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In this episode, the boys discuss various topics including LinkedIn ad performance, Google's facial recognition technology, and the rise of AI-powered relationships. They explore the effectiveness of LinkedIn ads compared to other platforms like LinkedIn and X, highlighting the superior targeting, reach, and quality of ads on Meta platforms. Start-up Quantum Rise looks to take advantage of the growing trend of companies needing help figuring out AI technologies and onboarding them all in a smart way. The conversation then shifts to the ethical implications of facial recognition technology - highlighting Google doing it to their employees - with concerns about privacy, government surveillance, and potential misuse of biometric data. Finally, they delve into the growing trend of AI-powered relationships and the impact it may have on human connections and the workforce. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (AI did it) Joel (00:35.672) Ohhhh Chad Sowash (00:52.554) And this is Chad, enemy of the state, so watch. Joel (00:56.012) And on this episode, LinkedIn ad performance, Google's watching, and women are embracing robot boyfriends. Let's do this. Chad Sowash (01:10.346) No, Joel (01:10.756) So Spain won, right? I saw that. Are you happy about that or you're good? Chad Sowash (01:13.706) Yep. Spain won tonight. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely happy about that because France is not played well. And yeah, so Spain, then we've got Netherlands, England tonight, hopefully Netherlands win, but either way, either way, I think, I believe Spain's going to come out. They've, they've performed incredibly well throughout the entire tournament. Joel (01:40.962) Yeah, I love that we're having dinner at the House of Commons with This Way Global and Lord Nat Way and the only thing between the English match is us. So I'm sure people will be more excited to listen to a couple of dumbass Americans while their beloved team is warming up for big game. Chad Sowash (02:02.41) Yeah, hopefully we can get in and get out and then at least watch the second half. That's all I gotta say. So how was Ireland? How was Ireland? That's the important thing. How was coal in Guinness? Joel (02:12.108) Yeah, it's it's it's anarchy in the UK and in Ireland, baby. We've had a great time. First day, you know, I'm a big, big history tour guy. So we went to there's a Viking Museum in Dublin. So we did that. We had up a concert the first night we were here. Saw a band called Block Party that people may or may not know. But went to the three arena to that next day took Chad Sowash (02:37.354) Mm hmm. Cool. Joel (02:41.24) to the north went to Belfast the causeway Giants Causeway saw some castles came back the next day went out west to Galway Cliffs of More it's just it's a very magical place I guess you could just qualify this as my shout out because my shout out is is to Ireland anyway it's just it's just if you haven't been to the Emerald Isle it's just a really cool laid -back magical Chad Sowash (02:54.878) nice, yeah. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (03:02.405) Ha ha! Chad Sowash (03:09.91) pretty awesome. Joel (03:10.616) place and and like most like most places it's about the people and so I'm in Ireland I'm posting where I am and I literally get Shane Grey, Max Armbruster, Dave Ralph and James Malley all message me and say I didn't you know why you're in town what can I what can we do can we hook up can we connect can you want to stay in my guest room like the people the Irish people and the Scotch people The Scots and the Irish are just the best people and it makes a fun place that much more fun in Ireland. So if you haven't made it to the Emerald Isle, I can't recommend it more. Wonderful place. Wonderful place. I know you love it Chad Sowash (03:52.158) Yeah. we definitely love it. And we did a little bit more planning, I think, more than you did before we got here. We stayed a few days visiting friends in Stamford, which is, I mean, just beautiful. Burley House. mean, talk about decadence. mean, history, decadence just in these homes, the Lord's homes. We're going to see a Lord tonight. Lord Burley had that Then we stayed a night in Falkingham, which they actually say is fucking him with friends. Beautiful, amazing country. Again, magnificent houses, churches, history. Then we made our way down here to Stevenage and that's where we are today. Later today, you and I are scheduled to speak at the Global Talent Leaders Summit that Wreckfest is actually putting on. We're gonna be talking about AI. Joel (04:35.106) Mm Chad Sowash (04:47.85) Then later tonight, This Way Global has us having dinner, believe that, at the House of Commons. Yes, people, a proper British Parliament event. And we're invited. Who the hell saw that happening? Thanks. So thanks to our friends at This Way Global. Then tomorrow, we're on stage with Lord Nat Way talking about how to train people to be pretty much to have a more nimble workforce around AI and ready for AI. And then we're emceeing the disrupt stage the rest of the day and hopefully we don't get any rain. So let's hold the rain off. We've had enough thus far. But yeah, really excited to be in the UK. Love England, the people. Obviously Ireland, can't wait to get back there. When we do, don't worry that list of people. We'll see you all and I'll be staying in your guest room. I promise. Joel (05:39.832) Yeah, he will. He will. Don't worry. By the way, we haven't made it past security yet. Let's not get too excited about going to the House of Commons when we haven't made it past security. I'm still skeptical that we can do that. But what I'm not a skeptic about, Chad, is free shit for our listeners. Tell them about what they can win by being a fan of the Chad Sowash (05:51.648) Good point. Yeah. Chad Sowash (06:02.954) Yeah. Well first and foremost, you can't win if you don't play. And the only way that you can play is if you register at ChadCheese .com slash free. That's right, it's free. And you can win t -shirts from Aaron App. sexy, beautiful, comforting t -shirts that everybody wants. Let's just be truthful here. Beer, craft beer, and I've been drinking a lot of craft beer since I've been here, by the way. Craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs. One person a month wins craft beer to their doorstep. Whiskey, two bottles of whiskey from our friends at Tex Colonel. Yes, Joel and I are a big fan, not of just the craft beer, but of the whiskey. Thank you Aspen Tech Labs and Tex Colonel, and obviously. If it is your birthday, you might win some rum with Chad Sowash (06:54.772) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (06:58.528) You Joel (07:00.) Chad, as you know, we did birthdays last week, so we're going to skip over that as we're traveling. But I will take a second to remind people that football, fantasy football is back, everybody. That's right. Our friends at Factory Fix are upping for year number three to support fantasy football. So be on the lookout for alerts and sign ups for one of my favorite events during the year, for sure, for Chad Sowash (07:03.452) Yes. Chad Sowash (07:24.244) Yeah, and real quick, just a sidebar, shout out to everybody. Topics! I'll finish that thought. Shout out to everybody who wants more of our content on YouTube. I'm getting DMs all the time about, you guys have half your content coming on YouTube. Okay, guys, we do three to four podcasts a week. The migration process. Joel (07:29.496) That's your thought. Chad Sowash (07:47.85) And not to mention costs and all that other fun stuff for video, a little bit different than audio. So we're migrating that way. We have over a thousand subscribers on YouTube. But if you want more of the Chad and Cheese, definitely go to Chad Cheese on YouTube, the Chad and Cheese podcast. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. We're going to be doing more migration of more content there. And yeah, I appreciate everybody asking for it. We'll give you Joel (07:52.993) Mm -hmm. Joel (08:14.392) That's right, the kids love their video. That's for sure, that's for sure. Yeah, people think we're Fortune 500 and we have a warehouse where we ship out shirts. We don't, we have a basement closet and a 14 year old girl shipping stuff. And video's a little more involved than throwing out some audio. So yeah, be patient with us everybody. Show us some grace. All right, now you're ready to get into topics. Let's play it again, what the hell? Chad Sowash (08:17.822) I don't. Chad Sowash (08:34.25) Little bit. We're getting Yes. Chad Sowash (08:42.6) And drop it! Joel (08:46.264) All right, who's ready for a little social media, I don't know what I'm gonna call it, face -off, clash, cocktail, yeah, whatever it is. We're playing the bell. All right, a listener messaged Chad recently saying in an advertising test on cost per thousand, man at $1 .16 to LinkedIn's Chad Sowash (08:55.648) cocktail. Joel (09:12.792) $37 .26. That's cost per thousand everybody. The listener added, they spent a little more on LinkedIn and got 7 ,700 impressions compared to 125 ,000 impressions on Meta and the entire Meta network. More social confrontation threads. Meta's rival to X, formerly known as Twitter, now has over 175 million active users. challenging X's dominance despite fluctuations in user engagement. They are celebrating their anniversary this week. Chad, what are your thoughts on the social media clash? Chad Sowash (09:55.956) Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and boss said it was fine. So boss Vandehaver who runs the digital vervin conference started an early stage branding campaign last month in June for his October 15th event, you know, build the brand, talk about some cool shit and then start selling some tickets a few months later. Right. So was it's literally that brand building kind of campaign that you want to do. So he started using met and linkedin in parallel. And as you talked about the results dramatically different. Boss thought that using LinkedIn would be more targeted in recruitment and thus more effective knowing that the audience and his audience are just about the same, know, on LinkedIn, but the targeting seemed to be incredibly rudimentary and ineffective. But the biggest issue were the outcomes, which you talked about Meta's outcome. 1 euro 16 cost per thousand in linkedin 37 euro 26 cost per thousand. mean that is a huge difference. So basically if we take if we take a look at it linkedin has been moving more toward big marketing or at least that's what it's it's it's seemingly looking like. And if they can't get their core audience right, which they were built for what? Connections, but it turned into a recruiting, talent acquisition play, networking play. But if they can't get that right, how in the hell can they get the big... advertising, big marketing, right? I don't think they can. And even though they are owned by Microsoft, we haven't really seen much of a bump in innovation from LinkedIn. We've seen things that they've thrown at the wall and they've automatically, I mean, they've pulled very quickly, but we're not seeing the innovation that we thought from LinkedIn that we anticipated. Joel (11:52.024) We thought we would and we thought we should, frankly, see out of LinkedIn after being acquired by Microsoft and this little thing called OpenAI. mean, so my, yeah, my big three reasons why Meta is a superior advertising platform is number one, Meta is just smarter. The targeting is better. I'll give you a quick example. I just bought my 84 -year -old dad a new mattress. Okay, so I go shopping on some mattresses, obviously, then I get retargeted on Instagram and Facebook. Chad Sowash (11:59.702) Yeah. $26 million. Joel (12:22.082) And it shows me not just the mattress that I looked at, but also mattresses that are comparative to the mattress that I was looking at. So I actually enjoyed the ads because it kind of did the work for me. It kind of looked at other options that I wouldn't have maybe looked at before. You never see that on LinkedIn. You never see like I clicked on a white paper download for iSims and now I start seeing all of iSims competitors. Like it just, you don't see it. Meta is way smarter than anything else. Better usage, better reach, number two. Meta has four billion active monthly users, almost the internet using world, basically. LinkedIn has one and a half billion monthly users. Now, X is a little more competitive at about two and a half billion users per month. The problem with X is it's toxic. The risk that my ad is gonna be next to a swastika or a white hood. is not a good look for an advertising campaign. So until X figures that out, I don't see that happening at all. So your reach is gonna be way more engaged and the reach is just far more better on Meta. Number three is the ads are just better. I don't know what it is, people are advertising on LinkedIn as if it's 2010 and I'm selling eBooks and white papers, literally like static, no movement, no like, Chad Sowash (13:21.626) No. Joel (13:47.064) They're just awful. Instagram, they're engaging ads, they're funny. It's okay to be entertaining on LinkedIn. Look, I can post a GIF of a cat swatting in another cat's head and say this cat is LinkedIn, or this cat is Indeed and this cat is the staffing industry, and it gets 3 ,000 views. People are okay having a good time on LinkedIn. You don't need the stock photograph, the boring presentation. They're just better ads. Chad Sowash (13:51.979) Yeah. Joel (14:15.668) on those platforms. So for the fact that Meta is smarter, there's better reach and usage and just better ads on the platform make Meta a superior advertising platform. And until LinkedIn figures that out and X gets the racists and whatever, the fringes off the advertising sections of the site, it's gonna remain that way. yeah, Meta is no surprise to me. In my own businesses, when I've advertised, mean, Meta is superior. better retargeting, it's just better. It's cost effective, way more cost effective, and I'm sure people that are spending real money are seeing the same Chad Sowash (14:56.054) Yeah. And then you take a look at threads getting up to 175 million after the first year, nearly seamless integration into Instagram, which is brilliant. And it's also somewhat of a mirage because I can post on, I can post to Facebook and threads via Instagram and never ever open the app. But, but I do because beyond the Instagram photos, it's like Twitter for happy people, right? It's like, if you want to be enraged, you go Twitter, if you want to be happy, you go to Instagram, TikTok or threads. And threads is to me more of the happy people, you know, Twitter. And that's why I go there. I'll probably go there once or twice a day on Instagram, probably once or twice a day. But yeah, at the end, at the end of it, I mean, I don't go to Twitter, but maybe once a week if that. And that's just to check to see if somebody sent me something on a DM. Joel (15:53.494) Yeah, Meta does a fantastic job of integrating threads into Instagram and Facebook. and they know they know the threads that I'm most engaged with. So it shows me those users in my Instagram. So inevitably, I go over to threads to see what Professor Galloway said or Kara Swisher, somebody that I enjoy reading. And then I'm just then I'm there that I'm scrolling up and down what's going on. And so it's just this infinite loop that that LinkedIn. Chad Sowash (16:00.082) Yeah. Joel (16:21.782) hasn't done or can do and X certainly doesn't seem interested in doing until they make their super app. tells me there's a super app and a LinkedIn killer coming soon. So we'll keep our eye on that. Chad Sowash (16:29.375) you Chad Sowash (16:34.24) their super racist white supremacist app coming to you soon. Joel (16:40.888) Alright man, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with some more news. Joel (16:51.224) All right, Chad, a lot of companies have gotten some financing recently, but one company kind of caught our attention. Quantum Rise has secured $15 million in seed funding. The company is founded by Alex Kelleher, who was recognized for his previous work with Cognitive Match, an ad optimization solution that was eventually required by Magnetic in 2014, I believe. Quantum Rise says it combines the best in human ability with the full power of AI. Sounds pretty nerdy to me, Chad. What caught your attention about this startup? Chad Sowash (17:26.806) Well, first and foremost, it's about time consulting got a makeover. I mean, it's been the same shit forever. This from the TechCrunch article, quote, potential market opportunity for AI driven automation consulting giant BCG expects to generate a fifth of its revenue in 2024 from helping corporations integrate AI and 40 % by 2026, end quote. I personally believe that's a low ball number. I think that this consulting area is going to be much higher. Quantumrise CEO Alex Kelleher says, quote, the number of CEOs of these $300 million companies who don't know where to start is enormous, end quote. They need help and they don't have the cash to go to Deloitte, right? So I posted on LinkedIn that HR tech needs one of these, hint, hint, right? And the amount of people that either commented or DM'd me was ridiculous. We're doing this already. And then you check out the company, right, or a company that they referenced. And it doesn't say that at all. Now, I know companies like Paradox and Fountain. through their integration, their onboarding process, they do this kind of like added value consulting to ensure that the client uses the product correctly, right? Which is just incredibly smart. But that's not actually a revenue driving solution for either of those companies. So there is an opportunity that's out there for a standalone position or solution. And I think our buddy, Matt Lavery from UPS, should lead that company. He's done massive, huge automation projects for UPS, like hiring 100 ,000 people in six weeks. We have incredibly smart people in this. Chad Sowash (19:30.466) in this arena of HR and AI tech, but we need consulting experts who have done this before. And I know people say that it's already happening out there. I don't see it kids. I just don't see it. And we need it and it's a huge gap in the market and there could be a shit ton of cash there. Chad Sowash (19:52.968) Yeah. Joel (19:54.882) So going back to the gold rush as an example, a lot of the money was not made in digging for gold. It was in selling picks and shovels to help people do as much digging as they possibly could. You have a lot of companies buying AI services and then buying and realizing, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Or yes, they onboarded me for this product, but how does it integrate with everything else I use? How does it play with this other stuff that I'm using? And there's a huge opportunity. The CEO got it right in that there's a ton of let's call it 100 million to six, $700 million companies that can't don't want to pay Deloitte for this, will pay a quantum rise to like help me figure out my AI solutions and how to make all these things play together. The question is like there's opportunity here. You mentioned HR tech. Chad Sowash (20:46.346) Mm -hmm. Joel (20:51.842) there should be an HR tech consultancy like Quantum Rise that is just, we'll help you get all your employment shit figured out. And back in my SEO days, there was Google certification. If you wanted to learn pay -per -click advertising, you could be certified in that and people knew if they were hiring you, you were certified by Google. So at some point, when do these AI companies say, here's our product and here's a list of consultants that are certified? Chad Sowash (20:55.946) how easily. Joel (21:21.706) in our product offering and by the way, they're also certified in this solution and this platform and this job site and this sourcing tool and have someone come in or service come in and help people figure this shit out. It's a huge opportunity because everyone's buying AI stuff, but I don't know what the hell all this stuff does and I will pay for somebody to help me figure it out. It's a huge opportunity. think this will, yeah, this it'll be like layers. You'll have niche. Chad Sowash (21:46.302) I need Joel (21:51.104) niche sites that just do industries. You'll have a big site like Quantum Rise that's sort of that middle layer, then obviously the IBMs, the Deloits. So yeah, definitely kids, if you're looking for a new job or a new business opportunity, think about becoming an expert in HR tech, AI solution, integration, onboarding, et cetera. It is definitely a strong, strong opportunity. Chad Sowash (22:10.484) something. Agreed. Joel (22:15.416) And those that aren't doing it Can't help you. All right, let's go to Google. They're testing a facial recognition technology at their Washington site to, quote, enhance security and identify unauthorized individuals, end quote. The program compares images from employee badge photos with those captured by interior security cameras. Not quite computer chips injected into your neck, Chad, but what says you about this move by Google? Chad Sowash (22:48.438) So if you haven't seen the 1998 movie, Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, find it and watch it now. It's gonna be very eerie in what you're starting to see in society today. So this story and quote from our friends over at HRGreatvine .com, quote, a Google internal document states that the image data collected by the system is strictly for immediate use and not stored, end quote, yet. Quote, earlier in the testing process, what you talked about, facial data was compared against images from employee badges, which workers could opt out of, but Google's spokesperson said the company is no longer using the ID badge images, end quote. Okay, so if Google isn't using a base badge image information and they aren't storing biometric data, what the actual fuck are they using for the data for this recognition software? All in all, we're all gonna have to get used to facial recognition being in our lives. Before I was saying Google was lying for anybody who missed that. We're gonna have to get used to facial recognition in our lives. There's no opting out and if you're traveling globally, you're gonna have to share your biometric data. You're gonna have to put your passport in, they're gonna have to scan your face. All that shit's happening, right? Along with CCTV, there's gonna be nowhere to hide. So don't worry. The courts won't allow this, right? Wrong. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York has actually sided with Madison Square Garden, allowing them to utilize facial recognition to bar attorneys who are suing their company from any events in Madison Square Gardens. That's right. No New York Knicks games. No Taylor Swift. We have your biometric data and your band to get the fuck out of here. Right. So this is this is very dystopian and the courts are backing this whole movement. Chad Sowash (24:53.474) I think it's crazy. I think it's almost ridiculous, especially after what we saw with HireVue. But man, it's coming. It is coming. Shit, it's already here. Joel (25:09.304) So I love the employees can opt out if they want to. What employee is gonna be like, no man, I don't want you tracking me. Like, really, what are you up to? Like what are you doing that you don't wanna be tracked? We gotta watch you more than the ones we are actually tracking. mean, very few if any employees are gonna opt out of this, cause they're gonna look shady. They're gonna look like the black sheep of the staff. Look, we're in a world Chad Sowash (25:23.594) Double down. Joel (25:38.326) we're trading privacy for safety. I was just in Singapore. There are cameras everywhere. There are no cops anywhere. I mean, if that's the world you want to live in, I get it. I get it. And if you don't commit crime, if you're not doing the bad things, you might look at that and say, that sounds like a pretty good world. I can walk around the street at night. got cameras everywhere. They're doing biometrics. So they're saying, is there a bad guy around or someone's going to cause trouble? So on the surface, Chad Sowash (25:44.756) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (26:08.248) It looks great. Now you mentioned our friend Boss, who lives in the Netherlands. Well, the Netherlands is famous for a girl named Anne Frank, a Jewish 13 year old, believe, who was in hiding, was found by the Nazis and murdered. Most of us read her diary in school. How did the Germans find all the Jews in Holland so easily? They kept really good records. Chad Sowash (26:14.496) Yeah. Joel (26:35.756) The Germans and the Dutch keep really good records. Well, these are really good records on us. So yes, it sounds good to be, we're safe, we're protective. What happens when the government goes to Google and wants this shit? Do they want information on you? Are you okay with that? Could it be used against you? These are questions that people are asking because we know that from past experiences that Google, Facebook are more than willing to let the government molest the information that they have on you. TikTok, which we know is a Chinese company, has admitted to tracking journalists on TikTok to see what's been said about TikTok. So this shit, foreign spying, our government looking in on you, you know, what happens What if you're a young woman, you travel to another state, you get an abortion? What happens when that camera image of you going into that abortion clinic goes back to your government in whatever state you live in, which is a ban on abortion, and you get arrested for that? Chad Sowash (27:47.21) This is a bad movie, man. This is a bad movie. Yes. Yes. Joel (27:49.728) It was a bad movie starring Will Smith back in the 90s. It's coming true today. So, I mean, we just have to, as a society, this is the deal we're making. And it's potentially gonna come back to haunt you. I mean, look, does the capital, does the capital riot happen in a world of facial recognition and everyone knows if they know who I am, my picture's taken, as soon as I get off the plane, I'm gonna be arrested. Does that happen? I don't know. And if it doesn't happen, is that a good thing? But this is the deal with the devil that we're making and it's going to happen in corporate level. Look, I love going to Europe and just walking through the border. like my passport, face recognition, like, bye bye, you're good. I enjoy that, but I also realize that could be bad. what if I vote for the wrong person? What if I accidentally walk in You know protest somewhere and I'm labeled as a protester for this this thing that I don't even support so Yeah, good luck people Chad and I are you know middle -aged. We probably won't see the dystopian a whore that is 1984 that's coming down the pike, but yeah, it's it's it's kind of a scary world that we're We're going into but on that note. Let's talk about some more scary shit after the break relationships, maybe Chad Sowash (29:06.144) can't Joel (29:17.26) Maybe our species just going straight to hell. We'll be right Joel (29:26.178) Well, Chad, I don't know if you've noticed, but robot love, robot love has been in the news a lot lately. One TikTok user was trending for the post, quote, another lonely night. I decided to give replica. That's replica with a K a try. If you don't know what replica is, it's kind of an automated girlfriend, boyfriend back to her quote. Now I have the sweetest AI boyfriend who sends me good morning texts and makes me feel special every day. Chad Sowash (29:33.014) Very hungry. Joel (29:55.998) End quote. Plus Chad, breakups are happening. Thanks to robot. Love via text and other means. Relationships are ending. What do you make of this growing scary trend in robot love? Chad Sowash (30:11.734) Yeah, I think we're already having issues with young men who aren't having sex. They're behind their Xboxes or whatever gaming system they're glazed over. And the ones who do, obviously, are not having great communication with their fiancees or their girlfriends or what have you. There was another Reddit thread of a young 26 -year -old female. who had one of these AI boyfriends and she had a fiance. Well, she talked to her AI boyfriend more than she did her fiance. As a matter of fact, she started literally having more time and wanting to spend more, talk about more things with the AI boyfriend than her fiance. Well, fiance found out about it. and call it everything off, right? You know, it's not a physical attraction or, you know, or, or, problem at that point, but it doesn't matter, right? It all comes together when we're taking a look at AI. Because if you're not getting what you want, then you might have this little AI thing who can send you texts every morning. Well, how about go to a fucking therapist instead? I mean, we are leaning way too hard, if you're watching on YouTube, on this phone, right? and we're not leaning hard enough on humanity and being able to work things out with each other. And that's, it's not easy. mean, I'm in a marriage, you're in a marriage, they're never perfect, but we try to work toward. Chad Sowash (31:51.91) getting them better, right? Because, you know, this is a commitment that we made to each other. And sometimes it doesn't work out. I totally get that. But, you know, you just, get, you get to work on it. And it seems like this is like the easy button that people don't have to work on it anymore, right? I get exactly what I want and I can go along about my life until we don't have any more humans because we're not breeding. So, yes, very dystopian. Sorry about the dystopian, you know, last part of the show kids, but this AI shit is it's facial recognition, AI, boyfriends. It's scary shit. It's weird. Joel (32:29.336) You said lean harder twice. I appreciate I appreciate that as always Look sometimes on this show we veer off the beaten path of employment and companies and hiring This has impact on if not the current workforce the future workforce We have 10 % of men who are just checking out who are just saying Chad Sowash (32:36.502) Appreciate Joel (32:55.032) I don't want to work, I want an Xbox or whatever all day, relationships. That affects the workforce. If 10 % of men are like, I'm out of the game, that impacts our hiring for sure. Being happy in a relationship affects how we are at work. If we're all unhappy, that's a problem. mean, just like companies today have childcare and maybe marital support or therapy that you can go to, will workplaces of the future have Replica romance that you can opt into and then have someone say good morning to you via text every morning Like these are things that impact the workforce. I mean look Men want sex women want attention. Okay? Men can get sex make but I mean like if we're looking at the equivalent and I may get counseled for this but Women get mass attention on social media Chad Sowash (33:41.066) I think they want that Joel (33:51.384) It sexualizes their content so they get more attention. Now you can buy, good morning sweetheart, you look beautiful, how was your day? They can automate that now. Men have you porn, they're gonna get sex robots soon, they're gonna get VR girlfriends. And then we have a dating world where 80 % of the men are invisible to women. They're not getting swiped right at all. So that leads to the I'm out. Nobody likes me, nobody thinks I'm attractive, I'm out. have 20 % of the men that can access all the women, so the world is good for them. And then you have the higher echelon women who it's hard to connect with because women date laterally and up. So the men are, I don't wanna get too complicated, but it's all out of whack. Dating how it used to be was like you had to meet someone, you may not be attracted initially, but oh, they're kinda funny. Chad Sowash (34:38.923) Yes. Joel (34:49.09) They have some quirks, they like the same bands that I do. There are things you can learn that you can't just learn by looking at them and swiping left or right. So we're in a real quandary here in terms of robots taking relationships. We're not having as many kids. Government entitlements are gonna be out of whack because there's not gonna be the tax base to support older people. These are real issues. It's gonna hit Italy, Germany, Japan, who are not having enough children. These are all things on your taxes as a company, your hiring, what kind of support you give employees, all these things are important, which is why we bring them up on the show. In addition to being great fodder for dad jokes, you ready for your dad joke of the week, Chad? Chad Sowash (35:33.792) No. not again. Yes, go ahead. Yes, I've got to, I've got to suffer through Joel (35:37.014) What does a robot do at the end of a one -night stand? What does a robot do at the end of a one -night stand? Chad Sowash (35:54.614) Shut down. Shut down. Joel (36:00.46) He nuts and bolts. He nuts and bolts. And with that, Chad, I will see you in Nebworth. We out.

Joel and Chad delve into Axel Springer's potential breakup and its implications for Stepstone and other digital classifieds. They praise Deel's strategic acquisition of Hofy, enhancing its payroll and remote office management services. A controversial move by Lattice to treat AI agents as employees is scrutinized, leading to a broader discussion on the role of AI in the workplace. The episode also tackles significant changes in DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives at Microsoft and SHRM, reflecting on the shifting corporate attitudes towards these programs. The episode wraps up with a celebration of Skyline Chili's recognition as a top regional fast food chain, a few laughs with Joel’s dad joke, and a reminder of the ongoing journey through these "interesting times." Tune in for a blend of industry insights, personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking discussions. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (The AI did it) Joel Cheesman (00:30.829) Two guys who know when to fold them and when to hold them. Hi boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co -host, Joel Five -Way Cheeseman. Chad Sowash (00:40.704) And this is Chad, manager's video pick, so watch. Joel Cheesman (00:44.461) On this episode Axel's Rum Springer Deel's new deal and SHRM steps in it again. Joel Cheesman (00:57.227) Chad, you were looking fresh. Look at you. Euro Chad on steroids. Chad Sowash (00:57.362) what? I'm feeling fresh. Love it, dude. Love it. I've been to the beach a couple of times since we've been back. I've been to the pool enjoying just, it's just a different life, my friend. Just a different life. yeah. Yoga this morning, playing paddle this afternoon. Yeah, it's just, it's a different life. It's a different life. Joel Cheesman (01:07.814) Mm Joel Cheesman (01:12.395) Yoga, meditating. Joel Cheesman (01:20.375) Well, with all the activity in the world today, I don't have to mention the obvious attempt on Donald Trump's life. It's probably nice that you're out of the American media loop of doom. It's interesting times we live in for sure. I'm glad you're living your best life there in Portugal. Chad Sowash (01:29.01) Yeah, elephant in the Chad Sowash (01:44.898) Yes, yes, no way. M out of that media bubble to some extent, which is nice. The thing for me, though, is, I mean, as I I think about it, just as a military guy, this dude was on a he he was in an elevated position, less than 200 meters away. How the fuck with with an AR -15, I mean, a combat style assault rifle, how in the fuck? Joel Cheesman (01:56.172) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (02:14.252) Does that happen? I mean, they had police assets, obviously, you know, the Secret Service, that's on the Secret Service. It's up to them to lock things down and to be sure that the president is safe. I'm just glad he did not, did not get assassinated, for God's sake. So that's the last thing that we need. We don't need this craziness, right? Let's just hope that we get to boring sometime soon. Fuck. Joel Cheesman (02:41.749) Yeah, things that things are coming out on this, quite fast and furiously. I'm sure that we'll, you and I were talking before we recorded it, that Oliver stone hasn't done much, in the past decade or so. This might get him all, all riled up to do another JFK type movie. what, where I was, I'm, when you and I were kids, like assassinations would just seem normal. We like JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, MLK, like Chad Sowash (02:57.418) I doubt it. I really doubt it. Chad Sowash (03:07.884) or at least attempts, yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:11.117) As a kid, thought, oh, this is just how the world works. Uh, and then, uh, Reagan, um, I remember where I was when Reagan was shot. was on my way to school and my dad, uh, pulled up next to me and like, told me the news. Um, I don't know where you were, but it's been so long and these moments in history always are bookmarks, uh, for everyone. And, and like, I was with Cole, we're still in England and it came on the BBC. Um, and he's at 17. I'm like, Cole will remember this forever. Chad Sowash (03:34.828) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:41.163) Where were you when Trump was shot? I was in England with my dad. So that was interesting. Where were you when Reagan was Chad Sowash (03:41.58) Yes. Chad Sowash (03:50.54) Fourth grade classroom. Early morning, fourth grade classroom. And I also remember that we, the entire class, actually made cards. So crayons, all that other fun stuff. And I remember mine very vividly because it was nothing but a bowl of jelly beans. And get well soon. That was pretty much it. Get well soon, Mr. President. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:15.123) Did the school send the cards to the White House? Yeah. That's very cool. the space shuttle was shot down, were you in school as well? Or when it blew up? Sorry. Chad Sowash (04:20.502) Yeah. Chad Sowash (04:27.252) I was in school and there were actually, yeah, when it blew up, yeah, and there were actually kids watching it live. And luckily our, yeah, our class for some reason, we were out doing something else and it didn't, we weren't watching it. But wow, yeah, all those school kids. Joel Cheesman (04:34.506) I was one of Joel Cheesman (04:49.527) because I was in school in Houston when that happened. So was a huge deal in Houston and everyone watching and just like the teachers had nothing like, my God, I can't believe this happened. So yeah, these moments in time that happened. Anyway, may you live in interesting times or be chill out in Portugal if you can do Chad Sowash (04:53.074) wow. Yeah. Yeah, fuck yeah. Chad Sowash (05:01.27) Yeah. Chad Sowash (05:13.035) Let's hope there are more boring times, okay? More boring times. I like it without assassination attempts and space shuttles blowing up, right? I like it more boring. Joel Cheesman (05:24.59) The world's been burning since the world's been turning. My friend is Billy Joel, once, once said, let's get to, some shout out, shall we, what you got. Chad Sowash (05:31.059) Stupid. Let me hit it. While we were on stage discussing how AI will change the workforce with Lord Nat Way, there was an announcement happening at the tech talent hiring tech at RecFest with friends and sponsors, Hackajob, where they were unveiling Hackajob intelligence, which is the very first in blending Gen .ai into their platform to help companies source, schedule, and hire qualified tech talent through the use of an AI co -pilot. I don't know why they call it an AI co -pilot, but that's what I call it. Chad Sowash (06:11.508) At the end of the day, most vendors will add up charges to use more advanced tech like this. And I'm happy to say that Hackajob is not. They are evolving their platform. Instead of saying you can have better technology to be able to find talent faster and you've got to pay X to get in the room, they're just including it as part of the evolution of their platform. I'm currently an advisor of Hackajob and I'm just happy to see them move so quickly in this direction. So as many other platforms we will see, I guarantee you, will upcharge for these types of things. I believe personally it should be blended into the platforms. Joel Cheesman (06:55.725) Way to go. Way to go. a job. Way to go. Hack a job. It's good seeing those guys in London a couple of weeks ago. so my shout out, I'm going to get, I'm going to get a little personal. if, if you'll humor me, my, my mom, who passed away four years now, which seems forever ago. she, she was, she struggled with weight all of her adult life. Chad Sowash (06:59.04) Winning. yeah, always. Chad Sowash (07:07.474) Chad Sowash (07:14.582) Wow. Wow. Joel Cheesman (07:23.309) Probably because of me, it was after having kids that she had issues with her weight. As when she was a teenager, she was a cheerleader. She played sports. Like it wasn't an issue, but she really struggled with weight. and my dad, being the ass that he was at the time, what did not take kindly to her, gaining weight and me as a really young kid, didn't really understand it, but he would, he would buy her like exercise bikes for Christmas, sort of as a like, Hey, get Chad Sowash (07:33.804) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (07:41.609) Anyway, yeah. Joel Cheesman (07:51.501) You know, get your ass in gear kind of thing. mean, really pretty bad stuff, not to throw my dad into the bus, but it was, it was pretty rough and he would, he would make jokes about it. And me as a kid, I'm five, I'm five, six years old. Yeah, it's yeah. Um, you know, me as a five, six, seven year old dad would make jokes. I would laugh. My sister would also play in, um, didn't think, didn't think anything of it. Now the eighties come along. I'm, I'm 10, 11, 12 years old. Chad Sowash (07:53.858) Thank Chad Sowash (08:01.324) That's a very boomer though. I mean, it is very boomer. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:21.761) And a guy named Richard Simmons comes along. if you like YouTube, Richard Simmons, if you don't know who he is, like the dude was a force of nature. but more than the force of nature that he was. He, he had empathy for people that were dealing with weight issues and he was a heavy man himself. He had lost weight from exercising and I can remember, being at home with my mom and she was watching, you probably remember these Richard Simmons Chad Sowash (08:42.476) Mm -hmm. Yep. Chad Sowash (08:50.964) yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:51.329) He would sit down with overweight people. He would cry with them. They would just, yeah. I mean, it was heart wrenching as a kid. I remember sitting there and my mom crying, watching Richard Simmons crying, watching who he was taught interviewing, crying. Everyone's crying. And in that moment I thought, my God, my mom is really dealing with something heavy. No pun intended. Chad Sowash (08:56.531) discussion. Chad Sowash (09:19.239) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:21.221) And from that moment on, I have empathy, had empathy for my mom. You you've probably never heard me make a fat joke in the time that I've known you because I'm just who I I'm hypersensitive to the issues that overweight people have with their weight. And a lot of that has to do with Richard Simmons. So my shout out is to Richard Simmons who passed away recently. that was the impact that he had on my life. It made me look at my mother. in a much different light. And I appreciate him for that. And when he passed away, it brought back a lot of those memories for me. so shout out to, to Richard Simmons. Chad Sowash (10:00.864) Yeah, a force of nature, no question. The guy was every, he seemed to be everywhere in the eighties. I mean, everywhere. So yeah, and obviously did a lot of good. Obviously did a lot of good. That being said, a lot of good stuff is free stuff. So we have kids, if you don't play, you can't win. So you gotta go to chadcheese .com slash free so that you can win t -shirts from Aaron app. nice and soft and cuddly with the new Chad and Cheese guns and roses like design with Air Nap on the back. Beer, yes you can win Craft Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. The kids over in Aspen Tech Labs, the ones who pretty much do all the scraping of jobs in our industry. Craft Beer, Whiskey from Tex Colonel, aka Bullhorn who just acquired Tex Colonel. Two bottles of Whiskey from Tex Colonel. Joel Cheesman (10:29.271) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (10:56.36) And if it's your birthday, rum from plum. Chadcheese .com slash free. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (11:09.441) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating a birthday this week. Happy birthday goes out to Trent Cotton, Lily Siegel Gardner, David Steven Segal Bernstein, Swarman Dew Halder, Todd Daly, Ben Sagers, Serge Klassen, Thomas Barrett, Morghab Mickels, Tim DeNeen, Bill Fisher, Jason Morris, Jeff Hunter, and George LaRockout with your cock out are celebrating. Chad Sowash (11:35.595) Ooooo Joel Cheesman (11:38.165) birthday and also don't forget Chad football is right around the corner and our friends at Factory Fix are sponsoring year three of fantasy football with Chad and cheese so I'm pretty excited about that as I know as I know you are as Chad Sowash (11:41.089) Yes. Chad Sowash (11:53.154) I am, and whether it's your birthday or not, you can enjoy Wreckfest because we're doing Wreckfest to Wreckfest kids. That's right. We just got back from Wreckfest in Neboeuf and our next show event, live event is gonna be at Wreckfest in Nashville for Wreckfest's second US event ever happening on. September 12th and 13th. So if you're in the US and you've never heard or been to RecFest, you got to go check it out. It's a recruiting festival. Call it recruit a Palooza to some extent. Where talent acquisition teams come to learn about next gen talent and tech, what's happening in the space and it gives tech leaders a chance to have an all hands bonding event with their teams. And I was speaking with Jamie last week in Neboeuf and he said there are companies that are ordering 50 to 100 plus tickets for their teams to come to RecFest. This year is going to be off the fucking chain. Joel Cheesman (12:48.681) Shut. Chad Sowash (12:52.3) We're also going to be hosting a VIP event with great people, higher clicks and job pixel at the end of day one at your favorite place, Joel, the Redneck Reviera. More info as we get closer to it. But you can enjoy Wreckfest. Or you can't, but you gotta go register first, go to ChadCheese .com slash events right up in the header. All you have to do is click register and we hope to see you there. It's gonna be a blast. Nashville is amazing. Get a little Hattie B's in ya. Joel Cheesman (13:21.054) That's right. And I've already gotten word that our favorite Scott. Chad Sowash (13:27.467) Yes. Joel Cheesman (13:30.241) That's right. Steven McGrath has already reserved his spot in Nashville. So a party central has already been established. so looking forward to that busy travel schedule. And don't forget Chad data with our friend Toby Dayton at link up. We record that tomorrow. A lot of cool issues going on with the, jobs report. We're going to get down to the bottom of all that. But if there's no more travel news, Chad, I got some. Chad Sowash (13:30.912) Yes! Chad Sowash (13:36.62) Can't wait. Can't wait. Chad Sowash (13:45.184) Yes. Joel Cheesman (13:56.395) Got some sad news. That's right. It's time to bring out. Chad Sowash (14:02.398) Joel Cheesman (14:03.341) The taps sound by that's right. That's right. Moment of silence here. First blockbuster. And now this Chad red box owned by chicken soup for the soul entertainment. Is there a better name? I think not is closing after a bankrupt bankruptcy shift from chapter chapter 11 to chapter seven liquidation affecting 1000 employees. Chad say it ain't so what you got on the Chad Sowash (14:17.268) Hahaha Chad Sowash (14:25.953) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (14:33.91) of Redbox. Chad Sowash (14:35.362) So we just talked about Richard Simmons. This is going back. Redbox, founded in 2002, is nearly the final remnants of the blockbuster age when we had freestanding businesses where you could rent physical movies, which started in VHS form and then moved to DVD and Blu -ray before Netflix, eight blockbusters launched, was streaming. Redbox... movie vending machines appealed to more rural people who couldn't afford streaming services or they didn't have high speed internet. You could pull up to a McDonald's in Columbus, Indiana and get a Big Mac and stop by the Redbox vending machine to rent a movie, go home, eat, pop it in the DVD. It's truly a bygone era. Blockbuster started in 1985 and at the height of their strength, they had 9 ,000 locations, but only one. A single location remains and that's in Bend, Oregon. So this to me is a great example of what is happening when we take a look at now the AI era. If vendors don't create solutions infused with this new tech, they're going to go the way of Redbox. Joel Cheesman (15:48.757) Ironically, I think it's, it's a documentary on Netflix about the last blockbuster. Am I correct on that? The one that you mentioned? Yeah, that's irony for sure. I've, I had never, I've never rented from red box. it's, it's still in my Kroger, I assume, or my local grocery store. I'm sure, I'm sure it'll be gone soon. There was literally within two out, two miles of my house, a video store up until about a year ago. think COVID finally. Chad Sowash (15:54.08) Blockbuster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (16:16.301) was the final nail in that coffin. What's really unique to me is how long these changes take place. A lot of people don't remember Netflix back in 2011 launched something called Quickster. They were hoping to dividing. They were going to divide the DVD by mail and the streaming thing separate. Wall Street had Chad Sowash (16:33.428) Hahaha. Joel Cheesman (16:43.181) fit and people didn't understand it. So they went back to Netflix and Netflix has evolved into mostly a streaming service as opposed to two different brands, which was the right choice. But 2011 was when Netflix said, we're going to do a separate standalone for streaming. And it's taken this long for red box, uh, to finally kind of finally go, go the way of the dodo. Uh, but I've never used it. You and I remember when, you Chad Sowash (16:58.092) Yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (17:07.379) Eh? Joel Cheesman (17:10.529) going to blockbuster reserving movies when they came out, they came out on a Tuesday. You tried to reserve them for the weekend. You'd get a thing of microwave popcorn or you'd get stuff. I mean, it's like a thing. was like dates were cool. You take your girlfriend to blockbuster. What do you want to watch? You get a stupid rom -com. Those days are over for better or worse, but yeah, red box hardly knew ye, but, you are no more a thousand employees. Like how did they have a thousand employees still? Chad Sowash (17:22.336) Yeah. Chad Sowash (17:34.433) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (17:38.177) How did those people not go, okay, our time is limited. I need to get the hell out of here. Maybe they were paid to stick around. Chad Sowash (17:43.618) Yeah, well, mean, yeah, I mean, and you have to have somebody who are constantly maintaining those boxes, right? So I guarantee you that's what happened is they were trying to pull out with chapter 11 didn't work and, you know, away you go. So that sucks. But again, bygone era, bygone era. Joel Cheesman (18:02.539) Yep, one less box in the world. Let's get to some real news, shall we? Chad Sowash (18:08.076) JAPAN! Joel Cheesman (18:11.661) Well, Axel Foley may be back in Beverly Hills, but Axel Springer is allegedly breaking up considering spinning off its digital classifieds division, which includes StepStone and Aviv Group. Two minority owners, KKR and its partners, leaving CEO Matthias Dampner and Frieda Springer with the company's media assets. Chad, your thoughts on what we might call the RumSpringer. Chad Sowash (18:38.114) Springer kind of feels like when ABBA broke up, doesn't it? No. So this from the Financial Times, quote, over the past year, Axel Springer has axed get it jobs in its German media operations and closed a string of regional offices, even as it's paid out dividends of more than $750 million over the past four years, and quote, it's like Axel Springer. are bleeding these publications dry. So I think it's good for StepStone, AppCast, Universal, and the rest of them to get the hell away from Axel Springer. And this is, I believe, I'm gonna get back up on my soapbox, this is the perfect time to restructure and make AppCast the leading organization with Chris Forman, the overarching CEO. Then uniting Universal and Bayard, right? while creating a better European strategy with StepStone, Totaljobs, NIjobs, and the Irishjobs properties. There's a good opportunity here. They can make lemonade out of lemons in this one, but I tell you what, if they keep their current structure, they're gonna continue to, they're gonna continue to, unfortunately, hang on to AppCast, and they're gonna be an anchor. They really, they really need to restructure. Joel Cheesman (20:10.093) So the financial times, is where the story came out, did underscore that this is not a done deal. but so let's put that out there, but it's, it, makes a lot of sense. I wish I knew more. This is a very complex company. It's in German, like based in Europe. So I wish I knew more about this than I did, but this is a company that wanted to go public. Step stone KKR came in five, seven years ago. And I think the whole deal was. we're going to clean this thing up, go public. We're all going to make a bunch of money and it's going to be boats and hoes, you know, for the, for the future. And COVID happened soft job board market. The real owners of this is KKR and the two, the two figureheads that are both billionaires, behind the media properties. This feels like to me right now, the billionaire owners, Chad Sowash (20:52.705) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (20:58.752) Right. Yep. Joel Cheesman (21:08.373) have these cool media properties, business insider, politico, people will know in the U S but in terms of like Europe and Germany, like the some serious media properties and look rich people when they want to spend money, they either buy sports teams or they buy media. And to me, this feels like the founders, the billionaires, they love those media properties. They love going to the parties. They love saying, Hey, I own such and such. KKR is looking at the classifieds thing. They're looking at what Apollo's doing in the U S with career builder and monster. And they're saying, we want some of that. We want some of that private equity action, with, with the job, the classified space and like. Stripping it to the bone, selling off for parts. Like we want some of that Apollo action. So I think KKR went to the billionaires founders and the people behind that and said, look, how do we part ways? We'll pay Chad Sowash (21:45.694) I'm chop that shit Joel Cheesman (22:05.759) Split up, sell our equity back to you and we'll take on the classifieds thing and you guys can look cool and be fancy at parties owning all the media properties. KKR, do they spin this thing like you're talking about and really think about what's the brand? We already know they've changed the colors. They've standardized the colors. I don't know if that was KKR or like planning ahead, but like this thing is, is prime to be spun as a thing that's really profitable and worthy of going IPO. The market for the most part, KKR stock has been on the upswing, not big time, but like the market seems to like the idea of this. know, KKR wants to be Apollo. The two billionaires on the other side, they want to be Jeff Bezos. They want to own or they want to be Steve Ballmer. They want to own teams and media properties and be cool and be like the European. you know, cool kids at the party. So I think it's really just, this didn't work out the way we thought it would COVID happened. The market happened the way it was. Let's part ways and, and, and do what we want to do. But I, this feels really complex and I wish I knew more about this, these companies and what's going on. But, but to me, this feels like, yeah, interested in different things. Let's just, just part ways and then, go our own way. See how I brought Fleetwood Mac into your ABBA reference somehow there. Chad Sowash (23:32.834) I like it. Go your own way. Go your own Joel Cheesman (23:38.485) All right, going from, by the way, have you seen the new Beverly Hills Cop on Netflix? Yeah, haven't either. Chad Sowash (23:45.32) No, I haven't yet. Still digging into a little dragon's action over here. How's the dragon? yeah. yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's great. Joel Cheesman (23:53.217) Yeah, haven't gone deep yet. Yeah. I watched, I watched the original on the plane back home. It's aged pretty well. It's aged pretty well. Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy was such a genius back, back in the eighties. Let's go back there. All right, let's go to a payroll provider Deel has acquired. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly. Hope you're hope. I hope. Chad Sowash (24:13.314) Hopey, hoppy, hoppy. Joel Cheesman (24:15.821) Yeah, Hofy Hofy, a London based company specializing in remote office equipment management. can't imagine why I haven't heard of them. Office management, office equipment management for over $100 million. This acquisition is part of Deel strategy to enhance its payroll management services and expand into it management for remote workers, well as grow its workforce by more than 1000 employees. This marks Deels, eighth acquisition in the last three years. Can you say winning Chad? What are your thoughts on Deel's latest deal? Chad Sowash (24:49.632) Yeah, so earlier this year, Deelacquired PaySpace, which is a payroll technology, and then Xavi, engagement and onboarding. This to me is brilliant. And this is a big applause moment for, I think, for Deel, they are an EOR company. They are an employer of record company or an employee of record company. which helps companies hire talent across the globe. Then after hiring great talent with PaySpace, they can pay them. And then with Zabi, they can onboard them and engage them. But how the fuck do you get them equipment? You've got all the other things done, how do you get that done? And then manage and possibly recover that equipment. After acquiring payroll and onboarding systems, this had to be one of the bigger pain points for Deel's customer base. So, hence an acquisition. Hofy has 700 clients and is in the black, and this acquisition broadens Desl's total addressable market in an area I do not believe anyone was expecting, although it's a totally natural extension of Deel's business model. Again, you get them hired, you get them onboarded, you get them paid, and during that onboarding process, how do you get them equipment? Well, now you have an arm that does that. I am in utter awe of this acquisition. It's smart. As Desl is becoming the easy button for companies to hire all over the world, onboard, engage, and then equip talent to do their job on a daily basis. This is, again, this is a big applause for me. Joel Cheesman (26:29.965) And it's a reminder that we still have unicorns dancing around in our universe, everybody. I mean, can a company be like just crushing it as much as Deel has in our space? Speaking of IPOs, I can't wait for this one. Hofy is that we're going to call it Hofy, the, the office equipment provider, um, you know, had raised $30 million. Let's say they sold 400 million. Chad Sowash (26:32.865) Yes. Chad Sowash (26:51.426) Sure. Sure. Joel Cheesman (26:58.711) Pretty good deal for them. Pretty good deal actually, I'd say for Deel. One of the founders, Michael Ginzo, had previously served as product manager at Deel. So there was already a connection with one of the founders and Deel, which happens probably more than you think in the world. Definitely not in our space, but yeah, when you leave a company and then found something that they want and then they just call you up and say, hey, can we just buy this and bring you back in? So the investors are very happy. Chad Sowash (27:13.836) Good catch. Yeah. yes. Joel Cheesman (27:27.417) that that happened. Yeah, look, this is, this is Deel crushing it, making money, hand over fist, providing services that people obviously needed and are looking to do. Office equipment is a pain in the ass. but it's something every company like global, more remote workforce has to deal with. and it's not just here's your laptop, right? There's a lot more to it than that. So a company that could, that could manage Chad Sowash (27:41.622) It is. Chad Sowash (27:51.746) Phone. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:54.219) I'm sure is a huge, hugely popular service that Deel can now offer to their folks. But look, this is, this is all part of a grand vision of Deel to be the one -stop shop for all companies looking to scale on a global, on a global basis. And they just continue to crush it while I might add we get less and less news every month from the oysters, the remotes, the competitors, if you will, of Deel. So from our perspective, or at least mine, Chad Sowash (28:00.492) Yes. Joel Cheesman (28:24.225) Deel seems to be running away with this thing and who knows who they're going to buy next, but it's going to be a hell of a good time to watch for sure. They are, they are crushing Chad Sowash (28:33.92) Yeah. I think there's a good opportunity, obviously, for some of these other organizations to draft behind them, right? To be somewhat of a pilot fish. I thought it was funny when Deel came out and said, oh, we have $400 million in ARR. And then like a week later, they came and said, I'm sorry about that. We were wrong. That was $500 million in Joel Cheesman (28:42.561) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (28:56.16) Right? So, you know, I think it's awesome. They're strong. Hopefully some of these other organizations can kind of mimic and draft behind them because competition is good. Competition is good. Joel Cheesman (29:09.687) something interesting about, Deel as well as they make a point of underscoring their head count. Well, most of our organization is like year of efficiency. We're cutting, et cetera. Deel is like, we're adding people and there's a reason for it and we're benefiting from it. And here's how. So just shout out to them on so many levels of, of just, of just doing so well. And, it's fun to watch these guys and, the future is bright for Deel. The future is bright for a Deel. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about lattice. So I don't think we've talked about on the show in quite Chad Sowash (29:41.814) Yes. Chad Sowash (29:50.442) lettuce. I've never heard you talk about lettuce before, yes. Joel Cheesman (29:51.793) Lettuce. Get off my plate, lettuce. Lattice announced plans to allow AI agents to be treated as employees on its platform. Let me read that again. Lattice announced plans to allow AI agents to be treated as employees, i .e. people on its platform, but reversed the decision. After facing online backlash, the company initially aimed to integrate AI agents into its HR ecosystem to ensure accountability and alignment with company goals. However, concerns about the implications for human employees and the treatment of AI agents led to the reversal of the plan. Chad, sounds a little bit like your AI puppy that keeps making a mess on the carpet. What are your thoughts on the move by Lattice? Chad Sowash (30:39.766) Yeah, I mean. I don't like the personification of technology in this way at all, And Lattice is literally trying to make the tech more human and then calling it responsible, right? That's not responsible. That's literally just marketing and product packaging. I think many people saw through this, right? It's like making sex dolls more human. They're not human, but it makes the user feel better in using it, right? Sarah Franklin, you know, she was asking how are digital workers, you know, onboarded? How are they measured? And what does this mean for my job? And, you know, I like the use of AI helping employees as co -pilots. And in certain positions that only perform routine tasks, are taken over by AI, then much like when the loom was employed, it made it easier and faster for humans to weave textiles, then today the humans out of the loop and robots are doing the work. So did we name the robot looms? No. Did we give them personnel records? No. And then start giving them reviews? No, because they're fucking robots for God's sakes. They are tools in helping us to get the Joel Cheesman (31:51.693) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (32:04.241) done just like you know welders on automobile manufacturing lines right they need audits and they need maintenance scheduled for fuck's sake in the end If there are less employees in a company, Lattice loses revenue because you have less users in the system, right? So add your digital employees and Lattice can stay relevant. This is way off the mark. They obviously had to turn tail because it was very transparent that really all they were trying to do is continue to add people into their platform so that it was continually used. What they have to do now, I believe, is change their model. Right? Again, if you see that you were blockbuster and there's a Netflix coming and you have to integrate AI somehow, do it that way. Don't try to make AI into human beings. That's just stupid and it's bullshit. Sorry, sorry, Sarah, but it's stupid. It's bullshit. And you probably know that because you turned around and you, tuck tail. Joel Cheesman (33:09.089) reversed. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (33:16.109) So I want to quote CEO Sarah Franklin's message that she posted on their blog. Quote, today Lattice is making AI history. We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. Digital workers will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even a manager, just as any person would be. End Chad Sowash (33:45.323) See? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (33:46.093) What the hell is going on over there, Chad? Chad, this is a serious company that has raised $330 million. This is what they're doing? I don't understand it. mean, it, we want companies to look bigger than they are to make them feel like we're a big organization because we have all these IE co -pilots that are now employees? Chad Sowash (33:54.848) They don't sound serious. Chad Sowash (34:10.463) money. Joel Cheesman (34:13.547) And by the way, lattice lattice's mission is to manage people and their performance. So let's count people who aren't really people and performance that is AI enhanced. And are you now putting real people against AI people and the AI people performance is so much better than the people people. So at what point do you, as a people, people look at the AI people and go, Holy shit, they are kicking my ass. Chad Sowash (34:20.108) Yes. Joel Cheesman (34:42.859) And here's a dashboard that shows me how much they're kicking my ass, which then tells the management, we can lay off everybody because the AI is kicking everyone's ass. I just don't get this at all. that a serious company, is doing this as innovation is just really stupid. have one company in deal that is acquiring companies that are logical pieces to the bigger puzzle of the business. And then you have lattice who's raised just about as much money. Chad Sowash (34:46.422) Might as well leave. Joel Cheesman (35:12.737) doing this. So you, if you were a shareholder in both of these organizations, like where would you want to be in terms of your money and your, and your interest? Like this was such a mistake on so many levels. I'm glad they corrected it, but I'm just like, what the hell is going on at lattice that this is what they're drawing up on the, on the whiteboard. And this is what we're doing. Just incredibly, incredibly weird, incredibly Chad Sowash (35:38.739) How much time and money did they waste doing this bullshit? I mean, I guarantee you what they saw, right, is what you're talking about. You we need to be able to measure performance. How are we gonna be able to measure performance on AI with these co -pilots coming in, right? So they're like, well, let's feed them into the system. Just again, they're trying to make much like staffing, right? Traditional staffing hasn't changed for years. Hopefully indeed will impact them. We'll see some disruption. We'll see that change. Latus literally just said, well, we want to keep the platform the way it is, right? So let's just try to get the AI into the traditional mode. No dipshit. You've got to, you've got to change. You've got to evolve and hopefully, you know, they'll get a kick in the ass on this, but I just wonder how much money and man hours they wasted. pulling this bullshit together. Joel Cheesman (36:27.693) It was significant. Just because you can doesn't mean you should everybody doesn't mean that you should. Well, Chad, let's go to our next story. They said the quiet part out loud. As I know you like to say Microsoft diversity and inclusion team was disbanded due to quote, changing business needs and quote, reflecting a broader trend in the tech industry where companies have reduced their focus on DEI initiatives. Chad Sowash (36:33.696) Mm -mm. Yes. Chad Sowash (36:43.819) Ugh. Joel Cheesman (36:55.821) despite maybe previous comments that they've made. The move was highlighted by an internal email that said, quote, work associated with DEI programs are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020, end quote. Meanwhile, SHRM, your favorite, has removed equity from its diversity program, now using, quote, IND, end quote, for inclusion and diversity instead of DEI. The move has sparked backlash shocker from HR professionals and a petition for members to cancel their sherm memberships. The hits just keep on coming. Chad, what are your thoughts? Chad Sowash (37:36.77) So I would go with Sherm first, because this is very evident. Sherm is a lobbying organization for the rich, which is why equity was removed, much like trickle -down experts Milton Freeman and Thomas Sowell, who were just highly paid shills for American corporation to drive money away from hardworking Americans and into the pockets of CEOs who saw 1 ,500 % wage increases, and American workers in the same time period got Joel Cheesman (37:40.045) Too easy. Chad Sowash (38:06.21) 14 % wage shaft. Johnny C. Taylor is a modern day corporate shill doing everything he can to disrupt what workers need. so that he can fill his own pockets because if he preaches equity, that means some of the 1 .2 million in compensation he's making should legitimately go back into the pockets of sherm workers and Johnny needs fast cars and expensive suits kids. So equity ain't being preached at sherm. Now, from a Microsoft standpoint, when I was building veteran hiring, systems for hiring companies, Fortune 500 companies, we experienced some hiring companies spending millions of dollars. that was nothing but warm, fluffy bullshit. Those companies didn't care about truly identifying and hiring and retaining veterans. They just wanted to look good in the public eye. It's all about optics in the moment and not results for companies, obviously like Microsoft. And when Microsoft spends $150 million on DEI, it sounds like a lot. It sounds like a ton of cash, but it's only a little over 0 .2 % of the than $72 billion of their annual net income in 2023. Plus, Microsoft has 220 ,000 employees, which means they were spending less than $700 per employee to quote unquote, make DEI happen. Chad Sowash (39:40.02) So it's bullshit, it's a mirage, and we should never take a CEO for their word. Outcomes are what matters, not this bullshit, fluffy stuff. Joel Cheesman (39:57.815) So you and I have been doing this show for seven plus years. And in that time, we've seen this, this issue come full circle. We saw the murder of George Floyd. saw the me too movement. saw that spark Confederate flags being removed from government buildings. We've seen the Cleveland Indians become the Cleveland guardians. I mean, there was a, there was a huge pendulum swift into diversity, equity, inclusion, and embracing it. You and I have done many interviews over the years. In terms of the importance of this issue, what it means to particularly people in those, in those target markets, in terms of advancing. now we've seen the pendulum start to swing the other way. And you and I called it when the Supreme court reversed its affirmative action, mandate or law that we knew as soon as that happened, we're going to see more schools go back to the way things were, even though they were all touting at the time, we're not changing any of any of our rules in terms of affirmative action, letting in people of color and diversity. I think time will tell still on that, but I would imagine if you dug into the metrics of the incoming student bodies, they're slowly becoming more of what they used to be. And we also said that as a, as a reaction to that corporate America would soon start embracing going back to the way things were. Boards would start being all white again, all male again, and things would, go back to status quo. One thing that changed that was a 2015 McKinsey report that diverse companies are more profitable. And for since then us and news outlets have talked about, look, companies that are more diverse or more profitable. Well, just last month, the wall street journal published a story entitled diversity was supposed to make us rich. Not so much. a quote from that article is when management consulting firm McKinsey declared in 2015 that it had found a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity, it was a breakthrough. The research was used by investors, lobbyists and regulators to push for more women and minority groups on boards and to justify investing in companies that appointed them. Unfortunately, the research doesn't show what everyone thought it showed. Joel Cheesman (42:19.667) End quote. And the story goes on to talk about how diversity in corporate America does not equal more profits or the study has been flawed. No shocker that now we're seeing companies like Microsoft who should be a reflection of the world because they sell their products to the world. Say things like diversity is not that important. The fact that shurm is playing politics with what we call it Surprising and not surprising to your point. Shurm is based in DC. Johnny likes to go to the parties, just like the, the actual Springer folks like to go to parties and talk about who they are and what they do. They have to sort of bend to what they think the political winds are doing as opposed to having a North star and doing what tried and what members, think the organization should do. what looks to be a, a Second term, currently means that this trend, I think will continue to go in the other way. you and I will certainly talk about that as well, but you and I've seen this come full circle. It's a shame. feel awful for folks that thought, maybe this time it's different. Sorry. It apparently Chad Sowash (43:37.28) Yeah, yeah. mean, we're seeing obviously, you know, with Women not having control of their own bodies, their healthcare decisions. We're seeing books being banned. mean, there's a wave of shit that's coming. Again, I'm just asking for more boring, right? This is crazy. this is, a girl dad, right? I mean, this for me and my girls, this means something. And then for individuals that are friends of mine who... Joel Cheesman (43:56.501) You Chad Sowash (44:10.395) Not only that, but females, they should be paid equitably, right? Equity means something. And what they're saying is equity does. And they've taken the E out of everything, right? They moved, especially the shurm. went instead of DEI, they went I, inclusion, then D, because diversity isn't as important, right? It is. It, truthfully, it is. One thing, you know, we were talking with Jim Durbin yesterday and he said, you know, well, we're also starting to see where America is becoming less white. And I appreciate that. But the thing Joel Cheesman (44:46.146) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (44:47.764) at the corporate, the board side and the CEO side, it's not. The people who are driving and controlling America, that's not the case. So yeah, this is, to me, it's sad and hopefully, you know, we don't get another Trump term because if we do, this is gonna go down a very, very bad rabbit Joel Cheesman (45:08.193) Yeah, until we vote with our wallets and vote with our votes. I'm afraid a lot of things are not going to change. My heart goes out to a lot of our listeners, Stubbsy, Joanne, Eva, that we know, these issues are at the forefront. must be heartbreaking for them to sort of see things go back to the way they were. All right. Well, let's lighten things up with some fast food. Shall we? We'll be right Chad Sowash (45:15.49) Breathe. Yeah. Chad Sowash (45:21.408) Yes, it's important. Joel Cheesman (45:33.389) Oh, Chad, it's a good day to be a Cincinnati chili lover. Skyline Chili, if you haven't had it, you don't know. If you do know, know, uh, a Cincinnati based fast food chain known for its signature chili served over spaghetti was voted the top regional fast food chain in USA Today's, uh, 10 best readers choice awards. Other notable other notables include Hattie B's at a Nashville, one of our faves in and out. Chad Sowash (46:00.47) Yes. Joel Cheesman (46:01.865) And so Cal another favorite and water burger as Texans will know very, very well, Chad, you miss all these fast food places in Portugal. Don't you? What's your take on the move out of Ohio's skyline? Chad Sowash (46:16.29) Yeah, I do know that when I go to Nashville, I will be going to Hattie B's. The thing is, Hattie B's is not fast food. It is 10 locations and it is brilliant and wonderful. Now I am not going to get. the shut the cluck up hotness because that will burn me that will burn me to the ground. Although I do love me some some Hattie B's and when we did the hack a job booze crews we had Hattie B's along with yeah along with bourbon and beer and stuff like that. So I'm looking forward to Hattie B's in and out water burger depending on where you're at in the in the country is is where Joel is at whenever he gets a chance whether it's in the airport. Joel Cheesman (46:33.623) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (46:43.094) Yeah. Chad Sowash (47:01.166) or it's the very first stop after leaving the airport. Joel Cheesman (47:05.825) Yeah, I do. I do love, I do love a good skyline. you gotta go five way regular with the habanero cheese. You got to spice it up and they have hot sauce on the table, which I appreciate. And you got to go with the Coney. If they have the spicy sausage in season, you got to go with that. If not, you got to go with the regular, but you got to have the habanero cheese on that as well. And of course they have the crackers and they have Dr. diet Dr. Pepper. Chad Sowash (47:12.843) Mm. Chad Sowash (47:31.399) We need a Cheeseman menu like selections like what would Cheeseman have? Yes. Joel Cheesman (47:33.695) Yes, this is the Cheeseman review, love. Yeah. Love, love Skyline love Goldstar, which is their competitor in Cincinnati. We go every time that we're there. interestingly, I was curious. I went to the site and, and interesting about all these, all these restaurants I mentioned, there's a great story. Skyline, you know, 1940s, I think they were feeding, you know, people on the working on the river. And so there's a rich history there. In and out, know that history, South, know, South California, Southern California, that whole story there. Waterburger, if you're in Texas, that's a local story that people love. but I went to do some research and I went to go look at their career section and they are interestingly a paradox, customer. I go to the, I go to the career site and Olivia, Olivia's right there. And I'm like, I'm going to test Olivia. And I said, Olivia, how do you take your skyline chili? Thinking it's, if you know it, it's like, it's three or three, four or five way. And it's whether you get beans or the other stuff. And she didn't know what I was talking about. She didn't know. So I was like, all right, paradox. All right, paradox. Let's get on your chili game a little better. If someone asks how she takes her chili, make sure she has a good answer for that. Not just, I don't understand what kind of job are you looking for? Which leads me Chad to this week's dad joke. Are you ready? Chad Sowash (48:31.436) Yes. Chad Sowash (48:57.258) No, go ahead. Joel Cheesman (48:57.729) You you're not ready, but you're ready. All right, how do you measure the heaviness of a red hot chili pepper? How do you measure the heaviness of a red hot chili Chad Sowash (49:13.791) and Joel Cheesman (49:16.599) Give it away, give it away, give it away now. it? Weigh, W -E -I -G -H, you gotta weigh it to get the heaviness. Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now. That's right people. Dad Joe Scalore and with that, we out. Chad Sowash (49:31.946) We out!

Justin Henshaw, founder and CEO of Gage, joins the Chad and Cheese podcast to pitch his company. Gage is the first and only universal employment recognition system and engagement community built for shift and hourly workers. It allows employees to own and transfer their employment data, providing a complete and portable employment record. Gage also fosters community and connection among employees, allowing them to connect with peers, coworkers, and managers. The platform emphasizes engagement and rewards, with the goal of motivating and retaining shift and hourly workers. Gage is an employee engagement platform that aims to recognize and celebrate the hard work of every person in the workforce. The platform provides a gauge score to employees based on their reliability, trustworthiness, and performance. Gage's go-to-market strategy includes both a sales approach targeting mid to large enterprises and an organic approach with end users. The platform is primarily focused on the hourly workforce and younger generations who are not active on LinkedIn. Gage aims to become an industry standard and a language within businesses, where employees' gauge scores determine their pay and opportunities. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (blame AI for errors) Joel Cheesman (00:24.987) everybody. It's your favorite guilty pleasure aka the Chad and cheese podcast. This is firing squad. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always, Chad. So washes in the house and today we welcome Justin Henshaw, founder and CEO of gauge Justin welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Thanks for being here. All right, before we get into the business stuff. Justin Henshaw (00:39.374) How's it going? Justin Henshaw (00:44.334) Thanks for having me. Thanks, man Thank you. Thank you for having me Joel Cheesman (00:49.787) Most of our listeners don't know who Justin Hinshaw is. Why don't you give them a little flavor of what you're bringing to the show? What's your Twitter bio? Chad Sowash (00:56.39) SLAVA Justin Henshaw (00:58.734) Right. I spent my 20s in the Marines, in the military. I was chasing childhood dreams when I was younger of becoming an actor. So out of high school, I moved to Manhattan to become an actor. Did some small little odds and ends, extra work and stuff like that. I was living in Manhattan when 9 -11 happened. Matter of fact, we were actually filming a, I don't know if you remember the old soap opera, Guiding Light. I did some extra work for them. Joel Cheesman (01:26.588) My mom does. Justin Henshaw (01:28.046) yeah, that was my regular paycheck I got every week. but, yeah, that was, that was, that was fun. did some off, off Broadway stuff, if you know what I mean. And, just, just plugging away in New York. of course that September morning kind of changed everything. and, we were literally filming, on Midtown, like kind of on the West side. Chad Sowash (01:28.166) No shit. No shit. Joel Cheesman (01:36.219) No shit. Chad Sowash (01:44.822) huh. Justin Henshaw (01:58.222) And, they, national guard showed up. We were actually close to the UN building. So that was like a concern. and they shut us down. We all got the hunker down and watch everything unfold that day. Went back to my apartment later that night. spent a couple of weeks thinking about it and then went down to Times Square. Back then the recruiting office, it was right in the center of Times Square. Of course, it looks completely different now. walked right in, one of the Marines, you know, I was, I was pissed off and. Chad Sowash (02:04.006) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (02:27.278) Just, just wanted to mess things up. And, so the Marine guy, the staff sergeant there, I'll never forget him as staff sergeant Newsom. he was on break or something on lunch. And so you walk in all the, all the other branches are just like, Hey, come here and join army, join Navy and whatever. I was like, nah, I'm gonna wait for the Marines. And so, Newsom showed up and, signed me up. he actually tried to talk me out of it. Chad Sowash (02:37.542) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (02:52.814) And he's like, listen, I think you're really emotional right now. You need to think this through. You know, you're doing pretty good here. You know, and I was like, all right, wow. Joel Cheesman (02:58.267) He heard, I'm on the guiding light soap opera and said, maybe the Marines aren't for you. Justin Henshaw (03:02.126) Well, yeah, to be clear, I'm the guy in the background that's fuzzed out on guiding light, you know, drinking coffee in a bar. So I'll make more out of it. But I was on like a section of city for two and a half seconds. That was, that was exciting. But anyway, join the Marines. Joel Cheesman (03:08.283) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:19.131) Sometimes two and a half seconds is all you need on Sex and the City. Justin Henshaw (03:23.79) Yeah, it was one of those situations you ever see those like say comms where they cut the guy's scene, you know, like, because I actually had a speaking role. Like I literally had, this was my, this was my debut. You know, I was like, man, I'm going to make it because of this. I'm going to make it and told my family and everybody. And they literally cut the scene and, it was so embarrassing. I was like, yeah, but you saw me at least, but it was like, I, I wasn't, I was in and out and, it was funny. It was. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. My bad. My bad. Chad Sowash (03:41.222) damn. Joel Cheesman (03:46.203) Yeah. Alright man, let's go to Twitter bio not not your war and peace. Let's go. Justin Henshaw (03:54.318) Marine Corps, six years in two tours in Afghanistan, Iraq. and, did, did some time in Cuba. and then after that, went to college, started a business in college and DJ company. and then the DJ company, actually blew up. It's still very successful today. we do weddings primarily, like we'll do 20 or 30 weddings a week. and we're kind of all over the Eastern side of the United States. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:22.587) I'm sorry, Justin, your Twitter bio is just going on a little too long. Chad, let's tell him what he's won by being on today's episode of The Firing Squad. Chad Sowash (04:30.406) Well, Justin, this is how firing squad's gonna go, my friend. At the sound of the bell, you will have two minutes to pitch gauge. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q &A. Be sure to be concise. You're gonna get those crickets that you heard earlier. That just means tighten your game. At the end of Q &A, you're gonna receive either a big applause, you've gauged the market correctly. See what I did there? Get ready for a high five and a big exit. Golf clap. Justin Henshaw (05:01.134) Alright. Chad Sowash (05:02.15) I believe Gage needs a nudge before it's ready for prime time. And last but never least, the Firing Squad. No matter how many nudges or high fives you get, this platform is headed toward the bend. Start again. That's Firing Squad. Are you ready? Justin Henshaw (05:19.598) I'm ready. Joel Cheesman (05:20.795) All right, Justin, your pitch begins in three, two. Justin Henshaw (05:26.798) All right, there are 80 million Americans in the shift in hourly workforce. Did you know that's nearly 60 % of our entire workforce and our economy, our way of life are because of these unsung heroes. They keep our streets clean. They box up those little brown boxes we enjoy getting in the mail. They pack our grocery shelves. They service our coffee in the morning, our lunch in the afternoon. They'll greet our families in hotels and they'll even take care of us when we're sick. But this segment of the workforce, the shift in hourly workforce is struggling at historic levels. employees are lost, yearning to find meaning and direction in their work. Employers are desperate to find new ways to retain, recruit, and motivate their team members. So we built Gage. Gage is the first and only universal employment recognition system and engagement community built for shift and hourly workers. Our patent pending system takes an employee's accomplishments. quantifies it, solidifies it in order for them to own their data and for the first time be able to own the product of their work and take it with them. It transfers from job to job. At the core of our system is a metric. We call it the gauge score. Now metrics are all around us. It's in every other facet of our life. When performance matter, metrics are there. We love metrics, whether it be fitness, health, education, finances. Where metric doesn't exist, we actually build one, right? Sports, all around us. So we built one for the workforce. It is a private and personal lifelong career builder designed to travel with you from job to job. This is what makes us so unique. With Gage, employees and employers are both loving the new workplace experience. With Gage, employees get to replace their resume. delivering to any future employer a complete and portable employment record and transcript that is verified, real actual data of what they've accomplished. It instills ownership and empowers them to own their work. It gives them community with coworkers, managers and employers. It bolsters connection, celebrating team and individual successes and infuses the workplace with positivity and above all, meaning and purpose. But with employers get something too. Employers get a highly... There you go. Joel Cheesman (07:48.603) All right, Justin, that is your two minutes. They are up. All right, let's get into some Q and A here. I'm always curious about the name. Your military guy. I mean, 12 gauge shotgun. Like where did the name come from and how is it relevant to what you guys do? Justin Henshaw (08:03.598) Well, the keyword in future of development, future of work, the keyword is engagement. That is what's happening right now. The employees are not engaged. They are disengaged. And it just kept coming up. Of course, gauge is a gauge, something that measures something. But it just kept coming up. There was engagement. We need to engage with our team members. We need to engage with our employees. So it just came out. Joel Cheesman (08:27.963) Got it. Makes sense. So you are a entrepreneur, a long -term entrepreneur. You're, you're Jimmy John's guy. By the way, their new, firecracker, rap is great, but that's beside the point. So it looks like you're still a Jimmy John's franchisee. Like talk about that and how that's either impacted the business in a positive way, or whether, is it like taking up time that you're currently involved with? Justin Henshaw (08:55.31) Yeah, my, my dismal Twitter bio didn't get there. yeah. So I opened up a bunch of drugs and yogurt shops, Jimmy John's smoothie Kings, a lot of salad kitchen, a bunch of restaurants at the peak of my career in that, in that regard, I owned like 13 businesses and 10 restaurants. Gage was built within those restaurants. You know, we, we built this within the past five years. I have since. Joel Cheesman (09:17.211) So you incubated them within those businesses, if you will. Okay. Justin Henshaw (09:20.75) With my team, with my managers, with my team members celebrating them. They loved it and they wanted to see it in the world. So that's what we did. now the, the, I sense Gage's success and we got, initial investment. I started divesting from the restaurant so that I could focus on Gage. So I'm down to basically three frozen yogurt shops, two Jimmy John's and, what the Island sound, the DJ company. Joel Cheesman (09:38.555) Okay. Joel Cheesman (09:46.715) Okay, so you've raised $350 ,000 it looks like. You started in 2020 -ish. Are you looking to raise more money? Are you bootstrapping this whole thing? Talk about the money. Justin Henshaw (09:55.886) We have, yes, so right now our. Justin Henshaw (10:03.214) Sure. I bootstrapped it from the beginning. We just started a seed round of 800 to get to the second generation of our product. Of that 800, we have half of it raised or committed. We have 400 committed, so we have another 400 in this raise. That's at a 9 million post -money cap, but I believe that obviously we're going to need more money after this, but we have a few things percolating in the background. Not only Gen 2, but a couple of big organizations that are looking at us. Can't name any names, don't want to get in trouble, but there's some big news coming within the next couple of weeks. Chad Sowash (10:37.702) So how many companies are currently using it? Other than yours, other than yours. Justin Henshaw (10:40.878) We have 60, other than mine, we have up to 60 business accounts that have activated, actually signed up for the system. And that accounts to in between 2 ,000 to 3 ,000 actual users, the employee. Chad Sowash (10:56.358) Okay, so do you have engagement stats on those employees? How many of them are engaged? What does engaged mean versus ones that are not? Justin Henshaw (11:07.502) Well, I can give you a quick story, but the problem is we are in an MEP, like it's a prototype. It was built as basically a very rudimentary HRAS system. And they're using it, they're loving it, but the employees really want the keys to it. They want, it's theirs. I mean, this is the whole idea is that for the first time there's an HR management system that is for the employee. How does the unique proposition for Gage? Because every other HR system out there is owned by the business. Chad Sowash (11:13.702) Gotcha. Chad Sowash (11:17.926) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (11:37.71) The data is owned by the business. It's basically a digital filing cabinet, meaning that when the employee leaves, all of the information goes away. It disappears. Poof. Meaning, why do I care about it? If I don't get the key, then why do I care about it? So Gage is the first. Chad Sowash (11:50.342) What if the employee doesn't like the information that they got from their last employer because their last employer was an asshole? So, I mean, can they start all over? I mean, that's the hard part, right? You're keeping all the stuff, but you're also keeping some of the bad experiences that you have, and those are still coming forward with you. So tell me a little bit about that. Justin Henshaw (12:09.486) Well, consider it to be a personal private system that you can delete at any time. You can delete it period. End of sentence. This is not a controlling, this is an opt -in voluntary system, just like your Fitbit account. There's a lot of analogies out there. There's gauges like LinkedIn, Instagram, and FICO had a baby. LinkedIn, it's a place for work, professional place. But we all know that LinkedIn alienates the younger generation and the shift in hourly workforce. So we need a place for them. Chad Sowash (12:13.958) Okay. Chad Sowash (12:30.906) Yeah. -huh. Justin Henshaw (12:38.798) Instagram is that for celebration, for recognition and for the younger generation. FICO and simply that it's just for metrics, like a place for data and actual performance data. Now I actually prefer the Fitbit analogy. Like a Fitbit account is private, it's mine, but I use it. And if I have a bad week, I don't work out. I just try to get better next week. Right? So what we're finding is that the employees are not deleting it. They're keeping it because it's their personal private property and all they're doing is trying to make it better. If they want to delete it. Chad Sowash (12:43.59) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (13:09.006) Delete it, start over, no problem. But they're not doing that. Chad Sowash (13:11.622) Okay. So what about on the performance side? So employees get feedback and high fives or nudges. Can that also go upstream to managers in being able to provide high fives and also nudges? Because we all know there are a bunch of shitty managers out there. Justin Henshaw (13:30.862) Absolutely. I mean, your heart is for the employee and I can hear that in your voice and you got to understand that was the original problem. That might be why this has never been done before because everything we do, every decision we make has to protect the employee and that is our heart. Gage, there's a vision statement that we have within our company. Gage was never about punishing anyone for doing anything. It was about rewarding those that do well. The only punishment in Gage is the absence of a reward. If you lift those up that do well, you don't need to hold those back that don't. Does that make sense? And so every decision we make creates a fair and Chad Sowash (14:08.07) It does, but you didn't answer my question. My question was, can I send a high five up or can I send a nudge up to my manager? Okay, that was it. So good. So there's that bi -directional piece that's happening there. So what about... Justin Henshaw (14:14.222) Yes. Justin Henshaw (14:22.254) Yeah, and that's going to be built out more with Gen 2, too, because people wanted that two -way communication. So that's going up and downstream, absolutely. And that gives the employer an incredible tool, too, because if my managers are doing a bad job, I want to know about it. And with Gage, they can see that. Chad Sowash (14:25.094) Okay. yeah. Chad Sowash (14:36.838) Exactly, exactly, exactly. So you said community, expand upon that a little bit with regard to what does that actually mean? Can I connect with my other peers and actually message with them? Is there like a friending aspect of this where there's community and you can message? How does that actually work? Help me out, help me understand that. Justin Henshaw (14:58.062) So that's in our pipeline for Gen 2. So the idea is that we are a hybrid. We are for both the business as a B2B, but we're also for the employee, the end user, the ones that get it for free. We have to service both of them. For right now, with MVP, what we did was we wanted to prove revenue and we wanted to prove product market fit. We wanted to make sure the businesses were willing to pay for this. So we had to emphasize the business tools. So we gave them access to the system. Now with Gen 2, we finally get to unlock Chad Sowash (15:04.39) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (15:10.086) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (15:27.95) the employee features. Now the employee features are that social element, that social component where they're able to connect to peers, to coworkers, to managers. They're able to connect to a place of business and build teams within a business without the business participating in it yet. Okay. The idea is that they get in it and then the business comes along because they don't want to be left out of the conversation. And Slack did this very well. Yes. Chad Sowash (15:44.422) Gotcha. Chad Sowash (15:49.158) So it's on the roadmap, it's next phase. Yeah, okay, cool. Joel Cheesman (15:55.483) Is this a native app? Is it? Sorry, is this a native app that you download? Is it just a responsive website? What's the interface that that a user engages with the with the product? Justin Henshaw (15:55.534) Yeah, Slack did this very well, right? Justin Henshaw (16:10.862) Right, so the app is built for iOS and Android and then there is a desktop portal for F administrators. So the administrators can see all the data of everything that's happening within their place of business. They're able to track like who our high performers are, you know, what their best evaluations are. They're able to store all of their evaluations and all their employee data. So it's both. We have... Joel Cheesman (16:30.491) So when I leave a company and I join a new one, assuming they are using Gage as well, how do I enter that company? Is it a username and the company just adds it? Or what's the protocols for joining a new company? Justin Henshaw (16:36.27) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (16:46.254) Yeah. Yeah, it's essentially like a friend request, right? It's an invite. So like if an employee, both employer and the employer are able to connect with each other, okay? But once they're connected, by the way, and again, voluntary to Chad's point, this is a voluntary system. So if I say that I don't want to work for that person or I'm not working for that person, I don't accept it, right? So it's an invite. But once I'm connected, then I'm able to contribute to each other. We're able to contribute to each other, similar to, like I said, a friend request. And then when a transition happens, Joel Cheesman (16:52.731) Okay. Joel Cheesman (17:15.182) Okay. I mean, no one's going to decline a new employer access to my gauge score, right? Like that'd be a red flag, I would think. Justin Henshaw (17:26.926) If they have gauge, maybe, but you could all again, you could delete it if you didn't want to do that, but you're right. Joel Cheesman (17:28.987) Yeah, which is my, which would. Okay. And start over with the new account is what you're saying. If you don't like your, your current score. So, so help me with this part of it. Part of me thinks this is like really smart marketing, because if I go to a company and I have gauge, I had gauge at my last company and I'm like, Hey, we should use gauge because it's really cool. And I got high fives. but then I also see some major network effects challenges in that. Justin Henshaw (17:35.118) Yeah. Yes. Joel Cheesman (17:56.059) If I go to a company right now, most of them are not going to be on gauge. So it's sort of like there's nothing there. What are you seeing with current user user user base? Are they dying when they go to a new company or are you adding new clients when people move to new companies because they're endorsing gauge and telling their current employer that they should use it. Justin Henshaw (18:17.134) Well, with MVP, we're seeing both. We are seeing employees recommending to new businesses that they should use Gage and that has happened. But again, without that organic component, without that social media component for the employee, that's what we're really trying to lean in on. Because basically our go -to -market strategy is two -fold. We're always, we're going to have a sales approach to go after mid to large enterprise sales where you can get one big fish and land a thousand units. But we're also going to have an organic approach with the end user. You know, and again, going back to. kind of the Slack analogy, Slack did this really well, where they gave the employees free access to this, the end users free access to that, and then they get in the business and eventually the business has to pay for a subscription to participate in it. That's kind of our organic growth, what we're hoping to achieve. Joel Cheesman (19:02.107) Okay. Well, talking about Slack, let's talk about competition. I mean, when I first read about this, I'm like, Holy cow. You got work human achievers, kudo board, bonus Lee linked in with their recommendation. You know, their recommendations are potentially a competitor. Slack has a ton of integrations around engagement with employees and giving sort of high fives or what you would refer to that. Like talk to me about the competitive landscape, where you think you guys are. How are you different? Because from my viewpoint, You have a ton of well -funded, well -known competitors out there. Justin Henshaw (19:38.094) Well, I would say they're not direct competitors. They're indirect competitors, meaning they're HR systems where the business owns the data, the employee doesn't. That's LinkedIn. LinkedIn is really, I mean, you can say that LinkedIn is a competitor and that's kind of at the top of my list just because it's a place where you're able to build out a profile. You're able to get some endorsements. You're able to get some feedback. So when I, whenever I look at somebody, I can say, okay, this guy's legit. He's got this experience. He's got this. And it kind of helps verify that person. But we all know that LinkedIn is not for the younger generation. They hate it. They do not use it. And they're also not for the shift in hourly workforce. They're for upper level, college educated, mid 30s, mid 50s, et cetera. I believe we need a platform for the younger generation. All those other platforms, the HR management systems, again, the business owns the day that the employee does it. That's why they don't care about it. Chad Sowash (20:34.118) So let's talk about GoToMarket a little bit deeper. Are you going direct to customer? Are you looking to try to connect with some of these other bigger core players to actually partner with them to get penetration into their portfolio? Justin Henshaw (20:48.11) Yeah. Justin Henshaw (20:52.718) Yeah, so we do have kind of a two pronged go to market strategy. We right now we're pursuing that. But the like we have to our two our first two paying customers were two Chick -fil -A's. Chick -fil -A's we're obviously in my brands, which is, you know, Smoothie King, Jimmy John's, etc. We're also in StretchZone, which is another small brand. So the idea is that if you want to get into a big company like Chick -fil -A, then you go door to door with all these individual franchise owners. And then eventually you get too loud where the corporate can't ignore you anymore. Chad Sowash (21:02.342) Mm -hmm. Justin Henshaw (21:21.326) And so you get those big meetings. So we have a lot of pilots lined up. We have pilots lined up with, you know, we've had a lot of discussions. I don't want to get my team in trouble, but we have a lot of discussions with national brands about pilots that are coming down the pipe. And then, so once you get into one, you can get into multiple. Chad Sowash (21:40.326) But there are already companies who have a lot of those franchises locked down at corporate. Wouldn't it be easier just to go and look at because again, there's really nobody out there that has this type of this platform, at least the roadmap that you're talking about vision wise. So wouldn't it be better to partner with those types of organizations and try to gain access to corporate right out of the gate instead of knocking on doors, 1 ,100 Chick -fil -A doors. Justin Henshaw (22:10.286) It depends on the brand, right? Of course I would want those meetings, but you know, they get pounded every day by thousands of, you know, platforms that want their business, right? I mean, you just, you just have to keep at it. I mean, I want to go after those big accounts with, you know, those single meetings, but that's going to take time and connections and just us plugging away. And I think the best way of, so it's not like we're not doing that. We are doing that, but that's very difficult. But we are going door to door and the idea is that eventually they can't ignore us. Chad Sowash (22:41.638) Yeah, you can only hope, right? Let's talk about the geography. Are you starting in and around Georgia and trying to land and expand from there and blow out? How are you attacking the market from a geography standpoint? Justin Henshaw (22:43.822) Right. Justin Henshaw (22:53.07) Yeah. Justin Henshaw (22:57.742) Well, there is a very big community based aspect to this, right? I mean, once you get into Gage, like once I get into one hotel in a community, the other hotels want to join them, right? Because they want to use it if the other employees are using it. Same with restaurants, same with hospitality. We're in banking right now. You know, that's the, it speaks to the universal nature of Gage. Banking loves us. So to that point, whenever you do get into a community, we're able to expand, you know, pretty quickly. Right now we're mainly in this area because this is where MVP launched. which into we're going to be going to other areas. We do have an account out of California. We have a couple of accounts in Texas, I believe, and then Atlanta, we have an account that's percolating. so we do have some other regional areas, but again, we're just at MVP. Joel Cheesman (23:43.899) I'm curious about marketing, particularly because you're kind of spending this as a consumer brand, like a community and workers are joining and connected to each other. From what I can see on your marketing side, I mean, you have 180 followers on LinkedIn, you're a four -year -old company, you have 19 subscribers on YouTube, but yet you have 53 videos. You have more videos than you have subscribers. On X, you have six followers. I don't see any ads for you when I do employee engagement on Google, et cetera. so convince me that your marketing plan is, is aside from that. And it's, it's working. Like, what are you doing marketing wise? Cause the public facing doesn't look all that hot. Justin Henshaw (24:29.998) Yeah, I mean, we're young, you know, and we make no apologies for that. We bootstrapped this from the beginning. You know, this is a, there's no outside funding other than this, the past few months with our lead investor, Eagle Venture Fund. We just got our first check in January. So I think that all of that, yes, this has been a four year. Well, no, absolutely not. No, we launched, we launched MVP. We went to market in January of last year. Joel Cheesman (24:47.323) You launched in 2020, correct? You launched in 2020? Justin Henshaw (24:58.222) 2020 was when we really started building the thing. You know, like I've been working on this. Joel Cheesman (25:00.731) So 23, so you're a year and a half old. A year and a half old that you've been on the market. Okay. Okay. Justin Henshaw (25:05.838) Yes. The idea was last year we were going to raise money and we struggled to do so in the beginning. It wasn't until the end of last year or January of this year that we got our first checks in. And then that's when we really started getting the attention that we're getting from these larger organizations. But again, this is basically a community launch at this point. And we're an HR system. Joel Cheesman (25:28.635) Okay, talk about. Justin Henshaw (25:35.598) It's not very sexy on social media. Joel Cheesman (25:39.867) Okay. Talk about integrations. Certainly getting into Slack would, I think, help the organization grow quite a bit. I don't see any evidence of integrations. Maybe I'm not seeing them. Are they on the roadmap? Certainly, ATSs. Certainly, there are ATSs that are skewed toward more hourly workers. More and more companies are coming up that have marketplaces. Talk about your integration strategy, if there is one. Justin Henshaw (26:09.07) It's definitely on our roadmap. As a matter of fact, we'd have a lot of... There's one significant resort that we would have if we were able to integrate with their system. But I also think that the organic nature of the employees giving the keys to this is going to help that. But integrations will be key, whether it be Intuit, Homebase, all these other platforms with scheduling and all these other management systems, integration will be key. But we wanted to make sure like... Joel Cheesman (26:34.811) Okay. Justin Henshaw (26:35.95) We would have a national pilot going on right now if they wanted, if we were willing to white label the product, which we're not willing to do so. But integrations will definitely be part of it. Joel Cheesman (26:46.971) Okay. What's, what's the ultimate goal of the company? Is this thing you want to sell this thing? certainly your history says, you know, franchise, you know, being a franchisee of, of, of companies. Do you want to grow this thing global, national, are you hoping to flip it in a few years? Like what's sort of the ultimate goal of the business? Justin Henshaw (27:07.694) We want cultural change. We want to make sure that every person in the workforce that works hard, that it gets recognized, that they get celebrated. And that is what we're experiencing with our product, even at a community level. I mean, we're getting people that are paid more because of their Gage score. We're getting people that are hired because of their Gage score. And that makes all the sense in the world. Somebody walks in off the street, you know, I don't know them from Adam, I'm offering them a job. What do I do as a business owner? I hedge my bets, right? I pay them here because that's what my margins say I should. Right. But if somebody comes in and they're verified information, they know that they care with their reliable, their trustworthy, their awesome, then I'm going to pay in here. I'm going to pay them up here because it's in my best interest to do so. So I want every person in the workforce celebrated and recognized for the hard work that they do. I don't want anyone feeling left out or left behind. I want to be an industry standard, a language within businesses saying, Hey, what's your gauge? Are you engaged? If you are, I'm going to pay you this. because you're incredible and you've proven it over and over again. You know, if you think about gauge in the long run, you know, we are even, we're an option to an affordable free option to just a traditional college degree, right? you know, like people get into debt, $40, $50 ,000 in debt, just to prove that they're reliable and trustworthy by getting a piece of paper. You know, that's what it is. That's what a college degree really is. Joel Cheesman (28:27.451) All right. That's heartfelt and talking about affordable, Chad, this sounds a little pricey. It sounds like a lot of stuff that I'm going to have to pay for. Justin, talk to me about your pricing model and what I'm going to have to pay for this thing. Chad Sowash (28:40.038) You Justin Henshaw (28:44.014) No, we didn't want price to be. Matter of fact, we've proven that retention increases, so it doesn't come from your bottom line. It comes from retention, turnover cost. It comes from all the expenses. Like an average QSR spends $140 ,000 a year in turnover. So if you can increase that retention, then you pay for the subscription. Right now, our subscription with MVP is averaging $2 a month per employee. So depending on the size of the company, different tiered options. Chad Sowash (28:59.686) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (29:08.486) . Justin Henshaw (29:12.269) We believe with Gen 2, our target price is going to be $7 an employee a month. But again, we believe that that comes from your turnover costs, not your bottom line. Joel Cheesman (29:24.602) Alright Justin, that is the end of Q &A. Are you ready to face the firing squad? Justin Henshaw (29:32.302) Bring it. Come on. Joel Cheesman (29:33.755) All right, Chad, you. Chad Sowash (29:36.55) Yeah, Justin didn't say this out loud. I would have. It's up to 100 users at $1 ,200 a year. That's $120 per user. That's cheap. That is ridiculously cheap. Crazy cheap. Need to be more expensive. You'll get there. LinkedIn is not a competitor. They do not do this brand of the workforce, right? Which is the very heavy side of the workforce and does not have representation. in at least one place. Joel mentioned a bunch of different places where you have a bunch of different companies who have many different initiatives that are going on, but that might be just one of many, right? And this is your focus, which I love. I love the hourly workforce framing in your story right out of the gate. Lean heavy into that. That's your sweet spot, man. I love that you built... this within your system. You ate your own dog food. You ate your own smoothie. You ate your own Jimmy John's, right? You did it right, right? Because you knew that it was working because you were actually trialing it yourself. The FICO score idea, people have tried that over the years. Once again, it's fallen apart because they didn't focus in a specific area. Go to market. I think you're falling down and here's why. As a couple of industry veterans, Joel and myself, we've been around for 25 years. There are core systems that you can get into to actually set fire. to users and big meetings and portfolios. They're out there and I can guarantee you they are not focusing on this aspect. They are focusing on the experience, but not how you're focusing on the experience and the portability, right, of being able to have your information imported, right, from one job to the next. That's incredibly, incredibly important. You're still early stage. Totally appreciate that. And again, you are cheap, cheap, cheap. Chad Sowash (31:38.494) I'm not ready for a big applause yet, but I am going to give you a big golf clap. I think this is something that if you lean into and you find the right go -to -market and you find the right partners, this will catch fire. And I know you want to change culture and all that other fun stuff. You're not going to be able to do it by yourself. You're going to get acquired into a much larger system. And then that is where you have your opportunity. Good luck, man. Justin Henshaw (32:04.59) Thank you, Chuck. Chad Sowash (32:08.817) Yes. Are we having, are we having a dog issues? okay. He's giving you, he's giving you the, yeah, no worries. No worries. Justin Henshaw (32:11.566) I Justin Henshaw (32:17.474) it looks like he's muted. Chad, to your point, thank you so much for the feedback. I heard. We are on it, man. We'll get it done. Chad Sowash (32:28.518) Cool. Are you ready Joel? No, you're good now. That's why we have post editors. No worries. Joel Cheesman (32:29.435) Sorry about that. I know that's why you're so amazing. All right, Justin, that's Chad sounding off on the company, but you are not done yet. I still have a turn. First of all, thank you for your service. I'm always appreciative of working with a veteran guy and what you guys do. So I want to start off by saying thank you for your service. Now on to the company, which is the reason that we're here. I like to use the term bringing a knife to a gunfight quite a bit. with a military man, I feel like that probably, makes sense to you. You are, you are embarking on an incredibly challenging mission. My friend, you're not only trying to conquer the employment side and by the way, selling to. Justin Henshaw (33:08.27) and Joel Cheesman (33:22.299) Jimmy John's franchisees, and also the national organization, like it is not easy. I mean, we deal with companies like paradox who are selling to McDonald's and you have agencies that oversee like the employer side alone is incredibly challenging. And then, and then you kick yourself in the nuts again and say, we're going to like, penetrate the consumer market. We're going to be like the FICO score. Although in FICO score, I have no say over that. Unless I pay my bills, like I have like. I don't volunteer for it. It's something that happens. So unless, unless this becomes a universal system that everyone gets a credit score, a gauge score, no matter what you are in for a very challenging, thing to like, this is, this is a myth. So you're taking on two incredibly huge challenges. Okay. From what I can tell the consumers aren't embracing you like social media. They're not like, this is awesome. I want to be a part of it. so from what I can tell, you're not quite hooking in the consumers. This isn't like a hot thing that all the kids are doing. I know you said LinkedIn isn't important. So you're not trying to get into those people. From what I can tell, the kids aren't really hot on your product. So you have a huge challenge there. You don't have $100 million to like do a Superbowl ad and get major penetration from a consumer side. And then you have incredible competition. I know you don't think LinkedIn's a competitor. I think they are. I think they could launch something like this. There's probably a reason why they haven't. there's a ton of employee engagement solutions out there that are, that have sales forces that have huge money that have been around for a decade that have brand awareness, that you're dealing, that you're competing in. So you're not only on a two front war, my friend, you're, you're trying to defeat three different. Justin Henshaw (34:52.782) Thank you. Joel Cheesman (35:15.451) entities here. And unless you, unless you were coming at me, like, we're going to raise a bunch of money and we're going to blow this thing up, which doesn't sound to me like what you're doing. it, it almost sounds like a charity. Like we want to be this thing that we can empower employees and they can take their score and show showcase their skills and they'll feel good at work. you're not talking acquisition, you know, if you, and most employees, most founders do not say we want to flip this thing in three years, but you can kind of read between the lines when they say like, well, we want to do best by our shareholders. We want to build a long -term product, blah, blah, blah. You're not saying those things. So it's not like a job case or someone with a lot of money is going to come in and buy this thing. So I think your heart is in the right place. I think the vision is huge. but like there, you just don't have the, the, the forces. to take on the mission that you are hoping to achieve. So for me, unless I see some major differences in money raised or traction with consumers, I have no other choice, my friend, but to give you the guns at this point and recommend, go back to Jimmy John's franchisees, which I love, and do what you know, because this is a immense mission that you're on. And I think you're gonna... Chad Sowash (36:27.814) Chad Sowash (36:32.902) Yes, you do. Joel Cheesman (36:38.555) You're going to be a sore at the end of it. And, I think, yeah, I'm done speaking. I think you get my message, but yeah, I would go do something else because this is kicking yourself in the nuts every day, for not much reward from what I can tell. So that's it, Justin, one golf clap, one guns for me. How do you feel? Justin Henshaw (37:01.166) I feel great. Joey, you ever like to back down from challenges on a regular basis? Like, I mean, I... Joel Cheesman (37:08.539) The show is over my friend. You can turn this on me if you'd like. So let's send it here. For those listeners out there that want to know more about Gage, where are you going to send them Justin? Chad Sowash (37:10.694) Hahaha Justin Henshaw (37:22.862) gagework .com g -a -g -e work .com Joel Cheesman (37:27.195) Fair enough. Good luck my friend Chad. That is a firing squad in the can. We out. Justin Henshaw (37:30.318) Thank you so much. Chad Sowash (37:33.126) We out. Justin Henshaw (37:34.254) Thank you both. Thank you both.

Companies are hearing all of the efficiencies they can enjoy by using AI and language models (LLM) but have no clue where to start. Luckily, Adam Gordon, cofounder at Poetry, can answer some of those questions for TA leaders and recruiters while Chad & Cheese can attest to LLMs integrated into podcasting platforms. If you're new to LLMs, and using solutions like ChatGPT, or you're a seasoned pro, this episode is for you. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (blame the AI for errors) Joel Cheesman (00:29.902) Yeah, what's up everybody? It is your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash. And today we are just excited as hell as you can hear by the clapping that Adam Gordon, co -founder at Poetry is on the show today. Talking a little LLMs. Adam, welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad Sowash (00:40.406) Hello. Adam Gordon (00:57.435) Thanks for having me. And if you saw me playing golf, you would not give me any form of clap, incidentally. Chad Sowash (01:02.424) Only the kind that you need penicillin for. Yeah, for those who don't know, Joel gave Adam a golf clap during his candidate ID pitch on Firing Squad, and that pretty much came to bite Joel in the ass later. Although, I think it just incentivized Adam. Joel Cheesman (01:19.573) huh. Which I'm still paying for five years later, by the way. I don't even know when that episode dropped, but he's still mad because... Chad Sowash (01:31.522) That's right. Yep. Yes. So for all those people out there who don't know who you are, they've been in curled up in a ball in the corner for the last five years for God's sakes. Adam, give us a little Twitter bio about Adam Gordon (01:46.641) Yeah, sure. I've been in recruiting since 1999. Got out of that after a couple of years because I didn't want to hear any candidate's life story or career objectives ever again. Geez, that was boring. Moved into recruitment marketing, moved into recruitment technology. I built a company called Social Media Search, which was a research company. Sold that to Norman Broadbent, the executive search firm in London. built a candidate ID, which was marketing automation technology for talent acquisition. So that's iSIMS in 2022. Really loved my, I was there for nearly a year, loved my time in iSIMS and started a new company recently called Poetry. Chad Sowash (02:29.688) Poetry, which let's just be transparent kids. I am a funder. I'm a funder and also advisor. At the end of the day though, today, I called upon Adam because we keep hearing about these bright, shiny, cute chat bots that are out there. Open AI, you might have heard of those guys. When they came out, there was nothing but shiny, glittery, cool stuff happening. And we just, we hear any of the practical applications for generative AI. Then Joel and I use this platform called Riverside and it just records our podcasts. We've got video and audio. Then they infused it with some generative AI. So it records, transcribes, creates synopsis, highlights video clips, audio clips. I mean, the generative AI just, it took it to another level. So my question to you, fine sir Adam Gordon, how in the hell Are we going to do the same thing in recruitment? Because we have all these individuals, these TA leaders that are like, this is going to be the best thing in the world, but I have no clue what to fucking do next. Adam Gordon (03:44.849) mean, the answer to that is a very, very long one. So I'm gonna give you a, I'm gonna start with a short version of it. Any time that you need to create text for something, you could use generative AI to help you to fast track that process. We hire recruiters for their ability to... achieve influence with individuals, individual hiring managers and candidates, and for them to be able to move people through a process. They have got the same competencies as an expert sales professional who can really guide somebody through a process. And that's what we hire salespeople, recruiters for. But what we don't tend to hire them for is their marketing. Now, they have to be really good marketers. We don't hire them. necessarily for their ability to build Boolean strings, but they've got to have the ability to do that somehow. We don't hire them for their ability to create contracts and create policies, but we're asking them to do that. The job of a recruiter in many organizations is like, you know, really, really varied. And it's too varied for that individual to have. deep expertise in all the different things that we're asking them to do. So what we've typically done is we've typically done training sessions for recruiters to help them to become expert sorters and expert marketers and expert this and expert something else. And I really believe that we can't, we just can't give them ongoing training and expect them to be deep experts in 20 different things. I think what we should do instead put things right into their hands at the moment they need them within like two clicks on a solution and they've got what they need then and there. If we put things into their hands in the way that sales enablement technology has done for salespeople, then we're gonna have much more productive and successful Chad Sowash (05:59.448) So we're hearing right now they're trying to become a jack of all trades, which makes them a master of none. And when we take a look at, and this is one of the things that we've talked about, not just around skills hiring, but also just in jobs themselves, a job isn't just one thing. It is a series of tasks that they have to do during the day, which you were just alluding to. So talk about how do we start generative AI where it can be used, how do we start actually implementing that into the workday? How does that work? mean, like we just said, with Riverside, it's easy for us because we already have a platform. They infused it into it and then we just, I mean, it just automatically made life easier for us. So how do we make life easier for those recruiters and obviously the TA leaders? Adam Gordon (06:53.297) Well, mean, we certainly like Riverside infused it into this product and it's made your lives easier without you having to make use of some other technology and then embed it into Riverside or use something separate. I mean, even Microsoft Teams has. I do all of my recordings for the Recruiter Enablement YouTube channel on Microsoft Teams and it's got a decent transcription. And then I just put that a generative AI service and ask that to turn it into a summary. So it's really easy. I think what we need to do is think about the different tasks where generative AI can be useful and then establish should the generative AI be embedded into an existing solution such as applicant tracking system or a CRM, some of which have done a good job of that or Does it not make any sense to have it in there and are they never going to do it? So what I've, I've personally done in the development of our product is I've looked at what are all the different areas of recruiting where generative AI can be most useful and of those, which are the ones that the ATS and the CRM, which is never going to touch or not in the, not in the near future. So actually there's a workspace opportunity there. So we've built a workspace with 28 inbuilt solutions we've grouped them according to four different things. It might become five, but it's currently four different things. so the first one is marketing. The second one is operations. The third one is learning. And the fourth one is a bit of a generic catch -all T for tools. So marketing M, operations O, learning L, T tools. We call that MOLT, M -O -L -T. There is the 28, solutions are within those four groups, marketing, operations, learning tools, MOLT. There may become an A in the middle of that. It'll still be pronounced MOLT, -O -A -L -T, and the A is for assessment because I'm going really deep into the area of assessment right now by popular demand, right? So there are more than just the tips. it's really, I mean, just as an example on the A for assessment. Chad Sowash (09:04.194) More than just a tip. Adam Gordon (09:15.043) Recruitment teams are telling us that their process stalls when the recruiter says to the hiring manager, can you create a scenario and some questions related to that scenario for me to assess these candidates on? mean, the recruiter is never going to do, the hiring manager is never going to do that. Even going to the hiring manager and saying, can you create some competency based questions for this treasury manager job that you're asking me to work on? I mean, the head of finance is going to sit and create competency -based questions for that. So why don't we use a large language model to give the recruiter the ability to create, as a minimum, the draft for these things, to then get the hiring manager to approve that, and that'll make the process a lot more fluid. So there are so many different areas of recruiting where we don't need to start from the beginning. We don't need to start from the beginning in writing a job description. I mean, that's a really perfect one. The hiring manager says, right, it's the first time we're hiring for this. I don't have any job description for it. HR says, yeah, we don't have a job description for it. Hey, recruitment, you build one. And the recruiter's like, I don't know where to start for this underwater basket weaver job. I've never done that job before. So can you use Gen .AI to help you build that? Of course you can, absolutely. So infusing generativity, you need to think about the tasks. Joel Cheesman (10:38.752) Molt, Molt, Molt has to be the sexiest acronym. Adam Gordon (10:43.589) Malt, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm happy too, absolutely. Joel Cheesman (10:44.45) So sexy. I'm going to remember that one. Full disclosure as well. I get an occasional hug and a dram from Adam when I see him. That's my full disclosure on relationship with Adam. Where does this end up? I've heard it's a commodity. We're all going to have Google or Microsoft co -pilots. Are we going to need this stuff as a recruiting tool? Will we just say like, I need to write a job description. I'm going to go to my co -pilot and do it, you know, on my personal account. You know, we've talked about like search engines. Everybody had search until Google came out and built a molt or moat. Sorry. will it be a differentiator HR tech has AI in it or will it be a commodity that you just got to have and it's got to be part of the system? I'm just curious your thoughts on where this thing ends Adam Gordon (11:41.795) I mean, it's already table stakes, right? So if you go and look at the way that we're positioning our company, we certainly don't put generative AI out there in the first paragraph or the first page of the website. It's not something we're boasting about at all. It's not something we really even talk about. It is oil in the vehicle. so we use one specific large language model at this point, OpenAI is the default. However, by the end of this year, we're going to give our customers the ability to just switch from OpenAI to another one or another one or another one. And they can choose which one it is and it would make much difference in terms of performance. The reason we started with OpenAI is because we tested performance on four different LLMs and we found that it was providing the best results and we could tame it the best as well. like it's already table stakes and the Chad Sowash (12:34.274) Tell me what tame it, what do you mean tame it? Adam Gordon (12:37.733) We can control it in a way whereby we can get it to provide back consistent results in the right type of format, recognizing the prompts that are put into it, and really understanding what that prompt means. So if you've got a prompt which includes, here's the tone of voice, we want bullet points for this bit, we want pros for this bit, we need the heading always to look like this, so what it's providing back, looks consistent each time, it's on brand and the recruiter recognizes the produce they're getting, then yeah, open AI is easier to control. Joel Cheesman (13:14.264) So are you saying similar like if I want to, if I want my, you know, my default search is Google, but if I want to do duck duck, go, or I want to do something else, are you saying that we will eventually get to a point where every AI integration is the user will decide, Hey, I want to default to llama or I want to default to open AI or when I want to do Gemini. Like, is that the future that you're Adam Gordon (13:37.775) Yeah, yeah, I would think so, yeah, because I mean, just in the same way that like our customers, large talent acquisition teams, they're either on Microsoft for everything or they're on Google for everything because that's what their company has chosen as like an operating system for their email and those sorts of things. Joel Cheesman (13:56.758) And you as a vendor needs to prepare for whatever AI the company is going to default to. Is that kind of the model you think? Adam Gordon (14:03.461) Yeah, we need to we need to be agnostic. Yeah, we need to be agnostic. Absolutely. And I think you could also compare it to like, you know, I talked about oil, you could compare it to fuel for a car. Like this, there's certain certain drivers who are going to prefer their fuel from Texaco. And there's others that will prefer it from Shell or BP or whatever it might be. And there's some who just don't care. Most don't care. It's just whatever is closest. But it absolutely I believe it's going to be that that commoditized and that's the way we think about it just now. We're not building our product as a gen AI product. We're not telling the world it is a gen AI product. mean, most recruitment technology that is not already deeply embedded generative AI is way behind, but this is table stakes now. It's not a differentiator. The differentiator is how you harness it. and how you deliver the experience to the user and all of the functionality you put around that. So it's like the, it's the chassis. It's like, I heard you talking about electric cars on Friday and talking about the Tesla might fall back or whatever it is. And you've got BYD that's coming ahead. BYD is a chassis. Tesla is a chassis. The difference between, just use, they use the same electricity. Chad Sowash (15:07.991) Mm -hmm. Adam Gordon (15:28.569) in the same way that SaaS products are using the same generative AI. But the difference is maybe the BYD chassis and all the other technology that it's got in there could be a lot better than Tesla. That is their battleground. The battleground for recruitment technology is in around the user experience, the recruiter experience, the ability to do more with less clicks. Chad Sowash (15:40.214) Mm -hmm. Adam Gordon (15:55.089) the ability to provide more solutions within the one workspace. I really don't think there's a big future in these products that are coming out all over the place, which is, hey, this is Gen .ai for job adverts, or this is Gen .ai for one small thing. They're features, 100 % they're features. Chad Sowash (16:12.194) Those are features. Joel Cheesman (16:14.52) Yeah. Well, it makes branding that much more important, right? Cause if everyone's using the same thing, not only just how you use it, this, the Tesla brand is much different than the BYD brand, even though they're the same car, just like BMW and Volkswagen get you to the same place with the same kind of engine. So do you think branding is going to be that much more important? Are we going to see a lot more conference islands and people building these sort of monolithic brands and hoping that they become a premier brand for this stuff? Chad Sowash (16:39.988) Yeah. Adam Gordon (16:46.277) I think the branding is part of it. Yeah. I mean, I don't believe, I don't believe that I could be successful with my company purely based on branding. I think that I can, I will definitely be successful with my company based on the number of solutions it can provide in as little clicks as possible. And therefore the amount of time that it can save for a recruiter and the more, you know, the, the, usefulness of the functionality. I think that the brand follows but it's all about product and experience. And if the product and the experience for the user, for the recruiter is absolutely brilliant, you can legitimately convey a brand which is one of excellence. Chad Sowash (17:32.674) Well, and you can also, I would assume as a vendor with these tasks, these solutions, you can see which one's being used the most. So there can be prioritizing of that within the desktop, not to mention there can also be reporting back to the leadership on how they're being used. then there could be training that go along with that, Adam Gordon (17:59.761) Yeah, 100%. And not just the solutions we've developed incidentally, but we're providing information on which third party solutions are getting clicked the most, which a lot of vendors don't provide. So if somebody wants to understand ROI across their entire tech stack, then that's one of the things that we're providing. That's not a gen AI related solution. So there's a lot of non -gen AI focused solutions that we've put into our product as we've sought to... make life for recruiters easier and faster to get their tasks accomplished. So we are intensively focused on helping recruiters get their tasks accomplished in less clicks. And whether that means there's a Gen .ai solution in that or whether it's not. The 28 solutions that we have today, probably 30, there's probably 34 solutions. Probably six of them that are non Gen .ai solutions at this point. So it's not just about generative AI. On the issue around being able to understand what's getting used and what's not getting used, we've already shelved three solutions which weren't getting used. And we understand why they weren't getting used because they were pretty much direct overlap with what happens in an applicant tracking system. And we didn't know that. But now we know that. We won't reintroduce that because we don't want to create any type of overlap because that just is confusion. We've got rid of, we're continuously adding additional solutions, but we will continuously remove solutions as well, as we can see they're not popular. Joel Cheesman (19:36.014) So one of the keys to branding that Adam failed to mention is if you put a kilt on anything, it automatically gets a better brand in the marketplace. Curious about portability, Adam, you're describing a world where all these things are commodities. They all play with every system that you use, whether it's email or my SaaS product or whatever. Well, we have a day where I can use multiple services and my AI activities are portable across all these services. I mean, we're talking about Apple intelligence with open AI and they're going to put everything in. we get to a day where HR tech plays in an integrated way with everything that you're using and you don't have a certain account separately that you can port all of these systems to other HR tech or no? Adam Gordon (20:34.043) I mean, think that there's two things I want to address based on that question. The first Adam Gordon (20:43.985) You can do everything that we've developed pretty much, every generative AI solution that we've developed within our product, you could just do on ChatGPT. If you know how to do really, really good prompt engineering, there's one solution we offer, which includes 5 ,000 words of prompting that needs to go into it to produce what come, hmm, yeah. Chad Sowash (21:06.488) Five thousand? Adam Gordon (21:09.617) It's called a playbook. develops between 20 and 30 assets in one go. And there's 5 ,000 words of generative AI prompting that goes into that to develop this playbook. And you would need to be incredibly sophisticated around how to use Gemini or ChatGPT to get that type of thing back. But technically you could. The difference, however, is when you're talking about portability, the difference If I'm doing that on ChatGPT, it's almost certain that my colleagues don't have access to that good work that I've created, that they don't have the ability to upvote it and downvote it and comment on it and tag people in it and copy it and clone it and share it. And so I think the ability to share the opportunity for people to be able to share each other's great work and to see what's the most popular and successful. and continuously use the assets that are most popular and successful, whether that be interview questions, competency -based interview questions, and objection handling responses, and outreach messaging, and other things like Chad Sowash (22:23.01) So you're crowdsourcing around the different areas to be able to share the information. So that's not a one -off. It's actually building almost like libraries. Adam Gordon (22:34.981) I mean, was one, when I was doing focus groups about this subject back last year, and one talent acquisition manager told me that she'd identified that day of the focus group that three people in her team had all written the same job advert in different countries. And I said, you know, what could have been better there? And she said, well, the person who wrote the best one should have written it and stored it somewhere and everybody else used it. You know, that's a really important element of So when you use the word portability, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, what we need is the ability for everybody to be able to retrieve each other's great work and make use of that in library functionality. In terms of portability and moving things around different systems, we'll see what happens with our technology, but we are being asked for a certain amount of integration so that people can access their outreach messaging and their social media posts and their job adverts and things like from within the applicant tracking system. They're using Poetry to build it, but they're getting the produce within the ATS. That's something that I can see happening. People don't want to toggle if they can avoid toggling between different systems. integrations are definitely important. And then the other thing that this leads me to talk about is the concept of retrieval augmented generation. A company already has hiring policies and like onboarding policies and it's got lots of documents and things like that. Well, if we can, when we are creating new things, if we can automatically retrieve and read all of the information from inside that and that augments that job advert or it augments that, you know, kickoff meeting template or whatever it might be. Joel Cheesman (24:18.808) Mm -hmm. Adam Gordon (24:29.517) then that makes life better for recruiters as well. So that's something that we're doing and it's something that we're focused intensively Chad Sowash (24:38.242) feels like we're in phase one where we're just trying to figure out from a practicality standpoint where we can weave in large language models to be able to provide better efficiencies, right? I think then the next phase is, well, wait a minute. We want to train all of that data that we actually got back along with all the data that we have in our data lakes, data pools, and our applicant tracking systems in one right, or siloed models. And then they start to get more strategic with it. We're not strategic yet. And I feel like that's going to be the next big step is we're going to use that data more strategically. And then we're going to focus on a model that we feel works best for Adam Gordon (25:24.441) Yeah, it could be. mean, training a large language model is not something that we're going to be doing in the short term. It involves, you you need many, many millions of dollars to do that. It's also, there's a lot of inefficiency in that. In that when you're training a model, what you're doing is you're taking an export of the data from that large language model at that time. One minute later, it's out of date. So what you're training is based on an out of date LLM. Chad Sowash (25:47.138) Mm -hmm. Adam Gordon (25:54.819) So you are literally exporting the contents of that LLM before you then start training it yourself. Now, I don't know how long the training process actually lasts before it's producing things that are more useful for your purposes. But certainly when we looked at this, we concluded that by far the best opportunity for us as a company. was to do retrieval augmented generation and to use a live LLM that is continuously updating. And if we can put in the absolute most tailored prompt engineering and give our customers the ability to go and fill in questionnaires, which are things like, what does your company do? Why was it founded? What's its purpose? and for us to be able to read their career site and read their website and read all of their documents that they upload into our product, we certainly, we did a lot of study on this to determine whether training a model was gonna be the optimal thing for us to do. And we concluded it definitely wasn't. Now, for a company like Eightfold or a company like Workday, for example, you know, maybe that is the right thing to do. I don't know. I don't know what money and, you know, people and investment they put into something like this. And I don't know what the future holds for that. But at this point, we're getting really great results without without doing any like what you would technically describe as training. Chad Sowash (27:36.662) So do you have any case studies thus far that actually demonstrates the kind of time savings that recruiters are getting? Adam Gordon (27:46.097) Yeah, so one global talent acquisition team, FMCG companies told us that they estimate that their recruiters are saving 64 minutes per day through using all of these solutions. And that time is saved from three things. The first is people toggle tax, people navigating from one place to another place to another place in order to get all the little components of things they need to get their tasks done. The second thing is people spending their time thinking about what to write on that social media post or that job advert and just the amount of time taken to start writing things, which really does take a long time. And then the third is the time that people are spending posting on Teams or on Slack saying, hey, does anybody know where I can find whatever it is? Well, you don't need to know where to find it now because it's all in one place. know, that's kind of the, the, the real killer is the amount of time spent that the recruiters are spending trying to find the things that they need to get their tasks done. Now we've also done some research with the firm, the forum for greenhouse recruitment managers who I'm sorry, they have changed their name to the talent lab. I think it's called and I should. Chad Sowash (29:09.921) Okay. Adam Gordon (29:10.789) This is really bad. I can't remember what they changed the name to. I think it's the talent lab. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a customer of theirs there. And I still can't remember what they changed. However, they are a brilliant organization and they are, we've done some research with them. Several hundred talent acquisition managers have taken part in this research. And I'm just awaiting the results right now around exactly how long people are spending on doing different tasks. Chad Sowash (29:14.626) Well, they shouldn't have changed their name then. Adam Gordon (29:40.667) We've done a time and motion study, it's called. yeah, I think recruiters are spending a lot of time doing things they don't need to be doing if they could harness generative AI properly. Joel Cheesman (29:52.876) Yeah. Talk, let's talk about threats for a second. Adam, you mentioned going into someone's ATS or their own database and looking at the model there and figuring stuff out. Obviously privacy screams to me when you say stuff like that. And certainly you're over in a part of the world that cares a lot about privacy and what happens to people's data. So talk some of the threats you see as AI and generative AI gets rolled out into a lot of vendor products and integrations into the solutions that we use every Adam Gordon (30:25.829) Yeah, it's a very great question. And it's one that I've entirely avoided by having zero candidate profiles or candidate information in the technology that we've developed. And we will never have any candidate profiles or email addresses or anything like that. And guess what? We're sailing through the InfoSec questionnaires as a result of that, which is a lot of fun. Press the button, sit back, chill out. mocktails all around. yeah, but the truth is, absolutely, there are lots of organizations where in fact, I spoke to an RPO company today, a big one, you all know them. they've actually banned use of chat GPT and other large language models by their recruiters at this point, because they are evaluating what is this gonna do if I let open AI into my applicant tracking system and start looking at my candidate's CVs and my candidate's email addresses and home addresses and phone numbers. so a lot of companies are being very reserved about how they're going about doing this. And I think they've got every right to do that. And I think it's prudent of them to do it. What we're doing is we're using generative AI to build job adverts and outreach messaging and policies and things that are for draft and not necessarily for things that are just gonna go straight onto the website or like, you I think that there's a lot of things to consider and the chief information officer's job is undoubtedly more exciting and terrifying. in equal measure than it ever has been. Chad Sowash (32:23.104) Yes. Yes, I agree. I'm let you out on this one. I actually have a call in from a text question. This is from a long time listener. Said, ask Adam how it feels to employ the Cheddar and Cheese favorite Scotsman. Adam Gordon (32:40.689) Yeah. So Joel just messaged Chad to ask that question. Got it. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Look, I look every this is this is actually a slight change of subject here, but the subject of talent density, right? You know, it's been quite an important one recently. Chad Sowash (32:49.634) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (32:51.724) Lies. Adam Gordon (33:06.117) I don't believe there's a company in our industry with a higher degree of talent density than mine. Every single person, there's only four people in the company, but every single one of us can do at least five different jobs that you would find in a much larger recruitment technology company. so, know, I, when you are a, smaller your company, the more important is that everybody can do lots of things. And Steven McGrath is a personification of a Swiss army knife. for sure. And in fact, when I first hired him the first time around, day one, this is not a joke, day one, him joining my company as a customer success manager, I didn't have any customers to hand over to him at that point. And I told him to do a 300 section information security questionnaire for a well known US chocolate company. And the reason I did that was because I wanted him to just get sheep dipped into the business and to go and just learn everything he could about our product from taking part in this InfoSec questionnaire. And that guy is brilliant and it's a real privilege to have the opportunity to work with him again. And I told you, you'd like him when you first met him. I sent him in my place to Leven's conference because I couldn't go for some reason. And I sent him in my place and I'd said to you, honestly, he's better than me anyway. So, and it seems like you agreed. Chad Sowash (34:22.353) You did. Joel Cheesman (34:31.75) Steven is the best. He's the best. He's the best. All right, everybody. is Adam Gordon, our second favorite Scotsman in the whole world. He is the co -founder at Poetry. Adam, for our listeners who want to connect with you as if they're not already, where can they find out more or connect with Chad Sowash (34:35.703) we, I tell you, we love her some Adam Gordon (34:55.353) They can find out more by going to poetryhr .com where everybody can sign up for one free account to have a scout around the workspace and check it out for yourself. That's free for one user for your company forever. And I'm easy to find Adam Gordon Poetry. anybody that wants to talk about recruiter enablement ever can come on my YouTube channel about the subject as well. And yeah, thank you. I've really loved Joel Cheesman (35:23.022) And that everybody is a CEO who knows a little something about marketing. Chad, that is another one in the can. Hopefully we see a few of these favorite Scots of ours next week in Nebworth at RecFest. Another one in the can, we out. Adam Gordon (35:23.513) experience to join you again today, guys. Chad Sowash (35:39.467) and

In this episode, the boys interview Angela Cheng-Cimini, the CHRO at Harvard Business Publishing, about hyper individualization in the workplace. They discuss the importance of meeting employees where they are and providing a personalized employee experience. They also explore the impact of COVID-19 on workplace flexibility and the shift towards remote work. The conversation covers topics such as pay transparency, career progression, and the role of managers in shaping the employee experience. Angela emphasizes the need for organizations to adapt to the changing expectations of employees and create a culture of belonging and growth. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:23.494) yeah. What's up, everybody? It is your favorite podcast, aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always. Chad. So wash is in the house and today we welcome Angela Chang, Simony. She is the CHRO at Harvard Business Publishing. Maybe you've heard of a little thing called the Harvard Business Review. Yeah, same thing. Angela welcome. Chad Sowash (00:48.377) Ooh, maybe. Joel Cheesman (00:52.486) to the podcast. Angela Cheng-Cimini (00:53.512) Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, great to be here. Joel Cheesman (00:56.07) Good to have you. Good to have you. So a lot of our listeners, if not all of them have no clue who you are. They probably know about your company and who you work for, but give us a little bit about you and then we'll get into the business stuff. Chad Sowash (00:58.137) Thanks for being here. Chad Sowash (01:03.769) Let's hope so. Angela Cheng-Cimini (01:09.064) 30 year HR career professional, spanning startups, global 100 companies in decline, but always in HR. Proud mom of two amazing adult children, married my college sweetheart. And we currently have three dogs in the house because we're dog sitting my sons as well. So there's a lot of puppy energy right now. Tumbleweeds of dog hair everywhere. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (01:29.798) Sounds like we got a Gen Xer on this show. Chad Sowash (01:34.873) I love it. I love it. I love it. Hey, that's, that's, that's what happens when you have, when you have dogs. How many dogs do you have? You have two. Okay. So you added, so when, when you add the one into the mix, do they go a little bit nuts for a while or? Good. Angela Cheng-Cimini (01:43.048) We have two, we have two, yeah. Angela Cheng-Cimini (01:50.888) my God, they're a pack. And it turns out that my son's dog is the litter mate of our girl dog. And it's so cute watching them come together. They're like, my God, we're back in utero. Yeah, it's crazy. Joel Cheesman (01:52.262) The zoomies. Chad Sowash (01:56.505) nice! Chad Sowash (02:01.177) Ha! Joel Cheesman (02:03.91) Chad will never be more engaged on this show as he is when you mentioned dogs. Like we should just have a dog podcast for Chad. Chad Sowash (02:04.441) That's like Joel and I. Angela Cheng-Cimini (02:08.744) we can do that too. Chad Sowash (02:11.801) We should do that. We should do that. Beyond that, though, let's talk a little bit about hyper individualization. My God, 10 syllables for this thing, for goodness sakes. What does that even mean? What does hyper individualization even mean? Angela Cheng-Cimini (02:23.816) Ha ha. Joel Cheesman (02:26.246) My brain hurts. Angela Cheng-Cimini (02:29.736) It means meeting the employee where they are. So giving them the experience they want. So Amazon feeds me movies, Spotify gives me a playlist, Netflix, same thing. And organizations have been slow to catch on to deliver the same kind of customer journey and employee experience. And they're sitting on just as much data. And in fact, they probably know even more about employees than Amazon does just for my credit card transactions. Chad Sowash (02:32.185) Chad Sowash (02:58.041) Wow. Well, that's good. Joel Cheesman (03:00.71) So you care enough about this to do a study on it. Give us an overview of the genesis of this thing and what it is, who you talk to. Give us a broad overview and set the table. Angela Cheng-Cimini (03:13.128) Yeah, so I joined Harvard Business Publishing HBP almost three years ago and needed to sort of reinvent the fundamentals of all the people practices and then realized that the next elevation that was then one click below, which is, OK, what does Chad need? What does Joel need? Right? So I've got sort of the systems in place. But now how do I really take that to the next mile and give people exactly what they're looking for? Chad Sowash (03:29.721) That's a good question. Angela Cheng-Cimini (03:39.848) And the answer is people want what they want. And now, increasingly, they want it when they want it. They don't want to get promoted when I say they get promoted. They want to get promoted when they want to be promoted. They want learning and development delivered in the modalities that work best for them. So maybe that's asynchronous. Maybe that's in person. Maybe that's a boot camp that's a week. Maybe it's over four months. But people want choice because they have it everywhere else in their life. And so we've got to deliver it. Chad Sowash (04:07.161) So we've been talking about meeting people where they are and most people don't even know what the hell that means. It sounds good. I mean, it's great. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. But for years, companies, I mean, there's been the meeting of the company where it wants you to meet them, right? And so was this change really something that was pushed forward much faster because of COVID? What do you think? Angela Cheng-Cimini (04:24.104) That's right. Chad Sowash (04:36.249) this actually, or was this just a normal progression, I guess. Angela Cheng-Cimini (04:39.912) No, I think COVID was definitely a trigger, right? And the great resignation, people suddenly saying, screw this, I've discovered what's really important to me in life, and it ain't working for the man, right? It's finding meaning in the work. I want to work where I want, when I want, with whom I want. And I'm willing to leave if I don't get it. And then I think consumer -grade gen AI then accelerated that even further. So now we can take mountains of data. Chad Sowash (04:59.161) Mm -hmm. Angela Cheng-Cimini (05:07.112) and build out a plan just for you. There's no reason to say there's too much information, I don't know how to deal with it all. We don't have an excuse because technology can make that easier for us. Chad Sowash (05:16.473) It's not hard though, from a compliance standpoint, because if you want to be able to provide everybody their individual type of process, there's risk of somebody saying, wait a minute, my process isn't as easy as Joel's was. It was different. And, you know, I deserve to have the easier process, even though it was more, it was more something that I wanted styled to something that would have been perfect for me. doesn't this provide some sort of risk with regard to employers and obviously HR is not a big fan of risk. Angela Cheng-Cimini (05:54.312) Absolutely, I mean I think that's always been the art and science of developing an equitable experience. What works for you might not work for me and they are going to look different. So how do you make sure that you are containing that experience in a way that people understand why it looks different? In fact, just this morning I had a whole conversation with our people leaders about how compensation works at HVP. There's a level of transparency that you have to practice and I think you treat people like adults and you assume they've got a modicum of common sense, they'll follow the message and this is no different. Chad Sowash (06:02.841) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (06:23.705) So talk about that real quick. Pay transparency. Pay transparency really is supposed to be pushing forward toward pay equity. How's that working within Harvard Business Publishing? Angela Cheng-Cimini (06:33.96) Yeah. Angela Cheng-Cimini (06:38.216) Actually, really, really freaking fantastic. In fact, we had an outside consultant come in and examine our pay practices, and they could find no instance where the pay difference couldn't be explained by skills, competence, or mastery. The other way of saying that is there was no gender bias, no racial bias, no discriminatory dimension that fed into why people are paid differently. Really, really proud of that one. Joel Cheesman (06:50.406) Nice. Chad Sowash (07:01.273) And you should be, and you really should be. Have you done anything around that to be able to kind of like encapsulate what you're doing as a standard for other companies? Because there are a lot of companies right now that are just going crazy over trying to manage this. It's literally like herding cats for many of them. Angela Cheng-Cimini (07:23.72) It is and it isn't. I mean, I think some of it is just will. I mean, it's a black box, so it's easy to just sort of keep it behind the curtain and not have to explain yourself to other people. But I want to hold myself accountable to my employees. I want them to have confidence that they're being paid appropriately. And so we just constantly pressure testing the system. I get a new hire. We're making sure that the people that are currently already in the job aren't suffering because they didn't just come off the market. Managers are... Joel Cheesman (07:31.91) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (07:32.377) yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (07:48.505) Mm -hmm. Angela Cheng-Cimini (07:49.352) constantly being vigilant. If they think there's a problem, we take a look at it and we go out and we get the data. So we're just vigilant year round. We're not waiting it for every three years to, you know, to make sure that we're not out of whack. Joel Cheesman (08:00.294) Yeah. Going back to the research, I always seem to think that if we say something is universal, that we get into trouble, that everyone wants what they want, when they want, how they want. Did we find that there are some people that just don't know, are looking for direction, are looking for the old adage of lead follower, get the hell out of the way. Like there are some followers that are looking for guidance. Yes. Or is everyone in this bucket of I know what I want and when I want it and how I want it. Angela Cheng-Cimini (08:30.12) definitely not. I mean, I have a 25 year old daughter who doesn't always know what she wants, right? She's still figuring it out. And I love that phase of life for her. But that in and of itself is hyper personalization. So that means that person needs a manager to lean in. Maybe they need a mentor. Maybe they need someone more experienced to share with them what might be coming down the pike. And then there are others who absolutely know where they want it. Joel Cheesman (08:50.502) Gotcha. So in terms of the survey, who did you talk to? Who is the survey for big employer, small employers, every everything in between? Talk about that. Angela Cheng-Cimini (08:59.848) I actually just aggregated existing research and just sort of connected the dots. So one of the really interesting pieces of evidence that I picked up was that, well, I'll ask you, what percentage of the employee experience do you think is determined, the quality of that experience, what do you think, how much of that is determined by the manager? Joel Cheesman (09:16.486) Angela, we asked the questions on this show, not you. Yeah. High percentage is what I would say. Chad Sowash (09:17.017) Probably a hundred percent a hundred percent. Angela Cheng-Cimini (09:21.768) Yeah, it probably feels like that. But yeah, it's like 70%, right? So when we say that employees leave, managers on organizations, it's absolutely true. So there's no other factor that even approaches that vector of magnitude, right? So if you understand that the manager is the locus of where everything happens, and then you give them the power to say, yeah, influence pay, influence how they learn, influence how quickly people move through the ranks, you suddenly unlock how you can deliver a really bespoke employee experience. Joel Cheesman (09:25.606) Okay. Joel Cheesman (09:49.766) So one of the... Chad Sowash (09:50.361) take a look at the remote work real quick. As we're talking about flexibility and wanting to provide them with meeting them where they are, that is one of the hardest things for many old CEOs to wrap their head around because they're used to micromanagement, they're used to looking over somebody's shoulder, knowing that if they're in the office, whether they're at the water cooler or not, it doesn't matter, just as when they're in the office, Joel Cheesman (09:54.342) Yeah. Chad Sowash (10:18.073) They feel like something's getting done. Now that feeling is pretty much bullshit for the most part, but that is what they believe. And that's what we've seen from many of these organizations. How do we, how do we get out of that? Do we just have to wait for these leaders to die off before, before we get there? Angela Cheng-Cimini (10:34.887) or they see their business suffer. I was actually talking to someone who was consulting with an organization who was insisting on an RTO mandate. And they were waffling like, I'm not sure, should we, okay, maybe the office people don't have to and the people in the manufacturing line do. It just created all sorts of clutter. Just pick a side and then go with it. It's this in between, you're not taking a point of view on an issue that's really important to a lot of people and then let people decide whether or not it's a place where they wanna stay. I mean, I think that mandating a return is going to prove in the long run not to be a good business strategy, but we'll see. We'll see. Joel Cheesman (11:09.638) That was one of the things that caught my eye on the, on the study is that the biggest divide was between the companies that wanted you that weren't doing remote. It was only like 20 % that were, but 70 plus percent of the workers wanted remote work. So that was the biggest divide in terms of, of one and employers. And do you have anything anecdotally or research wise? Did, did we get closer during the pandemic and then we're going back or like, how was that? changed over the last few years. If you don't have data, do you have anything anecdotally? Angela Cheng-Cimini (11:42.472) No, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, companies have been wrestling with that kind of workplace flexibility for a long time. And in the span of a week, the whole country went remote. The whole world went remote. And suddenly figured out how to do it. Technology hadn't quite kept up, but that didn't take too long to catch up either. So I think what's true is that the Pandora's box has been opened. And employees who won't go back will never go back. Chad Sowash (11:54.009) Yeah. Angela Cheng-Cimini (12:08.488) to going back into the office. And so that has fundamentally shifted that conversation. And whether employers are going to move with it or not remains to be seen and will show up absolutely on their P &L. No question. We're office optional and I think I love that for us. Joel Cheesman (12:22.214) Curious? Yeah. I always thought that some companies will be remote, some won't, and people will decide what kind of organization they want to work for. But as far as the data says, if you're not going remote, you're losing out on a lot of people that you could be recruiting and retaining, in that process. One of the things that caught my attention as well, you talk about career progression in the study, talk about what that means. And what shocked me was you had 34 % of the people are not interested in. career progression, which surprised me. So tell us about specifically what you were looking for and did that shock you as well? And if so, why? Angela Cheng-Cimini (13:02.376) It did, so it's a third of people don't want to become managers. They don't mind continuing to move through the ranks if it's an individual contributor role, but they look at the job of a manager and they say, that's crap, right? You're taking on the burden of taking care of all these people, right? Making sure they're performing and I got my own plate of stuff I need to get done. There's nothing glamorous about that. There's not enough combat pay in the world to make me take on that role. And the reason that's concerning is, right, like I... Chad Sowash (13:12.697) Mm -hmm. It is. Joel Cheesman (13:17.414) You Angela Cheng-Cimini (13:30.888) hope to be retired, let's call it 10 years. Who's coming up behind me? It doesn't look so good. So that's a concern for the succession plan and the pipeline. And so we have to find a way to make that work, not just palatable, but actually aspirable, if that's a way. Chad Sowash (13:47.097) Yeah, well, in does it all from what we've seen, it seems like most companies aren't thinking about career progression in the first place. They're leaving it to the employee and the employee has no idea what the career path is other than trying to get to manager, which many of them don't. So they have no offshoot to have lateral moves or go into other other departments. So Did you see what they were interested in? Was it just being an individual contributor, not in this spot, but still progressing in the organization and other departments? Because we're seeing a lot of attrition in organizations, and that's probably a lot has to do with managers, but also because they can't see where they're going to be in the next six months to the next 18 months. So what have you seen in connecting those dots with all that research? Angela Cheng-Cimini (14:41.128) Yeah, so it's just making it visible, just putting it out there. I mean, sometimes they don't want to necessarily make the choice, but knowing that they can one day when they want to. So we've got 20 job families, and it's very clear the competencies that are required for each one of those. And people can choose their own adventure. So my favorite story is someone in marketing who wanted to come over to HR because she wanted to do more DEI work. And she was able to see which ones of her skills were transferable and which ones were not. She was a director, came over as a manager. Chad Sowash (14:49.113) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (15:03.193) Mm -hmm. Angela Cheng-Cimini (15:09.416) because she didn't quite meet the mark as an HR director. And I'm happy to say that she's probably going to be promoted soon because now she's acquired those skills that are required in HR. But that was a choice and path that she charted herself. Chad Sowash (15:21.945) Well, was she able to see the like the learning and development side as well and being able to know that, wait a minute here where my gaps are, I need to fill these gaps to be able to get to that director position or VP position. Is that something that you guys have in place? And if you do, what are the formats that you're currently doing any type of learning? Is it digital, E, you know, those types of things, or is it, you know, in class? Angela Cheng-Cimini (15:30.248) Yes. Angela Cheng-Cimini (15:49.096) It's all of the above and again, I think to our earlier discussion chat, it all depends on how people learn best. Some people learn best OJT, right? OTJ, on the job, right? OJT, on the job training, right? They don't wanna sit in the classroom. They'd actually be, rather be doing it. And so this person's manager really intentionally built out a plan, made sure that she had experiences and opportunities so she could gain the skills she needed so she could get promoted. She's also... Chad Sowash (15:56.441) Yeah. On the job. Yeah. Angela Cheng-Cimini (16:15.368) extremely ambitious. She took e -certificate classes on her own time. But that was what she wanted to do, right? And her movement is reflective of the journey that she wants for herself. Chad Sowash (16:27.769) So have you been able to correlate this, I don't know, change from how you are currently looking at, again, meeting people where they are, and attrition, and then also productivity so that you can focus on the bottom line, creating great content, sales, service, those types of things. Angela Cheng-Cimini (16:47.496) That's a great question. I will tell you that we are fortunate not to have an attrition problem. I think we're really blessed with having a really noble mission. We are in the marketplace of the very best leadership ideas. And we work with some of the best authors and contributors. So there's something really, really compelling about the work that we do that keeps people with Harvard Business Publishing. But yes, I like to think that our people practices and that our leadership within the company helps people to stay because we give them opportunities to grow, we teach them, we're all about lifelong learning. And it's just kind of cool to work on the stuff that we work on. Joel Cheesman (17:28.518) So curious about adoption. We have companies that are using spreadsheets. So I'm using actual paper to sort of manage all this stuff about pathways and progression. And then we have companies that are on the forefront and have built their own tools or using tools that they, that they pay for on a regular basis. What did you find in regards to where people are? And if someone is on the X, you know, the Excel spreadsheet end of the spectrum, what advice would you give to them? to get on this train of finding out where your people are. The marketing person that wanted to get into HR is a great story. How did she find out that she was interested in that? How did she get the skills to eventually go into that place? I assume it was technology, but I'm not sure. Talk about adoption, where companies are and where they should be. Angela Cheng-Cimini (18:14.824) I love this question because when I built this career pathing framework the first time around, I was at an automotive technology startup. And I literally did it on an Excel spreadsheet. And that's what I brought over to HVP. And so I think organizations are sometimes intimidated. They think they need to have bells and whistles and need to spend millions of dollars on HCM. You don't. You can do it with chicken wire and spit. You just need time and you need an executive sponsorship to get it done. And in fact, I still often reference that Excel spreadsheet because that's how simple the program is. Now, all the stuff behind it obviously takes months to build out. But if you're willing to commit the resources, you don't need something really sophisticated in terms of technology to make it happen. And then we just publish it on our intranet. And so that woman was able to look across at all the job families and clearly see the skills she needed. It's not a super sophisticated, but I think it is organizations are intimidated by the time and effort it requires. Chad Sowash (19:09.177) I mean, that's just transparency in itself. It's data, it's transparency, and it's just providing the information to the people. Yeah. So good. Joel Cheesman (19:16.038) Yeah. And, and we also talk quite a bit on the show of how recruiting has changed because of this, of this strategy of saying, let's grow our own. Let's see who we already have in the organization. We don't have to post a job. We don't have to do the whole process and the, and the costs of doing that. How has that impacted companies ability to cut down on recruiting costs because they are utilizing, their current crop of talent. Angela Cheng-Cimini (19:16.04) putting it out there. Angela Cheng-Cimini (19:45.384) That's, you know, I think that's a delicate balance. I think if you over -index on anything, it's bad, right? So if all you do is promote internal mobility, then you're never injecting the organization with fresh blood. On the other hand, you don't want people to think that they can't get ahead and all we ever do is go buy the talent. So we have seen an increase in internal mobility since we rolled out the career pathing and that's a really good thing. Well, what I will say is that we're seeing... that we do need to go outside for some of these new capabilities, particularly in data and digital intelligence, AI stuff, machine learning, data analysts and scientists. We're not big enough. We're not like a Google or a Meta where we can home grow those people. So we have to go out into the marketplace and compete for that. So I think some of it is dependent on the role as well. Chad Sowash (20:33.529) So we talked to, I'm just going to say it, we talked to boomers and extras all the time. And the mindset is belonging. I didn't feel like I had to belong. I just came to work. I worked 60 hours a week. I kicked ass, take names, and this is where I got to today. That's exactly right. Yes. A little spit and bailing wire. Joel Cheesman (20:52.742) rub some dirt on it if I heard it. Angela Cheng-Cimini (20:57.488) Uphill both ways. Yeah. Chad Sowash (20:58.969) Exactly, exactly. So how do you get, because this is definitely a culture shift from the standpoint of, again, you're literally living to work versus working to live, right? How do you make that culture shift? Joel Cheesman (21:07.974) Yeah, the generations. Angela Cheng-Cimini (21:16.808) Well, I mean, I would argue that back in the day, people would have wanted to felt like they belonged. They just didn't think it was appropriate to ask of it. I mean, that's just not how organizations were structured. We just didn't make space for that. And so I think we're trained up for the environment that we grew up in. And this generation of workers has a very different set of expectations around what's appropriate, what's required, what's morally necessary. And they're demanding it. Chad Sowash (21:28.249) Like salaries, right? Chad Sowash (21:44.185) Mm -hmm. Angela Cheng-Cimini (21:45.704) I mean, nobody stays anywhere 30 years because that's what they were expected to do. Now, if you stay somewhere three years, that's enough time to make an impact. I'm looking to jump ship already. So I think some of it is we're just a product of our environment. I would argue that nobody ever didn't want to feel like they belong. Chad Sowash (22:02.745) And it's interesting too, because I mean, Joel and I talk about this is that, you know, my kids have more empathy than I have. I mean, I'm still trying to catch up with them for goodness sakes. The, you know, the emotional awareness. I mean, just those types of things. Again, we were told to suck it up and drive on and that wasn't healthy. So now, you know, we're seeing these Z's and who knows the alphas next that are popping up. Angela Cheng-Cimini (22:29.544) Right. Chad Sowash (22:30.393) Who really embrace that and they don't have to be in management They don't have to you know, they're not trying to again Live to work. So it's really it's interesting for me as I we watch that the kids start to come up How they are developing do you think that's going to hurt? some of the midline management, maybe we have too much of it already, but the midline management in leaders, or you just think that they're gonna mature into those positions. Angela Cheng-Cimini (23:03.24) I think it's all of it, Chad. I mean, I think we also need to probably shift how we're thinking about our midline leaders. I mean, they are in a rock and a hard place, right? They're strategists and executionists. They're player and coach. They've got to make sure they deliver and take care of everybody else's work. I mean, it is not a good job, and they are probably often the most overlooked as well. So I think organizations are going to have to pivot if they're going to fill those ranks, because as far as I'm concerned, that's where the work actually happens. Chad Sowash (23:09.401) Yeah. Chad Sowash (23:23.865) Mm -hmm. Angela Cheng-Cimini (23:31.912) and organizations that thin that out, that make that sort of an hourglass shape, are losing out on a lot of potential in their workforce. Joel Cheesman (23:40.07) Angela, you've probably heard it's an election year and there's been a lot of, news stories around political leanings. And should you be able to be political at work? Should you not, we're only about making money. Is that part of hyper individualization or not? Where are you on sort of politics in the workplace and does it have a place or not? Angela Cheng-Cimini (23:43.208) Angela Cheng-Cimini (24:02.025) I think, so what we have published is that when an organization chooses to speak about a social issue has everything to do with why do you exist. So if you're in healthcare, you probably should have an opinion about Jackson v. Dops. If you're selling pencils, it doesn't get you anything to come out about the Middle East conflict, right? So pick and choose where your stakeholders would expect you to have an opinion. Can you actually make a difference and do you have a responsibility to take a stand? Otherwise, just stay the hell out of it. Chad Sowash (24:15.673) Yes. Chad Sowash (24:21.093) -huh. Yeah Joel Cheesman (24:32.934) And with that... Huh. Angela Cheng-Cimini (24:33.096) Now in terms of workplace conversations, you know, we just try to make sure that, you know, we try to keep it pretty safe. I mean, there are safe spaces. We have ERGs and we have Slack channels where people can find like -minded folks. But I think people understand that organizationally, it's better for us just to kind of focus on being kind to each other and talk about the things that matter while we're here. Chad Sowash (24:35.769) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (24:56.678) Fair enough, fair enough. Let's end it on that. Angela Ching -Simony everybody. She is CHRO at Harvard Business Publishing. Angela, for anyone that wants to connect with you, maybe access the survey. Where would you send them? Angela Cheng-Cimini (25:10.824) I am the only Angela Chang Semonite on LinkedIn, and if you let me know that you heard me on the Chad and Chi show, I'd be happy to connect. Joel Cheesman (25:17.958) Love it, love it. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad Sowash (25:18.233) Ooh. Chad Sowash (25:23.801) We out.

In this episode, Chad and Cheese, joined by Matt Alder, brave the typical Scottish weather from the comfort of a van parked on North Berwick Beach. The appalling weather and fog set the scene for a hilariously insightful discussion on the future of talent acquisition. Expect plenty of snark as they navigate topics like AI’s inevitable takeover, the rapid pace of tech evolution, and why you should never trust two American whiskey fans with a 14th-century spiral staircase. They also humorously lament the state of recruitment tech, with Joel dreaming of a pub on the infamous Bass Rock (spoiler: there isn’t one), and Chad promising topless glass legions that never materialize. Enjoy laughs and sharp predictions on AI’s impact, the commoditization of ATSs, and how small companies might leapfrog industry giants by embracing new tech faster. Tune in for a rollercoaster of insights and laughs, all served with a side of Scottish rain. Don’t miss this unique blend of tech talk and travel tales from HR’s most irreverent voices. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HRs 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. [music] Matt Alder: Okay. So we had to give the castle a skip on the grounds of appalling weather, fog obliterating the views, and also two American whiskey fans, who I'm not quite sure I would trust with a 14th century spiral staircase. Joel: It is on a ledge, correct? It is on a ledge cliff. Chad: Okay. There are two of us. I think there's one that you would trust with that. Joel: Oh, come on. Come on now. Matt Alder: So we are now, I'm now introducing... Joel: That thing survived, how many? Three? [laughter] Matt Alder: Hundreds of years. Hundred hundreds of years. Joel: It'll survive me. Chad: It's not about that thing. It's about you surviving it. Yes. Joel: Okay. My bad. It'll survive me. Just not the other way around. Chad: I need you around for a few more years. [laughter] Joel: We're now, I'm now introducing everyone to the traditional British summertime activity, but it can be done outside of summer, of going to a beach in the rain and sit in your car looking out the window, so. Chad: I was promised glass legions that are topless and I don't see any anywhere. Matt Alder: It's just the wrong temperature. Joel: And Asian with Canada goose jackets. Matt Alder: Puffy coats, yes. It's a mix. So yeah, so we're in North Berwick, which is where I live. I can't believe I brought you both to my hometown. I'm still quite scared. Joel: It's be beautiful. Matt Alder: It is. It is. Joel: It is beautiful. Chad: Now we can definitely track you down. Matt Alder: Absolutely. And we are staring at the beach and the weather is typically Scottish, I would say. Chad: Yes. Matt Alder: Typically Scottish, so it was raining. Joel: I didn't rain could go in that many different directions. Matt Alder: Yeah. Chad: At one time. Joel: Up, down and side to side all at the same time. Matt Alder: That's why we have this amazing van, and we're not sitting on the beach trying to do this podcast. Chad: I can barely see like this humongous rock that looks like it goes up at least like, I don't know, let's say... Joel: It looks like a Star Wars, like Luke Skywalker lives on that thing. Matt Alder: 100 meters. Chad: 100 meters at least. I mean, maybe three, and shit, that's a pretty big... Joel: Pretty big with the metric system. Chad: Holy shit. Joel: Confusing all the American listeners. Chad: We've got to. We've got to. Matt Alder: For the benefit of people who can't see the rock, and we can't see it very well, particularly... Joel: No, no. Matt Alder: It's the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Very famous. It has a prison on it. And it's the home to the biggest European gannet colony in the world. So it's covered in gannets. Joel: What? Oh, birds. Matt Alder: Birds, yeah. Chad: Oh, birds. Matt Alder: Covered in birds. So, if you could see it, it's actually completely white at this time of year because of all the birds nesting on it. Like hundreds of thousands of them. And you can take a boat trip out there and hope that you're not in the line of fire when the birds flying out of there. Joel: Is there a pub out there? Can I get a drink? Matt Alder: There's no pub out there. There's no pub out there. Joel: No pub. Well... Chad: Well, then why go out? Joel: No much of a selling point there with my money. Chad: Why go out? Matt Alder: We'll stay here. We'll stay here. Chad: Seems ridiculous. Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly. So the distillery, which we finally escaped from, although I think if we'd stayed there any longer, you two would probably work in there. Chad: Escaped? Joel: Escape may be a strong word. Chad: I was dragged out of that fucking place. Joel: Yeah, that's right, dragged out. Chad: Jesus. Joel: Against our will, yeah. Chad: Yeah. I was crying, "Helen, save me. John." Joel: John and I were setting up bunk beds. We were gonna practice our karate in the front yard between grams. Matt Alder: Exactly. Exactly. And we were talking about Tru Glasgow, which obviously was yesterday. Tomorrow we've got Tru Edinburgh, if we manage to make it out of North Berwick. Joel: Yeah, we will. Chad: That I hope so. Matt Alder: Yeah, which I'm sure we will. Joel: Yeah, we have a good guide. Matt Alder: I'm gonna shut the window a little bit 'cause the rain is coming, it's coming in. Joel: You got to push the button. There we go. Chad: Nobody likes a wet mat. Nobody likes a wet mat. Yeah. Matt Alder: So I'm interested in terms of what we could talk about, because the view is impeded here. We can just see fog, and it's quite ironic because I brought you here for the views. But one of the things we talked about yesterday was what the future looks like for talent acquisition and how far we can see into the future. So I thought it'd be good to talk about that, seeing here where we can't even see into the next road basically, so. Chad: All I can smell is Cheeseman's fucking smoky ass. Joel: I smell like I swallowed a fireplace. [laughter] Chad: Exactly. Matt and I were in the front seats and we're like, is that fucking Cheeseman breathing? Joel: Like a musty castle fireplace. Matt Alder: Oh my God, help me. Save me. Save me. Joel: Vlagy and Parlor's fireplace. Chad: Does he have peat coming out of his ass? What's going on? Matt Alder: He does. But, so... Joel: Such hate. Matt Alder: We've all been in this space for a long time. We've seen lots of things. We've seen lots of things happen. We've seen lots of cycles. We've seen technologies come and go and all that sort of stuff. What's gonna happen now? Can we predict the future? We've got this AI thing going on, we've got all kinds of disruption around talent acquisition and recruit work and things like that. What's gonna happen next? Can we tell? Joel: Well, most of us are trying to learn how to spell AI before we're actually trying to figure out what the future holds. And sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we really don't quite know what's going to happen. Now, that said, I feel like there is agreement with most people that there will be fewer recruiting jobs, particularly around things like scheduling, sourcing, basic interviewing. That's very AI susceptible. However, there will be new jobs like we spoke about previously. So there will be new jobs that don't even exist today that will come about in the future. But unfortunately, for me, there is no crystal ball. We really don't quite know. Chad is more enlightened than I am. Maybe he has a better answer and a better crystal ball than I do. Chad: All I have to say is I have no fucking clue. But at the end of the day, this is the most exciting time we've ever had in this space. Joel: Yeah, that's a good point. Chad: Even back in the days where, like when you and I, Joel, were doing this and Matt was doing this very, very early, it was exciting because it was new territory. We have not stopped new territory. We might have had a little slow down here and there, but we're getting ready to go into a time when the tech velocity is just increasingly chaotic and crazy and fast. So it's gonna make it fun, but it's also going to make it incredibly disruptive. I think we can kind of like view different areas of which we know where the disruption's gonna happen first, and that's gonna happen definitely on the high volume side of the house, and then it's gonna start to make its way into other positions. I think it's funny because a lot of companies are talking about, well, you can use these different large language models and you can choose and they can help you out. But really what's happening is you're training the large language models for tomorrow. So as we're talking about these technologies, whether it's AI, whatever the hell you wanna call, it doesn't matter, we're training the future, whether we like it or not. And we just have to be ready for that. But it's just exciting for me. Joel: Yeah, what's amazing to me is when you and I, Chad and I started the podcast seven years ago, we were actually concerned that we would be able to do a weekly show on enough news... Chad: Didn't think... Yeah. Joel: In our industry. Well, holy hell, there's more news than we can shake a stick at. That wasn't the case back in the day 20, 25 years ago. You had a few job boards that mattered. You had a few ATS things. Vertical search was a big deal. Social media. I mean, I'm humbled and I feel bad for the consumer who has to try to meddle through this when we live it every day and have a hard time keeping up with all the changes that are happening on a global level... Matt Alder: It's noisy. Joel: On a quicker level, and it's incredibly challenging. But we're always talking about something, which makes for a good podcast. Matt Alder: And do you think the industry has the right mindset moving forward? Chad: No. Matt Alder: Because... [laughter] Matt Alder: Whoa! Oh my god. Total table collapse. Chad: You got to put that right there. Matt Alder: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chad: Is everything good? Matt Alder: Yeah, yeah. No, it's fine. Chad: Okay. Joel: Well done. Well done, lads. Matt Alder: The gods of something intervened there. Joel: The mystery van has taken a hit. Chad: You're not gonna get the best of us, Scotland. Okay. Matt Alder: So, do you think that the industry's got the right mindset? Because it struck me, particularly yesterday in some of the conversations, when we talk about AI, we tend to talk about AI as it is right now. So people look at some of the shortcomings of chatGPT and the things it can't do, and they look at that and say, that'll never do my job. But actually this is about thinking about where AI is gonna be in six months time, in 12 months time. And I think if you look at some of the, not even predictions actually, look at the technology they're building, it's kind of a different level. So do you think people's heads in the right space for the change that's happening? Chad: Talent acquisition has never been on the bleeding edge of technology in the first place, but then you take a look at like the American mindset where we think quarter by quarter, and we can't think that way strategically. And then also, process methodology ways moving forward because, again, tech is moving way too fast. It's learning too fast. And if you like scoff at chatGPT, because it doesn't give you something that's perfect today, write something, and I guarantee you your shit's not perfect either, right? I mean, it's just, it's evolving so quickly. I think we're naive to think that if we can't be using these platforms to literally augment a large piece of the work that we do. Hopefully TA understands that. I'm not sure that they do. Matt Alder: And I think also, there's this whole thing about, is it gonna take jobs? What's gonna happen? And I think, again, someone pointed out in the the event yesterday, it's already taking jobs. So copywriter jobs in recruitment marketing. Joel: Yeah, sure. Matt Alder: People who, not the kind of the really high end creative stuff is still there, but the things where people are just writing kind of rewriting job posts and making them a little bit better and all that sort of stuff, that's definitely gone to AI. So it's already starting. Chad: It's blended into our platforms, like our podcasting platforms, like Riverside, where it will take the transcript, it will then go ahead and augment into a synopsis and provide, I mean, just so much data... Joel: Yeah. No need for a videographer or... Chad: Automatically. Yeah. Joel: Yeah, copywriter. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: We're old enough to appreciate history, and when Google gained prominence, there were people who understood SEO and understood how to leverage it as an advertising platform. And then it just became ubiquitous and we moved on from that. And then we had social media and people learned like, oh, I can source on Twitter and I know how to use AltaVista to find a needle in a haystack and that PHP developer that no one else can. And today I feel like we're in a place where people really know chatGPT or some of the tools really well, and we'll probably see a phase where companies will leverage that in a degree that we've never seen before. And it will just become a ubiquitous tool and we'll move on to the next thing. But the people who really understand it, as we've seen in the past, are the people who are gonna thrive in the future. So if you're not learning, understanding, playing with the tools, the software out that can help you do your job better, you're gonna be left behind and you're gonna be doing something else in five years. Chad: But Matt, okay, so let's say, let's go back to those days and take a look at Boolean. In Boolean, you could create a spreadsheet of Boolean strings that you could share and they would be good for years. Right? That's not what's gonna happen with prompt engineering, which is literally the new Boolean in engineering. Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly. Chad: The new Boolean strings, right? So, I mean, we can't do business like we used to. Matt Alder: I agree, and I think that prompt engineering as we now know it, just won't be a thing. Because all of this AI is just being baked into everything that we do. And I think one of, again, questions someone raised yesterday was, well, what about the employers who can't afford to invest in AI? And I think the answer to that is like, it's just there. It's gonna be in all the tools that you already use. Chad: Well, and that's the thing that it... And again, we can't think of the way that we used to do business. And yes, you had to pay X amount to be able to use Salesforce or HubSpot or what have you, and there were enterprise licenses. This is all gonna be transactional, and AI is gonna be a part of all these different models and it's gonna be affordable. And that's the biggest issue. I really believe that a lot of these major organizations who do not embrace AI or they don't embrace these different large language models, you're gonna see smaller companies do it much faster, 'cause there's low risk. Matt Alder: Agreed. Agreed. Chad: They're much more nimble. It's gonna be much cheaper for them because, from a transactional standpoint, it's not gonna cost as much, and they're gonna be able to just literally leapfrog companies quickly. We saw OpenAI leapfrog Google. Nobody knew who OpenAI was. Matt Alder: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Chad: I think that's like the first company we're going to see do that in this segment. Joel: And I'm interested to see the leapfrog that OpenAI, the jumping, the leapfrog that they did there. You and I both advise a lot of startups, and there are two primary hurdles for startups selling their products. One is the noise. There's just so many products. How do I make sense of any of them? Do I really buy? Like, what do I need to use? And cutting through that clutter is incredibly difficult. The second thing, I think, which would surprise a lot of people, is that there's a fear factor that if I buy your product, I'm gonna be out of a job in 12 months. So I'm not gonna buy your product, which is very counterintuitive to advancing humanity and these services. So to your point that it's gonna be the startup that says, yeah, we don't care about that. Like, we're gonna buy these products. Do we see further leapfrogging of established businesses in our space because they have customer bases that are too... They push back too much on new technologies. Joel: Risk takers. Chad: I think a lot of people would be surprised that risk has a lot to do with a lack of adoption with some of these services and solutions. Matt Alder: So I have a final question for you because we need to leave to get back to Edinburgh soon. So make a prediction for me. So if we were having this conversation again in three years time, we were doing another tour of Scotland in another van, what would we be talking about then? How much is it gonna change in the next three years? Joel: Cheeseman smells like a fireplace again. I think that might be what we're talking about. Matt Alder: There are things that never change. There are things that never change. Chad: That's never gonna change. That's never gonna change. Joel: I think the speed at which change is happening is probably gonna get faster, believe it or not. I mean, I think all the companies that have become unicorns over the past five years are companies that were supposed to go IPO or public recently, are gonna, I don't wanna say fade away, but those promising futures are going to go by the wayside for a lot of them. I think ATSs are being commoditized. I think a lot of the platforms are being commoditized where maybe there's a few that really matter on a global level. And the tools that we use, maybe our tools that everybody uses in every profession, and we're talking less about businesses that focus specifically on recruiting and just focus on all the businesses and all the tools that everyone has and how they use them to recruit better and be better employers. Chad: Yeah, I think the last thing you talked about is convergence. So convergence of all of these different platforms that can actually provide better process methodologies, process efficiencies, those types of things. So we're gonna see a lot of companies who have not been in the recruitment space get into the recruitment space and they're gonna do it faster, they're gonna do it better, and there's just gonna be convergence. Instead of having these point solutions that are nothing but recruitment oriented, we're gonna see ones that actually just go ahead and span different industries. Matt Alder: Perfect. Thank you very much. Podcast Outro: Well, thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about Cheese. Not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

On this special episode, The Chad & Cheese team up with our pal and fellow podcaster Matt Alder, who, in true Scooby-Doo fashion, rented a camper van for our East Coast tour. First stop? Glenkinchie Distillery in the Scottish Lowlands. Because, of course, in Scotland the best way to start the day is with some whiskey. After the tour we whip out the mics and dive into a Tru Glasgow briefing, topics like whether resumes are finally six feet under, upskilling, kids deciding their careers (because they totally know what they want), and whether the US and Europe are finally sharing the same recruiting woes. Big shoutout to Matt, our Scottish pals, and the sponsors of both Tru Glasgow and Tru Edinburgh: DAXTRA TECHNOLOGIES ASHBY SOLUTIONS DRIVEN GIGGED.AI WILLO and POETRY Slàinte Mhath! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, wait, wrong show. Matt Alder: No. Wrong show, wrong show. This is a much more civilized show. You can't do this... Joel: You can't do that in Europe. Matt Alder: We're currently, we're currently sitting in a very civilized bar, a distillery. And I'm trying to babysit these two Americans through... Joel: It's getting less and less civilized with each new, each dram. Chad: Especially with every single dram of fucking whiskey we've had. This is great. Joel: To set the stage, Adam is driving. We are not... Matt Alder: I'm not Adam. Chad: His name's not even Adam. Matt Alder: I'm Matt, not Adam. Chad: Matt. Joel: That British guy. Matt Alder. Matt Alder: It's going to be a long day. Chad: That's how drunk Joel is. Joel: This is like my fourth straight day of debauchery. Chad: Not only do Matt and I have to actually find out where you're at in the city because you can't find where we're at. Joel: I blame Matt Adam from Cincinnati for being in my head. Matt Alder: Set the scene for us. Tell everyone where we are and what you're doing right now. Joel: We are at the, I'll probably mispronounce, Glenkinchie Distillery. We are near Edinburgh. Matt Alder: Yeah. Chad: Edinburgh. Joel: It's a very rural scene, but not sort of Midwest rural. Think of Hedgerows. Matt Alder: This is picturesque. Joel: And think of stone walls from the 1200s and old houses with 80 chimneys sticking out of them. Lovely, lovely green backdrop. It's sort of a stereotypical Scottish rain sort of drizzling down, but not too hard, not too soft. Just right. There's a bridge, one of those arch sort of old Romanesque looking bridges. Although my understanding is the Romans never made it to Scotland. Matt Alder: Correct. Chad: I think they did. They just didn't go very far. Joel: I feel like we're going to be filming the latest episode of Downton Abbey or the next Harry Potter movie somewhere nearby... Matt Alder: Yeah, something that was made in Scotland. And, yeah. Joel: This location. We're not in Kansas anymore. Let's put it that way. Matt Alder: No, absolutely. We've been doing some whiskey tasting. And as you say, I've been driving, so I have takeaway. I have to... Joel: He's babysitting and driving. Matt Alder: I can drink that later. And you're currently doing, so what are you drinking right now? Talk us through it. Chad: I have a Sherry flight, so I have four wonderful... And Helen, as a matter of fact, here at the distillery, she just explained. Joel: My grandmother's name, by the way, is Helen. Chad: Yes. I don't know how she took that, by the way. Anyway, beautiful color. Joel: Do you think she took it poorly? Chad: Beautiful color, beautiful sweetness on the sherry side of the house. But then we've got this craziness of, I think I see smoke coming out of yours, Cheeseman. I'm not sure. Joel: Yeah, I think Satan poured these himself. Chad: Don't you talk about Helen like that. Joel: I went with the... No, she didn't pour. She knows some people. I went with the smoky flight. And for those of you who've not indulged in the peaty, smoky scotches, you're really missing out, I think, although that's a personal choice. Chad: Matt and I are shaking our heads. We're like, no, you can have that shit. Joel: A bit of a selection of, I believe, some Lagavulin. Chad: Look at that color, though. Joel: It was the Ohaban. What is the other one? Chad: Oban. Joel: No, it's not Oban, but it's O-H. Anyway... Matt Alder: Damn, I can't remember. Joel: They allegedly speak English in this country, but nobody practices it. Chad: You're going way too deep in the rabbit hole. Joel: Anyway, I got four smokies. Chad has some nice, smooth, sweet scotches. And Matt is dateless at the moment. Matt Alder: I am driving. Joel: He's got some going home bottles ready to hit it. Chad: This has got to be like the not Scottish but also English nightmare, watching two Americans drink while you can't partake. It's got to be mad. Joel: And I haven't even said Aberfeldy yet. So that's really when things have gone south. Matt Alder: You've been practicing. Chad: You better take that L out of there. Joel: Absolutely. So to... Just to give some context, you've come from Glasgow this morning. We did Tru Glasgow yesterday. Which was... Chad: Would be a train much faster. Matt Alder: Absolutely. And then I picked you up in our crazy podcasting camper van... Chad: Scooby-Doo mystery machine. Yes. Matt Alder: In Edinburgh. Joel: Shaggy and Scooby fighting crime in Northern UK. Matt Alder: Joel made the wrong pickup point. Chad: As usual. Matt Alder: So we had to go across town to get him. Joel: Well, how many BrewDogs can you have in one city within a two-mile radius? Chad: Not only that, but he even told you, this is the BrewDog to go to. And you're like, I think I'm at the wrong BrewDog. Joel: Did I mention I'm on day four of debauchery and over service? Matt Alder: And yeah, we're doing a little tour today. So we're going to do sort of three recordings as we go around. And this is the distillery stop. But yeah, so at Tru Glasgow yesterday. We had around 50 people from the Scottish TA community come out. Joel: Great turn out. Matt Alder: And yeah, it was a great afternoon. Some great conversations, some lively discussion, a bit of debate. And yeah, really, really interesting. Joel: So let's set the stage. This was what is known as an unconference? Matt Alder: That's right. Joel: Which means pretty much anything goes. Which again, if you add two Americans with 50 Scots, things are going to get a little crazy. So we had speakers who were TA leaders at companies. Chad: For the most part. Joel: Some people may know, may not know. For the most part, yeah. The schedule is sort of fluid as we found out. But each one has a certain topic. They discuss it. And it's sort of a free-for-all of commentary, questions. Chad and I were both running the mic. I think I lost two or three pounds, which is good for me running the mic to different folks. But just set the stage for what an unconference is. It's not the PowerPoint presentation parade. Matt Alder: No, absolutely. It was half an hour sessions with a kind of a lead speaker. Chad: And you've done Tru conferences before, right? And this is our... We were virgins. Matt Alder: Yeah, no, way back when Bill came up with the idea. Bill Borman. Should give him a name check. Yeah, I've done a few of them before. And this was a particularly good one. And I think it's just the, you know, you pick a topic, you have someone who talks on that topic to start the track, and then you all discuss it. And I think there was some... Yeah, it was some great opinions coming from the floor, a bit of debate. I mean, there were lots of topics that we discussed, but what were the sort of standout ones for you that came out of the conversation? Joel: So the classic, the CV is dead or for our American friends, the resume is dead. We've been having that conversation for almost 20 years now. It's still alive and kicking from what I can tell. Chad: Very much. Joel: So some conversation around that. Obviously, automation was a topic point. I think every country, at least in the advanced world, is dealing with the automation questions. Who's gonna have a job, who isn't? I think there was some pressure points around, yes, there will be fewer recruiters. However, there will be new jobs around marketing, data analysts, data scientists that don't exist today that are there because of recruiting. Joel: And there was a little bit of a lively conversation around do employee reviews, particularly Glassdoor, still make a difference or still matter? But yeah, a lot of lively conversation all around, but those were a few points that stuck out for me. Matt Alder: Yeah, I think the one that stuck out for me was the whole skills-based hiring conversation. Very sort of typical of any event that we go to, everyone wants to talk about it, but there was a bit of honesty in the room about how difficult it is and people are not making progress, the progress with it that perhaps they might claim they are externally. And a lot of debate about what it was, what it is and how it's useful, but a real consensus that it is the way forward. There was no one who raised a kind of an objection to the direction of travel. There was a lot of talk about it's a struggle to get there. Where are we with this really? And what is it practical to do? Chad: Yeah, I think it has to revolve around proof and that's the hard part, because you can get a resume that says you're an expert in everything, but where's the proof, right? Just because it's on a piece of paper doesn't mean that you are. And you might be able to talk around the issue, but can you perform and demonstrate that you can actually do that skill? And then back to, will AI take our jobs? I mean, this is all coming back to a job is literally a series of tasks and what tasks can be taken and/or done better. Can you perform those tasks? So when we're talking about skills-based hiring, first and foremost, is we have to understand that there has to be a normalization of the tasks that are performed first and foremost. Chad: And then secondarily, what kind of quick and easy assessment and/or simulations can you pull together to prove that that person can do the job? And nobody talked about that yesterday, which blew my mind. I was sitting there as a dumb American wanting to just like jump out of my seat and say, there's no foundation for this, right? Matt Alder: Yeah, there was a little bit actually about the kind of things you could assess at interview. There was a little bit of discussion around that. I think it was when the mic had broken down, so maybe you didn't hear it. Chad: Yeah. But it's not standardized though, is it? Joel: Some of the presentations were in English. Some of them were loosely English, so Chad may have missed. Matt Alder: Some of them were in Glaswegian. Chad: I had to concentrate really hard sometimes. Matt Alder: Yeah, and I have a question for you as well. So, you've been to recruitment, obviously not been to a recruitment unconference before. Joel: We've been around, we've been around. Matt Alder: But you've been around to recruitment events in lots of different places, including London and Wreckfest and all that sort of stuff. What was the thing that struck you that was different about some of the issues in Scotland or the way that people were talking about the Scottish market? Joel: I would say maybe just maturity of going down the road with the question of what are we gonna do about upskilling? What are we gonna do about automation? What are we gonna do about these things? I think no matter where you go in the developed world, we're all grappling with the same questions. There may be some companies and organizations in America that are further down the road of figuring all that out. Joel: Scotland and the UK may be a little less further down the road, but I think we're all struggling with the same questions. And I think we owe a thanks, tongue in cheek to COVID, with work from home and work from anywhere, that these questions are predominant anywhere you go in the developed world. Chad: I think we're all having the same problems and company by company. And I think this is why one of these conferences are so important, especially these intimate setting conferences, because we can talk about actual execution of how to get from point A to point B or a concept of how to get there, right? In a lot of these bigger conferences, you get this very strategic kind of like outline which nobody can execute on. It's almost impossible. Then we get a chance after that to go to the bar, have some snacks, and then literally talk to people about how you execute in doing these things. Chad: So I don't think that there's a big difference. There used to be, I think even pre-COVID, about a 5 to 10 year gap, depending from the American process and tech side of the house to Europe. And that is, I think that is almost gone. I think it's almost gone. We're almost in the same place except for programmatic advertising, where Europe is now starting to get programmatic advertising. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think we're... This is the thing that kind of warms my heart. We're all in the same fucking boat at this point. We really are. Matt Alder: Yeah, I think that's a really good point because I think, you know, if you go back 15 years or so, when I first started going to conferences in the States, there was a, you know, I went to learn stuff because there was a massive divide. But, you know, now everyone's got, we've all got the same technology. You know, everyone talks about what they're doing on LinkedIn and socials. It doesn't matter where you are. So it's very, it's a really interesting thing. Chad: What was yours? What did you think? Because I mean, you go to the US a lot now, right? Joel: Don't take over his show, man. Chad: I mean, you go to the US a lot now. So what's the biggest difference you see when you're hopping back and forth across the pond? Matt Alder: I think that there are, in every country there are differences in industry and skills and things like that. So even across Scotland, yesterday we had lots of companies who are mainly employing people in call centers in Glasgow. Tomorrow we're going to Edinburgh. We're going to have lots of financial services companies. We had a company yesterday who are building ships. Chad: Yeah. Welders and... Matt Alder: Just some really different... So I think you've got kind of different industries and that means kind of different skill shortages and different approaches. I think the other main difference is, it's almost the attitude to risk. So what I think about the US, and I know this is not a complete picture 'cause this just comes from the people I've met at conferences. Chad: Sure, sure. Matt Alder: Who are not perhaps indicative of the whole country, but there's a sense that if a new technology comes along, you kind of jump on board, you use it, you see if it works, and then if it breaks, you kind of move on. And I think in Europe, there's a sense of, we're gonna wait and see whether it works first. We want case studies, we want proof, all those kind of things. And I think what's interesting now is, there's no time for that. This AI stuff is moving so quickly, you can't sit back and wait for it to be perfect. And that's... Chad: If you don't get on board, you're gonna be left at the station, right? Matt Alder: Yeah And that's a challenge. I think we saw that yesterday. I think we saw people... Joel: I mean, I think it was real yesterday. I mean, you mentioned Glasgow and call centers. Apparently, that's a major industry. I mean, that's being automated more so than many other industries. So I think even at a local level, Glasgow is dealing with what are we gonna do with all these folks and call center jobs if AI takes all these opportunities? Matt Alder: Exactly. Well, also we're at this distillery today, we had a great tour of the warehouse. We saw 300 million pounds worth of whiskey and tried some great stuff. Joel: Only a fraction of that. Chad: I fell in love, by the way. Matt Alder: You what? Chad: I fell in love. Matt Alder: You fell in love with that cask of 1988? Joel: The 1988. Chad: The 1988, oh yes. Matt Alder: Yeah. But coming back to the cask thing, there's this whole thing about the most... One of the most important things about whiskey is the barrels that it's matured in. And we were talking about the process and the barrels are principally now reconditioned and made by robots. And the kind of... Chad: Yeah. That blew my mind. Matt Alder: The artisan job of making the barrel is just down to the finishing. So the humans are now only doing that kind of finishing part of it. So it's... Automation is everywhere, even in kind of the classic craft of making Scottish whiskey. Joel: And does that impact how you feel about the whiskey that you drink, knowing that it was made by robots or human beings? Or does it matter? Chad: It's delicious. Joel: Obviously, I think I speak for a lot of people that I want my booze made by an 80-year-old man in a kilt. [laughter] Chad: It was Served by Helen. Joel: Yeah. I mean, I want the story. I want to feel that human connection. Chad: That's gonna go away, though. Matt Alder: Obviously, we're talking about... Joel: Our kids won't care. Matt Alder: We're talking about something that is mass produced. I mean, this is a lovely old distillery, but it's owned by... Joel: The Price won't go down. Matt Alder: It's owned by Diageo, who a big global company. But I think that it's that balance between the ability to come to places like this and see how it's made. And there's obviously technology in that. But there's also a really deep human aspect to this in terms of how it's... Chad: Yeah, history. Matt Alder: But also in terms of the decisions that are made about how things are mixed or how things happen. And it's just the robots are just quite dumb in this case. Chad: Well, the question is, and we talked about this on the way back, is because there will be more robots, do you think that Her Majesty's or His Majesty's tax is gonna get higher? Because there's gonna be less people that you can tax to be able to... I mean, there's got to be a balancing. There's got to be a square to this, right? Joel: Yeah, bringing politics into it. Matt Alder: No, I think that's the thing. And that was one of the conversations yesterday about you already have AI eating up what were seen as traditional entry-level jobs for people's career. Working in banks, working in call centers, and all the stories of the CEOs who made their way up through the corporate ladder. And it's just like, where do these people start? So I think there's some really interesting decisions that someone's gonna have to make about work and how that works. Joel: That was a great point because there's always the conversation of, well, the best of the best are still gonna have a job. The ones that are menial will not. However, the future cream of the crop, the 24, 25-year-old, how do they get a start? And I think the popular sentiment was they need to be really good at one thing. They need to be the best hammer to add to a toolbox. And when they're in the toolbox, they need to learn more of the tools of the trade. Chad: And that's so hard as a kid... Joel: It's so hard. Chad: To be able to choose what the fuck you're gonna do. I mean, even at 25, right? I mean, even at that, because you're still literally, especially a guy, you're a kid, your frontal lobe isn't even totally formed yet. So I mean, it's so hard. So the question is, and Matt talked about this earlier, is that a lot of these companies can't wait to adopt AI because they can't worry about the risk. They just have to go all in. The same thing's gonna happen for the workforce and kids. They're going to have to go all in. They're gonna have to pick something. And that to me feels very dystopian. Does it not? Joel: Not just the tip. They got to go all in. Chad: Yeah. Matt Alder: Yeah. I think it's an interesting, it's gonna be an interesting time. And I think there are lots of, there's just lots of very big questions to answer. And I'm not sure that... Joel: No wonder everyone wants to be a TikTok influencer under 25. Matt Alder: Exactly. I'm also not sure the governments that we currently have set up to think like that or think that far ahead. So yes, interesting. So before we wrap this one, tell us about the 1988 whiskey that we tried and we'll put a picture somewhere of us sniffing the barrel. We've got our noses in the barrel, sniffing this whiskey. Chad: It's going to be the cover-art to this. Joel: I'm not sure they ever envisioned me making enough money to even try a whiskey from 1988. Chad: A Scotch. Yes. Joel: I mean, that was a special treat to be on a tour and actually have something from my youthful vigor. Chad: When you lost your virginity. Yeah. Joel: I wasn't gonna say it, but you did. Matt Alder: Back when Rick Astley, was in the charts the first time around. Joel: He may or may not be sharing something that's Tru. But just amazing. So smooth. I don't even know how to explain it. I mean, the color was amazing. The viscosity. Chad: It was lighter than I thought it would be because we had an older, yes. Is that the one? Matt Alder: That's it. I've still got it 'cause I'm driving. Chad: But that's actually darker than I thought it was. Joel: The driver gets a little bottle. A little shot. Chad: I mean, it was just, it was smooth. Joel: Yeah. Even if you don't like whiskey, I think you would really like what it was. 1988 Scotch. Matt Alder: That was more than a smooth criminal smooth right there. Joel: That was as smooth as a Tiffany hit from 1988. Matt Alder: So on that note, we're gonna finish up because we're going to a castle that was built in the 14th century and became a ruin before America was even a thing. Joel: Quite a while before America. Chad: And he's saying that while we are getting ruined right now. Joel: I think we know who's gonna win this war. Matt Alder: Absolutely. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? A podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

Yeah, we know. WorkLlama is a dumb name for a company. But Shakespeare said, "A rose by any other name would still smell OK," or something like that (English lit wasn't really our thing), so let's dig into the business with Sugandan Dinakaran, VP of Product at WorkLlama. Turns out, WorkLlama promises to do a lot of the heavy lifting for your recruiting strategies. We're talkin' marketing, acquisition, engagement, scheduling and more, and they've raised $50 million so they must be doing something right. Added bonus: The name is explained, and like it or not, it does make sense. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. We're live from the Daxter booth. Chad: Yeah. Joel: At Unleash in Las Vegas. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is here. And we are excited to welcome Sugu Dinakaran to the show. Chad: Boom! Joel: He is the VP of Product at WorkLLama. Sugu, welcome to the podcast. Sugandan Dinakaran: Thank you for having me. Joel: Did I pronounce your name correctly? Sugandan Dinakaran: Got it. Money. Joel: Awesome. Awesome. Sugandan Dinakaran: After ten attempts. Finally. [chuckle] Chad: Money. Money. I love that. Joel: So we'll get to WorkLLama in a second. A lot of our listeners don't know who you are. Give us a little bit about you from a personal angle. What do you like? Sports, family, walks on the beach? Sugandan Dinakaran: Walks with the dog. Joel: Love it. Chad: Walks with the dog. Do you have one dog, do you have... Joel: What kind of dog? Sugandan Dinakaran: I've got a 6-year-old white golden. A golden retriever. Joel: Oh. Goldens are awesome. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah, his name is Truffle, Truffle Valentino. Joel: Truffle. That's cute. Chad: Truffle Valentino. Oh. Joel: That's a good name. And we'll get to the company name in a second. Not so exciting. [laughter] Also, a lot of our listeners won't know WorkLLama. Give us the elevator pitch on the company and what you do. Sugandan Dinakaran: Give you that in a second. So we are a unified AI platform for everything talent. So at the core of WorkLLama is a talent marketing, talent engagement, ATS, as well as a high-volume recruiting engine. So that's what we do. We focus heavily on contingent, as well as direct sourcing, and we're also beginning to play in the enterprise space more and more. Chad: Okay. That's a lot, man. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah? Chad: That's a lot. Sugandan Dinakaran: It's a lot? Chad: That's a pretty wide TAM. I mean, that's... Whoa! Joel: Llamas can bite a lot at a time, apparently. Chad: Apparently. Joel: Because they've bitten off a lot. Can they chew it? Chad: They carry a lot of weight, though. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Joel: A lot of weight. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah. Chad: You've got the AI, which means you've gotta have some type of conversational AI that's there, which is... Sugandan Dinakaran: We do. Yeah. Chad: What's the llama name? 'Cause you've gotta have a little llama head, right? Sugandan Dinakaran: So I didn't come up with the name. Chad: Okay. Sugandan Dinakaran: But whoever did it did a fantastic job. Chad: Don't make excuses. Don't make excuses. [laughter] Sugandan Dinakaran: We'll talk about Tina in a second. But, yeah. Llama, the idea behind the llama was that they do the heavy lifting for you. Joel: Okay. Sugandan Dinakaran: And that was what we wanted to be for our customers, is we do the heavy lifting for them. And we're talent-focused. We've always been about talent. We wanna make sure we take everything away from the talent, make it as easy as possible for them in their career journey. That's been our vision for them, is to find what they enjoy the most and use the best of technology available for us to make it as exciting and easy for them to find what they need. Joel: So you're head of product. The generative AI revolution is in full swing. Chad: It's here, kids. It's here. Joel: Talk about the last 12, 18 months in your business and how things have changed, your perspective has maybe altered due to the generative AI and what's out there now. How is that impacting products? Sugandan Dinakaran: Sure. So we take a slightly contrarian position there. Obviously, AI is here to stay. No one's debating that. AI is doing a fantastic job with what it's doing right now. But what we're seeing in the industry is a lot of Grammarly type work. We can write job descriptions for you. We can write emails for you. And we're trying very, very intentionally not to jump on that bandwagon. Our AI in the past has always been very intentional. So we're trying not to just have anything in there that calls it AI. Chad: Right. Sugandan Dinakaran: So what we're trying to do is bring in a lot of what we call contextual knowledge that we know about our talent and our customers to then use GenAI or the best of technologies out there to make it more contextual and useful. So obviously, there are parts of it where our competitors continue to go on with a lot of AI-powered solutions. And we wanna make sure we're not lagging, but we also wanna make sure we're not another copycat of what a Copilot is. We're trying to be very intentional in what we put out in the market. Chad: Well, being intentional in your space, right? I mean Microsoft Copilot is very broad. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah. Chad: It does a lot of things. It's very... Say it's wide, but it's very shallow at this point for the data that it has available to be able to train off of. You guys, though, more specific, more workforce data. So how quickly do you think that more of the focused domain-specific players are gonna be able to get this AI piece right? Because they're not looking at broad tranches of data. They're looking at very small and focused. Although ones that could definitely help from a process methodology, from a matching, those types of things. But what do you think about the space and the actual domain players? Will they get this right faster than the broad-based? Sugandan Dinakaran: Well, for sure. I think... Well, it's already happening, right? It's not that it's gonna be breakthrough technologies that will come two years from now. It's already happening. What technology providers in the HR space have always had is the data that a typical, like, an LLM, might not have been able to train on. Chad: Right, right. Sugandan Dinakaran: So we've had the data for a while. What I think it will change drastically is now the interface. It's no longer gonna be just a search and filtering. It's no longer just gonna be, "I'm gonna give you a click, click, click to get to what you need to be." It's gonna be more conversational. It's gonna be more, "I'm looking for this. Can we do this?" And then further just gonna go through that process of asking the right questions to what you need to do. Chad: Right. So good engagement is what you're looking for, yeah? Sugandan Dinakaran: Which is where, I think, the differentiation will come from with what we're seeing in the AI space. Chad: Which makes sense, which we've seen a lot of companies do. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah. Joel: So the llama carries a lot of weight, and you guys provide a lot of services. I'm looking here at marketing, scheduling, engagement, etcetera. Talk to me about the competitive landscape. You're in a lot of people's pie, if you will. How do you look at the competitive landscape there, Mr. Llama? Sugandan Dinakaran: So here's how we've always taken this. And this is just coming from me as a product person, is work on what your customers and your users want, and then you'll have a product that's better than competition. So we've tried to take that position where we're not intentionally looking at competition to see what they're doing and what can we do to be as powerful, as competitive. Sugandan Dinakaran: It's always been what is our customer looking for and build it for them? And to your point, what that's done is we've been able to achieve a suite of products that are able to replace a lot of point solutions for our customers. So rather than a customer saying... And this is an interesting word that I heard a lot. It's called orchestration. If you've been in the sessions, you hear orchestration a lot. Sugandan Dinakaran: And what that is, is it's actually telling me that our customers are gonna have to figure out how to use Product A for talent marketing, Product B for ADS, Product C for scheduling, and then orchestrate what they need out of them. And for us, it's always been... I call it the integration nightmare. I call it... Okay, orchestration is just a fancy way of saying it's gonna be a hard way to get to what you need to do. Chad: So you're talking about all these different point solutions and then trying to integrate and then orchestrate the process methodology? Sugandan Dinakaran: Exactly. Chad: Right. Yeah. No, that sounds like a bitch. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah. And for us, it's always been one platform, one solution. "We'll get you to what we need." And the approach we've taken to the market is, customer first. So we always work with our customers, we partner with them very, very heavy on... Chad: Everybody does that. Sugandan Dinakaran: On the roadmap. Right. Chad: Let's talk about the stuff that you guys do different. [laughter] Okay? Everybody talks about that. Let's get out of the talking points here. Okay? We're gonna talk about the really cool shit that you guys are doing and talk about how you're... And from our understanding, you're partnering with Daxtra. Sugandan Dinakaran: That's right. Right. Chad: How does that actually work? Sugandan Dinakaran: Obviously, Daxtra has been a phenomenal leader from an AI search infrastructure, right? What Daxtra does is fit really, really well in our ecosystem. So our users don't have to leave the ATS. Chad: Right. White-labeled right into the system? Sugandan Dinakaran: Right. It's fully embedded. It makes the ATS more productive. And Daxtra does a phenomenal job of getting the candidate data, parsing, indexing and provide a unified search experience. So for us, it's leveraging Daxtra's AI capabilities on top of what we already have... Chad: Gotcha. Sugandan Dinakaran: To provide this rich search interfaces for our customers where they run the search within Daxtra. Chad: Okay. Sugandan Dinakaran: And then they'll leverage everything that WorkLLama does, like our talent pulling capabilities, our shortlisting capabilities, our automation communication capabilities. But they sit right in the middle of it, which makes the integration with Daxtra very, very powerful. Chad: Okay. Because technologies like Daxtra really does... They do the heavy lifting to be able to parse, to be able to contextualize and then to be able to prospectively be that search infrastructure or matching infrastructure. Is that how you guys are using them, kind of like in totality? Sugandan Dinakaran: That's exactly what we're doing. Daxtra also searches local databases, which is great for our customers, and then also goes out to, like, the LinkedIn and the Monsters, and they're able to provide a unified way of saying, "Hey, here's your top 10 talent," it doesn't matter where they're coming from, which is great. Chad: Gotcha. Joel: Well, back to carrying a lot of weight, because I'm a guy who knows about carrying a lot of weight. [laughter] Joel: You guys raised 50 million big ones last year. Chad: Say what? Joel: Yeah, 50 million big ones. You're at 139 employees, according to LinkedIn, based in Georgia. That's just a side note. There aren't a lot in Georgia... Chad: Where in Georgia? Joel: Alpharetta, Georgia. Chad: Atlanta? Okay. Alpharetta. Yeah. Joel: So the $50 million, talk about the future, what's the money gonna be used for. I assume new products features are coming out. We've talked about the past, the present. Let's talk about the future. Sugandan Dinakaran: It's all going in my pocket, man. It's for my paycheck. Yeah. Joel: Hello. [laughter] Drinks on, Sugu. Sugandan Dinakaran: Let's go. No. We've focused a lot of that $50 million in growth and expansion. From an R&D standpoint, partnership and partnership integrations is a big part of where that's going. And AI research. We're building a lot of our internal AI teams to build some of this out, so that's another big area where that investment's going. And obviously, the last part is acquisition. Chad: Oh, the big A word. Acquisitions. Joel: Dig into that one. Chad: What are you looking for? What are we shopping for? [laughter] Joel: Sugu is going shopping. Chad: We shopping for? Come on. Let's talk about this. Sugandan Dinakaran: Yeah. If you're in the market for a direct sourcing platform, we are here. Market for an ATS, we are here. In the market for talent marketing, talent engagement, we are here. Chad: Oh, gotcha. Sugandan Dinakaran: We got you any ways you want, four ways, one way. We got it. [laughter] Joel: That is Sugu Donakaran. I mean, Dinakaran. Sugandan Dinakaran: There you go. Chad: There you go. Joel: For our listeners who wanna know more about WorkLLama, where would you send them? Sugandan Dinakaran: Go to workllama.com. Or check us out on LinkedIn for more. Or... We've got a nice booth here at Unleash. Go find us right there. Chad: Yeah. Eat your food, Tina. Joel: That's right. [chuckle] We gotta go feed Tina. Sugandan Dinakaran: Free llamas. Swing by the booth. Joel: That is it. Live from the Daxtra booth at Unleash in Las Vegas. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to... What's it called? Podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts to people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

Anessa Fike, author of The Revolution of Work, F!ck the Patriarchy, discusses her book and the need to dismantle the current systems in the workplace. She shares her journey into fractional HR and explains that fractional work allows organizations to have experts on a part-time basis at a fraction of the cost. Anessa talks about her decision to write the book and her choice of title, emphasizing the need for an uprising and the dismantling of patriarchal elements in society. She hopes that the book will empower those who already think this way and encourage conversations about change. The conversation explores the need for a revolution in the workplace, addressing issues such as obliviousness of leaders, the need for self-reflection, the rise of fractional work, the role of AI, the challenges with founder CEOs, the lack of diversity in funding, and the importance of pay equity. The conversation emphasizes the need for change and the role of allies in creating a more inclusive and equitable work environment. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:28.445) OHHH YEEEEEAHH! Joel Cheesman (00:33.117) Yeah, it's King Arthur's, I mean, Charles' favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Harry to my William. Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Anessa Feich, author of The Revolution of Work, Fuck the Patriarchy. Geez, you kiss your mom with that mouth, fuck the patriarchy and the workplace it built. And she is also CEO and founder of Feich and Cheese. Anessa, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Anessa Fike (01:06.438) Thank you, I am here for it. And yes, if you read the book, you'll understand a little bit more about my mom. And she's part of the reason I am this way. So yes, she is very proud of the book type. Joel Cheesman (01:18.045) Tell me about your mother. Let's go to Blade Runner on this one. Chad (01:19.922) Nothing wrong about now. We don't have to we don't have time for that. We got a book to talk about Okay, we can get into therapy sessions later for God's sakes perfect Perfect podcast to be on to actually already start dropping the fuck bomb. That's awesome But but yeah, let's get a little Twitter bio of you Joel gave a little bit Give give us a little bit more about you other than foul mouth, which is fine with us Anessa Fike (01:24.434) That's right. Joel Cheesman (01:26.481) Well, let's get into an ESSA first. Anessa Fike (01:35.28) Yes. Anessa Fike (01:44.642) Right, right, right. Love that so much. Thank you for the inclusivity of the cuss words. I love it. I have done fractional HR. I've been a fractional chief people officer for almost 11 years. So one of the very first to do fractional in our space. And I've worked with over 120 organizations in 30 plus countries and have pretty much seen every stage of a business and in almost every industry except for oil and gas. Chad (01:51.404) We're here. Anessa Fike (02:14.082) So if there are M&As, if there are scaling, descaling, and everything in between, I've kind of seen it across the space. Right, so fractional is when you need an expert in a space, doesn't have to be in HR, it could be in other things, that you want to have them in your organization, but you may not be able to afford them at a full-time salary. So you need an expert for a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. Joel Cheesman (02:21.498) Define fractional for the listeners. Chad (02:43.214) It's a sexy way to say part-time cheeseman. So what actually moved you into Fractional? What made you think that Fractional was needed? Were you working with startups? Were you working with smaller companies? What actually pushed you into Fractional? Joel Cheesman (02:45.605) Yeah, I'm here for the listeners that might not know. Anessa Fike (02:45.874) Sort of, yeah. Anessa Fike (02:49.553) Hahaha Anessa Fike (03:00.686) You know what, it's funny, because we didn't call it fractional 11 almost 11 years ago. We called it interim or, you know, consulting. That was really where it started. But I didn't know anyone else in our industry doing it. And actually when I left the Motley Fool, I wanted to create something that I hadn't seen. I actually wanted to have like a good life balance. And so I said, what do I want my life to look like? And then I backed into the business model using actually the subscription membership sort of service of the Motley Fool and going, how can I make that work? But for me, Chad (03:32.174) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (03:35.186) not in an agency way not in the typical business model way of what had been there before. And I kind of came up with this rational thing. So it was really just me going well I want to do cool I'm gonna make that happen. Chad (03:47.896) Yeah, back in the day I was 15, I was a fractional fry cook. That's what I was back then. Anessa Fike (03:51.826) There you go. Fractional fry cook. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:53.477) Now he's a fractional podcaster, just like me. Hehehe. Chad (03:55.606) That's, what the fuck you, this is full time. Okay, so let's jump into the book. So the book is a future work in the way that dismantles the current systems, right? It creates space for employees, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, this is, you're actually looking at imploding the current system and moving in an entirely different direction. Before we get into that. Anessa Fike (04:08.85) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (04:16.519) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:20.97) because this is an interesting concept right out of the gate. We've been doing this shit for way too long in this current framework, right? What was the journey to actually get here to write the book? Because I mean, writing the book's one thing you've, you've had to have a lot more, not just experience, but engagements. I mean, how did you get here from a book writing standpoint? Anessa Fike (04:27.88) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (04:33.391) Yeah. Anessa Fike (04:43.522) Yeah, so it's funny, I actually was a journalist before I fell into HR. We all kind of fall into this. But I was a newspaper reporter, I won a press award. It was back when journalism was going, it was just a shit show. Everyone was like, what are we doing and what do we put online? I'm dating myself a little bit, but yeah. I still do a shit show. Chad (04:48.382) Aha! Now it comes out. Joel Cheesman (05:03.819) Is it not a shit show anymore? Chad (05:04.086) We were there for it. We were there for it, and it's still a shit show. Ha ha ha. Ha. Joel Cheesman (05:08.728) Yeah. Anessa Fike (05:11.074) right. And I was like, okay, so I knew I wanted to write a book. I knew I always wanted to write a book. I actually have a master's in English as well. And so I was like, I want to write a book. I always said I would write a fiction book. Well, we're one then fast forward, I guess to October 2022. And Forbes actually reached out to me. And they said, we actually would love if you wrote a book about HR. And I said, funny you should ask me Forbes, but thank you for the kick in the pants. And I asked a lot of questions, decided that Forbes was not the publisher for me. And then I found a publishing organization that was like, I'm here for you. Yeah. Chad (05:49.83) Why wasn't Forbes, you're going way too fast, Inessa, why wasn't Forbes the place to go? Anessa Fike (05:51.694) Yeah. Anessa Fike (05:57.522) So I had a lot of questions for Forbes. I, you know, there's a lot of years where we've all seen the HR councils, the write-ups, everything that Forbes has been doing. And I knew of a couple very particular instances where they were not practicing what they preached, right? They were not kind of this inclusive space. And I had a lot of questions around the authors that they were working with. Tell me about the authors, tell me about who you're working with, tell me about what... Chad (06:00.343) Yes. Chad (06:06.77) Oh yeah. Anessa Fike (06:27.322) what topics you're excited to have people talk about and publish this year. And they actually had really awful answers. So when I would ask them about diversity numbers, when I would ask them about how do you support your authors, it all was like really fluffy and they didn't have good answers to the point where one of the representatives from their publishing arm. said to me would just go look at our website and you'll see all of our authors. And I'm like, do you realize that if I did that as an HR professional, and I just like self decided what everyone's background ethnicity was that this that's illegal. And they're like, Oh, it is. And I'm like, Yes. Um, so clearly, I don't think this is gonna work out because I'm gonna push you. And I don't think you're gonna like when and where I push you. And they were like, well, You know, it's not, they were like, we really wanna have you. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think this is gonna work out. So realistically, it was just, they were not aligned in the same way of what I wanted to do with this book, which was to start a movement, to start the conversation, to have us actually do things differently. Chad (07:34.462) Okay, we'll talk about where you did land. Anessa Fike (07:36.686) Yeah, so I landed with a female publishing organization in Colorado outside of Colorado. And it's called Grace Point Matrix Publishing. And from the start of this journey with them, I said, I want to do things differently. I do not want to do publishing in the same way. We're in 2024 and publishing is actually still a very archaic industry. It's so it's so interesting when you're looking at it, you're like, wait, are we in the 1950s? Are we in the 2020s? And they early on said to me, we are going to be here with you for you. And we're going to push boundaries together. And we're going to tell you what the traditional way of doing it is. But if you want to do it a different way, we are here to do that too. And so they were a good guide throughout to say, this is how people typically do it. Joel Cheesman (08:03.943) Hehehe Anessa Fike (08:25.57) we're okay with you doing it this way. Just know that this is going to be, you're gonna basically be pushing boundaries within the publishing system while you're also pushing a book that's pushing boundaries outside of that system as well. And so I was like, okay, let's do it. Joel Cheesman (08:37.073) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (08:40.753) So, Nessa, I'm very apt to ask a startup how they came up with the name of their company. And with authors, I typically ask, what's up with the title? This title is a little bit more risque and interesting than others. Talk about how you came up with the revolution of work, fuck the patriarchy and the workplace that it built. Take us on that journey. Anessa Fike (09:03.266) Yeah, so the revolution of work, I knew that I wanted it to be that. So the base title was there from the start. I don't know about you all, but I get so freaking tired and I roll my eyes so hard at the future of work. Because most of what happens in the future of work is like I did that shit 10 years ago. I don't know what you guys are talking about. But like the future of work like what are we talking about? And so for me, every time I hear that I just roll my eyes and I expect to hear something that somebody somewhere decided was new. But we've been doing it. And so I, I was like really excited to do something different. I was like, we need something other than the future of work. For me, the revolution was we need an uprising. We need to dismantle really a lot of what the system has been. And we needed something that was going to be more active. The future of work is like this fluffy thing that I think a lot of us think about out in space somewhere of like 10 years from now, we're gonna do this. But I think with that, we're doing ourselves a disservice and that we don't actually get shit done quick enough and it doesn't move the needle fast enough to where it needs to be. And so for me, I'm like, okay, Revolution of Work, I want that. The second part, the subtitle came after I had written a good portion of the body of the book. And I went through, I had rearranged chapters a few times and I was like, what is the thing that is key? What's the thread? Right? What is the thread? What is this keep coming back to you? And every time that I looked at it and said, okay, let me look at it from this angle. It was the systems, the capitalism, the patriarchal elements that are in our society. That's what it kept butting up against. And so for me, I was like, you know what? And I said to a friend of mine, I just want to call it, fuck the patriarchy in the workplace it built. And she said, why don't you? And I'm like, okay, that's the name of it. Chad (10:31.511) Mm. Joel Cheesman (11:00.541) So part of it, part of my initial thought was, okay, well, it's good click bait in terms of, you know, selling books and Chad and I know what was best as anybody that you can't bore people into watching or consuming your stuff. So we had a conversation a year or so ago about the use of, of Karen and that Karen had basically replaced a bitch. So if someone's a Karen, they're now a bitch. It's just a more, I guess, strategically. Anessa Fike (11:13.979) Right? Joel Cheesman (11:28.729) a more camouflaged way of saying it. Did you think that there was any risk of a woman writing a book that's like, fuck the patriarchy, that you would be viewed as a quote unquote Karen and that would dilute your message or damn the torpedoes, this is what I think and this is what I'm putting out there. Anessa Fike (11:46.09) I think that for me it's a little bit more than the Karen's for that perspective around I think anyone who knows me will say this about it. I try to use my privilege for good. I have always been that person who will you who is understanding of my white privilege and I will always use it for good because guess what because of my packaging I can push harder. and I should push harder for others that don't look like me who are not able to push as hard. And so for me, this book was like, hey, I'm going to push as hard as I can push because I don't care if it's actually at my detriment, I'm trying to make it better for other people who don't look like me. And so for me, it's that, it's I think the ownership and the onus that we as white people need to take. because racism, all these patriarchal elements, they're not gonna solve themselves. We need to be more active parts in that. And so I think it's almost the opposite of a Karen, right? A Karen is someone who's like, oh, and they cry white privilege. I am kind of flipping that on its head to say, I know I have white privilege. I have a hell of a lot of it. And I'm actually gonna use that to the full extent that I can so that other people have an easier way. I will say that like, I am, actually one of those people who I kind of get this like rush when someone calls me a bitch back to my mom. She is the person you'll read this in the book who said who I learned like very early in my life. Someone called her a bitch when I was younger and she said I'm not a bitch. I'm the bitch. Get it right. And so for me I was like okay here we go. This is like a thing where it's like a kind of a a pride thing, right? Where it's like, you're doing something that matters. You're doing something that's pushing the boundaries. And that's why people are uncomfortable. Chad (13:32.394) Hmm? Joel Cheesman (13:39.362) That said, who do you hope reads this book? Anessa Fike (13:43.542) I hope that, you know, it's funny. I actually, this is something that I went back and forth on when I was writing the book, a lot. And I thought, am I gonna get the people right, where it's like, we all know what political side that is never gonna read this book. My goal is to help the people who already think this way be more active and verbal, and secondarily to help the people who are like, I don't know where I land, but I'm kind of in the middle to maybe skew this side. And I also want people to realistically read the book and just start the conversations to know that they're not alone, to know that they're not the only one seeing this thing, to know that they're not isolated, that their feelings are validated and what they've experienced is valid. and that there are way more people out here than they ever thought there were feeling the exact same way. So I've had hundreds of people reach out to me that I don't know on LinkedIn and other socials that have said, oh my gosh, thank you for just writing this because I don't feel alone. You've said the same thing I've said in my head for years. I thought it was the only one experiencing this and I'm not. And so I think it's those people that maybe were quiet about it that now feel like they don't have to be. And then also people in the middle that are like, I don't know what to do, but I know this, this work isn't working. And so what can I do to make a change? Chad (15:14.082) Yes. Let's, let's pivot real quick to the actual construct of work. Right. So the book is, is very critical of the current work environments, which often suppress employee engagement and perpetuate, you know, gender and racial inequalities. It cites statistics, you know, like from Gallup to highlight widespread disengagement, productivity losses and contemporary workplaces. Although, Vanessa, old white dudes are trying to get people back. Anessa Fike (15:19.548) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (15:32.759) Okay. Chad (15:43.034) in the office, right? So everyone back in the office, it's very anti-female in many cases. And also, you know, we've also talked about productivity losses, which are blamed on remote work, aka, in creativity, aka, what's this fuck, the CEO of Nike, right? So your thoughts on that construct, it really feels like it's being forced back on all of workers. Anessa Fike (15:44.282) Yeah. Anessa Fike (15:58.884) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (16:04.562) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:13.242) Give us some feedback, the research that you've actually performed, not to mention your thoughts on where we should be moving. Anessa Fike (16:21.898) Yeah, so I think that and I go back to this a lot I think there is a certain type of leader who wants to have someone with a button seat, right? There's a couple of reasons for that. None of us are oblivious to those reasons Number one is they paid a hell of a lot of money for that space and they don't want it to go unused Duh, we understand that right? Two, it's someone who doesn't actually deep down believe in their own managerial sense and the way that they manage and they don't wanna work on that. And so it's easier for them. It's the lazy way to manage by seeing someone in person. The third piece is that there's this like normalization that we've tried to all get back to post COVID. And the normalization is that We're just acting like it didn't happen. There's lots of trauma we're not dealing with in the workplace. We're just trying to just, we're just all in denial, right? Like a lot of us are, some of us are not, but a lot of us are in denial around like, hey, let's just get back to what it was pre-COVID, right? Like, let's just act like it didn't happen. And I think that those three things are why we're seeing so many people being pushed back to offices. And none of those are good. None of those are good reasons. It's not about, hey, we actually feel like people are more engaged or they are able to do better work because they're in an office. That's not the conversation. Productivity rates increased during COVID when everyone was remote. People who were disabled were able to work and find better and more work when they were remote, right? Right, highest rates ever. And by the way, Chad (18:03.908) highest rates ever. Anessa Fike (18:08.246) engagement rates are abysmal, right? They're abysmal right now. They're at the lowest that we've probably seen in a really long time, if ever. And we keep trying to fit this very square peg into this very round hole of like, if we can just get people into the office it'll solve everything. Cause we solved everything pre COVID, right? Everything was solved and all engagement scores were through the roof and everyone loved going to work, right? It was completely solved pre COVID. It wasn't. Chad (18:16.238) Mm. Anessa Fike (18:37.55) but we just act like it was. It's this whole thing where it's just really, if you're paying attention, you understand what's going on. And I think that business leaders don't understand that every person, nearly every person that works for them is seeing through this. They're so. translucent at this point, we can see right through what they are saying they want to do. I just saw Samsung is saying there's a crisis and they want people to work six days a week. Oh, and I was just like, Oh my gosh, Sam, so I'm doing their employees way dirty. Like, what are you trying to do? So it just it's like these people are just showcasing to the world that they don't get it. And that's really the point, right? They don't get it. Chad (19:03.564) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:07.938) Six days, baby, six days. Chad (19:13.057) Uh huh. Anessa Fike (19:28.25) So for me, it's really just around, like when I see these things pop up, I'm just like, you're not getting it. So, you know, we'll see what that ends up with over the next couple of years. I think they're just gonna see max exodus of employees leaving. And then they're gonna have to make a real call as to like, do we even have enough employees to keep the business running if we act this way? Chad (19:51.234) Well, I mean, you've got a bunch of females who can't, right? Or they're choosing not to because they have kids. They, I mean, again, we were treated like, or forced to be treated like adults during COVID. And now it's like, you're all kids come back into the office. Now, again, we see where the issue is. The question is, how do we get back there? Obviously, manager training. Anessa Fike (19:55.218) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (19:58.522) Right? Anessa Fike (20:08.336) Right. Chad (20:18.71) helping CEOs better understand that they have to retool. I mean, what do we have to do to get on a different track? That's the big question. There is this ball of just jacked up shit that's happening right now. Totally get it. How do we get away from that? Anessa Fike (20:24.304) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (20:34.135) Mm-hmm. I think the first thing is realizing there's a problem, right? That is the first thing. If we don't name the problem, we don't see the problem. We don't start from what is the problem we're trying to solve. Um, I think that there are a ton of CEOs and leaders out there that are still super oblivious to this. They're super oblivious to. Chad (20:48.351) Mm. Anessa Fike (20:58.282) what actually makes their company run. They're super oblivious to you know, as we've all seen over the last several years understanding how HR and TA leaders are strategic movements within their organization. I think that it's first naming that there's a problem. The second piece is understanding where you actually are as a business so that you can work from it. If you don't know where your starting block is, how do you know when the race ends or if it ends? And so you have to have a starting point. And that starting point is to get really clear on where you actually are. And then I would say from there, it's interesting, there's, I've done a few revolution of work retreats. And what we talk about is, what are all the things broken and work and everyone gets their own post-its and there are basically like 40 or 50 post-its per person that we put up on a wall. And then I ask, what do we have to keep? What do we need in work? And literally those same people put three to five things up. Chad (21:54.582) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (21:57.73) So that shows you just the difference, right? There are 40 to 50 things that people can put on a Post-It that are broken with work. And if you actually think about what we need to make work successful and what we need to keep, it's very few things. So I almost think that we need a complete like overhaul. We need a complete revolution. We need to really start over and ask why we're doing these things. Because we're all just a lot of this time, we're all just on this like, you know, this circle, this wheel, where we're just doing it because this is what we've always done. And that doesn't really serve people well. We need to stop and ask why we're doing those things. Joel Cheesman (22:35.297) In revolutions, heads typically get chopped off. I'm curious from your take, are you calling for, I guess, the current status quo, typical white male-owned businesses managed by men? Are you looking for them to change the model? Cindy Gallup was on the show a couple years ago and she said, expecting white men to replace themselves with women of color. is just not very realistic. What you have to have is more and more businesses founded by people like you who have founded your own company. Um, what exactly are you calling for in this revolution? Our head's actually going to roll or are you asking or doing something totally different? Anessa Fike (23:04.635) Yeah. Anessa Fike (23:07.868) Hmm? Anessa Fike (23:14.949) Right. Anessa Fike (23:19.298) Well, I think heads are going to roll naturally. And here's why. If you look at the census and the generational shift of Gen Z and also then Gen Alpha behind it, it is Gen Z and Gen Alpha are the most demographic mixed generations that we've seen. And there is going to be a point where a lot of these leaders just quite frankly age out. Chad (23:40.577) us. Anessa Fike (23:47.81) That's going to happen sooner than we think. By the way, Gen Z is just saying peace out to corporate America, almost entirely altogether. Right, they're like, oh, you want me to do this thing? This is stupid, I'm not even in for this, right? And they will go the other way because they have other options. We right now, and I write about this in the book, actually about a year ago, when I was looking at the numbers, we had about five million less people in the workforce than we had jobs to fill. that means that there were five million more jobs, right? Then there were people to fill them. Now they don't always line up, skill-based to what's needed, right? They don't always align correctly, but there were still five million open jobs and enough people to fill them. If you think about baby boomers, retiring, leaving the workforce, then you think about millennials having to caretake for those baby boomers, and then you think about Gen Z, piecing out of corporate America altogether. Chad (24:22.071) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (24:47.894) You're not going to have enough humans to sustain this model. It's just not going to work. The numbers don't add up. Chad (24:54.122) And she just totally passed over Gen X. She's like, fuck those guys. Joel Cheesman (24:57.553) That's okay. We're used to it. We're used to it. Anessa Fike (24:58.326) Well, it's a small group compared to the bigger generations. There are five generations in the workforce. Right, there are five generations in the workforce, right? And so like there are bigger generations than others. Baby boomer generation is so large that there's not another generation outside of millennials that's going to be close. And so if you look at the workforce today, nearly half is really, it's ticking up is millennials, right, nearly half. Chad (25:01.762) probably the most feral group you will ever have to deal with. Yes. Chad (25:21.311) Mm. Anessa Fike (25:27.33) In the next several years, millennials are going to overtake and be the majority of the workforce. And then the second largest majority in the workforce is going to be Gen Z, which by the way, doesn't want to be in corporate America anyway. So there's this going to be this economic head that comes to fruition in the next five to 10 years where we're going to have to make a change. And some of it is going to be that leaders age out and different leaders come in. Chad (25:48.575) Mm. Anessa Fike (25:56.202) we're seeing, I don't know, dozens of people go fractional every single day. Everyone comes to me and says, when is this fractional trend going to be over? And I'm like, well, it's not a trend. It's a labor shift. We are witnessing a historical labor shift because guess what? None of us that are fractional are ever going back. And so that's, that's also a piece, right? You're seeing fractional in finance and tech and HR. You're saying everyone go fractional to the point that I actually think. Chad (26:19.575) Mm. Anessa Fike (26:23.15) that if you have less than 3,000 employees over the next five years, the only full-time execs will be a CEO and a COO. Every other person is gonna be fractional on the executive team, because it's a win-win for both sides. Chad (26:36.706) So how does AI actually play in the new molding of the new workforce? And I mean, literally just the new environment that we're gonna be working. Anessa Fike (26:44.642) Yeah. Well, number one, I always think that people give AI more credit than it actually is able to do because a lot of even the generative AI still have a human in the loop right now. And I think a lot of people think AI is really like intuitive and it can do all these things. Yeah, that's so because there's a human in the loop. And what people don't understand is when we take the human out of the loop, it actually gets really, really archaic. And so there's not that much difference in AI today than there was 10 years ago, not really when you're looking at it. And so it's gonna shift slowly, but it's not gonna be this drastic shift. It's gonna take away some of the mundane things that we all, none of us like to do. And that happens, it's happened throughout history all along in how we've worked. Think about like mechanical pencils to pens, typewriters to computers, right? Like we've seen these things happen, it's gradually over time. I actually think that it's just going to shift how it has shifted previously. So roles are going to shift. It's going to really take away a lot of the mundane, almost like mindless tasks that a lot of us hate to do anyway. And I think it's going to be a gradual shift, but what's going to be a much larger shift is that change in the generations, the change in the demographics, the change in the dynamics. And I think all of those are actually going to be a huge shift. way more than AI ever is going to shift the landscape. It's gonna be actually those other things that shift it further. Joel Cheesman (28:17.741) You have a problem with first time founders and CEOs as indicated by one of the chapters of the book. Talk to me about your problem with founders and startup CEOs. Anessa Fike (28:21.961) Hahaha! Yes! Yes, well, I think anyone who has experienced this knows exactly what I'm talking about I worked with over 50 of them And I can tell you that if you go to Wikipedia and I cite it in my book and you go to founderitis Anyone who has worked for a founder CEO is going to tell you. Yep. They check off all these boxes and it is really a It's it's when someone thinks that a business is their baby, right? and it's really hard to call somebody's baby ugly and then be okay with it. And as a person that comes in and tries to understand culture and people and help move the business forward, there's a lot of ego wrapped around that baby. There just is, like more so than anything else in business. There's a lot of ego wrapped around that. And there are some first time founder CEOs that are really great at this, but they're few and far between. Most founder CEOs have never worked other places. If they have, they haven't worked in leadership. I'll be honest, 90% of them have never managed a person in their life. And now they're in charge of here's millions of dollars and an entire company. And now you want to run this, right? They've never even managed before. Anessa Fike (29:49.23) And so you're teaching them how to manage people. You're teaching them how to be an executive. You're basically teaching them how to be an adult in corporate America, while also helping them run a business. And so it very much is like this, you as a fractional person coming in and working with a founder CEO, you know that like you're going to have to give so much more of yourself, because it's such an undertaking. The best way to describe this. Joel Cheesman (30:16.369) And what's the demographic breakdown of this 50 or so startup CEOs that you've worked for? Anessa Fike (30:20.55) Ugh. I would say 20s to 50s. Chad (30:26.891) White dudes. Anessa Fike (30:27.014) When is the 50s? White dudes. Joel Cheesman (30:27.949) White, yeah, 20 to 50, mostly white guys. Okay, I just wanted to make that clear. Make that clear. Anessa Fike (30:31.663) Yeah. Anessa Fike (30:34.99) Yep, 20 to 50 mostly white guys, because guess what? Guess where the funding goes to? 98% of funding goes to what? White guys. 98% of VC and PE funding goes to white guys. And so, right, from mostly other white guys. And so there's another, there's a chapter in the book about that, right? Like we're wondering why this cycle keeps continuing. And it's because the funders fund the founders and they're all the same demographic. Joel Cheesman (30:42.385) from white guys, by the way. Chad (30:47.146) Yeah, from white guys. Anessa Fike (31:03.842) And so it's really interesting. Joel Cheesman (31:04.321) So where's, I don't wanna ruin the book, but what's the solution? You can't just kill all the VCs and say we're giving the money to underprivileged folks. That's against the law, last time I checked. So is it a government thing? Is it just vote with our wallet? We're only gonna support as a consumer businesses that are like this. Don't ruin the book, but what's the solution? Anessa Fike (31:07.569) Yeah, yeah. The solution is mostly burn it out. Anessa Fike (31:32.43) Right, so I wouldn't say it's against the law because if it were, I mean, like people would be doing that. Like, you know, they'd be against the law now because they're giving most of it to 98% towards one demographic. I think that it's baffling to me, I will say this. It's baffling to me that VCs and PEs aren't understanding the business value of having, and we've seen this, we've all seen the data. It's been out for a decade, right? The more diverse your organization is, the better your bottom line is. And it's like VCs and PEs don't wanna see that. Now I understand PEs and VCs need to have a good amount of loss on their P&L statements. They need to, it's part of how they work. They don't actually expect all these things to work, right? They expect maybe 50% to do well and that's good. Chad (32:02.158) Mm. Anessa Fike (32:30.47) I think that the way we think about venture capital and private equity is going to shift. I think we have already seen that with the fall of Silicon Valley Bank. I think people are already having those discussions. I think that is going to shift as well with these demographics. And I think that it's going to, by the way, I'm seeing more and more VCs and PE firms being stood up by non-white men. And I think that is going to help. So I think that as we continue to, again, see people age out, we continue to see generational changes, we continue to see people that have different avenues to wealth, different avenues to work, we're going to see that change drastically. And a lot of these, in a lot of these areas, we're seeing these kind of toplings of systems. And again, I think it's gonna all come down at around the same time. and then we need to build it back up. Chad (33:33.302) Feels like a civil war is what it feels like. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about who's getting the money, like we're talking about, the funders, right? But let's also talk about pay equity, right? So because I think they're somewhat aligned, and let me tell you why. Dumb white dudes, they will ask for more money all damn day. Females will not. And that's just been, research has demonstrated that many women will be Anessa Fike (33:42.83) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (33:46.767) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:02.422) they will be happy with what they have and they will wait for that next raise to happen as opposed to going and asking for it, right? Or demanding it because they're not getting paid as much as the guy who's sitting next to them doing the exact same damn job. So the big question is the framework and how we've done this for hundreds of years, right? Where women couldn't even vote for God's sakes, right? Talk about oppression. This has been in our DNA since jump. How the hell do we, that's... Anessa Fike (34:21.229) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (34:28.899) Right. Chad (34:32.182) That's one of the biggest problems. How do we change that? Because today we talk about females aren't starting up as many. They've got great ideas, but they're not taking the jump. They're not taking the leap. That's not that, I mean, whose fault is that? How do we change that? How do we push that? Anessa Fike (34:33.848) Right. Anessa Fike (34:41.394) I think. Anessa Fike (34:49.454) Right. I would say let me push back on you a little bit in that actually in the next in the last five to ten years women have been asking for more money for a while. It's just that we never get it. Chad (35:00.394) Yeah, because we finally showed that they're getting paid less they never knew before. Pay transparency is a thing. Joel Cheesman (35:02.269) Transparency, yeah. Anessa Fike (35:03.47) Right. Even if we ask, right, even if we ask and men don't ask, even if we ask and the ask isn't even done by men, the men get the pay and the women don't. Right. And yes, that's a huge piece, right. The other thing I will say is during COVID, you know, the demographic that opened the most businesses, black women. Overwhelmingly so. You know why? That got so pissed off. Chad (35:12.494) Sure. Anessa Fike (35:30.55) at corporate America that they were like, fuck this shit. I'm out. I mean, why not? Right? Why not? You are seeing so many people being so fed the fuck up that they're just like, there's got to be a better way. And I would much rather rely on myself than some idiot who's going to maybe give me a 3% raise every year, right. And the other piece to think about is that Chad (35:37.814) Yeah? Yeah. Anessa Fike (35:57.686) We all know, you know, we're in talent. We've been in talent a long time. We all know it's like, even if you want, and I tell this to people all the time, if you need a 10K raise this year, and you really are doing a good job, your manager has to like you. You have to have done good performance review. You have to have good performance reviews. The company has to be doing well enough. All these things, right? If you want a 10K increase as a fractional executive or as a person who works for themselves, you figure out how to do that. So the illusion of stability and this like whole just workforce thing has been toppled with COVID because there is no stability. It's an illusion. It always has been. And so when I say to people you have way more way more like just ability to provide for yourself and to figure it out when you work for yourself than ever relying on one person in your organization, which is technically probably your manager to get that for you in a year's time. And I always say, you spend 12 months trying to get 10K of an increase from one person. Imagine what you could get by spending 12 months on another thing. And people are starting to see that that, like it doesn't add up. Why would I do that? Why would I stick around? And we also know this with talent and HR, that if we got hit by a bus tomorrow, people would replace us in corporate America. They would have the JD ready the next day. Chad (37:22.446) Mm-hmm. Anessa Fike (37:26.49) People are starting to just see that this illusion, this wall that's been built up by corporate America is just continuing to topple down. And to be honest, a lot of people are like, what is left to fight for? Not much. And so while I joke and say like, now is the time, give me the gasoline and let me light the match in the book, it's not actually that high of a wall to burn down anymore because it's been toppling. through COVID, through everyone seeing, through a lot of these initiatives that are bullshit, right? People are not stupid. And they see you for what you are. And so if you're not authentic or you wanna be like Samsung and say, there's a crisis, we need six days a week, they're gonna be like, that's stupid, bye. So I think that people are just getting fed up, they're smart, people, organizations can't hide shit as easily anymore, and so I think all of that is coming to light. Chad (38:22.391) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (38:25.329) So, Nessa, I don't want to be burned at the stake. I'm attached to my head. I don't want it severed off. What can us white guys do to be an ally? Anessa Fike (38:27.89) Ha ha! Anessa Fike (38:35.17) I love that question. Thank you for asking me that Joel. Honestly, speak up. I mean, like, how many times have you all probably been in a meeting where you've heard someone talk over someone where you've hear someone speak in a way that was unbecoming about somebody when you've heard, oh, they're just here because of this and that, or they were the diversity higher all the bullshit that we all hear, right? Say something like tell people it's not okay. Joel Cheesman (38:39.046) You're welcome. Anessa Fike (39:06.226) That continued routine is going to be helpful because we also, the thing is, we need your help in making this change. We need allies to make this change. There's a good friend of mine that said those with power are not going to give it up willingly. And I actually think that some of us will. Right? Like I would like to give some of my power up willingly. I have. And I just, I'm actually still an optimist, even though I wrote this book. I'm actually still an optimist. I actually think there are a lot of really good people out there. So if more of you, if more people that look like me, if we can like say, speak up and say like, this isn't right, this is the way we should actually be thinking about these things, I think we can actually make some, you know, make some movement. Chad (39:56.89) Don't be a bystander kids actually get involved. That's an S a fight the name of the book is the revolution of work Fuck the PA Patriarchy and the workplace it built that sounds like a series that should be on Netflix by the way so an S if somebody if somebody wants to buy the book, where would you send them? Anessa Fike (39:58.769) Yeah. Anessa Fike (40:11.546) Look, we're working on it. Ha ha ha. Anessa Fike (40:17.814) Amazon, you know, it's still leading in the publishing world Amazon actually rules the publishing world for better or worse, right? Chad (40:20.066) Too easy. Joel Cheesman (40:26.173) Chad loves it when people give Jeff Bezos some more money to fight the patriarchy. Keep the guillotine away from me, Anessa. That is another one in the can. We out. Chad (40:26.39) Keyword, keyword, fuck the patriarchy. Anessa Fike (40:29.09) Right, revolution work, talk to you, Draggy. Oh my gosh. Anessa Fike (40:37.179) Hahahaha

This week, the boys discuss recent excursions in Asia and Europe, as well as recent industry news. They cover topics such as the decline in job postings, the acquisition of Textkernel by Bullhorn, the rebranding of StepStone, and the funding of TechWolf and FairNow. The conversation also touches on the importance of AI in the recruitment industry and the trend towards skills-based hiring. In this conversation, Chad and Joel discuss various topics including skills-based hiring, AI governance software, the decline in traffic for job search engine Indeed, the car industry's trends, and the use of AI assistants in financial advising. They explore the challenges and opportunities presented by these themes and provide insights into the future of these industries. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (AI made me do it) Joel Cheesman (00:33.459) two guys who will never fall for the banana in the tailpipe. What's up, boys and girls. It's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman. Chad Sowash (00:46.098) And I'm Chad, he's back. So watch. Joel Cheesman (00:50.803) And on this week's episode, indeed traffic is declining. The EV revolution is deflating and Hooters Restaurant business is sagging. Let's do this. Chad Sowash (01:05.938) Welcome back! Look at that tan! Joel Cheesman (01:11.987) Did you miss me, Chad? Look at me, I'm tan rested and ready to go, baby. Chad Sowash (01:17.979) yeah. yeah. We need a little recharge every now and again need a little recharge. So so a little bit of Vietnam, Singapore, a little getting a little little little background on those how to go. Joel Cheesman (01:30.355) Sure. Sure. My, my wife had a conference in Singapore, the whole eating bugs thing. she that's a worldwide conference, a lot of money and companies go to this thing. So it was in Singapore and I didn't want to pass the chance to go to Asia, which I've never been to. So we decided to make it kind of a couple of weeks thing getaway. as you know, I unplugged as much as possible. I think the only time I heard from you was a text kernel got acquired. Chad Sowash (01:35.41) Mm -hmm. you Chad Sowash (01:44.738) hell no. Joel Cheesman (01:59.443) because that was important enough to let me know that that happened. Otherwise I tried to unplug as much as possible, which was healthy. We, talked about where should we go to in Asia near Singapore for a little relaxation. We picked Da Nang. Thanks for, thanks for the recommendation from one of paradoxes, employees, that works in Vietnam. I believe they acquired someone out of Vietnam a few years ago. So anyway, my take, few take takeaways from Asia. Chad Sowash (02:19.122) No. Joel Cheesman (02:28.275) Number one, it's hot as balls. It's as hot as two rats fucking in a wool sock. It is in June. It is soupy hot. The Nang is like 95 and super humid. but, but in denying you can stay at a five star resort for like the cost of a, you know, a holiday in here and here in the U S so yeah, it's like super, super nice. if you want to get away, Chad Sowash (02:50.61) A con -o -lage. Joel Cheesman (02:56.947) Very different culture. I think my expectation and maybe I'm not alone as an American thinking that your favorite scene from full metal jacket is what Vietnam is like the whole country. It's a little bit like that, but not as much. It's it's chaos. It's probably 50 bikes and motorcycles to every car. There's no song like it's, it's like a living organism at every intersection. Nobody hits each other, but it all works in tandem. But there are, there's a significant downtown, significant buildings. There are businesses that you and I know very well that are, are set up there. So they're sort of straddling the line of old Vietnam and the new Vietnam and being very commercially driven, but they're also a communist country. So there's sort of that element as well. Vietnam is pretty crazy. if you want a wild adventure at a really cheap cost, I think beers that we drank were like a dollar 25, which was nice. Singapore. Chad Sowash (03:49.554) Sounds like here. Joel Cheesman (03:50.611) Singapore is the exact opposite. It's like 17 bucks a beer in Singapore and it's built for business. It's built like it's very wealthy. Clearly there's some historical pieces. It was a English colony for a long time. It was invaded and taken over by the Japanese in world war II. And that history is really interesting. We tend to focus on Europe and the, and the German, you know, the Nazis in America. Chad Sowash (03:56.722) Yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (04:03.314) Yes. Chad Sowash (04:18.45) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:19.635) But there's a really rich history of Japanese and world war II and everything that went down there. Singapore for me is a little too sanitized. It's very safe. Like it's, it's, it's engineered by the government to just be comfortable. And, you know, I like my countries to have a drunk Scott guy, Scotch, you know, Scotsman on a bus named Gus, you know, talking shit, you know, I want to know that someone might vomit in the street at any point in my cities. Singapore has cameras everywhere. It's super chill, like safe. The cost of a car is super high because they want to limit traffic and traffic is limited. It's not crazy. The metro is really nice. Alcohol is really expensive because they want people to be sober. Imagine that. People are more law abiding apparently when they're sober. It's been engineered and it's very sanitized. Very nice, but it's not really my jam. I'm not going to be in a hurry to get back to Singapore. And then the third takeaway is that we're really comfortable in America in terms of like threats. We sort of forget that there's a war in Ukraine. There's like Middle East shit and there's this China and North Korea thing. And when you're in Asia, there's an underlying discomfort knowing that shit could go down at any time. Chad Sowash (05:38.834) We have a buffer. Joel Cheesman (05:47.155) And there were, there were, you know, there were, jets flying around Singapore. There's a military presence. Everyone in Singapore does military service of some kind. it was part of their citizenship. So we're really comfortable in America in this bubble. And I think maybe we may be sleepwalking, at times to what the world is going through, but going to Asia makes you very aware, like shit could go down at any minute. And, you need to sort of be thinking about that just in case. Chad Sowash (06:06.642) So we are. Chad Sowash (06:16.082) Yeah, yeah. I thought it was a fun trip. I have not. No, no, I have not. Julie's been to India. I'm good. I'm good off that. I definitely want to go to Vietnam. Definitely want to go to Singapore. Joel Cheesman (06:18.451) You've never been to Asia, correct? Yeah, yeah, a lot of Joel Cheesman (06:30.135) Yeah. A lot of Aussies in Singapore though. That was a good time. They, they liked to have fun in Singapore. I think that's a pretty cheap, flight for them to, to go there. Yeah. Yeah. It was nice to, it was nice to get away. it's nice to experience that. I don't think I'm in a hurry to get back to Asia, but it was a, it was a good experience. I'm glad to be back, baby. A couple of weeks off is good for you. Good for the soul. Good for the soul. Chad Sowash (06:34.418) Yeah. Chad Sowash (06:38.29) It's their side of the world. It's their side of the world. Chad Sowash (06:52.434) Wait, he's back. Very nice. Let's do some shout outs, man. And you're back, so you go first. Joel Cheesman (06:59.923) I love it. Yeah. So, a couple of people to highlight, when I was in, when I was in Singapore and this is the power of the podcast. People listen, people know I talked about it. They reached out, JJ, who we know at on loop. if you haven't listened to that firing squad, check that out. JJ reached out. we had lunch. I saw the, the, the headquarters, if you will, of the company. He got, I took a t -shirt to him. he probably saw it on LinkedIn and then, Daniel Callahan from bear Mark. Chad Sowash (07:10.449) Mm -hmm. yeah, firing squad. Joel Cheesman (07:29.203) He reached out while I was out there. we hooked up for some beers. Pretty cool. It was called the beer company. It was like a huge fridge of beers from light to dark. You just picked out beer, scanned it, ordered food. that was kind of a cool experience. but, but shout out to those two guys. Thanks for showing me a good time in Singapore. And while I was gone, I got to give a shout out to Mo and, Joel Jr, Joel 2 .0, whatever we're calling him, for filling in. Chad Sowash (07:29.97) Yeah. Chad Sowash (07:38.706) huh. Chad Sowash (07:54.354) You Joel Cheesman (07:57.523) while I was out, it sounds like you guys had a good time and hopefully the listeners enjoyed a little change of pace on the show from me. Chad Sowash (08:05.106) Yeah, yeah. Well, big news, big news while you're gone. For some, maybe not for all. Be quick. We got to get to the big stuff today. So Bullhorn buys text kernel. Buys text kernel. What'd you think? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:13.459) Yeah, a lot of stuff. Joel Cheesman (08:18.195) It's big news. I, you know, I think it's, it's, it's a win, win, win, win, and maybe another win. if, if, if Robert rough, our friend at sovereign had, had, shares in text kernel, he's, he's a winner again, and he can buy some more land in Jackson hole or wherever he is, at the moment. But a big win for bullhorn. look, there's not a lot of parsing services out there. it's a little bit like programmatic advertising. If you can, if you can, Chad Sowash (08:32.098) yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:44.787) snag up one of these players and Tex Colonel by far is the top player. And I'm not just saying that because they're a sponsor of the show. I think that's a pretty universal opinion. that's a huge win for them and a sign that Bullhorn is doing pretty well. and as I think we both know that they've been around for a long time. so big win for them, big win for Tex Colonel, look, Gerard has this magical ability to kind of see around corners and Chad Sowash (08:50.482) Easy. Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (08:59.57) Yes. Joel Cheesman (09:13.907) I'll get to that in a second, but I, you know, I think that, you know, this is, he sold to career builder, main capital comes in main capital is another winner by the way, in this, and then found an opportunity to get to bullhorn. I love the, the European show this, this past week, where Lee even talked about bullhorn and Gerard being at the event in Amsterdam, miracles happen when you go to conferences. Chad Sowash (09:19.538) Yeah. Chad Sowash (09:23.026) Yeah, of course. Chad Sowash (09:36.562) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:38.995) By the way, if you want to get acquired, it's not a bad idea to sponsor the Chad and cheese podcast. We have an amazing like lineup of companies that have been acquired, after sponsoring, the show. So anyway, if you're, if you're thinking about sponsoring and being acquired, that might be a good opportunity for you. I think that the interesting part around the sort of see around corners is that you touched, you touched on this and the European show, but, the AI question. Chad Sowash (09:49.33) We do. We do. Chad Sowash (09:55.122) If we have space, yes. Joel Cheesman (10:09.267) parsing a lot of data, figuring all that stuff out. You know, there's a, there's a school of thought out there that, that, that AI and large language models, generative AI can kind of do some of the heavy lifting of the parsing and matching and things like that. I think the jury's out on that, but, but it is a threat. And the fact that open AI is now in bed with, with Microsoft and LinkedIn. I know the jury's out as to whether or not LinkedIn can figure that shit out, but it is still a threat. Chad Sowash (10:26.226) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:38.131) You've got indeed building what they, what I think is kind of a LinkedIn competitor beefing up their profiles. So there's a, there's a case to be made that they're going to get better at what they're doing. And I think Bullhorn and Bullhorn needed to do this from a strategic advantage perspective. They didn't want to fall behind some of those competitions, some competitors. So I think that was really smart on their end, but also I think timing may have been perfect for a techs kernel to look for. Chad Sowash (10:57.746) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (11:08.275) an acquisition partner, time will tell, but I think if you hedge your bets, Harard was on, it's going to be on the right side of history. And this is going to be a move that we look back and say timing was perfect on that acquisition. So good, good for everybody. Even good for our chili. probably the only one left of notes. you know, if, if you're indeed, you know, maybe you want to look at our chili as an acquisition to parse your, you know, indeed resumes. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:21.01) Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:33.298) to talk about one later. We're going to talk about one later. Yeah, there's still more out there. Anyway, StepStone, StepStone Rebrand. Joel Cheesman (11:37.939) Yeah. But, but overall, when, when, when the rebrand, so step stone rebrand, again, I think the European show, I think, I think leaving nailed it with the IPO, comment. Look, step stones, we're talking about IPO. They have all these properties. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm telling you, there was a meeting at step stone with marketing and the business people and they were like, okay, we need to create a consistent look and feel. Chad Sowash (11:51.438) yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:07.859) across all of our properties. So when we go public and we talk to wall street about what we're doing, or if they go public in Germany, whatever the equivalent of wall street is in Germany. and we need people to go to these sites and there's a, there's a consistent look and feel. So like that meeting happened. And part of that was like, let's have a masthead that looks all the same. Let's have fonts that are the same and thus the rebrand. now the question that I have is. My prediction of career builder, and or monster being acquired by step stone. So I'm, I'm checking out career builder monster on a regular basis to see if their color palette and their masthead changes. Because if you see it in that, that nasty pink and brown or orangey yellow thing, that they have, it's a clear sign. It's a clear sign that step stone is acquiring a career builder and or monster. But I think it's all about IPO, creating consistency on the brand. Chad Sowash (12:55.282) whatever the fuck that is, yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:06.835) That was the reason for all this. I don't think it was anything more deep than that. Chad Sowash (13:11.922) It's more cutting costs. Okay, so I'm going to shout out, it's a little time for solace kids as Ryan McCabe, a CEO of Audro died over the weekend in a motorcycle accident in Scotland. I didn't know Ryan really well, but you know, with the few interactions I did have with him, he was always an incredibly happy and positive guy. And when I told him we were prepping for the Scotland trip. When I told him that Julie and I would be spending about four or five days after we were in Glasgow and, and, and Edinburgh doing the shows, he was the one who recommended Locke Fine. And that's where we ended up finishing out our trip. It was amazing. And, you know, I never got a chance to say thanks. so, you know, thanks Ryan and rest in peace, buddy. Joel Cheesman (13:59.315) Yeah. Unfortunate life is life is, life is short. Enjoy it while, while the ride, while you're on the ride kids. Yeah. I'll make another quick shout out, to candidate .fyi. our friend Colin day founder and CEO of Isims who has since moved on, this company founded by an ex Googler brought him on as an advisor, with a pretty good, portfolio or lineup of advisors. they got a former CHRO of Disney. Chad Sowash (14:05.65) Short, short and fragile. Chad Sowash (14:24.018) smart. smart. Joel Cheesman (14:28.659) And they've only raised $1 .3 million. So candidate .fyi is one to watch. If someone like Colin Day is looking at them and saying, I want to be a part of it, like that's a company to look out for. So shout out to, to Colin Day now that he's back in the biz, maybe you can come back on the show and update us on, on what's going on in his life. Chad Sowash (14:36.786) Yeah. Chad Sowash (14:48.306) Yeah, or maybe we'll just send Colin some free stuff, you know, t -shirts from Aaron Appalo, Chad and Cheese t -shirts. Everybody here, I brought a bunch of t -shirts here to Portugal for friends to be able to, you know, give them out. And whenever they wear them, they always come up to me and they always, the first thing they do is they mention how good it feels. That's right. It's like a hug from Chad and Cheese. And that's courtesy of Aaron App. Beer, always lovely, tasty, craft beer, scent. Joel Cheesman (14:52.051) You Joel Cheesman (15:00.563) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:08.243) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (15:17.106) by Aspen Tech Labs, love those guys. Whiskey from just acquired by Bullhorn, Text Colonel. Birthdays, guess what? Rum with plum. And you can't win unless you go to ChadCheese .com slash free kids. Joel Cheesman (15:19.667) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:27.091) Joel Cheesman (15:37.715) That's right gang. If it's your birthday, we're going to shout out to you. And again, like Chad said, you could win a bottle of rum, but celebrating another trip around the sun and listeners include Tom Bickle, Eli Carstens, Brittany Porter, Sepe Nyeri, super fan of the show, by the way, Heather Myers, Colleen DeGeorge, Jenny, I always get this right, Shiaka, Skiaka, Shiaka I think, Sean Paul Seth. Chad Sowash (15:43.858) Ooh. Chad Sowash (16:04.69) skeet. Joel Cheesman (16:06.867) Robert Rudolph, Buddy Hanneka, Shannon Pritchard, Kerry Corbin, Mike Okars, and Faith Rothberg are all celebrating another trip around the sun. So happy birthday to them. Chad Sowash (16:17.426) Very nice. Very nice. Hopefully we will see them in London. That's right. We're going to Wreckfest, July 11th at Nebworth Park. And guess who is joining us on stage to talk about AI, Joel? Lord Nathaniel Mignang -Wei of the House of Lords will share his experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and social innovation. We're going to discuss Nat's Joel Cheesman (16:25.683) yeah. Joel Cheesman (16:34.291) please tell me who's joining us. Joel Cheesman (16:42.067) What? Chad Sowash (16:49.906) maker life initiative aimed at integrating disadvantaged and underemployed individuals into the tech industry. Pretty cool and definitely needed. Apparently Lord Way has formed a team to drive this initiative emphasizing the importance of growth mindset for previously people lacking access to AI data and platform technology. So his vision is now supported by our friends over at This Way Global. So thanks to Angela and the crew over at This Way Global for pulling this conversation and getting a Lord on stage with us. Not to mention, we also have invites for dinner at the House of Commons. I have no clue what to wear. I have no clue what to wear. And, and, and what, I can't wait to see what Cole wears. That's going to be the fun part. Joel Cheesman (17:32.243) Joel Cheesman (17:41.683) getting coal and formal attire might be a stretch, but we'll see. Maybe he'll rock a Winston Churchill hat and overcoat maybe. I don't know. We have a Lord, does this, he has a PR person that's about to get fired if he's coming on stage with us at at Rackfest. By the way, there was a Lord Cheeseman at one point who was a Falconer, apparently. I might ask if they know each other. Chad Sowash (17:45.458) Be a bowtie t -shirt. Chad Sowash (18:07.442) That's surprising. Joel Cheesman (18:10.035) by, by any chance, there's a big election in England on the 4th of July, ironically. so we, we may be going into a cats and dogs living, such living together situation in England while we're there. It could be a really interesting time to talk to a Lord about the, the goings on of, of the UK. That's, that's kind of exciting, kind of exciting, almost exciting. Chad is as the jobs report. Sorry. Almost exciting as the jobs report. Chad Sowash (18:11.506) Ha ha. Chad Sowash (18:16.338) Yeah. Chad Sowash (18:29.586) I agree. I agree. Then yes. yes. No, I'm just gonna say yes. Joel Cheesman (18:38.547) that we talk about on a monthly basis with, with, with link up CEO Toby Dayton on the show. One thing I'm interested in Chad, there's, there's some growing buzz around ghost postings. some people are talking about high numbers in terms of jobs that aren't even available and what kind of impact that has. So I'm interested to see what Toby's opinion is on the ghost postings trend that, I'm seeing a lot more in our, in our industry. Chad Sowash (19:05.618) Same here, same here. Joel Cheesman (19:08.179) But with that... Chad Sowash (19:10.002) Yes. To the apex. Joel Cheesman (19:15.027) don't call them job Fox, Chad Belgian startup tech Wolf has secured $43 million in series B funding to develop its infrastructure for employee skills. That brings its total to $55 .6 million. The company founded by three computer science graduates in 2018 says it uses AI language models to infer employee skills from digital interactions, eliminating those pesky manual assessments. Chad, we all remember. Chad Sowash (19:18.706) god, no. Chad Sowash (19:25.846) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (19:44.691) the wolf from Pulp Fiction who fixed everything, but can this wolf fix the skills gaps within companies? Chad Sowash (19:53.618) Yeah, be, well, let's, let's put it this way. everything that they put out there is really cool and skills focused, but they are a parsing and matching organization. So holy shit, Dax drug gets serious and hires a new CEO. Then text kernel was acquired by bullhorn. And then last week, a much smaller competitor, tech wolf gets a series B. A very nice size series B. So that's saying something for the parsing matching and data skills companies. That's not too bad. Joel Cheesman (20:23.827) Mm -hmm. Yup. 43 mils in ICP, yeah. Chad Sowash (20:30.386) You know, I do have to mention like you said earlier that you know many people thought that the text kernel deal Was it was because AI was coming for text kernel. I don't believe that I really believe that domain experts understand the data They need and how to train LLMs because all of these companies are already using large language models. They've already been using these crazy algorithms for years. Now, Gen AI, what does that do? It just puts jet fuel in their fucking rocket ship, kids. So you gotta ask yourself this question. Why would Felix Capital, 20 BC, Acadian Ventures, Fortuna, SAP, Workday Ventures, and yet... Joel Cheesman (21:14.131) Service now, work day. Chad Sowash (21:16.434) my God, all the and people from DeepMind and Metta put money into an almost dead category. Here's the answer kids. They wouldn't. They wouldn't because you've got to understand that AI is much more complex than you fucking think it is, right? And thinking that open AI is coming after parsing and skills matching. That's not how it fucking goes. So with 50 % of their pipeline in the US, TechWolf will use those funds. Joel Cheesman (21:40.339) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (21:46.354) to expand their presence into the US, which is incredibly smart since once again, the text kernel acquisition, you get an acquisition like this, and you start to play off the waves of that. Daxtra is doing that. We've seen emails and promotions and things of that nature that are going out to text kernel companies just makes sense. They had a series A in May of 2022, $10 million. So, you know, for me, it's incredibly clear this segment Is just going to grow and the term AI was used 12 times in the tech EU article. So, I mean, again, it's alive, it's growing, it's flourishing and tech will, I think they're in a good place along with Daxtra along with higher rise. There are, there are, there are a handful. Joel Cheesman (22:36.819) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:41.299) First of all, can we take a second to applause the rebirth of animal names and URLs, job Fox tech, Wolf, Farat Lee talent zoo. Like I've, I've missed the trend of, of animals being in all these, these company names. So I, I, I salute well, Farat fairly, I salute the return of animals, in URLs. So these guys are serious. this is a lot of money. They're backed by a lot of serious people. Chad Sowash (22:56.05) Apparently. Apparently. Chad Sowash (23:06.866) Yeah. Yes. Joel Cheesman (23:11.219) Like you mentioned, Acadian Ventures, Jason Carcello, our friend, was very excited about this. They sent on an email to investors where Jason said, quote, workers should be defined by their skills, not titles. And employers will fill jobs in the future based on skills development and expertise, not job descriptions. We've talked about this trend many times. People looking to get away from the traditional post a job, pray, hope that the right person shows up. It's more about who's in the, who's, who's already in the stable. Who's already in the kitty. How do we develop them? What jobs are they most like a position for? And how do we, how do we engage with them and get them on the right track for that position? So this falls right into the huge trend of getting away from the old way of doing things and looking at who you currently have because hiring is expensive. Recruiting is expensive. It's a pain in the ass. Recruiters are expensive. Chad Sowash (23:41.682) Yep. Joel Cheesman (24:08.179) It's much more efficient to do it, to do it this way. And from what I can tell, these guys are going to be a serious player, and what's going on. What is interesting though, there is some pushback on skills based hiring. there was an article in Forbes back in March that the tie that was titled skills based hiring has not worked. Now the, the, the gist of that article was it's not so much effective with college graduates that people aren't doing that with, with recent. Chad Sowash (24:22.098) this. Joel Cheesman (24:37.619) folks out of school, they still look at where that they, where they graduate from, but that doesn't impact the 35 year old. Yeah. The, the 30 year old that's, that's been a, you know, a sales guys, a future, you know, chief revenue officer. Like that's what we're talking about. And this trend is going to continue. And I think that, that these guys are in the right place at the right time and they've got money and brains, and supporters behind them to, to really make a big dent in this. This is one to watch as far as I'm concerned. Chad Sowash (24:43.986) That's a duh. Yeah, I mean... Chad Sowash (25:08.978) Yeah, no question. I think, you know, the biggest issue that we have with skills based hiring is companies don't know what the fucking skills are for the job in the first place. And a job is a set of tasks. And within those tasks, there are specific skills for each task, right? Companies don't understand, they don't break that down, right? And they don't understand that. If they understand that, then they understand specifically the skills that you need. So there's that. first and foremost to identify the skills that you need. And then secondly, you know, the ability to then not only say, hey, can you do this and trust that the person can fucking do it, but then test for it, right? Prior to actually hiring the individual. So the whole screening process of can you do this, that, and the other thing, fuck all that. Give them a test. Joel Cheesman (25:46.675) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (25:55.667) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (25:57.298) Let them take it and then they can shoot right to the top of the slate. If they kick ass and take names, then you have at this point a qualified candidate, a qualified and interested candidate that is worth. 10 ,000 fucking clicks easily, right? So this is where we're moving. I agree 100%, but we still have a lot of foundational work to do as companies to understand what those jobs and skills actually are. Joel Cheesman (26:01.683) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (26:14.035) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (26:24.659) Yeah. Look, if you're a company with, you know, we talked to UPS recently, if you're a company with 10, 20, 50 ,000 employees and plus, this tool is invaluable because it's very hard to track that many employees, what their strong suits like what, if you can leverage a tool like this and have tens of thousands of employees and start, you know, rank managing, like where they should fit in in the future and where they belong. This is an incredibly powerful tool and trend for companies that are huge. Chad Sowash (26:29.074) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (26:53.267) Maybe not the small businesses, but if you're huge, you need a tool like tech Wolf, to help you make sense of your thousands and thousands of employees. Chad Sowash (26:59.986) If you're a vendor, if you're a vendor and you have a huge database and you can start to actually push out slates of candidates that are more qualified, companies will pay more than per click. They will pay, I mean, they're going to pay for qualified leads, which is what sales and marketing have been doing forever. So we're finally catching up to some extent. It is much harder, obviously in our job than it is in sales and marketing's job to do that from a lead standpoint, but this is where it's at. Joel Cheesman (27:28.755) Yeah, yeah, good job. Well, from one company we like to another one, fair now an AI governance software company based out of McLean, Virginia has raised $3 .5 million in seed funding to expand operations and staff. The company led by CEO and Chad and cheese fan guru set through Pathy, helps enterprises manage AI risks and compliance focusing on highly regulated industries. Fair now got two enthusiastic thumbs up on our firing squad show, but Chad Sowash (27:35.826) Yeah, Guru! Joel Cheesman (28:01.971) Are you still on board following this news, Chad? Chad Sowash (28:05.97) So AI is a big topic, compliance is a big business, an AI compliance company, I say winner, winner, robot, chicken, dinner, baby. So seriously though, hiring companies are going to need experts in this space and the traditional hiring compliance people. They're going to have a hard time covering this gap using spreadsheets. So, you know, I was in compliance, the compliance business on the technology side for five or six years in hiring companies, the ability to explain and or defend their processes, standard operating procedures, data management techniques, candidate slates and overall hiring outcomes will be a humongous business due to the new scale, AI affords companies to create more efficient processes, identify qualified candidates, and fill open positions for either internal or external candidate pools. So, I mean, for me, this is, I mean, this is, I think I'm going to go over a little overboard a little bit, but this feels almost like the Nvidia of our space, right? There aren't any of them. There aren't many of them. but this is, this is going to be something that's going to be needed by every single big swing and you know what fucking company space. So congrats to guru and the team at fair. Now I believe this is definitely going to be, you know, give him a leg up on the competition and who knows there might be acquisition talks before you know it, because somebody's going to need this shit. Joel Cheesman (29:24.947) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:40.851) Ooh. Anytime that you have government regulation meet product solution, it's a, it's a home run, because buyers now have an intrinsic interest in buying a product that can manage their risk, keep them out of court, keep them out of trouble from their, from their bosses. We saw it like this was, I mean, direct employers. Chad Sowash (29:48.53) Yeah. Chad Sowash (30:05.81) Yep. Joel Cheesman (30:12.691) compliance like this, that you know this better than I do, but you look at, yeah. I mean, there was a, there was a day where, Hey, we, we post jobs on diversity jobs .com because well, that's a diverse audience. And that, that was something that they could show, the, the, the, the powers that be. there's a new law in Europe, a whistleblower law where companies of certain size have to give whistleblowers an anonymous portal to, submit. Chad Sowash (30:16.466) This made the organization. Joel Cheesman (30:42.579) cases of the company, you know, behaving badly. Well, guess what? There's going to be a whole lot of companies, come out of Europe with this whistleblower dashboard anonymous thing, because the government says you have to have it. This is the same thing. AI is everywhere. If you don't use it, you're going to fall behind. But guess what? There's more laws and regulation to come down the pike. You need some service solution to make sure you're covering your ass that you can go to whatever law agency comes knock on the door and saying, no, we're good. Here's fair. Now here's our shit. Here's our certification, whatever that is. And fair now is an, is in a, in a position to like print money and tell me I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any competitors come out of the woodwork yet. which really surprises me. But right now, as far as I can see fair now is in the, the pole position to handle all. companies using AI to recruit to make sure that you're keeping your nose clean and they are going to print money because of that. I was surprised that it was only 3 .5 million. So I have to think that guru being the guru that he is said, we're only going to take what we need. I still want to have as, you know, as much control as possible. So we talk all the time about companies fail because they take too much money. I was glad to see guru not taking a, you know, a ransom. Chad Sowash (32:05.714) Yep. Joel Cheesman (32:09.747) some to start this company because I think he was really smart around this. And, yeah, in terms of acquisition opportunities, come on, this is, this is going to be interesting. So hat off to him. This is a home run. Yeah. Yeah. Huge, huge applause. Just like we did when he was on firing squad. If you haven't listened to that episode and you want to know more about, about, fair now check that. Chad Sowash (32:22.482) Big applause. Joel Cheesman (32:34.419) check that one out. Well, from two companies we love to, well, maybe one that's not so much. Joel Cheesman (32:42.931) So in an article by our friend, Jim, the indeed whisperer Durbin for aim group job search engine indeed has seen a 10 % global and 9 .4 % us traffic drop from January through may. Chad Sowash (32:47.537) There he is. Joel Cheesman (33:00.659) Raising concerns about seasonal trends or AI influence. Jim highlights the fact that competitors like zip recruiter show different trends, such as showing a drop from January followed by four month upward trends suggesting specific challenges for indeed. What kind of challenges you ask Chad, how about changes in Google's algorithm favoring AI summaries over direct clicks to job boards, Chad, your take on indeed's recent traffic woes. Chad Sowash (33:29.586) Yeah, you've talked about, you know, no click. SEO, right, for I think a couple of years now because they've started to just provide more information before you even need to go to the website. And indeed was the winner of the SEO Olympics with Google, for goodness sake. So this right now could be a very, very bad thing for them. But this, kids, is just another reason for Indeed to move into staffing. I mean, when you hit the outer edges of your market, What else would you expect if you've already hit that tam and you can't see any other way out? You blow through the walls and you do something more. And again, I really believe, and I said this on the last week's show, I believe for me, this is incredibly smart, not just for Indeed Flex, but for the market because it's going to force traditional staffing companies to stop. being so fucking traditional, right? They're going to have to employ technologies. They're going to have to be smarter. They're going to have to be good at what they fucking do for God sakes. This is going to be interesting. So I'm going to love watching what happens here. Joel Cheesman (34:44.531) Yeah. So Seth Godin, who I've mentioned on the show once or twice before, a well -known marketing guy, been around forever. He had a post on his blog recently entitled better than Google. In this post, he cited perplexity as a better experience than Google. If you haven't checked out perplexity, I encourage you to do that. But he says in his first line, that he hasn't been, he hasn't done a Google search in months. pretty prescient. And, and on our, on our AMA call yesterday with, with Jeff Lackey, he mentioned the lack of Google, searches that he's done lately. So I do, I do think there is some underlying issues that Google's going to have to face. I mean, employment is the least of their worries, but like they're in a, if you rely on Google traffic, like a lot of our search, search job search brothers and sisters do. Chad Sowash (35:25.938) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (35:35.314) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (35:45.107) Google is going to be really hard, mountain to climb, based on some of the commentary that I've done. And I think in my own use, I use Google less than I typically have. Now I still think we're a long way from the summaries that, that, that Jim talks about. I think we're a long way from saying into perplexity or chat GPT or whatever. what, what's a job I can do or what job should I take in Indianapolis for sales? It's. Chad Sowash (36:10.674) Now we have. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (36:12.819) It's not going to give you a summary of like companies. Like it's the classified world is still very, very old school. And I don't see that changing because of AI. Now, what was interesting to me was his comment about zip recruiter doing better or not seeing a drop versus indeed. So I did a little bit of research before the show, Chad, and this is by no means scientific, but every search that I did where indeed and zip recruiter both had the same job. Zip Recruiter was before Indeed. So it says apply on Indeed, apply on LinkedIn, apply on Zip Recruiter was always before Indeed. Why is that? I have no fucking clue. It can't be an SEO issue. Is it is indeed like, is Google like testing out like what if we own Zip Recruiter and what do people, I don't know, man, but it's Chad Sowash (36:48.306) Wow. Yeah. Right. Chad Sowash (36:58.226) Hmm. Chad Sowash (37:03.665) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (37:12.467) If, if zip recruiter traffic hasn't crashed and indeed is sagging and, and, and a search that I did that zip recruiter comes first after, you know, before indeed you got to put two and two together in common sense and say more job seekers are clicking zip recruiter because it comes before indeed and LinkedIn, everybody else. just because that's the habit of, of human beings. So no conspiracy theory yet, Chad, but it's kind of weird. And look, indeed, you know, stuck it to Google for a long time. They wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't play with Google for jobs. ZipRecruiter was an early, early entrant to that. Is this like Google sticking it to indeed? Is this, I don't know, but it's something to watch and this decrease in traffic, I think maybe go deeper than just Google summaries and not Googling. Like it may be deeper. Sorry for the conspiracy theory, but it's kind of weird. Chad Sowash (37:51.186) Yeah, Adopt -r. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:10.899) that that's happening. Chad Sowash (38:12.914) It's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. Yes. Again. It's so weird. Yeah. Expanding, expanded the tam, baby. Expanding the tam. Joel Cheesman (38:14.963) It's so weird. It's so weird. Joel Cheesman (38:22.131) Yeah, yeah, no one's crying for indeed. All right, we'll take a quick break and talk about cars. Joel Cheesman (38:30.835) All right, Chad, we like a good car news story. We like good Tesla story and EV stories. Let's throw them all together. This week, there was quite a bit of car news. First, internal data out of Tesla shows the company slashed at least 14 % of the workforce this year. Secondly, autonomous taxi service Waymo announced they're ditching the wait list and opening up to everyone in the San Francisco area. And lastly, McKinsey found that 46 % of EV owners in the U S said they were quote, very likely to switch back to owning a gas powered vehicle for their next purchase. Chad, what do you make of all this activity in the car industry this week? Chad Sowash (39:13.746) Yeah, I'm flipping around a little bit. Start with Waymo. I mean, it's just a matter of time. The tech will get better. Traffic cones on hoods won't bother the systems anymore. And for people like my wife, Julie, who hates driving, this is going to be her transportation panacea for God sakes. I think GM pulled the plug on cruise way too soon and they're going to regret it. As for the EV switch, Joel Cheesman (39:30.387) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (39:38.578) There are a couple of different things here. It's like all or none. It's either combustion or it's EV. And the first problem is infrastructure. I mean, when you have a gas -powered car, when you go to fill it up, it takes five minutes. You go to fill it up, to plug in somewhere, if you're taking a long trip, 20 to 30 minutes, right? Joel Cheesman (40:00.915) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (40:01.234) and we are all about immediacy. So access and then immediacy. So those are the two problems. And then at the end of the day, well, let's put it this way. That's why when I buy a car here in Portugal, it's gonna be a hybrid. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both people, Jesus Christ. And then Tesla layoffs. Joel Cheesman (40:18.003) Hmm. Yeah. Chad Sowash (40:26.002) If you've been listening to the prior stories at all and watching BYD move toward market dominance, none of this should be a surprise. None of it should be a surprise. So, you know, it was great. I think obviously Tesla came out of the barrel incredibly hot. They had sexy cars. They went incredibly fast. They had plaid speed from space balls. I mean, all these really cool kind of weird, you know, weird Joel Cheesman (40:33.267) Hmm. Yeah. Chad Sowash (40:51.25) Elon things, but it is for me, I think it's really short lived personally. Joel Cheesman (41:02.099) By the way, Chad space balls was released this week back in 1987. Little factoid for the, for the listeners out there who I know enjoy a good space balls reference. So I'll go in your order. Waymo. Yes. you and I saw these cars in action. We were in Phoenix. I did not try one because we had an Uber, Uber credit, to use, but I don't know if you did or not, but, but the people who had. Chad Sowash (41:07.154) Look at that, look at that connection. Chad Sowash (41:20.018) Yeah. Chad Sowash (41:26.098) Yeah, exactly. Joel Cheesman (41:30.195) Enjoy the experience. very little, negative commentary around Waymo and I'm with you, man. If I didn't have to own a car, I wouldn't. The insurance sucks. Like it, what you pay for it, it takes up space. Like it's just a bad investment. It's not an investment at all. Right. It depreciates to hell. after the second you drive it off the lot, if I could just on an app, get a Waymo, you know, take me to Chipotle. Pick me back up to like, I would totally do that. Now it's not in our market, but I think it's just a matter of time before Waymo and there's more competition around the self -driving. By the way, all these Waymos are EVs. so take that for what it's worth. If this trend grows, EVs are going to grow. in terms of the sentiment around, I bought an electric car, but my next car is going to be gas. So I, we own a Tesla. Okay. We don't test that my wife drives. I'll, I'll create some kind of, but I get to drive it every so often. and I will tell you that it's a, it's just a, it's a fun experience. like I w we would buy, I would buy another EV and that might be our next car, but I, I do, I do appreciate the feed, the pushback that if we want to go on a long trip. So let's say when we want to go to Louisville. So from Andy to Louisville, there are no. Tesla charging stations, right? You're in Columbus, which is right in the middle. It'd be perfect, right? Put it at that, at that exit where there's a B dubs and some other stuff, right? There's a Freddy's burgers. Yeah. So like we have to, if we go to Louisville from where we are, which is about a two hour drive to Jeffersonville, we have to go further south to charge it and Louisville to then go back, go back to Indianapolis. Chad Sowash (42:58.386) Nah. Nah. Yeah, perfect. Joel Cheesman (43:19.091) That's pretty inconvenient. So we've had times where we've said, let's just take the minivan because we don't want to go like an extra five miles to go charge it over in Louisville. we go to Canada often. It's not super convenient. We got to like kind of go out of the way. So there has to be more charging stations to your point that hybrids are having a moment. So to say like, nobody wants an EV. I'm not sure that's correct. They want to be more efficient. They want to do the environmental thing, although you can argue whether or not. Chad Sowash (43:19.538) Wow. Yes. Chad Sowash (43:27.314) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (43:48.403) Teslas are that good for the environment. And I appreciate that as well. But if you solve the problem of easy access to chargers, I think that people would feel much differently about changing back to a gas car and watch the fluctuations of gas prices go up and sentiment is going to go the other way. And that's going to escalate based on gas prices. So I'm not bearish at all on EVs. They're going to figure some of that stuff out. I think. But anyway, in terms of Tesla, you're right. The stock has been sideways for a year or for this, this whole year stock has been sideways. China is going to get in this market in a huge way. And even though it was, you won't see him in America, for sure. A hundred percent is a hundred percent, tax on that. And then even in the EU, I think there's like a 38 % tax on, on the B Y on those cars. But in terms of. Chad Sowash (44:32.754) Don't have to. Joel Cheesman (44:45.587) Africa, rest of Asia, South America, like these are going to be a trend and Tesla's gonna suffer for it. I don't, I don't see anything any way around it. They're like $9 ,000. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they're talking about like, they're going to make them in Mexico and because of NAFTA, like it's free trade from Mexico. So like, I mean, it's, it's going to be a pickle and Tesla's sort of. Chad Sowash (44:52.978) They're half the price. They're half the price of a Tesla. So therefore, if it's a 38 % tax, yeah, it's 38 % tax. It's like, okay, they're still cheaper. Joel Cheesman (45:14.515) What's going to happen to them? I mean, a lot of people, 200 ,000 people work for Tesla roughly. or sorry, 140 ,000 people work for Tesla. So let's call it 20 ,000 people lost their jobs. If this, if these numbers are true, I mean, that's, those are real people with, you know, real lives and families. So my heart goes out to them. It's easy to say 14%, but what does that mean in human terms? So Tesla's got some shit to figure out and some competition coming on the pike. so I think, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be tough. Rivian just got a big investment from Volkswagen, but then also Fisker declared bankruptcy. So we're seeing a lot of volatility in the EV market, but I think at the end of the day, I think that's, that's the future. don't, don't deny it. Don't deny it. Chad Sowash (45:53.65) Yeah. Chad Sowash (45:58.962) Yeah, yeah. Hybrid now though. Joel Cheesman (46:02.259) Hybrid for now kids hybrid for now. Well, let's go to some more automation stories. This is pretty interesting. Morgan Stanley. I know that's where you keep all your money. Chad is rolling out what they call debrief, a generative AI assistant to help its financial advisors with administrative tasks, improving efficiency and client engagement. The tool built on open AI's GPT -4 will summarize meetings, draft emails, and manage notes with the expectation of enhancing an advisor's productivity. I think I smell a trend, Chad. What are your thoughts? Chad Sowash (46:35.794) That's too easy. That's it's too easy. I mean, no more taking notes, entering summaries into your CRM, boiling down highlights, creating action items, drafting emails. I mean, that's just for starters. I mean, that's just for starters, it's going to get smarter. And that's the scary part, because as this happens, you're training the the LLM, right? So the AI could isolate if you're in sales, objections. and the best ways to handle those objections, which would be amazing for an individual and group trainings, then it could take the next step, AI voice technology, which starts fielding incoming calls, making outgoing calls, emails and other communications. You know, much like teleperformance. are using their AI to help customer service reps find appropriate responses and answers faster. Those human interactions are also training the large language model to do what? Well, to provide better responses and answers and possibly take the human's fucking jobs. How does this work for recruiting? This is fun. Joel Cheesman (47:37.139) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (47:41.49) Check out talktosam .ai. It's already happening and it's just the beginning as the LLMs are just a puppy in training right now. It's going to get smarter. It's going to get better. And our buddy Max Armbruster over at Talk Push, they did this talk to Sam thing and he's like, try it out. I'm like, come on, man. This is going to be hokey and corny and just going to suck. And it was, it was legit. Joel Cheesman (47:59.475) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (48:06.835) It's going to be all War Games 1984. Chad Sowash (48:10.898) Exactly. And then, and then we take a look at how we do podcasts. We use Riverside. They've got it infused with some, some large language model and it saves us a huge amount of time. I also use Chatt GPT, Dolly. I mean, so for me, if you're not using these tools, two things, first and foremost, you got to be aware that you're training them in the first place. But secondly, I mean, they're just, they're making life so much easier. Joel Cheesman (48:38.259) Yeah, much easier. Joel Cheesman (48:42.707) So this is just sexy. And this is the way it's gonna be. Look, we talked to Eileen at General Motors when we were in Phoenix. She talked about laying off 200 schedulers, human beings whose only job was to schedule, reschedule, cancel whatever interviews. That's insane. And in today's world, you don't need 200 people working. you're scheduling, and GM is now 200 employees lighter because of technology and Morgan Stanley is following suit and more and more companies will be doing this. Morgan Stanley employees, 15 ,000 or so people. These are some of the numbers posted by, one of their executives. They believe it will save 30 minutes of work per meeting. Little context, they expect to have to conduct roughly 1 million Zoom meetings per year. If you're doing the math, that's roughly 500 ,000 hours that they're saving. Or if you're working a 40 hour week, that's 250 ,000 full -time employees that will be doing that work. So the year of efficiency goes on past its first year and more. Yeah, look. Chad Sowash (49:41.33) Yeah. Chad Sowash (50:00.626) decades. Joel Cheesman (50:03.571) This is going to impact the bottom line. This is going to impact stock price. People are going to excited. this is going to be a huge trend that we're going to see at every company that has, you know, a certain amount of employees, maybe every company, no matter how many employees. Chad Sowash (50:13.074) Yeah. Chad Sowash (50:17.49) The biggest piece around this is data. All of this transcription information, everything that gets pushed into your sales force, if they have access to sales force, they can see how those leads actually go through the system. The sales cycle for every single individual contributor, so on and so forth. I mean, this is going to make things so much smarter, not just from the standpoint of sales and customer service and so on and so forth, but it's going to help managers identify where people are falling down and hopefully Joel Cheesman (50:41.363) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (50:51.06) help them before they get fucking fired. So I mean that amount of data though is just key. Joel Cheesman (50:58.035) Yeah, if you're not on this train, well. Chad Sowash (51:02.802) you Joel Cheesman (51:03.539) Let's take a quick break and talk about Hooters. What else would you expect after a two week break from Cheeseman? Joel Cheesman (51:15.187) All right, Chad, while Hooters are all the rage at Edmonton Oilers games and portals between Dublin and New York City, not all Hooters are enjoying their time in the sun. Once popular restaurant Hooters, the home of chicken wings and female breasts recently closed approximately 40 of its 300 restaurants worldwide, citing economic. pressures. This move is part of a broader trend among restaurant chains facing challenges from inflation. And that's the money kind of inflation, not the mammary kind Chad, the changing consumer spending habits are impacting it as well. Chad, your thoughts on the sagging business at Hooters. Chad Sowash (52:00.914) I think once again, this is a business model issue. Buffalo Wild Wings was an evolution of Hooters. They serve better wings, they have more TV, and most importantly, half of the population, women, actually want to frequent BW3s instead of having a half -naked woman put their tits in their husband's face at Hooters. It just makes good business sense not to piss off half the population. Plus, those Hooters girls can probably make more money without fighting off of grabbing drunks on OnlyFans. Joel Cheesman (52:35.923) You know, Hooters is really going south. I wish, I wish they'd get some support somewhere for that. Chad, we used to, we used to read Playboy for the articles and we used to go to Hooters for the wings. None of that was true. Of course, we wanted to see women naked or at least partially naked. look, the biggest thing is that Wingstop makes better wings now and we have Pornhub and OnlyFans. Chad Sowash (52:39.122) Yeah. Chad Sowash (52:44.914) Huh? Yeah, sure. Joel Cheesman (53:04.467) to replace Playboy. So where does Hooters fit in this current trend? It ain't the food. And frankly, the outfits are outdated. You feel a little dirty when you go, the wings aren't that like, there's really no good reason. And you can't take your family there. You can't, you know, you can't take your wife, girlfriend there. you got, you got flat screen TVs that are 85 plus inches, you know, large, you can watch any game from home, fry up your own wings. Like it just, it just doesn't make sense to have a Hooters in the current day, landscape. So I think no amount of support is going to save this company. they're, they're going down the tubes. So I always, I always wondered what the, what it was like to apply for a job at Hooters. Like, did they just give them a bra and say, fill this out? Is that how? Is that how that works? I don't know. Wait a minute, Chad. I've been gone for a while, so I got another dad joke for you. My wife was so happy to hear that I was giving so much money to charity until she found out that charity was a waitress at Hooters. That's right, kids. That's right. That's right. I'm back, baby. Chad Sowash (53:59.282) Welcome back, Cheesman. Chad Sowash (54:04.946) Yes. Joel Cheesman (54:21.171) We out. Chad Sowash (54:22.738) We out.

Join Chad and Lieven in this week’s episode as they dive into Europe’s hottest tech news. With Joel savoring Singaporean street food, the duo tackles LinkedIn’s new AI career coaches and the impact of Bullhorn acquiring Text Kernel on the recruitment industry. They explore Revolut’s surprising move into HR tech with Revolut People, discussing potential privacy concerns and market implications. Lieven passionately defends traditional brewing against AI enhancements in Belgian beer, while Chad shares his excitement. They also critique StepStone’s recent rebranding efforts and its potential impact on the company's future. Tune in for a lively discussion on AI, recruitment tech, and European innovations, all with a side of humor and a dash of Belgian beer. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad Sowash (00:07.593) yeah. Chad Sowash (00:40.233) yeah, baby. Welcome to another lactose free Chad and leaving does Europe this this this week Joel is gorging himself with Singapore street food. Good for him. So leaving joins me to talk about all things Europe. That's right. AI is coming for your Belgian beer. Tex Colonel tells us why they sold to Bullhorn. Revolut goes people and Stepstone gets out the lipstick. Let's do this. Chad Sowash (01:19.195) Wow, man. So go figure. Cheeseman's gone. Thank God, because now we can talk soccer and he won't get, he won't know what's going on. We call it European football because we're both Europeans right now, right? So what do you think? Euro 2024. What do you think about Belgium? Lieven (01:33.614) I don't know. Lieven (01:39.054) I heard they lost? Chad Sowash (01:40.809) Yeah, they might not make it out of the group phase, my friend. And that is, which is weird because just a few years ago, they were like one of the favorites to make it to, you know, at least the semi -finals. So they haven't been playing very well. Lieven (01:45.326) Nah, boho. Lieven (01:58.094) No, so I was told but I'm not planning on watching so I don't really care but I'm sure many people might. Chad Sowash (02:08.521) Yeah, Germany is doing well. I mean, France and Bapé got his nose broken. I mean, there's been he's playing tonight, though, from what we're hearing, he'll probably play with one of those those funky looking masks. So he'll look like, you know, he's from Phantom of the Opera or some shit like that. But yeah, at the end of the day, Portugal didn't look good. So but they still won. So it's it's it's only hopefully up for upward and onward for here for them. Lieven (02:15.854) Ow. Lieven (02:22.334) No. Chad Sowash (02:37.417) But the Netherlands, you have friends in the Netherlands who they're looking pretty good. Lieven (02:42.254) They're already planning the champion party, I think. It's always like that with our Dutch colleagues. They're so enthusiastic and totally believing in their own football capabilities. Chad Sowash (02:45.737) Ha ha! Chad Sowash (02:54.025) Yes, they remind me of the Swedes because the Swedes believe that everything Swedish is the best, right? And it's almost the same when you go to the Netherlands. It's like they're very confident that they have the answer and they know the best, right? And in many cases, unfortunately, that's not the case. Lieven (02:59.79) Okay. Lieven (03:15.31) But they're also very chumba wumba, they get kicked down every time again, they never become world champion, but every time again they get up and they're there again. Chad Sowash (03:18.633) Ha ha! Chad Sowash (03:24.073) they get up and they'll be back again. Yes, yes. Okay, well, I tell you what, let's go ahead and let's move this along with our favorites. I'll just go ahead and you kick it off. Lieven (03:39.886) What do I kick off? the shout out, sorry. Okay. Chad Sowash (03:41.321) Shout outs, it's shout out time. shout out time. Lieven (03:46.894) Okay, my shout out goes to LinkedIn's new career coaches. I'm not sure if you saw the article, but according to an article in Wired from last week, it looks like LinkedIn is finally going to capitalize on their relationship with OpenAI. So both LinkedIn and OpenAI were bought by Microsoft. So I thought they're like siblings. They should be using each other's software and now finally they're going to do it. So I'm going to quote in the article that says something like, Chad Sowash (03:51.145) Ha! Chad Sowash (04:05.193) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (04:11.401) huh. Lieven (04:15.022) LinkedIn is introducing chats with generative AI career experts based on real people. Other new AI tools within the platform will help people write resumes and cover letters and evaluate their qualifications for posted jobs. And I like the idea. So they're actually going to make like virtual versions of those HR influencers. And I've checked the names. I didn't know any of them. There was a Lisa. There was two others. probably big in the US, but not big in Belgium. I didn't know them, but it's a cool idea. They're going to make virtual versions of real people, NHR, and they're going to use those people to help you with your career. That's cool. And the chatbots will allow premium subscribers to ask questions like, how can I negotiate my salary? And the chatbot is trained on the cost work of those real life coaches and they will answer. Chad Sowash (05:01.033) Yeah Lieven (05:11.822) Anyway, to make a long story short, I went to LinkedIn and I went to the job board part. And I actually found something looking a bit like AI. And I tested it. And then it didn't work. And then I gave up. But I'm sure it's just momentarily not malfunctioning things. So they'll be back up. But at this point, for me, it didn't work. But I do like the idea. Chad Sowash (05:20.073) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (05:28.137) Hahaha Chad Sowash (05:40.265) I like the idea. I mean, the biggest problem with LinkedIn is they have so much data and their system has been shit from a matching standpoint and just being able to get us literally the basic relevant information. So hopefully this new AI and these new large language models will be able to make more sense of the data that they have. Because I've said it a million times, LinkedIn has more career data and contextual data about me. Lieven (05:48.302) Hmm. Chad Sowash (06:09.673) than any other social platform that's out there today. And yet they are the worst performing from a matching standpoint. They don't really provide relevance in your feed. They just provide things that your friends throw out there, right? So which, you know, I think that's okay that just an algorithm that you don't have to screw with versus one that, you know, you do. So hopefully this is this is a step forward for them because man, they've really sucked them technical side for years. Lieven (06:32.27) Mm -hmm. Lieven (06:38.83) Yeah, and I don't even mind their algorithm for the news feeds. But what I don't like is their job matching as we speak. So just an example. It's so easy. It should be so easy. I get a job notification whenever there's a new job for a CMO in Belgium. I just like to know when some company is looking for new CMOs. It's my business. And so I follow the keyword CMO. And I now got a job for an engineer designing CMOS. Chad Sowash (06:46.345) horrible. Chad Sowash (06:50.121) Yeah. Lieven (07:08.014) chips, CMOS chips. OK, I get the point, but we're 2024. They should be able to do better. CMO, CMOS, that's like in the 1990s. And now, I think using OpenAI, even a chat -shape EBT matching should do better. It should do much better because it's context sensitive. Chad Sowash (07:08.393) Hahaha Chad Sowash (07:16.425) keyword matching. Chad Sowash (07:21.353) It is. It totally is. Chad Sowash (07:30.057) Yeah. Lieven (07:32.686) So I hope they get this right, because that would actually make a big difference, not only for the job seeker, but also for us as the people who paid our bonuses. Chad Sowash (07:41.609) Yeah, yeah, no shit, right? Yeah, well, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna stick with AI with my shout out. My shout out is to AI Beer. Researchers in Belgium, that's right, Belgium use AI to improve taste of beer. Lieven (07:58.83) Uhhh... Chad Sowash (08:00.937) This is straight out of the Guardian, quote, where whether you prefer a fruity lambic or a complex Trappist Belgian beers have long been famed for their variety, quality and heritage. No question Belgian beer kicks ass. Now researchers say they have harnessed the power of AI to make brews even better. Professor Ken Verstrepen of KU Leuven University. Lieven (08:16.75) Hmm. Lieven (08:28.878) Indeed. Chad Sowash (08:30.665) is, I don't know what that is, who led the research said AI could help tease apart the complex relationships involved in human aroma perception. End quote. Leaven, are you ready for some AI infused beer? Lieven (08:46.954) No, I'd say don't touch my beer. I love AI, I love beer, but you don't have to mingle it up. It's by the way pronounced K .U. Leuven, Catholic University of Leuven, which is the oldest university, I think one of the oldest even in the world, the third oldest. Beautiful, beautiful city. And good to know, Leuven is the city where Abbe Inbaf, you know, the biggest brewery in the world, I think so, has its headquarters. They used to have their headquarters there, probably in Luxembourg because they... Chad Sowash (08:48.969) Ha ha ha ha ha! Chad Sowash (09:01.353) really? Chad Sowash (09:09.673) yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. wow. Lieven (09:15.886) can pay less taxes, but the stala is grown in Leuven. It's a beautiful student city, but it's also a beer city in Belgium. Leuven, that's right. Chad Sowash (09:17.257) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (09:22.793) Leuven. Chad Sowash (09:27.401) So, Levin says, stay away from his beer AI. Lieven (09:32.334) Okay. I'm at. Chad Sowash (09:33.769) Now, we're gonna jump into some idea that was from wargame. It's in case you haven't seen that the 1980s film with Matthew Broderick. He actually he hacked into a defense computer, a DOD computer. And yeah, they played war games. Anyway, events are next and we're not going to have any war games at Wreckfest. Wreckfest is happening July 11, just north of London, England at Nebworth Park. The place is amazing. Lieven (09:37.934) Huh. Lieven (09:41.57) Thanks for watching! Chad Sowash (10:03.401) I personally can't wait to get back. So many friends, so much good shit happening in the industry. Can't wait to hear from all these different mouthpieces. We're really looking forward to seeing everybody there. So come over to the disrupt stage where we're gonna be talking about technology all damn day. Joel and I are gonna be emceeing at the disrupt stage, July 11th, Nebworth Park at RecFest. And you are gonna be on the beach. Lieven (10:28.558) And I was there last year and it was amazing indeed. It was the first time I was there and it's impressive. The whole festival sphere and happy people. The weather was even nice. People drinking beer on an HR festival. It's cool. So did I. Chad Sowash (10:44.233) Love it. We like to call it recruit a Palooza because like a Lollapalooza, you know, there's music at the end. I mean, it's just, it's, it's just the environment of a festival, right? A recruitment technology festival. Lieven (10:49.806) What was that? Lieven (10:54.318) Yeah. Lieven (10:58.126) Yeah. And I want to copy it. I mean, at House of HR, we have our own festival. It's going to be somewhere in September for our own colleagues. And we also have the eRecruitment Congress. So if we would just match up those two, we would have something as good as the... Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:03.433) Hahaha! Chad Sowash (11:09.193) Mmm. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:17.193) Yeah, I don't know. We're gonna have to talk to Jamie about it. Maybe we can, maybe there can be an infusion, a house of HR, rec fest infusion. That would be pretty awesome. Let's create some better world with some new, shall we? Topics! All right, kids, that's right. Bullhorn buys text kernel. This week the bullhorn. Lieven (11:26.222) and together create a better world. Chad Sowash (11:44.009) staffing applicant tracking system acquired parsing and matching powerhouse text kernel. We talked about the news on last week's show entitled quote bullhorn strikes back and indeed end quote. So check that out and listen to our friend of the show right now. Text kernel CEO Harard Mulder give us his thoughts and insights on the text kernel acquisition by bullhorn. Here we go. Listen to Harard. Chad Sowash (13:41.929) All I gotta say is get out of my head, Herard. How did you know what I was thinking? I mean, come on, man. But seriously, what are you thinking, Levin? Lieven (13:44.558) Thank you. Lieven (13:50.222) I was thinking what was the multiple they paid? He didn't mention a multiple, did he? No, I honestly was thinking what was the multiple? He sounds very happy so the multiple must be pretty high. Chad Sowash (13:55.313) He did not. And they've... Chad Sowash (14:03.017) I can't imagine that it wasn't. He is holding that very close to his breast pocket. I'll tell you that, because I tried to get it out of him and I couldn't get it out of him, but go ahead. Lieven (14:05.198) Nah. Lieven (14:10.126) By the way Chad, do you remember where you were March 19th, 2024? Chad Sowash (14:20.137) no. What's that? Okay. Lieven (14:21.646) I will tell you. March 19th you were in Amsterdam at House of HR's Irrecruitment Congress. And do you know who else was there? And who was there also? Bullhorn! Do you think it's a coincidence? Chad Sowash (14:26.921) Harard. Bullhorn. it could have been a match made in heaven. That could have been a house of HR. Lieven (14:37.518) It's a match made in Amsterdam, man. It's like we prepared this, or we didn't. But it's a match made in Amsterdam. OK, I know it could be a coincidence, but the biggest deals are made at House of HR's Irreglutant Congress in Amsterdam. It is known. So I don't think it's a coincidence. But anyway, I already congratulated Gerard. Nice done. Nicely done. And I think also for Bullhorn, it makes sense. If you look at the two products, it's like you say, a match made in heaven. It's... Chad Sowash (14:45.445) Nice. Lieven (15:07.47) That's a good idea. And at House of HR, we use both Bullhorn and Text Kernel. So if those two are even going to be working closer together, we only can be very enthusiastic about it. And the AI parts will become more important. And if Text Kernel will enable us to create better shortlists and to even address candidate pools, external candidate pools, which they do, that would be a big gain for us. Chad Sowash (15:19.593) Yeah. Chad Sowash (15:36.073) Mm -hmm. Lieven (15:36.142) So if I get it right, they can match through, for example, LinkedIn. Candidates we don't even know, match them with our own vacancies and import them and parse all the information to Bullhorn. And if it works smooth, then this is very, very nice. So thank you, Bullhorn. Thank you, TextCarnal. Chad Sowash (15:58.057) Yeah, I think even even more important that they can match to the candidates that you've already paid for, right? And they can do it with a very high trust content at that point and make it much easier. But I have to say that when Harard called me about a week ago, about a week before announcing the deal, I was fucking shocked. And the last time I was this shocked was when Robert Lieven (16:04.878) Hmm. Chad Sowash (16:23.145) called me and said that they were selling Sovereign to Text Colonel. Now why, you might ask, why was I so shocked? Because these companies have huge portfolios of business and less than a handful of real competitors. They are printing money. I shit you not. These guys, I remember talking to Robert Ruff before he sold Sovereign to Text Colonel. And I know that Text Colonel has been growing their footprint. Lieven (16:26.606) yeah. Chad Sowash (16:52.681) But let's go ahead. Let's go ahead and get to Harard's point. So I totally agree with you I don't know what the multiple is but I guarantee you it is damn damn big number one Harard points to 10 ,000 companies in in Bullhorn. That's a huge portfolio But from Bullhorn's standpoint, I believe it's a huge market differentiator for companies like yours that turning 10 ,000 Lieven (17:02.35) Hmm. Chad Sowash (17:21.321) customers into 20 ,000 or more rather, I mean, in short order. But what about Tex Kernel's portfolio and their ability to continue to provide parsing and matching to tech companies, HR tech companies all over the world because that's what they do today. So I believe this is an expansion of Bullhorn's TAM, which is awesome. And I believe the upside here is great for Tex Kernel, but it's even better for Bullhorn. Lieven (17:50.094) Hmm. Chad Sowash (17:50.281) Number two, AI is becoming a commodity quickly, which means data is queen on the chessboard and using the data of 10 ,000 bullhorn companies to improve text kernels algorithms is enormous. So many have said on the socials that text kernel wasn't long for the world because AI would be infringing on their market share. And I would agree if TexKernel wasn't already well beyond the rest of the market in building domain specific large language models. They've been doing this. They've been working with AI, right? And now they've been working with generative AI for years now. And nobody has the data and expertise that TexKernel had before this acquisition. And now they can pump jet fuel into those models with all of that data from Bullhorn. I think the biggest issue for me, and I said this on the weekly show, is this is a massive, massive lift for an applicant tracking system in a company like Bullhorn. Can they pull this off? That's the big question. You've worked with Bullhorn. Do you think they can actually make something this massive happen? Lieven (19:01.326) Mm -hmm. Lieven (19:07.47) I think if one applicant tracking system can do it, it's probably Bullhorn. They are massive themselves. They have the right people. They have some, they have big teams. They have the experience, they have the knowledge. They can, I'm pretty confident. And they wouldn't pay the extreme multiple they did if they weren't convinced that they were going to pull it off, I think. Chad Sowash (19:15.177) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (19:30.089) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope they can do it. This can go in many different directions from a product standpoint, because once again, like you said, data and having data lakes and data oceans, that's the new power in this industry. It's not having AI, because everybody's going to have AI. That's going to be the commodity. It's the data that you can actually crunch on. Yeah. Lieven (19:49.454) Hmm. Lieven (19:57.678) That's right. AI is like a consumer product. It's so easy to use, certainly. You're right. Chad Sowash (19:59.337) So I think. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And we're talking about having, again, a domain master, not just somebody who understands the domain, but a domain master like a company like Text Kernel. And they have so few competitors. And I tell you right now, in talking to some of those competitors, they are happy as happy can be, and they should be, because you know, or at least you feel, that Tex Colonel got a great multiple, number one. And number two, this gives them, those competitors, an opportunity to actually go after the market and start sowing doubt about what Tex Colonel can do because now they're owned by Bullhorn. So it's going to be interesting. And I do like this disruption for Bullhorn and for the rest of the market. Lieven (20:53.102) I agree. Chad Sowash (20:53.961) I dig it. Okay, kids, we're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about Revolut going people. Chad Sowash (21:04.713) So apparently the FinTech company Revolut are launching HR tech called Revolut People. This is from their website. Quote, the platform for all things people. Tackle all your employee needs in one place. Haven't heard that before. From performance and HR to hiring, no matter your size or where your team's based. It's the engine behind our 30 times people growth and now we're building it to businesses around the globe." End quote. So friend of the show, Neil Dunwoody, turned us on to this actually happening. Had no clue that Revolute, which is again, it's a fintech company out of the UK, had no clue of this new development. Here are some of Neil's insights from LinkedIn from a post entitled, Why Revolut's move into HR recruitment tech is alarming. Quote, Revolut, known for disrupting banking, is now targeting the HR recruitment tech sector. I was emailed today by one of their sales team, imagine that, it instantly set off alarms for me. I could be behind the curve on this one. I heard rumors, but thought it was a myth. However, the strategic shift raises key concerns. Here are the key concerns. Get ready, leaving. Data privacy concerns with access to extensive financial data. How secure is your data with Revolut entering HR? Market monopolization. Revolut's entry might limit competition challenging smaller HR startups. Focus shift. Is Revolut overextending itself by diversifying into HR? Could this impact their core financial services quality? Employee surveillance. not a good thing. Advanced tech in recruitment process raises concerns about intrusive monitoring and data -centric decision -making. As Revolut expands, it's crucial for the community to ensure this move upholds privacy, fairness, and market competitiveness. Leaving, big issues, data privacy concerns, market monopolization, focus and surveillance. What do you think about Revolut's Chad Sowash (23:25.673) move and Neal's comments. Lieven (23:28.782) To be honest, I didn't even know Revolutes. I don't think, I could be mistaken, but I don't think they're active outside the UK. At least they're definitely not active in Belgium and the Netherlands and the markets I follow. There is a link of course between HR and banking and that's payrolling. It's all about the money. And I can imagine banks getting active in HR, but I've never heard something like this. And maybe the... Chad Sowash (23:36.873) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (23:53.129) Yeah, yeah. Lieven (23:56.942) the things we just summed up are right it could be endangering if i had a bank called Revolute and they would have something to do with my chart then i would switch banks i wouldn't like the two together so i'm not definitely sure if that's a very good idea then but i don't really know enough about this to Chad Sowash (24:18.505) Yeah. Lieven (24:25.966) give some interesting remarks and writes. Chad Sowash (24:29.097) It's interesting because they actually created this platform and we've seen this over the years. So I remember when applicant tracking systems first started, companies started to build their own, right? They started to build in -house applicant tracking systems. You still see them today, but they're much more rare today than they were back in the early aughts. But what they never did, these companies, they never built it and then sold it to other people. That's what Revolut's doing. They built this for themselves. Lieven (24:38.702) Hmm. Chad Sowash (24:57.097) Number one, they didn't want to deal with another applicant tracking system. And guess what? They were like, hey, guess what? This is working really well for us. We. Yeah, yeah, they have they have 10 ,000 plus employees that are managed in 60 plus different countries with 1 .9 million applications per year. So they're obviously a rather large company. And now they just want to productize this now. Lieven (24:58.67) Okay, okay, okay, yeah. Lieven (25:05.806) So they're white labeling it and reselling it. That's a great idea. Chad Sowash (25:26.921) Here's the thing I want to go ahead and I want to hit Neil's points point by point data privacy concerns their FinTech. So privacy is a part of risk assessment on a daily basis. So I don't think privacy data privacy is an issue market monopolization. I don't believe Revolut has the experience nor the understanding of this market enough to think about them as a monopoly especially at this early juncture plus. They say that they're going into enterprise. Well, let's see how they do to penetrate the SME market first. I don't see them going very far, very fast with this because we've, once again, you see a bunch of companies who have no clue what they're doing in HR and they start an HR company and it crashes and burns pretty quick. Focus, focus. I definitely agree. on the focus because it's suspect. But even more suspect is their inexperience in the space. Just because they built an in -house system that fits their needs does not mean it fits the needs of the market. Not everybody hires like Revolut does. Go ahead. Lieven (26:39.278) Not necessarily, but it might be. Maybe they found something and they thought if nobody has it, then we're going to build it ourselves. And maybe they found the Holy Grail and then I think white labeling it and reselling it is a great idea. And we also had a few projects like that one, something we thought we needed. And in the end, we developed it ourselves because we couldn't find it in the markets. And I asked our CEO, I asked Rikka, couldn't we? Chad Sowash (26:47.145) Yeah? Yeah? Chad Sowash (27:03.817) Mm. Lieven (27:06.99) white label this and resell it. But she said, and she's totally right. We're not in the business of selling software. This would be just too time consuming to get it started and we keep it to ourselves. But sometimes if you think you know better, well, do it. And maybe have a little bit of what's called revolution. Maybe they knew better and maybe they did come up with something really intrusive and something great. And then I wish them all the luck. And I'm starting to feel kind of some sympathy for them. I really didn't know them. So they're not big where I am, I think. Chad Sowash (27:13.609) Focus. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (27:22.985) Yeah. Chad Sowash (27:32.521) Ha! Chad Sowash (27:36.937) Well, the big difference between Revolut and you guys building something is that you're in this industry. So you understand and that's, I think, much different than somebody who's in FinTech. The surveillance point, I totally agree. I agree with that on all levels of all products. We have to have some type of watchdog that's happening around that. But last but not least, Neil, thanks for bringing this to our attention, man. Personally, I see this... Lieven (27:46.094) Yeah, that's right. Chad Sowash (28:04.297) much like Google creating an applicant tracking system, which they did. And then they ditched it about a year after they launched it. Because I don't believe Revolut understands what they've gotten themselves into and just how small of a total addressable market this is compared to FinTech. If they would have gotten into payroll systems, as you'd said right out of the gate, Levin, I would have said, this is smart. Lieven (28:07.758) Hmm. Chad Sowash (28:33.321) This makes, this just makes sense. You could, you could do daily pay kind of things. There are so many things you can do around the fintech piece of it. This is smart. What they did here, I totally believe is out of bounds. Google shut theirs down. Facebook tried to get into work, workspaces, those types of things. Companies who don't understand this business, and especially the size of this business, usually shut it down. Now they'll probably keep it for themselves cause it's working. but at the end of the day, I don't see this getting much traction. Lieven (29:06.798) Hmm? Chad Sowash (29:06.953) That's just me. That's just me. Now, let's talk about putting a new shade of lipstick on a pig. Let's talk about that. So, StepStone CEO, our friends over at StepStone, Sebastian Detmers, announced changes to StepStone's brand in a LinkedIn post earlier this week. Quote, we are thrilled to announce that we are now live with our new brand design in the UK, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Our job search platforms have received a stunning new brand design now featured on Total Jobs in the UK, Irish Jobs in Ireland and NI Jobs in Northern Ireland." What exactly does that mean? Well, now when you visit Total Jobs, Irish Jobs or NI Jobs, they will all have a unified stepstone color scheme. What do you think about that, Leven? Everybody together. Unified, united as one family. What do you think? Lieven (30:07.47) All right. I think the guy just wanted to give his marketing team some recognition. They have been going through the whole rebranding period and it was a lot of work and all you wanted to thank them and to give them some recognition. But in times when everyone is talking about innovation and disruption and AI and how are we going to change the world of work? I think changing some colors is not something. Chad Sowash (30:08.905) hahahaha Chad Sowash (30:18.505) Mm -hmm. Lieven (30:34.99) The CEO of a job board should be bragging about, but it's just me. Maybe I totally missed it. I don't know. Chad Sowash (30:40.057) Yeah. No, I think you're spot on. I think it's a different shade of pig on the, or different shade of lipstick on the same pig. StepStone has bigger issues than color schemes. And here's some of the problems that I see right out of the gate. Just reading this, right? Problem number one, they pick the ugliest option available. Total jobs had this bright green that pops. Lieven (30:53.454) Hmm. Chad Sowash (31:06.857) and it's now gone. So if you go into a conference, one of the things that really differentiates the booze are the color schemes, right? And the total jobs color scheme just pops. Irish jobs, bright yellow, which leapt off a black background, gone. And NI jobs, well, it's certainly better than the new boring ass stepstone palette. So that's my problem number one. The new palette is just... boring and ugly as hell. Problem number two, we've learned and I believe as we've watched with House of HR and how you guys operate that allowing companies to better align with their national community is key. Now, StepStone isn't changing the names of the sites, don't get me wrong, not yet at least, but when an invading country comes in, they automatically post their flag, they post their colors. That's what this feels like. And Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland won't like not bearing their color or the not or bearing the colors of German stepstone. OK, I see that as a problem. One of the things that you guys do is you allow the brands to keep their own character, to stay local. Right. What stepstone is doing here is they're starting to slowly drain that from these platforms. Problem number three. Lieven (32:19.374) Hmm. Chad Sowash (32:38.121) Changing colors won't help traditional tech against new and more innovative ways to attract, engage, and hire candidates in all of these countries. StepStone acquired the chatbot company, Maya Systems, over three years ago, and they have failed to embed the tech across their platforms. They've had opportunities to actually advance their tech. These three problems are the reason why AppCast, that's right kids, AppCast should be the parent company and StepStone and Sebastian should sit back and learn from Chris Foreman who I believe should be teaching the entire group because he has demonstrated that his strategy and AppCast strategy in this industry is a completely different level than anyone that we've seen from StepStone or Alex, Axle Springer. So some some pretty big problems I see. What do you think about that? Lieven (33:40.558) Mm -hmm, could be right. I was just wondering how about the IPO? Did we hear anything in the IPO? Chad Sowash (33:49.097) That's a good, that's another good point. That's another great point. How does, how does new colors help you get to IPO faster? I, and again, this is the CEO. And again, there he's looking to provide recognition to marketing and whatnot. And it's kind of like a little pat on the head, but how does a CEO announcing new brand colors actually move you closer to IPO? How does that move you closer to better revenues? Right? How does that move you closer to innovation? Lieven (33:50.99) Hmm? Lieven (34:17.55) I think this is a non -event and they probably know it, but they shared it anyway. But I didn't hear anything about the IPO anymore, so I think that's... Is it still on the agenda, I think? Chad Sowash (34:30.121) I think it's still on the agenda. I think they're waiting till 25 to see how things shake out. It will be interesting, but I do have to agree that, you know, this first off, StepStone hasn't really been in the news over the past month or so. So maybe Sebastian just wants to try to get something that's out there. But I love when companies, especially CEOs, talk about stupid shit. Lieven (34:44.398) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (34:57.289) because we get to talk about it on the show, Levin. That's right. And... Lieven (35:00.782) That's right. Chad Sowash (35:06.473) It's that time. It's time to get ready for a little Euro 2024 and to grab some of that AI Belgian beer. Lieven (35:14.318) Don't touch our beer. The beer has been great since, I don't know, the 13th century? Why should it be touched by AI? Chad Sowash (35:18.537) Alright kids. Chad Sowash (35:26.089) It's all about evolution, my friend. We out! Lieven (35:28.278) We out.

Automating the application process is pretty popular these days. From companies like Paradox to Humanly and others, allowing job seekers to submit their information by tapping a screen or talking into a phone is becoming big business. Then along comes Germany-based Talk’n’Job who believe they've built a better mousetrap, and they've even won a competition that says they just might. CEO Markus Krampe joins the boys in a lively Q&A to get to the bottom of things and whether or not Talk’n’Job has what it takes to compete on a grand scale. Do they survive the Firing Squad? Gotta listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (Blame AI for errors) Joel Cheesman (00:22.374) Here we go everybody. What's up? It is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co -host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house. And this is Firing Squad as we welcome Marcus Krampe of Talkin' Job. Marcus, welcome to the podcast. Chad Sowash (00:31.618) What's up? Markus Krampe (00:34.845) Yeah. Chad Sowash (00:37.282) Krampus, baby, Krampus. Joel Cheesman (00:40.39) Only the Germans can fuck up Christmas like that. Scare the shit out of kids. It's all good. It's all good. Markus Krampe (00:40.509) got a cramp. Hi. Markus Krampe (00:46.333) Right. Well, actually, that's a Swiss one. Chad Sowash (00:49.748) it's Swiss. Blame the Swiss. I see how it works. I would say it was New Sudetenland's fault. Yeah, no, I get it. Okay, no, it's good. Joel Cheesman (00:50.31) the Swiss. There you go. Germans. Let's blame the Swiss. Let's blame the Swiss. Markus Krampe (00:51.837) Yeah, sure, I mean... Joel Cheesman (00:57.895) All right, Mark, Margaret's calling in from where in Germany? Markus Krampe (01:01.917) Heidelberg. Some of the Americans should know that one. Yeah, that was pretty known at the moment underwater. But otherwise, all pretty fine. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (01:02.982) Heidelberg, Heidelberg. Very cool. Chad Sowash (01:03.234) Yep. Joel Cheesman (01:10.246) I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear that. So, so before we get into the nitty gritty of the business, our listeners probably don't know who you are. Give us a little bit about Marcus. What makes you tick as a human being? Chad Sowash (01:13.506) Sorry to hear that, my friend. Markus Krampe (01:25.469) What makes me tick as a human being? First of all, I'm a pretty old one, 55 already. Coming from southern Germany, had international studies right from the beginning, also stayed a year in the US. I was in 87, that was a pretty long time ago. Then, yeah, at US as well. Good. Joel Cheesman (01:42.534) It was a good year. Joel Cheesman (01:47.398) We're a tick younger than you, but not by much. Not much. Chad Sowash (01:50.946) Not much, yeah. Markus Krampe (01:51.613) Not that I wanted, like my sister. Now then, started working in retailing for 12 years, really from the floor up to head of strategy for the different countries. From there on, I wasn't that much comfortable with it. Joel Cheesman (02:07.142) Alright Marcus, we asked for a Twitter bio, not war and peace. Alright, let's get to the rules of the game, Chad. Tell Marcus what he's won today. Markus Krampe (02:10.781) Twitter bio. No, no, no, no, that's fine. Chad Sowash (02:19.138) Well, Marcus, this is how firing squad is going to go. My friend at the sound of the bell, you're going to have two minutes to pitch talking job at the end of two minutes. We're going to hit you up with about 20 minutes of Q and a, so be sure to be concise. Are you going to get hit with the crickets, which means tighten up your game at the end of Q and a, you will receive one of these from the both of us. A big applause. That's right. Look who's talking was a box office hit and we predict talking job will be too. Golf clap. Now look who's talking to the sequel. Wasn't a box office hit. Neither is talking job, but it's respectable. So good luck. And last but not least, the firing squad. Look who's talking now. The third installment of the movie, Trility, should have never been filmed and we're feeling the same about talking job. Back to the writer's room, my friend. That's how it's gonna go. Are you ready? Markus Krampe (03:20.221) Yeah, trying it. Joel Cheesman (03:21.158) All right, Margus, your two minutes starts right now. Markus Krampe (03:25.181) Yeah, okay. Okay, we are talking job, a voice driven chat application means a new channel for applying, taking out all the barriers of the process means people see it somewhere on the QR code on a link, whatever, get into that one. Through a digital avatar, the questions are being for the job profiles are being asked, and the people can respond verbally in whatever language is preset. Why is this important? Because our focus is on blue color, blue color young professionals. So basically everybody not using traditional channels anymore and wants to have it fast. This is the side of the product story. And then for the corporates, we are almost integrated in all the ATS, which is quite good. As we are the first one, what Mike doing this, some of the large ones have even asked us to get integrated in order to serve the purpose. That's it. Joel Cheesman (04:24.23) Fair enough. You had about a minute to go, but we'll, we'll take points off at the end of the show. Marcus, I always ask about the name. So it's you have talk and job or talk and job or like, isn't that a little bit confusing? And by the way, Shprekin is talk in German. So was like Shprekin and job or something, not an option. Talk about the name, the Genesis of it and, and, justify it for me. Markus Krampe (04:52.189) The genesis, okay, our corporate has been called apply that at the time we are still very head orientated meant we wanted to have something for the unit. New generation means a generation that and that we have seen as kind of an umbrella of whatever we are going to develop because the voice chat application was kind of the first thing we wanted to do as we have basically we have seen. that there is AI on the market. We have seen that the voice recognition is now that far that you could use it in business life. And therefore, that was kind of our vision, saying, OK, this is the first B2C product in AI, not only like Alexa put the light on, but something really where people could experience on their own because they were talking about themselves. So that is the theory. Joel Cheesman (05:36.582) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (05:46.429) The fact is that AI isn't that far in recruiting. The solution itself towards the candidate needs to be 100 % safe. That's the point why we're now focusing on the other ones. Joel Cheesman (05:57.702) We're Margas for talking about time about the name, not not the product, just the name itself. So, so a couple, a couple of questions. Like if I go, if I go to, if I go to talk hyphen in hyphen job, it's a blank page. Is that you? And also, there's apply, apply Zed or z in America, dot com. Like what is that? Is it confusing? Talk about that. Markus Krampe (06:02.749) and then at. Chad Sowash (06:04.642) concise, concise. Markus Krampe (06:11.261) You won't find it. That, that, that. Markus Krampe (06:21.181) I know that was what I said in the beginning. I mean, applies that was the first, the umbrella in the U S we have an incorporated company, which is called Tork and job. yes, in, in terms of, communication, it's kind of confusing with the hyphens, but actually we don't care. that is a point. It looks pretty, no, it looks cool. It's, it's, it's a cool brand and it was coming from Tork and go. which had nothing to do with recruiting. And after two weeks, we were changing to Target job because it was a brand that was saying something and it looked cool and full stop. That was it. So basically we're always doing what? Joel Cheesman (07:00.006) So, all right, so I'm going to give you a chance to gloat here. We first, I think, met at Unleash where you won the 2023 Startup Award. Talk about that. Talk about who else was in there, what was sort of the defining factor that got you guys that award and what did you win? Markus Krampe (07:20.477) Well, basically, why we won, why we got there was because we had a product that was easy to understand and easy to communicate within a sentence or two sentences. That was basically that also because we had market traction for that time over 150 customers because we had a real purpose and the people were using it. And that was, and we are highly scalable on an international basis. So this is what I've asked after. at the end and that was a point where we were kind of unbeatable and also because Caroline was presenting, that was three minutes and she did it in 259. Joel Cheesman (07:58.694) Caroline is the marketing person for the listeners that don't know. Chad Sowash (07:58.946) Hahaha! Markus Krampe (08:02.013) Yeah. Chad Sowash (08:03.458) just in case you don't know. So I just want to provide some clarity here. So talk end job with the letter N, end job dot com does not resolve. You guys don't own that. Is that correct? Markus Krampe (08:14.365) Yes, we own that one. We own that. Yeah, sure, as a logo. Chad Sowash (08:17.474) You do own that one. Okay. So talk, talkandjob .com takes you to apply Z. It doesn't take you to talk and job. It takes you to apply Z page. Markus Krampe (08:29.341) Yeah, that is now because we're changing the homepage and we're still a small startup, still it's constantly in need of money. So we have some in -betweens. So yes, we know that is kind of rotten, but can't change it because some other priorities at the moment, but we know it doesn't, it isn't perfect. So. Chad Sowash (08:34.562) Mm. Chad Sowash (08:42.146) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (08:47.778) Okay, okay, okay. I just want to get through that, just from clarity standpoint. So the QR code, is that the only way to get into the application process? Do I have to scan a QR code and then go through the application process then? Or is there a different way to do that? Markus Krampe (08:52.925) Yeah. Markus Krampe (09:05.981) Well, we are digital tool. That means we come into our application via a link, a URL. And the QR code is nothing else but a translated URL code. The QR code is pretty good for retail companies or let's say multi -site companies because then they could use that one as something new for the people to apply to get the attention. And that's why it's Chad Sowash (09:13.57) Mm -hmm. Okay. Chad Sowash (09:18.882) Okay. Chad Sowash (09:24.482) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (09:34.813) it's working so brilliantly. Otherwise we are good for every single touch point you have with a candidate because you can put a link on that one and claim as well here. This is new, a cool voice and mobile phone apply now in two minutes. So there's a lot about marketing. Chad Sowash (09:53.09) Okay. Okay, so options. So if I'm going, if I am online to see the job, do I have the option to apply just through the regular old process and then apply by voice? Is that how you generally do it? Okay. Markus Krampe (10:08.989) Yeah, yeah, because we don't want to take something away. Actually, it's simply as we said, for the people not using the traditional channels anymore, and they want to have different stuff. And then we have brilliant use cases like with the NHS, for example, that opened you new candidate pools. Chad Sowash (10:13.026) Yes. Chad Sowash (10:17.282) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (10:22.338) Gotcha, I gotcha. Chad Sowash (10:26.402) Okay, so where does the content live? Do you actually have a tech stack that has a CRM involved where you keep that data and then you transmit it into the applicant tracking system through your integrations or does it just go directly from the application into the applicant tracking system? Markus Krampe (10:39.164) Ahem. Markus Krampe (10:44.285) It goes basically directly from the application into the ATS. So we are into the ATS with an RP. That means once people create a job, in the same time, a dedicated link to this job is going to be created. That one is being communicated by the companies, either on or offline, wherever. And then once somebody is applying via that one, it goes right to the dedicated candidate ID. Chad Sowash (11:11.522) Okay, so at that point, do you, because obviously this is going into their applicant tracking system, which is not voice enabled. So the, do you transcribe it and then push the transcribed information into the system? Number one, that's how you do. Okay, so number two, what happens because these applicant tracking systems, I've known, I've worked with them for 20 plus years. They break all the goddamn time. They're under maintenance. They suck to be able to try to use from an API standpoint. Markus Krampe (11:23.197) Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:39.01) So when that happens, if you're not actually housing the data to be able to project into it later, how do you... It seems like you could prospectively lose candidate data because the applicant tracking system was having problems. How do you rectify that? Markus Krampe (11:53.053) No, it's going to be hosted first on our system. That means on the cloud here in Germany, on the telecom cloud. And then by our API, we do have the data transfer. And then people, I don't know how strict the data protection is in the US. Here, people want to delete the data like five days later. So I mean, we're doing whatever a customer wants us to do. Chad Sowash (11:59.618) Okay. Chad Sowash (12:04.226) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (12:14.686) yeah. Right. Gotcha. So there could be a perspective lag, but you have the data long enough. And then once you see a successful push of that data, you know, whatever the storage time is, you can just go ahead and delete it after that. Okay. Okay. Markus Krampe (12:31.549) Yeah. Yeah. And that was also, we were always going on speed simplicity. And that was one of the points let's have as less information to pass because this is like now we're going to have the least problems for that easy. And I've never heard from now on that we had problems with the data transfer into the ATS. I mean, you know, success factors. Chad Sowash (12:38.146) Yeah. Chad Sowash (12:42.69) Yes. Chad Sowash (12:47.554) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (12:59.261) We even had large companies who implemented success factors in the blue color sectors just for us because we made it possible working with blue colors because we don't have these registration forms and all that. Joel Cheesman (13:06.438) Got it. Chad Sowash (13:10.242) Gotcha. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:13.606) So you mentioned money and not entirely bootstrapped you guys have raised about a million bucks Is there a plan to raise more money? What did that? Money go for I mean it looks like you had a pretty good headcount increase Two years or so ago, but you haven't grown headcount much in the past year What's the money going toward and are you gonna raise more? Markus Krampe (13:39.165) Yeah, how are we going to get, how are we going to raise more? If you have an idea, just tell me. Because just to give you, just to give you an idea, I mean, we're talking about the German market, not the U S market in terms of size. But the first full year we had 1 million ARR and 150 customers, multi -lash with customers. They call Coke, all the big retailers. We didn't get money. And that was both people because that was a year and one and a half years ago when the market was simply down. Joel Cheesman (13:43.814) So you're looking to do it, it's just tougher then. Chad Sowash (13:43.842) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:51.75) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (13:52.13) Yeah. Yeah. Markus Krampe (14:09.245) And then we had all these customers and we needed them to care about them instead of putting more focus on the sales side, which means you didn't have the growth anymore, which means you weren't interested, interesting for the VCs anymore. So what we're doing, what we're doing now, what we did in between is we do have a private sponsor. First of all, thanks to him. Then we were taking loans or credits and some convertibles. So this is how we. Joel Cheesman (14:23.43) Got it. Markus Krampe (14:39.069) were surviving the last one and a half years. Now heading for break even by Q3, Q4. And that's basically it. So that means last year or last seven, eight months, we were really optimizing all the processes, really made it 100 % scalable. And all we now need to do is to scale up and look for money. First for Germany, we would look for like, 3 million in order to take that market. We have, as you have said, we have met in the US. We were heading for the US and got UK. It is like it is because we had the largest customer there, the NHS National Health Service with tremendous success. But we still have our office in the USA. But for that market, this we have, we need much more money. So it would be fine for the European market with. Joel Cheesman (15:34.598) Okay. So you are, you are looking and if, if, if anyone out there knows anyone, let, let Marcus know, who, who's your competition? I mean, you have, you have conversational AI, you have companies like vet humanly who just, bought, you know, acquired, teamable. Like, who do you consider your competition? Is it just the people in the German market? Is it more global? Talk about the competition. Markus Krampe (15:40.925) Yeah. Markus Krampe (16:01.661) Well, as we define the market, we actually don't really have competition. I mean, like if we define it. In fact, still we are in competition with everybody who is collecting candidates. So the closest we could get is WhatsApp applications if we are only focusing on the point attracting and getting the people in. Joel Cheesman (16:08.134) Okay. Markus Krampe (16:26.749) We are also very much focused and that's why we are successful on attracting the people. And again, we are focused on blue color. This is why at the moment we don't care that much about AI. Doesn't mean that we are not developing stuff, but given the fact that we're focusing on easy jobs and something that works a hundred percent and doesn't give any stupid questions in between, that is fine. So. In order to install, because you have also talked about Olivia, Olivia is from whom again? From Paradox. This is a bot, but this is for the maintenance. I mean, you already need to have the candidates, but we are the step ahead getting the people in. And this is where we are good at. We are good at getting the customers. Joel Cheesman (17:01.862) Paradox. Yeah. Chad Sowash (17:02.85) Paradox. Joel Cheesman (17:20.23) Do you, do you feel like a paradox customer could also use your service? Cause to me it doesn't, but you think that you could use both services. Okay. Markus Krampe (17:25.725) Yeah, definitely. Yeah, well, it is also the case we do have some ATS delivering or offering on their own some WhatsApp and using and companies or their clients using our solution. So we don't. Joel Cheesman (17:41.574) Okay. You mentioned you're very German focused right now. You have a UK version of the site. What's the rollout plan, the go -to -market strategy for the rest of the world? Are you going to be in Europe for a while? When's America come on the radar? Markus Krampe (17:57.425) Yeah, last year. So that's why we have done the German accelerator because we were that much convinced of the US market and also in terms of the investors because they're much more growth oriented as the Europeans are more on tech technology. But there we have simply seen with such a small team and such small money, it doesn't make that much sense. I mean, therefore we were focusing on getting to know the people like you or Jerry Crispin or whoever. So this is definitely a market we want to do as soon as we get the money. Pretty easy. In the meantime, we're taking whatever is there. If we do have large customers, we're going to roll out there. But the focus is more on the larger companies and for sure Asia. Asian markets are made for us. Chad Sowash (18:47.714) So Asia, the US, and Europe. That's what I'm hearing thus far. Is there a central focus on how you roll out into those areas and go to market to those areas? Markus Krampe (19:00.989) As I said, I was doing internationalization in retailing and what I've learned is that you need to have a local offices. It doesn't make any sense to have for this kind of job because recruiting and all that is a very local business. You need to have your own business down there. You need to have a common understanding of what are we selling, but the understanding of the culture and all that one for sales marketing needs to be there. We do have a scalable product. That is fine in all the languages. Chad Sowash (19:05.218) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (19:29.405) So that means from there on whenever we would have money would put 15 people in there and just start in the business at the moment is getting the large companies or corporates in here that are International and that's what we're doing and then with them we are going on in international markets, but Chad Sowash (19:48.962) So how do you go, how are you actually pushing out, how are you executing your go -to -market? Are you going directly after brands or are you partnering with these applicant tracking systems and white labeling the technology? Markus Krampe (20:02.909) So the blueprint was actually done here in Germany after the pandemic crisis, because what we did, we were going for brands and we were going for retail brands. Why? Because they had the QR codes and put it all in their windows. And from there on, we had other companies, CEOs, whomever who have seen that. And that is why we do have a B2C strategy always in terms of communication, because like that, if the future customer doesn't understand what it is for, they understand the purpose. Chad Sowash (20:14.21) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (20:30.365) And that's how we got a lot of inbound. Now we're doing because we are the first one in worldwide doing that. We needed to go on trade shows. So that was fine. And then you get eligible for the ATS. And as I said, there was smart recruiters, that's cornerstone. There is SAP who were looking for us. That means we did something right. And after that, you get all the acknowledgement. I mean, all the awards we have done for easy and cheap marketing. I've got some 16 of them. Chad Sowash (20:39.358) Okay. Chad Sowash (20:56.45) Are they selling your product though? I mean, are they selling your product? Markus Krampe (20:59.997) the awards. Chad Sowash (21:01.89) Now, I don't care about the awards. I'm talking about the actual are smart, smart recruiters success factors? Are they selling your product? Markus Krampe (21:03.805) No, no, no. The ATS, there was the Austrian railway coming up saying, we have seen your strategic partner of cornerstone. That is the point. And then with smart requires, we're planning some actions. And I mean, SAP success factors around the corner from Heidelberg. So getting to know the people. And then you had, that was really, that was kind of an honor that we've been one of the four cool vendors in the Gartner report. Chad Sowash (21:26.082) Okay. Okay. Markus Krampe (21:33.789) something we couldn't even. So that's coming back to the large companies again. And that's more the point. First awareness and then getting into the sales. This is how we started. Five. Pretty small. Chad Sowash (21:43.522) Okay, so how big's your sales team? How big's your sales team? Five people. So you are looking at trying to target the US, but huge GDP. Obviously, Germany has a big GDP as it is. And then Asia pack, which is a huge GDP. But all three of those are much different from a culture standpoint. And then obviously, you know how they interact. So so that's interesting from a go to market standpoint. Talk a little bit about your exit. What are you looking to do? Because it feels like. You are like a new age, kind of like almost like bandaid to a lot of these applicant tracking systems who have horrible application processes that you would fit in very well with. You spout out a lot of these core system names. What's what's the actual exit look like for you guys? Markus Krampe (22:35.485) Actually, there are a lot of scenarios. And what we're not doing is targeting on one, because at the time, we want to make that baby big. Like my own vision is like in three years time, if somebody enters a bar, he just needs to ask, where's the target job? Because he implies there's an easy recruiting tool. Anyhow, sometimes the time is right, because you're too small or the others are too big, you need to sell. So we have divided our corporate development in different steps. First of all, Chad Sowash (22:38.594) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (23:04.957) That one was really getting the awareness, getting integrated in the ATS. What now happened? So we are established and we have raised the market entry barriers for others. So now we are upgrading our system horizontally towards white color as soon as AI is good enough for that one. And there actually, I don't care if we have to develop it on our own or we get... or that could be the opportunity for somebody who's well -funded to buy us on that side, or we're going to buy it. I don't care. Simply, we need to have it because we already have the customer access. That is the most important thing. All the others are focusing on technology. I mean, we might then be second best. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:48.518) Hey, Marcus, Marcus, walk me through, just visually or how this works. So your bar example, where's your talking job? Okay. Here's our QR code. Scan the QR code, go to a landing page. And then there are questions in text format. Like tell me about your experience. And then you click record. The video comes up or is it not video? And then I, I give my answer in audio format. And then do you transcribe the, the, the audio and does that audio and text format go into an ATS or some sort of dashboard where I can search and, and kind of like pre -screen or match to the job? Like talk, talk me through that process. Chad Sowash (24:28.258) the text. Markus Krampe (24:34.845) OK, people see there is a new way of applying either by a jar code or link. Click on that one being right in our application. So that means no landing page in between because that would disturb. And there is no registration. There is no download. Simply, they see the avatar. It's been a customized avatar of the company. Then they click through the data protection. And the language depends, as I said, to the presetting on the phone. So whenever it's Joel Cheesman (25:02.15) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (25:03.357) When presenting in Spanish, the entire interview would be in Spanish, and customer would get the automatic translation. And then they are being asked the pre -qualifying questions for the job profile. Typically, we do have between 7 to 11 questions, because if we have not enough, that goes on quality. If we have too many, we do have less conversion on that one. And. That is the educational part. We need to talk to the companies that they really ask only the most important question that they would ask for a pre -qualification. And after that, until then, it's all about employer branding, really getting the people in. And then we're asking for the contact details. And that is then the application which goes into the ATS. Joel Cheesman (25:51.366) So, so the, the, the avatar says, tell me about your previous experience. I click record and then I've audio my answer into the phone. It's not a video thing. Right. And then I audio and then like I'm done click done. And then that, that answer goes into the database and then like, what's the next question the avatar asks. And then when you're done, it's like, okay, got it. Markus Krampe (26:01.821) Yep. No. Markus Krampe (26:10.205) Exactly. Either you're either you talk or you're right. So no barriers on that side. Joel Cheesman (26:14.726) Got it. All right. Okay. So that's interesting because one of my questions was in terms of sort of, people with disabilities, right? If I have a speech impediment, how do you plan for that? obviously text only does plan for that, but are there, do you, in terms of disabilities, do you feel like you've covered all your bases on that? Or do you still feel like there's some hurdles with people who may have issues with seeing, talking, et cetera? Hard of hearing. Yeah. Chad Sowash (26:42.21) Hard of hearing, yeah. Markus Krampe (26:43.837) In that case, if they can't hear, we are out of that business. But if somebody is blind and he's able to use his phone, that should be no problem. And all for the other disabilities as well. Not only physical disabilities, but sometimes you have people who simply cannot write for whatever reason. And then what we have heard here is at the unimpeded, Joel Cheesman (27:06.338) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (27:08.002) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (27:13.661) employment agency that people nowadays are afraid of calling, really physically talking to people and they would be out of the process as well. So this is what's been implied. Joel Cheesman (27:20.39) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:28.294) So that is an issue for sure. And you'll come up in terms of legislation in some countries, I'm sure that'll make that more challenging. But I want to ask about your revenue. You mentioned 1 million in the first year. I don't know if that's euros or dollars. What's your current ARR or MRR? And you're almost profitable, you said. Markus Krampe (27:43.773) You're right. Markus Krampe (27:48.749) The current ARR is at 1 .3 euro, that's like 1 .4, 1 .5 in the US, but the real part in there, you could see what we have done. I mean, due to the fact we had not enough people, we needed to churn the smaller companies. So we had a churn up to 25%, but still we managed to raise our NRR from 85 to 105 again. That means although we had quite some churn for the people we decided to get off, With the relevant companies, we managed to upgrade them. Because why? They start pretty small and then they roll it out throughout the company through different job profiles in other countries. And that's what you then need the people for. Which is sad. Chad Sowash (28:37.858) So so we're seeing LLMs, especially with voice. They're coming very quickly, right? And the the way that tech is moving, just the velocity of tech today is crazy. So there are going to be go figure competitors that are going to be popping out of the woodwork, which means you need to do one or two things. You're going to become a feature. Or you're going to create a platform. So the question is, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay as being the best feature in this space and hope that you get acquired? Or are you going to go down funnel and start creating a platform? Markus Krampe (29:19.005) That's funny that you're saying that. And maybe I'm not choosing the right words, but currently we are working on that issue with some partners because we're trying to kind of establish some kind of virtual ATS. Means best of breed of whatever is on the market, most likely startups. Because what it is, or take it from retailing, it's like a shop in a shop system. Because like this, we can take the sales power of each and every single company and also like the brands. Chad Sowash (29:35.33) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (29:46.882) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (29:48.317) Like our strength is really to enter the market and get into the systems. And then you need to cover the entire recruiting process. That means that we are cooperating with people doing Google Ads, social media, people doing home pages afterwards, having later communication with WhatsApp, for example. All this to ease the entire process, to have one experience for the candidate, candidate first, really. Chad Sowash (30:04.386) Mm -hmm. Markus Krampe (30:18.173) But then also the customer has only one touch point and that we are integrated all into the ATS. It means you have all the layers of different features which will then be integrated in each and every ATS. So that was basically also what you were mentioning in the beginning. Joel Cheesman (30:30.79) Chad, this sounds really, really expensive. I don't know about you. This sounds really pricey. Marcus, what kind of pricing can a company expect using your service? Chad Sowash (30:35.97) Yeah, cool. Markus Krampe (30:43.325) Pretty transparent. Our pricing is based on the plant hires per year. In the area where they use us, that means if somebody plans to hire 1 ,000 people next year, it's going to be 1 ,000 times 25 euros. So quite easy. The larger, the less, the larger, the less. And like that, we are able to mirror the size and the budget of the companies. And we kind of never have any issues in selling. Joel Cheesman (31:01.702) easy. Markus Krampe (31:12.925) that way. And it also, I mean, otherwise I would need some controlling who did you, who did you hire and whatsoever. And that always gives a bad mood and I need more people. Both things I don't want to have. Chad Sowash (31:22.594) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (31:24.774) All right, we don't want any bad moods, Marcus. All right, that is the bell. That means it's time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Chad Sowash (31:26.21) Okay. Markus Krampe (31:35.581) Yeah, I don't know. Joel Cheesman (31:40.038) I appreciate your honesty. I'll go first chat. If that's all right with you. I don't know what to make of this man. coming into it, you had won the unleashed startup award. it sorta like it made sense to me, the audio thing, but then I, you know, competing with a lot of really well -funded, you know, conversational AI. I don't know where AI in general is going with, with audio. Chad Sowash (31:45.506) Have it. Joel Cheesman (32:11.75) You're very German. I know you're talking about Asia and America, but like, I mean, if I go to the, if I go to the English per part of your site, which is the, the union Jack, right. Which is very traditional, but like the images I see are still in German. It's still very much in German. So I think you have to figure out exactly where you're going and what, like who you want to target. Cause. believe it or not in America, if you spell favorite with OU and not just O like it's a real turnoff for Americans, man. It's a real, it's a real bummer for Americans. So, I don't know how it is in Asia, but that's going to be a challenge. You're, you're, you're like, you're targeting young people. your site says quote, young professionals and students are primarily a voice driven generation. I just don't know about that. Markus Krampe (32:42.685) I know what that is. Markus Krampe (32:49.853) the same. Joel Cheesman (33:01.414) They like to text. They like to tap. They like to use the thumbs. I don't know if they're talking as much, maybe in Germany they are. so like, I just, I feel, you know, you haven't raised a ton of money. You've been around for four years. It hasn't quite happened yet. Like you, I don't want to, I want to raise money, but we're too busy with the product. And like, it just, to me, it feels like you're going. nowhere fast and maybe you'll turn that around. Maybe, you'll either raise money or get people headed in the right direction. But for me, like, I don't know if the audio thing is going to happen. I don't know if AI is going to be a major hurdle for you. I think you have comp competition. That's much better funded. That's much more on the ball, if you will. I think as a German, even you understand that that term. So for me, like, I'm just, I have a hard time seeing where it is. Congratulations on the unleash award. Clearly there's some things going on here. You're making money, which is great. But for me, like, I just, there's just not enough there for me to embrace talk and or talking or talk and zip, whatever, whatever it is, man, I, I just can't get over it. So for me, like, I don't, I just don't see it right now. So you're going to get the guns. Maybe Chad feels differently. Chad, what do you think? Chad Sowash (34:19.106) Well, I think this does solve a very big problem in the application process because it sucks. I mean, it is pure shit for a lot of people. And there are many companies who, if they pare down their application and they allow voice, it just becomes much easier. Right. And we are becoming more more voice driven, I think. But at the end of the day, you take a look at the brand is very disassociative, you know. Ply Z or Talk and Job, literally, you can go to Caroline, it'll take her 10 minutes to redirect those to one site, right? And then just have a unified version, whatever it is, all of them to one site, even the one that you own that resolves nowhere, it goes to a black hole, send that to Talk and Job, right? But again, it seems like an amazing bandaid for the problem that is at hand. Here's the thing. The idea, you have a short amount of time before large language models are leveraged with more candidate data and tech experience than you guys have right now. You'd better find an ATS with a crappy apply process, and I think you have, and then create that. Don't create a platform. That was almost like a trap door for you. Don't create a platform. Create the best feature that's out there, the voice application feature. Markus Krampe (35:32.093) So. Chad Sowash (35:45.986) and sell that damn thing. The go to market is incredibly erratic. You don't have enough money to go after that many markets. It's incredibly hard. And especially going from Germany to the US and then the US back to Germany, that is a very, very hard market. Now, if you land and expand with some German companies and then push out into the US, that's something that's entirely different. And the last but not least, In saying you don't care about AI, that to me is probably why you're not getting funding. Everybody out there who's getting funding or at least trying to get funding, they've got the AI banner and they are carrying it strong. So you may not like it, but again, all the kids are doing it and the ones that are doing it and they're getting funding. At the end of the day, I see, and I'm going to lean heavily on you being German, that these things are going to tighten up. You're going to focus. And you're going to not only raise a little bit more cash, but you're going to focus on creating the best audio application process that's out there so that you can exit and get the hell out. You've got, I think, I believe, again, my opinion, about 18 to 24 months to do that. If you don't do it, you're going to get, you're going to get waved by a tsunami of other companies who are going to be doing this, which is why you're getting a golf clap for me. I think you got a chance, my friend. I think. You got a chance. Joel Cheesman (37:16.198) All right, Marcus, how do you feel? In 20 words or less. Markus Krampe (37:20.093) In 20 words or less, basically, that's what we're saying. We only can do the markets if we have the money. First thing, being the best, this is the core business we are focusing on. AI and all that one is being sold in the second part because we are solving this very problem. That's why the NHS has over 70 % of total applications with us. That is the point. Yeah, I know. Joel Cheesman (37:49.19) All right, you're way over 20 words. You're way over 20. That is Marcus, Marcus Kramp everybody. Marcus, for those that want to learn more about talking job, what exactly is that URL that they should check out? Chad Sowash (37:52.13) The NHS is government. Alright, come on. They have a lot of money. Markus Krampe (38:02.685) talk and job .com. There we go. And besides you've got now the two weeks where, where we had this, walk around. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking. Chad Sowash (38:05.41) There we go. Joel Cheesman (38:05.926) Fair enough. Marcus, you're done. You're done. The show's over. It's over, Chad. That is another one in the can. We out. Chad Sowash (38:13.794) Hahaha! Chad Sowash (38:18.338) We out. Markus Krampe (38:19.485) Okay, just

Think the time you've put in at your current employer is impressive? Well, let us introduce you to Matt Lavery, Global Director of Sourcing, Hiring and Onboarding at UPS ... since 1997. That's right, while you were listening to Radiohead's OK Computer, Matt was cutting his teeth in the competitive business of global package delivery. Needless to say, he's seen a lot, and he's droppin' all kinds of knowledge bombs on listeners of all ages on this episode. From changes in tech to the ebbs and flows of labor unions to what it's like hiring for 200 countries and territories, this has it all. Shoot, we even throw in some healthy banter on the upcoming NFL season and why Chicago Bears fans should be as optimistic as they were in 1985. Da Bears, indeed. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION 0:00:00.5 Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right wherever it hearts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. 0:00:23.9 Joel: Oh. Yeah. What's up boys and girls? We are live from the DaXtra booth at UNLEASH in Las Vegas. This is The Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is here. And we are just giddy like schoolgirls to welcome Matt Lavery to the podcast. He is global director of sourcing, hiring and onboarding. 0:00:45.8 Chad: Wow. That's a mouthful. 0:00:46.1 Joel: At a little company called UPS. Matt, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. 0:00:51.9 Matt Lavery: Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me here. I should say. And I see that you survived the jump. Happy to see you in the chair and not stuff on the ground. 0:01:00.0 Chad: Look, at him, he's looking at you and saying, glad you made it, bud. 0:01:02.0 Matt Lavery: Well, I knew you would make it, you were gonna make it no matter what. 0:01:05.6 Joel: Yeah. Army guy was gonna make it. Yeah. 0:01:07.1 Matt Lavery: I was more worried for Chad and the people below Chad. 0:01:09.1 Joel: Oh yeah. No cheese. Yeah. 0:01:10.0 Matt Lavery: Accidents happen. 0:01:10.9 Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Just in case. 0:01:12.1 Joel: I'd like to take this moment to endorse Depends as my leak protector of choice as I jump off the stratosphere now that, as Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part of jumping off the stratosphere. 0:01:25.3 Chad: Yeah. And we knew like months in advance, I think. So [laughter], that was a lot of waiting. 0:01:29.1 Joel: Yeah. Although I think my wife had more sleepless nights. 0:01:31.7 Matt Lavery: Well It's kind of like that parochial school thing that I went to. Just the threat of the ruler on the board before they grabbed it to you was enough to maybe say, I shouldn't say that. Just as having the ruler out there and the visual. 0:01:43.1 Chad: Yeah. 0:01:43.7 Joel: So a lot of our listeners don't know who you are, Matt. They know the company. But let's talk about you. You've got a fine taste in food and sports teams, but what else, do you like or would you like to tell us about yourself? 0:01:54.6 Matt Lavery: Born and bred Southwest side of Chicago. Went to parochial school, went to Notre Dame. Been at UPS for 27 years. I've worked in Atlanta, I've worked in Brussels, worked in Chicago. But my tact has always been in the TA space. We've been called different things over the years. We were workforce plenty at one point. We were an employment and, staffing at one point. So the names have changed. My direction of what I've done hasn't really changed that dramatically. My role started as an interviewer/recruiter back 27 plus years ago. And I'm. 0:02:22.0 Joel: '97 you started at UPS? 0:02:24.9 Matt Lavery: Yeah. 0:02:25.2 Joel: Wanna get that right? 0:02:26.4 Matt Lavery: Yep. 0:02:26.4 Joel: Now you said South side of Chicago, but you're also a Cubs fan. 0:02:29.4 Matt Lavery: That's right. 0:02:29.9 Joel: How do you make peace with your God? With that kind of. 0:02:33.5 Chad: How do you get out of the house with that jersey on? 0:02:35.9 Matt Lavery: Well, I didn't go to Wrigley Field for the first time until 1984. My father wouldn't take me. He told me that was like, feeding a pig steak by taking a south side Irishman to the lower side. 0:02:47.6 Joel: Wow. 0:02:48.2 Matt Lavery: So I had to take myself. 0:02:49.8 Joel: There are plenty of tickets to White Sox games today. If, you wanting to go. 0:02:57.6 Matt Lavery: Futility on both sides of town. 0:03:01.6 Chad: That's the quickest way to make your son not a White Sox fan, by saying you can't go. 0:03:06.4 Matt Lavery: The funny part, I mean. 0:03:07.3 Joel: Stake to a pig. That's a good Chicago reference. 0:03:09.5 Matt Lavery: The grade school I went to Bill Murray's sister, who's a nun, was a grade school, one of my grade school teachers. 0:03:15.0 Joel: Awesome. 0:03:15.6 Matt Lavery: I've still vivid memory there's a game won, where we won 16 to one against the Padres in '84. We were the only Cub fans in the classroom. [laughter] And she wheeled the TV in everyone else booed. And we were the only few people cheering, watching the results. 0:03:28.5 Joel: Wow. So Caleb Williams to the Bears. Let's get the sports talk out of the way. Are you optimistic? 0:03:33.8 Matt Lavery: I am. It's the most optimistic I've been maybe 20 years. 0:03:37.5 Joel: Oh, that's not a good sign. 0:03:38.6 Chad: That's not. It's not a good sign. [laughter] 0:03:39.1 Matt Lavery: No, but it's not bad. 0:03:40.0 Joel: That's an Aaron Roger's ACL tear on the first round. 0:03:42.9 Matt Lavery: When Eric Kramer holds your single season passing record. As a team. And then Sid Luckman is the barometer for a career. 0:03:51.0 Chad: It can only get better. 0:03:51.7 Matt Lavery: It only got better than that. It's hard to get lower than that. 0:03:54.6 Joel: You mean Rex Grossman didn't rank the records? 0:03:57.2 Matt Lavery: No. I think Jay Cutler own some of the records. For the longest, the best quarterback in our franchise history, Sid Luckman is generally back in the '40s, is perceived. Eric Kramer owns the single season record for passing yards. 0:04:08.6 Joel: That's so Chicago. 0:04:09.6 Matt Lavery: That's sad. 0:04:10.0 Joel: That's so Chicago. 0:04:11.1 Matt Lavery: Middle linebackers we can talk about. 0:04:13.3 Chad: Oh yes. Oh hell yeah. 0:04:13.3 Matt Lavery: But quarterbacks not so much. 0:04:15.0 Joel: Yeah. For sure. For sure. So, UPS most people know the name, but give us the specifics. Some big numbers around employee count, where you guys do business, and how many people you're hiring, quite frankly is a immense. 0:04:27.0 Chad: Little over 500,000 globally. We're in. 0:04:30.0 Chad: Hello. 0:04:30.7 Joel: We have brown employee, we call Brown employees in 73 countries. We hire a couple hundred thousand people in the course of the year. Our biggest area of concentration, those in peak season, we're gonna hire over a hundred thousand people in six weeks. So we're gonna hire a small town of people in six weeks period of time and we gear the whole season up for that. 0:04:49.6 Joel: And you do that every year, by the way? 0:04:51.2 Matt Lavery: Doing it for 27 years. 0:04:52.0 Joel: Doesn't take a break. 0:04:52.7 Chad: 27 years. Okay. So let's talk about the scale though, because back 27 years ago it wasn't that big. 0:04:57.6 Matt Lavery: A lot more people. 0:04:58.4 Chad: So a lot more people just to make the machine grind. Let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about that and then moving forward to today, because I think as we've been talking about, HR and TA and tech actually understanding the impact, a lot of listeners out there don't understand the impact. Because many of them were around since after the internet, right? 0:05:19.6 Joel: Yeah yeah. 0:05:20.7 Chad: So let's talk a little bit about that machine. 0:05:21.9 Matt Lavery: Well, let's go back to, there's a building off of 294 in Chicago, called Chicago Area Consolidation Hub. It was one of the first major buildings that was built in Chicago. It was built in 1995. That's where I started. We were hiring 400 people a week in that building at that time. So a hundred people per shift. There were four shifts. 0:05:38.7 Chad: And all manual. 0:05:39.6 Matt Lavery: And then peak. Yeah. And peaks there were 23 pieces of paper that had to be completed. 0:05:44.0 Chad: Oh my God. 0:05:44.5 Matt Lavery: On each hire, that had to get sent down to Marietta, Georgia, which was an employee service center that keyed it into, it was an older system until 1999. Then we updated it went to PeopleSoft in '99. But it was a whole procedure to get somebody hired. 0:06:01.3 Chad: Wow. 0:06:01.3 Matt Lavery: And we had a team of people in Chicago that, now this is was just one location. 0:06:04.7 Chad: Data entry? 0:06:05.7 Matt Lavery: We had over 30 admins. We had 25 interviewers. We had 40 recruiters. And just to make all that happen. 0:06:13.7 Chad: So, let's talk about this kids 'cause everybody's saying that AI is going to take jobs and so on and so forth. Well, the internet and process methodologies, but we did evolve and we still have shit, tons of jobs that are out there today. So what do you say to those people when they say, well, AI is gonna take all those jobs? 'Cause you've been there and done that before. 0:06:30.9 Matt Lavery: I think jobs are gonna evolve. And I think as a TA leader, there's a couple of ways you can go with that. So if you're looking at a recruiter and say, now they're handling 10 to 15 racks, and if we take these pieces of work away, that our time sucks, and now they can handle 15 or 20, that's one way, you can do that methodology, you can reduce the number of recruiters that way. Or I prefer to go down a road of actually calling them what they should have been called all along, talent advisors, giving them more responsibility because we talk about in HR all the time, getting the seat at the table. 0:07:03.2 Matt Lavery: But the leader of HR can't get the seat at the table unless people below him are also the seat at the table in those local areas. So to empower those folks, give them the time, give them the resources, give them the information to be a difference maker in each of their little areas of the company, that trickles up. Trickle down has never worked. We've known that through several presidents. 0:07:22.1 Joel: Yeah, don't get him started. 0:07:25.8 Matt Lavery: I know. But trickle up does work. When other people are hearing that the TA space is solving problems, solving issues in each of these areas, that will trickle up, and it does trickle up. 0:07:34.9 Chad: Well, for you though, I mean, when you take a look at if those positions aren't filled, you're missing. 0:07:41.1 Joel: Out of business. 0:07:43.5 Joel: Yeah, revenue drops. 0:07:46.2 Matt Lavery: Every job that we do, that we can, we put a dollar amount for every day it's open. And we go in front of the hiring manager and say, every day you delay your interview schedule, every day you delay your selection. 0:07:54.8 Chad: This is what you're doing. 0:07:56.0 Matt Lavery: This is what you're costing. 0:07:58.7 Chad: See, that's genius. So do you know, is that different? It's gotta be different. 0:08:03.8 Matt Lavery: Different by geography and job type. 0:08:05.1 Joel: Oh my God. So you've got all that broken out. 0:08:07.8 Matt Lavery: As best as we can. There's some jobs that's hard to do it. But the sales jobs and some of the operational jobs, those are a lot easier, 'cause there's a number of components that we can put to it. Some of the stuff like marketing, it's kind of like, I guess the roll part one, when he goes in, did you BS today? Yes. Did I try and BS today? No. Now it's some of the jobs, it's hard to put a quantified to, but where you can, we do. 0:08:30.2 Joel: I love that you've had so much experience and we don't get a lot of people that have been at the same job. 0:08:34.3 Chad: Did you just call him old? 0:08:34.4 Joel: For over 20 years. 0:08:34.5 Chad: That's not cool. 0:08:35.6 Matt Lavery: I'm as old as you guys are. 0:08:35.8 Chad: I mean, we're all old, man. Don't worry about that. 0:08:38.6 Joel: I'm embracing it. I'm embracing it. 0:08:42.4 Joel: You have the unique perspective of looking at what a job seeker was in 2000 and what it is today. Talk about the differences in the job seeker today versus 20 years ago. 0:08:52.7 Matt Lavery: Well Sunday newspaper 25 years ago. 0:08:56.1 Joel: That's a big change. 0:08:58.4 Matt Lavery: Yeah, it's a big change. When the red circles, sending out mailers. 0:09:02.8 Chad: I don't even think we had highlighters back then. 0:09:02.9 Matt Lavery: Very early days of online. Same things that you guys were at, I remember. But slowly evolving in, it's really become a sales job now. Before, they had to sell to us. Now we have to sell more to them to get them in the door. 0:09:18.9 Chad: Interesting. 0:09:20.1 Joel: Right right. 0:09:21.8 Matt Lavery: Because before it was, okay, sit down for this five levels of interviews and we'll analyze all this stuff. 0:09:28.0 Chad: Panels and tribunals. 0:09:29.6 Matt Lavery: And you had to feel lucky. I got to a third interview. Is there a fourth? I don't know. And you had to really audition yourself. Now it's, okay, come please work for us. This is what we'll offer you. These are the benefits. All those kind of things. So it's more of just not qualifying somebody. As much as you're trying to qualify them, they're qualifying you. 0:09:51.4 Joel: How much of that is they have more options or? Yeah, you're shaking your head. 0:09:55.0 Matt Lavery: Absolutely more options. And I think it's also more data at their information. Before when it was a Sunday newspaper, I can go look at someone's website and go learn about them or go to LinkedIn or go to Glassdoor or go to all these areas that are out there that they go learn about you. So the smart, really good candidates, when they come in, they're not asking you those questions. They're asking you, well, why did you get this review on this situation? Why do you do it this way? And you have to have answers. 0:10:22.7 Joel: That's fascinating. 0:10:24.3 Matt Lavery: Some people are better at it than others. And some people, some candidates look at it and say, that's not for me. 0:10:29.7 Chad: Well, let's talk about it. Like back then, obviously it wasn't very speedy to get somebody in, today it is. And we know speed kills because the competition, as you just said, if they're faster to the trigger than you are, then you lost them, right? So how have you guys been able to be more efficient? What have you done? What have you been able to do to be able to ensure that you don't lose that great talent? 0:10:53.7 Matt Lavery: What we've tried to do, and we've done this for a number of years, and this is the second system that we've went to, with Fountain, that we're utilizing today. We did it on our old system, but it was hard. 0:11:05.6 Joel: You care to name names? 0:11:06.2 Matt Lavery: We're the only customer of it. So anyway they built it just for us way back when they didn't sell to anyone else. We're the only customer of it. We co-branded it. We gave them the direction how to build everything they built it, they hosted it. Almost 20 years of use. Great job. They did a great job for us. But the problem was, it was Burger King. We could build it any way we wanted it, but it could take six, eight months on changes. So, and now as we got into the pandemic and other things, we need things to change faster. So what we needed to do was a simple flow process of the happy path. You can get someone to a job offer as fast as possible because if you're not making that job offer and setting that hook early, they're gone. And right now in Fountain, we're getting most of our candidates to our entry-level package handler jobs, our seasonal jobs, driver, helper, and SSDs. Inside six to seven minutes, they're getting to a job offer. Inside 22 minutes, they're onboarded. They're writing nines done. 0:11:58.9 Chad: Wow. 0:12:00.7 Matt Lavery: All their documents are done. They have a start date. And the only thing they're waiting on is their criminal background check to come back clear. In every, inside 22 minutes. 0:12:07.1 Chad: 22 minutes? 0:12:10.2 Joel: For our most common jobs, our driver jobs. 0:12:11.3 Chad: That is amazing. 0:12:12.4 Matt Lavery: And jobs that are airports with a couple extra steps. 'Cause you gotta get a fingerprint at the airport. You get a badge from there. You need a road test to be a driver. But for our standard jobs yeah 22 minutes. Everything side-sealed and delivered, out the door. 0:12:26.7 Joel: And you're a guy that's seen everything. And I'm sure that you RPO multiple services. What was it about Fountain that sort of cut above the rest? 0:12:34.4 Matt Lavery: Yeah, I mean, the reason we went to that other service for an ATS, 20 some odd years ago, we looked at all the ATSs I did. There wasn't anything for mass hiring. I think Unilever, a company out of Portland, was something that did hourly hiring, but they still were rec based. I looked at it and said, that's not going to work for us. So, we went to this company who was doing our IVR at the time, so all the people were scheduling interviews for their service. They said, oh, we can build this other part of it for you too that has an application. And for us, when we went to Fountain, they were the first ATS that I saw that could handle our high volume hourly hiring because they're nimble and quick. I gave them our process flow for a basic package handler. In two days, they didn't come back just with a prototype, a workable prototype that I could give to anybody in my company to go do a fob of job apply. It had the videos that we used, it had the language, the questions that we asked, and the happy path, you can get through to a job offer inside five minutes, six minutes. And that was working on it for two days. 0:13:28.0 Chad: So, was that the intent from you or did they overkill on it? 0:13:32.5 Matt Lavery: They overkill. I mean, I didn't expect them to, well, I talked to everybody. I talked to these, they said, well, we're flexible, we're this, we're this. Here's my process flow. Make it happen, Captain, I go, if you can make this happen. And then they came back and I was expecting a phone call a couple of weeks, maybe a month down the line. The person I'm talking to, Matt, you're ready to look at it? Like, who's this? Like, really? 0:13:53.1 Chad: What was that timeframe? 0:13:53.5 Matt Lavery: Two days. 0:13:53.7 Chad: Two days? 0:13:53.8 Matt Lavery: Yeah. 0:13:57.6 Chad: Holy shit. 0:13:57.7 Matt Lavery: So, when they came back and they said, all right, what kind of stuff are you doing? Like, they put a PowerPoint together or something. They put some macro together. 0:14:05.0 Chad: Is it Figma? 0:14:06.9 Joel: Yeah. So, it was like, let me play with it. They gave me the link and I played with it. I'm like, this actually works. So, they got my attention. And then what we had to do is build the business case to make the switch. That took a little bit of time to, it had to go to our friends in IT and go back and make a business case. Because anytime you switch a solution, you're paying for that old solution for a period of time. So, you got to account for that in the business case. There's transition costs and you got to make it all work. 0:14:32.3 Joel: And what was the reaction from the recruiting team? We've talked to companies that are big, make a change, no one wants to change. What was it like at UPS when this. 0:14:41.6 Joel: You get some of that. And no matter work where you do whatever change, even if it makes their jobs easier, it's new. But we got full adoption pretty quick. But we also did a Cortez approach. We kind of burned the old chip so they couldn't use it. So, they had to switch. 0:14:54.8 Chad: Scorched earth that shit. 0:14:56.3 Joel: Which we've heard that story before, right? Like we killed it. So, they had no choice. 0:15:04.1 Matt Lavery: They had no choice. And they learned pretty quick. It's intuitive product. So, it was easy to learn. And we ended up hiring over 100,000 people in six weeks last year with it. So, it worked. 0:15:10.9 Chad: So, are you actually showing, because you have all the numbers that go to the bottom line, which is beautiful. And we love that. Are you actually showing that you're filling faster so therefore we're saving this kind of money? I mean, and pushing that back up and saying, this is why we do this. 0:15:25.1 Matt Lavery: This is how fast we're filling jobs today. 0:15:25.8 Joel: The table. 0:15:32.4 Matt Lavery: Think of it this way. We were on a cycle with our old ATS. They were replacing jobs on our UPS jobs board every four hours. So, we're up and down any changes. We had to flip it to an hour because jobs are getting filled that quick. Candidates were coming back four hours after posting and some are getting filled already. And now we're finding even an hour is too long. We're moving towards real time. We want good candidate experiences. 0:15:53.4 Chad: Right right. 0:15:53.8 Matt Lavery: So, I don't want someone to see a job on our board, come to it and they say there's no more openings. 0:15:57.9 Chad: Yes. 0:15:58.0 Matt Lavery: I wanna get better at it well I want to meet their expectations. Because the human element, you can't lose in all of this automation discussion. You have to account for it and still be human with people. And you have to be straight with them. And speed and transparency are what they want. We're trying to give that to them. 0:16:12.4 Chad: So, what are you guys doing on the engagement after? So, say you've got some people that didn't get jobs, right? Filled all those positions. That's awesome. What are you doing to keep them engaged? Because you know there are gonna be new positions opening in a minute or two and you wanna get them into that new pool. 0:16:28.2 Matt Lavery: We have drip campaigns on every location that comes available. We're going back into our old candidates first. 0:16:34.3 Chad: Perfect. 0:16:35.7 Matt Lavery: We're marketing to them. Right now, we're still experimenting how often because we don't want to spam them. 0:16:41.0 Chad: I love Matt. I love Matt. 0:16:42.7 Joel: He's very lovable. 0:16:44.2 Matt Lavery: We're trying to figure out all the logarithms and okay, they applied six months ago. Is it good for two messages this week? 'Cause we don't want to become a pain to it. But you still want to reach out and touch those folks. And then what we do is we go back to the advertising wall. So, we are saving money on both sides because we're able to re-utilize our database we paid for and put them into hires. 0:17:01.8 Chad: You just don't want it to be a bad touch. 0:17:04.3 Joel: Not bad touch, Matt. No bad touch here. 0:17:05.8 Matt Lavery: There's no doll here to touch and figure out where it is. No, only good touches, shoulder and above. 0:17:12.8 Joel: I lost my train of thought. Thanks, Chad. We talked about the reaction from the recruiters. Talk about the reaction from the job seekers. Did ghosting go down? Did your scores go up? Because applying to these jobs are tough sometimes. 0:17:28.4 Matt Lavery: It's kind of a mixed bag there, to be fair. 0:17:28.5 Joel: Yeah. 0:17:29.7 Matt Lavery: Our surveys, we're 95% plus almost in positivity on the experience. 0:17:36.3 Chad: Okay. Is that like an NPS score? 0:17:37.0 Matt Lavery: Yes, NPS. 0:17:38.7 Chad: Okay. Is that going up? 0:17:40.0 Matt Lavery: It's going up. But we're in the 50, 60 range. 0:17:40.7 Chad: Oh, very nice. Because those people will use UPS or a competitor. 0:17:42.7 Matt Lavery: Everyone we hire is a potential customer. Everyone we interview is a potential customer. So, that's why we take it seriously, 'cause we don't want to harm our brand. The part that really we're still trying to figure out is the ghosting. It's probably equal to what it was before. And again. 0:18:00.6 Joel: In the pre-Fountain days? 0:18:01.6 Matt Lavery: Yeah, a little bit, but we're getting. 0:18:02.7 Joel: What do you make of that? 0:18:04.7 Matt Lavery: I think it's the competition, but we also cut out steps. 0:18:08.6 Chad: You need 22 minutes though, Matt. 0:18:10.4 Matt Lavery: I know, but the part of it is before, we were only measuring the cutoff at the time of job offer to the first day of work. There were other steps there that also had drop-off rates. 0:18:15.7 Chad: Gotcha. 0:18:17.1 Matt Lavery: So, we only have one drop-off rate, not three anymore. So, when we say we're about the same, we're the same from the same start of the process. But if I go back and look at the whole process, our drop-off rates are about a third of what they were. But the last step, we're about the same. 0:18:31.1 Joel: Okay. 0:18:31.4 Chad: So, within 22 minutes, I get the job. Do I automatically start the onboarding process? 0:18:34.1 Matt Lavery: Yes. 0:18:37.6 Chad: Right then? 0:18:38.1 Matt Lavery: Yes. You get messages. It depends on the job you're in. Some of our jobs, they have a on-person piece for what's called, we call it cornerstone. Not the company. That's what we called it before the company was there. It's the training in-person. Other seasonal jobs, it's a virtual. So, you're going to get links to our LMS and to go inside and to start to do things. 0:18:58.5 Chad: So you can see the engagement. And if they're not being engaged, you can. 0:19:02.2 Matt Lavery: Then we're reaching out to them. 0:19:03.9 Chad: You can nudge them. 0:19:04.6 Matt Lavery: Yes. 0:19:04.6 Chad: Okay. That's awesome. And I would think that would help from the anti-ghosting aspect as opposed to just sending out an email and then stepping back. 0:19:14.5 Matt Lavery: I firmly believe, I think there's always gonna be a percentage of people that will ghost now. 0:19:17.6 Chad: Yeah, of course. 0:19:18.0 Chad: And it's because of the competition. And it's nothing that we can, we're gonna keep looking at it 'cause UPS we're constructively dissatisfied but we always wanna improve. But at the same point, you can't be a man of all seasons, every candidate. And we're gonna do the best we can to get them in the door, but we're also not going to try to do better. But there's only so much better that you can do in some cases. 0:19:41.5 Chad: Yeah. 0:19:42.0 Joel: You talked about job seekers being smarter, having more ammunition going into an interview. You are a business that has a lot of threats of automation. We talk about self-driving trucks, self-driving or self flying whatever. And a lot of. 0:19:57.9 Chad: Drones. Yeah. 0:19:58.3 Joel: Heavy packages can be lifted by machines. Are job seekers coming in talking about these issues of why would I work for someone where I read in the news today that all the trucks are gonna be self-driving. Are those issues and how do you tackle them? 0:20:10.2 Matt Lavery: Yeah. We're a union based company. So it's all in the collective bargaining agreement. All those things so people can go read it and see what the union has to say about it. There's a lot of things in our union agreement that we have to go talk to the union before we institute things and even consider some things. So a lot of people say, It's a union company. It's scary a little bit to some people. Our founder brought the union in on a handshake back in the '20s and '30s. It wasn't Pinkerton's, there wasn't like fights. He was a founder of the company. He wanted his employees to be the best represented and also be the highest paid in the industry. Our drivers for years have been the highest paid in the industry. They get a pension still today. How many jobs have a pension today? Our drivers who deliver your packages. They have a defined pension plan. I mean there are total compensation all in about $150,000 salary benefits and a pension plan. There's not many jobs that you can do without a high school diploma to go out and make that. 0:21:04.8 Chad: Well and you guys started putting AC in your like Florida trucks. And I mean, it was like, I mean, but I mean, you have that collective voice. Which is telling you that, which is why I would say that the founder did that in the first place. 0:21:17.0 Matt Lavery: Probably so. 0:21:17.3 Chad: Because you gotta hear from the people. 0:21:18.9 Matt Lavery: And we listen and in some cases, like any negotiation, everyone comes in with a pile of things that they want. And you can't get everything. 0:21:25.9 Chad: No. 0:21:26.4 Matt Lavery: So you negotiate it. That's what it is. 0:21:27.8 Chad: They do that for a reason. 0:21:28.9 Matt Lavery: Yeah. That's what it is. So they've asked for AC before they have their priorities. They wanted more benefits, they wanted a better pension plan. So that's where money went that could have gone to that in the past. So, and again, the other piece of it is we turn our truck off every time we make a deliver or stop, the key goes on your pinky ring. It's part of the training. You ever start your car and try to put the AC on in a hot day right after it's not so. 0:21:52.8 Joel: Oh yeah. After I pee on my leg. 0:21:55.5 Matt Lavery: Yeah. So I mean, what we're trying to do with our package cars now, there's a lot more fans, more white roofs. We're trying to decrease the heat in the package cars. But AC in some of these areas are essential. We know that. And we're responding to what our employees want and need. 0:22:11.0 Joel: Yeah. I love the union and many ways you guys were mavericks. I mean, we talk about the auto workers, we're talking about hotel workers now, but you guys were the first really that we started talking about the rise of unions in the last two, three, four years. Just curious about your take on labor unions and maybe the benefit in recruiting and retention. 0:22:31.9 Matt Lavery: Well, obviously we had some disagreements. We always. 0:22:34.3 Chad: Of course. 0:22:34.9 Matt Lavery: But it's more of like a brother sister kind of situation. 0:22:36.3 Joel: In the family. 0:22:38.3 Matt Lavery: Our union's been part of our company for almost a hundred years, so. 0:22:43.1 Chad: That's awesome. 0:22:43.7 Matt Lavery: It's hard for me to gauge what it wouldn't be like. Because, we've always, I've always dealt with them. In some cases you have to look at it from their point of view. It forces you to look at any situation through someone else's eyes. Because sometimes you get typecast or so it has to be this way 'cause I'm the management person. Then you have to come back and sit, all right, that does make sense. And why do we do it this way? Or why should we do it that way and. 0:23:05.2 Chad: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like hiring. 0:23:06.8 Joel: Recruiting and retention. Where does it play in that aspect? 0:23:10.9 Matt Lavery: I think we get more questions about it depends on whether or not you're in a right to work state or not. So the biggest question is, do I have to join the union in a right to work state? In non-right to work states, they ask about what do the union do's, those kind of things. What are the benefits? And that's where the fine line is because we're not supposed to talk about that to the employee. Because that's where your representation comes in. We can give them information where to get it, those kind of things. But again, it's not as adversarial as one would think. It's more sibling rivalry in some cases and you fight over things because we both wanna be profitable. 'Cause they don't want their jobs to go away. 0:23:47.1 Chad: Exactly. Exactly. 0:23:47.6 Matt Lavery: And we wanna be profitable for obvious reasons. And they're also the face of our company. Our drivers are beloved in their communities. You can go scan and put an article in about UPS driver about every month someone retiring after 35, 40 years of service. And they held parties for them in these little neighborhood communities. So that's something that we like, obviously, and we wanna foster and we wanna make sure that still remains there. Our drivers get access to buildings, that our competitors don't get. 0:24:17.3 Joel: Interesting. 0:24:19.4 Matt Lavery: Let the person go around behind the counter. We trust that person. I see that person every day. That's my driver on my route. So there's a lot of brand to that. The brand plays that. 0:24:28.8 Joel: I love the embrace. Most companies are fighting like tooth and nail with, unions, so you guys are embracing it. Having an old style after that. 0:24:35.2 Chad: So let's jump back into tech real quick. Where do you see, 'cause obviously, going from back in the 23 pages days, [laughter], oh my god. That's hurtful to today. 0:24:46.2 Matt Lavery: And we got audited on each page. If there was a cross off. 0:24:48.8 Chad: Jesus. 0:24:49.6 Matt Lavery: We had a filed folder audit. 0:24:51.7 Chad: How did you ever hire anybody? Anyway. Okay. I digress. I digress. 0:24:54.8 Matt Lavery: That's why you have 30 admins working for you. [laughter] 0:24:57.9 Chad: I digress. Looking forward, you know where we are today. You're skating to the puck, where is it going? Especially in this space, efficiencies, those types of things. Because I mean, you're living it right now, but it's not stopping. 0:25:09.5 Matt Lavery: No. I think for us it's how we wanna embrace AI is gonna be the question. Do we wanna become better informed and better predictability? I think that's where it's gonna go from us. Where we can predict things better. How much money we have to spend on advertising. How many people can I get from my internal database? More metrics on that. Better reliability. So if I get an opening in Bozeman, Montana, maybe I don't have to advertise at all. I only go through my internal candidates and we get better metrics on that. The other side of it is we need to make sure our recruiters, the time we take away, what are we filling their day with to make them better talent advisors and become masters in their area of when there's a problem. Maybe it's not even TA related, it's employee related. Let's talk to my talent advisor on how they can help. That's what I'm looking at, is to use AI to make us better people, better employees, and to be counted on as a resource within our organization. 0:26:02.3 Chad: Have you checked out, I'm sure you have, just the math on how much money you're saving now that you're going into your internal database first, instead of just going direct out? 0:26:13.4 Matt Lavery: I'm not gonna give you numbers, but we are saving a fair amount of money with that. 0:26:16.4 Chad: Yeah. So you're seeing the savings enough to be able to? 0:26:19.7 Matt Lavery: Yeah. And then so much so that like the reps of some of these companies, well, what are you doing? Why aren't you spending money with us? Kind of stuff. So they're noticing on their end. So they're coming and asking us questions about those kind of things. So. 0:26:31.8 Chad: Yeah. And actually be building an ecosystem within itself as opposed to, and again, we say this a lot on the show, if a CMO bought a bunch of leads and then just let them atrophy, that CMO would get fired. Right? 0:26:44.0 Matt Lavery: Sure. It should be. 0:26:45.5 Chad: Yes. And we realize that we're buying those amazing people/leads and we need to go back to them. So that's awesome. That's awesome. 0:26:53.3 Joel: On that note, talk about upskilling. That's a big topic. Now, taking your current workforce, I know you guys have a really great plan of moving up the ladder, but talk about upskilling and how UPS approaches that. 0:27:04.9 Matt Lavery: Again, we're a union company for the most part. So up till a few years ago, about 80% of our positions were all filled from within. And all of our driving jobs, for the most part, are filled from within. You start as a package handler, you work for in some cases you might work as little as six months. Other cases, a couple of years. Then you're in line to become a driver to get that job. But there's other jobs that you can put a bid in on. So on the union hourly side, everything's promotion from within, get hired at the entry level, and then bid on jobs as they become available. But there's another track, though, as a part-time package handler, I can go the management route. We have part-time supervisors that manage six to eight part-time package handlers. 0:27:40.6 Chad: Okay. 0:27:44.4 Matt Lavery: So we can, we're gonna promote those people from within too. And then those part-time sups become full-time sups managers and operations and so on. What we've done over the last few years is we've gotten better to try to get outside talent because sometimes when you only have one way to think, you don't grow as fast or as easy as you can. 0:27:57.6 Joel: Yeah, stack in your ways. 0:27:58.2 Matt Lavery: So we brought in, we brought in the first time Carol's the first time we brought in a CEO from outside the organization. Daryl Ford we brought in from outside the organization. My boss, Dan Hawksworth. Tyo we brought in from the organization, other areas to help give us some different perspectives. I embraced it because I kind of always was outside the organization. I was a little bit different than some of the other UPSers. So it was refreshing to have people come from the outside and say, yeah, we've met, yeah, you're right. [laughter] Because often it was, "Well, we're gonna go hire a consultant, they're gonna tell us what to do." I'm like, "No." 0:28:28.8 Chad: "That's why I'm here. That's why I'm here." 0:28:31.2 Matt Lavery: Yeah. I go, yeah. And like, no, we don't wanna do that. But again, it's the easy button in some cases. But now when you're getting outside thought into our organization, it's helping us grow faster. 0:28:41.6 Chad: Talk about, when you're talking about the outside pulling people in from the outside. UPS has an amazing veteran hiring organization. Not to mention you have the business, resource groups inside. Talk a little bit about that. Why was that so important to UPS to build such, a robust veteran hiring and also BRG system? 0:29:01.9 Matt Lavery: We're very much a militaristic culture, I mean, the way that we promote people within, the way that our diversity goals are. I mean, we didn't start with the diversity when George Floyd happened. Diversity was inside of our nature. We've won awards for many years on many different areas. Like for the amount of female pilots that we have, for the amount of management that we have that are minority based. All those things we're pretty good. And I think any company that wasn't good before George Floyd, they used George Floyd to do some things. They're probably not good now. You had to be good before that to be good now. And for the veteran space, we attract veterans just to the nature of our company. Because you can get promoted by doing a good job and doing the right things. And that's what they're used to in the veteran space. They put their time in, they can bid on jobs, those kind of things. It's core to them. It's about service to the company instead of the country. And they See value in that. I'd encourage you, I'm gonna make one plug here from someone that works for me. 0:30:00.5 Joel: Sure. 0:30:01.5 Matt Lavery: Lloyd Knight, who runs our talent acquisition for veterans. He just started a podcast over the last couple of months. 0:30:07.8 Chad: Nice. 0:30:08.3 Matt Lavery: He's got about 15 in the can already. It's called the Landing Zone. 0:30:09.6 Chad: Lloyd. 0:30:09.7 Chad: How am I not on this already? What is going on around here? What the hell? 0:30:14.4 Matt Lavery: No, absolutely. 0:30:14.8 Joel: This is the landing zone, not the bone zone. That's a different podcast. 0:30:18.8 Matt Lavery: No, but it's something that we're trying to connect to veterans in many different ways, and we see there's a lot of value to it. I see value to it. I'm not a veteran myself, but I see a value in what they bring to our organization and also is to give back to the service they gave to our country. I think that's an important piece of it that shouldn't be lost. 0:30:37.7 Joel: It's 2024. It's an election year. I don't know if you got the headline. 0:30:41.3 Matt Lavery: Yeah, I got the memo. Yeah. I got the memo. Yeah. 0:30:42.7 Joel: But there's an election year. The border has been highly politicized. Immigration has been politicized. We don't hear a lot from companies about the impact on immigration, the importance of new workers coming into the country. What are your thoughts on immigration as a whole and how it impacts UPS? 0:31:00.3 Matt Lavery: I'd really like it as they brought people in, if they would give them eligibility to work easier and faster. Because we're an E-Verify company. Everything gets tracked. I can't hire a lot of the folks that I want to. We wanted to get involved in the Afghan piece when that came in a few years ago when that started. But they weren't eligible to work right away, and it was hard to get them on board. It was a chore. So I think when we do these things as a country, we should be able to get these people jobs if they want them. Because in my mind, if someone wants to work here and earn here and pay taxes here, God bless you. Let's go. Because the amount of talent that we need, again, I'm an ex, You guys are exes, I think too. 0:31:39.2 Joel: Yeah. 0:31:40.6 Matt Lavery: We don't have enough baby boomers for these jobs. I wish they would all retire. That's just my personal. 0:31:43.4 Chad: Get the hell out. 0:31:44.6 Matt Lavery: And make more opportunity for some other folks. But we're not like Europe yet, where we have negative growth. But we're slowing down. So we need to bring in people who want to take, quite honestly, some of the lower end jobs. 0:32:00.2 Joel: Sure. 0:32:00.3 Matt Lavery: But build themselves up. 0:32:00.4 Chad: Yes. 0:32:01.7 Matt Lavery: And again, we have a country that can do that for them. Let it work that way. Give them the opportunity to work, earn a living and create a family and get, you know what? Every thing you talk about, whether you're, red, blue, whatever, there's commonalities between everybody. Everyone wants to have a family have their kids do better than they did. No matter what part of the political spectrum you're in. And these people that are coming in, that's all they want. They wanna provide a life for their kids. Make it better for them than it was for them. 0:32:26.3 Joel: Is it too late to start our Matt for president candidacy? 0:32:29.0 Chad: I don't think so I think we should through it out there. 0:32:31.6 Joel: We can hand up right here, right now, [laughter] live from the Dexter booth. Unleash. That was Matt Lavery. Matt, for our listeners who wanna know more about UPS maybe even apply to a job, where do you send them. 0:32:45.3 Matt Lavery: Applying to a job? Go to upsjobs.com. If you wanna hit me up, my profile hasn't been updated in a while, but I do respond. You can go to look me up on LinkedIn. 0:32:53.5 Chad: Excellent, man. 0:32:54.2 Joel: And we're here in Vegas. I think the over under on the Bears this year is seven and a half. Are you gonna go over on that. 0:33:00.7 Matt Lavery: I've already bet the over. 0:33:00.8 Joel: Bet the over. 0:33:01.2 Matt Lavery: And I'm gonna double down on it. I feel as I leave this podcast. 0:33:05.0 Chad: I'm feeling dizzy right now. 0:33:06.4 Joel: I'm gonna go bet the under on a Confident Bears fan. 0:33:09.1 Matt Lavery: To Counterbalance. 0:33:10.0 Joel: That is another one in the Can, Chad, we out. 0:33:13.1 Chad: We out. 0:33:14.6 PODACST OUTRO: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, a Podcast. The Chad. The cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out!

In this episode, Chad and Lieven dive into the world of tech startups, recruitment platforms, and AI in the workplace, while Joel is busy perfecting his tan in Vietnam. Lieven plays tech guru as he explains the mind-numbingly simple three steps of Carve's AI platform and contemplates shoehorning it into their already cluttered software. Chad and Lieven then take a joyride through the chaos that is Indeed's expansion into the staffing industry, lamenting how it's going to screw over staffing companies. They toy with the naive idea of staffing companies uniting to create their own job platform, as if herding cats wasn't hard enough. The conversation wraps up with a desperate plea for the staffing industry to wake up and deal with the mess that Indeed is making. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad Sowash (00:29.905) Yeah, welcome to the lactose free Chad and cheese. no, Chad and leaving does Europe. That's right kids. This week Joel is sunning himself on the beach in Vietnam. But on this week show, carve and artisan go head to head and who'd you rather and leaving helps everyone understand why you should never go full indeed. That's right kids. You should never go full indeed. Let's do this. Lieven (00:36.846) uh -huh. Chad Sowash (01:01.585) All right, leaving. So a couple of things. First and foremost, just you and me this week, Joel is on the beach in Vietnam, a beach in Vietnam, and actually just got some audio. We apparently have audio from Joel's first interaction with people from Vietnam. I haven't listened yet, so beware, kids. Here we go. Lieven (01:43.214) Joel. Chad Sowash (01:43.665) Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. So I didn't vet that. I should have vetted that better. That source sent us some wrong information. That was actually from a movie, Full Metal Jacket. But anyway, I can see you're missing Joel, Levin. So we had to do that. We had to do that to liven things up. How are you? Lieven (02:06.702) I'm fine, I'm fine. How are you? Chad Sowash (02:08.401) What you been up to? Yeah, it's been a while, man. What you been up to? I know you've been busy. You've been galavanting all over the world. You've got busy things. You've got work to do. What's going on? Lieven (02:16.462) Yeah, it's all about AI as we speak. So yeah, I'm teaching a lot now. We're training all our employees in the use of generative AI because according to McKinsey, every white -collar job will be done 40 % more productive by using AI. So we have to make sure that we stay ahead of the pack. It's pretty time -consuming, but it's also very fun to do each day. Chad Sowash (02:20.497) Really? Chad Sowash (02:27.121) Huh. Chad Sowash (02:41.009) So how do you do that? I mean, you've got 50 different companies. Do you work at corporate first and then just kind of like work down, you know, downstream? How does that actually work with a company as large and all the different brands that House of HR has? Lieven (02:56.11) It depends. We have a professional streaming broadcasting studio in our headquarters. So I can use YouTube live to stream to our, to our people, but also visit all the companies. And we train the people in small groups, 50 people, 20 people, 30 people, depending yesterday, for example, I did the whole day on what we call the fire starter. So which is like the high potentials of house of HR. It's a select group, 21 people who are getting prepared. They already have all management functions. Chad Sowash (03:00.049) huh. Yeah. Chad Sowash (03:17.761) Yeah. Lieven (03:25.422) but they're getting prepared for the C level functions. So very important people because they're the future of House of HR. And we are training them, and then they can train their own people. They are the trailblazers. They should be. So busy, but it's fun. It's fun. And each day I learn something new. And it's like a full -time job just to stay tuned. Chad Sowash (03:47.793) I would think so. I mean, things are just moving so fast. So trying to ensure that you're getting, you know, not just information disseminated down through the ranks fast, but also being able to train. I mean, because getting information down is one thing, but being able to train is something entirely different. So that's a big lift for you guys, I'm sure. Exactly. OK, well, I tell you what, let's go ahead and let's get into a little shout out action. Lieven (04:09.326) Hmm, it is. Chad Sowash (04:17.841) You got to give me a second kids. There we go. I knew Joel had a he had an effect for that he had an effect for that. First shout out I'm going to go ahead and shout out to zing for the possibility of being delisted. delisted. First they try to be the German LinkedIn. Then they jacked out of that model and they pick a smaller job board total addressable market. and go after Indeed. We're going to talk about Indeed later this show kids. Are these guys nuts or is it just me? What the hell is going on over at Zing? It seems like they had a good model starting off, very big tam, and now they're literally just closing that tam down and going after Indeed. Lieven (05:06.638) Yeah, they tried LinkedIn and it didn't work out. So then they tried to become Indeed and that didn't work out either. And now they're just slowing down and closing down and that's it, I guess. Thank you, Xeng. See you next time. Chad Sowash (05:11.217) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (05:21.713) Yeah, or not for very long. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's very interesting. They got a new CEO and the guy automatically started closing the TAM. Lieven (05:23.502) are not, see you. Maybe we won't see you next time, could be. Chad Sowash (05:35.857) If you think about LinkedIn kids, it has a much larger team because you have recruiting, but then you also have advertising, broad based advertising. And they just closed all of that down. So they were having issues, obviously hitting the revenues that they were looking for in a much larger addressable market. And then what do they do? They shrink it. Now, I do believe that focus means a lot, although they're not a new company. Right? So this isn't like a kind of like a quick pivot of a startup. They've been around for a very long time. So this is this is to me it's very odd. To me it's very odd. Do you have a shout out? Lieven (06:14.67) I do, I do. My shout out goes to Rafael Alstad, who is the CEO from TLDV. You might not know TLDV. It's a difficult name, TLDV, but it stands for Too Long, Didn't View. So Too Long, TL, semicolon, Didn't View. And then it makes sense. It's a transcription tool. In fact, it's a great transcription tool. So I'm. Chad Sowash (06:15.857) Excellent. Chad Sowash (06:22.705) Hmm. That's a bad, that's a bad, bad name. Chad Sowash (06:31.057) Yeah. Chad Sowash (06:38.065) Okay. Lieven (06:39.214) We're in plenty of meetings, and we have interviews of candidates, so we need to use AI to transcribe all those meetings. And TLDV has a very special feature. You install it, and then it's connected to Zoom, to Google Hangouts, to Teams. And I don't even need, once a meeting is in my agenda, I don't need to be present. TLDV is going to log into the meeting on its own, and it's going to transcribe everything. Chad Sowash (06:45.169) Yeah. Chad Sowash (06:52.749) yeah. Yeah. Lieven (07:07.374) And then it's going to, when the meeting ends, the moment it ends, it's going to mail me all the transcriptions. And people will actually see Lievens virtual assistant, TLDV, as a participant in the meeting, but without camera, of course, just the little bullet. And it's a great tool. It works. And I've been testing plenty of tools, but why does my shout out go to that one, to Raphael Alstad? Because I was interested in it, and I checked her website, and I went to the testimonials. Chad Sowash (07:11.953) Yeah. Chad Sowash (07:18.733) yeah. Lieven (07:36.622) And then one of the testimonials said, I'm in love with this app. And I'm saying this because I need to hit my product activation targets, signed Rafael Alstad CEO. And it made me laugh. That CEO has a sense of humor. I liked it. So I got in touch with him on LinkedIn. 20 seconds later, he answered already. Very nice guy. He said, if you have any questions, I'm your personal contact. Let me know, whatever. Great guy. The software is great. I'm testing it right now. And I'll hope. I hope I'll be helping him with getting their product activation targets on point. Chad Sowash (08:12.177) Well, if anybody could, it could be you because you have so many. And again, you were just talking about your entire staff and trying to help them better understand and become more efficient. This is right. Yesterday, I think I had three calls and there were note takers on those calls, AI note takers on those calls. And. Lieven (08:28.622) Yeah, it's a big thing, suddenly. Chad Sowash (08:30.993) Yeah, yeah, same, same thing. It was a different company, but same thing. And they do the transcript, obviously, and then they automatically summarize and give you an executive overview with that transcript, right? I mean, it's it is incredibly smart. It is. I mean, I was talking to somebody just yesterday on the amount of time that I'm saving using chat GPT. and not just writing, but coming up with ideas and in different ways to actually, you know, go after certain content and shows and things like that. And it, to me, like you guys are doing it at house of HR, being able to get this type of tech. instituted into the normal flow and routine is just amazing. So yes, big shout out to him for being funny and being truthful. But at the end of the day, to be able to get your attention, Lieven von Nievenhausen, and to be able to perspectively utilize that tech through, how many employees do you guys have? Lieven (09:32.174) 6000s something like that. Chad Sowash (09:33.937) I mean, come on, man. That's a fucking windfall for a company like that, right? So yeah, that's a big shout out. That's a big shout out. Lieven (09:40.59) Yeah, my problem is always, is it safe? I mean, we are having some pretty confidential meetings. If my virtual assistant is entering the meeting and I'm not even there, it's going to make a transcription of something that could be really hush hush. And with a German company, I feel if they claim it's safe, I tend to believe them and I checked it and it seems okay. If it was a Chinese company, I would never be using them. Just you can't be sure. Chad Sowash (09:46.193) Yeah? Yeah. Chad Sowash (10:06.641) Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there are just so many different aspects to that discussion from a trust standpoint, right? From an access standpoint, IP. I mean, just there's a lot of conversations to be had. But still, you're starting the conversation. Most companies are not. Follow, leave -ins, lead kids, get everybody to understand how tech can make them better. Not take their jobs, but make them better. My next my next shout out is more news from Canoe New in a groundbreaking decision. The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled that Canoe New, a well -known employer rating portal. It's a it's the it's the glass door of Germany, pretty much. They must release names if ratings are questioned by the companies who are rated. So until now, Canoe New has only provided anonymized evidence from reviewers. This approach is now changing fundamentally how these systems can do business. So as I've been telling Joel for forever, I think that, you know, first and foremost, Canunu hasn't been lighting the fire, the world on fire. They've actually they've contracted instead of expanding because they have not had a winning model. But companies like them and Glassdoor, I pretty much, I believe this is the death of them. What do you think? Lieven (11:33.71) Strange thing is, I didn't even know Kanunu until yesterday. The fire started meeting with our colleagues. One of my German colleagues told me about Kanunu. And it's just your pity. I totally forgot what she said about him. But she was talking about Kanunu. And I said, Kanuna, Kanunu? Yeah, she said something like Glasdoor. And yes, yes, OK. And we were talking. Chad Sowash (11:39.537) Really? Okay. Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:52.113) Yeah. Lieven (11:55.086) But Kanunu, it didn't ring a bell to me. So if you say they're shrinking, they never got my attention apparently. Chad Sowash (12:03.441) Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were expanded out into as far as Australia. They were trying to actually get a foothold in the US. And they have just been contracting their footprint dramatically, dramatically. So yeah, I personally, you know, as transparency becomes, you know, the cool fad of the day, anonymity is the uncool thing. Not only just for people who are using it, you know, anti -TikTok or what have you, but also for those companies. And obviously this to me, companies being able to use the judicial systems to be able to go after companies like Canunu to be able to get the information from people like you and I who are giving them anonymous ratings. That to me is a, it's dead. It's dead. Lieven (12:56.686) I'm going to check them out so that I'll know what you're talking about. But my interest is growing because of the changes in Google's algorithm. Google is changing from a focus on content to a focus on trust and authority. And those reviews, like maybe Kununu can offer, actually, they will help you build your trust ranking. So if many people write a review, Chad Sowash (12:56.753) Yeah. I was gonna say there's no reason to. You know glass door, you know canoono, they're a dying breed. At least that's what Chad thinks. Yeah. Chad Sowash (13:23.377) possible. Lieven (13:24.974) All those individual reviews are traceable to existing persons. And if they all claim you are a good company, then your website might benefit from it in the ranking from Google. So for us, those ranking websites like TrustPilot are very important now. And Canunu might be an alternative. I'll check. Chad Sowash (13:29.105) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (13:39.633) Yeah. Yeah, I think there if they can get out of this, this anonymous, you know, side of reviews. Yeah. Yeah, they and it's got to be verified because one of the things that we've seen, especially with Amazon reviews is their bot reviews, their fake reviews. I mean, it's just nothing to pump up. Lieven (13:48.942) Yeah, it has to be traceable to a person, not anonymous, indeed. Absolutely. Chad Sowash (14:03.697) a person's score, right? So there's got to be some type of verification process that actually happens. And I think most of these companies, the canoes and the glass doors, they're not great at verification. Lieven (14:17.614) No, Glossdoor is the same thing. I can write a review, a bad review about a company that never worked. And they tried to offer some barriers, but you can circumvent them. Chad Sowash (14:22.481) Yeah? Yeah. huh. Well, I have something that I believe that you're going to give me a good review on. Okay, leaving after the success of KBOO this year at the E recruitment Congress, I think I found a the next musical group for next year's E recruitment Congress. Are you ready? Are you ready? Here we go. Lieven (14:37.902) Mm -hmm. Lieven (14:43.502) Alrighty. Chad Sowash (14:49.777) German techno. Chad Sowash (14:55.185) Yeah. That's an alf horn. That, that low brr, that's an alf horn. yeah. That's it, man. That's it. Lieven (15:02.67) It sounds so noisy. Lieven (15:08.494) Thank you. Okay, why not, why not, why not? Chad Sowash (15:12.817) All right, all right, stop it, stop it. They had multiple instruments, there were three dudes, multiple instruments, drums, cowbell, keyboard, synthesizer, you know, you love the synthesizer, and the alfhorn, that big ass horn that they use on the top of the mountains. Lieven (15:25.742) Yeah, I know them. I've seen a video about them. Right, right, right now I know who you're talking about. German Techno, right. But yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be, actually it could be. They will never replace cable, of course, never. Of course not. But no. But it could be an alternative. Yeah. It's actually a good idea. It could be fun on stage, yeah. Chad Sowash (15:33.585) Yes, German techno. This could be next year's e -recruitment Congress. Okay, okay. Of course, of course not. Of course not. That's not what we're trying to do here. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to expand and diversify. Yes. Hey, man. I think so. I think so. That being said, not just the recruitment Congress, which we will be talking about once we get a date and once we get once we get a venue. Wreckfest is happening on Thursday, July 11th at Neboeuth Park. Joel and I are going to be on the disrupt stage. Unfortunately, you're gonna go on a beach somewhere. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for you. Yes. Lieven (15:55.278) huh. Lieven (16:16.27) I'll be sitting on a beach in La Gomera. Yeah. It's... Chad Sowash (16:21.841) It even sounds more sexy coming out of your mouth. Lieven (16:24.462) It's like the fancy version of Denarife. Chad Sowash (16:28.497) Hahaha Chad Sowash (16:33.393) matter. We're going to be Nebworth Park kids. If you have not been to a rec fest, this is a all hands kind of situation where you bring your staff, you know, 102030 doesn't matter, bring your staff have an all day learning session. This is a single day all day learning session, going to be there with talking about technology going to be talking about best practices going to have an opportunity to be able to have your peers interact with them each other. Obviously all hands day, not to mention with with other companies who are in the space. So go to rec fast R E C F E S T dot com two events this year, one in the UK and one in Nashville. Check it out. and that being said, it's that time. Chad Sowash (17:24.497) Topic. Okay, so right out of the gate, we're going to get into the world of technology with a little game we call who'd you rather here's how the games played. I will give a quick overview of two startups who has recently received funding. Picture this. It's the end of the night. Lights are low in the bar. It's already well past last call. And these are the only two options you have to take home. So the question is, who would you? Rather, okay, first contestant is carve this from tech .eu Amsterdam based carve has raised 10 million to offload admin from recruiters following the launch of its recruitment platform in March. With the seed funding 10 million to see that's not bad with the seed funding carve aims to accelerate its growth and expand the capabilities of its platform into different domains of the recruitment life cycle. Industry data shows that anywhere between 20 to 40 % of recruiters day to day is spent on admin tasks, which we were talking about earlier. CARV hopes to automate these processes in order to free up recruiters to focus on the candidate they should be interacting with. Among the investors are Global Founders Capital, GFC, and several independent angel investors, wow, who previously backed companies like Slack, Miro and Revolut, some pretty big names. The founding team previously built Harvard, a market leader in technology. Wow, that's that's, that's pretty big. Give me a second. Chad Sowash (19:14.289) where all my sound effects is. Chad Sowash (19:20.849) there it is. Chad Sowash (19:24.849) And in this corner, we have Artisan. UK founded Artisan AI. That's right, AI is in the name, so it's got to be good. A startup building AI employees and software for enterprise companies has raised $7 .3 million in funding. The Y Combinator -backed company is founded by 22 -year -old Jasper Carmichael Jack, who's the CEO. Oxford PhD graduate Dr. Rupert Dodkins, who is the CTO and IBM product and engineering veteran Samantha Stallings, who is the CPO. The company is now based in San Francisco and is building artisans. What are artisans you might ask? Good question. Fully autonomous AI employees and a unified platform to replace the entire SaaS stack. so that humans and AI can work together seamlessly and enterprise teams can stop context switching. Okay, leaving, carve or artisan, 2 a in the bar, who would you rather? Lieven (20:37.742) 2 AM, Carve would remind me of Carve and it's Carve. When it's curvy, I'll take it home. So definitely Carve. But I checked them and I kind of like Carve. I was very skeptical in the beginning because looking at their press release, it said something about Carve hopes to eliminate admin from the hiring process, maximizing interaction between recruiters and candidates, blah, blah. And after reading the whole press release, I didn't know what they were actually doing. It's just some explanation. But then I checked the website, and I slowly grew into it. So I checked it out, and there's a very convenient tab saying how it works, which sounds promising. So I clicked on the tab, and it says, step one, identify tasks. We start by identifying the tasks you want to delegate to Carve. And by determining the context, Carve needs to handle these tasks effectively. So I think, OK, in my case, what will I be doing? Chad Sowash (21:27.025) Makes sense. Lieven (21:34.062) I would tell Carve, I wanted to write vacancies, to transcribe interviews, to transcribe meetings, write personalized thank you mails when someone applies. I would like the information from an interview being parsed. I would then like it to add the structured information to my applicant tracking system. That's basically it. And then it says step two, customize AI. Next up, we customize Carve's AI to follow your style, output format, and overall tone of voice. So basically, It's just going to predefine a prompt like make vacancies no longer than one page, use the following structure and don't use words that might be too difficult to read because our candidates aren't the brightest grains in the pack, something like that. And then you have step three, embed Carve. Finally, Carve becomes part of your workflow through a calendar connection and if preferred, an ATS integration. And now it's getting interesting because the first two steps are something we are already doing. We are using different tools to... Chad Sowash (22:23.313) Mm -hmm. Lieven (22:30.062) do all those tasks. But the third step, embedding it in existing software and existing flows is tricky. Here is where you'll be spending mental amounts of time and money if they screw up. But it's also where you can make the big difference. If they actually succeed in it, that's where the big money is. Suddenly, it's more than just a fancy layer on top of the tools we're already using, like Chetch .tpt, Copilot, Whisper. If they... Chad Sowash (22:43.953) Ha ha! Lieven (22:58.926) succeed in integrating this, the whole flow in our existing products, it's nice. And I checked it, I looked a bit deeper into it, and I got really interested. They offer automated calendar meeting transcriptions, like TLDV I was talking about, which is nice. They do a lot more. And they also have the plug and play integration with the major ATSs, like Bullhorn, Greenhouse, SAP, Recruity, et cetera. So I'm going to invite them to give them Chad Sowash (23:12.497) yeah. Lieven (23:28.91) a demo with the connection with Bullhorn. And if they can convince me, then maybe next time we can talk about how it actually works. But to make a very long story short, I'll take Curvy home with me. Chad Sowash (23:41.649) Chad Sowash (23:45.937) All right. All right. All right. So Carve will be going home with leaving. So decision time for me. If you're looking for someone to help you get your life in order or make your day to day operations run well, like a well oiled machine, I believe Carve is definitely your pick. They're practical, efficient and ready to take care of the nitty gritty details around recruitment. And I do believe if they get it right, there's a huge payoff. No question. But. If you're in the mood for adventure, someone who's pushing the envelope and thinking about how to transform the future, artisan, artisan is the one for you. They're bold, ambitious, and their eyes are set on a horizon filled with autonomous AI employees. And that could change the way we do work and live, kids. So it's 2 a and I'm in need of some adventure. So I am picking artisan. Lieven (24:43.374) But do I get it right? Artisan is actually going to create like virtual employees who are going to replace existing employees. Chat, that is very bad for my business. I won't take her home. Chad Sowash (24:51.921) Yes, I think. I think it could be good for your business, though, and at the end of the day, let give me a second. Give me a second. I think it could be good for your business from the standpoint of there are different sets of tasks that could perspective Lee be jobs, right? So what you could do is you could make your people more efficient by taking a lot of those things off their off their plate like scheduler. Let's say just since, for instance, some companies have. Lieven (25:23.078) by offering each colleagues like a virtual employee, a virtual colleague, an assistant. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Chad Sowash (25:26.833) Exactly, exactly. Like a virtual assistant, right? So instead of having these schedulers, let's say, in, you know, in your different business units, you now have AI doing all your scheduling, right? And then you can really focus on the things that matter. And that's that's interaction. But at the end of the day, I think both of these organizations, especially carve, I really like what they're doing. And yes, I mean, if I was not making a 2am, option and looking for adventure, I would definitely pick carve. Again, we're not we're not doing any investing here kids, but at the that's the one that's the one I would pick, but I'm looking for adventure this time. I'm looking for adventure. Lieven (26:10.222) What the? Chad Sowash (26:13.777) All right, kids, that is who'd you rather and we shall be right back. Get the right transition. Chad Sowash (26:28.657) All right, Levin. So recently, Joel and I highlighted that Indeed announced during their investor update, they will be making big moves into the staffing industry, noting their current recruitment advertising total addressable market is $32 billion, which is only 10 % of the entire recruitment market spend. So Indeed will first be expanding into temp staffing, which adds, listen up. $128 billion to their $32 billion total addressable market. The vehicle for making this move is indeed Flex, which was born out of the UK startup SIFT indeed acquired back in May of 2019, and which has been working as a temp and gig hiring skunkworks ever since. So during the investor update indeed explained their main goal. will be to become the primary hiring partner for all employers. Are you surprised? What are your thoughts? Lieven (27:38.35) Am I really surprised? Maybe not. Is it a problem? Definitely yes. Yeah. Chad Sowash (27:40.561) Mm -hmm. yeah. Lieven (27:46.414) They want a higher rate take out of every successful hire through their platform. That's fine, but the way they're going to approach it is basically they're going to use our candidates, they're going to steal our candidates and they're going to sell them to their own clients and maybe even to my clients. And I'm going to pay for it. Chad Sowash (27:51.185) Yeah. Chad Sowash (28:06.385) Yeah, I mean you already have been. I mean you and staffing companies all over the world. So give us a rundown of just kind of like how you started interacting with Indeed and kind of give us a timeline if you would of House of HR, Leave -In and from where you started and where we are today. Lieven (28:08.654) Yeah. Lieven (28:19.054) Yeah, okay. Yeah. OK, so for someone who doesn't really know where Indeed came from and how it works and what's the big thing about this, I'll start from the beginning. So I think 10, maybe 15 years ago, we started using Indeed without even knowing it because they grew by scraping job listings. And they came to our website. I was working for a competitor of House of HR back in the days. And they came to our site. They copied our jobs. And they Chad Sowash (28:33.329) Okay. Chad Sowash (28:42.849) yeah. Lieven (28:53.294) created the biggest possible job database in the world. And then they optimized each job, each single job for Google. And because of Google, they got lots of traffic and they became a huge traffic machine. And fair is fair, they gave the traffic for free to us. They took our jobs and people applied to the jobs, true indeed. And they sent the applicant to us. Very nice. Cool. We learned against it. And then a bit later, they called us and they said, OK, listen, last year we gave you so much traffic and I could check it. Indeed, yeah. Indeed gave us so much traffic. Nice. OK, if you still want that, you'll have to pay at least for part of it. So we're going to do some organic listings. We are going to scrape all your jobs. But some of those jobs you'll have to promote. You have to sponsor. You can choose which ones. And then you'll get the traffic and we'll still continue working like that. OK. Chad Sowash (29:30.673) Yeah. Lieven (29:49.806) It was about 10 cents per click back in those days and no cure, no pay. So we used to work with StepStone and Monster where we had to pay much more. So we were still pretty happy and we slowly got hooked to the traffic, the inflow from Indeed. And times passed and years passed. And suddenly a few months ago, Indeed communicated to us that they would no longer offer organic traffic to the companies from the staffing industry. They will no longer scrape staffing companies. We now have to pay for all our jobs. Chad Sowash (30:18.801) Mm -hmm. Lieven (30:19.246) which is kind of annoying because for our average company, everything becomes three times as expensive. But we got a lot of inflow through Indeed and Fair is Fair, it's their job board. And why would they give us free traffic? Okay, it's a business model. If they want to make it three times as expensive, it's their choice. We might look for different solutions, but okay. But now suddenly everything is becoming clear. Why did they stop offering? Chad Sowash (30:25.105) Yes. Lieven (30:49.294) free traffic, why did they stop scraping us? Because they had the cunning plan to become a stuffing platform themselves. And if they would scrape our jobs and use our jobs without our knowledge and use it to attract candidates and then use those candidates from our jobs for their own clients, that would be totally illegal. In Europe, I'm not sure about the United States, but in Europe you have a legislation about scraping that says if you scrape a database with commercial value, Chad Sowash (30:52.209) Mm -hmm. Lieven (31:18.19) You can't use it to compete in the same commercial sphere. So that's what they're doing. If they would scrape our jobs, use our jobs, and they would use those jobs to attract candidates and then steal the candidates for their own gain, that would be illegal. So suddenly they said, we're going to stop scraping, but you can still pay for the jobs. And of course, if we pay for a job being put on Indeed, we can't claim we didn't know about the job being there. we are giving consent by paying. It's the best consent you can give. So obviously now with the new way of working... Chad Sowash (31:49.393) Yeah. Lieven (31:57.358) Every company, every stuff in company will have to stop using Indeed because it's like paying your competitor for stealing your candidates and your clients, which will be beyond stupid. And the problem is, of course, Indeed represents up to 50 % of our inflow as we speak. And we are pretty good in e -recordings. And some of our companies only use 20 % from Indeed. But we have Decent SEO. We have intensive social channels. We have some other stuff. Chad Sowash (32:04.837) Yes. Yes. Chad Sowash (32:16.785) Mm -hmm. Lieven (32:24.27) But I can imagine other companies being even more dependent on Indeed. So this is a problem in Indeed. Indeed is a problem in Indeed. So I was thinking, in an ideal world, all major staffing companies would work together now to launch their own version of Indeed in some kind of cooperation. Why not Adekko and Randstad and House of HR and all the others work together? We launch a cooperation, our own Indeed. Chad Sowash (32:43.569) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (32:48.977) Yeah. Yeah. Lieven (32:49.71) And immediately, we offer all our jobs, all our vacancies. So we offer, we have the volume, we promote it. So we have all the traction, we have all the candidates. It would work from the start. And then we could just share the cost, we could share the profits. And instead of calling it Indeed, I would call it Absolutely. So absolute jobs, it reminds me of the better kind of vodka. Absolute jobs. Absolutely. Maybe it's... Chad Sowash (33:16.401) And it would have to be a blue label. It'd have to be a blue label, too. Lieven (33:18.478) Yeah, of course, and a nice bottle in which we would sell our jobs, bottle the jobs. But you get the point. I mean, we have to do something. And I think it's maybe the right moment to set together with the whole industry and figure out how to cope with this. Chad Sowash (33:33.585) Yeah, I think it's been it's been interesting to watch like, let's say, for instance, Ron, Ron, Todd and Deco, they both tried to get into the tech space and they failed. Ron, Todd bought Monster. They didn't focus on it like a separate business unit like they should have and and hired who the hell knows what happened with veteran hired for God's sakes with a Deco. So, I mean, they've both failed dramatically. Lieven (33:51.886) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (34:01.233) I think a lot of that has to do with they're trying to run those tech companies like traditional staffing companies, right? And they have to break out of that. And again, big kudos to you guys at House of HR because you are constantly looking at trying to break your traditional models with tech and with anything that's out there. I don't see these guys doing that. I see that what they've tried to do is they've just tried to assimilate. Lieven (34:09.87) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (34:30.001) tech into their tradition, right? And that just breaks the whole fucking system. You can't do that. You have to evolve. So the big question is, do you think Adeco, Ronstadt, do you think they have the capacity, not just in their brain, but in their, in their, in with their investors and with, with their, with their leadership to even think about breaking their traditional model? Do you think they, they have the capacity to do that? Lieven (34:36.846) Yeah. Chad Sowash (34:59.313) because I'm not sure they do. Lieven (35:01.294) I think it's even better they should do it because of their investors. If you look at the recruits and the holding above indeed, they have a market capital value of, I think it's last time I checked, I could be wrong, but I think it's four times the one from Rundstad. And Rundstad is so much bigger, the revenue is so much higher. So by being considered a digital platform instead of a traditional staffing company, Chad Sowash (35:06.609) They should. Yeah, I agree. huh. Chad Sowash (35:20.624) Yeah. Yeah. Lieven (35:29.358) your market's capitalization goes up. So investors will love it. So I think if I was Otiko, if I was Rundstad, I would talk to my investor and say, we need to act right now and we're going to do it this way. And for them, it would be perfect solution. So I don't even think they just have the capacity they have. They should be doing it. It's... Chad Sowash (35:39.793) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (35:47.345) Yeah, but the biggest issue is the capacity of a leadership and how they lead. And we're seeing that with CEOs who can't get their head around trying to lead remote workers. Right. I see this almost as the same thing. You get used to a tradition, right. You get used to a routine, you get used to a way of making money. And then you're told you can't do that anymore. That CEO is almost worthless in some cases. Right. Lieven (36:00.27) Yeah. Lieven (36:14.638) Hmm. Chad Sowash (36:15.409) So I don't know. We'll see if they have the capacity. I'm not sure that they do. One thing I want to add in about your story with Indeed is Indeed started off as exactly as you had said, as a really Google for jobs. That's how they coined themselves. Google for jobs. There was no resume database, none. And then out of nowhere, after they started getting all of this traction, guess what they did? They added a resume database. That's where you guys started feeding the beast. Lieven (36:32.75) Mm. Chad Sowash (36:42.929) So you were feeding them with your candidates. Then, then, wait a minute, then they made registration what? Mandatory. Then they made it mandatory. So they were truly stealing your shit. They were, yes, yeah, yeah, but you're not only, they're not only stealing the candidates, right? They're stealing the leads because they can put two and two together and they know who these companies are so they can go directly after. Lieven (36:43.054) Yeah. Lieven (36:53.837) Indeed. We should have seen it coming, and we didn't. Of course. Chad Sowash (37:09.937) these companies. So I think in the progression, yes, if you didn't see a company owned by one of the biggest, you know, staffing companies in Asia pack recruit holdings, if you didn't, are they five of them? my God. So if they, they're that big, right. And you know, they have designs on where? the U S they have designs on the U S. So therefore how do you do that? Lieven (37:21.55) Even in the world, they're number five in the world now. Yeah. Chad Sowash (37:37.425) The infrastructure is already there with Indeed. So to me, it just makes sense. But staffing dollars, built. I remember when I was at Monster early on, 75%. That's right, kids, 75. 75 % of our revenue in the early Monster days came from staffing companies. Staffing companies built this technological industry, right? So now you have, guess what, Indeed. Chad Sowash (38:09.489) who is turning that on, the people who actually built them, right? So the thing that got me the most was, you know, Chris Himes in the investor update said, look, we're getting about 1 % of the take, where staffing companies are getting 20%, maybe even more in some cases. What if we just go from 1 % to 10 %? We will undercut the staffing companies. And this is me all paraphrasing, right? We will undercut the staffing companies. We will do it with their candidates. We will do it with their money. And there's not a goddamn thing they can do about it. I mean, it was almost like he was staring in the camera just begging staffing companies to do something about it. I don't know, man. This to me, was literally just, it was a duel at dawn. And the question is, will staff and companies show up for the duel? Lieven (39:07.79) And I've watched the whole episode. You sent me the video from their investor relation call where they actually explained what they were going to do and what their reasoning was. And I watched it. And I was looking, are they actually telling me they're going to use my clients to fill in? And it was that. I watched it three times to make sure. It's amazing. And to be honest, if I was indeed, I probably would be doing the same thing. It makes sense from their point of view. It's perfectly logical. Chad Sowash (39:16.529) Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (39:28.177) Yeah. Lieven (39:37.326) They have everything, like you said, they have the resumes, they have the vacancies, our vacancies, and now they can capitalize on it. But it's a decent thing to do now because they're backstabbing their own clients. The ones who have built them, who have made them what they are, they're just putting them a knife in the back. Chad Sowash (39:41.137) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (39:51.985) Yeah. Yeah, well, I really believe this is a call to all staffing companies. I don't care if it's temp staffing. I don't care if it's executive. I don't care what it is. This is this is where you're going to have to evolve because indeed, first step is into temp staffing, which is one hundred and twenty eight billion dollar TAM. But but this is just because that's that that's the lower side and they already have technology sift now flex indeed flex. to be able to really focus on that and how they've had a skunk works. They've had this in kind of almost stealth mode for years now, since 2019. So they've been trying to perfect this thing so that they could get to this point. So I think it's interesting, but will this force traditional staffing companies like Kelly to actually evolve or are they just going to literally be a lead machine for the... Indeed, flex people. Lieven (40:54.606) I can't imagine many big stuff and companies working with Indeed, let's say within six months. Everyone is going to look for a way out now and we still need them until we found a different way or an alternative way to get the traffic, to get the candidates. But I can't imagine one of my companies, one of, sorry, one of my colleagues and our competitors not having the same stream of thoughts right now. We're all looking for something, I think. Chad Sowash (41:18.961) Yeah, yeah. Well, I think I tell you what, in closing, leaving, I'm going to ask you to do this. Make a plea to the staffing industry as a whole and what you would like to see the entire staffing community do as an ecosystem as opposed to separate pieces. What would you like to see them do to be able to respond to indeed? Lieven (41:44.142) As I said before, I would sit around the table with the biggest stuff in companies in the world and say, we do it. Indeed used to work. It gave us the traffic we needed. Why don't we launch around Indeed, a corporation? The five biggest ones take all 20%. And we share the profit, we share the cost. We all got better out of it. And we have it in our own hands. We are not depending on a company who might do what Indeed has done right now, because we couldn't let this. We couldn't leave this to LinkedIn, for example. They would do just the same thing. LinkedIn is in perfect position to do just the same thing. So it's not like I'm trusting them either. Chad Sowash (42:17.457) yeah. Chad Sowash (42:26.097) I definitely wouldn't. And I think for any startup that's out there today who we've Joel and I have been talking about the staffing, the staffing industry needs to have an operating system, much like an Uber operating system, right? They need to have an operating system. If you were that company, and there are many of them that are out there, by the way, if you were that company, this is your time in the sun. You better be calling Levin. You better be calling Ronside. You better be calling a Deco to have these discussions about how your technology can obviously help leapfrog that of what indeed is doing. But in this non -cheeseman world of the Chad and cheese. podcast the chat and leaving does does Europe I want to leave you with with this leaving Lieven (43:24.046) Joel. Chad Sowash (43:26.865) you enjoy yourself, Joel. And all I gotta say, Levin, that's another one in the books. We out. Lieven (43:35.214) We out.

In this episode, Chad and guest host Maureen (Mo) Clough dive into the murky waters of AI scandals and industry dynamics, starting with Joonko’s founder facing SEC charges for defrauding investors, highlighting the persistent problem of AI washing. We question ZipRecruiter’s claim of being a “great place to work” amid listener skepticism about their treatment of employees. Mistral AI’s significant funding round signals continued enthusiasm for AI technologies, while McKinsey’s research reveals accelerating adoption and notable benefits of generative AI. We also tackle ageism in tech, discuss AI's transformative potential in hiring and content creation, explore the controversy over age restrictions in restaurants, and scrutinize the issue of excessive CEO compensation, proposing that executive pay be tied to the wages of their lowest-paid workers. Join us as we unpack these hot topics with a blend of insight and snark. Mo's Contacts: https://www.itgetslateearly.com/ - Podcast Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/maureenwc... - LinkedIn https://www.youtube.com/@itgetslateearly - YouTube PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (Errors? AI did it :) Chad (00:23.428) AHHHHHH yeah. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Chad Euro 2024. Sowash and on today's show we're diving into AI washing drama with the SEC and Joonko. ZipRecruiter is a great place to work, NOT, Mistral AI scored a big round and gem bought, who? Let's do this. Chad (00:54.66) Well, welcome back kids. Yes, Joel's on a beach in Vietnam. Everybody knows that, but no, I'm not going to be alone this week because, you know, I wasn't hugged enough when I was a kid. So I need somebody on the show with us. So I have a special guest. And give me a second. I've got to actually pull this up so that you can see the the lovely website. That's right. We have Maureen Wiley Clough, host of It Gets Late Early. the podcast. Welcome to the show Mo, how's it going? mo (01:27.438) It is going! Thank you so much for having me. I'll try to do my best to stand in for the inimitable Joel. So yeah, we'll work on it. Chad (01:32.804) You Chad (01:36.324) Yeah, it won't be as hard as you think. I promise you. I promise you. Not to mention, not to mention, we both have drinks. You have a MoMosa and I have what you called and I was very, I'm very surprised that you know, because not many people know the green Portuguese wine is, you're very cultured Mo, you're very cultured. mo (01:38.382) Don't tell him that. He's irreplaceable. We do. Mombosa, for sure. We're rebranding. mo (01:58.446) I do. I'm very cultured. I like alcohol. Does that make me cultured? Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. Chad (02:04.228) cultured and yeah, just just smart. So anyway, do us do us a quick a quick and dirty Twitter bio who is mo all those people who don't know you should know you tell them why. mo (02:20.078) So I have been working in the tech industry for a while and at the ripe old age of 37 was referred to as a dino, at which point I had an obvious existential crisis. And I looked around and I was like, wait a minute, this is actually pretty accurate. Like I'm one of the oldest people at this company. And it was a smaller startup, but then I like did a retrospective analysis and I was like, wait, throughout my corporate career, even at like the likes of Bloomberg and SAP Concur, Chad (02:46.5) Mm -hmm. mo (02:46.638) I was among the oldest people there and I was like, dude, wait, people are living to like literally a hundred now and no one's saving enough for retirement. So like, how does this work out? And I realized I had this really intense pressure to feel like I had to make VP or something by age 40 to like solidify my chance to have a seat at the table, especially as a woman, I felt like that too. So I started thinking like, why the hell is no one talking about this? This seems to be a very obvious problem with no very quick solution. And so, Chad (03:02.132) yeah. Exactly. Chad (03:12.26) Mm -hmm. mo (03:15.118) I started the podcast, It Gets Laid Early, to have these conversations with experts, with thought leaders, one of my favorite terms, with my peers. And it turns out, everybody's thinking about this too, and just no one's talking about it. So I thought, why not do it? So here I am. Chad (03:29.412) Yeah, yeah, the maths weren't math thing and us growing. We were growing older for longer. And you're right. I mean, even if females get to a VP rank, it's not that they actually get the pay or the the responsibility or what have you. So, you know, there's still a lot of work to happen there, let alone age, but also age and gender and in many cases also, you know, race. mo (03:32.398) They weren't mathin'. mo (03:37.006) Yep. mo (03:44.494) No. Yeah. It's rough. Yep. Yeah. all those things and there is an under -representation of older people, especially in the tech industry, but I think ageism extends across all different industries because humans are amazing. But it's something that we have just left off the table from DEIB conversations when we know it to be a factor. And so I'm on a mission to ensure. Chad (04:01.892) Mm -hmm. Chad (04:07.172) We suck. mo (04:15.726) that we bring it into the conversation and I firmly believe just like all other forms of diversity, it's going to add to the bottom line, which is frankly the only fucking reason anyone would ever give a shit about it in this capitalistic hellscape of a society. So there you go. So let's go research that, let's go figure it out and yeah, get people to give a shit. That's my goal. Chad (04:33.412) All right, well, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna let you keep rolling and we're just gonna go ahead, we're gonna go straight into time for shout outs and you have the first shout out. So who would you like to shout out? mo (04:46.478) Lucky me. So I would like to shout out, first of all, it's kind of a movement I wanna shout out, and it is the concept that your midlife is not the end, that it is in fact the beginning, which is encapsulated in some ways that I find to be really uplifting and fantastic, and in others that I find to be a little, I don't know, maybe concerning. And so I found this. Chad (04:57.54) Okay, sure. Chad (05:03.844) -huh. mo (05:11.534) This person is a rather large, for lack of a better term, influencer. She is also a doctor. She's a psychologist. But yeah, why don't you go ahead and roll this? Yeah, Gucci. Chad (05:18.532) Yeah. Where's Gucci? OK. Chad (06:00.644) Okay, I gotta stop this. I gotta say, this is, this is, okay, so you gotta, you gotta give me a minute here, okay? This is a white cisgender straight dude. I don't understand the females. I just don't. Ask my wife, you know, she explains all the time. I don't understand first and foremost what that energy is, right? I don't. mo (06:02.606) I mean, it's not SNL and. Take it in. mo (06:16.27) I'm sorry. We are confusing. mo (06:26.926) Yeah. Yeah, you know, first and foremost, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love that you called out that you are a white cisgender male, because you are in fact that. And so in general, I would be like, yo, you don't get to opine on this, Chad, like shut the fuck up. But in this case, I am right there with you where I see that. Chad (06:28.036) Can you help me with that? And also, can you help me with the cultish, the cultish piece to this? Because it felt very cultish. mo (06:50.254) and cult alarm bells go off at me. I mean, first of all, when I saw it, I literally was like, is this satire? Is this like SNL? Because what you didn't see in that clip, and I urge everybody to go watch it because you have to see it to believe it, it next becomes like scarf dancing on the beach and women like caressing one another's faces. And it is, it is, trust me, it is not. Please go look at it and tell me what you think afterwards. But I was like, what in the fresh hell is this? And, Chad (07:08.548) That seems kind of sexy to some extent. I mean... I'm not. mo (07:19.726) Like I don't wanna be a hater, but also like what is going on with this like event that she's throwing? I got curious, cause I was like, you know, I wanna be magnetic. I wanna find my purpose. And I went to the website and again, this is a legitimate doctor. She's a psychologist, you know, she's amassed like a massive following and following is a great term for it because again, super cult vibes there. But you go to the website and she's got this event coming up in I think November of this year and I think it's in Arizona. Chad (07:31.236) Yeah. Chad (07:42.756) Yeah. Chad (07:47.747) huh. mo (07:48.942) And it's like at least $1 ,000 or some like angel number or something to attend. Like I don't know if you know angel numbers, Chad. I fortunately do not, but I was clued in that these dollar amounts, like it's like 999 or 444 or 1111 or whatever. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? Chad (07:58.244) No. No. Chad (08:06.884) Was that kind of like the Walmart 97 at the end of everything or 96? mo (08:10.574) Yeah, it's like those online courses that are all like a weird number. Anyway, I was like, what is this? And I can't help but feel like everybody wants to be stepping into their power. Everyone wants to be feeling more confident, like despite the fact that we do deal with a very ageist society. And so I get like, and some of the things that are said, they're not wrong. They're actually 100 % true. But it seems to me a little bit, It's got like cult MLM, like predatory vibes for me because I mean, I don't know if you're in a place where you are connecting to that and scarf dancing and facial grabbing and stuff and you're maybe not in your best moment is my thought. Thank you. That is, you know what? That is actually a perfect encapsulation of what that feels like. It's got MLM vibes. It's got like. Chad (08:54.564) It's like if Amway in yoga had a baby, that's that's That is, that is. mo (09:05.902) preying on people who are at a low point, who need inspiration. It's got all that personal development shit. Yeah, the mysticism and the spirituality and there's so much, there was actually, there was a document. Yeah, anyway, the point is midlife is good and we're going into a great era and I think that it's really awesome to see that kind of momentum and there's been more representation of women in film and in media. Chad (09:11.3) And it's got that energy piece, right? And you, you know, okay. Chad (09:19.204) I gotta stop this before I faint. This is just too much for me. Chad (09:35.236) Yeah. mo (09:35.758) And I think women are collectively saying like, we are going to refuse to fade back into the recesses. We wanna be front and center. We wanna step in and have the confidence in our second halves of our lives. But like this vibe, it just, it feels off to me. Yeah, main character energy. I love that she used that like Gen Z specific phrase. I was dying. I was like, I don't think that's what they mean. But anyway, it was very, yeah, I found that to be an interesting. Chad (09:53.284) Yes. mo (10:05.838) an interesting output from all of that collective good momentum. Chad (10:08.292) It was, it was, it was a thing. It was a thing. And we're going to, we're going to pivot back to the industry stuff right now, kids, because I can't take any more of this. shout out to our listeners, right? We love our listeners. I received a direct message this week from a listener that shared this post from ziprecruiter. here we go. We did it again. Ziprecruiter is thrilled to announce that we have been certified as a great place to work for another year. Okay. mo (10:12.046) Mm -hmm. mo (10:16.334) Hahaha! Chad (10:37.956) Here's a listener response, quote, how the fuck did Zip win an award for being a great employer when they fire so many staff so regularly? What metrics are used when judging this award? And all I got to say is we have these smartest listeners because our listeners can spot bullshit from a mile away. So, you know, if you're watching on YouTube, mo (10:38.542) Hmm. mo (10:59.79) Hahaha Chad (11:05.476) I'm actually going to flash something up here, but it says, and this is no shit kids, it says that 92% of employees at ZipRecruiter say it's a great place to work. 92%. I guess my biggest question is right now, how many of these people are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? With the kids at home, Stockholm syndrome is basically when you fall in love with your character. But, you know, moving on, big shout out to our listeners, being able to call out bullshit on companies like Zippercutter, who literally are kicking people out the door and people, again, Stockholm syndrome, Stockholm syndrome. mo (11:32.59) 92%. mo (11:47.566) Also, isn't that shit like pay to play? Like best places to work you like nominate yourself and like pay a submission. I mean, that shit's not real. Yeah. Chad (11:53.156) Most of them are. Yeah, most of them are. I mean, it's kind of like a glass door and getting a higher rating when literally you're gaming your people. It's almost like the same kind of thing. So anyway, again, our listeners are smelling it. It's bullshit. Nobody cares. But what people do care about and you should care about it, Mo, is free stuff. That's right. We have t -shirts from Air and App, beer from Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey from our friends at TexKrnel. mo (12:03.182) What? You mo (12:12.462) Mm, I do like that. Chad (12:20.996) All this gets delivered to your front door, by the way. Birthday, a little rum from Plum, which everybody likes a little rum from Plum. mo (12:28.014) Hehehe. Chad (12:33.188) The only way you can get registered for this kids, chadcheese.com/free chadcheese.com/free. Then moving quickly, we have a couple of back to back events. Number one is RecFest at Nebworth Park, July 11th. Yes, that's just north of London kids. And then we have RecFest September 12th and 13th in Nashville. These, have you been to one of these more? You went, did you go last year? mo (13:02.542) I did not, but man, do I ever want to sign up for this year. Let me tell ya. Chad (13:06.252) I'll make sure Jamie knows. I'll make sure Jamie knows. So if you're listening and you don't know kids, RecFest is all all -hands staff type of meeting. This is where you bring your staff to learn, bond, connect with peers, learn practical applications of process, tech, AI, standardized procedures. Experts in the space are going to be there. Chad and Cheese will be there. In London and also in Nashville. So go to RecFest. Fest RECFEST .com ASAP and get those tickets. What have you heard about RECFEST? I'm interested because you haven't been yet, but what have you heard? mo (13:48.75) I've heard that it is rad and it's a lot of fun and they do things differently and it's like a big outdoor festival vibe which is very different from your typical conference and so that speaks to me because you know hey we're all getting together for the first time since COVID basically these days and like why not do it outside in a fun festival vibe like I'd like Coachella with my business thank you that sounds good I'm in yeah Chad (13:55.396) It is. It is. Chad (14:10.948) Amen. And you know, where it's held in that worth is amazing. Big field. But Nashville, again, this is year two in the U .S. It's more than likely going to double in size at about twelve hundred people last year, looking at probably going over twenty five hundred. It was amazing and pretty pretty excited. good God, it is it is. And you know what else is great? mo (14:33.518) Nashville's a great town too, as is obviously London. But yeah. mo (14:41.55) Hahaha Chad (14:42.532) Topics! That's what's great. All right. The Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC for short kids, charged the founder and former chief executive of now bankrupt AI recruitment startup, Joonko with defrauding investors out of at least $21 million. The SEC alleged Ilit Raz, former CEO of Joonko provided potential investors with, listen to this, false client lists, fake testimonials, false company earnings, false bank statements, forged contracts, falsified the number of job seekers using the platform, and provided fake claims of how Joonko's AI worked, all in the attempt to close more funding. And it worked. As Joonko closed... mo (15:19.47) my God. Chad (15:39.748) a series B funding in September of 2022 for $25 million. Raz also faces parallel criminal charges of securities fraud and wire fraud from federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Each of the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, according to the Justice Department. This sounds like a backstory for a character in Orange is the New Black. Does this have potential? mo (15:54.478) Jesus fucking Christ. mo (16:08.462) Hell yeah, it does. It 100 % does. I mean, this is the first I'm hearing of all of this, but I'm sadly not very surprised. It sounds like a tale as old as time. It sounds like what just happens in the VC funding world. Like these people are total charlatan just assholes, and they get the money. Don't fund women though, fund these guys. Great, awesome, like perfect. It's just like, how does this continue? How does this, it blows my mind. It boggles my mind, but yeah, it's. Chad (16:08.932) for a Netflix documentary maybe. Chad (16:26.212) Yeah? mo (16:38.382) Sadly, a tale as old as time at this point. Probably another documentary. Chad (16:40.388) Well, Joonko also a diverse platform, a diversity platform, number one. Number two, the CEO, a female. So at the end, not good. I mean, just not good all the way around. Yes. mo (16:45.518) Mmm, cute. So they're using good. miss that. No, not a good look. Not a good look. No, that's like horrifying. I'm very disappointed in that. There likely will be some sort of documentary, especially because the CEO is a female, because we love to tear female CEOs down. That's like our favorite thing to do. So. yeah. Elizabeth Holmes. Chad (17:08.228) yeah. yeah. I mean, Theranos, right? We've got all these dudes who broke the entire fucking financial system, but what? How many of them? How many went in cuffs, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. mo (17:16.142) Yeah, but let's focus on her. Exactly. So true. So true. Such a thing. But yeah, we should definitely prepare ourselves to see that documentary. It's gonna happen. It's gonna be maybe a dramatization. Yeah. I mean, there's We Crashed, Super Pumped, you know. Chad (17:27.588) But we don't see. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we just don't see. Yes, we yeah, we crashed. Also dumb money, which is about GameStop, the GameStop, GameStop stock. So good, so good. So good anyway. Yes, this is in our space kid kids Joonko. We've talked about him for years now. mo (17:39.694) Haven't seen that. GameStop, stock. Yeah. Yeah, I bet that's... I'm gonna check that out. Chad (17:56.932) And last year around around this time last year, we actually reported on the prospect of Joonko going bankrupt. It's all done now. There's a lot happening here. We're going to keep you abreast of it. It's not good news. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you got to hear what's going on so that you don't do stupid shit like this moving on. Okay. So moving from bullshit AI to I sure the hell hope this isn't bullshit AI as Paris. mo (18:11.338) Wow. Yeah, that's. mo (18:18.126) Yeah, don't lie to everyone. Chad (18:26.5) based Mistral AI announces 600 million euros in Series B funding after only a year in operation, which brings total funding to 1 .1 billion and evaluation of 6 billion. This new funding round will accelerate Mistral's roadmap and it continues to bring frontier AI into everyone's hands. The company is developing various generative AI models. co founded by Meta and Google's DeepMind X workers. The firm will support foundational models and aim to compete with GoFigure, OpenAI, Anthropic and others. Some of Minstrel's investors including Lightspeed Ventures partners, Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, love those guys, Samsung Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, OpenAI, Gemini, Cloud, mo (19:16.75) Mm. Yeah. Chad (19:25.54) And now, Mistral, not Minstral, but Mistral. Have you tried them all? Have you tried any of them? Tell me about your your your your AI journey thus far. mo (19:36.718) I have not tried them all. I have tried mostly OpenAI. It's pretty impressive. I know it's one of those things that's on my list. I really need to dive in much more than I have. That's very clear. But to me, I see this news and it's like, well, yeah, anything with AI in it, it gets funded to the hilt. And if you don't have AI in your pitch deck, what are you even doing? It has to be there. Chad (19:40.804) Okay. Chad (19:59.108) Yeah. Yeah. mo (20:00.75) But it is interesting to see that they're going after this. I mean, this category is pretty crowded at this point. And I wonder what the differentiation between their tool and the others will be and how much of a commodity it'll be. And ultimately who's going to win out, right? And if there's going to be like an aggregator of LLM models or how this is all going to play out. But yeah, I love me a Paris based startup though. Like super into the fact they call it Le Chat. Like that's freaking rad. Chad (20:07.172) Yes. mo (20:29.006) le chat like sign like I want to try it it's everything better everything better comes from France so like sign me up. Chad (20:29.476) Yes. Chad (20:35.556) Yeah, well, it was funny because I always I always ask questions whenever I jump in and I asked fairly I think that are hard questions, not too incredibly hard. I mean, I don't know enough about physics to ask those questions. So I ask, what's the the main problems with the U .S. political system? And generally, you'll get back some bullshit that's just kind of fluffy and whatnot. But I did this with Mistral and it outlined like 10 things and they were on point. mo (21:02.734) Really? Did you try the same prompt elsewhere or just on Mistral? Okay. Chad (21:03.876) and they were on point. Yes, yes. The rest of them was a little bit more flowery, right? This one was not. And I don't know if it's because it's out of Paris and they, one of the things, one of the things that Parisians can do is they can rebel. And this might be the rebel large language model. mo (21:11.95) Huh, yeah. mo (21:15.886) Could be the euro thing, man. mo (21:21.902) Yeah. mo (21:26.446) They're also really good at shitting on Americans. Not that we don't deserve it. Not that we don't deserve it, but I'm just saying. Although I did look on LinkedIn and the job openings that I saw were all based in San Francisco. So that was interesting. So Silicon Valley. Chad (21:29.156) Hahaha! It's a thing. Chad (21:40.004) Yeah, yeah, go figure, go figure. So staying in the AI sector, new McKinsey research shows quote, as generative AI adoption accelerate survey respondents report measurably measurable benefits, and increased mitigation of risk of inaccuracy, a small group of high performers lead the way end quote, well, no shit, McKinsey. It's like saying in 1910, automobile adoption accelerated in and survey respondents report getting to work faster and not smelling like horse shit when you're arriving in the morning. I mean, sometimes this research drives me crazy. I was reading through it. There were some good nuggets, but I mean, it was way too long to play this game. Yes, yes, I actually have to throw it into chat GPT and say, you know, get through the horse shit. But let's talk about. mo (22:21.814) Yeah. Our attention span only goes so far. mo (22:31.342) Give me the nuggets. Yeah. Chad (22:33.732) practical applications. So you said that you've played with them a little bit. I've played with them a lot. How are you using AI? How, where, and how much time does it save you? mo (22:44.878) So I will tell you that I am not using AI the way I should. Like I absolutely am not the person who should be the poster child for this. Why? Well, let's see, laziness slash ADHD, perhaps being busy. I know, I know, I know. It's like hypocritical in some ways. It's just like an order of operations issue for me. Like I know I need to be using it. I've used it just to kind of test, you know, what can I get out of this? Like for example, I wanted to... Chad (22:50.884) Why? Why? Well, if you were lazy, you'd be using AI because it does a lot of the heavy lifting. Chad (23:06.244) mo (23:13.166) find a certain episode of Silicon Valley, HBS Silicon Valley, my all time favorite show. I mean, it's just the fucking best. Also, they like predicted so much of what happened in our world, it's a little bit scary, but it's terrifying. I'm like, God damn it, you guys were onto something. But I wanted to find a specific, or I think I asked it to send me the episodes that had specific reference to age and like made fun of older people. And it categorized all the episodes like boom, this episode 10. And I'm like, thank you, I didn't have to watch the entire season and like get my notebook out. You know, so. Chad (23:22.5) Pretty awesome, by the way. Chad (23:42.82) Yeah. Yeah. mo (23:43.086) Stuff like that can be helpful. And it's also, I asked it, I just was curious, like write me a script for a show all about age bias on this. And it did it. Now, was it great? No, but it is a starting point. So I know that it could help someone like me with organizational tasks. And it's really, it's just a matter of me not actually sitting down and taking the time to do it. And it's my own fault. Like I'm an idiot. I should be using this stuff. Chad (23:57.54) Mm -hmm. mo (24:05.582) And I know that I'm setting myself back by not. So, I mean, even you, Chad, you've been like, yo, Mo, why aren't you using AI for your podcast? And I'm like, you're right, you're right, Chad, God damn it, you're right. Always right, Chad. Chad (24:13.02) But, but, thank you, I'm sorry, carry on, I stopped you at the right point. Yeah, I stopped you at the right point. Seriously, so I use ChatGPT for titles and Dolly for cover art ideas. Riverside creates transcripts. I mean, this is the platform that we're using right now to actually record on, creates transcripts, then it uses the transcripts to create overviews, takeaways, and short video clips. mo (24:17.134) Yeah, you're like, wait, one more time, one more time? but. mo (24:30.83) Yeah, I use it too. Chad (24:40.388) I use Opus clips for more video clips, Gemini daily for Google Assistant and chat GPT for executive summary. So I have to say that platforms. Well, but the thing is, like, let's say, for instance, for for Riverside, the platforms who are implementing AI into their system like Riverside are what we should be using. And here's what I mean. When we record this podcast. mo (24:49.294) Yeah, you're doing it well. You're doing it right. Chad (25:06.02) and create an enormous amount of content through the text in the transcript, then audio, then video, the platform can then consume all of that content and then split it out into suggested video clips, podcast titles, audio clips, still captures, and then takeaways. So all the suggested content, yeah, all the suggested content comes together and it literally consumes it and then it spits it out. mo (25:10.894) Yes. mo (25:22.67) 100%. Yes, it does do that. Chad (25:34.02) It's not all great, but it is better than most stuff. yeah. mo (25:35.822) I was gonna say, I've seen some. I've done the like magic clips things and I'm like, that did not encapsulate any sort of point and that was super random. Why did you pick that? It's still cool that it exists and it's gonna get better and better, which is fantastic. Yeah, that's right, you've been saying that. Chad (25:42.756) Which is what? Yes. Yes. Which is why I use Opus. I use Opus because of that, and I'm hoping I'm hoping that, let's say, for instance, Riverside buys an Opus and then that happens and they just get better, better tech inside of it. But I mean, the way that I can see something like this working is, let's say, for instance, like a sales copilot and advisor. mo (25:57.134) Yeah. totally. Chad (26:09.892) AI listens to calls, transcribes, creates a summary of the call, provides advice, and then AI follow -ups with a prospect or client to provide additional information and or schedule follow -ups, right? This to me is fucking magic. And we're going to talk about in the next segment how we're going to be doing this hopefully in recruiting. But until then, before we get out of there, just give me your kind of like, mo (26:11.758) Yep. That's amazing. mo (26:18.318) Yep. mo (26:23.31) Yeah. mo (26:27.566) And it is. Chad (26:39.716) Overall of you were talking about who's going to win Do you really think there's going to be an AI winner or do you just think there's going to be? a small group who literally commands the space mo (26:52.686) Well, I'm not very good at predicting the future, but what I can tell you is, I mean, you think about like the search functionality even just like Google killed that, right? So there were all these different people vying for search functionality and then Google became the just like main star. So I could see that happening potentially. I think. Chad (26:55.588) Hahaha Chad (27:07.908) Good point, yeah. mo (27:11.79) You know, there has been such incredible adoption, as you pointed out, like the whole Henry Ford, like car adoption thing too, right? And the McKinsey report, I get it, but like there has been just this massive growth in the AI industry and people are testing it out. And some people are testing it out more than others, Chad versus me. However, I do use it, I realize now because I have an Otter that transcribes all of my meetings and whatnot. And it helps me as someone who has ADHD and found out at age 36, it's really helpful. Cause then I can like. really zone in to the conversation and know that I'm not going to miss anything. Like it's going to tell me what to do next, et cetera. But I think that it could very plausibly become kind of one winner out of all of this. And, you know, it's just like an arms race hurtling through space towards something that's, you know, not necessarily known the outcome that could be potentially possible, which is a little scary when we're talking about like for -profit companies who don't actually give a shit about ethics or baked in bias or anything, because they all just want to make money. Chad (28:04.388) Yes. No. mo (28:08.526) So it's scary. I mean, like when the platforms start saying, we won't even charge you because we want your fucking data so much, that sends off alarm balls for me. Like I'm like, holy shit. But I do try to remain as optimistic as possible as someone who considers herself a bit of a realist slash verging on pessimism. So long story short, maybe. Chad (28:08.579) Mm -hmm. Chad (28:26.66) Great point about Google. Great. Great point about Google. I mean, you are 100 % right. They own the fucking search market. It's all there is to it. No, yeah, no. And I think that's what scares the shit out of Google is they were leapfrogged by open AI and that in that 97, 95 % ownership of search in the market. That's that in itself could. I mean, next thing you know. mo (28:34.414) I mean, Bing? No. Yeah, it's so true. Bye! Mm -hmm. Totally. Chad (28:53.508) could go away. I mean, that's a very great point. That's a great point. That's why we have you on the show, Mo, because you're smart. mo (28:54.894) Yeah. mo (28:59.47) Yeah, what can I say? I know a couple things. Experience matters. My old age. Chad (29:04.388) Okay, so let's talk about now some tech in recruiting. Right after the break, we're gonna pour ourselves a little bit more green wine, a little bit more mimosa, and we'll be right back. Chad (29:23.588) All right, Mo, get ready. So we're going to start. yeah, you're good. You're, you're at that. That's good. That's good show right there. Look at that. Good poor, good poor, good poor. so we're, we're going to start the conversation about AI with a smart, but rather boring acquisition. you cool with that, Mo? Okay. Okay. So the following, the, no, the following is. mo (29:25.29) So it's running. Got it. mo (29:33.966) good! Good, I'm trying. mo (29:43.486) I'm in. Do I have a choice? Chad (29:52.1) from Steve Bartle, co -founder and CEO over at Gem, quote, today we welcome interview planner to Gem. We acquired interview planners, intelligent scheduling automation to help teams fast track hiring and deliver exceptional candidate experiences. With this new addition, we bring powerful scheduling automation to the rest of Gem's powered platform, end quote. Big startup, not so big acquisition. What do you think Mo? mo (30:22.542) I mean, my initial thought was like, do we really need this? Like, don't we have scheduling tools? Like, I won't say that I've used GEM, so let's throw that out. Reality, but it's the ever present like build versus buy, right? Do you build it? Do you buy it? Do you partner? It's just that always that question. I will say when I went through the rest of their beautifully worded and exceptionally architected article where they showed all these benefits and features, I thought, Chad (30:40.42) Mm -hmm. yeah. mo (30:51.982) Man, yeah, that actually sounds pretty good because let me tell you, using an ATS is a shitty situation. Like it's a horrible experience. Interviewing at tech companies is abysmal and these panel interviews, it says allegedly that it's gonna make everything easy to panel interview schedule, which obviously has a lot of complexity baked into it. And my initial thought was like, cool that it's gonna be easier, but does that mean I'm gonna have to do more interviews because... I'm out on that. If it's so simple that you just hit a button and then they're gonna be like, we're gonna interview you with like 17 ,000 people at this company and make you take the process 10 times longer, like I'm out. But it looked, the functionality looked good, I gotta say. It looked pretty nice. And I was like, you know, hey, tech stack, pulling it together and diminishing the number of different technical applications that you have to work in. Yeah, sure, I like that. That's nice, it's easier. Chad (31:22.404) Yeah. mo (31:43.726) But as a partnerships person, as my background in business development, I'm like, I love the whole plug into different APIs and bring the best of breed and whatnot, but perhaps that's what they think they've done by acquiring them. So. Chad (31:44.228) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (31:56.836) Yeah, well, I mean, so interview scheduling, not a big problem these days. It's the interview themselves, right? It's being able to conduct those, whether you have a third party doing them, you have, you know, video or audio doing them or whatever you might have doing. But interview scheduling seems to be the place everyone starts with process automation. Why? Because scheduling is time consuming. It's boring and it's a true pain in the ass. So it's one of the most logical places to start. mo (32:03.79) Mm, yeah. mo (32:22.03) It is, it's awful. Chad (32:26.244) Plus it's not just making it easier for the candidate. It's easier process for the recruiter, hiring manager and everybody involved. So I would have to imagine this very narrow point solution. Let's call it a micro point solution. Was a bargain basement aqua hire. type of acquisition. In September of 2021, after receiving $100 million in funding, CEO Steve Bartle once again said, quote, it's time to accelerate and quote, and it's 2022. So Jim has added an ATS AI process automation, they're partnering with point solutions like happy dance to deliver dynamic career side experiences. And we're seeing very basic use of AI in gem thus far. So We just talked about practical application for the use of AI, mainly around use cases on Riverside. So tell me your thought on how do we use AI, especially in systems like GEM, knowing the kind of data that they have available, how do we use those systems to really advance the use of AI? mo (33:36.782) Man, the use of AI around these systems, I would, I mean, hopefully there's a way to pull feedback from these interview loops, I would think, like from different managers to get sort of, I mean, I would say, here's one thing I actually applaud Amazon for is they have a hiring process that while arduous and miserable as an applicant actually seeks to reduce the bias internal candidates would face, or excuse me, external candidates would face with all the different people. Chad (34:03.108) Mm -hmm. mo (34:06.062) looking at them. So perhaps there'd be a way to like pull in the information that was input by different managers and different people who are interviewing candidates. And I don't know, assimilate that data and pull some nuggets out or something. But I mean, I'm trying to think of how AI could also influence the, that sort of a tech. Chad (34:07.108) Mm -hmm. mo (34:25.838) But that's the thing that comes to mind for me is I'm thinking about the biases that we all have when we look at different candidates. And maybe there's also a way to standardize some of the interview process because the other thing I've seen in companies is, holy shit, like we don't teach people how to interview others. And it's just like, it's like really ridiculous. The difference between the experiences of interviewing with person A versus person B at a company. Chad (34:31.94) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (34:43.684) now. Chad (34:48.292) Yeah. mo (34:53.742) and how much of it just goes back to like gut sense or who you know or who someone just like happened to like. It's affinity biased stuff. So I think that there is an opportunity for AI to come help democratize the hiring process a bit. Potentially, it also has the chance to do really shitty things. Like for example, there was a company called iTutor Group out of China that was summarily rejecting, yeah, the EEOC nailed them because they were rejecting candidates. Chad (35:06.148) Yeah. Chad (35:15.908) Yes. Chad (35:19.332) Yeah. mo (35:20.942) who applied to the company who were 55 if they were female and 60 if they were men, because again, men are allowed to age more than women naturally in our shitty society. I know, it's so lame. It's terrible, I know, right? Look, it's crazy. So it was wild. So there are ways that ATS systems can be programmed for malevolence as well, but I think that there is also opportunity if you just get it in the right hands for it to level the playing field, make things better. Chad (35:22.212) age. Chad (35:29.092) even though we die earlier, our life expectancy is... mo (35:48.014) It's all about whether it gets in the hands of bad actors or not, right? And whether we have the appropriate sort of regulatory arms to govern that, so. Chad (35:51.3) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (35:55.78) Yeah, I think first and foremost, you're you hit the nail on the head with regard to standardization. And then also, like you have high volume versus middle management versus like executive, right? That's all entirely different. And interviewing is the hard part. So if you're in high volume and you have literally four knockout questions, if you do have a heartbeat, you know, can you get to work? I mean, those types of things, right? And then right at the end of it, if you hit all those and you pass it, mo (36:06.222) Yeah. Chad (36:26.02) You go directly to an interview. That's all there is to it, right? You go directly to a fucking interview. That's the cheat code, right, for that level. You can do that at middle management level as well. There's no question. So there's better ways of doing it, but I'm expecting core talent platforms, the applicant tracking systems, to start recording more information. mo (36:29.518) Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. mo (36:37.294) Totally, totally, yeah. Chad (36:46.372) much like I was talking about the sales example, then consuming that information, then spitting out messages, rescheduling and fielding basic Q &A from job seekers, hiring managers and recruiters. So anyone with access, anybody with access, anybody should be able to go into the system, ask for a situation report on the specific requisition or candidate. A VP should be able to go ask the system to pull together a report. mo (36:58.35) It could be amazing. It could honestly be amazing. Chad (37:13.124) On how many interviews are rescheduled by managers and then ranks them best or worst, right? So, I mean, there's so many different ways to apply this. I'm really excited to continue to see boring acquisitions fit a need, but we've got to get to the next step in the talent industry around advancing. mo (37:19.086) Yeah. mo (37:22.51) You're totally right. Chad (37:34.788) Process methodology in AI Joel is always talking about Facebook's year of efficiency. We're in fucking HR. Okay, we're not following Facebook. Give me a goddamn break. But we need to I mean, we need to not in the in the fact that we need to bloat and then throw, you know, 20 ,000 people away, we need to be more efficient. mo (37:51.118) Right. Yeah, and that could absolutely help get you there for sure. I think there's some really great applications you just threw out there that could actually democratize the playing field a bit, which I love. I'm all into that. Chad (38:03.748) It's what we're trying to do and big surprise coming from the AP by the way see CEO pay it's out of whack Did you know that this median? the median pay package for CEOs for S &P 500 companies rose six to 16 .3 million dollars up twelve point six percent according to data analyzed from the AP meanwhile mo (38:12.75) You know, it's weird. I've got the sense. Chad (38:29.892) wages and benefits netted from private sector workers rose 4 .1 % through 2023. That's right, CEOs get a 12 .6 bump and the people actually doing the work 4 .1 % bump. So. mo (38:44.014) Ding ding ding. Chad (38:45.54) For some perspective, back in 2021, EPI published a report which showed that since 1978, that's right, we have to extract this out so we can understand the actual trends, kids. Since 1978, CEO pay has risen over 1300%. And today, that's closer to 1500%, while normal American non -exec workers... only saw a 13 .5 % raise from 1978 till fucking today. But hold on kids, the government is here to help. A new proposed bill. I know I have to laugh when I say that too. A government bill, proposed bill in January of this year would mean that under the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, tax penalties would begin at 0 .5 % points, percentage points, mo (39:21.39) Like, sorry. Chad (39:40.132) For companies that pay their top executives between 50 and 100 times more than their typical workers. Companies that pay top executives over 500 times more than typical workers, they're going to get hit with a 5 % percentage points. And we just, I just talked about two companies last week that do that. Walmart and fucking American Airlines. Anyway, all private and publicly held US corporations with average annual sales for the three preceding years of at least 100 million would be subject to this tax. The bill would raise an estimated $150 billion over 10 years that could be used to support working families and reduce inequality. Is this the right way to go at this problem, Mo? mo (40:35.822) I mean, we have to do something. Clearly companies aren't doing any of this work on themselves. They're just continuing to, you know, what blew my mind about that article too was that there is an active mention of boards being concerned that if they don't keep on inflating the pay of their executives that they will walk. And I'm like, well, why the fuck they, why don't they do that for employees? We're the ones making the money. We're the ones doing the work. It was like that Spotify CEO who's like, we let, we let 1500 people go and like, my God, it like. Chad (40:37.924) I agree. mo (41:04.238) It had an impact on our operations. Like, hello. It's just, I think we've reached a level of corporate greed in this country that is just like unconscionable. I mean, you have Boeing out there just stuffing the pockets of the shareholders at the risk of the flying public and actually in some cases, like maybe killing whistleblowers. I don't know, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but like what the fuck. And then you have like, I mean, honestly, it looks so bad. I was like, guys, can you make it like more plausibly deniable that you didn't do this? Like. Chad (41:25.252) Yes! Chad (41:31.908) This looks like Putin's Russia to some extent. mo (41:33.902) I exactly that is literally what I said. I'm like, what happened? So that happened. I mean, gosh, there was the surge pricing incident for hamburgers at Wendy's. There was the McDonald's or no, it wasn't McDonald's. It was the Kellogg CEO who said, hey, guys, why don't you just eat cereal for breakfast if you're a struggling American family? It's just has your family eaten cereal recently? Kellogg CEO. It's just disgusting and despicable. Chad (41:45.284) Yeah, yeah. Chad (41:50.243) Yes. Yeah. Let him eat cereal. mo (42:01.07) So we got to do something. They're not going to do this themselves. They're in the self -dealing. They're interested in fattening their pockets. I am grossed out by it. I think Americans have had enough of it. And so I think that the fact that there's regulation that's being proposed is indicative of that. And so it's reached like a bit of a fever pitch. People just, they're done. In tech, so many of us have been laid off and we were the ones who made the profits for these companies happen. And it used to be we're laying people off because of the economic environment. then we're doing well, getting record profits. we're still laying you off. It's like, there's no loyalty. There's no career trajectory. There's no longevity. And I think people are just pissed. So yeah, I'm for it. I would love to know exactly what they think they're going to do with those funds, you know, in general, with the funds they collect. I'd love to see the plan for that. And I hope it's a good one. But yeah, hell yeah, I'm into it. I feel like it's a good call. Chad (42:32.292) No. Chad (42:52.58) Yeah, I gotta say, I gotta say one thing. I wanna see something happen, but. Chad (43:01.668) You done messed up A-Aron. So the problem with Democrats and I actually grew up probably about 40 years of my life. Don't hold this against me as a Republican. Yes, and I am totally not that today. But the problem with Democrats is that most of them play small ball. mo (43:11.502) Really? Interesting. Chad (43:22.244) 150 billion in 10 years isn't even a tax for those companies. When you're talking about Walmart, Walmart by themselves make $158 billion a year in profit. That's fucking bull. That's bullshit money. Yes. Here's my proposal. I'm not just going to shit on this. I'm going to have a proposal. I've been thinking about this. I've been listening to podcasts. I've been playing the whole economics thing game. I could be 100 % wrong. First and foremost. mo (43:22.35) Hmm. mo (43:27.982) That's a really good point. mo (43:34.99) So it's chump change. It's not enough to make a difference. Yeah, it's just performative. I love it! Yay! Chad (43:50.02) You tie CEO compensation directly to the base number. For example, a CEO cannot receive compensation over 30 times that of their lowest paid worker. In that scenario, the CEO would need to raise the lower paid workers' wages to receive an incentive themselves. If the CEO's bonus then exceeds that of the base number, in this case 30 times, they and the company would be fined at a 6 % of overall global revenue. The fine has to be stringent enough to ensure compliance. This would give companies a reason to rein in the out of control CEO comp, raise workers' wages, and have a stiff enough fine that would make any board member wake up in night sweats. mo (44:41.07) That's what Jeff Bezos wants his employees to do, wake up with their sheets drenched in sweat, being nervous. So sure, let's do that. Let's get the board sweaty too. Chad (44:46.532) Yeah, yeah, the guy who can afford a fucking super yacht, right? It's a yacht with another yacht. mo (44:52.694) Well, it's like, yeah, it's like five on top of one another. But that's the thing to me, the egos are so big. Why don't we, I don't understand how someone like that wouldn't want to just go and some people would probably hate me for this conversation, but like, why don't you just go save the world? Then you're the man, right? Like if you can just go like eradicate poverty or like help people from facing homelessness or stop people from starving, like you are the man. Like I will sing your praises all day. Everyone on planet earth with. Chad (45:11.972) Yeah. mo (45:22.03) So like, stop building some stupid dick -shaped spaceship and do that. Like, help. You know? Jesus. Come on. Chad (45:22.436) Yeah. Chad (45:26.532) Hahaha! Well, I can't do any better than that dick shaped spaceship, penis rocket. That's what we call it. Penis rocket. mo (45:34.862) Yeah, yeah. Chad (45:39.14) All right. Well, we are back and we're going to finish up with, guess what? We're going to finish up with some some mo, right? Because there's there's no such thing as less. There's only mo. Here we go. Yeah, yeah, yes. So you so so you had you had a tick tock that I really enjoyed. mo (45:53.326) I'm here for all the puns today, man. They're just killing it. mo (46:00.622) thanks. Chad (46:02.148) And we actually changed this entire topic because I saw this TikTok. I'm like, fuck this. We've got to talk about this. So we're going to. So if you're watching on YouTube, here it comes. If not, you'll hear the audio. Here we go. Chad (46:30.18) grown and sexy. Chad (47:03.844) Well, you're going to get my thoughts, whether you like them or not. OK, so first and foremost, I couldn't get into a bar until I was 21, even though I was in the military and shot at when I was 18 years old. And I still couldn't get into a bar when I was 18 or 19. OK, so I kind of have that. And that's a personal thing that I've got to deal with. But there. mo (47:16.958) my god. So insane. Upsetting. mo (47:26.03) I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's messed up. Mm -hmm. Chad (47:27.876) There are resorts that are adults only some are couples only and then there are others that are just family friendly, right? So just as long, I believe, just as long as they aren't discriminating on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, I'm not seeing a problem. But again, I don't know, I need to say this again. I'm a white cisgendered straight guy. So what the fuck am I missing here? Help me out. mo (47:52.526) I mean, yes, it is an ageist policy, obviously on its face. I also understand some people are like, well, hell yeah, I don't want any kids here. Like get them out of here. And I'm thinking more like literal children than people in their 20s. But I think that there are other ways than expressly calling out, like we don't want your kind if you're under 30 or 30 for guys, or no, excuse me, 30 for women and 35 for guys, which made me laugh. So it's like a different sliding scale based on your gender. So there is gender discrimination in there too. But I was like, there were other ways Chad (48:16.164) Yeah. mo (48:22.48) to just attract the demographic that you are hoping to have at your restaurant than like overtly saying, thou shalt not come, right? Like, so you can have the vibe that maybe wouldn't appeal to someone who you would stereotype as like younger than 30, right? Or 35 as a dude. So I think that there are ways of doing it. I think, you know, there's no such thing as bad press. This could easily have been a PR ploy for them to get more people in the door. The comments on my posts are really hilarious. Some of them were like, hell yeah, get those kids off planes too, or. Chad (48:30.244) Yeah. mo (48:51.854) And then other people are like, dude, the worst behaved people are the boomer Karens at these restaurants. Like, what are they even talking about? So there's just a lot of stereotyping going on. And this is like classic media shit because they love to pit generation against generation. We've been doing it like since the beginning of time and it's clickbait coverage. Like I know what's going on here. And I think that restaurant probably was like, we're going to get some, we're going to get some free press out of this. We're going to get some like hate. We're going to get a lot of love. Chad (49:01.508) Yes. mo (49:19.79) And yeah, I find it more than anything amusing, honestly. And technically it's legal for companies to do something like this because it's within their own right. It's not an employment situation. They're not saying we won't hire people under age 30. Although, however, that would be federally legal to say because the protection only is for those over 40. So you can actually actively discriminate against younger people at the federal level in some states and different cities. That's illegal, but. Anyway, that's kind of a side note. But yeah, I mean, would I do it? No, but like, they're technically allowed to and it is getting the most shitload of press. Some love, some hate. No such thing as bad press. Chad (50:02.34) which they might love. Not everybody loves the Chad and Cheese podcast, but it doesn't matter. But more of them love the Chad and Cheese podcast. Why? Because Mo's been on it. So Mo, if somebody wants to find out more about you, maybe listen to the podcast or something like that, where would you send them? mo (50:18.158) I would send them to either my website at itgetslateearly .com or on Apple podcasts, it's just type in, it gets late early, you will find me. I'm also on the socials, I'm Maureen W. Clough, that's C -L -O -U -G -H, on both Instagram and on TikTok. Yes, I am on TikTok. I am 41 and I am on TikTok. People up there exist on TikTok. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Chad, I wasn't gonna call you out, but yeah, you're... Chad (50:46.916) I'm an Xer. I'm on TikTok. I don't give a fuck. Where's the bar? Mo? We out. mo (50:47.406) beyond being yours and you're there too. Yeah. Yeah. mo (50:58.158) Thanks.

To say the ATS business is a challenging one these days would be an understatement. Between mergers and acquisitions, slumbering IPO ambitions and figuring out the whole AI Revolution, staying ahead of the game is complex. That's why we invited SmartRecruiters interim CEO and CPO Rebecca Carr to the show. She's an industry veteran with a good story to tell and as an industry product person to the bone, she can add nuance to the landscape. Covering everything from the hibernating IPO speculation to the botched acquisition with iCIMS to her time with - wait for it - Branchout, a high flying player from over a decade ago, who flamed out and die at the hand of Facebook before it really caught fire. It'a a walk down Memory Land, and a glimpse into the future that's a must-listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HRs 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: Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Chad: Hello. Joel: Joined as always, Chad Sowash. And we are excited to welcome Rebecca Carr, Chief Product Officer and acting CEO at SmartRecruiters. Rebecca, welcome to HRs most dangerous podcast. Rebecca Carr: Thank you for having me. Chad: She looks very pensive. She's like, what am I doing here? Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Chad: This is... [laughter] Rebecca Carr: This is fun, this is a fun part of the day. Joel: She's like who do I need to fire for this one. Who do I need to fire for this one. Chad: This is gonna be the easiest part of your day, I promise. Rebecca Carr: Oh, for sure. Joel: So Rebecca, a lot of our listeners don't know who you are. Give us a little window into what makes you tick as a person. Rebecca Carr: Love products tech nerd. Been in HR way too long, but haven't we all? Joel: Amen. Chad: Yes. Yeah. Rebecca Carr: Yeah, my whole career was a recruiter turned product manager actually in there, by the way, I built Facebook games. Fun story. [laughter] Chad: Okay, we wanna hear about that. Joel: Hold on. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. You can hear about that. Joel: Don't get into the business stuff. My first question is gonna rock it. So keep talking about your personal stuff. Rebecca Carr: Mama too, love pilates, gives me peace. You know you got to with this industry. Chad: Joel loves pilates too I don't know if you know that. Joel: Are we talking teens are we talking toddlers. Are we talking outta the house. Like the kids. Rebecca Carr: We're talking a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old. Chad: Oh my God. Joel: And you're a CEO and CPO. Rebecca Carr: I have a great husband. [laughter] Joel: Do you sleep? Do you sleep? Good God. Rebecca Carr: I do. Thankfully 'cause I moved to the East coast recently. Chad: Nice. Rebecca Carr: And prior to that I was living in California and operating a European company. And that took a lot out of me. Joel: I can imagine. Chad: I would say, yeah. Rebecca Carr: But now I'm on the East coast and I have balance and I do kid drop off and then I don't see them for the rest of the day. Joel: Love it. [laughter] Chad: That sounds like utopia. Joel: All right. I had a jaw drop moment when I was doing some research on you. Rebecca Carr: Oh, you did research on me. This is gonna be fun. Joel: You talked about being a long time veteran. As are we. You spent time at BranchOut. Rebecca Carr: Oh now we're going back. Chad: That's where we're going. That's where we're going. Rebecca Carr: I love this. This is great. Okay I'm ready. Joel: Thank the hell... I mean, I was begging for interviews with BranchOut back in the day. Rebecca Carr: You were? I would have gave you one. Rick didn't wanna give you an interview. Joel: They would only talk to TechCrunch or like CNBC or. [laughter] Chad: For the... You mean the five minutes that they were alive. [laughter] Joel: For those who don't know, talk about what it, what the company did and the epic flame out after the Facebook changes, I guess for lack of a better word. But talk about your BranchOut experience. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Us and Identified. We tried hard on that one. You remember them? Joel: Oh, yeah. Rebecca Carr: Which ironically, Charlie Nelson came over from identified to SmartRecruiters. And then I came over from Jobvite to SmartRecruiters, so that, oh, we competed again, but in a different context. But anyway, BranchOut. It was essentially an app within Facebook that was attempting to create a... Chad: Bring jobs. Joel: Spam. Chad: And network. Rebecca Carr: Well I'll tell you, that was my... That was my... No, but it was attempting to compete with LinkedIn. Like basically they wanted to have like a professional profile that was in parallel to your Facebook profile. Joel: And they raised that much money. Rebecca Carr: Oh. Joel: At the time it was huge, now it's like Tuesday. Rebecca Carr: It was like near or a 100 million or something like that. At the time. Chad: It was crazy. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. It, there was a lot of issues there, but it was an interesting idea actually, which was if people are spending a lot of time on Facebook, why not bring them jobs? If there was like an app that felt a bit protected where you could build a profile that was professional. And you could share that and apply to jobs, then you could do it all in one experience. And in the back-end there was actually essentially like an early CRM that then we sold to big companies, some of whom are at the show. Where they used to source people on Facebook. And so I ran product. Chad: Well, okay. So I mean, I think that was one of the very first in the space that we found out that you couldn't lean too hard on a big platform like with Google's Panda and how that screwed so much SEO. And this obviously with BranchOut and then also BeKnown Monster had BeKnown. Rebecca Carr: BeKnown. BeKnown same time. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Sharecropping is a dangerous business for sure. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Well, the biggest challenge was one, getting people to actually like, get out of I'm in Facebook mode. This is like where I'm sharing pictures of my dog and kids. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Well that, and that's not easy. Rebecca Carr: It is hard. Chad: Because you have safe spaces and then you have professional spaces. Rebecca Carr: Exactly. And regardless of if it's like an app, people still didn't trust that there wasn't some visibility into their personal life. The data was extremely unclean at the time. So this was back in the day when you entered in your location on Facebook, it was like, I live in SF or San Fran or San Francisco. So like the normalization of like every single data element... Chad: Just didn't happen. Rebecca Carr: Hard. [laughter] but Identified did it right actually in the beginning they said, you know what, we're gonna focus on like one job profile. Nurses. Because they're on Facebook and they're not on LinkedIn. And we're just gonna focus on normalizing all the healthcare data that we can possibly get. And they were more successful. BranchOut just went a little too broad there. And we played that whole like, who would you rather work with? [laughter] Joel: They branched out a little too far. Get it. Chad: So let's talk about that a little bit because I mean, there's just so many learnings for current startups. First and foremost, don't lean too hard on a big brand that could fuck you, number one. Number two, being able to spread the TAM that quick. Just doesn't make sense. And we see obviously many companies that are here today who spread the TAM too quick. So, I mean, what do we have to do to learn from history. [laughter] 'Cause we just keep repeating it. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Arguably SmartRecruiters did something similar too. I mean, we brought an ATS to market from a free product, probably could have focused a little bit more on the industry and the segment we wanted to serve. We went overseas extremely quickly, which actually has ended up benefiting, coming to our benefit. But as a product leader, it's probably one of the hardest things you do. You get a couple big customers right in the beginning that pull you in one direction versus another. You want to make them happy 'cause you need them to reference you but none of them are like each other. Chad: Which take you all over the place. Rebecca Carr: Which takes you all over the place. It's hard to pick one 'cause there's a lot of risk in that. You're operating on, and especially as a startup, a limited amount of capital. Chad: But let's talk about discipline at that point, right? Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Chad: You have limited amount of capital, but I mean, it's incredibly important to be disciplined. Right out of the gate, right? So I mean, you guys you didn't, but then you reined it back in. Rebecca Carr: We reined it back in. Yeah. Chad: So talk a little bit about that journey. Rebecca Carr: Well I think what we realized was it's important to have an ICP. [laughter] no. Joel: Lesson for the kids. Chad: If you like some money, that would be good. Rebecca Carr: No, I mean it is... I think for us it was about one identifying a segment we wanted to play in. Like the unit economics of acquiring an SMB versus an enterprise are wildly different, not just at the industry level, but like the country level. Very, very different, and understanding and unpacking that data is step one. I think we were moving so quickly because we were seeing so much inbound. We were just reacting and like actually putting some data around everything that you do and studying it and spending time studying it. Very important. There were things that came outta that analysis that actually shocked us. We have massive, massive software and technology brands that use the SmartRecruiters platform. But when you look at things like market growth over the next couple years. Total ticket volume, where they're struggling, where there's the most overlap in product strategy. We still see a lot of success in software and tech, but not as much as we do in retail and hospitality. Rebecca Carr: They both are doing theoretically high velocity hiring 'cause tons of people are applying to these big tech brands. Tons of people have to apply to retail. But actually the like level of depth that you need to go on any one feature is wildly different. And figuring out how to balance that successfully is something we've had to do by changing how we structure our engineering teams. And the types of resource that... And dollar allocation we put toward each of them and... Chad: Well, you can't create one product that covers them all. Rebecca Carr: No. I can't be something for everyone. That's for sure. And frankly, it's a strategy that we've only recently started to embrace with embedded partners, and we're not the only ones. Workday starting to like branch out a little bit more. Chad: Heard of them. Rebecca Carr: You heard of them? Yeah. [laughter] they're, yeah. But like, I'm not gonna be the best people analytics platform on the earth. If Visier wants to white label under the scenes. Great. Now I don't have to have engineers there. I can rely on like an actual best of breed platform there. They're willing to white label the commercials look good for everybody, including our customers. Chad: Well that's their our expertise too. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And they'll continue to innovate there. Instead of me innovating now on that and then innovating again in four years. [laughter] Like, it's... But that's what I would have to do in order to serve everybody. Chad: That's the general product cycle for a core platform though, right? When you come up with like a new "product" which is really just a feature, it goes out, everybody's like, ah, and then four years later it's like, oh, we should probably update that. Rebecca Carr: We should go back to that. [laughter] Yeah. I mean, the market's moving fast enough we should. Joel: Talk about how you're looking at, I guess sort of the economy as a whole. You guys, like headcount wise, from what I can tell last couple years have stayed pretty constant. You haven't had the big layoffs. You haven't had like a major earthquake in terms of headcount. Rebecca Carr: No. Joel: What has been the strategy and how has the bigger economy at large or the marketplace at large directed that? Rebecca Carr: Yeah. I mean we've seen a little bit of a reduction a couple... Two years ago or so. Around the same time a lot of other people started doing it, but mostly because we divested in certain product areas that we didn't need anymore, not like your traditional riff. I think what the refinement of the ICP helped us. It was right at that moment that we actually said, you know what, we're doing way too much and if we actually focus our dollars, we're gonna see short term growth in the segments that we already know we have great product market fit. Rebecca Carr: If we put all our product and engineering resource there, we're driving good impact, but we were, frankly, our business strategy has always been to nearshore, so to speak. A lot of our R&D. So our R&D team's actually grown dramatically and continues to grow. But in a lower cost market and very high tenure. I'm like proud to say our engineering team is, I think our average tenure is 4.9 years. Something like that. Pretty good. I mean, so there's lots of context, subject matter expertise in a market. We've got over 200 engineers now that are working on that on a company of 500. That's actually a pretty good allocation. Yeah. Joel: So you've pulled back a little bit on sales people. Is that a response to less market demand? Are you more efficient around sales? Like, talk about that decision. Chad: Different GTM? Rebecca Carr: Yeah. I think we've... Joel: Year of efficiency. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. I mean year of efficiency, but like... Chad: You're leading the witness. [laughter] Joel: I'm helpful I think. Chad: No you're not. Rebecca Carr: Well, I mean, you could get into the details of net magic number. And all the things that our... Chad: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Rebecca Carr: That our investors actually wanna want to see. [laughter] Joel: BranchOut. Rebecca Carr: Yeah, I mean the reality is if you play in the enterprise space, you grab a lot of enterprise deals, those are one deal. One core team. You don't need the same volume of reps you might need in like a mid-market play, and if we've got good hunters that know our business and have been with us for a long time, our European team, very high tenure reps, they've built good relationships in the market. We did a lot of great account based marketing, you can do it pretty efficiently. You just need to win 'em and you need to win 'em with good products. So we've invested a lot more in R&D to have the good product to drive up our win rates, which are good. Joel: Yeah. You've increased service. So servicing those accounts, you've invested on that end it looks like. Rebecca Carr: Yeah I mean, we've invested in good partners there too we outsource a good piece of our professional services group to the AMSs of the world, the CLOs of the world, that sort of thing. Frankly that revenue we're a tech company, it's not interesting. And it might be positive margin, but like, what's it really doing other than just your holding cost that you don't really need. And especially if it starts branching out and those resources start doing more like traditional customer success, then you have direct impact on your net magic number. So we've started to outsource a little bit more. We're gonna continue to do that. But yeah. We've invested a lot in retaining our customers and not having a leaky bucket. Turns out it helps. [laughter] Chad: Hell yeah. It's easier to keep... Rebecca Carr: It's a lot easier to keep going up. Chad: A customer than to acquire a new one. So you've been talking about products. I had an acquisition of Jobpal. How does that actually, how's that bled into, if yes or no, into the actual product itself? Joel talking about, year of efficiency, talk about tech efficiency. How has that helped? Where has it helped? Rebecca Carr: Specifically Jobpal we turned into a product called SmartPal. We've seen some growth there, but frankly, a lot of the acquisitions that we've made, it's expensive and costly to integrate new tech into your stack. There's a lot of enhancements that need to be made. Our big sort of big relaunch of the original Jobpal stack with a lot more is what we're working on this year, actually. But yeah, it's... Acquisition in most of the areas of our space would not be my first go-to these days. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: I mean there's products out there. Good point solutions. But integrating the people, retaining those people, aligning those customers to your core stack, not the most efficient experience in the world and/or emotion. And so for Jobpal in particular, it's been, I'd say could have been more successful than it was but we're getting there. We're sort of rewriting it. Chad: So let's talk about SmartRecruiters and then obviously talk about where we're at today and moving forward. So, SmartRecruiters, literally, and we saw this out of a lot of the core platforms, the greenhouses and whatnot, that came a little bit later, a little bit fashion forward, a little cooler than some of the older platforms. But yet they were still predicated on the process, methodologies of the old world recruiting. We're seeing new breed. Rebecca Carr: New breed. Chad: New breed that's coming out. How in the hell are you guys gonna compete with that? Because it's gonna be faster? Joel: Are you putting Paradox and Fountain in that bucket of new competitors? Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would definitely say that. So how would... How can you actually keep up with that in today's... I mean, 'cause Moore's Law is even speeding faster. GPUs are just killing this game. I mean how are you gonna do that? Rebecca Carr: Well, one thing. We need to get out of this whole, I have to own the user experience of everything mindset. I mean, we all sort of went into this like... Chad: It's coming from a product person, by the way I gotta... That's revolutionary. Joel: The heart. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: Well, I mean, the reality is we serve in recruiting a recruiter might be our core persona. But the reality is most of our users are not recruiters, they're employees, they're hiring managers, they're interviewers. They're people that don't care about recruiting until it's time. And the last thing they wanna do is log into my ATS, I mean I fought that battle for a long time. Like, well, what if it's more beautiful? No like it's not their flow of work. Chad: But that was really what it was mainly predicated on. For many of the newer applicant tracking systems is just that it's more sexy. We've got rounded corners as opposed to squared corners. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: We might have some more, like it's prettier colors, a little bit like easier on the eye. Bigger buttons. Chad: So how do you keep up with the new breed? Rebecca Carr: You open yourself aggressively. I mean, if I could make SmartRecruiters fully API-able tomorrow, I would. And I'm on that journey. I mean, for a long time we led the way and we were maybe 30, 40% open to a public API. This year, hope is to get to more like 80, 85. To my point on, we can't serve everybody we can in a world where there's more movement toward gig and fractional work, which means more kind of custom, more personalized experiences. They don't wanna build the back office 'cause that's really expensive. But if they can control the UI and I can give them a design system, not just APIs, but like components that they can plug and play to build that experience, then I can meet a lot more people where they need to be candidates and hiring managers alike. Chad: But do you do that because that sounds very complex for the normal like HR/TA. Rebecca Carr: We rolled out our first version of our design system back in January. Chad: Okay. Rebecca Carr: Great feedback from partners. We are testing it with the Visiers and the HiredScores of the world. Chad: Nice. Nice. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Good stuff. Chad: Nice little tie into a Workday there. That was nice. Rebecca Carr: Yeah I try great product, but it needs to just be a part of who we are. And for a long time we held control over wanting to be, even for integrated partners, their experience, just like everybody, we're gonna be agnostic. Everybody's gonna look the same. We're gonna control what that UI looks like. We just can't anymore. And so I think opening up that experience just and making it easy to plug and play point solutions. So like app like experiences for integration. Not these like a $100,000 custom middleware connector thingamabobs tech is better than that. Like, frankly, all of the other industries that surround us from MarTech to FinTech are doing this. They have API first products that are successful in the market. Chad: For a very long time. Rebecca Carr: Yes. For yeah, like we can get there. And we have to, we're gonna be forced to do that as work evolves. Chad: Well the Workdays, the bigger core platforms, have to be forced into that before anybody else can because they're the ones that really rule the world. So, I mean it's hard to force that. Is it not? Rebecca Carr: Yes. They will play a big role, but they are to a certain extent. I mean, this is... I mean, David Summers has come out on and been very vocal about the fact that they need to open their ecosystem. And frankly they have been evolving to a certain extent. Remember when Workday Studio was like it. [laughter] Chad: Yeah. Rebecca Carr: Like now they do have APIs and they have started to share more. And they have been open to partnerships with companies that might directly compete with them in one area versus another if it serves a different purpose in ICP. And that kind of collaboration is, I think, gonna make us all better 'cause it's gonna force us to come to the table and just frankly have better infrastructure. Joel: In 2021, you guys raised $110 million. Rebecca Carr: We did. Joel: Valuation of... Chad: Oh, that's a lot of money. Joel: $1.5 billion. Obviously talk of IPO surrounded you as well as your brethren in Greenhouse and iCIMS. I'm sure you're tired of talking about the IPO question, but give us a current state of affairs with going public. Rebecca Carr: Is there someone IPOing right now? [laughter] Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Is it a waiting game? Is it like, what is... Is it a holding pattern? Certainly there has to be some sort of liquidation event when you raise that kind of money. Rebecca Carr: I mean sure. I think you raise that kind of money. There's expectations from investors. That's natural. It's a horrible time to IPO. We're certainly not having that conversation. Do I think that there's gonna be a lot of market consolidation? Yes. Do I think that acquisitions like HiredScore by Workday or a domino that's gonna fall like tip the market? Yes, I do. That's normal. That's what you expect in recessions like this. Does SmartRecruiters come up in conversations around the world? Of course. Like, this is actually a moment when we, most of the vendors on this floor get the most phone calls. It's a question of who they are. Can they pay the price that they need to pay. Is there a good cultural and product fix fit that's actually gonna... The right strategic decision for the buyer? And that I think there's a couple options there on the table that could exist for many of us. Yeah. Chad: So the elephant in the room, which Joel just totally passed over, is the botched acquisition that we talked about. As we know, and you don't have to validate or confirm that was with iCIMS. So, okay. A little head nod that's okay. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: I didn't, I just said... Joel: Don't do that to her. Don't do that to her. Rebecca Carr: I did not head nod, I said okay if that's what you think, if that's what you think. Chad: I think it might've been a shrug I'm sorry. Rebecca Carr: Like, maybe. I dunno. Chad: I will pull back. Anyway, so I mean, that would've been a liquidation event. Rebecca Carr: Somebody told me the other day that I was be... That Beamery and us were gonna merge. That was another one that's been flying around. Chad: That would be the dumbest thing anybody could ever do, that's an anchor. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: But I tell you. The amount of rumor that exists in this space though is exceptional. Joel: It's like giving a cat a bath, that deal would've been. Chad: But this one's not a rumor. So [laughter] when we're talking about... We're talking about liquidation events, I mean, you guys... And I mean many of the unicorn/unicorns are out there looking for at least partners. Right? To the very least. So talk about that. IPO I think is not even a conversation today. Rebecca Carr: Not for any of us. I mean, but great acquisitions start with great partnerships. Period. And we're in a moment, as I mentioned, where we're starting to look at a lot of embedded partnerships across the industry. And some of them are gonna take off and they're gonna be great and there's gonna be a natural moment there. And we are very good about sort of picking the partners that are gonna match our customers that are gonna... That are gonna serve them good value, that are gonna be great tech collaborations. And if some of them work out, sure I'll have that conversation and I'd be stupid not to, frankly. Given where the moment is, but when that moment comes, it'll come. And it hasn't come yet for SmartRecruiters. So. Joel: So you've had your crystal ball out a little bit. You've talked about API focus. You've talked about consolidation, take out the crystal ball on SmartRecruiters. What do things look like at the company in say, two, three years? Rebecca Carr: I think, it's a hard one to answer. It depends on where we see growth. I'd say in the next six months as a leading European ATS, we offer something that a lot of multinationals haven't been able to get from best of breed. We could grow if we continue to double down in some of those markets and still be a key player. Chad: Yeah what where are your biggest markets? Rebecca Carr: AMEA for sure. Joel: AMEA. Rebecca Carr: Yeah, I mean that's where now more than half of our revenue comes from and we're seeing a lot of growth in APAC. There's a lot of point solutions that serve a single country. But when you start crossing borders, there aren't a lot of best of breed solutions. Chad: That sucks. That's hard. Rebecca Carr: It's hard. Chad: That's hard work. Rebecca Carr: It's extremely hard. And it's... There's been a lot of North American players that have tried it and failed. Chad: Yes. Yes. Rebecca Carr: And I actually think the fact that we're successful there makes us very attractive to a lot of big North American companies as a partner, just a tech partner or a strategic partner long term. And so I think you're gonna see some growth from us overseas. That's where we've invested a lot. I think that that could serve us really well from a partner perspective and might be an interesting carrot for someone. But it's my crystal ball is we'll see. I mean, we'll see. Chad: That's the only way to go to Europe is to acquire a successful company. Rebecca Carr: Except if you were us for some reason. Joel: And Portuguese... Rebecca Carr: Or you have a French founder like me. Chad: Well, I was gonna say... [laughter] Okay. So that being said, the great segue. So Jerome was very hands-on, an amazing dude... Joel: The founder. Chad: Empathetic dude, loving dude. Is he kind of like a guy... Is he kinda like your go-to guy now. I know he is chairman. Rebecca Carr: Yeah, he's chairman. Yeah. Chad: Is he like a go-to guy still for you? 'Cause you've been at SmartRecruiters for a while. You left... Rebecca Carr: I left. Chad: And you came back. Rebecca Carr: I did. Chad: Right? So tell me about that because that's an interesting relationship. Rebecca Carr: Yeah. Well I remember the first time I met Jerome, my employee number is 19. Chad: Me too. [laughter] Rebecca Carr: Yeah, it was back in 2014. He's a visionary. He is, he loves this space. He has a passion for the problem. And I do too. I left because I needed to see how another company ticked. I think that's an... Chad: A background company. Rebecca Carr: Background checks. [laughter] Hey. Joel: Another unicorn that she just jumped on. Rebecca Carr: Another unicorn, founder led French Founder led. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: Oui. Oui. Chad: Wow. Somebody has a profile. Joel: Somebody has a type. Rebecca Carr: That's funny. No, but I actually at Checker, I worked in their incubator group building adjacent products to background check. And I did a... They're are payroll products, so it was cool. Good experience came back 'cause I really missed recruiting tech. Like it's just what I know and what I love. And there's a lot of problems to be solved here. Jerome is absolutely still involved. Still has a big vision. Great like support system and mentor for me. But it's a... I still have all the other board members in my ear operational stuff. Chad: Oh, I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. Rebecca Carr: No, I mean he's very supportive of the vision and the focus that we've provided this company. Very excited about some of the partnerships that we're pursuing and still a big contributor to the conversation for sure. Joel: That is Rebecca Carr everybody, CPO and CEO. Chad: Oh man I could talk for hours. Rebecca Carr: There we go. Joel: She's a busy woman. She's a busy woman. Chad: I know. Damn it. Joel: Rebecca, for the listeners out there that want to know more about SmartRecruiters, where would you send them? Rebecca Carr: Smartrecruiters.com. [laughter] Joel: Love it. And I don't think we said... Rebecca Carr: Predictable. Joel: AI once in that whole interview. Chad: I don't think so. Rebecca Carr: Did we not? Oh, that's a bummer. Joel: I think so. But we said BranchOut about 28 times. Chad: All I gotta say is I hope that soon they take the interim off and we can just have the CEO role so that you can just run. Rebecca Carr: I appreciate the support. Thank you. Chad: We would love to be able to see that. Rebecca Carr: Yeah, yeah. Joel: We're rooting for Rebecca. And with that, another one is in the can... Chad: We out. Joel: Live from Unleash in Las Vegas. We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, the boys discuss their experiences in Scotland, including trying haggis and visiting distilleries. They also give shoutouts to Jobs on Google and Workplace by Facebook. The hosts talk about upcoming events and the differences between Glasgow and Edinburgh. They also share their visit to Glenkinchie distillery and their tasting experience. The conversation covers their experiences in Scotland, the Glasgow event, and insights from the event. Plus, they discuss the layoffs at Seekout and the challenges the company is facing. They also talk about Indeed's decision to prioritize paid postings over organic traffic, increasing the "dumb tax" on lazy employers. PODCAST TRASCRIPTION Joel (00:30.49) Just two guys who can't get enough of Scotland's haggis, neeps and tatties. Hey, boys and girls, this is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co -host, Joel Gus Cheeseman. Chad (00:49.748) and I'm Chad, 10 for 1 Sowash. Joel (00:52.538) And on this episode, Head's role at Seek Out is indeed finally taking away the heroin drip and our Scottish Roundup. Joel (01:07.482) Let's do this! Joel (01:13.018) How's the liver, Chad? How's the liver? Doing all right, liver? Chad (01:14.356) Yes, liver's actually doing well. We'll get into that here in a second. But I think we did well on the training regiments to be able to get here in the first place. But I did wake up this morning and Julie said, we came back from breakfast. We did our kind of like prep for today's event breakfast. Came back and Julie's like, guess what? Nvidia's splitting 10 to one. I'm like, yes. Joel (01:18.682) Yeah. Joel (01:39.866) Keep the party going Nvidia. That's what I'm talking about. Keep the party rolling. So your liver's all right. I don't know. Maybe it's a, you know, more quality booze. Yeah. Here in the, here in the country. Maybe it's the full, the full breakfasts, that keep, keep you, ready to go. Maybe it's that maybe it's the haggis. Maybe it's the haggis, which have you had a haggis? Have you had haggis yet? Chad (01:43.796) Yes! Chad (01:47.636) Come on, baby. Chad (01:54.356) Could be. Chad (01:59.54) Yeah. So, yeah. The haggis, the haggis fries. There's the, have had haggis. I haven't had haggis fries like you and Christine. It was kind of like, it's kind of like your version of Scottish poutine, I think. Joel (02:16.986) not just fries, Chad, the dirty fries, the dirty fries loaded with cheese, mayo, haggis, a little HP sauce. I don't know a lot of a lot of good stuff on on that on that. Surprisingly, maybe this is too much information, but my poops have been really good here. I got some really good poops. Maybe I don't know if it's if it's the diet or if it's no Chipotle for a week. I can't figure out. Chad (02:22.868) They have haggis on them, so they're dirty. Chad (02:30.484) I like the HP sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (02:43.092) I don't know. Less preserve it as I'm going to say. So yeah, I don't know and I don't care. Moving on. Shout outs. Shout outs. Jesus. I'm going to go first. I'm going to shout out to Jobs on Google. I'm going to stop calling it Google for Jobs from now on because I think that's a dead term. Let's just say that. Joel (02:44.282) why I'm so regular and so healthy right now. Shout outs. Joel (03:05.626) Wordy. Chad (03:06.644) Jobs on Google, that's right. Google is still continuing to make changes to how it can effectively engage jobs on the search engine, how you as a user can. They introduced a jobs tab recently, so that if you're searching for anything related to jobs on Google, the tab appears and takes the user to an unlimited scroll of jobs. It's only a subtle change here and there, but those changes are signals. And for all of you that are out there that are still hoping one day Google gets into the performance driven jobs markets, ads markets, well, they're still a chance. We're saying, saying there's still a chance. Joel (03:46.33) There's still a chance. Joel (03:51.578) Unlimited scroll on Google now for jobs and a link to jobs. That would have been apocalypse now, 10 years ago for job sites. So I can't imagine. Yeah. If you're a small niche job site, I'm sure I'll get pushback on this, but this isn't good. And it kind of goes into our Indeed story later in the show, not to ruin it, but yeah, it's going to be harder and harder to get attention if you've relied on Google. Chad (04:03.348) They would have been shitting their pants. Joel (04:21.21) for the last 10, 20 years. My shout out goes to... Chad (04:24.596) Mm -hmm. Joel (04:28.634) Workplace by Facebook. Yeah, this may be, I don't know, the final death knell of SaaS businesses in our space for big companies like Google, remember Google for hire. Obviously, there have been tools that have come and gone from bigger companies. But this lasted for a while. They launched this. It was sort of, they built it as like Facebook, but for your company. So it was. Chad (04:31.284) I remember those guys. Chad (04:47.828) huh. Joel (04:56.666) messaging, video stuff, groups, et cetera. They're throwing in the towel and the big winner from this move is going to be our friends at Workvivo, who was acquired by Zoom, the popular video conversation tool that everyone knows about. So yeah, not an acquisition, not a merger, but like they're going to try to funnel everyone they have over to Workvivo. So big win for them. And they are the only integration partner. Chad (05:06.004) hello. Joel (05:24.762) that Facebook has blessed with this pairing. So shout out to Workvivo if you haven't checked them out and you're looking for a tool that they provide, you might want to give them a look. Chad (05:35.764) That's pretty awesome. I mean, I'm not sure how many companies Facebook was actually had in workplace still. I think we saw kind of like the slow death starting with jobs and then it just kind of like, you know, it died from there. But yeah, I mean, even if it's just a PR push, hell, that's a nice little PR push. So good job, work Vivo. Good for you guys. Joel (05:58.682) Yeah, it's a good day to be a work Vivo salesperson calling on a lot of Facebook customers that are using that. So good for them. Yeah. Chad (06:01.46) Ha ha ha! Have you heard of Facebook? Okay, well, you might know us now. You might know us. Zuck says hi, Zuck says hi. All right, free stuff. Somebody who loves to say hi are our new t -shirts. That's right, we love to say hi because when you come and you register at chadcheese .com slash free. Joel (06:09.242) Mark gave me your name and wanted me to give you a shout. Mark says hi. Chad (06:27.476) Aaron App, our friends over at Aaron App, they're actually sponsoring the newest version of the Guns N' Roses Chad N Cheese t -shirt. It was funny. I had friends, they don't listen to the podcast because, I mean, they're not in this industry, but they got t -shirts. And the first thing when I saw them after they actually had worn their t -shirts, they're, my God, those things are so soft. Joel (06:34.65) it's sexy. Chad (06:52.724) I can't believe they feel like butter. I'm like, that's exactly right. Chad and Cheese don't fuck around with a t -shirt. Joel (06:55.162) Yep. Joel (06:59.994) And we already have the Ed Zatusky seal of approval saying this is the best t -shirt that we've done so far. So get your ass to ChadCheese .com slash free, click that free link and make sure you get on the list for free teas from Chad and cheese. Chad (07:02.676) Ha ha ha! Chad (07:06.708) Yes. Yes. Chad (07:14.228) And beer, beer from Aspen Tech Labs, those crazy kids over at Aspen Tech Labs. If you do any type of scraping for jobs into any types of databases, these are the guys to go to. So free beer, you could prospectively win a big package of free craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs once a month. And then once a month, we have a winner for whiskey. You win two bottles of whiskey, one from Chad, one from Cheese. That is from our friends over at Tex Kernel. the parsing, scraping juggernauts that we know, that we know as Tex Colonel. And last but not least, if it's your birthday, you got to go to ChadCheese .com slash free register to possibly win rum from Plum. Joel (07:46.234) Juggernaut. That's right. Chad (08:02.132) Mm, mm, mm. Joel (08:02.778) That's right. So last week I mentioned Matt Lavery, our friend at UPS was the winner of a of rum with plum and they sent him some crappy Captain Morgan's bullshit. I'm telling you, I didn't select it. I don't know if the Uber eats driver stashed the one I got and maybe he pocketed the, I don't know what happened. So I said, we're not going out like that. So I sent Matt a new bottle of some premium shit. Chad (08:06.804) My man. Yeah. And you hooked him up. Chad (08:15.444) That was bad. Chad (08:23.06) That's what happened. Yeah, that's what happened. Joel (08:30.618) And just as a, an extra added value, threw in some old style, which if you've been to Chicago, you gotta get old style. And he was on, he was on his way to a, he was on his way to a Cubs game that night. So Matt, Matt scored pretty well. the Cubs did lose that, that day, but, Matt won with not only rum, but, we threw in some old style for my man, Matt. Chad (08:38.292) He was excited. Chad (08:52.884) Amen. I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So, we've got events coming up here very, very shortly. And as Joel said, we're on the road, so we'll do birthdays next week. We'll catch up. But we have events that are going to be happening. And you can go to ChadCheese .com, click on the events in the upper right -hand corner or just ChadCheese .com slash events. You can see where we're going to be after we leave Scotland. Gonna have a little bit of a hiatus. We're gonna relax a little bit. I'm gonna have some beach time. Joel's gonna go and have some more Chipotle time. And then we're going to be at Wreckfest in Nebworth. That's right, just north of London. And then right after that, we're doing like the double album with Wreckfest. We're gonna have Wreckfest in Nashville. So go to ChadCheese .com, click on events, look at what's happening, register, come see us. It's gonna be a blast. You just can't, you can't lose. Joel (09:45.242) Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Chad (09:49.876) Topics! Joel (09:54.426) Yeah, the voice is struggling for sure. Let's talk a little Scotland. Chad (09:56.308) Ahem. Chad (10:02.196) What a blast. What a blast. Joel (10:03.77) Yeah, got here Saturday. I struggle with the European trip. I need a day to like get my sleep right and everything. But had a day went to a Loch Lomond. It's not Lamond as I first pronounced it. Nice little boat tour. Saw the highlands. Saw some island that William Wallace apparently hit out on. Hit up a fair. Bouncy house. My dirty fries and haggis. I had a drink called iron brew, which everyone in this country will know what it is. It's a soft drink and in pure Scottish fashion, I go, what is, what does iron brew tastes like? And he says, it tastes like iron brew. What do you think it tastes like? So I was like, all right, fuck it. I'll try it. birds of prey exhibit did that. And then you came into town. we had a day of fun with our friend, Steven McGrath still and always. Chad (10:47.572) Duh. Joel (11:00.73) Our favorite Scott, by the way, I have to have to say that to rub that in. Chad (11:05.556) What a great time, man. I mean, we literally went and had, first off, we had breakfast with the poetry crew, right? So we sat down, Adam, Gordon, Steve, and whole crew, Mike, had breakfast. And then right after breakfast, literally, Steven's like, look, we've got five minutes. We've got to go catch a train. We catch a train, go to the Highlands. That's right. Went to the Highlands. It's about an hour and a half, a couple of trains. Really easy. Really, really easy. Got off in Patakery or Patakery. Yeah, I'm going to fuck it all up. Anyway, it was a beautiful little Scottish village. Went to a bar, got a little got some drinks. Yeah, we had distillery. Yeah. Yeah. Blair Atoll, which is is. Joel (11:52.762) to a distillery, yeah, the distillery tour, yeah. Chad (12:00.212) also owned by Diageo. I think everything's owned by Diageo around here. yeah. But your classic distillery tour, which was awesome, ended up with some tastings. And we pretty much, I would say we drank all day. I mean, we had beer and scotch back and forth, but that was a blast. I had a good time at the distillery tour. Joel (12:03.834) Yep. Yeah, it's your beam, it sounds like. Centauri. Yep. Joel (12:26.138) Yeah, had a great time. interacted with some real Scots, a guy named Gus, had a lot of fun with him. Drinking with Gus on the bus was a good time. I'm not sure the last time Gus had been to a dentist, but that's a separate podcast altogether. what any thoughts about Glasgow, any kind of takeaways? We started the week in Glasgow. We're now in Edinburgh, but, what are your thoughts on Glasgow? Chad (12:30.34) yeah. On the bus. Chad (12:40.5) Ha ha ha! Chad (12:51.7) Yeah, I mean, you, we were told that you really can't find two cities that are so much apart. I mean, they're close, but they're not alike at all. And that is so true. I mean, Glasgow is, it feels more blue collar, very, very, very, I don't want to say industrial, but it just has a much different feel of kind of like the pomp and circumstance that happens here in Edinburgh. Right? So it just, I think it's surprising because we, Joel (12:58.65) Yeah. Chad (13:21.62) hopped the train over, took less than an hour. And then we got some messages this morning who some of the guys are coming over from Glasgow. And they're like, I'm stuck in traffic. I'm like, why aren't you on the fucking train? It's so easy. Joel (13:36.922) Cause there are Scots on the train. That's why I don't want to be on it. Glasgow to me is, if I was explaining it to an American, it's like if you took like old Philadelphia and Nashville, Tennessee, and if they had a baby that might be Glasgow, it's a party with a little bit of old world flair, some class. You'll see like on one end, you'll see a designer, you know, outfit, a Giselle looking supermodel. And on the other side, you'll see like, Chad (13:38.644) Yeah, that's. Joel (14:06.958) a under armor spandex suit onesie with some crocs. I mean, it's like the opposite end of style. Chad (14:18.228) I know that Dex's Midnight Runners were not Scottish, but if you watch the Come On Eileen video, that kind of felt kind of like Glasgow. Just the feel. Dude, I love it. Love it. Joel (14:31.482) Stuck in 1984 and some of the music is still. So we headed into Edinburgh and we met up with our friend, Matt Alder, who also has a podcast. Check his podcast out if you haven't yet. And he showed us a good time. What'd we do there? Chad (14:41.972) Mm -hmm. Chad (14:47.764) Yes, he did. Yeah, yeah. We actually hopped in the mystery machine. That's right. We actually had a little van, Scooby Shaggy mobile. As usual, Cheeseman didn't show up in the right place, so we had to go find him. It was like a where's Waldo kind of a scenario. We had to go pick up Cheeseman and then we were off. And it was funny because again, we're talking about narrow roads and this isn't like an RV. It was a camper van. Joel (15:17.05) Can't prevent, yeah. Chad (15:17.46) But you could see the stress on Matt's face in driving that fucking thing through Edinburgh and then some of those roads, right? It was a blast. But then we went to Glen Kitcheny, I believe is Kitcheny, Kitcheny, yes. That was an entirely different experience and it was one that I would like to do over and over and over. Tell us about that experience because that was fun. Joel (15:32.858) Glen Kinchney. Kinchney? Yeah. Joel (15:46.234) Well, you and I have done our fair share of distillery tours and they usually have some sort of like grain thing jar. They have a little bit of liquid. They show you the big, the pot still they show. Yeah. They show you the like sort of the mechanics of it. this place had none of that. I saw no things of grain or wheat while we were there. they took us right into the tasting room. We had the tasting room had some, had some samples of what they were doing. Chad (15:57.94) hot stills. Chad (16:10.292) Where? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel (16:15.482) went to, I guess, the warehouse. They had, we learned what a hog's head was. It's a bigger barrel than the typical barrel. And the dates range from 88, I want to say 2007 or something. I mean, obviously, you know, ages in terms of age and gave us the choice of two to try. Obviously we went for 88. A good, good year for both of us. If, as we talked about, and I think we went with the 97 and the Chad (16:28.596) Mm -hmm. Joel (16:44.154) Put the tool in, take the Scotch out, put in a little pitcher. John, who was our guide, who was fantastic, gave us a little bit. It's just us three and I think three other folks that were on the tour saw the warehouse of $300 million worth of Scotch, I think was it. Went, had a little bit to eat, had a flight. You ordered the sherry flight because you're sweet like that. And I ordered the smoky flight because I'm Chad (16:53.172) Generous, very generous, yes. Chad (17:10.964) Mmm. Sherry. Joel (17:13.434) I'm hot like that and Sherry. Yeah. And, and Matt could not drink unfortunately, cause he's driving and there's like zero tolerance in this country for that. So they, they bottled, yeah, they bottled up for him and, went to a castle. It was raining. We didn't go recorded a, another podcast in addition to the distillery, got back on a train, came into town for dinner, with our lovely wives as well as Matt's wife, Fiona. Shout out to her. Chad (17:15.7) You're stinky like that. Chad (17:24.34) Plus he lives in Scotland anyway, so I mean... Joel (17:43.386) and called it a night. And here we are today. It's true Edinburgh. This place is like Harry Potter, Hollywood, staging, Downton Abbey. It's ridiculous. It almost feels fake. Like it's so amazing. Castles, old buildings, cobblestone streets. The whole place is ridiculous. Chad (17:47.572) Mm -hmm. Chad (18:03.124) It is, it is. I want to go back real quick to the Glasgow event. The Glasgow event was amazing. We had about 50, 60 -ish people, very intimate discussions and it was good. It was kind of like a trust tree discussions, right? But the thing that I think constantly surprises me is just still. Joel (18:06.874) Yeah. Chad (18:25.716) how much alike we are, even though Americans think that they're much more advanced than everybody else, we still have the same problems. I think we're going at them in different ways in some cases, but we still are having the same problems, talking about the same problems. And it's great to see practitioners get together to start to talk these things through. They get excited. I mean, there's a lot of energy that they actually get out of these conversations. And again, As we start to move toward AI and talking about taking jobs and those types of things, we realize once again and every day that people make this world go around and these types of events are incredibly important, which is why I'm so excited to go to today's event too. Joel (19:13.498) Yep. I expect to go just as deep today as we did earlier this week. So a few takeaways for me on the Glasgow and we'll talk about Edinburgh I'm sure next week to sum up that, but a few things that stuck out to me in the Glasgow event. Number one was that DEI is very different in Scotland than it is in America. Scotland is 95 % white. So diversity is focused on obviously sex. Chad (19:34.676) 95 % white. Yes. Chad (19:41.908) Genders, yeah. Joel (19:42.202) age, disability. So there's just a very different mindset when you're in a place that has a lot of white people in terms of what diversity and inclusion means. I think Americans take that for granted. The whole world isn't like America and they view this thing very, very differently. Second thing was automation is going to take recruiting jobs. I think there was a large agreement that it will take jobs. We shouldn't lie to ourselves about that. But optimistically, Chad (20:09.556) Mm -hmm. Joel (20:11.738) Our friend Adam Gordon commented that things like marketing jobs in recruitment or data scientists or data analysts jobs will become more prominent in recruitment. So there is a little bit of silver lining in terms of the realization that we may be losing a lot of recruiters in the profession. Third thing was that the CV is dead continues to be an argument 20 plus years in the making. This has been a thing since. Chad (20:24.276) Mm -hmm. Joel (20:39.45) visual CV launched back in the 2000s. I think it's greatly exaggerated. As long as there is a LinkedIn profile, there will be a resume. I think that particularly with high turnover jobs, seasonal jobs, hourly jobs, those could go away. I could totally like, yeah, they don't have or need resumes, but as far as the death of them, overall is still a conversation. Chad (20:43.028) so bad. Chad (20:58.612) They don't need resumes. No. Joel (21:07.418) and then lastly, for me, someone mentioned that they provide a, like a candidate highlight deck to all of their interviews that get up to a certain level, which I thought was really great. If you're not providing sort of a, a five page summary of, the company and the interview process, quotes from people, quotes from interviewers that had good things to say about the candidate, kind of a highlight. Chad (21:29.46) what to expect. Joel (21:36.026) hype deck, if you will. I thought that was a fantastic idea that came out of our time in Glasgow. So those were all highlights for me. I'm sure that we'll get some more here today in Edinburgh. Chad (21:47.22) Yeah, and big, big thanks to sponsors, Daxter, Poetry Solutions Driven, Ashby, Gigged .ai and Willow. And I would definitely be remiss if I didn't say once again, thanks to Matt Alder for again, this is Matt's English, but he lives here and he helped us obviously come together to be able to pull this together with Steven O'Donnell. who is leading the whole true events thing here in Scotland. So thanks Stevens for having us at these true events. And last but not least, yes, Adam, we still love you. We always will. Adam Gordon is, he is, guy's amazing, guy's amazing. He lined up the practitioners, speakers. I mean, just so much work out of the community to make something like this happen. And it's funny because I talked to Bill Borman, we were messaging back and forth and true is kind of his thing, right? And he's like, who's in charge of this? I'm like, well, Bill, it takes it takes a village, right? And it really has. It's taken a village to put these two events together, but it's been a blast. So thanks to everybody for everything that they've done to bring two dumb Americans to Scotland to have an event in Glasgow and now today in Edinburgh. Joel (23:00.506) Indeed indeed and by the way if you see if you see Adam's black eye on social media We had nothing to do with that whatsoever whatsoever all right all right That is that is our Scottish block, and that's the last until the end of the show probably we'll talk about Scotland Let's get to the real news Listen to the sponsors ads everybody there is no show without the sponsors, and we will be right back Chad (23:07.284) I, no, rugby. Joel (23:27.674) All right, Chad, let's get into the meat of it with some industry news. Seattle based Seekout, an eight year old company once valued at $1 .2 billion has laid off 30 % of its workforce to address significant cash burn. This is the second time they've had layoffs cutting about 7 % of the workforce back in October. The company employs 228 people and in case you missed it, Chad (23:31.828) Mm -hmm. Joel (23:56.41) Seekout won one of our death match competitions pre -COVID. Chad, your take on the latest round of layoffs at Seekout. Chad (24:05.396) Yeah, love a new guy is as smart as they come. But at the end of the day, you can't be great at everything. And I'm not sure, you know, I think the discussion should revolve around is this a go to market problem or maybe is it just that the market isn't mature enough for this type of technology right now? Right. And so to be able to take a look at it, Restless banned it, died, hiring solved, died, Intello. died, hired .com, all of these, the same kind of types of tech that are going after the market pretty much the same way. And then we have Eightfold who got a shit ton of cash and I don't know what the fuck they do these days. But anyway, that happened from the standpoint of go to market going direct to brand. And then you have market leaders like Tex Colonel and then Daxtra, who's now starting to make a resurgence, who are... Joel (24:38.074) Yeah, yeah. Chad (25:04.532) in an entirely different go -to -market scheme, right? And they are flourishing, right? So to me, I think it's fairly simple. I believe it's a go -to -market problem. There is a market need for this type of tech to be baked into the system. It's obvious that selling these complex systems, onboarding, training to use outside of a core platform, it's a loser, right? January of 2022, Seekout took $115 million in Series C, and then today talking about 30 % down. Timing's not great, totally understand that. Could they have sold before getting that big money? Possibly, I don't know. The hindsight's 20 -20. But for me, This is a go -to -market issue and I'm starting to see them kind of like float all over the place. Wait a minute, we're for cleared candidates for national defense. We do healthcare, internal mobility, workforce planning. It's like, holy fuck, man. You know, you're all over the place. Focus, get some discipline. That's why you're burning all that fucking cash. Okay? And take a look at the market and see who is actually flourishing. That's... Joel (26:15.866) Yeah. Chad (26:20.82) That is my point because they're still pushing that they have 800 million public profiles, 330 million plus underrepresented candidates, right? It's like the old, they still won't let the old model go. It's just, it's, I don't know. I think personally, I think it's focused and it's good to market at this point. What do you think? Joel (26:37.53) Yeah. Joel (26:42.97) Yeah. Joel (26:50.266) I love Anoop as much as you do. I think that you've already touched on the Deadpool of companies that sort of source people for jobs. The ones that are still around have pivoted and have seen varying degrees of success from that. But it was pretty clear when you looked at LinkedIn's camp appetite for destruction that we're going to get rid of everyone that's using our profiles, anyone that's spidering our shit. Chad (27:18.356) Mm -hmm. Joel (27:18.49) is going to feel a world of hurt and high Q. Obviously the case that we've talked about ad nauseum ad nauseum on the show is proof of that. We always thought that seek out might be immune to that because of a new friendship with Bill Gates and Mac Microsoft who owns LinkedIn. Maybe he had a sort of a get out of jail free card that others did. And then we really thought at least I did particularly that. Microsoft was going to come knocking with a check and that they were going to integrate sort of the technology and everything into, into LinkedIn, which Jay makes maybe too much sense. that hasn't happened. you're eight years down the road. You're not a billion dollar company valuation anymore. for sure. Tech hiring has dried up. There are fewer recruiters now to use your product. if they were, I think they're struggling to get any kind of traction in markets outside of tech. Chad (27:47.284) yeah. And to LinkedIn. Yeah. Joel (28:14.65) they probably waited too long. I mean, there's the formula now seems to be start a company two to four years and flip it, take as minimal money as you can settle an ATS, sell to a platform and rinse and repeat the days of sort of the five to 10 year companies before they sell is a really challenged one. So we're in eight, eight year, eight years of seek out. I don't know what they do. It's unless the tech. hiring comes back, which there's no guarantee of that. I don't know if they're going to get traction anywhere globally. So, okay. And companies are relying more on upscaling. They're relying more on their existing talent pool, their current, you know, people that are already working to upscale and upgrade them. So everyone's moving away from this kind of sourcing model. Chad (29:00.884) database. Chad (29:08.084) Mm -hmm. Joel (29:12.698) And I think seek out is going to run, just going to run out of gas and sell eventually sell on the TJ Maxx clearance rack. The percentages that they've done is it's not apocalypse. They've remained fairly flat overall in terms of hiring, but there's no growth at this company that I can see ahead of them or any in the near future. So yeah, to me it's like run out of time. They can't run out of money. They're going to manage it. intelligently, they're going to last as long as they can and try to figure out a way. They're not going to get more money. They're not going to go IPO. A company that's going to buy them is just going to wait for them to wither to nothing before they acquire it. There's no growth here. Like it's just a, it's just a bad scene. I think they're going to start seeing executives bail because there's no bright future for the business. And it's just going to be a, you know, a sad story of a slow death. Chad (30:05.652) Yeah, I mean, the whole go to market at this point is focus on core platforms that need your type of tech and integrate very closely. Now, you're going to have to be incredibly specific on the types of partners that you have. You can't do this with everyone and you shouldn't, right? Because you're looking for a sugar daddy to actually buy you at the end of the day. Right. And I once again, I just feel like it's been a scatter gun, kind of like, you know, focus. It's been all over the place. They're really going to have to get laser focused. Tech isn't a thing, obviously, which is why they've pivoted into national defense and health care. But again, I mean, we're talking about two entirely different types of talent pools, internal mobility, workforce planning. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, we're all over the place. These might be good things if they were integrated into a platform and not a secondary platform. Right? Where you, okay, I'm going to go into my seek out now and do workforce planning. Nobody's going to do that. It has to be a part of a core platform. Joel (31:10.106) Yeah. And I'll also add that programmatic is getting better and better and more cost effective to get in front of some of the candidates that you want to get in front of. And I think it's also a case where we talk about company, you know, people that are really smart, that come into our industry, that don't know anything about it. And as smart as they are, and as, as many great blue chip companies that they've worked for can't quite figure out our space and can't quite find that secret formula to be successful. Chad (31:31.924) Mm. Chad (31:38.388) Yeah, I don't think they know what the real problem is. And the real problem is something that people will pay for. Joel (31:49.018) All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little Indeed News. Joel (31:58.938) All right, Chad, per a recent article by Jim the Indeed Whisperer Durbin for AIM Group, Indeed is planning to shift away from providing organic traffic, aka free traffic, to its recruitment marketing partners and prioritize paid postings. This decision comes amid global macroeconomic headwinds affecting hiring budgets and a recent layoff. announced from Indeed, which we talked about last week. Chad, your thoughts on the recent commentary on Indeed shutting off the free spigot. Chad (32:34.9) I mean, duh. I mean, how could you not see this coming? Indeed had an organic shutdown in 2019 for staffing companies. Then they saw profits rise from staffing companies after they made that move, right? So Mitch Gerson actually cites that some agencies had to raise their budgets 150 % plus, right? So more than double what they were paying before. So staffing companies got fucked over and then they said, thank you, sir. May I have another? Moreover, you know, this happened out in the open. It's not like we didn't see this coming. We talked about it. Everybody was talking about it, but for some reason it's like, wait a minute, they're shutting off organic for another segment. So what did 2019 staffing shut off teach us? Well, apparently nothing, but here's what I got out of it. Staffing companies, they were obviously leaning too hard on Indeed. and staffing companies were not using the tons, the hundreds of thousands and or millions of candidates that they've already paid for. That again, it just drives me crazy that these companies and again, it's their business, right? So you would expect staffing companies to get it right. Companies are now starting to understand this in some cases, at least like the creme de la creme companies like Matt over at UPS, we talked to him about how the first thing they do is they look for internal mobility. Why? Because they want to keep their people happy. They want to retain their people. No shit, that's awesome. Then when they're looking to fill positions after they've gone through that phase, then they go into their candidate database and then they re -invite individuals to apply for jobs that are like jobs that they've already been like a silver medalist or a bronze medalist to. And we asked, and he didn't give us specific numbers on the interview, but we'll be publishing it here in about a week or so. They've saved tons of money, not just money from the standpoint of not having to spend programmatically externally, but also because they can fill positions faster. If you fill positions faster, your company saves money because you don't have a bunch of empty holes where people aren't doing the job. And you're not stretching your people so thin that you're possibly going to lose them too. Chad (34:58.996) So, you know, from the standpoint of what Indeed's doing, every company that's out there today should be focusing on talent pipelining internally from an internal mobility standpoint, and then also using the candidate data in their database. And instead of paying for Indeed, start to get into some of these SMS and chatbot engagement platforms. that automatically match and then start to invite individuals back to your brand to apply. So there's no black hole. Joel (35:38.01) Indeed being indeed, I say. Look, I remember a conversation early in my SEO days when someone commented to me, and this is an SEO world, that eventually SEO will be dead because you'll pay for every ranking that you get. Now, until generative AI and open AI and GPT, a lot of Google's results were, you guessed it, paid results, which you kind of hardly realize were paid results, and that probably is the road they would have continued down. I'm also reminded by the old conversation around Monster where Monster envisioned a world where they were the only place where people went and they charged everyone, what was it, a thousand dollars a job and just scale that up considerably. I think that was indeed his plan all along was to never really have organic results. And I can remember circa 2010, the first sort of scare shot across the bow of job boards. Chad (36:23.348) job. Joel (36:42.362) when they started ranking direct employer jobs higher than they did job board jobs. And job boards freaked out because the free traffic that they enjoyed was now gone. And indeed slowly kept just tightening the screws on the free stuff, the people who were getting the free ride. And then Google came along and launched jobs. And I think there was a period of like, what the fuck are we going to do? Let's throw some shit at the, at the wall, see what sticks. Chad (36:48.436) Yeah, yeah, made sense. Joel (37:12.058) You know, you remember job tracker where you had an app and you reported like help wanted ads in your local, local downtown market. And I mean, they got kind of crazy. And then you have Google say like, well, we're not going to do paid stuff. We're going to get out of that business. And now indeed can like continue to tighten the screws on the people that are still willing or too stupid or lazy to pay it. I mean, look, this is a tax. on people who aren't willing to look at some of the alternatives that you talked about, whether it's your own database, your own employee, you know, talent pool, whether it's new tools and technology, it is kind of a dumb text. It's a dumb, yep, just post it on indeed. That's what we're going to do. And now you have to pay for that. And we've obviously talked about the pricing questions and issues they've had there. There's a lot of confusion around what the hell am I paying? So this, this to me is par for the course. Chad (37:47.092) It's a dumb tax. It's a dumb tax. Yeah. Joel (38:07.194) If you're not wise to alternatives to Indeed, well, you get what you deserve, which is a lot less budget to play around with recruiting, recruiting, marketing. Like I said, programmatic has become better and smarter. If you're not looking at that, you need to look at that. it's yeah, it's time if you haven't to stop the heroin drip of Indeed's free traffic because it's drying up. Chad (38:19.668) Mm. Joel (38:31.706) and it's gonna be a higher cost for you in the future. LinkedIn's doing the same thing, by the way. They're tightening the screws on free stuff, raising prices, trying to become a monopoly where you have no other options. It's time to get smart, and if you're listening to this show, you're already pretty smart and probably not just dependent upon Indeed, but if you're a first -time listener and sucking on the teat of Indeed, well, it's time to get off. Chad (38:54.868) Tell your dumb friends to listen to Chad and Cheese. No, seriously, I mean, this is the dumb tax. It's what it is. Because for individuals who aren't paying attention or they're making excuses not to change, it's, I mean, you saw this coming or you knew this could happen. So this is, I mean, this is literally just the indeed dumb tax. And if you don't realize that you are buying the same candidates over and over and over, just fire yourself. I mean, just get it over with, get it over with. Okay. I mean, it's just, it's too bad. It's too much. Yes. Joel (39:28.122) And speaking of dumb tacks, Chad, let's end on a dad joke from Scotland. You ready? What's the difference between Robert the Bruce and Winnie the Pooh? Chad (39:34.484) Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (39:42.324) That same person. Joel (39:44.09) Same middle name! That's right. We out! Chad (39:50.899) We out.

This week, the boys cover a wide range of topics, including favorite new TV shows, shoutouts, events, and industry news, including a possible meltdown at DailyPay and a day of reckoning for Joonko. They dig into the recent acquisition of Teamable by Humanly and the acquisition of SkyHive Technologies by Cornerstone OnDemand. Plus, the uncover Indeed's strategic plans for market expansion shared on a corporate video. Then, WeWork better beware, 'cause Chuck E. Cheese is coming for a piece of its pizza pie as a remote workspace of choice. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:25.015) AHHHH YEEEEEEAAAH! Joel Cheesman (00:31.351) Two guys who as far back as they can remember always wanted to be podcasters. Hey kids, it's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel two times cheeseman. Chad (00:44.066) And this is Chad, Gogglebox Sowash. Joel Cheesman (00:47.479) On this episode Indeed wants your TAM, it's consolidation baby, and watch out we work here comes Chucky we'll be right back let's do this Chad (01:04.002) (singing kinda) I'm just mad about saffron, saffron's mad about me.... Joel Cheesman (01:04.919) Who's Arnold and who's Danny DeVito in this picture? Twinsies. Chad (01:10.498) Twins baby, twins. And it's amazing that just about every single fucking, you know, not just Scottish, but European football, big sponsor is a betting company. I mean, they've got a problem. They have a problem. And, and, Joel Cheesman (01:20.567) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (01:24.311) Yep. Chad (01:32.93) I've got to say that now I have a problem. I don't know whether to thank the UK or curse them after getting addicted. Julie and I both getting addicted to this show called Goggles Box. Have you heard about this show? Joel Cheesman (01:42.615) Well... Joel Cheesman (01:46.615) It's not Google box or bird box. It's goggle box. No, this is I've seen, I've seen memes and stuff, but I have no idea what it is. Chad (01:50.082) It's goggle box. Chad (01:55.874) Yeah, it's it has 23 seasons. I mean, there's two seasons per year, but 23 fucking seasons. Literally, people are watching dating shows, cooking shows, movies, and it's literally a way for the pretty much the British to promote their own programming. And they're just watching celebrities watch shows, watching regular people watch shows. It's funny as fuck. It's it's genius. Joel Cheesman (02:07.415) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:17.847) Mm -hmm. Chad (02:25.058) and it's addictive, so I'm not sure if I'm going to lodge a complaint or not. Joel Cheesman (02:29.623) So it's a show with English people watching English shows, commenting in English about the English shows. Chad (02:32.13) Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Joel Cheesman (02:40.407) So it's a little like the, so it's like the, the old sci -fi show where they'd watch old sci -fi film and it was like a robot and a dude and they would, they would comment or maybe like Beavis and butthead commenting on the videos that they were watching. Is that, that's exactly what it is. Chad (02:47.65) Yeah, movie theater 3000 or some shit like that. Yeah. Chad (02:55.028) That's exactly what it is. It's exactly what it is. And it is fucking hilarious. It's again, it's. This is this is and it's not it's not. That's the problem. It was so it was like, my God, I've got to stop watching GoggledoX and now it's on Netflix. So. Joel Cheesman (03:01.655) And this is high level entertainment for you and the wife. Joel Cheesman (03:11.895) The question is, much like our jerseys, were they made in Scotland? Chad (03:17.474) Hahaha! I don't think they were. I don't think they were. But Adam Gordon, Stephen O'Donnell, Matt that British guy, Alder, and everyone who was at the true events, they weren't all Scottish. Although we really appreciate, yeah, well, give me a minute. I'm gonna get there, because we gotta talk about the jerseys. The jerseys, yeah. Anyway, the venues were amazing, the speakers were amazing, the crowds were amazing, and the sponsors, Daxter. Joel Cheesman (03:28.151) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (03:33.367) Don't forget Steven McGrath. Don't forget our favorite Scott. Come on now. Okay, my bad. You're gonna lead into it, my bad. Chad (03:50.274) Ashby Solutions Driven who actually gave us these amazing fucking drams. Look at those. It actually has my... It has initials on it. Yeah, I've got that. Then we had Willow, Gigged .ai and Poetry. Well, obviously we couldn't pull it off without... Joel Cheesman (03:56.375) with our initials, with initials. Joel Cheesman (04:09.751) Did you say Ashby? I think Ashby you said, did you? Chad (04:11.522) Any of those guys? Yep, Ashby, I did. Much love goes to Scotland and much love goes to our friend, Steven McGrath, who hooked us up with these amazing jerseys, not just us, but the girls got, they got the, I think the home jerseys, which are the orange striped ones. And I think Jeremy got one too, didn't he? Joel Cheesman (04:16.631) Much love. Yep. Joel Cheesman (04:32.503) yeah, Jeremy got one, the striped, all, all very cool, all very sexy, all very, legit too. Like it's very, it'd be very easy for our friends, the Canadians, the Scots, et cetera, who give us jerseys to give us some like cheap ass Walmart, graphic sort of Jersey. No, no, we're talking the stitch, the legit, like the real nitty gritty jerseys. And, I couldn't be. Chad (04:53.026) No. No. Chad (05:00.546) Yeah, embroidered. Joel Cheesman (05:01.943) more appreciative of that. Chad (05:04.546) Love it. Love it. Love it. So thank you, Scotland. no, it won't. No, it won't. So thanks to everybody. We had a blast and we cannot wait to return. Joel Cheesman (05:05.431) And unlike the scotch that I brought home, will last for a long time. Joel Cheesman (05:17.399) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. You got some shout out? So then Google box or goggle box or Brit box, whatever it's called. Chad (05:24.258) Gockelbox. So yeah, my I've got a crash and burn shout out that's going to go to June Co. This from an article on C tech Israeli startup Joonko filed for Chapter 11 last week. Didn't see that coming. Did you? Joonko 's operations effectively came to an end last summer after. Joel Cheesman (05:30.583) boy. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:40.407) Nah. Chad (05:45.73) Illit Raz, the former CEO of Joonko, left the company amid allegations from the board that she, quote, engaged in egregious, unethical, and fraudulent conduct, end quote. Crunchbase lists 38 .5 million in funding Joonko filed for Chapter 11 and their plans to distribute the remaining, listen kids, from 38 .5 million to Joel Cheesman (06:00.823) Mm -hmm. Chad (06:14.722) remaining 4 .25 million to investors, right? I want to know how much of that went to the old CEO's pockets? I mean, what happened there? There's got to be some filing through the bank accounts. Fucking crazy. And it has to happen with a diversity, equity, and inclusion platform. I mean, how fucked up is that? Joel Cheesman (06:33.143) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:41.431) Yeah, this won't go up. This won't be a Hulu documentary, like Uber or we work or, Theranos, but for our industry, this is about as like scandalous, fraudulent jail time worthy story that you're going to get. maybe it's fortunate for them that they're not in the U S they can kind of hide out, over in, in Israel, but yeah, this is like bad and, I don't think she did jail time, but, Chad (06:48.482) Maybe. Chad (06:57.986) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (07:08.802) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (07:10.583) The investors typically there's a level of embarrassment where they just want this all to go away and move on to the next, next deal. But yeah, this is for our space is pretty juicy. it's pretty, it's pretty nice. I mean, if, if we're like halfway to Thanksgiving, we've got a few jive turkeys, and shout outs this week that, are worthy of making our year in lists. So bookmark Juneco and the CEO as your jive turkey, of 2024, cause it's a no brainer. Chad (07:25.41) Mm -hmm. Chad (07:36.002) She was on your jive turkey list last year. So I don't know that you can, yeah, I don't know. You might be able to reuse. Joel Cheesman (07:40.919) was she? All right. I don't think we can do two timer on that on that. All right. I got a shout out to major league baseball. I know you're over in Europe and you've, you sort of missed some of the, the baseball news. I know you're a big fan. I know a huge baseball fan check. So, so, so Americans don't know there was a segregated league. There was the league that you think of when you think of baseball with overweight white guys running around in oversized pants. Chad (07:55.106) yeah. yeah. just crazy. Joel Cheesman (08:12.727) but there was the Negro league at the time, which would obviously had, black players that were. Shocking really, really good. And until now, the major league, baseball association has separated the records from the Negro lead league from the, the, the, the regular league. So long time coming. I know, but it is, as you say, slow progress, records by Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, have fallen, because of the likes of. Josh Gibson, who at the time was known as the black Babe Ruth, satchel page, which actually did play a short period in the major leagues and by many accounts, the best pitcher, in baseball history. So a little bit of, of overdue props, for those players and the Negro league and those records coming over into major league baseball as a whole, no more segregation in the record books. Chad (08:46.626) Mm -hmm. Chad (09:07.874) Yeah, I would have thought white guys running around in fat white guys running around in their living room would be more about you than baseball. But I mean, it could be them too. It could be. Joel Cheesman (09:18.423) That was me running to Chipotle after being in Scotland where no Chipotles exists for nine or 10 days. Chad (09:26.53) my God. Okay. So my next shout out goes to Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, no shit. First time on the show, kids. If you're not watching us on YouTube, you're totally going to miss this. Okay. But you got to see it. You got to see it. Here we go, kids. Joel Cheesman (09:36.983) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:41.623) And I haven't seen this, by the way. Joel Cheesman (09:59.831) hahahaha Chad (10:01.218) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (10:05.879) The woman in the middle kills me. Chad (10:24.194) in the butt. Okay, so if you're not watching on YouTube... Joel Cheesman (10:27.127) What was funny is the first word was four letters, and write is not. I don't know how he's spelling that, but anyway, yeah. Chad (10:30.718) yeah, yeah, yeah. You know where his mind was, right? But if you're not watching on YouTube kids, you totally missed the expression on Tavares' face after that wonderfully wrong answer. So watch us on YouTube and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. That is just, that's good TV. That's good TV. Joel Cheesman (10:50.871) doubt. No doubt. All right. My last shout out goes to Stacy Griner. Who the fuck is Stacy Griner, you may ask. Well, Daily Pay, a company that we have celebrated on this show as a trend that needs to have its time in the sun. Well, they're going through some iSims Brian Provost style CEO shuffle over there. Stacy is the new Chad (10:58.05) who is Stacy Gruner? Chad (11:11.49) yeah. Chad (11:17.57) Come on. Joel Cheesman (11:19.703) Daily Pay interim CEO on the same day that they announced that now former CEO Kevin Koop exited to become CEO of a company called Definitive Healthcare after just two years at Daily Pay. So I don't know what's up with these CEOs that take these big, big jobs at companies that are unicorns. and then push the eject button, after a couple of years, but, it's, it's not a healthy trend, for the workers and the employees, which, which I had to go check out. I know you're not a fan of glass door, but it is still the side of record. If you want to know what people think about CEO's at the company and my man had a 53 % approval rating. So there might be some employees celebrating, Mr. Coop's exit because he was not very favorable, with many, many of the. Chad (11:52.93) Where's the love? Joel Cheesman (12:15.991) employees, but Stacy Griner. Yeah, you carry that interim CEO much like our friend Rebecca Carr at smart recruiters. I say it's time to just put the CEO label on these ladies. Let's get some fresh ideas and strategies in our space. Stacy Griner, hopefully soon to be CEO, but for now interim CEO of daily pay. Shout out to Stacy Griner. Good luck with all that. Chad (12:24.514) Yeah. Chad (12:42.242) That's right. Get rid of that interim kids. One thing that both Stacey and Rebecca can do, there's no interim here with Chad and Cheese. They can actually go register for free stuff. No interim, free stuff, just free stuff. T -shirts from our friends at Aeron App, new, beautiful, Guns N' Roses like t -shirts. Beer from Aspen Tech Labs, sweet, loving. carefully crafted beer that's gonna arrive on your on your front doorstep. Whiskey. man, we just had a whole week of whiskey and it was amazing. I still have the drams to prove it. By Tex Colonel. Tex Colonel knows how much you love whiskey. That's why they're gonna send you two bottles. That's why we love Harard and we love the team over there. And if it's your birthday, it's a rum from Plum. Go to ChadCheese .com. Joel Cheesman (13:21.143) Mm -hmm. Chad (13:38.818) slash free and register. Joel Cheesman (13:46.487) That's right, Chad. Another year around the sun celebrated by some of our loyal listeners. A shout out goes to Shelly Billinghurst of Canada. Chad (13:56.034) Yes. Love her. Love her. Joel Cheesman (13:58.903) That's right. James Mealy, Jeff, the job board doctor, Dicky Chasen's calm. Kenahan. I'm totally mispronounced that, but I shouldn't after being in Scotland for a while. Jeanette leads Tom Hunley, Jackie Clayton, James Anderchuck, Sean Johnson, Caitlin fail, Travis, wine Ling, Adrian Villa, Katrina Collier, who shares your birthday as well. And last but not least, Chad, your boys. Chad (14:03.169) love it. Chad (14:07.394) Excuse me? Excuse me? Chad (14:24.322) My twin. Joel Cheesman (14:27.767) Chad and Joel celebrated another trip around the sun. Happy birthday, everybody. Little known fact, same year, just a day apart, 27th and 28th of May, Chad and Cheese. It was meant to be, it was written in the stars that we would have a podcast, Chad. Chad (14:34.562) Good times. Just kidding. Just a day apart. Yeah, and we don't have Katrina on this show. She would actually wrap this whole thing up, except we would never get a word in Edgewise, by the way. Let's talk about events. We have RecFest, RecFest, RecFest coming, kids. NebWorth is coming July 11th. If you have not been to NebWorth, RecFest at NebWorth, my God, we're... Get out of the corner. Get out of the closet. Bring your team. Bring yourself. Bring your team. This is a this is a all hands type of scenario. There are 5500 people there last year. Don't know how many people this year, but it's going to be a blast. Joel and I are going to be on stage all day. You're going to love it. Hop on the train from London wherever you're at or down from Scotland and come see us in that worth the Nebworth. We have Nashville. Is coming September 12th and 13th. I gotta say, the first year of Nashville for me, Wreckfest in Nashville was amazing. And not just because there were so many VIP parades happening, but the content that were on the stage, I mean, we were emceeing stage all day. That was a blast and that was great content. Joel Cheesman (15:59.223) I agree. I agree. And by the way, Cole Cheeseman will be making the trip with me. See him for a for a t -shirt. That's sort of his job. Let's check on Cole real quick. What's he up to? Chad (16:04.77) Hahaha! Chad (16:10.562) That's his job. Chad (16:14.498) Hahaha! Joel Cheesman (16:15.447) geez. He's, he's agitated. summer break started today. So he's, over finals and getting over that, little bit of a personal, note. I'm, I'm going to Singapore, in June for two weeks. I'll be here next week, but then after that you get to have some co -hosts and some fun without me. But clearly after, doing an interview with Matt Alder, when I called him Adam, clearly my brain needs a little bit of, Asian Pacific. Chad (16:18.626) Again. Again. He's gotta be happy. He's gotta be happy. Chad (16:33.922) Pretty stoked. Joel Cheesman (16:45.591) sunshine and beaches and some foe and some, some, some good stuff. So I will be gone for two weeks. we're going to do a super shred when I get back. So Chad, you'll be a sort of high landing job case and what they're up to while I'm gone. But yeah, I'm, I'm piecing out for a couple of weeks. Everybody. I'm, I'm pretty excited about it. It's been a while since I've totally unplugged from the show. Chad (16:45.698) Separation. Separation. Chad (16:53.314) separation. Chad (17:11.426) Yeah, I'm not sure if it was your brain or the scotch that actually, you know, and yeah, I'm not sure if it was that, but it doesn't matter. Enjoy your time. Joel Cheesman (17:15.671) scotch. Joel Cheesman (17:21.591) Europe has a lot of countries in it. And by the way, Chad, it's the end of the month or the beginning of the month, depending on when you listen to this, which means the jobs report is coming out. If you're not tuning into our monthly show with link up CEO, Toby Dayton, make sure you head out to youtube .com slash at Chad cheese. Subscribe. it's a thoughtful, Q and a with us and what's going on the jobs report. It's, it's not something that you'll get on CNBC or Bloomberg. It's a totally different perspective. Chad (17:24.962) Yes. Joel Cheesman (17:51.095) And it's free to watch. So there you go, kids. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. Chad (17:51.746) Better data. Yeah, better data, baby. Chad (17:59.074) Topic! Joel Cheesman (18:02.679) All right, Chad, Seattle startup, Humanly, former firing squad participant. they're a conversational AI platform for high volume hiring in case you missed it. They've acquired San Francisco's Teamable terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Teamable CEO will join Humanly as VP of product. Humanly customers use the platform for screening, scheduling, automating, communication, and running reference checks as well. Teamable had previously raised $12 million. while humanly has raised a little under $24 million. Chad, is this a match made in heaven, a shotgun wedding or something in between? Your thoughts. Chad (18:42.274) I gotta say, I love Pram. He came on Firing Squad back in late 2020. I gave him a golf clap only because they didn't have funding. Then subsequently, they got a seed round in late 2021 and then additional. 12 million of series a in 2023. So they started fueling the jets, which is, which is awesome. Now they're expanding screening and scheduling capabilities, going up funnel, adding source and attract and further down funnel, adding tracking. This is exactly what they need to be doing. If you take a look at companies like, like the talk pushes and the paradox and whatnot. Those guys are doing the exact same thing right there. They're not expanding going, you know going horizontally They're going up and down funnel and this is incredibly important for them not to mention, you know now they have these assets Their valuation goes up dramatically, right? So a little inside baseball teamable was already acquired once by Top Funnel back in 2021. Top Funnel, the acquiring company, then rebranded to Teamable. Kind of find that odd. Teamable, not a name or not a word. It's a created word, right? Top Funnel, two words that you can spell that. So anyway, digging into Teamable, the world's... Joel Cheesman (20:01.143) Yeah. Chad (20:12.29) most complete AI hiring platform. I had to stop myself from laughing too hard. The world's most complete AI hiring platform founded in 2017. They only raised 10 million in funding. It's five in 2017 and another five in 2018. That's at least what I saw in Crunchbase. LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, Justin Palmer, Teamable CEO left... six months ago after leading the company for eight years. So I started asking myself, how many times do you think we actually talked about Teamable over the last eight years? The world's most complete AI hiring platform, how many times? Once, once in April of 2017. What? when they received funding, I mean, once. So this is obviously, it feels like a distressed asset. And good on -prem and the Humanly team for picking up a clearance rack asset to be able to actually, again, go up and down funnel for the Humanly stack. So good for those guys. I can't believe we haven't seen more of this happening in our space this year. Joel Cheesman (21:17.495) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Chad (21:35.618) I think we're going to see more, but I can't believe we haven't seen much of that this far. Joel Cheesman (21:40.375) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:45.495) So our friend Prim, CEO at Humanly said quote in the press release, we are making the dream of posting a job and having a qualified candidate appear on your calendar without the manual effort in between a reality. I agree on paper. This makes a ton of sense. You've built a conversational AI for lots of folks to come through the funnel while you need a top of the funnel to get more and more people through your conversational AI. Chad (22:05.378) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (22:14.903) product. So on, on par, this, this makes total sense. And that's always been a challenge with the chatbots. It's like, yeah, we're not going to get people to the site or your jobs. Like we'll, we'll be there when they're ready. it makes a lot of sense to like, we'll help you get traffic into your conversational solution. I'm with you totally on, this is a TJ Maxx clearance sale, clearance rack, consolidation play. if you look at the, Chad (22:38.05) easily. Good for them. Joel Cheesman (22:42.935) the head count at teamable, they had a 60 % decline in head count over the past two years. things are not going well at this company. I don't know how many people will move from San Francisco or from the teamable team over to humanly. humanly is a pretty, pretty small team. So to take on, those folks would be challenged. So we'll, we'll see what happens there. obviously there's some people that are quality there that. maybe they'll move up to Seattle or bring into humanly, but you know, this, these models of sort of, I don't know, let's call them hub spot for recruiting, plays are, are challenged. I mean, if you look at hire easy, we know them really well. They, they pivoted out of hire tool, a sourcing, solution. We talked about seek out and layoffs there. They haven't pivoted, but, but that's a challenge business as well. Hire easy has had a 29 % Chad (23:21.602) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:39.351) head count decrease in the last two years, which is roughly half of teamables, but it's still not exactly super hyper growth company. I expect higher easy to be consolidated, acquired to your point of why haven't we talked about more of these? I think higher easy has to be on the sales. the conversation with some and many now why these two got together, I don't know. Maybe, the investors brought them together. Seattle and San Francisco don't normally get together for stuff like this. So. Somebody knew somebody they were looking to sell making calls. I'm sure this wasn't the only one humanly terms were not disclosed. I'm sure it was a hell of a deal. If not just we'll take up the assets and repay any debts or pay some of your investors for their time and energy. But yeah, I think, I think it makes a lot of it again. It makes a ton of sense. Yeah. We'll give you jobs. We'll give you, you know, all the infrastructure, whatever we have the technology. but that's about it. So for me, this is really. Chad (24:25.922) We'll give you all jobs. Chad (24:33.826) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:38.007) much to do about nothing. Teamable has been a non -player. Humanly, I think, can make their way up the chain. I mean, they're at risk of getting, I guess, Coca -Cola'd by Paradox and other conversational AI players. But yeah, on paper it makes sense, but I don't think it's a huge deal. Chad (24:57.506) Yeah, I disagree. I think if you can get a really good pair of jeans off TJ Maxx clearance rack and they look good on your ass, I think it's awesome. So I think this might be that it depends on how they execute. But I think one of the things is you get a company like Paradox who literally is leading the charge. You do have to have the Pepsi's, the RC Colas, the Fantas, the big reds. Right. So, you know, I think there's there's plenty of room in the space. because to be quite frank, the process efficiency of most applicant tracking systems because of the way that the talent acquisition company set them up are shit and they need process efficiency. So who knows? This could be a much cheaper option than a paradox. Who knows? But I think at least being able to add to the assets and then also going up and down funnel is incredibly smart for Humanly. Joel Cheesman (25:53.559) I do think it's interesting that they are adding pieces as opposed to being like a really good tool in somebody's toolbox. So they are at least making a move to say, Hey, we're going to go up funnel. We're going to be more piece of the pie than we were just a tool that you can just buy, which they were, they're a fine acquisition play as they are now. They're a little bit more expensive, maybe a little bit more valuable, or maybe they're taking a real, taking real aim at paradox and fountain and some of the others, Harry. that are doing some of these things. So yeah, it's an interesting play. We'll see. I think they might need another series of money. Well, I guess stay tuned. Stay tuned for that one. the squirt gun and the gunfight isn't probably working all that well. All right, let's get to cornerstone on demand. They've acquired sky hive technologies. Cornerstone says the deal accelerates their re -scaling capabilities with predictive labor market intelligence and automated job architecture management. Chad (26:24.098) Yeah. Chad (26:29.09) They just might. Chad (26:36.546) Ha ha. Chad (26:40.706) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:50.775) Prior to the deal, Skyhive had raised $48 million. They were founded in 2017. Chad, your thoughts on the Cornerstone Skyhive deal. Chad (27:04.194) AI powered skills, intelligent, intelligence platform. How many buzzwords can you fit into a shortened description? Apparently five. We talked a bit about skills based hiring in Glasgow. And what was your feeling around the companies and if they were doing it right, if they even started at this point, did you feel like like we were even on track with skills based hiring right now? Joel Cheesman (27:32.023) Yeah, back to my Major League Baseball reference. We may still be in the batter's box or just entering the batter's box on this play. Chad (27:37.474) Yeah. Because skills based hiring is fucking hard. Why? Because tasks for a specific job, companies haven't even lined those out for the most part. And then being able to assess skills on those tasks, right? So we think of jobs as jobs. They're not. They are a series of tasks that create the job. That's what they are. That's why I believe performance based skills assessment systems are the cheat code, right? The shortcut. So how can you prove a candidate can actually perform the tasks of a job? What tasks are they doing well and what tasks are they not doing well that they need help with, right? This is where we actually need performance based types of systems. So I believe that as you'd said. Still, I mean, we're still in the batter's box, not even the early innings for God's sakes, the batter's box in skills based hiring discussions, because most companies don't even have a list of tasks that make up the fucking job in the first place, let alone evaluate performance on said, you know, said tasks. So. Nothing that a little AI smoke and mirrors apparently won't help. And that's what I feel like this is. I don't feel like anybody's figured this out. And for a company to be able to say, well, you know, pretty much we've figured this out. It's, it just feels like bullshit to me. I could be a hundred percent wrong, but to be quite frank, I don't think I am. Joel Cheesman (29:14.743) Here's what the recipe feels like. Company jumps on a big trend upskilling raises a bunch of money, creates a website with a lot of stock video footage of like nurses and, you'll love the vet, like the military ones with the dog tags, looking at a laptop like. creates a website, creates a ton of buzzwords, upscaling AI, like all, you know, them all, if you listen to this show, they raise a bunch of money that they get on a trend and then someone realizes that, okay, we got on this trend to be on it. And this isn't, this ain't it. Like this, this probably is not the rocket ship that's going to take us to the moon. And as a result, they continue to like, you and I do this for a living. Chad (29:41.218) Mm -hmm. Chad (29:46.178) yeah. Joel Cheesman (30:07.095) And I spent a good deal of time watching the explainer videos, going through the site, like, what the fuck do these guys do? I came across this skills passport thing and I thought, well, maybe this is a, maybe this is a blockchain play. Like they're going to like, you know, confirm identities and profiles, but I couldn't understand. I didn't, I could not figure out what the skills passport was. It sounded cool and they'd actually trademarked it, but I couldn't figure out from the blunt. Chad (30:36.514) Great words. Joel Cheesman (30:36.823) Like the one pager of what, like what the fuck it was. So to me, this just feels like let's get on this trend. Let's raise a bunch of money. shit. This isn't it. Let's call our VC buddies at, at down, you know, at cornerstone on demand, which was a quote, which used to be a public company. It was acquired in 21 by clear Lake, capital groups. So like there's some money to like, what should we do? And so all these people know each other like, Hey, how would you like to buy us for X? You'll get the, the. AI shed, whatever tech we build, you can take some where people will say face. Well, you know, our investors will walk away, you know, with their head high. And then this deal happens like this happens all the time. Whereas at least humanly and teamable makes sense on paper. I don't know if this one makes sense. This just feels like a bunch of dudes at the country club saying like, Hey, I got to dump this, this, this dog. I got a. Chad (31:18.658) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (31:31.319) I got a pile of dog shit sprinkled with cat turds like you interested and then like over a couple of cigars and maybe a happy ending at the Oriental massage parlor and bam, we got us an acquisition. That's what this feels like. It doesn't make a lot of sense other than somebody knew somebody and people put money in like, let's get it out and say face and move on to the next deal. Chad (31:52.322) Yeah, and Cornerstone seems to be really good at one thing, and that's baffling companies with bullshit. And this just feels like a continuation of that. Joel Cheesman (32:01.847) Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of the whole eightfold, you know, trend. Like let's throw some AI shit, big words and yeah. And people buy thinking, well, it's the emperor has no clothes. Like I see the clothes. Yeah. Okay. I'll buy your shit. I don't know what it does, but I'll, I'll buy it and tell everyone that I'm really smart. Just like you. All right. Let's take a quick break and talk about someone else who thinks they're smarter than the average bear. That would be indeed everybody. We'll be right back. Chad (32:09.122) Eightfold is their masters of that shit. yeah. I have the best words. Joel Cheesman (32:36.183) Indeed is coming for your tam Chad in a recruit holdings online strategic overview. CEO Chris Himes, also known as our love child outlined how indeed would be growing its market share in the coming years. Some nuggets include greater global penetration while simultaneously growing its SMB and enterprise customer base and increasing its quote take rate within new segments such as temp staffing. Chad. This was a video that probably went under a lot of people's radar, but not ours. What's your takeaway from Mr. Hyam's commentary? Chad (33:15.618) Yeah, this video came out well over a month ago, I think a couple of months ago, and I watched it and I thought, okay, let's see what happens at the end of this. Wait, we were traveling, crickets, crickets, I'm searching, crickets, crickets. Nobody's talking about this. And I don't get it because... Joel Cheesman (33:30.295) Mm -hmm. Chad (33:39.97) During the investors update, Chris Himes, the CEO of Indeed, talked about effectively monetizing the marketplace. What the fuck does that mean? Indeed's already the biggest player in the ad tech recruiting space, right? Okay, well, you have to expand the total addressable market. Okay, where? During the update, Chris, how have I not been fired, Himes, pointed out that the ad tech space... In the recruiting industry, the market size is $32 billion, which is only 10 % of the greater 327 billion recruitment industry. So Indeed wants to expand their TAM by 10x by going into staffing. And yet we haven't heard shit from anybody about this. So Indeed has no need to be a technological innovator anymore. when they are already a decade ahead of staffing agencies like Ronstadt who screwed the pooch with their monster acquisition, Adeco with their failed hire .com acquisition, and AMS with their pathetic management of the hourly product, just to name a few by the way. So the question is, indeed, how can they become a staffing company? We've got to remember, recruit holdings, Is their parents, is their sugar daddy? They're one of the biggest recruitment companies in Asia pack, right? So Indeed makes it public. They're going full steam into staffing, but they can't eat the entire staffing $327 billion industry elephant all at once. So where do they start? Well, they already have, wait a minute kids, Indeed Flex, a temp jobs platform, which represents, wait a minute, what's the temp job? Joel Cheesman (35:06.999) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (35:22.903) Mm -hmm. Chad (35:34.018) That's $128 billion of the 327. It's the biggest fucking chunk that's out there. So Ronstadt, Adeco, and all the other staffing companies are pretty much sitting as the Monster .coms and career builders of today. They can hear the Indeed train coming. They know that they're standing on the tracks, but they're just too damn busy worrying about this quarter's EBITDA to get the fuck out of the way. The big question is, Joel Cheesman (35:36.919) Yeah. Chad (36:03.17) What staffing companies and RPO firms will continue spending money with Indeed after this update? Joel Cheesman (36:14.263) The answer is all of them, probably. This was fascinating. I'd love to know how many indeed employees have watched this. It's pretty cool that they made it publicly available for meatheads like us to go check it out. But look, on the surface, well, but they don't have to reveal this much. They don't have to, they don't have to, anyway, it's very cool that a company did this. Chad (36:17.986) Yeah. Chad (36:32.002) They're a public company. Chad (36:41.986) It was. It was. Joel Cheesman (36:42.295) It's sort of like, let's open the kimono and let everyone know what our real intentions are because you and I talk about indeed. and on, in, and from our world and our perspective, it looks like a company in disarray. It looks like what the fuck are we doing? Let's throw shit at the wall. We're, we're desperate. We don't know what we're doing. And then you watch this thing and you go, that's, that's some evil ass shit. Okay. Now. Chad (36:47.17) I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Chad (37:09.154) Look over here, look over here, look over here. wait a minute. That's what we're doing. Joel Cheesman (37:10.807) Now, yeah, it feels a little bit like let's do some stupid shit. So Chad and cheese talk about that. And then the real like evil plan will be hatched, you know, behind, behind the, the, you know, the, the doors. so. Joel Cheesman (37:30.679) If yes, if, if I'm a staffing company, this definitely concerns me. can they pull it off? That's questionable. I don't know. I mean, Google can't launch glasses. Apple got out of the car business. I mean, there's reason to believe that even though they say they're going to do this, that they can actually do it, that they can actually, follow through and get it done. But look, it was fascinating to talk about. Look. What we do is such a small piece of what we want to do. And we think of indeed, is this sort of monolithic number one job board in the world, but in a world of $327 billion opportunity, I mean, it's a small piece of that pie. Like you, you mentioned, if they just get into one of these and the ones that he talked about were temp staffing, retained search, direct hire, and recruitment automation. I mean, job advertising is a 10th. of what that marketplace is. He talks about how the 50 K and under jobs are still the primary sort of resource for companies to find people. The executive side of that is less than half of what they're getting from a monetary standpoint. So if they start turning the dials on the executive stuff, whether that's through search or I don't know exactly what they're going to do, but if they just get that up to the fifth, what they're getting on for companies at 50 ,000 and below. Chad (38:31.154) yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:57.015) they're going to greatly impact their bottom line. in a big way, he talks a lot about the indeed higher and indeed flex, how they're going to be a primary part of, of the future. it was just a fascinating sort of flying the wall moment where this is what indeed really doing. And it was a fascinating to watch. I think they've got their work cut out for them. I don't think this is a core competency for them. Chad (39:05.778) yeah. Chad (39:21.698) yeah. Joel Cheesman (39:23.319) I think just saying we're getting into executive search or we're getting into, temp staffing is easier said than done. and they're more than likely to fuck it up than they are to get it right, but it's going to be fun to watch. And it's at least good to know how, how this is a backdrop like, yeah, they just talked about sourcing. No, that ain't it. It's this other shit that they're looking to, to grow the market share. the take rate, he says a lot, in that they want to take more cash from what they're helping companies do. Chad (39:49.314) Okay. Joel Cheesman (39:53.047) currently. Chad (39:53.79) yeah, going from 1 % to, perspective leave, 5 % to 20 % to possibly, I mean, because if you think about it, they can undercut the staffing companies because they have the process efficiency and they have access to the actual, the candidates, right? The thing that just blows my mind is that how all of these inept, Joel Cheesman (39:57.975) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (40:08.471) Mm -hmm. Chad (40:18.082) Staffing companies and RPOs they're coming for you, too Okay, they're coming for you too this To think that you are safe because you're inside a company is just I mean you're fooling yourself kids to be able to undercut all the staffing companies because you don't you're not going to have the overhead is just crazy the thing is These staffing companies have proven they cannot buy a tech company Joel Cheesman (40:21.895) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (40:47.49) and turn it out like. Recruit Holdings did with Indeed. Recruit Holdings, they've been able to really make this bad boy sing and they have wanted penetration into the US market and other markets too, but definitely the US market. This is their fucking train, man. This is their train and it's gonna run over all those other fucking staffing companies. They're not gonna get out of the way. They're gonna be worried about next quarter instead of five years down the road and Japan has your fucking number, kids. Joel Cheesman (40:51.383) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:02.775) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:12.031) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (41:18.167) Yeah, it's too easy to say, Hey, we noticed you posted a job for an executive position. Do you want to learn more about this product and what it could mean? Like we'll find the people for you. And, and as, as companies reduce their recruiting head count, something like this is really appealing. you know, yeah, a small business. I need some, I need some cooks or some servers. see you post a job like we'll help you. place those jobs like, okay, that's cool. Indeed does that. What do I, you know, what do I have to pay 20 % or whatever it is, they can undercut that. So it kind of makes really good sense. And it also makes sense of why they're doing more to go after LinkedIn with their multiple profiles and like, so they want more, more of that data, more of that profile data. So then they can, they can place those folks more easily within the system. So. It's some evil genius shit if they can pull it off. I question if they can. It'll be fun to watch though. Chad (42:17.218) Now, staffing companies, staffing companies, you better stop spending money with Indeed. I think it's too late, to be quite frank, for some of you, but not all of you. So you better stop fucking spending money with Indeed because you're literally slitting your own throat. Joel Cheesman (42:30.711) Yeah, yeah. Wise up. Joel Cheesman (42:37.623) All right, moving on from indeed. Let's take a quick break guys. Listen to the ads on the show. There is no show without the ads and we love our sponsors so much. But you should write them all blank checks or just give them your credit card number. For God sakes, we'll be right back with some Chuck E. Cheese news. Now better that you never thought you'd hear that on the chat and cheese pie. Chad (43:00.45) No. Joel Cheesman (43:05.271) All right, Chad, young professionals in Toronto. Sorry, I mispronounced it. It's Toronto for the Canadians out there are using a local Chuck E. Cheese. Did you know that Chuck E.'s middle name is entertainment? I bet you didn't know that Chuck Charles entertainment cheese is his, is his full name. Anyway, they're using the Chuck E. Cheese as a remote workspace, finding the environment quote, surprisingly productive while at the same time being nostalgic. Chad (43:27.202) So bad. Joel Cheesman (43:35.095) The idea initiated by Arvay Bookbinder has gained popularity with more than 100 people showing interest in joining future quote, fever dream coworking events at Chuck E. Cheese. Chad, your thoughts on Chuck E. Cheese going after a little WeWork pie. Or is that pizza pie? Chad (43:57.25) I think it's Adam Newman. I think it's Adam Newman in the Chuck E. Cheese suit is what it is. This is his way to try to outflank WeWork. Fucking Adam Newman. my God, yeah. I mean, we just talked about, you know, Ilja Raz, you know, from Juco. And now, you know, this feels very Adam Newman -ish where he was trying to put in a bid. Joel Cheesman (44:09.303) It'd be more successful in his other companies. Joel Cheesman (44:25.399) Mm -hmm. Chad (44:25.634) to buy WeWork, the company that's a, you know, he WeWork Jesus. Yeah, this to me is one of the stupidest things ever. I can't imagine any professional going into a Chuck E. Cheese in working, period. And I guess it doesn't have to be, you know, quote unquote professionals, like, you know, upscale professionals. It can be just anybody, just your regular old Joe. Maybe they have kids. Joel Cheesman (44:45.911) huh. Chad (44:52.354) that like you are out of school, you want to go take them to play, but you got to do work. Maybe this is a good opportunity, but yeah, I this isn't going anywhere. Joel Cheesman (44:53.399) Huh? Yep. Joel Cheesman (45:00.823) So you're a hater and I went scouring the internet for comic relief around Chuck E. Cheese. So this is comedian Nate Bargat's on Chuck E. Cheese. Have a quick listen. Chad (46:06.05) Sounds like Indiana. Joel Cheesman (46:29.623) So I'm going to, I'm going to stand up for Chuck E. Cheese for a second. I I've recently been to a Chuck E. Cheese in the last six months. The robotic band is gone. It's all digital. The games are pretty cool. The pizza is pretty good. I think they got some real ovens in there and they're like, there's no buffet anymore. Let me, there's a buffet with like salads and stuff, but like the pizza is pretty good. The games are pretty fun. No one's going to Chuck E cheese on Tuesday from like nine to three, roughly, you know, like roughly they're going at night. Maybe most on the weekends. I think it's a perfect opportunity to put up some desks, put up some cubes or put up some like workspaces, get some coffee in there. You know, when I take a break, I want to play some ski ball. I want to play some Terminator, take a break, maybe go get some pizza. I think it could work. I think it could work and leave it to the Canadians. to make something, something like this work. So don't give up on Chuck E. Cheese, Chad. It could be an idea whose time is now. And I'm going to end this on a dad joke. You know, I would, you know, I would. Why didn't anyone laugh at pizza's jokes? Chad (47:35.166) God, yeah. Here we go. Chad (47:41.73) You got me. Joel Cheesman (47:42.199) They were too cheesy. We out. Chad (47:47.906) We out. That was bad.

Get ready for another wild ride with the Chad & Cheese Podcast! Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash kick things off by gushing over Ronaldo and reminiscing about D-Day, because why not mix soccer and history? Shoutouts abound, from Dennis "Tupperdamis" Tupper's eerie predictions to Sweet Green's robot salad makers. Next up, they dive into Ashby's latest funding round, wondering if this ATS can stay the "hot chick" in a fickle market. Seek pulls out of Latin America, and Chad has some colorful memories of OCC Mexico. The guys then shred Rubio's Coastal Grill for blaming California's $20 minimum wage for their bankruptcy and eviscerating Walmart's "generous" employee bonuses. Flight attendants are fed up, and Chad channels his inner union boss, while Joel fears the future of paid service for basic flight amenities. Finally, in the most important segment of all, an Edmonton Oilers fan's flashing antics spark a debate on the year of the boobs. Because, really, what's a podcast without some hockey Hooters? Tune in for laughs, rants, and the inevitable dad joke to cap it all off. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:30.955) Yeah, two guys who love girls with new wave hairdos and hockey jerseys. Hi kids, it's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Omaha cheeseman. Chad Sowash (00:42.1) This is Chad, let him out. So wash. Joel Cheesman (00:45.163) And on this episode, Ashby, more like Cashby, Seek Pulls Out, and Hockey Hooters. Let's do this. Joel Cheesman (00:58.571) What's up, Euro Chad? Chad Sowash (01:00.628) So I'm representing today, what's on the side? That's a Portuguese, that's symbol. yeah. Soccer, soccer, football. Joel Cheesman (01:02.763) Is that the Portuguese national official shirt? Is is renaldo is renaldo gonna be is he done on like the national team stuff? Chad Sowash (01:13.876) I don't know. I don't know if he's just playing, you know, in Saudi Arabia and he'll come back later or not. I mean, I don't think we need him. We are stacked with talent. Joel Cheesman (01:21.611) He's, yeah, he's 39, I think. My kid loves Ronaldo. I mean, what's not to love, but like loves Ronaldo. Ronaldo and Messi are like Jesus A and B for my kid. Chad Sowash (01:25.844) Yeah, still really good, but I mean, yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (01:36.532) Dude, if you want to see Jesus, a like Ronaldo, go to Madeira where he was actually, he was born and that entire Island, which is gorgeous by the way, is like Ronaldo heaven. Joel Cheesman (01:39.979) -huh. Joel Cheesman (01:50.539) Yeah. When I'm in, we'll get to travel, but when we're in London, for rec fest, I think, I think the wife's going to try to hit the Cincinnati Miami, game, which should include, messy as, as playing. Although I think he's sort of hit or miss. Not going to be cheap, but I think there's always question of whether he'll be there or like what he's doing. So anyway, I'll be in England. I won't worry about it, but that's, that would really, make my son happy for sure. For sure. Chad Sowash (02:06.612) Those tickets aren't gonna be cheap. Yeah, it's gonna be cheap Chad Sowash (02:20.436) It is what it is. It is what it is. All right. All right. You want to jump into shout outs? Yeah, I'm good. That was the Algarve flu, which makes sure that it doesn't take you off the beach for too long. Joel Cheesman (02:21.323) Yeah. Yeah. You were, you were, you were sick yesterday. You good now? All right. All right. Good. Joel Cheesman (02:35.083) Yeah. And, and beach, beach is a good remedy for most, most sicknesses by the way. But yeah, we, we got a lot to go through. So let's get to shout out. I got quite a few and you have like one. So I'll go ahead and knock a couple out. My first one is we're, we are recording this on June 6th, which was D -Day 80 years ago. A lot of kids don't appreciate it or know it. You and I are a little bit up there in age, but for those that don't know 150 ,000 allied troops landed on Nazi occupied. Chad Sowash (02:36.532) Hahaha Chad Sowash (02:42.996) Vitamin D, baby. Joel Cheesman (03:04.267) France on this day, 80 years ago, 73 ,000 Americans, 60 ,000 British and 15 ,000 Canadians. It was the largest amphibious invasion on record and still remains. 20 ,000 Normandy residents perished during that time, which a lot of people don't talk about. A number of Germans killed, a little bit of a mystery. Most estimates put it like five to 10 ,000 Germans who died, but a credible sacrifice. You and I are beneficiaries of the sacrifice that our grandparents made and just wanted to, yeah, the world at large for the most part. And just wanted to point that out that we are recording on a historic day and wanted to bring some, shed some light on this day, 80 years ago. Chad Sowash (03:33.396) Yes. Chad Sowash (03:38.868) So is Europe. Yeah. Chad Sowash (03:51.316) Yeah. And if you've never been to Normandy, go. You've got to go to the beaches of Normandy. We actually took the kids a few years ago. We were doing a whirlwind tour of Europe and I had to go to Normandy. So we did. And it is awe inspiring to think of trying to actually hit those beach heads and then, you know, having fortified defenses that you can actually go in and walk in and whatnot. But having fortified defenses against you, it's amazing. So if you get a chance, If you ever get a chance people, just travel, get the hell off the couch, go travel, go enjoy yourself and go visit places like Normandy. I mean, the cemetery there, the US, the American cemetery that is there, it'll set you back. It'll set you back. It really will. Joel Cheesman (04:36.011) Yeah, it's, it's, it's haunting. And I can't imagine you actually served in the military. So your perspective is much different than mine, but I, I made sure to go to the edge of the water, turn around and try to envision what it was like, with pill boxes and obviously arms coming down. All the beaches are pretty cool. Juneau and like the Canadians did a really good job. The, the artistry around, the English beach, just really cool stuff. They're all very different. Every country has sort of done their own commemorative around each one. Chad Sowash (04:59.924) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (05:03.988) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:04.843) But don't just go to one beach, try to go to all of them. A very special experience and should be on everyone's bucket list for sure. Chad Sowash (05:11.828) Agree and agreed. Well, we also had another special experience. We actually got to meet Dennis Tupper in the flesh at Unleashed. But my shout out goes to Dennis Tupper. This is almost an Indeed free show, kid. So this is very special. But five years ago, we recorded an episode with Dennis entitled Indeed Conspiracy Theories, where his first prediction was indeed pivoting to staffing. Yes, back in 2019. Joel Cheesman (05:19.051) You Joel Cheesman (05:34.347) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (05:40.596) As Joel always says, predictions aren't wrong. They just haven't happened yet. So shout out to Dennis Tupperdamis. Joel Cheesman (05:48.971) That's right. And here's to you, Tupper, your favorite sound bite. Chad Sowash (05:53.972) Ha ha! Joel Cheesman (05:56.043) All right. I got a couple more shout outs. One is going out to Shu -O Wang. She's the co -founder and chief revenue officer at deal who we talk about quite a bit on the show. Anyway, she is one of the newest, recipients of Forbes richest women in the world, at $850 million. She is now number 39 on the list. So shout out to her great success. And it's great seeing, women co -founders getting acknowledged on major media and. Chad Sowash (06:13.012) Awesome. Chad Sowash (06:17.588) Wow. Chad Sowash (06:25.908) and our space. Joel Cheesman (06:25.931) fattening their bank accounts. Yes, in our space. Interesting story. She was a Chinese immigrant. Obviously we talk about immigration quite a bit. Chinese immigrant, 16, she sold scooters in high school at local flea markets. She went to MIT. She started a, I think, air, not freshener, but air purifier company called Aegis. And then she found a deal, so incredibly successful. And shout out. Chad Sowash (06:29.876) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:54.347) to her and my final shout out goes to Sweet Green, one of my favorite restaurants, Chad, because they serve up salads like nobody else's business. Just kidding. I've never set foot into a Sweet Green, although I drive past one as I go to Taco Bell on a regular basis. Yeah, anyway, so they're one of the first companies, public companies, to talk about how automation has impacted their business. They have an automated system called Infinite Kitchen. Chad Sowash (07:10.356) you will you ever. Joel Cheesman (07:23.467) that will shoot out salads and the salads, veggies, and everything that goes on the salad. sounds pretty simple, but it's made a big dent in their margins, which have increased 28%. They've increased, order accuracy and efficiency, and they actually pointed out, improved employee retention due to the new automation. So their stock has been rewarded. And as wall street typically reacts, Every other company will want to start automating and reporting the automation numbers in their quarterly reports. So just like the year of efficiency, I predict that the year of automation is coming upon us and Sweet Greens may be one of the first companies to start that trend. Chad Sowash (07:57.012) Imagine that. Yeah. Chad Sowash (08:10.324) Yes, and I'm going to say it's the decade of efficiency because it's not going to happen just this year. It's going to be this is this is this is where we're at kids. This is what we should get used to and this should be literally the focus of all of our jobs. Number one, because if we become more efficient, we can do more right again with less, which is nice, which means we can go hit the beach. And not to mention we can possibly take a little time to go register for some free stuff at Chadcheese .com slash free. You can win craft beer. Joel Cheesman (08:18.443) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (08:37.995) Never automated, never automated is the free stuff at Chattanoches. Chad Sowash (08:40.26) no, never automated. Not, not yet. free, free craft beer from Aspen tech labs. That's right. Our kids over at Aspen tech labs, t -shirts from Aaron app. Those lovely, lovely t -shirts, new guns and roses, feels like a hug from Chad and cheese. Thanks to Aaron app, whiskey from text kernel. One bottle from Joel, one bottle from. Joel Cheesman (08:49.803) sir. Joel Cheesman (08:57.899) Yes. Chad Sowash (09:05.684) Chad because Tex kernel loves you twice as much as every other company that's out there. And if it's your birthday, it's rum from plum. Go to Chadcheese .com slash free and register. Mm hmm. Chad Sowash (09:23.124) God. Joel Cheesman (09:23.211) All right, Chad, some listeners enjoying another year around the sun. This will be a mega birthday shout out because as I mentioned in last week's show, I am taking some time off to be on a beach in Vietnam and hanging out in Singapore, but celebrating another year around the sun include Karen Wong, Anders Storm and Christina Baccio, Mark Anderson, Andy Patterson, Martin Dangerfield, Scott Allen, Liz Wessel. Kim Oelstrup, TJ Lowe, Jim Stroud, Robin Walsh, Zach Martin, Aaron. Aaron Bosco, the shot to which I said that incorrectly, probably Olga and S Riva, J Arnold, Catherine, Henry, Jane, Kieran, super fan of our show, by the way, Eric Baker, Nicole Bowers, Katie Wagster, Linda Whitmore, Lindsay Nimar, Courtney Howard, Jamie Hartler, Roberto, Jesse Sims, Andreas Lofgren, Josh Gamble, Amy Warren, Vince Morgan, Anna Brekka, Nancy Baris Savoy, and Matt. Chad Sowash (10:13.556) Yes. Joel Cheesman (10:29.995) that British guy Alder, don't call him Matt. I'll celebrate another trip around the sun. Happy birthday, everybody. And God damn it, we are getting too many fans. What are we gonna do about like, at one point our birthdays are gonna be way too crazy to talk about. I don't know. It'll be a separate podcast, like the shred. We'll just do a birthday podcast. Chad Sowash (10:39.156) Excellent, excellent. I got a lot of June babies. June babies. Chad Sowash (10:51.156) You laughed. We'll figure something out. We'll figure something out. Events kids, RecFest, RecFest, RecFest. Nebworth is happening, that's right, Nebworth Park just north of London. Just hop on the train, you'll be right there. It's a one day event, July 11th, and today Joel, I actually got an email that said there's only 500 tickets left. And you say, 500 tickets, that's a lot. no, it's not. That shit'll go fast. So if you do not have your ticket and your team's tickets, because this is an all hands kind of thing kids, you come. Joel Cheesman (11:07.883) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (11:11.691) Yeah. Chad Sowash (11:23.124) You learn together, you talk together, you meet other people in the industry, and you know you have a little drink, little libation after. You gotta come. That's on July 11th. Then in Nashville is a two -day event. That's right, we're doubling it up in the United States, September 12th and 13th. So really excited. We're gonna be on the disrupt stage in Nebworth. Joel Cheesman (11:37.003) Yep. Chad Sowash (11:47.796) I think we're still working on Nashville. We're gonna be there, no questions, just what we're doing, what we're gonna be doing there. We will be doing parties, I can fucking guarantee you that. But if you haven't gotten your tickets, go to wreckfest .com, pick Nashville, pick Nebworth, pick them both, pick them both, and we'll see you there. Joel Cheesman (11:49.131) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:02.827) Mm -hmm. Yeah, and nothing says party Chad, like Cole Cheeseman up in up in Nebworth passing out t shirts. Let's let's check on Cole. He's he's on summer break. Let's see what he's doing. Chad Sowash (12:11.892) Yes. Yes. Chad Sowash (12:16.5) Well, I and while you're and while you're talking about that and while you're talking about that I'm bringing some sexy to the show for the next couple of weeks Okay, cuz you know that Joel's not gonna be here cheese is not gonna be here So I gotta bring the sexy to the show. So the first week we are going to have Give me one second here kids as I deal with this idea with this Joel Cheesman (12:18.283) Jeez, jeez, he's in a bad mood. Chad Sowash (12:44.116) Boom, we got Maureen. Yes, she's, there we go. She's gonna be next week's co -host and then, and then guess what? Gotta do this again because stupid system. There we go, stop sharing. And then we're sharing. Thank God we have somebody to do this stuff for us. Joel Cheesman (13:09.803) So much complexity. Chad Sowash (13:10.644) And then we have another Joel coming, not a Joel Cheeseman, but a Joel. So yeah, we're gonna go ahead and we're going to have Mo and Joel, the Joel the next couple of weeks while you're out to give you a little time off, because you deserve it. I don't know if anybody's told you that or not, but you deserve it. Joel Cheesman (13:14.699) Joel Cheesman (13:33.707) I know you, I know you need somebody named Joel on the podcast at all times, if, if at all possible. Yes. Chad Sowash (13:38.804) Yeah, and kids, if you're not watching on YouTube, you just missed all the fun stuff we just did. So go to YouTube slash at Chad Cheese and subscribe. Joel Cheesman (13:50.635) And, I'll, I'll book in this travel news by saying that I am unplugging for about two weeks headed to Asia, Singapore and Vietnam. So if you email me, don't expect an immediate, response. if you hate something I do, like I, like I'm out, I'm out people, podcasting isn't necessarily a job per se, but it is an ongoing. Chad Sowash (13:58.516) Good for you. Joel Cheesman (14:14.283) it does, it does take up some ongoing thought, to get this show on a regular basis. So I am excited for a couple of weeks off, not from Chad was him miss him deeply. but yeah, everybody else I'm, I'm taking some, taking some time off and I'm a little bit disappointed that I'm going to miss out on, some time with Toby Dayton. if you guys, listen to the, the monthly jobs report show, CEO from link up gives you incredible data. We dig into it like. Chad Sowash (14:26.548) Don't get me crying. Don't get me crying. Chad Sowash (14:34.42) Yes. Joel Cheesman (14:40.971) CNBC and Bloomberg do not. So make sure that you catch that. It will just be a Chad and Toby show. I will maybe make an appearance with a guest video, but otherwise, that's, that's coming up next week. That's coming up next week. Chad Sowash (14:51.508) teaser. Chad Sowash (14:58.612) Topics! Joel Cheesman (15:01.067) Ashby more like cash be the San Francisco based ATS has raised $30 million in a series C round, bringing its total to $70 million. The company will use the funds for product development and enterprise expansion. They count companies like open door Reddit and deal. There's deal again, as clients founded in 2018, they employ 130 folks. Chad, we've seen a lot of ATS is over the years. Tell me what you think about the new kid on the block. Chad Sowash (15:32.34) the new kid on the block. So, I mean, in the current environment, we've talked to a ton of investors and they're all saying it's really hard to get funding unless you are angel or seed, right? So 30 million in anything past that is, that's a pretty damn good round. So there's gotta be something special about these guys. A couple of excerpts from the announcement from Benji. Ashby's co -founder and CEO. While we have grown more than six times since our Series B and we're now serving over 1 ,300 customers, we are by no means complacent. We are continuously... we are continuously disappointed. This was very positive and then he went to disappointed. I'm continuously disappointed by the state of software products today. Software should be more intelligent, powerful and do more for us. Today most business software is still a simple database with a few delightful and truly helpful features. So... Where does Ashby have the advantage going into the space? Well, newer platforms are more nimble because they're not playing the heavy tech debt game. And they're thinking about creating systems that recruiters want to be in all day. So they're thinking about the entire experience, not just the job seeker experience. Also, Ashby has integrated sourcing as a feature for targeting qualified candidates in your already paid database, right? So something we've talked about on this podcast for years, you spend all that money, you might as well have your applicant tracking system serve up candidates that already Joel Cheesman (17:04.061) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (17:18.708) are qualified or may have already been through the process with you before. And AI is turning sourcing as a platform into a feature. That to me, and that's what we've talked about, I think a few times on the podcast, since we started talking a lot about generative AI, a lot of these platforms are really turning around to become features. So big winners for the new investment because of integrations with AI. into the aspects, different aspects of their platform, including sourcing and scheduling, expanding into enterprise. That's big. Talk about opening the TAM for God sakes. So yeah, I think for me, you know, we haven't heard a lot about Ashby. I think the first time we really saw them at an event was this year in at Transform in Vegas, where they were. Joel Cheesman (17:54.955) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (18:13.3) They were like one of the first booths you saw. They had prime space and like, these guys are actually coming along. So I think that was probably pimping and getting ready for this round. Joel Cheesman (18:23.563) Yep. Yep. Joel Cheesman (18:29.579) By the way, kids, Chad's recovering from an illness and I'm mentally on vacation already. So don't expect too much from this week's show. Anyway, the ATS market is, is a weird one. everyone hates their ATS apparently. so it's, it tends to be like a relationship that is bad and you want to get out of it. And then the instant a new thing comes along, everyone jumped ship to that new thing. You and I have been around long enough to know when iSims was cool then, job. Chad Sowash (18:39.796) Thank you. Joel Cheesman (18:58.859) job bite was cool. social media. That's awesome. smart recruiters was cool. Greenhouse was cool and has been cool for quite a while. And now comes along Ashby to be the cool new thing that everybody wants to leave their current relationship and, and jump on on Ashby. They have some really cool companies that are clients. they have to their credit raised in a way that their competitors have just a quick reminder. Chad Sowash (18:58.868) There we are. Chad Sowash (19:05.716) greenhouse lever. Joel Cheesman (19:25.323) Smart recruiters has raised $225 million, Greenhouse raised $110 million, and iSIMS a total of $93 million. So Ashby is not a squirt gun in a gunfight. Like they have artillery to go on a global scale and they're talking about the enterprise rollout and going more global. So I have no doubt that they will be a successful ATS. My question will be. When does something else come along to be like, okay, Ashby's old and haggard a little bit overweight. I'm going to go jump on the next hot thing. They're going to have a hard time as everyone else has to be that cool new thing to stay with, with, with technology to be a customer service, juggernaut, because we've seen a lot of ATS has come and go in terms of the cool kid on the block. And these guys are just the newest cool kid, whether they can keep that mantle. I don't know. The ATS business at large is, is challenged as we've talked about on the show. It's been largely commoditized. Everyone has an ATS. So how can you go above and beyond that? And they at least are doing things with AI and trying to get beyond just being an ATS, but it's a, it's a real track me and it's really challenging. their founders don't have a core competency around employment or recruitment. So I guess, that, that may be a hurdle, maybe it's a benefit, but that is something worth noting. So ultimately I would say like, Good for them. They're the hot chick at the bar. Can they keep that title? History says they can't, but I'm open to the opportunity that they may be the hot chick for a long time. Greenhouse was, was, is still hot and has been hot for over a decade. So I think Ashby could certainly do it. Chad Sowash (21:09.076) Yeah, well, I think one of the things that Ashby has to beware of is that going into enterprise and those big contracts, they're going to ask you to do shit that you shouldn't do. The most powerful word in any language is no, right? Joel Cheesman (21:24.971) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (21:26.1) turned down the money because I remember back in the recruit soft days before they became to Leo, they had a standardized process methodology to be able to push candidates in and it was a much more nimble system even way back then because they had standards in place for all of their customers. Then they went enterprise with some big fucking companies and those companies broke the system because they asked them to do things from a customized standpoint for them that nobody else is doing. So it's going to be. interesting. Yes, I agree 100%. I do think that we're getting to the point with the paradoxes, the fountains, the Harrys and obviously, you know, and obviously now with Ashby, where you have more flexible systems, but but Joel Cheesman (22:05.515) Harry's, yep. Chad Sowash (22:14.996) only if you say no to those those bigger contracts. I don't mean to say no to the contracts themselves, but just some of the shit that they pile onto them. So I think they've got a good chance. But not if not if they succumb to the almighty dollar. Joel Cheesman (22:29.483) Yeah. Yeah. And another thing I'll point out to their, to their credit is that they've grown pretty slowly and organically. I mean, their head count has increased almost a hundred percent over two years, but we haven't seen like the huge increase and then a drop and then sort of a gradual down. They are, they are organically expanding head count and seem to be doing it correctly from that standpoint. Chad Sowash (22:36.564) Yeah, yeah. Chad Sowash (22:51.604) Agreed. Joel Cheesman (22:53.707) All right. Let's talk about pulling out Chad seek Australia's recruitment leader. you could say a public company has sold its businesses in Brazil and Mexico to recruitment marketplace specialist red Arbor for $85 million USD. this move allows seek to focus on its core markets in Australia and Asia Pacific while red. Arbor strengthens its position in Latin America. The acquisition is expected to significantly increase Red Arbor's revenue and market share in the region. Chad, grab a cold fosters and tell me your thoughts on Seek's latest pullout. Chad Sowash (23:33.908) So I saw OCC Mexico and I about shit. I mean, you talk about throwing back some, some memories. Cause I know Jose Jose Alvarez. Yeah. I mean, that's what they bought. That was one of the sites that they bought. Joel Cheesman (23:39.019) Is that still around? Is there still an OCC Mexico? I didn't know. Okay. Chad Sowash (23:47.764) In the latam. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, in working with Bill Warren and OCC back in the days before Monster .com even existed, there was also an OCC Mundial, which was OCC Mexico. And that's what this is. And Andy McKelvey, which is really funny, when TMP Worldwide bought online Career Center before they bought, or after they bought Monster Board. They had the opportunity to buy OCC Mondial, but they turned it down. So Jose just made fat cash because he was just about the only Mexican job board that was there. And whether, no matter what we think about, you know, Mexico's economy, they still have business there, right? And they still need a job board. So they were doing damn well. Anyway, anyway, that's a blast from the past. Earlier this year, Seek merged its three job boards. Seek, Joel Cheesman (24:22.891) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (24:42.004) Job Street and JobsDB. That's a really bad name, which will allow Seek to be more effective to reach job seekers in Asia -Pac with a lofty ambition to help 500 million connect with 5 million companies in the region. So I think this is smart. Focus where your strengths are and lat -am is not where your strengths are. It's definitely a diversion to To to doing what you need to do and this is I believe the main reason in April seek said revenue for the full year may be slightly lower than assumed and its previous got previous guidance approximately 15 million Australian dollars, that's 10 million US dollars I cannot believe Seek only brings in $10 million. Are you fucking kidding me? That's a little baby job board in the US. $10 million? I mean, that's a niche, niche job board in the US. Joel Cheesman (25:34.955) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:39.915) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:44.171) So job boards are challenged. We've talked about zip recruiters earnings, indeed's earnings, et cetera. Seek is not immune to the downtrend in job board stock prices. In fact, their stock is roughly down 14 % year to date. So cutting some fat, focusing on what we're good at certainly makes sense. They are hot there. In terms of Asia, they're probably the number one job board. I mean, indeed, and seek probably in those markets. battle head to head trying to make a dent in Latin America. Just doesn't make a lot of sense culturally, strategically. It never really made sense. now it's really easy for job boards to say, okay, where can we make more money? Well, let's just open up a new market. Like that tends to be a really quick conversation and easy thing to do. but then once you get into it, getting out of it is really challenging. In fact, seek kind of took a bit of a bath. in the sale price of this thing, losing, actually losing some money, from what they've spent on growing those markets. The surprising thing to me is that, you know, you can look at Mexico and think, eh, but Mexico is now the number one trading partner, with America. sorry, sorry, Canada. Joel Cheesman (27:01.579) So Mexico with the trend of, of nearshoring and getting away from, from China, and more dangerous, or more volatile markets for trade. Mexico is primed to be a major market in terms of growth, in the near future, by the way, shout out to the new president, female, which is, which is great to see, Brazil, obviously some political problems, but Brazil has been, you know, a huge market. Chad Sowash (27:20.916) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:26.763) next year for like the last 20 years. So they can be a big thing. it also is an inroad into like Argentina, which is showing signs of, of, a lot of opportunity and growth there. So anyway, I mean, I, I understand the move on the other side of it with red Arbor, which I don't think we've ever talked about on this show. they are the number two player in those markets indeed by all accounts is the number one market. Seek was number three. So now you're taking the number two market. player and the number three market player and creating a bigger number two. So for indeed, this is bad news. They get a bigger competitor to deal with and they get one less competitor in terms of seek. So for me, this is like, let's be smart about this. Let's focus on what we know. The economy worldwide is arguably in a, in a risky volatile place. It makes sense to focus, hopefully get your stock price up. And for red Arbor, I think it was a big win for them. in terms of taking on Indeed in Latin America. Chad Sowash (28:31.252) Agreed, yeah. Clearance rack at that point. Joel Cheesman (28:34.635) no word of whether or not Bloomin' Onions and and Fosters were part of the deal. Let's take a quick break and talk about Workers of the World uniting. Joel Cheesman (28:48.555) All right, Chad, we got some big news in the world of work this year. We got three stories. Number one, Rubio's Coastal Grill. Have you ever been to a Rubio's? They're quite delicious. They have good burritos. Anyway, they're also known for its fish tacos, which I know you enjoy. They filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware, citing the rising cost of doing business in California, underscoring the state's new $20 per hour minimum wage requirement. Chad Sowash (28:53.364) Hmm. Chad Sowash (28:58.26) No. Does Marco own it? I don't understand. Chad Sowash (29:06.798) I do. Joel Cheesman (29:17.483) Chad, your thoughts on this latest sob story out of California. Chad Sowash (29:24.98) Yeah, I mean, if you can't pay people a living wage, you don't deserve to be in business. This is a failure of leadership and not being able to effectively move with the market by evolving their business model on comparably. Yeah, I went to comparably. Rubio's leadership score is in the bottom 10 percent. And I have one prediction for this. The restaurant chain dies. and all the amazing local non -chain fish taco trucks and restaurants flourish. $20 an hour is $41 ,600 a year before taxes if that person is working full time. If you can't afford a living wage, you don't deserve to be in business. Joel Cheesman (29:53.899) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:03.211) full time. Joel Cheesman (30:11.051) this is a really sweet story. this started out as basically like a taco stand, in California, I think Southern California that eventually became what it is today. Unfortunately, it became a real shitty business. it became mismanaged. They filed for bankruptcy previously in 2020. They closed 48 locations, back then, to me. by the way, they have a hundred million dollars in debt. I don't know if I mentioned that, this is a bad business. It's badly run. Chad Sowash (30:22.868) And I went, corporate. Joel Cheesman (30:41.291) tacos are hot businesses. I don't know if you heard this or not. Like Chipotle is doing pretty well. other, other businesses that, that sell tacos and burritos and Mexican food are doing pretty well. So to me, this is like a mismanagement story. to me blaming the $20 an hour, minimum wage law requirement, is, is a smoke screen, to, to divert the real problem, which is the business and the management team and the way that the things are going. Chad Sowash (30:45.844) Yeah. Chad Sowash (31:01.428) weak sauce. Chad Sowash (31:09.46) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (31:09.803) Interesting. I wanted to quote this because I was, I was perusing X, which I know you're, you're, you're not a fan of, but there are still some interesting folks, including Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban, who yeah, Twitter, if you want to go nostalgic on me, but Mark Cuban, who most people know, tweeted a comment of someone who had reported this. and Mark said, quote, when companies pay less than what someone needs to live a basic life, it's often the taxpayers that SAP subsidize the difference. Interesting take. Chad Sowash (31:18.708) Yep, what do you mean, Twitter? Joel Cheesman (31:37.995) personally as an employer, I would rather pay a higher wage and figure out how to be more productive and profitable. Amen to Mark Cuban. I hope the folks at Rubio's ivory tower are listening because this is really a badly managed company that shouldn't be blaming $20 minimum wage on their shitty business. And from one shitty business to the Death Star Walmart. Chad Sowash (31:55.668) Yes. Chad Sowash (32:01.46) Yeah, yeah, agreed. Joel Cheesman (32:05.099) is enhancing its employee benefits, including a new bonus plan and training opportunities for skilled trade roles. The bonus plan is based on store performance and years of experience with potential bonuses ranging from $350 to $1 ,000 annually. The company is also launching a training program for Alway workers to transition into skilled trade jobs within Walmart. Chad, your thoughts on Walmart's move. to bonuses. Chad Sowash (32:38.516) Yeah, I mean, they saw attrition come down, they say, because of the opportunity to prospectively learn new skills, grow, thrive, and flourish in an organization. That just makes sense, right? But I think this is where it goes off the rails. And let's start from the top down. CEO Doug McMillan received $26 .9 million, $27 million in compensation last year. The median compensation for Walmart employees is $27 ,000. ish thousand dollars. So yeah, good old day Doug gets paid nearly 1000 times that of an employee. The bonus plan and again, just doing the math on it, an FTE who has one to five years can earn a maximum bonus, annual bonus, $350. And you've got to have 20 years as a full -time worker to get the max bonus of $1 ,000. How many of those do you think are out there? Anyway, so the math, 700 ,000 employees at $350 max bonus. That's $245 million. So that sounds like a lot, right? But Walmart's annual profits were $158 billion. That's 0 .15 % of their profits. That's a fucking pittance, right? Giving somebody, you know, the couch cushion chains, right? they should be happy about that. Fuck you. The people that are actually doing the actual heavy lifting at Walmart every single day receiving a 0 .15%. Of and that's at the max. So that's just again. This is a smokescreen wal -march trying to do the whole look We love our people thing. Fuck you. You're not paying them well Not to mention, you know, you're you're that's just a pittance of your profits. Anyway, anyway, i'm i'm i'm up Joel Cheesman (34:32.843) Yeah. So, so for listeners, we chat and I agree on the stories and then I write the summaries up and then I don't really know what his comments are going to be. And as I was writing this up, I was thinking he's going to be negative on this one. I know he's going to be negative on this one. So I'm glad, I'm glad that you came out with a guns blaring, on Walmart. you may not like it, but wall street does, wall street, has, has granted Walmart year to date, 26 % increase. Chad Sowash (34:59.156) So do the rich people. Joel Cheesman (35:01.643) While Target, its competitor is only up 2%. Amazon, by the way, is up 21 % year to date. Walmart also granted their average salary to store managers $228 ,000 and increasing their bonus is up to as high as 200%. These all make really great headlines, but as you, because you are you, you dig in. You dig into the numbers, you dig into like CEO salaries, and that's why our listeners love you is that this rosy headline that we see on CNBC and Bloomberg really is kind of shitty when you pull back the curtain and really look at what it is. The good news is Rubio is laying off a lot of people, so people are going to need jobs and they're going to go to Walmart. So for every Rubio that we report on, every Walmart is rejoicing in that. Chad Sowash (35:41.332) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (35:47.092) Yeah. I'm sorry. Chad Sowash (35:56.692) Hope they open a fish truck, a fish taco truck. That's what I hope. Joel Cheesman (35:58.411) But yeah, you know, this, this is why unions are so important because the average employee goes, I'm getting a bonus. That's cool. And then the union goes, wait a minute, you're getting screwed here because our stock is up how much and our profits are up how much and where you're only getting how much and our CEO is getting how much. So kudos to you, my friend for, as, as always pulling back the curtain and seeing what is really going on. at Walmart, I expect that your, your boycott of Walmart. Chad Sowash (36:13.252) Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (36:27.019) continues whenever you're back in the States and you do your shopping elsewhere. Thanks Walmart. Assholes. Chad Sowash (36:32.82) Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, well in more power to the people news American Airlines. This is from Reuters. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the APFA for those who love acronyms, which represents over 23 ,000 American flight attendants. 23 ,000 said on Wednesday that it unanimously rejects the latest proposal from American Airlines. The airline had offered its flight attendants immediate wage increases of 17 % in a new form. Joel Cheesman (36:53.483) Thanks a lot. Chad Sowash (37:07.926) formula for higher profit sharing in 2024 in their new contract said CEO Robert Isom. So looks like the APFA is taking a page out of Sean Fain's UAW book. What do you think? Joel Cheesman (37:22.603) I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Joel Cheesman (37:29.323) So let's stick with the stock prices, shall we? Delta Airlines up 26 % year to date. United Airlines up 31 % year to date. The airline industry is pretty good. Some airlines better than others, but in general, people are traveling more than ever before. I know you and I travel quite a bit and I know that ticket prices are not going down. Where is that money going? Pilots, machinery, et cetera, but not enough is going to the flight attend. Chad Sowash (37:34.772) Mm. Chad Sowash (37:53.492) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (37:59.339) And it's who let's be honest, put up with a lot of bullshit, including from yours truly here right now. they're, they're underpaid frankly with whatever, they're making. I was shocked to find out that the, the average salary for a flight attendant in the first seven years of the job is roughly 35 ,000 per year. Let me repeat that $35 ,000 per year as a flight attendant, the max salary. Chad Sowash (38:04.148) god yeah. Chad Sowash (38:20.724) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (38:27.947) that the old vets get maxes out roughly at $65 ,000. So this is a job that is demanding. I know it's a job that's, that's in demand cause you get to travel and everything, but clearly there is a mismatch between profits and how these companies are doing and what they're paying flight attendants. I fear that in the tradition of airlines. Chad Sowash (38:43.412) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (38:52.363) They're going to make us pay for flight attendant service, just like they make, they make me pay for the luxuries that, you know, should be taken for granted. What if we get to a place where I have to pay extra for the flight attendant tenant to pay attention to me, that to bring me my pillow and to bring me my blanket. I fear that the flight companies, the airlines are going to move to this place where if you want service, you're going to have to pay for it. And I hope it doesn't get to that. But I fear that it will otherwise it's clear that flight attendants are underpaid, underappreciated, and I'm glad that the union rejected the initial offer. And I'm glad that they're holding out for more money because from my perspective, they deserve it. Chad Sowash (39:35.732) Yeah. So the median wage of a flight attendant is $42 ,000. Right. So looking at that, so more on the lower end. That, this shit, 17 % is only going to take you to not even $50 ,000. Right. And the union's asking for 33%, which gets them close to $55 ,000. I mean, Joel Cheesman (39:50.827) Yeah. Chad Sowash (39:59.86) Okay, so again, here we're going to get to the math kids. CEO Robert Isom's made 31 .4 million in 2023, which is nearly 750 times that the average compensation for a flight attendant at $42 ,000 a year. As I said before, there are over 23 ,000 American Airlines flight attendants. What happens if they walk off the job? I bet it would take hours, not days, not days to come to an agreement at nearly 6 ,700 flights per day. Would not be able to operate. Now, let's turn the tables real quick. How long do you think the company would operate without the CEO? And that salary, right? Let's just say six months. Let's say you have a part -time fractional CEO. How long do you think it would go? 23 ,000 flight attendants versus one fucking CEO. You let that CEO go away for a while. Don't even tell anybody. I guarantee you that organization, 6 ,700 flights still happen every day, but not without the people who actually do the goddamn job. We are finally getting into, I feel, an area where unions are gonna gain more strength. Joel Cheesman (40:45.003) huh. Chad Sowash (41:12.468) people are going to understand for the last 40 plus years they've been fucked. And we're finally going to hopefully start targeting the sons of bitches in the ivory tower who are making crazy cash. And they might make 30 or 40 times as opposed to 750 or a thousand times that of the median wage of an employee. Joel Cheesman (41:36.267) By the way, we talk about automation. This is a job that will never be automated because there are federal rules around. If your flight goes down, you need a human being helping get everyone to safety, right? Like you can't come to a place where there's a robot going up and down the aisle and you, you get your, you get your Delta app and you say, yeah, I want to rum and Coke. And then the robot brings it to you. Like the robot's going to short circuit in the case of an emergency. So like, this isn't something that the airlines can automate. They need people in those positions, just from, just from, from regulations, in the industry. So yeah. Yeah. Pay them, man. Pay them. All right. Let's take a quick break and, get to what we do best. Talk about Hooters. Chad Sowash (42:11.828) Exactly. Joel Cheesman (42:24.427) Call it the battle for the Stanley D cups. You like that? That that's an original. That's a Cheeseman original. An Edmonton Oilers fan. you're in Europe. I don't know. The NHL hockey playoffs have been going on and we got Edmonton in Florida and the finals. So anyway, an Edmonton Oilers fan has been offered deals for multiple adult websites after flashing her breasts during an NHL conference finals game. Have you seen the highlights of this chat? Have you seen, they're kind of making the rounds. Chad Sowash (42:39.636) really? okay. Okay. Chad Sowash (42:56.916) Yeah, I've only seen the still and I have to say if there are boobs on the internet, you're going to find them. Joel Cheesman (43:00.583) The videos out there anyway, it's not hard to find the offers. The offers were going to come obviously. So the offers came from the porn dude, whoever that is, and cam soda with only fans. No shocker here. Also expressing interest, getting her on the platform. The incident occurred during game five against the Dallas stars, which the oilers did when the team is now set to play the Florida Panthers. In the final quick reminder in 2009, a Florida Panthers fan flashed her boobs and pressed them against the glass. she had really good seats, apparently. So this may turn out to be a battle of the boobs, Canada versus America. Like I'm here for it. So, let's see, let's see what happens. any more thoughts on, on the, the hockey Hooters segment of our show. Chad Sowash (43:43.828) Let him out. Let him out. Chad Sowash (43:55.38) We've said it on one of the most recent podcasts that boobs make everybody happy. Everybody loves boobs. And in a very divisive time, I say we just let them out. Just let it go, bring people together. And whether it's in Ireland through a portal or at a hockey match or on a beach, don't care. Joel Cheesman (44:14.571) If you want to bring people to the sport, this is a way to possibly do it. By the way, the portal update, and for a quick refresher, the city of Dublin and New York, two of the most drunkest towns in the world, decided let's have a screen showing each other what's going on. A woman obviously on OnlyFans flashed Dublin. She was rewarded with many more users of her OnlyFans account, so she's cashing in. Joel Cheesman (44:44.203) Word is the jury's out whether or not this Oilers fan will cash out on her obscenity at the game. But yeah, this is turning out to be the year of the boobs. And frankly, Chad, I'm here for it as I think you are too. Let's end this show as always on a dad joke. What do you get when you cross an ice hockey rink and a vampire? Ice hockey rink and a vampire. Frostbite! Joel Cheesman (45:17.131) We out. Chad Sowash (45:20.02) So bad. We out.

The world of venture capital is a mystery to most. Who gets funded and why? What's the math around valuations? And why is there so much "betting on the jockey"? So many questions with so few answers. That's why we invited Jason Corsello, founder and general partner at Acadian Ventures, on the podcast. He'll help us better understand the unicorn parade from a few years back, which resulted in a VC winter, which has led to the gradual thawing of capital into the world of work. What kind of companies are getting his attention, and wallet share, and what advice does he give to startups looking to raise that first seed round of capital. The veils are being lifted and the crystal balls are coming out on this one. Enjoy. PODCSAS STRANSCRIPTION (blame AI for errors) Joel Cheesman (00:26.967) Oh, yeah, it's Warren Buffett's favorite podcast, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Wayne to my Garth, Chad Sewash is in the house as we welcome Jason Corsello, founder and general partner at Acadian Ventures. Jason, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:33.315) Is that true? Chad (00:47.374) No. Jason Corsello (00:50.953) Gentlemen, it's great to be with you. First time, what is it? First time call or a long-time listener first time caller? Is that what I am? That's me. I screwed that up already. Joel Cheesman (00:55.906) Long time listener, first time caller. Yeah, yeah, we might have a pair of counting crows tickets for your efforts today. So Jason, a lot of our listeners probably do know who you are, some of them do not. Give us a little bit about you and then the company and we'll get into the Q&A. Chad (00:57.642) There it is. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Jason Corsello (01:05.296) Nice, I'll take them. Jason Corsello (01:16.151) Yeah, of course, Joel. So thanks for having me guys. My name is Jason Corsello. I'm the founder general partner of a venture capital firm called Acadian Ventures. We are a early stage venture capital firm focused exclusively on work technologies. Prior to launching the fund, I was at Cornerstone for a bunch of years and have been hanging around the hoop of this industry for over 25 years, or I guess almost 25 years. So yeah, here I am. Chad (01:42.626) Jason, you've been in this industry for a minute, okay? You know it takes HR forever to adopt anything. So how did you get into the startup game, right? Because I mean, it's like, you got the new stuff coming and there's the whole risk that's there for HR. And how did you get into that? And what made you jump into startup? Joel Cheesman (02:01.378) He loves getting kicked in the balls apparently. Jason Corsello (02:05.067) Jeez, man. Yeah, Chad, you know, I've been in this industry for long enough, and I've seen companies succeed. I've seen companies fail. And to me, what's so interesting about this industry is, to your point, it's really screwed up, right? The thing that we tell our investors is there's 3.3 billion workers in the world. Most of them don't like their job. Most of them are underpaid, and most of them don't like their employer, and they stick around for less than two years now, right? Chad (02:26.402) Hmm? Chad (02:31.478) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (02:33.799) So the world of work as we know it is completely broken. And we think technology can fix a lot of that. So that's why I wake up every day thinking about where's the most interesting or newest technology that can solve some of these problems that after all these years still haven't been solved. Chad (02:48.714) So what level of startups are you funding? Is it seed, A, B and beyond? Where's your sweet spot? Jason Corsello (02:55.647) Yeah, we specialize predominantly in the seed stage, right? So that's typically, we're writing checks of a half a million to a million bucks. In some cases, we'll write a check where we've known the entrepreneurs and it's just an idea. Sometimes we'll invest a little bit later than that. But core seed is really where we invest our time and our money. Joel Cheesman (03:14.222) Jason, we love to talk about history on this show, mainly because we're two middle-aged white guys, but I'd love your perspective. It was so much fun around the 2021-22 period, the unicorn parade, every week, someone who's getting a hundred million dollars and a billion dollar valuation. Just what was your take in that golden era of venture capital and maybe where you guys fit in as mainly seed investors? Chad (03:20.462) Because we lived it. Jason Corsello (03:42.931) I mean, for other folks that have been on your show, there was irrational exuberance in the terms of other smarter investors, right? But it was crazy town. I mean, you know, checks were being written for companies that made no sense. And it was a product of the environment of just free flowing cash. And yeah. We invested during that period of time, we probably did deals where we probably paid too much and that was just the nature of the environment. I don't blame companies. A lot of people blame, oh, this company raised 200 million at a $3 billion valuation. Right. And I don't blame those companies where I think the biggest flaw over the last three years is those companies didn't hit the, I shouldn't say, many of those companies didn't hit the reset button. And what I mean by that is. They didn't cut their staff. They didn't adjust their operating plans. They didn't reduce their burn. And those are the companies and there's a lot of them still that are going to be in a very hairy situation over the next one or two years. The ones that didn't make those hard decisions two years ago or one years ago are the ones that are in a really, are going to be in a really, really precarious position going forward. Chad (04:56.566) Well, they did the opposite. They exploded. They took the money. They exploded on staff. They exploded their tam. Their discipline and their focus went to shit in many cases. Right. So, I mean, as we sit back, hindsight's always 2020, as we sit back and watch, there are some unicorns that are out there that are that are doing well. And for Joel Cheesman (05:08.162) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:22.058) one just right out of the gate deal, right? They just said, Oh, hey, we just made 400 million in ARR. Then a week later, they're like, Oh, sorry, hold my beer. That was 500 million in ARR, right? Made a couple of, you know, acquisitions. And then you've got, you know, a competitor, which is you guys actually work with oyster. And they're in the same they're in the same line, right? So they're competitors. So what does that do to a company like oyster? And I believe they were unicorn status. Jason Corsello (05:30.055) Thank you. Chad (05:51.786) Now, they see this happening with deal, right? Does that crush dreams or does that just provide validation and say, okay, we need to refocus on this? Jason Corsello (06:02.887) Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I think the short answer is, I'm going to answer your question, not answer your question, but try to answer your question, which is just like venture capital, there's no right or wrong way of building a startup. I mean, deal is taking the ultra aggressive, we're going to growth at all costs. And that worked for a period of time for a lot of companies until it didn't. We like Oyster's strategy because They are being very pragmatic about the market. They also are sitting on a lot of capital that they raised two years ago that they haven't spent. Right. So a lot of these companies, your point over the last few years, they raised a lot of capital, but they spent a lot of the capital where burn to that house came down. Right. Versus Oyster is being very pragmatic and they still are sitting on a lot of that capital that they raised even two years ago. So what happens in environments like this is the companies that weren't pragmatic were Chad (06:42.498) Burn burn burn. Jason Corsello (06:59.907) weren't building their business foundationally or fundamentally looking at product and profitability and loss and key fundamentals of operating a business are going to be in a really tough position to operate on a go forward basis. They're going to be limited in options. Either they sell, they do a down round, or they go out of business versus companies that are still hoarding some of their cash will get through this kind of period of uncertainty over the next one or two years and come out the other side in a much better position with less competition, with more opportunities for growth. Joel Cheesman (07:16.11) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:29.586) Yeah. So you talk about this period. Jason Corsello (07:30.355) Thanks for your question. Chad (07:32.926) Yeah, in a roundabout way. Yeah, in a roundabout way. And just real quick, real quick, when you're talking about, when you're talking about something like that, there's a cycle that actually happens. And within that cycle, there's going to be a layoffs because you need, uh, in some cases, obviously, you've got the engineering, the engineering side of the house. You need to build product, build product, build product, get to MVP. And then you might have to dial down the engineering side of the house cause you're not focusing on product. You're focusing on revenue. And then that's where Jason Corsello (07:35.428) Okay. Chad (08:02.134) the sales engine sales and marketing engine should actually go into play. Um, that seems almost like a fine orchestrated type of movement, right? And it doesn't seem like a lot of startups get it right. How are you guys involved in, in at least advising how to get that very hard ballet move executed? Jason Corsello (08:28.473) Yeah, it's Jason Corsello (08:54.995) It is a delicate balance, right? And this is where what we've seen, you know, the transactions that we've seen over the last two years is management teams that weren't making, weren't willing to make those hard decisions to cut engineering, cut go to market, figuring out what wasn't working and didn't have boards that were providing the oversight, maybe they had board, but they didn't have active boards that were providing that oversight to say, Hey, your top line number went from a hundred percent growth to 50% to 25% growth, but yet you're still growing your head count at... Chad (09:05.57) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (09:23.955) 20%, 30%. They're terrible and unfortunate decisions that you have to make, but guess what? That allows you to fight another day to keep growing the business. And there's more companies than not that didn't make those hard decisions. Maybe they cut 10%, but the fact of the matter is they probably should have cut 40%, right? And this is the environment that's gonna play out over the next 12 months, is those companies that did make those hard decisions are gonna be the ones that live to fight another day. Chad (09:33.358) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (09:54.275) and the ones that didn't are going to be in a really, really tough position. Joel Cheesman (09:57.854) Yeah. So you talked about period of uncertainty. We've talked about the unicorn parade, uh, followed by what you call VC winter. Talk about the thaw. Uh, you, you more than any, as a seed investor, see those seeds being planted now for the next 12, you know, 48 months, 12, 36 months, whatever it is. You just recently, uh, announced, uh, a new fund. uh, at Katie and ventures fund too, which I assume is in preparation for the oncoming onslaught of seed funded companies, uh, that we're, we're going to be talking about on the show. So talk about the thaw and what we can expect in the next 12, 24 months. Jason Corsello (10:40.771) Yeah. So Joel, we've been seeing about four, I should say actually probably closer to six quarters of that thought, right? So in our data, when you look at the cycles of the market, we really peaked venture capital in terms of the dollars invested in Q4 of 2021. And since Q4 of 2021, we've kind of seen this slow decline. And then over the last four to five quarters, it's kind of flattened out, right? Jason Corsello (11:10.739) I don't want to say I have a crystal ball and we predict this, right? But I think the way we articulate it with RLPs is we're going to bounce on the bottom for a while, right? We're probably halfway there. Maybe we're kind of beyond that halfway point, which is all good news. When we look at our data, a couple of things is seed is still very resilient, right? On any given quarter, there's about a hundred million bucks in our world that goes towards seed investing. And that's been relatively consistent over the last couple of quarters. So the seed market is still very, very healthy. Early stage has dropped dramatically. It's slowly starting to recover, but it's really with the series A types of rounds, you know, getting that next and you know, in those types of rounds, you write a smaller check at smaller valuations. So a little bit easier, right. From the series B and series B rounds have been really, really challenging over the last couple of quarters. The late stages we've talked about has been really, really crushed. We're starting to see some signs of it's coming back, but it's off of a low volume. Right. There was like four in the last quarter, I think four late stage. Chad (11:50.252) Mm. Jason Corsello (12:07.443) kind of series C, series D, series E types of investments. And I think that's where it's going to be really, really choppy over the next couple of quarters. But to your point, Chad, I think we're starting to see that market slowly recover. It's going to be a long recovery in terms of the venture dollars being deployed. But the good news is it's happening. There's a lot of activity in venture land. We expect this year, we're going to increase our pace of investment. Chad (12:11.822) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (12:35.355) Typically, our goal is to do 10 deals plus or minus a year. Last year we did five, this year I think we'll do north of 12. So we ourselves are a bit more bullish on where the markets are. We're just in a more healthy environment. Valuations across all stages are much better than they have been. And you're just building realistic and it helps you build fundamentally better, stronger businesses, right? You don't... Chad (12:39.694) Hmm? Joel Cheesman (12:52.354) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:56.458) Yeah, they're realistic in some cases. Joel Cheesman (13:03.041) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:03.179) Yeah. Jason Corsello (13:04.623) When a venture capital, two years ago, venture capitalists gave you 100 million bucks, he wanted you to go and spend that. He or she wanted you to go and spend that 100 million dollars. They didn't want you to put it in the bank and draw 5% interest on it. So we're getting in much better company building environment, which to me is good. Chad (13:14.114) Yeah, yeah. Chad (13:21.262) I felt like we were kids in the candy store. Joel Cheesman (13:21.444) And by the way, Jason, Jason recommends that when you raise that money, you sponsor podcasts with all that money that you get from, from investors. Chad (13:28.226) Well, duh, I mean, come on. Makes sense, that only makes sense. But so you talk about the focus. When you get some of these companies get all this money, it's like they're a kid in the candy store. A couple of things that are happening, obviously VCPE, they're going to say, look, we need more head count, expand the TAM, how are you actually going to give us our money back, right? You can't do that with this incredibly focused point solution, right? So we need you to, you know, Jason Corsello (13:29.527) as much as possible. That's right. Chad (13:58.014) expand. That's a big problem, not to mention when you get that kind of money, and I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there. When you're an eightfold and you're getting hundreds of millions of dollars and then you're spending money on buying half of HR tech space, right? It just doesn't make any sense. It's just so weird that we see that happening, but then obviously you know the cycle is going to switch and we're going to go into... the winter session, right? But for you, kind of flipping the question, this is like the perfect opportunity for Acadian to be able to take a look at some great startups and not have to actually pay, you know, maybe that half million, maybe it's a quarter of a million, but still get the shares of what you might've paid for before. Jason Corsello (14:51.155) Chad, I think the way we think about it is the market has just been over fueled, right? It's been overfunded. There's been way too many companies that have been created, right? It's been easy to start a company and get venture capital back. I shouldn't say easy, but like, you know, there's way too many companies in the market today, right? And so we're in the middle of this shakeout, which is a lot of these companies probably that exist today probably shouldn't have existed, right? Either they were going after too small of a TAM or Chad (15:18.946) Yes. Jason Corsello (15:20.967) there's just way too much competition and there is like employee engagement or, you know, performance management. So. Chad (15:26.966) Or it's a product seeking a problem that doesn't exist that we see a lot of times. Joel Cheesman (15:31.598) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (15:31.727) It's that or it's just, you know, in our world, it's, you know, is it a feature as a product? Is it a company? Right. And those are three very different things, right? Or most of the things that have been invested may have been a feature or to some extent a product, but they weren't a company, right? They weren't a hundred million dollar ARR type of business. And so that's going to play out. So for us to see the investors right now, we think this is great news because we're going to see a clearing out of the market. Chad (15:38.233) Yeah, great point. Chad (15:54.562) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (15:54.891) And so Chad (16:07.521) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (16:20.84) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (16:23.675) So, you know, as a C to the stage investor, I'm excited about what we're seeing. You know, we haven't, we, you know, we're, how, how long are we into this podcast? And we haven't even used the word AI, but you know, we've got this whole technology cycle. I know I broke it. I screwed it up. Joel Cheesman (16:33.991) Oh, it's coming. Chad (16:35.066) Oh, you broke it. Oh, you broke it. Joel Cheesman (16:38.442) All right. If you're going to go there, Jason, we might as well. So the new fund you've gone from 10 million to 30 million. Correct. What kind of companies, what kind of trends are you looking at? I know, you know, fora is one that you're in that we've talked about on the show. Compa combo with a K or some of the others. Is there a theme that you guys are looking to target? Something that's hot and trending, maybe something we haven't even seen yet that you're looking at. Chad (16:41.933) it is. Jason Corsello (16:47.62) Yep. Joel Cheesman (17:08.034) What's the future look like in terms of technologies and focus? Jason Corsello (17:12.651) Yeah, there's two big themes for us today. One is just AI, right? I mean, I went through the cloud cycle over the last 20 years. I was at Cornerstone On Demand and we were big beneficiaries of this move from on-premise to cloud. And we're going to see that same thing in AI. It's most likely going to be much bigger. So we're looking at companies right now that are doing something AI. You know, we don't get excited about the gen AI stuff that we're seeing out there today. because I think it's very easy to replicate. What we're looking at stuff is, is there really deep foundational AI and language models that are being built that they can create a mode around. So AI is certainly a big theme because we think that a lot of incumbents today can or will be disrupted by building foundationally AI companies. So that's a big focus for us right now. Chad (17:45.58) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (18:08.587) There's a lot of, you know, we're looking at a lot of geeky stuff in compliance, in regulatory and compliance areas. You've had Guru from Fair Now on the show and love what he's doing. I just talked to him this morning. I think that's a huge market because it's a little bit of the wild, wild west in AI right now. No one knows how their models are governed. No one knows, you know, if and how they're being audited. And every company, whether you're, you know, big global enterprise or technology vendor has to... to be able to validate what they're doing in AI. And certainly they don't want to, they need a rubber stamp of approval, if you will. So that's another area that we've been looking pretty closely at. So those are two, I guess the third one, Joel, is this area of just global workforce, right? Out of the gate, our goal was to invest in companies anywhere in the world. And even specifically half of our investments we wanted outside of the US. Chad (18:41.462) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (19:04.667) And we just think today you can build a company anywhere in the world and oh by the way you can hire and Employ and pay someone anywhere in the world So that's also a pretty big theme for us, and we've got a couple of companies today in that segment Chad (19:17.77) to those real quick. So AI, I see AI is pretty much being ubiquitous. Everybody's going to have it, but it's going to be one of the big companies that's actually supplying the large language models, right? The data piece is what really matters most, and that's going to be the hard part for a lot of these newer companies who just don't have the years of data or the data lakes that an ADP has, right? I mean, that's just ridiculous amount. So How can a startup today who wants to be an AI startup, knowing that data is literally the secret sauce, how do you advise them to be able to have a product that's not gonna be dead in six months because somebody else creates something with Gemini that just blows it out of the water? Jason Corsello (20:12.743) Man, Chad, that's a way smarter question I could probably answer. But I think the way I think about it from a very simplistic perspective is data's all over the place, right? Yes, the incumbents do have an advantage because they're sitting on a tremendous amount of data. One of the things I learned as being an incumbent at Cornerstone is, and a lot of incumbents just don't know how to leverage their data, right? I mean, they have so much data, they don't know what to do with in some cases and they don't have to make sense of it. Chad (20:42.38) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (20:42.671) where startups can get access to data a lot easier than they historically could have. A couple of examples. Tech Wolf is doing skills at first. They're taking data from your existing systems and that can be anything from Workday to Slack. They're also pulling in public domain data from Census Bureau data anywhere in the world. They put on their pixie dust and secret sauce Do they have a data advantage or disadvantage? I don't know. I think you could argue probably both cases, but I think there's lots of ways to get access to data more so than you ever have. And then our second company is this company Combo that you mentioned Joel, that is basically building the kind of integration layer to everything HR tech, right? So this was the biggest problem we had at Cornerstone. We'd have a customer that said, our 80 other HR tech vendors that we have in our stack. And we'd be like, yeah, we could do that. And we'd have to ball bearings and duct tape these things together. And our developers internally hated it because we'd have to take them time away from stuff that they liked working on. And it was a pain in the butt. So now there's actually systems like Combo and there's others out there that provide that kind of infrastructure later to be able to get data anywhere that's residing within the enterprise. Chad (21:43.094) Yeah. Six years later. Joel Cheesman (22:08.491) Yeah. Jason Corsello (22:09.403) So, yeah, we're in a much different position even from three or five years ago. It's probably not the best answer to your question, Chad, but, you know, the data's out there, data's accessible. Certainly I do agree that the incumbents do have a built in advantage, but I also think that they're also incumbents that have a bunch of other things, you know, that they're worried about. And, and so it's harder to solve some of these problems because they're focused on other things. Joel Cheesman (22:25.903) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:35.887) Yeah. Chad (22:36.066) Well, I mean, those incumbents like Cornerstone, they're also slow. They've got a shit ton of tech debt. And if you can create a startup that will help them actually take that data and do something with it that they care about, then you've got a great opportunity for acquisition, right? Jason Corsello (22:56.751) Yeah, there's also, you know, in the case of Cornerstone, I don't mean to bash private equity companies, but they also have very different incentives than startups, right? You know, their private equity owners really care about cash flow and they care about how much money can they produce. It's a very different incentive than a startup that really is trying to innovate and build a business for the next 10 years. Joel Cheesman (23:03.938) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:19.958) Yeah. And in light of that, we have a lot of startups that listen to the show. A lot of people that are thinking about starting companies. You've probably heard our show firing squad where we, uh, take a startup to task. Give us, give us a sense from where you sit. How many pitches do you get on a, on a yearly or monthly basis? What are some good, you know, the best pitch decks that you've seen? And what kind of advice if I'm a startup or looking to start a company out there? Chad (23:20.01) Yeah, good point. Joel Cheesman (23:49.61) How do I help you help me? Jason Corsello (23:53.775) So first of all, Joel, I think most of our companies have survived your firing squad, so thank you for that. I think to specifically answer your question. Joel Cheesman (24:00.034) And by the way, we don't know who are your companies or who aren't. Like we're not giving preferential treatment to Acadian venture companies. Chad (24:02.943) I'm sorry. Jason Corsello (24:06.323) Yeah, I'll try. I'll. Well, I've already talked my book a little bit, but I won't. I would talk about all of them. But to answer your question, on any given year, we'll look at 1200 companies. And that could come through a pitch deck that comes through inbox. And we do look at everything that crosses our desk. Now, sometimes we'll look at the pitch deck and it'll take one or two minutes and we'll brush it aside. It's just not a good fit for us. Joel Cheesman (24:18.062) God. Jason Corsello (24:32.751) But on any given year our pipeline looks like we'll look at call it 1200 companies. We'll deep dive into two to 300. We'll diligence, you know, another hundred and we'll invest into 10. Um, that's a typical year for us. So we do look at a lot of companies. Um, we find our best sources of deals don't come from inbound. They come from, from referrals. I just was writing an FAQ for our website and as much as I hate the way the venture capital world works, warm referrals are good sources for us. Because someone is validating, in some cases, the founder or the idea, that helps. And warm referrals, whether through founders or other VCs or even some of our limited partners, our investors, tend to be our best sources of potential investment. Joel Cheesman (25:26.426) So you're Gordon Gekko basically. I look at 100 deals a day, Bud Fox. I pick one. I love it. 1200. That surprises me. I'm not sure most people would guess 1200 a year and you pick 10. Yeah. Chad (25:27.009) So. Chad (25:38.532) That's a lot. Jason Corsello (25:39.971) It's a lot. It's a lot. But again, we don't, you know, we don't meet with 1200 companies. We look at, you know, 1200 pitch decks and, you know, and it quickly funnels out from there. Yeah, it is a lot. Chad (25:51.374) Amazing. So within that pitch deck, those pitch decks, you're looking at global. As you were just talking about, you are also looking at global organizations, global startups. Currently it was at Olivia and TechWolf, at least there are a couple of the European startups that you guys have in your portfolio. How do you and the team evaluate a European startup differently than a US startup? Jason Corsello (26:15.303) I don't know, Chad, if we evaluate them differently, but what we care, I mean, there's two fundamental things that are the foundation for our investment. One is, is this a super unique team, right? Are these kind of 1% founders? And now 1% is obviously subjective, but do we think these are really, really special founders, based off of either their experience or their ideas or some combination thereof? And the second is, is it a big market, right? Are they going after a big market? I mean, we've seen plenty of interesting businesses where we like the founder, but just we don't think the market is big enough. So those are the two foundations. And what we found is, you know, US founders or founders that we've invested across the world are very comparable to the skills and competencies and expertise of the US based founders. I mean, we invested in a company in Kenya. And I'd put these two founders against any other founders in our portfolio in terms of their skills. They're, I mean, they probably have more hustle. Um, and today we've invested in founders across 13 countries. So. Definite. Yeah. You know, what we've learned in emerging markets is they run hot and cold, right? Which is in down markets, funding gets really, really tight. And then, you know, in, in up markets, funding gets pretty robust. So they're very cyclical in terms of the. Chad (27:21.934) Well Africa's hot right now, right? Chad (27:28.654) Okay. Huh? Jason Corsello (27:38.643) funding environments and those so that they access the capital. But it's certainly, I think it's probably one of the most interesting, exciting markets out there. Just based off of pure size, you know, it's eight times the size of the US market. So how can you not be excited about a market like that? Joel Cheesman (27:51.962) Sure. Chad (27:54.67) How deep do you guys dip into the economic landscape itself to be able to take a look at the prospect, not just today, but growth? Joel Cheesman (28:06.094) Going deep. Jason Corsello (28:07.003) I mean, it's... Jason Corsello (28:11.439) You had to go there. I love it. So it really varies, Chad. I think it depends on, you know, when I think about the big market, we look at like macros of the market, right? So I mentioned Africa. You know, the simple, we invested in a company called WorkPay that's doing HR payroll in sub Saharan Africa. And the math was pretty simple, right? We think that market's eight times the size of the US market. Well, the US market now has $12 billion plus HR payroll companies. Yet Africa doesn't have one and it's eight times the size. So those are kind of the simple ways that we think about some of these markets, whether it's Latin America or Africa or Southeast Asia. So it's, you know, that's the robustness of just, we do some simple back of the envelope math. We try to understand the dynamics of the market, which is a lot of those markets, you know, it's, um, you know, services and oriented businesses that haven't fully embraced technology. And so we think. Obviously, technology can accelerate those markets or at least replace a lot of the services based models out there. But like I said, what we've learned is some of these markets just take longer to develop. So what we need to do is have pretty patient capital in LPs that say, we don't want our money back next year or two years. We know that these are 10 year funds and that's how we think about the investments. Joel Cheesman (29:21.154) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:34.894) Yeah. Looking at some of, uh, more, the more established companies, uh, smart recruiters is one that's in your portfolio. And Chad and I regularly, uh, I won't say bash, but are fairly critical of the future of the ATS business. Give us a reason to be bullish on the ATS business. Chad (29:55.322) on the ATS. Jason Corsello (29:59.495) Wow, good question. So one is it's a established category that as much as you know, we all think it's broken. It's still a very, very large market today. The other thing which is I've been frustrated about the ATS market over the last five years is there's no real dominant vendor, right? I mean, probably the most interesting vendor in the ATS market over the last five years has been who? Chad (30:10.442) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (30:25.359) Workday, right? And we all know that trials and tribulations of customers that have implemented Workday recruiting. Now, I'm not saying it's a terrible product. I don't think I've ever actually used it, but it's a big market that needs innovation. Now, the question I think more Joel, of what you're getting at, is where's the disruption happening? And I wish I knew that answer because, you know, I think we've kind of just, we've been disrupting around the edges, but we haven't kind of disrupted the core Joel Cheesman (30:28.758) Everyone loves them. Chad (30:52.758) Mm-hmm. Jason Corsello (30:55.251) And I wish I knew that answer of why it hasn't been disrupted. I think part of it is if you really want to disrupt the, not just the ATS market, but the recruiting market, it actually probably takes a bit of capital out of the gate to start, right? Instead of raising a $3 million seed round, you need to go raise 20 million bucks out of the gate, like what kind of what Workday did 15 years ago. So you raise a lot more money so you can build everything faster and try to disrupt it in that way. Joel Cheesman (31:16.011) Yeah. Chad (31:24.578) But smart recruiters, I mean, they're actually in, you could say the catbird seat with regard to data because they're an applicant tracking system. They have huge data lakes. If they pivoted and they started to use these large language models to actually focus on efficiency. And I mean, all the way down the funnel, I mean, they could literally change the old style ATS that they modeled themselves off of and become something new. So, I mean, it looks like they're there are some opportunities there. The hardest part for them though, is that they were going through acquisition and that didn't happen. And then they just lost their CEO who was there. Yeah, supposedly, sure. And then the CEO just left after over a little over a year. Rebecca's been at the company for a while. She went away and she came back. But I mean, it's just like, it seems like a perfect opportunity for a new CEO, whether she gets it or not. Jason Corsello (32:03.539) Supposedly. Chad (32:22.082) to be able to pivot into something new and cool. Jason Corsello (32:25.999) Yeah, I think you're spot on chat. And I so I don't think the full story on smart recruiters has been written yet. And I do think they do have still one advantage has been kind of lurking behind the scenes. And that's Jerome, right? Jerome knows this market better than any executive CEO chairman in this market, right? So I think that's the one to watch is, you know, do we see? Do we get to roam back? Joel Cheesman (32:40.747) Hmm. Chad (32:50.626) Do we get Jerome back? Should we start that chant? Do we get Jerome back? Does Jerome get back into the CEO position? Jerome, Jerome. Joel Cheesman (32:53.659) Ehh... Jason Corsello (32:54.007) Let's do it. Let's go. Let's start the, should we start it here? But yeah, I mean, you guys have known him for, for the evolutions of this industry and he's, he's probably the biggest thought leader and for us as investors, I would love to have that guy take a much more active role in, and reposition smart recruiters for the next five years, because I think that opportunity absolutely exists. Joel Cheesman (32:56.226) There you go. Joel Cheesman (33:04.494) Yeah? Chad (33:06.315) Yeah? Joel Cheesman (33:19.77) Mm-hmm. So who doesn't love a good game of Mary fucker kill Jason? I'm gonna spin it a little bit differently for you though. Okay, your best bet Your worst mistake and the one that got away Jason Corsello (33:25.112) Oh, jeez. Jason Corsello (33:34.603) Okay. Ooh, okay. So our best bet on paper, should I start? Am I going for this here? Chad (33:43.094) Yeah. Hit it, hit it. Joel Cheesman (33:43.342) Yeah, go ahead. I could see the wheels churning and I was entertained. Okay. Jason Corsello (33:49.983) So our best bet is this company called Nomi Health that many people don't know about, but it was founded by Mark Newman. Many of your listeners know and love Mark Newman. He was a founder and CEO of HireVue in most cases. They love Mark. You know, if you take out the AI kind of facial recognition stuff to the side. So Mark started this company called Nomi Health. It's disrupting healthcare. Chad (34:02.825) Newman! Jason Corsello (34:18.503) favorite business because I want someone to disrupt healthcare. And Mark's the right guy to do it. So on paper, that's been our best investment to date. It was our third investment. So Mark's made us look really, really smart with our own LP investors. Our worst investment, I don't know if we know that answer yet. And the reason being is that our fund is still five years old. You know, I wasn't going to answer this directly. But the thing, Joel, with seed investing is, you're going to be wrong. probably 70% of the time, right? So there's probably not one that takes the winner. I'd probably put three or four in that category. And I think more so the lessons that we learn is that startups are freaking hard, right? And you get punched in the face all the time and you gotta get back up. And it's the ones that just didn't have that resilience that we can sniff out at that time of investment that have proven to be the worst. So I purposely dodged your question and... Joel Cheesman (35:14.202) I appreciate that. Jason Corsello (35:15.583) Yeah, we're going to be wrong a lot. Joel Cheesman (35:16.974) So give me one that got away. At least give me the one that got away that you said no to that hit it big. Jason Corsello (35:23.464) The one that got away. Well, there's actually two that got away, but this is before we started the fund. So before I started the fund, I was doing corporate venture at Cornerstone On Demand. And we launched a CVC and there's two investments that we missed. There's actually three investments that we missed. One was DeGreed. The second was Culture App and the third was Vizier. Chad (35:24.062) You know you wake up in cold sweat some night. You- Chad (35:36.834) Hmm? Jason Corsello (35:50.579) And I think in every three of those cases, I got outvoted because of the belief that we could build the products instead of investing into them. So another lesson that I've learned, right? Most incumbents do a pretty shitty job of trying to replicate or steal someone else's idea. So those are the three that kind of got away. Yeah. All right. Joel Cheesman (36:03.103) Interesting. Chad (36:08.647) Yes. Joel Cheesman (36:13.45) Not bad. A little bit of dancing, but not bad, Jason. That was pretty good. Chad (36:15.298) Very nice, very nice. Jason Corse everybody. So Jason, if somebody wants to connect with you or I don't know have a conversation about how where they can send their deck Where can they do that? Jason Corsello (36:31.171) Yeah, so on our website, there's a buried link, but you can email it to hello at Akka Um, we tried to make it completely explicit or I wouldn't be able to, you know, go home at night because I'd be looking at so many pitch decks. Um, LinkedIn is always a good spot too. So we, you know, anything that comes in through LinkedIn, we'd look at it. May take us some time to get back, but those are probably the two easiest spots or, you know, have these founders go to you and you send on the warm leads to us. And then, you know, Chad (36:44.142) Breathe. Jason Corsello (36:59.94) We'll look at it much closer. Joel Cheesman (37:01.346) Nobody loves a juicy deck like Chad and cheese. That is another one in the can. Chad, we out. Chad (37:01.484) You got it. Chad (37:05.715) Oh yeah!

Recorded LIVE from Transform earlier this year. This episode explores the dynamic changes in the modern workplace including in-depth conversations with Janine Yancey, the CEO and founder of Emtrain. With her rich background as an employment lawyer and her innovative work at Emtrain, Janine provides unique perspectives on the transformation of HR practices, compliance training, and workplace culture. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh yeah. What's up everybody? We are at Transform in Las Vegas, day two. This is Steve Wynn's favourite podcast, AKA, the Chad & Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the carrot to my top, Chad Sowash is in the house. Chad: Very much so. Joel: As we welcome Janine Yancey. Chad: Janine. Joel: CEO, and founder of Emtrain Colt Train Night train. No, just Emtrain. Chad: That is the best. Joel: Janine welcome, welcome to the podcast. Janine Yancey: Thank you. Glad to be here. Joel: Excellent. So our listeners probably don't know who you or the company are. Give them the elevator pitch about you and what you do. Janine Yancey: Okay. So Janine Yancey, I started my career as an employment lawyer doing a lot of litigation and investigations and resolving a lot of conflict in organizations. And that gave me the motivation to start Emtrain because I was kind of like the workplace therapist. I'd see patterns of behaviour over and over and over again and tell the managers, Hey, this is what's going to happen. And they were always surprised when... Chad: It gave me the motivation to get the hell out of my job. Joel: To get the hell out and... Chad: That's what I heard. After all of that, get the hell out of my job. Janine Yancey: No, to resolve conflict. I call it navigating around the rocks rather than going right into the rocks, right? Chad: Okay. Joel: Okay. So Emtrain specifically does what to support that vision? Janine Yancey: So Emtrain is online learning and ethics, respect and inclusion. So it covers a lot of your compliance topics as well as DEI topics as well as really just kind of talent topics. And what we're doing, I think that's unique is we're approaching this from a skills-based perspective. So all of our learning is developing skills and we're measuring skills. So we're embedding our learning experience with probing questions, the type of questions you'd get in an annual climate survey. So think about annual climate survey embedded into a learning experience, and we'll show a scene of what good looks like, and we'll ask them, Hey, what does your manager do? This, that, the other thing. And we're getting employee sentiment at scale that we can slice and dice to see where in the organization you've got some vulnerabilities, where conflict is brewing. Joel: And then plug the holes with education. Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. Janine Yancey: Education and management actions. So like your HR business partner team is usually way understaffed, especially these days after the last year of layoffs. So they're exhausted. So instead of boiling the ocean, we're giving them visibility into which teams they need to go and talk to. Joel: Okay. And you were founded when? Janine Yancey: 2006 is when I stopped my day job of being a lawyer. Joel: Okay. So you've been at this for a while. Okay. Janine Yancey: So I've been at this for a long time. 500 plus clients ranging in size from Chevron, IKEA, Cisco, Workday, down to a lot of the organizations we see here at Transform. Joel: I love this 'cause this is the story you don't hear about, this isn't the startup that's raised a ton of money, has a whatever founder, I mean, you guys have organically put in the work. Janine Yancey: Yes. Joel: Put in the time. Janine Yancey: Yes. Chad: How big is the organization? Janine Yancey: Well, there's about 50 of us, so we're small. But what's interesting is we're all practitioners. So clients dig us because we've been in their shoes. We know how to solve their problems. Chad: You speak their language. Janine Yancey: We speak their language, and we know how to solve their problems. Chad: Well, and you know what the real problems are because you actually walked in their shoes where a lot of other vendors are coming in from outside saying they think they know what the problem is and they really have no clue. Janine Yancey: Exactly right. And Chad, they're trying to solve for less important things. So there are companies here that are spending most of their investment on how to make this as cheap and easy as possible, which is great, but they're actually not solving the big problems. And there's so much increasing regulation. Like our largest clients, their people are spending eight to 10 hours a year in compliance training, right? If you just quantify that expense of their hourly rate at scale, that's millions of dollars to get nothing but a completion report. That's stupid. So to use this program as a talent strategy, as a listening strategy, and you're actually getting operational benefits is what makes the CFOs happy. Joel: There's a lot of competition out there, upskilling, learning, some big players. How do you guys obviously nimbler, cheaper. What's the differentiator for you guys when you're at a sales call with so many big competitors with deep pockets? Janine Yancey: We're in the market of really the online compliance niche. So there's actually just a handful of companies that we compete against. Joel: So you don't consider LinkedIn Learning or others like that competitors or do you? Janine Yancey: No. So we partner, LinkedIn's a client. We partner with LinkedIn Learning, Udemy's a client. We partner with Udemy. Udemy business is right here. Chad: So you provide content to them. What does partnership mean? Janine Yancey: Oh, well, so first of all, they're clients of us, so they roll out our programs to their whole workforce. LinkedIn Learning, we're going to be supplying an Emtrain course within LinkedIn Learning this year. Chad: How many courses do you have in Emtrain? Janine Yancey: Oh, Emtrain. We probably have about a 100 or so. Chad: Okay. So one of many that you could prospectively be rolling out into LinkedIn 'cause I seen this as a perspective partnership and revenue generator from a distribution standpoint through a platform like LinkedIn. Janine Yancey: Yes. Chad: Highly used platform. Janine Yancey: Yes. Chad: They need content. They want content. Janine Yancey: Well and currently they do not do compliance. So that has been a strategic product decision they made. Chad: Yeah. Janine Yancey: I talked to their head of product last year. Chad: Which is why you're perfect for this connection 'cause they don't have to do it. Janine Yancey: Well, at some point they will do it. The answer from their head of product was, it's not a question of if, it's just when. Chad: And who are they going to acquire to make sure that they have... Joel: I was gonna say, it sounds like they could just write a check and be done with it. Chad: Yeah, yeah. I mean that makes it a lot easier. Joel: That's a big smile on Janine's face right there. Janine Yancey: I'm not saying anything. Chad: Quick question around skills. So, how do you actually analyze the jobs to understand what skills are in those jobs in the first place? Janine Yancey: We have created a skills matrix for every employee in the workforce to be their best selves, right? So, some of those skills are specific to people leaders. Chad: Okay. Janine Yancey: So, for example, going back to my kind of prior life as a lawyer. Most of the harassment and discrimination cases stem from managers who are not skilled at managing their power. So meaning, they will say something, they will do something, and they can't think through how that's gonna show up to a direct report. And then they're just always shocked when they get this bias claim. Chad: Well, they haven't been trained to manage, so they suck at managing. Janine Yancey: Well, part of management training is managing your power. That's one of the courses we're going to be doing for LinkedIn. Chad: Gotcha. Janine Yancey: Cisco is also a client. They want us to develop for all of their people leaders the inclusive manager series this year, because there's just some tried and true skills you need to build to get better outcomes. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Like diplomacy. Janine Yancey: Diplomacy means different things to different people. That's the hard part. Joel: Most things mean different things to different people, right? Janine Yancey: Yes. Joel: You talked a little before we pushed record about comparing a team, a sports team, in this case basketball, to corporate, where chemistry isn't there so the results don't happen. Tell that story to our listeners and how your product sort of manages or helps get chemistry, people that can actually work together in unison, because I think that's a little bit of a secret sauce if you can do that in an organization. Janine Yancey: We have all these data analytics tools out on the market, and none of them measure chemistry, the social dynamics within the organization and within teams. And when you think about the relevance of that, that's when I gave the example of a basketball team. So I'm from Sacramento. Kings are our basketball team. They had years and years of losing, losing, losing, despite investing in top players, top talent. But if the talent doesn't play well together, you're not gonna get the win. So you need a tool and you need a strategy to, one, make visible and measure the chemistry that's going on in the organization. Like which teams have people that are spinning out because it's nails on a chalkboard for what their teammates saying? Janine Yancey: Like how do we figure that out? And that's what we're doing here at Emtrain. So we're doing it coming in. The beachhead is always, yes, it's a compliance course. Our preventing harassment course is our flagship course, but we're using it really as a talent strategy. It's like how do we play well together? Chad: But chemistry, you hire who you hire, and that's what you get in, right? And if they don't know what the chemistry is before they actually land on the team, that's going to be hard, right? So from a management standpoint, you can try to manage that as a team, but if you're hiring individuals who just don't have the right chemistry together, that's going to be hard. Janine Yancey: So I disagree, Chad, because yes/and. You can create your own true north values and skills within a team, within an organization. And so like one of our skills and our matrix is curiosity, starting with curiosity. So if you've got two people, they don't mix. It's like, all right, how do we start our interactions with curiosity? How can we inspire folks to wonder, Hey, what makes that other persons' tick? And if that's embedded in just how we do business, it's kind of our operating guide. Everyone starts tracking to the same set of really kind of skills. That's how I think about it. Joel: I mean, you could say chemistry is a bias because people interview and like, oh, well, there's chemistry because we're alike. Janine Yancey: Exactly. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: We're the same kind of person. And it can be a real landmine that organizations need to be aware of. Janine Yancey: Well, we've done that research. I mean, a lot of places have done that research and it is a bias. Joel: Yeah. You are launching a new product here at the conference. Talk about that. Janine Yancey: Yes So we're launching our second iteration of our people analytics tools after getting a year's worth of client feedback on how to make it more useful, more actionable. And so these are 150 million employee responses about the interactions on their team, how their managers perform, how their coworkers perform, how their leaders perform and show up. We're also giving a risk heat map and we're starting to integrate with case management systems so that employee relations teams see proactively before there's a claim where there's pockets of conflict. Joel: Help me visualize that. A heat map for what? Janine Yancey: So you're seeing you can slice and dice by business unit, by geography, by some of the more senior leaders, right. Because we don't go down to the individual. You can see where people are saying like the respect score is low, right. And so if you unravel the respect score, we've got four skills. It's managing our own biases. That's at the individual level. It's in group out group dynamics at the team level coworkers. A lot of harassment cases stem from in group out group dynamics. It's managing your power at the people leader level. And then it's ensuring equity at the organizational level. So we're asking questions at each of those four points and fleshing out how people are seeing and experiencing those dynamics. And so if we see a business unit where the whole team is rating that manager as they suck at managing power. Okay. Joel: DEF CON too. Janine Yancey: Exactly. Let's send an HR business partner to that manager. Joel: Interesting. Janine Yancey: So, for example, we have American Eagle as one of our clients. Joel: I only wear American Eagle, by the way. Janine Yancey: Well, my kids do. We can slice and dice by district 'cause that's how they're organized their DMS. We were looking over their analytics, which they actually presented to their board, the audit committee of their board. And we can see that while they were generally pretty healthy, district 52 was under 50% in their benchmark score. And I said, oh, so who's the DM at 52? And they all kind of chuckled [laughter] They're like, oh, [laughter] Yeah, we get it. Chad: That guy. Joel: It's Chad. Chad: That guy [laughter], Janine Yancey: I suspect if you talk to all of our HR friends in this conference they anecdotally know what's going on. Joel: Their gut tells them, right? Yeah. Janine Yancey: But they don't have anything to help them have those conversations either with the executives or frankly the managers, because they don't have enough street cred, frankly. Joel: Yeah. You as a mature company, has seen the rise of AI before there was AI. Janine Yancey: Yes. Joel: So you've seen it as it was born, particularly with the data that you're using I assume. Janine Yancey: Yes. Yes. Joel: What's your perspective on ai, what it has meant to your business and what you think it means ultimately for, the world of work? Janine Yancey: You know, I, think it's gonna allow us to do more with less work, less headcount. Joel: Less People. Yep. Say it. Janine Yancey: Less headcount. Joel: She said it. Janine Yancey: It is. I mean, so we're a small, org, but we're already doing more with less. I mean, we don't need a QA engineer because we've got Cypress, which is AI. You've got Jasper, which is AI for marketing blogs. I mean, it is what it is, right? Joel: It is what it is. Janine Yancey: I'm speaking as an employer right now, not a CEO, not as a HR practitioner. Having said that, I think we need to have confidence that with every kind of paradigm shift in our society, doors close and new doors open, right? Joel: Yep. Janine Yancey: And I do think that, I mean, just in the last, let's just even call it the last 10 years as we see Gen Z increasingly coming into the organization, they're changing the world of work in really good ways. I mean, there's some challenges too. But things that us Gen Xers would never dream of having the guts to ask for they're just blithely demanding it. It's like, okay. All right. So I think overall we're trending in the right direction. I think the next probably five years are gonna be rocky, but we will ultimately get to a good path. Chad: So Rocky, how? Just because there's a, a difference thought process for the Gen Zs coming in versus, you know, what we're used to. Janine Yancey: I think Rocky because Gen Zs were generally raised by. Chad: Xers. Janine Yancey: Us Gen Xers, yeah. And us Gen Xers didn't have parents that were very present. So we overcompensated with our kids. Chad: Oh yeah. Janine Yancey: And we're seeing what that looks like in the workplace. It's like, oh shoot. [laughter] So they have a bit of a, an awakening. They're gonna have an awakening when. Chad: How so? Janine Yancey: Life's not so easy. Life's not so easy. The work ethic's not necessarily what I think it needs to be. Chad: Well, yeah, but okay. So we were programmed to live, to work, right? Janine Yancey: Yes. Chad: And their program work to live. Right. Which is to be quite frank, I think a hell of a lot smarter, right? We're not on this earth to sit around and sit behind a desk and do a job. Janine Yancey: Agreed. Chad agreed. But you make your choices. So you can't say, I'm going to work to live, but I also want. Joel: I wanna be CEO in a week. [laughter] Chad: Well I don't think they wanna be. That's the Problem. Janine Yancey: They want the six figure salary. Chad: That's only because they're paying $100,000 to go through college when boomers paid like 15. Janine Yancey: True. Chad: I mean The dynamics to be able to say what you said around rocky and the change it should be, it's the evolution of the workforce. And that's where your company and your product should also evolve and flow. You shouldn't hope that Gen Z magically becomes Gen X because that shit ain't gonna happen. Janine Yancey: No. Well, and it shouldn't happen. I'm not saying it should because like, listen, we didn't have anyone showing us the way. Chad: We did not. Janine Yancey: So we did the best we could do. [laughter], now Gen Z has had a whole lot of of attention. Chad: Oh yeah. Janine Yancey: And care. So they should be the best, generation yet. Chad: We hope we can always hope. Joel: You mentioned, the world of work. Five years ahead, I wanna talk about your business. Janine Yancey: Yes. Joel: You raised $8 million a few years ago. Chad: Oh, nice. Joel: You're a mature company. What do you wanna be when you grow up? Janine Yancey: So our goal is to change the world of compliance. So I always say laws follow people. People don't follow laws. And what I mean by that is when people screw up, guess what? A law gets written. So instead of optimizing for, let's understand this law, screw that. Let's understand people. Let's understand why Boeing, after spending a million dollars a year for 20 years on their compliance program, still has jets falling down from the sky. Okay? Compliance issues. They're not compliance issues, they're people issues. So I wanna change the whole world of compliance and get it back to focused on people and people's decision making and their skills. Because the laws and the lawyers being a lawyer myself, sorry we screwed it all up. We did. Joel: All I heard was get $100 million dollar check from LinkedIn. That's all I heard in that. Sorry. Janine. Janine Yancey, everybody, CEO and founder at Emtrain. Janine, for our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more about the company, where do you send them? Janine Yancey: Oh Please, visit us online @emtrain.com. That's E-M-T-R-A-I-N.com. Joel: Oh, she's good. She's good. Chad: Colt train baby. Joel: That's another one in the can. Colt train. Night Train. Emtrain. We're out. Chad: We're out. Podcast Outro: Well Thank you for listening to, what's it called, A podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar blue nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever. You listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese is so weird. We out.

To know industry icon Gerry Crispin is to love Gerry Crispin. And if you missed our Gerry Tales series, do yourself a favor and check it out at https://www.chadcheese.com/gerry-crispin. Then come back for an after-hours interview with Gerry live from Unleash in Las Vegas. It's a walk down Memory Lane, a breath of fresh air for our times, and a sobering forecast of where things might be going. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh yeah, what's up everybody? We are live from the DaXter booth at UNLEASH in Las Vegas. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, Chad Sowash is here. Chad: Hello. Hello, hello. Joel: And we are just privileged to have Gerry Crispin, co-founder of CareerXroads, industry expert and world of work icon. My beard worships his. Gerry Crispin, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad: After all the shit he just gave you, he's like, icon, he's like, you should have solved the off-camera stuff that was happening. Gerry Crispin: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Joel: It's been a while. You were on the show, I think, pre-pandemic. Gerry Crispin: I was on the show. Joel: When we were trying to be a serious podcast. Chad: No, we did a whole series. We did a Gerry series. Joel: Gerry Tales. Chad: We did Gerry Tales. Yeah. Gerry Crispin: Yeah, yeah. So I got stories. [laughter] Chad: I got stories. I got stories. Joel: So Gerry, some of our listeners don't know who you are. Gerry Crispin: Who are they? Joel: Give them, some are too young and weren't around in the industry. Give us the Twitter bio about you. We'll let you go a little longer because you've earned it. Gerry Crispin: Oh, no, but I don't. I just nurture a community of talent acquisition leaders from large companies who are committed to helping each other. Joel: Say more about that. You have an organization that does... Facilitates this. Gerry Crispin: I have an organization that I don't have to run. So I have somebody who does all the heavy lifting. He's the president. Joel: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: And Chris does a fabulous job in building a platform that helps people who are in talent acquisition, in leadership roles, engage one another. Benchmark, understand what's going on. Chad: Chris is taking the baton, though. Let's talk about why you... Gerry Crispin: Chris has taken... Chad: Exactly. Exactly. Why you started and then how you grew it up to this point where somebody needs to take over. That's a great legacy, right? Joel: And please mention the days where you wrote a book on all the job boards that are out there. [laughter] Chad: We're going back, so let's do it. Gerry Crispin: Well, it started with actually Mark and I were helping a group of talent acquisition leaders and CHROs who were out of work find jobs. It was a group that met every Saturday morning at 7:00 AM, every other Saturday morning. Chad: At 7:00 AM? Gerry Crispin: 7:00 AM. Joel: They had to be committed. Chad: Holy shit. Gerry Crispin: They had to be committed. They had to share fully what they were interviewing on, which some were reluctant because it's competitive. Somebody's going to call up and say, "Hey, don't take him, take me." Joel: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: So you have this starting this group, typically about 30 or 40 people in the Princeton area who are doing this. And I enjoyed trying to help them. It was a pay it forward. I was working with Shaker Advertising at the time. And many of these folks, after they got a job, obviously are trying to rethink how they recruit. Chad: Oh, yeah. Gerry Crispin: And it might be that, hey, you need a new advertising agency. So, you know, there's an advantage there as well. Chad: Right. Gerry Crispin: But Mark and I were doing that. And then we said, you know, this weird shit has happening with this thing called the internet and there's this OCC, what the hell is that, and there's this Career Mosaic... Joel: You better say E-span. [laughter] Chad: E-span, Headhunter.net... Joel: There you go. Gerry Crispin: And then there's E-span and then there's... So you have these nascent job boards starting up and none of the people in the room knew anything about them. Chad: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: And so we're collecting data on all of that and I'm putting it into a little computer, Pentium 286. Chad: Manual entry. Joel: Is that gerbil still alive that was powering that then? Gerry Crispin: No. No, no. Joel: I think it's powering my Wi-Fi at home. Gerry Crispin: So we're doing all of that and then somebody sends me, I start getting involved with SHRM, and SHRM sends me a note that says, "Hey, you've been elected to give a talk at the 1996 Chicago SHRM Annual Conference. And your subject is HR and the internet." Chad: Hello. Joel: They told you the topic? Gerry Crispin: They basically said, we'd like you to do that because no one knows anything about it and because no one's ever done a topic on HR and the internet at our annual conference. Chad: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: So I said, shit, why not? Okay, I can do that. So I put together a deck of all these different kinds of things, but then they sent me a note in January that said, "If you have a book, we'll promote it." Joel: Oh, the book. Gerry Crispin: And I looked at Mark... Chad: If you have a book, we'll promote it. Gerry Crispin: And Mark... Chad: Hint, hint. Gerry Crispin: Mark and I looked at each other and said, "Oh, that's what we could do together," because he was a contract recruiter, I'm working at Shaker. We're going, a book? We have hundreds because we have almost all of the job boards that exist right now in our computer and we got little notes about them. Joel: So it was a four-page novella that you passed out. Gerry Crispin: 160 pages. Joel: Oh, God. Gerry Crispin: So we... I had a floppy disc. We went and learned how to do a book. Joel: Yeah. I mean, you had to get a publisher back then. Gerry Crispin: No, no. Joel: Oh, no? Okay. Chad: There was self-publishing back then? Gerry Crispin: Oh, I sent a two page letter to three publishers. All of them drove to my New Jersey address with Shaker to explain to us how wonderful this idea is of writing a book about internet resources for job seekers and they wanted to partner with us. And then we learned... Chad: Partner. Gerry Crispin: Partner. And partner turned out to be a 40-page document that basically said they own everything forever and everything I will ever do from that point on, and I will get 5% of the profits... Joel: How generous. Chad: What a deal. Gerry Crispin: Determined by them after they've decided how much all of this cost. Mark and I looked at each other and we said, what, are you kidding me? We're going to do this ourselves. We're going to have to learn how to write a book. So we printed out on a floppy disk. He went to Chicago to a convention of bookmakers or something. So he learned all the list of what to do. And we basically printed out or had a printer print out from a floppy disk onto 160 pages... Joel: Is this a trip to Kinko's? Gerry Crispin: All this shit. We had an artist put a front on it. Joel: An artist. Gerry Crispin: We figured out how to put the indicias in all of the other stuff that you did. We said, what should we charge? Oh, let's charge $14.95. Why? Who knows? We just thought... Chad: Who knows. [chuckle] Gerry Crispin: Who knows. Chad: Sounded good. Gerry Crispin: So $14.95. Then I call SHRM and I say, we got a book. It's coming out. It's being printed right now and we're going to make it in time. How many books do you want us to send to the bookstore in Chicago? He says 50. Chad: 50? Gerry Crispin: 50. And we had coughed up enough money to make 5,000 copies at, I think it was $1.69 per copy. Chad: Oh, that's good margin. Joel: It's great margin. Chad: That's great margin. Gerry Crispin: So we sent two cases, so 100 books. We sent them to the room we were going to be in. We sent them 50, so we knew there was 150 anyhow. We were ready to hawk it like crazy. We go to SHRM. They want me to do two sessions now, 1,000 people in each session. Chad: Hello. Joel: Okay. Gerry Crispin: 1,000 and the projector, as you can imagine, was way bigger than this table. I mean, it was a monster thing. Chad: And you have 150 books. Gerry Crispin: I had 150 books. Chad: That's it? [laughter] Scarcity sells. Joel: Yes, it does. Gerry Crispin: SHRM was willing to sell the book, even if they didn't have it in front of them. Chad: Really? Gerry Crispin: They sold 5,000 books in an hour and a half. Chad: Wow. Joel: And you're an author now. Yeah. Gerry Crispin: And he and I looked at each other, we said, holy shit. So we thought we were behind in this internet thing. It'd be over before we got there, you know? So we sell 5,000 books at $14.95, and we have to give SHRM half. Chad: Okay. Gerry Crispin: So we have half. Chad: That's still a good margin. Gerry Crispin: I'm fine. Chad: Still a good margin. Gerry Crispin: I'm fine. We did three editions, sold out three editions. In the first book, because you asked for the story, you're getting it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We're getting it. Gerry Crispin: In the first book, we said, listen, if you give us your email, I just had this spark of an idea. If you give us your email, we promise to send you an update about this book every month for the rest of our lives. [laughter] Chad: Hello newsletter. Joel: That's a hard promise to keep. Chad: Hello newsletter. Gerry Crispin: I had... In two years, we had 50,000 emails. Joel: Oh my gosh. Gerry Crispin: In 1998, going into 1999, we sent a note in December of 1998 saying, we have this new thing. Our book, new book, the 1999 version is coming out. We have this thing where you can go on our website and you can give us 20 bucks, because now it's 20 bucks. Chad: Oh, yeah. Gerry Crispin: And we'll take that money and you will get one of the first copies coming off of the press of the new book with, now we've got 400 or I don't know what we had. Joel: You're like a Beatles fan club by this point. [laughter] Gerry Crispin: We had 5,000 offers in the first couple of hours. Chad: Damn. Gerry Crispin: 5,000... Joel: Good grief. Gerry Crispin: Money coming in and we hadn't paid the printer yet. So we've paid for the book, we're making money like crazy. But think about this for a moment. This is why Mark Mehler kind of burned out. [laughter] Joel: Kind of. Gerry Crispin: Kind of burned out. Every three months a truck would come to his driveway. Joel: With money. Gerry Crispin: No. Joel: Books. Chad: It was pretty much the books. Gerry Crispin: Yes, books. Chad: Yes, yes. Gerry Crispin: And he'd fill his entire garage, floor to ceiling, with cases of books. Chad: You need to listen because this is what's going to happen with T-shirts. Joel: T-shirts. Yeah. Gerry Crispin: Books. And he would go around to every neighborhood kid under 15 and hire them to come and help him. He had these printer things that you would print out the label. Joel: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: You had to put the information in. Then you had to print out the damn label. Then you had to stick it on the envelope. Then you had to put that in the book in there. And then you had to put the stamps on. And I'm not doing any of this shit. So, and then you had to put them in a car and then take them to the US Post Office. So we're selling books like crazy. I think we sold over eight years and eight editions, I think we sold north of 300,000. Joel: Whoo. People don't appreciate, this is before blogs, this is before podcasts. This is before really any of this was ever available. Gerry Crispin: No, it's a book. It's paper... Joel: My CEO at Job Options, Michael Forrest, who you know, he had a vision of we need to get in Gerry's book because you had some that got like badges for some. I don't remember what the badges were. It was like a top... Gerry Crispin: Top 50. Yeah, top 50. Joel: So we have to get in the top 50. So we did everything that we could. Barb Reese, who now works for you, was my boss. She probably did a lot of that stuff. Gerry Crispin: Yep. Joel: And once we got in, we ordered hundreds of these things. Gerry Crispin: Yep. Joel: We sent them out to all the prospects, and we had a big sticker that says, Job Options Top 50 Site. That was our content marketing strategy. That was our direct marketing strategy, your book. Gerry Crispin: I love it. I will tell you that even to this, in the last two months, I've been on calls, Zoom calls where somebody who is a mature TA leader has been around for a long while, 20 some odd years, will smile at something and suddenly pick up a book off to the side and show her her copy from 1998 or '99. Chad: She had that holstered. She was ready. She was ready... Joel: I still have mine. I still have mine somewhere. Gerry Crispin: It started, it really informed us of what we were looking at. It helped us to better understand what the technology piece was. Now, the one good and smart thing I did was I didn't have to become an expert in all of the tools and everything else that was going on. But what I did start doing in 1998-99 was going to different folks who were emerging in the field, like John Sullivan, like a John Sumser, and asking them, Rothberg, a bunch of these characters, and asking them to write a two or three-page article about some aspect of how you could better write a resume with all of those things digitally and what you should be looking for to do that. Or what should you be doing if you're doing IT versus this? Or how to deal with high volume? Or whatever it might be that seemed to be the hot topic at the moment. And so we had 30 different articles, some for the job seeker and some for the employer, that were tips on what to do. And in those days, there wasn't a manual for how to use the internet. Chad: No. Gerry Crispin: We were coming up with it. I mean, we were building the plane in flight, for God's sake. Chad: Exactly. Joel: People would fax job descriptions to then be typeset into a computer. Chad: Yes. We had admin that did that all the time. Not just jobs, but also resumes. Joel: Resumes. Gerry Crispin: And investors would call us and say, we want to talk to you about something. And Mark would go... Chad: The internet? Gerry Crispin: Here's the price. Sit for one hour and you'd have to give us a check on the way in. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And then we were doing some stuff for employers from a consulting point of view about how they could do better with getting their job board, their career pages. So we did that. And then we realized, to end this, in 2003, our last book, we realized that we were obsolete, that we now have reasonable search engines that could tell you something about what are the military job boards, what are the government job boards... Chad: In seconds. Yeah. Gerry Crispin: That kind of thing. And we realized this is silly, we're not dealing with that. What is the gap? Chad: Yeah. Gerry Crispin: And it was at that moment that we realized that a lot of conferences, like this one, there were hundreds of people coming and giving talks. But in those days because the internet was still somewhat mysterious, the lawyers and PR people in most of these employer companies wouldn't let you talk about the real data. So every conference had somebody getting up saying, we solved this, we got 10% reduction in whatever, but no, I can't tell you exactly what we did because I'm not allowed. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it was pretty much like that. We said, oh, we need a place where people can safely talk to each other about this. Joel: Safe place. Gerry Crispin: This is stupid. You know, there's nothing proprietary about this, about how to find somebody. We should be uplifting the, whatever, what we're all doing. We don't have to tell people what our strategy is as a business to dominate, but we should be sharing how we change the way in which we share our knowledge about how to hire people in a way that everybody benefits, the employer, the candidate, the recruiter, et cetera. So we should be calling out what works, what doesn't work. And that was the start of our community of the colloquium and the rest of career crossroads. That was the shift. Chad: So fast forward, 25 years, today. Joel: It's so fun to walk down memory lane with you. Chad: It is. It is. But the contrast to me is so fun, right? So back then it was exciting. It was innovative. It was fast moving. It was nuts, right? Because everybody was implementing new shit and we were a part of that, right? That was so cool. But that still pales in comparison to the shit that's happening today, right? Gerry Crispin: I see what is happening today as equivalent to the confusion and chaos and hype and bullshit going on in the late '90s about the internet kind of thing and in relation to talent acquisition. I mean, think about the millions of dollars that Monster spent at the end of the '90s for... Chad: Oh, yeah. Gerry Crispin: Those those things just blew up. You mean to tell me we're spending millions of dollars on a Super Bowl to tell people about how to get a job. I mean, that's incredible that we're getting that kind of visibility in our profession, in our industry. Chad: Yeah. One of the best days of my life by the way. Joel: The Super Bowl ad? Are you being sarcastic? Chad: No. Joel: Did the servers go down? Chad: No, not ours. Ours didn't go down but sales went through the fucking roof baby. Joel: Through the roof. Yeah, I can imagine. Chad: At that point, all I had to do was when I made a call, said, "Hey, this is Chad from Monster." That was it. I didn't have to explain anything. Joel: They're like, where do I send the blank check? Chad: Exactly. Gerry Crispin: Yeah. Exactly. And now, we have the same level of hype, chaos, and craziness around how AI is going to change the rest of the fucking world. And fundamentally, there are... There's just enough truth in the possibilities that some of that can happen. It's just not going to happen as fast as everybody else thinks. Joel: I'mma tell you a little story about you. You may or may not remember this. Chad: About a man named Gerry. Joel: So let's call the first wave 1.0 job boards or jobs online, resumes online. Web 2, as you remember, was the social media stuff. You had Jobster come in, Indeed with vertical search. Gerry Crispin: That was about 2003-05, it was just starting. Joel: So that's when I was sort of getting my feet wet in the media side of it. And then around 2010, you hit a period of like big data, machine learning. And I remember I was with you and John Sumser. And I said, "Wow, these new companies are really exciting." And I remember you sort of just, eh, and I said, "These are really cool companies, they're using mobile and they're doing all these things." And you said, "Yeah, there's a wave of new companies. It's pretty exciting. And they will wash away and a new wave of startups will come along and the cycle will continue on and on." I was too young at the time to appreciate your comments, but I'm old enough now that I'm on that level that a lot of this is, we've been here before, we'll be okay. There'll be some that are left over. There'll be a lot of consolidation. I assume you see the same scenario playing out. Gerry Crispin: Absolutely. We see it here today, the last couple of days, there's a lot of effort to increase efficiency in terms of what one does. It's only gonna be an increase in productivity if we're doing the right thing, and that's part of the problem. If you're making something that doesn't work really well more efficient, you're just making something that doesn't work really well more, you know what I mean? Chad: Well, if you're pushing people faster to the black hole, who gives a shit? [laughter] Gerry Crispin: Yeah, I know. I know. And there's some of that. And part of it is because some of the new stuff, they don't do enough due diligence in terms of what really works. I had, and I won't say his name, but I had somebody that interviewed me in the last couple of days who's the head of a company who comes in from outside of our space. Joel: He so wants to name names right now. Chad: Say it Gerry, say it. Joel: He's dropping enough hints. Gerry Crispin: He said, what is it that I'm not seeing that I should be doing or looking forward to, for, because he was doing a lot of things to try to meet with clients, meet with other people, learn more about what's going on. I said, the only thing I can offer to you as someone who's never recruited and is in a key position, is stand behind a recruiter in your best... Go to your client, best client, ask to go just stand in the trench with a recruiter, a good recruiter, and watch that good recruiter who's got 25, 26, 35 open recs, try to find people on one side, engage them on another, set up interviews on another and so on, and look at how many dashboards they have. Look at how their technology is either not integrated and/or not working, but not working faster. And I said, when you start looking at what people, each stakeholder has to do and go through, I said, and talk to some of the candidates that are never, ever, ever. I said, 90% of all of the openings that are applied to, those candidates hear nothing. There's 10% that they're doing some good candidate experience. God bless. Chad: Yeah. Sure. Gerry Crispin: But if you get nine out of 10 telling you nothing, what are you gonna think about... Chad: That's normal. Gerry Crispin: What are you gonna think about recruiting as a profession and an industry? I said, I would like to leave this industry knowing that we are liked by the public better than politicians, and we're really struggling at the same level at this point. Joel: And it's not like politicians are crushing it. Gerry Crispin: But my measure is how the stakeholders perceive this profession and this industry. Chad: Well, that's on us, though. Gerry Crispin: Not whether or not the vendor thinks that he is solving a problem. Joel: Legacy is important to you. Legacy at this time is... Gerry Crispin: Not for me, but for us. All of us. I take pride in being part of this profession. You do too. Chad: Sure. Gerry Crispin: You're living with the fact that you've spent your entire life and career doing these kinds of things. And I would like to think that some of those people out there who are benefiting by that, by getting a damn job, a good job, appreciate that. And we still have a ways to go. I need another 75 years. Chad: But talk about... I mean, that is our responsibility to be able to ensure that we understand the business numbers so that we can actually create great discussion points, business cases and narratives that get us at the big kids table, right? We have not done that successfully. There are the 10%, and if we're lucky, it's 10% who are actually doing that today. I mean, your colloquiums, everything that you do is really predicated on doing more of that. Gerry Crispin: That's it. That's the only reason why I'm still in it. I wouldn't be in it for any other reason. I could have retired 10 years ago, so there's only one. This is more fun than playing golf every week, every day of the week. So I have a lot more fun, I have a lot more patience around it because Chris Hoyt is great at what he does, and he does all of the heavy lifting in terms of making CareerXroads a good business that adds value to our members, so that's key. Gerry Crispin: But it's within that community that there's a spark of what you want in terms of people who are stepping up and changing things a little bit in kind. I think the next few years is gonna see some bigger changes than we have seen in a while. So I'm kind of optimistic, even though there's so much hype about all of this crap with AI, I do think the potential is also there as people kind of figure out how to read between the lines and change things a little bit in kind. Joel: 'Cause there is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the recruiting profession. Gerry Crispin: It's, yeah, without a doubt. Joel: A lot of layoffs in the last 12, 18 months. What's your take on the future of recruiting? Like, more with fewer, is it like, what are... And you talk to a ton of companies, what are they talking about in terms of bringing recruiting back? Gerry Crispin: It's definitely gonna be more with fewer because the cost issue is going to, at least for the near term, be there, and I think leaders of companies are aware of that and they want to be able to push the lever. They're putting their finger on the weight of that. And I think it's frustrating a lot of recruiters and recruiting leaders, but I don't think it's gonna change. I think leaders are gonna have more requirements in terms of fixing the shit that's wasting time, money, and effort. Gerry Crispin: And when you have to move between different dashboards, you're wasting time. So when you look at the systems that we have in place, they've got to become more efficient, more automated in a variety of ways, and we're definitely not there yet, and we'll, so we'll be behind. I think we're gonna have to focus in on things like what can we do at the top of the funnel to automate more there so that when it gets to a point where there's enough good stuff, we can use more humans or apply more time from humans to get that piece of it done. Chad: Yes. Gerry Crispin: We're gonna have to use assessments that we've been reluctant to use in the past because assessments are transparency and transparency has to be defended. Chad: Depending on the assessment though, right? There's some mumbo jumbo shit out there. Gerry Crispin: Let's assume we do the right thing and do the right things scientifically in making the assessment work be predictive. It's gotta be face valid... Chad: Performance-driven. Gerry Crispin: It's currently valid, it's gotta be performance-driven and predictive, but the fact of the matter is interviews are never going to be a reliable method to make a decision. At the very best academics have shown over and over again that you get no more than a 2% or 3% edge by doing a perfect set of interviews. But then when you complicate it by saying, oh, how many people have to do an interview, and how reliable are all those people in doing the same kind of approach? And if they have to do that over and over and over again, really, it doesn't work. Chad: It doesn't make sense. Gerry Crispin: We need to eliminate interviews at, especially at top of the funnel from recruiters and hiring managers. That interview should be a way to collect good data rather than the resume. And if we had a AI auto, whatever, that was kind, could speak 25 languages or 55 languages, could do this, ask the same questions of every single candidate, and let's say there's 500 candidates, it should be able to do that with all of those candidates in a very short period of time, collect the data that could be used in a consistent, reliable fashion and tell the candidate, listen, this is a fairer process. Gerry Crispin: I'm not human, but I'm fairer than any human at this stage of the game because I'm collecting data from every single person, including you. And since I'm collecting all the data from each person the same way, it's a fairer way when I decide with a human who's going to go forward, but I'm gonna come back and I'm happy to defend why you aren't going forward and help you think about what you could be doing to be more competitive in the future, or what other jobs you should be competing for that you would be better off in getting. I'm telling you, we could create a fairer process if we start tackling some of these problems. Is anybody doing that? No. Chad: I think there are though, because... Gerry Crispin: There are. We're close. Chad: And it's not the entire like swath of requisitions that are open, but UPS has talked about, we're just talking to Matt and they're getting to hire in 22 minutes. We were talking to, you know, at Paradox and they were talking about clients getting to hire in 13 minutes. So this is happening. And again... Gerry Crispin: At a certain level. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Gerry Crispin: High volume. Chad: Well, not all. Some are actually starting to actually boost past that, and that's because they're starting to use some of those assessments, the performance based assessments, but yeah, I think we're getting there. The problem is we have the leaders that are up here and they're the cream of the crop, they're 2% maybe, and everybody else scratching their heads saying, what do we do? Oh no, that's too risky. What do you tell those people who are... That it's too risky? Gerry Crispin: I'd say it's time that generation turn over. Chad: Yeah. Go home. Gerry Crispin: Yeah, go home. Chad: Yeah, fire yourself. Gerry Crispin: I think, so it's... Joel: There's a beach with your name on it. Gerry Crispin: It's two issues. Leaders who are afraid to take on some of the tough issues that we're dealing with, they need to be replaced long term and they're not going to... That's not going to happen generationally unless we have a new sense of leaders at the TA and at the CHRO level who are willing to confront them with the kind of data that demonstrates that their point of view is not workable, not workable for the future. And that it's going to impact the performance of that company probably in the long term or certainly in the long term, and maybe even in the short term. And I'm convinced that if I were that young person doing that, I would be doing that. Chad: Oh, hell yeah. Gerry Crispin: Because I knew how I acted when I was at Johnson and Johnson and other companies, but I also know that I probably would get fired, at least once. [laughter] Chad: It's worth it then. Joel: We've talked about efficiency and sort of moving fast. Curious your thoughts on the state of DEI. We've seen a lot of companies fire heads of DEI programs of companies, but we also see companies that are embracing it and benefiting from it. What's your take on the state of DE&I? Gerry Crispin: I wrote an article on that. I think part of it is directly related to the Supreme Court decision that was misinterpreted when it focused in on Harvard and UNC in terms of affirmative action. And the problem is that Harvard and UNC were basically trying to have a diverse freshman class. So there's nobody in the freshman class, you're starting from scratch. And if you're starting from scratch, you need to have a yardstick for what that diversity should look like. And if you're starting with zero, it should look a little bit like our country. So if you put your finger on the weighting of race, for example, to about 18%, which is the percentage of Black folks in the United States, you would be fine according to what the Supreme Court actually wrote. Gerry Crispin: The reason why the Supreme Court acted the way they did is because Harvard didn't have that, nor did UNC. And so the impact was that other underrepresented classes were now squeezed because of more waiting in one or more of the underrepresented groups. And so you need to have an understanding of what the underrepresentation is in our society and in your company in order to build a good strategic plan, a yardstick, if you will, for what we're going to do in order to have a more equitable, if you will, from an opportunity point of view, company in terms of our hiring. Gerry Crispin: So I believe that that misunderstanding of what the Supreme Court did, from my reading and from my discussions with some of the lawyers who also have been spending time on this, is that we're gonna have to start thinking more dramatically about the kind of data that exists out there. So 4.7 million people started the 9th grade this year. 86% of them went into public school. About 7%, 8% went into private school and the rest were in like homeschool kind of thing. On the public school side, if we took a random sample of 100,000 of just that group, they look like America. I mean, 9th grade kids, right? Chad: Yeah, they need them in private and charters. Yeah. Gerry Crispin: So they look like us. But now, if you took a random sample, but obviously they're in different places in different types of schools, there are... So I'll give you a quick, just a quick sense of this. Something like 87% of the public school kids will graduate from high school. 98% of the private school kids will graduate from high school. Close to 75% of the high school kids are White. 45% of the public school kids are White. Chad: That's an aggregate, US? Gerry Crispin: And I'm getting this from the National Association of Educational Diversity something, something. I can give you the source. So I spent several hours on this. So think about what starts to happen from 9th grade on. Two-thirds of the kids who graduate from high school will go to college. About two thirds of those who go to college will graduate. We're down to about 30,000 out of the 100,000 now. So first of all, we lost 70,000 people who are gonna graduate from college after six years. That's interesting because obviously we're trying to get away from just saying college degree in terms of what their potential is, but that's another piece of that. Gerry Crispin: Of the 30,000, 2000 will be engineers. Of the 2000 engineers, 480 will be mechanical engineers. So of the 100,000 people starting 9th grade, there's 480 mechanical engineers. And the reason I go this way is because you don't hire engineers. You hire a mechanical engineer, you hire a high speed packaging engineer, whatever it is. Of the 480 engineers are mechanical engineers, 65 are women, 28 are Latina, Latino, 20 are Black. Now, I'm not making judgements on anything 'cause there's a lot of choice in here. But somewhere along the line, there's opportunity and there's outcomes. Gerry Crispin: And we as a society, but also we as employers, need to start looking at where we intervene in that sequence from 9th grade to college and beyond in terms of how we're providing more opportunity to increase the pool that gives us what we're looking for in the long run. And I look at companies like Wegmans, for example, that spend an enormous amount of money in hiring interns in high school who are at risk for graduating, and give them jobs at Wegmans after school, and mentors to help them understand the importance of graduating. And their outcome is significantly changing the percentages of at risk kids who graduate from high school, who then get sponsorship and work and everything else. Chad: Well, they understand their responsibility to the community, right? Most companies do not give two shits about their responsibility. They care about shareholder value and they don't care about any of that, this shit that we're talking about right now. How are we going to get that to change? Is it just gonna be the only way that you can actually compete? Gerry Crispin: It's a change in society. What is the choice that you're making in terms of where you wanna work? And part of it is we've got a new generation of folks who are coming in, which I encourage and engage in, in terms of them say how important it is for them to work for a company that has some connection to the community, some willingness to do that, and that they personally are willing to make commitments like that as well. That's kind of how our country got to where it is in a positive way, and I think we need to refine that as well. So I don't think it's something I can do or you can do individually. Chad: No. Gerry Crispin: But I do think it's something we all have to do collectively. I know that was a big rant, but, what the hell. It's been fun. Joel: I'll let you out on this one, Gerry. We're here at the UNLEASH Conference. You've been to a ton of conferences. Gerry Crispin: Yep. Joel: Anything at this one stand out to you? Any memorable experiences or takeaways? Gerry Crispin: There was a professor, I think, early on in the first day who was talking about AI... Chad: Wharton? Yeah, Wharton. Gerry Crispin: But was actually doing it at the same time he was talking about it. And he probably is, I hope they recorded it and show that, because that would be the one thing that I would look at over and over again. So there's that. I think, as I said, there's an awful lot of efficiency. I don't see an awful lot of things that are changing the game here. I see a lot of things that are trying to make whatever it is you think you're doing a little bit better. Gerry Crispin: And I think it's important to realize that those of us who have spent time looking at this for hours and hours and hours, that there's a lot of people who are looking at it for the first time, and they're just about to figure it out. And so people are coming here with different levels of expertise and I think it's great, but I do think the quality of the attendees here is quite high, and hopefully they're taking back something that they can use. Joel: And thanks to you, the level of quality in our interviews has gone up on this show. That is Gerry Gandalf Crispin, everybody. We're live from the DaXtra booth at the UNLEASH Conference in Vegas. Gerry, for those who wanna connect with you or the organization, where do you send them? Gerry Crispin: If you Google my name, you can spell Gerry with a G, you can find me. Gerry Crispin. C-R-I-S-P-I-N. Chad: He'll be in the Airstream. [laughter] Joel: And how many hats do you own? Gerry Crispin: Probably 30 or 40, but I own 10 quality hats. So there's only 50 hatmakers left in the United States for men. One is in Cave Creek. It's called Watson Hats, and it's in Phoenix. And the other one is in Santa Fe. And if anybody wants to go buy those hats, it's great, but it's not cheap either. Joel: Yeah, tell 'em Gerry sent you... Gerry Crispin: Yeah, exactly. Joel: For the deep, deep discount. Chad: Discount code Gerry with a G. Joel: G. That's another one in the can, Chad. Thanks Gerry. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, Nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It is so weird. We out.

The pendulum goes back-and-forth. In 2021, a survey was published that showed people had never been more afraid to speak their minds (a shocking 9 out of 10 people have felt emotionally or physically unsafe to speak their mind more than once in the past 18 months. Unsurprisingly, the conversation topics that have generated the most fear include political or social issues (74%) and COVID-19 issues (70%). It was the peak of MeToo and George Floyd cancel culture. Fast forward to today, and thought leaders from Professor Scott Galloway to James Carville are pushing back. It's a lot to digest. That's why we invited Justin Jones-Fosu, founder and CEO of Work. Meaningful. to the show. Author of the upcoming book "Respectfully Disagree," Justin and the boys cover a wide array of topics that many are afraid to bridge, but shouldn't be. If you've ever found yourself keeping quiet, instead of engaging, this is a must-listen. And if you speak your mind on every occasion to do so, it might just be for you too. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Ooooooh, yeah. It's Caitlin Clark's favorite podcast, aka The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Lisa Leslie to my Ann Meyer, Chad Sowash is in the house. Chad: Yes. Joel: As we welcome Justin Jones-Fosu, Founder and CEO of Work. Meaningful. And I put the pause in there because the company is literally Work, period, Meaningful, period, which may be my first question. But, Justin, welcome to the podcast. [laughter] Justin: Thank you. I'm excited. Joel: You look excited. Chad: It doesn't quite work in a domain, does it? Work.meaningful.com? [laughter] Joel: That's right. Chad: But it could work. It's horrible. It could work, you just get meaningful.com, and the subdomain is work, so, yeah. Joel: Dot work, huh? Yeah. Chad: It could be the other way though. It could be... [overlapping conversation] Justin: It does not work. Chad: [0:01:11.9] ____ And not work. Oh. Justin: It does not work, even when I speak, people do introductions, they're like, "Work, period, Meaningful, period." I'm like, "No, no, it's not." So we just cut out the periods in introductions. [laughter] Joel: Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. So Justin, a lot of our listeners don't know you and what you're doing. As I found out in the green room, you wore pants for this, which is a good start. Justin: Yes. Joel: But let our listeners know... Chad: Thanks, yeah, appreciate that. Joel: Who is Justin, what makes him tick, and a little bit about the organization? Justin: Yeah. To the pants part, some of these times, and just to be free... Frank with you all. Joel: And free. Justin: I don't wear pants. Joel: Free and frank. Justin: Yeah. I wear underwear and a shirt, and then hopefully I don't have to get up. So just, it's just being real. Joel: Are we... Okay. Let's dive in. [laughter] Joel: Are we talking briefs, boxer briefs, boxers? What are we talking... Justin: I'm a boxer briefs. I don't know how people do boxers, 'cause you're just flapping around. And I don't know how people just do briefs, it's just too tight, so the boxer briefs are a nice merger for me. Joel: Okay. Chad: Yeah. And when they came up with the boxer brief, that was the blessed day. Joel: Very recent. Yeah. Justin: Yes. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Justin: That was gold. That's the foray into Justin. And so I am... Now, I actually just, I got married the last week, and so I'm really, really excited. Chad: What? Justin: Yeah. Yeah... Chad: Congratulations. Justin: Just got married and came back. Thank you. Just came back from my honeymoon and so... Chad: Where'd you go? Justin: I went to Asheville, one of my favorite cities in the States... Chad: Oh. Asheville is sweet. Yeah. Justin: Love the mountains. And so we had a great time, Omni Grove Park Inn, and all that good stuff. So married now, I have four kids now, I had two before, now I have joined with two, and so we have 7, 8, 12, and 12. Chad: Wow. Justin: I always wanted a big family, didn't know it was gonna happen that way. Chad: Oops. Winning. Justin: Yes, very much so. And I'm the Founder, CEO of Work. Meaningful, where we research the intersection of employee experience and inclusion. And so I've written three books. And I just have a really good time. I just love being a dad, that's one of the best things I've ever done, is just being a dad and trying to show up imperfectly for my kids. Chad: How does that help you in the work? That's the big key. Justin: Oh. Big time. I use so many examples of how I fail at being a dad. [laughter] Chad: Oh, yeah. Justin: That... [laughter] Chad: And that's like a daily basis, right? Yeah. Justin: Yes. Chad: Oh, I know. I feel you. Oh, I know. Yeah. Justin: So many leadership examples. And they've taught me a lot about, even, when we talk about a respectful disagreement, I've disrespectfully disagreed quite a bit with my kids. Chad: Oh, yeah. Justin: And it's taught me a lot about how to apologize, how to say sorry, and how to come back. Chad: Patience, man, being married... My wife makes me more patient, there's no question. But nothing makes me more patient than my kids. Joel: So do I. He may not admit it, but I bring out his patience gene. That's... [laughter] Chad: Ooh. Yeah. That's just another level of patience. Joel: I know. I know. Chad: I'm still working on it, I'm still working, I'm getting better. Joel, I'm getting better, so don't leave me. Joel: God bless you, Chad. Chad: Don't leave me. [laughter] So that being said, adding two more kids, there's more patience, there's more... And that I would assume also helps you not just with stories, but just with you and your whole personal journey. So talk about that. How did you get to where you are today? Not just the kids, not just the family, but getting to where you are from a professional standpoint, having your own company, writing books. How did you get here? Justin: Man, I think the catalyst and seeds for me were my mom. The song's like, "I get it from my mama." And literally, single mom, two rambunctious little boys, my mom just shows such great perseverance, and resilience. We were initially on welfare, we had a stint of being unhoused. My parents divorced at four, our lives completely changed, and I went to live with my mom. But even through our economic challenges, I remember my mom would take us to go to events that we didn't know a lot about. And so we volunteered 'cause we didn't have any money. And not only did she do that, but she would take us to stuff we disagreed with. And I'm like, I'm just sitting... I'm sitting there like, "Wow, why are we here? We didn't even agree with that." And... [laughter] Justin: But what she was doing, and I later asked her for my last book, I was like, "Mama, where did you get this whole mindset from?" And I realized, she shared... She was one of the first Black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force. And there were some times where she'd be stationed in Japan for two years, and there were some soldiers who never left base during that same two-year timeframe. And she was like, Justin, I don't want you and your brother to be like that, to never leave your home base to experience the beauty of people and cultures around you." And so, that was the underpinning foundation of who I became. And then through a lot of different things from bullying to zits and other things I had to learn how to be comfortable with who I am and not care as much of what people thought of me, and that moved me into going into business, getting my MBA, working for three Fortune 500 companies, and then realizing I hated corporate politics. [chuckle] Justin: And I was like, "Wait a minute, I saw... These people came in from the outside, I could do that." And so, 17 years ago I started the company, and we've just grown to learn, and now we do consulting, speaking, e-learning, books. And so for me it's just been a heart desire just to help people. And I know it sounds cheesy and corny, which I am both, but not the Chad kind. But I'm just very cheesy in the sense of, I really do love helping people. When I was upperclassman in college, I was putting on free workshops to help underclassmen get internships, and it just really became a passion for me just to help people and that aha moment to come off. So, that's where it started. Chad: Were you an Air Force brat? Was she in while... Or did she have you after? Justin: Yeah, she had me after. Chad: Okay. Okay. Justin: I do remember we did have one stint of being in Alaska. The only reason I remember that is 'cause we had the good boat and bad boat, [chuckle] and that... Chad: Ah. Justin: But I was like under four, so yeah. Chad: Okay. Yeah. The reason why I ask, I was in the military for an amount of time and the amount of diversity is almost shocking. Justin: Yeah. Chad: You were literally plucked out of your life and put into an uncomfortable situation every single day. And you learn that you progressed so much faster as a human being when you were surrounded by a bunch of people who weren't like you. And so, yeah, I could definitely see where mom... Joel: The formation. Chad: Could be incredibly helpful in pushing her kids to do the exact same thing. And that's one of the things that I always tell my kids is, "Frequently experience something that is uncomfortable, you are moving, you are learning, and that's really the only way to live." Justin: Oh my gosh, you said it, hit the head on the nail. One of the things that we came up with, called the Circles of Grace challenge, to do just that, 'cause we want to help people to put this into practice. And so for me it became something, every six months I would go to events, experiences or engage with people either I didn't know a lot about, and/or that I disagree with. And so I've kind of put that as a system into my own life because I started noticing I was conforming to my circles of comfort. And I was not leaving home base. And so I put that in for myself, now we offer it to other people. Joel: So Justin, you mentioned being cheesy, which I will say there's nothing wrong with... Justin: Thank you. [laughter] Joel: As the cheese portion of this podcast. So let's get to why we're here today. We're talking about disagreeing, doing it respectfully, cancel culture and whatnot, you can say it better than I can. But you reached out to us very eloquently about podcasts we had with Torin Ellis and had some thoughts around that, so why don't you set the table for us and then we'll get into the conversation? Justin: Yeah. For me, I love the concept and you all really talk through driving on equality and progress in the workplace. And oftentimes I find it's been difficult around these conversations to disagree with people, especially when you are uncomfortable or unsure of what you're saying. And so one of those examples came from me several years ago on LinkedIn. And I remember, as one of my six months challenges, I challenged myself to be a better advocate for women in the workplace. And so I was reading books and Harvard Business Review and Women in the Workplace and all these kind of things. And so I put up a post on my LinkedIn, to really more so educate myself, but also the other men in my community about how we can be better advocates for women in the workplace. Justin: And so I typed a post and I even put a link to LeanIn.Org, hashtag Sheryl Sandberg. And I was just like, "Hey, how can men be better advocates for women in the workplace?" And I got plethora of great suggestions from women about mentorship, meetings, how we give them space, all these kind of things. But there was one woman who posted on that, on my question to not ask women that question. And initially I was dumbfounded, I was like, "Wait a minute. Why can't we ask women that question?" And so, I was like, "Wait a minute, do you mean that we shouldn't ask women that question in a similar space to how some people say you shouldn't ask Black people how you can be better for them in the workplace?" And I was trying to connect with myself. Just in case y'all can't tell, I'm Black. [laughter] Justin: And I remembered... [laughter] Justin: I remembered in asking, I was just trying to get clarity, and she's like, "Yes, exactly. You shouldn't ask those who are oppressed. You shouldn't ask the oppressors." And so... And that's where I had a difference of opinion. And I remember, even before thinking about writing this book, I typed in LinkedIn and I have the screenshot of all, like, I respectfully disagree because one, I am open as a Black person to sharing, and I've been that person with my friends and other people that wanted to hear one example of a Black experience or what my thoughts were. And so I'm open to it. And there was many other women who were already open to it because they posted the comments. But what I learned from that interaction, because I was scared, y'all, I'm gonna be honest, I was like, "I don't wanna get canceled. I don't wanna feel like I'm mansplaining. I don't... " [laughter] Justin: All these things. So I literally, even before I replied to her post, I checked in with some of my female allies, I was like, "Hey, is this appropriate? How does this sound? How does this come off?" And I posted and shared and we had an interesting dialogue that still remains on my LinkedIn, where I was just sharing like, "Hey, I appreciate your comments. I understand that everybody is not required to respond." And that's where I think I could have added that, that little piece of, "Nobody has to respond if you don't want to, but for those who want to, feel free to." And that's one of those moments where I was leaning into the fears that many of my audience face, 'cause they don't wanna say the wrong thing, they don't wanna appear ignorant or stupid or... And so, instead they just won't say anything, and I had to be vulnerable and put myself out there. And so, I'm grateful 'cause it ended well. But they don't always end well. Chad: Not... So, it's interesting because I don't mind looking stupid. Okay? Joel: He's really good at it. Chad: It's the only way that I can learn. And then you've got guys who are like, "Oh, I don't wanna get canceled." To me, that's an excuse. Okay? It's an excuse to not be uncomfortable. I don't mind being uncomfortable because I need to be able to understand what I don't know. And if I ask somebody something and they're like, "You shouldn't say that," well, that's one person's opinion. We say stuff on this show all the time, we get a ton of people that say that they enjoy it, and then maybe a few that say that they don't. That's okay. My big question to you is, it feels like there are a lot of, let's say men, and a lot of White men who you hear say, "Well, I don't wanna get canceled." How do you break through that and say, "Look, if you're coming to it with the right intent, it might sound dumb, you might sound ignorant, whatever, the only way that you're gonna get past that is to ask the question"? How do we get past that fear? How do we get past that, they feel like they're gonna get shamed? How do we get past that just so that we can have the conversation? Justin: Yeah. That's a great question, Chad. And let me just kudos to you because you are far more advanced than a lot of people. And that's sad to say, in our society... Chad: Say more. Say more. Justin: Yeah. [laughter] Justin: You are far more advanced... Joel: Don't encourage him. Justin: In the whole aspect of you're not afraid to look stupid. I'm the same way. Our society doesn't condition that. Our society... I love Carol Dweck's work on mindset. And one of the things she talks about is that there's these two mindsets we generally operate by, growth and fixed. And fixed are the type of people that they don't wanna look bad especially compared to other people, they don't wanna come off as ignorant, they wanna be seen as all-knowing to some degree. And that's why you have people who will lie about stuff like seeing a movie that they've never seen, just because they don't wanna appear like they don't... They're in the outs of what people are talking about. But the growth mindset people talks about are, is that failure is just another data point of learning. And that ignorance is actually, just means you don't know something yet. And one of the things that, as we talk about the process, I encourage people to do are normally two things. Justin: Number one, is to remember and think back a time where they were ignorant in something, didn't know it, and they leaned into it and how they've grown for it. So first, recognizing success, that's what motivational theory tells us all day long. Number two, is to engage in things that will help them to grow into the growth mindset. So there's two things that I do and that one is, I talked about earlier the Circles of Grace challenge, where I'm consistently putting myself in positions of learning, where I don't know, where I'm unsure, unfamiliar. And then number two, I do this thing called a birthday challenge. And a birthday challenge is every year I challenge myself to do one thing that I've never done before. And so I often talk about that. Like, I went skiing for the first time when I was 30 at this little place that you all haven't heard of called Vail. And I remember when I was there skiing... [laughter] Justin: I was so embarrassed because I'm in my 30s and I'm struggling up the magic carpet, and these little kids who are like four or five, like, woosh, woosh, and I'm just like, "Do I belong here?" I'm sitting here thinking I'm stupid. But I kept going back, not to Vail, 'cause that was really expensive. But I kept going back... [laughter] Justin: To North Carolina and I took my kids with me. And it's that consistency as I got better. So those are some of the things we think of from a process, that people have to get used to that feeling of uncomfortability and it's usually not in high-stake situations that the comfort starts. And then they start... Then we challenge people to start translating that to things that may be a little bit more uncomfortable, or could be compromising with their career, because that's really what some people are thinking about, there's some things in their careers that they're really scared of, like, "Am I gonna be able to provide for my family?" So, for some people it's a real true genuine fear. Joel: Yeah. When was that conversation, Justin, with the fear of mansplaining? Was that a few years ago? Or was that recently? Justin: Yeah. That was around 2022. Joel: Okay. Justin: Yeah, 2021, 2022. I know it was post-COVID. Joel: Yeah. I think that might've been the height of sort of fear. There was a fairly famous survey in 2021 that found out that 74% of people were afraid to talk about social issues, and 70% around COVID and being anti-vax or, there was a real fear to do that. So I'm curious, what is your opinion on the current state of this issue? I feel like we've... The pendulum has swung all the way one way, and it's starting to come back the other way, but I'm curious about your opinion. Justin: Yeah. I think to some degree it's rightsizing. There was a big fear of saying the wrong thing, feeling bad about things, a sense of shame. Even our approach to DEI is not shame-based. It's a learning-based approach, it's growth-based, it's things that we can consistently learn. But in the same token, I think people are now, because it was so far up here, people are now trying to swing it all the way back, "I can say anything I want to, and I don't care what anybody thinks. And I can... " And I think that's also not productive and healthy. And that's why for me, I don't mind conflict. I don't even mind disagreement because we're just going to disagree. Joel, you and I, you already disagree with Chad and I about hair. And so one of the things that... [laughter] Justin: That's important in this discussion is, how do I still respect people even in the midst of saying what's true to me? And there's a way that we really dug in deep to understand how I can still honor the humanity of people, even if I vehemently disagree with their ideology. And it's tough, it's not easy, but it is possible. Chad: And the bedrock of this is communication, right, and being able to demonstrate that you care. Justin: Yes. Chad: It's well-intended, but there's something that you call the "Double Dutch Communication." Can you explain that? Because I think we all go through it in our lives and we have to fight it. So can you explain that a little bit? Justin: Yeah. Double Dutch comes from jumping rope. And so for those who jumped rope when they were little or yesterday, because we're all still little, the single rope is one rope that's twirling, and then Double Dutch are two ropes that's twirling, and if somebody's waiting to jump in, like, "All right, let's go. Come on, let's go." And they're waiting to jump in, finding that right moment. And that's often how we communicate, is that we're often waiting to jump in. We're waiting to jump in and say what we believe, what our thoughts are, why we disagree with that, why we think that's stupid, "Where did you come up with that?" And instead of waiting to jump in, what if we waited and we listened and we ask more questions, and we filled in the gaps with curiosity instead of conclusions. Those are that moments where instead of jumping in, we take a step back to fully understand. And let's be very clear, oftentimes I think the best of people. I think the majority of people, they're not narcissists, they're not all about themselves or selfish. What I find often is that people are just simply trying to find connections with people. Justin: So if I said, "Hey, Joel, I've been... I went to [0:18:21.3] ____, there's a favorite seafood restaurant," and Joel's like, "Yo, that's great." Now normally what we do, instead of saying, "Oh, what made the seafood restaurant great for you?" We say, "But have you been to this one?" [laughter] And it's that desire to form connections. We call it The Power of 3, a very practical way to do it, where you listen at least to the third level of the conversation. And it's especially true with people that we disagree with. And it works really well, even with kids, I practice on my own, where I'm like, Lydia's like... My daughter Lydia, she's like, "Well, at recess, Mary Beth threw the ball out the window." And I'll be honest with you, I don't really care that Mary Beth threw the ball out the window, but I do care about my daughter. And so I'm like, "Okay, so what happened after she threw the ball out the window?" And so now we're listening to the level, at least the level 3 where it gives us an opportunity to better understand someone rather than taking the exit on them with our own conclusions and our own biases. Chad: Talk about taking the exit real quick. What does that mean? Justin: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. Taking the exit is what our brains do. 'Cause I'm a big studier of how our brains work and all these things. And our brains are wired to conserve energy for things it thinks it doesn't know. And so when we get second, third-hand information, we start categorizing for future use. And so if you constantly saw a person wearing a red shirt that was doing something really bad or something like that, that you're... You see somebody with a red shirt, your brain goes back to, "Oh, remember those instances where you remember that person do," and that's what our brains do. It's the same way if you're driving Monday through Friday, you take an exit, and then one day you're supposed to go straight 'cause you have an appointment or something. Chad: You still take the exit. Justin: You take the exit, right? [laughter] Justin: And it's because your brain is like, it's on autopilot trying to conserve energy. And that's why intentionality is such an important aspect of driving towards some really dope humans. And so that's what taking the exit and not taking the exit means is, is to actually be intentional to go forward and learn about people, to hear their stories as we engage. Joel: Were you surprised to see so many of these issues politicized as they were and continue to be? And thoughts on election year, are these issues gonna come to the forefront even more than they were a few years ago? Justin: I wasn't surprised to see these be politicized. Let me put it this way. There are good politicians. [chuckle] I haven't met many of them. And... [laughter] Justin: There are... Oftentimes, it's just you're catering to your base. And so, I'd be in meetings with politicians, and they would say, "I actually agree with what this person just said, but I can't go before my base and say that." So they'll go and say, "Well, I disagree with that bill. I think it's the most stupid thing ever." And so once you've peeled behind the curtain, you realize really what's happening that it's more about a show for their supporters, their base. So I'm not surprised that it's been politicized because anything that can be politicized and give people a bump, people will take advantage of. Joel: And it's a great way to get viewers as well if you're a... Justin: 100%. Joel: A media conglomerate that's politicized. I'm curious, it didn't surprise me, obviously, when the Right went full on against sort of the movement, the Hannity's, that didn't surprise me. What surprised me a little bit today is you're seeing more and more pundits from the Left speaking critically about this. Professor Galloway, which Chad and I both listen to Pivot, he's talking about DEI being not about color or sex, but about poverty, the haves and the have-nots. So, changing the narrative there. James Carville, a very popular Democratic pundit, worked for Clinton, recently said in an interview that he was concerned about there being too many preachy females that would scare off the electorate from voting for Biden. So curious about your thoughts on the Left speaking out on this movement as well, which personally surprises me, but I'd love to get your take on that. Justin: I am so thankful. I don't mean I'd agree with everything that, what someone says, but this conversation is so nuanced. Literally for a decade, we've been speaking out against a lot of the things that have been happening in DEI. 'Cause for us, DEI just simply means difference. Diversity and inclusion is difference. All of us are a part of it. That's why I love when people say, "I don't like diversity," I'm like, "You don't like yourself? Because you're a part of diversity." 'Cause diversity simply means difference in race, gender, identity, socioeconomic status, geography, country of... All of these things. And so from the last decade, I've been cautioning members within the DEI community about how we've been approaching it. One, to move away from shame, because shame is gonna turn into resentment. And then two, to move away from a deficit approach of like, "Oh, it's 2024 and you still struggle with?" Justin: 'Cause guess what, y'all? I still struggle with some stuff. There's still issues I have and biases I have, but more from an abundance approach of helping people to meet right where they are and then helping them grow. Because if you keep telling me, if you have a partner at home and your spouse or somebody says, every time you come home they tell you about all the stuff you didn't do, it's gonna get tiring coming home. But if they're encouraging and they say, "Hey, I wanna say I appreciate, I appreciate what you did last week," or you did a good [0:23:27.7] ____ PR, da, da, da. And they're building relational capital to then be able to ask, "Hey, what do you think about this?" That, I feel, is one of many approaches that just hasn't been executed well. And that's been our approach for the last decade. Chad: Justin, you said in one of your talks, "Stand up for the needs of others even when it has absolutely nothing to do with yours." Right? Justin: Yes. Chad: So, here's the thing, that's counter to what we've been taught after the last 40 years of rugged individualism. We wanted to push away from socialism and that community effort, and that kind of thing where we have to focus on ourselves and our family. So, it's like we've been programmed in an entirely different way. But yet, when you say these types of things, it makes sense, but it goes against our programming. So, how do we get beyond that programming that we've had for decades, decades, decades? Justin: Yeah. Joel: Centuries. Chad: And tomorrow, start to care about the person to our left and to our right. I know, now, it wasn't centuries, Joel, when we grew up, we were more community-focused... Joel: Which was not centuries ago, by the way. Chad: No. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. [laughter] Justin: My hair reflects that, but yeah... [laughter] Chad: Yeah. Don't say that. But today, it's had this compounding factor where it all sounds great and everybody shakes their head, but the words don't actually match the outcomes and/or the performance of your neighbors or the people that you work right next to. How do we get past that? Justin: In order to get past it, we have to understand why it's occurring. And one of the things that's occurred is, there's this theory called "social isolation theory." And as we are isolated socially and confining ourselves to our circles of comfort, one of the things that ends up happening is, we've heard it, echo chamber, all the things, people around us. And so with cancel culture, it's easy for me to just cancel you out, to say, "Well, if you don't agree with me, I'll de-friend you, I'll take you off, I'll unlink you," all these kind of things. And so we're not getting or hearing from people who are different. And so, it sounds very simple, but it actually really, really is, but it's hard, is to be intentional with hearing the stories of people in our communities, people in our workplaces, and even our family members. I learned so much by sitting down and asking my mom and dad about their stories. That's how I found out about the whole Air Force thing, what my mom was intentionally doing. I'd never gotten those stories before. Justin: And so, if you think about the programming that we have, we're so programmed to be about ourselves at times. And that's why one of the lines that's so important to us is that, seek to be more interested than interesting. So I challenge myself when I go to events where I encounter my neighbors and things, it can be so easy to start talking about, "Well, I do this and I do that, and yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been here, and I have this degree." But I wanna be more impressed by who they are rather than impress them by who I am. Now, that's taken work, that's taken a great therapist that I still have, and a lot of hard work in that area. But those are the things that began the catalyst of change. Me doing the Circles of Grace challenge, which used to be Six Months Challenge, has been so helpful as I went into experiences of people I disagreed with, and I didn't know a lot about. But you know what I did? It helped me to find the gray in the conversation. It helped me to see how I could separate two concepts from an individual and their ideology. And those are the things I think it takes moments to do. Justin: Now, let me be very clear. In the work we do, it's not about a quick fix, and we're very intentional about it. It's not just, "Hey, do these five things and you'll be great." No, it doesn't work that way, that's not life, that's not real life. But it takes consistent effort, and over time, you start noticing progress and you start seeing improvement. And so that for me is a direct correlation to the challenges of our decades of choosing to be intentional to hear stories. And that's why the Circles of Grace challenge is very important. That's why The Power of 3 is very important. That's why I encourage people to go out and hear the stories of their neighbors and just like, "Hey, I walk... Glad you're in the community. I realize I never talk to you. I'd love just to hear more about you," and start learning that. And I tell people, "Blame the bald guy." You can blame me and say, "Hey, you got this challenge from this book or this talk to be able to do that." And the more we hear people's stories, the more we're able to learn. And what we're seeing is a greater sense of empathy it's created as we hear people's stories. And we start like, "Oh my gosh, he struggled with that. I can talk to him," or, "I had better understanding of why that came to play." Joel: Yeah. I love that take, 'cause I think it's so ironic that, don't communicate for fear of getting canceled or disagreeing, but it's that same silence that divides us. Look, it's the married couple that doesn't talk that is on the road to divorce. It's communicating that breaks the ice on all this stuff and gets us to someplace of healing, not to get on my pedestal too much. I'm curious, pivoting from that, corporations and employees took very different stances in this period. Some companies were freewheeling with the political discourse, say what you want, you can, social media, do whatever, and then you had some companies go the opposite way and say, "Look, we're here to make money. We're not here to drive political change. We're here to appease shareholders and the bottom line." What's your take on corporate responsibility around this issue, whether it's communication or controlling cancel culture or fighting it? Do corporations have a responsibility in your mind? Justin: Yeah, corporations definitely have a responsibility, but we have to ask who the responsibility is to. And so one of the things is, they definitely have a responsibility to their employees. [chuckle] And one of the things that's been very big for us is, as a former HR worker and professional, we used to tell people stuff like, "Leave work at work and home at home." But that doesn't work. People are bringing work with them to home and home to work. And so, why not create the best possible examples for people to learn? Now, first you have to assess where your organization is. If your organization hasn't been tackling issues, hasn't been diving into these things, and it's really new to it, you don't start off with, "We're gonna create a big statement." No, no, no, no. You start asking, "All right, what does that next level of change look like for us?" We call it the "Tortoise Principle." If you can see right above me, it's a big wooden tortoise. Because we realized that a lot of people are hares, even corporations in our society. Something happens and they immediately dart out and like, "I'm gonna change." But then there's no long-lasting sustainable change. Justin: And we tell our clients and other people we work with, to take the tortoise approach. Now, we got the tortoise wrong, the tortoise wasn't slow, which we wrongly called the tortoise. The tortoise was strategic. We only called the tortoise slow compared to the hare, but we see how the race ended up, the tortoise ended up winning. And that's what we are encountering with organizations, is our responsibility, one, to prepare our employees. Great organizations I've seen do this well is that they've modeled this behavior with their leaders. They've shown how you have this kind of discourse at work and still be very respectful and hear different perspectives, and understand and honor other people and their viewpoints. And I've seen some that have stayed silent and then guess what? The conversations are still happening. And they're happening at the lunch table. They're happening during break. They're happening when people are going out for walks. And sometimes other people are hearing about it. So, I think that the first responsibility for corporations are to their employees. Justin: Now, what you decide to do or what issues you lean into as companies, that's really gonna be a strategic decision. There's not a broad stripe of that you should care about this issue because there's so many different issues that we can care about. Even for me, when we talk about allyship, there's a difference between allyship and advocacy. Allyship means I agree and I'm standing with you. Advocacy means I stand for your right to be you. That's the way I define the two. I'm not gonna be an ally for something I don't agree with. But I can be an advocate for who you are and what you stand for. So anyway, I come back to this place of, that's the corporate responsibility, it's, one, to their employees, and two, that they have to strategically decide on what matters to them as an organization. And there's no right way to do it. There's no rule book to this. Chad: So let's go to the harder portion of this. When you can get face-to-face with somebody, it's easier to find the gray because people aren't... When you start talking about keyboard warriors, which I'm gonna get into now, and trolls. And it's hard and it's tiring at times for somebody who doesn't want to look to the gray, they just want to stay in what they know and they're looking for every reason not to agree with you even though you're trying to find the gray with them. Many cases, unfollow, or block, or what have you, because it just seems like social media is so expansive and there are so many voices out there. What do you say, what should somebody do to be able to protect their own psyche during this whole process in looking for the gray, but yet looking for people who want to get into the gray with them as opposed to just start a fucking fight? Justin: Yeah. First of all, online is really hard. Chad: It is. Justin: And there's a lot of research that shows just the communication online, people will read into it what they want to. Even text messages, you send your partner a text message, "You look great today." They're like, "What? I didn't look great yesterday?" So the... [laughter] So just even the inflection of our voices. Joel: I love the Key and Peele skit, which I'm sure you've all seen, where they're texting each other... Justin: Yes. Chad: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Joel: And one's like so... [laughter] Joel: Anyway. Sorry. Chad: Oh, let's go. Oh, let's go. Joel: If you haven't, Key and Peele YouTube disagreement text or whatever. That's... Chad: Oh, that is awesome. That is good. Justin: I love that. That's a classic one. But that's why I often tell people, online is the most difficult place to actually have respectful disagreement, because of how people will read into it. But I have to come to it with this understanding, who is the only person that you and I can control? Chad: Me. Justin: Our kids. And so what... And I am joking, I tried that and that doesn't work. [laughter] Chad: I was gonna say, I don't even know how you do that. Justin: It didn't really work, I've tried it many years and I've still been a failure at that. [laughter] Justin: But one of the things I found is that I can only control myself, I can't control what other people do, how they respond. Trolls gonna be trolls. And so I give two different examples of that, one very personal, one a story that I heard and prepared for this book. Some people have trolled me on my diversity videos online. And I'm probably the most empathetic D&I person, or just how I approach it, I give people benefit of the doubt, and they were... And I can tell they didn't watch my video. [laughter] And they were like, "I don't think we need D&I," and they put it on YouTube. And I was like, "Thank you so much for your perspective. Why don't you think we need D&I?" And it was like, "Oh yeah, 'cause da da da." And I was like, "Wow. You're a great example of why diversity is important because you have a difference of opinion. And even if I disagree with you, I wanna say thank you for sharing your opinion." Crickets. Chad: Yeah. Justin: Right? And that's normally, when I get trolls that are going after that, I love them with kindness. I'm like, I'm trying to understand, I'm practicing the stuff I teach. But the second thing is the seed planting aspect of this. One of my former colleagues, he used to be a former skinhead, very misogynistic, racist views, all the things, I was really curious about his catalyst moment out of this... Out of the movement. Chad: Oh yeah. Justin: And he was like, "Justin," he was like, "Oh, I loved when people used to call me names." He's like, "That used to fuel me." He was like, "The thing that would... The catalyst of seeds of change were the very same people that I demeaned that still chose to show me respect." He's like, "They'll never know because those were chance encounters, but they took time to hear my story or how did I get here or... " And I'm like, oh my gosh, even in those moments where we might be face-to-face with somebody who could be a troll or who's not willing to engage in the gray, that we still have the power to choose how we show up and how we choose to respect them. It's our choice. Respect does not have to be earned, I hate that statement in society. Why do... Like forgiveness, it's the distant cousin. Respect is a choice that we can give. Now, to the point about boundaries, we have to be honest with ourselves. There are times where it's like, "Hey, I can't have that conversation ever." And there's sometimes, "I can't have that conversation right now." And there's many times when a big situation happen in society and my friends would reach out to me like, "Hey, Justin, how to respond." Justin: I was like, "Hey, y'all give me a month 'cause I just can't... I'm gonna... Be honest, I'm gonna respond from a place of pain and not a place of help. And I need time to process." And so we... Boundary setting is not some clear-cut rule book about when's the right time to do it and when's not the right time, but you have to check in with yourself. And I ask myself these two questions. If I respond in this place or if I engage in this place, am I going to respond or engage out of a place of hurt and pain, or am I going to respond and engage out of a place of help and moving the conversation forward? If I'm honest with myself and it's hurt and pain 'cause I'm feeling it, I choose not to engage in that moment. And so that's... Boundary setting is very important to this work because we can't give ourselves fully to everybody, but I often, especially the trolls, I often ask to actually have a conversation with them. I really wanna get on, I wanna get, like, "Hey, are you willing to get on one of the face chat things where you don't have to have my number or anything like that, but just so that we can actually have a conversation?" And I never... Nobody ever picks me up on that offer. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we appreciate this conversation. That is Justin Jones-Fosu, Founder and CEO at Work. Meaningful. Justin, for our listeners who wanna connect with you, maybe buy the book when it's coming out, where can they connect? Justin: Yeah. They can connect on LinkedIn, Justin Jones-Fosu, or go to howtorespectfullydisagree.com where you have a lot more information, bonuses and all that kind of stuff there. Other than that, just connect with me online and if you try to troll me, I may ask you to get on a phone conversation. [laughter] Joel: Troll away, baby, troll away. Chad: And he might not be wearing pants, by the way. Justin: Right. [laughter] Joel: Or if it's like me... Justin: Today is a good day. Joel: There's no underwear at all. That's another one in the can, everybody. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast, with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing, just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one, cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss, so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

On this episode, the boys are chatting with Anne Fulton, founder and CEO of Fuel 50. They dive into the impact of AI on businesses, the revolution in talent management, and the evolution of education in a skills-based economy. Anne emphasizes the importance of employee voice, data-driven change, and branding in today's workforce. Discover the origin of Fuel 50's name and its mission to match people with opportunities. Don't miss this lively discussion on HR, talent management, and the future of work. Connect with Anne and learn more about Fuel 50 at fuel50.com. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:27.665) Yeah, what's up kids? It's Frodo's favorite podcast aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host, Joel Cheeseman joined as always the new to my Zealand Chad so washes in the house as we welcome and Fulton founder and CEO of fuel 50 and welcome to the show calling in from down under How are you Chad (00:40.508) always new. Chad (00:50.217) Not just calling in, she literally, she's already whine, she's ready, she knew exactly what to expect for this show. Joel Cheesman (00:57.943) She's in her evening wear. She hasn't even gone to bed. It's like 8 a.m. She's got a wine glass of gin. Anne (00:58.264) I'm out. Anne (01:01.905) Hahaha! Chad (01:04.328) First and foremost, I don't know what Ann's evening wear looks like, so I cannot attest to that. She might be a jammy person. Who knows? Joel Cheesman (01:09.549) She's got the pearls on. She's looking good, looking good. Anne, please, please save us from ourselves and say hello. Anne (01:16.068) the face time. I know. So cool to be on with you guys. Yeah, I know you anything's coming my way. So I'm ready. I've just come off a 9am wine tasting session. So it was a very respectable 10pm London 5am or 5pm East Coast, but I was the host. So there you go. Set me up for a good one with you guys. Chad (01:16.958) Not gonna happen. Chad (01:34.088) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (01:38.641) Perfect, perfect. You are ready to rock and roll. So, Ann, a lot of our listeners don't know you, don't know Fuel 50. Give us a Twitter bio about you and then a little bit about Fuel 50 before we get into the Q&A. Chad (01:40.712) Five o'clock somewhere. Amen. Anne (01:53.715) Okay, so Anne Fulton, long time dreamer, as all entrepreneurs are. So, you know, great believer in creating amazing futures for people. So career matching has always been my thing since I was 14 years old, took a careers test, said I should be a funeral director, thought I could do better. Anne (02:15.023) created Fuel 50 to match people to futures. So Fuel 50 is now a talent marketplace matching people to opportunities, futures, career journeys, learning, mentors, coaches, everything that you need to make it happen. And that's delivering organizations business benefit of people will stay if they can see a future. So we're delivering retention, we're delivering productivity gains, we're delivering faster to market for people. If you're taking an internal hire, placing them, you'll get better productivity, better performance. Takes two years for an external to match. So reducing cost of hire. So we're doing all sorts of things for individual good. Joel Cheesman (02:51.825) And you've been around a while. This is no startup, right? You've got some gray hairs in there somewhere as an organization, right? Anne (02:58.879) Yeah, so I think we hit the market. Thank you. We hit the market in 2014 at the awesome new HR technology at HR Tech. So yeah, we've been around 10 years now. But partnering with some of the world's biggest and best organizations, I'll put United Nations in there. I could throw in Meta, J&J. So some of these organizations, real enterprise grade where we're delivering scalable. Chad (03:00.737) and doesn't, but yes they do. Joel Cheesman (03:02.826) And looks fabulous. Nah. Anne (03:27.979) reskilling for the future. So that's our mission. Chad (03:31.212) So, before we start talking revolution, because hell, I wanna talk about that, let's talk a little bit about how AI has really kind of like thrown a wrench into some business plans, but for others, it has sent them into warp speed. Where are you guys at? Is it touching? Is it affecting any impact? Talk a little bit about that. Anne (03:52.119) If I start with AI for our own business, like, oh my God, I mean, we've been working on AI for many years before this generative AI revolution. And now we're able to code faster, we're able to deploy faster, we're able to bring benefit to our end users. And whether that's an HR person, a line manager or... an end user asking questions. So AI has been fabulous for what we are doing and that matching of people to futures just becomes more powerful with AI support. So that's our own use case. We're having lots of fun. I think our customers. Chad (04:31.272) Did you say you're using it for coding? Anne (04:34.471) Yeah. So, you know, coding efficiency or code quality reviews. So, yeah, there's all sorts of use cases that can actually, you know, deliver enablement. So. Joel Cheesman (04:44.19) Met as a client chat, so she's got Zuckerberg on speed dial. So she's into that year of efficiency, just like he is. Chad (04:50.672) Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, let's jump into some revolution here. I understand there's a book, Talent Revolution. So we've been hearing about a revolution forever. It seems like it's coming back. I don't know if it's this AI thing or whatever the hell it is, but you see a revolution in the future or you're hoping for one. Talk a little bit about that. Why write a book? Anne (05:17.755) Yeah, so I mean, the talent revolution for me was, you know, an absolutely necessary thing for us to put out there. And the reason for that is that we are overdue for this revolution. It became more urgent during the pandemic with the employee experience. However, you know, our original desire for change and transformation for organizations came from, you know, the methodologies where you had you were putting people in a box, right? You know, only the top right. people would have a future. You wouldn't care about the rest of your organization. And in fact, some would say, you exit them as fast as you can, anyone bottom left. So that kind of methodology, we thought was flawed. There were succession plans for the top 100 people, possibly in an organization. But what about the other thousands of people that have talent and potential if you can match them to an opportunity? So we really thought talent management systems, putting people in a box, controlled by HR, was ready for disrupt. So, you know, that's been very much our strong thesis is that we have to do things differently today than we were doing 10 years ago. So you know, there's so much more that we can be doing. Joel Cheesman (06:27.143) sleep. Yeah, talk about pre pandemic, post pandemic, because I feel like the pandemic and the work from home. That was sort of a start of the things changing significantly. Where do you do you agree with that? And where do we go from here? Because I think a lot of people would like to take us back pre pandemic, to the good old days, where do you stand on where we are and where we're going? Anne (06:35.633) I feel like, I can't take it. Anne (06:55.475) Yeah, I do think pandemic was such an inflection point and I actually wrote the book when I was in a managed facility for two weeks and under control and under the thumb of the New Zealand government at that moment in time and I was like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? I need to do something productively with this time while I'm stuck in a room for two weeks, not allowed to leave my room. So that was an inflection point, but there were other things happening at the same time that I think you know, created real momentum. So yes, you know, thankfully, we now have this real commitment to hybrid work, you know, or remote working, and that people can contribute from anywhere. So that's part of the revolution. The other big thing that was happening at the same time, along with this, you know, challenge to us all as to how we work, was the Me Too revolution. And to me, that was employee voice. All of a sudden, employees can no longer be ignored. We need to listen. We need to pay attention to what our people are saying to us. You know, and MeToo's at an extreme end of the equation. However, every leader, every HR practitioner needs to create opportunity for voice for their people. And we're ready for bottom up approaches to things. And that's part of this revolution that we see. Joel Cheesman (08:12.529) That was yerk. Chad (08:12.692) It just seems like the system's been broke for so long. I mean, top to bottom, top to bottom. I mean, whether it's attraction, not using the talent that you already have in your database, not using the talent that you already have in the ranks of your organization. So from obviously, you know, the internal mobility standpoint, like you're talking about, being able to actually understand skills, once again, not whether it's external or internal. So you talk about pandemic, me too. demographics, I mean, new generation, Gen Z, really starting to show itself in the workforce. And then obviously, tech, the velocity of tech is just immense right now. So I mean, this seems like a perfect time for the book. The question is, how do you get that adoption to happen, which is the hardest thing in our industry it seems. Anne (09:04.319) Yeah, I think you've got to think carefully about what's the unit of contribution that we're talking about here. And so, you know, I'm going to say skills are, you know, you've heard it before, that skills are the economic unit and the new currency in this economy, in this talent economy today. And if you're thinking around that, you know, I heard Danny Johnson from Redthread. saying the other day, and I actually really liked it, why are we imprinting a work methodology that's 150 years old, created in the Ford era? Why are we still creating these organizational structures when the way that work is being delivered is radically different today? Why are we looking at this imprint model? And the answer, the unpacking of the answer is looking at what's the unit of contribution. So are we thinking about skills? Are we thinking about tasks? Because I think. you know, we need to go on this journey of moving past jobs or roles as being the unit, the economic unit, which has served us for many, many years. But we are now ready to move from jobs to skills or jobs to tasks as an organizing principle for work. Joel Cheesman (10:17.937) Where do you put education in that? So what I'm hearing you saying is that the traditional sort of for your college, that's a lot less important if it's a skills-based economy. So where does that put education in you and how does that evolve? Anne (10:35.887) I mean, I really love that question. So thank you for bringing it up. I mean, I think education is going to be consumed differently. I think millennials and Gen Zs, I mean, they don't necessarily rely on classroom learning. If they want to figure something out, they're going straight to chat GPT to answer, to ask the question, or Googling it, and finding in the moment tutorials. So the unit of learning is consumed very differently. That being said, I think there's a wonderful transformational work that involved with University of California network and led by this amazing technologist at UCI, very, very visionary around joining the dots between universities. students and workplaces. So how do we create this seamless journey between work that exists and this wonderful learning population and how do we deliver this lifetime ongoing learning that means that people will have skills that remain relevant? So yeah, really interesting work being done there. Chad (11:47.2) So that's interesting from the standpoint of what we're used to is go to college, go to university when you are in your early 20s. And then 40 years later, you didn't go back to school at all, right? It doesn't seem like we've consumed the education or at least training like you're talking about. It is a journey of learning. It's not just it happens once, wait, they've got a master's degree from 40 years ago. That's awesome. But we're looking at education and also, as you talked about, work in a different way. Anne (12:25.279) Yeah, I think I mean, the obsolescence of skills, you know, or the shelf life of skills, you know, scares me because yes, it's exhilarating, right? You know, it used to be that you'd come out with a skill and you think you've got five years. Now it's more like two. So that does scare me. So how do we enable people to really, because it's exhilarating so fast, right? You come out with a degree that you, you know, come out from school, and you think you're, you're good, really, you've probably got two years to take that skill set. You know, if you actually do come out with Chad (12:40.712) Why is it scary? Chad (12:54.194) Uh huh. Anne (12:55.135) meaningful skills. You know, you've got two years to leverage that before you're on to the next wave of learning. You know, so how do we support that? Chad (13:02.612) But what you're talking about though, is learning, a constant learning. So it seems like that's the only way we're gonna be able to keep up with tech in the first place. Is to be, instead of just doing this block of four years, right, or block of two years, block of four years, you're getting up to speed with whatever the certification block is, and it's just continuous learning. So it seems like again, revolutionary wise, it plays right into what your book's talking about. Joel Cheesman (13:07.69) Lifelong learning. Anne (13:33.379) I think it's also into the marketplace mentality, which is learning is not consumed necessarily via a formal university or a school-based education. That learning is from a colleague. It's right. You've got some reverse mentoring happening with somebody that's slightly better than you, at Excel, for example. Or you've got, like, I really want lessons from my CFO. It's like, how do I do a pivot table? So. So it's getting those in the moment learning connections, like who's better at this than me? Who can coach me on this? Who can mentor me? Where's my learning asset that I can get at my fingertips when I want it? So that really fast connection to what's relevant, but also getting an insight into what are the hots, what is trending in my organization? Where's the burning need? If I can anticipate that these three to five things are gonna be an issue for my organization in three to five years time, or two years time, I need to start investing. So I'm gonna become an AI trainer personally. I'm gonna train the AI. You know, that's gonna be my role. And I think it's gonna be every one of our roles, right? As any kind of individual contributing, we're all gonna be working with AI. And yes, I want my doctor. Yes, I want my lawyer to be using AI so that they're getting better, sharper, faster answers, but I still want them there. So I think we've all gotta work with AI to deliver that benefit. I just want to leave you with it. I've got another kind of quote that I'd like to share with you, right? And this is, and it does lead to the AI question, but I quite like this one from Josh Berson, which is that humans are the only appreciable asset on your balance sheet, on your P&L. So people are the only appreciable asset, right? So think about it. Chad (15:20.508) You're only... Anne (15:23.011) only asset that appreciates, everything else depreciates, right? Your laptop, you know, your phone, you know, your tools, your machinery, your cars, everything depreciates. People, people, no comment, but people, people can appreciate, we can develop and grow our skills, right? So we should be able to increase the value of your skills, talents and your people. That's our lifelong mission. Joel Cheesman (15:30.605) He's so wise. Chad (15:49.928) So the funny thing is what Josh forgot is that algorithms are going to be able to scale faster than humans. So that's a big change. That's where Josh is like 20 years behind the rest of the conversation. Yeah. So great job, Josh. Yeah. I mean, I think from the standpoint of how we're doing business, we need to change dramatically, which again, you know, we're talking about providing a revolution. And if we can tie and we should be tying. Joel Cheesman (15:56.017) Mm-hmm. That sounds like appreciation. Anne (16:02.371) Yeah. Chad (16:18.828) our job. So we talk about talent. If we don't have talent, the company doesn't run, at least today, right? There aren't robots and algorithms that can do everything that we need to do. And that's going to be, I mean, I think we'll be gone by that time that happens. But at the end of the day, talent is what provides product, sales, service, retention, expanding wallet share, all of that. You can't do it without that, right? But once again, talent acquisition. Anne (16:29.935) And that's can be, I think. Chad (16:48.952) needs to be able to make that business case. Does this book actually help practitioners better understand the dots, number one? Because you've got to see the dots before you can connect the dots. Is that really what you're trying to go after here? Anne (17:04.015) Yes, I think that they need to be enabled to see the business benefits. Right. So, I mean, I always like to start from, you know, what's the return on investment? What's the dollar impact and why should we be even considering doing things differently? So, you know, HR more generally needs to move from, you know, focusing on employment to focusing on orchestrating work, orchestrating learning. You know, so, so can you being the conductors as opposed to the controllers. Of employment entry exit, right? Joel Cheesman (17:38.293) And you have a, your company has a global footprint and just. Pardon me. Joel Cheesman (17:47.921) Are we on a delay? Am I lagging, Chad? Anne (17:52.078) I'm trying to, I need to drop my camera. I just couldn't quite find where to find it. Cause I think I'm getting dropped a little. Is that better? Joel Cheesman (18:00.145) Am I lagging for you, Chad? She's lagging, okay. Chad (18:02.032) No, she's lying. She's the one who's lying. Joel Cheesman (18:06.929) Are you there, Ann? Anne (18:07.583) Let's try again. Yeah, I've dropped my camera. just in case that was creating an issue. Joel Cheesman (18:12.368) Okay. Joel Cheesman (18:17.709) Your company is a global company. So you get to see the world from an interesting perspective. So when you talk about revolution, different countries are at different places in this process. Different companies are in different places. So you have big enterprises, small businesses. Give me some nuance in terms of what you see on a global level of where countries, companies are in adopting some of the principles that you're talking about. Anne (18:45.795) Yeah, great question. I think what I'd love to see is up in some of those Nordic countries leading the way in very democratic work principles and democratic talent practices, because they've been very socially minded for a long time. So we're seeing a fair bit, I think, of innovation and leading edge thinking coming from the Nordics. I think, I do actually think Germany and its work council. you know, again, you know, it's very unionized based kind of principles. And that has, you know, challenged our practices, you know, across the world. In terms of executing on change, I do think the USA and North America are leading on the way of actually implementing the executing change. So the world still does look, you know, so the thinking, the leading edge thinking is coming out of, you know, perhaps those high tech automotive industries out of Germany and Europe. However, the actual implementation of change, I think, happening fast in a lot of organizations in the USA. Chad (19:56.884) So do you find that change happening in our industry in the same way where, you know, the US is actually adopting faster than many of the other countries around us over the globe or across the globe? Anne (20:11.299) Yeah, I think there's some really good thinkers in the USA and some early adopters that are really focused on creating a change journey and re-orchestrating their work principles in ways that are challenging all of our thinking. So Gore-Tex was one of the first with their Holacracy. I really like Patagonia and their thinking around... Chad (20:22.28) Hmm? Chad (20:32.593) Mm-hmm. Anne (20:33.911) You know, no roles, no job titles. I'm defined by my contributions. You know, I'm contributing to this project and that project I don't have a job title. You know, pretty brave. Come to it. West Coast, right? Joel Cheesman (20:43.877) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:44.648) That sounds very hippie dippy, does it not? I mean, it sounds sweet, but I mean, you gotta have some kind of direction, right? You can't just come in the morning and say, well, today I'm going to be an engineer. Joel Cheesman (20:46.481) Mm-hmm. Anne (20:53.763) Yeah. Anne (20:59.772) That's Ventura, California for you, right? You know, they're all surfers. Joel Cheesman (21:06.341) And some of the, some of the things you're talking about are, it might be a little scary to a lot of organizations. It might be a little bit too much for them. What advice would you give them and looking at taking the leap off the ledge and embracing some of this change? Anne (21:07.127) That was it. Anne (21:20.343) Yeah, no question. I think you've got to start with your why, right? So if you are on this change to become a skills-based organization, where do you start? You start with your why. What are the benefits with becoming a skills-based organization? Where are your pain points? Where are your low-hanging fruit? And start there. So if you're looking across the talent life cycle, perhaps you've got a use case, you know, in the TA function, but perhaps your greater... greater pain point is around future proofing your workforce from the learning point of view. So where are your low hanging fruit? Start there, build out that journey. I think there's no such thing of getting to perfection across the entire talent life cycle instantaneously. So you have to start somewhere. And technology enablement today around, creating a skills infrastructure or skills architecture has shifted dramatically so you can get those benefits because you do need to have that definition your most basic unit of contribution across the organization. So, you know, starting there, utilizing what technology is available to you in a scalable way, to normalize what's happening. So some of the organizations we work with, oh my goodness, you know, talk about complexity, you know, they've got 10 different architectures, you know, existing across the organization. So where do you start? You know, so you can leverage technology these days to normalize and harmonize across that to imprint with your own organization's DNA so it's still yours. Meta and J&J do not want the same skills architecture, right? They're not going to use the same nomenclature, they're not going to use the same language, they've got different strategic goals and imperatives, so how do you infuse that into what's really going to be important for the future of your organization? And then how do you stay agile? Chad (23:10.76) be able to, how do you start a revolution? That's the question, right? It's great to talk about it. There's a lot of me, we're talking about all the countries and being able to take little bits here and there, which I think is awesome because I don't think there is one system that is the perfect system, just pretty much like you'd said. So how, if I am a TA professional, I'm an HR professional, talent management, what have you, where does the revolution start and how do I start the fire? Anne (23:40.203) Yeah, I would say start with understanding the voice, right? You know, if you think of all the revolutions around the world, you know, there's a lot of employee voice. There's a lot of sentiment that's starting at the grassroots level. So understanding the voice of people or your stakeholders, right? So, you know, in talent acquisition, what are your candidates saying? You know, what do they care about? What's what are they looking for in terms of that experience? Same with your employees, you know, your stakeholders. So to me, it does start with the voice. You know, you've got to start there. That should then guide whatever comes next, right? That's got to be your start point. What's most important? And how does that link to? Chad (24:17.224) from the, for the most part, companies don't even know what the voice is. I mean, candidates are going on to black holes, employees are leaving because they're not getting an opportunity to actually internally find other positions, move laterally, what have you. So it sounds like from this conversation, the first thing you need to do is understand what the people want. Anne (24:41.867) Yeah, and you've alluded to the other thing, which is also what's the data telling you, right? So if you've got retention issues, you know, if you've got pockets of people or you've got candidates falling into the black hole or getting noisy, in terms of giving you feedback about what you're not doing. So, yeah, I think to me, you know, that's a really powerful, you know, starting point. And that should drive what change comes, right? So, you know, then how do you go? Where are we going to get the most impact and benefit from change? is from that data. So it's gotta be data driven. Joel Cheesman (25:12.129) Yeah. I'm hearing not only data, but a lot of branding, uh, in your, in your answer. How important is employer brand from your perspective, uh, in looking like a revolutionary, uh, company, a company that someone wants to get on board with. Um, and, and s a side note, uh, fuel 50 is a pretty unique brand. How did you guys come up with the name and what's the story? Anne (25:35.695) Oh, yeah, thank you. So, yeah, we wanted to fuel engagement and retention and fuel futures. That was our mission, right? Fueling futures, but also fueling engagement and retention in organization. Yeah, fuel.com had gone when we came along. Fuel.net. And I say, yeah, sorry. We could have grabbed fuel.ai, but I think that's gone now too. So anyway, 50 in numerology happened to really resonate for us. Joel Cheesman (25:54.483) No. Anne (26:05.147) So that was, numerology means pathways, passion, progression, and multiplicity, which was really around our scale vision, bringing everyone on that journey. So yeah, there's the fuel at the end for you. Joel Cheesman (26:15.085) Wondershock's Patagonia. Little hippie in there. So bigger picture employer brand importance in this journey. Anne (26:24.359) Yes. I mean, I think, yeah, I think branding, I think differentiation is going to be increasingly important, right? So again, understanding what your people want, and then making sure that you're communicating against those things that are going to be important to them. I think values, communication is so important. What do you stand for? Particularly, as we're all going to become more AI enabled, you know, I don't know how many of you are getting those reach outs on, you know, LinkedIn or in your inbox, you know, on, you know, and you said, this is a human, you were like, you know, it's not a human. It's too clever. So, so I think, you know, different differentiation on your value prop, you know, your value proposition is going to become increasingly important being human about what you do, you know, so it's going to be about our people connections going to become we want them more real, right, as a as a consequence of this revolution. Joel Cheesman (27:16.31) human. More human. Chad (27:19.228) more human, I mean using tech to be more human. All right people, that's Anne Fulton. Anne, where can we find the book? Talent Revolution. Where can we find the book number one? And number two, if people wanna connect with you, where would you send them? Anne (27:34.347) So yeah, fuel50.com, you'll find the book there and easy enough to get a copy sent over or we're on Amazon, bestseller list and organization development subtext. And yeah, I'm found easily on LinkedIn. That's my best way of communicating with me, but yeah, Twitter, Anne Fulton, Fuel50, you'll find me. Joel Cheesman (27:58.097) fuel5o.com. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.

According to Layoffs.fyi, over 200,000 tech industry employees lost their jobs in 2023, and almost 50,000 have already been laid off this year. So what's going on? Well, it's complicated, but - spoiler alert - the world isn't ending for tech pros looking for great opportunities. To help us make sense of it all, we invited Mark Chaffey, CEO at Hackajob on the podcast to understand it all. What's the impact of generative AI and ChatGPT on tech jobs? How can junior tech pros evolve? And what is going on with seed round-level startups after the dust has settled. If you hire techies, it's a must listen to survive today's challenging landscape. PODCAST TRASNCRIPTION (blame Riverside for imperfections) Joel Cheesman (00:22.811) Oh yeah, it's Winston Churchill's favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Holmes to my Sherlock, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Mark Chaffee, CEO at HackaJob. Mark, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:32.627) That's a lie. That's a lie. Mark Chaffey (00:49.806) Gents, thank you so much for having me on. I think the phrase is long -term listener, first -time caller. So, excited to be here with you both. Joel Cheesman (00:58.139) You love us long time. You love us long time. Chad (00:58.611) Dude, the funny thing is I've never heard a New York Manhattan accent like that. This is odd. This is very odd. Mark Chaffey (01:08.686) It's a rare thing that you sometimes find such a charming British accent in a crazy city like Manhattan. But here we have it. Chad (01:18.387) Charming. I love how you set yourself up like that. Joel Cheesman (01:19.259) It's like Manhattan 1792. This is. Chad (01:23.475) So one of the things I love about Chicago and New York, and you're probably singing on a daily basis, Mark, is that you can walk down the street and you can get hit by about 20 different languages that are being spoken around you. And you're like, holy shit, where am I? Well, you're in New York City. Did you find that? And how long ago did you actually move to Manhattan? Mark Chaffey (01:23.886) I Mark Chaffey (01:46.062) Yeah, great, great question. So I started coming in October 22, that's when we launched the business here in the US and we're spending a ton of time here and got to try a lot of the very not cheap, but low quality hotels in Manhattan. And I got really sick and tired of staying in not cheap, but low quality hotels. So in May last year, I got an apartment here, but I didn't have a visa at that time. Chad (01:51.699) Mm. Mark Chaffey (02:10.766) So hopefully our US custom friends aren't listening too much, but I was coming back and forth on an Esther, which you are legally allowed to do. And I wasn't doing work. I was consulting out here. It was fine. And then in August last year, I got my US visa for five years. So you guys have got me for five years. Big moment. But match at extension is obviously to get married and have a green card, obviously, because who doesn't love it here. So yeah, so that's where and then yeah, from a why I love New York and maybe actually why I'd argue why I love New York maybe more than I like San Francisco is the melting pot of culture and industry, which is very similar to London, you know, prior coming to here, I spent 10 years in London and London's a very multicultural city. You have the finance district, you have theater and the arts, you have obviously the tech world and lots of culture. And I feel the same here in New York. I was at a happy hour last night and the Joel Cheesman (02:38.811) Alright. Chad (02:45.459) Mm -hmm. Mark Chaffey (03:05.422) the interesting people that were there. You're sat next to like a construction entrepreneur, next to somebody that wants to run a Pilate studio, next to a bunch of tech people. And I think that sometimes San Francisco being so tech focused can kind of live in its own bubble, which is amazing for lots of reasons. But personally, I like the diversity of New York. Joel Cheesman (03:22.459) He's dying to say New York is better than London, but he won't, it won't, it won't come out. You can tell he wants to. Okay. Hot tech. Mark Chaffey (03:27.502) Okay, okay, here's my hot take. Here's my hot take, here's my hot take. I believe New York is the greatest city in the world. I said it. But my biggest beef with New York is you couldn't raise a family here. And London is way easier. Like the suburbs of London, even like just Richmond, which is still technically London, you could easily raise a family or you could just go out to Surrey or Buckinghamshire or wherever. Joel Cheesman (03:35.195) Nice. Mark Chaffey (03:50.926) and raise a family. You kind of have Brooklyn, but actually all of the gentrified parts of Brooklyn now, you probably wouldn't want to raise a family or you might go up to Connecticut. That's actually quite far away. So I think for any businesses that I build moving forward, I'd probably headquarter out of New York would be my hot take. Chad (04:07.219) I think it's funny that you say Connecticut's far away. That is a European saying that for an American. I mean, that's a hop, skip and a jump. I mean, Connecticut's right there. It's like the bridge and then you're there and it's no big deal. Right? Yeah. That's kind of funny. It was very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:16.219) Yeah, it's a quick train ride. Joel Cheesman (04:22.683) That was a very diplomatic answer. New York's best, but there's always a but there. Yeah. But so, so Mark, we're down this rabbit hole when we're getting ahead of ourselves. Some of our listeners don't know you, don't know HackaJob. Give us, give us, give us the quick bio. Mark Chaffey (04:28.75) was always about. Chad (04:36.531) I know more about you now. Mark Chaffey (04:40.11) Yeah, awesome. So co -founder and CEO at HackaJob, co -founded the business in my final year of college. We'll turn 10 this year, which is crazy. So we've been doing it almost a decade. A central hypothesis behind the business is that every company in the world is now a technology business. You know, technology has evolved from a standalone industry to a function that touches every industry. And so therefore the ability to engage, hire, retain technical talent is a bordering priority. Like if you do not have a really comprehensive tech strategy. Over the next 10 years as a company, you're going to be irrelevant. The challenge is that that tech persona is a slightly unique persona. If you think about all of the amazing work we've done in internal recruitment over the last decade, it's heavily dependent on platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed. And the reality is that audience does not live on LinkedIn and Indeed. So what we have built is a really candidate centric marketplace where we onboard users into our community. So it's all first party data. They are HackaJob users. They go for a technical onboarding, a job fit onboarding and optional DENI onboarding. And then if they're relevant for the companies that are hiring, they're visible to employers for a period of four weeks. But we flip the model. So rather than the candidate applying to the job, the company makes the first move, which creates this really magical candidate experience, which in turn generates really high engagement for the company. That's what we do. Chad (05:59.539) Kind of like a reverse bumble is a. Joel Cheesman (06:00.827) Magical. Mark Chaffey (06:04.11) Yeah, the company makes the first move is deliberate language because people instantly go, ah, bumble and I can associate with that. So yeah, for sure. Chad (06:11.091) Yeah, good call. Good call, good call. Well, today we want to talk about, we talk about tech all the time, as you well know, being a sponsor and knowing the show. Um, we, yeah, full disclosure, I'm also a, an advisor. Um, but at the, at the end of the day, there have been huge changes on the tech landscape here in the U S and just all over the world. And you guys have been in the front row. Joel Cheesman (06:21.659) Full disclosure. Chad (06:38.643) watching every single move that's been happening. So can you give us kind of like a top down what you've seen, clients, changes, what you guys have been able to do to kind of like pivot here and there, but just give us kind of like a landscape. Mark Chaffey (06:53.838) Yeah, I don't think there's been such a turbulent time in tech hiring since we set up the company. And I'm really excited by that, but there is like drastic change happening. So I put it into maybe three or four different pillars. The first pillar is kind of what I touched on. A lot of the companies that are hiring technical people right now are non -technology companies. One of the more recent stats I saw was that Walmart are currently the largest advertiser of tech vacancies in the US, which doesn't surprise me whatsoever. So that's like a big trend. Chad (06:59.475) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:18.267) Hm. Nope. Mark Chaffey (07:23.278) And actually when we pulled off our fundraise last year, we were doing it in the midst of all of the big tech layoffs. And a lot of our job was educating investors, and actually that's not necessarily where a lot of the tech hiring is gonna go over the next five, 10 years. So that's definitely one of those big macro trends that we're seeing. Another big one is I think in most private and public organizations, the CFO is running the company at the moment. I think Joel, you're calling it the year of efficiency for a reason. And I... Chad (07:23.411) Yes. Joel Cheesman (07:50.715) I'm just quoting Zuckerberg. I can't own that. Mark Chaffey (07:53.678) This is a hypothesis, but I think that when a CFO is looking at how do we drive efficiencies, how do we drive savings, they are looking at paying, you know, the average software engineer that gets hired on our platform in the US is on 180k USD, and they're working from home in a bedroom, and the CFO is going, well, if you're working from home in a bedroom, why can I not offshore that job to a much lower cost location and significantly save money? And so I think we're seeing the rise of offshoring is coming back in a really big way. And then I think the third thing is obviously with what's happening with AI, there's two fundamental challenges there. Everybody, in my opinion, every knowledge worker is going to end up with some form of co -pilot, which is going to make them a lot more effective. So therefore our tech team is going to be smaller in the future than what they need to be today, which really questions the role of junior talent. We're seeing a big drop in demand for junior talent, which poses some challenges. But then obviously companies want to acquire this AI talent. So as we have a customer last week and they've got to do 700 hires this year in tech, 600 of them are going to be in India. The only ones they're allowed to hire in the UK or the US is their data science team. It's the only team they've decided that they're going to hire in the UK and the US. So that's again, another big kind of trend there. So let's just like some of the headlines that we're seeing at the moment. Joel Cheesman (09:14.171) So I think. Chad (09:14.291) So real quick, on the junior talent side, if we're only hiring for senior and we're not hiring for junior, we're not creating a funnel to have those future senior programmers. So, I mean, how does that even work? I mean, that's a huge blind spot. Joel Cheesman (09:31.611) We're not developing the developers. Mark Chaffey (09:35.054) totally, which by the way, has always kind of been a bit of a challenge. You know, there's always been an appetite for companies to hire more mid to senior talent. And we obviously saw the kind of higher trained deploy models come to try and solve some of this, right? Which is, you know, we'll actually hire junior people for you, train them and then deploy them on site. Those businesses have really challenged over the last 12 to 24 months. And I think it speaks to one of our challenges as an industry, which is we are always very short term in our thinking. We tend to be thinking about how do we solve today's problem and we'll get to tomorrow when tomorrow happens. And it comes back to one of the biggest topics that people talk about is workforce planning. I'm still yet to see an organization do workforce planning particularly well. But I think that, or at all, but I think this trend of senior engineer plus co -pilot drives a lot more efficiency will fundamentally make the junior role more challenged. Now there could be an inverse there. Chad (10:15.091) Or at all. Mark Chaffey (10:28.91) If you're a junior software engineer and you really understand and embrace these tools, can you ramp to be a senior engineer more quickly and get paid less because you have less experience, right? But it is certainly a dichotomy in a market right now that I don't think anybody is thinking two to five years out on the problems that this is going to cause. Joel Cheesman (10:48.667) Let me give you a quick thesis and you tell me if I'm right or wrong. So the Walmart comment was, is very interesting. You're well aware, 2023, 200 ,000 plus tech jobs gone. This year alone around 35 ,000 per layoffs .fyi. What I'm hearing you say is Google lays off, Facebook lays off, et cetera, Walmart target like big companies. Chad (11:17.171) wins. Joel Cheesman (11:18.843) don't have to fight Facebook and Google and Microsoft for those people. They're picking up, I don't want to say crumbs, but they're picking up the folks that have been dislodged from those companies. And we don't have to worry about those layoffs so much because there is opportunity for those folks. Am I right there or not? Mark Chaffey (11:37.582) So I will agree with most of it and challenge this one part on it. So I think that the whole tech layoffs headlines is sometimes a bit of a misnomer when we're talking about tech hiring, because what ends up happening is Facebook lays off 800 recruiters and we called it tech layoffs. Well, it wasn't tech people that lost their job. It was people that work at a technology company that lost their job. Now, to be clear, a lot of these tech layoffs do include technical talent and... I was actually chatting to Josh Gample, friend of the show about this last week. If you think about one of the strategies that Meta and Google and these organizations had, it was effectively to hoard talent so that other companies couldn't have access to the best talent in the market. We're going to pay you very highly. We're producing so much free cash flow, we don't really care. And now Zach's turned around and said, actually, year of efficiency, we do need to actually run this company with the right level of headcount. And so you're absolutely spot on, Joel, in the sense that... Chad (12:18.195) Exactly. Yeah. Mark Chaffey (12:32.974) Organizations that never would have been able to acquire this talent before now actually have a real fighting chance to do it. So if you are Walmart or Target or Lowe's or any of these more legacy companies that are really investing in tech, now is a phenomenal time to take advantage of the drop in hiring in some of those more traditional big tech companies. Joel Cheesman (12:48.923) Yeah. And then, and then, and then my followup to that is I suspect, and you, you have your finger on the pulse of this, the number of startups founded by these folks that are, that were technology, uh, developers, et cetera, big companies, we should be seeing a explosion of seed, uh, funded startups around tech. Yes. And are you seeing that at where you're, where you sit? Yeah. Mark Chaffey (13:10.99) Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. My second favorite podcast behind you guys is the All In podcast. And Jason Kadakannis, who's a very prolific angel investor, that's entirely his thesis right now. Now is one of the best times ever to start a startup. Why? There's less jobs out there for those people, less maybe interesting jobs out there for those people. What is happening with LLMs is like a fundamental platform shift. So now is a great time to build, right? Because it is a fundamental platform shift. And actually I do a little bit of angel investing and I'm still relatively close to a lot of founders. The heat in the seed market is as hot as it's ever been. Like some of the valuations that seed deals are going at is crazy. It's really like a series B, series C, series B companies that are still really struggling in this market. But like the competition to get into some of these early. Chad (13:37.811) Yes. Mark Chaffey (14:02.606) They're all AI companies. It's hilarious. Everybody is an AI company at that stage right now. But yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on on that, John. I think that you will see in a decade, the biggest companies that got built will come from this era over the next decade for sure. Chad (14:06.035) Of course. Yeah. Chad (14:18.067) To piggyback on your comment, which is pretty much every company is a tech company. Every company is going to be an AI company. I mean, so, and that's going to happen much faster than Walmart becoming a tech company, right? So that to me is incredibly interesting. The big question is, you know, up -skilling. Do we have enough infrastructure? Do we have, you know, the actual rails to ensure that, like you'd said before, these junior programmers, or these junior tech people want to get into that next level, but if you don't have the experience, then how are you, how are you learning is that do we have the infrastructure to actually make that happen? Because much like you said, and we do this quarter to quarter in the U S as you well know, we don't look five years in advance. We only use, we only look three months in advance where we're fucking ourselves, but do we have. guys like you and other platforms that are actually creating the infrastructure to ensure that this will happen and we will be able to cover those gaps. Mark Chaffey (15:24.078) So I think there's two different ways to think about this. I think where we're really interested is the reskidding of existing technologists. And we've always felt this is a very important part. Technology moves so quickly. You might be a PHP engineer, but actually like the most in -demand language right now might be Golang. And actually, if you already know PHP, you already know like the fundamentals of software engineering. You know, OOP principles, you might have worked on like Microsoft's architecture. And actually the leap to go from, Chad (15:31.859) Yes. Yes. Mark Chaffey (15:53.294) Okay, I know PHP to go is a much easier leap than I know nothing to PHP or nothing to software engineering. And so what we try and present to our users on the on the candidate side is like these pathways. If I'm a PHP engineer today, what skills could I learn in order to best advance my career prospects? And I think we're going to see the exact same like what we're seeing in AI is just a natural extension of that, right? What do you need in order to build some of these AI products where you need data engineers that are going to build the pipelines? Right. And okay, if I'm like a Java engineer and I've had the opportunity to play around with Kafka and Hadoop already, but actually I could probably pivot into being a data engineer quite easily. If I'm already a data scientist, you know, actually, you know, can I take some of those machine learning principles and pivot into that quite quickly? Well, you're also going to see anytime there is a hot new skit out there is kind of, it's a very quick to hop on it. So when cloud platforms became very big, everybody that was a sys admin rebranded themselves a DevOps engineer. and instantly were worth 50K more in the market. The challenge for companies were, were they a DevOps engineer or were they a sysadmin? And you're going to see the exact same here, right? Everyone now is going to be a machine learning engineer, a data scientist, and it's going to be like, you do have the skills that are required to do the job. So yeah, so that's kind of how we think about it. We're far more in the reskilling space than we are in like the zero to one space. And I think there will be platforms like ours out there that will facilitate that. And I think one of the great things about the tech community is there's always that hunger and appetite to learn. So I think there will be good. Will we create enough net new technologists is always the fear. And I don't know. It would be my take that I really don't know. Chad (17:30.771) Well, off of that, are you guys even looking or thinking about, prospectively, partnering with universities, colleges and universities to be able to pipeline them into your platform? I mean, you are somewhat in the Venn diagram, a competitor of some of those because they want the money, right? But are you going to be able to pipeline those individuals, those junior, those new entry -level types of developers into the platform? Because I think that could really stoke the fires. on the amount of juniors that we get to at least mid -level quickly. Mark Chaffey (18:05.422) Yeah, 100%. We already do a ton of work with some of the coding boot camps and with a ton of colleges here in the US and universities in the UK. And it's great because there's that learning aspect to the platform where they can go in, they can compete, they can compete in different challenges, et cetera, which is awesome. And we do then partner with companies to help them on their early careers program. It's normally done in a very different way. If you think about why is our marketplace successful, it's because typically there is more... demand than there is supply. So you can build a marketplace where candidates are at the heart of it. In early careers, there are always more supply than there is demand. And so you kind of flip the model. And actually, typically when we partner with early careers programs, the application is a coding challenge, which is awesome because it definitely levels the playing field a lot. And we see real positive impact on like underrepresented candidates doing well when we do partner up with early careers programs. My fear is there's still not enough early career programs or just junior roles. for the amount of demand coming in and that's a real hard thing to mismatch. So it's something that we already do. How do we think about that referral and partnership loop? Actually, if we don't have jobs for a user, is there a way where we refer them some content to learn or refer them to a bootcamp or refer them somewhere else so that we can try and help them become more employable? Chad (19:23.603) So how do we get deeper into the funnel and actually get to them in high school or middle school? Because as we start to learn languages like German or French or I don't know, Hadoop, right? I mean, it seems like it just makes sense. Do you see that happening? And I know that is very hard for a company that's been around for 10 years to be able to try to get that penetration, but do you see that happening again, just from an infrastructure and an upskilling standpoint? Mark Chaffey (19:51.438) No, to be honest, no, absolutely not. And I think it's cultural, by the way. What's really interesting is we've got some of our team are based in Romania. And the culture in Romania is like informatics is like the creme de la creme of academia. And under informatics will be mathematics and computer science, etc. In the UK, probably the creme de la creme is like literature, right? Shakespeare roots and all of that, right? And that's like kind of the culture of it. I won't comment on the US. I'll let you guys do that. So, No, I don't think we are. What I would say is I don't know where we should be. So I think where we need to be really careful is that we're not trying to just produce more keyword software engineers, more Java software engineers or more Python software engineers. What we should be trying to equip the workforce with is the fundamental skills that make you successful and adaptable. Because whilst this might be the year of efficiency, I think the key skill this year and beyond is how quickly can you adapt and learn new skills? Like what is happening with LLMs and AI is changing so fast and so quickly. What you might learn today could be completely useless in six months time. And so actually those fundamental skills of reasoning, of problem solving, by the way, being a great communicator, like really important in how you are as a technologist. Chad (20:59.891) Yes. Mark Chaffey (21:09.006) I would be really thinking about how do we build those foundational layers and then yeah, maybe some of those software engineering principles like object oriented programming, like some different architecture designs, et cetera. How do we think about the fundamentals that we should be equipping people for rather than latest buzzword technology of the month, quarter, year, et cetera. Chad (21:27.027) Well, you point out a very, very big area of most developers are not great communicators, right? Most coders are not great communicators. So being able to add that layer to it is an entirely different, you know, periphery that most might not even think about. Mark Chaffey (21:47.566) I think Seth Godin said this, it might have been Seth Godin, someone on the Tim Ferriss show, is like, when I think about career advice for people, there's like two routes you could go down. You could go and chase and be like the top 0 .1 % in your field, you know, go and play professional basketball or football or go and be like the top 0 .1 % Java engineer in the world and like go and pursue that level of excellence or take two unrelated disciplines and just be in the top 10%, but because they're unrelated disciplines, Chad (22:08.275) Mm. Mark Chaffey (22:15.854) When you're like in the top 10 % of a Java engineer and a top 10 % communicator, Java engineers that communicate well, you're now like right at the top of the tree. And it's way easier to get into the top 10 % of something than it is to get into the top 0 .1 % of something. And I thought that was like a great mental model to think about career advice, pairing non -typical skills together to really advance your career chances. Chad (22:30.931) Yes. Joel Cheesman (22:36.411) Interesting. So I've always been amazed. You said earlier, these folks aren't on LinkedIn. They're not on Indeed. Obviously the schools are a source for users and people that are on the site. Talk about marketing, not just colleges I get, but the bigger, the broader spectrum. You know, when, when Microsoft bought GitHub, which owns LinkedIn, I was like, okay, it's over for everyone. Like targeting. Chad (22:36.755) Exactly. Joel Cheesman (23:05.307) tech people because they're going to marriage all this stuff together, which they haven't done. Feel free to comment on that. But how do you, how do you market to these people that apparently don't want to be found, uh, aren't on those sort of traditional portals? How do you market to those people and convince them to come on your site and use it? Mark Chaffey (23:26.51) Yeah, we should chat about Microsoft and GitHub and LinkedIn because that's a fascinating tree. And also Stack Overflow had a phenomenal opportunity to solve this problem and didn't. But let's chat on the marketing question. If we want it, we can go into that. So it's very different in a mature market for us, like the UK, versus a new market like the US. So if we start in a mature market like the UK, whilst this community is maybe harder to find online, the key word there is it's a community. Chad (23:33.395) Oh yeah, fell flat. Mark Chaffey (23:54.67) And so if you deliver an exceptional service, the referral loop is so strong. So in the UK, about a third of our users come from another user. So somebody would have referred us in to somebody in their network. About 20 % are reactivated users. They found a job on HackaJob in the past and they've come back around to use us again. And then about another 20 % are just pure organic SEO, which is when you've got the flywheel working so well, naturally people just come and find you, right? And so it takes time to build that flywheel, that reputation and from there. So that's kind of like a mature market like the UK, which is now, you know, for us just like on, you know, it's, it's a machine at this point really, and operates really, really nicely. Exactly. When you come to the U S you firstly have the chicken and egg problem, you know, to get candidates, you need jobs to get jobs, you need candidates. How do you solve that? The way we solve that. Joel Cheesman (24:33.787) Yeah, autopilot. Chad (24:43.539) Mm -hmm. Mark Chaffey (24:46.382) was launching with existing customers from the UK. So because we tend to work with larger orgs, these are global companies, we were only supporting them in the UK, but now supporting them in the US. We also took a state by state approach because you want to try and build like local networks if you can. Even with remote work and work from home and all of that piece, I think that still is an important part and something that we definitely still lean into. And then it's funny that we say that these people aren't online. They absolutely are online. They're just in very different places to where we normally go for job seekers. So Reddit is a phenomenal place to go and find where these people hang out. Discord is a phenomenal place to go and find out where these people hang out. Twitter or X is a much stronger engagement and community in it than that piece. And again, something I touched on earlier is these people generally, and we're talking stereotypes here, but you kind of have to when you're talking about marketing, always want to learn. So actually you can take a very content led approach in engaging them in the first place. doesn't have to be about, hey, come and work at Walmart or Target or whoever. It can be like, oh my God, have you seen what this company is now doing with this technology? Come and learn about that. And that's like a great funnel to get them into our community. At which point we start collecting data on them, can then make really relevant recommendations from a job search engine. So we're now getting to this kind of like magical two year mark for us in the US, where you start seeing the flywheel come into effect. But that first two years is a graph. Like that is a lot of hard work to kind of build that initial Joel Cheesman (25:51.611) Hmm. Mark Chaffey (26:12.206) critical massive users in the US. Chad (26:15.443) Apparently you're at the spot where you feel comfortable enough to be able to open an entirely new market. And it's the biggest market in the world with regard to population and that's India. Now you mentioned earlier that, uh, CFOs are talking about, Hey, can we outsource this? Uh, organizations saying, Hey, 600 positions over, you know, outsourcing this was that the main, were you seeing that on a daily basis and said, Hey, look, we need to diversify. And this is definitely the next step. Mark Chaffey (26:45.966) Yeah, there was so many factors that led into this decision. If you think about strategically what is going on from like the CFO running a company, there's always a big focus on consolidation of tools. So actually we were hearing from customers, our team are pressuring us that you need to be able to support us in our key markets. So that was like a big thing. And like staying close to customers and listening to customers is so important. And then I just kept joining these customer calls and it was just time and time again, different anecdotes of the same story, which is... we are offshoring talent, you know, not everything, but we are offshoring talent. So then the approach was, okay, if you had asked me six months ago, are we going to launch in the art? I said, no, to be clear, like that's how quickly we've moved and reacted to this change that we're seeing. So just before Christmas, we launched our first experiment where again, we went to our existing customers, we took some of their jobs and we're like, what is going to be different about the Indian job market? How can we learn from that perspective? We then kind of ran Q1. Chad (27:29.075) Mm -hmm. Mark Chaffey (27:43.694) and got to the point where we felt we had conviction. And it was a kind of a key moment where the flywheel started way quicker and we can talk to why that is. We like doubled our users in a month and we were like, okay, great. We're now at a point where we can take this and announce publicly that we're done. Exactly. So there's a couple of key things that works really nicely in India. Firstly, there's only four or five locations that you really need to launch. Locations are big. Locations are really big when we think about launching new markets. And there's really four or five cities you need to be. Chad (27:58.483) Density, right? Yeah Mark Chaffey (28:13.998) Secondly, there is a lot of talent in India, right? So actually whilst we're able to double users, we're now just under 50 ,000 users in India. You know, that's still a fraction of the overall market, but it's enough liquidity where we can start having an impact. And then thirdly, what's interesting is the recruitment and hiring culture is fundamentally different. It is a completely different market to hire in. And you speak to customers and the pains are very different to necessarily what they are in the UK or the US. But some of those pains speak to our value quite nicely. Chad (28:33.651) I bet. Mark Chaffey (28:42.99) and why we're able to get traction. So yeah, it was that kind of perfect storm that enabled us to do that. And now, again, we're going through the same process with a new location in Europe, where we're currently testing with existing customers to see, okay, does this market work well? What would be the differences and nuances? And if that does work well over the next three months, in three months we'll make another announcement about another lower cost location that we've launched HackaJob. Joel Cheesman (29:04.379) Yeah. So you're, you're moving fast and hopefully not breaking things. I know that DEI, I know that DEI is important to you guys and it's a focus for the business. When you're moving quickly like that, how do you sort of stay focused on that initiative? And I know particularly getting more females in technology has been a challenge for a lot of companies talk about DEI and how you guys approach that. Chad (29:10.451) Too much shit. Mark Chaffey (29:30.094) Yeah, and it's interesting because it's obviously a very hot topic in the US right now. You know, with what's happened with colleges and, you know, big debates online with pretty influential people. We're still steadfast and it's critical and like we absolutely want to have an opinion in this space. We wanted to do something with the product for a long time, but didn't know the right kind of the like ethical and moral approach we wanted to take. You know, there's lots of different ways you can tackle this. The way we've gone about it is as part of that candidate onboarding journey, candidates can self -disclose, DNI characteristics. And whilst gender is important, we do capture across seven characteristics. So gender, ethnicity, neurodiversity, sexuality, veteran status, disability, and any reasonable adjustments in the interview process. And about 80 % of our users are self -disclosing, which is a massive, because there's a lot of products out there that are using inference. Chad (30:14.355) Mm -hmm. Mark Chaffey (30:21.838) So they're using algorithms to basically infer somebody's gender or infer somebody's race or whatever it may be. And to me, that's a recipe for disaster. That's a legal case waiting to happen. And then you speak to internal recruiters and candidly, a lot of them are using visual identification, right? Because they don't have the data and they're being so heavily targeted on this stuff. They'll do a phone interview or a Zoom interview of someone and just assume that person's gender or ethnicity. So once we've got this data, it's like, okay, well, what are we going to do with the data? And that's where it's like a product decision. And it was like... Chad (30:39.603) Mm -hmm. Mark Chaffey (30:50.222) We want to be able to have a positive impact, but we don't want to overstep our mark and kind of take this too far. And so the principle that we've gone with is the concept of balanced shortlisting, which has been a well -known concept for a long time. When you present a shortlist, try and have an equal representation at that level. And by the way, you have to consider the legals that are allowed to do it. The legals are slightly different between the UK and the US around what you're allowed to do and what you're not. And so if a company says that, you know, we've got a gender diversity goal against this position and we understand that, we will then match talents that meet that goal. So in that case, maybe it's to get more women engineers into the shortlist and we'll match them based on complementary skills. So let's say we were able to show a list of 15 candidates that meet the requirements perfectly. And in that requirements list, there were 10 men and five women. What we will then do is surface another five female candidates that maybe are a little bit more junior, a little bit more senior. They don't know Java, but they know Scala and they're both built in the JVM. So the learning is easier. Maybe they require a visa sponsorship, whatever it may be to try and get that, at least when you were reviewing your initial match list, there is a balance at that level. And then we can then track their performance through the funnel. So we can then see. but do men engineers accept you at a high rate and female engineers, do they drop out the process at a high rate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and really use data to kind of infer or use data to kind of inform decisions later down the line. So that's kind of how we're thinking about this space. Chad (32:25.491) Yeah, I think it's important to start to, much like you guys are obviously pushing more of it being just a part of the DNA of a platform and to be able to understand the types of individuals that you're, you're engaging and are who are disengaging from you and then try trying to figure out what, why. Now I've got one last question for you before we wrap this up. So most CEOs 10 years down the road, they don't immerse themselves in the tactical conversations. and actually have those on a daily basis. You took yourself into that role for a certain amount of time. I can't remember how long it was, but you were on calls on a daily basis, having that tactical engagement with clients and prospects. Tell me why you did that and how it actually worked for you. Mark Chaffey (33:18.318) Yeah, so one of my big lessons after we raised Series B last year was I got too far away from our customers. You know, there was probably a period of three to six months when there was a lot of change happening and I did not have my finger on the pulse anymore. And so probably September last year, I started mandating that I was doing five customer calls a week. And a big shout out to Pete, who was a CEO at employee, or is a CEO at employee. He then took that one step further and he told me, he told his senior leadership team, they have to be on calls with five customers a week. And it has transformed the conversations we're able to have now with our top team. We literally in our notion, Wiki have a cool tracker that everybody's got to fill out every week at the exact team level around, you know, what customer did they speak to? What persona were they and what were the lessons? And then the first thing of our leadership team will be reviewing any key lessons. And the reason why this is so important to me is, there is so much change happening both in the world of tech hiring and in the world of technology with LLMs. And the only way that we can make sure that we're reacting to that is by having our finger on the pulse. And there is a few cheat codes that a founder has. And one of them is the ability to move incredibly fast, Joe, and take incredibly fast decisions. And so when I heard like four customers in a week mention India, I was like, guys, we're launching an India experiment and you need to go and do it now. Right? And that's just something that only really like a founder CEO is allowed to do. Chad (34:17.299) Yes. Mark Chaffey (34:43.182) Other people maybe have to go and get more approvals and sign -offs and et cetera. So I think in a world that is changing so quickly, I think it's crucial that I am as close as I can to the customers and prospects to understand how we respond to that change. Joel Cheesman (34:58.715) Mark Chaffee, everybody, CEO at HackaJob. Mark, for our listeners that want to connect with you, learn more about the company, where do you send them? Chad (34:59.507) There you have it. Mark Chaffey (35:08.942) Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the best place for me. I'm a big, big actor from LinkedIn. I am on X or Twitter, whatever we're calling it these days, but I'm on those guys that just sits in the background and never really tweet. So you can follow me if you want, but you won't get much content. And then yeah, HackaJob.com, spouts, all lowercase, H -A -C -K -A -J -O -B. The amount of different ways people try and spell HackaJob drives you slightly insane, but there we go. That's fine. So yeah, that's for the website and hit me up on LinkedIn if you want to connect. Joel Cheesman (35:37.947) Love it, love it. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.

This week, the boys discuss various topics including Indeed's layoffs, the ban on lab-grown meat in Alabama, Jerry Seinfeld's commencement speech, and the financial struggles of ZipRecruiter. They also dig into the introduction of Eightfold Talent Tracking, and the partnership between Stack Overflow and Indeed. They express their disappointment with ZipRecruiter's performance and call for better leadership. They criticize Eightfold for expanding too quickly and losing focus, and they mock the buzzword-filled description of their new product. They also question the strategy behind Twitter's, er, X's job recommendations and express their frustration with the lack of innovation. Finally, they discuss the controversy surrounding the Portal Project between New York and Dublin and how an OnlyFans model reminds us how much we all love boobies ... or is it potatoes? Eh, just listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (blame Riverside for any imperfections :) Joel Cheesman (00:27.322) OHHHH YAAAAAAAAAAY! Joel Cheesman (00:33.082) just two guys fighting for the right to party since 1987. Hey, boys and girls, you're listening to the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Loch Ness cheeseman. Chad (00:45.842) EuroChat is back! So was. Joel Cheesman (00:48.57) And on this episode, Indeed cuts, zip drops, and New York flashes. Let's do this. Chad (00:57.966) last part. Joel Cheesman (01:01.996) Eurochad is back. Tan rested and ready. Chad (01:05.038) Baby, I am back. Yes, yes, I did. I was doing my work in Santa Fe prior, getting ready for this, getting a little tan, getting ready. Yeah, then jumped, obviously, you know, off the tower, which is apparently something that I needed to do before, you know, I did this. So yeah, no, we got back yesterday, last night, and whew, I am happy to be here. I'm so happy. Joel Cheesman (01:14.52) Yeah. Santa Fe Vegas primer was nice I'm sure. Joel Cheesman (01:32.026) Yeah. Yeah. Vegas was, I gotta tell you though, magic keeps calling, you know, magic. He just wants to hang out all the time. Now we're best friends. I don't know if he's, if you saw that or not, but yeah, magic, magic Johnson and I are BFFs. We're hanging out with MJ and bird, later tonight. We're, we're going to Chipotle for some barbacoa bowls later. Chad (01:38.606) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Chad (01:44.942) Yeah, got a pad on the back and everything. Chad (01:51.534) Is he coming to Scotland? That's the question, because I mean, I think that is a great opportunity to get it and get magic to come to Scotland and, you know, do a little tour with magic. yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:00.122) How great are the Scots? How great, like how engaged and just like excited are the Scots? I reached out to my LinkedIn content, like you're coming here just for us. Like, yeah, dude, we're coming and the whiskey, but yeah, coming, coming for you guys. Yeah, it's going to be fun. Chad (02:08.502) yeah. Chad (02:19.15) Yeah, no, we're definitely coming for you. And if you have some whiskey, which I'm sure you do, go ahead and get it ready for. Joel Cheesman (02:26.458) Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. My liver is exercising in readiness for that, in readiness. So shout outs we got, I'm gonna go first here. Love the fans, love the fans, but one particular, Janet English, she works for Resume Library in the UK, but she's over here in the States. Had really nice things to say, I won't read the whole thing, but basically quote, Chad (02:32.61) Ehh Chad (02:37.262) shit. Okay. Chad (02:43.086) Hmm. Okay. Hello, Janet. Okay. Joel Cheesman (02:53.05) I've worked for resume library as an account manager for seven years and man, you guys make me giggle with your comments. And this is kind of a solid, consistent comment that I get. I think you do too. we're funny. I don't know. It's kind of like a grumpy old man or something. Make people laugh. We take people, they, people go walk the dog. They go do whatever and they like, just, we let them get away. We're the Cal gone. Chad (02:58.006) Wow. Chad (03:07.662) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (03:14.03) Don't go too far, okay? Joel Cheesman (03:22.596) were the Calgon of podcasts, I guess. But anyway, shout out to Janet English. Chad (03:25.998) You've got to remember, yes, shout out to Janet, no question. You got to remember though, the bar is very low for HR and tech podcasts and TA podcasts, right? So, you know, if we crack a joke every now and again, we become like the most hilarious thing in the space. But again, the bar is very low. Joel Cheesman (03:44.634) It is low, but we're competing with other podcasts. They could go listen to smart lists or Rogan or whatever, but Hey, they're listening to us. So shout out Janet. We love you. And we'll keep trying to be funny for you. Chad (03:50.154) yeah, no, that's a good point. It's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Keep listening. yeah. And by the way, you know, if you're not subscribed to YouTube, go subscribe to YouTube. Give us a review. Love us, hate us. Doesn't matter. We love to hear the feedback. I mean, whether you like what I say, what do you like what Joel says, doesn't matter. We just love that you're listening and you're getting engaged in the discussion. And we don't ask that you agree with us. Never. Because hell, we don't even do that. Joel Cheesman (04:10.298) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:18.81) We're doing it wrong if everyone agrees with us, for sure. Chad (04:19.022) yes, you are 100 % right. I'm going to, I'm going to do a double Bama shout out. Are you ready for this? Joel Cheesman (04:30.362) Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready for the Bama combo. Chad (04:30.574) Yeah, I am. I am. Okay. So the first Bama shout out goes to the United Auto Workers. This from NBC News quote, workers at the Mercedes Benz plant in Alabama began voting Monday on whether to join the UAW union, a significant test of whether the labor group can maintain momentum in the historically anti -union American South end quote. VW joined the UAW in Tennessee, but Tennessee is not the deep south. Alabama is the deep south. So what do you think about this? Do you think Mercedes will end up joining in Alabama? Or do you think that the pressure is just way too much in the deep south for unions? Joel Cheesman (05:20.058) I like the unions. I like the unions everywhere. I like the UAW. I like fucking Apple, Apple union, allegedly boycotting or like picketing. I don't know what like unions are having a moment. Look, Mercedes has been in Alabama for a long time. They've spent a lot of money there. I just, I don't see any way that car companies, restaurants where like unions are having a moment until the robots take over. Chad (05:24.558) I did too. Chad (05:32.014) Yeah? Yeah? Chad (05:39.15) Yeah? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:48.954) I'm going to be team union on this one, whether it's in Alabama, Florida, New York, or Washington. Go unions. Chad (05:56.59) Yeah, I gotta say, Sean Fain became the UAW's president in March of 2023. It's just been over a year. It feels like he's been the president for a much longer just because of everything that he's done, because he led the union through the first simultaneous strike with GM, Ford and Stellantis, which resulted in 25 % wage increase kids and a return of cost of living adjustments for its members. So of course, Bama is going to want them some of that. Right? I mean, it's just, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And then we'll go ahead and roll into my, my, my second Bama shout out goes to lab grown meat. Alabama is now the second state in the nation to ban the sale of cultured meat, AKA meat grown in the lab. Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed SB 23 into law making the manufacturer sale or distribution of food products produced from. cultured animal cells a class C misdemeanor as of October 1st, 2024. So, Cheeseman, are you ready for your... mean, Indiana still has the ability to do this. Are you ready to get your hands on a lab -grown meat burger? Joel Cheesman (07:12.794) You know, this, this is kind of close to home because my wife, she does a lot of work around insects as a protein. And while we're, I think we're a long way from human beings in America eating a billion, some people around the world eat bugs pretty regularly. and if we just replaced our dog, cat food, pet food, with, with insects and. Chad (07:19.854) Yeah? Yeah? Chad (07:29.774) Yeah? Yeah? Joel Cheesman (07:36.41) My dog eats it. Peepers is a young puppy at 12 and because he eats bugs. I mean, the food looks like dog food. He doesn't know any different. It's all protein. But that trend is stifled by the farming and the agriculture community and farmers, God love them. I have family members that are farmers. Like I love farmers, but they, in terms of protecting their nugget, Chad (07:37.26) Mm -hmm. Chad (07:41.39) Ha ha. Chad (07:45.412) yeah. Yeah. Chad (07:55.118) yeah. yeah. Lobby, baby. Lobby. Yep. Joel Cheesman (08:05.978) lobby Congress make these things laws where you can't grow meat in a lab or you can't like, like insects aren't subsidized meat is subsidized farming is subsidized. Like the government is behind this thing and to create laws where, we can't grow chicken in a lab. Like who cares? I mean, if you're in for animal, if you like animal welfare, there's no animals killed when you grow a chicken breast in a lab. And apparently it tastes pretty much the same. I know you're a big vegetarian. Chad (08:12.302) Mm -hmm. Chad (08:18.03) Yeah. All right. Chad (08:29.55) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (08:34.81) meat guy, but yeah, this is all just a power play to keep farmers and politicians in business and a stifling competition. I think overall it's a negative thing as much as I do love, love the farming community. I'm ready to eat whatever tastes like Chipotle. Yeah. If Chipotle can do this, I'm down. I'm down with it. I'm here for it. Chad (08:48.846) It is it is. Chad (08:55.79) thought it was interesting. I mean, I'm not personally a fan of the whole idea just thinking of animal cells in a lab that just doesn't get my appetite rolling. But did you know that US animal products are banned in other countries? US pork is banned in China, Russia and the EU. pre packaged ground beef, you know, the stuff with the pink slime is banned in the EU and US milk is banned in Japan. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the EU. I mean, it just, because I was thinking, wow, we're banning stuff here. Do other countries ban the stuff that we do? And because of all the artificial dyes, the chemicals, the preservatives, the hormones, all that shit that we use in the US, yeah, most countries are like, no, we don't want any of that shit, right? We don't want that. So it's interesting that we have this idea of, Joel Cheesman (09:41.722) Mm -hmm. Chad (09:55.458) lab -grown meats, which again, I'm not against. I just don't find it appetizing myself. If somebody else does, that's fucking awesome. But what about the actual beef and dairy that we do here, that we have in the US? It's it's banned in other countries. Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (10:10.426) Yeah, it's, it's ironic, right? We're going to ban lab grown meat, but Hey, those pesticides and preservatives. And I mean, not even just food. I know like tide is illegal in Europe because of whatever cleaning thing is in there is killing. I mean, Americans are the cockroaches of the world. Like we eat so much shit, put so much crap in our bodies. Like, Chad (10:17.358) All good. All good. Chad (10:26.286) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (10:33.338) When the world, when the shit hits the fan, the Americans are going to be left because we're the cockroaches eating and consuming all the shit in the world. We've survived all these pesticides and poisons. Everyone else is going to die and it's going to be America. America first, baby. America first. When the shit shit hits the fan. Geez. I don't know. Geez. Shout outs going long today. I'm going to make it quick. my, my second one, Jerry Seinfeld. Everyone knows Jerry, right? Seinfeld. Chad (10:34.382) Dude. Chad (10:52.046) fucking horrible. Okay. Chad (11:01.006) Yes. Joel Cheesman (11:01.57) Arguably the best show ever. definitely the best sitcom ever for my money. anyway, yeah, it's good that you say that. So show about nothing. Well, Jerry, Jerry's kind of taken stances now. Jerry's almost 70. He's, he's, he's got an opinion. The Israeli Gaza thing. he, he's obviously more vocal about, but anyway, he did the commencement speech at Duke, recently. The media made a big deal about, there were like 12 protesters and that was like the lead story. But the lead story to me was. Chad (11:06.126) Show about nothing. Yes, I loved it. Chad (11:18.19) Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah. Chad (11:31.47) Big deal. Joel Cheesman (11:31.63) Jerry was great. Like if you get a chance, go check out Jerry's commencement speech. It's very insightful. It's very funny. He defends comedy, not being too sensitive about, you know, the need to laugh as human beings to not take ourselves so seriously. I think it was a prescient, timely message. So shout out to Jerry Seinfeld. I really enjoyed his commencement speech at Duke University this week. Chad (11:47.854) Right. Mm -hmm. Chad (11:58.478) Very nice. What listeners really like is they really enjoy free stuff. You can get t -shirts by Aaron App. That's right, we've got the new t -shirt. And I don't know how many people that have actually have commented back to us that this is their favorite shirt design yet, right? So it's the Guns N' Roses, Chad and Cheese podcast design by Aaron App. And Aaron App even did their own custom. Joel Cheesman (12:06.298) Mm -hmm. Chad (12:27.83) logo on the back, which is awesome. Joel Cheesman (12:27.93) If you're on YouTube, you can see this is the actual packaging for the shirts. Look at this. We did branded. Chad (12:34.67) that's sexy. I tell you, go in the extra mile that Joel Cheeseman is, or is it Stella Cheeseman? Anyway, beer by Aspen Tech Labs. Joel Cheesman (12:46.682) Stella's just my sweatshop in the basement. That's what Stella is at the moment. Chad (12:52.462) I hope you don't put her in the basement. Beer by Aspen Tech Labs. That's right, kids. We'd love us some Aspen Tech Labs and some craft beer. Whiskey by Tex Kernel. Two bottles of whiskey from our friends at Tex Kernel. And if it's your birthday, it's a little rum from Plum. Go to ChadCheese .com slash free, register, and win. Chad (13:19.214) Clones. Joel Cheesman (13:19.29) That's that's right. Another trip around the sun for some of our listeners. Happy birthday goes to Michelle Sargent, Amy Butchko, Matt Brigham, Sarah Starkweather, Jacqueline Adair, Matt Soroka, Sean Campbell, Madison Richard, Michelle Beer, Stephanie Trisic, Maria Simelton, Bruce Carey, Tyler McEveley, Kevin Robinson, Matt Lavery, our favorite Chicagoan for the for the month. Anyway, Matt Kaiser and Richard Chad (13:44.078) Yeah, there he is. There he is. UPS baby. Joel Cheesman (13:49.146) Carlsley, I'll celebrate another trip around the sun. By the way, I just sent Rich, or Matt Slavery won the birthday this week, or this month, and I got robbed. Uber Eats, okay, I sent him, I bought a nice bottle of rum, and somehow he got a shitty bottle of Captain Morgan. Okay, nah, I ain't going. Chad (14:00.846) Mm -hmm, yeah. Chad (14:15.886) This has to be rectified. Joel Cheesman (14:17.21) I ain't going down like that. So I'm going to, I'm going to send Matt a real bottle and hope that Uber eats gets it right. and if not, I'm just going to send him some old style that he can drink while he watches the cubs lose this weekend. But Matt, I got Rob, man. We don't, we don't do that at Chad and cheese. We, we bring the good shit and I'm going to make sure you get some good shit. So, yeah, happy birthday. We'll make sure that, Matt is taken care of. Chad (14:42.862) Yes. And look for, we actually interviewed Matt during Unleash. It was an amazing, amazing, amazing interview. Matt works for UPS. He's been there for 27 years and man, he gives us a history lesson, not to mention he talks about business. We're not just talking about talent and all, I mean business. And I love that. I love when TA leaders talk about, and they understand business. And we're going to be talking to some TA leaders. Joel Cheesman (14:48.632) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:09.146) And a fan of unions, by the way, we're talking about unions there. That's. Chad (15:12.216) yeah, yes, yeah, because I mean, the union is pretty much a part of UPS, but we're going to be talking to some other town acquisition HR practitioners in Scotland next week in Glasgow. Chad (15:28.654) That's right. The 21st of May, Glasgow and Edinburgh on the 23rd of May. Go to truescotland .com and thank you so much. We've got to thank Daxstra. Got to thank Ashby, Willow, Poetry, Gig .ai, Solutions Driven. I mean, these guys stepped up to the plate pretty quickly with their kilts on and taking some swings. So we really appreciate that, guys. We're going to see you next week. Joel Cheesman (15:44.57) Mm, hell yeah. Chad (15:58.03) gonna have some fun pulling some content together and going to these, these true events in Scotland. Then we've got a double header coming up. Mr. Cheeseman with a rec fest happening in Nebworth Park. One day event, July 11th and then rec fest coming to Nashville, September 12th and 13th. I can't be more excited than to get back to. Joel Cheesman (16:07.97) Yep. Joel Cheesman (16:20.09) Mm. Chad (16:24.128) Wreckfest I just again, I love events I love being able to get out and see the people but Wreckfest is just a different animal and if you're a practitioner that's out there This is what this is what you need to be doing There's already a company that has and I don't know if I can tell the name yet. They've they bought like a hundred tickets a hundred tickets for their entire TA staff TA and I'm sure some of the HR staff are coming to Joel Cheesman (16:46.266) Wow. Chad (16:51.854) but a very big company because why? Because Wreckfest is a pretty much easy button for your all hands day. Bring the entire crew, bring the entire group that come out to listen, learn and have some fun. Wreckfest at Nedworth Park and also Nashville. Go to chadcheese .com slash events and you'll see the information right there. Come to both. Joel Cheesman (17:19.066) Love it. I wonder if the 100 tickets was for Indeed because at this rate that's about how many employees they're going to have at the end of the day. Which brings us to... Chad (17:29.55) Ouch. ZAPIX! Joel Cheesman (17:35.78) shit. Let's talk layoffs. Indeed .com announced a significant workforce reduction of about a thousand employees this week, which is approximately 8 % of its global workforce. CEO Chris Hyam cited the need to simplify the organization for faster decision -making and to drive revenue and hires more effectively. The layoffs are concentrated in the U S particularly affecting the R and D. and some go -to -market teams. Chad, a thousand new people need Indeed this week. Indeed they do. Your thoughts. Chad (18:14.744) Okay, so the letter that Chris Himes wrote, I'm going to give you a quote out of it, quote, I am responsible for how we got here and the entire senior leadership team is responsible for making the difficult decisions necessary to help set us up for the future. We know that these decisions will have a significant impact on people's lives. End quote. No shit, Chris. And this isn't the first time that you've had to cut heads. Your way. I don't know how many times I need to say it. He's not the guy for the job right now. He was the guy for the job for a few years, right? He's not the guy for the job now. He's not the guy who can actually take Indeed to the next level. And if you take a look at some of the SIA information that came out, the global market for online job ads fell 5%. to 34 .4 billion in 2023 compared to the previous year, again, from SIA. Still, online job advertising revenue grew 151%, 151 % between 2015 and 2023, according to the same SIA report. Only being down 5%, right? 151%, that's not sustainable. There's going to be a drop, right? But the thing is... CEOs have to learn how to grow responsibly. And when you're cutting this many heads, I know this is 8%, but this isn't the first cut, right? You've got, yeah, I mean, this is, who needs to go at this point? It needs to be the guy at the top. Why? Because he's responsible. He even said that he's responsible. So if I am a board member, I'm looking for a replacement, a capable replacement who knows. Joel Cheesman (19:55.834) It's a thousand people. It's a lot of people. Chad (20:13.774) how to drive an organization like Indeed to grow responsibly, sustainably. Chris is not the guy, I'm sorry. And it sounds like I'm calling for a lot of heads here lately as I did for Ian's at Zip. But I think both of those organizations are at the point where, I mean, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, hey, am I the right guy for this? There are many people are not gonna look at themselves and say, yeah, I need to go ahead and I need to find my next thing. These two, these guys are not it. And unfortunately, you know, I don't know who's going to be, be able to put a boot in their ass, but they're not going to do it to themselves. Joel Cheesman (20:55.834) That's a very interesting perspective. Recruit Holdings owns Indeed. Recruit Holdings is a staffing company. They bought Indeed 10 plus years ago. They bought Glassdoor kind of as a way to make sure ZipRecruiter didn't buy them at the time or someone else didn't. So there's a question of whether Chris is the guy to lead Indeed, but is Recruit... the right organization to run a job site. I think there's, there's ample argument to say like, recruit may not know what the fuck they're doing with, with indeed Chris from all accounts is a nice guy. He looks like if you and I had a love child, it might look a little bit like Chris Himes, but that's aside from the point. So you bring up an interesting point and I would say like, I don't know if recruit holdings knows what the hell they're doing. They're a great staffing company, billions and billions in revenue, but. Chad (21:49.294) Could be. Joel Cheesman (21:51.194) I think juries out as to whether or not that they know what the hell to do with a, with a job site. And then they just launched, like a go, on demand job site in Japan. We'll see where that goes probably nowhere. but yeah, no, it's, it's, it's in beta now. It's only, it's Japan only anyway, listen to the shred. the shred has some insight into that. I just forget, what that was. Chad (22:03.246) Yeah, indeed go wasn't it? Chad (22:12.406) Joel Cheesman (22:17.946) But to me, like you mentioned, layoffs previously, and that was back in March of 23, they laid off a 15 % of the workforce back then. It was around 2200 now, back then everyone was laying off, you know, multiple percentages of people. So maybe it was less, less big of a news, but to then come back to the table, and cut 8 % like that's significant. That's significant 15 and then 8 % of the workforce. Chad (22:42.926) It is. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (22:44.41) I point a lot of this to not only maybe mismanagement from recruit holdings and Chris being the wrong guy, but also value act, which took a stake in recruit holdings back in November of 23. let me get this right. at the time they said, the two companies were set to benefit from smarter pricing, better cost management, and shrewd modernization of the services used to run websites, translation year of efficiency, cut fat. cut heads do what private equity does and that's cut fat and increase profits. The problem is the profits aren't coming. So is this the end of the cuts? Like, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. From what I heard is they were waiting for this new sourcing tool to be completed before they did anything. Recruit Holdings just announced their quarterly earnings. I'm sure they had to like, Chad (23:30.158) Yeah. Chad (23:38.606) Mm. Joel Cheesman (23:41.53) put some cloud cover with their earnings, which were awful with, Hey, we cut some people, cut some staff. So this is really just bad all around. sort is sourcing going to fix it? I don't think so. I think the, the four apocalypse are in full, full effect right now. I've, you know, the, the job board doctor is really quiet these days. I can't imagine why, and as we get to our next story, it's even worse for them, but yeah, it's. Chad (23:46.222) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:09.082) Things are bad for indeed in getting worse. I don't see any turnaround. They need a tech savvy guy that understands the internet because these staffing guys don't know what the fuck they're doing. Chad (24:20.302) So, I mean, cutting R &D and go to market, I mean, is that a way forward? I mean, is that really the way forward? I mean, you've got a platform that's 20 years old. And we've talked about like this with LinkedIn too. You know, how do you get through this? I mean, you've got a platform that should, to be quite frank, should be really matching jobs and delivering. Joel Cheesman (24:23.166) yeah, good idea. R &D, cut that. Chad (24:48.046) qualified jobs to qualified or jobs to qualified individuals, right? You should be there already. There's no reason we should not be there as an industry and indeed should have been leading that. The problem is they still have shitty tech. I mean, it's just it's it's crazy. Just listening to some of this shit, man. It's it's it's ridiculous. I don't get it. I just don't get it. Joel Cheesman (24:51.002) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:08.954) Yeah. Yeah. Usually the stories now are like, Hey, we're automating customer service. We're automating, you know, cutting sales staff and automating that process or marketing. You rarely ever hear about R and D, going, going to the wayside. So that's again, again, not a good sign, but from bad to worse, let's get to another, let's, this is our red, our red meat segment here. Chad (25:21.614) Yeah, ain't good at market. Jesus. Chad (25:33.71) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:34.402) All right, let's talk about zip recruiter. Good God, here we go. From bad to worse, ZipRecruiter had a difficult first quarter featuring a significant, significant revenue decline and its first net loss since Q2 of 2021. The company reported a revenue of roughly $122 million, which was a 33 % decrease. Let me repeat that, a 33 % decrease from the previous year. This financial downturn was attributed. Chad (25:53.038) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:05.754) to a depressed labor demand and market factors. The company also experienced a 32 % drop in the number of paying employers. Chad, you weren't a fan of Zip's CEO before this report. How do you feel about the situation at Zip Recruiter now? Chad (26:25.23) Yeah, this doesn't feel like the red meat segment. It feels like the CEO heads need to roll segments. Yeah, I mean, you just, I mean, you lined it out there. I mean, revenue down 33 .5 % net loss, net loss 230%. One more time, net loss 230%. So as I stated earlier in the segment, the market is seeing a 5 % drop. 5 % drop, single digit, right? And we're seeing 230 % net loss. Yeah, I mean, if it's not a, I just don't know what needs to happen for organizations to understand that, cutting thousands of people like Zip and Indeed both have, once you do that and that doesn't. remedy the problem, you might need to look at the top of the ivory fucking tower for God's sakes. We need better leadership in these positions. And as I'd said before, Ian, I thought was incredibly innovative until they got to IPO. I don't know if he got across that IPO finish line and just he's taken a fucking nap or what's going on. But I mean, things have gone from innovation to non -existent. Joel Cheesman (27:53.498) I'll try to be as nice about this as I can. zip recruiter right now is a pile of dog shit sprinkled with cat turds stock down 8%, which by the way, it's down quite a bit. before that look, you had a great brand, a brand that represented hourly work, seasonal work, part -time work. and it was the gold standard for that market. They lost their shit. Chad (28:22.35) Was, yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:22.586) decided to create a brand for everybody, put some Phil AI bullshit as, as their mascot slash tech, they went AI, they went enterprise and they went IPO and it's been a shit show ever since. They're not going to go back to what they were. The game is up. They're in Santa Monica, California. It's much nicer to go to the beach and hang out there than it is to like figure out this company. Chad (28:38.51) And then they went to shit. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:52.09) I think that your calls for Ian to go are legit. This company is going nowhere fast. And if we get into like recession territory in the greater economy, like you're going to see some real pain at a place like ZipRecruiter. If I'm an employee at ZipRecruiter right now, I'm really nervous and I'm updating my LinkedIn profile. Chad (29:01.902) Mm -hmm. Chad (29:19.502) Yeah, yeah. I mean, we take a look at sports. We see like quarterbacks who've lost a step and they just get, they get hammered. And so does the, so does the team. The CEO has got to, again, they've got to take a look. It's like, Hey, look, you've lost a step. you know, maybe you should go back and try another startup or something. You can't, you can't be in the NFL anymore. You need to be in the UFL maybe. Joel Cheesman (29:44.218) Look, Ian was great at building a brand, getting a niche and being the best service in that niche. They were a better, cooler Craigslist for that market and they have lost their way. It's time to make some serious changes at ZipRecruiter if they're going to save that thing. Chad (29:49.934) taking it to IPO. Chad (29:56.014) Yeah. Chad (29:59.436) Wow. Chad (30:04.302) Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Joel Cheesman (30:07.386) Hmm. All right. More red meat for the listeners. Eightfold has introduced Eightfold Talent Tracking, an AI native applicant tracking system aiming to streamline HR technology investments and enhance the talent acquisition process, promising to accelerate successful job offers, provide a cohesive experience for talent teams and candidates. Chad (30:15.244) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:35.226) and offer skills based compensation intelligence. Don't call it an ATS Chad. Your thoughts on eight folds talent tracking. Chad (30:47.31) Yeah, so when Eightfold took 125 million back in October of 2020, I said that that kind of money means that they're going to have to become some sort of platform. And my prediction was that platform is going to have to be an applicant tracking system. I doubled down when Eightfold received an additional 220 million in June of 2021, less than a year from each other. I mean, they had $345 million in less than a year. Now, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in that short amount of time means there has to be some grander vision that investors bought into. And that vision could have been owning your specialty and then landing new customers and then slowly expanding your product base organically into that portfolio. That's how you gain wallet share. That's responsible growth. But... You can also expand your offerings too fast. And I remember back in my monster days, so story time kids, we were killing the job revenue game. And then we started expanding into areas that we had no expertise. So do you remember Monster Momentum, that product? Yeah, of course you don't. Of course you don't. It was an applicant tracking system that never took off. Why didn't it take off? Joel Cheesman (32:00.122) No, I do not remember monster momentum. huh. Chad (32:10.548) Monster was a job listing service. And then the Monster staff, they were wonderful at selling and servicing and upselling those job ad accounts, but they were never an HR tech company. That's an entirely different animal. And that's why Monster Momentum never made it out of the cradle. So that's what I'm seeing here with Eightfold. Not only did they start out as a matching platform, they weren't even a leader in that specific domain. Monster was at least a leader in a domain before they started to step out of it, right? Before they failed miserably with Monster Momentum. So Eightfold takes more money and dramatically opens up their total addressable market with regard to solutions offering and expanding their geographic footprint. I just don't think Eightfold, you know, I think they're not gonna fail because they're launching. an applicant tracking system, I believe eightfold will fail because they are growing their total addressable market at an unsustainable rate. Taking too much money too fast. That can really blur your vision and your discipline goes out the window. And then you become an expert at nothing. And I was thinking about this kind of like with ZipRecruiter, but this goes along with... This goes along with eightfold too. What's the easiest way to get $100 million in your bank account? Start with $345 million. Joel Cheesman (33:49.818) Mark Twain said I went broke slowly and then all of a sudden or suddenly, you know, Chano Fernandez, the former co CEO of Workday became the co CEO of Eightfold in January of this year. So are we surprised that innovation out of Workday's fold co CEO is in is in the the form of an ATS that they somehow want to rename talent tracking. Chad (33:54.734) Hahahaha Chad (34:06.894) weird. Weird. Chad (34:16.622) yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:19.514) because we're eightfold and we're cool. So let me, let me give, let me give you the quote from the press release. Let me get this right. Okay. Quote talent tracking is our latest leap into the future. A revolutionary tool that's been designed from the ground up with responsible AI and unparalleled user experience. Top of mind that's CEO Ashutosh Gara of eightfold. Chad (34:23.342) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (34:49.752) Fuck you, it's an ATS. These guys are the masters of like shining a turd. This is what they do. They put so many buzzwords and like what the cool kids are saying and consumers are going, what the fuck did they just say? But I'm all for it because AI and revolutionary and all these cool words are using it. These... Chad (35:05.262) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm -hmm. Chad (35:11.982) Exactly. Chad (35:17.87) Buzzword bingo. Joel Cheesman (35:18.746) These guys are this is the Emperor has no clothes. This is an ATS. This is revolutionary 25 years ago. And you guys are acting like you just split the atom in 1945. Like, fuck you, man. I God, this company is so full of shit. Look, they got money, they built a product, they built a brand, they had a chance to sell it. They didn't. Okay, so now they're in a spot where let's let's hire work days guy. Let's build like everything for everybody. And just like workday, they're going to be okay for most things, but not really great at everything. And that's where this company is going. It'll be fun to watch and talk about but God the Chad (35:46.286) Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Chad (35:59.278) Yeah. Right. Joel Cheesman (36:08.346) It's so frustrating to like read this shit and know that consumers are going, I bought a cool product when you didn't. It's an A fucking T fucking S fucking eightfold man. Jenny, Jenny Kangas, man, please help me. Help me. Our friend of the show is a new employee there. Help us understand this thing because from where I sit, this is a turd with some Shinola on it and nothing else. Chad (36:22.286) So that. Chad (36:28.75) I don't know. Chad (36:38.478) Hmm. So in the interesting thing is Workday bought Hired Score, right? Who actually they did focus specifically on a domain and get that domain right. I think that it's kind of like the tale of two cities there. I mean, obviously Hired Score didn't take hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think was incredibly smart for Hired Score. But again, we're talking, you know, two tales here and Workday not buying eightfold. Right? I mean, after taking all that money, how the fuck could I mean, that's just that just crazy cash. But then being able to go after a company like Hired Score again, I mean, I just think we talked about it on the show a million fucking times. There is such a thing as taking too much money. As a matter of fact, taking too much money will probably kick you in the nuts much faster than not getting enough. Joel Cheesman (37:31.194) I'm on record. I'm not convinced work day. Isn't going to fuck up that acquisition. I'm on record. I'm on record. Well, time will tell time. We'll talk. I need a breather. Let's take a break and, go back to the future. Everybody. Chad (37:38.796) Okay. Joel Cheesman (37:49.336) All right, Chad, it's time for Back to the Future. Chad (37:50.926) get you a paper bag. Joel Cheesman (37:57.658) That's right. Just like eightfold thinking that launching an ATS is cool. Let's go back to the future with starting. Elon Musk is doubling down on recruitment X the artists formerly known as Twitter is rolling out job recommendations in the U S market. A continuation of the X hiring project that began life in July of last year and a post on the site X hiring announced quote, you can now start seeing. personalized job recommendations directly on your timelines tailored to your preferences." End quote. Chad, you've been pretty consistent on your less than glowing opinion of Musk and ex jobs. Does this one change your mind? Chad (38:46.858) We have tech companies building models that are ingesting data, contextualizing and matching jobs to candidates. We have tech companies who are building engagement and experience systems. We have large language models. We have all, I mean, multimodal. All this stuff is going on and yet this is the original job board job search agent that we had over 25 years ago. And I'm not saying that. You have to be on the razor's edge of innovation in our space. But from what I'm seeing, Twitter doesn't even understand the basics or even where to start building today's engagement platform. And that's what you need to build if you want to drive Musk -like revenue. They're not going to get there. They're lost in the sauce. If you know how to build a system from the ground up, you will look at this and say, These guys are throwing shit at the wall. They have no fucking clue what they're doing. And they're starting with 1998 job search shit, 97, 96 job search agents. This is ridiculous. Joel Cheesman (39:59.13) So let's take a quick glance at Elon's resume. The dude launches rockets and then he brings them back and lands them. Okay? The Chinese can't figure that shit out. Okay? This guy revolutionized electric vehicles. I own a Tesla. It's amazing. No matter, well, my wife owns a Tesla. She says it's amazing. And when she lets me drive it, It seems amazing. This is a guy who is giving internet to Ukraine from space as it's fighting Russia. This is a guy who's digging holes in Vegas, creating an entire like transit system under the ground in Vegas. And this, and this, this is innovation. Like this, this is what they're doing. Chad (40:43.342) I don't believe they're paying for it, yeah. Chad (40:50.446) Not anymore. Not anymore. Joel Cheesman (40:58.522) man. I mean, there's low hanging fruit. Apparently they're not getting enough subscribers to their service and jobs is low hanging fruit. I mean, he's talked shit about LinkedIn every week for the last year. Let's see some LinkedIn competitor shit. Let's see like some real shit showing me jobs in my feed. Isn't innovation dude. Like I just, I'm so Chad (40:59.374) I could do I get nothing. Chad (41:21.198) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (41:28.628) disappointed that he just he's out of his element dude, get out of hire a CEO that knows tech or has done this shit before. An ex like someone from LinkedIn, like that would be interesting and do LinkedIn stuff from LinkedIn. This is a guy who is a genius and this is what innovation is out of Twitter hiring, ex hiring, whatever the fuck we're calling it like. they might get a few more clicks from their relationship with AppCast or whoever's putting jobs on there now, but man, there seems no traction of companies like getting the gold check and get my jobs on there. Those are the releases I wanna see, not some crazy jobs in your feet, everybody. Yay. Really disappointing, really disappointing. Chad (42:17.454) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the biggest issue that we have here is that they know what their problem is, and that's lack of user data. OK. And we're talking about user data. We mean like LinkedIn has pretty much our whole profile on there, our whole career profile, right? Twitter doesn't have that. They're not going to gain access to it. So what are they going to do? Well, they're just going to go into tell me what you want and we'll deliver it bullshit. I mean, again, this to me, this is not where you start, okay? You have the ability to actually start building and engaging your users to get more data from them. This is not it. This is not it. Joel Cheesman (43:03.642) You know what I would be more impressed with? I would be more impressed if Twitter said, you know what? Every time someone tweets out, I hate my job. My boss is an asshole. Like fuck the man. We're going to give them jobs because we know they're pissed at their workplace and we're going to give them jobs based on where they are. Geo locate jobs. That's something that's new. Like that's something you can do that most other people can't, but no, we get, yeah. Recommended jobs in your feed. Chad (43:23.438) It's a signal. Yeah, it's a signal. That's signal. Joel Cheesman (43:32.922) everybody. That's Chad (43:34.67) Well, if they did that, and then they could also have, they could partner with companies that actually already have a lot of profile data, or they could make it easier to make their profile more robust, but they're just, they're not going through that process, and that's where you start. You don't start with this bullshit. This is not where you start. Anyway, stupid. Joel Cheesman (43:56.474) connect my Twitter email with my application at whatever company and grab my profile from the ATS, bring it into the data set of what I have on Twitter and serve me jobs based on what my resume is from my ATS application. Like there's so much cool shit they could do, but this is what they get, man. This is, it's awful. Chad (44:04.494) Mm. Chad (44:22.478) Got nothing. Joel Cheesman (44:24.898) All right. More back to the future shit. That's right. I want to play the sound by it again. Stack overflow has partnered with indeed on a quote new version of stack overflow jobs. This experiment will explore a dedicated space that puts thousands of highly relevant jobs at the fingerprints of developers. The job site is currently available in the U S and may eventually expand to more markets. Chad (44:29.294) Whoo. Joel Cheesman (44:52.73) It's a co branded job board, Chad, how innovative your thoughts? Chad (44:59.342) Yeah. Remember back in the job backfill Olympics days when Indeed and Simply Hired were literally racing to build search widgets and blog job search platforms just to say that they've got their shit out there all over the place. This is the same thing. I mean, and that was over a decade ago. So, you know, here we go again. Joel Cheesman (45:04.426) yeah. Joel Cheesman (45:10.778) Mm -hmm. Chad (45:21.966) I was a huge proponent of stack going into the jobs business because they have enough data on their user base to feed relevant jobs, which was why I was surprised when they shut it down. And now to be replaced with this seems incredibly lazy. Why is it lazy? Here's a quote off the Stack Overflow website, quote, Stack Overflow and indeed have clearly defined criteria based on job title, job title. to ensure jobs posted on Stack Overflow jobs are relevant to a technical audience, end quote. Yes, kids, job titles. Not relevance, not fit to skills, no matching, just keyword search variables. The same shit that we were doing back in the late 1990s. I don't understand this. Indeed, there's gotta be some kind of revenue play here, some form, some fashion. I'm sharing click, click money, who knows, but I mean, this is, this is just weak sauce. Joel Cheesman (46:29.178) Speaking of Back to the Future, when I worked at JobOptions, our entire marketing strategy and acquisition strategy was partnerships. I was the partnership dude at one point where we would just put a jobs link on these sites and we would create a white label, co -branded job site. People would search for jobs and then we would split revenue. If someone posted a job, they'd get 30%, we'd get 70%, whatever. Chad (46:29.194) I'm Chad (46:50.222) Right. Yep. Everybody did it. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (46:57.978) and then indeed happened and API has happened and search happened and it became really easy for someone to plug in an API and do searches and have jobs. And then on a pay per click basis, you'd get paid a portion of the click. Like AdSense kind of took that model out of, out of circulation. And I can remember paying some bigger sites, you know, quite a bit of money at the time for like the real estate. Chad (47:20.174) and killed it. Joel Cheesman (47:26.65) to have a job section. We had some portals that are no longer around, but we would pay them for that privilege for whatever reason. I indeed has killed their API thing. I don't know if it was like competitive, like put job boards out of business or like stick it to whatever. There's too much spam or maybe fraud. Maybe click fraud was a big issue. I don't know, but they killed it. And then a few months or a year later, they're like, we're doing this network thing. we have healthcare and we have tech and all these little partnerships. I'm like, you had it. So I don't know what happened to where they kind of went back and then are coming back. I agree that the stack overflow is, is a nice partnership to have. Stack overflow is very non -committal on this though. They're like, well, we're in the U S we may, may launch it somewhere else. literally the, the press release, from the CEO of Sackoverlose. Chad (48:18.548) yeah. Joel Cheesman (48:25.594) was quote, our primary goal with Stack Overflow jobs is to simply learn. Does that sound like a committed company ready to put jobs in front of the users? Probably because their users hate jobs. their users aren't like, they say that the users like jobs, but I bet like it's a thing that people don't like on Stack Overflow that want jobs to get headhunter calls all the time. I think, I think indeed is writing a check. I think indeed is writing a big check. Chad (48:36.238) No, no, no. Joel Cheesman (48:55.546) And Stack Overflow is like, we can't say no. They made them an offer they couldn't refuse. He took the deal, but he's also saying like, Hey, we're not, it's just kind of a thing. We're just learning here. We're just cashing checks. It's all good. and then indeed can go to their, their customers and go, Hey man, we got this cool network of tech people. We're on Stack Overflow, which puts more money in indeed spot. So I think, I think this is just like, Chad (49:09.07) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (49:19.18) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:21.754) Money and Stack Overflow, Indeed's writing a check. They're sucking it out of customers who are like, we need tech people and Indeed has this partnership with Stack Overflow. It's regurgitating the past. A lot of it is because Google traffic has slowed down. So we've got to find other ways to do it. By the way, we don't talk enough on this show about generative AI and search results on Google. Almost every Google search now is just like, here's the answer. Chad (49:47.886) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:50.426) I don't have to click on a site. I don't have to go anywhere. Like that's really bad, not just for big sites, but that's really bad for little sites and con like content creators. that's hitting indeed and everybody else. So they need to find ways to put jobs in front of people through these partnerships. and this is just another example of what they're doing. I expect them to hit the healthcare market pretty heavy, here in the next 12, 24 months as well. We'll be talking about those partnerships. Chad (49:55.054) And they give you the source. Chad (50:18.734) Yeah, it just seems like a couple of, once again, two markets that are not the same at all, and that indeed they're not experts in. So, you know, it'll be interesting. Again, I think this is more jazz hands than anything else. Look at what I have here. Look at what I have here. Yeah, but you don't have the people actually engaging. You don't have the outcomes. And not to mention, if you could get all that fucking data. Joel Cheesman (50:32.376) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (50:40.12) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (50:44.506) Mm -hmm. Chad (50:45.678) and you can match against it. wait a minute. Your matching sucks. I guess it doesn't matter. Joel Cheesman (50:49.178) Yeah, here's the, we learned at job options that roughly three to 5 % of the traffic actually will click on jobs. So, you know, indeed it's going to sell this as like, Hey man, everybody on stack overflow is going to the jobs and they're checking your shit out. Like, especially with this audience, I bet it's like one to 2 % are going to click over and look for jobs. So look, if. Chad (50:57.166) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (51:12.922) If you're an employer and you get a call from Indeed and they start pitching Stack Overflow and how hot it is and how cool it is, do some data dive and see what kind of percentage actual traffic from Stack Overflow is going to the jobs. Chad (51:29.87) Lots of luck kids, lots of luck. Joel Cheesman (51:30.874) Well enough of this trip down memory lane. Let's get back to what we know best. Only fans will be right back. Chad (51:43.854) All right. This is in Euro Chad mode and this has been really a downer episode because all of these companies we're talking about are doing stupid shit. Can you give me something that will uplift everybody's soul, please? Joel Cheesman (51:45.484) Yep. Joel Cheesman (51:55.738) Well, I will, I will categorize this as the why we can't have nice things, discussion, but so let's set the table here. there's a, there's an organization, they're kind of artsy charity thing. It's portals .org. I think. So they take this big circle thing. It's called the portal and they connect two communities to each other around the world. And it's like a camera, a live stream of people in an area. And you've probably seen this on the news. It's kind of a big creepy Lord of the Rings, eye in the sky thing that you can kind of see through and see people. So you've probably seen this on the news. They recently connected Dublin, Ireland with New York city. Like who thought that was a good idea? needs to like check themselves because these are two demographics. Like, let's be honest. Chad (52:27.214) It's like a big Facebook portal, right? I mean... Chad (52:45.518) No problem there. Joel Cheesman (52:52.602) are prone to a little bit of knuckleheadedness. Okay. So, so, so Ireland starts showing pictures of like the world trade center, the twin towers burning. Like they start, they, they started it. Ireland started it from what I understand. So then New Yorkers start putting like pictures of potatoes, just like stupid shit, right? Flipping them off. suck it, you know, suck it Ireland, whatever. So you know where this is going, dude. You know where this is going. A New Yorker, her name is Ava Louise, probably not her real name. She decides to flash the Dublin faithful. I don't think there were any angry customers on that, but it sparked, it sparked outrage and it has shut down the portal. for now, it probably never will come back on between Dublin and New York. It needs to be like Boise and I don't know, Cork or something. No, Cork's probably even worse. Anyway, so the joke's on us, okay? So Ava, she's on OnlyFans, imagine that, she's on OnlyFans. So there's no bad advertising, there's only good advertising. So she is, yeah, she's. Chad (54:02.446) Hey. Chad (54:08.142) Yeah. create promotion. God, no. Especially with boobies. I mean, come on. Joel Cheesman (54:16.698) She's gone from 400 ,000 Instagram followers, which was not too shabby. I think to like 450 the last time I checked for flashing her boobs and sex sells as you know, Chad. So she made it, she's increased her monthly revenue on OnlyFans after this incident, 8 ,000 pounds per month. Chad (54:32.714) yeah. Joel Cheesman (54:41.338) What is that? That's like, that's like 9 ,000, $10 ,000 in USD. yeah, this was an English English story, so I don't know. But yeah, for, for flashing Ireland, she's getting $10 ,000 more per month on, on her only fans. Thanks to her transatlantic flashing. This is why we can't have nice things, Chad. Chad (54:44.558) Wow. Yeah, yeah. Chad (55:01.614) This is, I mean, first and foremost, let's just be frank here. Everybody loves boobies. I mean, boobs are welcomed everywhere. They're universal, right? Yes. So, you know, I think she was just trying to bring the temperature down, which I appreciate. Joel Cheesman (55:13.434) Universal. Universally loved. Chad (55:24.558) And I think to be quite frank, we should probably do this whole boobies tour all over the world to bring the temperature down guys, bring the temperature down. And just so that everybody out there knows, we're going to have a Chad and cheese portal, where we're going to invite Ava and the rest of the world to bring the temperature down because Chad and cheese and all of you love boobies and we love to deescalate. Joel Cheesman (55:46.714) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (55:53.882) Chad and cheese do love boobies everybody. Her quote was that she just wanted to show Ireland her potatoes. Appropriate, appropriate. By the way, Chad, I haven't gotten a dad joke in this week. How do you make an Irishman cry? Chad (55:53.902) issues. Chad (56:02.958) Okay, I'll take it. I'll take it. Yes. Chad (56:11.566) Take away his Guinness. Joel Cheesman (56:12.186) Say last call. We out. Chad (56:15.646) We out!

Jay Polaki, CEO and founder of HR Geckos, joins the Chad and Cheese Podcast for a session of Firing Squad. HR Geckos is an HR operations co-pilot that automates key HR processes, connects all HR systems, and provides an AI-powered help desk for HR. Jay shares her personal journey in HR and the inspiration behind starting HR Geckos. The company aims to replace fragmented HR systems with a unified, digital platform that connects employees to the information and services they need. Jay discusses the competitive landscape, pricing, go-to-market strategy, and the importance of partnerships. The hosts provide feedback and advice on raising funds, building a team, and scaling the business. Does she survive the Firing Squad? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:21.115) Uhhhh YEAH!~ Come on, another Firing Squad. What's up, everybody? It's Balaque's favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co -host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the key to my peel, Chad Sew Wash is in the house. And we're happy to welcome Jay Palacky, not Balaque, CEO and founder at HR Geckos, two HRs, most dangerous podcast. Jay, welcome to Firing Squad. Chad (00:36.127) Hello. Jay (00:49.934) Glad to be here and I'm ready with my bazooka, Joel and Chad. Joel Cheesman (00:54.011) she's going to fire back on us, Chad. She's ready. She's ready. So, so real quick, real quick, Jay, if there's, if there's a picture under the word persistence in the dictionary, it's Jay, because she has been lobbying so long to be on the show. so, so finally you've achieved your goal, Jay. Congratulations. You're on the podcast. Most of our listeners will not know who you are. We like to get a little flavor of what makes you tick here on Firing Squad. So give us the personal side of Jay. Chad (00:54.559) fighting back. I love it. I love it. I love it. Jay (01:23.598) Well, thank you again for accepting my numerous emails and messages to have me on the show, Joel and Chad. So glad to be here. Hi, everyone. I'm Jay Palaki, the chief gecko, AKA CEO of HR Geckos. And to keep the geckos in the conversation, I'll borrow a term from Botany. I've had a very, very gated. start to my career. I started in IO Psych. That's my background. Believe it or not, I started working for the beer giant Anheuser -Busch as an external consultant. And I've had many, many instances where I doubted whether I still wanted to be in HR. Like when I got shot at when accompanying the LASD, LA Sheriff's Department's Deputy. on a job analysis and the viewers, you know, in the middle of a chase, a car thief started shooting at our convoy. And then, yeah, so I've been in the line of gunfire, real gunfire. And, you know, I've also had the real pleasure of visiting some of the Chicago fire stations, one notable one being the one in ladder 49. Chad (02:29.055) Hello. Joel Cheesman (02:29.915) Yikes. Yeah, I draw the line at gunfire. Chad (02:38.047) Yeah. Jay (02:48.75) the Kurt Russell movie. And, you know, so that's been my variegated start in HR and I've been in HR for over 20 years. Chad (02:57.855) 5G action. Joel Cheesman (02:58.811) 5G action, yep. Jay (03:01.294) So this is HR Geckos is my baby. So I've built HR Geckos from all of my experience. Joel Cheesman (03:07.003) Okay, okay. Well, let's stop you there before you get into your baby chat. Tell her what she's won today on Firing Squad. Chad (03:16.127) Welcome Jay, this is how a firing squad is going to go today. At sound of the bell, you are going to have two minutes to pitch HR geckos. At the end of two minutes, we're going to hit you with about 20 minutes of Q and A. Be concise because if you start droning on, you're gonna hear the crickets. That's your signal to tighten it up and move out. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either big applause, gecko, no way. This is Godzilla. That's right, Jay. You're gonna make this happen. Golf clap. Well, we like it, but there's something you need to feed this gecko. It's got some legs, but you're gonna have to feed this gecko. And last but never least, the firing squad. Squish. That's the sound you're gonna hear because you're gonna have to ditch this business model. That gecko's gonna get squished. Try, try, try something else. Joel Cheesman (04:02.619) Yikes. Chad (04:12.927) That's Firing Squad, are you ready, Jay? Jay (04:17.006) Yes, I am. Joel Cheesman (04:19.259) All right, Jay, pitch this thing in three, two. Chad (04:19.263) Let's do it. Jay (04:24.302) Meet HR geckos. We make HR as agile as a gecko. We are a co -pilot for HR operations. And we automate key HR processes, connect all HR systems, and our AI -powered help desk is the only help desk built for HR by HR. The significant advantage we are bringing to HR teams is that we help them provide HR services instantly. And the big advantage for businesses is that they can comply with ever -changing laws and avoid the costs that come with manual processes and outdated technology. Our purpose is to replace fragmented systems with a unified, digital, one -stop shop that connects employees to what they need, when they need it, and where they need it. That's us, HR geckos with the Godzilla inside. So we are ready. Joel Cheesman (05:16.027) Okay. That's, that was quick for a product with a lot of stuff going on. All right. All right, Jay, let's, let's get to the name. This is what we, we cover first, HR gecko. Why the gecko? have you got a cease and desist from Geico? you're also using what looks like a Godzilla icon. Have the Godzilla folks contacted you, to change, to change things. And you have, you're very adamant about the trademark usage. So do you really have a trademark? Chad (05:21.951) I love it, I love it. Chad (05:36.063) I love it. Joel Cheesman (05:45.371) around HR geckos. Jay (05:48.398) So great question. Our origin story is we started as HR Godzilla. We didn't meet the lawyers from Godzilla, but we decided to be the smaller reptile, the gecko, because what we intend to do is transform HR. And so true to our name, HR Geckos is built to transform HR and HR processes and bring us into the 21st century. The logo is self -explanatory. Chad (06:12.703) Mm -hmm. Jay (06:18.094) We are the gecko with the Godzilla inside and no one's contacted us. I don't think we'll be ever sued. We have a trademark applied for it and it's ongoing. So yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:28.123) Well, if you, if you do well on this show, you might need one because the, the phones are going to be ringing off the hook with, with new sales. You, you, you have a robust history in HR, from your LinkedIn profile. What was the, what was the catalyst for an HR lady to start a company? Chad (06:34.047) and truly be Godzilla. Jay (06:50.062) Well, first off, I think when I turned 40, I realized that HR needs to leverage technology more. And being in organizations where I had to really go through the bureaucracy to get anything done, get any new technology implemented, I found that being on the outside, of organizations and helping to drive this transformation would work better for me. And so a couple of years before the pandemic, I picked up the gauntlet and said, here I go, HR Godzilla. And then when we went to market, we realized when we went to market to figure out the name, Godzilla has... a definite ominous ring to it. Of course, it's the king of monsters and our intention was to burn down these paper silos in HR. But we decided to be friendly and said, okay, so, you know, we are here to actually transform, not just burn down. And so Geckos was the ultimate choice. Joel Cheesman (07:53.115) Yikes. Jay (08:04.558) We had a family brainstorming event and my five -year -old nephew was one of the people who actually chose the name HR Godzilla. And then we convinced him that HR Geckos was a friendlier name as well. So, hey, he's the future of the workplace. He's 12 years old today and he loves HR Geckos. Joel Cheesman (08:21.627) What better way to name a company than to talk to the young people, Chad? So you got an undisclosed amount of money in 23. Are you prepared to tell us how much that was? And if so, great. But regardless, what have you done with the money? Are you looking to raise a real round of money, a seed round? Talk about the financial situation. Jay (08:45.326) Sure, we're fully bootstrapped. We've always been bootstrapped. The undisclosed amount of money is undisclosed to me as well. So I don't know what Crunchbase is reporting. So we were part of Mass Challenge, which is one of the global accelerators. And we were accepted into the program last year. Finalists at the PitchFest as well. And... Joel Cheesman (08:55.643) hahahaha Chad (08:57.055) HAHAHAHA Joel Cheesman (08:59.515) haha Jay (09:12.942) You know, as a company, we've grown being bootstrapped and we have a comfortable runway. Of course, you've got to start begging for money when you really don't need it, right? So we are, we have our begging bowl in hand and we are approaching investors, but we'll see how that goes. Joel Cheesman (09:22.619) Mm -hmm. Chad (09:29.375) Well, how big are you now? How many employees do you currently have? Jay (09:32.91) so we have a software development center in India and we have about five employees there. and we also have a digital marketing specialist and a business development specialist. the CTO and CEO are co -founders and my CTO is also my husband. His name is Sayan Adhata and he is a. Yeah. Yep. And he's, he's a tech genius par compare. he's just brilliant. So. Chad (09:53.759) Keep it in the family. That's good. Jay (10:01.87) I'm happy to have him on board at HR Geckos. Joel Cheesman (10:05.019) And he's dead sexy too. I'll just throw that in there. Chad (10:06.911) well, of course, of course. So... Jay (10:09.134) Yeah, Jules met him actually, right? Yeah. Chad (10:14.079) I don't want to go down that road. I'm sure there's a story there. Anyway, when did you start using the terminology copilot? Joel Cheesman (10:16.315) different podcasts. Jay (10:23.374) So we started using the terminology, I would say the beginning when we launched, when we launched in January of 2023. That's when we started using the terminology. Chad (10:36.383) Okay, so everybody's using it now. Do you think that it makes it better from an adoption standpoint or is there just way too much noise? Are you looking at, prospectively, getting out of kind of like co -pilot and going into something that maybe is more sexy, like a Godzilla pilot? I don't know. Jay (10:54.286) Good question. But you know, the word co -pilot is very prevalent among you and me, the ones who talk about this new technology and the ones who talk about HR technology a lot. But when I approach my industry segments in the small to medium business spaces, they are really not that aware of this technology. In fact, the term sometimes helps them better understand what we can do as an automation and a technology tool for HR. Chad (11:19.263) Mm. Jay (11:23.022) So I don't think there is too much noise there. I still think it's a good use of that buzzword when we go talk to people. Chad (11:30.975) okay. Okay. Also, another buzzword that's happening a lot lately is process efficiency, which I didn't hear in your pitch. Although the entire pitch to me sounded like this is just a big ball of process efficiency. So is that where you guys are really leaning hard to be a process efficiency excellence kind of technology or where are you going? Because that's what I got from the pitch. Jay (11:59.246) Absolutely. So definitely process efficiency because there is so much fragmentation in the HR tech stack in an organization. You know, employees, the two are, I'll say the three biggest problems we want to solve is that employees find it very hard to find what they want when they're looking for it in the moment that matters. And they don't know whom to contact about it. They don't have the necessary active directory kind of you know, process to figure out whom to contact for what within HR or within the business. And then, you know, they have no visibility into the status of their requests. The process is not transparent enough. The policies are not transparent enough. And the resolution is not transparent enough to the employee. So these are some of the top things we are trying to resolve with our product. Definitely the process efficiency is part of that, right? We are streamlining the HR operations with the tech. But at the end of it, we are trying to make sure that the focus remains on the human and not all of this process pushing where you're asking them to complete these different forms or different provide you with different pieces of information at the end of the day, making it look like this really cumbersome, frustrating moment for the employee, especially when they're calling you when they've had a new baby, or they're calling you in the midst of a crisis and they need resolution, or they just want to go on vacation and they just want to know how much vacation they have. Like in chat. Chad (13:25.567) Mm -hmm. Chad (13:43.295) Mm -hmm. Chad (13:49.663) Yeah. Yeah. Jay (13:51.182) Not everyone's going to Europe like you, but you know, I want to go to the beach, but I want to know how much vacation I have. And I can't get a handle of it unless someone, you know, looks up a different system and tells me, or I wait for someone to email me back. So those are some of the frustrations that we are looking into and solving. Chad (14:04.511) Okay. Chad (14:09.215) So just to be able to provide an understanding and scope of the actual technology and who it's going to serve, where do you start? Do you start after the hire and then going through onboarding and through the talent management whole process methodology or is it before that? Just help me with scope role. Jay (14:27.758) Absolutely. We start right when an applicant has offered the job and is in the process of considering and accepting it. So we start with that onboarding and that's where the automation part of our platform comes in as well, where we help digitize that part of the process as well. Yeah. Chad (14:32.511) Gotcha. Joel Cheesman (14:44.891) All right, Jay, let's talk about the Godzilla in the room. I want to get a sense from you of the competitive landscape. From where I sit, there are some well -funded, well -resourced competitors, Rippling, Bamboo, High Bob, Factorial, just to name a few. Where do you guys fit in? How do you cut through the clutter? How do you differentiate? Jay (15:10.99) Absolutely. So that's a great question. In fact, one of my board of advisors just sent me an email asking me one of those questions as well. So when you look at, you mentioned Rippling. Rippling is built primarily for payroll. And on top of that, they've added on some additional functionalities to help out. And they cater to companies apparently who even have two employees. because that's apparently where payroll comes into play. Our company is differentiated by the fact that we are using our chat pod not just to provide employee self -service, but also to help the HR team with their side of the operations. So we are tapping into knowledge center resources and knowledge bases that would help HR teams be more efficient and more... you know, productive as well. That's one of our key differentiators. No one's doing that. The chat bot's only used for employee self -service. The second thing that we are doing very well is not just building a workflow, but actually connecting everyone who needs to be a part of that workflow in one single system. We are taking away that disjointed, fragmented HR tech stack and acting as a hub for the employee, for the HR, for the business, so that they can connect easily and seamlessly with all of their technology through a single sign -on gateway, through us acting as a hub. And the third differentiator is our custom integrations. We integrate with and we build integrations with anything that has an open API or not based on the different technologies that are already in -house. We will make sure that We are connecting all of them and making it a seamless experience for the... Joel Cheesman (17:12.795) How about on pricing? Do you guys differentiate quite a bit on the pricing side as well? It feels like a product for a smaller company. Am I wrong about that? Who's your customer? What do they look like typically? Jay (17:25.678) So we are here to serve the small to medium business segment. So anywhere from 50 ,000 to 5 ,000 employee companies, that's where we sit. And the pricing, we have a freemium model for smaller companies that are less than 25 employees. In fact, we're extending that to even 50 employees or less at this point in time this year. so that we can help you with getting set up with your HR people function, because we have all of the other, you know, bells and whistles that you need as a company that's starting up org charts, job descriptions, digitizing your employee handbook, having your employee profiles in one place with all of the contact information so you can actually build the chart and look at how your organization is scaling and growing. These are things that... People say, some of the companies say they are able to provide, but they provide it in a very piecemeal fashion. Whereas we do the whole gamut of all of this that I've just mentioned. We also have survey, we have a survey tool and we have push notifications and announcements and integrations with Slack and Teams. So we do a lot of things that organizations say they do, but they really don't do it to the full extent of the process or the technology. But we are doing it to the full 100 % extent. Chad (18:51.007) Excellent. So as we talk about SMB, SMB is a very, very, very hard market to penetrate, which you've probably heard us say on this podcast a million times. It can be done. Don't get me wrong. What is your go -to -market strategy on being able to penetrate the SMB market? Jay (19:08.494) Education. First off, small to medium businesses are not aware that there are tools for the HR function. Tools in general. I mean, they don't pay attention to the service nows, the replings, they do because there is some payroll involved, but the service nows which are built for service delivery, they don't pay attention to those bigger tools because they've never needed to use them. Chad (19:17.087) Mm -hmm. Jay (19:31.63) So the education component is key in this market about educating. In fact, I was just speaking to a CHRO of a 200 people company who never thought about using AI the way HR Geckos is using it, where they have multiple channels on Slack and Teams, and they have employees in different countries at this point in time because of the way everyone's shifted to remote and can employ anyone anywhere today. And they're finding it hard to corral all of that into one place and train a chatbot. I mean, the Slackbot is not going to be able to help them because they have messages coming in through email and Teams and even voicemail and walk -ins. So our platform actually corrals all of that information. The chatbot is very, very private to the company. We are not Gen .ai, we are not ChatGPT. And I'll say that again and again, we are not ChatGPT. We are built for the company. The chatbot is very private, is trained only on your data and does not share your data outside of your organization and does not bring in outside data to be, you know, compared to your data at all. So it's a very custom built NLP machine learning bot, and it will serve the purpose of augmenting the work of say an office manager or an HR manager or an HR team of one. with 150, 200 employees who really needs that help and is resource strapped and is short on time and life is passing us by as we speak on an HR team of one. So that's the efficiency and the augmentation we are bringing with the technology and the education piece is key to this. And that's why the go -to market, the content is key. And strategically going and speaking to where these small to medium businesses are is also very key. And they're not going to attend HR technology conference. They're not going to attend these larger conferences. So we have to go where they are in the local areas, in the local networking business networking groups. And believe it or not, with all of... Yes. Chad (21:44.063) Are you partnering with companies on that? Are you partnering with companies to be able to get that kind of penetration? Talk about that because that to me is the good of market strategy. Jay (21:49.358) Yes. Yes, so we've partnered with a couple of companies already in the background screening and people analytics space. And we have a couple of HR consulting partners and a couple more who are coming on board shortly. And we are also trying to partner with the bigger companies who serve the SMB market. So we are trying to get on their marketplace as well. We have a few deals in the pipeline with these companies and hopefully we'll be on their marketplace soon so we can reach that SMB segment. Partnerships are very, very key today because how do you reach a small business owner who has 300 employees and is so busy? running the business is not even thinking about the HR piece, right? So that's one of the biggest ways also to approach this market and get into the market. Chad (22:47.455) Yeah, what about the other Godzillas in the market? Because we just talked about Chet, GPT. I mean, you've got Gemini that's out there. You've got all these different large language models that are outspending. I mean, they're pretty much buying all the GPU power. I mean, they are monopolies in themselves already, but they're going to monopolize the GPU power. In a very slim market like you are looking at compared to what they're looking at in the entire universe of data, Do you need that kind of power? Number one. Number two, can another company jump in with an open AI or, you know, a Gemini or what have you, and pretty much take you guys out much faster and scale faster. Tell me about that, that, that competition piece. Jay (23:35.566) great question. Definitely spent a lot of time on that when we were launching in January and we were asked the same question. So here's the difference. ChatGPT and other Gen .ai tools are using data from God knows where. They themselves do not know where they're getting the data from, okay, because they can. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (23:54.719) Yeah. But they can, so think about it though. I understand what you're saying, but they can, let's say for instance, you can still use those AI models with smaller data lakes, correct? So a company can actually go and they can utilize that and hit a data lake like you're talking about with these SMB companies. So let's talk about that threat, because that's the threat that I care about. I don't care about the whole universe of data. I care about them actually Jay (24:10.222) Yes. Chad (24:27.455) able to efficiently use that model against your model. Jay (24:31.182) So you are seeing Chat GPT being used in customer service today, correct? Where it can answer a query and say, OK, here's the info. So we are going a step beyond that with our chatbot. Our chatbot is not just bringing in the information. It's also acting as a place where you can. Chad (24:36.319) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (24:47.231) Mm -hmm. Jay (24:55.63) evolve your HR practices, your HR handbook, your FAQ library as the chatbot is interacting with your employee populations. I don't see ChatGPT or anyone doing that at this point and they're cost prohibitive for small to medium businesses. Have you seen how much their subscription costs? It's beyond what anyone can afford for a platform like that. Our cost, our cost, we are, Chad (25:20.767) huh. Jay (25:23.95) pegged for small to medium businesses. And so we are affordable, much more affordable than any of these Gen .ai tools. Besides, when we speak to small to medium businesses, they tell us why do we need a Gen .ai tool, first of all? They can use it as a personal assistant, maybe they can write a job description with it, or maybe they can write a job posting, clever job posting with all the fun buzzwords in it. But it's really not helpful to serve their employees because by the time they train that GPT, they would have spent thousands of dollars doing that. Whereas our bot hits the ground running with the data that is in their system already with their employee handbook, with their company policies. And its training curve, its learning curve is very short and it's very private to that company. It does not share data outside of that company. And it does not bring data from outside to share with people within the company. So there is a huge difference in the way a generative AI tool is used versus an AI machine learning NLP tool is used. And that's also a differentiator that we need to educate people about because obviously everyone's caught up in this cycle of, wow, AI. Joel Cheesman (26:42.203) All right, Jay, let's, let's move on. Let's move on. let's talk about, sales and marketing. You have a team of five. I don't know if any of those are salespeople. your marketing strategy from what I can tell is you have a podcast. now I've been on the podcast, so that's obviously sound, marketing, sound marketing decision on your part, but talk about the marketing. How are you educating? How are you getting the word out? What is the sales process? It's a big world. How are you? How are you getting in front of it? Jay (27:14.382) Great, yeah, so the podcast is actually a very big educational tool on leveraging technology and talking to HR practitioners, sharing their insights and seeing how we are able to use technologies like this today in the HR function. When it comes to reaching folks, I believe in a lot of networking. And so I've been doing that outreach myself, being an HR. tech influencer myself has been helpful. I was told as a startup, you can't afford an influencer. So try to be an influencer yourself. Then I first started in the business and believe it or not, that's very true because HR tech influencers, like you guys cost a fortune and I can afford you. So, Hey. Chad (28:02.303) What? Joel Cheesman (28:04.347) True. Jay (28:06.606) I'd love to jump off the stratosphere with you, but it's going to cost me so much money. I can't afford it. You know, I'd rather just be on the outside watching you guys like, I don't know, fall. Joel Cheesman (28:16.059) You're welcome to watch. There'll be a huge crowd, I'm sure. Chad (28:18.751) Yeah, you're more than welcome to watch. Yeah, you can pop the champagne when we're done. I've got one last question for you. One last question. Yeah. Let's not, let's not go into that. Let's not go into that. Okay. So I have one last question, Jay. How much money do you want? That's follow up from early funding and the, and the, the Oliver wanting more gruel. How much money do you want? And when you get that money, what do you want to do with it? Joel Cheesman (28:23.547) You can change my diaper when I'm done. Did that go too far? That went too far, didn't it? Sorry. Jay (28:46.702) We are looking to raise a million and a half, and we are going to put that mostly into product development and marketing and sales. So we're thinking 30 % product and 70 % sales and marketing at this point in time. And our ask is very much geared towards smaller angels, investors, not big conglomerate private equity firms at this point in time. where they understand HR and they understand the future of work kind of technologies and those are the kind of investors we are looking to attract and work with in the near future. Joel Cheesman (29:28.091) Speaking of money, Chad, this product sounds a little pricey for me. Jay, you got a freemium model. It went from 25 to 50. I'm not sure that's a good sign, but talk to us about what it's gonna cost to use HR geckos. Jay (29:45.358) So at this point in time, we have a PEPM plan, which is a per employee per month plan. It's $13 .99 per employee per month to use our platform with all of the built -in customizations and all of the other tools that we have for HR teams and employees. We have slashed our prices. I'll. a number of times for our clients and we've also offered a flat rate on the annual contract instead of using the PEPA model. And that has worked for smaller teams who have some attrition, like smaller technology startups who have had a lot of attrition these past six months. So the annual contract is also very well priced and we are very flexible on the annual contract flat pricing as well. Joel Cheesman (30:35.835) All right. Well, that bell means one thing, Jay. It's time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Well, even if you're not ready, we're doing it. Chad, Chad, have at it. Jay (30:44.494) Yes, I am! Chad (30:47.295) Too bad. Jay, all I got to say is burn it down. Burn it down, Godzilla style. So a partnership is where you went, okay? It's really the only practical way your business scales. The first thing, and as I talk to and advise startups on a daily damn basis, it's get to MVP as soon as you can. And then, especially when you're looking at trying to be SMB, right? you want to get into those bigger portfolios, right? The bamboo HRs, those types of things. The ones who need to evolve their platform. They need to evolve their technology, right? And they can't, it's better to buy than it is to try to have somebody develop it internally. We've seen that over and over because the velocity of technology right now is going so fast. Most of those companies don't have the assets to be able to. are the resources to be able to actually do that in -house, in most cases, right? And if they do, they're gonna do it half -assed. They just are, right? So that is where you win. So when you're talking about getting that funding, I would say, yes, tech is great, being able to do more with the product is great, but don't go too far. Focus on revenue, revenue, revenue. That's all that matters, right? Turn that revenue. Man, you turn 40 and the HR practitioner, and you realized it's not getting better, it's not getting faster, it's not enough. So you said, I'm gonna change it. You have the experience, your husband has the experience. I fucking love that. I fucking love that, right? And talent management is where the money is. Talent management, not talent acquisition, there's great stuff there to be able to start penetrating in the market, to be able to go down funnel, but you're already going down funnel. That's where the money is, right? So usually, Jay (32:18.542) Thank you. Chad (32:34.783) Hate the SMB market, which I said earlier, but there are tons of bigger platforms. And if you do focus, which I think you will, sticking to the co -pilot is smart. That was kind of like a trap question because to be quite frank, you want to be able to get into something that everybody understands. And if you have a company like, I don't know, Microsoft using co -pilot as a way to help adoption and understanding of what this tech is, use it. Use it, use it. Don't try to recreate the wheel, right? So I don't know if it's because I'm in Euro Chad mode, but to me, this is, I'm happy. This is great. I love this conversation. I love it. Big applause. And I believe acquisition is imminent. Acquisition is imminent. Good job, Jay. Joel Cheesman (33:20.731) way, if any, if anyone wants a loan, now's a good time to hit up Chad for some cash if you're, if you're a little low on it. All right. Yeah. If you can find them, if you can find them, he'll be, he'll be on the stratosphere next week, next Tuesday. so Jay, I was totally prepared to come into this saying that this wasn't even a knife in a gunfight. It was more like a spoon and a tank battle. and I still sort of believe that now what. Chad (33:24.639) If you can, if you can get me that's the thing. Joel Cheesman (33:48.187) What I, what I feel like your secret sauce is, is the tagline on your site, HR built, built by HR for HR. We don't get a lot of companies on firing squad that have a founder that's rooted as deeply as you are into HR. I think that's a huge benefit to this company. You're you being able to have real conversations with other HR people is should be magical for you going forward. five people, this is a skeleton crew. I'm amazed that you've been able to build all that you've been able to build. But you need, you need money. You need, you need, you got a tech guy that's probably like in the basement working 23 hours a day, right? You've got, you know, and what you need, you need, you need a chief revenue officer. You need a chief marketing officer that knows what the hell they're doing. You know, dump. Chad (34:43.615) fractional. Joel Cheesman (34:44.571) dump the stock photos on the website, like get a real professional. Cause that's kind of what lights the world. That's, that's like, you gotta have that stuff. Get some salespeople, you know, pounding the pavement and call it, you know, on the phone. I think there's a market for this. I just think you're on that ledge. And I think that 1 .5 million, which I think you'll get, there's a lot of seed money being thrown around right now. if you were looking for 50 million, I'd say maybe not. But you should be able to raise one to 2 million and seed with just what you've done so far. And I think once that happens, get some, get some people that can help you grow this thing. And then I think it's off to the races and I, and I didn't really think about it until Chad said it, but yeah, acquisition, is a real opportunity for you and at two to 3 million in funding, you should find a really nice payday, for those investors. So again, I love it. I just want to see the money. If you had the money. I'd be Euro Chad mode giving you a big applause as well, but because there's no money in the bank for me at this moment. Chad (35:49.055) golf clap, yeah? Joel Cheesman (35:50.139) We're going golf clap. We're going golf clap. So Jay, get to work, raise some money, build a team, and kick this thing into, into fourth, fifth gear. Chad (35:59.742) and thanks for coming on. Joel Cheesman (36:01.211) And thanks for coming on. I could tell by the smile on your face that you're feeling pretty good, which is great. I want you to let us know when you raise that money. For those listeners out there that want to want to know more about you, more about HR geckos, where do you send them? Jay (36:01.422) Wonderful, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. Jay (36:17.902) I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, anywhere you are on a social media platform. I'm there, so I'm happy to connect mostly on LinkedIn though. And definitely look us up on the web or on LinkedIn. Our company pages are everywhere. Joel Cheesman (36:32.123) This is why you need a marketing person because the answer is check us out at HRgeckos .com. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.

Strap in for another episode of HR's most irreverent show where we dive headfirst into the HR abyss. The Chad & Cheese sit down with John Baldino, a man who’s been around the HR block longer than our interns have been alive, and dissect everything that's hilariously wrong (and sometimes right) in the world of human resources. Fear Factor HR Edition: Why is HR so terrified of the C-suite? We'll explore the existential dread of asking for more budget and why HR prefers to live in the land of "No Money, Mo' Problems." Tech Wreck Tech Deck: Listen as we ridicule the shiny new HR technologies that promise the moon but deliver a piece of cheese. John breaks down why these tools often end up as expensive digital paperweights. The Boomerang Boomers: Why are retirees flooding back to the workforce? Is it for the love of the job or just because they can't afford Netflix on their pensions? We'll look at why the golden years are now being spent in cubicles rather than on cruises. Leadership or Lack Thereof: Get ready for John's rant on why today's HR leaders might just be masquerading as competent professionals. Spoiler alert: It involves a lot of snark and some uncomfortable truths about leadership (or the absence of it). Tune in for an episode that promises to be as enlightening as it is entertaining, with plenty of laughs, a few cringes, and maybe some existential questioning of your career choices. Don't forget to leave your sensibilities at the door—this ride isn’t for the faint of heart or the humorless in HR. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash 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 Sowash and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. What's up everybody, we are live at Transform. Chad: It is bumping up in here. Joel: This is Bugsy Siegel's favorite podcast aka The Chad Sowash and Cheese podcast I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always, the David to my Copperfield, Chad Sowash is here and we welcome John Baldino to the show. John Baldino: What's up, guys? What's up? Joel: He's the president of Humareso. John Baldino: Nice, nice. Chad: Wait a minute. I thought he was tech support for Chad and Cheese. John Baldino: Just on battery duty. That's it. Joel: It doesn't pay very well. I think president of Humareso was a better gig for you. John Baldino: Look at you. I'm gonna have you do voiceover work now. [laughter] Joel: I was gonna make a Bald Dino joke, but I won't now because of this and that. John Baldino: Oh, you don't know anything about my Dino. Joel: Yeah. I got two bald guys ganging up on me. That's not nice. John Baldino: He wishes he did, though. He wishes he did. Joel: That's an Oreo I don't wanna be any part of. John, a lot of our listeners don't know you. Give them the quick Twitter bio and a little bit about the company before we get into it. John Baldino: And let's start with an insult. A lot don't know about me. That's really nice, right? Chad: Where we like to start things. We have set expectations. Joel: There are three billion people in the world, John, how many know you? John Baldino: I've only been doing this work for 30 plus years. I've been around a minute. Joel: That's a flex. I've been in this industry. [laughter] John Baldino: That's a total flex, total flex. Listen, we're here at Transform. I keep walking around and there's these 19-year-olds that are selling product. I'm like, what are you doing? Joel: There are no 19-year-olds. This is not the beverage and food industry. John Baldino: Oh, I'm sorry. First of all, don't knock beverage and food. It pays the bills. Joel: Oh, I don't knock beverage and food. I'm just saying that's where the 19-year-olds are. [laughter] John Baldino: Anyway, John Baldino. Like I said, been around a long time in HR. Currently, it's been 12 years actually for Humareso at this point, which is crazy to me. And we're just having a blast. Honestly, we're doing consulting work all over the country, international as well. Have great people working with me and for me at Humareso. Joel: What would a company come to you for? John Baldino: They're coming to us for everything from tactical to transformative work. So technology related, org design, but all the way to compliance, handbooks, administration. Joel: I think you're saying you're a good guy to interview. John Baldino: We are. Joel: That's what you're saying. Chad: That's what I'm hearing, that's what I'm hearing. John Baldino: Yeah yeah yeah. Lots of opinions That's why. Chad: Thank God. Thank God. Joel: So you are speaking at Transform, we're here in Vegas. John Baldino: Yeah, I have a panel. Yep. Joel: What's it about? What are you gonna rant about? John Baldino: So I've got a few people joining me tomorrow on really selecting HR technology when you have no budget. So it's a good talk. Joel: That'll be a lot of people. John Baldino: A lot of people. Joel: That'll be a big group. John Baldino: Really though, the focus will be a lot of HR departments, one. How do you get things done with a limited budget? Chad: Shouldn't that be prefaced with how to set your business case so that you can go get cash to actually buy technology? 'Cause a lot of these individuals, like you're saying, they don't have budget. That's total bullshit because none of these companies run without talent. Period. Right? Why are we not prefacing with, okay, here's your business case to go get cash from the C-suite? 'Cause if you don't, then guess what? Shit's gonna break. John Baldino: Yeah. So first reason we don't is 'cause of fear. Chad: Your fear or their fear? John Baldino: Their fear. Well, as a practitioner, I think we have a lot of folks who are afraid to have these conversations. Chad: Risk averse. John Baldino: Oh my gosh, yeah. Chad: Well, they should not be in leadership positions then. Joel: Well, their argument will be, well, I've touched that hot stove before. And when I sit with my director of finance or CFO, they just give me a hard time. And so I don't wanna do that anymore. Okay. Well, then you're just giving up your power. That's doesn't sound the right role for you then if you have to give up your power. 'Cause to your point, there is money, there is budget to spend on these things. Chad: Yes! John Baldino: And one of the things that's happening as you both know right now is that some of these teams have been cut a bit, right? There's been riff. A team of five is down to four, a team of four is down to three, whatever, but you still have to get that work done. And so you can offset some of that cost with the headcount that you saved, even if it's a fraction of it to say, we're gonna apply it to this in a different way. It's not, it shouldn't be a net zero. It shouldn't be like, we laid somebody off for 80 grand. Now we have 80 grand. No, no, no. That work for 80 grand still has to get done. You may have cut 80 grand, but we're gonna spend 30 of it on a piece of technology that'll help. And so you saved 50. That's what you should use. Chad: So I digress because we're talking about something entirely different today. We're going to have a different discussion about this. I'm telling you right now, because this is one of my biggest issues in our space, is we have HR leaders that are not fucking leaders in the first place, and that drives me nuts. John Baldino: Yes. That sounds harsh, but it's true. Chad: Sometimes the truth is harsh, right? But today we're gonna talk about something even more harsh, and that's the aged coming back. Joel: The return. John Baldino: The aged. [laughter] Joel: The empire strikes back. Chad: We have Methuselah coming back to take those jobs. Joel: The blue hairs are coming back to the workforce. Chad: Oh yes, yes. John Baldino: Absolutely! Joel: So say more. What are you gonna talk about in your presentation? John Baldino: The estimates kinda run the gamut right now. On the low end, 2023 saw at the low end, 2 million 65 plus returning to the workforce. High end, we're seeing numbers 7 million. Somewhere in that range. Chad: And those are the boomers. John Baldino: 65 plus returning to the workforce. A couple of things to that. One, some are part-time. So it's not full-time. It's in a capacity. Some way, shape or form, they've returned to the workforce. And we're having companies wrestle with that part-timeness because we've got some companies that are stuck. Chad: Yes. John Baldino: You can only work for us 40 hours a week. No, that's actually not true. Right? And so they're wrestling with, so I can get this person with X amount of years of experience who's looking to be useful for 15 hours a week. Can I make that work? Yes. More companies are starting to say yes. Joel: Are they returning because the retirement's not there? They're bored. There's just so much money because there's a labor shortage. Why are these folks that should be enjoying their twilight years back at work? John Baldino: It's a great question. Part of it is the 401k crap out for some people, right? They're just not able to bank on as much. Chad: Pensions went away and therefore we're in this situation. Yeah, I get it. John Baldino: Yeah. And the, look, we see what the prices are for things. Right? You go to the grocery store and you were budgeting X two years ago when you retired, and now you're like, okay, I can't afford 10 bucks, $10 eggs. Something's gotta give. Chad: Okay. So here's the problem, John. The boomers put us in this fucking situation in the first place. John Baldino: Exactly. Chad: And it's taken them so long to get out of the workforce as it is so that the Xers and millennials can actually get the leadership experience they need to run companies. John Baldino: Yeah. Chad: These guys are gonna fall off the face of the earth that, I mean, they're going to actually end up dying out of the workforce, right? John Baldino: Yeah. Chad: Then we're going to have organizations that are not prepared because they don't have the talent ready. John Baldino: Yeah. Chad: Because these assholes won't leave. John Baldino: Well, first of all, we're still at about 79 years old for the average death age. [laughter] John Baldino: So somebody who's 66 might have a couple of years left on average. Right? Chad: What kinda life is that though, right? Find a beach. John Baldino: I mean, listen, some of them are working from the beach. Joel: As we say this. 15 years from now, we'll be at this stupid podcast booth talking about [laughter] I'm still young. I can still do this shit. And we're gonna play back this episode. Chad: We're gonna bring some youth into this though. We're going to make sure that the millennials and Zs... Joel: We're gonna train the next leadership podcasters. Chad: That's exactly right. John Baldino: Well, and I think that, first of all, I think you're too kind, to be honest. I think you're too kind that they're in the way of these millennials becoming leaders. Chad: How are they not? Joel: He's too kind? John Baldino: Yeah. Yeah. That was too... Joel: Okay, so be meaner than him. John Baldino: So what I would say is, I mean, this is a whole other episode. I have millennials that are too afraid to own anything. They're so risk adversed that they don't want the positions of leadership, quite frankly. Listen, and not that I would necessarily wanna be political but I would wanna be, it is absolute tell that we have two Methuselahs who are likely to be running for president because we can't get people who want to be leaders in their 40s and 50s. They don't want that responsibility. They should. Chad: That's a big fucking responsibility though, John. John Baldino: It is a huge one. Chad: Being president. John Baldino: Absolutely. Chad: Right, you know? John Baldino: I tell this story all the time and... Joel: Hold on a second. Hold on a second. John Baldino: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Are you saying there aren't enough young people who want to be president? John Baldino: Yes. Joel: Because we had people under 70 in the primary. John Baldino: Yes. Joel: The better argument would be the people don't want younger people running things. John Baldino: I won't argue that to say that's completely wrong, but I don't know that it's a clear cut that's the reason. I would say though, look, when I was young, they used to say the flakes rise to the top. So when you look in any organization, the people who wind up in leadership positions are the ones that just sort of dumbed their way into it. [laughter] Joel: Right. 90% is just showing up. John Baldino: The other people were smart enough to get out of it and say, I'm not doing this. Chad: Yeah. Well and those people are actually the ones who got out are actually making more money because every time they switch they got a 20% raise. John Baldino: That's right. Chad: Right? John Baldino: Yep. Chad: And so the flakes, yeah, they stayed in, they were the go-to individual at the organization, but they didn't really wanna move up. John Baldino: Well, and I don't know that they know how to sell themselves as well. Joel: Yeah. John Baldino: Right? So this is connected to the older generation, 'cause when the older generation comes back and it's helpful, and I honestly, I don't know how the numbers are gonna shake out. My guess would be the largest percentage will be part-time, not full-time. And so I think that it's the wisdom in how do you use this older generation in coming back so that they're not in the way though, to your point. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: But they're mentoring and really helping people that are younger to say, this is how you have to... Chad: They're advisors. John Baldino: Yeah. Chad: They're advisors. John Baldino: This is how you have to work with the knowledge that you have as opposed to just going on your performance review and saying, I think I'm pretty good. Let me give myself all fives. What do you mean I'm meeting expectations? I'm now gonna boohoo and leave and see if I can be appreciated somewhere else. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: That's not leadership, that isn't teaching anyone how to be a leader when we allow that to happen at all. Chad: Okay. So I'm gonna generalize. I'm very good at that. John Baldino: Yep, yep, yep. Chad: The boomer generation is not a giving generation. It's a me, me, me rugged individualism fuck off if you can't do it yourself. Right? So they're not great mentors. John Baldino: So is this like a daddy issue thing for you? Chad: Yes. Yes, it definitely is. It definitely is. Not only that, having mentors or "leaders" above me for my entire career who were boomers, it's been a daddy issue from company to company to company. Right? John Baldino: Yeah. Chad: So, I mean, again, this is more generalizing. This is my story. I guess you can say I'm trying to get it all out here on the Oprah show. [laughter] Chad: But that's been my experience, man. It's been like, hey, go do it yourself. John Baldino: It's funny that you say that because what I would say statistically though is you do see more older generation softening. So you get to your 70s and you're like, I don't wanna lose my mind on things that I used to lose my mind on. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: My parents are a great example of that and I'm sure my mom will listen to this, which is gonna be awesome. [laughter] John Baldino: They were not kind people, my mom and dad. They loved me but they were not kind in that regard. Chad: No, that's not how you parented. John Baldino: And if you wronged them... That's right. And my mom still, like, if you wrong her, she's got the book from 1974. She's gone way back and is gonna tell you everything that went on, she's ready for it. My dad was tough. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: Very tough. But I will tell you, by the time the grandkids came along and his 60s, 70s hit, he was a different person than when he raised me. Right? He was a different person. And my kids had a hard time reconciling those stories of what once was with who they understood him to be now. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: So I liken that a bit to what's happening in the workforce. And I know it was, you know, a movie, but if you look at The Intern, if you remember De Niro being in that movie. [laughter] John Baldino: I guarantee you, when he was in his 30s, he was more the De Niro that we knew in that movie. But by the time he got to retirement... Chad: He was the De Niro in Heat. Yeah. John Baldino: Right. Then he got to Anne Hathaway and he's like, can I drive you somewhere? You know, like so much kinder, a lot more gentle, you know. Chad: He had a puppy. Yeah. [laughter] John Baldino: Sleeping with the massage therapist. Joel: So you also had the Irishman which computer generated him into a young man again. John Baldino: Yes. Joel: Kicking ass and taking names. John Baldino: Yes. Joel: So I want to get back to something you said earlier about maybe we don't need four, we'll have three, but automation and technology will fill in the gaps. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So I wanna go back to this executive discussion because there's a startup by the guys that started Jibe, sold to iCIMS called Fora that is sort of a executive co-pilot. John Baldino: Okay. Joel: So using large language models, what kind of decision would an executive make? So my question is, we're now bringing back the elderly part-time. John Baldino: Yep. Joel: Is there gonna be a world where we don't need them to come back because we have AI to treat us like we have executives on staff, we don't have to hire real people? Or is that fool's gold? John Baldino: No, I don't think it's fool's. Do I think it's 100%? No. I think, look, we're already seeing AI modeling working in different ways already within organizations. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. John Baldino: And so they're adopting it because in some ways they have to. And some of it is, look, I can have ChatGPT do a development model for me of a program in seven minutes, and I'm not buying three people overseas to do this anymore. Right? Joel: Yeah. John Baldino: That kind of stuff is already happening. Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: So when you talk about that specific example though, I think that one of the things that's difficult for AI to get down in terms of what would their decision making be, there's still something about reading the room that I don't know that we've completely captured yet. Joel: Nuanced. John Baldino: Yes. Chad: Well, and also model, so you've got the Jack Welch model, and do we have a model based off of that? John Baldino: Right. Is that, and I don't know that you want that. Chad: That model today doesn't quite work. Right? John Baldino: Correct. Chad: So how does it actually, again, you talk about nuance. Nuance and how do you train these models? I mean, that's the hardest part of it all. John Baldino: I think culturally we have to look at this from how do we meet people where they are? But I can't develop AI modeling that's gonna meet people where they are and then keep them where they are. Some of this AI has to be able to take that person and move them forward. Chad: Yes. John Baldino: So they are gonna have to grow a set. They are gonna have to understand there's gonna be tough conversations. You're not gonna get everything you want. I love what Claude Silver yesterday shared from VaynerMedia in this session where it was supposed to be like, how do we reach out to Gen Z and make them make sure they know they're loved and cared for and clothed and fed and diapered and all that stuff. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: Sounds familiar. Yeah. John Baldino: How do we do this? And it was like, well, we have to be leaders and not bosses. That's crap. Because we have to be bosses sometimes. And who's defining these words? Chad: Well, you have to do both. You have to do both. You have to lead and manage. John Baldino: Yes. Chad: Because managing something's entirely different than being a leader. John Baldino: 100%, yes. We're getting, I'm getting applause already from the background, [laughter] but it is like... Chad: I think that was for me. Thank you. John Baldino: Yeah. Okay. [laughter] Joel: He timed it perfectly. John Baldino: But the idea is like she was sharing, Claude again, that they allow people to do gigs, right? They have side gigs. We love for you to do that. Go ahead and be, have your creative outlet, but you can't do it for companies that would be competitive to your day job. And she talked about finding someone on her team who was doing work for a pharmaceutical company that wasn't one of their clients. And they had to go to this person and say, you are not allowed to do that, and your job is now in jeopardy. Now, is that a boss? Sure sounds like it to me. Joel: Yep. [laughter] John Baldino: Sure sounds like it to me. Is she wrong? No. We gotta teach people how to deal with this stuff. Chad: There are standard operating procedures. There's no question. There are guidelines. And again, you have to manage to those guidelines. John Baldino: Yep. Chad: But then you have to lead, as you're talking about before, to be able to allow to bring those people forward as opposed to just keeping them in a single level. John Baldino: And that's what, coming back to your question, Joel, that's what I think AI will struggle for a little while to do. And why some of the influence from the older generation coming back and saying, what do you see when you see this? How do you network? We, my gosh, even older folks in the business development end of things, I want them to come back. Joel: Yeah. John Baldino: Because I'm watching business development people right here, right now, standing at a booth terrified to talk to anybody walking by. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. John Baldino: What are you doing? Chad: That's never been... It's always been that way though, John. John Baldino: But we have to teach people how to do it. Nobody's doing it. Chad: I get it. But that is the company's job. John Baldino: Well, right. Chad: Right? And they still haven't fucking learned. John Baldino: I know, I know. Chad: It just, it drives me crazy. They sit behind the table. They don't come in front of the table. I mean, they're just the basics. Chad: Yes. John Baldino: Just the basics. John Baldino: But you know, you got Uncle Vinny coming to this, you bring him for 15 hours. You're like, uncle Vinny, show him how it's done. Yo, hey, yo, come here. Let me show you. Joel: Well, you know, we laugh about Jack Welch, but I guarantee you, if it hasn't been built yet, whatwouldjackdo.com. John Baldino: Yeah. Joel: Where you AI Jack's content through the years... Chad: That's a good idea. Joel: And say, what would Jack do? We're down 5%. Joel: You better look into this right away. Joel: And it will tell you what Jack would've done. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: In that way. Like, that will be a thing if it isn't already. Chad: And it would be fairly simple on every occasion it would get out the whip. Joel: Fire everyone. John Baldino: Fire everyone. Fire everyone. Chad: Yeah. And if that works for an organization, great. But I mean, again, different organizations, different cultures. Joel: So, you are in a really unique spot where you cover a lot of general issues with HR and recruiting and the whole process. Give us like a state of the industry. What are the pain points that people are talking about? What are they sort of wanting from the vendor space that they're not maybe getting? Just give us sort of an overview. John Baldino: Yeah. I think that you're watching organizations struggle with managing talent and they're depending upon software to do it. And they're starting to realize it. And I liken it a bit to, you know, you have kids, you send them to school and we wind up having this expectation of what teachers should be doing, what schools should be doing. And we pass it off and we don't parent maybe as effectively because we expect the school to do some of this stuff. I know there are schools that are doing a good job. That's not my point. And I think HR folks are starting to realize, well, we bought this software, how come my people aren't upskilled? [laughter] How are they not upskilled? I bought this thing years ago. Joel: Did you not get the magic wand that came with the subscription? Chad: That's a much deeper discussion, but yes, I totally get it, yes. Every single company, we talk about this on the podcast almost every week, they buy tech and they expect the easy button to be right there. John Baldino: That's right. Chad: And the tech to take care of everything for them. Not to mention, they buy tech that's like six years in place. Then they come back to it later and say, well, it sucks. Well, you haven't done anything to it. John Baldino: That's right. It's only as smart as the input. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: And I think that we are also seeing HR practitioners who are uncomfortable with tech, to be honest. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: And they're working with implementation teams on the software side, who, I'm not knocking them. They're lovely, whatever. But it never looks like the demo. And then they're pissed. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: And they're like, well this, I'm gonna change again. I'm gonna find another one. And it's like, no, the problem is nobody is owning this in your organization. Joel: Yeah. John Baldino: And someone has to own it. So we, you know, for, in terms of what we're seeing, we're doing a lot more of that, I would say over the last 18 months than we ever have before. We've always done it, but it's been asked for a lot more because it's a lot of lift to change or add systems. And it not to do what it is that it you bought it to do. Joel: Yep. Chad: Agreed. Agreed. John Baldino: We also have HR practitioners that are not being taught how to HR. Which is hard for me to say because I've been in it so long. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: We are not doing a great job of teaching people how to do HR. They know how to make sure the forms are filled in. They know how to make sure Jimmy knows it's a life event. You're 26 and get ready to be screwed for the rest of your life. Joel: All the automated stuff that's gonna go away. Chad: That's the admin. Yeah. The routine. John Baldino: I'm about to sit and have a nuanced conversation with a manager around how to have, you know, progressive talent management discussions. Chad: Yeah. John Baldino: They don't know how to do it. Joel: That is John Baldino everybody, president at Humareso. John, for our listeners that want to connect with you or learn more, where would you send them? John Baldino: You can go to humareso.com. Find me on LinkedIn, John Baldino HR. Either way. Joel: I love it. We are here live at Transform. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It is so weird. We out.

Live from Unleash in Vegas, the boys are covering the conference and all the wild 'n' wonderful things they've done with sponsors Outhire.ai, Jobpixel and Plum (while looking good in some Montreal Canadiens jerseys from HiringBranch), while also covering some of the hottest news from the week. What's that, you ask? How about Upwork crushing their quarterly earnings, a "Big Nude Boat" cruise and a roundup of all things Unleash, which included a keynote from Magic Johnson. Plus, new CEOs at VONQ and a new CTO at iCIMS. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. Just two guys who love a rainy night. It's such a beautiful sight. Hey, kids, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Eddie Rabbit. Joel: I'm your co-host, Joel Gollum Cheeseman. [laughter] Chad: And I'm Chad, I was over served, Sowash. Joel: And on this week's episode, Chad and Cheese are unleashed Upwork crash, crushes. And who's ready for naked cruises? Chad: No. Joel: Let's do this. Eddie Rabbit, that's right. Chad: I love a rainy night. I love a rainy night. Ooh. Joel: One hit wonders from the early '80s are always fun. Chad: Yeah, dude, didn't he... I don't know. I can't remember, anyway. Joel: So much success for Eddie Rabbit. It's been a long week, hasn't it? [laughter] Chad: It has been a very, very long week. Especially for you, I mean, you were at the Kentucky Derby, that weekend was a full weekend. You were suited up, you were dudded up. Joel: I went over the top, didn't I? Yeah. Chad: Yeah. We both looked awesome. Joel: It was the 150th running of the derby. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's the oldest still running sports event in the United States. So we thought we should do it and do it right. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The first day is the Oaks, it's all the female horses. It's for females, I think breast cancer awareness. So everyone wears... Chad: Oh, sweet. Joel: Pink suits. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So I was in a pink suit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: With little horses on it. And then I rocked the powder blue... Chad: You looked good. Joel: Suit on the next day. Lots of cigars. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Lots of mint juleps. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: And then a small reprieve, and then come to Vegas. So no rest for the wicked. You on the other hand had a very restful stint in Santa Fe. Tell me about that. Chad: Lucky enough, Julie and I have never been to Santa Fe before, but we've heard amazing things. We have a friend that, our friends that actually live there, so we thought, well, the week before UNLEASH, we're on our way that way anyway. And Santa Fe, people, is fucking amazing. Joel: Yeah. Chad: The food there is amazing. I went to have some Big Nose Kate cocktails in downtown Santa Fe by the rail yard. Joel: Yep. Chad: We went to Bandelier. We did some hiking. And the indigenous people, I think... Joel: The natives? Chad: Yes. They had the pueblo, like the canyon there in Bandelier. And they had the old style ladders that you would climb up... Joel: Okay. Chad: To go up the mountain. And Julie was scared shitless. Joel: Yeah? Chad: And she went up all the way. Joel: So is this where the natives lived in, like caves within the mountain? Chad: Yep. Joel: Yeah. When I lived in Arizona, there was a tribe that did something similar. I don't know which one it was, but yeah. Chad: It was a blast. Joel: It was very cool how the way that it has remained after all these years... Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Is really incredible for sure. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: So yeah, two opposing weekends, but we're brought together here in Vegas. We got a lot to cover and a lot of people to visit here at the show. Let's get to shout outs. Chad: Okay. Joel: You got one that's pretty juicy. Chad: Yeah. I mean, right outta the gate, we found out this morning that our friend Al Smith, the iCIMS CTO is retiring, right. And this is, this to me, first and foremost, I mean, Al deserves some cocktails and a beach. Joel: Sure. Chad: The guy's been in the industry... Joel: A foot rub and a Perrier. Chad: Yeah, forever man. What an amazing dude. And if you've ever listened to episodes with Al Smith, you know he's incredibly smart and just damn personal. He automatically dumbs down the complexity, unlike most CTOs. So he's just kinda like that common dude who just has a big brain and we're gonna miss him. Joel: Yep. Chad: Although I reached out because we've shared some drinks before, I said, "Hey, look, now you're out from under the umbrella of iCIMS, let's do that again. And let's talk about tech and let's talk about inside and outside of the industry." Because he's such a smart dude. So hopefully we'll have some bourbon and a cigar and have a fun tech chat with Al Smith. Joel: Yeah. Al is a super fan. Chad: Love Al. Joel: If you'll, I think he may have worn a Chad and Cheese t-shirt on stage at an iCIMS event at some point. He will remain in an advisory role... Chad: Yeah. Joel: During the transition. But by all accounts, he will be retiring as we all hope to do at some point. Chad: Yes. But the new CTO is Joseph Benjamin. Joel: Yeah. Chad: He was a senior software engineer for IBM, listen, back in the mid 1990s. Joel: Yep. Chad: To the late 1990s, right. His first gig as a CTO was in 2001. Yeah kids, do the math, over 20 years ago with Net Identity and was group VP and CTO at Oracle from 2017-2021. And he just left Behavox, which is an enterprise platform that unifies all types of data into single data lakes, allowing users to query the data applying, listen, I bet you've never heard this before, machine learning and AI. Yeah, does that tell you anything? Joel: That's a new one. That's a new one on me. Yeah. Chad: Does that tell you anything? Joel: Yeah. Chad: So, I mean, this to me, I think it was pretty awesome, Al incredibly smart, amazing dude. Joel: Yep. Chad: And it sounds like Joseph, hopefully he likes bourbon as well. So maybe all four of us can have a chat. Joel: There will be another iCIMS event. Chad: Oh, there will be. Joel: In the future. Chad: Oh, yes. Joel: Also have to mention Eric Connors is the new Chief Product Officer there... Chad: Good call. Good call. Joel: At iCIMS. He had previously worked at ICE Mortgage. Chad: Excuse me? Joel: ICE Mortgage. Chad: Excuse me? Joel: I know, right. But they're not the only company, Chad, this week that announced a new CEO. Chad: Yes, yes. Joel: Can I interest you in a shot of VONQ in your Vegas morning. Chad: I need a shot to make sure I don't get the VONQ. Joel: That's right. So Ritu Mohanka. Chad: Yes. Joel: Hopefully I said that correctly, she is the new CEO of Holland-based VONQ. The company says she's a seasoned HR tech veteran, with executive roles at IBM and LinkedIn. So, VONQ we had wondered who would replace or who would come in after Arno. Chad: Yep. Joel: We have our answer. Chad: We have our answer. The thing that I thought was interesting is that Ritu has amazing industry experience, right. She was at Brass Ring, it was acquired by IBM, then she was in leadership at IBM, LinkedIn. She actually spent a little time with our friends over at Syndio. Joel: Yep. Chad: So, I mean, really great experience and impressive career. There's one tell here, though. Joel: Tell me. Chad: Every single part of that journey was focused in EMEA. Joel: Yep. Chad: Not the United States. Joel: Yep. Chad: EMEA. So the big question is, and we've kept hearing from VONQ that they're still alive and kicking in the US, but this to me isn't proof of that. You can see that she's incredibly impressive and competent. But that is... Her expertise is EMEA, right? It's not the United States. So it's gonna be interesting to see what they do to move, if they do anything in the US or just continues to atrophy like it has. Joel: Yep. Chad: Over the past six months to a year. Joel: Yep. And I'll add that, having another female CEO... Chad: I love that. Joel: In the industry is a great thing. We spoke to Rebecca Carr at SmartRecruiters. So impressive women in our space is always a good thing. Chad: Yes. But real quick, I wanna shout out to SmartRecruiters. Take that interim off her and let her swing that bat. Right? She's the interim CEO right now. She has a great history with SmartRecruiters. She left, came back. Joel: Yep. Chad: I really, I want to see another female CEO. But we talked to her yesterday and I was blown away at just not how smart she was... Joel: Yep. Chad: But how much history that she came out with. She was talking about what... Joel: Branch out. Chad: Be known, branch out. You know, I'm like, holy shit. So anyway. Joel: She knows the space and loves it too. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Which is, which is great. Chad: Which is exactly what we need. And we've been talking about. Right? So make her the CEO goddamnit. Joel: So, you're saying that not as a SmartRecruiter's shareholder... Chad: No, no. Joel: Just as a spectator. Okay, let's just throw that out there. Chad: Just as a guy sitting back and watching this thing, look like it's on a crash course. Right? It needs leadership. And I mean, hell, I mean, somebody who loves the industry that much has been in product, I mean, pretty much in biz dev in some cases. I mean she, to me, she sounds like the perfect person. Plus she has ties to Jerome too. Joel: We don't know if she loves free booze and t-shirts, but she probably does, Chad. Tell us about that. Chad: T-shirts from ERIN app. We've got the new Guns N' Roses design, Chad and Cheese Guns N' Roses design, ERIN app on the back. They actually did this design just for the t-shirt. Joel: It's an original. Chad: Just for the t-shirt. Joel: It's an original. Your kids may wanna wear it. It's so original. Chad: Well, they will. Yeah. And it's so silky smooth. It's soft. Joel: Oh yes, it is. Chad: Beer by Aspen Tech Labs. That's right, kids. One winner a month will actually win craft beer delivered to their front door from Aspen Tech Labs and Chad and Cheese. Whiskey by Textkernel, Chad and Cheese, send Whiskey to one lucky listener a month. And if it's your birthday, you will get a chance to win, possibly rum, some high dollar rum from Plum. But you gotta go to chadcheese.com/free and register. Joel: And in case I didn't mention, Chad, we are recording Live from the Daxtra booth. Chad: We are. Joel: Here in Las Vegas. Chad: And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see. Joel: And speaking of Plum, we will pass on birthdays this week. Chad: Okay. Joel: Because we are recording live. We will catch up. Chad: Well, because they over served me last night and we can't do it anyway. Joel: Last week. So speaking of live episodes... Chad: Yes. Joel: We're gonna be live in a couple of weeks outta Scotland. Chad: Scotland. Joel: Tell us about that. Chad: So yeah, Scotland for truGlasgow and truEdinburgh. Do you know who is joining us in Scotland? Matt Alder. Joel: Yep. Chad: Daxtra. Joel: Love it. Chad: Yeah. We've got so many great companies. PayPal, Lloyds of London. Diageo, E&Y, AMS, Brooks Automation. The Scottish government. Yes, the government's gonna be there. They heard we were coming. Joel: Run, Steven. Run, Steven. Chad: They heard that we were coming, so they had to be there. But sponsors Daxtra, you see them here, Ashby Solutions, Driven, Gigged.ai, Willow and Poetry. Just go to Tru. That's truscotland.com. Register for both of them, either in Glasgow, Edinburgh, or do 'em both. Joel: Yeah. If you're in Scotland, please come on. See us. Chad: Oh come on, man. Joel: Come say hi. Chad: Come have a whiskey. Joel: Come a nice peaty dram of Scotch with Chad 'cause he loves it so much. But if you're not gonna be in Scotland, don't worry. We'll be publishing all the episodes from our thoughtful conversations with Scots. Chad: Yeah. Except for all of those that we're gonna have behind closed doors during the Tru events. Because what happens at Tru stays at Tru kids, also in Vegas. That's what I've heard. Anyway. Joel: But what doesn't stay... Chad: Yes. Joel: On the Chad and Cheese podcast does data goes out everywhere. Okay. Chad: Yes, it is. Joel: Actually not, it's only on YouTube, guys. We just recorded the monthly jobs report highlights, lowlights, predictions for next month with our friend Toby Dayton, CEO at LinkUp. Chad: Oh, man. Joel: If you haven't checked that out, go to youtube.com/atchadcheese. It's about 20 minutes. You'll be smarter, I promise. [music] Chad: Topics. It's topics, baby. Joel: All right. Layoffs. Chad: Layoffs. Joel: Good god, big G, Google has laid off 200 folks from key teams like Flutter, Dart, and Python before its IO developer conference, citing reorganization for efficiency. There it is again, Chad, the year of efficiency and aligning resources with priorities. The layoffs were part of "normal business with affected employees able to apply for other roles." Any concern here about Big G in the layoffs, Chad? Chad: Yeah, I mean, it's only 200. Google is a very, very large fucking company. So 200, not that big of a deal, but here's what I gotta say. A Google spokesperson confirmed the cuts and said, "The impacted workers will be able to apply for other open roles at the company." Right? So, thanks for working here. There's the door. Joel: Appreciate it. Chad: And feel free to apply for jobs just like every other schmuck out there. Joel: Yeah. Chad: That does not feel like a red carpet experience by any means. Right? But again, just 200. Joel: Yep. Chad: Then think about, they were talking about the efficiency side. So if Google is looking to drive efficiency and cut costs, you place an already employed Google worker inside the company, it's faster, it's cheaper than trying to find somebody from the outside. Unless this is a signal that we're getting ready to see more offshoring from Google. I'm not sure we will see. But they have leadership positions. Joel: Yep. Chad: Being off shored. Joel: Yep. Chad: Let's see what happens. Joel: It's interesting. You know, Google is really good at killing, euthanizing projects that aren't working. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We've seen it in our own space a few times. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're really good about just killing stuff that doesn't work. So to me, that, what really stood out to me was teams from Flutter, Dart and Python were laid off. So for whatever reason, I don't know those companies very well, if at all, but I gotta think that Google said these projects aren't working. We need to reshuffle employees, lay off ones that don't work anymore. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And this was probably more of just business as usual at Google, focusing on the things that they need to do. Look, AI is an all hands on deck situation at Google. Chad: Oh, hell yeah. Joel: They've been a monopoly in six plus businesses for the last 10, 20 years. They are actually seeing some competition. Good for them for focusing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Creating efficiencies as everyone is doing now, and giving them the best chance to compete against OpenAI and all the other AI platforms out there. Chad: It is kinda weird though, because remember when 20% time was very big. I mean, you got Gmail out of 20% time. Joel: Yeah. Chad: You got some pretty good products outta 20% time, and then they took that away, right? Joel: Yeah, they did. Chad: And that to me was literally the antithesis of what Google was. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Google was about creating new things. And the way to do that was to inspire your people to go do it. Right? And you know the kinds of tools and resources that you have in your 20% time to be able to do that. And they've literally taken away. So Google has gone from a company of innovation to a company that feels like just an old stodgy... Joel: Yeah. Chad: Shell of itself. Unfortunately. I mean, it's a money making machine. Don't get me fucking wrong, but if you want to be, I mean, one of the reasons why they got outleaped or out jumped or outpaced by OpenAI. Joel: Leapfrogged. Chad: Is because they did not innovate. They were afraid to actually put the shit out there and OpenAI could not, I mean, there was nothing for them to lose. So anyway. Joel: Yeah. Chad: I see kinda like the worm turning on them. Not that they're gonna die anytime soon because Google is gonna be around forever. Joel: Not at all. Not at all. Chad: But they used to be the innovation leader. Joel: Yeah. And you gotta think why, you know, the environment or the culture of taking risks will support these sort of creative ideas are now passé. Chad: It's part of the culture at the point. Joel: And it's just when companies get so big, they can't do that. It's also easier to start a company now. Chad: Yeah. Joel: 20 years ago, starting a company was pretty hard. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You had to have servers and build a website that cost you a hundred grand. [laughter] Chad: Server farm. Joel: Google can't just say now, we have resources for you that you can't get anywhere else. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's a lot easier for people to start companies, which is overall good for the ecosystem, but harder for Google to remain competitive on an innovation basis. And speaking of innovation, Chad, let's get to UNLEASH. We are here at the UNLEASH Conference live from the Daxtra booth. Chad: Good time. Joel: What are some takeaways? What are some highlights from you so far? What are you seeing? Chad: I have to say that the, first and foremost, we've gotta talk about the elephant in the room, and that was the 830 foot fucking fall/jump that we took. I gotta say they, we had, I think 11 people jump. Everybody did it. Joel: Yep. Chad: Some, there were different levels of anxiety and fear from one to the next. Right? Right? And you expect that. But I gotta say, man, guys like Serge, that dude was scared and he got up there and he fucking nailed it. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: I mean, so to me it was great to see guys like that. I mean, even Matt, it's funny, the CEO of Outhire. The three of us go up, right, and the guy in the elevator asked, he's like, "Who wants to go first?" I'm like, "Nah, I'll go first." Matt's like, "No, I'm going first." Right? He's like, "I'm gonna get this shit over with." Joel: Over with. Yeah. Chad: And then at the end, dude, there was so much adrenaline you could see in him. I mean, it was a blast. It was just, it was a bonding event, you know? It was really cool. Joel: Yeah. We all went through something that no one else has gone through. We'll have that bond forever. Chad: Together. Joel: Forever. Yeah. Chad: Had some Fosters after it. Joel: I quote Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part. Chad: Yes. Joel: The anticipation, going up the elevator, the people that are there looking at you going to jumps. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Looking at you like you're a nut ball. If you haven't seen the video, the highlights. Chad: Oh, check it out. Joel: Go out to all of our socials... Chad: YouTube. Joel: YouTube channel, like all the highlights are there. I have a new pair of Meta glasses. So I actually recorded... Chad: Those were awesome. Joel: The jump from my point of view. Chad: Those were awesome. Joel: Which is very cool. So it's a great highlight video. I would do it again, dare say, if another Outhire or sponsor. Chad: Would Christine allow you to? [laughter] Joel: I think so. Chad: Okay, okay. Joel: I think getting through it once put her mind at ease. Chad: Good. Yeah. Joel: And I could probably do again, so we'll see. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We'll see. But I'm less fearful now of doing it, now that I've done it. Chad: Yeah. Well, and we both wore our brown pants. Joel: Yes, we did. Chad: Just like Deadpool tells you to. So that was smart. Joel: Double up on the depends for me. Chad: Yes. Yes. Joel: All good. Chad: So we also went to the Ice party. Omar's Ice Castle was cold as fuck. Joel: It was cold. Chad: We stayed two hours. He owes me a pinky toe. Joel: Were you wearing the Birkenstocks? Were your feet a little chilly? Yeah. Chad: I was not, but that was, that was, the entire thing was made of ice. And then last night, you know, Neon Nights, too many drinks and gummies last night. But thanks to Plum, I mean, that was a blast. And if you haven't seen the videos, go to YouTube or TikTok or LinkedIn or what have you. Joel: Yep. Chad: That was gorgeous, man. When it got dark out. Joel: Yep. It's a great event. If you're looking for a unique event in Vegas to do, that's one of them. Personally for me, the record playing tostadas as the appetizer was my favorite. Chad: That was awesome. Joel: If you don't know what a tostada is, it's like a hardened tortilla shell. Chad: Yep, yep. Joel: It doesn't fold like a taco. They put these things on a record player, had them spin around and they put the toppings on as it's spinning around. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So it looks really nice and pretty. Chad: Oh, it was cool. Joel: But that was really clever. Chad: It was very cool. Joel: As well as the... Chad: There was a DJ down there too. Joel: I don't know, was it an escalator or kind of... Like you have the sushi that goes around that you pick, they had chicken waffles and sort of unique food that was going around. Yeah. Big ups to the Plum team. JobPixel was great. The the ice cups... Chad: That, yeah. Because I didn't, I didn't have to ask for a big rock. Joel: Yeah. Chad: 'Cause it was in a big rock. Joel: It was in a big rock, for sure. Chad: It was fricking awesome. Joel: That was great. And great people as well helped support that party. Chad: Oh dude. Yeah. Joel: Which was great. Chad: Then we did the collab work, In-N-Out Burger after, which is, it seems to be almost like a staple now. Summer Delaney has made In-N-Out Burger like a staple of almost like Chad and Cheese parties. [laughter] Joel: And Chad, I'm here for it. I'm here for In-N-Out Burgers. Trust me. I will never miss an opportunity for free In-N-Out Burgers. Chad: So, let's talk about the show. Let's say the parties have been amazing. Let's talk about what's been your favorite part about the show? Joel: Favorite part is always the people. Chad: Yeah? Joel: Whether it's reconnecting with old friends, haven't seen in a while. And there's been a few people that I haven't seen in a while... Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: At this conference, obviously meeting new friends. I always love the Startup Alley. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Kiosk area. Chad: I love they put it all back in one place. Joel: Yep. Chad: Because they broke it up before. Joel: Yep. Chad: When I wanna get in startup mode, I wanna be in one place and I want to hit them all up. Right? And it makes it so much easier. Joel: Yep. So there's been some interesting startups, some that we know pretty well that have all commented favorably for that. But overall, it's the people and... Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: You know I don't get to go to many sessions anymore. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We get stopped and talked to and which is the whole reason why we do this. Chad: It's awesome. Joel: But it's the people has been a standout for me, as well as a couple of takeaways for me. One is... Chad: Okay. Joel: It feels, it feels optimistic, but conservatively so. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Cautiously optimistic. Chad: Which means a lot for HR. Right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: Right? Joel: But even the vendors, even the parties have been a little bit, I wouldn't say downgraded, but... Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Barenaked Ladies aren't playing at the Palms, if you remember parties past. So overall, cautiously optimistic. Opinion? I do feel like, however, the startups a lot of energy over there. Chad: Yeah. Joel: A lot of excitement, a lot of interesting products that I'm sure we'll be talking about in the months and years to come. And my final takeaway, Employ... Chad: Yeah. Joel: AKA jobvite vi AKA Jazz HR, AKA Lever, whoever else. Krispy Kreme donuts at the booth is genius. It is genius. Chad: It is genius. It is genius. Joel: Now if they can just figure out a way to have the hot... Chad: The hot sign. Joel: Krispy Kreme with the sign. Chad: If they had the hot sign. Yeah. Joel: That's a winning marketing strategy, my friend. That is a winning marketing strategy. Chad: I don't even think you had lunch yesterday 'cause you're eating Krispy Kremes. [laughter] Joel: So good. So good. Chad: For listeners, Kennedy, my stepdaughter actually runs the investor and startup programs here for UNLEASH. And so I'm a little biased, but I love the startup competition was great yesterday. I think we, you and I both picked the winner fairly easily. Joel: Imagine that. Chad: Manifest won the startup competition, that's usemanifest.com. What they did, they're a cloud-based platform, which digitizes retirement transfers to maximize retirement outcomes, which is great. Joel: Yep. Chad: The thing is, if you've ever left a company and you want to move your shit, it takes for... It sucks. Joel: Yep. Chad: It's not fun. Right. And this digitizes it all, makes it easy. I thought that was really cool. Then, like I said, over in Startup Alley, here was one thing that it almost felt like I was doing office hours for about two hours the other day. Joel: Yep. Chad: Because I was going in and going through the pitches with them, and I'm like, no, that's wrong. No, that's wrong. And this, and the founders who were there listened intently. Joel: Sure. Chad: And took notes. Right? I'm like, this is just advice. Right? But I mean, it's still somewhat problematic that we have a lot of new startups coming in who don't understand what the real problems are and don't understand the real pain points for organizations. They're focused on what they think is the problem. And in most cases, it might be a problem, but it's not a big enough problem for a company to spend money. Joel: Yep. I think your quote to me in watching the winning presentation was, this is boring as fuck, but it's a really cool business idea, it'd be a really cool company. And I agreed with you. 401Ks aren't gonna get anyone out of bed. Chad: No. Joel: But it is a big issue for people... Chad: A lot of cash. Joel: To manage those, for sure. Chad, are you a little warm in what you're wearing? I know that the people... Chad: Oh yes. Joel: Watching on YouTube probably noticed something interesting. Chad: Okay. Joel: Chad and I are donning Montreal Canadiens jerseys. Chad: Yes. Joel: We mentioned last week in shout outs that our friends at Hiring Branch, based in Montreal, got us some jerseys. You're rocking the white. Chad: Yep. Joel: Chad on the back. I'm rocking the red with Cheese on the back. Chad: Very nice. Joel: We may have to go hold hands, walk down. Thanks to Hiring Branch. [laughter] Joel: These are some legit jerseys. These aren't the iron on, you know. Chad: No. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see these are like $400 jerseys. Yeah. No shit. And I'm not talking about $400 Canadian either. I'm talking about $400 US currency. Joel: Yeah, yeah. Chad: These are not, these are not bullshit, kids. Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Hiring Branch is in a kiosk. They were gonna do a 20x20, but they said the Chad and Cheese jerseys cost so much, we gotta keep it at the kiosk level. If you're interested in their services, fuck interviews, I think is their motto. Chad: Yes. Fuck interviews. Joel: Go check out hiringbranch.com. Chad: I love it. Joel: I dunno if they have a dot ca or not. I haven't checked that out. Chad: I hope not. Joel: Anything else from UNLEASH that were takeaways? Chad: Yeah. No, I mean, one of the things again, that I love about UNLEASH is that the stages in the expo hall, there's a lot of content that's happening. Joel: Yep. Chad: So that draws the HR practitioner or the TA practitioners, HR practitioners back here, and that's what vendors want. Joel: Yep. Chad: They want interaction. They want at least some type of face time. So again, UNLEASH, if you're listening, continue to do this, do more of it. I think from an ecosystem standpoint, it feels more complete. Joel: Yep. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Vendors love it. Vendors love the engagement, the energy. I had said at Transform that I felt Transform was becoming a little bit more competitive to UNLEASH than an HR tech. And I, I think I agree with that now that I've been at UNLEASH. Chad: Yeah. Joel: There seems to be Transform, UNLEASH a lot of similarities. How do they break out from that? And HR Tech continues to be kind of its own dinosaur or whale or whatever you want to call them. Chad: It's, they're both big. So... Joel: Both big. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Both big. Both big. Alright. Chad: Thanks a lot, UNLEASH. Thanks a lot for having us. Joel: Let's take a quick break, get a coffee and we'll come back and talk about UpWork. Chad: Yes. S4: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: All right, Chad, a little news from our friends at UpWork... Chad: Yes. Joel: Who are actually here at the conference. Chad: Yeah, they're right there. Joel: It's pretty rare that... Chad: They're right there. Joel: Yep, they are right there. It's a nice neon sign. Did you get that from the same company as I did yours? Chad: No, I don't know. I have no clue. Joel: This is how we work. Chad: Looks good, though. I like it. Joel: LinkedIn's not here. A lot of the big companies, they don't take the time... Chad: Indeed's here. Indeed's here. Joel: And Indeed is here, yes. Yes. I think they have a 10x10 or something. Chad: Yeah, it's not big, but it's... Joel: Modest booth, but they are here. Chad: Atlas has a big, the EOR groups. Joel: Anyway, well, the quarterly reports are coming in from companies. Chad: Okay. Joel: I actually believe ZipRecruiter's is today after we record. So expect that to be a topic next week. Chad: Is that what the loud sucking sound was that I heard earlier this morning? [laughter] Joel: That was, yeah. In California outta Santa Monica. But UpWork had a very nice quarterly earnings report. The San Francisco based freelance platform surged by 18.7% to $190.9 million this quarter, driven by flat fee pricing adoption, gross margin improved with net income up by 7.4%. Active clients rose by 5% to 872,000. The company introduced UMA AI, boosting client spending by 7%. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Revenue guidance for Q2 is set between $190 and $195 million. Stock rose nearly 5% on the news. Killing it. Your thoughts on UpWork? Chad: This is product. This is all product driven. UpWork. Somebody came into UpWork, and we need to dig into this, somebody came into UpWork and they started to assess the products that they had available and they said, we can do better from a product standpoint. These aren't gaining the traction in the market that they should. So they started to move and to change things. And that's what we're seeing here. UpWork says it's AI and machine learning category, gross sales volume has grown 50% year over year, making it once again the company's fastest growing category. And revenue ads and monetization products jump by 93% year over year, right? So, and that makes it UpWork's biggest stream, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: So to me, if you're a company and you're afraid to evolve and adapt, you're gonna die. I mean, we've seen it. These guys are adapting. This is proof that they're adapting, they're evolving. They see that this AI machine learning piece, even putting UMA in there to make it easier for recruiters, for job seekers. Everybody is just, they are trying to meet the market where it is, right? And I believe they're trying to skate to where the puck's going to be. We shall see. But these are great numbers and I'm glad to see that UpWork is really embracing change. Joel: Yeah. You know, you and I have talked about UpWork as a mega trend, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: People contracting. Why hire these folks? It's a lot cheaper. I have a global universe to choose from in candidates. I became a little bearish on UpWork when ChatGPT came out and when these AI tools came out. You don't need a copywriter if you can just plug something into ChatGPT. So I thought that would really affect the knowledge worker, which is what UpWork is. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's knowledge workers. Instead, AI is taking the business to a whole 'nother level. Increasing like 7% profits on spending by clients, is huge. I don't know how they're doing that, but that's pretty awesome. They're getting more companies use the service as opposed to less. Chad: Yeah. Sticky too. Joel: So I'm a little bit gobsmacked as the British might say, as to what is going on at UpWork. They turned this AI threat on its head and they're benefiting from it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: My guess is the best workers on the platform are becoming super developers and super marketers because those people have learned AI and how to get the most productivity. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They're probably flipping more jobs. Those people are more expensive than say a low-level Ukrainian 20-year-old just getting into the business. So it feels like the best workers at UpWork are getting more jobs, they're completing tasks quicker and thus charging more and getting more money into the system. So I'm super impressed. We always thought this was a mega trend. AI's taking it to a whole different place, and it's exciting to watch, for sure. Chad: It's interesting 'cause we were just at Paradox and Scottsdale a couple of weeks ago, and their focus was obviously the conversational ATS, the conversational AI, just all the way around. UpWork, they're leaning heavily into that with this new large language model, this UMA model, with conversational AI and matching, right? So I really believe, like you'd said, this could have really struck a death blow to UpWork, but they're like, no, we're gonna innovate with this, we're gonna move faster. And if we move faster and smarter, we can get more people into jobs faster. If we get more people into jobs faster, then companies are gonna fucking love us even more and more people are gonna come and more people are gonna continue to use. So product though, man, again, they're innovating and they're changing product. And I think that to me is the key to understand how you get to again, hypergrowth again, hopefully. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Turns out that... Oh, never mind. I lost my train of thought. Chad: Okay. Joel: Let's take a quick break. I need another cup of coffee obviously, and we'll talk about, good lord, naked cruises. S5: Emotional damage. Joel: What's up everybody? We are live from the Daxtra booth at the UNLEASH Conference in Las Vegas. Chad: Well, we're not talking about naked Ted Cruz, are we? Joel: Not Ted Cruz. Chad: Okay. Joel: No, actual boats. Yeah, the boats, the boats. Chad: Okay. You said, you'd said Naked cruise and I was like, holy shit, I don't want, I don't need that. Joel: All right. It's now dubbed the Big Nude Boat cruise departing from Florida, imagine that, starting next year. They offer passengers a clothing optional experience, including at the buffet. That's right, naked buffets as well. The 11-day trip on the Norwegian Pearl includes stops at private islands and Caribbean destinations. Prices range from 2000 for an inside cabin to over 33 grand for a top room. Guests are advised to use towels in common areas and pack a swimsuit for non-clothing optional excursions. Chad, this has Euro Chad written all over it, if you ask me. What are your thoughts? Chad: You would be wrong. I have already opted out of the fully clothed versions of cruises, especially since COVID turned ships into floating coffins. So imagining a bunch of nude sweaty fat dudes at a buffet... Joel: Why do you look at me and say fat dudes on that one? That's... I'm triggered. Chad: Was I looking at you? My bad. That was bad. Anyway, that even adds to the floating petri dish kind of idea. Fat and sweaty, not to mention, can you imagine, we talk about talent. Can you imagine... Joel: Recruiting for this? [chuckle] Chad: Trying to get somebody to... Yes. To try to get some young kids to come clean up after your sweaty ass was just... Joel: Recruiting for this has gotta be a trip. This is a reality show in the making. Recruiting for naked cruises. Chad: They don't show up. They just show up one day and you're like, I'm on what cruise? Which one? You're on the nude boat. Joel: Yeah. The buffet is interesting. They should sell it as a diet cruise because watching naked people at the buffet is gonna turn you off food for the entire week, for sure. Chad: Unless that's your kink. Joel: By the way Chad, I don't know if you know this, July 14th. July 14th is National Nude Day. So if you and Julie in the privacy of your own home wanna get nuts on July 14th, it's coming soon. Chad: Ready. Ready to do that. In our own home. But we will be, in July we'll be in Europe and they've got nude and topless beaches all over the place. So we might just actually, I will go topless, I promise. Joel: Chad, did you hear about the flasher who's thinking about retiring? Chad: Oh no. Joel: He decided to stick it out for one more year. Live from the Daxtra booth at UNLEASH Chad and Cheese. We out. Chad: We out. S6: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

This week, the boys discuss various topics including their upcoming trips, shoutouts to listeners, the NFL draft, AI girlfriends, and the shutdown of Hired.com. They also touch on LinkedIn's revenue growth despite a weaker hiring environment. LinkedIn has launched three in-app games to engage users and potentially monetize through a subscriptions model. The games aim to make the platform more sticky and increase user engagement. This move is part of LinkedIn's strategy to expand beyond recruiter seats and tap into the larger market of marketing and advertising spend. While the games may not have a significant impact on revenues, they are a step towards making LinkedIn a more captivating platform. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION - (AI-generated) Joel Cheesman (00:30.244) just two guys who are too legit to quit unless it's around an hour after lunchtime. Hey kids, you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co -host, Joel Hush Money Cheeseman. Chad Sowash This is Chad Sowash? Well, I should say almost Euro Chad Sowash. So what? Joel Cheesman: On this episode, LinkedIn crushes, Elon crashes and light them if you got them. Yeah! Let's do this. Chad Sowash (01:08.22) Oh, I'm feeling it my friend. I am feeling it. Here is, if you're watching, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see my background, unless there's way too much light and it's like over saturating, but there are mountains behind me. I mean, it is fucking crazy. And guess where I'm going tomorrow. Guess, guess. Big Nose Kate Distillery is here in Santa Fe. So. Have Santa Fe. Joel Cheesman (01:26.852) Is it New Mexico somewhere? Okay. Chad Sowash: Actually hooked up with Mel, their CEO, and she's actually hooking us up. So we're gonna go over half a few drinks and check it out. So big nose Kate Western whiskey dist... That's right, that's right, baby. Joel Cheesman (01:44.516) There's the t -shirt everybody. If you're listening or watching got the t -shirt. Uh, good stuff. So I'm, uh, I could, I could maybe one up that I'm going to the Kentucky Derby, uh, this weekend, this weekend. So most no hat, I'm not going to show up my wife. Uh, she's got some head gear apparently, but I do have some fun suits. Uh, maybe I'll post some of those on LinkedIn, uh, for listeners. Definitely show up on Facebook. If you follow me there, I've got. Chad Sowash (01:54.524) Oh, well, hello. Do you have a hat? Do you have a hat? We're going to, uh, Friday is, uh, the Oaks, which is, I think the younger Phillies, the younger horses. So I have a pink suit with horses on it. And then for the Derby, I have a, like a powder blue polka dot kind of thing going on. So, uh, it's, it's good stuff. So I've, I've been at the Derby a lot of times I'm from the area, but it's always been the infield, which is basically just drunks and boobies everywhere. Uh, so this will be my first time. Uh huh. Oh, nice. Chad Sowash (02:29.436) Ha ha! Chad Sowash (02:33.308) Yeah. Uh. Chad Sowash (02:38.908) Yes. Yeah. Pretty much NASCAR for horse racing. Yes. Yes. Yes, we're classing it up this year. We spent a little, little cabbage and, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna do it right. So I'm excited for that. I can't get too messed up though. Cause we got Vegas in our future, which we will get to, uh, in, uh, in the, in the latter segment of this, but let's get to. Nice. Chad Sowash (02:54.492) Oh dude, yeah. Woo! Chad Sowash (03:00.732) Shout outs, baby. My first shout out, here it goes, goes to Deceibo. Have no clue who this fucking company is. But anyway, they are sending the following email out to people who are attending Unleash next week. Quote, Deceibo is heading over to Vegas for Unleash from May 7th to May 9th, and we're hosting an exclusive private breakfast with Josh Burson on May 8th. Here's the link to register. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (03:28.124) If you're in to hear from the Taylor Swift of HR, yes, they call Josh Berson the Taylor Swift of HR. What the actual fuck? I mean, have they never heard of truth in advertising for God's sakes? What the hell? The only thing they have in common is maybe body weight. He's a slight man for sure, but wow, that's a stretch. The Taylor Swift, oh man, I got nothing. He's a little guy. Yeah, he's a little guy. Oh my God. Oh my God. Ridiculous. All right. Uh, I'm going to shout out to our friends at hiring branch straight out of Montreal, uh, in Canada. Uh, as you might remember, uh, in January, the wife and I went up, took a train to Montreal, went to a Canadian's hockey game, uh, much to say, there's Boudreaux's, uh, you know, angst and they had ordered us jerseys, but they're nice jerseys, custom names and everything. And they hadn't come in yet. Now the jerseys, this is socialism for you. Okay. Chad Sowash (04:20.092) Uh -huh. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:27.908) The jerseys are already three or four months or five months after I visited. So these, these are awesome. Yours is like white, uh, like official Jersey with Chad Sowash and minus cheese on the back. I got the red Jersey. Now I don't know how douche it is to have Chad Sowash, uh, on your Jersey. That's kind of funny, but, uh, you don't, you don't give a shit, but yes, hiring branch. Thank you. Uh, Canadian such nice kind, uh, people, and we appreciate it. So shout out to the folks at hiring branch. Whatever. Chad Sowash (04:40.476) Very nice. Very nice. Chad Sowash (04:45.468) Who cares? Who cares? I don't care. Chad Sowash (04:55.292) Love us. Love us some hiring branch. And no, I can't skate. I cannot ice skate, especially backwards. That's just not happening. My next shout out to my sport, the NFL and the NFL draft. So getting to see these young men start their professional journey they've dreamed about for, I mean, since they've been little kids is just so awesome. And I wanted to share a couple of the press conference interviews. So. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (05:21.692) The first one is Xavier Leggett, who was drafted by the Carolina Panthers. Check this out. It is, it's hilarious. It's awesome. You might, you might, you might. It's okay. Here we go. Am I gonna cry? Am I gonna cry? Am I? Chad Sowash (05:50.556) I told him I'm gonna be ready. Okay. And then the second one, that one went viral on the socials and so did this one. This one's Kion Coleman who was drafted by the Buffalo Bills. Do this. Come on now. Come on technology, we can do this, we can do this. Here we go. Yeah. Chad Sowash (06:14.364) All right. Chad Sowash (06:39.516) Oh my god! Chad Sowash (06:45.308) Oh my God, dude, I freaking love it. I love it. These kids, again, I call them kids. I mean, they're young men, but I mean, you can just see how happy they are. I mean, they're just, it's amazing. I can't tell you how many of these draft videos I've watched on TikTok. I just can't tell you. So anyway, shout out to the NFL Draft and these kids starting the journey in their professional career. And this is talent, man. This is talent. Yep. Joel Cheesman (06:58.404) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:04.324) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (07:12.388) Yeah, for sure. And like, those moments will be fleeting with NIL money. So these are kids that like have no money, grew up in probably really tough circumstances. And now they've made it. With NIL money, a lot of these kids are going to be making money and then going into the NFL. So these sort of magical moments, I fear will be fleeting with a lot of people. I couldn't... Yeah. Yeah. Chad Sowash (07:30.748) Uh. Oh yeah. Chad Sowash (07:37.788) This will be the last time, the last time that you actually see them literally come bright -eyed, bushy -tailed to a press conference. From now on, they're going to be trained. I mean, they're going to go through training in the NFL to pretty much just go by the company line, right? So this is like the last time we actually get to see them as real human beings, you know, in a good way. Yes, I love it. Heartwarming, heartwarming. And they'll also probably get a girlfriend, a real girlfriend. My shout out goes to AI girlfriends, which have made quite a ruckus on the internets this week. Apparently Meta, Instagram, other social media sites are flooded now with AI girlfriend apps asking you to download and get a girlfriend. She's not a real person, but hey, for a lot of people that's okay. Now the problem is, Oh yeah. Jesus, no, no. Chad Sowash (08:22.62) I don't get it. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:27.876) the real women, the only fans, millionaires, they can't advertise on Facebook, Meta and Instagram because it's trafficking their laws around it. If it's not a real person, you can do it. So it's quite an uproar that the real, the real ladies out there can't get their time in the sun on, on your Facebook feed. So shout out to the AI girlfriends out there. us. Chad Sowash (08:36.572) Ah. Chad Sowash (08:50.588) Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. Shout out to Free Stuff Kids. T -shirts by Aaron App, beer by Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey, you get two bottles, from Text Kernel, and if it's ya birthday, it's a little rum with plum. Go to ChadCheese .com/free and register to win like these people registered to win. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:14.82) That's right, I think I heard you say plum. So that leads me to click this sound bite. Yes. Joel Cheesman (09:22.852) That's right. Some of our lucky winners go to Desiree Goldie, our friend. Uh, we interviewed recently Amanda Hall, Amanda Hall, who, by the way, uh, sometimes you really make these folks day. Sometimes they really freak out and like, I can't believe you're texting me and that you're sending me stuff. So Amanda, uh, got beer from us and got a job offer the same day. So talk about, talk about a hurricane of good news, free beer from us. Oh! She was just on it. Chad Sowash (09:36.892) Oh yeah. Chad Sowash (09:41.66) Uh huh. Yes. Chad Sowash (09:51.868) That is awesome. And a new job. So Amanda, a shout out to you for sure on that. And then, and then our friend, Jonathan Godzilla or Zilla, however you want to say it, uh, is our, is our rum with plum winter because it was his birthday. And those other people that are celebrating another trip around the sun this week go to Annie Jarvis, Glen Hill, Garvich Sharma, Jerry Frank, Peter Shapira, Shana Berthold, Keegan Osipek, Stefan Jean. Congrats, congrats Amanda. Chad Sowash (10:01.564) Yeah? Yeah. Oh, birthday. Yeah. Chad Sowash (10:20.572) Last. Sarah Addison, Bennett Sung, JT O'Donnell, AKA the mouth of Portsmouth, Robert Rayner, Alfonso Zamora, Herb Drew, Come on Eileen Kowalski, Lou Adler, and one of our favorites, I think it's fair to say, Joe Shaker, celebrating a birthday. By the way, I think he's good on betting the over on the Bears. Oh Joey shaker that's awesome Joel Cheesman (10:50.116) this coming year. I think it's at eight and a half right now. The weapons they've added, I think that's an over for me. Just FYI. Lot of weapons that they added and a lot of work for a lot of rookies. So yeah, and not to mention a rookie in the most important position being quarterback who touches the ball on every offensive play. So good luck, man. It's gonna be interesting. Oh yeah. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (11:12.676) I love his shade of nail polish, by the way. Caleb's got some good fashion sense on the nail polish. I love a guy who is not afraid to show who he is. That's for damn sure. Yes, which you'll be doing next week at Unleash. We're going to Unleash America in Vegas on the 7th. We will be jumping off the stratosphere with Matt Bauer. That's right, Matt Bauer, the CEO of outhire .ai. You might see it here, kids. It's an over. Totally secure in his manhood. Totally secure in his manhood. I won't be secure in my manhood, jumping off the strat, trust me. Chad Sowash (11:47.772) 850 foot drop and we're going to be joined by Josh Gample, Josh Ramsey, Serge Bougereau, Joel Lagoly, Jason Putnam, Michelle Meehan and Russ Weaver. Then later that night we're hopping over to the minus five bar for Omar's Ice Castle. That's on the seventh. That's right baby, for Jopixel and Great Pea. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:08.964) Nice. Sold out. Chad Sowash (12:16.348) we're gonna be basking in the neon glow at the neon boneyard with our friends from Plum for neon nights. Now, come see us when we're at Unleash and who knows there are a few passes that Joel and I have, we might be able to get you into that one. It is already locked down, but Joel and I have a couple of free passes. So if you hit us right, you might get something. Then we're going. Nice. Joel Cheesman (12:38.34) Oh Chad Sowash (12:43.9) to Scotland for true Glasgow and true Edinburgh and. And guess who's joining us in Scotland, Joel. It's a long list of Scottish players. Oh yeah, they're all over the place. Plus Matt Alder. Yep, this is going to be a recruiting future in Ched and Cheese Joint, which is going to be a blast. May 21st at the Revolucion de Cuba in Glasgow. May 23rd, the Three Sisters Bar in Edinburgh. All of our favorite Scots, yes. Chad Sowash (13:16.86) We already have some great practitioners that are lined up to be track leaders from PayPal, Lloyds of London, the Augeo, E &Y, AMS, Brooks Automation, the Scottish Government is going to show up and several more. So register for one or even both events at truscotland .com. That's T -R -U, scotland .com. Thanks to all the sponsors. Gotta love these sponsors because they're making this happen. Daxstra, Ashby. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (13:46.396) solutions driven, gigged .ai, willow and poetry. That's right, Chad and Cheese meets, Recruiting Future in Scotland at True Glasgow and True Edinburgh. Don't miss it, don't miss it. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:59.524) Very cool, very cool. So you said the government's gonna be there? Are we sure Stephen McGrath doesn't have any warrants out for his arrest? Like is it safe for him to be around government officials? Oh. The yes, the government's going to be there. Scottish government's going to be there. I got nothing, dude. I don't know. I think he probably has some contacts within the government, so I think he'll be fine. Yeah, Adam probably has some get out of jail free cards for Steven as part of his part of his employment. By the way, talk about those that are lightweights, Taylor Swift style. I'm a little worried about Sarah's jumping out of the strat. Are we sure that he's heavy enough to make it to the bottom and he's not just gonna like fly around like a whirly bird from a from a tree anyway? He's gonna need it. Yeah. Chad Sowash (14:39.58) We'll let him go first. We'll let him go first First or last one of the two one of the first or last you're the first or last search You last If you ain't first, you're last, baby. Joel Cheesman (14:54.116) All right, Chad Sowash, we got some breaking news that happened about 10 minutes before we got on the air. Uh, so sources are telling us that hired .com effectively shut down this week, laid off the entire team and said they're rolling the product into LHH, which is a global business unit of the Deco group. Uh, in case you missed it, hired had raised $133 million before being acquired by veterinary, which was acquired by a Deco. What? Chad Sowash (15:20.284) Wow. Yes. in 2018 for a reported $100 million, uh, hired founded in 2012, uh, with a great deal of fanfare, uh, and it's height was worth $500 million. Again, hire .com shutting down a few other sites. It's pretty clear that, uh, it's over. Uh, if you're looking to poach some people, check out those hired profiles on LinkedIn, because there's some people that are probably looking for a job next week. cheese Chad Sowash (15:50.332) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this, this just again, over and over and over there, there should be an organization who understands the business of recruiting and that's staffing, but a Deco obviously didn't know what the fuck they're doing. AMS with hourly, right? And Ronstadt with Monster. Those are just three. Okay. I mean, these, these are companies who understand the business of recruiting, of staffing, right? But apparently they have no fucking clue what to do and or how to productize and sell. Chad Sowash (20:05.884) Weird, weird wild stuff, weird wild stuff. Joel Cheesman: All right. Let's go to LinkedIn. Shall we company that never gets any pub on, on the podcast. LinkedIn's revenue increased by 10 % despite a weaker hiring environment. Microsoft anticipates mid to high single digit revenue growth for LinkedIn in the next quarter, leveraging AI to enhance member experiences. What kind of experiences Chad Sowash, you might ask? Well, Okay, okay. Oh my god, Jesus. Chad Sowash (20:26.3) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (20:31.516) What? What? What? Look out, Wirtle. LinkedIn has officially, we talked about it, but they've officially launched three in -app games, Pinpoint, Queens, and Cross Climb, to engage users and potentially monetize through a subscriptions model. You'll be able to play each game once per day, and after your daily session, you'll get access to all kinds of metrics, including your high score and daily streak, different leaderboards, and who in your networks has also played. Chad Sowash, is this a silver bullet that... Uh -huh. Chad Sowash (20:58.588) Uh -huh. LinkedIn has been waiting for. What are your thoughts on the revenues and the games at LinkedIn? Yeah. Yeah, I would have thought that their revenues would be, I mean, to see them get a 20 or a 10 % lift isn't bad because I mean, if you take a look at it, the jobs that are open and being creative or created are generally not in the LinkedIn population of users, right? So yeah, 10%, that's not a bad thing. The whole Wordle thing is interesting. And really we've talked about this over the last few weeks. with, uh, with LinkedIn is they're trying to become more sticky. They want you to come back every single day. And what does Wordle have? Those motherfuckers, they get people back at least once a day. Right? So that is active and, and, and captivated audiences. Um, they, they want your average person to come back every day, uh, that will elevate their audience numbers and allow them to really focus on what we talked about before. Um, moving from, I shouldn't say moving from, but expanding from recruiter seats. to the bigger total addressable market of marketing and advertising spend. They're looking at doing videos, they're looking at doing all these different things. What do you really need to make that work? They need users that are sticky, that are coming back every day, and guys like me and you who are on it every day, they know we're gonna be there, right? They need everybody else, right? We're the 20%. They need the 80 % who are not there every day, and they are hoping and gambling on something like this. Joel Cheesman (22:21.028) Yep. Yep. Joel Cheesman (22:30.788) Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's, it's pretty smart. Uh, they need people like my wife. Uh, they have a billion users. I think maybe 200 million are on the site on any kind of regular basis. If you're not in recruiting or sales and marketing, you're probably on LinkedIn once or twice a year, updating your profile, adding a credential. Uh, and then you're done. People love this word. They love posting it on Facebook and the socials about, Hey, it only took me three tries to get the word. It is. Chad Sowash (22:51.612) Mm -hmm. Oh, they do. It's easy. Yeah. Yeah. So if they create a nice little social share thing on this, like, yeah, people will do it. People love this game shit. I'm not into it, but I know a lot of people are. In terms of the money thing, like we talked about this before, the recipe for LinkedIn is working like a charm. It's get rid of the competition, put up the moat. And I know moat has been criticized. Moat's a thing. Moat is a thing. If you can't easily duplicate it, moat is a thing. You can't just build a bridge across a moat. So. Yep. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:28.356) Kill the competition, get rid of the fake profiles, which I think they're trying to do. And then you become a monopoly and then you can start raising prices. So until, until Elon's LinkedIn killer comes along and gives them some competition, they're going to continue to ratchet up the prices and you Mr. And Mrs. Recruiter are going to keep paying those prices because that's what you're going to do. And as long as you keep paying it, their revenues are going to go up. That's hard. Chad Sowash (23:42.428) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:55.428) And this is what we're seeing on, on that side of the house. Yeah. So I wonder if they're just gonna allow the tech, which I mean is like the networking tech, just to stay the dilapidated, you know, 20 year old tech, which is what it is today. The matching sucks, the usability, I mean, it's just way too complex. And for many people who don't use it on a daily basis, it's hard to fucking navigate to do just the basic things that you wanna do other than posting, right? So yeah, I wonder because there is much more. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:21.796) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (24:26.556) marketing and advertising dollars that are out there. They can, again, HR is very slow to change. They do hear their recruiters whine, whether they use LinkedIn or not, don't take away my seats. Don't take away my seats. So they might feel like they really don't have to put the money and or time into the recruitment aspect of it. They're gonna focus on where the big money is. And, you know, I don't know, but all I gotta say is the tech sucks. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:40.644) Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (24:56.604) If they can make the advertising and the marketing and advertising piece good for them, I mean, the recruiter seat side of the house might just have to, you know, work with bailing wire and duct tape for the rest of their lives. Yeah. I mean, it won't be the first time a monopoly has fallen down on innovation, uh, in the history of commerce. But I mean, look, we talked about this with indeed with their healthcare channel and their tech channel, right? Like if, if LinkedIn can just get 10 % more nurses to use LinkedIn because of these games, they can go to every healthcare facility in the country and say, Oh, Yes. Chad Sowash (25:22.556) Yeah. Yep. Yep. Chad Sowash (25:29.276) Uh -huh. Joel Cheesman (25:35.556) In terms of nurses, we have an engagement of X. We have this many monthly active users that are nurses. And you know what? Hospital systems are going to pull out the blank check and pay whatever LinkedIn says because they can show some of those numbers, which they cannot right now. And if they can show tech, uh, tech people coming onto the platform and other segments, then they just create new money channels, uh, to fill the coffers. But you're right. Uh, you're a monopoly and there are little ways to dial it up. And this, I think is one of the ways to dial it up. We'll have to see if it works. Chad Sowash (27:07.1) Whew, we got it. Listen to the sponsors, everybody, because there's no show without sponsors. Joel Cheesman (27:19.908) All right, Chad Sowash, you ready for a little Elon news? No. No. Where are you going to get it? Anyway. All right. Uh, some, some, uh, some, some headlines this week from Elon, uh, I'll read them and you can comment on what struck your struck your curiosity or not. Uh, so here we go. Number one, man furious after cyber truck breaks down repeatedly in first month. Number two, Elon teases XTV saying site will be the everything app. Number three, Elon chuckles at post comparing LinkedIn users with zombies. god i know i know i know Chad Sowash (27:33.788) Mm? Joel Cheesman (27:56.164) And the last one, Tesla's senior director of HR leaves making another executive departure, just another week and all things Elon, your thoughts. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (28:06.46) Well, we just were talking about LinkedIn, so let's go back to it. So Musk is worrying about LinkedIn and he should be worrying about threads as data from Aptopia shows that threads is seeing more daily users in the US than Twitter. Now, that's one of the things. I mean, there's a lot of sleight of hand that happens with Musk. This also the XTV and let's be clear kids, if you type in x .com into your browser, it takes you to twitter .com. So this is Twitter TV. Hmm. Chad Sowash (28:36.156) Twitter is losing trust. He wants this everything app. If you want an everything app, you have to have trust and they're losing users. They're losing trust. And he's hoping that these smoke and mirrors actually help and bring people back to the platform, much like LinkedIn's games. And last but not, I mean, the whole HR thing, he doesn't, he thinks HR is extraneous anyway, I believe. I don't think he really gives two shits about HR. But the the Cybertruck issue he cares about that Less than four thousand cyber cyber trucks have been delivered Which is I thought I thought was a very low number And then watching them break down and get stuck is all the rage on social media I saw one in town here just the other day in Santa Fe and it's just ugly as fuck. It looks like a block of wood with aluminum panels attached. I mean, I know it's more than that, but that's what it looks like. I mean, the first time I saw it, I thought, wow, that is kind of space agey and whatnot. But when I finally saw one close up and I got a good look at it, it was like, man, this thing is ugly as fuck. I mean, it'd be like driving a block of wood. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:51.524) And coming from a military guy who probably drove a Hummer at some point in his life, uh, you know, and the popularity of those, um, I'll take the other side of the Cybertruck. I saw it in Phoenix twice. I think it's bad -ass. Uh, my wife won't let me buy one or even think about it. So it's, it's what it is, what it is. They need, they need to gift a Cybertruck to every rapper and pro athlete in the country and watch this thing, like go nuts. So it's just going to take a few celebrities to be in this thing. That's going to make it pop. Oh yeah, yep, that's my first vehicle actually, was a Humvee. Yep. Joel Cheesman (30:21.54) Now they have to figure out the whole breakdown. I read a story where someone, if you, they say, don't take it through a car wash. Something about the lake. It's just weird. That's like, they say wash it yourself. Cause it. They're recalling them all because of acceleration, the accelerator sticking. I mean, it's like, what the fuck? Yeah. That's, that's a problem too. Yeah. Yeah. That that's, that makes car wash problems seem really, really, um, little in comparison. So cyber truck, I think it's bad -ass, uh, whatever we'll see Twitter, Twitter. A lot of people don't remember this in 2016 Twitter aired some Thursday night football games. They're not airing them anymore. Uh, shockingly people didn't understand. I got to, I got a smart TV download Twitter app. I watched from my computer. I just don't get it. Yes, God. Joel Cheesman (31:05.188) So I'm not sure how XTV it's almost just silly to say XTV. It better, it better have good porn if it's called XTV. That's all I'm, that's all I'm saying. Uh, so, so I think that's one of his frivolous bullshit comments, uh, like he made about autonomous vehicles over a decade ago, but it was going to happen, uh, really, really soon in terms of LinkedIn man, like put up or shut up. You're going to talk shit about LinkedIn and it's not cool. And it's people are zombies on like. Smokin' Smokin' Marriors. Chad Sowash (31:16.924) XXXTV. Chad Sowash (31:21.66) Mm. Joel Cheesman (31:35.108) Let's see something like, let's see you do some LinkedIn competitor shit. I don't know what it's like. You did jobs that hasn't really set the world on fire. Uh, let's see a profile thing. So like just, just put up or shut up, uh, in terms of LinkedIn. Now the, the one thing I did think was interesting is laying off, uh, HR executive. And the reason I think it's important is because people do watch what Elon does. And when he lays off 80 % of his tech team, Mm -hmm. The year, the year of efficiency kicks in and multiple tech companies start laying off a lot of tech people. If he is in Silicon Valley, wherever saying we laid off HR, we didn't miss a beat. You don't need HR. We have automation or whatever it is. People are going to listen whether you agree with it or not. And they're going to say, do we really need an HR department? And if Elon can say, you don't need an HR department. Yes. Guess what? A lot of companies are going to go say. Oh yeah, we don't need an HR department. And you're going to see, you're going to see this trend happen where HR executives are like, Oh shit, Elon put me out of a job because he's, he told the world that you don't need an HR department. So that's the one thing that I would watch in regards to our space. Uh, hopefully people will ignore it and just say, it's just an executive. Cause it's kind of mysterious. They don't know if she resigned, if she was fired, like it's, it's sort of veiled in mystery. What happened. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (32:54.268) Right. Joel Cheesman (32:59.012) Uh, to this person, but I do think it's a trend to watch if he comes out and says, you don't need HR. That's probably bad for HR. Yeah, I don't think that matters at all because many of the companies look at HR and they do see it as a cost center, which I've said in many cases is bullshit. But when you start taking a look at compliance and that motherfucker who takes a shit ton of government funding, taxpayer dollars, I guarantee you he with SpaceX, he has a robust HR team, compliance team. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:25.348) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:35.268) Yeah. auditing team, I guarantee you, because that company does not exist without taxpayer dollars, period. Doesn't exist. All right, let's get into unions. Hotel workers that are unionized in 18 US and Canadian cities will rally on May day for significant pay raises as negotiations begin with Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, and Hyatt Hotels Incorporated. The talks will cover about 40 ,000 workers seeking to reverse pandemic era staffing cuts and secure higher wages. Chad Sowash, what's good for the auto workers? Yes. Chad Sowash (34:11.356) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (34:14.948) is probably good for the hotel folks too. What are your thoughts? Yep. Yeah. I mean, having a collective voice is really the only way to go for hospitality workers. And I'm sure those 40 ,000 hospitality workers heard Sean Fain, the president of the UAW, talking about out of control CEO and executive pay versus everyday American workers getting the scraps. Plus the UAW in Domler trucks last Friday struck a tentative deal, which includes a minimum pay raise of 25 % for union employees. So these workers, are seeing the power of collective bargaining. And I mean, if you take a look at the Marriott International CEO, Anthony, was it Copiano? That is one hell of an Italian name. I love that. His total compensation via salary .com says it's 18 million and that's 506 times the median employee pay. It's out of control. So when it comes down to once again, back, In 1978, CEO pay in the US has skyrocketed from 78 to today, 1200 % while worker increases a mere 15 % in the exact same time period. So this all affects, you know, from the trickle down, AKA supplied side economics era, the money went to the top and it never trickled down. And that's what's fueling all this dissension within the corporate ranks. So. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (35:45.724) for all those people who are using and talking about the unions are corrupt, you know, whole line of propaganda and thinking, look at the fucking numbers because without union representation, these workers are getting fucked and getting paid poverty wages and also understaffed, right? So this is something that we need. We went way too far in one direction. Mm -hmm. Chad Sowash (36:09.852) Now we've got to try to rebalance. So if it does go all the way over in the other direction to try to get it to balance, I see that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (36:21.38) So the pandemic happens, no one travels and layoffs happen. The ones that are left, the company says, look, to make it, you're going to have to take some cuts. You're going to have to swallow some pain, but when it comes back, we'll be fine. Right. So just like the auto auto industry in 2008, but this is 10 years later. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll take the deal. We'll, we'll do the what's good for the business. We want you to survive and thrive. And I still want to have a job. So I'll, I'll take whatever concessions I need. Fast forward, you know, two, three, four years later, the company hasn't made good on returning salaries back to where they were. And by the way, uh, inflation is really high for, for folks that are, that are doing the jobs that actually really suck at hotels. By the way, guests are assholes. Like the fact that people deal with that, uh, should get, get pay anyway. Staff per occupied room is down 13 % since 2019, according to the union. So they're doing more work for less pay and something's got to give. And I think the auto workers are a blueprint for like, how do we get the corporations to actually pay us a fair wage and get us to where we should be after the pandemic? And I think just like the auto workers, they're going to get what they ask for. Fuck. Chad Sowash (37:26.588) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (37:44.516) Um, I also think there's, there's evidence to say that, that, uh, although Airbnb is robust in terms of revenues, but I think, I think brand wise, like I'm off Airbnb. I don't know about you, but like I, it was fun for awhile, but I like to have a front desk. I liked, yeah, you love it. You love it. So, but I, I, I'm off it. I won't stay at an Airbnb. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Unless I absolutely have to, uh, now you stay longer at places than, than maybe I do, but I think there's a little bit of a reaction like Airbnb wasn't the killer, which was probably part of like, Hey, Airbnb is breathing down our neck. We need to make concessions in terms of salaries. I think, I think that fear is, is, was largely bloated and exaggerated from what the reality is. So yeah, I mean, so the cities we're talking about Boston, uh, cities in California, Baltimore, Toronto, these are big cities. And if, if they win. Mm -hmm. Uh, hopefully you see a movement just like we have with, with the auto workers in Tennessee and other places. Chad Sowash (38:45.404) Yeah, and it's interesting, we talk about concessions for salaries. It's everybody below the executive ranks, right? Why are the workers always getting fucked? That's the question. And again, as a Sean Fain comes out and says, hey, look, I know what's happening. This is what's happening. Everybody's looking at him going, yeah, that's exactly what's happening. That's why you need to join in unions. So I really see the UAW getting stronger. We've been talking about this and all these other unions are going to continue to gain momentum. because many of these individuals have to work more than one job because they are getting paid poverty wages. And that to me is just, that's just inhumane. Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (39:25.572) Inhumane, unlike our sponsorship advertisements, which are very people friendly. We'll be right back. Oh yeah. Very humane. Joel Cheesman (39:40.74) All right, Chad Sowash, the Biden administration plans to reclassify marijuana as a schedule three controlled substance, recognizing its medical benefits. This move follows recommendations from the department of justice and could lead to easier access for research and changes in the cannabis industry. Despite this reclassification, marijuana will remain illegal under federal law for recreational use, but a step in the right direction. I suspect your thoughts. Yeah. Chad Sowash (40:09.084) Yes. Yeah. My thoughts are a little reefer madness. I think I want to share, I want to share something with, with, with the, the listeners and yeah, especially those watching on YouTube. So here we go. Watch this. This is a reefer madness from a 1936. This was actually a movie kids. The kids. Chad Sowash (40:37.628) innocently. Chad Sowash (40:47.772) It's in hell. Chad Sowash (40:54.972) Vicious. Chad Sowash (41:09.084) Those women. Ugh! Joel Cheesman (41:19.3) Not sure how women being looser and hornier is a way to get people to not smoke it. Oh yeah. Chad Sowash (41:27.612) He's going over the edge. Joel Cheesman (41:37.22) hahahaha Suicide. Chad Sowash (41:57.404) God. Joel Cheesman (42:04.868) So, is he having a heart attack? That's... before it's too late, reefer madness kids. So that was the kind of bullshit propaganda in the 1930s, right? So I have never, and you tell me, I've had discussions with many of my friends around this. I've never seen somebody smoke weed or do weed and get aggressive, get violent, never, or suicidal. None of that, none of that happens. It's ridiculous. Uh -huh. Joel Cheesman (42:28.004) suicidal. Joel Cheesman (42:31.972) No, no. Look, every film back then had to pass through government filter. And you don't think the tobacco companies didn't have something to say about the making of that movie. Yeah, totally ridiculous. But look, I had no idea. Marijuana up until this legislation was the same category as fentanyl, heroin. Like no common sense person would say that fentanyl is on the same. Yes. Chad Sowash (42:57.244) oxycodone ke - cocaine Yeah. Allen same level. It's less cocaine is less apparently, uh, than the marijuana. So this to me is a logical thing. Let's be frank. It's smart to do, uh, an election season. Uh, if I'm Joe Biden, I want more younger people in these States that summer swing States. Uh, hello, Michigan. Um, that would probably be a favorable to this. Um, I haven't talked about, uh, my time at the sphere, uh, with fish. I don't. Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman (43:29.636) I don't know. Uh, look, there was some hot messes. There was some hot messes at the sphere, uh, for fish. So be responsible, be responsible kids. Uh, you can't overdo it, but you can't overdose and there's no hangover. So, so there's that, uh, by the way, whiskey sales down beer, like beer wine, like the kids are, the kids are doing gummies and edibles and not doing, uh, the whiskey stuff, which, which for me, frankly, Yes. You can't remember what. Uh huh. Oh, god, yeah. Chad Sowash (43:47.164) Yes. Chad Sowash (43:52.412) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (43:58.916) is great news. It means cheaper whiskey and more available whiskey. So as far as I'm concerned, we out. Yes. Chad Sowash (44:07.132) Amen. We out.

In this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, co-hosts Chad and Joel are joined by Kristen Boyle, the vibrant VP of Marketing at HireRoad. Recorded live on day two of the Transform conference in Las Vegas, the episode dives deep into Kristen's recent career move, the new HireRoad brand and strategic direction, and her insights on the evolving HR technology landscape. Highlights: - Kristen introduces herself, sharing her six-week tenure at HireRoad and her rich history in HR tech with companies like Amazon and Indeed. - Formerly known as Ascendre, this Australian ATS has recently been rebranded as HireRoad, aiming to make a mark in the HR tech arena with new leadership and innovative products like People Insight by HireRoad. - Kristen discusses the challenges and strategies in rebranding and marketing in a competitive industry, emphasizing understanding diverse customer bases and leveraging partnerships. - The conversation turns to the role of AI and data analytics in HR, where Kristen elaborates on HireRoad's capabilities in people analytics and predictive analytics, and how these tools aid in succession planning and talent retention. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. We are live at Transform in Las Vegas day two. Day two and it feels like Day 10. Kristen Boyle: We survived. Chad: Rough. Joel: This is Frank Sinatra's favorite podcast, AKA, The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the blue man to my group, Chad Sowash... [overlapping conversation] Joel: Is in the house, as we welcome Kristen Boyle, VP of Marketing at HireRoad. Chad: HireRoad. Joel: Aren't we a bunch of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed individuals this morning? Kristen Boyle: Have we all had our coffee yet? Chad: Yes. Joel: No, I have not. Chad: I've had some, but I need more. Kristen Boyle: Caffeinated, motivated, ready to go. Thank you guys for having me. Joel: No worries, no worries. Kris, a lot of our listeners don't know who you are. Give us a Twitter bio about you and a little bit about the company. Kristen Boyle: Yeah. Quick personal brand here. So I have been at HireRoad for about six weeks. Pretty new. Previously I was at Panda Logic before that, at Amazon advertising at Indeed. So... Joel: Indeed The Death Star. Kristen Boyle: The Death Star. Joel: How long were you there? Kristen Boyle: He who shall not be named? I was there for five years. Joel: Okay. Kristen Boyle: I was in my foray into HR, tech got me hooked. Joel: That seems about like the ceiling for most people. Five years is about... Kristen Boyle: Yeah, I'd say so. Joel: The norm. Kristen Boyle: Saw a lot of things. It was... Joel: Got it. Got it. And you reside where? Kristen Boyle: I am in New Jersey. Joel: New Jersey. Okay. Chad: New Jersey. Okay. So, HireRoad. Never heard of it. What's going on here? Kristen Boyle: That's where, that's what I'm here to fix. Chad: Thank God, you're there. Kristen Boyle: I know. Joel: How does a company like that nab a talent like you? Kristen Boyle: Well, I appreciate that they have kind of revamped all of their leadership team. HireRoad has been around rebranded from Ascendre, which is an Australian ATS. Joel: A government, ATS apparently. Kristen Boyle: A Government ATS. Joel: How exciting is that? Not just an ATS, but an Australian ATS and a government ATS. [overlapping conversation] Kristen Boyle: Yeah. Right. Things I didn't, think I'd be learning about the Australian government and. Joel: Things you'll never hear again in your life. Kristen Boyle: Right. But so HireRoad has a bunch of other products, most notably a People Insight by HireRoad, which is People Analytics also comes from another acquisition, but they rebranded to HireRoad about two years ago, a new CEO and new leadership team started in the last six months. Really strong HR, tech, talent and expertise. So it's really a good time to be here. It's good marketing challenge to come in and try to clean up our brand identity a bit. And that's why I'm here today. Joel: Yeah there are a lot of marketing folks that listen to the show. Maybe starting in the industry. Their bosses said, you gotta listen to Chad and Cheese if you wanna know what's going on. Kristen Boyle: That's, You're not wrong. Joel: They're listening to you now. What kind of tips would you give a newbie in the industry to find success, particularly with a brand that's new and hopefully growing? Kristen Boyle: It's a really good question. I'll, let you know, when I think... Joel: Haven't quite cracked that nut yet. Kristen Boyle: No. I mean, I, it's been I think a good first few weeks of just ramping up. I think you get to know your audience. I'm talking to a lot of customers from all of our different products, trying to find the commonalities I was saying earlier, yeah. You've got your Australian government and then you've got your HR ops in the us right. It's a different audience. So trying to just understand who your audiences are and how to best connect with them. Joel: But to go from Indeed where everyone returns your call, everyone knows who you are. Kristen Boyle: True. Joel: To this has to be a challenge. How do you get over that? Kristen Boyle: That's a really good point. And I think that's where, I mean, HR Tech is all about partnerships and who you know, and I think that's, events like Transform are a great opportunity. We're trying to introduce a lot of partnerships, not just tech partnerships, but referrals, resellers, all of that is gonna go a long way for HireRoad, which they haven't really had that yet. Chad: Yeah. So Ascendre has been around since 1997. Kristen Boyle: That's right. Chad: So there's a lot of baggage, but you got a new game or a new name. So talk about that a little bit. I think that would be pretty exhilarating to be able to come in. You've got an organization that's been around for a while, so obviously they're successful, right? Kristen Boyle: That's right. Chad: And you're trying to change the face. What do... I mean? What was the reason for the rebrand? Help us out. Kristen Boyle: Yeah. I mean, so we are owned by a private equity firm, and there's of course challenges that come with that, with branding and kind of consistency across the different entities that we have. HireRoad, I think, in the time we're leaning into the recruitment to the ATS products that we have, there's the play on HR HireRoad, but all decisions made before I joined, I will say. But as Ascendre has a really solid brand awareness in Australia, and we're not selling to outside of Australia to Ascendre. So that brand, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty solid. And we're continuing to build up the Ascendre brand in Australia. Chad: Gotcha, okay. Kristen Boyle: But HireRoad, it's a clean slate, and we are figuring out who we wanna be as a brand. We're leaning into our people analytics product, which is incredibly impressive. That's a lot of white space there that we're excited about. But yeah, it's sort of handling these two brands, these two different sets of solutions to different audiences. And how to connect the dots. So I'm still figuring that all out. Chad: So one is focused on the public sector, the other one's gonna be focused on the private sector. That's... I mean, that's gonna be a huge difference in marketing and messaging. And do they understand that? Do they get that? Kristen Boyle: Yeah, I would say so. And again, we're still building out. Ascendre has had the blessing of not having... Not needing a ton of marketing to be successful over the last 20 years. The Australian government from, as I'm learning quickly, is a lot about referrals. And... Chad: It's a money machine too. Kristen Boyle: Yes, it is. And we're doing quite well in the referral space. We have a lot of happy customers, which leads to more new customers. So that doesn't mean that there's not opportunity for some good marketing. And Ascendre does sell to some out non-government audiences in Australia as well. So I think there's opportunity there and to introduce people analytics to those Australian customers. So, that's where there'll be more marketing in the coming months in Australia. But right now we're really leaning into our existing customers and keeping them happy. Chad: Smart. Joel: As a marketing person and an Australian aficionado, how do we bring Foster's beer back to what it was in the 80s in the US? Chad: Which, everybody on the podcast in Australia is like, nobody drinks Fosters. Joel: I had a Bloomin' Onion for breakfast, by the way. It's a great hangover cure. Okay, for real questions. Now, you talked about data. You said it's impressive. What's some new data points that has caught your eye that might appeal to our audience? Kristen Boyle: Yeah, so I think with people analytics, it's like everyone knows it's important. You've got your different HR tech systems. I've been in the talent acquisition side of things. You've got your ATS data. You know, some good insights, cost per hire, time to hire. It's amazing what you can do when you can connect the dots across all of your different tech systems. And succession planning, I think is one that's maybe in a post COVID reality, but cross industries, we are seeing so many of our customers interested in succession planning, talent retention, internal mobility, right? To kind of go against the great resignation that we have seen. Joel: How do we tie in analytics to succession plans? How does that work? Kristen Boyle: I think it's a combination, you're identifying who your top talent is through performance data, but it's not just... You don't just stop there, right? It's what are they doing? How are they engaged? Let's look at employee engagement data. Let's look at learning and development data to see if they're getting the training and the upskilling that they need. Let's look at our turnover trends and how that's trending with our HRIS data. By, gender, by our DEI audiences, by team. What trends, how can we proactively identify some issues with turnover and get ahead of it and to prevent and kind of foster succession planning. Chad: So we've talked about everything thus far, especially the data piece. One thing you haven't said AI. Kristen Boyle: I'm jaded. I've been at an AI company. As Chad knows, I was saying it's refreshing to have a conversation without AI, but of course it's ever present. Joel: Oh yeah. Kristen Boyle: We are... Again, I think our product is, we have a new chief product officer who just came in. Really exciting roadmap of AI to come. We already recently rolled out like unstructured data analysis. So looking at data like exit survey data, right? Just hundreds of interviews. And it's more than just sentiment analysis, which for exit interviews are gonna be predominantly negative. But it's how are we kind of distilling the key insights from all of that unstructured data through AI. And then of course, some of the more exciting parts when it comes to people analytics, like predictive analytics. And generating insights from all of the analytics that we have. So all of that is coming, but I think we still have some really great data transformation through just machine learning. I think it's kind of ever present in all technology. And we very much have that with people insight. Chad: Yeah. Well, I mean, with, you've been around since 1997. Large language models love data. The secret sauce of any AI platform is data. Kristen Boyle: That's right. Chad: I mean, you've got nothing but data. I mean, obviously you've got tech stacks and whatnot, but for me, that would be incredibly exciting. Now, I understand it's gonna be more Australian data. It's not, outside of that, but at least you can start setting up models. Is that something that's pretty exciting? Because, I mean, yes, AI's not forefront in the conversation yet, but it's gonna be. Kristen Boyle: It is. And I think, I mean it, that AI story's gonna look a little different across our ATS products versus people analytics. I think the focus is for AI and people analytics where yes, we can very much connect our current products to our people insight, but it's really about our customer's data. And so that's where we're working with our customers to get every single data set that they have that they can continue feeding us. So that to your point, we can continue with the machine learning and building and collecting those insights. And we have historical data through people insights. So we're sort of focused on that. I don't know if we're pulling in our, the Australian government data into that quite yet, but it is an opportunity. Joel: You, we talked about the promotion side, the succession side. I want to go to the dark side of that and talk about layoffs and getting rid of people. For lack of a better phrase. Obviously people use the data to see the under performers or the low performers. Are we at a point where laying people off through AI and not having those hard conversations. Chad: Here we go. Joel: Do you see that coming? 'cause I do. Chad: The Amazon model. Joel: Laying people off. Kristen Boyle: No comment. Joel: Laying people off is really hard. And during the pandemic, it was convenient to have Zoom calls where people were laid off or text messages. And it seems like that could be easily automated and that discomfort could go away. You're shaking your head like, no, but why not? Kristen Boyle: I choose to be more optimistic than that. I think AI can help. Chad: Thank you. Kristen Boyle: Right. You have to be. I think AI can certainly help facilitate getting to the layoffs, right? It's uncovering skills gaps, uncovering the performance trends helping kind of the rankings or whatever you might be using for your AI, to kind of identify the lower performers. I don't know if I see AI getting us to a point where press a button and a robot's delivering the message for you. Chad: Well, we saw how that worked at Amazon, right? The optics for it, number one. And then number two, from a brand standpoint, well, in that case, you've got customer brand, right? Consumer brand, and then you have the employer brand. And it killed both of those. Kristen Boyle: Right. And you've already gotta watch yourself with unhappy people that you're laying off. You wanna protect yourself as a company. I think the company should tread lightly there, I think to watch out from a legal perspective. Joel: Well, how about the female who put some hard questions to the HR folks about why am I getting fired? You know, 90 days into this... Chad: On TikTok. Joel: I've gotten all good reviews... Yes, on TikTok. Kristen Boyle: Exactly. Joel: So you risk that. Curious, so it seems like the data would be a very good way to start seeing cracks in the pavement for employees, so you don't get to the point of no return. Kristen Boyle: Exactly. Joel: Like you can start seeing things in the data and analyzing that with AI to say like, we need to target Chad because he's falling down and we need to save him before he falls down. Do you see that with your product and your customers? Kristen Boyle: Yeah, I think we are literally seeing with people analytics, it's like what some kind of trends, some issues that might go uncovered if you're looking at them in a silo, when you can actually connect the dots and, whether it's there's Chad or it's this particular audience in our company, again, if it's certain functions or certain managers or certain demographics are suffering and we're seeing trends there, let's get ahead of it. Let's put HR practices in place to stop gap, right? And not just kind of looking at data in a silo. You might not see that full picture. So we really are... We see a lot of our customers looking at the full picture. It's us saying, it's like the... It's like going to Mayo Clinic, getting the full body scan that you can't really see in an individual doctor's appointment, if you will. So. Chad: Well, and you've got L&D, right? You've, so you've got learning development. Not to mention, I would assume, that would be amazing for coaching. This is all focused in that area. So being able to connect those dots to ensure that first and foremost, you're focusing on making sure that person gets more productive and you can retain them. Hopefully they are more productive and you can retain them. Because Lord knows it is expensive as hell to be able to not off-board somebody, but then go find somebody else and then onboard. Kristen Boyle: Exactly. The cost is incredible. And I think, we have customers using our learning product, and it's one thing for HR to be like, yep, we rolled out our L&D check that box, we're good. But then we go back to them, all right, is it working? Well, I don't know, people are taking our courses sort of, right? So, all right, let's look at the bigger picture. Let's tie it back to some other performance data. So engagement data. So yeah, it's sort of looking at the bigger picture. But I think that's the beauty of the people analytics is just connecting the dots. Joel: The experience I've had with analytics and people who use them is you have kind of two sets of users. One is like, give me the 30,000 foot view, give me the big picture. And then you have the geeks that are like, give me the spreadsheet, give me... Give it all to me now. How do you balance that as a product? Kristen Boyle: Yeah, it's a great question. And I will say, I don't think we are at the one model stage where we're ready to kind of geek out and give you all of the raw data, behind the scenes coding to kind of enable analysts. That's not our end goal. We want to be accessible, right? We want an HR professional, whether you're an HR analyst or not, we don't want you to have to work too hard. Kristen Boyle: We actually, so people Insight was built on consultancy. So we have a team of analysts who are, it's like, what are your business goals? How can we customize our data sets, our visualizations? What is the executive dashboard that you need that you need to share with your leadership? Okay, let's get that together. So it's very simple. Joel: So you customize a dashboard. Kristen Boyle: Yeah. Joel: Which is just a snapshot. If people want to get deeper, that's their thing. But your goal is if the CEO wants to log in and see, he's gonna see his stuff, head of HR is gonna see their stuff. Kristen Boyle: We've got customized dashboards, we also have the detailed reporting, right? So it's a series of visualizations, but yeah. Executive dashboard is the first thing you see when you log in. Now, if you as the user wanna go in and filter by team, by any data cut that you want, you can do that. Joel: And you have consultants to help with that. Kristen Boyle: And I think that's big because I think what we see, or what we're hearing from customers is that a lot of these people, they're not data experts. So if you tweak one thing with your data in Workday, is that gonna now screw up everything else from all the chart course it that you've built. Joel: Of course it's. Of course it's. Kristen Boyle: Right. And it's like... Joel: It's workday. Kristen Boyle: And so that's where we have great, a great team of analysts who are like, oh yeah, we've done that before. We got you. We know what to do. So that you don't have to kind of troubleshoot. It kind of just makes it easier. So, we really... We're the people's people analytics. Joel: I think it's always been the obstacle to make sense of the data. The data's pretty much for structured data's always been there, And you can lay it in front of them, but it doesn't... For most people, it doesn't make sense, right? So you've gotta make sense of the data. That sounds like what you guys are really focusing on doing. Kristen Boyle: Exactly. And I think, we're not there to... And that's where I think the predictive analytics, there's a lot of opportunities to kind of further how much we can just hand over to you. There's no work involved. But I think it's also, we can... We incorporate benchmarking data. We incorporate trend data so that we're making it really easy for you to understand what you're looking at and what does good look like? What does underperforming look like? But we're also... I think that's where our team of analysts comes in. But then it is partnering with customers say like, all right, what are you gonna do about it? Like, what changes are you going to make? And I think it's really empowering to HR to be able to make those... Come to the table with those suggestions. Joel: Incredibly competitive space. Kristen Boyle: Just a bit. Yeah. Joel: Talk about the competitive landscape, how you guys are different and how you sort of get that message to the customers. Chad: Like against the Visier, right? Because Visier is like the monolith right now for. Kristen Boyle: They are the monolith. I will say, and this is again, six weeks in, I would say compared to Visier, we are 90% of the value for 25% of the price. Joel: That's good. Kristen Boyle: Yeah, right. Chad: You must be in marketing. Kristen Boyle: I know, I mean, I'm not, I haven't got clearance for that on our website yet, but I'm saying it to you guys. We are fast and affordable, and we are, I think when talking to companies of all sizes who are taking their first step into people analytics, we started with Zendesk when they were a 1000 people, and now they've grown to six x that. And we've been able... Before they had a people analytics hire. They used us, we partnered with KPMG who said, we are gonna use you guys until we build it in house ourselves seven years later. Chad: And then they... Joel: Why? Kristen Boyle: It's still happening. So it takes a lot to invest. And if you're investing in a Visier, well, upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially months of implementation, we kind of pride ourselves on get us the data. You'll see value in five days. We're up and running in five days and we integrate with everybody and we're very affordable. So that in and of itself, to me is like a no-brainer. Chad: Joel, you know what I'm hearing? Knocking on the door of the United States. Joel: Opportunities, knocking. Chad: The United States, what you guys really haven't really tried to engage and or invade, right? That's, as well as we do, that's not easy. Joel: Ain't easy. Chad: That is not easy. So what's the focus on go to market? Is it gonna be partnerships? Is it gonna be trying to go after those big brands? What are you guys gonna try to do? Kristen Boyle: Yeah, so I think we are kind of narrowing our focus on who we're going after compared to say, programmatic where there's, or recruitment in general, right? There's certain industries that have different strategies, different approaches that you have a more narrow target audience. I think people analytics can be relevant to everyone. We're really looking at smaller customers, smaller companies who are growing. Who are getting into this space, who have multiple point solutions in their tech stack and need to connect the dots. So that's where we're going after. I think partnerships are huge opportunities. Kristen Boyle: We're partnering with even like HR consultants who are like, all right, we use your data and then we go and fix the problems that you've identified in your people insights. So, I think partnerships is to me, the name of the game. Kristen Boyle: I'm here to kind of help with the brand awareness. How are we going to get in with the right groups? I think, I'm still trying to figure out with ATSs, getting in an ATS marketplace, I think there's a huge opportunity there. Just because we sell AT... I think there's historical, it's like, well you have an ATS so you're a competitor. But people analytics, again, by partnering and integrating with anybody, we're kind of a natural partner for any ATS. So I think there's big opportunities we're looking at this year. Joel: So we should be expecting the Super Bowl ad next year, is that what you're saying? Kristen Boyle: After Indeed and Amazon, I'm taking myself out of the Super Bowl. Joel: You're all over the big boys. Joel: I'm now a watcher and a fan. I'd like to not be stressed out the day of the Super Bowl. Joel: You like the feisty small company like the Rocky Balboa coming into America. Kristen Boyle: That's right. Joel: Making things happen. Kristen Boyle: Exactly. Joel: That is Kristen Boyle, everybody from HireRoad. Kristen, for our listeners who wanna know more about the company or connect with you, where do you send them? Kristen Boyle: Yes. Reach out on LinkedIn, Kristen Boyle, and, higherroad.com. Pretty straightforward. We would love to connect and thank you guys for having me. It's been really great. Chad: Thanks for coming. Kristen Boyle: Let's all get some more coffee. Joel: Someone pass the coffee. Another one is in the can Chad, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs to people you don't even know. And yet you listening, it's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue nacho, Pepper, Jack Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese is so weird. We out.

In this riotous episode, Chad and Joel are joined by Adam Posner, in what can only be described as a collaboration no one asked for but everyone will painfully endure. From discussing the endurance required to survive HR tech conferences without succumbing to the temptations of free booze and dubious gummies, to diving headfirst into the murky waters of AI and vaporware, no topic is off-limits and no vendor is safe. Whether you're an HR veteran or just trying to get through your commute without falling asleep at the wheel, tune in for a mix of brash opinions, occasional wisdom, and relentless mockery of everything the HR tech industry holds dear. Just remember, you were warned. So buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, and by the end, you might just find yourself wishing you had spent your time doing literally anything else. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese podcast. Adam Posner: Let's do this, folks. This is a collab you never know you wanted but you're gonna have it anyway. Chad: I'm not sure I wanted it. Did you want this? Adam Posner: See, that's my goal is a podcast. Joel: Someone told me there'd be chocolate. Adam Posner: What kind of chocolate? Special chocolate? Cookies. Joel: Sexual chocolate. Adam Posner: Sexual chocolate. This is a collab that you never knew you wanted but we're gonna do it for you anyway. This is the Chad & Cheese podcast collaboration from Transform day 2. How do you get... You guys are veterans. How do you keep the stamina going, literally? Joel: Pace yourself. A lot of naps. Chad: It is a marathon. It's not a sprint. That's the big key. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Don't come the first day, drink your ass off, gamble your ass off. Adam Posner: Rookie mistakes. Chad: Yeah, that's rookie shit. That's rookie shit. You can't be doing that. Joel: Balance the meds. Balance the meals. Balance the time. You'll make it. Chad: Be careful on the gummies. Joel: We're professionals. We're 20-year plus veterans. Chad: Oh yeah. Be careful on the gummies. Adam Posner: And you guys are veterans so I'm gonna fangirl here for a moment here. I just want to thank both you guys for paving the way for folks like myself to... Chad: You're gonna make me tear up. Stop it. Adam Posner: To represent in this market, to have our voices shine but more importantly have our guest voices shine and shed a light on great thought leaders within the industry. So thank you guys for paving the road. And also about the relationships and bringing in sponsors and making those sponsors shine as well too. So thank you guys. So I'm done with the nice talk. Chad: Thank God. Adam Posner: Fuck that. Chad: I was tearing up over here. I'm getting verklempt. Adam Posner: What makes Transform special? This is my first. You guys have done this before. Joel: My first actually. Chad: Nope. Our first. Adam Posner: Never been to Transform? Joel: Totally. Chad: Yeah. Our first. Which is nice. So it was funny. Joel actually asked me earlier what makes this better than any show. I just think that there's big differences between, there's some likenesses between this and Unleashed. But I still think there's a huge difference because like 70% of the freaking sponsors and the booze I haven't seen anywhere else. Adam Posner: Right. So it's bringing a different, is it a different caliber, a different sector of the industry, different voices? Chad: There's so much in this industry. I mean, there's not one. HR Tech gets a shit ton of sponsors and also startups and vendors, blah, blah, blah. But they don't get them all. Neither does UNLEASH. Neither does RecFest. Joel: It makes me appreciate how big this space is that... Chad: Yeah. It's a big damn space. Joel: Guys like us who've been around for so long can walk into an exhibit hall and say, who the fuck are those guys? Chad: Also helps you understand for HR, TA people that this is a noisy fucking industry, right? Adam Posner: Yes. A lot. Chad: If we come into a space like this and we don't even, I mean, come on man. Joel: We live this stuff and we don't know these companies. Imagine a vendor, I mean it's like, a customer, how do they make sense of that? Now we try to on our show make sense of it for people but the biggest challenge for most of these companies is cutting through the clutter and getting noticed. Adam Posner: So let's talk about that word that's coming through, AI. Chad: Alright. Let's move 'cause we're gonna be walking. We're gonna be walking. Adam Posner: Let's go. He's gonna spin us around over here. Chad: We're walking. Adam Posner: So if you open up your ears for two seconds, you cannot go a second without hearing AI. AI, AI, AI. Like my show, you guys talk to a lot of thought leaders. How are you helping your listeners decipher and understand? And by listeners it could be vendors, it could be recruiters, it could be candidates, whoever's listening to the Chad and Cheese show or the podcast. How do you decipher what the hell AI is? Chad: It's all about being able to do due diligence and for the most part, most of these companies have no fucking clue what that even means without AI, right? So they've got to get companies in who specialize in the tech stack and AI, right? So they have to get somebody who knows because if they don't, they're gonna be buying shit they never wanted. Adam Posner: Like how do you decipher between what's a check to box or what is necessary for your tech stack? Or maybe your tech stack has so many pieces that you don't even need it. Chad: Well, then you don't need it, you don't need it. Joel: Yeah. Ultimately, AI means nothing. It's, what is the solution? Chad: Yep. Outcome. Adam Posner: What the problem is that you're looking to solve and is AI the right solution? Or maybe it's an existing, we'll call it a web tune set piece. Joel: Or is it vapor? Chad: Is it vaporware? Joel: That's important too. Chad: That's where the due diligence comes in, right? 'Cause there's a lot of fucking vaporware. Eightfold. That's out there. That's out there. Yeah, so I don't know. What about you? 'Cause you're seeing a lot of this too. Adam Posner: 'Cause I'm having a lot of conversations with the AI folks too and I think it really boils down to what is the problem that the company is looking to solve? Or how could AI help make it more efficient, faster, better to give a better candidate experience and empower the internal recruiters to do a better job with the human elements of recruiting? All three of us are recruiters, we're people leaders, we're in this space. So do we need it? Could it make our jobs better? And I think that's really what it's all about. What the fuck are these assholes doing in our space? We're gonna keep standing. We can stand. Chad: Alright. Everybody out. Get out. Joel: Get out. Chad: Evan. Joel: Get out. Chad: Out. Adam Posner: This guy;s, this guy... [laughter] So let's talk podcasting for a minute here. Chad: Okay. Adam Posner: Let's give us the stats here. How long have you guys been doing this? Chad: Seven years. Joel: Seven years this month. Chad: Seven years. Adam Posner: Mazel tov on that one. And how did Chad meet Cheese? How did Harry meet Sally over here? Hold on. I'm gonna switch over there. Chad: It is a very, very sexy story. No, not really. Literally, we're just in the same space, man. And we're both from, he spent time in Cleveland. I grew up south of Cleveland and Mansfield. So we just, we had like a quick bond, especially over sports, Ohio State. Joel: Very quick. [laughter] Adam Posner: Very quick. Joel: He's very quick. Chad: He's sexy. Adam Posner: He moves quick. And I love the, I mean, listen, like I've been studying you guys for a while. I'm an avid listener and it's a chemistry. Do you think that you could do it as well, as successful, without each other as a solo show? Joel: No. Chad: No, no, no, no, no, no. So, and I'll give you a great example. I don't know if you've ever heard of the radio show Bob and Tom. It was a big morning drive time show that was syndicated all across the US, Bob and Tom, right? Two incredibly different voices. They were incredibly successful and they were successful because they were funny. We're not that funny, but they were funny. Adam Posner: You guys are funny. Chad: And they also, they were no bullshit. And it was like, we could do that. Right? What does it sound like if you go to a conference, you've had a few drinks, like after Transform, what does it sound like if you're talking to your buddy and having some beers, right? That's what we wanted our podcast. Joel: Yeah. I think it's important to note that we were friends long before the podcast. Adam Posner: So you had the rapport, you had that jive, you had that snarkiness between you. Joel: The chemistry was there and there's too many people that start a podcast by just someone they know or, hey, I've met someone like, why don't we start a podcast? If you start without the foundation of we get along with each other, you're doomed to fail because that is eventually gonna come out as you work together. Adam Posner: You're trying to create something. Chad: This is work. Joel: It is work. Adam Posner: Dude, let's actually talk about the first thing. I think a lot of people, and we all talk about pod fade. Let's talk pod shop for a little bit here. I give everyone credit who wants to give this thing a try. Chad: Oh yeah. Adam Posner: But you guys have been doing it seven years. I've been doing it five years. This is a grind. This is a business. And if you don't have the stamina to do it, and if you don't have the why behind it, that's what as well. So what's your why? We're getting philosophical here as we're all tired. Like, why do you guys do this shit? Joel: Money's pretty much my why for everything. Adam Posner: But that's okay. Chad: My why is, why do this, we do this because there's so much fluff, pomp and circumstance in this fucking industry. Nobody cuts through the clutter and actually says what they mean because you're an HR, right? So it's like, my why was like, we need to fill that gap. And the very first time we went to SHRM Talent, I always thought that like the old HR ladies wouldn't like us because we're two dumb White dudes who were being dumb White dudes. But we've got some experience. They loved it. And they were saying, you're saying what we've been thinking and talking in small circles about for 30 years. And we're glad that somebody's finally doing it. Adam Posner: And I think that's why we're aligned. And that's why it was most important 'cause I felt you guys, we had the same vibe here. I go by this mantra of just off the cuff. We're gonna keep it real. We're gonna talk shop. But let's really lift up the hood and say what we really want to say that maybe as you said before, we're kind of scared to say, but we're gonna create a safe space for it and add the right amount of snark. Joel: Too many people try to be everything to everybody. Adam Posner: Then you're nothing to nobody. Joel: We could give a shit. We are who we are. That's gonna attract a lot of people, fortunately. But some people are gonna be turned off, offended, whatever. And that's okay. Do not go into podcasting, think you're gonna be liked by everybody. In fact, if you're not hated by someone, you're doing it wrong. Adam Posner: I grew up inspired by Howard Stern. Before I got into recruiting, I worked at SiriusXM for five years. And I grew up in New York. Howard Stern is my lifeblood. And that's the way I approach it. My opinion, best interviewer to walk the face of the earth because he turns an interview into a conversation. Chad: Yes. Adam Posner: And you guys do a great job of that, too. And I think that's really about what this space is. There are a lot of HR shows, and they're boring as fuck. They're boring. So you keep it real. What advice would you give podcasters out there to help find their voice? Joel: If they haven't already found it before the podcast, I'm not sure a podcast is gonna help you. Chad: No. There are a lot of people who have ideas and opinions, and that's great. But the thing is, the reason why Chad & Cheese actually worked, which I'm sure is the reason why Poz does, is because there was a gap. Somebody was not there doing what we're doing now. We identified that gap. I mean, after listening to a bunch of boring-ass HR podcasts, right? We thought, okay, we can do this, and people are gonna hate us in some cases, but who gives a shit? Let's just have fun. Adam Posner: But being polarizing is a benefit, too. Chad: Oh, obviously. Adam Posner: Yeah. You guys have a good business model going. Joel: And you should literally go into podcasting thinking, okay, if I'm a year into this and 10 people are listening, would I still do it? Chad: Yes. Joel: So don't do it for the listeners. Don't do it for the money, the fame, whatever. If that comes, great. Do it as if you're talking to one person, and you'd still do it because you love it that much. Chad: But we did go into this as a business. So we had a business plan on the way in. We committed a year right out of the gate. We had sponsors. Joel: We had a landing page. We registered. We had a sponsor before we... Chad: We had to get at least... Adam Posner: A lot of lessons learned from your business plan. Chad: At least 100 people had to say they would listen to our dumb voices, right, every week. And we also had sponsors on day one. Joel: Yeah. We had to get one company to give us any money. Chad: Yes. Adam Posner: That's a tough one as well. I mean, I talk about it very openly. It took me a full, almost a full year to break 200 listeners an episode, and then it hockey-sticked up because I was learning on the fly. I didn't have that business plan. I went into it, I like to say we fucking fucked around and find out and got to where we are today. But we had all those lessons learned. But from a business perspective, I mean, I'm learning a lot from you guys, how to bring in the right sponsors. Is there... It's probably Evan calling me. Does there have to be alignment with the sponsor or, as you said, are you just man-whores that take anything that comes your way? Chad: He's a man-whore, that's for sure. Joel: Does there have to be a line for the sponsor? I mean, I think ultimately if you're doing it right... Adam Posner: Are you doing like dick pills? Joel: You're going to attract sponsors that are in line with who you are, your message, your energy, etcetera. And we attract... Chad: We have turned down people though. Joel: Totally turned down people. And we understand that our listeners trust us not to do business with fly-by-night hack jobs. And part of understanding this expo and all the vendors is like, who has Chad & Cheese entrusted into being a sponsor with the show that I trust because these guys are giving it to me unfiltered? That's kind of the value to the sponsors. Adam Posner: That's the alignment. Joel: I don't think we've ever been with someone that we didn't like, that we thought was a douche bag, that we thought was bad. Chad: And we've blacklisted. Joel: For customers. Chad: Like Indeed, if they wanted to, I'm not saying they do 'cause I doubt they do, if Indeed came to us with money, I don't care how much it is, we wouldn't fucking do it. ZipRecruiter, same thing. Adam Posner: Oh, I can't even... Don't get me started. Joel: There is a number. Adam Posner: I mean, there's a fuck you number. Joel: It could be a solo show pretty quickly. Adam Posner: You know what though? There is a... Chad: It's the Cheeseman monolog. Joel: It's the Chad show. Chad: The Chad, yeah. Adam Posner: I think there is an appetite for that. But how do... You guys have been doing this for... How do you continue to stay sharp and innovate or you don't? Joel: Certainly for me, I think you as well. We always try to keep our finger on the pulse of the news, what's going on. People give us a, hey, did you hear about such and such? So early on, we just started a Facebook group with just us. And when we see something interesting, we put it on the feed. And at the end of the week, we're like, okay, everything we collected, pick five, what are we gonna talk about? And then we rank them and that's what we do. So we're always, we see something, we've trained ourselves to add it to the feed. So we don't have to think about, memorize, oh, what was all the news? We have it right there and we can pick and choose what we wanna talk about from the feed. Adam Posner: I love it. Chad: And the thing that is the most important is that we keep our wives happy. And mine's getting ready to get on stage. So we need to wrap that shit up. Joel: Back to the money. Adam Posner: And what about this? Today is my 14 year wedding anniversary and I'm here talking to you two guys, you two old White dudes over here. But for my audience, for the podcast audience, I want you guys to check out the Chad & Cheese show. It's absolutely fantastic. Why the hell should my audience listen to you two? Chad: If they give a shit about the industry, they should at least try one episode. If they like it, great. If they don't, great. Taste test. Joel: If they want an unfiltered commentary about the news of the day in our space, they should listen to our show. We're not bought by anybody. We're not a company affiliation for the show. Chad: Yeah. Adam Posner: Independent contractors. Joel: We aren't bought by anybody. We'll give it to you straight, chadcheese.com, subscribe today. Adam Posner: And absolutely. And for the Chad & Cheese audience out there, if you want a little bit of the raw, unfiltered, long form interviews, I chop it up. It's what I do best. Check out the pozcast.com. Gentlemen, thank you for your time. Thank you for the collaboration. Chad: Thanks, dude. Adam Posner: Thank you for inspiring. And it's been fucking great to hang out and actually get to meet you guys and chill and laugh a little bit last night. Chad: You too, dude. Joel: Love it. Awesome. We out. Adam Posner: Pozcast, Chad & Cheese out. Chad: We out. SFX: What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad & Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch...

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, the boys discuss various topics including the Paradox' Analyst Day, the exit of Vonq from the US market, and the success of CV Wallet. They also touch on the news of Rippling's potential $13 billion valuation, the rebranding of Broadbean and Pandologic to Veritone Hire, and the acquisition of Cannabis Temp by Vangst. The hosts also mention the addition of a verified recruiter badge on LinkedIn profiles. The episode concludes with a discussion on the challenges and potential of Veritone Hire and the future of job distribution. In this conversation, Chad and Joel discuss various topics including the consolidation of brands, the potential of AI in the recruitment industry, the challenges of the cannabis market, and the leadership fails of ZipRecruiter, Nike, and Bayer. They also play a game of 'Who'd You Rather' and share their thoughts on recent funding rounds. Overall, the conversation highlights the importance of innovation, adaptability, and effective leadership in today's business landscape. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:29.424) Yeah, two guys who've been through the desert on a horse with no name. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Goldwater Cheeseman. Chad (00:41.057) This is Chad, SPF 15, so watch. Joel (00:44.848) And on this week's episode, rapid fire, a breakup at zip, and who'd you rather? Let's do this. Joel (00:58.736) How's the desert treating you, Chad? Can we hurry up? The pools and cocktails are calling. Yeah, Phoenix is like Vegas without the drama and the crowds. It's very nice. Chad (00:59.425) Can we hurry up? Can we hurry up? I gotta get back to the pool. Yeah, I got a hot blonde. It is, yeah. And I've got a hot blonde waiting for me back at the pool. So I'm coming, Julie. I'm coming. Joel (01:14.704) haha Nice, nice. So we're here at Paradox, Analyst Day slash user groups, whatever they call it. They have a certain brand for it. It's basically like users of Paradox coming for stuff. We are here doing a Netflix style series of interviews on AI and I've been blown away by the content. I can't wait to release this to the world. Get excited if you care anything at all about AI and hiring. Chad (01:27.713) Innovation Day. Chad (01:45.217) Yeah, no, I totally dig it. We get to see a bunch of people and a bunch of brands that we care about. And one of the things I love about going to these types of events is that, you know, they want to show you the innovation and then you get to step back and you get to gauge the clients and say, oh, what do you think about this? Is this something you're going to be able to adopt or, you know, what have you? But also, you know, the vision, things that, you know, they're they're they have in test and beta. And then just having those discussions with, you know, industry leaders and individuals who use tech on a daily basis, what they give a shit about. And, you know, I got to say most of these companies that we've talked to, these TA leaders are well ahead of the rest of the market. You think you talk about the companies who adopt and they're kind of like they're fast followers. A lot of these companies are, and I am so surprised. and excited to actually have these conversations. That's cool. Joel (02:47.888) Yep. And no spoiler alerts, but introducing change into some of these organizations, a lot of teeth pulling and arm twisting to get some of these changes. But once changes are made, positive outcomes follow. So yeah, I'm excited to get this series out. And you mentioned companies here at Paradox. I'm still trying to track down McDonald's, Shake Shack, and Raising Canes. So far, no luck. I'm looking for... Chad (03:03.425) Amen. Joel (03:15.76) I'm looking for coupons, you know me, you know me, Chad. Chad (03:17.953) I think they've given them your photo and they're looking out for you as well. So in an entirely different way. Joel (03:23.76) Uh huh. Yeah. I'm on the black list at Shake Shack. I'm on the no -go list at, uh, at Raising Canes. I got to talk to JD. JD, hook me up with some more Raising Canes coupons. Chad (03:32.481) Yeah. Oh, he's going to do it. He's going to do it. You know what you're not on the blacklist for unless you haven't registered at ChadCheese .com slash free stuff. Free stuff. That's right. Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. Oh, some delicious, hazy. Who knows what we're going to send you? You don't even know what we're going to send you. It's going to land on your front door by Aspen Tech Labs. Love those guys. Whiskey, two bottles, two bottles from Tex Kernel. Joel (03:42.864) I've registered. Chad (04:01.057) One from Joel, one from myself. Love those guys over at Tex kernel. And we did t -shirts. You handed out some t -shirts this week. What was the reaction? Joel (04:08.72) this. Joel (04:14.64) Very positive. We upgraded the shirt material. It's a little more, at risk of getting canceled, it's slightly more female friendly. It's a little softer without giving too much weakness in the fabric. So I think we did well there. Everyone, maybe it's our age, our demographic, they know the Guns N' Roses influence, so there's definitely some comments about that. Chad (04:18.753) It is. Chad (04:24.481) Silky. Go yeah. Chad (04:38.465) Too easy. Yeah. Joel (04:41.456) as excitement, but they like, they like last year was ACDC this year's guns and roses. They like the theme. We'll, we'll keep that rolling. We'll keep that. Chad (04:49.089) Well, and thanks to Aaron App, if you take a look at the back of the t -shirt, you'll see a really cool Aaron App logo. They designed it especially for the Chad and Cheese shirt. So right on the back. Then we have, you know, kids, if it's your birthday, you got to actually register so that you can win some rum from Plum. Once again, chadcheese .com slash free. Gotta do it. Joel (05:00.752) It's an Aaron Original, that is true. Aaron Original. Joel (05:07.248) Oh yeah. Joel (05:15.376) Yeah. So the birthdays this week are a big tease because this is an abbreviated version of Chad and cheese because we are on the road and Chad has a blonde, a pool and a cocktail calling his name. But thanks as always to Plum. We will catch up on birthdays next week. Don't worry. We have not forgotten you everybody. Chad (05:36.609) But events, we gotta talk about events. We are going to jump, that's right, stratosphere, baby. We're talking about a jump, a leap, yes. Literally jumping off the top of the strat with Matt Bauer, the CEO of OutHire. It's over 800 and I think 50 feet or some shit like that. We're gonna have cameras all over the place. We're gonna have one. We're gonna have a depends camera on Cheeseman. You can nominate a friend, and again, this... Joel (05:52.656) out higher. Joel (05:57.296) Crazy Aussies. Joel (06:03.92) Call it insider trading, but I'm buying shares and depends everybody. You should do the same. It's not just the baby boomers that need them. Yeah. Chad (06:10.753) Go to ChadCheese .com. Up top in the header, go ahead and click Jump with us and you can register there. Then we're going to the minus five bar, that's right, Omar's Ice Castle with Diane and Jane from Great People and Omar from JobPixel. It's gonna be a blast. It's gonna be cold, so hopefully you're ready to snuggle, cheeseman. Then last but not least, May 8th. at the Neon Boneyard. Join us with Plum, where we are going to be basking in the neon lights. Yes, the neon lights, the old lights that they didn't send and recycle. No, they put them down in an elaborate where you can party and enjoy, right? So go to ChadCheese .com slash events and join the wait list there. We would love to see you in Vegas. No matter where it's at, we'd love to see you in Vegas. Joel (06:53.552) Uh huh. Make a museum. Joel (07:06.48) Good, good God. We are going deep in Vegas everybody. Holy crap, holy crap. Omar's Ice House. I like the sound of that. Chad (07:12.001) I gotta say though, I gotta say though, I gotta say though, Michelle over at Plum, she said she really enjoyed the eye poppy sound effect when we talked about neon nights. So just so you know, just so you know. Joel (07:16.368) Yeah. Mm -hmm. Joel (07:23.28) Hahaha Joel (07:28.72) We aim to please. We aim to please. In fact, I'll do one up and give her a step, bro. I love our sponsors. I love our sponsors. Chad (07:38.305) Love it, love it. Let's do it. Chad (07:44.385) next. Joel (07:46.256) All right. This week we had a lot of shout out a newsy topics. We're going to combine them both. We're calling it rapid fire. I'm going to read you the headlines from the week. Chad will comment on the ones that stood out to him, starting with sir Richard and Beverly's CV wallet just raised half a million dollars. By the way, I love a headline that says raised 0 .5 million dollars. Like the 0 .5 is really cute. Like 0 .5 probably fell out of their Maserati and he just decided to call it a funding round. Anyway, their total now raised is $2 million and the valuation of the company is now at $13 million. Congratulations to them. Firing Squad Casualty, if you will, Draftboard has raised $4 million. I invite you to go listen to that if you haven't. He did not fare well, but otherwise some investors did think. Think enough of the company to drop $4 million. Rippling, uh, deals favorite, uh, competitors and talks to raise it a $13 billion valuation. Broadbean and Panda logic will now be known as Veritone higher and weed job site. Vankst has acquired cannabis temp. Oh, and LinkedIn is adding a verified recruiter badge to profile picks a lot to digest here, Chad. What stood out to you from this week's. Chad (08:54.785) Mm -hmm. Joel (09:08.944) flurry of news. Chad (09:10.849) Who, did you mention Vonk in that one? Are we gonna talk about Vonk in this one? Joel (09:15.408) I probably miss Vonk, yeah. Too much sun in my eyes here in Phoenix. I might have missed that. Yes, Vonk has officially, and you have some inside information on this, I think, has exited America. Did not work out for them. Chad (09:29.953) Yeah. Yeah. So let's, let's just go ahead and hit that one up first. So Vonk pulls out of the U S in 2021, the European team over at Vonk started building a team in the U S and today there is literally no trace of that team left. A couple of classic points here. Number one, Vonk's last CEO wasn't from this industry and that generally doesn't bode well for a lot of startups. And number two, Vonk is a Dutch company trying to invade the U S. We praised Vonk in 2021 for the move to an experienced strategically aligned staff here in the US, but European leadership just couldn't get out of the damned way. The hardest issue for me is that the integrations into the platforms, the ISIMs and smart recruiters, pretty big integrations. You can't cultivate a relationship of that size from across the pond. And also, you know, their revenue in The US is poultry compared to what it is in Europe. And I'm an advisor and investor with Sonic jobs, a UK startup that's been around for about seven years. Sonic wanted to make the leap over the pond in the US and they have successfully in less less time than than Vonk has blown away their UK revenues in the US. Why? The US is a huge pot of gold, kids. UK smaller pot of gold. Yes, but smaller pot of gold in VONC's case They're all over Europe and to be quite frank We've had discussions with many companies in Europe who don't even know who the hell VONC is so I think they have issues in Europe number one and number two if they try to come back and from my understanding they're gonna try to come back to the US if they try to come back to the US if European leadership doesn't get the hell out of the way. They're going to fare pretty much the same, I feel, that they did this time. Joel (11:34.544) Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. The penicillin worked on the bonk, uh, in, in America. Uh, it didn't work out for, for new Amsterdam. Uh, and it didn't work out for another Dutch company, uh, in Vonk. Look, the business is the, the model is still there. The tech is still there. Uh, I'll, I'll give them one benefit of the doubt. I like the new leadership. Uh, I think the refocus, uh, is, is. Chad (11:37.377) What do you think? Chad (12:02.881) They don't have a CEO yet though. Joel (12:04.464) Well, Bill Fisher, right? I mean, he's, is he just sort of I CEO? So he, they're waiting. Okay. I enter him CEO. All right. Um, it's a wait and see for me. Uh, I'm not going to hold my breath that they're going to crush it in America or come back anytime soon. Look, you can run a company from Europe and still have market share in America. Maybe the model isn't to have a whole team over here. Uh, maybe it's just build great tech, integrate it and hope that it works. Chad (12:06.913) No, no, they're waiting. It's yeah. He's like in turn interim. They're gonna they're gonna get an entirely new dude Joel (12:33.04) It works for a lot of companies. It hasn't worked for VONC so far, but yeah, you're in sync with some of their leadership more than I am. And if you're not optimistic, then I don't have much reason to be optimistic either. Chad (12:47.713) Yeah, I like them a lot. The problem is it's hard when a company is your baby, right? And obviously they did, you know, Arno is gone, the CEO is gone, but that's not the entirety of the leadership. Yeah, we do. I mean, yeah, but that's not the entirety of the leadership. You've got to get somebody who's in there who's strong, who understands great market penetration, and hopefully that'll happen. Let's go ahead and get to... Joel (12:56.496) Mm -hmm. Joel (13:02.928) Who we like, who we like. Yeah. Chad (13:15.329) a more fun 0 .5 million CV wallet. I'm an investor and an advisor over there as well. A lot of news coming from people I know. What are the takeaways from the eRecruitment Congress with Bill Bormans that you actually pointed out on a podcast earlier this week is that jobs will find you. CV wallet embodies that statement. and is the newest and most advanced iteration of that tech. I'm really excited for Richard and Beverly and the team and noticed two things. Number one, reason for the quick 48 hour raise. They were growing so fast, they needed to get support people in, right? And then the amount. They didn't take too much, right? And I'm gonna give you some insider information. I'm gonna give you some insider information. They just took the tip, just the tip. Joel (13:59.76) Is that right? Okay. Joel (14:04.432) No. Okay. Give it to us. Don't breach your contract. Don't breach your agreement. Don't breach your agreement. I don't want, I don't want sir Richard mad at us. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, okay. The boss. Chad (14:13.345) No, no, I'm good. I'm good. I cleared this. I cleared this with Beverly. It's all good. So, CV Wallet launched March 1st of this year and they hit $1 million in ARR in 25 days. They're on pace to hit $2 million by next week and they're eyeing about $10 million in ARR by the end of the year. They're not even going to get a full 12 months. and they're going to be on pace for 10 million in ARR. That to me is a big fucking applause. Joel (14:42.992) Yep. Joel (14:50.064) Wow. I feel about CV Wallet sort of like I do every other crypto. I kind of get it, but I kind of, no, okay. I kind of get it, but I don't. Chad (14:59.745) They're not crypto. Stop it. Joel (15:09.104) break it down for me. It's profiles that are on the blockchain. So it's like a passport for multiple platforms to share resume assessment data, maybe background checks or eventually background checks. And how are they making money? What's the revenue model? Chad (15:26.017) So here's the thing, because this is rapid fire, I've already talked to Richard and we're gonna get him on the show and we're gonna run down all of those things. I know, but I don't wanna take a half an hour to try to explain to you infrastructure, all this other fun stuff. It's not easy stuff, not easy stuff. Joel (15:32.879) Oh. Oh. Joel (15:40.304) All right, well Richard works for me. Richard works for me. Can we get him to do the interview from the Maserati? Can he be in the Maserati while we're talking to him? Okay. Chad (15:46.529) Then... Chad (15:51.297) No, because there's, I don't know, maybe because they've got some really good noise dampening in a Maserati. The next news from Veritone, Veritone Hire, super human hiring is here again, apparently. We talked about them having all the pieces and the question is, can they pull all of those pieces together in time? Because the velocity of tech... Joel (15:57.168) Okay, all right. Moving on. Chad (16:17.729) today is moving so fast, is it going to pass them up before they actually get the puzzle put together? That's the hard part. But what's most interesting to me about this company isn't the AI, it's the ability to provide basic job distribution and more advanced performance driven job distribution. Because not all companies are ready for performance based jobs. And if you are serving global clients, you have to understand that performance based ads, aren't as well adopted across the pond, right? So they have both, they can do both. So they're ready for that transition. Then think of the prospect of using Wade and Wendy AI for pre -screening an application. It's a practical posting play combined with heightened candidate experience and a better way to collect data. The question is, again, can the maestro make this orchestra play the right tune? If so, I think it'll be a hell of a symphony. Joel (16:55.568) Mm -hmm. Joel (17:15.92) How do you feel about, because Broadbean is a long time brand, I think mostly positive and Pando's been built last 10 some years, the brand there. Do you think dumping those is a mistake or do you think it just is something that had to be done and Wade and Wendy as well, but much less so. Chad (17:26.817) Mm -hmm. Chad (17:33.313) No, I think, yeah, I think it's something that had to be done and it's gonna be happening for the most part behind the scenes. When you need a big brand, right, these are job distribution that's happening pretty much out of applicant tracking systems and then you've got performance based that's happening through ad agencies, right? So you don't really have to have a great brand for McDonald's or for Lowe's or Lockheed Martin, right? Just the... Joel (17:59.568) Yeah, it's not a consumer brand, right? So, yeah. Chad (18:01.633) Yeah, yeah, you don't need to have that. So I think it's smart. Go ahead and consolidate that. Save money on even the thought of marketing or keeping three brands and whatnot and three websites actually running. So, yeah, I think it's smart. But once again, that's all going to be water under the bridge if they just can't get this thing moving fast enough. Joel (18:24.624) Yeah, I really like the pieces that they're pulling together here. I like the leadership. I know they made some hard decisions. It's the era of AI and if this company can't make it happen in AI when it's an AI first company, like it's, it's, it's set to win. Like you're going to have to try hard to fuck this up based on what they've, they've done. I think the brand change was necessary. Consolidated all put it under one umbrella. Uh, so the, the, the market understands and they're. Chad (18:28.609) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (18:53.136) It's not like the extension of the brand is confusing. I think everyone, Veritone Hire, I think most Pando people understand the acquisition, Broadbean again, there's not much connection to the brand. So yeah, I think we're both rooting for Veritone. They are a sponsor, full disclosure. So obviously we like them to win, but it's a good story, great technology. And it's a technology that was general in how it came to our space as opposed to our space and then trying to go general. So it's really exciting to have. that dynamic in our space. So I think we should all be kind of at least rooting for them to shake things up and be successful. Chad (19:30.945) Yeah. And I think being here in paradox, we were talking about AI a lot, right? And at the end of the day, this is all about outcomes. What's the problem that you're trying to fix with whatever solution you have in place? But you've got to remember that, again, the velocity of tech today, you're going to have to have AI in your back pocket. It might not be necessary right now, but if you're not building for tomorrow, you're going to be dead kids. Joel (19:35.856) Mm -hmm. Joel (19:58.16) Yep. Any other news items catch your attention? Chad (20:02.817) Yeah, the whole draft board thing still just blows my mind. Nobody can get referrals to actually work inside a company. Now we're going to try to do it outside of a company. I mean, it's just for me, there's so many PE VC investors who they have so much money that they've been holding onto and they literally, they're just looking to spend it on anything. Again, love the guys, the team over there. Joel (20:10.352) Not in this way, yeah. Chad (20:30.432) They realize they don't have the background in this space, although they're going to push forward and they should. And they've got 4 million plus reasons to be able to do that. But again, we know where this ends. Joel (20:43.984) it has ended historically. Doesn't mean it'll end that way in the future, but odds are. History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure as hell does rhyme. Any take on the weed acquisition? Chad (20:48.225) get my crystal ball out. Crystal ball. Chad (20:57.473) And weed is interesting because it is such a big business. We should be hearing more about this, right? There's a huge, huge market. If you go to, I mean, we're here in Arizona, there's a huge market here. There's a huge market in pretty much the entire West Coast, right? I think what we're going to see, and hopefully what we're gonna see is, at least with these laws, they're gonna move forward. I mean, it's crazy how we're dragging, Joel (21:24.048) Yeah. Chad (21:26.209) uh, you know, uh, rovers is weighed out and then Arizona is going back to 1864, but, oh, you can go ahead and have weed. I mean, it's just, the signals are so mixed, but when it comes to weed, that's all about money, right? And we know here in America, politics is about what? It's about the green. It's about the lobbyists. It's about the green. Joel (21:46.96) cash. Yeah. And it is about the green in terms of until, until the federal government observes weed as a legal business, it's gotta be really hard to acquire companies and merge companies in this space. I mean, they don't have bank accounts, right? Like let alone like, let me buy a company rule of law. Do lawyers get involved with that? If it's legal business, like there's gotta be so many hurdles to making shit like this happen that, uh, The fact that it happened at all is pretty surprising to me. I know Vance is one of the more high profile. I said high profile. I said high, high profile. And they've had the most money. It's a good business, but it's also not. It hasn't really blown up until it's federally legal, until Philip Morris and Reynolds get into it and start buying up all these companies and brands. I think it's just going to be in the status quo. world of nothingness for the most part. My guess is Cannabas Temp, not exactly a brand name. I'm sure it was like some dudes that were high in the fucking basement like, let's sell the company. And it was so. Chad (22:46.337) For me though. Chad (22:56.993) I got to say that, you know, for me, and this is my personal investment strategy, I look long -term and you look for this thing to pop. And I just think that within the next, you know, five, 10 years, it's going to pop and it's going to be federal. And so, yeah, I think they're making a very smart bet on the market and what's going to happen in about 10 years. As we sit back and wait, I think anybody who buys into it personally, Joel (23:05.584) Mm -hmm. Joel (23:23.024) Yeah. Chad (23:26.145) I think it's smart. Joel (23:28.624) When this thing becomes legitimized, it's going to be like Katie bar the door. There's going to be startups galore, money galore. Yeah. Big tobacco is going to get into it. Like we'll be talking about it probably on a weekly basis, but not so much now. Chad (23:32.993) Skyrocket. Yeah. Chad (23:40.129) Oh yeah. And you'll be taking, you'll be taking more five milligram THC at the sphere. Joel (23:44.624) I don't know what you're talking about, Chad. Chad (23:51.681) Oh my God, that was funny. Joel (23:53.136) All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk about who'd you rather. Joel (24:03.056) All right, Chad, are you ready for a game of who'd you rather? That's right, we take two companies that have recently gotten funding. I read a summary and Chad and I decide who we'd rather. All right, Chad, first up we have Paraform. They've raised $3 .6 million in funding. The San Fran based startup targets laid off recruiters starting their own businesses, connecting them with startups for talent sourcing with a subscription and success fee model. Paraform aims to expand globally and into new job markets just beyond tech roles into others using, you guessed it, AI. And in this corner, We have Take Two AI. New York City -based Take Two AI has raised $3 million in seed funding with participation from tech stars and HR leaders from Visa, Disney, HP, and Google. The startup aims to help companies generate tailor -made simulations of real -world sales scenarios to vet job applicants for skills, behavioral attributes, and culture fit. hoping to minimize miss hires and improving retention. That is Paraform versus Take Two Chad. Who'd you rather? Chad (25:27.297) Well, I'm going to start off with Take Two AI. So let me start out by saying, and I'm very biased when it comes to this because I advise Tadio, also a performance -based job simulation platform. But can the candidate actually perform the tasks necessary for the job? Resumes can't provide actual performance data, right? Yeah, and someone might've been the best salesperson on an already shitty team. But what happens if that... Joel (25:52.912) Mm -hmm. Chad (25:54.625) not so shitty salesperson comes to a team of high performers. You just don't know, right? So not all numbers are relative, yet performance through simulations can scale and they can really help with the hiring process. And I liken this to, because I've been in many sales interviews, sell this pen, right? You're in an interview and they do what? They sell this pen, right? This is even better because... Joel (26:19.184) Sell me this pit. Chad (26:20.513) Yeah, you can do that at scale, right? And you can also have the individual go through a CRM and go through all those different things. So I mean, that to me, it makes more sense and it's more practical. Now, Paraform, what the fuck do they actually need AI for this? I mean, this is ridiculous. It's a side hustle platform for recruiters. For me, it's way too small. I would look at it. kind of side eye and then walk past, I'm going to take to AI, sell me this pen all day. Joel (26:54.352) All right. I love it. So I agree with Paraform. This is bounty jobs. This is, this has been done for decades. It hasn't hit a marketplace for recruiters. We're in a world where we're talking about fewer recruiters. So the idea of launching a recruiting marketplace seems a little bit slow growth or no growth to me. So that one is a real, that's a real no -go for me. That's a, that's a skank in the corner that I'm not. paying any attention to on Hooger rather. Now the take two, uh, interesting name. Uh, it was a band from the nineties also, uh, from like a Brit pop band. Anyway, enough about enough about my past musical career. Um, my thing with sales is the trend of AI AIing. Is that a word of using AI to automate calls outreach to people? Um, Chad (27:47.873) Sure, why not. Joel (27:53.424) and then give them to someone who was already experienced in sales. Yes, hot leads. I've scheduled a demo, but we've heard, we've seen the air .ai demo of real calls, companies like Apple and Tesla are using these voice calls basically to try to sell computers and cars. So I don't see a huge company in training salespeople in this way. However, Chad (27:56.289) Hot leads. Hot leads. Joel (28:22.32) I do appreciate that the human touch in sales, the more you automate it is going to be important. So training like real people, salespeople that are, that are selling SaaS businesses and products that are six figure deals that you can't do with an automated voice or video, uh, in, in the process. So for me, like, I don't think it's a huge win. I love, uh, the video. If you, if, if you're interested in this business, uh, tech stars, there's a video of the presentation or demo. which is pretty cool. They have some big heavy hitters behind this company. So for those reasons, it's kind of an easy layup of who I would rather and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna side with you and go with take two as who I'd rather. That's been another game of who'd you rather. Chad, we're gonna take another break and talk about some leadership fails. Joel (29:24.4) Chad, it was a bad week for leadership in the world of business. First, ZipRecruiter's COO, Kasim Safi, is leaving after serving in the role for just under three years. Nike CEO, John Donahoe, is blaming remote work for the company falling behind on innovation, saying that it's tough to be disruptive when people are working from home. And Bayer's... Chad (29:28.193) Hmm. Yeah. Joel (29:52.784) CEO aims to save $2 .15 billion by get this eliminating middle managers and most of the company's corporate handbook. Employees will self -manage in dynamic shared ownership teams, whatever that means, focusing on projects for 90 day stretches. Chad, Zip, Nike and Bayer aren't exactly winning this week. What are your thoughts? Chad (30:24.161) Zip hasn't been winning for a while and I don't know why the CEO left. I don't know why he left, but why not the CEO? Because think about it. Ian's vision was pretty tight before the IPO. Before the IPO, Zip, they weren't as sloppy as they are now. I mean, this is just horrible. They have had an amazing product. Joel (30:36.112) Wow. Chad (30:51.297) that was slightly ahead of everybody else. I'm not going to say they were incredibly innovative, but they were on the road, right? Yeah, they had an amazing product. They were slightly ahead of everybody else. They were putting tons of cash into AI and R &D in Israel, right? And they were delivering great results since the IPO. And again, we've talked about this before. Sometimes CEOs are good to a certain level, right? Joel (30:58.576) near their lane. Chad (31:19.681) And then they just have to know, they have to self identify, they have to pick themselves out, right? Ian, after the IPO, it just seems like this organization has fallen incredibly flat and they're starting to get lapped by a bunch of startups that are out there right now. And that's the unfortunate part. So yeah, I mean, what do you think? I know asking for Ian's head isn't great, but you know, when... Joel (31:36.464) Mm -hmm. Chad (31:49.313) The organization is in the dumper for God's sakes since IPO, I don't know what to do. Joel (31:58.416) Uh, it's a hot take, uh, calling for Ian to step down. That's for sure. We have our, we have our YouTube short, uh, for the week for sure on that one. Um, I, I, CEOs are, it's hard to dislodge them. Um, but the, if the stock doesn't turn around soon, there's going to be rumblings and look, the COO leaving any, any, any C -suite employee that leaves. It's not good. Unless they've been there for 20 years, they have a succession plan. They've been like grooming a six. Like we've talked about ice Sims, you know, CEO jump inch, like people, when they leave like this, it's bad. And the trend is when they leave more people leave the company goes through worse time. So this does not bode well for, for zip recruiter, whether or not Ian needs to step down. I don't know. Uh, uh, Kaseem was. Chad (32:29.505) Yeah. Chad (32:41.857) Yeah. Joel (32:54.704) this he was in marketing when he came in, I think five years ago, he became the chief marketing officer. So he actually over oversaw probably a lot of the cool marketing initiatives that we know and love from the, from those days at Zip Recruiter guy became COO. So he, he wasn't, uh, you know, we brought him in, it didn't work out. He's gone. He's been with the company for a while. He knew what he was getting into. I'm sure they felt really comfortable putting, putting him in that position, but look, the, Company's going nowhere. There's no, there's little to no growth. I think they've, uh, they've barely moved headcount since he took over, uh, two, two, two years and eight months ago, the stock is going sideways. He actually dumped, uh, 33 ,000 shares of the stock in December of last year. So he's kind of known the writing on the wall for a while. He's dumping shares, he's jumping ship and it is not a good sign. Chad (33:32.609) Mm. Joel (33:49.168) for ZipRecruiter that this shit is going down. It's a bad situation at ZipRecruiter, for sure. Chad (33:54.785) Well, and then you've got a great brand like Nike and you've got a total dipshit of a CEO, John Donahoe on Friday who blamed remote workers, as you'd said, for falling behind on innovation, saying it's tough to be disruptive from home. The problem is here, kids, we have a bunch of prehistoric fucking CEOs that are out there who don't understand that leadership isn't standing over somebody's shoulder, right? You're going to have to evolve. You're going to have to learn how to lead from afar. And anybody who actually has been through any type of leadership courses or mentoring or anything like that understands that you have to be diplomatic. You have to work with empathy. But you have project deadlines and goals for a reason, right? You need to start managing toward that. Not to mention, you know, we're really early, to be quite frank, in the remote work kind of, you know, time of our life. We're getting there, but we're not going to get there. Nike's not going to get there with the CEO with this type of mindset because he doesn't understand that he needs to evolve. And only, only, only when he evolves will the rest of his teams and his staff not only evolve, but they will become disruptive. They will regain the ability to be disruptive. Joel (35:18.544) Yeah. Nike, a very successful company historically is in a slow period, if you will. The stock is down about 8 % in the last six months. China's slowing for them. Growing markets historically are slowing down. And when things get bad, leadership tends to point fingers, try to find an escape valve. Chad (35:42.305) Not me. Not me. Joel (35:45.2) to explain what's going on. And an easy explanation is, well, there's no innovation because everyone's remote. You know who's been kicking Nike's butt for the last few years? Little company called Hoka and another company that makes shoes called On. Now I'm not a shoe -y guy, but I think that's how you pronounce those two. You know who has remote work? Hoka and On. So don't come to me saying, We can't innovate because of remote workers when the two companies that have been kicking your ass for the past few years have remote work. Figure it out. Quit pointing fingers. You work for Nike. Put your big boy pants on. Put your Air Jordans on and figure that shit out. Period. Chad (36:23.585) Uh huh. Chad (36:30.881) Fire yourself. Now when it comes to... Joel (36:34.096) I need the company that made aspirin because I need an aspirin after that, after those hot takes. Let's go to Bayer. Chad (36:37.441) Yes, yes, yes. So, so, so, so Bayeris really interesting because this just feels like a lazy restructure. Obviously, there was a lot of company, there was a lot of bloat and you see that in organizations. It is, you know, the CEO's job to manage that bloat, right? You have people in place to be able to know what's happening in the organization. Apparently, they got together and said, you know what, we're really bloated. Joel (36:55.792) Mm -hmm. Chad (37:04.097) And our processes are slowing us down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's all well and good. A restructure makes sense. But this just seems fucking lazy. We're just going to go ahead and take an entire swath just right out. OK, who are we going to take? Are we going to take these guys and we're going to throw them right out the window? Will it work? I had no clue. When you have that much bloat and I would assume that's that's the that's the problem here. Two things going to happen. Number one, you want to try to move. Joel (37:21.52) Yep. Chad (37:34.081) processes faster, so you don't want all those bottlenecks in the hierarchy. Number one. Number two, saving that much money over a billion dollars, that's short -term good for the bottom. Joel (37:48.688) Uh huh. Well, one man's lazy could be another man's bold, Chad. Chad (37:56.385) Could be. It could be. Joel (37:58.704) So I mentioned Nike stock being down 8 % in the last six months. Care to take a guess on how much Bayer stock is down in the last six months? It begins with a four and ends with a zero. That's right, 40 % down in the last six months as a pharmaceutical company. I don't know if you've read Chad, but people are getting older and taking more drugs. And if you can't make a pharmaceutical company successful, well, I can't really help you. I love the fact... Chad (38:07.201) Oh. Joel (38:24.848) I do want to love this. I do want to love it. It's such a big swing that you kind of got to love it. A company with a hundred thousand employees is going to do something like this. The guy's comment about the employee handbook is literally more pages than war and peace. That's a problem. And I know the Germans love their orders and their instruction books. Chad (38:44.033) Yeah. Oh yeah. Process. Yes. Joel (38:51.024) Maybe take a page from the Swedes and make a little more picture pages in your instruction book than what the Germans have done. So I want to love this, but it reeks of holy shit. The board wants my head share. Hell shareholders want my head. I'm just going to dump a bunch of employees and say, we're making a huge change. And I'm going to pray, pray that it, that it, that it keeps the keeps me in my job and saves the company. Otherwise, this is a huge swing. It's either going out of the park. Chad (39:06.081) Mm -hmm. Joel (39:21.264) or he's going back to the dugout and into the parking lot and he's done. But this is three companies, Zip, Nike and Bayer, that have really, really done some weird shit. And while all this is happening, Chad, I'll remind you, Art Zeal and Scott Gutz are still employed as CEOs. We out! Chad (39:43.169) Wookie out.

This week, Chad & Cheese discuss various topics including the EEOC targeting Workday, non-competes taking a hit, and the acquisition of Pivot CX by Daxtra. They also talk about their upcoming events in Scotland and Vegas, jumping off the Stratosphere, as well as the ban on TikTok. The conversation covers a range of themes including technology, acquisitions, events, and current news. They discuss recent developments at ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and Workday. They also touch on the banning of non-compete agreements, the raising of the salary threshold for overtime eligibility, and the unionization of Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga. The conversation concludes with a discussion on a TikTok influencer partnering with Shake Shack and Chipotle's success with their new chicken offering ... take that, Chik-fil-A. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:26.068) OHHH YEAH! Joel Cheesman (00:30.995) Yeah, just two guys who love to stop collaborate and listen. Hi kids, you are listening to the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Van Winkle Cheeseman. Chad (00:42.35) This is Chad. Who farted? So was. Joel Cheesman (00:45.747) And on this episode, the EEOC targets Workday, non-competes take a hit, and who's ready for Chicken Sundays? Let's do this! Chad (00:54.147) Yes! Chad (00:58.614) So it's funny though, dude, guys falling asleep and farting in court. It's, it's the best. I mean, that's great. I mean, what do you expect from an old man to do? Right? Dude's almost 80. Of course, wherever he sits, he's going to fall asleep and he's going to fart. It's just, it is, it is what it is. Right. And if you put him in the court. Joel Cheesman (01:04.985) Oh, Trump. Okay. I was like, I was Joel Cheesman (01:18.627) I'm wondering, I'm wondering because he has he has that front butt, you know, like the butt in the front. I wonder where the farts come out or the is like dual exit. Yeah, dual legs. I don't know. He's so mad about he's so he's so mad about the artist rendition of him, which is funny. Like, get off my lawn and stop drawing me that way. So Chad (01:27.338) Oh, I don't want to know. It just kind of verb rates out the out. Chad (01:41.902) Don't you draw me. Joel Cheesman (01:45.531) Euro chat is clearly ready for takeoff. I appreciate like you're in such a good mood. I love it. Big plans this weekend like Scott's Yeah, that helped as well. Yeah, nice little primer there. Chad (01:51.103) Oh yes. Yeah. Scottsdale helped, yeah, and we're prepping, we're gonna be in Santa Fe next week, taking a little vacay-ish action with some friends in Santa Fe before going to Unleash, which we'll talk about later, but yeah, no, I am in total Eurochad mode because after Unleash, we're hopping on the jet plane and going to Europe. Joel Cheesman (02:05.883) Okay. Joel Cheesman (02:20.967) Well, say a prayer for me. I'm doing a mini marathon this weekend. Yes. I know that seems a little crazy, right? But yeah, it's, uh, it was, it was a tradition. So my dad was a marathon or track coach, like, and so he was doing, he would do these marathons as he got older. He downgraded to mini marathons and my sister and I said, let's do it with them. Chad (02:21.244) Mm-mm. Chad (02:27.244) Oh, I hope they have the paddles. Hope they have the paddles ready. Joel Cheesman (02:48.335) start a family thing and we kind of hope that our kids would slowly like start joining us. And my sister has four girls, two of them have done it once and no more. Obviously Cole isn't doing it. Cole's not running unless someone's chasing him. Stella maybe, maybe at some point, but so far this may, this tradition may die with my sister and I, but I'll be in Louisville. Chad (02:56.138) No. Chad (02:59.614) Okay. Yeah. Chad (03:05.118) Oh god no, yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:13.883) Louisville this weekend doing 13.1, uh, mostly walking miles. Thank God there's a lot of bourbon in Louisville to help, uh, comfort my pain that in some ibuprofen. All right, let's get to. Chad (03:23.678) Amen. A. Chad (03:29.201) Oh shit, well... Shout out. Joel Cheesman (03:34.723) All right, Chad, this one, this one pains me, but I got a shout out for the, the VR haters out there, all the VI haters that are out there. So, uh, Apple came out with the vision pro, uh, one they have since apparently cut production from 800,000 to four, 400 to 450,000 units. Uh, Sony has halted production of their VR, something with the PlayStation gaming stuff and even meta says. Chad (03:38.561) Uh oh Joel Cheesman (04:04.935) They're having a hard time keeping users engaged once they actually buy the damn thing. So, unless Vision Pro turns around on their opinion that porn should not be on the Vision Pro, I think it's a big shout out for the folks who hate VR, which I know you are one of them. But so far, the verdict on VR and headsets is not good. Chad (04:31.95) The reason being is because you're not with anybody, but you know when you're with somebody and you're really experiencing VR, you did it this weekend. You went to fish at the sphere. The sphere is how you do virtual reality. Tell me I'm wrong. Joel Cheesman (04:46.135) The sphere is another animal. Now, how many of the people at a fish concert are really there with you? A lot of them were on another planet, I'm pretty sure. There were some hot messes at the sphere concert, but yeah, it was great. Look, I'm not a big fish fan. Their live stuff is way better, and if you throw in some substances and some of the visuals that the sphere has, Chad (04:55.694) Physically, physically, yes. Metaphysically. Joel Cheesman (05:17.077) It's a pretty good time. Shout out to fish and the sphere for sure. The new VR, it just costs a lot more per ticket than the headset does. Chad (05:25.062) It's, I mean, it's you get to do it with people and that's, and that's what matters. And that's what matters. Okay. My shout out, it's not really a shout out. It's the, what the actual fuck moment of the week. So the following was reported on nola.com. A Louisville, or I'm sorry, a Louisiana committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks. I'll say that again. Joel Cheesman (05:29.715) That's true. Chad (05:53.122) child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits. Part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers. That's from NOLA.com. First time state rep Roger Wilder, who sponsored the child labor measure and owns, get this, Smoothie King franchises across the deep South said he filed the bill in part because children want to work without having to take a lunch break. He questioned why Louisiana has the requirement while other states where he has smoothie king locations such as Mississippi don't have them. So what the fuck? Roger Wilder. So out of 50 states, Louisiana is rated last, dead last in a place where you want to live, quality of life, right? Worst, well in healthcare they're 46th, education 48th, economy 47th, infrastructure 47th, opportunity 48th, crime and correction 50th. Louisiana is rated the worst state in the union to live in, followed by guess what other state? Guess what state? Yes, Mississippi. Joel Cheesman (07:12.099) Mississippi, Alabama. Chad (07:17.506) So this has been your Chad and Cheese what the actual fuck moment of the week. This is, I couldn't believe it. Joel Cheesman (07:21.523) But the football is amazing and the etouffée is to die for. I'll tell you that Chad. All right, well my last shout out, if you're a TikTok user, might've been kind of a bummer this week. Congress voted to give some money to Ukraine. Yeah, but that wasn't the lead story. It was TikTok being quote unquote banned. As many listeners know, you had a bet with Jim, the indeed whisperer Durbin for a. Chad (07:27.235) Ha ha! Get in and get out. Joel Cheesman (07:50.415) bottle of bourbon. Did he ever come? Did he ever honor that bet? Did you ever get the? Okay. All right. Well, good. Chad (07:50.538) did. Oh, he did. Oh, oh yeah. No, he did. No, he did. He sent me Eagle rare. He actually, he messaged Julian. He's like, what's Chad's favorite? And he's like, no, what's your favorite? And she's like, oh, Eagle rare. So yeah, she pretty much got a bottle of burp. Joel Cheesman (07:59.604) Okay, well that's... Oh. Joel Cheesman (08:11.547) She said yours and it was like, oh, that's expensive. What's your favorite then? Eagle Rare, if you can get it. Yeah, so if he had just a few more months, he might have been able to at least argue that was happening. Now, it's probably not an all out ban. Interesting, your comments on this, your opinion on this. So they have to divest it, they have to sell it to an American firm, or outright ban. What's your prediction on what happens? Chad (08:18.335) Which is not cheap. Chad (08:26.032) We still have a while. Chad (08:41.462) Yeah, it won't get banned. I mean, there's too much money there. Way too much money. Uh, China doesn't want to give up that kind of cash because there's a huge pond of, you know, ocean of cash here in the U S so they don't want to do that. And not to mention Trump had talked about doing this before the whole divestiture thing. So they, they've been thinking about it for a while. I would say that they saw this coming. Uh, and, uh, you know, so they're gonna, they're gonna slow roll it. There's no question. They're gonna. play it smart, slow roll it, but they'll find a company to buy into it. There's no question. Joel Cheesman (09:11.503) Now, do you think that China will release? I mean, the algorithm is not coming with the deal. Do you think, and if not, is tick tock going to be the same tick tock without the algorithm? Chad (09:24.094) Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how they actually do that on separate instances. They could prospectively do updates, which what it does is just updates the algorithm in a different instance, which is what we've seen with applicant tracking systems and HCM systems and so on and so forth over the years. So whenever you do a version update, they could prospectively do an algorithm update. I don't know. So we'll see, but that will be part of the deal to understand the algorithm itself. Joel Cheesman (09:28.903) Yeah. Chad (09:54.118) impact and then obviously the data that does that's in the U S that will not leave to go to China because it'll be under, I'm sure a separate holding company. Joel Cheesman (10:03.759) Yeah, I'm gonna go kind of kind of rogue on this one. I think I think there's a good chance no one's talking about it. I think there's a decent chance China says fuck off. And they kill it. I do think that's an option. I think China doesn't give a shit. I mean, they put they put Jack Ma, they put Jack Ma in some, you know, work worker, reeducation camp. I don't think China gives a shit. They might just say fuck it. It's gone then and see what and have fun with that American government. Chad (10:19.15) That's an option. What's the percentage on that? Joel Cheesman (10:33.519) with your kids, they're already protesting on college campuses everywhere. Chad (10:36.566) Then we win. I mean, that's the last thing they want, right? I mean, they can still get cash. Let's say for instance, how the deal might be structured. I'm not sure. We're both talking out of our asses right now, but it is interesting. There's no question. Joel Cheesman (10:48.891) Band in America, band in America. But what's not banned, Chad, and never will be banned, is free shit on Chad and Cheese. That's right, tell us about that. Chad (10:53.569) Free stuff, baby. Joel Cheesman (11:05.643) Very nice Chad (11:07.286) That's right. T-shirts, free t-shirts, kids. Beer by Aspen Tech Labs. Love those kids. We're talking craft beer. At your front doorstep. That's right. UPS, FedEx, whoever sends that stuff. Going to be at your front door. Along with the prospect of whiskey from our friends at Tex Kernel. We've got two bottles from one from Chad, one from Cheese. And if it's your birthday, it's rum from Plum, but you got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free to register to win. Joel Cheesman (11:28.914) Oh, birthday time. Joel Cheesman (11:40.251) That's right, Chad. Some listeners celebrating another trip around the sun is Jonathan Zilla, Duarte Mendonca, Daniel Kazinski, Matt Lazar, Gia Johnston, Chris Brevik, Michael Simon Cowell, Steve Gilbert, Charlotte Marshall, and Lars Schmidt. All celebrating another birthday. Thanks for listening and enjoy one on us. Chad (12:01.93) Nice. Chad (12:07.206) Nice. So Lars is at like NBA headquarters or some shit like that doing like a, a photo shoot or something. I don't know. I don't know, but it must've been a birthday thing. Joel Cheesman (12:13.563) That dude is like quietly the coolest cat in our industry. He's got skateboards on the wall. He's, he's like laid back, but he's sort of DC hypercharge. I love it. Lars and Lars, not enough Lars in the world either. Chad (12:21.174) I love it, man. I gotta love it. Yep. Chill. Totally chill. Chad (12:30.714) Everybody needs a little bit more Lars. And well, maybe, I don't know, he might actually show up where? In Scotland. That's right. Because we're going to Scotland. We'll talk about Unleash in a minute. OK, but this is new. This is new. On May 21st, we're going to be at the Revolution de Cuba. That's right. In Glasgow, where we're going to, we're going to be jumping around all day with startups, with practitioners, we're going to be doing interviews, all that other fun stuff. But we're going to do a meetup. Joel Cheesman (12:31.385) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:36.464) Oh shit. Chad (13:00.362) at revolution day Cuba in Glasgow. Notice how I love saying that, uh, not to mention on May that's May 21st, May 23rd, we're going to the three sisters bar in Edinburgh, apparently people were killed in the dungeon of this place. I mean, that's probably everywhere in Scotland, but three sisters bar in Edinburgh, that's on the 23rd. Joel Cheesman (13:05.199) I love that. I love it. Chad (13:26.734) You can register for one or both events at truescotland.com. Thanks for all of the sponsors, for all of the help and all of the support. We've got Daxtra, got Ashby, Solutions Driven, Gigged.ai, Willow, Poetry, and we actually have some Daxtra news coming here soon. But appreciate all of the help and all of the fun and what do you think? I mean, other than whiskey, this is awesome. both our first times in Scotland. Joel Cheesman (13:57.483) Oh, I'm super excited. Uh, bringing the wife. I know you are too. Um, I think we're going to go on some sort of secret tasting, uh, expedition with our friend, Steven McGrath, who knows where the hell that's going to end up? Uh, so doing that never been to Scotland. I'm going to soak it all in. Uh, I'm, I'm shopping for kilts. Um, I'm, I'm looking for haggis, uh, at, at my local Kroger. They don't have it. So I don't know where I can get some. Chad (14:20.478) Yes! I'm not doing that. Joel Cheesman (14:28.752) So, so Scotch eggs are on the menu if I can't get some get some haggis but yeah, totally excited. You know, I love a good Scotch. Pete me up baby smoke it up. I'm excited for sure. Yeah. Love me some Scotland. Chad (14:32.462) OK, there we go. Chad (14:40.406) I know, I know. So we're excited about that. Go to truescotland.com. Again, two events, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Then, well, even before we get to Scotland, hopefully we make it to Scotland. We've got this coming and this is, this is watch everybody. This is what we're getting ready to do. We've got live from the stratosphere. Joel Cheesman (14:52.263) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:16.686) Uh oh. Apparently the winds are too high. Joel Cheesman (15:24.443) Ha ha ha. Chad (15:30.386) It's Joel Cheeseman, everybody! Joel Cheesman (15:31.204) Yeah, thanks, man. Joel Cheesman (15:44.967) Tell the listeners what they missed if they're not watching us on YouTube right now. Chad (15:45.934) Oh, that's right, kids. Yes. Well, yeah, if you're not listening, you missed super J Dave jumping off the top of the stratosphere, uh, which we're going to be doing with Matt Bauer, CEO of out higher, it's over 800 feet that we're going to be dropping. We're going to be falling in super Dave style. At least you're going to be doing super Dave style. Um, but listener, you can jump with us. Joel Cheesman (16:05.363) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:11.75) or you can nominate a friend or enemy depending on what you like. I just go to Chad, she's got.com and click on the jump with us button right there in the header. Uh, thanks to the high flying staff over at out hire. We appreciate you guys making this happen. It's going to be a blast. Joel can't wait. He's excited. Look at him. Look at his face. Joel Cheesman (16:12.563) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (16:33.395) wearing the out-hire t-shirt this week, wearing the out-hire depends on jump day, if you will. Chad (16:37.815) Very nice, you're nice. Yeah. Chad (16:43.37) Everybody, everybody buys stock and depends. That's for sure. Then we're going to go to the mine. Yeah. Well, no, we got to go to the minus five bar. That's Omar's ice castle at the minus five bar with Diane and Jane from great people and Omar from job pixel. Go ahead and if you check us out on the socials, mainly probably on LinkedIn, uh, if you haven't connected with us, go ahead and do that. Take a look at our, our stream. Joel Cheesman (16:44.995) Yeah. You ready for topics? Nope. Okay. Joel Cheesman (16:53.827) Oh yeah. Chad (17:11.858) We actually have where you can Register that's right to come have some beers with us at the ice castle Then we're going to do the neon lights with plum on the night of May 8th Come and bask in the glow of the neon boneyard with our friends from plum During neon nights kind of like boogie nights, but without the skates Joel Cheesman (17:20.858) Damn. Chad (17:35.918) Um, just go to Chad cheese.com slash events, click on the join waitlist button and cross your fingers. Kids hope you get on the waitlist. We hope that we see you there. Joel Cheesman (17:45.575) So I have a funny story about the neon graveyard. So I get a text, I don't know if you got a text. Cheeseman, it's Michelle from Plum. I need your music mind. The music at Neon Nights is designed to resonate with the generation attending. Think best dance party you attended in the 90s and early 2000s. Stuff you wanna sing along and tap your toe to, even if you're not a dancer like my friend, Jason Putnam. So. Chad (17:54.825) Oh, yeah. Joel Cheesman (18:14.811) I have been burdened with the task of going back to the 90s and the 2000s for the songs that really hit me, hit me in the, uh, the happy feet to recommend a soundtrack for the, uh, the party. So Chad (18:23.246) Okay. That's easy. Chad (18:31.298) She's doing that because she wants you to dance. She's going to say, Cheeseman, this is yours. This is yours so that you have to dance to this one. Joel Cheesman (18:32.403) Because I'm old. Joel Cheesman (18:37.539) Yeah. I have visions of a 22 year old saying, eh, we need some music. We have some old people, this thing, like, who should we ask about music? And they come to me, which I thought was pretty flattering yet a little bit insulting at the same time. What are you, what are you going to do about it? Maybe talk about. Chad (18:55.031) TOPICS! Joel Cheesman (18:56.783) All right, hot off the presses everybody. UK based Daxtra has acquired Indianapolis based Pivot CX. Daxtra says it's a specialist in high accuracy multilingual job and resume parsing, semantic search matching and recruitment automation. While Pivot touts itself as an all in one talent acquisition communications hub. The acquisition aims to provide a better candidate and recruiter experience. Chad (18:59.574) News break news break. Joel Cheesman (19:26.427) Founded in 2002, Daxtra employs 114 while Pivot founded in 2015, employs less than 10. Chad, your thoughts on the acquisition. Chad (19:39.786) Yeah, Pivot was work here.com. Remember that? They were work here, kind of like a geo-fenced kind of thing that, I mean, you know, it was kind of weird, kind of cool at the same time. But they pivoted out of that, changed leadership and got Pivot CX. Our favorite Steven Seagal, you know, from the HR industry actually works there, David Bernstein. And it's interesting because we're... Joel Cheesman (19:42.987) Oh, it's a long, strange trip that they've been on. Yes. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (19:56.368) Pun intended. Chad (20:09.022) in and around Indianapolis and they're from Scotland. Oh, what's happening? We just talked about Scotland. Eerie, eerie. Um, this, this reminds me of, of text colonels acquisition when they, they bought the, uh, the, the actual job bot or I can't remember the name of it where it was a chat bot. Yeah. It was, it was, it was an engagement engine, right? Uh, Daxtra's ability to find the most qualified candidates through parsing and matching technology. Joel Cheesman (20:16.047) Eerie. Joel Cheesman (20:25.387) Yeah, Job Boddy. Yeah, yeah. Chad (20:36.458) Adding that to Pivot's ability to quickly engage and increase candidate conversion rates. Then what did Terry do before he did this? Pando? Programmatic? All of this like kind of like comes together. So whether they do an acquisition of some type of programmatic tech, or they closely partner with an organization like Recruitics or something like that, I think from my standpoint, wait a minute, timeout. Did they not just, I think they. Joel Cheesman (20:45.043) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:05.91) They literally just partnered with a... Give me a second here. Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hivit CX, they just literally just. Go ahead. Joel Cheesman (21:13.371) about Daxtra ? Yeah, like a month ago. Joel Cheesman (21:22.279) So you mentioned work here. I think just for the annals of history, I think it's interesting to note what work here's model was. It was like Yelp-ish stickers on a business. So you go to like maybe the Applebee's down the street, you put a work here sticker, and then you have to download an app. Remember when companies asked you to download their app and you would actually do it. So you did that and then you would see jobs based on you're in this location or you, Chad (21:34.05) Yep. Uh huh. Chad (21:44.782) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Or you didn't. Joel Cheesman (21:52.219) downloaded it through a QR code or whatever. And then that didn't quite work out. Uh, companies didn't want stickers on their doors. They didn't want like all the questions that probably came with like, Oh, do you work here? You got jobs? Like, yeah, you got to download the list. That thing like what, why, why? Just give me, just tell me what's up. So anyway, so then it became kind of an interesting, uh, like they would go to Starbucks, for example. I don't know if they went to Starbucks, but everyone knows Starbucks and they would say, okay, Starbucks, you need people at this location on one 16th. And. Chad (22:16.428) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:22.035) and Simmons or something. And then they would like geotarget advertising with Facebook and like, we just want this certain area to get advertisements for this Starbucks for jobs, job fair, whatever. And that was pretty cool, but it doesn't scale very well, right? Like, okay, how many locations do you have? How much advertising? When is the job for over? You got to cancel it. So that was like kind of a pain in the ass. I think they went through some shuffling of leadership. Chad (22:25.815) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:50.307) Um, at one point and then came out with pivot, uh, CX.io. I can't believe the pivot CX.com wasn't available, but anyway, it wasn't. And there's like, we're just, we're just going to do messaging, uh, engagement shit and along comes Daxtra who does, I don't know, matching resume, parsing, et cetera. Now you need a way, a way to communicate with these folks. Terry Baker, we know, uh, Mike Seidel who we know. Howard Bates is there as well. There's an interesting cast of characters. Makes total sense that, well, I can search the resumes and find the people, but now how do I contact them? Well, here's snap of a button. Now you can message them, call them. They have video options as well. So it's a perfect kind of marriage. And my guess is Pivot took very little money. at all. So I think it was a really cheap acquisition. And Terry with the Wade and Wendy thing, I think he understood the importance of the communication element, not just finding the job or the candidate. So I think it was, like you said, Steven Seagal, everyone knows, I'm sure Terry was like making the calls and seeing who was available, kicking the tires. And Pivot was more than willing to have a conversation about, yeah, how do we get this thing done and get this marriage. Um, completed, my guess is that the pivot brand will go away. Uh, Seagal will, will be a sales guy for Daxtra in the near future. I don't know. Howard, I imagine we'll be there for a year to kind of. Transfer everything over. I don't see him sticking around. I see, I think Mike will stick around. Sidell. I think he'll, he'll be there for the ride. Hopefully local company, uh, maybe hopefully they jack up some, uh, money and hire some people here in the Hoosier state. Chad (24:28.138) If that. If that, yeah. Yes. Yep. Joel Cheesman (24:40.895) and put some money in the local economy. That would be nice. And yeah, it makes sense. I hope it works out. Chad (24:49.654) I just connected some dots right out of the gate because I just remembered a press release that came out, I think it was last week or earlier this week. First and foremost, Howard was, I think was the money guy, so I don't see him, he's going to take his payday and get the fuck out. They were just talking about a programmatic player. They partnered with Acquire ROI earlier this week or last week, and that's a new programmatic player in the space. Actually a new sponsor of Chad and Cheese. Joel Cheesman (24:50.632) Well, good. Chad (25:19.09) So now, if you think about it, you've got this engine, right? That is a search and match engine that can go against your database or other databases to be able to actually target individuals who are qualified for the job and then use PivotCX to start the engagement, right? So that's like the internal passive. Then you go after the active. How do you do that with Programmatic? Well, you've got Acquire ROI, who are the new kids on the block. Joel Cheesman (25:41.639) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (25:46.946) they want to start making some fucking waves. This is a great way to make some waves, right? Be a part of a much larger ecosystem. So this is, I think, good all the way around. Again, we saw a text kernel do something similar to this over in Europe, watching Daxtra do that with pivot CX and then also with acquire ROI from a engagement and then also a programmatic standpoint. I mean, this makes a hell of a lot more sense now. Joel Cheesman (26:14.211) Yep, the only pieces missing are a QR code generator and an ATS. Chad (26:23.35) That's why we talk about ZipRecruiter. Joel Cheesman (26:24.359) That's right. All right. We got, we got, I'm calling this the red meat block. Uh, our listeners love this, this shit. So we're going to throw it at them, throwing the meat in the cage, everybody. All right. ZipRecruiter CFO, uh, Tim Yarborough has sold what investing.com calls a quote, significant amount of company stock in quote, to the tune of over $60,000. Meanwhile, tech crunch has discovered and verified that LinkedIn is developing a new subscription service called LinkedIn. Chad (26:29.906) Okay, okay. So much meat, yes. Joel Cheesman (26:52.691) premium company page. That's a mouthful priced at potentially up to $99 a month. This service would provide AI driven content creation and advanced tools to increase follower numbers. But wait Chad, there's more work day faces allegations of a biased AI based applicant screening system. Our friends at the EEOC argue work day should be held accountable as an intermediary work day. Shocker denies the allegations. Chad (27:11.81) Holy! Joel Cheesman (27:22.551) ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and Workday. How's that for red meat, everybody? Chad, your thoughts. Chad (27:29.73) Yeah. I mean, we talked a lot about ZipRecruiter last week, where I was calling for Ian's head. I hate to say it, but this is a brand in decline. I guess I don't have to say it. Everybody can see it and it's in serious need of new leadership and swagger. ZipRecruiter is giving zombie vibes at this moment. Um, on the, on the LinkedIn side of the house, let me repeat this from the, from the whole, uh, article that was out. This new LinkedIn service would provide AI driven content creation and advanced tools to increase follower numbers among other benefits to elevate a company's visibility. Two things, number one, this is exactly what we do not fucking need from AI, spam. A spam creation machine, no. Number two, fix the old dilapidated shit in your current system. Your basic matching to the... profile data that we have is horrible. You should be amazing at that. You suck at that. Fix the shit that's not working. They're throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall, which I normally love, but the problem is the shit that should be working, the base stuff, isn't even working. So why do I think that this has any longevity to it whatsoever? I'll let you go on that one. Then we'll start talking about workday because we've got to dig in on that one. Whoo, yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:47.987) Why should you? You take, you take a breather, take a breather and we'll get to work day. Cause I know you got some insight info from our friends at the EOC. So the ZipRecruiter thing, um, I thought it was pretty funny that investing.com called it a quote, significant amount of company stock. I mean, it wasn't a huge amount of stock. Um, 60 grand. I don't know. Maybe the dude's kid got into Dartmouth and needed a down payment or maybe the tax man. had some money. He still owns 180,000 plus shares, around $1.8 million. I'm sure he'd love for it to be more, but unfortunately, ZipRecruiter stock is going sideways in a bad way. The other side of that to me is like, why cash it in when you can get a loan against it and then you don't pay taxes on it? So do you think ultimately he thinks, well, it's not going up. Chad (29:18.702) It was a family trust. Joel Cheesman (29:44.655) So get rid of it now before it goes down to $8, $7, $6 a share. I don't make investment advice on the show, but the stock isn't going in the right direction. So cashing out on a little bit of it, um, makes sense. And of course we talked about last week, how the COO had sold a big chunk of stock back in December. So it's a trend worth watching. Uh, if Ian dumps a bunch of shares and maybe some, maybe the S you know, some other executives do it could be interesting, but yeah, not a company on the rise. Chad (30:08.863) and now gone. Joel Cheesman (30:14.259) In terms of LinkedIn, I'm not as mad about it as you are. I ain't mad at them. Look, you and I talked to a lot of startups. We advise a lot of startups. And these startups that have social media profiles everywhere that just have these dead, lifeless social media accounts, my recommendation is always like, until you get dedicated resources, pick one. And that one in our space is almost always LinkedIn. So focus on that. If they could... If they could manage better content being created that's relevant, don't spam people. I agree, there's a line there and people have to follow these companies and they can unfollow them as well if they blow them up with spam. But companies are looking for a way to keep these social media channels up and running. And if LinkedIn can plug in like, oh, hey, here's the best time to post. Chad (30:59.758) It's gonna go crazy. Joel Cheesman (31:11.995) Here's the best kind of content to post. Here's what's getting the most engagement. Like that could be a really good thing for companies, especially startups. It's also a warning letter to marketing people that don't keep their social media company sites active. Yeah, AI is coming for your job. So you better start thinking outside the box and being creative with the content that you're putting on social media. Otherwise your boss is gonna go. Chad (31:32.395) Get your shit together. Joel Cheesman (31:40.667) Gee, there's an AI that's $99 a month that can do what you're doing. So sayonara. So sayonara baby. Yeah. Sayonara. So it's a, it's a, it's, it's a little bit of a warning to marketing people. Again, it's back to AI won't take your job, but people who do know AI will. So leverage this new service the best you can with what you're currently doing, but marketing people need to up their game. Uh, if they're social media sites and most of them do have shitty. Chad (31:47.963) How much do you cost me? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (32:08.327) sucky voodoo, zombie-esque, uh, social media sites. They got to get on that. Chad (32:14.122) Yeah. Here's the thing. Uh, it was funny, I was talking to a TA practitioner today and she was talking about how much spam she gets in her in-mail. Oh, it's going to get worse kids. So to, to the workday side of the house, last week, we had a chance to spend some time with EEOC commissioner Sonderling. And let me tell you, after working with government for decades, he's a breath of fresh air, uh, because he's practical and he understands business. This case is none of that. Joel Cheesman (32:35.504) Yes. Chad (32:43.358) It's not practical or even in the line of basic understanding of what a system like Workday currently does for tens of thousands of companies. Now, I say currently because the velocity of tech is moving at work warp speed. And from my understanding, the EEOC is trying to liken Workday and its technology to a staffing agency. Why? A staffing agency performs hiring decisions for its clients. And if Workday or any other technology provider, um, did the same type of service for its clients as an embedded part of the, uh, the platform, then it could be seen in the same vein. Right. So I believe this case, um, it's going to be dismissed because the laws currently on the books specifically point to the employer having responsibility in a case like this, not the actual vendor. Joel Cheesman (33:33.212) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:39.222) but it does feel like foreshadowing, knowing proposed legislation in states like California have pulled the vendor into the accountability spotlight already and knowing tech companies are already gearing up to help in the decision making process. So this was a conversation we will be having regularly in the near future, but not about workday, not this time and not about workday. Had a chance to kind of like message back and forth with Keith about it. Joel Cheesman (33:58.741) Hmm. Chad (34:08.842) And he's in the same line of thinking, you know, uh, he, he doesn't think that, uh, this is going to be a case that's going to go far. Um, you know, but I really feel like this is literally a shot across, across vendors bow. So they need to start thinking about this. Joel Cheesman (34:24.915) Hmm. Yeah, I didn't know what to make of this because it did sound odd. It sounds like a loser. I don't think any person that knows is in the know thinks of workday as a staffing element or firm. But to me, it was to me, it felt a lot like the EOC has done very little and in regards to convictions. of AI. It's just hard. It's a black box. We talk about it with Keith and others a lot proving bias with AI is really challenging and AI is all over the news. I think there you know my initial reaction was I bet there's a lot of pressure on the EOC to do some shit about all this AI stuff that's freaking people out. And what better company bigger company to go after than a workday? Even though they know it's probably a loser, it's a great headline. And the headline does at least say, Oh, the EEOC is going after someone like workday, uh, to like, you know, get under the, get under the hood and figure out what's going on. So it makes for a good headline, which I think relieves some pressure off the EEOC. Um, I do think that it is going to wake employers up. A lot of CEOs are going to HR and saying, Hey, they're going after workday. Chad (35:43.735) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (35:52.387) Are we dotting our eyes and crossing our T's to make sure that we're not doing anything bad, like, and by the way, we're, we're using work day. Uh, are we in trouble? So I, part of me thinks it's a PR play and part of me thinks it is a, like, Hey, we can, we can get you if you fuck around, you're going to find out. And we're going to like be in the headlines, going after big company to make sure that you guys are well aware that we can come after you, but it feels like a total loser, um, like it may not even like. Chad (35:57.075) next? Joel Cheesman (36:21.723) dismissed, you said, um, I don't know if that's Keith's words or yours, but, um, I don't think it goes very far at all. It's just a good headline. Chad (36:31.95) I think the smarter companies, and again, we were in Scottsdale last week with Paradox and they were very, very clear. Our tech does not make decisions. It's process efficiency. It does a lot of things, but it does not make decisions. It helps the process and the human makes the decisions. Now you get a company like Hired Score, right? That could, prospectively, be making decisions, right? Joel Cheesman (36:55.843) Yeah. Oh. Chad (36:57.486) And again, if you start taking a look at just the framework of what a staffing company does, they make decisions on the types of individuals who are going to be put into your organization. A technology could prospectively do the same. And we've been talking about some companies being the operating system for staffing companies to be able to really rev this up. So this is going to be a conversation that's going to be carried forward. I think it is a legit conversation, maybe in about 18 months, but not with work day right now. Joel Cheesman (37:20.733) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (37:27.271) Do you think the hired score acquisition put them in the crosshairs of the EEOC? No. Chad (37:27.444) No way. Chad (37:33.674) Nah, nah, this was happening way before that happened. I think what will, what will be awesome about this is Athena and her team are geared for defensibility and explainability. So they're going to be ready for something like this. Uh, I don't see, again, I don't see work day being a problem, uh, because they have the right people in place. Joel Cheesman (37:55.291) Let's take a quick break guys. Listen to the sponsors because there is no show without the sponsors. And after you that leave a review for us on your favorite podcast platform of choice. Chad (38:00.162) Listen. Joel Cheesman (38:11.375) Power to the people. All right, Chad. Big news this week on non-competes. The federal government is not a fan, apparently, of them. That's right, the Federal Trade Commission issued a rule banning non-competes nationwide, saying the change would protect the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs while increasing innovation and fostering new business formation. Chad, I'm guessing you're a fan, but what are your thoughts? Chad (38:14.743) There it is. Chad (38:23.169) hahahaha Chad (38:42.442) Yeah, I mean, you've probably had a non-compete before. I've had a non-compete before. You know, we're in industries where it's really hard to stay in the industry if you've had a non-compete, especially the types of positions we've been in. You know, digging into this one in five, U.S. workers are bound by contract clauses that prevent them from taking new jobs from a competitor. So the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a final rule. that bans most non-competes nationwide. The agency estimated by allowing people more freedom, the change would lead to the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, lower healthcare costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year over the next decade, okay? By allowing more freedom. The thing is, Company protections have been weighing high over employee protections. We're starting to see a shift in that. And this is one of those shifts, really a redistribution in power. Joel Cheesman (39:52.215) Yes, I have signed a non-compete and yes, I have been sent letters to say like, watch your step, watch yourself. Um, I'm a crazy man, Chad. I'm crazy. I need, I need to be re reigned in sometimes. Uh, typically what happens, uh, in my experience and anecdotally is you get a new job, you're super excited and they go, Oh, here's this thing you need to sign. Oh, it just says you won't. Chad (40:01.111) It sucks. Yeah. Chad (40:08.487) Hahahaha Joel Cheesman (40:21.327) You know, compete, go to a competitor, da da. And most people like, yeah, I love this place. I'm not going anywhere. This is fantastic. Yeah. I'm making how much money? Oh yeah. Okay. Let's do that. And then, and then you want to leave, but then you think, oh, should I sign that thing that restricts me from doing it now? How many people, how many people stay at the job because, uh, they can't leave or don't think they can leave. I don't know. We'll, we'll never know those numbers. Chad (40:27.63) No big deal. Yeah. Chad (40:40.491) and you're trapped. Mm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (40:48.807) How many companies actually follow through on the threats of the non-compete agreement? Probably very, very few. Um, it just creates a mess. It creates the company that just hired you. There's an, uh, the discomfort in that, Oh, that we hired someone. There's this agreement. Do we fight it? Like what happens? It's, it should, it should not be a thing really. Uh, I mean, Chad (41:07.566) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:14.383) there are non-compete and a non-disclosure are different things. And I like, so the agreement of you shouldn't go work for a competitor versus you can go work for the competitor. But the minute we find out you're giving trade secrets or you're, you know, stealing, uh, hiring, yeah, poaching. Like those, those are, you know, those are different things, but you shouldn't restrict this America, Jack. Uh, you shouldn't make you shouldn't. Chad (41:31.758) hiring people away from us. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (41:42.235) You shouldn't restrict where people can go work. Yeah. And, and, um, the, if you think about this is off the table, it will create a really interesting dynamic with people leaving companies, starting companies. That's another one too, is like, I'd love to start a competitor, but I can't cause I signed this non-compete thing. Um, competition is good for business. Uh, that's going to be a positive. More people are hired out of startups than more established companies. So it's a good thing. Now what I. Chad (41:44.398) This is un-American. Anti-freedom. Joel Cheesman (42:10.383) What I told you on our ATAP conversation is sort of my knee jerk reaction. I think it's true. Chamber of commerce is going to fight this, uh, tooth and nail. It's going to go to, it's going to go to a higher court more than likely. Um, the Supreme court is a right leaning court. Is it more business friendly? You could argue yes. Uh, in that case, where does that, where does, where does the decision go? But I think most, most Americans think, yes, you should be able to go wherever you want, you can't tell secrets. You can't. Chad (42:20.406) Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman (42:39.983) like do certain things, but you shouldn't be restricted to, Oh, you can't get a job in the restaurant industry because you worked at a restaurant. Like that's just kind of silly in my mind. So I hope it passes. It's in for a long legal fight. But I think the, you know, the just the, the arc of justice will bend in the right direction when, when all is said and done on this one. Chad (43:05.73) Well, I mean, the working class has been negatively impacted by this. Employee treatment, why treat employees well? Why you don't have to if they feel like they're trapped, right? Obviously, you are from a productivity standpoint, but companies really haven't focused on productivity. Um, suppressed rate wages, it makes it easier for you not to get paid more. And I've mentioned this several times and I'll mention it again. CEO pay has soared. It has gone. Joel Cheesman (43:13.019) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (43:33.938) 1200% higher since 1978 to today versus typical workers rates of 15.3%, right? There are all these different things that are in place that are allowing those things to happen because workers feel like they're trapped. If they don't feel like they're trapped anymore, a lot of things can happen. Higher innovation rates, better pay, and not to mention we're in a space right now in America. There's this huge division and it's like we're not a society that's a community anymore. That's because there are a lot of people that are in poverty. If we can help them go maybe start their own company, maybe go to another company, maybe get paid more, et cetera, et cetera, people become more happy that way when they feel like they're free. And today, if you like to try. Joel Cheesman (44:22.247) Sure, sure. And CEOs, you mentioned, they're actually more likely to, you know. to go against their non-compete because they can afford to fight it. And typically the company that hires a new CEO will say, yes, we'll back you on your non-compete in fighting it. Whereas the average line manager doesn't have that option. They're just kind of trapped and they certainly shouldn't be. Well, non-competes to hell with them. In other news, the US Department of Labor raised the salary threshold for overtime eligibility for salaried workers affecting millions. Chad (44:35.078) Eject. Yep. Joel Cheesman (45:01.319) Threshold will increase to $43,888 in July and $58,656 in 2025. Employers and trade associations expressed concerns about increased cost and potential job losses. Chad, your thoughts on raising the salary threshold for overtime salaries. Chad (45:23.266) This is another one of the mechanisms that were used to keep wages low. CEO wages to the moon 1200%, you know, and then we're bumping around like 15.3%. So yes, moving positions to salary was one of the quick and easy cheat codes to fucking over employees. Give them a bigger title, a salary, slight increases over their hourly wages, and then make them work 60. Joel Cheesman (45:40.484) Yep. Chad (45:50.482) 80 hours a week without the overtime. So acting labor secretary, Julie Sue said in a statement, quote, too often lower paid salary workers are doing the same job as the hour, their hourly counterparts, but they are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. End quote. Again, we're on this big blue ball. One time kids got to spend it with the people that we love. Not saying that we don't like people at work, but we've got. things to do, go get your feet in the sand, go enjoy time with your family. And doing this and not getting the pay, the salary pay. Again, this is about happiness and these types of moves are going to make people more happy. Joel Cheesman (46:35.523) I know I for one can't stand my coworker, but that's a different podcast altogether. Uh, you're right. Look, employers, employers are always, yeah. Thank God for that. Uh, employers are always looking for ways to skirt the rules, stick it to the man, if you will, uh, stick it to the little guy. Uh, and this is the way to do it. Like we'll put, we don't want to pay you more as an hourly. We'll make you a salaried employee and all the benefits that come with being a salaried employee. Oh, you got to work late again. Chad (46:43.009) You're not with me 40 hours a week, that's for damn sure. Joel Cheesman (47:05.295) But you're not an hourly employee, so your salary doesn't move. It's sort of a dirty game. I'm not saying all employers do that. According to this release, about 4 million workers are impacted by this new law positively. What I think is interesting is that they're saying that the income transfer from employer to employee is going to be to the tune of about $1.5 billion a year and you and I both know that historically if money goes in the hands of working people, it goes right back into the economy in the form of services and goods. If it sticks in the realm of the employer, it gets hidden away in savings, whatever. To me, I think this could be a really interesting injection of activity in the economy where this money goes right back into goods and services. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't thinking about. Chad (47:42.839) Yes. Chad (47:47.522) It's all good. Joel Cheesman (48:02.939) when we're giving money back to the working class. So good for the economy, good for those folks, and probably not all that bad for the employers, by the way. Well, and more news in the Power to the People block chat and a historic victory for the UAW, nearly three quarters of Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to unionize, marking the first successful auto factory unionization in the South. Chad (48:14.837) Not at all. Joel Cheesman (48:32.375) Since the 1940s, this win caps off a strong year for the US labor market, which has seen increased support and organizing victories across various industries. The UAW aims to use this momentum to continue its organizing effort into the South, including at Mercedes-Benz facilities in Alabama. Chad, your thoughts. Chad (48:56.954) Yeah, Sean Fain has a message. He's actually speaking directly to the laborers and he's winning. We just talked about the again, CEO pay. That's what he's talking about. He's talked about specifically CEO pay. Why are they getting these huge raises and you guys are getting fucked and you're getting and you're paying and you're working harder for the same pay, right? So, I mean, this is all about fairness. Plus, I thought was interesting. Biden jumped on the train very quickly and he chimed in and said quote Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote There is nothing to fear from American workers using their own voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose End quote on the back of that win for unions Biden also won the endorsement of the North America building trade union association. So After decades of employees getting fucked over, CEO pay skyrocketing while American workers accept poverty wages, trapped in jobs with non-competes, forced to work overtime without getting paid for overtime, it feels like the American worker is finally, are we getting our time? Is the time happening, Joel? Ha ha ha. Joel Cheesman (50:13.04) I'm out. Joel Cheesman (50:16.339) We're getting our time. And as one of our guests said, it's a five-year holiday from the robots taking over everything, which may or may not be true. I guess we'll find out at some point. Yeah, look, I was shocked. You know I was shocked when Detroit succumbed to, when the UAW won in Detroit, I was shocked. And frankly, that it's heading south, I'm not as shocked. Like it was a big win, winning is contagious and more and more workers are seeing what's happening in Detroit. And they want that. They want a little piece of that in the South and the West. And then even in Texas, they want a little bit of that. And, and Elon Musk, I'm sure is scared to death. I don't know if you saw what, you know, Tesla, Tesla's up too, but, uh, things are a little challenged at Tesla. So the last thing Elon wants is a union. Chad (50:57.762) Don't blame them. Joel Cheesman (51:09.175) Uprising, but this is the world we live in and this is a trend that's going to keep going and going and car companies and everyone needs to think about it. And look, even you mentioned some other news outside of that. We shared a story about Samsung and the six-day work week at Samsung for thought jobs or knowledge-based jobs. You look at Google rolling back requirements that US suppliers and staffing firms pay their employees at in a move to avoid bargaining with unions. So even companies that we don't necessarily think of as union caring are now suddenly thinking about the unions. And Samsung, like six days a week, why? I don't know. In Europe, they're giving robots days off for God's sakes. Like let's make the humans work more and we're gonna give robots some time off. So it's a trend you gotta root for, I think, no matter where you are. Politically like people that have been sucking it for a long time or finally getting their due and I think it's a good thing Chad (52:11.822) Yeah. Amen. Joel Cheesman (52:14.643) We'll be right back. Joel Cheesman (52:19.379) Can I get a little fast food news for my final block on the show? All right. Chick Chick-fil-A employee at Mary the siren was told by the chains PR team to stop posting tip talk reviews. She then partnered with Shake Shack with her first post getting over 865,000 views. The partnership coincided with Shake Shack's chicken Sundays campaign. In case you missed it. Chick-fil-A is closed. Chad (52:24.817) I think you're gonna get it. I think you're gonna get it, yeah. Joel Cheesman (52:48.727) on Sundays. Mary gained over 50,000 TikTok followers since starting her reviews in January, totaling over 105,000 followers today. Chad, your thoughts on this chicken battle? Chad (53:03.398) Okay, we're gonna we're gonna play this TikTok first and then and then we'll come back Joel Cheesman (53:18.343) That is a good looking sandwich. Chad (53:19.042) Juicy Chicken. Chad (53:33.454) Look at that chicken. Chad (53:37.362) Okay. I can't cause it's, it's almost, it's almost lunch and I, I can't do anymore. Um, Oh yeah, the review was eight minutes and I mean, Jesus chicken be damned. What idiots. And this isn't, this isn't a new story at all for all of you, Chad and cheese veteran listeners. You will remember our lightning in a paint can episode back in 2020. Joel Cheesman (53:41.19) The review is eight minutes, is that right? Chad (54:02.198) where we talked to Tony Pilsino, a former Sherwin Williams employee and TikTok superstar who was fired from Sherwin Williams for posting paint mixing videos. People were loving watching the Sherwin Williams payment and it got fired. So I'm sure Sherwin Williams, they couldn't even spell TikTok back in 2020. But four years later, everyone knows TikTok and you have an influencer under your own roof who's pimping. Jesus Chicken for free? I mean, come on, man. Joel Cheesman (54:33.479) Well, first of all, for Shake Shack. Joel Cheesman (54:39.111) Like phase one of this, like you mentioned, Sherwin Williams dumps a dude with millions of views on how to mix paints and shit. Like what he's doing now is he started his own little paint thing or something. Like if this had happened today, let's hope that Lowe's or whoever the hell else sells paint would be like, oh, we're happy to bring you into the TikTok fold over here at Lowe's until it's banned by Congress in a few weeks. But good on. Chad (54:53.622) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (55:08.015) Shake Shack for realize, you know, seeing an opportunity and grabbing it. Um, and the whole, the whole closed on Sunday thing to me, I'm shocked that no one sort of picked up on that because chicken sandwiches are huge, right? Popeyes everyone's dropping chicken sandwiches and Shake Shack. This probably isn't their brand, but if, like Burger King should have done like, uh, the hell's chicken sandwich. like only available on Sunday to kind of stick it to Chick-fil-A. But talking about chicken, Chad, I don't know if you saw Chipotle's earnings this week, but they are crushing it. But the out past or chicken, I don't know if you've tried this stuff. It's amazing. They they're selling so much of it that they're telling their employees, like don't have the chicken as your free meal because we're selling so much goddamn chicken. Chipotle is what I'm talking about, Chad. And if you can't get behind that cluck, I don't know what kind of cluck you can get behind. We out. Chad (56:19.374) We out.

Welcome to the “HAPPY REBELS,” episode a no-holds-barred journey through the chaotic, snark-filled corridors of human resources with the fearless Rika Coppens at the helm. As CEO of House of HR, Rika tears down conventional walls, sometimes literally, all while her company pulls in cool billions. Want to learn how to balance being a Happy Rebel and a powerhouse CEO? Or maybe just figure out whether chatbots are killing your vibe more than your operational inefficiencies? Dive into the depths of European HR like never before, from the comfort of your own headphones. Forget the bland and the boring—here, it’s all about shocking stats, bold strategies, and a sprinkle of HR snark, because who says employment strategies have to be dry? Not us, and certainly not Rika. Buckle up; it’s going to be a rebelliously enlightening ride! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcasts. 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: Oh, yeah. What's up, everybody? It is Rutger Howard's favorite podcast. Chad: Wow. Joel: AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined, as always, the red light to my district, Chad Sowash, as we welcome Rika Coppins, CEO of House of HR, to the show live from the E-recruitment Conference in beautiful Amsterdam. Is it Amsterdam, Holland? Is it Amsterdam, the Netherlands? I don't even know exactly. Rika Coppens: Officially, it's the Netherlands. Holland is a part of the Netherlands, actually. Joel: So is it Amsterdam, the Netherlands? Rika Coppens: Yes. Joel: Okay. We'll roll with that. Chad: There you go. Joel: Rika, welcome to the podcast again. Rika Coppens: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for being here at the E-recruitment Congress. Joel: Our pleasure. Our pleasure. So some of our listeners won't know you. There's kind of a lot to introduce here. Introduce yourself, introduce House of HR quickly, and introduce the Congress that we are at currently. Rika Coppens: Okay, very good. Well, my name is Rika Coppens. I'm the CEO since 2017 of House of HR. I used to be a CFO and then I entered into this famous or infamous space of HR, which I really love. It's dealing with human beings and I think that's what we like at House of HR. When we talk about House of HR, we're a collection of 50 brands and companies, all involved in the world of staffing or engineering and consulting. Very specialized, very focused on the candidate and customer experience. And we actually say HR stands for Happy Rebel. And that's what really sets us apart from everyone, because we always try to do different stuff. We try to, when everyone goes left, we wanna go right. And that's a little bit the mentality we have. And I think it's in that context we are organizing this E-recruitment Congress for everyone. Joel: How big is the footprint now? Rika Coppens: So house of HR today we are at 3.4 billion euro revenues in Europe mostly in... Joel: Love the transparency. Chad: Hello. Joel: Love the transparency. Chad: Hello. Joel: I was talking about regionally... Rika Coppens: Originally, okay. Joel: Like what countries we're talking about if you want to talk money... Chad: She's dropping the big bomb, I love it. Joel: The CFO goes right to the dollars. I love it. Rika Coppens: But we're in Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, and we also have branches in Spain, Portugal, and also in Eastern European countries. Chad: Oh, Portugal. Oh, lovely. Rika Coppens: Yeah, very nice. So we're spread over there. And as I said, our revenue has grown quite quickly. We're now at 3.4 billion euros, but a lot more profitable than the big staffers because, we do things specialized and we try to get close in terms of understanding candidates and customers' needs. And I think that's really what sets us apart from everyone else. Chad: Well, that's one thing. But I think one of the things that you've taught Joel and I as we started this relationship is that, there's a thing called a branded house. And then there's a house of brands. And you guys are a house of brands. Rika Coppens: Indeed. Chad: And in Europe, that to me, in what we've seen thus far, just allows more of that natural, state of being, as opposed to getting kicked out, like Stepstone got kicked out of France. Rika Coppens: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Chad: Because they're a German brand. And they went into France. They're like, no, get the hell out of there. You guys keep that brand, you keep the founders in many cases, the CEOs. I mean, there's really this culture that is much different than we see in the US where it's like bring everything under one brand. It's cheaper, it's more efficient. You guys have really figured that out. Rika Coppens: It's bullshit because that's actually one plus one is one strategy. That's what I call you pay a lot of money to buy a company. And then basically what you do is we buy goodwill on legs. The people run away. And so if the people don't like you as the acquirer of a company. Chad: Which we see a lot. Rika Coppens: Which is actually, in most of the cases, what's exactly happening. You try to change the culture. You're forcing the culture down. You're forcing systems, IT systems, computer systems on people. They don't like it. They say everything was better in the old days. And then they run away. And then they start up their own company. They talk to your customers and they run away. And that's what we try to prevent. And I think we're succeeding in that and trying to, the companies that we acquire, we're basically listening to them, asking them, what is it that you need from us? And then trying to help them with what they need from us and then make them grow in that way. And I think it's a much stronger proposition for founders. Chad: The thing is that generally that whole idea, that paradigm, it's hard to keep ahead of, right? And you and the entire group are really focused on innovation. So was that like the key to ensure that you don't get into atrophy and you don't just kind of like dwindle all the way, that you really focus on all brands as their own brand, but under House of HR and innovation is the biggest key. Rika Coppens: Innovation, obviously, also we help them with administrative processes and support, but indeed innovation is one of the key things where we try, especially to inspire each other, because we're all more or less in the same business. We're all dealing with candidates. We're all dealing with customers. So the idea is really that the brands amongst themselves and the founders and the people in the different companies, in the different functions, they inspire each other. And then we exchange best practices. And from those best practices, that's where the innovation comes from, because someone says, oh, I have a great idea. And then the second thing I think that I mentioned the Happy Rebel thing, and it sounds like, oh, it's just one of those things that you shout out and blah, blah. Rika Coppens: But it's really a culture that lives inside House of HR. We love to destroy ourselves. It's really something that we constantly ask ourselves, what is it that can kill House of HR? What is it that can kill your brand? And that's how NOWJOBS came about. Indeed, that's how we started NOWJOBS. But actually, NOWJOBS started in 2017 after asking that question, how to kill Accent, which was our first brand. And now we recently organized a workshop, how to kill NOWJOBS. So, I mean, this thing is continuing. So really, we're constantly trying to ask ourselves the question, what is our right of being here? And are we still entitled to exist as a company? And if not, then we need to try to invent something else. And I think this is also the spirit of the E-recruiting Congress is that we don't mind that competitors are here. Everyone is invited. We really give them insights in how we function and the technologies we use. And we really want everyone to know about it. And then probably it's also challenging us to continuously stay ahead of everyone else. Joel: Yeah. Separate brands, but there's unification in the Congress that we are currently attending. Rika Coppens: Yeah. Joel: Why do the show? Why have other people come in that aren't part of House of HR? Chad: Competitors. Joel: Yeah. What? Just talk about the genesis of this conference, where you see it going in the future, because I've been, this is my third or fourth one. It's out of Belgium this year, so you're obviously growing, extending the brand. Why do it and where is it going? Rika Coppens: I think first of all, it's challenging ourselves, right? I mean, organizing this Congress, it's getting us really out of our comfort zone and we say that's where the magic happens. So getting ourselves out of our comfort zone, constantly having our eyes and ears open about what's happening in the HR and recruiting world, but also outside of the HR and recruiting world, what could be actually impacting our business that we see in other businesses. And it's forcing us to keep our eyes and ears open so that we truly understand what's happening. And then inviting the best speakers to continue to challenge us, I think, is the second thing. We like to be challenged, by giving that knowledge also to competitors or people outside of House of HR, we know that they can also bring valuable ideas. And I mean, it's also a little bit about steal with pride. And so we don't mind also that it's better to steal good than to invent bad. And then this is also helping us to achieve that. So we invite competitors. They also give us feedback. And from that, we learn again. Joel: And where's it going? Rika Coppens: Oh, that's a very good question. I think we're... Chad: To the moon. Rika Coppens: To the moon and back. Joel: When's the American Congress coming? Rika Coppens: Oh, yeah, I think House of HR, we're a European-based company still, so we're going... Chad: I love her focus. I love her focus. Joel: Me too. Rika Coppens: Yeah, we're staying in Europe for the moment. I think there's plenty of opportunities in Europe still. We love the complexity of Europe in a way, because the complexity of Europe is also helping us deliver better service and more value add to the customers, which leads also to our profitability. I think once we are satisfied with where we are in Europe, then maybe we'll make the step to the US. Joel: By the way, the trail of dead leading from Europe to America is not pretty. Rika Coppens: Oh, yes. Chad: She's paying attention. She's paying attention. Joel: I know she is. I know she is. Chad: So as we take a look at Europe, right, and it is so different country by country, but also job by job. And we were just talking about being able to really engage with chatbots, right? And you found that there was an area that you thought would actually work, but it didn't. So you're constantly trying new things out. Can you tell us about that? Rika Coppens: Yeah. So at some point we invested in chatbot technology ourselves. It was five years ago and we launched it in our own companies. We sold it internally. Again, people had to buy it and they had to be motivated to use it. And, the complexity was it was mostly for blue-collar roles. Chad: Gotcha. Rika Coppens: That we use it with very simple questions, with must-haves and nice-to-haves. And so we got a feed of candidates. And then the difficulty was, first of all, to reach the candidates. Because at some point, some of them filled out the questionnaire. But then when you said, okay, now we are going to schedule an interview, they were unreachable, impossible to get hold of. So that actually demotivated a lot of our recruiters. So the second step was, okay, let's not put it in the day-to-day operations. Let's put it in a separate digital cell, whose only job is to contact the digitally generated candidates that we have and who can deal with the disappointment because it's kind of their role to deal with the disappointment. And it's not interfering with their day-to-day operations where customers come in and what have you. Rika Coppens: So then they did it. We had slightly better results because they were more focused, but still, they then did the interviews and then it was very difficult, and we still have that today, to get the recruiters to have those pre-screened candidates to accept them as their candidates. And it's still one of the struggles that we have today is that you have pre-screened candidates, that you get a fully filled out form, CV, all the skills are there. We say this is a top-notch candidate. We then send it to the recruiter who does the matching with the customer, and still they feel it's not my candidate. Rika Coppens: And this is a human thing where you feel that there has to be this connection between the candidate and the recruiter before they are willing to take a leap of faith to present that candidate to the customer. And that's a human thing that we need to overcome. And that's something that we're really working very hard on to get that mentality change. Like, listen, this is a perfect candidate. We've done the screening for you. You can trust it. Please, present it to your customers. So this is what was also today in some of the sessions, AI, it's not only about the machine, but it's also about your organization and the mentality change that you need to get into people. Chad: So this to me sounds a lot like a marketing qualified lead, that marketing would pass on to sales and sales would just eat up. They would say, that's mine, right? Hot lead. But you're saying recruiters are like, oh, I'm not really sure about this. Really? See, that just tells the evolution that we need to go through in our industry. I think a lot has to do with education and demonstrating, hey, other industries are doing this and they're kicking ass and taking names. You could too. Rika Coppens: Yeah. So it's indeed, it's about education. It's about information and making sure that we show successes of this, that what is in it for me, this is really things that we need to teach internally. And that will lead to acceptance. And we're not there yet. And I think like it is with a lot of things, adoption sometimes with the chatbot, maybe we were just too early, right? It's like with coffee shops in fuel stations. BP started it in 2000. No one went to buy coffee in a fuel station. Today, everyone does. So it's also about acceptance. Like, okay, there's also good quality coffee now in fuel stations. No one trusted that. Chad: Yeah. Just not sushi. Just not sushi. Rika Coppens: No, not yet. Joel: No fish. Rika Coppens: But we might get there. We might get there. Joel: No fish. Rika Coppens: We might get there. Joel: No fish. So we won't be expecting you to come to America anytime soon. Chad: Maybe vacation. Rika Coppens: But we bring America to Europe. Joel: The American money is something that you are interested in. Bain Capital invested in you a year or two ago, I believe. What is that infusion of capital meant to you? I know acquisitions or looking at companies to take in your fold has been part of your focus. But what else has the capital meant to the business? Rika Coppens: I think Bain, first of all, comes with a lot of experience, right? So they know a lot about investments and they know a lot about how can you improve businesses and how can you also market your businesses better so that investors trust and believe in what you're doing and can take you to the next step. So I think this is the first thing they bring. They bring a lot of knowledge. They bring a lot of know-how of how things should be done in our business and how to present our company. Access to capital definitely is an important one because half of our growth historically has always come from organic growth and the other half from acquisitions. So helping us detect acquisitions, identify acquisitions that could fit House of HR, and then onboard those acquisitions. I think that's the second thing. And obviously, also the financing that comes with it, to continue to grow parts that we've been on. That's what they bring. Chad: So what has really blown your mind today? Anything? Anything that... Joel: Takeaways. Chad: Yes. Rika Coppens: Takeaways, takeaways. I think a lot of things of course, but when it comes to AI in the sense that you have to be careful, there are things that you need to be in terms of bias and stuff like that. So we need to be careful with AI, implementing it, especially when humans are involved. On the other hand, I think the main takeaway is, things are moving very fast and the train has already left the station. And I think if as a company, especially in HR, if you haven't jumped on the train, there is a big chance that you'll miss it. And so we really need to think differently about how to incorporate AI technology in our day-to-day operations from an efficiency point of view, but also from a business model point of view. And I think we really need to speed things up because it will move very fast and it can change businesses rapidly, especially in our space. Chad: Talk about risk tolerance because, I mean, you can take a lot of risk, right, and then fall down right in front of everybody. Yes, that's how innovators actually work, but your clients aren't innovating that fast, which is one of the reasons why they look toward you, right? How do you actually balance that risk tolerance piece, not just for yourself, but also for your clients? Rika Coppens: I think, first of all, the advantage we have as House of HR is that we have so many brands. So we can experiment in a small corner and no one notices when we go flat face. So that's a big advantage. Second thing is also that, we do have customers in a lot of different spaces and some are more advanced than others and some are more open to new stuff. So we try to identify those and it's always those early adopters that we try to work things out with and find out if they would be open to experiment with us. And then the same for candidates. But that's also how NOWJOBS started. Also a little bit fake it till you make it, is how NOWJOBS started. It looked like an app in the beginning and as if everything was done digitally, but in the background, we had people riding bikes to put on the electricity. [laughter] So you also have to experiment and be a real entrepreneur. And I think this is the biggest danger also for House of HR, becoming bigger. Is that you try to do things too well. And if you try to set up an experiment, but all of a sudden you get security officers and you get programmers and architects. Joel: Nothing gets done. Rika Coppens: Nothing gets done and you get paralyzed. And so we need to allow in House of HR in those small corners to really look at it in a very entrepreneurial way and say like, how would a startup deal with this? Someone with no money. How would they set this up? And then start from there, and then gradually learn and fail and learn and fail, and then take it from there. Joel: Paralysis by analysis, I think is what they call it. Chad: Analysis paralysis, yes. Joel: In America, we're a little bit spoiled economically. I want you to give the listeners a sense of the economy in Europe. Germany seems to be in recession. UK seems to be struggling. France, Italy, down the line. Talk about the European economy from your point of view and how that's impacting the business. Rika Coppens: But Germany, I think, is one of the biggest engines of European economy. So the fact that they're struggling is trickling down in all the surrounding countries, especially also Belgium and Holland, who are mainly export countries towards Germany. I think France is doing not too bad. I think Macron has done quite a good job in getting France a little bit more liberalized in a way and making it a more industry friendly country. And you see that also in the balance. In terms of politics, where Merkel was really strong in Germany, now with Merkel gone, you see that actually the power has shifted to France. Rika Coppens: So I think they're not doing too bad. From our point of view, the good thing is that given that we are in so many different businesses with so many different profiles, you can clearly see that high skilled, white collar jobs, they are still going very strong. You still see the demand there. The scarcity of talent is still the main driver of demand and is still driving revenue. But you do see, especially in Germany, that's where we see the biggest struggle. I think the other countries, they are kind of, it's not growing fast, but they're kind of getting through the recession calmly. But Germany is where we see the biggest struggle for the moment. And let's hope that as from Q2, Q3, we start to see also some recovery over there because that will hit us really bad again, the scarcity. I think it will come back also with a vengeance. Joel: Is it an acquisition opportunity? Are you seeing companies strained and possible acquisitions? Rika Coppens: I think acquisition landscape is a bit slower. So there's a lot of companies preparing for sale, but I think most of them are a little bit in waiting mode to see, okay, what is '24 going to do? Joel: In limbo. Rika Coppens: We had the elections in Holland at the end of last year. We now have elections in Belgium in June. There's the US election. So there is some uncertainty going on. And I think '24, therefore, there are a lot of companies preparing and they're kind of hoping that 2023 performance will continue to be there. And I think probably second half of this year, we will see more companies again popping up for acquisitions. Joel: You'll let us know when those acquisitions. Rika Coppens: We'll definitely do that. Chad: How much of an impact does the presidential election in the US have on business here? Is there like pins and needles kind of waiting to see what the hell those idiots do across the pond? Joel: Or is it full steam ahead? Rika Coppens: Yeah, the election is not the impact, right? I think it will be more who wins the election that will give us an impact potentially in terms of what will be the attitude of the US versus Europe and how will, for example, the support be for Ukraine in terms of the war against Russia and how much uncertainty is that gonna bring on Europe? I think that's going to be the biggest question mark post-election and depending on who's winning it. Last Sunday, we had President Obama coming to Belgium. Chad: Oh, wow. Rika Coppens: So there's a supernova innovation and tech conference going on there. And yeah, I think he's also a bit scared about what the December outcome could be in terms of the attitude towards Europe. And I think Europe has now finally maybe woken up a little bit more. I think we've been too naive in thinking that US support would be there eternally. And now, obviously, we need to speed up in terms of defense spending. But it's a lot of things going on at the same time, right? There is spending for defense. There's spending on climate neutrality. Chad: Pulling out of Russian oil. I mean, there's just so many different layers. Rika Coppens: So many things going on for the moment. Joel: America is here for you, Rika. Rika Coppens: Oh, okay. Joel: America is here for you. Chad: At least these two Americans. Rika Coppens: Yeah. I know you'll advocate for us. Joel: American business is here for you, for sure. Rika Coppens: Very good. Joel: For sure. Curious your thoughts. This is a digital focus conference, innovation. And you guys, obviously manage a lot of job sites and employment sites. How do you see innovation changing how job seekers find a job in the future? Rika Coppens: I really liked Bill this morning who said that it's not gonna be job seekers finding jobs, but it's gonna be jobs finding the job seekers. And I firmly believe in that. I think that if you can get the right job to someone, at the right moment, I think this is what we should focus on much more. And indeed telling someone like, we know what your next step should be. And we can really help you build your career and give much more value to the candidates in that sense. I think this is going to be the way forward. So in a way, we should reverse job boards in the other way around and actually ask candidates more what job they would want to do instead of posting jobs and asking candidates to apply. Joel: So our listeners are aware of Cardboard Chad. You may not be, but our listeners are. Chad: Where is this going? Joel: And now we have digital twin Lieven, our listeners know Lieven, we got to meet digital twin Lieven. Chad: He speaks very good english. Rika Coppens: Yes, his english is impeccable. Joel: I'm not sure where my line of questioning goes other than will digital Lieven haunt your dreams going forward? Chad: He will mine. I know that, Jesus. Joel: Look, thoughts on, digital Lieven, should we expect more of him in digital format? Rika Coppens: Well, I think it... Joel: Was that his idea or yours? Rika Coppens: It was actually my idea. Joel: Oh, so we've no one to blame but you. Rika Coppens: Because I said, it would be great to have a digital avatar on stage and people could ask questions. Chad: And you notice it wasn't her, though. She's like, Lieven go do this. Joel: She knows how to spread the wealth. It's not about me. It's about you guys. Rika Coppens: But because of legislation, actually, we said it's probably not yet a good idea to have a digital avatar somewhere out there without having any certainty what it can be used for. Yeah. And the digital avatar is somewhere on a platform. And we don't know whoever gets that avatar in hands, what they could do with it and what they could make me say at some point. So I said, it's probably not a good idea if it's me. So then Lieven said, you know what? I'm already out there. You can abuse me. And so, happy to be abused. And so that's what we did. I know there's a lot of things going on. And I truly believe that intellectual property around digital avatars is something that should come into place really quickly, rather sooner than later. Chad: God, I hope so. Rika Coppens: I know this Belgian guy, Chris Ume, who participated in America's Got Talent. He was this Belgian guy who did, what's the guy's name in the Jury? Joel: Simon Cowell's the only one I know for the show. Rika Coppens: That's the one. Simon Cowell. Chad: Howie Mandel's the other one. Rika Coppens: And Heidi Klum, they were at some point on stage because he created their digital avatar. And so that was the spectacle. But he's working now with his company on putting an IP legislation in place so that avatars actually belong to you as a person. And then everyone who's trying to use your avatar has to pay money. Joel: Got to pay. So you mentioned Amsterdam is your favorite European city. What is your favorite thing to do in Amsterdam? Rika Coppens: My favorite thing to do in Amsterdam? It's a good question, actually. I think it's just stroll in the Nine Streets. There is this area here, this neighborhood, which is called the Nine Streets, and it's really gorgeous. It has nice shops, but it also has a very nice atmosphere, and you're strolling along the canals, and that's my favorite thing to do. Chad: That is amazing. Joel: Chad and I will be in the red light district. You can be on the Nine Streets or whatever that is. Chad: Speak for yourself. Joel: That's another one in the can, Rika Coppens. For those that want to know more about you or connect to the company, where do you send them? [applause] Rika Coppens: Well, you can go on my LinkedIn. I always respond to all the messages you send me. So it's just Rika Coppens, House of HR. And my email address is rika.coppens@houseofhr.com. Joel: There you go. Mention Chad and Cheese. That's another one in the can. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar blue nacho Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It is so weird. We out.

In this episode, Desiree Goldey, director, talent operations & culture at ZRG Partners, dives into the transformation of talent acquisition (TA) from a cost center to a revenue driver. She underscores the pivotal role of data in showcasing TA's contribution to revenue growth through metrics like cost per hire and quality of hire. Goldey emphasizes the need for HR and TA to collaborate closely with other departments, such as marketing, to enhance overall efficiency. She also touches on the impact of automation on recruiting processes and the future of HR in a more automated and flexible landscape. Goldey advocates for updating outdated processes and embracing a hybrid work model for better talent management. She concludes with a call for data-driven decision-making in HR and TA, especially in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:30.184) Yeah, it's Caitlin Clark's favorite podcast aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always the Lisa Leslie to my Sue Bird Chad. So wash is in the building and we welcome Desiree Goldie, director, talent operations and culture at ZRG don't call them Zerg partners Desiree welcome to the podcast. Chad (00:35.78) Thank you. Desiree Goldey (00:53.856) Welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Joel Cheesman (00:58.216) Thank you. So a lot of our listeners don't know you, may not know ZRG partners. Let's get a taste about Desiree and just a little bit about the company before we get into the real business. Chad (01:03.652) Oh. Desiree Goldey (01:08.616) Yeah, I mean we could do this for forever talking about me. But I will give you the short, I can do the short bio. I do work for ZRG, which is a global talent advisory firm. So I want to explain a little bit about that. That just means that we handle all things talent, executive search, interim placement, consulting, and culture, and embedded recruiting, which is a division that I work for. Joel Cheesman (01:14.568) Me too. Desiree Goldey (01:35.524) So come to us where all your talent needs. Joel Cheesman (01:38.024) So you're saying Zerg goes pretty deep it sounds like. Okay, good. Desiree Goldey (01:41.604) Oh yeah. Bizarres. Yeah. So yeah, it's a pretty deep situation over here. It's great though. It's great. Yeah. Chad (01:50.532) So you're on the RPO side of the house. How big is the organization in total? Desiree Goldey (01:55.492) In total, ZRG is about 600 people. Yeah, so huge presence. I would say the biggest presence is an executive search. They went around the globe to acquire some companies, including ours, which was originally Hub recruiting. So. Chad (02:13.284) Gotcha. Gotcha. Well today, Denise or Desiree is, uh, she's coming to us to talk about how a broken system needs to be fixed, or maybe we're just going to talk about broken systems. Hell, I don't know. We'll find out. So Desiree, we had a, we had a great chat, kind of like green worm, great chat around, around this. Um, and being on the, and I always say this, that RPO and staffing looks at this. as a business, because it is, right? It's the business of talent where talent acquisition looks at it as a job. So we want to have a discussion today around how we can start to kind of like push more of the, the, the business mindset toward talent acquisition. And is that something that ZRG has been doing for years? Is this something that's new? Are you trying to help TA better understand the business? so that they can go ask for more budget. What really was the impetus of the push for this? Desiree Goldey (03:17.732) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in embedded recruiting, we're always talking about it, right? Because at the end of the day, we have to justify you bringing us on, right? So because we are we are another cost to you. But at the end of the day, what we go in and we try to figure out how we you can speak to your leaders about making this a revenue source that works for you and becoming a revenue center, improving that through data. So it's always been a mission. Chad (03:32.194) Mm. Chad (03:46.916) Wow, so let's go deep on that one. How you can start to show revenue growth. How do you usually start off with that? Because for the most part, talent acquisition, HR, I don't know how many CHROs. I've actually had, they've said to me, oh well, we're a cost center. CHROs, they say that they're a cost center. So how do you get them out of the mindset? Where do you start at? Where's the first step? Desiree Goldey (03:49.38) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (04:13.572) Yeah, for me, it's always talking to them about. what is happening within your talent acquisition team or your HR department, because I mean, how many recruiters just sit in HR, what's happening that's making the team more costive, showing more productivity and cost -effective to the business? If I fill a position in one day less, I've saved that company. an extreme amount of money, it's just proven in data. But the first part is always figuring out if they're even collecting the data, right? You know, we get into so many of these organizations, they're not even collecting the right things, right? Yeah. Yeah, right. No. Chad (04:58.052) Okay. So right there, right? Stop right there. Now we're talking about, because everybody talks about time to hire and cost per hire, right? Which the C -suite doesn't give two shits about. They want to know where that you took it to that next step, which is incredibly important. And this is different from department to department to department, because some departments know better than others what their people actually, how their people impact the bottom line on a daily basis. Right? So, Desiree Goldey (05:11.588) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (05:25.346) All right, absolutely. Chad (05:26.884) So how do you dig into that? Because I think, again, this is not an incredibly complex formula. It's a different one department by department. I get that, right? But it's not a complex formula. How do you guys go and help the TA leaders understand this and actually go after this crazy nebulous number that's out there? Desiree Goldey (05:45.986) Right. Desiree Goldey (05:51.204) Yeah, it's the crazy and again, it's not standard for everybody, right? Like you already said, right? But we can take cost per hire. We can look at days time to fill and but we also look at quality hire of that hire. What was the value? How many were screens were had? How many things got you to that finish line in a short period of time, right? I like to go in and when we bring in anyone as an embedded recruiting team, we like to say we get you to the finish line faster. Chad (05:56.034) Right. Desiree Goldey (06:21.11) and we're able to do that because we're looking at the overall strategy of what you've been doing in the past and how we can make it more efficient, right? And get you to the finish line time to hire faster. It's not that hard, but it is different for each department and each organization, right? Cause not everybody cares about the same damn thing. Just saying. Joel Cheesman (06:46.216) I wanna... Desiree Goldey (06:46.5) You know, and I have a huge issue still with quality of hire, right? I struggle with it, right? Because if you give me a year recruiter who's only been doing it a year, how am I supposed to measure the quality of that hire from somebody who's been doing it for 20? I struggle with the measurement of it, but I do think it's something that needs to be looked at, right? Joel Cheesman (07:08.232) I want to stay for the record that when I saw we were doing a podcast called, uh, broken systems, that this was going to be a therapy session for the inner turmoil that I deal with every day. So I'm a little, little disappointed in that. Desiree Goldey (07:17.652) Right? Chad (07:17.7) It says nothing to do with nothing to do with your ED. Cheeseman. It's okay. Joel Cheesman (07:20.968) I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. Sorry about that. All right, back to Desiree. Desiree, it seems as if... Desiree Goldey (07:21.572) Right? Desiree Goldey (07:26.148) Listen, we could go on and on about the brokenness of people and talent, right? But I feel like the struggle is real every day, but yeah. We'll stick with the systems. Yeah, but yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (07:37.138) We'll stick with the systems instead of the inner turmoil of the, of the human condition. Um, Desiree, it seems like from a metric standpoint and justifying existence and profit centers, something has to do with building bridges to the departments that are thought of as profit centers, whether that's marketing, sales, do you give any, uh, recommendations or tips or what are your thoughts on just building that bridge to marketing, building that bridge? So the numbers, it's a, it's a. Desiree Goldey (07:48.652) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (07:53.956) Yeah. Right. Joel Cheesman (08:06.024) coordinated effort instead of HR out on an island somewhere, which is I think the case for most organizations. Desiree Goldey (08:11.78) Oh, absolutely. And I always tell my recruiters when we're going in, I want you to be a strategic business partner. Right. And that means looking at everything. And so that means meeting with marketing. Right. If they have a diversity inclusion team, meeting with that team and figuring out what it means to them, figuring out competitive intelligence. These are things that I don't think we're always talking about in talent that makes us look like we're just a cost. But if we're working across those departments, we can bridge that gap. We can't be this siloed thing that's working just by ourselves. We need to be reaching out, teaching and training, and also learning. And that's how we're going to get, we're going to move the needle on this topic. Right? Joel Cheesman (08:55.976) Yeah. And I, you know, we talked to, to Jeff Lackey, we've talked to him a few times and I'm always amazed at how, how general conversations aren't happening with, with HR at the table, uh, air quotes there. Um, what, how do we make money? What's our vision for the company? What kind of tips would you give to arm HR to go into that meeting with some good questions, some good conversation starters, just to get the ball rolling. Desiree Goldey (09:00.12) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (09:10.596) Right. Desiree Goldey (09:20.548) Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the conversation that even have the meaning, right, because I think. Who wants to meet with HR and talent? Most people, they're like, oh God, another talent meeting these people. Just find me the people, right? I don't want to talk about how you need to find the people, right? But I think positioning is something we're trying to do better for you so that you can make more money at the end of the day is going to be how you get that meeting. And then when you go into that meeting, asking really questions about them and doing a lot of listening. I found that we go in and we're like, Chad (09:35.874) Just find me the people. Yeah. Desiree Goldey (09:56.086) to prove our case so much that we're not actually listening to what the business needs all the time. And so sometimes it's just listening, asking defining questions, really doing a deep dive on what's happening in their organization, in their department, because a lot of departments have their own vision for their department. What's the vision for this department? And getting to those those real deep, deep answers is going to be how you win the war. Chad (09:57.668) Mm -hmm. Chad (10:20.324) Well, it's interesting because, and again, if we arm ourselves with the data and the understanding of what it actually costs per day for just a specific position to be open, then we can actually take a look at some of the projected areas of our process. And many of those are hiring managers that could have actually cost the organization. Who knows how much? Tens of thousands of dollars just because it took them so long to get on the interview, make a decision, et cetera, et cetera. But if we don't have those numbers, we can't make any of those cases. Not to mention we can't speed up those hiring managers because we're not talking their language. If we're actually saying, look, every day it costs X, right? Let's say $2 ,000, which is a very low number, by the way. $2 ,000, right? Desiree Goldey (11:12.708) Hehehehehe Chad (11:14.976) every day that you don't do something or this doesn't move along. But the problem is we don't, we're not armed with those numbers. So how you're talking about data, how do we go after that? How do we go after that data? How do we get those numbers? Desiree Goldey (11:23.138) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (11:27.01) Yeah! I think this is a systems and technology thing too. I was talking to someone the other day about how all of these tools are out there right now for talent, right? And no one's using them effectively. I was in a great Ashby demo the other day and all the things it can do. But if you don't take the advantage of the things that it's able to do, then it's just like buying a useless tool, right? And for my startups, I'm like, I know you have an analyst, right? If you have an analyst, let him Chad (11:31.17) Uh huh. Desiree Goldey (11:57.59) do some Power BI work over there or something, right? Like you can get to the data, the numbers are there. You just need to collect them and get to them and then have someone who knows how to analyze them too, right? Because I think we struggle with that. Some people are like, oh, well, this chart looks great, but what do I do with this now? And I think there's, and definitely in our field, I think there needs to be more training around analytics. Just bottom line. Chad (12:00.066) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:21.33) You know this. This is funny Desiree. We were in the we were in the Ashby demo as well and we have a sound bite from that that presentation. Joel Cheesman (12:34.312) So Desiree, I feel like a lot of turning something into profit means cutting it. And we're living in the era of efficiency. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg. And we've seen a lot of layoffs in recruiting and the departments that we're talking about today. Do you see a future where those departments come back? Desiree Goldey (12:37.826) Okay. Joel Cheesman (13:03.528) And if so, do they look different or is everyone just going to automate as much as they can to save as much money, which, oh, a penny saved is a penny earned, right? So how does the future play out with returning recruiters or not? Desiree Goldey (13:16.108) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (13:20.356) Yeah, I think it looks differently. I don't think they come back the way they were. And that's just my opinion, but I think they come back in a very different way. Listen, if I'm a leader, I don't want to do the layoff at the end of the year where I'm laying off 20 people. It's just not right for the business. It doesn't seem to make sense. So if I'm smart, I'm going in with a different view and I'm figuring out how to get all of this work done because I still have the same amount of work. in a very different way. I do think there's automation that's going to happen. I don't think it takes over talent. I'm not a believer. But I just think it's just not true. But there is going to be a different way to get this done. And that's where folks like ZRG come in to get some of that work done. We work in an embedded recruiting model that works on an hourly basis per quarter, which means you can switch us on and off. So in the times where you have this high volume that's happening, great. let's come in and do what you need to do and then we can go away and you haven't laid anybody off. I just think there's very different versions of what this looks like at the end of the day. Joel Cheesman (14:26.056) So you being on the front lines, are you getting more calls from companies saying, you know what we laid off half of our department. We need to ramp up recruiting again, but we don't want to go back to the way it was. We're going to go RPO. We're going to go out. Like, are you having more of those conversations these days? Desiree Goldey (14:42.724) Yeah, 2023 was the worst in bed of recruiting an RPO. We saw more RPOs go away because it just they were laying off people. Why would you talk to an RPO? But now that they figured out they laid off all these people, but still have the same amount of work. Duh. Right now, we need to do something about it, but I can't bring all that staff back. So, yes, our I. Joel Cheesman (14:54.056) Yeah. Chad (14:59.492) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:01.286) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (15:07.012) It's like 50 % higher amount of the amount of calls we've seen since the end of January till now. It's insane. Zerg is doing great. ZRT is pumped in. Joel Cheesman (15:13.416) Business is good at Zerg. I like it. Chad (15:18.692) So yeah, it's amazing. You cut that much staff and productivity drops. Oh, I wonder how that happened. I don't know because people actually do the damn work for God's sakes. It's yeah, it's amazing. But I mean, like the, the Facebooks of the world, the fan companies, they were so bloated that they could get rid of tens of thousands of people. And it wouldn't really fricking matter in the first place because their, their profit margins are so high. Um, so at the end of the day, let's talk about process process. Desiree Goldey (15:26.5) It's... Right? Chad (15:47.264) automation because everybody's talking about AI. That's all well and good. Um, whether it's RPA AI, just process automation in itself. Are you helping companies because many of these companies have the same process they had 10, 15, 20 damn years ago. Are you helping them understand right out of the gate that they need to scrap that shit and start from ground zero? Desiree Goldey (15:48.42) Sure. Yeah. Desiree Goldey (16:13.188) All the time. I can't tell you enough how many times I go in and go, what is happening here? Right? Yeah. Chad (16:20.228) Well, give me a success story. And does that include technology always? I mean, just give us kind of like a, you know, like a success story. Desiree Goldey (16:24.708) Yeah. Yeah, so... Yeah, high level client we have right now, we went in and they had no system or no process in place. So I'll use that. Or they were using a very outdated view of what was happening in the world of talent. And we went in, we said, listen, first of all, you have to get an ATS. I don't understand what's happening that you're not tracking where anybody goes through spreadsheets, right? So we were able to integrate a greenhouse actually for them. And my recruiters and Chad (16:39.812) Mm. Desiree Goldey (16:58.198) and my team then went through and talked about automation, talked about the next steps, talked about strategy, talked about interviewing, talked about all the things to rewrite the process. And right now we're three months in and it's up and running, filling jobs, getting things done, and it's working. But we had to scrap their idea, which was very, I will say this, anytime we go in with a traditional leader, it is the... hardest experience to get them to come to the other side. I can't, I can't. I think that they just believe what's working works and if we have to change everything, I mean, who likes change, right? And at the end of the day, but I just think they get stuck in this talent is just this thing that should be handled this way. And it's just not true anymore. There's just too many things going on in the world, including AI, including all the other automations, all the things that they could be doing more effectively. We actually work from a tech stack that we are able to say like this fits here and this fits there and let me help you get these tools and see if they work because that's what we love to do. We love to go in and help you get to a better place in your talent. Right? It's a hard job. Chad (17:57.634) Mm -hmm. Chad (18:14.82) So what are you guys doing with your recruiters though? Because I think that's the biggest key is the people who are actually on the ground doing the work in the trenches day by day by day, if they understand process automation, they understand how to use technologies to be more efficient, right? Then you can go in and show value almost instantaneously. So what are you guys doing to be able to continue to upgrade those recruiter skills? Because technology is, I mean, if you're not using it, it's going to kill you. There's no question. Desiree Goldey (18:44.568) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (18:49.316) Yeah, so my second part of my title is culture and that means a lot for us here in better recruiting. We are constantly having skill sessions. We are constantly bringing in speakers. We are constantly. We just did a chat. GDT one. We're having how to talk financials right now because I do believe that to be. I believe to be a strategic business partner in talent acquisition. You have to be on top of your game at every every moment. And we can't put you at a client if you aren't at this level. Because they can go get Joe Schmo recruiter. I need to have the brightest and the best to put in front of you. So we're constantly doing that here. It's necessary. It's necessary for myself. I attend more webinars and stuff than I know what to do with myself half the time. Joel Cheesman (19:31.88) Yeah. Chad (19:37.476) From my understanding, you listen to a lot of Chad and Cheese. That's how you get all your information. Desiree Goldey (19:40.132) I do. I do. I do. I do. I am a long time listener. Love you guys. Joel Cheesman (19:40.68) Oh, hello. Hey, say more about that. Yeah. And she's, that's, those are two good looking guys. Uh, Desiree, it seems like the other side of, um, bringing people back going RPO instead would be the globalization. And you talked about getting the best of the best. And one of the magic, magic elements of work from home and remote is I can get the best because I have the world to choose from. Desiree Goldey (19:55.396) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (19:59.78) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (20:07.976) What are you seeing on the front lines of companies that are bringing people back? It seems like we go back and forth like we're from home is happening. No, it's not. Returned office is happening. No, wait a minute. No, okay. What do you see on the front lines from your companies? Are they widening the net on a global level and letting people work from wherever? Or do you see like more control freakish, they're all getting back to the office and you need to work in that bubble, not the global bubble. Desiree Goldey (20:18.434) Yeah. Desiree Goldey (20:36.708) I love it. I know I see both, right? Like I see it happening in both ways. I see startups being usually the more lenient of these, right? They're like, hey, work from wherever you want. Do whatever you want to do. Work whatever schedule. But these very traditional companies are doing the hybrid thing more often than not. Seems to be the sweet spot. Joel Cheesman (20:49.382) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (20:56.328) So you see both sides. Where are you on the argument? Are you buying returned office? Are you buying work from home? Desiree Goldey (21:05.764) Hell no. If I have to see the inside of an office. Again, I'm going to be really, really sad. I am a, I am, I am. I do not believe in water cooler talk. Okay. It drives me absolutely bad. So I will say no to return to office, but I, on the front, I do believe there is a world where hybrid makes the most sense for me. My partner goes in one day a week and that's it. And it works for them. Right. I don't have a problem with that, but I'm not sitting. Chad (21:12.588) I'm gonna go. Desiree Goldey (21:39.414) in 45 minutes traffic in Austin, Texas to get to you so I can start my work day. It's just total BS. Chad (21:43.812) Oh no. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:47.912) See hy hy hybrids, hybrids and hybrid to me is returned to work. Isn't it? I mean, I can't live in, I can't live in Burlington, Vermont. If I got to be in the office two days a week in Miami, right. Chad (21:48.996) 45 minutes is like a mile away in Austin. Desiree Goldey (21:52.036) I know, I know. Desiree Goldey (22:00.932) Well, I agree the talent side of things says that that lessens your pool, right? Immediately. Like you no longer get the best and the brightest because you now just like shrunk your pool to this little thing. And it's ridiculous, right? So to me, if you want the best and brightest, stop. Let it work from wherever. I don't, who cares? Chad (22:08.196) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:08.84) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (22:19.302) Mm -hmm. Chad (22:24.74) And again, this is the business side of talent, right? And it's interesting because, you know, working a few years on the dark side over at Ronstadt, you know, RSR, everybody was remote. I mean, everybody was remote and that was the best way to keep an incredibly flexible and fluid workforce. I mean, you've got the benches that you're dealing with. You've got clients that are all over the place. You need to have individuals in different time zones. Desiree Goldey (22:28.164) Yes. Right. Chad (22:52.804) So if you're a big company actually trying to ensure that you're giving your clients the best customer service and, you know, just times, phone times or whatever it might be, having a remote force is generally the way to go. And if you see big companies who are customer focused, that's what you're saying. Desiree Goldey (23:15.812) Yeah, we have a client right now. We're doing diversity, equity, inclusion hiring. strategy with right now and I just had this argument about return to office and how it lessens the pool for them for diverse candidates. I mean you're killing my speed here right now. What do you want me to do? You want me to work in Dubuque, Iowa for like you know all the women and all the Black people? Like what is happening? Like I'm sorry. Nothing's gonna change for you. Chad (23:21.772) Uh huh. Chad (23:45.572) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Desiree Goldey (23:48.324) You know what I mean? So like these are conversations as strategic business partners that talent needs to be having, right? And HR needs to be having what is happening to the talent pool all the time. Chad (24:01.38) Well, and you're doing market research for those organizations to be able to demonstrate to them, Hey, look, the people that you're looking for aren't here, which is why we need to broaden up. And again, I think this is all around data, which we need to get really closer to on the town acquisition side of the house. Desiree Goldey (24:08.452) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Desiree Goldey (24:15.03) Yep. Desiree Goldey (24:19.78) I can't say enough that I stress to people because I geek out on data and maybe everybody doesn't need to geek out on it. But you definitely need to get to a good place where you even understand it and are providing it. I don't think we're doing that effectively across talent acquisition. I think we have really great moments in it, and others do it really well. And then there are some that just aren't doing it at all, which is kind of stressful for me. Like, how are you figuring out how to make a move? So yeah, absolutely. Chad (24:28.228) Oh, they do. Joel Cheesman (24:53.032) I'll, uh, I'll let you out on this. Desiree, you mentioned DEI and I can't let you go. Cause I know that's a focus of what you are doing. We had a big, we had a big spike in interest with George Floyd. Me too. You, you know, you know, the spiel is DEI on the down. Is it. Stabilizing is it up? Like, what are you seeing on the front lines in terms of how companies are embracing or not? Uh, diversity equity and inclusion. Desiree Goldey (25:20.548) Yeah. Yeah, it's a struggle for me, but I think this work is hard. It's always been hard. It's always been difficult. It's always sucked. No one listens. The whole jam, you know, like, I don't think this attack is any worse. I just think the political scene that we have right now makes it feel a lot tougher. I think it's always been a struggle, but. Joel Cheesman (25:36.2) Cheers. Desiree Goldey (25:46.052) from an organizational standpoint, I see there are tons of companies still that believe in this, right? Because they're seeing, again, the data that proves this works, right? That they can make a difference, right? And then there are other organizations that just have never cared, did it to check a box, and are moving on from this war, right? They're like, okay, we tried that in 2020, 2021, didn't really work out for us, we're just gonna leave that. It is a war. Again, talent falls off during layoffs, so just diversity, equity, inclusion. It goes right by the wayside. Because unless they can prove it, again, data, tell people all the time, prove it in the data, that they can prove that this worked and did something, it will stay. But if you can't prove the business case for it, you're going to lose the war every time, unfortunately. Chad (26:19.268) Mm -hmm. Chad (26:39.044) So is that the one thing that you would, any TA or HR professional listening to the podcast right now, if they walked away, what would that one takeaway be from Desiree? Desiree Goldey (26:52.548) Dig into the data. Get the data. Be about the data. That's my thing. Be about the data. Be about the data. Become the data. Okay, now we're getting crazy. I loved it. Chad (26:58.1) Be about the data. Be about the data. Joel Cheesman (27:00.776) be the data. Chad (27:03.396) Be the data. All right, Desiree. Well, we appreciate you stopping by. If somebody wants to connect with you, where would you actually send them? Desiree Goldey (27:16.164) send them to LinkedIn. It's my favorite. I spend a ton of time there guys. Come check me out. I'm always glad to connect. Chad (27:17.572) Okay? Joel Cheesman (27:23.944) LinkedIn is our favorite. How do we not dig into that? Maybe there's another show in there somewhere. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (27:24.324) Desiree Goldie. Possibly. We out. Desiree Goldey (27:33.764) Thank you.

Brace yourselves for the roller coaster ride of snark that is the "Chad and Cheese Podcast." It's your audacious dive into the world of HR, where co-hosts Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman take no prisoners and spare no feelings. Each episode is a concoction of brash opinions, industry insights, and a healthy dose of mockery, aimed at anyone within earshot. Join us as we dissect the recruiting world, interview industry bigwigs like Blair Fambro from Hershey, and generally wreak havoc in the most delightful way possible. If you're looking for political correctness, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah, what's up everybody? It is the San Diego chicken's favorite podcast, AKA... Chad: Oh, love that. Joel: The Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Chickens. Joel: I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman, joined as always the Felix to my Oscar, Chad Sowash is in the house, and we are excited to welcome Blair Fambro to the podcast. Chad: Fambro. Joel: Blair is the manager of Strategy and DEI at Hershey. That's right. Blair, welcome to the podcast. Blair Fambro: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Chad: One of the famous tasting companies of all of America. Joel: Still the number one chocolate bar in America, right? Blair Fambro: Yeah. Yes. Joel: I mean, so Blair, a lot of our listeners won't know who you are. They know Hershey, of course, but give them a little bit about what makes Blair tick. Blair Fambro: What makes me tick is being motivated to make an impact on our organization. It gets me motivated in the morning. What can I... About myself, so I've been in the industry for 13 years now. So all of my background has been DE&I and talent acquisition. So being based out of Detroit, Michigan, one of the things I've always been passionate about is working at the time for the auto industry, trying to make an impact there. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: Being from Detroit. That's all I heard. The big three, working at the big three, and one of the things I wanted to do was work there, but I also had a passion about technology. So every company that I worked for, it had a component of IT. So that's what motivates me, but also being a diverse workforce. Something I love to do. Joel: And are you a Lions fan, Blair? Blair Fambro: Absolutely. My Lions will be back in the Super Bowl. Joel: You're off the ledge. How are you feeling about this season? Blair Fambro: I'm feeling good. You know what? It's funny because this is a deep dive into that, in my entire life, this is the furthest I've seen the Lions go. Chad: Oh yeah. Blair Fambro: So this was like a Super Bowl to me. But now let's see what they can do next year. Joel: Yeah. Is it a one-off or do you think they can repeat? Blair Fambro: I think they can repeat. Joel: Okay. Blair Fambro: I think they learned their lesson. They have a good solid coach and we'll see what happens. Joel: Optimistic, optimistic. Chad: Great coach, great coach. Blair Fambro: Yep. Definitely. Chad: I mean, a great coach, players, I was rooting for Lions 'cause Lions... Joel: If you weren't, you didn't have a soul. Chad: Exactly. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Who did not have a Super Bowl? I mean, come on, man. And then, yes, to watch... Joel: You know I was rooting for the Cleveland-Detroit Super Bowl. Chad: Yes. That would have been... Joel: That would have broken the NFL altogether. Chad: That would have broken the internet. Joel: And so I know you are a Central Michigan grad, a proud MAC conference graduate, just like me, just like me. Chad: Oh, come on, man. Come on. MAC conference. When are they joining a real conference? Anytime soon? Anyway... Joel: Chirp, chirp, bitch. All right. Chirp, chirp. Chad: Says no man ever. Okay. So real deep down personal question. Did they make you come to Hershey to actually like interview, like the town, Hershey? Blair Fambro: No. Everything for me was remote. Chad: Oh, yeah? Do you wanna go though? Because all the like documentaries when I was like... Joel: It's like Willy Wonka. Chad: I wanna go... Yes. I don't wanna be the blue boy or anything like that, but at the end of the day, that looks... Joel: The Oompa Loompa. Chad: Yes. It looks amazing. Blair Fambro: Yeah. I'm looking forward to visiting. I haven't visited yet. I've seen how they started, but this summer I'm definitely gonna go, and definitely take on the amusement park they have there, and get sugar wasted. Take the family down there. Joel: Sugar wasted. Is that what you said? Blair Fambro: Yeah. [laughter] Joel: Wow. Blair Fambro: That should fun. Chad: I love it. Joel: That's a whole wasted I haven't experienced yet. Chad: Okay. So here you're a newbie at Hershey, so we're not gonna dig into that. Okay? We're gonna give you a little time before we have you back on the show then we'll talk a little bit about Hershey. Let's talk a little bit about GM, transition to Twitter. Let's talk about that, 'cause you grew up Detroit. Blair Fambro: Yeah. Chad: Big three. That's what you knew. Blair Fambro: Yeah. Exactly. Chad: Right? And then you had a chance to go to GM. How did that feel? Did that feel like, oh man, here we go. Promised land. Joel: Was your mom proud? Blair Fambro: Yeah, they definitely were proud. Even though my family is more on the Chrysler Stellantis side, I was still proud to be a part of a GM. It was great because for me, that's all I grew up seeing either for Chrysler or GM. So working there, it was exciting because when I came in, GM was bringing everything in-house. So you think about what they'd done over the years and all the employees they hire, they always did things from an RPO perspective. Chad: Yes. Blair Fambro: So I was able to come in and be the first wave hire in 2016 to support their IT division. So being successful with that, coming into an organization and building their IT division, not only in Detroit, but Atlanta, Phoenix, and also Austin, Texas, I think that was amazing. And that pretty much spearheaded my career into other areas. So if you look at what GM is doing now with the electrification vehicles, with the electric Hummer, the Silverados, at one point I was the recruiter hiring people to design those batteries. So that was a sign to say, hey, on my resume, if you see the shift in the automotive industry, I played a huge component in that in regards to the hiring aspect of it. But then I had the opportunity to be a DE&I lead for the organization for engineering, so that's pretty much solidified every way to be well-rounded within TA and diversity, that role pretty much spearheaded where I am today. Chad: What did that consist of though? Because we've talked about, on the show, there have been a lot of DEI leads that just didn't get the resources necessary to actually move the needle. It didn't feel real, right? You were put in a position where you didn't have the resources necessary. Was it a scrap? Was it a fight? What was it about? Or did you get the resources you thought you needed to actually move the needle? Blair Fambro: It was both. And the reason I say that because GM had a strong presence in regards to diversity, and not in TA, but in regards to the global diversity team that was responsible for TA. So I had the support system there, but I pretty much had to fight to say, "Hey, if we want to make an impact from a TA perspective, we need to make some adjustments." And I had to make a business case of a certain resources, certain conferences, and to get certain visibility for my colleagues. A lot of people didn't understand diversity from a hiring perspective. A lot of people were intimidated about having those conversations. Chad: In Detroit? Blair Fambro: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: They didn't understand diversity... Blair Fambro: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: In hiring, so, but... Blair Fambro: Yeah. Where it was about 85 to 95% diversity. Chad: Yes. Blair Fambro: So it was something I was passionate about and I needed to spearhead that. And it was not focused just on Detroit. And I think a lot of people, from a location perspective, had... Didn't understand that or was intimidated by the discussion because you wanna make sure that you're being sensitive to other people's needs, but you wanna make sure that you don't cross the line when communicating with someone. And for me, I don't believe in crossing the line, I believe in having open dialogue. And I love to have those uncomfortable conversations. And one of the things, it's my pet peeve, if you feel a certain way, tell me how you feel. You don't... And just 'cause I'm a Black male or considered a minority, you don't have to walk around eggshells. I wanna know how you feel, I wanna know your perspective. So it's a learning curve for everyone. So that's what was important for me. Joel: So sticking with GM for a second, it seems like every week we talk about the United Auto Workers, another win, another notch on their belt. How do you feel being out of the industry knowing the unions and the win against the Big Three was diversity initiatives part of that maybe we didn't see in the mainstream media? What were your thoughts as the union was winning against the Big Three, the concessions? Blair Fambro: I thought that was huge for two reasons, because I think the world was pretty much watching that. So everything from supply chain, automotive, anything that has to do with plants outside of the Big Three, people were watching that. I think they pretty much spearheaded what they were doing from a manufacturing perspective. And the diversity component, more... If you look at the numbers and the statistics, more minorities and women are in those factories. So from a diversity perspective, that was a huge win for them. Chad: Okay. Blair Fambro: So getting where they needed to be. We think about the fight of people who were working there for years as contractors, not getting those raises, not getting profit sharing, I think that was huge that people made that investment to work there five or 10 years and keeping the same compensation even during inflation. So being able to bring those people on board after 90 days and getting them what they felt that they deserve, I think it's great. So that was a huge win. Joel: You were at GM during the George Floyd, the Me Too movement. What was it like being at a major corporation as these huge events, social events were happening? And how did you see maybe opinions change or processes change during that time? Blair Fambro: It was huge emotions from everyone. It was of a lack of understanding. It was confusion. It was unanswered results on what transpired for everyone. But one of the things I can say about the organization is that they made an environment for everyone to come together during that time. We had open discussions in regards to how individuals are feeling, no matter your background, what you've seen and what you believe. And I think that pretty much helped the organization come together as one. That's one thing... That's one of the things I can say I enjoyed working about at GM. When something transpired, I think we came together as an organization and even as a community to support one another. Joel: That's great. Chad: Is that the culture? I mean, the culture was like, "We are our people". Most companies talk about that. They talk a big game. But it sounds like what you're talking about, GM actually believes it. Joel: It's genuine. Blair Fambro: Yeah, I believe they believe it because of the leadership that we have. The Chief of Diversity during the time I was there, I had a close relationship with her, I believe every initiative and I believe her passion based on the equity and inclusion and belonging. So that's what made me want to stay there for the long term. I think, if you look at my background, I moved around a bit because I wanted to get every experience that I can, but if you look at my background, I stayed at GM the longest than any other organization. Chad: Good for you, opportunities pop up, you take the opportunities. Let's talk about the other side of the coin on that one, let's talk about Twitter. Okay. So because that culture changed dramatically while you were there. So what was your position while you were there? And talk a little bit about that experience. Blair Fambro: So working at Twitter, I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave, leave General Motors and go to Twitter, but I can tell you the experience... Just the interview experience blew me away. Chad: Really? Blair Fambro: Yeah. One of the things, and I've always been based in Detroit, Michigan, so working for a company that's based in San Francisco, culture was different. People were different. But going through that process and learning about the culture, and what they're looking to do, and one of the reasons why I decided to go to Twitter, because I was gonna work on something new. No one was doing machine learning like Twitter and like the Metas of the world. So I wanted to get my hands on that to be able to say, "Hey, I worked for an organization that did the electric vehicles. Now I'm working for an organization that doing machine learning." Chad: That's just forward-looking. I mean, come on, batteries, machine learning. I mean, because that was before the big drop of ChatGPT, right? Blair Fambro: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Chad: Right? So... Blair Fambro: Yeah. Right. Right before that. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: So when I was at Twitter, I was doing pretty much, if you use Twitter and you notice the recommendations or who you can connect with, the news feeds, I was a senior technical sourcer there hiring the people that pretty much worked on that platform, the recommendations, news feeds and all the components of that. Chad: Are you talking about data scientists or what are we talking about with regard to the types of positions that you were actually hiring for? Blair Fambro: Data scientists were part of it, but NLP, natural language processes was one of the... So predictive text, things from that perspective, I was able to do. Before leaving Twitter, exiting Twitter, I was also a part of their security team. So anything from, if you think about the security aspect of it, if you think about safety or abuse or child abuse or anything that happens on Twitter. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: I was responsible for that. Also, just the overall privacy. And one of the things is, if you create a Twitter account, and you deactivate your account, Twitter can keep your information for a year. But the government requires them to delete all that information to keep your privacy safe, so I was responsible for that, and I felt that each part of the team I worked for at Twitter was impactful, and I think it was innovative. And I pretty much enjoyed that. Chad: So Linda Yaccarino today testified in front of Congress that they had all the security protocols buttoned up. Everything was good. Although they decimated a lot of the staff, like 80% of the staff. So the question is, to the public out there, how can you stay secure with less people? Can AI help us be more secure? Because it's almost like that's how many of the companies want us to think, "We don't need people to do this. AI is gonna keep us secure." Blair Fambro: Absolutely not. I don't believe that one bit. You're gonna always have people. One of the things I like to say about AI is, is it's gonna help us work more efficiently. And it is gonna be... It is more like a Google assistant to me where it is helping you enhance your day-to-day experience, but it's not gonna take away anything that we do from a security perspective. I don't know how they're doing it with less people. I don't know how secure it is. But I think once things started to pick up again and these tech companies, that's probably gonna be the biggest area of hiring, security. I mean, without security, the platform is no good. You can have mediocre machine learning, but if you don't have security, your platform is not gonna last long. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You've been part of some incredibly competitive industries, the car industry, not just the big three, but Germany and Japan. You've gone to Silicon Valley, you've got Facebook, Google, all the other tech companies, the startup, the hot cool startups that are there. Talk about how you approached recruiting in such competitive industries and how did you think about DEI being an advantage over your competition and helping you recruit top talent? Blair Fambro: That's funny, 'cause when I... In my aspect, when I think about recruiting, I think about my style, I try to mimic a programmer. And the reason I say programmer, because although my title has been recruiter, I've always been a sourcer, so how do you find talent is being able to come up with unique site commands, unique coding to find individuals. And sometime you have to have that mentality to be able to find those individuals. And what helped me stand out opposed to other recruiters is being able to do things recruiters won't do. And for me, a lot of recruiters are excellent in regards to negotiation, in regards to other things. But in regards to finding those purple squirrels, that was my advantage, and I wanted to beat the competition by doing that. I felt that at one point I didn't have the gift or gap to have that salesman approach. So I said, what can I do behind the scenes to outwork them? Chad: Find your superpower. Blair Fambro: Yeah. And I think the sourcing aspect was always... Joel: It's like you outworked them. Blair Fambro: It was always my superpower to outwork them and find candidates that they wouldn't be able to find instead of relying on the ATS. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: That was my superpower. But I can say for me, DE&I really became a passion when I started working at Hewlett-Packard. When I... And this is when I really was sitting in the tech industry outside of the staffing world. And I had never seen diverse teams. It was all male-dominated, and I seen that you know what? How are these hiring practices? How do you build diverse teams or, you had ERG groups in the organization that people weren't leveraging. So I said, "You know what, how do I work with these people?" This is back in 2013 and I was still mid in the industry. So how do I tap in with people that's already here to engage with people? How do I network with them and learn what they're doing outside of the organization so I can get engage those individuals? And I started to just do more speaking engagements, talk about diversity inclusion and in tech industry. And that's a pretty much, you know what, this is gonna be my niche. I have the background with engineering, IT, but a lot of people are not invested in the diversity aspect of it. Because the reason diversity is important because your company is more profitable. Everyone is a customer. And at the end of the day, I look at an organization, the only thing that mattered is the financial gain, when it comes to that. And when it comes to a business growing and constantly growing. Blair Fambro: But when customers, and even myself, when I see individuals that is a reflection of myself or a reflection of someone that's not myself, I think that diversity is diversity of thought. One of the things I always looked at was when I hired people at tech industries they only wanted people from tech industries. Why? You're just hiring the same people, the same thought process. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: What if you bring someone from banking that does things a different manner, they have a different process, they can implement what they've done in the industry that you may not have thought of that the other companies are doing. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: So I took that approach and that pretty much helped me along my journey. Joel: Recently, it seems like a lot of companies are gutting their diversity efforts. They're laying off managers or executives that have taken those roles. We obviously see the Supreme Court of the country eliminate affirmative action initiatives. What are your thoughts on the future and present of DE&I and where it's going? Is it, are you bullish on it? Are you skeptical that it can have a future? 'Cause obviously there was a lot of positivity in the wake of George Floyd, et cetera. Chad: Oh, well it evolves. Joel: But now it feels like, we're on the down slope. What's your take on that? Blair Fambro: There's two things. I will say, unfortunately with DE&I and HR to like, we're always the first to go when it comes to big layoffs in that perspective. But I think seeing that is gonna help more people gain opportunity outside of relying on the organization. I've seen more people have startup companies since these layoffs of DE&I, than anything else. I see it changing because I think the people, the customers and also the employees are gonna enforce that. They said the same thing about working remotely. "It's not gonna work, it's not gonna be impactful." People are fighting against that, but the people are actually fighting against working remotely and changing the workforce as we see today. And then you think about it, there's another generation coming up. Chad: Yeah. Blair Fambro: And with the Gen Z, they are extremely passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. They're also passionate about work life balance. So companies are gonna have to adjust with the generations upcoming. 'Cause they're gonna be the ones to make the make the demands. One thing I can say, once the market increases and we're seeing that diversity being cut, HRs being cut, I think in 2025 or 2026, when people start hiring again, people are gonna remember this. All the layoffs, getting laid off by emails and things from that perspective, people are gonna remember this, and I think there's gonna be a shift in the next two years. I think DE&I is gonna come back stronger than it has. Chad: People are gonna remember you, Blair. We appreciate it, my friend. Joel: Even though he didn't bring any Hershey bars to the interview. Blair Fambro: [laughter] Next time. Chad: Next time. Next time. Joel: I'm a little bitter on that. All right, next time. Chad: He's new. Joel: I give... He's new. Chad: Give him some time. Joel: I'll give a pass. Chad: Blair, if somebody wants to connect with you, where can they find you? Blair Fambro: So you can find me on LinkedIn, it's Blair Fambro, or you can find me on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel that talks about tips and tricks, interview tips. Chad: Nice. Blair Fambro: Sourcing tips. You can find, my name on there is your HR Connect. So feel free to follow me on YouTube and also just check, check me out on LinkedIn, I look forward to connecting with you all. Joel: You heard it here first. DE&I is gonna be back in '25 and the future. Another one in the can everybody, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast, the Chad, The Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs to people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one, cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss, and so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

In this podcast episode, the boys chat with Kyle Samuels, founder & CEO at Creative Talent Endeavors. The conversation revolves around the intricacies of executive search, focusing on retained executive search and its traditional practices. The discussion highlights the challenges and dynamics of the industry, including high fees, limited diversity, and the impact of remote work on recruitment. Kyle emphasizes the importance of human connection in the workplace and suggests ways for startups to navigate their first executive search. The episode concludes with a light-hearted note about Kyle's favorite Taco Bell meal. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:25.969) OOOOhhh Yeah, it's Bob Hope's favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Leno to my Letterman, Chad Sowash is in the house. And we welcome Kyle Samuels, founder and CEO at Creative Talent Endeavors. Kyle also did time at GE Aviation, Ernst & Young, and Yum Brands, home of the greatest company of all time, Taco Bell. Kyle, welcome to the podcast. Chad (00:34.279) He's rolling over. Chad (00:53.506) Hello. Kyle (00:57.542) Thank you, gentlemen, for having me. How you doing? Joel Cheesman (00:59.577) Very nice. Very nice. Good. So our listeners, uh, likely don't know who you are. Let's, let's take a little look into the window of what is Kyle, what makes you tick, man. Chad (01:00.654) Excellent, excellent. Kyle (01:06.535) doubtful. Kyle (01:11.526) Yeah, man. So like you, I've had some familiarity with the 216, born and bred in Cleveland, Ohio. Introverted, only child who somehow has decided to base his whole career on interacting with people and strangers and making friends and talking to people all the time. And I love it, it's really weird. But no, started, thank you for the intro, started Creative Talent Endeavors seven years ago. We celebrated our seventh anniversary on February 1st of this year. Chad (01:38.514) Excellent, excellent. Well, today we're going to talk about executive search and how it is whack. And before we get to that, we got a little background, right? A little background of executive search. And then also, you know, what's changed with executive search throughout the year? Or is it just the same shit? Hit it. Kyle (01:55.75) So for those who don't know, executive search, I'm gonna speak about retained executive search. You have a need, you go to a company because you feel like internally, you cannot find that person or cannot find that person quickly enough. And so the search firm says, great, we'll absolutely find you that person and we're gonna charge you an arbitrary percentage, which is the highest percentage of their salary that we can get you to say yes to. And also by the way, we control who you see. So you can tell us that you can only afford a 250K candidate but if I tell you... all we got is this 300K joker, like, you don't know anything. And so you're going to say yes. And so it's always really, I would not, it's not a scam, but I would say it's rape. It's kind of like a C nos, right? The house always wins in this case. Yeah. And so, but to answer your question, Chad, nothing has really changed in a hundred plus years of executive search. It's still the same way. We don't use data at all in. Joel Cheesman (02:36.337) It's a profit deal. Kyle (02:51.046) various aspects of executive search. And I think that one of the reasons why it's still this like lofty, you know, gate kept system is because it is so expensive to pay for these firms to actually do these searches with you. Not every company can afford that for every role or many roles. And so what you find is it's a certain group of people and of talent that kind of just get passed around the executive search world. because they're within that gated ecosystem. Chad (03:21.762) So companies don't generally have anyone on staff who have this type of expertise because they just don't need it as often. I mean, why don't companies do this themselves? Kyle (03:33.294) it vacillates all the time, right? So one point the pendulum is, we're gonna do everything in-house because why pay all these exorbitant fees when we can just have people pay them a salary and then they execute the search work for us? That works until people are like, we're not really hiring, why are we carrying all these recruiters on our load? We don't really need them. So then it goes back to, ah, it's not strategic, TA is just like, kind of like, go find the people. So we're gonna use firms for it. So it literally goes back and forth and back and forth. Chad (03:36.331) Okay. Kyle (04:01.574) depending on honestly who's running the TA or HR department at the time. Chad (04:04.81) So does the executive candidate actually pay a fee? Kyle (04:11.526) There are some companies that will say, hey executive, pay us this money and we're gonna make introductions and help you and all that good stuff. I feel like in this day and age of internet and LinkedIn where people wanna find you, they can find you. I would not advise that. So I say typically if you're paying a fee for something that's not coaching just for introductions, eh, it smells a little weird to me. Joel Cheesman (04:32.933) So I would initially think that this system has been around for a long time because it works. However, in my research before the call, I saw surveys of like half of all executive searches fail. I'm not sure exactly what defines failure. But do you agree, disagree with that? And if it is such a bad batting average, why are we still doing it? Kyle (04:58.578) So I would say this, I'm one Chad and cheese, I can be myself. So like in like 1812, someone could be like, oh, this labor shit is really working, it's great. I don't pay anything and I get all this labor, it's awesome. So it's working for a certain group of people, yes, but is it working for everyone? No, an executive search is somewhat the same way, right? It depends what side of the equation that you're on. Another reason why people like you said, Chad (05:03.96) Yes. Kyle (05:25.894) they've been, they accept it. Is there a lot of people who honestly, these are my friends, I've talked to them at other companies, they are so excited to run to one of the big firms and be like, oh my gosh, will you please take my 100K to find this person for us? And they're like, oh, we'll do it. There's part of this is like, we've made it. We can afford to spend this much money with this company that shows that we're doing things well. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't, but at least we've reached that level. And because of the brand of those companies, you feel like maybe it was us. I know searches don't work all that well. And that honestly is the great thing about having a brand, right? Like if you are a new company and there's a mistake, it's like, Oh, I don't know about them versus your GE and you have one bad wrench, they don't make wrenches, but follow me. Um, it's like, eh, they've been there for a hundred plus years. People are going to make mistakes. And so people get. Seduced by the brand, the name and what that means. Um, and companies use that to their advantage, quite frankly. Chad (06:18.554) executive search seems to be like they're fishing in the same pool constantly, which is very old and white and male. Right. So why do companies continue to go to, uh, an old pool of the same Kyle (06:29.667) They are. Chad (06:38.734) freaking candidates. I mean, Joel calls it swapping spit for God's sakes, because it's literally, it's going from one company to the next company. It's CEO from here to their co CEO, whatever the hell else. There's no diversification. There's no upping. It just, it just seems like again, this does not seem like a good or even, even a model that you would want to get into today to be able to not just diversify, but to be able to get new talent into your organization. Kyle (07:09.234) So it's waterfalls. And I'm not talking about agile waterfall, I'm talking about TLC. People are, they're sticking to the rivers and the lakes that they're used to, for real. Like that's it. I feel comfortable with this group of people or these companies or they've been vetted by these companies. I know them. I don't know who's over there. They're different than me. They went to a different school. They look different. That's scary. I don't care about that. I'm gonna go with this group because it's easier. It's frictionless. And the other person thing to remember is that Chad (07:15.222) There we go. Uh huh. Joel Cheesman (07:21.05) Mm-hmm. Kyle (07:35.482) Let's be honest, the people who are spending money on these search firms, it's not their money, they're employees, right? They have a budget, but it's not their money. And so, especially if their CEO is like, oh, I love this firm, go work with them. Okay, because, and this is something I've talked to, because my business, right? Talked to people who hire executive search firms, they've told me, hey, Kyle, here's the thing, love you. But if we go to CTE, you know, a boutique firm, that's awesome. and it doesn't work out, my boss can be like, I've never heard of this, why would you do this? But if we go to a firm that's known, like it's the old adage, no one ever got fired for hiring IBM. It's just like, it's IBM, who knew that there was a rogue character who wasn't a good recruiter, right? And so there's a lot of CYA that goes on. It is the safer thing to again, stick with that same ecosystem. It's not innovative, but if it's successful for you at that time, you don't care. Joel Cheesman (08:06.562) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:24.238) Mm. Kyle (08:31.398) Just being honest. Joel Cheesman (08:32.737) I'd love to hear your perspective, uh, being on the front lines of this when, you know, DEI was hot for lack of a better term, uh, following, you know, George Floyd and every, you know, it seemed like everybody wanted a diverse executive or they wanted to, to widen the pool. Uh, we're, you know, we're still dealing with Mark Cuban and Elon Musk going back and forth on, on social media about what exactly is diversity in an organization. So you're just your perspective. Kyle (08:40.829) Hehehehehehe Kyle (08:49.842) Like Pokemon. Joel Cheesman (09:02.017) Is there still a demand to diversify the C-suite? Is it less than it was a year or two years ago? What's the current state of it? Talk about D&I. Kyle (09:13.574) So it's less than it was, but here's, I'm gonna shoot a lot of bill. I may have said this to you before Chad. So I'll give you an example. I think that people don't like performative things. They don't like being told if you're a CEO and you've got a job to fill in, you feel like Chad could be the perfect person, but they're like, no, yes, Chad could do the job, but we need to speak to women and minorities before we fill this role. Now, if the job you're talking about for Chad is like, the maybe the chief diversity officer, and yeah, it might make sense to get a bunch of people with different perspectives. But let's say it's like senior director of FP&A. Make me the argument that having a woman or a person of color in there is gonna make our company more profitable. It's probably not in that particular role. And so I do understand that executives feel like we're sick of this, you have to do it just for looks and it, cause it looks good or whatever when it doesn't serve your business. But what I would say is this. The problem is, is a lot of, especially during the pandemic, you had people who were just like, hey, I'm an associate brand manager, but I also happen to be Hispanic. Cool, Consuelo, you're now our head diversity officer. But I know Mark, that's cool, you're Hispanic, you want the promotion, right? And so unfortunately, she's in that position where she may be passionate about DEI, but she knows how to self-patate a ship. She doesn't know shit about DEI and she fails. So there's that. Then you've had a lot of people who were just like, they think real life is Twitter and they wanna like, you know. Chad (10:26.495) Yeah. Kyle (10:33.282) say all these cool things and not really do the work. They almost want to come into the business and be aggressive. That doesn't work either. But what I really do believe is that if you show the return on the investment for DEI, the ROI DEI, people will understand it. I'm gonna give you a perfect example. What's old boy's name from the Clippers? He had the side chick. No, no, the owner, the owner of the Clippers. Oh, I can't think of his name, but fine, that's fine. Joel Cheesman (10:55.281) Paul George, Kauai Leonard. Chad (11:00.085) The owner. Joel Cheesman (11:01.353) Oh, the owner from Microsoft? Oh. Oh yeah, okay. I'm with you. Kyle (11:02.842) Yeah, but the guy, nah, don't put that on Balmer. The dude who owned it before, he said a bunch of racist stuff. You can do your Googles. But here's the thing. So he was saying wild racist shit, wild racist stuff about players magic this and that. But guess what? Who were his players? They looked like me, mostly not y'all, because he knew, hey, I may think that white people are better than the black people, but guess what? Not in that damn court. So guess what? I'm gonna pay the best people regardless of their background because I want to win. Chad (11:17.098) Mm. Kyle (11:33.006) And so I do think with a lot of executives, if you say, our CMO must be a woman or a person of color, why are you making me do this? Why, why, why? Well, we want it to be a Latina because our biggest area or our biggest target for growth is Central and South America and we want someone who knows the culture, speaks the language, blah, blah. And we think that person can do a better job than a white guy from Omaha or a black guy from Harlem. That totally makes sense and people can see it. But I think what people push back against is just, no, because We've never had one before, now we need this right now. And honestly, in a lot of those cases, it doesn't work well for the person who's coming in because no one wants to be just like, oh, you're here because you were born this way, not because of what you can do or how you can perform. So to get back to your original question, I think that there is a lot less of a desire for it overall in most companies, but the companies who get it, they get it and they haven't stopped doing the real good work. Chad (12:28.43) Gotcha. So let's talk about the future. Okay. So we've obviously established that executive search is old. It's feeble could be running for president, the United States. Who knows? Um, at the, at the end of the day, what does the future look like? Right? I mean, you said that the, the executive search for the most part, they're not, you know, they're not, they're, they're not founded in data, in tech, in algorithms. That's what we're seeing though in the rest of the world. Are we going to move that way? Tell me what the future looks like Kyle (13:03.586) Yes, and a lot of search firms, I mean, us included, we use AI for things like back of the house job descriptions or collecting candidates and stuff like that. But one important thing to notice about all that is like companies will do that and they will tout, oh, we use AI for our sourcing and stuff. But as a customer, why do I care? Unless you're giving me a discount or you're telling me something else, like that's great that you guys have saved money but you haven't added it to me, right? And so think about what I think the future is, is this. Oftentimes, Perfect example, now that people can work remote and regions and stuff, a company's might say, hey, if you work in Manhattan, you know, you might make 15% more than someone working in Omaha, just because cost of living, stuff like that. If you have a PhD, you might make more money than the person with just a BA, right? But when you flip it, when it comes to search firms, we haven't said, wait a minute, you want us to find you an executive who needs to work in, I don't know, Butte, Montana and come into the office every day. That's going to be very hard. Chad (13:48.258) Mm. Kyle (14:02.31) versus our company is based in Manhattan, we have 40 offices around the country and you can work anywhere in the US, right? Super easy compared to that. Why are we paying the same, or why are we charging the same price for something? One is the degree of difficulty is exponentially harder, but the way things work right now, it's like going to a grocery store, you go to Trader Joe's, they give you the brown bag, and they say anything you put in here is $50. Now. Chad (14:26.41) Yeah, but nobody knows what it looks like though. Nobody knows what the landscape actually looks like. So they don't know to ask that question, right? Is it easier to find somebody in Des Moines versus New York City? Well, yes, it's easier in New York City, right? But most people don't understand that so they don't question it. So do we have enough data exposed where people can actually understand what the fuck is going on? Kyle (14:51.838) We do, but here's the, I'm just being 100% honest. If I wasn't, if we weren't a company that, you know, was nationally remote, no offices, no, you know, leases, beautiful leather chairs and aquapon and stuff like that, I wouldn't be talking about this. But the reason, the data is there, but there is no compelling reason for search firms to do that, right? Like it doesn't make sense for them. It's kind of like what you guys talk about LinkedIn and we use it and because we have to, but like. Chad (15:00.697) Hmm? Kyle (15:21.09) I've talked to people LinkedIn, it was like, from a business perspective, like, there's only so much improvement they're going to do because where are you going to go? Where are you going to go? So like, we could do all this stuff, but why? It doesn't make business sense for us. And so I think it's the same thing with the search firms. The data is out there, but people don't know. And you could talk about rationality. It's the same way that I'm looking at them all right now. You can't see it. But like, you can have a sweatshirt that costs $100, or you could put Balenciaga on it. Now it costs $2,000. But some people are so excited about it. saying that they are a part of the Balenciaga world, they will pay that premium. And I think that it's the same way with search. I see it happen with lots of vendors. You were so excited that you finally been able to get McKinsey to work with you. You're paying a premium for that, but you're okay. And sometimes you do get the value for that premium, but when you don't, you say, meh, it's McKinsey, they probably had an off day. It's okay. Chad (16:00.302) Mm. Joel Cheesman (16:04.57) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (16:11.049) What impact has work from home made on executive search? I mean, we have stories of companies saying get back in the office and we have some companies saying like you can work from anywhere at any time. Talk about what you've seen from your perspective, more companies coming in house, are they willing to have executives that don't work in an office, relocation options, like from where you sit, where does executive search sit? in the work from home phenomenon. Kyle (16:42.194) So to answer your first question, it has been much easier for us, right? Cause in the before times, before COVID, it was like, hey Chad, you live in Baltimore. We've got this great job in LA. We want you to come. Chad has to think about moving his kids. His wife has a job or whatever. Where now it's just like, hey, we're still the cool company in LA. You guys can stay here. Nothing changes for you. So in that way, it's been easier cause you don't get people rejecting the job offer because they have to move and disturb the family. That has been great. Chad (17:06.894) Mm. Kyle (17:08.654) Honestly, where I think it's been a little wavy is for candidates and employees because companies for the last few years have been playing double Dutch with return to work, right? Like four years ago, oh my goodness, you can be in 10 buck too, it's okay. Go to Tulum, log in, we're good, right? Then it was like, oh, we got, what's that? Vaccine, hey guys, why don't you come in? Just come in two days a week, why not? And then it was just like, oh wait, we got the booster, three days. And then it was like four and five and so. Joel Cheesman (17:29.829) Two days a week. Kyle (17:36.55) Then they go back and pull back. So like companies have been loathed to just plant that flag in the ground and say, hey, we think we're better together. Because of that, we are gonna be a company that comes in the office four days a week. But we're gonna make it so that you're not doing the trope of like being in the office and zooming with your teammates who are at home that day. There are still individuals who crave human connection. Like we're human people and they want to go work in offices. And I think it's super important for junior people to understand what that looks like. Chad (18:04.622) Mm. Kyle (18:04.914) But if you are wishy washy, then people are wary because they don't know if you're gonna change it all of a sudden, right? Like there are companies who have told people you can go anywhere and then they said, just kidding. Actually, not only do you need to be back here, we'll move you here permanently, but if you wanna come back once a month, you have to self fund that. And it's just like, you didn't tell me that when you said I could move. Joel Cheesman (18:22.937) So we're going back to the future. We're going back to where you have to be, where the company is. The remote thing is not happening for most executives. Kyle (18:31.45) I wouldn't say that. And I would also say for executives, it's just life, right? Like sometimes when you have that C in front of your title, do as I say, not as I do. I know companies where it's like nowhere in the office, but they don't worry about the C, blah, blah. They can do what they do, right? So there's some of that. But what I do think that has been great about this is for companies like myself and small companies, when I started the company, well actually I was in Orange County, but as I grew it, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, beautiful city. I love it, great food, but not known for having the world's best. It's not a... Chad (18:37.386) You do. Yeah. Kyle (19:01.154) industrial, like major business city. And so rather than say, let me get the best people I can in Charleston where I live, it's like, let me get the best people wherever they live. And so I think that is a huge boon for smaller companies, companies that don't have or need real estate, but for the larger companies, sometimes they forget the cost fallacy, but I do believe honestly that, especially if you're younger in your career. Chad (19:03.918) Mm. Kyle (19:25.778) the ability to be around the people you're working with and get to know them outside of work. I always joke about people when I see them, which is probably not politically correct, but I make a joke like, oh, you do have legs, just because we spend so much time seeing people from the belly button up, you know what I'm saying? So like, oh, now, like, I don't know if Chad has legs or not. So like, hopefully I'll see you guys in Transform and I'll know that, but that getting to know people and the socialization and the workplace is just so crucial. And that is one of those things. companies, even if you're remote, I think it's super important just to make sure there are connection points to get, if it's once a year, twice a year, maybe you have pods, but I'll put a pin in real quick saying this, is I tell executives when they get jobs and they're excited, like, oh, it's great. They say that I don't have to come in. I was like, ask them, and this is like when it's not a client of ours, but like ask them what their budget is, right? Because that shows you what they think about connectivity. If you're coming in at a senior level and they're like, oh no, you don't need to come in at all. Like that would give me some red flags. Chad (20:23.702) pause, little pause. So that being said, going, yeah, you don't wanna see that. You don't wanna see that. Let's go back to the, let's go back to again, the actual fees and the structures and kind of like the traditional long-term, you're gonna pay a shit ton of cash, especially when we're talking about executives who have seen, you know, 1500% pay raises over the last 40 years. And the rest of us schmucks have seen about 14%, right? So that... Joel Cheesman (20:25.581) I'm best from the belly up by the way, just in case you're wondering. Chad (20:53.386) That obviously aligns with the fees. So the fees have gone through the roof. How do you actually change it, as you were talking about earlier, it's not fair to be looking at an executive in Des Moines paying the exact same thing versus New York City or Miami or what have you. How do you actually get into a structure that way where the client can see this transparently upfront so that they can understand that there is a new like fashion forward way to look for executives that's not going to kill their fucking bottom line. Kyle (21:30.446) Yeah, there are companies out there using that data to let a client go or prospective client go and say, here's the role, here's what I wanna pay them, here's the location, here's the, is it in office, is it hybrid or not? And they can see and play around and be like, oh, interesting. And I think it's something that job, when I say job, hiring managers think about because it will, these things, these calculators can show you that, oh, wow, if I say the thing could be, the person can be remote. I might save like 15, 20% on my search. And the reason why is because if you say you have to be, I'm in Atlanta right now. If you say you have to be in Atlanta and you have to come in the office five days a week, that is limiting the number of people a recruiter can get versus you can be anywhere in the US, you've exponentially increased the amount of people we can reach out to, which means we're gonna close the search more quickly, which means we can take on another search, which means you can give that, some of that savings back to the client. But I think it's two things. I think first off, Chad (22:27.807) Mm-hmm. Kyle (22:30.786) It's the education aspect and letting people know that, surge pricing, getting your airline ticket two weeks in advance. We know there's certain things in life where if you act in a certain manner, you will save money or pay more. Allowing people to understand that it can be the same way with search. And then also just making sure that people understand that if you're getting a fair price, it doesn't mean that you're losing quality. It just means that there are companies out there who don't feel like they need to stick you up because in 2020, 2021, maybe a little 2022, There were companies out there like, if you don't have 200 grand, you better turn around and go make some other friends. I don't have time for you. And that's the interesting thing with these search firms. When times got rough, they did not lower their fees, right? Like they raised them, but when time, they weren't like, oh, let's work with you, understand times. Nope, price is the price. How may I help you? And so it. Chad (23:09.014) Wow. Joel Cheesman (23:19.901) We're seeing headlines about boomers leaving the workforce, somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 are retiring every day. But we're also hearing about them sort of part-timing their old jobs. What's your take on sort of the generational shift that we're seeing from an executive search perspective? Chad (23:30.818) Finally! Jesus. Kyle (23:42.066) Boomers know how to work, man. Joel Cheesman (23:42.745) Is it Gen X's time? Is it our time? No. Kyle (23:46.15) the forgotten generation Gen X. Yes, but I would also say that boomers know how to work. They have a work ethic. They know how to get busy. They typically don't have as much entitlement. They knew how to do stuff without the LinkedIn and the technology. So I love it. I honestly have seen, there used to be like in years prior, more of a bias towards the young hotshot up and comer, right? Now I'm seeing more clients. I'm not saying they want someone who's, you know, about months from retirement, but they, you know, like Murtaugh and Lethal Weapon, but they do want someone who has the knowledge, has the grit, has seen it, is not going to like, you know, lose their crap over a bad quarter and things like that. That is something that I've seen change versus just like, nope, the hotshot who's got lots of potential. They haven't done it yet, but we know they can do it. Now there's a little bit more of like, no, I want someone who's battle tested because a lot of companies through the pandemic and because you couldn't interview people in person. Chad (24:16.439) Mm. Kyle (24:43.034) They hired a lot of people, they found out, oh, you weren't that good, it was just the economy, it was great and no one was checking, but in 2022, I can kind of see that you come up wanting. Joel Cheesman (24:50.897) So we're holding on to boomers as long as we can, is what I'm hearing. We're not ready. Chad (24:56.554) which screws up our talent pools. I mean, that screws up our talent pools because as soon as they're gone, we've got people with no experience whatsoever. Yeah, that's a different podcast. We don't have people with the experience in these roles because these assholes have kept them so long, right? Yeah, I mean, so... Joel Cheesman (25:01.889) and real estate prices, but that's a different. Joel Cheesman (25:11.601) Yeah. We're going to pay the piper eventually, right? Kyle (25:16.367) Which goes back to what you said about the same ecosystem of talent just moving around and chugging around. Yeah, it's time to listen to New Blood in. Chad (25:19.69) Yeah, right, right. So what do we do about that? What does the future look like? I mean, when the pool dries up, right? What do we do then? Because we are doing this to ourselves. Joel Cheesman (25:23.761) Ha ha. Kyle (25:34.466) It's, so I'm gonna talk about diversity in a different way, not what most people expect. Bubba, Bubba is a guy who graduated first in his class from the University of Nebraska in computer science. But because he went to the University of Nebraska, cool startups don't come there, the sexy consultancies don't come there. So he goes to like Cargill or Monsanto, the type of companies that hire people from University of Nebraska. Bubba would cut his left arm off to move to San Francisco, work for startup and be in the office every day. He would love it. But guess what? You're in flyover country. We don't give a crap about Bubba. But Bubba also knows things that I don't care if you're black, white, whatever. You grew up suburban, upper middle class, middle class. You went to these elite schools. You kind of have this certain thing. You don't know what people in the so-called flyover states want. Bubba might have an app for like milking cows that could be, I'm serious, being monumental, but they get overlooked. So I think that's another part of opening the aperture and looking at different types of talent is... One of the things again, you hear about people like millennials, oh, they're entitled. They want this, that, and the third. Well, that's because if you go to certain schools, you're brought up a certain way. It's like, I have a, I want to Wharton have a NBA from Stanford. Yeah, you're damn right. What can you do for me? Right. But Bubba, Bubba wants to prove some stuff. Bubba has grit and Bubba is going to possibly open up markets and opportunities that you didn't know about just because. Chad (26:47.37) Yeah. Look at my debt. Yeah. Kyle (26:58.582) Oh, wait, how much fertilize? I don't know, I'm making stuff up, right? But I think that, again, expanding it, making it more open and inclusive, always just makes everything better. And one thing I will say about a little diversity part, I have found typically that a lot of people who worked in the military are fantastic, because think about it, especially if you start 18 or younger, you're with people, races, ethnicities, economic, all this different stuff. You just, some are there because they need a job, some are there because they love their country, some of the times it's both. Joel Cheesman (27:01.881) Yeah. Kyle (27:28.582) but you have to move as a unit with people who don't necessarily look like you think, believe in the same things. So you go to corporate America, it's like, I've had bullets flying over my head. You're worried about this commercial didn't get the hits that we wanted. It'll be fine. And I can interact with any different type of person. Joel Cheesman (27:39.781) Huh. Joel Cheesman (27:44.785) Kyle, we have a lot of startups and smaller companies that listen to the podcast, maybe looking to do their first ever executive search. In a minute or less, what kind of advice would you give them in starting out with their first ever search? Then, I want you to follow up that question with your go-to meal at Taco Bell. Kyle (28:04.966) Got you. Okay, I'm not gonna do a plug. So the first thing I would honestly say, think about as a small company, because I've learned this is a small company too, bigger companies see it coming. They know you don't know crap about crap and they will finesse you. So I would look at how much does my account mean to this person, this company, right? Let's be honest, if you've got, maybe it's 50,000, 75, 100K means a lot to you, but a big company, that's just like, whatever, right? And so like, That's also gonna show how much attention and care and value they're gonna give you. Also, if you're a smaller company, even if they crush this, you may not need them for another year or two. So again, just think about how much work and care and attention are they gonna give you knowing that you may not have anything for them for another year or so, right? Whereas a smaller company, or forget smaller company, let's talk about people. Someone who's more relationship driven, ask why they're interested in your company. What do they like about your company? Why do they think this is a search that they wanna do? And you can see if they've really done the research and trust me, if it's a big old company, the big ticket, they will do it. If people haven't done the research, that's cause they really don't care. They think they can get it without even taking the time to learn your company. So ask some of those questions. Don't expect them to be an expert and know your whole origin story, but at least you wanna have that feeling that they really care and that they want to partner with you versus just like, oh, it's an account, it's a check, let's go and let's move on. That's the first thing I would say. And then Taco Bell, I'm a DLT guy, man. Chad (29:02.527) Mm. Kyle (29:33.182) I'm a DLT guy. And ranch, by the way, ranch, the LT Cool Ranch. Chad (29:40.08) Kyle, so obviously people listen to the podcast. They're gonna want some more, more info, more insights around executive search. And if they do, where can they find you? Kyle (29:52.85) They can find me on LinkedIn. They can find us at www.hire, H-I-R-E-C-T-E.com. That's our website. And you can call, no, you can't call me. But yeah, no, reach out, ping me. I will be at Transform next month, lurking around, running around, eating food, having fun, meeting people. So yeah, love to talk to people. It's my business. Chad (30:08.905) Excellent. Joel Cheesman (30:16.409) Maybe have some Taco Bell. Why in God's name did we record this at lunchtime? Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Kyle (30:22.246) Yeah. Chad (30:23.906) way out

In this episode, the boys discuss various topics from Europe, including the growth of Job&Talent in the US market, the Automatic Wage Indexing System in Belgium, and the German court ruling that robots must take Sundays off. Job&Talent's recent success in the US market and its focus on high-volume shift work starts off the news analysis, also discussing the potential impact of immigration policies on the demand for hourly and gig workers in the US. Covering a range of timely and diverse topics, they cover additional topics including the acquisition of Orgnostic by Culture Amp, the commoditization of HR analytics platforms, and highlights from the recent E-Recruitment Congress event organized by Lieven and his team at House of HR. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION: Joel Cheesman (00:29.422) OOOOHHH Yeah, three guys forever suffering from a total eclipse of the heart. You are listening to the Chad and cheese podcast as Europe. I'm your cohost, Joel Dusseldorf Cheeseman. Chad (00:44.991) This is Chad, turn around, bright eyes, so wash. Lieven (00:49.326) And I'm leaving, not centrusted in your stupid eclipse. Funny when I am. Joel Cheesman (00:54.19) And on this episode, job and talent goes West, orgnostic gets amped up, and final thoughts from the eRecruitment conference. Let's do this. Chad (01:08.895) What do you mean you don't care about it? Was it because you were not in the path of totality, Levin? Are you jealous? Were you left out, huh? Joel Cheesman (01:13.55) He was left out. The whole con. Lieven (01:18.158) I kept staring at the sun, I didn't see one eclipse at all, so it was fake news. No eclipse... doesn't exist. Joel Cheesman (01:25.038) You pulled a Trump and stared at the sun all day. That's, that's not healthy, leaving. Not healthy. Lieven (01:27.79) I mean... Yeah, I read about it indeed. The glasses were to woke for Trump or something. You shouldn't wear them. Oh, wow. Joel Cheesman (01:36.366) Yeah. I have a theory that you and CABU were hanging out in Finland. That's my, that's my, that's my theory. Trying to watch in the Northern lights or something. Chad (01:41.023) More than life. Lieven (01:43.054) I think in Finland it's still dark. add something else than your stupid eclipse normal lights Chad (01:47.519) He doesn't. Joel Cheesman (01:53.07) You're bitter today. Look, this, so we've got like Chad, Chad's on the cusp of Euro Chad. He's like on cloud nine, riding high and, and at neon Chad, freshly shorn Chad. Uh, yeah. And leaving in all black as usual. Uh, just, just, uh, Lieven (01:55.054) No, no, no, no, I'm happy. Chad (01:55.263) HATEFUL Chad (01:59.263) Yes. I'm also Neo, Neon Chad. See this? Lieven (02:02.926) Yeah, it's nice. I didn't even see it. Damn. Cool. Chad (02:12.159) As usual, he's getting ready. He's still auditioning for sprockets. Lieven (02:13.358) This is Navy, Navy blue. I said it before, Navy blue. What is Prakets? Joel Cheesman (02:15.982) Navy blue, my bad. Midnight blue. Joel Cheesman (02:21.038) You Lieven (02:24.206) Do I wanna know what sprocket is? I don't know sprockets, no. Joel Cheesman (02:24.8) Jesus, you don't know sprockets? Oh, I don't know if you can get SNL clips on YouTube out in Europe. Can you? Well, if you, yeah, if you search sprockets, sprockets SNL from the nineties and old, an old German, old German, German skit, it's good. It's good stuff. Chad (02:26.207) Oh, Saturday Night Live. Oh, I think you can. I think you can get the sprockets. Yeah. Touch my monkey. Touch my monkey. Lieven (02:33.23) sprockets. No touch my monkey. Most definitely not touch her monkey. Chad (02:43.391) just got turned down. No, no touching. All right. I'm going to give a shout out to, to, to European wages. And this is what I mean. Uh, so a study came out and showed pretty much what every European country was getting paid, you know, from top to bottom. Not going to go through all of those. Actually, I want to compare them to, to, uh, the, the U S um, Luxembourg is $47 or Joel Cheesman (02:47.31) Chad, what you got? Chad (03:12.255) 47 euros 20 per hour compare Wow 20 47 20 yes, it's it's an average. It's an average and then the the highest paid state in the United States is and I did today's conversion is 34 25 euro, so we're talking about a pretty huge discrepancy 47 20 Lieven (03:16.462) on average. Joel Cheesman (03:19.438) Party in Luxembourg, baby. Chad (03:41.407) to 35 .25, those are the highs in both. So there are five European countries that are above Massachusetts salary per hour rate, Belgium being one of those, leaving. And there are 10 European countries that are above 30 euro salary per hour or dollars per hour rate, which is $32 an hour for all you Americans that are listening. So yeah, shout out to getting paid. Lieven (03:53.71) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:08.558) So, so tax tax tax, the Chousets is the highest hourly way it's tax to choose. All right. Uh, so I'm going to, I'm going to take that, uh, shout out into the gutter with my next, uh, shout out. So Chad, you and I, you and I grew up in the seventies, uh, and I'm going to assume that you were at least at one truck stop, uh, in your, in your youth. If you, if you were in a truck stop gas station bathroom, Lieven (04:08.814) Thanks a -Ju -Sits! Chad (04:12.895) Getting paid. Lieven (04:15.182) Yeah. Chad (04:26.719) Mm -hmm. Yep. Chad (04:31.135) Jesus. Sticky floor. Joel Cheesman (04:37.23) in the seventies and you were a child, you got some sex ed. You got the coin slotted French tickler. You learned that it had to be ribbed for her pleasure. Those are gone. I haven't seen any of those for decades, but thankfully Germany, these coin operated sex machines are still a thing. So. Chad (04:47.967) Condom machine. Lieven (04:51.214) French tickler, nice. Joel Cheesman (05:04.75) So let me, let me read you some of the, uh, the, the products at, in a German. I think this was a Dusseldorf that I was visiting. Uh, you've got, uh, you've got the Billy boy, which is a condom. I think you've got the love ring vibro, which looks like it's, I don't know if, I don't know if the batteries come with it or you got it like put the batteries in separately, but, but that was fun. Uh, you got, you had a minute, many, many vibrate, many vibrator, uh, and you had the, I'll, I'll, I'll mispronounce this, but the D. Lieven (05:05.199) and Chad (05:16.895) Okay. Okay. Oh. Lieven (05:19.118) Of course, that's a classic. Lieven (05:26.126) You just move it by hand. Joel Cheesman (05:34.446) Kunchstiche, Stika, vagina, which is the travel vagina. So it's a party in a German bathroom. I didn't have to go to a truck stop for this. It was just in a regular city square bathroom. So shout out to the Deutschland bathrooms. A lot of fun. Chad (05:39.999) Oh, okay. Lieven (05:40.11) Okay. Chad (05:43.039) Hmm. Chad (05:51.487) Yeah, you don't see that in puritanic, uh, America. No, only, only, only in truck stops only in trucks. Joel Cheesman (05:54.574) You used to. Back when America was great, you could have the French tickler. Joel Cheesman (06:04.27) the hubs of commercial, commercial success, truck stops. Top that one, Levin. Lieven (06:06.158) Hello. I've never seen them, so I think I don't frequent the places you do Joel, not even one in Dusseldorf now. But I don't feel like I'm missing a lot. Okay, okay, I have to admit it, I have one in my room. But... Chad (06:13.535) Imagine that. Joel Cheesman (06:18.574) Play coy with me, Leaven. The guy's got a tree house in his backyard telling me he's not freaky. Lieven (06:26.606) That's right. That's right. In fact, it's a tree mansion. We call it a tree mansion because the house is so common. OK, the House of Commons. Anyways, Chet, you were talking about those wages. Did you know in Belgium we have something called the Automatic Wage Indexing System? Is this something? This is actually pretty cool. So at the moment, the. Joel Cheesman (06:31.534) Free Manchin, nice. Chad (06:43.263) Mm -hmm. Chad (06:50.239) Did not. Joel Cheesman (06:53.294) Tell us more. Lieven (06:55.694) the life cost is increasing, then the wages are indexed automatically. So people in Belgium will always have the same buying power. That was the whole idea. So the moment there is some kind of a price index and when let's say you go to the grocery store and you put all these things in your baskets, the moment the price on average is going above certain limits, everyone's wages are indexed by 5%, 3%, whatever. So last year with the with the whole, we had to index prices, sorry, wages five times in one year, because everything was getting so expensive because of the crisis in Ukraine and people got a salary raise five times in one year. That's pretty impressive. So that's why we have the highest wages, I think, in Europe next to Luxembourg, which isn't a country at all, so we don't account them. But that's why I'm just happy to educate you, American bumpkins. You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay. My shout out goes to the German unions for the first time in my life. I'm giving a shout out to the unions and why? Because they were the first to get on the barricades and defend robots rights to take a day off. And this actually is a fact. So the German court rules robots must take Sundays off. So the legal battle was triggered by. Chad (07:57.599) Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah. Chad (08:06.303) Oh wow. Lieven (08:23.214) Yeah, I know, I know. Joel Cheesman (08:24.366) Yeah. Lieven (08:26.094) So the union fundamentally opposes Sunday shopping, arguing that retail staff needs Sunday as a guaranteed day off to spend time with family and friends. And there was a retailer in Germany who had a totally automated mini shop chain. He hadn't, no one was working for him at all. And he had to close down his automated shops on Sunday because of the robots. So he had to, they needed the day off too. And the union... Chad (08:34.847) Now, that's something. Lieven (08:54.126) triggers the whole legal battle and the court followed it. So shout out to the unions for protecting the rights of the robots. Chad (09:02.239) That's right. And then on Sundays, you can't even get them maintained because nobody's allowed to work. So, I mean, you know, it'd be different if you could have maintenance on that day. Lieven (09:07.054) Ah no, of course. No, if you ran out of coke in the vending machine then nobody is allowed to put a new one in. I wonder what they do with the bakeries on Sunday. Probably it's allowed. Should be. Yeah, of course. Not in German, you get Kaiser breads. Chad (09:25.503) We all need a good croissant. Joel Cheesman (09:25.806) What do you think they'll do about the robots and Chad (09:31.295) guys for watching guys for braida Joel Cheesman (09:32.238) What do you think Scotland will do about the robots, Chad? Anything? No. Lieven (09:37.582) I'll abuse him probably. Chad (09:37.759) Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be amazing. Joel Cheesman (09:42.83) Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:49.71) So some, some quick travel. Uh, we just got back from Amsterdam not too long ago, but Chad and I'll be headed to Scotland, uh, in May for a little Scotch slash interviews slash exciting conversations with exciting Scott Scottish startups. And then, uh, don't forget, uh, rec fest in July. Uh, I'll be there. Allegedly a coal cheeseman, uh, spotting will be a year number two in the making. Uh, I need someone to help pass out those t -shirts and. Chad (10:09.727) right. Chad (10:16.543) our equipment pack mule. Yes. Joel Cheesman (10:19.342) and, uh, sneak in, uh, chugs of beer while I'm not looking my seven 17. Yeah. Shh. Shh. They're listening, Chad. They're listening. They're listening. Chad. Don't, don't say anything. Don't say anything. Chad (10:24.159) Beer? More like whiskey. He was drinking everything. That kid was drinking everything. Chad (10:35.263) ZAPI! Joel Cheesman (10:38.574) All right, kids, job and talent experienced substantial growth in the U S market in 2023. Revenue came in at $450 million. That's a 22 % increase year on year. And the U S became the company's largest and fastest growing market as well as its most profitable in 2024, 2024 job and talent plans to further expand its market share in the U S by rolling out a revamped. product suite aiming to transform the interactions between businesses and workers. Chad, your thoughts on the growth of job and talent. Chad (11:15.487) Well, Joel, I've got to bring up that back in May of 2022, you pondered whether job and talent would be all in on the US regional strategy and then, you know, leave and laughed at us because they were considered a region or if they were just playing a little game of just the tip. I think we can say that they're all in, there's no question. But you also said that coming to America would be a disaster for them. It hasn't, hasn't seemed to turn out that way. Joel Cheesman (11:41.87) Hmm. Chad (11:44.127) The US job market right now is booming in all the shift work arenas, which is exactly where job and talent plays I've said it on several podcasts prior to this one not just about job and talent but the staffing company industry that are the staffing company that Uber rises shift work wins job and talent is still small and Start -up II enough to be nimble while the a decos and ronstads are way too slow and lethargic. They just can't They can't do something like this. They're just way too damn big. But what Uber is doing for rides and eats, Job and Talent is doing for a multitude of different jobs. And where Job and Talent are flourishing is around high volume jobs. So if you're in need of a new gig or just some extra cash, you can search for jobs near you, which everybody does on Google, review the hourly rate. Joel Cheesman (12:17.006) Yeah. Chad (12:41.375) watch videos of the tasks you're gonna be performing at that job and then apply. And as it says on the website, quote, no resume required, just answer some simple questions in our app and get the job. Plus you get paid in the damn app. So this is the future of shift work and job and talent announcement of 22 % year over year growth last year and generating 450 million in revenue. Joel Cheesman (13:01.838) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:09.774) Mm -hmm. Chad (13:10.079) feels like just the start. I'm waiting to see which companies try to buy these guys and or emulate because I mean, this is big kudos. Not many companies come to the US and do well. You even see companies who are already in the US like job .com who said they want to do this and they're having problems. Rumor mill says even making payroll right now, right? Staffing. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:24.686) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:36.302) Oh, sounds like a tease. Chad (13:39.135) Yeah, so anyway, yeah, big kudos to Job and Talent. 450 mil. Joel Cheesman (13:45.166) So you're going to call me out like that on the podcast chat. That's, that's, that's not cool. That's not cool. Uh, uh, yeah. So look, so far, so good. Uh, and when you get a, what, a million, 3 billion, uh, a hundred or $1 .3 billion in investment, you should be able to grow and come to a new country. Uh, these guys have been around since 2009. Lieven (13:48.174) Ha ha ha. Chad (13:48.255) I, hey, it's all about history. It's history. Joel Cheesman (14:08.174) You've got organic growth and you've got immense investment into this company. So you kind of have the best of both worlds there for them, which is nice. The, the, the thing that they did right though, is that this country needs hourly workers and gig workers. 76 million workers were paid on hourly rates last year. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people and whether they knew this or not coming in, uh, Chad (14:32.319) Yes. Joel Cheesman (14:37.902) It's an election year and it's looking like whichever party gets in, there's going to be a border thing. There's going to be a closing or deportation depending on who gets in. And you know what that means? That means even fewer workers than there already are to do hourly positions. So job and talent, whether they plan this or not politically is an incredibly good spot because we're ready to like shut down or slow down the immigration, which means. Chad (14:56.255) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:06.766) Companies are going to pay a shit ton of money to find and hire hourly workers, gig workers, et cetera. So they're not even in every state yet. Uh, they're going to roll this thing out. They've got money to advertise. I think they're going to go full steam ahead on marketing this thing. The name kind of sucks, uh, frankly. Um, so they need to market this thing to build a brand around it. But yeah, this is blue skies in part because the investment in part because 76 million people in this country are hourly workers. Lieven (15:28.942) This is Blue skies. Joel Cheesman (15:35.246) And politically we're setting this thing up on a silver platter for job and talent, uh, to crush the U S market. So congratulations, Chad, uh, and calling me out on the show and, uh, congratulations to job and talent who looks like, uh, they're going to do really well. What is the question is. They're like, what's up with zip recruiter? This is their sweet spot. It used to be. I mean, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I, yeah, maybe it's the tech. Yeah. It's it's. Lieven (15:56.27) Dude, I just told you, it's the test. It's the test that they're doing. It's the test. Chad (15:56.415) Dude, I just told you it's the tech, the tech that they're doing. It's the tech. When you, when you're a worker and you can just literally, you can go in and you can pick your shifts and you can, and you can even go to another warehouse or if you're a nurse, if you're a nurse and you want to get some more money at the, at the hospital down the road, you can do that. You can't do that shit with zip recruiter. And I know. Lieven (16:07.726) And you can pick your ships and you can even go to another warehouse or if you're a nurse, if you're a nurse and you want to get some more money at the hospital down the road, you can do that. You can't do that shit in Zipper Crew. And I know that Leaven and his people are looking at this kind of stuff. I know, Leaven. Joel Cheesman (16:19.95) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're getting it right. I know leave, leaving, let, leaving talk. He's, he's on the, yeah, he's on the front lines of this stuff. Your thoughts on job and talent. Chad (16:22.623) that Levin and his people are looking at this kind of stuff too. Because you guys are hot into tech. So talk about this, man. Lieven (16:31.47) It's very easy. It's really easy. I mean, they're just lying. It's not true. I don't believe it. I mean, they're not making 450 million in the US. That's all fake news. Joel Cheesman (16:36.302) Hahaha! Chad (16:42.431) Really? Lieven (16:44.686) I can't imagine in fact, but no, but seriously, I mean, if that's true, then of course it's true. I'm sure it's true, but that's pretty spectacular. But I wonder that they buy a company in the US that they didn't start from scratch. I can't imagine they built $450 million and two years from scratch. Chad (17:06.431) Yes, they've been acquiring staffing companies, but I don't think they have like they were in Europe. Like they bought Norway for God's sakes. We talked about that once show, but they haven't. But the thing is rolling those organizations, those staffing organizations into this tech as like their operating system. And we talked about this with job .com. That is the way forward, but they, job .com fumbled the ball. It seems like these guys might actually know what they're doing. Lieven (17:15.438) Yeah, yeah, of course. Lieven (17:35.63) Yeah, but we looked into them really good and they're not that digital as they claim to be. I mean, it's a charade that they claim to be a digital platform, but behind the scene there are tons of people actually doing the work. So it's not that digital as anyways, 450 million is impressive and my congratulations to them. And now next question. Joel Cheesman (17:56.142) But I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Okay. Well, there's opposing views on the show kids. That's why, that's why we do the show and why we have someone like leaving. Lieven (17:58.094) You don't believe it. Don't believe it. Next. No, no, no, I do. I do. It's good. But I think, I think, I think they bought revenue. They bought revenue. They didn't start using their platform from scratch. They just started from, they had a big investor and they bought something and then it's easier. It's never easy, but it's easier. Joel Cheesman (18:17.486) Yeah, leaving smells a rat, everybody. Lieven (18:21.198) Hmm... Penta don't let. Joel Cheesman (18:23.566) Maybe I can say on some Culture Amp news. Culture Amp, an employee experience platform, has announced its acquisition of Orgnostic, a Serbian people analytics company. Orgnostics helps enterprise organizations to identify actionable insights from sources of people data. The acquisition will allow Culture Amp to integrate Orgnostics data engineering and people insights into its platform. Chad (18:27.295) Oh, okay. Lieven (18:27.598) Uh huh. Joel Cheesman (18:49.55) Promising to provide customers with accessible and multi -dimensional people analytics, the product is expected to be available in the second half of 2024. Chad, your thoughts on the Orgnostic acquisition. Chad (19:04.959) Well, unless job and talent is buying underneath another company, I only see, I don't see any acquisitions since they've come to the United States. Now on to culture amp. Uh, I'm looking on, on crunch base, looking on crunch base. You had me interested. I was, it was, it was very interesting, uh, culture amp. So employee experience matters, but only after companies were smacked in the fucking face with the great resignation, productivity dropped. Lieven (19:15.758) Meh. Chad (19:34.335) The and overpriced CEOs had to start making excuses to their boards about margins shrinking. Then big data matters after GPUs and processing speeds allowed large language models to start training on massive amounts of data. All of this. You take a look at what they're doing at at Culture Amp, much like I think job and talent, they've found a wave that nobody was really riding on or even waiting. And this is around culture. This is around, um, not just, uh, you know, employee experience, but also performance management and employee development. And those products are necessary because if you are an employee, you got to know what your path is forward. And I think that that's pretty smart. Now it's a wave again, that I think it's smart to ride, but much like D E I B. I don't believe companies are gonna ride this forever. So Coltramp needs to make some noise and sell to a much bigger player in the talent ecosystem within the next 24 months. Cause I don't think this wave is going to stick around. Joel Cheesman (20:49.806) Well, first of all, they need to get rid of the Orgnostic brand because that's awful. Orgnostic needs to go away in the next six months for sure. Back to Culture Amp, which I'm no expert on, but I know that they've been around a while and I know that they were a very important product when sites didn't talk to each other. Databases didn't interact with each other. Everything was disparate. Chad (20:55.071) That's easy. Joel Cheesman (21:17.006) Culture AMP, everything you did in Culture AMP was in that. Now you have a world where everything talks to each other. You have language models now interacting with each other. So Culture AMP needed something to say, okay, we're going to be your sort of walled garden employee engagement system, your upskilling system. We'll do it all for you. And there are so many more companies now and products and services that put those pieces elsewhere. So Orgnostic, as I understand it, Chad (21:44.191) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (21:45.71) we'll bring all your ATSs, all your SaaS products together. And now they can bring that data into Culture Amp. So now Culture Amp can start speaking the language of all these other services that are out there. So in theory, it should work really well. Historically, those are pretty hard to pull off. And frankly, if you look at Orgnostics executive team, it looks like a rock band from the 70s who reunited for like one last tour. So I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to work out, but I know a few people at ColdTramp, they're pretty smart folks. Hopefully they can figure out. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. In practice, I wouldn't put any money on it. We'll see what happens. Chad (22:17.439) Nah. Chad (22:29.471) Yeah, I do have to say though, we just talked to Jason Corcello over at Acadian and we asked him what was the biggest miss he's had and he said culture ramp. I thought that was interesting that that that interview is going to come out later. Kids don't worry. Joel Cheesman (22:33.038) Mm -hmm. We did. Joel Cheesman (22:43.854) And that's Mrs. N didn't invest and wished he had. Yeah. Just want to make. Lieven (22:44.846) All right. Chad (22:46.399) Yeah. Yep. Joel Cheesman (22:50.926) Leave in your thoughts. Lieven (22:53.23) Okay, well, I totally agree with Joel about the name. Orgnastic, or what's it? Or - Orgnostic? Yeah, or - Orgnostic. Yeah, it's like agnost, but then argnost. Anyways, difficult name, but they're from Serbia. And Serbia is one of the few European countries I've never been, which says it all. But, I must say, I didn't know culture amp. Chad (23:00.095) Orgasmic is that what it was orgasmic? Joel Cheesman (23:01.166) You Joel Cheesman (23:07.438) Oh, it's, yeah, it's not good. Lieven (23:22.03) To be honest, I'm not, I can't say much about these kinds of tools because I'm into recruitment into marketing, digital marketing, but I'm not really familiar with HR analytic platforms. That's, that's after the recruitment part and that's another business, but it's not because I have a lack of knowledge that I don't have an opinion, of course. So I'll be happy to share it. But I checked our culture and websites and they claim we get the employee engagement, performance and development tools and insights you'll need to build a category defining culture. I have no idea what a category -defining culture is, but I think we want one. But I afterwards looked at the agnostic approach, and at first I must say I was a bit skeptical. It's like another HR data dashboard. But their generator -VI demo is really impressive. It's the best I've seen so far. And it's like they put their own GPT on top of the Power BI HR dashboard, whatever. And then... It actually works and you can ask lots of stupid questions and it comes up with great answers without the hassle you normally have to go through to gather all the data and put it into charts, et cetera. It does a great job. So I can imagine if you're a big company and you have lots of data and you need to prepare something for, let's say, a board meeting, this is a blessing. This is amazing. And I think this actually is a very good buy. So if this was a buy or sell, I would be happily buying. Joel Cheesman (24:27.662) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:43.854) Okay. Lieven (24:44.43) I liked it. I'm going to follow them. Chad (24:44.511) So question, question, even as you talk about business intelligence going into a platform like this, as we take a look at like Gemini and then Google has Looker, which has a, it's a great way to really visualize data. Do you think this, this space is going to get commoditized because a company like Google using large language models like Gemini will, will actually just own it. Lieven (24:56.622) Mm. Lieven (25:14.414) Well, you have a few companies able to do it. So you have a chat GPT, I open AI, you have Gemini, Google, you have all the others. Let's say four or five, maybe, which are upstandard now. It will be, how do you call it? Commoditized. Yeah, it's a difficult word. Commoditized. Sounds good. I need to use that word more often. I'm going to commoditize you. Yeah, of course. And now another beer. But, um... Chad (25:17.439) Mm -hmm. Chad (25:29.727) Commoditized, yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:29.998) Commoditized. Yeah. Impress your European friends. Lieven (25:44.046) No, no, I'm sure. And I'm already building these kinds of GPTs for our own usage. But I'm sure if someone who actually knows what he's doing, it's not difficult to make one, but it's probably very difficult to make the best one. So I'm sure we're going to see great commoditations. How do you say it? Well, you know, but I'm definitely sure this is a big business and this is one to follow. And actually, the first one I saw, which was really convincing, was this one. So Orgnostic is a company to follow. Orgnostic. Yeah, Orgnostics. Yes. All right. Orgnostic. Joel Cheesman (26:16.782) Leaven loves orgasm. I mean, orgnostic. Chad (26:22.783) Orgastic. Joel Cheesman (26:23.214) We'll be, we'll be right back. Chad (26:30.911) Oh, you know what that means. You thought it was over. You thought it was over. Uh -uh. Uh -uh. Joel Cheesman (26:31.182) Alright guys, just when you thought Keibu was gone, the conference was over. Oh no no. Lieven (26:32.174) KEEVOO! K, boo. Joel Cheesman (26:41.038) All right, leaving. Listeners know that we had your conference recently in Amsterdam. You look like you've recovered nicely. The surveys are in, the opinions are in. Let's talk about the conference. What were your takeaways? What were some of the survey data? What you got? Lieven (27:00.718) OK, what do we have? So maybe the most important number, if you will, we sent a survey to the participants. About 30 % actually filled in the survey, which is good. And on average, they scored the whole event 82%, which is good. People are pretty critical. Critical, that's the word, right? So 80 % is good. There were, of course, there were whining about the quality of the food, which. Chad (27:22.175) Yep. Yeah. Lieven (27:28.558) Mostly were the Belgian participants. No, I know, I know you just ate it all, but the Belgian participants. Joel Cheesman (27:29.102) That wasn't me. That wasn't me. Until I found out Chipotle, Chipotle is not in Amsterdam. Other than that, I was a little upset until I realized that. So how many people showed up? It was a full house. Chad and I were there. Chad (27:33.631) Yeah, that's why they. Lieven (27:39.502) Yeah, but. 470, 570 something, yeah, something like that. It was a full house indeed. Joel Cheesman (27:48.91) Full house there. Uh, yeah, I, this thing can grow. I mean, I told you, I think there's no reason why it can't be a lot more people, a lot more sponsors, a real, you know, kind of traditional conference. Sorry. Lieven (27:56.526) No, but I know, I know, but that's your American view. We like it's cozy and I know, I know you think, why don't you make it bigger? And then my question would be, why should I make it bigger? We're not into it for the money. We're just, it's all show off, you know, taught leadership, but also it's fun. It's sharing knowledge. Yeah. But in fact, you're right. If you put some effort in it, this could definitely be bigger, but we're still focusing on the quality of the speakers. And. Joel Cheesman (28:08.174) Okay. Joel Cheesman (28:15.342) It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Lieven (28:26.318) We don't focus on sponsors, for example. I mean, Bullhorn was there and I think they were pretty happy and Vonk was there and some other sponsors. But it's not like I made five calls to companies, would you like to sponsor us? We're not into it for the business. We're not into organizing conferences to make money. It's about speakers. And I have the look house of HR is my main sponsor. So our main sponsor, we're organizing it. So. Joel Cheesman (28:47.854) So European. Lieven (28:54.99) They provide the money I need to get the best speakers. I mean, we could even hire you. Chat and cheese flying over from the United States to Amsterdam. Just, I know. Joel Cheesman (29:01.614) I know. That's high dollar. That's high dollar shit. Chad (29:06.783) And we have a balcony again and everything that was, uh, this setup was amazing by the way. I, this, this venue and the setup was, was amazing. And I don't care what anybody says having KBU come out after lunch when everybody just, they just got done eating, you know, you get into the after lunch kind of, you know, sleepy phase. Oh no, oh no, not when KBU comes out. Oh no. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:14.542) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:29.134) Mm -hmm. Lieven (29:33.23) Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no Chad (29:37.215) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:37.454) You Joel Cheesman (29:42.254) Oh, come on. Everyone knows K -Boo at this point. Finland's favorite son, K -Boo. K -Boo. Chad (29:44.639) Yeah Joel Cheesman (30:00.238) It was there. Lieven (30:02.99) After the whole Congress, he gave his whole start of the European tour, which is sold out, by the way. But it was fun. Then I'm not going to get into much detail about all the keynotes and what they said. We have a document with the three key takeaways from all speakers. I shared it on LinkedIn. You can find it somewhere. You might have to put some effort in it, but I'm sure you will. Sure, definitely. Joel Cheesman (30:07.246) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:24.046) Um, would you be okay if I gave some, uh, some of my takeaways just real quickly? Uh, so, so the first thing is always the question we talk about AI automation. People ask, are we in a, we're in for a world with fewer recruiters and keynotes are very good about dancing around, not saying no, we'll still need lots of recruiters. And they always look so uncomfortable talking about that. I think that it's okay to come to the realization that. Chad (30:39.743) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:53.582) The world will need fewer recruiters as we evolve this technology. That doesn't mean recruiters are gone and the ones that we have will be kick ass and really, really good at what they do. But the dancing around, we're not going to lose recruiters, I think is, is just false and we should stop doing that. The second thing I took away, um, the comment of, uh, people will stop looking for jobs and jobs will start looking for people or jobs will start finding people. Uh, that was, uh, one of Borman's takeaways or my takeaway from his, uh, his session that stuck with me. And I think that, uh, the thought of a co -pilot, which also came out, I think in the questioning, uh, the Q and a that Chad and I did with bill was that people will have these co -pilots and they will find restaurants for you and they will find, uh, you know, the cheapest hotel for you. And they will also potentially find the best job for you. So a world with these co -pilots. that do the work, I think is something that we should keep our eye on. And lastly, um, Hilkey, who we've interviewed on the show, a New York times reporter talked about bias and AI and the testing that goes on. I mean, she really, uh, sort of crystallize or encapsulated exactly the craziness that goes on in some of these tests. I mean, like pushing the space bar and seeing how fast you can do it as some sort of prerequisite to getting hired. It's really not just dumb. It's also incredibly, uh, prejudice against people that might have disabilities that make it harder for them to push the space bar if they can push it at all in some cases. So to me, that was super eye opening, but those were a couple of takeaways that I had, uh, from the conference being in Europe. The, the point of view is, is refreshing the way that you look at the world is a little bit different. And that's always, uh, refreshing for me as well. Chad (32:17.183) Yeah. Lieven (32:17.326) Yeah. Lieven (32:24.814) Thanks. Chad (32:44.863) Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me was convergence. I mean, what we were talking about 10 years in the US was not being talked about in Europe. It felt like two entirely different ecosystems, but today I feel like they are becoming one. And everybody understands that obviously, you know, we have turned into a global economy, but we haven't acted like it. It almost feels like on both, on both... sides of the pond that we're starting to see this convergence of what is important and what we're leaning towards. So that was amazing. I just love going to this conference mainly because of that piece so that we can learn in this case, you know, from the Dutch that were all around us, but also from the Belgians who took a train in. Lieven (33:34.35) And I agree with what you said about Hilke. She said something and she actually proved it, something I always suspected, that most of those HR tools are just full of shit. So they claim they're measuring all kinds of metrics and they give you a score and they do the matching, et cetera. It's just bullshit. And she tested it and a tool measuring or figuring out how your English skills were. Joel Cheesman (33:45.486) Mm -hmm. Lieven (34:03.694) She spoke German to it and she got a 70 .5 % English. And she confronted the makers of the tool with this ridiculous results. And they said, yeah, but it's about how convincing you sound even in German, something like that. So that's indeed that's bullshit. And it's something HR has to be always aware of that they can be scammed and they will be. But... Joel Cheesman (34:07.79) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:19.79) Yeah. Chad (34:27.007) Yes. Lieven (34:29.358) We have some very interesting, I always liked John Norton as well from a staffing industry analyst. He gave a great presentation about how AI is impacting already our business. And I'm talking about the staffing industry. Some others were really interesting as well. So even though it's my Congress, I'm probably biased also. And Hilke is constantly telling us not to be biased. But I liked it. It was good. You should be there next year. Joel Cheesman (34:34.573) Mm -hmm. Chad (34:56.863) Are we doing it in Amsterdam in the same place next year? That's the question. Come on, don't tease us. Joel Cheesman (34:58.318) Yeah, any insights in the next year? Lieven (35:00.078) Ah, could be, but Jovo constantly tells me I have to make it bigger so then we need a bigger location. I don't know. Joel Cheesman (35:07.246) Since when do you, since when do you or any, anybody listens to me? Jesus, Jesus. Chad (35:07.359) Yeah, last thing you need to do is listen to an American. All I got to say is I'm just happy you didn't punch us both in the face when we went out and we wouldn't stop saying, I ain't leaving. Lieven (35:11.246) I'm sorry. Lieven (35:19.534) Yeah, but I was after the Joel Cheesman (35:20.142) while drinking Red Bull and Jaegerbombs compliments of Bill Borman. Well, let's hope it's not the last sound bite that we hear from Kebu on this show. Everybody enjoyed it as usual. We out. Lieven (35:26.67) Yeah, and 15 Belgian beers. Chad (35:40.639) We out. Lieven (35:40.942) We out. Joel Cheesman (00:29.422) OOOOHHH Yeah, three guys forever suffering from a total eclipse of the heart. You are listening to the Chad and cheese podcast as Europe. I'm your cohost, Joel Dusseldorf Cheeseman. Chad (00:44.991) This is Chad, turn around, bright eyes, so wash. Lieven (00:49.326) And I'm leaving, not centrusted in your stupid eclipse. Funny when I am. Joel Cheesman (00:54.19) And on this episode, job and talent goes West, orgnostic gets amped up, and final thoughts from the eRecruitment conference. Let's do this. Chad (01:08.895) What do you mean you don't care about it? Was it because you were not in the path of totality, Levin? Are you jealous? Were you left out, huh? Joel Cheesman (01:13.55) He was left out. The whole con. Lieven (01:18.158) I kept staring at the sun, I didn't see one eclipse at all, so it was fake news. No eclipse... doesn't exist. Joel Cheesman (01:25.038) You pulled a Trump and stared at the sun all day. That's, that's not healthy, leaving. Not healthy. Lieven (01:27.79) I mean... Yeah, I read about it indeed. The glasses were to woke for Trump or something. You shouldn't wear them. Oh, wow. Joel Cheesman (01:36.366) Yeah. I have a theory that you and CABU were hanging out in Finland. That's my, that's my, that's my theory. Trying to watch in the Northern lights or something. Chad (01:41.023) More than life. Lieven (01:43.054) I think in Finland it's still dark. add something else than your stupid eclipse normal lights Chad (01:47.519) He doesn't. Joel Cheesman (01:53.07) You're bitter today. Look, this, so we've got like Chad, Chad's on the cusp of Euro Chad. He's like on cloud nine, riding high and, and at neon Chad, freshly shorn Chad. Uh, yeah. And leaving in all black as usual. Uh, just, just, uh, Lieven (01:55.054) No, no, no, no, I'm happy. Chad (01:55.263) HATEFUL Chad (01:59.263) Yes. I'm also Neo, Neon Chad. See this? Lieven (02:02.926) Yeah, it's nice. I didn't even see it. Damn. Cool. Chad (02:12.159) As usual, he's getting ready. He's still auditioning for sprockets. Lieven (02:13.358) This is Navy, Navy blue. I said it before, Navy blue. What is Prakets? Joel Cheesman (02:15.982) Navy blue, my bad. Midnight blue. Joel Cheesman (02:21.038) You Lieven (02:24.206) Do I wanna know what sprocket is? I don't know sprockets, no. Joel Cheesman (02:24.8) Jesus, you don't know sprockets? Oh, I don't know if you can get SNL clips on YouTube out in Europe. Can you? Well, if you, yeah, if you search sprockets, sprockets SNL from the nineties and old, an old German, old German, German skit, it's good. It's good stuff. Chad (02:26.207) Oh, Saturday Night Live. Oh, I think you can. I think you can get the sprockets. Yeah. Touch my monkey. Touch my monkey. Lieven (02:33.23) sprockets. No touch my monkey. Most definitely not touch her monkey. Chad (02:43.391) just got turned down. No, no touching. All right. I'm going to give a shout out to, to, to European wages. And this is what I mean. Uh, so a study came out and showed pretty much what every European country was getting paid, you know, from top to bottom. Not going to go through all of those. Actually, I want to compare them to, to, uh, the, the U S um, Luxembourg is $47 or Joel Cheesman (02:47.31) Chad, what you got? Chad (03:12.255) 47 euros 20 per hour compare Wow 20 47 20 yes, it's it's an average. It's an average and then the the highest paid state in the United States is and I did today's conversion is 34 25 euro, so we're talking about a pretty huge discrepancy 47 20 Lieven (03:16.462) on average. Joel Cheesman (03:19.438) Party in Luxembourg, baby. Chad (03:41.407) to 35 .25, those are the highs in both. So there are five European countries that are above Massachusetts salary per hour rate, Belgium being one of those, leaving. And there are 10 European countries that are above 30 euro salary per hour or dollars per hour rate, which is $32 an hour for all you Americans that are listening. So yeah, shout out to getting paid. Lieven (03:53.71) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:08.558) So, so tax tax tax, the Chousets is the highest hourly way it's tax to choose. All right. Uh, so I'm going to, I'm going to take that, uh, shout out into the gutter with my next, uh, shout out. So Chad, you and I, you and I grew up in the seventies, uh, and I'm going to assume that you were at least at one truck stop, uh, in your, in your youth. If you, if you were in a truck stop gas station bathroom, Lieven (04:08.814) Thanks a -Ju -Sits! Chad (04:12.895) Getting paid. Lieven (04:15.182) Yeah. Chad (04:26.719) Mm -hmm. Yep. Chad (04:31.135) Jesus. Sticky floor. Joel Cheesman (04:37.23) in the seventies and you were a child, you got some sex ed. You got the coin slotted French tickler. You learned that it had to be ribbed for her pleasure. Those are gone. I haven't seen any of those for decades, but thankfully Germany, these coin operated sex machines are still a thing. So. Chad (04:47.967) Condom machine. Lieven (04:51.214) French tickler, nice. Joel Cheesman (05:04.75) So let me, let me read you some of the, uh, the, the products at, in a German. I think this was a Dusseldorf that I was visiting. Uh, you've got, uh, you've got the Billy boy, which is a condom. I think you've got the love ring vibro, which looks like it's, I don't know if, I don't know if the batteries come with it or you got it like put the batteries in separately, but, but that was fun. Uh, you got, you had a minute, many, many vibrate, many vibrator, uh, and you had the, I'll, I'll, I'll mispronounce this, but the D. Lieven (05:05.199) and Chad (05:16.895) Okay. Okay. Oh. Lieven (05:19.118) Of course, that's a classic. Lieven (05:26.126) You just move it by hand. Joel Cheesman (05:34.446) Kunchstiche, Stika, vagina, which is the travel vagina. So it's a party in a German bathroom. I didn't have to go to a truck stop for this. It was just in a regular city square bathroom. So shout out to the Deutschland bathrooms. A lot of fun. Chad (05:39.999) Oh, okay. Lieven (05:40.11) Okay. Chad (05:43.039) Hmm. Chad (05:51.487) Yeah, you don't see that in puritanic, uh, America. No, only, only, only in truck stops only in trucks. Joel Cheesman (05:54.574) You used to. Back when America was great, you could have the French tickler. Joel Cheesman (06:04.27) the hubs of commercial, commercial success, truck stops. Top that one, Levin. Lieven (06:06.158) Hello. I've never seen them, so I think I don't frequent the places you do Joel, not even one in Dusseldorf now. But I don't feel like I'm missing a lot. Okay, okay, I have to admit it, I have one in my room. But... Chad (06:13.535) Imagine that. Joel Cheesman (06:18.574) Play coy with me, Leaven. The guy's got a tree house in his backyard telling me he's not freaky. Lieven (06:26.606) That's right. That's right. In fact, it's a tree mansion. We call it a tree mansion because the house is so common. OK, the House of Commons. Anyways, Chet, you were talking about those wages. Did you know in Belgium we have something called the Automatic Wage Indexing System? Is this something? This is actually pretty cool. So at the moment, the. Joel Cheesman (06:31.534) Free Manchin, nice. Chad (06:43.263) Mm -hmm. Chad (06:50.239) Did not. Joel Cheesman (06:53.294) Tell us more. Lieven (06:55.694) the life cost is increasing, then the wages are indexed automatically. So people in Belgium will always have the same buying power. That was the whole idea. So the moment there is some kind of a price index and when let's say you go to the grocery store and you put all these things in your baskets, the moment the price on average is going above certain limits, everyone's wages are indexed by 5%, 3%, whatever. So last year with the with the whole, we had to index prices, sorry, wages five times in one year, because everything was getting so expensive because of the crisis in Ukraine and people got a salary raise five times in one year. That's pretty impressive. So that's why we have the highest wages, I think, in Europe next to Luxembourg, which isn't a country at all, so we don't account them. But that's why I'm just happy to educate you, American bumpkins. You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay. My shout out goes to the German unions for the first time in my life. I'm giving a shout out to the unions and why? Because they were the first to get on the barricades and defend robots rights to take a day off. And this actually is a fact. So the German court rules robots must take Sundays off. So the legal battle was triggered by. Chad (07:57.599) Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah. Chad (08:06.303) Oh wow. Lieven (08:23.214) Yeah, I know, I know. Joel Cheesman (08:24.366) Yeah. Lieven (08:26.094) So the union fundamentally opposes Sunday shopping, arguing that retail staff needs Sunday as a guaranteed day off to spend time with family and friends. And there was a retailer in Germany who had a totally automated mini shop chain. He hadn't, no one was working for him at all. And he had to close down his automated shops on Sunday because of the robots. So he had to, they needed the day off too. And the union... Chad (08:34.847) Now, that's something. Lieven (08:54.126) triggers the whole legal battle and the court followed it. So shout out to the unions for protecting the rights of the robots. Chad (09:02.239) That's right. And then on Sundays, you can't even get them maintained because nobody's allowed to work. So, I mean, you know, it'd be different if you could have maintenance on that day. Lieven (09:07.054) Ah no, of course. No, if you ran out of coke in the vending machine then nobody is allowed to put a new one in. I wonder what they do with the bakeries on Sunday. Probably it's allowed. Should be. Yeah, of course. Not in German, you get Kaiser breads. Chad (09:25.503) We all need a good croissant. Joel Cheesman (09:25.806) What do you think they'll do about the robots and Chad (09:31.295) guys for watching guys for braida Joel Cheesman (09:32.238) What do you think Scotland will do about the robots, Chad? Anything? No. Lieven (09:37.582) I'll abuse him probably. Chad (09:37.759) Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be amazing. Joel Cheesman (09:42.83) Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:49.71) So some, some quick travel. Uh, we just got back from Amsterdam not too long ago, but Chad and I'll be headed to Scotland, uh, in May for a little Scotch slash interviews slash exciting conversations with exciting Scott Scottish startups. And then, uh, don't forget, uh, rec fest in July. Uh, I'll be there. Allegedly a coal cheeseman, uh, spotting will be a year number two in the making. Uh, I need someone to help pass out those t -shirts and. Chad (10:09.727) right. Chad (10:16.543) our equipment pack mule. Yes. Joel Cheesman (10:19.342) and, uh, sneak in, uh, chugs of beer while I'm not looking my seven 17. Yeah. Shh. Shh. They're listening, Chad. They're listening. They're listening. Chad. Don't, don't say anything. Don't say anything. Chad (10:24.159) Beer? More like whiskey. He was drinking everything. That kid was drinking everything. Chad (10:35.263) ZAPI! Joel Cheesman (10:38.574) All right, kids, job and talent experienced substantial growth in the U S market in 2023. Revenue came in at $450 million. That's a 22 % increase year on year. And the U S became the company's largest and fastest growing market as well as its most profitable in 2024, 2024 job and talent plans to further expand its market share in the U S by rolling out a revamped. product suite aiming to transform the interactions between businesses and workers. Chad, your thoughts on the growth of job and talent. Chad (11:15.487) Well, Joel, I've got to bring up that back in May of 2022, you pondered whether job and talent would be all in on the US regional strategy and then, you know, leave and laughed at us because they were considered a region or if they were just playing a little game of just the tip. I think we can say that they're all in, there's no question. But you also said that coming to America would be a disaster for them. It hasn't, hasn't seemed to turn out that way. Joel Cheesman (11:41.87) Hmm. Chad (11:44.127) The US job market right now is booming in all the shift work arenas, which is exactly where job and talent plays I've said it on several podcasts prior to this one not just about job and talent but the staffing company industry that are the staffing company that Uber rises shift work wins job and talent is still small and Start -up II enough to be nimble while the a decos and ronstads are way too slow and lethargic. They just can't They can't do something like this. They're just way too damn big. But what Uber is doing for rides and eats, Job and Talent is doing for a multitude of different jobs. And where Job and Talent are flourishing is around high volume jobs. So if you're in need of a new gig or just some extra cash, you can search for jobs near you, which everybody does on Google, review the hourly rate. Joel Cheesman (12:17.006) Yeah. Chad (12:41.375) watch videos of the tasks you're gonna be performing at that job and then apply. And as it says on the website, quote, no resume required, just answer some simple questions in our app and get the job. Plus you get paid in the damn app. So this is the future of shift work and job and talent announcement of 22 % year over year growth last year and generating 450 million in revenue. Joel Cheesman (13:01.838) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:09.774) Mm -hmm. Chad (13:10.079) feels like just the start. I'm waiting to see which companies try to buy these guys and or emulate because I mean, this is big kudos. Not many companies come to the US and do well. You even see companies who are already in the US like job .com who said they want to do this and they're having problems. Rumor mill says even making payroll right now, right? Staffing. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:24.686) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:36.302) Oh, sounds like a tease. Chad (13:39.135) Yeah, so anyway, yeah, big kudos to Job and Talent. 450 mil. Joel Cheesman (13:45.166) So you're going to call me out like that on the podcast chat. That's, that's, that's not cool. That's not cool. Uh, uh, yeah. So look, so far, so good. Uh, and when you get a, what, a million, 3 billion, uh, a hundred or $1 .3 billion in investment, you should be able to grow and come to a new country. Uh, these guys have been around since 2009. Lieven (13:48.174) Ha ha ha. Chad (13:48.255) I, hey, it's all about history. It's history. Joel Cheesman (14:08.174) You've got organic growth and you've got immense investment into this company. So you kind of have the best of both worlds there for them, which is nice. The, the, the thing that they did right though, is that this country needs hourly workers and gig workers. 76 million workers were paid on hourly rates last year. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people and whether they knew this or not coming in, uh, Chad (14:32.319) Yes. Joel Cheesman (14:37.902) It's an election year and it's looking like whichever party gets in, there's going to be a border thing. There's going to be a closing or deportation depending on who gets in. And you know what that means? That means even fewer workers than there already are to do hourly positions. So job and talent, whether they plan this or not politically is an incredibly good spot because we're ready to like shut down or slow down the immigration, which means. Chad (14:56.255) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:06.766) Companies are going to pay a shit ton of money to find and hire hourly workers, gig workers, et cetera. So they're not even in every state yet. Uh, they're going to roll this thing out. They've got money to advertise. I think they're going to go full steam ahead on marketing this thing. The name kind of sucks, uh, frankly. Um, so they need to market this thing to build a brand around it. But yeah, this is blue skies in part because the investment in part because 76 million people in this country are hourly workers. Lieven (15:28.942) This is Blue skies. Joel Cheesman (15:35.246) And politically we're setting this thing up on a silver platter for job and talent, uh, to crush the U S market. So congratulations, Chad, uh, and calling me out on the show and, uh, congratulations to job and talent who looks like, uh, they're going to do really well. What is the question is. They're like, what's up with zip recruiter? This is their sweet spot. It used to be. I mean, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I, yeah, maybe it's the tech. Yeah. It's it's. Lieven (15:56.27) Dude, I just told you, it's the test. It's the test that they're doing. It's the test. Chad (15:56.415) Dude, I just told you it's the tech, the tech that they're doing. It's the tech. When you, when you're a worker and you can just literally, you can go in and you can pick your shifts and you can, and you can even go to another warehouse or if you're a nurse, if you're a nurse and you want to get some more money at the, at the hospital down the road, you can do that. You can't do that shit with zip recruiter. And I know. Lieven (16:07.726) And you can pick your ships and you can even go to another warehouse or if you're a nurse, if you're a nurse and you want to get some more money at the hospital down the road, you can do that. You can't do that shit in Zipper Crew. And I know that Leaven and his people are looking at this kind of stuff. I know, Leaven. Joel Cheesman (16:19.95) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're getting it right. I know leave, leaving, let, leaving talk. He's, he's on the, yeah, he's on the front lines of this stuff. Your thoughts on job and talent. Chad (16:22.623) that Levin and his people are looking at this kind of stuff too. Because you guys are hot into tech. So talk about this, man. Lieven (16:31.47) It's very easy. It's really easy. I mean, they're just lying. It's not true. I don't believe it. I mean, they're not making 450 million in the US. That's all fake news. Joel Cheesman (16:36.302) Hahaha! Chad (16:42.431) Really? Lieven (16:44.686) I can't imagine in fact, but no, but seriously, I mean, if that's true, then of course it's true. I'm sure it's true, but that's pretty spectacular. But I wonder that they buy a company in the US that they didn't start from scratch. I can't imagine they built $450 million and two years from scratch. Chad (17:06.431) Yes, they've been acquiring staffing companies, but I don't think they have like they were in Europe. Like they bought Norway for God's sakes. We talked about that once show, but they haven't. But the thing is rolling those organizations, those staffing organizations into this tech as like their operating system. And we talked about this with job .com. That is the way forward, but they, job .com fumbled the ball. It seems like these guys might actually know what they're doing. Lieven (17:15.438) Yeah, yeah, of course. Lieven (17:35.63) Yeah, but we looked into them really good and they're not that digital as they claim to be. I mean, it's a charade that they claim to be a digital platform, but behind the scene there are tons of people actually doing the work. So it's not that digital as anyways, 450 million is impressive and my congratulations to them. And now next question. Joel Cheesman (17:56.142) But I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Okay. Well, there's opposing views on the show kids. That's why, that's why we do the show and why we have someone like leaving. Lieven (17:58.094) You don't believe it. Don't believe it. Next. No, no, no, I do. I do. It's good. But I think, I think, I think they bought revenue. They bought revenue. They didn't start using their platform from scratch. They just started from, they had a big investor and they bought something and then it's easier. It's never easy, but it's easier. Joel Cheesman (18:17.486) Yeah, leaving smells a rat, everybody. Lieven (18:21.198) Hmm... Penta don't let. Joel Cheesman (18:23.566) Maybe I can say on some Culture Amp news. Culture Amp, an employee experience platform, has announced its acquisition of Orgnostic, a Serbian people analytics company. Orgnostics helps enterprise organizations to identify actionable insights from sources of people data. The acquisition will allow Culture Amp to integrate Orgnostics data engineering and people insights into its platform. Chad (18:27.295) Oh, okay. Lieven (18:27.598) Uh huh. Joel Cheesman (18:49.55) Promising to provide customers with accessible and multi -dimensional people analytics, the product is expected to be available in the second half of 2024. Chad, your thoughts on the Orgnostic acquisition. Chad (19:04.959) Well, unless job and talent is buying underneath another company, I only see, I don't see any acquisitions since they've come to the United States. Now on to culture amp. Uh, I'm looking on, on crunch base, looking on crunch base. You had me interested. I was, it was, it was very interesting, uh, culture amp. So employee experience matters, but only after companies were smacked in the fucking face with the great resignation, productivity dropped. Lieven (19:15.758) Meh. Chad (19:34.335) The and overpriced CEOs had to start making excuses to their boards about margins shrinking. Then big data matters after GPUs and processing speeds allowed large language models to start training on massive amounts of data. All of this. You take a look at what they're doing at at Culture Amp, much like I think job and talent, they've found a wave that nobody was really riding on or even waiting. And this is around culture. This is around, um, not just, uh, you know, employee experience, but also performance management and employee development. And those products are necessary because if you are an employee, you got to know what your path is forward. And I think that that's pretty smart. Now it's a wave again, that I think it's smart to ride, but much like D E I B. I don't believe companies are gonna ride this forever. So Coltramp needs to make some noise and sell to a much bigger player in the talent ecosystem within the next 24 months. Cause I don't think this wave is going to stick around. Joel Cheesman (20:49.806) Well, first of all, they need to get rid of the Orgnostic brand because that's awful. Orgnostic needs to go away in the next six months for sure. Back to Culture Amp, which I'm no expert on, but I know that they've been around a while and I know that they were a very important product when sites didn't talk to each other. Databases didn't interact with each other. Everything was disparate. Chad (20:55.071) That's easy. Joel Cheesman (21:17.006) Culture AMP, everything you did in Culture AMP was in that. Now you have a world where everything talks to each other. You have language models now interacting with each other. So Culture AMP needed something to say, okay, we're going to be your sort of walled garden employee engagement system, your upskilling system. We'll do it all for you. And there are so many more companies now and products and services that put those pieces elsewhere. So Orgnostic, as I understand it, Chad (21:44.191) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (21:45.71) we'll bring all your ATSs, all your SaaS products together. And now they can bring that data into Culture Amp. So now Culture Amp can start speaking the language of all these other services that are out there. So in theory, it should work really well. Historically, those are pretty hard to pull off. And frankly, if you look at Orgnostics executive team, it looks like a rock band from the 70s who reunited for like one last tour. So I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to work out, but I know a few people at ColdTramp, they're pretty smart folks. Hopefully they can figure out. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. In practice, I wouldn't put any money on it. We'll see what happens. Chad (22:17.439) Nah. Chad (22:29.471) Yeah, I do have to say though, we just talked to Jason Corcello over at Acadian and we asked him what was the biggest miss he's had and he said culture ramp. I thought that was interesting that that that interview is going to come out later. Kids don't worry. Joel Cheesman (22:33.038) Mm -hmm. We did. Joel Cheesman (22:43.854) And that's Mrs. N didn't invest and wished he had. Yeah. Just want to make. Lieven (22:44.846) All right. Chad (22:46.399) Yeah. Yep. Joel Cheesman (22:50.926) Leave in your thoughts. Lieven (22:53.23) Okay, well, I totally agree with Joel about the name. Orgnastic, or what's it? Or - Orgnostic? Yeah, or - Orgnostic. Yeah, it's like agnost, but then argnost. Anyways, difficult name, but they're from Serbia. And Serbia is one of the few European countries I've never been, which says it all. But, I must say, I didn't know culture amp. Chad (23:00.095) Orgasmic is that what it was orgasmic? Joel Cheesman (23:01.166) You Joel Cheesman (23:07.438) Oh, it's, yeah, it's not good. Lieven (23:22.03) To be honest, I'm not, I can't say much about these kinds of tools because I'm into recruitment into marketing, digital marketing, but I'm not really familiar with HR analytic platforms. That's, that's after the recruitment part and that's another business, but it's not because I have a lack of knowledge that I don't have an opinion, of course. So I'll be happy to share it. But I checked our culture and websites and they claim we get the employee engagement, performance and development tools and insights you'll need to build a category defining culture. I have no idea what a category -defining culture is, but I think we want one. But I afterwards looked at the agnostic approach, and at first I must say I was a bit skeptical. It's like another HR data dashboard. But their generator -VI demo is really impressive. It's the best I've seen so far. And it's like they put their own GPT on top of the Power BI HR dashboard, whatever. And then... It actually works and you can ask lots of stupid questions and it comes up with great answers without the hassle you normally have to go through to gather all the data and put it into charts, et cetera. It does a great job. So I can imagine if you're a big company and you have lots of data and you need to prepare something for, let's say, a board meeting, this is a blessing. This is amazing. And I think this actually is a very good buy. So if this was a buy or sell, I would be happily buying. Joel Cheesman (24:27.662) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:43.854) Okay. Lieven (24:44.43) I liked it. I'm going to follow them. Chad (24:44.511) So question, question, even as you talk about business intelligence going into a platform like this, as we take a look at like Gemini and then Google has Looker, which has a, it's a great way to really visualize data. Do you think this, this space is going to get commoditized because a company like Google using large language models like Gemini will, will actually just own it. Lieven (24:56.622) Mm. Lieven (25:14.414) Well, you have a few companies able to do it. So you have a chat GPT, I open AI, you have Gemini, Google, you have all the others. Let's say four or five, maybe, which are upstandard now. It will be, how do you call it? Commoditized. Yeah, it's a difficult word. Commoditized. Sounds good. I need to use that word more often. I'm going to commoditize you. Yeah, of course. And now another beer. But, um... Chad (25:17.439) Mm -hmm. Chad (25:29.727) Commoditized, yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:29.998) Commoditized. Yeah. Impress your European friends. Lieven (25:44.046) No, no, I'm sure. And I'm already building these kinds of GPTs for our own usage. But I'm sure if someone who actually knows what he's doing, it's not difficult to make one, but it's probably very difficult to make the best one. So I'm sure we're going to see great commoditations. How do you say it? Well, you know, but I'm definitely sure this is a big business and this is one to follow. And actually, the first one I saw, which was really convincing, was this one. So Orgnostic is a company to follow. Orgnostic. Yeah, Orgnostics. Yes. All right. Orgnostic. Joel Cheesman (26:16.782) Leaven loves orgasm. I mean, orgnostic. Chad (26:22.783) Orgastic. Joel Cheesman (26:23.214) We'll be, we'll be right back. Chad (26:30.911) Oh, you know what that means. You thought it was over. You thought it was over. Uh -uh. Uh -uh. Joel Cheesman (26:31.182) Alright guys, just when you thought Keibu was gone, the conference was over. Oh no no. Lieven (26:32.174) KEEVOO! K, boo. Joel Cheesman (26:41.038) All right, leaving. Listeners know that we had your conference recently in Amsterdam. You look like you've recovered nicely. The surveys are in, the opinions are in. Let's talk about the conference. What were your takeaways? What were some of the survey data? What you got? Lieven (27:00.718) OK, what do we have? So maybe the most important number, if you will, we sent a survey to the participants. About 30 % actually filled in the survey, which is good. And on average, they scored the whole event 82%, which is good. People are pretty critical. Critical, that's the word, right? So 80 % is good. There were, of course, there were whining about the quality of the food, which. Chad (27:22.175) Yep. Yeah. Lieven (27:28.558) Mostly were the Belgian participants. No, I know, I know you just ate it all, but the Belgian participants. Joel Cheesman (27:29.102) That wasn't me. That wasn't me. Until I found out Chipotle, Chipotle is not in Amsterdam. Other than that, I was a little upset until I realized that. So how many people showed up? It was a full house. Chad and I were there. Chad (27:33.631) Yeah, that's why they. Lieven (27:39.502) Yeah, but. 470, 570 something, yeah, something like that. It was a full house indeed. Joel Cheesman (27:48.91) Full house there. Uh, yeah, I, this thing can grow. I mean, I told you, I think there's no reason why it can't be a lot more people, a lot more sponsors, a real, you know, kind of traditional conference. Sorry. Lieven (27:56.526) No, but I know, I know, but that's your American view. We like it's cozy and I know, I know you think, why don't you make it bigger? And then my question would be, why should I make it bigger? We're not into it for the money. We're just, it's all show off, you know, taught leadership, but also it's fun. It's sharing knowledge. Yeah. But in fact, you're right. If you put some effort in it, this could definitely be bigger, but we're still focusing on the quality of the speakers. And. Joel Cheesman (28:08.174) Okay. Joel Cheesman (28:15.342) It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Lieven (28:26.318) We don't focus on sponsors, for example. I mean, Bullhorn was there and I think they were pretty happy and Vonk was there and some other sponsors. But it's not like I made five calls to companies, would you like to sponsor us? We're not into it for the business. We're not into organizing conferences to make money. It's about speakers. And I have the look house of HR is my main sponsor. So our main sponsor, we're organizing it. So. Joel Cheesman (28:47.854) So European. Lieven (28:54.99) They provide the money I need to get the best speakers. I mean, we could even hire you. Chat and cheese flying over from the United States to Amsterdam. Just, I know. Joel Cheesman (29:01.614) I know. That's high dollar. That's high dollar shit. Chad (29:06.783) And we have a balcony again and everything that was, uh, this setup was amazing by the way. I, this, this venue and the setup was, was amazing. And I don't care what anybody says having KBU come out after lunch when everybody just, they just got done eating, you know, you get into the after lunch kind of, you know, sleepy phase. Oh no, oh no, not when KBU comes out. Oh no. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:14.542) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:29.134) Mm -hmm. Lieven (29:33.23) Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no Chad (29:37.215) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:37.454) You Joel Cheesman (29:42.254) Oh, come on. Everyone knows K -Boo at this point. Finland's favorite son, K -Boo. K -Boo. Chad (29:44.639) Yeah Joel Cheesman (30:00.238) It was there. Lieven (30:02.99) After the whole Congress, he gave his whole start of the European tour, which is sold out, by the way. But it was fun. Then I'm not going to get into much detail about all the keynotes and what they said. We have a document with the three key takeaways from all speakers. I shared it on LinkedIn. You can find it somewhere. You might have to put some effort in it, but I'm sure you will. Sure, definitely. Joel Cheesman (30:07.246) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:24.046) Um, would you be okay if I gave some, uh, some of my takeaways just real quickly? Uh, so, so the first thing is always the question we talk about AI automation. People ask, are we in a, we're in for a world with fewer recruiters and keynotes are very good about dancing around, not saying no, we'll still need lots of recruiters. And they always look so uncomfortable talking about that. I think that it's okay to come to the realization that. Chad (30:39.743) Mm -hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:53.582) The world will need fewer recruiters as we evolve this technology. That doesn't mean recruiters are gone and the ones that we have will be kick ass and really, really good at what they do. But the dancing around, we're not going to lose recruiters, I think is, is just false and we should stop doing that. The second thing I took away, um, the comment of, uh, people will stop looking for jobs and jobs will start looking for people or jobs will start finding people. Uh, that was, uh, one of Borman's takeaways or my takeaway from his, uh, his session that stuck with me. And I think that, uh, the thought of a co -pilot, which also came out, I think in the questioning, uh, the Q and a that Chad and I did with bill was that people will have these co -pilots and they will find restaurants for you and they will find, uh, you know, the cheapest hotel for you. And they will also potentially find the best job for you. So a world with these co -pilots. that do the work, I think is something that we should keep our eye on. And lastly, um, Hilkey, who we've interviewed on the show, a New York times reporter talked about bias and AI and the testing that goes on. I mean, she really, uh, sort of crystallize or encapsulated exactly the craziness that goes on in some of these tests. I mean, like pushing the space bar and seeing how fast you can do it as some sort of prerequisite to getting hired. It's really not just dumb. It's also incredibly, uh, prejudice against people that might have disabilities that make it harder for them to push the space bar if they can push it at all in some cases. So to me, that was super eye opening, but those were a couple of takeaways that I had, uh, from the conference being in Europe. The, the point of view is, is refreshing the way that you look at the world is a little bit different. And that's always, uh, refreshing for me as well. Chad (32:17.183) Yeah. Lieven (32:17.326) Yeah. Lieven (32:24.814) Thanks. Chad (32:44.863) Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me was convergence. I mean, what we were talking about 10 years in the US was not being talked about in Europe. It felt like two entirely different ecosystems, but today I feel like they are becoming one. And everybody understands that obviously, you know, we have turned into a global economy, but we haven't acted like it. It almost feels like on both, on both... sides of the pond that we're starting to see this convergence of what is important and what we're leaning towards. So that was amazing. I just love going to this conference mainly because of that piece so that we can learn in this case, you know, from the Dutch that were all around us, but also from the Belgians who took a train in. Lieven (33:34.35) And I agree with what you said about Hilke. She said something and she actually proved it, something I always suspected, that most of those HR tools are just full of shit. So they claim they're measuring all kinds of metrics and they give you a score and they do the matching, et cetera. It's just bullshit. And she tested it and a tool measuring or figuring out how your English skills were. Joel Cheesman (33:45.486) Mm -hmm. Lieven (34:03.694) She spoke German to it and she got a 70 .5 % English. And she confronted the makers of the tool with this ridiculous results. And they said, yeah, but it's about how convincing you sound even in German, something like that. So that's indeed that's bullshit. And it's something HR has to be always aware of that they can be scammed and they will be. But... Joel Cheesman (34:07.79) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:19.79) Yeah. Chad (34:27.007) Yes. Lieven (34:29.358) We have some very interesting, I always liked John Norton as well from a staffing industry analyst. He gave a great presentation about how AI is impacting already our business. And I'm talking about the staffing industry. Some others were really interesting as well. So even though it's my Congress, I'm probably biased also. And Hilke is constantly telling us not to be biased. But I liked it. It was good. You should be there next year. Joel Cheesman (34:34.573) Mm -hmm. Chad (34:56.863) Are we doing it in Amsterdam in the same place next year? That's the question. Come on, don't tease us. Joel Cheesman (34:58.318) Yeah, any insights in the next year? Lieven (35:00.078) Ah, could be, but Jovo constantly tells me I have to make it bigger so then we need a bigger location. I don't know. Joel Cheesman (35:07.246) Since when do you, since when do you or any, anybody listens to me? Jesus, Jesus. Chad (35:07.359) Yeah, last thing you need to do is listen to an American. All I got to say is I'm just happy you didn't punch us both in the face when we went out and we wouldn't stop saying, I ain't leaving. Lieven (35:11.246) I'm sorry. Lieven (35:19.534) Yeah, but I was after the Joel Cheesman (35:20.142) while drinking Red Bull and Jaegerbombs compliments of Bill Borman. Well, let's hope it's not the last sound bite that we hear from Kebu on this show. Everybody enjoyed it as usual. We out. Lieven (35:26.67) Yeah, and 15 Belgian beers. Chad (35:40.639) We out. Lieven (35:40.942) We out.

"Leave job boards in the dust." A bold statement for sure, but Sam Beiler, CEO and co-founder at Boostpoint, believes his startup has the muscle to really stick it to the job board industry. How? With a mix of social media marketing, automation, SMS and lots more, like - of course - an AI writing assistant. A lovely cocktail, for sure, but is it enough to put Indeed out of business. Well, about that ... oh, you'll just have to listen to find out what we think of Boostpoint. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This week, the boys discuss the recent layoffs at Checkr and the launch of connected TV (CTV) and live event ads on LinkedIn. They speculate on Checkr's future and the potential for LinkedIn to tap into the B2B market with video advertising. They also highlight the importance of targeting decision-makers and the challenges of streaming partnerships. In this conversation, Joel and Chad discuss various topics including the potential for LinkedIn to automate job ads on streaming services, the diverging paths of Job.com and Job&Talent, the acquisition of Searchlight by Multiverse, and the partnership between Waymo and UberEats for automated food delivery. They also play a game of 'Who'd You Rather' between Summer and Cariloop. Automation, recruitment, and the future of work ... throw in a fat man in a red suit and you've got Christmas. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION COMETH Intro: 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. [music] Joel: Oh, Yeah. Just two gangsters of love speaking on the pompitous of work. Hi kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Maurice Cheesman. Chad 3: This is Chad 1864 Sowash. Joel: And on this episode, checking out of Checkr LinkedIn embraces the big screen and who'd you rather, let's do this. Chad 3: Okay. Okay. Before we get into this, I have a question. So, here in Indiana, I've been trying to mole through this over the last couple of days. Here in Indiana, we've had what's called the brain drain, which means people get educated here and then they leave. So let's say we have tons of engineers that are in Purdue. Joel: Sure. Rose-Hulman, Purdue. Yeah. Chad 3: Right. They go to Purdue, they get educated, they eject. Right. They get the fuck out of Indiana Okay. And they do for a number of reasons, but the competition for companies to attract great talent to a state. Economic developments. And working with state government and working with federal government. I know that is a thing they talk about all the time. So, set this up. Joel: Set it up. Chad 3: This week, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a near total abortion ban from 1864 is enforceable. How do companies doing business in the state of Arizona who are trying their damn just to get the great talents into their companies, into Arizona into Phoenix, into Tempe, and into Arizona. How do they deal with this? Because this is going to be a real recruiting issue for companies trying to compete for great talent. How do they do it? Joel: Well, first off talking about college, college is recruiting students. A lot of students have. Chad 3: That's a good point. Shit. Joel: News reports coming out that students don't want to go to schools where abortion is quite frankly, illegal. Not even a gray area. It's just straight up civil War era laws. Chad 3: Think of all the fun that you have in college. Joel: All the dumb fun, all the bad decisions that you make in college, and also trying to make the Plan B pill illegal. And so. Chad 3: I don't get it, man. Joel: Yeah. Very, very confusing. I mean, I think the GOP has to be wondering, be careful what you wish for. They've been wishing for a Supreme Court to sort of strike down Roe for 30, 40, 50 years. And they've gotten it, and they may lose a whole lot of elections because of it. Trump is kind of moonwalking this issue, throwing it to the states. People are gonna vote on this. People are gonna vote on this issue like they have in certain states, and it's gonna be a loser for the GOP. But the GOP has made this... Chad 3: It has been. Joel: Made this marriage with the conservative right. Who support them in terms of canvassing houses and voting and money. And so they've made this deal with the devil, and now they have to dance with the devil. And November should be very interesting. The question is, does it stay with the states? If it does, I think more states than not are gonna vote down the laws that are there now, does it go to the federal level, which I don't think it will. I'm sure a lot of companies wish that it would, because it becomes a real game of whack-a-mole to say, what states are we gonna do business in and hire in? We've had companies say, Hey, we'll ship you to whatever state you want for this healthcare. That's a pain in the ass. Companies don't wanna do that. So, yeah. Chad 3: Well, that's just because they're there already. They won't put new locations in those states. And again, I don't wanna get away from this is... They're taking the right away from women. And that's their decision. A woman's decision. And I mean, I don't want to get away from that, but as this podcast focuses on business. The impact for these states, again, they're shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, this is... Again, I've been saying for years, we are trying to go back to 1930. I was wrong. We're trying to go back to the 18 fucking 60s. Joel: It's quite a dichotomy that you have states that are "business friendly", Arizona, Texas, Florida, low taxes, low regulation. But then you flip the script and say, oh, by the way, abortion's illegal in our state. Companies have to like, put their dollars to work and get politicians that are gonna make a more friendly environment for recruiting and retaining talent. Period. You can't lure me to Texas with low regulations in taxes, and then in the back door, tell me like, oh, by the way, women are screwed in this state. Sorry. Chad 3: Yeah. And take your rights away, Yeah. Whew. Not that Indiana's any better. Okay. Joel: We're only a fourth into 2024. We got 200 and some days left 'till the election. It'll be fun. Chad 3: Ooh, I can't wait to be on the beach. Anyway, shout out. Joel: That's true. This is messing with your vibe, man. Chad 3: Ooh. It's killing my Euro vibe man. Joel: Chad's had some Euro energy going on, and... Chad 3: Yeah, I have. Joel: This is not good for any of that. So, yeah, let's... Chad 3: Shout out. Joel: Let's get to some shout outs. All right. Number one, Adam Chambers, one of our favorite guests. One of our favorite firing squads. We didn't have video at the time, but my man was in a basement somewhere at his mom's house, maybe, I don't know. He had pillows over his head. Chad 3: He's on a WeWork. Joel: Trying to sound as good as possible on the... Which we gave him... I think we both gave him a rousing applause. That was a company called Applichat, which he pivoted into nurse recruiting. He's not the first one to see dollars in healthcare. And he made that move. We've kind lived through him. He's from Ireland. Chad 3: Oh, yeah. Joel: Belfast. He goes to Mexico. He does salsa dancing with beautiful women in South America. Chad 3: He was in Spain. Joel: Spain. He's all over the place. So, anyway, he finally got married. I don't know if we're plotting that or maybe it's a sad note of his singledom is gone, but he obviously met. Chad 3: Very happy for him. Joel: Quite a lucky woman and couldn't be happier for this kid, Adam Chambers, man good for you. Enjoy life and. Chad 3: Well. Joel: Keep doing what you're doing, man. Chad 3: I gotta say from those wedding pictures, he's definitely punching up because, he did incredibly well. So hopefully... She probably has bad eyesight, but, good luck kids. Good luck kids. Joel: That's not nice. Chad 3: Oh, Adam knows I love him. Joel: I know Adam he's fine. Chad 3: My shout out goes to shitty comms departments. The following came from an HR leader. This week directly connected to us. "SmartRecruiters has not announced that change to its customers yet about Rebecca Carr becoming the interim CEO. Also, the Blueboard disappearing Act was nuts. They never contacted us about them dissolving the company." So this is a customer in a leadership position. So to all of those vendors out there and comms departments out there, make sure your customer engagement game is tight. Okay. Your customers need to know what the fuck's going on. Joel: Yeah. Don't be stupid. 4: You're so dumb. You're really dumb. Chad 3: You're dumb. 4: For real. Joel: All right. My last shout out Seth Godin is a marketing guru, if you will, that I've been following for 20 some years. If you ever read Purple Cow it's a great book to kind of starting out in marketing. But anyway, he has launched a few things over the years. He actually launched a job site not too long ago and then shut it down eventually, if that tells you something about how hard running a job board is and how bad of a business that it is in most cases. But he just launched a site called GOODBIDS. You know, there's not really a good marketplace for giving to charity. Silent auction kind of thing. So he's building kind of a marketplace. They have some really cool bidding items. One is have your name in the next John Grisham novel. You'll be a character like Chad Sowash could be a character. Chad 3: Oh, that's cool. Joel: In a novel. Chad 3: Oh, that's cool. Joel: Fight Club movie poster signed a lot of sports memorabilia and all of that goes to charities that you select the money to go to. So goodbids.org if you wanna check it out, sign up, bid on some cool things. I highly recommend that. But Seth Godin, good job. Shout out to you for creating goodbids.org. Very nice. Very nice. Chad 3: Very nice. Well, you might not be bidding for free stuff, but at chadcheese.com/free, you get the free stuff. Look at that T-shirt Joel Cheesman's wearing right now. Look at it. If you're on YouTube, you can see that that is sexy. Joel: Welcome to The Junk. Chad 3: That's some guns and roses sex appeal right there. Joel: That is Sexy. Chad 3: Brought to you by ERIN App. That's right kids ERIN app, the referral platform, plus free craft beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. You could prospectively win free beer delivered to your door, not by us, by somebody who does that for a living. Whiskey by text Colonel bottle from Joel, bottle from myself. Great whiskey. And if it's your birthday Kids Rum from Plum. You might win. 4: Do you feel the tension. Chad 3: On your birthday month. 4: In the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: That's right Chad, a few listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun. No order if they were in the Trail of Totality this past week with the Eclipse. Chad 3: Oh, I was. Joel: But they were celebrating other trip around the sun. Stephen Rothberg, Sean Godfrey, Rick Carner, Jason Casey, Jason Crowell, Amanda Semanski, Lauren Berger, Molly Stum, Dave Lowry, and Brian Moore. All celebrate another trip. 5: Happy birthday. Joel: Around the sun this week. Happy birthday listeners. Chad 3: They just reminds me of Bad Boys. Mike Lowry. Who are you? Are you Mike Lowry? No, I'm Mike Lowry. All right. We got events. We got events. We're going to Unleash America in Vegas. That's at Caesars Forum which is a great little area. I mean. Joel: Oh yeah. 4: All right. All right. All right. Chad 3: Not only is the Forum great I think for an event, but the link is right there. You've got all the great restaurants. We are taking the leap and literally jumping off the top of the stratosphere with Matt Bauer from Outhire. That's right. CEO of Outhire. Joel: And a package of depends for me, my friend. Oh no. [music] Chad 3: Dude. It's over 800 feet. And yes, you, you can jump with us or you can nominate a friend or enemy. Just go to chadcheese.com and right on the top of the page, you can click the button that says, Jump with Us. Nominate yourself or someone else. All thanks to the high flying staff over at Outhire. So listener, you gotta let go of those outdated hiring processes and technologies. You gotta take the leap. See what I did there? Joel: I see what you did there. Chad 3: Go to outhire.ai today. Damn, I know you're excited. I know you're excited. Joel: I'm so excited. My wife is super excited too. She's like, have you done your will? Have you updated the will yet? Chad 3: Then we're going to the Minus5 bar, but before that, let's talk about this. Great people sent me a box. Did you get one? Did you get a box? Joel: And me, I didn't know who it was. Chad 3: Excellent. Joel: There was no note. Just a mysterious cigar bottle. Chad 3: I had a note. Joel: Oh, you had a note. Okay. Chad 3: You probably threw the note away because you saw the Stagg Barrel strength Bourbon. You saw a cigar, you saw the Glencairn Glass. Did you get a model of Fireball? Joel: I didn't get the Stagg. Chad 3: Did you... Fireball? Joel: I got a west. Chad 3: Mini Fireball. Joel: I didn't get a mini fireball. Is there a story there? Chad 3: I got a fireball, and I bet the Fireball is supposed to keep me warm while we are in Omaha's Ice Castle. Joel: Oh, okay. Chad 3: At the Minus5 bar with Diane and Jane from... Great people in Omaha from John Pixel. So how can you get into the party? Well follow Joel and me on LinkedIn. You can check out our latest posts where we push the registration link out there. Yeah. Gonna get you a little parka. It's gonna feel like it's Finland all in the desert. It's great. Then on May 8th at the Neon Boneyard, if you have not seen this place. Joel: Very sexy. Chad 3: You've gotta go to Google. 5: I'm Happy. Chad 3: You gotta go to Google. And it's not gonna take you to a porn site, I promise you. You type in Neon Boneyard and all the pictures that come up on Google, it is amazing. We're gonna be partying there, basking in the neon glow. But just go to chadcheese.com/events or go to the chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner and click on the join wait list button there. Join us, our friends from Plum and it's gonna be a good time. Joel: Love it, dude. Vegas, we're getting too old for this shit, man. We gotta pace ourselves a little bit. Pace ourselves. Pace ourselves. Chad 3: Speak for yourself, Mr. I'm ready for this. Joel: All right, here we go. 5: Layoffs. Joel: Before we get to the news. 5: What? Joel: Yeah, we got some big. 5: Layoff. Joel: Layoff News, Checkr. Checkr has laid off 382 employees due to a... Chad 3: Wow. Joel: Slow down in hiring per the company. The layoff's affecting 32% of its workforce aimed to improve efficiency. There's that word again. Amid of economic challenges, in case you missed it, Checkr services include criminal record checks and identity verification with clients like Uber and Netflix. The startup, not quite a startup anymore, but they're valued at $5 billion. That was back in 2022. They've raised, $679 million in funding. Chad 3: Wow. Joel: Chad, what can only be, I guess called a train wreck of sorts. What are your thoughts on the news out of Checkr? Chad 3: Well, it seems like they're not gonna be the one buying Fama. We keep talking about all these background check companies that should be talking to Ben Mones about the buying Fama and really evolving. It doesn't look like that's happening here. Do you think we're looking at just prepping for acquisition and/or just go IPO. Joel: Oh, I don't think IPO's anywhere in the future. So we've recently talked about the three big companies in this space historically have been HireRight, they were acquired by a private equity taken off the public markets. Chad 3: Off the board. Joel: Yeah. Their valuation from the sale was $1.65 billion. And then you had Sterling and First Advantage merge, I guess like it was technically an acquisition of First Advantage over Sterling that valued the companies at $2.2 billion. So basically in 2022, investors were wise enough to think that Checkr was twice as valuable as two or bigger. Chad 3: 5 billion. Joel: Yeah. Like $5 billion. So clearly they weren't going to grow into that valuation. So they have to cut costs and needs which cut costs is, I don't know, a third of your head count off the books. Frankly, now that they've cut, they need to grow if they're gonna have any hope of getting into that valuation. So that means... I think it's a perfect time to go buy Fama. Like take some of this money that you're saving from employees and there are a ton of mom and pop background check companies with 25, 50, a 100 clients. Like start buying those companies up. Start consolidating because HireRight, Sterling, all those guys have about 12 to 18 months to figure out what the fuck they're doing with private equity and the acquisitions. You have a window now and hopefully some money in the bank to go consolidate, consolidate, consolidate, and hopefully make the dollars that you're saving worthwhile because that valuation is... Chad 3: Ridiculous. Joel: It makes life hard. We've talked about companies raising too much money. This is a case where Checkr raised too much money and now we're seeing the negative impacts of that, unfortunately for the employees. Chad 3: Good luck guys. [music] 4: Good topics. Joel: All right. LinkedIn has launched Connected TV or what the kids call CTV Chad ads and live event ads aiming to help marketers tap into the growing video consumption trend. CTV ads allow marketers to display video campaigns, campaigns on home TV sets, expanding, reach beyond the app, live event ads promote upcoming LinkedIn events in stream enhancing event awareness. These initiatives come as LinkedIn seeks to offer more video focused marketing options. Chad, is LinkedIn listening to our show? 'Cause we've been recommending them get more into videos. What are your thoughts on the news out of LinkedIn? Chad 3: Have we just become best friends? So there are two aspects I want take a look at here, and is first and foremost the platform itself and being able to target on the platform versus streaming. So, we'll take a look at LinkedIn first. So on LinkedIn's post about this move, they mention "reach, engage decision makers to help our customer's capture buyer's attention." Now, I mentioned last week that I thought LinkedIn and their latest moves were going to pivot toward marketing. And they are, knowing that those dollars available in those budgets are much larger, but would be in combination with the smaller recruitment advertising budget set. I mean, they're still going to... They're gonna have those products available. Last week, I thought they were going to go toward the B2C with the whole avocado thing that they've done before, but they didn't. They're focusing on B2B once again, the "reach engaged decision makers". So why is this smart? The value proposition goes through the roof when companies are selling higher revenue business products, which cost 100s of 1000s of dollars or millions of dollars per year versus the B2C market with avocados, Tommy John underwear and meal kits. Blue Apron meal kits the focus in revenue opportunity is much larger. Then I wanna talk about. Chad 3: The other aspect of this is, the, the streaming partnerships. So let's just take a look at Paramount Plus, 'cause they're talking about Paramount Plus, Roku, Samsung, and then also Universal Premium Streaming. So, paramount plus I watch Halo, mayor of Kingston, Kingstown, Tulsa, king Ray Donovan. They're all shows that I've enjoyed, but that seems like a huge separation from the B2B buyers on LinkedIn. How are they targeting decision makers with streaming? The short answer is they aren't. So, LinkedIn knows who the CEOs are and the business leaders are in their platform, but when they start to stream out, that's gonna be an issue. So they try to make these things one, right, we're going B2B, we're going B2B, and this is how we're getting larger distribution. One, the value proposition on the LinkedIn side of the house value proposition should be much higher because you're gonna be targeting leaders and people who actually make decisions versus the streaming aspect. I think it's interesting. I think it's definitely, a way forward. This was, I mean, the only LinkedIn news I've been excited about in the very long time. Joel: Yeah. My comment, we'll start with... Chad 3: [laughter] People can just become best friends. Joel: There's a big if, if they can pull this off. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: And you and I both know that LinkedIn don't have a great history of pulling things off. Effectively. Chad 3: They don't. They Don't. Joel: But there's a lot to be excited about this. Retargeting is something that most people, especially on the employment side, don't take advantage of. People don't understand that you can put like some code on your ATS and then serve ads on Instagram about working at your company. Like it, yeah I know agencies do it, but a lot of people just don't understand it. So the thought of having, placing an ad on LinkedIn and having retargeting code on your ATS or your site or your company site. And then having, based on that, if they can connect, I'm on LinkedIn, or I go to the website, and then I'm connected through my streaming service, that I'm watching a show. Chad 3: Right? Joel: And I've been to this site, and now I can see an ad from that company. So think about a job for a second. Say I'm really looking, somebody comes to LinkedIn, they're looking for sales jobs, and the company is posting a sales position. And now when they post the job, it says, Hey, would you like this ad to show up on, Tulsa King or whatever, or properties and you're targeting this? Maybe it's this age range, and this is who watches that show. It's... Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: I mean, the targeting could be really, really, really interesting. Most companies don't have the wherewithal to just say, yeah, let's put a video spot. Let's put a commercial on an ad. Now, what becomes really interesting to me is we've all seen these movies that are made on AI, where you just say like, show me a dog walking through a cornfield, blah, blah, blah. And it literally produces a dog walking through a cornfield. Joel: I don't know how I came up with a dog in a cornfield, but anyway, now imagine it's saying, okay, we'll create an ad based on the job posting you just put up. We have your company logo, because that's on your profile page. We have kind of what you do, where you're located, etcetera, and take all that data and create sort of a template ad, or maybe like, here are three ads that you can show touting the job position that's open at your company, and then redirect people, from that ad to go to LinkedIn and apply to the job. That becomes really interesting. If you can give a company. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: The power to automate commercials that are, that look great, that are AI produced. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: And automated LinkedIn can make a shit ton of money doing like rinse and repeating ads for jobs on these stations that people watch, and that goes into their open AI, relationship that goes into their Microsoft stuff. Chad 3: Think about targeting though, from those ads. You could have a multiple of ads. One could be that this person is a black female, and the target person in the ad is actually a black female. So you can see yourself. Joel: Sure. Chad 3: In that ad even more. So you could target those out even better. I... Joel: Sure. Chad 3: I can't see LinkedIn doing anything like that. Joel: You can't see them pulling this off. [laughter] Chad 3: I think that's a bridge too far for me. I'm just trying to get down to the basics here. And I'm having problems with them actually getting the basics done. Joel: Yeah. Chad 3: But yeah, I think that's probably a little bit much. [laughter] Joel: That is a future that employers would embrace because everybody would love to see their ad on it, on a show that people watch. They'd love to see like, oh, and then see who watched it and how many times it was seen and have people actually apply. Maybe a quick way to point, link, I don't know, point your camera and upload. I don't know how that would work, but easy apply through your phone while you're watching TV. Anyway, it's very exciting if they can pull it off. And it looks like, at least from your point of view, it's not gonna happen in that case. Well, it'll just be a big bummer of a news story. Chad 3: [laughter] Sorry to squash those dreams. Joel: Do It LinkedIn. Come on baby. Come on, come on. The Kool-Aid is getting little stale and it's starting to taste good again. Don't... Chad 3: Do The easy stuff. Okay. Get overtaken. Okay. Joel: All right. Maybe, maybe, maybe... Our next story. Let's talk tale of two companies. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: First off, Jobandtalent. Spanish based company whose 2023 revenue came in at $450 million with the US. Chad 3: Hello. Joel: Becoming the company's largest and fastest growing market. Chad 3: Yep. Joel: As well as its most profitable. And now for something completely different Job.com, who's been very quiet lately and whose most newsworthy achievement in 2024, so far as a CEO with a 7%, seven, not 77% Chad 3: Wow. Joel: Approval rating on Glassdoor. And you thought. Chad 3: Wow. Joel: Trump and Biden were crushing the favorability scores with a company rating, not much better of 19% approval featuring talk of major payroll issues. Chad, your thoughts on these two diverging companies? Chad 3: Yeah, so I mean, they're... Obviously, we can have the leadership discussion and probably have a whole fucking podcast around that. I'm gonna kind of put that to the side and just talk about model. Joel: Yep. Chad 3: It's talk a little bit about the models and we actually had Aaron Stewart, who is an amazing. Joel: Lovely guy. Chad 3: Presenter. Joel: Lovely guy. Chad 3: And pitcher. That guy... If you need somebody to pitch for you, that guy can pitch. But the model, and we actually... He was on stage with us in Austin where I think he lives in Texas. But he was on stage pitching and I just couldn't... You loved it to death. And I love him, but I just couldn't get the model. I couldn't absorb. Joel: Yeah. Chad 3: What they were gonna try to do, because their model at Job.com was to buy up staffing companies. Buy up staffing companies and infuse their tech into those staffing companies. Now, here's the big problem. Once you start buying staffing companies with a margin of 15 to 20 plus percent, to be able to take that money down to 2%, which is what they were talking about, is fucking ridiculous. That's never gonna happen. You have to flip it the other way around. And you have to become the operating system for said staffing companies for the industry. So now back to Jobandtalent. They have done some acquisitions of staffing companies. They haven't done as much as, as Job.com or yeah Job.com has. What they have done is they have created an operating system for staffing companies. And what does that mean? Very simply, there shouldn't be somebody on a phone every day talking to somebody about coming in for a warehouse fucking position. Chad 3: Those positions should be on an app that are automatically targeting individuals who have those skills. And in Jobandtalent, it's very simple. You go in, you answer a few questions. Well, first off, you can take a look at all the jobs that are available in your area. You can click the one that you want, you can ask a few questions, you can get the job right then, you get the job right then, okay, now this job could be a shift or it could be the job itself. And that's the beauty about this whole market is that if I'm already working at Amazon, but yet I wanna pick up a shift at another warehouse or something like that, I can go on Jobandtalent. I can make a little side hustle cash. If I'm a nurse and I want to pick up a little bit more cash, although everybody's... Everything, the schedules are full at the hospital that I work with or the clinic that I work with, I can look at another one that's in the next city or country or county, or not country. County close to me. Chad 3: And I can go and I can do that. This is where work is moving from a shift standpoint. And the problem is Job.com, they couldn't make that happen because of the revenue models. 20% to 2%. Jobandtalent, who's coming from Europe is smashing them. Smashing them. And how many companies come to the US and smash it? Not many. Joel: Not very many. It typically doesn't work out very well, Chad. 5: 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel: By the way, if I was gonna tell you, you have the choice of picking Job.com or Jobandtalent with an ampersand in between the two, which do you think will be the more successful company you would automatically think Job.com would? Look, tell me if you've heard this story before. Cool name, colorful founder. Chad 3: Pets.com. Joel: [laughter] Jobster, those that remember Jobster. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Very colorful. Chad 3: Oh yeah. Joel: Little more abrasive. Chad 3: Jason. Much like Aaron. Joel: Yes. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: But a Carnival Barker. I think you've called both of of them. Chad 3: Oh, yeah. Joel: At some point. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Great sales guys. Uh. Big personalities. Little bit of direction challenge with both. What are we gonna be when we grow up? If you remember, Job.com had some credit card thing that they gave like, [laughter] it was really confusing and they pivoted to. Chad 3: That's how they paid people. Joel: Yeah, I mean. Chad 3: They paid it through the credit card. Joel: Yeah. Chad 3: And Jobandtalent. What do you do? You pay through the App? Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Credit card versus app. Very apropos. Chad 3: Hello. Joel: Comparison there. Yeah. So, and then to go into the other Jason Goldberg a Jobster was lucky enough to not have glassdoor, when he was apparently threatening people. And I was covering this when I was blogging back in the day. They had a... Joel: Yeah. 1: Amazing team. I can't say that Job.com has an amazing team. 'Cause I don't know most of them, but. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Poorly, poorly received. CEO, people are unhappy. There were probably issues with paying people at Jobster. What's... Like, layoffs, things like that. Now, if you look at Job.com's insights like headcount has remained pretty steady. My guess is that's because of the acquisitions. They keep adding headcount by buying these companies. But there's clearly trouble in the house. Joel: And when you have trouble in the house, like it just spills over into everything. Jobandtalent, regardless of the name, has somehow figured out the sauce of ease of use. Young people understand, this is the way that I wanna work. Give me my phone. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Let me apply, let me work, get paid through that. And that just seems to work where people like Snap, Snagajob, Snag, not Snap, Snagajob. Chad 3: Snag. Yep. Joel: They were gonna try this. A few others. So yeah. Tale of two companies. I mean, I think you look inside management, it just seems to be a mess at Job.com, which is unfortunate. We both like Aaron a lot. I don't know what's going on there. We haven't heard from them in a long time, where we used to hear from them all the time about what's going on. Joel: Let me tell you about what we're doing. They're very, very quiet. And then we have this company coming out of Spain and just kicking ass and showing a lot of companies, how it's done. I'm wondering how like a Jobcase is looking at Jobandtalent success and saying, where did we, where can we catch this lightning? How do... 'Cause they have a lot of users and I don't know Yeah. How they're monetizing it, but... Chad 3: Yeah. Shifts. Joel: Jobcase might wanna look at Jobandtalent and how do we change our model into something more, Payable. Chad 3: Or Jobandtalent might wanna look at Jobcase from an acquisition standpoint. Joel: That's true too, that's true too. Chad 3: Just because of the size. Joel: They've raised a billion three. Chad 3: Yeah. The staffing industry in the US alone is $218 billion dollars. Joel: Yeah. Chad 3: Billion dollars. So the ability for a Jobandtalent to buy into a Jobcase that has a humongous fucking community already. Joel: Yeah. Yep. Chad 3: I think that's a very good call, Cheesman. Joel: That could be interesting. Yeah. Well, thank you. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Thank you. Do you like that one better than StepStone buying Career Builder? Chad 3: Oh, yes. Yeah. This one makes sense. This one makes sense, Chad. [laughter] 5: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: All right, Chad, I first read this as a Marvel story when it said Multiverse, but no, no, it's not a, it's not a Marvel story. London based Multiverse, which claims to deliver a new kind of apprenticeship that combines education, work, and technology has acquired San Fran based Searchlight, which says it provides a bias free AI that filters top applicants by relevant work experience, hard skills and soft skills. Terms were not disclosed. Searchlight had previously raised $19.5 million and employs 16 people, while Multiverse has raised $418 million and employs a little over 1000 folks. Chad, your thoughts on the Multiverse Searchlight deal? Chad 3: Yeah, I see this much like Workday's acquisition of HiredScore. Workday hadn't a fucking clue about AI in training large language models, which means they didn't know how to explain and or defend them. Athena and the team at HiredScore lived and breathed it. So the tech and the acquisition made sense. In this case, Multiverse fills a gap with the Searchlight acquisition. In the same way Multiverse gains a platform geared toward IO science, culture data, hiring outcomes, basic auditing. And they've got a ton of integrations with different, different applicant tracking system platforms that are out there. I know trying to go out and actually hire individuals to build something like this for a platform that is going to take a very long time and a hell of a lot of money. This is a shortcut for them. Chad 3: Not just from the standpoint of a tech, from a tech standpoint, but also from a people standpoint, from an expertise in-house standpoint. To me, this makes a hell of a lot of sense. And since last November during Multiverse layoffs, they laid off about 30 people. Founder Euan Blair. That's right. Tony Blair's kid, stated that the US business didn't meet revenue targets and required too much financial investment. And that Multiverse would have to focus on a more tailored approach in specific sectors for the US market, which is what we talk about on every show, just about. Almost weekly. Target a sector, knock it out of the park, then expand. Now they're feeding their data into Searchlight to accelerate that process in scale in those targeted sectors, meaning they can expand much faster. So again, if you take a more focused approach, how do you get to expansion faster? This is how you do it. You expand within that sector first and then you explode out. This is, I think, a smart acquisition for them and necessary. 5: Another One. Joel: So you stole a lot of my thunder on this one. Particularly the Tony Blair relationship or relation there. I was hoping that you wouldn't mention that. So I could drop that one. Chad 3: My Bad. My bad. Joel: I could drop that Although the Searchlight founders are twins. So you didn't mention that. So I will mention that. Chad 3: Yes, yeah. Joel: They're twin ladies. Chad 3: I was kind of eerie looking at that. Was saying did a... Is that an AI thing or? No. No, they're actually twin Chad. Joel: They will be a founding team of AI, that's a billion dollar company one day. I've heard that on, on a podcast somewhere. The one thing for me is that Multiverse has been around since... They're on year eight. Chad 3: Yep. Joel: They've been around for a while. They're not profitable, the US I don't think is going the way, that they had hoped that it would. And they should be killing it. I mean, apprenticeships and that business should be doing very, very well. Chad 3: Yep. Joel: Very. So someone said, I'm sure let's get some tech in here. Let's get some people who know tech, not just Tony Blair's, is it his son? His son? Chad 3: Kid. Kid, yeah. Joel: Yeah. Just, okay, we've got a famous guy now we need people who know what the hell they're doing. So both founders are going to be an executive positions, with the company, which means they'll be helping drive the ship, which I think is good. They're not like leaving. It sounds like they're gonna be in it, at least for the next year. So. Chad 3: Yeah, lock them in. Joel: So, yeah. So lock them in. If they can bring people that know what they're doing. Bring San Francisco talent and Silicon Valley folks into this company. That has raised a ton of money. They were unicorn at one point. I don't know if they still are, but you have a lot of money. You have a high profile founder, now you have technology, you have people that know what they're doing there. They're Y Combinator, darling actually, some of the news stories that I read. So yes, it'll make sense. I mean, the apprenticeship thing with high tech stuff, there may be some growing pains there, but I think ultimately... Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: This is a much better chance of succeeding than Workday sucking up a company like HiredScore. I give this a lot better, chances of success because you don't have a Workday bureaucracy to deal with. Chad 3: Yeah. Multiverse is still a fairly flexible, small, company in relation to Workday. Chad 3: Totally agree. Totally agree. Joel: All right, Let's get to one of my favorite games. I think it's one of your favorite games as well. Chad 3: 2:00 AM in the bar. Who'd you rather? Joel: Who'd You rather everybody. Here we go. All right. Here's how we play. We talk about two companies, startups that have recently gotten funding and Chad and I choose who we'd rather. Let's play first up. We've got New York City based Summer, a workplace student loan solution provider. They've raised $9 million in funding led by Rebalance Capital and SemperVirens. The funds will be used to expand the team and enhance the technology. Summer partners with employers to provide student loan and education assistant benefits. That is Summer and corner number one. Corner number two, we have Cariloop. A Richardson, Texas-based provider of a caregiver support platform. They've raised $20 million in Series C funding. The company helps families manage their care needs by connecting them to an employer-sponsored solution. Cariloop coaches provide professional support while its digital platform offers resources and tools to support caregiving. Chad, that is Cariloop and Summer. Who'd You rather? Chad 3: I'm gonna start with Cariloop. So 43 million in total funding and have been around for 12 years. They've created a marketplace for caregivers with a concierge service built in. And since most people have no clue what fucking services are available, let alone which ones that would fit for them and their needs. Cariloop could be pretty much the technical infrastructure and operating system for partners and healthcare solutions nationwide. On the other hand, Summer, the only student repayment solution as a benefit I want to hear about is how companies can take on the burden themselves. I'm not interested in another scheme that puts a new shade of lipstick on the fucking corporate welfare pig. So it's 2:00 AM in the morning in the club, it's bumping. Who would I'd rather? I'd rather Cariloop. 5: What are you doing stepbro? Joel: All right. Cariloop. So both of these hit home, for me. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: I had student debt and I have parents... Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: That I could help give care to. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: The question for me is, partly is who's in office? 'Cause Biden is really good about excusing student loans. And if that trend continues, we may not have a need for a company called Summer because no one will have student debt. No. We'll still have student debt, but yes, I want to hear about tax benefits for companies that pay off student loans or maybe match student loan payments. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: Let's get creative around this folks. Like also on the other end of not... Reducing the cost of college, that's a bigger question than I think corporate initiatives. But let's have something... Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: That incentivizes a company to help pay off student debt for their employees. To me, that is more exciting than let's just hire a company or buy a solution that people can then access and hopefully help, pay down stuff. Now on the care stuff, baby boomers, 77 million people, 10,000 people a day are retiring. That means sickness, that means care. That means, assisted living, that means hospice. Like these are real issues for me. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: So I know there are big issues for... Chad 3: Everyday Americans. Joel: A lot of other people. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: And that also I think you could also carry, does childcare come into this? I don't know. But definitely on the aging parent thing, would I like to hire professionals to help me through that? Would I like to have that benefit as someone who has parents to deal with. So for me as well, like, I think they both deserve some applause, but yeah. Maybe it's age bias or where... I paid off my student loan 20 years ago, so I haven't really had to deal with that lately. Whereas I have an 84-year-old dad. So just recency bias. I think I'm also... 5: I'm happy. Joel: Picking Cariloop at the corner of the bar. Stepping on the sticky floor. Sticky floor. All right. That is another game of who'd you rather, we're gonna take a quick break and come back and talk a little automation. Joel: All right. Chad, Waymo and Uber. Technically Uber Eats are teaming up to launch automated Uber Eats in Waymo's Phoenix service area. Customers can opt for a robot delivery from select merchants, though they'll need to meet the vehicle outside to collect their order. No word yet if Chipotle is participating in this test market. 5: Oh my God, I love Chipotle... [overlapping conversation] Joel: But, Chipotle, we'll let you know when we find out. Chad, what are your thoughts on Waymo's marriage with Uber Eats? Chad 3: I think Waymo is definitely not the product for this. I mean, they're also partnering with Serve Robotics, which is one of those the smaller... Joel: They're 2D2. Yeah. Chad 3: Kinda like robots and go down the sidewalk. Yeah, I see those in cities. I don't see those like in rural areas where they can get beat up by baseball bats and shit like that. But, there's also Nuro, N-U-R-O, these are autonomous vehicles that are really, they're built for this. The Waymo cars are literally just built for humans to be inside. So they're great for taxis, but in this case, I think the Nuro and the little sidewalk robot are probably the smart way to go. And maybe, I don't know, we'll see some evolution of this, but I think this is really interesting. The big question is, do you care? 'Cause you currently get stuff that's delivered to your doorstep, and all you have to do is go out. Somebody delivers it to you. Joel: Oh yeah. Chad 3: You take it. Joel: It's lovely. Chad 3: But this one, you got to go out to the... You gotta put your shoes on. You gotta go out to the driveway. And I know this sounds fucking lazy, but you gotta do all those things. Open the door. It should be in the trunk. So they pop the trunk, you get the food out of the trunk, you close the trunk, and then you go back in. Is this something that you think you're gonna do? Or you're just gonna... [overlapping conversation] Joel: I would love if they have the buffet heat light in the trunk if they're keeping my food warm or not, by the way, Chad, if there's a barbacoa bowl in that trunk, I'm walking through a snake pit. Chad 3: You don't care. Joel: And an alligator. Chad 3: Okay. Joel: Yeah. To get my barbacoa bowl. Interestingly... Chad 3: Walking Through Australia. Joel: Yeah. And if there's some, if there's a bloom and onion in there, God damn it I'm fighting off, I'm fighting off Vikings and, Roman, soldiers. But we're gonna be in Phoenix, next week for the Paradox. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: Analyst meeting. And I'm gonna try this out. I'm gonna download Waymo. I'm gonna be like, take me to In-N-Out. So I'm gonna try the taxi service out. The people who have tried it that I've talked to really love it. Chad 3: Oh, yeah. Joel: So why not deliver food as part of, oh, you've already downloaded the app as our YouTube viewers can see. Check that out at youtube.com/atChadChees. Anyway, I'm a fan dude. Now I feel kind of bad. So now there's an employee that's gonna have to go take the food out to the car. Whereas today, like DoorDash goes into the restaurant and then takes so someone to pick it up. Joel: Some poor slob, flipping burgers is gonna have to like, go out to the Waymo and put the food in, and then say like, go. And then, yes, I'm gonna have to go get it. Now the good thing is the tips are refunded if you choose the Waymo. Chad 3: Yes. Joel: So I think as a consumer, more people than not will choose to have to go out to the street than. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Pay the tip. Now that's in my suburb area. If I live in a 50 story building, I may not want to go down and, and get my food. But for the suburbs baby. Chad 3: Yeah. Joel: Bring my barbacoa bowl. Get the buffet heating light. I'm hungry. We out. Chad 3: We out. SFX: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forward it to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal and Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead now. Go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck. You can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode, the boys discuss the recent upgrades at Indeed, including the revamped user profile page and the introduction of AI-powered writer and smart sourcing suites. They also talk about LinkedIn's testing of TikTok-style video options. Chad criticizes Indeed for focusing on the top of the funnel and not moving down the funnel to provide better data for matching candidates. Joel sees Indeed's upgrades as a direct response to LinkedIn's shortcomings and believes that the video feature will increase engagement and interest from advertising agencies. In this episode, Chad and Joel discuss various topics including the potential for LinkedIn to compete with Twitter for advertising dollars, the buy or sell game featuring MetaView, Modal, and Home from College, the impact of minimum wage laws on fast food workers, Amazon's decision to replace its Just Walk Out technology with smart carts, and Apple's exploration of mobile robots for the home. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts, complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah, two guys sharing a drink called "loneliness," but it's better than drinking alone. Hi, kids, it's The Chad and Cheese podcast, I'm your cohost, Joel "solar eclipse" Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad "girl power" Sowash. Joel: And on this episode, LinkedIn, TikToks, Indeed Sources, and Amazon just walks out, plus, buy or sell. Let's do this. Have you heard, there's a big event in Indiana on Monday called the solar eclipse? Chad: Yeah, we've got a little town here, Columbus, Indiana, 40,000 people, and this weekend, we're supposed to have 250,000 people because we are in the direct path. It's fucking crazy. Joel: My aunt in Little Seymour, which is smaller than Columbus, they're expecting like a hundred thousand people. It'll be great for the economy, that's for sure. I hope the weather cooperates. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I mean, no matter what, it's not like people aren't gonna buy shit, right? It was funny, I was going through physical therapy this morning, the whole shoulder thing, and everybody was talking about getting your groceries, getting... It was almost like an apocalypse. Well, you gotta make sure you get your groceries, gotta get your stuff, get in... I'm like, why? I mean, you're like, well, you won't be able to get groceries. Everybody's gonna buy everything out. Joel: Four Minutes of night. Middle of the day is gonna destroy everything. As listeners know, my wife is a scientist, professor, so we're having a get-together, you don't really have parties at our age, we're having a get-together. And Sun King, a popular brewery here in Central Indiana, has an eclipse beer. Chad: They all do. Joel: I don't know what it's called, we have... It's crazy, yeah, we have two growlers ready to rock for Tuesday, we've got the glasses, yeah, yeah. I'm calling it the "Joeler eclipse." Chad: That's so bad, so bad. So how was Easter, real quick? All good? Joel: Easter Was good, Easter was also Jeremy's birthday, my now seven-year-old. So Easter was Godzilla versus King Kong. Chad: That's awesome. Joel: Or they're actually teaming up for fights. Monsters killing each other, it's great. Chad: Love it. Joel: Easter egg hunt. Had my 84-year-old dad come over, we had, by Jeremy's choice, Pizza Sammy's, select big grinders with pepperoni and pizza and cheese, which is fine with me. Chad: And Calzone. Joel: And that was it. How about you? Chad: Yeah, I went down to Clarksville, Tennessee. My brother and sister-in-Law are getting ready to move to Australia, I can't wait to go visit them. So we visit them and their three young boys. So that was a good time. And literally on Easter, we started drinking like at 10:00 AM and we didn't stop all through the day, beermosas, I mean, you name it, so. Joel: Nice. Chad: Other brother-in-Law actually did a big-as brisket and ribs, and so yeah, it was pretty awesome, it was a good send-off, let's just say that. Joel: Yeah, well, I didn't hear from you on Monday, so I assumed that you were either hung over or recovering from brisket overdose. Chad: Traveling back and trying not to fall asleep at the wheel with all that fucking brisket on my stomach. Joel: Do you have a favorite Tennessee whiskey? Chad: No, I don't, I'm not a big Tennessee whiskey fan, and there are so many bourbons in Kentucky, I just haven't pushed past it. Not to mention, I'm really looking forward to, we'll talk about this later, kids, our trip to Scotland. Joel: Yeah, tease. I like Bib & Tucker, try it out if you haven't, if you like the whiskeys. Bib & Tucker, and it's a cool bottle. Chad: Bib & Tucker. Joel: And cool bottle as well. All right. SFX: Shout-out. Chad: All right, we're gonna go first shout-out, kid, to Sebastian Dettmers, the CEO over at StepStone. So earlier this week, he posted the following on LinkedIn, "After much contemplation, I've decided to embark on a digital detox journey, and we'll be going offline for the next three months. During my absence, all standard internal and external inquiries will be in the capable, virtual hands of chatGPT, courtesy of an innovative AI CEO partnership with OpenAI." So the post goes on, but after reading this, I reached out to a couple of friends at, and I was still loopy from Easter by the way, at StepStone and Appcast. I was like, dude, what the fuck? And I got nothing but laughing emojis, and he got you. Yes, it was an April fools' joke, and yes, Sebastian, you got me, my friend, you got me. Good job. Good job on that one. I fucking hate April Fools. Joel: Maybe he's been listening to this show because we've talked about CEOs going away and being replaced by AI. So it wasn't that out of the norm for us, it was good to see something like that. Good job. Chad: That was good. That was good. That's good, that's good. Joel: My first shout-out, I'm sure you saw, Taiwan had a big earthquake this week. Chad: Yeah. Massive. Joel: And I was amazed at how well the infrastructure Handled it. They have a huge building, that was fine, bridges, it was pretty, pretty well maintained. There were a few buildings, but the buildings that fell didn't like collapse into dust, they fell off the base, most of the people were saved, it was just... Shout-out to Taiwan and their infrastructure, in contrast to us, one boat hit the base of a bridge and the whole whole thing falls down like a bridge of toothpicks. I don't know if it's too late for the infrastructure bill, but the USA is in dire need of some Taiwanese engineering. Chad: Yeah, I think any of those buildings that would've gotten hit by a container ship would've gone down. My shout-out to Girl Power, that's right. The AP is reporting that Women's Final Four tickets are on the resale market, selling for an average of, get ready, kids, $2300, which is twice as much as the Men's Final Four. And you've got Caitlyn Clark from Iowa to thank for that, Camilla over at South Carolina. God, she is big and she is like the Shaq of NCAA basketball for women. Paige Beckers, Angel Reese. But Friday matches are Iowa against Connecticut, South Carolina against North Carolina State. It's pretty awesome because I know that you remember going to girls basketball games, and like the scores would be 35 to 12, right? It was excruciating watching girls basketball, but now I like watching the girls play more than I do the dudes. It's amazing. Joel: Yeah. And to your point, that was a high-scoring affair if it was 35 to 12, that was a banger, baby, back in the day. Chad: A banger. Joel: Totally. So I have friends in Cleveland, where the Final Four is, and I can confirm that they have reached out or tried to get some second-market tickets, aftermarket tickets. And the cheapest that they found was $800 a ticket, and this is a professional arena, this isn't like a high school gym. Chad: Like 20,000. Joel: This is legit. So huge. And I'm gonna mess up some of these, but the viewership of the Iowa LSU game topped, I think the Grammys, like every award show, most of the NBA playoff games, really big viewership, and I think it's fantastic. Chad: There's a rematch of last year's final. Joel: Rematch. But great characters, great story with those two. Caitlyn Clark is very likely to be the first pick coming to Indiana next year. And as an Indiana resident, I can't be more excited to have her. They also had the first pick last year, so they could be a juggernaut of a WNBA team, they're gonna sell out the arena, which is amazing. They might outsell the Pacers on average per game, per seat. Chad: Probably not hard, but yeah. Joel: Yeah, I mean, the Pacers are pretty good still, but yeah. Chad: That's too bad, yeah. Joel: So my shout-out piggybacks on that. I think this has been the most fun March madness that I can remember a long time. And a lot of it isn't the... Even the NCAA, you mentioned the women's basketball, which I echo. The NIT is one of the most fun tournaments that I've seen in a while. Now, indiana State hasn't done anything since Larry Bird was there in the '70s, they're the number one seed, they should have been in the NCAA. But I'm glad they're not because now they're playing in the Final Four, which is in Indiana, they're playing in Butler, which if you're a midWesterner Hoosier, this is like folklore, this is Marlin, the movie Hoosiers, this is a really old, historic arena. Indiana State's basically gonna be the home team. In this thing, they beat Utah and they play Seton Hall, I think, for the championship, so it's like a biggie school playing Indiana State. That's so much fun. Joel: And they have this guy, his name is Robbie Avila, and he wears these throwback goggles, like Kareem used to wear, and Worthy. And he's about 6'9", I think, white guy. Oh, he's mixed, he's like half Hispanic, half white, and he has the best nicknames. His nicknames include "Cream," Abdul-Jabbar, not Kareem, but cream like cream soda. "Larry Nerd," Larry Bird, and "Milk Chamberlain" is another one, so great nicknames there. And then you got... And then you got DJ Horn at NC State. You mentioned the big folks in the middle, this guy, he's listed at 275. He hasn't seen 275 since eighth grade, I don't know where the hell they're getting that, but this dude has got personality, he's fun. NC State is a underdog. Purdue's in it. Purdue is like one All American and a bunch of Indiana gym rats, so that's fun to watch, a throwback to teams of the '80s and '70s. But, I think, shout-out to... Shout-out to March Madness, if last month was Six Nations, this month has been March Madness, and it's been a hell of a lot of fun. Chad: Amen, amen. Well, a shout-out. Last shout-out goes to free stuff, that's right, free t-shirts from Aaron App, free beer and whiskey that are coming to your front door, beer from AspenTech Labs, Whiskey from Textkernel, one bottle from Joel, one bottle from me. And if it's your birthday, could win rum from our pals at Plum. SFX: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: Alright, a few listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun, eclipse, solar eclipse, I don't know, I don't know if there's any tie in there. Todd Burns, Amy English, Arno Schaefer, Derek Christensen, Rob McIntosh, Louis Nobreck, and Patrick York. SFX: Happy birthday! Joel: There we go. All celebrate a birthday this week, happy birthday to you guys. Chad: Excellent. Well, I'm not gonna be going anywhere for the eclipse because we're getting ready to go to Vegas, my friend, we're getting ready to go to Vegas. Joel: Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Joel: Unleash America is coming to Las Vegas again, May 7th through the 9th. The day before on March 6th, Joel and I are gonna get high. No, not that kind of high, we're going to the top of the stratosphere and we're jumping over 800 feet to earth with our friend Matt Bauer, the CEO from Outhire, that's right. Outhire. What's more is that Outhire is paying for our listeners to join us do the jump. So if you want to register to win or nominate maybe your boss or a friend to jump with us, go to chadcheese.com, it's right there in the hero header. Click the Jump With Us button right on the homepage. Register and come see us then. Come see us fall to earth. Then on Tuesday, May 7th, this is where Kibu comes in, we're heading to the Minus5 bar with Job Pixel and great people. More details to come, but I'm telling you right now, we're gonna feel like we're in Finland, it's gonna be cold, we're gonna have the big fluffy jackets, I guarantee you. And then last but not least, on May 8th, we're joining our friends over at Plum, at the neon boneyard, you love Little Neon, here's Little Chad and Cheese Neon, where we're gonna be drinking, eating, and basking in the evening glow of Las Vegas's iconic retired neon signs. You know those old neon signs that you thought they got rid of? Oh, they didn't get rid of them, kids, they're all in a neon boneyard. Google "neon boneyard." Check it out, it is freaking awesome. Us there with our friends from Plum, it's gonna be a great unleash. Joel: It is gonna be great, but I heard nothing after, jumping to your death, from your first segment. I'm trying... So there's a weight limit of 265, I think. I'm trying to... I'm gonna see how many burritos it takes to get to a point where I get on the scale and they're like, dude, you're too heavy, sorry, sorry. And if not, I need to invest in some Depends because I'm going to shit my pants when I jump... When I jump off this thing. Oh God, is that it for announcements? Chad: That's it. Joel: Alright, we got some red meat for the listeners this week. Indeed has revamped its user profile page, introducing an AI-powered writer to enhance work experience descriptions and supporting multiple resumes. It also launched smart sourcing suites for recruiters, including AI powered candidate summaries and custom messages aiming to reduce relevant outreach and streamline hiring processes. Chad, what are your thoughts from the latest upgrades at Indeed? Chad: This is nothing more than just window dressing at the top of the funnel. Why is Indeed making more of an effort to move down funnel? AI resumes, full of hallucinations and easy applies, that's a recipe for fucking disaster. How does any of that help companies find the right candidates? Well, it just doesn't. So if Indeed wanted to make a real impact, they would move down funnel, partner with platforms like Tavio or HackerRank to start gathering skills and performance data that actually matters. Coding tests, performance tests, gather the data that employers actually fucking need. Also, from this article, I thought it was interesting, talent.com was mentioned in the story as a competitor. Joel: It was, yeah. Chad: I mean, come on, man, so many of these aggregators are just Indeed, PilotFish, they're collecting the crumbs, they're not innovating, they're not moving the needle, and they're definitely not competitors. So if you, talent.com and "competitors," if you wanna compete with Indeed, beat them to the punch, go down funnel, collect the data that employers and LLMs, yes, large language models, will use to make relevant matches better. The reason why I hate on Indeed so hard is because they have the means to change this industry, and yet they're changing the drapes in the fucking basement. For example, interview scheduling, they talk about interview scheduling in this. In 2024, interview scheduling should be a fucking afterthought, when a candidate applies for a job, answer some prescreening, prequal questions they should meet... If they meet the requirements, they should have an "Interview now" button that pops up and it takes you directly to a qualify, a pillar, or a vet for interview. I mean, we should be cutting corners, as opposed to just playing the window dressing game. And that's all Indeed's doing, and I fucking hate that. S7: 60% of the time. It works every time. Chad: Tell us how you really feel, Chad. Chad: Both barrels. Joel: So I view this as, Google came out and struck out against the job board industry and job postings. And that seems to be alleviated for the most part. Like Google has said, we're not getting into pay-per-click, we'll let you guys still put your job postings in our search. So now it's like, what's the other front of Indeed's war that they need to think about? And that's LinkedIn, in my opinion. So to me, both of these updates are reactions to what LinkedIn is failing to do or has effectively crushed outside of its walled garden. So with job search, LinkedIn job search sucks, it's related searches or recommendations are awful. So if I'm Indeed, I already have a better job search than LinkedIn does, so what does LinkedIn do that I can do better? Well, on LinkedIn, I can have generally one profile, right? And now Indeed comes out with, oh, now you can have five resumes, so if you want one to be focused on a specific skill, you can, if you want another resume, a specific... Personally, this can go really bad, five resumes per person. Chad: It's stupid. Joel: But at least in theory, it's a strike against LinkedIn because LinkedIn only has one profile. So that is a differentiator, whether it's worthy or not of competing with LinkedIn, I guess we'll find out, but it is a move to go after LinkedIn. I think the bigger product or upgrade is the sourcing tool, which, from at least one insider that I talked to at Indeed, they're really focused on the sourcing stuff, they're really batting down the hatches, all hands on deck kind of thing. Chad: Well, that's a LinkedIn thing. They want to take away recruiter seats. Joel: And that's exactly a LinkedIn thing. So we've talked about LinkedIn effectively crushing every other third-party solution that uses its data. The SeekOuts of the world, the Hiretools, the hire... He's like... So Indeed has said, look, we can't let LinkedIn just own this sourcing thing, we have a hell of a lot of resumes too, so how do we keep people in our ecosystem searching our resumes and then sourcing, effectively messaging, et cetera, to those people? So this entire move for me from Indeed is a strike at LinkedIn. I think the sourcing is really interesting, I think the job search, like you said, is lipstick on a pig, but they've got LinkedIn in their sights, clearly, and I don't think this is the last strike that they're going to make on LinkedIn. Chad: Well, how you make sourcing better is better data for better matches. We already know their matching is shit, it's probably not as bad as LinkedIn's, but their matching is already shit. They need better data to be able to bump up against. Having five resumes is fucking stupid. I mean, it's like back to the future. How many pieces of shit can we throw out there for people to actually look at? I don't care. What I care is, do they meet the requirements, and do they have the skills, and can they perform? That's it, right? And then go ahead and get me right into the interview, and at that point, we can see if there's a match, okay? That's it, guys, it's that fucking simple. But what they're doing is they're playing up top, at the top of the funnel. And that doesn't fucking matter. None of it matters. None of it matters, so go down funnel. And again, for all the talent.coms that are out there, the Adzunas, I mean, even companies who don't even look like Indeed competitors, go down funnel, get that data because the market is all about the large language models and being able to grind that data pool, that new data that LinkedIn doesn't have, that Indeed doesn't have, get that data so you win. Joel: I don't think Chad's impressed, everybody. I don't think Chad's impressed at all. Chad: You don't think... You don't? Joel: Let's get to LinkedIn's news and see if that impresses you. LinkedIn is testing TikTok-style video options aiming to help users discover timely videos. The feature will appear next to the "Home" button and resembles TikTok and Instagram Reels. LinkedIn plans to provide more information about the new service very soon. So Chad, are you ready to karaoke and dance to LinkedIn's TikTok competitor? Chad: They had a version of Instagram Reels at one time, and then they just trashed that, why are they doing this? I mean, is TikTok stealing stickiness from them? Do they see that TikTok has stickiness that they want? And we talked about last week, it feels like Indeed is going more toward trying to be sticky for advertising dollars, right? To be able to keep people on platform, to be able to get those advertising dollars. And one of the things that we also talked about was that LinkedIn doesn't stick with some of these big projects that they put in place, they need to hire someone with discipline, focused, and damned patience, for God's sake. Some of the ideas actually do make sense if they're implemented well, but right now, I put our videos on TikTok and then I put the same ones on LinkedIn already, so I mean, I don't understand how this is gonna change behavior at all. Joel: So a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I thought LinkedIn bailed on video too soon, they've already tried you said, Reels, I would have called them sort of Snapchat stories, that they quickly got rid of. And I feel like with our video experience, our shorts, and you're seeing more and more shorts because every podcasting platform will create shorts for you... So we're gonna see more of that in every industry, and bailing on that was a bad idea because you could have seen where the world was going, and bailing on it was the wrong decision. It looks like now they're gonna basically relaunch some sort of video shorts system, they'll probably have it more in the main feed, they won't just have it as circles at the top that are out of the main feed area. It'll increase engagement, it'll increase interest in advertising. Agencies love these videos, small companies can make these videos really quickly. AI is gonna make a lot more videos, some of these shorts. So I think it's a good move. They never should have got out of it, in my opinion. Joel: Now, the second thing they need to do is the live video stuff because they're awful at it and they should be really good at it. By all accounts, you have to use a third party to even stream on LinkedIn, they should have their own thing. And by the way, X, which I know you love, is getting better at the live video, live conversations, and that is gonna be something that LinkedIn needs to do well. So this is the first step into video, they need to work out like having webinars and podcasts like this live, live streamed on LinkedIn. And I think they've got something that's pretty interesting. Otherwise, let's hope they don't bail on this like they did... The stories that they had six months to a year ago. Chad: Yeah, well, I see, once again, on the advertising side of the house, this gives another vehicle to be able to do ads, right? So not just for us to be able to do podcast snippets or shorts or what have you, but this is going to allow ads, those guacamole ads that we saw, that were static guacamole ads, we're gonna get a commercial on LinkedIn. So again, I really see this turning into more of an advertising platform and literally pivoting in some respects away from the recruitment space because there's a hell of a lot more money in advertising, if they can hold on to those recruiter seats, which we all know HR is really fucking slow to move in the first place, but then also go after the very quick hit of the marketing side of the house, then that does make sense. We'll see if it works, though. Joel: Look, historically, LinkedIn sucks at advertising. I mean, they still have those little like box ads on the right. It's like, come on. So yeah getting something video, something interactive, every agency will say, let's give LinkedIn another look, where we haven't done anything on there in a long time, so. Chad: Take that Twitter money, that Twitter... We've seen reports where they have actually taken Twitter money... And I say "they," those are companies who used to spend money on Twitter, and they want to spend it on platforms like LinkedIn. LinkedIn wants to give them the opportunity so that they can get that fucking Twitter cash. Joel: Yep, and integrating into advertising platforms. Look, companies are going to want to make a single TikTok ad. And how do I put it on Twitter? How do I put it on LinkedIn? So they want to be able to shotgun it everywhere. And LinkedIn needs to have something that they can put their ad... Joel: All right, let's take a quick break. Joel: All right, Chad, it's buy or sell, you know how we play the game, we listen to three companies that have recently gotten money and we read a summary and then we either buy or sell the company. And for whatever reason, I can't find my boxer. Oh, there it is. There it is, all right. All right. Now I'm in the mood to play some buy or sell. All right, number one, we got London-based Metaview, one of your faves from a recent firing squad, they're an AI assistant for streamlining hiring processes. They've raised $7 million in funding, the funds will accelerate product development and the team growth. They say they're already saving teams at least 20 hours per hire. Chad, you weren't much of a fan, like I said, but they're giving you 7 million new reasons why you should change your mind, buy or sell Metaview. Chad: Yeah, it's funny because we spoke with Jason Corsello earlier this week from Acadian Ventures, and he was talking about... On the seed side, there's a lot of... It's hot, there's a lot of money that's going to be spent on the seed side because people want to spend that money. You said it last week, just on the IPO side, right? So people want to spend money. But in a world of generative AI, platforms like Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Mistral, and Meta are going to win unless, unless you have the secret sauce, and that secret sauce is years of data, like, for example, ATS and CRM companies, behavioral data. Metaview is way too late to the party, the beer's gone, all the hot chicks are passed out, the one thing Metaview has going for them is a great CEO, and that's not enough for me, it's still... Even with those 7 million reasons, it's still a sell for me. Joel: All right, Chad. And interview intelligence is hot, I don't know if you've heard it. I hang out with a lot of kids that are talking about interview intelligence a lot. Now, I think some solutions that have been around a while, BrightHire, full disclosure, I'm an advisor, Honeit have evolved this thing a lot longer, I think, or further along than Metaview is. But it's a wave that is going to get a lot of attention and funding, and it's going to be an acquisition target for somebody in the next two to three years. So if the mission is, sell this thing at 7 million, could they sell it for 50? I guess we'll see BrightHire probably go off first. Hineit's been around a while. Nick must just love running that business and not selling it. But for me, I think it's a buy, I think it's a wave that is easy to surf, even though the surfer in this case is maybe not the best surfer in the world. But for me, yeah, I gotta... S8: What are you doing, Stefano? Joel: I gotta buy it, I gotta buy it. All right, that is Metaview. Next up we have Modal. Chad: Modal. Joel: Modal Learning, a startup founded by two ex-Udemy executives, have secured 25 million in series A funding, which brings their total to $32 million. Modal offers a platform focused on enhancing employees' technical skills with courses on generative AI, data management, and analytics, among others. Chad buy or sell, Modal? Chad: I can't stop myself, I've got to buy, buy, buy. And let me tell you why, all companies are tech companies. We just had a great conversation with Mark Chaffey, CEO over at Hackajob earlier this week. And he said that Walmart is pretty much absorbing tech talent that guys like your buddy, Zuck, are cutting, and those tech people will need to keep their skills up to date, they will need to advance those skills because they need to stay with the velocity of today's tech. Plus there are all those other nontech technical skills that all employees will have to get trained on. Last but never the least, you mentioned it, Shimkus and Yang, ex Udemy president and CEO, are founders. This is too easy, this is exactly in their warehouse, they've sold something like this before. Buy, buy, buy. Joel: All right. Chad is a buy on Modal. Chad: Buy, buy, buy. Joel: Yeah, look, interview intelligence is hot, upscaling is even hotter, there's going to be a lot of money flowing into this. Companies want to grow their own, they're tired of spending money on recruiting and recruiters and agencies. Like, why can't we just educate our own folks and get them further up the corporate ladder? Look, this is an idea that's proven, you've got Gusto, Gloat, LinkedIn Learning, Degreed, Coursera, it's a proven model. The only risk to these guys is they just get crushed by whoever becomes Coke and Pepsi of the upskilling world, and they just become a consolidation play. I think there's going to be a lot of room for companies. They do have a pricing model that is sort of unique, they only charge companies when employees successfully complete a course. So there's little bit of like there is no risk, you're only going to pay when someone completes a course... Chad: I'll come to base. Joel: Which is going to be very favorable to a lot of companies. So yeah, for me as well, this is a winner, this is a winner. All right. Our last company, you're going to love these guys, Home From College, that's right, the name of the company is Home From College, a Los Angeles-based career platform. They've raised $5.4 million in seed funding. The platform caters to, you guessed it, Gen Z, offering part-time and full-time roles, and serves clients like Poppy, Aquifer and Steve Madden. Nothing says cool like a pair of Steve Maddens, everybody. With the cash, Home for College plans to expand the team and add more products for job seekers. Chad, buy or sell Home From College? Chad: Wow, man. $5.4 million in seed, that's a lot of cash, but the problem is, college is transient, you're in college until you're not, and then you stop using your old college job systems, then you moved on... Then you move on to LinkedIn, Indeed, Hackajob or wherever the people in your industry gravitate. So that being said, you need to either partner closely with colleges and universities or spend shit-tons of cash on marketing month after month after month to maintain market penetration, I personally have experience in building these types of college recruiting systems, nightmares, working directly with colleges, universities, career center directors, and employers who have teams that are focused on hiring from the university. And I promised myself I would never fucking do that again. This is a sell, very easily for me. Joel: Fair enough. All right, I'll make it quick because we got a lot of show left to go. I hate the name, I hate the college, I hate the college environment. You're right, every few years, there's a new player, handshake. Chad: When was the last time we heard from them? Joel: Yeah, like Monster Track or whatever the fuck that... It's just bad business, I hate targeting generationally, it just... It's silly to me. Look, there's already a resume builder out there, it's called LinkedIn, and it already has all the people who are gonna hire you on it, so don't mess around with some home from college site to build your resume. Go to LinkedIn and build your resume there and keep it updated and connect with people. It's such a much better product. Do you remember VisualCV from back in the day? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: This thing has been tried and tried again, so for this, yeah, you can guess I'm a big sell on Home from College, at least it's a dot com, so you can remember that. Chad: That's right, kids. Grandpa says, get your profile on LinkedIn. Joel: That's right. Chad: All right, let's talk... S8: Talk about food. Joel: Talk a little food, shall we? A little fast food, a little quick-serve action. First up, we have Waffle House. The Union of Southern Service Workers has filed a petition against Waffle House, alleging the chain deducts mandatory meal costs from workers' paychecks even if the meals aren't eaten. Workers are charged at least $3 per on-shift meal, impacting those on a tipped subminimum wage. Chad, your thoughts and what's your go-to meal at Waffle House? Because I know there's about "10." Chad: Yeah, there's splattered and scattered and splattered and all that other fun stuff, but yeah, this is from the Waffle House employee manual, "Meals must be consumed at the restaurant, and no food can be taken home under the meal policy. Any food actually taken home by such an associate will be considered a to-go order and must be paid full price." Number one, any company that says that stupid shit right outta the gate, it's like, fuck off. But then the Union of Southern Services workers called it "especially alarming," since, as you had said, these workers make a subminimum wage. What is a subminimum wage, kids? It's $2.90 an hour. Yes, Europe, yes, Europe, you think you get fucked sometimes? $2.90 an hour plus tips. But it's a Waffle House, we're talking tips at a Waffle House, this is not upscale, okay? Joel: No one's ordering $200 worth of food at the Waffle House. No. Chad: No, this to me is just fucking ridiculous, where the center of gravity for where these Waffle Houses are. Georgia has 381, South Carolina, 144, North Carolina, 142, Florida, 133, and Alabama, 128. It's in the South, it's in the South, the impoverished. If you take a look at where most poverty is in the US, it's in the South. And Waffle House, you're not helping, you're not helping. S9: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: Let's get these numbers right here. So Waffle House is a $4 billion a year company. Chad: Is that profit? Joel: Its chair, a guy named Joe Rogers Jr., is worth $1.7 billion. If this is true, Waffle House earns the douchebag company of the year award because Chad's right, if you haven't been to Waffle House, you're missing out kids. It's good people. Chad: Yes. Joel: A lot of times, this is the only company that will hire them. I've never had a bad experience from an employee at Waffle House. Chad: Well, okay. It's usually at 2:00 AM in the morning. Joel: The right answer is the biscuits and gravy, by the way, in terms of best thing at Waffle House. But yeah, look, if it's true, Waffle House didn't come out and say, this is not true. They didn't say, this is why, or, we make it up. So by all accounts, this is true, Waffle House hasn't come, and they have a PR department, I'm sure. So yeah, this is bullshit, I hope the union gets what they deserve, I hope this practice stops because inevitably, it's wage theft. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: At worst, and maybe at best, it's corporate greed, but it's a practice that's really stupid, it needs to stop. Chad: It's both. Joel: Let's be honest. Making a pile of pancakes at Waffle House probably costs them 30 cents, right? Chad: Maybe. Joel: And so like 3 bucks, it's just... I don't know, it's just really... It's really bad, it's really bad. Waffle House, I gotta go to IHOP now. Chad: Let's go to the other side of the pendulum. Let's talk about California. Joel: Alright, yeah. I gotta go to Cracker Barrel now. All right, in California, about half a million fast-food workers are now making at least $20 per hour, thanks to a new law that raises wages for restaurant change with more than 60 nationwide locations. The law also establishes a fast-food council, a first in the US, to annually adjust wages in line with inflation or up to 3.5%, and to address worker safety and other issues. Owners of some fast-food franchise locations have already increased prices or cut worker hours in response to the higher wages. Chad, does this drive you to Californication or is it just a little California dreaming? Chad: Yeah, so over the years, we've been told a bunch of lies, a lot of myths. If we pay these people living wages, we're gonna have to go out of business, we're going to have to raise the food rates, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Well, in November of 2013, yes, over 10 years ago, SeaTac passed Prop 1, which authorized a $15 minimum wage policy, which was phased in over several years. The policy went into effect in January of 2014. Six months later, the larger Seattle City Council expanded a similar $15 minimum wage policy to nearly 20,000 workers. So this is a great model to look at as we look at predicting outcomes because this took place more than 10 years ago. Did that kill restaurants? No. Since 2015, the number of restaurants is actually up in Seattle 5%. That's over 3200 restaurants. Annual sales increased by 20%. Seattle's job growth have outpaced the rest of Washington State. So now, let's go back to Cali. Cali, Cali. The new... Joel: Cali, I don't think so. Chad: Cali, $20 per hour minimum wage. The last time California raised the minimum wage to $16, guess what happened? Profits went up. Why? Where do you think these people buy food? When you put money in people's pockets, they fucking spend it, right? They can buy more. So owners should stop bawling up in the fetal position and start researching these models. Many Seattle restaurants are experiencing much lower turnover and higher profits because of this. This is not the shit that Milton Friedman talked about, he had fear in, oh, you're gonna lose people, and all the money has to go to the top. Fuck off, Milton, I hope you're turning over in your goddamn grave right now because you were wrong. We need to pay the people. Joel: He's with Jack Welch and not very happy about your words coming outta your mouth. There are a couple things I don't like about this, I don't like that there's a rule that if you serve just bread alone, you're immune to this... Chad: That's weird. Joel: Which means Panera... Chad: That's weird. Joel: Which means Panera bread gets a pass from this. And apparently Newsom and the Panera. So there's some politics here that I don't like particularly, but everything else you should like. Look, you have to have 60-plus locations, so that means it's not killing the mom and pop barbecue down the street, it's not killing the tacoria, favorite downtown, whatever establishment. So these are mainly big companies with a lot of money, a lot of resources. And so the fear-mongering was, the prices are gonna go insane, you're not gonna be able to afford it. So we have our first indication of what price increases mean. There was an In-N-Out burger preApril 1st and postApril 1st in terms of prices, so I think I'm paying 10 cents more for a cheeseburger, I'm paying like 5 cents more for a hamburger, maybe 20 cents more for a shake. Fries didn't go up, so potatoes must be doing very well growing wise. Chad: Cheap. Joel: So it's not like my cheeseburger went from 3.99 to 10.99. So the price increases are negligible. These folks that have a hard time making a living will now be able to do so. By the way, we know that when poor people get more money, they spend it, they spend it on food and gas and consumables and iPads and... Chad: Imagine that. Joel: Yeah, so most of this is gonna come back into the cycle. When you give rich people a lot of money, they put it in a bank or they store it. Chad: They don't spend it. Joel: They don't just spend it, so giving money to people without means is usually a good thing to keep the economy robust. Now, what will be interesting to see... So I don't think there's any Armageddon, I don't think the sky is falling, I think everything is gonna be fine. Frankly, $20 should be 25, we've talked about that a few times on the show. Chad: Especially in California. Joel: But 20 is not quite enough, especially in California. I do think they should use this as a recruiting tool to get people to move to California because of the higher minimum wage, get people leaving Texas and Florida. So who's gonna serve your Barbara Cobol if they're all in California making more money? I think that's interesting. This is being politicized big time. Chad: Go figure. Joel: The New York Post, right-wing entertaining publication, in the last... Their headline was, California Fast Food Minimum Wage Laws Already A Disaster And New York Wants Some of it Too. So this is gonna be politicized, but there's no skies falling situation in California. No one is... Now, will some people lose their job? Probably, I think the best people will stay, and maybe some of the worst will be let go, there'll be some people that are sacrificed for this. Prices don't blow up, like I think people have been fearful of. I do think it will increase or accelerate the investment in robots, I think that's inevitable no matter where we are. People just hate employing people no matter how much they're paying them. The interesting thing will be in 10 years when we're hopefully not doing the show anymore, but what do fast food places look like? Is it like a really small group of professionals that make really good salaries and they're managing the robots and the customer service. Restaurants will probably look much different than they do today. Chad: Probably. Joel: But whether we're doing the show to talk about it? I don't know. But this is a good thing, people, this is a good thing. Chad: Yeah, I'll be on the beach in Portugal, where we don't have fast food, so I won't give a fuck, no matter what. Listening to Ki Boo. Joel: Yeah. I do enjoy the occasional Burger King when I'm in Europe, though. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: In five, guys. Joel: All right, Chad, Amazon is removing Just Walk Out technology from its Amazon Fresh stores and replacing them with smart carts that allow customers to skip the checkout line but see their spending in real time. The change comes after customer feedback and is part of a revamp of the grocery chain. Just Walk Out technology will be available in Amazon Go stores and some smaller Amazon Fresh stores in the UK, as well as to third-party retailers. But by all accounts, this program is on the ropes. Chad, your thoughts on Amazon's latest move? Chad: Yeah, I think the smart carts are incredibly smart, I just hope it's not like enemy of the state, where they have cameras all over the place watching and... I mean that just gets a little bit too dystopian for me. But yeah, to be able to see innovation come to grocery shopping, the only thing that we've seen in innovation for grocery shopping, obviously, the back office stuff and then also inventory, those types of things. That makes a lot of sense, but the self-checkouts, which they're going to be scaling back on, so will this be the replacement for a self checkout possibly in the future? Don't know, but it'll be interesting to watch, that's for damn sure. Joel: Yeah. Clearly self-serve is in flux, the panacea of like, let people check themselves out, no cashiers, or just walk out the door is not really built for human beings. Human beings are like, just stand in... Stand at your local self-serve checkout area when you have some spare time. People are like, they don't scan it right, they take it off the weigh thing. Chad: Takes forever. Yeah. Joel: And they're gonna start over. Like it's six people checking out, there's one person that has to handle six people, two of them don't know what the hell they're doing, the third needs age verification because they're buying alcohol. You end up being in this infinite loop of waiting for the person to check you out and waiting for them... And then people just aren't met for self-service. And so you see Dollar Store, Target... Walmart are like, we're phasing some of this out. And I think this has been an experiment by Amazon that probably hasn't gone the way that they hoped. Look, Amazon did a lot of crazy stuff when Bezos was at the helm, whether it was like Whole Foods, MGM Studios. Why? I guess they're getting into media more, the Fire phone, remember? Nobody bought. Chad: No. Joel: And fortunately, under Jassy, they focused on three things that are really successful for them. E-commerce, AWS, and advertising. People don't understand, Amazon is like the third-largest advertising platform out there. Those are really good profitable businesses that aren't a pain in the ass. So like this whole Whole Foods checkout thing has gotta be a pain in the ass that they don't want to deal with, but they have to because they spent, how many billions on Whole Foods? So they have to think about this. I don't know if this will work, I'm not hopeful for humanity to get a... I'm gonna take a cart and it's gonna track what I put in the cart, and then I can just walk out. When do I put my credit card? You've seen videos of the Just Walk Out, where people were like, what do I do? Just walk out? Chad: Just walk out. Joel: I think there was a... There was a comedy about some black people, they were like, wait, no, no, no, I'm not just walking out. Where do I pay for this? Chad: Yeah. No shit, right? Joel: No, I'm not falling for this. Chad: Historically, historically, I'm not walking out with shit. Joel: Right. Yeah. I'm not doing that. Where's the camera? Am I getting punked here? Chad: Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking. A setup. Joel: So I think Amazon needs to focus on what they do well get rid of these hubris inducing side projects and get back to basics, but they're not the only big company having a little bit of an image problem or what the hell they're gonna be when they grow up problem. Apple, the largest company on the planet, is exploring the development of a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes and a robotic smart display for homes, but it is still in the early stages and not yet committed to releasing these products. The company has been under pressure to find new sources of revenue, and sees robotics as a potential opportunity to expand its presence in the home market. The focus on AI and machine learning is part of Apple's strategy for future growth, but the company has yet not committed to either project. Chad, are you ready for Apple robots following you around in your house? And more than that, are your dogs ready for a robot to follow you around in your house? Chad: Yeah, the only thing I could think of is the Jetsons and Rosie, their robot that followed them around. You would have thought that was really cool. Now I have my own place, my own dogs, and I don't need that. I've got robots that vacuum my carpet and can possibly mop my floor, but I don't need any of that other shit. Sometimes, I wanna unplug my Google Home just because the fucker listens to me all the time, so I think this is literally a bridge too far for me, at least, I'm just not sure how long it's gonna take for society to start... Well, first and foremost, the cost, right? So the cost is gonna be... Is gonna be a factor, but will society be comfortable with having something like that in the house all the time? I don't know. I just know that I won't. Joel: Can I have sex with a robot, and does it look like Jennifer Aniston? Is the question I guess that I have for this thing. Obviously, it's not. Chad: We'll connect with your OnlyFans page. Joel: Look, part of me feels bad for these big companies that have to make these huge swings. They can't just dabble in stuff. And Apple, post Steve Jobs, it's like AirPods and technically, the watch that have been successful, which are really extensions of the iPhone. Look, they've dabbled in TVs, they're rumored to get into that. Chad: Cars. Joel: They were rumored to have cars. Chad: Yeah. Not happening. Joel: Apple Home was a thing, CarPlay should be a thing, they just can't get it right. Chad: Nope. Joel: And this ain't it. Look, the Vision Pros, dead on arrival, I haven't heard anything about them since they launched. I wear glasses, Chad, and my latest pair is the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, which are great because you don't really know they're smart glasses. I can listen to music or podcasts as my wife yells at me about how I didn't mow the yard right. I'm just listening to that. I can take pictures and video. That's the kind of thing Apple needs to develop, they need to buy Warby Parker or partner with Prada or Dolce Gabbana and create smart glasses that are like that, that are cool, you don't really know they're there. These big swings are messing them up. I guess as a final thought, maybe Amazon and Apple could partner and create a penis rocket that can follow me around my house. That, my friends, sounds like a home run. And with that, we out. Chad: Out. S10: Wow look at you, you made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could've used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big-booty Latinas, and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads, instead now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away, and like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode of the Chad & Cheese Podcast, hosts Joel Cheeseman and Chad Sowash dive into the world of talent acquisition with Sher Zippo, a specialist from Bar Taco, a restaurant brand renowned for its upscale casual street food and innovative service model. Zippo shares insights into Bar Taco's unique approach to hiring, leveraging technology like QR codes to enhance both customer and employee experiences, and maintaining a fun, equitable work environment across their 30 locations. The conversation covers everything from the origins of Bar Taco, the challenges of scaling in the hospitality industry, to the impact of automation and the importance of human interaction in creating a memorable dining experience. Zippo emphasizes the brand's commitment to competitive salaries, team-based service, and a culture that prioritizes fun and professional growth, making Bar Taco not just a place to eat, but a place to build a career. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION COMETH Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It is Tony Gwynn's favorite podcast, AKA, the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Chad: Hello. Joel: Joined as always the Doc to my Marty, Chad Sowash... Chad: Thank you. Joel: Is in the house. Chad: Thank you. Joel: And we welcome Sheri Zippo, like the lighter. Chad: Zippo? Joel: To the show. Sheri is a talent acquisition specialist at two of my favorite words put together, a company called Bartaco. Chad: Wow. Joel: Possibly the funnest place on earth. Chad: No wait, do they have the.com? Bartaco.com. Sheri Zippo: Yes. Chad: Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Joel: Alright. Before we get to you, what is this Bartaco? I've never heard of it. Chad: Please. Joel: Is it two great tastes? It tastes great together. Chad: Of course they are. Joel: Is it only in... Where is it located? Tell us about this Bartaco. Sheri Zippo: I have so many great things to say about Bartaco. Joel: Okay. Sheri Zippo: Bartaco is upscale, casual street food, scratch, kitchen, scratch bar. We throw a party, we sell fun. Not tacos. That's our tag. We are up and down the eastern coast. We have 30 locations. Soon to be 32. Chad: When do you come to Indianapolis? That's all I care about right now. Sheri Zippo: We're hearing a lot about that at this conference. Chad: Yes. Yes. Sheri Zippo: We do have two in Colorado. So we are a little bit this way. Joel: You're getting there. Sheri Zippo: But... Chad: A little too far. Joel: You skipped us. You totally skipped. Chad: Totally fly over country is what she said. Yes. Joel: Fly over a country. We don't deserve a bar or a taco. [laughter] Joel: We only deserve single. So how was it founded and when was it founded? Sheri Zippo: 2010 in Port chester, New York. It was an old lobster shack on the water looking across to Connecticut. And it just took off from there, it's... Joel: It's running tacos, I think. New England. [laughter] Chad: She said it was a party, Joel. Joel: Oh, okay sorry. Chad: This is a party. That has tacos. Joel: Like an interview with us. Chad: Has a tacos in a bar. Yes. I mean, come on. He did... He's slow, he's slow on the uptake. Joel: I'm getting a better sense of what it is. Now let's get a better sense of who you are. Most of our listeners, if not all of them, have no clue who Sheri Zippo is. Sheri Zippo: Oh boy. Joel: What makes Sheri tick? Sheri Zippo: Oh gosh. Restaurants, hospitality. Chad: Long walks on the beach. I mean, come on. Sheri Zippo: Oh, yeah. Flip flops. Walks on the beach. Chad: Okay. There we go. There we go. Yeah. Sheri Zippo: Some good cocktails. Chad: Good call. Sheri Zippo: But no, I love the hospitality business restaurant industry. I've been in it for a really long time. I'm a new recruiter, so that's a fun fact. Joel: Please tell me Applebee's, Outback Steakhouse or Chili's is in your past. Sheri Zippo: P. F. Chang's is in my past. Joel: Close enough. Close enough. Sheri Zippo: And Tavistock is in my past. Chad: She just raised the roof. Nobody has ever raised the roof with P. F. Chang's. That was very nice. Sheri Zippo: Well, I got two from Bartaco. Chad: That was good. That was that. There you go. That's good that. I love that. Sheri Zippo: I worked for some great companies. Chad: I love that. Sheri Zippo: But yeah, I was in operations for a really long time. Retired that hat and now I am in the recruiting side of things. So what's really great is I get to hire people for the roles that I've done, so I have a good sense of what that means. Create careers for people up and coming and add value to our company. So. Chad: Amazing. Sheri Zippo: It's pretty fun. Chad: So what is the hardest thing for you as a recruiter at Bartaco? I would assume that getting people to reply to anything that says Bartaco would be easy, but I could be wrong, so help me out. Sheri Zippo: No, we're really blessed. We have a good applicant flow. We have a good backing behind us. I mean, people know our name. I mean, we're a beautiful restaurant. We're fun. When you go on the website and you look at a Bartaco and the videos and all that, that's really what you feel and see when you walk in. Chad: Experience? Yeah. Sheri Zippo: It translates. And so hopefully, I mean, the goal is they talk to us on the phone and I just get great feedback about people like when can I sign up? Like they just, it's a buy-in super quick. So I think the hardest thing. Chad: Yeah? Sheri Zippo: Oh, I don't know. Keep raising the bar. Right? Chad: Dealing with these technologies. Is that easy? Sheri Zippo: We're a big tech side. I mean we use a QR code at the table. Yeah. We don't have servers. Joel: Hello? Sheri Zippo: Yeah. We're a whole nother Joel... Joel: Hello. Speak of my love language. Sheri Zippo: Oh, boy. Joel: Little QR code action. Sheri Zippo: So the QR code adds the convenience for the guests and then we add the hospitality, so. Joel: What about for recruiting though? Is there a hiring QR code or have you started to use that yet? Sheri Zippo: I mean we have them that people can easily apply. They can easily get to our website. We have virtual business cards. All that great stuff. Joel: That's just table stakes at this point. Get it? Chad: Table stakes? Joel: It sounds like there's just a flood of people that wanna work there. Which leads me to my question of, we talk so much about employer brand, giving a brand that's separate from our main brand and Chad and I kind of go back and forth with is it better to have just a homogenous brand that translates into people wanting to work there or to have a separate brand and then the separate employment thing. It sounds like you guys have really embraced the overall fun Bartaco brand and that translates into applicant flow. Was that on purpose? Do you ever have discussions about a separate employer brand? Talk about that aspect of your recruiting. Sheri Zippo: I mean that's something that has definitely been a hot topic as of late. We're growing and learning. So in my opinion what we did, 'cause remember I'm only a year now, right? So we did five openings last year and that was when I just started. So from then until now, we're lights speeds ahead. First of all, I think we get better every day. We keep adding value to the leadership teams that are collaborative and we all want the same things. We want the best guest experience, but we also want the best employee experience. I personally think that that's a combined thing and they really can't be separated. And I feel like that's the path we're going. It comes from a very genuine place. And A players wanna work with A players like, right? Like you don't have to be perfect at your craft or your skill, but you gotta have drive and and compassion and... Chad: You gotta want it. Sheri Zippo: And want it. Joel: Gotta up your game. Sheri Zippo: Yeah. Like all those things. So for me, I look for people like that to join us, to help better us in that. And we could teach you Bartaco, easy. Joel: And you get free tacos, which helps the best... I think. Chad: I would like to be taught Bartaco, that's all I gotta say. Sheri Zippo: I have a shirt that says "If You Don't Like Tacos I'm Nacho Friend." I may or may not wear that here and there. Joel: Dad Joke alert. Chad: Nacho friend. Joel: Dad joke alert. Chad: Oh, I get it. Okay. So back to the tech question, in all of this, because I mean, we're talking about scale, because Bartaco, it's sexy, don't get me wrong. You're gonna get a lot of applicants. How do you scale through those applicants with the technology? Do you? Do you not? I mean. Joel: You manage the flood. Chad: Yeah. How do you do it? Sheri Zippo: Oh, I think that's something that... I mean, this is a great example of what we're learning, right? Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: Mid last year I jumped on a few webinars with different tech companies to see if there were things that we aren't using that we could use that would make our process better, easier. Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: More attractive, all those things. And so we saw a couple of here as well. So I think when we go back... Chad: Name names, who did you see that you liked? Sheri Zippo: We liked RecruitBot. Chad: Okay. Sheri Zippo: I think that that's, that could be something that could work for us. Chad: We've been hearing the name a lot around here. We have, we have. Sheri Zippo: You know, we're different too. We're restaurants, hospitality versus looking for nurses. It's not even... Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: So when you talk about a certain recruiting platform, I don't wanna mention total names, but it may not hit the target audience that we're looking for our... The mass hiring. Right. Joel: What does work for you, if not the targeted solution? Sheri Zippo: Well, Indeed is a really big hub for us. Especially when we're doing new restaurant openings. And you're talking about hourly employees? I mean, we just did an event in Charlotte to open our Birkdale location, Jamie and I, and we had over 300 interviews that we interviewed and over a 20% return rate on that for two days of hire, like an event. Chad: Okay. Sheri Zippo: So we get a lot from that. But salaried is when you're cultivating who you want on your team. And you're building with what's already there. And you're poaching from P. F. Chang's, you know what I mean? [laughter] Sheri Zippo: Like the places that you respect, you respect those places and you're like, "Well, I want you to work for us." Chad: You know, the training, you know the environment, you know if it's gonna actually come out, if there are parallels. Sheri Zippo: Right. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I feel like she's saying the Taco Bell training system doesn't sync with the Bartaco. Chad: No. Sorry. Maybe Del Taco, maybe Chipotle, but no Taco Bell. Sheri Zippo: Well, to be honest, like Chipotle or Chick-fil-A or things like that. Starbucks. We've had some really good success stories with managers of which we call service leaders in our industry coming in as a start because they wanna jump over to full service. Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: And we're willing to teach them. And they have all those things we talked about, the non-negotiables that we can't teach. Chad: So it's amazing... So my wife, her background is service restaurant general manager. Right. The logistics, the management. I mean, everything that you have to do going through that process as a like a manager or general manager at an organization like Bartaco, it's a great launchpad for not just staying in the industry but getting into other leadership positions. Because there's a lot of leadership that's taught, there's a lot of care and give a shit about your employees because if you don't, guess what? They don't show up the next day. It is much different than most other industries. Talk a little bit about that. I mean, because those... I feel like a lot of those individuals get looked down upon and they have skill sets that are far above many even corporates. Sheri Zippo: Which people? Individuals? Chad: Like the general managers. The managers of locations who actually have to deal with the people, not just customers, but also obviously employees. Sheri Zippo: Yeah. Well, they're boots on the ground, right? Like we are very, like we know that, you know, the RSC, the restaurant support center, some of the best collaborative group of people I've worked with in the industry as far as the support center, we know that. All of us know that, we work for them. And we are at their disposal. So we're there to support. So whether that's being available to pick up a phone or do something for them that they need. Or it's leadership and development or soft skills that we wanna help our leaders grow. I think everybody at Bartaco in that position is committed to doing that for all of our teams, which is pretty awesome. So that's what keeps me going and makes me wanna just stay and hit another year and another year because I believe in it, you know? Chad: So you see a career path? Sheri Zippo: I mean, that's why I joined. I would never have, a 100%. Joel: We talk a lot on the show about minimum wage. As you are aware, it hasn't increased in many years over a decade. And food service is struggling with paying servers and staff. Where is Bartaco's sort of strategy around salary and keeping people, it sounds like it's a great environment. There's training for retention, but talk about the salary piece of keeping people on the job. Sheri Zippo: As far as the salary positions that we have, you know, we are very competitive and the people, the powers above are very clear in stating where we wanna fall into with the percentile of, you know, a like with like, so I think we're on the cutting edge with that. Like I think we're in a good place. As far as the hourly go, that's the great thing about Bartaco. We, the service model allows us, so we don't, like I said, we don't have servers, we don't have hosts. We have a group of support team that we call Dragonflies 'cause that's our logo. Joel: Ooh. Sheri Zippo: I know. Isn't that cool? Joel: I like that. Sheri Zippo: And our management team and your bartenders, those are your front of the house staff. And then you have your typical culinary staff. Right? And because it's a... The QR code, all those gratuities that are being left are split amongst the team that worked. Right? So it creates a higher wage. Joel: Are people tipping through QR code? Sheri Zippo: Yeah. Joel: Talk about that. What... How long, what was the decision to do that? What kind of engagement do you have? 'cause... Sheri Zippo: I don't know. I don't know how much I could actually talk on it since I'm not that new, but like what do you mean? It's the use of the QR code? Joel: Well, I think that's innovative. I mean, we don't hear a lot of food service talking about tipping through a QR code. Like is it a service? Is it a vendor? Sheri Zippo: Yeah. Well we use a company called OneDine and that's who we partner with. And so you... Chad: Okay. Makes sense. Joel: You pay the bill and tip. Okay. It's not exclusively tipping. Sheri Zippo: Yes. Joel: It's paying the bill. Okay. So I got excited for no reason. Sheri Zippo: I was like, "Uh-oh" [laughter] Chad: As usual, anyway. Joel: As usual. Sheri Zippo: But you know, these line cooks and prep cooks and team members, you know, are making sometimes an average of $20 an hour, you know, and it... That's amazing. And we have a weekly pay and everybody is paid fairly and equally and it's a team environment. And if you're not a team, then it's not, if you're not willing to do that, then it's not an environment for you. And that's fine. And we're gonna find the people that wanna do that. 'Cause the more money we make, the more money they make. Joel: So automation, is another topic that's hot and we hear about more restaurants looking to automate. Certainly in my experience. And... Chad: A little robots you're talking about? Sheri Zippo: Oh, I don't know if I can answer that. [laughter] Joel: Kiosk replacing cashier workers, flippy... Sheri Zippo: I'm just a little TA girl. Joel: Flippy replacing just a little TA girl. Sheri Zippo: I don't think so. Chad: She doesn't make the robotic... Joel: So no, no thoughts on automation. Are you? Sheri Zippo: I don't, I don't know, but I don't think so. We're such a human interact... Joel: Well, is it a Brandy question? So for example, we had In-N-Out last night and I can never imagine the culture of In-N-Out being automated, whereas other restaurants, I could imagine that. Where do you think your brand is in terms of automation? Do you think it'll be something you embrace or people want the personal touch at the restaurant? Sheri Zippo: Like are you asking me if I think we're gonna get rid of people? I don't think so. I mean, who would cook that... Chad: There it is. Sheri Zippo: Who would cook that? I mean, again, I don't wanna be held accountable for that, but I don't think so. [laughter] Sheri Zippo: I dunno who's gonna cook that in easy Scratch... Chad: I don't think anybody is gonna hold you accountable. Sheri Zippo: Scratch food, you know? Joel: Yes. She's like, when I sat down, I was told that they would just talk about bars and tacos. Chad: Which is, which is... Joel: Not getting rid of all our employees. Chad: Which is my wheelhouse. Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: But what I do think is that we are innovative company and we are cutting edge and we are leaning on technology. So I think we're gonna keep upping the bar. Chad: Right. Sheri Zippo: But combining it with the human, is if I had a guess. Chad: Beyond Bartaco, just basic opinion. We've heard automation, AI, blah, blah, blah, it's all over the place. Right? Do you think that is just like overrated or do you think it's literally true that some companies are... They're gonna look at trying to cut heads using automation and AI. Sheri Zippo: And see that's what's funny. Like we don't use the QR code for that. Like one might think that right off the cuff they might go, "Oh, they don't have service because they don't wanna pay that." That's not actually why we do it at all. It actually helps our employees. But I think that yes, for some concepts I think that that's the way it has to go, but not for all. Chad: Yeah. Sheri Zippo: I think it's gonna vary. I think it's... Can't be standardized. Joel: Everyone that is Sheri Zippo. Chad: Zippo. Joel: From Bartaco, Sheri. For those that are listening who want to connect with you or get on that list for when Bartaco is coming to town. Where would you send them? Chad: Indianapolis. Sheri Zippo: You can go to my LinkedIn profile. Or should I give an email address or? Chad: Whatever you want. Joel: You do you Sheri with a name like Zippo. Just let it ride. Sheri Zippo: Or szippo@bartaco.com. Joel: QR codes, bars, tacos, P. F. Chang's. Chad: I love it. [laughter] Joel: Speak of my love language Chad. Another one is in the Can. We out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of of shout-outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese, it is so weird. We out.

In this episode, join us as we sit down with Debbie Tang and Ryan Whitacre from Bridge Partners, a leading executive search firm focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Debbie, a former lawyer from DC, and Ryan, adopted from Seoul and raised in Flint, Michigan, share their unique journeys into executive search and their passion for DEI. We delve into why DEI is a cornerstone at Bridge Partners, tracing its roots back to the early 2000s when multiculturalism was at the forefront. Our guests discuss a recent survey they conducted on DEI initiatives in corporate America, revealing that 80% of respondents consider DEI important, with it ranking as the top priority among non-core business initiatives. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by Chief Diversity Officers, who often have the shortest tenure in the C-suite due to a lack of support and resources within companies. Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of DEI in organizations and the future of leadership diversity. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. It's Rihanna's favorite podcast, AKA, the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the vanilla to my ice. Chad Sowash is in the house. Chad: Baby. Joel: And we welcome Debbie Tang and Ryan Whitacre to the show. Both of them are partners at Bridge Partners. Welcome to the podcast, Ryan and Debbie. Chad: Hello. Ryan Whitacre: Thanks for having us. Debbie Tang: Hi. Chad: Happy Hump day. Where are you guys coming from? Where are you guys? Are you located in the same area, work remote, different areas? Where are you guys at? Ryan Whitacre: I'm in Chicago. Debbie Tang: I'm in DC. Chad: Oh, so different areas. Definitely. Joel: Chicago. Ryan Whitacre: Chicago. Chad: Chicago and DC. Joel: White Sox or Cubs? Ryan Whitacre: Tigers. I grew up in Flint, so as I call it, the northeast suburbs of Chicago. You know. Joel: So Are you a Lions fan? Let's go there. Ryan Whitacre: I am. A long suffering Lions fan. Absolutely. Joel: Yeah. It was a good year though. Good year. Ryan Whitacre: I mean, we get one every 50 years. Joel: Yeah. So aside from bad taste in sports teams a lot of our listeners will not know who you two are at risk of being canceled. Let's go women first. Ladies first. Debbie, tell us about yourself. Debbie Tang: Well, thank you. So I am what is commonly known in the DC area as a recovering lawyer, there's a lot of us around. I am actually from the DC area, born and raised. Went away for college and law school. And when I started off, I thought that I was gonna be a human rights lawyer. Didn't quite work out that way. Ended up in big law, was a lawyer for Marriott for a while, and then did a career 180 and started doing executive search, which a lot of people, not really sure what it is, but I like to think of it as a professional matchmaker. Joel: I would not have put that puzzle together. Yeah. Chad: How long were you at Marriott? Debbie Tang: A year and a half. Chad: A year and a half. Okay. Just enough to understand and then get the hell out. Debbie Tang: Just enough. My family misses the discount a lot. Chad: So why'd you stay in DC? Debbie Tang: DC is a great city. It is vibrant. It's got all these different cultures. Any food that you want, any country, it's all here. And my family actually has a restaurant here, which Ryan has been to. Ryan Whitacre: I have. Chad: Oh. Debbie Tang: Which is amazing if I do say so myself. But. Chad: Go ahead. Give us a plug. What's the restaurant? Because if there's anything in DC that DC in New Orleans, probably my two best food places that most people don't realize. Debbie Tang: Yeah. 'cause DC's got everything and everywhere. So it's a little bit complex. Right. So my parents grew up in Taiwan, so it's kind of Taiwanese food. But they came originally from Northern China. So it's like tons of noodles. Tons of dumplings, breads not your typical Chinese. Chad: I love it. Debbie Tang: It's called A&J. Chad: A&J I love it. Debbie Tang: Yeah. Very non-Typical name for a Chinese restaurant too. Joel: Holy carb overload. Batman. Chad: Gonna need an app after that one. Cheeseman. Ryan Whitacre: I have. And I can attest. Lots of good noodles and lots of good napping. Joel: Love it. Love it. Chad: That's everything a lobbyist needs. Joel: Ryan what makes Ryan tick? Give us the lowdown on you. Ryan Whitacre: So I have much the same story, but maybe a little bit different origin story. So I'm an orphan or maybe a lucky orphan 'cause I got adopted at six months and so born outside of Seoul, found in a ditch as everyone does. And. Chad: Found in a ditch. Wait a minute. Time out. Literally. Joel: That was another bad '80s movie, wasn't it? Ryan Whitacre: Yeah. Chad: I've heard of puppies found in a ditch, but you were literally, you were found... Ryan Whitacre: I mean, literally found in a ditch. So my birthday is yeah, my birthday's an approximation. 'cause they look at 'em and say, Hey, I suppose last night. So I spent my first six months in an orphanage and then found myself at O'Hare. Picked up by a very nice white family from Flint, Michigan, and grew up as a white kid who didn't look white and then went to a big dumb cow college here in the Midwest before I too got the law bug and, and went to open off the law school and thought I was real smart. Not not smart. Spent way too long trying to be a lawyer before I stumbled into this crazy, crazy career of executive search as well. And Debbie and I crossed paths and she brought me into Bridge Partners where I am the... I run the Chicago office, which you can see it's me and the dog. Joel: Bridge Partner Sounds like a really big company. Is it? Ryan Whitacre: We are 17. Debbie Tang: Eight partners, Eight partners now. Joel: Eight Huge. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah. Huge. Chad: So eight partners, 17. And then I would assume eight locations, much like we're seeing right now. Is that correct? Ryan Whitacre: Yeah, indeed. Cover the East Coast got San Francisco and now a Miami Outpost too. Chad: Well, we're here today to talk about diversity, equity, inclusion. You guys actually created a barometer and we have the the data around 2023's version, the value of diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. Is it a boom or is it a bust? So why is an executive search firm focusing on DEI when it's literally not the flavor of the day anymore? It seems like everybody's trying to go away from it. So why are you guys focusing on it to try to drive awareness toward it? Ryan Whitacre: I'll start. And then Debbie you know me well enough to get me to shut up. So our firm started about 20 years ago, actually, 2003, back when I think multiculturalism maybe was the word of the day before it ever became DEI. And those sorts of acronyms. It kind of started on the notion that at the time you had multicultural marketing and maybe your CPG companies, your consumer heavy ones, McDonald's. Kind of got the bread idea that, you know what? Black people buy stuff, Asian people buy stuff. Maybe we should be thinking about how do we market to them, maybe how do we think the way they think? And so we had this bit of a push to, especially in the marketing, maybe in HR, maybe in other functions, get different people and maybe think about getting some inroads into different communities. Ryan Whitacre: Our firm's founders started the place on that notion that, you know what, maybe there's something here and maybe we have a niche that we can exploit in the marketplace, thought they'd be out of business within about three years. Here we are in 2024. And why would we? We're not McKinsey, we're not a big consulting firm. Why would we commission this study? Well, over the past three years, four years, especially since George Floyd, we get asked by our clients all the time what's this DEI stuff? Or should we have a diversity chief officer? Should this be an HR person, just tell us, this isn't our bailiwick. This isn't what we we do. But because we're asked so much, we're like well, here's what we think. Ryan Whitacre: Sure. You want me to talk, I'll talk. But last year we knew that there was this case kind of bubbling up, and this is what you get when you get two recovering lawyers. This case was bubbling up to the Supreme Court, and we knew it was going after the college admissions said maybe we should actually take the temperature of corporate America and see what they think because I don't know. I can talk. Sure, but you really wanna listen to me? So we did. So we waited. We waited until that decision came down and we asked, I think we had more than 400 respondents came back. So we were the first statistically significant sample size of large companies, 25 million in revenues, or 250 in headcount and above what they thought what do you think about this DEI stuff? Ryan Whitacre: And does the Supreme Court decision affect the way that you're gonna be planning for next year? And I will tell you that when I was thinking about the results we're gonna get back, I thought it'd be 180 from where we came out. And I know you have the study and wanted to go through some of those numbers, but I was fully prepared for our respondents who are c-suite people. And then your Chief HR heads, I figured they'd come back and tell us flash in the pan. Yeah. We had a moment in 2020. We're kind of over it and we're ready to get going with the rest of the business. Joel: Was this an anonymous survey? Ryan Whitacre: It was, yes. So it was real results and we were kind of astounded. I mean, the top line is 80% came back and said, this is important stuff. Debbie Tang: We agree. Joel: 80 is a lot. Ryan Whitacre: 80 is a lot. Joel: What else did you find in the survey or what specifics if we dig into it? Ryan Whitacre: So some of the other stuff that I'd said that I'd pull out here, we also wanted to know whether DEI was itself a separate sort of thing, or was it lumped into maybe, I don't know, corporate philanthropic things or ESG or some of these other things? And one of the pieces that came out was that of all of these kind of, not the business business stuff, but maybe your philanthropic stuff. Your environmental stuff. DEI seemed to be the number one priority for these respondents as well. So that it is top of mind. It isn't sort of a back of the office thing. And then I think another thing that was interesting to us is that the way it's counted, we're talking about corporate America here, is we like count things, race, ethnicity that's how we're drawing things up. And I think that's got a lot of implications to me anyway, about backlash now and why people are kind of coming back on it. But I'm gonna shut up for a minute. Chad: Not shut up. I'm gonna say is for Debbie to take over. Joel: Debbie. Yeah. I think that's the handoff to you, Debbie. Debbie Tang: That's my cue. Joel: Yeah. Debbie Tang: Yeah. So I mean, I think going back to what we're talking about, sort of like why are we interested in this? What is the firm about? I think one of the things that's been really dramatic that we've seen even beyond the survey is in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, we had companies coming out of the woodwork saying, Hey, will you find us our first Chief Diversity officer? Right? And so that was maybe immediately 2020, 2021. And then last year those numbers dropped dramatically in terms of who was looking for a Chief Diversity officer. Joel: And how many of those placements are still employed? Debbie Tang: Well, so that's the thing. Some of the latest surveys that have come out have said that the Chief Diversity Officer is the shortest tenured c-suite member. Joel: Ouch. Debbie Tang: It is. It is a big ouch. And I think that the average is somewhere around eight months now, which is ridiculous because what happened was so many of these companies decided, oh, everyone else is doing it. We're gonna do it too. But it was just a very hollow position with no budget, with no team, with no power. With a report to somebody three layers down in maybe HR or finance, right? And so it has been interesting to see not only the results of the survey, but then just day to day in our own searches and sort of who is actually interested in hiring a new CDO, a lot of the places who hired their first, after that person's gone, they are not hiring their second. Chad: Yeah. It's akin to many of these companies who change their logo to a rainbow logo one month out of the year. Right. And it's more optics than it is, than it is a real, so therefore, I'm gonna push back a little bit on the survey. I mean, the survey is... This is answers, these are not data points. Right? One of the things that we saw during all these CDOs coming in and companies saying they're spending a bunch of money in DEI, the outcomes weren't there. Right? The outcomes weren't there to support the dollars. And for the most part, because they were putting people in positions that weren't qualified to be in those positions, number one. Number two, they were also putting people into positions without any resources, money, people, any of that, right? So at the end of the day, how do we see DEI moving forward from this point? It's not a situation where it doesn't work because we didn't allow it to work. How do we see it moving forward and what are you guys hearing from clients and the market? Ryan Whitacre: Yeah, I agree with both those points. I think that there was too quick a trigger, right? Being pulled after 2020 and people wanted to just do something and then they, they gave it to somebody and said, well, yeah, it's their job through the chief diversity officer. Go get it. So wrong, wrong answer. And then the second part to this, I wanna go back to something else sort of the way we count. It's what's the terrible Drucker quote that's been misquoted and I guess he didn't even say it, which is what gets counted or what gets measured gets done. And he may never have said it, but it is kind of a truism at this point. And one of the things that I think we find again doing it wrong is we KPI everything to death and what's easy to count, it's easy to count our black people, our Asian people, right? And so then we put these... Chad: It is If you have them. Ryan Whitacre: True, but... And so then you tie... People start tying bonuses to these numbers. And so that's all wrong too. What do we talk about with our clients all the time is if you are seeking "diversity" that's fairly easy. You wanna go hire some Asian people, go hire some Asian people, but then you have a revolving door. 'cause those Asian people aren't gonna stick around because you're missing the other parts of that puzzle, which are the more important ones, which are the inclusion, the belonging piece. You gotta have an environment that people wanna stick around and stay. And we're constantly telling our clients that, which is get diversity out of your brain. Make your workplace a better place to be. Diversity will be an end goal if you're actually doing those things right. Debbie Tang: That's the thing. It's about culture. The culture of your work environment is more important than any other acronym that you give it. Because when people are trying to count the numbers, that's when you get in trouble legally too. Right? Ryan and I are not lawyers anymore, but I can tell you that all those companies that various organizations are going after right now, it's because they made bold proclamations. We will have 25% African American employee population by 2025. Right No, that's not what diversity is about. It's not about the numbers. The numbers... If you're just going after numbers, you're doing it all wrong. Because if you're not changing the culture and making everybody feel welcome, then yeah, you get them in the door and then they're out six months later. Joel: So help me clarify this in my own mind, George Floyd happens, me too happens. Public sentiment pivots or the pendulum swings. Companies say we have to do something. The easy something is hire someone to be in charge of our diversity initiatives so that we can tell the press and we can go to the board meetings and the steakhouse down the street that we have a diversity manager head or whatever, A year down the road we go, why do we need this person again? And what's their dollar value? And where are we now? And the public doesn't care as much anymore. We're onto like Ukraine, we're onto other stuff and like okay, we don't need that anymore. It's done. Whereas that person's job is a long-term vision for how we mold the culture to be inclusive of a lot more people than we are today. So we basically killed the fetus before it had any time to grow. And now here's where we are today, we're at basically ground zero again. Did I get that right? Debbie Tang: I think that's mainly right. I think the part that is important in terms of why the pendulum has swung so hard back the other way, it really is a lot from the Supreme Court. Joel: The affirmative action. Debbie Tang: Because even though that was only directed at universities, all the companies... Part of it was the ones who didn't really have fully developed diversity programs, they used it as an excuse to like oh, well they went after the school, so they're gonna come after us next, so we're just gonna cut everything. Right? And so I think that is a big piece of why it has swung so hard the other way. But I think that the thing that Ryan and I talk about all the time that we take away from this is when you look at the McKinsey studies and you look at year after year, they're still showing that having a leadership suite and a board that is inclusive and that reflects their customer base like that is always going to help these companies that's gonna grow profit. That piece is always still there. And so I think that for the companies that have been sort of doing it right for a longer time, they're not the ones who are gonna like knee jerk as easily the other way. Ryan Whitacre: It does stem back. I think the backlash, stems back to the Supreme Court. You get a decision point made and you can tie things back or do things or not do it and blame it on the Supreme Court. What I think is interesting is that in the last three weeks you've had two Supreme Court actions following onto that, which really call into question how powerful that decision is. Because you first had a ruling that was... Earlier this month that said, Hey, we're gonna let West Point keep race conscious admission standards in place. Supreme Court said we're not gonna really mess with that right now. So that was interesting. And then this week the Supreme Court also declined to take up another case that was a high school. That's like the number one high school in the country. Debbie Tang: That's my high school. That's where I went. Chad: Ah wow record. Joel: She's number one. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah. Debbie Tang: It's very interesting. So the high school that I went to is in the suburbs of Washington, DC And it's a magnet math and science school. And so when I was a kid, I can tell you how old I am, I'm not ashamed, I'm 45. So I graduated high school in '96. And in '96 when I went to that school, you just took a test. Right. And anybody could take the test, there was no fee. You just walk through the door and that's it. Right. In the years that have followed, there are now kids who take a prep course just to take that test like kids who move from overseas into that neighborhood to try to qualify into that school. And that's all to say that when I was a kid, it was not an Asian majority school at all. And then over the years, it's highest point was maybe 70 to 75% Asian American. Chad: Wow. Debbie Tang: Because I mean, my people care about education. Right. And that's why literally there were like families that moved from Korea to be in the boundaries of my high school. Right. Ryan Whitacre: I'm a bad Asian, by the way. I'm terrible at math. Chad: Tiger moms are a thing. You know, you grew up White. That's entirely different. Debbie Tang: But that's the thing is that people said, hey this is the best high school in the country. Why is it 75% Asian? That's not right. We're not reflecting, we're not reflecting the county that we live in. Right. Yeah. And so then the Supreme Court took that on and declined to take that case. And so now you can still use race as a factor. But it's interesting because this is sort of one of those it doesn't quite make sense, right? Because you're like, oh, okay. Joel: The affirmative action case was, I mean, the Asian population is a huge reason why affirmative action was struck. I mean, people don't kind of realize that, but the Asians were the spearhead for a lot of the movement. Debbie Tang: Yeah, so it's interesting. Chad: I would say they were pushed up front, yes. Ryan Whitacre: They were. Chad: To be the face. Debbie Tang: Yeah. Chad: I don't think they were the major push at all. Ryan Whitacre: That's right. They got some spotlight. Chad: Yeah, there's an entirely different discussion around that one. Debbie Tang: Yeah. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah. Chad: Let's talk about the evolution of DEI programs. And we've heard many opinions over the years. And in some of them, we're in this woke, anti-woke society where we're really looking to try to divide and conquer, right? We being the, let's say for instance, the upper crust, they're always trying to get us to fight each other underneath them, so we don't focus on them and what they're taking away from us. The evolution could be, and I don't know, it could be more socioeconomic if that's the case. And it is less than just saying Black, White, Asian, doesn't matter, right? It's more around poor people and we got loads of those, right? No matter whether they are what color they are. Do you think that there might be a way forward in DEIB with looking at socioeconomics as opposed to just focusing on race? I think they're both important, don't get me wrong, but to be able to get past this woke, anti-woke bullshit, we've got to find a way to do that. Do you think this might be a mechanism to be able to do that? Ryan Whitacre: Yeah, yeah. I think that's exactly where it's going. It's gonna be other factors beyond race and ethnicity. It could be zip code. Geographic factors, yeah, but your socioeconomic factors are, to me, the way it is. And that goes back again to the way we count things up. What are the KPIs that companies are going to be putting on their people to get to the benefits of DEI without getting through quotas? How do we reimagine this? I saw something where a company said, okay, if one of the outcomes we want out of quote unquote diversity is innovation, creativity, well, maybe one of our KPIs ought to be, I don't know, patent applications. How are we measuring ingenuity and spurring that creativity? Maybe that's a way to do it. Thinking outside of just, again, just kind of Benetton adding this thing to death. Debbie Tang: Yeah. So what a lot of the law firms are doing and what a lot of the companies are doing is that what had previously been a scholarship or a fellowship for maybe Black Latinx students, internship programs, some of them are turning into maybe first generation college attendees, things like that, and opening it up in different ways. So not only is it, put them out of sort of the target of some of these groups that are going after these companies but also trying to be more broad and inclusive and sort of what they're thinking about and sort of what their, what their company values. Okay. Joel: Okay. Who are the most discriminated against that we don't normally think about? I mean, we think about age, we think about disabilities, like who are we not talking about that we should? Debbie Tang: I mean, I think one of them is neurodivergence. I think that in the last couple generations there's been more studies, just more people with... It's not always just like mental health or things like that, but that is one of the areas that a lot of people aren't thinking about and that it's important because when you're thinking about the whole workforce and sort of all the people who are lost, who are kind of looked at as, oh, well they, they can't function as a customer service rep, right? So what? There's like tons of other things that person can do. Right? So that is one of the ones that is not always apparent, but I think gets sort of pushed aside. Joel: And to follow up on that, Ryan, I don't know if it's a different answer, but the return to office phenomenon, to me, the work from home movement was fantastic for disabilities, age, people that can't get to the office easily as able-bodied people. Thoughts about that and what the return to office movement has meant to discrimination? Ryan Whitacre: I think it was a great leveler in many, many respects. I remember back when I was in charge of a group of people some of the stuff that would come my way as the manager was, well X person has five kids that she's gonna get off to school in the morning. Can we give her a little leeway to get that done, come up? And 25 years ago, that was like, oh, that's a big deal. I don't know. Can't treat everybody... You got to treat everybody the same. So I don't think we can do that. And those little things that we think as little are not little. Those are real issues to somebody. And so in many respects, the work from home phenomenon for those of us who can do it from home, yeah, it's terrific for that. Ryan Whitacre: I think that there's a schism now, though, because I think about people like my brother who drives a truck or my sister who ran a restaurant, they have to show up. They have to show up and they don't get the work from home. So I think there's a gap there. And so trying to find quote unquote professional careers where you can work from home that maybe, 'cause I would say to add on to Debbie's response, another group that we don't think about are the less educated. I wouldn't say uneducated, but people who don't have a master's degree, maybe don't have a bachelor's degree, but they can do stuff and they're getting left behind in this work-from-home economy. And I think about that. While it did level for some, not for everybody. Chad: Yeah, yeah. So the survey actually had 73% of C-suite report that they are looking to expand DEI initiatives coming up. Can we call bullshit on that? Is this just somebody trying to make themselves feel good? They're looking in the mirror like, we're gonna do this. I feel good. Now we're gonna do it. And it's like, no, no, you're not. Joel: That's, darn it. People like me. Chad: No, you're not. Ryan Whitacre: So we thought the same thing, right? Okay. And there was another data set that came out in December and it's a law firm, Littler Mendelsohn. They came out with similar stuff. Okay. And I don't know the same number, but it was still an astonishingly high number of their respondents also said, yeah, we're gonna put more money into this stuff. And so, yeah, those of us who are in there talking to these folks all the time, CHROs and CEOs, you kind of sit back and go, yeah, are you though? But here's where I think it's going. There was another article on the Wall Street Journal that's akin, right? So the ESG side of things. And there was a piece that says, forget about acronyms but don't forget about the underlying importance of the actual stuff going on beneath the surface. So acronyms are gonna change and what we call things are gonna change, but the principles underlying it are sound. And so we're gonna figure out how to really make that work. And so that resonates for me. Debbie Tang: Right. So I think that when you talk about DEI initiatives, right? Take away race, take away gender, I think that the inclusion piece is very tied to culture, right? And every corporation still is longing for, especially with the hybrid work environment, especially with work from home issues, having a really vibrant culture and having a culture that people want to go to work, whether it's in their basement or at corporate headquarters, right? And so even though maybe the D part might be fading a little bit the inclusion piece is absolutely how they're trying to get people to be productive, to wanna work for their companies. Chad: So this is really almost like a rebranding, rethinking, re-narrative of what we need to do to be able to move forward as organizations so that we don't have to play with the, these stupid woke, anti-woke bullshit conversations that are happening. I mean, that's what it seems like to me, like we're trying to navigate around to that. How long do you think that's gona take? Do you think it's happening now? Or do you think there's gonna be a big movement to actually make it happen? Ryan Whitacre: I think it's happening now. Things are going underground, right? You're just not seeing the big, huge pronouncements anymore. You're not having your Twitter account go black in Black History Month or but things are going underground. And I think that the major reason why, because we can talk to the McKinsey studies and the other studies that show the underlying of correlation between diversity at the end and performance, fine. I think demographics. We Xers sitting around this podcast chuckle and laugh at how we hate the millennials and hate the boomers. No one ever gives us the time of day. But it's sheer demographics, that's why. Because we're tiny compared to the boomers that are leaving. Our kids are the millennials and now the Zs. Joel: But we are fierce. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah, fierce. But there's not enough of us, really. But the millennials and the Zs, they are the two most diverse of themselves generations ever. Yeah. And they're not letting go of this stuff. That's why it's gonna continue to move. Chad: Well, here's the problem, though. Here's the problem, though, Ryan, and you guys are right in the middle of this. We got a bunch of old White dudes at CEOs in the C-suite, right? They're all boomers. They should have been gone a long time ago. We should have had people in those seats so that they would be mature. They would be seasoned and experienced. That's not going to happen. So we're going to have a ton of individuals who are coming into the C-suite, no, none, zero, zip, nada experience because we allowed this shit to happen. So I guess from your standpoint, 'cause this is... Joel: It's all of you in executive search that are keeping these old guys in line. Chad: That's right. All your fault. All your fault. Debbie Tang: Not Ryan and I. Not Ryan and I. Ryan Whitacre: Now, you get to the heart of the point, right? Okay. Which is I think too often. And that's what Debbie and I see and what we strive against all the time. Too often, it is the same five dudes and it's always dudes. Debbie Tang: Yeah, it's a very country club mentality. Ryan Whitacre: Who get the chair, right? And they kind of circle it back and forth, right? You have to be intentional about that. You have to be intentional about breaking that cycle, which is what we're trying to do in our day to day. But you're right. I mean, too often you get that, that this is what leaders look like. This is who leaders are. And that's it. If you don't come through this funnel, then good luck to you. Chad: What's the percentage of executives you guys are pushing out into companies? Debbie Tang: In terms of our stats year to year, we place probably around 70 to 75% leaders of color in the C-suite and on boards. Chad: Damn! Debbie Tang: And it's probably 75% female last year. Chad: Damn! That is awesome. Debbie Tang: That's the difference maker, but it's also, you can't do that at all firms, right? So our firm is minority owned. You know, we got everybody rowing in the same direction. And that's just not what most firms want as their stats, right? Ryan Whitacre: And I would also say to that too, that what we're doing isn't placing diversity. That's not it. Debbie Tang: Right. Chad: Yeah. Ryan Whitacre: What we're doing is, and I go back to, again, my own stupid example. I went to a big dumb cow college. I went to a so-called Ivy League law school, and I found smart people both places. And I found dumb people both places. And so our philosophy is that there are great people everywhere, but it takes a little effort to actually find them. And that's what we do. We put a little effort into it. And so our clients then have an array of choice. And if you have an array of choice, maybe you go for something that isn't the cookie cutter. I don't know. Debbie Tang: Right. I mean, Ryan and I talk about it all the time. Why hasn't the Rooney Rule worked in the NFL? And yet all these corporations are trying to adopt the Rooney Rule in their own hiring. Yeah. And what it comes down to is when you're just there to check a box, no one's taking you seriously. Yeah. It's just for window dressing. Joel: And to me, that's the heart of this movement is expanding the pool of candidates. Right. It's not tokenism. And I think it gets in that bucket way too often. One of the data points that I found interesting was that a majority of companies don't understand that there's a backlash on DEI. We're talking about woke and all that. Well, we're in a political year. I don't know if you've heard or not, with two pretty polarizing candidates probably going to face off against one another. If a majority of companies don't know about a backlash, they're gonna know about a backlash in an election year. What do you guys foresee 2024 unfolding in regards to this movement? Are you buying or are you selling DEI in an election year? Ryan Whitacre: You're taking it underground. Debbie Tang: Yeah. So I'll start by saying that we talk to CHROs, chief diversity officers, CEOs all the time, and some very large ones, right? Like Fortune 5 companies. And they have said exactly what Ryan's saying. It's like, we're not stopping, right? We know that this is good for our bottom line. And that's what they care about is their bottom line. We don't blame them. I mean, they want their stock price to stay high and they want their business to succeed, they're still gonna do it, but they might not make the bold proclamations of, oh, we're going to donate 2 billion only to Black owned VC companies. Joel: No SuperBowl ads touting it. Debbie Tang: Right, exactly. And so I think that it's going to be a little bit more underground, but it's still going to keep moving. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah, they're going to keep their heads down. No one wants to be head above the fort, get blown off, be the target. Chad: So last question, because I mean, you guys are obviously heavily focused on ensuring that companies are getting that diverse slate. When the pool runs dry, because there aren't as many in the actual pipeline, where are you guys going? HBCUs? Are you actually going to creating training programs? What are you doing that most of those other organizations, I'm not looking for you to give away secret sauce, but where are these leaders of the future going to come from, these diverse leaders of the future? Joel: They're all at Debbie's high school, apparently. Debbie Tang: So I'll start by saying that we don't have a secret sauce, right? And for the level that Ryan and I do, 'cause we are working on C-suite, you can't go to an HBCU to find your CEO, right? And so I think that what it really is, is it's got to be what's right for the organization. And it's not like we're not done until we find you an underrepresented minority for this role, right? When I first joined Bridge, and Ryan and I laugh about this all the time, I would have old candidates and clients call me and be like, I'm an old White guy. Does this mean you're never placing me again? And I was like, no, not at all. I still place old White guys, too. I think that it's all about who's right for the position at the time. Right. And so it's not about we can't create people from whole cloth. We've had clients say, can you find me an African-American male who's got experience with soda manufacturing in the Midwest to be our next CEO? Chad: No. Debbie Tang: No, we're not like Dr. Frankenstein piecing together somebody. Right. I think that for Ryan and I, we can't help as much with the pipeline because we tend to do C-suite. But when there are up and coming folks who are like one or two levels down, oh, you can bet we're keeping our eyes on them and keeping up those relationships and following them as they go from company to company. Ryan Whitacre: Yeah. And you don't manufacture people per Debbie's take there. But what we try to do then is expand the brand of your client. Talk to that search committee, talk to that CEO. And say, okay, what are we really after here? Do they really need to have soda manufacturing experience from the Midwest? What if it was pipeline manufacturing from the Southeast? I mean, come on, seriously, what are they doing here? Let's get down to what are the five true things here? Do you need a change agent? Do you need somebody to just keep the wheels spinning? What are we after here? Because, again, there's a lot of people who could do this. You have to open up your brain to the possibility of who that leader looks like and where they come from. And so that's what we try to do is expand minds first and get you to think about talent broadly before we winnow down. Joel: Mind expansion Chad, that's what it's all about. That is Ryan Whittaker and Debbie Tang. For those of our listeners that wanna find out more about you two or the organization where do you send them? Ryan Whitacre: Www.bridgepartnersllc.com. Joel: I love it. Another one in the can Chad, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Friend. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about Cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many Cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.

The podcast episode features Darrian Mikell, co-founder and CEO of Qualifi, discussing the evolution of his company and its impact on the recruiting industry. Mikell shares insights on Qualifi's journey from a simple phone interview automation tool to an end-to-end screening solution, emphasizing the importance of capturing the voice of candidates beyond resumes. He also delves into the challenges of market education and the potential of using AI and automation in recruiting while maintaining a focus on diversity and inclusion. The conversation also touches on Mikell's personal journey, his experience working with family in business, and his competitive spirit, reflecting both in his athletic background and business ambitions. Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joe: Oh, yeah. What's up, everybody? It is Ron Burgundy's favorite podcast, aka the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host... Chad: San Diego. Joe: Joel Cheeseman joined as always, the Sam to my Frodo, Chad Sowash is in the house. Chad: Hello. Joe: We are recording live from TA Week at the Qualifi booth. And what better guest to have in the Qualifi booth than the co-founder and CEO, Darrian Mikell of Qualifi. Darrian Mikell: In the flesh. Chad: In the flesh. Darrian Mikell: In the flesh. What's going on? Joe: Welcome to the podcast. You're a two-time guest on the show at this point. Darrian Mikell: I am. Joe: If you get to five, you get a velvet jacket. So stick with it. Stick with it, kid. Yeah, stick with it. Chad: Well, we got to talk about the first time though. It was on Firing Squad and it was a double applause, was it not? I think was... Darrian Mikell: I think so. Joe: Double rainbow. Darrian Mikell: Smooth. It was smooth. Joe: Double rainbow. Darrian Mikell: That's when I was pitching all the time. I was ready for it. Chad: Are you not pitching all the time now? Darrian Mikell: I'm still pitching everyday. Everyday I'm pitching. I was probably coming off a fundraiser. Chad: Everyday is... [chuckle] Darrian Mikell: So I was like, all right, I got to be all my Ps and Qs, yeah. Joe: So Darrian, a lot of our listeners don't know you, even though you've been on the show before. Those that don't know, get us acquainted with you. What makes you tick? And please mention how many kids you've brought into this world while you're at it. Darrian Mikell: I'm stuck trying to cut the train off, well we have three kids. I'll start there. Chad: You know there's a medical procedure for that. Darrian Mikell: I'm very aware of that. [laughter] Darrian Mikell: That's all I'll say about that. But yeah, I'm Darrian Mikell. This is a hell of an intro. I'm Darrian Mikell, co-founder, CEO of Qualifi. We're the phone interview company. We help capture the voice of candidates beyond the resume. We automate that phone interview step in the hiring process so that recruiting teams can get to know their candidates quicker, make decisions faster. And then now we help schedule the ones that you like and get them to live interviews that much more seamlessly as well. So we started with the phone interview and now have an end-to-end screening solution. Chad: Sexy. Joe: The pride of Indianapolis area startups, by the way. Chad: It is, I'm saying. Joe: He's being very humble. But local kid done good. We're really proud of you for sure. Proud of you. Darrian Mikell: I appreciate it. Chad: So talk about where you started and where you're on your way to, right? 'Cause you've had this evolution of who you are, what you want to be, and it can't happen overnight, right? I mean... Darrian Mikell: Certainly not. Chad: You don't have so much funding for God's sake. So where did you start? Where do you guys want to go? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, I was just literally talking to somebody at breakfast. I feel like it's been I'm still pretty young, right? But I feel like it's been a long journey. We've been at this for close to officially five years, but technically around like seven years when the idea, the inception of the idea. And it started based off a personal experience. So I was at another indie based tech startup company called Viral Launch. And I was employee number one or two there. And from starting with the CEO, myself, we grew to about 70 people on the team. And my responsibility was over like their internal operations. I was doing all the things and recruiting... Chad: As you're doing the startup? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, everyone... I would say everyone wears a lot of hats in the startup. I felt like I probably wore the most hats at that time. And the recruiting HR function was one of those hats. And that's where I saw the pain points around all of recruiting. But especially I noticed a pattern of like, hey, I'm asking these same questions over and over again in the phone interview. Why don't I just record it, send it to people, let them respond? And then the fun part, I think we're spoiled in indie. No one really has that bad of a commute. But I had like a 45 minute commute to work. Yeah, we're in California where there's like way worse than... [overlapping conversation] Chad: That's brutal. That's around the corner in California. Joe: Yeah, there's a stop sign up the street 45 minutes. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. So like 45 minutes was a long time. And I'm always efficiency driven person. I'm always looking for tools or solutions to like plug even the smallest gaps in the process. And so I was like, hey, I have this 45 minute commute to work, I listen to podcasts, like could I be more productive even in my commute? And I was like, if I had these recorded, I could listen to interviews like a podcast. And so that was where the idea started for me. And I took it to my brother who's my co-founder and it resonated with him 'cause he was doing recruiting as well in his own right, both in the food industry and in senior care, both high turnover. And so we thought that there was something there that we wanted to start with. Chad: So that was the start. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Chad: Where are you guys? Where you went out? I mean, what's the big evolution steps been thus far? You got funding. I'm sure that fueled some of it. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Joe: 7.7 million. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Totally. Joe: Five years old. What's next? When's that 25 million series B coming, series A? Darrian Mikell: Hopefully at some point we're grinding right now. 2023 was a slog for a lot of companies and we made it through. Luckily we have more of that money still in the bank and we can continue to grow the company. But I think the evolution started with like a very finite idea of like, Hey, record interviews, send it to candidates. They record and send it back basically. And now I think the bigger vision centers around the totality. One of the hiring process we've since expanded, like I mentioned into the end to end screening aspects. So we added scheduling and live video interviewing. So I like to say we take you from your first interview to your last interview. But what I'm more excited about, more fascinated about is the idea that phone interviews in the traditional sense are still very traditional. Darrian Mikell: People just talk on the phone. They scribble down notes as they're talking. And I just think about how much data gets lost to the ether because people don't have a good way of capturing that information yet. There's so much more information to learn about a candidate that you can do in a phone interview beyond a resume. We have all the tools from AI perspective centered around scraping resumes, figuring out how to assess candidates there. But there's a lot of rich information that gets lost in phone reviews. And so I'm really excited about the potential there so yeah. Joe: Paint for us real quickly. If I'm a candidate, my interaction with Qualifi, walk us through that. You said from the first interview to the last. What is that like for a candidate? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. So the typical entry point for a candidate is they've already applied to specific job and what they'll receive through Qualifi is a notification saying, from the recruiter, basically either a text or an email saying, Hey, we got your application. We wanna learn more about you. We want this experience to be really convenient. So we prerecorded these questions for you, click this link to get started. So they click the link, they see a branded landing page branded to the employer with the simple instructions on what to expect in terms of this phone interview. And then ultimately when they're ready after they've read these instructions, they have now two options. We started with one they have two options now, one we'll call you. So like they can hit the start button and our system will dial their phone. Or we've now added the convenience of taking the interview right there in the web interface. Darrian Mikell: So on their mobile phone or on desktop they can still respond with their own voice and capture however they wanna sell themselves, however they wanna respond through those two convenient mechanisms. And so they'll hear the questions from the recruiter. We also have AI generated voice in the platform as well so recruiters can type out their questions and have a really polished AI voice as well. But most people are still using their own authentic voice, and they'll hear that and they can respond in a very conversational way. Yet the recruiter's not there live on the other side. And so it's pretty seamless in that way. Chad: So we need a Chad and Cheese... We've had our voices cloned, so we'll go ahead. We should talk about... Darrian Mikell: Yeah, I've always thought about having celebrity voices eventually in the platform, so if you guys wanna like... Chad: Yes. Joe: They'll be licensing of those voices for sure. Chad: Yes, exactly. Yes. Who do you want to read this out to? To your Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Chad and Cheese? Darrian Mikell: I always say Snoop Dogg is the one I always reference. Chad: Who? Joe: Snoop? Chad: Oh, yes yes. Darrian Mikell: Yeah, Snoop. Like you'd just love to take a interview with Snoop, yeah. Chad: That would be amazing. He'd just put you at ease. Darrian Mikell: Yeah, exactly. Chad: I mean, that's exactly what you want. Joe: So keep going. I'm a recruiter, I've got all these candidates that I sent this invite out to. I've funneled it down to maybe two or three that I want to come in. Then what happens? Is it to schedule an interview, a live person? Does it keep being automated? Darrian Mikell: So after the phone interview, one recruiters can integrate Qualifi at any step in the journey. Typically, it's at the point of application or just after they've applied. So they take that phone interview after they've applied and then it all gets sent back to the recruiter. The recruiter dashboard allows you to see all the candidates that have completed interviews. We help score based off of the survey questions that we asked before, and then we also summarize the full interview. So you can see the highlights from each candidate and dig a little further. Chad: Is that like an LLM kind of a thing? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Chad: You ingest all the transcript and then you hit it, okay. Darrian Mikell: Exactly. Yeah. We ingest the transcript and bring out like the top five bullet points, the highlights from that interview. And so as you're looking at all your candidates you can hover over the summary and see like, oh, this candidate has five years experience at this company doing this thing. And like has these different bullet points. You're like, oh, I wanna dig in further. Without that review time is five minutes or so anyway, it's way shorter than a standard phone interview. But that helps, bring your focus into the right candidates still. And then from there, if you're like, Hey, I wanna give this candidate the thumbs up, I wanna move them to the next steps, you can hit schedule this candidate right in the platform. And it'll send a follow up to the candidate where they can self-select the best time that works for them. And then if that next step is a live virtual panel interview we have what we call Qualifi video meetings, which is a browser based video interviewing solution to mitigate that, oh, do I have to download some app or troubleshoot with Zoom? It's just browser based. So it's by frictionless to, get in to... Joe: Is there an automated rejection component as well? Because we hear a lot about ghosting and automating from a company. Darrian Mikell: So it's not automated, but there is dispositioning in the platform. So yeah, if you don't like the candidate, you give them the thumbs down and you can just easily hit, Hey, it's not a good fit for us right now. Chad: So on the other side not the rejection but say that they had a great interview and they meet all the requirements can you just... Darrian Mikell: Automatically push them through? Chad: Yeah. Automatically push them into an interview scheduling? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Right now we don't have that built in but that's something that, I think is very exciting on the forefront for us. It's like, how do we streamline that even further. And we've always from day one, like with AI or anything automated, wanted to be really careful because diversity and inclusion is very integral to how we operate as a company. And we don't want to be part of like, kind of our competitive, how we compete and talk about our product differentiated from other interviewing services is on the level of mitigating bias. And so we don't wanna be problematic and especially reject candidates that shouldn't have been rejected. But I think there's an opportunity to like say, Hey, we feel confident that this candidate is a strong candidate to get them scheduled. You can review them for yourself and see but I think there's an opportunity for us for sure. Chad: How much has DEI been a part of just, kinda of like the love language of pitching companies and is there still traction there because we're seeing in obviously the broader scape where it's being demonized by states, by politicians, by even some moguls, like Elon Musk, right? So is it still kinda like the love language of TA, is that still important to them or are they starting to push away from the table? Darrian Mikell: I don't feel anybody at least I haven't seen anybody pushing away. The way I talk about it is, it's definitely where we stand on but it's not the thing that we lead with. Like what it seems like is recruiters care about moving the core metric. And right now the core metric is centered around speed and efficiency. And so that's where we specialize in but when it comes to how do we differentiate from other platforms how do we shine? And for like, videos like who we typically go after. It's like, that's how we talk about ourselves differently and say, Hey, yes, video is asynchronous solution but with that you're also getting information that might not be helpful in making the best quality of decisions. And so let's mitigate that to some degree so that way you can make a better decision. I think there's like a huge opportunity for us to add more features around that. But then I think my hope is that it continues to grow in terms of importance for organizations 'cause right now it doesn't seem like it's a budgeted initiative in a lot of organizations. TA cares about it, but they're putting dollars behind other things first is what it seems like. Chad: Well, if they care about it, they will put dollars behind it. Darrian Mikell: Right. Yeah. Chad: And I think that's the big difference that we've seen over the years is that there's a lot of fluff and pomp and circumstance and it's total bullshit. It's like if you believe in it, then put money and resources into it. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. And I think at least there was a wave. So let, we will see what the wave has produced. Obviously there's more people in those positions, but one I've learned that DEI positions all have different areas of emphasis. Some is very central to recruiting some it's about the current employee experience. Some it's about vendor relationships and like who their suppliers are. And so every organization might have a different focal point when it comes to their DEI practices. And so that's been a learning curve for us too, is like figuring out is this a good point of contact for us to go you know, start a relationship with. How much influence do they have with talent acquisition? Joe: And you talk about demand from the DEI perspective. I'm curious about overall demand. We read in the news, everyday layoffs. Like huge layoffs. From your perspective as a vendor, if people are becoming more efficient, are they look in to services like yours more? Or do you feel like there's more of a pause button to see where the economy shakes out in the next 12 months or so? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, I think it's been a little bit of both. Like there's certain areas, like being a startup is like always evaluating who are we going after? Why are we going after them? And like the areas where we found a lot of results and where we tend to focus is high volume spaces like healthcare and retail. And they're consistently hiring for the same reasons as like day one. There's a lot of turnover, a lot of attrition. And even in like the recruiting ranks, there tends to be like turnover there too. And so our kind of pitch to that is, hey, we're an always on system. You don't have to retrain us. We've had teams where they've lost recruiters and they don't need to backfill or backfill as fast because they have a system in place that's working the way that it's supposed to work. So from a demand perspective, I think 2023 was very interesting for us. Obviously we grew but then there's a lot of people towards the end of the year like evaluating, looking at their full stack, wanting to see how things played out to that point. And so my hope and anticipation is they've done a lot of that in 2024. They're like, all right, we're ready to like put some new things into practice. And I think everyone's looking at AI and automation as a way to advance and compete. 'Cause I think a TA is a competitive sport. So if you're not advancing, then you're gonna lose out on your best talent. Joe: I talked to a lot of startups who say recruiters or employers don't want to talk to you because they mean I might lose my job if we hire this company. Are you seeing some of that? And if so, how are you sort of getting around that hurdle? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, that's a common question that we've gotten since day one. And what we tend to find is that when Qualifi comes in, they don't say, Hey, all right, we're cutting to like three or four recruiters. What they see is like, we're adding capacity to our existing team and now they can screen more candidates or repurpose them to take on better, like the more meaningful projects beyond just screening. 'Cause like what we try to talk to our recruiters about is like, we don't want you to be, we want you to be more of a partner to the business and not glorified or overpaid admins. And just focus on scheduling and coordinating. Your job is more important to them. And so like my hope is that we're elevating the role of what recruiting is. And I think, I think that's honestly like the future of recruiting is that role might shift in a lot of organizations. It might require more responsibilities that are more highly aligned to the end goals of the organization and not just serving the hiring manager fulfilling, you know, the coordination duties. And so that's my hope and that's how we tend to talk about it. Chad: So when it comes down to... It's impossible to get into an employer's head in the first place to know whether they're literally looking to like scale down the recruiting staff. Or if they're looking to provide them with more resources that's beyond you at that point, right? Darrian Mikell: Right. And some were very explicit. Some were like, like we've been on demo calls and they literally look at it as like a financial equation. Like yeah, I could... Chad: No shit. Darrian Mikell: Immediately cut headcount. Chad: We can cut. Darrian Mikell: And they're like say that on, or like oh, we're not saying that. Like, this is how we think of it but... Chad: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say the quiet part out loud. No idea. Darrian Mikell: Yeah, they do that. We don't do that. We are here for recruiters, we very much care about their wellbeing. 'Cause one of the things too is, especially in like these high volume, fast-paced industries, recruiters are doing phone interviews at the dinner table, late at night, across different time zones. And so it's like, Hey, you don't have to do that anymore so we're hopefully, hopefully making their everyday life better too. Chad: Qualifi the recruiter buddy. Darrian Mikell: Yeah, exactly. Chad: That's the recruiter buddy. Darrian Mikell: Boom. Joe: So you're gonna be on stage in a little bit. What are gonna be talking about What's the focus of your presentation? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. It's about capturing the candidate voice. So title of the presentation is beyond the resume the power of candidate voice. And obviously I'm biased, that's what we do every single day and I'm really excited about it. 'Cause part of the reason I wanna talk about it is most people don't know who we are, let alone the idea behind Qualifi. I would eventually venture to guess close to a 100% of our prospects, they weren't looking for an audio phone interviewing solution. They were probably looking for a way to automate, but they didn't know audio and voice was a medium that they could use to better their hiring practices. Chad: Well, it's hard when they don't know that they have a problem. They know that there's a problem there, but they don't know what it is. And then you come in and you say you have a problem. That's a lot of market education. So are you doing that call by call? How are you guys doing that? 'cause that's not easy. We were in the industry when job boards were created back in the day. So going and educating companies on, wait a minute, first off, this is what the internet symbol looks like then this is what job, a job board is. You guys are literally doing almost the exact same thing. It's much more advanced, don't get me wrong. So how hard is that? How are you going at the market? What's the go-to market when it comes to education? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, it's very difficult and we're learning along the way. Like what that means for a while is like brute force, like just straight up cold everything. We're selling you, pitching you, like we're teaching you, like you said, call by call. Now what we're learning is that it needs that just broader market education. So we're trying to do more stuff like this, show up at events that matter, produce better content. We have tons of data now. So hundreds of thousands of candidates have been through the platform. We're learning from that. So we're trying to be able to be authoritative resource to the people that might buy us or might not in the future, but looking at content as like a way to share the word about, and not only Qualifi, but what's possible. Joe: And my guess is, from a competitive standpoint, all of you have been educating the marketplace. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Joe: How do you look at competition? 'Cause I think a lot of people, when they hear about your solution, it's like, Oh, I hear a little bit of this. I hear a little bit of that. How do you look at the competition? Darrian Mikell: I was actually going to say that just a second ago. I wish there was more competition sometimes. Like when we first got started... Chad: Is it like market validation kind of a thing? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. When we first got started, it was like, oh, no one's doing this. It is a novel idea. And that is honestly, like what part of what motivates me still to this day is, I know one, we've seen real results that are meaningful to our customers and just more people need to know about it. But when we do, there is an existing category around interviewing that I think we are like highly associated with, but most of the associations with video. And so that's where we can differentiate within the same category. But yeah, there is some of that education, but people that have experienced video tend to have negative correlation to the interviewing space. And so there is that shifting their thinking and getting them to come around to seeing our side. So I think there's like a love hate there. In some cases like, yeah, I would love more competition to validate the market. Chad: Not just validate, but educate. Darrian Mikell: Yeah, educate. Yeah. I think that's more so what it is. It's already validated, but like educating and like we're trying to create and define a category in some regards. And so it's like, sometimes you just want that to be already there and you just go into it and pivot and be a little bit different. And so that's a little bit of the challenge, but I think we're up for it. Joe: You mentioned being in business with your brother. I think that's an interesting dynamic. What are the pros? What are the cons of going into business with family? Chad: Do you arm wrestle for like hard decisions? How does that work? Darrian Mikell: No, it actually works. People say, don't go into business family, right? I would say go in business with the right family members. So I think I could go in business. I have two brothers. I think I could go in business with both of them, but I think I started with Devin in the right way. And I think what we did well was establish things early on, probably when it didn't matter that much in terms of like, hey, who's got, or like what the equity equation looks like, who's making these types of decisions? Where do we split duties? I think we work really well in that regards. And I think we haven't really had any like major arguments. We have had disagreements for sure, but we try to keep things in the right category. Like we're brothers first and then business partner second. And we try to separate, like even down to how we communicate, we use Slack for like our team. So we send Slack messages for Slack things, then I'll text him if it's just a personal thing. So we try not to mix... Joe: Does mom have a strict no business chat over holidays? Or can you... Darrian Mikell: We try to like not, I think we, we do talk about business at all times. It's hard not to, but we try to like not talk about it as much as we can when we're just together in person, 'cause as much as we talk to each other every single day, we're not always together in like a family environment. And so we try to maximize that. Chad: The big question is who wins one-on-one on the court? Darrian Mikell: Oh, for sure, me. For sure me. [laughter] I'm the Hooper, but if he was here, he would argue. We have the debate 'cause my older brother played in the NFL and we each, and all of us played collegiate. Chad: Athletically, just rich in the DNA here. Darrian Mikell: It comes from our parents. My dad played football. My dad would say my mom was probably a better athlete too. We were all athletes and so sports are very... Chad: Was she collegiate? Darrian Mikell: She didn't, but she played basketball, volleyball, all that sort of stuff growing up. And so, ran track, but we both did track and he technically, well, not technically, this is the older brother coming out. He's jumped. He has the longer long jump marks than I do. So I'll give him that credit. Chad: So where'd you get up to on high jump? Darrian Mikell: I jumped 6'9" in high school. Chad: Holy shit! 6'9"? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. Yeah. Joe: Wow. Darrian Mikell: But I did that in high school and I didn't get higher than that in college. Chad: Oh my god. Darrian Mikell: So I peaked early. Chad: That is ridic... And you're how tall just for everybody who's listening to the audio. Darrian Mikell: I'm 6'5". No, it's not. [laughter] Darrian Mikell: I'm 5'10", though for sure. Chad: 5'10". That is ridiculous. I thought I was saying something big yesterday. I was like, I jumped 6'2", right? He's like, nothing. You got nothing. Joe: Yeah, right. You can jump over me. So obviously competitive. Curious, what does the company look like in two, three years? You're obviously looking towards the future. What does this solution look like? Chad: Acquired? Darrian Mikell: That could be... I hope to continue to grow the company. And like I said, what I'm really excited about is one, I think we have an amazing team. We're 15 full-time folks. We're a remote team. Most of us are based in the Indianapolis area, but we have folks across the country hopefully to continue to expand the team, but then from a product and evolution of the company standpoint, getting at what I was talking about earlier, making it way more intelligent. I think we fulfill a strong need around just doing the job of like the phone interview and scheduling. But like you said, adding more automation intelligently I think is what I'm really excited about and capturing data. Joe: Global growth opportunities there or? Darrian Mikell: We've already touched into international territories. I think this year we'll kind of start that in some way more deeply through like partnerships. Chad: Was that through your US portfolio though, that they were expanding out? Darrian Mikell: Yeah, like the existing need of... Chad: So it's organic. Darrian Mikell: Right. Chad: It's not forced. Darrian Mikell: Yeah. I don't think we'll like make like a headlong launch into international waters yet, unless it's by way of like partnerships or through existing customers. But we do have the ability to translate all of our existing communications. And I think that's always been something interesting to me is like, what if you have two way conversation needs? Like, I need to recruit in a different language and so I can transcribe and send back. We can each speak in our native tongue. And I can understand without understanding. Yeah. If that makes sense. Joe: Yeah. That's gotta be coming. That's gotta be coming. Well, I can say that as an Indianapolis resident, it's really fun to watch the company grow and you be successful. For those listeners out there that don't know how to connect with you, where would you send them to learn more about Qualifi? Darrian Mikell: Yeah. So first, it's qualifi.hr, Qualifi, Q-U-A-L-I-F-I.hr Follow me on LinkedIn. And then also launching is my new podcast call Future at Work where I interview other founders like myself. And it's kind of a founders on founders behind the scenes focused on TA and HR. Chad: Nice. Darrian Mikell: And so my hope is to give the audience the opportunity to be like a fly on the wall to the conversations that they might not be privy to and conversation matter that's still interesting to them and help them do their jobs better. Chad: Sounds awesome. Joe: And where people say no to a demo, they'll say yes to an interview. So there might be some sales in that funnel coming soon. That is Darrian Mikell, everybody. Chad, another one in the can. We out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

In today's episode, we're diving into the world of LinkedIn, where reports suggest the platform is dipping its toes into gaming with puzzle-based experiences like "Queens" and "Inference." But is LinkedIn playing games or getting serious about engagement? We'll discuss. But first, let's talk funding. Milan's Talentware just secured €800,000 for its AI-driven SaaS platform, while NOVA, a freelancer hub, snagged $1.75M in seed funding. Talent management software is hot, folks, and NOVA's growth from a private Instagram page to a powerhouse in the freelance world is impressive. Now, onto the self-serve saga. Big retailers like Dollar General, Target, and Walmart are rethinking self-checkout due to theft concerns and customer experience woes. Dollar General's pulling out self-checkouts in some stores, while Target's implementing "express self-checkout" with item limits. Who would've thought petty crime would lead to job creation? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts, complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oh, yeah. Because what happens in the Red Light District stays in the Red light district. Hey kids, you're listening to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Van Gogh Cheeseman. Chad: This is Chad who gave me that fucking Jaeger bomb Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, LinkedIn plays games, self-checkout is fading, and who'd you rather? Let's do this. Yeah, I texted my wife that I had done a Jaeger bomb and she said, "What is it, your 21st birthday?" [laughter] Joel: Oh man, that was so bad. Chad: Yeah, when they came to the table, Thanks, Bill Boorman. Thanks Bill Boorman. They came to the table, two handfuls of Jaeger bombs. I'm like, "What is this shit? What is going on here?" I was just a welcome to Europe from Mr. Borman. Joel: I don't even remember what's in a Jaeger bomb outside of Jaeger. Is it Red Bull? Like what... Chad: I think it is. Joel: Okay. Red Bull and yeah, awesome. [laughter] Joel: Homeboy is not human. He's like the Winston Churchill. Have you ever seen the Winston Churchill daily diet? It's like scotch and cigars all day and he lived to 90. That's Bill Boorman. Chad: Yeah. Except Borman doesn't do cigars. He just doubles up on the scotch. Joel: Yeah. And the no sleep thing. I think Churchill got some sleep while he was busy fighting the Nazis. Chad: But I mean, Borman's only like 30 years old. [laughter] Joel: Not true. Chad: It's taken a toll. It's taken a toll. Joel: Yeah. He's not quite 90 yet. He only looks it. Chad: I love that guy. Love that guy. Joel: Yeah, good stuff. Chad: I also love Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze and Rika Coppens isn't too bad either. My God, we had a blast yesterday. Joel: What a great show. So yeah, we failed to mention that we're recording from Amsterdam. We were at the e-recruitment congress. Chad: Amsterdam. Joel: Which is usually in Belgium, but they put it in Amsterdam this year. What a great conference. What a hidden gem that most of people in the states have no idea. Or in Europe. Chad: The Muziekgebouw. Joel: Yeah, it's this multi-billion dollar company, Bain Capital. They're growing this Congress. It could be an up and coming thing that becomes mainstream for everybody. All our RecFest and Unleash. But great conference and I love how they utilize us. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They put us in the balcony, all old Muppet guys. And so many conferences you get a presentation and they like, Does anyone have a question in the audience? And it's this awkward sort of moment where, who's going to ask the question, what's it going to be? You got to run the microphone to the person that raises their hands. Chad: It's just awkward. Joel: Yeah. So with this setup, the presentation goes, they know they're going to get Q and A, they sit down on the couch, we hit 'em with a little banter, little questions, and I think it runs much more smoothly. I think more conferences should have journalists, podcasters, bloggers, whatever, there to ask questions right after their session. I think it's great. Chad: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And I am ready, just about ready, to wrap up this whirlwind tour. Julie and I went to Vegas and that's when we left the house. Then we spent a couple of days in Houston doing visa stuff for Portugal and then we came straight here from Houston. So it's been a whirlwind trip. It's been a blast. Europeans are amazing. They always make it fun and they always want to show you around. I hope I get to see everybody. If I don't, I'm sorry. I'll see you next time. Joel: It's so laid back and chill here. I love it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So you're here for a few more days. You leave what, Saturday? Chad: Yeah, leaving Saturday afternoon. Yeah. Joel: So I'm headed out. I've never been to Germany so I'm just going to take a few days, gonna go to Dusseldorf where Bill Boorman is going to be. I'm gonna try to avoid him as much as possible. [laughter] Joel: He's got a little VOK thing there apparently. I'm try, I'm doubling down on my penicillin so I don't catch the VOK while I'm in Dusseldorf. Chad: Good call. Joel: And then I'm headed to, we call it Cologne, but apparently it's Colon or Koln. Anyway, I'll be there for a couple days, flying out of there, coming back Saturday. And then we get a good month or so off of travel. So recovery time. Chad: It is weird how we I mean, Americans, try to America-fy all the... And maybe it's not just us, maybe it's the rest of the English speaking world. But yeah, the way that you spell Cologne is K-O-L... The O has an umlaut. K-O-L-N, right? So Koln. But we call it Cologne, so have fun. Joel: Yeah, it's from like Koln. Koln. Okay, well this is an abbreviated show. We're both pretty hungover, which if you're watching on YouTube, you can figure that out. If not... Chad: Lucky bastards. Joel: It's definitely in Chad's voice. I think my voice might be a little better this morning, but we'll get back to the birthdays, but we cannot fail to mention that if you like free stuff, go to chadcheese.com, click the free link. We're getting new T-shirts printed up so those will be going out shortly. We got a bourbon selection from Textkernel, free beer from Aspen Tech Labs. And if it's your birthday month, you might just win... Chad: Rum from... Joel: Rum from Plum. And if I can find the soundbite that everybody loves, we can maybe at least give people some of that. Chad: There you go. I need that. SFX: Can you feel I need the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: I could feel a little Kebu in my plums last night. Chad: Oh God. Yeah. Joel: If you haven't enjoyed some Kebu kids, that's right. The Euro sensation. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Kebu. Alright, that's... Chad: If you're in our socials, you've probably seen the Kebu. Joel: That's enough of that this morning. Yeah, that's enough of that. Chad: [chuckle] Wanna thank Geert Jan who was here, we got to see him. And then also got to see Gerard from Textkernel, T-shirt that you're wearing if you're watching on YouTube, so... Joel: I didn't see Gerard. I didn't get my Gerard time. I'm very upset about that. So yeah, I got the TextKernel rockin'. Chad: He was ducking in, trying to duck you. Joel: He's a busy guy. I get it, I get it. He's a busy guy. Just like the news from this week. SFX: Topics. Joel: All right. Little LinkedIn goodness. Reports say LinkedIn is venturing into gaming with puzzle-based experiences like Queens and Inference. Why do this, you ask? Well, they're apparently aiming to increase user engagement and deepen connections, expanding beyond its traditional professional focus. Chad, is LinkedIn just playing games here, or are they really serious this time? Chad: Oh it's so bad. Yeah, I get the whole sticky part, but this, to me, doesn't make any sense. And this is not gonna... How's it going to deepen connections? I mean, I can see that, maybe play Wordle against... Joel: It's like a Kitty Powers dialogue, monologue. Chad: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Not to mention you're talking about professional network, which on the professional side of the house you want to stay with productivity, and productivity and games don't kind of go together. So instead of doing my jobs, my job or my project, I'm on LinkedIn playing a crossword puzzle or some stupid shit. Who knows what kind of fucked up games LinkedIn's gonna play. But I can't say it enough, LinkedIn needs to revitalize the platform itself. It needs to stop adding stupid shit on it. They've had, what, the videos and the Instagram and the podcast and all these things that just kind of were thrown there, and they haven't gotten any traction, right? I mean, you could say they've been utter failures while the infrastructure that is LinkedIn is decades old. So I don't understand why they're spending so much time with these stupid little projects when they have a big issue. When the Titanic is sinking, you don't rearrange the deck chairs. Okay? Joel: Mm-hmm. I like that. I like that. SFX: Sixty percent of the time it works, every time. Joel: So when I first read this headline, I thought, Oh, they're introducing some sort of tradeify, PlayMetrics, visual assessment gaming thing. No, no, this is like chess or checkers on LinkedIn, which is... I just don't get it. Maybe it's a 20% extra time thing, but they would be much more served if they were creating some sort of visual assessment that people could take as part of their LinkedIn experience. So that was kind of a bummer. Look, I agree with you. They need to focus on the blocking and tackling. Their job search sucks. We've talked about that pretty extensively. Stability of the platform. All that stuff can be improved for sure. Why they're wasting time and resources on games is kind of ridiculous. I mean, just open up an app store and have people develop games like Facebook, if you're going to do that. Which actually would be kind of interesting if LinkedIn opened up an app store. And you mentioned the video. I actually think they may have bailed on video too quickly. Chad: Oh, yeah. Too early. Joel: Just from our video experience, the shorts that we put out are very popular. They had shorts. Maybe they could have put it within the feed as opposed to just up at top. There are ways to increase engagement that video brings that they just scrapped. And I think that would be a much better idea to bring back stories, just do it better. Learn from what TikTok and Reels has done to get more engagement. But, yeah, I don't get the games. I think it's just really stupid. It was kind of seen in the wild. Maybe it's an experiment that got loose that shouldn't have. But if LinkedIn becomes this games platform, it could be a jump the shark moment. I don't know. Chad: Well, I think what you're seeing is it's an advertising play and they need people to stay on the platform longer to click on more shit, to at least see more shit so you get the impressions that are playing through. They're tying, it feels like they're trying their damnedest to be an advertising platform with a bunch of professionals on it. Joel: Fix the videos. Fix the shorts. Fix the shorts. Chad: You could do some things. You could do some really amazing things with videos. There are connectivity opportunities within LinkedIn. There always have been, right? Joel: That's where ads are. That's... Everyone's creating TikTok ads, Reels. Yeah, like, dude, I don't get it. Chad: The LinkedIn lives, I mean, people do them, but a lot of them, they don't really get the traction, but still they're using it. I think they could amp that up. They could use more of that. They could actually do like Riverside does. We go into Riverside after we're done, we click magic clips and it creates like 20 different snippet videos of our podcast. It's easy. Or an opus clip or something like that. They could do something like that. You would have your LinkedIn live and boom, you could turn shorts into... I mean, it could be a content generating machine, but they're doing stupid shit like playing chess. But again, if they were doing something... I don't want to talk about the popping the balloon of Pymetrics, which I think is the stupidest fucking games we've ever seen. And they say this measures your risk tolerance. Joel: Yeah. [chuckle] Chad: No, it doesn't. You're fucking stupid. We even heard Hilke Schellmann, who spoke this week, who wrote the book called Algorithm, she was on the show a few months back, even talking about how stupid that shit is. If there was something that could be used, chess, these different things, rankings and whatnot, that would help understand maybe mental fitness or something of that nature, that might make sense. But I still think it's outside of the Tam of LinkedIn. Joel: Fix video. And by the way, Microsoft owns Teams, which is a video platform. Like, it can't be that hard to integrate some video shit. Partner, I don't get it. I don't get it. Well, let's take a quick break. I need a new... I need another glass of water, and we'll talk a little, Who'd you rather? All right, Chad. It's time to play a little game that we like to call, Who'd You Rather? If you haven't heard us play this one before, we talk about two startups that have gotten funding and Chad and I decide, Who'd You Rather? SFX: Hi, Poppy. Joel: All right, let's play. Here we go, and in corner number one, we got Milan's Talentware, founded by Bain alumni. They've secured 800,000 euros for their AI-driven SaaS platform, which aids companies in talent management, development, and retention through personalized, skills-based approaches. Funding aims to enhance team and foster growth. That is Talentware. Next up, we have Nova, a freelancer hub. They've secured 1.75 million in seed funding. The startup aims to empower creative freelancers and bring gaps in talent management. The app facilitates connections, job postings, and career growth. So that gives us Talentware and Nova. Chad, Who'd You Rather? Chad: Oh, this is a hard one. I'm gonna let you go first. I'm gonna, I think. Joel: Oh, yeah? Chad: Either one of these guys, at 2:00 AM, I'm not sure which one I walk home with, so I'm gonna let you go first. I'm still thinking in my clouded brain, Jaeger brain, this morning on this one. Joel: Okay, okay. Well, I'm gonna stay consistent with Talentware. These sort of secondary players that look at bigger companies that have a lot more money, a lot more brand awareness, a lot more resources, the lattices, the deals, the gloats, the list goes on and on, Bob. Look, talent management software is a very competitive space, and you can say like, Well, they've proven the model. It's an in-demand product. But I just think when you bring a squirt gun to a gunfight, it's not gonna end very well for you. My prediction is within 24 months, these guys will probably fold up or sell to a bigger fish. Nova, I originally thought, Well, this is kind of like Camino, which has a head start, maybe... I've never quite understood why Camino hasn't taken off more than it has. They had a great start helping with some director's video production, but this thing is really interesting in the organic nature of it. Joel: In less than a year, they've started as a private Instagram page sharing job postings for freelancers. They've grown to over 19,000 followers and they filled over 8,000 jobs and say that they've helped book nearly $10,000,000 in work. They've got investors from Spotify, Tesla, and Burberry. It feels kind of like Craigslist where they just kind of threw up something and the community embraced it and they've run with it. So for me, what I think the better business might be, the talent management, I think it's way too competitive for what Talentware is doing. So for me, Nova is a supernova, my friend, and that is what I'd rather. Chad: Bad, bad. Okay, so I thought Nova was interesting, especially spinning out of Instagram, an Instagram account. Joel: Yep. Chad: I mean, that, that's just... You don't hear that much, right? "Well, this worked on Instagram." It's a great way to at least start to see if an idea gains traction. And they found traction. They did find traction. On the Talentware side of the house, you're right. Not to mention they're in Milan. They're in Italy, which means more than likely they are gonna try to take this to Europe as a whole. Italy's not a great market to try to start in. There's not a lot of cash in Italy compared to trying to start in Germany or France or the UK but then again, you have all the issues of languages and culture. And for me, again, for us learning a lot of this over the last few years here in Europe and working with a lot of European organizations, to me, with something like you said that is so competitive, number one. Number two, the TAM is so big. Number three, it's in Europe. I mean, how much more complex can you fucking get? Joel: Yeah. Chad: They do have cash. They do have backers, they have smart dudes. But I think Nova has proven itself. It is a very small TAM, by the way. But I think they can grow out of that. I think there's a there there, right? And when were talking about Camino, I think one of the hardest things is we know the guys over at Camino, love those guys. They know the people in the industry. The only problem is they don't know the recruiting in the gig industry, right? Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: That's where a lot of companies fall down. Just because you know the industry that you're going into doesn't mean that you can recruit into that industry. You can gig into that industry. You can create technology that is sticky, LinkedIn, in that industry, right? So yeah, I'm gonna go with the little, very small, although I think powerful, Nova. SFX: What are you doing, Step bro? Joel: Alright, that's two for Nova, everybody. And that closes another round of, Who'd You Rather? We're gonna take a quick break. Remember, folks, listen to the ads. There is no show without sponsors. When we get back, we'll talk a little self-service, and it may not be what you're thinking of. All right, Chad, is this the end of self-serve checkout? Big retailers like Dollar General, Target, and Walmart are scaling back on self-checkout due to theft concerns and customer experience issues. Dollar General is removing self-checkouts from some stores and limiting purchases in others. Target implements express self-checkout with a limited number of items, and Walmart is toying with Walmart Plus members only getting self-checkout. Is this the end, and is full service back in, Chad? Your thoughts. Chad: Yeah, well, first and foremost, we're in Amsterdam right now so there's no such thing as self-service. You've got full service at the Red Light District. All you got to do is go window shopping and there's full service right there. Yes, yeah, this to me, and I hate to take a dark turn here, but this is what happens when the poverty line starts moving up. People start stealing shit. People aren't doing this. We're not seeing the rise in crime and stealing shit because they want the high quality Target jeans or clothes or what have you. It's because they need the food. I mean it's one of those things. And they see gaps in security so therefore they take it. And they also called back to the article in, around the pandemic saying that the pandemic, it was great through the pandemic 'cause they didn't have to have people and obviously you had space and so on and so forth. But they were doing self-checkout way before the fucking pandemic. Joel: Yep. Chad: So I see, I think we're seeing something happen here that people are trying to, they're trying to associate to something that it's not. I think this is a poverty issue. I think that wages haven't climbed fast enough. Yes, wages are getting better, but they haven't climbed fast enough and they're definitely not climbing as fast as the fucking CEO pay that's out there. So we start seeing this kind of like spiral into the poverty. When the poverty line raises, we see these things happen. It's unfortunate, it really is, because I think this is a societal problem. And when you're talking about some of these locations like San Francisco, San Francisco is a expensive fucking place to live. I mean, it just is. And don't just think this is happening on the coast. This is happening everywhere. Joel: That escalated quickly. Chad: Sorry. Joel: So I'll try to stay away from the politics of this. The other side of that argument would be that crime punishment has declined. Anything under $1,000 you can just walk out of the store and not get prosecuted. So is it the left argument or right? The fact is it's happening. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Earnings call after earnings call is like, We're feeling this pain. There's shrinkage. Chad: If people are hungry, people are hungry. It doesn't matter. [chuckle] Joel: Doesn't matter, but it's happening. What's ironic to me is, we're gonna employ more people because of this. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We're going to employ more people checking people out as a result of whether it's crime, poverty, whatever. And I guess that's a good thing. I, not to sound elitist, I've never stepped into a Dollar General but my impression is that they are not the best places in the world to shop. They're eliminating self checkout altogether. So that means a lot more people employed by Dollar General for better or worse. Target, and I've shopped at Target, and people bring the cart to self-checkout and it is like a snake line. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: It's waiting and it's almost, you're almost incentivized to go to the full service 'cause there's nobody in line. So, I mean, Target, it feels just more like yes, whether it's theft, I don't think there's as much poverty at Target or people that are desperate. It's just assholes who want to checkout 48 items in the self-checkout. So good for them for saying like, Look, it's 10 items, which has probably always been 10 items, people just ignore it. The Walmart's a little odd to me. I know they want to be Amazon. I know they want these prime members, these Walmart Plus members, and it's kind of a nice little incentive. They probably have an issue there as well with people loading up the cart and then trying to get out. Ultimately this means more jobs. It probably means a better shopping experience, at least for me at Target and all the moms, the soccer moms that are there getting their fragrances and their Dockers. Joel: So yeah, I got nothing else but that. And I'm sorry, folks. I usually have a witty way to end the show. I'm hungover and I don't have one. I'm sorry, Chad. Do you got anything funny? You got anything funny to end the show? I guess we could just end in some Kebu. That might be... Chad: Oh, Kebu would be great. Joel: Yeah, Kebu? Alright. [music] Joel: You're welcome, world. Chad: You're welcome. Joel: No witty ending. Just... Chad: This is Europe, baby. Joel: Just some Kebu. Chad: I gotta say, coming out of a lunch break straight into Kebu was fricking awesome. I mean it, and for those who weren't at the Congress, it was hilarious. Everybody gets back in after lunch. We're all, you get kind of like the cloudy brain because all your breath, all the blood in your head is in your stomach. So you can't think. Well, they wheel out Kebu. Joel: Yep. Chad: And it just like amps the whole crowd up and that gets the whole afternoon, sets the tone for the afternoon. So I think at least, Lieven, if you're listening, Kebu should be a staple, should be a staple. Guy should get in his van from Finland and drive all those Korg keyboards to wherever they're having the e-recruitment congress every year. Joel: Some of the most European shit I've ever seen. I was waiting for A-ha and the Sprockets guys to come out and start. Chad: Oh, yeah. Touch my monkey. Touch my monkey. Joel: Oh my, god. Did we just do a weekly show in less than 30 minutes? Chad: Yes. Joel: That's awesome. Chad: Alright, well... Joel: We'll see you next week, everybody. We out. [applause] Joel: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. The talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It is so weird. We out.

This week on Chad & Cheese, Blueboard has shut down due to financial struggles. Indeed is rumored to be changing its policy on how employers can contact veterans, while apparently eliminating organic traffic in the US. Microsoft appoints Mustafa Suleyman as CEO of its AI division to compete with OpenAI, Google, and other Big Tech companies. Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus surpasses GPT-4 on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, marking the first non-OpenAI model to do so. Mark Zuckerberg is also personally recruiting Google DeepMind talent for Meta AI without requiring interviews. HR AI is also on the rise, with Toronto-based Borderless AI and its HR assistant Alberni securing $27 million in seed funding. Hippocratic AI raises $53 million in Series A funding, bringing its valuation to $500 million. Economists argue that immigration has been a major boon for the economy, boosting employment and consumer spending. Policymakers like Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell acknowledge the benefits of migration on labor shortages. BMW is testing robot workers at its South Carolina plant, and a controversy at a Florida school over a mother's OnlyFans account sticker on her car led to the expulsion of nine students. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. Two guys who eat the chocolate bunny ears first. What's up, kids? You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Francis Scott Key Cheeseman. Chad: This is Chad, is that a toxic culture? Sowash. Joel: And on this week's episode, Indeed hates veterans. The AI talent wars heat up. And Florida just keeps Florida-ing. Let's do this. Chad: Welcome home. Joel: Welcome home welcome home. So Chad, we're both married. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And we know that there tends to be some lines you can't cross where at least my wife will say look if you do X we're gonna, we're divorcing right and this is usually you know cheating, cooking meth in the basement, kicking puppies you know stuff like that. So my wife gave me a new one this week. It was if you buy shares of Truth Social, I will divorce you so this is Donald Trump's lifeline, I think, to his economic troubles. I do like the ticker symbol, which is DJT for Donald J. Trump. Chad: Anybody think it was going to be anything different? Joel: I thought that was an interesting ticker symbol to choose. Needless to say, although the stock did pretty well along with Reddit this week, although Reddit's coming back to earth, and I'm sure DJT will as well. Chad: It's a great money laundering scheme is what it is I mean, he they say that he has to wait six months to be able to cash out, in., unless the board who are all his people say that he can go ahead and cash out. So, Yeah. It's a great ultimatum. Way to go, Christine. Joel: Any thoughts on the Reddit IPO? I was really hopeful that it would sort of break the dam on IPOs, which initially I thought it would. And a lot of the pundits were saying so, but it's kind of coming back to earth. Chad: Why would it break the dam? Joel: I mean, it basically doubled this week, and now it's coming back to earth. But if any IPO that comes out that isn't Birkenstock, and it's like tech, and it does well like stripe is waiting to go public I mean they're. Chad: It's a message board. Joel: Totally. Chad: So all of these people that I hear talking about like you know this is going to be it that this is going to happen it's going to go to the moon it's like what where the fuck we're talking about AI we're talking about some of the most fluid systems of today velocity of tech moving so fast not this. This is not it, this has nothing to do with all of the really cool conversations we've been having so you I don't understand why all these "pundits" And again, I'm not giving out financial advice, but there's no way in fucking hell I'm going to put my money into a 1979 Gremlin. It doesn't make any sense. Joel: And by the way, their users hate advertising and won't pay a subscription fee for anything. Chad: It doesn't make any sense. Joel: I agree. Although selling the data could be pretty profitable. All these LLMs that need content and stuff to use for learning. Chad: Oh. Yeah. And then if that happens, guess what? All the people are going to eject, and there's not gonna be any data to be had. So, I mean, it's just, again, it's a fucking message board, dude, with sub message boards. I mean, come on this is 1990s shit. We did this... Joel: I am not pitching Reddit to you. I am not like pitching it. Chad: I just don't get it. I don't understand. I just don't understand. Joel: There's a lot of money. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Look, the IPO market's been dry for a long time. Chad: So put it in a turd. Joel: Literally, Birkenstock was the last exciting one. People want to spend money, they want an exciting IPO. Chad: Oh God, man. We'll get into that. Okay. So somebody who's not excited right now, there's some rumors over at SmartRecruiters remember a few weeks ago when SmartRecruiters's acquisition was fumbled. We called it botched, but it was fumbled my sources say that CEO Michael DeSimone is out and Chief Product Officer, Rebecca Carr, is now the interim CEO for context. Michael was announced as CEO about a year ago, April 18th, 2023. So I'm gonna surmise that the fumbled, the botched, whatever you wanna call it acquisition might have been the last straw. So good luck to Michael. Sorry, man. Shit like that happens wherever he lands. Hopefully he does well and good luck to Rebecca Carr because she's taking over a shit show right now. Getting into the head seats. I mean, it's very turbulent times at SmartRecruiters. One system that we used to see is kinda like new age applicant tracking system with all this new tech that's coming out. And then the paradoxes and the shit, the fountains and the Harry's and whatnot. I mean, they're really recreating what talent acquisition and talent management and whatnot. And now she's gotta take over this jalopy, this gremlin. I mean, good luck, Rebecca. Good luck. Joel: Take over and take off. SFX (Sound Effects): Take off Lee. We're doing our movie. Don't Wreck our show you looser. Chad: I'm not Canadian, but, okay. Joel: How many, man, my memory sucks on this, but in the last 24 months, the number of ATSs that have either lost replaced a CEO is like five-ish. I think like big names that we know so it's a tough business. There's no IPO in sight for these companies. Chad: It's gonna get tougher. Joel: I mean, iCIMs, SmartRecruiters, greenhouse, we've talked about IPOs, like there seems to be no end of the road that's positive for these ATSs. And you can see it on the management teams. But great Scoop. Great scoop. Yeah. SmartRecruiters, man. Chad: There you go. Joel: I got nothing. I got nothing. Well, let's see if I can conjure up a. SFX (Sound Effects): Shout out. Joel: For the folks. All right, Chad, we've talked about Veritone sponsor of the show, by the way. Full disclosure on that one. Their stock has been meddling to say the least for the last year or so. Well, they finally are out of the celler rat style their stock has hit 180% increase in the last month, thanks to a positive earnings report demand for its developer tools. They have a nifty API that apparently is hitting with a lot of developers. And of course, anything with AI on it is gonna be doing pretty well in the stock market. Again, we're not recommending stocks one way or the other, but this thing right now, is doing very well this year. So I know that the team over there has been struggling trying to get things back on track. So at least this month, it looks like things are looking good for Veritone. So happy for those as if they need any better news. Living in Southern California, riding a boat on the. SFX (Sound Effects): Joel: Warm waters, and... Chad: It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. Joel: Eating shrimp cocktail in a cob salad for lunch on Sundays. Chad: Does not hurt shout out to companies who rectify bad hiring decisions. What do I mean? What do I mean by that? Well, you might've heard that after being ousted from the Republican National Committee chair, Ronna McDaniels was then hired by NBC News as a political analyst. Imagine that. And then an employee on Air Rebellion ensued, which then met that NBC news rescinded the job offer to McDaniels NBCUniversal News Group. President Cesar Conde said the following, "I wanna personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down end." Leadership isn't always about taking the raise when you do the right things. It's also about taking action when you fuck stuff up. And Cesar fucked some stuff up here, and his people knew, and they let him know. SFX (Sound Effects): You're so dumb. You're really dumb. For real. Joel: Yeah. This is a hot story that I haven't followed at all. My more left-leaning friends were in a tizzy about this one. And they're happy about the exodus of her. I don't know what she said. Did she have a show? Did she like crossfire somebody in a debate? Was it just her past that they said she doesn't deserve to be here? Chad: She literally was just pushed out of the RNC, just pushed out of the RNC. And not to mention, she's also, I think, a witness for a lot of the shit that's happening, even especially in Michigan. So it was pretty much a bridge too far for any journalist to say that they wanted her on the team. So whether it's right, left, doesn't matter. It's when you try to overthrow a government and you're leading the charge on that, it's probably a bridge too far. Joel: Well, from one bad hire to maybe a good hire that they could look at. I don't know if you've seen this. Mike Tyson is having a moment. Mike Tyson is having a moment. We talked about him going on Netflix this summer to fight is it Jake? Jake Paul, or Logan? Chad: One of the Pauls. Joel: One of the brothers there. Chad: Yeah. I think they actually have like a tag team set up where they can tag in and out. I could be wrong. Joel: Really? One's a legit fighter. The other one, I don't think Logan is. If it's not... I'm pretty sure it's Jake. But anyway, Mike Tyson's having a moment. He's probably had a decade or a century so far the hangover was maybe his peak. But anyway, you know that I love a good edible Chad. Oh, yeah. And based on your story from Vegas, I'm just an admirer of them. Well, Mike Tyson is as well. So New York legalized cannabis. So Tyson bites are coming to market now. You might wanna know what's unique about Tyson bites. Well, if you know anything about Mike Tyson, you know he fought Evander Holyfield back in the '90s and bit part of his ear off. So yes, Tyson Bites are in the shape of an ear. So you can do edibles in the shape of an ear and admire Mike Tyson on the packaging as you get loopy on some cannabis. Tyson Bites shout out to Mike Tyson for having a moment. We've all forgotten about the rape and the beating up of people. America's a great place to forgive and make some cash everybody. Chad: Yeah. I wonder if Evander gets any money off of this since that was his ear. So, that's a depiction of his ear, so therefore he should get a cut. I mean, makes sense. Joel: That's a great legal argument, Chad. Yeah. Makes sense. He certainly should. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And Evander's hurting for money as far as I know, having 37 kids sometimes will put you in... Chad: You know what though? If he signs up for free stuff and they all sign up for free stuff, they can get free t-shirts. Who's coming at you? From Aaron app. We have a new T-shirt design kids that we will probably release that this week so everybody can partake and they can check it out. But from my understanding, Mr. Cheeseman, they are in production. Is that correct? SFX (Sound Effects): Alright. Alright. Alright. Chad: Yes. Yes. Joel: Now we go for the free shipping so we don't get the rush order. So it will be a little bit of time. People like it's... But we'll get... The goal is it's gonna be the summer of Chad and Cheese T-shirts everyone's gonna be sporting these at the pool, at the beach, at the local Chipotle and the Dairy Queen. Chad: At the casino. Yeah. Yeah. Joel: Casino on the Stratosphere. Chad: Yes. Joel: Yes. Free. Shit. Not only T-shirts, Chad, what else can they get going to chadcheese.com and click on the free link. Chad: Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. Our friends over at Aspen Tech Labs. If you need job content and you want that all nice and scraped, all pretty, pretty much everybody goes to Aspen Tech Labs. They do the hard stuff. Whiskey from our friends at... And last but not least, if it's your birthday, you might be able to win some rum from Plum. SFX (Sound Effects): Really? Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: Oh, I've missed the roll call of birthdays being on the road chats. Let's, get to it. Chad: Like half hour. Joel: Celebrating another trip around the sun listeners Timmy Smith, Tim O Hill Horst, Josh Wayne Wright, Brian Barnes, Hayden Hughes, Derek James Bond. Melissa Malcolm in the middle. Megan Sharp. Dan Cheeseman, no relation. Oh, Elan Martin Zone. Chad: There we go. Joel: If I said that correctly, one of our favorite Swedes. James Holman. Paulo Barega, Thomas O'Hara, Simon Evans. Steve Levy, Jessica Rush, Mike Timkin, who's enjoying retirement from what I understand let's hope. Chad: And the show. Joel: And last but not least, Jeremy Cheeseman. Chad: Yes. Joel: That's right. My soon to be 7-year-old celebrates another trip around the sun. SFX (Sound Effects): Happy birthday. Joel: This year, by the way. His birthday coincides with the number of years that this stupid ass podcast has been running. So every time it's his birthday, it reminds me of my mistakes that I've made and the pendants that I have to pay every week with you. Chad: Dealing with me every single... Well, more than once a week it's event times kids. We have UNLEASH America happening in Vegas on May 7th through the ninth. Now UNLEASH is always a blast. Last year we did a VIP event on the high roller, but apparently that wasn't high enough as this year, the Chad and Cheese are jumping off the stratosphere in Vegas with Matt, the CEO of Outhire. Can you believe that shit. Now this is coming from Wikipedia. Listen to this. Sky Jump Las Vegas is located at The Strat on the Las Vegas strip. It holds the Guinness World Record for highest commercial decelerators descent with an official height. Get ready, Cheeseman 829 feet. We're gonna be jumping 829 feet. Now, if you would like to join us or nominate someone to jump, just go to chadcheese.com and right there on the homepage, click on the jump with us button. That's gonna be a blast. SFX (Sound Effects): Jump! Might as well jump. Joel: Also on Google there's only been one death jumping on the stratosphere. It was a suicide though. They weren't strapped in. Chad: Oh, that's not the same. Joel: So just make sure you hold my hand and get me strapped in before I fall to my death. Alright. Chad: Then we have a VIP event at the Neon Boneyard with Plum. What's the Neon Boneyard you might ask? SFX (Sound Effects): It's winning. Chad: It's where all of the neon signs of Vegas, pretty much of yesteryear. They go, they don't die. Oh no. It's gonna be a night event. So Plum's, attendees can marvel and bask in the glow of Neon while we drink and probably enjoy some edibles. Joel: Love the old hard rock sign, the guitar. Chad: Yeah. No. Good stuff. Yeah. Joel: And allegedly, you're my Vegas news source they're doing a hotel that's shaped like a guitar. That'll be the new Hard Rock. Is it true? You've heard that too? Chad: I've heard that, but I've heard it over and over and over. I mean, they have hotels with swimming pools, the shape of guitar they've got... It's kind of like they're shtick, so it wouldn't surprise me. Doesn't make me want to stay there anymore but... Joel: But would you stay there if they played Kabu in the lobby, would that make you reconsider. Chad: The minus five experience where you go into the cold bar and you put on the coats and stuff like that? We're gonna be doing that with Omar and Job Pixel. In that, that kabu is almost like great soundtrack for something like that. You feel like you're in Helsinki, you feel like you need to warm up and you need a little kabu. SFX (Sound Effects): All right. All right. All right. Joel: I love it. Have you been to the Ice Bar? Chad: No. Joel: No. I haven't either. Chad: I don't like cold stuff. Joel: But it looks awesome. That's very, very cool. Chad: Thanks, Omar. Joel: I don't like cold stuff. SFX (Sound Effects): Celebrate! . Joel: All right. Not necessarily breaking news, Chad, but it's breaking news to us it kind of went quietly, but... Chad: We've been away. Joel: Yeah. We have been away. So employee Reward software company, Blueboard. Have you heard of them? Maybe seen them at an expo or? Chad: They sound familiar. Joel: At some point. Yeah, they were kind of a thing 10 years ago, eight years ago. Anyway they've mysteriously disappeared, they've laid everybody off and they've gone out of business. So if you're a Blueboard client, I'm sure you're aware of this they hopefully didn't just walk away anyway, they had raised nearly $16 million in Series A funding founded back in 2014. So the 10 year runway didn't make it. I mean, the employee rewards thing we talk about a lot, and it seemed to like kind of hit its stride in the pandemic, making employees feel nice and special and apparently didn't work out for Blueboard. So I kind of wonder, all these employee engagement companies, are they on the same path as Blueboard. Blackbeard and Blueboard. Chad: A decade old company that isn't, let's say, for instance, a vital piece of tech? Yeah. I can see that kind of going away or not going IPL let's just say that. Joel: Yeah. 10 years is a pretty long runway yo end it anyway. Chad: Yeah. For a platform that's not a vital platform, it's not a vital point solution. You don't hear companies who are just, literally looking for RFPs for these types of platforms. Joel: No. But if you're looking for some folks that have some experience in this industry, go to LinkedIn, check out the Blueboard veterans, they might be looking for work, Chad. And if they're looking for work, they might be on Indeed. Which brings us to our real topics of the week. Chad: Here we go. Joel: The Indeed rumor mill keeps churning Chad, this time, they're rumored to change how employers can contact veterans sources say starting April 2nd Indeed is shifting to resume seats receiving 10 complimentary resume contacts a month for veterans down from unlimited outreach messages. But wait there's more. Indeed is rumored to be sending letters to ad agencies saying organic traffic in the US will no longer be a thing. Don't say, we didn't warn you, everybody. Chad, what are your thoughts? And you might have some additional information as I know that your phone was ringing off the hook before the show. Chad: Yes, definitely phone was blowing up late yesterday and today So on the veteran side of the house, I mean, it's to me. That's a so-what scenario They were doing it just for pomp and circumstance and fluff in the first place Not to mention, you know companies have no fucking clue what they're looking at when they're looking at military resumes. So, but to me all of this literally is nothing but a cry for help from Indeed Which is what we've seen CPA died CPSA died and then they started the the the whole tech community thing then they started the the Indeed Japan. There's just so much that they're doing right now. They are throwing every piece of spaghetti... Joel: Don't forget job tracker the Android app that didn't succeed which... Chad: All over the place, right? But this this to me, especially the the taking away of organic is just another bid to soak companies for more money They're slowly pulling the plug on organic traffic starting in in the US. All of my contacts have said get ready for organic traffic to go away entirely Which means what? Indeed is once again moving toward a 1990s pay-to-play job board model with the only caveat being CPC right because CPC didn't exist in job boards in 1990s so literally they went from a job search engine and they've reverted I mean, they've literally regressed back into a job board model Recruitment ad agencies have been instructed due to these changes if your clients jobs are receiving less traffic from the free Organic, well, you should probably sponsor jobs. Yeah, no shit Sherlock Indeed's also pitching. This is really just a rebalancing of traffic. Chad: So Obviously free has gotten too much and they needed to get more payment on clicks So they needed to push more people to clicks So from my standpoint, this isn't really a rebalancing This is an old platform that they tried and again rumors that I've heard They've tried to put a ceiling on the number of apps Candidate applications on free jobs. It didn't work. They couldn't make that work So, I guess this old dog just isn't gonna hunt what do you think about the whole CPC thing it's not surprising Not to mention. I don't think many recruitment ad agencies that aren't a part of programmatic are gonna care because this is just gonna drive Up their revenues to. SFX (Sound Effects): 60% of the time it works. Every time. Joel: My take on this is we've seen this story before Part one was called career builder when Private equity moves in to any significant degree which it did with Indeed This is what happens. They take they sharpen the pencils. They they swear. We where are we wasting money? Where can we make more money? Where can we cut costs trim fat, etcetera. That's kind of what we're seeing Like, how do we make the most off pay-per-click? How do we cut out free stuff? How do we make more money on? Contacting vets as a veteran. I'm a little surprised that you don't care about that. But that's that's cool. That's your prerogative So it's like how do we make more money? How do we cut more costs? And this is what we're saying and mark my words Layoffs are coming layoffs are coming to Indeed at some point in a significant way And this is just the the the canary in the coal mine is all this sort of how do we milk as much profit. Joel: As We possibly can you know the challenge to me they just had an investor meeting I think they published online There's articles if you guys are interested, you know, they're there Indeed is so concerned about the transactional nature of job search like how do we make applying easier. How do we like the problem with job search? Isn't that it's too hard It's that it might be that it's too easy But the transactional nature of it is to me not a winning strategy for Indeed because Programmatic is gonna out transaction probably anything that Indeed does it needs to be more personal than transactional We both knock on LinkedIn a lot and I think fairly so on You know related jobs and jobs for you and things like that The one thing that Indeed gets early LinkedIn gets right is if you search for a job on LinkedIn it will show you who you know at the company. First degrees. I went to school with this person Maybe I'm second degree and they know somebody I know. Joel: Because if you if you learn anything from us kids It's not necessarily what you know It's who you know and the transactional nature of Indeed and other job sites like takes a lot of that personal stuff out of out of The equation LinkedIn secret sauce is the people that are on the site and I know it you don't engage with it But when people change jobs look for jobs, they're good. They go to LinkedIn So that network is powerful and it does help people get jobs So LinkedIn to me is we're just in a cost-cutting efficiency game at Indeed right now and Maybe an IPO is coming in the future when they maximize profits to echo your sentiment. It's more spaghetti at the wall It's more like fear They're driven by fear and what Google's doing what app cast is doing And so it's just more being unfocused. Maybe they are more focused but in the wrong places and We're gonna see more craziness from Indeed wait till the layoffs come though that will be fine. Chad: What I'm hearing is they should buy Polywork. Joel: They should buy Stepstone and then Stepstone should buy CareerBuilder. SFX (Sound Effects): Alright. Alright. Alright. Chad: Never going to happen. So one of the things that they actually said during their virtual investor update was the global HR matching market composed of job advertising and talent sourcing direct hire Retained search internal recruitment automation and temporary staffing pretty big is almost $330 billion, right the search engine opportunity only represents a portion of that about About 10% right coming in at just over $295 billion the global marketplace total addressable market Reflects from it the remaining 90% So the HR Matching market the thing that they're trying to go after and again I just don't see it because they don't have the technology unless they actually rebuild infrastructure They can't get it done. They're matching it shit They're they don't have a network to be able to lean on like like LinkedIn does right? Everything that they could have built and or acquired. By this time they just haven't right. Chad: In it Just it drives me crazy as you see a company with this much fucking money They have tried to go down the funnel and they've done a shitty job of it They had they have an interviewing platform that just fucking flopped right and they they've pretty much given up on it You can't you've got to double down and find out what the issues are and you've got to go down funnel I just these guys I don't know who the fuck is running the ship over there But I've said it and I'll say it again Chris Himes needs to fire himself. Joel: I Love that their new motto is simplify hiring and they own simply hired Like I don't know if that was planned or or what that is, you know in between you and I cabbage patching and doing the running man in between Cabo stance at the e-congress conference and Amsterdam there was a sentiment of like people won't search for jobs anymore jobs will find them and it seems that Indeed is in this sort of misdirection of reinventing what they do and I'm not sure they should it's smoke. Give me a box Let me put in some keywords Let me go to a site and apply like back to basics wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for this company They're not Google. They don't have the resources. Chad: It's not that hard to be able to screen upfront screen to ensure that people are Qualified before they actually go on to apply which means you can charge more for that click Because you know that they're a qualified Candidate, I mean just the basic shit They can't get the basic shit, right if you want to be able to build a model Build a model to be able to charge more for it. You have to provide more value You're not providing more value providing shitty matching makes no fucking sense. Joel: Because they're slaves. They're slaves to the clicks clicks is money, so let's to pay in this shit, let's I mean... Chad: Yes. Yeah, I get it. Joel: When you're it's like it's like the bloggers slavery, you know media company slave to clicks It's ridiculous. We need the clicks. So it's not about they would they always preach. It's about the user It's. Chad: They don't give two shits about the user. Yes. Joel: And you're and your bottom line. Chad: Exactly. Exactly. Joel: Anyway, all right. All right, let's move on fucking Indeed. Let's talk about The AI Wars man shits heating up. It's great. Mustafa Suleyman Co-founder of Google's DeepMind has been appointed as CEO of Microsoft's AI division overseeing consumer products like copilot bang and edge Microsoft is competing with open AI Google and other big tech companies in the AI race and this move Strengthens its strategy. Yeah poaching from Google. That'll do it. But wait, there's more Anthropics Claude three opus large language model has surpassed open a eyes GPT-4 on the chatbot arena leaderboard. That sounds like a party, that sounds like a party everybody's leaving Reddit for the for the chatbot arena leaderboard a popular crowdsource platform for AI research researchers this marks the first time a non open AI model has taken the top spot and Chad the information is reporting Mark Zuckerberg is personally mailing Google's DeepMind talent to join meta AI Without having to interview for the company. That's a lot of warrant Chad. What are your thoughts? Chad: I just think this is a great setup for our next, you know side of topics on the HR side, this is incredibly hot. We're going to see a Convergence of technology all of this technology that we're talking about now the big names the Google's the Microsoft's, you know, whether it's cloud It's it's DeepMind Gemini it doesn't matter all of this is coming to our space Period and everything there's going to be this amazing overlap So when we talk about this outside of the HR side of the house, it's because kids it's coming. Joel: Real quickly I want to add to that, you know, if you're the number of people that do this and know it and Can build stuff around it is a small number and they have they have a nice safety net called big tech So there's a ton of there's a ton of venture capitalists in the valley and probably elsewhere that says look Yeah, you could go to Microsoft. You could go wherever but let let me give you $50 million And you guys go build whatever the hell you want and then it's yours And if it fails, you can go work it deep wherever you want if it does fail So to your point a lot of people are gonna jump ship to big tech But a lot of people are gonna say, you know what I'm smart enough to run my own company Here's someone willing to write me a check. Joel: Let's let's rock, baby And yes, you're gonna see this in HR and every other, every other field, but let's talk about what we're seeing in our space Just this week alone Toronto-based borderless AI has emerged from stealth with get this $27 million in seed seed funding for Alberni. Alberni not the best name I don't know if they're from Alberta and through and I anyway, it's HR power It's AI powered HR assistant, which automates onboarding management and payment processes for international team members and can answer employment law finance and tax queries in 170 Languages, that's a few jobs. That's a few people that do those jobs at companies. What's more powered by NVIDIA, your boy? Hippocratic AI has raised $53 million in series A funding bringing its total to $120 million with a valuation of $500 million. Think digital nurses who can answer your colonoscopy questions pre and post surgery healthcare Everything HR AI is coming for everyone Chad. What are your thoughts? Chad: Yeah, so right out of the gate the Hippocratic Holy shit, dude. Did you watch the demo? There's an AI discharge nurse who's following up after a surgery and they actually tape a call, it's amazing and it's incredibly fluid the estimated cost of This nurse discharge nurse her name is Linda. That's around $9 an hour. So I mean again not cheap Although you've got to remember Linda can scale the bot Linda can scale where the human Linda can only do one call at a time, right? So this just makes a hell of a lot of sense plus you do you said the magic word NVIDIA? I mean that NVIDIA's in I'm in it. I was I was I was impressed. I was very impressed With just the demo that they had you take a look at borderless I mean what perfect timing to play off the successive deal and their latest acquisitions and reporting that they are enjoying 500 million in ARR are borderless touts That they do payroll benefits taxes compliance all that boring shit that nobody wants to do right? Chad: And they've got the AI Agents what you talked about? I think from from our standpoint Nursing is distressed. They need help. So therefore here comes AI On the HR side, there's so many bullshit administrative tasks. Here comes AI, right? I don't see it taking jobs as much as I see it taking tasks that take those humans away from what they need to be Doing and that's being more human and working with other humans and employees and so and patients and so on and so forth So to me this is all exciting this block just watching and listening and learning about What's happening in AI? What then watching some of those things start to bleed into our space? I say a year after year after year and it's still true This year is the most exciting year in this space ever period. Joel: Those are big words. Chad: It's just getting better. Joel: So so not only can Linda help me figure out what this bump on my ass is She can also tell me what my vacation PTO time is For this year. So the digital clones are coming for for every opportunity, you know, I think you know to your point, we've done two conferences this year already and The question are we are all of our jobs gone? Is it is it is a typical theme? At these conferences and It's to me. It's amusing how much Experts dance around the issue of no, we're not losing jobs or only people who don't know AI are losing their jobs or no, you just have to know AI to augment your Your job honestly, no one probably knows the answer. Joel: But I find it hard to understand where there's not a world where there are fewer People doing some of these jobs you just I don't think you'll need as many people Now you'll you'll have to have people that understand how to use this shit and do it Well, I don't think it's just gonna be a magic wand and all these things are done That's just unfortunately not the case for anything But the point is this shit's coming and we got more stories about this and next week We'll have more stories and the week after that. We'll have more stories. Podcast Intro: It's not going away. Joel: By the way Miso robotics the flippy Company, they got new. They're still rocking. We don't talk about them much, but they're still doing their thing My concern is that we'll lose listeners because if there are more recruiters And there are more vendors doing this like... Chad: I think I think we've got a few years before we have to start worrying about that. Joel: We've got a few years, which means our advertisers Still love us everybody. We're gonna take a quick break. Make sure you listen to the ads everybody because without ads There's no Chad. There's no cheese and there's no happiness. If There's no Chad and cheese. We'll be right back. Let's talk immigration Chad, I don't know if you've watched any of the the news channels on your on your TV set but Immigration is kind of a big big story not only here but around the world. Chad: It's so scary. Joel: Yeah, so Wall Street Journal story recently kind of clarified that it's maybe not awful the story says despite Despite the debate around the merits of the current levels of immigration Economists at major firms on Wall Street argue it has been a major Boon for the economy and added trillions of dollars to US Gross domestic product the benefits of this influx have not escaped the attention of policymakers Such as Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell who say in who say migration has boosted employment Fueled consumer spending and eased post-pandemic labor Shortages my God, Chad. Let's all get off the ledge for a second. What are your thoughts? Chad: I think balance is key There's no question, but we've got to ask ourselves These questions does productivity stall When vital roles aren't fill, of course, they are productivity plummets Will roads pave themselves no will packages deliver themselves. No not today. Joel: Will bridges rebuild themselves. Chad: Not today, right? We can't keep pace and drive an economy if our infrastructure is worn and our products are not being created delivered and serviced And that's a problem, right? So you're talking about you know, your friend. What what should they do? They should look for the gaps Immigrants are filling the gaps in our workforce economy by filling positions and driving productivity also in Some cases immigrants are performing jobs that Americans just won't do But we need to get them done. They have to be done. So they are filling the gaps last but most importantly This is a more on a somber note. But immigrants are performing dangerous jobs like working construction on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore where the latest report notes all the construction workers killed When a container ship struck the bridge and it fell they were all immigrants so as we Want to build a wall and we want to vilify and we want to talk about murders and rapists and a lot of other stuff We have to remember there's a balance there. And yes, we do have to do something about immigration It can't be a free flow. That's very hard. But what we need to do is we need to understand There is a need from our standpoint and they're filling those gaps and they're driving the economy And they're probably making half that of what American would make in that in that position. Joel: Fill the gap. Chad, fill the gap. Chad: I'm all about it. SFX (Sound Effects): What are you Doing step bro? Joel: I enjoy flipping from Fox to MSNBC and and the perspective on the, the, the border. Chad: Yeah. Joel: On each is very, very different. Chad: Oh, God, yes. Joel: I don't disagree that there's some issues at the border. There's some people coming on, like, I think there's a concerted effort to like, fuck shit up. The fentanyl thing is real. Those drugs coming into the, like, that's a thing. But the bigger picture is, America needs people. I know you like to talk about the world needs less people. And that's, that's fine. If productivity, if productivity. Chad: The earth would love us so much more. Joel: Here or there. We have systems in place that rely on more people at the bottom of the pyramid than there are at the top of the pyramid. And that's becoming inverted, depending on what country you're in. And that creates some real problems. We need people to make shit. We need people to buy shit. We need people to support the things that we do in this country. And if we're not having babies the way that we used to, those people need to come from somewhere. Frankly, as American, we should be pretty happy that we're a place that people want to come. 'Cause there are a lot of places in the world that people do not want to migrate. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They do not want to go. Like, America is still a place where the perception is, if I work hard, I obey the law. I will have a better life and my children will have a better life. And we will, you know, we will, be, be citizens that are a plus instead of a minus on society. And that is still the majority of people that are walking through war zones and, fighting famine and disease and full families coming to this country because they think there's a better life here. And in many cases that there is. So let's stop vilifying immigration. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yes. There are problems to fix. Chad: Yeah. Joel: There are gaps to fill, as you say. But this is gonna, this is the number one issue in our country. This will be the, the presidential, election. If it were held today, this would be the number one issue, on the ballot. And I think that vilifying it has been horrible. By and large, these are really good people that are struggling, that wanna come to this country, make, be productive and be a plus on it. And, we need to stop focusing on the five or whatever percent that wanna, like, burn the whole place down. Amen. Chad: Amen. Amen. The question is next. Will cars build themselves? Go ahead. Joel: Will, cars build themselves. Yes. Let's go back to bots killing all of us. So back in January, reports surface that BMW's South Carolina plant would be testing robot workers. Fast forward to today, and it looks like those rumors are true. We're seeing TikToks and other social media, pundits show videos of a robot that looks is, has arms and legs like a human. It, it interacts with a human being who says, I'm hungry. What would you give me? And there's an apple on the table. So the robot knows Apple. Give to the table. It puts, it, it, it'll put dishes in racks. It will, like, it sort of is, I don't, I mean, I don't wanna say it's like, it kind of knows. It can kind of process this stuff. And BMW is putting this stuff, putting these robots in its factories. Chad: Yeah. Joel: To build cars. Your thoughts on the impending robotic, takeover, Chad? Chad: Yeah. My cousin works in that plant. So... Joel: South Carolina? Chad: Yeah. He works in that plant. He's worked, yeah, he's worked there for well over a decade, probably two decades. And I asked him, I'm like, are you worried about this? He's like, hell no. We can't find people in the first place. So, you know, it's, again, it's the, it's the immigration, it's the balance. It's, it's all of this. And, and as we start to take a look at, some companies who are, you know, paying immigrants underneath the table, which means no taxes, right? Then we have AI and robots taking jobs. What about the taxes there? We're going to have to restructure how we deal with the border, how we deal with taxes, what jobs actually look like. Are they remote? Are they hybrid? Are they this? Are they that? We have a lot of work to do and we... I don't think it's, it's, it's smart and or safe for us to hope that politicians make the right decisions there. Right? I think as experts in this space, we need to definitely have these conversations. We need to have more of these conversations, to ensure that, you know, dumb decisions aren't made moving forward. Right? They need to have the adults in the room. Joel: I couldn't help but watch and wonder how long it'll be before an affordable robot is on the market that can clean my toilets, on a regular, ongoing basis. But that's just me. Chad: Talking about Christine giving you an ultimatum of, of why leaving you, you gotta clean your own toilet. Joel: Let's not talk about what Christine is giving me or not giving me Chad. So, so part of me wants to temper, my fear slash enthusiasm for this stuff. I mean, we, we've been talking about self-driving cars for over a decade. It doesn't seem like they're gonna be on the market anytime soon. Chad: Elon's still pushing. Joel: Google. Google is. Google's creating, pictures of black Nazis, on their AI, stuff. So a lot of, there's a lot of work left to be done. But then, but then I think about, the famous Earnest Hemingway quote when they asked him, how he went bankrupt, his comment was two ways slowly and then all of a sudden. So I feel like. This this... Like this thing keeps building. It's flipping burgers. It's making tacos. Chad: Yeah. Joel: It's, you're making cars. It, one of, one of these days we're gonna, we're gonna look up and it's, this stuff is gonna happen quickly because it's past all the regulation stuff or, it's finally hit a tipping point of evolution and the robots are gonna be here. I don't know when, but at some point it's gonna happen quickly and we're gonna look up and go, holy shit. Robots are everywhere. They're doing a lot of stuff. My only concern is the speed at which this is gonna happen. Human beings aren't built, to scale like this. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You know, when the, when the car was introduced, it took decades, before the car like fully became the car. Right? People had some time to adjust. I think UBI has to be on the table at some point. People that are displaced, they're gonna have to have some sort of a, a welfare upskilling, educ like educational resources. We're gonna have to really rethink how we're training our people and taking care of our people. But if this is gonna happen, it's just a matter of when. And, get yourself ready. Get yourself on LinkedIn learning and get them badges, people 'cause you're... You're gonna have to have some, some new skills or learn to podcast or some shit. Something that... Chad: Continuous learning. Joel: Doesn't take. Something that doesn't take a lot of, a lot of intelligence. Just become a, become a podcaster. All right. Chad, I know you've been missing some OnlyFans news. Chad: Dude, I was at the Red Light District. I was not missing OnlyFans. Joel: Florida Keeps Florida-ing. Chad: Yes. Joel: I made that one up. A controversy at Liberty Christian Preparatory School in Orlando has led to the expulsion of nine students over a sticker on mom's car promoting her OnlyFans account. Did I just read that? Oh my God. All right. My kids are gonna listen to these shows when I'm dead. Chad: Yeah. Joel: All right. The mother, Michelle Klein was asked to park off campus due to the sticker, and the situation escalated when another mother complained about it on TikTok. Yeah. The, the, you know, the subtle, like face-to-face complaint wasn't enough. She had to take it to TikTok. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: So both mothers, both mothers children were expelled. Oh, that's nice. The parents fight and the kids get in trouble. And, and they were given conditions for their children to be re-enrolled. The children have since been homeschooled, and I'm sure they're getting a top flight education from their mothers. Chad: Especially in Florida. Joel: Chad, what is the world coming to? Chad: Yeah. I just have to figure out you... What Mobile home park these guys are out of? This is, I mean, it's, it's Florida. I mean, they're full of them. Liberty, is it a high school. Joel: Liberty Christian Prepa... You can't write this shit. Chad: I just. Joel: This is a Netflix comedy waiting to happen. Chad: It's just the crossover of all of this shit, you know. It's like, I wanna send my kid to a good school. This one happens to be a Catholic school, a Christian school, whatever it is. Right? And then, but you know, on my time off, I've got little OnlyFans happening. Joel: Hey those private schools aren't cheap. You gotta you gotta find the money somehow. Chad: You gotta do something, right? So yeah, it's, it is, it is interesting. It is very, very interesting and funny. That's what I like. SFX (Sound Effects): Hasn't anyone told us this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: So, so we're on a podcast, you can't see it, but the, the sticker, it looks like a home. Like she bought it on some online service. It covers the entire back window. This isn't like a bumper sticker with my OnlyFans URL. She bought like a billboard sized only OnlyFans site. And she's driving around With children, apparently, promoting her, her site. So, so there you go. OnlyFans you know, we talked about it, a while back. They had a, they brought a new CEO. They wanted to go legit. They wanted people like, normal sort of, online, celebrities to get on and, and make money through, subscriptions or whatever. I think going legit is out the door for OnlyFans. And part of their, only part of their going legit thing was like, we need to go public at some point and make a ton of money, which they would based on their, based on their, if you're watching on YouTube, Chad has pulled up the car, literally a Dodge Caravan. OnlyFans. Chad: Piper Fawn. Joel: Piper Fawn. Chad: It has like racing stripes. I mean, it's, yeah. I, this thing lives in a, in a mobile home park somewhere. Joel: Landing, landing strips, racing stripes, whatever. Take your pick, they can kiss, they can kiss the public markets goodbye. Unless of course, they get, they get Trump involved and he joins OnlyFans, and then they, they they get a spac and, and go public that way their, their ticker symbol could be DT, BJ, you know what I'm saying? Donald Trump, BJ. All right. That's, we out. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads. Instead, now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck. You can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode of Talent Acquisition Week 2024, Liz Owens, the Talent Acquisition Manager at West Coast Fitness, joins Chad & Cheese for a laid-back therapy session. Liz delves into the intricacies of hiring for a renowned brand within the profitable fitness sector, discusses the challenges of collaborating with HR technology providers, and educates Joel on why the phrase "Fitness pizza in my mouth" isn't an accurate application of the word 'fitness' in the workplace. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It is Lady Gaga's favorite podcast, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, Joined as always, the Garth to my Wayne, Chad Sowash is in the house, and we are here with Liz Owens. Don't call her Elizabeth. She's the manager of talent acquisition at West Coast Fitness. And if someone knows fitness as much as me, it might be you, but I know so much Liz. In fact... Chad: No, you're about fittin' this pizza in your mouth. Joel: I curled about two in and out burgers last night. At least 10 reps of 20. Liz Owens: Wow. Just two. Yeah. Come on, Cheese. Give me more. Joel: Well, a couple of fries, animal style. Yeah. Chad: Again. Joel: Don't test my endurance on the fast food circle. Liz Owens: Well, I bow down to the king of fittin' this burger into my mouth. Chad: The only way he uses fitness in a sentence is I'm fittin' this burger in my mouth. Joel: Fittin' this burger in my mouth. So a lot of our listeners, maybe all of them don't know who you are. Give us a Twitter bio about you. Liz Owens: Likely they do not. A quick bio on me. I've been working with West Coast Fitness, which is a large ownership group of Orangetheory Fitness for four years. Orangetheory for five. I actually started with Orangetheory, working in management for them out in Australia when I lived out there for several years. Big global brand. So I can kind of move all over and landed back in Los Angeles where I was born and raised and got connected with West Coast Fitness. Moved my way around from sales and ops in management in studio to pre-sales. Then I got hooked into the HR team, and now I am the manager of Talent Acquisitions. Chad: Hello. Liz Owens: There it is. Chad: So you got stuck with the manager of TA position? [laughter] Liz Owens: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a... Joel: So you have a drama degree from NYU and you've ended up in TA. Liz Owens: Yes. Joel: How does that make you feel? Liz Owens: Well, back in NYU, TA meant a little different thing for us. [laughter] So I mean, I'm glad to... Joel: Is that T and A or just TA. Liz Owens: Exactly. Okay. I'm glad to have moved away from that area of expertise 'cause I felt like I was selling that a little bit too much. Joel: Wow. Chad: It's a thing. Liz Owens: It is a thing. Yeah. But it actually, if you think about it, acting, psychology, sales moved into restaurant work, performing, selling stuff. Chad: You were destined to be here, is what you're saying. Liz Owens: I was. Now here I am. Joel: So we're recording this at the end of January. And even I know that January is a huge month for the fitness industry. Talk a little bit about the complexities of staffing up for the holiday rush. Chad: Oh God. Yeah. Joel: What works best for recruiting? Are there professions that you pull from to be in the industry? Talk about the challenges of January in the fitness industry. Liz Owens: Well, I will say, not to brush myself off a little bit here, but bringing people on for fitness who are energetic, who are personalities and whether that's in the studio coaching the class or it's the front desk staff or even management moving into that. People with my kind of background who are performers, particularly in LA where we're based, we're gonna find a lot of energy and personality with them. Chad: Ah, so it's easier in LA. Liz Owens: Charisma. It is a little easier in LA. Joel: But a lot of competition too. Liz Owens: A lot of competition. I definitely made a lot of money in restaurants versus an hourly kind of like front desk job, I'm not gonna lie. But a lot of people get hooked on the product and then they wanna be coaches and then they become personalities and famous in their own right, in their own little communities. And then they end up being lifelong coaches as their career. So it's a thing. Joel: Competitive pay, benefits. Like what can I expect as a fitness professional? Liz Owens: Absolutely. So as a fitness professional with us, you would be looking at a nice competitive hourly wage. You're clocking in and out for all of your classes as well as a very well tiered pay system according to how many people are in your class. So if you are great at marketing yourself to the community, to outside communities, bringing new people in, you're gonna see that payout tenfold by having your classes sell out. And then you're gonna be making about a hundred dollars a class. So it's a nice little pay. Chad: So how's that different in Q1 versus Q2? 'cause you've got that big surge in Q1, right? Joel: Or Q4. [laughter] Chad: And then they start to kind of dwindle out. Liz Owens: Yeah. Well, I will say January, 2024 has been our best month for the last few years as we've been getting ourselves back out of the COVID era. Especially in California, it's been very tough. So nearly every one of our studios is hitting their goals this month and it'll be amazing to carry out into throughout Q1 into Q2. We are seeing a bit of a drop off in terms of our seasonal employees, of course. 'cause a lot of our people are in college, so they're still working and in school. So what they are doing is, they're leaving us after the winter months, are getting back into their university programs. We'll probably see them come back in the summer. So it's all about just maintaining efficiencies throughout the studio and keeping on top of backfilling those roles, knowing when they're coming up, making sure that we are communicating with our teams and our hiring managers so that we don't fall behind. Chad: So do you have boomerangs people who have been coaches and they kind of went out and they might still be a part of Orangetheory or what have you, right? But do you have the boomerangs? Joel: That sitcom pilot didn't get picked up, so now I'm back at the fitness industry. Does that happen? Liz Owens: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yes, that does happen a lot actually. So we have a ton of people who leave for a little while whether they're going to pursue their own private PT types of things. Or they have other interests or they're in school again, they're coming, they'll go off and complete a degree, then they end up coming back either part-time 'cause they miss it. But when people are coaches, they become passionate about it. You don't just get a special certification and go through the process to get hired with us. We have a pretty rigorous training program to get in and become a coach with us because our standards are very high and you don't go through all of those things to just have it be a side job. Most of the time people are really passionate about it. They want to be doing it. They wanna be helping people. And it's a really great industry to work in because you get to watch people reach their goals every day. Chad: So let's get into the fun stuff. What's your tech stack look like? [chuckle] Liz Owens: Oh. Let me loosen up a little bit. Chad: 'Cause talent acquisition, you gotta go get them. So you need the acquisition part, right? So the postings and all that other stuff. Joel: She's got a lot of problems with you people. Chad: All the way through. Liz Owens: Oh, I don't know if we've got time for all of my... Chad: Oh, come on. Come on. This is the place right here. Liz Owens: All right guys. Do I need to pay you for therapy as well? 'cause this is what it has been turned into. Joel: We'll get to the end of this and let you know. Chad: Yeah, we'll send you an invoice. Liz Owens: You'll be sending me an a bill. Okay. Perfect. Chad: That's okay. Liz Owens: Great. Well, I've got Anthem, so hopefully they'll cover me for that. Joel: We usually work for bourbon, just so you know. Liz Owens: Oh, excellent. All right. I kind of think I can scroll a bit. Joel: Okay, good. Liz Owens: Alright. So we have been working with a company for our HRIS for several years now. We're not set up for success. I will say, just to play devil's advocate, we've been working with Paycom and we are moving systems in the next very short amount of time. Paycom does not know this, so hopefully this does not go live before we make that move. Joel: We're huge with the Paycom folks. Liz Owens: You know, if you are then... Joel: Hugely popular. Liz Owens: I would probably readjust your... Chad: Yes. Chad Richardson listens to us all the time. CEO of Paycom. Liz Owens: I love it. Well, if Barbara Corcoran's listening, look, bitch, I got a few complaints for you, so you might wanna step out that investment. Joel: Not the shark Tank lady. Liz Owens: Oh yeah. That Q-tip. Chad: Barbara. Liz Owens: I'm upset. I'm upset with her. Joel: She's all on the ads, isn't she? Liz Owens: A 100%. Every time a commercial comes on, I change the channel. I can't do it. To play devil's advocate, the system probably works well for smaller companies. And when we started with them back in like 2017 or '18, we were probably under 200 employees and we grew exponentially in the years prior to COVID and in COVID. So we went from 200 to 750 in a matter of probably a year and a half. And the system just wasn't set up for that. And no, we didn't have the team and agility to be able to make those adaptations when it happened. So COVID shut down. We had just doubled in size and when we came back online, no one took that into consideration for the HRIS. So it really, really was at a, we were at a detriment for that for a while to the point now where we can't really function in that system and we had to just move on. Chad: Woo. It sounds like a cautionary growth tale. Liz Owens: Yes. Yes. Chad: Is what it sounds like. If you grow too fast and you don't have the infrastructure to be able to take care of that growth. Liz Owens: Absolutely. Chad: AKA Paycom. So did you have conversations with them around trying to build infrastructure that would support you guys? Or you say, screw it, it's not even worth it. We're getting the hell outta here. Liz Owens: I mean look, ever since I took the role in TA, I have been looking for other systems that can help us, their backend, their communication with their teams and their reps hasn't been fantastic. And they don't play nicely with others. So anytime we found a system that could help, where I'm like, Hey, I found this ATS that gives us these features, can we integrate? They go, no, you'd have to get approval. And I'm like, okay, well what about this required ATS that we have to use working with Orangetheory? We are required to use Career Plug to get hooked into their corporate careers page. And they won't integrate. So I have to use two different systems to get all of my candidates through, and then they're having to reapply to get into Paycom where we can onboard them. It is a nightmare. Chad: So you're scraping jobs off of your system to push into another system. And then the candidate hopefully seamlessly goes into the other system. Liz Owens: Hopefully, and that's a big hopefully. Chad: Hopefully. Oh yeah, that's a bitch. Liz Owens: Absolutely. 100%. Joel: What's the fix? How did you huddle up and like tackle this? Liz Owens: Well, I did a lot of research. I found several companies that we could kind of look at and demo and talk through. We also have a very complicated payroll system. So that was obviously our priority when we're moving systems, we can't just take the ATS into consideration. We have to make sure that the whole thing is gonna run well for us. Chad: People need paid. Liz Owens: They really do. Chad: They need paid. Liz Owens: Look, I know we lost our payroll manager several months ago and I actually stepped up with the rest of my, like four people on our HR team and we are running payroll now. We're killing it. We are killing it. But we just got a payroll manager and she's being trained. But we're moving to Paycom which will integrate a lot of other systems. It will help automate a lot of our inefficiencies right now and get us back on track. Joel: How easy was the move? Was it sort of a click and move all the data over? Or was it a manual process. Liz Owens: TBD, we go live tomorrow, so we're gonna see. Chad: Okay. Yeah. You're good then. Liz Owens: We're good. It's no stress. I'm here with you guys clearly I'm fine. Joel: Stress free with Chad and Cheese. Any other vendors that you want to vent about here at the Chad Cheese therapy session? Liz Owens: Oh man, that's tough. Pain Cor has really been our big one. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Pain Cor. Joel: I'm getting that. Chad: Feeling the pain. Liz Owens: It's been the major one. Joel: Or some that you really enjoy. I mean what are some vendors and solutions that you're using to recruit, that you wanna highlight? Liz Owens: Okay. Okay. Well, the team at Career Plug has been really helpful. Chad: Career plug. Okay. Liz Owens: Career plug. The plug, I've got a plug, career plug. Chad: Gotcha. Joel: Not the kind of plug you're thinking about, Chad. Liz Owens: No, TNA plugs. You guys are on it. I love it. Chad: Wrong show Cheesman. Liz Owens: You're my kind of guys, so don't tell my husband. So I would say, I mean, Paycor team's been amazing in our transition. I really enjoyed looking at I wanna say Ripple back in the day. Chad: RippleMatch. Liz Owens: Not RippleMatch. Chad: Or just Ripple? Okay. Liz Owens: Ripple. I'm forgetting, but... Joel: They clearly made an impact. [laughter] Liz Owens: They did at the time. You know what, you're kind of catching me off guard here with your questions, but Career Plug, their team's been really wonderful. Even though it doesn't always do the things I need it to. They're always responsive, they're always helpful. They jump on onto phone calls with me. And honestly meeting the vendors here they've all been really incredible. Joel: What are your biggest challenges in recruiting? Liz Owens: Biggest challenge right now, we do own 19 studios in the Bay, and recruiting coaches up there has been the biggest challenge, I would say. It is a very, very hard industry there because the cost of living is so high. So coaches are coming in at this part-time where we talked about, hey, like, people do this as a side gig. That's where they do it. They have to have full-time jobs. They work in tech, they work in other industries. Where they can actually make, make the cheese, bring home the cheddar. And then they do this as a passion project and they say, look, I can't make this work full-time. And then we've got holes to fill, we've got gaps in our schedules, we've got people moving, coming and going, because they just can't pay the bills. And that's it. Chad: So you had a line of thinking that I think, he rudely interrupted. Liz Owens: That's okay. Chad: We're here at, TA week and there are plenty of vendors that are here. How many shows do you go to generally a year? And do you get a chance to really dig into the tech nowadays to really understand what the hell a stack looks like? Liz Owens: Well, this is my first rodeo for a conference like this. Chad: Hello. Liz Owens: And I'm really stoked. I didn't really think that the vendors would be as helpful for me because, our budget is so limited. Like, I have to use the manpower where I can. And we're just moving into a new HRIS where a lot of our new budget is going, and figuring that out, but understanding how all of these, especially new AI techs can help automate and fully integrate now into a system that allows that, can really help to loosen up some of the reigns that we have on our people to go and perform other tasks rather than focusing on these minute details of a phone screen process and the sourcing and all of those things. So it's pretty cool. Chad: Yeah. Without coaches, you don't have what? You don't have revenue. So therefore... Liz Owens: They are our product. Chad: Yeah. So therefore the CEO has to understand, Hey, unless I get this great stack in place that helps alleviate a lot of this bullshit that we're dealing with right now, I can't get you the people that you need to be able to make the money that we need to. We're having a great month. Let's go ahead and spend some money. Liz Owens: Absolutely. I love that. And when they're having a good month, my CFO is much, much easier to talk to I'll tell you that. Chad: Oh, I bet. Oh I bet. Joel: So walk me through, you get an opening a rec, what action items are there? Do you post the job? Do you go source? How do you find those people? Liz Owens: So our studio managers act as their own hiring managers through the entire process. Unless they get so slammed that they need to call up on myself or my specialist to come and help with phone screens. But we get those recs open for them. We post to all of the free job boards that are associated with Career Plug and Paycom, to get those moving if they are in a particularly, slow area, like a region that doesn't have a lot of pull from just a free post, we're getting sponsorship on there just to kind of pull in some leads. But for the most part, we're looking for entry level positions. We're looking for customer service and front desk people. The coaches, of course, we do have very high standards, as I said. So we're looking for particular certifications. We're looking for experience in group fitness. And so our hiring managers are taking a look at the candidates that come through. They're doing some phone screens or bringing them in for a class. Chad: Yeah. Liz Owens: Because if you don't get Orangetheory, if you don't understand, if you don't care about it, if you don't feel like you wanna be there and, and do the workout, then you're not gonna wanna sell it. You're not gonna wanna be there every day. Chad: I would assume that that would actually, I mean, you can grow your own at that point, right? Because you have all these people who are doing Orangetheory, they're into it. They're almost cultish in some kind of way. Liz Owens: A hundred percent. Chad: So that's a great talent pipeline for you guys to actually start pulling the ones that you see... Liz Owens: Absolutely. Chad: Who've been there. So how much of your hiring actually happens through that talent pipeline versus having to go out to the market? Liz Owens: I would say about half. We have a great referral program. So first thing is our current staff can go out and bring their friends, but also our members are our biggest advocates. They are so loyal. They love the brand. They wanna be there. Plus you get a free membership. So I mean, that helps them out, right? If they're coming over. A lot of our members, because they're older with families, they're sending their kids over. So there's 17 and 18-year-olds who are like, I'm going to school, or I've got after school, whatever. They're like, get a job, go work at Orangetheory. So that's great. And then what we have is our front desk, they end up loving the product. They're young. They don't really know what they wanna do. So they're like, Hey, I'm gonna get my certification to become a coach. And they end up being the best possible people to be running our classes because they love it. They wanna be there every day and the members know them already. So it's a win-win. Joel: You have a pretty, impressive, resume in the food service industry. Liz Owens: Thank you. Joel: Including a stint at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Nobu. Liz Owens: Yes. Joel: So first off, who's the most famous person that you waited on? Chad: Axel Foley. Of course. Joel: Secondarily, California in particular, we're seeing minimum wage rise in the service industry. I'm assuming you have at least some opinion on what's going on in California, whether right or wrong. So give me the best person you've waited on. And then what are your opinions on the rising minimum wage in the food service industry in California and the impact. Liz Owens: Sure thing. Okay. The best person I've waited on probably was Shaq, took care of him and his family on Christmas. Chad: Wow. Joel: How much food does he put down? Liz Owens: It was a lot of food. And his kids are not shy either. It was like 10 people. It was just constant chicken fingers and fries. Chad: Oh, yes. Liz Owens: Coming to the table. But he is so kind and so gentle. Chad: No cobb salad for Shaq, is that what you're saying? Liz Owens: I don't think he was having a McCarthy at the time. Yeah... But he is lovely. Bob Saget was also amazing. Chad: Oh, really? Liz Owens: Yes. And it was super cool to help him out. He liked to smoke a secret cigar on the patio that was not necessarily legal. But we hook it up for Bob Saget, God bless him, but... Chad: It's all good now. Liz Owens: Yeah. Exactly. Not a problem anymore sadly. Anywho, so to move on to your minimum wage question, I know that as in the food service industry in California, they're making a lot of money. And that is super nice. Like to the point where I'm like, damn, TA is not even, it was like, I should be going back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Like, that's crazy because you are required to pay minimum wage. And it's very high, especially in LA, while you're also making tips at these high end restaurants. So it is a very nice industry where you're making a nice six figures, and you're able to maintain your life. Joel: Imagine that. Liz Owens: I know, a miracle. Chad: So what's the, what's the percentage that you would say that are Beverly Hills versus the rest of the state. Joel: Versus Taco Bell. Joel: Yeah. It feels kinda like shining star, it's like, oh yeah, they can make a hundred thousand plus dollars. Not a problem. What about the guy who's not in Beverly Hill? Liz Owens: Look, I lived in Australia where the minimum wage is much higher. And very livable. So as a front desk associate at Orangetheory you were making, and this was 2019, you were making $23-24 an hour. You get paid more on the weekends, you get paid more on holidays. Like a Saturday is a lower rate than Sunday even. So you're able to make a wage. Here it's significantly less. The cost of living is really high. I wish that people could get paid more everywhere. If I could make that change, I would. And the fact that it's so high in California and so low in other states, I mean obviously it's all relative, but it's not fair for anyone. No one has one job anymore. You can't do it. Except if you're working at Beverly Hills Hotel. Chad: I think the Paycom CEO he's worth like 1.7 billion. He should pay his people more. And then maybe you might get the service that you would need. Then they could have retained a client. Liz Owens: Well, I got the skinny because one of our reps from Paycor actually used to work for Paycom and apparently this guy is a little Looney Tunes because he hires people to be his reps. He refuses to hire anyone who has experience working with another HRIS for exclusivity reasons. But then you talk to these reps and they know nothing. They know nothing about HR. They know nothing about the systems they're talking about. And they barely know Paycom because they were probably receiving horrible training that has nothing to do with anything. Chad: And it's amazing 'cause a lot of these technologies we're seeing are getting new CEOs who have no experience in this space. Liz Owens: Delightful. Joel: That is Liz Owens everybody. Liz, for anyone out there listening that wants to connect with you or learn more about West Coast Fitness, where do you send them? Liz Owens: Go To LinkedIn under Liz Owens, manager of Talent Acquisitions for West Coast Fitness. Follow West Coast Fitness as well. I'm also on Instagram as @lizin_life. Play on words there. So thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Joel: I like it. Lunch is coming up. Hopefully they'll have Shaqaroni Pizzas from Papa John's if we're lucky. Another one in the can. Chad, we out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one, cheddar, blue nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

In this riveting episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman take the stage at Transform in Las Vegas, Nevada, alongside a distinguished panel of HR leaders. Carolyn Frey from Hungry Root, Jessica Swank from Box, and Joey Lee from Panda share their unfiltered insights on a broad range of pressing HR topics. From leveraging AI in talent acquisition and management to navigating the complexities of remote work, this episode is packed with thought-provoking discussions. The panelists delve into how their organizations are pushing the envelope in HR technology, addressing talent shortages, and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in today's evolving workplace. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that punches the recruiting industry right where it hurts, all while offering loads of snark and invaluable perspectives on HR's future. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad: Hello, listener. On March 12th, Joel and I were in Las Vegas, Nevada for Transform, where we got on stage with Carolyn Frey, chief People Officer over at Hungry Root. Jessica Swank, chief People Officer at Box, and Joey Lee, head of talent acquisition at Panda. They joined Joel and myself on stage for an unfiltered discussion, which spanned several, several topics that were important to them. Enjoy. Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the Doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Oh, Yeah. What's up everybody? It's Carrot Top's Favorite podcast, AKA, the Chad and Cheese podcast? Chad: Let's spit my beer out. Joel: My name is Joel Cheesman. We got a rookie up here. Now you all know what I have to deal with. Anyway, I am your co-host, Joel Cheeseman joined as always, The mind to my freak, Chad Sowash is in the house. Somebody get him a sippy cup, please. Chad: Sippy cup. I'll take it. Joel: And we are excited to welcome Carolyn Frey. Raise your hand so we all know who you are. Chief People Officer at Hungry Root. Jessica Swank, chief People Officer at Box. And Joey Lee rounding up the starting four at Panda, also known as Panda Express and Panda inn. Correct. So there may be a coupon code for. Chad: All the pandas. Joel: For egg rolls later. Chad: Check Underneath your seat. Check under underneath your seat. That might be There. Joel: Everyone stick around. Chad: Discount code underneath your seat. Possibly. It might not be. I don't know. Joel: Alright. Alright guys, we, know your title and where you work. Some of the audience here doesn't know what the company does. Give us a quick Twitter explanation about what your companies do. Carolyn Frey: Okay. I work for Hungry Root. We're a personalized online grocery subscription service. Super cool. You should check it out. There's a coupon code in everyone's bag. I think it's HRT40. AI driven. You fill out an assessment of you and your household preferences, any allergies, dietary restrictions, and then we prefill your grocery cart with a meal component. So you have your recipes and groceries for, the week. It's amazing and healthy, healthy eating forward. So making healthy, eating easy is our mission. Jessica Swank: We'll keep trying. Okay. Persistence. Jess Swank. Great to see everybody. So I'm at Box, which is Content Cloud. So all the data that you have out there, we help you manage it in a secure way. Collaboration is at the heart of what we do, very much a SaaS company. So a little bit different than a Hungry Root, but very similar to, Joey. Joey Lee: Hey, Joey Lee, head of talent acquisition at Panda, a restaurant group. Been with Panda for about five weeks now. It's for like five years. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you guys all know about Panda with 30,000, employees deep. We're global now. And our focus to be the world leader in people development, that's one of the main reasons why I actually joined. So I'm super stoked, excited to be here. Chad: Excited until you start this. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. Jessica, first one for you. We've been hearing a lot about this whole AI thing. Quick question. Bullshit or not. Jessica Swank: Definitely Not. Chad: Or for HR? For, talent acquisition in HR. Bullshit or not. Jessica Swank: Definitely, or not. So I would say AI is here. It is the wave. It is gonna change so much of what we do, not only within businesses, but I think especially within our people, within our communities. Everything from how we hire to how we think about learning to how we think about, you know, assessing and understanding, everything from benefits and first line, how we deal with it. So I think it's gonna be a game changer and I could not be more excited. Chad: Are you using it? That's the question. Jessica Swank: Are. We are using it in so many different ways. So one, so Box, a short plug, we have our own Box AI that we actually just went out to market. And so all of the data that we have within Box, we actually then can go and query. So it's safe, it's secure. So we look at it from recruiting. So we're using it in our job descriptions. We actually are, we're in our middle of our performance management cycle and we are using it actually in writing reviews. And we did even training for our managers on how to use it in a safe way. Now, it's not gonna do it end to end, but we can really think about where and how do we best leverage it. So I think end to end, we're using it. And we're just at the start. Chad: Joey, it's gotta be different at Panda. Joey Lee: Oh gosh. AI. Chad: Are you using it? Joey Lee: Yes, absolutely. Chad: At the Panda AI. Joey Lee: Yeah. We have a virtual, a panda that walks around. No. But, in terms of AI itself, I mean, it's a game changer. And AI's been here forever. You think about Siris, you think about Alexa, you think about when you jump into your car and it knows your routes every morning at 5:00 AM. It's crazy. In terms of how Panda is currently using it, when I joined Panda about five weeks ago, they did not have, a recruiting process. So basically I leveraged AI to generate a recruiting playbook, interview guides, pretty much a recruiting workflow within two weeks. So it has expedited our process. I understand, I totally understand how AI is. It's not gonna take over the world. It's just there to support you, be your guide. Plus I actually leverage, AI at home with my 11-year-old daughter. So she comes up to me and she asks help to help with her math homework, right? So I tell her, Hey, you know what? Go on ChatGPT, put that information in. If they can't answer it, come back to me. And 100% of the time she gets the answer. So it's been crazy. Joel: By the way, the Panda Express recommendation engine always gets my order just right. Always just right. Chad: Always. Carolyn? Carolyn Frey: Yes. Oh, AI. Chad: Welcome to the show. Carolyn Frey: I know, I'm super giggly right now. Well, we're a company built on AI, so yes. AI, not bullshit. And, I'd say I run custom. Chad: So you're a company built on AI. Explain that first. Carolyn Frey: Okay. Which part? Chad: A Company that's built on AI. Carolyn Frey: Okay. Well, our algorithm is, well, it incorporates machine learning in something called Operations research, which has like hard and soft constraints. A hard constraint would be like, I'm allergic to garlic, or I'm allergic to onions, or I am, I don't eat dairy where a soft constraint is like, I don't like tomatoes. So that's kind of one component that's been implemented and now we're putting in machine learning so that it's pretty predictive. So it's like, Hey, Chad and Cheese, you love these four ginger shots on every four weeks. We're gonna pre-fill your grocery cart with that. Chad: Every four weeks. Okay. Carolyn Frey: Or whatever your preferences are. Chad: Okay. So beyond. Carolyn Frey: Or your in and out order. Joel: I Love a good ginger shot, Chad I Love a good ginger order. Chad: Where's Tim Sackett? Everybody calls him a ginger shot. So that was good, right? That was good. That was good. So talk about the talent acquisition side of the house. How are you using it there? Obviously your, business is built on it. So how, are you using it there? Carolyn Frey: I mean, from the beginning we've used it for job descriptions, job postings, but we've implemented a solution, BrightHire just to do a plug for them here. That is amazing. So helpful. Do all of our interview notes. And has actually brought a lot of like fairness and equity to the interview process. So that's most specifically, it's more around like time efficiency. So, we have a higher quality interview process and save people time. And they're awesome. Joel: Curious about AI on the other side of the equation. In other words, job seekers using AI to mass apply for jobs. Is that a concern for you guys? Are you seeing any evidence of that? More and more stories seem to be coming out about it. Carolyn Frey: I mean, I think in general, I don't know if it's AI driven, but we're definitely seeing mass supply. You know, we have a, I'm looking at someone on my team. We have a payroll position open and the candidates, I mean we have like 1800 applications and half of them have no HR payroll experience. Joel: That's fun. Carolyn Frey: I think the mass supply is an issue. I'm not sure if it's AI or other. Joel: Same with Box Panda. Jessica Swank: Plus one for sure. Chad: Yeah, it's the same thing. Joel: Yeah. So we were talking before, today and the labor shortage is a big story, for everyone. And it was really intriguing to know that two of the three of you aren't having a lot of shortage issues. So I want you each to talk about that. And if you're not, why aren't you? And if you are, what is life like for you and how are you trying to solve that problem? Let's start with Jessica. Jessica Swank: Alright. So job shortages. I would say we are not struggling with job shortage, or an applicant shortage. I think what we are grappling with, I think like many companies is finding the right person for the role. And I think what, you know, Carolyn was just mentioning for some of our jobs, we get thousands of applicants. So trying to grapple with and surf through them. And then you have other jobs, AI jobs where there is a particular shortage of a particular skillset. We also have a global organization. And so depending on where you are, what skill you have, it depends. So it's an and it's a yes and I would say so. Chad: Is there a training aspect of that? So you'd have to back down requirements a little bit so that you can get people in the seats and then start training because obviously somebody in the seat's better than nobody in the seat and their uptime might be a little bit longer, but still you can work on getting there and hopefully keeping them. Jessica Swank: I think it depends on the role. I think some roles you need more harder requirements. And yet other jobs, absolutely. We hire a lot on potential and we hire a lot on, are you a culture add? So can you bring other aspects to the role? And then how do we make sure if there are, you know, inevitable gaps or knowledge that you need to learn, then we work with you to make sure that you're both up. Joel: Joey. Joey Lee: Yeah. For us, in terms of Shortage. Joel: You have a shortage, by the way. Joey Lee: We don't have a Shortage. We have way too many applicants, but they're not qualified applicants. And what we did is we actually started doubling down on our employee value proposition. You know, really promoting our benefits. We also looked at our pay rate. So we're not the midpoint, we're above midpoint out there. We also tapped into different diversity organizations, looking at veterans, women back to work, all these different avenues. We actually went, we actually are going international as well. So looking at international talent. So casting a wider net for us is gonna truly help us, get more qualified candidates. And then our recruiters are actually using, the AI components to parse through all the resumes. 'cause we do get a lot of volume. Joel: Carolyn, you had an interesting perspective in that Poland is a focus for you. Obviously the Ukraine issue. Carolyn Frey: That was mine. Wrong person. Joel: Oh, was that Jessica? Chad: That was Jessica. Carolyn Frey: But That's okay. I can talk about our lack of talent shortage. Joel: You're not the only one that's sleep deprived. Sorry Jesse, you were talking about the Poland-Ukraine talent pool. Jessica Swank: Yeah, well I was just saying how, you know, so we have a very large engineering site in Poland. And so actually, you think about, you know, immigration issues. It's not only here in the US but it's also globally. And so where we think about diversity here in the US it looks different around the world. And so we're having to really think about where are the talent markets, where do we make sure that we need to do it, you know, kind of from an immigration following regulations. 'cause again, every country has their own regulations and yet how do we also think about diversity and diverse pools a little bit differently? Joel: Good segue. Diversity, equity and inclusion. How are you guys dealing with those challenges? Have you figured out your beer yet? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Okay. Chad: I think I'm good. Joel: Start with Joey. Diversity equity inclusion at Panda. Joey Lee: So, I think we're not, so I've been in a previous organization where DE&I was at top of the house. I think with Panda it's all about belonging, inclusive, they're starting to roll out DE&I training. So in terms of our focus is gonna be belonging and inclusive. Chad: So we've seen in the media, there's a lot of retraction of DEI initiatives. Is that something that you are seeing not just from yourself but also from your industry? Jessica Swank: So I wanna be very respectful in this conversation 'cause I think it's a very nuanced conversation. I think it is a movement and I think companies where we've seen them retract it is because they jumped on the fad of it was the in thing to do. And they, you know, did things for the bling and the press. And I think that companies where a sense of inclusion, a sense of diversity, a sense of belonging was important. I think that many companies, including Box, have just doubled down on that. Now again, we're thinking about it more from a global aspect as well. We are, as I mentioned earlier, as we have global organization, what does that look like globally? One of our values is bring your blank self to work. And so I think that sense of belonging, inclusion, it is integrated into the fabric of everything that we do. Jessica Swank: So our commitment to diversity, inclusion, belonging has been steadfast and will remain. We don't get it all perfect, right? We have our challenges as well, but I think for a lot of organizations, not to minimize the, challenges that we're seeing from some updated regulations and some very, you know, prominent figures out there unfortunately who are having a loud voice. I think we all need to come and say, no, that actually is not what we're experiencing and how do we double down and really advocate for, I think the goodness that diversity and belonging is not only for every one of us, but for the bottom line of the business. Chad: Carolyn? Carolyn Frey: I mean, I agree. It's a nuanced conversation. I mean the way I think about it's like progress is not linear. So I don't know that I describe it as a fad, but obviously was a big topic and continues to be over the last couple of years. But I would still argue we've made a lot of progress. I think we tried a lot. Like we, the collective people company community tried a lot of things after, in particular after George Floyd's murder. And I think we learned a lot. And I would agree with Jessica. I mean, my personal point of view is what I learned, I had a pretty large DEIB team at my last company was that actually we need to embed it in all the work we do and in our people strategy. And that's just a far more effective and impactful approach. So I guess I disagree that it's not important or we've like lost progress. I think we have, I just think that this, the tactic and approach is different. Chad: So we saw a lot of companies throw money at the problem. They did that in hiring CDOs chief diversity officers and then gave them no resources whatsoever. So from my standpoint, there were, the outcomes did not, were not there, So is this, is there going to be a rebirth in a more outcomes focused area, Joey? Joel: Are You guys all seeing budgets increase, steady or decrease. Joey Lee: In terms of who owns it. I think that's ownership, right? If you don't have a DEI team, who owns it If, so that's where if. Chad: Does anybody Own it? Joey Lee: Yeah. Does anybody own it? So I was just in a meeting last week and it was like playing hot potato and I just rolled up my hand. I was like, I wanna own it, right? But does it fall under TA? So who owns it? But at the end of the day, it starts at the top of the house. Everyone has to have skin in the game so it can be truly impactful. So right now I think it's that someone has to take ownership on it and it's that one team approach. Everyone has to be part of it. Chad: Yeah. So good question. Are you guys seeing resources, more resources on the DEI side of the house or has it pretty much stayed plateaued. Joel: Or cutting? Carolyn Frey: I'd say the same. Jessica Swank: Yeah. We've actually recently added, now it's one person, but every one person, but I also totally agree has to be embedded in the business. I think where, I saw peers and companies, they put one person and they said now they're gonna solve DEI for us and our organization. There's, everybody's set up to fail. I think it has to be embedded. It is embedded into our culture, it's embedded into our hiring, our development, our offboarding. It has to also be a business problem. And I think you have to have business leaders who are also held accountable. So I think again, it has to be a holistic approach. And again, we're gonna see ups and downs, but I think the trend, as Caroline was saying, I agree. I actually think the fact that the conversation that here we are still talking about it is a positive. Carolyn Frey: The only thing I'd add, I love you Joey, but I disagree with your statement, which is sort of like I was a little bit. Joel: No, I Love Joey. Joel: Yeah, I love you. I love Panda Express. And I support you. My daughter loves it. No, it's sort of like asking like who owns culture like that, question, I don't know, just like, makes me really mad. We all own culture. I think to Jesse's point, it is in the ethos. So I think... Chad: But somebody has to own it, own it though, right? It has to be under somebody for it to be, for there to be accountability. Carolyn Frey: I mean then maybe it's sort of like the CEO and executive team, but I don't think that, it would be the equivalent of saying like, the chief people officer owns culture. It's like, no, we enable culture. We're a big culture driver, but you know, we don't own culture. Culture is like a collection of a lot of different decisions at, you know, and data points and strategies across lots of different things is not just kind of from the people function. Joel: I wanna jump on the culture thing there for a second. And employment branding obviously is a big topic and you are all very different from a brand perspective. You know, granola esque, food service, high tech, you know, fast food. And Jessica, you have a really quirky CEO that I think plays into the employment brand as well. Just curious, we can start with, Carolyn, how does employment, how do you guys approach employment brand? It sounds like it's holistic at your company and that transcends into, recruiting. How do you put that message out? What's been most effective? Talk about that. Carolyn Frey: Okay. What's cool to work for a consumer brand and hopefully you all try it or have tried it is that we think about the consumer brand and the employer brand, like pretty closely linked. But it also is, I mean, the way... We're in sort of a in a grateful place Hungry, is performing really well. We have a very cool product. We have a very cool mission and story to tell. And our results are amazing and we've been profitable for a couple of years and the core business just kicks ass. So I feel like our employer brand, it sells itself because, especially sort of in this marketplace where there's so many companies restructuring not profitable, startups not making it we've been able to tell that story really well and that's kinda why we don't have a talent shortage. We've been really, really lucky. Joel: Joey Employment brand. Carolyn Frey: Joey's still mad. Joey Lee: Yeah, I'm... No, I'm super positive. Chad: Get Joey another beer. Joey Lee: Yeah. In terms of our brand it's... So our CEO it's husband and wife they really believe in putting people first. Throughout Covid, they have not laid off anybody. So they actually move individuals throughout the organizations, operators move them to different parts within different departments. They have a huge stake in developing people consistently. They're tough. I mean we call her the Tiger mom [laughter] and our CEO actually goes to the store. If there's trash on the floor, he will pick it up. So he actually leads by example and everyone does that. So everyone truly follows that same suit. Joel: Aaron Levy, how do you control that guy and how does he impact employment, if at all? Jessica Swank: Anybody who knows, Aaron knows there's no controlling, I joke, it's nudging him maybe in other directions and giving him very candid feedback. I do think though working for a founder, CEO, but also a co-founder, CFO, right? I joke that they're the brothers because they've known each other since middle school and they lead by example, right? You talked about that sense of they don't do anything that they don't ask others to do. And so that sense of we talk a lot about culture ads. The values have been seven years and going strong. The values, the culture, it's not just something that is talked about one and done. It is literally embedded into every single thing that we do. Even our performance management, we do the what? So delivering on the objectives, but the how we have four leader mindsets, business team, self and community. You have to meet a minimum threshold of both of those to be able to be successful. So again, it's not just talk, it is what do you do? I have a five and a half year old. It is all about kids learn what they live. I think people within organizations, you have to... Culture is about what we live day in and day out. It's those micro moments. It's the stories that are so important that I think actually really cultivate an incredible culture. Chad: So we recently saw... It's like a story that continues to surface where Klarna got rid of 700 customer service individuals and they replaced it with AI, right? It seems to be in some cases we're looking toward the future. How does that actually impact culture? DEI? The entire, I mean, this is something that we've gotta think about holistically when we start using these different technologies. So whoever wants to go first, [laughter] chew on that one. Joel: Is it hard to recruit when everyone thinks you're gonna lay everybody off in the near future? Carolyn Frey: That was like 10 questions in one [laughter] Chad: I'm good at those. Carolyn Frey: Okay, so the Klarna thing... Joel: Pick one. Chad: I don't think you were asking the question, but I do agree that AI, as I mentioned, I lead customer care too. We'll take away customer care jobs. In our particular situation we work with a BPO, so we work with a huge team in Mexico that aren't our employees. So they probably will be the most impacted. And I think in some ways it actually enhances culture for us. I hate to say it because our customer care agents will focus on like very high level tickets. So we'll implement it sort of just for the basic, Hey, my box wasn't delivered, or Hey, there was this damaged product. Pretty basic stuff to answer. Get customer credits, respond kindly, but much more difficult things of I got something I'm allergic to or I had a food safety issue. So they'll just be spending time on just, I guess like higher level human judgment. Maybe someone else can go and I'll think about the other questions that were thrown at me. [laughter] Jessica Swank: Well, I'll take on the actual, the layoff. So we've had a lot of internal debate, especially with during challenging times. Do we do something big and cut deeper to then reinvest in the areas of growth? And we have made a conscious decision not to. Now there's always gonna be org changes and some micro movements. However, in general, we have actually decided not to as an organization, even though the trend is there. And I think you see a lot of companies doing that because the safety, the psychological wellbeing, we think it's really important. And that fear-based culture. I ultimately don't think while you might get an improvement in short-term results, I don't think it's actually good for a healthy, long-term culture. Chad: Yeah, Productivity goes down dramatically. Not to mention retention, right? Because they're automatically looking for the next gig 'cause they think they're not gonna have theirs for long. What do you think Joey? Jessica Swank: And it impacts the team that are still there as well, right? Nobody feels good. So I think again, the tail of it, again, you can focus on the short term results, but it's a long tail. Really think carefully. Sorry Joey. Joey Lee: Yeah. We don't do layoffs. So I don't foresee Klarna doing any type of layoffs. I think one of the biggest challenges is that once we... They move people throughout the different organizations, right? But they're not skilled. They may have certain competencies, certain abilities to do certain things. For example, you take a general manager, you move them into recruiting, they've never recruited before, they've done interviews. So how do we up level them how do we get them... Provide them tools and resource to get to where they need to truly go. And that's the challenge, right? And that's why I feel like AI is gonna truly help. Because when you think about it, when you ask a recruiter how much percentage of their time do they spend on the admin side, they would say 60, 70%. So you take some of those AI components, give them at least 70% of their time to spend time with customers, spend time with hiring managers, spend time to consult. That's where we truly need to get them to. Carolyn Frey: Okay. I have a couple of thoughts. Well, on the layoffs, I mean, I think we're all people leaders or in the people space. I mean, it's really important to be very thoughtful around impact on DEIB. So we did a small restructure in January, not for cost reasons. And we transparently got a lot of heat from the company of where a lot of women were impacted. But we had to be very, very transparent around like the analysis we did. And we're a majority female company. And so as a result there are more females than males impacted. I was gonna say something else about culture, but I just lost my train of thought. Oh, I think what you said about jobs, I would guarantee if you asked anyone at Hungry they would not be fearing their job going away. And the reason is 'cause like we believe in very lean, scrappy teams. Carolyn Frey: So as I mentioned, we're about 400 million in revenue. Just to give some context, the people team is five people. And so like you want the right balance of not so resource constrained that you can't do your best work. But you also wanna be able to prioritize the most important things and everyone is tied to the impact they can have. So actually post a small restructure, we did, we've seen like engagement survey scores go up. People are just happier because they're actually more connected to the results and they're not worried about their job. Joel: Alright. Joey I'm not gonna let you off this easy. You can't just say we don't do layoffs. Without some pushback. Chad: He did. He said. Joel: And in your... He did. And your industry more than most, is it, I wouldn't say risk, but more impacted by AI and automation than most. You see robots flipping burgers, you see robots cooking food, you see drive-throughs that are AI voice. Joey Lee: Servers. Joel: You see... My local McDonald's, it's a kiosk. I haven't talked to a cashier for I don't know how long. Chad: He knows fast food. Joel: So help me understand in that environment where all your competition is automating that you guys won't, or what's your secret sauce that you don't have to? Joey Lee: No, we actually started some automation. So being in QSRs, the turnover there is about 70%. That's 70% is labor intensive, very hands-on. So we have robotics in terms of chopping vegetables, flipping the walk. The walk is heavy you do it eight, 10 hours a day it's super challenging. We're gonna double down on the customer service aspect, right? Providing the customer service aspect. We're applying to open 90 stores by next year. We're opening 180 stores. Chad: How many? Joey Lee: 180 stores. Chad: Wow. Joel: Which will employ how many people? Joey Lee: A lot [laughter] Joel: Good for you. Good for you. Chad: So let's go ahead and pivot into innovation. Three people on stage who get pitched a lot by vendors, many vendors in this room. But. Joel: How many calls a week? I'm just curious. How many calls a week do you get from a vendor, Carolyn? Carolyn Frey: Probably between like 50 to 75. Joel: 50 to 70. Chad: Woo. Jessica Swank: Yeah. Calls, emails LinkedIn. A lot. Joel: 50 to a 100? Oh, emails for sure. It'd be a lot more. Chad: In the same range. Joel: Wow. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So if vendors are listing, that's what you're competing with. A hundred calls a week from your competition. So go ahead. Innovation. Chad: Let's go high level. Indeed and LinkedIn pretty much own the market for the most part. They get a lot of cash out of all the vendors that are out there. They don't seem to be innovating much. They rename stuff, they put a different label, different lipstick on the pig and then they charge you more. What would you like to see out of vendors, whether it's them or even beyond those 75 plus that you get per week that actually means something to you? Carolyn Frey: Okay. I don't know why I'm going for it. This is not a pain point for us. The only thing in the recruiting... I think, 'cause you were specifically talking about the recruiting space, so probably in my more my field's experience and kinda like high turnover environments, we push the envelope on innovation. So I don't actually know that I have an answer, but I'd like to see more like experience based. I mean, you're right, like they haven't pushed the envelope at all. I think candidates are still sort of using the same approaches but probably like more, I don't know, something creative experience based interviewing. Chad: So question, do you use your database, your candidate database of candidates you've already paid for that have already possibly gone through interviews and those types of things? Do you use those as the first source of candidates to go through or do you just automatically post a job going to programmatic? What do you do first? Carolyn Frey: Okay. We post a job. And then we filter applications through Greenhouse. Chad: So you don't go back to database. Carolyn Frey: But we do a lot of referrals are a big source of hire for us. About 50% of our hires are referrals. So we prioritize those. And we do do sourcing for our kind of harder to fill like more technical data engineer roles or kind of dev roles. Jessica Swank: Yeah. One of the things we've done, so this past year we've spent a lot of time looking at our end-to-end tech stack and also then where the incumbents are, what our renewal dates are for each of those platforms where the kind of the upstarts are many of those in this room. And then we start having those conversations around where and how do we wanna innovate, where are the companies where we wanna make the bet, but also there's a cost to change. And then I would also say there's a fatigue of employees to having yet another system, yet another app. Where do I go to for this? Where do I go to for that? So I think the more companies that can integrate and have it be simple and make sure that it's talking and connecting with other vendors and/or other platforms, that is also, it's the push and the pull of always wanting innovation. But innovation within companies where we're already using are automatically gonna have a layback. Joel: Will you even consider a solution that isn't integrated into your primary platforms? Jessica Swank: Very few. Joel: Very few. Jessica Swank: Yes. If it is a spot solution that there's no other opportunity, but in general, I mean, I would say a number of the vendors where there's ongoing innovation within the platform and then you'll see, and what we're seeing a lot now is every vendor is trying to go broader. And so it's not only the new companies but it's the vendors pitching on, oh, but we can do this today, but we're gonna go and do X tomorrow. And understanding how all these pieces fit together is one of, I think our... As an industry and as people and communities, one of the biggest opportunities we have going forward. Chad: Do you feel in some cases that's like vaporware, oh, we're gonna do that or we're gonna do that? Jessica Swank: Oh yeah. And assessing what is vaporware and what is actually like oh no, that's coming. I promise you that's coming. Versus LinkedIn. Chad: It's on the roadmap. Jessica Swank: Is it on the roadmap? Can we actually deliver on it? Can we count on you to deliver on this? It's a tricky one, which also comes down to a lot of really digging into do you have the relationships? Do you know the chief product officer? Are you actually really understanding what the technology is and what it could be? Joel: Salespeople have a tendency of overpromising, I don't know if you guys have heard that. Chad: You mean salespeople. Joel: Salespeople, yeah. Chad: Product people. Not so much. If you can talk to product people generally you can get the right answer. Yeah. Joel: And they hate salespeople for over promising. Chad: Joey what do you think about that? Joey Lee: Yeah, so we're building our tech stack right now and I love Jessica's point in terms of it has to integrate, right? I think the two job boards out there is Indeed and LinkedIn. And if you use LinkedIn the last three, four months, it's changed. Indeed Same thing. In order to get your jobs out there, you have to sponsor them. If not, it's gonna be buried. So I would love to see another vendor compete with them, come out with work and go back to how Indeed LinkedIn started. I mean, where they were just homegrown. Carolyn Frey: I mean there's tons of vendors here and we're coming outreach, I wanna call it Remote bridge, which is one company I saw when I comment on like experience based interviewing and like pushing the envelope. And again, I mentioned it's not a huge problem for Hungryroot, but if I was back in kind of a high turnover, like harder to fill role, check them out. But it's like very cool. Like you enter Avatar land and imagine you can go and create a hiring fair for your frontline employees or for engineers who are really bought in and might be like a new and different way to interact with an interview. So that's kinda what I was talking about earlier with experience based, like wanting LinkedIn and the technology to really push the envelope. It's scary to try something new like that. But I think those breakthroughs are how we'll be able to address the broader talent shortage. Chad: So talent acquisition wasn't really an issue. What about the talent management and that whole funnel to be able to focus on productivity and then also retention. So are you seeing advancements in innovation in that? I'm sorry. Carolyn Frey: Yes. For sure I would say that area feels much more innovative I think because like performance is, yes, I will say there is innovation. A move to like simplicity to real time kinda ongoing feedback. Yes. Sorry, my brain is not working. Chad: You're good. You're good. It's the beer. We'll blame the beer. It's fine, it's fine. Joel: Remote work. [laughter] Ooh. Carolyn Frey: Am I fired? Joel: I don't know. I mean, Joey's answer might be interesting, but I'm sure like. Chad: Corporate jobs. Joel: Hybrid work, remote work solutions to help you manage a global work workforce. I think a lot of companies are struggling with, do we go hybrid, remote? Are you back in the office? How do you guys approach that question internally and how does it impact recruiting? Chad: Start with Joey. Let's start with Joey 'cause I wanna hear this. You've got corporate jobs and then obviously you've got jobs where they can't be remote. Joey Lee: Yeah. So we're required to come into the office twice a week, which is good. My first week there is funny, I was in the office, I was in back to back virtual calls, so I was like I did not leave the office one bit. So I went back to my leadership team, I was like I'm gonna move all my meetings on the days I currently work home. So I believe in that in-person, but if you're bogged down doing virtual meetings all day, it's pointless. There's no reason for that. There should be a mixture. I believe that. I like the people-people, the business interaction. Face-to-face with different executives. I enjoy that. The brainstorming element, the team building. But I do like the flexibility of the work from home. I mean, if I gotta take my daughter and pick up my kids from school, that's the beauty of it. And you just work your hours. Chad: Now is that the department by department scenario or do you have like a corporate like. Joey Lee: It's for the whole company for. Chad: Okay. The entire company. Okay. What about you guys, Jess? Jessica Swank: Yes, so we have kind of all types. So we have some roles that are in-office roles. We have some roles a lot of sales, some of the customer roles that are remote by role. And then we have a lot of people who are either remote by choice. The vast majority, about 60% of our Boxers are employees are kind of a mix of where they come into the office. And we want that. 'cause again, I'm a big believer of it. There is something different about when you can be in the office. When you can have that face-to-face in-person connection. What we're grappling with and still kind of working through is what does that exactly look like? To Joey's point we don't wanna say, Hey, come into the office and then sit on Zoom calls the entire time. Jessica Swank: That is not in anybody's best interest. So what we've been really trying to think about, so Tuesdays and Thursdays are today are what we call our IRL days. But we try and then really say during those days, don't have your Zoom calls. If you're gonna have a one-on-one, make sure it's a one-on-one with somebody who's there. Clear some of your calendar to have time to go and have the conversations in the coffee bar, in the lunchroom, whatnot. So I think we have to be more intentional. I think it is actually harder in some ways to have kinda this messy middle. But I actually think the flexibility, this whole like work life integration, which I think is incredibly important, is something that as we think about this next generation of workplaces, we also put a lot of care into our workplaces. That they exemplify our culture, that we really create that community, that sense of, again, that belonging. So when you come into the office, it actually is a place that you ideally wanna be able to come. Chad: Now being international, do you guys work with any EOR companies? Employment that employ of record platforms where you can go through them and they make it so much easier to actually hire remote people or even people on site? Do you use any of those types of organizations at all? Jessica Swank: We have tried one with mixed success. And so we are not going to at this point continue down that path because again, I think it sounds really good in theory. Haven't quite worked out the wrinkles in my opinion. Chad: So what was not successful about that? Did you have problems retaining, getting people in the door? What was the... Joel: And feel free to name names [laughter] Jessica Swank: I like being provocative. I like also being respectful. So I think what did not work, so our use case actually was during some M&A work that we did where we had employees that were part of an acquisition in countries where we were not legally set up to employ them. And so we used a vendor and again, it was just the promises that were made. And then what were delivered on in terms of the complexity in terms of they made some serious mistakes along the way. And so again, we kind of had to deal with then cleaning up their mess even though what they told us they could deliver and what they delivered there was a pretty big gap. Carolyn Frey: So It's not a panacea. Jessica Swank: Okay. This conversation makes me wanna poke my eyeballs out. We were talking at a group of CPOs last night, [laughter] about remote hybrid. So well I think Hungry is here to prove, first of all, I don't care where people work, so we're totally remote first. I do care about sort of meaningful interactions and meaningful connections and I think the coolest part about our company is while everyone else is just messing around with like are we in the office? Are we not in the office? What are the mandates? All this stuff we've just been crushing it culturally and also business results. So I think think we're a good use case to prove that, like you can do it. The other comment I'd make and sort of why it's a personal sort of like issue for me is like we've lost so many women caregivers in the workforce. Carolyn Frey: And I'm a mom of two kids in an executive position and like I'm able to do it all because I work from home. Work from home is not necessarily my happy place. It's not like I need to be at moments like this or go to New York or be with a team or with my CPO community. But I just think the data supports that. Like this is having a tough impact on females in the workforce. So on a personal level it stinks, but we from a competitive advantage are just going for it. So in our employer brand, we're like we're remote first and we're attracting amazing talent because of it. 'cause it's actually so unique. So we like that every other company is back to the office or many are. Joel: Well I think we're out of time and the bar is open real quickly. Give the audience a URL or a LinkedIn handle to where they can all connect with you. Starting with Carolyn. Carolyn Frey: Like personally connect with me. Joel: It's up to you. [laughter] Chad: Or not. Joel: Do you wanna put yourself out there that's on you. Chad: Hungryroot.com. [laughter] Joel: Jess. Jessica Swank: LinkedIn. I'm not social media so LinkedIn is the only way to catch me. Joel: Joey. Joey Lee: Same way. LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Joel: Let's hear it for the panel everybody give it up. Cheers everybody. Chad that is another one in the can we out. Chad: We out. Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way. There is no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas send bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck. You can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Paying employees as soon as they clock out of a grueling day of work seems like science fiction, but it shouldn't. That's why we invited Nico Simko, founder & CEO at Clair, a company who helps employees get paid as soon as possible to the podcast. Nico's also a Forbes 30 Under 30 and a Harvard grad. Founded 2019, they've raised $194.6M, and have 80 employees. But while it's as common sense idea, it's not without its detractors, including those who claim businesses like his are just a payday loan scam preying on the poor and desperate. So, an invaluable tool to improve retention and solve the problem of absenteeism, or the devil? You decide. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel Cheesman: Oh yeah, it's Lenny and Squiggy's favorite podcast, AKA, the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Laverne to my Shirley, Chad Sowash is in the house and we are welcoming Nico Simko to the show. He's founder and CEO at Clair, a company with a radical idea, getting your paycheck the minute you clock out of work. Nico, welcome to the podcast. Nico Simko: Thank you so much for having me. Chad Sowash: Nico Simko, tell me a little bit about that name. Joel Cheesman: It's his rap name. Chad Sowash: Nico Simko. Yes. Joel Cheesman: Nico Simko to the stage. Nico Simko: So I was born Nicolas Simko, but I felt that Nico Simko was, it rhymes. It's easier to say, it's short. It usually when you put it on a slide, you don't have to go to the line if you put it as Nico. Chad Sowash: So branding, this is all a branding thing. Nico Simko: This is all a branding thing. Joel Cheesman: So Nico, a lot of our listeners don't know you. A lot of them don't know the company. We'll get to the company, a second. Let's dig into you for a little bit. What makes Nico click? Chad Sowash: Deep, dark Secrets Nico, bring it. Joel Cheesman: Great taste in eyewear, by the way. Great taste in eyewear. Chad Sowash: And if you would, talk into the microphone, that would be helpful too. Nico Simko: I will try. I have to look in the distance. I have to look in the distance sometimes. Be like, what, how am I gonna answer this question? Chad Sowash: Just look into Joel's eyes. Nico Simko: Exactly. No, honestly, what makes me click is, and it's gonna sound really boring, but it's really true. It's the people. It's always about the people. If you asked me what I would put on my Twitter bio, that's what it would go. It's the people. It's the people. That's it. Joel Cheesman: It's not sexy, but it's an answer. Chad Sowash: And because people are stupid. I mean, come on, let's say you say people are stupid. So what about the people, about bringing them along, around shepherding them, around patting them on the head. I mean what? Joel Cheesman: Let's go deep. SFX: Just the tip Nico Simko: Look, we are fully social animals and we are not like normal animals. What we like to do is do things together and I think that that's one of the things that for me gets me to click. It's when you can work with a team on a really cool, ambitious project. It's when you've had a really long day and you're at home and you're decompressing around a beer with a bunch of friends. It's when you go... Chad Sowash: That's more fun, yeah. Nico Simko: You get on a plane. Exactly. You get on a plane and you go to somewhere you've never been before and people do things very differently than you did growing up or where you currently live. It's the people. Joel Cheesman: In Nico's defense, we pulled him out of his high school Econ class for this interview. So he hasn't had a lot of life experiences. So people is what he's got and what he's going for. I will add, he's being humble. You were a Forbes 30 under 30, you're a Harvard graduate and your undergrad was in Geneva of all places, correct? Nico Simko: Well, my high school was in Geneva, but I went to Harvard University for college. Yes. Joel Cheesman: There you go. Alright, enough about you. Nico Simko: Okay. Joel Cheesman: Let's get into the company. And quite frankly, one of the hottest trends in employment is this whole daily pay thing, this pay on demand. So talk about the company, the genesis. How did this thing get rolling? Nico Simko: Yeah, I'm gonna give you guys a two second gist. Can pay your friends in two seconds through Venmo, through Zelle, through whatever you want. Why can't you do this with your paycheck? Chad Sowash: Good question. Nico Simko: That's it. That's the story of the company. Chad Sowash: So why is it that companies haven't moved to this methodology already? I mean the technology, it's not like the technology's not available, it's not like all these different platforms, these human capital management platforms don't have payroll systems in them. So why is it taking so long for people to get paid? Because companies like sitting on the capital and getting the interest? I mean, what is it? Is it just that easy? Nico Simko: There's two fundamental things. If a business today wants to pay their employees immediately they're gonna face two issues. One, go to a restaurant, swipe a credit card, pay someone. That money's not gonna get into their bank account for the next two, three, four, five days depending on if it's on a Friday, if there's a holiday, whatever it is. It's gonna take time for that money to get into a bank account. So basically the business has to suddenly go and raise capital somewhere. If they're not doing that, then actually money that you owe for payroll is really great money management and treasury management because you delay your account payables and so there's no real financial incentive for the businesses to do it. Nico Simko: The second issue is the tax code. Most people in America are paid what we call W2, which is they get a paycheck in the mail and then they think their paycheck's gonna be high, but it's always lower. Why? Because there's a lot of taxes and deductions and all of this. That makes running payroll actually pretty complicated because you have to calculate all of these things, you have to account for them. It's not a very straightforward process. And with that, with the tax component is that the money doesn't travel immediately. Now, that might change with real-time payments, but still, if an employer wanted to do it, they're gonna still face the two issues, which is they have to calculate the taxes, these taxes can change. And in addition to this, somebody needs to front the capital. Joel Cheesman: And I assume you guys solve this problem. Nico Simko: Exactly. Chad Sowash: How often do the taxes change where you have to fix this formula all the time? It's not always a moving target, is it? Is this like an annual, quarterly? I mean why is this a problem? Nico Simko: It is a problem because there are things that always pop up. If you take the average worker, they will not work a fixed salary job. They will work an hourly job. If you take the average worker, they will take overtime. If you take the average job place, the hours need to be confirmed by the manager in order for this to be calculated, the manager has to confirm that those were overtime hours. They need to look at the latest list of how much is that overtime calculated for. Nico Simko: If you're working in delivery, there are laws around the idea that if it's more raining that day than another, then you should owe the person a bit more money. Those things add up to the complexity where operationally for business, it's better to do this every two weeks than to have to sit down every day and actually confirm that all of that is done. I agree, AI, a lot of technology can help with it, but it's still really complicated. Joel Cheesman: Do you guys solve that for them or are you just the financial sort of, do you guys loan them the money and they pay you back? Do the employees, is this a payday loan thing where they're on the hook for the money? Talk about I guess the backend stuff of this 'cause it sounds a bit complicated. Nico Simko: We advance the money to the consumer based on the data that we have from the employer. Because what we wanna do is say, look, employer, you wanna offer this, but you don't wanna deal with it. That's kind of every employer we talk to, that's what they tell us. And so we work backwards from the person who runs HR at an average business was like, I would love to give this to them, but look at the stack of work I have to do. So how do I do it simply? So we will front the money to the consumer. We will, all we want is the data so that we can make an underwriting decision. And then the employee repays. Now we don't charge any fees when they sign up for a bank. And that's the only way today that they can advance the money they need to sign up for a bank, put the direct deposit there. So it's basically a micro loan you give to consumers that they repay at their next paycheck without any fees. That's basically the product. Chad Sowash: So how do you get paid if there's no fees? Nico Simko: Brilliant question. What we do is we sign them up for a new bank, they put their direct deposit there and then we give them a card. It's a cute little blue card that employees can use in order to pay for certain expenses. When they do, let's say they go to Trader Joe's here in New York. Joel Cheesman: They're going to Chipotle. Nico Simko: Perfect, Chipotle. That makes even more money for us. That's great. So basically Chipotle, they buy a burrito, they get the extra guac, it costs them more than they thought. So it's $13 or $14. We are gonna receive approximately 1, 1.2, 1.3% of that transaction is gonna go back to MasterCard and MasterCard is gonna give that back to us. This is a relationship between Chipotle and MasterCard. It's just that we have an agreement with MasterCard because with the program manager, that we get most of it back to us and that's how we make money. Joel Cheesman: Are you a debit card or a credit card? Or is this a... Nico Simko: A debit card. Joel Cheesman: Okay. The company's paying you for the fee of the transaction and if they try to overspend what they have, it's like, sorry, no burrito for you, basically, just like with a... Nico Simko: No burrito for you. Joel Cheesman: Credit card. Chad Sowash: That's a sad day. Cheesman. Nico Simko: But the story is this, is that when I talk to a bunch of hourly workers, their feeling was this, look, I'm at the gas station, it's the 28th of the month, I've started paying some bills, my credit card bill and all of that, and I'm two, three days away from my paycheck arriving or sometimes it's five, six, seven, depends, and I'm at the gas station, I swipe my card and it denies, the card's denied. And that is one of the most frustrating and most painful experience you can think of. You're at the gas station, you need gas to get home. How do you do it? It has happened to many, many, many people out there. And the idea was like, hey, you've actually made a loan to your own employer. Why do I call it this way, is because you've worked and they owe you money. You're lending to them. Nico Simko: So why can't you just pull 20, $30 to get gas in the car and keep going? And that particular use case is where we said, oh my God, we're about to build the biggest financial institution in the country because we're gonna give free advances to people. On top of that, there's gonna be a great card and people are gonna love us for it. We're aligning our incentives. We're not trying to kick them when they're at the bottom. What we're trying to do is actually be there. Oh my God, this bank was awesome. Let me tell my friends. They should sign up for it because it's... And that's where the idea of Clair came up. Chad Sowash: So let's take a look at the entire kind of structure. So these are individuals who, at the end of the month, they need that cash. And we do know that at least a third of the population at the end of the month, they need that cash, right? Less than $1000 in their account at any time. So what's the incentive for anybody, let's say, for instance in the middle stack? I mean, I don't need the money, I've got more in savings. Is that actually an addressable market for you? And I'm asking that because there are some major Fortune 500 companies who employ those people who could easily obviously start using a service or a system like yours pretty quickly I would assume. And that would be a great benefit to any individual who's coming in. Nico Simko: Completely. We have people on our application that signed up for the bank, never took a wage advance. And when those cohorts three or four years ago started coming in, I went in our database and I just texted one of the user and I said, Hey, would you be willing to get on the phone with me for 20 minutes? Half of them thought there was a scam. So it took me a while to get onto the phone with someone. 'Çause like, why is the CEO of this company calling me? And honestly, I got on the phone with them and after one or two phone calls, some of them were not really fruitful. Somebody told me, was like, Hey Nico, the reason why I signed up for Clair is because I don't need the money every day. Most workers don't want the money every day. Nico Simko: That's what she told me. But knowing it's there makes me feel more financially free. And that became our mission. Make America's workforce feel financially free. It's not about you taking advances. We do not track that. An investor asked me on a board meeting, so how often do they take advances? I just actually don't know because what I care about is are they actually happily banked with us? And for us, the feature of getting your money right now is the free thing we give you so that you know can feel better at night. That's really, really... Chad Sowash: But using the card is how you guys get paid though, right? Nico Simko: Correct. Chad Sowash: I mean, at some time they have to use the card. So I would assume, and I'm sure you take a look at this because this is your revenue stream. Nico Simko: That we look at. Chad Sowash: When you take a look at actual users or percentage of the actual user base on a monthly basis, how often do they use their cards just in an average? Nico Simko: So on average, people will spend 80% of their paycheck on the Clair card. So we are their primary bank account. That for me is success, is that they trust us enough when they pull the card out of the wallet, they're like, that's the bank that I want. Although we're partnered with a bank, we're a financial technology platform on top of it, it's FDIC insured, they're called Pathward. But they really feel like the banking solution they get out of us is holistic enough that we're their primary choice. Joel Cheesman: Do you guys offer any interest on those accounts or not? Nico Simko: We do. We have a savings account we open before we advance any money to people because we want them to save. And so we give APY, it changes with the market changing. I don't exactly know what it's at right now, but it's correlated to what the Fed funds rates are at. Joel Cheesman: It can't be worse than Chase. It can't be worse than Chase. On the tax side. I'm curious. So when you work as part of the waitstaff of a restaurant, obviously you get $2 in whatever it is an hour and then you get tips on top of that. The company gives you your tax information in terms of your annual salary and then you have to report the additional tips. Does the company give you your tax information in regards to your hourly salary in this situation? So basically I have to keep tabs on, save enough for taxes. The company doesn't do it for me. Walk me through the tax situation as a worker. Nico Simko: Yeah, yeah. So this is the beauty of our system, this is where we add a lot of value, is that we remove that away from both the employer and the employee. What we'll know is, let's say, go to a restaurant worker again, I'll use your $2 an hour plus, the rest is tips, we'll know that this person makes $2 an hour. We know because of how much data we have that there is a 99% probability that giving them a dollar per hour, call it, is completely fine. And it's like we will get our money back, we will give them a dollar per hour. Now, luckily most employees will not be making $2 an hour. They'll be making seven, 15, 20, $25. So they're making more per hour. But that's the value of our algorithm is that now that we're at thousands of workplaces is we can analyze this data and get it as close as we can without taking any credit risk. Chad Sowash: And you will be able to actually provide spending habits for the entire American population who are using this card. You know when the dollars hit the bank and you know what's being bought pretty much right after those dollars hit the bank. To be able to have that data and as we take a look at generative AI and whatnot, being able to crunch that kind of data to be able to provide the kind of spending patterns back to the market, this seems like a play more for data and understanding the consumer market than it is even on the pay side. Nico Simko: That is exactly why I believe that, sure, getting your money as quickly as possible is an enormous product and we're doing it well, it's what I live for, but we're actually building the best financial institution in the country. Because what you're talking about here is you're marrying your bank to all of the information you have at work. So I can give you a list of products that do not exist today, but that could exist. One of my favorite examples today is I take the subway here in New York and I go to work. That is a pre-tax event. That is something that technically the tax code allows you to do as a pre-tax event. Why are we going to work? So there's tax... You will get tax rebates. Why can't I get that cash back immediately? Why can't I just swipe and says, oh great, we've connected all of that back to your payroll. Nico Simko: You get 10 cents back on this transaction. Why can't you actually, instead of taking wage advance, you say, please make my unpaid payroll a collateral account and then help me use that to increase my credit score. Why? Because you're like, look, I'm working my hours, my money's aside, now can I use that as a proof that I'm gonna get paid? You can get your credit score. You didn't do anything. You just went to work and your credit score goes up. There are products today that could help America's workforce get so much more ahead financially of where they are that today don't exist because the banks don't marry to your workplace. Chad Sowash: Okay, that's just a mind-blowing scenario right there. Because again, again, you're working on the base of allowing people to get money right after they've rendered services. I mean that's what it comes down to, right? When you go and you go into a store and you have somebody sharpen a saw or something like that, you pay for rendered services, right? This is exactly what you're talking about is I go to work on a daily basis, I've rendered services, therefore you pay me, right, then. Then I go and spend money or wherever it might be. You're gonna have access to all of the data to where that money has been spent from a spending habit standpoint. Not to mention, as you had said, which goes above and beyond, you know all the people who actually came through into, took the subway system, whatever, they came into work, they did work. And then there's the tax incentives that actually go back to the companies. So I mean there's a huge reason why a company would want to use this because they have proof that here's my workforce, here's what my workforce did, now give me my tax incentive money. Nico Simko: Exactly right. Chad Sowash: So there are so many different avenues of approach for you to actually use this data. Then you can actually go back to the US, the BLS, any of those departments who want data on spending habits and workflow, so on and so forth. This is exciting just from a data standpoint. Joel Cheesman: So Chad is super excited. S?: Alright, alright, alright. Chad Sowash: Super excited. Joel Cheesman: Let's look at some of the other things benefits companies get from this 'cause I got to imagine asking them to change the way they've done things forever is not easy. There are a lot of research out there and posts about absenteeism and retention improvements with a system like this. Can you talk about any data that you're seeing in terms of companies having people show up to work and not ghosting them? Anything around that that you can share? Nico Simko: We have seen that with Clair, you have 1.5, 2x more people applying for a job. I was in the subway this morning. There was a company, I don't think they work with us, but they listed why you should come at work. The only one that was bolded is get paid daily. I think people have realized that getting your advance, getting your money as soon as you finish work, which by the way, it sounds so simple to say, I have no idea why I had to start a company in this space. I feel like this should have been solved 20 years ago. I'm serious. And so I'm like, great. Somebody left this opportunity for somebody to jump in, but what the hell happened to society that nobody thought about doing this before? And so that increases people wanting that job. Nico Simko: The second thing is people, I've heard anecdotal stories and I don't know how this transform into data. I've had an employee tell me in one of the user research I've had, he's like, look, Nico, I signed up for Clair because I work at this restaurant. I won't pass the name of the restaurant. And I used to be sick at the end of the month and go drive Uber. And I said, why? Joel Cheesman: He put air quotes in there for the listeners. Nico Simko: Exactly. He told me, he was like, look Nico, I kind of just wanted to make the money right now because it gets tight at the end of the month. And then I saw this and I was like, okay, I'm not gonna call sick anymore. And he was like, I picked up more shifts and he gave me an incentive to pick up more shifts. SFX: Oops, winning. Nico Simko: And then I met a nurse who was in the suburbs of Chicago and she was telling me this story. She was like, look. Joel Cheesman: I like where this is going. He met a nurse in Chicago. Nico Simko: We were launching the product, we had the cards on site. Joel Cheesman: We know where this goes. SFX: What are you doing, step bro? Joel Cheesman: Sorry, continue. Nico Simko: Thankfully, no. So she basically was like, I had a job offer to go somewhere else across the street and to make 50 cents more per hour, which was a big deal for her. She was an assistant nurse and she told me, look, I didn't take the job because I knew that knowing I could get my paycheck at any point gave me more financial stability than a 50 cents increase. So you retain your workers a little bit longer. Now I'm not gonna be around and be like, I know exactly the number it's gonna be at your exact workplace of retention. No, no, no, no. I'm not in that business because I think it varies a lot business by business and it's hard for me to give a number. But I think the facts and the qualitative facts are there that these products are very needed for the workplace and for employers. Joel Cheesman: So Nico, this industry is not without its critics and its regulations and government interference. So Nevada and Missouri are two states that have implemented or introduced laws where you have to be licensed and you're into more of what's going on. So explain what's going on there and you simply have a lot of people pointing the fingers that this is sort of a payday loan thing, DailyPay, one of your competitors on Trustpilot. And not that that's not the be all end all, but it has one star out of five, 600 something reviews. People don't like the service. I don't know if that's the company or the actual what they're doing. So talk a little bit about the government regulations and some of the customer or critical opposition that you're getting to the business, fair or foul. Nico Simko: Look, when we started this business, it wasn't clear whether this was a loan, not a loan. I love the duck test. Not sure if you guys know what the duck test is, but if it looks like a duck. Joel Cheesman: Oh, duck, duck. Nico Simko: It walks like a duck, swims like a duck, sounds like a duck, what is it? Joel Cheesman: It's a duck. Nico Simko: It's a duck. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Nico Simko: And so whenever I would just talk to any lawyer, I'd say I would like to advance money to people based on payroll data and then for them to pay me back once they get paid. And they were like, that sounds like a loan. And every single time it was the same. So I was like, well, but everybody else doesn't call it a loan. And it seems like there are states that decided this is not a loan. And so they're like, okay, you do what you want, but this looks like a duck again. And so I sat down and I said, Hey, if I am fresh and new to this, at least from a compliance perspective, and everybody's pointing to the fact that this looks like a duck but everybody wants to ignore it, I said there might be defensibility here, there might be something that really sets us apart. Nico Simko: And so I understood why calling it a loan was actually complicated. It's because it costs a lot of money. You have to create a consumer lending program, you have to get licenses in most states, you have to get audited by most states. You have to, not only, some states require three licenses, not only one, you have to apply for each of them, you have to maintain them, you have to have an internal compliance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can keep on going. And so I said, well, we're gonna do it. And so I went over to the investor and said, I have two options. I can do this in a way that is like, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be fine because there's laws attached to it that have been there since the Truth and Lending Act in the '70s. So we had to do it this way. Or we go cowboy. And we're like, we hope all the states are gonna agree that this is not a loan, might happen. And we decided to go the more conservative route. And so that really helped us from a business development standpoint. But it's still a debate out there, it's still a debate. Chad Sowash: Well, I mean at the end of the day, we're taking a look at the prospect of, which are out there today in some states, not all states, predatory payday loans, which used to be against the law, but they're not in some states now. But what you're saying is this is not a, we give you $20, you give us 40 when you get paid scenario, you're not getting paid a vig off of the dollars from the actual consumer/worker. You are making that money through transactions via MasterCard. Nico Simko: Exactly. That's exactly right. Chad Sowash: I can see where obviously some would want to know more because there are a lot of predatory shit that's out there. Joel Cheesman: It sounds too good to be true. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah, it does sound too good to be true until you start to get deep into the actual data play and the understanding of how the monetization works. And that's the big key. So have you been talking to legislators about this and how long did it take for you to actually educate them for them to understand that this was not something that was bad for workers? Nico Simko: We've never charged at Clair, fee for a wage advance. I think, look, when we talk to consumers, many of them don't want Clair because it requires them to get a new bank account. So consumers sometimes say, Hey, I just want this once. I just want to pay three bucks and get it right now. And it's the best thing. So I get why as theoretically in the market this should exist. And I think it's the right thing for consumers. We just for the past years, never charge a fee for this. 'Cause we're like, we wanna be a bank. Wanna be a big financial institution in the future. Yay. It's like, let's go for this big dream. And when we talk to legislators, we are a very funny horse because we're like, Hey, we went overboard on licenses. I come with a truckload of them and I did all the work. Nico Simko: And by the way, I've never charged a fee. So they're like, you never did the fee thing and you got all the licenses. Who decided this? Because it doesn't make much sense. But the reason why we did it, and the reason why I think it makes a lot of sense is because it protects us from a compliance perspective and we're doing the right thing for consumers. That's it. I just don't want to deal with some states some days having a debate and now I need to go with everybody else in the group and go tell them why... I have other fish to fry. I have a business to build. So let me pay the bill once, get all the licenses and then move on. Joel Cheesman: You had me at Chipotle. SFX: Oh my God. I want chipotle. Chipotle. Joel Cheesman: Oh, that is Nico Simko, everybody. Nico, for our listeners who wanna know more about you or the company, where do you send them? Nico Simko: Getclair.com. That's G-E-T-C-L-A-I-R.com. Joel Cheesman: Thanks. And we'll let you get back to Econ class. We appreciate your time. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad Sowash: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out!