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Automated sourcing, referrals and analytics are all pretty popular features to have in your tech stack these days, but what about a startup that delivers - or at least hopes to deliver - all these things. That’s where newbie Kula comes in. Achu Ravi, founder & CEO of the company that is “On a mission to turn every employee into a recruiter” takes on the Firing Squad in this episode. A bold undertaking, and barely out of diapers, Kula has raised nearly $15M dollars to take on the world but let's see if they can even get past The Squad. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. Intro: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids, The Chad and Cheese podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel Cheesman: Oh yeah, it's another Firing Squad. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined as always the Boo-Boo to my Yogi, Chad Sowash is in the house, and today we welcome Achu Ravi, Founder and CEO at Kula. Achu, welcome to Firing Squad. Achu Ravi: Thanks for having me, Chad and Joel. Joel Cheesman: Oh, you're very, very welcome. Very welcome. Chad Sowash: So cool. Joel Cheesman: Very jovial guy, very jovial, very nice guy. So, Achu, before we get into the business, let's introduce our listeners to you in our Twitter bio. Go. Achu Ravi: I'm Achu, born and raised in southern part of India, a place called as Chennai. An engineer turned into a recruiter now a founder. Yeah, I know I Love playing cricket. Joel Cheesman: Chad loves cricket. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Can't get enough of it. Chad Sowash: Fuckin hate cricket. Jesus. How many days do I need to be at a sport for God's sakes? [laughter] Achu Ravi: You should try the T20, Chad. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman: What's the T20? I don't know. And I'm sure most know. Chad Sowash: It's where they cut it down considerably to three hours. Yeah. Joel Cheesman: And it's called the T20? And it's three hours? Why not the T3? Achu Ravi: Yeah, it's T, Twenty20. Each side gets 20 overs to play. It's lot of fun. You can see a lot of swings. But yeah, no, it's fun for sure. Apart from that huge fan of photography, was a documentary photographer and, yeah, that's about me. Chad Sowash: So long walks on the beaches of southern India. That's what I'm hearing. Achu Ravi: As well as the streets. [chuckle] Joel Cheesman: A simple man who loves crickets. Okay, Chad, let him know what he's won today on the Firing Squad. Chad Sowash: Well, Achu, this is how Firing Squad's gonna play out. At the sound of the bell you will have two minutes to pitch Kula. At the end of the two minutes, we're going to hit you up with about 20 minutes of Q&A be sure to be concise or you're gonna get hit with the crickets, means tighten your game up. At the end of Q&A you are going to receive one of these from both of us. Number one, big applause. The only thing Kula is Don Shula, nobody can beat an undefeated season, but we predict one hell of a winning season from Kula. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Golf clap. Joel Cheesman: Does Achu even know who Don Shula is? Chad Sowash: I don't care. Joel Cheesman: Don't care. Chad Sowash: This is my show. Joel Cheesman: Okay, okay. Chad Sowash: Golf clap. Kula made the team, but you're gonna have to work harder if you wanna start in this industry. And last but not least, the Firing Squad. Kula can't hold Don Shula's jock strap. Hang it up because the practice squad doesn't even want you around. That's Firing Squad. Are you ready? Achu Ravi: I'm ready. Joel Cheesman: All right. Achu, pitch Kula in three, two. Achu Ravi: Wonderful. So, Kula is a platform which helps recruiters to build effective top funnel by increasing their response rates. So I know it's mouthful but so what we really do is over the course of years, the top funnel building efforts have completely changed in the recruiting process. In early 2000s, most of the employers will typically build their funnel using Job Bots. That is going to Job Bots, posting jobs, newspapers to drive traffic and get those applicants for a particular job. But over the course of years things have changed. We have very little, today, if you look at it, we have very little contribution from the inbound channel. Most of the hiring is happening vie referrals or passive outbound recruiting. The era of recruiting is becoming more social and more passive, thereby the tools today are not really efficient to drive the adoption of such use cases. So what we do at Kula is we really solve for outbound recruiting workflows for a recruiter to increase their response rates, which will in turn reduce the time to hire, as well as generate better yield for a recruiter. Achu Ravi: So we have two modules. One is called as Kula Flows, which will amplify your response rates by automating your engagement across multiple platforms. We are the only platform today, which helps you reach out via LinkedIn, email, connection request, WhatsApp text, and bunch of other channels. So it's a true multi-channel engagement platform so that you can automate your reach outs to candidates across different touchpoints. We also have another module called as the Kula Circles, which helps you increase the adoption of referrals within the company. Today, referrals is a very push driven product where a job gets created, a recruiter does some sort of a campaign internally called as hot jobs. You give them free iPhone, free iPad, but everyone is busy, is doing their own chores. They don't have time to go through their network and refer. So we built a module called as Circles, which helps you bring all your employees network in one centralized place. Joel Cheesman: All right, Achu, your two minutes are up. Let's get to the Q&A. Let's talk about the name. Okay. Kula.ai... Kula.com, and that's K-U-L-A, kula.com is parked. Did you try to buy it? Are you currently trying to buy it? Talk about the genesis of the name and why you didn't get the dot com. And I still have a few name questions after that. Achu Ravi: Sure. Kula means community in Sanskrit. So the thesis of building Kula is... I was a recruiter throughout my career and I wanna build this product for recruiters. So we wanna build a very strong community, which will help build a great product for recruiting use cases. So, hence the name of... Hence the name Kula formed. We tried for kula.com, of course, to rank better to search in research results. But there is another player who is a biotech company, which is using kula.com. But technically, we are... We wanna implement a lot of new technology stacks to help empower recruiters to do their job better. And the closest to us where the AI because we are implementing a lot of AI in terms of the Kula Flows module as well as Kula Circles. Joel Cheesman: Okay. All right. So also misspellings of Kula, K-O-O-L-A and C-O-O-L-A.ai are still for sale. Why have you not obtained those, secured those domains? Achu Ravi: We, again, we wanna stand by to the name, which translates to community. Joel Cheesman: The right answer is, we haven't gotten to it yet. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Joel. We'll do that immediately. All right, let's get to the copyright on your footer, which is still 2022. When you gonna update it to 2023? Achu Ravi: Pretty soon. Chad Sowash: In five minutes. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: All right. Real quick birth of the idea, you were a recruiter with Stripe, Uber, Freshworks, deep experience there. How did that drive to this company? Achu Ravi: Yeah, the inception of Kula started during my time at Stripe. We were growing pretty aggressively in terms of headcounts and one of the gaps where the existing tools in the market were predominantly built for organization workflows, like a system of record, like ATS and whatnot. So what that really means is, as a recruiter, when I identify a candidate, I can only manage certain part of workflows inside a particular tool that is scheduling interviews, taking feedback, making an offer, and moving them down the funnel, and not many tools were available in the market to build effective top funnel. That is, how do I discover a candidate? How do I engage with them to generate better response rates? I ended up building a small hacky solution on Airtable which got adopted internally at Stripe and there was a lot of success. So I thought instead of building internally, I'll just go for the entire community of recruiters. That's how the inception of Kula started. Chad Sowash: You talk about recruiting being broken. No shit, right? We know that. Where specifically is it broken that you're trying to fix it? Achu Ravi: Two areas, Chad. First and foremost, on the passive outbound recruiting site, identifying or discovering a candidate is not a challenge anymore. We have a lot of sites where we can just throw in a keyword and we can find thousand individuals. The main challenge is, how do I get in touch with them and how do I convert them? So there are also a lot of tools which helps you identify the email addresses or contact information about the particular individual to get in touch. There are also a bunch of automation tools to help you drive that, but the main challenge is content plays a very important role in terms of driving response rates. And let's be honest, not many recruiters are really good at crafting a beautifully content cold email. Achu Ravi: So we wanna couple a bunch of things which will empower recruiters to do their job better. One, what are the things which will generate better response rate, better content creation, better source of channels. Today an automation can happen via an email, but email as a channel has been missed. Let's say a engineer might not be hanging on emails, but they might be more active on the email, which they recently committed a code on. And so how do we help recruiters to reach out to the right channel for a specific persona, is where it is currently broken, which involves a lot of manpower, time, manual effort. So we really wanna fix the whole, I would say response rate generation engine. And that's one area which we are focusing. And another area is mostly on the referral side of things... Joel Cheesman: Okay. Achu Ravi: Where people are not really able to generate better referrals because everyone is busy doing their own jobs. There is no time for them to go through their network and refer. So we help you build visibility of your entire internal employees network. So that you can mine their talent pool, identify them, ask for a warm introduction, rather than you passively reaching out which will increase your response rates. Let's say if I wanna get in touch with Joel, probably I'll reach out to you, Chad, if you are friends, I believe you are friends. [laughter] So, you might be able to put me in touch with Joel, versus me cold reach out to Joel. So taking a warm network connection to get in touch with Joel is primarily what we are trying to build. Chad Sowash: So you are focusing on obviously being able to get passive candidates in, but also the referral side of the house. Why are you wasting your time on the referral side? I mean, we've seen so many platforms, who've tried to do what you are doing right now, fail, fail dramatically, crash and burn. So the question is, why are you wasting your time on something that we just haven't figured out as of yet without being more of a truly engaging model. 'Cause this is literally just throwing out messages to people that you hope respond. Achu Ravi: I sort of see that as an opportunity, Chad, where of course there are a lot of tools which try to solve referral related challenges. If I wanna break down, there are 2-3 high priority challenges in terms of referrals. One, visibility to your employees on what is happening with the candidates who they are referred. Number two, recruiter's not able to churn a lot of leads via referrals. Where there are a bunch of tools which really helped you mine networks and whatnot. There is a lot of friction in terms of importing connections and making that referral flow better. Chad Sowash: Right, so do you make it easy for everybody to import? How long does it actually take for me to import all of my connections from LinkedIn into your system? I have to go do the whole spreadsheet download and then we've gotta upload it back into yours. How does it work? Achu Ravi: No, not at all. It takes less than 10 seconds to import your contact from LinkedIn to Kula. So there are a lot of adoption related challenges in the previous platforms. One, how easy is it to import contacts? Number two, lot of friction around who gets the first touchpoint and how do I make an introduction? The channel for introduction was a big touch point failure. Number three, integrating with your existing systems. That is an ATS. Number four, visibility. It was also a challenge with those systems. So we covered all of those pieces and we still believe that that's a very untapped market and we want to penetrate heavily into particular example. Chad Sowash: Okay. So you talk about integrations. Who are you currently integrated with? Achu Ravi: We integrate with Greenhouse, Lever, Teamtailor and bunch of other top ATSs in the market. Joel Cheesman: That's a little bit gray, Chad, and a bunch of others. Very subjective. Chad Sowash: Top ATSs. Joel Cheesman: Any others you wanna name? Achu Ravi: Yeah, we integrate with roughly around 12 different ATSs, Workday and Workable. Chad Sowash: So when you say integration, does that mean that, are you actually white labeling inside the applicant tracking system so that you can work inside of the applicant tracking system? Or is a recruiter going to have to use your platform and the ATS at the same time? They're gonna have yours in a tab, theirs in a tab and having to flip back and forth? Achu Ravi: Yeah, it's the later, you don't need to have two different tabs. It's a bidirectionally synced platform. So any changes you make on Kula will reflect it on ATS. Currently inside Kula, we only look after your top funnel building efforts. We don't look at mid funnel. That is scheduling interviews, taking scorecards, bottom funnel that is making an offer, moving, onboarding them. We don't look at all of those functionalities, we only look after top-funnel efforts. Chad Sowash: So you're trying to be the dashboard for recruiters? Achu Ravi: That is correct. Like a single source of truth for all things top-funnel efforts. Joel Cheesman: Wanna get back to the referral business, just so I'm clear on this, 'cause you've got downloads and LinkedIn, and so, does it work in a way that, I'm a recruiter at a company, I know who is employed at my company and then I know on LinkedIn who's the first degree of all my employees, and then I can have them write a note to outreach about a job or do I... You're shaking your head. So that's how it works. So, what exactly are you uploading in 10 seconds? Achu Ravi: Sure. So I'll probably go a little bit more deeper on that. Every single employee within the company will get onboarded onto Kula Circles module where it's a one-touch click to import their connections from different channels that could be LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook and whatnot. Imagine that we are a team of 10, and we all have thousand degree, thousand connections each. Cumulatively, we build at 10,000 people of internal talent network, which will be exposed to your recruiting organization so that I as a recruiter inside the company will now have access to these 10,000 people. Joel Cheesman: Okay. Achu Ravi: Discover them, filter them with the kind of roles that you are hiring for that could be multiple filters, company filter, title, whatnot. Joel Cheesman: So, I join the company, and they say, "Go to Kula, click this button, download your LinkedIn contacts, your GitHub, etcetera." They load into the system and then on your dashboard, hey, these are, this is a first degree to Chad. I'm gonna reach out to them and say, "Hey, I know you know Chad at our company, I know he's a dick, but you won't have to work with him, that kind of thing." That's how it works? Achu Ravi: No. The later part is quite different. [laughter] Achu Ravi: But you identified Chad, you identify Joel and I see that Chad is connected to Joel. Rather than me reaching out, I can ask, request Chad to reach out on behalf of the company. You can do all of those things on the platform. Joel Cheesman: That's manual on Chad. You give him a template or here's what you need to say, but it's essentially Chad writing the note and not an automated thing. Achu Ravi: That is correct. Joel Cheesman: Okay, into his... Chad Sowash: Can I import the ATS database into mine, because those are people I've already paid for. Achu Ravi: That is correct. We also integrate with ATS so that we can also look at all the past applications and we can also connect them to the network. So what we are trying to do here is creating a network layer within the organization, because generally referrals tend to perform better and stay longer with the company and you will have a lot more context about the individual who you're referring to. Joel Cheesman: Is there, so you've built the communication system. Is there a reward system? 'cause most referral solutions have, "Hey, get an Applebee's gift card or get cash or whatever." Like how does that fit in to the solution or does it? Achu Ravi: Great question. Currently, we don't have a reward in play, Joel, but we have the reporting which talks about number of hires which an individual has made, number of introductions they've made and whatnot. We are currently in the process of integrating with certain vendors to help support the gift card mechanisms and other reward programs within the platform. That's our V2 of the product. What we are currently focusing on is, "Okay, hey, does this really increase adoption? Can you see value and what's the reward which you generally offer because it's unique to the company, right?" Certain companies don't have any reward programs for referrals, certain company does. How do we look at that? So... Joel Cheesman: How much, it sounds like you rely a lot on LinkedIn and GitHub and some other, what's, how much of a threat is it that they turn this off or change the API to get contacts and I mean they've made it harder over the years. Is that a real threat or no? Achu Ravi: Oh no. We don't do anything outside of their terms of use. All we do is pull a public URL and we hit our data vendors to enrich data information. We don't scrape any information. We get a consent from the user. Joel Cheesman: So I have a LinkedIn account, I go in and say, "Hey, give me all my contacts." Achu Ravi: Mm-hmm. It's like a takeout. Joel Cheesman: So my question is, if LinkedIn either restricts certain portions of information, email address, phone number, whatever, is that a threat to the business or no? Achu Ravi: No, we don't require all of those because we work with, all we need is a Google public URL. Let's say if I search Joel... Joel Cheesman: Well, you need my contacts, email addresses, right? Achu Ravi: No, I don't need your... I just need your LinkedIn URL. That's pretty much it. And we have a data engineering team which will work with different data vendors to enrich that information back to you. Joel Cheesman: But you're not scraping LinkedIn? Achu Ravi: No, we only pull the public URLs of an individual via Google X research. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: You figured it out, my friend. You figured it out. Why not use SeekOut, Hiretual, some of the other solutions or candidate ID or some other competitors? Chad Sowash: HireEZ. Achu Ravi: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Oh, did I say Hiretual? Damn it. It redirects though. It redirects. Achu Ravi: What we do is with Hiretual or hireEZ for that matter, we compete with them in other flows module where we build the sequencing layer to reach out to candidates more efficiently and also discover within the platform. So we don't have the discovery piece built in because we believe that the existing investment on LinkedIn is already being made and the datasets on LinkedIn is much more accurate. So, what if we really help empower recruiters is to get in touch with them faster and close the loop rather than building a discovery platform right on the tool. That's the only differentiator. We only focus on the sequencing layer like Gem for our flows module, hireEZ does not have anything related to Circles or the referral engine so far. Chad Sowash: So can recruiters actually use your platform to amplify everything that they're doing to their entire social network? Or is this just a direct, connection? Only. Achu Ravi: You mean in terms of reaching out to candidates? Chad Sowash: Yeah. If I wanna post in my feed that I have something going on or what have you, and I wanna do that to my entire network and then I wanna reach out individually. Can I do both? Achu Ravi: No. It's just individually. Chad Sowash: Individual. Okay. So, and this is the next piece. First and foremost, it'd be nice if you could actually just broadcast, to my entire network, first and foremost, and then be able to reach out. Because being able to, again, if you know advertising and know marketing, which is exactly what this is, it's messaging, it's awareness. You need more than one just message to get in front of them, in many cases to be able to get a reaction. Taking a look at your social, you know, being able to even do that with your own platform, I mean, on Twitter you have little to no activity. Why aren't you using the platform to drive content awareness, engagements, Instagram, nothing there. LinkedIn, you're more active, but you haven't posted in two weeks. You know, if I am a buyer, I'm gonna be going out and looking at those signals. And if you're not using your engagement platform, your lead platform to drive your own leads, I'm not gonna have anything to do with you. Achu Ravi: Yep. No, great, great points, Chad. I think first and foremost... Joel Cheesman: Shouldn't even have an Instagram account. There's nothing on it. Get rid of it. It's embarrassing. Achu Ravi: Yeah, so... Joel Cheesman: It's embarrassing. Achu Ravi: Let's be honest, right? You know, our top priority today... Chad Sowash: We are. Achu Ravi: Our top priority today is making sure that we build right products and solutions to take it to market. We are still, we haven't gone GA yet. We are still testing with our existing very limited users. So we are primarily focusing on LinkedIn as a channel because that's where we believe our ICPs are hanging out. I don't think recruiters will go onto Instagram and look for cool products. So, you know, if you want to take a meme approach or a, you know, do some reels, yes, maybe, that's the part which you would like to take but currently given the team size, which we have, and given the investment which we are looking to make in the product, we just wanna channelize our efforts in the right direction to make the needle move. Joel Cheesman: So when you go update your copyright date at the footer, take out the Instagram link and whatever the hell else is there, unless you're using it, 'cause it's a waste of space. Chad Sowash: And again, it's all about retooling your platform to be able to be a real messaging platform, a real messaging platform that only does point-to-point isn't, it's not good enough. Right? I need, I need a much more broad-based scaled amplification that's there. Let's talk about competition, which you did talk about. So hireEZ and SeekOut, their AI both have about 7-10 years of lead on your platform. They've been collecting data, crunching data, training AI for a very, very long time. So how do you, how do you expect to compete with those types of organizations? Achu Ravi: So, a couple of things which I would like to call out. One, in terms of the data which we collect, it's mostly around information on network layers. That is what's the degree, closest degree of connection with Chad and Joel? Let's say for example, if the AI, which let's say for example, hireEZ or other competitors have built, is mostly around search index. Show me all the relevant people who might be a good fit for this particular role based on certain parameters. What we do is a little bit more deeper in terms of understanding network connections because we don't do a... Build a discovery platforms. That's not our game. So we use AI in twofolds, one, content generation in terms of creation of flows, which will generate you better response rates. So recruiters struggle today to write better content, to generate better response rates. Chad Sowash: They have ChatGPT, now I can go do that free, why do I need you? Achu Ravi: It's not just content you are generating, but you can also look at content parameters across different channels. What kind of content which will work in LinkedIn, what kind of content will work in email based on certain parameters, which you give us input. Right? So that's number one. Number two, the network layer is significantly important because if I know who's the closest net person who is connected to this individual within my company, there are higher degree chances for me to get in touch with that particular person rather than me just shooting an... Spraying and playing an email. Right? So we only focus on these two AI layers. We don't compete really on the discovery module yet, and we are not intending to go into that particular direction. We really wanna focus mostly on communication, engagement, set of things that is better content, better way of type of sequences of messages will go out and whatnot. That's our core focus. We are not really focusing on discovery piece. Joel Cheesman: Gotcha. Let's talk about money for a second. You guys have raised 14.7 million according to CrunchBase in 12 or in August of last year, you raised $12 million. What's the money going toward? Global expansion? What's customer look like, sales, etcetera, talk about what the money's being spent on. Achu Ravi: Sure. So far we have raised two rounds, cumulatively put together we have raised roughly around $15 million. So we are a small team, small, but biting team. Most of our efforts currently is going on R&D. The money will be used to build better functionalities to serve our customers. As I told earlier, we just went live a quarter ago and we are north of around 30-plus customers. All of them are paid customers. We don't have any freemium users or anyone from day one we have been getting only paid customers. Roughly our focus for 2023 is going to be more investment in product, and go-to-market teams. You spoke about not much of activity on Instagram, LinkedIn and whatnot. I think we are gonna invest heavily on our content marketing engine to help drive the traffic. So that's primarily where we are chasing that. But currently we are just full heads down focusing on product and building, right? Just to support our users. Joel Cheesman: We talked about no freemiums. I tried to look up pricing. You made me fill out a form, tell you what integrations I have, and then I probably get a call from a salesperson and then I have to do a demo and all that other bullshit. So... Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: What does this cost? Why the hoops to get pricing? Why not be more transparent, make it easier on me. Talk about that. Achu Ravi: As I mentioned earlier, we just went live last quarter. We are still figuring out what does an exact good pricing means for us. So what we are currently doing is purely based on what the customer requires, we custom-price for each of our customers. We don't have a standard sticker price yet. So the pricing is a big experimentation work because there are a lot of parameters which we need to be considerate about. So in July we are going live with freemium and as well as pricing page. So hopefully that should be resolved in the next two months, Joel, when you visit our website next, you should, you can be able to skim through all this loops and you'll be able to play around the product in the next couple of months. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I'm also gonna follow you on Instagram. If I don't start getting some posts, you're gonna hear about it. Okay. You're gonna hear about it. Achu Ravi: Yeah please do. Keep us checked. Joel Cheesman: All right. That is the bell. Achu are you ready to face the Firing Squad? Achu Ravi: Please. Go ahead. Joel Cheesman: Chad, would you like to go first? Chad Sowash: Sure. So Achu, Buy or Sell in September of last year. Kula was there, you guys came out with a Kula video it was, well done, incredibly well done. It got, got me, got me excited to see what the brand was gonna hold. One thing that I gotta say though is, you know, having some big names in the market, like hireEZ who has over 45 million in funding, SeekOut 188-plus million in funding, Findem close to 40 million in funding. Those names, their successes and funding does provide great validation, market validation for a segment like Kula, right? And no doubt recruiters are in desperate need of tech that will help them scale through automation. We need to get rid of the admin tasks so that recruiters can take time back and give candidates the white glove service that they all deserve. Chad Sowash: I did reach out to three Kula competitors and asked them what they thought of you guys, and they all responded like clockwork with who are they? Can you send me a link to their site. That's saying something, right? And we were talking about the social presence and whatnot. There's literally no market presence and awareness other than that really cool video that I talked about, which came out last September. Okay? Now on the other side of the equation, if I were a buyer and I talked about this before and I saw a vendor like you that was talking about engagement, awareness, activity, brand building, those types of things, I would want to see you demonstrating that first. If you can't demonstrate that first for me, as you being the first client, I don't wanna have anything to do with you. You're not even gonna make it on my RFP list, right? And OpenAI, when we start talking about content creation is going to change your narrative and probably your tech stack because content creation's gonna become a commodity very, very soon. Then we look at referrals. Referrals are more than just having a bunch of names and outreach, right? If that would've been the case, then guess what? We would've had this figured out over a decade ago. Joel Cheesman: Jobster. Chad Sowash: Easily. Back in H three days, right? We would've had this figured, but it's more than that. So the thing, what I'm trying to help you understand here is that you are focusing personally, my opinion, in many different areas that you should just ditch. You should focus on helping companies surface the great candidates and reengage the great candidates they've already bought in their applicant tracking systems. These are things that actually make really good business sense, right? Now with all of this because of market validation, because I see where you're going and there are some great companies that are out there as well, there is some space in this market for Kula. I don't think that will be a problem. Gonna need, probably need a little bit more funding and a hell of a lot more market awareness, right? And at that point, I'm gonna, this is a wing and a prayer my friend. I think you're gonna make, you're gonna be on the bench, but you're gonna get a golf clap. I don't think you're a starter just yet, but I think you got a chance, my friend. Joel Cheesman: You're halfway there living on a prayer is what Chad is saying. [laughter] S5: It needs to be about 20% cooler. Joel Cheesman: All right, Achu, I'm gonna echo a lot of Chad's sentiment, particularly on focus. I mean, you guys are all over the place. Like domain names need to be registered, that'll redirect to misspellings, your copyright date, there's literally no posting on Instagram. And you guys have a link to your Instagram like focus... Chad Sowash: Just the basics. Joel Cheesman: Get rid of all the fat, the exterior stuff, like focus on what you guys do. We didn't even talk about your analytics product, which is in there. So I don't know, you know, only you know about what are people wanting? Is this referral thing a customer driven or is this like we just had a cool idea to do it 'cause there are companies that do referrals that do it a lot better can you find a way to integrate those solutions into yours where you're using Bonusly or whoever, plug that into our stuff. Joel Cheesman: I love your background, time at Uber recruiting, time at Stripe. These are serious companies that did some serious recruiting. So I gotta think you learned a thing or two in that time period. The fact that you actually made a product that Stripe was using internally, I think is great. Chad mentioned more money. I'm kind of surprised that you're not further along with almost $15 million in terms of brand awareness. The fact that your competitors don't know who you are. Like that money needs to go to some brand awareness and who the hell are you guys? And so I think that needs to be focused. Maybe you need more money, but I think with 15 you should be able to do a lot of these things that smaller companies can do that you guys aren't doing. So I'd love to see more focus. The product wise we mentioned SeekOut, we mentioned, hireEZ and some others, I agree they're further along, but there are things that you guys do that they don't. Joel Cheesman: For example, hireEZ only does email outreach, which something we learned at Unleashed last week. The fact that you guys have integrated text messaging, WhatsApp and all those other messaging platforms is a good thing. So I think there are things you guys are doing right on the tech side, you're failing miserably from a marketing, brand awareness, go-to-market perspective, I think that can be fixed. I as well, wing and a prayer is a good one. I'm gonna, like, I sold you guys when we first reviewed you. If not for your experience, some of the tech and some of the things that you're doing focus, get brand awareness, and I think that you've probably got something that can make it. But no way, you're getting an applause, but I'm not ready to shoot you down yet. This also for me gets a golf clap. Chad Sowash: On your way. Joel Cheesman: Gets a golf clap. Chad Sowash: You can possibly get off the bench, Achu. You just gotta work hard my friend. Joel Cheesman: I wanna think of a cricket metaphor, but I have no idea of anything about Cricket. So get your googly or whatever it is together, wicked googly and fix this shit. And you'll be all right. Other than that, how do you feel? Achu Ravi: I'm feeling great. Thanks. Thanks for this comments of course. You know, we've been live in the market for the last... We started building 16 months ago. A lot of efforts have just been focused as just been more on building product... Joel Cheesman: I just asked you how you felt, not try to save your rating. So you're feeling good's? All right? Okay. For our listeners that wanna know more about Kula, where would you send them? Achu Ravi: Kula.ai, @Kula Twitter, follow us on LinkedIn. Chad Sowash: Follow them on LinkedIn. That's about the only presence they have right now until they blow all those others up. Joel Cheesman: That's right. He's got a black eye and a bloody nose, but he did survive the Firing Squad, Chad. And with that another one in the can, we out? Chad Sowash: 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.

After a week of travel and nursing a Recfest hangover, the boys are particularly feisty this week. The recent acquisition of recruitment marketing agency Bayard by Stepstone’s Appcast provides ample fodder for some big-time opinion on the news and the ripple effect it’ll have on the industry as a whole. What’s more, could Meta’s strike against Twitter with Threads be a sign of things to come in recruitment or not (talkin' to you, LinkedIn). Plus, buy-or-sell with alfii, RecruitBot and Zinc, then a deep dive into the Lazy Girl trend taking TikTok by storm. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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 international nude day or as I like to call it every day. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel bad naked Cheeseman. Chad: Chad, Mr. Worldwide Sowash. Joel: And on this week show, Appcast Goes Full Blast. Meta goes after Elon and a little buy or sell. Let's do this. Chad: And you're back across the pond, aren't you? Joel: Yeah, I traded London England for London Ontario this week. That's right. [laughter] That's right. But it is always great to be in Canada, Chad. SFX: Take off, we were doing our movie. Don't wreck our show, you hoser. Chad: Love Canada 'cause there's literally nobody who lives there. It's amazing. It is a huge country. And it has less population than the state of California. So yeah. Joel: And lovely people. Positive outlook on life. Chad: Yes. Joel: She got a love. Chad: Always. Yes. Joel: So I look like I rolled out of bed and you look like you just came off the beach. You're recuperating nicely from England, I think. Chad: Yeah, 'cause I did. Freaking amazing. I had to come out of the water to come do this, but that's okay. That's what I'm here, listener. [laughter] I'm here for you. Joel: Yeah, the Pit Bull label is starting to grow. [laughter] The pit bull of recruiting as Chad Sowash or as I like to call him Euro Chad is in full effect. Chad: Euro Chad, Okay, so we're just going to roll right in the shout-outs since we're talking about being away, because we got to talk about RecFest. Okay? Joel: Yep. Chad: Whoo. Last year, great time. Everybody's coming out of their cocoon. Everything was just starting to happen. It felt great. Felt great. Joel: Yep. Chad: This year, it was fucking off the chain. It was amazing. I mean, it did not feel like 5000 people. It felt like 10,000 people. And the way that they situated the tents this year were a little different than last year. They did some things different here and there, but man, it was a fucking blast. Joel: It was a blast. And for me, it had extra heartwarming vibes. [laughter] Because I got to bring my 16-year-old to the event. He was working hard, passing out t-shirts. Chad: There he was. Joel: Had our equipment. He was kind of a gopher, getting us beer. That was a good time. And he was particularly impressed with the rooftop party thrown by Hackajob and seeing what that meant. Chad: Best booth. Easily. Joel: That was a good time. The booze laws are a little more flexible in England. So we found out that my 16 year old enjoys a good cider from the old country, which is nice. [laughter] Chad: The cedar. He loves the cedar. Joel: Yes. The cedar. Chad: Now, that's good stuff. Yeah, I thought the best giveaway, at least, Julie, we didn't have time. We were on the stage all goddamn day. We were working. We were emceeing the Disrupt Stage. Talk about little recipe in the minute for all those kids out there who want to get on stage, how to get a packed house. I'll tell you that here in a minute. But Julie went and she went shopping. Chad: 'Cause she didn't have to be on stage. Last year she was on stage. So she got to go do what everybody does. Get the bag. Go get the good swag. The best swag for me personally was, we're going to talk about them later in this podcast. Zinc, they gave away whole bean coffee. Good coffee. I'm drinking it as a matter of fact right now. Oh, yeah. Good stuff. Can I asked Julie, I was like. Okay, so you went to a bunch of presentations. Which one was your favorite? Guess who it was? Joel: Is this all the tents or just our thing? Chad: All the tents that she went to. Joel: All the tent... Oh, I have no idea. Chad: Brew dog. Go figure. Alcohol once again wins, kids. I do have to say after being on stage, watching a tent full. I mean fucking standing room only and then in the very next presentation having a quarter of that. We found out what the recipe was. And you can add some color into this 'cause I'm sure you can. Joel: Sure. Chad: Number one, it's a sexy title which includes a big brand. You got to have the sex appeal in there kids and even though, many of these smaller companies have amazing stores and they're doing much better and nimble things. I'm telling you right now, if you want to fill a room, you want to fill a tent, you want to fill anything, you'd better have a sexy title and you better have a big name on stage like AstraZeneca, Siemens, Heinz. Those are some big names, they filled the fucking house. Anything to add? Joel: Anytime you could put Semen on a title, it's gonna... [laughter] I mean Siemens, sorry, sorry I misspoke. Siemens is a good one. I would add that it should be snappy, unless it's so long that it's sort of sarcastic. And also, if it bleeds, it leads, so if it's anything about killing recruitment, employers are finished, anything like that, is typically gonna play pretty well. I have a BrewDog story, Chad. Chad: Oh, okay. Joel: I'm a little unhappy with BrewDog. And this has nothing to do with recruiting, so bear with me. Chad: Oh, please tell. Yeah, do tell. Joel: It's half my show, so I'm going to take over here. [laughter] Joel: So, Cole and I fly into Manchester. We like the music scene, I've never been there, I'm a big Oasis fan, there's a whole thing going down. He's a big Joy Division fan, the Smiths, so anyway, I read all the laws about drinking in England. And it says that as long as a 16 year old is with a parent and they're having a meal they can have beer, cider or wine. Chad: Okay. Joel: So I'm like, cool, that's the law. So I go into BrewDog specifically, because I know that they do beer. They have a great hotel but that's a different story. So anyway, I check in and I ask the bartender and I say, hey what's... I want to make sure I know the law, like I got my 16 year old. I want to have a flight of beers, I want to have him try a lager, a sour, a stout, like every... Like let's see what he likes and go from there. Bartender says, "Yeah, the law is, as long as you're eating and you're there, you can't leave". Chad: Right. Joel: It's all good. So I'm like, cool. So we get back from all our touring, we shower up, clean up, go to dinner. I'm like, cool, I'm going to get a flight and we're going to have a good bonding experience. Well, what I assume is the manager... Joel: Takes our order and I start like looking at beers to order, and he says, "Sorry, sir, we don't serve 16 year olds." And I'm like, but your bartender said that you do. And he said, "No, it's our policy that we don't." He leaves and gets my drink. I go online to look at the UK laws, and it says on the official website, just what I told you about eating and dah, dah, dah. So I show that to him and I say, well, according to the law that I can, I mean, I guess you can have a corporate policy. And he said, "Yes, it's our corporate policy not to do that." So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go to Brewdog.com and see if there's anything about 16 year olds can't drink, even if they're with their parents. Of course, there's nothing online that says that that's the case with BrewDog. So I'm like, there's nothing on your corporate policy that says I can't do this. Cole was getting upset, like, you're embarrassing me. I just decided to drop it. But the whole reason I picked BrewDog was to have this experience, and they kind of fucked me. So I'm a little bit mad, with BrewDog. Chad: Wow. That hurts, dude. That's where you don't ask for stuff. You just order and then you just share. You just ask for forgiveness later. Yeah. I get it. Joel: Well, you know my policy. SFX: 60% of the time. It works. Every time. Chad: Every time. Joel: All right. Well, let's get to some other shout-outs, I guess. SFX: Shout-out. Chad: Hit it. Joel: All right, Chad. You know, one of our favorite times of the year is football. And we are as of this... Chad: Oh yeah, American football. Joel: This publication, yes American Football, 55 days until kickoff for the NFL and Fantasy Football with Chad and Cheese has become an annual tradition. And FactoryFix gets my first shout-out for being... SFX: Yes. Joel: A repeat sponsor of fantasy football. SFX: All right. All right. All right. Chad: Ah-hah, baby. That's awesome. Joel: Which now we know Dennis Tupper, the defending champion, will be in the league, we know FactoryFix will have someone on the league. But we will soon be promoting the opportunity to play some fantasy football with Chad and Cheese. Always fun, love reading the leaderboard, during the season, but that is one of my big shout-outs. Chad: Excited again for fantasy football. Yes. Joel: Yes. And I love our league because, we have an extra, wild card with Quarterback... Chad: Yes. Joel: As an option. Chad: Shhh, don't tell anybody the that's the cheat right there. Joel: That's part of the fun. Chad: You can't tell anybody what the cheat is. [laughter] It's fun when they don't know what the cheat is. It's a shortcut. Joel: Yes. Justin Fields is my sleeper this year. I think he's gonna blow out this year. Chad: No kidding. I hope so. Joel: Trevor Lawrence was the hot item last year. I think Justin Fields, hits it this year, who knows. So my second shout-out, Chad, you and I remember the early days of what Microbrews were. Chad: Yes. Joel: You and I would drink in the '90s. It was Sam Adams for me anyway. Sam Adams, Goose Island, Fat Tire and and Anchor Steam. Chad: Anchor Steam. Yes. Joel: Three of those, two of those have been bought up. Sam Adams is still holding firm, but Anchor Steam announced this week after 127 years, the San Francisco icon will be stopping the creation of beer, the brewing of beer, and just closing up shop. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I'm personally sad about that 'cause that was one of my go-tos whenever I'd go to San Francisco. But I also think talking about Bud Light as we do on the show, Bud Light's problem isn't being too woke. Bud Light's problem is people aren't drinking shitty beer anymore. They're not even drinking like the good Microbrews of old, they're drinking local shit in their city and towns. Where people they actually know work there or they know where the brewery is. It's better. It's fresher. Like that's the biggest problem. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: With Bud Light. And I think Anchor Steams news sort of underscores the problem with the beer industry right now. Chad: And if anybody knows that we do, because in Indianapolis and all throughout Indiana, we probably haven't, Midwest probably have the best beer, especially IPAs in the world, juicy, hazy, fucking amazing. Joel: Indiana goes deep when it comes to Microbrews. SFX: Just a tip. Joel: And who else goes deep? Chad. It's us. When it's, when it comes to giving free shit away, we gotta talk about on every show. But if you haven't signed up kids, go to chadcheese.com, click that free link. Give us your information. You could win a t-shirt from our friends at JobGet. You can win beer from Aspen Tech Labs. You can win Whiskey, one from Chad, one from me. Our favorite bourbons, that's from our friends at TextKernel and a new one, Chad. Abode HR new sponsor. We got $250 Airbnb gift cards every month. You want to get out, COVID's over, like this is your opportunity. Sign up and get a night on us. A night on Chad and Cheese. Get a special romantic room. A little candles, fill up the bathtub. Like what could be better than that, Chad. Chad: Fill it up with champagne and do it the way that Chad and Cheese would do it. And then doing it... Joel: This is not your honeymoon my friend. Chad: Also in your Chad and Cheese t-shirt because it's like an hug with Chad and Cheese. Love it. SFX: Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Really? Can you feel the tension in the air right now? [laughter] I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plum. Joel: Oh, that just never gets old. That's right. Chad. Another year around the sun. Some of our fans are celebrating a birthday. We got Christina White, Justin Spencer, Eddie O'Neill, Ellen Spiegel, Rob Busey, Todd, the mayor, Daley, Ben Sagers. I think that's a made up name. There's no way that Ben Sagers is a real person. [laughter] Melissa Bordage, Karen Lash, Patrick Sullivan, Elaine Euler, Will Staney and Christian Anderson. I always bring up Christian Anderson because he was the PR guy for Jason Goldberg [laughter] back at Jobster, which none of that exists anymore, but he's got a special place in my heart. And by the way. Chad: But the stain still exists. Joel: We mentioned Matt Alders birthday last week. I think the dude is double dipping. It was not his birthday last week. Chad: Oh, what? Joel: He's trying to get more t-shirts or something. I don't know what's going on, but... Chad: He's trying to get some rum from Plum. Joel: We're onto you. That British guy we're onto you. It was not your birthday, so stop double dipping. SFX: Happy birthday. Chad: Verification. We're gonna have to have, like ID verification for birthdays or something like that. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. What is it ID.me that people can sign up for? We're gonna have to have like a clear... Chad: Oh shit. Okay. Joel: Program or something. Chad: Okay. Well, you definitely gonna need a clear, because coming up next Kids it's events and yes, we just did RecFest and we're getting ready to do RecFest again. All of the craziness, all of the FOMO that you obviously if you weren't there, you felt, you gotta come to Nashville. It's very simple. It's in September, we actually have a 50% off discount code. Yes. 50. That's half. Yes. And why do we do that? Here's why we do it. Because TA professionals, you need to bring your entire team. This is an all hands day, right? You bring them out... Chad: You get together, you rub those members together, you make them sticky. That's what our friend Douglas would always say. But you gotta love a little RecFest. So get out there, come see Chad and Cheese at the Disrupt Stage. Then we're going to be in Vegas at HR Tech. Everybody's obviously gonna be there, but it's gonna be a little different this year. Chad: That escalated quickly. Joel: And this year kids, you can come to the Fuel50 booth where Chad and Cheese will be recording live in front of a studio/expo audience. That's right. Gonna be at the Fuel50 booth HR Tech. And then last but not least, 'cause I gotta bring this up because I can't fucking wait to do this. Unleash Paris. Unleash America was amazing. But when you have Unleash Paris, come on kids. You got to come to Paris. SFX: All right, all right, all right. Chad: Got to do it. All of this is at chadcheese.com. Click on events in the upper right hand corner. Register for them all. Joel: Yep. By the way, Chad, I had a call with, Fuel50 this week. You were on the beach doing something. Chad: Oh, okay... Yes. Sorry about that. Joel: A little teaser. Not confirmed, but cardboard Chad might be making... Oh yeah. An appearance at HR Tech. Not confirmed yet kids. And there may even be a cardboard Cheese. I don't know. It could get crazy. Chad: But I was gonna say, but I'm actually going to be there, I don't understand why we need a cardboard version of me. I don't want to compete with me. Joel: But we take breaks, Chad, and there needs to be something to fill in the seat when we're gone. So, I don't know. I'm just tea... I'm just, we're still exploring. I don't know. Chad: Okay, teasing out, teasing out, okay. SFX: Topics. Joel: Alright. It's so big. It's gonna cover the whole first block of our podcast, Appcast. By all accounts, the most popular programmatic Ad distributor in the recruitment industry has acquired Bayard Advertising, a recruitment marketing company. Terms were not disclosed. The combined company will become a Global Recruitment Agency with programmatic services serving over 2000 clients. The deal resulted in the addition of 238 employees. And Bayard's executives will continue their roles under Appcast's leadership, aside from the CEO, the acquisition will integrate Bayard's operations into Appcast and retire the Bayard name. It's gone. Appcast focus on large enterprise clients will continue and the company aims to maintain partnerships with other Agencies. I don't know, Chad, this is big news. What are your thoughts? Chad: Ooh, well there's a commonality here. We just saw Anchor Steam 127 years gone. Bayard has been around, Bayard around for 100 years, a century, and they are going to be gone. So consolidation and convergence between traditional agencies and technologies have been happening for over a decade. And this is big. Why a convergence between agency and technology? I think it's pretty simple. Employers are spending more budget today on recruitment marketing than their actual core talent acquisition tech stacks. And if you don't have to pay that 15% agency fee, 'cause that's yours, plus you can widen up that wallet share with creative and all that other fun stuff. Woo-hoo. That's some cash. And Bayard had a very nice size portfolio, mainly in the US. So this to me is incredibly smart. It just makes damn good sense. I got a call on Sunday talking about this was gonna happen on Monday. It sounded like they feel like they're getting away with something. Somebody could have bought Bayard, but we got them. They were, it wasn't just the bullshit, we're trying to put up this fluffy, this is we were really excited about this. They are giddy, fucking giddy that they bought Bayard it. This is a big, big move. Now we'll talk about a little bit of why that might be, but let's dig into some history here. Chad: So in 2013, Symphony Talent known back then, as Findly, by the way, they acquired Bernard Hodes Group, that's when we started to see a lot of this technology's gonna play a big game in the agency space. Well, Hodes and Findly their cultures and their business priorities didn't align at all. It was cats and dogs, the shit didn't work. So that really didn't gel. They thought they would, they finally killed the Findly brand. Chad: They became Symphony Talent 2016, started including programmatic later on down the road. Then fast forward six years later in July of 2019, Gemspring a PE firm acquires TMP Worldwide. So since then they rebranded the Radancy. But again, we're starting to see agencies really understand what's happening here. Then Appcast, was obviously the predominant player in the space for agencies. Chris Foreman, incredibly smart go-to market. They created the infrastructure for agencies to be able to make money from programmatic and performance jobs. That worked so well, that obviously StepStone acquired Appcast on July 1st of 2019. Chad: Indeed not to be outdone acquires ClickIQ on July 15th and then Radancy not to be put in a corner like a baby July 16th that they're buying Perengo another Programmatic ad platform. Then two weeks later we've got four fucking acquisitions that are happening here. Recruitics has their Hold my Beer moment [laughter] as they acquire the very sexy KRT Marketing. So all was quiet on the Western front until July of 2021 when a brand new player Veritone acquires Programmatic player PandoLogic and then just recently bought a large portfolio of business from Apollo and CareerBuilder. They call that Broadbean. Now this. Historically we're seeing the convergence happening. Joel: Don't forget Recruitology and Jobcase as well. Chad: Oh yeah Jobcase. And Jobcase but then you've got all of that but you've got a 100 year name agency so do you think the day of mad men is pretty much gone as we move toward technology. Joel: Oh in our industry for sure. And you gave a eloquent great breakdown and all the kids should be listening to your historical breakdown. I'm gonna go even deeper with my historical breakdown... Chad: Just the tip. Joel: So 20th century 50 plus years agencies were a money printing machine. I mean they would do display ads. They would basically answer the phone and be like oh yeah can we place our New York Times ad again this week? Sure no problem. We'll change the dates. We'll do a little change in creative like oh do you wanna do colors? Chad: $60,000. Joel: Do you want to do coloured, maybe we do a full page instead of half page whatever, and just like printed money and their main role was the three martini lunches, the season tickets the dinners at Morton's that was the agency world and that was what existed. Chad: Mad man baby. Joel: And then the internet came along and cheap job ads. And for a while they did all right. They did the little bundle thing. They said let's put it in the paper let's put it on hot jobs. Let's throw it on Chromosaic and things were pretty good. And I remember the days of going to trade shows and agencies would have vinyl walls with literally newspaper ads stuck on Velcro on there. And they would just show people the ads that they've done. And then after job sites technology started happening. ATSs SEO led to mobile stuff. And agencies had this moment where they said well we can build this and get all the money or we can partner with these tech solutions and get part of it. And a lot of the agencies built their own shit and they ended up realizing that it's not as good as the shit that's actually being built by the entrepreneurs and the startups. So we're gonna transfer to being the consultant and knowing everything out there we're gonna plug you into what's best. And that worked really well. I didn't have to spend money on building stuff and maintaining it. I could just leverage the best solutions and plug people into that. And now we're into a phase of I have to now push Appcast which acquired an agency which I've always been a competitor to. Joel: So agencies that... The Shakers you mentioned most of them in there. Now it's a moment of do we build it now? Do we keep putting money in Bayard and Appcast pocket? Do we use a different solution until they're bought by someone that we're competing with? My guess is you're going to enter a time where these agencies are like who should we acquire? Who should we invest in to have a piece of it? So if they do buy we have a first right of refusal or we have an opportunity to get in bed with these companies. But I think it's a really interesting time because I can't imagine any of the agencies I know really loving the fact that now they're putting money in Bayard's pocket or a competitor's pocket. So there's gonna be a really interesting shakeout with what these companies do. Do they stop recommending Appcast? Can they stop recommending Appcast? Where are they gonna send people? And these solutions are being built all the time. AI is going to be a major fun time for us to talk about startups till these agencies that are still around start saying okay who do we place bets on? So we can be at the forefront or we can buy these companies. Joel: So to me that's historically the most interesting perspective is we've gone from the martini lunches to M&A who invest in but then it's conflict of interest because are we recommending only the companies that we're investing in? I think it's really gonna be a difficult time and they're gonna have to dance between the raindrops to keep everybody happy. I would not want to be an agency head right now trying to figure out all this stuff right now. Chad: Yeah. So when we're talking about the Shakers and the NASs and whatnot I really believe that not every agency is good for every company. There's obviously a need that fits and will they continue to use Clickcast and Appcast who knows? There are other Programmatic tools that are out there that they could prospectively just flip over to. It's not gonna be that easy but there's definitely things that they can do. I think what Joe has done and just personally... 'Cause we know Joe and we're definitely biased. There's no question. Now you can see us wearing the Shaker gear around all the time. I really believe that his idea of we don't wanna buy it because we're not a tech company. And we're not gonna try to fool people like Radancy did like TMP did into thinking that we're a tech company 'cause we're not a tech company. That's not who we are. And I appreciate that authenticity and I also appreciate that he can be more nimble and unbiased in being able to use other technologies that are out there and so on and so forth. I do believe there is always going to be a place for that. The thing that interests me the most and I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you. Joel: Yep. Chad: Is what this means to Indeed because Bayard had a large, large sum of cash that would actually go from their clients to Indeed. Now does Appcast outflank Indeed and start taking that cash maybe a little bit more of a margin on it and that money goes into Appcast instead of directly to Indeed. Are the Germans outflanking the Indeed Army? That's the question. Is Axel Springer coming out? Are they actually getting this right. And we have been giving Stepstone shit this entire time and they might be outflanking Indeed. What do you think about that? Joel: I think you pulled the rabbit out of the hat and it's interesting to me how little Stepstone is mentioned in any of the PR any of the interviews and they own Appcast. The press release could have just been Stepstone acquirers Bayard as well as it could have been Appcast acquiring Bayard. So Stepstone is allegedly preparing for an IPO this year. Okay? This is a good move if you're gonna IPO. I assume they're gonna IPO on the US markets. It's the biggest markets in the world by far. And I'm gonna throw out a prediction to you Chad. Stepstone acquires CareerBuilder. [laughter] Let me say it again. Stepstone acquires CareerBuilder. They wrap all that into the Programmatic solution the agency piece and they go public owning one of the best brands historically in the US market. That sounds like an IPO that will get the interest of a lot of investors. CareerBuilder gets acquired by Stepstone. That's my answer to your Indeed question. Chad: Wow. I think that would be a great move because there's no question CareerBuilder is on the market at fire sale prices right now. And if anybody could get them it would definitely be Stepstone. StepStone was looking at Broadbean at one time so maybe they were looking at trying to just outflank in a much different way and going toward the US market versus focusing on Europe as much. Because when you have the rails like Appcast does it's just smart. The other Programmatic players that are out there today though they've got to be excited though. They've got to be excited because a couple of things happens. This just invalidates the power of the platform and the rails. We saw Recruitics buy KRT now Appcast buys Bayard. This isn't the other way around. This isn't a TMP buying a little Perengo which was a little early stage startup compared to these other two. So I think this really flips the switch and starts to say okay look at the validation for all of these Programmatic players. Now valuation where does that go. And everybody's gonna be clamoring for them because they are unbiased. Joel: The acquisition of Appcast for the price tag that they got it is quickly looking like the steal of the last... Chad: So smart. Joel: Four or five years. Yeah it's starting to look really really smart. And I think we called it then but it's certainly playing out that way for sure. And if they can do a deal on CareerBuilder and wrap all that shit up and go IPO that'll be a lot of fun to watch. Chad: Last one kids prediction from Chad Indeed which we've been talking about for a while now. This actually kicks Indeed in the ass and says "Well you've been thinking about it now you must move to the agency model." Joel: We'll be right back. Chad are you on Threads? Chad: I am. Joel: I think we should talk about it in case you missed it everybody. [laughter] Threads. The Twitter rival launched by Meta reached a 100 million signups in just five days. Twitter has 240 million daily active users. So Threads has a little work ahead of it still but it's a good start. It's a pretty good start. Threads lack certain features like direct messaging hashtags and keyword search but it's a good bet those are coming soon. Currently Ad-free Threads will consider monetization after reaching one billion users. Pretty lofty goals early days Chad but what's your take on Threads? Chad: Well first and foremost I think it's amazing because Bluesky Jack Dorsey's new venture which is just a Twitter clone. It reached one million. It's been around for a minute. But it was one of those invite-only. Mastodon was an invite-only. I'm on Mastodon. Who the hell knows how many are on Mastodon today 'cause nobody cares. Joel: We know Truth Social is your favorite Chad [laughter] Chad: Post News is actually really cool from a monetization standpoint because of the micropayments. I think that wrapped in with some advertising could be incredibly helpful with all of the content. And then also feeding journalism. That's the big key is trying to feed that thing that we all need is journalism. We need them out there pressing for the truth. Anyway back to Threads. Yes. Threads was incredibly easy from a registration process standpoint. I went through Mastodon and they're asking me what server do I wanna fucking sign up for? Are you kidding me? I'm not a tech guy. I don't want to choose a server because of my social alignment. I just want to be on the fucking platform. It was easy. Threads just boom you're in. You did have to do a little profile which... That didn't take too long. So being able to get to a 100 million users in five days was amazing. Here's their big problem stickiness. Twitter is incredibly sticky because they do have the trending. They do have the notifications and these guys are still really new. Even though they do have a obviously great tech backbone with Meta and everything Meta does. They still are going to have to get at least some of the very basic features together that create more sticky, more of a sticky platform that I want to come back and then they actually have notifications that are meaningful to me. Chad: I think that that is something that will be incredibly helpful while Elon continues his stupid shit and puts limits on tweets and all these things and then he wants to charge for tweet deck and so on and so forth. And it's like okay you're just giving all these reasons all these toll roads for me to go somewhere else. And if Threads is that popular that fast and they can create the stickiness I think there's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance. Joel: You're saying stickiness is the key. SFX: What are you doing step bro? Joel: So sometimes this copycat approach works for Facebook. Sometimes it doesn't. I mean some of the things that weren't real successful they went after Foursquare with the check-ins. Check-ins is just a feature now. I miss being the mayor of my local Chipotle but that's a different story. [laughter] They launched Bulletin to arrive or have a new survey so they paid really high profile people to write content. Bulletin.com doesn't even work anymore. So they scrap that real quick. Chad: Jesus. Joel: Now sometimes it works really well. Reels has worked pretty well copycat. Marketplace copycat working pretty well. WhatsApp Instagram. So far Threads looks like it's working. Now you and I have seen things skyrocket and as quickly come down. I'll mention Clubhouse as one of those. We're not talking about them anymore. And traditionally something that rises really fast will fall really fast. So they've won the early innings but we'll see what happens long term. What really makes me wonder about this is if Zuck believes he has a recipe for kind of these copycat and I have three billion users and I can become a major player on overnight what would stop him from going after LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a twenty six billion dollar acquired company from a few years ago. It has no competitors really. What's to stop Zuck from creating a LinkedIn competitor. Plug in your Facebook stuff put in your current employer rights whatever. I don't know how they would do it but apparently this Threads thing was built with 20 developers as a almost side project. They could roll out a LinkedIn kind of thing. And everybody hates LinkedIn. Just like a lot of people hate Twitter and Elon Musk. There's a real incentive in my eyes that people would leave LinkedIn and maybe not old people like us who have tens of thousands of followers. Joel: Where I'm just too tired to build a whole new LinkedIn. But if I'm a kid Polly work looks like a pile of shit to me. Something that Facebook could build and plug me into maybe some employers that are in their marketplace or that used to post jobs. By the way that's another failed copycat is job postings around the Facebook. But I would love to see Facebook roll this recipe out and put out a LinkedIn competitor. I don't know how it would do but I think LinkedIn could use a little competition. We talk a lot about how shitty it is. If they had somebody at their heels nipping like a Facebook with that kind of budget I think it would be good for the marketplace and good for business. Chad: It'd definitely be good for the marketplace. We need something that's an alternative to LinkedIn just because it is, it's old, it's crappy. Just the tech itself I feel like I'm getting into a 1997 Jalopy for God's sakes. Yeah we need something newer. They are trying a lot of different things. And I think that's the biggest problem is they are throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall. To me okay let's go over to Facebook. Facebook tried the workplace side of the house. I think they could, could possibly get it right if they had people that were in there who actually knew how to build tech for this space. They're trying to build tech for what they're used to. This is an entirely different space and most companies don't get that. So yeah I don't know we'll watch threads I've been posting on threads. I do also like the idea of all of those individuals who are my friends that I'm linked to on the threads I can take to any social platform with me. I'd love to be able to take all of the people that follow me on Twitter and then all of my history of tweets and then port that over another social platform. To me that's not starting from ground zero anymore. That's freedom of choice. And Elon's always talking about freedom of this freedom of that. What about freedom of choice? Give me my shit [laughter] Joel: Yep. Yep. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. But we both agree that LinkedIn could use some competition and it could use some competition from somebody with deep pockets so I don't care if it's Google Facebook Twitter could launch something Amazon Salesforce somebody sack up and create a LinkedIn competitor. I think that would be good for everybody. Chad: Google needs to buy the CV wallet and then they can just build the profiles off of that thing. Joel: Look at you bringing Sir Richard into the podcast. That's... Chad: I'm just thinking of foundational rails to get something going. And... Joel: By the way how do we go to London and that bastard isn't at RecFest. Chad: Web thrust. Joel: Goddammit poor Richard. [laughter] Chad: Dude's working. Dude's working. Joel: I miss you man. I miss you man. Chad: Beverly is cracking the whip is what it is. Beverly's cracking the whip. Joel: And speaking of cracking the whip all right let's play a little buy or sell everybody. You know how the game works. Three startups that have recently got funding. I read a summary and Chad and I either buy or sell the company. Here we go with Little Buy or Sell. First up we have Zinc background check provider Zinc has secured around $6.5 million in a series A. The investment will support global expansion and product innovation. The company aims to tap into the growing global background check market and becomes a leader in regulated industries by leveraging a technology driven approach. Chad Zinc buy or sell? Chad: Well first and foremost Zinc Coffee from RecFest was awesome. So that's automatically that's a thumbs up here from Chad. Joel: Not their business unfortunately. Chad: Yeah. Not their business. Although every morning when I pull out the beans to grind the beans you know what's looking me in the face. Their brand. It was fucking brilliant. At the end of the day though background checks need a facelift. We've been talking about this week after week after week. Anything that helps me wake up in the morning and could prospectively take an antiquated segment like background checks and move it into 2023. I am a buy all day. [applause] Joel: Chad do you remember Virgin Cola back in the '90s? Do you remember? Chad: I do not. No. Joel: Sir Richard Branson since we're bringing up Sir Richard. Sir Richard Branson. Do you remember Virgin Cola? Chad: I don't. Joel: Yeah, mid-'90s. They had a cola. And mistakenly made it red, which is Coke's color. So that was a bad idea. By the way, Virgin Cola failed. No one's drinking it. Chad: Apparently. Yeah, apparently. Joel: The problem with background checks, it's an old industry, and we have our Coke and Pepsi. We have Sterling, we have HireRight. And now the tech option is Checkr. It's a business that has its big brands. Fanta would be Checkr, I guess in this analogy. By the way, Sterling Stock, which is a public company from a year ago, is about at half of what it was a year ago, which means it's kind of a shitty business. It's a disparate business. It's a hard business. Companies aren't super loyal. They kind of bounce back between the two big ones and maybe Checkr. So I hate the business. You have your Coke and Pepsi. I think this is a sad exercise in futility. And for that reason. Chad: We need a revolution, Joel. We need a revolution. Joel: It ain't in background checks. It ain't in background checks. [laughter] All right, let's go to RecruitBot. The San Francisco-based recruiting experience platform has raised an additional $8.2 million in seed funding, bringing its total to $11.2 million. The platform utilizes AI and ML, well, we haven't talked about ML in years, to match companies with suitable candidates from a database of over 600 million people and facilitates personalized automated email campaigns on behalf of hiring managers. Chad, RecruitBot, buy or sell? Chad: So they've been around since 2017, and I don't know that we've ever talked about them on the show. Have we? Joel: Possibly. A lot of bots and recruit in our content. Chad: Yeah. I don't remember them. Anyway, 8.2 in seed funding is a lot of cash. That's a lot of cash for seed funding. So there's a good amount of runway that's there. Matching recruitment automation and recruitment marketing automation light is pretty much what the platform does. 600 million candidate database. To me, whenever I hear something like that, it means it's garbage. It means they went and they bought candidates from somebody else. They bought it from a data warehouse. Automatically think garbage. There's no mention of generative AI, which I thought was odd, although cool at the same time, AI, ML. We have two really big brands in this space, SeekOut, hireEZ. We've got more than two. But we've got so many of these. They're a little bit late. They're underfunded compared to definitely SeekOut. I hope they kick ass tech names, but for me today, kids, gonna sell it. [applause] Joel: Another sell. Yeah, Chad, I got really excited about this company, and I remembered it was 2023 and not 2017. [laughter] Yeah. Look, if companies like SeekOut and hireEZ have really pivoted, kind of grown their business into different ways, oh, by the way, HiringSolved is closed for business, what reason do we have to think that this thing is gonna be successful? I'm pretty impressed they've raised as much as they have, especially when they've raised it. But I see no reason, this feels antiquated. Even their logo is like this fucking Windows 95 robot thingy. I mean, it's just, it's a disaster to me. Chad: Hating on the robot. Joel: I have nothing... Chad: Oh. Oh-oh. Joel: RecruitBot is... The name is horrible too. It's all bad. [laughter] It's a big sell for me. All right, let's go to our third and final startup. Dubai-based Alfii has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to expand its business. The near-term focus for Alfii will be building a suite of innovative payroll features. You don't hear innovative and payroll in the same sentence very often. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The startup aims to serve the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly startups and SMEs, and has already attracted over 250 businesses across countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Chad, buy or sell Alfii? Not to be confused with the '80s alien and popular sitcom ALF. Chad: Yeah, the alien who eats cats. Yeah, not that one. So this to me... This is FinTech. To me, we are starting to see a convergence of technology, and we're going to see more of that with generative AI. So all of these huge tech companies are going to start bleeding into HR and talent acquisition and payroll and so on and so forth. And there's so many great FinTech companies that are out there that I think will just automatically gobble up payroll and do it much easier, apps on the phone, all that other fun stuff, and just make it incredibly simple. It's gonna be crazy competitive market, which is one of the reasons why I just can't buy into Alfii. It's a sell. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Chad: Sorry, Alfii. Joel: Oh, that's a sell. All right, is this the first Dubai-based startup we've ever covered? I don't remember ever saying Dubai. Chad: I think possibly. Joel: Yeah, possibly. [laughter] So in case you missed it, the Middle East is spending money around the world. Like, they are drunken sailors. They're buying sports teams, they're buying entire leagues. They're trying to sports-wash the whole energy authoritarian government thing. And if that starts bleeding into our industry, Katy-bar the door. 'Cause there's a whole lot of money that they can start funding these employer-related startups. Not that Alfii is taking money from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Who knows? Actually, we do know 'cause it's in the press release. But anyway, I love the region. I love the money that they are spending, which has to come to startups at some point. They have to start getting into businesses and startups after they get done with sports and who knows what else they're spending money on. I love the growth opportunities in Africa. I love the growth opportunities in the Middle East. I think it's gonna start diversifying from energy-only to many other industries. And companies like this, to me, are on the forefront of that. So I just think it's hella interesting. And the money that's flowing around the Middle East right now makes this... SFX: All right. All right. All right. Joel: A buy for me. And if you're keeping score at home, well, that's a whole lot of sell ratings this week on buy or sell. Chad: It was. Joel: When we return, we'll talk about lazy girls. All right, Chad. Move over Boss Girl, Lazy Girl is here. The Lazy Girl trend, popularized by Gen Z on TikTok, is challenging the previous Girl Boss hustle culture. Young women are prioritizing work-life balance and opting for jobs that meets expectations without exceeding them. The trend has gained traction on TikTok with users sharing their experiences of Lazy Girl jobs that offer flexibility and minimal stress. Have a listen. [video playback] SFX: Most vital person to your career and livelihood is the person who they would fire. Lazy Girl: I could not agree more. And I've done this, and I'll talk about it. And I did the other way around. Okay, guys? I did... I talked about this in my podcast, like, I did the other way around where I sat there and I tried to be the best-performing person, and I worked extra nights and blah, blah, blah. And I didn't get any more of a raise than I did just doing the second worst, best effort. Giving your best effort and working the most overtime does not equal a pay raise. It's just my opinion. I worked in the tech industry. That's what I saw. The people who got a raise, they stayed top of mind by talking about the projects that they were doing all the time. And they weren't even that impactful of projects. They would just talk about what they were doing all the time. They would look like they were moving the needle all of the time, but not actually working. That's who gets a raise. It's not the person that's quietly grinding the whole time. So just be the second worst on your team and just go live your life. Joel: Just be the second worst. Chad, what's your take on the Lazy Girl trend? Chad: So I think it's bad marketing, first and foremost, to put lazy in any of that. I think she could have gotten to the source and found something a little bit more appetizing, [laughter] something that somebody would want to embrace. Nobody wants to be called lazy. But it is a game. And she very keenly, at a very young age, has pinpointed the truth. We've always heard the squeaky wheel gets the grease, gets the oil. On this case, it gets the greased palm. They get the leg up. So life over work, that's exactly what she talked about. I think that the marketing that we've heard since the '80s, work hard, rugged individualism, has finally started to decay and it's starting to fall down. And these Zs understand because either they're feeling it themselves or they're having Xers like us saying, "Yeah. Nah, it doesn't really work that way." [laughter] Joel: There is some evil genius sprouting out with this Gen Z crowd. And I'm here for it, my man. So the Lazy Girl hashtag on TikTok currently has 14 million views. Here's some quotes. Chad: Wow. Joel: Here's some quotes, "I don't have to talk to people. Only come to the office twice a week." "Me at my Lazy Girl job that lets me do whatever the heck I want, as long as I answer emails [laughter] and keep everything clean." Are these girls podcasters? Chad, I've been at the forefront of this trend for 18 years. [laughter] You have met Lazy Girl. And now I present to the Lazy Boy. Everyone bow down to Joel Cheeseman, AKA Lazy Boy. We out. Chad: Nappy Boy. 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'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.

Another top-notch interview from our time at iCIMS Inspire in the spring. This one features Vanessa Burnaby, VP of Global TA at Avalara, a cloud-based tax compliance solutions to handle every transaction in the world. Previously, Vanessa also served at Workday and SAP as a talent acquisition leader. She has been efficiently scaling and building strong teams, most recently, through recruitment automation, the ability to streamline processes and scale, primarily through focusing on strong analytics strategies. We don’t spend a lot of time interviewing TA pros with such a deep competency of the job and the industry, so this one is a must listen. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. INTRO: 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... Chad: He's had a bourbon or two, Jesus Christ. Joel: Yeah. What's up, everybody? We're live from the iCIMS Inspire Conference in beautiful San Diego, California. Chad: I love it. Joel: I am your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is my co-pilot, and we are excited to welcome Vanessa Burnaby, VP of Global TA at Avalara. Vanessa, welcome to the podcast. What the hell is Avalara, first of all? Vanessa: We are a tax compliance software. So sexy. Yes. [laughter] Chad: So sexy? Vanessa: But... Chad: Not sexy, but necessary. Joel: But they need people to do this job. Vanessa: Two things guaranteed in life, right? Death and taxes. Joel: Death and taxes, I quote. Chad: I bet she never uses that. Vanessa: Never. [laughter] Joel: I quote Kelly Bundy, "Death in taxes... Chad: And taxes, yeah. Joel: "Are the only two things definite in life." So day one of the conference, what stood out to you? What blew your mind? What are the takeaways? Vanessa: Yeah, great first day. Some really good, inspiring speakers... Joel: The right answer is, I loved the Chad and Cheese segment. Vanessa: I mean, of course, you guys finished out the day. [laughter] Chad: She wasn't happy she didn't get a beer, but I'm sorry... Vanessa: I haven't had a beer yet. Joel: Nobody's happy about that. Chad: We'll do better next time. Vanessa: Thank you. I mean, a lot of the data that Rhea Moss went through was great just to see. And really comparing the beginning of COVID with where we are now and the fact that actually the data is the same, I think that is a great conversation with executives. Chad: Crazy, isn't it? Vanessa: Yeah. Chad: I mean we were in a pandemic, now we're not in a pandemic. To see that there's... Vanessa: It's still the same. Chad: Yes. So, talk about that. Vanessa: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think a lot of leaders have this expectation that especially with layoffs, it should be easier to hire, it should be faster to hire. We shouldn't have to pay them as much, right? That employers have the upper hand. Chad: Are they watching the headlines too much? Is that the problem? Vanessa: I think they're watching the headlines, I think they're also seeing economic trends. I think the PE firms and the VC firms all have opinions. Chad: But those economic trends, in many cases, feels like it's bullshit. Vanessa: Agree. Yes. Chad: Rhea said, like, were you watching the first of the week or the latter part of the week? Vanessa: Yes. Chad: It's two entirely different narratives. Vanessa: Well, and you see folks in the industry who are asking the questions of, okay, if they're laying off and not hiring, why are you still hiring? Different business, different market... Chad: Exactly. Vanessa: Why should we all be doing the same thing? Chad: Yeah. Everything's being lumped into one big ball. And that's not how the market works. It never has been. But yet, we're getting these point and click... I don't know if it's click bait or what it is, but it's driving me crazy. Joel: If it bleeds, it leads, Chad. Vanessa: Yeah. Chad: Yeah, there's a lot of bleeding going on. Vanessa: Yeah. But I think data right now is so critical for the business case and to help leaders understand what's really going on in the markets. You know, when I look at our data just from Q1, not much has changed. Our offer acceptance rates, pretty on par, pretty stable. We're still seeing offers declined. We're still seeing candidates with multiple offers. So I'm not seeing major changes in the market based on the talent that we're trying to hire. Joel: So, it's in our notes here that you chose iCIMS after being with another vendor that you had been with for eight years. Changing ATS is a major decision. A lot of listeners and companies out there are probably in the same shoes you were in changing vendors. What was the catalyst to go a different direction? What was it about iCIMS in this particular case that made you make the jump? Vanessa: Avalara was going through an immense amount of growth, and so we needed a system to really support that growth and help the company scale, help TA be more efficient and effective. And what we had previously wasn't keeping up with our demands. So we looked at lots of different vendors including my former employer. And iCIMS just proved to be the best option for what we needed. Joel: Do you wanna name your previous employer? Vanessa: People can find it. Chad: It's the internets. So your focus and really passion at this point is on talent networks, which I think is interesting because back in the, I don't know, late odds, for goodness sakes, we really started to talk about Avature was a platform that was literally... The premise of the whole thing was talent networks. Vanessa: Right. Chad: Are we just finally catching onto this or is it just like, TA just didn't get it right in the first place? Vanessa: I think many teams have aspirations for this. Joel: What are the aspirations? That's the question. I mean, where are they going? Vanessa: Okay. Well, I know what my aspirations are, which is, let's work smarter. Let's take advantage of all the candidates that we already know, who we know are interested in us, who have the right skills, whether that's the silver medalist candidate that we just didn't have a second job for, great candidates we've met at events, boomerangs, which we know are increasing, and really nurturing and building those relationships. We know that matters immensely with diverse communities, especially in tech where there's a lot of mistrust around the culture and environment that will support their careers. And so if you can really build those one-on-one relationships with them, invest in that relationship, it will matter when you have the right job at the right time for them, you end up with the right candidate. Chad: So, focusing on the biggest asset you have, which is the candidate database, because you spent more money on driving candidates, I'm just gonna say in general, most companies do. You spent more money on creating a candidate database than you did on tech. Vanessa: Right. Chad: Right? And for the most part, most companies, they create this lead database with great leads that are silver medalists, bronze medalists, qualified individuals, it doesn't matter. And then they totally abandon it, and they just continue to spend money, spend money, spend money. Vanessa: Yes. Yeah. Chad: So, you guys, what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're looking more to internalize and look at that asset... Vanessa: Correct. Chad: And start to keep them warm, engage them, and they might already be in a job. Next six months might not be a good option, but in 18 months, might be a hit. Vanessa: Yeah. Chad: Right? Vanessa: Absolutely. Chad: So, talk about that. Is that one of the reasons why you chose the tech that you went with, number one, and number two, how are you starting to build that? Vanessa: Yeah, so it is definitely partially why I built the tech, having a fully-integrated platform like iCIMS where you've got CRM in addition to the ATS. And now with their upcoming... Chad: Matching and... Vanessa: Yeah, the matching, engagement scoring, candidate experience management and all the automated marketing, that's phenomenal. And there aren't a lot of other systems that are fully integrated. And so when you think about adoption for your talent acquisition team, I think it matters, because I've done it elsewhere where you bolt on a system, adoption is super low, 'cause recruiters are like, "I have another system I have to go in." Chad: It surfaces candidates, and then they're automatically invited to apply for the job. Vanessa: Right. Chad: So at this point, why are we trying to use recruiters to get them to adopt a new process? I don't understand it in the first place. Vanessa: Yeah. Well, I think you have to set up as much automation as possible, but I do believe there still has to be a human on the backend. Chad: Where in the process? Vanessa: I think it depends on the company. I would say for Avalara, at the beginning. Because again, nobody knows who we are, and so our employer brand isn't on par with any of the big FAANG companies or whatever. And so, but we know we have great opportunities and a great environment for people to work in. So the moment we can get somebody on the phone, we can get them excited about the opportunity and get them engaged. So I think kind of back to talent networks, I don't think it's about quantity of candidates. I think it is about quality. And so I'm not asking my team to go build a database of thousands and thousands of candidates, I'm asking them to focus on quality around critical talent areas, niche skill sets where we know it takes a long time to hire, it's hard to find the talent, so that we can improve cost, quality, speed in those areas. Joel: You mentioned boomerangs, which I don't think was even discussed today during the conference. Chad: Big. Joel: Was that an accident, or I guess, a happy accident? Was it something that was part of your strategy, part of your automation stack? Talk about the boomerangs, 'cause I think that's an interesting topic. Vanessa: Yeah. I think it was mentioned once today. I can't remember who put a stat up there. But we are absolutely seeing it in the last 12 months. But even prior to the change in the markets, going after alumni has always been part of my strategy. Because even at a minimum, if they choose not to come back, we want them to feel great about where they've worked, we want them to speak highly of us, refer. And so, if we continue to stay engaged with the alumni of the company... Joel: Yeah. So let's dig into that for a second. When you say, part of our strategy when we communicate, let's get tactical on this. Are we talking monthly emails? Are we talking like alumni events? Talk about that. Vanessa: All of the above. Joel: All of it. Chad: What are you doing events-wise? I want to hear the events piece, because... Joel: And is booze involved? [laughter] Vanessa: Yeah. So we haven't started back to in-person events just yet. We've done a couple in our Brighton, UK office, smaller events. Joel: Well, UK, you know booze is definitely involved. Vanessa: Definitely involved. Always. Joel: And football. Vanessa: Yes. Pre-COVID, we did a lot of events and we really just tried to focus on events that wasn't pitching a job, that was like a value add. And so for alumni, it's, come meet the people you used to work with, come meet teammates you used to work with. Joel: Wow. Vanessa: Come have some drinks and some food. Chad: It's like a family reunion. Vanessa: A little bit, right? People enjoy that. Chad: Bring some baked beans and... Vanessa: You know, and if they're willing to join your alumni network, you know they still feel pretty positive about their experience working there. Joel: Do you have any numbers around what percentage of former employees come back? Vanessa: I don't. Joel: I mean, are we talking 10, 15? Are we talking 40, 50? What are we talking? Vanessa: I don't think it's... Chad: How big is the alumni network? That's... Vanessa: 50%... Well, I think it depends on the size of your company. Joel: What's yours? Vanessa: For ours, less than 500 at this point, but it's been interesting. Joel: That's still great. If you can pull 10% of that, that's huge. Vanessa: But it's been really interesting in the last 12 months, the number of employees who've called us and are like, "I would really like to come back, actually." Chad: How long are they usually away? So, six months, a year? Vanessa: It's like three to nine months. Chad: Okay, okay. Joel: Wow. Chad: Well, so you know it's not like a retraining that really needs to happen. You can just go ahead and plug them in pretty quick. Joel: Yeah. Vanessa: Right. And for the most part, we've been able to find opportunities for them, because these have been high-performing employees that we're happy to have come back. Joel: Yeah. I feel like this is a quiet success. I feel more companies should be doing stuff like this. We're not talking enough about alumni networks and how companies are getting people to come back. It's a topic that deserves more attention. Vanessa: The one company that I know of that I think has been doing this for a while and doing it well is Deloitte. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Deloitte's done just about everything forever. Joel: That is millions. Chad: Yeah. Everything forever, and not... I mean, they've spent a lot of money on a lot of different things. Yeah. So it's... Vanessa: Right. Yep. Joel: Talk about upskilling. I assume there are a lot of employees you get that are sort of newly outta school or not super veteran, but that seems like an opportunity to train these folks to take those positions that are upper level. Vanessa: Yeah, so that's a great question. For Avalara, we're actually just starting our journey around that. We were in a place of like, grow at all costs, for many, many years. And we tend to hire very senior levels. And we're now at a place... Chad: Really? Vanessa: Yeah. Chad: Okay. Vanessa: We're now at a place where we're really focused on our entry level talent. Chad: Well, that's not easy to grow at all costs. And then, just senior level, that's rough. Vanessa: Yes. Yes. And it has put us in a position where we're really having to step back and re-evaluate our workforce and our teams and how we're structured and org design, and as well as making sure that we're gonna have the long-term career opportunities to retain these employees. Chad: Well, just the long-term... Again, the long-term base of employees that you can bring up through the ranks, it's almost like a grassroots type of scenario. So yeah, it's gotta be easier going after the entry level, but again... So, what was the conversation, the discussion around that? Why was the company looking at senior, mid-level versus trying to build your own? Was it necessary because there was a huge gap there within the ranks? Vanessa: I don't know that there was a gap. I think there was a mindset that the best, the most experienced, because they'll help us get the most done. And we have big aspirations and a lot that we are trying to build and put into the market. Chad: So, how did that affect your diversity goals? Vanessa: We haven't really gone after specific diversity goals until just recently. Chad: Okay. Vanessa: And so, that is a newer focus for us. And now, we're focused on more of this entry level talent. New out of school, and/or people potentially changing careers. And so, ages are relevant in all of this. Chad: Yeah. Vanessa: How do we build really solid onboarding programs and boot camps? How do we improve our hiring process? We just implemented assessments that assesses potential in candidates, and so we've got this good objective input to say, "Okay, yes. They meet this bar." We get them through our interview process faster and then we make sure we've got really solid onboarding and kind of checkpoints through onboarding to say, "Okay, they're meeting the bar here, they're gonna keep going." And since we're early in our career or in our journey, we don't necessarily have the data yet to see the success around this. But there's a lot of excitement in the business, and leaders are really embracing the model. Chad: So, assessments. Who do you use for assessments? Vanessa: Criteria Core. Chad: Okay, yeah. Vanessa: Yep. Chad: Yep. So that's helped actually quicken the pace? Vanessa: It has. And for our entry level, especially, we've seen good improvement in time to hire. The hiring manager sentiment is very strong on it. They're feeling like... 'cause they're only seeing candidates that meet that bar, and they feel like the caliber of candidates that they interview has increased. Chad: Gotcha. Joel: "Grow at all costs," something my waistband says every time [laughter] I go to Chipotle. That is Vanessa Burnaby, everybody. VP of Global TA at Avalara. Vanessa, for those that wanna connect with you, where would you send them? Vanessa: Go to LinkedIn, please. Yeah. Joel: Chad, another one is in the can. It must be dinner time, because I'm bringing up Chipotle. We out. Chad: We out. Joel: 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.

Probably one of the most enjoyable podcasts you've listened to this year or ever. Yea, it's that fun and good! They say never meet your idols. They also say don’t fall in love with new tech. OK, the latter saying is less popular, but Andreea Wade, VP of product strategy, says it, and that’s why we wanted to chat with her, live at iCIMS Inspire in San Diego. Andreea’s also a winner of Chad & Cheese’s Death Match competition - and we love her - so there was plenty of reason to hangout. Andreea is kind of a big deal when it comes to AI, has strong opinions about ChatGPT and enjoys a good convo about bias. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: All right, we are live from iCIMS Inspire overlooking beautiful, gorgeous... Chad: It is fucking gorgeous. That's just Andreea. [laughter] Chad: Oh no. Oh, there it is. A little less gorgeous, we've got... Joel: The whales you know what staring right back at us from where we are recording our podcast today. [laughter] Chad: San Diego. Joel: Yes. Yes. Yeah. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Ron Burgundy to my... Chad: Champ. Joel: Champ. Yes, that's good. [laughter] Chad Sowash. Today we are excited to welcome Andreea Wade, VP of Product Strategy at iCIMS. And more importantly... Chad: Yes. Joel: Former Death Match winner... Chad: Death Match winner. Joel: Of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Andreea, welcome. Chad: In Lisbon. Andreea: Yes. Chad: Lisbon Death Match winner. Andreea: I know. Chad: That was the start of the journey. Andreea: Yeah. Joel: Think about who she beat. Chad: Yeah. Joel: She beat Candidate ID. Hello, Adam. Chad: Yeah, Adam Gordon. [laughter] Joel: She beat the recruiting robot. Hello Tengai and Elin. Chad: And Eric from Maya. Joel: Yes. Chad: Yes, Eric from Maya. Joel: We hardly knew you. Chad: We hardly knew you and Maya was sold at a fire sale, but that's okay. It was a good time. You came out on top. Andreea: I did. Chad: And you got the Chad and Cheese Death Match medal... Joel: She brought Connemara by the way. I'm not saying that that was a decision making bottle of whiskey that you brought, but it may have been. Andreea: I did. [chuckle] But Adam brought something too. Chad: Just so you know, I didn't get any of that. Joel: He brought kilts. Chad: Yeah, I didn't get any of that. So where are you housing the Chad and Cheese medal that you won? Joel: Oh, this is good. Andreea: It's in the office. Joel: Yes. Chad: It's in the office? Andreea: And the office is all glass. Joel: Yes. Andreea: So everyone can see it. [laughter] Andreea: It's visible to everyone. And every time a new team member joins, I take it off the window ledge where it sits, and I go, "Hold this. It's heavy, isn't it? I won this." And then I go into a little tank and then like... Joel: Do you ever wear it interviewing people and just see what their reaction is? [laughter] Chad: Okay, so listener, listener, you gotta understand, this is a rope gold chain with a big old medallion with our dumb cartoon heads on it that says Death Match Winner. It's big. Andreea: It's big. Joel: Like three inch circumference gold chain. Chad: Andreea's about 4'5. [laughter] Andreea: Yeah. Chad: So her wearing this, it makes it look even more immense than what it is. Joel: Yeah, it is awesome. Andreea: Yeah. Do you know that like I didn't get that in Portugal 'cause you guys didn't have it. So you gave it to me in Austin and I was traveling to Vegas, and I only had a hand luggage. So I had to go through security with this thing. Joel: Did they take it out of your luggage? Andreea: Yeah. Joel: Awesome. [laughter] Andreea: And everyone saw it and he was like, "What is this?" [laughter] I'm like, "I'm a world champion." [laughter] Andreea: Yeah, it was hilarious. Chad: That is the best. Joel: That is great. Chad: That was in Austin? Andreea: Yeah. Joel: In Austin, so they took it out and they like held it up. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: It's kinda like Lion King. [laughter] Joel: The thing is that's on security cameras, that's archived somewhere. Yeah. [laughter] Andreea: Yeah. Joel: That is fantastic. Andreea: Yeah, I was like, "Long story. Yeah, I won it." Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I won. [laughter] Joel: And we chose wisely because not shortly thereafter, you were acquired by iCIMS. Talk about the acquisition and how that went down and what your new role is at iCIMS. Andreea: So acquisition 2020, my current boss, Al and Mike Will Chuck was the Chief Strategy Officer and someone who worked with Mike, Chris, they come over to Dublin in January, 2020. And then we all know what happens in March, 2020. Long story short, we went through an acquisition during the pandemic where I also got COVID. And I was coughing on all the due diligence calls. Chad: How bad was it? Andreea: Very bad. Joel: I didn't know that. Chad: Was it really bad? Andreea: Yeah, yeah. Chad: Did you have to go in a hospital? Andreea: No, but I had like lung pain for three months, I couldn't sit back. It was... Chad: Like brain fog and stuff? Andreea: Yeah, yeah. All of that. Joel: Did you say three months? Andreea: Yeah. Joel: Yikes. Andreea: Yeah. And we had neighbours signing witnessing acquisition papers because it was a lockdown and nobody else could. So I would go, "Hello neighbour, can you sign this thing?" And over the fence as well because we couldn't see each other. So it was sort of fun. Not really. But it was great at home. Joel: It's a good thing she's so healthy like me. That's how I would've handled COVID. [laughter] So you get acquired and then how's the onboarding go? How does working with Algo, integration? Andreea: I was just saying it to Julie there, your lovely wife Chad, that I didn't have many bosses, but Al is definitely the best boss I've ever had. Joel: Awww. Andreea: Yeah, I totally love Al. So yeah, onboarding was great. I have to say the experience of being acquired for us by iCIMS was great. The first nine to 12 months were on, fully on. I would have like 12 meetings a day and I would not know what my name is at the end of the thing. So it was intense. But we achieved the plan earlier than projected. Everything went fine. Chad: Let's talk about your tech currently in the platform 'cause a lot of times what we see is we see the tech absorbed into like a bigger platform, and literally like only a fraction of a percentage of what could be used for it, it's used. Like we saw that with HireVue and with AllyO. They're like using it for like... Joel: Well, you're looking at me while Al is demoing some of the new stuff and you're like, "Europe." Because most of the stuff has been Europe acquisitions. Chad: Yes. Andreea: Oh yeah. Chad: It was Candidate ID and it was opening.io. Right? So talk about how much of the technology, just the scale of the technology that they acquired and then you've actually now like grown since then. Andreea: A lot of it. Most of it, to be honest. So when we got acquired... Chad: Are you happy with it being a founder? Because most founders leave like within six to 12 months because they're like, "Fuck this, they're shit-canning my stuff." But you've been around for a while now. Andreea: Oh yeah. I mean, I did take some of the months off last year. Chad: Yeah. Well, you should after, I mean, a little sabbatical. Yeah. Andreea: But most of the tech that we built is there. It's throughout the platform. It's in the ATS, it's in the CRM. It was in the CRM already because Jibe was our customer. So when iCIMS acquired Jibe and when iCIMS integrated Jibe into the platform, our tech was already in there so the acquisition also kind of happened that way. Chad: Oh, yeah. Did you hear that kids? That's the recipe. Deep integrations. Andreea: Yes. Chad: Yes. Andreea: Deep... I mean, 100 billion percent. Joel: Not just the tip, Chad. You gotta go deep. [laughter] Chad: I know, yes. Yes. [laughter] It's always the reaction you want to get out of Andreea. Joel: Yeah, and you never get that when you're on a recording. Chad: Just the long laugh. Joel: Only live. Only live. Chad: Yes. Joel: So, you talked a lot about the risks of AI. You talked about hallucinations. You talked about garbage in, garbage out. For those who aren't here at the conference, talk about the risks of ChatGPT and other AI solutions. Andreea: I mean, look, there are many. ChatGPT has been racist, has been making up stuff, has been inaccurate. And not just ChatGPT, right? Now, the vendors, I was on a call the other day with Amazon, they have their own version of generative AI. It's everywhere. There's a lot of open source stuff. But really, I mean, accuracy is key. So whatever you unleash it, if you unleash it as a chatbot that will tell you I don't know what, even if it makes up that the salary is not 70 grand, it's 94 grand or whatever, right? Chad: Yeah. Andreea: So you do need to watch out for accuracy, obviously fairness, building responsibly, ethics, all of that kind of stuff. And then there's other security, privacy and whatever concerns, who owns the data? Chad: It has brought fanfare, right? Andreea: Yeah. Chad: And it's made AI, everybody's been talking about AI for years, and we've really not seen anything out of it because it's been behind the scenes. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: Now it's not behind the scenes anymore so everybody wants them some AI. Is that not a good thing for the industry? Andreea: Is it a good thing? It will be eventually. Joel: Not today. Chad: It was like the original car. Was the car a good thing? Probably it wasn't great. No, it broke down all the goddamn time, it sucked. It was horrible. Joel: Eventually, it'll be amazing. Chad: But yes, it's our primary mode of transportation. Andreea: Look, it's accessible right now, right? So everyone can play with it. I mean, I have a friend who's in the hospital right now, she's having brain surgery on Friday. So I asked ChatGPT to write a poem for her. And I was like, "My friend likes alpacas and she likes Greece and she likes... " I fed it all... Joel: Your friend likes alpacas. [laughter] Andreea: I don't know. I just... Joel: Was she raised... Oh, you're making it up. Okay. I thought it was a real life example. Andreea: No, no, no. It is. It is a real life example. Joel: Okay. Does she breed alpacas? Andreea: No, she just likes the way they look, I don't know. Joel: She just likes them, okay. Andreea: So anyway, I fed this to ChatGPT. ChatGPT wrote the most beautiful poem, which I sent to her. And what a cool thing to do, right? Or you have DALL·E or you have all these things. It's accessible. You don't have to be a data scientist to play with it, to go, "Oh, my God, what this thing could do." But it's accessible by the masses, not necessarily for a task A or B, it's to play with. But when you're asking it something and you want for sure to tell you 100% the most accurate, the most whatever story, that's when things change. Joel: Got it. Andreea: 'Cause it's not. Joel: Tell us about iCIMS Talent Logic. Andreea: Yes. Well, it's not called that anymore. [chuckle] Joel: Well, tell us about whatever Talent Logic used to be called, 'cause according to my notes, it's currently called that. So wherever I got it, LinkedIn, it's changed. Andreea: It's changed. Chad: Okay, so Andreea doesn't spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Andreea: Oh, did you get it from my profile? I must update it. Chad: Probably. Andreea: Yeah. So it's called Talent Cloud AI now. TCAI. Joel: Oh, Cloud AI. Andreea: Yeah, yeah. Talent Cloud AI. Joel: So tell us what that is. Andreea: That is the multitude of all AI that exists in all the iCIMS platform. So it's Talent Discovery, it's CV to CV match, it's career pathing that we're launching right now. All of that is TCAI. And you can buy it or not. You can... Chad: If you're dumb, you don't have to buy it, but you can. Andreea: You can turn it on in the system or not. But yeah, it's the AI across CRM, career side, ideas and so on. Chad: My favorite AI, which I feel you guys are really leaning into and tell me if I'm wrong, is companies have not leveraged the biggest asset that they've spent money on over the years, and that is their candidate database. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: They spent hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases. That database is there, it's atrophying. They've got a bunch of silver medalists, bronze medalists who didn't get the job but they would be perfect for that next job maybe a week later, a month later. You guys, I want a little bit more in depth from you. You guys are actually matching against that first to surface those candidates so that companies don't have to spend that dollar again. Andreea: Again, yeah. Chad: Talk about that. Andreea: That's exactly why opening.io was founded when it was. So I never worked in TA, I never worked in HR. I had no idea of any of this. Opening was built by candidates, right? Me and my co-founder, we were not really understanding why when I send my CV and I know that I am somewhat a good fit for the thing, I just disappear in this black hole and I'm gone. So from a candidate perspective, which again was the world that I knew, we built this tech to find relevance if relevance is there. And that's exactly what we did. So we built these deep learning models that go in there, mine the data that you have and surface that relevance. So that is talent discovery now and you have it in the CRM, in the ATS and so on. And that was the very first API, if you wish, that we built and the quintessential reason for even that company existing. Chad: We usually don't see founders from outside the industry come into the industry. And it took how long for you to get acquired? Andreea: Five years. Chad: Did you get... Five years? Joel: She's a snowflake. Chad: Yeah. Joel: She's a snowflake. Chad: Totally. I mean, that to me is amazing because you did understand the problem. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: And usually you can understand the problem, but you don't know how to sell it into because HR is very hard. Andreea: Oh, we had no idea. Chad: Yeah. Adoption-wise, all those things. Andreea: No. Chad: What do you think the key thing was for you as a founder to make that connection to maybe a system or a client, what do you think that was? Because you're, again, you are more like, I mean, literally like a unicorn/snowflake. Joel: She's a Yeti surfing across the San Diego waterfront. [laughter] [vocalization] Andreea: Whatever a Yeti does. Chad: I don't know what that was. [laughter] Joel: Whatever a Yeti is. Chad: I don't know. Joel: You're a leprechaun. Chad: I don't think... Joel: You're a Leprechaun surfing. Chad: I do not think a Yeti makes that noise. But okay, we'll go with that. [laughter] Joel: Surfing the California seas. [laughter] Andreea: Okay. That image is disturbing. Look, there was a lot of trial and error, we had... We did understand the problem, but we had no idea. We knew nothing of the industry. First we were like, "Oh, we're just gonna sell this to employers," but we don't have a product. We have APIs. How are they gonna buy the API and what? Chad: Yeah, I get you, yes. Andreea: And then the second thing was we kept getting approached by agencies and we're like, "Oh, agencies. Oh, but we do have to, they don't really have tech people and we have to connect into their systems and we are not Accenture or something." Chad: So you needed some type of a middleman is what I'm hearing, right? Joel: A translator. Andreea: We ended up in the end realizing that where our market is is vendors, other HR Tech, TA Tech companies. But it took us a minute. Chad: That's a episode that we just had with Chris Conrad, build... Joel: Buy or partner. Chad: Buy or partner. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: And you guys went straight into that. And I think that there are so many vendors today who feel they can go direct to market. Well, you originally thought you could do. Andreea: Yeah. Chad: And then you're like, "No, this can't be done. It's too complex. There's no way they'll be able to adopt it, use it, integrate it. We're gonna have to do it through a partner." Andreea: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And again, it took us a minute to figure that out, but when we had the right people in the room, we knew when we had product people in the room and they had a business case because we were a deep integration, it wasn't just a thing that you would, I don't know, buy separately. So you had to have a business case of why would you use this third party thing and plug it into your engine and so it was definitely a learning curve because we, again, did not know the industry. Chad: How about your partnership with Microsoft, how did that help? Did it help? Was it more a fanfare and PR or did it really help you and the team? Andreea: It was PR to some extent. But we did get great exposure, great intros. The team in Dublin was super, super helpful to us. So they were willing to do anything and everything. They were like, "Okay, well, we can go to Europe and we'll get a bunch of HR professionals or TA professionals together and we can do these round tables and you can, I don't know, we can take you into Brussels and we can sell to government," and whatever. Everything was a lot bigger that we could... Joel: Ooh, Brussels. Andreea: I mean, you're open site, so these are the things that you could do. Joel: So you were a newbie to the industry, now you're a veteran. Andreea: Oh God. Joel: What does recruiting look like in five years? And do we need recruiters in five years? Andreea: Hi, we repeat it, come on. [laughter] Andreea: You're not replaced. It's like every year something is replacing, or every minute. Chad: That is the answer I love to hear. "Oh, come on." [laughter] Andreea: Yeah, we're not replacing people and jobs. Joel: "Come on you fucker, what are you talking about. What's wrong with you." [laughter] Chad: "Give me my lucky charms." Joel: "Fucker." [laughter] Andreea: Fuck off. [laughter] Joel: I got nothing. Chad: Oh yeah. I think we can wrap. Joel: Yeah. I think you... Unless you wanna answer that question. Andreea: Look, it'll be more of the same but more automated. Maybe some a bit more intelligence in parts and maybe equally dumb in others. Joel: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Andreea: Oh yeah. Joel: Andreea Wade, everybody. Chad: Yes. Death Match winner. Joel: She is the VP of Product Strategy, but more importantly, a former Chad and Cheese Death Match winner. Andreea, if our listeners wanna connect with you, where would you send them? Andreea: Probably LinkedIn, Twitter as well. But I'm different on Twitter. Joel: She's very active on Twitter. Chad: Yes. Joel: If you so choose. Chad: You gotta get on Twitter and then follow JustforZiggy. Andreea: Yeah. [laughter] Chad: JustforZiggy. Joel: That's right. Always a pleasure to talk to Andreea. And with that, Chad, another one is in the can. Chad: We out. Joel: There goes that surfing leprechaun. We out. [laughter] 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 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 trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Live from UNLEASH America in the Workhuman booth, Sean Christian, senior employer brand & recruitment strategist at Discount Tire, and former Air Force recruiter, joins Chad & Cheese for a lively discussion … like, two military dudes talkin' sh!t kinda lively. Aside from the Air Force vs. Army talk, Sean drops knowledge bombs around quality vs. quantity with job boards, how metrics are the only thing that matter and how to earn a seat at the table. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Chad: Live from the Workhuman booth at Unleash America in Vegas this year, Joel and I were able to sit down with some great practitioners and industry voices. Sit back and enjoy this exclusive episode, powered by our friends over at Workhuman. Answer the human need to be recognized, developed and celebrated at workhuman.com. 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: We're back everybody live from the Unleash America Conference. Chad: Workhuman. Joel: From the Workhuman booth. And... Chad: Damn. Joel: We welcome Sean Christian, senior employer brand and recruitment strategist, at Discount Tire. Also a Texan. Sean, welcome to the podcast. Sean Christian: Thank you. A longtime listener, first-time caller. I'm excited to be here. Joel: He loves the Christopher Walken... Sean Christian: I do. Joel: Ending. [laughter] Sean Christian: My wife and I were headed to the beach and, it got to the end. Normally after the show, I'm like I go on to the next one, but I just let it run, I was going through some rain, and then Mr. Walker. And I died laughing. [laughter] I go, that's got to be AI. It was super cool. Joel: Yeah. Chad: You gotta hear the newest one. It's Morgan Freeman. Sean Christian: I... Chad: Oh, yeah. Sean Christian: I've heard Morgan. Chad: Okay, good. Okay. [laughter] Sean Christian: And honestly, I went back to the second show because of the ending. But I got more great content and great ideas. Chad: Nice. Sean Christian: So, it brought me back. But then I got more for what it's worth. Joel: We appreciate that. [laughter] Joel: So, aside from having really good taste in podcasts... Sean Christian: Yeah. Chad: Of course. Joel: What should listeners know about you? Give us a high-level view. Sean Christian: I'm a patriot. I'm a veteran. I love our country. A 21-year Air Force Vet. Last 11 years in my Air Force career, I was in recruiting, ended my career at Air Force Headquarters Marketing and Advertising. I had the best job in the Air Force. Chad: Holy shit. Marketing and Advertising? Now the Army has the grandest budget when it comes to marketing right. Air Force can't be that far... Well maybe that far behind but still, it's a big budget. So you guys, there must have been a lot of playing around. Sean Christian: Yeah. The good thing is I had, and I can't speak for everybody, I had phenomenal leadership. Chad: Okay. Sean Christian: And I think without proper leadership, you're doomed to fail. Leadership is key to any type of industry that you're in. And my leadership saw that I was intrinsically passionate about being a recruiter, and not just being a recruiter, but supporting recruiters... Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: And supporting what the Air Force provided me and my family. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: I'd be face down in a pool somewhere, hanging out with my buddies from high school if I didn't join the military. Chad: Same here. Sean Christian: True story. 6 weeks before I left, my dad was on his deathbed with leukemia. Who's still alive by the way. I got popped for drug paraphernalia. It was a going away party for me. And I went to jail, and it could have gotten a lot worse. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: And the fact that my dad was literally dying. And my dad said, "Son join the military 'cause I'm gonna be dead in six weeks." And then I had a judge who was partial to my situation. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: Dropped all the charges. I didn't lose my job. Today's climate your job is gone. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: You're out. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: But by the grace of God they let me ship, and I'm still good friends with my recruiter. And I valued the relationship that I had with my recruiter. And this was 21 years ago. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: I was 18 years old and I remembered that. Chad: So to throw a quick curve ball. Let's talk about leadership real quick because the military, when you get promoted, you are forced to go to leadership school or you get demoted right. I've had to go through the ranks. I've been through several leadership schools. On the corporate side that doesn't happen. So we don't really have seasoned leaders. We have all of these really good doers who now are slammed into a management position told to lead, and they have no clue how to lead. Sean Christian: Right. Chad: How do we change that kind of culture on the corporate side? And it might be a hard question because you're just coming out of the military. Sean Christian: It's easy, ownership. Start with ownership. If you can't own the problem, it doesn't matter if it's your problem or not. Chad: Right. Sean Christian: If y'all work for me and there's a mistake, who owns the problem? Me. Joel: Yeah. Sean Christian: I own the problem. Chad: Right. Yes. Sean Christian: So it starts with ownership. The Chief Wright was the chief Master in the Air Force. I'm not gonna quote the years, but he would always say, fail forward. There's a lot of things he said that I didn't like. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: But I resonated with that. We have got to, create a culture of... There's a probably a better way to say this. Create a culture of failure. Meaning it's okay to fail. Chad: Well understanding... Sean Christian: Right. Chad: Failure is a path to success. Joel: Yeah. Sean Christian: Absolutely. Chad: That's what... I think we've lost that if we've ever had it at all. Sean Christian: And we have to learn to trust. We have to learn to be okay with things not... It's not always gonna be perfect. Chad: Nope. Sean Christian: Because we're human. Joel: Yeah. Sean Christian: We just we... I think we said there's nothing wrong with high expectations, but what's wrong is when we, I don't know, put our teammates down and we point fingers. Chad: There's a big difference between military where we are all focused to be a team. Because if we don't lean on each other... Joel: People die. Chad: In corporate America, it is all rugged individualism. You're all for yourself. So when we talk about team, when we talk about family, that's really it feels like bullshit, like bullshit narrative. And I only know that and feel that because I have 20 plus years of military experience too, right. I get where you're coming from. The problem is this seems like a huge problem across all industries, big companies, small companies. It's easy to say, take ownership, but how do we systemically change something like that? Sean Christian: Yeah. That's the question, right? And I don't know if there is an answer. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: I think it starts individually with ourselves. And, no one is dying today. Look where we are. We're in Las Vegas. Chad: Yeah. Depends on how much weed Joel smokes later. But yeah. [laughter] Joel: Can that kill you? Chad: I don't think it can. Joel: I'm scared now. Sean Christian: I don't think it can. Chad: I don't think it can. Joel: I'm a little scared now. Chad: I don't think it can. Sean Christian: But everyone just needs to calm down. Right. Just chill out. If you're listening, calm down. Joel: Speaking of pot, everybody just chill the hell out. Sean Christian: Yeah. Chill out. Chad: Yeah. That's like one of my favorite statements to anybody that I'm talking to that is freaking out. Or questions. Did anybody die to put things just in perspective. Did you fuck up? Yeah. Are you gonna learn from it? Let's hope so. Okay. Sean Christian: But in the moment it's hard. I still get worked up. Chad: Oh, yeah. Sean Christian: I'm a driven, fiery guy. And if things don't go the way I want them to because I have such high standards. My wife is like, "Dude, calm down man." Chad: Well, you also have expectations too. And that's one of the things that we do is we tune ourselves with our own expectations and then it doesn't work out that way. It might still be a good outcome, but it didn't happen the way that we wanted it to happen. Sean Christian: Yeah. And that's healthy, I think. But it's how we react to that. Is when you're stressed... Chad: Agree. Sean Christian: And you don't meet your own personal expectations. Don't take it out on your team. Don't take it out on your peers. Kind of step back, reset, chill out. Do whatever it is that you do. Chad: Yeah. If you're in a state that allows it like Vegas, go ahead and take a quick one hitter. Joel: I hate to interrupt two military guys going off on a conversation without me. But I'm gonna pivot back to the military 'cause I've always been fascinated. And you're a top of funnel guy. You're a marketing, advertising, sales guy. The military is trying to convince people to come to an organization where they might die or have to kill other people, which to me is a hard thing to sell. Now let's go a layer deeper. You're in the Air force, you're selling against the army, the Marines and everyone else. Talk about internally how those strategy sessions go when you talk about how do we get a kid that comes in and says, I'm thinking about the army and let's get them into the Air Force. Sean Christian: Okay. Fair. Well, let's set one thing straight. Chad: Much easier. Sean Christian: I never had to compete with the Army, the Navy or the Marines. But... Chad: Was it Coast Guard, I mean who was... Sean Christian: Do they still exist? I'm sorry Coasties... They're legit. I love those guys. Chad: They're in Space Force. Yes. Sean Christian: Hey, the Space Force. And that's a whole nother story. I was there when that whole thing happened. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. Chad: Okay. Okay. Sean Christian: But... Chad: We will get some beers and talk about that one. Sean Christian: Oh yeah. It's a funny story, but I never felt like I had to sell a kid. Even though I'm a sales guy. At the end of the day, I love sales. I love the Air Force. And when you're passionate about the service or the product or the company that you represent, it's not hard to show passion. You gotta be passionate about the product or the company that you work for. Joel: So when people walk through that door, they pretty much were 90% I'm going to join the Air Force. Sean Christian: No, sometimes you'd have mom and dad drag them in or sometimes they were just interested. It's hard to tell. That's a great psychology question is like, where are they in their minds sitting in their journey of figuring out what they want to do with their life. Chad: Well, we know where you were because you just got popped from paraphernalia. I just wanted to get the fuck outta the house. I wanted to be on my own, do my own thing. Got sick and tired of mom and dad telling me what to do all the time. The only way, because I grew up poor, was having Uncle Sam send me off to strange places wherever he wanted to send me. Joel: But did you go to each branch and say, what can you do for me? Chad: I did not because my family had really had been in the Army. Only in the Army. I had one grandpa who had been in the Navy, but everybody else was in the Army. So that was just normal. I wish I would've actually shopped them because probably I might have gone into the Air Force. That's where I push everybody today. [laughter] Love the army. Don't get me wrong, but... Joel: Is that your experience? Sean Christian: Well, so I knew I was gonna join the military as a young kid. My grandfather was Air Force. My father was Army. I knew, like my brother, he was chasing that American dream. Big house, white picket fence. Me, not so much. I was kind of a rebel. Got in some trouble, chased the girls. I had no desire to go to college or study, I didn't wanna study. And the military and the Air Force was just... I don't know, it was like a calling. Like I just knew it's where I wanted to be and... Joel: But was it the ads? Was it the sexy planes? Chad: Dude, I tell you what though. Teenage kids with a bunch of testosterone seeing those ads. Oh yeah, that'll get you going. That's it. I think for me, you just want that challenge and you want to be able to do something different. Sean Christian: Yeah. You look around 9/11, that was probably one of the best, years after 9/11, the best recruiting time other than when Top Gun first came out. [laughter] So that time, that period, I think Americans or anyone really, you see something that you value and when you see your country get attacked, something inside of you changes. And you just don't know how to shut it off. You just have to follow that drive. And you walk into the recruiter's office and you say, what do I do? How do I get there? But not everybody's, just because you want to join the military doesn't mean you're gonna get qualified. It's easier to get into college than it is in the Air Force. We discriminate left and right. Height, weight, education, we run your credit. If your debt to income ratio doesn't look pretty more than 30%, you're not coming in... Joel: Wow. Sean Christian: Without a payment plan. Without something to show. Chad: In the Army, depending on if we're hitting our goals or not. It could be waiver city where it's like, oh yeah... Joel: It could be a curve that's... Chad: These usually would disqualify you. But because of today in our special plan. Joel: But today. Chad: Today, only. Sean Christian: Recently, within the last 10 years, I think it's safe to say we just changed our tattoo policy. So you couldn't have any tattoos above the collar bone. The Marine Corps was really strict on tattoos, especially around the wrist. We were a little bit more relaxed, but our general was like, what does tattoos have to do with service and commitment? Like we were dequeuing people left and right. That just could do things that most humans could not do. But yet we were disqualifying them because they had a tattoo. Chad: Oh, yeah. Sean Christian: It was the silliest thing ever. So our general was cool as shit said, "Am I the general or what... " Nicks, no more tattoo issues. [laughter] Joel: Nice. So we know from talking in the green room, that you're a numbers guy. Sean Christian: Yeah. Joel: And with all these restrictions, it sounds like pretty rigid. Let's go into the recruiting side of that. Where does tracking come in for you with advertising, who you choose to do business with? What kind of metrics do they have to show you? Talk about ROI. Sean Christian: Yeah. That's a broad question, right. So if it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense. Joel: Amen. Sean Christian: You've gotta follow the money and it's important... Relationships are important to me. If a vendor can't come to me and say, "Hey, we dropped the ball and this is how we're gonna fix it," I don't wanna do business with those type of vendors. It's a relationship. On our renewals or when we are revisiting last year's activations... Joel: Yep. Sean Christian: They need to show the ROI. They need to show, Hey, you spent X amount of dollars, and this is what we see on our metrics. If they can't show me metrics, then it's not working. Chad: Let me ask you a question though. Companies spend more on recruitment marketing than they do on their tech stack, but yet they're still, they're pulling the exact same candidates in over and over and over and they're not using their database first. What's your experience behind that? And if you were in marketing, which you were, you'd get fired for not doing that. But in HR and TA we don't do it. We don't use the leads that are already in our system. Why is that? Sean Christian: Well, let's talk about leads for a second. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: I see a lot of pitch decks. I see we can increase applicant generation by 30%. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: That's the wrong language to speak to me. Is that a 80-year-old? It's a lead. Chad: Yeah. Is it a qualified lead? Sean Christian: What's the qualified lead? Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: I'm not impressed by you can generate a thousand leads. I can generate a thousand leads. If I work hard enough and leverage the tools that are around me. And go out and build relationships and ask for referrals. We know that's the number one generator, of leads is just asking someone, do you know anyone else that's interested in X? So, don't tell me about you're gonna increase lead gen. I want you to increase my applicant to hire ratio because that's a quality lead. Or, my retention, help me focus on retention. Chad: Yeah. I get that. But on the talent acquisition side of the house, fit is important. Sean Christian: Yeah. Chad: No question. But a lot of that has to do with their experience after they've been hired. So to ask somebody on the front end to worry about your backend, that's unfair. Is it not? Sean Christian: I don't know. Is it fair to go to a restaurant and eat the food and then get food poisoning? That's the backend. [laughter] Chad: That's not, [chuckle] the same thing. Sean Christian: But it's the backend, right? [laughter] Chad: If you got food poisoning, that's where it would be coming out. Yes. Sean Christian: Right. That's a garbage food. That's a garbage meal. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. That's in and out garbage. Sean Christian: In and out garbage. I think that's fair to look at it from that perspective. Chad: I know but the thing is though, when somebody comes in as an employee and you bring them in, you've hired them, there's an after... Sean Christian: There is. Chad: That after, which doesn't happen in a meal other than with your body, is up to you and your experience. Sean Christian: Yes. Chad: And you providing a great experience for those employees. Sean Christian: Correct. There is a shared responsibility there. Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: Goes back to leadership. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: We can all lead the horse to the trough. Can't make it drink. You can bring me someone on, I can onboard them, I can properly get them up to speed, set good expectations. But if I don't follow through with training and leadership and mentorship... Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: And giving them the tools to succeed, then you... Correct, I have failed that. So I guess the question is if you're a tech company, how do you fix that problem? How do you make sure that you're providing more quality leads, but then we, I have to do my part on the leadership side. So then that's the culture of the organization. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: So, it's important that the vendor culture matches with their customer's culture because that way you can speak the same language. Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: So I get, again, I get pitch decks to say we can increase your hire ratio. Well, then I'm held to that standard when I present that to my leadership. Joel: Yeah. Interesting. Sean Christian: And that's super challenging for me. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: So I don't have a lead gen problem. I want quality people. Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: To join. I don't know if that answers your question or not, other than the food poisoning part. But... [laughter] Joel: Are vendors dropping the ball on providing the metrics that buyers need? Sean Christian: Yeah. That's a subjective question. Maybe. Joel: Yeah. Sean Christian: And maybe I'm not setting the expectations on what I expect from those calls. And so I could probably own a little bit of that. In the past, not all calls are gonna go perfect. Has that happened? Yes. But, when I've asked for stuff, do they come back and give it to me? Yeah, they do. But my mentality is I want you to have your stuff ready, without me asking. Chad: Have your shit together kids. Sean Christian: Have it together. Joel: So what sources, I think you mentioned referrals. What works best for you in terms of getting those qualified leads through the door? Sean Christian: So I'm a belly to belly guy. I believe meeting your customers where they are, and we're all fighting for attention on social media. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: And you can't build relationships. You can build it through to a certain point on a Instagram or a TikTok post or any type of paid advertising. Can I get in front of them? Yes. And we all know you pay to play, the person who's gonna pay the most in advertising is gonna get their message across. Chad: Yeah. Sean Christian: But, if I can leverage the social ads with relationships with X activating at an event, I love sports marketing. I love sports marketing, why? Because we're all passionate about sports. And if I can meet them in a place where they're already passionate and then that experience is great, now they're associating with that great positive experience with my brand. And now I can peel back that onion, and really understand what that makes that person tick. Chad: That's a very military marketing way. Joel: Yeah. Chad: As you take a look at NASCAR, NFL, all those things, because you're getting something that somebody's incredibly passionate about and you're tying it to your brand. Joel: So this isn't a metaphor, this is literally you're sponsoring NASCAR events, football games, or was it a metaphor? [chuckle] Sean Christian: No, when I was in the Air Force, I was the program manager. Joel: Okay. Sean Christian: And I now granted, I got a good buddy, he'd always gimme a hard time. He's like, Sean, how many leads you get at NASCAR? Is it... NASCAR's [chuckle] not a great example of lead gen for the Air Force because, it was super low. But what it did is it create, and it comes back to recruitment marketing, and EVP is it created a platform for us to communicate who we were as an organization, not just a war fighting military branch. But who we were as an organization that can help you get from point A to point B, whether it be financial, education, grow your family, job security, all those other things. The media does a great job of associating the military with wars and combat and deaths and depression. But they've missed the mark on all the great things that it can do. And I just leverage sports marketing to share that story. Now with sports marketing, what I also do is I look at the lead, the registrant to lead ratio because some sporting events are more propensed to produce the target audience that an organization may be looking for. So, NASCAR with it being so broad. You've got a 2-year-old to a 9-year-old, there. Sean Christian: It's hard to pinpoint your target audience there. But let's say like formula drift, gearheads, younger generation, tech-savvy. Now that's a very high propense for... Chad: What about... Sean Christian: For someone going into the automotive industry? Chad: E-Sports. Sean Christian: E-Sports? Chad: Yeah. Joel: That's exactly what I was thinking. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. E-Sports. You said belly-to-belly which I thought was an insult at first, but I realized that it's not now. Sean Christian: No, it's not. Joel: You're a face-to-face high-touch guy in a world that's going more automation, less face-to-face, are you willing to accept that future or are you going to fight back against that? Sean Christian: I'm gonna accept it because I'm gonna leverage all those other tools to put me in a better position to create relationships. I'm gonna leverage AI, I'm gonna leverage these other... 'Cause If I fight it, then I'm screwed. It's just gonna make me sour. I need to pivot and be smart. And I'm gonna out hustle my competition. And there's a lot of recruiters out there that post and pray, post and just forget about it. They don't follow up. I'm a big believer in CRMs and helping you in the sales funnel. Recruiting is sales. You've gotta take that applicant through that journey and make sure that they understand the steps. Correct? Chad: Yes. Sean Christian: And if I can go to any event and build the relationship with little Johnny, shake his hand, meet mom, meet dad, meet girlfriend or whoever, and then I'm gonna call Johnny three days later. "Hey Johnny, it was great to meet you at NASCAR. Let me know if you ever had any questions about these opportunities, but it was great to meet you and your family". I never hear from Johnny. I called Johnny two weeks later. "Hey Johnny, did you check that race out last week? It was awesome. It's badass. Did you even watch the race?" Whatever, nothing. Four weeks later called Johnny. "Johnny, I'm gonna be in your neighborhood. I'm going... Joel: Johnny... Sean Christian: And guess what? We all know the average touches on a sale between the eighth and 12th contact is where you're gonna find that sale. And AI doesn't think like a human because we're emotional. So I'm gonna leverage the AI to give me the research, the market research on maybe the demographics in the city or what other organizations are going on in that city. So I'm gonna leverage those tools, but it's just gonna make me a better face-to-face, belly-to-belly recruiter because I bring it all onto one table. Joel: Are you bullish on job fairs? Sean Christian: Depending on the fair. Joel: Okay. Sean Christian: And it depends on how you activate. You can't sit behind the table. And I've walked around here, and if I see a vendor sitting on their chair behind their desk, I'm not gonna go up to him. So you can take some recruiters to an event, a great event, and they can sit on their butt for two hours and they'll walk out of there and say the event sucked. "No, you sucked." [laughter] Joel: How about virtual job fairs? Sean Christian: Those are interesting. I've been in one and I just sat there and waited for people to come into the booth. Chad: You couldn't get out in front of the table? Sean Christian: I couldn't get in front of the table. But we still got some leads out of it. Chad: Okay. Sean Christian: Now we were, that was more on the corporate side and I didn't... Chad: That's more scale 'cause they're more actually being able to attend. Sean Christian: Even when I was a job seeker, when I first retired from the Air Force, I attended one. And from a applicant perspective, I wasn't really impressed again, because I believe in the relationship. I can't look at the recruiter eye to eye, and how do I know they're not blowing smoke 'cause we all know Army recruiters, they lie all the time. [laughter] Chad: Oh, if anybody knows that it's an Army Drill Sergeant. [laughter] Joel: Yeah, right after podcasters, I think. So you're here at the show, we're in the expo hall. Any companies that have caught your attention? Any companies or businesses that you want to visit while you're here? Sean Christian: I'm just trying to take it all in. This is my first HR/Recruiting convention that I've been to since I've retired. I'm just looking to see what does the market look like? Who are the vendors? I just wanna be smarter. I wanna be better in my craft. Chad: So talk to me about how you think as you're a belly-to-belly guy ChatGPT and all the different generative AIs that are out there are going to change, and how rapid you think it's gonna change this industry? Sean Christian: Oh, it's already changed the industry rapidly. I heard about it December or November when it first really went mainstream. Actually it wasn't even mainstream at that point. It's... But look at it from December to now, all these companies are just popping out left and right. I love it because I'm not a graphic designer. I'm not... It's hard for me to get creativity, but what I think of AI, OpenAI is like a little assistant. Joel: Yeah. Sean Christian: I say, "Hey, here are my thoughts." Whether they make sense when I write them out with my misspelled words. I go clean this up and help me create a better prompt to ask you so I can get a better output. So I just use it to help me idea generation. When we... So I'm remote and sometimes it's hard to have some idea conversation when your team is across the country. So I go to ChatGPT and I say, "Hey, you're a marketing, you're the CMO of an X company and I want to influence this target audience in this industry. Give me 10 ways to do that." Joel: And clearly that frees your time up for more of those belly-belly relations. Chad: I love the belly-bellies. [overlapping conversation] Joel: That is Sean Christian, everybody. Chad: Yes. Joel: Sean, for those that want to connect with you, where would you send them? Sean Christian: LinkedIn, hit me up Sean P. Christian, @SeanPaul. Sean Paul the rapper his name. I was first. Chad: I see the resemblance. Yeah. Sean Christian: Yeah. Mine was first. But Sean P. Christian. I'd love to connect with you. I'd love to hear from you. I wanna hear your wins. If you reach out to me, I wanna hear your wins and how you're changing the game. That's what I want to hear. Joel: Belly-to-belly. Sean Christian: Belly-to-belly. Chad: That's a win. Joel: [laughter] That's a wrap. We out. Chad: We out. Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called the Podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant! We talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible! And not one word about cheese, 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.

Things have been pretty quiet on the unicorn front lately, but thanks to ChatGPT and Nvidia, that’s about to change, and it will undoubtedly impact the recruitment space. The boys discuss. The US Supreme Court struck down Affirmative Action, and it too will undoubtedly impact recruiting. The boys discuss. Stepstone’s CEO stepped in "it" this week, and they’re more than a little defensive about their own DEI efforts. Again, discuss. Plus, Beyond.com insight, flying cars and spider humans. Oh, and full English breakfasts. What’s up with the baked beans anyway? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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: Yeah, alcohol, because no good story ever started with having a salad. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Madchester Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad. Meet George Jetson Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, the Unicorn parade is just starting, Stepstone gets sensitive, and flying cars are finally here or not. Let's do this. [laughter] Chad: Welcome to England. Joel: The Cheesmans have landed. Can you explain to me how showers work in Europe? Two knobs, different like the overhead. Chad: It's different everywhere though. It's different everywhere. Joel: Yeah, exactly. Chad: It's like in the US, you go in, you turn on the thing, you pull the thing, and you're done. And everybody has the same setup, but that's not the case throughout Europe. So you go to Ireland, or you go to England, or you go to... It's all different. So yeah, you take probably about at least the first 10 minutes of your first shower figuring it out, and then the next time remembering how to fucking use the thing. Joel: The other thing is no free refills on sodas. That's a killer. Chad: Yeah, but that's good. That's how you keep obesity down. Joel: Cole Cheesman likes his Coca-Colas. Chad: I'm sure he does, I'm sure he does. Joel: That the concept of no free refills is very hard for him to understand 'cause it's an American pastime, like free refills. Chad: It is, yeah. Joel: Like just load it up. But anyway, other than that, having a great time in Europe. Flew into Manchester. If you've never been, beautiful city, really kinda gritty. Great music scene, great art scene. Chad: Oasis time, yeah. Joel: Oasis time, Joy Division. We went out in the... If you don't know the story of Joy Division or the band, the... Chad: Check it out. Joel: '70s band into the early '80s, lead singer committed suicide. Depressing story, depressing band, but great music. We went out to see his grave, which was kind of a nice little trip. It was raining and dreary, which was appropriate. Chad: They'll figure. Joel: Came back. We're in Liverpool now. It's beautiful weather. Had some scouse last night, which is the Liverpudlians are called scousers, in case anybody didn't know. And that's their like meal. Chad: Okay. Joel: It's a lamb stew with some cabbage, which is very British. But, yeah, enjoying our time and headed to London today, and we'll see you tomorrow, Thursday breakfast. Chad: Yes, yes. So it's time for some shout-outs. We're gonna keep it here in England, and I've got a theme. We're gonna go with the English breakfast shout-out. First English breakfast shout-out goes to Gemma Jones, Darren, and Fred, her son, for being amazing hosts in Stanford this week. Stanford is a gorgeous and seemingly rich little village about an hour north of Knebworth. It's an old town, beauty, amazing pubs, boutique, hotels, restaurants, and really, really worth a visit. It was a blast. And an honorable mention goes to Stephen and Sarah Anderson from Crouton for spending time with Julie and me as well, doing a little dinner time. But shout-out to old world adorable English towns. Alright, alright, alright. Joel: Why does it always seem when you meet up with Crouton, you're having meals? I don't know if it's the company name. Do you always have a salad when you have dinner with Crouton? Chad: Always have alcohol. That's for fucking... [overlapping conversation] Joel: Were there croutons in the salad is the question. Chad: No, there was no salad having, and let me tell you, uh. Joel: Yeah, yeah. You know, I love me some good full English breakfasts. Chad: Oh, God. Joel: Cole got his first one, official one... Chad: God. Joel: This week. He was a little shy on the blood sausage, a little shy on the blood sausage. But other than that, we've had a really good meal quest, if you will, while we've been here. Chad: I think blood sausage, there's just the marketing behind it. They need to change the name, and then you'll get better. But I did have English breakfast once while I was here. And Darren was like, "Did you get your English breakfast?" I said, "I did". He's like, "Did you like it?" I said, "I did not". I cannot stand an English breakfast. It is too greasy. Baked beans go with my hot dogs on 4th of July, right? It's just none of that makes fucking sense to me. Chad: The baked beans are interesting. I don't know where that came in. Like, who thought, let's throw some beans in here. That sounds really good, that sounds really good. Chad: Some baked beans. Joel: Yes, yes. Love us some breakfast, for sure. All right. I'm gonna up you one on that. I have another LinkedIn poll, Chad. Chad: Oh, good God, not another poll. You're always on the poll, man. Joel: A good LinkedIn poll like I do. So if you missed it, SHRM had ex-president Bill Clinton keynote their conference a few weeks ago. Now if you don't know the history of Bill Clinton, certain intern named Monica Lewinsky that he had relations with and kind of an HR nightmare, if you will, in the making. So to me, it's kinda odd that SHRM would choose him to be a keynote, although he is a president. I asked my LinkedIn community what they thought about SHRM having Bill Clinton speak. Almost 300 votes came in. 54 said yes, SHRM fucked up and made a bad decision. The rest of them saying, it's all good. Nothing to see here. A lot of women were on the yes, that was a bad decision side more so than men. But, yeah, I thought that was interesting that they would choose that. And most people thought it was a mistake, although it was pretty close. Chad: Yeah. And that's HR, right? We're so incredibly risk averse. How do we learn from our past? We have to dig into it, and we're so afraid to dig into all of the risks and all the fuck ups that we've had before. That's the only way we get better, guys. That's the only... And who fucked up more than anybody? We don't need to get past that from an HR intern standpoint. It was Bill Clinton. If we sit around on our hands being afraid, we're not gonna go anywhere. And I'm just sick and tired of everybody who's saying, "Well, he represents X, Y, and Z." Well, let's hear the fucking story and learn from that shit. That was one of the reasons why I didn't think it was a bad idea. Joel: You love you some Johnny, you love you some Johnny. Chad: Yeah, Johnnie Taylor. Joel: Johnny Taylor and Chad, best buddies, best buddies. Chad: No, he can fuck off. Anyway, continuing my English breakfast shout-out, we're gonna shout-out to Jim, Thomas and Rob over at Talent Nexus. God, I love those guys. Thanks for having us out on the town in London last night. We had some drinks, played some shuffle board. The best part of the night was watching the Aussies get under the English skin. Lauren and Craig from Todd Pod, they came out with us. And it was hilarious because I thought Americans could get under the Brits' skin. Not even close. Aussies have it, and I think it might have to do with the Australians are beating the British in cricket, The Ashes right now. It's a little back and forth, but yeah, it is fucking hilarious. So we had a great time. Thanks Talent Nexus, and also thanks to to Craig and Lauren for coming out with us last night. Joel: Yeah, I was on... I was in an internet wormhole recently, and apparently, there's some kind of new spider in Australia that's red. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: And can kill people. Australia is crazy. Chad: Imagine that. Joel: And the other thing is, there's a jellyfish that is from Australia that has ended up in the Gulf of Mexico or something. It's killing all of them. Like Australia is coming to kill everybody. Australia is killing everybody and I'm scared to death that they're here in London. Chad: Don't worry about the robots. It's the Aussies. Joel: No, no. It scares the hell out of me. Let's get sexier with the shout-outs. Chad: Okay. Joel: Marcy Mall and Joe Perry. No, not Aerosmith, Joe Perry. Chad: Oh damn. Joel: We've seen in Chad and Cheese T-shirts this week, and I think they look fine. Apparently, the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team fared well when a Chad and Cheese t-shirt showed up in the stadium. So a coincidence, I don't know, but I'm down... Chad: I don't think so. Joel: For all the Chad and Cheese love, Chad. Cole Cheeseman has a bag of t-shirts. We're gonna be going out at RecFest. I expect to see a lot of sexy from the British Isles next week when everyone is sporting Chad and Cheese t-shirts. Chad: And if you're not at RecFest, how do you get that free t-shirt? Joel: You gotta go to our website, Chad. You gotta go to chadcheese.com. Click the free link. Give us your information. My 13-year-old is managing the distribution, so don't freak out if you don't get it like the week of... But eventually, your shirt, hopefully... Chad: Stop. Joel: God willing, post office willing, will get to you at some point. But you can't win if you don't play chadcheese.com, click the free link. And not just t-shirts, Chad. From our friends at JobGet... Chad: What? What? Joel: We're giving away beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, a bottle of bourbon from each of us. We each pick a selection, we send it to the winner. That's from our buddies at Textkernel. And if it's your birthday, Chad, you could win a bottle of rum from our friends at Plum. What are you waiting for? Head out to chadcheese.com and get some shit. Chad: You keep forgetting the getaway. We have a $250 gift card Airbnb giveaway. That's right, kids. What do you do? You get out of the weeds, you go off to some far, maybe mountains, maybe the ocean abode. HR is giving away once a month $250 Airbnb card. So you can get the hell out, you can enjoy yourself, you can let your hair down if you have any. And yeah, again, chadcheese.com. Click on the free link, put your information in. Joel: Oh, wait till you see Cole Cheeseman's hair, Chad. Chad: Oh, I've seen those luxurious locks. Joel: It's magnificent. Yeah. The girls are gonna be jealous, the girls are gonna be jealous, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. Well, that sounds good. All right. Well, you said birthdays? Chad: Really can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. Joel: I can. Chad: I can feel it all the way down in my plum. Joel: All right, guys. Another year around the sun for some of our fans. Celebrating a birthday this week, Lee Cuevas, Claire Hoveland. That might be Holland. I don't know. Maybe it was misspelled. Chad Matson, Megan Maker, Deb Lindsay, Joshua Tarant Senzy, Tommy Menzer, Brock Magnus, Laura Turner, Andrew Clark, Josh Ramsey, and Matt, that British guy, Alder are all celebrating another trip around the sun. You might have a bottle of rum from our friends at Plum coming to you, but either way... Speaker 4: Happy birthday. Joel: Happy birthday. Chad: Brock Magnus, the guy's name is Brock Magnus. How more of fucking testosterone? You just give the guy the name, and he's automatically like 6'4 and 250 pounds of muscle. Joel: He was born in an octagon, apparently. That's the word. He was born in an octagon with a bottle of whiskey from what I understand. Chad: Oh, kids, we've got events, events, events, events. Tomorrow is RecFest. You're gonna be hearing this after RecFest. We're on the disrupt stage in one of the big top tents, but that's not the story because guess what, if you didn't go, that sucks for you, FoMO. But you couldn't get in anyway. You know why? Because it was sold out. In Nashville in the United States, you've got a chance. You got a chance to come see us. I was talking to Jamie actually this morning, and he said there are American companies buying 20 tickets at a clip. Why 20 tickets you might be asking? Well, it's all about the all hands meeting. That's right. Bringing the whole team in, learning, enjoying, bonding, doing all those things that teams should be doing. You can do that at RecFest. It's gonna be in September in America, the very first one in Nashville. Go to chadcheese.com, click on advance in the upper right hand corner, and we get... Listen to this kids. We have a discount code, we have a discount code, 50% off. Get the whole team there. We'd love to see you. Joel: And there's no team building like team building on Broadway over bourbon and some hot chicken, Chad. That's what I'm talking about. Chad: It's Amazing, amazing. Joel: That's what I'm talking about. Oh, it's a Unicorn stampede, Chad and I didn't download the sound bites. You might have to plug it in there 'cause we haven't heard it for so long for God's sake. Chad: I know, I know. Joel: Sorry. Here's some new San Francisco based AI startup, Inflection AI raised 1.3 billion. That's B from investors, including Microsoft, Nvidia, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates to develop its personal assistant called Pi. The funding brings their total raise to 1.5 billion, but wait, there's more, Chad. New York based Runway raised a 141 million extension to its series C funding round with support from Google, Nvidia, Salesforce ventures and others. Meanwhile, San Fran based startup Typeface secured a $100 million series B round led by Salesforce ventures. Runway focuses on AI image generation while Typeface aids in enterprise content creation. Chad, what's your take on the revival of the Unicorn? Chad: First off, I've gotta make sure that the housekeeping doesn't come in, so give me one second. Housekeeping, you want me to jerk you off? Joel: What kind of hotel is this? Chad: All right, so here's a quote. "Whoever wins the personal agent, that's the big thing because you will never go to a search site again, you will never go to a productivity site, you will never go to Amazon again." Bill Gates. Joel: Wow. Chad: Second one, Marc Andreessen says, "Every person will have an AI assistant coach, mentor, trainer, advisor, therapist." The big question is, what is next? Now I'm gonna say who whomever Nvidia is backing is the winner in my book. Nvidia's GPUs are the reason why AI has made such a huge leap, and I see them obviously having more than one horse in this race. But the big key here that I think through these three, Inflection, Runway and Typeface, is multimodal. And when you're talking about multimodal models, it's not just consuming text, but you're also consuming audio and video. So if you wanna contextualize the data, which is really what this is all about, you need all aspects of that data. So think about it. If you're reading something, you gain some context. If you're listening to it, then you gain more context than reading, listening than watching. I mean, you're just continually starting to understand how AI can learn. So we're getting past just the text aspect, and that to me is pretty exciting and scary at the same time. But the only way that you're going to get more information out of us as humans is to put a chip in our head. Joel: And if Elon has his way, we all will be chipped, if you will. Chad: God. Joel: I look at this from a sort of money perspective. Look, there's been a lot of money on the sidelines for a long time. We've been waiting for something to trigger the flow of investment, and thank God Nvidia hit a trillion. That has released the hounds, if you will. ChatGPT in coordination with Nvidia, a trillion dollar market gap. Money is gonna flow like wine in ancient Rome, Chad. I mean, this is probably gonna dwarf what we saw with remote work and the money that came into our space. Look, remember ChatGPT is less than a year old. People are just now developing, how do we figure this out? What companies do we start creating? And these companies are pitching investors, and these investors are seeing the money that these high profile companies and firms are giving to these macro AI companies. Joel: This thing is gonna flow down to us. HR tech where remote and deal and Oyster and Velocity Global, those guys were the big swinging dicks. The AI companies of the future are gonna be huge and we're gonna have a lot of fun talking about it. There are gonna be new businesses that we've never thought of created around this. I think the IPO market is gonna start opening up. I interviewed Fountain CEO recently. He disagrees. He thinks it's closed, the IPO market. Now he should know he's the CEO of a big value company. But I think we're gonna start seeing IPOs. There was a food IPO recently. A restaurant came and was huge, right? So if people are ready to spend money and invest in new food companies and restaurants, wait till the next awesome tech company comes public like a Pi, which I'm hearing more and more about. Joel: So this is gonna be great for us to talk about. Our industry is gonna change again. This is, to me, very exciting and it's gonna impact us in a big way. I mean, one of these companies we talked about talks about content creation for enterprises that's gonna spill over to employment in my opinion. Chad: Oh easily. Joel: It's gonna be very exciting. Yeah. This is gonna be really, really huge. There's gonna be a lot of money coming in at the end of this year and going into '24. Chad: And then tech is gonna be incredibly fluid much more than it ever has been, right? So we're gonna be able to use it from sector to sector, segment to segment, industry to industry. The big difference are these awesome domain players like the paradoxes or talk pushes or what have you been using conversational AI that are specific to a domain. That's information that these big... These large language models can't get to, but when they do, it's gonna be incredibly fluid. I mean, it's just going to be from one to the next, whether you're asking a question about the size of a TV and the actual pixels, or the HD versus 4UK or what have you, and then start talking about an application process. It's gonna be able to be incredibly fluid. And to me, that is very exciting. It's scary and exciting at the same time. Joel: The only thing more fun will be talking about the crashing and burning of a lot of these companies in 2025, 2026. Speaker 4: 60% of the time, it works every time. Chad: Every time. Joel: All right, Chad. Well, in case you missed it, the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action last week citing a violation of the 14th Amendment. Opponents say the decision will have significant implications for higher education and the workplace. Want more insight? Just go ahead and google it. There are greater sources than us to talk about this or inform you of it, but me thinks the old White guys have won again. Chad, what are your thoughts? Chad: You don't say. The US Supreme Court has once again thrust us back in the 1960s with this. It's a classist and a racist ruling and I'll go through with that. Do legacy students receive a leg up and the ability to pass through the admissions process? Are most legacy students throughout America, Black or White or of color? "A study on Harvard finds 43% of White students are legacy." 43% legacy athletes, or they're related to donors are part of staff." That number drops dramatically from Black, Latino, and Asian. They clumped them all together at 16%. We're not going one by one, but we're saying all together, 16%, which is fucking crazy. Here's the kicker, 75% of those White students would not have been admitted. They would've been rejected because they wouldn't have met the standards. That is racism at its best, kids. Chad: So this has major implications for American businesses who need to build a diverse workforce. If less kids of color are admitted into institutions, it'll be even harder. So now the burden shifts from academia to corporate America. And don't get me wrong, I'm not shedding a tear for corporate America here, kids, because they are the major benefactor of an employee's work. But let me break this ruling down for you in areas that makes sense and that actually is breaking or has broken the system. System breaker number one, once upon a time, companies were focused on their people as much as their profits because the system provided benefit to embrace that mindset, tax breaks. Once we took that incentive away, companies started losing focus and keeping employees trained and happy rather than it shifted to keeping shareholders happy. Chad: That broke the system. System breaker number two, US colleges and universities' revenue in 2022, whew, $576.2 billion, over half a trillion dollars. So this isn't about the struggling White kid that can't get into a school because their slot was taken by a kid of color. This is about the moneymaking machine we call academia. And why does Harvard have a class size, a median class size of 12 in an endowment of $53 billion? So academia has lost sight of purpose, educating and bettering the community they support. Corporate America's lost sight. That's broken. Now we're breaking the academia. We've broken academia as well and that's where we sit today. So employers, you're now going to have to take this burden on all by yourself because guess what? It's not up to academics anymore. Joel: Yeah. So when the story broke, you were in Europe, I was in the States, and every university in Indiana released a statement that basically said, "This isn't gonna impact our admissions. This isn't gonna change anything. We're still gonna be committed to diversity and, blah blah, blah." Right? Chad: We'll see. Joel: Purdue University, their statement was, "We will follow the law." That was it. [laughter] At least they're being honest and at least they're saying what everyone else is thinking, I'm frankly still digesting some of this and I've been traveling and whatnot. It's a huge story. I know a lot of people feel very strongly about it. It's interestingly... It was interestingly brought up by the Asian community for not being admitted in numbers that they feel that they should have been because of affirmative action. Joel: So it's not White people sort of striking this down or coming. And there's been like anti-affirmative action or reverse discrimination cases in the past. We know that California has done away with this since the mid '90s, and it has impacted admissions negatively. So there is some historical perspective on this, and you can go ahead out there and there's a lot of information on that. Now we've been talking about DEI falling off the radar of corporate America for weeks now. It was a huge moment about from '20 to '22, and it's falling off the radar. This is only going to throw it off the radar even more, right? Chad: Yes. Joel: This is more excuse to not focus on it, not spend money on it. So from that perspective, it's just a horrible thing that's probably gonna transpire to less diversity in companies, less diversity particularly in our industry, which we should be the shining example of which I think we'll talk about after the next break. Chad: Yes. Joel: To me, this underlines the importance of doing the work before college happens. We spend such an inordinate low number of dollars on childcare, on K through 12, on teacher salary. Chad: Things that matter. Joel: That's where a lot of the focus is. If we fix that shit, admissions will take care of itself because everyone will be on a more equal footing because of that. Until we start paying entry level like teachers a hundred grand and go up from there, nothing's gonna change. The other thing that I worry about is the perception as we know perception in many times is more strong... Is stronger than reality. And if low income diverse populations hear about this ruling, all they're gonna hear is no more affirmative action. If I hear that as a diverse person, lower income, whatever, I'm thinking, there's no chance I'm getting into Columbia. There's zero chance I'm getting into Northwestern, right? So I'm not even gonna apply. So to me, the perception of this by saying there's no more affirmative action, it tells the kid that thought he could get in because of it now won't even try, and to me that is a sad, sad development in this whole thing. Chad: We need to be able to fund universities, don't get me wrong, but they've turned into much like corporations focusing more on the shareholders or their donors than the actual communities that they serve. Same thing with employers. When we took the tax incentives away, they stopped really training and ensuring that their employees were moving up the ladder and staying with them because they understood that that just made sense. All that's gone out the windows because we're focused on one thing, the shareholder, right? The rich White dude, that's what we started to focus on. So the system's broken. I think we need to do that. There's no question. The front end with kids and childcare and all those things, that is a necessity, but we have to change the money quotient on this too. And on the Asian side of the house, this is exactly what the top level organizations want. They want a small group like the Asians. They're not even looking at the big machine. That makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Joel: Yeah. This issue obviously is just beginning, but our show is middle through people. Chad: Midway. Joel: Let's take a quick break and we'll talk some industry stuff. If you don't think we talk about Stepstone enough, well, today is your lucky day, everybody. Chad, you had an interesting back and forth with the Dusseldorf, Germany-based company this week. What's going on? Chad: Yeah, I mean, literally... Okay. So we'll just break this down. It's on LinkedIn and Sebastian Dettmers, who's the CEO of Stepstone, initiated the 10 in under 30 program at the Stepstone Group to bring together 10 of the brightest young talents from within their organization ready to shake things up, question methodologies, and bring transformative ideas to the table. And so there was this great post and this picture of the group in itself, and it sounds amazing, and I love that. Well, only until an ex-employee who had worked there for over 10 years, Ryan Grogan, challenged Sebastian by commenting, "I'm disappointed to see that the future of Stepstone appears to be predominantly White. If I remember correctly, the first year's cohort was also." Chad: Now Ryan's comment was deleted and Sebastian blocked Ryan at that point right out of the gate instead of digging into the conversation. The problem to me wasn't about a seemingly all-White cohort as much as how Sebastian, a leader of one of the most well-known companies in Europe in our space, handled the situation. Sebastian posted about people questioning methods, which is exactly what Ryan did. But yet another more junior Stepstone employee commented on one of Ryan's posts and said, "All of these people pictured represented different cultures, different countries, speak different languages and practice different religions/opinions. Some represent our LGBTQ community, some are family network, others are women support network. I think you have to be more careful in the way we think about DE&I, not just go to snap judgments." Chad: And I agree 100%. She was defensive and I wouldn't have recommended that to take that angle, although deleting a comment and blocking somebody after saying that you want to receive and be challenged on transformation, that was very short-sighted by Sebastian. And hopefully, he opens that back up and most other CEOs can start to take a look at this as pretty much a learning moment, right? You're going to get questioned, right? You're gonna get people who don't believe in what you believe in. That doesn't make them wrong. It doesn't make you wrong either. That's where the discussion starts. That's not where it ends. That's where it starts. And unfortunately, Sebastian ended that interaction completely. That's not the way we should be doing things. And as we just talked about affirmative action, right, the Supreme Court cut that shit off right at the top. We can't be doing that as CEOs and leaders of the organizations in our industry. Joel: So Bud Light has been a topic on this show for more than one week, and they're getting hit from both directions. They're getting hit from the far right saying, "You've gone woke and we're done with you." And because they didn't have the right response, the left came out and said, "We're not serving you beer either. You didn't stand up, you didn't fight back." Chad: Yeah. Joel: So they're getting it from both directions. And I think that more or less every CEO on the planet right now does not want that smoke. They do not want anything political to spill into their organization. Unfortunately, Stepstone CEO said, "I'm not getting in and in fact, I'm blocking people and I'm deleting shit." So I get it. It's a symptom of the Bud Light thing and more corporations are gonna be like so far away from political statements and whatnot that this is not gonna be the first time this happened. Chad: It was his post, so he started the conversation, right? It's not like somebody pulled him in. Joel: Sure. Well, how many times have you said something and said, "Oh, shit, I offended somebody. I didn't mean to do that. I'm out of here. I'm out of the room." So the real problem to me is that, okay, perception is reality. Okay. The woman who responded about, "Hey, you don't know anything about us. We are diverse." The perception of an all-White executive team. And look, I went into LinkedIn, I looked at Stepstone, I looked at their employees. It's really vanilla people. Like it's really... They might have things going on that are diverse, but perception is it's a very White organization. Perception is reality. We talked about Nike, we talked about Facebook years ago about, look, if anyone should represent the world, it's Facebook and it's Nike because the world is your customer. We need to be a shining example as employer vendors of what we would like the world to be. And if our biggest companies... And Stepstone a lot of people in America don't know Stepstone, Stepstone is a huge organization. They bought Appcast, they've got... Chad: Oh, by Axel Springer. Joel: This is a huge organization. Yes, they should be a shining example of what the world should be in terms of an employer and when companies in our industry don't do that, it sends a terrible message to employers that aren't focused on the global market. So we need to be an example. And yeah, I mean, okay, we all have different shoe sizes that makes us diverse. Okay, but if you look at it from the outside, there's not a lot of diversity going on at Stepstone and I hope it changes and maybe this will help spark that. Chad: Yeah. But I think if Sebastian would have said what she said, at least he would have engaged in the conversation as opposed to retreating. And as a leader in this industry and you said it very well, we need to not just look like. We need to think like, we need to engage in these conversations. And when you're challenged, it's not a bad thing, man. That's an opportunity for you. So hopefully Sebastian re-engages and stops the blocking bullshit, 'cause that's just not how a leader acts and/or reacts. Joel: Yeah, yeah, and hopefully he's regretting not engaging with the community. Chad: Yeah, well, let's hope, let's hope. Joel: Well, speaking of brand and rebranding, Chad, overstock.com is rebranding as Bed Bath & Beyond, one of your favorite retailers I know. Following its purchase of the bankrupt brand's name and assets, Overstock share surged over 15% after the announcement. The company plans to relaunch its Canadian website first. Chad: Take off. Will you? We're doing a movie. Don't wreck our show, you hoser. Joel: And then roll out the new branding into the United States. The acquisition excludes Bed Bath & Beyond's physical stores, which are closing. Why should you care? Well, you may not know there's an industry back story here. Chad's got a source. What you got? Chad: So this goes back to, if everybody remembers, one of our sponsors, Nexxt, Nexxt with two X's, not the triple X. Joel: Not three. Chad: Nexxt was beyond.com. And this is a story that I don't believe has been told and I think is incredibly important. And now we're at where we are right now, I think we can tell it. So Rich Milgram, who's the CEO of beyond.com at the time is incredibly stubborn, it's smart dude. He's on the engineer's side of the house. But in this case, his stubbornness definitely worked to his advantage because Bed Bath & Beyond started offers for beyond.com, which they bought. They started at $1 million. Rich kept saying no, as they just kept ratcheting it up. Eventually, when they went over $15 million, he realized that he could make some quick cash, pay off some VC debt and have some cash in reserves, which is fucking awesome. So Rich said yes. Guess what the number was, kid? $24 million. He sold beyond.com to Bed Bath & Beyond for $24 million again... Joel: Alright, alright, alright. Chad: To get rid of some VC debt. Obviously, quick cash on hand, have some money in reserve. It just made sense. So he sold the domain, then leased it back from Bed Bath & Beyond for over a year. Why did he do that? Well, everybody was under and sworn to secrecy because Bed Bath & Beyond would pull the deal if anybody found out. So it was one of the largest sales of a domain at that time. Rich came up with the new name, Nexxt, called the managers into the office, told them what was happening, and that they would have three months to completely rebrand the company, contracts, do all this in secret and come up with a story behind it. Clients, employers and industry pundits like us we said, "What the fuck is going on here?" beyond.com to Nexxt, how does this make it Nexxt with two X's? How does this make any sense? But obviously, Rich is much smarter than all of us. The name was not as good as beyond.com, but the $24 million in the bank must have felt amazing thus the story of Nexxt. So now we know when all those years, it was like, we had rumblings of knowing that Bed Bath & Beyond obviously paid a high number. We weren't sure, but this is what it was and that's the story, kids. So if you're looking at history, and one of the things that's going on now, overstock.com I believe owns beyond.com. Joel: Yeah, that escalated quickly. So they wanted to make it into sort of a Amazon Prime, pay us a monthly fee and you can get discounts and special shit and whatever is going on at Bed Bath & Beyond. Chad: Couponing, that kind of shit. Joel: Not really a place I frequent often, but whatever is going on there. So in theory, like a good idea, like a new ad campaign, go to beyond.com. We go beyond Bed Bath & Beyond and duh, duh, duh. It never happened. Like it never... 'Cause I would go back occasionally like, "Oh, is that thing up?" And they had it, but they never advertised it, they never uploaded it. So to spend that much money and not follow through, man... Chad: On a domain. Joel: That's some shitty, shitty management and strategy. So it's no shocking, like no shocking news that this company is bankrupt because if their efforts around this domain and what they wanted to do and what they spent on it came to what it did, they deserve to be out of business. The question to me is, if they do own beyond.com, it doesn't go anywhere now. I checked it for the story. So if you talked about does Rich go back to Beyond, is there like a re-rebrand where they go back to what they were? [laughter] Joel: I think enough people have probably forgot about Beyond or are not nostalgic for it. They know Nexxt now. I don't know if it would make a lot of sense, but he could probably get it on the cheap if he wanted to. I think that's a possibility or lease it for a while and have it redirect to Nexxt so the people that still remember Beyond can go there. But yeah, this is just shitty business practices, shitty strategy. Chad: And good for Rich. Joel: Good for Rich. I didn't know how much the dollar amount was and I don't think you did until this week when someone came forth and let us know what this is all like insider stuff. It's alleged. We don't know the exact number. But that's a big number for a domain and good for Rich clearing the books on debts and whatever they had to do. This was a really savvy move on his part. Congratulations. Chad: And so ballsy from a negotiation standpoint. They started at a $1 million for beyond.com and to take it all the way to $24, I mean, that to me is just... That's baller, that is fucking baller. Whether he was known as being stubborn or not, it obviously worked out in this case. Joel: Yeah, champagne and cocaine at the Nexxt headquarters. Alright, Carl. Alright, Chad. Chad: Carl? Joel: What else do we have? Okay, so we'll take a break. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Clearly, we're traveling, hangover, everything else. We'll be right back. Chad, can I interest you in a new story or two news stories about flying cars and spider humans? Chad: Oh my God. Joel: Oh, yeah. Chad: Here it comes. Joel: Oh, yeah. You want some of that, don't you? Chad: Yes, yes. Joel: We're gonna go deep here, baby. Chad: Just the tea. Joel: All right. First, let's talk about flying cars. Alef Aeronautics, a California based company, has received approval from the FAA for its flying electric car, and is now accepting pre-orders. It has a flying range of up to 110 miles and a driven range of up to 200 miles. Pre-orders are available for around $300,000. Yeah. And the FAA has issued a special airworthiness certificate for the vehicle. Chad, are you ready to strap in and take your next car to the heavens? Chad: Meet George Jetson. Yeah, I mean, that, to me is amazing. And remember, I mean, like back in the 50s, I think, 40s and 50s, they were testing jet packs and all that other fun stuff, and people were blowing up because it was fuel on your back. Now everything has gone to the hover fans, which is fucking awesome. 300K for this car, I think. I'm sorry, I thought it would be more. I really did. It's a car that fucking flies. Okay. It's electric and it flies. I thought it would be more. So no, I'm not gonna buy one, but I just think it is totally awesome that we're finally getting to this point. Now, the Jetsons was set in 2062. So the question is, in the delta time that we have between there, do you think this is going to be something that actually "takes off?" Joel: No, no, I don't. Look, we've been talking about jet packs, flying cars, I don't know, swimming airplanes for decades. There's a branding problem, but now a real branding problem, and it's called submarines to the Titanic that implode and killed people. Chad: Yeah, yeah. I can do it. Joel: Look, this whole thing about go to space, go to the bottom of the ocean, do these crazy like rich people things is gonna get regulated to death, governments are gonna be forced to create laws around this, and it's just not gonna happen, people. It'll be a fringe thing. A few people will buy them, but this company's gonna go outta business in 10, 20 years, maybe less, probably less. Virgin Galactic is basically outta business. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They haven't been to the space in a while. When was the last time Bezos space dick went up into the heavens? It's been a while 'cause the minute someone dies in space, which by the way, the odds of dying in space are much bigger than dying in a submarine, this whole thing is gonna shut down. So it's nice science fiction. It's nice to talk about the flying cars, the jet packs... Chad: Damnit. Joel: Are not coming anytime soon. Chad: Dammit. Joel: I'm sorry. Chad: You killed my mood, man. Joel: I'm sorry. Oh, I might be able to perk you back up, Chad. Chad: Okay, okay. Good. Joel: Let's talk about spider humans for a second. So researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed wearable robotic arms called Jizai arms. I'm guessing I got that right. That can be attached to humans as needed. The arms up to six arms, six can be controlled by the user or controlled remotely. The developers envision a future where artificial limbs can be personalized by users, personalized by users. I'm not sure what that means. Different sleeves on each charm. I don't know. Jeff Bezos must be behind this technology to improve warehouse productivity. Spider humans, Chad. Are you a buy or sell? Chad: So leave it to the Japanese. The same people who came up with the creepy ass Hentie to cartoon porn [laughter] to come up with something like this. I mean, it just... To me, it is creepy as fuck. If you guys get out there, check it out. Just do obviously search on Google. Look for spider humans. It's a pack, not kinda like a jet pack, but it just has arms and it is creepy as fuck. I have no clue on why anybody is ever going to need these things. Again, Hentai, creepy, spider human, creepy. Japanese, they got the market almost on creepy. Joel: So we've talked about VR a lot on this show, the Apple headset, everything and PornHub needs to sponsor this shit because that is what's gonna make this happen. You tell me six arms is useless. What could six arms mean in the porn industry for God's sakes? PornHub needs to be behind this. That's how it's gonna work. The number of marriages this thing could save, the amount of fun you could have, the adult kind of fun is insane, Chad. Not quite the kind of fun that we're gonna have at RecFest tomorrow. Chad: Yes. Joel: I need to pack my bags and get outta here. Spider humans, I've heard enough. 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'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.

Shifting demographics combined with the digitalization of all aspects of life are transforming the nature of work. This is forcing companies to rethink how they design jobs and recruit, develop, and engage employees. Live from UNLEASH America in Las Vegas, Dr. Steven Hunt joins Chad & Cheese to discuss his new book. In Talent Tectonics: Navigating Global Workforce Shifts, Building Resilient Organizations, and Reimagining the Employee Experience, Dr. Hunt explains how technology is changing the purpose of work and why creating effective employee experiences is critical to building organizations that can thrive in a world of accelerating change and growing skill shortages. It’s a must-listen for anyone navigating the ebbs and flows of managing a global workforce. Enjoy and get smarter in the process. More: Dr. Steven Hunt - www.linkedin.com/in/steventhunt/ The Book - https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Tectonics-Navigating-Organizations-Reimagining/dp/1119885183 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Dr. Steven Hunt: Anyone who tells you work was better 50 years ago didn't work 50 years ago. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: You know? Chad: Yeah. Joel: They've never dug a trench. Yes. Yes, yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah, exactly. 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. Chad: Welcome to the morning after hangover edition, live here at UNLEASH America. Joel: I tell you what, I'm feeling good though. Chad: From beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. And we are here. I'm Chad Sowash. [laughter] Chad: Joined by Joel Cheeseman by the way. Welcome to the show. Dr. Steven Hunt, author of Talent Tectonics: Navigating Global Workforce Shifts, Building Resilient Organizations and Reimagining the Employee Experience. That's a mouthful. Dr. Hunt, what else should we know about you? Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah, another mouthful is my job title. I am the Chief Expert for Work and Technology for SAP and... Joel: Chief expert? Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Yeah, so I... Joel: So you're the CEO? Right? You're the chief? Dr. Steven Hunt: I used to be a junior expert. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: No. [laughter] Chad: And before that, apprentice expert. [chuckle] Dr. Steven Hunt: No. What I do is, it's pretty kinda unique. I'm an industrial organizational psychologist, so the psychology of work, all that stuff. And my career is focused on, how do you use technology to create more effective work environments? Like enable better decisions, more inclusive environments, agile environments, high-performing environments. As well as a lot of this is, how is technology changing the environments we need to create? Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: And so that book, Talent Tectonics, is really based on my experience working with, at this point, thousands of companies. Looking at how do we use technology to create better environments, taking into account the one thing that isn't changing about work, which is the fundamental psychology of people. Joel: It's all about signals at this point, right? All of what you said is about signals, whether it's behavioral signals, salespeople being able to reach their goals. They're just... It's all signal oriented, is it not? Dr. Steven Hunt: I think that's part of it. I don't think entirely. A lot of it is... Joel: I know. I know I'm simplifying it and you... Dr. Steven Hunt: No, no, no. Joel: And the chief experts like to make things complex. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. No, no. Chad: He's a doctor man. Joel: Jesus Christ. Chad: He's a doctor. Dr. Steven Hunt: Not exactly. Not a real doctor. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: My wife's a family medicine doctor. I'm always like, "I don't really... " I'm the kind of psychologist that doesn't actually care about people. Joel: Oh, okay. Dr. Steven Hunt: They just care about what they produce. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: That's not true. Joel: Ah, sounds familiar. Dr. Steven Hunt: No, it's more than that, it's job design. What's happening is the two big shifts, and you guys would know this, is one, the demographics are fundamentally changing our labor markets. There's more people aging out of a lot of labor markets than entering into 'em. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: And it's not that we don't have enough people, it's that we're not fully utilizing all the people we have in society. The labor participation rates are going down. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Particularly in historically, whatever you call, historically disenfranchised communities, wherever you want. How do we go out and how do we more effectively engage the entire workforce? Because just recruiting harder isn't gonna work. Joel: Companies really aren't engaging communities in the first place. We used to have training programs. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Joel: Where they would work with schools, vocational schools. They would work with community colleges. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Joel: They would... But they totally pulled back from that because of the incentives [chuckle] weren't there anymore. But long term, the incentive was always there that they would be building their own talent pipelines and now that has dried up and we're in the situation we are right now. Dr. Steven Hunt: Right. And I always get frustrated if you hear people say, "Oh, declining birth rates are bad for economies." That's not true. They're bad for economies that depend on exploiting large amounts of underemployed people. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: And the problem... Joel: Yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: We have a lot of people... There's a quote, I don't know who said it, but the potential is equally distributed across society. Opportunity is not. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: That's definitely true. A lot of this is about, the book's about how do we reimagine work so that we can bring more people into it through changing... I'll give a good example on technology, shift scheduling technology. The reason a lot of people don't work, particularly people that have primary family care responsibility, which in our society is mainly women, is because of shift schedules. If you gotta... If you're the one who has to pick up your kids... Joel: Oh, yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Shift schedules... And also hybrid work, this is another interesting thing. That hybrid work, since we've moved to that, employment of people with disabilities in the United States is the highest it has ever been. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Since we moved to hybrid work. Joel: 'Cause they can do work from home. Chad: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Exactly. Joel: And they can still get it done. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. So the book talks about, this is an example of job design. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: But also, how do you staff, how do you hire? But the book also focuses a lot on, the other thing is digitalization has changed the nature of work. We need to hire people to be creative, collaborative, caring as opposed to just productive. You can't be those things if you feel exhausted, burned out, hangover. [laughter] Just coming to your earlier comment. [laughter] Joel: As he looks directly at you, Joel Cheeseman, Jesus. Chad: I don't know what you're talking about. Who do you hope reads this book? Is it the CEO? Is it the head of talent? Who do you hope picks this book up? Dr. Steven Hunt: Anyone who is focused on creating more effective workforces and work environments. Now, for some companies that is the CEO. To be honest, a lot of CEOs, that's not where their passion and focus is. They're like, "People are important... " Chad: They say it is. [chuckle] Dr. Steven Hunt: "That's why I hired a CHRO." Yeah. But that's okay. I'm not... You can love technology. That doesn't mean you wanna be a CIO, but it's definitely HR. HR, HR technology, consultants, anyone who... Hey, my job is about helping companies create more effective job design, better staffing, more, better employee development, more engaged workforces. And it goes into... And the book is... It starts with talking about how digitalization and demographics are changing labor markets and work. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: But then it goes in and says, well, what do we do about it? And that... It's built around, I kind of talk about it, when it comes to HR and you guys have been in this field a long time, the basic challenges of this field never change. Joel: No. Dr. Steven Hunt: It's how you design jobs, how do you fill them, how do you develop people and how do you keep them around so they don't quit? Joel: But we're still getting it wrong. [chuckle] Dr. Steven Hunt: And now the book talks about, how do we need to rethink work using technology, but also going back to focusing on the one thing that isn't changing about work which is, what motivates people? What makes people happy? How we learn, it's the same now as it's always been. What changes is labor markets and people's expectation. They can get it, but it's like your grandparents didn't want to work in a soul-sucking repetitive job... Chad: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: That forced them to an early grave. They wanted to work in a cool job where they were appreciated and recognized. But it was a different world a hundred years ago. Chad: I'm gonna push back a little bit or just get your insight on this. So what if all the amount of change at the corporate level doesn't work? What if people are just into the freedom of the gig economy? Flipping the switch whenever I wanna drive a car, flipping the... Punching my ticket whenever I wanna deliver food. What if all the changes you talk about making to get people back into the workforce, keep them at a job, doesn't work because that is such a huge trend of freedom, independence... Joel: Autonomy. Chad: And living the way that I wanna live? Dr. Steven Hunt: Well, I think part of it is going back to really looking at a couple fundamental myths. One of them is that people don't want to work. There's a concept in psychology called need for achievement, which is that we are wired to want to accomplish meaningful things in our life. It's why babies crawl when they can. Parents don't go, "Oh, it's time for you to crawl." The kids... That's one of the joys of being a parent. You have kids. They just figure stuff out. Chad: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: It's just amazing. And it's... Why? 'Cause we're hardwired for it. And there's a reason why the word meaningless is a synonym for depression. People want a reason to get up in the morning. They want to go out and do something that makes them... There's people that where they feel valued, they feel like a contribution. Now, if they didn't have to work for money, would they work differently? Absolutely. But would they not work at all? No. No. Not if you're psychologically healthy. If you're clinically depressed, that's a different issue. Joel: People wanna do stuff. Dr. Steven Hunt: People wanna do stuff. You want to be valued. You want to make an impact. Chad: Is the achievement of delivering for DoorDash different than the achievement of writing a new program for a corporation? Dr. Steven Hunt: It's the reason for why you're working. People work for different reasons. You guys probably ride in Ubers all the time, or Lyfts or whatever. It's fascinating to talk to those drivers about why they decided to do it. A lot of them are like, "'Cause what I wanted from work basically was a paycheck to pay my rent. And this is the easiest way to get it and I'm great with that." Chad: Or I have a young child and this gives me the flexibility to spend time with them. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Joel: We talked to a Uber driver in Scottsdale and she literally, she was head of huge customer service, and they've got call centers and whatnot around there, and she got out of that. First off, they were doing layoffs because of COVID and they were trying to pull people back in. And she just got out of it and she started driving Uber because she was stressed, she was burning out. She never got time to spend with her family. None of those things. So it's kind of like, what do you want as a human? Chad: And I think made more money. Right? At the end of the day, or no? Joel: Yeah, I don't... I think she made... Chad: Comparably? Yeah. Joel: As much as she needed to be happy and that's all that mattered. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. And that's the thing. I think what we're seeing is we are seeing a shift in how people wanna work and companies partially is that we used to hire people just to be productive, which is, show up, shut up and do what you're told, right? Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: And now because of digitalization, all this stuff that was show up, shut up, do what you're told is being automated. It's being automated away. And I'm a big fan of automation. It's like most of the stuff that's automated is repetitive, inhuman tasks that people shouldn't have to do anyhow. Joel: They suck. They're tasks that suck. Dr. Steven Hunt: Anyone who tells you work was better 50 years ago didn't work 50 years ago. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: You know? Chad: Yeah. Joel: They've never dug a trench. Yes. Yes, yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah, exactly. What's happening though, is now, we are hiring people to do the uniquely human things, like being creative, collaborative, caring. I use caring as a really good example. Technology can never care for a person 'cause caring is, by definition is about a person giving time of their life to you. That's what to care means. Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Technology can do the exact same thing, but it's part of the caring is, no, somebody's actually literally thinking of me. And that's at a deeper, profound level. So as we're changing the nature of work to do more truly human activities... Joel: Right. Dr. Steven Hunt: We need to tap into the things that make people really good at this. And the other big myth about people is that people fear change. We don't. We fear poorly managed change, punishing change. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: And that's our experience. We're wired to think change is always gonna be bad. It's just our... Joel: Well, and that's a great point. That's a great point because change usually sucks because the transformation part sucks. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. But I use examples like when I'm talking to people about this, have you ever gone river rafting? Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Okay. Did you have to do it? Were you like Louis and Clark and it was the only way to get across? [laughter] Chad: No. Dr. Steven Hunt: Did you pay money to do it? Joel: Yes. As a matter of fact. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah? Did you enjoy it? Joel: Oh, hell, yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: Did you know you can drown and die? Joel: Yes. So the rapid... Yeah, the... Yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: So you paid money to voluntarily introduce change in your life that could have killed you. Joel: And almost die. Yes. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. We don't fear change. Chad: He did the same when we started this podcast, by the way. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Right. We actively seek it out. We seek it out. But there's certain things that make it fun. First of all, we know why we're doing it. It's like it's meaningful to us. You're not just being thrown on a boat in a river and saying, "You're off." Joel: Right. Dr. Steven Hunt: The second thing is that we're confident we have the task to be successful. It wouldn't be very fun if you had a boat that didn't float, right? And the third one is... Joel: Wouldn't work. Dr. Steven Hunt: We do it as a group. When we're under stress particularly, it's really important we feel there's other people around us and care about us. River rafting by yourself probably wouldn't be as fun. Joel: It's called kayaking. Dr. Steven Hunt: Kayak. Yeah. And it's a different experience. But I use this example because we have to rethink work that taps into that fundamental joy of learning and change that you see. Like going back to when you have your kids, one of the joys of being a parent is watching how delighted kids are in change. "This is new. Oh my gosh. Wow." But then we manage people to be productive and productivity is about doing the same... Chad: Standardizations. Dr. Steven Hunt: We're most productive when we do the same thing over. So it's, this book, that's what it really dives into is... I wanna be clear too, it's not about putting employee needs above the company 'cause good employee experiences don't come from working for failing companies. And I think we've even seen that in our own industry where companies kind of overemphasize one way and all of a sudden, "Oh, we're not making any money." Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: It's about realizing companies can't get what they need if employees don't get what they want. But employees can't get what they want if companies don't get what they need. How do we balance that? Joel: Talk about belonging. That's something that we haven't talked about yet. And it was something that many companies have really leaned heavily on from a culture standpoint is that you need to feel like you belong. And this was something that was starting to catch on before COVID and then really started to be useful within COVID because they didn't want to lose people who were working remote. But it almost feels like a lot of this doesn't matter anymore as as many CEOs are forcing back into the office. It feels like a micromanaged forcing that's happening. Which is change. And that is change that a lot of people, as Joel said earlier, they want the autonomy and they just don't like it. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. They don't want it. And they don't have to have it. And I think that with the companies that are going that route, it's like, yeah, in the future you're gonna be employing the people no one else wants to hire. Not a good long-term staffing strategy. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: It is. It's true. You're seeing this change. I think it is very frustrating from an exclusivity. The most inclusive thing that has happened in our lifetime to work is this move to hybrid. And I realize there's a lot of jobs you can't work hybrid. But even in those jobs, it's also creating a lot more empathy for people whose jobs require them to work fixed schedules. You've seen a lot of technology focused on what they call deskless or hourly workers. Part of that is staffing shortage. And part of that is more of a realization of, "I never thought about the fact that I didn't have to work from the office and there's other people that do." I think we're more empathetic to that, which is positive. I think as far as this backlash we're seeing right now, I think it's just a temporary response that you're seeing. The only reason we didn't embrace hybrid work sooner was the mindset of leaders that... Dr. Steven Hunt: I always point out that an office building is a form of technology. It's a form of communication technology developed in 1709, supposedly the first... It was the British Admiralty building, supposedly is like the first office building. And it's good and bad like any form of technology, like email or whatever. There's some pluses and dark sides to it and all that. But it got so widely used we forgot it was a form of technology and executives thought it was there... It wasn't effective. They just liked it 'cause it was familiar and it was comfortable 'cause it's how they grew up and they're... Joel: Well, I think it's management style though, personally. Dr. Steven Hunt: It's management style. They don't know how to... Joel: It's control. It's the way that you can control is only if you can put your hands on somebody. You can put your eyes on somebody. Dr. Steven Hunt: Well, and it's even worse than... If I'm getting really cynical here and I will... Joel: Please. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: 'Cause you guys, I know you guys like that. Chad: That's how we roll. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: I'm bringing it out. Joel: Come on Dr. Steve. Dr. Steven Hunt: Look, I'm trying to get you to laugh, 'cause you're kinda looking hangover. [laughter] Chad: How did I get this reputation? Joel: Yeah. You're a grumpy bastard, that's why. Dr. Steven Hunt: 'Cause you opened up saying, "This was the hangover edition." I listen. Chad: I'm a wonderful guy. Dr. Steven Hunt: I'm a psychologist. I'm always listening. [laughter] No, if you look at it, I think for a lot of these executives, nothing is more depressing than walking into an office with no people in it. And a lot of these executives, it's so funny, I see these people get up and there's two things that's almost always true about the, "We're getting back in the office." And I wanna be clear here, there's reasons to come back in an office or anything that, but I tend to lead... I don't like mandates in general. It makes much sense to be saying, "You have to be in the office three days a week." It'd be like saying, "You can't be in the office more than two days a week." Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: People want flexibility. Give it to 'em. But if you look at the people that say this, getting really cynical for a second, they're inevitably somebody who does not have primary family care responsibility. It's not the person that picks up the kids if they get calls from the school. Joel: Yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: It's probably somebody, if they commute at all, lives very close to the office. And very often it's people that probably are never even in the office. But I think what it is, is they come off their business trip, they walk into the hall and it's depressing when there's nobody in this cubicle farm. They wanna see all the people and they walk through. And I think it's very much an ego thing, to be honest. Joel: Well, and the cubicle farm is depressing for the people who have to fucking work there. Dr. Steven Hunt: Who never get to leave, who don't [laughter] get the windows. Joel: Yes. Yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: 'Cause the windows go to the person that's never in the office. Joel: So it has nothing to do with the masses, it has to do with that one individual. So there's a story where DJ Sol, David Solomon from Goldman Sachs, was at a country club. Some of his employees came up during the week and said, "Hey, love you, love working for Goldman Sachs." And he automatically thought, "What the hell are you doing here? Why aren't you working?" Again. He was at the country club. It's like this inability for CEOs or somebody at that level to understand that, "Hey look, first off, are they getting the job done? Are they hitting their KPIs?" And by the way, you're at the goddam country club too. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah, I agree. And this is empathy. I think we're getting a lot more empathetic in general. But there's an interesting one where technology plays a role in that. One of our customers I was working with pointed out and said, "Executives can't truly understand employee experience without using technology." And I was like, "I sell technology for a living." So I'm kind of like, "That sounds like something I'd say." But [laughter] this is a person who didn't have to say that. I'm like, "Well, can you talk more about that?" And she said, "First of all, if you're a large company, you can't possibly interact with everyone. Plus people's experiences change radically over time. So you'd have no way to sort of keep the finger on the pulse. But second," she's like, "You live in a bubble, you're treated differently. And that's not bad. They have admin assistants for a reason, but there's a lot of stuff that regular people have to do, they don't have to deal with." And then the third one I thought was the most fascinating. She also said, "And you should get out amongst the people and listen and have that." That's good. You should do that. But even then, if somebody's emotionally intelligent isn't gonna be totally authentic with a CEO. Joel: Oh, hell, no. Dr. Steven Hunt: I talked to a friend once who said they met somebody very high up in the organization and they had a really significant problem. I said, "Did you talk to them about it? 'Cause they could do something about it?" He goes... Joel: No. Dr. Steven Hunt: "I'm only meeting this person one time. I don't wanna be the guy who whines." You know? And so I think part of this is leaders having to really understand their inability to really experience the same thing their employees are experiencing and know that gap exists and then find ways to close it. Joel: Well, and larger organizations having the hierarchy and the actual managers trained to be leaders, not just managers, not just pencil pushers or micromanagers, but actual leaders, we don't do that in corporate America. Dr. Steven Hunt: We don't. Joel: The military does it. But we don't do it. As you get promoted in the military, you have to go through leadership training. There's no leadership training in corporate America. You just... Your great individual performance gets you to be a manager for some reason. Dr. Steven Hunt: I always joke when companies... I'm like, "How many of your managers were promoted to management positions 'cause they were good at coaching?" They'd say, "None." Joel: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: And then I'm like, "And how much training did they get compared to like your sales teams?" "Like almost none." "So you could master management." And then the last one they asked that... And this has gotten better over time. I will say all these we're trending in a positive direction unless I sound super depressing. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: But we've got so much farther to go. I always ask, "You wanna develop people, how do you reward managers that develop and promote people off their teams, which is what a good manager does." [chuckle] And so often it's, "Well, we punish them by not backfilling the position." [laughter] I'm like, "And you wonder why you don't have a coaching culture." It's not the manager's fault. It's, you haven't created an environment to make it happen. Joel: Then that's a behavior that the manager understands. So therefore, they never allow anybody off their team. And everybody feels stuck. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. But the managers, what are they hired to do? They're rewarded to execute against a plan. And so if they're not rewarded to share talent, why else should they do it? You're not asking them to. And they don't... So don't blame... I hate it when it... Talent poaching is a weasel word to... It's like when people say employees don't quit companies, they quit managers. I mean, no, they quit companies that employ bad managers. Don't blame the manager. [laughter] Chad: You're using the word hybrid instead of remote. Is that on purpose? And how do you see the future of the office? Dr. Steven Hunt: Well, I think it is hybrid in the sense that part of effective remote work is meeting in person. And we've known this before the pandemic. There's a lot of research on virtual teams. And this is why I crack up when people are talking about this change. I have worked remotely for 16 years. I worked for a global company. I had at one point a team that had people in six different countries. It's not that this is new, it's just new to a lot of people. And so I see the future of us going into more and more hybrid work. There's so many benefits to it. What we haven't figured out is how to effectively use that communication technology called an office that we were over-reliant on it. There was all sorts of bad sides to, oh you're committed 'cause you stay late, kind of BS, stuff like that. Joel: Yeah. Yes. Dr. Steven Hunt: And actually aside, it's fascinating how it's changed the power structures 'cause it's like why does that person have more influence? Well, they don't know anything but they sit next to the CEO. Chad: Yeah. Dr. Steven Hunt: They get face time. Chad: Proximity bias. Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. So what we need to figure out is how do we effectively use in-person meeting? Because the research on this has shown it's really important to connect. Like the fact that we've met in person now forever will change our electronic communication. Hopefully in a good way guys. I hope so. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: You know what I mean? Once you've met somebody, when you get an email from them, you actually interpret it differently. And I don't know what it is psychologically, I kind of joke, maybe we smell each other or something, I don't know. But there's something that happens when we meet in person. Joel: Pheromones. Dr. Steven Hunt: Pheromones. Joel: Joel's putting off some pheromones right now. Dr. Steven Hunt: And its... Chad: My Drakkar is very pungent this morning. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: Yeah. Joel: Hai Karate. [laughter] Dr. Steven Hunt: English Leather. [laughter] Chad: Sex Panther, 60% of the time, works every time. Dr. Steven Hunt: That's what I thought but I couldn't say it, I feel like. Chad: We can say it, thankfully. Joel: Of course. Chad: That is Dr. Steven Hunt, everybody. Joel: Yes. Chad: Author of Talent Tectonics: Navigating Global Workforce Shifts, Building Resilient Organizations and Reimagining the Employee Experience. Doctor, for those that want to connect with you or buy the book, where would you send them? Dr. Steven Hunt: The book is available on Amazon and any other online sites that you buy books from. It's published by Wiley and LinkedIn is this a great place to find me. You can also go, steventhunt.com is my little website, Talent Tectonics about the book. And I work for SAP, so you can also contact me through SAP and if you're an SAP customer, I hope that you will. Joel: Excellent. And if you're not an SAP customer? Dr. Steven Hunt: You can still talk to me. [laughter] Chad: Feeling fine and cherry wine. That's another one in the can. Chad, we out. Joel: 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'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 hang 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.

While Joel takes some time in the "happiest place on earth" Chad pulls in industry pro Quincy "Queen of Chatbots" Valencia to fill in and add needed snark to this week's episode. Indeed hops in the trojan horse for a trip to France where they are introducing a pay-per-results pricing model, after retreating from launching full-scale PPSA and PPA models in the US. IS JOONKO GOING DOWN? After allegations of fraudulent conduct by Joonko's CEO? FUTURE OF AI WORK McKinsey predicts AI's impact to occur by 2030, more than 70% of organizations struggle with the risks of using AI tools and that's just scratching the surface - ENJOY! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Chad 'Passed the Pierogi' Sowash. Quincy: I'm Quincy 'Way to Fly for Your Fake AI' Valencia. Chad: [laughter] And this week's show, Putin's chef lays an egg, Joonko is falling apart right in front of our eyes, companies are planning for the future of work with AI. And the question of the moment is, will Indeed bring results or bullshit to France? Let's do this. All right, live from Krakow, Poland, kids. Cheesman is off enjoying Orlando with the family this week. There's a great Book of Mormon joke in there somewhere, I just can't find it, which is why we have once again an honored guest, Quincy Valencia, filling in for the Mr. Cheesman. [applause] Quincy: Thanks Joel for never working and always being on vacation, I really appreciate you for that. And I'm coming to you live from the Redneck Riviera of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Chad: Oh, that is the Redneck Riviera. So, Quincy, for those listeners who have been asleep for the past two decades and they don't know who you are, give them a quick Twitter bio. Quincy: I've been in this space for almost as long as Chad Sowash, 25 years. He's older than me, so he always wins. HR, HR tech, provider, practitioner, product creator, and currently working as an HR tech analyst. So if it's a thing in the space, and now I'm a podcast co-host for a day. Chad: Yes! Quincy: So if it's a thing in this space, by God, I'm doing it. Chad: Goddamn it, I'm doing it. That's right, kids. Practitioner, vendor, analyst, all the boxes are checked. That's one of the reasons why we have Quincy on the show. And she knows all the skeletons in my closet, that's another reason. Quincy: That's true. Chad: So I'm in Krakow, Poland, and this week, Putin's chef Yevgeny Prigozhin... What is it? How do you fuck say it? Quincy: You're asking me? Chad: He turned his Wagner troops and tanks toward Russia. And it's a much different feeling when you're watching this play out from a country away. Here in Poland, we've got Belarus that is a country between us and Russia, and then we've got Ukraine just to the South. Was this a big issue? Was this a big point of news in the US? Quincy: It was all over the news and I try not to watch the news. But yeah, it was everywhere. It was definitely a story, as it should be. Chad: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Quincy: You know, when people tried to overthrow the government here, it made me mad, but when they try to do it there, I thought it was the right thing. So maybe I need to reevaluate my standards. Chad: Yeah, I don't know, because I think the entire world stage looked at us when that happened, January 6th happened, and they were like, "What the actual fuck, this should never happen in the US." But Polish that I've talked to here, Polish citizens, they're like, "Yeah, no, we expected something like that to happen." And again, I think a lot of it has to do with the optics of what we've been able to, whether it's our story, propaganda, whatever the hell you wanna call it, we're really good at driving a message. Russia is really good at throwing a bunch of bodies at bullets. Quincy: Which is unfortunate. And in that particular case, I'd have to say I would be on the side of the usurpers because maybe I'm okay with it, overthrowing the government, if the government's crazy, I don't know, maybe that's my standard, I'm not sure, and dangerous and murderous. Chad: Dangerous and murderous. Well, my first shout out is going to go out to, guess who? It's the Polish people. Where's my shout out sign at? Anyway, screw it. The Polish people. Much like last week when I was in Vienna, Julie and I received the red carpet treatment. But Agnieszka Porebska, the CEO of Talent Alpha, headquartered here in Poland, she went the extra mile by bringing her family to Krakow and personally taking us to two museums with walking tours. And at the end of the day, we had beers with a group of vendors and practitioners here in Poland. So the Polish are incredibly warm and welcoming people. So big, big shout outs to our friends here in Poland. [applause] Quincy: That sounds like a great time and I'm really happy for you and all of you. And that's a great use of your time, too. Chad: I think so. I think it's all about diplomacy. That's what I said last week. This is a diplomatic mission for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Quincy: Is that how you justify writing it off on your taxes? Chad: No. It's a good idea, though. I never thought of that. [laughter] Quincy: We'll talk. All right, well, my first shout out... Is it my turn? Do I get to go? Chad: Yes, you get to go now. Yes. Quincy: So I did mention that I am an industry analyst now in the HR tech space, and I've only been in this seat for a little over a year, so a baby, if you will, but there's someone I wanna give a shout out to, her name is Lisa Rohan. Lisa's been an analyst in this space at IDC for 20 years, I think. She's one of the OGs in this space. Chad: Wow. Quincy: And she is moving into retirement happily. Good for her, congratulations to her. She's a legend, she's forged paths for the rest of us that we may not have had. The space is it's pretty male dominated. There's some great women analysts in this space. We've got Madeline Theranos, Sarah White and some others, but Lisa was there first. And I don't know Lisa well, but I certainly know her legacy. I had the honor and privilege of meeting her and actually sharing a table with Lisa at an event we were at together last month, I think. Maybe it was April, I don't know, the month's weren't together, but she was phenomenal, her questions are on point and smart and everything she has brought to this industry has been meaningful. So, thank you for all you've done, Lisa, congratulations on your well earned retirement. Chad: Amen. Can't get enough good people, not to mention, you've got leaders like that who help others actually hand up throughout their career. So that's awesome. My second shout out goes to VanHack. That's right, kids. [vocalization] Chad: A Vancouver, Canada-based software company dedicated to connecting international tech talent with employees or employers, in Canada, in Europe received 3 million in funding this week. That's right, kids. It's a marketplace for talent. No ChatGPT necessary. Quincy: What? Chad: Congrats to CEO Ilya Brotzky and the VanHack team. SFX: Take off, we're doing our movie. Don't wreck our show you hoser. Chad: So Quincy, quick question, what are your thoughts on funding in this area of the era of GenAI? Because right now it seems like those who are generative AI or if they're getting more of a look than everybody else, other than obviously the VanHacks of the world? Quincy: In some ways they should. I mean, it is the next new great thing. My cautionary tale is twofold, first of all GenAI in general is not new, it's been around since the '60s. The technology is advanced and really took a turn forward, and I think it was the mid-2010s. There was a new piece of technology that bolstered the ability of generative AI, and then certainly we all know, I'm not even gonna say the name, it who shall not be named in November of last year, who came out. And it really does have the ability to be transformative. Every single person though who's coming out right now is saying that we're using generative AI or large language models or blah, blah, blah. And they're not. And that is the reason for my way to fly for your fake AI nickname this week twice. [laughter] Quincy: I spend a lot of time with vendors twice in the last 2 weeks, I've been shown products where they're touting their generative AI capabilities and that's not what it is. One of them was a traditional chatbot, which by the way, there's nothing wrong with it. Chad: No. Quincy: There's a ton of place, and it's useful and there's reason to use that. And the other was basically RPA, and everyone's trying to spin their product offering as if it's GenAI, as if that's the only thing. GenAI is one form of technology, it deserves the funding so that we can advance it, but the security protocols around it that we need mitigate some of the risk associated with that, which is gonna have to come certainly at the org level, but at a larger level around the technology itself, but guys, you don't have to be in GenAI to create new shit, so good for them for getting funding for something that's still really useful. Chad: Amen. Out of Canada, and we also dropped an interview this week with Georgios Markakis from Venero Capital, he answers that question in our episode, that is HR Tech Funding and M&A. So check that out. Quincy: Alright, so my second shout out is to the entire State of Ohio. Chad: Oh no. Quincy: Right, for two things. First, I've been to all 50 states, Chad, did you know that? Chad: All 50 states. Yeah, you actually lived in South Dakota, which nobody wants to do that. But yeah. Quincy: [chuckle] I know. So I've lived in all 50 states and never ever have I been to a state with worst highways than the state of Ohio, so congratulations on fine funding of your highway programs there, Ohio, for making me never ever wanna go back. And the other reason I never wanna go back to Ohio is because their's stupid shit like this, an Ohio State Representative, and I can't remember his name, and frankly, it wasn't worth looking it up 'cause it was so stupid, has put forth a bill to end all remote work, he doesn't want it, should be illegal, shouldn't be allowed, to which I say, which CEO in the state of Ohio took this guy on his private jet somewhere and is the biggest campaign financer for him, because why in the hell else would you do that? And why should government care? It's the stupidest thing, there are a lot of stupid bills, and I live in the South, so if you wanna talk about stupid bills, we could have a whole other show on that. But that's, not only is it ridiculous, but it goes right along with my 1.1 shout outs with my part B to the CEO of PayPal, who just jumped on the remote work doesn't work, and everyone should go back to work bandwagon. It's ridiculous, it's been disproven repeatedly, and in fact, the opposite has been proven true. And this guy just needs to sit down. Chad: Yes. So it's gone all the way up to pretty much the Supreme Court. Quincy: It has. Chad: Where all the hand greasing, palm greasing, that's been happening. So yeah, transparency is huge, Jona actually talked about the death of journalism, which is really has started to kind of like atrophy over the past 20, 30 years. Quincy: Oh yeah. Chad: And a lot of that has to do with trying to ensure that this transparency doesn't happen more. When you have local people on the streets, we don't have as much transparency in our local government, and then it just continues to bloom up. So yeah, it's a huge issue. And when we have individuals who are actually weighing in on topics that they should just be shutting the fuck up about. Quincy: It has nothing to do with him. Chad: At all. At all. Well, my last shout out goes to Datapeople, a New York-based SaaS recruiting predictability platform provider, that's a mouthful, raised 13 million Series A funding. Another non-GenAI platform getting funded? I don't think so. [chuckle] Chad: Datapeople brings data-backed objectivity, efficiency and predictability to talent acquisition beginning with the optimized job description. And my question is, companies like this who lean very hard on this type of tech, like a Textio, they do have some domain expertise, there's no question around this area. Although, when being able to train AI and having enough data to be able to back and pretty much replace a Textio or a Datapeople, I feel like this platform is going to be pretty much scrunched into a feature on every single core talent platform that's out there. What do you think about that? Quincy: As it should be, in my opinion. And it's already showing up. I wrote about this week, Oracle released some new tech using GenAI that actually does some of that. It helps... It's assisted authoring, which is really really smart. The risks... Well first... And I think everyone should be doing it by the way. Particularly as more and more of the work leaves the seat of HR or recruiters or other people who've been trained in our expert supposedly in these things, and lands firmly in the lap of hiring managers and it's, "What do you mean, I gotta write a job description from scratch?" They don't know how they haven't been trained. And they're gonna unintentionally turn away some candidates. So I think it's a really smart thing to do. Have to be careful because depending on what model you're using, again, we all know you can automatically bake in bias. Chad: Yes. Quincy: Into those job descriptions. So it has to be careful how it's applied but I don't see any reason why you wouldn't wanna do this. And I hope that after this round of funding and a few short years we see them making bank, if it works, getting acquired by one of the platforms that needs to include it. Chad: Yeah, I think this to me sounds, again, like more runway to be able to look very deeply at different acquisition targets. So you're the acquisition target but acquirees, right? Quincy: Yeah. Yes. Chad: That's the biggest key, because this is going to be a feature, kids. This is not a platform, this is feature and... SFX: Just the tip. Chad: That's just the tip from Quincy and Chad today. So, free stuff. That's right, kids. Oh, my God, we give away so much shit, there a lot of stuff. For instance, we give away beer, craft beer. Quincy: I've never gotten any. Chad: Aspen Tech Labs. That's right. Aspen Tech labs, they don't actually deliver the beer, nor does Chad and Cheese, we have UPS and FedEx for that. But one person every month is going to win a box of craft beer from our friends in Aspen Tech Labs. Then you have whiskey. It's coming from Textkernel. Everybody knows Textkernel. They are the scraping and AI. Oh, you've heard of that word before, right? Quincy: No. Chad: AI. They've been doing that for decades, kids. And they are sponsoring a couple of bottles of whiskey. One from Chad, one from Cheese. Mine's always better. Quincy: Right. Chad: Then you have T-shirts from JobGet, which everybody loves as well. I think you have every single one of them, don't you? Quincy: I do and I wear them all over the world. [laughter] Chad: Always selfies, when you have your Chad and Cheese T-shirt, you got to take a selfie no matter where you're at. Then... Quincy: I do. Chad: I know. I'm telling everybody else. That's what you do. You are the standard. Quincy: Thank you. Thank you very much. Chad: We also have a new giveaway, a $250 Airbnb getaway gift card. Quincy: What? Chad: Yes. From Abode HR, they want all of the talent acquisition professionals that are out there, they want them to be able to get the hell away from all the noise, sit and think for a minute. You can do that in an Airbnb wherever you want. Take the $250, take a long weekend, do whatever you want, but you got to get away. And especially for the Abode folks, you wanna focus on that new cohort that's coming up and that's Gen Z. That's their specialty. Last but not least, if it's your birthday... SFX: Happy birthday. Chad: It's rum from plum. Now, birthdays will be back next week because I don't wanna mess with Cheesman's, his whole flair with birthdays. But again, Rum from Plum, if you haven't done your Plum Assessment yet, go to Google, type in Plum Assessment, go take it, have a good time. This can all be found at chadcheese.com/free or just click on free in the upper right hand corner on chadcheese.com. Quincy: Do it. Chad: Last but not least, next week is RecFest at Knebworth Park, ten stages, 5500 people, they're only allowed to have that many. They sold out a few... I think, last week or something like that. So if you didn't get a chance to go, sucks to be you, maybe next year, but it's gonna be a blast next week in Knebworth Park. But if you haven't been able to get to Knebworth Park and maybe, I don't know, maybe in the US or maybe you wanna visit the US, RecFest is coming to Nashville in September. It's the very first time. And Quincy, are you going to Nashville? Quincy: I'm not. Chad: Okay. We're gonna rectify this because this is the place, everybody's gonna be there. And without Quincy being there, not everybody's there. So we've got to get Quincy there. It's where TA leaders bring their teams for all hangout days, right. There meetings, interact with other practitioners, learn from obviously a bunch of different vendors and practitioners and find out exactly what's happening in the Tech space. So just go to chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner. Are you ready? Quincy: Ready. SFX: Topics. Chad: Oh, shit. Indeed goes to France. Who saw this coming? This comes from RH Martin. Indeed, France is changing its pricing model, making way for pay-per-application. "It's France and Canada's turn to make the change, which is scheduled for the beginning of July. What change, you might ask? The first results with the pay for results system obtained in the US and UK are satisfactory." Is that how you really... You wanna go with satisfactory? Quincy: Satisfactory? Chad: "We particularly follow indicators that have baptized positive outcomes." Said by the Indeed France Managing Director Matthieu Eloy. Okay, Quincy, is Indeed bringing innovation or bullshit to France and Canada. Quincy: Well, first and foremost pay-for-performance is not innovative. Appcast and others have been doing that for years in other realms, but same thing. Chad: Yeah. Quincy: So no, that's not innovative. Much like some people that I know who host a really popular podcast, I'm skeptical of anything that Indeed does. I'm not a fan. They're good at pushing propaganda. You know, we'll get you a thousand applicants, but only one ever gets hired, is not the way to go. Depends on their pricing model. And we'll see if it works and maybe it'll work better there than it has other places with their, what do they say, satisfactory results? [laughter] Chad: That's... Yes. Yes. Quincy: I mean, is that the way to launch a product. Satisfactory? Who approved that? But I don't know. I'm skeptical. It's not innovative. It may be innovative there. I'm not an expert in recruiting in France or Canada, for that matter. But we'll see, we'll see what happens. I'm interested, Chad, as always, to know what your thoughts are about something Indeed is doing. Chad: Hmm. I'm gonna start off with that. So first off, they talk about pay-per-performance results oriented, and they're really focusing on this Pay-per-started apply, which literally should just be the acronym should be S-H-A-M, because it's a sham. Quincy: Wait, it's pay-per-started apply? Chad: Yes, yes, yes. Quincy: Oh, I missed that part. Yeah, it's shit. Don't do it. Save your money. Chad: So, it's exactly what PPC is, it's just repackaged. It's a different colored lipstick on the same damn pig with expensive... More expensive rates. So, now let's talk about PPA. Quincy: Wait, before you do that. Chad: Yeah. Quincy: I have to roll back what I said. Chad: Good. Quincy: And not compare this then to what Appcast and others have been doing quite successfully for years. Because what they're doing actually works. This is different. I agree. I missed that little part. The pay-per-applies start. And that's... You're right. PPC repackaged. So, sorry Appcast, I take it back. [laughter] Quincy: Tame. Chad: Okay. So then we'll roll into the PPA side of the house. The pay-per-application. This is nothing more than suffocating trusted partners through Indeed's new mandated registration. Remember back in the day when they actually kicked platforms off for mandated registration? Quincy: Yes. Chad: Now they're doing it. This is the newest Trojan Horse built to, once again, suck the life out of trusted partners. Indeed claims a monthly audience of 300 million unique visitors to its engine worldwide, including 7 million in France, which they would not have, I repeat, Indeed would not have without their trusted partners. They can't reach that kind of traction and/or audience. Now, let me tell you a little history. Little story. You ready for a little story? Quincy: I'm ready. Chad: Back in the day, Monster.com and CareerBuilder... Quincy: Heard of them. Chad: Yeah. They both started working with Indeed and in their first Trojan horse. And they got a little bit of that traffic and then they got hooked. And then the next thing you know Indeed is sucking all the traffic and all the life out of the Monsters and the CareerBuilders of that day. Now, that was before mandated registration. Mandated registration means everybody out there in the trusted partner network, it means, everybody that you push their way, they don't need you for next time. They're sucking the life out of whatever you are sending to them, which means your money stream, your revenue stream from Indeed is going to atrophy, it's gonna go away, and then they're gonna kick you to the curb. This is what history shows us, kids. So to think that this is something that's gonna be big in France, I think is kind of hilarious. But we'll see. They're pushing the propaganda, they're boiling the frog, and they're doing what Indeed does. Quincy: Oh, I don't say boiling the frog. I don't like that. [laughter] Chad: Leave the frogs out of it, Chad. Quincy: Nobody likes it, but that's what they're doing. All right, I'm going down. That's the newest single from Joonko. That's right, kids. Here directly from The Post. Joonko, a New York City based startup that created an AI powered job board to improve diversity in hiring, is on the brink of collapse. I'll say that again, is on the brink of collapse after its CEO allegedly duped investors with an elaborate scheme to exaggerate the size of the company's business. Joonko founder and CEO, Ilit Raz, resigned after internal probe found she had "Engage in egregious, unethical, and fraudulent conduct, which caused harm to the company and its shareholders". The startup's board of directors said in a statement obtained by The Post. Raz allegedly misled investors by claiming Joonko was working with 150 companies, "When at practice the number was significantly smaller." News of Raz's alleged scheme... This is where it gets fucking crazy, man. Quincy: It's already crazy, man. Chad: Yeah, but it comes after the company raised $25 million in cash from investors last fall included the submission of, listen, fake invoices that were attributed to real people and real companies, fake wire transfers, and even fake bank accounts. A source with knowledge of the situation told The Post. Joonko received 38.5 million in funding. Their last round, as I had said, September of 2022 is a series B and that was 25 million. Quincy, does Joonko live through this or are they already dead in the water? Quincy: No, I don't see there's any way they can live through this. The blow back is gonna break them. They won't get any more money. First of all, has she not ever heard the name Elizabeth Holmes and the company Theranos? You can't do this. Why they would, I don't know. I'm familiar with the product, it's actually a good product. So I'm not sure why they would do that. And they actually do or did, I have some notable companies and logos that they could actually tout. So why they would do that is beyond me. The only thing I can think of was to bolster that round of funding and, did they need it? I guess. I don't know what was going on in the background. Everybody needs money. 38% of startups in 2021, I just read this, failed because they didn't have enough cash. That was the number one reason why they failed. Number two was because they were offering a product or service that no one wanted or needed. That's a good reason to fail. Chad: Oh, yeah. Quincy: But if you need the cash, that's fine. But I don't understand, you don't have to do that. And it takes a lot of work to put that elaborate of a scheme together. One would think and hope that if she used those powers for good instead of evil good, could have come out of it. I don't think they have a chance. What are your thoughts? Chad: Yeah, yeah. I think, from my standpoint, you gotta wonder how long before investors rip those funds back. Number one, we do know Aubrey Brown, who we interviewed and he was actually leading the DEI efforts over at Airtable before he took the VP of Strategy Position there at Joonko, He's literally I think the only person that I would say could prospectively right the ship if they kept their funding. The guy knows what he's fucking doing. It is, from what I've heard, a good product. So, I think you've gotta have the right person in place, number one. Number two, you've gotta have that funding so that runway's got to be there. And, I don't know, I think he's a great guy. Incredibly well spoken, everything that you want out of a founder. Quincy: Yeah. Chad: Right. He's a great just face person. And I think because he is a practitioner too, he knows how to get inside the minds of the people that should be buying. So I think they have a chance, but it's a very, very, very, very thin chance. Quincy: Well, what they've done, what she's done in this case is really... There are other products who do this in the market, SeekOut does something similar, right? Which we know and love that company. So there are others who do the same thing or something similar and she's opened the door completely... Chad: Yes. Quincy: For organizations to make the switch. And it's not a technology that's so deeply embedded into an organization that's particularly difficult switch. Chad: Yeah. Quincy: So I think the other companies who do the same thing are poised to come in and say, "Hey, we are not gonna lie and cheat you, and take some of that business." I never want a company to go under, particularly if it's a good company offering a good product the market needs. Chad: Yeah. Quincy: I just don't know, in this case, even with the right person at the helm, that it's gonna be able to do enough and do it fast enough to fix this. I don't know. Good luck to them, but... Chad: Yeah. Quincy: She is... The theme of today's show, by the way, is people will see as we go on, is for fuck's sake people, what are you doing? [laughter] Quincy: Starting with Ohio and moving in here, and I just, I don't understand people. I just don't get it. Chad: I don't either. And the hardest part about this for me, I think is that we've seen DEIB as a nice to have instead of a need to have. And when you are a platform that is not seen as a need to have, and this happens, it just automatically sends everybody running away from you, which is not a good thing to be kids. We will be right back. Alright. How about a little future of work? Quincy, what do you think about that? Quincy: My future is retirement. I don't wanna work. [laughter] Wait, I didn't say that out loud. If my boss is listening, I do wanna work. I love my job. I don't wanna be unemployed. Chad: Woo. Yeah. Okay. Well, you still got some time for that, don't worry. So this is from Forbes, Gone, our CEO requests to McKinsey for explanations of how AI technology works and whether it's over hyped or not. Now, five questions dominate the conversation these days. Quincy: What are they? Chad: Rule number one... Good question. What are the specific use cases? Number two, how do I get started? Number three, what are the risks I need to manage? Number four, what are the implications for present and future employees? And the last one, how do I learn fast? [laughter] Yes. That's the top five. So previously McKinsey predicted AI would take effect in 2040. They've bumped that up to 2030. Right? Open AI has cracked this bitch wide open. Their winners will be those who move fast and quickly figure out how to integrate these new technologies into their IT stack and workflows and reimagine how they manage talent and design, their operating model as a result. But wait, there's more this from HR Dive, more than 70% of organisations are struggling to keep up with the risks of using AI tools, citing significant risks that have emerged, which could lead to financial loss, reputational loss, or damage, the loss of customer trust, regulatory penalties, that sucks. Compliance challenges, litigation and more. It's the wild wild west out there, and James West and Artemus Gordon aren't here to save us, kids. So what's the CEO to do, Quincy? Quincy: Well, first of all, they're asking the right questions. Means a lot of questions, but they're asking the right questions. I talked to customers, and it's 10 years ago, every time I talked to a client it was, "Hey, do you guys got any of that AI stuff?" And 'cause it was a checkbox on somebody's performance review and they had to have it. Chad: Yeah. Quincy: And now it's not that anymore. It's, what are we doing and how are we moving the product forward with the use of AI? They still don't necessarily know what it is, but buyers are becoming more educated. They're certainly more sophisticated. And they know that this is not something that's gonna go away. And they need to really evaluate their tech stack and the products that are coming to them for how it'll be used for the security protocols behind that technology is very, very important. And so my advice to some of the smaller guys is make sure that you can have the same sort of story as some of the big guys, because people know and trust their security, so you better make sure you have that too. But I do think the CEOs are asking the right questions and the vendors need to keep up. But by the way, don't lie to the analyst your briefing and tell them you have something that you don't 'cause that will never end well for you. Chad: It won't. That's what a vapourware has been around ever since the... Even before the internet. It was salespeople are selling shit that doesn't exist that they saw could have prospectively been on a roadmap at one time. Quincy: Say it isn't so, Chad. Chad: You know it's so. That is a huge issue. And I really believe, and this is where we have to start taking control over the risks. That's not gonna stop. Right? Those things are not gonna stop. But what we have to do as practitioners and leaders, and also vendors, co-founders and whatnot, is we have to ensure that we are doing the right things from an auditing standpoint. Quincy: Yes. Chad: To ensure, right? That first and foremost, our deliverables are on par with what we're promising. And we can't... If the little Joey over there selling something and has a side conversation, it's not something that we can manage. It's everything that we're putting out in the public. And some of the things that I've seen out there over the years have been total bullshit in the first place. Out in the public through mass marketing and their PR people, it's just total bullshit. So, we have to make sure that we align with those things because trust in this market means more than anything else. Chad: ChatGPT and OpenAI showed us one thing, it's that transparency and giving the individual and opportunity to use it, feel it, touch it, and understand that it's not perfect, but it's growing, it's living, and it's moving, and it's learning, is that you are going to have to be more transparent, you're going to have to put that technology in the hands of people well before they buy that shit. So, anybody out there today that's thinking about, from a vendor standpoint, you've gotta start thinking about how you can prospectively do much like, not exactly like, but much like OpenAI did, put the power of the tool in the hands of the practitioners, help them understand it's not perfect. Make sure you get it in front of the analysts and everybody, because I'm telling you right now, transparency will save your ass in the end. And everybody was looking at OpenAI at first, like, what the fuck are they doing? Putting this this thing out there for the masses and look what it did. Quincy: Yeah. Yeah. I partially agree with you. I'm gonna just sit somewhere I don't think that it's... I do I believe in transparency, so I 100% agree with you there. We know we've always been aligned there. I don't know that it's necessary for every single technology vendor to go to every single perspective buyer and say, "Here's how we do every single thing in the backend." I don't know that that's... Chad: Oh no, you don't need to do that. Quincy: I don't know that's necessary. I don't even know that anybody would care to want to. I used to have a boss a long time ago that would say, "I don't wanna hear the labor pains. I just wanna see the baby." And I think it kind of... This fits the same... Well. Chad: I hope that was a female who said that. [laughter] Quincy: It wasn't. This was in the early '90s. Yeah, let's go back to our DEI&B discussion. Anyway... [laughter] Quincy: But really, practitioners and people who are gonna be using it, they care about the practicality of it, they wanna know it's their CTOs wanna know a little bit more. I don't know if they have to put it all in their hands, but transparency is absolutely key. Again, buyers are becoming more sophisticated and more intelligent... Eh, no. More sophisticated, more educated. [laughter] Quincy: And organizations need to have statements. So, I actually talked to a client about this this week. I never recommend that all of my vendors go, all of my clients go and up in their entire roadmap to figure out a way to insert this new stuff. Most of them are because they're smart. But you don't have to, but you need to have an organizational position on it. Are you taking a more conservative approach? Are you taking a wait and see? Are you making sure you have more security protocols? Is it on your roadmap? Are you working on it? Are you not? Have a statement. Because you will not go in, your salespeople will not go into a meeting without somebody asking about it. Chad: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we actually talked about this on the stage at Unleash America. This is all about build, partner, or buy, if you are a vendor. If there are ways that you can actually, practically get some of this text, some of this generative AI or what have you, into your stack, there are point solutions that are out there that you could partner with. If you can maybe possibly build it yourself or just buy that shit, the market is fucking perfect for that right now. Yes. Quincy: You buy it. You don't have time to build it yourself unless you already have, a team of developers sitting on the bench with nothing to do, buy it. You have the cash, go get it. Chad: Well, go buy it, I would partner first. So you get that little taste to see if it works and see if they're not bullshitting you. And then once you get it, once you get it and it's like, okay baby, you're mine. That being said, we're gonna talk about ChatGPT and jobs. So this is from Business Insider jobs are now requiring, that's right. I just said requiring. Experience with ChatGPT probably like 15 years of experience or something. Quincy: What's the theme of the show, Chad. Chad: Yeah. And for fuck sake people. Quincy: God. Chad: And they will pay as much as $800,000 a year for this skill. I don't believe that, I'll have to see that one. A recent study from Resume Builder found that 91% of companies with open positions were looking to hire workers who knew how to use open AI's Buzzy chatbot. Respondents said ChatGPT helped boost productivity, save time, and bolster the company's bottom line. Companies are already using the chatbot to generate marketing material, develop code, and court briefs. Much more on that one later. Here's a quote. "AI won't take your job." The economist Richard Baldwin said during a panel, at the 2023 Work Economic Forum summit, "It's somebody using AI that will take your job." And here are the categories that they think will, AI will start being used very quickly. Marketing, yes. AI and ML engineers. Weird that that wasn't first. Software developers, AI model trainers, copywriters, teachers, product managers, and recruiters. Yes. Recruiters actually made the list. So, talk to me, Quincy, is this the Iron Man suit, the AI platform vendors have been touting for years? Or are we just training our AI overlords to replace our asses? [laughter] Quincy: No, we're not training anyway, everyone said that. No, our AI overlords are not going to replace us because there's too much error and there's too much bias, potential for bias, and you still need humans to take what it's spitting out and tweak it. Couple things. First of all, ChatGPT experience is not even the right thing to say. Organizations who are looking to move into this space need to be looking for people with experience with large language modeling. And it's not all ChatGPT. So the fact that they're saying that tells me what the hell they're doing in the first place. Chad: It is buzzy. That's all they are doing. It's marketing. Quincy: It's a very buzzy. The second thing is people asking for 15 years of ChatGPT experience should be fired on the spot. And the third thing is no, you know... Well, some jobs I think will become different and will shift just like with every advancement in technology that we've ever had. But no, I don't think it's going to take your job, unless you use it exclusively and do some really bad stuff and then you're going to get fired. Looking for people with these skills is the right thing to do. I think it's really smart. I do think the applications that he said are the first place it's going. We've already seen it, but know what you're talking about before you put something out there in the public is all I'll stop there, Chad. [laughter] Chad: Well. SFX: That escalated quickly. Chad: That escalated very quickly. I mean, just from the standpoint of, as you'd say, using ChatGPT, it's more buzzy in marketing, trying to pull people in with these new buzzy words. Much like years ago when everybody was slapping AI on a product and then they started slapping DEIB on a product, this has nothing to do with anything other than trying to sucker people in just to be able to take a look at the job. I mean, $800,000, I don't need to see ChatGPT for that, but yes, it is something that we're definitely going to be talking a lot about. And I'm just going to go ahead and pull back for a minute because we're going to talk about it right after this break. Chad: Now we're headed down that not-to-do lane of ChatGPT from NBC News, A New York federal judge on Thursday, sanctioned lawyers who submitted a legal brief written by the AI tool ChatGPT, which included citations of non-existent court opinions and fake quotes. Judge P. Kevin Castel ordered the both Peter LoDuca and Steven Schwartz, they're both attorneys, along with their law firms LEVIDOW, LEVIDOW & OBERMAN. Holy shit. To pay $5,000 in fines. That's it. $5,000. Quincy. This is fucking ridiculous. This is fucking ridiculous. And again, ChatGPT has gone awry. This is, again, I think a cautionary tale for not just lawyers. Quincy: But again, I mean, this is it. This is what we've been saying all along. The first thing we said was for fuck's sake, people, you use your brain. The second thing we said is, there are risks associated with using these types of models. You can mitigate that [chuckle] with the right security protocols and the right practice of how you apply the model. But you can't just use a publicly available tool like that and expect it to be okay. And for this man or their firm to only be fined $5,000 is not setting, it's not setting the right precedent because we're talking about legal hearings and I don't know what it was, but these legal hearings and these legal rulings have the potential to impact people's lives. And you can't just say, "Oh that was dumb. Five grand. There needs to be a bigger message sent." There will be if it wasn't that guy. And I can't even with people today. There's my salt again, I don't understand. Chad: For fuck's sake people. Quincy: And it's not like people haven't warned about it. Chad, it's not like people haven't warned about this very thing. I typed into ChatGPT because I felt like it. Who did it? Was it William Tim Cook maybe to write an obituary about me? And I wrote it an about 20 different prompts and it still didn't know who I was. So if it can't even get that right, there aren't too many Quincy Valencias for crying out loud. Don't rely on it for legal briefings... Chad: No. Quincy: Or professional work, or anything you're going to attach your name to. [applause] Chad: I have to say though, Quincy, let's just celebrate that humans are still in control for now. SFX: Shall we play a game? 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'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 and 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.

Let’s look at a few trends going on in workforce tech right now: inflation, layoffs, lack of VC funding, tightening budgets and technological disruption. All combined to create uncertainty in multiple dimensions and end up laying the table for what should be a feeding frenzy for M&A. That’s why we invited Georgios Markakis, managing partner at Venero Capital Advisors, to the show. In addition to the acquisition and fundraising landscape, we look back at what things were like during the pandemic, what’s going on with IPOs and what makes a good founder when dissecting M&A opportunities. It’s a must-listen for vendors and the founders who run them. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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 your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA, The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Barney to my Fred, Chad Sowash is in the house. And we welcome today Georgios Markakis. Did I say that right? Chad: No. Georgios Markakis: That's right. Joel: I didn't say it right, Chad? [laughter] Georgios is the managing partner at Venero Capital Advisors. He's educated at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Chicago, and a super fan of the show. Chad: What? Joel: Which we certainly appreciate. Georgios, welcome to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Georgios Markakis: Hi, guys. Great to be here. Chad: Great to have you, man. All the way from Greece. Dude, that is freaking awesome. Joel: The breadbasket of democracy, I think. Isn't that... [laughter] Chad: The breadbasket? Is that what we're going with? Joel: The breadbasket. [laughter] The birthplace. Georgios Markakis: People listening to the show all over the world, including Athens, Greece. Chad: Including Athens, Greece. Joel: We're huge in Greece. Georgios Markakis: Big fan base in Greece. Joel: Although there's no Chipotle, so I won't be visiting anytime soon. [laughter] Chad: And Greece is thanking you for that. Joel: I Appreciate that. [laughter] So Georgios, a lot of our listeners don't know who you are. Give them a Twitter bio on you. Georgios Markakis: Yes, I'm a managing partner at Venero, like you said, Venero Capital Advisors. We were ranked number one HR tech focused M&A advisor globally in terms of deal flow, number of deals. So Venero, we have the largest number of deals in the sector, across HR tech and work tech. So anything in talent sourcing, talent management, workforce management, payroll benefits, that's what we do. My personal background, so before Venero, I was at Deutsche Bank doing M&A across Europe, and have been focusing on HR tech for the last almost five years now as part of Venero. Chad: What got you into HR tech? Joel: Well, if you're gonna be number one in something, it might as well be HR tech. [chuckle] Georgios Markakis: So the answer I like to give is, as a young boy growing up in Greece, I've always dreamt of working in HR. Chad: What? Said no young man ever. [laughter] Georgios Markakis: No, the reality is basically we just stumbled into the sector when we started the firm and we were generalists, and we happened to get one mandate in HR tech, then a second one and then a third one. And also, we called the sector a great time. I think we decided to specialize in the sector back 2019. And at the time, that was boom year for HR tech. So we got a great time and just momentum built. So we decided just focus exclusively on the space. Joel: You've recently been at a conference and you're on the circuit giving presentation. But we haven't had sort of an M&A money guy on. I wanna know your historical perspective of the insanity that was 2020 through like 2022. What was it like from where you sat when all that money was being thrown around and companies were just flushed with cash? What was that like? Chad: Money flowed through the streets, and yes, that the true breadbasket. Georgios Markakis: It was fresh. So back in time... So we go back to that... We keep track of things and then you go back to 2016, 2016, '17. If you look at the M&A multiples, so evaluations where companies were getting acquired, back then, there's maybe two times revenue, one, two times revenue. [laughter] And it was very much I think I like to say kind of the HR tech was the unloved cousin of SaaS. People just didn't think the addressable market was there. People just didn't think that HR departments would adopt all these new SaaS tools. But what happened over time, if you look at the multiples, evaluation multiple, is gradually, they've been expanding. So from one to two times they went, three to four, six to seven. And the best year, actually, for the sector was 2019. If you keep track of the median and the average multiple, 2019, they're very close, the median and the average, which basically means that 2019, basically every company was getting acquired at around nine, 10 times. Joel: The good old days. Georgios Markakis: The good old days. And that's when we first started to hear complaints from buyers and investors about, "Hey, frothy market, what's happening?" Everyone's expecting to be acquired, those multiple. So in 2020, you started to see the median and the average multiple diverge, which basically means that buyers started to become a bit more discerning. The average was still high, which means that the best-in-class assets were still getting acquired a really high multiples, even well into double digits, et cetera. And then everybody else was getting more modest multiple. And then 2021, that trend continued. And then 2022 is when you started to see that contraction. But 2019, '20, '21, and even if you look at investing, like funding flowing into the sector, '21 was a record year for the space. So a lot of funding went into recruitment, a lot of funding went to... Even you had a lot of companies raising income in the billions. So the likes of Access and big private equity started coming into the sector, and those guys were investing hundreds of millions and billions into this space. So you have 2021 really being a record year for the sector. Chad: So did you see that... I mean, HR is slow to the party. They are slow, finally catching up to, let's say, for instance, SaaS or the sales, the marketing kinda like platforms over the years. So was that kind of like key for you guys to say, "Hey, look, these guys are lagging probably by at least five years. We can jump into this and we can be early adopters when they actually catch the rise?" Is that what you guys saw? What... I mean, because HR just isn't sexy. Let's just say that. Georgios Markakis: It's not sexy. And look, I'd love to say that it was all planned and it was, we saw the opportunity and... But it was, basically, we just had the deal flow. So we went with it, and we were small team at the time. So it just made a lot of sense for us to specialize. And look, at the end of the day, today, people think about HR tech and we talk about HR tech and work tech as a superset of HR tech. We think it's a small sector. It's actually quite a big sector. So there's about 15 of us now. And still the sector is really, really, really, really large. So the opportunity for us was big. We caught it a great time. At this point, we're experts in the space, and we're happy that we made that decision back then. Joel: I noticed that a lot of your deals are cross border, they're global. Talk about that because I think it's a relatively new trend. I assume that you expect it to continue. Talk about the global nature of M&A and how that's gonna be in the future. Georgios Markakis: Yeah. No, that's a very good point. And so, again, it goes back to the history of the sector. When all these funding started flowing into the space, you had a lot of these point solutions crop up. A lot of companies, a lot of vendors were addressing specific pain points. So we actually have a thesis. We call that part of the history kinda the period of rapid innovation. So a lot of new companies being spun off and addressing all these pain points. Now, of course, customers, for the most part, they don't want to deal with like tons of systems. So that's when we started to see this consolidation. So we went from the phase of rapid innovation to growth and consolidation, which was maybe the last, three years or so. What that meant was that a lot of buyers, a lot of corporates would either decide either build a more unified and more seamless offering or acquire best-in-class point solution. And so that's what was happening. And of course, these point solutions exist anywhere in the world. They cater to customers, for the most part, globally. Of course, it depends. There's others who focus on certain geographies, but for the most part, HR tech is a horizontal geography agnostic solution. So a lot of companies were being acquired, integrated into a broader offering, and then rolled out internationally. So, yeah, cross border is super typical, let's say. Joel: And Chad and I talk a lot about sort of the promise of India, Africa, South America. What's your read on those three areas and what they'll mean to recruitment in the future? Georgios Markakis: Okay, so there's two dimensions there. One is on the candidate side of things. And now with remote work and everything, we're seeing a continuation of the trend where you source talent from all these regions, so India, and so on and so forth, Africa, to some extent, Asia. So when it comes talent marketplaces, there, you have a very spread out geographically reach across all these geographies. So there's talent marketplaces, from Upwork to Fiverr, and everybody, who have talent globally. So, of course, India and Asia is very prominent. Now, when it comes to SaaS solutions. And we do have mandates globally, so we have mandates in Southeast Asia and Australia, of course, North America and Europe. With SaaS, it's different. A lot of SaaS vendors that are headquartered in Southeast Asia, for example, they will tend to focus on customers in southeast Asia. Some Indian vendors try to cross over to the US, but that's less common. Australia, same thing. So a lot of Australia, New Zealand vendors, they tend to be a bit more local. They'll try to transition maybe to the US, but rarely will they come to Europe. European ones and US, there, you see more of a cross pollination. US, you have bigger concentration North America, and of course, globally. So that's, I think, how... When it comes SaaS, there is this geographical focus. There's more investment going into Africa. It still, I think, has room to go before it grows out of Africa into other regions. Chad: Let's talk about the invasion of European companies, startups trying to come to the US. It's not easy. And a lot of times, they don't have enough cash, let alone experience, to be able to make that work. And everybody just thinks it's easy because we're just 50 states, we speak the same language and it's a big pile of money, but it is hard to achieve successful invasion of the US and then also try to follow the recipe for acquisition at that point. So when you're talking to European startups and when they start to get more money, they know that they have to increase their TAM. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for a bigger pile of money. So how do we do that? Oh, shit, let's go to the US. It seems like the de facto, but it's not a successful de facto. Tell us a little bit about that. What happens behind the scenes when you're talking to a startup, you're talking about funding, that funding is growing, it's like, "Oh, shit, we've gotta increase the TAM? Where do we go? What do we do?" Georgios Markakis: Yeah. No, actually, you're absolutely right. It is the default go-to market, simply because... I think it's probably process of elimination. People thinking, "Okay, should I fight about... Suppose am in the UK already, should I fight a battle in France or Germany where I have to get a different language, different culture? It's still Europe, but they're very different. Or do I pick a very large addressable market that's relatively more uniformly than Europe?" A lot of companies and founders do choose to go to the US. I think there are a couple of different recipes for success. So the ones that I've seen that are doing this, I think, properly are doing two things right. First of all, at least one of the founders moves to the US [laughter] to build a team there. And the secondly, they get support... They get local knowhow from investors that know the market, who can guide them in building that market. Of course, you need to build up the team from scratch and have unique go-to-market strategies for that. So those guys do it properly. If you try to grow into the US from Paris or from Munich, I think that's much harder to accomplish or to do properly. Chad: So what about the other way around? We have US companies that now they look at Europe to be able to, again, expand. And that's a hell of a lot harder just because of everything that you just said in trying to grow within Europe. I mean, if you're in the UK and trying to grow in Europe, that's hard, right? Georgios Markakis: Yeah. Chad: So being a US company trying to come across the pond, what are some of the recommendations and/or advice that you provide to startups who are prospectively looking at that path? Georgios Markakis: Yeah. Yeah, no, we see that as well, and with mixed success. I think the most successful ones would be either large companies that open offices locally in Europe, but we've seen companies either make sizeable acquisitions in Europe and then from there expand, make acqui-hires in Europe, and then use that to expand. You can acquire business and then make that founder kind of head of European expansion. So those are strategies that work. But what doesn't really work is to have a marketing team sitting somewhere in the US try to sell... Do a marketing plan for a French company. Chad: So one thing that we have noticed and working with the House of HR is how they acquire companies throughout Europe, but yet they keep the brand, to be able to give that sense of, "We're not changing anything. This is a French company. It's gonna stay a French company. It's under the house of HR umbrella" And in the US, we usually don't do that, because it's just like, "Let's cram everything together." But when we started seeing that type of strategy in Europe and then started to do a lot more digging and research in Europe, that made a hell of a lot of sense. What are your thoughts around the house of brands versus just a single brand? Georgios Markakis: That has a less obvious answer, I think. We've seen both. We've seen companies acquire kinda relatively wellknown brands, but then decided to sunset that acquired brand. And others keep things separate. I think there's merit to both. I think the answer is, it depends. So yeah, I don't think there's a single right answer for everybody. It depends on the product, your go-to-market strategy, your customer base, how global is your customer base, versus local customer base, how strong is the local brand. So I think the answer there is, it depends. Joel: Let's get into your presentation that you did at Transform. Some of our listeners may have seen you there. Let's look at the laundry list of global headwinds, inflation, layoffs, dry-up of VC funding, tightening budgets, technological disruption, which we'll get into in a little bit with a little thing called chatGPT. I'll ask about that. Chad: What's that? Joel: It all looks like chaos, companies looking for an out, the IPO markets have dried up. This looks like the dawn of the glory days of M&A. Am I wrong? Georgios Markakis: Some of these indicators are leading, others are lagging indicators, but, okay, a few things are happening. So when it comes to buyer spend, companies acquiring these kind of SaaS tools for HR tech and work tech, what we're seeing and what we're hearing is that at least on the recruitment side of things, at least the vendors are exposed to recruitment. They're seeing an impact. So they have a problem. Even if you look at some of the publicly traded ones, without disclosing any information on private companies, like Super Recruiter is forecasting, I think, a 15% drop to revenue this year. Upwork or Fiverr and those kind of companies, they're projecting kind of a much slower growth, like in the single digits. Of course, they've been suffering for a while. So the recruitment vendors, they are seeing this impact of companies just not hiring as much. And this, of course, comes on the back of very strong performance in last year, believe it or not. 'Cause last year, even though the headlines were talking about recession and macro headwinds, last year, businesses weren't cutting back on their spending. But this year, they sort of are. So this is in recruitment. Georgios Markakis: In the other segments, we're hearing about longer sales cycles, we're hearing about CFOs and everybody just thinking, "Okay, do I need this?" On the investment side, a lot of investors are asking... Before they invest, they're asking, "Okay is this product a must-have or a nice-to-have?" And that's the reality on the ground. On the inflation side, of course, that means that salaries sometimes will need to be adjusted. We keep hearing about businesses need to update the salaries of their employees, which increases their cost base, which, of course, affects their cash per. And then the funding side, we're reading in the headlines, it's true, the investor, the VCs, they're being a lot more discerning when it comes to investing. And so they'll talk about, okay, must-have versus nice-to-have, they'll talk about what's the outlook for the next 12 months. They won't take the longer term view of this is something that's temporary. 2024 could be a better year. They're a bit more, at least shortsighted when it comes to investing this year. Chad: I'm gonna say, get that ALDI bag out because it's shop time, baby. [laughter] Joel: Yeah, it sounds like a feeding frenzy for the M&A guys. Like, are you feeding calls constantly to get deals done? Are there companies with dry powder looking to say, "Who's ready to sell?" It's gotta be a busy time for you. Talk about that. Georgios Markakis: Yeah. So on the M&A side, again two things are happening. First of all, last year companies just decided not to come to market. Companies were saying, "Well, I'll wait. I've been reading the headlines. Valuations are down. I don't know what to do about... I'm just not going to come to market." This year, we're seeing a big uptake in companies have different conversations. They're saying, "I'll come to market, I plan to come to market." And usually, there's... Typically, there's two drivers. First is need. Some companies just need to come to market because of all the other things we talked about, because revenue is being impacted, because funding is not as easily available. So some companies need to come to market. Others, believe it or not, choose to come to market, because some companies actually are doing okay. Their KPIs are fine. And it just so happens that all they're waiting for is for sentiment to stabilize. Georgios Markakis: Last year, sentiment was pretty bad. This year, we found a floor. It seems like, okay, at least there's no worsening of sentiment. So as soon as sentiment picks up a bit, these companies will choose to come to market. Now, what I'm telling you, you don't see this in the numbers. If you look at the numbers of announced transactions, you don't see this. Why? Because announced transactions have a six to nine-month lag. Deals get announced today are the deals that were launched nine months ago. But at the end of the year, and maybe early next year, you'll see that uptake because processes are getting launched this year. Chad: So from a personal standpoint and also from the organization, what is that one thing that you guys look for in a founder? And I'll tell you what I mean. When we first started seeing this frenzy, we started seeing founders that have huge exits from like marketing in sales. And they felt like they could come into this space and just rock the shit out of it. And they, in many cases, failed miserably. And as we started to see kind of like the recipe, I guess you could say, for a good organization, Joel and I have our own, like, personal one thing that means everything for at least the start. What is that for you? What is that for you from a founder standpoint, from an organization standpoint? Georgios Markakis: Interesting. So instinctively, somebody might say, "I'm looking for a founder who knows the sector, who knows the sector that they're catering to." And that's always a plus. A lot of times though, what we've seen is sometimes the people who know the sector don't necessarily have the best execution or best product in the market. So we've seen that being a plus. But equally, it's not the one thing. It's not the one thing. I think the one thing really comes down to personality, I think. It's this charismatic founder. Like, we keep hearing this from investors or for acquirers, this founder and their co-founder, they're just... They have this 'Je ne sais quoi' if you wanna use French on the show. Joel: Bless you. [chuckle] Georgios Markakis: Bless you. Thank you. So it's just this charisma that translates into fantastic execution and the ability to solve any problem that comes their way. So I think that... Which probably true for every sector, but it's equally true for this sector as well. Chad: I have to say that a friend of mine who did sell, Adam Gordon with Candidate.ID, he was on every stage he could be on. And again, very charismatic and just getting out there. And I asked him, I was like, "Why are you getting on so many stages? I know it's good from an awareness standpoint." He said, "No, it's better for me sharpening my message and then being able to get feedback from practitioners. It just... It starts a conversation that prospectively wasn't there before." So I agree 100%. So when you take a look at, Joel and I every week, and I'm sure you hear it, we keep wondering how some of these companies get funding. It's literally a solution looking for a problem. It is somebody who literally has no experience in this space, along with trying to find a problem for a solution. When you were looking and assessing, adding someone to your portfolio from a funding or an M&A standpoint, what are you looking for? What's... Beyond just the charismatic piece of it, what are you looking for? Joel: Obviously someone in a kilt, in Adam Gordon's case. [laughter] Georgios Markakis: If you think about it from an M&A side of things, it's different from... Versus an investment. For an investor looking to invest, they look at the founder, the founding team, fundamentally. And they go to market and their ability to execute. But for M&A, it's a bit clearer. So an M&A, a buyer basically looks at their existing offering and they say, "What gap do I have in my offering?" So they also look at it from a product perspective. So they look at the founder and the management team, but equally, if not more, they're looking for alignment between their own strategy as a vendor and what products the target company is offering. So that's a bit more... It's a bit clearer. "What's the size of the vendor, of the target company? Is it big enough? Does it move the needle for me? What's the product it's offering? Is it good enough quality wise? From a technology perspective, does it fit with my platform? Geography, does it cater to the same geographies that I want to target or same target customers?" That's what... So it's a bit more clear cut, if you will. Chad: Well, the founder... At that point, if you're not looking to make that founder the CEO of the bigger organization, they're gonna be out the door anyway. So really, it is about all of the assets and not the personnel as much. Georgios Markakis: Exactly. The founder typically will stay on for a couple years to ensure the transition, maybe hit some earn-out targets, and then maybe they stay on, maybe they move on. Usually, it's their choice. Joel: You've been doing this for a while, and diversity has been a hot topic for the last few years. From your perspective, are we seeing a healthy trend toward more diversity with founders, boards, et cetera? Are we making progress on that end, or does now look like it did mostly like it did 10 years ago? Georgios Markakis: Yeah. On boards, definitely. And actually here, I'll plug the boardroom, which is... My sister actually launched the boardroom out of Switzerland, which is basically supporting gender diversity in the boardroom. From a founder perspective, there's been a big push for non-mainstream founders to raise funding. So that's definitely been a positive. Now, to what extent that has translated into actual major exit, et cetera, I think it's a bit early, 'cause usually, remember, it takes quite a few years for a new company, a newly funded company to make kinda headlines through an exit. But look, I think at least we're doing the right things when it comes to talking about it, creating new funds for these types of founders. So at least we're doing the right things. And I think the next few years we'll see the results of today's actions. Joel: So we saw you last in November in Paris at Unleash. A little thing called chatGPT launched back in November and has [chuckle] had some impact. You may have heard of it. So in your LinkedIn post, you said, "Generative AI will disrupt the future of work more quickly than people anticipated, and the impact will be more pronounced. It seems to be catching a lot of people off guard." Talk about generative AI and what it means from where you sit. Georgios Markakis: Right. First of all, let me just say, I'm not... I'm a finance person. I'm not a tech person, although I do have a master's in computer science. [laughter] Joel: Studied at Carnegie Mellon. I know about technology. Yeah. [laughter] Georgios Markakis: As I jokingly say every now and then, I do have a master's. But look, we think there are two... And of course, AI has been around for a long time. And a lot of vendors already use AI in their tools. And they use what we call predictive AI as opposed to generative AI. And we think there's two fundamental aspects that make this different. The first thing is that applications like chatGPT, they're iterative and interactive. So up until now, with predictive AI, you would give the AI an input, it would spit out an output, and that's it. I think it would be explainable and all that, but that was it. Now, we're talking about something that's interactive, that's iterative, that improves the results in a user-friendly and iterative way. And we think that's the one thing that is initially very different. It will improve the user experience dramatically. So that's the one point. And the second point is that the barriers for AI are being lowered significantly. Up until now, to build AI, you needed to have experts, and money, and data scientists, and access to data, and servers, and you get to train it and then... Now, all these barriers are being lowered. So what's going to catch people off guard is that AI will become mainstream. Georgios Markakis: Today, companies that use AI, relatively few, and they have a competitive advantage. Soon, everybody will use AI, and those who don't will be at a disadvantage. It's a shift in the mentality of the competitive landscape. And of course, this will change the competitive landscape dramatically. AI will no longer be a competitive advantage. You'll need to find a different moat for your competitive advantage. So I think that's what's going to catch people... And of course, there are some vendors that will be completely disrupted, but that's a whole different story. [laughter] Joel: You think? Chad: Yes. So Georgios, so last question, the hardest question of this entire interview, conversation. [laughter] Why do you listen to The Chad and Cheese Podcast? Is it because we're a couple of bumbling Americans and we're funny to listen to or why? What is it? I don't wanna feed you with reasons, but go ahead. Joel: Chad needs a hug. [laughter] Chad: Always. Georgios Markakis: Well, first of all, you guys make it interesting. I think I've listened to other... I mean, no offense to others, but... Chad: They all suck. No, I get it. It's 'cause... It's okay. [laughter] Georgios Markakis: You make it interesting. You bring on very interesting guests. And for me, it's just I'm interested in finding a way to stay up to speed with what's happening in the sector. So as a finance person, that's my... I listen to it, I enjoy it, I have fun and laugh with you guys. And also it's informative. So that's a... Joel: He has the same hairstylist as you, Chad. That's why he listens. Georgios Markakis: Is there going to be a video with this? 'Cause yes, that's true. [chuckle] Chad: It's sexy. I'm excited. [applause] Joel: That is Georgios Markakis, everybody. Georgios, for our listeners who wanna connect with you or learn more, where would you send them? Georgios Markakis: Venerocapitaladvisors.com, or on LinkedIn, Georgios Markakis. Yeah. Joel: I'm a lot smarter, Chad. I don't know about you. Georgios, thanks for coming on the show. Hopefully, we can see each other face to face again. Chad: Amen. Joel: It'll be over a few beers this time. Georgios Markakis: Absolutely. Joel: Chad, another one is 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'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.

Inspire in Coronado Beach in Sunny Cali. Essential workers are all the rage right now. The only thing more popular is figuring out how to recruit them. That’s why we invited Ashley Miller, VP of HR operations at Quanta Services to sit down with us at iCIMS Inspire in San Diego. According to Ashley, start with a strong message targeted toward an inclusive audience, including military veterans, give them incredible benefits, including upskilling, and leverage technologies like SMS and video, and treat workers like family. What a concept! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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? We are recording live from the iCIMS Inspire Conference from beautiful San Diego, California. I am Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is by my side. Chad: Hello. Joel: And we are excited to welcome Ashley Miller, VP of HR Operations at Quanta Services, not Qantas Airlines... Ashley Miller: Correct. Joel: Quanta Services. Ashley, welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Ashley Miller: Thank you guys for having me. Chad: Thanks for being here. Ashley Miller: Not Quantum either. Joel: Not Quantams. Ashley Miller: Not Qantas, that's the airline. Right. Joel: Clearly we don't know what the hell's going on. Most of our listeners don't either give us the dealio on Quanta Services. Ashley Miller: Sure. So we are a company that you've never heard of. Joel: Yes, until today. Ashley Miller: We are a 14200 organization and at the end of the day, everybody has a utility bill, right? So I was just talking with you guys. You have Duke Energy is who you pay every month for electricity. Joel: I sure do. Ashley Miller: So they help keep your power on. But there are a lot of contractors behind the scenes who are actually going out in the middle of the night who are helping to rebuild the infrastructure in the country. Joel: Oh. Ashley Miller: So we all have this lovely 20... Is it 2030 carbon neutral? [laughter] Joel: Depending on your state. Ashley Miller: Everybody think... We're gonna... Yeah, exactly. California. It's much sooner. Chad: It's like it keeps moving. Ashley Miller: It does keep moving. Joel: There's an election next year. It might change after that. Ashley Miller: It might change again. Chad: Yeah. It'll be 2022. [laughter] Carbon neutral retro, yes. Ashley Miller: All of that being said, we have an aging infrastructure in the States. Right. Our organization provides the craft skilled labor that essentially builds the infrastructure for tomorrow. So we power your modern life, right? So you turn on the light switch, you should be thinking about the folks that are out there climbing on the poles, ensuring that you have electricity. [laughter] Joel: Thank your lucky stars. There's Quanta Services. When you turn those lights on. Ashley Miller: When a storm comes, who do you think's going? Who do you think is going to restore the power, winter, hurricane, whatever it is? Chad: Exactly, They have to strap on the little things that climb the poles, right? Ashley Miller: Yes. That stick into the pole to help you. Chad: That still happens. Ashley Miller: That's still happens. Chad: It's still a thing. Ashley Miller: But we are going to vanes. Chad: Elevators, are you gonna do elevators? Ashley Miller: We have wind energy. We actually just got awarded a project called Sunsea. Joel: Look at you. Ashley Miller: Largest clean energy project in the United States history. Chad: Where where? Ashley Miller: It's in New Mexico, in Arizona. Chad: Oh, nice. Ashley Miller: And we are delivering energy essentially to California. Because California always needs energy. Chad: California needs everything. Ashley Miller: And water. Chad: They need everything. Ashley Miller: I used to live here actually, for eight years. Chad: Really? Ashley Miller: Yeah. Joel: San Diego or California? Ashley Miller: San Diego, Northern California, Sax wellington. Joel: And you left because? Ashley Miller: It's too effing expensive. Joel: Okay, good reason. Chad: Yes. There it is, ding ding ding ding... Ashley Miller: I am a Texan, so paying a million dollars for a shack is not actually something I wanna do. Chad: So recruiting here is not easy, is what you're saying. Ashley Miller: Recruiting is definitely not easy here. We actually have a huge labor population in California and a lot of our Northeastern states. So we partner with IBW to try to help the industry get a lot more craft skilled labor into the trade. We bought a college a few years ago, so we actually... Joel: I'm sorry. Chad: There we go. Joel: We bought a college. Ashley Miller: You wanna talk about diverse, your portfolio. Joel: Quanta you. Chad: This Is amazing and smart because here's the thing, kids, we hear this thing called the skills gap. Joel: We own the gap. Chad: When you can fill it from pampers. Ashley Miller: From pampers. Chad: All the way, all the way in. It just makes sense, right? I mean, that is so, so incredible smart... Joel: Gold plated diapers. Baby. Chad: So Joel and I, we're a little bit older than you [laughter] We went to school, we went to school when there was vocational. Ashley Miller: Yeah. Training, yeah. Chad: Yes. That shit doesn't exist anymore. Ashley Miller: It does. Joel: Except at Quanta University. Chad: But no. Ashley Miller: Not as big, but it's coming back. Chad: One of the things that I, that I love about the whole idea of this is instead of leaning incredibly heavily on corporate welfare, you guys said, no, you're not gonna get this shit right in the first place. We're gonna go ahead and take this on ourselves because this is a long-term commitment to building what? Oh, let me hear it. Talent pipelines. Because everybody talks about talent pipelines, but nobody knows what it really means. I'm gonna give you a big kiss right now. Joel: They're committed. They're committed. Ashley Miller: We are. I mean, in all honesty, we control the training. Chad: Wow. Ashley Miller: And we control it for the industry. Not just for our organization, but we hold something similar to iCIMS, but we have all of our customers. It's called Utility Perspectives. We come in and talk about industry trends. And yeah, buying a college was certainly not something that was in our portfolio. We are, again... Chad: Genius. Joel: And what's the name of the college? Ashley Miller: It's called Northwest Line College. I'm not gonna say lineman. But it's Northwest Lineman College. We have four campuses throughout the states. We probably produce about 5,000, 6,000. Chad: Wow. Ashley Miller: Pre-apprentice journey line workers. So. Chad: Are you gonna grow it? Ashley Miller: We intend to grow it. Yeah. We will continue to grow it. Chad: 'Cause you could do that nationwide, not just for yourself, but for other. Ashley Miller: So we actually have customers who pay for our training and send... Yes. So, it's actually a, it's not a non-for-profit, but if it's for profit it's... Chad: Where have you been all my life. [laughter] Ashley. Where have you been all my life. Ashley Miller: We just need to capitalize on it. We need to get people excited about the industry. We need to get people excited about this trades. This is like six figure work. Like no joke. It's a lifestyle. Chad: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Ashley Miller: But it's good trade. Joel: So we're talking about growing the apples directly from the tree. Ashley Miller: Yes. Joel: You guys are really committed to diversity and veteran recruitment. Talk about that. Ashley Miller: We are. So we have another advanced training center, which is actually in Lazy Q Ranch. And it's in La Grange, Texas. And we have a partnership with our veteran organizations where we essentially hire them from the military. We're picking folks that are interested in being outside, working with their hands, used to being away from home. We have 'em come in, we pay for it. So we're giving them a wage. We're actually sponsoring their education for them to continue to be a journey line worker. Chad: Well in the military they have, I know I spent 20 years, they actually have what we call wire dogs. And that's what they do. So I mean, they have all these skills... Ashley Miller: Transferable skills. Chad: Yes, that you can actually pull in, right again, love this, this is amazing. Ashley Miller: We actually have a big session coming up. We're going through a little bit of a business evolution. So we are, and actually with our partnership with iCIMS, we have about a hundred operating companies that traditionally have maybe bidded against each other in the same market. And so we've done, has really changed our operational model to be a more regional, and our customers are like,"Hey, I don't wanna talk to five different freaking people from your company. Like you self-perform 85% of your work. Talk to one person. We want you." So at the end of the day, we're in this situation where our customers are demanding a change. So we don't wanna look dumb in the market when it comes to talent. So that's actually how we're partnering with iCIMS. Chad: You don't look dumb, I'm telling you right now. Joel: Wire dog? Is that anything like [laughter] a Chicago dog? 'Cause I'm all over it if that's... Oh, no? Okay. I see. Chad: Yes. No. It's not the same kind of dog. You don't wanna put that dog in your mouth. Joel: Oh boy. All right. So I'm gonna quote your website. At Quanta, we pride ourselves on being a family company. Ashley Miller: Yeah. Joel: Now we've heard some pushback in different employers that say,"We don't want to portray our workers as family because it's harder to lay them off. We're more of a team." So talk about the commitment to talking about employees as a family. Ashley Miller: I can give you a quote of something that happened when I first joined Quanta probably about seven years ago, I stood up and our CEO in a town hall. And this was right at the time when bathrooms were a topic of discussion. Chad: Oh, yes. Yes. Ashley Miller: What bathroom should you use? Chad: Because that should always be an issue. I mean, give me a break. Ashley Miller: I mean it rised up everywhere, right? So my CEO basically stood up and said,"Listen, I don't care who you are. I don't care who you love. I don't care what bathroom you use. At the end of the day, if you wanna work hard, I want you here. We want your brother, we want your cousin, we want your sister, we want your aunt. If they wanna work here and they wanna work hard, we want them." And as a personal note, I've had, my sister-in-law works for the organization. My mother worked for the organization. There is obviously sometimes a little bit of issues when you can't fire them. But I think we're working through all of it and you know, we're trying to make sure to do it ethically. Chad: But that's real family. Ashley Miller: It is. Chad: Not just this fake family that most companies talk about. Ashley Miller: It is, every company says that,"Family core value." Chad: Yes. Ashley Miller: This is the only company that I've... Joel: They take it to the next level. Chad: Yes. Ashley Miller: For real. Chad: Yes. Yes. Ashley Miller: Everybody's family, which as an HR professional when you're doing an investigation, can be quite difficult. You have to know who is related to who? Joel: I keep saying the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to family. Chad: Can't even imagine. Ashley Miller: They do. It's a retention, right? So at the end of the day, I know a lot, one of my best friends got an interview and job at the organization... Chad: And how hard is it gonna be to leave... Ashley Miller: It'll be super hard. Chad: Because she's gonna let you down and, and all the rest of the family. I mean, literally family down, just the loyalty connection here, it's just smart. Ashley Miller: It's different, It's different though. Joel: Wicked smart. Chad: Unless it's not, 'casue family drama can be a little bit much. Ashley Miller: It can, but we have a great leader. We have great leadership teams that are probably harder on their family members than they are on, regular employees. So, yeah. Chad: Come on Jeff. Get to work. Joel: She said harder. Okay. You guys have like fantastic benefits. Ashley Miller: We do. Joel: Really good benefits, talk about that... Ashley Miller: We have pet insurance. Chad: Oh. Joel: I know you guys go above and beyond. Ashley Miller: We have pet insurance. Joel: How important is that to recruiting, retention? Talk about your benefits? Ashley Miller: Yeah, so we have, your traditional benefit plan. We've probably got about three or four different options for folks where they are in their lives. We really pay attention to our spouses. So sometimes, other folks don't pay attention to benefits. Joel: So do Chad and I. Chad: Yes. Joel: Not yours, ours. Ashley Miller: But the spouses do. The spouses care about it. So we have a really hands-on approach. When we come to working with families. We have some unique stuff. Again, pet insurance, we have a pretty big program with mental wellness. So we've construction in the construction industry, unfortunately, there are a lot of suicides so we've got a really big dedication today to really focus on trying to reduce that number. Chad: Well, that's amazing. And also employing veterans, right? I mean, it is important to take care of your people and when... Ashley Miller: And their spouses. Chad: Yes. That's what I was getting... I was getting right to that. Because in the military, we are used to, we have to take care of everybody. Meaning not just the person in the ranks. But also their spouses. Ashley Miller: Their family. Chad: And their kids. Because we know that when they are not focused on the job, they're focused on something else. That's a life and death situation. And it literally could be for some of the positions that you guys have. Ashley Miller: We are working on energized lines. Chad: Yes. Ashley Miller: It's just, I mean, that we're one of the very few contractors that can do that. You make a wrong mistake and it's fatal, right? So it's serious and that's why there's a lot, there's a connective tissue there for our veterans because it's the same thing. They see it as serving their country like we are building the infrastructure for tomorrow. So it's kind of that honor and pride in what you're doing. It translates very well. Chad: So what about hydro? Are we doing hydro anytime soon? Chad: Little bit. We we're starting, we're in the research phase really on the hydrogen front. We've partnered with a lot of different universities, and so we've got a lot of folks that are working, and so we're in that market a little bit. Our big push right now is in our renewable and battery storage, so, you know that when you put on Christmas lights, how many times do you trip over... Like, all the time. Chad: All the time. Ashley Miller: All the time, right? Joel: All the time. Ashley Miller: So if you think about everybody with an electric vehicle, right? Like signing up the infrastructure's not here today. So we are focussed on that research. Joel: Oh. Believe me. I am Clark Griswold in the Christmas season. Changing out the lights. Ashley Miller: Themed with music. Joel: Rusty. Rusty. Rusty. You guys leverage a lot of communications platforms, SMS, video. Talk about the decision to do that and how effective it is with your recruiting? Ashley Miller: I think it's getting a lot better. We actually have a podcast. Chad: What? What? Ashley Miller: That we own. I know, right? Called Powerline podcast. Joel: Live from the college that we just bought. Chad: I love it. Ashley Miller: No, live from our jobs sites, man. Joel: Oh, my bad. Ashley Miller: We've got a pretty big brand marketing group now. Chad: I think we should be on one of the job sites and do one of these things. Ashley Miller: Come, come on. I'll introduce you to Ryan, he's great. And you'll see the trades. It's hard. It's hard work. It's hazard. Chad: Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Ashley Miller: But yeah, we're leveraging it. I think we could do better. Of course, partnership with iCIMS is something that we really want to leverage those video stories, so I think that's the next step. But again, going from a decentralized hundred operating unit company with their own culture, their own processes to kind of becoming the power of Quanta is a journey. And we've really just kind of stepped our foot in the water. So, yeah. Exciting. Joel: That is Ashley Miller, everybody, VP of HR operations at Quanta Services. That ticker symbol is P-W-R Ashley. For our listeners who want to connect with you or the company. Where do you send them? Ashley Miller: Quantaservices.com is our website. If you wanna connect with me, it's AMillerSpeaks on Instagram or Ashley E. Miller on LinkedIn. Joel: That may be our first Instagram, handle we've had on the show and with that. Joel: I'm a millennial. Joel: Another one is in the can. We out. Chad: We out. S4: 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.

What do you get when one cohost is in Vienna, Austria and the other is in Orlando, Florida? Pure podcasting gold, baby! Throw in the fact they’re talkin’ Humanly raising, Vidcruiter acquiring, Yale rehabbing (kinda), Google employees whining and Bud Light still losing, and you’ve got the best podcast you’ll hear today (probably). One man’s pork tenderloin is another man’s schnitzel, this week, on Chad & Cheese. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. INTRO: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad 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. It's National Detroit Style Pizza Day, Chad. Ah, Detroit style pizza. The bronze medalist of the pizzas. You're listening to The Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Motown Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad. Did I just see the Vienna Vikings? Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, Humanly raises, VidCruiter acquires, and Bud Light is taking it from both sides. Let's do this. Chad: Is there really a bronze pizza? I mean, seriously, any pizza? Joel: Oh, it's New York. It's Chicago, and then it's Detroit in the bronze... The bronze category. Chad: Still good? Yeah. Not gonna turn it down. Yeah. Welcome to Vienna Kids. Joel and I were just talking in the green room. I was on the tram, a little public trans kind of thing. It's what we do here in Europe and I saw a fucking billboard that had the Vikings on it, like the Minnesota Vikings, and I got out. Joel, and I got out, I looked at it. No, it was the Vienna Vikings. Apparently they had a European League of Football. Think they have 12 teams and the Vikings were the same color, logo. I mean, they were last year's champion, so I guess, they can do whatever they want. Hell, I don't know. Joel: That has to be the saddest football league in the world. There are 12 teams? [laughter] Chad: Well, I don't know. The XFL and the USFL are pretty sad right now, too. Joel: Yeah. Much more intriguing is your diet while you're in Austria. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: I mean, I'm enjoying the pictures of, I guess, fritters or... Chad: Schnitzel baby. Joel: Tenderloins. Chad: Schnitzel... Joel: Or whatever. Chad: Yes. Joel: Schnitzel, yes. Pork tenderloins basically. Chad: Schnitzel or some Buko. I mean, they've got amazing beers, wines, eating amazing foods, meeting amazing people. The culture. I mean, we went to museums, all the art churches stuff. I mean, it's just fucking awesome. It's our first time to Vienna. So we're both pretty hyped up. Joel: Are the hills alive with the sound of music Chad? Is the question. Chad: Well, of course they are. [laughter] Why wouldn't they be? Joel: I'm fortunate enough to be in Orlando, also known as the Vienna of Florida or the Vienna of the South. And I also am surrounded by priceless works of art in my hotel room... Chad: I can see. I can see. Yeah. Joel: As you can see, only on the YouTube channel kids, can you see the priceless works of art? My daughter is in the national volleyball tournament. Chad: Yes. Joel: So it's like tons of teen girls screaming and mama drama everywhere. Chad: Oh my God. Joel: It'll be a fun four-day experience for me. Chad: That sounds like hell in Orlando. Oh my God. Woof. Joel: Yeah. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pill. Chad: Well, that leads into my first shout out. Go figure Vienna and... SFX: Shout out. Chad: The team from Jobiqo. Yeah. So our flat was rented out for two weeks and we needed a place to go. So, we've never been to Vienna. We're gonna go to Kraków next week. But this is our first stop. So, like I'd said before, wonderful food, the museum's history, churches, amazing public transportation, down the road is this amazing Turkish bakery. Chad: It just, the food is amazing. But anyway, Jobiqo is here. If all those in the industry understand Jobiqo, they're a job board platform and they provide to many job boards that are out there. Hundreds of job boards that are out there. We spent the day with Martin and the team had lunch, amazing drinks, dinner, that kind of thing. Special shout out to Ling Wu over at Jobiqo, who set up a Google Maps list. It's the first time I've actually seen one of these things. It has literally a list of sightseeing, bars, restaurants, it helped us tremendously in being able to see Vienna. So thanks to Jobiqo, thanks to Ling Wu, Martin and the team. And shout out to Vienna. Joel: And I don't hate you at all, and I'm not jealous whatsoever. [laughter] Chad: All right. All right. All right. Joel: I love that you use our place is rented. So we had to go to Austria to get away for a while. Like, Jesus. [laughter] Chad: What? Joel: Jesus. All right. My shout out Chad. It's official. Chad: It's a thing. Joel: It's official, student loan payments are set to restart in October. Chad: Oh. God. Joel: Says the education department, interest on the debt will begin accruing even sooner. Chad: Fuck. Joel: In September, around 40 million Americans have debt from their education. The typical monthly bill is roughly $350 for that student loan. And loan debt in the US totals nearly $1.8 trillion. And this is gonna put the screws on those borrowers. They've had a nice little break, but it's time to get back to work. The party is over. "Student loan payments are set to start," says the education department. Shout out to those poor bastards paying student loans. Chad: Yeah. It's amazing. I thought about this this morning. How we always tout GDP over happiness and actually the US literally inflates our GDP by things like this. This is actually 6.5% of our GDP. Is something that other countries get for almost free, if not free. So we inflate our GDP because we make our citizens pay for the shit. Healthcare, close to 20%. That thing that most other countries, they get paid. So we talk about taxes and how we don't get... We don't have to pay those high taxes. You stupid motherfuckers, we still pay that shit. Look at... There is over, what was it? 1.6 trillion, trillion in debt. That's fucking taxes kids. That's fucking crazy. Anyway, you're hurting me here. I wanna talk about fake priests. Shout out to fake priests. Joel: Fake priests? Okay. This is a first. [laughter] Chad: Stick with me here, kids. This is crazy. Joel: I'm with you. Chad: A restaurant in California has been ordered to pay $140,000 of back wages and damages to employees after it hired a priest to extract workers' confessions. Apparently, Che Garibaldi, who operates two locations of a Taqueria Garibaldi, hired a fake priest to hear confessions during work hours to get the sins out. That was the thing. They wanted to get the sins out. Including asking if the employees had been late for work, stolen any money from the restaurant, or had bad intentions toward the employer. Taqueria Garibaldi, and three other restaurant owners. Some others got into this fucking shenanigan bullshit. They were ordered to pay $140,000 back wages to 35 employees, the restaurant will also have to pay, listen to this, oh wow this is gonna kill 'em, $5,000 in civil penalties. [laughter] S?: Just a tip. Chad: $5,000. Yes. I mean, it's fucking crazy. Shout out to fake priests. I don't know who the struggling actor was. Who actually did this, but, wow. This is a new low. Joel: Shout out to getting the sins out. I'm all for that. [laughter] Joel: All right, Chad. Well, we've talked about commercial real estate crashing. Thanks to the work from home movement. Chad: Yes, we have. Joel: Well, say hello to Picklemalls. Chad: No. Joel: That's right. Picklemalls, empty malls and stores are being repurposed into Picklemalls offering pickleball courts, one of your favorite. In case you missed it. Pickleball is a popular sport that combines tennis, badminton, and ping pong attracting players of all ages apparently. The initiative aims to utilize vacant spaces and support the growing pickleball trend across the country. Chad, is pickleball going to save us all? Chad: Pickleball is worse than badminton. Have you ever watched badminton? I mean, it's an Olympic sport, don't get me wrong. But have you ever watched badminton? It is boring as hell. You've got the little shuttlecock thing that just kinda like flies really slow. Pickleball is fucking horrible. So yeah, could it save us? If it saves us, then great. I'll be wrong, but it's a horrible sport. Joel: I'm gonna put the odds at... S?: 60% of the time it works every time. Chad: That's high. That's high. Joel: What they need to do is bring back Jarts the '70s classic, and people will start dying and we'll have less people and less things to deal with, I think, if we just did that. I don't know. Chad: And we grew up with jarts and dodging jarts as our friends threw them at us. [laughter] Joel: What a crazy-ass game, man. Chad: We'll be fine. We'll be fine. Joel: Right in the big wall down the sidewalk while your friends throw jarts at you to try to dodge them was a fun game in my neighborhood. [laughter] Well, you know what else is a fun game, Chad? Chad: What? Joel: Winning free shit from us. Chad: Ooh, I like free shit. Joel: And if you haven't played, you gotta go to chadcheese.com, click the free link and we will send you booze, t-shirts and all kinds of fun other things. Some announcements for this month's winners. Our whiskey winner goes to Jane Curran, our beer winner, that's sponsored by Aspen Tech Labs by the way, our bourbon giveaway is sponsored by Textkernel and I'm enjoying water on this week's show from my Textkernel... Chad: Ooh, love it. Joel: Water jug. That is Chris Russell, the mad scientist of recruiting has won some beer. Chad: Lucky bastard. Joel: And our birthday celebration went to Brittany Porter this month. And that is sponsored by our friends at Plum. And if you haven't gotten a free t-shirt yet, our homeboys and homegirls at JobGet are helping us give away free t-shirts. And by the way, kids, if you haven't left us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you enjoy our podcast and particularly if you're a YouTube junkie, like Chad and I are, make sure you like, follow, leave a review. It's our oxygen. It's how we get better period. Chad: Don't forget about getaways kids, because there is a $250. That's right. We're gonna give away little credit card, little Airbnb credit card once a month from the Chad and Cheese. Powered by Abode HR. So you need to get away kids, you need to go to Austria. I don't care. [laughter] Chad: You can go somewhere. Go to Orlando, right? Take your Airbnb card. You use it wherever you want. $250, you're gonna get it. But you can only do it if you register chadcheese.com/free or just click 'free' in the upper right-hand corner. Joel: Love it. [laughter] SFX: Really? Can you feel the tension in the air right now? Chad: Uh-huh. SFX: I know I can. [laughter] SFX: I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: I think that guy is in Florida actually. [laughter] Joel: He was at the restaurant. All right. So that means birthday announcements, everybody. Another trip around the sun, go to fans Tom Bickle, Brittany Porter, Heather Myers, Colleen De George, Jenny Schiacha, or Schiacha, however we're pronouncing it today. Sean Pauls Ceph, Mary Ellen Slater and Cepi Nayeri, one of our big fans on this show. Joel: Oh yeah. Love it. SFX: Happy birthday. Chad: And don't you forget about what events. That's right. Knebworth Park coming up July 6th. RecFest. [music] Chad: If you don't have tickets, yeah sucks to be you 'cause it's sold out. 5,500 people packing that fucking place. I think they're like 10 stages. Chad and Cheese are gonna be on the disrupt stage. So come find us. We're gonna be talking about tech all day. We're gonna be emceeing that stage. But just because you missed RecFest in Knebworth in London doesn't mean that you have to miss it kids. You can go to Nashville, that's right, in September, the very first time RecFest comes to the US is going to be in Nashville. Just go to Chadcheese.com, click on 'events', the entire fucking hero image. Click on the 'sign up', go get it. We've got a 50% off code. Bring the whole gang. This is a team bonding exercise and enjoy some time with Chad and Cheese at the Disrupt stage. Joel: And don't forget a whole bunch of TA professionals being overserved for the Basement Jack's concert in Knebworth. [laughter] Joel: Definitely gonna be a good time. Chad: Topics. Joel: All the topics that are humanly possible, everybody. All right. Seattle start up Humanly raised... Chad: Oh, it's bad. Joel: $12 million in a series A round. This brings total funding to roughly $23 million. That's according to CrunchBase. It's platform automates recruiting functions including candidate-screening and communication. The company is investing in conversational AI to enhance efficiency and equity in the hiring process. The funding will support the expansion of engineering and their go-to-market teams. Chad, what's your take on the Humanly news? Chad: I think we've already given, humanly, a double applause during firing squad. So Humanly is a... Joel: Oh great tell Chad. I went back. Chad: Oh, did you? Joel: You were a golf clap. I was an applause. So... Chad: Dammit. Okay, so I might be a big applause. Now, I have to be, because the chatbot revolution is in full effect kids, and you can thank OpenAI and ChatGPT for the attention and the heightened funding in that area. Here's what caught my eye from the GeekWire story. "The company is also introducing AI into analytics features for human to human conversations. These tools which run during live calls, generate insights and send follow-up emails. Now, two weeks ago we talked about Teleperformance AI and the co-pilot for customer service reps, which allows quicker uptimes, which means less training and getting them to the phones faster, faster call times so they can actually help the AI, helps the customer service individual index the information and get to resolution faster, higher quality calls, more accurate resolution." Chad: So again, indexing the information is one thing. Being able to provide accurate information, is something entirely different. This co-pilot piece is, I'm saying the future in literally the next step, right? If we're talking about, everybody wants to know how we use ChatGPT, this is the next step. It's the co-pilot. It's, before it takes everything over, but it's the co-pilot. 30% faster calls from teleperformance means more calls can be taken and less heads are needed on the phones to achieve a better result. Not to mention, imagine how much less stressed a customer service representative is, 'cause that job fucking sucks. When you don't have to sit around and try to index and find, frantically find the right information, right? It's automatically being cued to you by the AI. Now imagine taking the same type of model to where? Oh yes, recruiting. It just makes fucking sense. This is incredibly smart and it's one of those things the right time. You gotta be at the right time and you gotta be skating to the puck and these guys are doing it. Joel: Less heads Chad, less heads. Chad: That doesn't sound like fun. Joel: On One hand, this is a really feel-good story to me. They've grown organically. I gave them big applause. I'm still excited about the business. They have a really great team that's there. They're not taking on too much debt. I mean, what they've raised has not been insane. The fact that they've been able to raise money in a high-interest environment is great for them and I think speaks well to the company. It feels a lot like Qualify or some of these companies that grow organically and have good leadership. And we both love CEO, Prem there at, Humanly. Joel: On the other hand, it feels a little bit like a knife in a gunfight. We have Paradox that's the apex predator in the space. We have got almighty Veritone, coming into the space with a lot of AI tools that Humanly can never even think about sort of building. They feel like just that it's not gonna be enough as this thing expands. Conversational AI is arguably the future of interviewing and recruiting and onboarding and all these things that's gonna happen. So a company like Humanly, while a great story, just doesn't feel like there's enough juice there unless they go super focused on like, "Hey, we're the healthcare provider." "Hey, we're the sales per... " Whatever it is. They need to go really focused, otherwise they're gonna get gobbled up by a Paradox, a Veritone, somebody that has bigger pockets, maybe an ATS that needs to plug this into their platform. So from that perspective, if acquisition is the main goal, like, I think they're definitely gonna be acquired and be a piece... Joel: To a bigger puzzle. Till then they've got this nice bridge funding, they can continue to build the product and survive any bumps in the economic road. So for me, it's all good, but they're not gonna go public. They're not gonna be a billion dollar company. They're gonna be a nice story. A nice little lifestyle business that's gonna get eaten up by bigger fish at some point down the road. Chad: So we talk about Paradox and how they are moving toward the ATS realm, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: How do you get some money? How do you look sexy for all those other decrepit fucking applicant tracking systems that are out there so that they can start to prospectively try to keep up with the new hot, sexy of the Paradoxes of the world, right? You buy these guys. Chad: That's what you do, right? I think the co-pilot, again, the whole co-pilot idea, and we'll talk more about this in the podcast, is something that, already works first off. We have business cases that demonstrate that. And if you start to talk about what are you gonna be working with less? Less recruiters. We start downsizing recruiters. How do we augment the recruiters that we have now get them 30% better, 60% better? How do we do that? Well, it's gonna be this type of tech. If you have an old, antiquated, applicant tracking system, it's probably not, but you feel like it is. But they don't have this kind of tech, they don't have a co-pilot. Chad: This is, I think, a prime fucking target for acquisition and that bridge funding. That's a solid gold fucking bridge, man. That's a lot of money. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, Prem, if you listen to last week's show, don't pull a spark higher co-mate and go buy an... Don't go buy an ATS of your own. Chad: Don't go. Joel: Don't be an ATS. Wait for an ATS to go buy you. I think that's what Chad is saying. Chad: Yes. Joel: All right. Can I interest you in a Canadian company story? [background conversation] Joel: That's right. Calgary-based, I believe, VidCruiter, an interviewing platform has acquired AI startup Engage Solutions to enhance its video interviewing platform with real-time intelligence. Engage's ethical AI technology, improves interview performance, reduces bias and promotes equitable hiring practices. The company says the acquisition strengthens VidCruiter's position in interview intelligence and talent identification. Terms were not disclosed. Shocking. Chad, what are your thoughts on this marriage? Chad: Yeah, I think it's interesting that they're still going heavy on the DEI route, the anti-bias thing when... We heard AI, was really sexy at one time. Everybody was slapping it on their stuff. And then next thing you know was DEI and everybody was slapping it on their stuff. And now it's generative AI or the ability to co-pilot. So the one quote that I pulled outta here that I think that makes a hell of a lot of sense is Engage analyzes the interview process and interviewers not the candidate. So that's where the problem starts. Not with the candidate, but with the goddamn interviewer. That's where bias creeps in. But also you get really bad interviews, but guess what, guess what they have? This is gonna be a co-pilot for all of those interviewers going in. So just because you turn a dickhead manager into a great interviewer, that doesn't make him not a dickhead manager though, right? [chuckle] Chad: You can only do so much to fix the people. Okay? Anyways, engage interviewing solutions, and I really focused more on Engage around this because they seem to be the heavy tech player that we're gonna come into and help augment the interview side with adaptive AI that improves the interview process. TensorFlow engine that evolves right alongside you. It's a machine learning scenario and real-time insights to obviously help the interviewer. To me, again, this is another co-pilot opportunity, but it's more focused on where the problem is. It's not the candidate, it's with the actual interviewer. So I think this is incredibly smart. I think, again, we were talking about it last week. If Engage actually, could have gotten in front of this and started skating to this puck a little bit quicker on the generative AI side of the house, maybe they didn't need to sell but this is where we're at. S?: That escalated quickly. Joel: So a little bit about VidCruiter. They were founded in 2012. They took some seed funding back then, COVID happened, everyone was like, "Video-interviewing is the thing." And I think they just stumbled into timing. Like, "Holy shit, we got an actual business now." They actually had a press release a few years ago, about hiring 100 people. Like no one does press releases about, "Hey, everybody, we're hiring 100 people, just so you know." So they're up to 200 people. So they doubled in size. That's all good news. Now you have Engage, which comes along, Stanford-built, so it's got the Stanford name on there. And they're a DEI tool. Again, another COVID darling, right? Everyone needs video. Everyone needs DEI. Two, three years later, everyone's going back to work. Joel: DEI is on the back burner because it's just not in the budget anymore. It's not in the lexicon of society as much as it was anymore. So now you have one company that was flying high in COVID, and now maybe on lesser prosperous times, you have another one that flew up during COVID and is now on less prosperous time. So I guess the strategy here is like, "Let's get together, the bar is closing." Two companies had a great time, but now they have to realize, "Oh shit, we gotta sober up and actually do something that works. Let's go home together. Let's have a good time. Let's sleep it off. Let's hope that the world comes back to no more recession talk, no more inflation." We got an election coming up. Joel: "Maybe if we join forces, the whole video-recruiting DEI thing is gonna be hot again. It'll be back in the lexicon, back in the discussion. And we will be boats and hoes and champagne and cocaine." I think that's the bet that's going on here. I'm certain there was very little money that went into this acquisition, probably a little bit of an acquihire, although I'm guessing the Stanford guys wanna go do something much more cooler. Chad: More unlikely. Joel: Than Engage. But otherwise nothing burger until the world goes back to 2021. And it's all about video and DEI. Chad: It is interesting because when Entelo bought, what was the name of the company? It was Take The Interview and then they rebranded as something fucking. Joel: Yeah. Convey IQ, I think. Chad: Convey IQ. Yeah yeah Convey IQ. So they had some money that they actually got along with that acquisition. It's interesting that that didn't happen, right? Because they're gonna need a boost. It doesn't matter. And back to the co-pilot piece, it's pretty awesome, but it's just not as sexy as the co-pilot external. So, yeah. We'll see how it rolls. Joel: We'll see what happens. Let's take a quick break, shall we? Chad: Yes. Joel: Now for something totally different, Marcus Harvin, a parolee and Yale College fellow, graduated with an associate degree in general studies from the University of New Haven. Through a partnership between UNHS' Prison Education Program and the Yale Prison Education Initiative. The program aims to provide education and transform the lives of incarcerated individuals, offering a path to college degrees. Harvin and his classmates are the first to matriculate from this partnership, which is part of a national consortium of 15 schools and prison systems. Chad, your thoughts on the news? Chad: This story is amazing from the fact that an individual who committed a crime is now turning it around. And can see the light at the end of the tunnel. So that is amazing for him and six others in this program. But how fucked up is our system? Let me count the ways, Marcus Harvin, the focal point of the story was a drunk driver in an accident nearly killed two kids then that's fucking awful. But he spent six years in a Maximum Security Prison. Maximum security. Dude, he wasn't a rapist, didn't conceive a plan to murder anyone. His dumb young ass got behind the wheel while he was drunk. And then he finds himself in Max Security. In my eyes, here's where it gets worse. Yale's endowment is $42.2 billion. And we're talking about six people in this program, right? That should be 6,000 in these programs working towards 60,000 inmates in a US incarceration system that has close to 2 million at this moment right now. So this to me is inspiration porn for the alumni and people who want to talk about progress. But if you wanna see progress, here's what you do. Kids. Princeton has 37.2 billion in endowments. Stanford, 37.8, Yale 42.2, University of Texas, 43.6 billion, Harvard, 53.2 billion. That's the top five. Over $200 billion. Chad: That we could be creating and helping thousands of communities inside, that are incarcerated, and outside. But we're talking about this inspiration porn. I love that these kids, these men got an opportunity to turn it around, but six doesn't even scratch the fucking surface over $200 billion five schools. What would happen if we started to, I don't know, give back to the community instead of our alumni? Joel: Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned some of the numbers. One in half million Americans are currently incarcerated. Approximately 70 million people in the US have a criminal record. We'll all remember the site 70 million jobs in sort of honor of that. Nearly 60% of formerly incarcerated individuals are unemployed one year after being released. On the other side of this we have a lot of universities that are struggling. You mentioned some of the successful ones. They're not all Texas Yale and Stanford, right? We talked about college debt being repaid. That that's coming back in the circle. What a great government program if we actually subsidized educating some of these formerly incarcerated individuals. Schools would benefit, those individuals would benefit, society would benefit. What a great program. So when I run for president that's gonna be my platform. Just kidding. [laughter] I am not getting in the ring for president. I promise you. Now... Chad: No. Joel: But look, it is progress. And I know you like to say it's nowhere near the progress that we want. Chad: Dude, it's inspiration porn. It's it's not progress. Joel: It's technically a little bit of progress, Chad, we ask a lot about... A lot of companies and we talk about MOD Pizza. We love them. We need companies to do more. We need government to do do more, and we need colleges to do more. And why not have some sort of a partnership around this where everybody wins. I hope that a name like Yale brings a lot of attention to this. This isn't Tennessee Tech, this is Yale, right? So let's see more universities do this, more government programs aim towards this, subsidize more education, and we all win. But until then, yes, it is a little bit of porn. Chad: Bred the wealth. Yes. Joel: It's a little bit of porn. [laughter] Chad: It's a lot of porn. [laughter] Chad: For six dudes. I'm so happy for them, but, fuck, man, we can do so much more. Joel: Yeah. How many state universities, how many community colleges, they can make so much money just like get some of these folks into college, get them in the system. Well, from that story to an overeducated, a bunch of whiny asses. And by the way where Chad and I find most of our porn. Let's talk about Google. [laughter] Joel: The employees are expressing frustration and venting on the company's internal forum about the strict enforcement of return-to-office requirements. Google's crackdown includes tracking employee badge swipes, which some employees feel is treating them like school children. The backlash came after an internal memo from Google's HR boss when she informed employees that the company would closely monitor office attendance and that poor attendance records could impact individual performance reviews. Employees are sharing memes on the forum to criticize the new policy and mock their bosses for attending meetings virtually while enforcing office attendance for employees. The Titan returned office policy has raised tensions within Google which currently underwent layoffs and cut some of its office perks. Chad, what's your take on this news out of Google? Chad: They're continuing to boil the frog. They're working their way back to everybody back in the office all the time. Check my work not my badge, just pretty good bumper sticker. That's great rallying cry for them. Yeah. They literally are treating them like kids. If I'm hitting my project goals, the fuck are you here to talk about? As a matter of fact life isn't lived inside the office building, which means work doesn't have to happen there either for many of us, not all of us. The New York Post actually posted about some YouTube hypocrisy that was happening. And that, to me, I thought was amazing. The YouTube bosses were on a virtual call talking about return-to-work policy. [laughter] Chad: See they were on the call. This didn't hit them in the brain. They were on a virtual call talking about return to work. So this goes back to, and we've said it several times, the beatings will continue until morale improves at Google. [background conversation] Joel: Well, first of all I'm sure all the warehouse workers at Amazon, pinging trash cans feel really bad for the Googlers... [laughter] Joel: They'd have to go back to work. But look, you're right. If you're going to lead you first must lead by example. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: That's a tried and true idea that you and I have heard through our whole lives. You can't tell people to get back to work from a Zoom call. You just can't do it. It's like the DJ Goldman Sachs. What was he, at a country club? And he saw employees there and he is like, "Hey get the hell out of here. Well, get back to work." Like you can't be at the club and tell everyone to get back to work. It doesn't work that way. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The other thing that strikes me is these people got a job at Google. Why don't they just leave? That's the ultimate voting. Like, "I'm out of here dude." Chad: That they will, yeah. Joel: They should. I... Chad: Yeah they will. Joel: That always that always strikes me. But back to your point, I'm feeling more and more the work-from-home revolution, it's bloodied, it's down. It may not be out. But it is beaten up, man. Traditional businesses are like, "Get back in the office." The commercial real estate crunch is coming, and the voice of like, "Get back in the office," is gonna be more, it's being portrayed as a moral issue from Elon Musk. Chad: He's an idiot. Joel: They're trying everything to get back. Chad: They are. They are. Joel: There was an interview with a Tech Exec recently that was like, "Well, it worked at the beginning because we were more productive, and everybody was really on on it. And now it's digressed into long lunches at Chipotle, hooking up for dates," or whatever. So everybody is back to work. Google's no exception. Everyone's gonna have to swallow it and deal with it, or just join the gig economy, start a podcast. I don't know. You do have options, but it feels like the world of work-from-home, the frog is boiling, it's almost ready to be plated. I am disheartened by what has happened with work-from-home, and a poor economy, God help us if we go to war at some big scale like... Then it's really over. But yeah, right now it's bloodied in the club. Joel: It's on the floor, bloodied, it's not pretty. I don't know if it's gonna survive, Chad. Chad: I think we still have the Airbnbs of the world. We still have all the organizations that are using this as a catalyst to get great talent into their organization. I tell you, any company that's out there today, especially listening to this podcast, dude, I'd be going directly after those individuals. I'd be looking on LinkedIn, I'd be going to hireEZ or wherever the fuck I can, right? Seek out to actually start pulling those candidates in and I would nail the shit out of them. And guess what? I don't give a fuck if you and your wife are banging at home during lunch. I don't care if you're doing your laundry. If you get the code out, if you make your sales, if you do everything that we need you to do, I don't care. Joel: Get the code out, people. [background conversation] Joel: And we'll be right back. Joel: All right, Chad, it's been a hot minute since we've talked about Bud Light. With a new wrinkle in the story. The Saloon, a gay bar in Minneapolis, has decided to stop serving Anheuser-Busch beverages, including Bud Light, citing a lack of integrity from the company. The decision was made due to the way Anheuser-Busch handled the backlash over their partnership with influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which led to a drop in sales and market value. The Saloon owner expressed a desire to do business with companies that support marginalized communities and have integrity. Other gay bars in Chicago have also committed to no longer serving Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch executives have acknowledged the controversy and emphasized the importance of bringing people together during divisive times. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, Chad. What's your take on this news? Chad: So last Saturday here in Vienna, a reported 250,000 people marched in the biggest pride parade in Europe. It made me think, "Why didn't Bud Light double down, attend the pride parades all over the world with these limited edition cans?" That would have emboldened the brand to the community. But no, Bud Light, they picked a lane and then they changed lanes. One thing you cannot do, you can't pick a fucking lane, change lanes, and then expect everybody, especially when you're a brand as big as Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light, that nobody's gonna notice, right? It's why we were adamant on the show about Anheuser-Busch not backing off, especially because it was a fucking limited can promotion. They didn't change, this isn't going from Coke to new Coke. They didn't change anything other than the can, right? So this to me was just a demonstration of weak leadership at its worst. And the poor CMO got her head chopped off because of this, and she's probably happy today because these motherfuckers don't know what they're doing. Joel: This is an all around just disaster. By the way, did you know Stella Artois is an Anheuser-Busch beer? Chad: No, I did not. Joel: Anyway, there are quality beers in there somewhere, one of my favorites, Stella, and the namesake of my daughter, by the way. Anyway, Garth Brooks has a new bar in Nashville. It's called Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk, and he is gonna be serving Bud Light almost in protest of this decision. He says, "If you're an asshole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway to go." [laughter] Joel: Now, of course, Garth has gotten some pushback, obviously, from that. I have to feel like, part of me says there's gotta be a huge amount of fear for companies to go political. Like, the default now is gonna be, "Don't touch it. Don't look at it, don't smell it, don't go near it." Chad: But this isn't political. This is just a person's choice to... That's the thing is we've politicized this, and it shouldn't be. Joel: Yeah, we do. It's not the company's fault. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: It's people are assholes. We're all assholes. Now, I have to think if Bud Light had... If they could turn back the clock, I think what they would have done is they would have gotten a Garth Brooks, or the manliest guy possible, like Sam Shepard, or the ghost of Patrick Swayze, I don't know. And they would have put them in the commercial with Dylan Mulvaney, and it would have been a funny, like, we're at the bar, beer's for everybody, we all love beer no matter where we're from or who we are. Chad: Or who we are. Joel: And I feel like if they could have done it differently, they might have sort of built a bridge between meathead male and progressive transgender celebrity, and somehow it would have worked. We would have laughed it off, it would have been funny. Of course, we can't go back in time. That's what it is, but I applaud Garth Brooks. He's gonna get pushed back from this, unfortunately. Again, for the reason why you can't go into politics unless you're like a Nike. Nike with Kaepernick that worked, because Nike understood rebellion, siding with their core customers was a good decision. So the Nikes of the world will continue to get political, but I fear that more companies won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, and that's a shame for society and for the greater good of everybody. By the way, Chad, RecFest, as you mentioned, is coming to Nashville soon. Chad: Yes. Joel: You don't think Garth Brook was... Garth was calling us assholes, do you? Chad: No, I was gonna ask if he had a bull in his bar. [laughter] Joel: He better have Stella, 'cause we're coming and we're riding the bull, Garth. We are friends in low places my friend. From Orlando and Vienna, we out. Chad: We out. S?: 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 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.

Live from UNLEASH America at the Workhuman booth, J.D. Cummings, Vice President of Recruiting at Raising Cane’s, a fine purveyor of chicken finger goodness, joins the boys to talk turkey, er, chicken, I guess. On the agenda: The art of high-volume hiring, living your brand, must-have tech tools, and yes, even the secret menu at Raising Cane’s. Be prepared to get BOB’d and have your mind opened by one of Chad & Cheese’s favorite people (and not just because he comes with gift cards). More: J.D. Cummings - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcummings/ Workhuman - https://www.workhuman.com UNLEASH America - https://unleash.ai PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Chad: Live from the Workhuman Booth at Unleash America in Vegas. This year, Joel and I were able to sit down with some great practitioners and industry voices. Sit back and enjoy this exclusive episode, powered by our friends over at Workhuman. Answer the human need to be recognized, developed and celebrated at workhuman.com. 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: We're back, everybody, recording Live from Unleash America from the Workhuman Booth. And we welcome, JD Cummings, Vice President of Recruiting at Raising Cane's. And previously before that at Chipotle. Chad: Oh my God. Joel: So the guy knows a thing or two about fine food and high volume hiring. Chad: I tell you what, man. Joel is in fucking heaven right now. Last time we actually saw JD, years ago. JD, did you send us coupons or did you give them to like out of your pocket? 'Cause Joel is going fucking crazy. JD Cummings: I travel with them. So, yeah. Joel: Gift cards. Yeah. Chad: Okay. So we got... It was at an ISMS event. He pulls out the gift cards, Joel automatically starts drooling. [chuckle] He's like, we have a Raising Cane's. Just new location. Joel: One just opened up a couple miles from me and the line is insane. [laughter] So I'm gonna wait it out a little bit. JD Cummings: Well, you're not alone. Our sauce was actually rated the most craveable sauce in the United States just recently. Chad: I'm all about the sauce. Joel: Did you dethrone Chick-fil-A? JD Cummings: I don't know if they were on that list or not. Joel: Okay. JD Cummings: But I know that we are now officially the most craveable. Joel: And did you get a wrestling belt for that? [laughter] Chad: Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Joel: Or a champion chain, for that? Chad: Should have like a chicken head on it, like a on fire chicken head. Joel: Like the Neon Sign at Hot Ones. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Like most craveable sauce. Chad: Oh, yeah. JD Cummings: I think Technomic gives us a nice little plaque for that. So yes, something. Joel: Aww, that's sweet. Chad: So even though you get those really cool plaques and awards, it's still hard to find people. JD Cummings: It is, yeah. Chad: Especially high volume, which is your specialty. So talk a little bit about that, talk about some of the problems, some of the obstacles that you guys are facing right now. JD Cummings: Yeah, we, just like any other company out there, we got hit really hard in 2021, the Great Resignation. But we took some extreme measures. One of the neat things that we did is our leadership shut down our support office and sent everybody from our support office out to the restaurants to work and also... Chad: Put on an apron big boy. JD Cummings: And also to recruit. So I had to very quickly teach a bunch of accountants and marketing people how to be recruiters. [laughter] And we took extreme measures. We got our restaurant staff back up. So going into early 2022, we were in such a better place than most other concepts. And we kind of held and maintained that for a while. Chad: Wow. JD Cummings: We're doing all right. But it's still hard. Chad: Have you ever heard of an all hands kind of scenario like that, where it's like, batten down the hatches, give me all the accountants, give me all the salespeople, give me all whatever. We have to focus in these areas. You are all now recruiters because if we don't have people... Joel: JD's LinkedIn literally says Fry Cook. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And something else. JD Cummings: Fry Cook and cashier, I wear... Joel: In addition to VP of recruiting. Yeah. JD Cummings: Right. Yeah. Joel: Which is very cool. Chad: So have you heard of other companies doing that before? JD Cummings: I have not, and... Chad: I hadn't either. JD Cummings: And the reaction was really interesting. There's a lot of people that were saying, "Hey, it's about time that the folks in the corporate office got to know what it's like to work on the front line." And what's interesting is, our culture is... We're deeply rooted in the restaurants. We run restaurants, we own and operate all of our own restaurants. And so everybody who comes in, regardless of their role, they spend a couple weeks working in the restaurant as the first part of their training. Joel: Yep. JD Cummings: And then each year we go back and recertify work in a restaurant for a week. Joel: Have you leveraged that? Like, if I go look for a job on your site, do you have pictures of the CEO, fry and cook chicken up in the back? Have you leveraged it or is it just a word of mouth thing? JD Cummings: It's a great idea. We have not leveraged that in our marketing. Joel: You're welcome. That's free advice. JD Cummings: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Chad: Wow. We're giving it all away today. Jesus, that's... Joel: Yeah. All away. All away. JD Cummings: It's part of our pitch in the recruiting process. We talk about it. With a candidate. Say, "Hey, part of this is you're gonna work in the restaurants. You have to earn the fry, cook and cashier title." Joel: So another big issue with where you are has been minimum wage in salaries. And we see from Walmart to Target, to McDonald's, just wages going up and up. What is Raising Cane's sort of view on minimum wage and via states? Or do you fluctuate by location? How does that work? JD Cummings: It does fluctuate a little bit by location. Our goal is to be as competitive as we can be, but we have to operate within the confines of the economic model of our restaurants. But our average wage for crew members has gone up significantly over the last, let's say, four or five years. I think our average crew member across the system is around or close to $15 an hour right now. A lot of our markets are paying a premium above and beyond that. Joel: Yep. JD Cummings: And we've invested very heavily in our hourly manager ranks and our salaried manager ranks. And we've launched this new thing, it's a new evolution of our crew journey. So making sure that at every stop and really our crew members now are in control of their earnings. So you'll start at, let's say $15 an hour in some of our restaurants based on how many hours they work. So once they accumulate a hundred hours or 400 hours of certain milestones, and how many areas in the restaurant that they've completed training on, they get a raise automatically. So it's not based on once a year we do a merit review or twice a year. It's based on how much have you worked, how much have you learned while you're here? You automatically get a 25 or 50 cent raise at every milestone. Joel: Is that unique to you or is that common in the industry? JD Cummings: We're seeing it in some other concepts. Joel: Okay. JD Cummings: But the way that we've structured it, I think is unique. And it's every 600 hours worked after a certain point. There's just an automatic raise that happens and it does have a cap on it. Like our crew members will eventually get to the point where the next step they need to go to an hourly management position because they kind of maxed out on what they can earn as a crew member. But it puts them in control of their earnings. If you want that 50% raise, there's an easy way for you to attain it. Joel: Yeah. JD Cummings: It's not whether your manager likes you or not, it's how hard are you working? Chad: Well, and that gives you this very military time and service. You're getting paid for time and service, but there are caps on that, you have to get promoted. JD Cummings: Yep. Chad: To get to that next point. So it's that time that you're spending, obviously gaining the expertise, etcetera, etcetera. You do have, obviously, your evaluation reports and whatnot for promotion, but still all those time in grade pay ups happen. JD Cummings: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Joel: So we talk a lot about technology on the show, as you know. What are some invaluable technologies to you that help you fill seats within these restaurants? Any tools that you could not live without? JD Cummings: I mean, high volume, entry level SMS messaging is absolutely critical. Our candidates would prefer to communicate via text message versus... So having that fully integrated into our ATS where that conversation string, if it's recruiter hiring manager, whoever's communicating with them, we can see the entire string of conversation. So we're not messaging them same thing three different times from three different users. So that's been really, really important to us. Joel: Is some of that automated or is that all human to human from when they apply? JD Cummings: We have the ability to automate and there are some messages that are like, when we initiate a background check, they get an automatic message that says, "Hey, go check your email. There's a background check that you need to go complete." But most of it is actual conversation. We want our restaurant managers to be authentic and genuine and reach out to somebody and say, "Hey, I saw your application, love to chat with you. When are you available for an interview?" We don't want it to feel like it's a bot talking to them. We want them to know it's a real human being who's saying, "Hey, I want to chat with you." Chad: Well, on the high volume side though, most of them don't care if it's a bot because they usually don't get the messaging anyway. They go into a black hole until they hopefully one day find something out whether they got the job or not. So is that really a big deal, whether it sounds like a bot or not, just getting connection and engagement? Isn't that like job one? JD Cummings: Yes. We encourage all of our restaurant managers no matter what, to reach out to every candidate that applies. And sometimes it's reaching out to say, "Hey, your availability doesn't work with my schedule right now. Check back with me later." Or sometimes it's just, "Hey, I'd love to chat with you. Come in for an interview. We want to interview every candidate." Now, the fact that a candidate may not be offended by a bot, it does go against our culture, which is one of being very genuine and authentic and wanting that culture to come across in our communications so that it's not a canned, templated messages that hits their inbox. Chad: Is there a happy medium though, because these managers are so damn busy, they've got so many tasks, this is one of them. It's incredibly important, don't get me wrong, is there a way, especially seeing the new generative AI and whatnot, is there a way you think that you might be able to bridge that to make it easier? Joel: The happy medium is coupons for everybody for free chicken. Chad: No. JD Cummings: We've actually toyed around with the idea of offering post interview free lemonade offer 'cause our lemonade is an upgraded beverage in the restaurant. And it's fresh squeezed lemonade and all that. So it's wonderful. But just to say, "Hey, thank you for coming in for interviewing with us, regardless of the outcome of the interview, we'd love for you to come back, visit us again, come back to the restaurant." So we have kind of toyed around with the sort of the free coupon idea. But going back to conversational AI, we're not opposed to it. It's not a definitive, we're not gonna do that. I think we would have to think very cautiously about how we would approach it so that it feels authentic to our brand. Chad: Yeah. Okay. Joel: Another hot issue has been automation. Now, based on your previous comments, I'm guessing whether you're a fan of automation or not, the human touch is very important at Raising Cane's. But we've seen stories where Wingstop, McDonald's, companies are starting to experiment with humanless restaurants. [laughter] What does the landscape look like at some point? Chad: You mean JD wouldn't have to be a fry cook? [laughter] Chad: That's crazy. JD Cummings: I don't foresee that in our future in any way, shape or form. I think the service industry is special because of the people that are in it. And for us especially, we're not your traditional QSR. When you come to Raising Cane's, the experience should feel different. As soon as you walk in that door, the crew members are greeting you, "Hey, welcome to Cane's." When you come to our drive-through, we have these clever sayings that are approved of course. But hey, hey, hey, want some chicken today? It's not the sort of canned greeting that you get in most drive-throughs. And would you like to try our special sandwich today? It's very playful. And so that experience is part of what our customers appreciate about our brand. It's not just the great food, amazing Texas toast, the awesome sauce and the great chicken. Joel: Do you see what you did there? Chad: They awesome... Yeah. Joel: See what you did there? See what he did there? Nice. Chad: Okay. So many companies, they might not think like Raising Cane's. Which means they're not getting the outcomes. And what I mean by that is they don't treat their employees great and therefore the employees are not treating the customers great, which is obviously affecting the bottom line. How much focus on manager training, understanding, retention, turnover, I would assume many of these GMs understand it because they have to fill the positions on a day-to-day basis. Do they and are you pressing to them that how they're treating employees and how they're being flexible and whatnot directly goes to the bottom line? And whether that customer comes back or not. JD Cummings: It's everything to us. And it started with the first restaurant when Todd opened up in August of 1996, he had these students from LSU that were working in the restaurant, working so hard. He turned a profit that first month it was only $30 but he did turn a profit. And the first holiday that came around was Halloween. And he didn't have a lot of money to reward his crew, to give them any bonuses or anything like that. But he remembered when he was in elementary school, his teacher used to give everybody a ghost pop, which is a blow pop with a little Kleenex around it and a ghost space on it. And so he went out, that's what he could afford to do for his crew as a special little reward. And he gave them a ghost pop that had a note on it says, "Thanks for all your hard work. I couldn't do this without you." It was a little token of his appreciation. We still do that today. So we're sourcing 50,000 ghost pops at Halloween. Chad: Probably from BAMCO. Joel: Probably. JD Cummings: But that is one element of our culture that kind of explained, like we have a whole entire department called Cane's Love. That is a budgeted function for each leader in the business that tells you like, hey, everything from a handwritten note to say thank you for your hard work to a gift card, to tickets to a sporting event. Chad: And this is all to employees. JD Cummings: Crew members, individual contributors, leaders in our support office in our field. It's. Chad: That's amazing. JD Cummings: And it's a huge budget of the company. I think it's a half percent of total revenue that goes into this Cane's Love budget to make sure... Joel: That's a lot of Cane's Love. JD Cummings: To make sure that we're rewarding everybody. Chad: That's amazing. Joel: So, branding is obviously important to you guys and through the pandemic, DoorDash, Uber Eats has become more popular. How do you guys balance that phenomenon with living the brand and making sure that it's cohesive? Are you guys doing your own delivery service? How do you guys look at that? JD Cummings: So we don't do third party delivery. Joel: At all? JD Cummings: At all. Joel: Okay. JD Cummings: There are some that we don't have a relationship with and they will just do it anyway. They'll show up. But they have to show up as a customer and order at the counter and... Intro: And is that a branding decision? We don't wanna outsource that. JD Cummings: There's a couple reasons for it. I think one is Cane's is really an experience that I think is best in the restaurant. Fresh hot chicken we cook to order. Joel: Yep. JD Cummings: We don't have any heat lamps. Chad: Experience. Let's just focus on that word for a minute. JD Cummings: Yeah. Chad: Because you can't control the experience beyond outside of your doors. JD Cummings: We cannot. We cannot. Okay. And let's be honest, french fries, no matter who's making them whatever company, they don't travel well. And if somebody from Uber Eats or DoorDash, no offense to those companies, is gonna deliver it, those french fries are not gonna be amazing. They're probably gonna be soggy, they're probably gonna be cold. Chad: And if they're as good as Raising Cane's, they're probably stealing a few. JD Cummings: Yes. Possibly. Possibly. Yeah. But for us it's about we want, especially if you go to a new market, like we're gonna open in Manhattan in July. Right in Times Square and... Chad: Damn. JD Cummings: If the first experience that somebody had at Raising Cane's was a delivery through a third party and it took 45 minutes to get to their house and it's cold chicken, all that, it's not an amazing, it's not our best. We want somebody to come in and experience us at our best, especially when we're introducing them for the first time. We have zero margin for error. Think about it this way. There's one thing on our menu, it's chicken fingers. So if you came to Raising Cane's today and you had a mediocre chicken dinner and that was your first experience, why would you ever come back? There's literally nothing else on the menu. Chad: Because that's your thing. JD Cummings: That is it. Chad: That is your thing. Well, that and sauce by the way. JD Cummings: Yes. The sauce. [laughter] But you might be forgiving of another brand that has a broader menu because you go and order something and it wasn't amazing and you might just think to yourself, well, I didn't enjoy that particular menu item, but I'll go back and try something else. Maybe it was what I ordered. With us there's nothing else to order. Joel: Interesting. JD Cummings: It's simple, but it's incredibly complex that we have to get it right for every customer. Chad: Have you ever tried to expand the menu? Because you always see these franchises, I mean, McDonald's obviously with the... They created the Big Mac to go against the Whopper and it's like they're constantly creating these new Shamrock shakes or some stupid shit [laughter] that's novelty. Joel: How dare you say The Shamrock Shake is a stupid idea. Chad: Oh my God. JD Cummings: In our industry we call that an LTO or limited time offer. Chad: Yes. Yes. JD Cummings: Yeah. We have not changed our menu in the 26 years that we've been in business. In fact, last year was our 25th anniversary. We had billboards around that said 25 years of not fixing what ain't broke. Like, it works. Joel: So we're here in Las Vegas and In-N-Out is obviously famous here on the West Coast. JD Cummings: Yes. Joel: And they have a very simple menu as well. However, they have a secret menu. Does Raising Cane's have a secret menu that I should know about? JD Cummings: Absolutely. Yes, there are some things on the menu that are not on the menu that you can order in the restaurant. One of them is BOBbed Toast. So BOB stands for Buttered on Both sides because normally our Texas Toast has a proprietary garlic butter blend that we put on one side of the toast. But if you want it on both sides, you can order it that way. We do also have. Chad: Next time you can BOB it. JD Cummings: Yes. Joel: Let the man talk. What else? [laughter] JD Cummings: We do also have honey mustard, which is not on the menu. We do make it fresh in-house. It is amazing. It's really good. It's offered, it's there. You can order it, but it's just not visible on the menu. We do have, of course you can mix our tea and lemonade together for an Arnold Palmer, even though it's not on the menu. We do have naked tenders. If somebody is not wanting the breading on the outside of their chicken, we... Joel: Like me. JD Cummings: We will cook them. We will cook them without the breading. Joel: Without the breading. This is why we have a podcast, Chad. Chad: Nobody needs naked cheese, okay? Joel: This is why we do these interviews. JD Cummings: The only thing I ask for anybody who's listening is please, come into the restaurant when you order those specialty items. Don't be in the drive through because it really messes up our throughput. But no, we encourage... Joel: Sounds like a deal. Sounds like a deal. JD Cummings: Yeah. We encourage everybody to come try the special items. Joel: So we're here at Unleash. We're in the expo hall. I know it's early, but any companies that you're looking to talk to, anyone that's sort of stood out in your time here? JD Cummings: I always like to see the little startups and the little pavilions. Joel: The kiosks, yes. JD Cummings: And sometimes I find it fascinating because, maybe it's a problem that we haven't encountered yet, but I see that somebody's trying to solve a problem that I didn't even know was a problem. And it kind of keys me into like, things in our business that maybe I should be looking deeper into. So I like to go talk to the one man booths where they've got a little laptop computer and they just created some technology. Joel: Yeah. Chad: How many times have you actually walked up though? And they're like, here's the problem we're trying to solve. And you're like, that's not a problem. I don't know how many startups I've seen it's like, is that really a problem? JD Cummings: And it may not be a problem for us, but I assume it's a problem for somebody. I hope it is. Otherwise they're probably not gonna be very successful with their startup. Joel: They will not be getting out of the kiosk alley anytime soon. That's JD Cummings everybody. JD, for our listeners who want to know more about you or have some delicious chicken, where would you send them? JD Cummings: Follow me on LinkedIn, visit us at any one of our 700 restaurants here in the US or visit our career site and come join me on this wonderful journey. Chad: Yes. Joel: Why did we schedule this during lunch? Goddamn it. Another one is in the can. And where's the buffet? 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'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.

Landing pages? Wait, did I hear you correctly? A platform for landing pages? That's correct and, in this Deja, vu moment Rick Maré and the team over at SHAZAMME are betting on a platform that helps hiring companies build better landing pages quicker. No question, this is definitely a case of "what is old is new again", but has the idea run full circle? Has it lost its luster or is it just in time? Will Rick receive big applause, a golf clap, or the FIRING SQUAD? You gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Intro: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover, kids. The Chad and Cheese podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: Alright. Alright. Alright. What's up everybody? It's another Firing Squad. If you don't know, just ask your sister. This is your favorite guilty pleasure, The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always the chewy to my Han, Chad Sowash is in the house and we are here to welcome Rick Maré the CEO and Co-Founder at Shazamme. Did I say that correctly, Rick? Chad: Shazamme. Joel: They're in Australia and I don't speak Australian. Rick: Shazamme, yeah. Joel: Shazamme? Rick: That's correct. Joel: Shazamme. Welcome. It's 6:00 AM in Melbourne so it's your coffee time and our happy hour. Chad: Thanks for joining us. Joel: This will be fun. Chad: Yes. Thanks for joining us. Rick: Pleasure to be here. Joel: Well, we always start with a little Twitter bio before we get down to business. So why don't you tell us more about Rick. Rick: Thank you. Look, Rick is a very complicated person. Always been very interested in finding challenges and new ways of doing things. So I was born in South Africa, left when I was three months old back to Holland where I grew up until I was 15 then came to beautiful Australia and learned to swim with the crocodiles, swim with the sharks and have snakes around. So it is what it is in Australia but great fun and I wouldn't leave here for a million dollars or anything else. Joel: Is it really true that 90% of the world's venomous animals live in Australia? Rick: Absolutely. Absolutely. Joel: Wow. Wow. Wow. [laughter] Chad: Joel's got a boner right now. Okay, so Rick, welcome. [laughter] [music] Chad: Welcome to Firing Squad. This is how it's gonna play out. At the sound of the bell, you will have two minutes to pitch Shazamme. At the end of two minutes we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q&A. Be sure to be concise or Joel's gonna hit you with the crickets 'cause he loves the fucking crickets. That just means get your shit tighter and move it along. After Q&A you're either gonna receive from both of us, big applause. [applause] Chad: What is old becomes new again. Get ready for the second coming of website-building, golf clap. Okay. Okay. Okay. Maybe you've got something here. And last but not least, the Firing Squad. That's right, Rick. I'm sorry Rick but the '80s called and they want its Commodore 64-like technology back. That is the Firing Squad. Are you ready? Rick: Ready as I'll be. Joel: Alright Rick. Pitch Shazamme in three two... Rick: Shazamme is what the recruitment industry needs to build a brand online. So what we've done is we've looked at technologies around the world and saw Shopify, ecommerce sites, Canva and all types of technologies making it easy for people to do what they want to do. Now, that was not available in the recruitment and staffing industry. So what we did is we scoured the world and looked at what technologies we could use to make it really easy for people to do what they essentially needed to do to build a brand online. So build landing pages, track the referral sources and really do it very easily without coding. So Shazamme was born out of pulling together no-code platforms that really dealt with all the issues that we learned over the previous 14 years. So making sure that people could build landing pages, brand them, drop a job board on, drop 10 job boards on, filter it any way you want all without writing a single line of code. Rick: So our four key promises to the market have been simple drag-and-drop technology. No developers required. 24/7 chat support so that if you do need help when you're building landing page new sections on the site, you have someone to talk to supported by extensive help system and an academy to teach you how to do certain things. Pricing. So pricing was meant to be very much competitive and not excessive compared to what was in the market at the time. And then integrations, making sure that we have every possible integration with every ATS CRM and multi-posted to make it easy for you to connect to your backend systems. So making it really easy and what that has allowed us to do is win clients from the smallest to the largest in the world. They all give us five-star reviews solely because once they see it they just go, "This is what the industry has needed for many many years because finally we can do what we want to do without having to go through support." Joel: Thank you, Rick. Thank you. You did get that five-star commentary in there which I'm sure you wanted to get in there. Rick: Absolutely. Joel: Let's start with the name, Shazam I think of a music discovery app or I think of a superhero that they may or may not have in Australia. It's spelled S-H-A-Z-A-M-M-E. So Shazamme but the spelling is off. How did you come to it? You're marketing people why not go with a word that people recognize. A common spelling? What's up with the name? Rick: Very good question. Look, we wanted something that was Shazam boom bang here. And we threw around lots of names and the first version was Shazam my brand. So it's about building a brand for recruiters. That was too long, too complicated then we started throwing ideas around and Nicole my co-founder came up with Shazamme and we looked around and there was not a single mention of it. It was absolutely unique and yeah, we took it. We've got every URL possible and that's when the journey started. We registered a trademark and lo and behold, our good friends Apple and DC Comics sent us lovely letters resisting. SFX: Shazam. Joel: Now, that makes more sense to me. You should capitalize the M at the end, the second M so it's ShazamMe. Anyway, that's my own little thought. Rick: Well, if you saw the first iteration of the logo, the first part Shazam was one color and Me was the second color. And so in order to get around the trademark dispute, we swapped it around so the Shazam was not highlighted. Yeah. Joel: Okay. Okay. Rick: That was very interesting having to deal with two absolute giants of the industry but they were very good. Joel: Okay, so you have a nice history. You were at an agency before this. 20 years ago you were making biscuits and chocolate at a company called Snack Time, [chuckle] how... Chad: I'm hungry. Joel: Talk about the JXT, your past experience and how that all helps support Shazamme. Rick: Yeah, very good question. So, you are right. I have been in a few industries. I was part of a housing company before that that owned the biscuit or snack company. So I built houses, 12,000 a year so that's many a week and then went into biscuits and chocolates. Very different again, but all to do with volume, outputs and how to best manufacture, how to get more out of a factory. Joel: You can just jump to JXT. Rick: Yeah. [laughter] Joel: Get off the biscuits. You're making me hungry. Chad: Please get hungry. Rick: And then back in 2006 after trying to find staff for another business, I just realized it was very hard to use job boards that were prevalent back then and very costly. So I raised some funds and started Job X back then which was the next best job board. The technology by then was definitely far ahead of the major competitors in the market. There were three of them back then. And the GFC in 2008 hit and as you all know, the recruitment industry stopped spending on anything that was not core to their business. So rather than spending on four job boards, they moved their money to one job board and our technology or our platform essentially became obsolete. So we used that technology we developed to essentially spin out the first white label type SaaS technology for recruiters. And we went on a journey with Google back then to educate the market as to why recruiters should have their own brand and how they can build it well online. And we won large companies in the first sort of five years. We got Adecco, Manpower, Kelly and a lot of Australian big companies to jump on board and use our technology. And so that was the journey into the recruitment technology space. Since then we've had many iterations with under... You know Job X became JXT and then, yeah, Shazamme just before COVID hit and that was probably the best thing I've ever done. Joel: Okay. Landing pages. That sounds like job descriptions to me. How is that... How is it different? I mean, you can embed a video, you can put in some graphics in a job description. What are you doing that's different? Rick: So what we class as landing pages is, for example, you are a medical recruiter and you want to build landing pages for a specific hospital opening or an anaesthetist in Wollongong, you can literally in five minutes build a landing page, filter it down to that category, throw whatever you want on there, video consultant, anything you want, FAQs and have that running and then promotion on say Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, whatever you want and then track everything that comes back all the way through. So one of the things that obviously ecommerce does really well, they track everything that comes in and everything that comes out. So you can go ROI on this Facebook campaign for $100 with 10 applications. So we've perfected that process so that even if they don't stay on the landing page but then they go to another job or look at something else and then apply, we still attribute that to that campaign. Not difficult technology but the way the recruitment space is set up as you know, people go and buy a landing page product that stands alone and isn't integrated into the rest of their brand or they'll go and get MailChimp and they export CSV files and that's not connected to their brand or website. So we're trying to make it the Shopify of recruitment. Chad: So building landing page is nothing new for this industry. Rick: No. Chad: Right? Rick: Absolutely not. Chad: So what's the focus of the market that you're trying to hit? Who is your perfect client? Is it a practitioner? Is it staffing? Is it RPO? Who is it? Rick: Yeah, good question. So to date we have solved lots of problems for anyone from a startup, so a single person organization that doesn't know what to do. Because as you know, they may have come from a big recruitment brand and they step into the world on their own and they don't know how to set up email. They don't know how to build a website. They don't know about SEO or technology or... Chad: So is that SMB or enterprise? I mean what do you... Rick: Enterprise as well, yeah. Chad: I'm trying to cut to the chase here, man. We only have so much time let's get to it. Come on. Rick: Yeah, no problem. And for enterprise we solve a bigger problem in that they want the best platform. So we have one of the top five in the world as our client and they were on a different platform they moved to ours and they're absolutely loving it because they now have free reign to do whatever they want. They don't need to lodge a ticket to get things done. So they're running away and we've seen that with lots of our clients. They were on a journey on their own and sometimes we go to their site and go, wow! This is totally different now. We left them two years ago or a year ago it looked like this and now they've totally changed it and they've built all these additional things on there. Chad: So it's flexible landing pages. So trying to carry on, I need concise, Rick. I need concise. We've got SMB, we've got enterprise so you're trying to cover the whole gambit. And then talk to me about customer service 'cause that was one of the things that you touted which I think is awesome. So talk to me about customer service and size of the staff. Rick: I will just add RPOs is another big part of our market that we're now getting people approach us that really love the RPO concept because we have a tech stack and they can just roll them out cookie cutter style for their clients so, very popular. We've got quite a few large brands. The customer support, so the help system, the academy and the 24/7 chat support is winning lots of lots of love because the clients that we have can jump on and they'll ask a simple question. And we say that 95% of all of the support questions are solved on the spot within five minutes. Chad: Okay. And that's through chat so once again the question is, how big is your support team? Rick: So we've got 27 staff around the world ranging from people in New York, Phoenix, Columbia, UK, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia etcetera. So we try to cover the full 24/7 support. Obviously sometimes there might be a gap or we're too busy but we always follow up because the chat sends us an email saying hey you missed this chat so we'll follow up within as quickly as we can. Chad: Okay. So knowing that many of the platforms that are out there today relic ATSs, new platforms and so on and so forth, they generally have this baked in. So why would they buy something that is just an additional piece of cosmetics versus just using what came with the system? Rick: Correct. So in the staffing space, we are not aware that any ATS has a fully baked marketing platform. So we're talking Bullhorn, JobAdder, Loxo, JobDiva etcetera. None of them have a baked in full platform. There are a couple that claim they do but when you then look at it, it's a very stock standard. Everyone looks the same and you can't change anything, you can't edit it. It's all within a very solid framework. You certainly can't go building 10 job boards on the site. You can't throw landing pages on. You don't have the connection between consultants and jobs and you don't have that ecosystem that as I mentioned before, ecommerce sites thrive on and that's what makes their success. Those platforms don't have that and as I said, we certainly don't know of any that do. Well, that's in the staffing space. In the corporate career space, yes you may have a few that do this but what we are seeing they're very clunky, old technology. And the clients that we talk to once they see ours, they just have a big smile on their face during the whole presentation because they can just see how it can help them grow their talent acquisition path in the digital space. Chad: So you mentioned some platforms Bullhorn, Loxo etcetera etcetera. Do you actually partner with them to be able to sell within their systems or do you just go direct? Rick: A bit of both depending on what their model is but certainly with Bullhorn we're in their marketplace. Chad: Tell me the ones that you actually have partnerships with that you are selling together with and then the rest of them we know. So that's the important part. Rick: Yeah. So Bullhorn, we're in their marketplace, JobAdder and then we're marketplace. We just signed a marketplace agreement with Aviante, were with Idibu, with Broadbean, we're also finalizing Loxo and then there's lots of the other ones where we have an agreement with them because they don't have a marketplace. So in total we've 35 integrations so far ready to go and as new ones come along so we just did one the other day takes us two or three days because of the no-code technology platform that we use and so it's very quick to get an integration up and running. Chad: How much revenue is actually represented by your partnerships, percentage wise? Rick: I would say at least 80%. So most of our referrals at the moment are inbound. So we've done very little marketing to date. It is mostly inbound. As I said, some clients refer lots of their colleagues to us. They'll just say, "Hey, we work with Shazamme. It's just amazing. We love it. It solves a lot of our problems and... " Chad: We know everybody loves it, Rick. Answer the question and let's move on. Come on. Rick: Yeah. Okay. Joel: Yeah let's talk about money real quick. According to CrunchBase at least, you guys have bootstrapped this whole thing. Is that true? Do you plan on raising some money? Is this thing gonna continue just to be self-funded? Talk about the investment. Rick: Great. So to date we have had some investment from clients in the industry. So we've got about five, six investors all from the industry that saw the tech and invested. Very small amount. We tried to... Nicole and I tried to keep as much of the equity as possible. We are now embarking on a raise to expand our team globally mostly in sales and marketing because as I mentioned, we haven't really marketed anywhere before. So that is really where we're up to now. We're looking to raise up to 2 million USD. Joel: Do you guys do URL mapping? Rick: Yes we do. Joel: Okay. Is that usually a big hurdle to get a company to map a URL to your platform? Rick: No. Very easy. Joel: Not very easy? Rick: No. Very, very easy. Chad: It is easy. Joel: Very easy okay. More political than technical I know but sometimes companies worry about that kind of shit. So recruiters aren't traditionally marketers. I know Canva and some of the ones... And I've used Leadpages and Unbounce before from a marketing perspective. Even for marketers, that takes a little bit of training. What's the bridge like to train recruiters to use the platform? Do they have to go through a internal approval process? How do you make it easy? Do you have webinars about how to use the service? Is it onboarding a pain in the ass? Talk about that. Rick: That was one of our absolute must, must-haves before we launched the product. So Nicole and I, whilst we've been in this space for a long time, we actually can't code. We can't write a single line of CSS or HTML. The test that we both said for this product to succeed, we must be able to build a recruitment website without writing a single line of code or without help. And that was the absolute hurdle we needed to cross. So Nicole is sales. I'm very much about product and ideas. We both, and just like you, Joel and Chad, you could build a website for the recruiting space fully integrated with probably 10 minutes of training or looking at a couple of videos. That is how simple it is. Joel: What's the typical use case from the jobseeker side of it? Is the goal typically, click to view the job description? Is it, click to give us your email address and then we'll contact you? Is it a... What is the typical... In most marketing it's like, "Hey, give us your email and then we'll send you a white paper or you're signed up." What's the use case on Shazamme? Rick: So the most common one, we obviously have many different options depending on what ATS they use or how they want to funnel people into their process. But typically it's a job listing. Could be from one job to 1500, 2000 jobs. People can search and refine just like on ecommerce sites. They'll go, "I want an engineering job in Melbourne or engineering job in New York." They'll have the list up, they can then filter through them, they can read more to look at the full job detail page and then they can apply. And typically the most common way to apply is what we recommend is just first name, last name, email address and a CV. And sometimes in the fast-moving space, people don't even ask for CVs anymore. So we make it as easy as possible. We don't want to have the barriers that a lot of ATSs natively have, where you have to register and you have to fill out three pages of stuff that is never used during the application, and then you finally get to put your CV. So we're about quick conversion, in and out. Chad: On that line of thinking, are you using a partner for parsing, to be able to parse all that data so that you can get it into something that makes sense to the system? Rick: So our great partners tend to have those in the ATS. So the parsing is done at the ATS level. So we send the CV in and we can get that data back. Chad: So you, generally, you are a contact, really, high-level contact gathering of information and you're passing the CV along. Although, in many cases these applicant tracking systems still need more apply through their process? Are you then just pushing them... So you're becoming pretty much a lead form at that point and they're still having to apply through the applicant tracking system? Rick: No, they apply through us and we send that information into the ATS. So first name, last night, email address, CV, then if they wanted... So we've job alerts. So again, the automatic notification of when there's jobs. We are heading down the path where we integrating into Shazamme CRM, so if anybody applies, registers or creates a job alert, we push them into the CRM with the information as to what they selected. So an engineer in New York, that then builds up a very effective marketing engine to then send SMSs, campaigns, whatever you want, to that audience. Chad: So you said that you're looking to expand globally where? Rick: USA and Europe is our main focus. North America and EMEA, so Europe, Middle East, etcetera, and then APAC. So they're our common markets, English-speaking markets. We are multilingual and we do have a client where we've rolled out 14 countries in Europe, with I think 20 odd languages, so our platform is fully multilingual. And again, it's very easy to change that, and we've made it so flexible anyone can change languages and make widgets different. Chad: Okay. You're gonna tackle Europe and US, the US, all at once? Rick: Correct. Chad: Okay. So I reached out to a couple of friends of mine. Industry analysts and also people that are in RPO, one of them, RPO in the UK. And none of them had actually heard of Shazamme. First and foremost, does that surprise you? And secondly, how are you going to rectify that with only two million USD? Rick: You're absolutely right. As I mentioned before, all of our clients have been acquired through inbound leads. The markets globally is 166,000 companies, according to LinkedIn, in the staffing space. We are attending all of the events that obviously are the most common ones, the VSIA, Bullhorn, the ones in the UK. So the way we are going to tackle is outbound outreach through LinkedIn, outreach through email marketing, through the partner network. That's really how we want to do it, through Broadbean, Idibu, etcetera. That is how we are going to tackle it. So we've modeled this out quite extensively, based on cost of acquisition, we know roughly what the industry average is. To date, as I've said, we've spent $0 on marketing. We know it can be a very clear path in the recruitment industry because you have such a finite and dedicated audience you need to target. So we've mapped out pretty well how that's gonna happen. It's gonna be... We're gonna be everywhere. Joel: You've said a few things, your landing page development company, I guess, self-serve development company, but you've talked, you've said job alerts via email I assume, talked about SEO. What else do you guys do? Is there a social component to this? I assume all your web pages are mobile responsive. Talk about the other things that you do, other... I think it sounds really simple to say you build a web page, but it sounds like you guys do a lot more. Expand upon that. Rick: You're right. And a lot of people do look at it just as a web page. We actually build very complex... We have a complex platform that's easy for people to use, and that includes SEO pages, consultant pages, sector pages. So we've over the years defined what we call the ideal site architecture for recruiters. 90% of recruiters that we talk to don't get that concept, and once we show them, they understand, ah, you've gotta have mining recruitment pages to attract employers and mining job pages to attract candidates, and that needs to have content on there, needs to have consultants on there, everything needs to be automated. So in our platform once you put a job on, or we receive a job from one of our partners, everything is automated from that point. It's put onto the job boards, put onto the sector pages, put onto the consultant pages. Job alerts are sent out immediately. If there are landing pages with that on, that is instantly populated. So we are very much about automating that whole process so once that website is set up, everything is very, very simple and automated and SEO-optimized. So we do send feeds to all of the aggregators out there, like Indeed, LinkedIn, etcetera. So your job really goes everywhere the minute the consultant presses the publish button in their ATS. Joel: You mentioned MailChimp earlier, and MailChimp launched this week, I think it's in beta, maybe it's more widespread, but they've essentially integrated ChatGPT technology to basically automate the creation of emails that are really custom to the user. Which is pretty exciting and slightly scary if you're in the business, from a threat perspective. I don't see you guys having the military buildup to take on something like a MailChimp or bigger companies that'll be able to automate these pages being created. My sense is that most recruiters don't like making landing pages or managing pages, and if they could automate it through something like ChatGPT or what MailChimp is doing, that you guys are toast. Tell me where I'm wrong. Rick: No, it's a fair point. First and foremost, as you guys know, the recruitment industry is very niche. And the reason I used MailChimp before was because a lot of clients that we know just export a CSV file out of their ATS, throw it in MailChimp, nothing talks to each other, people unsubscribe, they don't know who has unsubscribed because next month they'll just download a new CSV file, throw it in MailChimp again. So that's sort of what we're trying to avoid and fix for the industry by having a fully integrated marketing system. In terms of ChatGPT, we launched already our own ChatGPT widget. So, imagine you're a recruiter, you want to type... You want to get a blog up and running, you just drag the ChatGPT widget onto the page. Rick: You say, "Write me a hundred-word article on why nurses should be working in Sydney," and it'll type it for you. You can preview it, edit it, and publish it within a couple of minutes. So we already have that, and we also have a secondary version that is a bit more sophisticated and can do a lot more as well, and we are certainly going down the road. The good thing about ChatGPT, it's all open technology, as you know, so it's not that hard to build on it, and we are certainly... The people that we've shown just sit there smiling because they know that we can cut their work time in half or make it so easy for them to do. So yeah, absolutely agree, it is where recruiters want to go, because they are typically short of time, have better things to do, if they're in a small firm; obviously if they're in a big firm and marketing is their role, they'll love it even more because they can push out more content. Chad: Let's talk about exit. So who is your perfect acquisition partner? Who would come in... Joel: SEEK. Chad: Acquire... Just because they're in Australia, come on. Joel: Yeah, exactly. Share a Foster's and buy my company. Chad: Who is that perfect partner that you are looking for? Or is that even the exit strategy at all? Rick: Yeah. So there is definitely an exit strategy, whether that's a public offering or an acquisition. There are plenty of fish there in the sea that are big enough and are in this space that could expand their offering to the industry with a product like Shazamme. You don't need to think too far from LinkedIn, Indeed, that type of company, that has a global footprint and has recruiters as a prime audience. It's someone where I think we can add a lot of value and revenue to their top line. Because everybody, in reality, every recruiter, every corporate TA team needs to have a career site or a recruitment website to promote the job openings. We've only seen it get harder in the last two years to find and attract good staff. So that problem will remain. Joel: Chad, global aspirations, ChatGPT integration, this sounds like a really fucking expensive product. Rick, talk about the price for us. Chad: Better be. [chuckle] Intro: I've done this before a number of times, and one of the other items that I didn't want to have was a legacy monolithic platform. So as I mentioned to you, Nicole and I were the guinea pigs to say, "We have to be able to build recruitment websites," which we passed with flying colors. That was tick. The way we did that was through selecting appropriate parts of a platform. Think iPhone. Apple doesn't make the screen, Samsung does. Up to recently they didn't make the chip, Intel did. So we took a very similar approach in our design. We said it had to be a microservices based platform, not monolithic, so if we wanted to replace parts it's a very quick and easy, we'll replace this piece with another piece. So what that meant is we decided on no-code platforms. Joel: Just looking for the pricing there, Rick. [laughter] Joel: Just looking for the pricing. Chad: Cut to the chase, my friend. Rick: Yeah. So no-code platform is what underpins what we do. So we've been able to do what we used to do with 20 developers now with a number of developers, and we're running so fast that we can't actually keep up with the speed of development. Joel: Pricing's on the website, everybody. Feel free to go out there if you wanna know about it. All right, Rick, it is time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Rick: I'm ready as I'll ever be. Joel: All right. Get him, Chad. Chad: All right. Rick, I love that you and Nicole have great industry experience. We're not seeing enough experienced industry folk like yourselves. So that's pretty damned refreshing and it's awesome. I personally led a project that launched a build-out of 40,000 job site domains and worked with over a hundred Fortune 500 companies in building out their websites. Hold your breath. As in 2009, 2009 we were doing that. So I'm very familiar with the process and definitely familiar with being able to scale that tech. The thing that we didn't do, even though we did launch at that scale, we didn't go after Europe and everybody else. You know why? Because focus and discipline means something. And $2 million? We were over 20 coming to the bottom line at that point. So we had some major... We had pretty good revenue for a small organization. Two million is not enough to take on those two fronts, period. Chad: I think that you guys need to be more focused, need to definitely get somebody in there from a marketing standpoint that will squeeze that message so that you have a nice concise articulation of what you're trying to provide. And at the end of the day, I think you've got a chance, I think you've got a little bit of a chance if, if you're focused and you have discipline and you don't go and try to invade America and Europe at the same time. So I'm gonna give you a golf clap. Joel: All right, Rick, you're still alive, man. You're still breathing. [laughter] Rick: Great. Joel: A little bloodied Mad Max style. A little bloodied Crocodile Dundee style. Rick: That's what the Australians do well. Joel: So Chad, you said 2009 when that little project launched, and I remember that period, that was glorious, and [laughter] that was 14 years ago. And on a marketing side, landing pages, I mentioned Leadpages, Unbounce, that was a thing about the same time. I always try to temper myself, Chad, because we try to talk about such innovative things, cutting edge stuff, but at the end of the day, man, HR, recruitment, these are people that are not ahead of the curve, by any means. So like... Chad: No. Joel: I really have to temper myself to say, when someone comes to us with, we do landing pages, and I just want to go, "What the fuck?" [laughter] Go, "Okay, hold on. Remember what industry I'm in. Remember where I am, okay?" Job postings. We do online classified help wanted ads, basically. So I'm gonna temper sort of my mentality going into this. I understand that people hate their ATS, they hate to have to go through a platform to create things quickly. They want to throw a page together, talk about nursing jobs in Melbourne or warehouse jobs in Toledo, Ohio, whatever. I get that people want to have that platform like yours to do that quickly. It sounds like there's not a lot of hurdles to get those done. Marketing doesn't have to look at these pages. You really saved your shit when you said, "We're putting in some ChatGPT automation." [laughter] Joel: Copywriting stuff. Like if you had not said that, it would have been bad for you, my friend. But you... That was great. You talked about the market, the potential market, I think it was 66,000 staffing companies, RPOs, people that want an efficient, cheap, fairly cheap, solution like yours. Damn it, this is not sexy. I think it's maybe something an agency, somebody will snap up. Chad: Bullhorn. Joel: Two million is not... Yeah, two million is not high expectations for that series A funding round, so it sounds to me like you're just gonna get over that hump, get something that is something that someone will be interested in buying. If that's your goal, for me, I gotta put my 10-year curve hat on and say, we're in HR and goddamn it, Rick, you and your Aussie mentality and gung ho spirit, man. [applause] Joel: I'm gonna give you an applause. And on top of that, I'm gonna give you a... SFX: Shazam. Joel: Yes, sir. All right. How do you feel? Rick: Yep. Feel good. Thank you for the feedback. Absolutely, you've hit a few good points there. Just as a addition, the two million was a seed round only, not a series A or a series B. So we certainly have a plan to not just have two million to expand. So it'd be two million seed, grow rapidly, then go for your series A and then series B. So there is a longer term plan to grow rapidly. I do get the focus, Chad, and that's certainly something we'll have a chat about. Joel: Well, when you do get money, promise me you'll update your website because it looks a little bit like Steve Irwin and Mad Max downed some Foster's and went to Photoshop and made a website. Chad, another one is in the books, and he just made it out alive. We out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been The Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to The Chad and Cheese podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the firing squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.chadcheese.com.

Four podcasters walk into a German bar in downtown Indianapolis to discuss the state of recruitment and chaos ensues. You know (and love) two of the podcasters (Chad & Cheese) but you may not be familiar with the other two: Ira Wolfe and Jason Cochran, co-hosts of The Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization Show. Everything from AI to automation to … ah, hell, there were too many German beers and links of sausage to remember, but trust me, it was entertaining. Gern geschehen! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Chad: What happens when four podcasters walk into a bar have a few beers and press record? You're about to find out. Jason Cochran and Ira Wolf from the Geeks Geezers and Googlization podcast join Joel and me on this episode recorded live from the Rathskeller in downtown Indianapolis. Enjoy. [music] Speaker 2: 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] Chad: Okay. What were we talking about kids? [music] Joel: How was Vegas? [music] Chad: How [laughter] was Vegas? Joel: You guys look well rested and you look recuperated. Jason: 'Cause we're so young and sprawled. Chad: It was Vegas dude. [music] Jason: I don't feel reinvigorated. Chad: I don't feel like it either. Yeah, but you ran [chuckle] a, mini-marathon on Saturday, like a dumb ass. [laughter] Jason: Family Traditions, man. What am I gonna do? Ira: That is peak male performance to be able to go to Vegas and yes... [laughter] Chad: Which nobody said about Joel Cheesman in his life. Joel: Since the '80s. [laughter] Chad: Three words, nobody ever said about Joel Cheeseman. Peak male performance. Joel: Is the going, right? [laughter] Jason: That is real, right? Chad: Never. That's gonna be the name of this podcast. [laughter] The name of this podcast is Peak Male Performance now. Ira: Beards and Beer, Peak Male Performance. Chad: Okay, so seriously we're getting good levels. Ira: Toxic masculinity. Chad: We're good... Toxic Masculinity. [laughter] Ira: Test. Test. Test. Another white boy with a podcast. Chad: Another white boy with a... Have you guys heard that song? Joel: Uh-uh. Chad: Oh it's fucking awesome. Another white boy with a podcast. Joel: Yeah. So what do you wanna talk about? Ira: So what was the talk at UNLEASH? What, were some of the hot topics that you guys were talking about with leaders? Chad: Build, buy or partner was one of the things that we talked about because of all... Everything that's happening in Tech. ChatGPT, all that fun stuff. So that was one of the things that we talked about. But, we literally did 10 plus interviews. So, pick a topic. Ira: So we have a dichotomy of your knowledge workers are getting laid off to a certain degree, tech workers, which I think is inevitably gonna be a good thing because they'll all start companies that hire a bunch of people and get a bunch of money. So I think that's inevitably gonna be a good thing. And then you have still a high level of stress around, seasonal hourly, frontline-type workers. And their stress is automation and how quickly, and do we automate many of the jobs of the frontline workers. So, I think if you looked at... For me a trend was looking at knowledge base and the challenges they're having, as well as the frontline workers and the trends on that side of the aisle as well. In addition to that, we still have a war in Europe. We have mounting tensions globally. We have an election coming up [chuckle] next year. So a lot of things going on in the fringes... Chad: Plenty of things to talk about. [laughter] Ira: Impacting hiring in America. Chad: Layers. Shall we say. Ira: Yes. Chad: Layers. Ira: It's an onion that we peeled back. [laughter] Chad: And it makes you cry every time you fucking peel it back. Ira: It makes you cry, yes. Joel: So what was the general mood? Were people still holding back? Is it fearful where the way the economy's gonna go? Or is it, "Hey, we're gonna take a step back, but after that, we're gonna have a, big opportunity". Jason: I feel largely we're in a bubble. We're hearing about inflation, we're hearing about all these things, macroeconomics that are struggling. Chad: And we keep hearing recession. Joel: But we're still hiring like a mother. We're not investing in companies in our space as much, but we don't stop hearing about, people still need people to serve food, to take care of patients, to store warehouse goods and services and deliver them to people. At a very basic level employment is really strong while we hear so much in the news that things are going wrong. So hopefully that [laughter] continues for us. Chad: But I think a lack of funding is good though, because we had way too... We had a sugar rush on... Jason: Or, drunken. Chad: On funding, yes. [laughter] It was horrible. Now I think we're gonna get an opportunity to see these startups actually perform or get eaten up or just die, which is exactly what we need. We had way too many startups, too much noise, too much shit out there that needs to be filtered. Joel: But is HR tech lost in the tech bubble, or the tech collapse, in the technology industry. But the reality is, as you said, there's a shortage of people. There is no out, most people don't know this, but for the last 40 years, we've had 2 million new bodies. Not qualified bodies, but 2 million new people. [laughter] Millennials, Baby boomers, even Gen X come into the workforce, every single year. And we had immigration, on top of that. For the next 20 years, we're gonna have less than 500,000 new people from Gen Z and Alpha and no immigration. So there, literally is no people coming into the workforce to replace this. So we are gonna continue to have shortages, but HR tech seems to still be focused on the old practices and falls into the tech bubble. Isn't this an opportunity though, to disrupt and transform where we're headed, how we're gonna deal with people, new opportunity? But their heads are still stuck up their butts. [laughter] Jason: I got four words for you. Ira, ChatGPT. [laughter] If there was one theme at the conference. [laughter] Chad: One of those was an acronym, but go ahead. Yeah. [laughter] Joel: Hey, I was digging into my inner looking color, for back in the day. ChatGPT, AI. All these things are gonna disrupt, what we're going to do. It's gonna disrupt companies that currently do what, ChatGPT or other AI technologies can do. It's gonna disrupt a ton of companies, create a bunch of new companies and we're gonna have a good time talking about all of those for sure. Jason: And ChatGPT is Auto-GPT now it's like, what could possibly top ChatGPT, now it's Auto-GPT, which is basically... Chad: Oh just sit back and watch. Jason: Yeah. Here's the project I want you to work on. Chad: Crazy. Jason: You put in the parameters and then it goes and does it. And I heard this crazy story, nightmare scenario with it that just happened to somebody. They put a project in front of Auto-GPT, it ran into a wall, a problem that it couldn't solve. So what does it do? Joel: Kill all the people. [laughter] Jason: Kill all the people. That's right. It starts the AI Apocalypse, [laughter] it kills everybody. [laughter] If you're listening to the show, you're one of the few remnants of humanity that's left. Chad: ICBM started the war. [laughter] Jason: Let's seek refuge in Indianapolis, Indiana. That's the only reason we're surviving. Indianapolis is a refuge. No, it actually, that's hilarious. [laughter] It actually went out and it tried to secure a contract with somebody on TaskRabbit who had expertise to solve the specific problem it couldn't solve. So it posed as it's human and was negotiating a contract with this person. The TaskRabbit contractor sends the contract over to the human and the human is like, what is this? What's going on here? And it unpeeled the layers and realized. Chad: I need to get a bank account to pay this contract. Jason: Auto-GPT is running. Exactly. Chad: And then naked photos started coming... Jason: It got a bank account in SVB to pay this person. Joel: Yes. Well, dovetailing on that, there was another one is what happens when a piece of it... ChatGPT is based on all the information that is out there. So it reads an economics book and it reads a psychology book. Chad: Oh great, just what we need. Joel: And it reads a psychology book. Chad: We should double down on trickle-down economics. Joel: And it reads about behaviors, psychology. So now it can negotiate with you based on your public profile, [laughter] So, I mean, you have all this but, it looks at all your feeds, how you behave, how you respond to things, what's your outlook. And it's... Jason: So think about that in our space. AI will be able to look at your profile, where you've worked in before, where you've worked before, what your title was, what the average salary of that title is based on the years that you were there. And come up with some sort of a salary that it thinks you'll be taking because of your past experience. Chad: It won't happen because salary transparency's gonna get rid of all of that. So that's a non-starter. Carry on. Jason: But how about just interviewing you? I mean, it's gonna be a lot smarter than a lot of people who are. It may come up with a salary based on in aggregate. Chad: The standardization. Well, that makes sense. But yeah. But it has to also take a look at all the people that you're currently employing. So Yeah, it couldn't happen. There's no question. But back to your original question, until HR gets a fucking spine, a spine and learns that business is what runs everything that they do. What they're looking at every day is, oh, wait a minute. My whole life is predicated on this new opening or onboarding or what have you. Right? No. If you understand the actual businesses that you serve, sales, marketing, you can talk to the CEO and CTO about their business, then you can get more budget. Why? Because they understand that without you right now, before ChatGPT, they need people to ideate, to create product, to sell product. Joel: To serve customers... Chad: Customer service product, to be able to expand wallet share. To do any of that, you need people. HR, the limpest of all departments. They go into the corner, they put their thumb in their mouth, and they get in the fetal position. We need to be stronger. Jason: Less Limp. [laughter] Chad: Less Limp. Ira: Less limp is what we need. We're hearing many cool stories how ChatGPT is being used by HR leaders, currently. Chad: HR leaders, not as much as staffing organizations and startups. Because they're more innovative and they're not afraid. Once again, HR and TA for the most part, they're afraid because they might trip over some compliance tripwires that might be there. Everybody else is out and they're out in force using it. Ira: And to add on that, I think writing job descriptions is an easy one. We're seeing vendors integrate that into their solutions. We're seeing some of the basic sourcing, the first contact, if you will, of candidates being automated. Rejection letters. Things that you would normally do content-wise are being automated by ChatGPT. And a lot of it is not even just vendors doing it, but just people on their own are figuring out where to go, what to put in, how it works. I mean, this thing has more users than anything else that came before it in a shortened period of time. So a lot of people are using this and messing around with it and coming up with their own solutions. I think also, interestingly, Chad and I have talked about on our show, how job seekers are being creative around ChatGPT and creating profiles and replying to tons of jobs and passing pre-screening questions based on ChatGPT intelligence. Chad: Passing tests. Full-scale tests. Joel: Oh yeah. Jason: Pre-screen test, actual copy test, actual writing copy. That's doing better than most of the applicants that are humans. Ira: Well I mean, it counts on your resume if you can write the prompt. You can engineer the prompt for Chat GPT and it's real. Jason: That's prompt engineering baby, that's right. Joel: Right. It gets translated... Jason: It's the fastest-growing profession. Ira: But the thing that you mentioned there, I still remember so many times, Kevin Grossman, who's a friend of ours in candidate experience, will talk about how many times people would apply and then they never hear anything back. So at least with AI, are you actually getting a rejection letter letting you know? That's a huge step forward, to actually get some kind of communication back. Chad: Which is sad. Ira: Which is sad, but it's actually getting done. Chad: It if fucking sad, because the problem is that, and again, this goes back to Ira's initial question around HR, we have never been able to scale past the resume and the fax machine. As soon as we were able to start getting resumes electronically, couldn't scale since we have not been able to scale since. Hence all of these black holes that exist. Jason: So if we go back three years, the pandemic revealed all the vulnerabilities of a company and then it created opportunity realizing what remote work could look like. The technology, people were unprepared. So ChatGPT and just AI in general, because now we're putting it into our hands. I mean, just pulled off the band-aid, exposed all the vulnerabilities of HR because we're... I've been in HR for 27 years, but you know, ran been in business for 40 years. Joel: And you've only been in therapy for 25 [laughter] of those 27 years. [laughter] Jason: For all, for 45. [laughter] Jason: The, challenge is that we're still talking about people faking resumes and this just put it on steroids. Joel: This is when Chad goes into his Web3, yes. Jason: NFTs. Chad: CV Wallet, watch out, baby, watch out. [laughter] Jason: That's the transition where people were saying, well, okay, we're trying to digest ChatGPT, we're trying to figure this out. Just give us time. We're gonna think about it. We're gonna put it on next year's strategic plan. Chad: Tech is moving so fast, you can't put it in next year's anything. It has to be next week's conversation. And again, going back to the HR is so slow and so spineless, we've gotta be able to react, we've gotta be more nimble, and I'll revert back to one of the interviews that we had with Jeff Lackey, who used to be over all of CVS hiring. 90% of his budget came from other departments because he went back out to them with business cases and said, look, wait, you want those salespeople to get hired? You want those customer service, you want this and that we need funding. We don't have enough funding to be able to sustain. So your top five positions right now for us is your top one, maybe half position. So if you can fund us, then maybe we can talk. So he went back to the business to talk about these things. We need to think about HR in an entirely different way, and we need to be more nimble. He was nimble and he taught his team how to be nimble. We have to. Ira: Ira, I joke on the podcast about one day we'll have robots interviewing robots. Chad: He's really not joking. [laughter] Jason: No one will see anyone until they show up for the first day of work. And we're sadly going to a time where job seekers are automating, companies are automating, and robots are interviewing robots. Ira: But you guys brought up a perfect use case for NFTs, right? The non-fungible tokens. Like so many times, I'm a big proponent, I'm on the bandwagon with you on Web3 but so many times the detractors would be like NFTs. There's no use case for them. Chad: Just as long as you don't call them NFTs, I think you're okay. Right? Just like you don't call it blockchain, right? You don't call it blockchain. You're like, "oh, okay. I'm okay with that." It's like, here's a product, here's what the product does. "Oh, that's fucking cool." It's NFTs and it's blockchain. Oh, wait a minute. Get me away from that thing. Ira: But I mean the use case you just brought it up is it's gonna be really easy for people to fake things. That they contributed towards their experience and stuff like that with AI. So there's gotta be proof of authenticity, the things that you actually contributed toward. And then also you can't have guys like Jewel that are trying to pose as Drake coming up with music that sounds exactly like Drake. Chad: Gotcha. [laughter] Ira: So there's gotta be this proof of authenticity on the artistic side of things too, with what's being done. Joel: Fortunately, I was born to look like Drake. So the voice isn't that big of a leap for me. So let's get into this. LinkedIn is obviously partnered with CLEAR to verify profiles. So are you bullish, bearish, hold on. LinkedIn verifying profiles through CLEAR? Ira: Yeah. I don't trust them and it's because I don't have any stock in LinkedIn. Joel: That's a bearish, I'm guessing. Ira: Selfish. Joel: You're selling... Ira: Bearish, you're selling LinkedIn. Chad: Ira, what about you, Ira? What do you think? Joel: On profile verification through blockchain and or LinkedIn/CLEAR? What else is out there? Anything? Chad: Well, I think that's the direction, but it goes back to we have no guardrails in place. So part of it is utilizing that to verify it, to make sure people are actually who they are. I think it's a good thing. It goes back to what we were just talking about with resumes. Ira: Do you have your blue check Ira? Joel: I do. Ira: Alright. There you go. Chad: Which means nothing. [laughter] Chad: Which fucking means nothing. Ira: It means he submitted his ID to Elon Musk. So, it means something. Chad: Means nothing. [laughter] Joel: And I went through the LinkedIn process. That's why I'm bearish on it. Jason: We're going towards a blue-check ecosystem. People are gonna need some sort of verification, I think going forward, whether it's blockchain, whether it's NFT, whether it's... Chad: I think the guardrails come in with Europe. 'Cause Europe is actually setting the stage for the entire world for a lot of this technology with guardrails. GDPR was... And from what we're hearing was really just a mechanism to slow the American machine down. Because we were so far ahead of Europe and now we have to think about, oh shit, if we wanna sell things in Europe pretty large, market with 44 plus countries. What do you think about that compliance, guardrails, do you think that Europe is really gonna lead the way since the US is really just focused on cash as opposed to how it treats its people? Joel: I'm not sure leading the way is the solution because we're still globalized. There's countries that aren't gonna participate. Chad: Let's say Germany. Let's say Germany does. Joel: Why'd you pick Germany? Why? Why? [laughter] Chad: It's the biggest GDP in Europe and we're here at the Rathskeller drinking German beer. Anyway, if one of those countries does it, it's much like California putting in regulation. The rest of the country really has to fall in line. Ira: Well, we all know that Reddit is the 100% source of all truth. [laughter] Ira: And what I saw on Reddit. Chad: You didn't know Joel was Q did you? [laughter] Ira: Oh, you're Q he's an on. [laughter] Ira: You guys are famous. But yeah, on Reddit they were talking about this subject and what was really fascinating about it was how many users of ChatGPT have said that basically the governor has been put on ChatGPT already. They'll put in the same types of questions or prompts, and it'll give a response like, "I'm not qualified to answer that question". Or it'll put some kind of a disclaimer out there. [laughter] Ira: And it won't actually answer it. And so we are kind of in this weird space of we do want it to advance, we want it to be able to help us innovate and create new product services, solve problems. But then we also have this problem of, yeah, is it going too fast where it's invading privacy or is it stepping beyond its balance of what it actually has competence in? Is it actually fabricating and creating false information? Chad: Definitely fabricating shit. [laughter] Joel: But you can create the regulations and the compliance in the Guardrail. But then you have China and Russia. How do you enforce compliance? Chad: You stop them doing business in your country. That's how you do it. That's the only way you can force China or Russia to do anything that you want them to do, is choke off the cash. That's it. Joel: But you're talking... When you talk about no backbone, you've got Congress. Chad: Yes. [laughter] Joel: When they're trying to figure out how Facebook still makes money. Chad: Yes. Joel: And don't realize they changed their name and they have a new business model. Chad: I think they might go back to Facebook. By the way. [laughter] Ira: Someone from the audience brought up a good question. [laughter] Jason: Yes. Yes. Perfect. Jason: Does all this confusion and ID verification lead us back to a time where we just hire who we know? Personal friendships, contacts, who knows who, which throws in a whole other diversity, inclusion and equity challenge to that. But do we go back to who we know. Like we don't know what the bots are telling me. What is AI telling me? I'm just gonna hire the dude I went to school with and they know somebody that wants to be an intern. Ira: Then organizations better hire people that are really welcome connected. Jason: It's still not what you know, it's who you know. Like you. Ira: What about me? Jason: Like you guys, they need to hire people like you guys that knows everybody in the industry. Chad: And then what? White dudes. Jason: With a podcast. Chad: Middle-aged white dudes. Yes. Joel: Four white dudes. Chad: It could be the fallback position, but I don't think that's ever the answer. And most of these companies are making record profits. And for them to say that I can't officially go after... Fuck off. Use the money that you have, go diversify your workforce and then build from there. One of the things that we did, I don't want to get too political, but back in the '80s is, we started cutting off funding from employers putting money back into their employees. Trickle-down economics. We were like, "Hey, here's all these tax cuts, you're gonna put it back in the market." Which they never really did. Instead, back then, they were incentivized to drive and build talent pipelines within their own organization. Today we don't do that. We talk about talent pipelines. There's no company that has a talent pipeline that exists? Very few, put it that way. So we need to get back to actually building talent pipelines within our communities, and then our companies start to look what our communities look like. Whether it's policing, whether it's just Fortune 500 companies, we need get back to that. And when we stop focusing on "shareholder value", and we focus on the long term existence of an organization, then I think we have something. Ira: So going back to your question, Joel. Jason: Yep. Ira: Do we move back toward human connections of who we know because we're comfortable with it, but it wasn't very good before. We hired people that we were comfortable with and we got what we got, but it was a low common denominator. And as over the last three years, we've talked about how we can't build relationships. You can't build cultures through a screen, because there's no serendipity, that... Where there's no creativity, but that's only because most people don't have the ability to do it. So part of it is, do companies revert back to that just as they are now is bring everybody back to the office. 'Cause that's the only place you can have innovation, growth and serendipity. Chad: Have you seen the new Upwork commercial? Jason: Of course. Joel: Yes. Chad: Okay. So the zombie grandpa who can't die because he is afraid of his company going under, because all he could do is hire his kids and his grandkids, and they were shit for talent. Then he goes to Upwork and he is like, "I've got all these talented people all over the world. That's exactly what Ira is just talking about. Jason: So, I mean, we keep going back to this lowest common denominator, what we're comfortable with, going back to normal, which we can't do because it wasn't very good before. Joel: But we have CEO after CEO talking about we need to go back to what it was. We need to go back to the office. We need to go back to a culture. Chad: That's 'cause they're all old white dudes. Joel: And most of them have ownership in commercial real estate, which is a side issue, [laughter] but where are you with remote hybrid, get your ass back in the office. Where do we go from here? Jason: All of the above. That's actually... It's one of the parts we talk about. So we're talking about it in the wrong context. It's not about hybrid, in-office or remote, it's about flexible, it's, people want flexibility. Chad: Autonomy. Jason: And flexibility. So they're not opposed to coming back to the office. When you come back to the office, come back to the office because there's a purpose to come back to the office, because it's the absolute only place where we can function or do something. But I spoke last week, and 2 weeks ago in Missouri, and one of the people shared to us, she said, "I went into an office yesterday and walked down the corridor and there were 10 offices." It was a marketing HR kind of business. And no one was there. And she walks down the office and she hears voices, and all the doors were just marginally cracked, and everybody was talking in their offices to each other. So they were in an office, on a screen call, sitting at their desk talking to each other. Jason: There is no reason in the world to say I had a higher childcare., I had to leave somebody, I had to commute an hour and a half to come to this meeting, to sit in my office to talk to somebody in the next office, because everybody talked through a screen because everybody was busy and they don't have to pay a 100% attention. But if there was a reason to come back, I think this is a brilliant model and it's from Cushman & Wakefield. We just interviewed Bryan Berthold a couple weeks ago on it. And they have a motto called Experience Per Square Foot. And it looked at, productivity was number one. They looked at the productivity of people wherever they are. It looked at collaboration, it looked at employee well-being, it looked at community, and it looked at communication. So those were the five metrics, and they put it into this measurement of Experience Per Square Foot. And they said, where is the highest value? Ira: Number. Jason: The highest number... Ira: My brain hurts. Chad: No, where they're playing Juice Newton, Morning Angel. That's where the experience is. Joel: Which is where I want to work. Jason: That's right. Chad: That's the soundtrack of this podcast, by the way. Jason: It's an interesting model and it puts it in a different perspective. But where does that happen? And that's the problem of thinking, are more people more productive in the office or remote or hybrid? And it still amounts to flexibility. Because even the four-day work week, which now regenerated for the 15th time. Ira: I still wear my khakis on Friday, no matter what. Casual Fridays. Chad: That's not very productive... Joel: And they still have wing juice on this. Jason: They still have the fleets that go all the way down. Joel: That's not flexible for people. They have a working spouse, and they have to be in the office Tuesday. So do I. I have to be in the office Tuesday? We have to find childcare for one day. Jason: Yeah. That's dumb. Joel: That's not flexible, which means you piss somebody off and they don't want to do it. So how do you create flexibility? And that goes back to HR and their alignment for a business and their alignment with HR. What's the measure? What are you trying to accomplish? How do you measure productivity, communication, collaboration, employee well-being? How do you put all that stuff into a mix? Jason: So am I hearing you say going back to the office is bullshit. Joel: A mandate... No. Jason: The story you just told was, it's bullshit. Joel: If it's a mandate, it is. Jason: When is it not? Joel: Companies need metrics. Jason: Why are you bringing people back? Joel: What metric does that work favorably? What are you gonna accomplish by bringing people back to the office, mandating it, that you can't accomplish if they work somewhere else? Chad: We shouldn't be... Okay, so first and foremost, Henry Ford came out with the 40-hour work week in the 1920s, that's still where we're at. We're focusing on the amount of time that we're taking or that we're "giving" as opposed to the outcomes. I don't give a shit if... And I didn't care when I was building teams if it took you 20 hours to get to the actual project timeline or not, it didn't matter. And when we start to get into that old 1920s mindset of the, "oh, we've gotta be there." And this is manufacturing. Most of us aren't in manufacturing now, 'cause America doesn't make shit. So now, 40 hours a week doesn't mean anything. Jason: Here's the tie. So it's not only that. Flexibility is not only where people work, it's about when they work and what are they doing when they're working. Joel: And how much they get paid. Jason: I can't tell you how many times that we talk about flexibility also comes about when people get paid, so... Chad: Oh yeah. Yeah. Jason: Day pay. Going back, you have hourly workers, you have senior leaders... Chad: He has flipped it on us. You see that? Jason: They went from Juice Noon to Smokey Robinson. I'm a little bit outta my own element, I'm a little confused. Chad: It's a Rathskeller playlist by the way guys. Ira: When does Hasselhoff come on? Geez. Jason: By the way, when we talk about day pay, getting paid, "hey, I worked three days, but I've got a bill, I've gotta go to the emergency room." Joel: Are we in favor of day pay? Jason: Yeah. Yes. Speaker 2: Oh fuck yeah. Yeah. Ira: Absolutely. Joel: Just making sure. It'll never work because obviously it doesn't work for Fiverr and Upwork. Ira: And since all the banks are basically being demolished... Joel: We love it but it will never work. Ira: Says Ira. Joel: That's not how the cashless society works either, all your tradespeople. So basically, you get paid when you work. So I can go in and do that. The biggest percentage is not frontline workers who use it. The biggest percentage is this... Not necessarily C-suite, but management. Chad: Is it because it's not available to frontline workers? Joel: No. It's just when they make it available, the highest percentage of users turns out to be managers and above. That's the percentage. But that's just a side issue. Jason: Okay. So you're telling me SVPs are taking daily pay? News to me. Joel: People who don't need the money, but they want to get it into the account quick so they, yeah. Reinvest. Jason: Yeah. But, two reasons. Joel: Well, SVPs don't live day to day. And that... Jason: The only thing I've ever read was that it was for frontline workers. Joel: It was for frontline workers. Jason: Hourly pay. Joel: I've never heard of anybody building this for executives. Chad: This is news. Joel: This is new to me. Chad: Write this down. Write this down. Joel: Okay. So the original point was that the objection I hear with that is that, "oh, we asked our payroll company, and they say they can't. Or we asked our managers and it'll mess up our accounting. So the problem is that there is a demand for it, there's a purpose to it, there's a reason that you can attract and retain employees, if you offer that type of pay. That, "hey, I've worked a week, why do I have to work another week? Because, I'm all stressed out, and I don't have money to get my car out of the garage. I don't have time to take my kid to the doctor because I need cash." Because the payroll system or the accounting system or the managers don't allow it to happen. Chad: Or cash flow. Yeah. Joel: So we keep going back to, there are solutions out there that have been around for five, 10 years, that companies just trip over their feet with policies and administration is, go find another payroll company. Go find, figure it out. But if we're giving you a way that will attract and retain people and say, "hey, the only reason I'm gonna work for you is because I can get paid by the day." I don't have to wait two weeks to buy groceries for my family or to pay... Or get my landlord off my back, because I can get the money that I put in and earned already. And somebody comes up with the brainy idea is, we can't do it because our HRIS system doesn't do it. Our payroll company says we can't do it. Our CFO says we can't do it. Get rid of them and change it. Chad: Yeah. And get one that has... Ira: Bitcoin reserves so that you know that they have the liquidity. Chad: Did the crypto king just say something? Ira: Oh, sorry. Sorry. But you know the other part of this too, we're talking about the money side of it and where people work, is when people work. And Yahoo just had a fascinating report that came out on millennials and Gen Zs. You know what the new 9:00-5:00 preferred working hours are for millennials and Gen Z? 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM Sign me up. Joel: More shocking is Yahoo still has breaking news. [laughter] Ira: Breaking news... You heard that first on Yahoo. Joel: That's right. Ira: Looking for a sponsor. Jason: But yeah, that absolutely just floored me that like the other part of this freedom is not just where you work, but when you work. Chad: It shouldn't fucking matter. That's what we need to get down to. It is like, look, if I have goals I have to hit, if I hit those goals, it doesn't matter when I work, how I worked, if I was at the strip club down the street for God's sakes, I got shit done, If I'm coding while I'm having prime rib with cherry, it's okay. Jason: Oh, I think that's what this report was showing was that there needs to be that flexibility. If that's when they're saying those are their productive hours when they deliver the most value for the company and it works best in their schedule, why not? Chad: They would like doing a rager and then they went straight to work after the rager. Jason: But the same arguments going after the shift is that, hey, we can't find somebody. So we don't have enough nurses, we don't have enough staffing, and we have a 7:00-3:00, a 3:00-11:00. But you do have people that can work from 11:00-7:00. Or 11:00-6:00. Then the problem still goes back to, but how do we do the accounting for that? Because our models are set up. Joel: They're all hourly anyway. Jason: It doesn't matter because... Joel: It does matter. It's paid on hours, Ira. Jason: But it's how they schedule. It goes back to... Joel: That's bullshit. Jason: But it goes back to what you said. It's their policy is that we have our... Joel: It's 'cause my pterodactyl wouldn't eat that kind of food. Give me a break. Jason: We have a template that says 7:00-3:00, 3:00-8:00, 3:00-11:00, 11:00-7:00. And the fact is that we'll get a new template, and it'll go, well, we checked with our HRIS system or ATS and it doesn't allow that. Joel: Hours are hours. That's one thing that hasn't changed during this entire workday. Ira: The only thing I heard is that strip clubs should be open 24 hours a day. [laughter] Joel: By the way, when I retire, I'm giving all my money to Charity, and if she's not working that night, it goes to whoever is onstage. [laughter] Jason: Well done. Well done. Were there any fears around the second bank collapse with First Republic when were out on UNLEASH? Chad: Here's the biggest problem, even before we get to UNLEASH. The biggest problem was we were starting to come out of this, Joel was talking about this bubble, we were starting to come out of this pensive do we spend money bubble? And then SVB throws all this fucking ice back in the water, which was getting nice and cozy. We're getting in the hot tub, it was feeling good, it was warming up, the bubbles were going and boom, they threw ice in the motherfucker. So we're in that now re-warming up phase. Then we had Republic? [chuckle] Jason: Signature Republic today. Ira: Jamie Dimon's feeling really good about getting First Republic on a pretty cheap basis with all the protection from the FDIC. Joel: Still the smartest guy in the room, Jamie Dimon. Thank you. Thank you very much. Chad: Until he opens his mouth. Joel: Thank you very much [chuckle] Jason: Exactly... Joel: Until you're back in the office. Chad: Until he mandates everybody back. Joel: Yes. [chuckle] Joel: Morale will not improve, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Chad: Him and DJ Saul. Joel: The meetings will continue until morale improves. Chad: No, UNLEASH was, it was a big show. Joel: It was great. Chad: Big expo hall... Joel: Third year, stellar. Chad: Yeah, that was only year three, it was big. Joel: And not consecutive. Chad: Yeah. And then we've got RecFest that's coming to America this year. I think we're gonna see a lot of growth. Can we keep the ice out of the water long enough for some of these funders and some of these startups to be able to really just explode? Jason: Were there any Web3 companies there? [chuckle] Chad: I don't think so. Were there? Jason: Joel's over here, cackling, he's got a story in the house, [chuckle] Chad: There was one that actually did an announcement that week, and that's CV Wallet out of the UK. So Richard and Beverly Collins, who actually sold a company to Indeed, they're now getting into Web3. It's a portable CV... Joel: Wallet? Chad: Yeah, wallet. Which allows all of the credentialing, all of the background checks, all that stuff, that actually stays with me, not the company, 'cause it's not a background check on the company, it's a background check on me. So I get to keep that as I go from company to company and I apply, for as long as I want them to have my information. So I see this as evolution. We'll see if we can actually get adoption with that evolution. Jason: Does it support NFTs? Chad: I'm sure it does. Jason: Yes. Joel: I can imagine. Ira: So if there weren't vendors, there was their conversation about Web3? Joel: Very little from my perspective. Ira: I mean, isn't that the problem? Chad: Yeah. Well, okay. Joel: Everyone's living in chat GPT shadow at the moment. Chad: Yes. But here's the thing though, you gotta remember, how much did we talk about cloud computing? We did for a minute, it was like, "Oh, this is the coolest thing in the world." And then it just wasn't there, but it took over the world because it's actually like a white labeled solution that's happening behind the scenes. I see the same thing happening with Web3. It could power some amazing tech, but it's not something we're gonna talk about and there's no reason to. Ira: It's fascinating right now. Web3 was really picking up steam and then AI came on the scene. Jason: Well, and then certain companies went out of business that were Crypto or... They sneeze and everyone's caught a cold, so they're guilty by association. And I fear that Web3, Blockchain, Crypto, NFTs, do they all get lumped in the same thing as, be careful, don't touch. I think it's a long game where all this stuff plays out, but for right now, I think there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt around anything, Blockchain, Crypto, NFT, Web3, there's not a massive break. Joel: So is it not happening right now or is it just that people are, "Let's lay low." Ira: If you get into this CV wallet, it's the long game. I mean, you're not flipping this thing in 24 months. It's the long game as far as I'm concerned. Joel: Somebody's gonna want to buy it, that's the thing though, because everybody wants to do a resume differently and we've been bitching about it for... Jason: Which goes back to the uncertainty. If this is just another company I can buy and sell and acquire, they're gonna have to convince people that CV Wallet Web3 is different than LinkedIn. And that means you can't just sell it to another company. Otherwise you're just putting your resume and profile through another company. Chad: I can't apply for a job on Indeed with my LinkedIn profile. I can't apply for a job in all of these other places outside of Indeed. Jason: Can you apply on Indeed with my CV wallet? Chad: Yeah. Well that's the whole thing is that if you can create these things and LinkedIn doesn't create it, Indeed doesn't even create it, but you have a third party do it, and they have these integrations with assessment companies and whatnot, the practicality of something like that happening goes up tremendously. As soon as Indeed builds something like that, you're gonna have half the market not want to do it. Jason: Most job boards will have, apply with your Indeed profile, and apply through Indeed. And... Chad: If it works. Jason: If it works, [chuckle] I mean they have it. So the promise of blockchain, and particularly Bitcoin is right, Bitcoin is beyond any government currency... Chad: But you're missing something. Indeed has a bunch of fake ass profiles. It's one of those things where if something that's credentialed, it's something that you know real, and it's portable for us as a user, it just makes sense. There's a messaging problem, a narrative problem as you say every week for Web3, Blockchain and Crypto, I agree 100%. They just need kick-ass marketing. Jason: So let's go back to, and it's something you've just said just popped in my head, if you go back and we figure this out and let's say the wallet becomes the new resume, and we have a better way than in a LinkedIn profile, how do companies... One is, how do you verify the skills that you can build any resume? Chad: Well, they're verified within the actual assessments and the assessment vendors in your wallet. Jason: If the assessments are measuring what's important. Joel: Or they're reputable. Jason: But people are still hiring, and I came from this world. I mean, people hire on personality and behavioral style. So how do you hire people that actually have the ability, one is the knowledge, and the wisdom, and the ability to apply it? So I can take all the courses and skills and have 30 years of experience, but how do you verify that I actually could apply and I'm willing to apply? Chad: Testing simulations. Those are the biggest keys. And... Jason: But they have to be part of the Web... Chad: Oh God yeah. Well that's part of the credentialing part. Jason: So you're demonstrating your ability, it's not that I just went to school and I clicked this off and I had 10 years of experience and I met all my goals for 10 years. Chad: And Jenny did all my tests for me. Ira: You know Jenny too. Chad: She's from the block. Ira: I think she's friends with Charity, isn't she? She's friends with Charity. Joel: Jenny's just short for Generative AI. [laughter] Joel: That's right. Ira: So what? We often say... Jason: Too smart, Ira. Ira: Humans are still gonna have certain skills that AI can't do. I'm a little skeptical. I gotta be honest. Chad: I don't know how long though. Ira: Me too. So I'm just curious from you guy's perspectives, what are those things that... Joel: Nuance. Emotions. Jason: So that's one of the concerns, is that AI in the future, that we can't replicate human compassion and empathy, but you can replicate the behavior. Chad: But what's the difference, Ira? Joel: Since most people do it robotically now. Chad: Yes. That's what I mean. Joel: So you go, is how do I become more empathetic? It doesn't mean the person gives a shit about anything. It's the reality, is they act like they do. Jason: Yes. Like most managers. Joel: And then the person has to have the ability to discern, are they authentic or not? Which most people don't have that ability to discern it because, "oh, he gave me a paycheck and he really likes me." Chad: And he's a Browns fan, so he must be full of shit. Jason: Right. Because we have something in common. Joel: Oh. Are you a Browns fan? Ira: I'm a Browns fan. Jason: You and Drew Carey. Yeah. You got something to say? Chad: Two of them. Jason: No, I'm a Colts fan, so I'm in misery too. Hey, I was listening to a podcast the other day and it talked about military preparation, and it said that in military battles or war games, that AI will typically do whatever it takes to win the battle or the war. It will sacrifice soldiers in order, for the big picture to win the ultimate prize, which is the war. Whereas human beings would look at sacrificing people as, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe there's another way. So to answer your question a little bit of like, yes, there is something to be said for human beings because we would look at that and say, sacrificing humans isn't just... Chad: All right. Context. Jason: An algorithm. These are people that live and breathe and have families, etcetera. I think there is still nuance. Joel: So this is interesting. Yesterday on the way out here on the shuttle, met a guy... Chad: Gingalactic. Joel: Went to the airport, turns out he's a 3-star general. Chad: Blue Origin, P-Rock. Joel: So he oversees one of the defense organizations with the government. Three and a half trillion dollars, 250,000 contracts. I asked him, I said, "Hey, you want to be on the podcast?" He'd love to... He's retiring. I said, "Love to get you on the podcast. Talk about what the future is heading." He said something like, "What are you using for AI?" His answer was that they're not focused on AI. He says the biggest value that they see is business intelligence. Is where they're looking at AI is not in the strategy. Jason: Really? Joel: Is in analyzing all the data that they have to make better decisions leading up to how, where do they invest their money. Chad: But yeah, but I mean that would be ML and AI at the same point, 'cause you have all that data to grind. Joel: But it's not about the human life. It's about how do we make better decisions about, how many F16s do we really need? And, who's the best vendors, and how do we have higher quality? And they're not even using that yet. They're not even at that level of using the business intelligence to the level it should be. And now we're already extrapolating out to, who's gonna make that final decision about, is this gonna sacrifice more human lives? So we've got a long way to go. And as we always say... Ira: Where's Matthew Broderick and his monkey when you need him? Joel: That's a great point though. Chad: Drones on the battlefield. That's what clears up this entire conversation. Jason: Yeah. Boston Dynamics with the little dog robots. Chad: We're not worried about human lives when we got drones in the air and we got the little Boston Dynamic dogs. Ira: But, I mean, that's a really fascinating point with sometimes having... We've got a ton of information, but we're really terrible as humans a lot of times at knowing what it's telling us, and organizing and synthesizing... The human capital reporting is a mess. I mean, we just got into this a few weeks ago where there was a report that came out in February on human capital metrics, now that publicly traded companies are supposed to be disclosing this stuff. And what absolutely blew my mind, of the S&P 500 companies, only 23% of them are still reporting anything on culture. And of the 23%, 50% of those, what they are reporting on culture is an engagement survey that they do two times a year. Chad: Poll survey. Ira: Yeah. And that's it. Chad: So they don't care about the culture in the first place and they never did. Jason: The people are our most valued resource. What are you talking about? Joel: As long as it's correct. To be consumed. Chad: As long as they're white, middle-aged males, then they're our most valued resource. Ira: That's right. And heterosexual. Chad: Yes. Yes. Ira: Don't forget that one. Chad: Just the hypocrisy of corporate America who says, first and foremost that employees are the most valued. And then there's like, get your ass back into the... We know what you want is what you want, but we don't care. You were incredibly productive, but get back into the office. DEIB, the most important thing in the world. Oh, wait a minute. Let's go ahead and cut all the heads in DEIB. And diversity, equity is ongoing. Ira: And don't you dare have a marketing campaign to those people. Chad: Don't you start. Don't you start. Ira: Don't you dare put that face on a BUD LIGHT can. Chad: Yeah. The trans community doesn't need to know about that beer. Ira: They don't drink beer. Chad: And they said, come on people. Joel: They don't drink beer. Chad: Yeah. And a great campaign, but then Anheuser-Busch folded like a fucking cheap card table. Jason: They did. They did. Chad: And that was on product. That wasn't even on employees. So if they're gonna fold that quickly on product, they're not even thinking about employees, you fucking kidding me? It's all just fluff. Ira: What I'm really hopeful for is, with AI, is that we're not gonna get more data, but we're gonna make better decisions with it. And so, imagining the day when there's gonna be an AI agent sitting at the table in a boardroom and just look at board members and say, that is a terrible idea, that's the stupidest thing I've heard today, and here's all the reasons why based off of the data. Chad: You need data from Star Trek, right? [laughter] Jason: But being able to refute a lot of things that I think that often get conflated as fact, but are strictly opinion, or the ways that things have always been or the way that they've looked at data... Chad: Oh yeah. Jason: I really hope that there's gonna be more objectivity that comes to it. We've gotta get better than 23% of S&P 500 companies reporting anything on culture, if you're gonna say that you care about people. Chad: We can't even get economy right. The shit that we talk about as rules in economy is basic theory. It has nothing to do with rules at all. Our Economics 101 that you go through in school is total bullshit. They're talked about as laws and it's total theory. We can't even get the thing that's most important to us right. And then we want to think about, oh, wait a minute, employees. Oh okay. Yeah. Ira: But at least we learned how to square dance in high school. Chad: That's a good point. Yes. That's a good point. Ira: At least in Indiana. Chad: You square danced in high school. You had to have. Ira: Broke danced, square danced, I did it all. I did it all baby. Chad: And he still does. Ira: I'll break out the running man right now. Chad: Pull out the piece of cardboard. That's what I want to see. Ira: Breakin' 2, Electric Boogaloo, the classic. Who else is hungry? Is it just me? I feel like the super fans sitting around the table. I could use a Ruben. Chad: Time for food and another beer kids. Ira, Jason, thanks for inviting us out. Joel: What a pleasure. Jason: Thank you for having us. This was a blast, man. Chad: Absolutely. Ira: Rathskeller. We're gonna have to do it more often. Chad: Amen. Ira: Monumental meeting. Chad: And with that, another one is in the can. Another beer on the way and a Ruben is cooking in the kitchen. We out. Jason: We out. S6: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Chase podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded 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 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 chuckle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and was off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Twist and SHRM, Industry Acquisitions Come Together Cheese is back from a whole week in Vegas, where he attended the SHRM National show, so we start with an update from the expo hall, including vendor takeaways, podcast superfans and a budding romance between Cardboard Chad and Cardboard Dolly Parton 🔥 Back to business, Adzuna, Beamery and Synthesia embrace AI, which is something we’ll certainly see more of from the solutions space. The show also covers recent industry acquisitions from Spark Hire and WebMD (yes, that WebMD). Then it’s Buy or Sell with Ferretly, 2045 and Swing Education. And what better way to end a show that starts with the adult playground that is Vegas than a story about an OnlyFans creator shutting down conservative commentator Piers Morgan? TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Intro: 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. It's National Fudge Day and take back the lunch break day. Any guesses what I'm having for lunch today after the show, Chad? Chad: Yeah. Good guy. Joel: You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Packer Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad Nobody wants an AI Ringo Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, SHRM stuff, an only fan smackdown and buy or sell. Let's do this. Chad: Mother fucking cardboard Chad. Joel: Motherfucking cardboard Chad [laughter] Chad: You had a week. Joel: Dude. I walk into the expo hall. So if you're not a regular listener, I was at the SHRM National Show this week. I walk into the expo hall, no shit. Cardboard Chad is facing everyone that's coming into that particular door of the expo hall, because Aaron's booth was right on the corner. And they moved cardboard Chad to basically greet everyone that was coming through the door. Chad: I love it. Joel: It was quite a sight. [laughter] Chad: And a roll up with Chad and Cheese. HR's most dangerous podcast. I had, me in my robe and slippers. Yeah. No, it was pretty legit. Joel: And Chad heads were all around as well, which is not good for anybody. Chad... Cardboard Chad made friends with Cardboard Dolly Parton, which was probably one of the highlights for me of the show. That's a romance that is budding and worth keeping an eye on Chad. Islands in the Stream takes on a whole different meaning. [laughter] Chad: Oh, yes. Joel: When it's cardboard Chad involved. Chad: Yes, it does. Jesus. Joel: So yeah, I've been in Vegas for a week. I need a nap more than usual. I was there with my wife and some of the in-laws having a good time, and then transitioned over to the SHRM show. Drank every day for sure, of that trip. And it's not good. Congratulations to hockey's Las Vegas Golden Knights who won the title while I was there. Had some drinks with the Plum team which... Chad: Nice. Joel: Includes a Canadian founder. So it was always fun to rub in the fact that another year goes by without a Canadian team winning the NHL, which by the way we researched the last Canadian team to win it, 1993s, Montreal Canadians were the last Canadian team to win the cup. Chad: Holy Shit. Wow. Joel: Of course, they're very quick to let you know that everyone that plays on every team is Canadian, so it doesn't matter. The Canadians win every year. Chad: Every year. [laughter] SFX: Shout out. Chad: It's time. While you were in Vegas, I was on a me... A mission to spread diplomacy. That's right. You don't need shots for that. I was spreading diplomacy. We actually met two French couples at an Italian restaurant, and we were just having a good time. They didn't speak English, we didn't speak French. They bought us two bottles of wine. We sat there for three hours, I swear, just bullshitting and Google translating. They invited us to their Airbnb last weekend and while you were in Vegas we arrived to five hours of food and drink. Only communicating through Google Translate. We had a fucking blast. It is literally one of those days we're gonna remember for the rest of our lives. So anyway, shout out to French people and technology and when Julie and I go back to Normandy we've got a place to stay. Joel: You know a lot of porn stars with French people in Italian restaurants by the way. That's where my mind went on this. Chad: Oh, God. Joel: It also reminds me of European vacation when the Griswold's go to a French restaurant and he is like "I'll give you dish water. You won't know the difference." And he hits talks about Clark's daughter. Anyway, at least there's Google Translate. Chad: They weren't Parisian. Yes. [laughter] Joel: Shout out a little bit more SHRM stuff. Okay. Let's... Chad: Yes. Joel: A little business stuff. Chad: Bring it back. Joel: The expo hall was interesting. It was full. It was busy. Chad: Of course, yeah. Joel: I think they had a larger number of people that went this year than last year. It was a little more telling about who wasn't there in the vendor space. Eightfold who we love making fun of for their 80 by 80 booths had no booth whatsoever. Deal, Oyster, Velocity, Global. A lot of the unicorns we talk about weren't there. Indeed, HiBob, Fountain, Paradox, Remote were there but very subtle booths. Mostly did not have the A team in the booth. Obviously not the A team in the booth. [laughter] Indeed had one of the banners that hung from the ceiling, the rafters. It looked like somebody printed it out from the HP printer in the office. Like they didn't... Chad: Dot matrix. Joel: Yeah. The dot matrix with the holes on the side that you gotta rip off. That's what that looked like. But that was my takeaway from the vendor side was in the Aaron Booth from another Chad and Cheese perspective. Another 150 t-shirts with our faces on it were given out during this conference. And I'm just amazed. Chad: Wow. You didn't even save one for Steven McGrath. Oh, my God. Joel: I did not. That's another shout out that's coming up. So don't ruin it. But yes I got one for my dad who it's pretty much all he wears is his Chad and Cheese t-shirts [laughter], which I can't hate on. [laughter] I got him a new one so he can rotate it in the laundry. But it was a good show. I would say equal parts optimism, equal parts nuclear winter is coming. I'm not sure what to make of that but we'll be talking about that obviously as the weeks and months go by throughout the rest of the year. Chad: Well, what's gonna save us, Joel, or my next shout out, large language models. That's right. All vendors are looking at different ways to leverage generative AI and Adzuna is choosing to use this most powerful tool... Tech for job seekers, and an interview prep tool. So this is from the press release based over 10 years of labor market data, Prepper is built on a large language model using in-built prompts to generate and review interview questions and model answers. The tool also assesses and scores candidates' answers, reviewing each response with the skills and requirements being sought by the employer and provided bespoke feedback, not customized, but bespoke feedback to help candidates improve. So you just add the job title into this and the job description. Then you can choose easy, hard, or pirate. I love that. Very talru, very pirate. [laughter] Chad: As an interviewer preference and away you go. So using large language models AI to help job seekers. Shout out to LLM and for Adzuna, focusing on the job seeker. And Little Rumor News. I heard a little listener told me... [laughter] Joel: Why are you looking around? Chad: You only see that on the YouTube. Joel: Yeah. Listeners won't see what you're doing. That's... Chad: I heard from a little listener that Indeed is backing away from their mandatory salaries on their job. So this is just a work and... Chad: That escalated quickly. Joel: We're going to take a look at it. That's exactly right. We're gonna continue to watch this space, but Indeed might possibly be backing away from their salary mandates. Keep a watch. Joel: Wow. So the name Prepper... [laughter] Joel: Sometimes these like countries, words mean different things. When I saw prepper, I was like, is this some doomsday product that they're creating that. Prepper is like doomsday prepares. And I hope, I pray that, I pray that some country creates a competitor called Fluffer. Please God, please let someone not know and make Fluffer the first... [laughter] Chad: It's the only fans version. Joel: The competing product. Yeah. And speaking of Fluffer, my next shout out, I got a few super fans, that I need to, I need to shine a light on... Chad: Fluffer. Joel: Steven McGrath. I don't know how many shows in a row that he's been in, but our favorite Scott, finally got his T-shirt. My God. Yes. There is, there is a God. Finally the mail service, the post got it to him. Well, both you and I woke up this morning to a picture of Steven in his t-shirt and nothing but the t-shirt with a big censored bar over his twig and berries. Chad: If you're watching us on YouTube, you can actually see the picture. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Something Adam Gourd wouldn't even think about doing. Steven like, it's just Tuesday at the McGrath house. So shout out to him and a couple other super fans, that came by during my time at SHRM. Rachel Scatter, she's with Jobcase. She's a Hoosier. Went to, Indiana State, the school, you know well, because your daughter was there. Chad: Oh, Terre Haute. Joel: Yeah. Terre Haute, Indiana. She came by and was excited to see that we were there. At least I was there. And also, Ilia Brodsky a super fan. He is the CEO at VanHack. Chad: I love that name. Joel: And if you don't know what VanHack is, it makes sense. Chad: I love that name. Yes. Joel: When you realize he's from Vancouver and he helps people in Vancouver hire tech people. I think they've moved on from just Vancouver, so he is trying to figure out the branding. I told him like, dude just get a VW van as a Mascot and then put a techie on the side of whatever and he's like... Chad: Van Wilder, VanHack. I love it. Joel: Yeah, no, I don't know if it, but anyway, so those two guys, yeah. Big fans of the show. Steven McGrath, keep doing you, man. I can't wait to see you in London which I guess will bring us into travel here in a second, but can't wait to see you, man. Don't corrupt my son too much, please? Chad: Good luck on that one. I've got an update on the, messy shout out from last week with, Inter Miami. So $29 tickets now cost $450 plus. Come the fuck on people. It, it's almost like we don't know how capitalism works. A family of four is over a $100 at $29 per ticket. Do you think a family of four can afford close to $2,000, including all those fucking fees and shit? Not enough families to fill the damn stadiums. Buy beer, hotdogs and nachos. Your favorite. What the actual fuck were these idiots thinking, raising Skybox rates might have been good, but fill the fucking stadium. Sell merch, sell concessions, then ratchet it up from there. This reminds me of JobAdder's dumbass CEO takeover [laughter] of JobAdder in, in the Boost, right? I don't know, maybe he's on the team at Inter Miami. I don't know. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: To charge more for MLS. I don't care who's on the pitch than football tickets in America is just. Chad: No. Joel: Just stupid. Chad: No. Joel: You just can't do it. You can't do it. Chad: You stop it. Joel: You can't do it. Chad: You stop it. Joel: Oh, man. Chad: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know. I can. Joel: You can do it. Chad: I can feel it all the way down in my Plums. Joel: You can do it. Down in my plums. That's right Chad. It's birthdays and it's Rum with Plum, which also we should mention if you haven't given us your contact information for free. Shit. We got beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, Bourbon from our friends at Text Colonel and Rum with Plum. If it's your birthday month and celebrating another trip around the sun this week is Eli Carstens, Kimberly Ol strap, TJ Lou, Robin Walsh, Zach Martin, Catherine Henry, Eric Baker, Linda White Moore, Jennifer McClure and Dan Yell North. SFX: Happy birthday. Joel: Happy Birthday fans. Chad: We also have to let our listeners know that we have a new free giveaway. It's for Getaways and it's from our friends over at Abode HR. You go and register at free and once a month we're gonna give away with Abode. We're gonna give away $250 worth. It's a little card, little credit card of Airbnb. This gives you TA and HR professionals an opportunity to get the fuck away, to breathe and to focus on strategy and get out of the goddamn tactical weeds. That's from Chad and Cheese and your friends over at Abode HR. Joel: Ooh, I like that. [laughter] I like that a lot. Chad: Events. Joel: And where are we going, Chad? Chad: We're going to the UK. We're going to RecFest July 6th at Knebworth Park. [music] Chad: But, by the time you hear this episode kids I'm pretty confident that RecFest is going to have already hit their threshold of 5,500 people that are allowed to come in. So, if you haven't gotten your ticket, you're shit outta luck kids. That's just sad. But what should make you happy is RecFest Nashville. Be there to say that you and your team because this is an all hands thing. This is a bonding moment that you were the very fucking first RecFest USA fans, what have you? Seriously, it's a thing in five years RecFest, you're gonna be the OG, they'll have OG badges, that kinda shit. You're gonna get you see people with the OG badges, you give them that subtle nod while you get a little bit more champagne and your Mimosa, Cheesman you know exactly what I'm talking about. You bougie bastard. That is exactly what RecFest is about. Fun, getting together, all hands learning. And since you couldn't make it to the UK, because they're sold out, you gotta come to the US. Joel: Electric Bull Chad. I want the Electric world in Tennessee baby. [music] Chad: Starbucks. Joel: All right. AI. Yeah. Startup Synthesia has raised 90 million in a series C round, bringing its total to $156 million. Synthesia's platform allows companies to create instructional videos using AI avatars without the need for actors or studios. The company will generate over 12 million videos and works with over 50,000 companies worldwide this year alone. Nvidia, the company powering its revolution, powering this revolution, excuse me, is now a trillion dollar juggernaut. McKenzie says, the AI boom will usher in an age of accelerated productivity to the tune of around $4 trillion annually. But it will come with profound disruption for many primarily knowledge workers. At least they can use the time off to listen to some new Beatles songs. As Paul McCartney confirmed this week that they're making a new single utilizing John Lennon's AI generated voice. Chad, lots to unpack here. The AI front is hot as usual. What's your take? Chad: My take is you're very tired 'cause you didn't use the unicorn sound effect. [music] Chad: Nvidia is the most important company in the world when it comes to AI development and ML right now. Why, you might ask, Nvidia's GPUs are the processors used for AI and deep learning. They don't have the market cornered, but they've pretty much have the market cornered. So if you're an AI company and Nvidia comes knocking whether you need the money or not, you open the goddamn door, you have the conversation. So apparently there are over 12 million videos with Synthesia. This is that, that's a horrible name. Synthesia has over 12 million videos that have been generated on the platform since 2017 in 50,000 companies worldwide. That's not too shabby if we better understand what their MRR, ARR, their pricing model is. Here's a big thing. Competitors. Hour One, who's been on the show, Veritone, sponsor and on the show many times. This space is heating up. It is fucking hot. And this is nothing but market validation for the companies that we've already been talking to. Hour One, Veritone, who are looking at voice, not just audio, but also video. Joel: Video. Chad: Video and avatar all the way through, man, it is fucking crazy. Tell me what you think about that. Joel: For sure and again, I've got SHRM on the brain. Yes, I need a nap. You're right about that. [laughter] Slightly braindead, for this week's show. Sorry about that, everybody, but... Chad: I'll put the unicorn in, don't worry. Joel: Don't worry. It's clear companies are trying to figure out how we get on this AI train. There's a lot of pasting messaging because when people buy the booths for SHRM, it's usually like a year before and they try to figure everything out. You could see there was a little bit of plastering of, yeah, ChatGPT and coming soon, this and that and the other. So everyone's trying to figure out what to do on this front. But you have companies that were there and I talked to, that are on this train right now. VirgilHR, who I spoke with, and I think we'll get that interview up at some point. They're using AI to basically replace lawyers for a firm. Joel: So, or for a company so an employee can like type in. I wanna lay off people in California. What are the laws? What's the process? And it can like spit it out for you that you don't need the lawyers that you used to have before. Beamery, you mentioned Adzuna, Beamery this week announced I guess what they're calling an AI driven workforce planning solution. So everyone's trying to release news, trying to get this stuff product together. What we've talked about before is that you have these, I don't know, baby gorillas soon to become 800-pound gorillas, the Veritones of the world. They're gonna have just a Howitzer that'll tie in HR products and services because they have the video technology, the scripting, the language processing, the translations into multiple languages. Joel: They're going to be at the forefront. And a lot of these other companies are just not gonna be able to play ball or compete with it. So it's gonna be crazy to talk about. The McKinsey report, that came out this week. If you get a chance, type in Google McKinsey digital report. It's a long thing, but it's really interesting. Yeah. It's, this is the next year or two that we're gonna be talking about. AI solutions, startups. Chad: Easily. Joel: Money's gonna be going into this stuff. It'll be real exciting and disruptive. Chad: Nvidia CEO actually said Moore's Law instead of being one and a half times it's two times right now. It is moving that much faster. Going to the Beatles discussion and a new album. Right? Joel: Yep. Chad: So, I had a discussion with Julie this morning 'cause I don't know how I feel about this. I love music, I love the classics. I love it from living people. I don't know if I love the new generated, not real stuff. So I asked Julie, I was like what do you think? She said, I think it cheapens the experience. I then asked her if you thought it was okay to speak with your grandma, because that's another thing, right? You can actually condense that information. Joel: So it's that coming out now. Chad: She had a visceral reaction to that. She said, yeah, no, I would definitely love to speak with grandma. Chad: Then I said, but for some people, music and bands are like a personal and real relationship. And then she thought that one through a little bit harder and said, okay, well, maybe no. Right? Maybe no, because it cheapens the experience. It all led to this question, what is life worth? If you live 27 years, like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and a list of others. Does it cheapen the experience after you saw Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at Woodstock and you're one and you're a boomer, would it cheapen the experience if a new AI version of the album came out and who would buy it? I guess we're gonna find out. And this is also going to open up a can of worms around should Harry Caray AI be used for Cubs games? Should AI be used to recreate obviously all these musical works? And or discussions with Grandma, because these are all discussions and products that are already out there. Joel: What is life worth? Chad: That escalated quickly? Joel: You went there, didn't you? So I initially liked this trend, mostly because there's a new Oasis album and Oasis wasn't gonna make a new album ever. [laughter] And it was pretty good, like voice. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Single was written and the real people played instruments. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And then, yes, this came out and I was, do I really wanna hear a Beatles record? With John Lennon's AI voice, now it's endorsed by Paul, which helps it, because if you go to YouTube, search AI cover, and there's everything under the sun, right, there's Freddie Mercury singing Hotel California, and there's this. People are just being crazy. I think that totally is stupid. That's novel. People will get over that, like they did MySpace and some other things, but. Chad: And most people buy it. Joel: The problem is yes. These songs don't exist in a vacuum. These artists don't exist in a vacuum. You can't, you couldn't release Revolution today and have it, have the same meaning as it did in the '60s. You can't have Blitzkrieg Bop released today and have it, have the same gravitas that it did in the '70s. Smells like Teen Spirit today does not have the same hit that it does in the early '90s. So for me, maybe it's old school. I don't like the idea of artists that have these bookmarks in history, these bookmarks in our lives, these bookmarks in time, whether it's Vietnam or whatever in history. I don't like the idea of that. Maybe it's an old guy crusty thing, but yeah, I'm gonna sell the whole dead rockers creating new stuff trend. Chad: Yeah. Again, what is life worth? Joel: Damn. You went there. That was... Chad: That escalated quickly. Joel: That was really fucking deep. We gotta move on from some of that shit. [laughter] Chad: Clearance rack. Come on. Joel: Let's talk about sales. All right. Can I interest you in some sleep inducing acquisitions, Chad? [laughter] Israeli startup, Comeet, a provider of applicant tracking and candidate management platform is merging with video interview platforms, Spark Hire. The merger is estimated to be a $50 million deal. The merge company will have a combined customer base of over 7,000 companies. But wait, Chad, there's more. There's more from the TJMaxx. WebMD is set to acquire Limeade. The transaction values limeade at $75 million and is expected to close in the third quarter. Limeade provides software to help companies enhance employee wellbeing and satisfaction. Alright, Chad, throwback a five hour energy and give us your take. Chad: Dude. An applicant tracking system just bought, or was just sold to a video interviewing platform. That's about as backwards as it fucking gets, right? Comeet was founded in 2013, received about $7.2 million in funding. Spark Hire founded back in 2010. It seems they've taken little funding, under 70 employees. So it almost seems kind of a lifestyle company to some extent. Spark Hire isn't a big name in the space, right? And again, that might be on purpose, buying this many people and New Tech, they're gonna have to go after funding. Is this a great time to go after funding? It's not. It's not. So, I see this as Spark Hire's very safe and reliable Volvo. They just hitched it up to a freight train and now the Volvo has to pull the Comeet Freight train. It's gonna be incredibly incredibly hard for them. I wish 'em luck. But what they were doing, I think it's gonna be really hard for them to expand beyond and into applicant tracking. Joel: So we had a show, I think maybe a year or so ago, and we talked about, what do SMBs do when they need an ATS? Well, a lot of them just use the Indeed built in ATS or they'll use the ZipRecruiter or whatever. And what does that do to that tier two or tier three ATS, kinda puts 'em out of business, frankly. There's a lot of Tier 2, Tier 3 ATSs. Comeet is one of them that simply can't compete with the iCIMS, the smart recruiters, the big guys that are out there doing it. On the other side of that, there's a whole lot of SaaS companies that think they are a platform, or at least they wanna be a platform. And to be a platform in our business, you better have an ATS. So you're gonna see a lot of these SaaS companies go shopping for these lower Tier ATSs because frankly, it's just a bad business. Joel: ATS, the ATS is a commodity. And these ATSs that are down this, down at that level, they don't have marketplaces. And if they do have marketplaces, companies aren't building for it because they don't have enough penetration to make it worth their while. So you have an ATS and all there is, is an ATS, there's no marketplace. Companies are leaving them to go to ATSs that do have marketplaces that they can use. It's just inevitable that these are gonna get bought up, go out of business, and you're gonna see more of these SaaS companies with a little bit of money, a little bit of cheddar in the bank from investment, go buy ATSs and say, now we're a platform. Will the market buy it? I don't think so, but it is a move that I at least understand. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Now going to the WebMD deal. Chad: Oh, geez. Yeah. So Limeade, I think the biggest issue, and we see this throughout our entire industry. Chad: Is we don't know... We don't understand how to create a narrative that's going to sell more. There are some amazing CEOs that have gone through our industry who can raise money and can sell shit, and they do one thing incredibly well. Narrative, being able to hone in on what is truly important and create a narrative. Limeade couldn't do that. Went into their press release, went into some of their blogs, went into their website. They couldn't get narrative right. I mean, they could have been a two... They, they could have easily been a five to 6X as opposed to a little over a 2X, right? They had a couple of points that they should have definitely hit. I saw that, that were easy to hit, but they didn't even touch. Number one, low worker productivity, which equals lost revenue. Chad: And that's all been in the news lately. High attrition rates, lost revenue. That's the key. We don't focus on the hard lost revenue types of numbers, which the board gives a shit about. We always focus on the fuzzy charts and graphs and that kind of shit. That's the thing. We really need to focus on stories like Amazon lost 9 billion in revenue because of attrition, lost revenue. Two words we have to have in our lexicon, and we have to go further than just talking about three times better productivity. That doesn't mean a fucking thing to the board unless you can put numbers to it, right? And in that productivity, what does that actually do from an attrition standpoint? Attrition stretches teams too thin. So you lose productivity while you're trying to fill a record number of positions and the employees that stay are getting burnt the fuck out. Chad: Then you hire onboard. How long does that take? Because your current team is still running on fumes. And then finally, when you get people in the seats to do the goddamn job, the people that are burnt out fucking leave, you're in this vicious cycle, right? That's where productivity has gone to the shitter. And then we need to tie in attrition rate. So again, lost revenue. Our industry needs to focus on those two words. Limeade wasn't even close to it. So again, I really think that this organization could have sold for a lot more, a lot more. They just didn't know how to build a narrative. Joel: The math did not add up, Chad. Chad: 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel: So my take is a little bit different on this. And it's pretty simple. I've said it before on the show. This company raised about 33 million. They were founded in 2006. You said it. Raising money now, really hard. There's no free money left, right? Time ran out on Limeade. Clear and simple. The money ran out. The patience for the investors ran out. They sold this thing probably for a song. I think that's, to me clear cut at what happened in terms of that deal on that side. Chad: It was a little over two times, two times at least in their funding. Joel: Well, I hope they've used that 33 to make some money in the 20 years basically, that they've been around. Hopefully that they did have some monetary value there. The WebMD thing, I don't know WebMD very well. I know it comes on search results when I want to know about my prostate and what's going on with my weight gain in the holidays or whatever. But two words on that side. Elevated Careers. Do you remember Elevated Careers Chad? They were the eHarmony of jobs. Chad: Oh, they were fucking horrible. Joel: Eharmony bought the eharmony of jobs. So WebMD coming in thinking that they can buy some employee, you know, satisfaction company or employee wellness company. And now they're gonna watch WebMD employment or WebMD work and try to make this thing, something, that people want. And I think it's going to end up just like eharmony and be a total piece of dog shit. [laughter] Hot garbage. What the hell are these companies thinking? We'll be right back. Joel: Alright, Chad, can I interest you in some buy or sell baby? That's right. Chad: Always, always. Joel: We talk about three companies that have recently gotten funding. We read a summary and Chad and I will review them and either buy or sell. Let's play. Number one. Ferretly. The social media screening company has raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round, bringing its total to $2 million. Ferretly's platform helps organizations assess candidates online personas to align them with corporate values, reduce risk, and create a safer workplace. The funding will be used to expand into the pre-employment screening market and other segments. Chad, are you buy or sell on Ferretly? Chad: So we've talked about Fama who just acquired social intelligence in this space for a few years, and I believe we both feel that this type of social background checking is inevitable. It's just, it's going to happen. The biggest difference between Ferretly and Fama, I think, is messaging. Ferretly is going heavily toward pure fear marketing, using words like hate speech, political speech, insults and bullying, self-harm, sexual impropriety, terrorism, extremism, toxic claim. Chad: The list goes on, and on and on. Those are triggers that will sell a very risk-averse HR practitioner. If you scare the shit out of 'em, they're like, "Oh, fuck, my people are doing that. We need to put parameters around this," but I've said it before and I'll say it again. Old crusty background check companies will have to build new processes and infrastructure to sale... To scale. The days of someone running to the local courthouse in Walla Walla, Washington will be a thing of the past as data becomes more public and AI scales background checking. I believe Fama is well ahead of Ferretly, but that doesn't mean Ferretly isn't a good acquisition target for an old slow and lumbering background check company. This for me, my friend is a buy. [applause] Joel: Have you even been to Walla Walla, Washington? Chad: I have. Joel: Have you. Okay. I haven't. [laughter] Joel: I'm sure it's... I'm sure it's a fine place. Another difference between Ferretly and Fama is money raised. Chad: Yes. Joel: Fama's raised around $17 million. And then of course, the 2 million, here by Ferretly. This is to me, the Coke and Pepsi of this sector, of the industry. If you're looking for social media, like background checking, these are the two companies I don't think we'll see anymore. It's becoming a hard business. Is TikTok InVideo and like how this stuff is created, that's a tough thing to monitor. It's not just tweets. It's not just text. So it's a tough business. I don't see anybody getting into it from here. Both are basically features for a bigger background check company. I agree with you. That's a no-brainer. Ferretly at much less raised is gonna be a probably the first one to go out. And that'll set the market for Fama. Money isn't free anymore. Like we've said. This feels a lot like a bridge loan... [laughter] Joel: To when we finally get to a place where people are buying companies again, because that's, it's just not a lot of money. It feels like the investors are like, oh, let's get us to 2025, 2024, and then we'll start talking about acquisition. I don't see them raising more money. Yeah. I think it'll be bought by '24, '25. The litmus test to me is, in terms of being bought is does it make a profit for the investors? And I think the modest investment that they've gotten for is gonna be returned maybe 10 x for a company like this, because a background check company needs to have this service. So for me, yeah, this is an obvious buy from me as well. [applause] Joel: Well, let's talk about 2045. The New York City based network, an exclusive network for influential professionals of color secured $4.2 million in pre-seed funding. Funds will be used to enhance digital tools, programming and their NYC clubhouse. The company also unveiled a comprehensive in-person and online membership platform with committed corporate sponsors, including Pfizer, Ford, and Fidelity. Chad, are you buy or sell on 2045? Chad: I love the apply for community membership element. It's a velvet rope type of community. Not everybody can get in. I don't like that it's NYC New York City focused. We live in a remote environment. Why do we have boundaries? This... I understand there is a physical element to it, but that doesn't mean the entire thing has to be a physical, their messaging is pretty tight. Diverse leaders are leaving corporate jobs at a staggering rate. That's a great hook because those who have left and or are thinking about leaving, they're not giving up. They're just taking a breath. And what a better place than among other like-minded leaders. 4.2 in pre-seed funding is for a professional network? That's pretty stout. 2045 is looking at two membership options. Number one, individual pay, and number two, company pay. Number one is a non-starter. This should be a free platform subsidized by companies in a variety of ways. Now if they want to charge for live events and or use of their clubhouse, that's understandable. But membership fees are a non-starter. I love the core concept, but they have some business model issues that need to be shored up. They have self-imposed, geographic limitations and I think some soul searching to do so, even though I love the core concept, 2045 right now is a sell for me. Joel: So first of all, I tried really hard to find out how the name 2045 was given to this. I have no... I can't find it. I assume you didn't find it. So if somebody knows how they got the name 2045, let me know. Chad: I believe that is when, in the United States, white people aren't gonna be the majority anymore. We're gonna be more of a mixed society. Yeah. Joel: Okay. That's why I have you on the show, Chad, to let me know about this. [chuckle] Joel: So, so number one, the is NBA All-star, CJ McCollum, who is an avid Brown's fan from Canton, is an investor. And I just had to get the Browns on the show somehow. [laughter] Joel: So that's how I'm gonna do that. Look by almost all metrics in America, blacks are behind. I'm all for anything that lifts people and sets an example of success. This company portrays blacks as successful, just in a positive light. And that's good for everybody. We've seen organizations like this pop up, whether it's blacks, women, Hispanics, et cetera. And they've all had little to no success that I can see. Fairygodboss was acquired. I guess that may be a win. 2045 being a winner is a winner for all of us. They do have digital membership, so you don't have to be in New York. My guess is if it works, they'll launch it in Philly and Chicago and LA and it'll, it'll come to other markets. And I think we should all be rooting for this organization to be a big success. So for me, I love what they're doing. It's a good first seed round. A lot of good corporate sponsors, so... SFX: All right. All right. All right. Joel: I'm gonna buy 2045. Chad: No, 2045 leadership. Feel free to reach out if you'd like some, at least some advising, from me, I'd be more than happy to have a conversation, no invoice necessary because I'd love to see what you're doing, work. I just see a lot of gaps and would be more than happy to help. Joel: And if CJ McCollum ever wants to come on the show... [laughter] Joel: We will make room for you, my friend. We will make room. All right. Let's go to Swing Education. San Francisco based startup Swing Education has raised 38 million in a series C funding round, bringing its total to $60.8 million. The company operates an online platform that connects schools with substitute teachers addressing the issue of teacher shortage. Let's go back to school, Chad, I'm gonna review this one first, just for the hell of it because yeah, I need a nap and we need to click this thing up. Alright, historically, tapping into solving government pain is a big winner. Getting government money is a winner because it's a consistent form of cash that you can rely on right now, over three-fourths of states in America are facing teacher shortages until we start paying teachers like the rock stars that they are, we are going to continue having teacher shortages, a company out there that can help plug in teachers, even on a substitute basis, I think is a [laughter] slam dunk because there's such a need for it. Joel: I think their educational programs where they can take substitute teachers and make them into full-time teachers with up-skilling, I think is a big win as well. When you have a need like this, when you have government money that's gonna go towards it and a consistent customer that's not gonna go anywhere, this is to me. [applause] Joel: Another buy which is my hat trick and my hat tip to the Las Vegas Golden Knights. My hat trick on buy or sell. [laughter] Chad: Somebody's in the good mood. [laughter] So yes, we have a teacher shortage, there's no question, and there's another a number of reasons for it and Swing Education is a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound, but but because the problem is so God damn big, we need even if they're Band-Aids, we need something to help, and I don't disagree, I don't disagree at all that a platform that can help really connect a lot of these substitute teachers in the spot and give them an opportunity to see what's open and where they can go, very quickly, just makes sense. So I mean this is really a marketplace, I love marketplaces, again, this is not gonna fix the problem, but I tell you what it's gonna do, it's going to make money, it's a buy for me. SFX: Alright. Alright. Alright. Joel: Can I interest you in a OnlyFans story, Chad? [laughter] SFX: What are you doing, step bro? Joel: All right. OnlyFans, creator Elle Brooke was quizzed by Conservative, Piers Morgan about how her future children will react to her career. It is being celebrated as the perfect response, but I'm gonna let our listeners decide for themselves. Piers: I'm just curious about you being someone who embarked on a law career, was obviously very bright, went to university, packed it in just for money to be effectively an online stripper. I mean, that's what you do, right? Elle: Yeah. Way worse than an online stripper, but. Piers: What do you mean way worse? Elle: Way worse. Online stripper's just naked, I do things that are way more grotesque than that. Piers: Just pornography. Elle: Pornography, anything. But it's all within what I want to do, and I absolutely love it, and I'm really good at it. I could be a good lawyer. Yes. But also, am I good at doing other things on video and camera? Yes. Piers: How would you feel when you want to have kids yourself? Elle: Well, I mean, that's... I don't really want kids right now, but at least... Piers: But you will. How old are you? Elle: 25. Piers: Right. So you will do at some stage, probably, right? Elle: Maybe. Piers: When you do, are you gonna be proud that you have your little ones and they look at you and go, "Didn't you wanna be a lawyer? Mummy, what happened?" And you go here, but look at all my stuff. Elle: Yeah. They can cry in a Ferrari. [laughter] Joel: All right, Chad, drop the mic moment for the OnlyFans movement, or not so much? Chad: Yeah. I mean, there's no shame in Elle Brooke's game, for God's sake. Sex is about control. And Piers Morgan is... I don't know if this is really how he thinks, but he's definitely demonstrating the old power structure and sex is about control. Throughout history, sex has become taboo because there's one area that men don't own control, and that's a woman's body. Unless they use things like shame to harness that control, which we've done amazingly well through religion and many other structures of things that we can't even prove exists. But Elle is doing what she wants, how she wants, where she wants, and most importantly with whom she wants, good for her. Good for her. That's she's gonna make more money doing this than being an attorney. Joel: Yep. So, Piers Morgan is an old white dude. [laughter], for our listeners that don't know, I'm an old white dude. Chad has called us old white dudes before. Attitudes about naked women from yesterday are much different than they are today. Sex has become normalized online and women are profiting from it handsomely. And it's not just dildos and BJ's, by the way. Some twin female basketball players from the University of Miami have earned millions of dollars in those, the NIL deal from a couple years ago. And they're not strippers and they're not porn stars. They're just really cute. Playboy used to be the primary outlet for most men to see naked women. Playboy came out once a month, so the number of women that could be in the limelight for their nudity was very exclusive. Joel: The internet has democratized sex appeal and sex. It is what it is. I'm not sure if it's ultimately a net win for society. I have a 13 year old daughter. I don't want her to think that being sexualized is the way to make millions of dollars necessarily. I know you have a daughter, so I don't know how you feel about that. I mean ultimately I think AI phases out a lot of this trend. The sex robots, the AI videos where you can get the AI girl to do whatever you want, however you want to whatever is probably ultimately gonna put OnlyFans out of business. And this will be something that we talk about from back in the day. Just like the internet or just like... The internet put out, put Playboy outta business. I think AI is ultimately gonna put OnlyFans out of business, but only time will tell. Until then, it's fun to talk about. SFX: What are you doing, step bro. Chad: We Out. Joel: 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'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.

Live from UNLEASH America in the Workhuman booth, Bennet Sung, co-founder at New Cherry and longtime industry know-it-all, joins the show to talk about everything from employer branding to the hottest takeaways from the conference to even explaining the name of his company. I mean, New Cherry? What’s that all about? For more: Bennet Sung - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennettsung/ Workhuman - https://www.workhuman.com UNLEASH America - https://unleash.ai TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Chad: Live from the Workhuman booth at Unleash America in Vegas this year, Joel and I were able to sit down with some great practitioners and industry voices. Sit back and enjoy this exclusive episode Powered by our friends over at Workhuman. Answer the human need to be recognized, developed, and celebrated at workhuman.com. Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the Doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous vodcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right by where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, mass opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad: What's up boys and girls? We are at Unleash America, the Workhuman Booth, having many guests and fans of the show. But our first guest, congratulations. Our first guest. Bennett Sung: I'm number one. I was number 32 at In-N-Out Burgers yesterday. [laughter], Joel: You're number one. We've only done about 1,060 podcasts. Chad: But for today at the Workhuman booth, you are number one. Bennett Sung: Awesome. Chad: So let me introduce Bennett Sung. He is the co-founder of New Cherry [chuckle] His LinkedIn profile reads like a Tolstoy novel. I mean, it's like you've been everywhere. Give us the summary of your professional journey. Joel: [laughter] Oh my God. I hope you use protection. That's all I gotta say. [laughter] Bennett Sung: My professional journey is pretty simple. 16 years in product marketing and now supporting B2B enterprise SaaS companies. Joel: All the way back to Virtual Edge, which most listeners won't even fucking know what that is. So tell a little bit about that story. Bennett Sung: Oh yeah. So Virtual Edge. Interesting enough, when I first interviewed back in April, 2006, I literally asked Diane Smith, the fun question I was most interested in is. Are you planning to get acquired by ADP? [laughter] Chad: He goes right for the jugular, doesn't he? Joel: Here's some foreshadowing by the way, listener. Bennett Sung: Because at the end of the day, if you're an HR tech, and you want to have the biggest distribution channel. ADP is a great option. Right? Joel: Any one of the acronyms, the SAPs or the ADP. Chad: UKG. Joel: UKGs. Bennett Sung: UKGs. Exactly. Whatever. If that was the case, [laughter] But interesting enough, she obviously didn't gimme a precise answer until six months later when she appeared in the "blue suit", because that's the ADP uniform for executives and so for those that know about it, it's like, okay, there are a couple things that, not only did she do that she got rid of all the wine, all the liquor from the building. Because obviously was not allowed. Joel: That's horrible. Bennett Sung: So Virtual Edge got acquired by ADP, then got wrapped into a tumultuous journey. [laughter] Joel: Well talk a little bit about this scale. 'Cause we're just talking about some companies want to get acquired so badly, although when you get eaten by the 800-pound gorilla, there are areas of scale that you can't even realize until you get punched in the gut by that gorilla. Bennett Sung: Oh yeah, totally. In this situation with Virtual Edge, it was still a highly configurable application, but was it configurable and scalable for implementing 300 plus customers at any given time? Joel: 'Cause you were doing, how many of your first... Bennett Sung: We're probably doing maybe 10. Joel: Right, but you're talking about high level, very customized. Very so I mean, you're talking white glove service from 10 to 300. Bennett Sung: 300, Yeah. And that was the biggest eye opener when we talk about scale. So when I go out and talk to all these early stage startups, I said, I hope your vision... If you're long, North Star is a big distribution channel, let's make sure the technology is set up to be successful in a situation where you envision at some point in time you're gonna be implementing 300 concurrent customers. Joel: How many of those care about that though? They're just looking at trying to get acquired. Bennett Sung: They're just trying to get acquired. Joel: And then after that it's pretty much scales on you. Big boy. Bennett Sung: No, and that is my biggest challenge to all of the book acquirers is like, can this company succeed as is without you having to quickly do another acquisition to replace the one that didn't work? [laughter] 'Cause that's exactly what happened in ADP world. I mean the, Virtual Edge came in, we had some good success for a few years, and then of course the technology began to show itself off in the context that it wasn't scalable effectively. And so they had to go back out to market to go find a new one. Chad: Do you think that's a threat? We talk about integrations all the time. Bennett Sung: Oh yeah. Chad: And I've talked to startups that integrate with, you name it, and they get flooded or at least unexpectedly flooded with business. What advice would you give knowing your experience to companies looking to integrate, make sure that they're ready for it and, what questions should they ask before they make that leap? Bennett Sung: That's a great question. I think interesting enough, we are in an industry that integration is necessary. It's a requirement. And I think this is what also cripples early stage companies. They don't realize that their entire roadmap will begin to shift away from innovation to integration so quick. Chad: Oh my God. I love that [laughter] Joel: That is great. That is great. Chad: Drop the mic. I'm done. Innovation to integration. Joel: Wrap this up. Chad: Holy shit. Joel: So this is why we see, and let me clarify this real quick. We see these point solutions are incredibly, incredibly innovative. They get acquired and then nothing. Bennett Sung: Nothing. And here's the deal. They will go ahead and spend $30,000 of engineering money per integration. And guess how many customers they have on one integration? One, they don't try to find, okay, how do we now go and find... Chad: And you say one because it's that one that enables them to get that integration. Bennett Sung: Exactly and they never find a way to find the next one. So a big part of their integration strategy is like, how do I now find 20 more greenhouse customers, 20 more SAP customers? And it becomes a rinse & repeat in order for you to make it profitable. Joel: How does a behemoth like ADP not know how to do appropriate due diligence around this specific area? Bennett Sung: I think that's why we also began to see ADP shift their mindset on acquisition. I mean, when was the last acquisition we heard ADP recently made? Back in the 2006 there was employees out of Atlanta. There was all sorts of small little payroll companies. You had virtual Edge, you had the Right Thing and then all of a sudden, boom, they stopped. Joel: Don't they have a huge marketplace? So it's kind of like. Bennett Sung: They have a huge marketplace. And, and I think that is what was the catalyst for the slowdown and acquisition with this because they ended up realizing that the point solutions got so frustrated trying to figure out how to integrate with ADP because they had so many, like compliance requirements and security guards just to be even authorized to pass, you know, even do and see a file transfer. Joel: Can you imagine the red tape for a global organization like ADP and all the different areas of HR that they actually touch? The compliance points that they, I mean that would be a fucking nightmare for, I mean, any point solution. Bennett Sung: Oh, it's impossible. I mean. Chad: Why do you think founders don't stick around after a year? Joel: Oh, God. Chad: It's because of that. Bennett Sung: That's a great point. Like, I mean, most of them supposedly have a retention clause when they get acquired. But almost every single one of 'em I've saw left in three months. Joel: They eject. Bennett Sung: They eject so quickly. It's like I'm out of here. No way, I might be able to stick around. Chad: That's the same with SAP. That's the same with MD. Bennett Sung: And then they lose momentum because these founders have such close relationship with their customers and it's like now that relationship, these big companies we're trying to like hold onto just fall apart because the actual founders, the ones, the glue left. Joel: Innovation to integration. That's the killer. Bennett Sung: It's the killer of every early stage startup. But that's why I'm kind of interested in like... Chad: ADP is where innovation goes to die. [laughter], Bennett Sung: Any of these big companies, it's where it goes. Joel: I mean, to be fair though, ADP is a fucking monster with every piece of tech imaginable from talent acquisition all the way into kicking somebody out the door. Bennett Sung: Exactly. And not, and then you go every size of company. Joel: Yes. Bennett Sung: Right. The SMB, the mid-market and then the enterprise. But yeah, I mean imagine they also used to have an automobile dealership partner side of their business. [laughter] And they got rid of that. Joel: Sound like when Monster had the the blue collar. Bennett Sung: Oh my gosh. Right. [laughter] Chad: Declare your independence. 4th of July, gig economy, freelance economy. Bennett Sung: So I mean, I think there's a little hope on the integration front and that's kind of like this new evolution. I think it's a company called Merge, which is, it's kind of like, remember when there was a company HR and X back in the day? There's still a few of those cloud integration partnerships, but they just don't work. They're expensive. Chad: It's hard. Bennett Sung: And especially with like all of the newer emerging AI tool point solutions and what they're trying... Because these are supposed to be augmentations of a team. This is not just, not about like a UX integration, add tracker systems, like any of the bots that are out there, they want to be able to move and change statuses on candidates. And a lot of times these ATS systems, CRMs have no capability to do that. And that's where the disappointment in integration experience really sets in and people that's like, oh tired of this. Joel: So with Any Tech, we have to take a look at evolving markets. User behavior, those types of things. All of these things we have never, ever been fluid with in HR at all. Talent acquisition, anything like that. Now with the advancements of obviously the generative AIs, or our fun little brother ChatGPT [laughter], you know. Chad: Bard. Joel: Yeah. I mean we're actually getting companies who are programming ChatGPT with, Chad and Cheese Voices. Bennett Sung: Nice. Chad: And tones. Joel: And tones. So this is getting crazy and out of whack. My point here is before the landscape was always fluid, but we weren't. Now it is ridiculously fluid. I mean, we're talking change day by day, right? Bennett Sung: Every day, yeah. Joel: How The fuck are we going to keep up with this shit? Chad: We're not. Bennett Sung: We're not [laughter] Chad: We just... Dude, we talked about this at the panel, this little kiosk, this whole thing is gonna be little kiosks of like 700 people creating cool things with, with AI and all the solutions out there. And the buyer's going to walk in and go, what the fuck is this? It used to be like, I went to the biggest booth and I bought them. Now I got to look at this. There'll be an AI that says what is the best solution for me? Bennett Sung: And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk over my ChatGPT on my phone asking, so where do I find this tool inside the exhibit hall? Chad: Yeah. Who should I buy? Bennett Sung: Because if this is all going to be these small little booths that I have to squint because I can barely see, I'm gonna need a hearing aid. Call ChatGPT to tell me where to go. Joel: Well And, and think about it. It could easily, totally nerding out right now, it could easily digest the information from this entire conference and then link out to all of the, the different company websites to be able to ingest all that. Then go to reviews. Like you said. Then, I mean you could, Bennett, do one of those and, and a conference should. Let me put this out there, should, yes, be looking at doing things like that 'cause that would be fucking amazing. Can you imagine an app, like you were saying as an HR practitioner, you come in and you say, how do I find X, Y, and Z? The app just goes, oh, you need to go to these different booths. Bennett Sung: And not to mention, can you tell me the sessions that are gonna support that. Right. Joel: Oh shit, we've got a startup happening here. Okay. Chad: God! Now you're getting nuts. Bennett Sung: No. Because I've always realized, like when you think about the hardest part, like I've been using the Unleash app, it's a very complicated app. It's like, I got to go to attendees, I got to go to speakers, I got to go to sponsors, I got to go everywhere. It's like I have one goal, here's what I'm trying to find. This is what I'm trying to learn. And I wanted to like, by the way, here's your agenda and I just added to your Google calendar please. Joel: And Boom. Chad: Like give me these companies in order of how much they've raised. Give me these companies in the order of how many news articles have been written about them. Joel: Yeah. All depends on what your need is from a media standpoint, from a buying standpoint, from a competitive standpoint, it could be all that shit. Bennett Sung: And then you make more money from other sponsorship dollars. Chad: We just cracked the case. Bennett Sung: So next year we're going to report on the new, ChatGPT app for events. Joel: We can't launch this episode because there, there's a business behind it and we've got to talk about startup. Chad: I'm buying eventgpt.com. Bennett Sung: Oh my God. Who's going to buy that? Who has that domain? [laughter] Chad: Shit. I want to pivot real quick 'cause your name fascinates me and not Bennett Sung, but New Cherry. What? How'd you come with the name? Because you're a deep dude. You're a smart dude. There's got to be some hidden agenda with the name like New Cherry. Joel: You work up in the middle of the night, sweats, New Cherry! Chad: You went to college in Hawaii, [laughter] So maybe you were like on a ocean adventure please clear this name up for me. Bennett Sung: So, New Cherry is pretty much, a good friend of mine, Jeff Bamo, who also worked at ADP. He happens to live on a street in Atlanta called New Cherry. I said, perfect. I live in Seattle. Many people may not know the Seattle and Washington are renowned for cherries, period. So between his street name, where I live right now, I didn't want to think too much about other company names. Chad: I love these stories. Bennett Sung: It really stemmed from, the connection that Jeff Bamo and I have. Chad: So you have a podcast. I want to give you a second to just talk about what you guys talk about. And. Joel: Ben has a podcast? Bennett Sung: I'm getting to everything. Joel: Awesome. I dig it. Bennett Sung: It's a webcast. So, Rayanne, Thorn, Krueger and I, we work together considerably at Humanly. We spend a lot of our time just rifting on what the hell's happening every day. Because before we even started to actually do work, right, of course the owner knows all about our rifting all day long, [laughter] And we just said, do you, do we think that something could come about, people would be interested in hearing what we have? That's an outside in view into what Rayanne and I talk about? Because we cover a lot of different things. And so we said, shall we just test this out? So we just come up with On the Edge, it's kind for me, it's a storyline. It's a lyric off of Lady Gaga's album. And Rayanne has her own interpretation. Joel: Or Aerosmith. Bennett Sung: Or Aerosmith. Chad: Living on the edge. Joel: It's good for everybody. So a little bit in there for everybody. Bennett Sung: Everybody. Joel: There you go. Bennett Sung: Right. And so we just started every Friday at 8:00 AM Pacific time, Willis, jump on to LinkedIn live and boom, we're just rifting about a variety of things and we're beginning to kind of rein it in a bit to make it a little bit more focused. 'Cause I think at some point it's like, I don't think they all wanna know about all of our side conversations we like to have [laughter], but it's not probably super productive or informative. So we're beginning to concentrate our focus on a part of the whole diversity mantra and we're gonna focus our entire energy moving forward. In fact, we're in the midst of potentially planning an event around belonging. So belonging is gonna be what we're planning to build our central focus for On the Edge moving forward. Chad: So we're here in the expo hall, it's only the first day, but any companies catch your eye, any companies you wanna make sure you check out? What's your take? Bennett Sung: I'm planning to check out every one of these little small companies. [laughter] Chad: The kiosks. Bennett Sung: The kiosks. Yes. I'm planning to check the kiosks out. Joel: I love the little, startup alleys? I love those. Bennett Sung: I do but I had no idea. There's startups everywhere. I think under every banner there's this kiosk probably, right? Or kiosk, like a kiosks section. So I'm gonna check them all out. There's a few, I'm seeing how innovative are they really going to be... Are they really, it's like, are you just trying to reinvent the phone interview yet again? I see a few of those out there. Oh, we're gonna do voice, we're gonna do record your voice on the phone and we're gonna translate that and it's gonna go into your ATS and said, yeah, I could have done that by a chat bot. I could have done that in 50 million different ways. Why are we, why do you wanna do the phone version of that? Those are the questions I have. It's like, where's the transformation going? Or are you just minutely making a small little change and then they say, oh, we're gonna get rid of the phone interview. I said, is it like we're gonna get rid of the resume because you've been... We've been saying that for ages, [laughter], it's like there's all these clickbaits. It's like get rid of the resume. Joel: But with tech, the way that tech is moving now and how fast it is, there's an opportunity. There really is an is opportunity. Like, like there never has been before, which makes me pretty damned excited. Joel: It's still cynical though 'cause no HR and TA is slow to fucking adopt. Chad: And I'm still waiting for the Oculus headsets to make it into their start up kiosks. Bennett Sung: Oh right. Where is their AR VR, what? Didn't it make a little indent a couple ago? Joel: I don't know if you remember or not, but Career Builder pioneered that space with Pokemon for Jobs. Remember that? Bennett Sung: Oh my gosh. Chad: QR codes and headsets. Where the hell are they damn it? Bennett Sung: Where are the QR codes? They disappeared fast. Chad: Bennett Sung everybody. Bennett, for our listeners that want to know more about your connect, where would you send them? Bennett Sung: You can find me all over LinkedIn. Look for the guy with pink hair on the profile picture. It's linkedin/in/bennettsung. Chad: Thanks Bennett. We appreciate you stopping by, Chad. That's our first one, but not our last. Joel: Nope. Chad: We out. Joel: We out. Intro: 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 shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar blue nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. 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. This is so weird. We out.

After a long weekend on both sides of the Atlantic, the boys have downed some Tylenol and taken a nap before turning on the mics, discussing a wide range of topics. First-up is an update on CareerBuilder’s sale to Greece-based Kariera and what comes next in Europe for the brand. If you love layoffs triggered by AI, then you’ll love the story out of BT, who says they’ll cut 55,000 jobs, mostly in the UK, by the end of the decade as part of cost-cutting measures powered by AI. And speaking of AI, Google’s Bard is expanding to 180 countries, but noticeably absent from the list are countries in the European Union (EU). What’s up with that? We discuss. Then it’s on to Buy-or-Sell with Abby, Centuro Global and Belgium-based Whale. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. SFX: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. 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 & Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oh, yeah, it's World No Tobacco Day, which is why we all dropped acid before this episode. Welcome to The Chad & Cheese Podcast does Europe, everybody. I'm your co-host, Joel Marlboro Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad. I can't quit prompting you, Sowash. Lieven: And I'm Lieven. No Bard for me, Funny-man Alison. Joel: And on this week's episode, AI takes a bite out of European headcount. No Bard for you in buy or sell. Let's do this. You guys look a little rough today. [laughter] Joel: Outside of Chad's nicely, freshly shorn scalp. You guys are looking a little rough today. Chad: I had a 6:00 AM flight out of Madeira... Joel: That will do it. Chad: To get to, yeah, back to Lisbon. And then a two and a half hour car ride to the place here in Cabana. So yeah. Joel: So many places in Europe. SFX: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel: Lieven, what's your excuse? Lieven: We had, what's it called again? Pinksteren yesterday. [laughter] Lieven: Some kind of a holiday. I forgot the name in English. Joel: Pentecost Day, I think. Lieven: Pentecost. It sounds like some witchcraft thingy. Pentecost. Joel: Sounds like some middle ages shit to me. Lieven: Yeah. Chad: Is it religion? Well then, yes. It sounds like witchcraft. [laughter] Joel: We burned some witches and drove some stakes into some vampire's hearts over the weekend. Lieven: So we had a holiday and it was... The weather was beautiful. And when the weather is beautiful in Belgium, we barbecue and we drink too much. So that's why I look a bit rough today, [laughter] as you call it. [laughter] Joel: What's a barbecue in Europe like? Lieven: It's something you would complain about. [laughter] Joel: And what would I complain about? [laughter] Joel: Not enough barbecue sauce? Lieven: Yeah. The steaks aren't steaky enough. And the barbecue sauce, it's not barbecue sauce enough. But, no, no, it was actually good. I have a good butcher. It's a fist thick steak. Joel: Too much green stuff on the grill, I think would be the problem. Lieven: I made it actually an American coleslaw or something. It was American recipe I found on Weber, [laughter] the barbecue brand, Weber. And I looked for side dishes and the coleslaw was a thing. It was good. Chad: Was it good? You like it? Lieven: Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Chad: What about everybody else? And did the kids eat it? That's the question. Lieven: Well, it was too green for them as well, even though it's not green. [laughter] But some even did. [laughter] Joel: Did you make hot dogs, is the question? Did you grill some hot dogs? Lieven: We had better sausages, but we did... Chad: Thank God, yeah. Lieven: We did do sausage. Chad: He talks about great steak and then he says hot dogs. I mean, how does that even go together? [laughter] SFX: That escalated quickly. Joel: We'll get to this in a second. Chad and I celebrated a birthday this weekend. So my birthday menu for my wife was chili dogs for lunch. Chad: Jesus. Joel: Ribs. Ribs for dinner. [laughter] Joel: And then when the kids came over, the big kids came over, we had smash burgers. So that's what's on my menu birthday time. I don't know about yours, Chad. Chad: Nice. Yeah, no, I went to a five star restaurant in Madeira and had five courses. Can't remember them all because I had wine the entire time. So yeah, I had a hell of a headache. Woke up about 3:00 AM took some Tylenol, went back to bed. [laughter] It was a great birthday. Joel: Dude, I fear that you're still on that yacht in Lido, Southern California. [laughter] You've taken douchey to a whole new level. Now it's come to Europe, you've left... Chad: It's my birthday. [laughter] I get to be a little douchey birthday. [laughter] Joel: I had wine with Buffy and the crew. Yeah. Chad: Oh my God. Madeira has amazing wine though. Joel: At least one of us is still people with the people. The commoners having chili dogs. [laughter] Joel: Jesus Christ. All right, let's get to... SFX: Shout-out. Chad: Shout-outs. First shout-out goes to, you're gonna love this name, Theofilos Vasileiadis. He's the founder and CEO of Kariera.gr. I think first and foremost, every CEO should have a gladiator name like that. Theofilos. Anyways, you might remember Kariera.gr here in the news lately because, what? Yeah, they bought CareerBuilders International business. But here's a message that Theo sent me on LinkedIn specific to our comments about the CareerBuilder Fire Sale episode. If you haven't heard that, just go to chadcheese.com. CareerBuilder Fire Sale episode. So long story short, Kariera didn't buy the CareerBuilder brand, so they can't use the CareerBuilder brands, just the business and the intent to spin off those local businesses with newer tech. Chad: Can't use the CareerBuilder brand. It sucks anyway. Why the fuck would they use it? Joel: Yeah. It's so strong. That's gonna kill everything. Jesus. [laughter] Well, good luck to them they're in Greece. SFX: Uh. Joel: All right, I got a shout-out to LinkedIn. I'm really gonna use this as a reason to talk about me. So again, I had a birthday this weekend. [laughter] Chad: Did you have a birthday this weekend? Joel: It's not too late to send those e-gift cards at woodencork.com to joelcheesman@gmail.com. But anyway, like me, Chad, you probably received a lot of automated happy birthday messages on LinkedIn and I'm here to tell everyone, stop it. [laughter] Joel: Stop it. I don't know you people, you send me a happy birthday on a holiday weekend. I know it's not real. The messages I get from these people are like eight years deep of just happy birthday every year, like clockwork. I don't have a conversation. I don't know them. So if you're on LinkedIn, if you've got the automated messages set to Happy Birthday, just stop. It's time to stop the insanity. [laughter] Joel: It's gone too far and it's a little too crazy at this point. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Chad: Not authentic, kids. Lieven: I'm going to give you a manual happy birthday Joel. Happy birthday. Joel: Ah. Thank you Lieven. Chad: Do we get a song? SFX: Happy Birthday. Chad: Can we get it in Dutch or in Flemish? Is there... Joel: How do I say "Happy Birthday" in Flemish? Lieven: Gelukkige verjaardag. Joel: Yikes. Gelukkige verjaardag. Lieven: Yeah. Something like that. Joel: Okay. [laughter] Joel: Very good. Lieven: The gelukkige was actually pretty good. The last part you screwed up. But okay, happy birthday. Joel: That's the story of my life, man. Last part I screwed up. Lieven: You started out just fine and then you screwed up. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. Chad: Then he went to sleep. Joel: Yeah. And then it goes wrong. Lieven: Okay. Joel: What you got, Lieven? Lieven: Okay, shout out. My shout out goes to Michael Blakley from Equitas. You might remember Equitas. We've done a... Chad: Oh, yeah. Lieven: Buy or sell on Equitas some weeks ago and I think Chad bought and I didn't. I sold, and afterwards the guy reached out to us on LinkedIn and the co-founder Michael Blakley, and he was very nice, so he made me feel guilty about not buying. [laughter] And he tricked me in a demo, which actually was a very good demo. If you remember Equitas is some kind of a platform, a very nice platform I must say now, to ensure you are doing some fair hiring. And I thought, fair hiring. Fair hiring, that's something very American. We don't need software to tell us what's fair in Europe, but he convinced me otherwise. [laughter] If this was a buy or sell, now I will buy. Lieven: But, and this actually is the point I was going to make. He told me something really interesting, or at least I found it interesting. He lives in Belfast, so he know the troubles for the very young people, maybe you don't but the Catholics were constantly fighting the Protestants in Belfast and killing each other in a very efficient way and bombing each other, whatever. He lives in Belfast and their demographic data capturing is an obligation since the 1998 peace agreement. There it's obliged to ask when you are on a job interview, are you a Protestant or are you a Catholic? Because they need to note it down to make sure there's fair hiring. So I wondered, okay, but what if you are Jewish and they say, "Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?" "I'm Jewish." "Yes, but are you Protestant or Catholic?" [laughter] But I don't think they have many Jews in Belfast, I guess. You are either way Protestant or Catholic and it's noted. It makes sense that a platform to ensure fair hiring like Equitas was born in Belfast. Bye. [laughter] Okay. That's it. SFX: All right. All right. All right. Lieven: He's going to send me a bottle of Bushmills, he promised. [laughter] Joel: He bought your vote. It sounds like, here... Lieven: I'm for sale. Joel: We have some live footage from that demo that Lieven got. SFX: What are you doing step bro? [laughter] Joel: Oh, good God. Lieven can be bought everybody, Lieven can be bought. Chad: Oh, good God. Well, maybe... Joel: With a bottle of Bushmills. Chad: Yeah, well maybe we can get that Bushmills at where? RecFest at Knebworth. Joel: Knebworth. Chad: Park baby coming. That's right. Joel: Oh, yeah. Chad: Yeah, Michael Blakley from Equitas. I expect some Bushmills in July 6th. We're gonna be at Knebworth Park at RecFest. Just north of London, kids. If you're in Europe, you gotta come to RecFest. It's gonna be happening again. One day, one day. Bring the whole gang, bring... It's a team, whole team. The whole Chad and Cheese team's gonna be there. It's gonna be Joel, it's gonna be myself. It's gonna be Lieven, Julie's gonna be there. We're gonna have a... Hell, Cole's gonna be there for God's sakes. The whole team. Joel: Lieven's gonna be there. Chad: Yes. Everybody gonna be there. Lieven: I'm gonna be there. Joel: We're going deep, everybody. SFX: Just the tip. Chad: Which means you need to bring your team, you need to bring your team. We're gonna be on the Disrupt stage all day, where all we're going to do is talk about technology. So get out to Knebworth Park, London, just north of London. Knebworth Park, July 6th. Joel: Love it. Love it. SFX: Topics. Joel: All right, Telecom's, giant BT plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs. Yikes. Mostly in the UK by the end of the decade as part of cost cutting measures. AI and other technologies will replace a fifth of the workforce primarily in customer service. CEO Philip Janssen believes AI tools like chatGPT will enhance services without making customers feel like they're dealing with a robot. The job cuts align with the trend in the industry following Vodafone's plans to cut 11,000 jobs as well. Chad, what are your thoughts on the news? Chad: I think it's interesting right out of the gate they're like, customer service can go. [laughter] And I've never called BT before, but I have called AT&T and I've called many other services and it really sucks. I think the best advent that they've come up with is this callback scenario, "Hey, you've got a 30 minute wait, can you give us your number and we'll just call you back?" Joel: Yeah. Chad: And that was one of the best customer service inventions, I guess you could say, over the last, probably fucking 20 years. [laughter] But we take a look at it. So BT currently has 98,400 employees that are not contractors. 130,000 with contractors. So nevertheless, 55,000 represents a large segment of the population of what they're gonna cut. You only put out an announcement like this, kids, to stifle an earlier announcements of reported 12% drop in profits. Yeah. Their profits went down $1.7 billion from year to year to April. Right. So BT's shares fell more than 7% after its results fell short of analyst expectations. BT wants to project a leaner and more profitable business, which is why they're giving the cuts 15,000 cuts to the building of the fiber networks. 10,000 UK networks require less maintenance. So you got less people there. 10,000 for new tech and AI for customer service. And then just 5,000 for basic restructuring. At the end of the day, this is more about trying to project power for better stocks than it is anything else. I don't believe that they know how many people they're gonna be able to displace with this tech just yet. I think they're willing enough to be able to say, look, we gotta make shareholders feel better and we gotta hopefully pump the stock. Joel: So you're saying it sounds like a diversion. [laughter] Joel: By the way, the callback customer service tactic always gives me PTSD because it reminds me of dating in high school where girls would say, "I'll call you back when I have a second to focus on you," and of course they never did. But anyway, I digress. Chad: But AT&T calls you back though and Verizon. Joel: AT&T, yeah. Chad: Yeah, they call you back. Joel: They're a little friendlier than the girls I dated in high school, but that's another story. Remember when we talked about IBM a few weeks ago, Chad, replacing 30% of their back office jobs primarily through AI. Guess what their stock did? It went up. People love cost cutting and no one likes cost cutting and headcount reduction like Wall Street. You mentioned the stock price correlation there and that's no mistake. People on Wall Street like to hear about job cuts and they like to hear about companies that are embracing AI. Our friend Prof G likes to talk about the old days when everything had a dotcom on the end of it, because putting a dotcom at the end of your name meant that your stock went up a good 10%-15%, because now you are an internet company. Joel: And I guess, BT is now an AI company because of all the layoffs through AI that they're going to be doing. I agree. No one knows exactly how many jobs are gonna be cut, what kind of new jobs are gonna replace the old jobs? They're just giving these sort of rosy diversions primarily to help support the stock price, to make them look like a cool, new company. I do think it's real that there will be lost jobs from AI, but I also think it's a big spin and PR tactic to make your company look better by embracing technology and reducing headcount, thus increasing stock price, thus increasing the values of CEOs and everyone in the C-suite and on the board and everyone else. So it's a win-win-win. Nobody really loses until the jobs start getting cut. And when you're on a yacht off of Lido, no one really cares about the job losses. [laughter] Lieven, what's your take? Lieven: I thought I read something about 10,000 people within customer care who would be replaced by AI before the end of this year. So it's actually a really big number and it's getting pretty concrete. So they're going to fire 50,000 people, but 40,000 of those were just in fiber. And the project has finished, so makes sense that they stopped the project, but 10,000 people in customer care will be replaced. And I feel first line customer care, it makes sense to replace those people with something like ChatGPT, this is what ChatGPT is made for. Pretending to be human and staying patient, which isn't easy, I think, if you have constantly people calling and being annoyed. So I think ChatGPT does this best and it could, like we always said, generative AI you isn't going to take over your job. It's people going using generative AI are going to take over your job. And for my business from my industry, this is of course something we look very closely at. If 10 people are working in a company now, and they're going to be replaced by two people who are using OpenAI or generative AI, then we have to make sure it's our people who are going to stay. Lieven: So I just launched a project in House of HR. We made a deal with a Belgium University, all our employees, and a big cuts of the people we put to work at all those companies will get a training in generative AI. And we want them, if they're going to fire someone, it's not going to be our people who are going to be fired because they know how to use generative AI. They have a certificate from a Belgium University. So this is something we need to act very fast, and we have to train everyone. So if someone gets fired, it'll be someone who doesn't know how to use it, which won't be our people. Joel: Lieven, we've talked in the past about how influential labor unions can be in Europe as opposed to America. What role, if any, do you see labor unions playing in job losses due to AI? Do you see a strong response from unions or not so much? Lieven: A dirty role as ever. [chuckle] Joel: A dirty role. Lieven: A dirty role. They have to be realistic, of course. This is reality and you just can't say we're going to make it illegal to use generative AI. That's ridiculous. Chad: Or can you? We'll talk about that in a minute. Joel: Yeah, we'll talk about the government's role in a second, but I'm curious about the union's role, if there is any. Lieven: Yeah. Well, and to be honest, I haven't heard anyone from the unions talk about this in Belgium at least, yet. So maybe they're still debating over it or striking somewhere else, but... Chad: Well, in this case for BT, the union actually said they understood that there were gonna be cuts. Just kinda like we're gonna have to take what we have to take, but they said, "Can we please make sure that we go heavy on the contractor side first?" They have 98,000 workers, a ton of contractors that they want to see let go prior to the actual FTEs. Joel: And on that, when we come back, we'll talk about the government's role with AI. [laughter] Joel: Let me do that again. All right guys, a little bit more AI. No Bard for you Lieven. Google's AI chat bot Bard is expanding to 180 countries, however, noticeably absent from the list are countries in the European Union. While Google did not officially state the reason, it is likely related to GDPR compliance concerns. Italy recently banned a similar AI, ChatGPT, for the same reason. Google hinted that further expansion will align with local regulations. Canada, or what I call Europe light is also noticeably missing from the supported regions. Chad, what's your take on Google's decision, especially now that you're on a beach in Europe, probably not caring at all about Bard whatsoever. [chuckle] Chad: Well, this is mirrored by what we saw from OpenAI. So switching, quick gears. Just a generative AI overall, whether it's Google whether it's OpenAI. Now I know Cheesman, you've been waiting for a Brokeback Mountain sequel. And here's a great storyline for that. A Time article entitled OpenAI Could Quit Europe over the New AI Rule. So, quote from the article, "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Wednesday his company could cease operating in the EU if it is unable to comply with the provisions of the new AI legislation that the block is currently preparing. Altman said that OpenAI's skepticism centered on the EU's laws designation of 'high risk. That's air quotes kid. High risks systems as it's currently drafted. If we can comply, we will. And if we can't, we will cease operating in the EU." This is seems like I can't quit you kind of scenario. I don't think they're gonna leave. Joel: They'll have to if the government says they have to. Chad: I don't say they have to. They just have... They just say that they have to abide by rules. So the government's not saying that they have to leave, please stay, but you have to abide by the rules. Joel: Well, and Google's not even showing up. Chad: Google's not showing up. Joel: By the way, anytime I can put a Canadian news flash and a European show is always great. SFX: Take off. We were doing our movie. Don't wreck our show you loser. Joel: So European policy to me seems like a double-edged sword to some degree. We will celebrate record fines on Facebook or Google and that's a good thing. But the flip side of that is these tech companies are less likely to play in a way that they would in America or probably Asia and other places because of said fines and regulations and laws that Europe has set forth. So to me, this is like a lose for Europe because if Italy bans ChatGPT or Bard doesn't come to a European city near you, Europe just falls more behind countries that are introducing new AI, new technologies. So you can celebrate the fines and all the regulations, but also there's a double... Joel: There's another side of that in that these companies are less likely to play ball or introduce these technologies to European countries, which also limits their ability to create new AI and companies around artificial intelligence within Europe itself. I would like to know if you asked any European, would you rather have greater privacy laws or the ability to play with new tech around AI? My guess would be more would say, "I'd rather play around with the new AI stuff and see the new tech than they would concern about their privacy." So this is the way it is, Europe, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you're gonna fine Google and Facebook and everybody else to the moon, you're also gonna have less technology and cool shit to play with as a result of that. Lieven: Yep. I totally agree. And it'll be pretty problematic if we would get behind on this, I think, and I don't think the Americans would mind if Europe was dragging it a bit. Not sure. So I definitely hope they won't be so stupid as to completely drive OpenAI away. Google doesn't like GDPR and neither do I, I think the whole idea is great, but I doesn't like the way... I don't like the way how it was executed, but that's a different story. But I was able to test Google Bards by using VPN and pretending I was in the United States. So there's always a way to work around, but I didn't really like Google Bards. And this is problematic too. I mean, it makes things up and it's still in an beta testing phase, I know, but it makes things up. I asked Google Bards write a biography over myself over Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze who works at House of HR. And it started perfectly, it says, okay, Lieven is Chief Digital at House of HR, a company, blah, blah, blah. Everything was right. Lieven: And then suddenly it said Lieven was born in 1972 in Ghent. I was born in 1976 somewhere else, but the rest was right. So it's mixing stuff, which is made up with stuff, which is true. And then it becomes very difficult to filter out what's not right and then this can become problematic if you use it for let's say, contract building but you are starting from wrong premises. I dunno. I think they have a lot of work to do. Also, it said I used to work for HannStar. I never worked for HannStar. I used to work for USG People, never for HannStar. So it knows vaguely what I've been doing. It knows who I am, but if it's not sure, it's just like making things up and I didn't have the same experience with OpenAI. It's much better in my experience, so I hope they stay and you can keep your Google Bard. Chad: It's cleaner. I think ChatGPT and OpenAI is definitely cleaner. I think it's better. And just further along in its iterations, but one of the things that Sam Altman did say is that, "To be able to scale the nonsensical bullshit that's out there on the web today, you can't do it without generative AI." I mean, you just, you can't. So you have, when Facebook had the issues with Cambridge Analytica, that was all human, right? That was all data, but it was contracted, and then humans actually posted and targeted individuals. This, being able to scale, utilizing that same kind of data would be fucking scary and crazy. So there are some really bad sides to it. I don't think that OpenAI will be kept out of the EU. I think they'll work something out. But I hope there are some limiters because we have to have something limiting. We didn't have Facebook limiting with Cambridge Analytica selling shit to foreign countries and we got stung. We got stung hard. This could be 10 times worse when AI experts out there, they said a 10% likelihood that this could be existential risk. That's too much for me. Joel: Hey, when the robots decide who they can get rid of first, it's Europe. So think about that when you talk about that. [laughter] Joel: And how prevalent is like VPN usage in Europe? Like I would say it's low single digits in America, people that leverage VPNs. I have a feeling it's a lot higher in Europe. Lieven: Probably not. I use it because sometimes when I'm testing our websites, I want to make sure that I can test it on the different domains of whatever for Google, et cetera for keyboard tracking. I sometimes try to see in Germany how do we rate on the Google listings, for example. So then I have to pretend to be in Germany. So I use it, but I don't think many people do. My students say, "We use it to watch Netflix." Chad: Yes. Lieven: So they can see the Netflix movies which are already released in the United States, but not in Europe yet, for example. Chad: Yeah. Lieven: And then they pretend to be in the US but I don't think many people use it in a professional way. Joel: Single digits? Chad: I mean, my kids were coming home telling me how they were using VPN on their phone to access stuff on the school's network that they couldn't without. So you, I think it's used a lot more than you think. Joel: So old people don't use it, is what you're saying? [laughter] Joel: Hi [p people do. So it's a lot, lot bigger number. Lieven: Young people like me. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The hallucinations don't bug me that much because I was on the internet speaking of old people. I was on the internet doing searches in the '90s, which really sucked. And it got better. Imagine that. So this stuff is gonna get better. Hallucinations are going to like slow down or stop, or there'll be some function around that. But anyway, it's gonna be fun to watch. I hope that Europe does not stifle exposure to AI. 'Cause I think it'd be really bad for Europe as a whole. Chad: Agreed. Joel: But what would be great for Europe is a game of, buy or sell everybody. That's right. If you know how we play the game, we talk about three companies that recently got funding in Europe. I read a summary and the boys give it a buy or sell rating. Are you guys ready to play a little buy or sell. Let's talk about Centura Global. Chad: Bring it. Joel: Based in London has secured 3.3 million pounds in funding. They assist companies in expanding internationally by helping them comply with local regulations, including immigration, HR, legal, tax and accounting issues. The platform covers over 150 countries and caters to companies of all sizes offering one-off advice or ongoing support. The funding will be utilized for platform development and expanding the team. Chad, is this the deal of a Centura or just another bottle of snake oil? Chad: This org looks like it has a couple of high-powered founders, that understand at least the mechanics of the space. Unfortunately, there's just way too much firepower in said space right now. Several with many that have large war chests of cash, like Remote, Oyster, Deel, Velocity, Global, Multiplier, Rippling, and many, many more. Plus the aforementioned platforms have tech experience. This to me very simply, I'm a big fan of founders who know what they're doing. I think they have a lot of reputation in that space, just not on the technical side of the house. Not to mention there are a hell of a lot of unicorns that are in the space that have money to actually throw at this problem. It's a sell, unfortunately for me. Joel: Oh, boy, that's a sell. So I'm trying to kind of make sense of this whole trend of small comp or like small invested companies taking on the remote work category because like you said, Chad, we have companies that have gained unicorn status for the amount of money they got, Remote, Oyster, Deel and so forth. And we've talked about them ad nauseam here on the show. However, we've also talked about on the show that companies don't fail because they've taken too little money. We talk about that they fail because they take too much money. So is the calculus around giving these companies a couple million dollars that we're hoping that Deel and Remote all go out of business and we're the mammals while all the dinosaurs die and we're the ones that come up from the ooze and become the players that companies actually use. If you're using that calculus, then this thing would be a buy. Unfortunately, I think that what will happen with the Deels and the Remotes and the Oysters and the Velocity, Globals and everyone, they're gonna eventually fight it out. There will be a Coke and a Pepsi from those two and maybe a Fanta, which we love to talk about. But those guys will fight it out. At best Centura Global is a minuscule like cracker crumb acquisition 5-7 years from now. But I don't think they're gonna get 10x on the 3 million that they got for this one. So for me as well, it is a sell. SFX: Sad Trombone. Joel: Lieven. Lieven: I think they're doing like what Boundless is doing. We used to have Cockley in this show two years ago or something. And she launched a company then, I think, which is exactly doing what they're doing now. So I wonder how she's doing. Maybe we should ask if her company is doing just fine, then this might be a good investment. But I checked their website and they offer a seven day free trial and I like seven day free trials. So I was going to give it a try, but I couldn't get past their signup form and they always said, there is some error, try again. So I tried again and I tried again for seven times, but it kept saying the same thing. So I can't buy in these conditions, can I? [laughter] So it's a sell. SFX: Boo. Lieven: Boo. Chad: Literally can't buy. Joel: Literally could not buy the product. All right. Number two is, France's Abby has raised 1.2 million euros. The company aims to become the leading SaaS solution for freelancers, offering tailored support and business management with a growing market of over 4.1 million self-employed individuals in France alone. Abby plans to accelerate customer acquisition, develop a mobile application, provide access to chartered accountants, and launch an advanced offering. Chad, are you ready to buy Abby or would you rather read the latest installment of Dear Abby? Is that too American of a reference? Chad: Both sounds horrible by the way. [laughter] Chad: We've all said it before, going SMB sucks. Going contractor only sucks even more. You have to find those individuals, where they are and then try and sell them a single SaaS seat. [laughter] I mean, instead of going enterprise and selling teams SaaS seats, right? That's hard in the US where we all speak the same language and generally do business in the same way. Trying to get this rolling in Europe as a French company, that would be a fucking nightmare. Sorry Abby, this is a sell for me. Joel: Oh, boy. All right. So when it comes to first mover excellence, here's what France does well, revolution, art, and turning snails into fine cuisine. Chad: And croissants. Joel: WorkTech... Okay, I'll give you croissants. Especially the chocolate ones. Anyway, WorkTech, not so much. Abby is an invoicing software dedicated to micro entrepreneurs. What the fuck is a micro entrepreneur? I've heard of solopreneurs... Now I gotta deal with micro entrepreneurs, wherever the hell that is. You know what makes invoicing easy? PayPal, QuickBooks, bill.com. And if you're already a freelancer, Upwork, Fiverr. Oh, and by the way, there's already a freelance platform in France called Freelance.com that you might wanna check out in terms of getting paid for your work. The field is way too crowded. This makes no sense to me. And for those reasons, I am a sell, how do you say sell in French? [foreign language] Joel: There you go. [foreign language] Joel: Lieven what you got, man. Lieven: For me, it was a difficult one. I'm sure it's very interesting. And I've got a management company myself, so I'm not really a freelancer, but it's the same system. I've got my own, how do you call it? I don't know. My own shop. My own company. I hate all the nitty gritty, all the paperwork. So I have an accountant who takes care of everything for me. And this could be, Abby could be something to replace the accountant, but I would still have to enter all the data in the system, and I don't like it, so I would never, ever use it. Maybe control freaks who want to stay in control over everything, they might use it. But basically, if a freelancer who has lots of work, doesn't have the time to do this, and he will give it to his accountant. Maybe starters, but they don't have much money. So after careful consideration, it's a sell. Joel: Did you try the seven-day trial period in this piracy? Lieven: They didn't even offer it. They didn't even offer it. Boo. Joel: That's two sells from Lieven, but can I interest you in a Belgian startup out of Ghent, Lieven. Lieven: Yeah, it's bots, it's bots. Yeah. Joel: Check this out. Check this out. Lieven: According to Bard, I was born in Ghent, so I mean... Joel: There you go. So you gotta let this... And we don't cover a lot of Belgian startups. So here we go. Whale has secured 2.5 million euros in funding for its knowledge sharing and employee software as a service platform. The investment will support the platform's growth, including the integration of AI in Europe and the US. Whale's platform allows small and medium-sized enterprises to create playbooks for training teams and measuring their impact on the business. Chad, is this a whale of an opportunity or a guppy you're gonna throw back into the water? Chad: So, knowledge databases are really powerful but they suck to use. Going through company manuals, documentations, it just sucks. But think about having a knowledge database that you can plug into an OpenAI, kind of a database. And we keep talking about all these different rich databases that companies have that it's their own secret sauce. That's going to be the Bards, the OpenAIs of the future, the really focused tech, the rich databases. So I really believe data-rich platforms like Whale that help companies leverage their secret sauce will dominate how they work in the very, very near future. For this one, it's a buy for me. [applause] Joel: All right. Very, very nice. Very nice. All right. Did you guys know that the war of 1812 ended with a treaty signed in Ghent in 1814, war between America and Britain? No. No one, no one cares. Okay. Anyway. Lieven: Yeah, I do, I do care, but I didn't know. Joel: You didn't know? So there you go. You were born there. And the Treaty of 1812, the war of 1812. Lieven: I was not born there. [laughter] Joel: That's a really sore subject with you, Lieven. Don't tell Lieven he is from Ghent, everybody. He will slice your ass. Lieven: I used to live there, but I wasn't born there. It's not exactly the same thing. Joel: It's a beautiful city. Lieven: My twins were born in Ghent, so. Chad: Oh, okay. Joel: All right. So anyway, back to buy or sell. This company takes what most small companies might use, SharePoint, Google Drive, and I think probably make a little more intuitive, a little bit more fun, as we've seen in their YouTube videos. And by the way, if you have some extra time, go search Whale. Not the whale creature, but the company Whale, videos. It's pretty funny. So to me it's kind of a hybrid of upskilling standard operating procedures in a company that is usually boring. Throw in a little bit of community in there. I like their no-nonsense endorsement videos as well. If you're on the site, click on one of the endorsements. It's like a TikTok green screen behind... I mean, I don't know who produced it, but it's very underground looking, trying to be professional. It's hard to explain. Anyway, it's clear to me that they're doing more with less. They're fighting much above high, above their weight class. And for those reasons, Whale is a buy. SFX: All right, all right, all right. Joel: All right, Lieven. Chad: Now if they weren't in Ghent, then maybe Lieven would buy them. Lieven: No. I love Ghent. I love Ghent, I was just not born there. People should stop claiming I was born in Ghent. Definitely Bard should stop it. No, but I like the idea and I like the whole concepts. I think the hard part will be convincing people to take the time to document all their knowledge on the platform because if they don't have the time when there's a new colleague, to train him, why would they have the time to put all the knowledge on the platform? And also, I think a problem could be, people don't know they know something. There is lots of knowledge which is like subconsciously somewhere present and I use it when I need it, but it's not like it's top of mind and I'm going to document it right now. So I've been in this business for like you, for 20 years. I've known lots of stories, know lots of things, but I will not put them in a system like this. So some kind of knowledge will be documented, but the most important knowledge in my opinion will not be. But they're from Ghent, so definitely a buy, of course. [music] Chad: And, of course, you can always get all of that knowledge that Lieven's talking about on the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe. Lieven: Indeed. Joel: Of course, Lieven, can't get Bushmills out of Ghent. I don't know what monastery beer he'll be getting this week. But more power to him. And hopefully he'll bring some of that beer to Knebworth so we can all have a few glasses and pints and toast and cheer a good time in England. Lieven, we will see you soon. Chad: Amen. Joel: You too, Chad. Until then, we out. Chad: We out. Lieven: 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'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.

Layoffs, acquisitions and world-destroying A.I. … Oh, my! Veritone spreads its wings and snags Broadbean from CareerBuilder for a reported $52 million. Dice and ZipRecruiter initiate layoffs and a CEO takes a 30% pay cut. Experts say AI could soon be smarter and more powerful than us and it is time to impose limits to ensure they don't take control over humans or destroy the world (don’t worry, we talk you off this ledge). And Elon’s brain chip has been cleared for FDA testing. Wait, what? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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 National Donut Day and Leave The Office Early day. So, Chad, I will meet you at Dunkin's baby. Dunkin's it is. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Bear-claw Cheeseman. Chad: And this is Chad. What the fuck just happened, Sowash? Joel: And on this week's show, Veritone flips the bean, Zip and Dice chop some heads and Elon invades your brain, let's do this. Chad: Oh shit, dude, we gotta hurry up. I've got paddle. I've got competition here going on. Joel: Is that a boat thing, paddle. Chad: It's like racquetball and tennis, all-in-one, that pussy pickleball stuff that you guys do in the US is fucking ridiculous. This is real true sport that happens here in Europe. Joel: I'm sorry. That you guys do in the US, you aren't totally European yet. You're not even a citizen as far as I know. Chad: I have a place, that's close. Joel: Good God, I'm gonna... Racquetball and tennis, what is the ball like go 20 feet? Chad: No, it's a tennis ball. Joel: Well tennis and racquetballs are bouncy I mean like 200 feet not 20 feet. Chad: Yeah. Oh yeah dude. No, they can fly. It's a pretty awesome, awesome sport. You go to YouTube check it out paddle ball. But yeah, no pickleball is for pussies. Joel: We got a lot to cover so. S?: Shout out. Joel: Job openings, my man, job openings in April... Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Saw the highest number of US openings since January, indicating a labor market that cannot be killed. Call it the Dracula job market. The Job Openings... Chad: Zombie. Joel: And Labor Turnover survey or what the kids called JOLTS... Chad: JOLTS. Joel: Reported 10.1 million job openings for the month. All of this means the Fed is likely to raise interest rates in June. I'm headed to Chipotle before the chicken burrito hits north of $10 Chad, how about you? Chad: Oh yeah, this is the recession that never happened, I mean, it just continues knock on wood okay kids. But yeah, it's great to hear and enjoy your time at Chipotle. My first shout out goes to rust out. Now, what the actual fuck is rust out? Joel: Excuse me. Chad: Yeah, exactly. Well according to HR Grapevine, it's the opposite of burnout. It means employees are bored and have been in their job far too long and that they're starting to experience job dissatisfaction, which I mean you probably have experienced in marriage a few times. Joel: Yeah. Chad: According to HR Grapevine, [laughter] ensuring your employees are engaged decreases absenteeism 41% and increases, this is the big one, profitability by 21%. Okay. You mean that employees that aren't absent from work and are actually at work create more profits, really? Shout out to HR Grapevine for creating a narrative for HR and TA leaders to go get more budget. Joel: Rust out. S?: Does anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Chad: The great rust out. Joel: Rust out is what I do every morning when I get out of bed. I got to get the rust out, you know what I'm saying. All right, I got a shout out to Jon Taffer. Chad: Who's that? Joel: Who the hell is Jon Taffer? Maybe you've seen the show Bar Rescue, where this angry guy comes and fixes your bar and tells you, you suck and whatever, well anyway. Chad: The Gordon Ramsay of bars. Yeah. Joel: He was interviewed recently about the state of restaurants, and talent, and automation and I thought it was worth sharing with our audience as a shout out. So take a listen. Josh Gampe: Jon Taffer is with us this morning by the way. He knows all about this. Hotels and restaurants that are supposed to see a record number of customers this summer, bouncing back to pre-cap pandemic levels. Jon Taffer's with us. He's nodding his head. Is there a boom in restaurant and bars? Stuart: Incredible Stuart. Since April we've hired over 900,000 employees, we need a lot more but we're forecasting record travel this summer, record hotel occupancy. Restaurants are booming, but we're challenged because we need people to fulfill all the business that we have now. So I'm at the National Restaurant Association convention now and it's all about robotics, and automation, and technologies to help solve those issues. Josh Gampe: Okay you tell us, how are you using AI in your restaurant business? Stuart: Well, in my restaurant business we're using it more in the back of the house, for purchasing and pricing and things like that. Here I'm standing in a SkyTab booth now, this is all new transactional technologies that connects third parties like DoorDash and Uber Eats into the POS system frequency programs, credit card programs, all connected into one system now and then robotics are huge. Wendy's is about to launch a Chatbox program in Europe for automated ordering. They're the restaurateurs, they're going crazy already Stuart. Josh Gampe: You see we always think of AI as some kind of a negative, a threat to us, but to you it's very much a positive. It can enhance your profitability, right? Stuart: Well, not only that we can't find the employees, Stuart, so we have to solve the problem. If we can't solve it with employees then we're gonna go to automation. Joel: And there you have it we talked about this a lot on the show obviously Chad, but here's an industry expert at an industry conference talking about it. And what you don't get in the audio, when he says there that the restaurateurs are cheering, like it's obvious that they want this to come. People who own restaurants the efficiency, the cost savings, the lesser pain in the ass, the filling positions like they will... They are visibly excited about this future, so I think it was very telling to watch that interview as I did, and hopefully the audio came across of how important it is that automation is taking restaurants by storm. Chad: Yeah, automation... Yes, human suck, we totally get that. We'll talk more about that later in the show, my next shoutout is to life, my friend. I actually received this message from Josh Gampel, who is stepping away as President of Talivity, the parent company of Recruitics, "why?" you might ask. Here's a message from Josh. "For two decades, I've dedicated my career to assisting businesses in finding exceptional talent, I've served in multiple roles, a recruiter, a marketer and a leader, now my father and I, who collectively bring over 50 years of recruitment experience to the table, face our most daunting task yet, recruiting a kidney for my mother. In 2019, she was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder that severely damaged her kidneys. Her condition has only worsened over time, exacerbated by COVID-19 and subsequent complications, the urgent need for a kidney transplant has never been more pressing and, although the outcome remains uncertain, we are steadfast in our determination to give this our all, we've established a straightforward website" Chad: Take this down, kids recruitakidney.life, recruitakidney.life to provide more information and raise awareness about the critical role of living donors. If we succeed in finding a kidney through this platform, we plan to replicate this process for others in need, potentially forming a foundation for a broader initiative. However, we recognize the importance of approaching this one step at a time. To all the talent acquisition professionals tuning into this podcast, I extend my sincere gratitude, your ceaseless evolution has kept us at Recruitics both challenged and motivated, and your commitment to a purpose-driven field of work is inspiring, it has been an absolute privilege to share this journey with you". Okay, well, this is a tearjerker, I'm gonna stop right there. There's more, Okay? But if you're listening to this podcast right now, connect to Josh on LinkedIn, he will be posting more there. That's Josh Gampel, G-A-M-P-E-L. While you're doing that, go to "recruitakidney.life" and check out how you might be able to save a life through kidney donation, shoutout to Josh, life, his dad, and most of all his mom, Debra, "recruitakidney.life" I'm about ready to tear up here kids. Joel: I'd say it's worth the applause, yeah definitely did. Great cause. Let's go from saving kidneys to killing livers, Chad, you can win free booze on Chad and cheese. Sorry, that's a bad segue, but this is what we do on the show. If you are interested in free bourbon from our friends at Textkernel, free beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, or even if it's your birthday this month, you might win some rum from our friends at Plum, either way, if you don't drink, you can get a T-shirt sponsored by our friends at JobGet, but you can't win unless you play Chad, you gotta go to "chadcheese.com", click the free link, fill out the form, and then wait for the goodies to arrive. That's "chadcheese.com". Click the free link. Chad: Yes, and everybody loves the Chad and cheese t-shirts. Obviously, everybody loves free beer, they love free whiskey, I mean, obviously rum from Plum, especially in your birthday. How can you not love that? The big question is, do we have enough t-shirts for RecFest? That's the big question. Joel: Yeah, I'm gonna have to get my inventory manager, I.e my 13-year-old daughter, to give me a rundown of t-shirts that we have for that... Chad: Nice, nice. Joel: Also, I know we'll get to travel, but I'm headed to SHRM in a week or so, and I'll be at the Arin Booth. Arin is printing up exclusive SHRM t-shirts of that, so I might be able to get some Arin supply if they overstock. Chad: Do I have my big head on the front? Joel: Yeah, your big cardboard head we'll send that to Europe, so you can have a Portuguese copy for your records, but yeah. People love the t-shirts, we may have to get some more because the Europeans love them, some soft, supple, cotton combed, fabric in their dresser drawers. Do they call them dresser drawers in Europe? It's probably something weird. Chad: I have no clue, just where they put their clothes. So do we have birthdays? No Birthdays this week? Joel: Oh no, we have birthdays my friend... S?: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? Chad: Yes I can. S?: I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: That's right, that's right. If It's your birthday, and you're in our list, you could win a tasty bottle of rum from our friends at Plum. Celebrating another trip around the sun, we have Ander Storman, Andy Peterson, Rodney "don't call me Rodney", Martin Dangerfield, Reese Wessel, Jim Stroud. Our favorite cartoonist of the industry, Bosco Vojotovich... Chad: I love Bosco. Joel: Olga Nasreva, J. Arnold, Jane keeran and Matt "that British guy" Alder... S?: Happy birthday! Chad: Yes. Joel: Happy birthday everybody have one on us. Chad: Exactly, and well, we're gonna see that British guy, Matt Alder very soon at RecFest. That's right kids. RecFest, July 6th at Knebworth Park. You can't but be there, if you're in Europe, if you're in the listening of this podcast, if you're downloading this now, go get your tickets now, go get your tickets now, it's crazy. Joel: Matt Alder, Stephen McGrath, Cole Cheeseman, Liven... Chad: I'm sure Hung Lee is gonna be there, yeah. Oh, Liven? Joel: Our favorite porn star Hung Lee is gonna be there. S?: What are you doing step bro? Joel: That's right. Knebworth is gonna be off the chain kids. Chad: Amazing! Chad: We have topics. That's right. Joel: All right, we'll pick your headline, I guess. CareerBuilder sells Broadbean, or Veritone buys Broadbean, whichever you like. Our friends at Veritone... Chad: Flicking the Bean. Joel: Are acquiring Broadbean, a job distribution solution for $52 million. Veritone aims to combine Broadbean with its previous acquisition, PandoLogic to form Veritone HR solutions. Here's a soundbite from Veritone CEO and President Ryan Steelberg on the deal. Have a listen. Ryan Steelberg: We are obviously very excited about this acquisition. We expect it to close in just a few weeks from now. But a little background though, this is a target and a company that we've been looking at Veritone for over a year now. And actually we were hopeful to try to actually acquire this at the end of last year but at Veritone we had a move in a different direction for a period of time. So we are thrilled that Broadbean through Apollo's divestiture of different CareerBuilder assets was still available. We remained in close communications with Alex and his team over there, and we're obviously thrilled that we're able to get to this point of signing. This deal is very strategic for Veritone and our vision of how we intend to continue to bring AI-based automation and intelligence to the HR space and specifically the talent acquisition marketplace. Broadbean obviously has a very large installed base, thousands of customers spanning many countries with a large international presence, which is very complimentary to not just PandoLogic and in our, I'd say heavy skewed North American focus, but for all of Veritone. We look at HR based solutions as being ubiquitous, they're not limited to a single market vertical. And I think the combination of BroadBeans' broad-based job distribution platform and PandoLogic's. Ryan Steelberg: Programmatic job advertising platform is a perfect marriage. One thing that may not be obvious to many, is outside of the obvious of bringing more programmatic to the installed base of Broadbean customers is this very rich data sets that we're bringing together here. Which is obviously from our perspective of leveraging our expertise and know-how in the AI space and on the programmatic side is something that we're just so excited about. We are very confident that Pando and our solutions they're are gonna get better, they're gonna get smarter, they're gonna get more automated, and ultimately bringing more efficiency and benefit to our end customers. But we also think that there's a multitude of net new exciting product and services. As we take advantage of Broadbean's extensive integrations with over a hundred ATS platforms, we're envisioning a lot of exciting attribution and down funnel opportunities that we're gonna continue to investigate, invest in, and ultimately bring to market. Joel: And the sale of Broadbean and CareerBuilder's International Unit, which we reported on a while back, will leave the once mighty job board with just its core US based recruitment offering. Chad, there's a lot to unpack here, what you got. Chad: Yeah. CareerBuilder stands alone with a facilities manager. Pretty much Jeff he's sweeping up, he's getting ready to turn off the lights 'cause that thing's sold. Okay. It's sold. I don't know who bought it yet, but we're gonna find out. Okay, so why buy? It's fairly simple, from my standpoint, four major points portfolio, 3000 customers, access to Europe, which they didn't have before, five billion data points. Veritone is an AI company that means everything to them and for the future. And then integration into 100 applicant tracking systems. These are all points that are incredibly valuable. And to look at the $52 million deal at the annual revenue that they were looking at around 35 million seems like a deal, right? So the portfolio in itself, take a look at transitioning thousands of clients from duration based to performance where necessary. Then Europe slow to adopt performance driven recruitment advertising compared to the US, so they can start that nudging, the nudging with keeping the duration around, but yet nudging toward performance. Did mention Terry Baker is out, and Alex Fourlis is in. This is a well-deserved rest for Terry Baker, for god's sakes. The guy's been in the industry for fucking ever. Jesus Christ. I hope he finds an island somewhere and enjoys a year off the grid. Joel: Lot more Padre's games in Terry's future, I believe. [laughter] Lot more Padre's games, which is good. Chad: But Alex came to CareerBuilder through the Greek job site, which we talked about career.gr He moved up through the CareerBuilder ranks as managing director of the UK and then over to Broadbean in 2019 and was given the reins as president of Broadbean in May of 2022. So Alex has seen the CareerBuilder/Apollo shit show from the inside out and for a very long time. And Ryan obviously has faith that the post-traumatic CareerBuilder syndrome won't be a problem. If you think about it, you're looking at trying to transition a lot of these portfolio clients, right? So you want to be able to try to keep the same team, same faces, those types of things. Do you ever think that ex CareerBuilder employees wake up in cold sweats, screaming El Chapo in the middle of the night? Or is it just John Smith. Joel: Former CareerBuilder 'cause if it's current, it's like six people or something. [laughter], but yes. I know for sure a lot of the old guard at CareerBuilder. Just, yeah, have voodoo dolls of Irena and Company in their bedrooms that get stuck every night before bedtime for sure. Chad: From that standpoint, you take a look at the Veritone stack now, we've got performance-based recruitment marketing, duration-based recruitment marketing, chat with Wade and Wendy. And why that's important is because if you start to integrate chat into, much like we see with Paradox for the apply process, it's much easier, it doesn't have to be synchronous, it can be asynchronous. There's just a better way to collect data. It's just more fluid, it's better. Then you have Veritone's AI backbone with voice and video, I mean, that's just the tech stack that I'm covering now. I'm sure they have much more than that. So what are your thoughts on the actual acquisition itself, the portfolio and the things that I just ran through? Joel: Sure, Sure. So full disclosure, we love Veritone. They're a sponsor. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We've been on their boat, so take that for what it's worth. But I like to think that, we'd set that aside. We would both be very excited about this acquisition. And I can also probably speak for both of us in saying that, when Veritone first bought PandoLogic, there was a little bit of head scratching, a little bit like, "How is this supposed to work? Got this AI company with video and then we have this like job thing. How is this gonna fit?" [laughter] Joel: And it was a little bit tough, but you and I both know Ryan, Ryan sort of sees into the future like you and I cannot, he saw where this thing was going. And I find it really intriguing that as we come out of the pandemic, as we come into what is a challenging time for our industry, I mean, we're just, we're almost ready to say goodbye to CareerBuilder, like who woulda thunk that when we started this podcast six years ago? Chad: And Monster's still living. Joel: The old guard is going, Indeed's freaking the fuck out every week, we're gonna talk about layoffs and all of them are talking about challenging economic times, challenging with hires. There's an interesting picture here, where we come out of this season of our industry and Veritone is primed to be one of the major players in employment. And I find that incredibly exciting and the fact that they've embraced HR and hiring the way that they have with all the other things in their portfolio and all the other things they do. And how they've sort of been able to figure out, "We can combine this with hiring and it's an incredible opportunity globally to be an industry leader in that space." So we may come out of the end of this and say like, Veritone is right there with Paradox and whatever Indeed is doing at the time, and whatever Workday is... Whatever the major players are doing, Veritone is primed to be in that spot, based on what they've been doing. And I like to think that I would say that irregardless of the spicy cocktail shrimp that we had on the boat. [laughter] Joel: You mentioned all the in's and out's with Broadbean, the footprint that they have, the management team that's coming over I think is gonna be very valuable to Veritone. What was interesting was that the street, Wall Street, there was about a 10% decrease in stock when this deal was announced. Now what is interesting is it coincides with a downgrade that the stock had recently, which, based on the earnings call, there's a lot less Amazon dependency because Amazon is not hiring the way that it was before and there might have been a heightened dependency on Amazon dollars. So we don't recommend stocks on this show, and please don't buy this or sell it based on our recommendation, but it seems like a stock that, if this thing comes to fruition, is gonna be up into the right for the foreseeable future, if I had to guess. So, yeah, all around we know the people there are excited for them. I'm excited to see how this deal plays out. We talked before the show and I'm sure you wanna talk about competitive landscape now, this certainly shakes some stuff up. I know you have some thoughts around that. Chad: Oh, yeah. So think of this from a Stepstone standpoint. They invade the US with the acquisition of Appcast, only to find their US market weakened and their European, performance-driven flanks exposed. I feel like there's a marginal-line analogy in there somewhere. Anyway, Stepstone has missed a huge opportunity in solidifying a strong US market and then transitioning us slow to adopt European markets. They just couldn't pull it together. They just couldn't pull it together. They were retreating from France. They just couldn't get their shit together. They were... They're trying to get ready for IPO. They're firing CEOs at Totaljobs. I mean, all this shit, so that's the big name. And Appcast is still major, major fucking player, but they have not wielded Appcast like they should have. But then you have a small, a much, much, much smaller player like VONQ, and this is only going to ignite a fire under Stepstone and Appcast asses. So VONQ needs to find a buyer fast. They've been able to, while Stepstone's been sleeping and not using that big axe, which is Appcast, to be able to gain market share and do some things, but they don't have the firepower to fight a two front war. And then last but not least, you have Radancy, a player in the recruitment market in programmatic tech space in the UK. To me, in the UK and Europe, I'm sure they've been gaining, but it's nothing compared to these two powerhouses. Joel: And we talked about, in our visit with them, the number of sort of non-programmatic or just traditional job postings that go through Broadbean. It's... Chad: Duration. Yeah. Joel: Yeah. Like there's a huge opportunity to move a lot of these posts into programmatic solutions, which is a huge opportunity for Veritone now. And then you start thinking about, how do we plug in our conversational AI capabilities, our AI capabilities into that process? And it becomes really scary because this is something... We talk about how Google has things that Indeed can't compete with. Well, Veritone has things that none of them can compete with. So now that they're on a equal footing from the job posting programmatic perspective, how do they then take it to the next level and plug in all the other shit that makes our jaw drop when we see it and check it out. So exciting times at Veritone. Chad: It's amazing. And then we're starting to see these brands where Veritone is going to be not a house of brands, but a branded house. And so PandoLogic, the brand's going away, Broadbean, the brand is going away. And I think Ryan and team believe it's better to build a branded house rather than trying to manage all of those brands, just that simple focused tech, focused message, and they're gonna need that, because again, I really believe that Appcast and StepStone are... They're gonna get a fire under their ass after this because they were vying for... Everything that I've heard over the last 12 months, I've heard many companies who were trying to buy Broadbean. It was just way too expensive. I think this is a luck in timing kind of scenario, where Ryan and team were right at the table. It just didn't happen at the end of last year. Then this year happened, shit started to go south. Prices came down and they got a hell of a deal. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Steelberg doesn't play, people. Ryan Steelberg does not play around. And by the way, this is a great time to mention that Veritone powers Chad and Cheese in four additional languages, including Portuguese, French, German, and Spanish. So if you'd like to hear us in sexy Spanish... Chad: That's the kind of fucking tech they have. That's the scariest shit. Joel: If you want a little taste of what they can do, go check out Chad and Cheese in German. It's angry and fun, everybody. And have a sauerbraten while you're there. Chad: Yes. Joel: We'll be right back. Oh yeah. It's that time of the podcast Chad. S?: Layoffs. Chad: Layoffs? Joel: That's right. We got layoffs. ZipRecruiter is eliminating about 20% of its workforce and giving its top executive a pay cut due to a broad slowdown in hiring. They plan to cut about 270 roles, about half of which are in sales and customer support. CEO Ian Siegel will also take a 30% cut in his base salary, which was $550,000 last year. Meanwhile, DHI group, the parent company of Dice and ClearanceJobs is reducing its workforce by 10% in a move expected to generate annual cost savings of between 8 and $10 million. Your boy, CEO, Art Zeile said they must do what is best for the health of the business by managing their investment and expenses, adding, they don't anticipate hiring more positions this year. Chad layoffs. What are your thoughts? Chad: Does Art have pictures of everybody on the board doing crazy shit in like a donkey bar's or something like that? 'Cause there's no reason this guy should still be in power. Joel: Hey, there's no cost reduction in Art Zeile's salary, that was not in the press release. S?: All right. All right. All right. Chad: Oh, anyway, I'm gonna get away from Art just because there's just no reason to talk about Dice anymore. They had plenty of opportunities to evolve into what they could have been, for God's sakes, and they're still a fucking job board today. Anyway, when it comes to Zip, the question is why is Ian still there? I mean, wow. What a ride. Taking Zip from a little email blasting company startup to an innovative matching job board to IPO. I mean, that is a huge feat. What's he still doing there? Not all CEOs are meant to be in the seat past startup. He strapped in past IPO. Good for you, man. But I think it's more apparent than ever, "Stop taking fucking pay cuts and go enjoy some time with Terry on a fucking island somewhere. [laughter] You both deserve it." Seriously. Joel: Well, they both know the Southern California coast pretty well. They both know California pretty well. Chad: I'm sure. I'm sure. Joel: So stocks weren't hit real hard on this news, either way, in either direction. I mean, Zip has been a sideway stock since about February when they spiked and Dice was down about 2% on the news. This seems like perfect storm time for our industry. We've got inflation, we have fed rate hikes, we have no cheap money anymore, and those are all bad signs for any business, especially in our dotcom hiring businesses. But both of them talking about the hiring business being challenged is probably something that everyone in our industry should note because when hiring goes down, everyone feels the pain. So that's always a bad sign. And you and I lived through 2001, we lived through 2008, we've been waiting for a similar situation, which hasn't come. And remember my shoutout, which talked about the strong labor market. Joel: So we have tale of two cities, where one is strong labor market, but then we have companies in the industry that see the trends and see what's going on, talking about a challenged environment. So something to keep your eye on. I think another thing that's interesting that didn't exist in 2008 or 2001 was Google's influence in this marketplace. And I had a contact reach out to me, who will remain anonymous, but he had an interesting comment that I wanna read to you in regards to Google and sort of their activities around this. So, "I have confirmation, Google is still pedal down on job ads. General availability, which means for everybody, will be in 2024. Google is much smarter this time around compared to its original jobs mess. My unsubstantiated guess is Indeed is doing CPA to not just fleece their customers, but also to distinguish themselves from Google becoming the jobs CPC king." Which you and I have talked about on the show. Chad: Yeah. Joel: "From internal materials, Google sees advertising to passive job candidates as their next big advertising opportunity." Which we actually don't talk about a lot. Google has a lot of properties. If they start plugging in job postings on YouTube and Gmail and everything else that they own, like that's again, something that Indeed can't really touch. So Zip is on Google for Jobs. All these other sites are. They might be seeing the power that Google for Jobs has. I notice in my own usage of Google for Jobs that they're limiting the number of sites that they are showing when you can apply to a job. I don't know how that's impacting Zip and Dice and others, but there's a lot of things coming to a head here that's all negative. And these layoffs sort of encapsulate what's going on in the industry. We've also had Indeed, Glassdoor layoffs. We've talked about LinkedIn layoffs. I'm sure every small company that isn't public or big is having layoffs that we're not hearing about or talking about. But this is cascading into everybody's business and we're here to talk about it on the show. Chad: Yeah. As Google continues to focus on the top of the funnel and they will, that's just what they're doing, that's what they will continue to do 'cause that's what they do best. Indeed, they're playing the CPA game. They should be playing the next round of, instead of just sending you traffic, "I wanna be able to send you qualified traffic." They talk about that shit and it's total bullshit. They don't have the tech at the top of the funnel to be able... They give you these bullshit screener questions. Who gives a fuck about that? I don't care about what the person says or what's on their goddamn resume, show me what they can do. There's tech out there today that we've talked about over and over and over, they should be funneling, they should be siloing, they should be buying, but guess what? They're doing business like they did 10 years ago. They're trying to change the name of their product so that they can 10X it and try to charge a hell of a lot more, again, and fleece their clients, much like your contact said, we've gotta stop doing business like it was 10 years ago and just calling it something different. It's total bullshit and everybody sees through it. Joel: Yeah. You mentioned it's a good time to buy. And I think we've addressed that on the show quite a bit. Some of these sites, some of these companies are gonna be clearance rack-type opportunities and like you mentioned, Indeed should be acquiring these companies. Indeed, historically is a pretty good acquisition strategy with Workology and Glassdoor and some others. They've gotten away from that. Who's gonna buy CareerBuilder? Indeed kind of makes sense. Just shut it down. You'll kill a competitor or just... Chad: Do the SimplyHired model. Joel: Yeah, do it SimplyHired. Just put all the Indeed jobs on CareerBuilder. Funny enough, our friend of the show, Chris Russell, opined that ZipRecruiter could buy CareerBuilder. I'm thinking after the news this week, they're probably not in the market for that. I'm still holding out for a European company. I'm still holding out for a Jobandtalent or SEEK maybe, which is Europe South and Australia. Chad: Well, and if you think about it, we were just talking about Stepstone and being able to, again, solidify a foothold more than Appcast here in the US. You would get it for cheap. That's for fucking sure. But anyway, that's just a two guys who don't hold the purse strings. Joel: Yeah. Let's move on to AI. Shall we, shall we? Chad: Oh God. [laughter] Joel: All right. Experts, AI experts, I will add, issued a dire warning this week. "Artificial intelligence models could soon be smarter and more powerful than us, and it is time to impose limits to ensure they don't take control over humans or destroy the world." [laughter] That's right. Pretty sure North Korea didn't get the hold up development memo [laughter] Oh, North Korea. Love that. All right. But don't jump off the ledge yet, kids, 'cause Chad and Cheese are here. The National Eating Disorder Association has taken down its chatbot called Tessa, after concerns grew from a viral social media post revealing the bot was promoting unhealthy eating habits. End of humanity, go humans or somewhere in between. Chad, what's your take? Chad: Earlier this week on the Europe show, we talked about BT, aka British Telecom group, their plan to replace human employees with AI. Well, I'm going to refer to Mark Twain's embellished quote, "The tales of my demise are greatly exaggerated." And in this case, the tales of AI taking human jobs are greatly exaggerated. Here's the scary part about AI for those who don't understand AI, and here's a quote from the story that was actually on Vice, "So far more than 2,500 people have interacted with Tessa," that's the chatbot that they used. "And until yesterday, we hadn't seen this kind of commentary or interaction. We've taken the program down temporarily until we can understand and fix the "bug" and "triggers" for the commentary." This is where HR and talent acquisition professionals need to listen. When the CEO comes to you after hearing about BT and they want to install generative AI, here's the story that you need to have in your back pocket. Chad: It's one thing to install conversational AI, which has solid guardrails, but when you move into generative AI, that space, you better understand what the actual fuck you are buying, how the actual tech works, what safety mechanisms are in place. After 2,500 conversations, not a lot kids, 2,500 conversations, that chatbot went rogue. Can you imagine replacing all your human customer service positions or even half with AI and then it goes rogue. What happens? What happens when you don't have customer service anymore? Because you gotta shut the whole fucking system down. This is a story where BT, I think they were more pumping their stock than they were anything else. But still, if you're trying to think about this and you have the head shed coming to you saying, "Hey, what about this generative AI thing?" Pull this story out of your back pocket and say, "Look, this was only 2,500 interactions." Joel: This is a complex, deep issue, Chad, and I'm just not sure I'm ready to go all in. [laughter] S?: Just the tip. Joel: So every week we have a show about AI's gonna take over, AI's gonna kill us, and then we have another story. It's, was it Paul Bunyan who beat the machine with the Blue Ox? Chad: Yeah. Then he died after. Yeah, Blue. Joel: Yeah. Okay. That's apropo. But it feels, this sure feels like a constant tug of war between technology and human beings. Frankly, I'm gonna go with something in between. We're gonna have AI and robots that make a lot of sense, that don't hurt people, make my cheeseburger, love that, mental health issues, maybe it's not the right thing to throw into. Amazon was too early with hiring in their AI solution. Clearly AI, whether it's pumping stocks or legitimate or somewhere in between, it's gonna take jobs for sure. I'm confident it's taken marketing jobs and customer service and content jobs and social media managers. It's not hard to go, "Hey, write 20 tweets about Ron DeSantis entering the presidential election." It'll give you 20 tweets and seven of them are pretty good, so writing content is obviously taking a hit. College kids are using this ad nauseam to write papers, and there's literally programs that will put misspellings in your content to make it not look like a robot wrote it. Joel: This is the future that we're going into. None of us know exactly how this is gonna shake out, but I think it's important to look at mental health, eating disorders, children, for sure. Children is a huge one. And there needs to be age gating of social media. And that's gonna happen. One day we'll look back and go, "How the hell did we let 8-year-olds on Instagram or social media?" That's, it's like the smoking of today. So anyway, I'm opining, dragging this on, I don't need to, we don't know where this is going, but really smart people says, "AI's gonna kill us." And then really smart humans, "Push the pause button for mental health and eating disorders and caring for people." It's gonna be somewhere in between. It's gonna shake out. And Chad, we're gonna be here to talk about it every step of the way. Let's take a quick break. If all this doom and gloom AI wasn't enough, Chad, [laughter] can I interest you in Elon Musk in your brain? Chad: No. Joel: All right. So Elon Musk's brain implant company, Neuralink, how many companies does this fucker have? Like how much time does... Anyway, on Thursday said it received Food and Drug Administration or the FDA approval to launch the first in human, in human. Not in monkey, Chad, not in pig, in human clinical study. In case you missed it. Neuralink is developing a brain implant. It hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. Musk said he'd implant a chip in his own children's brain. But what about your brain, Chad? Chad: Who in the hell would even think of putting a chip in their head? I understand spinal issues. I mean, the opportunity is so amazing. And those are the types of individuals that are going to be the guinea pig. Think about it. A chip in your brain. Have you ever, I mean, ever had a piece of tech that didn't get a little buggy? What happens then? We're talking about physiology here. Humans aren't made the same. Our brains are all different. I mean, we know that from just between you and our wives. I mean, there's a huge shift. They're much smarter than we are, that kinda thing. Anyway, so who would actually put a chip in their head? Well, guess what I did? Went to LinkedIn and I did a poll. [laughter] Joel: Yes. A good poll, baby. That's what I'm talking about. S?: What are you doing step bro? Chad: Well, after a 110 votes and I put it out there, and it hasn't been out long, but 75% said no fucking way would they put a chip in their head, but 25% said, "Sure, I'm down." So even more interesting, that was only 3% of the people who actually saw the poll. So the rest of them are just sitting around like lemmings waiting to see what everybody else does. So, I mean, this to me is an easy, hard no. I don't want somebody in my brain. Maybe I've watched too many sci-fi movies, but no. Joel: Oh, Elon. [laughter] We're so worried about AI going to destroy humanity. Have we ever considered the fact that Elon Musk might destroy humanity? Chad: Yes. Joel: Maybe he's a AI conduit to the end of mankind. Can someone check if Elon bleeds or not? Are we sure he can't transform into some cyber truck? Maybe he is the Twitter algorithm. This is not gonna end well, Chad. 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'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.

Interviews kinda suck. There’s got to be a better mousetrap, right? That’s why we brought Stephane Rivard, CEO & founder at HiringBranch on the podcast. Proudly wearing a T-shirt that says “F*CK INTERVIEWS,” Stephane takes us through his plan to toss job interviews into the dustbin of history. No easy task, and Chad & Cheese are here to see if HiringBranch can actually walk-the-walk. MORE HiringBranch: www.hiringbranch.com Stephane Rivard: www.linkedin.com/in/stephane-rivard-entrepreneur/ Chad & Cheese: www.chadcheese.com PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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: This is another morning after hangover edition at Unleash America. Las Vegas Nevada. Chad: How you doing, huh, huh? Joel: Not too bad, but I'd rather be on a Lazy boy with a Parie right now than podcasting. Chad: Parie. Joel: Parie. That's for our guests too, is French Canadian. And by the way, that leads us to our guest today, Stephane Rivard, CEO and co-founder of HiringBranch. Stefan. Bonjour. Stephane Rivard: Bonjour. Thank you. Chad: Bonjour. Stephane Rivard: Bonjour. Thank you very much for having me here. I'm excited to be here today. Chad: Last time we saw you, we were up in a big glass ball, about 300 or 500 feet above Las Vegas. During the high roller HiringBranch event. How'd that go? Joel: Ferris wheel 2.0? Chad: Is that good? Is that good? Stephane Rivard: Yeah, that was exciting. We have one in Montreal, but it's of course, it's only about half the size. Chad: Oh, okay. Stephane Rivard: So everything's much bigger, more fun up here. [laughter] Joel: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Well, Stefan, what really stands out as we're talking to you and our listeners can't appreciate this. Talk about your t-shirt for a second. Stephane Rivard: So, yeah, so, I'm wearing a T-shirt here and it says, fuck interviews. And, I wish I was clever enough to come up with it, but we didn't, I know, I didn't come up with this, our customers did. So we went out to create a platform, [chuckle] Joel: Oh, stop it. Now wait a minute. Your customers... Okay, now carry on. Carry on. I wanna hear this. I wanna hear this. Your customers are like, fuck interviews. I get this. I can get behind it, by the way. Go ahead. Stephane Rivard: Yeah, they didn't come out and say that, but we went out to design a platform that evaluates people's language skills, communication skills, and employability skills. And I guess after a certain amount of time, the platform was working so well that they decided to completely skip the interview. And we did this to, a customer discovery says, so how's the platform going? This is great. We don't interview anymore. So hence the T-shirts. Chad: So you didn't even know that they were doing that. Joel: Was that the plan? Stephane Rivard: That wasn't in the plan. Joel: You just wanted to be a nice enhancement to interviews. You didn't want to kill them all outright. Stephane Rivard: Yeah, we wanted to leverage our expertise and we've been working in language training and language assessments for a long time. But and we knew that we could do more, especially adding soft skills into the mix. So yeah. So we had no plans to do this, but here we are. Joel: How does the product typically work? I apply to a job, they give me a link, and then you go through your tests and then that went into an ATS. Like talk about how this sort of step-by-step process works with the product. Chad: Ranking, scoring that kind of stuff. Stephane Rivard: Yeah, so I think they nowadays that's exactly what happens. The candidates, the first thing they'll do is they'll get an invite to do the assessment. And the way that the assessment works, it gives those candidates a job preview. So they actually get to do the job. And it's geared towards any customer facing role. So you can imagine that you were. Joel: Get to do the job how. Chad: Like a simulation. Stephane Rivard: It's a simulation. Joel: Is there a VR headset involved in any of this? [laughter] Stephane Rivard: There's no VR set. No. Joel: God damn it. Chad: Joel just got excited. Stephane Rivard: Oh, bloody hell no. Joel: Oh, well. Stephane Rivard: No VR headset, they actually interact [laughter], they actually interact with our platform. So they take mock calls. So they get to actually listen to a customer call that calls in and says, I just bought this telephone, and the internet doesn't work on it. And they're challenged to answer with their voice. They have to record, there's no correct answers, and you gotta use your best skills possible. And you do this for about 30 minutes depending on the vertical you're in. Chad: Okay. Stephane Rivard: And we evaluate how well you do. Chad: So is that done by AI? Is it like transcribed? How is that scored? Stephane Rivard: So a 100% AI. We have NLP, we have ML, we have a large tech stack that evaluates this in real time. And the interesting thing is that, why did this customers get rid of interviews? Well, it came through the correlation process. We looked at how well these new agents were performing and they were outperforming by large margin, their normal process. And what we mean by that is an increased revenue. So there's, one customer we had, they're due fundraising. So these candidates were raising 10% more money than the traditional process. Joel: Is there video involved in any of this? Stephane Rivard: No video. Joel: All the video interview solutions? Are they dead? Are they worthless? Like do they have a certain piece of hiring that does work? I mean, talk about video interviewing and the future. Stephane Rivard: Well, videoing interview, I'm not in that space and our customers, were in that... Joel: And you're not getting into video. Stephane Rivard: We're not, unless we can extract some interesting AI or interesting metrics out of that, it's not in our plans immediately, but the roles that we're looking at are really based around the skills, talking to people, understanding people, can you figure out what they want? How quickly figure out what they want and that's a question that makes sense. And answer that makes sense. Joel: And are these high frequency positions usually? Okay. Stephane Rivard: Yeah. We work mostly with high volume. So, it could be call center sales, telco, insurance, telehealth, anything that has to deal with, you want a successful customer outcome, you need great soft skills. So that's the crux of all we do. Chad: There's a couple of really cool aspects of this, first and foremost, not being able to do or need to do an interview cuts down the hiring process time wise. And in a sales position, when you fill a position faster, that means you have somebody driving revenue faster. Do they know what actually, I mean, obviously they're getting better people. That's what they're saying. But also what's the huge benefit? Do you know monetarily that 10% was won, but you're filling roles faster, which means you have salespeople in the seat faster. Stephane Rivard: Yeah. So we're filling these roles within 24 hours. Like literally you do the assessment. Chad: Stop it. Stephane Rivard: Yeah. So 24 hours you do the assessment sales roles, 24 hours. So they do the platform, the recruiter looks at a dashboard, figures out the skills that, do these match these benchmark sales that we want. Send them right away to training and job offers. So small organizations can do this within a week. Larger organizations which have a more complex training program. Could be a month. Our larger just customer takes about a month to get through the training process. And one of the challenges they have with the traditional process is that they were losing about 25 to 30% of the candidates through the training process. And our largest telco customer in Canada, they're down to like 1% or 2% because the screening process is so much more accurate. And, a lot of advantage, first of all, the candidate gets to know what kind of work they're gonna be doing. So they get to experience the actual job. Joel: So remote is a thing, I don't know if you've heard about it here at the conference. How does... How does... Chad: What is this you're talking about? Joel: Remote. Chad: Oh, okay. Okay. Joel: How does the product evolve into different languages, different parts of the world? Do I have to use English and maybe French, depending on where you're from? Chad: Can I hire Portugese salespeople? Joel: Yeah, talk about language and your global footprint. Stephane Rivard: Yeah, so we have customers that have global footprint, they operate in 30, 40 different countries. So for those customers, we've customized assessments and we support about 13 languages at the moment. But the crux of our business is still English. English represents 90% of the market. Chad: So is it specific just sales, that's where you're niched out? It's a humongous niche, by the way, but is it sales, customer service? Where do you guys actually touching right now? Stephane Rivard: Yeah, so right now, we're touching sales and customer service, but we have banks that are fascinated-ly. They're very interested in what we do. Imagine deploying a tech stack that can do a better job than what they're getting and increasing revenues by a few percentage points, and finding those candidates immediately. Even, I have a friend who hires all across Canada for salespeople at the financial sector, and he says, "At the end of the day, I look at CVs, I interview them, I don't know who's selling." So, we're adding science to this process. Joel: Science? Stephane Rivard: Science, yes. Chad: Performance as well. Is that right? Stephane Rivard: Performance, yeah. Chad: So I mean it's one of those things where you can take a look at somebody's resume, you can see what they did, or at least what's on the resume, where they worked, but you really don't know what their performance looks like... Stephane Rivard: No. Chad: Or how they work. Stephane Rivard: Correct. Chad: In this case, you're providing them with the opportunity to see actionable skills. Stephane Rivard: Correct. Yeah, so we have this framework we've designed, and each of these positions has multiple soft skills, and we can isolate those soft skills for those positions. So we've had actually candidates go in through the customer support queue, do the assessment, do phenomenally well. Then they say, "We're gonna patch you to the sales queue," and completely fail. So they come back to us, says, "Your assessment doesn't work." Well, you're supposed to tell me what level there are. You go back to the data and it's quite obvious that that candidate cannot position a product, they just can't sell, and we see this every day. Chad: Yeah. Or they're not comfortable closing. Joel: They're not comfortable closing. Chad: That's the hardest part about selling. You can talk about something that you love, this product that you've drank the Kool-Aid, but trying to close somebody when you get to that obstacle, that's a switch that not every customer service person can flip. Stephane Rivard: That's right. And we can measure that. Building rapport, active listening, fluency, the ability to know what the actual problem is, the objection is, identifying a statement, that's what the tech stack does. And trying to do that in a 10 to 50-minute interview is very difficult. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So we're in day two here at UNLEASH, in the expo. I'm always curious to hear founders, CEOs, leadership positions give their opinion of the vendors here, the startups. You're over there in the start-up alley or nearby, what's your take on what's going on here at the conference from a vendor's perspective? Stephane Rivard: Yeah, so from a vendor's perspective, there's a lot of interesting technology out there that, from point of view, from every single point... And I guess, when I look at it, I says, even for myself, I can imagine being a HR manager and being totally overcome, all these different separate tech stacks, and they all do solve one problem. So how do you put all those together? So that's the [laughter] over and over again. We do something that's super unique really well, it gets incredible outcomes, but if you're a large corporation, how do we fit into your tech stack? Joel: Your take on ChatGPT and what it's gonna do to the industry? Stephane Rivard: Oh, fuck, that's a great question. I think we're trying to raise money in that, so we're not gonna invest in to it because of ChatGPT. But I think ChatGPT, as Microsoft said, I think that human skills will still be the most important. I think that eventually we're gonna have co-pilots that's gonna guide those customer service, those sales agents around. And as Sam Altman said, I think ChatGPT is almost state of the art. We need to create new technology to accelerate what we have. So what it does, it does extremely well. We can see automation in customer service being augmented without a doubt. But at some point, you still wanna talk to a human, you still wanna be heard, and you wanna make sure that that human has good skills. Joel: That means we'll have this podcast for a while, Chad, because people still wanna hear people, apparently. [laughter] That is Stephane Rivard, everybody, co-founder and CEO at HiringBranch. Stephane, for our listeners that wanna know more about you or the company, where would you send them? Stephane Rivard: I would send them to hiringbranch.com. All the information is there. Joel: Bonsoir, bonjour and merci. Stephane Rivard: Merci. Joel: 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 Chase podcast, or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there is no doubt you wish you had that time back, viable 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.

War games, worker woes and Cardboard Chad littered our news feed this week, so it’s fair to say this is one helluva show. Cardboard Chad is LinkedIn’s hottest trend in years (IYKYK) and is making its way to SHRM in Vegas next week. (Gotta listen to make sense of this one, sorry.) Indeed is still messing up, but they’re doing it on multiple continents this week. HackerRank plays Whack-a-Mole with ChatGPT and drones are going to kill us all. Unions and strikes are trending too. Oh yeah, Martha Stewart tells us why we should get back to the office. Recruit Holdings 2023 Shareholder Annual Meeting Notice Recruit Holdings Shill Story PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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. It's National Donald Duck Day, you know what that means Chad, no pants. No pants. Daisy is a lucky girl, isn't she? You're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host Joel, it's not many, Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad, is a time for a coffee break, Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, war games, worker woes and cardboard Chad. Let's do this. [laughter] It's the hottest social media sensation. Chad: It's ridiculous. Joel: Said Tequila Tila or whatever her name was. It's cardboard Chad. Chad: It's cardboard Chad. Yeah, everybody else is getting replaced by AI, I'm getting replaced with cardboard. So kids get ready, cardboard is the new AI. Joel: What's old is new again with cardboard Chad. So, listeners that don't know, I'm gonna be at SHRM this week. Chad is living his best life in Portugal. So I said, why don't we get a cardboard version of Chad for the booth while I'm recording to make me feel at home, to make people feel like Chad is there. So, they ran with the idea, we sent over the picture of Chad in the bathrobe in Sweden with his Ray-Bans and a beer. And they have three cutout heads of Chad and a full body cardboard version. So I posted this on LinkedIn. Chad: Yes. [chuckle] Joel: And people are losing their minds. Like, people are re-sharing it, liking it. It really is the... We need to give these out for Christmas. [laughter] Cardboard Chad for all our fans. Chad: Oh, my God. It's fucking awesome. Yeah. Life size, I love how it says, "Life size cardboard Chad." [laughter] Joel: It is not healthy. SFX: That escalated quickly. Joel: It is not good for anybody. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Chad: Alright. Time for shoutouts. SFX: Shoutouts. Chad: Alright, first shout out goes to Remote Work, kids. A new survey carried out by LifeSearch has revealed that 77% of workers have said they've done, "something they shouldn't have," during working hours, including one out of 10 respondents who say they have sex during working hours. SFX: What are you doing, step bro? Chad: And I say, there's nothing wrong with substituting your coffee break with a sex break. And if you're Joel Cheesman, you can still have sex, still have your coffee, and a toasted bagel. Shout out to remote work. [laughter] Joel: That escalated quickly. So, from that remote work to this, so my shout out goes to Martha Stewart. That's right Chad, your favorite SI cover girl at Inside Trader has weighted into the hotly contested remote work debate saying, "America will go down the drain if people don't go back to the office." Adding, "You can't possibly get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely. Look at the success of France and their stupid off for August blah blah blah... " Shockingly, and I'm shocked Chad, Martha Stewart has an estimated $100 million in real estate. Go figure that she wants everybody back into the office. Shout out to Martha Stewart. Chad: Stupid people everywhere, my friends. Next shout out goes to Lionel Messi, that's right kids, who is leaving Paris Saint Germain, that's Julie's favorite club. But not for the big dollars of Saudi Arabia. No, no, no. Not back to the wonderful tapas of Barcelona, but on the play in the MLS over at Inter Miami. Why? Well, here's a breakdown from CBS Sports. Speaker 5: Involves for him, Growler and why MLS do you think? Speaker 6: I think in the end, although it's Lionel Messi and you would think, "Okay, he's got a billion options." This was what it seems was the best one, obviously, because he chose it. But I think Saudi just represented a lot of money, and maybe not the big picture that he was looking to and Inter Miami presents to him profit sharing, a bigger picture, ownership, maybe similar amounts of money, better lifestyle. I can only speak to my experience of Miami and what Miami is all over the world. Speaker 7: You're right. Speaker 6: It's one of the best places to live. Speaker 7: You're right. [laughter] Speaker 7: So not as good as New York. Second best. Speaker 6: It represented more things than just money. And I think that's what made the most sense. And from what I understand, Barcelona was basically off the table. Speaker 7: Yeah. From a business side though, he's getting percentage of the club, I was just reading, and percentage of revenue for Apple. Speaker 6: Apple and Adidas. Speaker 7: That's incredible. It's, you get the money too, you get the lifestyle, your kids get to learn English. It's the best of all worlds. Chad: In Miami, baby. SFX: Alright. Alright. Alright. Chad: Miami. Yeah, so Apple, Messi share of revenue through the MLS season pass. That's the prospect that they're talking about. Adidas, offered a profit sharing agreement that could cut him into any increase that they see resulting in MLS profits within his involvement. So I'm sure there's some strings that are there. But yeah, Messi coming to the US. The greatest soccer/football player ever to play the game coming to Miami. Joel: And I'm sure he will finally make soccer popular in America. [laughter] Let's see, we had Wayne Rooney came to town, Beckham came to town, that Zlatan guy came to town. I'm not saying that correct. So, I'll give you this, if Messi can't do it, Pele couldn't do it either, by the way. Although that was 100 years ago. If Messi can't do it, maybe it can't be done. 'Cause if the best player in the world can't... Now, Ronaldo might have a better shot 'cause he's foxy like that. Messi doesn't really have that sex appeal that the Miami folks love. And Miami's kind of a weird fan base anyway, they kinda show up, they kinda don't. So, we'll see how this plays out. But hommie's getting paid, that's the bottom line. Chad: Oh, yeah. Ownership and then being able to get all that Apple and Adidas cash, there's some good options there. Not to mention, you're talking about Cuban food, great tans, hot chicks, and... What else, Miami? Welcome to Miami. Will Smith's there all the time, come on. [laughter] Joel: Sure. Sure. Chad: Cuban food. Cuban food. Joel: Come to America, baby. Come to America. The American dream is alive and well for Lionel Messi. Chad: Too awesome. Joel: Love it, love it. Alright. Well, from something that makes sense to something that probably doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot people. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: Alright. My shout out goes to Tony Fidel. Who the fuck is Tony Fidel? Well, you've probably heard about Apple's new VR headset dubbed Vision Pro. Chad: Yes. Joel: Reviews were mixed. But Tony Fidel, a guy who played a key role in the development of Apple's iPod, said he doubts the pricey gadget will gain wide acceptance. Saying, "Apple's Vision Pro is a technological tour de force, very impressive. But with the consumer apps and marketing for $3,500 with a two hour battery life, apple has truly 'jumped the shark'." ouch. Chad, I know you're a big Apple guy. Any opinion on Apple's new Vision Pro which doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being owned by you, by the way. Chad: No. [chuckle] Have they been paying attention to Facebook? Now Meta. I don't understand any of this. It makes no sense whatsoever. So, the big thing right now is being able to automate ChatGPT. It's like, you find what is working and you roll with it. Google's doing it with Bard right now to be able to change search with generative AI, and then they come out with a fucking ugly pair of glasses. Yes, you can see through them. Wow, is that the innovation that we're going with here? A heads up display? I don't know, I will not own a pair anytime soon. Joel: I learned a valuable lesson in the early days of the internet, Chad. PPC drives the internet. PPC, not pay-per-click. Porn, Pills, and Casinos. The only way this deals work is if Apple partners with PornHub to create virtual reality porn that will be bought by every male on the planet for whatever price. [laughter] They want to ask for it. But until then, no. Looking at the stars with this thing on my head. Chad: Not doing it. Joel: Which is basically a ski mask. [laughter] Joel: Or ski goggles. I don't know, man. I don't know, man. I want VR to work, but I don't think it's gonna happen. Chad: Yeah. No, it's cool tech, I just don't think it's practical. My last shout out goes to Dina Perro for sending us some podcast love. She calls the, Chad and Cheese, "The most enjoyable real podcast," She listens to, and that she loves the new YouTube podcast. That's right kids, we are on YouTube now. You go to YouTube, all you have to do is search for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Click on the channel, subscribe, and Dina for all of that, you get a free T-shirt. Joel: Ooh, free t-shirt. Chad: That's right. Joel: She's gonna love that. Love that. So, we've gone from voice to audio. Basically we're going deep, Chad. SFX: Just the tip. Joel: Alright. So... Chad: Wait a minute, we got to give Serge Boudreau a little credit for that sound effect, 'cause he's feeling a little slighted, because he sent that just the tip sound effect to us that we use all the fucking time. And he's not allowed to on his show because Shelly won't let him. And we use the shit out of it. [laughter] So thanks Serge, we appreciate it. [laughter] Joel: It's pronounced Serge. Chad: Serge. Joel: And no love for Canadians. [laughter] SFX: Take off. We were doing our movie. Don't rick our show, you hoser. Chad: Carry on. Joel: Alright. So, speaking of... Chad: Free stuff. Joel: Great stuff. Whether it's YouTube, or stuff that you can drink or put on your body, you got to get some free stuff from us. We're giving away t-shirts from JobGet, Bourbon from our friends at Tex Colonel, Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. And if it's your birthday, we're giving away rum sponsored by our friends at Plum. But you got to play if you wanna win, you got to head to Chadcheese.com. Click the freelance. And you might get some really, really cool stuff people. [laughter] Chad: What time is it? SFX: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? [laughter] Joel: Sounds like it's time for some birthdays. [laughter] SFX: I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: Alright. You know what that means, Chad. We've got some birthdays this week. Another trip around the sun and some people that could win some rum from our friends at Plum. We're talking about Christina Bucci, Fishers Indiana's own. Mark Anderson. Scott Allen, Aaron Koteff, and Philly, Nancy, Baris Savo. Chad: There we go. Joel: All celebrate. SFX: Happy Birthday. Joel: Another trip around the sun. Chad: Nancy from Philly, guess what's next? Joel: Travel Chad. Chad: Time for travel. That's right kids. Joel: That's right. Chad: This is the 2019 Chad Cheese RecFest shirt. That's right. Joel: You can only see that on YouTube, kids. [laughter] Chad: We are going to RecFest in the UK in Knebworth, July 6th. All hands meetings happening there. That's right. Talent Acquisition Leaders taking their entire fucking team. Why? 'Cause you need time to get together. You need time to bond. You need time to learn, with little beer, a little Chad and Cheese, maybe little Hung Lee. That's just a tip. Joel: Oh, that is just a tip. [laughter] SFX: Just a tip. Chad: But you got to be there. You go to chadcheese.com. Upper right hand corner, click on events. Still time to register for that event. And plenty of time, well not enough time. You should go do it now. Register for the RecFest in the US happening on September 13th and 14th in Nashville, Tennessee. Again, RecFest is nothing but a party for your entire fucking team. We're gonna bring our whole team, Cold Cheeseman is coming to London. SFX: Alright. Alright. Alright. Chad: Leavin, coming to London. Joel, myself, and Queen Julie, coming to London as well. Anybody else from our team coming? Joel: Don't forget our favorite, Scott, Steven McGrath. Which is sure to upset all the Scotts to listen to this show because... Chad: We better have a t-shirts for him. Joel: So sensitive. Chad: You better have a t-shirt for him. Joel: Scotts are so expensive. Chad: Yeah, he's gonna be... He's sensitive. He's a ginger for God's sake. Joel: It's in the mail, Chad, and I'm tracking it. It's in the UK as we speak. Chad: Thank God. Joel: So, fingers crossed it will get to Stephen's barrel chested upper body by the time. Breakfast is there. Chad: Hairy little man. Joel: Yes. Yeah, yeah. So you're in Portugal, we mentioned this at the beginning. I will be at SHRM next week. Chad: Oh, that's a... Joel: I'll be in the Aaron Booth. Chad: Did I say Janet Jackson was gonna be there? Joel: Oh, yes, Chad. Not only cardboard Chad, but Janet Jackson will be there. By the way, Janet's married to me. She just doesn't know it yet. [laughter] Joel: And by the way, it's more like the 1992 Janet, with the hands over the boobs. But she's always that Janet in my mind. But anyway, hopefully I'll see her. If you're going to SHRM, if you're in leadership, I don't know how the tickets are being dulled out. Like, if someone can hook me up with some Janet tickets and some back backstage VIP passes that'd be great. But I will be there doing some interviews. Cardboard Chad will be there, I'll be there. The gang at Aaron will be there. Booth 2801, come say hi. And we'll have t-shirts, Chad, you know how people love them t-shirts. Some exclusive t-shirts from our friends at Aaron Booth. 2801 at SHRM, I'll see you in Vegas, everybody. I will see you in Vegas. SFX: Beaver, Las Vegas. Beaver, Las Vegas. Chad: That cardboard Chad gets back backstage tickets before you do. [laughter] Joel: Cardboard Chad will get much luckier than me for sure at that. Oh God, this is going south. SFX: Topics! Joel: We got to get to some news before this goes really south. Alright, let's... Chad: Too late. Joel: Let's talk about some Indeed News. [laughter] Joel: Alright. More tomfoolery at our friends at Indeed. A source shared a document from Recruit Holdings, Indeed's parent company, "I currently work@indeed.com and I'm a big fan of your podcast." We're a big fan of you too, Mr. Anonymous. "The intel is that after Indeed did their layoffs just last week, we found that their board of directors wanted to increase their own compensation. So, basically it was like laying off 15% of our workforce, just so the board of directors could get 15% more salary increase when they already earn close to a million dollars annually." [laughter] Joel: "Specifically, directors have an annual salary pool of 10 million and want to raise it to 11.5 million." But wait, Chad, there's more. Chad: Yes. Joel: There's more. Japanese media reported Recruit Holdings, apologize this week for employees posing as students and making inappropriate remarks during some 20 or more online seminars. Recruit acknowledged the dishonesty and inappropriate behavior and expressed its commitment to preventing future incidents. Chad: Sure. Joel: Another week, another fuck up in the Indeed family tree. Chad, what's your take? Chad: Yeah, they got caught. That's what's happening here. Whenever they get caught, they say, "Oh, I'm sorry." And then they try to fuck up again. Yeah, so we actually got a link to the Recruit Holdings 2023 notice of annual shareholders meeting. So, this is just the notice that's going out, what they're looking to talk about try to give a little preemptive idea of what the meeting's gonna be about. There are two categories of directors that they have on board. They've got the independent director and then they just got the plain old directors. From the report, "Compensation for independent directors consist of base salary only, not tied to performance." Chad: That's a nice gig. Currently, directors have an annual salary pool of $10 million and Recruit Holdings wants to raise it to $11.5 million. A 15% increase in tandem, Recruit Holdings wants to take those independent non-performing motherfuckers and take their potential from $720,000 to $2.2 million max compensation. Why the raise? Well, they say they need to be competitive, and also they're looking to raise the number of seats on the board. What the fuck? This is what happens when nobody is actually in charge of a board. [chuckle] They just get to do whatever the fuck they want, they hire their buddies. They get to add more seats, they chop some heads, they raise anxiety, and then they just go ahead and raise executive wages. From my standpoint, if I, and again, I'm not, but if I was in leadership at Indeed, this would be a huge... You can't do anything other than lead an uprising, immunity, a mutiny and get the fuck out. That's the only thing you can really do. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. Chad: I don't know what else you do. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: So, Chad, rich people are gonna do what rich people do, and remember buybacks? Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: Buybacks were popular for a long time. And what happened was companies would get government bailouts and then do stock buybacks. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Which, gee, people don't like. So let's figure out some new financial engineering. Let's lay off some people and give ourselves a raise. Ooh, that's gonna bypass all the PR filters, isn't it? SFX: 60% of the time it works every time. Joel: Look, the disparity between rich and not so rich is growing. This is indicative of that. No matter what kind of laws or PR hits that you take, companies are gonna find ways to pay the rich people more money. This certainly isn't like, "Oh we're paying them more because we don't want them to be a board of director on another company and leave us." Like, people don't leave boards like that. This isn't like, retaining top talent. Chad: No. Joel: This is just rich people getting richer and it's just the way it is. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And fortunately, people like us can call it out because we have fans that are willing to give us the insight info on what's going on at the company. So, fuck indeed, again, as they cry all the way to the bank about about the news. Now, the Japanese story. Chad: Yes. [laughter] Joel: Now, this was like, you and I don't necessarily tune into the Japanese media. Chad: No. No. Joel: I had to translate this page. And even then, it didn't come across very well. So I can't really comment intelligently on what happened, but the comments that this story brought in, a thousand plus comments on what I would think would be a pretty mundane story about how upset people were about what happened with people infiltrating this webinar and asking stupid questions or kind of taking over like, this was a big deal from the commenter standpoint. So I can't talk intelligently, but the backlash from the comments that I saw and read, and like, people are really pissed about this. And I don't know a lot about Japanese culture, but I know when you apologize, like it's a big deal. Chad: Yes. Joel: And like they're really sorry about this. So I think in Japan it's a fairly big deal. Chad: Well, they were talking about having shills, which pretty much employees that were feeding into asking questions, and then also in the chat section starting to berate some of the individuals who were really supposed to be there. So, yeah. Again, in the US, I think, we're kind of used to this because of all the fucking trolls. But we don't quite have the respect culture that seems like Japan does. So this is a big deal. And again, like you'd said, when I started reading that, I'm like, sounds pretty common over here in the States, but apparently in Japan, not so much. Joel: Yeah. In the States it's called marketing. In Japan it's called rude. So there you go. Chad: There you go. Joel: There you go. All right, Chad. HackerRank has launched an advanced plagiarism detection system powered by artificial intelligence. The system analyses coding behaviour, submission patterns, and question features to identify potential instances of cheating with 93% accuracy by leveraging AI. HackerRank aims to ensure fair assessments and provide developers with equal opportunities while upholding assessment integrity. The company acknowledges the transformative impact of AI on the developer community, and is committed to continuous improvement in its detection system. Chad, what do you make of all this plagiarism? Chad: Remember playing the whack-a-mole game at Arcades or maybe even Chucky Cheese, that was more your style? Joel: Of course. Chad: Bravo to HackerRank for whacking this mole quickly. Now the challenge will be whacking the next one, then the next one. Or, will this even be necessary in a few years, especially since AI is becoming a part of the coding process. So, with the prospect of all coders being equipped with Gen AI as a co-pilot while developing, this whole thing seems good for now, it seems like it not really a band-aid, just kind of like a small bridge that we're just not gonna need. So the real question is, how fast will bots take over coding? SFX: Shall we play a game. Joel: Everybody listening and watching, we don't share notes before the show. I literally wrote Whack-a-Mole on my notes. So you stole my whack-a-Mole thunder, Chad. Thanks a lot. [laughter] Chad: Sorry about that. Sorry. My bad. Joel: So 82% of developers in a recent survey think AI will change the future of work. 82%. Well, no shit. Well, if developers who are at the front lines of this think it's going to change work, then it certainly... Chad: Easily. Joel: Probably is. And this is a whack-a-mole situation. This is the spammers and this is the black hats and the white hats fighting it out. Plagiarism... I mean, ChatGPT is on a whole new level. I'm hearing them talk about students. There are programmes that will put misspellings in your ChatGPT to make it look more human. And this whole thing is gonna go back and forth. Now, in our industry, what typically happens is, we say we have it, and people just believe that we have it, whether it's AI or ML or Big data, or... Chad: Yes, yes. Vapor ware. Joel: SEO or mobile. Like, people just say like, check it off because we have it. And nobody really takes them to task. So that's gonna be an issue in our space of people saying they have plagiarism detection and whether they really do or not. Who's gonna audit that? Nobody. People are just gonna I guess rely on their network and podcasts like ours to figure out who's good and who isn't. Now if you're a buyer of services like this, I think it's a totally fair question to ask, how are you detecting AI generated content? Whether it's a cover letter, whether it's... The resume may not as big a deal, but pre-screening questions, things like that, you need to be asking questions of your vendors because there's a chance that you're gonna fall prey to content that is AI generated, if there's nobody policing it. Joel: I'm sure there are already APIs out there that people will be able to plug this stuff into their solution which is a million dollar idea. By the way, Chad, if you can create an API to monitor all this AI content, then you've got a boat with some hose on it, if you will. Yeah. This is just something that's gonna be... This is the future. Like black hats, white hats, fighting it out. Like you said, big applause to HackerRank. Look, developers is where this stuff is gonna happen but it's gonna filter down to everything, whether it's PhDs, warehouse workers. Like everyone's gonna... Chad: It's gonna be expected though, don't you think? I think it's just gonna be expected where it's like, did you use AI to develop this code? And guy's, No. Was like, why not? Everybody else is doing it. Everybody's doing it faster, they're being more efficient, etcetera, etcetera. Why not? Joel: If you don't care, then sure. Chad: But why would we care? Like let's say in the next few years, I don't think anybody's gonna care. Joel: Well, you wouldn't hire a journalist that just submits AI generated content necessarily. Or you may not hire a coder... Chad: It's content wise. Joel: Whose job is to write code. Yeah, some jobs you won't care. But if it's, I'm writing code, I'm writing content, I'm writing papers or research, you may wanna think twice about AI generated content. Dude, this is the Wild West. We talked to Ryan at Veritone this week. Like, he even acknowledged, like this is just gonna be wild west stuff. Things will get figured out. But for now hats off to HackerRank for at least acknowledging this is happening and providing some guardrails to protect their customers from getting crappy developers into their system. Chad: Let's hope. Joel: Can I interest you in some Robot war games, Chad? SFX: Shall we play a game? Chad: It seems like every day. [chuckle] Joel: Alright. In May approximately 3900 job losses were attributed to AI. That's according to Challenger Gray & Christmas's monthly report. This is the first time AI has been listed as a cause in the report. The tech sector accounted for all the AI related job cuts. So no Shocker, HackerRank is the one that's providing some guardrails. The tech sector accounted for all of them but it's not just tech workers. Of course Paris based Teleperformance known for running call centers has reported significant benefits from integrating chat GPT into its operations. The AI powered solution reduces call links by almost 40% cut staff training time and half and decreases errors by 90% according to the company. However analysts express concern over the impact of AI on Teleperformance business predicting that up to 30% of its volumes may be automated within three years leading to potential margin impact barriers to entry and implications for the wider service economy and layoffs. Chad what's your take on robots? Chad: So, right outta the... I think it's funny because in the 4000 jobs lost article, other listed reasons for the job cuts were things like market and economic conditions, cutting costs, restructuring mergers and acquisitions. Reasons not listed for cuts; over hiring, shitty business models, and leaders who cut staff to give themselves raises. See what I did there? [laughter] It's amazing. So about 5% of the 80,000 job losses, I think that's under reported, especially listening to the teleperformance information. Teleperformance itself, here's some call center stats from Phone Olo, there are currently 15 million people employed as call center employees. Statista Global market for contract call centers will reach close to 500 billion by 2027. And then replicant, the call center turnover rate can reach 45%. Why is that all important? Margin. Chad: If I can scale with a chatbot, right? And we're talking about these chatbots today who are actually providing amazing efficiencies for individuals like you and I. I mean, they're really co-pilots, right? So they're 40% better at what they're doing. Their training time is faster by 50%. They can do all those things. What they're doing right now, listen to me kids, what they're doing right now is they're training these chatbots to take over. 30% of the roles [laughter] in, what was it? Four years? No, in three years. There's no way that that's not going to happen. So if you take a look at the 20 to 30% that they're predicting, I think it's gonna be more because Teleperformance is a shitty ass company. [laughter] They're monitoring employees, I mean, just... Anyway, we've talked about them before on podcast. They're going to be probably about by 50%, if not more, my prediction, in three years. Chad: Why? Take a look at all of the money that's gonna be saved, not to mention scale, right? They can stop hiring people. If they've got a 45% attrition rate, people keep leaving, the robot scales up. And then all you have are people that are actually monitoring and auditing, that is gonna be a much lower staff rate versus what they have today. Call center suck. It's a horrible job. The anxiety, the stress, I mean, it just sucks. So seeing these jobs go away I don't think it's gonna hurt anybody but we've got to be able to take a look at what's the next thing for these individuals to do. Plumbing, AC, maybe being the auditors or what have you, who knows? But we're going to have to create some jobs. SFX: That escalated quickly. Joel: So yeah, up to 30% of their volumes will be automated in three years. How about in five years? How about in 10 years? How soon before we get to a hundred percent or 90-80 plus percent? That's gonna be a lot of unemployed call center workers. Chad: Yeah. It's a lot of margin. Joel: Yeah. That's an incredible speed at which this shit happens. So, historically, change comes at a snail's pace, from walking, to the horse, to the buggy, to the car, that stuff took decades, if not millennia, in some cases. People had time to sort of adjust, figure it out, new industries came along, new businesses, new technologies. What I'm fearful of is, this is not quicksand, this is the floor crashing in on all of us. And there are a lot of things to consider here. Number one, how do people handle that? That's incredible change. People don't like change. They really don't like change that happens fast. Number two, how do governments handle it? Governments move at a snail pace, right? Like, checks and balances. Unless you're an authoritarian government it takes years if not decades for changes to happen. Right? Number three, how does the market handle it? You mentioned the stock prices in these articles, and we've talked about who is the company with the college courses that talked about AI taking... They're being affected by AI. Tregg... Or Chegg. Chad: Chegg. Chegg. Yeah. Chegg. Joel: So Chegg stock crashes from that news. Number four, whether or not job creation and upscaling can happen fast to keep the pitchforks at bay. These are all really important questions, because things are happening at a quicker rate than they ever have. And there's gonna be some bad consequences. You, on our newsfeed, our private newsfeed about the show had an avalanche gif as part of this story. Well, interestingly, Chad, you have about 15 minutes if you get caught under an avalanche to be saved before lack of oxygen, cold temperatures start really fucking your shit up. That's not a lot of time. And an avalanche I think is a perfect metaphor for what's happening here because we only have a short period of time to dig ourselves out of this before people start dying and losing their shit. So that's all I got on that. That went dark quickly. I'm sorry. Chad: I think the only ones that are gonna save us in this one, are the Europeans. They're the only ones who are actually looking to try to stifle. You might see the stifling progress, but there are guardrails that need to be put in place just in case. I mean, we have to work on those contingency plans. And guess what? Nobody's doing, working on fucking contingency plans. The US sees cash and that's what we're built on. Unfortunately, we're not built on... I mean, the people build the cash but that's not how we see things. So yeah, we're not going to be fixing this, I don't think anytime soon. We're going to have to look for Europe to actually fix this forest which really fucking sucks. Joel: Yeah. And then you get into the beta of well, government regulation slows up the process. Well, other countries aren't gonna slow up the process, so should we slow up the process? I mean, it's gonna get ugly, Chad. It's gonna get kind of ugly. Chad: Ooh. Here's some ugly. Joel: And speaking of ugly, let's talk about some worker woes. Well, hundreds of thousands of UPS workers in the US are considering authorizing a strike this week if a new contract agreement is not reached with their union, the Teamsters, by August 1st. The nationwide UPS strike would be the largest work stoppage in US history affecting the delivery of goods of households and businesses across the country. The union is seeking improved pay benefits and working conditions. But wait, Chad, there's more, there's more. Journalists at two dozen Gannett owned newspapers in the US are staging a two day strike to protest working conditions and criticize the chief executive of Gannett, who used to own Career Builder. Chad: Yes. Joel: Used to own Career Builder. Yes. We got Career Builder on the show. Thank you. You're welcome. The strike, which is expected to be the largest labor action in Gannett's history comes as journalists accuse the company of under compensation and increasing workloads. Workers of the world unite, Chad, what's your take? Chad: So, first and foremost, UPS drivers don't have AC. How the fuck does that work? I mean, yeah, they got the cute little shorts and stuff, but my God, how are they working in Houston, Texas without AC in those fucking trucks. Next. So let's go ahead and set the table for salary. UPS drivers, pay is about $24 and 30 cents an hour. So you're talking about over $50,000 a year. It's not a lot of money for a lot of hard work. UPS CEO made 19 million, which is 376 times that a UPS driver. UPS airlines CEO, didn't know they had that, 6 million. UPS International President, 6 million. UPS CFO 7 million. Chief Digital Officer 7.5. Total for all of that $45.5 million. Do I believe that leaders who have more strategic responsibilities should get paid for more? Chad: Yes. Jesus fucking Christ. Yes. But at a rate of 376 times, that of the people that are actually doing the hard work without AC. No, not even close. Since 1978, CEO compensation has risen 1500% while entry level and middle class wages have stayed stagnant at a mere 18%. How do we fix this? Do we reverse trickle down economics, or do we just make sure that CEOs can't get paid at estimated 30 times more than that of their lowest entry level worker? Right? If that was the case, taking the driver in this case, the CEO would make 1.6 million a year. Who can't live on 1.6 million a year? That's what we've become. Right? We've got to really focus on fair. And in the case of the journalists, it's free and fair press. This is scary, because, I mean, I was in radio before coming into the world of the internet, and we've witnessed the slow death of journalism over the last 20 or so years, because who actually funded the journalists? Chad: Well, when readership was high, advertisers pay. When listenership was high, advertiser pay. When local news viewership was high, advertisers pay. We stopped reading newspapers, listening to local radio, and watching local TV. Why? Instant access. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, 24 hours, instant access. Traffic reports that we used to watch or read or listen to on the radio, it's on my phone, instant access. Weather reports, instant access. Free news, free news on my phone. I don't have to pay for that paper anymore. Free and Fair Press has been strangled by free access. And that is what has killed journalism and kids out there. I can't say how much journalism, local journalism, and national too, but mainly local journalism holds politicians and community leaders feet to the fire. And if they're not there, they will continue to run rampant if we don't have journalism in a free and a fair press, that's the scary part of all of this. Joel: That was really good, Chad. You should run for president on that platform. I can't say it better in terms of local journalism. I will add that, you remember the Representative George Santos, who's maybe the house's biggest douche bag and liar. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Was uncovered by local news. Chad: Yes. Joel: It just never got traction. That's the kind of shit that happens when you lose your sort of local media and your journalistic foundations. I do think it sounds a lot like the Hollywood writer strike, anything where corporations can replace people that do writing with automation, is gonna suffer. There's just no two ways about it. And money is not going into support headcount, whether it's... I mean, employers like Classify, it's had a huge impact on local news. Chad: Yes. Joel: And newspapers. Like we have some blame for that. But I don't see how the journalists win and come back in this. I just think it's a failed push to make Gannett or any newspaper company pay you more money. I do think that the UPS story... By the way, I love that we're bringing Teamsters on the show. We haven't had a Teamsters... Chad: Jimmy Hoffa. [laughter] Joel: Jimmy Hoffa reference in a really long time. And that feels to me like an old school labour versus capital sort of fight. And there's a perfect storm of, we're getting more stuff delivered to us than we ever have. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: We have logistical supply chain issues where the work is hard and it's more valuable than ever. And then you have the fear of competition. Now generally competition says, Well, okay you wanna quit? Go, we'll just hire FedEx people or hire other services 'cause they're workers. What's happening is people who have contracts with UPS are saying, "Well, fuck we're gonna go to FedEx, we're gonna going wherever if you guys can't do the job." There's leverage there that the labour unions at UPS haven't had in a long time. And this is just an old school labour uprising to say like, "Hey, the power is in our corner. We're going to fight for better wages, benefits, et cetera." So, I applaud them and hope that they get what they want, from that perspective. Journalists, history is not on your side. Like, it's not good for you. Kids who are looking to get into journalism, don't do it. Do podcasting instead, it's much more fun and there's probably more money in it. We'll be right back. Chad: Oh God. Joel: Oh yeah. Chad: Here it comes. Joel: Call Arnold. Chad: Damn it. Joel: All right. We got some military news here Chad. The US Air Force has denied a story that circulated at a defence conference. That's probably a party, right? Defence conferences? Claiming that one of its AI powered drones turned on its human operators during a simulation. The Air Force clarified that the story was a "thought experiment" and not based on an actual event. While the incident did not happen or did it, Chad? Or did it? It highlights concerns about the potential unintended consequences of AI in military systems. Chad, you were in the military, what do you make of this, "thought experiment."? Chad: I think this has happened many more times than we've heard right now. I mean, we've talked about it on the show many times. The military is easily going to militarize drones. They already have in the air. They're going too, for soldiers. Anything that can save, and this is gonna be the narrative, and I understand the narrative is somewhat true, save human life, save American life, then we should do it, right? And that is going to open Pandora's box to this kind of shit. Here's from the article from somebody who... They quoted, the system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times, the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat. But, it got its points from killing the threat. The system knew it got the points from killing this threat, much like war games, the movie, right? So what... SFX: Shall we play a game. Chad: Yes. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because the person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective. I mean, it's not thinking like a human being. It's thinking like a computer 'cause it's a fucking computer, kids. No real harm was done to any person yet. Joel: The Air Force says they remain committed to maintaining human control over AI systems and its operations. Well that's comforting, Chad. I'm sure our enemies feel the same way about controlling everything with humans. Someone call Matthew Brodwick and John Connor, because I'm getting a little nervous here about bots taking us out of the loop and just making decisions on their own. Somebody get me a perrier and a Theragun. I'm going to Vegas. SFX: Beaver, Las Vegas. Beaver, Las Vegas. Joel: See you at SHRM Cardboard Chad. We're out! Chad: We out. 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 favourite 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 favourite western, you can't quit them either. We're out.

Live from UNLEASH America in Las Vegas, James Appleton, director of talent acquisition at Harri, joins Chad & Cheese for a conversation about the other side of the coin … ya' know, life through the eyes of a practitioner dealing with an onslaught of solutions looking to make recruiting more tolerable. That’s because prior to Harri, James was head of recruitment for a variety of companies, which means he knows what he’s talking about. And now he’s on the other side, pitching to employers where he used to toss opportunities to job seekers. I know, it’s confusing, but it’ll make sense after you listen. MORE Harri: www.harri.com James Appleton: www.linkedin.com/in/james-appleton1/ UNLEASH America: www.unleash.ai Chad & Cheese: www.chadcheese.com TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: We are live at Unleash America. This is the morning after hangover edition of the podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined as always, Chad Sowash. And today, we welcome James Appleton to the show. James is Director of Talent acquisition at HARRI and has an interesting story. Chad: Harri? Joel: Harri, H-A-R-R-I. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's no regular Tom, Dick, or Harry. Chad: No. Joel: It's a different kind of Harri. Chad: Yeah, this is more of a millennial Harri, I think. [laughter] Joel: James, save us with your English accent and make us sound smarter. Chad: Please. Joel: How are you doing? James Appleton: I'm very good, guys. I'm very good. I'll give it a go on that. Joel: Excellent. So listeners don't know who you are, interesting story. Give us who James is. James Appleton: Okay. So I've done a couple of different things. So, obviously, as you get from my accent, UK-based. So, originally, I worked for a big 45,000 people company in the UK that's focused on pubs and restaurants, in operations there as an area manager, that sort of thing. Ended up getting into talent acquisition, and led talent acquisition for the company. So bringing in that was my first introduction to Harri. Eventually brought Harri into the company. Joel: How many open reqs at one time are we talking about, this 45,000 person company? James Appleton: Open reqs, we're in the thousands. Joel: Oh, yeah, thousands. Alright. James Appleton: So yeah. Yeah. Joel: Little bit high frequency. James Appleton: Little bit. It's high volume. It's high volume. So that, loved it. But I had an itch to scratch, so I left that after a number of years and went and started my own pub restaurant in London. So owned, operated that. Joel: What was it called? Like the Salty Lion or the... They always have interesting names. What was your spot? James Appleton: There was no dog and duck. There was no badger. There was no... There were no crazy names. It was called Chalk Pit. Joel: Chalk? Chad: Chalk? James Appleton: Chalk Pit. Chad: Chalk Pit. Joel: Like, chalk, write chalk? James Appleton: As in you write. Chalk. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: Okay. So dig deeper into this. Chalk Pit. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. James Appleton: So myself and my founder Tom, so one of my best mates, Tom, we started this together. He ran a craft beer merchants at the time. So between us, we put it together, and Chalk Pit was the road that linked where we grew up. It was Chalk Pit Lane. Joel: Ahh. Chad: Ahh. James Appleton: So there's no crazy deep story there but... Chad: That's the second road reference we've had in, because Cherry, Bennett's Cherry Lane. Joel: New Cherry. Chad: Or whatever. Joel: New Cherry. James Appleton: Yeah. Joel: Cherry Lane. Yes. Interesting. Interesting. Chad: Yes. So Roads. Roads. Joel: What's your favorite English beer? James Appleton: Oh, my favorite English beer. My favorite English beer is probably, if I'm drinking something every day, Thornbridge Tzara is probably the best craft lager that you can buy in the UK. Joel: Do you know that one, Chad? Chad: I do not. Joel: I've never heard of that one. Chad: Gonna have to try it. Joel: Is it regularly available or do I have to dig for that? James Appleton: You'd have to dig a bit. You'd have to go to the right pubs or the right places. Joel: Give me one that's easily accessible. James Appleton: Easily accessible. You're probably going with Carling. [laughter] James Appleton: Which is up there with Stella. Joel: Okay. 1664 is a good one. James Appleton: Pretty much. Joel: Okay. Alright. Alright. Let's get to work. Now, you're on the side that everyone that we typically talk to wants to be in front of. Talk about your experience as a buyer. [chuckle] I don't think people appreciate the clutter, the sales calls, the confusion. Talk about just that from your perspective, because I don't think a lot of vendors appreciate what a buyer goes through. James Appleton: And to be honest, my perspective kind of completely changed. So, because I had that side that I'll talk to, now I lead the product side at Harri, so sitting on both sides of those fence is, is quite eye-opening. So when I was buying is quite bewildering. And the way I liken it to people is if you bought a house once in your life and that was it, and you had very limited information to do it, that's what it's like being a buyer for a massive company. Chad: That's scary as shit by the way. James Appleton: But it's where you got loads of money, right? Chad: Yeah. James Appleton: So you're a big company, you got loads of money, so to torture the house analogy. People are coming to you and they're wanting to sell you everything right? And they show you all sorts of houses, and it is quite bewildering. I remember when we looked, we looked seriously at 25 different vendors, and it took a huge amount of time. Chad: Wow. James Appleton: Yeah. To get that down then to a shorter list and do it. Chad: How long did that take? James Appleton: Oh, months. It was months. Chad: Over a year. James Appleton: Yeah. And you go through all the crap processes of RFPs and things which are useless in many ways, of how you go through that. Joel: How vital were like review sites or your network and maybe, "Hey, have you guys used this?" How important was that? James Appleton: Hugely. Because same for most things in life, that word of mouth, getting recommendations from people of what was out there and people you'd worked with before, people you'd trust people, people you know in the industry to give you a recommendation will mean that you'll at least look at them. You'll open that door. Then you've obviously got the big ones, you've heard of, and that sort of stuff. The hard ones are knowing whether you're willing to take a punt on your shortlist on someone that's a little bit different. But it's that kind of thing where you're shown houses by a realtor and you're shown four houses and they go, the kind of mystery house, we think you might want to have a look at this. Right? Of how'd you get those into your mix, you know? Yeah. Joel: And some houses you can rent for a while, some houses you have to buy, others are lease to own. So there are different levels of commitment that you have to make. Not all houses are created different. Chad: Yeah. And it's hard to pilot a system that big. James Appleton: Well, that's the problem. And realistically, you can't. Chad: Yeah. James Appleton: Because the change management piece. At that sort of scale at 1700 locations, 45,000 employees, you cannot really pilot. The organization won't accept it, and that change management, because they expect you to try and they expect you to get it right. The operators expect you to get it right first time. So that's hard to do. And when you're bringing it in and you are speaking to people, you go through that process and that discovery piece, the discovery piece, both sides have sat on that fence, that's where it lose or wins, right? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yeah. James Appleton: The discovery piece you'll go through... And again, back to this house analogy, sometimes you will speak to someone and you'll say, "I don't own a car." And they show you a house with a garage. And it's like, "Well, that's not helpful to me." Okay. Joel: That's garage for our American listeners. [laughter] James Appleton: It's a garage. You can translate it for me. Thank you. And so, that should be out of your process. Right? But the biggest thing I see now and I saw then was discovery. So, you get a lot of people on the buyer side. A lot of my friends who are still buyers who get annoyed, they get a bit pissed off at going through a discovery process. Show me, I want to get to that point. Chad: Yeah. James Appleton: But if you haven't done that, if you haven't done it properly, then you're never gonna get the right thing. Right. And I... Chad: It's called due diligence kids. James Appleton: Yeah, exactly. Chad: Jesus. [laughter] Joel: But that's work Chad. Don't make me work for God's sakes. Chad: It is work. But it's work up upfront that you're not gonna have to do for years. Okay, so let's talk about Harri, because you guys, obviously you're focused in a niche area. Joel: What is it? Chad: Hospitality. Hospitality, right? What do you actually do different? Because there are a lot of high volume systems that are out there that could say that, "Hey, we work for anything." But you guys specifically pinpointed in that area. Joel: Yeah. Chad: So talk about that. James Appleton: We zero in. So Harri is HCM for the frontline. We're employee experience led but with a real vertical focus. And for us, that is hospitality at the moment. So we go really, really deep in terms of how we meet the needs for hospitality right across the platform. So, whether that's TA that I look after, whether that's workforce management and getting into all the fair work week or all that sort of stuff that the compliance piece that people really want, we will do, and we increasingly branch into retail and healthcare. But if people will take us as we are now, we will go deeper and deeper into those over time. But for us, we are very very focused on hospitality. Chad: Well, and you also started out almost like a social network, right? James Appleton: Yes. Yes. Chad: So, it's like LinkedIn for the hospitality side of the house, which is an amazing... So it's a great go-to market, I believe because you guys own the database, right? Because, I mean, you're actually creating this LinkedIn with an applicant tracking system, onboarding everything that's like wrapped around it. So therefore, what we're used to for years back in the job board days is like, "Wait a minute, that's my candidates in my applicant tracking system." Well, no, you're buying us because of the entire ecosystem. How has that been different and/or an obstacle for some companies because they're used to my candidate, my candidate, my candidate. Right? That's an entirely different change for them. So, talk about that. James Appleton: Well, firstly, I couldn't really say it better myself, but in terms of how you described it there, it is LinkedIn... Joel: Only that it was in an American accent, is the only thing wrong, that's what you gave there. James Appleton: Yeah, smooth is American accent there it was. [laughter] Chad: I'll send you my invoice, don't worry. Joel: Smooth. James Appleton: That's fine. [laughter] Joel: Smooth. James Appleton: So, for us it is exactly that. It's LinkedIn for hospitality. That's kind of how we look at it. We've got 10 million people who are on that. So, one million in New York for example. So that is obviously... Chad: Holy shit! One million in New York. James Appleton: It's a lot of people. Chad: Alone. James Appleton: Yeah. So when people come into that, it's the thing we get asked the most, everyone wants to have their cake and eat it. Right? I want access to everyone. But I don't want anyone to have access to my people. Chad: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. James Appleton: So we put in a privacy shield for people in that sense. So, there are candidates that come to that client and they will be privacy protected so only they can see them. If people are coming generally into our pool or into a client that hasn't got that, then they can go into that broader pool. So we kind of bridge that piece. But for us, it comes into a big bit that I'm passionate about and that we're developing at the moment, increasingly is talent pooling, of where we want to take that. So one of the frustrations I used to have as an operator and used to have when I was leading TA is actually, we would spend huge amounts of money on recruitment marketing and it just goes in the bin. Chad: Yes. James Appleton: We spend money and we lose those candidates. Chad: Well, it's not just losing the candidates. You're buying them over and over and over. It's the same goddamn people. And you're spending money for the same people. James Appleton: Yeah. Exactly. Chad: Yeah. James Appleton: So for us at the moment, we are developing very deep auto tagging to put all of those candidates, caption them in the system but in a very deep targeted way with a lot of filtering. Chad: Yeah. James Appleton: If you can do that and then use our CRM so you can keep those candidates warm but also use it for employees as well. There's that bridge between, very big on that bridge between TA and L&D. How do you pull that piece in so that you keep... Because the biggest problem, the biggest driver that we've got within our industry is people leaving, obviously it's that churn... Chad: Churn. Yeah. Churn. James Appleton: That you're constantly getting. How do you keep those people? And it's actually by engaging them and showing them, recommending jobs to them. So one of the things we can take that to the nth degree and what we're building at the moment is you come, you spent once. You spent your money wherever you spend it, whether it's Indeed, whether it's wherever you've spent all and/or wasted your money and it's gone out and you bring those people in and then if you keep them... If you can keep them, you can tag them. And then what we can do is with our AI algorithm, so it's open, we'll match those people in, be able to say then, and this is what we're building towards at the moment. Chad: Yes. James Appleton: So is be able to invite them directly to interview. That's the flattering piece. If you can say to someone, "We've got these five people who have matched, we've got 500,000 people in our talent pool. These five people have matched and we want to invite you directly to interview." That's the piece. Chad: I think the most compelling piece for me is that you guys are so focused and disciplined in one specific area, that you can really understand how matching works because you are focused on just that one area. Unlike, like you had said, like Indeed who is everything and... Tries to be everything to everybody and they suck at matching and they suck at quality. So therefore, it's the difference between that generative versus domain specific knowledge. James Appleton: It's exactly that. And being able to be really focused. And personally for me, the knowledge that I've got, what I've done before, and when I speak to our clients, and we'll do some kind of consultancy for some of our big clients, whether that's KFC, whether that's Radisson, whether... Whoever that is. And actually it's bringing that piece because it is focused, because of how we're doing it. Chad: Right. James Appleton: And it's getting to that point. If you can spend your money once and you can spend it wisely, but the difference where I want to us to be able to flip people to is spending above the line. Recruitment marketing is not done like marketing. It's done by this 1, 1, 1. If you imagine you were doing that and you were spending money to market one burger sale, it's insane to think of it, like that point of view. If you were whoever and you're trying to sell that one burger and you were putting dollars behind selling one burger, it makes 0 cent. You should be going above the line. So where we'll be leading towards is the ability to apply to a talent pool. I wanna put myself in there and it flips it round. So if I'm the employer, my message to the candidate is, let me find you a job, let me become your recruitment agent because you put yourself in the talent pool for my organization because you like it, you might not be ready yet. You can fill different stuff out. We can match you, and then we can use the recommendation algorithm to invite you to interview. That's the dream. Chad: There you go. James Appleton: And then you spend your dollars above the line. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You had me at cheeseburgers. Why does this show always go to food even when we're not even trying. [laughter] Chad: And it's lunchtime. Jesus. Joel: Yeah. Let's talk about competitive landscape for a second. You mentioned Indeed, when I hear, your LinkedIn tag, I think of Jobcase saying, "We're LinkedIn for everyone who's not on LinkedIn." So there's some confusion there, which you've seen as a buyer, kind of differentiate the competitive landscape and where you guys fit in it. James Appleton: For us in terms of who we might see ourselves against, it might be iSIMS, it might be Paradox and those places, for different reasons. We have... Very similar from a Paradox point of view and Olivia, we have Carrie, and what we can do there, and lots similarities with different people. Where we bring it together is that focus that, that focus of what we can do and how we can bring it all together around hospitality and the depth that we can go into. And particularly around, what we're saying there, with the talent pooling that will increasingly is, but will increasingly become a real, real key part for us. Joel: Have you guys talked to Prince Harry about being a pitchman for the company? [laughter] James Appleton: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's in talks at the moment. Joel: Yeah. He might be discounted. Chad: We're trying to get his name changed officially to Prince Harry with an I. James Appleton: Yeah, with an I. Joel: That'd be even better. James Appleton: But it's difficult. Charles has just vetoed it. But at the moment, we've got the coronation coming up, so if I get a late invite. Chad: Go through Meghan, she'll get shit done. James Appleton: She will get shit done. She will. Joel: I love it. That is James Appleton everybody. James, for our listeners that want to know more about you or connect with the company, where would you send them? James Appleton: To connect with me, find me on LinkedIn, reach out to me, but otherwise either me or to Harri.com and we will come right to you. Joel: Did somebody say cheeseburgers? It's lunchtime, Chad. Chad: Yes. Joel: 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'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.

Imagine for a moment the 1980’s classic, “Goin' Back to Cali” by LL Cool J. Now imagine the music video, and replace LL with Chad & Cheese, and you have a pretty good picture of our week with Veritone and iCIMS. Quality time with some quality people. Of course, news travels west too, so in addition to our Cali adventures, news from Hirevue, LinkedIn, Google, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Wendy’s and even Dice fill our show with tasty content. Enjoy … and pass the sunscreen. Links www.chadcheese.com www.youtube.com/@chadcheese VIDEO VERSION PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion.​ 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. Intro: Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the The Chad & Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oh yeah, happy International Nurse Day. Studies say over 50% leave the profession within two years, so similar to people who start a podcast. You are listening to The Chad & Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Rather Be an OnlyFans Star" Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad "It's Time to Hydrate" Sowash. Joel: And on this week's episode, HireVue goes shopping, LinkedIn bids adieu to China, and Bard cozies up to Indeed and Zip. Let's do this. Joel: Clearly, a little sleep-deprived. Chad: Yes, yes, yes. [laughter] Chad: That was an amazing trip, but definitely have to hydrate. I did well hydrating, but there was so much alcohol consumed during this trip. But I gotta say, ending up with a delayed flight last night. Joel: Both of us. Chad: Both of us, yeah. You got up even earlier than we did to have to hit the airport. But yeah, we were supposed to go through Atlanta. That flight wasn't cancelled, it was just postponed, which means we would have to stay the night in Atlanta, so they flew us to LAX, and then my head didn't hit the pillow until 07:00 AM this morning. So I got a few hours sleep, feeling good, hydrating. Joel: Trust me, no one feels sorry for us, Chad. No one feels sorry for us. We had a fantastic week. Chad: Yes. Joel: In Southern California. Let's talk about that, shall we? Chad: Oh god, yeah. So Veritone, dude. So you came into John Wayne. Chad: Yup. Chad: Julie and I came into San Diego, we got a car. And we drove up. Always love doing those little trips, right? Joel: John Wayne is Orange County, for the kids out there that don't remember who John Wayne is. [chuckle] Chad: Shame on you if you don't know who John Wayne is. Shame on you. On the way up, it's hilarious though, we pass an In-N-Out Burger. And I look at it and I said, "I bet you... " Joel: You gotta jump right to the In-N-Out joke. Chad: "I bet you on the way back, on the way back we get a request from Cheesman, he's gonna come back with us, we'll get a request from Cheeseman, we will hit an In-N-Out Burger." [chuckle] Joel: It's like predicting the sun will come up tomorrow, that's like the easiest prediction in the history of predictions. "Cheesman will want In-N-Out Burger." Yeah, good for you, Chad. Good prediction. Good prediction. I like that. I like that. Much better than your usual predictions. SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel: So you finally, you made it in. I was there first. Chad: Yup. Joel: Got some seafood. Some listeners will know my wife hates seafood, so whenever I'm in a locale with good seafood, yeah, that's where we were. The seafood is a-flowin, so we're talking sushi rolls, we're talking shrimp cocktails, we're talking... Chad: Everything. Joel: Clam chowder. We're talking everything. Chad: Everything. Joel: In my belly. Chad: Yes. So Veritone hooked us up, they invited us up. They're like, "Hey, you're coming to, you're coming to Cali. Come a few days early, we'll hook you up at the Lido House," which is posh as fuck, guys. Chad: We're hanging out at the pool. We go on Ryan's boats with Terry. Amazing food, amazing company. Not only Ryan Steelberg and Terry Baker out on the boat enjoying the bay and the ocean, but also we hooked up with Kelly Robinson and Don Barton as well, so. Joel: A little UK love in SoCal. [laughter] Joel: By the way, we used to be a podcast of the people. Now we're just two douchebags on a yacht. [laughter] Joel: I don't know what the hell happened to us. I need to go roll around in some nachos to feel better about myself now. Chad: We're gonna fix that in Nashville at RecFest. Joel: It's true. Yeah, yeah. Chad: We're going back. 'Cause we're gonna do a pontoon booze cruise, right? So we're gonna fix that, 'cause we are a podcast of the people, my friend. [laughter] Joel: We're gonna make it up in Nashville. That's nice, that's nice. I do think one thing that was interesting is big tech used to not give a shit about employment, whether it was Google or do you name it. But a public company like Veritone, kickass AI and solutions. Work tech, work whatever you wanna call it, is a major part of their future. Chad: Yes. Joel: And that's a major change in what we've known for the last 25 years. Chad: Yes. And their tech is so much more advanced than anything that we have in our space. Let's just go ahead and put that out there, okay? They've cloned our fucking voices, guys. They've translated our voices into four different languages. And that's just the tip of the fucking iceberg. It's pretty amazing. The generative AI that they play with, not just with voice, but also with avatars, video. It's fucking crazy. Joel: Yeah, I mean, what we were able to see and hear about under NDA. Sorry, kids. At some point you'll know as well. It just blows your mind that some of this stuff is coming to employment. A little bit scary. A little bit scary. But... [laughter] Joel: Little bit scary, but still awe-inspiring nonetheless. Chad: Well, then we went south, which is when we actually got to have the prediction come true. [music] Chad: We were in In-N-Out Burger for Joel Cheeseman. Oh my god, I was so stuffed with all the fish and seafood that we'd have that day. Joel: Who goes to In-N-Out and gets nothing? Chad Sowash, that's who. [laughter] Joel: That's who goes there and gets nothing. Chad: I tell you who was happy though, Julie Sowash. 'Cause she wanted some In-N-Out Burger, that's for sure. But we make it down to Coronado beach, iCIMS hooked us up, we were at the Loews, the resort. Again, first thing we do is throw our stuff down, go to the pool. It was a good time. Joel: By the way, if Julie Sowash says that she's bringing sunscreen, don't believe it. Bring your own sunscreen. [laughter] Joel: I was a bearded lobster by the pool for most of the time. Chad: Oh dude, Lido House and Loews both had their own, self-serve. Freakin shut up. Shut up, whatever. Joel: Fortunately my Mediterranean skin soaked up the... [laughter] Joel: Soaked up the sun nicely. Thank god we're on video now. You can go check it out for yourself, how savagely tan I am now. Chad: I've got a nice base. I'm ready, I'm ready for this next coming few months. So iCIMS hooked us up, Carlee did... I mean, I gotta give it to her. She was like, "Look, I'm gonna make a bet on Chad & Cheese. They might come up in here and fuck some things up, which is not good for me. Or they might just blow it out of the water." Which we did. Chad: So big thanks to Carlee. Super fans Will and Brooke. Megan, for helping us with the T-shirts. And just a long list of people that took care of us. I literally felt like royalty. It was a good time. Joel: I gotta say, so the T-shirts, Carlee at iCIMS said, "Hey, we love your t-shirts. Let's get some exclusive ones made for the show." I was like, "Cool." So it's our shirt with featured iCIMS and Spire. I think had a 150 made. Probably about 200 people went to this thing. I thought, "Man, we're gonna have a lot of shirts left over, no one's gonna want these things." Joel: They were gone before the first day was over. By the time we did our thing, I looked out and it was like they were gone. I looked under the table, nothing under the table, they were literally gone. So people ordered these shirts, loved 'em. Joel: I can hear Stephen McGrath right now. "Gone? Where's my t-shirt?" [chuckle] Joel: If Stephen's not happy, we're gonna have to do something to cheer him up a little bit. Chad: One of our favorite, probably our favorite Scot, who will definitely get a T-shirt, if not more, when we see him at RecFest. I promise. [chuckle] Chad: We had Christy Spilka and Loree Porter on stage with us. This is a very exclusive group of practitioners who were in the room. Great content, great parties. Joel, I thought you broke a hip on stage, but that was on purpose. Joel: The roll, we're calling it the "roll" now I think. The roll got a lot of attention. Chad: How could you not? Joel: All I did was I thought... It was a snap decision, I engaged with my inner Chris Farley and Chevy Chase, and I did like a roll on the stage. Someone got video of this. People thought I really fell, they were concerned. You were like, "He pulled a muscle." I'm glad 911 didn't show up. [laughter] Joel: But the roll got a lot of attention. If you haven't seen that, go to social media and check it out. Chad: And you got right up, grabbed a t-shirt, threw it into the crowds. So everybody's like, "He's okay, he's okay." Joel: "He's alright. He's alright." And then you forgot to mention Loree brought us some beer from Nevada. Chad: I wanted to get to that, 'cause that was... That was amazing. Loree Porter, she knows us, right? I feel like she's our people. Okay? She brings us four different beers from Nevada. IPAs, most of them hazy juicy IPAs. It's almost like we were in the same mind, it was beautiful. Chad: We asked Carlee, it's like, "Hey, we wanna take these on stage so we can drink during our thing?" And she throws up, "Huh?" [chuckle] And then she asked... She asked Ari, and Ari is like, "Yeah, of course. What else did we expect?" SFX: Alright, alright, alright. Chad: Christy did though. She had champagne on stage. So we... Joel: She's fancy. Chad: She is fancy. Joel: She's fancy. Chad: You know what also is fancy? That fucking iCIMS hoodie. It's so soft, and it feels like a hug from Brian Provost. [chuckle] Joel: Yeah, who made those? Aviator. I never heard of those before. Chad: They are like... They are like custom made, they're like 200 bucks a piece. [music] Chad: They're like 200 bucks a piece. Soft, light, embroidered. That was great. Great. I love seeing the swag game just get leveled up. Joel: Yeah, in my house we keep score between yeti giveaways and hoodie giveaways, and it's pretty close now. [chuckle] Joel: It's pretty close, it's about even. A lot of yetis and hoodies getting sent out. By the way, when you think about free stuff getting sent out, Chad. Our listeners, if they sign up, can get a chance at some free shit. Who doesn't love some free shit? Chad: Unless you're Stephen McGrath. [chuckle] Joel: Unless you're, unless you live in the Highlands. We don't deliver to the Highlands, unfortunately. We're talking about t-shirts, we have the custom that were made at the show. But you can have your very own t-shirt. Just go to chadcheese.comfree or click the free link. We got t-shirts from JobGet. Joel: You can win whiskey, my friend. You get a Chad and Cheese selection. That's from our friends at Textkernel. Aspen Tech Labs is helping us send beer to people. And our friends at Plum, if it's your birthday, you have a chance to win a fine bottle of rum sent to you on your birthday from our friends at Plum. SFX: Really? Could you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I could feel it the all way down on my plums. [chuckle] Joel: Alright. That brings us to the birthday celebration. Last episode was a really long list, this is a really short list, so whatever was in the water back in the day at this time of the year, I don't know what it is. It's the early May or something. Chad: Taurus. Joel: Anyway, so celebrating another trip around the sun, we got Amy Butchcoe, good friend of the show. Michelle Bier. Maria Similton, Christoph Foley, Ward Chrisman. Jenny Rutt and Ed Neumann. SFX: Happy birthday. Joel: Happy birthday, everybody. Happy birthday. Chad: Yeah. And guess where we're going next, kids? It's RecFest. Holy shit. Early July, Knebworth Park. Just north of London. [applause] Chad: Joel and I will be MCing the Disrupt stage. It's all tech, all day. Beer, love, friends. Packed house. Guarantee you people. Joel: Nashville hot chicken all day. All day we'll... Chad: No, before that. We're going to Knebworth first, then we're gonna go to Nashville. [laughter] Chad: You were so excited about the Nashville hot chicken. Joel: I am. RecFest is everywhere now. Shit, I can't keep up. Chad: Yes, yes. So we do have, we have the RecFest in July, but we also have RecFest coming to America finally, in Nashville in September. All of these, you can find. Go to chadcheese.com, click on "events" in the upper right hand corner, check out where we're gonna be, register. Especially the RecFest Nashville, listen up kids, hey listener, 50% off discount code. No shit, 50%. [applause] Chad: So if you're new to RecFest, let me give you a little something here. It's much different than any of the other conferences that we go to. This is like an all-hands time for you and your crew. Chad: So if you're VP of TA or you're director of TA and you wanna have an all hands meeting, this is the place to have it. It's like, it's like the easy button, you go to Nashville, you bring the whole gang, and that's what this whole event, this carnival of TA master-ness... Master fullness? Whatever. Chad: That's what you have to do, right? So again, chadcheese.com, go to "events". Go get your 50% off tickets, bring the whole goddamn crew, man. It's gonna be a blast. Joel: Am I the only one that thinks the RecFest leadership team wants to spend a night in jail in Nashville? [chuckle] Joel: I feel like that's where this thing is going. And yes, as you see, Chad is sporting the Shaker Recruitment Marketing swag. All our travel is powered by the good folks at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. And for what I understand, Joe Shaker had a happy birthday. Chad: Happy birthday, Joe. Happy Birthday. Joel: The Cubs still suck. Chad: Last but not least, though, kids, guess what? That's right. Chad & Cheese have gone video. Yes, we're starting off, we're working with our friends over at SkillScout who can actually do this stuff and make us look good. Or at least try to make us look good. Chad: What did you need? More Chad & Cheese and our ugly mugs on YouTube. Video snippets coming. It's gonna be off the chain. We're gonna have a blast. And if we look bad, it's not our fault, it's SkillScout's fault. [chuckle] Chad: No, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. Elena and Abby over there, they are fucking pros at what they do, and we're really excited to partner with them to actually get this done. Joel: Yeah, if anyone can make us look competent, it's them. But I can tell you the early shows will have some F-ups, so if you wanna get a real entertainment, watch the first few episodes of us on video. Chad: But it will not be as bad as our first podcast, I can guarantee that. [chuckle] Joel: Oh god, yeah. Yeah. [music] Chad: Topics. Joel: Talk about a meandering hour and a half of nothingness. Yeah, go listen to the first ever episode. Alright, here we go, kids, we got some topics to cover. Joel: HireVue has acquired Modern Hire. They intend to use the acquisition to accelerate the growth of both companies' technology and create new solutions to help organizations to understand and activate a candidate's potential beyond their background and experience. Joel: Modern Hire's CEO, Karin Borchert... Or is it Borchette? [chuckle] Joel: Said the combination of the two companies provides, " A tremendous opportunity to rapidly expand hiring solutions for customers and their candidates alike." Chad, what's your take on the HireVue news? Chad: Little back story, first and foremost. HireVue, around since 2004, okay? 93 million in funding, which seems like a pittance compared to the Eightfolds of the world. So you gotta give them some love because they are making money, 'cause they haven't gone over the edge with funding. Chad: Montage, that was what Modern Hire was. We'll talk about that in a second. They came around in 2007, about 28 million, 27.7 million in funding. Montage merged with Shaker International and then re-branded to Modern Hire in 2019. Chad: From my sources in the rumor mill, the merger didn't go very well. The cultures clashed, they were pretty diametrically opposed from a team and a culture standpoint. So you have the drama and then the drama doesn't play well to production goals, focus, sales vision, anything like that. Chad: Then in July of 2020, Modern Hire acquires Sonru, something we've never heard of before. Another interviewing tool. So a bigger fish eating a smaller fish. Chad: One thing that we did see, kind of like side bar, Modern Hire always did a wonderful job at conferences, showing a little leg, teasing to perspective buyers. "Look at my booth, come demo my product." It really felt kind of like an Eightfold's luring of the buyer strategy, just on a trailer park budget. Chad: Anyways, congrats to Modern Hire. It's a fucking hard game. And to be out there and knowing and hearing that they've been on the sales, I don't wanna say clearance rack, I think they ended up the clearance rack, but they've been looking to be sold for a while now. To me, HireVue, bigger fish eating a smaller fish, which a couple of smaller fishes in the food chain. Chad: So that's what we're saying. Consolidation, which we talk about all the time. Joel: Yeah, so Montage was kind of a cool brand. Chad: It was, yeah. Joel: They were sort of hip and cool had kind of a cool name. Shaker was this kind of weird Cleveland company that I knew from my time there, and they did like job testing, like you're on the site, they tried to pre-screen you for jobs. Joel: And these two got together, I'm not exactly sure why. I thought that was kind of a weird thing. And then they did the dumbest of all dumb things, they trashed Montage brand, and they create this ridiculous Modern Hire. When you have the show Modern Family, you have David Bowie's Modern Love, it just did not make any sense to me. They come out with these black and gold colors, which weren't the colors of any of the businesses that just paired with each other. Joel: I think there was this definite culture clash, if you will. I think that the tech was very different on both ends. I don't think it worked. I don't think consumers ever really embrace the Modern Hire brand. I think if... They should have remained Montage, bought Shaker, put in the tech as much as they could, benefit their current clients. Joel: But they created a lot of confusion in the marketplace. I don't think it ever worked. We made fun of them at their first HR tech, 'cause it looked ridiculous. Even the font was stupid, the font look like they were trying to launch a Hollywood production company or something. Chad: Or a furniture store. Joel: Pandemic happens and really... Pandemic video solutions. They should have thrived. Chad: Yes. Joel: They did not. And they lost real estate to startups that we've talked about on the show. I think they've lost some leadership and some people at the company over the last few years. Joel: Along comes HireVue, you know the story, two dinosaurs cuddle up to hope that they can withstand the meteor shower. HireVue clearance rack, great, sure. HireVue has been around a long time. If they would have... If they were gonna explore, they would have exploded by now. I think they just kinda chug along, found a discount, get some people, get some sales people, whatever. Joel: But to me, this is a big... This is a big old nothing burger. That's about it. We're not even talking... Let's just throw in the whole AI legal problems that HireVue has as well, and then it's just a whole recipe of why acquire another company and blah, blah, blah. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Chad: Well, I mean, the market is just way too noisy and competitive. There are way too many cost-effective and viable options for interview, like BrightHire, Wedge, Honeit, our boys over in Scotland, Willow. Harbor, Qualifi, Interview.io. And even platforms like Woven, HiringBranch, and those crazy smart Israeli ladies over at TaTiO, that test for competencies, which allows you to skip interviewing entirely for some of those high volume roles. Chad: So I believe in some cases, companies know they are filling roles, just the process is way too long and they're losing people. So with the latest flurry of startups which we're starting to see with chatbot interviewing, or as I had said earlier, cutting out the interview process entirely for high volume roles, HireVue is going to have problems gaining market share. Chad: So how are they gonna get market share? They're gonna have to buy it. They're gonna have to buy. And as we talked about, they're also going to have to do one thing. One or two things. They're gonna have to get acquired, something's gonna have to happen there. And/or they're gonna have to get acquired or just die. [chuckle] Joel: Throw in the towel. Just cash it in. Take the money and run. Chad: Yeah. Because now, Modern Hire clients are gonna be, they're gonna be transitioned, I guarantee you, over into HireVue and then they're gonna see the bill and it's gonna be at least 2 to 3x that of what they were used to paying in the first place. So it's gonna be interesting, it really is. Joel: Everyone was driving a gas automobile, and then EVS came out and everybody said like, "I want some of that." Modern Hire, not so modern, they're more of a jalopy at this point that got acquired. We hardly knew ye. We hardly knew ye, Modern Hire. [chuckle] Joel: So from one fading company to arguably, another one? I don't know. LinkedIn is cutting 716 jobs, roughly 3.5% of its workforce as part of a wider restructuring plan. The company will also shut down its local jobs app in China. LinkedIn has been the only Western social media platform to operate in China since 2014. Joel: On the jobs front, LinkedIn is testing a new feature that uses generative AI to draft personalized messages that candidates can send to hiring managers. The feature uses information from a user's profile, as well as the hiring manager's profile, job description and the company of interest. Joel: The AI will create a personalized message that can be sent to the hiring team. The feature is available to the platform's premium subscribers, so no freebies, kids. Chad, your take on some of the news out of LinkedIn this week? Chad: So first and foremost, here's the quote from the article, 716 roles will go as a part of, "Changes aimed at responding to economic conditions." Economic conditions. "And making the business more agile." More agile. Chad: So classic CEO spin, blaming economic conditions and not addressing sub-standard product built on 20-year-old tech. We're seeing this from CEOS everywhere who are trying to create bullshit narratives to save their multi-million dollar comp packages. 716 people. That's about 3.5% of LinkedIn total head count. 3.5% will not make you more agile. Chad: At 20,000 employees, LinkedIn is an incredibly bloated organization, and 3.5% will not move the needle. Especially when it's the tech in the products that need to be more agile. The amount of tech debt they are paying on a daily basis, it has to be enormous, I can't even fathom. Chad: But the big story here, and you definitely touched on it, is the continued failed efforts in China. We've seen many companies try to crack into China, either by introducing products like we're seeing here with LinkedIn, or acquiring Chinese sites like Monster did back in the day. China looks like an amazing opportunity until you start throwing cash at it and it doesn't come back. Chad: On the generative AI side of the house, this is an easy plug for Microsoft. This is I think an easy bridge. Do I think that this is gonna save the archaic platform itself? No. I think there's gotta be something that they do to be able to change who they are for the future. Chad: They can't be the six degrees from Kevin Bacon focus, they have to be more fashion forward, and they're gonna need new tech to do that. I just don't know how they get there. SFX: Layoffs? Joel: Layoffs at LinkedIn again, 3.5%, 26,000 employees. Not a big story. I'm just surprised it wasn't more. Why they don't just take one big cut at it and get it over with? I don't know. Joel: So to me, that's not a huge story. I think like most tech companies laying off people is just par for the course. Replacing those folks with more AI solutions, which by the way, LinkedIn has the inside track. They're owned by Microsoft, who's a big investor in OpenAI. So that's much to do about nothing. Joel: I do agree that the China play is really interesting. Some history, Google got out of China over 10 years ago, I think. Just because China wanted so much control over the algorithm and the search results and who's searching what, and Google is just like, "We're out, we're not gonna play that game." Baidu obviously has taken over the search market there. Joel: Facebook never got in. I remember Zuckerberg over in China and palm pressing and playing nice. Never happened. Twitter never happened. LinkedIn was really the only social network, and they were basically LinkedIn as you know them, until I think 2014, they were the only player in town. Since China was being China and like, "Okay, we wanna know who are the dissidents, who's sharing stuff about China's government," or whatever. Joel: So then LinkedIn said, "Okay, we're just gonna be jobs, alright? We're just gonna be jobs and that's it." And I thought, "Well, how would... " That's okay. That's pretty safe, right? Well, apparently not. So now they're totally out of China. Joel: I think the regulations, the government, I just think it became too much of a headache. They probably weren't posting a ton of jobs anyway in China. I'm guessing most Chinese companies are encouraged to post their jobs on Chinese sites and not American sites. Joel: The TikTok drama, I think has some play into that. I think maybe LinkedIn is seeing like, "Look, this whole app banning censorship thing is gonna happen, we might as well get the hell out now while we can and not get caught up in the whole TikTok thing." Joel: So that to me is really interesting, and it goes to our division of like you're either on Chinese or team like Western democracy. Team authoritarian and the world is splitting up, and this is sort of indicative of that. Joel: The AI stuff for job seekers is pretty cool. I think making it only paid users, and I think we talked about this previously, like if you made it free, employers would freak out because of all the AI generated whatever applications they would have to deal with. Joel: So if you keep it to the paid members, it's a little bit under control, bots aren't creating profiles to spam companies. And I think the more that LinkedIn gets to monthly sponsorships by individual users, I think the better the business becomes. Joel: Because as you and I talk about, companies that don't love necessarily being on LinkedIn and are looking for an alternative, like it's smart to have more diversity in where money comes. Joel: So as far as I can tell, the Kool-Aid is still tasty. It maybe not have as much dim sum as it used to have in it. I don't even know if that's a Chinese thing or not, but it sounds like a Chinese thing. So less Chinese flavor, but I think the Kool-Aid is still tasty at my buddies at LinkedIn. Chad: I think they could easily put a cap on the usage, but I'm gonna go back to again, Monster, when they acquired the 6sense search back in the day. And then it was really cool, it was revolutionary, it was amazing, but then they made you pay for it. So it never got adopted. Chad: And it just didn't get... It didn't reach the adoption level that it should have quickly. We're talking about job matching that was really good, and it was ahead of its time. But they put that layer of you had to pay for it bullshit in there. This is another thing that LinkedIn, you've gotta understand history and how this shit works. Chad: Allow everybody to touch it, taste it, feel it. Put a cap on it, and allow those other individuals, right? You got this freemium model that's happening. Chad: And if you take a look at Microsoft's Copilot, some of these videos where it's actually embedded into the Microsoft Word, all the different Office products, and you're working with the Copilot to be able to generate PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, etcetera, etcetera. Imagine what you could do with that generative AI with all of my information? Chad: I've said it a million times, there's more information on LinkedIn about me and my job history than anywhere else on the web, okay? Imagine grinding on that data, being able to really have a search that could prospectively match me with jobs that makes sense, instead of trying to throw bullshit at me because their current search and technology is shit. But to be able to pivot into those types of things. Chad: I really believe from a strategic standpoint, this is all flash in the pan, because they're not taking a look at what OpenAI actually did. Had a freemium, "Come, everybody. Come in. Taste it, feel it, touch it. How is it? Okay, great. Here's your monthly fee." Joel: Freemium models, Chad, are the wave of the future. [chuckle] Joel: Yeah, either way, Microsoft and OpenAI, shit's gonna get bonkers. I wonder what Google is gonna do? We'll find out when we come back, everybody. Joel: Alright, so we're talking AI, which I know our listeners are gonna be shocked about. [chuckle] Joel: So we have a few stories to address here. So details are little sparse, but Google's answer to ChatGPT or Bard, apparently is coming to some clarity, if you will. They had a big presentation yesterday outlining what Bard was gonna do, what their plans were to integrate it with search, blah, blah, blah. You can google that if you wanna learn more. Joel: But interestingly, they talked about an integration with ZipRecruiter and Indeed. Not real clear what is gonna happen here. I did a search on Bard 'cause I am... I'm in the test group. I think more and more are. But I searched "sales jobs near me", it just gave me, "Go to CareerBuilder," which was interesting. One of the answers was like, "Go to Monster, Indeed or CareerBuilder." Joel: And then I said, and I did like "ZipRecruiter: Sales jobs" to see what happened. Nothing really happened there. So I'm not exactly sure how this is gonna play out, but the fact that they listed Indeed and ZipRecruiter as partners is certainly interesting. Chad, what are your thoughts on where Google is going with Bard and our job search brothers? Chad: Well, thanks to Rob and Alex over across the pond at Talent Nexus for actually turning us on to this. This to me is the antithesis of what should be happening with generative AI. Chad: Over the years with Google initiatives, we've seen incredibly lazy and uninformed moves in the job market. From Google Base to the initial launch of Google For Jobs, Google Hire, the Google Jobs API, and then the Military Crosswalk job search that they had, which was a fucking disaster. Chad: If Google has done anything in the space, it has demonstrated that it doesn't understand this space. So no matter how many PhDs they throw at it, it's just not gonna work until they start to get people who understand the actual industry. We're so much different than every other industry. Chad: So in this case, we shouldn't be training off of duplicative data points. We should be training on driving users to actually the actual source of the job. Is this a political positioning move for Google to try and build a defensive case and try not to get into legal hot water like they did in the EU? Maybe. Joel: Maybe. Chad: It's somewhat of a mirage though, and detracts from Google For Jobs. It's also a very lazy effort to consume jobs, because it's not going directly to the source. And Google For Jobs already has feeds that are marked up. So why are they doing this instead of just using what's already available to them? Chad: Once again, with Google initiatives, and we've seen this over and over and over, I remember back in the Base days, Google is so fucking big, they don't... The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. At all. And that's exactly I think what's happening here. Chad: So I think whatever we see out of this is literally just going to be... It's gonna be just trash. Joel: Yeah. It's really strange, and I was spending a lot of time on the flight or waiting for my flight more or less, thinking about this. So when Google For Jobs came out, Indeed was like, "We're not gonna play. We're not involved. We're not doing it. Fuck it." They obviously have since changed course and they are putting their jobs on Google For Jobs. Joel: So the fact that they would be sort of an early adopter or early partner in terms of this was really interesting to me. Also, what does this mean for the future of Google For Jobs? Joel: They just launched pay-per click, like they just started monetizing it. I don't know if they said, "Hey, we're not monetizing it enough, or there's not enough interest. We need to change course." So that was weird to me as well. Joel: I think what the real fear of Google is, is having their search leap frogged by ChatGPT. So if you even just say, "Hey, Google or Bard," or whatever, "I need a reservation at such restaurant on Friday night between 07:00 and 08:00. Can you do that?" And it just goes out to Opendoor, makes a reservation, and like you're done, it syncs in with your Google account or whatever, and that's done. Joel: So we've had news before about Apple being concerned about ChatGPT leap frogging the app ecosystem. I don't need an iPhone with apps anymore, I can just do it with voice or talk to my AI assistant and it'll just do it for me. Joel: Well, an obvious sort of thing to do is classifieds, and jobs is one of those things like, "Hey, Bard. I need a job, I need a sales job in Milwaukee that pays between 75 and 100 grand a year," dah, dah, dah. Okay, bam, it goes in there and it gives it to you. And it needs trusted sources to be able to deliver that stuff to you, because if Bard starts delivering stuff that's like Joey's Lobster Cabin... Chad: It's more like LinkedIn today. [chuckle] Joel: Yeah. It's from a job site called joelslist.com or something, and you're like, "This is bullshit. I'm not gonna use it." So to have these trusted sources where it's Opendoor or Zillow or whatever to search these things, I think that is where Google has to go. Joel: So maybe it has less to do about job postings and political stuff, it's just, it's fear that search itself is at risk. And if we don't create these collaborations with brands people trust, they're not gonna use us. And to me, that is the bigger picture for what Google is looking at. Joel: Now, how do you get in the door? And how don't you? Do users select, "Hey, I really love this job site, this local site, I want that part."? I think that'll be determined later. But to me, it's a real threat to the actual business of search that Google is making these partnerships, but it's very, very interesting and we're both excited to talk about it on the podcast. Joel: More of Google to come, but we don't talk about Dice very much, Chad. So let's... Chad: There's a reason for that. [chuckle] Joel: Let's throw them in the mix here in our AI block. Tech job board Dice has launched Dice AutoPen. AutoPen, an AI-powered tool developed on OpenAI to help Tech professionals generate cover letters when applying to jobs on the Dice mobile app. Joel: Chad, your mind is blown, I can see it. What are your thoughts on the news from Dice? Chad: Cover letters? For tech? Fucking cover letters? [chuckle] Chad: You wasted tech assets, PR and marketing assets on fucking cover letters. Dude, I got nothing. Art and the team have literally dug the hole and they're starting to throw dirt on themselves. I mean, cover letters? Dude, I got nothing. This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard for the tech market. Cover letters? That's the best you got, Art? Yeah, fire yourself. Joel: You're saying they didn't go deep enough? SFX: Just the tip. Joel: And they branded it, which is the funny thing, Dice AutoPen. I got nothing. [chuckle] Chad: Again, they wasted assets on something that is this fucking worthless. Joel: I have to assume AutoPen will be a suite of features, one is cover letters, one is resumes, one is like a total auto-pen. Chad: For the tech community it's really not even necessary. The thing that they're missing are the testing, all of the things that bring community together. They just don't... It's much like Google, as we're talking about our space, Art and team, Dice is one of the oldest job sites in the world, and guess what, they just don't fucking get it. Joel: How many recruiters hiring tech folks bitch about, "Gee, the cover letters just aren't what they used to be. We need better cover letters on our tech, our tech applications."? [chuckle] Chad: Yes. Joel: Oh god. Dice, Dice, Dice. Alright, let's go to our third story in the AI block. About 35% of US workers believe that their job will become more reliant on workplace automation in the next few years, while almost 10% have already been impacted by it. According to a survey by our friends at SHRM. Joel: Additionally, 23% of workers are concerned that automation will replace their jobs in the next five years. That's almost one in four, Chad. Women were found to be less concerned about job displacement due to automation compared to men. I don't know where to go with that one. Joel: But Chad, what are your thoughts on all this concern about jobs being replaced by the bots? Chad: I think the last place I'm gonna go to try to do research on generative AI and replacement and all that other bunch, is SHRM. Okay? SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time. Chad: They do a survey. Come on, man. This is... Again, one of the things that we have way too much of these days is shitty content, worthless content that just presses a narrative that doesn't even fucking exist yet. Right? Chad: If we start to talk to people who actually get it, and there's data that goes along with that, then let's have that conversation. But this is just SHRM trying to get into the AI conversation, trying to look cool so that Johnny can get another really expensive suit or some shit like that. Who the fuck knows. I mean, it's just crazy. Joel: Oh, that's a red alert, Chad. My spidey senses have gone off on this story. What I wanna know is, with things like this, you got up-skilling companies, how many companies in this... I wanna know what companies is SHRM now going to invest in, that this data will support to make these companies more profitable? That's what I wanna know, Chad. Joel: Because you know deep down, we're gonna make more money because we're gonna be an education source for all these HR people who are scared of being replaced, and we're gonna make money on these companies that provide services for all these people that are scared to death, and SHRM is gonna look like Duck McScrooge on Duke Avenue in Old Town, Alexandria. And Johnny Taylor's gonna be cocaine and... Cocaine and hoes and boats and whatever. I got nothing. This is some funny shit. Joel: Anyway, let's talk about productivity. That is the end of our AI block, everybody. So the United States has experienced five consecutive quarters for year-over-year declines in productivity, which has never happened before, since the data was first collected way back in 1948. The low productivity is creating compensation pressures and pushing up unit labor costs. Joel: Research suggests that the current low productivity environment is due to the constraints that the pandemic has placed on the economy, such as supply chain constraints, labor constraints and capital constraints. Joel: Increased productivity would alleviate each of these concerns as well as cost pressures. Experts are optimistic that numbers will trend towards normal again this year. Joel: Sounds like a work from home scam to me, Chad, but what are your thoughts? Chad: Well, first and foremost, we put out a podcast episode this week with Andrea from Visier, that is focused on turnover contagion. And it's fucking hard to keep pace with when your positions aren't filled. Or new employees are onboarding, in training, and just not up to snuff with their predecessors. Chad: So this isn't a work from home problem, it's a continued workforce problem, and it won't be fixed until companies start changing the ways they're doing business, by focusing on employees first instead of just the outcomes. The outcomes will come, if you put the time and the effort into your people. Come on, this is basic shit. Chad: So when the employee trust the company, they commit to the company, they stay with the company and productivity happens. Morale won't increase with more beatings, iron fists, and less focus on humans doing the job. Chad: So the article says, EY's Gregory Daco, "Acknowledged hearing from clients that remote work could be making employees, well, work less hard." And that's completely anecdotal and builds a false narrative to divert away from the real problem. Chad: Again, one of the things that we have to do, and I'm glad that we do this podcast weekly, is we have to cut through the bullshit. Period. Take a look at the market, take a look at what's happening, what is actually impacting it? It's quitting, it's turnover, it's this turnover contagion thing that's actually happening. Chad: It's still happening. Okay? It is still happening. It's not remote workers. And if it is, it's a very, very small, small fraction of the problem. Joel: Sounds like another billionaire scam, Chad, from where I sit. So your buddy, Johnny Taylor... Chad: Oh, good god. Joel: From SHRM, he was a presenter at iCIMS. Chad: If what you wanna call him. [chuckle] Joel: And his take on this was that all the productivity news at the beginning of the pandemic, we're more productive working from home, or at least we're as productive as we have been. His take was, there was nowhere to go, everything was closed, everything locked down. All you had to do was sit home with kids that probably hated you and you were mad at them. So all you had to do is like close the office door and work. And now that we have places to go, everything's open, that people are doing stuff outside of that. Joel: I have no doubt that people were really productive at the beginning, maybe are taking a few more trips to Chipotle, the Dairy Queen, the Orange Julius at the mall, I don't know where it is. [chuckle] Joel: Or what they're doing in their local markets. But they're willing to be as productive as you are willing to lead them on the projects and things that the company needs to get done. Joel: I've had coaches, yes, I used to play sports, Chad. I know looking at me, that's easy to understand. But the best coaches out there were the ones that say, "Look, if we're not performing, if you're not doing what I need you to do, if you aren't producing at your highest level, it's not your fault, it's my fault." Joel: And the best coaches are willing to look in the mirror and say, "It's the buck stops here. If we're not doing what we need to do, it's on me. And I need to motivate you, educate you, get you in the right spot, get you on the right position that you need to be in." Joel: So to me, this is a failure on the part of leadership. Maybe there's a learning curve, may be learning to motivate in remote conditions is something we'll get through. But to me, to blame the workers is just short-sighted and really lazy. Joel: Just like the best coaches in the world, they look in the mirror and say, "It's on me if we're not producing," and the best managers out there and need to look at themselves and say, "If we're not producing, it's on me." Chad: Yes. Agreed. Well, it's funny too, because we just did a show a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, where Johnny's talking about the prospect of remote work not working. Chad: Well, that asshole actually outsourced, fired somebody who wanted to go remote, and then outsourced the job to India so he could pay 40% more. That's still fucking remote work, asshole. Chad: Again, it only makes sense to the CEOs 'cause it's in their brain as they're getting ready to go to the country club on Friday, and you should be home working. Joel: We'll be right back. Joel: Just in time for lunch, Chad. Let's talk about Wendy's. They're set to deploy an AI-powered chatbot to automate its drive-through service, powered by national natural language software from Google. Joel: Wendy's aims to streamline the ordering process and avoid long lines in the drive-through lanes from turning customers away. The AI chatbot is trained to understand the various ways customers order off the menu, and includes unique terms and phrases specific to Wendy's burgers, fries and other items. Can I hear someone say, "Frosty." Amen. Joel: Wendy's has been working with Google since 2021 in areas such as data analytics, machine learning and cloud tools. The customized language model is built and fine-tuned on top of Google's own large language model. Joel: Chad, the drive-through is about to get a lot more interesting. What are your thoughts? Chad: We've got McDonald's who, they're launching human-less stores. No people work at the stores, right? This is just a step toward that. And I remember being a kid working the drive through, that was probably the best job. Working the fire was not the best job. Right? [chuckle] So being able to actually talk to people, give 'em their food. That kind of thing. Joel: Get numbers from girls. Yeah, I know what you're saying. [chuckle] Chad: I mean, yeah, it's one of those things. But it just makes sense. And if I don't have to be on the mic and have to go through all the bullshit and I can just, again, take some of those tasks off and just interact human to human through the actual drive-through, it's interesting. But then that human's gonna be taken away from the drive-through and there's gonna be a robot that's handing the bag out sometime soon. Joel: Yeah. So you remember when we talked about the Walmart robots stacking shelves, and how long would it take for someone to pick up a Louisville Slugger to one of those robots? [chuckle] And so my mind, as awful as it is, goes to the games people are gonna play with AI at the drive-through. Joel: So a little story, one spring break, I went down to Texas, South Padre Island, with a bunch of friends. And one of the friends got kind of cute with ordering at whatever restaurant we're at. He ordered Paul smokes. Paul smokes, and I'll let you use your own mind in terms of what that is a metaphor for. Joel: So anyway, the cashier didn't know what that was, and he went on to say like, "Oh, we have them in the Midwest, you don't sell them here." She asked the manager like, "Do we have Paul smokes?" He got the joke and laughed, "Ha, ha," and then whatever. Joel: So anyway, the things are gonna happen. Chad: Seymour Butts. [chuckle] Joel: Yeah. So I'm really hoping for the day that I can go to the McDonald's near me and order my barber cold ball. That's what I want. SFX: Oh my god, I love Chipotle. [chuckle] Joel: It's time for a nap. We out. Chad: We out. 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 big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. Outro: No, you hung out with these two chuckle 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 took away. And like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either. Outro: We out.

Everything Must Go at CareerBuilder! Who doesn’t love a good garage sale? Items that have outlasted their usefulness going for pennies on the dollar to a new owner. We don’t usually associate the garage sale with HR tech, but here we are (again) with the once mighty CareerBuilder giving us plenty of bargains and clearance rack specials to talk about. Lots to talk about. But the gold plated content doesn’t stop there. Twitter has made an acquisition in our space, Elon thinks remote work is a moral issue, Google just may crush half the businesses in our space with their new search, Qualifi continues to make us Hoosiers proud and there’s a new Caryn in town, and this one mints money while vacationing, well, wherever the hell she wants. Lots to digest this week; good thing Chad & Cheese are here to make sense of it all. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast. WATCH VIDEO VERSION [music] Joel: Oh, yeah. Oscar Mayer is changing the name of the Wienermobile to Frankmobile. Ironically, Frank is what I call my wiener. You are listening to the Chad & Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel, all beef, Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad, did Dwight from The Office just become CEO, Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, CareerBuilder burns. Who would you rather, pitting Twitter against Google, and CarynAI. Buckle up. Let's do this. Joel: So Chad, the new dynamic, you're in a happy hour in Europe, and I'm at lunch time in America. I'm not sure how that's gonna go. Chad: Beautiful. New beer. Local, local. Joel: Seneca? What does that say? Chad: Senescal. Senescal. Joel: Senescal. Chad: Yes, Senescal. Joel: Okay. Cardinal ALE. Chad: Cardinal ALE, religiously multi-ruby ALE. Joel: So monks are making it at the... Chad: The Templar knights. Actually... Joel: The temple down the... Yeah. Chad: No, literally, the Templar knights, one of their last strongholds is really close to here, and this is where they brew the beer. Joel: Okay. Chad: I shit you not. Joel: 'Cause when you're dying in the middle ages, it helps to be drunk, that's for sure. Chad: Well, it always helps to be drunk, c'mon. Joel: Especially podcasting, so drink on a drink, Chad. Drink on. Drink on. Well, I'm glad things are going well. Things are going well. Shall we get to some... SFX: Shout-outs. Chad: Shout-outs, let's do it. Joel: Alright. I gotta go first. So I'm in America, you're in Europe. I'm gonna see stuff on TV that you're not gonna see, or you're gonna see second hands. Chad: Thank God. Joel: So this week, CNBC had a big interview with your boy, Elon Musk, and he opined about work from home, and he framed it as a moral issue, which I found really interesting. So I'm gonna play this sound bite for you and our listeners, and we'll talk about it on the other side. Chad: Okay. Elon Audio: I am a big believer that people need to... Are more productive when they're in-person. Look, there are some exceptions, but I kind of think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Mary Antoinette quote, "Let them meet cake." It's like, really, you're gonna work from home and you're gonna make everyone else you made your car work in the factory? You're gonna make the people who make your food that gets delivered, that they can't work from home? The people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? That's messed up. Elon Audio: You see it as a moral issue? Elon Audio: Yes. Elon Audio: I mean, I see it more as a... Elon Audio: It's a productivity issue, but it's also a moral issue. People should get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work from home bullshit, because they're asking everyone else to not work from home while they do. The laptop class is living in la-la land. Chad: Hello. Joel: The laptop class is living in la-la land. What do you think about that, Chad? Chad: Well, I think it's pretty simple. This is what the rich guys have always done. They've pit the middle class against the lower class, against the low wage class. They've always done that. So it's like, don't look at us and the million/billions that we're making and super yachts and all that other bullshit. Now, I know Elon likes to say that he sleeps in his office and that kind of shit. That's just 'cause he's a weird fucking nutso job. At the end of the day, what this is, is what he'd said right out of the gate, it's a belief. It's a belief in his fucked up head. He's pitting one class against the other, and then he sits back with the popcorn and he watches. And that's what rich dudes with a lot of money, who can get on big TV, can do. Either buy ads and/or just get on these interviews. Joel: Yeah. So to me, we've seen this evolve, at first it was a culture issue. It was, "Well, if we're not in the office, we're not hanging out at the water cooler talking about Seinfeld or whatever." And then it became a productivity issue. And, well, I think last week we talked about the new productivity report and productivity is down as people are working from home, and now it's a moral issue, which I find really, if that's not a reach, I don't know what is. But if we're like, "it's a moral issue." And he also said a few things that stuck out to me in the interview. One is that, I think he said 3.6 million applications came in to Twitter... Oh, Tesla. Sorry, Tesla last year. When you have three million applications, and he also said it's harder to get into Tesla than it is to Harvard, was one of the things that he said. And when you have the mentality that you're more exclusive than Harvard, then yes, you better come back to the office because I've got three million other people that are willing to do the job and come in the office. So his luxury is not everyone's luxury for sure. So he's in sort of a bubble from that end. The other thing that he said was that he and Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, hang out quite a bit, and I'm sure that he and all the gang at Silicon Valley hang out... Chad: Oh, sure. Joel: And have cigars... Chad: The yacht club. Joel: And bourbon or whatever, and I'm sure what they talk about is, it's costing us a lot of money in rent and real estate and whatever else, how do we get these fuckers back in the office? And they sit around and go, "Let's paint it as a moral issue. Maybe that'll work," and this is the latest thing. So I don't know. Moral issue is a real reach from my perspective. Chad: These are all... And again, one of the reasons why I love this podcast is we get a chance to actually break down the bullshit. Just these narratives, productivity, we broke that down last week. It's not fucking productivity, guys. It's the bullshit situation that you actually make people work in every fucking day. In this case, again, he's just pitting lower class with middle class so that they can sit back and watch those two fight it out. Yeah, the last thing I wanna do is listen to the richest man in the world tell me how we should actually fucking work. It's well beyond him at this point, not to mention, he's the guy who actually went into Twitter and had all of his engineering staff re-engineer his account so that he would actually be more popular than some of the other influencers that are out there. So this is where the guy's head is. It's all about him. Has nothing to do with anybody else. It's all about him. If you wanna worship Elon, great, you should, and you should work at Tesla. Joel: And for 3.6 million people, that's exactly what they wanna do. Chad: There you go. Joel: That's exactly what they wanna do. Chad: I'm gonna switch it up. I'm gonna give a shout-out to a start-up, Adsee. I'm going to shout-out to Adsee because, the organization, we literally just did a shred on them, and they were part of a laundry list of organizations that were in it. But Vlad, the Founder and CEO over at Adsee, who's in Kyiv, by the way, first and foremost, if somebody talks about you, amplify it. Fuck, get it out there. Amplify it, number one. No matter whether it's good, better or indifferent, you can actually turn a negative into a positive, or at least a perceived negative into a positive. And we see this from so many companies when we do by ourselves or we have opinions during our podcasts or what have you, where some companies, the smart ones, they want to help control the narrative. They reach out to us and they say, "Let's talk through what you're saying. We want to know more about what you're talking about and/or try to educate you on what we're trying to do in the market." To me, that's trying to control the narrative. Trying to be smart. We have big companies who have gotten unicorn cash, who we talk about, never reached out to us at all. Now, some have, don't get me wrong, but to me, it's a huge brand fail for an organization not to amplify what's being said about them, one way or the other. In this case, a little bitty company out of Ukraine called Adsee was like, "Holy shit, let's amplify." So big shoutout to them. Joel: Yeah, and by the way, what happens when that happens is Chad and I share it, we like it, and then you get to access our tens of thousands of followers on LinkedIn. So in addition to good practice, it's a pretty good marketing strategy. As of this recording, Adsee, that's A-D-S-E-E, has 14 followers on LinkedIn. Chad: Ratchet that up. Joel: Let's see if we can get that up a little bit, if nothing else, just because of what they did. And they went deep, Chad. SFX: Just the tears. Joel: They went deep on that marketing. My second shout-out and my last one is on LinkedIn. Chad, if you've noticed a dip in your LinkedIn follower account, this would be why. LinkedIn will no longer count inactive or restricted accounts in connection and follower stats. Chad: Really? Joel: So if you've seen your number dip, that's why. I frankly haven't seen much, so that's a good news. Being in recruiting, everyone that I'm connected to is probably on LinkedIn all the time. So I didn't see a dip, but if you have, that's why. Chad: No dip here, kids. Shout-out to Lauree Porter. You might remember Lauree because she's the director of all things cool at PENN Entertainment. She was on stage with us in California during iCIMS INSPIRE. Now, Lauree went above and beyond. She actually took the panoramic view of us on stage and she made that her LinkedIn background. And I just have to say, I saw it, I laughed my ass off and I loved it. Thanks, Lauree, and I can't wait till we see you again because you bring the best beer. Joel: That's right. If you don't know PENN Entertainment, they do gaming, Chad. And if you're not playing the game at Chad & Cheese, which is free shit, well, you are a loser, my friend. You are loser because we're giving away, get this, Chad, free t-shirts from our friends at JobGet, free bourbon from our home boys and girls at Textkernel, free beer from Aspen Tech Labs, and this month's winner for free beer is Britney Kaiser. Britney Kaiser lives in Michigan, but she's a State fan. She's not a Wolverine fan. That was important, but not necessary to win, to win stuff from us. And if it's your birthday, you can win rum from our friends at Plum, and this month's winner goes to Sean Campbell. Again, if you want free shit, if you wanna be a winner, you can go to PENN Entertainment, but you can as go to chadcheese.com, click the free link and sign up up. Chad: Yep, you miss every shot you don't take, kids. Events, guess what? We are getting ready to travel. Oh, that's right. I've got some travel already happening. But we're gonna be at RecFest in Knebworth Park. That's right. Courtesy of Shaker Recruitment Marketing and the lovely kids over at RecFest. We're gonna be emceeing the Disrupt Stage. And that's gonna happen early July. If you are in the UK, hell, if you're in Europe for God's sakes, and you've never been to RecFest, take your whole crew. It's all there is to it. Not to mention, if you're in the US, guess what kids, we're going to have RecFest in the US in Nashville. And Joel and I, we were two douche bags on a yacht. We're gonna try to do the two dudes on a pontoon again, podcast of the people, but that's in September. So you have time, in the US, go to chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner, and the whole hero image says RecFest. Click on the button, register your whole fucking team, man. This is an all hands meeting. Learn, drink, enjoy, and come to RecFest. Joel: And by the way, Chad, I think at Knebworth, there's gonna be a Lieven sighting. SFX: Oh. Joel: Lieven, our European man on the street, is gonna be there and joining us. We're gonna drag him on stage at some point. Chad: I cannot wait. Joel: Yeah, but that'll be a ton of fun. And as you're in Portugal, I will be in Vegas in June with the gang at the ERIN app, that's E-R-I-N. In honor of you not being there, they've actually purchased some cardboard cut-outs of you, like three big Chad heads, and then one, I think, full body Chad, that'll be in the booth with me recording, so that'll be a lot of fun, and that's in Vegas in June at the SHRM National Show. Chad: It's me, my plush bathroom when we were in Sweden, because we actually walked to the Kattegat because we were gonna jump in and swim with your ancestors. Joel: Oh, we did, yeah. Chad: And we had it on, and we had the beer, and we had it all. So yeah, no, that's a great pic. Joel: Oh, thinking about you in a bathroom, Chad. SFX: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know, I can. I can feel it all the way down on my plums. Joel: That's right. Let's talk about birthdays this week, celebrating another trip around the sun, we've got Michelle Sergeant, Matthew Bringham, Kalm O'Quinnan, tell me you're Irish without telling me you're Irish. Jack Linadare, Janet Leeds, Matt Seroka, Sean Campbell, Madison Richard, Stephanie Trisick, Caitlin Phil, Sara Grossman, Bill Cudic, and the doctor, not Jay, not Detroit, not Strange, The Job Board doctor. Chad: Job board, yes. Joel: All celebrate another trip around the sun. SFX: Happy birthday. Chad: And don't forget, kids, the Chad and Cheese are now on video. That's right, video. You can go to YouTube or you can go to chadcheese.com, you can click on the YouTube logo on the header, and you go to YouTube, subscribe, check us out. You can listen to us, you can watch us. All that fun stuff. Joel: Literally, this video is new for us. SFX: Alright. Alright. Alright. Joel: But we are loving it so far. [music] SFX: Alright, let's peel the onion. Okay, CareerBuilder has reached an agreement to sell its international business to a recruitment marketplace in Greece called Kariera. The deal includes CareerBuilder sites in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Vietnam and India. Meanwhile, CareerBuilder has reportedly laid off a significant number of employees with sources estimating up to 60% of its workforce in the US. The company has appointed Jeff Furman as the new CEO, replacing Susan Arthur, all this to focus on growth in the US, where CareerBuilder is still one of the top five job sites. Chad, lots to unpack here. Let's start with the international angle. Chad: Yeah. So this is a real Moe Greene Godfather moment here. You don't buy me out, I buy you out. So CareerBuilder bought kariera.gr in 2007, but sold it back in 2020. So they bought it and then sold it back. They probably sold it for less. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Chad: I mean, they did the same thing with Texkernel. Kariera Group will have 300-plus employees in 10 different cities. The CareerBuilder sites acquired are in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Vietnam and India. Via SimilarWeb, there is only one of those, Vietnam, that is in the top five. So there's a lot of work for the group to have, and hopefully they got this on sale, they got all these sites on sale. SFX: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel: Gee, how often do we talk about Greece in the game of world employment technology? Not very often. Chad: Never. Joel: So here's our introduction folks, Greece. I'm guessing a TJ Maxx in Milan had CareerBuilder on the rack. I don't know what to make of this. Offices, employees, this feels like an acquihire. It feels like a total fire sale from CareerBuilder standpoint. I mean, why they... Whatever. Are we gonna be talking about this on the European show? I wouldn't hold your breath. We'll see what happens, but I don't see this new company that's putting a stake in the ground in all these countries making a big impact. I don't see Stepstone shaking in their boots any time soon. So I don't have a ton of commentary on the international piece other than let's wait and see. Chad: $30 million going into Greece. That's not a bad thing. I think they're definitely gonna try to spin what CareerBuilder was. Most of these sites were CareerBuilder branded sites. There's only one, I think, maybe one or two, Jobs.de, which is one hell of a domain to have, was the German site. Joel: Do they kick out the CareerBuilder ad? Do you think they become a house of brands? Chad: Yeah, I don't think that you can in Europe. We've talked to Lieven about that. You have to stay with a brand that is something that the community and the country aligns with, and I think that was one of the reasons that Monster had problems, that Indeed has had problems. It's slowly ticked up in some of the countries, but I think, I would say that's some of the reasons why CareerBuilder is having problems. Remember, and you still see it, when you go to a restaurant and you see a sign that says, "Under new management," I think they should, in every single one of these sites, put, "Under new management," and then actually put, "We're Europeans" on it. Joel: And they need to go back to the old CareerBuilder branding, and if there's a God in heaven, they'll bring back the monkey commercials. This time with CGI, 'cause you get cancelled with real monkeys in ads these days. So, they'll have to be CGI, but they can always bring... Chad: I don't know that they have that kind of budget, by the way, but, yeah. Joel: Bring the monkey. That's right. That's right. The CGI, let's use some puppets or some shit. I don't know. Chad: So, the question is US, what the fuck with the US? Joel: Yeah, US, still a top five site, still on auto-pilot. Most of their shit is email still. The number of email addresses they have and registered to the user site, they're still pumping out tons of emails to unsuspecting job seekers. The cash cow, they can eliminate most of the employees. Now, what I've heard is everywhere from 20%-60% of staff. I think 60% makes a lot more sense based on what's going on with what history and what we think the future is on this. So you've got better insight on this, so I'm not gonna steal your thunder, 'cause we talked about it in the green room, but other than the US is about it. We're both pretty sure Broadbean is gonna be off the table very soon, if not already. More insight on that is we know more or get approval to talk about that, but you have more insight on what's gonna happen in the US, and I don't wanna steal your thunder, so you go ahead and give your opinion and insights. Chad: Yeah, I think, right out of the gate, top five, from my sources, CareerBuilder is making over a million dollars a month in arbitrage alone. Arbitrage alone. You can effectively run the operation on a skeleton crew, just for arbitrage, depending on the amount of tech debt you're facing. Hell, you could switch to a job board in a box at that point. You can kill the tech debt and still get the cash handsomely. So, we'll talk more in-depth about the CEO change in a minute, but I don't think you bring in a guy like Jeff Furman to finish off a CareerBuilder USA deal or a Broadbean deal. I believe they're both already done. And that's one of the reasons why Sue Arthur walked out the door. There's no way in hell you let Dwight Schrute do this. I mean, that's all there is to it. To me, and again, this is mostly opinion and vibes that I'm getting from my sources and from the industry itself, there's a shit load of cash that's there. There is an asset. It could be almost on autopilot to some extent. I think both those deals are done and there's nothing but turning the lights off, kids. Joel: So, if it was an acquisition target, any guesses on who might come in and pick up the yard sale rubbish? Chad: Yeah, that's a good question because this is core CareerBuilder. Everything was built around this. So, the question is, does Apollo have fatigue after this? And I don't think that they would, because this is what they do. They carve up companies and they sell that shit. So I think they're gonna get a good price out of it. Who would buy it? To be quite frank, Indeed could smash it or they could buy it. I think that's smart. Anything beyond that, it's up in the air to me, because all you're doing, if you take a look at some of their acquisitions they've had over the years, some of the big ones, Career Mosaic, we know that name, 'cause we've been in the industry for a while. Career Path. You go to those domains today, they don't go anywhere. Joel: HeadHunter.NET. Chad: They don't go anywhere. They don't resolve. It's like, "Oh my God." So, there are all these domains and what not that they're not even doing anything with. I don't even know if they understand the value of those assets or even if there is a value anymore. Joel: Yeah, from my perspective, Indeed would be interesting. I think Indeed has enough problems going right now to deal with that. And we talk a lot about companies in Europe coming to America, a job in talent could come in and buy this thing up and have instant brand, instant user base. Chad: Stepstone. Joel: Stepstone. Yeah, if you're looking to come to the US, CareerBuilder seems like a really nice door to the market with customers, with users, regardless of what you do with the brand after time, no big deal, but if you can get a foothold through CareerBuilder, that seems like a pretty good strategy to me, and if... Chad: You're not buying the tech. You're buying the lists, you're buying the portfolio, because the tech, from my understanding, again, is shit. Joel: Yeah. Chad: 20 years old, it's shit. And they've juiced everything out of that tech they possibly can, so it's gotta be an operator, who already has tech in place. Joel: Yeah, slap their logo on your brand, and you're done, and you move over all their data and customers, and you're good to go. So, you mentioned your commentary on the CEO. I'll go ahead and mention, Sue Arthur who came in in 2021, she barely had enough time to put her stapler on the desk before this shit went down. And yeah, you're right about Jeff Furman. His LinkedIn profile, if you had white bread on a profile picture, that would be Jeff Furman. He was VP of Facilities and Real Estate before this position. Doesn't really inspire a vision for the future. Chad: No, no. Joel: At any rate, so more of the same with managing the... He's in the cockpit. Who's driving really? And this things on autopilot, whatever. Jeff, I hope you have a good parachute to jump out of when this thing goes down. But yeah, it's like they picked one of the few guys left and said, "You wanna be CEO?" Like, "Sure, I'll add that to my resume." And Jeff Furman, congratulations. Chad: Yeah, as soon as I heard this, I automatically thought of Dwight from The Office. It's like, who do you hand the keys to? 'Cause who's gonna be the only one left standing? It's gonna be that fucker. Yeah, so seriously, today, May 19th, 2023, Jeff Furman is their CEO. Going a little bit deeper into the LinkedIn highlights. He was the Director of Real Estate at Johnson Controls, the Chief Procurement Officer and Head of Global Real Estate at AmEx. Responsibilities were for all global real estate operations, including transaction, project and facility management, as well as strategic planning and lease administration across a global portfolio. Jeff was hired at CareerBuilder five years ago for this specific reason, to sweep up, turn off the lights and lock the doors because everybody's gone. Joel: If Jeff's profile page was a sound bite. So, lay-offs real quick, are you in the 20% camp, the 60% camp, where are you? Chad: They're definitely more toward the 60%. At this point, they're trying to lean out. Broadbean, CareerBuilder, I personally think they're off the table. I think there are done deals already, so those individuals, well, obviously those are individuals that will go with those organizations. So, yeah, I think it's closer to 60%. One way or the other, it doesn't matter. This is a plane that's going down and Jeff Furman was hired to be the Kamikaze pilot to put this baby in the dirt. [noise] Joel: And that is our CareerBuilder block, and after that, we need a quick break. But when we get back, we'll talk about Twitter and Google. Joel: Alright Chad, let's play a little, 'who'd you rather' with some heavy weights, Twitter and Google. These aren't two startups in HR tech. These are big companies. So two of them made news this week. Two have pretty big aspirations. We're gonna break it down and give who we'd rather pick in this decision. So, number one, we have Twitter. Twitter has reportedly made its first acquisition under your boy, Elon Musk's leadership, purchasing a fellow San Fran-based job matching tech startup called Laskie. Reports say the acquisition aligns with Musk's vision of transforming Twitter into a multi-functional super app. The exact acquisition price is not disclosed, but Laskie had raised $6 million. According to Crunchbase, founded in 2021, they employed 26 people. Joel: Now to Google. Gloves are off. That's right. Google announced new conversational features for its search engine and made its Bard chatbot accessible to English speakers. Google's updated search engine uses AI to provide detailed summary responses and allows users to ask followup questions in a chatbot-like manner, Google also announced upcoming enhancements to Bard, including image responses using Google Lens, image search and integration with partner applications like Adobe, KAYAK, OpenTable, ZipRecruiter, Indeed and the Khan Academy. Chad, who'd you rather? Twitter's super app or Google search enhancements? Chad: This is the worst superhero I think I've ever seen. It reminds me of the Facebook for jobs thing that happened. Twitter with jobs. Elon is all over the board. No focus, wants to be an influencer. Twitter is nothing but a hobby for him. But on the other hand, Google, with generative AI search, this is about survival for Google. Last week, you mentioned Google seeing OpenAI as really a huge threat to search and to their model, to their advertising model. OpenAI has created a subscription-based model, where Google Search entirely predicated on advertising. Instead of just packing up the search tent and putting everything into Bard, which they could have done, which more than likely would have been and will be subscription-based, Google was forced to evolve the search experience by folding in generative AI, which will allow for text and voice interaction, not to mention, as you said, image. But the result sets will be served up in a new generative AI model, instead of the old timey search algorithm that we've known since the 2000s. This will allow for a new and better experience with the ability to keep advertising and then start charging subscription, aka, freemium models, which are big again, through Bard. It's the best of both worlds and evolves more than just the UI of the Google Search product. This is what Google needed, to get away from the good old algorithm they've been tweaking for 20 plus years. Joel: So, you'd rather Google? Chad: A-Fucking-men. SFX: What are you doing step-bro? Joel: Alright, Twitter, okay, super cool and interesting that they bought a company in our space. Did not see that coming, but it's really weird. They basically shut it down. Usually, when somebody buys a company, the company's website is still up. There's a big thing on the header like, "Hey, acquired by so and so." And then, click here for the press release. You go to laskie.com today, and it's like, "We're not working anymore. We're just done." There's nothing there. So it's like, why the hell would you buy this thing? $6 million isn't a lot of investment. San Fran-based, for all I know, Elon hated the founder and wanted to buy him and shut him down. For all I know, he wants to hire everyone that's working there and make them Tesla employees or Twitter employees. Maybe he wants access to the database of tech workers to come work for his company, and he wants to just give them to his recruiter base as an ego or a quick way to get resumes. But if he's getting three million resumes a year, does he really need more profiles and resume? It's just really fucking weird. I wish I had an insightful comment about what the hell Twitter is doing buying Laskie, which we never talked about on the show by the way. Chad: No. Joel: So, I got nothing, man. Usually I have something to say. I don't know what the hell Elon is doing. The super app thing, could I see Twitter having profiles like LinkedIn, where they're more professional, maybe some basic professional information or degrees or credentials? Yeah. Is this that? I don't think so, maybe. I don't know. Payments are gonna come in. He talked about Tesla automated driving. So that could be done through Twitter maybe. I don't know. It's just really weird. Now, Google... Chad: Who trusts Elon with their credit card information? Joel: Google. Google, watching their demo. SFX: Alight, alright, alright. Chad: Fucking sexy. Joel: Okay. The gloves are off at Google. Somebody at Google said, "You know what, we've been scared to launch this shit. We've been thinking about humanity and our survival. Fuck it, we're dropping the bomb on everything." So, Bard is impressive. It's still not... What's cool about Bard is, OpenAI is, 2021 was the last time that they sourced content. Unless you feed stuff into it, it's old. Bard is like real-time. You can ask it news question and it knows, in real time almost, it can comment and tell you what's going on in the news, which is exceptional. Google is leveraging everything they have in their arsenal, which OpenAI does not have. They gotta build that shit up. Google's like, "We got a whole mansion of shit. We're gonna dump it in and fuck shit up." This is, step brother is walking into the interview. We're here to fuck shit up. That's what Google did with this demo. Now, what's interesting to me as well is, I'm always curious about, who are they gonna kill in our industry? Who's in trouble? The first obvious one, the Textio's, the job description things, I think anyone that helps you write a resume is probably fucked through what's going on now. Chad: Too easy. Joel: I was searching on Bard, what is it like to work at, name a company? It was able to tell me, Glassdoor style, Indeed review style, news and the whatever style, what it's like to work there, the good, the bad, the ugly. There's real potential to fuck Glassdoor and Indeed reviews and Blind and whoever's doing reviews is fucked. Because I can go in and find out what it's like to work at any company. I don't have to go to your site, which may or may not be true, and what's seeded, what's fake? I think that's a real issue with these sites. Google Bard will do it. It'll tell you what it's like to work at a company, and to me, that's a real threat to the review sites. That's one of my main insights. So yeah, I don't know what the fuck is going on at Twitter. It's fun to watch, and I'll continue to do so, but what Google is doing is, as a user, cool shit, as an industry, shake up. A lot of people are gonna be scared about this, Google for sure is who I'm picking in this debate. Chad: And as soon as they get their head out of their ass, with regard to job feeds, and they just go over to Google for Jobs, because all that content's already marked up, new fucking, game big boy. Joel: Yeah. If and when you can say, "Find the perfect job for me," and it could just give you shit, that's... Anyway, that may or may not be where we're doing. SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel: Alright, let's talk about some company getting some bucks. Indianapolis-based Qualifi, has secured $4.5 million in funding to support its growth and development. This brings total funding to $7.7 million. Qualifi plans to use the funding to enhance its hiring platform, establish industry partnerships and address recruitment challenges. The company aims to streamline the hiring process and provide a memorable candidate experience through automation and asynchronous phone interviews. Chad, your take on the news from our, who's your brothers and sisters? Chad: Yeah, so Darrian was on firing squad about a year ago, and I believe we both gave him a big applause. [applause] Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. So, there's one thing I look at as a priority and align most of my weight behind, whether I'm looking at a yes or no decision when I'm assessing a start-up. It's not the domain name, it's not the colors, it's not the brand, it's not the tech. What matters is the founder, the CEO, the visionary, the voice box, and I think Darrian is a winner. He's personable, he's humble, moldable, but most of all, you can see the sparkle in the guy's eyes. The vision is clean, the platform is clean, and that's the reason they over-subscribed. I also think it's smart, that much like Adam Gordon day with crowdfunding, you set the bar low and then you blow it out of the fucking water. So in summary, for me, I don't like the koala. It doesn't matter. I don't like the colors. It doesn't matter. I really don't like that they don't have pricing on the pricing page. I'm gonna grit my teeth when I say this, but it doesn't matter. But what does matter is that I like the tech, the vision, and most of all, Darrian is a fucking winner, and he's in a space that is very crowded, very crowded, but I think they do have the guy at the head of the table, the vision and everything necessary to make this win. Joel: Yeah, we're a little biased. We've known Darrian for a while. Just a solid guy. Just someone you wanna hang out with. Chad: I think we only had beers with him once though. So we've seen him several times. Joel: Oh, he's been at shows, he's been at conferences. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: He's around. Chad: Everybody has. Joel: But, I wanna say a sweet kid, but that's maybe a little... Chad: He is amazing. Joel: Look, he's just a sweet heart. Chad: He is. Joel: So, Indiana, we're biased. He's a Black founder. We're biased. We love seeing that. We love seeing the organic growth. Like you've mentioned, they were founded in 2019. This isn't some one-year-old company getting $10 million. They've grown organically. They employ 25 or so people. Most of them are Hoosiers as well, so that's nice to see. They've just grown organically, done it right, and we just... That's always something that appeals to us. The thing is, the whole voice interview, chat interview, texting, there's so many companies doing that. I can't imagine the push and pull of like, "We should do this. We should do that. We need to add this because so and so just launched and has that." Qualifi's done a really good job of focusing on what they do best, honing that, making it as superior as possible, and you and I both love the focus with any start-up, and these guys showcase that as well. So I speak for both of us when I say like... [applause] Joel: Great for Qualifi. Keep it going guys. Darrian, yeah, we'll have to have drinks again soon, obviously. Chad: It'd have to be in August. Joel: When Chad's back in the States and he's salty and miserable again, we'll have to get him a drink. And it looks like you need a refill, Chad, so let's take a quick break and we'll talk about Caryn with a C. Joel: Alright, Chad. Caryn Marjorie, Caryn, spelled C-A-R-Y-N, is a 23 year old influencer with 1.8 million followers on Snapchat. Chad: Wow. Joel: She has created an AI-powered chatbot called CarynAI, which serves as a virtual girlfriend to more than 1000 individuals. Since we've seen this story, it's probably up to 5000. These virtual relationships involve conversations, ranging from discussing future plans to intimate and sexually charged chats. CarynAI closely mimics Marjorie's voice and personality, and people are willing to pay $1 per minute for interactions with the bot. During its private beta test on the Telegram app, CarynAI generated, you're ready for this? $71,610 in revenue from its predominantly male user base, no shit. Marjorie believes that having an AI doppelganger can enhance her career as an influencer. Chad, what you got? Chad: It's the new phone sex line. I remember, you'd be watching TV at night and like, "Call 800-CarynAI." Joel: It was 1-900, yeah. Chad: Yeah, 1-900, yeah, whatever. But you think of it though, $71,000 in a week. Joel: In a private beta. Chad: In a week, kids. Okay, just my mind's gonna explode here. Imagine coupling this with video, synthesized video, because this is already audio, OnlyFans would fucking explode with content, revenue and... Well, let's just leave it at that. It would explode. Several 18-25 year old males' heads would explode as well. I listened to the Hard Fork Podcast, which is, I think by the New York Times, from February, where one of the journalists/podcasters, went into a Fatal Attraction like hole with Bing's chatbot named Sydney for two hours. This stuff, it was eerie, fucking eerie. Because it sounded... He was reading the texts back, these were text. This is, we're actually talking synthesized voices, more humanized. Sucks you in. It is fucking crazy. But think of, again, we keep talking about these OnlyFans, $8000 a month, $12,000 a month, this is $71,000 in a week. Joel: And she did no work. A bot did the work. Chad: Guess how this could explode. She has a portfolio of pictures. You jump into the chatbot, it's $76,000 or $71,000 in a week, will be nothing compared to what OnlyFans and these influencers will make. SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: By the way, no word if it's in multiple languages, which she'll also be able to do in the near future. There is a lot of money in lonely men, Chad. Chad: Wow. Joel: There's a lot of lonely men and boys... Chad: Horny men, yes, or is that redundant? Yeah, I think... Joel: That need to be divorced from each other. I love the 900 number reference. Astrologers and phone sex lines. Chad: Oh, that's another good one. Joel: We're having a party, big boy. You wanna join the party? That was great. So, we've gone from $100 hookers to $9 a month OnlyFans accounts, to a $1 a minute AI women. It's become a commodity. What's next? I guess the sex robots will be a $1000 bucks a piece, and they'll eventually be, I don't know, $50 bucks at Walmart. That's kind of like where this thing goes. Chad: I would not want one of those. Joel: Well, wasn't there a movie where somebody got a sex robot out of the trash? It was like an older model. Anyway... Chad: It was probably Idiocracy, which is where we're going, by the way. Joel: That must have been Skinemax back in the '80s, when I was watching that on regularly. Chad: Skinemax, yeah. Joel: Dude, we're doomed as a species. We're totally doomed. Yeah, once video comes and she'll do whatever the hell you want, and then the VR headsets and the sex... We're just fucking doomed. Only Jeff Furman can save us, Chad. Somebody call Jeff Furman, otherwise our species is finished. Chad: Because he's so hot and sexy, that's why. [laughter] Joel: Save us, Jeff Furman. We out. Chad: We out. 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 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 soup 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.

It’s Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. So, it shouldn’t be a shock that some industry players are “out to lunch.” Google for Jobs search results have really been wacky for a lot of users around the world, and we’re here to break down why. Indeed, who’s apparently taking an extended vacation, throws some more spaghetti at the wall, and we decide if any of it will stick. And then there’s Goldman Sachs, who’s CEO is permanently at the country club (at least his lawyers are working overtime). It’s not all OOO, however, Instawork raised millions and MOD Pizza is looking to hire millions after doing away with background checks for entry-level workers. Plus, strippers unionize! God bless ‘Murica! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. WATCH VIDEO VERSION 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. It's world Dracula day. Commemorating Bram Stoker's famous novel, published on May 26th, 1897. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel, private dancer, Cheeseman. Chad: This is Chad healthy budget Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, Google for Jobs, get sleepy. INSTAR Work makes it rain, and strippers unite. Chad: Yes. Joel: Let's do this. Portuguese Chad is in full effect today. We got the barb in the background, you are on some island and the tropics or some shit. Yeah, looking good. Chad: Madeira. Yeah. It's known as the Hawaii of Europe, and Americans don't know about it because the Europeans once again, like to keep the good shit from us. Joel: Let me guess, the DeSantis Twitter meltdown isn't much news there in funky cold Madeira. Am I right? Chad: Yeah. And nobody hears about that asshole. I did see them in my feed, and I thought it was hilarious because obviously Elon likes to make everything about him. Joel: Yup. Chad: DeSantis wants any stage he can find because he's pathetic, and they had a huge obviously melt down just that... Again, everybody's been talking about how Twitter has been staying up, upright with all the cuts. And it's like, Oh, I put it under a little stress, and I think that's what you're gonna see with DeSantis tude. He's gonna fold like a fucking cheap card table. Joel: So, I'm assuming you didn't tune in, I actually tuned in 'cause I just wanted to... I just wanted to be part of it. Chad: Were you wearing your DeSantis t-shirt. Joel: Yeah, my DeSantis t-shirt is in the mail. The mail is more efficient than Twitter these days, apparently. So I got up 400,000 and it was breaking, it got up to 700 some thousand, and then at 20 minutes people just started bailing and I got to like 150,000, and then he came on. I think it got up to maybe 300,000. But I just... It's hard to believe that Twitter can't handle 700,000 people at once. Chad: When you get rid of most of your staff and more than likely, they cut infrastructure, if you think about it, he was cutting everything, I mean hell, he wasn't even paying his bills for goodness sakes. So yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I knew that there was going to be an event where there would be problems, and this was a perfect event for a meltdown. Joel: And this is a perfect event for... S?: Shoutout. Joel: Let's get to some shoutout, shall we? So I'm gonna go into an industry, shoutout first. HiringSolved our friends, sponsor at one point is apparently out of business. The hiringsolved.com site is done. I haven't seen anything in regards to messages to customers. Chad: No. Joel: But it certainly seems official that they are done. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And for whatever reason, the URL doesn't even go do Allegius who basically bought the company few years ago. So what we know about HiringSolved, started in 2012, Shon Burton co-founder who we know really well, no longer with the company or hasn't been for a while, apparently. They got some investment, they made some good hires with Jeremy Roberts, Jackie Clayton, who then eventually left. We know they got sued big time by LinkedIn back in the day, these are what we know sort of publicly. I'd be surprised if Allegius isn't still writing checks to lawyers for cease and desist letters and LinkedIn shit. But surprisingly, they didn't sell the company apparently like it was just too much of a hassle, or they just didn't have the energy to do it. Joel: My guess is they probably Allegius took in some of the HiringSolved people that they wanted to keep and just said, "Shut the fucker down" But bigger question, the whole sourcing thing, they did a big pivot a year or two ago, higher tool became higher easy. And became sort of a platform for marketing. HiringSolved look to go into ATSs and be their search engine, and then seek out who has a good relationship with LinkedIn, apparently is still kind of chugging. To me, this is like invariably, to put it short, like LinkedIn won, again. They put Hi-Q out of business, and I think in a long-winded way, they've enabled to put... Or they've been able to put HiringSolved out of business as well. Chad: Yeah. I don't. I Think you give way too much credit to LinkedIn. I think you should give all the credit to Allegius. Their inability to actually manage technology, that's generally the biggest issue. They can't focus, and I've seen this in RPM when staffing for years. They think they wanna get into technology, they get into technology shit just fucking implode. So the LinkedIn thing for them could be a huge diversion as HiringSolved was really moving back away from that and they were trying to actually dig into, which I thought would have been perfect for Allegius, the database, their candidate database. They have a huge fucking candidate database. Now matching off of that to current recs, man they can be popping. I mean they could be easily. But again, the staffing in RPO world, they're so focused on the old world of doing business, the new world just kind of like just slips away from them. Joel: Well, irregardless of that, HiringSolved out of business. Chad: My first shout-out is to a movie. When we're talking about AI, what could be better than a movie that actually shows almost the extinction of the human race, it's called The Creator. The perfect timing for the AI extinction junkies out there. It's a movie about AI, how it lives with humanity, the perspective fights back and forth, the extinction possibility, just go to YouTube, search on The Creator, watch the trailer. It drops in September. We've seen these types of movies before. Where obviously AI takes over, the robots take over, so on and so forth, but this just from a timing standpoint. Nothing could be more perfect. Joel: Yeah, what's your favorite technology end of days movie. Chad: I think War Games, because again, you're talking about a computer that literally... And this is backing me shit in the '80s, right? Joel: Yeah. Chad: Where a computer hacks into the mainframe. And again, this is AI, way back in the day kind of like foreseeing, what's happening? So I love that movie, it has a lot of intrigue kid who actually is the hacker that gets into it, it's just... It's a really cool movie. So if you haven't seen War Games, dude, you gotta check it out. Joel: Ferris Bueller hacks into the national defense system. That's great, that's great. Great. Cameron's in it. It's great fun, it's a lot of fun. Chad: Of course. Of course. Joel: So 2001 was was great, Space Odyssey, that was sort of the first film where machine kills people. Terminator for me, like 13 years old... Chad: It's amazing. Joel: Go to see Terminator, scare the shit out of me. Chad: Yeah. Joel: That was Terminator, the first Terminator always is gonna be my favorite machines kills humans movie. Not a machine though Chad? Chad: Yes. Joel: Jim Brown. Chad: No, he was a machine, he was told being machine. Joel: He was the terminator on the football field, for sure. If you see some had old footage, he was the Terminator on line backers back in the day. So Tina Turner passed away yesterday. I know that's on top of mind for everyone. Chad: Best legs in rock and roll baby. Joel: As a Brown's fan, Jim Brown passed away football player and questionable three-time NFL MVP Rookie of the Year, eight times for a C mall pro, 8-time NFL rushing leader. Arguably, the best lacrosse player in college history arguably. Chad: They had to change the rules because of him. Joel: Played in a Syracuse basketball game where he scored 50 points. Like random and off the street, Hey, Jim you wanna play some basketball. Score 50 points in a game. He was a civil rights leader. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's a complicated history. But we've lost Bill Russell in the past year or so. Two years, Jim Brown, obviously, Muhammad Ali, before that Karim, is sort of the last of that group that's still alive. He was actually in MLK's funeral. He was one of the few that actually got to go in. He got Crips and Bloods together in the early '90s, the LA riots, got them together to chill on the violence that was going there. So football and icon, but also civil rights. Complicated history, there are a lot of podcasts on it, if you wanna listen, but Jim Brown gets a shout out for me, any Browns fan will know the greatest Brown of all time, Jim Brown will be missed, and if you haven't seen, I'm gonna get you Sucka from the '80s. Jim Brown was also a movie star... Chad: Yes. Joel: And a great scene with Chris Rock ordering ribs. Anyway, if you haven't seen, I'm gonna get you Sucka. I encourage you to do that as well. If you learn nothing else about Jim Brown, watch, I'm gonna get you Sucka. Chad: Watch the Dirty Dozen. Joel: And the Dirty Dozen. Chad: That is an amazing Jim Brown, he's one of the cast of characters, but amazing film watching. Joel: Left after nine seasons, similar to Barry Sanders, but he left because that movie, that movie was running longer, he was getting fine $5 a day by the Browns organization, and Jim felt dissed. Chad: He's like fuck off. Yeah am out. Joel: He felt dissed by that and said I'm fuck I'm out, I'm out and you could still walk late into his life, so good for him. Chad: Well, like they tell you the next shout-out it's gonna love coming after Jim Brown and Tina Turner. Mike Fit Simmons over at cross-check, so we didn't get a chance to actually sit down for a drink and chat at unleash in Vegas. So he sent me a fine bottle of Woodford Reserve double oaked Bourbon. I promise we will sit down for a chat as soon as I'm back, Mike, thanks. And I shout-out to we forget. Back in the day that we had to find different classy ways. I remember I did as a sales guy, just to be able to get in the door, just to be able to get a chat and appointments a call. Joel: What was your best like gorilla sales tactic? Chad: Best gorilla sales tactic. Joel: To get in the door. Chad: Yeah, easy, the stuff that we would do today. And we would send packages, we literally would find out depending on... I was in radio, in radio sales, so it was all about promotion. So we could actually put together packages and send them off, which nobody else did, and with a little card in it, Hey, we'd love to sit down some time and have a chat. Worked 100% at the time. Joel: FedEx is great 'cause you would be alerted when it was delivered and then you could call and say, Hey, I just wanna make sure you got the package anyway Still works today Kids. Chad: It's perfect. Joel: FedEx Still works today. Chad: It's perfect. Yes. Joel: So I gotta get this shout out in quickly, you've probably... Well, I don't know if you do fast food anymore, but in fast food restaurants now, they have like a juke box for soda and you can get any flavor of anything that you want, push a few buttons. So Heinz ketchup up in the Heinz company said, hold my beer and have released the Heinz remix machine. So now they have ketchup, buffalo sauce, barbecue sauce like anything you want the Heinz remix machine is coming to a fast food restaurant near you and I cannot be happy, oh my friend. Chad: Remember when we were young, we would take the glass and we would go for the soda. Joel: The suicide. Chad: And we would get the, Kamikaze right? The suicide. You could do the exact same thing with this right? Joel: I'm so excited. Chad: Last shout out to Kamikaze beyond. We're talking about brainfood, if you haven't subscribed kids to brainfood, you gotta check it out, it is a weekly curated list from our friend Hungley, who actually does a hell of a job, we were showcased on last weeks, but it doesn't matter if we're showcased or not. Great content. Go check it out. Recruiting brainfood with Hungley, do a search. Sign up. Joel: Always love the love from our favorite porn star. Thanks Hungley. And some of our favorite people are people listening to the show Chad and it's time to remind them that they can get some free shit from us. Chad: Oh. Joel: If they go to chadcheese.com and click the free link, we're talking teachers from job get bourbon selection from each one of us, from our friends at TextKernel. Aspen Tech Labs is helping us give away beer, and plum is helping us give away birthday Rum. Each month, so it would behoove me not to mention that to our listeners and... Did I just say. Did I say birthdays as well dude. Chad: I think yeah. Joel: I think I said, birthdays didn't I? S?: Did you feel the tension in the air right now. Chad: Yeah, I can. S?: I know, I can, I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: Alright, birthdays are sponsored by our friends at Plums, celebrating another year around the sun is Bruce Carrie, who whined about not being a shout out last week. The Bruce... Chad: It wasn't whining. Joel: So Bruce there you go, buddy. We'll make you famous. James Maley, Tom Hunley, James Andrew Chuck. John Johnson, Travis Windling, I believe. Katrina Kaya, who shares your birthday, by the way Chad, and our favorite Canadian. That's right. Shelly Billing Harris of the flex podcast. Celebrating another birthday. And most importantly Chad you and I celebrate birthdays this weekend. Chad is May 27th. I'm May 28th, we're on the same year, little known fact about us on this show, you can send your e-gift cards from at wooden Cork to joelcheeseman@gmail.com, and I'll make sure that gets his bottles as well. But that is another. Maybe my favorite birthday shout out of the year because we're both on it. Chad: Oh, my favorite thing is events, you know I love to travel Joel, and we are going to RecFest in the UK, July 6th, knebworth park. Kids you gotta remember, if you've never been to a RecFest, you gotta be to... You gotta go to a RecFest, and this isn't just about you going and learning, this is about you taking your entire fucking team, take the entire team and it's an all-hands day, enjoy the day, learn, have some beers together, bond. This is good for what? Team cohesion. That's right, team cohesion. Not that kind of team cohesion, Cheeseman. Then in September RecFest is happening again in Nashville. Same motif, just changing the location. Both of these... Both of these Chad and Cheese are going to be MCing the disrupt stage all technology all day. So again, if you're in the UK, if you're in the US, go to RecFest, actually good at chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right-hand corner. And this is the first year for Nashville in the US. So we have a 50% discount code kids click on register here or whatever it says on the header, you get 50% off for your entire team. Go make it happen. RecFest UK, US. See Chad and Cheese there. Joel: RecFest is going deep. This year Chad. And if you have to mention, Carl Cheeseman, Leaven and Steven McGrath are all apparently gonna be in the house by the way. Chad: You better have a T-shirt. Joel: How soft are the Scotts. We mentioned on a show that Steven is our favorite, Scott and the Scots came out of the woodwork to whine about how hurt they were, that they weren't our favorite Scott. Who knew the Scotts were so. Chad: Work harder. Gotta work harder. Joel: So soft and I Chad without you kinda... I'll explain why I'll be at SHRM National in June. I'll be in the Erin booth. That's E-R-I-N. The Erin app. They're getting cardboard cut-outs of Chad Sowash to make sure that I feel at home and that I feel like... That I'm warm and fuzzy in the booth, we're talking Chad heads, cardboard cut-outs and a full body Chad in a bathrobe with sunglasses in Sweden, so if nothing else, if you're going to SHRM, come by the Erin booth, take your picture with cardboard Chad and the real Joel Cheeseman. It's gotta be special Chad, it's gonna be fun. Chad: Well tell Mike after this, I'm going to trade mark my likeness, just so he knows. [laughter] Joel: Trade mark, my likeness. Good luck with that my friend. Chad: Topics. Joel: Alright, Google for Jobs. We've never talked about them before. Alright, what's going on at Google for Jobs? A listener in Germany hit us up this week with the following "Something weird is happening at Google for Jobs. Most clients I work with have seen a huge traffic loss, if you do a search for new jobs, you get zero hits, some smaller EU countries are hit really hard" Chad. What do you make of this? Let's call it a hiccup. Chad: Or just an app, first off, Dylan Buckley over it directly apply, he originally turned us on to this issue then Oras Al-Kubaisi, and then we got a post from Alexander Chukovski on LinkedIn. He actually went through and had some ideas, a hypothesis of what it might be, it could be an algorithm update, a technical issue. Google Ads roll out, so they're actually looking to try to roll those ads out or the killing or reducing traffic to Google jobs or what I think is they could just be fucking with everyone to be quite frank. I mean, seriously, this to me is nothing more than understanding that this product is still an alpha and we really feel like Google should have their shit together. We should know better by now. Google doesn't have their shit together. It's gonna take a while for them to get their shit together when they do, then they're gonna be dangerous, so there's no question. But they're in Alpha kids, not to mention, think about this, shifting resources to the future, which is now Google's new gen AI search doesn't quite fit in with the current Google for job search mechanism as they try to switch over the new generative AI, and you've gotta remember what they did with Google for Hire, Google for Hire was actually... Chad: Or Google Hire came up as an applicant tracking system, they were getting some great traction, and then cloud needed resources, they needed to focus because cloud was going to have a hell of a lot more cash coming in, so they took all of those resources, said, Oh, we're gonna shut down Google Hire, see you guys, and they push those resources to cloud. If you think about it very simply, they could easily be pulling resources and just leaving kind of like a skeleton crew, if that maybe 20% time with the Google for job search as they're focusing on this new generative AI engine that could have jobs associated with it as well, so those are just opinions, but you've gotta take a look at history and what they've done before, and all of this is true. So there's plenty of opinion, plenty of fun, but I've gotta say, no matter whether it's Indeed, Google, no matter, you can't put all your eggs in one traffic basket, kids, you gotta diversify. Joel: And don't forget to mention how much Google loves the, your EU and all the fines that they put on one you. Anyway. Yes, I don't think this is a shutting down of Google for Jobs, this is not a, we're back tracking. It's gonna be gone. There was a big updated march of the algorithm taking me a lot of duplicate content, a lot of crappy content that may just be filtering into their vertical search, which is jobs, and let's be honest, there was a lot of crappy job sites that were just created to spam the shit out of Google for jobs, a lot of shitty sites, a lot of just scams, a brief perusal of Google for Jobs this morning. Most of the application sites are reputable names now, it's LinkedIn, it's ZipRecruiter, it's a company website. So it may just have been like the Google update got into jobs and now a lot of the crappy sites or the spammy sites are now gone, that could be the easy explanation, maybe Europe trailed because they're not as attuned to what's going on there, the language differences, who knows, but it seems like Europe got hit a little more. Chad: The bigger question is, like you mentioned, the generative AI, the Open AI. The barred question, what are we gonna do in AI that's where the resources are going? My guess is this hiccup happened at jobs, a couple of days went buy and someone said Shit, we gotta get somebody on this to fix this shit, they went in and sort of dialed back and flipped whatever switch to fix it, but I don't think Google for Jobs is going anywhere, I think it is... I don't wanna say it's a side project, but when you think about the AI battle that Google is gonna have to fight, that's where their resources are, that's where their best people are, the people over looking Google for Jobs are probably 21-year-old interns out of Berkeley who knows? But they wanna monetize it. It's a decent product. People seem to use it. So I don't think there's anything to freak out over here about this thing, it's just a little hiccup with things that are going on at Google, which are getting curiouser during curiouser thanks to generative artificial intelligence. Chad: Yes. Joel: So let's go to another evil empire, company that we love, all right Indeed budgets. Let's talk about that. Starting June 1st, Indeed is implementing a minimum budget requirement for each job posted on their platform, previously companies could set any budget they desired, the introduction of "healthy budgets" means that advertisers must meet the minimum budget requirement for each job they post on Indeed. Don't come to Indeed with your measly $25-job posting budget, Chad, what do you make of this news out of Indeed? Chad: So it's interesting because we actually got this information from the, were critics blog, and from that blog post, I'm gonna do a little translation for everybody, it's out there, "Indeed aims to increase job posting budgets to effectively achieve hiring goals" Translation Indeed aims to focus or force higher budgets to increase revenues, they don't give two fucks about any of this, effective hiring goals. They don't care about any of that shit. They are doing nothing but trying to make more money, so what happened, we had cost per application took a shit, cost per started application took a shit because they didn't roll it out like they normally do in chunks, they try to do it all. They tried to jam it down everybody's throat. It didn't work, right? So in Indeed's plan to force employers to CPA and CPSA model failed, so they're looking for a new way to generate more revenue. It's just that simple. So to be able to try to put a spin, which I love how Recruitics does, 'cause they have to be diplomatic. Joel: Switzerland. Chad: I appreciate that, but that's not what's happening. They're just looking at different ways, squeeze, whether it's low-end, high-end, more cash, and remember the cost per started to apply that they're still gonna try to roll out kids, is literally just the repackaged cost per click for Enterprise. Because Indeed knows that Enterprise has much higher budgets, and they wanna soak those big companies with higher prices for no reason, so that's a long-term strategy, this is just a band-aid to try to get to that CPA, CPSA. Joel: Brother we have some footage from a Indeed strategy meeting around this decision. SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel: Remember the good old days when it was like 25 cents a click, that's like, that was the maximum per click, whatever your budget was, it could be a dollar, you get four clicks. Remember the good old days of Indeed. Yeah, so much of all they do is throw it at the wall, see it sticks if people freak out, let's throw some difference. We gotta hit the wall. I gotta think that in a per application, per interested candidate world, if people have below budgets, they're gonna get very few clicks, interest applications, whatever to Indeed business is small, smaller companies, mid-sized businesses... Chad: Transactional. Joel: People just wanna... Like they wanna test Indeed, they wanna give it a spin, see how it goes. How much of it is programmatic? Programmatic, we know is pay per click, we know that the budgets can be whatever, we know that there are a lot of flexibility and things are optimized to get the most bang for your buck. This seems more like, you're gonna give us X, whether you like it or not, there is no... We're the big 800-pound gorilla. What we say goes, and we're gonna get at least this much out of you, whether you like it or not, I don't know if companies will hate it. It depends a lot of what the minimums are, nothing I saw on the news was what that minimum would be. Is it $100? Is it $500? Is it $1000? They'll certainly probably screw that up and then go back to something lower higher, who knows what will happen there, but, yeah. Indeed continues to throw shit at the wall, it seems very desperate and confused as usual, it seems fear-based decision-making, panic maybe at this point, but yeah, whatever Indeed, it's another week and other weird sort of decision that you're making, the days of focus are gone at Indeed that's for sure. Chad: Oh, God. Dude, they're reeling, they really are. They're cutting shit to, come up with this shit to be able to come out and try to push the narrative of "healthy budgets" That's what this is all about. This is all about you. We're just trying to get you what you need to fill that role. Fuck you. That's total bullshit. You're trying to squeeze me for more cash, right? You're looking at the lower end, you know that the smaller companies, you probably have a little bit more wiggle room with, but you gotta be careful 'cause that she didn't work with CPA either. You fuck that up. So you gotta be careful going into it with these minimum budgets, which is exactly what what Recruitics is calling it, because that's what it is, it's not a healthy budget, so they're trying to play this narrative game on, we're trying to help you when no you're not. Joel: That's right, kids. Take it for me, anything healthy is bad, including healthy budgets, we'll be right back. INSTAR work. Chad: INSTAR POK. Joel: In the news, the San Francisco-based company that connects hourly workers with available shifts has raised $60 million in a series D-round to enhance its use of AI and machine learning, this brings the total funding for INSTAR work to $160 million with a valuation of $760 million. Oh, I wanted to play the unicorn sound bite, but I cannot unfortunately. INSTAR work plans to use the funds to develop AI-powered training and certification programs to help workers up-skill and access higher paid job opportunities, another win for the essential workforce. Chad, what's your take on the news. Joel: Do we really need AI for job matching in the hospitality space? Really is hospitality really that complex that we need AI. No, we don't, but that's where INSTAR work took advantage of an opportunity and went after the AI cash that's floating out around there, which might be smart, because if you need more runway and you can lean heavy on the, "We're gonna build AI into our platform" You're gonna find suckers out there with money. Everybody wants to spend that ChatGPT cash. How are we gonna do that? It's good for them, but you don't need AI for matching in the space because the requirements for those positions are very basic. Now, if they were focusing on conversational AI that would drive scheduling, engaging employees to pick up shifts and those types of tasks, then I would say that makes a hell of a lot of sense. But matching, no. To me, it was a cash grab it's they saw an opportunity for more money and they went after it, so good for them, but to be able to say that this is around matching is total and utter bullshit. SFX: That escalated quickly. Joel: So remember when Handshake raised money and said it was to take on LinkedIn. Yeah, sometimes companies need a reason to make more money from their investors. Look, this is one of those things that we've said for a long time, it's a good idea when Snagajob launched their app called Snag, that was basically like, Hey, look at opportunities today. And what do I wanna do today? And build credentials and badges around, Hey, I'm a great burger flipper or whatever, and I can go take my skills to any burger place in town and pick whatever hours I wanna do it. It's a good idea. It's flexibility, it's like, what I wanna do, I don't wanna drive and I wanna deliver food, like I wanna cook, or I wanna wash clothes or car. Whatever it is, right? It's a good idea that Snagajob maybe too little too soon or too late. I don't know. There are other services here that, this is gonna get competitive. Snapshift in our backyard here in Indianapolis, Quick is another one, obviously Uber, DoorDash, all of those are trying to get into the marketplace and build engagement and brand awareness. To me, this is simply, they need to consolidate these companies, and frankly, I think they're gonna use the money that they've gotten to go buy up a Snapshift or Quick or some of the smaller one, some are dedicated just to restaurants, some are dedicated just to certain things. I think the money needs to be used to start consolidating these competitors, 'cause ultimately... Joel: Just like with Uber and Lyft, there's gonna be a Coke and a Pepsi, and INSTAR work needs to make sure that they are at least Coke or Pepsi, otherwise they're Fanta. And nobody likes that unless they're on vacation in Madera, apparently based on the bar in your background. But anyway, yes, I think AI was ML whatever is a lot of like cloud cover for what their real aspirations are, which I think is the gobble up as much market share as possible. Maybe grow on internationally, they're still pretty much a US-based effort, and I think there's a lot of opportunity around the world, but yeah, they're gonna need a big boat to do that, and I think the money that they got is gonna help them do that. Chad: So I think there are great platforms that are out there that are doing this, right, one of them being Hairy, which is literally kind of like a point-to-point solution. They're building an entire ecosystem within that platform, and then our friends over at HourWork. But companies need to understand that it's not just about reaching qualified candidates, just ask MOD Pizza. Joel: Oh, great segue, Chad. Great segue, which leads us to our next story, MOD versus DJ Sol, or also known as Goldman Sachs. So it's a tale of two companies in one corner, we have Chad's friends at Goldman Sachs who have agreed to pay 215 million to put it into a long-running class action lawsuit that accused them of systematically under-paying women. DJ Sol and the legal team struck a deal with 2800 female associates and VPs. It's a feel good story, if you will, Chad, let's go to our second contender, the tail of two cities, if you will. Joel: One of our favorite companies, and certainly one of my favorite pizza makers MOD is eliminating background checks for entry level roles. Chief People Officer, Dayna Eberhardt recently told an audience that MOD's goal was "To Be The leading employer of individuals who face barriers to employment." Chad, your thoughts on Goldman Sachs and MOD and a tail of two companies. Chad: Yeah. Oh, I think this is perfect because this is definitely the Yin and Yang of companies, so you got the assholes over at Goldman Sachs, and then you have MOD Pizza. So you know where I stand. Let's dig into this. So 2800 women impacted. Overall 215 million is close to $77,000 per person. That seems pretty pretty big. $77,000. Still not enough kids. Goldman Sachs... Joel: Did you take out the legal fees on that calculation, did you take out the third that go to... Chad: Still reported net revenues of Goldman Sachs in 2022 was 47, over $47 Billion, and their net earnings are $11 billion for the year ended in 2022. So $215 million is fucking cash out of the coins, out of the Goddam couch for God's sakes. Joel: Yep. Chad: So we need to... If we're gonna take a look at actually providing... This isn't a fine. This is squaring up what Goldman Sachs fucked up. They need to square it up. That's awesome. They need another billion dollar fine on top of this from the US government going into the actual coffers to be able to stop companies from doing this stupid shit. Goldman Sachs isn't gonna stop. There's no reason for them to because you hit them with a little piss it fine. On the other side of the fence, you've got MOD Pizza background checks, they've taken around out background checks that hire individuals with criminal records, helping them expunge criminal records, individuals with disabilities, background checks slow down the process. Chad: When it's not necessary and it's a waste of money time, you lose candidates, when you lose candidates and you can't fill positions, you over extend your current staff, your current staff gets pissy. They treat customers like Shit. Churn starts happening, and the cycle of lost revenue gets worse, then you are a asshole owners be the phrase, people don't wanna work anymore. Well, MOD Pizza is only doing the logical thing, they're getting positions filled faster, they're extending their talent pools to Second Chance candidates and individuals with disabilities, just to name a few, so that they can fill positions and not over-extend employees, which keeps employees happy. Current employees happy, and it makes for a better customer experience, more return customers, more revenue. So it's a very simple. MOD is just being smart and they're taking advantage of talent pools that nobody else is even trying, they feel like there's too much risk for it, they're even helping expunge criminal records. The loyalty there is amazing, the individuals who have been involved in the justice system, that's what they call it, have a higher rate of retention, higher promotion rate, and higher engagement rate across the board. From a mobility standpoint, MOD is talking about things like Bachelor's degrees, High School completion. Chad: Career development and growth within the company and outside of the company. This is how you actually create a culture that wants to stick around loyalty because they feel like you give a shit about them and the actions of MOD actually demonstrates that they do, even though it's good for business, if you take care of your people first, and that's job one, then the revenue, if you got a great model, the revenue is gonna come. Joel: On the Goldman story, I'm convinced these big companies have a play book, whether it's Facebook or Google in Europe or... Chad: Okay their attorneys do. Joel: Yeah. They're... In law school, there must be a class of the bullshit guide book or something, where like if were sued, step one is the, step two is this, that three is this, and we keep hammering them and wearing them down, hopefully, and if they don't worry down and we know that we're gonna die or we're gonna be in trouble, then let's make sure the calculus around that and what we're probably gonna have to pay is in line with what we can do very easily. So there's very little fear with executives to do things, it's sort of like, Do whatever the hell you want, we at the legal team, we'll make sure that the fines will be negligible, that the backlash and the press won't be detrimental to growth or... Joel: And by the time this happens will be beyond this and whatever building and whatever in the database or our ad product will be far superior in return for the small fee that we're gonna have to incur. So I'm convinced there's Algebra around this and that companies just don't give a shit, and until their purp locks. Until DJ Sol's in an orange outfit, Orange jump suited the behind the DJ table, not much is really gonna happen, we're gonna have these stories going on and on and on. MOD Pizza. Big ups to them. We first talked about them, I think when their ad ran with actually an ankle monitor on one of their employees in the ad, like, Holy shit, a company actually did this, not in a press release, but I actually put it on network television, that was huge. And we continue to talk about them, I love the term they use justice involvement, someone who was justice involved or involved with justice. That's much better than like ex-con or whatever the hell language I've been using for the last senior, so I gotta get justice involvement in my lexicon. But you're right, in terms of retention, recruitment, think about how many people that have a record never even apply to a job, maybe they apply to a couple, and it's like, Well you're an ex-con, we don't hire them. How many of those people just say, Fuck it, there's no hope, right? Chad: Yeah yeah. Joel: And along comes MOD and says, We're not even gonna do a background check on our entry-level jobs, the number of people that that probably appeals to that have never even considered going into the workforce is huge, and it's an incredible community service really that MOD is providing, and it's unfortunate that we're not talking about more companies following MOD's lead, and we watch this stuff, so we would know, but yeah, big ups to MOD. Totally courageous, gotta get them on the show and talk more about this. Shine a light on what's going on there. And by the way, there's a Blaze Pizza and a MOD Pizza. The Blaze Pizza is closer to me, but I always go to MOD because of shit like this, so it does do something, and I spend a lot of money on pizza Chad. So it does do something... Chad: Oh, I know. Joel: It does do something to the bottom line, but yeah, major applause to MOD. DJ Sol, does he even know about this? Probably not, he probably got a little... Chad: It's... It wasn't a big enough blip on the radar for him to give a shit, Yeah. Joel: We'll be right. Alright, Chad. Chad: You have too many sound effects on that boy. Joel: Let's talking about that I need to prune the edges on the sound bites. Alright, dancers at the Star garden topless dive bar. That's a mouthful, pun intended. In Los Angeles have voted to become the only unionized strippers in the US. The National Labor Relations Board announced that the employees at the strip club voted 17 to zero. 17 to zero, it was unanimous in favor of joining the Actors Equity Association, the Campaign at Star garden highlights issues such as sexual harassment, unresponsive management, and an unsafe working environment, which I've never seen at a strip club that I have attended Chad, none of that is is present, it's very present in all of them. Anyway, topless women are people too Chad. What's your take on this news. Chad: Yeah, it's fairly simple, 17 to zero. There's obviously a problem in this place, in many places, the question is, can we actually get more of this happening from Unionizations standpoint, not just strip clubs, I mean, this is an opportunity for the people themselves to be able to get together and have some of a collective bargaining agreement, we know that wages and livability, I guess you can say, is incredibly low in this country in the United States, because the corporate machine which we've built GDP on for God's sakes, has been printing out cash, keeping it for themselves, pushing it to the rich stock holders and ladies like this, there's two things that they can do, they can continue this and get into a union, or they can go to only fans. They can go to only fans where they don't have to worry about that asshole who has had four tequilas and is getting grabby. They can scale what they do as opposed to when you're doing that dance on the stage, it doesn't scale what happens in the moment. That's it. But if you're doing only fans and you can record it, you can scale it. We're starting to see one of two things happening, that live show is starting to die and go to only fans, which I know is sad for you. Joel: It's very sad for me Chad. You're right, the local strip club is a staple in every community that should be cherished and the loss of it would be just detrimental to everyone, so this is a great retention tool, okay, if you can go to a strip club that's unionized, and you know that your brother not brothers, your sisters, I guess in this case, are fighting for you in a group as opposed to being on your own and you showing up. I think it's a great retention tool, it's not like scabs are gonna come and take your jobs, it's not as if strip club artisans go like, Oh, there's a whole group of strippers right here ready to take your place, so there's a real loss of money. If these owners don't sort of support unionization and support the strategy. And frankly, Chad, I don't care how attractive you are, if you're not happy in your job, the work is just going to suffer. And that's not good for anyone. These ladies are doing God's work, and I'm going to do all I can to commit my harder earn dollars to the unionized boobies. If I know a strip club is unionized, I'm gonna go support it, and I urge all of our listeners to do the same. Joel: 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'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.

A new study says for every woman stepping into a director-level leadership role at work, two are choosing to leave. Forty-three percent of women leaders reported feeling burned out, compared to 31 percent of men, according to Lean In and McKinsey data. Women leaders are leaving their organizations at the highest rate ever. What the hell is going on? Well, don’t ask two white guys, ‘cause they’re clueless. And that’s why we brought Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, cofounders of Catalyst Constellations and co-authors of Move Fast, Break Shit. Burn Out onto the show to dive-in and find some answers. Uncovered was a lot of intriguing data, insightful commentary … and we all got in touch with our feminine sides. Grab the Kleenex box and enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: 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 & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. If you don't know, just ask your mixologist. What's up everybody? It's the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, and as always, the Joey to my Chandler, we have Chad Sowash on the line and we are just giddy to welcome back to the show, Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, co-founders of Catalyst Constellations and co-authors of the bestselling book Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. Ladies, welcome to the podcast again. Shannon Lucas: So great to be back. Tracey Lovejoy: So excited to be back. Joel: Glutton for punishment. [laughter] Joel: By the way, for our listeners in the green room, this is interesting. So in our past interviews, you weren't able to see us. On our new platform you, can see us. And Tracey comes in, and Chad and I are talking and she goes, "Wow, Joel, you're smiling. Your voice sounds like you never smile." [laughter] Joel: So, God bless video. I'm not the bad guy that you thought I once was. [laughter] Chad: Well, he totally is. He just can smile when he's bad. It's okay. It's okay. Tracey Lovejoy: I know. Chad: So ladies, give us a... Again, for listeners who haven't listened to the other episodes, give us a little Twitter bio about yourself. Not about the business, anything like that. Just about you. Tracey Lovejoy: Hi, my name's Shannon. I'm a Catalyst, recovering Catalyst. [laughter] Tracey Lovejoy: Yeah, I've spent the last 20 years in large tech organizations, creating my own ventures and leading emerging business and innovation in some of the world's largest companies like Vodafone, Microsoft, Ericsson, and Cisco, and now I'm the happy Co-CEO with Tracey Lovejoy, building the Catalyst movement. Joel: So happy. Chad: There was emphasis on happy. It's like you're overcompensating here. What's going on? [laughter] Chad: Tracey, Tracey? Shannon Lucas: We really are happy, totally happy. My Twitter bio, Catalyst, co-CEO, researcher, executive coach, mom of two human children and five fuzzy children. [laughter] Joel: Frossy? Shannon Lucas: How's that? Intro: What? Fuzzy. Shannon Lucas: Farsi, fuzzy. [laughter] Joel: Fussy. [laughter] Chad: Jinks. Joel: Is that like Fozzie bear? We got Frozzie. Chad: Fozzie. Yeah. Have the Fozzie. Shannon Lucas: That's more my husband. He is a little on the bear side. Joel: Tracey's got a lot going on. Tracey Lovejoy: I have six real children and two fuzzy. [laughter] Chad: So does Shannon. Six. Six kids? My God. Tracey Lovejoy: Six kids, two fuzzy babies. Shannon Lucas: Six boys. Tracey Lovejoy: Six boys. Chad: Wow. Okay. So how old's the youngest? I've gotta... Tracey Lovejoy: Seven. Chad: Seven, okay. And the oldest? Tracey Lovejoy: Just got married in Melbourne, Australia a couple weeks ago. He's 28. Chad: Very nice. Now that's a hell of a span right there. Tracey Lovejoy: Yeah. My husband brought five to the party and I brought one. [laughter] Chad: So Joel, I threw this topic out to you around women in leadership leaving their posts and I thought, we need to get a couple of strong females who actually can understand this, we can't, we're just dumb dudes, on the show. And then your response was, "What? What's this article about?" [laughter] Joel: Was that when I said, "What's the title of this? Chicks that can't hack it in the workforce?" Was that our cancel title? Tracey Lovejoy: Keep listening people. Keep listening. It's gonna to be interesting. Push through. [laughter] Chad: Yes. So we've obviously been saying much to do about females leaving the workforce. Not just leaving the workforce, but getting into leadership positions. And we've been talking on this podcast for almost, what, six years? Shit, it has been six years. About getting more diversity into the C-suite, getting into the ranks. Well, that's starting to happen slowly. It's trickling, but it seems like it's become more of a revolving door than anything else. So what the hell is happening? What are you seeing in the market and with some of these articles, what were you able to extract from some of the studies? Tracey Lovejoy: I just want to say first, thank you for having this conversation. Joel: You're welcome. Tracey Lovejoy: It's a super important conversation and snarkiness aside, it is hard. It's hard to hang sometimes in these large corporate environments as a female exec. So thanks for creating this space. Joel: You're welcome, Shannon. Chad: It's what the space is for. So welcome to the space. Now, tell us what the hell's going on? Shannon Lucas: It's a summary as of the topic. To some extent, I'm pointing to the amazing articles that you queued up for us Chad, in talking about this. I think Jacinda stepping down in New Zealand has really created a global discussion point for us. This is related to also several key female executives stepping down. And then in last year, in 2022, there was a report put out together by McKinsey and leanin.org, Women in Work, that are looking at the phenomena that are happening. And this is something that you were pointing to us as well to circle this conversation around. Shannon Lucas: In that report, there are good things and then there are things that are showing that in a lot of ways, we're not seeing changes across the marketplace and organizational shifts. So we do see small, I won't call it quite incremental, but we do see small shifts in women in leadership at all levels when you look at the report. Even at the highest level of executive from 2017 to 2022, we do see about a 6% increase of women in those highest positions. I think what really leads to this conversation is a key finding that you do see double the women leaving at the director level than we see for men. And they point to a few key phenomenon that they saw in this study that they relate to that. One being, that it's really emotionally hard to be a woman in the workforce. Shannon, a nice way of talking about this is the emotional labor that we have to do. In the report they talk about microaggressions, they talk about having to defend yourself more as a woman. Joel: Can you define microaggression before we talk about it? Because I think, to a lot of people that's a new term. Shannon Lucas: Yeah. So it can be... Actually, I don't know the definition off the top of my head, like in perfect. So I can more talk about what it feels like when we experience it. Joel: Examples. Shannon Lucas: Yeah. It can be even unconscious statements that will come our way as women or people of color or anyone who's a minority in the moment that diminishes you and your value. So it could be, "Can you move over at the table?" It could be... Joel: Can you get us coffee? Shannon Lucas: Well, yeah. That's a very... That's a macroaggression. [laughter] Joel: Can you talk a little bit louder? I mean a little bit softer? Or, wow, you're so much, you're so emotional. These can be microaggressions that are happening. Another thing the study talks to which I think falls into the microaggression category as well, is not being recognized for the role we have in the company. Being assumed that we are more junior than we actually are. And so, someone walking into a room, perhaps, I'm actually senior to this person, but making the assumption because of my gender or my color that I play a role that may be lower within the hierarchical chain. So this is a key reason they point to. They also talk about the desire for more flexibility, and so as organizations are moving back to bring people into the workplace, women are leaving jobs saying, "I wanna go someplace that maintains the flexibility that I've come to really love, both because perhaps I still have a greater role in my home, which statistically is still true, but also because some of those microaggressions and the ways I have to justify my value aren't experienced as much when I'm in a remote-work world. And so I can remove myself from some of the things that feel bad and exhausting and the emotional labor if I'm not constantly in the office space." Joel: Either of you, your take on... COVID was brutal, just brutal for women in the workforce. Have we recovered at all from the pandemic? Tracey, you're nodding your head. Talk about the lack of progress after COVID, or your viewpoint on the state of women in the workforce after COVID. Shannon Lucas: Oh, I'm laughing because I don't think any of us are truly recovered from COVID. And as I see all these organizations that are calling people back, every coaching call that I get to do where someone says they're... Even though it's in my contract, they're starting to challenge me, they might fire me. And it is... People are still exhausted coming out of the pandemic, because we were working more and we're working under harder conditions where it became especially we work with change makers in the world, and change makers have to work through influence across silos, and that's actually harder in the virtual world. So we are exhausted coming out of the pandemic still. Joel: Is we women, or men and women? Shannon Lucas: I meant more globally as a workforce that just, as humans, yeah, that's what I meant. Shannon. Tracey Lovejoy: I think one of the things that the pandemic exposed to everybody, and it wasn't felt by everyone in the same way prior to the pandemic, is the challenges we have with basic access to childcare from a almost infrastructure perspective in the US. Now, European companies do this differently, and just because of the way that that... Access to that ends up impacting women's ability to be present and show up the ways they wanna show up in the workplace, if we don't have that infrastructure in place, it disproportionally affects women. The other thing that it disproportionally affects though, and we saw this 'cause so many places actually folded, there just wasn't great business models with care is, okay, as a middle-class White woman, I could have my kids in the other room and have them on an iPod, but if I was a frontline worker who didn't have access to healthcare, I couldn't bring them to the places that I was going. And so just the amount of managing that you had to do around that potentially up to losing your job. And so, while we have shed a light on this, I think that it's a pretty intractable problem in our US society which is unfortunate 'cause it also impacts men too. Tracey Lovejoy: There are single dads, they're also trying to lean in and help too. So it's like it impacts everybody, and I think we need to look at some of those structural things underpinning all of this. Chad: It seems, at least looking at the report from McKinsey, that there are three major reasons why females are leaving. Number one, there's more hurdles than there are for men. They're overworked, not compensated for some of the things they do, we'll talk about that. And then things aren't changing. So to boil it down for me when I was reading this, it's just that the old boys club still exists, and that the change hasn't happened, that's why there's more hurdles, that's why you have to work harder because it's hard to break into the old boys network. How do we get past this 1950s way of working and actually transcend into 2023? Tracey Lovejoy: I think it's interesting because when we talk about systemic prejudice, if you will, it's not like people are intentionally showing up and saying, "I want less women in the boardroom, or I want less women on the leadership team." As humans, we have a natural predilection to seek out places that are safe, like for like, all of those things. So I wanna sort of put that, and so what it requires is a deeper self-reflection, a deeper self-awareness, a commitment to lean into wanting to help which requires emotional labor itself. As we were chatting at the beginning, I think one of the problems that we're realizing is that third-wave feminism helped a lot of women lean in, develop the skills, stand in our power, all of the things. I can say as a mother of six boys, [chuckle] that what we didn't see after the fact was helping men also lean into some of the other traits that might... As women, we leaned into more masculine traits. The '80s, we saw the big shoulder pads and trying to be more man-like. Working girl, we can go back to that. Tracey Lovejoy: But for men, when I was sending my son to kindergarten, I literally cried for weeks because I knew what was gonna happen. I knew that his sweet precious self was gonna start to be told that it wasn't okay to have feelings in the classroom, that it wasn't okay to cry, that it wasn't okay to be vulnerable, that if he showed up that way, even if it wasn't normalized in the classroom, it would happen on the playground, and it did. And so we have this legacy now that these women are ready to lean in, but that men have been told that that vulnerability that could be their strength in helping to create this change wasn't wanted or desired, it wasn't powerful. So what that leaves then, is the women right now to do the emotional labor in the organizational context to help create this change. And that's one of the things that you're referring to, it's this other dimension. We show up twice as much supporting other people, trying to cultivate diversity, not just for ourselves but across. And that comes at a toll 'cause we also have to, as you said, prove ourselves a 10X factor that we're capable for the jobs. Chad: Not for the same pay either, by the way. Tracey Lovejoy: Not for the same pay. That's exactly right. Joel: How much of it is just learning to speak each other's language? 'Cause I think when you say, "Get in touch with your feminine side," that men automatically think, "I gotta be a big wussy if I wanna work with women." [laughter] Joel: And I think that's a false premise. And when you talk about, you go to the workplace and say, "I have to put my masculine hat on and I have to be bold and interrupt people and do that," I think telling men you gotta be emotional and cry at work, I don't know if that's the right message. I think it's more... And tell me if I'm wrong, it's more about just understanding your language as you guys have worked really hard to understand our language. Where am I right or wrong on that? Shannon Lucas: I think you're right, and I'll tag back to something Chad said and then bring it back together. Chad, you had asked the question, if the old boys club still exists, how do we come to a different world? I think starting with even shifting from calling it an old boys club is a starting point. Because when people hear that, it's really easy to create distance from that. And to say, "I'm not intentionally part of an old boys club." Instead, to begin to frame it as thinking about in any system, someone has power, any system. The systems we happen to be talking about, the power is predominantly sitting with older White males in this case, but in other systems, other people have the predominant power. To really shift from whoever is there, it starts with the people in power embracing that it is their norms that have become dominant within the system. That's just what's true, it doesn't matter... Any anthropological study you go back to, that's what has happened, and that's how we work as humans. And so to your point, Joel, as we think about, talking more like you, we first have to tap into what is unconscious bias. The system is built for the people in power, that's just how it's happened. And so if we all can actually agree, "Oh, there's ways I've learned to work in the system that I'm not even aware that I've learned." Shannon Lucas: And that's part of what Shannon was talking about in terms of the way that we've trained men and women from the very beginning. If we can say, there's ways of working and we can help people safely tune in to what's happening there and what the positive and potentially negative consequences are of the normal ways we're working, and not make it a blame game, and not be like, "You've created the old boys club." But create this way that we're all gaining awareness, that's where you can begin to see people safely change. And so really, solidly good unconscious bias training helps all of us see where we've adopted some of this thinking. I remember being in a training once and the woman openly admitted, she said, "One of the first times I looked at my gender unconscious bias is I got in an airplane, I was surprised to see a female pilot." Those are things that can be born into us. There's that old joke we've all heard of a man was with his son, they get in a terrible accident, they arrive at the hospital, and the surgeon says, "I cannot operate on this boy, it's my son." How is that possible? The surgeon is his mother. Right? Chad: Wait a minute, it could be his stepdad, it could be his stepdad, probably. Shannon Lucas: It could be his stepdad, it could be his gay dad. It's an old joke. [laughter] Shannon Lucas: We're in a very fluid, beautiful world today that's incredibly inclusive, but the joke's origin is around gender bias. And so if we can acknowledge like yeah, power comes with a set of ways that we behave and let's make those really explicit, then we can begin to have shared conversations, like you're saying, Joel. And I don't... You think that while emotion is certainly important and an important thing that we need to talk about, it's also just, "Oh, I might accidentally be doing microaggressions even if I don't see myself as someone who's aggressive, even if I know I'm actually not biased and I love having female employees, colleagues, bosses." Joel: Or one man telling another man, "Dude, no, that's not cool." That doesn't happen enough either. So I think having men understand that whole dynamic will help each other as well. One of the great discussions we've had doing this show is with Torin Ellis, Black man influencer in this community. We asked him what can we do to help as two middle-aged White guys, and he said, "Speak up. When you see bullshit, call bullshit." And I think the same goes for women in the workplace as well, in this example. Tracey Lovejoy: If I connect that back to your point though, 'cause I wasn't advocating obviously for men crying in the workplace, but it does end up with a certain amount of vulnerability. And in that moment you're making yourself vulnerable, you're monitoring yourself, there's a self-awareness that that thing was uncomfortable, and you're stepping into a space that you weren't invited to step into, and that can be really scary. And so there's this vulnerability that is like a precursor in a way to us being able to have these authentic conversations. The other, sort of call to action for that allyship though, is tapping into that vulnerability again in different environment. So one of the DEI leaders that I was just talking about said, "I got out of just having conversations about the traditional allies," which we can talk more about, and she said, "And I curated a group of White guys who are in leadership positions, but my job there is to create that safe space for them to ask the vulnerable questions." And I think we all know that even myself as I'm leading this DEI exploration, I have to own that I have nerves about maybe stepping in it or saying it the wrong way. My intentions are good, but that's not always enough. Tracey Lovejoy: We have to be curious and willing to admit like, "Oh, I'm sorry that that thing that I thought was okay is offensive to you," and listen and take that in. But again, there's an emotional ability to regulate there that helps us through this process. Chad: But there are instances, and I would say many, where guys like us, we sit back and we're like, "Well, looks like we've been the problem. We need to shut the hell up and just sit down." And so therefore, you don't get those individuals who could prospectively be great allies, but they're more pushed off into the corner. And they, I think, extract themselves from the situation more than anything else. What do we do in trying to evolve a workplace, which literally is still 1950s type of punch the clock, come in. We've just recently been able to talk about remote and hybrid because of a damn pandemic. But how do we start to take this 1950s thought process, Mad Men process and move it? How do we do that? Because every time we do, we spend millions of dollars, billions of dollars every year in DEI training. It's not doing anything. We're seeing barely any outcomes. So money is being spent, but we're not seeing progress. What the hell do we do? Tracey Lovejoy: As I have these conversations, I think it's, there's the two sides, and there's the call to action for the men to lean in more. Right? It's really easy to take two steps back. And I don't know how to fix that exactly. As we talk with Catalyst about creating any kind of change, right? So this is the work that we do, we work with these innate change makers who see better visions of the future and can't stop themselves from moving into action to realize that better vision. Tracey Lovejoy: And no matter what kind of change you're making, I've increasingly been talking about the emotional labor of change. With you're in an organization and you have a sort of big, bold audacious vision and the organization is resistant to it, you have to be really clear about how much emotional labor and your own energy you're willing to put in to move the needle at all, or you can scale back your vision and maintain some more of your own energy because you're closer aligned to what they want, and so you have to be comfortable with that. Tracey Lovejoy: The emotional labor of change agents doing DEI work, I think is 10X, because everyone is going into their corners and not knowing how to... Being afraid to step in it, not knowing how to be a good ally, not knowing how they might be contributing to it with that unconscious bias etcetera. So it's sort of a dual call to action. It's like people who are allies and on the DEI leadership track, be... You're gonna have to recognize that you're gonna need to do the emotional leadership. So how do you create a community and places where you can recharge safely? And then on the other side, we just need more people to lean into being vulnerable to have those challenging conversations. Joel: Chad mentions zero progress. But I wanna throw some numbers at you guys and you guys live this every day. For every man, almost two women are attending college, in the United States. 70% of high school valedictorians are women. Over 50% of grads are women. Almost 60% of professional degrees are gotten by women and even at MIT, 47% of the degrees are obtained by women. In 1995 we had zero CEOs that were women in the Fortune 500 and today we have roughly 10%. Is that progress or not? Shannon Lucas: Yes. Joel: Okay. Then what's the disconnect from the valedictorian to, I'm gonna get the hell out of the workplace. How do we bridge that gap? Or can we? Tracey Lovejoy: Can I come back to that question, Joel? Joel: Sure. Tracey Lovejoy: 'Cause I love Chad's question and I have five calls to action. Not for you guys to do all of them. [chuckle] Handpick and then we'll talk about the gap, I promise. Chad: Okay. Tracey Lovejoy: So it's like here's a menu, not a like everything. One, if you sit in an organization, ask folks in your leadership, what are our statistics around diversity? How do we measure them? How do we know they're working? Just ask questions, because the more that leadership hears these questions, the more they think people are serious about it. That takes almost no work. So it's like, set yourself a goal. Once a week, ask some leader in the organization about what's happening with diversity, but getting a little deeper in a meaningful way. Tracey Lovejoy: Number two, something else you can do. Take some training on unconscious bias. And there's so many great resources, like just watch a TED Talk. They're amazing TED Talks on unconscious bias. Go to Coursera, go to LinkedIn. Make yourself aware. Begin to make notes of where your unconscious bias pops up. Right? 'Cause when we're really honest with ourselves, we see it everywhere. Man, I lock my doors in certain neighborhoods. That is embarrassing for me to say out loud. And that totally happens for me. Total unconscious bias that happens for me. Number three, name it. You already said this, Joel, and I love it. Name it if you see things happening, right? Call it out and be like, "Hey dude, that's not cool or wow, that felt strange to me. What was happening for you?" And you can name it to the person. You can name it aloud, you can name it in different ways. Tracey Lovejoy: Number four, remember this is a menu, you don't have to do all of them. Mentor women. Statistically, women hear more feedback about their confidence and their soft skills. We have this dilemma of we are either too much of a bitch or we're too passive, and so we get a lot of feedback in that continuum. What men usually get mentored on are hard skills that are really valuable to the organization and help them move up in really concrete ways. So, mentor. All right. Fifth one, show up for activities around diversity. Take that this is... I put it on the list last because this one is maybe you already got a packed schedule. It's hard, but I already gave four other things that you can be doing that's really, they're somewhat easy. So that's my menu. And now, Joel... Joel: Tracey, you should know that if there's a menu in front of me, I'm ordering everything. [laughter] Shannon Lucas: I love it. Joel: Pick and choose, yes. Chad: He generally goes toward the buffet. Joel: Yes. Yes is my answer to the menu. [laughter] Tracey Lovejoy: We have the gender buffet for you there. [laughter] Tracey Lovejoy: Yes. Shannon Lucas: That's right. All right. Tracey Lovejoy: I wanna say something though about, Tracy just building onto that. I'm reading this great book about how to be an anti-racist and I think that the same is true. I actually hadn't thought about it, do we say anti-misogynist? I don't know what the gendered version of this is. Chad: [laughter] Yes. Tracey Lovejoy: But the position is really clear and I love it, which is there's no neutral here. Now in the racist world, we can have racist thoughts and ideas he moved away from categorizing a person as a thing 'cause we move through different things. And to Tracey's point, our prejudices might come up in some context more than others. But this goes back to if you're seeing something or you're participating in racist systems or racist policies, the only option to combat that is not to be neutral on it, but to be an anti-racist if we really wanna see change. And I think the same is true for women. Chad: One of the things that Joel said, I wanna hit because I think it is incredibly prevalent within our society, is that, well, we are seeing some change. Well, at the rate of change that we are today, it's gonna take 125 years, actually get to equity. Do you call that change that you will accept? Fuck no. Yeah. Has it changed? Yes, it's changed. Is it incremental? Is it almost worthless? Fuck yes it is. So the question is, how do we actually make change so that we can move more toward equity in our organizations without the government having to step in like they have with salary transparency, to actually force the issue? Chad: We're falling in traps left and right because we think we see progress which really isn't... It's not really there. And we're not gonna see it in our lifetime. So what do we have to do? I saw the menu, I get the menu, how do we not fall in these traps? Tracey Lovejoy: But this is my own personal opinion I will say that out loud, but I think unregulated capitalism is destructive for humanity and society. So if we're expecting corporations to do this out of the goodness of their heart, I think we'll be waiting a long fucking time. I think that's right. [laughter] Chad: Okay. Joel: Does that mean that we should go to regulating how many people should be on the board? Of what color and what gender? No, I don't think so either. Joel: Shannon, interesting point. So we interviewed Cindy Gallop a couple years ago, and I don't know if you know Cindy or her work, but she's pretty no nonsense. And one of her ideas was that if you're expecting the system to change, it's not. It's only going to change if we have more women founding companies. If we have more Black men and women founding companies, more people of diversity. Agree, disagree 'cause I sort of agree with her, there need to be more government programs, more money into education or people that are founding companies that are diversity. To me trying to fix what's already there is gonna... If not impossible, be really, really hard. And to Chad's point, you'll see incremental change and then everyone will point to that. But is it real change? Probably not. Tracey Lovejoy: I think it's all the things, Joel. I think we need to look at the healthcare system. I think we need to look at, like, California actually has regulated board compositions, so, well, in a few years we'll have some statistics about how that's playing out. Joel: And you mentioned Europe, maternity leave and things like that in Europe. But what are you guys seeing in Europe? Tracey Lovejoy: Totally because... But that's the other side. If the paternity was always even, then women could get more help in that place too. My personal belief in, and this is sort of my personal mission statement is around the power that the largest multinationals have. They have more money than most governments. They transcend national borders, they employ more people than the federal government can touch if we look at them collectively. Tracey Lovejoy: So I am not giving up on, I think we definitely need more female-founded, people-of-color-founded, that marginalized people founding companies. But in order to sit on a billion dollars of profit and have meaningful impact at a systems-level problem, I think we also need to be fixing the big companies. Joel: And is that government that makes the biggest impact? Is it customers saying, we demand this out of our public companies? Tracey Lovejoy: The customer thing is interesting. As part of our Catalyst Leadership Trust, we're actually looking at the impact of what up-and-coming customers are gonna be demanding of large organizations. And in that community, we have a lot of C-levels from some of these really large companies. And this is alive for them. And it's alive on a lot of different levels. Not just from a technology perspective, how they need to engage but what deeply do these new customers care about? And certainly sustainability and equity are big factors in that. Shannon Lucas: I have maybe a not popular perspective here. [chuckle] Joel: That's our show, babe. [laughter] Chad: Bring it. Bring it. Shannon Lucas: It's all you do, it's okay we are ready. Joel: We love to be unpopular. Shannon Lucas: Change takes time. Chad: 125 years, Tracey. Shannon Lucas: I'm not advocating for 125 years. Chad: Okay, okay. Shannon Lucas: But this is part of the work that Shannon and I do that, the title of our book Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. Is the idea that the natural change makers among us wanna move so fast and we're doing it faster than people and systems are ready for. And that's how we're breaking shit. We're breaking relationships, we're getting ejected from organizations, we're burning out in the process. Shannon Lucas: So I'm not saying that 125 years as a woman, as a mother of a daughter, these aren't things that I'm saying, "Yeah, okay, we'll get there." But there's a reality of the adoption curve. There's a reality of the tipping points that happen. And something that has to happen as change is taking root, is people have to see the benefit of it. So we're beginning to have really good data that show us between the work that I don't remember, Gina, the actress who really looks at women in Hollywood, this work that Sheryl Sandberg does with Lean In, together obviously with McKinsey report, we're beginning to have really reliable good data. Shannon Lucas: We have amazing data on diversity that shows public companies that have diverse boards and leadership actually have a better financial return. And once you see those kinds of numbers, you're beginning to see organizations adopt it. Not just out of the goodness of their heart, but because it actually makes the right financial sense for them to do it. We're doing it badly, we're doing it as a checkbox, we're kind of half-hearted because it's not where the focus is for most companies. Shannon Lucas: And so as we're going through this change curve and as the adoption has to take hold, women are leaving and they're starting their own companies, and they're demonstrating the power they can have, and they're finding organizations that are more flexible and actually understand the power that women can bring so they don't have to fight the fight. That's what the statistics in the report show us. But it's happening. Yes, I want us to do more. Yes, I want more women-led businesses. Shannon and I are a women-led business. Tracey Lovejoy: I totally agree, Tracey and that was something I was gonna bring up earlier. Because humans also, our brains can't understand exponential change. And the beginning part of an exponential curve feels really fucking slow. [chuckle] But you do hit this tipping point if you, especially if you have all of those things in a system that becomes the flywheel. So I totally agree with that part. I have a question for you guys though. All right. So as White dudes, what are your answers to some of these problems? Chad: Get involved? I think right out of the gate, not taking the easy way out and extracting yourself from the conversation. Actually getting in, asking the dumb questions, and being a real advocate. I think it's really easy to feel uncomfortable, but guess what, as a White dude, I don't know what uncomfortable feels like compared to a female in a boardroom or a person of color in a boardroom or something of that nature. So I just need to suck it the fuck up and drive on as we've told everybody else to do. So it's kind of like we're starting to feel what everybody else around us has felt for years. And now we're like, "Oh, wait a minute I'm uncomfortable. I'm gonna get outta this." Shannon Lucas: I don't like it. I don't like it. Yeah. Chad: Yeah, I don't like this. So I think we just need to stop taking the easy way out. We need to actually get involved and it's gonna be uncomfortable. And that's good 'cause that's what... Change is uncomfortable. Joel: I think calling bullshit when you see it, is something that I'd have a more awareness of. I think to your point, Tracey as well is, I have a daughter 13 years old and I'm incredibly aware of not micro-aggressing her, I guess. [chuckle] Pointing out where leadership that women can be CEOs, that women can be leaders of countries. And where I see it in my own life to highlight that. Just as a parent with a 13-year-old, I know that my mother as a 13-year-old, the world and the opportunities that she had are much different than what my daughter, her perception of the world and the opportunities that she has. And if you look at progress, I can tell you my mom had a much more closed view of what her life was gonna be like than my 13-year-old daughter today. Joel: So to me I have to be a champion for her to say, "Women are awesome, they're leading companies." When I see a startup that's a cool idea. I'm like, "Look at what this woman is doing." I wanna point out and highlight to her that women kick ass. And if I can help her, and I'm a man saying women are awesome, to me, that is the ultimate gift that I can give to the world. If I'm getting in touch with my emotional side here on this podcast, which I think I can. Tracey Lovejoy: We haven't made you cry though, Joel. [laughter] Joel: Oh, it's coming. It's coming, Shannon. If I can elevate her, to me I've done my job. I don't work for a Fortune 500, I'm not in a position to make any sort of big swings from that perspective. But if I can make a difference in my daughter's life, to me that's kind of what I really focus on. Chad: Yeah and we're a couple of saps to be quite frank. I think, and Joel might disagree, but I think our favorite commercial, like Super Bowl commercials... Joel: No. Oh, God. Chad: Is that Audi commercial with the dad and the daughter and she's racing. They keep saying you can't do it. And he's there, and she does. And it's just one of those things where I have two daughters as well, so it's like, I want for them... Joel: And the dad's like, "What am I supposed to tell her? She's not gonna make as much as a man?" What am I supposed to... Yeah. Chad: Yeah, yeah. And it's like, no, fuck no. And I'm not gonna stand for that, and that's where I think we have to be as White dudes, but we've always just kind of faded into the woodwork when it became uncomfortable. Joel: And I see her falling into I guess the cultural trappings of, you're a woman, this is how you're supposed to act. And anytime I can pull her back to, no, you don't have to take that. You don't have to just... Tracey Lovejoy: That's awesome. Joel: Do what someone says because you're a female. Get out of that stereotype because you don't have to fall into that trap. I think I'm finding myself do that more and more with my daughter. Tracey Lovejoy: If I had one more call to action for people, I think it would be, thinking deeply about the equality versus equity. You're going back to the numbers, and it's like, if you all start from different spaces behind the starting line, then an equal race is not gonna be equal. And so equity is going back to the numbers that you were talking about and saying, look, when we're looking for a board position, we're looking for a woman, and our traditional criterion meant that they had to have C-level experience at a large public company. That funnel is really small because of all of the micro-decisions that were made before that. And so getting to equity is thinking deeply about where can we lift someone up where we know they'll still be able to do the job? We might need to be able to give them a little bit more support to fill in those gaps, but we're committed to the diversity and the equity. Joel: Tracey is clapping by the way, for listeners that can't see. [laughter] Shannon Lucas: Call to action. Tracey Lovejoy: I didn't get a Joel clap though. [applause] Joel: It takes me a while to catch up Shannon, and Chad will attest to that. And that is Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, co-founders of Catalyst Constellations. Chad, another one in the can. And I don't know about you, but I'm a little smarter and a little more in touch with my feminine side. 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 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 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 trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

It’s no mystery that ChatGPT is already making inroads into HR tech. So, who’s ready for “ChatGPT for interviews”? Metaview thinks you are. That’s why Siadhal Magos, Metaview co-founder and CEO, faces the Firing Squad. A former Sr. product manager at Uber, Magos, created Metaview to automatically write interview notes for recruiters in order to “save time and focus on high-quality interactions with candidates.” Maybe he’ll use Metaview to summarize his interview on Chad & Cheese, but it will be no defense against a smackdown if his pitch is a dud. Locked and loaded, let’s do this. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover kids. The Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: Alright, alright, alright. It's Firing Squad everybody. And this is your favorite guilty pleasure a.k.a the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always the woody to my buzz Chad Sowash is in the house and we welcome Siadhal Magos, co-founder and CEO of Metaview to the program. Siadhal Welcome. Siadhal Magos: Thank you very much for having me. Joel: Glad to have you here. So most of our listeners don't know who the hell you are. Give us a little bit about you in a Twitter bio. Siadhal Magos: Nice, thanks. So I'm Siadhal. As you've mentioned, I'm one of the co-founders at Metaview. Been building Metaview for about four years. Before that was on the product team at Uber when they were one of the fastest growing companies on the planet which is really where I started to get pretty nerdy and frustrated about hiring processes and how we might be able to use technology to improve them. Metaview's pretty full on, but outside of work, I've got a very young family. So I have a two-year-old and a six-week-old. So if I fall asleep... Joel: Wow. Siadhal Magos: During the show, then please forgive me. It's nothing to do with how entertaining the show is. It's only to do with the lack of sleep. [laughter] So pretty full on that side of things doesn't leave much space for other things. My wife's on a mission to visit 100 countries in her lifetime, so by default, I do a bunch of traveling too. We're currently on 60 which is we're getting there. But the pesky kids have sort of got in the way of late. [laughter] I grew up in London, currently live here too, but in between, I have spent a bit of time living on the west coast of US and a couple of years living in Amsterdam as well. So that's a bit about me. Joel: Benny Hill or Monty Python, which is funnier? [laughter] Siadhal Magos: I would say Monty Python, but that is both a little bit before my time. But Monty Python I think has stood the test of time a little more. [laughter] Joel: He's off to a great start calling us old. [laughter] He's off to a great start. Chad: Joel just loves Benny Hill because of all the boobs that came along with Benny Hill. Joel: You say it like it's a bad thing. Chad: I didn't. I was just putting out a fact. So how many countries in Europe have you actually visited? All? Siadhal Magos: No. Chad: Most? S?: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. [laughter] Siadhal Magos: There's a lot of the small ones that we haven't been to and... But my wife's very strategic about it. She's like, "Listen, we can do those European ones easily anytime." So what we had to do before we started having a family was go to the sort of hard to travel to places. And then she's got a bunch that are easier to travel to now, so we're more likely to do a bunch of those European countries. And then I guess we get back to challenging ourselves in some distant future. Joel: Talk about how great Portugal is when you visit. That's how you get on Chad's good side. Chad: Everybody loves Portugal. Shut up. Siadhal Magos: Yeah, absolutely. [laughter] Joel: And over this Euro trash, tell him what he's won. Chad: Yeah. So this is how Firing Squad is going to play out. At the sound of the bell, you're gonna have two minutes to pitch Metaview. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q&A. Be sure to be concise or you're gonna get the crickets. Just means to tighten up your shit and move along. At the end of Q&A, you will receive one of either from the two of us. Big applause, pop the champagne, this one is a winner. Golf clap, put away the champagne, it's looking good, but you still have a lot of work to do or the Firing Squad. Joel: Ouch. Chad: ChatGPT just drank all the champagne. You better pull out the whiteboard because this one is headed to the dumpster kids. That's Firing Squad. Joel: ChatGPT more like ChatGPT with the guns. Are you ready? Siadhal Magos: I'm ready, I'm ready. Joel: The pitch begins now. Siadhal Magos: Interviews are the most crucial touchpoints in any hiring process. They're aware the decision gets made by the team and by the candidate, but every recruiter and every interviewer hates frantically taking notes during interviews rather than actually engaging with candidates, then spending a bunch of time submitting subpar notes that don't really feel like a full reflection of the conversation. Metaview makes it so that you never have to take interview notes manually again. No more sort of cracking your knuckles before and taking a big deep breath before the interview begins. Metaview does that exhausting work for you. We've built the first of its kind AI that seamlessly records your interviews, then generates your interview notes for you, so recruiters and interviewers can instead focus on high quality interactions with candidates, save time writing up notes after every interview, and really just give the judgment, the decision, and why they're making that decision rather than sort of the morass of content you captured during the interview. Siadhal Magos: Now what's more, the notes are far higher quality than you'll be able to write yourself 'cause of course robots are doing it for you. A few things that make experience of using Metaview the best assistant for your interviews, one, our notes are purpose built for recruiting. So they take into account all of the context and specificities of the interview context. Secondly, where typical transcription might let you down maybe with technical terms or specialist language within your industry or company names, Metaview does not because we've trained it particularly for this use case. And thirdly, we know that every person's note-taking needs are different. So after every interview, based on what you do with your notes, our AI tailors and improves itself to get closer to your specific needs for note-taking. So that means if you prefer paragraphs to bullet points, your notes will be in paragraphs instead of bullet points. Siadhal Magos: If you prefer bullet points, they'll be in bullet points. If you prefer really succinct notes versus really detailed, we'll take that form. So it learns based on how you take notes. Our AI generated notes are being used by recruiters and interviewers at companies like Brex, Robinhood, AngelList, Pure Storage, and the proof is really in the pudding. 80% of recruiters say they would be very disappointed to have to go back to the old way of doing things. They say it saves them anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes after an interview and obviously has an immeasurable impact on candidate experience. 50% more scorecards are being completed within 12 hours. Head to... That's a... Obviously I had to run. Head to metaview.ai to find out more. Thank you. Joel: Alright, alright, alright. Well, we'll let you squeak in that last bit there. Metaview the name, talk about that. Your metaview.ai, metaview.com is not in use right now. Did you try to buy it? And more interestingly, has Zuckerberg called you to file a lawsuit? Siadhal Magos: Okay. So Metaview is a mashup of metadata and interview. So that's where the name comes from. Metadata is data about data. We found that a lot of people were focusing on the outcomes of the hiring process like time to close or time to offer acceptance rates without having any data about what led to those data points. So that's where the name comes from. We would love to have the.com. Watch this space on that one and Zuck has not been in touch. We were Metaview before Meta was I guess part of everyone's daily penance. Joel: Part of the daily lexicon of business with meta. Okay, I can buy that, I can buy that. So there seems to have been a fair amount of pivot with ChatGPT and what the business... The core business to what it is now. I think December or February maybe something major happened. Talk about the pivot, why you did it, and the difference in the business now versus what it was before. Siadhal Magos: Yeah. I probably wouldn't call it a pivot. The product still retains a lot of the features it had before that point. Really what changed with... We've been working with OpenAI for a couple of years on a few elements of our product. It's sort of how we ended up enriching a lot of data off the back of interviews. But what sort of... The changes around... You said December is when all these changes started to rapidly occur. We then launched this new product, this AI notetaker in February. What we saw was just... So it was a different pinpoint for a different bunch of people. So previously we would sell sort of to help organizations understand, take control of their interview process. It was a strategic sale, still very much part of our business. What we're finding now with AI generated notes is it's just flying off the shelves for individual recruiters who want to make their life easier and want to give it a go. And we are wrapping sort of a different go-to market around that. We're enabling people to sign up and start to use it and have a very quick onboarding because the product really speaks for itself and the time to value is so instantaneous and the value is so clear to them that it's just crazy not to. Chad: So the problem you're trying to solve is note-taking. Is that the scope? Siadhal Magos: That's the problem as the sort of the end user feels it for sure, like the sort of the franticness and exhaustion of taking notes. If you are running sort of five to 10 interviews a day, yes. Obviously the downstream impacts of that impacts the candidate experience, it impacts the speed of your... When you run better interviews 'cause you're actually present during the conversation, you make better decisions which means you have fewer weaker candidates sort of polluting the rest of your pipeline. But yeah, I think it's really fair to say the big sort of the painkiller that we're providing to folks is stop doing that really manual rope work 'cause machines are better at it now. Chad: Okay. It's pretty much a micro point solution at this point, right? Joel: Feature versus product. Chad: Yeah. When you take a look at it, are you looking to perspectively grow this into a platform or really just focus micro and get this right for really a small segment of the universe? Or are you looking to expand that? Siadhal Magos: So right now, laser-focused on this AI note generation. There's so much more you can do to make it even more delightful. The way that we think about I guess the market is that summarization is gonna be one of the key capabilities that is gonna impact many parts of business. So people will be summarizing all of their meetings and they'll be relying on AI to do that. And there'll be various platforms that will do that job. Maybe Teams already has this capability for general meetings. Zoom I'm sure will at some point too. But recruiters and people who are involved in interviewing have a very specific workflow and very specific expectations around who can access their notes, who in the conversation is the person who'll be most interested in getting notes about that? Siadhal Magos: There are all these very specific things that means we have this steady. Having a dedicated summarization solution for interviews makes a ton of sense and there's loads more we can do there before you move into that platform world. When you think about that platform world, we actually have a bunch of these capabilities already because we built this previously. What we focus a lot on is one, how do you help interviewers level up? So as well as sort of taking away the need to write notes which means you can be more present and you're just a release valve in terms of improving your basis for interviews. We also play back data. How much did you speak compared to the candidate? How many questions did you ask during the interview? And how does that compare to other people in your company who are responsible for this same interview type? So we can give you really contextual data to help you understand, "Looks like I ran that interview a little differently to what I usually do." Chad: Okay. Siadhal Magos: Secondly, we help organizations create training programs that are fully automated too. So a lot of top tech companies especially, and I'm sure it's true in other parts of the industry, will train up interviewers by having them shadow. So, "Hey, listen in on Joel next time. He's doing an interview. We think he's really good at interviewing. You can learn how he does it." That has a couple of downsides. One, Joel might be good at interviewing, but this next interview might be terrible and it might be with a candidate who is really not up to the task and therefore you never really get to see what a rigorous interview looks like. And now you are calibrated based on this weak interview. The great thing about having this corpus of recorded interviews which is part of Metaview's platform is you can actually identify your canonical examples of amazing interviews run by your best interviewers and say every single person who's gonna interview at this company going forward is gonna listen to those very best interviews before they start doing it themselves. So training is a big part of it too. Essentially there's a whole number of applications that unwrap themselves when you're capturing these conversations. But AI notes generation is the painkiller that makes people say "Hey, I want this today." Chad: Okay. So who are your main competitors in your mind today? Siadhal Magos: From an AI notes perspective, we are really first to market with this and years ahead of any competition because anyone else, if you look at say the Otters of the world or these companies that do generalized meeting summarization, they're not specific for the use case which means really there's no competition. In terms of the broader interview intelligence market, there are other companies like BrightHire, Pillars who sort of also record interviews as well. Chad: Yeah. Now you've got ChatGPT in the market plus you're gonna have to face some bigger competition with organizations who have been in the Chat realm for a very long time and they're already gathering this data. Now they can plug into ChatGPT and just bulletize what happened. So when you take a look at the landscape today especially with organizations who can plug into chatGPT and take all of this text like you're saying, it's not created the way that I want it. Well, I can get it there pretty quick. All I have to do is tap into an API and boom, I'm done. What is your next step because this isn't gonna get you where you need to go? Siadhal Magos: Just to clarify your question, when you're saying these other players that have chats, what are the sort of thing you're referring to? Chad: I'm talking about conversational AI talking about all of these other... Siadhal Magos: Got it. Chad: Even hone it who does the transcription, I take the entire transcription. All I have to do is plug it into ChatGPT and I can get it bulletized in a heartbeat. It takes no time. Siadhal Magos: Yeah, yeah. So where you start to gain advantage over time is one, integrating into workflows as I mentioned. So I mentioned a few. The fact that we know... Given we have integrations with the ATS, we know that the recruiter for this role is this person. So when the candidate was interviewed by the hiring manager, we can default into knowing the recruiter has access to that set of notes which means they don't have to spend time chasing up the hiring manager to say, "Hey, give me your summary," only to get a one line summary. All of that is sort of ingested into the workflow of this summarization. Chad: Well, all that should go into the ATS in the first place and you're just integrating it into the ATS. So I mean, this is all systems and process. This has nothing to do with your system. Siadhal Magos: Yeah. No, no, it does because the generation of the content that goes into the ATS which is... Chad: Where's my recordkeeping system? Are you my record keeping system? Siadhal Magos: No. Chad: You are not. So therefore it has to go to my applicant tracking system. That's where I'm going to do business. So from a process methodology standpoint and from a recordkeeping and storage standpoint, it better be in my damned ATS. So that's nothing that you have control over. Correct? Siadhal Magos: It's correct that we don't have control over. So the pushing of the content and helping people fill in the ATS which is a... Chad: Do you have control over where the recordkeeping actually takes place? Siadhal Magos: No. Chad: It's gonna happen... Storage wise is in the ATS. So therefore access is available to anybody who has an access point there. So either you're talking about SMBs who are gonna use your platform as a point solution and they're gonna use it as the full solution. But when you're talking about enterprise, you're talking about an entirely different animal. Let me go ahead and really quick pivot into experience. You and your co-founder, how much experience do you have in this industry before actually starting Metaview? Siadhal Magos: As hiring managers in interviews, we were hiring managers in interviews for four or five years. Chad: That's not in this industry. That's not talent acquisition. Being a hiring manager, I was that before too, has no bearing on understanding the processes, these issues, and the problems in this industry. Before you started Metaview, how long have you or your co-founder actually been in this industry? Siadhal Magos: Given the definition that you described there, we were not in this industry before starting the company. Chad: Okay. Joel. Joel: Let's talk about fundraising. You guys have raised 7.6 million. 6 million of that was in late '21. So it's been a while. What have you done with the money you've raised? Is there gonna be another round here soon? Talk about investment. Siadhal Magos: Yeah. Bulk of the cash is, as I guess with any company our size, was used on building the team, getting much more experimental on the marketing side of things too now as well which is yeah, a good thing. So in terms of raising again, we'll look at things later this year, is where our sort of timeline brings us in. Joel: So you mentioned building a team. Richard Cho is a fan of the show and we're a fan of his and Chad sort of grilled you on experience in the industry. I will help you out a little bit and say that you are at least bringing some people onto the team that have a pretty deep knowledge... Siadhal Magos: Oh a 100%. Yeah, yeah. Joel: Of the industry. So talk about getting Richard on the team. He's an advisor at Gem still. I don't know exactly what his relationship is there, but he's on your team. Talk about that. Siadhal Magos: Yeah. So Rich Cho was... We got an introduction to him probably about three years ago now from Village Global who are one of our early backers. And we sort of initially just jumped on the products really as at the time, it was more of a prototype. Robinhood was going through absolutely crazy growth at the time and he had a bunch of thoughts around the directions we should take the product which were all pretty prescient, but not things we could do at that point. We were sort of three people. So we obviously had to pick which arrows we put our wood behind. And we just stayed in touch since. He became a customer at Robinhood over time and we stayed in touch as he moved on to Gem. And increasingly, I've been sort of picking his brains for sort of some of the sort of both positioning questions, but also very much product questions too around what direction to take the product. And yeah, we made it official start of last month that he's a strategic advisor to the company. Joel: So you mentioned some of your logos customers which from my standpoint are pretty small in nature. And Chad sort of alluded to what your customer look like. Who is your customer, who you're targeting? Talk about global footprint if any at all at the moment. Siadhal Magos: Typical customer is venture-backed tech company. So usually series B to series D and then a couple of marking customers further along the net. Recently, especially with the launch of AI notes, we're finding a lot more inbound from other parts of the market, whether that's recruitment agencies or much smaller organizations, maybe just even with one recruiter who's water wall, doing interviews every day that we can help. But typical sweet spot is that sort of series B to series D, maybe up to series E I'd say. In terms of sort of international footprint you asked as well, well, about 50% of our customers are in the US and then the rest are dotted around different parts of Europe. So we have sort of... Yeah, it's about 50-50 at the moment. Chad: So why this industry? It's slow to adopt, it doesn't garner the types of budgets that marketing and sales does. So I mean, why get into this tar pit? Siadhal Magos: Yeah. [laughter] You folks have probably heard this from a bunch of founders before, but really when you're starting a company, the best advice is to scratch your own itch. And at the end of the day, much as you pointed out, we don't have frontline recruiting experience as founders, we were at companies where we were running a lot of interviews as hiring managers and sort of interviewers on other people's loops. Uber, as I said, I was there 2016, 2017, growing incredibly fast. Co-founder was at Palantir, which interviews a lot of people to make one hire, let's put it that way. So you end up just doing a lot of interviewing and that's where we really got exposed to the problem. So yeah, it was very much scratch your own itch thing. It wasn't sort of a super opportunistic thing necessarily. It was something we felt that we were understood really well from, again, a hiring manager and interviewer perspective. I think the thing that we've learned a lot as with folks like Rich Cho have really helped us with this is the way that recruitment... The work that recruitment have to do around interviewing, but also the way they view it, which I think when you scratch beneath the service is this is just a big dependency for them. Siadhal Magos: They need to hit... They're supposed to hit their number, they really value the quality of their relationship with their hiring manager, and they just have this big dependency in their ability to achieve, which is the interviews. And none of those people in that interview process report to them or work with them. And so that's sort of the other side of the coin that we realize over the last... Well, as we started the company. But yeah, anyway, background is it was our own itch. We wanted to scratch it. We didn't probably know all of those characteristics of the market that you just described, Chad. Those weren't top of mind for us. We just wanted to... We just thought this product made a lot of sense. Chad: So go to market. Talk to me about your sales, go to market strategy. Siadhal Magos: I'll go to market. As of six weeks ago now, we launched a free trial. So folks can get onboarded for as few as many seats as they want and run a free trial which runs for 10 interviews. So you get your first 10 Metaview written AI notes for free. And then we have a conversation about converting and you can buy one seat or you can buy 100 seats. It's up to you. And then if you decide you wanna roll it up past your recruitment team, then it's more of an enterprise discussion because obviously a lot of interviews don't interview every time and per seat doesn't quite make sense. So sorry, per seat for recruiters and then enterprise for if you wanna roll up beyond the recruiting team. Chad: Okay. Are you going direct? Is the main focus direct to brands or are you actually doing partnerships with other platforms? Siadhal Magos: Vast majority direct. As in direct is our... Our focus is on getting direct as efficient and optimized and predictable as possible. Chad: Okay. So what about integrations? What integrations do you currently support? I see that it says you sync with the applicant tracking system. What does that mean? What applicant tracking system? Tell me more. Siadhal Magos: Sure. So, yeah, we are sort of partners with Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, Teamtailor, recruiting a few others. So again, these mid-market ATSs are the ones we partner with most closely. And then our system also works seamlessly from a... So that's one really sort of important integration point. You don't need to integrate with your ATS to use Metaview. You can still get really high quality. You just have your notes written for you even if you don't integrate to the ATS. It just helps with some of the workflow that we were talking about earlier. And as you said, that's where the notes need to end up. And then on the video conferencing side, Teams, Zoom and Google, we capture interviews on those platforms. Chad: Talk to me about your exit plan. What are you looking to do? Are you looking to actually have a bigger player gobble you up to be a part of a a larger ecosystem? Are you looking to prospectively turn this into a platform that serves more than just note-taking? Siadhal Magos: Definitely the latter. So if you buy the idea that interviews have always been this black hole in your hiring process, which we completely do, then the ability to turn those conversations into data is gonna help our customers make much better hiring decisions in the future. And if you have access to what's actually happening in the interviews, given that is where the decisions get made, if you have the platform that has those interviews... Is making those interviews available to our customers, then actually suddenly you become a really interesting place for those hiring managers to make their decision. So if you think about the system of action for a hiring manager, where does a hiring manager go and a recruit, anyone involved in hiring decisions go to make their decisions? Currently, of course the final decision is logged in the ATS, but the actual act of the hiring decision is usually debrief conversations or Slack messages back and forth or corridor conversations and it's not super data-driven, but actually if you have the data, then you can become that system of action for hiring. And that's our bigger play. And we think a lot of power... I guess strategically a lot of power rushes to the platform that has the most compelling data about your hiring. And actually we think the most compelling data is in these conversations. Joel: Walk me through how this is recording conversations. Is this a Chrome browser extension that you turn on and it records phone calls? Is it a mobile app that's recording both ends of the phone call? Talk to me about that 'cause I'm a little confused about how it can pick up video conferencing as well as your phone calls and record all that talk. Talk me through that. Siadhal Magos: From our system's perspective, those are two applications. We have our video conferencing bot that will essentially pass... Whether it's a Teams link, a Zoom link or a Google Meet link will understand that this is where the interview is happening and they will join that as a participant and record at that point. From a phone conversation, it's your classic switchboard application where someone will dial our number first and then they'll later patch through to the candidate. And that's how we capture those. So those are two different channels for capturing the conversation. Chad: Do you also capture the video? Siadhal Magos: It's configurable. So most customers prefer to capture the video too, some opt for just audio. Joel: Which makes it odd that you wouldn't say like a HireVue or a Vervoe wasn't a competitor. No? Siadhal Magos: Most of the time on the... Definitely for our market, most of the perception, most people see HireVue more as the sort of top of funnel filtering tool that's sort of like the asynchronous video interviewing, the on-demand video interviewing. What we focus on is completely the live video, the live interviewing where you have a human being talking to another human being and they're sort of potentially meandering conversation, potentially going off on tangents. Those are all of the problems that we witnessed, less so they're sort of the top of funnel filtering. How do I not leave three thousands, thousand CVs and maybe rule some people out based on a on-demand interview. Joel: Clarify this for me. Chad asked you about integrations. You started talking about partnerships with Greenhouse and some others. Are those different in your mind? Have you built on those platforms? If you haven't built on it, what is partnership in your definition? Siadhal Magos: Partnership really, it means that we have an agreement in place with these organizations that we are logged on their partner app store, we have access to certain of their APIs, which means we can build either right data to their ATS or pull data from the ATS depending on our customer's discretion. So it's a relatively... It can be light touch. It's again, really up to the customer. Joel: Okay. Siadhal Magos: But that's what partnership means in that context. It's not like a go-to-market or a marketing partnership necessarily. That's really we source our customers. It just tends to be a lot of them are Greenhouse or Lever or Workable users. Joel: You guys are on all those marketplaces. If I use your service, I can use it integrated into the system. Okay. Alright. I think last one for me is the world is moving toward more automation. ChatGPT is gonna be everywhere. Chad sort of alluded to being a commodity at some point where hell, I can just plug it in and I'm a competitor of yours or it's easy to do that. Convince me that this product won't be irrelevant in five years. Siadhal Magos: So five years from now is obviously... That's a very long time. Joel: Pick whatever timeframe you'd like. Three? Siadhal Magos: The context for your question was more about note-taking. So the reason note-taking will always be specific for interviewing is because of the workflows that sit around recruiting. I talked about some of the characteristics. I think, Chad, you alluded to the idea, well, I could get the transcript, I could give ChatGPT some prompts and they could format it for me. The fact is we have a bunch of people who are working tirelessly and every day to make sure that this is the perfect notetaker for this particular context and I won't sort of bore you by talking through some of those contexts again. But that's the primary reason why there will be specific applications, specific note-taking applications for very common structured conversation types such as interviewing. Siadhal Magos: Just as there'll be one for sales conversations and one for customer research conversations, for example, there'll be one for interviewing. In the longer term, again, the richest data that you've never had in your hiring process is what happens between interviewers, hiring managers and candidates in those conversations. If you are the organization that knows what topics are being covered in those... If you're the platform that knows what topics are being covered in those conversations, how long different people are speaking for, when this person is really vocal during the debrief, we tend to make bad hires, if you start to get these sort of alerts and these bells ringing in your company, suddenly you're in this world where you have a much better hold on how you can actually design a high quality interview process and a hiring process as opposed to what most companies do, which is leave it to luck. Like, "Hey, I think this person seems pretty smart. Let's put them in the interview room." And I've got no log of whether they've made good decisions in the past. I don't really remember what they said for this, but it's just a complete... Hiring has not had that moneyball moment yet, and that's what's gonna change. Joel: In 30 seconds or less, run us through your pricing. Siadhal Magos: Pricing is start free trial. If you wanna use it beyond that, it's $25 per seat, per recruiter seat. And then if you want to expand it beyond recruiters, ie, into the whole organization, then it's a much lower unit price per seat because of course these people don't interview, but it's essentially based on the volume of interviewing. Joel: And that's per month? Siadhal Magos: You can go per month. Most people go per year. Joel: When you say 25, it's per month. Siadhal Magos: 25 per month, billed annually. $32 per month if you wanna go month to month. Joel: Alright. You know the bell. It's the end of the Q&A. It is time to face the Firing Squad. Siadhal, are you ready? Siadhal Magos: Yeah, bring it on. Joel: Get him, Chad. Chad: I gotta say, I love, love, love the idea of taking big tasks off of recruiters and then also hiring managers because yeah, that was one of the things that really sucked about being a hiring manager, was doing interviews 'cause they suck, they're horrible, they're uncomfortable, and you don't get a chance to really focus because you're taking notes and because you're thinking about what's my next question, and etcetera, etcetera. So it is a pain in the ass. Interview data needs to be gathered so that training can actually happen. So I agree with that 100% and I love that Cho is on board. He's a great guy. And he's been in the space for a minute, so it's good. So next time somebody asked you about experience, just pull out a picture of Richard Cho, okay? Chad: Cho hooked you up on that one. But for me, the biggest issue I think I have right now is that it timing. Take a look at the current landscape, take a look at ChatGPT. The solution, it's a little bit too micro for me. Once you start to expand and perspectively be able to start pushing out training modules and start to create a training business, I think there's something there. The experience that you and your founder have, like I had said earlier, you have to lean very heavily on individuals who have been in this industry who understand not just the tech stack, but the process methodology and also the thought process behind talent acquisition. Chad: It is much different than most other business leaders, I promise you. Go to market execution. I would go to white labeling as soon as humanly possible because there are so many damned threats that are out there that you might not even see right now. So at the end of the day, I love where you're going. This is very early, I think, in the journey for me. So I'm gonna have to give you the Firing Squad. Joel: Ouch, ouch. Alright, Siadhal. You still got to face me. This one's really hard for me. We're in the early, early days of ChatGPT, and I can remember a day when there might have been a few players that were doing like search engine optimization for jobs and people would say like, oh, if you just fix the URL, if you just fix the title tags, then everyone has SEO, right? The truth is Jobs2Web was really the only solution that paid... That got paid big money for what they did. You could say the same about mobile or particularly job postings, right? Like, "Oh, if I just plug in an API, I've got every single job that Indeed has, I've every single job that Monster has." Like if you're a job board, then you're irrelevant, right? Because this thing is a commodity. To me, ChatGPT is in the same place. Like, I think it's a little bit disingenuous to just say, well, anyone can plug this technology in and you're all the same and that you're on a level playing field and it's a commodity. Joel: I do think that while the technology will be available, I don't think it's as clear as saying everyone's gonna be the same because they can plug in this technology. I think that right now you're more... You're much more of a feature than a product. I think you need to work hard to become more of a product and become like the place where people go for all things interviewing. I don't know what that looks like. You guys live this every day, so hopefully you'll figure that out. But I do think unless you become more of a product, they're gonna be a lot of companies with this feature and you're gonna get squeezed out as an also ran. And I don't think that you want that. You don't have experience in this industry. However, you're clearly a smart guy. Spent some time at Uber and in some other places. I think Richard Cho speaks volumes in terms of my impression of your stock if there was stock at the moment. Richard Cho Facebook, I mean Jim, I mean his resume speaks for itself, but he would not be on board this company in any form or fashion unless he saw something there that was worth getting behind. Joel: Pricing I think is right on. I don't think it's a hurdle. I like that you're transparent with your pricing. A lot of people are not in this space. So for me, it's just really hard to like endorse it and get on board, but it's also, I think, impossible for me to just shoot it down to the Firing Squad. So for me, this is gonna be a golf clap. I think there's opportunity. We're unclear what ChatGPT is gonna look like and you're bringing on team members that know the market. So I think you got your work cut out for you, but you can make it thus the golf clap. So that is one Firing Squad and one golf clap for Metaview. How do you feel? Chad: It's early, it's early. Come on, man. Joel: Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate the feedback. I think there's some great feedback there. So I appreciate it and thanks for that. Yeah, we know we're... We've got some really happy customers out there, so that's what... That's I guess the most important thing. Joel: And Chad's just a double American anyway. For those who wanna know more about Metaview, where would you send them? Siadhal Magos: Head over to metaview.ai, sign up for a free trial. Would love to get you on board. And, yeah, you can decide I guess whether it makes a difference for you. Joel: Chad is limping out with some blood flowing, but he's still alive. [laughter] Joel: Maybe he'll be back in a few years to tell us to stick it with how successful his company has been. And with that, another Firing Squad is in the books. We out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been The Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com.

This episode is a masterclass in understanding Talent Acquisition and Talent Management business strategy through the eyes of Manjuri Sinha, Global Director of Talent Acquisition at OLX and Quincy "Queen of Chatbots" Valencia, VP and Research Director over HCM Tech at Ventana Research. In this episode; - 2021's Unethical Scaling and the impact - No track of productivity metrics for Expensive Staff - Always buying and not upskilling - Attrition verus Upskilling and more! Get ready to take notes... PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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] Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm your co-host, Chad Sowash. And the substitute teacher today for Joel Cheesman is Queen of chatbots herself. That's right, kids. Give it up for Quincy Valencia. [applause] Quincy Valencia: I'm back. Chad Sowash: Welcome back to the show, Quincy. Quincy Valencia: Thanks. It's been too long. It's good to be here. Chad Sowash: Well, it has been too long. So for all of those listeners who don't know who Quincy is, give 'em a little Twitter bio. Quincy Valencia: So I've been in this game, like you, for about 25 years, although as we already established, you're older than me. So you probably have done it a little bit longer. Chad Sowash: Shut it. Quincy Valencia: It's true though. Yeah. But I've been a practitioner, I've been a provider, a vendor, a product creator, and now most recently, I'm taking a seat in the analyst chair as head of the HR Tech Analyst Practice at Ventana Research. And apparently, I'm now a podcast co-host. Chad Sowash: Exactly. So this is the first time you've been in the co-host seat, right? Quincy Valencia: First, but not the last. Joel, better watch out, man. [laughter] Chad Sowash: So it's feeling comfy, is what I'm hearing? Quincy Valencia: I like it so far. We'll see. Chad Sowash: So let me tell you that this interview today is at least a year in the making. We've been working hard to get this interviewee on. She's important. She's one of those types of people. She's important. Today, I would like to introduce... Are we ready? Are you ready? Manjuri Sinha. It's right. Global Director of Talent Acquisition over at OLX. Welcome to the show. Finally. How you doing? How you feeling? Manjuri Sinha: Great, great. Finally, super, super happy to be here, Chad. So one year in the making, so yes, finally, we landed it. Chad Sowash: It feels like longer than the year. It could have been the pandemic fog making it seem longer. I don't know. Manjuri Sinha: Possibly, possibly. [laughter] Chad Sowash: You said it's actually taken longer than getting some of your execs hired. [laughter] Manjuri Sinha: Of course. Yeah. We call it the birth year of the vacancy. So if you have a year's birthday, I think that's a good time to take a call, would they keep that role open or not? [laughter] Quincy Valencia: That's funny. I'm excited to be here co-hosting today with you because I talk to vendors all day, every day, and what I really enjoy is talking to the people who are actually solving problems in the workplace. This is gonna be a fun conversation for me. Chad Sowash: Amen. So most Americans don't know who OLX is. It's a huge brand in Europe. So if you would, give us a little Twitter bio about you, and then tell us a little bit about OLX. Manjuri Sinha: Sure. Absolutely. About me. So I'll start with being a panda lover. Anything to do with pandas, I am a crazy fan of. So if you see me ever presenting a talk in some conference, you'll definitely find a spy panda stalking somewhere there. 20-plus years of experience in HR and TA, different roles, different industries, different countries. My passion is talent acquisition, have been working across India, lived in countries like Sweden, Czech Republic and now called Berlin and Germany home for the past nine years. I'm myself amazed that it's been nine years here. And yeah, currently, I had talent acquisition, including employer branding, all cool stuff, as well as onboarding for OLX, and I'm based in Berlin. What is OLX? So OLX is basically a classified platform, and somewhere where you can go for buying and selling secondhand cell phone, car, house, anything. A couple of the brands, front-ending brands. Probably listeners from the US would relate to our brand, which is called Webuyanycar. If you're in Portugal, then you would know OLSISH, because that's how it is pronounced in Portuguese. If you are in Poland or Romania, you definitely know the OLX brand because it is the classified platform, app that you use. Kids use for the first mobile or the first refrigerator when students shift into their first accommodation, etcetera. Manjuri Sinha: So we are mostly in the emerging markets of the world. Eastern Europe, Latin America, India, Indonesia, these are our footprints. 30 markets all across, 10,000 plus people as an organization. Chad Sowash: So what's your favorite kind of panda? That's the first question I wanna get into. Manjuri Sinha: It's the mid-sized, fluffy pandas that you can probably lift and take with you. So that's an agenda in my life. I've been hunting for a job vacancy called a panda nanny. Quincy Valencia: I was just gonna ask if you've applied for one of those, because I've seen them, and they look fabulous to me. I can do that. Manjuri Sinha: That's my life goal. I really wanna do that one day. [laughter] Quincy Valencia: My life goal is to be an elephant keeper. Chad Sowash: Oh, elephant keeper. Manjuri Sinha: Oh, you should watched The Elephant Whisperers, by the way. Quincy Valencia: I have watched it. I love it. If I don't get my hands on an elephant and come to have my own elephant sometime before I die my life will not be complete. And it's interesting because that's what the whole topic of today's conversation is, right? Elephants. Different type of elephants, but it's still an elephant. I feel right at home. Chad Sowash: Elephants in the room. So in our long set of trying to actually get this pulled together, we had several different topics that we wanted to try to tackle. And Manjuri said, "Well, there are many elephants in the room, so why don't we just start calling them out?" That's what we do. So let's do it. Let's start with the first elephants, which you wanna call irresponsible hiring. So tell us a little bit about that. Manjuri Sinha: Yeah, thanks, Chad. And I think good, Quincy, that you spoke about the elephants and brought us here. It's interesting that all of us are hearing a lot of advice being given to talent acquisition leaders and TA functions right now on how to shape up, how to plan your teams, how to plan ahead, etcetera, what could have been done better, etcetera, in the past months. We've also seen TA teams have been disproportionately impacted with all the layoffs which have happened in the past couple of months. However, if you take a step back, it is so interesting to see that there's been a lot of what I call as unethical scaling across 2021, all across. Right after the pandemic, we had three months when people were going slow. A lot of the tech organizations did think that there'll be an impact, so they kind of held strong. And the moment they saw that the consumers were running to online, behaviors had changed, there was more traffic online, there were more purchases being done online, people who were flocking to Netflix, Zoom was in demand because of organizations going for remote, etcetera, that's when we saw the curve coming back on like crazy. I think that phase in 2021 and 2022, as most of us know, that we've seen 2x, 3x hiring in those phases. Manjuri Sinha: I was looking at some data today. Between 2019 to 2022, companies like Amazon, Amazon grew by 106% in their headcount. Meta grew by 103% in their headcount, Salesforce by 67% in their headcount. And this is up till 2022. We know that hiring went on crazy pretty much till the August or July of 2022 as well, so it's more than these numbers. And today when we open the Layoffs.fyi tracker, we see that just from Jan today, there have been about 149,000 layoffs across these organizations. So for the lack of a better word, it's a bloodbath out there, and this has to do a lot with this whole hiring ahead of the curve, really going crazy, not thinking about, "Do we really need those 10 packs of engineers? And has there been any kind of due diligence that we've done?" When we look at the org designs, we hear today a lot of leaders talking about, "We have too many managers and too less people to do their actual things. Why do we have such a layer of managers and managers and managers?" Well, at that particular time, nobody was looking at the org design, how many managers do you need, what is your rule of a pack, what is the productivity of the team, how do you track that productivity, how is the finance team looking at, "Yes, we are getting these headcount plans coming in. What kind of productivity will they give in? What will be the cost that we're looking at?" Manjuri Sinha: And this unethical scaling actually went ahead on other things because we have to fight the war for talent. We were looking for the same people. [laughter] All the Amazons, Metas, us, all of us were looking for the same people, we're dipping in the same pool, and we were fighting the negotiation battle on, "Let's give you 20% more, 30% more, 40% more." And what did we do? We increased the salary cost there for the organization. This was a whole tech bubble. It's not just one company standing alone and doing it, it's everybody was within this pool. And now we're seeing the domino effect. So rather than just saying, "What should the TA teams do?" I think it's also calling out these elephants and not saying, "Okay, the blame is on whom," but really looking at, "What can we do better?" Because the tables will turn again. Quincy Valencia: So like you, I've worked in corporate TA as well. And I talked about this, and Chad, of course, I've heard it on your show. But HR and TA leaders have had that proverbial seat at the business table more than ever over the last couple of years. Everything sort of went to hell and everyone looked at HR and TA and went, "What do we do? I don't know what to do," because they'd never had it before. So we know that, but this is not a TA issue. As far as I'm concerned, this is a business issue, because TA's reacting in many cases to what business is telling them to do. "I don't care. I'll get the budget approval. Just go do it. Just go do it." Organizations are not using the technology that they do have to scale appropriately. They're using the technology to mimic and just replicate poor decision-making and poor processes that have been in place forever, and then you have the perfect storm of that with the businesses who are making promises, "We're gonna grow by so much," and they never meet it, and they're going to their TA teams and saying, "Just do it. Just hire." And TA teams are working at the behest of the business, and it's this terrible cycle, and that's where we end up. Now, there's been no planning and then not using the resources that they already have, and I'm sure you've seen that as well, or I'm assuming you've seen that as well. Chad Sowash: So real quick, I don't agree that TA is not at fault, because first and foremost, TA needs to understand the business. And we just did a great interview with Jeff Lackey, who was at CVS, and one of the things that he did was he focused heavily on talking to the business units to be able to take a look at the "vital positions" that were opening to really see if they were impacting the bottom line, and if there was strategy for long-term growth there, or if this was just something that was felt to be a need versus not. So I think in talent acquisition, if we are more in tune with the business and we can understand it, then we can actually guide it. The problem is we have never really been at the table, a seat at the table. We finally were, so we were so excited. Then the next thing you know, we were reactionary with the rest of the business, as opposed to being the adult in the room, which we need to be. So I do agree, there were a lot pushed on us, but we need to stiffen our spine and be more business minded. Quincy Valencia: Oh, completely. There's no question about that. What we need to do and what our colleagues and so forth need to do, I'm not saying there's a complete lack of responsibility, but I'm saying that the bottom line is the business makes those decisions and owns those decisions at the end of the day. So no matter how smart... Even Jeff, as you were saying, I'm certain that there were times where he had very strong opinions based in facts and data and he was overruled. Ultimately, it's a business decision and a business responsibility. Manjuri Sinha: Exactly, Quincy. And thanks for laying it out, because that's exactly what I wanna say in follow-up, this elephant in the room, that when you have the TA leader at that table, listen to the TA leader. And this is exactly what a lot of CEOs and CFOs have not done in that period. I happened to be at TA leaders dinner two weeks ago and this resonated, because another very senior TA leader in Berlin shared his experience, that he tracked and saw that there were senior executive positions, almost 365, that had already been hired. Humongous cost. Chad Sowash: Senior? Manjuri Sinha: They have another 100 senior execs, so you can say Director, Senior Directors and above in the organization, and they have another 100 vacancies still open. So he went back to the CFO talking about the cost of hiring, plus the cost of the average salaries and actually said, "Are you sure? I think you should pause. I literally recommend you to pause." What did the CFO said? "Yeah, thanks for the information, but I think we'll go ahead." And that company has actually gone through a round of layoffs right now. So this is where we need to also put it, "Yes, TA leader should do this, they have to be chief repeating officers, they have to really, what John Vlastelica says, have those teaching moments with the leaders, but the leaders have to listen to the TA leaders as well." That's what is a key takeaway from this. Chad Sowash: But there are no ramifications for CEOs who lay off tens of thousands of employees. That's the biggest issue. Quincy Valencia: Yeah. They're still getting their salary and their bonuses. Chad Sowash: Oh, they've got a golden parachute, for God's sakes. But there's still no ramification for hiring tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals and then chopping because of irresponsible growth. So do we really think... Other than us being able to have a seat at the table, start speaking more to business, do we really think that this is going to change unless we start seeing heads roll at the top? Manjuri Sinha: It will change, Chad, if we get adult leaders who have the... Okay, maybe I won't use that word, but... Chad Sowash: I like adult leaders. No, we need this. [laughter] Manjuri Sinha: Probably. Okay, let me quote unquote. Who have probably the balls to say that, not really think about, "Am I on the chopping block next?" But say that in that round table that, "There are trade-offs you're doing. If you're planning a growth curve which looks like this on the... Looks like a platform like this, it'll cost still this much and ramifications. You remember that time. Will you sign the trade-off today for me as well?" So I think these are the adult conversations that don't happen. And Quincy said, we were so happy that, "Yes, we got the seat at the table. Let me show you we can deliver." Of course, we can deliver. At what cost? I think that's the trade-off, remembrance that we have to keep on giving to the senior leaders as well. Quincy Valencia: The other cost that no one has mentioned too is when you hire at that pace, which of course, is unsustainable for every reason imaginable, every DE&I initiative that companies claim to have, that they have on their wall and their marketing goes straight out the window because they don't actually care of the makeup of their organization, they care that they have butts and seats. And then you start laying everybody off and then it's that group that, once again, is disproportionately let go, and then that continues the cycle as well. And to your point, when you say, "Will it change, unless it changes from the top," well, no, I don't think that it will. And I think you have to start looking at the accountability, Manjuri, who has the balls to stand up and make the stand and actually make it happen, but look at who the CEO's number two is. If you're in an organization where their right hand is the CFO, you're always gonna have a problem, because at the end of the day, no matter how forward-thinking your CFO is, if they see humans as an expense line, you're never gonna overcome it. If your right-hand person is the CHRO, then they're looking at your people as part of your go-forward strategy, and you're gonna have much more of a chance of making some of these changes that need to happen in the business. Chad Sowash: I would say, in most cases, CFO or CRO are generally the right hand, much more than the CHRO, which is the things that we should be focusing on, right? Quick question, it's a little bit of a diversion. How much talent hoarding do you think was actually happening by some of those big organizations, keeping amazing talent away from competitors and really out of the market, doing nimble things within their organization until they were cut here recently? Manjuri Sinha: A lot of it, a lot of it, Chad. I think we've seen the quotes from Meta ex-employees very recently. They've shared their stories of this lady who was practically doing nothing for the past eight to nine months and had a humongous salary sitting in New York. And not just on local employees, these companies have actually hired experts on H-1B visas who are today just left with 60 days to look for a job and switch. Otherwise, go back to their home countries. So they had to hoard it. And this has been a norm. We've also seen an experience in India where we were competing with companies like Meta, Amazon, Walmart, etcetera, where for each offer that we would make to the individual, literally within two days, we would have a counteroffer that comes from one of these companies. And we would... Of course, we would ask them, 'cause in India, you can ask for a candidate to literally show you that offer. So they would show that offer, and you can see that it would increase percentage by percentage, so the numbers that they were hiring at, and the kind of pace as well that they are hiring at. It was definite that they were hoarding the talent. Chad Sowash: Wow. Quincy Valencia: But in some cases, don't you think that's the right, smart thing to do? Manjuri Sinha: In some cases, yes, Quincy, but not at the kind of bulk that they would do. And did they think of what if? Do you... I understand a lot of organizations have a talent pool, like the services companies have a bench, they carry a bench. They bench as a method, and they know that, "Okay, after a particular month or two, we can actually move them to another project." Here, that projection was not there. It was pegged n the growth that was supposed to come, which never came. Quincy Valencia: Right. Right, right. Chad Sowash: Well, let's go ahead and transition to elephant number two. That's actual justification for all of this damn hiring. So let's talk a little bit about that, Manjuri. Manjuri Sinha: Yeah. So I think we were talking about this whole high cost of attrition. And this is now the interesting fact, that we talk about a lot of the news, a lot of the articles, Bloomberg articles, etcetera, talk about the new headcount that companies have added, but there was this one interesting article which Amazon never put a comment on. That was about the estimated cost of attrition that they said would have been around $8 billion annually. It's interesting to see how much of this hiring that happened in 2021 and 2022 was backfills. And most of the cases, they were actually higher number of backfills because yes, people were hired. Like Quincy said, when you hire fast, the things that you compromise on are diversity, equality and also that new hire engagement, and that's what was happening. Yes, people were joining, people were dropping. People were joining, people were dropping. Whether they are dropping for a 30% increase in another organization, that's a different thing to look at, but that's what was happening at that time. And this cost was humongous on organizations. When we are looking at those balance sheets today and seeing that, "Yes, we need to push up our bottom line, and that's why we need to look at our staff cost," no organization is looking at that cost of attrition. Manjuri Sinha: I don't think any organization can literally even calculate that. Any finance department can show me today, "This is the cost of attrition for 2021." I don't think so. Quincy Valencia: So I will tell you that in 2009, I was getting my master's degree, and one of the things that I was putting together was about the high cost of attrition. It was actually about creating a high productive workforce, but attrition was in there. And I worked with... I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. John Sullivan. He's all over the place. But he actually... And he probably doesn't remember it, but he worked with me directly to come up with a cost, a literal cost of that turnover and what it means for the business, because Finance, I said it before, they only see a cost to the business if you are in a revenue-producing role directly. Otherwise, they don't see it. And we actually worked on it and calculated the map and came out and put it in, and nobody cared then, and nobody still cares today, and it's so completely short-sighted. It boggles the mind. Because to those of us who work in this and who do this work, it's so obvious, [chuckle] and I just don't understand what is so difficult, what part of the story is not coming across. It makes me crazy. Chad Sowash: Yeah, no, I agree 100%. And one of the things that we don't know who owns in many organizations is talent management. Who actually owns the up-skilling, the ability for internal mobility, those types of things. Is that with Talent Acquisition? Is that with HR? Who actually owns that? And how do you actually look for justifications? Well, first off, you have to understand the cost of the business. And as you'd Quincy, a lot of organizations, especially CFOs, only see you if you're a revenue driver. Well, let's go ahead and make this very simple for everybody to understand. If you don't have people, you can't ideate product. And if you don't have people, you can't develop product. If you don't have people, you can't produce. You go along. If that salesperson and that customer service person who sells it and expands wallet share doesn't have all of those individuals, then they can't actually make revenue. Quincy Valencia: You're gonna bring me to tears here. [laughter] I've never also seen or heard or connected in my life. Chad Sowash: It why we have you. It's why we have you. So at the end of the day, I've heard CHROs call themselves a cost center for years, and I look at them square in the face and say, "You are the living, breathing heart of every organization. There's no revenue-driving, there's no product. There's nothing without you." So at this point, once we start to breathe that in and understand it, how do we get to the point where we understand that, "Okay, there's a cost to loss," and we see this with Amazon. Who takes control of that talent management piece? Who focuses on up-skilling, internal mobility? How do we actually transform... We talk about transformation all the time. Nobody's really fucking doing it. How do we get there? Manjuri Sinha: Yeah, Chad, we also saw that there was hardly any interest in up-skilling during this period. There was more buying of talent. Everybody went external. And that lack of up-skilling also harmed folks and not... Because if you look at the hiring demand coming in at that period, and because of all the competition, I was talking to a lot of TA leaders in my peer group, be it in the US, India, Europe. Everybody had the same deal, 70% to 75% of all open vacancies were in the senior bucket, join and run, join and run. So that's another... That's another. This, again, Quincy, also was completely contradictory to diversity because you know in... For example, in technology, a role like reliability engineering, if you are looking for our seniors, there are very few women in that bucket. So if you don't grow these women and hire them at a junior level, then how will you enable that talent? So that's a big, big loss. And that's amiss. I think a lot of... Even talent leaders need to take that accountability. I can share my example. The bit on internal mobility, I think that was initially amiss because we were running on the external bit. Last year, this was something that we prioritized, and we said, "Okay, let's not figure out who owns this. We will own this, we will launch the platform, we'll get this going, and then figure it out amongst us," kind of a thing. Manjuri Sinha: So I think we need to pick those pieces up as well and take ownership. TA as such has evolved with a push as well in the last three years beyond the whole push of remote hiring, the whole push of, "Let's look at hypergrowth. Let's scale. Let's stop." So all these things have been very, very interesting. I think we need to look beyond just the gamut of employer branding and hiring and new hires, but go beyond, also internally, look at how we can... Look at location strategies, etcetera, and be more valuable on that aspect and take more ownership. Quincy Valencia: So I will say that I have seen a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. So one of the things we do as analysts is we prognosticate about things that we assert will happen, not unlike your predictions that you do on this show every year, Chad. [laughter] I've seen the blending now of talent management and talent acquisition, which I actually think is super smart, because to me, it's a talent function. I don't really care where you get the person. I think you need to invest properly in your internal talent that you've already invested so much in and give people the opportunity to see paths down the road, potentially, whether it's the same path to run or a different one, and give them the tools to develop skills, they need to close those gaps. I think that you need to look externally, you need to make sure that you have a proper blend of mix of where your people are coming from, internal and external. And the technology vendors have really stepped up. I think they're actually ahead of the adoption rate, and I think they'll drive this, where I've seen more and more opportunity marketplaces coming, particularly from the platform players, but others that are just quite impressive in bringing in data from the external marketplace, from the internal marketplace, from the ATS, what jobs are open, what gigs might be open, projects, so you can redeploy, Manjuri, some of those people you were talking about and keep them, and then identify paths... Quincy Valencia: One thing... I actually have something I'm publishing that's coming out here pretty soon, an analyst perspective, which is really just a, "This is what's on my mind lately," thing. But for years, there's been... Everyone has touted themselves with saying, "Here at this organization, you own your own career path," and that's bullshit. [laughter] You can't own a career path to do something when you don't even know what might be available. Unless you happen to get lucky... Especially if you're early career. Unless you happen to get lucky and somebody takes you under their wing, you have no idea what you might be able to do. And so when you have these technologies that are bringing together, "Here's what might be available," how do you get from A to point D if that's what you wanna do if we value you as an employee? And that point D is still something within our organization that we're gonna need, more valuable to us. It behooves me as the organization to provide you the employee that we value every opportunity to get where you wanna go. And the technology vendors are coming up with ways to get this done. Now it's a matter of getting organizations to adopt it on the back end, which is harder. Manjuri Sinha: Yeah, I think we need to stop acting as airport operations department of handing over the flyers from the operations to the plane and have a sink. And talent management and talent acquisition actually should sit under one wing, because you have the moments that matter along the lead and the candidate and the employee and the alumni. You can't impact it if you do this whole Ops handling, okay, take over, hand over, take over, hand over. You lose a lot in that. And this is where platforms like Gloat, Degreed, I think they will be a game changer, and such as well that bring this insight on skill insight. We are listening about a lot about skill-based hiring, skill-based growth, etcetera, as well. This is the excellent tie-in there. It also talks about those... Many jobs. So we were talking about people hired or hoarded talent. This in a way is your bench talent. So if I am good, 60%, this is what I do, maybe 40%, I'm great with DE&I initiatives. So on that 40%, can I hone my skills to take over a role in that probably in the next one year? I'm actually building a bench strength with that skill. Not just the person or the headcount, but it's also the skills that we can count. Those are good to hoard. Quincy Valencia: You're gonna make me cry tears of joy too. This is just [laughter] the sobbing, emotional, Hallmark Channel movie episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Chad Sowash: Exactly what we always wanted, Quincy. So let me ask you a question with regard to being able to create your own. And this is internal mobility, but it's also being able to fill those entry-level roles with individuals who have at least a subset of skills that you need. Manjuri, why aren't companies actually building talent pipelines, internally, but also externally with schools, with community colleges and those types of things and working on the curriculum to ensure that we don't have these "skills gaps?" Because that's... The gap has grown over the years, the actual skills gap. And there's a lot to be said about that. But isn't it our job as organizations to go out and start to cultivate that new crop and then get them ready to hopefully be with our company for years? Manjuri Sinha: Yeah, absolutely, Chad. And I think I see this as a legacy of abundance. And yeah, we know we've never had a abundance of talent, this is because of the talent war, but the abundance of resources. And a lot of startups and the gig economy companies have never ever built that muscle of growing talent from really junior levels. The enablement of give back to the community and then you can take as well from the community, I think that piece has always been missing. So it's a vicious circle. When you have your VCs plugging in that money into you, they want to see the growth right away, and you want to have products and products released and shipped right away. There are some challenges. There are a lot of startups are hiring, they've also probably not hired the most grown-up tech leaders who would really like to train people also from the bottom. So availability of this, we see cash resources, which is now completely bootstrapped and there's a constraint on that, that was something that people had legacy of and they wouldn't look at this. Manjuri Sinha: Companies that are steady today or companies that are not facing as big as a problem today, we see those examples, they have those programs. They have management development programs with colleges, they have... Even certain... Other companies, set good examples, initially, we saw Google working very closely with Udacity and having nano-degrees for data scientists and certain other players. We don't see that as much in the gig economy. It only caught up end of last year when we realized that we will not have the unlimited cash to really buy senior tech talent and we need to grow that tech talent as well. So that's where I see the... If I may say, the legacy of The Triangles of Sadness. [laughter] It's a movie that I saw recently and it really hit hard, but that's the legacy of abundance, I guess. Chad Sowash: And this, I think, all revolves around the elephant number five, which is no strategy. It feels like we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall every time a new requisition is open. There's no strategy on how to even look internally to see if we might have a great up-and-coming star who'd be for this role. We're just automatically getting into, "Throw spaghetti at the wall and let's just hope that we've got a great candidate." Manjuri Sinha: Absolutely, Chad. And we're talking about this whole sit at the table discussion. In 90%, to probably 95% of organizations today still, there would be a discussion between whoever is deciding, probably a CTO or a CEO or whatever level in the organization does, and the CFO. You would have the headcount plan. That headcount plan comes up and gets shipped. I'm not even calling it a workforce plan because hardly will you ever talk about skill sets, just the headcount plan, it's resourcing. So you talk about that, and that comes as an email to the TA leader saying, "Go hire." Literally, this is practically that, "Okay, go hire." And then you'd probably have a nice chat with the TA leader where you make the leader feel that their advise is being taken to account, which is absolutely not happening. This is where examples of lack of strategy. You probably have given 50 super difficult roles to be hired in a country, but you don't even have those 50 super difficult people to look for. Quincy Valencia: You must have 15 years of chatGPT experience. Manjuri Sinha: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. [laughter] Chad Sowash: I knew we were gonna fit chatGPT in here somewhere. Quincy Valencia: We certainly weren't gonna talk about it. Chad Sowash: I knew you would do it. [laughter] Manjuri Sinha: Exactly. And then you would have a discussion with this leader. Then this leader will go helter-skelter, figure out how to do it, probably will tie up with an agency at an RPO, which will cost really high or need local recruiters and then take a lot of time to bring those people and relocate them, blah, blah, blah. Why not start from a location strategy, ask for that input, think about, "Okay, I need this many. Let's look at what our location strategy can be." We are sitting in a world of hybrid and remote. Why not learn from what we've learned in the last three years, drive that strategy, you look at talent, you look at cost, and also look at what Quincy was talking about, in which pockets do you have a diversity aspect as well? Can you have more neurodiverse candidates? Can you have people with disabilities in that bucket? Can you have more women in that talent, in that bucket, etcetera? But we don't see that kind of a strategy ever happening mostly. Quincy Valencia: So you said... So some of the things we've seen over the last three years and one of the things that we've seen across the board is the amount of accountability and responsibility that's been pushed to a middle layer of management that has never had it before. And so now we're giving them the responsibility saying, "You have to accomplish these 50 things you've never had to do before," but not giving them the tools to do it, and I think some of that is what's perpetuating... I'm not gonna say what's leading to, 'cause it's always been that way, but it's perpetuating the inability of someone at that level to see potential in other people internally or in people with adjacent skills because they simply don't know how. And that's not a knock on anybody, it's just, that's not their job. You and I have been trained in how to identify talent, how to interview talent, how to look at people and look and see what they might be able to contribute. Those managers haven't. They know that they have certain goals that they have to get to by the end of the year, and as far as they know, they have to get somebody who already knows how to do all the stuff, and that's not necessarily the case. So now we've just put more on that table and they have no idea how to do it, and they are woefully ill-prepared and ill-equipped to make these decisions, so now we're making the problem [chuckle] even worse. It's difficult. Manjuri Sinha: And that's where maybe AI can help, right? Quincy Valencia: Absolutely. Yeah. [laughter] It is a matter of fact now that you mentioned it. [laughter] Chad Sowash: And that's another show, kids. I was actually gonna call this The Elephant Killer Series, but I don't wanna Quincy start to cry, so we're not gonna do that. [laughter] We'd like to say thank you so much, Manjuri Sinha, for coming on the show. Global Director of Talent Acquisition at OLX. So we've got a lot to talk about. We should find a stage, maybe, I don't know, come back on the podcast after another year or so and talk more about this. [laughter] But Manjuri, if somebody wants to find out more about you or they wanna connect with you, where would you send them? Manjuri Sinha: Just go to LinkedIn. You'll find a lot of my podcast, you'll find a lot of the recorded talks from different conferences. That's where you can find me. And Chad, I'm at Unleash this year. If you're there, we're definitely catching up there. Chad Sowash: Excellent. Excellent, excellent. Quincy, thanks for subbing in. You're a much better time than Joel Cheesman. That's all I gotta say. Quincy Valencia: I was just gonna say, I'm no Joel, but I didn't clarify what that actually meant. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Well, another one in the can. We out. Quincy Valencia: Out of here. 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 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 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 trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

We are unleashed this week as, um, UNLEASH America makes its third trip to the states. The boys wax poetic about their time in Vegas, which includes a Chad & Cheese party, a pot party and selfie consultants … don’t worry, it’ll all make sense. News-wise, CV Wallet raised money, Jobcase cuts heads and CEOs are still losing their minds over remote work. Pass the Tylenol, bet it all on black and enjoy this live episode from a Vegas dive bar. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for The Chad & Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oooh, yeah. We are live from a dive bar in Las Vegas, licking our wounds from a week at UNLEASH America. Hey kids, you are listening to The Chad & Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "What I Did Here Stays Here" Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad "Did You Pick This Place Because It Has A Shit Ton of Big Booty Latinas In It" Sowash. Joel: I don't know what you're talking about. On this week's episode, which is Abbreviated CEO's Gone Wild, Sir Richard Unchains the Blockchain. Chad: Oh my God. Joel: And UNLEASH is unleashed. Let's do this. How are you feeling, Chad? Your battery a little low? [chuckle] Chad: I'm one of those guys who at first I am energized off of all the engagement. Joel: Sure. Chad: And then it just fucking smothers me. Joel: And it's been a while since we've had this much engagement. We're a little out of shape. Chad: Yeah. Joel: We need to get in conference shape again, but it's been a hell of a lot of fun. Chad: It's been amazing. It has been amazing. Let's go ahead. Let's. Let's jump... We'll talk more about unleash. Joel: Let's suck it up. Be professionals. Chad: Whole block of unleashed... Joel: And do some shout outs. Chad: Do some shout outs. I'm gonna do a block of LinkedIn shout outs. You ready for this. Joel: LinkedIn love. Chad: James Cleaver on LinkedIn. Here's a quote. It's what he posted. Joel: Yep. Chad: "I have to mute unleash and chad and cheese. The FOMO is killing me." Next, we have Stephen McGrath on LinkedIn. Quote, "I square to the good Lord, if someone doesn't get me one of those t-shirts ASAP, you're both gonna be in trouble when I see you next." SFX: Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, If it's not Scottish, it's crap. Chad: And then Joe Stubblebine. Joel: Stubbs. Chad: I'm gonna save this one for last. Joe posted on LinkedIn, quote, "You've got to hand it to Chad and Cheese. They're... The Chad and Cheese podcast is a master class in staying relevant." This is where I tear up a little bit 'cause Joe was one of the original listeners. I mean he was almost like an advisor at one point where he would call in and say, "Hey, look... Joel: When we sat down and said maybe 50 people will listen to this and he was one of them. Chad: He was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was incredibly helpful early on. He's been listening and watching in the background and every now and again he comes up for air and he gives us little gems like this so. Joel: And helpful in many ways because he was critical. Chad: Oh God, yeah. Joel: And sometimes your critics are your best friends. If you listen to them and take their advice early on, I remember him saying you guys should, you know, snap it up a little bit. Don't worry about the F-Bombs and then taking people to task. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And we listened. So. Joe, thank you. Chad: Yeah, we had the usual HR kind of like line coming into us saying, oh wait a minute, you guys need to back it down. Joel: Oh, you can't do that. Chad: You're challenging people, you're using the F-Bomb, you're doing these... You just can't do that. And Joe was one of the only guys there was a handful that said, "You know what? Fuck them. Dial it up. Dial it up, because that's what the people want. That's what they're thinking. That's what they want." And when we went to our first SHRM talent, where all the old SHRM HR ladies go. Joel: The suits. Chad: Yes, they came up to us and they said the exact same thing. You're saying what we've been thinking for 30 plus years. For God's sakes, keep it up. Joel: Yeah. Chad: And thanks to people like Joe for the support. Joel: Thanks for all the love. We'll get to the actual on site love that we've been getting. But thanks for the virtual love. Chad: Yes. Joel: From everywhere. From Scotland to where the hell is Joey Stubbs now? On a boat off of the Italian coast. Chad: He could be in Budapest. He could be in Italy somewhere. Greece? Who the fuck knows? But that guy's... He gets around. Joel: Well, Chad, my shout out goes to a special person in my life. Chad: Oh, yeah? Joel: When I say Jerry Springer, what comes to mind? Chad: Cincinnati, Ohio. And who the baby daddy? Joel: Jerry. Jerry. Yes. Former mayor of Cincinnati. Chad: Yes. Joel: I believe he was caught with a prostitute, which is why he was no longer the Cincinnati mayor. Chad: Big surprise. Joel: And obviously most famous for The Jerry Springer Show. Chad: Yes. Joel: Which in college, while you were battling the communists, I was in a fraternity house with a bunch of guys in our underwear watching Jerry Springer. And years later, I met Jerry in Cleveland, got a picture taken with him. It's out there somewhere. I'll find it. And I said, "Jerry, you got me through college." And he said, "Well, don't send me the bill." And that was my Jerry Springer moment. But Jerry, sadly, has passed away this week at the ripe young age of 79 years old. Chad: Wow. Joel: Rest in peace, Jerry. I like to think that Jerry had a little influence on this show. We're not throwing chairs. We're not revealing who the baby daddy is, but we do talk a lot of shit. So, Jerry, this is for you. Shout out. Chad: For your side of the show. We'll say that's Jerry Springer. Okay, Let's go ahead. Let's jump into events again. We'll talk about Unleash here in a minute, but we have more events coming kids, this is exciting. It's pretty amazing. Our next one is gonna be an iCIMS Inspire Coronado Beach early part of May go to Chadcheese.com/events if you're an iCIMS customer I don't know prospect or maybe a vendor who just wants to come to enjoy check it out Chadcheese.com. Joel: Vegas to So-Cal Life doesn't suck. Chad: Does not suck. Joel: And then you go to Portugal. Chad: Yeah. [laughter] Joel: So I did all the birthdays. Chad: Oh really. Joel: Last week for the rest of the month. Chad: Good. Okay. Joel: But Plum was here at the show. Chad: Yes. Oh, my God. Joel: And they were very supportive. Chad: Yes. Joel: I just wanna give a quick shout out for them. Chad: They fed you, that's crazy. Joel: For sponsoring. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The birthday segment of the show. [music] Joel: In case you missed it, everybody. Chad: Oh, what? Joel: We were in Las Vegas for the Unleashed America Conference this week. Joel: You did not miss it. James Cleaver had to mute us. Chad: We're talking PowerPoints. Plug-in software and pour me another one. Chad, I need a nap. What are your thoughts and takeaways from our time in Vegas? Joel: I got to say the new venue, as I'd said prior, I'm really excited to see how it plays, right. Because MGM actually has a pretty good setup, but the Seizures Forum is much more business. It's much more focused. The high roller is there for events. They had the night summit. It was pretty awesome. And this is just the first year, they're actually gonna expand next year. I thought the setup, just the venue itself was pretty amazing. What'd you think? Joel: Yeah. The venue for sure. I love that it was... So typically in Vegas, it's at a hotel. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And you end up staying in the hotel. Chad: Everybody. Joel: Because it's just a pain in the ass. This one is located where you're basically right at an alley of bars, in and out burger... Chad: Hotels. Joel: Gordon Ramsay Fish & Chips. So you can walk down this alley. Chad: Flamingos right there. Joel: Yeah. And then at the end of the alley, you've got the Vegas Strip, is at your fingertips. Chad: Yep. Joel: So I love that the location was great. The Ferris Wheel is a cool visual. Chad: It is. Joel: The hotels that we stayed in were right where they needed to be. So location-wise it was fantastic. I think you and I talked about how much, how far this conference has come in three years. Chad: Yes. Joel: And they've been a juggernaut in Europe. Chad: Not even consecutive years, that's the thing. Joel: Correct. Chad: Yeah. Joel: There was a pandemic in there. [chuckle] But I remember us talking when they said, "We're gonna come to America." sort of scoffing and there's so much competition and HR Tech and for Mark and his team in three years to bring this saying to as big of a apex predator as it is, is really, really impressive. And I think the other conferences need to look out, keep an eye at the back of their head because Unleash is coming. [laughter] I'm equally excited about Rec Fest. Chad: Oh fuck. Joel: Taking their first step into the United States. These two European... Chad: Americans got to step their shit up. Joel: America's gotta step it up. Chad: Here's the interesting thing. HR Tech was bought by a European company, a UK company. So we might see a little twist this year. Maybe not this year, maybe next year. But it is interesting. Joel: So you are saying like HR Tech Euro? Chad: I don't know. Joel: Europe. Chad: Yeah. Who knows? But there might be a red light district somewhere. Who knows. [laughter] So we got here, we had a chance to be in the Work human booth four hours yesterday. Kissing hands, shaking babies, giving away t-shirts. I appreciate everybody who stop by. We're gonna have some great interviews that are gonna be popping out. Joel: And before that, we're on stage with Tex Colonel. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Talking vibe build or partner. That was a great segment, which I think we got on record and we'll push that out as a podcast or no? Chad: Yes. Joel: Okay. So be on the lookout for that. We got to talk about the Tatio party. Chad: Yes. Joel: They're your homeboys and girls. Talk about it. Chad: Yeah. So, Tatio, little startup out of Israel, two female founders, they are incredibly electric. I don't know how other to say it. Right. I mean they are just incredibly ele... Joel: Ball of energy. Chad: I don't know if it's the Israeli culture, and they're all born bred military for the most part, but they are on it. And this is the second party that they've had with us. And this one doubled the last one and we blew out the last one. So it was a great time. We had over I think 125 people who registered, we had over 80 show up. Joel: Wow. Chad: That kind of ratio of engagement to actual attendance is pretty fucking awesome. Joel: And it wasn't easy to get to where we were. Chad: I'm humbled it was not in the same place. Joel: No. Chad: People had to walk 15 minutes. Joel: So I'm incredibly humbled by the experience. Yes. Love the Tatio girls. Chad: They're amazing. Joel: They wear Yellow Jackets, [laughter] which makes me think I'm in Cantons Football Hall of Fame every time that I go, or the old Monday Night football with Howard Cosell and the Yellow Jackets. So it's a nice fashion touch and makes me miss football season quite a bit. But I was saying that this little podcast is on the verge of becoming bigger than... Like a life of its own. And it's incredibly humbling, but it's obviously a thirst that needed to be quenched in our industry. And we are happy to tap the keg and pour the beers people. Chad: Yes. So then also let's talk about the Evan White experience, shall we? Joel: Sure. Chad: We went with hiring... Joel: Is that talent tok's new name or is this a whole. [laughter] Chad: So hiring branch had us on day zero after the vendor summit up in the high roller. Yes. That's a Ferris Wheel that... I think the Apex is like over 500 feet in the air. Takes a half an hour for a full turn. We had a bar in there, we had about 25 to 30 people. It was a blast. Joel: It was a who's who of HR influencers. Chad: It was a blast. Joel: For sure. And I love. [laughter] Last call takes on a whole new meaning. Chad: Oh God. [laughter] Joel: When you're on the clock and you can see it towards the end. Slowly coming. The rush to the bar was like a college frat party. It was very entertaining. Chad: It was great. Joel: But yeah, thanks to hiring Branch. That was fantastic. And then after our party, we did the toque a little bit. I didn't know what to expect. It wasn't a really official, official venue type thing. Chad: No. Yes. Very informal. Joel: It was a little bit like. Chad: Let's smoke weed. Joel: We were selling fake Rolexes [laughter] and on the carpet on the street, and then when the cops come, you roll it up. Chad: Okay. Yeah. Joel: And then you run out. Chad: I gotta tell a story though. So we're all sitting there because Evan had to go get the weed and then we see him rolling up now Evan has a Chad and Cheese t-shirt on, has this very light jacket. Right. And he looks like he's coming straight from Miami. Straight from Miami. Joel: Don Johnson is missing jacket. Chad: Miami Vice. He's walking up, he has this leather Satchel, [laughter] like he was a bank robber in the 1930s. [laughter] He gets up to the point where we are, he drops the satchel, opens it, pulls out a blunt, lights it, takes a puff. Says who's next? [laughter] That was fucking baller. [laughter] Joel: Bootlegging and balling is what that was. Chad: That was baller. Joel: Wow. Chad: Yes. Joel: Evan. Love you man. Love you man. [laughter] Joel: So we're in the middle of everything at the Bellagio, watching the water, people enjoying it at certain levels. A lot of curiosity seekers. And then we went to the Museum of Selfies, which is a thing that your wife apparently loved. Chad: Yes. She did. And they had selfie experts on hand because... Joel: Selfie experts. Chad: Yes. Because they have all these different areas where you can take pictures. And there are different modes on your phone that are better for certain selfies. Joel: Yep. Chad: So depending on what area you're in, like the exhibit area, they would actually show you which one, like Slow-mo, or Boomerang or whatever the hell, and they would show you how to do it. And it was really interesting. So you didn't just go and get some really cool selfies, you had somebody actually teach you how to use your fucking phone. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. Unfortunately my flip phone was incompatible with many of the selfie. Chad: Yes, no. The Nokia. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. Chad: No, the Nokia. [laughter] Joel: The Blackberry wasn't working for me on that one. And then we had, I don't know, the courage... The liquid courage to then go have more drinks at O'Sheas... Or was there something in between... Oh, In-N-Out. Chad: Yes. Joel: We went to In-N-Out, didn't we? Yes. Chad: My first time. Joel: No shit. Chad: My first time. Joel: You are living now my friend. [laughter] Joel: And please tell me you didn't get the veggie, like the lettuce burger. Chad: I did the... I did a double animal style. Joel: Nice. Chad: Yep. I had to go. I'm gonna go. Joel: Is the hype... Is it up to the hype or do you think it was... It's... Chad: I think it was really... I love a smash burger no matter what, the Steak 'n Shakes. Yeah. It was good. Joel: You'll be back. Chad: It was really good. Joel: You'll be back. Chad: Yeah, 'cause there's a possibility. Joel: Cool. Late night at In-N-Out. Chad: [laughter] There's a possibility. Joel: And then, we went to the PandoLogic Museum of Selfies. And then we went and got more drinks. Chad: Yes. Joel: And I think that was the end of our night for the... Chad: That was it. Yeah. Joel: Most part. Chad: Yeah, yeah. Then up again in the SAP booth, the UNLEASH SAP booth. Joel: Four interviews today. Chad: Four today. Joel: And the weekly. Chad: I am interviewed the fuck out dude. Joel: Yeah. After this I think we're done. Chad: Yeah. Joel: For a while. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: Yeah. Chad: No, it's good. It's good. But I also have to give somewhat of a pseudo-shoutout to Pando and my lovely wife, the Disability Solutions. So they actually launched a new product called PandoDIVERSITY. Pretty close to this one. Here's a quote, "PandoDIVERSITY provides access to a robust network of publishers specializing in diverse and underrepresented candidates such as women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans. Additionally, the use of AI-based programmatic recruitment technology helps to automate and optimize hiring campaigns, remove bias in the recruitment funnel and enhance data transparency." Again, I'm biased on this kids, but I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Chad: Most organizations come up with this, and they have literally nothing that is outcomes-oriented. Julie's team literally every single day does nothing but get individuals with disabilities hired into major organizations. And just Pepsi in itself, I think have 3000 plus with higher retention rates than the normal cohort of non-disabled individuals. 20% of those are disabled veterans. So to be able to see something that actually fucking works, has outcomes retention, all those things, and then to twist new programmatic technology into it, I'm pretty excited about it. Joel: Terry Baker, CEO at PandoLogic told me it took three years to develop this product. So your endorsement is great and his time commitment to this issue is... Chad: Yes. It means something. Joel: Is worthy of another... Chad: Yeah, it means something. Joel: Not just a pseudo-shoutout, Chad, a real live, legit shoutout is what that deserve. All right. The news keeps rolling on kids. We'll take a quick break, get a refill and be right back. Chad: Beer, beer here. Joel: Sir Richard and Beverly are back, Chad. CV Wallet, a skills-based hiring platform that utilizes Web3 and AI Technologies has raised $1.1 million in an angel round. The startup plans to use the funding to further develop its job seeker tools and employer products and assessment provider partnership program. CV Wallet's mission is to create a fair, more efficient and trusted hiring ecosystem by bringing together job seekers, employers, and assessors, that might be the key word, to enable skills-based sourcing at scale. Chad, we love us some Richard and Beverly, but give us your objective take on this news. Chad: I don't have an objective take, first and foremost. Joel: It's impossible? You can't do it? Chad: I love Richard and Beverly. These guys, they know where the gap is. Right? And they are not taking the easy road in trying to fill this gap. This is also another one of my predictions that came true, thank you very much, for 2023, I might've seen this coming, I don't know. [laughter] Joel: You might've had a few pints... Chad: I might've... Joel: Yeah, and then got to this decision. Yeah. Chad: I might've seen this coming. But here's the thing, the resume sucks, we've all known that. But then everybody says, "Yeah, but what else are we gonna use?" which is a great question. What else are we going to use? Well, something that is yours that you own as an individual, that is portable, so you don't have to go through, Indeed or Monster or any other website to be able to apply or go get your stuff to apply. You've got this, it's yours. Right? You dictate how long somebody can actually utilize this information, how long they can't. Not to mention all the credentialing, the assessments, everything is within this actual wallet. It's not spread all over the fucking web like it is today. So if you go get an assessment here, an assessment there, a background check over here, everything's all over the place. Joel: Yep. Chad: And you gotta try to pull that into the applicant tracking system. No. Pull that shit into the fucking blockchain in the CV Wallet and away you go. The hard part about this, I don't think is adoption because it'll happen white label wise, behind the scenes. I think the hard part is, the hard work is getting all the assessment, background check, everybody to say, "Look, the old way of you making money, which you still do fairly well is going to go away, now it's time to adopt something new." Joel: Yep. So, here's what we found out early about Sir Richard. He sold his business to indeed. Chad: It was Richard and Beverly Get it together. They're a duo. Joel: Early on we didn't know Beverly. Chad: That's because she's the smart one behind the scenes. Joel: My point here is early on what we knew. Chad: She's the smart one behind the scenes. Joel: We knew that he had probably made a little bit of cash. We knew that he drove a Maserati. That's just about all we knew about him in our first conversation. Chad: Aston Martin. Joel: So let's assume that he has a little bit of money. [laughter] Chad: And what I like about this... Joel: An Aston Martin, a little bit of money. Joel: Is how low the round was. What it tells me is that they understand this is a long game. Chad: Oh, Yeah. Joel: Everyone who hears Web3 blockchain, whatever is like, "what! It's gonna take some time for this to unfold." Chad: Yes. Joel: So the low round tells me that he understands this is a long game. We talked about LinkedIn partnering with Clear to make profiles legitimate. There's gonna be a lot of competition around this space to make some leverage to be successful. So I don't know how this is gonna turn out. I'm gonna watch this and you are as well, but there's gonna be a lot of competition to make profiles legitimate. We're seeing the blue check at Twitter. We're seeing LinkedIn partnering with Clear to do this. Is CV Wallet gonna be the thing? Are they gonna be bought to have someone bigger than them have that as the thing? I'd have enough faith in them that this is going to go somewhere. But it's also a long game. Don't expect a final chapter to be written for years to come. Chad: So the whole LinkedIn-Clear partnership is nothing but validation for what these guys are doing. Number one. Number two, it's a Band-aid because they're not not going to the extent of creating the infrastructure that's needed for this industry. Clear was built for something entirely different. So I love the signal from the market in LinkedIn saying we need something, but that's not it. So, good for these guys and I don't know, at least I have not heard of anybody taking cash, that's looking to do the same thing CV Wallet is. Joel: Yeah. I want to see Indeed do something. I'd like to see even a ZipRecruiter or somebody to do something. But yeah. If you're bullish on blockchain, this is something you need to keep your eye on. Chad: Here's the problem though. If ZIP does something or Indeed does something. Nobody else is going to use their shit. They won't allow an Indeed blockchain resume to actually come into their system like an applicant track system. So remember iSIMS, how much they fucking hate Indeed. Right. So it's one of those things where it's gotta be a third party. It's gotta be somebody who's not attached. Then what happens is they get all those connections, they get the infrastructure built, and then you see somebody big come buy them. Joel: Yeah. There's people that are still putting money in Chase Bank and Wells Fargo. Chad: I'm not saying it's bad. What I'm saying is the trust will not be there if it's a big name. Like in Indeed. Joel: And, I think crypto, blockchain has a trust issue as well. Chad: Yeah. Crypto, I'm gonna separate crypto from blockchain. Joel: I think a lot of people don't. I think a lot of people put it in a bucket of new stuff that scares me. Chad: I don't think that they're gonna sell this as blockchain. I just think that they're gonna sell... Joel: Web3. Chad: Yes. They're just gonna sell it as Web3 and here are the capabilities of the product. Joel: So perhaps the biggest hurdle is gonna be perception and they have very little to do with that. Chad: Yes. Just not saying blockchain. [laughter] Joel: We may still say blockchain just like we still say chatbot. Sorry. [laughter] Joel: Sorry again, All right. Let's get to Jobcase, word is podcast sponsor. Jobcase is struggling after we reported about layoffs in February. Word is the ax has fallen again costing some 50 people their job at the self-proclaimed LinkedIn for everybody that's not on LinkedIn. Chad, Jobcase has raised almost $150,000,000. What's your take on the news? Chad: My take is that the first cut wasn't deep enough. They did layoffs. Joel: Fred's too nice. Chad: It is hard as a guy as empathetic as Fred is. Joel: So sweetheart. Chad: Not to mention he understands optics. Right? Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: So if you can try to get away with their first cut, then fuck Yeah. Let's do it. Right. But in this case, I mean they actually dropped some pretty big talent, one of them being Ben Koons. Right. I mean the guys will, should and would find a job in five minutes. Right. But I think a couple of things, we just did a podcast earlier or earlier this week called Tech Debt, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: Jobcase has been around for a very long time. They just bought recruitology. There's a lot of tech that could maybe not or will be integrated. Joel: Yep. Chad: There's a lot of work to be done and in this market we see Indeed floundering with new models. Right. And them having to backtrack. From CPA, CPSA, I hope it's one of... It's my hope that, they get a chance to really focus heavily on their good to market and then just start to squeeze it. Because I personally, I think Jobcase is one of the players who could alleviate a lot of the pressure on most of these companies from using Indeed. And if we get more of that along with programmatic players and whatnot, if we get that, then Indeed loses power. And these companies are not forced into bullshit moves. Like calling CPC something entirely different and charging 10 times more for it. Right? Yeah. So we need the Jobcases of this fucking world to be fucking strong and go out there and alleviate pressure on the market. Joel: We talk a lot on the show about how companies generally don't fail because they took too little money. Chad: Yeah. Joel: They fail because they took too much money. And that along with timing, has really put the screws to Jobcase to make money quickly, to be that Indeed... Or LinkedIn. For a lot of people that don't use LinkedIn very quickly, it's a tough business. The job board business is really, really hard. From ZipRecruiters, Share price to dice, to even indeed having challenges, as we've talked about on the show, this is a hard business and they've taken a lot of money, they're investors that want to see growth quickly, and it clearly hasn't happened. So headcount, restructuring is the first step. To your question, where does the business itself go? They have 100 million profiles of people on the site that are looking for work. You should be able to monetize that in some form or fashion. I agree on Fred, total sweetheart, great guy, smart people that are there, but this is a case of a lot of money, bad timing. Let's see if they can turn the Titanic around and if not, well you know what happened to the Titanic. [laughter] Chad: Yes. No, we do know what happened to the Titanic. Yes. Joel: And just like this beer sank, I'm gonna need another beer. Chad: Thank you. Joel: And we'll be right back. And we're back. Chad: We're back? Joel: And unbeknownst to us. Chad: What? Joel: We have a special guest who neither of us know, but she wanted to know what we were doing and let us know that it's her birthday. Chad: What are these microphones for? Yes. And she's also in the industry. So what's your name miss? Joel: So give us your name, where you're from and a little Twitter bio. SFX: I don't know if I need to disclose that right now. Just kidding. [laughter] My name is Ivana Zirojevic. I'm the CEO and founder of Ren Head. Joel: CEO. Chad: Hello. Joel: Nice. Chad: I love it. [laughter] SFX: And I'm a local, by the way. Chad: Happy birthday, by the way. I understand, it's your birthday, it's your 30th. You are looking smashing for 30. SFX: I love you. [laughter] Chad: The youngest billionaire out there. Okay, well... Joel: Well thank you for stopping by. SFX: Thank you. Joel: We appreciate it. CEOs continue to lose their minds over the work-from-home issue. Chad: Go fucking figure. Joel: This week, real estate billionaire, Sam Zell, said, "Work from home is a bunch of bullshit." And added. [laughter] Joel: "One of the biggest lies in the world is that people working from home are more productive than people working in the office." Chad: What an asshole. Joel: An oped and business insider entitled, the real reason bosses are freaked out by remote work proclaimed, "CEOs might as well just say it. They think working from home is for sissies." The beatings will continue until morale improves. Chad, what's your take on this never-ending CEO assault on remote work? Chad: These little wimpy assholes calling anybody a fucking sissy in the first place, that just, to me makes me laugh. To be able to play that bully sissy card... Joel: Jeff Bezos will fight you. Chad: That is... Joel: Jeff Bezos. Chad: Well that's fine. That's fine. He's probably all hopped up on Mountain Dew and shit anyway. What a piece of shit. What a piece of shit. One CEO said, he actually remarked, also mentioned an unnamed employee who had decided to sell his family dog in order to comply with the back-to-office order, and that was something that he got behind. And he felt like that was the kind of a commitment that an employee should make. I'm a dog guy. Joel: You are a dog guy. Chad: I would beat the shit out of my CEO if he told me to get rid of my fucking dog. Luckily right now I don't have a CEO. [laughter] Joel: Yeah. So, you know how I always say the answer to all your questions is money? Chad: Yes. Joel: How did Sam Zell make his billions? Chad: How? Joel: I'll take commercial real estate for 400. So shocking that someone who made billions of dollars in... Chad: In real estate. Joel: In commercial real estate would want everyone to go back to the office. Sam Zell, I get it. What troubles me is that six months ago I was like, "We're never going back to work the way it was. Layoffs happened. CEOs are getting really chirpy and chesty about how work from home is bullshit." The pendulum is swinging to get back in the office and it'll be a lot of fun to talk about and watch on this podcast. Does it go back? Do the workers unite and send it back to the work-from-home movement? Is hybrid where we settle? Does the fraud continue to boil? We will be watching. Chad: I think we underestimated the power of old white dudes, 'cause they continue to play fucking oppression and bully games. It's bullshit autonomy, not micromanage is the king of the day. And we learned that through remote and hybrid working. So I think, and this is during one of our conversations earlier with a chief expert at SAP. He said that the companies who demand this are gonna look like the iron fist types of rulers and people are just not gonna wanna work for them. They're gonna lose the best talent. And it's already happening. Joel: Well, there's work from home, and there's me who can't wait to get home to lay in my bed and take a nap. And with that from Las Vegas, 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'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.

Do you like your snark served up with a heaping helping of despair? Then this episode is for you. Permanent layoffs, stock crashes, and a commercial real estate meltdown are just the beginning of what A.I. has in store for us. And let’s throw in robot baby daddies to boot and child labor run amok at McDonald’s. The good news may be ridding ourselves of high-priced CEOs forever. Oh yeah, and a couple of startups - Hackajob and Simpplr - got funding, but we’re kinda mixed on those too. We’ll even throw in fake obituaries and a Gen X rant. The end is nigh, humans. 🤖 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls! It's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh yeah, happy Cinco de Mayo! 47% of all drinks ordered in the US today are margaritas. Hola ninos. You're listening to the Chad & Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host Joel Cerveza Cheesman. Chad: And this is Chad I'll-have-a-Corona Sowash. Joel: And on this week's episode, Hackajob comes to America, not-so-happy meals at McDonald's, and the end is nigh humans. S?: Shall we play a game? Joel: Let's do this. Chad: Damn, back from Vegas just in time to rest up and get ready. Well, you had a mini-marathon. [laughter] Now we get rest up, then we have Cinco de Mayo, then we find ourself back on the left coast again next week. Joel: Yeah, there's a pool with my name on it. I'm a little concerned, though Chad, these hotels are getting really nice that these companies are having these events. I'm not sure they're gonna let a guy like me in, I'm gonna have to hit up a Motel 6 off of Highway 66 or something. Chad: Econo Lodge. Joel: Yeah, Econo Lodge, Holiday Inn Express, I don't know, I'm getting a little worried. A little high class. Chad: The Cheesman brand has to be, it has to be solid. The Econo Lodge Cheesman brand. Joel: That's my people. Give me an all-you-can-eat waffle bar and I am a happy, happy man everybody, happy. Chad: Shout out. Joel: I got a shout out, Chad. And I got a beef. Chad: Oh God, here we go. Joel: I got a beef with Gen-X. Chad: Already? Oh with us? Joel: I got a beef with Gen-X. A Gen-X beef, yeah. Chad: Okay, fuck. Joel: So you and I came of age when the baby boomers were going from their like hippie, Woodstock period to their Wall Street greed-is-good period, and we all swore like, "That's not gonna happen to us, we're... " Chad: Their cool-to-asshole period, is what I call it, yeah. Joel: Yeah, our pop-icons are gonna be solid. And I point anyone younger to go search an interview with Kurt Cobain back in the early '90s, where they told Kurt that Madonna's tickets, concert tickets were 50 plus dollars, and Kurt gob-smacked, couldn't believe it. I think Nirvana tickets at the time were probably $12 to $15. So anyway, my wife is a huge Pearl Jam fan, it's her favorite band, they're touring this year, and they're coming to Indianapolis for the first time in over a decade, they're only doing nine cities. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So she's super excited and people will also remember the '90s that Pearl Jam was this band that fought Ticketmaster, fought the man, was anti-capitalism, pro Green, they were sort of the poster childs for this. Well, you gotta register to even buy tickets, so you put your name in a little lottery, and then you get an email whether you can buy tickets. Well, my wife was selected, went to go buy tickets and wanted to get the best tickets possible. Well, to her surprise, the best tickets possible now to a Pearl Jam concert are in the $800 to the $1000 range. Chad: Oh God. Joel: Let me say it again, 800 to $1000 range. S?: Boo. Chad: Fighting the man to become the man. Joel: How much pro-capitalist is the other guy, but if your brand is based on fighting the man, doing it for the fans, keeping it real, Dave Matthew style, Fish style, etcetera, you can't drop 800 to $1000 tickets at a concert, so I had to get that out, little Gen-X disappointment there, little beef with Pearl Jam, Ten and Vs. Are still fantastic albums, but I'm a little less bullish on Pearl Jam at the moment. And did they need money? Did Eddie? Was Eddie broke? Was Andy hurting? I mean, come on now. Chad: Never meet your heroes. Never meet your heroes. My first shout out goes to Rahkeem Morris, the CEO of HourWork, he actually sat with our dumb asses for about an hour and a half, actually more than that, to create the New voices five-part series. We dropped it yesterday, Wednesday, a five-part binge-able series. So go check it out, you can go to the chadcheese.com, go to Voices, you can check it out there. Also, I created a Spotify playlist. That's right, all you have to do is search Voices and Rahkeem Morris. But five episodes. This dude's journey, I'm talking about way back when he was like a kid, like a pre-teen, his journey to all the way through today is just an amazing, an amazing story, and I'm glad we got a chance to do this series. Joel: I feel like we've either jumped the shark with this five-part series, or we're gonna start giving Netflix a run for its money. I'm not sure. S?: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: Alright, so you mentioned my mini-marathon after my liver destruction tour date in Vegas. Chad: Yes, yes. Joel: So I'm sitting down, I go to Louisville, and Louisville will come up later in the show by the way, I'm sitting down with my nieces, my family, and my nieces are in their 20s, I like to get like what's trending, what's happening? What kind of app should I be paying attention to? They're on BeReal, they're obviously on TikTok and everything. And one of my nieces says, the latest trend is fake obituaries and people are faking deaths, faking like literal death certificates and statements to employers, and apparently it's easier than ever with work-from-home and remote, you can just pick these things online. Chad: Come on. Joel: There are templates. Chad: Come on. Joel: I'm telling you. So I just... I want all the HR people out there to listen, to know, to be on alert that fake obituaries are a thing. So I'm gonna play you the sound bite from the TikTok and just to give you a flavor. Here we go. S?: My dad has died at every single job I've ever been at, sometimes I forget when he really died because I've said he died, I lied and said that he died so many times. My cousin Reed told me, she said, "If he don't do nothing else for you, at least he can get you a couple of days off work, and then when you come back, you get so much attention, everyone feels bad for you, and you might even get some motherfucking flowers." So ever since then like, "My dad died, I'm sorry I got a, you know, bereavement." That bereavement's a bitch too. Once you got that bereavement, set. He ain't do nothing else for you, might as well get you off a couple of days. Joel: Hope it's still funny in hell, Gen-Z. I hope it's still funny in hell, shout out to fake obituaries. Chad: It says something about our society when it's that hard to get a fucking day off, you gotta fake your dad's death. It says something about the character of that person, but it also says something about our society. One good thing about our society, I'm gonna give a big shout out to Mark Coleman and the UNLEASH team for an amazing event, number one, but I have a special shot out that's a little bit more personal. Are you ready for this one? Joel: Oh, do you want? Chad: It's not sexy, okay? It's not sexy at all. Joel: Oh, no. Chad: So you and some listeners might already know that my step-daughter Kennedy lives and works in Budapest. Less than a year ago, she started working with Mark and the UNLEASH team in the midst of preparing for a huge UNLEASH America event. Kennedy living in Budapest had a medical emergency, so Julie jumped on a flight and Mark and the team dropped everything and provided amazing support to Kennedy. Long story short, she had minor surgery, was on a flight to Vegas with Mama Julie less than a week after the surgery. So this was something that could have been major, but because of the quick reactions, the care and the support from Mark, Gina, Orci, and the team at UNLEASH, a crisis was averted. So shout out to an amazing UNLEASH team. Chad: It's one of those things where you have friends in the industry, you have people that you have acquaintances in the industry, obviously, we are continuing to find the people that are more than friends, but family, and we're starting to, I think, have even deeper connections than we ever have, and I am thankful. So thanks guys. Joel: It feels very European to me, I feel like if it had happened in America, it would have been like, "Good luck. See you at the bar." Chad: Rugged individualism. You'll be fine. Joel: Good luck. See you later, see you later. All right, Chad, well, we mention it on every show. Chad: Yes. Joel: We got free shit and I took a bunch of T-shirts items to Vegas. I got rid of all of them. These things are hot, hot, hot items. Chad: They are. Joel: The Canadians can't get enough. I think they're re-selling them at a top dollar in Calgary and Winnipeg, I think they're hot items. So anyway, if you wanna get one in your mailbox, you gotta go to Chadcheese.com/free or click the free link. We're talking beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey from Textkernel, free t-shirts from JobGet. And if it's your birthday, Chad, you could win rum with plum, that's right, we'll send you a nice bottle of rum from our friends at Plum, but you gotta play if you wanna win. Chadcheese.com, click the free link to win. S?: You know what that means. 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: All right, that brings us to birthday shout-outs for the week, these people are spending another trip around the sun, shout out to Annie Jarvis, Glen Hill, Garvit Sharma, Jerry Frank, Peter Shapira, Shauna Berdholdt, Keegan Ocepek, Stefan James, Sarah Starkweather, Sarah Addison, Bennet Song, who we interviewed, so be on the look out for that. JT O'Donnel, the mouth of Portsmith, she's celebrating another year around the sun. Robert Rainer, Alfonso Zamora, Herb Drew, Lou Adler, Matt Kaiser, and our favorite Chicagoan, Joe Shaker. S?: Happy birthday. Joel: All another year older. Happy Birthday everybody. Chad: Happy Birthday. Joel: God, and our list of fans is getting big, at what point do we like we can't... It's too many people, it's too many people. Chad: We're just going to have to announce the winners, I think is where we're probably gonna have to go with this. Joel: I'm gonna need a supply of oxygen. Chad: That being said, we need to get to events also brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right, kids. Whenever the Chad and Cheese travel, we travel in style with Shaker swag. Events coming up, we talked about UNLEASH, it was amazing. Now we're getting ready to go to California, baby. Coronado Beach for iCIMS INSPIRE where Chad and Cheese are closing out day one with Lauree Porter, who's the Director of HR systems at Penn Entertainment, who recently, Joel, acquired Barstool Sports and Christy Spilka, VP and Global Head of TA for iCIMS, we're gonna be doing a round-up of what we heard from the stage that day, and who knows. You're prepped and ready for Cali? Joel: Again, similar to the high-end hotels that they're putting us in, I feel like the guests are getting way too solid for us, like I'm used to the degenerates in the vendor side of the house, we're talking to like the elitist in the employment and hiring process, so I might shave a little bit. I'm getting a little ratty, so I might shave a little bit, comb my hair and put on some cologne for this audience, for once. Chad: I know Christy and the team over at iCIMS, they are avid listeners, so they're gonna be there and listening in, then we're gonna find ourselves... It's gonna be in July, so we're gonna take a little time off, which is nice, but July 6th, in Knebworth Park, just north of London, Chad and Cheese are gonna be hosting the Disrupt stage where it will be all things tech all damn day. And if you have not been to a RecFest, kids listen up, listen up listener, go to chadcheese.com, click on the events in the upper right hand corner, check out our events, register, but you've got to, if you're even close to the UK, you gotta go to RecFest. Jesus, this place is a fucking carnival, it is amazing. Joel: By the way, there could be a Cole Cheeseman siting in Knebworth, which I know you see in European vacation National Lampoon's... Chad: Rusty. Joel: In the scene where Rusty makes out with the German girl. I'm having a little bit of fear that some British girl might have it her way with my 16-year-old son, so I'm gonna be... Chad: A little fear... Yes, I'm sure. Joel: I'm gonna have the leash on Cole Cheesman in Knebworth, for sure. Chad: Topics. Joel: Oh my God. Layoffs baby, we haven't talked about layoffs in a while, but we got some big ones here in our industry to talk about. Number one, Greenhouse who I predicted would go public this year, which does not seem very, very good for me at the moment... Chad: I don't know. Joel: But we'll see, it's only Q1 at this point. So they laid off according to layoffs.FYI, 12% of the workforce or 100 or some people. Gloat another big winner in the investment sweepstakes, laid off 12% of their workforce. And Culture Amp, another surprise there laid off 9% or 90 people according to layoffs.FYI. So talking layoffs. Chad: So Greenhouse, being able to talk about IPOs still feeding into your prediction, this is generally part of the recipe to go to IPO, you're thinning out the ranks, you're focusing on obviously spend, revenue, all that stuff, so you could still... That prediction could still come true. Doubtful, but it could come true. Joel: Well, you know what they say about my predictions Chad... S?: 60% of the time it works, every time. Joel: Alright, let's talk about London-based Hackajob, founded in 2014. They've raised $25 million in a series B, bringing their grand total to $33 million. The company will use the funds to accelerate expansion into the United States. Hackajob's product suite includes a two-sided marketplace for direct talent sourcing, online assessments, remote interviews, and the like. The company says it has a community of over half a million techies. Chad, your take on the Hackajob news. Chad: So I think platforms like Hackajob are what all legacy job sites and applicant tracking systems, core talent platforms should be modeling after. I'm a huge fan of two-sided marketplaces, but I really like the feel of Hackajob as they position the platform as an employees come to you or employers rather come to you type of system, and that's a great way to entice top talent to join up. Then there's the up-skilling and testing modules in the platform, which I believe every single fucking marketplace should have. The companies receive 85% response rates, and they reduce their volume of candidates, which means they're getting more quality than they are quantity, I.e. Indeed still sucks. Also 25% of active candidates now based in the US, which means they have tremendous room for growth with this cash. Now HackerRank and GitHub are major competitors, but I believe if Hackajob creates the right partnerships, key to growth here in the US, kids, partnerships, they can compete in the market. We're seeing amazing types of marketplaces like Harri with an I, on the hospitality side, where they're building an entire ecosystem and also Applicant Tracking System onboarding, those types of things. This is the new age, right? This is the new age. So I love what Hackajob is doing, I think it's a model and a standard, and again, we're seeing the same thing in hospitality with Harri. Joel: So I have a little show that covers the European market, and we like to comment regularly that companies from Europe that come to the US typically face a pretty negative outcome. So Hackajob has its work cut out for it, to say the least. I think there are a few headwinds, I like the business overall, but there are some things outside of their purview that are gonna impact. The number one is the tech employment universe is freaking out right now. Elon's laying off everybody, but can do what they've done with less people. Meta, Apple, Amazon, laying off people. I'm hearing from tech folks that you can turn an entry-level or modest experienced recruiter into like a super 10X type recruiter. Can you do more with less? Can you do more with not senior people or the levels that you have had before? I think we're gonna find out. I think Twitter is sort of at the edge of that, and a lot of companies are gonna watch to see what happens there, what happens to all the... We'll talk about some companies here in a little bit that are also laying people off thinking that AI can do the job of developers. So there's a major headwind in terms of just the techy developer ecosystem that's gonna hit everybody, not just Hackajob but everybody, so that's number one. Joel: Number two is timing again, timing's a little rough, high inflation, war in Europe, it's just not the best time to do a lot of stuff. A lot of companies are staying pat, so growing right now, you're getting ahead of the curve and hoping that things will get better. I hope they do, certainly, but we'll see what happens there. And the other one I think is the biggest is competition, looking at America, we got Turing and Della, HackerRank, Stack Overflow, you mentioned GitHub, I'll throw Dice in there dammit. I will throw in Dice and all the others out out there, the top tall, etcetera. It's gonna be a hard road to hoe for Hackajob. I'm bearish on them. You're bullish, but I think both of us look at it as things outside of their purview that are gonna impact them more than just the business itself and what they do. Chad: We saw and I'll show my t-shirt here, it says "Fuck interviews" from HiringBranch them, the Tadeos of the world, and I feel like all of these marketplaces, the HackerRanks, the GitHubs, the Hackajobs, they are all focused on a couple of things, upskilling and or not just assessments, but tests, so most of these platforms at that point can get rid of the interview entirely, unless you're really looking for "culture fit", you don't need it, especially if you've got tech people who are working remote for the most part. So I see this is a great opportunity, and again, most of these marketplaces, they've gotta move toward upskilling and assessments either through partnerships or through building it themselves. Chad: Now, from a timing standpoint, I agree from the standpoint of, I think this is perfect timing because if it was booming at this point, they wouldn't have enough time to actually focus on areas of the business that they could or should. I think they're going to have more time because they don't have as much demand on them, they've got the money, so now they can re-tool and when everything hits and it will because it's always the cycle. Chad: They'll be ready for it. So again, I think that the Hackajobs, HackerRanks, GitHubs, all of these organizations that are focused on marketplaces that upskill and also test are getting well, well, in front of the old style career sites like the Indeeds, the ZipRecruiters, and even applicant tracking systems. These guys are going to leapfrog over them, if these companies, these old legacy organizations don't get their shit together. Joel: It sounds like you're saying if they're gonna make it into America, they gotta go deep. Oh shit. [automated voice] Chad: Here we go. Not again. Joel: Now we got what we're calling, the Doomsday segment in two parts, call it The White Album for Chad and Cheese, a double album, we'll have an advertising break in between, but some things are happening with AI that scary as shit should... Should be on everyone's radar. So let's go through some of these and we'll have a comment on each one, so number one, the week started with Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI... I bet that picks up chicks at the bar, don't you? He's quit Google. He regrets the work he's done and fear AI could lead to the proliferation of fake images, videos and text. No shit, he also warned AI could power killer robots and cause harmful disruption to the labor market. No shit. Chad your take on The Godfather bowing out? Chad: Yeah, I mean, Skynet... Skynet, on its way, it's interesting, they asked AI experts what the likelihood was of AI actually taking over and being deadly, and they said, "Ah 10%." Okay, 10% is pretty fucking big, that's a little bit much kids. What do we need to do to regulate this shit, so as we hear about just literally this unregulated no guardrail AI that's happening out there, I can see why the guy wants to eject, he probably has plenty of money and chics again, being the Godfather of AI, so... Yeah, no, I see that now, being able to progress into what's the next step and are we gonna lose jobs in this market is the next question I think. S?: That escalated quickly. Joel: Did you see the killer drone that hit Moscow this week? Chad: Yeah, it was funny because I think on the news today, they were talking about how somebody went out and got a couple of drones from a Radio Shack or something like that, it was all just like, Okay, this is really nothing much to do about anything, it's kind of like the drones that you might see around your neighborhood. Joel: I'm calling a fake flag on that one, there's no way that was a legitimate hit on Putin's life, that was literally like a kite with a bomb, a firecracker on it. Chad: Not from Ukraine for God's sake says, no. Joel: And they're blaming us for it. Look, say what you want about America. If we wanna take a guy out, we're probably gonna take the guy out no matter which they are. So that leads us into more doomsday scenarios, let's talk about the IBM CEO who said quote, "He expects to pause hiring for roles as roughly 7800 jobs could be replaced by AI in the coming years. 30% of non-customer-facing roles could be replaced by AI and automations within five years." Chad, your take on the IBM CEO comments. Chad: So first and foremost, we've all recognized that most of the corporate ranks have become bloated, we're seeing... We're seeing these layoffs because of the huge bloat that's happened, so cuts shouldn't surprise us, even though the C-suite's job is to plan and manage the business, so CEOs and the C-suites almost across the board have underperformed in these tasks and doing their damn jobs, for most of what we're hearing though, over and over and over is the phrase cutting mundane tasks, which does not equal jobs. So we continue to have that discussion about tasks, which does make sense, but it's augmenting the human, not replacing the human. So let's be serious, we're not talking about less humans performing different positions, we're talking about being able to give them a better experience, and then also prospectively customer's better experience as well, but here's the big question, so during this whole discussion, you've gotta ask yourself, why is IBM CEO saying this out loud, this isn't great for optics when it comes to holding onto top talent, so why is he saying this out loud. Joel: Are you gonna tell us? Chad: I have a conspiracy theory, but think about it, you can be replaced, so I feel like this is almost like a power play of just saying, "Hey look, we could replace thousands, thousands of positions, you could be replaced, so get your ass back into the office." It's the exact same bullshit move that Johnny C. Taylor made at SHRM when an employee made a case that their job could be done remotely, so Johnny's dumbass just fired them and outsourced the job to India for 40% less. So these are the power plays that reign in the peasants, it's nothing more than control at this point, that's a level that I see because there's no reason for the CEO to come out and say this stupid shit other than trying to rein in the peasants. Joel: I like a good conspiracy theory, Chad when Johnny's mentioned, yes. So I posted this on LinkedIn, I was surprised to see how many people are like, "It sounds like he's trying to set the table to justify layoffs, he said like, he's creating the expectation like, people are gonna lose jobs, and it's not my fault, it's technology's fault, so you're not the only conspiracy theorist out there, Chad. There are a lot of people thinking that. He said that to serve a purpose of laying off people. Now, he did say that they wouldn't lay off people, they would just say they wouldn't be replacing people once those folks left for another job, but you're right, and that those people probably don't feel real secure in their job right now, and they're probably looking to get out and you save yourself from the bad PR when people just leave and you don't have to lay people off, and you get a little bit of extra severance to keep in the coffer, so conspiracy theories abound on this one at IBM, which leads us through Chad, your Xanadu, your paradise, your Nirvana. Joel: Can I interest you in a robotic CEO, AI CEO... Chad: Oh, wait a minute, what? Joel: That's an article from Futurism argues rather than replacing employees with AI-powered robots, CEO should consider replacing themselves with artificial intelligence, a CEO's primary function is often to measure business growth, a task that can be outsourced to AI pretty easily, but Chad, I wanna know your thoughts. My favorite CEO hater. Chad: So I don't hate CEOs, I hate that they have become overrated. Let's just say that. So CEO-pay has skyrocketed nearly 1500, 1500% since 1978. While the people who are actually doing the fucking work, their wage increase is guess what? Not even 20%, 18%, so the average CEO today is earning 400 times more than the employee who's doing the work. Another quote from Futurism Amazon CEO, Andrew Jassy, 2021 salary is capped at a staggering $213 million, a number amounting to the collective earnings of 6474 average Amazon employees, that's salary, not total comp, CEOs get paid ungodly amounts of cash. If we could just ratchet that down to where it was before, it just makes sense, but, but listen to this, even the CEO of Warner Brother's discovery, David Zaslav, who raked in $200, almost $250 million back in 2021, was named on the worst CEO list of 2022. They're still getting paid even though they're doing shitty fucking jobs, they're bloating, they're not managing the company, right, so we're seeing all these huge lay-offs, they're not doing their job, so one or two things need to happen, they need to take a huge pay cut and or they need to get the fuck fired. [automated voice] Joel: CEOs aren't going anywhere, Chad. Chad: They aren't. I know. Joel: Unless the Red Army shows up in San Francisco. The system will prevail over the working class every day of the week. Chad: The peasants. Yes. Joel: Which we should mention a couple other startups that came out recently, so Harvey as a company, they just raised $21 million, they're looking to augment or replace a lot of the tasks of a lawyer, and you and I both have some familiarity with lawyers... Chad: Unfortunately. Joel: And believe you me a lot of the shit they do can be automated or at least augmented. The other one, a company called an NinjaTech AI, horrible name, but some really smart folks at some really big companies just raised $5 million in alpha, you gotta sign up on their waiting list to get access to that, they're gonna replace assistants, executive and otherwise with real-looking people like facial, this is some next generation shit head out to Ninjatech AI at ninjatech.ai I think if you wanna look at more, but I will reiterate, the CEOs and the shareholders will be the last one standing in the castle when the peasants come with the pitch forks to take over. Now CEOs will augment their job and probably have more time on the golf course, more time on the beach, hanging out with you in Portugal... Chad: Still get paid. Joel: Using AI, but they'll be damned if they're gonna be replaced by AI. Chad: And they're not gonna be replaced, like you said, they're gonna be augmented and they're just gonna continue to make this crazy amount of cash, and that's the thing, is that we need to focus on the narrative that we've been told our entire life. If you take a look at just basic economics, whenever "inflation" happens, we don't look at price gouging or profiteering, we look at wages and wage growth, and we focus on middle class, and it's like, "Oh wait, these wages are growing too fast." Motherfucker please. 1500% compared to 18%. You fuck off, Steve Rattner. Joel: And that is part one of our Doomsday segment, we'll take a quick break and come back with another start-up, raising some money. Alright, Chad, I like things that are simpler. How about a company called SIMPPLR? That spelled S-I-M-P-P-L-R. There's two p's on it, SIMPPLR or not, but anyway, the California-based internal social network platform has raised $70 million in a funding round. This brings total funding to $131.1 million. SIMPPLR aims to enhance employee engagement. SIMPPLR platform also uses sentiment and emotion analysis to track and monitor employee attitudes and language patterns. Scary. The funds raised will be used to expand the company's workforce and product R&D. Chad, your thoughts on SIMPPLR. Chad: Horrible name, the whole misspelling generation won't even get this one right. Joel: Only those using Flickr will get this one right. Chad: So has Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others ruin the social network forever allowing these types of platforms to pop up? Does a company really want and or need their very own social network? I mean, who polices it, will employees really even use it and then from TechCrunch, what you'd actually said, SIMPPLR also uses AI for sentiment and emotional analysis. What employee is gonna wanna put any of their information and or data or anything into that? Moreover SIMPPLR's CEO declined to answer questions about the company's privacy policy, including how long, sorry, SIMPPLR stores user data and whether users can easily delete the data, this is a big fuck you, man. I don't know how they got $70 million. Isn't Slack, Teams and that Facebook work thing enough for business already? [automated voice] Joel: Facebook for your company. What could be more fun than that, Chad, create a profile, connect, share pictures, do polls, play music to each... I don't know what's going on, but it certainly sounds good, and I'm sure a lot of employees will think it's a lot of fun to get on the social network internally and engage with their co-workers. Chad: And get monitored. Joel: However Chad I must caution you. How did Facebook make all their money? Data, they know everything about you. Chad: You're the product. Joel: While you're having fun, sharing pictures at the company picnic, the company is learning more and more about you, including when you wanna leave, maybe you're lobbying other co-workers to leave with you, maybe you wanna start a company that's a competitor. Oh boy, Chad, SIMPPLR sounds like a fantastic way for your company to monitor you and keep you in line. Chad: It's like your own Cambridge Analytica. Joel: Say no to the SIMPPLR... Simpler life. This has disaster written all over it. If they start importing data, exporting your data to other companies, and that company can create a score on you of like what kind of employee you are, are you... Is it gonna be mutiny on the bounty when you show up like, this is a really bad idea. And the only way that they could get that kind of money is because they spun this story to investors about, we're gonna be able to track people all across their entire professional life, and it's gonna make us a ton of money. Chad: Yeah, no. [automated voice] Joel: Alright, Doomsday part two, baby, here we go, let's go to a little more corporate angle on this and. Alright, so number one, shares of Chegg, Chad we're too young to know what Chegg is, or benefit from it, 'cause we were in school when CliffsNotes were considered cheating. Anyway, so shares of Chegg, coming to help students with homework, exam prep and writing support fell by 50 freaking percent after they reported a fall in revenue due to, "Significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT." Chad, your take on the Chegg news. Chad: Chegg is the Blockbuster in the scenario, while Khan Academy is the Netflix, and they are actually piloting ChatGPT in the hopes that the tech can turbo-charge it system with generative AI tutors that leverage the content already provided in Khan Academy. So we're going to see this throughout every single industry, kids, period. We're gonna have the Cheggs of the world, the Encyclopedia Britannica of the world, they're just gonna die because they didn't innovate, because they didn't go that next step, and then you're gonna have the Khan Academies where they automatically I mean they're feverishly going into this saying, "Wow, this could really super charge what we do, and it could help us really force multiply how we tutor students in our platform," so there is a great opportunity to turbo-charge platforms and companies versus what Chegg is looking at the blockbuster is having one store in Alaska, I don't even think that one exists anymore. Joel: So Chad if you wanna know what's coming, watch the kids, remember Napster, that was a revolution driven by the kids and the kids are gonna go around over and under the fences and walls that we as adults create, and I think Chegg is just the tip of the iceberg for what the kids and eventually the adults are going to be doing to public companies and regular old companies all around every industry whatsoever. You and I talked about a little company called Textio in our space a couple of weeks ago. Imagine if Textio was a public company, there would be headlines like this coming out of Textio and fear of companies just go into ChatGPT and writing their own unbiased job postings and their stock with tank more than 50, I promise you that if that news came out, so this... Watch what the kids do, 'cause this is coming to a company near you and it might be coming to the company that you currently work for, and you should be aware of that. Joel: But yes tip of the iceberg. This is gonna be a common thing. If the company you're using or working for can be disrupted, this shit and these kind of headlines are gonna be hitting you, and I guarantee you they're hitting a lot of the companies in our space, a lot of the unicorns that we talked about, 2020 through 2022, they're going through the same shit, they're just not public companies that have to put out headlines on this stuff, but I promise you, they are feeling the pain, just like the people who own commercial real estate everywhere, but certainly places like San Francisco and New York City that have a high density of people in downtown. So this week, we learned that nearly 30% of San Francisco's office space is now vacant, most notably, a building in Downtown San Francisco that is worth or was sold for $300 million four years ago, is likely to sell for 80% less on the market now. Joel: 80% less. And in New York City, a report from Columbia University says New York City office buildings could tumble $48.75 billion in value in the coming years. These are just New York and San Francisco, but I guarantee you every city in the world, thanks to remote work, is feeling the pain. What's your take Chad? Chad: We need to re-imagine cities, much like our relationship has changed to work, our relationship to cities need to be different, in some cases, we need to turn into destination, more of a destination location, even for people who are "locals." We have to innovate as opposed to have this fear-mongering that's going on. Yes, prices are coming down, okay, and they're dropping, they're plummeting, okay, that's an opportunity for organizations to actually get in there, and also for the city of New York to start looking at innovating how they're pulling people in, everything is changing so fluidly with technology today, even brick and mortar. So we have to evolve to be able to say that, well, we need to force people into the cities because of rent. No. This is what we call evolution. The pandemic did this, it demonstrated how fluid we could be as human beings, it also helped us re-prioritize our lives in some cases and work, and that long ass commute is not a part of it anymore, so we've gotta re-imagine these things, we've gotta be smarter, we've got to evolve. Joel: Yeah. And there's gonna be a lot of pain in that evolution. Chad: Yeah, of course. Joel: You and I talked about Sam Zell last week... Chad: Fuck that guy. Joel: Who's pounding the table to get back to work, get back in the office, morale will improve once the beating start anyway. How many rich people do you think own commercial real estate around the world? Chad: All of them. Joel: A lot. Chad: All of them. Joel: So it's no shocker that all these people are like, get back in the office, work from home is bullshit, remote sucks, etcetera. So the first of the cycle is them bitching about this, trying to get people back to work, which isn't gonna work for the most part, the second is, you're gonna see defaults, bankruptcies, runs on bank. A lot of the loans that came for these local markets, commercial real estate are regional banks, local banks, they're gonna feel a lot of pain, and you're starting to see it now in the news with smaller regional banks under pressure from shareholders and fear of what's gonna go on there, so that's gonna be really painful too. The banking system is gonna take a lot of pain from this, and then the next thing is, there are a lot of laws right now, zoning laws that say you can't build residential shit here, you can't build whatever. This is a commercial real estate section of town, those laws have to change and change very fast. We gotta put on the expediting of those in a big way, but... Yeah, you're right. Joel: Look, they're not gonna tear these buildings down and grow farms, they're not gonna put a Six Flags in the middle of Manhattan, so these changes are gonna happen just like in 2008 when everything went to shit. It took five, 10 years for things to come back, and I was in Phoenix at that time, Phoenix is back like it was... Florida's back like it was before 2008 and 2009. These cities will be back, but there will be a lot of pain that happens before that, and speaking of pain, Chad, let's talk about reproduction. Chad: Oh good God. That was never painful for me, at least... Joel: Yeah. Chad: On my side. Joel: But this story might be painful, so robots apparently are taking our women. This was in the news this week. Two babies have been born after a robot guided by a PlayStation 5 controller. Yeah, I said Playstation 5 controller fertilized human eggs. This is in Barcelona, your neighbor there in Portugal, Chad. The procedure created by Overture Life is intended to make it easier for women to become pregnant in a cheaper and more accessible way and... Yes, without men. Chad, talk me off the ledge of all these catastrophe news. What are your thoughts on robot daddies? Chad: Yeah, I got nothing there, man. I can't put myself in the shoes of a lot of the sex-less 20-year-old dudes that are out there today, and why this could, in some cases, be necessary now, there are lesbian couples who want to have kids, and this might be a great mechanism to be able to do that, but personally, this is well outside of my wheelhouse. Joel: Well, yeah, it's nice that all those dudes in their basements are playing video games because that might be the only way that they get to impregnate a woman, with that PlayStation. Look, if women are gonna resort to pregnancy by PlayStation controllers, it'll be our fault, men and the sex robots that we're making right now and perfecting apparently, not that I would know anything about this, but I read the news and it'll probably start in Utah, Chad, because Utah has just blocked PornHub from the entire state, and with that Chad, only Bill Burr, one of our favorite comedians, can sum up the future of sex and how men are gonna be responsible for fucking it all up. Take a listen. Bill Burr: They're gonna make Victoria's Secret super models, just like Paris runway, looking super models, and you can be able to come home to one of these things and it's gonna laugh at all your jokes. [vocalization] Bill Burr: It's gonna sit down and watch the game with you. Like it doesn't get any better than this. Yes, it does. [vocalization] Bill Burr: And it's gonna get up and make you a fucking bundt cake or a meat pie, whatever the fuck you people. Right? There's not gonna be a human woman in here that's gonna be able to compete with that, for longer than 90 minutes, even on your birthday, by the third trip to the fridge, she's gonna be like "Yeah, fucking get it yourself. What am I, your slave? Go fuck yourself." And after you've been with one of these robots like sex dolls, you're not gonna be able to go back to a real woman, right, with all their hopes and dreams and their needs. You're gonna be coming home, she's like, "What is going on with you? We're not connecting. We need a date night." All you've been thinking is how do I shut this fucking thing off. What is it on nagging mode? Why isn't it blowing me right now? Joel: We'll be right back. Joel: Alright Chad, McDonald's is in the news. Call it the not so happy meal, a McDonald's franchise in Louisville, Kentucky has been found to have violated federal labor laws by employing two 10-year-old children. That's right, I said 10 years old who were not paid and worked late hours, including operating a deep fryer, which is prohibited for workers even under 16, let alone 10 years old. The franchise has been fined nearly... You're ready for this Chad, $40,000 by the department of labor. Two other McDonald's franchises were also investigated and found to have employed 305 children to work more hours than legally permitted and perform prohibited tasks. Chad, what you got on this story out of the golden arches? Chad: Welcome to America, kids. So this from the Economic Policy Institute, in the past two years, at least 10 states have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections, here in the United States. Already in 2023, eight bills to weaken labor protections have been introduced in six Midwestern states, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota, and in Arkansas where a bill replacing restrictions on work for 14 and 15-year-olds has now been signed into law. In Iowa, probably the most extreme... In Iowa, they've proposed lifting restrictions on hazardous work, lowers age for alcohol servers, extends work hours, grants employers immunity from civil liability for workplace injuries, illness, and death. That's right, your kids could go to work and die, that 10-year-old in Iowa because this is the state of America, kids. Joel: So this is nothing new, apparently, this is news to me. The rise in illegal child labor has been observed by the department of labor since 2018, and the agency has issued millions in fines in just 2022 alone. Chad: Wow. Joel: $40,000, employing two 10-year-olds. Nothing's gonna change, and you and I talk about this all the time, nothing's gonna change with these little fines. That local McDonald's probably makes 40 grand in one day in terms of sales of chicken McNuggets and McShakes. So until we start seeing real fines or perp walks or the McDonald's headquarters, putting on some orange jumpsuits, this is gonna continue to be a problem. Joel: I just can't believe no one noticed a couple of 10-year-olds at the store. And by the way, this is Louisville, I know it's Kentucky, but we're not talking like Dukes of Hazzard, Boss Hogg, Hazzard County, Kentucky. We're talking like a city in Kentucky, so how nobody noticed this or said something just blows my mind, and frankly, if there's an argument for automation in restaurants, I think there's not a better one than keeping little Johnny and Janey away from the fryer, which I can tell you as a fast food worker is not fun to be around, and it's even worse to clean. I'm loving it, McDonald's, not so much. And Chad, that's why I'm boycotting the quarter-pounder for at least a week. We out. Chad: We out. 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 a 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 chuckle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you will be back like an awful train wreck, you can click away and like Chad's favorite Western, you can quit them either. We out.

Build, buy, or partner? Fewer questions have dogged mankind as much as this one, especially when it comes to HR tech. That’s why Chad & Cheese added Textkernel’s VP of sales in North America, Chris Conrad, to get to the bottom of this pickle, live from the big stage at UNLEASH America in Las Vegas. Along the way, they break down the issue, visit the historical implications and shine a light for current and future generations to answer this puzzling question, once and for all. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. 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] Intro: In this episode of the Chad and Cheese we take to the main stage of UNLEASH America in Las Vegas with our friend Chris Conrad from Textkernel. Talking about should companies build, buy or partner? Check it out. Jess: Chris Conrad, VP of sales for North America from Textkernel. He's a global... Textkernel is a global leader in AI-powered semantic technology for understanding, connecting and analyzing people and jobs better. We've talked about that on the consultant panel a little bit ago. Over 15 years of experience in recruitment, and recruitment technology. Chris brings a ton of knowledge and experience to this panel and to this conversation. He's gonna sit alongside Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman, of course the co-founders and co-hosts of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I learned a whole bunch of things when I read this intro earlier. I didn't know all of these things about Chad, so I'm gonna share them with you. Former infantry, army infantry drill sergeant. He cut his teeth in online recruitment back in '98 with an outfit called Online Career Center, before the next year it became Monster. Thank you. Jess: And then of course he went on to build direct employers from the ground up. He steered recruit military toward revenue as their Chief Experience officer, and built Randstad's first military veteran recruitment program. I didn't even know all of this about Chad. That's an amazing bio. [applause] Jess: Joel Cheeseman has over 20 years of experience in online recruitment as well. Worked with both international and local job boards in the late '90s and early 2000s. In 2005, Joel founded HR SEO, a search engine marketing company for HR and launched an award-winning industry blog called Cheesehead. Let's bring them to stage. [applause] [music] Chad: My turn? Jess: Amazing. Yes, absolutely. Chad: Hello, hello, hello. Is this thing on? Is this thing on? Jess: Good to see you. Chad: Hello. Jess: Have fun. Yes. Chad: Wake up, Vegas. Joel: I know that dude in the back. They said can you and Chad get on the couch together? I don't know what they're expecting at Unleash to happen with that. [laughter] Joel: And those lights are bright. [laughter] Joel: It's very interesting vibe right now. Chris Conrad: So what are we we're talking big back better. Is that, is that... Chad: Build Back better? Joel: Build back Better, big back Better, love it. That was at my house. [laughter] Joel: Immediately moving over. Build... Chad: Yes. Joel: Buy or partner. Chad: Yes, exactly. Joel: I think that's the topic, right? The hot topic, yeah. Chad: Which is... Yeah. Which is what the other group tried to stay away from the entire time, and everybody kept asking. So we might as well go ahead and and knock it out. Joel: So, I feel like we should really simplify it, what those terms mean. So, build, do you have your tech team build this thing from the ground up? Chad: Yep. Joel: Do you buy? Do you acquire somebody that's already doing it and plug it into your system? Chad: Really questions for the ages, to be quite frank. Joel: Or partner. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Yes, partner. Someone does it really well. You know that you are not... I don't know. You're not named Google or AWS or something and you just go buy that and partner with them to do it. So, I think, historically if we take it back there, there's been some mistakes that companies in our space have made. One that comes to my mind is Jobbing Video. I don't know if you remember Jobbing Video. Chad: Who was around long enough to remember Jobbing Video? Joel: Who remembers Jobbing? Oh, you're able. We got one. Chad: Jesus Christ. Joel: Well, Jobbing was a job board, headquartered out in the southwest. And in the mid 2000s, YouTube was a thing, google Video came out. And Jobbing created Jobbing Video where they thought, "We can do a video player as good as YouTube. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: Turned out they couldn't. Chad: For about five minutes. About five minutes. Joel: They couldn't. It cost too much. Hosting it was too much. They couldn't do HD, they couldn't do the the things that that YouTube did. So they went back to YouTube. So that's one example of, they should have just partnered with someone like YouTube to start with. Chad: But sometimes you're afraid to do those things because there might be an API, I don't know. Twitter might come out with an API and you use the API and you start to build revenue off of the API. And then they pull the plug on the API. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. You were a career builder. What did Monster have on Facebook back in the day? You remember that? Remember, Be Known. Chris Conrad: Oh, my God. Joel: Be Known, anybody remember Be Known? Chris Conrad: I try to forget about that... Joel: I know. Yeah. I heard you, so... Chad: Everybody was doing social media, Facebook. Joel: Be Known, and they had Branch Out. Branch Out was a startup that was on Facebook and they claimed to have a billion users. Which is... Chris Conrad: How do you remember all of this stuff? Joel: This is what I do. Chad: It's our job. Joel: I have no life. So, we have a billion users. And then Facebook said, "You know what? We're gonna switch this up." And they're dead. And so is Monster's Be Known. Chris Conrad: I'm pretty sure that they'll be known in my office somewhere. Joel: So, there are significant threats. A guy named Elon just bought Twitter. Now you have to pay for that API. So all these companies that were using Twitter's API are now proper, you know what, in using that. Chad: Bot. Joel: So, in our space we have to ask the question "Build, buy or partner?" My man here at Textkernel, a lot of you know Sovereign, they acquired Sovereign a couple years ago. You have tons of partners leveraging your program. And I assume you see this question with your partners. How do you convince them not to be scared that you're not gonna go away, that they shouldn't build it themselves? What's that conversation like with companies? Chris Conrad: Surprisingly easy sometimes. [laughter] Chris Conrad: Especially when you start talking about R and D right? Yeah. I think you know a lot of the audience here are actually customers of our Sovereign product line. Within HR Tech we have a high level usage. I think probably maybe over a thousand different partners in North America alone. Joel: Yeah. And if they're not using you directly, they're probably using someone that's using you guys and saying that they built it themselves. Right? Chris Conrad: That is a phenomenon. Joel: That happens. Yeah. Chris Conrad: We've ran into that before. But, yeah, so the thing is, for maybe a lot of you guys, what we do is fundamentally resume parsing. So, I think something like two and a half billion resumes get parsed through Sovereign and Textkernel. Chad: Two a half bi-bi-billion? Chris Conrad: Yeah. Chad: Is that a year? Chris Conrad: Yeah, per year. Chad: Holy shit. Chris Conrad: It's insane. Yeah. All unique people, obviously. All unique. Yeah. Chad: Yeah. [laughter] Chris Conrad: No, but it's crazy stats, right. And so, yeah, we do a lot of this and we've built up a lot of energy and expertise, but the challenge is who's building a new parser? Is it anyone's core business model to build that? Even if you're a job board, do you even want to have that proprietary tech? Joel: And we're talking how many years between Sovereign and you guys, have you guys been doing this? Chris Conrad: They both started 20 years ago. Joel: Yeah. Chris Conrad: And that's crazy. I'm not aware of another parser that's been came up in the last five, really. But, really, I think any more it's less about just the parsing, it's more about the enrichment of skills, professions, it's about all the other stuff. And what's kinda crazy... And this, I feel like I'm getting in a parsing tangent, this is weird. It's like all the creativity that people have on resumes, the advice that your mom would give you. Chad: Yep. Chris Conrad: Like on your first game job. Like, "Go stand out." Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Conrad: And so then people started making these really creative resumes. Chad: And you guys strip the creativeness out. Chris Conrad: And it's horrible for... [laughter] Chris Conrad: So you have to do a lot of work, be like, alright well... Because people are putting addresses all over the place or they have headers where their footers should be, and it's all over the... Joel: And doesn't LinkedIn change things up pretty regularly to keep you guys on your toes. Just keeping up with LinkedIn is a total pain in the ass, right? Chris Conrad: Yeah. Yeah. They changed style, like what? I feel quarterly now. Joel: Yeah. That's a whack-a-mole that no one wants to play. Chris Conrad: Yeah. No, but... And so that's a thing, right? So when we're talking about all the different technologies that are coming out, It's hard to keep up with the Joneses. So I think when we're all talking about different vendors in this segment, it's what can we differentiate? What can we special in? What can we bring a unique solution to the market? But really almost all of us have to interact with either job data or candidate data. And so you start having the question, "What needs to be proprietary technology for your business to be unique in the marketplace?" And surprisingly, and especially I feel like the conversation's changing daily now, it's limiting. Like, what makes you unique is sometimes a very small set of skills, very small set of capabilities that your tool might have or problems that you're solving with your solution. Joel: So, let's... We don't have a lot of time on stage. Do we open up the chatGPT Pandora's box yet, or no? Chad: Open up the can of worms. Because we... Joel: Okay. Chris Conrad: We haven't talked about that, right? [laughter] Joel: No one has talked about this yet. This is brand new for everybody, I know. ChatGPT, in case you don't know it, go ahead and Google it. Is this a conversation? 'Cause I fear a little bit like we're moving really fast to adopt this, to integrate it, without sort of thinking about it. And some of you may know... Chad: You feel that way? Joel: So, Samsung. Chris Conrad: Yeah. [chuckle] Joel: Not job specific, but... Chad: Well you've seen how many products pop out that are GPT in the last 2 weeks for God's sakes. Joel: Oh, yeah. Chad: It is ridiculous. Joel: Wait till you go to the expo hall. Chad: It is ridiculous. Joel: Yeah, it's the new AI in big data over there. But at Samsung, some developers said, "Let's throw all our code into chat GPT and see what happens." Chris Conrad: Why not, right? Why not. Joel: Well, to their dismay now open AI has that code, and it was sort of an oopsie moment. But we have not just code and IP, but we're talking about candidates, human beings. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: Databases of profiles. Should we be afraid about unleashing the chatGPT, the OpenAI animal on all this data? Should vendors be asking, should we, instead of why not? Chris Conrad: We talking about people, right? What's the risk? Chad: Yeah. I guess, yeah, the big question is cannibalizing your own current business and future business. So do we actually utilize the secret source that... We're talking about Samsung, right? Chris Conrad: Yeah. Chad: The secret source that nobody else has. It's our code, it's our data, what have you. Do we go ahead and allow a company like OpenAI or Google, or maybe soon, Amazon, to actually gobble in this? Joel: Elon's got one too, x.ai. Everyone's gonna be flooding that with data. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Jess: So, pros and cons behind that. Because you guys, you've powered pretty much the entire industry between Sovereign and Textkernel, powered the entire industry and you know what white labeling and partnering looks like, but now this is changing the game entirely. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: So tell us about that. Chris Conrad: Yeah. A lot of our company is PhDs, so. I'm a sales guy, but we're a small sales, and we don't need to be. We have huge R&D efforts comparatively for our company size. And so I'm talking to our head of R&D, and getting our position on large language models, which I feel right now should be a drinking game. Like every single time you say generative AI, you take drink. Joel: Why Not? Chad: Somebody get the Makers... Chris Conrad: I got a bottle of Makers. Chad: Yeah. Get a Maker's Mark out of my bag. Chris Conrad: Let's get after it. No on will... [chuckle] Joel: Backstage is crazy, everybody. Chris Conrad: Soo, one of the anomalies, I guess, the smart people are talking about is the concept of hallucinations. Where the generative AI, which is naturally creative, will just make up stuff, which is great when you're asking it to write up some marketing content, maybe draft a prospecting email or make a job description. But when you're talking about something like, let's just say a resume, we're testing it out and we're like, "This is sometimes just coming up with just fake history." Chad: So you're saying a hallucination for AI is pretty much them, the AI itself, not having enough data to fill a gap so they come up with their own, and it could just be total bullshit. Chris Conrad: Could be. And I think how it's been explained to me by the Smarty pants is that it's like when you're having a conversation with someone, but you anticipate what someone is gonna say next, how often do you get that wrong a little bit? I know I kind of screw it up a bit. Well, it's like generative AI, it's kind of doing that. So it's making that assumption, it's drawing that conclusion, which sometimes... Most of the time it's right, sometimes it's not. And so when you're talking about doing this hundreds of times, thousands of times, billions of times, that level of inconsistency is horribly dangerous. And so you're talking about, like that's a challenge. So, what do you do with this? So there's things that it's really good at. And I personally believe we're at this moment where because of how accessible this technology is, I think it's gonna change a lot of things. But for the short term, we need to be able to augment what it's able to do, it's creativity with hard coded data sets, things that are industry specific. Chris Conrad: So for example, we have extensive taxonomy and ontology around skills and professions, great. Use that to guide the AI, because that's similar to curation, right? So you're pointing in direction saying, "Hey, you build out this job description, but here are the skill that it should have. Don't guess, don't jump to some conclusions." Like, here's what we want on here. Chad: So you're talking about, really... And we've talked to a couple of AI companies that focused on large language models and then having a link to domain specific. And that's smaller, right? But it is really organization's secret sauce. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Chad: And again, your secret sauce being 2 billion resumes that have been parsed, the ontologies, the taxonomies, all those things. That large language model does not currently have that information. How long do you think it's gonna take for them to actually pull that data in? Or do you think that it's gonna take a company to point them in that direction to be able to start gleaning that data? Chris Conrad: That's a good question. I suspect not long. So we're already looking really heavily into how we incorporate, we're incorporating it in certain areas. And our main focus is around compliance, obviously, privacy, and what not. So there's a lot of concern, like what kind of data are you pumping into? Is this gonna be compliant with European legislation? Definitely not. But we know American legislation's gonna change. New York City has that weird law in the books that no one can seem to figure out what to do with it. But you know what, California's not far. Colorado's pretty close. This is all gonna change. Again, I kind of... We were talking about this over lunch, I see this as like the Model T, where traffic lights didn't exist before. The cars were around before. Chad: Yeah. Chris Conrad: But it's just the prevalent... The amount of 'em that started hitting the roadways. You had to put rules in place. You had to have, which side of the road are you gonna be on, what are stop signs? How are they gonna interact with horses? I think this is how we're gonna have in the future to be like, "Hey, How do we use this? How do we regulate it? How does it manage our environment?" But, that's beyond my scope too. Joel: For a long time we talked about automation, AI replacing recruiters. And I feel like that has come full circle to it's gonna augment what a recruiter does. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: Does Chat GPT have the ability to write job descriptions, to write rejection letters and cover letters, and does this replace the recruiter or does it augment them to do their jobs better, or focus on more important things? Chris Conrad: Ooh, that's a dangerous question. Joel: It' what I do. Chris Conrad: We've talking about this for years. In terms of, obviously not with generative... Of this type of technology, but with different workflow automations, conversational AI, right? I don't think we're at that point, anywhere close to it, because at the end of the day, it's human connection. People wanna talk to people, you can read the room if you're gonna give someone some bad news. You need to have that conversation. But also it's kind of like if you... So my wife's a recruiter and she was singing an offer to someone, so she had the phone call with that individual, of course they wanted more money. So, how do you have that conversation with someone? I think where you're gonna use like a AI generated, voice of Bruce Willis, to communicate, like this stuff, is that where we're going? Chad: They can definitely do that. Yeah. Chris Conrad: There's also the rights. Why not? Joel: There's also the flip side, which is less controllable, which is the job seeker. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: And we're starting to see stories about smart developers that are applying to jobs that aren't them, and they're passing pre-screening questions, and they're passing conversational AI discussions, and they're getting job interviews. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: So we're building a beast on both sides. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: I always joke about eventually robots are just gonna interview robots until that first day of work, no one's gonna see anybody. But I think the job seeker side of it is worth... Chris Conrad: Yeah. Wasn't, bill Gates given an interview where he's talking about where his test for whether open AI was ready was whether it could pass AP Bio exam. Joel: Yeah. Chris Conrad: And he thought it would take like two years from the do. And I guess they call him back in a couple months being like... Chad: Done. Chris Conrad: We're ready to do this now. Chad: Yes. Chris Conrad: Yeah. I think that we're there, there. But, again, it's I think the human interaction, we always, I think, discredit that a little bit. There's things you can do, obviously, in terms of matching, understanding different data points, different pieces of the puzzle. But at the end of the day, still being able to understand whether someone's the right fit for your company culture, are we going to rely on that to generative AI? Chad: I think that's the answer. For the most part is because how long have we given job seekers a shitty experience anyway, right? Chris Conrad: I mean. Chad: They've gone into a black hole. And they just want some type of touch, some type of love, some type of, communication. They don't care where it comes from, just as long as they know whether they got the job, they're going through to the next... To the interview or what have you. I think when we're talking about recruiters, they're gonna be able to provide... When they utilize this tech in companies who smartly build this tech or partner to build this tech, they will provide recruiters with the opportunity to have more time that they don't have today 'cause they're doing so much administrative shit that takes up all their time and they don't get a chance to actually be human and talk to humans. So AI could, in this sense, help recruiters be more human because it gives more time back to them to be able to have that conversation about pre-interview, post-interview, offer, et cetera, et cetera. Chris Conrad: Yeah. And kind of switch gears a little bit, think about like... Also if you're starting up a new tech company. Right now we have all the different building blocks, we're starting to get to that point for a company to really build unique solutions, right? So they could... You're leveraging the public cloud to store all your data. You got processing power from, let's just say using Generative AI, you're buying that processing power. You can leverage companies like us to process the initial data, building out your indexes, build out your data set. So you have all the different components. So you can actually deliver solutions, I think, in the future, a lot faster to market... And with less headcounts, but you have to still have that unique solution, that unique idea, that differentiation. You can't just churn out like a copy of a copy. Chad: Is it just the idea? Joel: Is that a good thing though? Chad: I mean, no. Well, first is it just the idea that now you can take pieces and parts and APIs and large language models and start to build your own, not even with your own tech. I mean, you don't even have to have a layer of your own tech in there other than bleeding all those together and having UI, right? Chris Conrad: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: So how close are we to that today? Chris Conrad: I think we're close. So I got a good buddy of mine and he runs a sales org, or a small startup, that does a little bit of conversational AI, a niche player. And so I was talking to him, I was like, "All right, so tell me more about the tech." And none of it's proprietary, none of it. So, which is... This is interesting, and they're doing great. So what's proprietary obviously is their marketing campaign, their ability to sell and position within like the niche segmentation that they do. And they're really good at the staffing industry. So they have the local knowledge of how to apply the technology to that, into solving those problems. So they're doing great, but none of it truly is their unique IP. Chad: So therefore, from an acquisition standpoint, that's more than likely not gonna happen. But they've got a great lifestyle company. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Well, they're making money. Joel: Let's explore this for a second. So when we got started in this, we'd go to Sherm, there'd be like 10 huge booths and a few 20 by 20s. And now we have like the startup alley where people have kiosks and these startups. And there're fewer big booths. Are we going to a place where just it's one big kiosk mall and every company is like 10 people or less, and 80 companies do the same thing? And what's gonna differentiate companies and if no one's getting a $100 million, everyone's getting 2 million in funding, and that they can make a business. I just see this going into a real confusing, convoluted space. Am I wrong there? Chad: More than what it is now? Joel: Yes. [laughter] Chris Conrad: Who wants to be in that conference room? Joel: Way worse. Can you imagine walking into HR tech and it's all kiosks. Like think of the worst mall ever. Chad: I can't think anything worse than walking into HR tech expo. Chris Conrad: It'll be the eightfold booth, 200 by 200, and then a bunch of kiosks. That's what HR Tech will be like... Joel: Oh, and just like a whole bunch of singular sales reps with hungry eyes, asking you to come on by. Chris Conrad: I don't think that's good for the industry. Is it? Joel: I don't think so at all, right? Chris Conrad: Is that where it's going? Joel: I'm not against startups, obviously. But I think you still need to differentiate yourself. And the scenario you're talking about is like cookie cutter. Where you're not differentiating yourself. I don't think that's where the market's going. I think we're just talking about the ability to bring new products to market faster, and differentiate. Chad: Well, in today's environment, there are still companies that utilise, as you'd said, tech not theirs, building companies for... I mean, it's happening today. The question is how much faster can this happen when you have these types of capabilities with organisations like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Elon's dumbass... Joel: The ability to differentiate technologically, to me is going to a place that's almost impossible. The only differentiator is brand and maybe I have money to spend on trade shows and commercials. But if everyone's using open AI or Barred or whatever, and if those all become commodities, it's really hard to see a world where you really have something unique. Chris Conrad: Yeah. I think you're describing... Joel: Unless you have 20 years of experience and data. Chris Conrad: Well, obviously something to be said about having industry experience or niche industry experience, but I think you can't discredit human creativity. Whether we're talking about any of this stuff large language models are disrupting. This has all happened before. Human ingenuity. We're gonna always solve problems and this is gonna create a problem that we're probably gonna solve in another way. So I think we're just... The tool set is changing rapidly, but not the application or the creativity. Chad: So in the future. Build, buy, partner? Is this even... Joel: Are we doing buy? Buy or sell? Chad: Yeah. I mean, is this even going to be... Joel: Yes. I think build is a big sell. Chad: Yeah. I mean, is build even gonna be a part of it when it comes to technology? Joel: Unless you wanna be a two person company. Chris Conrad: Yeah. Joel: I guess. Chris Conrad: I think build is... I think it's important if it's gonna be unique and it's gonna be a differentiator. But so much if it's not, if it's not part of your core business model, if it's not something that will set you apart in the marketplace, you've gotta partner every single time. Because you can be faster, more efficient, more economical, and then focus on what you can deliver, what you're in the business to do. Are we selling, buy? Chad: Buy, definitely. Chris Conrad: If buy becomes there's a dozen big companies with a lot of money and then a bunch of kiosks, at some point, all those kiosks get bought up by the big companies. So I think in that perspective, there will be a lot of consolidation from this. But ultimately, partnering, if you can be that trusted source of data or technology, and you're not gonna go anywhere, that seems like that is the best answer today. Joel: I mean, that's the bet we're making. Chad: At least from this stage. And unfortunately, the big screen says time is up. Joel: Yep. Chris Conrad: Take a question? Joel: Does anyone have a question? Jess: Ooh, he's got a question. Louder. Outro: All the big providers have massive marketplaces, and different partners, obviously. And they seem to be growing and growing every single day. Don't you feel a lot of the startups that are in those marketplaces are getting washed out, so it's hard for the actual customers of those companies... Joel: So the question is around marketplaces. So most of you know, your ATS or big platform, you can build on top of that. And then their customers can access those products and services. So the question is, do those just get washed out? Chris Conrad: You know, someone asked me this question. Joel: There's no platform on text Kernel? Chris Conrad: No, no, no. Joel: Okay. Chris Conrad: I think, the platforms are always gonna be slow to innovate, in my opinion. And so I think that there's always gonna be a healthy marketplace for innovation, for startups, because they're always gonna be more agile, right? Chad: Do we really see a workday, like coming out, cutting edge? [chuckle] Chris Conrad: I mean, that's probably a burn there, but that's the reality, right? Chad: No, it's the truth. Chris Conrad: It's not their business model. Chad: They're old lumbering dinosaurs for the most part, right? And so they're going to need those marketplaces and they're gonna need to nimble startups that are actually there. Chris Conrad: I think they probably need 'em more than ever, to stay relevant. Because also those platforms have a ton of technical debt, like massive, and this is only accelerating. So you think these platforms are gonna be able to like overhaul, right? Chris Conrad: No. Chad: Like Dynamics or... Joel: I can tell you now. I know we advise companies and talk to a lot of startups and whatnot on the show, and we always advise startups, get on the easiest... Most are free now, fortunately. Get on as many platforms as possible, integrate as much as possible, because that's gonna be a funnel to customers. I think the threat becomes, does the company just build it themselves, and you become like way down on the depth chart or do they kick you out totally, or do they buy you? Chad: Yes. Chris Conrad: They usually buy. They usually buy. Joel: That's probably where you were going, is like, if you look at TextRecruit and iCIMS, TextRecruit was on the iCIMS platform, and they saw... I mean, the secret of having platform is you get to see what the coolest, new, sexy stuff is that people are using, and then you go buy it. Chris Conrad: It's also the data. So they also see the analytics, what the usage rates are. They have a lot more data points, some of these these companies. And we're starting to see them now that they're funding some startups too. They'll have little investment arms. It's amazing. Really. Chad: Thank you, Omar. We appreciate it. Thanks for everybody. Chris Conrad: Have we answered your question? I feel like we just kind of went round of it. Joel: Thank you everybody. Chris Conrad: Thank you. [music] Jess: Thank you. Thank you. That was amazing. 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 favourite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckle 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 favourite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Did you know quitting a company is contagious? Yeah, us either. Luckily, there are really smart people looking at data and making such conclusions. That’s why we invited Andrea Derler, Ph.D., principal, research and value at Visier, a human-resources analytics company, to the show. Visier found that when employees were laid off or terminated, the likelihood that their direct colleagues would quit was 7.7 percent higher thn if those employees had remained. Ooooh, that’s juicy. Sounds like a podcast topic … so let’s do this. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. 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 & Chees Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA, The Chad & Chees Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Garth to my Wayne, Chad Sowash. And we are happy to welcome Andrea Derler, PhD. [applause] Joel: She's the Principal Research and Value Principal at Visier. Andrea, welcome to the Chad & Chees Podcast. Andrea Derler: Hello. I'm so happy to be here. Joel: Your mic is better than ours. I'm a little upset about that. Chad: Yeah. Joel: A little... Chad: No, that's a good looking mic. Yeah, you can't see the mic, but it's pretty sexy. That's a sexy looking mic right there. Andrea Derler: Thank you. Joel: So, Andrea, a lot of our listeners don't know who you are. Give us a little Twitter bio and then we'll dig into the company and what you guys do and the data that we're gonna dig into today. Andrea Derler: I started the humans behind the data. The accent that you all discover is because I'm from Austria, living in the US. I'm from the same city... Chad: No, that's not a Raleigh accent. That sound like Raleigh, North Carolina to me. [laughter] Andrea Derler: I can't even do that. Joel: It's Southern Austrian. Andrea Derler: Southern Austrian. Joel: It's Kentucky Fried Austrian, is what that is. Chad: Yeah? Andrea Derler: That's right. I'm from a beautiful city of Graz, which is the same city as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don't share his popularity quite yet, but I'm hoping to very soon with the type of research that we do. [laughter] Chad: Andrea, the Terminator. Joel: Yeah. Andrea Derler: Data Terminator. Yes. Chad: Oh, there it is. Andrea Derler: Yeah. Joel: Ooh, we found a new LinkedIn title for you, data terminator. Chad: So a little bit more about you. How did you find your way to the US? Andrea Derler: I won the Green Card Lottery, and that's no joke because not many Austrians actually wanna move to the US, so it's very easy to win the Green Card Lottery. [laughter] It is really true. And so, yeah, that happened about 16 years ago and that's how we got here. And this country has treated us really well, my husband and I, and my two kids. Chad: Nice. Andrea Derler: So we've been happy ever since. Chad: Very nice. Yeah. Why leave Austria? Well, there's a good reason. Joel: Well, there's pretty good skiing in North Carolina from what I understand, so. Andrea Derler: That's probably up for debates. Skiing in Austria is awesome. That's why we go back there quite often. Joel: We have a lot of sarcasm on this show, Andrea. Andrea Derler: Oh, I see. Joel: I don't know. Andrea Derler: I'm sorry. I didn't catch, yeah. Joel: Yeah. Didn't catch on. Andrea has a PhD, so she's like, what am I doing here? Chad: Well, she's Austria and that's not... Sarcasm isn't really baked into it, so yeah. Andrea Derler: No, we are very dry and boring people. Usually, that's my one of... Joel: I will ask the questions. All right, Andrea, we know more about you. Some don't know Visier and what you guys do. So talk a little bit about that and we'll get into some specific topic that you recently wrote about on LinkedIn. Andrea Derler: This is the leader in people analytics, according to George Person, for sure. So we are a people analytics company. That means we have about 25,000 customers around the world who load their data from their human resource information systems into Visier to do people analytics. Meaning to understand some of the relationships between, for example, retention and diversity, productivity and business outcomes. Chad: How many people does that represent? Because obviously under those companies you have many... How many people are you getting data points from? Andrea Derler: Yeah. It's growing every week, but it's currently at about 17 million employee records. That means people working... Chad: God. Andrea Derler: In companies around the world, 17 million. Joel: That is a lot. Chad: That is huge. Now, I have this amazing business insider, layoffs can cause contagion, that pushes workers who are left behind to quit. This is something that... We talk about attrition on the show, right? We talked about Amazon and their attrition, and it's actually cost them billions and billions of dollars. Why is our industry... Why are companies not paying more attention to this? I mean, layoffs are one thing, but what about the actual attrition that comes along with that? Because it sounds like it's inherent. Andrea Derler: I think many just don't know. We've discovered this phenomenon in our data, because we actively looked for it. We wanted to understand is a resignation or a layoff of a person, an isolated event or does it actually affect the people around them? And because we are studying the humans behind the data, we found like, let's see if team members are affected by one person's either resignation or layoff event. And we did find that there is an effect on others. And if you think about this, naturally there would be. If you're losing your colleague, through whatever reason, it affects you in many ways. Either you have to do their job now, or your work is being completely changed, every process is being turned upside down, or you simply miss them and you need them to be successful yourself. So you're suddenly considering, well, if they're not here anymore, what am I doing here? And I think, that's the component we just haven't really paid enough attention to. It's as simple as that. We didn't know and we had no way to prove it. Chad: Right. Right. So turnover is contagious in this case. And did you guys coin the term turnover contagion, or did that exist already? Andrea Derler: The term has existed before. So what I like to do is I like to... I'm a little bit of a nerd, so I do read academic articles, and when we started turnover in general... Chad: Oh, you're the person that does that. Okay. Andrea Derler: Yeah. I do that sometimes, because you find really interesting nuggets such as turnover contagion as a term, where we then said, okay, can we prove that this is happening? That it's an actual phenomenon in our vast database. So the term has existed before. It has different words. Sometimes they call it collective turnover. It's always affects on... Social effects basically on teamed members around a person who's leaving. Turnover Research is about a 100 years old, so there is lots more nuggets we can probably test. But that particular one interested us, because we started the resignation wave that started in 2020, and that's when we came to the turnover contagion as a phenomenon. Joel: So when you say contagion, I obviously think COVID, they're not connected whatsoever. But we're in a remote world, and when I hear what's going on and you see people in jobs, maybe yours now, that you didn't have before, how has working remotely impacted this? I could see where, hey, the New York office had a big layoff, and because I actually know these people and we go out for drinks, there's more of a contagion there. But if my New York coworkers get laid off and in I'm in Boise, Idaho, is it less contagious because I'm geographically in a different place? Chad: Because you're not really connected to those people? Is that what you're saying? Joel: Correct. How has remote work impacted the contagion? Andrea Derler: The assumption, based on what we found, we tested this in a timeframe between February, 2019, so before the pandemic until October, 2020, to have that time to calculate everything. We don't know if there's an actual effect of the pandemic on this or hybrid work. However, the way we know that people are connected, even regardless of where they live, is are they're working for the same manager, for example, belonging to a certain team is how we defined team. So that's why if a random person leaves that's living someplace else, or even not even works within that same team, that effect does not exist. That's how we tested it. The only reason we know that turnover is contagious is because we could see who's been working on the same team. So when their team member left, that's when their team, their peers were affected. That's exactly how we proved that regardless of where you are, if you're a member of the same team... I've worked remotely for the last 10 years. I have very close relationships with my peers who are on the other side of the country, sometimes in the other side of the world. But if one of them leaves and I depend on their work to be successful myself, doesn't matter where they are. So my hypothesis would be that the effects of remote are probably, weaker. It's more important who you are connected with and how strong the relationship is. Joel: Is the opposite true? If people being laid off leads to people quitting? Does greater retention lead to more people staying? Andrea Derler: It's actually not a mirror image of each other from what I've learned here. So we haven't looked at that. The draw certainly was away from the company, which is different from why am I staying? So that's not... So the reasons why I'm staying at a certain place are not the same as why I'm leaving a place. So that's what we've learned too and academics have written quite a bit about that. I don't know, to be honest, we can't really say if these are the same reasons. I think, it's more about, and that's what fascinates me about this topic, is the social impact, the relationships, that bonding experience, again, beyond the office can be pretty strong. So if somebody's being let go, that the effect is a bit weaker than if somebody actively leaves, which is that resignation. That's why we found different effect sizes. Joel: When you do that study and publish it, let us know. Maybe we'll have you back talking about that. Andrea Derler: Okay. I promise. Joel: When it comes to the company, in the report, you'd said that, if you do a layoff, expect another at least 7% to leave. In this case, do you think they were, those individuals that were leaving, this contagion piece was, they were just ready to in the first place? Or I might as well leave before they cut me. Do we know any reasons or we just know the data is that if there's a layoff, at least 7% are gonna go? Andrea Derler: The way I think about that is, again, based on academic research, because we don't know why the people in our own sample left. That's... Would be something we have to study later. But there is something like a shock effect, a trigger. Something happens, somebody around me is being let go in the case of layoffs and that's a shock event. Was I ready to leave before? Maybe, but maybe that's not even important because that shock event, that's really what shakes me. That's what makes me wanna leave. That's where survey data meets our data sometimes, that we have seen lots of surveys, who said 40% of people are going to leave next year? You remember that? We saw that in industry publications. That was based on surveys, but survey... And our intention to leave, me wanting to, planning to, maybe not always happy, sometimes frustrated is not by any means the same as me actually handing in my resignation tomorrow. So we don't really know always the reasons of why people now are suddenly triggered to leave. Layoffs is certainly a shock event, but if one of your best colleagues... Chad, if Joel were to leave tomorrow, you'd be really shocked. Right? And so you'd figure it out, what am I still doing here? Chad: Oh, yes. I would be very shocked. [music] SFX: Hey, it's Corona time right now. Chad: I have to get some Corona. Yeah. Joel: He'd be all right. I think. Chad: Is there any correlation between, and I don't know if you've actually run these numbers or not, but if there are positions that have been open long on that team, obviously you're starting to spread those people that stayed too thin. Right? Have you started to take a look at the actual data around the open positions? The longer they're open, the more people that actually go out the back door because again, they're just being worked too hard? Andrea Derler: Yeah. This would be all subject to more research, to be honest. I think the first step, and I keep saying we have to do more. I just wanted to point out how unique it is that we even could find an effect. There are hundreds of studies, based on survey and academic research that showed that turnover contagion is a possibility. But we did an experiment to even see that there is an effect that we saw people leaving because of the_ was a really big importance next step. There are many other questions that open up, that we need to explore further. I think what's probably important and interesting is, what does this mean for the manager? What can they do? What's also interesting is when does it actually happen? When is the effect the strongest? Because it's not forever. Your team members don't leave in the next two years after that first resignation. We saw very specifically, this happens immediately after, on day one, of a person's resignation, once this becomes known. Joel: What advice would you give a company? I know you're not a marketer, but what would the spin be if you were on the end of the company, in terms of trying to put out any kind of contagion quickly? Is there something companies should say to sort of turn the temperature down on people sort of freaking out and taking off? Andrea Derler: Oh, that's top of our mind. So our research doesn't exist in the bubble. That's particularly important in terms of what can an organization or managers do. The first one is, immediately look at the risk of exit profiles for the remaining team members on that team. That should be something that hiring managers do all the time. And you're looking, basically you're asking yourself, who is my top talent? That sounds a bit mean, but I think that's how we all think. Who are the most important people on my team? Who do I certainly not wanna see leaving as well? You look at their risk of exit profile, you see, when was the last promotion, what's their compensation? When was their last pay raise? How long have they been in the job? What's their tenure? Where do they live? But also I think most interestingly, is now in the hybrid world, you mentioned that what managers can do now with technology is to see how engaged are people. What do I know about their, let's say, collaboration with others? What do I know about their potential burnout? What do I know about their work patterns, their daily work patterns? Have they changed? Can I detect any changes in how my people are working every day? Andrea Derler: And so that's something that should always be top of mind. But I think in a resignation event, if I have somebody who is leaving, I have to think immediately about what impact this potentially could have on others. So I do wanna have that open conversation. First, I check the data, but then I should actually, address it heads on. Joel: I was expecting sort of a rah-rah locker room speech from the CEO. And what I got from you was sort of a really personalized employee by employee strategy of how is each one going to hopefully stick around. That was an answer I wasn't expecting. So I appreciate that. Now, if I flip it on the other side, and Chad and I do in this show, we know that companies tend to be evil sometimes. Chad: Twitter, Elon Musk. Joel: So my question is, are companies putting contagion in their calculus when they do layoffs? In other words, if I know that 5% are gonna leave, if I lay off 20%. If I want 25% to leave, do I just lay off 20 and then I know the other 5% are gonna leave and I don't have to pay them severance and all the other stuff. Are companies thinking about contagion when they do layoffs, hoping that more will leave so they come down a little bit and wait for the others to leave after? Andrea Derler: I think we should ask that question to a CHRO because that's a question that I can't answer. I don't think they have done it so far. Joel: What do you think though? Andrea Derler: I don't think so. I don't think that the awareness was there before. Maybe they thought maybe it's possible, they were hoping secretly that this will happen in some cases. But then again, how do you control who's gonna leave? You want your top talent to stay, you don't want your top people to be part of that. Right. That's why it's a little dangerous and risky if you were to do that, because you don't know who's gonna leave. Chad: Right. Makes sense. So, I guess when we're talking about those people, obviously leaving, not knowing whether they're gonna be your top talent or not top talent, and they're sure at this point aren't correlations yet, but this starts the conversation. I think this data starts the conversation for TA leaders and thinking, okay, well if some of my top talent leaves, not only is it going to be bad for others wanting to leave, but they might have had more of the load, the workload, than others, so therefore they're going to spread people too thin. I mean, it's one of those things where we have to look at resources, and I just don't think that many CHROs obviously are even thinking about the contagion effect and how deep it goes. Do you think they are, or is this something incredibly new for them right now because of all these resignations that we've seen over the past few years? Andrea Derler: I love that you're bringing up the talent acquisition function there, because that was something on my mind that I've [0:15:45.7] ____ on. If you know, for example, a team in another company, who have been chasing talent. That's certainly one way to track who's leaving at that company and to see if there are other people that I'd like to kind of have a conversation with about potentially interviewing or are considering other roles. Again, that's the power of people analytics that we are starting to learn about those dynamics right now. We are starting to learn about those phenomena and what they mean for other functions. For example, we know that there's a significant amount of rehires of boomerang employees, that has a lot of implications for talent acquisition, right? Because I may hire people, but then how do I keep them on as long as they actually get embedded in the organization? Or are they leaving within the next three months again and going back to the previous employer? So the retention starts with the hiring, of course, right? So who do I need to keep? How long do I need to keep them on, and what's the risk of them boomeranging back to their previous employer. Andrea Derler: So we have talent management, we have talent acquisition, employee experience, HR function needing to work together because this is becoming a more and more complex problem now. So I think the way you're thinking about this is also how we've been thinking about that. What does this mean for talent acquisition? Not just about hiring and recruitment, but also, what do I need to know and how can I attract teams and team members in my target organizations? Chad: Right. One thing you didn't mention was internal mobility, which is incredibly big. But again, something that just here, recently, we've started to put more emphasis on. So being able to demonstrate to the actual employee that, Hey, look, we value you. We want you to stay. Here's what your career path looks like. Here's some opportunities for education. Right? Those types of things. And being able to demonstrate that, okay, this isn't all on you. This is a team effort. If you're talking to someone in TA about this, or even just on the talent management side of the house, what is the biggest key for them, the biggest indicator for them to be looking at, for the possibility of somebody leaving the team? Is there anything in the data that actually says this is an event, that shock event? Is it pretty much just you're seeing layoffs or is there another shock event? Andrea Derler: I think from what we learned from other analysis we did, is internal mobility is still lagging behind vastly when we compare external versus internal. So that's clear. I think the biggest indicator, we interviewed a couple of boomerang employees and wanted to know why did you leave in the first place? Which is coming to the retention question, I think that you're asking, which is really, people get bored. The top talent that's sometimes resigning. And that's exactly, again, the problem. They get bored at their jobs, they wanna learn something new, they wanna do a little bit of a different role. So theoretically, internal mobility would be the key to... One, key to talent retention, including compensation. So mobility, learning... So the typical ones that we always have discussed, but what makes it so hard? A couple things. Of course, talent hoarding by managers has always been an issue. Who's gonna wanting to let go talent that they really need and want, and probably even really like, and get on with really well. So that's becomes a systemic problem you take in, asking an individual manager to let go of somebody who they actually really need on their team. Andrea Derler: So that's an issue. I don't know how much organizations know these days about the skills that those employees actually have. How much do we know, which roles my employee can actually take in my company? The way CV is sometimes processed, or I mean, curriculum vitaes or even experiences and skills summaries are not very comprehensive sometimes. So I don't know what other skills you have, what do you know about what other skills I have? I've been in sales for a very long time before I became a researcher. Nobody usually knows that. So knowing about what my people can do, versus what they actually currently do, is one of the key problems I think that organizations have. They're working on that right now. As you know, skills technologies are becoming more prevalent now, but it's a complex problem that needs a lot of brains working together. Chad: Well, it's what they want to do as well, right? I mean, they... You know what they can do, but they might wanna pivot into... If you were in sales, you might wanna pivot into marketing, right? Or something of that nature. From an internal mobility standpoint, are we thinking too much about ourself and what we need as the company, as opposed to what the employee needs? Because again, they're gonna get bored and then they're gonna leave, and if they leave, there's high likelihood that another 7% or plus would leave with them... Andrea Derler: But that's really comes down to, again, the manager understanding their team members, right? So you're right. We should always consider what the person wants. That's always been an ever occurring problem because they just don't know. I think what I learned from interviews of people who I interviewed for the boomerang research last year, was the primary reason of why they left was, I just wanna do a little bit more. It's not sometimes a radical change that people want to do, but just learn a little more. Make that next best step. People are incredibly positive usually about the way they work. I mean, I'm not... I'm overgeneralizing here, but my position's always been that, in general, people want to work, want to do a good job, want to perform, most of them. And so, give them that opportunity to maybe contribute to a project outside of their realm. It doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't have to be complex. Andrea Derler: But we are going into psychological safety. Now, again, am I going to my manager and talk to them about that I'm bored at work. Do I feel I can do that? Do I feel that or should I go to HR? Who do I speak to about this? I think that systems and processes need to be in place, that support managers, to have those conversations transparently. But I agree with you. I think that's a complete close circle. How do we keep people? What do we know about them? What don't we know about them? And so far, certainly we have not known about the social collective impact of anyone being a little frustrated and actually leaving their jobs. Chad: You mentioned shock to the system. Is there any data... What would your thesis be around multiple rounds of layoffs? In other words, one round of layoff, you see a certain level of contagion. If there's another round of layoffs, does contagion go up more because there's more layoffs and more fear in the workforce? Andrea Derler: I think that would be another really good question. I mean, I can only hypothesize around that. Of course, when we think about psychological impact of turnover, caused by layoffs in particular, what it causes in people is an incredible big sense of uncertainty, right? Fear, uncertainty. This goes way beyond, can I keep my job? But it's what's... When is it gonna happen to me next? So we would assume that the probability of more people resigning after layoffs would go up only because of that sense of uncertainty, but it will depend on the industry as well. Of course, we see industry differences, and how easy is it going to be for me to find a job someplace else, or I'm just gonna wait it out? So I think we'll see probably variations in industries, probably in education levels, probably in skills as well. What can I do someplace else versus why do I have to stick around? But in general, we would expect that this goes up because people are, of course, particularly in the US where there's not a really strong social safety net, where you don't get a lot of unemployment benefit, it's becoming a life and death situation for some people. Can I survive with my family? Chad: So the recommendation would be, if you're gonna do a round of layoffs, get it done in one sort of action instead of drawing it out into multiple rounds of layoffs. Yes or no? Andrea Derler: Can we do another podcast in a couple of months because we are studying layoffs next? Actually we're looking... Chad: Oh, of course. Andrea Derler: Into this right now. We'll have a lot more data around when are layoffs happening, which industry is the most affected, which kind of demographics are most affected? And I'm actually trying to interview managers about what made the decision happen in the first place? What played into the decision making process? So the layoff conversation is a whole different other beast that we are tackling because it's happening quite prevalently right now. Joel: We'll put a pin in that one. Andrea Derler: Yep. Joel: The media plays into this, I think, you mentioned the great resignation and if you go to Google Trends, the term the great resignation spiked in 2021. It has since collapsed in terms of media mentions of it. You're seeing the great regret start to go up, right? Everyone's regretting resigning. How much does media play into people's decisions to stay or go at a company? Andrea Derler: I love that question. I think what media outlets underestimate is that impact that they have on how people feel, the sentiment about work. I'm always really concerned about that, because it may just really, sometimes, make a problem worse. The great resignation did happen. It's now gone down in numbers. We are tracking resignation rates monthly based on our data, on our database as well. So yes, resignations are down. In terms of the great regrets, interestingly, we've found that people really regretting and going back to their previous employer has been steady over the last four years. So that has not changed much. We see that about a quarter of hires, new hires, are actually rehires. That was higher than we expected. Whether that's regret or not, it's hard to say. It varies by industry as well, but it's been quite steady over the last four years. What's probably more interesting currently is to see how long is that whole recession talk and layoff talk gonna last, because I think compensation's gonna be the next big topic. Andrea Derler: If we are trying to keep people, particularly in some regions of the world, we need to think about compensation. How much do organizations really need to ramp up their compensation and pay for new hires and existing hires until the breaking point? And at which point does that affect actually fade away? How much do I need to pay Andrea so that she stays, but at some point, she's gonna leave anyway. Chad: Yeah. Andrea Derler: So I think that makes sense. That's the next big topic that we want to see after layoffs even to understand what role does pay really play in retention? Chad: I'll let you out on this. You mentioned in your article that smaller teams are at greater risk of contagion. Why is that? Andrea Derler: We've consulted a psychologist on this and the common opinion is that the smaller teams have just more coherence. They know each other better. They're in a closer relationship. That sounds pretty obvious to all of us. That's probably at the core. I think, their work process are also probably more intertwined. So if my colleague leaves and I really depend on them in my smaller team, because we do work together almost every day, that's why the effect is probably stronger for smaller teams than for larger teams beyond 20 or 30 people where the effect is much smaller because people don't necessarily... You won't have 30 people working on one project for a very long time together that closely. Even though the effect is still there, there're still an effect for larger teams, but it's that bonding experience and that necessity of us doing something together to be successful kind of sentiment that makes that effect stronger for smaller teams is our hypothesis. [applause] Chad: Well, Andrea, we appreciate you coming along, talking to us about turnover, contagion, all these wonderful things. I've gotta go get a shot now. If somebody wants to find out more about you or they wanna link up with you or they wanna find out more about this data and the statistics, where would you send them? Andrea Derler: We have a report that can be downloaded on our Visier website. I also have published this a lot on LinkedIn, so you can follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow Visier on LinkedIn or me personally, Andrea Derler, and there's lots of media attention around this. You'll just type in Visier turnover contagion, and you'll find lots of interesting articles and links. Joel: Quitting contagion. Don't stand so close to me, Chad. Another one is in the books. Andrea, thanks for joining us today. We out. Chad: We out. 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, pepperjack, 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.chadchees.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

The LIVE onstage energy is back with this performance, complete with two amazing guests, Lauree Porter, Director of HR Systems at PENN Entertainment, and Christy Spilka, Global Head of TA at iCIMS who help the boys cover a wide range of topics that preceded them during a full day of rich content. The Chad and Cheese take the stage, Joel nearly breaks a hip, hurl some t-shirts, drink some beer, and close out the first day at iCIMS Inspire, which took place Tuesday, May 9th at the Loew's Coronado Resort. Enjoy! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. Speaker 1: Please welcome back, Shannon [0:00:01.0] ____. Shannon: All right, I have to get you some fresh air and getting you guys to come back in from that wonderful weather, I'm glad you're here 'cause we're gonna lighten things up with what some call HR's most dangerous podcast and hopefully... Yeah, I see they have beers on hand here, so this won't be your buttoned up HR conversation. Oh no, watch out HR pros, because there's gonna be some honest truth told on this stage today, so without further ado, please join me and welcome the Chad & Cheese 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. [music] Joel Cheesman: Come on! [applause] Chad Sowash: Give it up. There you go, watch yourself. Watch yourself. Joel Cheesman: Where's Will? Chad Sowash: He just threw his shoulder out, Will, thanks. Joel Cheesman: I think I pulled something. Chad Sowash: Now I've gotta look for workman's comp, this is crap. Joel Cheesman: What's up? Chad Sowash: Good call. Joel Cheesman: Oh yeah, what's up everybody? If you don't know, ask your parole officer, this is the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Chad Sowash: I'm Chad Sowash. Joel Cheesman: Joined as always. Chad Sowash: That's right Chad Sowash. Joel Cheesman: The Lennon to my McCartney, Chad Sowash is here. And we are excited to welcome to this stage Lauree Porter and Christy Spilka. Give it up everybody. [applause] Chad Sowash: Who wants one? Don't take... Joel Cheesman: There we go. Chad Sowash: Don't take mine. Don't take mine. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, Chad had a special, special one. Chad Sowash: You guys don't have any? What's going on? This is... Joel Cheesman: Yeah, ISM said everyone would have one. Sorry about that. Chad Sowash: I think that was supposed to be at 6:00. I'm not sure. Joel Cheesman: Can we turn the spotlight down on Chad's head? I don't want him to blind anybody. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: By the way is Torin still here? Oh yeah Torin there's a golden girl with missing some glasses, you might wanna return those later. Later in the day. How is it going, ladies? Lauree Porter: Good. Christy Spilka: Cheers. Joel Cheesman: Cheers. Everyone's mad at us 'cause we... Chad Sowash: Oh that sucks. Christy Spilka: So is that good? Chad Sowash: That's delicious. Joel Cheesman: It's good. That's good beer. That's Nevada finest right there. UNLV grad, by the way, in case anyone wants to know, former cheerleader at UNLV. Christy Spilka: Go Rebels. Joel Cheesman: So for those that don't know us this is Chad, I'm Cheese... We're the Chad & Cheese Podcast. If you wanna learn more, go to chadcheese.com. If you haven't gotten a t-shirt at the registration desk, we have every size possible, get your free t-shirt. If you put it on the socials, we'll give you a shout out on the weekly show, how does that sound? Woo... Chad Sowash: We'll see. Joel Cheesman: And we'll mention your company maybe get you some free advertising now. For those that don't know, these lovely ladies, let's do a quick Twitter bio before we get into the Q&A, Lauree you can go first. Lauree Porter: Lauree Porter with Penn Entertainment. I'm the director of HR systems. Christy Spilka: Hi everyone, I'm Christy Spilka. I am the VP and global head of talent acquisition at iCIMS. Chad Sowash: Excellent. Joel Cheesman: So give it up for them. All right, make them feel good. Chad Sowash: We don't have a lot of time. Let's dig into this. Okay, so we've talked about a lot today, and a lot of it... Well, a good amount of revolving around tech, but there's a lot of noise in the space today dealing with the tech side, dealing with just process automation side, all of it. So Lauree I'll start with you, how do you get through the noise? I mean, you have a lot to deal with, you have a lot of shit to deal with during the day, how do you stay in tune with what's happening or do you? Or can you not? You just have to focus on what you have in front of you. Lauree Porter: I think it's a combination of both. On a daily basis, yes, I do have to focus on what's in front of me and keeping all the systems running, keeping all our properties happy. As things pop up and initiatives come up with... Whether it's TA or something else, then you have to go out into the market and find what's out there, what's relevant, it's nice that there's so much out there, but it also makes it difficult because there's so many different variables and it's always changing. So what I've seen last year that may have worked well for one circumstance isn't gonna work again this year. Joel Cheesman: More importantly, how many sales calls do you get a day from vendors? Lauree Porter: Not many. Joel Cheesman: Not many? Lauree Porter: No. Joel Cheesman: There's a opportunity sales guys and gals out there, their phone ready for your calls. Lauree Porter: That's one of the beauties of going remote is my office phone no longer exists, so I just have my cell phone and not very many... Joel Cheesman: So do you rely on friends, colleagues, do you go to... Chad Sowash: Podcast. Joel Cheesman: Do you go to podcasts? Do you go to websites where reviews or all the above? Lauree Porter: Yes. A lot of networking, getting to know people in the industry like today, so later on down the line, if I need something and they're in an industry similar to ours, I know I can reach out to someone and get some information. Chad Sowash: Christy, same question, I know you have a tech stack, I get it, but not all the... It's not... The whole points they're not all covered always, right. I mean, come on now. So... Joel Cheesman: I was like where are you going with this? Chad Sowash: What do you do? Christy Spilka: A lot actually, I listen to your podcast number one. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Brownie points. Joel Cheesman: Such a suck up. Please. Chad Sowash: I love it. Christy Spilka: And of course, I get a lot of information being an iCIMS, especially with Rhea and our Data Insights reports that you guys heard earlier. That's always fabulous. And then outside of that, I'm the board president at ATAP, the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals, and we do a lot of work there as well to connect the community and really have conversations about what's happening in TA so that we can all support each other as we advance talent acquisition. Joel Cheesman: So we're the final entertainment for the day. You've been through all of the sessions. What stood out? What blew your mind? What was like... What are your takeaways from the conference so far? Lauree. Lauree Porter: I would definitely say a lot of what Rhea talked about really rang true. And also surprised me when she talked about how the younger generation is really looking for stability, that really surprised me. I think we were all under the assumption that they weren't, that they're carryover millennials. And so it's really taking a look at who we're hiring and how we need to hire them, so that was great information for me. Joel Cheesman: Let me piggy back on that before we get to Christy. So you hire everything from a baker to an Android developer. That's a broad spectrum of folks. How do you navigate that? How do you message that? How do you target those different audience? [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: Make sense of it for us. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Lauree Porter: Well, I think the thing to remember is that there's gotta be a general process that everyone can somehow customize that works for them. So where a property may have one process when they have a lot of front-line openings, the team that's hiring for vice presidents has a different process, but the basic steps along the way are still within a standard process. Joel Cheesman: Christy your take aways from the show. Christy Spilka: So many. It was a great day. Right everybody, amazing speakers. Joel Cheesman: Awesome give it up for iCIMS. [applause] Christy Spilka: So many takeaways, I love hearing about CXM coming from Al. I'm really excited about that. I think the ability to pipeline our talent and engage our talent and build those healthy and diverse talent pipelines is more critical than ever, it's always been important, and it's ever more so. So I'm really excited about that. The interesting facts we heard from Rhea today on the data insights report, that was interesting. And what we also found is over the last three years, the difference in compensation between the expectation of early grads and what HR professionals are looking to pay actually was smaller a few years ago, increased rapidly and then has compressed again. So I found that to be pretty interesting and Torin always gives a great, a great talk. Chad Sowash: Takes us to church, all the time. Christy Spilka: Amazing. Always. So inspiration also overall, just a fabulous day today. Chad Sowash: So you have the inevitable position where you get to use all this tech that iCIMS has at your disposal, and I assume even start testing some things and getting feedback or giving feedback on stuff that's going on. Not everyone has all those tools. So if you could break down everything from texting to video, to custom messaging, what are a few things that employers should definitely look at doing, what are the tools are invaluable to you getting the right people in those seats? Christy Spilka: Oh my gosh, I think we're gonna need a couple of hours to hit that topic, but... [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: We're gonna extend, we're extending. We need more beer. Lauree Porter: We'd be cutting into happy hour. [overlapping conversation] Christy Spilka: To break it down to a few things, I think your applicant tracking system is really important, and looking at the way that you're creating efficiency, looking at the way that you're creating engaging experiences with candidates that are coming through the process. Monitoring that candidate experience, we heard earlier in the session today that we're worried about what's gonna happen in candidate experience with some of the layoffs that we've seen. So really looking at how you can ensure that you've got quality there is gonna be really important. Video is always amazing. I know we've talked about video recently, we use video a lot in our internal TA team, we have it on our career site, we just did a whole career set refreshed by the way, so check us out icims.com. But we have it in all of our nurture campaigns too, so going into your CRM and creating email campaigns with a video, that's really going to set you apart. We heard one of our customers earlier talking about the importance of that and creating those experiences to really highlight their culture, I think that's gonna be critical as well. Joel Cheesman: So talk about... It sounds like iCIMS has almost like an internal Skunk Works that's happening, right? And you would be perfect and your team are perfect to lead that, I'm sure Lauree is very envious. Talk a little bit about that because you're building products, obviously for yourselves, but something that you can actually productize for the entire market. Talk a little bit about that and how you guys impact the build to actual technology and future technologies and processes. Christy Spilka: Yeah, it's definitely a part of my job that I love. I've been a customer for more than nine years, so it was a big iCIMS fan, even before I came to work for iCIMS, I've implemented three times over numerous companies. And so I've got a good amount of experience in leveraging our products and our team gets to all be a part of customer zero at iCIMS where we get to give feedback to the product team. I have the chance to sit down with Al and talk about, "Oh, what's coming up this year, and what are we working on? And let's talk about some of the feedback from our internal talent acquisition team." All of our team members have the opportunity to participate in that, and it's been great to be a customer zero and help to have those conversations. Joel Cheesman: Lauree, you were just talking about the ability... Really to be able to somewhat customize the process, because obviously high volume is different than executive, etcetera, etcetera, but you're also looking at a very fluid market, the landscape is changing all the time. We're talking about how the economy... We have no clue that's doing one week, next week, first part of the week, second part of the week, so how do you plan for that next change? How can you be nimble? Is it really hard with today's tech? Or is it much easier than it has been in the last few years? Lauree Porter: I will say with iCIMS, it does make it a lot easier because I do have the capability to make a lot of changes on the fly when I want to, when I get feedback from different properties or different recruiters that just say, "This isn't working, or how can we fix this, or I wanna do this," I can go in and do it myself. I can play with it, I can test it. They can test it out and say, "Okay, it does work, it's working better. Can we change this? Can we change that?" So it's really just working with the users out there, getting their feedback and testing things out, seeing, does this work? How can we make it better? Joel Cheesman: Fortunately, in the gaming industry, they're used to taking risks and doing things that aren't normal for most people. Chad Sowash: Very heavily regulated. Joel Cheesman: Yes. Chad Sowash: Yeah. DE&I was a focal point of today's content. What are each of you doing in terms of targeting diverse communities, bringing more people into the fold? I'll let Christy start because I know that we talked about it earlier. Christy Spilka: Yeah, we do a lot of work in this area. Like I said earlier, we put a really big focus with our career site refresh on making sure that we had videos that we're representing our culture and who we are as an organization, and our focus on DE&I. We actually created a whole new page on our website as well, in the career site, to talk about the focus that we have in that area. We do a lot of work, we leverage a third party as well to help us ensure that we have inclusive job postings. So every single one of our job postings before it goes up on our career site, it gets a score, and anything below a 95% score is not getting on our career site, so we take that really seriously. We have... Joel Cheesman: Is that an internal tool that's built into iCIMS. Christy Spilka: Third party. Joel Cheesman: Third party, okay. Christy Spilka: And we do a lot of work with, we leverage performance-based hiring, we have what we call alignment meetings rather than intake meetings, where we're really aligning on the opportunity. What are the critical things this person is going to do to be successful in this role? And then we really help partner with our hiring managers on what are those things that the candidate should bring to the table, and what are those areas where maybe we can train someone. So it's a really... It's a very inclusive process, and we're very thoughtful on the approach all the way through the entire hiring process. Joel Cheesman: She says third party tool, I say future acquisition, am I right, Al? Christy Spilka: They're testing it, they're testing it. Chad Sowash: Where's my M&A people? Yeah. Lauree Porter: So very similar to what Christy and iCIMS is doing, it's a non-stop ongoing evolution of things that you need to look at, and I think someone brought up today that it doesn't stop when someone's hired, and I think that's something you have to remember. It's not just at the hiring process, yes, you have things in place to look at who you're hiring and how you're hiring them, and metrics to report on that, but it's also important to think long-term as far as what does everyone have to contribute to the organization whether it be leadership programs or further development programs, making sure all of those are inclusive as well. Chad Sowash: Let's jump into the hard conversation, so generative AI, everybody loves it. They're playing with ChatGPT blah, blah, blah, right. The thing is, it can be very helpful from the efficiency standpoint, but as a Al Smith would say, there's a lot of poo out there, that's a quote from Al. Joel Cheesman: His mom is so proud of him for using that language. Chad Sowash: But also taking the behavior that us humans have, which is incredibly biased, and one thing that AI can do is scale much better than any human can do. So as you're looking at future scope, there's a lot of risk, but there's also a lot of reward. How do you guys approach that? I'll go to you first, Lauree. Lauree Porter: So I know you mentioned the gaming industry likes to take risks... Joel Cheesman: Some I heard not that I would know first hand... Lauree Porter: In the casino? Yes. When it comes to systems and processes like that with the risks, that's probably something we'd be in the background for and wait and see what happens, there's a lot of risk, like you said, for inaccurate messages that we wouldn't want to get out there. Especially when it comes to gaming because we are so heavily regulated, so for me, it's really early, and we'll think about it later. Joel Cheesman: You're a fast follower. Is that right? Fast follower. Lauree Porter: I wouldn't say fast. Really, we wanna see what happens with others that are in similar industries before we jump all in. Joel Cheesman: Christy. Christy Spilka: From an AI perspective, I go back to Al's conversation earlier. He talked about being human lead and some of the principles that we focus on at iCIMS as it relates to AI, and I think a big part of that too is to use the words that he shared as well, having that co-pilot, having that human loop is going to be really important as we embark on this. Joel Cheesman: Background checks were mentioned in Johnny Taylor's presentation, which I didn't really come in thinking that would be a topic, but then when I think about how detailed your background checks need to be... And I look at social media and what's going on there, we gotta say at least Tiktok wants in our presentation of what's going on. How do you guys look at background checks specifically, not just the state and county records, but beyond that with what people are doing online, and whatnot? Lauree Porter: I think it depends on the position. A background checks are definitely a necessity, a lot of our locations actually require licensing. So if you can't pass the background check, you can't get licensed, you can't work for us. So it's not something that we can be too flexible on when it comes to those situations, but depending on the position that someone's in, it depends on the level of background check that we'll go through. Joel Cheesman: So the baker is not as detailed as... Lauree Porter: Head of finance. Joel Cheesman: Head of finance, sure. Thanks for saving me on that one, Christy. Christy Spilka: We follow the requirements in that area of the world, and our own internal guidelines and conduct background checks according to that. Joel Cheesman: Do you look at social media content and what people are putting out there? Christy Spilka: Me? No. Joel Cheesman: No, that's interesting. Chad Sowash: On the record no. Joel Cheesman: They're always listening. Christy Spilka: I've seen what you guys are doing on social media, that's about it. Chad Sowash: Not like you would ever hirer us, I mean come on. Joel Cheesman: We don't need mean background checks. Christy Spilka: Or you wouldn't be here. Joel Cheesman: We have our parole officers and our ankle bracelets. Chad Sowash: So process efficiency. We were talking about application. The application process, heard stats earlier. Needs to be less than five minutes. That's awesome. But also over half of the applications are coming via mobile, so are we just trying to take the mobile process make it shorter or the desktop process make it shorter, put it on mobile? Are we really going to engage with chat bots and look at asynchronous apply as well? Lauree I'll go with you. Lauree Porter: So a few years back, we actually did look at our application process and we saw that 50% were coming from mobile and that a large number of them were dropping off at certain points. So we sat down, we said, "What do we need to know? Now, what's the initial things... " And we cut out at least 50% of the job of the application questions. Cut out any forms. Cut out anything that I could ask you later. What do I need to make a decision there? Chad Sowash: How hard was that? Were you the determining factor of that, or did you have to go... Lauree Porter: I was not, I had recommendations, but I worked with our TA team because ultimately they're the ones using the system, I knew what I thought, but I did work with them. The hardest part, I think, was coming to a consensus and getting everyone to agree on what are those critical questions. Chad Sowash: How long did that process take? Lauree Porter: Well, it got delayed by a little thing that happened in 2020... Chad Sowash: Oh, okay. That'll do it. Lauree Porter: But overall, it's something that I also did at my previous company, so I knew the process, and actually there's someone in here, maybe Jamal, if he's in here, he helped me with my previous company when went through that, and so he really helped me set the ground work for this next time that I did it. So it could have been done very quickly, but it was pandemic consensus, it's always not the top priority until it is the top priority, and it became the top priority when then we had to bring people back after the pandemic, and we need to get them in fast. How can we do that? And I'm like, "Guess what... " Chad Sowash: So Christy, you're part of the Skunk Works... Joel Cheesman: Can I jump in here reall quick before we get... So I think this is an important point you mentioned... [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: Of course you think it's an important point. Joel Cheesman: Well, obviously a lot of people agree with me, so the pre-screening questions where you lost people in the process of mobile when you looked at it. Because certain ATSs not this one that we're at currently have a bad reputation of a bad mobile experience on their ATS. So I just wanna get to a point where the pre-screening questions were, where you got the point of people left and how you fix that to keep them going through the final destination. Lauree Porter: For us a lot of it was that we had an i-form as the application, and so if you're on a mobile device, it's not as mobile-friendly. So we took out the questions that we needed to ask and just built it into the profile and got rid of the form. Joel Cheesman: Got it. Lauree Porter: So if you were on a desktop or a mobile device, you're still answering the same questions and you actually got a better experience on the mobile device. Joel Cheesman: Cool. Chad Sowash: Gotcha. So on the skunk works side of the house. Christy Spilka: Customer zero. Chad Sowash: Huh? Christy Spilka: Customer zero. Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah customer zero, I like skunk works better. Sounds great. So are you using... Are you thinking about using async chat to be able to go through application process, because somebody could be applying on the bus and then they have to get off on their stop, then they wait till they get home, and then they finish the application? What are you guys doing? What are you guys doing internally? Customer zero. Christy Spilka: Yeah, I know we heard in Al's conversation earlier talking about this with our chatbot and some of the work that we're doing there, so absolutely, we plan to adopt that and leverage that to have a fast apply process, and like you said, iCIMS... We're great with the mobile application experience already, and internally, we make sure that we have a really fast process for people to apply as well. And we can track that, which is great, and the ATS, I can see exactly what my drop-off rate is at any given time, how long it's taking to apply and having that data at your fingertips is really critical. Chad Sowash: So what about other things like onboarding and being able to take that chat process to onboarding and async or maybe even synchronous. Yeah. Christy Spilka: No, I think that's great. I think that's very interesting, and we also leverage video studio, video, and all different things to keep people engaged through a process as well, to ensure that we have a very low drop-off rate during the onboarding process. Joel Cheesman: Up-skilling is a hot topic now. People would rather grow talent in-house as opposed to the recruiting because that's more and more challenging, talk about opinions on up-skilling from your company's perspective, what you guys are doing on up-skilling strategy and maybe what you're looking to do in the future. Lauree. Lauree Porter: So we've always had a pretty strong internal transfer process, and I think that's a form of up-skilling where you can look to grow in other areas of the business, and so that's always out worked well. We've also increased the talent and development offerings for those who want to grow, whether it's in or outside, whether it's the mentoring program, so we've really tried work on a diverse number of options as far as people who wanna grow. Joel Cheesman: Is it in-house, is it third party? Christy Spilka: It's in-house. Joel Cheesman: In-house. Chad Sowash: To talk about the internal mobility, 'cause most companies... It's now a new buzzword, internal mobility. Yeah, let's take care of our people. Let's move people through. Talk about that. Talk about... Joel Cheesman: Horrible. Chad Sowash: Yeah, I know, I mean, we're losing people. How is that happening? I don't know. They... Talk about that, did you see attrition happening, you're like," We know this is an issue," or was this just a part of the culture from day one? Lauree Porter: It's always been a part of the culture. We always look internally, especially when it comes to our upper level positions, we're always gonna look internally at who's been with us, who's been working for us and performing for us. We know exactly who they are and what they can do. Let's go to them first before we go to externally, even if it is moving them across country. Joel Cheesman: Let's talk about work from home, remote work real quickly, you have a lot of employees that can't work from home, I assume probably aside from tech, and you can tell me where the remote is and where they're not. You on the other hand, probably can go almost totally remote if you want to, so you first, talk about the challenges of remote work, where does Penn stand on hybrid versus back to the office versus remote, and then the advantages that you have in a work-from-home environment that others don't. Speaker 1: So I think Penn not I think, I know pen is very flexible. So it comes down to what does the business need. So if in our interactive division, they are all remote or there's a small number that needs to be in the office, there is no black and white as far as who needs to be remote and who doesn't. It's really about what the business needs, what the leader needs, what they're comfortable with. Joel Cheesman: So does the manager decide what the team... At what level is it decided where you could be remote or not, or hybrid or what days you come in? Who decides that? Lauree Porter: I'd say leader of that area. Joel Cheesman: Okay, manager. Lauree Porter: But not like... Like the GM can't say that at my property we can all be remote... Joel Cheesman: There's been no CEO mandate of saying "We're all hybrid or we're all... " It's at the ground level of what the team needs to do... Lauree Porter: Yeah, the message has always been that he trusts his leaders, and so they've decided for themselves what they thought worked best. Joel Cheesman: And was that decided from the top down, or did you ask your employees what would you prefer to do and they told you and then you adapted that? Lauree Porter: It was both. Joel Cheesman: It was both. Lauree Porter: We did have conversations, town halls, where we talked about it. He heard feedback from everyone, including his leaders. Joel Cheesman: That's great. Lauree Porter: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Christy. Christy Spilka: So I think even in some of the data we saw today, flexibility is really important for people having the opportunity to have hybrid in many cases, because a lot of folks like remote and a lot of folks like on-site and many enjoy hybrid work as well. And so I think there's no really one-size-fits-all approach. One of the things that we did a while back on our career site and internally is we added that as a column when you're searching for a job so that you understand exactly the work type of that position, which has been really helpful as well. 'Cause I think transparency is also really important when people are looking for jobs, they wanna know what that's going to look like for them. Joel Cheesman: And does the new hrjobs.icims.com site have remote or not remote in the job posting? Christy Spilka: That's a really good question. We're gonna have to check that out. We'll give some feedback of customer zero... Joel Cheesman: By the way talking about this site I'm thinking what a great sales tool. Think about all the HR people that they can sell iCIMS from the site. Sorry, I'm cynical, I'm cynical. Chad Sowash: Sales jobs.icims.com. [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: HR jobsite. Chad Sowash: I think I've seen this before, I think I've seen this before. So $85 trillion in lost revenue because positions aren't getting filled, why are we not taking this to the C-Suite and giving more budget so that we can get better tech stack, so they can get better resources? Are we finally getting the data that we need to start making the business case? 'Cause we've been talking about cost per hire forever, and CEOs don't even know what the hell that is, and they don't care, because that's not something they can sell to their board. But they can sell this number, it's huge, so do you feel like all these data points are finally coming together for us as an industry so that we can sell it and we can start to be at the big table and talk about the big discussions? Christy Spilka: 100% and how often have you gone to a conference or listened to something online and hear people talk about putting together a business case for investment or whatever, like... We don't talk about it enough, I don't think. I think it's a really important topic. It'll actually be in plug check out my career site session tomorrow, where I will be going through putting together a business case to get investment in your career site, but I do think the data that was shared today is amazing. Jot that down, bring that back to the business, because ultimately, that is how we can continue to get investment, I've done that in my own various organizations over the years in TA to say, "Here's what I'm looking to do, here's why it's important. And here's the value that we'll get back as an organization," Lauree Porter: And I think we're getting there because the leaders are seeing the effects, you don't necessarily have to show them the actual dollar amount, they're actually seeing the effects in not being able to do things. And this hasn't really affected us, but how many businesses do you see that can't open on Monday because they can't hire people. Well, if you had maybe more resources to hire people, maybe you could get people in there. So people are now seeing the actual effects of it, not only the dollar amounts. Joel Cheesman: Seat at the table, Chad, we're out of time. Let's hear it for Christy and Lauree. We are the Chad & Cheese podcast, get your t-shirts before they run out and check us out at chadcheese.com. Chad. It's in the can. It's done. Chad and Joel: We out. [applause] Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it's called a podcast with Chad, with Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most all, they talk about nothing, just a lot of shout-outs of people who you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible, and not one word about cheese, but one, cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. 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 in recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

A recruitment marketing podcast with a surprise news alert? Yes, please. Recruitics made a move that all three hosts like a lot. But listen and make up your own mind. Regularly scheduled news, however, includes everything from tip bullying to Miller Lite following Bud Light, bending conservatives out of shape to Goodwill doing, well, good. All the feels in this episode. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. S?: 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 Cheesman: Oh yeah. News out of Tesla says Elon must personally approve every new hire. That'll certainly speed up the hiring process. Hi kids, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your cohost Joel "Model Y" Cheesman. Chad Sowash: And I'm Chad "Elon is The King of Dick Moves" Sowash. Julie Calli: I'm Julie "Real Human Intelligence" Calli. Joel Cheesman: On this episode, Miller Lite stirs up Conservatives, Goodwill gets a new life and working nine-to-five is no way to make a living anymore. Thanks, Dolly Parton. Well, let's do this. Chad Sowash: So, I was told this week that I'm not a real European unless I'm watching Eurovision. I didn't know this is a thing. Joel Cheesman: What the fuck is Eurovision? Julie Calli: Is it like Hulu? [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Is it like Hulu? Chad Sowash: That was the thing that actually created ABBA. Did you not know that? It's kinda like the America's Got Talent before America's Got Talent, but it brings all the European countries together. It's what ABBA won to become ABBA. So, yeah. So again, this is something that the Europeans keep away from us Americans so that they can have it all to themselves. Joel Cheesman: So, it's like American Idol for Americans. And there's also a really bad Will Ferrell movie, I think, called Eurovision. Chad Sowash: It was. Oh, it wasn't bad. It was amazing. Joel Cheesman: It was awful. Chad Sowash: That was hilarious, dude, I love it. Joel Cheesman: It was awful. Chad Sowash: Watch your mouth. Joel Cheesman: Will Ferrell's either like gold or trash. Chad Sowash: He's always gold. Julie Calli: I'm a fan. Joel Cheesman: I know. He's always got a good quote in every movie, but some of his movies, man, I just... I can't do it. Chad Sowash: Was it the Blades of Glory? I mean, that was horrible at first and I've watched it like a dozen times since. Julie Calli: You're right. It's like a fine wine. If it sits a couple years, it gets funnier, [laughter] maybe. Chad Sowash: Fine wine. Joel Cheesman: Napoleon Dynamite. What happened to that dude? That was supposed to be his like big leap into the stratosphere of celebrity stardom, but I think he's just like living in Utah, skiing now. Chad Sowash: Him and Pedro. I mean, what happened to Pedro? I mean, seriously. Joel Cheesman: Pedro's on the corporate speaking circuit talking about how to win elections. Julie Calli: Vote Pedro. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Vote for Pedro, baby. Vote for Pedro. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: That is a great movie, by the way. Chad Sowash: Shoutout, eat your food, Tina. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Do these chickens have talons? What did you say? Alright, I got a shoutout, everybody. Chad Sowash: Okay. Joel Cheesman: Tip bullying apparently is a thing now. Chad Sowash: Oh, good God. Joel Cheesman: I don't know if you've heard about this. So, the Wall Street Journal had a story this week about how self-checkout machines at various establishments now prompt customers to leave a default 20% tip even if there is minimal or zero interaction... Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: With an employee. Some experts argue that companies are shifting the responsibility of paying employees onto customers instead of increasing salaries themselves. So, this phenomenon known as tip creep aims to encourage higher tips in transactional situations. The article claims customers perceive self-tipping as a form of emotional blackmail. I like that. How do you guys feel? SFX: Emotional damage. Chad Sowash: Dude, I think it's fricking horrible. I don't know. Julie, how many times have you actually gone and gotten a coffee, and then this thing prompts you and you have to go to custom? There's no no tip. You gotta go to custom and then hit no tip. Have you gone through this? Julie Calli: You know, I do a lot of takeout and I feel like I still have to tip when I do takeout. But... Chad Sowash: Really? Julie Calli: I can't even bring... I can't bring myself to spend money on buying coffee. It's just... Why pay $5 for a cup of coffee you could have made at home? I have a really hard time with that. Joel Cheesman: Problem is it's not just coffee, it's everything now. Julie Calli: Yeah. Chad Sowash: No, it's everything. Yeah. Joel Cheesman: If you pay digitally with a credit card... And by the way, Chad, if you push customize, it's a pain in the ass. It's like an exact amount... Chad Sowash: No, it is. Yep. Joel Cheesman: Percentage... And it's worse if you got people behind you like self-checkout, you feel like an ass if you don't tip even though you know you don't want to and the person behind you feels guilty if you tip... Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: And then they don't tip. I know what you're gonna say. It all comes down to like, let's pay a fair wage. Let's be like Europe and just tap and go and be done with it. Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the biggest problem I see is we're not paying real wages as it is in the first place, living wages in that case. So, we automatically go figure... The company's like, "Well, if they had good service, then they'll go ahead and tip." Well, that's total bullshit anyway. We need to start taking a look at wages and when we're all... The thing... This just drives me crazy. First off, whenever we start talking about inflation, the only thing that we can talk about is wages and how wages have come up. And we don't look at the CEO wages that have exploded, since 1978, 1500%. We look at the bottom line that has only gone up less than 20%. And we're like, all those people, they're the problem. We don't look at profiteering, we don't look at any of this stuff. But yet, we have to focus on, "Oh, let's go ahead and see if we can shame people into tips instead of... " Just the entire system in the United States from a payment and a wage and compensation standpoint is totally fucked up. Julie Calli: Yeah. Is that tipping or is that charity? Are are we trying to fill in the compensation because the company can't afford to pay that wage? Chad Sowash: That's a good point. Yeah. Julie Calli: And then it's unpredictable for the employee. Like, "How many people are gonna tip me today? Will I be able to pay my rent?" It's not predictable income. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: And there's a lot of ambiguity. Like if you tip... If you give a waitress five bucks, you know that five bucks is going in the pocket of that waitress. If you digitally donate 20%, who the hell knows where that goes, to be honest? It's not like at the end of the night, everyone gets paid a percentage of what came in digitally. Chad Sowash: Well, then you take a look at the experience. And this is going off-track a little bit, but when we take a look at actually having dinner in Europe, they're not trying to turn and burn tables because they don't need that next tip. "How many tables did you turn so I can get more tips out of those tables?" And they're always coming back, "What's next?" They're politely pushing you out the door here in Europe. I mean, if you don't have a three-hour dinner, you didn't have dinner, for god's sakes. And it's amazing, 'cause again, you go and you tap and you go, nobody asks for a tip. Nobody thinks about asking for a tip because they make a great livable wage for where they're at. And it's crazy. Again, America's fucked up when it comes to salaries, wages and focusing on the bottom line as opposed to the assholes up top who are getting 1500% boosts. Julie Calli: Right. And tips originally were almost a way a bit of an incentive, like good service, you get tipped at the end for providing quality service. But if you're paying for your coffee upfront, you don't even have your coffee yet, you still need to wait 15 minutes to get it, for somebody to write your name on it and move it at the end of the line. Chad Sowash: And they didn't even spell your name right, for god's sakes. Come on. Julie Calli: So, you're tipping upfront, but yet you have no idea... Chad Sowash: Yeah. Julie Calli: The service is incomplete. [laughter] So you're like, "Here is a tip. I hope to get my coffee within the next five minutes." Joel Cheesman: For our listeners who haven't been to Europe, it's so nice to go into a bar, get a drink, round of drinks, whatever, pull out the thing, tap and you're done. In America, it's like, "Do you wanna start a tab? Yes or no?" "Here's my card, let me go run it," get the thing, sign it, get a tip... It's such a nice way to do business when you just tap and go in the bar. It's bad for my liver... Chad Sowash: It's amazing. Joel Cheesman: But it is good for efficiency. By the way, Chad, I know you're a Galloway listener. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: In his market podcast, they talked about the writers strike in Hollywood and all the money that CEOs in entertainment are making right now and his co-host said, "Why don't the CEOs just reduce their pay so that they can pay the writers?" [chuckle] And of course, Galloway is like, "That's really cute that you would think the CEOs would reduce their pay to pay the writers." Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, I mean, Galloway's onboard with making as much money as he fucking possibly can. Joel Cheesman: Oh, he's a capitalist. Chad Sowash: He's a capitalist who lives in fucking London. Fuck that dude. Julie Calli: Yeah, I mean, I feel for the writers. I know whenever people need to go on strike, it's to make a point, it's to make a stand, but of all the times to make a stand, writers are at the top of the list of their careers being threatened by AI and they're like, "Hey, now's the time. Now that I'm replaceable by artificial intelligence, now I think I'm gonna demand more pay." [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Like most things in life, it's all the millennials' fault. All the password-sharing, none of y'all were paying, none of y'all were paying for Netflix and now the writers get to pay for it. Thanks, millennials. Thanks, millennials. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Oh, shit. My shoutout goes to events. I can't say enough. And again, we're a little ways out of COVID, but I can't say how much it... How good it feels just to see people again, to be on stage. [music] Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. It is amazing to be in ferris wheels, to do VIP events. I mean, this is how life was meant to live kids, and we're just having a great time. All the events that we're going to, one event, get ready kids, we're gonna be at RecFest in London just north and in Knebworth Park. And the very first RecFest in the US is happening in Nashville, happening in September, so you got plenty of time. You go to chadcheese.com, click on Events. If you click on the discount code in our events section, hell, it's in the header, for god's sakes, it's a hero image, click on Sign up or Register Here, or whatever the hell it says and you'll get a 50% off from Chad and Cheese. Bring your entire team because that's what RecFest is about, it's about community, it's about bringing the whole team together. And an all-hands day in Nashville is exactly what your team needs. So, go to chadcheese.com, click on Events, click Sign up and boom baby, we'll see you there. Joel Cheesman: Groupons from Chad and Cheese, that's what I'm talking about. And we get to see Julie Calli in Vegas. That was the first show of the year. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Joel Cheesman: And Julie Calli is in the house. Julie Calli: Yeah, that was great. Chad Sowash: We were up in a ferris wheel. Julie Calli: Oh, the high roller was awesome. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: I'm on a boat and a ferris wheel. Julie Calli: Yeah. Thank you to HiringBranch for that trip in the high roller. I just thought it was like a ferris wheel, and then the doors opened and there was a bar inside of it. I was like, "What am" Joel Cheesman: A bartender. Julie Calli: "I climbing aboard?" And then I was just so overjoyed. Chad Sowash: Is this a penis rocket? [laughter] Julie Calli: With all the people that were... It was a great move too, to seal us all in a little pod together. [laughter] But then you put a whole bunch of talkers in a pod together and I was enjoying all the conversation, I realized, "Oh yeah, let me look at the view." [chuckle] I almost didn't even look out the window. I was so excited to talk to everyone. Joel Cheesman: I have a request, Chad. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: I know Jamie listens to the show at RecFest. Chad Sowash: Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman: Come to America, the ferris wheel is a cutesy thing in England, I get that. You got the Eye in London. You're coming to Nashville, I want a mechanical bull. I want a mechanical bull at RecFest and I will ride it. Julie Calli: You will? Joel Cheesman: On record. Chad Sowash: I can see... Joel Cheesman: Yes. Chad Sowash: I can see a Chad and Cheese VIP event with a mechanical bull. Oh, wait a minute. Alright. Joel Cheesman: I'm talking chaps, pants, optional, baby. That's what I'm talking about. And an electrical bull. Do it Jamie. Chad Sowash: I do not want Cheesman ass-less chaps, okay? Joel Cheesman: Come on, Jamie. Chad Sowash: That's not... No, no, I don't want that. Joel Cheesman: Give me a bull, Jamie. Julie Calli: Should I control it? [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Get me a bull. Chad Sowash: Sure. Joel Cheesman: There you go. Chad Sowash: He can't even control it. Are you kidding me? Joel Cheesman: Control the bull, baby. Here we go. [music] Joel Cheesman: And topics. Alright. Well, listeners will remember discussing Bud Light's ad featuring a trans influencer which led to an outcry by Conservatives. Well, Miller Lite is in the news this week for what conservatives are calling a woke ad. The surprise is the ad came out in March, nearly a month before the Bud Light ad. Listeners, if you haven't seen it or heard it, let's sample it and we'll talk about it on the other side. [video playback] Miller Lite Commercial: Here's a little known fact. Women were among the very first to brew beer ever. From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to Colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing. Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis. Wow. Look at this shit. Wild. It's time beer made it up to women. So today, Miller Lite is on a mission to clean up not just their shit, but the whole beer industry's shit. Miller Lite has been scouring the internet for all this shit and buying it back so that we can turn it into good shit for women brewers. Literally, good shit. How, you ask? Ladies, take it away. Miller Lite Commercial: First, we turn the bad shit into compost, then we feed compost to worms, beautiful fertilizer. Miller Lite Commercial: That good shit helps farmers grow quality hops. Miller Lite Commercial: Which is then donated to women brewers to make their own really good shit. Miller Lite Commercial: But there's definitely more shit out there, in your attic, in the garage, in your parents' basement. Send any shit you got to Miller Lite and they'll turn that into good shit, too. Oh, so here's to women, because without us, there would be no beer. [music] Joel Cheesman: Alright, Julie Calli, you are a woman, what are your thoughts on the Miller Lite campaign? Julie Calli: Oh, it feels a little like it's pandering a bit, but I'm glad to see that at least it's calling out the truth of, yes, women have been used to sell beer, but at least this is giving some credit to, women also took a big part in making beer throughout the centuries. But I read a lot of the comments on social media and I'm like, why are people getting all rallied up about? It's a commercial. It's a commercial and it's trying to change the narrative a little bit and be more respectful in the way that it's doing this commercial. I'll take that. I'll take that recognition that women may have been used in beer commercials in ways that are maybe not the same that we want going forward. And it's making a change. And it's not just calling out their own ads. It's calling out everybody's ads. I'm for it. I'd say go for it. Keep changing the narrative to things that are more inclusive today. Joel Cheesman: Julie, you came of age in the '80s, '90s and these beer ads. How did you feel as a young woman watching these ads? Did you take offense? Did it impact you in any way? Julie Calli: It painted a lot of pictures of what I thought I was supposed to look like. Certainly had a lot of influence on that. And I would say at a young age, I truthfully feel that a lot of the impression that was put on me is it mattered more what your beauty was than your brains. And when you're young, you have youth on your side, [laughter] and then as you get older, you realize that's not what matters. So, I would say that I didn't really start to feel even as if there was more to myself to offer beyond beauty until I started to get into my young 20s. And then I started to realize how powerful my own brain was, but that was never something that was real... I wasn't growing up seeing female doctors on TV. I wasn't seeing female CEOs in my youth. Julie Calli: So, I was inspired by other working women who were going to school and getting an education and fighting for a place in the workforce of equal opportunity. So I got to witness that. I wanted to be part of that and I stood my ground as I entered into this space. But I realized that that was not what it was like before. So yeah, I think that those commercials had a huge influence. And while the beer commercials might change going forward in the future, young women are still very vulnerable due to social media today, which is something I didn't have in my youth. Chad Sowash: Well, and remember there was a time when bulimia was... I mean, it was literally... It was like an outbreak. Joel Cheesman: Sure, eating disorders. Chad Sowash: And a lot of that, you could definitely tie to those commercials, those ads, and just the whole idea of what a "woman" should look like. Julie Calli: Yep. Chad Sowash: Right? So, I think, going back to the people that are saying this is woke, what we're seeing is what they call selective rage campaigns and people are creating rage where it doesn't really exist. Okay? This is truth, much like critical race theory. They have problems with that. They have problems with history. I mean, it's fucking history. It's history you weren't taught. It doesn't mean it's not true. Right? So, now we're doing the same thing with females saying, "Hey look, women created beer. Guess what guys, you like it, that's great, but we created beer." So, these are things that we as human beings we need to be aware of, that many of these things we're that calling things "woke", it's just a selective rage campaign to be able to try to pull the narrative away from things that actually fucking matter. Chad Sowash: I mean, things that matter versus things that really don't matter. I mean, this doesn't matter other than being able to just tell history. It matters from that standpoint and we should be doing this. But it's pulling and it's diverting away from conversations we should be happening because this is... Or we should be having. But this is something that's important. Joel Cheesman: Julie, are you more likely to buy a Miller Lite product or a product by the Molson Coors Company because of this ad? Julie Calli: Well, I already drink Miller Lite, [laughter] so now I'm just gonna raise my beer a little prouder, I think. Chad Sowash: There you go. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Okay. Julie Calli: But today, Miller Lite and who's next? Right? I just feel that every brand when they make an attempt now to stand for something, there's gonna be somebody out there starting a campaign against them about why it's wrong that you gotta stand for something right. Chad Sowash: Well, talk about Bud Light though, 'cause they folded like a two-card table after we were giving them huge kudos. Julie Calli: Yeah, disappointed in them. Chad Sowash: What is a brand to do, especially in the United States when all we do is we focus from quarter to quarter? We're not looking long-term, right? We're not looking long-term. We're looking from quarter-to-quarter and we're answering to shareholders, it seems like, every five fucking minutes as opposed to being able to plan long-term, which is what we were really focusing on and saying, "Hey, these guys have been around for 170-plus years, right?" Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: They wanna be around for another 170-plus years. They've gotta think long-term. But they got shot. Well, they really didn't get shot down. They shot themselves down. Julie Calli: Yeah, they did. Now, instead of standing with one side, they folded on both, right? So now, who do you stand for? Nothing and nobody. And that's not it. We talk about being a cult brand, people gravitate towards something that's authentic and real that they wanna be part of. So stand for something and people will stand with you. But Budweiser really messed that up. They really did. Joel Cheesman: I think it's an important message for the kids that if you can't... What really changes the world is voting and money. And I was in a conversation with my two nieces who are in their 20s and I was asking about the Bud Light ad, what they thought about it. And of course, they were upset and didn't understand and they responded as you thought that they would. And I said, "Okay. Did you guys go out and buy some Bud Light in response to this ad?" and both of them said no. They had other things to spend money on, whatever. And I said, "You can feel as strong as you want, but until you spend money or you can vote, things are gonna change much more slowly than they would otherwise." And if you look at... Obviously, Budweiser stock is down about 8% from last month. Miller Lite's parent company's stock is down around 3% on this story. Now, if all the women in the world or in America said, "Let's all go buy Miller Lite," and their earnings report went through the roof, we'd see more ads promoting women in a fair and balanced way. Joel Cheesman: So just for the kids, until money is spent, companies aren't gonna go near transgender issues for a really long time. It's gonna have to be a start-up that is willing to take chances. But a big established company like this is gonna be really gun-shy because of the Bud Light issue. And what's interesting to me as well is the whole Disney Florida thing is also another touchstone for Conservatives and going on talk radio and Fox News. The Little Mermaid comes out this month, and Chad and I were lucky enough at iCIMS to meet an influencer on TikTok whose daughter's seen the Little Mermaid ad and it's an African-American Black mermaid. Joel Cheesman: Everyone who wants fairness, inclusivity, go see the Little Mermaid because if Disney can crush it at the box office, you're gonna see more movies like this and more inclusion in that. If this movie flops for whatever reason, it's gonna be another punch in the gut to sort of this entertainment and advertising and marketing being more inclusive. Julie Calli: Yeah. So, sign me up. I wanna be right there in the front row to see that movie. It almost brought tears to my eyes to see some of the videos. I'm getting choked up just saying this. Seeing the videos of moms recording their daughters and them seeing themselves in the Little Mermaid like, "She looks like me." Right? Joel Cheesman: Mm-hmm. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Julie Calli: To see the look on those kids' faces, it made me realize just how much they're starving to see themselves in the types of movies and entertainment that we create. And it was incredibly touching to see that. And I was fist-bumping immediately after seeing that, the response of the children's faces and they're seeing inclusion. That was really touching for me. Chad Sowash: That to me... I mean, you're right. I teared up watching those kids saying, "It's me." Julie Calli: Yeah, they were in such shock. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: So go see the Little Mermaid everybody and have a pint of Miller Lite after the show. We'll be right back. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Let's talk a little bit about Goodwill, shall we? So Goodwill, the place Chad likes to donate his used jockstraps, has launched... Chad Sowash: I haven't worn one of those since I've been like 18. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Do they still sell jockstraps? Chad Sowash: I don't know. Joel Cheesman: Anyway, anyway. Okay, alright, so they launched a new ad campaign called New Lives to highlight the impact of donations on changing lives and supporting individuals facing employment challenges. The campaign showcases the stories of Goodwill job seekers and emphasizes how public donations play a vital role in empowering these individuals. The campaign is based on consumer surveys that revealed increased support for Goodwill's mission among donors, shoppers and job seekers. Julie, just like Chad and I, you probably buy from Goodwill from time to time. What are your thoughts on their new ad campaign called New Lives? Julie Calli: Yeah, I love Goodwill. I shop there a lot, actually. I find more interesting things there than I do at the mall. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: And if you got kids, it's invaluable. Julie Calli: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: They outgrow this shit in a week, pay a dollar for it, yeah. Chad Sowash: Oh God, yeah. Julie Calli: I'm glad that Goodwill is raising awareness for what they do because a lot of people think, "Oh yeah, you drop off your clothes and stuff, and then they sell it there, and then maybe that money goes to charity and that's great." Right? But it does a lot more than that. So, I love that they're raising awareness for that, that they are creating a lot of career pathing opportunity for people that are in need of those services. So, I think that that's fantastic that they're raising that awareness to that. But I think it's sad that they have to because Goodwill actually has a lot of competition now. You've got the Salvation Army, you've got Savers, you've got... Joel Cheesman: The internet. Julie Calli: Yeah, the internet, right? So, there's a lot of ways that people can donate their goods now. I think that it's great for them to allow people to understand that by donating there, by shopping there, that you're really making an impact on helping people be enabled to get back to work in many cases. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, and they also have individuals with disabilities that have been working throughout Goodwill for decades, right? So yeah, being able to impact different communities to be able to... Literally, Goodwills are in communities far and wide throughout the United States. That to me is... It's more than impactful for the individual. It is impactful for the entire community. And that's the thing that we've lost in the United States a lot. Again, we've aligned behind rugged individualism and do things for yourself, and we forgot about community. And then what happens are that these individuals who are less fortunate in many cases, physically, monetarily, it doesn't matter, they get lost, they get lost and they have been getting lost for decades. And you have to have an organization like Goodwill to be able to demonstrate, "Hey, look, a community exists." People are getting lost. Chad Sowash: Now, what we need to do as Americans, what we need to do as humans is we need to focus on these types of initiatives. And we need to remember that we are a part of a community. This isn't just about me, me, me, right? All these other individuals only get one life as well. Take a look at how they're living and would you ever wanna live like that if the roles were reversed? Kinda like 48 hours kinda thing. No, trading places. That was it. But at the end of the day, Goodwill is amazing. Do I think that their CEOs... 'Cause every single one of these locations or these regions have a CEO that gets paid about half a million dollars apiece. Julie Calli: What? Oh no. Chad Sowash: Oh yes. I don't know if that's quite what I would be looking for. Julie Calli: That doesn't sound like Goodwill. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Yeah. Julie Calli: Their CEO is not working on his good will. Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah. So, there are some takeaways that we can kind of have and talk about and try to peel back the layers there. But again, there's a lot of good being done. Could there be more? Of course. But yeah, this is a big kudos. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, Chad, you mentioned disabilities, Second Chance is another one. A lot of people that have had... Chad Sowash: Yes, yes. Joel Cheesman: Mistakes in their life and done time get second opportunities at places like Goodwill. And Julie, you mentioned in America, there's a Goodwill in almost every community. And I think people take for granted that you just give your stuff to them, you get the tax credit or whatever, and then you move on. And there are certain charities that specialize in other things. People don't really realize that Goodwill's sweet spot really is employment opportunity and education. And here are some numbers which surprised me, I had no idea. Nearly two million people receive services to build skills and connect with jobs in their communities. Roughly, 300 people every day find a job because of Goodwill's help in training and education. Nearly 125,000 people found employment through services provided by their local Goodwills last year. Joel Cheesman: So, we talk about government needs to do more, people need to do more. There's things going on behind the scenes at places like Goodwill and charities that are doing amazing work to help people get jobs and find employment if they're not employing them themselves, helping them find jobs elsewhere and vouching for them with credentials. So, big applause from all of us, I assume, here on this one that Goodwill is doing some great work. And for everyone out there, if you need to donate some stuff, Goodwill is a pretty good choice to do so. Chad Sowash: I've got an audible for the next one. There's news breaking. Joel Cheesman: Okay. Chad Sowash: Are you ready? Joel Cheesman: Alright. Chad Sowash: Acquisition alert, kids. And this is perfect for recruitment marketing. Recruitics acquires video recruiting platform, Jamyr. Recruitics, the leading in data programmatic advertising, engagement and analytics for recruitment has acquired Jamyr, J-A-M-Y-R, that's how you spell Jamyr, an innovative video recruitment platform. Jamyr delivers employee-generated videos, content at scale, enabling organizations of all sizes to strategically and easily engage job seekers with exceptional and relevant content. Julie Calli, I'm sure you knew this was coming. What do you think about this? A video, programmatic video. Are we looking at programmatic video ads being distributed? What's going on here? This sounds like pretty crazy stuff. Julie Calli: Recruitics came into the market with... Really created the job programmatic industry, being the first to market with that technology. But it's built on top of analytics. So, data is the foundation of everything. And everything can expand from there. So, it's a really smart move, of course, to bring video into its platform, into its suite of technology that it has. It's always build, buy or partner, right? So, a way to accelerate and get video into the platform, it's a great move. It's a great move because, as you know, with TikTok and all of the things, the new generation is all about video. It is all about video. Chad Sowash: Who can receive video ads at this time? Are we looking at kinda fashion-forward stuff when we're looking down the road and whatnot? Because at this point, people are just getting used to performance-driven job postings, right? Julie Calli: Right. Chad Sowash: So, how fashion-forward is this? Is this really something that we could see prospectively by the end of the year where we're delivering videos? What's the idea around this? Julie Calli: Well, so I can't speak for a lot of things very specific to this... Chad Sowash: Sure. Julie Calli: 'Cause I'm not on the leadership team there. But what I would say generally is we have been attached to the job, like the J-O-B job, the actual job, the metadata, the thing, the URL destination, the terrible ugly texting. [laughter] We've been attached to that since job boards first were created in 1999 and we've been stuck on that. That's the only way, right? Now, I know that there's some legal needs to be able to be compliant and you have to post jobs. Okay, fine, check that box. But that does not mean that's the only way that you can create awareness about your opportunity. And nobody wants to read that boring text on that flat page. The internet is more interactive now. You have Siri in your kitchen talking to you, you have video, and short form video at that. People have an attention span of 15-30 seconds. You can't even read a job description in 15-30 seconds. Chad Sowash: No. Julie Calli: People wanna feel more human connection. So video is absolutely where the consumer industry is. That's how they wanna see it, they wanna see real people, they wanna feel more connected to it. So, it's an excellent move. But we're gonna see a lot of other things like people getting away from it just being on the job. We're gonna find a lot more creative ways to be able to talk about job opportunities using multimedia rather than just a static job posting. Joel Cheesman: If we can blame the millennials for the writers strike, we can blame Gen Z for the fanaticism around video. And Chad, we talked about last week, the HireVue Modern Hire acquisition in terms of video. People progressively don't read, they don't search, type stuff. They want voice, video, audio. That's the wave of the future. And as our industry is ahead of the curve and like people wanna hire young folks, that's the developers, that's the creative types, you need to talk to them in their language. It's really as simple as that. And if their language is social media, short-form video or audio, then that's how you have to reach them. And Recruitics started as a way to reach job seekers. It was pay-per-click for the most part, how do we leverage search? Well, people aren't searching like they used to. They're doing it differently. Chad Sowash: No. Joel Cheesman: So obviously, Recruitics is getting ahead of the curve there. Applause to them that they are seeing the future and the future is visual, audio, et cetera, voice, and they're getting ahead of that. And they won't be the last. You're gonna see a lot of consolidation, a lot of gobbling up. Because building video is pretty hard, by the way. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: YouTube has sort of been doing it for everybody forever. Well, no one wants to just embed video from YouTube because you gotta deal with ads that are on Google and you gotta deal with their shit like they wanna own it. And if it's buy, build or partner, buying is certainly a good option because not a lot of people have built good video platforms in the past 10 years. So, you're gonna see a lot more consolidation and acquisitions around this space. Chad Sowash: So, I'm a big believer in video. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you know out there or not listener, but the Chad and Cheese now have video podcast. Go to youtube.com/@ChadCheese or just type in the Chad and Cheese Podcast on YouTube. Yeah, we're seeing this huge, I don't wanna say rush, but there's this hockey stick that's happening with video. And if we can get into more snackable video, I think that's even better. I'm an advisor for JobPixel, so I wanna put that out there for you guys. I really believe that this is... That there's validation, not just because of Jamyr getting acquired, but we saw iCIMS buy Altru, right? Julie Calli: Mm-hmm. Chad Sowash: And I think we're going to start seeing more of this consolidation, but also these moves because you have to outflank your competition quickly. What is hot, right? What can you use? What can you actually integrate into your platform and/or system? I think video is one of the more sexy, and again, I'm biased, but one of the more sexy ways to actually get in front of those potential buyers. Joel Cheesman: Unless it's you on the video, then the sexiness goes up. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Then it goes up about 100 times. Joel Cheesman: Portugal Chad is way sexier than Indiana Chad. [laughter] Chad Sowash: It's the tan. Yes, it's the tan. Joel Cheesman: And Chad... This is our first episode recording where Chad's in Portugal and unfortunately, we don't do video for these. But Chad is tanned, he's got like... He's got the leisure suit on. He's got sun in the background. Yeah, sunglasses on. Julie Calli: Oh, there it is with the sunglasses. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Yeah, it's the poor man's Rock, everybody, coming at you from Portugal. Great scoop, great episode, everybody. We'll save freelancing for maybe next time. But until then, another one is in the can. We out. Chad Sowash: We out. Julie Calli: We out. S?: 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.

If last week's show was lactose free, this week is an extra cheese edition of Chad & Cheese, because Chad is away in merry ol' England and Cheese is running the show. Anyway, this week is Thanksgiving in America, which means we highlight the year's biggest jive turkeys. Industry veteran Jonathan Duarte of GoHire helps break down some turkeys too. We'll leave it up to you as to which "turkey" gobbles the loudest. Even Chad weighs in from London. Turkeys in London? Oh yeah, turkeys are everywhere. Enjoy and don't hog all the stuffing, damn it! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Joel (1s): Time to introduce a little anarchy for the non-regular listener. I'm Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast. It's Thanksgiving Day Week in America, and my cohost Chad is away in London for a conference. Here's a little secret about Chad. He's a fucking control freak. He edits all of our shows. He enjoys it, by the way, but he likes to control the show. He's taking a break from the show, so I'm in charge. And that means zero editing. This show is gonna be raw. It's gonna be like a Grateful Dead bootleg cassette from 1973. The production may be bad, my dog might bark. Joel (43s): The ads are even gonna be off the cuff. We're likely to get canceled, especially since I've invited industry veteran Jonathan Duarte to the show this week. We'll get to him in a second. Anyway, regardless of how this show turns out, thanks in advance for coming along for the ride and sticking it through. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the Jive Turkeys we'll be highlighting on this episode, but anything can happen when chaos rains and there's a turkey in the oven. Here we go. sfx (1m 17s): Hey, look, sit down. Alright. It ain't cool being no Jive Turkey. So close to Thanksgiving. INTRO (1m 25s): 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 (1m 46s): Oh yeah. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Who needs Taylor Swift tickets when you've got hrs most dangerous podcast? Hi, boys and girls. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel, you need to calm down Cheesman. Jonathan (2m 2s): And this is Jonathan Duarte "I need more Aderall". Joel (2m 7s): And on this week's show, it's all about the jive turkeys as we celebrate Thanksgiving in America. Let's do this. Jonathan, are you familiar with JobAdX? Jonathan (2m 22s): I am. Joel (2m 23s): You are. Okay. That sounds really positive. Well, they're a longtime advertiser with our show, and I'm thankful for our longtime advertisers, especially ones that are from Canada. sfx (2m 35s): Take Off. We we're doing our movie! Don't wreck our show you Hoser. Joel (2m 39s): That's right. They're Canadians, so, you know, they're nice. They hail from Thunder Bay and Toronto. By the way, Jonathan, do you know how many Canadian provinces there are? Jonathan (2m 49s): I think there's 13. Joel (2m 51s): That's close. But that is incorrect. I'm sorry. I had to go back to the judges. So when I first started dating my wife, this is a side note to this advertisement. When I was dating my wife, she is Canadian, she asked me how many provinces there were. I did my best sort of atlas estimate and I said five, which also, oh, that was really wrong. So there are 10 provinces in Canada in case you're ever on Jeopardy. Anyway, let's get back to JobAdX. They're an all in one advertising for jobs platform. They're one tool to analyze and manage the entire job advertising process. Jonathan, you know, everyone is looking to leverage programmatic these days, but you need to make sure. Jonathan (3m 34s): Yes I do. Joel (3m 35s): You need to make sure JobAdX is on your shopping list if you're looking to get into programmatic yourself, you're an agency or your company. You know, look, maybe AppCast isn't quite what it used to be since being acquired by StepStone a couple years ago. Maybe that ROI is a bit too pricey these days with your programmatic job solution. If that's the case, go check out JobAdX. That's www.jobadx.com. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Jonathan (4m 13s): Hey, thanks for having me. It's been a long time and so great to be on with you, Joel. Joel (4m 19s): It has been a while. When did we last see each other? Definitely pre Covid, right? Wwere you at HR Tech? Jonathan (4m 25s): Yeah, I think you were drunk and forgot. Joel (4m 28s): Well, that's very likely the case or we were both drunk and both forgot the meeting altogether. Jonathan (4m 34s): That was probably true, yes. Joel (4m 37s): But yeah, man, you, you and I have known each other for what, 17 years? Jonathan (4m 44s): Probably. Joel (4m 45s): '05. Jonathan (4m 45s): Yeah. I'm not even gonna try to get back to those days. But that was, remember old SEO for jobs and before Success Factors bought, who were the guys back in the day? Nah, I can't remember Joel (5m 6s): Something my job? Jonathan (5m 7s): Yeah, somehting my job. Joel (5m 10s): That's Take the interview. Jonathan (5m 12s): I know, exactly. That's, that's how long ago it was, right? Can't even remember. Joel (5m 15s): It's been a while. Yeah. I remember many SEO laden conversations with you back in the day when you were rocking GoJobs. Jonathan (5m 25s): Yeah. Joel (5m 25s): Google hadn't put the smack down on everybody yet, but. Jonathan (5m 28s): Exactly. Joel (5m 28s): You're into a lot of other stuff, which we will get to after our shoutouts and our celebrations of fantasy football and birthdays. So you came armed with some shoutouts, so you have more than me. I'm gonna let you go first and we'll just alternate. So who's your first shout out? Jonathan (5m 47s): So my first shout out is to Will Staney who you may have met and I'm sure, yeah, many might know him. And the reason why is having been a CEO and founder multiple times, myself and you as well, layoffs are the hardest thing to do. When the economy turns down, you know, you gotta go through it, but Will had to go through this recently. One of the best, I think guys that have ever handled it. I don't mean guys and girls, but he went on and tried to help everyone that he had to let go doing recruiting, I think everyone knows a lot of the team, but just a really stand up guy and took it the best way. Jonathan (6m 45s): They're not easy for a CEO. A lot of people don't understand how that impacts a leader too. But Will did it in a phenomenal way. Joel (6m 54s): And is there anywhere that people can go if they are looking to hire some of those folks, like find Will on LinkedIn or did he have a blog post? Jonathan (7m 6s): Yeah, find Will Staney, Proactive Talent on LinkedIn. Probably pretty easy to find him. I think he's got a post out there that's probably pretty easy to find. Joel (7m 18s): Yeah, I'm guessing sales people, some marketing folks, those kinds of, Jonathan (7m 21s): A lot of recruiting. So they were doing a lot of recruitment tech and we'll get into another one cuz I got other ones on that same vein, if you will. Being thankful for folks there. Joel (7m 32s): Well, if you're looking to hire some recruiters and maybe some other kinds of folks go find Will on LinkedIn. So my, my overall shout outs this week are on the tradition of Thanksgiving. And, I really have to give some thanks to our fans, particularly this week they really stood out. My first one goes to Joe, Joe Stubbe. Joey Stubbs, you know him, you love him. He was, he was really complimentary to us on, on a, a LinkedIn share. He said quote, there's one podcast on careers in HR tech that I can't get enough of, Chad and Cheese. It's also known as HR's most dangerous podcast. And that's why I love it. Joel (8m 13s): We love you Joe, and you've been a listener since the early, early days. Gave us some great feedback that we did implement and we're thankful for Joe, wherever he is in Europe, probably not celebrating Thanksgiving. So he may actually be listening to this week's show as opposed to passed out on the couch from too much turkey. So, so Joe, shout out to you buddy. We appreciate the comment and we thanks for your listenership. Jonathan (8m 41s): Yeah. Way to go. Way to go, Joe. All right. Joel (8m 44s): Excited for Joe, man! Jonathan (8m 46s): No. Well, I mean, the last time I saw Joey Stubs doing his little walk, you know, he's got his walk. He just another late night at one of the TA tech conferences. But I saw him at HR Tech and you know what was so funny was, I think he married a Ukrainian recently. Joel (9m 10s): Did he? Okay. Jonathan (9m 12s): Yes. And just, you know, Joe's been in the space for so long, a guy who just really knows his stuff and just a great person. Which is, you know, it's not like it's a rare find in our space cuz we got a lot of really great people, but somebody who's just real and a good guy to be around too. Joel (9m 32s): Gee, Joe Stubb marrying an a Ukrainian woman. How am I not shocked by that? You know? Jonathan (9m 38s): Exactly. Joel (9m 38s): Probably took her on the boat and it was over from there. Anyway, we're happy for Joe and and thankful for him. All right. Who's your next shout out? Jonathan (9m 48s): Okay, so this is multiple. So with, you know, the slow down economy, recruiters unfortunately are again, usually the first to be let go. There is just a team of people out there trying to help each other. Katie Zucker, Hallie O'Neill recruiters at Amazon. Sarah White is an analyst we all know. sfx (10m 20s): Applause. Jonathan (10m 20s): So many people out there on LinkedIn trying to help other recruiters. This is not an easy time, but I just wanted to appreciate everyone who's spending their time to, you know, create opportunities, list them out, share on Twitter opportunities with others. That's what we need to do. Because this is, as anyone who knows listening, this is a very small community of people and it is community. We help each other a lot. Joel (10m 52s): Yeah. Jonathan (10m 52s): So. Congrats and well not, I mean, thanks for everyone who's, you know, doing their best to help each other out, because chances are at some point, I mean, the recruiting industry, it comes and goes, but that's we're here to do is just help each other out. We've been doing it for years and thanks for everyone who's helping out. Joel (11m 11s): Yeah. Like you and I learned in Pledgeship, little known fact. Jonathan and I are both Sigma Chis, albeit from different schools. Rising tide helps all boats. My next shout out goes to Tyler Weeks of Marriott. Tyler's a long term fan of the show. Anyway, Tyler went above and beyond. I was at iCIMS Inspire last week or the week before that and I saw that Tyler was speaking and I just said, Hey, dude, would, would you, what would I need to do to get you to wear our t-shirt on stage? And he was like, no problem, man, just make sure I get it. So I brought the T-shirt. Joel (11m 52s): I expected him to be in like some side room where he was talking about, you know, AI or whatever PhDs talk about at recruiting conferences. Well, turns out in the keynote part, the opening keynote with the CEO of iCIMS, the now outgoing CEO of iCIMS, he actually brings Tyler on stage with them. So Tyler comes out in a Chad and Cheese t-shirt talking to the CEO of iCIMS. Apparently they livestream this thing out to like 5,000 people. You know, the messages and stuff started coming in like, nice shirt, or I can't believe he wore your shirt, da da da. Joel (12m 35s): So, Tyler Weeks man, is a huge shout out! sfx (12m 38s): Applause. Jonathan (12m 39s): Nice. Joel (12m 39s): Nice is something else. So anyway, I know he is listening somewhere. I know he is enjoying Thanksgiving with his family, but Tyler, man, you are an Allstar dude. Thanks for wearing the shirt at iCIMS and especially wearing it at a time that you knew was on stage with the CEO. That was awesome. Jonathan (12m 59s): All right. And I got one last one and it's a kind of odd one. Some of you may know Rob Kelly, the founder of Ongig. I think he's a quiet guy, very smart guy. No one really talks about him. But Rob has done so much work in this space to help people understand ATSs. And he's got a monthly newsletter where people ask me all the time when I'm on sales calls and they're asked about, you know, which ATS should I buy? I'm like, who knows? I mean, there's like at least 30 variables that you have to consider before you even ask that question. Jonathan (13m 48s): That's a whole nother story. But Rob has done phenomenal work as far as talking about, in his newsletters, what ATSs are out there and, you know, just done a lot of data work. And so he's one of the unsung heroes in our space that I just don't think that many people talk about, cuz he's just heads down doing his work. Joel (14m 10s): Yep. Jonathan (14m 10s): But a founder and been in the space for a long time. Joel (14m 16s): Well, he is no longer anonymous cuz he's on HR's most dangerous podcast. Speaking of thankful, you gotta sign up for free shit, Jonathan. We're giving away all kinds of shit that you can be thankful for this holiday. We're talking about whiskey from our friends at Textkernel. We're talking about beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. We got t-shirts like the one that Tyler wore at the iCIMS event. Those are sponsored by our friends at JobGet. And if you're celebrating a birthday this month, our friends at Plum are giving away some rum. That's good marketing Jonathan. Rum with Plum every month if it's your birthday. Jonathan (14m 54s): Nice. Joel (14m 54s): But you can't win if you don't sign up. You gotta go to Chadcheese.com, click the free link and sign up. And also, if you're thankful for the podcast, leave us a review. Go to your favorite podcasting platform, give us a review. Positive or negative, doesn't matter. We just like to get some of the feedback. And that is it for our shoutouts. Let's get to some birthdays. And as some of you that listened last week, know that Chad skipped on the birthdays. So there are quite a few this week. And let's get to those. So again, if it's your birthday, you get a chance to win rum from Plum. Joel (15m 36s): Celebrating a birthday from the last couple weeks we got Jeff Herndon, Michelle Meahan, Kyla Fraser, Mason Wong, who actually won this month's Plum giveaway. Nichole Adamson, Quincy Valencia, the wonderful Jen Levine Reilly, Chris King, Neil Dunwoody by the way, we're trying to get a trip to Ireland scheduled to go see Neil, he just opened up a distillery. We'll see how that pans out. We got Deborah Szajngarten, hopefully I'm saying that correctly. Tracy Harmon, Frederic Pattyn, Victoria Conly, Katrina “Roman” Polanski. I put in the Roman, not her. Joel (16m 19s): Jennifer Sheridan. Jonathan (16m 21s): I was gonna say! Joel (16m 24s): Thomas Twomey, Anthony Scarpino, Kevin Wheeler, Noel Cocca, Michael Goldberg, De Ann Russell, Susan Burns, Jason Buss, Alex Murphy and Matt Charney. Everybody that's celebrating a birthday, that is a who's who's list of recruiting royalty. Jonathan (16m 37s): Yeah, that's, some real stars in there. Joel (16m 40s): Yeah, yeah, send 'em a note. Send him a note. Send him a happy birthday note. Send him some whiskey. I don't know. Travel is over for the year for us. Jonathan, wherever Chad is, is his last trip. Wanted to give a quick thank cuz we're thankful on Thanksgiving to Shaker Recruitment Marketing for supporting our travels and our bar tabs. Quite frankly, at many airports across the world, without them we could not do it. So big thanks to to Shaker. Next we have our foreign language shows. Have you heard one of our foreign language shows, Jonathan? Jonathan (17m 14s): I have not. English is about as far as I get. Joel (17m 17s): Well, our foreign language shows, you can listen to us now in German, which apparently is a lot angrier than the English version, which some people might prefer. We've got Spanish, French, and Portuguese because Chad is the new prince of Portugal. We gotta have a Portuguese version for that. Anyway. Jonathan (17m 37s): That's nice. Joel (17m 37s): Powered by our friends at Veritone who acquired our friends at Pando. So they're doing some fantastic things over there. Lastly, before we get to the good stuff, let's talk about Fantasy Football. All right, week 11 is in the books sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. Here's your leaderboard from number one to the basement. Number one. 1. Chris “Rock” Mannion 2. Matt Hilltopper 3. Serge “Fading into the “Boudreau 4. Joel “Stinky” Cheesman - that's me! 5. Chad Sowash-ed up 6. Dennis “The Menace” Tupper 7. Smokin’ Joe Wilkie 8. Christy Kelling It 9. James Gilliam & The Skipper 10. Joel (18m 19s): Iron Mike Schaefer 11. Jason “And the Argonauts” Putnam, who by the way was last year's champion. 12. Dan Wee-Willie Shoemaker rounds out the fantasy football lineup. All right, let's get to the good stuff. Chat with you Jonathan. Let's talk a little bit. You've got your finger to the pulse of recruiting. For those that don't know you, they know a little bit about you now give us a a Twitter bio. You got some kids, you're an entrepreneur. Like give us a little bit about you. Jonathan (18m 54s): Yeah, so I think the easiest way to understand me is I started one of the first 10 job boards in '96 when we were on dial up modem. I built a lot of job distribution stuff in the late nineties, then built a background screening company and now I'm in building text messaging and recruiting automation. And just for years, just been trying to solve one problem that is just encompassed my entire brain, which is 'how do we make it easier for candidates, qualified candidates to talk to recruiters?' And that's just spurred me for years. Jonathan (19m 34s): And married, got two kids, a daughter just went off to college and a son who's 16 and out driving a car. Joel (19m 44s): There you go. And that is Jonathan DuArt, everybody. So my favorite story about you goes back to 2008 and you had lived through the 2001, you know, dot com crash. So you had seen like kind of what our industry does, it does less so now. Jonathan (20m 0s): Yeah. Joel (20m 0s): Because we're more diversified and more like sort of tech focused as opposed to job posting focused. But in 2008 when the world ended, mortgage crisis, Bear Stearns, et cetera. You said, fuck it, you you laid everyone off at your company, which wasn't like a ton of people. Jonathan (20m 17s): Yeah. Joel (20m 17s): You, I guess you put in like Indeed backfill and the job board and just let that run with SEO and then you move the family to Thailand or Vietnam or some shit and just said, I'm gonna put my head down, wait for the storm to pass and then I'm gonna come back. I think that's the coolest shit, that I've heard in a long time. And I always think about you when I hear your name or see you. So I don't know if 2022 is starting to look like 2008? From the sounds of it, not so much. But if you do decide to do that again, please say goodbye and turn out the lights as you leave in California. Jonathan (20m 57s): Yeah, it was a weird time. And there's a whole backstory and I actually love, I think at HR Tech you introduced me to someone that time and in that same vein, certainly after several cocktails. But it, the truth of the matter was, is in 2008 I owned seven houses. I literally could not go bankrupt because of a bunch of legal reasons. And at the same time I owned a ton of SEO traffic. So I was able, my wife and I just decided like, this just sucks. Jonathan (21m 43s): So we literally, I couldn't go bankrupt. I couldn't even, I was just stuck and we had to foreclose all our houses except for one. We packed everything that we owned into a 10 by 10 storage unit, sold everything else, rented our house to our friends, for two years. And our intent was to take our three and five year old and travel the world for two years because I could live off the SEO from Indeed. Joel (22m 15s): Yeah. Jonathan (22m 15s): And, you know, it worked okay, but the economy just kept crashing. But it was like, I read the four hour work week and many people have, cuz it's almost been like a dream for people. I'm the only one I've ever mentioned that I've ever heard of that actually implemented it. But I don't think we're even close to that now. Like the economy right now, yes, there's tightening, there's a lot of weird things going on. People are getting laid off, especially in the Valley. We'll talk about that. Jonathan (22m 55s): But Macroeconomically, we're okay. There's just other things that are happening that are beyond our control as individuals. So yeah, I don't think we're going into a tailspin. I think we've had some bad numbers and I think they're gonna continue for a while. But I, the sky's not falling and I think in recruiting. I was even just looking up to, cuz we'll talk about it from turkeys. I mean, people are still hiring and they're still hiring recruiters. It's just a different market. Joel (23m 27s): Yeah, yeah. We're much more diversified and global than we were. Jonathan (23m 31s): Yeah. Joel (23m 31s): Back in 2008. So I know that the GoJobs just sort of zombies, zombies along. You're focused much more on the go hire the go be the chat conversational ai. Like what's the state of chat right now in terms of where that is? We saw a lot of companies, the AllyOs, the Myas, you know, get gobbled up in the last couple years. Like what do you see as the landscape for conversational ai/chatbots? Jonathan (24m 1s): I still think, we're super early and you know, it's weird, we've been doing, I think we're now, what, eight years into chatbots? I don't even remember. Joel (24m 15s): Yeah. Like Mya was 14, right? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan (24m 22s): So we're really early on, I think. So I started in this space 2016, released the first messaging chat bot for job search this week in 2016. Two days before Thanksgiving, I sent out a post on Facebook, 'Hey, here's this.' It went viral to 130 countries in 30 days. Joel (24m 49s): There you go. Jonathan (24m 50s): And so the thing is the tool works, you know, but it's the strategy around using the tool that's often the problem with implementing HR Tech. It's the engagement and how you make it work. So we're just getting there. You know, texting in the US is a phenomenal tool. People said, oh yeah, everyone's bot texting. I still don't think more than 10% of recruiters text. Joel (25m 20s): Really? Jonathan (25m 20s): And certainly don't do it in a automated way. So it's a huge opportunity. Still. The difference between what we're doing at Go Hire. Joel (25m 28s): That's a wild number. I'm gonna stop you there. 10%. Even though we've seen TextRecruit, Canvas, you what, you know, what you're doing. I mean these are integrated solutions into popular ATSs and you're saying it's still only about 10%. Jonathan (25m 49s): Yeah, and that's because even like, I think Paycom, Paycor, some of them have one on one texting ability, but the tool isn't smart. So it's a checkbox in the RFP rather than a tool that can really automate and help, especially in the hourly workforce cuz they don't read email and no one picks up the phone anymore. I always ask people this, I think the thing that, all I do on sales calls is ask. All I do is ask this. I ask clients, I go, when was the last time you answered the phone from a number you don't know? Jonathan (26m 38s): And I make it tangible. Because everyone has a blocker or everyone doesn't pick up the phone and because candidates do the same thing. And when you're trying to pitch a new technology to your boss to buy. When you can tangibly say no one's picking up the phone when I try to call, that's like, you know, when they say, you know, somebody moved our cheese or you know, my, whatever that book was, that's what's happening is the old tools just don't work anymore in the hourly space. Email and phone just is, they're not as effective as they used to be. Joel (27m 15s): Or in mail. Jonathan (27m 15s): It's just starting off. We're just still early. Joel (27m 19s): Yeah. So this is your one commercial for the show. For those that want to know more, would you send 'em to gohire.com? Jonathan (27m 31s): Yeah, gohire.com and it's all about just utilizing texting in what we call is recruiting automation for recruiters. Joel (27m 39s): Okay. Curious, you're in the Valley, which from Indiana at least looks like a shit show. Elon's doing his thing, hiring freezes, metaverse. Like what's the state of San Francisco in the Valley right now from someone who's there? Jonathan (27m 59s): Just like you guys see it? I mean, I think last time you were here, like, we drove by like a Tesla charging stations, like all over the place. It is a weird place. I mean, I love it cuz that's what I get off on, is like, you know, trying to find the next thing. Joel (28m 25s): Sure. Jonathan (28m 26s): But it is a shit show in the sense of what's going on with Twitter and Meta and like, I know, you're a big VR guy, which I think has a lot of practical purposes, but the whole Meta thing, like I just don't get it. Joel (28m 43s): Yeah. And crypto. Jonathan (28m 44s): Maybe I'm old, but like whatever otherwise. Yeah, go ahead. Joel (28m 48s): Well, cause for a while it was like all the best tech talent is going to blockchain. Do you see that? Are those people gonna exit and then find no jobs at Meta and other big companies? Jonathan (29m 5s): Yeah. Well here's, I was talking to somebody, the other day, an exec at LinkedIn, and I think there's two things to realize about the Valley, is that it's constantly, and it's not a valley if anyone doesn't really know that. It's an area like it's constantly regenerating itself. So, all the, you know, thousands of people that are getting laid off by Twitter and Facebook, they're going to take that knowledge and there are incredibly talented people at these companies. They're going to take that knowledge base that they learned, they're going to spread that into all these other companies that don't have that knowledge base. Joel (29m 48s): Yeah. Jonathan (29m 49s): So it's gonna keep growing that next level. And that's happened generation after generation in the Valley is you get really smart people. Like you look at PayPal, Elon Musk was there and that team spread out and then they grew the next wave and then they grew the next wave. Joel (30m 9s): Yeah. Jonathan (30m 10s): And they grew. So it's just another regeneration. It's not a death spiral and not all of the employees that got let go. I mean, Twitter had a lot of people here and same with Meta, but they're gonna get picked up and moved around. Maybe they're not gonna get a quarter million dollar paycheck for do as an admin, but yeah, they're gonna be, it's gonna solve itself. Joel (30m 32s): And I some of the great next startups will come from this group of people. Right? Jonathan (30m 41s): Absolutely. There's just a lot of talented people who are willing to, I think the difference in the Valley is that people come here or, you know, when they come in as college students or you know, post-college, when they come in, it's all about, we're not looking for security jobs, we're not looking for, I'm gonna retire here. They're looking for option packages, they're looking for, you know, it's the next runway. But I think there's a collective knowledge that it's never gonna last where you are. So it, you're always looking for an off ramp. Joel (31m 24s): Yeah. So there, I heard a few predictions in there. Gimme one more before we move on to our Jive Turkeys for 2023. Jonathan (31m 33s): Well, I think for predictions wise, I think, you know, this next year's gonna still be tough because we're still gonna be doing economic stuff, but I think it's all gonna come through. I think we're gonna see it all, you know, change. I, I don't think we're gonna see much of a true recession, where people are getting laid off as much as you would normally see a recession. Especially in the Valley. There are people gonna lose their jobs, but at the same time, people are gonna take some time off and they're gonna hang out with their family on holidays and then they're gonna get right back to work again. Joel (32m 5s): Got it, got it. All right, man. Let's get into the Jive Turkeys, shall we? Well, Chad can't totally disengage from the show. He sent in his own Turkey of the year, if you will. So I'm gonna play that little sound bite and we can comment or not and move on to the next Jive Turkey. Chad (32m 28s): All right guys, it's time for Turkeys from London. Yes. They have turkeys in London apparently. And my Turkey goes to Indeed. Yeah, I know it's a surprise. Indeed pitching pay per apply starts, as something new when it's nothing more than just 2008 PPC campaigns. Pre 2-pane obviously. Give it a new name, a higher price and watch the suckers come running. Now let me clarify. Indeed really isn't the Turkey here? Okay. The turkeys are all the TA and recruiting professionals, including the recruitment marketing agencies, that are once again turning a blind eye. Chad (33m 12s): Fooled once, shame on Indeed. Fool twice, shame on you. Fooled again and again and again. Well, you're a fucking turkey. Joel (33m 20s): Figures the first F-bomb would come from London in a prerecorded message from Chad. Indeed had a lot of turkey moments this year. Anything stood out from you? I have one as well later in the show, but what's your take on Indeed in it's current state? Jonathan (33m 39s): I think that people need to stop drinking from the fire hose and think about, just look, like do the deep, like you got a couple weeks now where there's not a lot of hiring going on. Just look at your process because there's other opportunities. Listen to the show. Go back and hear about, you know, PandoLogic and some of these companies that can do things a little differently. Joel (34m 8s): Yeah. Jonathan (34m 11s): But take part of your budget and experiment. Cause programmatic, to me it's crazy that companies aren't going to programmatic and I don't think anyone on this show, hasn't looked at programmatic. And if you haven't take this time over the next two weeks to figure it out, because you're gonna save money, you're gonna get better candidates and that's the end of the game. I mean, I know there's a whole bunch of things you have to do in HR and tech in recruiting, but it doesn't make any sense. It just keeps sipping, sucking on the Indeed tit and expecting something different to happen. Joel (34m 55s): That is good, good advice. All right. My first turkey goes to ZipRecruiter. Okay. This is from August. ZipRecruiter announced that the company had joined President Biden's call to action to address the nationwide teacher and school staff shortage. I don't know if you remember this, they were on stage or at a table with Indeed in Handshake as well. However, Zip went the extra mile. They actually launched a new online job portal schooljobsnearme.org, which was powered by ZipRecruiter. Sounds really great. Right? Sounds like something that a headline is just made for, unfortunately ZipRecruiter didn't really put a whole hell of a lot of effort into school jobs near me. Joel (35m 46s): There's no link from ZipRecruiter for teacher jobs or school jobs or link to schooljobsnearme.org. The only link on ziprecruiter.com that I found was their cookie policy page. There's no link in the footer, there's nothing in site map links, there's no ads on Google when you search school jobs near me or education jobs. So, they're spending no money there. There's nothing on YouTube that would highlight school jobs near me. This looks just like a real fucking circle jerk of let's get some great PR, let's get some headlines, let's get some pictures with the president and not do anything that we say that we're gonna do. Joel (36m 29s): To me, this was a massive Turkey from ZipRecruiter from last year. Comments. Jonathan (36m 37s): Yeah. I get that, you know. Yes. You're taking pictures with the president and so you gotta have some sort of PR angle, but I think I'm with you. Is ZipRecruiter's better than that. Joel (36m 50s): Yeah. Jonathan (36m 50s): And I just don't know why they didn't execute. I mean, they have a great team. They could have done something better. Joel (36m 58s): And maybe my comments will be inspiration to do more. All right. You gotta, turkey. What's up? Jonathan (37m 8s): Yeah, so mine just goes, I mean, what we've already been talking about is Elon Musk and Twitter. The whole HR shit show that's going on over there. And the weird thing about, it's not about the Valley or anything else, it's just the way you handle people. And in our space, and the interesting thing is they're hiring again. Joel (37m 35s): Hiring back some of the people they laid off too. Jonathan (37m 38s): Yeah, maybe. But I mean, you know, so if you're a recruiter, I mean a contractor recruiter, you could probably make a ton of money at the moment cuz they're gonna need anyone and everyone and from tech side and everything else. But just the way you treat people, I think that Chad's gonna be rolling over in his grave that he's not on this one. I think Elon's become the new Jeff Bezos as far as, you know, how you treat people and your community. And I mean I think he's gonna get the biggest turkey award for the next decade cuz I was talking late last night about it, which is I think he just hit his own Tesla moment, where Tesla sold, you know, gave his shares back to Westinghouse and died poor. Jonathan (38m 35s): And I think Elon just hit his inflection point of, he doesn't know what the shoot he's dealing with and he just screwed himself. Joel (38m 48s): Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen a personal brand decline outside of maybe racist or, you know, just outlandish statements, than Elon doing what he's done. And I think that to your point, there's a lot of worship, you know, technocratic worship going on that that Elon knows what he's doing. We're too stupid. He's gonna turn this thing around. I'm not sure he has a clue. I think he's bitten off. He's the dog. You've heard this, he's the dog that caught the car. And what that does from here, I have no idea. Yeah, he's a massive turkey on multiple shows. I like that. He took a spin at recruitment on that one and the talent exodus is gonna be interesting. Joel (39m 31s): Now what I find intriguing is, will all the other, you know, boards and shareholders look at this, if he turns around and say, oh, well if Elon did that with, you know, half of the staff or less? We need to lay off half of our staff as well because he's smarter than all of us. I hope that it doesn't become a contagion and that everyone follows suit by laying off 50 to 75% of their developers. Jonathan (40m 1s): Yeah, I don't think anyone, you know, if you talk to most CFOs they're not thinking that way at all. It just, yeah, I have a great quote. I can't remember it specifically at the moment, but you're just coming from the entrepreneurial side. But your company is only as valuable as the systems that you create. And it's, everyone's got dreams, but your dreams don't create a system. It's the value of the company is in the system. So you don't just destroy the system. Joel (40m 41s): Yeah. Jonathan (40m 42s): As a way, and in many cases the system is still people. In most all cases. So I don't think other companies gonna follow suit that way. Joel (40m 49s): How Silicon Valley of you to make the statement that you just made. All right, dude, let's take a quick break and we'll get to some more jive turkeys. All right. Right. Jonathan, I know that, you know, Sovren, the staple from many companies, but if you know Sobren, and I know most of our listeners do, actually all of our listeners do, cuz they're a they're a longtime sponsor show. You need, you need to get to know Textkernel who acquired Sovren a year or so ago. Since 2001, Textkernel has been delivering AI power technology to companies looking to better connect people at job ads. Joel (41m 31s): So whether you're talent sourcing, looking for a matching engine, or frankly the best resume parser in the world Textkernel with Sovren technology that they've acquired is the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. If you're a vendor, staffing firm, corporation consultancy, whoever, if you haven't checked out Textkernel, you'd need to do that asap, like as of yesterday. You love Sovren, you know, Sovren, I promise you'll love Textkernel as well. And by the way, if you haven't listened to our recent interview from Unleash in Paris with Textkernel CEO Gerard Mulder, check out our archives in Chadcheese.com today. Joel (42m 13s): Some great insight from Gerard, as well as some insights into the future where the product's going, where the industry's going. Check that out at chadcheese.com today. But no matter what you do after this show, go out to Textkernel.com. That's www.textkernel.com. Jonathan (42m 41s): I also wanna put a little note on that is Joel (42m 43s): Sure. Footnote Baby Jonathan (42m 44s): Show. Yeah, the show with Gerard, a lot of great learnings in there, especially from a CEO merging two companies, understanding the market. There's a lot of things that can go wrong in M and A, and I think that this is one of those partnerships I think you talked about it, that is gonna work for a very long time and positively affect our industry. Joel (43m 8s): Yeah, yeah. And if you know Sovren, you know, Robert Ruff, a bit of a wildcat, a bit of, you know, not doing business as usual, Textkernel's, building a kick ass team here in the States and building an infrastructure to really take the company to another level. So yeah, appreciate the comments. If you haven't listed that interview, go out to chadcheese.com and and check that out today. Back to the turkeys. I'm gonna give an Indeed Jive Turkey as well. They, they've had a lot to be basted for this year, but to me, going back in time with you, and because you have a historical relevance to this, when Indeed and SimplyHired and Jobster were indexing jobs back in the day, this is '05, '06, '07. Joel (43m 59s): I remember the day when Jason Goldberg from Jobster told me that, Craigslist had given them a cease and desist as well as Indeed and everyone else not to scrape or index their job postings. To me it turns out that was a pretty good idea. Jonathan (44m 17s): Yeah. Joel (44m 18s): Craigslist is this little company, I think they're the most profitable per person company in the world. Like that decision was something that they made. And when Google for Jobs launched in 2017 and Indeed was like, we're not gonna play. To me it harken back to that moment when Craigslist said, you're not gonna index our stuff. And I thought that it was a good solution at the time. This year, however, after five years, Indeed has decided that they're going to do the walk of shame. They're gonna bend over, they're gonna give it to Google to finally win the day. Joel (44m 58s): And Indeed Jobs are now listed on Google for Jobs, which to me is a major Jive Turkey moment. Now it probably is paying off. Our friend, Chris Russell recently noticed from a quarterly report, I believe, that traffic had spiked to the tune of 50 million globally last quarter or per month. Which to me is probably no small way due to Indeed jobs suddenly showing up on Google for Jobs. And now we're getting word that Indeed pricing for certain customers is going up a hundred plus percent. Joel (45m 38s): So all that free Google traffic is translating into real costs for employers. Congratulations back to Jive Turkey. Indeed. Comments? Jonathan (45m 47s): Yeah. Yeah. Back to sucking on the Indeed tit. Is, I don't know this and I think most of us don't in the spaces, like what's the actual cost per candidate? That comes out of, I know some of our, some of the co friends on the show will be able to tell you right away, but if you can't benchmark your cost, as a TA leader, if you can't benchmark your cost of candidate acquisition from your recruiting spend and you're not going to programmatic company to look at alternatives or other ways to change your, what we call like the pipeline or your process, your conversion, it's not always just buying more ads. Jonathan (46m 47s): It's about optimizing the funnel, the recruiting funnel. And, I think everyone listening at TA, there are ways probably to reduce your spend and convert better and get better candidates. You just gotta talk to the right people and just don't write the check. Joel (47m 8s): Amen. You got another Turkey. Who you got? Jonathan (47m 12s): So mine, this isn't on an individual or company, but, I think you guys, I know you and Chad would greatly appreciate this. The endless funding of shit companies in HR tech, from people that have no idea what's going on in the space and think that they're gonna create something new that's been failed five times over. So that's to, you know, the venture capitalists that love good business ideas, but have no reality in what we do because this is a very, very complicated space in the sense of, like when I talk to clients, I literally have to say, okay, let me understand your config. Jonathan (48m 2s): Like how do you run your process? There is no two processes even within the same company for the same employ, for different rounds of employees. I've worked at VC backed companies in HR tech and they're thinking that staffing and HR are the same things. Joel (48m 27s): Yeah. Jonathan (48m 27s): So it's the knowledge base of understanding that this is a very, very different area and anyone who's pumping money in, and then I just, the reason I bring it up as a turkey is HR teams just have to deal with people calling them who have, it's just nonsense that they're trying to sell stuff. Joel (48m 45s): Yeah. Jonathan (48m 45s): That is just never gonna work. Cuz they just don't, they just can't tie it out. So that just pisses me off, not only as the founder in the space, but somebody who has to talk to clients who spent money on something and it's a risk adverse space. And when you've got, you know, a great salesperson who sells you something that's just, you know, a pig with lipstick on it. It's really tough to be able to invest again. Joel (49m 29s): Yeah. So question in that vein, we saw a lot of companies in the last few years become unicorns based on the work from home, work from anywhere, pandemic inspired, sort of new workplace. We saw Remote, we saw Deel, we saw Oyster, we saw Velocity Global, we saw HiBob, Personio, like the list goes on and on of companies that got billion dollar valuations. Since then, we've seen companies that we know, Snapchat, Facebook, et cetera, like super declines in terms of valuations, stock prices. Jonathan (50m 6s): Yeah. 75 percent and then some. Joel (50m 9s): What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen to all these companies? Jonathan (50m 13s): Atom bomb? I mean, you're gonna see it's gonna be worse than Hiroshima for some of that stuff. Joel (50m 22s): Wow. Jonathan (50m 22s): Because, and they're payroll companies, right? And so here's the thing is, how could a company that doesn't have an international presence, doesn't have the systems, doesn't have the relationships? Be worth more than ADP? Joel (50m 39s): Yeah. Jonathan (50m 39s): The numbers just don't, you know. So the other thing is in VC world, so, the thing is like, they have a powder keg, they call it the powder keg, how much money they can deploy. And they're sitting on tons of cash right now the VCs are, because they had a lot of really big as exits over the last couple years. So they're throwing money at things that are less risky. And you also have private equity companies coming in really into the startups space. So there's a lot of money coming in. Jonathan (51m 20s): It's really tightened up a lot lately. But. Joel (51m 22s): Yeah. Jonathan (51m 22s): You know, when you can write a $50 million check, it's easier to do that than the right five, $10 million checks. Joel (51m 32s): Yeah. Jonathan (51m 33s): But your risk is still really high. So they're still doing that with these big companies, but I just don't think the math works. Joel (51m 45s): Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, my biggest turkey of the year goes to our friends at Wells Fargo Bank. This is from June, the New York Times. For many open positions at Wells Fargo, employees would interview in quotes, "diverse candidate", the bank's term for a woman or person of color and keeping with the bank's years long informal policy. But someone there noticed that often the so-called diverse candidate would be interviewed for a job that had already been promised to someone else. Oh shit, the whistleblower was fired. Apparently they retaliated against him for telling his superiors that the fake interviews were inappropriate morally wrong and ethically wrong. Joel (52m 31s): Well, no shit, but wait, there's more, Jonathan. Seven current and former Wells Fargo employees said that they were instructed by their direct bosses or human resources managers in the bank's wealth management unit to interview diverse candidates as well. Even though the decision had already been made to give the job to another candidate. Five others said they were aware of the practice or helped to arrange it. Wells Fargo, you take the stuffing this year for my biggest turkey, and you'll probably end up on my naughty list for December as well. Joel (53m 15s): Big Shame on Big Turkey, Wells Fargo. Jonathan (53m 15s): I don't, like, I know you didn't know this and a lot of people probably don't, but I built some of the artificial intelligence chatbots for Wells Fargo and it's a mess. I mean, it's really, it's truly a mess. It's just they can't get over the, you know, the stuff that happened in the past. They just won't own up to it. And, because they won't own up to, to it. And obviously it's still happening. It's a leadership problem and the company is just never going to get around it until they start chopping heads at the top. But welcome to big banks, you know, they're too big to fail, they're too hard to, you know, toss out. Joel (54m 2s): Yeah. Jonathan (54m 2s): It's a but it's a truly a cultural issue at Wells Fargo. Joel (54m 9s): Yep. Yep. Alright, quick break and then we'll get to our final turkey of the episode. So another longtime sponsor, Jonathan, PandoLogic. I assume you know Terry and the guys over there. Jonathan (54m 24s): Absolutely. Yep. Great Solutions. Joel (54m 26s): Yeah, I mentioned, I mentioned that they were powering our foreign language podcasts through the technology Veritone, which acquired PandoLogic last year. You already probably know Pando is a fully autonomous recruiting platform. AI empowered recruiting is powerful recruiting, which is why top employers trust PandoLogic. But I wanna highlight what Pando is going to do with the power of Veritone. The shit that Veritone is doing, and I've gotten sort of a sneak peek is pretty mind blowing. And if they start taking, you know, foreign language on the fly, video with different languages, interacting with candidates and customers, it's really mind blowing. Joel (55m 8s): So if you've looked at Pando in the past, if you've passed on it, do yourself a favor and connect with them again. Get a refresher on their products. If they can give you a sneak peek into what's going on. Take a look at Veritone and what they're doing and kind of use your imagination to say, if they took Veritone stuff and put it in recruiting, what would it look like? And that'll hopefully give you somewhat of a picture of what Pando's doing, but I guarantee it'll blow your mind. Go to pandologic.com today. You can also go to Veritone to find out more. Joel (55m 49s): Again, that's www.pandologic.com. Go there today. Jonathan (55m 50s): Awesome. Joel (55m 51s): All right. Jonathan (55m 52s): That's gonna be cool to see how Terry and the team pull that stuff off. That's gonna be a fun thing to watch. Joel (56m 2s): Yeah. And it sort of dovetails into what you're doing with conversational stuff and chat stuff. So if that becomes a video of a person in multiple languages, like it gets really, really interesting. So yeah, it's not just hyperbole that I'm saying go check out what Pando's doing and keep your eye on on them. Keeping your eye on one thing is another thing that you should do when you're in an office when someone's got a pee pee problem, Jonathan. And this brings us to our final turkey. Hopefully all that Thanksgiving dinner has digested by the time you listen to the show, because this next turkey might make you lose your mash potatoes. Joel (56m 51s): This, out of Houston, Texas. Charges have been filed against 50 year old, Lucio Catarino Diaz, a janitor who told investigators quote "that his sickness led him to commit reprehensible and unspeakable acts against employees at a doctor's office leaving multiple employees with herpes." Oh shit. You don't get rid of that overnight, Jonathan. How you asked did they get herpes? The janitor was infected with Simplex one and allegedly past the disease onto his coworkers after repeatedly urinating in water bottles. Joel (57m 34s): The jig was up when one victim removed the cap on her water and noticed that there was a yellowish liquid inside. Oh. The woman smelled it and realized that it was urine. Security cameras caught the would be peepee perpetrator. And he's now facing multiple charges and sure to see some jail time unless that insanity plea takes hold. Jonathan, this may be the best argument I've heard for working from home that I've ever heard. What are your thoughts? Jonathan (58m 14s): How do the guys at JP Morgan Chase feel about that? Joel (58m 18s): Well, you're working with them. You can ask them. Listen dude, thanks for joining us. Jonathan (58m 23s): Jay-Z Joel (58m 24s): Oh no, it's not Jay-Z. It's shit. Anyway. Anyway, dude. Jonathan (58m 27s): Oh yeah, yeah. Joel (58m 28s): Happy Thanksgiving to you. Thanks for coming on the show. We went really long. Hopefully people found some value out of it. But other than that, enjoy your holiday and yeah. Jonathan (58m 39s): Thank you. Joel (58m 39s): Yeah, it's all good man. Jonathan (58m 39s): Thank you so much. SFX (58m 38s): Sit down. Alright. It ain't cool being no Jive Turkey so close to Thanksgiving. Joel (58m 39s): Give me a We out. Jonathan (58m 38s): We out. Joel (58m 39s): We out. Happy Thanksgiving.

There’s all kinds debt. Like our bar tab. Don’t even get us started. Or technical debt, the kind that makes life difficult of developers everywhere, but especially the tech behind a lot of HR tech. That’s why we’ve invited Sean Luitjens, vice president of product management for Korn Ferry Intelligence Cloud to the podcast. After a walk down Memory Lane, highlighting Sean’s days at Monster in the ‘90s, we come back to the 21st Century and talk about issues creating headaches for tech teams today. Additionally, we discuss smart questions customers (that’s probably you) can ask vendors to make sure landmines aren’t stepped on in the future. We also explore if the technical debt can be a good thing, and what the hell is wrong with LinkedIn and its crazy high debt. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah, it's your favorite degenerates, AKA the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, the Bart to my Homer, Chad is in the house, and we welcome today... [applause] Joel: Sean Luitjens, Vice President of Product Management for Korn Ferry Intelligence Cloud to the show. Sean, welcome. Sean Luitjens: Hello. Chad: This dude's a dinosaur, man. You can see. He's actually in Jurassic Park right now. Sean Luitjens: Yeah, yeah. Joel: Yeah, there's a Brontosaurus behind him right now. Jesus. [laughter] Chad: Where the hell are you at, Sean? Before we get into the Twitter stuff, where the hell are you at? Sean Luitjens: Yeah, I'm in the Azores, hanging out in Portugal. I'm working my way across the ocean. Next year, I'll hit the Algarve, but this island made it partway this time. Chad: Okay. No, that's a good stepping stone. Maybe Madeira, and then you're welcome in the Algarve any time. It's freaking gorgeous. Joel: It's shown in the first interview we've had that he's outdoors, that he's literally parked his bike on the side of the road to talk to us. Chad: I think so, at least with the ones that we've had video, that's what we know. Sean, give the audience a little bit about you. You're VP, as Joel said, of product management over at Korn Ferry, but give us a little Twitter bio about you, triathlete, that kind of stuff. Sean Luitjens: Wow. Yeah, so I'm glad you didn't ask about work experience 'cause I'm so freaking old. It'll take a long time. But mostly... Joel: Yeah, your eight-page resume. Let's go over that. Sean Luitjens: No, no. So yeah, that piece is basically miscellaneous product stuff, talent acquisition and pay type of things, basically everywhere around the software space. Nothing as an HR practitioner 'cause that job, honestly, looks like it sucks 'cause you have to deal with all the employees while still trying to solve the problems. Other than that, yeah, I'm at Korn Ferry now, and married most of the kids off the payroll. So I'm working... Got one left out of three, which will be a big momentous day for me. And then I have... You're making fun of me working outside here. I have done a couple of podcasts from the trail or two. So I'm a big fan and a work remoter. Chad: Nomad, baby. That's right, the nomad life. I love it. So Sean and I both come from around the same place, so does Joel, but Sean and I have an interesting relationship because I was with Online Career Center back in '99. Sean actually, you joined the Monster Board in '98, didn't you? Sean Luitjens: Yeah, I was there ahead of you. I was there in the good days. Chad: Yes. Well, yeah, when we were printing fucking money. S?: Alright, alright, alright. Chad: But we've had so many listeners that we talk about technical debt all the time and we just know it because it's ingrained in our upbringing in tech, especially when it comes to recruitment tech. And most of our HR practitioners, there are many of our listeners that are out there that really don't understand technical debt. So I wanna bring in a product guy who's been around the block who knows this shit, not too much in-house stories. So that's why we are here today. So your first gig in this industry was what? Tell us a little bit about. Sean Luitjens: Yeah, so I'd come over from Fidelity actually to show how old... I'll just claim myself and not you guys. I helped kind of put together some of the 401K system at Fidelity and met Jeff Tailor along the way. We had put some online ads from some newspapers Fidelity had bought and came over to the Monster Board. So I was a product/tech person. And not long after that, you kinda had TMP Worldwide had kind of stealthily acquired the Monster Board and Online Career Center, which was kind of interesting back in the day when there were like six job boards, they decided to consolidate two right away. Chad: Two, yeah. Sean Luitjens: And so you really already had, to be honest, technology was changing even back then pretty quick. So you already had our tech stack, which was completely different than Online Career Center's tech stack coming together, and how do you deal with and take the best of those and throw them together? And for those of us that can remember that long ago, we merged and then bought a Super Bowl ad. And so nothing makes friends with the people on the other side when you're trying to consolidate things and a real hard deadline. Joel: Can I give you an outsider's perspective on how that went and not knowing any of the inner workings of it? Sean Luitjens: Yeah. Joel: It looked like you basically took OCC and slapped Monster's logo on the website. Chad: We'll get into that. We'll get into that. Sean Luitjens: Yeah. Joel: You guys are insiders. I was on the outside looking in. That's my perspective of how this thing happened. Chad: So I'll dig into that here in a second, then we'll get Sean's side, too. But first and foremost, let's dig into what is technical debt? So originally coined by computer scientist, Ward Cunningham in 1992, technical debt is the idea that building short-term solutions to technical systems incurs a set of trade-offs, resulting in future obligations that must be repaid in the form of engineering work. So it's kind of like using bubble gum to close up a hole in the dam instead of actually taking the time and resources to shore up your actual structure. Anything you wanna add to that, Sean? Sean Luitjens: Well, the concerning part is that term is not that much older than me being in the industry. It's probably not good when words come out. [laughter] Joel: It came in with you. Maybe you're responsible for it. Sean Luitjens: Yeah, I'm the creator of technical debt. Yeah, I think that's right. I think what's interesting is most decisions companies make, and I say most 'cause we can come up with stories of things where shit just went completely wrong out of the gate, but most of those decisions, if you put them in isolation, tend to be not bad decisions, right? Something's not going to break, and so you decide to go after the revenue instead of fixing your technical debt. And like credit card debt, it just sits there and piles on and then you have another year of interest, another year of interest. But most of those decisions aren't bad. I'll show my age. Windows 3.1 was one of the most solid platforms you could drop anything on. And so there was a period of time when I was at Mercer, it was so hard to go get investment to write a new system because people would ask, "What's your up time?" It's a 100%, but I'm gonna have to go to the old folks' home to get someone to write APL for DOS on Windows 3.1 pretty soon. And so when do you tackle that? But I'd argue most of those decisions taken on their own aren't bad. It's just that they sum up over time. Chad: Let me give you my first experience with technical debt. So I was in sales over on the Online Career Center site, so on the OCC site, and we had our sister, the Monster Board, and we would use other job boards to find leads. It just makes sense. You'd use the newspaper job boards. But if somebody was already using a job board, you knew they already bought in, right? And at that point, we were educating people on what the Internet was, let alone what [chuckle] doing online ads were. Chad: So anyway, I noticed that Monster Board was timing out every day around 2:00 PM, right? So that's when I started calling on the leads that I got from Monster on 2:00 PM every day. So I'd start calling them and I just would ask them, "Hey, where are you doing your ads?" and they would say, "On the Monster Board." I was like, "Is that still alive? I don't think it works anymore." But that was all because of technical debt. The infrastructure that the Monster Board built was very short term and it wasn't built like Online Career Center. So to kind of like answer Joel's question, yes, what happened on the flip-over in January of '99 was they took all the monsters and the colors and they put it on OCC and they redirected, pretty much redirected everything to OCC. Now, I knew this from a backend standpoint because I was a sales guy and I had to do demos every single day. Right? I had everybody calling me from Maynard, Massachusetts, all the salespeople, 'cause they didn't know what this new platform was. [laughter] So Monster Board, pretty much talk about the technical debt that you guys had to deal with on a daily basis. Sean Luitjens: Yeah, I mean when I got there, I mean that was the thing, they really... They were working in trailers, getting it out. And still today actually, the job board business is a marketing business. Basically, how do I get consumers to show up in B2C space? It's, how cool does it look? Right? And so it looked cool, and it was. One of the reasons we went to Online Career Center's tech stack was there wasn't a Home Depot in Maynard, Mass., and so I couldn't buy enough duct tape to keep things jammed up. And that's right. I think that was the case. And to be honest, in the back office, you really look at it and you say, "Here's the tech stack we're on. Here's the tech stack you guys are on. We've got four months to get this right." And it was just on a better tech stack. It was a little more recent and it was actually the difference between an Oracle or Microsoft stack and you looked at it and they had just done a better job of planning for the future side. And so we took the best of both worlds. Chad: In January of '99, when you flipped the switch, tell that story, number one, and then number two, the load that it took on Super Bowl day. Sean Luitjens: Oh man, I don't even remember the stats, the load, but I'll tell you, you talk about everyone else was enjoying Super Bowl ads and how stoked they were that our ad was on there and there had to be a couple of the guys at Indy and myself, we were like ill, just sitting there with fire extinguishers ready next to the server farm 'cause that's when you hosted your own, you're like, "Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please." I mean, the traffic spiked back in those days 'cause obviously you go from a not big number, now the numbers are so huge, to hundreds of thousands to millions of users. It was insane to watch and you're like... And then by halftime, we were like, "Oh, I'm still employed and we've got huge numbers and we're off and running." Joel: It didn't crash, did it? Sean Luitjens: No, no. Joel: I mean, I remember everyone at our company was like, "Monster's gonna die. They're just gonna die." And they didn't. So congrats to you. That was a thing in the '90s that happened, right? [overlapping conversation] Chad: OCC backbone, baby. Sean Luitjens: Yeah. [laughter] Joel: OCC was the best. Sean Luitjens: But the hard part of that tech debt stuff is, like Chad mentioned, is how it all starts is getting people to convert. So you do have Monster people who made good decisions at the time, got it going, it obviously had a huge brand, right? And you've gotta get them to agree to make a change. And that change management piece is huge to this because you gotta get somebody to admit, especially if you've got long-term employees, that what you did just isn't good anymore. Chad: The biggest name on that is Jeff Taylor. I mean Jeff is the one who actually... He instigated this because I think he saw that they were coming to a bridge that wasn't built yet. And he wanted something bigger. He knew that they had the brand, but to be able to technically get to where he needed to, they were gonna have to rebuild the entire fucking system. So why not just merge the two? Intro: But that's what good leaders sometimes know. They're good at what they're good at and they punt on crap they're not, right? And JT was like, "I'm not a tech guy, so a couple of us from Monster go away with the OCC people and you come back and tell me what's not gonna implode in January and you have to sign your name to it." Look, even if I was on the Monster side, think something like a Super Bowl, you're like, "I kinda wanna keep it 'cause it was ours, but I also wanna be employed in February. So I'm gonna pick the best available player to win." Joel: Can we come into the 21st century now, guys? Is that... Sean Luitjens: We can. [laughter] Joel: Okay. The consumer side '90s was great. So the perspective from the consumer business, the B2B stuff and with the ATS's and things happening, my perspective is that the debt that has been incurred is largely a part of salespeople and the buyers wanting customization, wanting sales to be made and those customizations happening because they want sales to happen. And ultimately down the road, when you get to 20, 25, 30 customers, the customization piece really breaks the machine. Am I right on that? And how did it get solved? At what point did we say, "Okay, stop it, we need to create standards in our tech and not customize everything"? Sean Luitjens: Well, real quick, I wanna come up to today, but if we remember Recruit Soft, Recruit Soft was one of the very first applicant tracking systems that had a standardized rollout for every single one of their customers. So you couldn't come in and customize anything. I mean it was just... And again, we're talking early, early days. Now, they did that for a few reasons. First and foremost, from an onboarding standpoint, it made it much easier. From a sales standpoint, it made it much easier. Right? So from an ops standpoint, it was much easier. But from a technical debt standpoint, you could last a hell of a lot longer if you could standardize. Then a lot of money came and customization became a part of what they did. They changed their name to Taleo and we are where we are today. S?: Go ahead, Sean. Sean Luitjens: Well the opposite of that though is brass ring at the time, if you wanted a configured system, you could get anything you wanted, like anything, you can pay for it. But they got to somewhere around, I don't know exactly, 25, 30 clients, as you mentioned Chad, and then if they wanted to change a button from blue to red, they had to roll it out 25 times 'cause they had 25 different strings of code running out there. Chad: It's buggy as shit. Sean Luitjens: And I think we're in a better state now. If you jump up, 'cause I know Joel wants to get into the current decade, the Agile methodology, if people are on that, you can roll things out much better and it's just a prioritization issue. But to your... You still have the same fundamental problem of, "It's working. Do I kick it down another quarter, two quarters before I deal with technical debt because I've got this giant client who wants something?" Now, when you roll it out nowadays, you obviously roll it out for when you roll it out for all. Who pays for it? We can put that on the other side. So that technical debt from that, having multiple strings of code, that just doesn't generally happen. At least if you're decent in the product and dev side, that just shouldn't happen now. The tools are better. But you still create technical debt, though. Chad: That's a hell of a caveat, by the way. [laughter] Sean Luitjens: Yeah, yeah. There's still people hanging on to that stuff. Well, and you still have people that are on tools that are even 10 years old, right? So let's not even go that old. You and I chatted once before. You mentioned your LinkedIn just turned 20, which, God, did I feel old when somebody said that. They're gonna have tech debt. There's gonna be companies with tech debt out there that you wouldn't think have tech debt. And when do you solve those things under the covers? Joel: And I guess rolling into that as well is, should customers care? I mean, it's not really my problem if your shit doesn't work. Should customers be asking questions to make sure that shit doesn't break down the road, to make sure that they're buying a tech that is standardized or is built for flexibility and growing? Sean Luitjens: Yeah, I mean, I think customers should 'cause obviously if you talk to, with Chad on, it's always fun to make fun of sales guys. Sales guys can be either your best friend as a product person... Joel: Easy target. Sean Luitjens: Or they can be your worst enemy, right? They come back and tell you what they just sold type of thing. Getting the product team in and just asking some simple questions around, "Do you have a roadmap?" you'd be surprised how many people are like, "Well, we don't have a roadmap." Well, if they don't have a roadmap, they're probably not thinking far enough ahead to deal with the tech debt. And you can ask them basic questions around, "Well, what percentage of your dev is for tech debt?" Chad: Well, can we see the roadmap? I've heard so many people talk about said roadmap and it's just total... It's much vaporware is what they're selling in the first place. Now, I do have an angle from the sales standpoint. If the C-suite themselves understood what really drove business and they stop putting so much emphasis on sales and giving them so much power, this shit wouldn't happen as much. Sean Luitjens: Yeah, but there's... Well, now it's a quarterly thing, right? So you look at it every quarter and you can look at your annual plan and put it together, and you basically are saying... They want new revenue, right? So the assumption from management and CEOs, especially public companies is everything that you had this year is gonna happen again next year. Well, you know this Chad, right? I mean, they don't wanna talk about renewal. Renewal should be 100%. And so you got clients on a platform. And that's going to work. And so now they wanna know, "How do I get the next dollars? What's the next new cool thing to help me? What are clients asking for? This client needs this to sign, et cetera." And if you don't clear that old, your churn goes up and then instead of having to get 10% new, you gotta go get 15% or 20% new just to get to the same line. And that's the tech debt discussion that's really, really hard 'cause companies are based on how much additional profit and revenue you had. That's just the way it is. Chad: Well, talking about LinkedIn, we're talking about a company that's 20 years old, and we're always making fun of them because they're coming up with shit like Instagram features and things of that nature that, to me, it might drive engagement, but for the most part, it's not gonna drive sales. So they have old infrastructure. They are dealing with tech debt on a daily basis. What does a company like LinkedIn do? Joel: And I'd love to know your thoughts on Microsoft owning them and how that plays into LinkedIn's problems. Chad: Or does it? Joel: Or not. Sean Luitjens: I mean, look at it as there's an opportunity there to get a quality product in place, right? It's hard to fix tech debt, let's just be honest. It's like anyone's bill, your mortgage, hard to pay off in one chunk. So you've gotta get somebody with some rigor to step in and say, "What's the plan to get rid of the debt?" Just like you prioritize new features, how do you get rid of the old? Start to line that stuff up in the roadmap and have some dedicated resources. This is where HR practitioners can ask, "What percentage of your dev goes to tech debt?" If they say, "No, no, no, our shit's so cool and so great that we don't need to have it," then you gotta start asking yourself, "Well, how hard is it to switch?" Because that, to your point Joel, that becomes the question they need to ask, "Why is it my problem?" If it's an easy switching cost, who cares? It takes you a month to switch, it doesn't matter. If it's your ATS or your human capital management system or something like that, that thing goes bad, well, the best you can do is go find another job, make it someone else's problem. It's not good. And so that's why you gotta start asking those questions. How are you gonna deal with those? Joel: How did the pandemic impact this issue? I know security, infrastructure, processes, all these things sort of came to the forefront. Was the pandemic a good thing to sort of get companies focused on scale and getting rid of debt? Joel: I think it just depends on the company, in my honest opinion. If you were a company that had enough revenue coming in, so all of a sudden I'm selling toilet paper online, I probably have enough infrastructure dollars coming in to deal with tech debt. Companies that had to get lean to get through like, "I've gonna ride this out, I've gotta go completely lean," maybe if they don't have much stuff coming in, I think that's a tough question. And you have the philosophical issue, right? Does a company use COVID and that whole period to say, "I'm not gonna push out the same profit because of COVID and deal with tech debt"? That's the leadership, the CTO's suite to deal with that issue during that time. Chad: When we're talking about applicant tracking systems, because these are I think the systems that are most wrought with tech debt, can you somewhat explain to HR practitioners that the more complex their process methodologies are that they try to feed into these systems, the more tech debt they're actually building into systems? Sean Luitjens: I think it's that and I think the number of things you try to plug in. So you start adding the number of tools you wanna have in your toolbox to be cool. "I've gotta have this tool, that tool, every tool." So now you're... Chad: So like the tech stack itself. Sean Luitjens: The tech stack, right? So every one of those could exponentially go bad. So if it's a workflow and it's pretty linear and you're using different tools along that workflow, you start looking at a couple of those going bad. They don't integrate. They're on an old methodology, tech stack methodology. They're not gonna integrate with some point in time. 'Cause those big companies, the progressive companies, they'll say at some point, "You can't do this anymore. We're gonna sunset this methodology." And if the other companies got so much tech debt that they can't deal with that change, you're now stuck in the middle of cutting and pasting from one process to the other, whatever it is. So I think there's just a lot of complexity there. And yeah, ATS is, I think, as you start to add all these other things in there, "Oh, I'm gonna be the first one today, how cool." So even if you integrate something like ChatGPT or Bard in there, I get to be the first one to say that today, how is that gonna affect the other tools that are down through the system? They all talk to each other. Chad: And that being said, today's dinosaurs who have tech debt, what kind of chance do they have against the ChatGPTs of the world, this more fluid technology that's actually making itself into our space? And we've had some of these in our space before, more domain-specific. So how do these dinosaurs have a chance against the more nimble platforms that are out there? Sean Luitjens: So I look at ChatGPT a little bit different. So I think you have to stick to your business principles. "What am I trying to do for the customer?" That doesn't change. ChatGPT now might be the way to get rid of some tech debt if you haven't been able to do these things. "So here's the 10 things, whatever the number is, that's in my vision of what I take care of for clients with my tool." That's it. How do I get to those 10 things? And some of that was obviously slinging code to make these things happen and now ChatGPT comes along and it might be your chance to kind of drop some debt because it's just there. The weird thing from a product standpoint talking to people is, this is obviously a big leap in theory, is this sometimes perpetuates the problem, right? So some leaders are gonna be like, "Well, why should we fix the old? I'll just wait for the next ChatGPT thing to come along. I'll just make this last as long as I can." Sean Luitjens: And if you don't get one of those in time, you've got a problem. But I think for some places, if they can use the tools to solve the problem they're trying to solve, I think there's gonna be some people trying to just use ChatGPT because, "I wanna say I use ChatGPT," and now they're gonna spend dev cycles on that. It doesn't change the value proposition to their end client. They might even try to charge more for the same shit that has all the same problem. And by the way, all those dev resources aren't tackling any of their actual internal problems. Joel: Facebook popularized go fast and break things around 10 years ago. Are those days over, or are they still popular? Sean Luitjens: Go fast and break things. I guess I'm a fan of aim, fire, aim, fire. So build an infrastructure that I can make a guesstimate based on client, theoretically a smart guesstimate on what I'm doing, get it out the door. I'm not a believer in zero bugs. I also don't want a million bugs. And then basically look at the client feedback and make those changes. And that's where I think those discussions at HR practitioners need to have with product teams, say, how nimble are you guys, and do a little bit of research. Are you an Agile methodology? You don't have to get down into the weeds about the tools and all that crap. But if they say they're Agile and they do a release once or twice a year, that's not okay. If they're doing a release every two or four weeks, you can look at that and put that together. But I think just a little bit of research to do that and are people gonna lie to you or do whatever, but at least you did your diligence. Joel: So an article in Info World said, "A growing school of thought among progressive engineering organizations says that technical debt should be a core part of the job of all software developers and that proactively managing technical debt, those teams may not only avoid sinking, but can actually outpace the competition." So the question is, is the attitude around technical debt changing and can it actually be a good thing? Sean Luitjens: Well, can tech debt be a good thing? I think... So we look at it and we try to tackle it in a percentage of time, dev time goes to tech debt. And so I think if you start to tackle that, you're just always looking at what's older and what's longer and actually take a really pragmatic look at that. Is it a technology that's gonna be around for another 10 years and it's working? Fine, I can kick the can down the road, 'cause obviously can't do it all. Do I have stuff that isn't gonna run anymore in the next little bit? It's not going to... I'm not gonna be able to get dev going? Then those are the issues I need to tackle. But I think most companies are now having some percentage of their time looking at tech debt. And hey, it's a great quarter if you've got no tech debt and you can do some new dev, but it should be at least part of the fundamental product process to look at it and say, "Are we creating tech debt?" And if you have engineers that are looking to dev folks that have to deal with tech debt on a regular basis, like any of us, they're like, "I don't wanna make that mess 'cause I'm gonna have to go clean it up because I can't just bury it in the closet, or the other guy is gonna give me crap if I write code or build something that's gonna result in tech debt another two years." And so it becomes part of the practice to try to eliminate as much as you can. Chad: Yeah, I think that magazine was more about realizing that you do have tech debt, everybody does, and managing it and who manages it best. 'Cause it's gonna happen. It's all around the strategy of managing that debt. And again, much like financial debt, being able to manage the debt to be able to get yourself out of the hole, but you're not gonna be able to from the standpoint of just putting Band-Aids on it, there's gotta be a change in infrastructure. And again, that goes back to kind of like what we talk about with LinkedIn. It has more of my information and I think any other platform that's out there that's kind of like a job board-like platform or a social media platform, and yet they return the worst results, their tech still is slow and sloppy, and I attribute that mainly to, they haven't changed in 20 years. What are your thoughts? Sean Luitjens: The good news is with tech debt, I mean, think about it, the good news is to have tech debt, you've been in business a while, so take the W that you've got that going, right? [laughter] Chad: It's a good way to look at it, yeah. Sean Luitjens: If you... A lot of businesses go out in a hurry. I mean, I'd be curious, I don't know the number, how many go out of business because they just can't keep up at some point, the new tools and new tech. So they've got 50 clients on, and to keep those 50 clients, they can't actually produce anything new. But I think with LinkedIn, the Microsoft piece, can they get them on some type of fundamental product path to prioritize those things to get out in front of clients? Obviously, you might have an opinion, Chad, have you list those out. Is it the functionality? Is it speed? Is it search results? What is that issue? And then as you look at those client issues, you go back and say, "Well, what's the root cause of the speed? And now... Is it the way I'm structured? Okay, I gotta tackle that. I gotta tackle that 'cause I was not gonna get better... " The speed thing will never get better with time. Retro is not cool with everything. So... Joel: Only my wardrobe. [laughter] Sean Luitjens: Yeah. Joel: Curious about marketplaces. And marketplaces seem to be a great way to standardize things. Like if you're gonna build on the platform, this is how it is and this is our documentation around that. Curious, Fountain, we talked about them in last week's show, they just built a conversational AI chat bot, it looks like a homemade solution, whereas my thought was, why not build a marketplace, spend that time and energy to let other people build on top of that? Just curious, your thoughts on marketplace versus building it yourselves. Isn't Fountain just begging for more technical debt when they build it themselves? Sean Luitjens: Yeah, without... I mean, not to pick on or talk about them specifically, but I think you start to look at it and say, "What are things that are core to my business that can give me a differentiator in the market? What makes me different?" And if there's other stuff that doesn't make me different, then I'm gonna go try to grab that marketplace, or I guess I'd use the term, unified API platform, that there's tools out there now where you basically... Their whole job is to be the, almost like the old job distribution engines actually, but basically it'll be a platform by which you can integrate with them and they integrate with everything else and you basically say, "That's an... Everybody has it. No one's gonna buy my crap because I have this versus something else." Where I would argue with Fountain is if they think they've got something that's so much better than everyone else. It's a differentiator. It's why you buy. That's what you build. You build the stuff that banks you money. The other stuff you're like, "What's the most efficient way, cost-effective way for me to get that either content or tech?" Chad: A difference between a market differentiator in a me too, right? Sean Luitjens: Yeah. Chad: So last last for me, if you're talking to two groups, HR practitioners and vendors, what advice would you give them surrounding due diligence? Because I don't think that we do a good enough job in prepping on the vendor side and also even understanding. People are asking for, "Hey, can I have your latest RFP?" They have no fricking clue what to ask. What should vendors do and what should the HR practitioner do? Sean Luitjens: Vendors, I think is just, you mentioned, is managing tech debt. I don't know how to answer that question so much from the standpoint of what they should do to deal with those. It's a, how do you deal with tech debt? Like you said, I think everyone's gonna have it at some level. But do I have a small mortgage or a big mortgage? Am I about to file Chapter 11 on my tech stack? The goal for me would be never having to shut down. I think we joked and we chatted once, Chad, about the FAA. Everyone says we need to update the system, but I'm like, "Look, I don't wanna be the dude flying the first week they put the new system out. I don't know about you, guys. That's not for me. Are they gonna shut down for a month to beta test it? That's probably not happening either." So that's so much tech debt that they've reached a point at which, what are they gonna do? Chad: How many years has that tech been out there, I can't remember, that software? Sean Luitjens: Like '60s, '70s. It's actually pretty... Chad: Yeah, yeah. Sean Luitjens: You think about the amount of crap they're managing on seven... I can't imagine... Think of an HR company from the late '90s or mid-'90s that you would wanna use their stuff, and then think how smart those guys probably were putting together the FAA stuff because it's still jamming along. On the company side, I'd probably say leverage one of your vendors' product teams. I literally would just make a network of... Obviously, if it's someone you might be purchasing or whatever, they're gonna be maybe biased. But I would go out to one of your current vendors that you really like the way they're doing business and say, "Hey, can I have 15, 30 minutes with your product team?" So what would you ask? What would someone ask me that I would say, "Here's how I'm going to show you, 'cause I think we're in a good place where we are right now"? Sean Luitjens: Obviously, I'm slightly biased. We are moving some legacy tech debt. One of the reasons I came here was there is some legacy tech debt around a couple of the products, but we're tackling that. So there's a plan in place and that was kind of coming over versus get here and how much duct tape can you bring over when you come to Korn Ferry? That's not the plan. But if someone was to sit down and say, "Can you spend 15 or 30 minutes with me?" virtually walk through the five or 10 questions you'd ask and what you'd expect for reasonable answers, I think that gives you a really good starting point to see... And if they won't put the product person on the phone or someone on that side, that's not okay. [applause] Joel: That's Sean Luitjens, everybody, VP of Product Management for Korn Ferry. Sean, for our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more, where would you send them? Sean Luitjens: I'd send them to LinkedIn. The good news about being Luitjens is three is three of us online. So I wanted to take my wife's maiden name when we got married 'cause I got... It sucks spelling Luitjens, but there are some times it works out. Joel: I feel the same being a Cheesman. Chad, that's 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, viable 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 quit them either. We out.

From a name change to another pivot, HourWork caught a wave that resulted in nearly 10,000 clients signing up. Additionally, more investments poured in, and our friend Rahkeem Morris shares his experience of being a black man raising funds for his startup. All these events led to the birth of HourWork, the company as we know it today, with a vision that's making them one of the hottest names in the industry. This finale, part of The Chad & Cheese Podcast's Voices series, may not be as thrilling as Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, but it's truly remarkable, even though I may be a bit biased. Until next time, I'm co-host Joel Cheesman, and this is more of our interview with Rahkeem Morris, the CEO and founder of HourWork. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Intro: Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices, like mine, are smooth and comforting. While, on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese Podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you're now listening to Voices, a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Joel: A name change, another pivot, and catching a wave that would lead to signing up nearly 10,000 clients. On top of that, more investment came in and our friend, Rahkeem Morris, discusses his experience about being a Black man raising money for his startup. It would all lead to our work being the company that it is today. It's not quite Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, but this finale, part of the Chad and Cheese podcast's Voices series, is quite remarkable, even if I may be a tad biased. Till next time, I'm co-host Joel Cheeseman, and this is more of our interview with Rahkeem Morris, CEO and founder at HourWork. Joel: So you're talking about a pivot, which, when Chad and I talk about the numerous startups that we talk about all the time, pivots are a, they're just built in, right? It's just baked into what you do. You didn't start out as HourWork. You started out as Syrg. Talk about that name. You've talked about the pandemic pivot. What other pivots did you face in the early days of the company? Rahkeem: Yeah, it's, yeah, this is going to be a trip down memory lane for me. It's been quite a bit. In terms of main major pivots, there's been one with the company. In terms of these smaller mini pivots, there's countless of them. The first thing that we were doing as a company is we were getting involved a lot with scheduling. We were backfilling shifts for people, and we thought that we needed to get, well, just very integrated into the scheduling system at these employers. And given the integration challenges that we were experiencing, we decided to build out a scheduling platform at that time. It was something that was too big for us. Time, like programming time is actually really, really difficult. And then getting it right is even more difficult, especially when you're dealing with employers who want to make sure that their operations are running as efficiently and smoothly as possible. It was something that wasn't going to benefit us long term. And so we dropped the scheduling component of that, and we kept this backfilling of the shift component, and that became Syrg. Rahkeem: So before Syrg, actually, there was something that we had called Aday, A-D-A-Y. There happens to be, by the way, a woman's clothing company [laughter] in New York City that we occasionally got confused with. Chad: It's where Joel gets his shorts, yes. [laughter] Rahkeem: Oh, I could tell. Shift to the camera that's on right now. [laughter] All right, that's our first product. Once we removed the scheduling component of this, that's when we changed our name to Syrg. We were only dealing with shifts that became open because, let's say, someone was sick or their car breaks down or something like that. That's when we made our first big pivot to just and then after shifts, that's when we not focus on Syrg, which was this individual shift product that we had, and then pivot to what we're doing today as a company as a result of the pandemic. Chad: So a round of that, you talk about concepts, right? And then there's execution, because you can ideate all day. There are plenty of people that do it. Talk about the execution point to this pivot, because it's not as easy as it might sound. You can't just put it on the whiteboard and it happens. So talk about that, that actual transition pivot, who was involved. I would assume that there was a good amount of company interaction then also founder interaction. Rahkeem: Yeah, 100%. For me, when I'm thinking about this business and just businesses in general, most startups at least, you know that there are going to be certain pieces to the puzzle of your grand vision that you will need to assemble at some point in time. So let's say, as an analogy, let's say you are building a car. You know that you need to have your axles, your drivetrain, your wheels, your doors. You know that you have a certain list of components that you'll need to build a car that functions and that's legal and that runs. Same thing with the business. You know eventually you'll need to have, let's say from an operational standpoint, like marketing, you need to have sales. But from a vision standpoint, which I have very clear in mind, there were certain components of the vision that needed to be true that we know that we need to build at some point in time. It's strictly a matter of sequencing that's the question at hand. And for us, around the time of the pandemic, we had proven at that point that former employees are willing to return back to their former employers for on-demand shifts. Rahkeem: What we haven't proven just yet is that former employees are willing to come back to their employers for full time and part-time jobs. When the pandemic happened, we weren't doing that one component of the larger vision that we know that we need to do. But there was another part, component of that larger vision that we saw an opportunity to launch a new product to the market that would accomplish the component of this longer-term vision, which was getting former employees to return back to their former employers. Joel: You're talking about consumers driving the pivot or what you're doing going forward and I think that's a little surprising to people that are doing a lot of competitive analysis and what's the market opportunity. It sounds like that wasn't a big part of your decision to do or to change course with the company. Was it a part or does it even need to be a part? Is it consumer demand that should drive it? Rahkeem: The broader market context was the only reason that we decided to pivot this company and then following that and wanting to catch the wave. We did two things around the time of the pandemic and that's just me, us, looking forward to the future thinking, well, half a million people are being laid off of work every single week. What's going to be the next phase of this? Well, the next phase is a massive rehiring effort of employers and we have documents here on the team that are labeled and titled in the beginning, call in something else. Rahkeem: Catch the wave. Catch the wave. Do all businesses wanna catch the wave? All of the internal documents that we have? We created a program at the company that was focused exclusively on catching the wave of the massive rehiring effort of employers. And we built that product right before things got really serious in terms of the rehiring efforts. And we caught that wave all the way up into nearly 10,000 restaurants that we now have on our platform. Chad: Which, predictable, right? That was predictable. You could see that this was going to happen. So yes, you weren't actually addressing something that was happening in the market. You were addressing something that you knew that was incredibly predictable that was gonna happen in the market. Joel: Go where the puck is going. Rahkeem: Yeah. Exactly. Chad: Yeah. Rahkeem: Yep. Go where the puck is going. Right around that time too. I wish I would've known that Tupperware stock would've gone through the roof. It went from $1.76 cents on March 27th, 2020 to $33 on December 31st. So that's another one I wish I would've caught the wave on. [laughter] Joel: Right next to the eggs. Chad: Maybe next time. Maybe next time. So, in talking about the actual product, now, first and foremost, why did you feel like you needed a rebrand? Why didn't you just pivot under the same name? Rahkeem: I really enjoy this question. I always wanted to have a name for the company that, and I was proud of our last name. I wanted to be proud of, and I wanted to represent exactly what our mission and vision were for the company. The company, it's called HourWork, and it is a play on words. Maybe a play on spelling is a better way to say that. The hour is spelled with H, I'm sure you get the connection. And this is really, this is this gets back to the reason why I founded the company which was to benefit people that worked these jobs. Especially recognizing and acknowledging the skills that they've learned from these employers and then using that knowledge to get additional income. Chad: So, personalizing it, it's our work. Rahkeem: Yes, exactly. Our work. Hourly workers. Hourly employers, our platform that is that's the reason why it's HourWork. Joel: So you've raised a total of just over $16 million. What was the decision to go raise more money? Was it always something that was in your mind like, okay, we got a seed, now I gotta go get a series A. Are you looking to get more money? Also interested in raising money as a Black man and your take on the difficulty of that and challenges that maybe others don't have? Chad: I think you're closer to 18 now, aren't you? Rahkeem: Yep, $18.1 million. There's one fundraise. It's not recorded because it is a convertible debt note. [laughter] So you won't find that in the public documents. I suppose. And so why did we raise money and when we raised it. The first couple of rounds were, it was clear that we needed to raise money because I needed to hire a team, get engineers who are very expensive to work here at HourWork at the company. And so it was clear then and I've actually been pretty good with this which is to set out very, very explicit objectives that I wanted to accomplish with a certain set of funds. And then going out for each one of those raise with those objectives being first and foremost in my pitch. And so I was always raising based on some initiative that I wanted to achieve and accomplish here at the company. And each of my raises have, well just done exactly that. I'm actually, my forecasts for everything I've told investors so far has come true, including my top line revenue number, which I'm really proud and happy about. Chad: What might that be? Joel: Name names. Rahkeem: It will be public knowledge now, and so we're right above $5 million, just a little bit over two years in the market which I'm also really, really, really proud of my team. And of course, me being involved in that getting us to that point. Joel: Well, raising money as a Black man, your impression of that, more challenging, different than a White guy? Chad: Much like the Harvard experience, I would assume. Rahkeem: Definitely, yeah. It's exactly that. There's, it certainly is more difficult to raise money as a Black founder, and it's not because people are sitting, let's say in the decision making room thinking about, oh, this Black guy just pitched to me. Let's say no because he's Black. No one is having that conversation anywhere. What happens is that I'm sitting across a table from an investor who grew up in a suburb of some really big city that we all know of, and they went to a boarding school, they went to the same schools that I went to, Ivy League schools, and they've just had a very different type of life than I did. And we're sitting across the table and we don't have anything in common. Rahkeem: And so now there's no small talk, there's just very, very strictly business is what we're talking about. And very small differences and micro behaviors that culturally come up, those are not relatable. And so for that reason, it is there's just less favorable outcomes for a Black man in this league. There's unconscious biases certainly of investors. And there is also, I think we also think that we're in complete control of our mind. 99% of the day we're doing things on autopilot, and if you're not intentional about the evaluation process for the founders that come into your room, you're going to have unpredictable results. Rahkeem: One of the things that we do here at this company is that when people are interviewing for a role here on the team, we make sure that we're asking that person, each person that comes in for that one role, the same questions, and we wanna make sure that we can compare apples to apples. That does not exist in the VC world. No one's asking you the same questions. No one's caring about creating a fair and equal process. And I say that because it's not an intentional process of making sure that they're picking the winners. It's all based on gut feelings about the pattern recognition that they have. And I'm saying all that to say that it hasn't fazed me in a bit. I go into a room, I go into a pitch expecting to win, expecting getting that investment and walking away with a yes from the investors that I meet every single time. Chad: I have to say, intentional isn't a word that just automatically points to you, for goodness sakes. You've been intentional through the whole walk, it sounds like, of this journey. When it comes down to the actual platform itself, everybody, and Joel and I talk about this all the time, talks about, they talk about how they slap DEI on their platform and they put their thumbs up or AI on their platform, and they put their thumbs up. You guys haven't done that. You've kind of stayed away from that. Why is that? When that is the popular thing to do and also moving toward with that wave, what do you think, how do you think your platform can just help find people who are qualified? Rahkeem: Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate this question, especially thinking about the types of people that work these jobs, these wage earning jobs. So you're thinking about, when we're thinking about jobs that pay less than 30, $40,000 a year, those jobs are going to be worked predominantly by Blacks and Latinos in the United States. The majority of people that work these jobs are gonna be US minorities, again, Black and Latinos primarily. And, well, these employers, at least at this level don't struggle with DEI in the same way that let's say, a desk job would. Joel: I want to a little shoutout to you, your team is very diverse. And Chad mentions the companies with DEI on their pitches and their websites, and then you look at their leadership team and it's not so diverse. So you guys walk the walk, which I think is, which is commendable. And was that on purpose? Is that based on your interviewing process, which you just said is everyone gets the same question and also one of your corporate mantras is be like the Army. Explain that. Rahkeem: Yeah. Two things here. We have on our job postings that we focus on DEI at the company, and it is a program that we have here internally. I will also say that we always hire the best person for the job. When you have an interview process in which you're comparing apples to apples, what happens is that you get a more diverse group. So no one gets a job because they're a woman and because they're Black, because you're, whatever it is, no one gets a job for that reason. We're able to get a diverse team at this company because we run our interviews well, and that's the reason why we have a diverse team here at this company. That's one. Rahkeem: And in terms of the Army, I think you may be referring to sometimes how I pitch what we want to do longer term with this company, which is that we want, let's say a McDonald's manager to think about their workforce very much like the Army does. They have your active duty people and you have your reserves. And we want a place like McDonald's to think about their headcount as every single person that they have ever trained. Rahkeem: It's also the case that 1-8 people have worked at McDonald's. And so you can imagine now that you have your active duty staff working at McDonald's, a shift becomes open or someone quits their job. You're able to go into your previously trained people just like the Army does with the reserves. Get that person in here in short order, and make sure that you're meeting every single operational metric goal initiative that you have at your restaurant. And it's something that, would employers embrace it, they will have a operational revolution that they've never experienced. Chad: It's pretty amazing though, too, as you talk about that when we were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were many times when we had more infantry units that were National Guard and Reserve on the ground overseas than we did active duty. So being able to actually structure a workforce like this gives you more assets and more availability to actually get the job done, especially when we have issues with jobs just going totally unfilled, positions going unfilled and companies that are missing top line revenue because of those unfilled positions. Rahkeem: Exactly. Yeah. There are more than enough people in the United States for every single hour of every single job. The reason that we don't do it today is a collaboration failure among employers that they don't recognize these skills as universal skills to be shared among employers so that people can work at multiple employers. If that were something to be true with wage earning jobs, and then people were actually able to get legally, which is a whole other thing. Then every single job and every single hour would be filled. Over time, all the stuff, all the things that owner, operators, operators, managers, franchisees worry about, this would all be solved for the platform as I'm describing it. Chad: So requirements, go down real quick. When you're hiring from a requirement standpoint, one of the big issues that I see with companies today, the requirement is a need, right? We need you to have this skill, this skill, this skill. A want is, I would like you, it would be nice if, you had these. We're clumping them all together these days in the same group. And when people are applying, you're getting a variety of mishmash of people who meet the wants and or needs in vary, in a variety of ways. Rahkeem: There's a case that, well, actually every single employer outside of QSRs, fast food places, they don't know which positions their employees are trained on. They just don't know. And I know it because we've sat down with managers at places and gone through the entire roster on a table with all of the positions on the Y-axis and the people on X-axis, and then fill out every single one of the boxes. Can this person be a sweeper here? Can this person be an expediter here? And have done that exercise dozens and dozens of times. And so what happens when you have a short-term staffing need? You don't, you literally don't know who to call because you haven't recorded these positions or skills either at that employer or you're recognizing some external skills that you need at that job. And so there is, that not knowing what someone can do that is in there, that prevents us from having an efficient labor market, both local to just that one employer, that one location and just the broader labor market. We just don't know what people can do. Joel: You mentioned McDonald's and at risk of getting even hungrier than I already am with all these fast food names being dropped. A popular story that we read a few years ago was a McDonald's franchisee paying $50 for people just to come in and interview. I assume that's the kind of problem that you're looking to solve at HourWork. And what sort of your... What would you do with that franchisee and what is just your overall opinion and perspective on the state of hourly work in America? Rahkeem: Two big questions. The first one is what would I do to let's say advice or some suggestion that I would make to that owner who is paying people $50 for their interviews. Is that right? Joel: Yes. And they weren't even coming in for $50. Rahkeem: Yeah. I think a better way, a long term, that's a very short-term solution to a problem that they have. I'd say that they, well, what I would suggest to them is that they take the 50 bucks or the amount of money they're paying to people. 50 bucks times, let's say, 10% success rate and they need to fill 50 roles. Now they have 500 interviews and they're paying, I don't know, $25,000, $2500 for this. Maybe that math is right. [chuckle] But they're paying a lot of money for people to take interviews, people that are not guaranteed to eventually work at that employer. A longer term sustainable solution would be to take that amount of money they're paying for interviews and pay that to their existing staff for doing a good job at that employer to engage in some profit sharing with their hourly workers and their frontline workers. Rahkeem: In the same way that desk workers, I look forward to my bonus at the end of the year and how that incentivizes people to stay longer at that employer to cash out on their bonus by the end of the year. That same thing could do wonders for employers, especially, employers that have hourly workers. Having that bonus structure of profit sharing could incentivize people to stay longer at that employer and take more pride in their work. One thing I'm confident about is that there is for many people a stigma for working in these types of jobs. And it's a stigma for many different reasons. One of the main reasons is that, it's a job that is very much plug and play for certain people. You're not walking into a McDonald's with a certificate or a license to say, "I'm a proficient." Rahkeem: It's not a professionalized job just yet. But when you do things like profit sharing, you get people on the frontline thinking about how they can improve the profit margins of their employers because you're doing profit sharing, the more profits that the store has, the more that you get your take home pay as an hourly worker that is engaging in a profit sharing program. And so I would take the money that they would spend on interviews and really create a robust benefit package that would include profit sharing at that employer. And that will do so much, [chuckle] again, for their operations. And absenteeism, people showing up on time. It would do a lot. Joel: Absolutely. Rahkeem Morris, everybody. Thanks for giving us so much of your time. For those listeners out there that want to know more about you or HourWork, where would you send them? Rahkeem: Yeah. You can go to rahkeem.com. It's my Twitter, follow me. And then you can also go to hourwork.com. Make sure you spell Hour with the h to get to the right place. And you'll find out more about me, the company, what we're working toward, and more about our vision and where we see the market going for HourWork. Joel: Awesome. Such a pleasure, man. We appreciate the time. Chad, I'm gonna go eat some Taco Bell, man. I don't know about you. Chad: Maybe you should. Joel: We out. Rahkeem: Yes. Chad: We out. Rahkeem: Yes. Grilled cheese. Do it. [chuckle] See ya. Outro: You can find more episodes of Voices, the Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit chadcheese.com.

We often hear about the inception of companies secondhand, but in this episode, you have the opportunity to hear it straight from the mouth of a co-founder. Rahkeem Morris, the CEO and founder of HourWork, shares his experience of participating in a startup competition that led them to secure their seed round. He also talks about the challenges they faced during the pandemic and the changes they had to make to their strategy. Brace yourself for a rollercoaster of emotions; you may laugh or even shed a tear, but one thing is for sure - you won't want to miss the final episode. Enjoy the show! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Intro: Voices, we hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting. While on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you are now listening to Voices, a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Joel: We hear so much about the birth of company secondhand, but this is your chance to get it straight from the co-founder's mouth. In this episode, Rahkeem Morris, CEO and founder at HourWork, talks about the startup competition that landed them their seed round, along with a pandemic pivot that forced them to rethink their entire strategy. You'll laugh, you might even cry, but you'll definitely want to hear the final episode after listening to this one. Enjoy. So you're so thoughtful in calculating in your moves. Rahkeem: Yeah. Joel: You're looking at top 10 lists and things like that. Was it just serendipitous that Rob was in the same place at the same time and you guys both wanted to start this business? Did you have to sort of twist his arm, how the idea and how that came about talk about that. Rahkeem: Yeah. I am a calculated person and I think that has a stigma sometimes, but I certainly plan. I am a calculating person, I'm proud of it, and I do like to create my own luck in life. And I was hanging around the Harvard Innovation Lab, because I knew that it was a good place to find founders, because often someone in incubation, their startup doesn't work and they still have that entrepreneurial vibe and spirit. Rahkeem: And so I very intentionally hung around the Harvard Innovation Lab to find early employees and co-founders for my business. And I'll also say, with great success, because the first... My first team, which almost all of them are still here of three or four people, they worked for free for the company for a year. And then maybe, I can't say that, 'cause the IRS now, [laughter] but they quit their jobs and decided to do this full-time with me. Now I think about it, their stock actually more than enough makes up for it Now. [laughter] Joel: Good say. Rahkeem: And so I can't say that. [laughter] they did an entire year, quit their jobs and worked on this company without any compensation, cash compensation that first year. Chad: So was this company an idea in your head that had been long standing, or did it just pop in Harvard? When did it happen? And then how did you start to carry this through to fruition? To me it sounds you had an idea when you were seven, for God's sake. [laughter] Joel: He went out and bought the barons and saw the most, profitable businesses to start. How'd that come about? [laughter] Chad: So it was when you were 14 when mom had this issue, it's like you had this idea pop, and then you started creating the schematic to success. Hey, when did it happen? When did it hit you in the face? Rahkeem: I'd say that it was, when I was thinking about starting a business, there was two things I had in mind. First, how terrible that experience was working at that temp agency. [laughter] Rahkeem: That day, the first day I went to this warehouse, [laughter], I didn't have a way to get there, so they told me to get in this car of someone who was... [laughter] And later found out has several felonies, and so I'm just going back and forth with this complete stranger into this place. And then I'm sweating at the end of the day, and they gave me 20 bucks at the end of the day. Rahkeem: And so I had this experience working this temp agency. And then I also had the knowledge that for most of my wage-earning jobs that I had, again, I had 13 in total, over half of them, I had returned back to them at some point later after I initially left them. I was a boomerang employee, so Taco Bell, I just kept going, that was a revolving door for me. Yue Huang, the same thing. Pizza and Uno's the same thing. Joel: You're making me hungry, man. Chad: So did you keep your flare so that when you went back to Yue Huang, you said, "Hey, I've got all the flare, we're good to go" Rahkeem: Wait. I wanna make sure you said that, I definitely kept my uniform. [laughter] It's almost anticipating that I would... And now I think about it, this happened. I totally forgot about the story. I had all those uniform tops, when I graduated Cornell, [chuckle] that was the first time I actually let them go. [chuckle] And I donated them. So I would keep my uniform, and so I was always able to walk back in. And I thought, "Alright, well, I worked all these jobs, I can always go back. I had this terrible experience with this temp agency. I had this prior training, why wouldn't I be able to do this at a place like a Taco Bell, returned back there, because I got this training from them that I still remember?" Rahkeem: These jobs are all rote memorization. If you need to get that Taco at 2.9 ounces 50 times a day, and you do it for a whole year, you're not gonna forget what that weight is. That's like you're doing flashcards all the time at work. And so you don't forget those things. And so I have all this training, I knew I could just do that job again, if I were to walk back in. Why not create a platform and system that would enable exactly that? Chad: When did you actually whiteboard this idea, 'cause I think that's when it comes to fruition. When you start to ideate and you get the ink out to whether it's on a pad or it's on a whiteboard. When did you do that the first time? Rahkeem: Great question. So the first time I did that I was applying to these startup competitions. For a whole year, the only thing that I did was, yeah, like without building anything, was apply to startup competitions. And that is one of the most useful things, surprisingly. It was an... Well, the outcome of it was completely I couldn't have anticipated it. Since I was in school, I wasn't able to actually work on it as many hours as I wanted to. [chuckle] And so all I was able to do was apply to competitions. [chuckle] And so I would get all this feedback, from all the judges, and I would just iterate on it until I had something that was beginning to sell to the people. And that's exactly what happened. Joel: Were you like Y Combinator, you must know every single incubator in the country? Rahkeem: I literally, and this is without exaggeration, I'd applied to over 50 accelerators. And then I'd say over half of those have gotten to a certain step in the competition, where I'm getting very valuable feedback from people who are often founders themselves and entrepreneurs in their past lives. Joel: And what was Rob's role in this? Did you guys sort of develop a relationship where your strengths were his weaknesses and vice versa? Talk about the evolution of your relationship. Rahkeem: Yeah. Rob is a really great writer. He's a really great writer. Initially, I was writing all these applications myself and to have a partner like him to come in, rewrite what I had written and then reapply to some of these competitions, with a better written let's say... Joel: Better pitches, better written pitches yeah. Rahkeem: It certainly helped in the beginning. And then getting into the finals of these competitions. And getting to the final of these competitions was also the reason why I was able to raise that pre-seed round, our very first round. We went to a competition at Rice University at their business school called the Rice Business Plan Competition. Joel: That's creative. Rahkeem: Yeah, right? It almost, it's like an acronym. [laughter] Chad: Say what it's, I like it. Rahkeem: Exactly what it's. Chad: Yes. Rahkeem: So we enter this competition and one of the fascinating things about this competition is that they don't give you the prize. It's not a no-strings attached $50,000 winning for winning the competition. When you win the competition, they give you a convertible note. It's a fascinating way to run a competition. Initially, in the beginning, I felt gypped that it was a convertible note, but then when you realize it... Or when I finally when it happened, I realized that, we won second place in this competition was that when we got a term sheet for winning second in the competition that set off the fundraising process. And one of the best ways to kick off a fundraising process is with a term sheet. And that's exactly what happened out of this competition. And it set us up so well to raise a little bit over a million dollars for our very first round. Joel: So a lot of our listeners didn't go to Harvard Business School, describe a convertible note for those that don't know. Rahkeem: Yes. So a convertible note, the longer form name for a convertible note, it's a convertible debt note. And if you're thinking about the balance sheet, you know what you said to one who didn't go to Harvard, I'm gonna do it to one who doesn't have even, let's say a knowledge about business. Pretty much an investor gives you a loan, and then by the time that your business looks as if it's going to be something, that's converted into stock for that company, that's pretty much what a convertible debt note is. Joel: So you have a little money in the bank. What's your next move? Rahkeem: And this is around the time after our first round. Chad: What's next? Joel: Yeah. Rahkeem: Oh, yeah. So what's next? So we're going back to August, 2018. Well, we began to begin building out toward the vision, that I had set for the company. Chad: What's the vision? Rahkeem: Yes, the vision is a liquid universal workforce. Chad: A liquid. Liquid... Rahkeem: Yes. Chad: Universal. I like that. I like fluid better, but liquid is fluid, so that's good. Carry on. Rahkeem: Yeah. And so, why is it liquid? Why is it universal? Liquid refers to the ability for a worker to take a skill that they have and convert it into income in a very quick way. So you think about all the assets that you have. Let's say as a company, you have assets that are liquid and assets that aren't liquid. It's the speed at which you're able to convert that into cash. And so the liquid part refers to someone's skills to be able to convert that skill quickly into cash. And that's what the liquid part of this means. And so that looks like, and we have many different proof points of this working already with our platform today, is that someone that has been previously trained at a job, let's say you've been trained as a crew member at a McDonald's. With that skill that you've been trained on, you're able to return to the McDonald's that hired you instantly through our platform. And so now you've got this skill that you've earned, you're able to make it liquid by converting that into income in the form of a paycheck by returning instantly to your employer without any questions. Chad: If the employers get into this because the employers, they're obviously the door that you have to have opened, and these are franchises. So if they all agree that, let's say, for instance from a Taco Bell standpoint, "The exact weight of a Mexican pizza, then come on in," right? And if you have proof to do that, also what about manufacturing, being a CNC operator and being credentialed in one organization, how fluid is this? Is this just for fast food, or is this for a more broad scope? How were you thinking of this first? Was it incredibly pointed when you first executed, or was it just broad-based, come on, come all? Rahkeem: It was broad-based, come on and come all. It's actually exactly the way that my mind works. I'm very much, especially given where I've come from and just understanding what I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go, I'm just a visionary-type person. I have the dream bigger beyond my current resources and circumstances. And in the beginning, thinking about this company and what I wanted it to do. I thought very big, very broadly. And that refers and that relates to the universal aspect of this platform so liquid universal. Universal refers to those skills. So not only do we want to have all skills on this platform, we also want someone that is in possession of one of these skills to be able to use it, that skill, at any workplace where it's currently practiced. Chad: That's herding cats though, right? You've got all these skills, now you've gotta silo the skills, and then you've gotta get the employers to agree that said skills are exact, the exact skills so that they can open the door for all of this fluid, fluidity to happen, right? That might have been the concept, but that's not really where you started at first, right? You started with the janitorial side of that. Rahkeem: That's right, yes. Okay. Yes. So janitorial, we started with janitorial for the reason that is a general skill that someone has. As long as you can follow directions and do some job shadowing of someone for a very limited amount of time, you'll be able to become fully proficient and competent in that role. It's a easier... There's no previous training that you need to have that job. And so we got started off with what's our first product that we had. By the way, our product was nearly killed, this product was killed by the pandemic. Although we have one legacy... Two legacy customers on it. The first product that we had, we allow for managers to request their former employees on demand. And that was with companies that cleaned commercial buildings. Chad: Okay. Rahkeem: Around the time of the pandemic, we had about 12 to 15 of these companies on our platform. Chad: Okay. How did it work? Did it work well before the pandemic? Rahkeem: It did. And so what we did is we created a pool of workers, who were completely unscheduled. These were people who were employed by that employer still. And at the beginning of the week, what they did is pick up each and every single one of their shifts. The benefits of the employer was that with nearly 2000 people, but to this one employer is a case study here, 2000 people that this employer has cleaning about 300 buildings in all of Los Angeles, they incurred no overtime in a year after we were installed. Chad: Whoa. And now these were all employees that were already on the payroll, or were they 1099? Were they W2? What kind of employees were they? Rahkeem: All W2 employees, 92% of these employees had first jobs, which is one of the things that was important to us on this platform, that they were using this for supplemental income, so 92% of them have first jobs. What we did is we took the former employee list, that we got from this company, call up everyone that they gave us, created this list of people who are willing to do work in this way. We got a really great response from their former employees. Then we got them rehired at that employer, and then we kicked this off. [music] Chad: You can find more episodes of Voices, The Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit chadcheese.com.

Have you ever imagined being in charge of managing more than $1 billion in corporate expenses, especially in your mid-twenties, and for a renowned Silicon Valley giant? Well, in this episode, we catch up with Rahkeem Morris, the CEO and founder of HourWork, as he shares his experience of doing just that. We also delve into the early days of his entrepreneurial journey, which paved the way for even greater accomplishments. Brace yourself for yet another inspiring episode that will leave you eagerly anticipating the next one. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Intro: Voices; we hear them every day. Some voices, like mine, are smooth and comforting. While on the other hand, The Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album; you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you're now listening to Voices, a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Joel: How would you like to oversee $1 billion in corporate expenses? How about doing it in your mid 20s for a giant Silicon Valley company? This episode finds our friend Rahkeem Morris, CEO and founder, at HourWork, doing just that. Additionally, we explore the early days of his journey as an entrepreneur. It's an exploration that would lead him to even bigger things. Another inspiring episode that'll have you craving for the next one. Chad: So how did that set you up for your time at Google? What was the transition? Joel: Did they recruit you? Rahkeem: Yeah, you know what? I was recruited. That's the crazy thing. I got either an email or LinkedIn... No it was an email and I showed my friend like, "That's @google.com email address." I didn't know they actually had google.com email addresses. That surprised me because I'm thinking... I don't know, it just surprised me that... Chad: Did you think it would be Gmail? What did you think it'd be? [chuckle] Rahkeem: That's what I was thinking. [laughter] Yes, actually, that's exactly it. I thought I'd get an email from a Gmail address. I'm like "This is official. This is from google.com." And I did the interview. I did something I never do in an interview, which is that I totally get... Eventually who will be my skill level report... Manager rather... I told him I wanted to draw on the whiteboard the solution to it and he loved it. Chad: What was the problem? You're talking about drawing a solution, what was the problem? Rahkeem: [chuckle] That's another good question. Okay, so the question was... All right, "Let's say Google AdWords is making different gross margins in the United States and Canada. Tell me what are the top two or three drivers for that?" And so the crazy thing is that I didn't know what AdWords was. [laughter] Joel: Wow! Rahkeem: I'm sitting literally 30 minutes before the interview, and then something... I was going online, I was like searching... I forget what it was, but I got some recommendation to open up an AdWords account. So I opened up an AdWords account immediately before my interview. I set it up, I went through a couple of different options. And yeah, lo and behold, I go on to the interview and the question is about AdWords. And I explained it to him at such a level of depth that probably shocked him, probably more than he knows... Not because he's not a smart person. It's because I literally had just read the manual on it. [laughter] And so going into depth about these terms on the whiteboard, I was really into it, and it worked out obviously. I got the job. Joel: I'm surprised they didn't ask you "How do we save Google+?" because it was in 2012. [laughter] Joel: If only they had asked you that, it might still be around today. [laughter] Rahkeem: I think so. It's funny. Actually, for some reason, me and my friends at Google, we're all Googlers at this point. We try to prop up Google+ and we actually used it as our main social media tool for like a year. Joel: You and Chad. I think Chad was heavy on the Google+. Rahkeem: It would be on chat, right? [chuckle] Chad: Horrible. Yeah, it was horrible. [laughter] Joel: So were you AdWord... Were you working on AdWords? What'd you do at Google? What did you started doing and what did you end up doing? Rahkeem: Oh yeah. So my first job I had at Google, I had a Job that was listed as FP&A job, but it was completely different from any job I ever did at GE. This is a job where I had to go to directors, VPs and even the CIO, to ask them, "All right, what do you plan to spend your money on? What are the projects and initiatives you're having for your team?" And then I would have to report these metrics and operational data to them. It was... We're kinda... And then also, I approved, literally, every single expense. So all of the area I looked over was $1.2 billion of expenses. About half of that was... Yeah, it's ridiculous. I was like, 25-26 years old. Chad: $1.2 billion of expense [laughter] Rahkeem: Yes. [chuckle] Like literally, I'm going in and approving each one of these requests for... Like, I'm the gatekeeper for all this money. And I would do it on the bus down from Mountain View... Or rather from San Francisco, to review. Chad: Didn't take the BART? Rahkeem: I didn't take the BART, it was on the Google buses. And I improved all that spend and then I would have to tell people... Again, I'm very young, telling directors and VPs, asking them to stop spending money. And they're just looking at me, like "Who are you?" [chuckle] Looking back at that job, I shouldn't have had that job. Like, knowing what I know now, especially running this company for as long as I have and seeing the growth, I should have never had that job. It was, it was... No, I shouldn't have had it, but anyways, that was my first job or that's my primary job, I had at Google. Joel: Was that when they showed you the money printing machine at Google? That just... Chad: I'm staying. Yeah, I'm staying. Rahkeem: That was one of the biggest differences between GE and Google. Joel: I bet. Rahkeem: At GE, every single penny is accounted by the company and they're so good with their financial controls, it's exceptional. And you go to Google, and people are spending $5,000 on a Frodo statue they wanna give to one of their engineers. Shouldn't have thought about that. [laughter] Joel: That sounds like a true story. You wouldn't have just pulled that out. Rahkeem: [laughter] Just like, "I'm not sure if I can approve this." [laughter] Chad: A fucking Frodo statue. Rahkeem: And so that was the biggest difference. And so they were just so willy-nilly with their money, relatively so of course. [chuckle] But we have profit margins of what? 90 whatever percent it is. It's very easy to be that... I was gonna say careless, but... Chad: Yes. Joel: Frivolous. Rahkeem: Less stringent... Yes, frivolous with your money, kinda, yes. Joel: Frivolous, there you go. Chad: So how in the hell did you find yourself to this industry? I mean, you had $1.2 billion of expenses that you actually had control over. That's really what it was. Joel: He's segueing you to Harvard, I think, this is what Chad's doing. How did you get into that? Rahkeem: Yeah... And so by the way, it was all with IT. And that's the last thing I wanna mention before I go into what I'm doing today. So it was IT, and the way that IT is... By the way, with that $1.2 billion, I wanna be very clear, over half of that was salaries. I can't really do anything with that. So that's just like, you gotta just approve that. And so with the IT, which was where I was doing all this work in finance and operations at Google, there's a IT team for each of the teams that are at Google. So let's say there is an Android team or a finance team, or a real estate team, there's a corresponding IT team for those teams at Google. And so not only was it 1.2 billion in IT expenses, it was across the entire company. Rahkeem: And I had to interact with each of those managers to understand how they're spending their money, what are the main operational metrics of each of their teams, their initiatives for the year, what they're doing to excite their teams. It was... I just got a lot of insight across the business, surprisingly [chuckle] from this position, which is another outcome that I couldn't have anticipated in the beginning. And so I knew I wanted to get my MBA. I also knew very early on, that I wanted to start a company. And it's mostly based on my personality type, that I knew I needed to start a company. I was pretty certain about it over the summer of 2015, that's the summer before I got my MBA. And right before that, I took an Amtrak trip from California to the East Coast in New York. Joel: Good God. Amtrak across the country. Rahkeem: It was actually... I loved it. I did. It was my first solo trip too. And I just needed to get away from work for a bit. And so there's this deal where if you pay them 500 bucks, they give you these 10 passes where you can get on and off the train at anywhere that you want. And so I had mapped my entire journey across the United States. I went through Arizona, down to Texas. I saw a ton of historical landmarks, some that, I guess, I thought I would see later in my life, but I happened to see it then. The Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. I went to the Central High School in Little Rock, with the... And a story there that we all... Well, we know about. I visited the World War II Museum in Louisiana, which is an incredible museum, I love it. Yeah, I never thought I would be so into a museum, and that was really great. And I also went to a plantation for the first time and saw that. And so I saw all these sites across the United States right before I went to school, and it made my decision to become an entrepreneur even more certain, that trip really solidified it for me. Joel: What was your first nibble on entrepreneurialism? Is there a story as a kid that you were hustling? What's the seed that planted that? Rahkeem: Yeah, this is another great question. A lot of these answers, yeah, I haven't thought about these in so long. I wrote about this in my Cornell essay. So I'm from Upstate New York, Albany, New York, again. I've been shoveling people's porches since as long as I can remember. And so I would just go around my neighborhood, walk door to door, knock on their front door, say, "Hey, you know, I'll shovel your porch for a dollar." I always started with a dollar. And then I eventually I would go through the whole thing, finish, and then they would feel so guilty that I did the whole thing by myself. I was like, I was 7, 8, 9, 10, 11-year-old that they would give me much more than a dollar. And so I would do that every single time that it snowed. And it was the one reason why I looked forward to when it's snowed in Upstate New York. So that's my first taste. Chad: Money, money. So you felt like you needed a Harvard MBA to do this? [laughter] Rahkeem: Yeah. Well, so I, at that time... So this is actually the truth of it. I looked up who gets funded for companies, and it's people who got their MBAs from Harvard. Joel: Harvard... Does his homework. [laughter] Rahkeem: And so I literally applied to Harvard for my MBA program. And then fortunately, obviously, I got accepted and graduated. Joel: That's a really quick breeze of Harvard MBA. What was your experience there? Was it what you thought it would be? Was... Like talk about that for a little bit. Rahkeem: Yeah. Oh yeah. So my Harvard MBA experience, I had a great experience going to that school. It did bring to light a lot of different, let's say, inequalities about the world and just different ways of living. My mom made about $20,000 a year supporting three siblings. And you can imagine just the things that... It's just not a lot of money. It's not at the poverty level, but it's fairly close to it. I'm in a class now of 90 people, there's like several people in the class where it's just public knowledge that their parents are billionaires. And it's just... And they're like actually pretty awesome people, I love these people. It was just really... It was just funny that that's just like the case, where not one, but multiple of them. And also the sons and daughters of CEOs of companies, household names that you know of. And then also there's this thing where people go on foreign trips on the weekend and... So every weekend you're like going to Iceland, or Chile, or to Columbia, or somewhere halfway around the world. And this is the first time where I'm like, "Okay, well, maybe... " Rahkeem: There is a hangover effect of growing up so poor. I just can't go to a new country every single weekend. And so I did miss out on a couple of different, let's say, excursions with my classmates because it was getting really expensive to go to the school in addition to the opportunity cost of going getting your MBA, not working for two years, and now spending all this money, all these travel and trips. At a certain point in time, it definitely felt as if I'm the poor kid getting my MBA at Harvard. Joel: Did you feel like their level of commitment was the same as yours? Or did you feel like they're just here because daddy says they have to go to Harvard? Rahkeem: It's a good question too. It's maybe a bit controversial, but if people took the MBA degree seriously, they can get so much out of it. People didn't take it seriously enough when I went. And it's so funny 'cause nowadays, I'm going back in my cases, whether it's a module note or an actual case itself, I'm reading it, understanding it, and thinking, "Shit, this would've been really helpful to unpack these concepts when I was in school and talk to my peers and learn from them." And at the same time, maybe I guess I didn't find my group of people who were like that, who took it more seriously, at least the concepts and the actual academic exercise of studying and understanding businesses. That's... I don't think that they went to school because of daddy's money or mommy's money for that matter, or because they wanted another shiny thing on their resume, they went there because, well they had money. The school would accept them because maybe, well, I don't know, how would I say all that [laughter] Joel: They had money. Go ahead, say it. [laughter] Rahkeem: This is a public... [laughter] I would've went to school and excuse some class sessions and [laughter] be invited back. But I'm kidding about that. But I don't think I do anything for that reason. It's actually is a really fine education that you get in the school. Joel: Now, you did meet someone, I'm assuming, someone named Robert Snyder at Harvard. Talk about that. Rahkeem: Yeah. So, Rob Snyder is my co-founder in the business. We worked together by the way, our four years in this. He's an advisor with us now, but we're working quite closely. Rob Snyder... When I was working on this, I had written a paper and I was on the look for a co-founder for the company. And I am an early bird. I wake up, since time immemorial, at least for me, I wake up very early in the morning, 4:30-5 o'clock in the morning, just a relic cup of the past. And so that's what I do. So I'm always up in the morning. At the Harvard Innovation Lab, it is their incubation center for startups at Harvard, and it opens up at 7 o'clock in the morning. And so I was always up, maybe I have worked out and done on my whole routine at 7 o'clock in the morning and there's only one other person there at 7 o'clock in the morning. It was Rob Snyder. And we began to, well, just have conversations pretty much every day of the week. And, yeah, we were the only two people at the Harvard Innovation Lab that early until we struck up a friendship. Joel: And he's from Upstate, New York as well, right? Rahkeem: I think he was born there. He was born in Buffalo. Joel: Big Bills fan. Intro: He is a big Bills fan, yeah, like a diehard Bills fan. Even a fan of them when they're not winning. But they've had a lot of really great seasons recently. And so he's from Upstate New York. Eventually I think that him and his family moved to Ohio, not too far away. Yeah, we had that connection as well. [music] Outro: You can find more episodes of Voices, The Chad and Cheese podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders, by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit chadcheese.com.

Prepare to gain a fresh perspective on Taco Bell. In this episode, we continue our conversation with HourWork's CEO and founder, Rahkeem Morris, as he shares his experiences of working demanding hourly jobs while attending an Ivy League school. This journey proved to be rewarding, eventually leading him to secure a position at one of Silicon Valley's most esteemed companies. Tune in and enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Intro: Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting. While on the other hand, The Chad & Cheese Podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, you are now listening to Voices, a podcast series from Chad & Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Intro: Get ready to have a whole new appreciation for Taco Bell. On this episode, our journey with our work, CEO and founder Ricky Morris continues taking us into his stint at an Ivy League school while working through the gauntlet of demanding hourly jobs. It was a journey that would pay off. However, landing him an opportunity at one of the most prestigious companies in Silicon Valley. Enjoy. It's a must listen. Ricky Morris: So I eventually went to community college for a year, and then at the same time I applied to Cornell, like literally what I did was I pulled up a spreadsheet of the top ranked business schools. I assorted it from one to whatever, and then it was, I think it was three or four. It was in New York. I was like, this is close enough. This is the highest freaking school I could think about, possibly going to and I applied and I got a letter back that said that I wasn't accepted right away. And then I had to go to another school for a year to get either, I can't remember, it's either three eight or three five at another school. And I was going to be automatically accepted. And so I went to SUNY Albany and then also community college courses. And then I got, it's like a three nine something. And I was able to transfer automatically to Cornell. Well, I finished up my education there. Joel: Did you work through college? Obviously Ivy League schools aren't cheap. Did you get scholarships? How did that work out? Ricky Morris: Yeah. That's, I had to work all the way throughout college and I've paid for every single penny of my education. Joel: Wow. Ricky Morris: And this is before... Joel: Good for you. Ricky Morris: Thank you very much. This is before these schools, these Ivy League schools had this whole thing where if your family earns less than $60,000, obvious, they give it to you for free. That happened as soon as I graduated from undergrad after I'm working. Joel: Go figure it. Ricky Morris: Listen. Tight right. The timing... It's maybe some retroactive program that's [chuckle] someone can hear and then pay me that back. I'm kidding. But it was the case that when I dropped outta high school 14, nearly 15 years old, I began working hourly jobs right away. Over the course of the nine years after I dropped outta high school, I had about 13 hourly jobs. Chad: Well, Was there a range? Were they all like the same kind? Tell me about those jobs. Ricky Morris: These are mostly wage earning, actually. They were all jobs that you're earning money by the hour wage jobs. And they were primarily in restaurants and food. So I've worked, it must be four or five different industries. So my very very first job was at Taco Bell. Ricky Morris: Taco Bell, I remember having such great time. There we go. They came up in the beginning and I actually, I really enjoyed my time there. I still remember the waits for some of the products there. Joel: Are you as glad that the Mexican pizza is back as I am? Ricky Morris: Actually, I am... You know what? Joel: Yes. Ricky Morris: Fun fact for me at least, is that the Mexican pizza was the very first thing I had at Taco Bell. And it's because I was in the break room. I had worked there for about four or five months. We mess up in the Mexican pizza. Do you want it? I'm like, oh, I've never ate Taco Bell before. Chad: You were there four or five months and you had never had Taco Bell. Oh my God. There's no way in hell Cheesman could have waited four to five minutes. He would've... [laughter] Joel: That would've been a requirement for me to take the job. Ricky Morris: Well, it's funny, [laughter] back in the day, Taco Bell for me was like exotic food, I've never... Joel: It still is. What are you talking about? [laughter] Ricky Morris: I was like, I've never had Mexican food before. I was almost concerned. I have it when I was 15 years [laughter] old working at Taco Bell. But by the way, I think our Mexican pizza is 10.8 ounces. I'm pretty sure that's right. So I'll well fact check that. But I have all these weights of foods that I still remember to this day. So a hard taco's 2.9 ounces. Soft taco is 3.6 ounces. Quesadilla I'm pretty sure is 10.9 or 11.9. Chad: Did you get credentialing for that? Because you should have. Ricky Morris: Actually, you know what, I did become a trainer at Taco Bell during my time there. And so that's probably one of the other reasons why I remember these things so well. And so that's my very first job. And then I probably worked about three or so waiting jobs, just waiting tables, which is such a fascinating, you learned so much about people doing that. Ricky Morris: I was a dialysis technician. I worked at FedEx, I worked at Kinko's, was a temp worker for a company called Labor Ready. It's called People Ready Now. That was a fascinating week that I had there, moving appliances across the warehouse. It was... Okay, [laughter] it was a week. And I remember why I quit that job. And it's because you're paid daily as a temp worker. You show up at this place, this like... It looks like a rundown, shopping out plaza. You go to this place, you wait outside in the morning, it's 06:00 o'clock. They tell you what your job is the day of, you work it and they give you a check at the end of the day. And there's these check cashing things inside of the place. And then I was getting maybe 20 or 30 bucks for really hard manual labor. And I realized at that time it was just something I couldn't do sustainably, but that job. And every time I think about it, there's another job that pops up. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I did that one too. So it was probably more than 13. I just can't remember them all. Chad: So how did that actually shape where you were going to go in the future? Because you're going to school, you're paying for school. And I would assume you're like, "I don't want to do this." Ricky Morris: I can't say that it had a strong influence on the type of job I chose afterward. I just knew that I wanted to not have to work on my feet anymore. And well, when you're on the line for about 10, they're working at double 15, 16 hours. Even at 17, 18, when you're young, your joints are healthy. That hurts. Your ankles... Chad: Yes. Ricky Morris: Are in pain. It is just like, "I can't walk another 10 feet." And so I suppose the way that influenced my decision was that I gotta got a job that I will be sitting down, maybe some part of the day, and that's the strongest influence it had. Joel: Did you go from Cornell to Google, or was there a bridge between that? Ricky Morris: Yeah. There was a bridge there. Yeah, I worked at General Electric. Joel: Oh yeah. Ricky Morris: That was my very first job, I did the financial management program which trained me very well. Surprisingly for the job that I have today. It's a genuine shock how helpful it is that I went through that program. Because you worked that job and they also have the training part of it, and it's like a class, it's three or four credits. Joel: Was that still the Jack Welch culture or were you, did you kind of miss out on that? Ricky Morris: I think I missed out mostly on it. I think he may have been the CEO when I was an intern, but when I was full-time, he wasn't. Joel: His shadow was still there after he left, wouldn't you say? Ricky Morris: Exactly. Yeah. It was. Yeah. Culture is a something that's very hard to change in the company. Joel: And did they pull you out of Cornell? Did you wanna work for them? How did that connection happen? Ricky Morris: You know what? I have a very, actually, really fascinating story about that, that I'm almost concerned about legal issues to say this. [laughter] I'll try to be like... Joel: Lawyers, don't listen to our show. It's okay. Ricky Morris: Okay. Very good. Then I'll say everything now. I got, so I worked my internship at GE. I remember the head of HR told me if I didn't graduate in that current semester in the fall semester, they weren't going to give me the full-time job. They were looked at my resume. The reason why they said that is because they looked at my resume. I had 150 credits on my transcript, rather, 150 credits is a lot of credits to have as an undergrad. What they didn't take into account was that I dropped outta high school. And so when I went to community college, it was all remedial classes. So I have all these credits, but 30, I don't know how many credit, it was a lot of credits that were all remedial. They saw the transcript. They thought, all right, we want our classes to start in January for this new this F&P program. Let's put some pressure on this guy to graduate school this semester instead of taking the entire year. The thing is, I had 24 credits that I needed to take to graduate with the requirements that I needed, but I also really wanted and needed that job. And so what I did in my last semester of school is I worked two jobs and I took 23 credits at Cornell. Chad: Oh cool. Ricky Morris: And by the way, it was my best performing semester. I got a three, nine, one doing that. And also in that semester my car didn't start with the key. You had to jump my car every single time to start it. So I probably jumped my car at least a hundred times. Working two hourly jobs and taking 23 credits at Cornell of all places. Joel: Powered by Taco Bell, by the way, kids. Chad: An hour and a half sleep every night. Ricky Morris: Literally in my last semester in school, and this is not an exaggeration, I stayed up every single Sunday night, all night of every single Sunday night. Chad: You didn't have a choice at that point, did you? Ricky Morris: I was just working. And by the way, this is... Before I even knew what things like Adderall were, like that would've made things much easier. I was just on caffeine and five hour energies. Joel: Who needs Adderall when you have Chalupas. Chad: But Chalupa puts you to sleep. Are you kidding me? Ricky Morris: And by the way, Chalupa is just a fried gordita. Just so you both know that. Chad: Oh, Joel knows. Oh, Joel knows. Joel: It's a slice of heaven, bite your tongue. Ricky Morris: It's very good. [music] Outro: You can find more episodes of Voices, The Chad & Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit chadcheese.com.

Do you believe your childhood was difficult? Well, think again. In this episode, we have a virtual chat with Rahkeem Morris, the CEO and founder of HourWork, who joins us from downtown Boston. Rahkeem shares with us his childhood experiences, which challenged and tested him, ultimately shaping him into the successful man and leader he is today. This journey is both humbling and inspiring, and definitely worth listening to. No spoilers though! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Intro: Voices. We hear them every day. Some voices like mine are smooth and comforting, while on the other hand, the Chad and Cheese podcast is like listening to a Nickelback album, you'd rather stab yourself in the ears with an ice pick. Anyway, y'all now listening to Voices, a podcast series from Chad and Cheese that features the most important and influential voices within the recruitment industry. Try not to fuck it up, boys. Joel: Think your childhood had some hurdles? Not even close. On this episode, we meet HourWork CEO and founder Rahkeem Morris, chatting virtually with us from downtown Boston. Rahkeem takes us on a journey of his childhood. No spoilers, but it was these early years that challenged him, tested him, and essentially made him into the man and leader he is today. Equal parts humbling and inspiring. It's a must listen. Joel: So Rahkeem where does this podcast find you? Rahkeem: This podcast finds me in Boston, and in fact, I'm sitting in Old City Hall in Boston right now. Joel: How's the WiFi at Old City Hall? [laughter] Chad: It's good... Rahkeem: You tell me. How good is it? Is it good enough for you? Joel: Is there like a Sam Adams router somewhere? Rahkeem: Well, Sam Adams is literally buried perhaps less than 200 feet away from me right now. Chad: They planted the WiFi in Sam Adams. Joel: What's the best and worst part about living in Boston? Rahkeem: Really the people, you can find [laughter] anyone that you want to ever want to meet here. Whether it's different cultures, different ages, different everything it's a place to find someone of interest for you. Joel: And oddly enough, the worst part is the people of Boston. [laughter] I'm kidding. What's the worst part? Rahkeem: [laughter] That's funny. Joel: The winters. Rahkeem: The weather. You know what? I've gotten used to the weather because I found out what winter coats are. Well, and I say that in a way that I grew up in Upstate New York, and so I didn't have a good winter coat [laughter] when I was there. And it makes it much bearable. I suppose one thing that... One of the cons is that a lot of the streets here are narrow and just generally the... It feels like a older city, but not in a way that's cool, in a way that like, alright, I can't get gigabit to my house for my internet. That kind of old [laughter] The houses are old, and so there's a lot of not modernization in terms of how we're able to live here because of some infrastructure challenges. Joel: Well, thank God the country's most elite technology school isn't in a place like Boston. That'd be horrible. [laughter] Rahkeem: Hey, I had no stick in that game. Chad: Would be. Talk a little bit about growing up in Upstate New York. Your entire life did... Born, bred, Albany. Where were you at? Rahkeem: Actually the first time I was outside of Albany, I was about 19. So yeah, born and raised in Albany, New York. And I think your question was how was it growing in Upstate New York, in Albany? So in Albany. Albany is the capital of New York, but as you both know, it's not the biggest city in New York. You definitely get some smaller town vibes, but it's very much a city. I had a pleasant enough [chuckle] childhood growing up in Albany, New York. And it gave me enough of a grounding in just, where we are and who we are as people to be successful enough in the world. And so that's Albany for me. Joel: So your upbringing is unique, single parent household. Talk about that and how it shaped you. Rahkeem: Yeah, I think in terms of just having a single parent it's something that happens frequently here in the States and for many, many, many different reasons. But you can imagine that you just have one half less of a person as the head of your household. It's one less income, that's one less stream of support, that's one less of everything. And that's just math. And so when you have a mom, in my case, a single parent porting three kids, there's just a lot of resources being divided across many people. So, that's just the reality of it. Chad: Remember Joel, when latchkey Kids became a phrase. A moniker? Joel: I was one of them. Chad: I think that was a Gen X thing, right? Where latchkey kids where you would obviously get up in the morning, your parent probably wasn't there because they went to work and then you came back home and the parents still wasn't home yet because they were still at work. But you had the key that was either under the mat or on your necklace or where... Where was your key? Rahkeem: That's a good question. You know what, back in the day, and I... Now that you asked it, I haven't thought about this in years. I used to keep my keys in a carabiner. Joel: I'm sorry, what? The carrotbiner. What is... Chad: Carabiner. That's more of a military like piece of equipment. Joel's... Yeah. He's used to more like snacks, like carrots and well, maybe not carrots and... [laughter] Joel: Now Rahkeem you dropped out of high school, correct? Rahkeem: Yes. That's correct. Chad: Oh, when? Rahkeem: So I was 14 years old when I dropped out of high school. Chad: 14? Rahkeem: I went through I guess my evolution as a person later in life [laughter] if I could... Yeah, I was 14 years old, about two months away from becoming 15. That's just the way this school year works. And the reason why I dropped out of high school was because I had a new thing to do at home and that was to bring my little brother to school every single day. Joel: Are we talking elementary? We talking... Rahkeem: He's... Yeah. Great question. He is 10 years younger than I am. Joel: Oh, wow. Rahkeem: Yeah. Joel: Okay. So you're 14 taking care of a four year old? Rahkeem: Exactly that. Joel: Wow. Rahkeem: And so it wasn't even school in the beginning it was daycare I was bringing him to and then eventually it became school. Explaining why I got into this situation in the first place. So I mentioned before, single mom, but also my mom, her employer gave her an ultimatum and they told her that she needed to move her afternoon nursing shifts to mornings or find a new job. When that happened, she asked me to begin bringing him to school, well, initially, again, daycare, and then eventually to school every single day. But, well, sometimes in the morning they aren't always cooperative, especially when you're 3, 4, 5. And so you can imagine that this would add a lot of time to my schedule every single day. Most of the time I got him to daycare about 2 miles by public transit across town. It just added 90 minutes to 2 hours to my mornings every day. I began missing my first period of school. And that dominoed to me missing entire days of school. And the last thing I'll mention there is that I didn't quite understand this when I was telling people, initially this story that I only began this year recently, that I'm telling you now. I didn't realize that people thought I just dropped out because I wasn't focused or something like that. I was in honors classes. I was actually a year ahead in school. And... Chad: Oh, wait, time out, time out, time out. You didn't... So did anybody reach out to you during this? Seeing a kid with such great promise just eject, did you have anybody actually from the school reach out to you and say how they could prospectively help? Rahkeem: Yeah, that's a really great question, because this is what happened. So, no one from the school, I'm sure they called me. I don't remember getting those calls, and I don't remember my mum letting me know that she got those calls. So, about around the time I was going to my high school, Albany High School, in upstate New York. Only 43%, 44% of people that entered their freshman year graduated from that high school. It's one of those schools that, well, Johns Hopkins has done some research of all these high schools in the states. And that's just one of the dropout factories, they call it in the States. And so I think I got some calls, perhaps they were automated. There were just so many people who were dropping out of my high school. It's the only high school, public one in Albany. They put you on a program when you don't go to school. So, eventually, the outcome of this was that I was in this program called TIPS. I forget what the acronym stands for, but they more or less have you visit a probation officer every week or every other week. Chad: Like truancy. Right? Rahkeem: Exactly. Yep. Absolutely. Joel: And what was the impact on your mom? Obviously a solid work ethic as a nurse. Where was her head knowing that her son was in honors classes and dropping out of high school? That must have been crushing. Rahkeem: Definitely, it was. I also have to say that because I was also working, we had opposite schedules. So, I wasn't having these types of conversations with her. I was literally working in the evening while she was working in the day, and then it often switched. Joel: Wow. Rahkeem: At a certain point in time, she was able to get enough stability with her work that this wasn't an issue. Later when I returned back to high school, though for some time it was definitely well a lot extra to do that others wouldn't have to worry about at that time. Joel: So what was the catalyst to get you back into school? What sort of events played out? Rahkeem: I have a couple of different people to thank for that. I made friends with an incredible group of people that age in my life that we're around the same age. We all had our own thing that we were dealing with in life, and they really encouraged me to go back to school around 17, 18 years old. And so that was Juan. I had an amazing mom of a friend who also encouraged me too, and of course my mom who actually went through the process of getting it all done and making sure that I was returning back to school. So, I have a really good group of people, both friends and family that encouraged me to go back to school when I was 17. Just about 18 years old. Chad: So your mom, she was obviously having schedule, not really scheduling issues, she was having employer issues, right? Rahkeem: Yeah. Chad: So what do you know about that experience other than it rocked your life and obviously her life as well? What can you tell us more about that experience for her? What could you actually see? What was your experience through her? Rahkeem: Yeah, that's a really a great question. When I think about it, I... She was already out of the house in the morning when I was awake. So she needed to be at work at 6 o'clock in the morning. And the way that the public transportation... Well, it just takes an hour to get there. [chuckle] If you were to do it by public transportation, we didn't have a car. And so for her to be on a bus for nearly an hour, she had to walk to the bus stop, get in the bus. It just took 90 minutes for her to get on the bus in the morning. So she left around 4:30. So, in the morning, it was just... It was completely up to me and whatever I wanted to do. And what she instructed me to do too, at that time, which was to bring my little brother to school. Rahkeem: It was just, it was all up to me. And there was no one looking over my shoulder to make sure I got to school. What I'm getting to is that given the time... So if you're working an 8-hour shift and you get your standard 1 hour, which is typically unpaid, especially with wage work, you're at work now for 9 hours, then you have an hour to and from work. 'Cause it's several miles away, she doesn't have a car. So, now you're spending for earning 8 hours, now you're spending close to 11 to 12 hours just to do that one job because you don't have the resource to buy a car and you're taking the public transportation. I guess that it's also to say too, it's hard for me to tell you exactly all the things that she was working through and the feelings and emotions, and thoughts that she was dealing with to see her son go through this, go like drop outta high school and it's because she was working. She wasn't in the house. And then, eventually I was going to work myself in the evening and including going to night school for my high school diploma in the end. Joel: So this does have a happy ending. And most people would say you're a very unlikely candidate to attend an Ivy League school. Rahkeem: Yeah. Joel: Let alone even maybe even have that on your radar. Talk about the process of considering an Ivy League school applying, getting in, what that was like. That seems like the best hallmark story ever. From your perspective, how did that play out? Rahkeem: Yeah. Yeah, it worked out. It played out very well. So I went back to high school when I was 17, two months away from becoming 18. I went to a night school program that allowed you to get the full credit for that course, if you're passing the final exam. And so even though I had only gone to high school for a year, I was able to finish the last 3 years of school in a single year. [laughter] [applause] Rahkeem: 'Cause I would clear these 65 final exams [laughter], and in fact, I actually got a, on some of the state exams, I had scored the highest in the school in both the night and day programs. And so I still had that working well for me. But I had this experience not going to school for so long. It became, I'd say clear to me that even at 18, that education was going to be the only way for me to get out of my current circumstance, my situation, and I really poured myself completely into it when I was younger. [music] Outro: You can find more episodes of Voices, the Chad and Cheese Podcast series devoted to stories and opinions of industry leaders by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or just visit chadcheese.com.

It’s helpful to check the pulse of the recruitment industry from time-to-time. It’s especially useful when the company rep who comes on the show has a newsletter called The Pulse. That’s why we brought industry veteran Michael Woodrow, CEO at Aspen Tech Labs, on the podcast. With over 120K source sites and 9M jobs in their kitty, Michael is able to speak from a position of deep understanding about the labor markets. We discuss job openings, popular trends (ChatGPT alert!), just how bullish Michael is on ZipRecruiter and whether or not a hard or soft landing is on the offing. Tune in and get smarter. Mike's last interview - Woody's Google for Jobs LOVE/HATE PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions connects jobseekers with disabilities with employers who value diversity and inclusion.​ 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 & Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh yeah, if you don't know, ask your parole officer. What's up, kids? You're listening to the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined us always, the Dr. Dre to my Snoop Dogg, Chad Sowash is in the house. And we welcome Michael Woodrow, President at Aspen Tech Labs. Michael, welcome back to the show. It's been a minute. Mike Woodrow: Hi guys. How's it's going? Joel: Doing well. Doing well. Those listeners who don't know you or are new in the last four years, tell them about Michael Woodrow. Mike Woodrow: So, yeah, it's Micheal Woodrow, President of Aspen Tech Labs. What Aspen Tech Labs does is we kind of power the back of the Internet job postings, the backbone. We move a lot of jobs from company sites directly to our about 300 customers, job boards, advertising platforms, etcetera. So we collect job postings daily, or more often, kind of clean them up and move them into platforms like ZipRecruiter and Dice and The Muse. Chad: Talk about you, Mike. Talk about you. You're in Cally right now. You're usually on the slopes in Aspen. Joel: Company headquartered in Aspen. Yeah, Mike has as a tough life. Mike Woodrow: I'm an executive recruiter by training. So I had an executive recruiting firm. I come from that background, so I kind of know what it takes to fill positions. I've filled hundreds of recruiting positions, senior positions. Still have involvement in a recruitment firm, but that's how I got into the space. And then in the early 2000s, I launched a little job board and used some older technology, and then in about 2005, re-launched it and met my former partner, who's Ukrainian guy. So there's a little Ukrainian story to Aspen Tech Labs, or actually a pretty big Ukrainian story to Aspen Tech Labs now. But that was, we launched Aspen Tech Labs back in 2007 as a job board platform, which we still have called JobMount. So we launched niche job boards for our customers, and then we got into the scraping business, the data collection business, probably in about 2010. Chad: Is that because you guys needed it or you had prospective clients? Mike Woodrow: Our customers were asking for it. Chad: Makes sense. Intro: They were like, "Yeah, all right, you launched this job board for me, I need jobs." And some job boards, or we like to say a lot of job boards, don't want those paid feeds. They want real jobs or they want specific jobs. So that's how we got into scraping, and then now we have about 25 people that we call spider-men and spider-women who do are scraping for us and keep track of all the data that comes in. We scrape about 130,000 companies every day, right now, in a 120 countries. Chad: Damn, that's a lot. Mike Woodrow: So that business started with a couple of customers saying, "Hey, can you scrape some jobs for us?" And we were like, "Okay, we'll figure that out," and now we collect that jobs data, and any kind of data, if you can collect it and normalize it, it's valuable today in 2023. And so we operate mostly in the job space, but we dabble a little bit in auto and in property. A little bit more than dabble in auto, but auto and property are two of our other verticals, actually, and healthcare. So we collect a lot of healthcare data too. So we're really good at collecting data, going back tomorrow, looking to see if anything's changed and then collect what's changed or aggregate it and normalize it. Joel: How many job board clients are on your software platform? How many job boards are you powering right now? Mike Woodrow: We have about 100 job board clients. Joel: Okay. Refresh my memory. The origin of that was like for SEO, I remember. Like have all your jobs search friendly and indexable. Am I right about that? It's been a while. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, that was, I used this older technology when I launched my first job board and I launched it, and nobody could find the jobs. They weren't out there. Joel: You weren't alone. Mike Woodrow: So that was a big piece of me moving over to this platform that now is JobMount, that the jobs are all very well organized and set up for Google to easily find them. Chad: Let's rehash a little bit of our last conversation, and kids, we'll have a link in the show notes on this one so you can listen to that one. But back in January of 2019, the three of us got together and we talked about some things that are still being talked about today. One of those being Google For Jobs. So there's been a huge change and shift, and will it be there, and will it go away? And then here as of late, we start to see that they're beta testing paid jobs. So your thought back then was that Google is going to be a force. Google For Jobs is going to be a force. The question is, today, do you think it's gonna be a force for good for the rest of the ecosystem? Joel: Or evil? Mike Woodrow: The ChatGPT thing is really interesting to see where that's going. Joel: Oh you jumped right into that, didn't you? Oh my God. Mike Woodrow: But it's certainly a big competitor that we didn't even think about back in 2019 about Google. But a friend of mine is a senior person at Google, and he tells me that Google cares about making it easy for people to find whatever they want on Google. They obviously make a lot of money doing that, but they wake up every morning thinking about, is it a good visitor experience for someone to come and find whatever they want; a restaurant, a job, a car, whatever? And so they're still very focused on that. So jobs fits into that. And one thing that we're seeing with them recently, I'm a big... I don't know about advocate. I'm bullish on Google For Jobs. I think it works really well. It's clean. If I were a company, and I say this all the time, make sure your jobs are getting on Google For Jobs. It's free clicks. Why pay Indeed if they're putting your jobs on Google For Jobs and your jobs aren't optimized? That's something, just it's easy to do. So I think it's super important. Mike Woodrow: I do think it's gonna be a good thing for the industry. People are putting... One thing that they're focused on these days is addresses. Most job posting surprisingly don't have street addresses, but Google wants to, between their mapping and between everything, they want the job postings to be very specific because people search on things like jobs near me or X jobs near me or something. So addresses is something that is super important and becoming more important. They're telling their most important partners, unfortunately, we're not one of them apparently, but they're telling some of our partners that you need to put street addresses on job postings. Joel: Is mapping coming, you think? Mike Woodrow: Yeah, so, man, if you think about it, you think someone would wanna say, "Hey, this is where I drive my kid to school," or, "This is where I do whatever. What jobs are gonna be near there?" Or, "What jobs are gonna be around?" And that technology should exist. So I think it's super interesting. The paid thing, I don't really think it's a big threat to the industry or anything, so I'm actually a little surprised that they're monetizing it, but they're trying to monetize it. There's no question that they're more serious about it. They've been doing updates to their algorithm. We follow really closely. They've been doing updates to their jobs algorithm about 3-4 times a year for the last two years. So they're on this. Joel: Why are you surprised they're monetizing it? Chad and I have been predicting it for about eight years now, like before the show started. Why are you surprised by that? They are a for-profit business, right? Mike Woodrow: Yeah, I don't know that it'll be super easy for them to monetize it, I guess, but maybe it will. I don't know. Joel: It's like Indeed in the early days. All I need is about a dozen clients to pay me a ton of money to get their jobs indexed or higher in the search rankings. They don't need a million clients. They need a few job boards. They already have LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. They'll pay them a few million dollars a month, I would assume to have their jobs... Mike Woodrow: Yeah, I just don't know if that's gonna move... It's gotta be a big chunk of money to move the needle for Google, and so you're talking about, is there a $5 billion opportunity for them? I don't know, maybe. Chad: Well, which is why they got out of the APIs, what, the search APIs and Google Hire. They saw that the trajectory for Google Cloud in other aspects of business were just bigger, much bigger opportunity. So are you surprised they shut down those other two platforms and they kept this one going? Why do that? Why not just go ahead and keep search the way it is? But they can't make that kind of money if they're ejected out of this. Joel: You don't think the math nerds at Google believe that they can't make that kind of money? There are enough agencies, enterprise businesses and job boards. Chad: Did you think they thought about that when they built an applicant tracking system? Joel: Yeah, that was spaghetti at the wall. Clearly, Google For Jobs is a real business, they think, which is why they've launched a pay-per-click component to it. I think it's beyond the testing-and-see-what-happens phase. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, and I think also, if they can be successful, then maybe there's something they can do in autos or there's something they can do in some other verticals. I really thought that the Google For Jobs thing was really a keep using Google, come to Google for everything, jobs too. That's where I thought they were going with it. Chad: That makes sense. Yeah. Mike Woodrow: And that did make a lot of sense, but maybe they're trying to see if there's a big enough revenue opportunity, and then if there is, some of these other verticals, like I'm talking about autos, that'd be huge too. Chad: Does it just turn into more arbitrage though? As we're starting to cycle jobs through job board A to ZipRecruiter to Google For Jobs, has it just become a huge arbitrage game at this point? Mike Woodrow: You know, I've always been really negative on the arb game because the candidate experience is just so bad. Chad: It sucks. Oh, yeah. Mike Woodrow: And so we have a good thing in our industry, why screw it up? And so I've always been against the arb piece. It's not that easy to arb, I don't think the Google side. I think it's just the ads are expensive and so it's tougher. I think they're smart about taking a big piece of whatever they do, and so the way the arb works in our industry is there's 20 ¢, 25 ¢ here, 30 ¢ here, and there's people who can kind of scrape a little bit off the top and it works. I think with Google, it's harder to do that. Chad: Any more Google jokes? I'm gonna step to StepStone next. Joel: Go to StepStone. Chad: Okay, so last show we also talked about Europe and about StepStone. Were you surprised that StepStone bought Appcast? And if so, are you surprised what they've done with Appcast thus far? Mike Woodrow: Yeah, StepStone was very open that they were looking for a US opportunity, and they were looking all around, kicking a bunch of tires and everything, looking for a US opportunity. And I don't know the numbers or anything, but I would imagine that Appcast has been a big win for them. Again, like I said, I don't know, the numbers but Appcast numbers have to be down because Amazon was advertising just crazy for a year, a couple of years, and most of that was on the Appcast platform, and they've pulled back really significantly on that. But I think it's a great business. I think the StepStone guys were smart. A whole bunch of their businesses are our clients all over the world, our customers all over the world, Sun Group, Totaljobs, PNet in South Africa, all these are StepStone businesses, so they've got businesses kind of all over. Joel: Did they leave money on the table though? A lot of people think they sold for a little too cheaply. Mike Woodrow: Appcast? Joel: Yeah. $72 million, I think was the number. Mike Woodrow: I think had Appcast knew what was gonna happen with COVID and advertising and everything like that, sure, but... Joel: Hindsight? Mike Woodrow: $72 million for a relatively small business is a good number. Joel: It'll buy a lot of beer. Mike Woodrow: Yeah. Yeah. Chad: Well, it's interesting... Mike Woodrow: Yeah, so I think those guys did okay. We don't have to worry about them. Chad: I think it's interesting StepStone has retracted out of France. We started to see some chinks in the armor. Totaljobs, they're going through some changes. I think they're preparing for IPO. So there's some big changes, I think, happening at StepStone. Do you think we will see Appcast start to finally gain some traction from a usage standpoint in Europe? Because the US is one thing. Europe is an entirely different ball game. Mike Woodrow: I don't think I have a good perspective on that. You're right, it is. It's completely different. The UK, is kind of a solid, really established market, and then the rest of Europe is just a little bit piecemeal. But yeah, Appcast has not taken hold in Europe as strongly, but I know they're working on it. I know they're working on it. They're definitely focused on it. And I think their business model makes sense. Chad: It's kind of hard for them though, because their business model on how they actually, they won, let's just say, programmatic early, was to be the rails for agencies, for programmatic and performance-driven advertising. So they powered all of the agencies and then they were bought by StepStone. So at this point, it's kind of like, will they or won't they? You've got the RecruitX who was, obviously they bought KRT. You've got Pando that's out there. You have now all these competitors who could perspectively take advantage of some of the StepStone IPO focus, more focused on that than the actual market itself. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, Appcast is super focused on direct customers. They started with the agencies, but then moving over, and like you said before, getting the top customers, starting there first and taking that agency piece out of the equation, I think they're gonna be successful. Chad: So that didn't work for Monster and it didn't work for Careerboat. It hamstrung them. What makes you think it's gonna work for Appcast, to be able to go direct to client instead of through the agencies? Mike Woodrow: Well, yeah, I guess I don't have the full answer. I'm a big fan of Appcast. I think these guys are smart. I think that they're trying to make sure that the visitor experience is high quality. They're trying to work on things that some of the other guys don't care so much about it, and I think that over time, they're gonna build share. Chad: Last year we also talked about ZipRecruiter, and you were very bullish on them. And you said that pretty much their brut force ability is driving their success, but that brut force seems to have gone limp over the last couple of years. What the hell's happening at ZipRecruiter? Mike Woodrow: They are super focused and have been super focused on SMB, so the middle piece of the market. So they had their layoffs, Indeed had their layoffs. Once you're a public company, the game changes. And so I'm thankful, I would assume you guys are thankful you don't have to report quarterly, I'm thankful that I don't have to report quarterly, and I'll always be up over last year. Joel: My wife wants weekly reports, by the way, which can be more brutal than public markets, but that's a different show. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, so I think once you go public and you have quarterly reporting responsibilities, the game changes and you just really have to dial it down. But we work super closely with those guys. I'm still bullish on ZipRecruiter. They're smart guys. I think their advertising is pretty cool. Joel: Do you own shares? Do you own the stock? Mike Woodrow: I don't. Joel: Okay. So not that bullish. Mike Woodrow: I just feel like I'm long enough into some of our customers that I don't really need to own their shares. I've got a bigger stake than some shareholders do. Yeah, so I think to have a direct pipe into Google and some places like this, they're working on some really cool things, and I think they care about the visitor experience. I know they care about the visitor experience. I know for sure they do because we've got a product called Jobs Control, that we follow clicks through to see where they land and they're a customer on that product, so they care. They wanna know. They distribute their jobs. They wanna know what the situation is for the visitors, and that's rare. Chad: So talking about scraping, talking about labor market information and getting the pulse on what the hell is happening right now, you guys scrape... You've been scraping data forever. How long have you been warehousing that? How long have you been being able to analyze that? What's the whole back story and how much data warehousing do you have? Mike Woodrow: So we started collecting data for our customers and configuring it for them. So if we scraped for Dice, they want the data delivered this way, if we scraped for ZipRecruiter, they want it delivered it this way. So we weren't very smart about it in the beginning. We just collected it, configured it and send it on. And then we realized we've got this huge pool of data because not only are we scraping Amazon and Walmart, but customers kind of come and go. Like this month, for instance, we added... I just looked at the report. We get a daily report, we added about 430 new scrapes and about 330 scripts were cancelled, so just customer flow. That's pretty normal. And so there's very few months that are down, so we're a few down months recently, which I think is not a big surprise with the industry. So there's always scrapes being added and scrapes being subtracted. And so what we decided to do was take all these scrapes that were being cancelled and continue scraping them and collecting the data. Now we've got this data, but we had eight fields for Dice and 10 fields we were collecting for ZipRecruiter and everything, and we looked at the data and we were like, "God, this is a mess." Mike Woodrow: So it took about two years to really figure out how we could aggregate it. Because you think of all these job postings are the same, but they're really not. They're looking at things differently. There's a couple extra fields. Somebody's adding an industry classification, someone's adding this, whatever. And so it took us a couple of years. We launched this big jobs data quality project, both for our customers and to aggregate and normalize the data. So that took a couple of years, and last year, in about the middle of 2022, we felt like we were at the point where, okay, we've got this data normalized and we can make some sense of it. And so that's where it all started. And we have some historical data going back further than that, but not too much further than the middle of last year. So now we're starting to build it and we have a big... Everything we do is AWS, Amazon Web Services. I'm a big advocate of those guys, and Amazon's a customer too. They have a job board called AWS Educate, so we work closely with those guys. Joel: Such a name dropper. Mike Woodrow: Right, you gotta throw out a couple of them. Chad: Smart man. Mike Woodrow: Google, Amazon. We have some good customers. Joel: Amazon, ZipRecruiter, I know all the famous people. Let's bring us back into 2023. The Pulse, you talked about it, a lot of data, a lot of things you guys are finding out. Give us a 30,000-foot view of the current state of employment and workforce issues. Chad: Date of the Union of Jobs. Mike Woodrow: Yeah. So we have Job Market Pulse. We're putting out quarterly reports and some other things like that. One thing that that we look at that's really interesting is we have all of the S&P 500 companies in our database. So it's easy to see, "Hey, what's going on with S&P 500 companies? Is that representative of the US or not?" Kind of think it is because it includes the Walmarts of the world and some of the big hiring companies, and then it includes Exxon and some of the Microsoft and companies like that. So back in November, they had about a million job postings out there available. And remember, all of our data comes directly from the company sites, not from job boards where maybe they're duplicating things or they're doing whatever. This is directly from the company site. Joel: Is that global or US? Just so I know. Mike Woodrow: So that's US. Joel: US? Okay. Mike Woodrow: The number I'm giving you is US, about a million jobs US in November, and now that total is dropped below 800,000 jobs. So that's a pretty big reduction in job counts. More than 20% since November, and now we're sitting here at the end of March. Joel: So what the Fed hopes to happen is happening ultimately. They want fewer... Mike Woodrow: Yeah. And so, I've been in this game for a long time, since the '90s, so my perspective really is that when employment was really ridiculously low, kitchens and everybody was short staff, okay? So everyone knows that, restaurants open four days a week, all that kind of stuff. Over the last six months, that has started to fill in, and I think that's why we're seeing very low numbers on new claims for unemployment, even though we're hearing about all these kind of layoffs. So all those positions started to kind of fill in and we're getting to the point where I think they're full. You hear about hiring is still challenging, but people have filled position. And now we've got all these IT and these kind of more senior level positions that were announced and that just takes six months or so to work their way through. Mike Woodrow: People get a couple months of pay, the big companies have to give 60 days I think, and then they pay a couple months after that. So we're still in that cycle that a lot of those people are still kind of in between, kind of working or not working whatever, and I think it's gonna be a soft landing. I really do. I think it's gonna be a soft landing and we'll end up somewhere around 4%, 4.5% unemployment, which is I think good for the country and it's certainly good for our industry. Joel: And something that's good for my life is that Taco Bell is the number one employer in the polls. So that means a lot of people are still going to Taco Bell, which is good for me. I wanted to point that out. How much of it is... All right. You mentioned ChatGPT, all these tech people are being unemployed, but we're seeing hundreds of new apps being built around ChatGPT, companies hiring AI folks. Obviously, it's gonna be a huge thing with all the big guys; Google, Facebook, Amazon. They're all gonna get in this game. How much impact are you seeing job postings for ChatGPT, job postings for AI, what are you seeing in the polls in terms of AI? Mike Woodrow: AI is you, guys have been at conferences, people have been talking about AI in our space for the last, I don't know, five or 10 years. Joel: Yes. Mike Woodrow: You don't see that much kind of coming into play. But I'll tell you what's some things that are really happening. Now, one is ChatGPT, the date is old, right? Joel: Yeah, '21. Mike Woodrow: September, 2021, and that'll come quicker and quicker and quicker. Will it get to real time, what we call realtime, one or two days old? I'm not sure how long it's gonna take to get there. That's a lot of data and processing that. So I think, for our industry, I'm not sure that it's gonna be a huge, huge deal. Here's something that's super cool though. So you ready for me to drop a few names here? Chad: Oh, let's do it. Here we go. Here we go. Mike Woodrow: So my daughter's an AI PhD student at Stanford. Chad: Oh, hello. Mike Woodrow: So serious stuff, right? She's here with me this week and she was coding and she has an extension on her computer that Stanford has access to from ChatGPT. She starts coding and it tries to finish her line of code for her, because it knows what she's doing. Seriously, I watched it. And after she does it, she'll run it through and it'll say, "Hey, here's a better way to do this." And I use this example with her, I'm like, "Is it like Google translate that if you don't really know what you're saying, you're not really sure what's coming back?" And she's like, "Exactly." But if you know what you're doing, it's telling you a better way to do something. So she's actually making a presentation to our team tomorrow about how they can use ChatGPT to be quicker with their coding and more efficient with their coding. So that's some cool stuff. SFX: Shall we play a game. Mike Woodrow: That's being used now. That's not like next year, next month Elon Musk says. Joel: So bring that into our space. Don't you think... Chad: Well, that's on demand QA/QC. That's what's happening right now, right? Joel: Yeah. Mike Woodrow: Yeah. Chad: But that could literally be taken over after it's been trained enough. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, her argument is, at this point, you still need someone who's smart enough to see what's happening. Is it doing what you want, what you really wanted it to do, or just what it thinks you wanted it to do? So that's cool. And so it's already being used and this is just literally a Chrome extension. Joel: Yeah. So bring this into our space, Mike. I mean, job postings, why couldn't... Same thing. I'm starting to write a job posting and it starts writing it for me. I mean, what vendors, what businesses in our space are gonna be disrupted by what your daughter's seeing on the ground? Mike Woodrow: It'll certainly make it easier to write a job posting and things that are important like, "Hey, could you check job posting for diversity and inclusion?" Joel: Rejection letter. Mike Woodrow: They'll say, "Hey, here's a better way to say this", or, "Here's this." The thing that I think is super interesting is it's easy to generate content. So Google is, the search engines and everyone are the really big on original content. So what is original content gonna be like starting a month ago? Joel: Well, there'll be new tools and there already are that make it sound more organic. They'll take the AI wrote this and they'll rewrite it and AI can't... It'll be like this game of Whack-a-Mole. Mike Woodrow: There's already tools that can say, "Did AI write this?" Joel: Yeah, and there are tools that will rewrite the AI, so that AI can't say that AI wrote it. [laughter] Mike Woodrow: Yeah, exactly. Chad: So, a question, are companies like Textio in mortal danger? Joel: Yes. Chad: I mean, why do I need to spend the kind of money that Textio wants me to spend when I can just hook up a Chrome extension and and have a nice day? I mean, is it pretty much their day in the sun is over or they just need to sell as soon as humanly possible? Mike Woodrow: They're gonna be under pressure, but good companies adapt to new technology. So if they can help people use AI to do a better job writing and not instead of having a 1000 customers have 10,000 and charge them half as much, I don't know. I mean that's what I would be thinking about if I were them. Joel: Michael's so diplomatic. Chad: He is. He's bright and shiny too. It's like, I'm happy just talking to him. I don't get this just having a regular conversation with Joel, Mike. Thanks, man. [laughter] Mike Woodrow: I mean, what about you guys? ChatGPT is gonna create podcast. Joel: This is our show, Mike. This is our show. [laughter] Mike Woodrow: What if they created a podcast that were actually funny? No, I'm just kidding. [laughter] Joel: Oh, damn. Chad: That's a very good question. We already have our voices cloned by Veritone, so being able to actually generate the content, and then, yeah. Joel: You literally could do our show without us at this point in multi-languages, which is crazy. Chad: Five different languages at this point. So at the end of the day, when we're talking about the actual job polls, what's the biggest insight that you saw out of this information over the past, let's say, three months? Mike Woodrow: The biggest insights that we see and the thing that we're getting the most customer attention from is from the wage benchmarking. And we say wage benchmark, it's who's hiring and what are they offering? Because the recruiters don't really have control over the pricing, the wages, but they do have input into, "Hey, we're not filling these positions." And one of the reasons is because Taco Bell is paying $2 more in our market than than we are at Walmart or wherever. So yeah, I think that's the most interesting and that's something that's still evolving, or 20% States are starting to put the regulations in, and you guys, at least I say I know this, candidates wanna see it. They wanna see what what it is. Chad: Yes, of course. Mike Woodrow: And I think recruiters really want candidates who really want the job to apply. So, even though companies don't necessarily wanna post it, the Chambers of Commerce and everyone are kind of fighting that in each State, but it's coming. And I think that's the most interesting data I think that's out there. Joel: Mike, I wanna get your take on remote. The world has changed since we last spoke and remote jobs have obviously been a big topic on our show. Talk about, are the big metros dying? Are job postings moving elsewhere around the country? Are multiple postings for the same job being posted in different areas and is that skewing the actual number of open jobs? How many jobs do you see out there that actually are remote and really promote the fact that they are remote? Talk about that. Mike Woodrow: Yeah, so we track the remote job postings and very few jobs actually put remote in the job title, less than 5%. And part of that's because you need to have a location for a job. It's just the way that the old school systems are set up. You have to put a city in or something. So that's part of that, that's why they pop the remote up in the job title. But Apple and the financial services, companies want people back in the office. So my son works for a company called Dataminr and they collect breaking news from social media. It's a big company in New York. It's like a thousand people or whatever. But they have a whole bunch of people who are fully remote forever. So I really think it's gonna be company by company. But I think Google's got people in the office, what, three days a week. They're having a little more trouble in the US than they're having in other locations. Like in France, they're in the office three days a week. That's just, everybody's in the office. Mike Woodrow: And so I think people are gonna come back into the office. I do, I think they are. I don't think it's gonna be five days a week, but I do think people will want to come back into the office, and companies, we haven't talked about the Ukraine thing at all, but when people aren't in the same place, it's a little harder to collaborate and we're constantly building new products and everything and good companies are doing that. Being together makes it easier. And just kind of you hear about these companies who are saying, "Oh yeah, we're gonna meet once a quarter in wherever and we're gonna bring everybody in from all over and do that," I don't know. That's pretty expensive and that seems like it's not really practical to do that over the long run. I think people are gonna come back in the office on some kind of a three day week basis and that's gonna become the new normal over time. That's just my perspective. Chad: So, real quick, talk about Ukraine, because you did have and probably still currently have workers that are in Ukraine. I mean, how did that disrupt business? It had to have because it disrupted their lives. How did that disrupt and and how did you at that point start to work toward a solution for them? Mike Woodrow: We have an amazing team and we kind of call it family. So there's 60 people in our company. Right before the war started, we moved a handful of people out to Portugal and Poland because I was worried about power and internet. That's what I was worried about, and that's what most of us were worried about. And then obviously this happened. So we have 45 people still in Ukraine and the people are amazing. Chad: Wow. Mike Woodrow: We have not lost a single customer over the war. So nobody was disrupted. People needed something to do other than worry about the war. So our people decided to work. And so that was awesome for our customers and for the company. The people are fatigued now. The people who are still there are really tired, really tired of this, and I could imagine it. Joel: Yeah, of course. Mike Woodrow: One of my guys is having his first baby, his wife's having her first baby in a few days, lives by an anti-missile battery. So that thing's firing at night. Joel: Geez. Mike Woodrow: Just something you just don't think about. So the people are amazing, customers have not been disrupted because of, there we go, with AWS, oh, here's another plug I'll put, Starlink is fricking awesome. Absolutely awesome. I'm not a huge Elon Musk guy. Joel: And I've got Elon on speed dial right now. Mike Woodrow: That stuff... Joel: Elon's coming out to Aspen next week. Mike Woodrow: That stuff works. And we've got a handful of those things that we put in place after the war started. So we got equipment, some of it was delivered to Ukraine, some was Portugal, we moved over to Ukraine and that stuff works great. So, resilient people and I think we did a pretty good job as soon. As a war started, we told everyone, "Move wherever you want. Take with you whoever you need and we'll pay for it until further notice." So thanks to our customers for supporting all that. But that took the pressure off I think. People felt like, if I'm staying, I'm here 'cause I wanna be, not because I have to stay and I can't figure out what to do. So yeah, so it's been tough, but the people are great and we built a good company and I think, hopefully we reward the people so that they feel like it's a quid pro quo. [applause] Joel: That's Michael Woodrow, everybody. President at Aspen Tech Labs. Michael, for our listeners that wanna connect with you or learn more, where would you send them? Mike Woodrow: Just mike@aspentechlabs.com or as Chad knows even better, at lana@aspentechlabs.com. [laughter] Chad: Lana! Mike Woodrow: Yeah, big shout out to Lana. Joel: And with that, I'm headed to Taco Bell. Chad, another one is in the can. Thank God I didn't throw my dockers away from the '90s 'cause I'm going back to the office. We out. Chad: We out. 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.

Al Smith, CTO at iCIMS, is back on the podcast recording from his front-row seat to the AI race, he talks ChatGPT, chatbots deciding to compete with applicant tracking systems like his, what we can expect from the upcoming INSPIRE conference (icims.com) (new CEO on stage alert!) and why, exactly, he dislikes the term “ATS” so much. Al is always smart, candid, and transparent - almost like he has no filter at all - so this is a must-listen if you want an honest breakdown of the current state of tech at his company and the industry at large. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. 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. Joe Cheeseman: Oh yeah, if you don't know, ask your senator. What's up, everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA, The Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, the Little John Demi Robin Hood, Chad Sowash. Chad Sowash: What's up? Joe Cheeseman: And today we welcome Al Smith, CTO at iCIMS to the podcast. Al, welcome. Al Smith: Thanks so much, guys. Nice to see you again as always. Chad Sowash: Welcome back. Joe Cheeseman: Welcome back. So for our listeners that don't know you, all three or four of them, give us your Twitter bio, and we'll get to the hard-hitting Q&A after that. Al Smith: Yeah, real easy. So Al Smith, CTO at iCIMS. Been with iCIMS over eight years. And I've got responsibility for our product management, engineering, cloud-hosting teams, and a great lover of technology that helps people find jobs. Chad Sowash: Eight years. He just said eight years. Listen. Joe Cheeseman: I was drinking out of my iCIMS YETI. The ice was smashing against the lips. Sorry. Chad Sowash: So within the eight years that you've been there, what's changed. What's been the biggest change in our industry, not iCIMS? I'll get to that one in a second. Al Smith: It's funny, some things have not changed at all. And I knew nothing about this industry before I joined. To be candid with you, when the recruiter called me about joining iCIMS, I said, "Hiring software? Isn't this death, taxes sucks?" Like what could possibly be new." Obviously, I was poorly educated on this industry. I think I joined in 2015, and our industry hadn't yet pivoted to really understand mobile sufficiently. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Al Smith: And I think as I think of today, everything is de facto mobile, mobile, properly mobile, I think. And we've moved away from apps largely. Just mobile adaptive is being just bread and butter. I think the impact of... Everybody wanted to use the term big data. I did too. It's real. We benchmarked ourselves a lot, and I think a lot of our customers are hungry for that data to try to help understand the dynamic of their own business and what it could be, and it's a hard job. Al Smith: Now what hasn't changed, it's kinda crazy when you look at it, is I think it's still a crazy fragmented industry with hundreds of vendors playing different roles. I think when we look at our customers that are hiring... Buying and hiring software, we see customers a year buying best-of-breed or they're buying from their ATM vendor, and I don't think that's changed a heck of a lot. The numbers switch back and forth depending on which analyst you talk to. But I think at the other today, we do these surveys, and I know a lot of people do, how many tools does a talent acquisition team use? And I don't think numbers move the needle a lot. They use 20 to 25 to 30 tools depending on how big their scope is. I think what's changed for me and for us is we offer now more and more of those tools from one vendor, which hopefully in the big picture is really helpful for our customers. It's kind of the mission we've been on to say how do we make it easier, better, more of? But it's a hard job, folks, doing this. Joe Cheeseman: Can we clarify the death of apps comment? Are we talking about just our space? Are you digging the grave for the entire app ecosystem? Al Smith: It's interesting. I think a couple of technology changes that early on everybody was writing phone-specific, platform-specific apps. If you go 2013, there were six operating systems for mobile people were trying to write apps. Then we were writing for Android and Apple, and that's still happening. But I think there's a lot of movement. I know we've moved and other people have moved to like a React Native kind of implementation. We use React as part of our UI technology, you can generate a Native app for iOS and Android off of that, and therefore is less about going to the app store also, that kind of thing. And then mobile adaptive web experiences when you don't need the extra data help that an app can give you. I'd see a pretty strong trend that more people are focusing on web adaptive... Mobile adaptive experiences on a web interface 'cause it's easier. Joe Cheeseman: Yeah. So you mentioned 2013, I think you said there, and I'm gonna go back in the past just a little bit. You guys had... Chad Sowash: Here we go. Joe Cheeseman: The INSPIRE Conference last year, which was just November, and you've decided to just flip it and have another one like six months later. Al Smith: It was so good. Joe Cheeseman: Yeah. It was so good. Al Smith: Yeah. Joe Cheeseman: But a little... A few things have changed in the world since November. But I wanna go back to something you said in your presentation. I don't know if you said you hate the term ATS or something along those lines. Tell us why so hateful on the term ATS, and what should we be using instead? Al Smith: I don't think that I hate ATS. I think you put those words in my mouth, and I accept them. I was complaining that a lot of our... A lot of the analyst community particularly, but also even some of the market at large have a hard time seeing us as more than an ATS, and I was talking about iCIMS specifically. When I joined, they had three products. It was an amazing company that had been on a wonderful run. But we're now a portfolio of 20 plus products, and I think we do a disservice... And look, some of this is marketing brand and other things, but we do a disservice just lumping it all to say, "Hey, iCIMS is an ATS company." We're really focused on trying to address all the parts of the hiring process, the top of funnel, the attract and engagement experiences. Al Smith: Yes, we continue to remain really strong, I think, on the higher part, where ATS is still important. I still love my child called ATS. And then we've expanded our lane a bit. Last year, we introduced an opportunity marketplace around internal mobility and advancement. And for me, I think of all these things as a complete life cycle is what we're trying to bring to our customers and solutions on the candidate and employee experience. So I was whining. You called me out on the whine. That's fair, that's fair. And I was whining that says, "Please think of us... I need your help. Think of us as more than just an ATS." Joe Cheeseman: Cheese knows a whine when it sees it, you know what I'm saying there? Chad Sowash: It's really amorphous. It's kind of like this nebulous relic of... I mean, applicant tracking system back in the ResumeX days. I mean, this is back in what shit? What? '98. That was an applicant tracking system. The ResumeX of yesterday is not the iCIMS of today. Not to mention, if you even try to bump up different, "applicant tracking systems or what's siloed as an applicant tracking system", the capabilities, the performance, everything is different from brand to brand to brand. Al Smith: Yeah. Chad Sowash: I've wanted to get rid of this term ATS 'cause it is a relic. It is a very small portion of what you guys actually do. Although the hard part is, HR is slow to adopt, talent acquisition is slow to adopt. And trying to teach them a new term to be able to fit yourself into is just a marketing nightmare. Al Smith: Yeah. Like I'd give kudos to Colin Day who founded the company, and he'll tell you, I'm sure if we called Colin now, he'd say, look, it may not be sexy, but everybody needs an ATS and guess what? It's still the foundation of the hiring process. You know it is. And we invest a lot in... Chad Sowash: Recordkeeping. Al Smith: Yeah. Well, look, we invest a lot in it to constantly make it hopefully have more and more utility, I think is the right outcome as opposed to just being recordkeeping. So I don't hate it. Joel, I don't hate the term. I just wanna be known as more than that. That's all. Joe Cheeseman: And unfortunately, Colin is retired in Fiji, so the time zones really wouldn't work up if we did call him. Chad Sowash: I think he's in Bora Bora this month. Joe Cheeseman: Yeah. If we called him right now, he's probably asleep, he's probably asleep. Al Smith: He's gonna be listening to your podcast every day, come on. Joe Cheeseman: On the beach, yes, in a Speedo, obviously because that's the best way to listen to us. Al Smith: He did not do that. Joe Cheeseman: So going back to November again, a little thing called ChatGPT launched in November. A few things have changed since then. A lot of companies have embraced it. I just wanna get your overall take on ChatGPT and its impact on our industry. Al Smith: Yeah. So as I mentioned, I renamed my dog GPT. All kidding aside, I don't have a dog right now. My daughter does. The hype is crazy. Although, look, we're certainly doing research and experimenting with it. I'll come back and kind of lay out how I see it. I do think it's gonna make a huge impact in our business in a lot of different ways. And that's important to not ignore it or put your head in the sand and say, "Hey, I don't have to participate." It's gonna be a serious impact in a couple ways. Some I hope for the real good positive. We've spent a lot of time building a responsible AI program, working really hard at a code of conduct, human-led, explainable, reversible, transparent, all these things that we think matter. Al Smith: GPT today doesn't represent a lot of those aspects. And I think some of the people who are worried about it may be appropriately so is the explainability, is like, mmm, that kinda thing. That said, look even with all the careful work we've done, the number of companies at scale, I think that's the key word, not the early adopters, but companies at scale have been really slow to make decisions to use AI knowingly using AI as part of a decision process. I will tell you the approaches that we've taken on AI in general. I'll come back to ChatGPT, is I think AI can do a hell of a lot of good for our industry, solving problems that are beyond human scale. And I think we're just too ready to ignore these things that are beyond human scale. Al Smith: So DE&I problems, there's a lot of stuff that goes into the news around, "Hey, new AI model has bias and somebody's not getting a job that you get a job." Well, that's good that that's getting the news. That's a bad outcome. But if we look at the situation where you flip it on its head and you say, well, look in a normal hiring process, first of all, if you have a diversity plan, how diverse is your company to start? Do you know that? If you don't, can we set goals? By the way, when you start hiring, how diverse is the top of the funnel? Are you diverse to begin with? And do you lose diversity as the funnel proceeds? And if so, do you also keep track trending? Are you making improvements on your goals? And are you looking in the right places for diverse people? Al Smith: Are you using technologies that help you hire on potential, not on experience only? That is a lot of our AI program, and it compliments a lot for companies that are trying to solve the problem of scale and complexity and all these things that the human can't track. The other one, I think, is it's kinda crazy. We have employers that have... You have 1000 open jobs for a certain position and you're fortunate and our technology helps us, I get it. You got 25,000 candidates in an hour or in a day. In a day, you picked up 25,000 applicants. First of all, how does your team who's trying to hire 1000 people, how do they find the right 2000 people to talk to to make a decision on, number one? And most of the companies that have this dynamic, they're B2C companies. And so those people applying to your company are also your customers. How do you ensure you give them a good experience and telling them you're not giving them the job so that they don't think poorly of your brand and hurt those things? I think too often we're ignoring this stuff. This is where AI shines. Chad Sowash: We have for years. Even before the scalability issue that we're seeing now, we just... The black hole has existed. You have clients today that they don't address the black hole issue. This perspectively could help do that. Al Smith: Totally. And look, I will tell you categorically, when we talk about generative AI which we've been piloting and working with for a while, there's a lot of places in the different workflows that the hiring process represents, where this has a lot of great potential and we're certainly gonna use it. To me overall, it's got the highest potential on being a productivity aid, right? And we know everywhere we help productivity, there's a big plus for our employers and even for the candidates and employees who are going through this journey. I think from my perspective, we've been playing around with it for a number of months right now on, hey, don't take this the wrong way, but 90% of all job descriptions are a pile of poo. Can we have better job descriptions that actually better support... Joe Cheeseman: You can say shit on this podcast, Al, just so you know. Al Smith: I know, but my mother might come smack me, so I... And candidly, so are most resumes. They're pretty, pretty poor. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Al Smith: So helping people communicate better, the employer and the person looking for the job, can the technology give you a better starting point? Make you more effective at doing it and communicate better? Yes. Think about all the things that are in our talent cloud. I'm doing a marketing automation campaign to recruit candidates. Can I write better letters and emails and texts and things that better communicate the likelihood that you're gonna do it and give it to you in a way that I give you a starting point, you finish it? Because again, human-led, no black box, bing, here's the answer. We do... When we send you a job offer, can we give a better offer letter? When you're onboarding, can we give you better explanations of the tasks you're being given? There's just so many places where we have content that relies on kind of either lowest common denominator of template libraries or the talent of the individuals and their experience to write good content. I'm hoping this can improve that significantly. Joe Cheeseman: Are you talking about current products, future projects? It sounds like you're talking about some native things that iCIMS is gonna be building or has built. Talk about that. Al Smith: Yeah. One of the things I've decided to do, particularly with this technology, is introduce a bit of a playground where we can open up the lab for our customers to come in and play with the technology before we productize. We haven't released the ChatGPT specifically or generative AI in our products yet. We have a really robust AI platform that does a wonderful job at the notion of match and all the permutations of match, whether it's job to person, person to job, person to person, et cetera. And we've been using that AI also as part of helping us solve problems of human scale like, "Hey, we've got a half a billion profiles. When we go through there and look at people's job experiences, how do we actually identify a good skills cloud or skills taxonomy to help people make better decisions about career pathing and what skills you need and where are your gaps?" Same thing, when how do we normalize, look at how people name jobs. If I just look at our own company, how many different titles I have for the same job across departments, it's crazy. Al Smith: Those are problems of human scale our industry just sucks at. And so I'm using AI in solving a lot of those problems that, again, category is beyond human scale. Here's a great... We took... I know in one of our runs, we took about 250,000 different job titles and distilled them down to a common 20,000 jobs. And that's a jobs taxonomy that we can now do skills matching against and then help people with career pathing decisions. So that's in current product. What you'll see me do is open up a bit of a playground where you can play with the GPT products and other generative AI things that we're looking at. And I'd like to actually feedback and here's what I'm more interested in before I just say, "Hey, it's in our products". I don't know about the other vendors out there, and I know a lot of 'em have rushed to market with a new product named with that. Chad Sowash: Oh, you don't say. Al Smith: I do say, but... And I'm sure the early adopters will jump on that, but the regulatory challenges that I see our customers struggling with around data privacy, around data residency, around AI fairness. Look, we just spent a lot of effort and a lot of time. I knew we would do well, but just New York City's new fairness and AI rule, now they just delayed enforcement again until I think July. But we were ready in January. We went through the audit. Yes, we came through well 'cause we knew the program we had built. But even with that, I can't tell you how many of my customers have just second guesses about saying, "Yes, I'm willing to turn it on." That's AI that is very explainable. There's clear audit trail on all of this that we provide. GPT is a bit different. So let's see. Chad Sowash: Here's one thing and I think we get it in our own way sometimes because we talk about it being explainable, but those companies don't give two shits about explaining it. They wanna defend it. Right? So it's about defendability and it's about going in and transparency, number one. I think one of the lessons that we have learned from ChatGPT is that transparency is the way forward. Not just because of GDPR, not just because of New York and California and all these states and metros that come up with new regulation, but because it's better for business. Look at ChatGPT explodes because I would say my opinion is because of the transparency and allowing users to taste it, touch it, feel it, and really play around with it knowing that it's not perfect. It almost feels like it has to be perfect before we allow anyone in to our gates. And then when we do that, we only allow salespeople to demo that. Is that gonna change? Al Smith: Yeah. Look, that's a really great point you're making. I don't think any of these technologies will get to the point that they're perfect before you can adopt, I think. I think what you've got to ask yourself is, again, around that notion of a productivity aid, does this give me a better 80%, 90% starting point and take a lot of the undifferentiated work I'm required to do off my plate? If the answer to that is yes, I think you've hit the tipping point of adoption for a lot of people and a lot of users. And that's how I'm looking at it, at least. I will say one word of caution from at least Al Smith being the maybe overly cautious, I'll take that criticism. What's unclear to me, and particularly on OpenAI's public website, is when you put your information into it, who owns the IP that was generated? Do they own it or do you own it? Chad Sowash: Yes, they currently do unless you're using, I think, the API. There's a different set of terms and conditions. Al Smith: Right. And I just wanna put that word of warning. For my own organization, look, we're licensing, we have long-term relationships with all the cloud vendors, and Microsoft clearly has made the big investment. And so I can license with clear ownership of IP through there. I will say, by the way, just a nod to Microsoft, as much as I'm shocked that they let go of their fairness in AI leader, and they've gone all in on this, I do think the notion though that they've introduced of Copilot, Chad, is exactly the right way to think about it. It's your Copilot, right? So it's helping you get rid of the undifferentiated work you're required to do to complete a task. And if it makes you faster, better, more consistent at that work, can you bring other skills to what you do? And I think I like that concept. I think they got that right. I saw somebody else already has turned their stuff Copilot as well. I think SeekOut or somebody. I can't remember, but... Joe Cheeseman: Chad is my co-pilot. [laughter] Al Smith: He takes care of the undifferentiated work for you and... Chad Sowash: Let's just talk about all the work. Let's just talk about that. Joe Cheeseman: I don't know what any of that means, Al. Alright. Look, you have a front row seat with your marketplace to what you've mentioned vendors and what they're doing. Are you seeing a rush to add features on ChatGPT? Are you guys putting up any guardrails on that? What are you seeing on the marketplace? Al Smith: Well, look in the marketplace, we're not reselling our partners' products. We're making them available, saying that they've been validated, working properly on our products using our APIs, and that we have mutual customers. So if you're trying to make a decision, it is truly a marketplace. These are vendors you should look at and make a decision for what the fit for you is. Yeah, look, there's a lot of noise. I haven't seen new, I haven't seen new products in our marketplace yet per se. Some of the people who we have coopetition with who do have a presence in our marketplace, I've seen some of their introductions. I think it is gonna be a rush. I think it's gonna be the hype cycles probably more extreme for the reasons you brought out, Chad. People can touch it with their own hands, if you will, and see the benefit and that helps. And look, as a tech guy, am I excited by that? Yes, I'm excited that we climb over our next level barrier hopefully to get people to want to consider what good things it can do for you. Al Smith: I think we just need a little bit of air to come out of the balloon so that we also know what bad things it could do for you. Let's face it, these large language models are trained on all the poo that sits in the internet. They try to clean it, but they're... Where I have really high hopes is in a private implementation that we would do or people like us, we're curating the data, we're cleansing the data, we're removing data that might actually might create bias in its behaviors. And then if we train it on a model, do I think it'll work really well? I do. I have really high hopes and expectations that it can be impactful. Chad Sowash: So we've talked to Ryan Steelberg, who is the CEO of Veritone, the guys who cloned our voices and we actually do the foreign podcasts through. Talk about scary shit. Or sexy, depending on who you are. We talked to Ryan Steelberg about this and he's talking about linked data models where you have the large language data models and then you have the domain specific so that when you are in the Chat environment or what have you, the system knows whether it's gonna be hitting off of large language or if it's gonna be hitting off of domain specific, but those are separated so that you don't have to worry about kind of like the clash of terms, what you were talking about earlier. Talk about that. Have you seen that? Is that something that you guys are looking to do? Al Smith: Yeah, we are. I mean, look, I think everybody's gonna end up here for a couple of reasons. You don't want these weird... At least in... Look, we're producing a class of products in a B2B model that you want predictability and expected behavior in everything we produce, right? That's really the definition for me of enterprise software, known state and expected behavior, right? But I don't run the risk that this thing starts, just going off the deep end and asking to marry me, right? That would be a bad outcome. So I think as they... As we get smarter about what are the guardrails you can implore, that's gonna be one of the techniques. Certainly curating the data that you train those domain-specific models with is one of the techniques. For me, it's not about having a specific model per customer, which I think is a mistake the AI industry made even in our space over the last bunch of years because it's unsustainable. If every customer has a separate model, I also need data scientists to be tech support, I need data scientists to be implementers. I can barely find enough data scientists to build and train models, let alone do the full life cycle of software products. Al Smith: So I've not done that. Sometimes again to... I understand the criticism and it's appropriate for things we can't do, but we'd rather build domain-specific models, I use your term, that are specifically... We know the state of the data it's being trained on. And just to be clear, if you're running a responsible AI program, you're also training your models with uncleansed data, uncurated data, and you're comparing the results and you're measuring the bias and you're tracking and trending that and you're also looking for model drift. We do all that stuff. I'm not sure everybody's doing all that stuff, but we are. Joe Cheeseman: You mentioned everybody else and you've also talked about user experience and scale and a lot of things that sound eerily like a chatbot. And I won't name names, but a certain chatbot is getting into the ATS game. What's your read on that? Are you threatened? Is it like, yeah, mosquito on my ass. No big deal? What are your thoughts? Al Smith: Oh, you give me such like opposite end choices. Look, if I was them, I think this is bold and brilliant on their part. Knowing and looking at their business, they've done one thing pretty well. Like most specialists, I would imagine they're running out of white space in the market they're looking for. At least that's how it appears to me. They do one thing incredibly well and God bless. But now how do you keep growing for your investors at a rate that when you start using up white space? So their positioning is three things that I think are kind of interesting. A vertical industry alignment around high volume hiring is kind of a very needed, but also pretty narrow kind of space, that's one, although I know that's the strength of what chatbots do 'cause it's a simpler class of hiring. I think the fact that they're using conversational AI, not generative AI is an important nuance. And again, I think pretty cool on their part. So curious to see how well they do. And then the statement on, and now you no longer need an ATS, well, that's kind of interesting back to how our conversation started. I guess that works for regional companies doing a single class of hiring where you don't have extensive EEO and responsibility and other things, but I don't see our complex employers being able to get away with that in the challenges of running your business just at scale and let alone be global businesses. Al Smith: So look, I think am I ignoring them? No, I'm gonna watch and see how they do. Do I think that was bold on their part to reposition the company in this way using both technology and a narrow vertical industry focus? I do, but I think I understand why they're doing it. So let's see how it works out for them. Chad Sowash: So don't you think that probably one of the best ways to get inputs of data is through chat, through messaging, through... It's more async than it is sync, right? So even no matter whether you're high volume hiring or you're hiring mid-level managers, to be able to give them more of an experience that's on their time as opposed to having them fill out a form on the web, don't you think that that is a transition and evolution? And are you guys looking at actually going down that road? Al Smith: Yeah. Look, and let's hope that that is the trend because it's what's needed. Look, we've done some pretty good stuff with our digital assistant, not trying to say it's the world's most amazing, but I think we scheduled something like 45,000, 50,000 job interviews last year through the digital assistant and that's pretty meaningful. And so to your point, Chad, anywhere we take noise out of the process to let people get to the decision-making is good. And so if we can get people feeling comfortable with adoption like that, I like that idea a lot. And yes, we have a lot of different levels of stuff in the lab that we're always looking at. When's the right time to go into product? Can we do it at scale? Can I do it across all the geographies with regulatory data privacy, data residency rules? Sometimes I have to go slower because it takes me longer to get all that to line up on everywhere you're gonna go. It's so much easier in the US. Honestly, there's a lot less regulation and it's more uniform. Even though we have these CCPA in California and the New York Fairness and AI and other things popping up, it is less complex than that. Al Smith: And I'm hoping that what you described is we're all gonna just go there. But that said, and I'm not throwing any shade on any of my customers who have very strong legal teams, but we've got technology that really streamlines. Like I don't need your resume if that's not the class of hire, I don't need much information from you. It's 10 clicks. And then they hit the 12-page legal document that they have to read through on their phone and click through. It's like, gang, you're not getting it. If that's really a requirement of hiring somebody, bring that to them later, not when they're thinking about, "Gee, I wonder if I wanna work at this company." So there's so much unevenness when I look across the implementations out there. Joe Cheeseman: So the next time we all see each other, we won't be in our home offices. We'll be in paradise AKA San Diego for the... Chad Sowash: Yes. By the pool, right? Joe Cheeseman: Inspire Conference. So Al, give us a preview of what we can expect particularly a new CEO? What should we expect from him? Al Smith: Umbrella drinks, umbrella drinks from Brian. So Brian Provost will certainly have the keynote and I'll be joining him. Real excited. Brian, I think people are gonna find is a what you see is what you get kind of person, which is great. He comes from a really strong software background and his ability to jump into our company... And this is saying something, I think, jump into our company, plug in the culture and pick up the use cases very quickly that our customers care about, I think he's doing a great job. So hopefully you'll hear him having a comfort level from just being introduced in November as coming on board to somebody who's in the saddle and still learning, but doing a lot of things now from a totally different lens, that's one. Al Smith: You guys will uphold me... Hold me accountable for any announcements I made in November, I'm sure. I'll tell you some of the favorite parts of the conference that we've started to really build repeatably. I kind of like those fireside chat sessions where you get either a panel of people talking to each other or somebody driving the panel throwing questions. We have some really great ones. I know you guys are fans of, and I am too, of Andreea Wade, who is our strategist on AI and founded the company that we've built on and she's gonna have some great sessions. I think that every time I hear Andreea talk, I learn something new and it's just the kind of thing I wanna be doing. And then hopefully, you all are gonna be there, right? I mean, so we're gonna have... Chad Sowash: Yeah. And that's not for us. That's for Andreea Wade because deathmatch winner, number one, number two, acquired by iCIMS, and number three, she's going to be on stage in early May at iCIMS Inspire on the beach, or at least close to the beach. Al Smith: The other one, and I'm sure you guys will jump on this, is we've got a bunch of customers that are gonna tell their journey. That's always the best. Maybe that's why we moved it so close 'cause we wanted to do more of that. I don't know. Chad Sowash: Two or three a year, that'd be awesome. [applause] Joe Cheeseman: Al Smith, everybody, CTO at iCIMS. Al, for those listeners that wanna know more about you or the Inspire Conference, where would you send them? Al Smith: Icims.com, right on the banner. It's there. Joe Cheeseman: Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Another one in the can, Chad. We out. Chad Sowash: We out. 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 whisky, 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.

Companies rise and fall - usually because of of ego and hubris - and our industry is no different. Take CareerBuilder and Indeed for example; each to varying degrees are facing headwinds thanks to the unbridled belief that the good times will always roll and the competition is unworthy. Based on news this week, it’s looking more and more like Indeed is on the road to be the next CareerBuilder, and the boys dig in. Additionally, consolidation continues, as Fama has acquired Social Intelligence, making them a juicy acquisition target for the likes of Checkr and Sterling. What’s more, the CEO of MillerKnoll put her foot in her mouth and is paying the price on social media, while Amazon’s AWS is taking aim at Google and Microsoft’s OpenAi as another player in the artificial intelligence arms race. By the way, if you’re in Vegas for UNLEASH America next week, stop by the WorkHuman booth on Wed. and say Hi (you might even get a T-shirt). PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. 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, it's National Surprise Drug Test Day. Thank God it's the week before Talent Toke happens next week in Vegas. Hey kids, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your cohost, Joel... SFX: "All right, all right, all right." Joel: Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad "Is alive or Memorax" Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, Indeed backs up, CareerBuilder shrinks up, and Fama levels up. Let's do this. Vegas baby. Chad: Holy shit. My god. Dude. Just the preparation for getting ready for this. Yeah, it's a bit much. Joel: It is, it is. I'm gonna spend the weekend drinking Gatorade and sleeping, I think, to help prepare for this. Chad: Yeah. Pedialyte, I would go with Pedialyte. Get some Pedialyte, cut it with something like cranberry juice or something like that. That is the fucking breakfast of champions. Joel: Pedialyte. I'm gonna go one step further, my friend. Chad: Yeah. Joel: On camera here, I'm showing you ZBiotics. Chad: What the fuck is that? Joel: It's a hangover remedy that I'm gonna be trying in Vegas, so... Chad: Oh, I like that. Joel: Pray for me, America. Pray for me. Chad: Well, that being said... Joel: Oh my god. Chad: Let's get to shout-outs, baby. First and foremost, shout-out to Textkernel, that's right, for being crazy enough to bring us on stage with them during the Vendor Summit with our buddy Chris Conrad... Joel: Conrad. Chad: Talking about whether vendors should be building partnering or buying in a new AI, ChatGPT automation world. Textkernel is legit, they bought Sovren who's the legit OG, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: But they're the legit OG of this, doing the hard stuff, the heavy lifting, the white labeling so that vendors can focus on their core products. So, check us out at the Vendor Summit. Joel: And they are piling on the talent in the US. Chad: Yes. Joel: Every day I see a new LinkedIn update like, "Congratulations, new job at Textkernel," is what I saw. The troops are on the beachhead, if you will, of America, and it's nice that we're taking the stage with them before they become too cool for us in the States. Chad: Knock on wood, that's not gonna happen. Joel: I hope not, I hope not, I hope not. But yeah, that's just the beginning of a jam-packed schedule. Chad: Yes. I'm glad that's early, by the way. Joel: That is early. Chad: Yes. Joel: Yeah, that's like, "Dude, you gotta get there early, so we can do... " "Okay, cool." So, then we got a ferris wheel which is probably not the right thing to say. It's like a glass container, a glass egg on a tire going around Vegas. Anyway, it's the high roller event. Chad: Yes. Joel: Apparently, it's sold out. This is our friends, HiringBranch, that's having us come in. It's 30 minutes of all you can drink. By the way, shout-out to Evan White. Chad: Yes, who comes up with the coolest shit. Joel: Dude is PR extraordinaire. Chad: Yes. Joel: We'll get to more of his events here in a second. But this guy, if you're looking for a PR, look him up on LinkedIn. Anyway, he actually created a little card for everyone that's attending this thing. Chad: Yeah. Joel: That they're gonna share on LinkedIn. He's also got Talent Toke which we'll talk about in a minute. Anyway, to Evan, shout-out to you, man. You are above and beyond. And by the way, my man sent me a golden Tequila Panther. Did you get one of these? It's like Sex Panther's evil twin. It's a golden... It's like a liter, a full liter of tequila in this golden panther and has emerald eyes. Chad: Oh shit. Joel: It's insane. It has capped off my basement bar like I never thought I could. Chad: He sent me a tequila cowboy boot. [laughter] And it was delicious. It's already fucking gone, dude. It was delicious. I usually don't do tequila because it makes me bullet-proof and I get in fights. But I can do it at home, because there's nobody to get in a fight with. [laughter] Thanks Evan, we really appreciate that. Joel: Let's feed Chad as much tequila as possible in Vegas, everybody. Chad: Not gonna do it. Joel: Let's buy him all the tequila we possibly can. But yes, High Roller, that's our second gig and it keeps rolling from there. Chad: Yes, nothing like being locked up with Chad and Cheese for half an hour with all the drinks you can stand. Anyway, shout-out to plum.io. Not only are they awesome at making sure that we have great Canadian maple syrup for the next five years of our fucking life, Caitlin, Neil, Jason and the whole team, they're gonna make sure that Cheesman gets fed one night, and that's not cheap. So, thanks for dinner. We can't wait to see you. And if you haven't yet, go to plum.io and take that Plum Assessment. Joel: That's right. And this is no buffet, baby. So get the pocketbook out, pay in loonies 'cause we're eating on the Canadians. SFX: Take off, will you? We're doing our movie. Don't wreck our show you hoser. Joel: So then, it's back to business for us. And we've partnered with Workhuman to be in their booth for a whopping four hours of recording, palm pressing, baby kissing, t-shirt giveaways, maybe shots, maybe beer. Yeah, the party keeps rolling on in the Workhuman booth. So if you're there on Wednesday, make sure you stop by and say hi or listen to the interviews that we're conducting while we're there in the booth, but that's pretty exciting. Chad: Yes. And they have a, what they're calling a gratitude bar, but I'm not sure that it has alcohol. So, more than likely Chad and Cheese will be bringing the alcohol to the Workhuman booth. And they scheduled four hours which I think is legitimately crazy. But hey, I appreciate it. We'll be there. Joel: They've decided not to go all the way. So fortunately we'll be taking it all the way. Chad: So shout-out to Maya and the crew over at TaTiO for orchestrating another Drinks With the Chad and Cheese event at the Vesper Bar in The Cosmo. Have you seen this place? Dude... Joel: It's sick. Chad: It's gorgeous... Joel: It's totally sick. Chad: Okay, I'm gonna say that this is more of the Chad brand where if it smelled like Mexican pizza, it would be more the Cheese... This thing is fucking gorgeous man. I can't believe... Obviously, Vegas is above and beyond just about and everything that they do, but this bar in the Cosmo is, it just an amazing venue. So, thanks to TaTiO and hopefully you've been lucky enough to actually get your seat. If you haven't, go to chadcheese.com, click on events and then in the upper banner, the entire header, there's a click, just click for sign up and you might be able to get in. Joel: Chad, you mentioned Taco Bell and our next event might just lead everybody to Taco Bell. Chad: It will match Arnie, that's for sure. Joel: Just saying you were there at the first ever one is worth it. Chad: Yes. Joel: Talent Toke, I thought this was a joke when I first saw it. But our friend, our friend Evan has coordinated in an event at Bellagio? Chad: Yes. Joel: Is that right? Yeah. Chad: With the fountains. Joel: Oh the fountains? Chad: Yes. Joel: Okay, all right. So, apparently the best of the best green is gonna be available. Just go, 'cause you just said you were there, go to TalentToke.com, sign up, it's gonna be crazy. And yeah, I hope Gordon Ramsay's pub and grill are ready for the onslaught at Caesars after I get a whiff of what's going on at Talent Toke. Chad: Yeah. And from my understanding, we're getting the best of the best from Cookies, a brand of the Ganja. Can't wait to get a little Cookies. Joel: And what else could happen at Talent Toke? SFX: All right, all right, all right. Chad: Then right after Talent Toke, shout-out to PandoLogic who we're meeting at the Selfie Museum. We're going to the Selfie Museum for more drinks, food, craziness. I hope we can fit a fucking nap in there somewhere, because we're gonna need a little recharge. Joel: Oh my god, Monster, 5-hour Energy, I don't know. I hope Julie has her purse stocked with some 5-hour energies for us on that night. It's actually the Museum of Selfies, my friend. And as I was with my family, as listeners know, on vacation in Vegas. We actually walked by the Museum of Selfies and thought, "Oh, this might be something fun for the kids." Basically like, it's a, it's a glamor shots for the new kids, like it's... Chad: You've been there? Joel: I haven't gone in. But I was like, "What is this?" 'Cause I thought, Museum of Selfies... Chad: Yeah. Joel: Maybe it's like somewhere in 1862, somebody took a selfie and it's like all these historical selfies. No. There's many rooms and you can pick themes to have your picture taken. It looks like a blast, you know Pando does it right, so it's not gonna be some chump event. And also I just wanna throw this out, we're not gonna be there probably 'cause of the nap and the 5-hour Energy shots that we'll be doing. But at the Ice Bar friends at ERIN... Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: Erinapp.com, they're gonna be doing right across from our Museum of Selfies at the Ice Bar, they're gonna be having a party as well. Go check out erinapp.com if you want an invite to that. Chad: Little crazy, little crazy. Joel: Just a little bit, little bit. How old are we? How old are we now? Good god. Chad: I'm 25 motherfucker, that's how I feel. Joel: Good god, good god. And speaking... Chad: Yes. Joel: Of birthdays, Chad... SFX: Really. 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: All right. You know what that means, Chad? We got some birthdays to celebrate. Some of our fans are celebrating another trip around the sun, let's get to that list. Berry Doctor, Berry Doctor. Real name? I don't know. Let's check him out. Chad: Doubtful. Joel: Duarte Mendoca, Rick Kramer, Danielle Kasinski, Matt Lozar, Gia Johnston who was the winner of Rum with Plum. Happy birthday to you. Gia, happy birthday to you. Chris Bravik, Michael Simon Carl, Dave Larry, Jonathan Zilla, Steve Gilbert, Dan Wokee, Charlotte Adams. And our friend, Lars Schmitt, all celebrate another trip around the sun. SFX: Happy Birthday. Joel: Happy Birthday everybody, and if you like rum and it's your birthday, you can win a bottle of rum, but either way, you're a winner, if you go to chadcheese.com/free. This month's winners, we're gonna announce our Textkernel whiskey winner goes to Jim Schneider, long time fan and friend of the show. Chad: Nice. Joel: Our Aspen Tech Labs beer winner goes to Tom Hunley, Fishers Indiana. And I promise there was no playing with the votes on that one. And if you love t-shirts, we got JobGet sponsoring our shirts, go to the website, sign up, you'll likely get a shirt. And again, if you're at Unleash, hit the Workhuman booth on Wednesday. We'll have shirts there. Chad: Yeah. And don't doubt the polling of this kids because we have Dominion doing it. It's all good, it's fine. [laughter] [noise] Chad: What could that be, Joe? Joel: We know that sound in America, I don't know about Europe. Do they have the beep beep truck backing up? Probably something's on it. Chad: That probably sounds entirely different though, much like their police sirens and whatnot, you're like, "What the fuck is that?" Joel: By the way have you heard a Tesla back up before. Chad: No. Joel: It's like a space ship, sound like... [vocalization] Joel: And it gets higher as it goes like faster. Anyway, job search engine Indeed has backtracked on its plan to introduce paper application or PPA pricing. Chad: Say what? Joel: After customers complained of high bills and poorly explained guidelines. Instead, PPA will now be presented as one option alongside the legacy pay-per-click model. The company will also cap charging at 1000 per ad after customers complained that applications and pending charges piled up at overwhelming rates. Indeed is still came to introduce its new pricing model, called, Pay-for-results, it will be available next month to most employers in the UK and the US with a roll out to other countries to follow. Chad, listeners know what we're talking about 'cause we broke this shit back in the day, your thoughts on Indeed's back up? Chad: Big, big props to Greg Spencer over at the AIM group. And if you're not subscribed to the AIM group, they've got great market intelligence, go to aimgroup.com, pretty awesome stuff. But yeah, no, that's Indeed backing up the bus. So clearly, Chris Hyams, Hyams, Hyams, whatever. Joel: Our love child. [laughter] Chad: Have identified a major malfunction in their attempt to force every company using Indeed into a CPA or a CPSA model. This is what ego does, Joel, it drives you to make mistakes because of the worth you ascribe to yourself. All of the Indeed arrogance has finally come back to smack them in the fucking face so would you like to hear what they're going to do now? Joel: Please tell me. Chad: I'm gonna predict it. Joel: Oh production okay. Chad: Yeah, yeah, so it's simple, they're going to do what they probably had planned to do in the first place, they're gonna boil the frog, they will allow customers to use the old model and then slowly wean them off by forcing one group at a time, instead of everyone all at once. Seriously, we've seen this with Organic, first they kicked off job boards, then they forced them to pay, then they kicked off staffing, etcetera, etcetera etcetera. So this was a slow boiling of the frog model that worked, so why, oh why, would they go away from this model when they know historically, this is what worked for them. Joel: So you're saying they turned the heat up too fast and now they gotta dial it down a little. Chad: They just threw the fucking frog in the fire, dude. There was no water at all. They threw that shit in the fucking fire. Joel: Alright I got a prediction for you, you remember new Coke? [laughter] Chad: Yes. Yes. Joel: Okay, alright, so Coke has arguably the top three or four brand in the world next to cigarettes, and I guess Budweiser, so Coke decided, "Let's put out new Coke. That's a good idea." Well, they got kicked in the butt when they released new Coke which tasted not a lot like the old Coke, and by the way, everyone liked Coke the way it was, so why change it in the first place. So my prediction is Indeed is gonna come out with Indeed Classic, and they're gonna have that little classic under their logo and re-release it as like the old Indeed, although it won't be quite like the Indeed, everyone used to like. That's my prediction. Yeah, you said ego, I say hubris. There was a time where Indeed superpower was discipline, was focus, was keeping it simple. You and I both remember the days when Jobster changed business models every week. SimplyHired was like, "Let's do resumes. Let's do banner ads. Let's do all this shit." Indeed stood the course, and then you had another round of people like Monster launching BeKnown, trying to leverage social media, you've had these ebbs and flows, and Indeed through all that for the most part, has been really steady, consistent. Joel: People know what they're gonna get, aside from maybe vendors and agencies and whatnot. They've lost their way. And this really, I can trace back to Google for Jobs, that freaked them out. Programmatic started to rise, people started to ask questions of, "Why am I paying this per click when programmatic has given me much cheaper rates," and so then they went into two pan, they went into forced registration, they went to... So every move that they've made is based on fear, based on unknown, what Google's gonna do, LinkedIn is still out there for them. Getting back to basics is probably a really good idea for them, I don't know if they can or if they will. I will give them credit for doing the U-turn and saying, "Okay, our bad. We'll go back to the way it was or as close as we can to that." So I gave them a little bit of credit there. But every move that we've seen them make since about 2017 is rooted in fear, uncertainty and doubt. And a lot of that is traced back to Google and Programmatic and AI, who knows what they're thinking in terms of what's gonna happen in the business with that, but yeah, hubris fear, uncertainty doubt has been Indeed's downfall. I don't think they can get back on track. This is gonna be a slow burn. Chad: So they literally just slammed this down the throat of everybody all at once, and it just... They couldn't take... This isn't a u-turn because the CPSAs, out there, and the CPA is still out there. And any new customers that are coming on that haven't had CPC before, they're gonna be forced into this new model anyway. So it's going to be one of those... Again, it's a boiling of the frog type of a thing. Not to mention the 72 hours thing, really was just a fucking joke, where they said, "Hey, you know, we're gonna give you 72 hours to go ahead and decline any candidates that don't meet your requirements." Well, here's how out of touch these fuckers are, quote, "In the future, we may not even have a time limit referring to the 72-hour time limit for applicants to decline." Says, Mukherjee, Indeed's SVP and GM of employer, "It's not required for us. We believe so much in the quality of our matching." Are these motherfuckers delusional? Your matching sucks. Joel: Yes. That's what happens when you're a monopoly. You lose your shit. Chad: Talk to a client, you're matching fucking sucks dude. The arrogance is so thick, it's hard to breathe because I'm laughing so fucking hard. Now here's a response in reference to the CPSA being exactly the same as CPC, but costing shitloads more. So Mukherjee, I think that's how you say his name. This is what he said about that, quote, "There are ways to tackle the challenge, including by getting customers to share data, getting customers to share data showing how many applications results from clickthroughs from indeed.com." Again, how fucking delusional are these assholes? No employer in their right mind, no job site, no career site, no, quote-unquote "trusted partner" is going to give indeed their data. Why would they do that? It makes no sense. Not to mention, if you're a vendor that's out there today, I'm speaking directly to you right now, and if you're a quote-unquote "trusted partner" with this new candidate registration, mandatory candidate registration, they are taking all of your candidates so they can fucking close you out of the loop. You've got get that through your head. These guys are looking to just squeeze you until you are dead. That's it. And for everybody who's like, "Oh, no, Indeed is just doing the right thing for the applicant," you're full of shit. SFX: That escalated quickly. [laughter] Joel: I also love the $1000 cap. They have customers that are used to $75 on Craigslist. Chad: Yes. Joel: And they drop a $1000. They think that's nothing but to a lot of employers, a lot of small businesses. Chad: Delusional. Joel: That's significant. That's significant Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Chad: Yes. [laughter] Joel: I have no segue for that, but I just, I remember that as I'm talking about new Coke. That was... Those were good times. Those were good times. By the way, McDonald's is bringing back the Hamburglar. I'm just gonna leave that right there. Chad: Oh, Jesus. Joel: Let's go to another dysfunctional vendor. Per an email from CEO, Susan Arthur of CareerBuilder to staff that we got ahold of. The company is making an organizational change to bring the sales and marketing functions closer together in order to maximize lead generation and support revenue growth. Or at least that's the spin. Kristen Kelly, who joined as Chief Marketing Officer, late 2021, will now lead the combined sales and marketing organizations. What's more, Steve Cerny, who had been with the company for 17 years is leaving last one out. Turn off the lights. Chad, your take on this CareerBuilder news. Chad: Are they dead yet? I mean, Jesus. I mean, this is fun, don't get me wrong. But, so let me get this straight, Steve, a guy with 17 years of experience, at CareerBuilder gets the axe. A guy who, according to LinkedIn, worked his way up through the ranks at CareerBuilder in 10 different positions is out. Now Kristen Kelly, who is no slouch, she has great industry cred and held CMO positions over the years, but now taking the reins of revenue, sales? Take a deep breath, Kristen, because that is an animal. CMOs talk about when they're pissed off at their CRO counterparts, especially when they're drunk together at the bar. But it's usually not something that they want to touch when they're sober. I wish Kristen well, but the question begs, when has it ever been a good idea to have sales and marketing in the same hands? It's like the separation of church and state. To be quite frank, I don't know that CareerBuilder could do anything wrong because they've done everything wrong up to this point. So making a change, I mean it seems like it's gotta be natural, right? And Steve's been there for 17 years. If you wanna make a change, you kick out the guys who have been in the seat for the longest. Joel: Yeah. Speaking of companies that have lost their way, at least Indeed hasn't changed its logo yet. Remember when CareerBuilder did that? Yeah. What a bunch of bozos. Are we a job board? Are we a tech company? Ah, fuck it. Let's just sell the business and then like slowly die as we cut staff and office space and technology. And I mean, we've documented all this on the show. There's nothing really more that I can say, but, so I went... [laughter] I went out to some of the employer review sites. Chad: Oh Jesus. Joel: To get some to get some insight on some of this. So one comment was, "Sales is struggling and they are shrinking fast. Not sure how much longer they will be around." Well, this is kind of indicative of that. I'm sure they'd love to be a no sales company and just market stuff and milk their current client base until it just goes out to nothing, and two or three people are left at the company. And then the second one, which I really appreciated said they should rename the company CareerDestroyer [laughter] worst company I've ever worked for. Bad products, dishonest management, deceptive ownership, lousy brand opposite of customer centric, headed toward being dismantled. You should stay as far away as possible. [laughter] I got nothing that'll top that CareerBuilder. It has been nice knowing you, but your slow death while entertaining for podcast purposes is just kind of sad. Chad: Yeah, I've always told friends who are looking to join companies that are sinking ships, it's a win-win for you, man. I mean, seriously, the company was sinking before you got there and you tried to keep it afloat. Not to mention... Imagine the leadership experience you're gonna gain in those situations. So this to me is a win-win for Susan and Kristen, who will obviously get great pay days no matter what happens. But, what about those CareerBuilder employees who are bailing the water out of the sinking ship every fucking day? I mean, that has got to suck. So to me, this just feels like the extended version of wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald. Joel: Dude, someone hire Steve Cerny immediately. Anyone who's that loyal to this shit show will be your most loyal employee of all time. Like, Steve Cerny needs to be employed [laughter] by the time we go to Vegas next week. Good God. Chad: Good luck to Susan and Kristen. You're gonna need it, ladies. Joel: All right, let's take a break. Take a breath. We'll be back. All right Chad, Millerknoll, or commonly known as Herman Miller, if you've sat in their chairs before, their CEO Andi Owen, faced backlash this week after a video of her telling staff to stop asking about bonuses and focus on hitting the $26 million sales target, went viral. The video of the internal staff meeting showed Owen urging employees to spend their time and effort thinking about hitting the sales target, not about what they would do if they didn't receive a bonus. Some critics have questioned whether Owen's championing of workplace equity extends to forfeiting her own bonus in solidarity with her employees. Decide for yourself. Here's the audio for your enjoyment. Andi Owen: It's not good to be in a situation we're in today, but we're not gonna be here forever. It is going to get better. So lead, lead by example, treat people well. Talk to them. Be kind and get after it. Don't ask about what are we gonna do if we don't get a bonus? Get the damn $26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need, and not thinking about what are you gonna do if we don't get a bonus. All right? Can I get some commitment for that? I would appreciate that. I had an old boss who said to me one time, you can visit Pity City, but you can't live there. So people leave Pity City. Let's get it done. Joel: Next up, pity city, Chad. The CEO of the Year award is over. Your thoughts. Chad: Oh, lead by example. Those three words, just amazing because reportedly this asshole, CEO Andi Owen is keeping her bonus as she talks about everyone else without a bonus living in pity city. This is the kind of bullshit and greed that has become prominent in many businesses that preach team and family. But what they really mean is that we need you to go out there and make a lot of money for me. Fuck off. Don't worry about your bonus. Get outta pity city. I need my fucking bonus. So if you're working for Millerknoll, how hard are you working right now? I bet you're working harder on looking for a new job than you are doing your own job. Because this is a morale killer. This is a sale killer. This is a brand killer. This is definitely an employment brand killer. Who the fuck's gonna wanna work for that asshole? I have no clue why the board hasn't thrown her out on her ass by now. Any CEO, any CEO who makes this kind of move should be gone. Joel: So after her remarks went viral on Tuesday, she emailed an apology to workers. She said, quote, "I want to be transparent and empathetic. And as I continue to reflect on this instance, I feel terrible that my rallying cry seemed insensitive. What I'd hoped would energize the team to meet a challenge we've met many times before, landed in a way that I did not intend. And for that, I am sorry." So just like Indeed backtracking a little bit of credit for the apology. Many CEOs would not make such an action so. Chad: She's afraid to lose her job. Joel: I'm not offended by this at all. We'll disagree on this. We have become so soft in this country that hearing get out of pity city, offends us. Chad: It's not the pity city. It's a fucking bonus. She kept her bonus and she's telling everybody else to fuck them and their bonus. Joel: That's not what I heard her say. Chad: That has nothing to do what you heard her say, of course she's not gonna say, I'm gonna give up my bonus because she didn't. Joel: I didn't research that part. If that's true, then that's... Well, if they meet their goal then they're gonna get their bonus. Chad: Again, lead by example. If they don't get their bonus, she doesn't get her bonus. That's what lead by example means. Joel: Then get a new job. Chad: Yeah, she should. Joel: And they should. If they're offended by this, if they're mad about bonus structures, they can vote with their feet. Chad: They're not mad about bonus structures. They're mad about her keeping her bonus while she's kicking them in the nuts and them not getting theirs. Joel: What I read was the offense taken was that the pity city, the pep talk was off tone deaf. Chad: You call that a pep talk. That was not a fucking pep talk. Joel: Dude. You and I played sports and growing up, this shit was said every day. My dad said shit like this to me every day. You were in the military, you heard stuff a hundred times worse than this stuff. If she were a man, would we be debating this? I don't know. Chad: Fuck yeah, we would. If he's gonna say lead by example and he is not giving up his bonus, that's not leading by example. I don't give a fuck what gender you are, what color you are, what your pronouns are. You act like this, you get thrown the fuck out. And you can't compare this to anything in the military, 'cause there's nothing to do with that. Well, not like I could quit the military in the first place. Joel: But they can, they can leave. You can't leave your family. I mean, technically, technically [laughter] a lot of us would like to. [laughter] Chad: Can leave them on Facebook. That's the easiest thing. Joel: I don't know. If the issue is she gets a bonus, you don't, to me that's a different story. If the issue is like, she offended me, I'm hurt. Her words were nasty. I mean, to me that's just, we are so soft in this country. Chad: No. Joel: That we need, we need to get over shit like that. Chad: My whole problem was lead by example. If they don't get a bonus, you sure the fuck don't get a bonus. Joel: If that's true, then I'm fine with that. Well, I'd like to say I'll review the story and get back to you, but I gotta prepare for Vegas. So [laughter] I'm getting outta pity city and I'm getting out of this story. But in short, if it's a, like I get a bonus and you don't, that's fucked up. The board should come in and, and fix that. If the issue is, her words offended me, I say get over it and grow some thick skin. Chad: Has to do with actions, not words. Joel: All right. Back to reality. Fama, or do you say Fama in the Queen's English? I don't know. Fama has acquired competitive service Social Intelligence. The deal expands Fama's network of background screening partners and builds on Fama's goal to become the largest online screening company in the world. Fama's AI technology searches over 10,000 online public sources to detect fraudulent or illegal activities and identify extreme behaviors that are detrimental to the workplace. Based on digital profiles found on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as other online public forums. Chad, your thoughts on this deal, and be careful, your comments might show up in your Fama background check. Chad: God, I hope so. So in February of 2020, we had Ben Mones from Fama on the show. You can check that out. And then August of 2021 Bianca Lager from Social Intelligence on the show. Like it or not, this is gonna be a part of background checking and checking on current employees to make sure they're not saying stupid shit. This is part of the new world that we lived in, kids. Social Intelligence has two rounds of funding that weren't published. Fama around 18 million in funding through Series B. And I like that Ben didn't take more, because I guarantee you he could have gotten more. To me that shows just the health and intelligence of a startup. Fama had experienced 160% year over year net revenue retention. That's huge. Wallet share is expansion. I mean that's amazing. Chad: Increasing the size of background checking partners more than 75%, which is what Social Intelligence is bringing. There's a quote from the story. Fama has delivered more than 45 million reports to nearly 1200 customers. And Social Intelligence boasts hundreds of clients and 80 HRS partners. I think that's the big key here. They were going at the market and in entirely different go-to market ways. And that was the great part of acquisition for them, is when you are acquiring a company that had pretty much the same go-to market that you did, it's either about technology or, and or portfolio. In this case it's more like puzzle pieces. You're actually growing the go-to market in areas that you were really not focusing on. And so I think this is a really good marriage. I think it's pretty awesome. Bianca, Ben, good luck. Joel: So the background screening business is a convoluted clusterfuck of big companies, small companies, individuals, state specific, industry specific. Like, in the short time that I was in the industry, it's a incredibly confusing disparate business. So, Fama to me always felt like a piece of the background check business. Checking people's social media, definitely important. Companies are concerned about it. It is a slog to go back in, decades long worth of tweets, Instagram posts, and they look at forums, they mentioned 10,000 sort of points of content. That's a lot of work. It never felt like a must have, it never felt like a standalone product. It always felt like a feature that a sterling or a HireRight or someone like that should offer their customers, or even Checkr for sure. Joel: So, to me this was like a fringe business, a feature, two companies fighting for the same wallet share, which wasn't huge, probably comparatively to the background check business. So Social Intelligence has been around since 2010, I think. I don't think they've taken any money according to CrunchBase, this was a bootstrap business. I'm sure they were ready to maybe move on, saw the challenges in the recession, potential of the economy, maybe ran out of money, maybe lost a lot of business to Fama, frankly. And Fama went shopping, headed to TJ Maxx, probably got a pretty good deal. It's this consolidation opportunity, one less competitor off the board. And now they have a lot more leverage in terms of selling to a Sterling, a Checkr, whatever, and getting a premium for that sale. So to me it always felt like a feature that every background check company should have. And now I think it's a prime opportunity for a bigger background check company to come gobble that up. Sterling, we know is a public company, I think it'd make a lot of sense for them to go in and buy a social background check feature company like Fama that's really become the number one player in this space, which is a fairly new space and should sell at a premium. I'd say let the bidding begin if I'm Mr. Moans or is that Mones? Chad: Mones. Yeah, I don't know who had the better technology, but I think that if you take a look at just signals and being able to create context within what you're looking for as a company, then you can have an opportunity not to have a ton of people going through a bunch of tweets. You just have tech doing it. Right? And then they earmark the ones that are problematic. And then you start taking a look at individuals who are having a lot of those problematic tweets, posts, what have you. I think future scope, this is gonna be a lot bigger and I think it's gonna be something that, you know, we're all going to have to live with. So I think, I mean, you know Sterling a hell of a lot better than I do. They have a huge fucking wallet. You don't see them throwing cash on the table for this? Joel: No, I do. To me it's a feature any background check company would have. And if I were a buyer, I'm weighing one service over another, and one service provides like depth or deep background screening of social media footprints. Then I'm gonna pick the one that has the social media footprint. Particularly today with a more and more remote workforce, a more global workforce. I mean, who knows what the fuck... How many social media sites you don't even know about that other countries have and are popular in different areas. Like you need a solution to help you sort of manage and police all that. And I think Fama is in the perfect position to do that. And yes, Sterling would be the perfect check writer to bring a Fama into the the family. Chad: From a technology stand point, Sterling feels like this old kind of like old world, kind of like background check company where Checker seems like more advanced. Would I be wrong about that? Joel: Yeah, at least brand wise Sterling's been around for a long, long time, and a lot of the companies they've had have been with them for decades. Checkr obviously provides a streamlined, technologically focused solution that Sterling tries to sort of put some fresh paint on their solution they rebranded a few years ago, and they're trying to look cooler in the public market. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But even public market wise, they're still under $2 billion in valuation. And the last time Checkr raised money, they were at like a six or $7 billion valuation. So Checkr needs to make some moves, and they haven't in a while. This would be a really smart move for them to justify that valuation. Chad: They have close to 680 million in funding. Checkr. For me, that would be the smartest move. To see a sterling to try to absorb something like this would be kind of nice, but I just don't know that they could integrate it into their systems just because they probably have a shit ton of old antiquated systems. Joel: Yeah, and not even systems, but culture. Chad: Yeah, good point. Joel: I mean, the culture there is sort of old school. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And have been... Ben and his troops come in as this sexy, cool tech might freak everybody out. I don't know. Yeah, Checkr seems like a better fit. HireRight, maybe can work. Let's take a quick break and talk about Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and who knows who else. Joel: All right, Chad, OpenAI, Google's Bard And now Amazon Web Services is expanding its access to custom made chips that it says can run AI software more efficiently and cheaply than competitors. Unlike Google and Microsoft, which have announced products for the general public, AWS is targeting corporate customers. It wants to act as a neutral platform for businesses that want to incorporate generative AI features, allowing them to pick their own software and models. AWS is marketing itself as the Switzerland of the cloud giants by selling access to multiple large language models, including ones made by Anthropic Stability AI, and AI 21 Labs. Chad, it's a clash of the titans. What are your thoughts? Chad: Well, they'll all be doing this. Let's just go ahead and throw that out there. This is where everything blows up. Okay? AWS, Microsoft, Google are able to spin these up because of their cloud capabilities. And these clouds will provide their different types of instances like AWS is talking about right now. Now, look at our partner, Veritone. Now, they've been playing in the AI space for a while now. And then if you combine a player like them, a voice platform, with cloud instances that they're more attuned to their needs, in weeks you could have Chat GPT, create content for you, then feed it into Veritone. And then our clone voices could be legit, perform a podcast without us. We've performed over 1000 podcasts with about 700 of them or so having transcripts, which average about 6000 words per transcript, equaling 4.2 million words. Two things to understand here, ChatGPT can consume and train off the text, and then Veritone can provide tone and tenor to our cloned voices. Just let that sink in for a moment. That's where we're at. They're talking about these new chips and then they're talking about flexibility attuned to vendor. That's just one vendor. That's just Veritone. Right, this is going to get really crazy really fucking fast. Joel: So my mind was blown twice this week from AI. So, number one, sort of less exciting if you haven't watched the 60 Minutes segment when they go to Google and talk about AI and Chat GPT, and look at Google's R and D and the robots they're making and the crazy shit that's going on, watch it. If you have access to look back on old 60 Minutes. It was last Sunday. Watch it. The second one. So I had heard rumblings about Beyonce's voice on a song, or AI Drake. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Et cetera. Well, you know how much I love Oasis and they've been broken up since 2009. Anyway, some musicians got together and they took Liam Gallagher's voice and they AIed it. They basically wrote songs in the voice of Oasis or how Oasis writes song. They wrote new songs, had him sing these songs, and then they had human beings apparently do the actual instruments to these vocals. So if you go to YouTube, if you're a fan, if you're interested, go search AISIS. [laughter] It's AISIS instead of Oasis. So that's pretty clever. Go to YouTube search AISIS and there's literally like a 35 Minutes album of new songs by Oasis. It sounds like sort of old 90s Oasis. It's pretty mind blowing. And then you think about, what if you had Liam sing old Beatle songs, or do a duet with John Lennon? Or can you have Axel Rose sing Zeppelin songs with Robert Plant? And you just start thinking, as a music fan, how many mashups, how many crazy stuff can you do with AI? Anyway, aside from Amazon, my mind was blown twice because it was like, hands on. See this shit? It blew my mind. So, anyway, back to Amazon. So I'm in Bard's Test universe. Have you been invited in to Bard? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay, so I've kind of like tested. I've done the Pepsi Challenge with both, and I can tell you that as of now, OpenAI's results are better... Chad: Much. Joel: Than Google. Okay. You agree. That's good. Chad: Yeah. Joel: So they're different. Google's are more like educational professorial. Open AIs feel more like everyday common man kind of answers. So, anyway, the question to me is, is AI going to be a commodity or is it going to be different? Right? Like, when Google came out, search was going to be a commodity. Everyone was going to have the same results. Everyone was going to index all the same websites. Well, Google proved that it's not. They did a little bit better. They garnered more attention. AWS survives and thrives because they just have a bigger boat. Our servers and their servers. Servers are pretty much a commodity. If you have a bigger server farm and you can lease that out. And Amazon sort of a loss leader for their other stuff. Anyway. Server, commodity, AI commodity, I just don't know. But I'm kind of betting that it's not. I'm kind of betting right now that it's going to be different and we're all going to say like, OpenAI is just a little bit better. I'm going to use that one as opposed to Bard and AWS wanting to be sort of the bones or the power of all these businesses that are plugging in AIS or APIs and using that service onto their platform. Joel: I think OpenAI is going to have enough of a competitive offering, particularly with Microsoft in their back pocket, that I'm betting that AWS's, whatever they're calling it, AI Solutions, is going to be more like the Amazon Fire than it is Alexa. And I think it's going to fade into the ether like the Amazon phone did. Back in the day. Chad: Well, I think the big key here is that the AI is going to be much like cloud computing. You're going to choose whether you're on Azure, you're on AWS, you're on Google's, but you're going to choose which one you're going to be on. The big key here is again or the Veritones of the world, right? The ones who have domain specific knowledge, intelligence and their focus, their AI in a specific area, if they choose Azure or what have you. So the big three are definitely going to play and they're going to be really just playgrounds for these smaller companies to come pay them a lot of money to actually make more money themselves. So that's how the hierarchy, I see, actually just falling out. Joel: Yeah. And it may be last company standing or last company that cares. I mean, you and I remember Napster. Chad: Yeah. [chuckle] Joel: So you think about all these AI mashups with voices of rock and voices of hip hop. Somebody's got to get paid and all that. There's going to be lawsuits. Chad: There's going to be regulations that have to draw for that. Joel: The training data of all this AI, there was a time there with video where YouTube was basically out of business... Chad: Right. Joel: Because it couldn't afford the legal aspects of like, take my movie off YouTube, and Google came and saved them. So there's going to be a lot of expenses. A company like Google, Amazon and Microsoft can weather that. I think Veritone has to really be careful with that whole issue. Smaller players are going to run into landmines like that. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch. I'm going to sit back. I'm going to have a Toke at Talent Toke maybe, [laughter] and I'm going to relax and just watch the AI action. SFX: All right, All right, All right. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Joel: See you in Vegas. Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the 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 took away and like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Zoom - yes, that Zoom - has made an acquisition in the employment space and to say the boys have an opinion is an understatement. Will it be enough to fend off Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and others? So we’re sayin' there’s a chance, and I’ll leave it at that. Then it’s time for Buy-or-Sell with startups Loopin, Pera and Equitas, which gets pretty ugly, no gonna lie. Lastly, “strategic autonomy” is something we should all add to our bandwidth as France’s Emmanuel Macron talks about moving away from the United States and becoming a third superpower. It all ends up in a pretty animated, colorful episode. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. [music] S0: 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. On this day in 1987, the Simpsons first appear, thanks to the Tracey Ullman's Show. Just another American getting rich on the back of the British. Hey kids, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your co-host, Joel 'Millhouse' Cheesman. Chad: This is Chad 'Dropkick Murphys' Sowash. Lieven: And I'm Lieven "Disappointed in France again" Van Nieuwenhuyze. [laughter] Joel: And on this show, Zoom go shopping. Macron sticks it to America. And a little... Chad: Macron. Joel: A Little buy or sell. Let's do this. [music] Chad: Yeah. That's what I'm fucking talking about. [laughter] Joel: It must be a special shout out from Chad Sowash. Chad: That's right, baby. Shout-out to Ireland for making President Biden look like a fucking rockstar every time he had an appearance in Ireland. President Biden recently came out to the Dropkick Murphys song, 'I'm shipping Up To Boston' which you were just listening to. Smoke, lasers, big ass Irish flag in the backdrop. Shout out to Ireland. They know how to make the old man look good. Joel: It was like a wrestling entrance. Chad: It was fucking awesome. [laughter] Joel: No way were those Irish people that excited to see Joe Biden. They had to be hopped up on Irish whiskey and Guinness. Chad: I love it. Joel: There's no other excuse for that. Chad: When aren't they? What... [laughter] Is that something new? Did they stop that? Joel: Yeah, it was around breakfast that they did this, that they had this celebration. So mine is Ireland too if you're done. Chad: Oh, there you go. Sure. Joel: So I'm gonna shout-out to Michael Daniel Higgins. Chad: Now that is Irish. Jesus. Joel: Yeah. So if you're not in America, many of this show's listeners aren't, this got huge press, 'Biden in Ireland'. This was a huge deal. So I'm watching this thing on TV and I'm watching Biden with the delegates. And there's this little guy next to Biden that looks like an extra from Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. [laughter] And I'm like... Chad: It's Frodo. Joel: I'm like, "Who the hell is that guy?" So I researched it. It was Daniel or Michael Daniel Higgins, who is the president of Ireland. This guy is straight out of casting. He should have a pipe and a dragon to ride. And this guy is Ireland to the bone. Apparently, he's been there since 2011. He's only 5'4. He's literally the shortest world leader, male or female, on the planet. Chad: Holy shit. Joel: This guy reeks of Lucky Charms cover model. [laughter] And I was so impressed. He's in a tweed suit. He's got the bald head with the festive side. Chad: Oh yeah. [laughter] Joel: He needs some big lamb chops. He's got a Bernese Mountain dog. It was just awesome. So, this guy was Ireland to the bone, and I loved it. I had no idea who he was, but now he's my favorite world leader. Michael D Higgins, baby, shout-out. Chad: And it also made Joe Biden look better. Again, Ireland making Joe Biden look like a fucking rockstar. And that shit's not easy kids. Joel: Two white dudes in their 80s, tell me they're not partying up in Ireland. [laughter] Jesus. Save us, Lieven. We're going from Ireland to Montana with Lieven shout-out. Lieven: Right, right, right. I know Montana's not in Europe as Chad told me before the show, and I know Montana's on Europe, but I would love to... Chad: Geography, okay? Geography. Joel: Full of Europeans though. [laughter] Full of rich Europeans buying land. Lieven: Rich even. Okay. Shout-out to Montana for showing Europe how to ban TikTok and I've been complaining about TikTok since TikTok was launched, even in the show a few times. And Montana actually was the first state to put a ban on TikTok. So now it's officially illegal to install TikTok on a smartphone if you're an American living in Montana. So hail to Montana. [laughter] Chad: And all five people who live there. Lieven: And their cows. Joel: We have some live footage in the back of a ranch when the Chinese spy balloon flew over Montana. Lieven: That's the only right reaction. If you see a balloon, shoot it. [laughter] Chad: Watch yourself, Lieven. One thing that this country has that no other country has is an abundance of guns. So they will shoot shit. Okay? [chuckle] Lieven: I know. Chad: Not safe, not safe. Joel: Do they have the Yellowstone Show in Belgium? Lieven: No. And actually I would like to see it. It's probably on some paid channel, but I actually... Joel: Paramount. Lieven: Never watch tv, but I wanted to see it. Yeah. Chad: Paramount Plus. Joel: Paramount Plus in Belgium. Chad: Yeah. Probably gonna have to VPN it, but other than that, you should be good. Lieven: I know how to VPN something. [laughter] Outro: What are you doing, step bro? Joel: All right. Speaking of places to go and travel for both of us, Chad, we're on the move in Europe this year starting in July. I think we'll be in London for RecFest. Where else will we be in Europe this year? Chad: We've got Unleash coming up this week. My brain is on fire because of everything that we're going to be doing in Vegas this week. And then thinking about RecFest at Knebworth, and then Nashville later. Yeah, there's just so much going on. Listeners, go to chadcheese.com, click on events. Go ahead, register. Register for 'em all. Not to mention, we also have a move of the E-recruiting Congress from later this year to early next year. Joel: Yeah. Chad: So look for that. Joel: Lieven, we're pretty bum you're not gonna be in Vegas for Unleash next week. There's fucking pot parties. We're in a ferris wheel, drinking all kinds of stuff. We're doing a tattoo event again. You gotta get out to America, dude, and come party with Chad and Cheese one of these years. Lieven: Someday, someday I will. Promised. [laughter] [music] Joel: Topics. Alright. Zoom, yes, that Zoom has announced its acquisition of Workvivo, an Irish startup. There we are in Ireland again that focuses on internal communication and company culture. The acquisition will diversify Zoom's product suite and give it a direct connection to a number of big name enterprise clients. Workvivo is known for its asynchronous communication platform, which fosters employee engagement through an activity feed, people directory surveys, and a conduit for critical company communications. The deal's financial terms have not been disclosed, but Workvivo's founders and employees will join Zoom as part of the deal. Apparently, they're called zoomies at Zoom in case anyone was wondering. Chad, we rarely see deals like this go down. What are your thoughts? Chad: First off, zoomies are what dogs do when they're running around the house or around the yard when they just like for no apparent reason, they're like going full throttle. Those are zoomies. So we've talked about Workvivo on the show a few times. And it was kind of like a Facebook workplace style internet for companies. And I've always been kind of lukewarm on the idea as I felt that there are way too many other tools that are bigger and better like the Slacks of the world that are just components that vivo couldn't compete with. So I don't believe that I would ever buy a Workvivo, but where I would've swiped left, Zoom swipe right. And personally, I believe this is a great coupling. How can Zoom start to compete with Microsoft Teams? How can Zoom position itself as an employee communications platform beyond video and messaging and transform into a talent management hub? There's only one answer. That's Workvivo. Chad: How does Zoom inflate its lagging stock price? [laughter] How can Zoom open up its TAM and then the ability to gain more wallet share from their current roster of clients? I mean, there are so many good reasons why a company like Zoom, which I didn't see happening, would buy a Workvivo. So this I think is probably the best arranged marriage of the year. Joel: So we have talked about Workvivo a few times. They were founded back in 2017. They've raised roughly $40 million. They claim to have 1 million employees connect with their colleagues through their app and they count companies like Amazon, Lululemon and Liberty Mutual as their clients. So a lot of good things going on here at Workvivo. Terms were not disclosed, which is a little strange for a public company like Zoom. If they paid a good price for that, it seems like something that they would announce. You hit it round in the head when you talked about Microsoft. Look, Zoom was the darling of Wall Street during the pandemic. You had a few companies that were like, oh, they went from $20 to $300 a share and Zoom was one of those companies. Once the pandemic subsided, people went back to work. Teams got traction outta Microsoft. Zoom stock price has come back to earth in a big way. I think the AI component and what Microsoft Teams will be doing with OpenAI and the integration with ChatGPT takes it up another notch in terms of Zoom needs to do something. I think the other side of that is you have Salesforce which has been competing with Microsoft forever acquire a company like Slack and for the last year or so, Salesforce's share price has gradually gone up and up and up while Zoom stock price has been pretty much sideways for the last over a year really. Joel: So juice the stock, well, Wall Street doesn't really agree. Since this deal was announced, the stock really hasn't done much of anything either. That's 'cause no one knows what Workvivo is, which is quite possibly versus buying someone like Slack. Slack was a multi-billion dollar deal though, where I'm guessing Workvivo was nowhere near that much money. So I think Zoom has its work cut out for it. I think it's an uphill battle. I think Microsoft is an apex predator looking to just take Zoom out, and I think Salesforce is making waves. Obviously Google's gonna get into some of this. Even Facebook's a little at work, which we haven't talked about in a while is still out there as a social media communications platform. So this is a Hail Mary as far as I'm concerned. It's Zoom trying to compete with Microsoft and some others. I think it's gonna be a failed attempt and the stock is gonna continue to go sideways and down. I don't think it's much of anything. Good for Workvivo. They got paid and sold and everybody still has a job. But as far as long-term prospects for Zoom, I would not be recommending buying that stock anytime soon. Lieven: I kind of like Workvivo, but the problem is Zoom is the mothership and Workvivo is not going to improve Zoom, and I use Zoom a lot when I'm teaching. Zoom is a pretty good platform because it can speak to 100 and if you get a better account, if more people at the same time. And it's better for teaching than Teams for example, or Google Hangout or Skype or whatever. But it's not good. I mean, for example, the audio sucks. If you have several people talking at the same time, they are going to take one voice and lift it up and they're going to use some audio ducking on the other voice so they go down. So when people are in a meeting and meetings, good meetings have people talking to each other because they get animated, and then you just miss parts of the conversation. And that's something I don't have with Teams. For example, Teams is very basic, but Teams is doing what Teams should be doing, organizing meetings. So if Zoom wants to stay alive, it's not by buying companies like Workvivo, I think. They just should improve whatever they're doing as a basic. And today, I feel they're lagging behind. They had their moment like Joel said and the shares boom because everyone was pulling money from every company and investing in it. Chad: And the few companies who would get better through COVID and Zoom was one of those, but they totally missed the momentum, I think. And now buying Workvivo is like a silly effort. I don't know. I don't think they can compete with companies like Google Hangout, Skype, Teams, and buying Workvivo won't make a big difference. So I think it's a lost shot. Joel: Did he say Skype? [laughter] Lieven: They still exist, they still exist. [laughter], Chad: He's looking up competitors and the number one competitor that came up, and this tells you the history of the rankings was Webex. And I'm like, who the fuck uses Webex anymore. Lieven: Yeah, Webex. Joel: Blue Jeans. Lieven: Okay. They suck too, they suck too. [laughter] Joel: Next up, the return of Yammer everybody. Let's take a quick break and we'll play a little buy or sell. Joel: All right, guys. Who's ready for a little buy or sell? Yeah, that's right. If you don't know, here's how we play. We talk about three companies that have recently gotten funding or are raising money. We read a summary and each of us will either buy or sell the company. Are you ready to play buy or sell? First up, we got Loopin. UK-based Loopin has raised 1.6 million pounds in seed funding. The beta platform, which aims to help businesses measure and improve employee morale is expected to roll out a coaching feature also. Loopin is the first to develop a metric for measuring morale. And it combines with generative AI to change the way successful companies operate. Chad, is this a buy or just another loopy startup? Go. Chad: So it almost feels like this is a pivot of monumental size when they start talking about a morale platform. I mean, efficiency platforms. This is the time to be an efficiency platform, but yet they're trying to become a morale platform. I love efficiency tools. I can't get enough of them, but after watching the Loopin demos and digging deeper, it really feels like a platform that is about 10 years old. Kind of like Trello meets Google Calendar. You're using a platform, but if I'm still doing all the manual work, does that mean I'm more efficient? No. Integrating a virtual assistant into the platform, now that would be awesome. Recording meetings, transcribing, summarizing notes, being able to create actions and tasks for this pseudo Google Calendar thing that they have. In a world of chatGPT, we have to see more. And if you are going to make a big announcement calling it a morale platform, morale boosting platform, where's the wah, wah, wah at? 'Cause this is a sell. Joel: The wah, wah, wah is always at my beck and call, Chad. All right. I'm gonna go. This one's a little close to my heart. I launched an app 10 years ago called Morale, which is sort of similar ratedly, which I built looking at morale on review sites, and also poach, which use some natural language processing to kind of gauge, build almost like a stock chart of morale and what's going on with the company. Lieven: Sentiment score almost, right? Joel: Sentiment score, yeah. So this one's a little close to the vest for me. Although the idea is a buy because I've done it a few times and I can't like not be for it. I'm here to tell you it's not gonna happen because people don't care. Companies don't really care how you feel. I mean, everyone says they do. Everyone says that how our employees feel and their morale and they're excited to come to work is important. I think everyone being remote potentially gives this a shot, but ultimately, companies care about what you produce. They don't care about how you feel. And as long as you're producing and you're miserable, companies don't really give a shit. If you don't produce and you're happy... Chad: You're fired. Joel: Okay, great. If you're producing and you're unhappy, no one gives a shit. Basically, companies don't wanna know if you're happy or not. And as long as you're producing, they don't care if you're happy or not. If you're not producing, you're gonna get fired and you'll be unhappy either way. And it's certainly not something that, in my experience, companies are willing to spend a lot of money to do. So for me as well, the wah, wah is one of my favorites. This one, although a buy just 'cause it's close to me. It's a big sell because companies don't give a shit. Chad: So you don't think Jamie Dimon and DJ Saul cares about their employees that they wouldn't think this is big? Joel: No. Chad: Exactly. Joel: No, I don't. Lieven: First of all, we do care about our employees, but we don't need a employee morale booster based on AI generated content to care about the people. I mean, it's totally bullshit. What can you expect from a platform like that? Something like giving me motivational slogans every 15 minutes. "Hey, go, go Lieven." Or every oak was once a little acorn, go, go. I mean, seriously. So what's the morale booster going to do with people who are seriously depressed? Nothing at all. I don't think you need a coach to keep your employees from leaving. I think you need interesting jobs and a decent surrounding and capable staff, et cetera. And the best thing I feel to improve morale is to offer your people a common enemy. Chad: That's a different story. [laughter] Okay. Good talk. Lieven: But what I found interesting about TikTok. [laughter] What I found interesting about Loopin once that their CEO, Ben used to be a Royal Marine, and he claims the motivational stuff he learned being a marine, he's using now in his app. And that's an interesting thing. And I'm sure that if you're able to motivate a team in a terrible environment like the army, then you should be able to do it in a company as well. But how do you feel about it Chad? It's your business, armies. Chad: At the end of the day, that type of motivation is entirely different than the motivation that we see on the corporate side entirely. Lieven: Yeah. You fucking maggot get your lazy ass. That's not the kind of... Chad: Yeah, Because you could die. And if you're fucking something up, then literally there are lives on the line versus something like this. So when somebody says like, you're gonna take your motivational skills that you learned in the military, it's an entirely different world. So good for him. But yeah, I don't see it working. Lieven: Sell, sell, definitely sell. Joel: Three sells for Loopin. Chad: Wow. Joel: All right. Next up, Dutch HR tech firm Pera has secured 5 million euros. Pera aims to make recruitment faster and more accurate by analyzing the language used by job applicants and has a database of more than 5.5 million professionals. The funds will be used to develop Pera's technology, expand its footprint in the Benelux, is that how it's pronounced, Lieven? Lieven: Benelux, Benelux. Joel: Benelux, which is Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, which I didn't know. That's news for me. And as well as the UK and continue to gather data to improve its algorithms. The firm's periscope tool examines applicant's responses to three open-ended question and compares them with a data set on the professional achievements of others. Chad, by or sell Pera? Chad: This is probably the fastest assessment. See what I did there? That I've made in a long time. And it all has to do with the following quote from Rina Joosten-Rabou. Is that how you say it, Joosten? Lieven: Good enough. Chad: Where she mentions, I analyze the following statement. "The research behind Pera's approach is based on over 30 years of science, where it has been proven that people's communication contains subliminal clues about their motivations, personalities, and behavior". What the kind of fucking cycle bubble bullshit is that? Subliminal clues? Do ferries also help in the predictive function of Pera? I mean, if I were a hiring company, I would run for the hills. If somebody calls you and says, "Hey, I'm from Pera", put the phone down. I can't sell this fast enough. It's done. Good luck. Fucking subliminal. Are you kidding? Joel: Okay. First of all, the website is ridiculous. [laughter] Joel: That is the most asinine weird website for a SaaS company I've ever seen. They must have spent a ton of money on this website and it's totally ridiculous. Just go check it out if you wanna see what I'm talking about. That was a big, like eeh, for me starting off. So the website says, "Your written language is like a fingerprint. It can reveal your key competencies and future potential. All we need is your responses to a three-question interview". Okay. Who the fuck writes anymore, okay? It's a lost art. Kids don't do it. Young people don't write well anymore. And if you need to be a solid writer to come across on this test as a good potential employee, a lot of people are screwed 'cause they just don't write anymore. Paradox is Traitify, which uses visual shit and apparently works, I think is a much better technology. Chad: Visual shit. Joel: I mean, if you want something simple, go with a Traitify or Paradox. If you wanna go all in on this stuff, use someone like Plum. I just don't see Pera cutting through with a three-question writing test. I do like their regional focus and I like that I've learned a new word like Benelux because maybe I'll use that at some point. [laughter] But for me as well, man, I just do this fast enough. This is crazy shit, Pera. Lieven? Lieven: First of all, if you say Benelux, you have to say Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and not Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg as you did, because then the acronym is kind of lost but... Joel: Have patience, man. God is not finished with me yet. Sorry. Lieven: Benelux. Joel: Benelux. Lieven: Okay. But talking about Pera, I totally agree. I mean, they say on their website, three simple steps. The candidate answers three open questions online. There's no right or wrong. Then Pera registers the answers and extracts information from a language that subconsciously says something about the candidate. And then, well, the platform compare that data with the database of successful people in the same role. That's... In my opinion, it's bullshit. But who am I? [chuckle] And I asked Rina Joosten because that's the way how you pronounce her name. I asked Rena Houston on LinkedIn to connect and she already accepted. So I'm going to give her the right to answer and if she listens, maybe somehow will hint the show to her. Chad: Oh, she'll listen. Lieven: If she listens, she can contact me. We're connected now and I'm really interested because psychology interests me. And if she can prove that subconscious stuff like this could work, I'm happy to listen. But for now on, it's a very, very big sell. Outro: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Joel: That's six sells everybody. Let's see if... Chad: Geez. Joel: The final company can save it. All right. This is a crowdfunding deal that's nearing its goal of raising 700,000 euros. The company Equitas is an interview intelligence software aiming to support fair and inclusive hiring, helping companies build diverse teams. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Belfast, the startup says it's seen 800% year over year growth in the volume of interviews and have a sales pipeline of over 3 million pounds. 32 investors have already jumped in to invest, but I wanna know what you two think. Chad, by or sell Equitas? Chad: So co-founder Michael Blakley has experience in recruiting and deep experience in assessments. And what is an interview? It's an assessment. The platform provides structure to the interview, creating a standardized flow in questions including probing questions. No note-taking necessary as the audio is recorded and transcribed. Pretty standard nowadays. This is a very competitive space, but I always bet on industry experience and Equitas has that plus focus on the UK and Ireland. For me, gonna break the ice. It's a buy. Joel: Holy shit. [applause] Joel: Somebody had to. Lieven, you're champing at the bit. Do you wanna go or do you want me to go? Lieven: No, I wanna go. No worries. Joel: Go ahead. Lieven: I feel it's like very American software. I think it maybe useful for multinationals to prove in courts they don't discriminate because basically with the transcribing staff and all, that's what it's doing. It's keeping records of how this... The application process went and then it's offering proof. "We didn't discriminate because of this and that." But for most as I'm based in Europe and probably also for really big companies in Europe, we don't need software to do it. Lieven: I mean, the shortage of qualified candidates is structural. So we just don't have the luxury to choose between many candidates, let alone to discriminate. So I don't think many companies in Europe will be interested in buying software to prove they don't discriminate. And they definitely won't buy it because they don't want to discriminate. I mean, they don't wanna discriminate, but they just won't. So I don't feel this has big possibilities in most European countries, but maybe Anglo-Saxon countries, yes, they resemble America more. Could be, but for me it's a sell. Joel: Alright. We're back to selling guys. Okay, we're back to selling. All right. HireVue, Willow, VidCruiter, Vervoe, Paradox, Spark Hire, Wedge, Hire Fix, Indeed, TestGorilla, BrightHair... BrightHire, sorry. Should I go on? Chad: No. That's great market validation. That's a good point. Yeah. Joel: Equitas is a knife in a gunfight. If you want to invest in Belfast, buy a bottle of Bushmills. This also is a sell for me. If you're keeping track at home, that is eight sells and one buy. Alright. Let's get to one of our favorite or least favorite, depending on who you're asking. Leaders in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron has called for Europe to reduce its reliance on the US. What? And avoid being caught up in a confrontation between the US and China over Taiwan. Speaking to journalists after spending six hours with Chinese President Xi during a state visit to China, Macron emphasized his support for his concept of, "strategic autonomy," for Europe in which Europe would become a third superpower. The French president argued that Europe should focus on boosting its own defense industries while reducing its reliance on the extra territoriality of the US dollar. European Council President Charles Michel seems to agree saying EU cannot "blindly, systematically follow Washington." Chad, what do you make of all this strategic autonomy talk in the old country? Chad: I make that I wanna hear from the European on this one first. Lieven: And that's supposed to be me? Joel: That is you, yes. Lieven: Well, first of all, Macron spent six hours talking to Xi Jinping and afterwards, he launches the idea of Europe as a third superpower. Seriously. Russia and China succeeded in convincing Trump to move away from Europe and NATO, but then Trump scrolled up and he didn't get re-elected. So now they have to try something else, and they try a different approach and convincing Macron that Europe needs to be a third superpower. And Macron obviously has a very big ego, and he probably sees himself as the president of that third superpower. That's ridiculous. In different times, I would agree on Europe needing to reduce its dependency on the US, but not today. These aren't the times. Without US, Ukraine will be a part of Russia by now, Taiwan would be Chinese. So what? I'm sure Putin think Poland and maybe the Baltics belong to Russia too and have no clue what China wants after Taiwan, but I'm sure we won't like it. Lieven: And China has been increasing their military budgets drastically in the past decade. It's not because they're afraid of NATO and they're afraid that NATO might attack them. So I don't know what they're planning on, but Taiwan is too small to justify those really big growths and military budget. And China doesn't have many friends. So you have North Korea, but there are many countries with common enemies like Iran, for example, idealistically, they are totally different with China, but they have the same enemy, the west. So I don't think we want a stronger China right now. It's really... It's a problem. I think it's a problem bigger than Russia is, but now getting a split up between the United States and Europe would be the biggest stupidity to do, but who am I? Joel: America. Chad: So yeah. So you mentioned a name, Trump. He was probably one of the best, was he? Helpful idiots that all the strong-armed men across the world had, the Xis, the Putin's, the... What's this little buddy in North Korea? Lieven: Kim Jong Un. Joel: Un. Lieven: Or something, Kim Jong Un. Chad: He's saying the things that you shouldn't out loud, which is another thing that Trump is saying. If you feel this, I totally get it. That this is not something you say on the world stage at this point in time. Do I believe in isolationism? No, that's total bullshit because we have to have redundancies. And we have to be smart because we do have a global economy, although you have to be smart. And from the EU, I see from the standpoint of you look to the EU first and then you look outward and number two is the US. Totally get that. Joel: So one thing neither of you mentioned was a certain riotous behavior in France currently going on because they're raising the retirement age. And what better way... Chad: A diversion... Joel: What better way to divert attention to riots in the street in Paris than to talk about being autonomous and leaving the US or relying on the US much less than they have? Look, historically, World War II happened. Europe was decimated. America basically said, "We're gonna police the seas, the oceans. We're gonna basically be a Kevlar vest over Europe, protecting you from everything. You won't have to build your military as much as you have in the past. We'll create a union and things for 50 years or so." We're pretty much like that. And America spent a lot of money to protect everyone and everyone lived really nicely and had nice welfare in Europe because they didn't have to build a military. Joel: They could spend all their money on their citizens and keep them happy in that system. Fast forward to today, America, I think is spending 5X on Ukraine versus what Europe is. We're still spending a ton of money for defenses of Europe and keeping Russia at bay in many cases. So it's sort of strange to say Europe is gonna be autonomous and less on the US. I see the reality of it in that if we do get into war with Taiwan, does Europe wanna be involved with that? Not really. They didn't really wanna be involved when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Now they did send troops ultimately, but we sent a lot more troops to Europe and money and resources than they did to... Chad: They were already in a conflict. Let's make sure everybody remembers that. Joel: Hold on. We wanted to... We're fighting a two-front war. They're fighting the Nazis. Chad: Again, they were already in a conflict. Joel: The point is they have no... Chad: What fuck did you want them to do? Joel: They have no history of saying the US is in trouble in Asia. Chad: France had given up. What did you want them to do, Joel? What did you want France to do then? Lieven: Even Belgium gave up after six days. Chad: Historically, you're all fucked up. Joel: Europe does not wanna get involved in the Pacific. Lieven: No, no, it's true. But... Joel: Am I wrong? Chad: When they bombed Pearl Harbor, what was going on in Europe at that time, Joel? Joel: War. Chad: Oh, no shit, no shit. They had to defend themselves. Joel: So we could have said, "You guys deal with Europe. We got the Japanese to deal with", but we didn't do that. Chad: No, we saw that shit coming to us, so we had to actually do something. That was an America first issue. Joel: Why could have Europe seen Japan coming their way? Chad: They could have, but they're already in a fight. Lieven: Japan is very far, and Germany wasn't. Joel: So we weren't in the European fight, but we got into it. That's okay. But your argument that they were already in a war, so they couldn't come to the Pacific. Chad: Dude, most countries were decimated. Lieven: Yeah. And America was pissed off because of Pearl Harbor, and then they had to be involved. But I'm not sure. Did they want to be a part of the second World War in the beginning? Chad: No. Lieven: In the first one, they only joined in '16 or something. When did the Americans come to Europe to save our asses for the... I dont know how many times. Chad: We're always slow. Yeah. Lieven: Yeah. But when you come, of course you change tie. Joel: So let me get around to my final point here. [laughter] Europe is destined to eventually... I don't wanna say be on its own, but America is going to support Europe less and less as the decades go on and on. And they need to figure out what their road is. Is it a third superpower that makes nice with both the China, Russia, Iran, axis of evil as well as America, and try to tow that line and trade with both? I mean, let's be honest, for energy, Europe had a really nice winter that was warm. This wasn't a huge issue, but energy is going to be an issue next year. So Europe has a lot of issues in terms of relying on stuff from Russia and energy that they need to at least act like we're not America's bitch. We can make our own decision. [laughter] So I think Macron in some ways and Europe in some ways is forced to be, "We can't just totally be on one side or the other. We have to try to play nice with everybody so our folks don't fucking revolt", which as Macron knows, they have a tendency to do. They wanna keep the peace, keep people warm in the winter, keep people fed. And to do that, they have to play on both sides of the fence. Lieven: But I think it'll be selfish from Europe to say, "Okay, when Russia is attacking Ukraine, America, please help us." But when China is attacking Taiwan and the Americas has guaranteed they will protect Taiwan, now Europe would say, "Now this, we don't wanna be involved." It just doesn't work like that. There has to be loyalty from both sides. Joel: I will tell you, if Russia had rolled through Ukraine and was at the doorstep of Poland, Europe would be singing a much different tune than they are now. Lieven: Definitely. Yeah, of course. And it was a possibility. Russia expected to do it in a few weeks, take the whole of Ukraine. Everyone actually so as I was surprised it didn't work out that way. So apparently, Russia's army wasn't as good as they expected. Chad: Crimea was a practice run. Lieven: Yeah. And we didn't react and they expected the same now. Chad: We did not. Joel: And I'm sure Russia would love nothing then for our attention to be diverted to the Pacific and China, which leaves Europe much more on its own than it does now. So anyway, the world is gonna get interesting, kids, in a not great way, I suspect. Chad: Get me a beach and an umbrella drink. That's all I care. [laughter] Joel: Portugal's fine, everybody. Let's go meet up at Chad's for pina coladas and sunbathing. We out. Chad: We out. Lieven: We out. S5: 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. 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.

Warning: This episode might make you hungry, as Chik-fil-A, In-N-Out, McDonald’s and others get mentions. If you dare listen, however, you’ll get knowledge bombs on the trend of remote layoffs, how Hilton is turning happy workers into big profits and taking on AirBNB and whether or not employers are “going broke by going woke.” Google’s pay-per-click for job postings gets airtime too … imagine that. And chicken nuggets. Lots of talk about chicken nuggets. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is changing minds and changing lives through disability inclusion. Inro: 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. Think email spam is bad now? MailChimp just integrated OpenAI's GPT tech into its software, and the ladders couldn't be happier. Hi kids, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your co-host, Joel Hormel Cheeseman. Chad: I'm Chad Pass-Me-A-Budweiser Sowash. Julie Calli: I always forget the name. [laughter] Chad: That's why you write them down. Joel: How many shows have we done? Julie Calli: I'm Julia I don't know why I'm on this show Calli. [laughter] Joel: Oh, my God. On this episode, remote layoffs, Hilton gets it, and Bud Light triggers conservatives. See what I did there? Let's do this. What's up, kids? Chad: He's back from Vegas. So how'd it go? You had the family in tow. So did you take Jeremy to the Spearmint Rhino, or how'd it go? Joel: Wow. You just went right there, didn't you? So we went to Vegas but I wouldn't say we went to Vegas. First day was Hoover Dam, second day was Grand Canyon, third day was Red Rocks hiking excursion, and it wasn't until the last day that we did sort of the strip, and the Stratosphere and the roller coaster at New York-New York, had good meals on the strip. Yeah, I didn't put my six-year-old at the blackjack table and headed to the Sportsbook or anything. It was a family vacation. It was most like family vacations, it was equal parts loving, laughing, engaging, and then equal parts, I wanna punch you in the throat and I wish you were dead, kind of thing. Chad: Well, Cole being 16 and around that much sex, not to have access to it, that to me sounds like... That was not a good place. Joel: Why would you go Spearmint Rhino with my six-year-old and then sexcapades with my 16-year-old? Julie Calli: There's roller coasters. Joel: This is what happens when I'm gone for a week. Chad stuffs all this in and it's gotta come out on the very first podcast recording that we do. Chad: No, we've been talking about it all week. There's two podcasts we've been talking about this. [laughter] Joel: Yeah, yeah. So then now we're going to UNLEASH in Vegas in a couple of weeks. HR Tech's in Vegas, I'll be at Sherman. I might as well get a condo in Vegas at this point, we're gonna be there so often. Chad: [chuckle] Cole can take care of it. Joel: Yes, thank you for not bringing my daughter in to any of this, by the way. You do have some guard rails, which is nice. Chad: Hey, I was a 16-year-old boy at one time. I know the hormones that are coursing through that kid's veins. Joel: And you had a 13-year-old girl at one point, too, which is why you know not to bring that into the game. Chad: That's exactly right. Yes. I would kill a motherfucker. [laughter] Julie Calli: Well, here's a question, though. Did they enjoy it? Joel: Parts of it. Like any family vacation. I think there was probably too much hiking, at one point. [laughter] Joel: It was probably too much in the car, at one point. Chad: It sounds very Griswold. Joel: There was probably like, it's too cold out here, at one point. We did hit Vegas in a cold front. Chad: Well, welcome back. Joel: My 16-year-old loves In-N-Outs, so we did that. And he loves Gordon Ramsey, so let's go to Gordon Ramsey's restaurant. So you kind of balance out everyone hoping to be happy. And, I don't know, we didn't kill each other, so that's saying something. Chad: That is good. That is good. Yes, yes. Julie Calli: It's important, because it's the impression that you leave on them. So when you say, "Hey, I have to go to this event for work in Vegas," they're like, "Oh, that long car ride to the Dam again." And they think that's what you're doing. [laughter] Joel: I don't think they think that's what I'm doing in Vegas. No. I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it. Chad: Shout-out. Joel: I'll go first, since we're talking about In-N-Out Burger and Gordon Ramsey. My first shout-out goes to Chick-fil-A. Chad: [chuckle] Jesus, chicken. Joel: Regardless of how you feel about their political views, their employees step up at some point. So, Sarah Massey's dog, Molly, was put down on January 27th of this year. On January 26th, the day before, Massey went to Chick-fil-A to get Molly her favorite meal, chicken nuggets. And whose favorite meal isn't chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A? Anyway, when she got to the window to pay, the staff told her they "took care of it" and didn't charge her for it. Massey posted a video of herself feeding Molly the nuggets on Instagram and Chick-fil-A later sent her a personalized painting of Molly along with a note expressing their condolences. Massey was touched by Chick-fil-A's gesture and said it will always hold a special place in her heart. Who says employees can't make a difference? It was employees that noticed this was happening. It was the employees that alerted the HQ, and it was the employees that generated this beautiful portrait, as opposed to like, I don't know, a cow outfit or a Chick-fil-A bib. Joel: I don't know what would typically go out. It was a custom gift. Chad: Was the dog with Jesus, though? That's the question. [laughter] Joel: It was cool. Chad: In the painting, did they have the painting with Jesus and the dog? [laughter] Joel: Taco Bell isn't doing this kind of shit. I'm not saying it's specific to Chick-fil-A but having solid employees that listen to customers and what's going on in their life makes a big difference and it made a big difference at this point. Chad: It does. Joel: So Chick-fil-A or not, employees make a difference, and I thought it was worth a shout-out to Chick-fil-A and Massey and her dog, Molly. Julie Calli: Great story. Joel: On this show. Chad: Yeah, that's beautiful. Joel: Chad, a man who loves dogs as much as you, that you're not touched by this is... Chad: Nothing. I didn't say that I wasn't touched. I'm just thinking of the painting that's hanging over the mantle, with Jesus holding the dog while eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich. Joel: I'm thinking like the dog is Jesus. Maybe it's like a last supper with the dog and they're eating nuggets. [laughter] Joel: That would have been awesome. Chad: Oh my God. Okay, Julie. Shout-out. Chad, we gotta get out of that. Joel: Yeah. Pull us out, Julie. Pull us out of this. Julie Calli: Well, shout-out to Google for finally having these... The testing being done, they're not giving us much information about it right now, but Google job ads. Paid job ads on Google. We have been waiting for this for a long time. So shout-out to Google for finally making it possible. Joel: And we've been predicting it for a long time. So we're finally glad that Google... Julie Calli: Everybody's just been waiting. Now, yet? Joel: Google stepped up. Julie Calli: Is it now yet, is now the time? Joel: Yeah, yeah. [automated voice] Chad: Yeah. I took a shot at it and I finally got it right. So that's my one prediction I'll probably get right this year. [laughter] Joel: Yeah, yeah, and I think I made it three years ago. It was kind of obvious if they took this seriously they were gonna do it. I can't wait till like cost per click comes out, and cost, like when all the data comes out, that'll be fun. And if the data kicks a certain competitors ass, it will be really interesting to see where things go. Chad: Yep. Julie Calli: Provided it's a better experience. Chad: Providing it's a better experience. Julie Calli: Yes. Chad: Shout-out to our friend Brett Marz over at BAMKO. That's right, he was a guest on the show. The name of the episode was called Marketing is Clueless. Brett, he's been selling and working with marketing for years, and he has finally gotten this epiphany: Hey, what the hell is going on, why aren't we treating our employees better so that our employees treat our customers better? The entire discussion was around that topic. It was amazing. We've got so many messages about that podcast, and so I appreciate it and shout-out to Brett. Joel: And the compliments came from people who are usually the most critical of our episodes. So the fact that they were complimentary, I think, says a lot that you should check out that episode if marketing is important and recruiting is important to you. Julie, there's a birthday that you're celebrating. Julie Calli: Yes. Chad: Ooh, do they get rum from Plum? Oh, that's a question. Julie Calli: Well, I'd love some rum from Plum. Well, happy anniversary to Recruitment Marketing. One year, we launched the site one year ago today. Thank you to our audience. We've spent the last year really listening to what resources, what can we provide to help better empower people in recruitment marketing and talent acquisition. As we're all going through transformation so fast, and things are changing so quickly, how can we help empower the people to make better change and advance the industry? Continuing to put out new articles and trends but what I'm really excited about is we're about to launch two new resources and experiences. One being a community for talent acquisition and recruitment marketing professionals. This community is free to use, and I believe is gonna create a way for people to be able to collaborate more on some of the biggest challenges we face. Chad: Is it gonna be vetted? Julie Calli: Yes. You do have to register with your authentic credentials and we are paying attention to who's coming into the community. So we want it to be a professional community, and that is a community that we're launching. But in addition to that we're also launching a marketplace to help people better understand the technologies, the solutions and the providers that are out there, so that we can build something that's really helpful for people to understand and find the right solutions. Joel: Hell, yeah. And you can become part of that community if you're not already, at recruitmentmarketing.com. [music] Chad: Topics. Joel: All right, let's talk remote layoffs. Chad: Layoffs? Joel: They're becoming increasingly common, as more and more companies allow their employees to work from home. McDonalds was in the news recently when they asked corporate employees who usually work from the office at least three days a week to do the job from home. The plan was to lay off hundreds of employees, and the company preferred to deliver its news virtually instead of face-to-face. The pros of such a move? Well, digesting the news in private, as well as the cost savings. The cons? There's no closure, and maybe a level of stress that's not healthy for workers. And how about the impact on recruitment, retention and the future of remote work? Chad, what is your take on the trend of remote layoffs? Chad: So we're evolving our relationship to work in America. We've bought into this rugged individualism narrative hook, line and sinker. I know I did. I jumped in with both feet. Then the pandemic hit, and as people died around us, literally, we started re-evaluating life. Not work, but life. So it was also evident that companies had been bold-face lying to us every day about their inability to support remote work. So as we started working from home, in rather a quick and productive fashion, we started to think about how work would look on our terms. Right? So I don't see remote work changing. I see our relationship with work changing. I was listening to the Pivot podcast about a week or so ago, and Liz Hoffman was a guest. She's a journalist from Semaphore. And she told a story about our favorite DJ, David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, he said he was at a country club during the weekday and one of his workers strolled up and said hi after enjoying a day at the beach. Chad: That interaction really pissed Solomon off. Why wasn't she at work, and what was he paying her for? This is the type of evolution that I'm talking about. Number one, the 40-hour work week was created in 1940 by Henry Ford, for manufacturing, not for desk jobs. Solomon is paying for results. Not so much... Solomon was also at the fucking country club. Right? So if you're getting all of what you're paying for, which is results, it shouldn't matter whether it's 10 hours, 20 hours, 40 hours, 60 hours. It all comes down to our relationship with work. And it has changed. The problem is we have guys like DJ Sol, who doesn't want it to change. They want it to be the 1940s, 1930s, they want it to be Henry Ford, and they want people at their desk. The problem is we're gonna see some flux. Some companies who need the best talents will go remote and they will get the best talents. But again, it's all about the job market, man. So I think it's here to stay. It's just going to expand and contract as the market does. Joel: Yeah, you know, remote work, we've talked for a long time that it's gonna be messy. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Companies are gonna figure it out, what's this look like? I think one of the sad... You mentioned evolution, I don't know if it's evolution or devolution, but the trend of laying people off in a non-face-to-face manner, that used to shock people. I remember stories of like, oh my God, they sent out an email to people or a text message, right? Now it's commonplace, and now we're talking about it being normal. Julie Calli: Yeah. Joel: There are pros to this. You get to get laid off on your own time, you get to do it from the comfort of your home. The fact that McDonalds would say, hey... They didn't say, people we're laying off, why don't you work from home for the rest of the week? And then they got laid off. Well, there's your cue. If you're told by the company to go work from home, you might get laid off. They're not the first. We talked about Google recently laid off thousands via email. Mark Zuckerberg announced plans of big cuts in a 2000-word memo to employees. Even Pepsi, a more traditional company is laying off people in a digital remote manner. Chad: What about Indeed? Joel: I think the sad part is... Chad: Indeed, 2200 people. Joel: Yeah. We're just, we're immune to it now. In fact, we're moving to like it's a preference. If I'm gonna get laid off, I'd rather be in my La-Z-Boy or enjoying a day at the park, whatever, than having to go to HR, be in a room with a table of five people, and signing papers and whatever else. I just think it's funny that we've moved from, holy shit, how can you lay people off in a non-face-to-face manner, to like, how could you lay people off looking at them and in a room with them? They should be alone in their house or apartment? It's crazy how quickly the world has moved from like, when you talk about serious things and you lay someone off, you look them in the eye and you have that face-to-face human connection. We've gone 180 from that. Aand whether it's good or not, it's a sign of the times, and it's the way things are gonna be, get used to them. It's a reaction or just evolution, I guess, of this remote work. We're gonna remote work, we might as a lay people off when they're at home and this is how we're gonna do it, and this is gonna be standard business practice from now on. Julie Calli: This is an outcome of pandemic, right? That so many people were terminated in such a short period of time and had to do that remotely, where companies had to face that very quickly, right? They had to. So that's what forced change. Forced it. And then companies realized, wow, there is a way to execute on this. And some companies did it very poorly, so let's start with that, like the bar was pretty low when we first all adapted to that in Covid times. But then we've reemerged from that. Now, we over-hired for a while to fill that rise in demand, so a lot of companies are trying to level out now. So I don't call this really a decline. I call this a getting back to normal levels from my viewpoint of it. And now companies are saying, yes, this is actually a more effective way to manage this communication plan, with consistency, with process, to manage the experience, so that it's not parted out and handed it out into individual managers who might fub up the communication and not execute on that properly, which can create risk. So this is a better way from a corporate perspective to execute on something like that. Julie Calli: But, wow, the little bait and switch of like, oh, you can work from home this week, and then find out, gee, you're laid off. Yeah, you're right; I'm with you on that, Joel. Now, if I were inside one of those organizations and someone said, "Oh, you can go ahead and work remote tomorrow,' I would pack up all the stuff on my desk, because I would be in complete fear that remote work now means potential to be terminated. So does that start to change the mindset of people, of, I need to be in the office or I might be on the chopping block? Joel: Well, people are gonna start saying, "You're not getting fired, we want you to work from home this week because of whatever reason." One little story, side note, in terms of being laid off at work. Back in the days when I was writing Cheesehead, I got a scoop on some big layoff at Career Builder. And I posted it that night, and so that morning everyone at Career Builder sort of saw that post. Chad: In the office. Joel: They didn't start... Yeah, in the office. Everyone saw it, right? So it spread like wildfire, and then they didn't start the layoffs until 2 o'clock that afternoon. So they spent an entire morning at Career Builder of people speculating, are there gonna be layoffs, who's gonna be laid off? And I talked to an executive there that said, "You wouldn't believe how much money we lost in productivity because of that blog post." So if everyone was working from home, it wouldn't spread as quickly if something like that happened, you wouldn't lose so much productivity. So in a side note, companies, if everyone's at work, they lose productivity because all the gossip around who's getting laid off, maybe they can control it better when they're in a remote situation, anyway. Julie Calli: Productivity, you're about to lay people off, what are you... Of course, you're gonna lose productivity. [laughter] Joel: But do you know it or not, is the question. I don't know. Chad: They throw that shit in the Slack channel, it's gonna be the same thing. Yeah. So take a look at what Indeed did, they laid off 2200 people but they had everybody come to a call, and then it took 10 minutes before they actually sent out an email to let the people know. So you're talking about your entire workforce being impacted during that time frame, so yeah. It's a figuring it out kind of a thing, and that's gonna be on the employer and the employee, you've gotta figure out what you want out of this. If you want to be one of those ladder climbers, that's awesome. You probably need to be in the office, you need to be... Like I used to, I was an hour early, I was... I stayed an hour late, I was the last one out of the office and I drove. I had a commute of an hour one way. But if you're not... It's one of those things where you really have to figure out what role you wanna play and what type of position you want, or does life matter more to you. Julie Calli: Yeah, personal choices and where you feel that you fit in the culture. And are you gonna ever find a company that's a perfect fit for that? Chad: Nah. Julie Calli: Companies change and their culture changes. Chad: And people do too. Julie Calli: Yes, so there's a constant evolution of at the right time, the right person, the right place. Yeah, that could be today and it could not be tomorrow at any company for any person. But I know that companies have to do these types of layoffs. That's a fact that they have to. Can they do it well? I think that there is better chance to do this in these ways that are remote and done so that you can manage with consistency than that one-to-one. So while I know that it does eliminate a lot of the humanized experience that we're used to, I do think it's an advancement towards making sure that it's done properly. Joel: By the way, in case anyone knows, Chad has promised me that when he lays me off, it will be face-to-face over a bottle of bourbon in case you are wondering. Chad: Well, I really don't have to because I already have your voice clone, so you're still gonna be there. It's all good. [laughter] Joel: Just make sure you send the check to the right address. We'll be right back, everybody. Let's go to Hilton shall we? Happy workers equal prosperous brands. What a concept. Am I right? Hilton apparently takes it seriously though. The hotel chain has worked hard to cultivate an energized workforce to deliver on its brand promises in addition to improving its workplace culture post-Covid, which has been ranked among the best in the world by independent organizations, Hilton is leveraging brand mash-ups and appealing to new age travelers. Chad, what's your take on Hilton's new strategy? Chad: It makes sense. Again, we talked about Brett Martz, our episode with him, he talked about an actual experience that he had at a hotel where they were understaffed and he got shitty service. Then he talked about another experience, it wasn't in a hotel, but it was still... It was a customer experience where the employees were treated like shit, so therefore they treated the customers like shit, so that just kills your brand. It just blows my mind that this has been such a large, large blind spot for big marketing over the years. Chad: They're now starting to understand that. Joel, you and I, in 2018 were in BAMF for the gathering. And we really saw, because we didn't really have that much engagement with CMOs and brand leaders at that point, then we started to realize these guys have no fucking clue about how they're treating employees, how the employees are treating customers, not to mention, if you go through an application process, they're losing people there too, 'cause it's shit and they go into a black hole. There are so many areas where marketing is literally dropping the fucking ball. Now that Hilton is finally found out, and now they're doing all these great things to talk about how they have finally... How old is Hilton? Jesus Christ. Joel: It's gotta be a 50-plus year. Chad: Jesus! Joel: It's gotta be 50, 60, 75-year company. Chad: Easy, easy. Joel: So I stayed at an Airbnb in my time in Las Vegas. We talked about my vacation. I don't wanna say I'm done with Airbnb but I'm pretty close. Not just for the quality of some of the housing and the customer service, which is none, it's the person who owns the house basically. And Airbnb customer service has to be a third man in that if there's issues. Now more than ever, if you're a traditional hotel, your employees are part of that huge differentiation from this juggernaut they call Airbnb. Julie Calli: It's such a great point. Joel: While it may be a convenient, tech efficient, pricing might be better. Your employees, if you're a hotel, are your differentiator from Airbnb because Airbnb has jack shit when it comes to employee support, a smiling face to welcome you, all that good stuff that we took for granted at hotels. And the good news is, market forces and competition have made hotels up their game in the level that we're talking about with Hilton, and it makes a difference in the customer service. I'm more apt to go to a hotel now because of the shitty experiences I've had with Airbnb, and I don't think I would have said that five years ago. I would have said hotels suck, Airbnb is where it's at. And there was a period where Airbnbs were all really good, it was like the best people, they really cared. Now, it's like people who buy investment properties and just do a little fix-up and hope that you pay for the cost of the mortgage. So I think that's key. I also love this brand mash-up thing. I know we talked, my wife and I were watching TV last night, and Peloton has a commercial about how Peloton... Joel: It's the hotel commercial, but how Pelotons are gonna be in the hotels, and it's not gonna be a regular, shitty experience. And my wife is like, "Oh, well that's a really good deal for Peloton. That's kinda cool." So the other is like having Starbucks have a lifestyle thing at the hotel, so for me, this is all really good but you need employees to make it all work. And for that, I think that's great, and I certainly expect the Hilton example to come to all hotels, certainly your high-end hotels because that employee is the differentiator from technology and the Airbnb juggernaut. Julie Calli: Yeah, and so many companies are having a hard time hiring frontline workers, and I'd put hospitality into that. Chad: Yes. Julie Calli: They're having a hard time hiring them, and now they're also saying, we wanna hire those that are energized and bring that high level of service to our brand. Okay, so now you need people and you need the right kind of people. That has everything to do with the experience that you're gonna bring to them, because if you're already struggling to fill the demand, we have a shortage of frontline workers and their interest to work in these jobs. So if that's the case, what are you going to do to attract them as well? Because this is a really important part. You can claim, we want an energized workforce, but can you make them come? Can they show up? That is gonna have to do with not just running great ads and doing great recruitment marketing, that is gonna have everything to do with the type of experience you provide your employees. And that then is gonna circle back into the potential to bring more. Because if you really are giving a great experience, if they really are enjoying the work, and that is leading to Hilton being a great provider, people are gonna be proud to be part of that, and that's the story you wanna tell that brings the full cycle around. Great employees are gonna give a great customer service experience, they're happy, they're spreading that around, that's a successful company, that attracts more people. That's how the circle of life works in this case. Joel: It seems like a small thing, but people love... If I say, I work at Hilton and someone says, "Oh, I saw that commercial, you guys got Pelotons in there, and that's really cool shit," that means something to people that work there. We think it's a small thing, but it does mean something. Julie Calli: Yeah, I love the brand mash-up, I think that there's so many people who are cult brand to Starbucks, Peloton, they love something about a brand, you have the ability to tap into that cult-like experience and bring it into your own, mashing these things up, I think it's genius to do that. Chad: And it's only taken Hilton 103 years to fucking get there. Great job Hilton. Conrad Hilton... Joel: Way to google, Chad. Chad: Yeah. Conrad Hilton is rolling in his grave right now. [laughter] Joel: Let's transfer from that to wokeness, shall we? Chad: Oh, my favorite. Joel: I know, I know. All right. So go woke go broke has been a popular rallying cry for conservatives as of late. Many high profile companies are struggling with political tensions around the country. Disney's Bob Iger said the company would "quiet down culture war controversies" back in November, and now it's come to beer with Budweiser triggering conservatives with a campaign featuring a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney. In protest, Kid Rock shot cans of beer on Instagram. Chad, there's a lot to unpack here. Your thoughts. Chad: So there is one constant in this world, and that's change. And every woke initiative is forward gleaning, which is exactly what we want from companies. Instead of looking only to the next quarter, they are building for the next generation. And that's what scares the shit out of MAGA people like Kid Rock. MAGA people want it to be 1930 again and as younger adults have demonstrated, that just ain't gonna fucking happen. A couple of examples, we're talking about government, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black state representatives in the state of Tennessee were expelled from the house after joining a gun demonstration and then amplifying the sentiment on the House floor. Jones is 27 and Pearson is 29. They're not allowing this shit to pass. Chad: Jones was unanimously reinstated back into the Tennessee State House earlier this week, and I believe Pearson will be soon to follow. They are not allowing this dumb backward-looking shit to happen. Then last week in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race, young voters turned out to elect a pro-choice justice. So let's close the loop here. Kids aren't just voting, they are occupying seats in government and yes, also buying shit. Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser, has been around for 171 years, so they understand that next quarter's profits are important but making sure you're relevant to the next generation is fucking vital to their existence. So being woke isn't just good for business, it's the only business, and I bet Anheuser Bush would rather be called woke than caught yearning for the days of 1930. Joel: Yeah, the historic perspective is really interesting here, and I talk all the time about part of the benefit of us having a podcast, Chad, is we're old old people. Chad: Shut up. Joel: And we remember shit. I know. I'm sorry. [laughter] Joel: But there was a day where the only women in ads were in the kitchen making dinner or whatever. And it wasn't until Virginia Slim's you've come a long way baby, took hold, but the model then was like, we're gonna make a cigarette just for women. Yeah, it's the same god damn cigarette, but we're gonna say it's just for women, make it thinner or whatever. Chad: Or bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, remember that one? Joel: Yes, another example, and that was the '80s where women divorce and anyway, I don't wanna get into that perspective, but then we had... I remember Billy Dee Williams, pimping Colt 45, which seems super stupid and archaic today, but that was how it was like Black person promoting what we're targeting is a Black product, that doesn't work anymore today. All products are for everyone. Could you imagine Bud Light saying, we're gonna make a gay beer, it just doesn't... It sounds stupid when you say it but 50 years ago, that might have been a thing. So to me, historically, we have always had pushback or hesitancy or fear of combining certain people with different products and hey, they drink beer just like you do. They do this just like you do, they drive this car just like you do. Chad: They are human beings. Joel: Yeah, segmenting products and brands is just a really archaic idea, and I think it's just inevitable, history is on the side of Budweiser, whether you like it or not, and most of the people that are bitching about this are 50-plus year old White guys. Chad: Get off my lawn. Joel: Frankly. And I'm one of them, so I can relate to that perspective, but yeah, history is not on your side. History is on the side of inclusivity, I know not everyone's gonna love it, but everyone didn't like women cigarettes or Billy Dee Williams. To think about when gay couples or mixed couples on TV was like, what the fuck is that about? That's normal now, no one really goes nuts about like when Ellen kissed a chick on TV, that was a huge deal. Now it's nothing. So eventually we will get to a point where this is nothing but for now it's something and it's worthy of talking about on a podcast, but history is on the side of inclusivity on this one, and inevitably I think, Budweiser is gonna be applauded for this decision at some point. Julie Calli: Yeah. In today's world, it is almost impossible to be a neutral brand because then you don't stand for anything. Being authentic is standing for something. In this case, I'm very proud of Anheuser-Busch for even when all of the press and the publicity came back, they made a choice to still stand, to stand and not to give in to the transphobia behavior that was coming out against it. They didn't pull it back, they stood with it, they're standing for something that makes them a brand that then speaks to an audience. Now, the younger Gen Z demographic is the audience that they need to appeal to. Chad, I love what you said, they need to think about their future, 'cause statistically, the proud boys are gonna age out, and the Gen Z is gonna fill in the consumer market of the future, and that is an audience that cares about inclusivity. In the end, let's view this for what it was, it was a campaign. Chad: Yes. Julie Calli: Budweiser runs lots of campaigns, they work with hundreds of influencers. I'm sure that if you went through the list of every influencer, you'd find somebody you didn't agree with what they stand for but this isn't the spokesperson for their entire brand, this is one of many of the influencers. Influencer marketing is part of the world today, and brands, brands lean in on influencers to reach different types of audiences. This is one of them, there are many of them, and this is the one that's catching a lot of attention right now. So hey, that's actually a good campaign that brings out a lot of attention. And to watch now, Jack Daniels get thrown under the bus here too with this because they also have a campaign running to be expressing inclusivity. But in the end, your business. Where do you measure this is as a success? Go look at your stock, Anheuser-Busch's stock is up six points. [laughter] Julie Calli: Now, so is that because everybody's saying, I don't wanna buy your beer, or is that because they're buying 12 cases and shooting it up on their front lawn? Chad: Who cares? Who cares? Julie Calli: Whatever is going on, it is working. If the goal of marketing is to deliver communication about your brand that drives sales and revenue, they won, they did it. They increased their value, they're increasing their sales, their stock is on a buy right now, that is a success because they just rallied people who probably could have cared less about Bud Light, who now are gonna stand with the brand and be proud because of its standing for itself against the transphobia that's being expressed to it. So go ahead and shoot it up off your front lawn and pour the beer out. Julie Calli: But you know what, you bought that beer that you're pouring out on your front lawn. [laughter] You're giving them press, you're giving them the audience on a silver platter that they want anyways, so bravo, thank you for standing, Anheuser-Busch. And all of those that are being so judgmental of a single commemorative can, it's not even printed in all the stores, what are you doing? Take a breath. Chad: It's an easy math problem, you take a look at demographics today, and then you take a look at it in less than 20 years from now. Who do you want to appeal to? It's very simple, and to be able to make these types of big moves, it's not a big fucking move, it's one can, as you had said. It's not a big move, but yet they again, are really focusing on not the baby boomers anymore, not the... And in the population in less than 20 years, Caucasian is going to be minority, you're going to see a lot of this movement in the next 10 years at least, so as we talk about this today, get ready for the massive move, the massive marketing move. Joel: I will say it's really unfortunate in a time in America where we're dealing with shootings on a regular basis, that someone would take a semi-automatic weapon to beer cans, which essentially is representative of the trans community, I think you could loosely say, it's just a really bad thing for the country that we've come to a point where like, let's take guns and shoot up beers who represent this campaign of people of trans. So anyway, not marketing-related but still a sad commentary. Julie Calli: There's a lot of future here that we need to be careful. Like brands, brands are a thing of their own. But when they start leaning into people, they start to have the identity associated with those people. We're watching that a lot, like we can see Elon Musk and... But let me bring up Jared, which is a Netflix special right now. Who was the poster child... Joel: Proud user, Jared. Joel: For Subway, yes, and lost a few hundred pounds eating just Subway. They put him on tour. So he became the face of the brand. Then only to find out that he's a pedophile. Now, Subway wants to run away from that as quickly as possible but this is the problem, humans are perfectly imperfect and they're always gonna make mistakes and they're gonna do terrible things. And brands wanna remain this consistent forward-thinking inclusive area where they're not alienating any types of customers they can potentially have or any markets, they wanna remain open and neutral, but this is a dangerous game that we're gonna be playing as companies are leaning more in on influencers. Those influencers are going to have an effect on the brand. So that's what we're talking about here. Joel: So any time you tie a brand to a person, whether it's the CEO or a fat guy from Bloomington, Indiana, you run those risks, and we talk about brand mash-ups, Pelotons and hotels, and so like Peloton affects Hilton, affects other brands, so yeah, most companies just stay the hell out of I, but to applaud the ones that don't, Julie, to your point is we're talking about. Just like we're done talking on this episode. We actually agreed, all of us on a woke topic. How good is that? Kumbaya, baby. We out. Chad: We out. Julie Calli: 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'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 quit them either. We out.

Listening to Chad & Cheese is like going to your favorite restaurant: You know what’s on the menu, and you know that you love it … which is why you keep coming in for more. Cheese is back from vacation and the boys are covering acquisitions, artificial intelligence, robots, LinkedIn, OnlyFans and so much more. All the flavors you know and love. Specifically, Mitratech has gobbled up Circa and Trakstar, Textio is toast thanks to ChatGPT and the White House sounds off on AI best practices. Then, LinkedIn partners with Clear to verify IDs, Digidog is back on the beat in New York City and Walmart keeps automating to phase out more and more workers. Lastly, the boys introduce you to Claudia, OnlyFans' worst nightmare. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. 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 Cheesman: Oh, yeah, it's National Ex-Spouse Day. But let's reflect on all the positive moments we shared with our exes, Chad. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Hi, kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel, cheaper to keep her Cheesman. Chad Sowash: And this is Chad, keeping up with the ChatGPT Joneses Sowash. Joel Cheesman: And on this week's show, think twice before you stick it in to ChatGPT. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: LinkedIn finds a CLEAR path to ID verification. And who let the Digidog out? [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: Let's do this. Ooh, that was sound bite overkill. Chad Sowash: Wow. Joel Cheesman: How's that gonna sound? All right. Chad Sowash: You can tell you're back. My God. Sound bites all over the fucking place. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: That's right. [laughter] I got an itchy trigger finger, baby. That's an itchy trigger finger. Chad Sowash: A week away from the soundboard. This is what you get. Joel Cheesman: Quincy filled in nicely though. Quincy brought the funk. Chad Sowash: She did. She did. As a matter of fact, she's my first shout out because we had pretty amazing comments. We do generally get comments about guest hosts. But we never get the comments that we did for her. They literally, and we've had people say she deserves a third chair [laughter] on our weekly show. 'Cause she's smart. She knows her shit and all that other fun stuff, so that was pretty awesome. Not to mention she's been on the show quite a bit, so she doesn't have the butterflies or anything like that. So shout out to Quincy. Thanks for doing that. [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: Shout out for me to Rupert Murdoch. You'll remember, Chad, last time I was on the show, your favorite media mogul was getting married for the fifth time. Chad Sowash: Thanks, Australia. Joel Cheesman: 66-year-old, a former model. Yeah. It's time to scrap the wedding. The plans are off. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Rupert told Vanity Fair that Rupert decided to end things due to "her outspoken evangelical views". She apparently said that Tucker Carlson was a messenger from God. And Rupert said, "Nope, I'm out." Looks like a life of high-priced escorts and shots of Maalox from here on out for the 92-year-old. Shout out to Rupert Murdoch. Chad Sowash: You knew one thing, that was not a shotgun wedding. Shout out to the big-ass jug of maple syrup from our friends over at plum.io. So, it's funny because it came obviously from Canada. [automated voice] Chad Sowash: And the one of the slips was all faded. So I couldn't tell who it came from. So I put it out on... Joel Cheesman: Yeah, it was. Chad Sowash: On the LinkedIn, on the socials, and all the plummers started coming out to plum.io. Caitlin and the crew starts saying, hey, that's from us. But it's a big, it's over a gallon of fucking maple syrup, which is not cheap, my friend. Joel Cheesman: So this showed up at my house, and my Canadian wife just about lost it. She was so excited. She's like, "You know how much money this is? This is like $300 worth of maple syrup." And that next day, no lie. Because it was Easter, we had ham basically lathered in maple syrup. [laughter] We had a, some sort of maple syrup dessert and we had carrots that were cooked in maple syrup. So my friend, I'm gonna be maple syruped to the gills until that gallon jug of maple syrup runs out. So yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Plum. Chad Sowash: Diabetes alert from plum. Joel Cheesman: No, it's all natural. It's all paleo, man. It's all good. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah. So Sylvie Doré, a Québécois by the way, said that we should cook our eggs in maple syrup. Use it instead of butter on low heat. To me, yes, Canada is foreign but I didn't think that fucking foreign, I never thought of that. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: I kinda like that. I like that one. I like that one. [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: All right. So Elon Musk gets my next one. Chad Sowash: Oh, my God. Joel Cheesman: He revealed this week that Twitter has only 1500 employees down from 8000 when he took over the company. They're on track now to break even on cash flow as opposed to losing $3 billion. So Musk has fired roughly 80% of the company if you're keeping track at home. And the business is now arguably better off. I wonder now how many companies are gonna take Elon's lead and lay off a shit ton of developers. Wait and see for that one. Shout out to Elon for setting the standard for fewer developers is better developers. Chad Sowash: Yeah. That thing's going down in a pile of fucking flames, dude. Jesus. It's fucking ridiculous. All right. It's the dick move of the week, kids. That's right. Joel Cheesman: Oh, shit. Chad Sowash: An employee asked to go remote, her CEO says he outsourced her job to India instead and saved 40% on labor cost. Wow. What a dick move, right? What company would treat their staff in that way? Well, according to Inc and Business Insider, the idea came from Johnny Taylor, the CEO of the Society of Human Resource Management, aka SHRM early last year after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done from anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia where she held a job at SHRM, she asked to work remotely in North Carolina. Johnny says at that point, then a light bulb went off. I could actually go ahead, outsource her for 40% less cost. So the dick move of the week goes to Johnny C. Taylor. That's right, kids. Johnny, humans-don't-matter-to-me Taylor, the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, taking the human out of HR. Johnny Taylor. Good job asshole. [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: And why would he actually admit that? Why would he actually go on record? Chad Sowash: It sounded like he was proud of it. Joel Cheesman: I know. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. How bizarre. How bizarre. Chad Sowash: How bizarre. Joel Cheesman: All right, my last shout out goes to Chris Russell. This is a solemn shout out to an industry vet that a lot of our listeners know, or at least know of. He said goodbye to his greyhound Chase this week. Appropriate name for a greyhound, I think. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Chase was 13. And that really hit home from me because Mr. Peepers, our dog just hit 12 this week. And I know, Chad, you've got some geriatric dogs at your place, too. So putting down a pet is just the fucking worst. Chad Sowash: Oh, yes. Joel Cheesman: So our hearts go out to Chris. And if you know Chris, send him a note this week. Send him condolences. And if you really know Chris, he's a vodka guy. I'll just leave that. I'll just leave that right there. But Solemn, shout out to our friend Chris Russell. Chad Sowash: Buy him a shot at UNLEASH. And that being said, events, kids, we're going to be at Unleashed. It's gonna be a party. Well, there's gonna be learning, networking, business but there's gonna be parties. And I understand that this year's ticket sales is up dramatically from last year. Right? So this is going to be the party, kids. I love the integrated community. And we talk about this all the time that UNLEASH has. But I'm really excited about all the shit that we have going on. So if you, listener, wanna come and meet Chad and Cheese, you want t-shirts, you want alcohol, wanna have a drink with us? Here's where you can find us. On Tuesday the 25th, Joel and I will be on stage during the vendor summit with our buddy Chris Conrad from Textkernel talking about the build, partner or buy conundrum that is a very common discussion for vendors. But now with the likes of, I don't know, ChatGPT, Bard and others coming into the market, do you build, partner or buy to keep up with the Joneses? That's the question. We'll be talking about that on stage with Chris from Textkernel. Then that evening we're going to be at the HiringBranch event at the High Roller. You're excited for this. I know, 'cause there's a bar and you're locked in with a bar for at least half an hour. Joel Cheesman: So excited. [laughter] Chad Sowash: So if you're not already a part of the party, reach out to our friends at HiringBranch to see if there's still spots available because that pod's only so big. Then we're running to dinner with the plum.io team. Caitlin, Jason and the team. Then on Wednesday you'll be able to find us at the Workhuman booth. That's day one. Workhuman booth from noon to 4:00, where we're gonna be giving away t-shirts, doing interviews, and probably drinking, more than likely. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: That's the Workhuman booth from noon to 4:00 on day one, then right after that, wow. We're gonna be busy. 4:30, we're gonna be doing drinks before dinner with our friends from Taddeo. We only have about 40 slots, so go to chadcheese.com, click on events. The banner up top. You can click on a little sign button if you get there fast enough, you might get a slot. Then the Talent Torque event right after drinks. [laughter] Is this all before dinner, shit. Anyways, that's, I think we have more on the calendar, but that's all I'm going for right now. So, see us at UNLEASH. Are you excited to go back to Vegas? [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: I am. And not with my family this time, no offense to my offspring and my wife but it'll be a different vibe this time around. My liver is less excited than I am, probably. Side note, I get to come home on the red eye, go to Louisville, and I'm in the mini marathon on that Saturday. So I get to spend a whole week of debauchery and suicide, basically to come back and try to finish a marathon. So pray for me everybody. Chad Sowash: And then right after that, we're gonna find ourselves back on the plane going back to the West Coast. Early May, we're gonna be at Coronado Beach in California for iCIMS Inspire. We're scheduled to close out the day on stage with special guests. So we're supposed to be doing a panel but they don't let us know who they are yet. Joel Cheesman: So secretive. Chad Sowash: That seems a little sketchy. No matter. Those are just two of the events on the calendar thus far for 2023. Go to register for them all at chadcheese.com. Click on events. We'll see you there. [laughter] S?: Really? 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 Cheesman: That's right, Chad. It's time for birthdays. [automated voice] Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: If it's your birthday in any particular month, you could win a nice bottle of rum from our friends at Plum, as well as you gotta go to chadcheese.com. Click on the free link and you could win t-shirts, whiskey and beer from all of our great sponsors that you'll find on the site. Celebrating another trip around the sun this week is Sean Godfrey, Todd Burns, Amy English, Samilla Chevalakadu, Alakazoo Alakazam. Something rather. Chad Sowash: I love that. Joel Cheesman: Jason Casey, Patrick York, Arno Schafer, Zer Gut celebrating birthday. Jason Crowell, Rob McIntosh, Amanda Height, Lauren the intern, Queen Burger, Brian Moore, Carrie Noon and my second favorite Canadian turned American, Stephen dad-jokes-for-days Rothberg. [laughter] S?: Happy birthday! [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Happy birthday, everybody. Another trip around the sun. S?: Happy birthday! Joel Cheesman: Topics! All right. Hard hitting acquisition news. Austin-based HR software solution, Mitratech has expanded its portfolio through the acquisition of Milwaukee's Circa, a provider of OFCCP software and Seattle-based Trakstar, a talent acquisition, development and performance management solution. Terms of the deal not disclosed. The company says the acquisition will help Mitratech emerge as a leader in HR compliance and talent strategy. They hope to help organizations with a range of solutions for recruitment, onboarding and development. Chad, you're pretty close to this, your thoughts. Chad Sowash: Yeah, congrats to Patrick, Kathy, and the whole Circa staff. I bet Patrick can't wait to get out of the fucking door. Get out of this industry. For those who remember, Circa was a rebrand from a very, very, very old network of sites called Local Job Network. LJN was more of a mom and pop shop. They were SMB, they're an SMB player in our space and owned a number of sites like milwaukeejobs.com. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, Scott Molitor. Yeah. Chad Sowash: Yeah. It really was like the old jobbing model to some extent. Then they flipped into compliance and OFCCP job distribution for VEVRAA and 503. When Patrick came in as CEO of Circa, they started buying up all of their competitors, at least trying to so that they could expand their portfolio and drive growth. They bought AJE, Diversity Jobs, Job Finder, which I hope they bought that thing for a song for God's sake. Joel Cheesman: Oh God, I forgot about Job Finder. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Anyway, congrats to the team. Did you get a chance to watch the two-minute announcement video? Joel Cheesman: No, I had better things to do. Chad Sowash: Okay. Joel Cheesman: I assumed you did watch it. Chad Sowash: Oh, my God. Joel Cheesman: Highlights? Chad Sowash: Dude, you gotta watch it. So I felt like this was a segment in one of those '80s televangelist programs where they're sitting on like Mav chairs with a little table and a fake plant between them. It looks... Joel Cheesman: Between two ferns? Chad Sowash: Yes. Yes. It looks like they might have been filming in somebody's basement. Anyway, Mitratech had three acquisitions last year. TalentReef, AssureHire and Quovant. And this is the first two for this year. So it seems like, and I don't know, we might have to reach out to the Mitratech, Mitratech, whatever they call themselves, staff because it seems like a not so integrated portfolio. We have this portfolio of services, they're all over the place. They make sense, but it's not like we're going to integrate them to create one platform for them all because that shit costs money. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Yeah. This feels like buying your prom tuxedo at TJ Maxx where nothing's quite matching. Well, you're still in tuxedo, but you're not in the same tuxedo and you've just sort of piecemealed this whole thing together. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Which is okay. Joel Cheesman: I don't know, Mitratech's a pretty big company. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Like you mentioned, they're making moves. Circa, long weird history. Just a weird hodgepodge of acquisitions. And you're right, Jobbing pretty much owned every state.com, statejobs.com. And the other guys owned every city. So Milwaukee Jobs, Indianapolis Jobs, Cleveland Jobs, so dated model. This is like dinosaurs marrying government regulations. It's just a weird thing. Trakstar I know less about. They have apparently over 3,000 customers including like Dyson, Ben & Jerry's, they've been around a while. They've gotten a little bit of money. But they've also been around for a long time, I think. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: So, I don't know. We talk about consolidation and this is gonna be more common than not, but yeah, what a weird strange trip for Circa and to have it finally put out of its misery, I think that's just good for everybody. What a hodgepodge of crazy shit they were, man. Chad Sowash: Well, yeah, it's weird too because you take a look at the compliance landscape, which is incredibly important for major, major organizations because if they want government money and they all do, they have to abide by these regulations and they have to comply. There aren't as many players now, obviously since all the consolidation happens. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Which means competition is not going to be there. Broadbean created their own platform, which was bolted onto CareerBuilder. Broadbean is dying on the Vine as we speak, I'm waiting for that thing to get acquired sometime soon. Because to be quite frank, all it has is a portfolio. It's got a good portfolio, don't get me wrong, and partnerships, but at the end of the day, it's not gonna grow. It's not gonna be anybody's rocket ship. So I see just this landscape really consolidating, which means, again, competition is going to dwindle, which means prices are gonna go up. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. And I think it's funny thing you mentioned Diversity Jobs. There was a day where like, that was diversity recruiting. Just because your job was on a site called diversityjobs.com and we are targeting a diverse candidate. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Sort of thanks to AI, thanks to some tools that have been created in the last 20 years, I saw Diversity Jobs is just so antiquated. It's ridiculous. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: I mean that must have been just thrown in as an extra. By the way, looking at my notes, Trakstar is a 20-year-old company that looks like it was bootstrapped. So those guys just might have been like, we're done, we're done with this shit. We're gonna go hang on a beach and drink some beer. Chad Sowash: Lifestyle company maybe. Yeah? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I think they're, are they in Seattle? Yeah, they got better things to do if they're in Seattle. But yeah, this is, it's not gonna move the needle. I don't know how much it'll, yeah, like diversity, OFCCP is your lane more than mine. Is it gonna drive up prices for companies to... Chad Sowash: I think that's the possibility. And you can't underestimate compliance 'cause once again, if you're not complying, then you don't have access to the loads of money that the government contracts out for. So these are incredibly important pieces. When we built a national labor exchange at Direct Employers, we went from 140 member companies, which took us five years to get to 140 member companies. In 18 months, we were over 400 just because of that initiative. That's how important it was. It drew that many brands our way. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. It's the gift that keeps on giving and will continue to give. All right. Moving on. All right, let's go to AI. A total pivot from this old school shit. All right. So the White House Office of Science and Technology policy, who knew that existed, has identified five principles to guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems that protect the American public in the age of artificial intelligence. Call it an AI bill of rights, including rules around safe and effective systems, algorithmic discrimination protections, notice and exploration, human alternatives, consideration and fallback, as well as data privacy. Chad, your thoughts on the White House statement around AI? Chad Sowash: They're definitely steps that government should be taking, but this is all words. We're not seeing any action on any of these things yet. We did see action from Italy right out of the gate. They said that they were going to ban ChatGPT, and that brought OpenAI to the table for negotiations. And so those words were words of action and it resonated with OpenAI. A couple of things that need to happen here. We've already had problems with AI, algorithms, data privacy, all these things that they listed. Right? But it's all words until we see a major fine for one of these organizations and or a CEO wearing orange in a 6 X 8 cell. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. They actually put out a handbook for this. How government is that? Pick up a copy at your local postal service building, anyway. Yeah, this is like a driver's ed handbook without cops on the street. Here's your guide, friends but there's nothing out there that's got teeth and can bite you. So it's relatively harmless and meaningless until... Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Until the cops do show up [laughter] and the cops do pull you over, the government will have something to say, hey, we told you, we told you this is what we were gonna do. We told you how this was gonna go down. You decided to speed and run that red light anyway, so don't blame us. We warned you that this was gonna happen. Chad Sowash: Well, then you're gonna be there at that house party in that TJ Maxx tux. That's what you're gonna get caught in. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: That was powder blue tuxedo, by the way. Chad Sowash: Oh, okay. That's a good call. Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I think it's a good step. I think Italy, look, governments that ban this shit just means they're gonna lose to China, 'cause China's not gonna ban this. It's gonna run amok and... Chad Sowash: And see this is a step though. This is a step though. This brought OpenAI to the table. Joel Cheesman: This is different than banning ChatGPT. I'm saying guardrails and regulation, I'm letting people know, that's fine. You mentioned Italy, I just wanted to throw that out, I don't see that as a trend because you're just gonna lose to the countries that do have AI development. Anyway, talking about AI development, let's get to our next AI story. Our friends at Textio, they've reorganized their team cutting 15 roles and hiring for new positions as it seeks to prepare for anticipated growth. Ooh, the company's CEO, Kieran Snyder said generative AI features are becoming increasingly important to the writing experience as people's expectations for "magical and fast" experiences increase. Can you say disruption? Chad, your thoughts on the move by Textio? Chad Sowash: I can say that they can see the writing on the wall. That's what they can see. They've been around since 2014. They haven't been acquired yet. This is a company that should have been acquired, easily. They are, I think, living on borrowed time depending on how close they keep it, the secret sauce to their vest because this is all going to become a commodity, period. Large language models are going to start absorbing domain specific models. They're gonna be trained off of them. And to say this is for anticipated growth is I think totally a curve ball in saying that, hey, we've got to batten down the hatches and find a way to sell this thing quickly. There are organizations that are out there. It mentioned Textkernel just bought a chatbot, right? There are organizations that are out there that need these data sets. I don't know what the price has been for Textio but I guarantee you, it is sinking very fast. Joel Cheesman: Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting take. We said early on that ChatGPT was gonna be a large amount of pee in Textio's juice box, punch bowl, if you will. And clearly this means it is. They see the writing on the wall, just like you said, I viewed her comments as, we're going to do what ChatGPT does. But we're gonna hope you don't notice because we're doing it in a different way, even though it's probably about the right way or the same way. And you're gonna still pay the crazy-ass price tag for Textio in the process. It's probably part, sell this thing as fast as we can and part how long can we survive by saying we implement this stuff but it's different because it's Textio, it's got the Textio secret sauce in it. She's probably making a bet that they can survive long enough to sell. They've raised 42 million some dollars. So their price tag is not TJ Maxx bargain bin levels. This is not buying diversityjobs.com. Okay? Chad Sowash: Right. Joel Cheesman: So this is gonna be one hell of a dance prom that she's gonna have to go to and dance at to figure out who's gonna buy the company or how long we survive. Six months from now, if they haven't found a buyer or they're seeing not a lot of traction in companies, you're gonna see another round of layoffs. Six months from that, probably another round of layoffs. This thing could be a real slow death. For a company that was a high flyer for a long time, Textio was the darling of AI and job description and they were in that sweet spot of like everything for a while. And ChatGPT came out and kicked them squarely in the nuts. So, yeah, it's not, Textio is not a good place to be. They're gonna be a lot of companies disrupted by ChatGPT and they are the obvious first but they won't be the last. This will be an ongoing story for the next months to come. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, you see companies like Talkpush and Paradox who are more a part of the process and then also trying to find ways to gather data with a better user experience. And even Wade & Wendy with Pando, right? With PandoLogic. So these are mechanisms in which to actually gather the data and then again, build that huge heap of secret sauce that everybody needs. Textio doesn't have that front end, but I'm saying they are seeing the writing on the wall. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. To be a sales rep at Textio and get the comment of like, "Well, my ATS already has built this in to do what you guys do or at least get 80% there. Why am I paying for it?" [chuckle] That's a really uncomfortable phone call that Textio sales reps are gonna start having if they're not already. Chad Sowash: It's an expensive product when that starts to become, let's even just say 50% is good, right? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: That that becomes a feature, Textio is gonna become a feature, not a platform, a feature in some of these major platforms. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Yeah. They've gotten leapfrogged in a big way from what I can tell. Chad Sowash: Quick. Joel Cheesman: All right. Sticking with ChatGPT, let's talk about their terms of service, which everyone should be aware of. A recent post by startup founder and angel investor Kai Uhlig warns against putting proprietary or personal data into ChatGPT. He cites an example of Samsung's semiconductor division using ChatGPT to check their source code, which OpenAI was able to access. While OpenAI has no interest in reproducing or copying user content, users should be aware that their data is being used to improve the models. Says it right there in the terms of service. Chad, your thoughts on using ChatGPT and the minefield that it is? Chad Sowash: Yeah. Most people don't realize that their interactions with ChatGPT, questions, prompts, all of it, you're training the algorithm, your data that you're putting into is training the algorithm. So if you're QAQC-ing code in the Samsung case, what you're doing is you're teaching the platform. So unless you're using the API, which have different terms of service, but they do have three options, or at least Kai, thanks again Kai for doing all this work, buddy. He has three options on how you can move forward. Number one, you can use the API for OpenAI. The terms of service are different. Number two, you can opt out. There's actually a form where you can opt out and then you can set up your own secure instance of Microsoft Azure. So there are ways to get around giving your secret sauce as we were just talking about with Textio, it's an OpenAI, but again, yes, buyer beware, user beware in this case. Joel Cheesman: So some of the kids, this might be a history lesson to them. When Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all had APIs, everybody got all hot and bothered, man. They built all kinds of stuff on these platforms. You remember, Be Known, you remember BranchOut, I think built on Facebook... Chad Sowash: TweetMyJobs. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. TweetMyJob, all kinds of stuff. The rug got pulled out from almost all of them. And I was reminded this week because I register for a lot of services that are using Twitter APIs to collect data on public companies and stocks and stuff like that. Well, I got an email from one of the services I follow, they shut down because Twitter basically cut off their API unless you wanted to pay super exorbitant fees to use said APIs. As a startup, they weren't willing or able to do that. So it is a cautionary tale. As you use ChatGPT's API, keep in mind that they could pull the rug out from under you. Just something to keep in mind. Whenever you build on someone else's platform, it's very dangerous. Now, back to the topic here of putting data into ChatGPT. Yes. That's gonna be an ongoing issue. Joel Cheesman: You and I have talked to companies that are like, we can't use it because the company doesn't want proprietary information or stuff about our company going into the database. I think a lot of it's a little bit of undeserved fear but we'll see. It's definitely not worth getting bit over by having your source code [laughter] given by somebody like Samsung to ChatGPT. That's super dangerous. And certainly as we deal with employment, we've got profile data, we've got job data, all kinds of stuff that people may fear putting into ChatGPT to get answers for stuff and look for stuff and whatever. So it is something to keep an eye on. I love that he had here three strategies to get around it. You can get outta that. So if you are gonna use ChatGPT or you're worried about sensitive information, make sure that your belts and suspenders, cover your bases and make sure that you don't get pinched like Samsung did. That's bad. That's bad news. All right, let's talk a little. [laughter] LinkedIn, baby. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Drink down that Kool-Aid baby. Oh, here we go. Chad Sowash: Oh, God. Joel Cheesman: LinkedIn is partnering with identity verification company CLEAR. Maybe you've seen them at an airport. Chad Sowash: I have. Joel Cheesman: To launch new identity verification features for its users, enabling them to confirm their names and employers with a free government ID check. Additionally, the social media company is introducing two other ways for users to confirm their identities. A verification code sent to the company email address of the user's employer, and a partnership with Microsoft Intra to verify user's identities and employers through workplace IDs. The new feature will add a verification field to LinkedIn profiles, which will show which details have been verified. Twitter Blue, hold my beer. Chad, your thoughts. Chad Sowash: LinkedIn CLEAR. I like that they're moving down this path with regard to trying to at least possibly start kicking out some of these fake-ass LinkedIn profiles. There aren't as many as there are on Twitter but they are all over the place on LinkedIn. The problem it doesn't solve is portability and being able to have this as really your standard ID to apply everywhere. Right? Because Indeed, there's no way in hell Indeed's gonna allow this in their system. So there has to be a third-party that's doing this that isn't a "threat," let's say to an Indeed and or a LinkedIn. So portability isn't there. Then the credentialing piece is also something different. That's something that we do need now. There's not really that much user control behind this because who owns the data? LinkedIn does. Remember the HighQ case? LinkedIn owns this data. Fuck you LinkedIn. That's my data, right? So I like where they're moving. The problem is, this isn't the answer. This is at best one of those little bitty pinky bandaids that you put on stuff. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: The little round one with the little square cotton ball. Yeah. [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: All right. So I think this is huge, if... Chad Sowash: Huge? Okay. Joel Cheesman: If, and LinkedIn has no history of this, if they get it right. Fake profiles are a huge problem on LinkedIn. It's a huge problem everywhere. And partnering with CLEAR, not building it themselves, having these third-parties. So in your instance, does CLEAR become the ID company of record? Probably not. I filed taxes recently. A real joy for everyone, I know. Certainly for you as well, Chad. So on the government site, you can log in with, I think it's me.id or there's a global ID thing, which I've used in something else as well. They're trying to be a clearinghouse for all things identity. And the government has in its wisdom figured out that that's a good solution for that. You've talked about blockchain in the past, being sort of an all-encompassing resume or something you can take everywhere. But this is huge because LinkedIn has a huge problem with fake profiles. And if this helps that, I think that's great. Joel Cheesman: I do think it's a good move against the bots and the AI onslaught that's going to happen. You and I have talked about ChatGPT creating multiple profiles and applying to jobs. This'll help fight some of that. You could argue that it cuts off the blockchain threat before it becomes something really serious. And ultimately, algorithm love is gonna drive adoption, right? So if you have a little check, you're identified or you're verified by LinkedIn, they already have little in icon that verifies you. But if recruiters are looking through profiles and they see like someone is a genuine user, they're backed by whatever, if they move them higher to the top of the search results. If I'm a real person, my post and shares get more love because I am, that, the algorithm could drive a lot of usage on this, and it could become a really big thing. Time will tell if it's the thing, but it is a thing and it's a step in the right direction for LinkedIn. I say good for them. Chad Sowash: Little bitty bandaid. Joel Cheesman: Let's go to bots. Let's go to bots. [automated voice] Joel Cheesman: That's right. Who let the dogs out? Chad, New York City officials have brought back a robotic dog called Digidog, which was leased back in 2020 but the contract was cut short after critics called it creepy and dystopian. "Digidog is out of the pound," said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who added the won't bow to anti-robotic dog pressure. Or is that he won't bow wow. Sorry. Chad Sowash: So bad. So bad. Joel Cheesman: Sorry. And at Chad's favorite place to buy sunscreen for his overly exposed head this summer, Walmart has said that the unit cost of moving goods will fall 20% within three years as warehouse robots play a bigger role in speeding up deliveries to customers. They've been investing heavily in automation in recent years to keep pace with Amazon and other rivals and said that the revamped supply chain would ease cost pressures tied to the rise of e-commerce and help end a decade of stagnation in US operating income. Walmart getting chesty, New York City Digidog, Chad, bots running amok this week. Your thoughts? Chad Sowash: Yeah. Eric Adams just doesn't give a fuck. He just, he doesn't, and I understand that the bringing the dogs in, people have to get used to them and they freak the out of some people when they first brought 'em out a few years ago. Joel Cheesman: Yep. Chad Sowash: So they've gotta get everybody used to the dogs. Totally get it. Until one of those things hurts somebody. But this is, again, this is very, very RoboCop-ish. We're going to see these types of things, especially since it's so hard to find police officers and to retain police officers. We need to have policing, and if we can't have humans to find policing, but at the end of the day, this is where we live with regard to staffing issues. Same thing with Walmart. Walmart has issues finding staff, keeping staff because of pay and whatnot. But they've done a better job over the past few years in those areas. But this is about trying to phase out jobs that people don't wanna have anyway. And if we can actually take those individuals and start to push them up the ranks, that's good for everybody. So if we are "getting rid" of jobs that are shitty jobs in the first place, then great. Joel Cheesman: You know, I was saying just Walmart real quick. As minimum wage goes up and companies like Walmart increase it, they're able to say, we're reducing costs that much more when they replace those people with robots. So instead of a 10% decrease, now it's 20 because we're paying these people more. It just, it struck me as like an interesting PR move. Let's pay people more and then we can say we're saving more with the robots. I haven't heard anything about that truck or them expanding the driverless truck program. I would love to see more of that. I think the warehouse robot and the janitor robot and the whatever robot, that's kind of boring. I'm wanna see more cars automated from Walmart going into the future. Now to the robot dog, Digidog. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheesman: Which I think is really cool. [automated voice] Chad Sowash: The Black Mirror episode. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Black Mirror, granted creepy as hell. But to your point, not only is it hiring cops is a pain in the ass, this helps fill that void. We talked recently about Hilton bringing in Peloton bikes and Starbucks, whatever entertainment centers or relaxation pods and shit like that. How cool is it to now wanna be a cop because you get to work alongside a robotic dog? Only a monkey in a truck is better than working alongside a robotic dog. So I think it would be a really cool training video or recruiting video to be like, you're gonna be on the new canine program and you're gonna learn Digidog and high tech shit. It is a cool, I think, employment branding play. Robot security is here to stay. This is gonna be a thing. I don't think it's gonna be RoboCop anytime soon where they take a man, a robot and really fuck shit up. And I don't think they're gonna be armed anytime soon. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, and then what about the Digi peepers? Joel Cheesman: For the real peepers might not like the Digi peepers. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: I don't know how that would work. A drone, he would like. You could make a drone/dog, like dog friend. The drone could spit out treats to the dog. It could talk to the dog in your voice, as well as fight crime in your home. I'm telling you, man, there are huge business opportunities in this marketplace. And I'm here for it, Chad. I am here for it. I'm here for it. Bring on the bots if it helps us say bye-bye to the bad guys. We'll say goodbye to the bad guys and say hello to Claudia. That's right. The AI creation has been receiving compliments and payments from red users for her supposed selfies and nude photos. Claudia was created by two anonymous computer science students whose post AI generated images of her online. Who didn't see this coming, Chad? The call for regulation and the potential harm this trend could cause are getting louder. And if this isn't keeping all the ladies on OnlyFans up at night, maybe it should. Your thoughts. Chad Sowash: This is gonna take catfishing to another level. That's all there is to it, man. Because you're gonna have all these... I can't remember the linebacker's name who got catfished. Joel Cheesman: Mateo? Chad Sowash: Manti Te'o. Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Manti Te'o. Yeah. Chad Sowash: You're not gonna know who's real and who's not. This is getting so crazy. Our voices are cloned. We're speaking in several languages. There are avatars that are coming out now, 10 guy just came out with an avatar that are lifelike avatars. And now you have these AI images which we're seeing all over the place now, MidJourney, just everywhere. Dahlia, catfishing is gonna suck. And OnlyFans, that's, man, it's just gonna be, it's gonna be a weird time. These are the types of jobs I don't wanna see go away because these people feel safe in their home. They get to make the money that they want. Maybe not $80,000 a month. Okay. But yeah, I'd hate to see this go away because Skynet is taking over porn. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I fear this is the slow death of OnlyFans. Why pay $10 a month, not that I would know, for one real girl getting naughty online when I could pay $10 a month for unlimited amounts of girls or guys getting naughty when I can't tell the difference on a computer screen? Plus this new service will let me pornify, if that's a word, it is now, if it's not before. Pornify celebrities as well as my crush from college, complete with, as you said, their voices. Chad Sowash: So fucking creepy. Joel Cheesman: Forget the end of OnlyFans. This is gonna be the end of humanity. Big booty Latinas are going to kill us all, Chad. [laughter] S?: 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'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.

People love perks. Employees love them even more. Unfortunately, startups looking to make employee perks easy, scalable, and tax-compliant have come and gone over the years. Compt.io thinks they have a better mousetrap. That’s why Amy Spurling, CEO, and founder, has come on the Firing Squad. In a market expected to reach approximately $346 million by 2025, the stakes are high. Does Amy make it out alive? Gotta listen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro: Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they've got what it takes to make it out alive. Dig a foxhole and duck for cover, kids, the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel: That's right. It's another Firing Squad, everybody. If you don't know, ask your parole officer. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the rick to my Morty, Chad Sowash is here. And we are welcoming to the squad Amy Spurling, CEO and Founder of Compt. It's Compt and not Compt.io or Comptio? Let's get that out of the way real quick. Amy Spurling: It is just Compt. [laughter] Chad: Joel likes to add the io on all of the dot ios. Amy Spurling: Yeah. No io. Chad: Yes, he loves that. Joel: Comptio. Chad: Comptio, JobBoard.io. [laughter] Amy Spurling: No, just Compt. [laughter] Joel: JobBoard.io. [laughter] All right, Amy, welcome to the show. Amy Spurling: Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me here. Joel: All right. You know the rules. We gotta get a little bit about you 'cause most of the world does not know what makes Amy Spurling tick. So tell us a little bit about you and then we'll get to the rules of the game. Amy Spurling: Sure. So I'm a first time founder, but I've been in tech for 20 years, been part of building six prior companies and CFO and COO suites, so I've been in the tech industry, raising money, selling companies for a long time. I'm an avid hiker, spend a lot of time outside and trying get off the grid as much as possible. Chad: Love off the grid. Joel: Hiking Boston, that sounds fun. Amy Spurling: Oh no, I'm not hiking in Boston. I'm hiking outside the country for the most part. [laughter] Chad: There we go. Joel: Oh God. Chad: That's what I'm talking about. Joel: Chad just got excited. Chad: That's right. Amy and I are gonna share notes on... Amy Spurling: We are. Chad: Where to go in Europe for all the good hiking. Joel: For those that weren't in the green room, it was an episode of HGTV about how many international homes these two can purchase. As with kids are land-bound by the US state side. Anyway, enough about home shopping. Chad, tell Amy what she's won today as a guest on Firing Squad. Chad: Well, Amy, welcome to Firing Squad. And this is how it's gonna play out. At the sound of the bell, you're gonna have two minutes to pitch Compt. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q&A. Be sure to be concise or you're going to get hit with the crickets. That just means tighten your game up, okay? Joel loves the crickets, but still, tighten your game up. [chuckle] At the end of Q&A, you're gonna receive one of these from both of us. Big applause. [applause] Chad: We think you've got all the firepower necessary to win this one. Golf clap. Man, you've got the right idea, but you're probably going to need a little bit more ammo for this work. And then last but not least, you brought a knife to a gunfight. Time to adios and start over. That's the Firing Squad. Are you ready? Amy Spurling: I'm ready. Let's do it. Joel: Two minutes starts. Amy Spurling: So Compt is employee perk management software that helps companies design and administer employee perks so that everyone can get exactly what they need and want most. That's a lot of words. Let's talk about it a little bit. Now, the way we compensate people has really changed in the past two decades. Candidates walk in the door expecting a competitive salary for their industry, for their role. In a lot of industries, they also expect health insurance. These are now table stakes. So if you want to attract new talent or retain the folks that you have and make sure you're not poached by competitors, then you need to do something different to stand out. And I'm a three-time former CFO. I've been pitched every single perk company that is out there. They all say they help you attract and retain talent, this is not something new, but the problem is that no matter what you bring in or how amazing it is, if you're lucky, 5% of the team uses it. So it's really expensive and very ineffective, and CFOs hate this. So the thing is that you need to make sure that you find something that can actually engage everyone. Amy Spurling: I decided to start Compt because I believe that everyone should have personalized employee perks and they should have access to it because it's part of their compensation, but that this also needs to work for companies on a budget and compliance side as well, that these need to be taxed correctly and they need to support global teams, 'cause a lot of teams are global now. Compt is a reimbursement platform, so there's absolutely no vendors on it. Companies select categories for employees to use, things like wellness, student loan repayment, family, and then employees can spend on any vendor they want, wherever they're located, and then they submit a receipt and they get reimbursed and it's taxed correctly and all the nice things. And because of the approach that we've taken, for the past four years, employee utilization on Compt has been over 90%. So that's across 50 states and 60 countries, just insanely high utilization, because employees get access to that personalization. That's the key to unlocking employee utilization when it comes to this compensation. Joel: That's a tight pitch, Amy. That's a tight pitch. Thank you. Chad: Yeah, but where can they find out more? That's the question. Joel: Yeah. CEOs always forget that. You can find out more about us at... Amy Spurling: Www.compt.io. Joel: There you go. Amy Spurling: Or emailing me at amy@compt.io. Joel: Lauren, her marketing person, is like, "No! She forgot." Okay. Chad: Luckily we kicked her off. Luckily we kicked her off. Joel: Yeah, we did kick Lauren off. She's... Amy Spurling: We did. Joel: She's in the fetal position in the corner. [chuckle] Chad: Sorry, Lauren. Not really. Not really. [laughter] Joel: So your pitch said only 5% of employees use perk plans. Why is that? Amy Spurling: So every person wants something different, is what you find out. We actually went and took a sample... I mean, we obviously have amazing utilization and have for a long time. We took a sample of 8700 people about a year ago and watched 'em for a year and said, "All right, how many different vendors do they use?" Because that's what you'd have to bring into your organization to be able to support all these people and have high utilization. Guess how many different unique vendors 8700 people used in one year? Chad: Five. Joel: Five. Yeah. Amy Spurling: 27,000. Chad: Holy fuck! Amy Spurling: You cannot build a marketplace that will support your employees internally if you want high utilization. It's not possible. On average, every person wants three different things. So if your goal is utilization and to make sure that people are engaging with this, you have to take a different approach. If your goal is to, hey, throw something out there and hope a few people use it, cool, you like spending money on things that don't work. That's not my... The CFO in me gets a little bit sweaty on that. [laughter] Joel: I always ask about the name. I get the name. That's the good news. Dot io isn't that crazy? However, Compt.com is for sale. It's available. Have you tried to buy it? Why don't you go buy it? Why won't you secure the dot com as your name? Amy Spurling: It's theoretically for sale. So we approached that for the last like five years. No response. Doesn't matter who you go to. I have no idea who owns this, and so at this point, I just don't care because Compt.io is common enough. But yeah, so it's not for a lack of outreach, but whoever owns it, I think just has it in a portfolio somewhere. Joel: And chances are they're not listening to this show, so you're not in luck on that front. So you're a finance person. Why the hell get into workforce software? Amy Spurling: I managed finance and HR in all those prior organizations. So I wasn't planning on starting a company, I liked being that number two spot in all those prior startups, but I needed something to fill these compensation gaps so that you could attract people, so that you could retain them. And I waited for somebody to build the thing that I needed. I pitched it to engineers. I'm like, "Just build me the thing." I tried Jerry-rigging it with expense software, which was a disaster, and finally was like, "Look, if I'm gonna build another company, I need this to exist. So if I'm the only user ever, I don't care. I need this thing to exist," and so started the company five years ago. Chad: Okay. So you are not the typical CFO. At least the CFOs I know 'cause they're generally penny pinching. Joel: Careful. Amy Spurling: I'm a pretty cheap person. Don't get me wrong. We sit on some cash here. But it's looking at efficiency. I don't wanna waste money. I don't wanna spend more than I have to spend, but I wanna spend smart. I wanna spend smart on my team and I wanna do things in a as fair and equitable way as possible. But I don't wanna waste money. I don't like wasting money. Chad: As a CFO should not. Amy Spurling: I also like compliance a whole lot. I want my taxes to be done correctly and I don't want that coming off my exit price when they're like, "Wow, you have a mess. Let's just add a lot of [chuckle] things to your documentation." Chad: Let's talk about that, because that's interesting because you say that Compt is the only IRS-compliant perks software on the market. Really? Amy Spurling: When you're combining taxable and taxed. Chad: I mean, this is a huge market. Nobody else is IRS-compliant? Amy Spurling: Only if they're doing completely pre-taxed or untaxed. So if you're thinking about HSAs or commuter benefits, companies like WageWorks are of course tax-compliant, but they only do untaxed things. You cannot combine taxable and untaxed things anywhere else in the market other than our platform and have it be automated and tax-compliant. Doesn't exist. Chad: Holy shit. That's awesome. So you said 27,000 vendors. Amy Spurling: Just for that group of 8700 people. We've got a lot more people on the platform. Chad: How many providers do you currently integrate with? Amy Spurling: So on the vendor side? Chad: Yeah. Amy Spurling: Zero. Chad: So you don't have to... How do you actually get the data so that you can manage all these perks? Amy Spurling: So we don't have to suggest vendors. There's no path to suggest vendors in that scenario. If every person wants three different things, who am I signing up? That's not possible. I'm gonna have to sign up your dry cleaner and your dog walker and figure out who's got what nanny. That's not a scalable solution. So for us, it's much more around making sure that you've got the category set, and those are all based on IRS things, so things like wellness or family or cell phone or whatever. And then employees go and spend as they normally would, so they don't have to change their buying behavior, buy the thing that they want, upload it, tag it to that category, and then they get reimbursed through their payroll system and it's taxed there. Chad: Gotcha. Okay. So if they have a program, then the individual has to actually go through the process of... Again, it's taxes, so receipts, all that other fun stuff? Amy Spurling: Exactly. So receipts are a requirement until the IRS says, "Stop it," which would be great. Chad: Yeah, until we actually come into the 21st century. Are you fucking kidding me? Amy Spurling: Amazing, right? [chuckle] Chad: Jesus Christ. Anyway, 90% utilization? I mean, one... Amy Spurling: 91 for four straight years. Chad: 91. So okay, that's ridiculous, 'cause I thought right out of the gate that this is gonna be incredibly low, even at 20%, but 91%. So is there an app? What's the secret sauce when it comes to being able to engage these individuals to actually use their perks? Amy Spurling: So it's amazing that when you give people the free will of choice and treat them like adults that they just use the thing. It's part of their compensation. So we've got a 98% account activation rate, meaning 98% of people who get access to their account from their company, activate it. Payroll is the only thing that's higher, which of course, everyone activates their payroll account. Chad: Oh, yeah. Amy Spurling: So from there, the way we count utilization is that somebody uses some of their stipend. So it can't be you just logged in. We don't count... That's not useful for anybody. You have to use some of your stipend. So 91% of people on our platform have used their stipends for something within the year that they had them. The key to that is just making sure that you provide an easy-to-use platform. Employees can spend less than a minute on our platform. Chad: Is there an app? Amy Spurling: It's a web-based app, so it's a web app. It's mobile-optimized. It works on your phone. It can work through Slack. We're fully integrated with Slack, so you don't even have to log into our platform if you don't want. And so making it as easy as possible for employees, and it works. Onboarding is really simple. Usually takes about 30 minutes for our company, under a hundred people. We've got all the payroll integrations that companies need. I've been through enough HR software implementations, that's where all my gray hair comes from, that my directive to the team when we built this was, "Make it so easy that it's literally like turn the thing on." Because HR doesn't get access to engineers. HR doesn't have time for a long implementation. Employees have zero tolerance for anything difficult on their side. Joel: Is it fair to call you like a reimbursement engine? Amy Spurling: It is a reimbursement platform, so yeah, that is fair. But it's specifically around employee perks. So rewards and the recognition is part of it, so peer-to-peer recognition and then employee stipends is part of it as well. But it's very different from, say, an Expensify or a Concur, which is also a reimbursement platform. Those are meant for business expenses. They're not taxed, they're not tied to an individual. There aren't time periods where we can say, "Hey, you've got a quarter to use your wellness stipend." Joel: Got it. What does a typical client look? And I know that Drizly is a client and there's a good chance Chad and I are single-handedly funding their Compt account, [laughter] but what does a... [chuckle] Amy Spurling: I appreciate that. Joel: What does a client typically look like? Amy Spurling: So we get asked that a lot. It's anybody who is trying to attract and retain talent. So we've got about 17 different industries on the platform. It's in every state in the us. We're supporting employees in 60 different countries. It's not size-specific. Our largest customer right now is about 15,000 people, actually, in the Indianapolis area. And then the smallest is five or six people. So it really runs the gamut of, "How do I differentiate this piece of compensation in the most effective way possible for my team?" Joel: Got it. The most important question I'm gonna ask you is this... Chad: Oh, oh. Joel: There are tons of companies that do this. Bonusly just got a ton of money. I'm sure that you're well aware of that. I mean, Snappy, Fond, Achievers, Blueboard. OC Tanner is been given shit away at trophies, at conference. I mean, they run the gamut of engagement and perks and benefits. I'm sure your salespeople get this question every day, "How are you different from the masses of companies that offer this?" Amy Spurling: 91% utilization. [laughter] Chad: I love it. Joel: How would your competitors answer that? Amy Spurling: They would be really happy about 20% utilization. Joel: Really? Amy Spurling: Mm-hmm. If you're a marketplace, you might get 30 or 40%. If you're an individual perk, you're sitting in that 5 to 7% range. Like we don't see competitors in sales processes almost ever. Joel: I'm guessing this is anecdotal. They're not publishing papers about utilization numbers. I mean, is this... Amy Spurling: Some of them do publish because they do because... Joel: You got these offices tapped? Amy Spurling: No, because... I mean, I've bought this stuff for a long time, so I know lots of HR people, I know lots of CFOs. We all know what our utilization is, and it's pretty similar kind of across. And so if you're trying to reach folks, utilization is good. Joel: Utilization. Got it. So we were talking in the green room about how Gen X we were, but millennials, as we know, and Gen Zs are a big part of the equation building businesses and they love experiences, according to many articles that I've read. I didn't hear experiences as part of the perks that you guys offer. Can I go to Fiji and expense it on your platform? Amy Spurling: Could, if the company sets up either a personal travel or an entertainment or an experience category. We have all of those categories. I mean, there's 22 different categories a company could select and craft different stipends and things like that, so they absolutely could. It's just the whole point is not to try and do some... Like HR has been tasked with make everyone happy. One, that's not possible. And two, trying to do that with, "Okay, we're gonna offer experiences." Well, tell a mom with three young kids at home that she can go skydiving. Sweet. No time for that. Like, "This is not a good perk for me." [laughter] Amy Spurling: So it's meeting people where they are and allowing them to make the decisions for their own lives. Wellness is different for every single person. They're in different parts of their journey. We're all adults. HR shouldn't be dictating what wellness is. It's allowing for people to be treated like adults with their own compensation in a way that is still aligned with company culture. Chad: So I'm gonna go back to Joel's question, dig a little bit deeper. Who are you targeting go to market wise? You can do obviously top to bottom, that's awesome, but who are you targeting right now? Amy Spurling: So what's interesting is that almost all of our leads come in inbound. Companies come looking for us. So we have a really strong inbound engine, and that's the source of a lot of our leads because companies are actively looking for solutions for this last piece of the compensation. So they're actively looking for stipends, they're actively looking for employee perks. And we've got a very strong kind of SEO and content game, and so when they look, they find us. We're on, I think, the first page of Google for like 500 key terms. So that's where we don't have to target a particular industry because the problems are the same across industries. It's making sure that you're there and available for HR when they're ready to be in that process. Chad: Gotcha. Okay. So let's talk about the business model. Is this a seats-based per employee-based platform? Cost? How does this actually work out for an employer? Amy Spurling: It's a SaaS model, so there's a subscription fee for the platform. My CFO brand does not like per seat because I can never budget for that. "Okay. I add 10 people. How much now do I have to do across 15 different platforms?" So it's tiered, based on the number of employees when you start, but add as many as you want. We don't care. We're not coming looking for more money during the contract. We'll talk to you on renewal and figure out where you need to be then. So it's kind of guaranteed term of the contract. Chad: Okay. So this is an ARR kind of scenario then since you're not really fluxing? Amy Spurling: Exactly. Chad: What does ARR look like these days? Amy Spurling: Oh, it looks great. It also looks private. [laughter] Thank you. Agree with that. Chad: You've always gotta ask the CFO of that question. That's for sure. That's for sure. Amy Spurling: Yeah, not new here. [laughter] Chad: Okay. So let's talk about partners. And I mean, it doesn't sound really you need to get into integrations with ADP SAP Workday... Amy Spurling: Oh, we do. Chad: Okay, so talk about that. Do you have integrations? How does that actually work? Amy Spurling: So, payroll integrations are very interesting for us because that's how you automate a lot of this. It's all gonna be processed through payroll. Some payroll systems play nicer than others. We've got a great partnership with ADP we're fully integrated with them. We work with others like Bamboo and Colitis, Colitus [laughter] all the payroll players basically. And so that side of the house we spend a lot of time with. Other partners that we work a lot with are benefit brokers, so that's another place that we spend a lot of time. That's not a technical integration, that's just partners. Chad: Benefit brokers. So is employee perk management, is that something you guys came up with or is this literally been like a segment that nobody's paid that much attention to over the years? [laughter] Amy Spurling: No, it's pretty new. So when we started, we had to educate people on what stipends were. The term lifestyle spending accounts is now all over the place. The first woman on our team was a marketer. She invented that term. She did a very good job with SEO. She came out of HubSpot, so she understood, inbound very, very good. And now that term is everywhere. And we're sitting here going, "Man, we invented that five years ago. [laughter] like we should have just trademarked that." [laughter] But it's something that is relatively new. A lot of companies have gone the marketplace route. So, hey, here's 25 vendors your employees could use. Those have been around a lot longer. You mentioned Fond. They were just acquired, by the way, by Reward Gateway. And so there's a lot of kind of acquisitions in the space but those still get, if you're lucky, 20 to 30% utilization. So companies have been looking for, okay, what's next? How do I do better than that? Chad: Right. So let's talk about funding. Last April you received 13 million. What have you been doing with that money? What have you been putting it to? What's the focus on spend and your CFO brain? Amy Spurling: Yes. So the focus was one, build out a leadership team. Everybody on the team. We're a relatively small team. We're a pretty capital efficient team, no surprise. But everybody reporting to me is obviously a very bad plan as you start scaling. So, built out a really talented leadership team over the past year and then started spending a lot more money on testing out different pieces of the market for marketing spend, as well as different approaches on the sales side. Selling to HR is very different from selling to any other group of people. Joel: Amen. Amy Spurling: They're a pretty amazing group of people that fight fires all day long. Their priorities are never something that they get to control, and a lot of times they don't get to control their budgets. So you have to take a very different approach when you're selling to them and when you're marketing to them. And so that takes a lot of experimentation. I don't think anybody has cracked the book on that, and kind of cracked the code on that to figure out how that's works beautifully well. Chad: Well, that being said, HR does struggle with being able to kind of like show the ROI of who they are. You're a CFO, you should be able to help them do that. If you're coming to me and I need to pitch this to my C-suite, how can perks, how can your platform actually help my business? Actually, talk about the bottom line and impact in the bottom line. Amy Spurling: Sure. So the questions I ask them are, one, "Do you have trouble attracting talent that you need in your business?" If no, then okay, great. "Do you have trouble retaining talent?" If no, then fantastic. You don't need us. End of story. Now that's no one. Everybody is struggling with one of those two things and likely both. So if those two things you need help on, then the question is, "Are you paying competitive salaries and are you offering health insurance?" If you're doing both of those as well, then you have to do something else. And when you get to the have to do something else, the question is, "Okay, then what, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna pull in an app that 5% of your team is gonna use? Or are you gonna do something that gets you high utilization?" Because you know you have to do something in this space, or you're not gonna be competitive within your own team and talent. So it's really measuring against what else would you do with that portion of the compensation and how are you gonna use it most efficiently? That's the pitch to CFOs all day long. Joel: So in lot of that comment every business in our space is sort of prone to pain when the economy goes to hell. This feels like to me one of the first things that companies would look to cut. Am I wrong? Am I right? And if I'm right, is the current environment a threat to the business? Amy Spurling: You're right about employee perks. You're wrong about this version of it. So you're right about... So I was a CFO in 2008. I cut the heck out of everything. And so that was in the back of my brain when we started building this platform. The thing is, is that unemployment is still very, very low. In tech, it's 1.5%. There is virtually no unemployment in tech. We've been talking about all these layoffs, all of these things, less than 200,000 people in tech have lost their jobs out of hundreds of millions in this country. So you still have to figure out how you hire and retain. So if you're gonna cut something, it's gotta be something that's inefficient. So you have to find something that is the most efficient and cheapest way to be able to solve for that problem. And that's where something like this is a game changer in an economy like this, because you cannot just throw a whole bunch of stuff out there, spend a ton of money and hope that, it covers the board and you're fine. You have to be very intentional about your spend and make sure that it is very efficient. Joel: It sounds like remote work has been good for your business to... On the competitive side, does a remote workforce hurt some of your competitors? If you want to name names, feel free. But do some of the business models around perks suffer in a remote work environment? Amy Spurling: They do, and it's a lot of it... So it's remote and it's global. So we started seeing, we wouldn't global much earlier than I intended to. All my prior companies have been global. And because of that I've got plenty of battle scars. And so we planned on staying US-centric, but we realized that companies as small as 25, 50 people started having employees in other countries. And so to be able to support your entire team, you have to think about something. Basically the way that we built it, a credit card does not cross borders well. A marketplace does not cross borders at all. Taxation is an absolute nightmare when you start crossing borders. So you have to do something, basically the approach that we took and doing the tax compliance piece in order to be able to support an entire team. So that's one of the key places that, we really differentiate is the remote, but it's the distribution. If your team is all over the place, you can't have a book of vendors, that is based on in downtown Boston, because if no one lives there, that's useless. Joel: So I assume you're compliant in multiple countries, from a tax perspective, obviously the IRS is a big one for our audience, but can accompany in Stuttgart benefit from your platform as well, from a taxed perspective? Amy Spurling: They have to have a US legal entity. So my compliance requires US contracts. [chuckle] but you can have employees anywhere in the world. And so the way it works is that it's gonna be taxed in those countries because we're not... I'm not gonna say that we are tax locked down in 200 and some countries because quite frankly, I'd have to charge a heck of a lot more for this platform to do that. So we keep them on the conservative side, but we work with their teams. And if there's particular things that, like in Germany, don't tax this and Argentina don't tax that, we have the ability to do that. Joel: Let's chat on this one. AI surrounds all of us every day, particularly in our space. And we talk a lot about vendors and workforce software that are gonna be impacted by chatGPT, OpenAI, everything that's coming down the pike. This is one where I have a hard time thinking that AI impacts, you think about this stuff every day, how is AI gonna impact, if at all, the perks business? Amy Spurling: I think there is a place at some point, I mean, we're amassing, like we know what people are spending on, we know vendors that people are spending on. In theory you could say, people who bought this thing also like these other things, kind of like an Amazon marketplace that is less discovery and more suggestion. You could use AI for something like that down the road. It's not something that we have prioritized because we're getting the utilization we need in the meantime. But there is a place that you could do that, but it's not the first focus of what we're doing. There's a lot of other things we can do to support companies, employees in the meantime. Joel: Got it. All right, Amy, that is the bell. And that means you get to face the Firing Squad. Are you ready? Amy Spurling: I'm ready. Joel: Chad. Get her. Chad: Alright, Amy. The workforce and talent landscape has changed dramatically. It isn't what it was three years ago, you know that. It has rapidly evolved and employees are finally sticking up for themselves, quitting and asking for more. Companies are having a real hard time in getting in-office, hybrid, remote work. Those things, just those incredibly important things really hashed out. They don't have the bandwidth in many cases to think about things like perks. I personally believe perks are a must-have, but coming into this discussion, I wasn't sure that many penny pinching CFOs and weakass CHROs would be able to weave together a business narrative around why this makes sense. Until now, perks can help employee engagements retention and bottom line, I would only trust a CFO to understand how to connect those dots. 91% of the time, it's a win for me a hundred percent of the time, it's a big applause for Compt. Amy Spurling: Thank you. I appreciate that. Joel: Congratulations. But it's not over, Amy. You still have to face the big Cheese. Is that a little bit too egotistical? Anyway. [chuckle] Chad: You called yourself the big cheese. Really? [laughter] Joel: I did. That's the first time ever on the show and probably the last. [chuckle] I love this space because it takes me back in time to the OC Tanner booze at Sherm with plaques and trophies and the gold plated clock. It's evolved... Chad: So bad. Joel: So much from those... Chad: It was so bad... Joel: Those days, but I was gonna kick out of how that used to be. How we rewarded and engaged employees. So the global employee engagement software market is expected to reach approximately 346 million by the end of 2025. That means opportunity. I know there's a lot of competition, a lot of players in the space, a lot of well-funded players, but there's a lot of money in that pie and it's a big one. So I love the space. I think retention, I think engaging global employees is gonna be huge and will be huge in the future. The money's there. I love the IRS angle, I love the tax angle. I think companies hate dealing with that shit. The fact that you can support that I think is great. I do think you'll have to raise more money at some point. I think you know that as well, even as fiscally conservative as you apparently are. But for me, this is a fun space to watch. I wish you had said, AI was gonna be a big part of it and you were gonna like dive into that. But anyway, at least we're a long way from gold plated watches or gold watches and plaques for people to put on their wall for me as well. DJ Horn ends. Round of applause. Amy Spurling: Awesome. Chad: Double. Big applause. Amy Spurling: Double. I appreciate that. Chad: Hello? Joel: That's right. Congratulations Amy, how do you feel? Amy Spurling: Thank you very much. Fantastic. I'm gonna tell my mom. [laughter] Joel: Excellent. And one more time for our listeners, where can we learn more about Compt. Amy Spurling: You can learn about us on our website at Compt.io or feel free to reach out to me, amy@Compt.io. Joel: Chad, another one is in the books. I'm still waiting for my compensation. Until then, we out. Chad: We out. Outro: This has been The Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the Chad and Cheese podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today. That's www.C-H-A-D-C-H-E-E-S-E.com.

SUBSCRIBE wherever you listen to podcasts On this week's episode I'm joined by Quincy "Queen of Chatbots" Valencia as Joel continues his aspirations to be more like his idol, Clark Griswold, with a family Vegas vacation. I got nothin' man, seriously. Any who, this week's episode is packed with goodies like: Radancy acquiring Ascendify LeapXpert gives creepy a run for its money Kelly Fusion launches DIGITAL WORKERS! 300 million jobs to be replaced by automation Everybody gonna ChatGPT - Hireology, Beamery, Seekout, Phenom, who else?!?! Is GDPR Europe's secret weapon? ... and your office mates say that you talk too much, you never shut up! It's another tech packed episode and The Queen of Chatbots is holding court! You're welcome! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. 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, rash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. [music] Chad: It's a Cheese-free week, kids, welcome to the Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm your co-host, Chad, always blame the new guy, Sowash. Quincy: Yeah, and I'm today's co-host, Quincy, I have opinions on that, Valencia. Chad: And on this week's show, Radancy stops the technical Botox. Kelly introduces us to their new sexy digital staff, and a LeapXpert is watching you, it's official. Everybody's gonna ChatGPT, let's do this. Well, hello. Quincy: Well, hello to you. Chad: Okay, listener, you guessed it. Cheesman is on vacation. Don't understand the whole taking a kid six-year-old kid to Vegas. [background conversation] Quincy: What? Chad: But that's what's happening. Quincy: Every six-year-old needs a flyer about the latest nudey show. [laughter] Chad: That's a very good point. All those cards that they pass out... Quincy: Yeah, when you're walking down the street. Chad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Quincy: That's true. I should have named myself Quincy, the lactate of the Chad-Cheese Show, Valencia. Chad: The lactate. Quincy: Well, every time I'm here, Joel, isn't. Chad: Well, I gotta say, welcome back to the show Quincy. Quincy: Thank you. Thank you. Chad: I think you're actually eclipsing Tim Sackett's appearances on the show. Quincy: Woah! Chad: I think you now... Plus plus, I don't believe Sackett has ever guest hosted. So guess what kids? [applause] Chad: That's right. Quincy: This is my second guest hosting appearance. Chad: Wow, man, that's doubling up and nobody has done that, so let's go ahead and let's hear a little bit about Quincy. Anybody who has been in their pandemic bomb shelter and they're finally coming out, they haven't been listening to podcasts, they don't know who you are, give them a little Twitter bio. Quincy: I've been around forever, Chad, almost as long as you. Chad: Oh. Quincy: I can't help it. Chad: So much bullshit. Why do you gotta pull out the age thing? Quincy: Because it's all I have on you, Chad, despite my charm and personality, it doesn't hold a candle to you. You are like six months or eight months older than me, so I have to point it out. So I've been around, I've been a practitioner, I've been a technician, I've on product, and now I'm taking a seat in the analyst's seat, taking a turn there where I joined the analyst community for HR technology a year ago. On April 1st, not an April fools joke and it's been really fun. So I spend all day looking at new technology, old technology, the companies that provided what they're doing right, what they can do better, and then I talk about it. So kind of like what you do, only in a more formal way. Chad: And what Cheesman does, looking at OnlyFans and TikTok all day, so very similar. Just different ways... Quincy: Similar but different. Yes, exactly. So thanks for having me back. Chad: Alright, okay. Quincy, let's go ahead and let's jump in to shoutouts. Guest first. Who's your first shoutout? Quincy: So I relocated to South Carolina almost a year ago, and so my first shoutout as we enter the summer towards season... [music] Quincy: Is to all the great white sharks that are hanging out off the coast of South Carolina and washing up on the beach because... Yes, washing up on the beach, it feels very Amity Island, 1975. And I'm here for it, man. I'm telling you, I just... That's my life now. I came from South Dakota to South Carolina, and it's a very, very different feel. Chad: That is a different feel. You were in Atlanta, then you went to South Dakota, and then you went to South Carolina now. So what I'm hearing is this is not a 'Jaws' situation where you're not swimming nude in the ocean doing laps often. [music] Quincy: I never said that, Chad. You're putting words in my mouth. [music] Chad: Okay. Okay, okay. Alright. Enough of that. Shoutout to 10 Guy who this week launched a human-like avatar, get that, candidate application and recruitment platform, which mitigates bias and promotes a more diverse and inclusive workforce because that's what they have in Sweden. Long and the short of it, kids, the robot head is out and they've pivoted to the avatar. So what are your thoughts on that? Quincy: Well, I have to be honest, I think that their technology is super cool, and I've thought of that since the head came out, but I've also never stopped being creeped out by the head, so I'm pretty excited about this shift, I think... I'm much more likely to not... I'm less creeped out by the great white sharks off my beach that I am by the head. I think that using that tech to apply it in this new way is great, I'm excited to see it, and I haven't had a conversation with Elon in quite some time, maybe I need to have that soon. Chad: When we originally went to Sweden, and I think it was 2019, we talked about how the robot head is fucking cool, just from the standpoint of robots taking over the world, kind of cool, but we told them it's just not scalable, so from a novelty standpoint, they're going to get a lot of press, which is fucking awesome, but to be able to scale, they've gotta do something, and this is exactly, exactly what they should be doing, so I... Quincy: I agree. You know what, I think there's still a place for the head though, so I just suddenly got a thought of like... It's like the Wienermobile from Oscar Mayer. They can put that thing on a truck and they can drive it through the streets all over Europe... Chad: Oh my God. Quincy: And attract some attention for the really cool stuff they're doing that's not so creepy anymore. Chad: It is, it is. And we've always said that if you go into, let's say, for instance, I don't know, another Swedish organization like IKEA. And the first thing that you see is the 10 guy Bot who asks you if you need anything or just points in a general direction of kitchen or betting or whatever it might be. Then that could be a nice little Wienermobile moment as well. Quincy: It certainly could. It's 10 Guy is gonna be the Wienermobile of HR tech. But in a really, really good way. I really do love their tech, I think it's pretty awesome, I love this new thing, I think it's smart. Chad: Excellent. Quincy: Alright, shoutout number two from me, so I've been thinking about tech, 'cause that's what I do. Chad: What you do. Quincy: And what I've seen that's really kind of made a difference and made a noise that doesn't happen to be ChatGPT, it's the skill space stuff, man, and I just wanna give a shoutout to our friend, your friend as well, Jason Putnam over at Plum, he made the move into that space a little over a year ago, I think, and I think it's super smart what he's doing with Caitlin there and redefining really what skills mean? It's not just about, do you know Excel? Chad: Yeah. Quincy: It's about what soft skills do you have and what desire do you have, and where do you thrive as a worker, an employee in an organization and what they're doing at Plum I think is super cool. And the fact that Jason made the move there, I think it's a really smart move on his part, and on Caitlyn MacGregor's part to bring them in, so shoutout to Jason, hope he's well. Good stuff there. Chad: We say it on the show all the time, leadership is everything, and being able to get a guy like Jason who understands go-to market, understands narrative messaging, also has amazing networking power, then we... Quincy: Absolutely. Chad: Then we also have on the other side, more kind of like hard skills per se Maya over at Tadio. Quincy: Oh, she's my favorite. Chad: Yeah, and what they're doing. So we're starting to see... And what I would like to see is more of these assessments that are really focused on... If you can get it narrowed down like Plum or even on the hard side, like Tadio, to me, it just makes sense. So leadership, being able to bring these assessments really out of the shadows. Quincy: I agree. And then so the next time I co-host Chad and Cheese Podcast, I hope that my shoutout will be to those organizations who have the foresight and the vision to put their money where their mouth is and actually invest in some of these technologies and bring them into their workforce to make an actual difference and not just have them as platitudes on a wall. Chad: Throwing down the gauntlet. That's what Quincy does. Quincy: That's right. Chad: Alright, my last shoutout goes out to Arthur Grand Technologies. Oh, you're gonna love this one. In an article reported by Newsweek, a Virginia-based tech company that has sparked outrage after allegedly posting a job on Indeed, our friends over there that stated the business was only looking for white candidates for a business analyst role. Now get this, the tech firm has issued an apology on LinkedIn, which I think has since been pulled down and accused a "new junior recruiter" of adding discriminatory language on the job description when it was not present in the company's original text. Oh come the fuck on. It's the blame the new guy game, right. And that move, that move, I gotta tell you though, never gets old, never gets old. Quincy: Clearly not, but I just absolutely call bullshit on that. It reminds me of something that happened when I worked at Home Depot way back when Moby-Dick was Minnow. And it was a big push into putting things in the stores about... We're hiring for Spanish-speaking candidates, which is really smart. This is in the mid-2000, early oughts, I think when this... It was. It was the early oughts when this happened, and it turns out the minute that the bigs we're hiring sign went up, the day they went up in all the stores... Yeah, the translation that they used to create those particular we're hiring signs was of a vernacular that actually many Spanish-speaking countries understand it to mean we're soliciting as in we're soliciting a hooker on the street and that was the day that my friend and employment marketing had to go in front of the CHRO and CEO and explain how the hell that happened. Very similar vibe here. Some people had some fun recruitment, marketing, faux pas recently. Chad: Oh my God. Quincy: And in the past. To go along with yours. Chad: Well, and we'll see more faux pas possibly as we go to events, so the first event that we're getting ready, all geared up, it's gonna be a party is Unleash, so there's lots of learning, networking, business and parties and that kind of stuff, but... Okay, so I understand that this year's ticket sales is 75% higher. Quincy: Woah. Chad: Right now today compared to last year, so... You've been to Unleash before, right? Quincy: No, as a matter of fact, I have never been to an Unleash. Chad: What? Quincy: I know. Isn't that crazy? Chad: Dude, we have to totally, totally rectify that. And let me tell you why. One of the things I love about Unleash is that they've integrated the community where in most events that you go to, they split off practitioners from vendors, I mean it's really... It's two countries. Unleash doesn't do that. They pull them together. They are integrated on the Expo Floor with the stages actually being on the Expo Floor, so it's really cool, they have a main stage, they have all these sub-stages that are on the Expo Floor, and it's a pretty awesome, awesome event. I think Unleash and RecFest, just in my personal opinion, are probably the most different and most innovative events that are actually happening out there today. Quincy: So when we go to HR Tech, which we all do as one does, if you're in this industry, I think it's a great event, don't get me wrong... Chad: Oh yeah. Quincy: I see what happens up there, tons of opportunity to network and really see what's coming up, that's new and fun, so I love that there, but it's really sort of a vendor fest, if we're honest, a lot more vendors attend these days than buyers, that's where we're missing out, is that opportunity to interact with the people who are actually using this super cool new tech or the stale tech that just people who just have money to buy big boots. But that's another topic for another show. How is Unleash different from that? Chad: Very much, it's more integrated. So they're not trying to cordon off all of the practitioners. Quincy: So you actually do get to interact with people who are using the technology. Chad: And that's the vibe, man, the vibe isn't, oh, I know I'm hoity-toity and I'm gonna go out and be cordoned off, away from all the vendors and the vendors there's a respect that the vendors aren't always trying to be seeing blood in the water as they see practitioners all around them, so yeah. Quincy: Oh that's good. Chad: If you're going to be at Unleash, this is where you can find the Chad and Cheese on Tuesday, the 25th, Joe and I are going to be on stage during the vendor summit with our buddy, Chris Conrad from Textkernel, you know those guys? Quincy: Absolutely. Chad: That evening are gonna be at the HiringBranch event at the high roller. Have you ever been on the high roller? Quincy: I have not been on the high roller because I don't do heights. [laughter] Chad: It's much easier to do heights in the high roller because there's a bar in it. Quincy: Okay, well, that's a requirement. You might be talking me into it. Chad: It goes one revolution in half an hour, so it takes 30 minutes for one revolution. We're gonna see how many drinks we can actually get during that time, so that's the hiring branch, high roller party that we're gonna have, and then we're going to run to a dinner with our friends over at Plum. We're gonna see Caitlin, Jason and the team. Then next on Wednesday, this is day one, you can find the Chad and Cheese at the WorkHuman booth from noon to 4:00, where we're gonna be giving away t-shirts doing interviews and probably drinking. Go figure it. It's Unleash. That's the WorkHuman both from noon to 4:00 on day one, then right after that, I believe at 4:30, we're gonna be doing little drinks before dinner with our friends at Tadio, like we did last year in Vegas. Quincy: That was a great event. Chad: Or you're gonna love this one. Then it's the Talent Toke event, right after the drinks with Tadio, we're gonna walk over to the Bellagio, we're gonna toke up because weed is legal in Vegas kids, and we're gonna enjoy the dancing fountains while we are getting high, and this is all before dinner on day one, and that's just the start of our calendar, so we're really, really excited about Unleash, and if you haven't gotten your tickets, register, go to chadcheese.com, click on events, all the stuff is there. Then we're gonna find ourselves in early May, we're gonna be at Coronado Beach in California for ICIMS inspire we're scheduled to close out day one on stage with a special guest, that's so secret, they haven't told us who the special guest is yet. Quincy: That's exciting news. The last ICIMS event I attended, which was in November, I happened to see Arnold Schwarzenegger at breakfast. Chad: What? Quincy: I did. It's true. I have a picture. It was a fun-filled day, but I was trying to sneak and get the picture because you don't wanna be that one that goes up and says oh my god, can I get a picture. And so I happened to mosey over to somebody I didn't even know who was sitting at the other end of the breakfast bar and said, "Hi, we don't know each other, but would it be okay if we pretended to take a selfie, but really with our cameras faced the other way so we can both get a picture," and he said, "That's genius," 'cause that's what I am. So I now have that picture, so we'll see if you have any celebrity sightings at the next ICIMS event. Chad: The expectations at this point are now high, thanks to you. Okay, make sure you go to chadcheese.com, click on events, register for those events. We have plenty, long list of events this year, those are just two. Quincy: Hey, is Joel taking his kids to the Talent Toke event in Vegas? Is this a precursor event for that event? Chad: I don't think he's taking the six-year-old or the 16-year-old or 13-year-old to the Talent Toke event. Quincy: You never know. Chad: That was a good question. That was a good question. Quincy: Thank you. Chad: One thing that kids do like, and I think you do as well, is free stuff. Are you registered for free stuff? Quincy: I'm registered for free. I've never gotten any free stuff. Chad: Oh you've gotten a t-shirt, whatever. Quincy: I do. I get a t-shirt every year. I have a Chad and Cheese shirt collection, and I wear them all over the world and take pictures. Chad: I do love that t-shirts from JobGet. We also send beer, which is courtesy of Aspen Tech Labs. That's right. Beer landing on your front porch. What could be better? Quincy: Who doesn't want that? Chad: If you don't like beer, we got whiskey from Textkernel, so you get a bottle from Chad, you get a bottle from Cheese, so two bottles. Quincy: Now you're talking. Chad: And last but not least, if you got a birthday, don't forget the rum with Plum. Joel's not here this week, so we're not gonna go through through with birthdays 'cause that's his baby. But... [vocalization] Speaker: Really? Could you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Chad: That's right. Go to plum.io. Get your assessment taken. You're gonna love it, I promise. And a Plum crew will see you in Vegas. [music] Quincy: What do got for us today, Chad? [music] Chad: Oooh, it's an acquisition alert kids. Acquisition straight from the Radancy blog, CEO Michelle Abbey... Quincy: That's obnoxious. Chad: Michelle Abbey writes, "Today, we announce that Radancy has acquired Ascendify, adding value to our Radancy talent acquisition cloud." What a fucking name. Radancy Talent Acquisition Cloud. Anyway, "through advanced candidate relationship management, CRM capabilities, this acquisition enhances our suite of solutions focused on helping enterprises maximize ROI, that's return on investment, kids, reduce costs and find qualified candidates to strengthen their business." Ascendify received $13 million in total funding according to CrunchBase, a seed of two in 2013 and 11 million series A in 2017, only 33 employees according to LinkedIn. So the team was pretty lean. Radancy gains a brand spanking new CRM and features, which include advanced sourcing functionality, whatever the fuck that means, workflow automation, interview scheduling and event management to augment their candidate marketing capabilities. Quincy, your thoughts? Quincy: Yeah, so Radancy is weird, it's a fine company, I'm assuming. But I don't understand, they're a talent acquisition platform when they really only play in certain parts of that space. On their website, or was it a Ascendify, no it's on their website, they said, Together we're delivering the world's leading TA platform to which I say, I don't really think that's true. I'm just gonna put that out there because it's limited and what it's doing, Radancy is a relic of what it used to be, which was TMP, which was really great in what they did, nobody's arguing that, and they're continuing to do that, they've had some pretty cool technological advances, and I will say that this acquisition makes a lot of sense because I think that Ascendify and some of the features that it brings, plugs in some holes that were in Radancy's offering, but I think that they're going a bit too far to say to the world's leading TA platform, and I take offense to that. What are your opinions? [laughter] Chad: So, in performing due diligence for CRMS and recruitment marketing platforms over the years, do you know what brand never came up and the... Check these guys out list Ascendify. Quincy: Correct. Chad: And here might be the reason why since 2012, Ascendify has served over 50, five zero enterprise clients, averaging five new clients a year with their leading CRM and recruitment platform that screams, I'm running out of cash and I need a sugar mama now. Right? Quincy: That's exactly right. Chad: And Radancy has a CRM and a marketing platform, so why buy another? Well, what's hitting Radancy in the face right about now, I'll give you a hint. TalentBrew, technical debt. TalentBrew been around for how long. Quincy: Ever. Chad: Right, you can't beat technical debt, it's kind of like aging, you can get Botox, you can get a face lift, lipo, you can do all the things, but you can't outrun time, so it's the same thing with tech, it needs to update or the amount of daily maintenance piles up and the platform basically is worthless, so you have to rip and replace, which is so fucking hard, we saw companies like Monster literally die on the vine because they couldn't rip and replace. Quincy: That's the truth. Chad: Much easier for an organization like Radancy because of all the different instances, clients, those types of things, but still... But I give Radancy a lot of shit, they hardly ever make the news anymore, but over the years, they've gotten well over 500 clients pounding on their tech, and this feels like a smart move, a rip and replace kind of provide better infrastructure. But at the end of the day, to answer your question, nobody, I don't believe one platform can represent all of the talent acquisition function without being able to integrate with partner point solutions. Speaker: Well, and they don't even try to. We know Radancy is a leader in its portion of talent acquisition, which is a really important segment of TA, but they don't go across the board, so I do think, like I said, and you've actually said as well, Ascendify brings some features and functionality that Radancy doesn't have today, so I think... And they probably got it for a bargain price, we don't know this to be true, but we know now. Well, we know some of that, but they're... Based on what they published, but I think that's really smart. I don't think it solves their technical debt issue coming from my last gig was in product, so I can tell you that doesn't necessarily do the trick, but obviously they saw something in it to add to what they have, and certainly it will add support to their current client base and perhaps give them an edge in prospecting where clients are looking for something that had pieces that Radancy didn't have so good for them, and good for Ascendify. Chad: I've gotta say that TMP, when they made the move and they started creating TaletBrew to be... And because every agency wants to say they're unbiased, TMP really was, I think the agency that move toward a biased scenario, they're only gonna promote their own shit, and they've gone down that road, so what they've done is they've flipped from an agency model to a tech model, why, because they want to get acquired by JAM spring. Because the technical platform is gonna have a hell of a lot higher valuation than just an agency. A portfolio... Quincy: Tech is good. Chad: Yes, sure and so you're 100% right. Quincy: Because tech is scalable, human-based businesses are not as much... Chad: Exactly. Quincy: And that is a universal and certainly the case in the HR tech space, and I think that was actually a smart move for them as well. I do know people who work there, I'm sure you do too, They're fine people, they're good at their jobs, there's reasons that they stay there, and TMP has done some things very well and tuning in becoming Radancy and what they've done. I still wish they wouldn't say that they're the world's leading TA platform. Chad: Everybody says it. Everybody says that, and on the other side of that, you have the Shaker recruitment marketing of the world who do not, will not acquire tech, just so they don't have to play these money games, 'cause obviously Shaker's not looking to get acquired, they've been around for over 70 years, and that's I think the big difference. Shaker is really looking for the purity of what an agency is, and TMP at the time before Radancy. Now, Radancy, they were looking to get acquired and to be able to get a much larger valuation, they had to get into tech. Now, the problem that they're going to have, that they're gonna continue to have is being able to keep up with the market, and then the technical debt that they have to pay every single year, I think they're gonna rip and replace a lot of their CRM capability. They're old, kind of like CRM light that they had before, 'cause they really didn't have a robust CRM before they're gonna rip and replace, and I think they got it for... I think they got it for a good deal. So. Quincy: Well we'll see. Chad: I think it's a smart move. Quincy: Can I just say about Shaker, who does what you do quite well. Every time I think of them though, I automatically think of Don Draper on Mad Men, which is a fine thing that gives me the warm fuzzies. Yes. Chad: And I'm sure Joe Shaker would love to hear that on with the show. [music] Chad: Oh, that's right kids, somebody got money, LeapXpert raises 22 million in a series, A round, 36 million in total funding from TechCrunch with the spike and work from home in hybrid work. We've seen an obvious increase on workers, dependence on personal devices, it's been a particular challenge for the financial service industry, which has strict governance and compliance requirements. In September, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined a Wall Street banks. Listen to this, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, 1.8 billion, over failures in monitoring how staff use their personal phones to talk about work. Enter LeapXpert, which allows employees to message customers or colleagues through their popular apps, including WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage, Telegram and Signal while monitoring and archiving their business-related chats. LeapXpert was founded with a mission to help companies seize the opportunity to transform business communication. Is it just me or is this about as creepy as employee monitoring gets. Chad: I can't... I hate everything about this. I can't even think of something I like, I try to do. 'Cause I try and be balanced, I hate everything about it. Look, I understand the challenges that these financial services companies have and they're real and they need to protect themselves, and then you know how you do that, Chad, you invest the money and you get your employees separate mobile tech. Because I know that they say they have ways to capture personal info and chat separately or do not capture those, but I don't believe it, and I haven't seen it, and I just... Yeah, this is about as creepy as it gets, I hate absolutely everything about it. Chad: And that's the thing is that we're talking about an industry that is fucking rich. [music] Chad: Rich. These fuckers have so much money, there's no reason that they can't have a separate device or separate mechanisms, so that you don't have to utilize my personal device. So at the end of the day, I think that employee monitoring is just a horrible thing, and it's funny 'cause Julie would call this icky, that's her term for this. Quincy: I agree with Julie is it is icky, I don't like it. I wouldn't invest money in it, I think that organizations who are touting people bringing their whole selves to work and providing a better experience for making people engaged, cannot do that when they're monitoring their every move, they need to suck it up and find a different way. This isn't it, folks. Chad: Amen, okay, let's stay on the creepy side of tech... Quincy: Why not. Chad: But it's a little less creepy, I promise. [music] Chad: Automation, you might have heard of it, kids. Quincy: Well, I've not. Chad: Straight out of CNN business news, "as many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of AI that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT. Quincy: Let's hear about it. Chad: According to those crazy economists over at Goldman Sachs, well, apparently Kelly Services got the memo, this one straight on a Yahoo Finance as companies face economic uncertainties and fierce talent competitions, and workers report unmanageable workloads and disengagement from their jobs, Kelly becomes the first staffing provider. Did you hear that? The first staffing provider to tackle these challenges by deploying... [vocalization] Chad: Digital worker, in addition to their not as cool human workers, obviously. What will these new sexy digital workers be called? You might ask, that's a great question. They will be called Kelly Fusion Digital Workers. Quincy: That's not a good first and last name, it's not even a clever middle name. Chad: I would have expected how Blinky the board, something of that. Anyway, these solutions will automate routine tasks and allow employees to focus on their more meaningful work, this sounds amazing. Quincy, am I right the first? Talk to me, goose. Quincy: It sounds to me like branded RPA, that's what it sounds like. It's been around for years and years and years, and it doesn't sound new. However, I'm gonna give prop to Kelly, for a couple of things. A couple of years ago, I was on your show, it was the prediction show, and I predicted... Maybe it was three years ago now, I don't know, but I predicted that RPA was gonna be a big thing coming up, it's been around, it's not new, but companies are finding new ways to employ it within their organizations to do exactly this, which is automate those things that should be automated. Giving their very valuable, actual human being employees, the opportunity to do more value add, more strategic, more fun work. I think this is smart on Kelly's part, do I think that they're doing anything new in revolutionary. No, sorry, Kelly, I just don't. Every system out there is doing this, exactly, you have automated interview scheduling, you have automated... You name it, you already got the stuff out there, but packaging it together, however, and having a central resource to do this work, if that's impact what it can do, I haven't seen it yet. Quincy: And then branding it, I think is smart, it would be a nice revenue stream for them, so, kudos to them for that. Chad: Yes. Quincy: What do you think? Chad: Well, I remember when Tim Meehan over at Pontoon created their RXO recruiterless solutions back in 2019, and it wasn't new then, what was new was the messaging, was the narrative, was the productization of exactly what you're talking about. It is much more prevalent now than it was in 2019, so Tim was way ahead of his skis, I think with regard to the market. Not to mention we had a pandemic. Now, everybody's ChatGPT, everybody is, how do we automate? How do we do all of these things? This is amazing marketing and productization, which is exactly what you're just talking about. Quincy: I'm hearing you say, wait, it's not the first? Chad: It's not the first. Quincy: Go figure. Chad: Yeah, I know, right? Who would have thought? A big question. Do you see RPO staffing? This to me, just makes a hell of a lot more sense because I believe in the keep it simple, stupid model where we try to package things to make it easier for people to understand this digital... Kelly fusion, like digital worker, it makes sense because it is working in conjunction with their "human workers." Do you see that happening more? With that industry. Quincy: Yeah, for sure. It already makes sense. I've worked for several RPO organizations in my time, and I will tell you that I have never worked for one that didn't do this already, they just didn't brand it and productive it, market it in that way, if they weren't doing it, they wouldn't make money. RPOs historically have been people-driven organizations, and that's why companies buy those services, it's been white glove, it's been hand-holding of the candidate, and in many cases, because RPO organizations are made of people who've been in this space for 110 years they do it better because this is what they do this is their day job. Quincy: Automating has been in the back end, because if they didn't do it this way, these organizations wouldn't be able to scale and make money, so it's been there for years, kudos to Kelly for putting it out there as an actual product. I think it's smart. It's gonna get some attention. I don't think it's new. Chad: Yes, the big difference between talent acquisition, staffing and RPO, is that talent acquisition, it's your job. The other two, it's a business, they focus on EBITDA, they focus on margins, they focus on all of the business aspects of it, which means efficiencies and less headcount is the biggest thing that they need to focus on, and that being said, everybody's gonna ChatGPT. This week, in addition to Hireology and B. Murries, ChatGPT news over the past weeks, we now have SeekOut and Fenham joining the ranks of the hyper-automation. Is everybody gonna have a ChatGPT instance here? Quincy: Oh, I don't know. I think anybody who plays in the ChatBot space should. It's the next level, it's the next step up, it's the next ability to deliver a more humanized experience, to deliver it in a way that brings empathy to the process, all the things that all of us have been talking about for years and years that are very difficult frankly, to deliver. And I'll call it a dumbbot the smaller language model, the ones you have to train for every single intent and bring back, so if you're in that space at some point, I think you should look to bring it in, I don't think everyone should put all of their eggs in that basket. I don't think everybody should put all of their money there, I don't think that the big players in the world should change their entire road map to incorporate it, but I don't think that it's gonna go back. Words and what it is that it's doing. What do you think about it? Chad: So I think everybody is going to have some type of instance one way or the other, either to look cool or to actually facilitate business. So take a look at a Textkernel, they are not using ChatGPT, but they did acquire a ChatBot because they wanted a better mechanism in which to be able to collect user data, it's not something that has to be synchronous, it can be asynchronous. Then you have companies like SeekOut, why do they need a ChatBot? Well, there's a ton of different reasons, and a lot of it has to do with experience. So I think as we start to see this big wave of everybody understanding that, Wow, now that the ChatBot's cool again, large language models are amazing, but the domain specific language models and all of that data that you're actually... You're training your algorithms on, 'cause everybody's training algorithms, how do you get that data easily, more data into that machine so that it can feed it. Well, chatbots, text, messaging, WhatsApp, what have you, I believe is the perfect answer. Quincy: Oh, I agree, and chatbots are not just chatbots. And if you move beyond that, we're saying that ChatGPT is a ChatBot and it is, at its core, but all the large language models can deliver a lot more than just a question response sort of experience. We've seen it. We don't need to go through all of them ad nauseam, although I will say that Fenham and their release, it looks like their list of features and what they can deliver are straight from a ChatGPT created list of what ChatGPT can do. Which is funny to me, I would love to see it. I think they probably can do these things, I think that organizations who are extending their functionality would be wise to examine doing it within the realm of a large language or generative AI model. Chad: And what I would like to say is that anybody who's doing due diligence on any of these organizations, I don't care if they have a ChatBot or not, you need to feel it, touch it, taste it, test it yourself, having a sales person demo this shit. Is not the fucking answer. Quincy: Amen to that. Chad: ChatGPT, being able to be as transparent as it has, where you can see it, feel it, touch it, taste it, engineering your own prompts, there's just it's like the new bullion, but it's better and it's cooler. Quincy: Well I used that same analogy in my head as I was preparing for this show. Chad: There it is. Quincy: We are in the same space. It's the new bullion. Chad: Yes. But that being said, GDPR... Italy just ban ChatGPT citing GDPR, access to personal information and privacy, Italy says Open AI doesn't have the legal right to use people's personal information in ChatGPT, these large language models are pretty exciting and scary at the same time, it's interesting 'cause one of my friends... One of my developer friends, John Rice on LinkedIn, actually said, "US tech titans were ruling the internet, ruling data collection and seemed unstoppable, the lead they had over most European tech companies was nearly insurmountable until GDPR." His focus here is like, Look, everybody thinks this is a compliance and privacy play. No, this is slowing American tech down so that Europe can catch up. What do you think about those two things? Quincy: Yeah, I think it's both. I think it bums me out, I think as a technologist and an HR tech fan girl, I get excited about the new applications that are coming up, and then GDPR regulation steps in, like the responsible parent who won't let you eat too much candy before dinner, and it bums me out. That said, I think there's truth to both. I think it is about data privacy, I think in general, that Europe has led the world in that way, and putting some breaks on some things that potentially... I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that everybody's out to get you, and then everybody's gonna bleed my bank account. That said, I think that some regulation and some caution and moderation is important, so I appreciate that, but I also think there's truth to the other bit, European tech needs to catch up and they are. We've seen a lot of it. You've certainly seen a lot of it, you and Joel talk about it on this show. But... Yeah, I think there's a little bit of both in there. What do you think about it? Chad: Well, I think all I have to do is say, Cambridge Analytica and SVB. If we don't find a way to fucking understand these Goddamn things that are happening, these new tech platforms that are popping up and we don't start providing guardrails, then we're going to find ourselves in a heap of shit, really. Again, we weren't ready for Cambridge Analytica, we wanna focus on TikTok and how TikTok is owned by China, ByteDance and China. Totally get that. Understand that, but yet we still have an organization in our fucking backyard, Meta, Facebook, that work directly with a non-US company to be able to provide Russia with data. It's one of those things where it's like, Oh my fucking god. This is all about narrative. This is all about being able to... I think in some cases, yes, maybe slow the US from an innovation standpoint, so the Europeans can catch up, but at the end of the day, Cambridge Analytica, SVB, we might not slow this down, Joel calls it, putting the toothpaste back in the tube. I think we have to, as the adults in the room, because I'm gonna tell you right now, corporate America, they're gonna go after that dollar and they don't give a shit on how they get it, and again, that's what they've been charged to do. Quincy: They have... So having that, the parent making you wash your hands and not eat too much before dinner is a critical part of this development so that we don't end up with a case where... We all remember the case of Amazon a few years ago, who had to pull back their recruiting engine because it was fraught with bias, and we don't want that, we wanna take the tech that I think can do amazing good in the world and let it be applied for good and not for evil. SFX: Shall we play a game. Chad: Get ready kids. On the other side of this break, we're gonna talk about one thing that Quincy hates. [music] Chad Oh yeah. Quincy: We go way back here now. Chad: Not just a Quincy pet peeve, but survey... Quincy: Survey says. Chad: 95% of people have worked with someone who talks too much. Preply recently surveyed over a 1000 workers and here are their key findings, go figure, 95% of respondents have had a co-worker who talks too much on average, chatty co-workers spend 90 minutes of their workday talking. Americans say the worst time to encounter their talkative co-worker is when they're trying to finish something up and go home, a talkative co-worker has prevented 71% of work getting done. Quincy: And yet let's all rush back into the office. Shall well. So, I mean, look, I probably have been... In fact, I'm sure I've been that chatty co-worker... Chad: At the end of the day? Quincy: No, never at the end of the day. Are you kidding me? No, I'm a morning person. Well, other people hate it, they haven't had their coffee yet, they don't wanna hear... When we started the show, today, I sang to you, Chad. Chad: You did. Quincy: I sang. Chad: I know. Quincy: So I'm a morning person, I'd probably been that person, but you know how I limited that, I work from home, and I've worked from home since 2008 before working from home was cool. I had a lot more done, I'm a lot more productive. People... I like you, you're nice, we'll have a drink after work, but during the day, leave may be. Just let me be. Chad: So, the top three things not to talk about because they're annoying as fuck. Number three. Quincy: ChatGPT. Chad: Kids. Quincy: Oh, wait. No. Sorry. Chad: Kids, maybe kids and then ChatGPT. Number two, politics. Number one, gossip, and then the three best ways to handle... That's right. Handle these co-workers. Number three, directly say that you can't talk, which is what I do, I'm busy. Number two, avoid them entirely, so just run or number one, listen for a bit and then say, Oh, I have something to do. What's your go-to? Quincy: I put my Team's messaging on Do Not Disturb, and then I forget it sometimes. It's like that all day. I don't know. No, yeah, you know what, here's the thing I do like chatting with my co-workers. It's fun, engage with them, we have a good time. It's certainly not all about work all the time, but there's a time and a place, and people need to learn to read the room or the computer screen and understand if people aren't available, I don't think that you should put people in the position where they can go I don't have time for you. Go away. It's uncomfortable. Chad: It is. Quincy: Even me, as saucy as I am, I don't wanna hurt people's feelings. Chad: Lies, lies. Yeah, I have to say that I... Especially building and managing sales teams, most of your best sales people are one or two people, one who just totally laser-focused and they just knock your shit out and they nail their goals, and then you have the other one who is just so fucking good, half of their time, they're nailing their goals, the other half of the time, they're talking to people in the halls, I mean, I know some of my best sales people, I had to lure them back to their office, Hey, leave him alone. He's not a goal. You are, I did it. [laughter] Quincy: I see, I've seen opposite, the people who are talking that much, the sales people, they think they're just that good, but they really need to be a little bit more focused on research and prep. Chad: Amen. So that being said, Quincy, thanks for joining us on another show. Quincy: Thanks for having me. Chad: We appreciate it. And next week, kids. I'm sorry, Joel's gonna be back. So we'll try to have Quincy back, but until then that's another one in the can Quincy. Chad: We out. Quincy: We out. OUTRO: Wow. Look at you. You made it t through an entire episode of the challenges podcast, maybe you cheated and 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, a Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your five whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off on the guilt, let's save some soap, because you will be back. Like an awful train wreck you can't tuck away and like Chad's favorite question, you can't quit them either. We're out.

Finland joins NATO, virtual cheese is now and thing and WOW, that whole Axel Springer taking Stepstone public isn't going well... Is it? After being acquired by Stepstone, Cammio, a video recruitment platform, is won back through a management buyout. Lieven professes his obsession with ChatGPT. Okay his healthy obsession, while we debate ownership, banning, GDPR, and some techniques. Plus, Buy or Sell with Patch, Cruit, and Epinote. If you're allergic to great content you have been warned, grab your EpiPen, a cold beer and enjoy! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level. [music] 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. It's International Pooper Scooper Week. Pet Dogs generate over 4.4 billion pounds of poop every year. Almost as much shit as we talk on this show. Hey kids, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast as Europe. I'm your co-host, Joel Macron Garbage Cheesman, and I'm joined by Chad Portugal's, chief Pooper Scooper, Sowash, and Lieven Belgium three, Germany two, Vaughn D Hansen. On this episode, grand Cammio, Lieven's unhealthy relationship with ChatGPT, and a little buy or sell. Let's do this. Lieven: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Chad: Okay, so is it me or does virtual Joel have a weird poop fetish? Anyway, it's a Cheesman thing, I think. Lieven: Cheesman thing. [chuckle] Chad: Again, we have virtual cheese, which is, I guess just as good as the regular cheese, if you're using your headset. If you're using the goggles and you're in the metaverse, Joel is with his family. Let me say this again, Joel is with his family in Las Vegas. Now, Lieven is Las Vegas a place that you take the kids? He has a six year-old. Lieven: It's the last place where I would take a six year old to. I mean, it's a place where you can make kids and you can afterwards deny you made them, but it's not a place where you actually take your kids to. Why would you? [chuckle] Chad: I'm sure we will have some detailed conversations around the pick. It might have been more of his wife picking things, I don't know. I have no clue. We will figure out. But this week kids, we have virtual cheese. He should be back for the next show. So let's move on to shout-outs. Lieven: First one is, I'm feeling the LinkedIn love for the first time. Chad: Oh God, are you drinking the Kool-Aid? Lieven: I'm still on coffee. No, no. [chuckle] Seriously, seriously. Last week I was invited by LinkedIn to their talent awards and LinkedIn offered me a decent dinner and they put me at a table with seven interesting young women. And they gave me an awards, the talent awards, which was well deserved of course. [chuckle] But still they gave it to me. Chad: Wait a minute, seven hot models and an award? [chuckle] Lieven: Yeah that's basically the whole idea. No, I said interesting women, I didn't say they were hot models. Chad: Oh, okay. Lieven: Interesting. Yeah, but they're real nice. Okay, so they put me on a table, give me an award, I was happy, happy, everything was nice. And I must say I always loved LinkedIn as a concept. I mean, we're recruiters and LinkedIn is a resume database, which keeps itself updated, so that's great. LinkedIn is cool. But in the past I didn't really like their commercial attitude. They were really commercial and their client services to a certain extent sucked sometimes. Chad: Okay. Lieven: But I must say, in the past couple of years, they really tried to improve up to the point where I feel that our client services now are best in class. And I'm just going to give one example. Chad: Okay. Lieven: We have done so many acquisitions within house of HR and all the companies we bought, I'm talking about over 30 the last two, three years, all those companies had existing LinkedIn contracts. So, it was really a hassle to check who's paying what and all different contracts with different starting dates, etcetera. So LinkedIn really succeeded in putting all those contracts together in one house of HR contract in a way everyone got more out of it. We asked Indeed to do the same thing and after six weeks, Indeed came back to us and they said, "Nah, we can't... No, it's too complicated." [chuckle] And then I realized LinkedIn has been improving so much and Indeed still sucks and I don't think it'll improve. Now they fired over 2000 employees. I can't imagine their customer service will improve by firing people. Chad: No. Lieven: So tons of love to Jenny Hestermann and Mike Ams from LinkedIn. And Boo to my contacts at Indeed. Chad: Models and awards over at LinkedIn, I love it. Joel actually from Las Vegas also has a shoutout. Let's hear it. Joel: Okay. My first shoutout is what I'm gonna call a disturbing shoutout to Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Hungary's leader has gone too far. As far as I'm concerned, Hungary needs to be kicked out of the EU. Chad: What? Joel: Why you ask is it their blatant disregard for the rule of law. Chad: Maybe. Joel: Mistreatment of the LGBTQ community. Chad: Of course. Joel: Or even Viktor Orbán is concerning ties to Vladimir Putin? Chad: Definitely. Joel: No. It's because of the atrocity that is oranges on pizza. Chad: Oh. Joel: During a visit to Kiskőrös. Chad: Oh. Joel: Orbán visited a pizzeria that created a dish in his honor featuring toppings such as chicken, jalapenos and get this, slices of orange. Pineapple on pizza is one thing, but oranges, oh, no. No, no, no, no. [chuckle] Hungary you gots to go. How do you say bye bye and Hungarian, Viszlát. Chad: So oranges, is that a thing in Europe, Oranges on a pizza? Lieven: Nope. Never seen it. No. Chad: How about pineapple? Pineapple is a thing here. We call it a Hawaiian pizza. What about over there? Lieven: So do we, we call it a Hawaiian pizza. And actually I'm going to order one for my kids [chuckle] after this episode. They're highly popular, Hawaiian pizzas, but Italian try to keep a distance from it. I was told. Yeah. Chad: More importantly though, my first shout out is to Finland, who is part of NATO now Kids. Joel: Yeah. Chad: That's right. That's a cause for celebration, right? [applause] Lieven: Right. Welcome Finland. Chad: Exactly, this from Reuters, Finland formally joined the NATO Military Alliance on Tuesday in a historic policy shift brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Go figure, drawing a threat from Moscow of countermeasures. Take that Putin, suck it. Emotional Damage. Lieven: Suck it like an orange on pizza. Chad: Okay, let's go ahead. Usually we don't have an event until early July, although we've got something new that popped up. Usually we wait till the Friday show, but RecFest is happening in early July, and if you've never been, you're missing out on a chance to check out the best recruiting and technology carnival there is. It's an extravaganza, but if you've missed it before and you are in the UK or you're in Europe, here's how you get a free ticket kids. This is directly from Bobby Leonard's LinkedIn post quote, "Talent Acquisition and Recruiting Professionals. Yesterday, we announced a new initiative to get our industry back to work by providing complimentary RecFest tickets to all, open to work industry professionals. If you're seeking new opportunities and eager to learn, network and grow, don't miss this chance. To claim your ticket, follow these simple steps." First and foremost, you gotta go to LinkedIn, you gotta find Bobby Leonard from the recruitment events company on LinkedIn. Then comment on the post where he's talking about free tickets and they will DM you a unique code for a free ticket. That's it, kids, very simple. Kids over at RecFest wanna make sure that everybody gets a chance to network and enjoy the wonderful libations that happen at RecFest. Music. Chad: Topics. Joel: Cammio, a video recruitment platform has undergone a management buyout from StepStone Group, which acquired the company back in 2020. The buyout means that Cammio will operate independently under the leadership of co-CEOs, Sandhna Chintoe and Dimitri Knysch. Customers of both companies can continue to use their platform as before. So my take this rarely happens, especially when it's not with the original founders who wanna buyout the company. Although the two who want to buy it and did buy it are longtime employees of the company. Joel: During the pandemic, a lot of companies launched video or acquired video recruiting companies. Even if it wasn't an ideal fit for the business, it was a bet on the pandemic and the remote work phenomenon. I think that's what StepStone did here. They rolled the dice three years ago and with employment looking to slow down in 2023, they had to look in the mirror and realize video maybe isn't a real great fit for their business. Pawning it off to two employees was pretty convenient as opposed to selling it to another company. And here we are, StepStone gets to cut some fat and two loyal employees get to take the wheel. Good luck to them. I say they're going to need it. It's a crowded field of video solutions that they now get to take on. Chad: Wow. Okay, Lieven. So you have some insights. I don't know if you call this a very smart business proposal or if this was just a... Was a debacle that went wrong. Lieven: The timing is actually kind of weird of course. I mean, management buyouts happen all the time, but normally when there is an IPO coming, those people should be able to make some money out of it. If they were shareholders when they go make an IPO, then they get some money. So normally you would stay. These people maybe are not shareholders at all, but then it's weird that they would buy the company before it's going to get listed. So we could of course ask them why they did it and it would make sense, but it's much more fun to just speculate a bit on the possibilities. So I think it could be the management feels the company wasn't evaluated as it should be, so they got a feeling we could buy it for a bargain and we can make more out of it afterwards. Lieven: That's a possibility. Or as Joe was suggesting, there was some... They're probably losing money and they had to dump it before they are going to get listed. So just to pump the EBITDA. But then I think it's too late for that. If they're getting listed in 2023, those numbers will be still in. So it can't be that. Maybe it's like people working at Cammio just didn't want to be part of listed company and they refused and, they said Okay we're going to buy them as ourself and we'll do it ourself. Plenty of possibilities, but maybe it's just like, they feel they're leaving the sinking ship and they're better of alone could be as well. Because we've talked about StepStone, IPO already and none of us agreed at it or none of us thought it was because they were doing so well. Chad: And not great timing. Not great timing at all. I think you're 100% correct. I think that this is an IPO play and they probably got a great deal for a management buyout so that they can get rid of Cammio because as you're looking to go to IPO, you wanna try to slim everything down, you wanna try to make it look good. So I see this as an IPO play in StepStone's ability to integrate video is probably on pars with Monster's ability to integrate VideoMyJob years ago. It took forever and it shouldn't have. Why? Because a huge technical debt that Monster was fighting. And it never really became the video powerhouse everyone at Monster hoped it would be. So after buying Cammio and understanding the true obstacles to integration for an old platform like Axel Springer's StepStone, I think they took a look at it and said, "Hey, look, we need to shed this skin [laughter] and we need to set StepStone up better for an IPO and we can't do that with all of this internally." Chad: So as for the excited new startup platform that was reborn from this debacle, they've lost major grounds since the acquisition Cammio found itself competing against internal projects and new StepStone features just to gain oxygen and resources internally. That ground will be incredibly hard to make up. I say good luck to the new owners. That's awesome for them. But again, the market is much, much different than it was when they were acquired. Lieven: They were acquired only two years ago, 2020, three years ago. Chad: Yeah. Lieven: So I am... Just to have some fun [chuckle] I rewrote the press release, which was released back then and it's so fun. Chad: [laughter] Did you have ChatGPT rewrite the press release? Lieven: I did not but I could have. No, no, but I read it and I thought, okay, they were so happy about it and they were so enthusiastic and they must feel so disappointed now if they just let it go. In only two or three years, everything changes. And I know times are changing and situations change, but it was remarkable. And once again, the timing is weird. So good luck to them. Chad: It speaks volumes when we take a look at an older platform like Monster and how they tried to integrate a newer platform like VideoMyJob and this is pre pandemic and they thought they could turn it around pretty quickly, but it took nine months. They actually announced it, way before they were ready to launch product. It took an additional six months after the announcement, before they put product out. Because there's so much technical debt that Monster was dealing with personally. This is something that every platform that's been around for more than 10 years is dealing with. Monster's been around for 20 plus, so I mean, it was dealing with a lot. StepStone's been around for a very long time. Lieven: Since 1996. And I wonder, do you know if was StepStone before Monster afterwards? I can't remember. Chad: Well, I think it was before Monster, the online career center and the Monster board, those two that actually came together, those two preceded StepStone. So, '99 was when Monster.com was actually created, but that was emerging. But either way, I mean, StepStone... I don't wanna say they have old technology, but they're going to have more technical debt than most. And to be able to... And this is also a tale that I think has been told over and over and over, just through code breakers and press releases. When you look at something, you're like, "Oh, this looks like a great idea, oh shit, how are they gonna pull that off?" I just think they had a problem pulling it off and they just couldn't get it done in time to look good and start to make cash for an IPO. Lieven: Yeah. Something like, choose your battles and this one just took too much energy probably. Chad: Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. So after the break, we're gonna test Lieven's ChatGPT, obsession. We're gonna talk a little bit about what everybody's talking about, but from some different angles. ChatGPT. All right. Lieven, who really owns the results of ChatGPT? Lieven: That is a very good question indeed. And it's going to bring some problems sooner or later, probably sooner, because when I enter a prompt... A very intelligent prompt, which sure makes me feel better... [laughter] Lieven: A great prompt, I'm a prompt writer. Chad: You're a prompt engineer? Lieven: I'm a prompt engineer, of course. Chad: Yes. Lieven: And the prompt triggers the result. So basically I'm at the start, but then you could argue, "No, you're not at the start because the algorithm has been studying existing content." So your content which was prompted by your prompt, has been created on content created by someone else or maybe they at least should get some attention for it or some value for it. It's hard and maybe in the disclaimer of ChatGPT, it says we stay the owner of whatever is created by ChatGPT. I never checked, I should? Chad: Right. Lieven: There are many parties involved and they all could argue they have at least a part of the rights to the IP and they all probably are right. But translations, if you translate something and you rewrite it a bit, and chatGPT does rewrite content a bit is a different content or is it rewritten contents? It's hard to tell. Chad: Well, Alexander Tchaikovsky posed a question on LinkedIn. A pretty fucking, creepy question by the way, but relevant to this. Alexander writes quote, "I have asked ChatGPT to pretend to be Chad Sowash." I don't know why he'd want to do that... [laughter] Chad: "And suggest ideas for a highly engaging LinkedIn post, we can discuss the quality of the topics, but can we ignore the fact that mathematically speaking, some part of Chad's work has been used to calculate weights in a neural network. The exact weights in other people's work are used to generate the output in a screenshot that he shared, so do I owe Chad something?" God damn sure you do. [laughter] Chad: If I use these outputs and ask ChatGPT to write a post pretending to be him. SFX: Shall we play the game? Chad: This is interesting because I also had another friend that... He created an AI assistant with ChatGPT, he modeled it after me. Grumpy, innovative... I'm like first and foremost, I'm not grumpy, asshole. Innovative... Lieven: Asshole? Chad: [laughter] Passionate, right? So it's like all of these things are coming to an edge. When do I stop owning me, Lieven? That's the question. Lieven: Did you ever own you? Chad: I hope so? [laughter] Lieven: I'm not sure. We could have a small philosophical discussion, I guess. Chad: Good point. Lieven: This is indeed a very relevant question. I don't think they figured it out before launching OpenAI. Chad: Well, should we start banning? Italy has already started to ban. Lieven: No, of course not. And I think maybe the question isn't that relevant and I'm just going to quote one of the best prime ministers Belgium ever had. He said, it's a translation, so it's not really quotes, but you only have to solve a problem the moment it's there. So let's talk about this when there actually is a problem. So now there are potentially thousands of problems, but let's solve them once they arise and they haven't risen, rise yet. We'll see. Chad: Well, I think that kind of philosophy worked at a different age when we didn't move so quickly. This is scary because we're moving much faster. AI is starting to show promise that we've been talking about since back in the Terminator days for God's sakes, so back in the '80s. So we've been thinking about this, but this is the day when we start to see promise of AI and start to think of, and let me throw this out to you real quick, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, nobody really saw that happening, but then it happened and it was an avalanche of shit, right? That we now have to take care of. So, do we just wait for the avalanche of shit before we start to work on it? Lieven: Maybe not. But then again there are so many possible avalanches of shits and some will never happen. So, you can't solve every problem before it happens. You can try to evade them as good as possible, but you just can't take everything into account. But, and I must say I was impressed, WEC, the World Employment Confederation last week they had their big conference. And for those who don't know the World Employment Confederation, it's like the federation of the Staffing Industry on a global level. You have National Federations, in Belgium, you have Federgon, in the Netherlands it's ABU, and France, it's Prism'Emploi etcetera. Lieven: But the global one is called WEC. They had a conference and they presented code of conduct for using AI, and the staffing industry. I'll share it with you. And it's actually... I was impressed by the way they think ahead of problems which will some day, and we have to think about them in those cases before they arise. That's right. Chad: So, also on LinkedIn, a friend of mine, his name's John Rice, he's an American. This is something that he wrote that I thought was interesting, "I'm surprised at the number of people who have not noticed the brilliance of GDPR. Having less to do with data privacy and everything to do with leveling the playing field with US Tech Titans. So, I thought I would write a concise statement of why." He further writes, "US Tech Titans were ruling the internet, ruling data collection and seemed unstoppable. The lead they had over European tech companies was nearly insurmountable until GDPR." What do you think about that? I thought it was interesting that he took it from the standpoint of, wait a minute, we need to put an obstacle in the way of these big companies like we see with Google and Facebook and some of the social, big tech social companies. What do you think about that? Do you think GDPR is really that much of an obstacle? Lieven: He's American, right? Chad: Yes. Lieven: Yeah. So, he wasn't involved with all the problems GDPR created for decent companies. Because so many consultants became very rich just by trying to help companies adapt to GDPR. And I agree with the necessity of blocking the big tech companies and gathering the data and definitely misusing it. And like you mentioned Cambridge Analytics, was a big problem. But by trying to realize that they also fucked all those little companies totally. And I don't get less spam than I used to, I got as much spam as 10 years ago, probably much more. But the people who spam, they just don't care about GDPR, it's mostly illegal. It's like those shady lists they got from the darknet and they just tried to sell me something, whatever. Lieven: The decent companies, they don't spam me, but they didn't before because spamming people isn't a good way to sell something. So, I think so many companies had to spend literally millions of Euros on becoming okay with GDPR. And nothing changed, only maybe for a few big tech companies. Well, they should have picked them and they should leave us alone. Chad: So, your thoughts were that GDPR was more of a pain in the ass for Europe than it has been for the US thus far? Lieven: Yeah. They should have been sniping instead of using a nuclear bomb. Chad: Carpet bombing. Yes. Lieven: Yeah. But I agree it was necessary, and maybe now the Americans should be a bit jealous of what we have. But it was terrible for many companies to just get aligned with all those new legislations. It's not easy. Chad: So, let's go ahead and go back to your ChatGPT obsession. So, as we talk about all of this, how has it impacted you most in your life? 'Cause you use it on a daily basis. Lieven: Yeah, constant. I started with just some testing. Let's write a vacancy, okay. The moment you write a vacancy, you get a pretty decent vacancy. And with a few minutes of work, it's possible to publish it. So, that's a time saver. But living in Belgium, a very small country, we constantly need translations. Normally, I had to send a vacancy to an agency, which would translate it within 24 hours, and they charge for one page, 300 Euros. Chad: Okay. Lieven: So now, ChatGPT can do the translation almost as good as they could. So, now I just use a proofreader, someone a native speaker who just checks, "Okay, some little words must be changed." It will cost me like 10 Euros. So, it's a big difference. Chad: Yes. Lieven: But then I started using it more creatively. I'll give you an example. For one of the board meetings, I was preparing the numbers from Federgon, at National Federation. "How is the staffing industry moving in January? It's going up, is it slowing down?" We constantly check all those numbers and compare them to us to see how much better we are doing, and we always are than the markets. I had to check with ABU, I had to check with Federgon, with Prism'Emploi, all the others I mentioned. And they all use a different way of showing numbers. And it's all more or less the same, but it's presented differently. And some of them just use plain text. So, now I was able to copy paste the plain text and engineer a nice prompt, "Could you put all the relevant data in columns and rows, I could copy paste into Excel?" And the system did it perfectly, it saved me like one hour. Lieven: And then I started using it for really everything. And this is possible for contracts and the recruitment business, just writing a contract. But also someone asked me, "We need a letter to let someone know he is not being fired." And ChatGPT did a great job. This is something I didn't come up with myself and I checked, "Could ChatGPT do it?" And they could. And this isn't a normal kind of letter writing, it's not like just, "You are fired. No, we told you were fired, but we made a mistake you are not fired." This kind of letters, and it did a great job. So, it's really GPT-4 is better than the average employee in writing these kind of things. And this will be a wave of disruption in our industry. You've been around for longer than I am, I've been in the industry for over 20 years you've been maybe longer. I've seen a few moments, which I would call a wave of disruption. Now, the first one was at the early 2000s when suddenly steps on a Monster came, and the print advertisements dropped. Lieven: And one year from millions and millions to zero. Okay. So, this was a moment and arrival of LinkedIn definitely was a wave of disruption. And you always have winners and losers, and that's typical. And it's coming all of a sudden and it's washing everything away. That's why it's called a wave of disruption. And I think ChatGPT is, will be the same. I mean, hundreds... 100 million users after only three months. That's massive. Tons of winners surfing the wave, but also lots of losers who are going to be washed away and disappear in the surf and they'll never appear again. And this moment, it's, really exciting. I love it, but it's pretty dangerous. And when I was last week at the World Employment Confederation, all those different speakers, all experts within the industry all mentioned ChatGPT. Lieven: And at the end, Denis Pennel, the CEO of World Employment Confederation said, "Yes, that's all very nice." But, and then he showed a whole reason of books all predicting the end of work, the end of jobs since the 1800s. There was like Keynes who said people only will need to work like 15 hours because everything will be automated. And there are tens and tens, hundreds of books all saying the same thing. And they have been saying it for hundreds of years. And then I thought, "Okay, ChatGPT is great, and I love it. And it'll change definitely many jobs, but it'll also create many jobs." And if you compare it to the invention of electricity, it's nothing. I mean, electricity suddenly at the end of the Victorian period, electricity arrived in the houses. Chad: Yeah. Lieven: And that was a game changer. And I don't think many people lost their job because of electricity. Some people had to be re-skilled and the next 10 years, everyone will need to be re-skilled but people will. And I think in the end we'll have more jobs. But once again, different jobs, like every 10 years, something happens, which will create some kind of a wave. And this is the one, and I like it and I'm happy about it. Chad: So once again, nobody's going to question Lieven's obsession with ChatGPT. Lieven: My healthy obsession. Chad: Your healthy obsession. Joel: All right, guys, it's time to play a little buy or sell. For those that don't know, we read a summary of three companies in Europe that recently got funding, and the three podcasters. Buy or sell the following companies. Let's get started. UK Startup Patch has raised 3.4 million Euros to support the launch of new hubs. The funds will be used to expand the team and further develop their vision. Patch takes empty or neglected local buildings and transforms them into community spaces where people can work, meet and discover local initiatives. It provides a flexible model of working and living that's accessible to all unleashing the potential of millions of people in hundreds of towns, that according to the company. Okay, is Patch a buy or sell? Two words for you. We and work, WeWork has been trying to crack this nut for over a decade. You know where empty and neglected buildings are? Shitty neighborhoods. And you think workers are going to flock to these neighborhoods? Yeah, no. WeWork's stock is down almost 90% this year, and it's for good reason. It's a bad business. And as far as I'm concerned, Patch is doomed. It is a sell from me. Chad: All right, Lieven. That's a big sell from Joel. What do you Think? Lieven: It sounds very nice. Refurnishing old houses and inviting people to join the neighborhood and to all work together and, shiny, happy people. But it's breaks. And it's like, restoring and renovating old houses, this isn't our business. This is just creating co-working spaces but putting a marketing sauce on it. It's a big sell. Chad: I believe the conversation of where we need to go with work, to perform work is evolving. As we start stepping away from the 1930s and 1950s models, after the pandemic help us all understand work is what we do, instead of just living to make an hour commute in and back from work every day. The world of work and where we work, it's got to evolve. But the question is, is Patch the answer? The rise of hybrid has become a landing point, in a negotiation of getting the best talent. But I believe many of these spaces already exists in bars, restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, WeWorks, right? They're all over the place. So I believe the evolution of work will happen, but unfortunately, it will look a lot less like WeWork or Patch, more like an app showing open spaces and already established businesses in your neighborhood with coffee, breakfast, lunch specials, those types of things. So for me, unfortunately as well, it's going to be a sell. Next we have Cruit. Joel: Recruitment referral platform, Cruit, has raised funding from Venture Capital, Slingshot Ventures and Angel Investors in the HR industry. The company says funding will be used to make the platform even easier for companies to find candidates through employee and community referrals. Cruit says it has already seen significant success with many companies reporting improved hiring outcomes, and increased employee engagement as a result of using the platform. So buy or sell, Cruit. Here's from the Cruit homepage, "Make referring a lovable experience with gamification. Upgrade your employee branding by letting your people share their enthusiasm with the world." Yeah, this is the proverbial knife to a gunfight. With so many established players like Bonusly, Aaron, Firstbird, Bluebird, Compt, and others, Cruit is in way over its head. I see nothing here other than shiny marketing, as well as empty sales rhetoric. Cruit gets the boot. Chad: There it is, Cruit gets the boot. What about for you, Lieven? Lieven: Well, after trying it myself and failing miserably, I totally lost my faith in referral. So sorry, it's a sell. And actually we had all the right cards to make it a big success. We had an existing app with over 30,000 vacancies on it, and it's really popular app, and it's used constantly by companies and by job seekers. And we put an amount of money between 150 Euros and 1,500 next to each job. So we had over 1 million Euros of bonus to pay. And we had users and everything was there and I was sure it was going to succeed. It was going to be a huge success, and it wasn't. And the only reason why, is people just don't trust it. Why would you give me 1,500 Euros if I bring a candidate? They just don't trust it. And the people who do trust it, because they're the only employees and they don't care, they don't take the time. And after once or twice trying, they just stop. So, I gave up, and I used to be a big believer in referral, but if this didn't work, I don't think anyone else will. So no. Chad: It's a sell from Lieven. Sell from Lieven. Okay. So, referrals work, right? I mean, most of the data that I've seen over the years always show referrals as the number one or number two source of hire, which is why most HR and TA departments don't use referral platforms because they're tripping over candidates and hiring them already without the expense. Or they spent money on a referral program before, and the platform isn't sticky enough, meaning nobody uses that platform after it's lost its initial luster. The biggest problem with referral platforms is that they don't deal with user stickiness. These problems are these types of platforms have to evolve into more marketing based engagement platforms. So, unfortunately we're batting a thousand on killing them. Let's go ahead. The last one. Epinote. Joel: All right. Polish startup Epinote has raised 1.4 million Euros in a pre-seed round offer solutions for a flexible workforce to tackle mundane tasks. Epinote deploys a mix of human hands and technology to handle arduous repetitive tasks such as data annotation, lead generation, and validation, and customer and candidate acquisition. The company plans to use the funds to expand its offering, and help more firms to become data-driven organizations. Epinote has over 50 clients on three continents. So buy or sell Epinote. I like the automation piece. Theoretically could fit into the recruiting stack and it's priced pretty favorably. My big problem is this is not a product, it's a feature. And it's a feature that tools found at OpenAI and others will likely solve for free. And just be a plugin for other companies to put it into their solution. So, this is not a product. If they ever become a product, I'll certainly listen and reevaluate and take another look. Until then, Epinote, that's a sell, and that's three sell ratings from your boy. Chad: That escalated quickly. All right, Lieven, that's three strikes and you're out from Joel. What are you gonna give Epinote? Lieven: Well, it does sound very interesting, and if someone can take over my mundane tasks, I'd happily pay them for it. But, I agree with Joel. I'm not sure if they're very future proof. I mean, if you combine generative AI and cheap workers at Fiverr, your mundane problems are solved, basically. So I'm afraid there won't be anything left for Epinote to solve. It's one to watch, and maybe they will come up with something ingenious, but for now it's a sell. Chad: Oh, so everybody's touting automation. They're touting GPT, they're... AI, RPA, it doesn't matter. Everybody's focusing on this. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to really try to figure out what the hell Epinote is doing. 'Cause I looked at the website and just broadly saying that you can solve an automation problem, that doesn't say much to me. So I went to their business cases and here's what their business cases sound like. Number one, quality data collection over five countries. Number two, using Epinote to power an outreach campaign. Number three, improving retail experience with Epinote mystery shoppers. Number four, managing over 3 million products with data enrichment. And last but not least, number five, data annotation for more sustainable aquaculture. None of those sounded the same. What the actual fuck do these guys do? It doesn't feel like there is enough focus for a startup in the EU where you really have to be focused. They desperately need the focus discipline, and a hell of a lot more than 1.4 million Euros. Unfortunately, wow, no buys at all. We hopefully will get another bite at the apple on the next show, but until then kids... SFX: Shall we play a game? Chad: Okay, Lieven Get back to playing with ChatGPT before Belgium bans it. Lieven: It won't. Chad: That's our show, my friend. We out. Lieven: 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 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.

Thank heavens for tenue... How else would The Chad & Cheese's brash, challenging, and no bullshit attitude get in the same room, hell the same solar system, as NYU and UNC academics? Yup, tenue must be the answer. Bascially, earlier this year, NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, the 370 Jay Project, and the NYU Tandon Department of Technology, Culture and Society hosted a new discussion in the series “Co-Opting AI”, which included this humble podcast. This event was created to examine how AI intersects with recruiting and with gaining access to the labor market. Taking a deep look into the industry and providing insights on the HR tech sector. The players: - Ifeoma Ajunwa is an Associate Professor of Law with tenure at UNC School of Law. - Mona Sloane is a sociologist working on design and inequality, specifically in the context of AI design and policy.... and The Chad & Cheese of course :) Props to The Co-Opting AI event series and Mona Sloane. It is hosted at IPK and co-sponsored by the 370 Jay Project, and the NYU Tandon Department of Technology, Culture and Society, and the NYU Center for Responsible AI. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Mona Slone: Dr. Ifeoma Ajunwa is an Associate Professor of Law with tenure at UNC School of Law, where she also is the Founding Director of the AI Decision-Making Research Program. She has been Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School since 2017. Her research focuses on race and the law, law and technology, and importantly, employment and labor law. Her work has been widely published in very many high-impact journals, among them the California Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Fordham Law Review and many more. She also is an avid public scholar. She has Op-Eds out with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and so on. Just testified before the US Congressional Committee on Education & Labor and has spoken before governmental agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And she also has a forthcoming book called The Quantified Worker: Law and Technology in the Modern Workplace, which I'm also very excited about. Now, my other two guests are, kind of come together, Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash. [chuckle] Joel: My God. Mona Slone: Joel Cheesman is a recruiting industry tech geek, his words not mine, from the late '90s when he worked at eSpan, one of the world's first job boards as well as JobOptions, CareerBoard, Jobing and Recruiting.com. He also did partnership stuff at employee screening IQ, but you probably know him from his days as Cheezhead. Joel likes to tinker, which means he has started a variety of businesses, and his latest venture is a market sentiment platform called Poach. He is the co-founder of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, which is the thing the two do together. And Joel does this together with Chad Sowash. Chad, if you could wave too, say hello. Chad: Hello. Mona Slone: Chad has actually worked... Hello, in the HR talent acquisition and HR tech space for over 20 years, consulting hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. He is a former Army Infantry drill sergeant, who cut his teeth in online recruitment in '98 with an outfit called Online Career Center before it launched in '99 as Monster.com. He went on to build startup DirectEmployers Association, steer RecruitMilitary toward revenue as CXO and build RandStad's, which is a big agencies first military veteran hiring program. He is also a professional podcaster today and is doing the The Chad & Cheese Podcast together with Joel. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much joining me today. I am handing it over to Dr. Ajunwa, who will set the scene for us. Ifeoma, AI deployment in 2023, what does that look like? Ifeoma: What does AI in HR or recruiting look like? Slightly bleak is probably my answer. So as you mentioned, I have a forthcoming book titled The Quantified Worker. As the title suggests, I do take a critical view to the role of AI in the workplace, and one of my chapters... Actually two of my chapters is devoted to automated hiring and the role that AI plays in that, be it in terms of sorting applicants through ATS Applicant Tracking Systems or through the use of automated video interviewing and what sort of like pseudoscience can come from that. So with the book, I'm really very interested in the role that AI is already playing in the workplace, which I think is somewhat getting subsumed by the conversation around chatGPT, DALL-E, all this generative AI that's supposedly going to put workers out of work and just take over the workplace. And then unbeknownst to us, we've already had AI... To be quite frank, I don't like the term AI. I actually prefer the term automated decision-making, because that's what really these things are. Ifeoma: But we already have automated decision-making in the workplace long before chatGPT and any of those generative AI. Currently, we have automated hiring systems that are actually very actively affecting workers' lives, and this is impacting who's considered a candidate for recruiters, it is impacting how the candidate experiences the hiring process. Even just putting in your application, you basically have to run the gauntlet of automated hiring algorithms that may be looking for certain keywords or may be designed to eliminate candidates based on gaps in employment and all the things like that that might actually have a discriminatory impact on workers. So I write about that in the book, so please pick up the book, The Quantified Worker, coming out soon. Available for pre-order. But I think what I really want to talk about with Joel and Chad is what trends that they're seeing with AI in HR, ignoring the... Well, not totally ignoring, but getting past the chatGPT hype, getting past all the generative AI putting people out of work. What is AI doing currently in the recruitment space? Joel: Well, first, I wanna thank Mona for having us on, and I particularly wanna thank tenure, because without tenure, I'm not sure a couple of clowns like us would be on a podcast or a webinar like this. I wanna thank tenure and thank Mona for having us on. And I think before we talk about current state and where we're going, which is very important, I think it's important also to look back a little bit at the history of AI. And in our intros, everyone knows that Chad and I are pretty old. And when Chad and I first got into the business world, you'd literally send a paper resume with a paper cover letter to an employer. In that world, it's very hard to apply to many, many jobs. The internet changed that. The internet enabled people to shotgun their resume to literally thousands of employers, and when that happened, employers were like, "Oh hell, how do we control the flow of all these resumes?" And the early days of filtering that was like pre-screening questions, it could be as easy as, "Are you 18 or over? Do you have a driver's license?" The filtering started in simple format, and it was generally not discriminatory against race and age and things like that. Joel: As technology evolved and we got away more from posting a job online, it became finding people online, and we can thank LinkedIn and others for that. So in addition to posting jobs, recruiters were then, "Okay, fine, people." And then services came out that tried to match these people that are online with jobs that are online, and the early iterations of that, as Chad and I know, were really, really bad and didn't really work very well. So technology evolved, databases of people, how do you search them, how do you find them, all these things have evolved into what it is today and what we're talking about today. But it's also important, I think, to highlight that there's no conspiracy to screw over people in this process. These are engineers that sit in a room and go, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could look at someone's face and how they answer questions, and are they more likely to be lying about this than otherwise?" Joel: There was no conspiracy to screw over people of diversity and diverse candidates. But it's kind of turned into that, unfortunately, and I think that's what we're talking about today. But I wanted to kinda set the table historically with how this thing was sort of born, and it's become a bit of a Frankenstein's monster that we're trying to figure out, "Okay, how do we fix this?" Government's involved, employers are involved, there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt in this, and hopefully we can set some of that fear, uncertainty and doubt to rest as we talk about some of these issues, but that's sort of my take on the current state of things, looking at the past to explain the current day and future. Chad: Well, and a couple of things Joel was talking about, that's all scale. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. But that's scale, when you had to actually mail or... You couldn't email at the time, you faxed. You faxed then your resume, you hand-carried it in. Well, imagine that day versus the next day when you got flooded with hundreds of resumes, what would happen. Most of those went into a black hole because recruiters didn't have time to get to them because they couldn't scale. That's the big change. Now, what we didn't ask then, what we should ask now is what Joel was alluding to with regard to facial recognition and all those things is not, "Can we?" It's "Should we?" Should we actually go that way? And talking about bias, the history of bias is rooted in humanity, not AI. The difference is scaling bias. Humans don't scale well. The best that we can scale is through training. We can train people to be biased, and then you have armies of people going out to be biased, but AI scales in an instant. Chad: So some of the best and most powerful systems can carry bias, and if we don't pay attention to the outcomes and feverishly audit the algorithms, we're going to have bias. Regulations do not distinguish between human and AI bias. Bias is bias. It's just that bias can scale much faster with AI. That's where we need to focus, where we're hearing all these glitz and glamor things about chatGPT, which I think is demonstrating that we're getting closer to the promise of AI than all of this vaporware we've been talking about for years. But then we talk about... And we know history from Amazon, building an algorithm, this is the, "Can we?" Yes, they can. They should have asked, "Should we?" And they shouldn't, because they automatically failed sourcing and hiring experiments by knocking out females. Why? Because they were feeding the algorithm, the machine, they were training it on data that was what? It was biased. That was human behavioral bias. And what happened? The machines spit out bias. So as we start to have these conversations, it's the can we, should we, but it's also understanding that we have to innovate. So as we innovate, we also need strong regulatory entities to ensure that the enforcements and the standards are clear, which we just don't have today. Ifeoma: Yeah, I think that's such a great... So many great points, Chad. And also to go back to Joel's point first about thinking about the historical development of automated hiring, it's funny that you brought that up because a co-author and I actually researched how did automated hiring come about, how was it even advertised when it first came out such that companies could take it on, and it was this idea that a lot of it was trying to find talent away from your geographical location, and it was actually the advent of software development that drove a lot of automated hiring development, which is that we need a software developer. We don't necessarily have them all concentrated in Silicon Valley, like you have now, let's find them wherever they are. And first, people would mail in their resumes on like a CD-ROM. They would do all their little coding tests on a CD-ROM and send that in, and that was like, "Okay, that's not so efficient. What if we had a centralized thing now that we have the internet where people can just access it from anywhere and do that?" And then when the first automated hiring programs are being developed, to go to Chad's point, one of the slogans, one of the advertising slogans was, "Clone your best worker." So just sit and think about that slogan, "Clone your best worker." Ifeoma: So automated hiring programs were never really meant to diversify the workplace, which is somewhat how they're sort of viewed now or used now by a lot of corporations, they were really meant to replicate exactly what you already had. So you take your best worker and you clone them. So if you think about historical bias, historical human bias, such as workplaces where women have been shut out, workplaces where there are not really a lot of minorities. When you have an automated hiring program then, what you're doing is not so much eliminating the bias, as Chad mentioned, but you're actually exacerbating it, because then you're just basically trying to clone your best workers. So unless you're very careful and thoughtful and deliberate, an automated hiring program is just going to come in and replicate bias. And do it at scale. That's also important as Chad mentioned, because as I mention in my book, one biased human manager can maybe affect, I don't know, thousands of resumes in there, tenure as a recruiter or a manager. But a program that's written in a way that's biased or trained in a way that results in bias getting included in can impact millions of people. It can impact millions of people. Ifeoma: As you touched on, Chad, it's just so important to start thinking about regulations. Thus far, I feel that automated hiring has been really a wild, wild West. It's really anybody can create an automated hiring program, and we've seen this. I know you've seen this in industry, and just make claims about what this automated hiring program can do, and a lot of the claims are about, "Oh, it'll just find you more diverse workers. Oh, it'll just create all these avenues of talent for you." A lot of it is snake oil, and the question is that why is that allowed to exist? Why do we not have regulations to curb misuse of automated hiring? Acknowledging that it can have its uses, like Joel mentioned before, it can allow for this efficiency in finding talent, efficiency in applying, efficiency for the applicant, but we need regulations. So my next question for you guys is... I mean, I have my thoughts on what regulations should be in place, but as industry players, what are your thoughts about what regulations we need? Chad: So any vendor that says that their tech is compliant and not biased shouldn't be trusted right out of the gate, because it's not the tech that's biased, I think we've already established that. It's the humans driving the tech, meaning the developers perspectively on the vendor side, but also the hiring companies. As we take a look at regulations today, it's focused on outcomes, and I don't think that changes. We have to take a look at outcomes, but again, we're scaling outcomes differently than we did just five, 10 years ago. So being able to take a look at the frameworks that we currently have, 'cause we know that government doesn't move as fast as technology and/or business, that we can take some of those frameworks that already exist and they work, and we just need to enforce them. Now, being able to move past that to some of the regulations and standards around auditing, like in New York City, I believe their move forward is smart. It sends a signal, sends a message, but they are going to have to work toward ensuring that there are frameworks and standards in place so that companies aren't throwing their hands up in the air saying, "Well, I don't know what to do." They do need direction, there's no question, although the direction right now is current regulation and outcomes. Joel: I think ultimately, there are going to be some features that are gonna have to be outlawed. I think automation with video, I don't know how that gets like rubber stamped approved. There are so many pitfalls in that, so something like that, I could see like your technology cannot do that. Now, other things like with people with disabilities that can't speak in a more fluid manner, like things that are gaps in speech can't be a feature that eliminates someone from getting to the next level of an interview. So to me, it's like ultimately certain features of the tech that pre-screen or get someone to the actual human being interview are gonna have to be outlawed. Many things in automation are great. I have a 16-year-old son that just got his first job, and I can tell you that applying through McDonald's with a conversational chatbot versus sending in a paper resume at your local subway, the McDonald's experience is far better. And then in terms of bias, it's like you pass the main stuff, we'll schedule an interview, you can manage all that with automation. That's great. Joel: But I think a lot of these core things that discriminate are gonna have to be outlawed and vendors won't be able to create those features and employers won't be able to leverage those features going forward. I think we're seeing that a little bit on the local level, state level, Illinois has a great case with facial recognition, a company called HireVue that a lot of people know, so these things are coming out at the state and local level, but eventually on a federal level, these things are gonna have to come into play. I think a real challenge though is everyone's work from home, it's a global workplace, we're hiring people everywhere, and then that creates a contractor versus an employee situation. So are there loop holes around this or where you hire. So again, it becomes really complicated, but here in the US, I think there's gonna have to be an effort to say, "Look, these features, we're not gonna stand for it because they're discriminatory." Ifeoma: I so whole heartedly agree, I'm so glad you brought up the video interviewing issue, that's also something I write about in the book and in my research for that, what I noted in speaking with people who had been subjected to it was just a great potential for accent discrimination. The great potential for the use of pseudo science where supposedly algorithms are able to accurately determine somebody's emotion or even determine somebody's trust worthiness or if they're lying, it's just rife with all kinds of potential abuses and known abuses. So I just think that video interviewing, especially when purporting to read emotion or do official analysis, that it just has to be banned. But this also brings me to a point that Chad made, which is this idea of, so in my book, I talk about ex-ante versus ex-post regulations, and so Chad touched upon audits as a type of ex-post regulation, which is looking at outcomes and seeing, are these outcomes good? Are these outcomes something we want? And if they're not, we need to change them, or we need to change how we got to them. So that seems like it's very ex-post where you've already launched the automated hiring, but I also want to push upon like we shouldn't forget ex-ante regulations, and outright banning is an ex-ante regulation. Ifeoma: It's like, we just know that's bad, we're just gonna ban that, we're not gonna try to do an audit, we're just not gonna do automated video interviewing, but should we also be thinking about ex-ante regulation in the form of design features? So for example, one design feature that I'm proposing, and I'm trying to push the EEOC to mandate is the idea that you actually keep a record. So right now, automated hiring programs are not required to keep a record of all the applications, whether they pass through to be interviewed by an interviewer or not, a human interviewer, and even the interview attempts. So I actually think we might need an ex-ante regulation, which is the design of the automated hiring has to allow or actually mandate record-keeping, where every person that applies there's a record of that. And even failed applications because with the research I was doing, I was finding that some automated hiring platforms, they were actually preventing people from completing the application. So they were already culling people even before they could complete the application. So just to give you an example of that, I know it's hard to imagine. Ifeoma: I tried to, as part of my research, fill out an application for a major retailer, this is a, think major huge clothes, groceries, everything in one place kind of retailer. And in the application, I pretended to be different types of people, and one type of person was somebody who has a limited amount of time to work per day, so somebody that could fit the profile of say, a stay-at-home mother, most of the time, like somebody that would need to pick up their kids from school at 12:00, 02:30 or 03:00. So I put my availability from 09:00 to 02:00. What I found, I could not actually complete the application even though I had checked that I was applying for a part-time position and my availability was certainly enough for a part-time position, I could not actually complete the application. The application just would not refresh to the next page until I checked that I had unlimited availability. Chad: Okay. So the question around that is, is that a technical issue from the vendor standpoint or is that a corporate issue? Right? Because the company could be dictating that. There's a separation between vendor and process and standard operating... Ifeoma: But the program is allowing that. The program has to be programmed to allow that. Right? Chad: Yeah. Ifeoma: So should we have basically design mandates, like you can't do certain X types of programs, do you see what I'm saying? So whether it's a corporation mandating it or the vendor, if the vendor says, "We can't actually legally design that for you," You see? Chad: Well, yeah. The question for me is, I mean, so first and foremost, that's what audits are for, and that's what being a, that's what standards are for. So being able to actually point out where they're going awry with regards to standards, and you can't apply because at that point you don't become a candidate, you don't become a candidate, then you're not in the audit and you're not in the talent pool, right? That's a step that you need to take to be able to actually be "part of the record keeping process." So they were stopping that. I don't think that is the vendor's fault, number one. I think it's, the difference between adding seat belts to a car and allowing somebody to actually take a left or right, whether they're taking the wrong directions or not. So we have to be careful around what we actually dictate vendors to do, is that their responsibility or is that the responsibility of an organization who could be following EEOC or OFCCP, being a government contractor rule. Chad: So I think personally, from my standpoint, being in the OFCCP space for a very long time, that's on the employer. Now, are there some aspects where the vendor should definitely stay away, much like the HireVue instance? Yes, I think, again, that's the can we, should we kind of conversations, and that's pretty much where Illinois, they stood up, they pointed directly at HireVue and said, "You're the problem." So we need to start pointing out platforms and features and issues that are the problem, and again, do that through regulation, and at that point, nobody's gonna buy it. And we are a capitalist country, so therefore people are not going to buy it if it is against the law. Joel: And there's a little bit of a buyer-beware highlight here, not to pick on HireVue, oh, what the hell, let's pick on HireVue. [chuckle] Chad: We always do. Joel: So HireVue in the last six months or so has updated their terms of service to essentially say that, "Hey, employer, if something happens legally, it's your fault, not ours." You're gonna see more and more vendors try to immunize or vaccinate themselves against legal issues and put the blame on employers. So if you're an employer, make sure the vendors you use, what kind of indemnity or threats or dangers might there be if their tech is discriminatory because you're probably on the hook if their tech is discriminating against candidates that you're interviewing and hiring. Chad: And I think that was in direct response to California, because California is trying to push their regulations that actually start to hold the vendors responsible for some of these issues. So again, we're seeing some play here, some gamesmanship, but again, there is a huge buyer beware, not to mention we talk about auditing, who should audit? Who was credentialed to audit, and who was just audit washing? We saw, I think Mona actually published a study around Pymetrics where they were audit washing, they were paying an organization to say everything was fine, everything is good, and this is I think before they were even acquired, which brings up some other issues, legal issues. At the end of the day, there are many of these steps that we need to think about. We need to be incredibly intentional and thoughtful about putting frameworks and standards in place so that we don't have organizations going off the rails like we've seen, vendors going off the rails and hiring companies going off the rails. Mona Slone: Thank you for those contributions. I'm so glad that we kind of got to the juicy bits right away, which is regulation and enforcement of regulation. [laughter] Chad: It's what we do. Mona Slone: Yeah, so on that, on the kind of capital A audit question, you brought up some very concrete issues and questions here, all three of you, thank you for that. With colleagues from data science, journalism and psychology, we actually conducted a stealth audit of two personality assessment tools that are used in the hiring space, Crystal and Humanatic. And we found some instabilities in there that kind of show that these instruments are not really fit for purpose. For example, we found that one of the tools would predict a different personality type for the same person depending on whether the resume was uploaded as raw text or as PDF, for example. So non-job-relevant kind of elements that skewed the result here. Mona Slone: Now, that work was extremely cumbersome, it was interdisciplinary, I think that that is definitely needed, that we kind of have not just a purely technical approach here and end up with a statement that says, "Oh, we just need to make the algorithm better," but there are reasons behind the fact that some of these technologies can't work because they are snake oil as Ifeoma said. So that was a long process and it was kind of a bootstrapped project, there isn't necessarily funding available for that, and so my big question for the two of you is how should we actually design that whole regulation enforcement process vis-à-vis audits. Who is gonna pay for that? We can all say we all need independent audits, we need stealth audits, but then what? Who is gonna do it and who is gonna pay for it? Chad: I have a shortcut. There are hundreds of thousands of government contractors that are out there today who receive hundreds of millions of billions of dollars, and they can easily, if they want the government's money, which they obviously do, they could definitely have to go through a battery of tests for the tech stack that they use. And Ifeoma was actually talking about the applicant tracking system earlier, which is really a relic of our past. We now work in a tech stack, where there's more than just one piece of tech, where before we just had an applicant tracking system, and that was our record-keeping process. Chad: Today, we are much more advanced, and there are some incredibly powerful systems that are out there today that are stacked, all the way from a programmatic outreach to the chatbot application process that Joel talked about, dynamic screening, matching, engagement, there are so many different things that actually happen. What we need to do is we need to find easy ways to at least start the process, and it's very simple, I'm a tax payer, if you want my money, you have to go through this battery of tests to be able to get those hundreds of millions and/or billions of dollars of contracts, that to me seems like the easiest way forward to get this moving. Joel: The answer Mona, and Chad touched on this, to all of your questions, is money. So when you look at the problem... Employers are driven and technologies are created in large part because of supply and demand, and features are built because employers say, "We want that." Right? So if you create a system where an employer says, "I'm not gonna buy your tech unless you've got the seal of approval from blank," then that vendor is then encouraged, if they wanna stay in business, to get that badge, whatever that looks like in order to sell their product to employers. Now, does that badge come from a government agency? I prefer it not to. Joel: I'd prefer private companies to create an audit system that is approved by the government, that then they can say, "Hey, we're gonna run a fine tooth comb through your tech, we're gonna do an audit that's approved by the government and we're gonna give you our seal of approval that is approved by the government agency or body that we've been audited ourselves by to provide this badge." If you created an ecosystem where the employer felt confident buying from the vendor, the vendor felt confident selling it because they've been audited by an approved auditor, then you've got a winner. Now, how we get there, somebody smarter than me is gonna have to figure that out, but that's I think the environment that you have to create for everyone to be comfortable buying and selling products and services. Chad: It's our current process now for OFCCP in distribution of jobs, it's our current process. We set a standard, the OFCCP has education and enforcement, then there is a layer of what Joel talked about, these organizations who know what the standards are and they help the companies abide by the standards, it's something that we already have in place. So it's not recreating the wheel, it's a process methodology that we already have, it's just new tech that we have to be able to credential. Ifeoma: Yeah, I fully am so on board, especially... Joel: Then we're done. [chuckle] Ifeoma: We're done, we're done. It's so funny, 'cause I actually wrote a paper about this in 2020, about creating something called, The Fair Automated Hiring Mark, and this would be a certification, and I likened it to how you have certified green buildings. So it could be, like Joel mentioned, a third party certifying that these automated hiring programs do meet the required standards of the EEOC, and I'm not sure that the EEOC can't get involved. It seems like you're very much against that Joel, but in my paper I'm more open ended, it could be the EEOC actually getting involved in issuing the certification, or it could be a third party. I see pros and cons either way, right? Ifeoma: So with the EEOC obviously, they are a government agency, they have a lot of other things on their plate as well, with the third party, that's a new market, there's going to be people who will want to enter that market and provide that service, but there's also the con of, could it be co-opted? Could we get certifications that are not necessarily on the up and up, but I tend to agree with you, Joel, that it is about money, so I don't think that most third party agencies will get away, I mean third-party certification programs would get away with certifying things that don't work because they will get found out sooner or later. Joel: They're a business, yeah. Ifeoma: And then, yeah exactly, then no one will go work with them, so that's exactly what I argued in my paper. So I tend to very much agree with you. I also see that audits are part of this process. So we had talked about audits as being an ex-post regulation, but I actually think it could be an ex-ante regulation where you audit the algorithm or you audit the program before it's even launched and that audit is what allows it to be certified. Now, would I say that audit is enough? Would I say that's the only thing you have to do and then that's it? No. So in my paper, what I actually say is that even with this certification, the EEOC should still mandate that the employer do internal audits on a timely basis, I don't know what the time frame for it would be, that's something they can work out, but that they are required to do these regular audits and also keep the results of the audits because then if there is a lawsuit, they would be required to provide the results of the audit. Chad: Let me enter real quick on that one, 'cause I don't think that being able to audit it before makes any sense, because when we're talking about AI, it's all about the information the algorithm is trained on. So if it's trained on nothing, then I mean, you're really auditing nothing, you're auditing behavior. Again, the AI itself is not generally the problem, the Amazon's AI wasn't really generally the problem, it was the information that was fed into it. So the machine is what it's fed, it's what it learns, right? So I do agree... Ifeoma: Right, but there're training models out there you can use. So right now there's been a big move for training models to be made available on an open source basis, so there are lots of training data that can be used for audits. Now, will it be specific to perhaps the specific corporation? No. So that's why I say that first audit can't be the be-all and end-all, the individual specific corporation still have to do the internal audits because then they're using their own specific data, but I still believe that you can audit the program before it's launched just using all the training data that's out there free of charge. Chad: It's gonna be an entirely different animal over the data that it's trained against, right? Ifeoma: Sure. Well, it's possible. Chad: So it's taken us 49 minutes to get to ChatGPT. ChatGPT could actually be an entirely different animal if it was trained on current data. I understand what you're saying from a basic philosophy standpoint, but to be quite frank, it can grow into using those standards moving forward, the biggest point of audit for me is after it starts eating that data. Ifeoma: Sure, but even using the chatGPT example, not to be pedantic, you're seeing the problems already, because what is ChatGPT right now if not, basically, a huge audit, right? Or basically everybody using chatGPT is beta testing for them, they're doing the audits for them right now. Chad: Yeah, it's genius. Ifeoma: So you have all this wide variety of data and you're still seeing problems, different types of problems, depending on who is interacting with ChatGPT and what type of data they're putting in, but you are seeing the genres of problems already. So I think that's useful. Anyway. Mona Slone: So before we go down further the ChatGPT rabbit hole, just another call to the audience that we'll be starting to ask the audience questions very soon. So feel free to drop them into the Q&A box to the right of your screen. I wanna shift gears just a little bit and talk a little bit more about the HR tech industry per se. We kind of have very concrete ideas about regulation, how this could be done, who should pay for it, but as people who are not in that sector, in that industry, it would be very useful to understand what does that sector look like? Who are the players? What are the specific tools, especially the "AI-driven tools" that are out there? And what are the tools that recruiters really like to latch on to, 'cause I know there are some that they're just being mandated to use and others that they really love. So maybe Joel and Chad, you can give us a little bit more inside knowledge into that whole space that is quite hidden from public view to be honest. Joel: Hidden from public view, the dark web of recruitment. We talk a lot about automated recruiting, and we talk about augmented recruiting, and I feel like the augmented stuff is catching on much more than the automated stuff in terms of recruiters. So you've got conversational AI, basic questions, 24 hours a day, ask a chat bot on your phone or on whatever career site you're on, like that's embraced. Conversational AI is not going anywhere. Scheduling, automated scheduling, scheduling is a pain in the butt, so if you can augment that for a recruiter, that's gonna be popular. So you have companies like GoodTime, most chatbots or conversational AI solutions have scheduling as well, that people can control that. The other one I think is probably like sourcing, in other words, we have a huge database of people, here's my job, now go find me people who qualify for that job. And the augmentation or the robot says, "Okay, here's everyone in this database that we think you should be talking to or recruiting." So those kinds of three things, or anything that is a real pain in the butt or time-consuming, is being replaced and embraced by recruiters from my perspective. Chad: Yeah. And my favorites, and I think has the most promise is that companies today spend hundreds of millions of dollars on recurrent marketing alone, and that's just pushing jobs out to be able to pull people in. Well, then they build these candidate databases that we call them the black hole, where candidates go. Well, they've got these amazing matching technologies that give you an opportunity to use that database that you spent all that money on to be able to draw those individuals back in to apply for like positions or positions that they could prospectively be more qualified for. So there's a lot of heavy lifting for that. That's just an invite, and that's something that is a lot of heavy lifting from a data standpoint, but if you have the behavior of the candidates and you have their past and you know what jobs they meet the requirements for, that's an easy match just to invite them back to apply for another job. There are some... My favorites, and we obviously, with the Chad & Cheese podcast, we have sponsors, but my favorites, you're talking about programmatic job distribution, you're talking about matching, you're talking about conversational AI. Chad: So the thing that I think that ChatGPT has brought to us is first and foremost demonstrating that the promise of AI is finally meeting today, we've been seeing vaporware for years, and vaporware is pretty much just a promise that just never came true. Today, I think the promise is starting to come true with some of these products, and now that's pretty powerful. And then being able to have transparency, which chatGPT provides. If we see more of that from our industry, in recruiting and outsourcing and on all these things, then I think we aren't trying to look into a black box, we have more transparency and we understand what's happening and how it's a part of the process itself, because to be quite frank, building a tech stack for most talent acquisition professionals is like trigonometry for goodness sakes. Joel: Yeah, it's a hard question to answer because there are so many providers. It's not like the days where, "Where do I post my job to make sure everyone in the US can get it?" Like, "Well, go to Monster, go to CareerBuilder." Your best tool is either a really good agency, recruitment ad agency that knows these tools, or go to a G2 or go to a Product Hunt, look at reviews, ask your colleagues on LinkedIn who they use, it's really dependent upon your needs, your location, what you're hiring for, like there are so many variables, it's a hard question to ask or answer. And Chad and I get that question all the time. Like, "Who should we use to solve all of our problems?" And unfortunately, there's no silver bullet that we can recommend that everyone can just get on easy street with their recruiting automation tools. Mona Slone: I'm gonna ask a question that I get often when I'm being asked about my own research on this topic, which is, how do you trick the system as a candidate? And that's also something that of course is interesting for our students, Ifeoma's laughing. We get that question, "How do I tweak my CV?" We have this kind of urban myth of, "Oh, you just put the key words in white font on your CV, and then the system picks it up and pushes you up on the ranking." So I hear kind of these myths, and then when I interview recruiters and sourcers for my research, they kind of categorically deny that that's even a thing and say like, "Absolutely not, you cannot trick the system and you cannot trick me." And I'm so curious to hear your responses to kind of that whole space, that whole question, candidates and AI. Chad: It's funny that you say the white text... Joel: How much time do you have? How much time is left? [chuckle] Chad: It's funny you say the white text, 'cause that's like circa 1998. Joel: SEO, yeah. Chad: Yeah, that was one of the things that we were doing. It was all keyword search back then. Joel: They're the tags. Chad: It was all and we were actually teaching employers how to HTML some of those key words at the bottom of their job descriptions as well, so that they would rank higher. So it was happening on both sides. And it will continue to happen on both sides, so the gaming and we talk about ghosting and how candidates ghost employers. Well, they ghost employers because employers ghosted them first. It's a learned behavior. So I think for me, the one that's hardest for me to believe is the psychobabble that happens out there in all these pseudosciences which I call psychobabble in most cases, because I can go through and answer questions differently as I think they want me to answer them to try to trick the system into what I think they want versus who I really am. Chad: And not to mention... I mean, if you take a look at a lot of the data that's out there, females won't apply for jobs unless they are more qualified, 100% qualified or even more, versus men who could be like 20% qualified and we don't care. It's like, "Ah, I can do the job." Right? So it's like how... That's almost like tricking the system itself, I see what the requirements are, but I'm gonna go ahead and just push past that and click on apply because I think I'm qualified for the job, whether they think I am or not. So it's been happening and as Joel said, there are so many different ways for a candidate to trick the system, but there's also even more ways for the employers to trick the system. Joel: I love this question because we talk so much about employment tools that are automated, the job seekers have automated tools too, but to get to the tricking your resume question, yes, those white text on white background, that's really, don't do that. However, there are some really sound SEO strategies that you should still be using, like a good title, like a structure, like this is for real, robots that are scraping your resume are dumb, make it easy as hell for a robot to read your resume. So go to Google Docs or wherever, get the most basic formatted resume and use that as your resume, don't get fancy with columns or images or graphs or just like... Chad: That will break it. Joel: Straight text, man, make it as simple... Like, imagine a robot is reading your resume, make it as easy as possible to get your content. Now, back to some of the other stuff that you're talking about, we had a story that we talked about on our podcast recently about an agency, an ad agency who vetted candidates for a job, a copywriter. And the copywriter answered every question with ChatGPT. So they actually didn't even answer on their own, they answered through ChatGPT. And they actually got through to the final round of interviews by using ChatGPT and then, of course, they were sort of like, "Hey, this is an experiment." Joel: But employers need to be aware that job seekers are gonna get really good at applying to a lot of jobs as if they're a human being going through the automated interviewing process, and how do you police that? How do you really cut through the best candidates if they're all using a natural language processor to answer your interview questions? It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but we're basically almost at a point where robots are interviewing robots to figure out who actually gets to speak to each other face-to-face. And that does nobody any good because it's not really who they are. So it's getting a little bit weird out there, we'll see how it shakes out, but the job seeker side of this equation is real, and it's something that we need to be aware of. Chad: And Mona, from the experiment that you talked about earlier where a PDF versus Word documents, some parsers will get broken with PDF documents, so therefore you will get different results if you're using a PDF versus Word. And that's happening and it has been happening. Most of the more advanced parsers don't have that issue, but not all. Joel: Text only, baby. Mona Slone: Text only, which is really interesting, 'cause it is really the talking with the machine and to the machine, and sort of how do we trick the machine so we can get around it quicker so we can actually talk to a human, whether that's actually a recruiter or a candidate. Joel: You're not really tricking it, I don't like the word trick, I like the word optimize, you're making it as easy for a robot to read your resume, index it, and then make it searchable, scanable, bring it together with whatever algorithms are sourcing that candidate. I think the word trick is not a good word. I know English isn't your first language, but like optimization or standards I think are better than teaching people how to trick the robots. Mona Slone: Yeah, be good data. Chad: Well, and tech is like a three-year-old at this point, you're doing baby talk to it versus trying to use PhD level... Joel: Oh yeah. Some of this shit, I don't know if I can cuss or not on this webinar, but some of this stuff is homemade. Some of these recruiters are like hackers, self-taught programmers, and they're making up their own stuff. So like that's super simple. So yeah, make sure your resume is as simple as possible kids. Joel: Be good data. I want to take the last 10 minutes that we have together to bring in the audience who have been extremely active actually in the Q&A, and we have a ton of questions. So I'm gonna throw specific questions to one of you. So I'm gonna start with one that I found really interesting, which actually says that, "Focus has been on AI in hiring, but should we pay more attention to AI in the firing process?" Ifeoma, I think that one is for you. Ifeoma: Yeah. So I'm so glad somebody asked that, actually, I have been looking at that and been thinking to write a paper in that. Here is the problem from a legal standpoint. You have more recourses when you are not hired and you should have been hired than when you've already been hired and then fired, as long as you were not fired for an explicitly discriminatory reason. So just to simplify that, most of the US is employment at will. So it means you can be fired for any reason, as long as it's not about your race, your gender, your religion, right? So it's a little more tricky for workers to basically have recourse when they're fired by algorithm, I'm calling my paper Firing By Algorithm. Ifeoma: So it really comes down to, well, okay, maybe you're not gonna be able to get your job back if you're fired by algorithm, but should there still be some sort of regulation about treating humans that way? Do humans deserve some sort of explanation, some sort of human contact when they're getting fired? I think so, right? But I'm also not a CEO of a major corporation with thousands of workers. So I'd love to hear from you industry people, like what do you feel about this trend towards firing people by algorithm as we've seen so many companies doing now, whether it's algorithm or just an email or some people got an automated text that they were fired. What do you think of this trend? Joel: I think... Mona Slone: Joel, you can take that and then we'll move on to the next questions 'cause we have a whole bunch. Joel: Oh, yeah, I'll take that one. So I think some of it is country specific. I think as, the thing I say on the podcast is, this is America Jack, and we're really good at firing people. There was a time where that was really taboo. I think we're getting away from that. I think getting fired via email, getting fired via text, we're just becoming either numb to it or we just accept it. Now, country by country, that's gonna be different, but in terms of America, I think it's gonna happen. Look, again to ChatGPT, we did a show the other day about the black hole and not getting a, "Thanks, but we've moved on to another candidate," right? So you can go to ChatGPT today and say, "Hey, write a letter to a candidate who didn't get the job saying you're sorry, blah, blah, blah for this job description." Joel: And ChatGPT will create a really nice little form letter that could go out automatically to these candidates. And that can also happen with employees. So you could really easily create a natural language processing strategy where letters go out to people that sound really nice and sound really human-esque to let people go. So I think, yes, it's the future, whether you like it or not. Corporate America doesn't give a shit. That's the way that it's gonna go because again, it's efficient. You don't have to have the uncomfortable conversation face-to-face about thanks for playing, but we're moving on. It's gonna be automated as well. And people will just take it like most of the things that they take in the workforce. Mona Slone: Thank you for that. I think we should have a whole co-opting on that one, maybe later in the semester. I'm gonna move us on and I'm gonna combine two questions from Sig Silberman and Heather Moffett. And so it sounds like in five to 10 years, we should be expected to see a lot of technical standards from bodies such as ISO, ANSI, NIST, IEEE to become important in this space. So question is, is that plausible? And I'm gonna tag on Heather's question, who's asking, what if there was a sample data set that could be used by this standards body, wouldn't companies feel more confident running through this to ensure no adverse impact prior to launch and help with the adoption of these technologies? Chad, this one's for you. [laughter] Chad: Yeah, I think... Joel: That's good 'cause I don't have enough degrees to even understand that question. Chad: Any organization that has standing, yes, that would be wonderful. We're in the Wild West right now, right? So I think the best we can do is start to create standards around regulations that we're trying to press as it is. We have laws that are on the books that are already supposed to be in play. Like in New York City, we've gotta wait now till April. Again, these are signals and companies should be taking these signals, but also the vendors who already do compliance audits and those types of things should also be taking these signals in building their own somewhat standards and working with local, state and federal governments to be able to apply them. If they have IEEE or what have you to back them, that is wonderful. I think those types of partnerships make sense. Mona Slone: Thank you for that. I'm gonna combine a couple of questions on sort of audits, and I know Ifeoma has sort of one she wanted to tag on here as well. So Jiahao Chen, who I'm glad to see in the audience, is saying that all of you brought up the ex-ante auditing as possible requirement for employment AI. Those are not only possible, but exist in other verticals, such as consumer finance. But one key difference is that employment AI are decision-support tools and not usually used in full autonomous business processes. And so just curious to hear what you think about how AI to aid decisions should be regulated differently from autonomous decision-making AI. Mona Slone: And then we have another question from Nilesh, who is saying, "Well, in sourcing, there perhaps also is bias in other parts of the process in sourcing for example reaching out to candidates on LinkedIn who worked at major consulting firms and went to Ivy League schools. So isn't the process already biased?" And so that is part of the AI auditing question. And then Ifeoma, I know you had one about sort of addressing that via the contractor idea that Chad articulated earlier. So I'm gonna toss it to you, and you can decide who gets to answer these three questions. Ifeoma: Yeah, so I think this is for Chad, and definitely Joel can jump in, of course. But yeah, Chad, you actually touched on a subject that I perked up immediately 'cause it's been something I've written and think about, which is the fact that federal contractors have these higher standards imposed on them for making sure they have frankly a diverse workforce, right? And in terms of including disabled workers also, for example, that corporations don't have. And you mentioned that this could be kind of a start for regulations and maybe for audits. And I just wanted you to touch about that, on that a little bit more because I think we're still sort of struggling with the idea of what would be a meaningful audit? What would it actually look like? So for other industries like the financial industries, we have Sarbanes-Oxley that lays out here's what your audit needs to look like. We now have established industries of auditors. They actually are certified auditors that will come and do the audits, but we don't have that yet in the automated hiring space. So let's say starting with the contractors, which I think is a good low-hanging fruit, what would a meaningful audit look like? Chad: Well, first and foremost, there is a robust set of contractors and advisors in that space. So if they're not already putting together solutions for this, I would be surprised. Because obviously, when you're talking about OFCCP, you're talking about 503 with individuals with disabilities, you're talking about VEVRAA, veterans hiring, you're talking about the whole scale of diversity and things that you have to do as a federal contractor. And once again, these are higher requirements because you are taking money from the federal government. So the federal government wants to ensure that you're meeting these higher standards. So again, I think this is very simple and could be pretty much along with OFCCP regulations. The thing is, they have to. And this is one of the things that EEOC did not do in their last webinar. They did not bring vendors on, they did not bring practitioners on. They had only academia. That is literally a tenth of what they needed because the work happens with vendors and practitioners, mainly. Chad: Academia is there as advisors, and I think that is amazing, research, advice, those types of things. But we need to ensure that we pull the community together, and we have a vehicle in which to do that. And the vehicle is money, and that money is government contracts. So I really believe we could pull that together. And again, that could be a part of OFCCP and the current standards and outcomes that they have to abide by. There will be additional work that has to be done around trying to understand how these outcomes happened from the scaling of an algorithm, but you still know what the outcome is. This is not something that we don't already see because the hiring is there. The talent pool is there. All of that is the same. Nothing's changed. So now what we have to do is dig into the algorithm to understand where it's going wrong. Mona Slone: Thank you for that. We are at time, so I wanna ask my kind of closing question to all three of you. Joel, I'm going to start with you. Where do you see this space in five years? Joel: This space being recruiting or the AI? Mona Slone: AI and recruiting and... Joel: Yeah, it's gonna happen. I think the guard rails, safety nets, whatever metaphor you wanna use, are gonna be put in place 'cause there's simply too much money to be made/saved in automating the recruiting process. Even now, we're seeing companies that are laying off thousands of people, recruiters and HR professionals are part of those layoffs. They're not being brought back or they're being brought back as contractors more than people would thought. And most people are looking for these automated tools, these platforms to manage everything from recruiting to payroll, to onboarding, to offboarding. Everyone's looking for technology to save money and create efficiencies around this. So it's going to happen. The legal asks, the issues around biases, they might not all get worked out, but they'll get worked out to a point where people aren't afraid to buy services and create new companies and sell services. They'll be guard rails created, and this space will be off to the races in terms of AI. Mona Slone: Thank you for that. Chad? Chad: Recruiting, also known as talent acquisition in our space, is literally the beating heart of every company. No product or service is ideated, developed, sold, serviced, customer-retained while it's opened without the actual talent that is acquired through recruiting. It doesn't exist. But it's incredibly underfunded, much like Joel has said. So being underfunded means you're flooded with tasks, and many of those tasks can be carried out by robotic process automation or AI. Those tasks, I think within the next five years, at least 70% of those tasks, we will see more augmented recruiters where 70% of their tasks are actually part of RPA or AI. And then those individuals, depending on the organization and their care for the candidates, will actually use their people to be more human. Today, recruiters can't be as human because they're doing all these stupid little tasks. If you give them their time back so that they can actually give it to the candidates and they can be more human, then we can put the human back in human resources. Mona Slone: That's a great... Joel: By the way, imagine a world where you apply to a job at Tesla, and Elon Musk is actually the one interviewing you on your screen for a job at Tesla. Chad: I'd hang up. [laughter] Joel: Yes, politics aside, however you feel about Elon, but we're going to a world where video of a human and an actual human, you can't really tell the difference. And Elon will speak different languages based on where you're located in the world. This is where we're going. Five years is a long time with how fast the tech is going. I think you'll be gobsmacked by what it looks like in five years. Chad: I'll give you a great example. We have a podcast that we put out in English, and we have had our voices cloned, Joel's voice and my voice cloned. It is now also in four other language: German, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The AI has translated and cloned our voices in those different languages. Joel: Yeah. All it needs is the text. Mona Slone: I will audit the German one. Joel: You sure? [laughter] Mona Slone: I'm gonna toss it over to Ifeoma... Ifeoma: Exactly. Mona Slone: For the last word before I close it off. We're a little over time already. Ifeoma: Yeah, I mean, I really can't add too much more, just to say that I do concur with this idea of a move towards more augmented decision-making rather than really some sort of a wholesale transition to AI. So I guess to be more colloquial, I see like basically half of the people that have been fired in favor of GPT, they're gonna be hired back, essentially, because we're then gonna realize that it's not the same. We still need the humans. So, yes, I do think there will be more helper AI, more sort of augmenting and also making more efficient the sort of mundane tasks, but we're still gonna need that human decision-making at the final say. 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 chuckle 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.