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Let's be honest. Your career site probably sucks. But there's little data out there to show you exactly HOW MUCH it sucks. That's why we wanted to have a chat with Bas van de Haterd, an independent consultant and entrepreneur based in The Netherlands, while we hangout at UNLEASH in Paris recently. For the last 10 years Bas has run a major piece of research that audits the career sites of the largest 500 Dutch employers and he has a huge amount of data to share, including how to audit a career site, what social media sites perform best and how to best build an employer brand. If you have a career website - and you know you do - then this interview is a must-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. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Intro (0s): Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news/opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel Cheesman (22s): Oh, yeah. What's up, everybody? We are at Unleashed World Day 2 called the Hangover Editions of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman, joined as always, Chad Sowash. And we are here with Bas van de Haterd. Chad Sowash (38s): Yeah. We got PilotFish here too. We got Max Armbruster. We got Alex Murphy. Joel Cheeseman (42s): We got an audience. Live audience. Two people. Yeah. Live audience. Walking by where like, "Where's the coffee?" Bas, how are you finding the show so far? Welcome. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Bas van de Haterd (55s): Thank you for having me back again and this time in Live. Joel Cheeseman (59s): Guess who's back, back again. Bas is back. Tell a friend. So you're finding the conference amenable to you on day two? Bas van de Haterd (1m 8s): Yes, it is what Unleash always is. Just amazing. Meeting up people who are doing great stuff in the industry. Seeing some new startups, which I hadn't heard of, which are popping up in different places of Europe. Chad Sowash (1m 21s): Fucking everywhere, dude. They're everywhere, right? Bas van de Haterd (1m 24s): Yeah. What I love is-- Joel Cheeseman (1m 25s): Give us one or two that we should keep our eyes on. Chad Sowash (1m 28s): Now you're putting him on the spot. It's too early for that. Bas van de Haterd (1m 31s): Yeah. I had one cup of coffee in your asking me to recollect what I-- Chad Sowash (1m 36s): That's what it happens. Joel Cheeseman (1m 36s): We'll edit that question out. Chad Sowash (1m 38s): Guess what, no, we won't. Joel Cheeseman (1m 39s): No, we won't, okay. All right. You are here. We wanted to bring you by. You've done some really interesting research lately on career sites and why don't you tell us about that, some of the major findings and we'll get into it. Bas van de Haterd (1m 51s): Well, I've been doing this research for 16 years in a row now. Chad Sowash (1m 56s): Sixteen? 1-6? Bas van de Haterd (1m 57s): 1-6, yeah. Chad Sowash (1m 58s): Holy fuck. Bas van de Haterd (1m 58s): I am getting old, yeah. A couple of years and I've got your hairdo, mates. Joel Cheesman (2m 2s): Spring chicken. Chad Sowash (2m 2s): You got a good head for a bald head. You'll be fine. Bas van de Haterd (2m 5s): No, and I've been doing this for 16 years and I actually started out as a joke once and we just wanted to do the actual research on the candidate experience, the actual digital candidate experience. What are career sites delivering? We actually applied at every damn organization and we see. Are we being ghosted? How fast do they respond? What's the quality of response? How long does it take to respond? Joel Cheesman (2m 27s): How many companies did you apply to? Bas van de Haterd (2m 31s): Just over 500. Joel Cheesman (2m 32s): Wow, that's extensive. Chad Sowash (2m 33s): Wow. Bas van de Haterd (2m 33s): Yeah. I got seven students working for me during the summer. Chad Sowash (2m 36s): And this is just in the Netherlands, right? Bas van de Haterd (2m 40s): Just in the Netherlands. The 500 biggest employers of the Netherlands. All the major government agencies, all the major companies, everyone. Joel Cheesman (2m 48s): Still relevant to most companies in anywhere in the world. Chad Sowash (2m 50s): Yeah. But I mean, they've got-- I think when we dipped into the research, we'll see that, you know, things are different in the Netherlands. Joel Cheesman (2m 57s): Some uniqueness. Okay. Chad Sowash (2m 57s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bas van de Haterd (2m 58s): One of the things we've actually seen happening because of this research and because of the publications of the research and all the employer branding agencies read my research and as they say, we love and fear you, and you've actually seen the improvement go up literally the first time. The best site was like a B-minus or C-plus. Joel Cheesman (3m 18s): So do you grade or let each company know how they scored? Bas van de Haterd (3m 22s): No. Joel Cheesman (3m 22s): You just give them an aggregate number? Bas van de Haterd (3m 24s): We give aggregate numbers on what's the market doing and we nominate five because the thing is, if I would put out like a list of the top 50 person who would be 50 would be very disappointed because they're down at the bottom of the list and they're still in the top 10 percent. Chad Sowash (3m 38s): I know, but still they wanna be better though, right? I mean it's the only way that you get better is with a cohort of winners. Bas van de Haterd (3m 44s): Yeah. And that's actually what is happening now because we have a winner. This year, VodafoneZiggo won the award. Last year, CoolBlue, which is basically the Dutch Amazon, won the award. The Dutch railways won it twice. But what I've now actually hearing from the agencies is that RFP say we wanna be nominated for this award. Joel Cheesman (4m 2s): Couldn't you just do it as like top 10 percent as opposed to one through 50? So I have a little badge that says I'm in the top 10 percent of career centers. Chad Sowash (4m 10s): Six and one-half doesn't know the other. Bas van de Haterd (4m 11s): Yeah. No, we-- Joel Cheesman (4m 12s): Just saying, if people are mad at 50, like just tell everyone they're in the top 10 percent. Chad Sowash (4m 17s): We need to get them mad though. That's the thing. Bas van de Haterd (4m 20s): We are giving them the absolute best. So the 5, 6, 7 bests are getting nominated. That's a badge of honor. Everybody loves being nominated for the awards these days. And then I always get contacted like, all right, what do we need to improve to be actually a contender next year? Stuff like that. Chad Sowash (4m 40s): Yeah. Bas van de Haterd (4m 40s): So we've been researching and literally, the research is more than a hundred data points on the candidate experience. Chad Sowash (4m 44s): Let's talk about those data points. Not a hundred of them, but let's talk about some of the big data points, especially when it comes around, for me, time to actually apply because in the US you saw the App CAS research, 92 percent of individuals do not finish. They don't complete the application process. I think that's gonna be different in the Netherlands. Am I wrong? Bas van de Haterd (5m 4s): Yeah, probably. I gotta tell you, I'm not sure about the App CAS Research because I think the way they measured it was a bit different. But I wanna start with you by actually getting people to apply in the first place. So we know, for example, I know from the data from my consulting clients that on average the experienced hire comes back to your side about 2.7 times depending on how experienced you are. Yet when you come back to Amazon, they will tell you, you didn't finish buying this product last time. 2.7 percent of the corporate career sites have a previous jobs. So if you're looking at what can we learn from e-commerce, there's a lot to gain. Another thing, if you're looking at e-commerce, right? Bas van de Haterd (5m 46s): Let's look at the data on how are jobs formatted. When have you bought a product from Amazon based on the guide how to use it? Just text. I mean there's pictures in there. Well, 17 percent has only text but is acceptable and 41 percent of all job vacancies, all job descriptions on the side are only text and read like a booklet. Chad Sowash (6m 9s): So how many times have you bought something on Amazon you didn't know the price for? What about salary, Right? That's what we do every day to these people. We're like, hey, apply. Bas van de Haterd (6m 21s): 48 percent mention the salary in job description, which is great. Joel Cheesman (6m 23s): Is it Dutch law that they have to have the salary? This is all voluntary. Bas van de Haterd (6m 28s): It's all voluntary. Chad Sowash (6m 28s): Sounds high. I mean, which is-- Joel Cheesman (6m 31s): It sounds good, yeah. Bas van de Haterd (6m 32s): Yeah. And actually every time I ask people how many do you think it is? Everybody's surprised. This was in 2019 when I did the last research pre-pandemic, it was 40 percent. Joel Cheesman (6m 42s): Really? Okay. Bas van de Haterd (6m 43s): It's always been a lot higher than you expected in the Netherlands. On the other hand, only 90 percent mentioned the location where it's based, which is kind of an important thing. Chad Sowash (6m 51s): Not even remote, right? And that's a location, right? Bas van de Haterd (6m 54s): Remote is a location. Just mention where the hell I'm working. That's okay. Only 77 percent mentioned the hours they expect me to work. Chad Sowash (7m 3s): Okay. Bas van de Haterd (7m 3s): And only 40 percent mention the number of days we get off. Now that's pretty standardized. Chad Sowash (7m 8s): Does it say full-time, part-time? Bas van de Haterd (7m 10s): Full-time is accepted as being hours. Part-time, I wanna know how many hours part-time. I mean, is that two days, three days, four days? Or is it negotiable? That's fine. I mean if you tell me it's part-time negotiable, but don't tell me nothing. Chad Sowash (7m 25s): Yes. Joel Cheesman (7m 25s): Right. Chad Sowash (7m 25s): Only 30.9 percent mentioned something like a company car, which is very normal for many jobs in Netherlands, or you get a reimbursement for your travel expenses. So there's still a lot to win there. Another one I think you guys would love, only 4.8 percent of Dutch corporate career size has a registered to apply button. What--? How--? What percentage? Bas van de Haterd (7m 47s): 4.8. Chad Sowash (7m 47s): Not even 5 percent. And I guaran-fucking-tee you, you do this in the US, it's like 90 percent you have to register to apply. Bas van de Haterd (7m 56s): Yeah. We actually, we were at 10 percent and it dropped during the pandemic to 5 percent. One of the things I actually hear from a lot of companies is like, yeah, we can never win your award with the register to apply. So we got rid of it. That's actually what I hear from the market. That's the primary reason. Many companies actually start investing in a good candidate experience because they wanna be proud. Joel Cheesman (8m 16s): So just to be clear on this, you're saying they don't have to go through the hoops of registering in order to apply to a job? Bas van de Haterd (8m 23s): They say, "My name is Joel Cheesman. Here's my resume." Hit send. Joel Cheesman (8m 26s): Okay. It's like buying as a guest. You don't have to register to buy my product. Bas van de Haterd (8m 30s): Yes, exactly. And sometimes on the backend, they will say here's your password, but that's not a terrible experience. All right. Another one. Cover letters. How many do you still think have a mandatory? I mean, it's the most useless thing we've ever invented, right? Joel Cheesman (8m 46s): 15 percent I would guess. Chad Sowash (8m 47s): 15 percent? I would say again 5 percent. It sounds like-- Joel Cheesman (8m 53s): Oh, low, huh? Bas van de Haterd (8m 53s): Forty-five percent still have a mandatory cover letter. Chad Sowash (8m 54s): Forty-five? Bas van de Haterd (8m 54s): Mandatory government. Chad Sowash (8m 55s): 45? Bas van de Haterd (8m 55s): Yeah. Chad Sowash (8m 56s): I was all excited. I thought that the Netherlands had this shit figured out. Bas van de Haterd (8m 60s): No, 45 percent. Chad Sowash (9m 0s): Out of all of these numbers, because you-- This is really in-depth research. What was the one that surprised you the most? Bas van de Haterd (9m 9s): We are ghosted almost 26 percent of the time which is the second-highest number I've seen in those 16 years. Joel Cheesman (9m 17s): So define ghosting in your research. Bas van de Haterd (9m 19s): We applied and we never heard anything again. Or we applied, we got a mandatory, a standardized, "We received your application, but we had never rejected it." Chad Sowash (9m 29s): The black hole, yes. Bas van de Haterd (9m 31s): We just apply with an alias on, you know, a student applying at a CFO job, basically. Chad Sowash (9m 35s): Yeah. Bas van de Haterd (9m 36s): It's because we wanna get-- Joel Cheesman (9m 38s): No chance of being hired> Bas van de Haterd (9m 39s): No chance in hell. Interestingly enough, we have been invited to an interview a few times with the most prep resume with spelling errors, etc. Joel Cheesman (9m 47s): What would you attribute that to? Bas van de Haterd (9m 49s): Sometimes it's people figuring out that it's actually one of my researchers. I've heard that. And they think they score bonus points on that. But that might be one or two. And the others is just-- What I've actually heard from people because I've debated this with a few, they said, "Listen, the person was absolute crap for the job they applied to, but, hey, it seems like a really good graduate. So we just wanted to talk to this person about the graduate program we had." And instead of being the nice person and saying, listen, it's not gonna be that job, would you be interested? Chad Sowash (10m 17s): In something else, yeah. Bas van de Haterd (10m 18s): They just invite them and tell them at the interview, "By the way, this interview is not about the job you applied for." Joel Cheesman (10m 23s): Real question real quick. You had some social media numbers. I know our audience loves TikTok data. What did you find about social media? Bas van de Haterd (10m 34s): Yeah, social media. So the companies, 91 percent are active on Facebook, 79 percent on Instagram, and 15.5 percent on TikTok. But if you're talking TikTok, only 18 percent has any job content on there. The rest was average of which, by the way, most of that was the normal account also sharing job content. Instagram, over 50 percent of the companies only shared corporate content. But the rest also did-- Chad Sowash (10m 60s): Are you looking to take this worldwide? That's my question because the Netherlands-- This is good for the Netherlands, but everybody needs to have more transparency on how this is going. Bas van de Haterd (11m 9s): It's just been licensed in Australia, so Australia's gonna be end of the year. Chad Sowash (11m 13s): I need a big market, Bas. I need the United States to do this shit. Bas van de Haterd (11m 17s): Get somebody to license my shit and I am there. Joel Cheesman (11m 20s): And if a listener wants to do that, contact you more. Where would you send? Bas van de Haterd (11m 24s): I would send them to my LinkedIn page. And you can also hear a lot from my visions on the Talent Savvy podcast. Chad Sowash (11m 29s): There it is. Go to the podcast. Joel Cheesman (11m 33s): Bas van de Haterd. I said that right hopefully. Chad Sowash (11m 38s): We out. Joel Cheesman (11m 38s): We out. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Outro (11m 38s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called Podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts 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 Jjack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anyhow, 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. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Outro (12m 24s): 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.

Agree to disagree. Maybe that should be the title of this week's show, because there's a lot of verbal sparring this week. Aside from seeing eye-to-eye that the recent acquisition of TalVista by Clovers.ai makes sense, a game of Who'd Ya' Rather between Skillit and Grazzy goes sideways. So does whether or not TikTok is on its way to becoming illegal to use in the U.S. And don't even get us started on minimum wage increases at Walmart. At least we end the week in agreement that interviewing 3D avatars is both cool and creepy as well. And you thought Tengai the Recruiting Robot haunting your dreams for the last couple of years was scary! You ain't seen nothing yet. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel Cheesman: Oh, yeah. Who's ready for their Jazz Bath. Hi kids, you're listening to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Pig Skin" Cheesman. Chad Sowash: This is Chad "Public Comment" Sowash. JC: And on this week's show, Who Would You Rather, TikTok under pressure, and get ready to interview MetaHumans. Let's do this. Dude, are you ready for some football this weekend? I'm going Scentsy. The Mahomes ankle injury is a big one for me. CS: That's a hard one. JC: I think the Eagles, I just can't get on the Purdy train. I don't know, I can't do it. So Eagles, Eagles, Bengals, Super Bowl. CS: Yeah. The Bengals are definitely playing a hell of a lot better, especially after last week, and they just owned Buffalo away. Just owned them. So yeah, and then Mahomes, it depends on how mobile he is. But yeah, I'd love to see Cincinnati, especially after their start. They had such a shitty start. They went to the Super Bowl last year, came out of the pipe this year, just horrible, and then they just started killing it so they found their groove. JC: The Browns gave them a whooping just for the record. CS: Where are The Browns right now? Good question. JC: Yeah, they're in Cabo or Cancun, one of the two. [laughter] CS: So yeah, so yeah. The Eagles would be really cool to see. Yeah, it's really hard to see Purdy as a Super Bowl quarterback. But I mean, it's happened before. JC: He's got a hell of a team around him. CS: And got a hell of a defense, that's for sure. JC: Yeah, yeah. He won't be carrying them into the Super Bowl that's for sure. CS: No. JC: Speaking of Super Bowl. Shoutouts, I have no idea what that connection is, but it's the only segue I had. Shoutout for me. Joe Wilkie and Jenny Sciacca were in the giving mood this week. Joe, Joe sent me a nice bottle of Wild Turkey which was delivered right before the snowpocalypse here in the Midwest which went down. CS: A nice bottle of Wild Turkey. JC: Rare breed, baby. No. No. CS: I've never heard anybody say that. Oh, okay. It's rare breed. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. It's rare breed. It's rare breed. [overlapping conversation] JC: Get on board. Get on board, Sowash. And Jenny, who works for Disney sent both of us apparently an Iron Man t-shirt with our names on the back of them, so that was really nice. CS: Like we're twinsies or something? JC: Yeah. A little disappointed that Disney couldn't foot the bill for at least something that wasn't a Gildan 100% cotton beefy tee. But I'll take it. I'll take a free tee. CS: Yeah, it says The Chad and Cheese Podcast on the back, so how can you hate that? What is it... Let me see what it says here. It says, "Invincible The Chad and Cheese Podcast." Yes. [laughter] JC: Chad, I'm kind of a beefy guy myself. So when I double beefy, it's really beefy. So I just, I try to stay stressed away from the two beefy combo there on my t-shirts. But what are you gonna do? CS: Oh, that's amazing. So yeah, going from the Iron Man Chad and Cheese t-shirt to, we're over a thousand episodes now. It took us less than six years. JC: Holy cow! [applause] CS: We're averaging about 14 podcasts a month. Yeah, thanks to the listeners for asking for more. And yeah, thanks for the sponsors for being there and actually powering this bitch. JC: I think it was Joseph Stalin who said, "Quantity is a quality on its own." Of course, he was speaking about the mass deaths of young men in World War II who had to go to the front. But in this case, podcasting, quantity has its own quality and dammit, if we're not quality. CS: It's a different type of battlefield when we're talking about podcasting. [laughter] JC: You think? CS: Yeah. I know. JC: Speaking of battlefields and quality, our friends at Polywork, our listeners might remember that they were nominated last week for the Product of the Year by Product Hunt. A pretty well known... CS: Oh, they won. They won. JC: Pretty well known platform for companies. Anyway, they didn't beat out ChatGPT... CS: What? JC: Which shocks everyone for the best product. [laughter] JC: However, they did win a Golden Kitty Award. A Golden Kitty Award, I guess the cat is the Product Hunt mascot. Anyway, they did win for the Creator Economy category on the announcement. Polywork CEO said, "We couldn't have done this without Chad and Cheese." No, I'm kidding. [laughter] JC: He actually said, "We can't thank you enough for voting for us and for the amazing support you've given us over the years." Pretty standard vanilla CEO bullshit, but either way, Polywork. CS: As usual. Yeah. JC: It's an award. It's a Golden Kitty, something everyone is at some point in their life after. Congratulations. Shoutout to you. CS: Speaking of Golden Kitty. On this day in 1980, Prince made his TV debut on American Bandstand with the song, I Wanna Be Your Lover. [laughter] JC: So when I was in Chicago in December, they had the Prince Experience that my wife and I went to. And memorabilia, the motorcycle from Purple Rain... CS: With nice, big ass fairing on it. Oh, yeah. JC: The bathtub from the When Doves Cry video. So if you're a Chappelle and Prince fan, and I know a lot of our listeners are, you know the Chappelle skit where Prince plays basketball and then makes pancakes for everybody. There's literally, there's a collage in the Prince Experience of all these pictures of Prince. There's a picture of him playing basketball. So this story is apparently true. And the dude has a good form in the picture. So somewhere along the lines, Prince in high heels, learned to hoop. And there's a picture that's proof at the Prince Experience if you ever get a chance to check that out. But Prince, definitely good stuff. Definitely good stuff. Well, also good stuff, Chad... CS: Yes. JC: Free shit from us. We say it every week, but if you haven't hit up chadcheese.com, click the free link giving us your information, you're missing out on free t-shirts from JobGet, free Rum with Plum if it's your birthday that month, free beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey. They each get a bottle from you and me, it's a Chad choice it's a Cheese Choice. That's from our friends at Textkernel. But you can't win it if you're not in it so head out to chadcheese.com, click free link and sign up. And also while you're listening, leave us a review, won't ya? CS: Well, that being said, we're talking about alcohol. Big shoutout to Mitch Gerson. Mitch sent me a bottle of Nob Creek bourbon with a big Gerson Agency sticker over the label. I cracked it open, I poured it over a big rock, and noticed something was awry. JC: What? CS: It was a smoked maple bourbon. Dude, that's two weeks in a row. Two weeks in a row. Wala sent me the Maple Canadian whiskey which I actually boiled down into syrup because it was so sweet and that was delicious. And now Mitch sends a Knob Creek version. It wasn't as sweet. I think it's gonna be great with Old Fashioneds but what is up with the maple whiskeys? Are they all the rage now? Did I miss something? JC: They are not all the rage, for sure. Talk of Prince and pancakes means there might be more maple syrup coming your way, but no. That is an odd choice. And he's not Canadian, is he? CS: No. No, no. He's American, yeah. JC: Equally strange. I got nothing but I got birthday announcements, though. Alright, so celebrating another year around the sun this week, let's hear it for our birthdays. We love... SFX: Happy birthday! JC: And you can win Rum with Plum, as I mentioned, if it's your birthday. You're signed up for free stuff, you could win a bottle. For this week celebrating a birthday, we got Tony Lioi, Stephanie Krishnan, Matthew Miller, Ed Zetusky who actually was the rum with plum winner this month. Lynette Phillips, our friend Adam Gordon. Speaker 4: Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, "If it not Scottish, it's crap!" JC: Dan Sabatino, Gloria Okino, and JZ Josh Zywien. All celebrating birthdays this week. CS: Very nice. SFX: Happy birthday! CS: Excellent. Excellent, excellent. Well, I have an update for the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has announced that it will postpone enforcement of a new law intended to regulate the use of automated employment decision tools until April 15th, 2023. JC: What? CS: That's right. Yeah, so New York City had this wonderful law that they were putting in place around AI decision-making tools for hiring, those types of things, and they received so many comments, public comments, that they're gonna go ahead and put that on hold so that they can address the comments, have a second hearing. And to be quite frank, I don't think this hurts anything. This does nothing but give the government more of a cushion and say, "Look, we even gave you more time," right? JC: Yeah. CS: So, when they start enforcing this, employers better be ready. You can lawyer-up all you want, you're playing into their whole scheme of things. "Oh, you want more time? Oh, we'll give you more time. Now, let's see you fuck up." So, kids, if you're using automated decision hiring tools, it doesn't matter. You should be auditing your process no matter what. Audit your shit, make sure you're not doing biased, stupid shit, and that's from your friends at the Chad & Cheese. JC: It's time to belt-up, people, is what Chad's saying. You better be ready for the government to come after your ass. Chad, where are we going this year? We're back in the world. I know it's hard to believe in January, but we're gonna be back out soon. CS: We're gonna be back out. We're gonna be back out. Unleash America is happening in April at Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas. That's right, kids. They actually changed the venue. I love a little MGM, but when I took a look at Caesar's Forum, this is off the fucking chain. I can't wait. If you wanna find out more, just go to chadcheese.com, click on "Events" and definitely register. If you want more information about the prospect of sponsoring at Unleash America, go to chadcheese.com. Hit us up directly and we can put you in connection with the right people. Speaker 5: That escalated quickly. CS: Then last week, we have the official. Yes, that's right, the official announcement of Recfest USA. It's our favorite talent acquisition carnival, kids. That's right. It's coming to Nashville, Tennessee in September. We were able to crack the code of discounts, as well. Oh, yeah. That's right. We have a discount code. It's gonna be 50% off. We have the early, early bird rate with Chad & Cheese. You can use the discount code at Recfest.com of ChadandCheese, all one word, "ChadandCheese." Or, you can go to chadcheese.com, click on "Events," go down to "Recfest." Click on that link and it automatically populates it for you. That takes your ticket from $200, that's a two-day event $200 ticket for attendees, to $100. Actually, $99, but $100. [music] JC: Damn. Unleashed and Recfest. CS: Sexy, yes. JC: And discount codes. It just doesn't get any better than that. CS: Topics. JC: Did Prince ever perform in Vegas? Anyway... [laughter] JC: Let's have a layoff update shall we. SFX: Layoffs. JC: Alright, industry start-up Karat, that's K-A-R-A-T the Seattle-based company that helps companies conduct technical interviews has laid off 47 employees, reportedly 10 to 15% of its staff. Additionally, Coach-Hub and Scorrow, both in our space have let go around 10% of their teams, higher profile layoffs, this week include IBM canning 3900 employees or about 2% of its staff, combined Amazon and Microsoft are laying off a total of 28000 employees. There have been some bumps in the road, though Chad, Google laid off 12000 employees or about 6% of its workforce, as many of our listeners know. However, this included a married couple with a four-month-old baby... CS: Damn. JC: Both were on parental leave. Ouch. We wish everyone good luck in their endeavors of finding new opportunities... CS: Yeah, it's interesting, I mean Microsoft, they cut 10000 after hiring about 75,000 since 2020, Meta laid off 11,000. After hiring about 30,000 during the pandemic. Good news. I mean, again, so you take a look at it in total, yeah, they had some irresponsible hiring those the good news, the US Government has actually created a tech.usajobs.gov, because they are hiring tech. So they've actually increased their salaries on that and they're focusing on Telework options and remote work. So fuck you, Jamie Dimon, go to the US government. Find yourself a job. SFX: That escalated quickly. JC: Also Chad If anyone out there, listened to our European show this week, they know that we played an extreme version of buy or sell. CS: Yes. JC: Meaning a lot of startups are getting a lot of seed funding, which means a lot of tech people will land on their feet at some of these startups, which we think will become some of the next big things in the world, so it all works out in the end, I guess. CS: And talking about, like world as opposed to just the US, there are the country layoff rankings, and our friends over at Lanza shared some research on how countries are treating laid off employees, best to the worst. The top 10, US was not there. And this is all around notice periods and severance, so pretty much you've heard all the stories of people getting nixed via text message in the middle of the night here in the US, so we actually made the worst list and it was Puerto Rico was number one. The US is number two. So really, the US is number one. Yeah, we suck at laying people off 'cause we just don't give a shit. JC: Europe, on the other hand... SFX: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. JC: Alright. Let's get to our friends at Clovers and TalVista, they had a little marriage this week. Recruitment software platform Clovers, has agreed to acquire TalVista, a developer of a diversity and inclusion platform that aims to reduce bias in the hiring process, terms of the deal were not disclosed, the acquisition promises to help recruiters reach their diversity, equity and inclusion goals by providing solutions for attracting, reviewing and short-listing candidates, conducting interviews and applying data to enable efficient hiring decisions. The products of TalVista will be integrated into Clovers' platform to support inclusive hiring practices. Chad, your thoughts on this love affair. CS: Clovers.ai in good old Nashville, Tennessee. I bet we're gonna see them at Recfest. So, Clovers, they were on buy or sell back in September of 2021, I think they had 15 million dollars back then, and we both said we would buy them, still a big fan of leadership that comes from the industry, like Clovers CEO, Doug Leonard does. He was at higher view and Cornerstone to name a few. Plus he has a sales background, and what do investors love more than a revenue-focused CEO. The answer, they like nothing more than a revenue driven CEO. Then you have Scot Sessions, the CEO of TalVista, he was on death match in June of 2020. I think the integration of TalVista with Clovers made this happen. Once again, kids, this is a great recipe for acquisition, partner with a bigger fish, and as they see traction in the market, your platform looks a hell of a lot more appetizing, you were a little bit apprehensive around Clovers' anti-bias messaging. So what do you think now now that they've gone full TalVista. JC: The headline on the site now says Clovers acquire TalVista, creating a laser focus on building inclusive hiring tools. And to your point, that's exactly what they're building here. They're building a hammer that some tool box is going to want. You've got veterans, Elaine Orler and Scot sessions, as you mentioned, behind TalVista. Obviously, veterans in the space. I don't think they took any official money, maybe some seed money or angel money. You've got thhe folks at Clovers, you mentioned the Nashville connection, but they also have Jason Nazar, the guy behind Comparably, who sold to Zoom info last year as a co-founder, the guy knows how to build companies and then sell them. He's done it a couple of times in his life, so I think he's probably in the right seat at the right time. You've got a pretty competitive landscape with June Co., Canariis, The Mom Project, Circa, SeekOut is really getting into this space. JC: One of these bigger platforms is going to be in the mood to gobble up a nice DEI solution. And these guys are clearly consolidating some smaller players in the space and becoming a very attractive, acquisition for a SeekOut or any of the major platforms that we've been talking about for the last couple years. I think the, the higher view connection between Scott and Doug, I think probably played a big part in those guys picking up the phone and saying, "Hey, we're thinking it's about time." Maybe move on Elaine and has other things to do. I'm sure she's got a long, long career at Cielo, which I think she's back at full-time. So I think timing, consolidation of these players around DEI, that's gonna be a big acquisition target at some point. All makes sense. If this were firing squad from me, this would probably get a large round of applause in terms of acquisitions. [applause] CS: So in Bloomberg this week, there was an article, talking about the tech sector and how it really slashing DEIB teams. Twitter's DEIB team went from 30 to 2. So there's that. And then even before layoffs started, let's say over the last six months or so, we've heard a lot less about DEIB. I mean, all of 2020 DEI B was the new ai. You heard it all over the place. Everybody had it, everybody wanted it. Unbiased this, unbiased that. That that's tamped down a lot more. And I don't know if it's 'cause the layoffs because of the landscape, what it is, is this just gonna fade away? So my question to you is, do you think that, there's a lot of consolidation that's happening, that's obviously gonna happen this year. But do you think especially with the slashing of these DEIB teams at companies, that this is going to be top three on the want and need list? JC: Yeah. I mean, we've seen this happen. Americans in particular have short attention spans and with George Floyd and some things that were happening, a couple years ago, the light really shined bright on what are companies doing, what organizations doing to be more equitable. And we saw a huge blossoming of companies that all promised to make this something that companies could solve. We saw budgets actually being created. Of course, it's a different world now. Tech companies, budgets are being slashed, valuations are being cut. So if marketing is one of the first things that gets cut, recruiting is one of the first things that get gets cut. Well, certainly attention to this issue is something that gets, that gets cut. I don't think it think it's going away. I think it will come back. JC: But there may be a situation where you want to be bigger than you think you are. There's a really funny commercial right now. I think his name is Mbamba. He's the sinner for the Dallas Mavs, Boba maybe is his name, he does like Cheez-it commercials... Anyway, there's new commercial where "He says hi. He's like 7'4 or something. And he says hi. And then someone says, do you think he's real that tall? He goes in the locker room, takes his jersey off, and he's not one big person. He's like four little kids on each other's shoulders. So in some way, like these companies may be trying to get on each other's shoulders to create sort of one or two or three players that are worth, that are actually valuable and have the tools to make it that way. So, to me, there are many kinds of acquisitions. This may be one where two smaller players in something that is in less demand than it used to be, are trying to come together and make something bigger than what it really is. But I do think that DEI is gonna be a thing, I just think it's on pause because of the state of the world right now. You ready to play a little? Who'd you rather? CS: I would, yes. JC: All right. Who'd you rather everybody? Chad and I take two companies that have recently gotten funding, and we read a brief summary and then Chad and I decide who we'd rather. Number one is Skillit construction sector recruitment platform Skillit, and not what I have eggs and bacon and hash browns on Chad. It's a different kind of Skillit. It has raised $5.1 million in a seed funding round. It will use the funds to enter new regional markets, build its team and refine its product offering. Skillit says it offers a one platform solution for sourcing skills assessment, hiring, training evaluation, and wind back contractors facing record labor shortages. It also claims that it's vetted candidate profiles, custom matching automated workflows, data-driven compensation and labor market insights improve the hiring experience for both contractor and worker. JC: Next up, we have Grazzy. Grazzy. A NextGen employee payments platform has raised $4.25 million in a seed round for its digital tipping, same day pay and financial wellness for hourly workers. The platform helps hotels, salons, bars, and restaurants improve employee retention and guest experience through digital tips and instant access to earnings with the latest funding set to be used to expand across large hotel brands and operating groups, restaurant groups and salons. So, Chad, Skillit or Grazzy, who'd you rather? CS: You started drooling when you were talking about Skillit. Anyways. Andreessen Horowitz recently published their big ideas in tech for 2023. And I'll paraphrase, "We're having a labor shortage in construction, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, healthcare and education. These sectors are operating with legacy recruitment and talent management tech, which creates a massive opportunity for companies like Skillit and our friends over at Factory Fix. For these sectors, businesses trying to source and vet quality candidates is vital. Especially as most industries don't have their very own LinkedIn." I'm gonna say it's fairly simple for me. I'm gonna Skillit all damn day. [applause] JC: Skillit wins the Sowash boat for who'd you rather. All right. This is good. We're gonna disagree on this one. So I think both companies are winners on this game of who'd you rather? I like Grazzy better, however, no one carries cash anymore. So service workers who used to be rewarded aren't so much anymore. Valets, housekeepers, bellhops, can now make more in a cashless world with a solution like Grazzy, there's no app to download. You scan a QR code, on the property, you choose a tip amount, give some quick feedback, select a payment method. Guests see individual team member profile so you know who you're actually tipping. The hotel gets a branded interface, on this platform. All tips and feedback are connected directly to the team member or team that you're tipping. JC: I think it's brilliant and if I'm looking for work, an employer who is offering a tip solution like this, where I know when I make a bed and clean the toilets in a room, that someone will be more easily able to tip me or if I'm valeting or anything. Right? Like, I think it's a nice recruiting tool. I think it's gonna be a nice way for people to make more money. We'll get to the Walmart store in a bid, but people are hurting in this country. And anything extra that we can do to make it easier for you and I to give a fiver to someone that has given us good service, I think is a good thing. So for me, who'd you rather I'm going with Grazzy. I think you'll agree they're both winners. CS: Well, I think in the US there's no question Grazzy is a winner, but the thing is that it is not going to have an appeal outside the US at all. We are a tipping culture, nobody else is. JC: Yeah. But you think Americans go to Europe and other places to tip? Yes? CS: So being over in Europe for three months, they come to you with the bill, you tap it and you're done. There's no asking for a tip. It's just boom, and you're done. So, yeah, I think from a US standpoint, we have our own problems here. And this could be a bandaid to one of those problems, but this has no global appeal. JC: Well, I can tell you for sure, I've been at hotels where I want to tip the cleaning crew. And I don't have euros. I don't have cash. So in that case, it would be nice to have something digital where I could leave a tip. So I do think there are some instances whether or not companies embrace this in Europe, I don't know. But I think for the US it's a brilliant idea. We'll see if it catches on. Let's take a quick break and we'll get to, everyone's favorite topic. TikTok. CS: Oh, yeah. JC: All right, Chad. The screws are tightening on TikTok with a growing number of college campuses banning the app. Multiple schools have banned TikTok in recent weeks, including Arkansas State, Auburn, Oklahoma, Georgia, Idaho State, and Iowa. And nearly half the states have banned the app on state owned devices, including Mississippi, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The app is still alive and ticking. However, TikTok remains dominant in the US despite government ban with 68 million downloads, top five app ranking, and 46 million monthly active users on the Android version. Usage has remained steady with little impact from legislation. Chad, what do you make of the current state of TikTok in the US? CS: Well, Other than AOC and Katie Porter banning Congress, or even state Congress members, from TikTok, really doesn't mean that much, because officials aren't using it anyway. Then universities banning TikTok is even funnier. And I'm gonna bet that less than 5% of University staff use TikTok. I mean, can you see the 70 year old science professor using TikTok? JC: It's my understanding is that if you're on the wifi network at a university, it's banned. So students that are used to using the wifi they can't use the, university wifi. CS: It's called VPN. JC: And I think it's federal employees, not just Congressmen and women. CS: Still, if you have a federal phone. And a lot of these people have their own phone anyway. And it's funny because when my kids went to high school, they VPNed. It was very simple. You can find your way around it pretty easy. So as you had mentioned, downloaded 68 million times in the US over the past year, including 8.7 million times since December. And not to mention the US does one thing well, it's look for money and then create ways to actually siphon that cash away. And that's what they'll do with TikTok. JC: So this was a topic on our prediction show. And if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to do so. JT O'Donnell, our guest co-host was big fan of TikToking and had some really optimistic predictions for TikTok in this year. And I came back and said that I... I'll go the other way and say that TikTok will be banned in the US. I don't know if it'll be banned. That's not really what we do in America. But Biden has never been under more pressure from Congress to ban TikTok. Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley on just Wednesday of this week introduced legislation to prohibit TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company from all devices nationwide, essentially making it illegal to have TikTok in the US which would be huge. It's not an accident that Donald Trump is back on meta. JC: Elon Musk is a darling of conservatives. You don't think they're on the phone saying, "Hey, it'd be nice if TikTok just went away right about now." And for our space, even if TikTok doesn't get outright banned in America, if you're looking to recruit on college campuses, is TikTok something you're going to use to recruit? If you're recruiting government workers, are you using TikTok? Do you become fearful that government legislation may come down on you if you're using TikTok to advertise to government services? I don't know. I think the fear and uncertainty for a lot of advertisers, including, especially in our space, will keep people off of TikTok just by fear of, it's bad. CS: Yeah. I don't know if you saw the numbers or not. 8.7 million times downloaded since December. The fear mongering is so much bullshit. Nobody gives two fucks what the US government says, unless they actually wipe it from Google and... JC: Bingo. CS: Apple. JC: App Store. Gone. CS: They're not gonna do that. They're not going to do that. I will say now, I will put a C note on it, that they will not do that. You want to go, I mean, there's no way. There's no fucking way. 'cause there's too much money there. And to put up a guy's name like Josh Hawley, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. Can we talk about a fucking clown for goodness sakes, at the end of the day, TikTok is not gonna go away. The people that are being banned right now, they have their own devices other than their federal devices or they'll find a way to get around it. You can't stop the people, man. JC: You can stop the people with laws. CS: No, you can't. JC: Sure you can. If TikTok got wiped off of Apple's app store and Google, it would die. CS: Like I said, do you wanna put a C note on it? It's not gonna happen. JC: No, I don't wanna put a C note on it. But it's... CS: Okay. Yeah. 'Cause you know it's not gonna happen. JC: [chuckle] It could happen. I'm saying it could. CS: You know it's not going to happen. You're fear mongering. JC: I don't have confidence that it's definitely gonna happen. CS: "Oh, kids. Oh my God. It could go away." Oh, Stop it. JC: Kids don't vote. They don't vote anyway. So there's no fear like we're gonna lose voters. CS: No, they do, they do vote. They do vote. I don't know if you saw the last election or not. They do vote. Things are changing old man. Things are changing. JC: They go to reels... Anyway. There's gonna be pressure dude, and candidates still start talking about banning it. CS: Put Your money where your mouth is. C note. JC: There's gonna be heat, there's gonna be heat on TikTok. All right, going to TikTok to a good old fashioned American company, Walmart why announced it will raise the average hourly wage of its associates to more than $17.50 an hour. That's up from $17 an hour, before they made that change. The raise will include a mixture of regular annual increases and targeted investments in starting rates for thousands of stores. The overall minimum wage will also climb to $14 an hour, a 70% jump for workers who stock shelves and serve customers. This move reflects the strong demand for lower wage workers despite widespread layoffs in white collar industries. Other retailers such as Amazon, Target and Costco have also announced pay increases. Chad, your thoughts on the Walmart news and the rise of the workers? CS: No, yeah, I gotta say that corporate America is the best at twisting narratives. "Oh, look, we're giving new wages." So let's be clear. This isn't Walmart being a great corporate citizen, it's about market pressure looking for some kind of equilibrium. And in the US we've allowed stagnant wages to become standard for decades without any control of the crazy out of control c-suite compensation. The trickle down economics was supposed to find the money back to the worker and it never did. CEO comp went from 35 times that of the median employee compensation, and is now close to 400 times that. And in the case of the Walmart CEO, he's at 700 times that of a $17.50 an hour worker. So this is all bullshit and deception. CS: Here's an example of how out of whack this is. Walmart CEO made over 25 million last year in total comp. That's over, listen, $12,000 an hour versus 17.50, which is $36,400 a year. 17.50, $36,400 a year. How many single moms can live on $36,000 a year in the US. The living wage for the least expensive state in the union, Mississippi, I picked Jackson, Mississippi for an adult and one child, the living wage is $30.28 an hour. That's from the MIT living wage calculator. So as we start to see these things, we need to research more and we need to understand, "Oh wow, they're getting a pay raise." Well, it doesn't matter. They haven't had it for fucking decades in the first place, while the money's going directly to the top at a 700 times that. JC: So what you're saying is capitalism is awesome and the invisible hand of the market is amazing. CS: Not at all. I mean, you need to listen closer. They should be making, they should be making a lot more than 17.50. JC: So our friend at Jobcase CEO Fred Goff, posted on LinkedIn this week, "I'm shopping at Walmart this weekend. Happy to reward worker friendly progress." and I... CS: He's pandering. I mean, Fred's looking for fucking jobs on Jobcase. Come on, I love Fred to death, but that's total fucking pandering. JC: But the keyword there to me is progress. And this isn't progress to you. CS: No, it's not. This is bullshit. If it was progress, it would be at the living wage standard, in Mississippi, they'd be actually making $30 plus an hour. We are way behind. And for somebody to say, "Oh look, this is progress because we gave them some crumbs. Fuck you and your crumbs." Speaker 5: That escalated quickly. I mean, that really got outta hand fast. JC: Let's take a break and go to Metahumans. Speaker 6: Shall we play a game? JC: All right Chad, after 18 years tech expert, Bartosz Pampuch found himself out of a job. The last resume he had prepared was back in 2003. So he decided to refresh his CV as a 3D avatar that can answer questions and guide recruiters through his career history, work style, and skillsets. In a LinkedIn post, Pampuch said, "Recruiters all over the world say goodbye to static resumes and hello to a dynamic interactive experience. It's almost like having me right there with you in person." Let's take a listen to the video he posted. Bartosz Pampuch: Hello everyone. This is Bartosz Pampuch. Well, in fact, this is my metahuman based avatar, my digital twin, fully powered by artificial intelligence and capable of answering questions about me and my career history. I created it because sometime ago I asked myself this question, how many interviews would it take to find my next dream job? And I was like, why should I limit myself? I could scale this up and participate in thousands of interviews if that's what it takes to find the perfect match. And I turned the initial concept into the most interactive CV ever made an app you can talk to. S8: What were your main responsibilities as the vice president of Comarch Healthcare? BP: I was responsible for the strategic product lines, our telemedical platform, electronic health records, mobile and web-based solutions for patients and the medical AI cloud. JC: Lots to digest here. Chad, what's your take? CS: He put a lot of time to create a library around the responses. Would ChatGPT now start to take the training data that you wanted to focus on, which could be you and your history, right? And also the industry. And then just have it go ahead and work it itself. So he came up with, and he did a lot of work and being able to, get those interview questions and responses together himself. But now we have ChatGPT and then also we have the Veritone of the world, obviously who do voice cloning. They do that for us and our foreign language podcasts. They also have avatars. So this is going to happen much faster in 2023. I'm not saying the coming years, I'm saying the coming weeks. JC: So my man created a startup, whether he knows it or not, the ability to sort of like scan your face, create a 3D avatar, create almost an FAQ page of questions an interviewer would ask, how you would answer it, and then create an interactive solution to do that, is pretty incredible. I don't think he meant to do that on purpose. Somebody needs to grab hold of this idea, and move it forward for... Frankly, if I'm a video interviewing solution, I'm a little bit nervous right now. Maybe not now, but five years from now. Although from your perspective, this could happen a lot faster than that. These are basically video interviews without scheduling headaches, without putting a shirt on. It's an incredibly efficient way to interview people. It's also scary for the video resume vendors. JC: This is less AI to me than it is augmentation. I think that the resume as we know it is going to stay... The six second scan is, I don't think going anywhere anytime soon. However, to go through that six second scan of a resume and say, "Oh, I'd like to interview this person," click here and I get a 3D avatar, and then I can actually have an interview experience with the real person, with their real voice and real responses. CS: With their clone. JC: Is really pretty amazing if you think about it. It's scary, it's cool, I think there's a long way to go, but for a company that gets this right, is gonna crush it. CS: Yeah. I don't know how a guy like this doesn't get a job right out of the gate. JC: He probably already has one. I don't know when he put this video out on YouTube or did this thing, but he must, he's gotta have a job by now. CS: All the work that he put into it in actually developing it, because it also has speech recognition. You have to recognize what they're asking. So like with Veritone, we're talking about voice cloning and avatars, that's one aspect of it. Then the ChatGPT piece of it where you can actually condense and start to grind on the training data that provides the text that will go to the voices and so on and so forth. So, I mean, you can start to build something like this much easier than what he did. JC: Well I like that the answers were his... Almost like he bought a mic. He shows you like, we're talking on a mic now. He buys a professional mic. So there are a lot of moving parts on this. I don't know how you scale it easily, but the promise is there. Now, if they only had a husband and daddy avatar that I could turn on during the playoff games this weekend so I could watch without feeling guilty for neglecting my kids and being a bad partner, then we got something. We out. JC: 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 in 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.

The checks being written in 2023 may not be as big as the ones in 2022/21, but there sure are a lot of them already. That's why the boys play an EXTREME version of Buy-or-Sell on this episode, including HR Bot Factory, Amalia.io, awork, Arctic Shores, Huler and Gigged.ai. Our friends at Textkernel get "wise" with their recent acquisition and Wales embraces pay equality with the world's most popular sport. Oh yeah, and House of HR CEO Rika Coppens is still a total bad-ass, and she has the hardware to prove it. TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps companies strengthen their workforce and broaden their market reach by hiring talent in 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. Microsoft held an invite-only Sting concert for execs in Davos the day before the company announced layoffs of 10,000 employees. I wonder if the song, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" was played. Hey, kids, it's The Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe. I'm your co-host, Joel "King of Pain" Cheeseman. Chad: This is Chad "Show Me the Money" Sowash. Lieven: And I'm Lieven "If I had any Leopard tanks I would give them to Ukraine" Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel: And on this episode, Textkernel goes shopping, extreme buy or sell. And Wales just isn't the home of Chad's favorite show, it's a whole lot more. Let's do this. Chad: Yeah. Joel: What's up, guys? Chad: Whatever happened to the Europe has a bunch of countries in it sound effect? Have you moved away from that one? 'Cause I noticed how you moved toward and away from sound effects. Joel: I could put it in. I thought... Chad: No, I'm just... Joel: I thought the transition. Chad: This is up for conversation, that's all. Joel: The transition is kinda sexy. It's kinda... [laughter] Chad: It's hard hitting like our news. [laughter] Lieven: That's true. Joel: It is true. Chad: So let's get to the shoutouts. This is already off the rails. Joel: Right. Well, we shouldn't record this on Monday. We're way off. We're way off on Monday. I'll go ahead and go first because I need a little bit of Sweden to get me going. Joel: Oh, yeah. Lieven: Here we go again. Chad: I like a little Abba. Joel: Let's talk a little Sweden, shall we? In case you missed it, a Swedish mining company said last week that it had found Europe's largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals critical to many green technologies, including electrical vehicles and windmills. The world's production of rare earths is currently dominated by China, but this discovery by LKAB, a state-owned company creates the prospect that Europe could over time develop a domestic source of these minerals. Norwegian oil and now Swedish minerals, not since the Swedish bikini team has the continent nay the world been so excited. My shoutout goes to Sweden. Chad: It's nice to see Europe actually looking to take care of themselves. Joel: Suck it, dictators. [laughter] Chad: I'm gonna go ahead and give a shoutout to the Polish, English, and for the Germans too, it looks like turned their head to allow this to happen. But it looks like Ukraine's gonna be getting Challenger tanks and Leopard 2 tanks so they can actually start what Joel likes to call a full frontal. Joel: Did you say a full frontal? Speaker 6: What are you doing, step bro? Joel: Yikes. [laughter] Chad: If anybody has outshined the entire world during this whole fucking predicament where Russia invaded, it's been the Polish. They've taken in millions of Ukrainians. And this isn't even the government, just house-by-house. The communities have been taking in the Ukrainians. So now they're looking to send Leopard 2 tanks to the battlefield, and that's awesome. That's great to hear. Joel: Now we just need some Abrams tanks from the good old US of A to really change the complexion of this battlefield. Chad: That would hurt things more than anything else. They have way too many weapon systems and not enough people to be able to learn all those different weapon systems. All of the tanks that they're going to be stealing from Russia as those motherfuckers run toward the border, they're gonna have plenty of tanks. Lieven: Yeah, but you can send some soldiers as well, huh? Give them a few hundred Abram tanks with the soldiers to drive them or something, no? Chad: That's an entirely different discussion. [chuckle] Joel: Amazing how the change of uniform can make a Polish soldier into a Ukrainian soldier real quick. Lieven: It's almost the same language. Nobody would notice. Joel: The Germans. Chad: I think the Russians would notice, but go ahead. [laughter] Lieven: Nobody would believe them. They always lie. Chad: That's a very good point. Good point, Li. I like how you think. That's very good. [chuckle] You could be propaganda minister for The Chad and Cheese. Lieven: I'd be so good in being a propaganda minister for any case, basically. Joel: You'd be a... Chad: Shoutout. Joel: You'd be good at anything counterintelligence, propaganda. Yeah. Lieven: Oh, well, I'll just stick to Reddits and being myself there. Anonymous. Chad: Do you have a shoutout you'd like to share? Lieven: Of course I have a shoutout. You all know Rika Coppens, CEO of House of HR? Joel: Of course. Chad: Yes. Lieven: The Rika Coppens from the House of HR? She was elected Manager of the Year last week or two weeks ago. Time flies. Joel: Yes, she was. Lieven: Manager of the year is quite a big thing in Belgium. So now, she's big in Belgium. She's always been big in Belgium, but now she's really big in Belgium. The award was handed over by the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexander De Croo. Chad: That was awesome. Lieven: Yeah, it's pretty... It was really impressive. But of course the fun thing was, it's a HR company whose CEO was selected to become Manager of The Year, and that's the important thing. People are starting to realize that we work in an environment which changes lives for a good thing, etcetera. So, it's a good thing. Chad: Yeah. You sent a video of that, and that was a big to-do. It was in this big... Joel: Yeah, it was. Chad: Theater on stage. It had the... Lieven: Yes. Chad: You said the prime minister. Lieven: It's a big event. Chad: That was a big, big event. And was she the only female amongst the individuals looking... Who was being voted for Manager of the Year? Lieven: There were 10 nominees, two females... Chad: Okay. Lieven: Eight males. Chad: Gotcha. Lieven: So, still a bit dominant. [chuckle] Chad: Yeah, 80-20 rule, Jesus. Lieven: But Rika won of course. Chad: Yes. Lieven: And in fact, I don't think she won because she's female. Chad: No. Lieven: Even though it helps these days that we all know that being White males, we are constantly discriminated, but [laughter] she didn't win because she's female. She's just very, very, very good. Chad: [chuckle] Discriminated. Joel: Lieven needs a hug. Lieven: Yeah. We are constantly discriminated. Today, being male and White and... [laughter] It's hard. It's really hard. Chad: It's the privilege being knocked out of your face, is what you're used to. [laughter] It's like, "Oh, is that what the world really looks like?" Yeah. Look, it took a little bit of Lieven's privilege from him. Poor guy. Joel: Is there any like Will Smith style slaps on Chris Rock that goes down at Belgian award shows? [chuckle] Lieven: No, no, no. We're very serious people. We're nice to each other. We don't slap people around when there are cameras. Chad: When there are cameras. Joel: We only wage a World War every 50 years, that's all. Lieven: Yeah, it's not our fault. Joel: Never. Lieven: No. We are always the ones who are invaded. It starts in Belgium. Joel: That's true. You are the welcome mat for all the world's ills. Chad: The welcome mat. [laughter] Lieven: Yeah. Chad: Everybody clean your feet off on Belgium before you come into Europe, okay? Joel: How amazing to get past Belgium after the beer. It's like, "Have a beer and stay a while." Geez. Don't... Lieven: Exactly. Joel: Invade? What? Have a Duvel, you'll feel better. Chad: Well, I'll tell you what, later this year, we're gonna be invading Belgium again. Joel: Yes. Yes. Via Amsterdam. Chad: Ooh, yes. Yes. Joel: Traveling to the... House of HR, you're moving out of Belgium up north into Holland. Chad: The e-recruitment Congress. Joel: Cause chaos like Amadeus. Lieven: Amsterdam, November 14th. Save the date, save the location, and we'll see you there. Joel: I'll be there. Lieven: And basically, just a quick question. I'm still looking for very good speakers. We have plenty of them, but I need the best. So if anyone has a suggestion, anyone listening to the show today, if you have a suggestion, let me know. The theme will be... And it's still a working title, but I'm going to give it away already; "Manage your recruitment like a web shop." That's basically the idea. It's about convincing people to apply. We use the same technologies as when you convince people to buy a product or to buy a service. It's about managing your recruitment as a web shop. It's about authority, about speed, about convenience, about trust, etcetera. Which tools can we use for our recruitment as well? So if you know many speakers who might be a great fit, if you saw someone at the Congress somewhere, please let me know. Lieven@houseofhr.com, and you'll get two free tickets if you give me a great speaker. Joel: Lieven just opened Pandora's box and made a call for open nominations for speakers to come to his event. [laughter] Chad: With his email. Joel: With his email address. Have fun with that, Lieven. Lieven: Did I say Lieven? Joel: Yeah. [laughter] Lieven: I meant... No, no. Joel: No, I'm sure you're gonna get some responses of people who would like a little exposure for their CEOs or... Lieven: Yeah, we even pay our speakers. Joel: Some podcast whores looking for stuff. Chad: Now you're definitely gonna get emails. Jesus. [chuckle] Lieven: No, it's not like some other congresses, if you buy a sponsor pack, you can get a place on the stage. It's not like that. We actually choose our speakers and we pay them. It's a different approach. It's about content. Joel: Very selective. Chad: About content. Joel: Very selective. Chad: Yes. Joel: Much like the news on our show. Chad: Topics. Joel: All right. Our friends at Textkernel, a company that provides semantic search and matching technology for recruiting and staffing, in case you haven't been paying attention, acquired WiseGuys, a subsidiary of Coosto, a social media monitoring platform. WiseGuys provided the crawling technology and raw data used in Textkernel's job feed product, which the two companies had been working on in partnership for the past 20 years. The acquisition was made to own this part of the product and remove dependencies as well as to have more control over the product's roadmap for expanding coverage and potentially looking at other sources of data. This was Textkernel's third acquisition in the past 12 months. You might remember a little acquisition called Sovren that actually happened, I think, two years ago. Chad, you spoke with Textkernel CEO, Gerard Mulder in depth about this acquisition. What's up? Chad: Yeah, it just makes sense. They've been working with this organization for 20 years to be able to build a product, a labor market information type of a product. Obviously, they really wanna go heavy into the market with this product in 2023. So, instead of having a partner, have that partner be a part of the organization, they saw that it was a great point in time for both companies to be able to go through the acquisition process. Again, this is nothing new. It's just being able to, instead of saying that you do a certain thing, but yet you have an outside vendor or partner do it, you're actually going to bring that in-house and do it yourself. And we've seen some companies over the years actually do this; either they kick the vendor out because they've developed their own or they bring the organization in through acquisition. So, very smart play. And as we have been talking about, I really think 2023 is going to be not the year of funding, but the year of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations. Joel: This is some of the most Dutch shit I've ever heard. [chuckle] I mean, the Dutch are conservative people, but 20 years, 20 years, I mean, shit. Textkernel has super smart people running things. Gerard has been on our show. Look, they have serious financing through Maine Capital. Their history of acquisitions, hello Sovren, has been solid. So you know that they've made a good buying decision with the buy of WiseGuys. It's obviously a solid one. After 20 years of shopping, I hope that they've made a good decision. I don't even need to check out WiseGuys, knowing how thoughtful Gerard and his team are. I know this is a solid acquisition, probably too conservative for my American taste. I usually like to buy within 30 days or so. But nevertheless, this is a sound buy. Textkernel does not act outta turn. They've done their homework. This is gonna be a good acquisition like all the others. Lieven: No, I agree. I mean, Textkernel knows what they're buying from a client's perspective, and that's more than most companies can say when doing M&A. So if you've been a client for 20 years, then you probably know the company. And if they still wanna buy it, it must be a very good deal. I don't really know about the revenue of WiseGuys or the business model. No idea, really. But I like the company. They're very technology driven, and if they have been supplier for 20 years, the match must be perfect. Chad: Yeah. But if you take a look at Textkernel though and their growth, you're starting to see obviously the acquisition of a huge player in the market, Sovren. And then they come across the pond very strong. Then you have the entrance of Maine Capital, obviously. So, they do have the cash that's there. To me, as I think Joel was pointing out, this is just perfect from a timing standpoint. And instead of having to worry about possibly that partner getting gobbled up or acquired by somebody else, and then screwing your entire product, just own it yourself. Joel: Lieven, I gotta know. The term "wise guy" in America either refers to a gangster or a smart ass. If I say "wise guy" to you as a European, what do you think? Lieven: I think I know both of the explanations, but I would think smart guy, mostly. Joel: Smart guy. Lieven: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Lieven: But also, the wise guys, it has something to do with the FBI or Wise Guy. It reminds me of the movies, Wise Guy. I'm not sure exactly what. Chad: Wise Guys, yeah, they're being watched by the FBI. Lieven: Okay. Like that. Joel: Maybe a little lost in translation with the name, WiseGuys. Lieven: But "wise guy" sounds like a smart ass. Joel: All right. Well, let's take a quick break and get to, God help us, Extreme Buy or Sell. Chad: Extreme. Lieven: Ooh. Speaker 6: Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel: All right, guys. I hope you ate your wheaties on this one, or had your croissant. We're gonna do some Extreme Buy or Sell. Chad: Extreme. Joel: Our listeners know what that means. Typically, it means three companies, all startups, usually that have gotten money recently. And then I read a quick summary and then everybody buys or sells the business. We're gonna go from three to six, just because that's how much startup cash is flowing into Europe. Are you guys ready for a little extreme buy or sell? Chad: Let's do it. [chuckle] Lieven: It's not a little buy or sell, it's like a huge buy or sell. Joel: It's a huge... Lieven: It's extreme. Extreme, yeah. Joel: Huge buy or sell. Lieven: Huge buy or sell. Joel: Yeah. And it deserves a drum roll, is how much extreme this thing is. All right, let's talk about HR Bot Factory. Nothing to do with C+C Music Factory. Spain-based HR Bot Factory has raised €1 million in a Series A. Well, that's a hell of a Series A, €1 million. All right. The funding will be used to expand internationally. First, to the UK, and later to the US. The company had revenue of more than €500,000 in 2022, and is aiming to increase it to €1.2 million this year. Prior to this, they had secured seed funding to the tune of €650,000. That was January of 2022. All right, Chad, HR Bot Factory gonna make you sweat. Is it gonna make you buy or sell? Chad: One word, ChatGPT. It's a sell for me. Joel: All right. We got a sell from Sowash. All right. I can't decide if these guys are a paradox for Spanish or poor man's talk push. Either way, I think they're too little, too late to the ball game. Good luck with everyone's sloppy seconds in the chatbot automation space. HR Bot Factory. Yeah, it's also a shitty name, and it's also a big sell from yours truly. Lieven: I'm gonna follow. We do have some experience with HR chatbots technology. We use Dora the Chatbot, and it takes some time to get everything right, but once it's right, it's perfect. It really saves time. If it wasn't for ChatGPT thing, I would say maybe a buy. But I agree with Chad, this isn't the right time to be investing in someone who is not ChatGPT. Joel: That's three sells for HR Bot Factory, but that's just our first startup, guys. Let's go to number two. Huler. UK-based Huler has raised £2 million to further develop its employee experience platform, as well as create 12 new jobs at the company. The platform, which acts as a launchpad bringing together different programs, apps, and content that employees require says the funding will help them drive further growth in the UK and internationally. Chad, Huler, Huler, Huler, buy or sell? Chad: So, this is for all those big, ugly ass platforms that have acquired several point solutions over the years and need a facelift. I love the idea of working in a single tab instead of popping open new tabs every time I go from one point to the next in your HCM. I'm a big fan of better UX, and this will continue to be a problem most enterprise systems are making. So Huler, I think, is going to be a great target for acquisition in the coming months. So, this is a buy for me. [applause] Joel: All right. Basically, turn your company's intranet, the place no one wants to go anyway, into an iPhone interface. I'm sure it makes the branding folks feel really good about themselves. But is this thing as transformative as they make it sound? Not in my opinion. It's like my kid eating sugar, pumps you up for a few hours and then crash, which is exactly where I think this company is going. I am a sell on Huler. Lieven, break the tie. Lieven: So poetic. You stole my whole iPhone thing. I was going to say I already have an iPhone, sell. Basically, this is what my iPhone can do. So, sell. [chuckle] Joel: All right. Chad: First off, still going through on your iPhone on a lot of those human capital management systems is still going to suck. So, I don't care if you have an iPhone, you have a Droid or whatever you have, it's still a shit process. Lieven: You can buy, we sell. [chuckle] Joel: We're moving on. We're moving on. We're moving on. This is extreme, baby. We gotta move fast. Lieven: Extreme... Joel: All right, so... Lieven: Gigged. [chuckle] Joel: Good Lord, this is off the rails already. All right. Gigged.ai, a Glasgow-based startup. Speaker 7: Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, "If it's not Scottish, it's crap." [chuckle] Joel: Gigged.ai has raised £1.6 million in seed funding for its AI-powered recruitment software that matches people with relevant technology skills to suitable hiring companies, and provides an overview of a business' current talent capabilities to prevent unnecessary hires. The funding round was led by Par Equity and will be used to build out its team remotely and expand its Glasgow and London offices. The platform is already being used by the BBC. Chad, are you buy or sell on Gigged.ai? Chad: Okay. So the CEO has great experience with Allegis and tech systems. So he has experience in this space, understands the gap for tech and giggers. I like it. I like it a lot. Not to mention it's outta Glasgow and it's Scottish. So, it's a buy for me. [applause] Joel: All right. Hey, it's a sourcing platform which would've been cool about five years ago, but not so much today. We spent most of 2021 talking about how sourcing is being commoditized. While SeekOut, hireEZ and HiringSolved and the others have pivoted, here we are back to the future with Gigged.ai. Like most things Scottish, they wanna launch something after it's been popularized and call it innovation. [chuckle] I say, nope, this is a sell from me. Break the tie, Lieven. Lieven: Okay, okay. Well, it is from Glasgow. It has Gig in its name, it has AI in its name, so it should be an easy buy, but it's focusing on matching people with relevant technology skills with suitable companies. You can't match what's not there. If we find someone who's technically skilled, we don't need a matching platform. We need a telephone and we call seven clients and we can place it at seven places. [chuckle] So, no technology needed. So in this case, I love the idea, but no, it's a sell. Joel: Oh, boy. All right. Let's go to Arctic Shores. Founded in 2013, Arctic Shores, a Manchester, UK-based company that provides psychometric assessments using behavioral tasks to determine personality traits and reveal potential raised £5.75 million in a series B round for international expansion development of its soft skills assessment and adoption of its new self-configure platform. Total funding raised is £13.5 million. Chad, are you ready to buy Arctic Shores? Chad: We can't even get the basics right in what we do in HR and hiring, so on and so forth. And we've got all the psycho babble that's happening and getting thrown at us. And when it comes to psychometric assessments, I'm usually a hard no, not always, but in this case, this is definitely a hard no. It's a sell. Joel: Oh boy. All right. So, I hate trying to review behavioral assessment companies, mostly because I don't understand them. Speaker 8: 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel: And I struggle with Arctic Shores because they have been around for 10 years. So, there is profit there. However, it is going to be a big... It is not gonna be a big growth business at this point. It would've happened by now if that was the case. I'd buy Arctic Monkeys, the band, but Arctic Shores is a sell. Lieven: And I would buy Erotic Shores, but I'm not into arctics, so no. I think they have some very nice clients, and given the huge competition in this industry, it means they must be doing something right. But I couldn't find what it was. [laughter] And they have a tab, pricing, on the homepage, a whole tab called "pricing," and when you click on it, [chuckle] you have to schedule for a meeting. It sucks. Joel: Oh boy. Lieven: I thought, yes, they're going to be transparent about their pricing, and they're not. Joel: That is the worst. That is the worst. Lieven: So, no Arctic Shores for me. No. [chuckle] Sell. Joel: Oh boy. Chad: That is a Chad and Cheese pet peeve, by the way. If you have a price link and you click on pricing, you better show me fucking pricing. Lieven: Of course. It says "pricing," show me pricing. [chuckle] It doesn't says, "schedule a meeting with a sales guy." Joel: That escalated quickly. All right, let's go. We're almost done. Almost. All right. Let's go to awork, a Hamburg-based software startup has raised €5 million in a series A funding round. Awork provides a digital workplace software that allows creative colleagues to work intuitively on projects. The funding will be used to grow DACH market share and accelerate the development of its project management functions and workflows. With 17,000 user accounts on its platform, the company has 2200 corporate customers and expects to hit 4000 corporates before the end of the year. Chad, are you ready to get to work on awork, or is it a sell? Chad: Awork, a-hole awork. It's an integrated efficiency platform for teams that makes an unsexy process sexy, or at least that's what it says it does. But I'm not sold on most of the aspects of this platform, as it seems like a solution looking for a real problem. So, it's a sell. It's a sell for me. Joel: Ouch. Lieven: Yep. Same here. Nothing new to add, sell. Solution for a non-existing problem. [chuckle] Joel: I will expand on that. Probably the most innovative startup we're reviewing today, but man, does it look complicated? No wonder it's a German company, because Germans embrace this kind of complexity. Will it grow outside of its market? I'm skeptical. But they're not trying to grow outside of their market, they're trying to stay in their own little hyper-OCD market. [chuckle] And even though Germans don't historically stay in Germany for long, I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and buy awork. Or, is it [0:25:50.1] ____? [applause] Joel: All right. Chad: A-hole. [chuckle] Joel: Let's go from Germany to France. Amalia.io, a three-year-old startup from Lille France, I'm sure that's not how you pronounce that, has raised €4 million in funding for its no code sales compensation platform that helps sales teams calculate performance-based compensation. The platform also provides transparency by plugging in key indicators from the enterprise's customer relations management, or other back-of-house software engine to ensure everyone's in loop. The funding will be used to expand the team and widen its clientele. Chad, you know a thing or two about sales software. Are you a buy or sell on Amalia? Chad: Yeah, I think it's a great tool that could replace spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are not sexy, but I don't see this, again, solving a real problem. The processes that are in place, usually, if I'm in Salesforce, I can push everything into a spreadsheet. I usually have my data at my fingertips one way or the other. This, again, I think is more of a cosmetic UX fix, but I don't think that there's a real problem here. They're just trying to make things sexy that aren't sexy. And that, to be quite frank, isn't enough for me to want to buy. So, I'm going to sell. Joel: So, my experience with sales commission software is pretty close to zero. I understand in a global economy, being able to manage salespeople effectively is an ideal situation. However, I have a hard time thinking existing platforms like Salesforce or maybe even some payroll platforms out there aren't already solving this problem or already haven't solved this problem. So, I'm gonna lead on Chad and Lieven, who know a hell of a lot more about managing salespeople than I do, to guide my decision. Lieven, are you a buy or sell? Lieven: I'm a buy, actually. I think I like the whole instant gratification ID and... [applause] Lieven: The no code part sounds cheap, so that's a big win. [laughter] Really, I like it. I like it. If you can motivate sales by showing them immediately what they're going to gain, then it's kind of almost gamification. It's addictive. You enter a client, you leave the client's office and you say, "Woo! One more thousand euros," something like that. So, I like it. I think maybe I just misunderstood the whole thing, but I like it. Joel: All right, Chad is a sell and Lieven is a buy, which means I am... Speaker 9: It's Corona time. Joel: Corona time, 'cause I'm on the fence. A little push. Speaker 9: Hey, it's Corona time right now. Chad: If you're a sales guy and you don't know how much money that you just brought in after that sale or how much you have left, you're a shitty sales guy. So, I don't need that. [chuckle] Lieven: What? Sometimes, just very complicated. Chad: [chuckle] If you made it complicated, then that's management's fault. They need to get... Joel: Lieven just likes any French company that we talk about on the show. Chad: Yeah, that's a good point, yeah... Lieven: I love the French. Joel: He loves French. All right, everybody, that is Extreme Buy or Sell. Chad: Extreme... Joel: Now we're gonna tone it down a little bit... Chad: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Joel: With some European football. The Football Association of Wales, or FAW as Chad likes to call it, has agreed to pay its men's and women's senior players the same for representing their country. The deal which comes into effect immediately will see the men's team take a 25% pay cut to enable a 25% rise for the women's team resulting in parity for representing their country. The agreement runs until 2027 and makes Wales the latest country, including the US, yes, those misogynistic pigs in America, England, Brazil, Australian, Norway, and New Zealand to adopt equal pay for their national teams. Yo, Lieven, I didn't say Belgium. What the hell's going on? And what are your thoughts on the Wales team parity in salary? Lieven: If you ask my official company-backed opinion on this, then it's a great idea. We all love equality. [laughter] Joel: Okay, can I get your old white dude version now? [chuckle] Lieven: Of course, just my own... Joel: Nein. Lieven: Opinion which has nothing to do with my company's opinion, to make this very, very clear. Joel: Please, yes. Lieven: I think the moment they get the same number of fans, they can ask the same pay. But it's totally ridiculous. This is the entertainment business and you get paid, and if you entertain many people, you get paid more. It's like Sheryl Crow saying, "I earn less than Ed Sheeran. This is not fair." No, she just sells not enough CDs or she doesn't get enough listeners on Spotify. If you get more listeners, you get paid more. So just maybe a better example, in Belgium, you used to have two very, very, very good tennis players. You have Justine Henin, and what's the other one's name? [laughter] Kim Clijsters, of course. And... Chad: Clijsters. Yes. Lieven: Yeah, Kim Clijsters, Clijsters as you say it. Well, she made much more money than some Belgium male tennis guy because she was just better. And when she was playing, everyone went to watch. But if the souped-up guy we had was playing, nobody went to see his game because he was souped up. So I think you pay. If you are into professional sports, you get paid because you are the best. And in this case, I don't think they are better than the male team. So this is just like... It's almost like charity, and in their case, I would be offended. Chad: Well, I'm sure they're not mad that they're getting an extra 25%. So this is... And this is much different than the US women's, and let's try to separate them, because the US women's team was actually more successful. They actually won World Cup. Lieven: That's different. They deserve more money, of course. Chad: Exactly. Well, they deserve more money, but guess what? They had to go to court in the US just so that they could get paid at parity. They should be making more. Joel: So, as the one that knows as little about football as the other two, I agree... From Lieven's perspective, if this is a private industry where it's based on profits and how much ticket sales and merchandise, then it should be market driven and people should be paid accordingly. But in Chad's case, if we're talking about World Cup, we're talking about Olympics, we're talking about sort of government representation or representing your country, there should be more of an equal payment, because... Lieven: It's communism, I tell you. Joel: People aren't going to the Olympics to get paid a salary. They're going to compete, win a gold medal or win a medal and then do commercials for Progressive Insurance [laughter] and IHOP. So I see both sides of this, but in terms of if this is the Wales team, if they're paid by a government entity or a global entity, then there should be a lot more parity in salaries regardless of who's better or who's not. They're playing for the country and should be paid according to sport, more so than how much butts they put in seats. Chad: Look at that right now, Lieven. Look at that. That's what we call growth. That is what we call growth. Round of applause for Joel Cheeseman. [laughter] Joel: You're gonna give me an applause? Thank you. Thank you. [applause] Joel: My favorite part about this though is that I get to give my Canadian wife shit for the fact that Canada is not on this list [chuckle] and America is. So, my wife is the ultimate winner in this debate. [laughter] Speaker 10: Take off, we're doing our movie. Don't wreck our show, you hoser. Joel: We out. Chad: 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 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, Pepperjack, Swiss, so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

Back in 2018, we had a little competition called Death Match that pitted four startups against each other to win a coveted gold chain. It was New Orleans and the Bloody Marys were flowing. Conversational A.I. solution TalkPush, and its flamboyant CEO Max Armbruster, was there to pitch their company to a panel of judges. We go back to that moment in 2018 and then catch-up with what's been going on since then, as well as glimpse into the future for what's next. 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. 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 guilty pleasure, aka the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel, joined as always, the feral kid to my Mad Max. Chad: Yes. Joel: Chad is in the house and today, holy shit, it's a reunion show. You know him, you love him, you remember him, let's welcome Max Armbruster to the show. Max Armbruster: Thank you, thank you. Chad: CEO, founder, Talkpush all the way from Hong Kong, now you're in Ireland. So tell us a little bit about that real quick, what was the big move? What happened? Max Armbruster: It's a personal move. We're a company which is not anchored to any specific location we're kind of nation-less and so Ireland is good because we cover a lot of customers in Latin America and Asia, so I have more normal hours now and Hong Kong was becoming very restrictive for certain citizens, it was hard to travel, you couldn't download TikTok and other things like that. So it was time to go. Joel: The real question is, have you embraced Irish Whiskey? And if so, which is your favorite? Max Armbruster: I go buy scotch from Scotland, I do drink Jameson when that's what's on the menu. So I'm equal opportunity drinker. Joel: I'm sorry, the correct answer is Green Spot for everyday. Chad: Just something you should have on the mantle. Joel: Yes, yeah, something you should have on the mantle. Chad: So back in 2018, Max actually got on stage during a little thing we call Death Match, and this was back in New Orleans, and we had four on stage, Max got up there and he gave it his all and we're gonna listen to that first pitch. Joel: He was dressed quite captivatingly, if I remember. There was a t-shirt with a boxing hairy chest on it. Am I remembering that correctly, Max? Max Armbruster: Yes, that was me. I went up on stage with boxing gloves and a naked torso that was on top of like a kitchen apron. Joel: Yes, yeah, I remember it pretty well. Nola was out of control that morning. Max Armbruster: That's okay. It wasn't my actual torso, so we don't know each other that well. Chad: It was a good entering point though. Joel: We're gonna hear Max's original pitch back in 2018, and then we're gonna get a refresher, an update on what's been going on with Talkpush. Here we go. [music] Joel: Alright, next we have the CEO, Max Armbruster of Talkpush, bring it. Push it real good. Max Armbruster: I was so scared of this, I was so scared of that moment. Chad: Alright, Max. You can hear it. So two down. You ready? Max Armbruster: Ready. Ready. Joel: Love it. Chad: A little anxious. Max Armbruster: A little bit. Yeah. Chad: Would you like me to get off the stage so you can do the shit? Max Armbruster: No, I think we can switch. Chad: Fight. Max Armbruster: Let's do this. Alright, thank you. Thank you, Chad. Good morning. Talkpush in two minutes. Recruiters like to have it all. On one hand, they wanna use AI and big data. Max Armbruster: I'm out of breath. Chad: I can tell. Max Armbruster: And want to automate all the boring stuff, like scheduling interviews, doing background checking, re-engaging, all databases. Chad: This is where he almost faints. Max Armbruster: But on the other hand, nobody wants to be hired by a robot, people wanna talk to people, they wanna have a personal, individual conversation, I'm a little bit out of breath from running on stage. And so it's very hard today with an ATS and a CRM to get both of those experiences, the automation and the personal touch, until Talkpush. So what we do is we work at the front of the marketing of the recruitment funnel, and we automate the initial engagement with a candidate with conversational agents that optimize conversion rates. So that translates into a 70% reduction in marketing cost per hire, because those conversational agents aka chatbots who are talking on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, on career sites, they're really good at getting the candidate to that next step. Once you're at the next step, then you wanna talk to a recruiter and with our experience, the handover is seamless, so you go from talking to a bot, if you're a candidate, to a recruiter seamlessly and the recruiter can then take over... Joel: Seamlessly... Max Armbruster: From their mobile app and talking to the candidate. So we use the word augmented recruiter to talk about what the recruiter can do. Chad: And when you say that this is seamlessly, red flag. Max Armbruster: So much more with our system, this is why millions of candidates are already being processed on Talkpush with big brands like Adecco, Accenture, AIA, Starwood, using our system. They come to us because they realize the way you talk to candidates is a very core part of your employer brand, and they use us to level up the recruitment experience. Chad: Excellent. Joel: You said augmented back in 2018. That was awesome. Something that we would say very much in the next four years. Chad: This is the where are they now episode, right? So once you got off that stage, what was the start of the journey to get to here? What's been different? Other than a pandemic. Right? Talk a little bit about that. What's changed? Max Armbruster: First after that stage experience, I had to go get a Xanax, just to come back to baseline. Chad: Some makers markers, some shit like that. Max Armbruster: I think it's quite honest, the presentation that I made, because I really focused the pitch on the front of the funnel and that's what really chatbots we're good at. It's a UI-type technology that helps to increase conversion rates at a certain point in the journey. But because at that same time we were talking about augmented realities and machines and we saw a lot of science fiction come out, people would imagine that it could do so much more, that every conversation was contextualized and personalized. Chad: Yeah. Max Armbruster: And so I think there was a bit of a moment of deflation in the industry of what conversational AI could do since then. But we kept on just working at the front of the funnel mostly. And only recently have we started contextualizing conversations for the later stages, being able to answer questions from candidates when they've been hired or just before they've been hired and asking them additional information. So that's... That's from the... There's just broad technology standpoint, from a company standpoint, growing. Obviously the pandemic was a shocker to the system for us in a period of two, three months, we went from... We tripled our volume and, we did not triple our revenue at that time. We just tripled our volume, which meant we had to spend three times more money on Amazon. So that was a bit of a learning curve. Chad: Yes. Max Armbruster: And we were kind of a semi-remote already, but we basically went full remote and are now nation-less as I said in my intro. Joel: You've taken very little funding according to Crunchbase about $1.3 million while companies were raising tons of money in that time period. What was your mentality around money? Are you just profitable enough to like not worry about raising money? How does fundraising play into your business model particularly over the four years since we last spoke? Max Armbruster: And if you're gonna play videos of me from four years ago, back to me four years from now, I have to be cautious with what I say, because fundraising is not a philosophy or, it's just a tool that you use when the time is right. And I suppose the time wasn't right for us because we saw that every customer deserved a lot of hand-holding, a lot of attention, and therefore, just doubling or tripling the size of the team wasn't gonna crack the case on conversational AI, that you needed to kind of work through the pains of the technology where you could gradually automate some of the jobs. And that takes time. So I think our time wasn't there, even though there was obviously a lot of money in the market. Yeah. No regrets. We're around. We're still growing and still building while others have come and gone. Joel: Any plans to raise in the future? Max Armbruster: Sure, sure, I don't think money is dirty, just 'cause I'm French. Joel: Amen to that. Chad: Talk about growth. I mean, you guys have... You've been a big player in APAC, but that's been kind of like your core and not to mention what South America, Mexico. Talk a little bit about growth where you saw gaps and you wanted to fill those gaps. What areas. Max Armbruster: Growth can, as I said, you have to have happy customers with a stable technology to grow. So that's the basis. And we lost a bit of time chasing smaller customers for a while. And I think every entrepreneur wants to please everybody and wants to please other entrepreneurs, and so they want their technology to be adopted by all. But the reality is our technology, conversational AI is most applicable in high volume situations where there's a lot of repeat. So you have to embrace working with corporates, that means like investing in infosec and security and integrations and workday integrations and things like that. Chad: Things that suck. Yeah. Max Armbruster: Yeah. So it's a growing journey for sure. And that's where the growth is, and where the growth was low was in the S&B market, even though we spent a lot of time on it. And I like the emerging markets because they are a little bit more slow growth, but you can kind of leapfrog from Excel sheet straight to an automated recruitment platform like Talkpush without going through the ATS step. Whereas, in more developed market, perhaps in the western market, everybody's got an ATS in place, so then you have to integrate with the ATS and then sometimes it's... It just makes things too complicated. So there... We have two happy customers, the ones that never had an ATS and the ones that are working on a really big one like Workday because, Workday is not going away, but they still need another solution to handle all the transactions that we do. Joel: Interesting. I wanna talk about sort of overall branding of your business and when you first started, chatbot was perfectly fine to say, everyone was okay with, we're a chatbot, and over the last four years, it's conversational AI, which you've used in this interview, and chatbot has become a bit of a dirty word. Is that fair? What's your take on the use of the word chatbot? Max Armbruster: We all started interacting with them for customer service, and the thing you want when you talk to customer service is to talk to a human, and you're like, "Yeah, what do I have to say?" What's the combination of letters and numbers I have to put on my phone so I can get to a human as fast as possible? 3, 2, 1 or two good. I got somebody on the phone, thank the lord. That's the mentality for most people when dealing with chatbots. And I think that's why it's a dirty word, is because, it's trying to say, let's just get rid of that thing. Let's get past it. Let's get to the next step. I think that conversational AI speaks to a grander vision where the AI will not just be the first step, but maybe the second, maybe the third, maybe all the steps. And some employers now are doing all the steps in one go and the chatbot is still the interface. There's an AI in the back that decides for the 10% of candidates that did get shortlisted, what's gonna happen to them and what questions are they gonna ask. And to be able to contextualize the answers at different stages of the journey. That's like doing double the amount of work for only 10% of the volume. That's what has to happen to go from talking to candidates to talking to applicants. And then if you go from talking to applicants to talking to hires, that's another 90% drop. Max Armbruster: So again, you have to triple the amount of work to impact only 1% of the volume. So what I mean to say is that the last mile is very hard to do 'cause you have much less data and there's the economics are harder to build a full end-to-end platform. Chad: Seems like a maturation through data. And really... And correct me if I'm wrong, but the thing that, what really distinguishes one conversational AI company versus another is the experiences and the data that you have to crunch to contextualize the actual experience itself. Not everybody has the same data, not everybody has the same clients, the same region of the world, et cetera, et cetera, works under the same languages. So, I mean, from my standpoint, trying to like separate the two types of company, one conversational AI to another, it's really the secret sauce of the data and the behavior that you've been able to pull together over the years. Talk a little bit about that. Max Armbruster: Yeah. If our sales team talks to a company that wants to automate, but they have, let's say, 2,000 job openings and 200 different job description, over 10 different sites, I'd be like, this is not, this is too hard. And we're not gonna do it. But if it's a company with 5,000 employees or 10,000 employees and they have five sites and three job descriptions, then, yeah, that's great, that's perfect. So that's where it's hard because a conversation can go in so many different directions if you... The Chad and Cheese Podcast is like talent acquisition tech. Straight talking, and that's it. You know what you're going for. Joel: And sex appeal. Max Armbruster: And the sex appeal, and the alcohol. And the alcohol to forget. Yes. Joel: By the way you can't see this, but Max is drinking wine while we're doing this interview, so he may forget this, so you mentioned your AWS bill going up exponentially without an increase in revenue, obviously, COVID was a curveball in your business, what was another thing that caused sleepless nights, was unexpected, 'cause I know a lot of entrepreneurs out there, startups that are listening are dealing with things all the time, and people don't really appreciate, every day it's putting out new fires, what was a particular hot fire that you had to deal with since we last spoke? Max Armbruster: Traumatic experiences from the past, we lost our head of engineering in early 2019, and when you have a platform that handles 10 million conversations, 10 million candidate interactions, 10 million candidates a year... Joel: It hurts... Max Armbruster: Yeah. That's a scary moment for sure. He was our, kind of our CTO or founder. And yeah, that was a pretty scary moment. I think early 2020, when COVID happened, all of our pipeline basically disappeared from one day to the next, because everybody froze their spending, and as a cash flow positive company that relies on our customer to pay the bill, that was actually more scary than if we had been a VC-backed company with three million sitting in the bank, so we had to make a few twists and turns, but, yeah, and I think all good, you sign up to be a company builder so that you have a few scars and lessons. Joel: You sign up for the roller coaster, right? Max Armbruster: Yeah, yeah. So those were probably some of the low lights. Chad: Well, talk about the rise after COVID, because we started to see, obviously, there was a huge dip, and then there was an explosion, and then money was... It seemed like money was fucking everywhere, so what happened at that point. Because you see so many companies when they're looking at expanding and contracting, they have to do that around talent as well. Max Armbruster: The explosion, as I said, was one in traffic where it went from, it tripled in a period of three months for us, and while it was difficult to process from a cost perspective, it meant that the time had come. It basically meant that for a certain category of employers, the first screen would not happen with a phone screener, there wouldn't be no more phone calls, and once you've turned that corner, it's not something you can go back to. Automation is like a one-way street where you don't go back three years later and say, I remember the old days when we used to go through the fax machine and read the resumes and decide who to call? Once you're past that you're past, and it was the same thing with some of the pre-screening that we were put in charge of. The recruitment teams were cut by 20%, 30% of head counts, the volumes were triple, the amount of positions that were available to fill were lower, so there was no other solution than to use us for our customers and transformation that would have taken a couple of years were done in a couple of months. Chad: On the crack. That's what I'm hearing. They were on the crack. Joel: Well, is that the Irish crack or the... Chad: The Irish crack. Joel: I don't know if Chad knows what the Irish crack is. Max Armbruster: It means it's a good bit of fun, that's all. Chad: That's all it is. That's all it is. Joel: Chad loves crack. Chad: It helps me stay awake and get work done. So let's talk. I was lucky enough to actually judge a competition for Recruitment Hackers, which is something that you guys do, and one of the things that I love about a lot of the new tech that I'm seeing, but I really love about what Talkpush is doing, what you've been doing for a while, is getting candidates through the process incredibly fast, and one of those things was via voice, which I thought was incredible, and I think these positions that I was actually applying for, I was mock-applying for to these real companies, they were looking for customer service individuals, and one of the questions were around being able to speak fluent English, so that whole process of using me, my voice. What was that all about? So there literally was, I think, five questions that were asked and then you asked for an audio sample, so can you take us through that and take us through kind of like the completion ratios that you're seeing from start to finish, because as we've seen with Appcast data, 92% of individuals who start an application do not complete it, so only 8% complete. What are you guys seeing from completion rates? And then talk a little bit more about the voice tech that you guys are using. Max Armbruster: Okay, on the topic of completion rates. Be very wary of what the assessment vendors are saying, because you have to compare apples with apples, the completion rate for somebody who has already been through an interview with a live of human is gonna be drastically higher than somebody who comes from Indeed or Facebook or somewhere else. In our case, our customers, a lot of them were sourcing through Instagram and Facebook and word of mouth, and so they were very sort of low engagement candidates, and when our customers tried to move them to long-form assessments, they would get a 15% completion rate, so it's still better than what the 7% you are mentioning, but low enough that it would make it impossible to hit their quotas, their hiring quotas, and so we look looked for a solution, we said, "Okay, well, is there a way that we can collect this... " Because the assessments that we're talking about were long-form, 20, 25, 30-minute language assessments and people would just drop off, and I feel for the candidates, 25 minutes to apply for a job when you're looking for a job? That's worth a lot of money, because you could be applying to five other jobs in that time, so it's obviously annoying, and so we went around and looked for technology partners that could analyze audio data. Max Armbruster: And with one minute of data, we have 95% accuracy on something that if you did 25 minutes, you wouldn't get anything better in terms of generating a score for your English proficiency with multiple parameters, like vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation. And we can capture this data talking to people on WhatsApp or on Messenger or on a website. And so, because it's just one or two minutes of audio, it doesn't feel like a test. It feels like, "Hey, tell me about yourself. Why do you wanna work here?" Which is a different experience. It's more like, alright. I'm just saying what I... Why I wanna work here, I'm not being tested. And the experience of not being tested is better if you're talking to leads, if you're talking to applicants, maybe our shortlist applicants, then an assessment is more suitable. So that's our approach on that. And it's working well, always trying to reduce the workload at the front of the funnel. Chad: So what's the new percentage that you're generally seeing? Just kind of like an idea for completion rates? Max Armbruster: Yeah. It's about 60% for social media traffic. So we used to have like 70% completion rate for people to just apply, but now it's down to like 50, 60%, with this extra audio question. So it's not a big drop. And if you get qualified candidates on the other end, that's a huge cost saver. Joel: Like most things in France, it tends to be cool before it's cool anywhere else. And you were work-from-home before, it was cool. Talk about... I assume you're in favor of it, but companies out there that are thinking, do we go hybrid? Do we go full work-from-home, and no office whatsoever versus your asses back in the office? What's your stance on all that? And what tips might you give companies who are looking to go work from home 100%? Max Armbruster: You have to hire people who are very good at writing, you have to embrace asynchronous communication. You have to reduce the amount of meetings, and you have to have a very tough layer of management because the far from the heart, far from the eyes, far from the task sometimes. So it's not for everybody. I wouldn't advise it for everybody. I think it's great for us and it keeps our people happy and we managed to keep them. And that's great and obviously it's got all the benefits of expanding your talent pool. This year we didn't hire a lot, but we hired people in... And someone in Venezuela and Nigeria and Brazil, where we don't even have customers, but we still hire there because the talent is everywhere. Joel: Talkpush engages with leads in real-time when they click on ads in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Indeed, et cetera. What's your take on how employers are leveraging social media? Which platforms get the most activity, just overall social media in recruiting? Max Armbruster: Instagram and Facebook. Facebook gets a lot of bad press, but it has the most advanced advertising platform of all. You can do the most amount of targeting. They made things very difficult in the last two years because there was a layer of banning targeting ads. Because they wanted to be compliant with equal employment opportunity law in the US. And so they said no targeting at all, which slowed down the adoption of this wonderful tool, which is where you could say, "I wanna do an ad just for a woman, and just for a woman of a certain age." And why wouldn't that be a good idea? It's a great idea. But out of caution, Facebook kind of scaled that back a bit, but without revealing too much, you can kind of work around it and you can run ads that still, to target certain populations. And Facebook gives you the best cost per lead and the best targeting options. Chad: So let's talk about the evolution of the relic that we call an applicant tracking system. We're seeing more of tech stacks and what I like to call core talent platforms. I see Talkpush and Paradox. You guys have really created an engagement layer that is necessary to feed the beast being that that core talent platform. Right? Can you tell us what you think the future of this stack looks like and how it's powered? Max Armbruster: Adding a chatbot to an ATS is kind of like... I don't know what a good allegory is, but it doesn't work because basically an ATS is, at the foundation is just a place where you send email updates to your candidates and where you manage a career website. So if you don't need a career website and you don't need email, then kind of like, why do you need an ATS? Then you have to rebuild everything. So I think that it's gonna be hard for the traditional ATSs to really leverage messaging and messaging is what we do, is texting, WhatsApp, Messenger is how we communicate with candidates from the start to the end. Now we can send a link to somebody on WhatsApp and say, click here to see your employment contract and sign your employment contract. Nobody else is doing that. So where do I see... What was your question? How is that gonna evolve? Well, I hope it's gonna take off. [laughter] Chad: From what we've seen thus far, I think you're a hundred percent correct. I think it's like putting a V8 engine in a horse and buggy. I think that's what... That's pretty much what you're looking at, is that's not... That's what an applicant tracking system would be trying to do to build it from that old horse and buggy to try to give it some superpower. It's just not gonna happen. They're going to have to restructure and rebuild from the ground up. Max Armbruster: And another way to answer that question is to say there's an ATS for every type of candidate, and obviously there's a huge segment of the market, which is perfectly fine with the way things are. Email, long forms, whatever. There just happens to be a segment of the market where that's suboptimal. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Oh shit. Max Armbruster: And just like we have ATSs for truck drivers and for healthcare workers, it's normal that we have an ATS now for high volume, for retail workers, and for people at the early stages of their career where a resume doesn't mean anything. Joel: How has pricing evolved over the last four years? Max Armbruster: I'm not equipped to tell you, but we are working with one of your sponsors and they're working fine. Joel: I'm gonna let you out on this one, Max, better French based band, Phoenix or Daft Punk. Max Armbruster: I've never heard of Phoenix. Joel: So Daft Punk is your answer. [laughter] Max Armbruster: That's it. Chad: I think The Stripes are French-ish. Joel: The Stripes? Max Armbruster: The Stripes. It's a New York based band, but I heard that the lead singer went to like a bilingual, to a French lycée, basically in New York. Joel: Not The White Stripes just the... Chad: The White Stripes. Joel: Jack White is French. Chad: Hearsay. [overlapping conversation] Max Armbruster: Or is it The Strokes? Anyway, it's one of them. Chad: Anyway... Joel: And Julian Casablancas? Max Armbruster: The only rock I get now is from the intro of the Chat and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Man, you are as old as us, Max. You are as old as us. Chad: Here's the last one, with the advent of ChatGPT, how do you think that's going to impact chatbots, conversational AI? I mean, is it gonna make it easier because you have a different OpenAI set? Are you already using it? Tell us a little bit about what you think about ChatGPT. Max Armbruster: I had a chat with Quincy Valencia recently, and I'm gonna steal her idea and repeat it on your show. Chad: Okay. Max Armbruster: She said the first application for ChatGPT will be to help recruiters write job descriptions better. And that makes a lot of sense to me, 'cause I played with it and it obviously it writes well. And so that's probably the one of the hardest and most critical parts of recruitment. I don't see a short-term future for us to apply this technology in our environments 'cause we're happy with our natural language processing engine as it is. But of course I'll keep my eyes open. Joel: There you go. Max Armbruster from Talkpush. Max, for our listeners who wanna know more about Talkpush, where would you send them? Max Armbruster: Talkpush.com and The Recruitment Hackers podcast if you like the sound of my voice. Chad: Oh bullshit. Joel: Chad, another reunion show in the can we got all the feels on this episode. We out. Chad: We out. OUTRO: And thank you for listening to... What's it called, Podcast, with Chad, with Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss, there's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who. Be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

The boys are back, baby! The holidays are over, Chad's stateside again and predictions are in the can. That means we're back to business-as-usual, which means we're talkin' news out of Indeed, Netflix, ChatGPT, Deel and even CareerBuilder (kinda). You want more? How about layoffs at a handful of unicorns and start-ups in our space, like Beamery, Lattice, Oyster, Remote and more? If it bleeds, it leads, so you don't want to miss this Big Gulp of Chad & Cheese snarky-filled goodness. 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 1: 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: Oh, yeah. Tiger King's Carol Baskin says her husband is alive. Ron Jeremy only looks dead. And Coach Kliff Kingsbury is living the life we all want to live. Hey, boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad & Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Hedgehog Cheeseman. Chad: Chad, that ain't whiskey, that's syrup. Joel: So and on this week's show. Joel: Layoffs. Netflix finds the G-spot and Career builders Irina is back, baby. Let's do this. Joel: What's up, dude. Chad: Oh. Getting used to this whole American thing again. Joel: Yeah, great time to come back to the Midwest, January. Chad: It's actually nice. Joel: It is pretty nice. Chad: I brought the weather with me. You're welcome. Joel: Yeah, the cold fronts coming though. Don't worry. Chad: Damn it. Joel: I got a question for you. You're sort of a fight guy. You've sparred before. Have you seen this slap competition? Chad: Yes. Joel: Where these guys just slap the shit out of each other, and then you either pass out or you tap out? Chad: Yeah. Joel: And have you seen the most recent? This dude's head is swollen, like he's got a bowling ball... Chad: No. Joel: Tumor on head. Chad: Damn! Joel: Anyway, it's all over social media. I apparently have an algorithm that's different than yours, online. But this sport is crazy and this guy, you'll see him eventually. His head is swollen. He ends up winning the championship, this is a Vegas competition. Guess how much he won for being the champion, like the worldwide champion of slap, whatever this thing is called? Chad: In getting slapped like... Joel: Brain damage is for sure. Chad: $100,000 maybe. Joel: $5000. Chad: Is that it? [laughter] Joel: He won $5000 to have brain damage in five years, it's a crazy sport but there you go. Chad: What idiots. Idiots. Yeah, anyway. Joel: There you go. Let's get to shout out. Chad: Shout out shout outs, I get the first one. I get the first one, I already started it with my name. So got this amazing whiskey, Canadian maple whiskey from Voila, our friends over at Voila. Joel: They're the Quebec que be qua company. Chad: Quebec yeah, so I poured myself a glass and I started drinking it and it was so sweet... I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it, and then I gave it to Julie, who usually likes sweet drinks. She couldn't do it. So I looked at it and I was like, You know what, I just actually had some Blanton's maple syrup, bourbon maple syrup on my pancakes. Joel: Delicious. Chad: I'm gonna boil all this down and I'm gonna boil it down into a syrup. And that's what I did. So this weekend, I will be using that, thank you, Voila, on my waffles, my Saturday morning waffles. Joel: Voila. Well, you know, Chad, when you boil down the whiskey, you know what time it is. Speaker 4: It's Corona time. Corona time right now. [laughter] Joel: That's right baby. You gotta go to the Corona when the whisky gets boiled down. Alright, my first shout out goes to Polywork the LinkedIn killer that appeals to the kids apparently, and which I still hate is up for product hunts, Product of the Year. The compilation includes ChatGPT, BeReal, that's the social media where kids take pictures within two minutes, Lindsay AI, the magic avatars that we're all seeing on social media, and Dall E, the AI generated picture, so if I say, draw a cat on a rainbow, on a shark, whatever it draws it. So good luck winning Polywork against that competition, but I think the fact that Polywork is even mentioned amongst those companies, is pretty... Chad: Pretty legit. Joel: Pretty good company. So for me, I still hate the company but that, that's worth a big applause in my book. Chad: I have to say, when we first started talking about Polywork, literally there was no engagement in that platform, and I created a profile, all that other fun stuff. I've been getting engaged by Polywork in around the podcast side of the house, and it's actually working pretty well. Joel: Are you an active user? In Polywork? Chad: I guess you could say I'm an active user, so it actually, yeah, it works a hell of a lot better than it did, obviously, when it first came out, so they must have listened to the podcast, that's all I can say. Joel: [laughter] Clearly, their nomination is somewhat connected to the bashing that we give them on this show. Chad: Of course. Of course, of course. My next shout out is to Mike Burton. Who's Mike Burton? Joel: Who the hell is Mike Burton? Chad: Well, Burton is a 37-year-old who's based in Houston and works full-time writing original raps for individuals and businesses on Fiverr, he works 40 to 45 hours per week, and usually brings in about seven to $8000 per month. Joel: Oh my god. [laughter] Chad: So baby, the hustle is real. The hustle is real. Shout out to Mike Burton. And for all those people that are out there saying the hustle is dead. No, Mike Burton demonstrates the hustle is not dead. Joel: That escalated quickly, 37-year-old writing rap lyrics. Chad: Yeah. Rap lyrics, yeah. Joel: And making 100 grand a year, let's call it. That's insane. Chad: That's great. You don't have to only be on OnlyFans to make that kinda cash, that's the message kids. Joel: There's hope for the old white guys just write some rap lyrics for the kids. Chad: He's not a white dude, but which probably gives him more cred. Joel: Oh my God. Alright, not nearly as exciting as that, my shout out goes out to Deel, that's D-E-E-L. Chad, one of our favorite unicorns from 22, or at least they used to be, not sure if they still are a global hiring platform. Deel has acquired Capbase. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, Carta competitor cap base allows companies to update their cap table in real-time, as it issues shares, signs contracts and raises money from investors. Deel plans to pair it's existing services with a new product dedicated to equity management and issuance. Interesting move, I say shout out to Deel and Capbase. Chad: Doesn't seem high priority, does it? It's kinda interesting with what Deel does, I wouldn't think that as a high priority. Maybe it is a market differentiator, but is it that big of a market differentiator to go out and acquire a company? That's a questionable. That's questionable. Joel: I guess if you hire people on a global scale, having a global solution to manage shares and equity and all that stuff is something you need to do, so go out and buy it, if you can't build it, or don't wanna build it. Chad: Interesting. Joel: Terms weren't disclosed, so we don't know how much of a deal this was? Chad: Could've been. Joel: Get it? Much of a deal? Dad joke alert. Chad: My next shout-out is to Welcome to Wrexham. That's right kids, the marketing master class, known as Welcome to Wrexham, featuring Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, pulled in over $500,000 per episode for season one, talking about 18 episodes, around over 9 million dollars. That's right, Europe, it took an American and a Canadian to make Welsh football profitable, again, you're welcome. If you haven't watched Welcome to Wrexham, it's on Hulu, and it's a must watch, if you're into business, marketing and just a damn good time. I was blown away by the little pieces of business and marketing that was happening behind the scenes that they didn't really allude to, they just showed what was happening, and if you weren't paying attention, you didn't get it. But man, watching it, I was like, holy shit, these guys were making a shit tonne of cash, it was awesome. Joel: Do we know if this show is on in Europe? Chad: Yeah, I believe it is. I believe it is. Joel: Okay. It's a brilliant business move. Chad: So smart. Joel: And Ryan Reynolds has these weird like cellular stuff and Jen, and he gets in really odd stuff, but this... And I don't know as much about football soccer as you do, but I'm guessing if you can take a team from this level to the next level, the value of that team goes up exponentially. If you just spend the money and get the right coach in the fan base... And so instead of just buying Chelsea, just instead of spending big money, spend a modest amount, get to the next level and then the value of that team goes up significantly, not to mention, the value of the advertisers, TikTok, Expedia, the brand of these guys. Chad: It's crazy. Joel: So it's really brilliant. I expect more athletes celebrities to do this, Pickleball I know is apparently a huge sport and Tom Brady, LeBron are getting into pickleball, hoping that it blows up as well. Chad: It's like one of the worst games I've ever played, but okay. Joel: Pickleball. Pickleball? Chad: Yes, it's fucking horrible. [chuckle] Joel: Alright. From one of the worst games to one of the worst, probably IPOs that you've ever heard of, a 30-year-old Career Link, a provider of HR recruiting, staffing and retention software and services is going public, they're raising money to acquire independent recruiting and staffing firms that are challenged to compete effectively, without strong technology. Sounds a little bit like Job.com, doesn't it? Just a little bit like Job.com. Chad: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel: Anyway, they've been okay to raise up to 50 million in investment capital. If you wanna get an chat, they're looking for 4 per share, with a minimum investment of 400 per investor. It's January and the IPO market is already lit Chad. IPOs. Chad: How is that working for the biggest staffing company in the world who bought Monster. It's oil and fucking water, so it's gonna be interesting to... Again, and we take a look at Job.com, and we take a look at how they entered the market, they're go to market, and how that's changed dramatically. To see a 30-year-old platform come in and try to do this, I think it's interesting. Good for them. Love it. Good luck, but I see this one dying on the vine, baby. Joel: Full disclosure, Chad, are you gonna be an investor? Chad: No. Joel: No, yeah, me neither. Me neither. Alright. Well, who is a winner... Chad: Anybody with free stuff. Joel: And may or may not invest, I don't know, is the people that get free stuff on our show, Chad, if you don't get free stuff, you're not signed up. You gotta go to the site, Chadcheese.com, click the free link, we're talking whiskey from tax kernel, we're talking beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, if it's your birthday this month Plum might send you some rum. T shirts from our buddies at JobGet. We announced the winners of whiskey and birthday, that was Ed Zetaski, one of our league fans. Sarah Berlin, is this months beer winner. Everybody's kind of a winner who listens to our show, but these folks are big winners. And by the way, kids, if you're listening to the show, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We love getting feedback. It's our oxygen. Take a couple of minutes and tell us what you think. Chad: Berlin, that was, take my breath away. It wasn't it? [music] Joel: That was... Yes. Yes. Chad: So what free stuff does kids, it'll take your breath away. Joel: Free stuff, yes. And some people were born when that song was released, Chad, which brings us to birthdays this month. That's right, some fans are celebrating another trip around the sun. And remember, if it's your birthday kids, our friends at Plum are sending you a nice bottle of rum, potentially, but you gotta sign up. You can't win it if you're not in it. Celebrating a birthday this week, Jill Patterson. Tom Bartle, Paul Drake, Chris Grosgene, Chanele Nelson, Jenny Olson, Michael Odell, GJ Vasdor, Joan Lockwood, Jason Roberts, Robin schooling Tomar, Jess Miller, Miller Merrill and Chris Amato. Happy Birthday everybody. Chad: January babies. Speaker 4: Happy Birthday! Joel: I think we found out those were St. Patricks day kids. I think that's what Sarah, Sarah white... Chad: Somebody's doing the math. Joel: Did the math. Chad: That's a fact... Doing the math. Okay, we're into events kids. So the first event for the Chad and Cheese where you can actually come see us, and you should, is on the 26th of April, where we're going to unleash America at Caesar's forum in Vegas. Now, we're used to, we're used to unleash being at the MGM Grand, so what are your thoughts on the change of venue, Joe? What do you think? Joel: My thought? [music] [chuckle] Chad: It is sexy. Joel: Those are my thoughts. We're talking like part of it's outdoors, it's like a whole exciting way to sort of engage with a conference or event, so I think they're bringing sexy to Vegas and I, for one, cannot wait to soak up in the sexy at Unleash. Chad: It's a digital business, event space, it's huge, it's new, it's got a huge ass Faris wheel, the 2022 NFL Draft was actually held there, so it's got great outside of venue capabilities and it is sexy. It's very sexy. Joel: Our travel is powered by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing, we just love those guys. If you're not utilizing them, w the hell are you doing, folks? What the hell are you doing? Chad: We gotta go to the announcement. This is an announcement. Joel: Alright, hold on, here we go. Chad: Nobody knows this is happening yet, everybody has an inkling that it's happening. But, this is what you've been waiting for kids. Recfest USA is now official on the 13th and 14th of September in Nashville, Tennessee at Bicentennial Park. The view of Nashville is gorgeous from Bicentennial Park. Have you been there? Have you've seen it? Joel: Yeah, I have. Chad: It's fucking gorgeous. About 10 to 15 minutes walk from Broadway, Nashville is the music capital of the world, not LA kids, Nashville. They're gonna have three stages, the Inspire stage, the Innovate stage, and the Chad and Cheese disrupt stage, where we're gonna have nothing but technology on there. Joel: Recfest USA baby. [music] Chad: It's a team sport. TA leaders bring their teams, and if you're looking at all hands kind of like meeting for 2023, make it in Tennessee. September 13th and 14th, bring the entire team. It's an amazing experience. Joel: And did you hear In and Out is coming to Tennessee, by the way? Not connected whatsoever, but it's a food, it's fast food and it's delicious, so I thought I'd throw that in there. Chad: It's a staple of Joel Cheeseman, whenever he gets close to one. Joel: Now what would In and Out be in Portuguese? Would it be the same? Chad: I've got a lot of work to do on my Portuguese. Although, if we say it and we are saying it, it will actually be on the Chad and Cheese Portuguese foreign language version, the German, the French and the Spanish. That's right, we have four additional foreign language podcasts that you can find wherever you listen to podcast, just search for The Chad and Cheese, Deutsch, Español, Portuguese. And... What's the French word? Joel: Francais? Chad: Francais, that's it. The Chad and Cheese, Francais, look for those. And it could be in your native language. Joel: Alright. It's that time Chad. S?: Layoffs. Joel: Layoffs. That's right. Alright. You probably heard Microsoft is laying off 10,000 workers from news this week. Well, they're not alone, our space is getting rocked to barely a month after it hit unicorn status. Beamery said it's laying off around 12% of its workforce. Quick refresher in December Beamery closed a 50 million series D, funding around, which looked at the company to evaluation of more than a billion dollars. Fellow Unicorn Lattice who's raised over 325 million and employed almost 500 people will be trimming head count by 15%. Who else is trimming, you might ask? According to layoffs.FYI we got Carta, Limeade, Oyster, Re-level Career Arch, WorkMotion, Glance, HiBob, Jobcase, Payfactors, Namely and Remote, I'm guessing that won't be the end of it, but that's a hell of a lot of names just in our space. There's blood in the streets, Chad, what's your take? Chad: Oh you said in December, you're gonna push pause on giving Beamery shit, are you back on the... Joel: Oh I'll get to Beamery, you give us your thoughts first. [chuckle] Chad: So after the Series D announcement just last month, I wasn't impressed with Beamery, because Beamery is taken too much cash, they're deliverable is way too broad. Beamery touted Fortune 500 revenue growth by 250%, then why the series D cash? They also touted 135% retention rate, which means they were growing wallet share, then why the series D cash? Is this is scrolling away the nut scenario? I really hope so. Nevertheless, Beamery situation where less than a handful of larger platforms could actually afford them. So even if they were worth the Unicorn valuation, and I don't believe they are, there aren't many people that can actually buy them. So what do you think about Beamery? Joel: So I'm out on Beamery, they had me in and they totally lost me. How ridiculous is it tout your Unicorn status and new funding, only to lay off 12% of your people a month later, basically. Talk about a moral booster there at HQ. By the way, my girl Alison Holbrook was part of the right sizing. So if you're looking for a kick-ass Head of Marketing, hit me up and I'll make that introduction. Chad: Oh shit, yeah. Joel: I talked to some friends and industry, CEO summed it up best. And says it better than I ever could, "Raise a little more money and take the delusion hit. They raised 50 million on a 1 billion dollar valuation. They're cutting 50 people to save 5 million dollars a year. Stupid." My contact, who'll remains anonymous added, "Trimming like that just starts the downward spiral, it's better to strap up and grow into it, if you're fucked, then you need to do a Twitter and cut deep and hard and reset your cost structure, trimming a little on a growth company like Beamery and Lattice, just kills the momentum, trust and culture." Joel: Amen. Investors and founders need to put down the startup playbook and maybe start leading a little bit. I will note that the letter from the Lattice CEO was pretty classy and transparent. That was the only one I think we saw that from. But yeah, think twice before you make these layoffs, it's not just the Sequoia deck that you should be taking into consideration. It is a lot of other things. Chad: Yeah. So I mean, to those response to Lattice, 100 plus people got riffed. And that's a big shock to the system. Here's a little excerpt from Jack Altman, the CEO of Lattice's, letter. "While our revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic, our costs have grown by even more as we geared up for a continued rate of growth that now looks unlikely." That's just irresponsible. We knew this was unsustainable. Here's another quote, "My job now is to lead the company through a change in the way we operate with a far more balanced approach to growth and efficiency because the market and our customers will demand it." They demanded it before Jack, who said to go out and be irresponsible? I mean, nobody did. But you are not the one being held responsible. You're not the one that's actually gonna get cut. Chad: So do the dance, keep taking the check, keep pointing fingers at everybody else and keep doing a shitty job. I mean, personally, I don't want anybody to be riffed, but if 100 plus people lose their jobs, then the fucking CEO should too. He was irresponsible, so he should pay the price as well. If we don't have those types of impacts for people in the C-Suite, what's to stop them from actually damaging or impacting negatively individuals livelihoods. Joel: You just said, do the dance, Chad. [music] Chad: That's what he's doing, he's dancing. Joel: No doubt, not the last time we're gonna talk about layoffs in 2023. At least these people maybe had a good holiday, I don't know, but no word yet on Indeed layoffs, but they're back their old tricks. What's going on over at Indeed? Joel: Yeah, Joel, so here at the Chad and Cheese Podcast, we like to educate and entertain, which is why we're following the continuing saga of Indeed's newest product called, get ready, Pay Per Started Application. What is Pay Per Started Application? Well, I'm glad you asked, Joel. PPSA is a pricing model which charges you when a job seeker undertakes an activity to begin the application process, this is actually from Indeed's FAQs, on their site. For example, clicking the Call to Action button to apply for a job in a job ad, the button may appear as Apply, Apply Now or Apply on the Site. PPSA is performance-based and aims to deliver the highest number of started applications for your jobs and budget. Instead of evenly spreading budget across a campaign's duration, it dynamically spends budget to match job seeker demand and fill roles with more efficiency. Bullshit. So let's break this down a little bit. Remember when Indeed first was created, Joel? What model did they start with? Joel: Google for Jobs? Chad: [chuckle] Yes. It was pay per click. I mean, they... Joel: Oh, you didn't want me to go that far back. Chad: Yeah, no, no, I did. I did. I mean, it was Google for Jobs, and the way that they made money was pay per click. You use pay per click, it was very simple. You click on the job title and it took you to the job on the corporate career site. In this example, I'm gonna use corporate career site, it took you directly to the corporate career site. Then Indeed rolled out TwoPane. What was the change there? What was the big change that they made from that model to the TwoPane? Joel: I could click away baby. I could just... I didn't have to go to another side. I could just click, click, click, click and stay in Indeed, that must have been beautiful for the bottom line. Chad: Oh yeah, because Indeed changed away from the search engine model, they went to a job board model, where when you clicked on it, instead of taking the job seeker to the corporate career site where they could look at the branding, the experience, and they can apply for the job, they kept them on Indeed. Joel: It'd be like if Google had two panes where one of the panes had the actual website, you were clicking on Google and you could just... Chad: Boom, boom, boom. Joel: Machine gun through Google's results to see all the pages that are there. And so much of that for those that haven't seen it. Chad: And what happened back then, the first model was PPC, when you clicked on it and you went to the website, you were charged 'cause that was a click. But with TwoPane, they didn't take you directly to the website. You clicked, you still had to pay. But that kept you on Indeed. So now Indeed is transitioning to PPSA, which creates the Pay Per Start Apply, where they can dramatically increase rates after a job seeker reviews the jobs, and then clicks the Apply button on Indeed. So how can they charge more for that? The only thing that's changed here from back in the day when they were a search engine to now, is they inserted a click, that's it. But they're still making people pay more because they're calling it something different than Pay Per Click. Joel: Yeah, there's a few layers of the onion to peel here, from my perspective. Number one is, some nerds with pencils at Indeed did some math and said, "Okay, how many applies do we typically get per how many clicks?" And there's probably an average of... "Hey, after 10 clicks, we're gonna get four applies or whatever." So then it becomes, "Okay, how much can we charge for an apply to start making more than the clicks that we're making?" And by the way, Pay Per Apply process or start of apply, it sounds pretty good to a customer. Like, "Hey, we're not gonna charge you for those random clicks, we're just gonna charge you when someone actually clicks Apply to take that next step into the process." Joel: So as a customer I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm not paying for these crazy applys." Which when it was TwoPane, it was like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And I was getting fewer applys than I was before TwoPane. So now Indeed's in this weird spot, like, "Okay, how do we make more or keep making the money that we're making, but create some fear, uncertainty and doubt with the pricing model in what we're doing?" Joel: So this to me is a way to get those pay per click dollars plus whatever with the apply process. The second layer of the onion here that I see is if there's one major thing that keeps Indeed up at night, it's programmatic job distribution. And that is a pay-per-click model. So imagine all the sales people at Indeed, all the customer service people at Indeed that are like, "Why am I paying you $1.30 per click when I can go to Appcast, I can go to Recruitology, Jobbex, Panda, or whatever, and pay 72 cents? That makes no sense to me. I'm gonna not use Indeed so much anymore because I'm... " So then they're competing with a lot lower prices on clicks. So now it's like, "Okay, let's divert the click thing and have this new model that we can say, "Oh, wait a minute, it's not apples to apples, this is apples to oranges. Our model is way different than this pay per click thing." So yeah, so I battle back on the programmatic wave. I'm making more money than I was on pay per click. I'm creating a little bit of uncertainty in the customer. Like, "Okay, that sounds good, but is it?" Joel: Who's actually gonna do the math on, "Okay. When I was click only, here's what I paid, now it's pay per applicant." That becomes work for an employer. And they're probably not gonna do that in most cases. So to me this is a strategic move. It has nothing to do with the betterment for the job seeker, or this is better for the employer. It's strategy. I mean, hats off to them if it... Assuming that it's working, but it's just a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. A lot of obfuscation by Indeed to keep that cash cow mooing without losing market share to the players that are coming up. And by the way, Indeed pays programmatic companies to send traffic to Indeed. So they're paying. They're on the pay-per-click model. And they're also doing the math on, "Okay, how much are we paying Tauru to get us a visitor? And then how many of those visitors will apply to jobs? So we're gonna make sure we're paying Tauru less than what we're getting in applys." So they're double-dipping on the programmatic providers as well as their own solution. Chad: Yeah. "How can I pay less for what they're sending us and have our clients pay more for what we're giving them?" Also, don't forget my prediction, Google for Jobs pops out with an ad version. They've got to do something to separate themselves from something like Google for Jobs. They'll go pay per click as well. So they'll say, "No, we're different. We're doing the application start." Joel: Yeah, that's another thing. Google's never gonna get into the click-apply game. They're gonna be pretty simple, like they always been. So that's another thing. We can fend off Google by having a different pricing model altogether than the pay per click because you don't wanna be in the conversation of, "Why would I pay you X when I can pay Google Y which is much less." They don't wanna get in that conversation. Chad: They still gonna have to have that conversation. Joel: Yeah. So digging into the terms of service, and if you missed two weeks ago, Sarah White and I got into a deep dive on Indeed's terms of service. So go in to the archives, if you wanna check that one out. So apparently the FAQ page for this service, you can actually opt out of PPSA. However, PPSA cannot be turned off for jobs index by Indeed or jobs posted directly on Indeed using a monthly budget. If you do not want to utilize the PPSA pricing model, you can post a job directly on Indeed and choose a daily budget. Are you as confused as I am? Yeah, I'm pretty confused too. And the other thing that's confusing, if you look at the fine print, a conversation with a chat bot, is counted as an apply. Chad: Could be an apply start. Joel: Scanning a QR code is counted as an apply. So does that mean if I flirt with a chat bot and ask her to talk dirty to me, is that now an apply? Apparently it is at Indeed. Or if I go to a restaurant accidentally scan a QR code, 'cause it's a menu and not a job application, is that now an apply? According to Indeed that's an apply now. So read the fine print, be a smart consumer. But Indeed's playing games. And you get to decide whether you play or not. And a lot of people are still gonna play, but we're here to help you be smart in your choices of job advertising. We'll be right back. Joel: Netflix, holy... Have we talked about them other than what they show on their platform? Chad: I don't think so. I don't think so. Joel: Yeah. Imagine this, pay transparency, the topic of conversation. Our friends at Netflix have taken pay transparency to new lows this week, or maybe it's new highs, this from CNBC, "Netflix is looking to hire a flight attendant for one of its super mid-sized private jets." It sounds like a good gig, that sounds even better with the job posting saying the overall market range for this role is typically 60,000 to $385,000 a year. I think the regulators in New York, looking at pay transparency, might wanna have a little conversation with the folks in Netflix. The job posting ends with, "This market range is based on total compensation versus only base salary, which is in line with our compensation philosophy." Joel: It's not quite the $1 to $1 million in salary range we joked about, but it's getting pretty close. Chad, your thoughts on Netflix and their new job posting. Chad: Yeah, we have a saying in the military, "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." And here are the prizes Netflix wins for playing the stupid game, employers, listen up, because this could be you. Prize number one, Netflix just put a target on their own back. Yes, the roll out of this new law was quick, but this goes well beyond the bounds of looking like a good faith effort to the US government. And when enforcement starts, Netflix will be on the top of their list. Prize number two, the horrible, "We don't give a shit about your needs" optics. Candidates are demanding to know what the salary is on all jobs. So when you post a range like that, you look like a total asshole. And this story, which has nearly 7,000 impressions just on my LinkedIn feed alone, has not only caught the eyes of government, but also talent, who won't touch your brand with a 10-foot pole. So just two of many stupid prizes companies win when playing this game. Imagine if you're a government contractor raking in millions or billions of dollars from the US government, and then HR and TA plays this game, just think about putting millions or billions of dollars of contracts, on the line and perspectively losing them because you're playing these stupid games. Joel: Interesting perspective on the government side. To me, this is like, "Hey, show me a 10-foot wall, I'll show you an 11-foot ladder." Here's how some companies are going to get out of the pay transparency law. Here's the loophole, Chad. Healthcare, stock compensation, sales commission, revenue sharing, or whatever can be used to create a huge range in salary. And who's gonna be able to police what your stock is gonna be worth in 12 months? You can't. But can you put it as a range of the salary? Apparently, you probably can. Hello, loophole. Hello, grey area. Netflix, to me, has found the G-spot, if you will. And I think a lot of companies are gonna use these variable revenue salary things like, "What's healthcare cost? How much revenue, if we share revenue, are we gonna share with you this year? How much is our stock gonna be worth in a year from now?" Those are variables that you can't make hard numbers around. And I think companies like Netflix are gonna use those variables to create really wide ranges in salary to get around the whole pay transparency law. Chad: Salary is salary, period. Definition is already out there, you can't roll everything else up. You can't. It's not how it works. Salary is salary. And this is salary transparency. So that's total bullshit. If they're trying to put in benefits, benefits are not salary. They try to put in commission, commission is not salary. As a matter of fact, commission's even taxed differently than salary is. So you can't roll all that shit up. If you try, you get smacked in the fucking head, because salary equals salary. So yes, you can try to play, again, play the stupid games, Joel, but you're gonna win stupid fucking prizes. Joel: I'm gonna go on a limb and say, Netflix has really good lawyers, and they've probably read a lot of these laws. And we'll see. Joel: You know who's gonna talk about the lawsuits? You and me, baby. And that means more job security for us as podcasters, which means thank God AI hasn't quite figured out the nuance and expertise that we have with the show. Chad: It's getting there. Yeah. Joel: So destined to be a topic all year long. It's Chat GPT. Microsoft announced that it is expanding access to Open AI's popular Chat GPT software, which it has been previewing to its cloud computing customers in a program called the Azure Open AI Service. The software is now generally available, which is expected to bring a flood of new usage. The news comes as Microsoft has looked at adding up to $1 billion in its stake in Open AI, which it did in 2019. It's making a 10 billion investment in the company now. And this just in from Sky News. Something totally different. Chat GPT was unknowingly recommended for a job interview by a recruitment team after the AI was used to complete an application. Candidates, and I put that in air quotes, were asked, "In 300 words, tell us the secret of good writing." The AIs response was short-listed for an interview at the communications consultancy firm, SCHWA. The company's owner and founder stated that, "The AI was more competent than a lot of the bad people who apply to us." Joel: This incident raises concerns about the potential of AI to replace human workers in the future. No shit. Chad, I'm sure we're ready... I'm not sure human beings are ready for what's coming. What's your take on the latest news from Chat GPT? Chad: First off, in Davos, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadela, says Chat GPT will be integrated into all of Microsoft products. So this isn't just a "can it apply for a job and get it?" This is gonna be much easier to use in the future because it's gonna be integrated into Microsoft products, which is really fucking cool. I think it's amazing. The big question is, all of Microsoft products, do you think they're going to integrate into LinkedIn? And if they did, how would they? Joel: Are you really looking for a comment? Chad: You don't see it happening? Joel: We've talked about the integration of LinkedIn into Microsoft products. That's pretty much been a big nothing burger for the company. So do I think they're gonna go the other way and integrate this into LinkedIn? I mean, they should, I kinda hope they do, 'cause it'll make things interesting and good for us to talk about. But do I have confidence that LinkedIn is going to do that? No. Chad: I think when we take a look at the landscape itself, we're definitely going to have to evolve with this new technology. There are actually teachers that are using Chat GPT in classrooms. So this is doing nothing but pushing us up a level to get better and crisper about the content that we're actually putting out. And, here's the big key, companies are putting out so much fucking horrible content right now, if they just focused on putting out good shit and then compartmentalize that and then use that to actually market throughout the year, I mean, you could put out 10% of the shit that you are now, in some cases, and do a much better job. And that's the thing is, I think Chat GPT will put out a shit ton of content. And it can. Because it can scale better than any human being. But it's dull content, it's not great content. You're gonna want great content. Joel: Yeah. I got shared something on LinkedIn, "Technology can identify what's been created by AI." Don't ask me how it works, I have no idea. Wait till Google releases its algorithm to detect what content has been created by AI, and watch the penalties and rankings drop. That's gonna be a fun day for a lot of people. So if you're using AI to create content, Google can probably detect what's AI and what's human. Chad: They won't care. Not gonna care if it's getting engaged and it's getting... Joel: Google won't care, or the company won't care? Chad: Google won't care. Joel: Google won't care? They might care. Chad: No. It's all about engagement. Who cares who wrote it? Joel: So back to my point of what we're actually talking about, not to Google's latest update that's coming. So to me, this is shaping up to be the arms race of the decade. We all know Google is on DEFCON 1 and won't relinquish market share in this way, easily. They're in talks already to invest 200 million in an AI startup called Cohere. And we already know, at least one ex-Googler thinks Google's AI is a sentient being. And said so and got fired. So he may be saying something that we don't. But this is gonna be battle royale. And it's gonna be really interesting how this thing plays out. As far as employment, we joke a lot about a day when robots are just hiring robots, this story out of Sky News means we're not far off from that, 'cause yeah, it gets a little bit nuts from the... All these people are being laid off by HR tech companies are gonna start building companies around Open AI and the API, applying for jobs with AI, building cover letters, resumes, pre-screening questions, etcetera. Joel: And then someone's gonna come along and create something that's gonna red flag any of these responses, resumes that are built with AI. So companies are gonna be started up. They're gonna get a bunch of money invested, and we're gonna talk about all of them. But this is gonna be a whole new industry that's gonna be created just for us on resumes, job descriptions, cover letters, screening questions, etcetera. It's gonna be pretty loco. It's gonna be Corona time when all this shit starts going down. [music] Chad: A new version of rage applying. Joel: Apply to my job in the language of Shakespeare, please. That would be nice. All right. When we get back... Oh shit, Irene is back, baby. I can't believe, I can't believe she's back. Not in our space, but she's back. All right. So Hootsuite, one of 2008 hottest companies, has a new CEO. The Vancouver Canada-based social media management firm has replaced its CEO, Tom Kaiser, with Irina Novoselsky, the former CEO of Career Builder. The company also announced its third round of layoffs in the past six months, coming around 70 employees or 7% of its workforce. This represents the company's third staff cut since August of 2020, and the company's head count now sits at 900 people. It sounds like she's walking into a dream job. Chad, what's your take on Irina's new gig? Chad: Yeah, from one dumpster fire to the next. That's awesome. So I automatically thought this was an Apollo portfolio play, but Apollo isn't one of Hootsuite's funders. So then I just kinda backed up and thought, "Okay, so what could this be about?" So my first thought was basing her cred off of Career Builder's dumpster fire, which anyone outside of the industry wouldn't attune to. She looks like a great candidate, to be quite frank. And then number two, bringing Irina in to make an Apollo acquisition might be more appetizing. So if you're bringing one of the old team players from Apollo in, and you wanna look sexy to a PE firm, who can prospectively buy you, that might not be a bad idea. Joel: Look at you connecting some dots. I taught you something. Yeah. Chad: That's what we do. Joel: Dude, Irina is quickly becoming the angel of death, if you work for one of her companies. If she walks into your office, run, or at least update your LinkedIn profile. To your point, HootSuite was set to go IPO last year. They raised $200 million Canadian. They were hoping to raise $200 million Canadian through an IPO. It didn't happen. Let's let the CEO go. He didn't deliver. He's out, Irina's in. It was nice to them to fire everyone before she came on, so she doesn't have blood on her hands. That was really nice of them, but I like the Apollo connection. I like the prediction. IPOs aren't really happening these days, so an acquisition could be in the offing. And everyone knows about Chad's predictions. Chad: 60% of the time, it works every time. Chad: Every time... Joel: We out. Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to... What's it called? Podcast with Chad and 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 you don't even know, and yet you're listening, it's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one, cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo, if you wanna 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 at it, visit www.chadcheese.com, just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

Boy, turn your back on Europe for one second over the holidays and Axel Springer announces Stepstone is going IPO. Europe never sleeps when it comes to employment, indeed. What's more? How about a rumored billion Euro acquisition of a staffing company, Russia posting jobs for trench diggers in Ukraine and Pornhub's yearend Most Popular Searches, featuring the naughty habits of European countries from Spain to Finland. Find out what pegging and hentai are. Sorry (and you're welcome)! Oh yeah, and the date for House of HR's annual conference in Amsterdam gets revealed. 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 (5s): 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 lot, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (26s): Oh, yeah. Prince Harry could be booted out of the US after admitting he took cocaine and magic mushrooms in his new book. A book, by the way, that no one on this podcast will ever read. Hey, kids, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast - Europe. I'm your co-host Joel "Too Cool For British Rule" Cheeseman. Chad (47s): This is Chad "It Ain't 1914" Sowash. Levin (49s): I'm leaving, wishing most of you a very pleasant 2023. Joel (52s): Oh, that's nice. On this episode, StepStone Eyes and IPO, Belgium Go shopping, and Russian trench diggers. Let's do this. What's up boys? How was everyone's holiday? Chad (1m 7s): Happy 2023. Joel (1m 8s): 66% of this show was in Europe for the holidays. Must be nice. Chad (1m 16s): Yes, we were. I tell you what? It was wonderful just to unplug for a while and to do it in Europe. Joel (1m 22s): Yes, I love the pictures of you in Paris at Christmas, Chad. That was just really heartwarming. While it was negative 80 degrees here in the Midwest, it was nice to see that. Levin (1m 32s): Yes, you had a white Christmas I saw. Joel (1m 34s): I mean it was more like ice than it was like fluffy snow. Levin (1m 39s): I've seen the ice little thingies about those houses around the Big Lakes or the Great Lakes, or how do you call them? It was amazing. Everything indeed covered in ice. Joel (1m 51s): Oh yes. If you were in Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, a lot of buffalo has gotten killed this year. Poor buffalo, man. Chad (1m 59s): They always get the worst of it though. You talk about Lake Effect when the actual front comes through and it just dips into Lake Erie and dumps on Buffalo. They get dumped on every year, but this year, they got feet of snow, like over days, right? Joel (2m 14s): Yes. They got like full bodies of snow that just piled up. Well, we haven't recorded in a while, but apparently, there's some shoutouts that we should be doing on this show. Chad, what kind of shoutout do you have for our first show in 2023? Chad (2m 27s): Oh, this is a big one, man. My first shout out is to Austin Wells, a 28 year old tech worker at Meta who has bought a 237 square foot or 22 square meter studio apartment on a cruise ship, paying about 280,000 euros for a 12 year lease so that he can work from home as he sails around Europe. This kid has it all fucking figured out. Shout out to Austin Wells for taking remote work to a new level. Joel (3m 3s): Now, is this more of like a carnival cruise or a Viking cruise that he's rented out? Chad (3m 9s): They're building these boats and they're condo boats. Joel (3m 13s): Oh, shit. Chad (3m 14s): They're selling these like condos. It's a cruise ship, but the whole idea is that people buy these condos on the ship, which I think is the stupidest fucking thing ever, but for him, he's 28 years old. He's got the cash, spend it, my man. Spend it. Levin (3m 32s): He's allowed to make stupid decisions. That's fine. Joel (3m 35s): They do have these now. I don't know if it's the same ship, but they have these retirement ships, which I think are genius because if you're old, you wanna see the world, hang out on a boat, you don't want to own a home, get on a boat and live the rest of your days on a ship visiting countries in ports of call. I think it's a great idea. I think Stories is the name of that company. If you have a parent like I do that you'd like to put on a ship for the next 10 years. Chad (3m 60s): You would like to get rid of, yes. Joel (4m 2s): I did not say that, Chad. Levin (4m 5s): It'll be very firmish. The little grandchildren waving, and then the sunsets and the boat is slowly disappearing in the horizon. Bye bye, grandad, I will never see him again. It's tragic. Joel (4m 20s): By the way, one thing you can get on a cruise ship is Wi-Fi, which means you can get PornHub, which leads me to my shout out for the week. All right, guys. PornHub, every year, does their most popular search queries for the year, which is always pretty enlightening and educational for me. I wanted to to point out some of the highlights from Europe for the PornHub most popular search phrase number. Chad (4m 47s): Educational? Joel (4m 47s): I'm gonna tell you what I've learned. I'll tell you what I've learned, Chad, if you'll let me finish my shoutout. Number one, the UK and France follow the US, is the countries where most of Pornhub's traffic comes from. Levin's home country of Belgium comes in 20th place on the top 20 list, so just squeaking in there. Number two, Poland has the greatest number of women who frequent the site of the European countries. Interesting. Now, many of them are probably creating content for the site, which is why they're there, but that's a whole different podcast. Number three, the Europe's top search term pretty much for all countries is MILF. Joel (5m 29s): For the kids out there, that's mother I'd like to you know what. The exception, however, is Spain, and here's where the education comes in, Chad. The number one search term in Spain is hentai. Do you know what hentai is? Chad (5m 45s): I have no clue. Joel (5m 46s): Levin? Levin (5m 46s): You do know. You do. Of course, I know what hentai is. My kids are 12. They know what hentai is. Everyone knows what hentai is. Chad (5m 53s): I don't hentai is. Joel (5m 54s): Exactly. Here's the education, kids. Hentai is basically anime porn. Levin (5m 58s): Nasty stuff. Nasty stuff really. Joel (6m 1s): Nasty Asian cartoon porn stuff. Levin (6m 5s): Really gross. Really the most pervert stuff you can find. Joel (6m 10s): Yes, hentai in Spain. This is for Levin. The top porn star is Lana Rhodes. By the way, Lana is anal spelled backwards, in case you didn't know. Levin (6m 23s): I didn't know. Joel (6m 24s): Top category in Belgium is lesbian. Some trending searches in Belgium include Turkish, and more education kids, pegging. Who knows what pegging is? Levin (6m 38s): I won't admit. Joel (6m 39s): Levin knows but he's not gonna say it. It's not pirate sex. No. It is a female with a strap on having intercourse with a male. That is what pegging is. Chad (6m 56s): I'm definitely cutting that one out. Joel (6m 59s): Yes. My first shout out for the air goes to PornHub. Bra. You're welcome. You're welcome, Europe. You're welcome. Levin? Levin (7m 10s): You always got a cool shout out. Joel (7m 13s): Good luck following that. Levin (7m 14s): Okay. I'm just going to do a shout out to myself and to house of HR, someone has to, for organizing a new addition of the E-recruitment Congress. We have a date, we have a location. Would you like me to tell more or want to me to keep it to the next number? Chad (7m 31s): Bring it. Levin (7m 31s): What was it? I've forgotten the date already. It was in November 14th in Amsterdam. We got a really, really lovely location. It's the Music building, music house at the A, which is a lake in Amsterdam. A beautiful building. It's great. You need to check it out. Check the website. Of course, the coming episodes will be promoting this until you're getting tired of it. Joel (8m 2s): Obviously. Levin (8m 2s): November 14th, and Chad and Cheese will be there. Chad (8m 7s): That's right. Is it close to the red light district? You know Joel's gonna be there. Levin (8m 12s): We'll take the district to Joel. If Joel can't come to the district, we'll take the district to him. It's close, really. It's a walking distance actually. Joel (8m 20s): Now how is Amsterdam in November? Is it very 18 degrees and sunny? Levin (8m 27s): No, it's rainy and miserable, so people stay inside and stay at the Congress. Joel (8m 33s): I'm there. Chad (8m 33s): 18 degrees Celsius is actually pretty warm, Joel. Joel (8m 36s): Yes, I know, I'm married to a Canadian, so I get occasional Celsius updates. Levin (8m 41s): I guess in November, but with the warming of the earth, which I happen to like. I like it a bit warmer. I don't know. Joel (8m 51s): No one needs an excuse to visit Amsterdam at any time of the year. Trust me. Even though there may not be tulips, there will be wooden shoes and windmills. Chad (8m 59s): There will be two lips. Levin (9m 1s): God damn yourself. Okay. It'll be plastic tulips and plastic little windmills. What is clumping? The wooden shoes, they use clump in English. Joel (9m 15s): Clogs, right? Clogs? Levin (9m 18s): No, it's something farmers used to put on their feet and they put straw in it to keep their feet warm. Chad (9m 25s): Then they'd set them on fire and that's how they really kept their feet warm. Joel (9m 28s): In short, everyone, you got 10 months of hearing about Amsterdam in November. Levin (9m 34s): No reason not to be there. Joel (9m 36s): No reason not to be there. Chad and Cheese will be there. Let's get to some real news, shall we? Germany based media group, Axl Springer, which owns the well-known multimedia brands, build and develop, for everyone in Europe, is considering an IPO for its job portal StepStone next year according to the company's CEO, Mattias Duffner. He said that step stones accelerated growth and good profitability has offset and compensated for other areas that have been less profitable due to advertising declines and the general economy. Joel (10m 19s): Duffner also mentioned that the company's advertising subsidiary, Owen, and marketing company, Bonial, are also doing well, I probably not say those right. Anyway, he added that while it's too early to provide precise numbers for the group in 2022, November and December had been surprisingly successful and the company will fare better than anticipated. This comes as the market for IPOs had pretty much dried up in 2022. Chad, your thoughts on a StepStone IPO? Chad (10m 52s): Doesn't Axl Springer own Politico as well? I thought they they bought them like a year and a half or so. Levin (10m 60s): I think so. Chad (11m 1s): I saw this initial announcement. It was the first part of Q4 last year, and I thought it was just smoke. I thought it was a diversion while something else was playing out, But these guys are serious. They're serious about doing an IPO in 2023. It blows my mind because I really believe right now what StepStone should be doing is keeping their powder dry and lying and wait for great acquisition opportunities and not going IPO. This is not a great market for IPOs. Yeah, this is weird. Levin, why would StepStone be pushed into an IPO situation in a market like this, which really isn't looking for IPOs? Levin (11m 47s): To be honest, the only reason I can imagine is one of their investors desperately wants to get an exit. He wants to get out and nobody is willing to buy it. The only exits they see possible is an IPO, and I think that's probably the reason why. Chad (12m 1s): Desperate for cash. Levin (12m 2s): Yeah, it is. Chad (12m 3s): Because they would have to be desperate for cash to go in a down market to, wouldn't they? Again, the valuations at 7 billion. Looks like they're gonna try to come out at one. Is that what it is? Levin (12m 17s): Valuation of 7 billion is also ridiculous. They have a revenue of 800 million, so that's highly overvalued. Joel (12m 26s): KKR became the biggest shareholder of the company, 3.2 billion for a 43.5% stake. Look, Axel Springer is in the media business. I don't know if you guys have been watching the news lately, but the media business means advertising, and the advertising business is a pretty shitty business. By the way, you've got streaming platforms that are gonna be taking a chunk out of media budgets all around the world coming up. However, the labor market is still pretty strong. Now, if you believe the labor market is a lagging indicator of the economy, it might not be a good bet to go IPO. Joel (13m 7s): However, if you can spin a narrative like, "Hey, labor is strong. Our job board business is strong," then it makes sense to spin out a job board IPO because the rest of your media business is in the shitter. However, I would point them to ZipRecruiter's IPO, which is the most recent one. It's been a real dog to say the least, a dog with fleas if you're Gordon Gecko in terms of the public market. This reeks of desperation. It reeks of KKR pulling some strings and I think it looks like a train wreck in the making. Levin (13m 43s): No, totally agree. Let's just consider, why would anyone think this is a future-proof investment? They do an IPO. Why is someone going to invest in it? If you look at it, their CV database is worthless compared to the self-sustainable database LinkedIn has. It's mostly outdated and they charge 900 euros to gain access for one month. On LinkedIn, even for free, you got a much better CV database than that. I don't think that this is future proof. The second part of their business model is job postings. They still are a paper posts business model. We've been living in a paper click world for 15 years, but they still have a paper post in Belgium. Levin (14m 27s): I checked today. You pay 999 euros to get one job online for 30 days. In Germany, it's even 1,349 euros to get one job online for 30 days. That's ridiculous. If you want to add a video, it goes up a few hundred euros more so that's a lot. Then I think, young people don't know them anymore. We've done some research with the University of Antwerp a few years ago and we asked thousands of young graduates, which channels do we know? What channels do we think you'll be using when looking for a job? One out of two students had never heard about StepStone. Levin (15m 9s): The only reason why they could get to StepStone is by using Google Organic. We all know who's dominating Google. It's not StepStone, it's Indeed. Basically, they have LinkedIn as a competitor. They have Indeed as a competitor. There are plenty other more creative platforms as competitors. I really think they're desperate to find an exit before they totally crash. This is the only way out and they hope some institutional investors will believe in the story because they're old people. No offense, but when they graduated, StepStone was the biggest brand. True today, HR directors still believe StepStone is a huge brand, but if young people don't know them anymore, it'll go down fast. Levin (15m 53s): Those young people are getting into management positions now and they realize StepStone is not a big brand anymore because they don't know it. The business, which still exists now, is going to crash, but that's my 50 cents. Don't take it. That's not science, but I wouldn't put a penny in it. Chad (16m 13s): Would Appcast, and also, Total Jobs be wrapped into this big present? If it's all one in an IPO under one umbrella, that's a different story. Breaking StepStone out by itself, yes, they're an island really, because yes, it is the biggest economy in Europe being Germany, but really, they ejected out of France. They just can't get the type of traction that they want to in other countries, but it's different if Total Jobs is a part of this and then also Appcast is too. Do we know if those are a package deal or they gonna be broken out? Joel (16m 54s): Yeah, this is a really early story. No forms have been filed with whatever public market they're going onto. Until we know more, now I'm with you, Chad. I'm throwing the kitchen sink of profitable job companies in that IPO. Whether they are not, we just don't know at this point. However, if you continue to tune into our show, you will know what they're going to be doing. Chad (17m 22s): You will, and again, you're talking about the the pay per post duration base. Again, they've got Appcast that's right there. For them not to be leveraging and starting to do what Appcast did in the US, really just being the infrastructure for all recruitment marketing agencies and staffing agencies. How they have not done that yet still just blows my mind. The inability to execute is incredibly high, unfortunately. Joel (17m 51s): By the way, guys, we have some hidden audio from the strategy meeting from Axl Springer. Take a listen. Axl Springer (17m 59s): 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel (18m 5s): We'll be right back. Stratco. Let's talk about acquisitions. Chad (18m 7s): Ivan is in the news, everybody. Joel (18m 9s): Ivan Stracco. If he dies, he dies. All right. Probably not how they pronounce. Anyway, Belgium-based private equity group, Stracco, announced on in December of 2022 that it has acquired Wilton Group, a finance recruitment company from Dutch PE firm, One Two Capital. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Stracco is an independent entrepreneurial investment firm that focuses on long-term sustainable and profitable growth investments in Europe. Wilton Group, which was founded in 1992 as a provider of multi label specialist employment and professional training services to financial institutions addressing structural labor shortages, regulatory requirements, and digitization efforts in the financial services industry. Joel (18m 56s): With this acquisition, the Dutch-based Welton group is moving forward in its expansion strategy, which has also specifically considered neighboring and European markets. Hello, United States, maybe. Probably not. Levin, you have some insight into this deal. What you got? Levin (19m 15s): First, if you look back a few years, go back to the seventies, you had two people. There was Fredericka Vaden, a Flemish woman, and her husband, and they launched a little clinical lab somewhere in Dendermonde, small Belgium City, whatever. They have been working very hard, I guess, and they made its into the biggest lab chain in Belgium. They sold it to a French company and they made a gross profits of about 600 million euros on it in 2020. Pretty wealthy people, but instead of living the good life and retiring, what Chad would do, and probably what Joe would do, and definitely what I would do, they started investing and they've been investing pretty smarts and they were growing. Levin (20m 2s): What I find interesting, even though they didn't have anything with HR, as far as I know, they started investing in HR companies because they're smart people. They probably realized it's a big money machine when times are good, even when they're not. They bought one company, did well. Bought a second, bought a third. Now, they bought Wilton Group, which is a Dutch-based company, a secondment, if I pronounce it right, of financial profiles. I think secondment is a very difficult word, but secondment. They didn't mention any financial details, not as close, but we could make an educated guess. Levin (20m 45s): Let's say Wilton Group have a revenue of about 100 million. That's a fact. They're going to 120 million this year. 100 million last year. They have an EBITDA of, I think, in this business about 20% normally, something like that. Just to make my calculations easy, 20%, which means 20 million of EBITDA. If they pay multiple of seven, which I think could be reasonable for a buying like that, it would mean they've been paying 140 million, which for that company, probably, is a solid deal. House of HR wasn't involved. I checked. We could have been, but we have had more group in the Netherlands, which is competitors. Levin (21m 30s): This wouldn't make much sense to add them to our portfolio, but we do know the company and it's a pretty good company, I guess. My most important thing is people who are smarts are investing in our business even though they're not from our business. That's something I like. It's a good sign. Chad (21m 50s): I love that. The industry though. How deeper is House of HR in the banking and financial side of the house? Levin (21m 57s): Well, we have a few companies. Red Mar Group is a Dutch company. They have Triple A, they have House of Beta, they have a few other companies are elective. Actuarian. Is it a word? Is it a concept in US as well? These kinds of profiles, and it's good business. Every bank needs them. Every insurance company needs them. It's a total pain in the ass to find the right people so we're probably better in finding them than those companies themselves so they need us. Something like that so it's a good business. Chad (22m 32s): What is the future of banking jobs though? Because most of the jobs in banking professions are fairly routine. There are algorithms and or formulas. We've seen that from just TurboTax and and things of that nature. Do you see a real future in doubling down on staffing and just the banking industry because it looks like that's where their focus is? Levin (22m 60s): Yeah, there are different levels. You have the top accountants working for the big four. There are desperately needed because someone has to do the auditing. That's top domain, but you also have the people who will do some data entry about the numbers, you have the controllers. It's a big array of jobs. Some stuff will be automated in the near future for sure, but still, many people will be needed to check if the automation went correctly. There will some automation be done on automating, but whatever. I think for the coming, I'm not going to say a number, but plenty of years, this will be still a structural shortage of these profiles, definitely. Joel (23m 43s): Curious, Levin, and maybe piggyback on Chad's question. I do the shred, which is a weekly roundup of news. It's noticeable how many more staffing companies, certainly here in the states, are being acquired. There's a lot of consolidation. It sounds like Wilton Group is a really savvy owner. They know when the top is. Was this a get out while the Gittens good or we're at the top of the market? Do you see an overwhelming trend in Europe of these staffing companies being consolidated and acquired? Levin (24m 19s): Well, One Two Capital, the former investor, only bought welding group in 2021. This is a really quick exit. I think I believed them. They were not looking for an exit yet, but they were approached by the nice people from Stracco. Probably, they made an offer which was better than they expected so they accepted. Are there many consolidations? Yes, definitely. Definitely in Germany, it's still very fragmented. There's huge markets and consolidations are happening right now constantly. They will go on for years I guess. Joel (24m 58s): If you own a staffing firm, kids, the Gittens good. Make some phone calls and grab that cash. Speaking of grabbing cash, guys, Russia's in a cash grab if you're willing to dig some trenches. All right, we got some news out of Russia. Russians don't take a dump son without a plan. Russian job sites are advertising jobs for manual labor, such as digging trenches and building fortifications in occupied Ukrainian regions and nearby Russian regions. According to independent media reports, the ads are being posted on popular Russian classified services and social networks and are looking for unskilled shift workers in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia region of Southern Ukraine and the Belgorod region of Western Russia. Joel (25m 52s): The wages offered for these jobs are up to $4,000, I don't know what that is in rubles, for one to three months of shift work. The recruiter, STRICOM is a professional employer organization and have listed Kremian Bridge, which links the annexed peninsula to mainland Russia among their main projects. However, employer review websites criticize STRICOM for delaying or refusing to pay wages and providing poor living conditions. When you dig trenches, you really want some good living conditions. Sounds like a dream opportunity to me. Who's ready to apply? Levin (26m 30s): Adventure, baby. Adventure. Chad (26m 32s): The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to just blow my mind. As you heard from the soundbite, I think we all held Russia way too high from a strategic military standpoint. Russia didn't have a fallback plan after not taking Ukraine in 48 hours. Their troops aren't prepared. Now, they are digging trenches and building fortifications like it's 1914. If that's the so-called strategy that you want to use, then where's the heavy equipment to expedite the 1914 strategy? The US military has engineers that will roll up with heavy equipment and dig whatever you need. Chad (27m 12s): You need a def laid position for a tank, fucking call the engineers, right? Then I stepped back and I was like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute." That was my first thought. Then I thought those sneaky rusky bastards. Russia has had problems recruiting for the invasion, right? I bet once the people answer the job ad and they go there to dig fortifications, the next thing you know, they will be sworn in given a rifle and then they are part of the Russian military. I think this is all just a fucking smoke screen. Levin (27m 45s): I had exactly the same idea. Definitely, it's just, once again, lying Russian bastards trying to attract people. Like you say, in the best case, they get a gun. Maybe they won't even. They're just be a diversion. Diversion. Diversion. Chad (28m 1s): Yes, they will be a die-version. Joel (28m 6s): Die-version. Nice. Levin (28m 7s): The moment I read this, I thought, whenever I hear my colleagues, Sarah, complaining about how hard it is to find highly financial profiles or highly qualified financial profiles for our own teams, I will remind her other recruiters have to find people willing to dig trenches in the frozen solid Ukrainian ground. That must be hard. Joel (28m 28s): I know we're not doing a prediction show for Europe, but what are your predictions for the Ukraine situation? Levin (28m 35s): There are a few possibilities. If things stay as they are, NATO is not going to step in, so probably the United States, the UK, and some other European countries will keep providing Ukraine with weapons. This might go on for some time. Russia is not going to back down. They're talking about mobilizing another 500,000 people. Belarus will die as well probably, but then it takes some time. Joel (29m 2s): It stay as is for about another year at least. Levin (29m 4s): It'll be hard to get him out of the whole of Ukraine for example. It'll be very hard. They're digging in as we were just talking about, but let's say, they're stupid enough to activate Belarus and they've been sending like 20 to 30,000 Russian soldiers now to Belarus. They claim to try to invade from the north. I think they're just trying to make sure the Valerian people aren't going to revolt by putting a big Russian forest there. I don't think they're going to invade, but anyway, if they would, then things might change. If this is really going into a multi-country war, then NATO might have an excuse to step in because it's becoming too big. Levin (29m 50s): We need to do something. That might be the excuse. Then if NATO gets sent, Russia is fucked. They probably do have some nuclear weapons. I hope they're not going to use them, but at this point, we even doubts about the usability of their weapons. Joel (30m 5s): Chad's chopping at the bit as our military expert to chime in on Ukraine in 2023. Levin (30m 10s): What do you think? Chad (30m 12s): Russia does one thing well, and that's throw people at bullets. That's all they do well. We've always held Russia up. Their equipment's always been shit. They just can put it out faster than anybody else because they have more people to be able to build that shit. We're just demonstrating. I think right now, what has always been the case, they've had bullet catchers and that's what they have today, which is horrible for them. I don't know how the pitchforks don't come out as they start to mobilize more people, as they start to play these smoke and mirrors, "Go dig trenches, fortification bullshit." I think Russia is really being exposed for what they really are. Chad (30m 56s): They're not strategic geniuses. They're not military supremists. They're shit on all different levels, period. They've got one thing and they're holding that over Europe, and that's energy. Shame on you guys in Europe for allowing that shit to happen. Levin (31m 17s): You're totally right. I'd rather be colds than be warming myself with with Russian oil. Joel (31m 25s): Well, thank God for a warm winter in Europe this year. Levin (31m 27s): Indeed. Yeah, definitely. Joel (31m 28s): The correct prediction guys is Putin gets whacked as we progress more and more towards nuclear conflict. Everything's a one up of each other, right? Invasion, weapons, Nord Stream two, we're sending Patriot missiles. This is going towards a nuclear conflict in my opinion, And I think someone in Russia, within Russia, is gonna see the nuclear option become more and more likely. Putin is gonna go take a dirt nap and swim with the fishes. Levin (32m 4s): I hope you're right. Chad (32m 4s): No 25th amendment there? 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel (32m 13s): Boys, it's good to be back. Let's have a good 2023 with no nuclear war and we'll tie a bow on it in Amsterdam in 10 months. We out. Chad (32m 23s): We out. Joel (32m 24s): We out. Chad and Cheese Podcast (32m 24s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. 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. Any who, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Chad and Cheese Podcast (33m 5s): That way you won't miss an episode. 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.

If you thought TikTok's foray into employment was going to be short-lived, it might be time to change your thinking. On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing with Julie Calli, we're talkin' trends from 2022 and what to look out for in '23, exclusively from the RecruitmentMarketing.com community, as well as winners from their recent industry polling. What's more, they're covering TikTok's latest push into a Creative Talent Marketplace and how savvy employers are taking advantage of influencers to market their employer brand and job openings, as well as seven updates coming from LinkedIn this year. It's a must listen if you want to stay ahead of the curve. And that said, be sure to sign-up at www.recruitmentmarketing.com and subscribe to this show too. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Intro (1s): Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts, complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel Cheesman (22s): Oh, yeah. More than 120 million podcast listeners exist in America and some of them actually listen to this hot garbage. Hi, kids. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your co-host, Joel, Brass Cans, Cheesman. Chad Sowash (38s): This is Chad, Same As It Ever Was, Sowash. Julie Calli (42s): This is Julie, Ready To Take On 2023, Calli. Joel Cheesman (45s): Oh, I like that. On this episode, a look back on 2022, TikTok, Don't Stop, and LinkedIn's Seven Dwarfs. Let's do this. Happy New Year,. Julie Calli. Julie Calli (58s): Happy New Year. Chad Sowash (59s): She's back. Joel Cheesman (60s): She's back. She's got her Chad and Cheese T-shirt on. I love it. Julie Calli (1m 4s): Yes. I had to wear it today. Joel Cheesman (1m 6s): Yeah. Kind of a grunge thing. You got the sweater, the flannel, whatever the hell that is. Chad Sowash (1m 10s): The Weezer sweater, is that what you're saying? Julie Calli (1m 12s): The sweater matched your T-shirt, so I thought, you know, it's cold here in Connecticut. Joel Cheesman (1m 17s): I like that. Chad Sowash (1m 18s): Oh, yeah. Joel Cheesman (1m 19s): We usually go with easy-to-match colors like black. But, yeah, there's a little red in there that you're rocking. I like it. Chad Sowash (1m 25s): It's Corona time here in the Midwest. Joel Cheesman (1m 29s): It's always Corona time. Chad Sowash (1m 33s): Nice and warm blue skies. Joel Cheesman (1m 37s): Listeners in Australia are like, well, yeah, dumbass. It's summer down here. It's Corona time because I think there's an award that was announced this week that a certain somebody, a certain couple of knuckleheads actually won. Should that be--? Is that the first shoutout today? Julie Calli (1m 52s): Yeah, I'll go first with shoutouts. Joel Cheesman (1m 54s): Oh, okay. Chad Sowash (1m 55s): Hit it. Julie Calli (1m 55s): Because I'd love to give a shoutout, first of all, to everyone who participated in our voting recruitmentmarketing.com wanted to leave an opportunity for people to vote for who is the best, the best podcast, the best industry event, the best job site. And, yeah, very proud to announce and share with you that the Chad and Cheese Podcast won Best Podcast in the Industry. Joel Cheesman (2m 19s): That's right, that's right. That's right. By a large margin according to the blog post that went out. Chad Sowash (2m 26s): A large margin. Joel Cheesman (2m 27s): Did anyone else get a vote? I just can't imagine. Julie Calli (2m 30s): Oh, there were definitely other shows that were voted for best, but, you know, we did it looking at, you know, which ones stood out with the most votes. Only one vote per person. So there was a significant amount that voted for your show. Definitely was the leader contending for podcast. Joel Cheesman (2m 49s): Very nice. So runners up were, I think our Canadian friends. Chad Sowash (2m 53s): Recruitment Flex. Joel Cheesman (2m 54s): Recruitment Flex. Chad Sowash (2m 56s): Recruiting Daily. Joel Cheesman (2m 57s): James Ellis on there, Matt Alder. Chad Sowash (2m 60s): Honarable mentions. Yeah, Julie Calli (3m 1s): I honestly loved to see all the results that people, you know, put into what are their favorite shows. It was great to see just how many shows there are out there in the industry. Now each of them has their own flavor and their own style and no one can compare to you, but it really is incredible to see how many people are out there broadcasting to help people in the industry. Joel Cheesman (3m 26s): Now, was there another that people could fill in aside from the ones--? Julie Calli (3m 30s): Yes. Joel Cheesman (3m 30s): So you're saying there were a lot of others, a lot of Mickey Mouse write-ins for the election that happened. Julie Calli (3m 35s): Yes. Joel Cheesman (3m 36s): Oh, that's cool. Julie Calli (3m 36s): Yes, there were, but that actually helped us expand and understand what else are people listening to out there that we might not be aware of. Chad Sowash (3m 44s): Yeah. Joel Cheesman (3m 45s): So you released us on recruitmentmarketing.com. You're releasing a new winner every day. So we're recording on Tuesday, so we're finding out who won today? What was the announcement today? Julie Calli (3m 54s): So today's announcement was based on our votes what was the best recruitment marketing event in 2022? The winner was HR Tech. The HR Technology Conference. Joel Cheesman (4m 10s): A must-attend for the Chad and Cheese podcast as are most of the conferences that were in there. Who else got some votes on the best conference? Julie Calli (4m 18s): Yeah, the runners-up were all pretty close with Unleashed, being Unleash America got the most votes. I think that was based on, you know, our audience. But certainly Unleashed World does deserve mention as well as it came up quite a bit. But Talent Acquisition Week. Chad Sowash (4m 36s): Nice. So question, does Unleash America and Unleash World, did those combined results surpass that of HR Tech? Julie Calli (4m 45s): It did not. I would've considered that, but I would say combined, they definitely were runners up. Chad Sowash (4m 51s): Close. Julie Calli (4m 52s): Talent Acquisition Week also got really high rankings for Top Event and so did Inspire HR. Chad Sowash (4m 58s): And tomorrow we have what coming or when this podcast comes out, will be today. So what's the third one that you're dropping? Julie Calli (5m 7s): So tomorrow we'll be announcing Best Job Site. Now this one I was just holding out with bated breath to see every vote. Joel Cheesman (5m 18s): Congratulations for Careerbuilder. Chad Sowash (5m 19s): No, it was Monster. Monster took that one, didn't they? That's awesome. No? No? Okay. Oh, my bad, my bad. Julie Calli (5m 26s): This is based on votes, right, to determine what was the best. And I just couldn't wait to see what people thought, right? I know I have my own opinions and this was not based on my opinion, so I was excited to see-- Joel Cheesman (5m 38s): Hold on, hold on, hold on. Best Job Board goes to... Julie Calli (5m 47s): LinkedIn. Chad Sowash (5m 47s): LinkedIn, wow. Joel Cheesman (5m 47s): That's right, baby. Drink the juice, Chad. Drink the Kool-Aid, baby. Chad Sowash (5m 52s): One of the worst pieces of technology in our space and it wins. That's awesome. Joel Cheesman (5m 58s): Hey, hey. The people have spoken. Chad Sowash (5m 58s): Well, it's not surprising for HR and/or TA because, you know, we're about two decades behind anyway. Joel Cheesman (6m 5s): The people have spoken. Chad Sowash (6m 6s): Who was close, who were some up-and-comers? What else did you see in that space? Julie Calli (6m 11s): Yeah, so the next, what I would say, you know, the top-rated after LinkedIn was JobCase, Adzuna and Indeed. Joel Cheesman (6m 22s): Okay. Chad Sowash (6m 23s): Nice. Adzuna and then Indeed. That's good stuff right there. Julie Calli (6m 26s): There was quite a few that were listed in that. So in the article in which we released, we listed all of the ones that we thought had enough, significant enough votes to list them out for our readers. Chad Sowash (6m 39s): Congratulations because you're all winners. Joel Cheesman (6m 40s): You're all number one in Chad's heart. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. So how many more days do we have? What other winners? And make sure that we plug that you gotta go to recruitmentmarketing.com if you want to get all the latest winners. What else is yet to be announced? Julie Calli (6m 55s): So those are the three at one that we are announcing this week. But we also surveyed our audience on a lot of other information that we thought might be helpful to share on the sentiment that recruitment marketers are feeling right now. And one of those was, you know, I wrote an article on what the top trends of 2022 are, but we surveyed the audience and said, "What were the most impactful things to you as a recruitment marketer in 2022?" And that we will be publishing an article about next week. That was really great to see everyone's responses. There were a lot of responses written in so that we could see really all the things that people in the community are thinking. Joel Cheesman (7m 37s): Don't jump ahead, Julie, don't jump ahead. We want people to stick around after the advertisement, but when does the best porn site come out? Julie Calli (7m 46s): What? That's not something we would cover. Joel Cheesman (7m 47s): Oh, that's a different site altogether. Chad Sowash (7m 49s): They're workers. I mean, come on now, gigglers. Joel Cheesman (7m 53s): All right. Congratulations to all the winners and everyone that lost to us in the podcast category. Big thanks to them. We'll be right back and get back to those five trends for 2023. Chad Sowash (8m 6s): Top five trends, baby. Joel Cheesman (8m 7s): All right. Top five recruitment marketing trends from 2022 with a little look to 2023. The article discusses the increasing use of TikTok, the use of video for recruiting, pay transparency, the use of AI and chatbots to streamline the recruitment process, and an emphasis on employer branding. Julie, which trend stood out most to you, and which one do you expect to continue kicking ass in 2023? Any sneak peeks from your article as well that you wanna throw in there? Julie Calli (8m 38s): I mean, the two, I can't even pick one here because one of them is about adapting to change that's been forced upon us and that's the pay transparency, right? Pay transparency is absolutely gonna continue. It's going to be something that we will be managing through for I think a few years as states one by one decide upon entering these requirements. So I do think that that'll be with us for a while as we navigate through this. So that one. But the other is real opportunity and that is us advancing into the world. That's video for recruitment marketing. Julie Calli (9m 17s): I mean, TikTok is a foundational video format. This is the way that you know the world is going. If you don't have video and stages of your recruitment marketing process today, you gotta get started on that. You're gonna be behind the times with it, but it is gonna take a while for people to adapt and really discover all the places that they can use video to really enhance and improve their candidate experience. Joel Cheesman (9m 44s): Chad, any of those stand out to you as trends from 2022? Chad Sowash (9m 48s): Talk about pay transparency being forced, so is Indeed's pricing that's being forced. Get ready for that, kids, because they're calling ay Per Apply Start, which is really just PPC under a different name. They've recreated a bastard that's the exact same model that they can charge you five to 10 times more for. Get ready, kids. Good for you. I mean, really when you're talking about video's, TikTok's video, I see TikTok in the video discussion all coming as one, which I think you do as well, Julie. And it's funny because we just dropped our 1000th episode, which was an interview with Bill Borman where he calls employers trying to use TikTok dad dancing. Chad Sowash (10m 32s): And he calls it that because it's not cool and you're not doing it right, right? And I see the exact same thing, not just for TikTok, but also for video, right? You've got all these employers who say, you know, get my jobs on TikTok or, you know, they do these things which we've talked about before, but they don't realize that, you know, they have to be able to provide their employees with the opportunity to go out there and just talk about what they do on the daily. But I'm not sure that they want to relinquish the control to actual people. They want everything underneath the control of their employer, you know, TikTok accounts or their videos or what have you. Chad Sowash (11m 16s): So that's where I come with the same as it ever was. I don't think any of that's gonna change. We're gonna get crappy content spewed all over the web and only the smart ones are actually going to go to allowing their employees to start to use TikTok under their own veil, right? And then also go to some of these great production houses, like our friends over at Skill Scout to get really sexy videos that are done. And there's a huge contrast between the two, right? Joel Cheesman (11m 45s): Chad said spewed. I'm with Julie on the pay transparency. I still think 2023 is when pay transparency can no longer be ignored. It'll be messy. A New York Times article this week talks about how it's good for pay equity and it can be good for managers, but it's not so good for superstars. So there's gonna be a lot of pushback from that perspective. There's too much in favor of transparency for it not to strengthen in 2023 plus what the Feds are doing in regards to making non-competes illegal, which I think is gonna get some speed in 2023 will be a wind beneath the wings of transparency. Joel Cheesman (12m 26s): Yeah, I threw in a Beaches reference just for you, Chad, on pay transparency. Chad Sowash (12m 31s): And don't forget, one of my predictions for 2023 is that CNIO is acquired by a bigger organization. And CNIO is really the easy button for most of these companies to be able to throw all of their data, you know, their HR data into a platform to look for transparency. And another beautiful thing for government is to be able to point and say, "Okay, well if they can do it and they're a vendor, then you can definitely do it. Joel Cheesman (12m 59s): And we all know about Chad's predictions. Chad Sowash (13m 2s): Sixty percent of the time. It works every time. Every time. Joel Cheesman (13m 5s): All right, Julie, on the article to be published for 2023, the people have spoken on what's gonna be hot. Talk about that. Julie Calli (13m 13s): Yeah. So asking, you know, our community recruitment marketers, TA professionals, what was the most impactful change to you in 2022? Of course, requiring compensation in the job was number one, very disruptive to a lot of the ways of working that we have today. It was a mandate without a lot of time for us to figure out how to solve for it. So that was difficult on a lot of recruitment marketers. They wanted to comply. They wanted to provide that in the job, but it just wasn't that easy. So definitely made an impact. But what I will say is people are embracing it. The recruitment marketing and TA professionals are all in agreement that it should be done. Julie Calli (13m 58s): It's a matter of how. So made an impact that they all were comfortable moving forward with it, but challenging in how to execute that well. Chad Sowash (14m 7s): Well, and here's the thing. I don't believe any employer, okay. Let's just make it that easy because I remember when employers were saying that we couldn't go to remote work, and then within two weeks after a pandemic, guess what we all did, kids? We went to remote work and we made those things work. So first off, I'm not gonna carry any employer's water. They can make this happen. All they have to do is put the resources into it. And the reason why, I mean, they're obviously being scared into it because of obviously government and some of them are government contractors. And the last thing they want to do is lose millions and or billions of dollars. So it's more the stick than the carrot. Unfortunately, I wish the carrot actually worked. Joel Cheesman (14m 46s): Please tell me TikTok is in the top five somewhere for '23 trends. Julie Calli (14m 52s): Well, have some patience. Okay, number two, right, was not TikTok. Number two was innovations in TA technology. There are so many new technologies emerging that are trying to make the life of recruitment marketers, employer brand professionals easier. And as all this new tech is emerging, people are very excited. They want to see all the cool new things, but there definitely is a challenge to how can people keep informed of all of these things that are coming out into the place. Joel Cheesman (15m 29s): Hopefully, they're listening to this podcast, Julie, hopefully they're listening to us. Julie Calli (15m 35s): Exactly. Lots of great advancements, but really it is challenging for someone in the role as a recruitment marketer to stay on top of all of this. It really is. So definitely listen to the podcasts and help keep you accelerated. Chad Sowash (15m 48s): Totally agree. So for you personally, what excites you the most about the technology that's happening out there? Obviously, you know, we've been seeing ChatGPT blow up, you know, the news waves, but what's excited you the most? Julie Calli (16m 3s): I love that there's a lot of tools coming out that create efficiency in doing the job. There is so much process in recruitment marketing and in recruitment, so much process and a lot of it can be automated. Anything that's a redundant, repetitive task should go the way of tech and automation. What's happening is that everyone worked in their own little silos and had their own little unique processes, but we're starting to move towards more standardization, more best practices, and that is creating more paths for companies to come in and accelerate that. So I love to see the ability to create efficiency in managing contacts, the ability to distribute content in more automated ways, and also curate inbound information because information overload is an absolute thing that exists in the world today. Julie Calli (16m 56s): So how can you manage so many contacts, so many processes, internal, external, things that help build efficiency around that role all for them? Chad Sowash (17m 5s): Yeah. Starting to see, I think, and I'm lucky enough to advise some startups around video and being able to make it easier for you to go out and collect content and then manage the content that you push out to your site. So I mean, it's almost like everything that we've been talking about for years is finally coming to a head in many of these platforms, which you're hitting square between the eyes is really focused on automation, heavy automation and hitting those roadblocks that we've been hitting for years, finally finding a way around them. Julie Calli (17m 41s): Yeah. But, you know, for a little while it's probably gonna be a little uncomfortable because a lot of the new advancing tech is very siloed into its singular value or its primary feature. And we are going to see things right through either through acquisition or through companies bringing together the value making more systems work well together. That really is where we need to go. We're seeing a lot of advancement in technology, but how to connect them all so that they provide a unified experience that is gonna take some time. Chad Sowash (18m 13s): Well, let me ask you a question real quick because sometimes we see point solutions that are amazing and then they get acquired by a bigger company, and then they are smothered and they're dead, right? And then all of that innovation that we saw from that startup just literally just goes away overnight. Do you think that we're going to see bigger platforms actually get better into integration and marketing and utilization of that? Or are we just gonna see the continued smothering? Because to be quite frank, I hate to sound like a cynic, I see nothing but smothering happening out there. Julie Calli (18m 51s): Well, I would say that both are going to happen and the winner is going to be those that are really focusing on the needs and the value of the employers and the teams that use those tools. It's easy to throw in a lot of features and say, hey, we have all the latest the bells and the whistles, but is it actually making people's lives better and easier? Or are you asking people to log into seven different systems and making it harder to actually do the job? The technology should be making your life better, not worse. And well, unfortunately, what we do have is a lot of people buying technology and saying it's actually harder so that's not meeting the need. Julie Calli (19m 31s): I do think that some really great tools may not get the advancement that they need right now because they're just not going to bring in enough revenue, right? So it might really make a big impact, but if it's not something that a company can make a lot of money off of, it may not get the headwind that it needs. Joel Cheesman (19m 49s): And, you know, for better or worse, if this recession finally happens, the companies that aren't making any money will get bought up. The winners will win, the losers will lose, and will come out the other side knowing who we should purchase and who we should be putting our investment into, which we all saw in 2008, you know, who the winners were coming out of that recession. So I don't wanna wish for a recession, but in regards to making sense of what tools to buy and which ones not to buy, it might be helpful. Chad Sowash (20m 18s): I think it's gonna happen more organically. And what we saw in 2021 and 2022 with regard to funding was a total fucking anomaly. Joel Cheesman (20m 28s): Yeah. What I loved about your top job boards was Jobcase coming in second. I don't think I would've predicted that. And the fact that we're seeing, you know, the labor, the seasonal, the hourly stay strong and people choosing Jobcase tells me that that's where a lot of the action is moving into that hourly space. So take that for what it's worth. But it's interesting that the executive search platform was number one, but then the blue-collar, the job, the people that are not on LinkedIn came in number two. That was pretty interesting for top job sites. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll get to the big booty Latinas and bug fights of TikTok. Joel Cheesman (21m 12s): All right, guys, as much as I thought TikTok would just go away after this modest step into recruitment, it looks like it's here to stay. This past week CNBC had an article about how companies employers are leveraging thought leaders, influencers to actually promote jobs and promote the brand of companies as employment. They're not just selling, you know, Jordan's and Bombas. So that is a really interesting development. And in addition to that, TikTok is putting its money into where the action is. Joel Cheesman (21m 53s): They've introduced a new talent manager portal as part of its creator marketplace, a platform that allows brands and agencies to connect with 800,000 qualified creators worldwide. The new service allows talent managers with creator authorization to log into the creator marketplace to manage deal flow and negotiate contracts on behalf of their talent, handle the creative feedback and various reports and metrics about a campaign's performance or part of that solution. So people now will actually be able to go into TikTok, I assume, search for people in their local market, search for people that might be, you know, technical influencers, blue-collar influencers, certain age groups. Joel Cheesman (22m 33s): They'll be able to actually have these influencers market them and their opportunities as opposed to creating videos on their own or creating banner ads. They can actually leverage this platform. Pretty exciting stuff. My first thought was why did it take, you know, social media so long to figure out let's have people tap into our influencers. But TikTok is on the cutting edge here. Your guys' thoughts? Julie Calli (22m 59s): Creators are creative people who build audiences and make interesting content, and I love that this came in number three, the rise of TikTok as a recruitment marketing channel from our audience, and this is not necessarily because it's been the number one source of how people are making hires, but it's because there is a significant audience there. TikTok has been all over the news and a lot of executives are just telling their teams get us up on TikTok, but not really understanding what the channel is, what the media is. And this is where we absolutely need to have a marketplace for creators. Julie Calli (23m 40s): Because you cannot just go tap on, you know, an intern at your company and say, say build us a TikTok profile and make us some incredible videos. That is probably not going to yield the results that you want for your brand and creators need to be recognized as people that have real value and influence and treating them as such and putting a marketplace in which you can find ways to engage with them. This is absolutely fantastic. This is the better way to go about this than simply expecting your marketing team to be creators and put themselves out there for the sake of your brand. Chad Sowash (24m 15s): Maybe. It might be authentic. Depends on what they're peddling. I mean, because if the company still sucks to work for and then you have an influencer that's saying, "Hey, come work for ABC company. Come work for Amazon. They're great," you know, and everybody knows number one is bullshit and/or they take that influencer's advice and they go work there. The next thing you know is you have the influencer's video stitched alongside an employee who's quitting and calling, you know, her boss Earl, a misogynist asshole, right? So there's a lot of risk that happens there if you still have a shitty workplace. I mean, that's the key. Chad Sowash (24m 55s): So if we're not fixing the things that we should have been fixing forever, then none of that's gonna matter. And sparkling a little Kardashian, you know, sprinkle over it is not gonna make it better. Joel Cheesman (25m 6s): Chad loves him some Kardashian sprinkles. Oh, and Chad's completely right. Look, if Company ABC, I think Chad said, Company ABC, if they put out a video on the Ccompany ABC social media profile, no one's gonna comment like, "No, you suck." But if someone with 5 million followers says this company's great, go apply, comments and it's just gonna be brutal for companies. So there is a major risk when you put your brand and advertise with an influencer. Chad Sowash (25m 38s): Or your influencer brand, right? Because the influencers have their own brand and if they have a mutiny of the people who are, you know, following them, I mean, that's not good for them either. Joel Cheesman (25m 48s): Sure. And you mentioned duets, if someone takes that and duets it, I mean, yeah, there's tremendous risk, but I think we would all agree that any company out there that has budget for it should allocate a certain amount of money to go play with this influencer marketplace. Whether it's a local influencer or someone in your industry, like just put a little money there to just try it. I think too many companies will be like, no way. I urge you to put some money. This will be a trend. Facebook will do it with Instagram once it becomes huge, LinkedIn will try it, they'll probably fuck it up, but they'll probably try it. Twitter, Twitter with Elon Musk, like this whole influencer is advertisers for your brand is gonna be a thing and you should start getting into it now before you get left behind and, you know, get behind the curve there. Chad Sowash (26m 38s): Now, Julie, what we are saying, and I want to hear, you know, what you think about this is there are a lot of companies that actually have an individual who are focused on engaging influencers. Julie Calli (26m 49s): Yeah. I've seen this done really well using influencers in recruitment marketing. Some of the ways that I've seen this done best is using the influencer as a way to show a day in the life. A lot of people wanna know what is it actually like working at the company? So having the influencer come in and show what their first day is like, you know, the cool schwag that they get when they arrive at the office, or what is it like learning how to, you know, in some of the hourly positions, like, hey, how cool it is that you can wear your headphones as you're picking and packing at the warehouse. Or like showing some of the, like, advantages of what it is actually like to be in that role. Julie Calli (27m 32s): Building excitement of around it by giving a real narrative and story to it. Someone showing what their experience is like. Now the reason why this works is this person already has an audience. They've already built trust with their audience. So people are watching and seeing this and they believe this to be on an authentic relay of what this person's experience is like because they've provided all their other content in the same manner. Joel Cheesman (27m 59s): Do we know of any agencies that are on this? Because agencies should be all over this. Not just TikTok, but they should have a list of who are the Twitter accounts, what are the Instagram accounts like, as far as I know agencies aren't on this yet, but they certainly need to get their ass in gear because this is gonna be a hot trend going forward. Chad Sowash (28m 17s): Well, in shout-out to Work Human, we know that they actually have an individual who is focused on influencers. I mean, it just makes good sense and being able to, you know, talk to them and engage them at events, podcasts, TikToks, all that stuff. Joel Cheesman (28m 34s): That's right. Podcasters are influencers too, everybody. All right, definitely something we'll be talking about for probably years to come, TikTok's influence on recruiting. Julie Calli (28m 45s): All right, guys, before we move on, I just wanted to share the other two that came in on the top. One, the amount of executive-level attention that is being given towards TA. That was really interesting to see. Joel Cheesman (28m 58s): And that's not a prediction. Is that a prediction that they're saying they're actually seeing that? Julie Calli (29m 4s): Yeah. In 2022, some of the most impactful things that happened to recruitment marketers was the executive-level attention and that could be, you know, for the good that they are understanding. Joel Cheesman (29m 17s): They were saying for years that our most valuable resource is our people. Like if they're actually doing it. Chad Sowash (29m 21s): Bullshitting for years. Yeah. Yeah. Julie Calli (29m 22s): So that was great to see that people were saying that that was one of the most impactful things that had changed them in their recruitment marketing roles last year. I bet that that continues, that that's not going to be something that just happened last year. I really think that a lot of companies were impacted by talent shortages, the great resignation, and they are seeing the value of keeping ta close to leadership. So hopefully that works out for the better for us as we progress into next year. But the other one, I know many people are gonna empathize with this, but frontline worker labor shortage came in at number five. Now that means for that to have reached into the top five, this was significant to many. Chad Sowash (30m 5s): It broke supply chains. It should be number one. Joel Cheesman (30m 9s): Well, not everyone there hires frontline people, so it's a little bit skewed, right? Julie Calli (30m 14s): But for that to have merged, right? Yeah. Not seeing the struggles to hire tech talent, we're seeing a struggle to hire frontline workers. So obviously emerging from a pandemic that had already created a significant impact on this but, you know, we're seeing this in pockets of the industry and absolutely something that we're gonna be carrying into this year as a continued challenge that people are gonna face in these roles. Joel Cheesman (30m 43s): All right. LinkedIn and the seven Dwarfs, actually the title of the article was LinkedIn Announces Seven Updates Coming in '23. Chad, I know you can't wait to sound off on some of the updates coming from our friends at LinkedIn. So these improvements that they're launching in '23 include improved video accessibility by automatically generating captions for videos, standardized accessibility job titles to help professionals in the field be more easily discovered, alt text functionality and campaign manager for advertisers, updates to job search by testing personalized job collections, whatever that is, updates to B2B product search by adding new category filters and improving relevance post scheduling, which I've actually used, and content analytics to measure the effectiveness of a post. Joel Cheesman (31m 36s): These updates aim to improve accessibility, help professionals find job opportunities that match their skills and values, and make purchasing decisions easier. All right, you two, are we into any of these innovations? If so, which ones or has LinkedIn missed the mark as we head into a new year? Chad Sowash (31m 55s): I'm gonna bite my tongue for a minute. I wanna hear what Julie has to say. Julie Calli (31m 57s): So these are updates, right? These are in the future. Joel Cheesman (32m 1s): These are coming, yeah. The scheduling is already here. Maybe not for everybody, but scheduling your posts is something that is live at least for me. Julie Calli (32m 8s): I mean, that's great that they're making enhancements. I'm so glad there's so many places that they do need to make those enhancements. They've got great products, but they need to step up a little further here. Especially with their interfaces. People are working out of multiple accounts with multiple interfaces they have to work with and LinkedIn, you know, you got your sales navigator, you got the ability to manage your content and they're all not working together well. So it's great to see some of these updates. I'm really interested in what they're doing to update job search. Joel Cheesman (32m 42s): Chad is too. Chad cannot wait. Julie Calli (32m 45s): A significant amount of improvement that could be done there. But you know where LinkedIn really has some of the advantage is that they are doing so much with skill matching. They're collecting so much data here. There's real opportunity for them to bring something to market that works with this. But it's probably not ready yet, but I do hope to see that in its future. Chad Sowash (33m 8s): Yeah. So to me just rings of, you know, days of old with Monster. They just kept coming out with shit that didn't matter when they're bread and butter being the search and their algorithm and how their business worked was shit. It just sucked. And that's the problem with LinkedIn. Their algorithm sucks. Yes, they have more data on me when it comes to my profile data because I have a more robust, rich profile on LinkedIn than any other site that's out there. But yet they return the worst matches. Their algorithm is horrible. I can't imagine the amount of technical debt they have to go through day by day because this is nothing but horse and carriage tech when they should be blowing it up and they should be rebuilding on the side. Chad Sowash (33m 57s): That's the problem that Monster had. They didn't rebuild, they didn't challenge, they didn't Netflix themselves, right? Netflix had the DVDs that they had in the mail, but they also did the online streaming because they knew the progression and the evolution was going to happen. Monster allowed that to kill them. The problem is, I mean, LinkedIn's big, don't get me wrong, but this could kill them because they're not focusing on the things that actually matter most to people who use their platform. Joel Cheesman (34m 23s): Tell us how you really feel, Chad, about recruitmentmarketing.com's number one job board according to the fans. A couple of these I want to point out, this goes back to TikTok. I think LinkedIn has to get video right. Whatever that looks like. Stories failed. They can't get like live streaming quite right. Chad Sowash (34m 43s): Podcasting failed. Everything they've done has fucking failed, dude. Joel Cheesman (34m 45s): They're gonna have their lunches just taken from them if they cannot get video right. If they can't get video right and TikTok becomes a better outlet for marketing and these marketplaces, like LinkedIn needs to get that right. I also think if they don't get that right Polywork, who I hate, but, you know, LinkedIn for the kids, right? I mean that's a real threat to LinkedIn. If they can't get sort of what the kids like, which is video right, the kids are gonna move somewhere else and that could be Polywork or, hell, TikTok is looking like they're gonna be a major competitor in the employment space. The other thing I wanted to mention is the whole, if you're a B2B company, selling to businesses like LinkedIn is probably your number one source of reaching. Joel Cheesman (35m 28s): Who do I need to talk to? How do I market our wares? What kind of posts and stuff? Who should I target? And I do think that they're new search for basically pages and letting you say, okay, what are CRMs that I should be looking at? Or what are ATSs that I should be looking at? And being able to get search results and endorsements and likes and whatever. Like if they become an internal search engine or side search engine for vendors like that could be powerful. But like Chad said, they need to get job search right. How are they gonna get vendor search right or company pages right? I'd say the odds aren't good for them doing that. Chad Sowash (36m 9s): Sixty percent of the time, it works every time. Joel Cheesman (36m 12s): But LinkedIn is fun, TikTok is fun. All these companies are fun to watch. And marketing is obviously one of the more fun topics that we have a podcast about. So it's gonna be fun watching 2023. Any closing thoughts you guys before we push stop? Chad Sowash (36m 29s): I definitely think that recruitment marketing is going to continue to grow, but I agree a hundred percent. The agencies need to start thinking. They say they think out of the box. They say they're gonna bring these great ideas, these out-of-the box ideas. Joel Cheesman (36m 43s): Dude, they're scared of putting a chatbot on their website. You think they're gonna be like, let's talk to Cray Cray TikTok '23 to promote our stuff. Julie Calli (36m 54s): It's the battle that companies would like to brand and manufacture, right? And people crave authenticity in real moments. So this is where the conflict lives. How do you balance those two? Joel Cheesman (37m 11s): Chad and Cheese are gonna be on this. Recruitmentmarketing.com is gonna be on this through 2023. Until then, the sun is shining. It's almost 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the Midwest. Chad Sowash (37m 22s): Corona time. Joel Cheesman (37m 23s): Which means it's Corona time. It also means we out. Chad Sowash (37m 27s): We out. Julie Calli (37m 28s): We out. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Outro (37m 29s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called, podcast, the Chad, the Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of 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. Chad and Cheese Podcast - Outro (38m 12s): That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're added, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. This is so weird. We out.

To say Bill Boorman has been around the recruitment block a time or two is like admitting fish and chips is a little heavy. Both are well-known facts. That’s why we had to grab Bill at UNLEASH World in Paris for his current views on the state of employment, as well as his current engagement with VONQ. TRASNCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Intro (0s): 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 lot, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (23s): OH yeah. Everybody, you know what's up? You know what's up? We're at UNLEASH World Paris, France. And strolling by we grabbed the great, the mystery, the man, Bill Boorman. Chad (35s): His shirt was so loud. We had to pull him in. Joel (37s): According to his badge is an analyst at VONQ. We're in the VONQ dude, so it makes sense that he would show up. Chad (44s): So you caught the VONQ. Bill Boorman (44s): Got the VONQ for three years, my friend. Joel (47s): We cannot capture his shirt on audio, but just take my word for it that it's impressive. Bill Boorman (51s): If it was audio, you'd not be able to hear anything else. So I accept that. I accept that. Joel (55s): Think about the shirt equivalent of a Sex Pistols concert in the Caribbean. And that is his shirt. Bill Boorman (1m 3s): That’s the shirt. Chad (1m 4s): Drunk on rum. Joel (1m 5s): Yes. Bill Boorman (1m 6s): I agree. Joel (1m 7s): Bill, how're you doing? Bill Boorman (1m 8s): I'm good man. Joel (1m 9s): Excellent. Bill Boorman (1m 10s): Living in the dream, Back at HR Tech status. Joel (1m 12s): We have no agenda here. What do you want to talk about? Bill Boorman (1m 15s): So, I know what we were talking a little bit about what's happening in the European market, the things I'm saying. It's kind of crazy times I think. We use a lot of cliches in recruiting, right? A lot of them are hyperbolic and unnecessary. But I genuinely think this time is unprecedented. I think we've never seen a hiring time like this right now. Joel (1m 35s): And technologies? Bill Boorman (1m 36s): Well, technologies to deal with it. But it's more to do with in most of the major economies. In reality, we're in recession, even if we want to try and avoid talking about it, pretending, it's not happening. We are technically in recession. But we've never had a recession with zero unemployment. So, the metric is normally pretty predictable. You increase the number of contingency roles, your permanent roles drop-down and you have a lot more candidates than you have jobs. That's actually not happening. Although there's about 35% drop in jobs which are published on the web, there's still more jobs than there are people available before we even get into the factor, whether their skills match and all that kind of. So we're in a kind of really weird time where companies are going, Okay, we don't necessarily have money, but equally, they're going we don't have our key staff. Bill Boorman (2m 21s): And I think that's the other point is that what we learn the big lesson from COVID times and locked down, was the people who are key staff to our organizations are not the people we would have ranked as key staff. Joel (2m 37s): Like the CEO. Bill Boorman (2m 37s): The CEO, yeah, yeah. Chad (2m 38s): Not fucking key staff. Bill Boorman (2m 39s): Nobody was clapping for them on a Thursday night. I was clapping for the bankers who weren't at work. That sort of stuff. Joel (2m 47s): That's a shame on you. Bill Boorman (2m 48s): So the key people in organizations where we have the most acute shortage at this current moment in time, particularly in the UK and in Europe are not the people we've built tech. We build technology to hire technologists, executives, that kind of stuff. We haven't built technologies to hire hospitality, care, this kind of stuff. Chad (3m 7s): The supply chain, the fucking essential workers which we've never called these people before. Bill Boorman (3m 11s): They were the people who we went, we cannot run our businesses without these people go to work. Everybody else can work from home, do they have to do. These unless you're driving a bus or delivering somebody we thought about. Chad (3m 22s): But they have never been called essential in their life. Bill Boorman (3m 26s): No. Chad (3m 26s): They were called essential. They saw the supply chain start to falter and they're like, “Motherfucker, I get paid shit. I get treated like shit." Bill Boorman (3m 31s): And I still get paid shit by the way, because now everyone's going we lost all our money, COVID. So we can't. Chad (3m 36s): So I'm going somewhere else, to do something else. Bill Boorman (3m 39s): We've got that going on. The other really big thing. And I learned this from a guy called Kevin Green, who runs all the hiring for I think first bus, one of the big bus companies. And he said the bus drivers during the lockdown were heroes. They were taking the essential workers. People were applauding them clapping them in the street. They'd never been admired in that way. Postman said the same thing, right? But then a week after the lockdown finished, but everything opened up. Suddenly, they were really short-staffed, because a lot of them had caught COVID because they'd been out going to work every day running the race. So they were short-staffed. The buses weren't turning up on time. And they said we went from hero to zero in like a day. One day, they were all cheering us. Bill Boorman (4m 19s): The next day, they were all swearing at us because they had to go back to work and our bus was late. So there's also a lot of those people who wore the brunt of COVID, took a lot of risks, go in the care sector. People genuinely keeping people alive for minimum wage, right? And then when it was over, those people lost all that kudos. And that's had a massive impact on motivation. I had a conversation at lunchtime. You know this thing about "quiet quitting." Chad (4m 48s): The quiet quitting bullshit? Bill Boorman (4m 50s): So, what we mean by quiet quitting is people going to work and doing only their job. Only the amount that they get paid for. Chad (4m 57s): Doing what they're doing when they paying to. Bill Boorman (4m 58s): They are doing on what they are paying for. Joel (5m 1s): Lazy bastards. Bill Boorman (4m 59s): And we've embedded a thing that says that's a problem. Chad (5m 3s): You know what we also call them? Bill Boorman (5m 7s): Yeah. Chad (5m 7s): B players. Right, right. Because they're not overachievers. They're not our A players. But guess what, most teams are full of B players, which is fucking great. Bill Boorman (5m 15s): By the way, most of the time you want B players because they want to just carry on, do your thing. Totally. Joel (5m 22s): I want to jump back real quick. So you talked about unemployment and it being very unique time in Europe. As two Americans, we have a lot of fun on our European show, talking about startups, innovations, money coming into Europe. There's a lot more going on than just the unemployment rate. Talk about the excitement in Europe around the money, the ideas, the startups, and the companies that are really taking off. Bill Boorman (5m 43s): I think there's certain things that are really interesting, right? So I can talk about some specific companies in a bit. But there's some trends, which are really exciting when you look at the startup. So the first one is, I think we're genuinely getting to the point where we might actually do something with skills hiring. Where we are at the minute, which is not surprising is we've translated our way of hiring from experience into skills, it's the first stage. Is build a skills taxonomy. Look at the available data for those skills. Move people around those skills. Chad (6m 16s): At that validate the skills though, that's the hardest part. Bill Boorman (6m 20s): Right. That's part of the challenge. So at the moment, it's assume skills based on history, right? So it's not too different to your resume. But I think we're beginning to move towards more assessment stuff. I've been looking at two or three startups today, where they put some reasonable assessment in the application process that's quite light touch. Quite quick, but it's really matching you and taking you straight immediately to the interview level, offering you a video interview if you want it. So, I'm seeing some startups there that are doing some interesting work, assess you in the application. Show you if you're wasting your time, right, which is the ultimate candidate experience thing, which is just saying, “Do this thing 5-10 minutes. You're guaranteed an interview if you get through this. Bill Boorman (7m 1s): We're not going to waste your time. Chad (7m 4s): You know what in many cases if it's like a customer service job or something of that nature, you give them the fucking job. If they prove that they have validated then they can do the skills. Bill Boorman (7m 19s): So I'm saying that kind of thing. I'm actually seeing what's looking like more productive use of analytics that actually using data in some kind of meaningful way. So we've gone from these long, long discussions we had about whether it's big data. We're actually beginning to have products where we go. Actually, I can see some legs in there. I can see some reality in that. I can see a real application. And a lot of that is built around these marketplaces, which have been quite ignored, really, which is the high volume, low skill aptitude hiring for aptitude Russell class talked about that today. Chad (7m 52s): And that has picked up dramatically since COVID because of what we talked about earlier. Bill Boorman (7m 56s): Yeah. So COVID was a great time for HR Tech really, I think. Joel (7m 59s): COVID was a great time. Just so we get that. Bill Boorman (8m 2s): Well, that’s right time for me. I loved it. Not the dying stuff that was unfortunate, but I mean. Chad (8m 10s): Locked away at home. Bill Boorman (8m 11s): Yeah, the thing that really stood out for me was suddenly we had video interviews. We took hiring managers having to do five interviews at. When things became impossible, we discovered people could work from home, and actually it wasn't that bad. Joel (8m 25s): It was possible. Bill Boorman (8m 25s): But well didn't stop right. Now as a whole different show if we talk about way at the moment, but I think that whole thing, that COVID period, force change. It was a medically induced recession, it forced change. We got budget to do some things which we never had any money for. Because it was at the same time as the skills show it's the hiring that was still there, right? So we had the opportunity to do lots of things and come out of that COVID period. I want to say COVID is gone. But come out of that lock-down period. I think probably four or five years ahead of where we would have been if it would have been natural times. I think with certain things. Chad (8m 60s): Especially for remote work, hybrid work, and being able to utilize a lot of those systems. Bill Boorman (9m 5s): Yeah, use it takes like video, chatbots, loads of technology, right? Heavy Lifting had been stuff that we talked about for a long time is now a reality. And I don't see any sign of that going back in terms of the technology. Some of the methodology, do people work from home? Do they not? Is it practical? Chad (9m 18s): And some of the leadership Jamie Dimon, that kind of – Bill Boorman (9m 21s): It’s the leadership who can't deal with it, it's not the people. The people are like, “I'm okay working from home.” And it's actually someone going, “I need to see you to manage you. If I can't see you. I can't be your boss.” Chad (9m 32s): Thats a control issue. Yeah. Bill Boorman (9m 34s): And the other thing I think we discovered, why people are being called not really contributing is we discovered when you don't have to commute to work and have loads of meetings and all that kind of stuff. But whenever you have a meeting, it's 30 minutes. It has an agenda. It's very structured, which is the benefit of the Zoom tight culture. I think we actually discovered we were only really doing six or seven hours a week work. So suddenly, we're looking at jobs again. We paid someone for 40 hours and now this is all they're doing. And they're like, yeah, but the output is the same, their outputs better. So, I think there's some methodology challenges in there. But the tech, I think is really exciting. Bill Boorman (10m 14s): I think things are getting adopted. Where we get into is we've seen some good exits in Europe, reasonable exits. Particularly of point solutions, things like candidate ID that I worked with that for a very good multiple compared with what the revenue was. Showed a bit of methodology. All of the ATS is are looking to become platforms. Joel (10m 33s): Yes. Bill Boorman (10m 33s): I talked to the CEOs of the ATS’s about once a week, the main ones. And part of that is saying, right, what their plan is, is three things -t The first one is the money spent on a traction and selection is 20x the money spent on software licenses, and they want a piece of that, right? So the way in which they've got their valuations is to say, if we can get 20 or 30% of that revenue, by putting those services inside the ATS, firstly, we're more sticky. You have no reason to go anywhere else, you're less likely to leave and change. Secondly, we're suddenly getting 30 to 40% of revenue, which was a net. So that's really what we'd VONQ and whose booth we're sitting on? That's what we've built in terms of product. Bill Boorman (11m 13s): How do you put jobs inside the ATS? And all of these CEOs are saying the same thing. We want candidates in the ATS, right? We don't want you to go and source them from somewhere else, do something else. So we see more marketplaces coming in. We've seen more opportunity for not the integrations that we've had before which were really either one way emulation day a push or they were we'll put you in our shop. Like, you know, all the software companies will put you in our shop. We’ll integrate you will put you in our marketplace. Now it's we're going to put you in our workflow, you're going to be white labels. So, if you're solving one problem really well, and you're able to solve it better than than the ATS is and the ATS is see that as a critical function, whether that's compliance, job distribution, whatever it is. Bill Boorman (11m 57s): If you can be put inside the ATS and be invisible, you tick another box for them in the RFIs. You make them more sticky, you're giving them 30 - 40% of the revenue. For a business, you've no cost of sale. Now there's one other fundamental driver in that which people don't notice and that is historically the value of a software company has been based on ARR annual recurring revenue, right? And you'll get a multiple off for anyone who doesn't live in those strange well we live in. That’s how you value the company. And transactional business has been bad to do. It's lowered your value because you did lots of transactional sales. However, if you're doing transactional sales in a channel, like if you're doing the main greenhouse or Smart Recruiters, Cornerstone. Chad (12m 41s): Over hundreds or 1000s of companies. I mean, just over those companies, and then – Bill Boorman (12m 47s): to sell every day. Yeah, it's transactional. So you're having to build things around that like wallets for payments and create really an E commerce marketplace inside the ATS. But it also means you can do single transactions job by job. So what I'm seeing as a market trend, which is being reflected in tools is you can really split hiring into two distinct channels, right? 80% of hiring is what we'd call supply chain, repeated positions, similar skill level locations might be a bit different, but you're always hiring. So that's always on. So we're beginning to build the Always On machine, which says make sure there's always enough going in the top of the funnel. Ecommerce 101. Enough customers in the top means you get people coming at the bottom. Bill Boorman (13m 29s): So always on 15 to 20% of roles are campaign. They're ones that you have to hire specifically for this role. Either there's not a lot of candidates in the market, but it requires a job by job approach rather than a general approach. So what I think we're seeing happen in technology is more technology. People like real leads who do the referral stuff. So really, really exciting personalization of hiring job by job. And equally from a recruiters point of view you don't need any authority. So you get a budget for that role. Either we need to do referrals. I heard you talking about another referral tech recently, some guys who bought some treats, I think to speak about the -- Chad (14m 6s): Aeron. Bill Boorman (14m 8s): They bought you some drinks, right? Chad (14m 10s): Everybody buys us drinks. Bill Boorman (14m 12s): I’ll buy you a drink. The point of, actually, we don't want to do all the referrals. But we do want to do the best job needs referral or best job needs extra spent on advertising or this job needs duration-based advertising, which we've been starting to kill off with programmatic. So, I'm saying tech making lots of things possible to combine. This is our supply chain. This is our engine. Chad (14m 37s): Yeah. Bill Boorman (14m 38s): Recruitment marketing, all that kind of stuff. But it's all being driven through the ATS. So for me, it's like super excited where for 10 years, all of us world's most dangerous podcast has been talking about the ATS is broken, no innovation, nothing happening. Now this stuff really happening, right? Because they've got to consolidate that position. I think you may have originated this line of thinking actually, Chad. I think I may be gradually have to give you credit for something. So the thing I really liked right? Chad (15m 5s): I'll take it. Bill Boorman (15m 7s): I think when you did this show a while ago where you were talking about nobody thinks about indeed as the competitor to the ATS is but in the SME like the jazz HR. Chad (15m 17s): Yeah. Bill Boorman (15m 17s): That kind of space, right? Indeed and other platforms, other job boards were beginning to build credible enough technology to say, if you're only hiring 50 people this year, you actually don't need this stuff. Joel (15m 30s): Which is most businesses by the way. Bill Boorman (15m 33s): Most businesses, right, yeah. So I think that's, it's another exciting area when we're looking at our market to say, actually, what's competing with us isn't the people who we've heard. Historically, we've identified another company that looks a bit like us and said, “That's the enemy that these three companies what they do, and now we're going…” Actually, it's a mix of technology and methodology that saying, “Where's it coming from?” So, I think there's a lot of exciting opportunity. The other thing that's happening is the learning and development, if you look across the board, L&D and hiring is becoming a single function, right? Which lots of people are questioning that, but how I'm seeing that is historically, up to a couple of years ago, I could probably think of three or four people who went from head of talent acquisition to CHRO. Bill Boorman (16m 24s): And the reality is the CHRO is the board seat. That's where the C-suite is. That's where the power is. But generally, talent was too specialist learning was too specialist. The CHRO was a generalist who could deal with everything. What I've seen in the last 18 months is heads of talent acquisition becoming heads of people. Sounds like semantics, right? What's driven that is more of what we're taking on in talent acquisition went from onboarding, it started off with that, and we started becoming responsible for dealing with that, then internal mobility was a map been a massive driver and topic. Chad (16m 55s): Yeah, because of retention. Bill Boorman (16m 56s): Right. But if you bring internal mobility into talent acquisition, we do internal mobility just in the way we did external mobility, right, which is, who could get this job today, if we send him for an interview that to? Chad (17m 11s): Right that’s who owns talent management, which has been the hard part because… Bill Boorman (17m 16s): This is the next phase. The next phase is now people are going, well, actually career planning, workforce planning, all those good things need to come into this kind of TA into this people function. So, what I believe it we're going to see is the TA function is slowly going to disappear, as a title with a dedicated function. Chad (17m 33s): Becomes a people function, or a talent function? Bill Boorman (17m 37s): You're going to have learning and talent as a single function under people. Learning, bringing in the career development. But equally, the biggest part of employer brand is actually learning content. What we're seeing from all the data at the minute, where we say, “Where are the candidates?” Sorry, I was speaking about earlier. Everything we're seeing is candidates are not following brands in the way we perceive they would. They're not like following this company to a job falls and really all their stuff in modular video. What they're doing is they're applying to jobs. They're doing that with very limited information. Job titles, salary, locations, still, even though it's remote, and disqualifies what the reasons I wouldn't get this job. Why are they doing that? Joel (18m 15s): Are you saying brand doesn't matter? Bill Boorman (18m 17s): No, I'm not. But it doesn't matter for attraction, which is where we spend most of the money on attracting people in, right. Where it counts? What happens is – Chad (18m 27s): Retention? Bill Boorman (18m 27s): No. Retention of the candidate in the workflow, right? If you follow the data path, the moment they've applied, first of all, they're apply with no expectation they're ever going to hear from you again. Chad (18m 38s): They have to get through the application process first. Bill Boorman (18m 40s): Yeah. Why should they invest any more time than necessary in applying, and that feeling that they're almost definitely not going to hear from you, again? Generally, it is true, we reinforce that. But that's not unbelievable, right? But the moment they get one positive response, come to the adverse phase of the funnel, then all over employer brand. At the moment, we put all our branding above the funnel attract come and look at us, look how great we are, look at our stuff. Nobody's looking at that stuff. Millions being spent on it. Nobody looking at it. And the data shows us this. But the moment they're interested and get a positive affirmation, that's when they want more content, and they want more content, because they're going, I've applied to eight people, because I've just applied to everything that looks roughly right? Chad (19m 17s): Yeah. Bill Boorman (19m 18s): Now, I'm going to start making choices. Who am I going to goes? Who am I going to drop out of? Who am I going to speak to? Joel (19m 28s): And a big part of I think is social media. Bill Boorman (19m 32s): Yeah. Joel (19m 32s): And the first time I saw you speak, it was about the benefits of social media in terms of recruiting. And I'm curious 10 years hence, since I last saw you, where are you on social media, the importance? And most importantly, for our listeners, where does TikTok fall in the future, or president, or recruiting? Chad (19m 51s): It is the platform. Are you kidding me? Bill Boorman (19m 52s): Anywhere, where people go is a place to recruit. And that's everything from a physical place. I've seen people RecFest. A couple of companies have sponsored RecFest hired all their recruiters because they paid for a stage, right? so anywhere people go some old school physical, we've hired people for Oracle, have a bus stop because we knew that's where they were, right? So Tiktok is a channel where lots of people are, lots of people are engaging. In same time as lots of people are engaging on YouTube people are using video more as a means of communication, FaceTime. Actually, they prefer face before voice just to confirm you're not a catfish, right? So, all of those behaviors, I think – Joel (20m 26s): Is it a sign at a bus stop? How do you engage? How do you get to those people? Bill Boorman (20m 32s): First of all you need to know where they are. So understanding your audience. Where do they go? What do they do? Chad (20m 38s): How do they get to work? Currently, they take the bus. Those are the people that we want. Bill Boorman (20m 43s): Though it was actually outside the office, but it was the most visible point, right? Where we knew the other people work? Chad (20m 49s): So it’s a billboard as somebody's going into the office. Bill Boorman (20m 53s): The best one I ever heard of was an Australian company, Atlassian. Chad (20m 56s): Put it on kangaroos. Bill Boorman (20m 57s): They put a billboard. Joel (20m 57s): <00:20:39> fosters. Bill Boorman (20m 58s): Yeah, they put a billboard on the back of a lorry, with a little employer-brand video about how great it was to live and work in Australia. They drove it outside Oracle and other places, played the video saying, “We're coming to steal your developers, would you rather come and work in this place?” Like you hate your job, but you can hate your job? Oh, God, the beats in 10 minutes? Chad (21m 20s): Yeah. Joel (21m 20s): So what's the equivalent of that on social media? Is it advertising? Is an organic president? Bill Boorman (21m 25s): It’s a bit of everything. So sometimes it's very targeted advertising, making sure you're reaching the right people. And social media makes that possible. Sometimes it's timing. We no longer talk about social, we used to have social media recruitment conferences that we used to go to and speak out. We're now at the point where these channels are embedded in the way in which we communicate and should also be embedded in the way in which we communicate not just recruiting, but employee engagement, the whole thing? Chad (21m 54s): Yeah. Bill Boorman (21m 54s): So I think, really, we're at the point where having all the options of knowing where people are giving them the choice to behave, to do what they do in that channel. Understand the accepted behavior and terminology in that channel, in the way that you talk to people. But making sure if we want to connect with you, you can talk back to us. If you want to do that in WhatsApp, you can do that on WhatsApp. If you want to do that by email, you can do that by email. If you want to reach us by voice and have a conversation you can do that. So for me, it's using, how do we know just by looking at the data that nearly everyone we want to reach is in a social media channel in some way, whatever that is, and is using it to communicate or talk to their kids wherever it is. Bill Boorman (22m 38s): So, how do we insert ourselves in that without being intrusive? How do we not? So I compare it when I go on TikTok, since you're using the TikTok example. I mark video employer brand video is down on Tik Tok as Dad Dancing. I call it Dad Dancing. It's like a brand trying to be cool. And trying to be cool because it's almost not cool. Like even when it's a case if they've got. Chad (22m 56s): Dad Stop Dancing on Tik Tok. Stop it. Bill Boorman (22m 60s): Yeah, my son will go, “Yeah, you're trying to make it LinkedIn.” That's what he says to me all the time. He is 23. He is like, he says, “Dad, I'll try to take, even a social TikTok thing. And he'll go, “Yeah, don't do that, Dad like this. This is not your place. Because it's not where you come. You're not cool there. It's not very recruited dad.” Stick to LinkedIn father. Chad (23m 22s): Well, kids, we've just learned that Bill Boorman is not cool on TikTok. Although you need to be. Bill Boorman (23m 29s): Although I have a TikTok. Chad (23m 31s): I didn’t say you, you weren't on TikTok. You're just not cool on TIkTok. Bill Boorman (23m 36s): I’m not cool. Joel (23m 37s): It may be a harbinger of death, though, because the last time we interviewed him was in Dallas right before COVID. So, I'm a little worried that we're interviewing him today, and what might follow this interview? In regardless, Bill, thank you for sitting down with us. Bill Boorman (23m 50s): Thank you. Can I just say one last thing? So I want to genuinely, I throw a lot of shade at the podcast very often about the things. Chad (24m 1s): We love it. Bill Boorman (24m 2s): But I actually want to thank you for what you're doing. And you know, you'll be good voices out there. Chad (24m 8s): You're going to make me cry. Stop it. Bill Boorman (24m 10s): So, cheers, guys. Joel (24m 12s): When you say good voices down there. Where is down there? The depths of content hell? Bill Boorman (24m 16s): Well, no. It's like you've managed to combine a social show with a recruiting show. You're the world's tallest dwarves. Joel (24m 22s): Is that politically correct? Chad (24m 22s): Coming from dwarf. Bill Boorman (24m 24s): No. Well I one of the global recruiting awards, right? And I came back and I was kind of doing my dad's throw around the house. Chad (24m 36s): You're doing dad dance? Bill Boorman (24m 38s): Yeah. And my son turned out to me, he said, “Just turn around like kids do out of the blue.” They know your place. Anyway, that's great. But just remember that makes you the world's tallest dwarf. And that's where we are. Joel (24m 56s): And if our listeners want to connect with the world's tallest dwarf, where should they go Bill? Bill Boorman (25m 1s): The best place Facebook, LinkedIn. Anywhere, social BOORMAN. Joel (25m 6s): The end of the world, our interview with Bill Boorman. Chad (25m 13s): As we know it. Joel (25m 15s): And with that, we out. Chad (25m 19s): We out. The Chad and Cheese Podcast (24m 57s): 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. 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. 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.

You know 'em. You love 'em. It's prediction time for 2023, and we're not messing around this year. That's why we brought on J.T. O’Donnell, AKA "Nostro'Donell," Founder & CEO at Work It Daily to share prediction duty with the boys. Hey, a female perspective is a good thing, trust us. In addition to making 2023 predictions, we go over what we got right and wrong in 2022. As usual, LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, iCIMS, Greenhouse, Web3 and much more get highlighted. And we may or may not have been drinking on this episode, not that that's a bad thing. Cheers! 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 (0s): 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 lot, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (20s): Oh, yeah. Predictions are never wrong. They just haven't happened yet. Hey, boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel "Where the hell's my flying car" Cheeseman. Chad (33s): This is Chad "Crystal Ball" Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (35s): I am J.T. "Nostradamus" O'Donnell. I didn't say that right. I tried. Chad (41s): Nostra Donnell. Joel (41s): Nostra Donnell. J.T. O'Donnell (42s): Thank you so much for that name. Great start. Joel (45s): We're off to a great start in '23. Anyway, on this week's show, you know him. You love him. It's the 2023 prediction show. Yeah, let's do this. J.T., already throwing onion at the show. Way to go. Way to go. Chad (1m 4s): I love it. I love it. J.T. O'Donnell (1m 6s): Well, I didn't get to pick my own name. What can I say? Joel (1m 7s): Promise you'll still share this to your 2 billion followers or whatever it is up to now. J.T. O'Donnell (1m 12s): Maybe. Well, we're doing videos, so yes, it's happening. It's gotta happen. Joel (1m 17s): Some of our listeners don't know you. This is a very important seat that you sit in, The Prediction Show. This is no joke. J.T. O'Donnell (1m 25s): I know. Joel (1m 25s): Give the listeners a little bit about you, where they could find out more. Give us a Twitter bio on J.T. and what does J.T. stand for, number one. J.T. O'Donnell (1m 33s): Yeah. First of all, I did think it was a joke when I got the email that, "Would you like to be on the show Predictions?" Thank you. J.T. stands for my maiden name. Janine Tanner, but my name is spelled oddly so people always butcher it. You know when they call up and say your name right? I gave up, started going by J.T., and it stuck. That's how I got the name. I've been in the industry. It's just nobody remembers me. I was in staffing, recruiting, and 20 years ago, I decided to hop to the other side and start to become an advocate for the worker because I just knew people needed to learn a little bit more. They were at a disadvantage. That's what I've been doing for 20 years. Then stealthily, in the scene, have been working on some stuff to come back to the other side. J.T. O'Donnell (2m 15s): Here I am and now working in recruitment marketing and employer branding space. Joel (2m 21s): You are marvelous for 20 years in the industry. I just wanna say that in a non-threatening way. Chad (2m 25s): Guess you know why? Because you started when she was three. That's why. In a non cancelling way because this is January. I don't wanna get canceled already in 2023. Joel (2m 36s): How are you gonna get canceled? Although J.T. has encouraged us to drink on this show, so who knows where the hell our final prediction will go. J.T. O'Donnell (2m 44s): I did. Bring it. Joel (2m 46s): Blanton's in Laro. It's gonna be a fun show. It's gonna be a fun show, everybody. Chad (2m 50s): Yes, very much. Okay, let's kick this off. 2022 predictions, which we had. We always have something to say, but it doesn't mean that they're always right. I'm gonna go ahead and jump into mine because it's partially right. Joel (3m 2s): Let get the wrong buzzer ready. Let me warn this there. Okay, there we go. All right. Chad (3m 9s): My first prediction was a paradox twofer, because they just got funding. They had a couple of acquisitions the year before and I knew they were gonna come into 2022 just rolling. I said that they would acquire a European tech company. None of that shit happened, but my second part of it was that they would reposition away from just being a point solution and being more of a major competitor to the applicant tracking system providers, which I can say they definitely have done. Joel (3m 43s): Yeah, that sounds like a halfsie. Chad (3m 45s): Yeah. I'll get halfsie. Joel (3m 45s): We're gonna go off clap. We're gonna go off clap on that one. Chad (3m 49s): I'll take it. That'll take it. Joel (3m 50s): J.T., do you have any comment about the paradox prediction? J.T. O'Donnell (3m 52s): I don't think it counts. I'm sorry. You didn't get it all right, then you don't. Joel (3m 56s): That's why you don't make two predictions in one. Chad (3m 59s): Bullshit. Joel (3m 59s): Chad's always on both sides of the fence. You know what I mean? He's always back door, front door. Chad (4m 4s): That was one fence. It was the paradox. Joel (4m 6s): That's Chad. All right, so I predicted that one well-known restaurant would launch a robot only location. Chad (4m 11s): This was a long shot, by the way. This was a fucking long shot. Joel (4m 19s): Mostly because I said a brand name like somebody everyone knows. Not some random startup in Idaho, right? Chad (4m 23s): Somebody put a flippy in. Joel (4m 24s): The gods of of predictions blessed me in December of last year with the following headline. "Burgers, fries, and robots. McDonald's opens first mostly automated location in Dallas." I'm gonna claim if McDonald's gonna do that. I'd say that is an endorsement for robots at your local fast food restaurants coming in 2023. Chad (4m 54s): You don't realize how many fast food restaurants we have in America until you leave for a while. I was gone for three months. I was in Europe for a while, came back, and they're fucking everywhere. In Europe, you get the little mom and pop, little restaurants and whatnot, and they're a blue zillion of them. You come here, it is all industrial fast food and it's everywhere. If you're gonna have industrial fast food, you might as well have automation. What's a little grease in your burger? That's not a big deal. Joel (5m 27s): Plenty of Burger Kings, McDonald's, and Taco Bells in Europe. Just not where Chad is. Chad (5m 32s): All we have to do is take a look at per capita and you will see that we blow them out of the fucking water. Joel (5m 39s): But when I Expedia my hotel location, I make sure that there's a Taco Bell, Burger King, or McDonald's within walking distance, which is not a far away from me, Chad. Chad (5m 49s): Congrats on that one. Joel (5m 52s): In the proximity of my hotel, yes. Chad (5m 53s): That was a very big swing and you got that. Joel (5m 55s): Not too bad, not too bad. Chad (5m 56s): Good prediction. My second one fell flat and I can't believe it fucking fell flat. I predicted that ZipRecruiter would acquire VRVO, did not happen. This is just another reason why ZipRecruiter is dying on the vine. They aren't taking our recommendations. We're giving them free recommendations on the show and they're not even taking the shit. This is why they're dying. J.T. O'Donnell (6m 18s): You don't even own a board seat yet. Joel (6m 23s): Is ZipRecruiter a common theme on some of your content, J.T.? Do you have an opinion on the Zip? J.T. O'Donnell (6m 27s): They're popular right with the job seekers. I think everyone's looking, but most companies, everyone's struggling with. They're not getting the response that they want from whether it's Indeed, Glassdoor, or ZipRecruiter so job seekers are tired of it. I think they all have to figure out a way for the response rates or some form of engagement rate to go up, or it's troublesome. They go the way of some of the other boards. Joel (6m 54s): Popular with job seekers, but here's what Wall Street thinks about ZipRecruiter. Commentator (6m 58s): 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel (6m 59s): All right. That's a big hit for you on ZipRecruiter, Chad. All right. My second one from 2022, I predicted that NFTs will be used to recruit and retain talent. The idea was Nike would give NFTs of their athletes to recruiting and retention goals. People would have these valuable NFTs. Unfortunately, aside from Donald Trump getting richer on his NFT collection, and you know you have a few out there in a Chad and Cheese Land, I could not find any proof on the Google machine that NFTs had been used to recruit or retain talent in 2022. Chad (7m 41s): I tell you what, Donald Trump showed us a great way to launder money through those little bullshit NFT cards. That was pretty genius in how he scammed the living. Joel (7m 55s): Bitcoin is gonna work in Moscow when he sets up shop with Putin in a year. Chad (8m 2s): My last, but not least from last year, I predicted that Randstad shuts down Monster. They didn't shut it down, although, they have been selling it off in pieces parts. Ranstad sold Monsters, APAC, and Malise business to Quest Corporation. They didn't get shut down, but they have been sold off. Not everything, but little pieces. Joel (8m 27s): Is this your plea for a golf clap? J.T. O'Donnell (8m 31s): He's doing it again. He's doing it again. Chad (8m 34s): I just have to make sure that the listeners know what's happening, Joel. I don't care about whether I get a buzzer or not. Bastard. Quest literally just changed the Monster brand in Finland to Jolly. The Monster brand is that fucked up in Europe and AsiaPac. They also announced that Monster operations, the actual operations umbrella is going to be rebranded as Found it. That is how bad the Monster brand is in those areas of the world. Joel (9m 4s): I don't know, J.T. Is this eh or do we give a golf clap to Chad on his monster? J.T. O'Donnell (9m 11s): Oh, I already told you how I feel. It's not a hundred percent. Chad (9m 16s): Such a hater. I don't know what she hates so much. Joel (9m 18s): If you couldn't tell, Chad was not hugged much as a child so he tries to get as much positive as much as possible. Chad (9m 24s): I do like a hug. I like a good hug, yes. Joel (9m 26s): Unlike me who was loved by their parents. My final prediction was that at least one startup in our space would get at least a 10 million investment under the guise of recruiting in the Metaverse. Now, while there are endless webinars, blog posts, and news stories about recruiting in the Metaverse, I could not find any evidence on the Google machine that there were any startups that were specifically for recruiting in the Metaverse. We have a long way to go before the Metaverse is a thing in recruiting. One prediction that we got right, Chad, and will continue to get right. People love free shit as we give free shit away on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (10m 8s): If you haven't signed up, I know J.T. is at the top of the list for free shit at Chad and Cheese. J.T. O'Donnell (10m 17s): I do. Joel (10m 17s): You gotta go to Chadcheese.com, click on the free link. We're talking about free t-shirts from our friends at Job Get. We're talking about free Bourbon Whiskey from Tex Colonel, Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. Am I missing anyone? Chad (10m 26s): Rum from Plum Baby. Joel (10m 27s): Yeah, that's right. Shout out to Ed Tuske, Chad and Cheese super fan, for winning. Chad (10m 32s): Ed from Philly. Joel (10m 33s): Philly loves them some rum and Plum is gonna send Ed a nice bottle of rum. He is also celebrating a birthday this month, which is how you win a little bit of rum from Plum. Jenny Shakka Khan, I'm not sure how you pronounce. Chad (10m 54s): Walt Disney, yes. Joel (10m 55s): From Disney. She is a double whiskey getter. A choice from Chad, a choice from Cheese. It's like the old days of Blockbuster when you got film choices from Chad and film choices from Cheese. Chad picks a bourbon, I pick a bourbon, and you get drunk and have fun. That's how this works. Chad Cheese, free shit. That wraps up 2022. We're gonna take a quick break and J.T. might get to talk in the next next series of predictions. We're gonna get into 2023. Sit tight kids. I'm pouring my second bottle or tram, sorry. All right. Joel (11m 33s): All right. All right. 2023. Chad (11m 38s): Come on baby. Joel (11m 38s): J.T. is chomping at the bit to make a prediction and she is our guest. J.T. O'Donnell (11m 44s): I'm ready. Joel (11m 45s): Welcome to the show. We're excited to have you here. You're clearly opinionated, you're clearly smart. You've clearly been around the block a few times in this industry. Give us a prediction for 2023. J.T. O'Donnell (11m 60s): Prediction number one, the ambition recession is gonna rage on and impact how we recruit. There's a guy named Robert Glazer out of Boston, owns Acceleration Partners. He coined the term, founded on LinkedIn. Basically said, "Look, people are checked out, all these purpose driven professionals are not feeling it. We're going to have to completely change how we get their attention and get them to apply to our jobs." I don't think he's wrong. As someone who spends a ton of time with job seekers right now, I would say there is definitely an ambition recession. People would rather do less or figure out how they're gonna work on their own terms, but they're not gonna be a sellout. J.T. O'Donnell (12m 42s): That's the thing I hear time and time again. They just don't wanna do the grind. They don't believe in the hustle. They obviously don't wanna do the long hours. It's gonna get interesting, especially when we're seeing in the news today. Companies are demanding people to come back more than two days a week, more than three days a week. Disney four days a week, right? I don't know. I think the recession's strong. I think you're gonna see a lot of people say, "F it." Joel (13m 6s): This came out today that the Hartford did a survey of savings and stress levels for lack of money, and found that some two-thirds of people are stressed about not having enough money. Over 50% have less than a thousand dollars in their bank account for savings. Do people just not give a shit about money anymore? J.T. O'Donnell (13m 28s): I think some of it is social media. Social media keeps telling them, prioritize your health, take care of yourself. Don't get stressed out, don't let work run you. That narrative is still going strong everywhere they look. People are feeling, they don't wanna go back to those crazy hours because they almost feel like I said, that they're selling out or they're caving from this big shift to being a purpose-driven professional out of the pandemic, which is, "I'm gonna do work that I wanna do work, that works for me, not the other way around." I think there's a ton of that internal conflict going on with people. I think right now they're gonna push back and figure out how to do more with less or continue to deal with that stress. Chad (14m 11s): What's your actual prediction though? Will companies change or will job seekers change? Who's gonna have to change? Because somebody's gonna have to change. J.T. O'Donnell (14m 18s): Companies will change. The really smart companies out there are gonna know how to change the narrative, how to change what they're saying, and where they're saying it so that people don't feel like a sellout to come to work for them. That's gonna be the difference. They can feel like they're doing it on their own terms and work them back in, because we've gotta get people excited again about working. We've gotta get them. It doesn't have to necessarily be ambition, but some sort of excitement for work wanting to get there. The smart companies are gonna figure out to do that, but the message is different. It's not the same carrots that we used to hang in front of people. Companies aren't thinking about that so if you really are gonna put whatever you were doing in 2022 on repeat for 2023, they're not gonna bite. Chad (15m 2s): Yeah. It was the we are family kind of thing, which is, as a family, we wanna work hard and we wanna work 20 hours a fucking day. You know what I mean? It's one of those things and that's just not passing muster anymore at all. I agree, companies are gonna have to find a new propaganda line to be able to work. It's funny because on the weekly show or on the European show, we talked about how this 28-year-old kid actually took out a 12-year-lease on a condo, on a cruise ship where he's working from anywhere and he is also seeing all of Europe. I think we're at a point where companies are going to have to be more flexible than they've been incredibly rigid over the last shit for forever. J.T. O'Donnell (15m 52s): I agree. You're gonna demand them to come back in, they're not going to do it happily. If you don't think that that's gonna impact their work, their productivity, and that they aren't out looking for another job, so the smart companies are gonna create the benefits and perks that work. I'm with you. It's the messaging that is going to have to change. If employers don't do it, they're not gonna get the talent. Chad (16m 16s): Oh, it's all propaganda. Joel (16m 17s): Sounds like you're bullish on the gig economy as well. J.T. O'Donnell (16m 20s): Hey, I am. I've been saying that for years, right? We're not employees anymore. We're businesses of one. We're service providers. We've come full circle from back in the day where you were a farmer, right? My maiden name's Tanner. My family we're Tanners so it's come full circle. Every job's temporary. We're crazy to think that. We're all commodities until we prove otherwise. If we're teaching people that, if the pandemic taught them nothing else, then they're gonna keep going with that. They're going to figure out how to do it for themselves and they're not gonna get a set of golden handcuffs and go into an office four days a week if they don't want to. Joel (16m 55s): The beatings will stop when morale improves. Chad, what's your first 2023 prediction? Chad (16m 57s): Okay, so Facebook runs from the jobs. We saw how Facebook ejected out of jobs. Google is going to seize the opportunity by releasing paid job ads in the Google for Jobs platform. That will happen in 2023. Joel (17m 10s): Pay per click, flat fee. What are we talking? Chad (17m 14s): It's gonna be their same scheme. Okay. They're not gonna change their scheme. It's gonna be plug and play. They're just gonna do it with jobs. When you promote something, your ad's gonna be your job. Joel (17m 32s): We've talked about this for many years, not many years, but I'm shocked they haven't done it yet. Shocked. The only thing I can think of is that the European antitrust yet just has them so scared that they just wanna hold off on doing it, but this would be a billion dollar business for them. Chad (17m 50s): It would. The thing is that you have to take a look at the perspective shift of power though too, because indeed on Google for Jobs doesn't have as much power as they did on pure SEO because they were better at SEO than everybody else. They weren't playing with Google for jobs they currently are. They did here just last year. You have to take a look at the shift of power. Will Google allow other platforms to buy or is it just gonna be direct employers? Are they going to allow agencies just buy to buy for direct employers? To be quite frank, it'll turn into the exact same thing it was before. Indeed was out buying everybody else. It'll be the same as it ever was and Indeed we'll continue to spend more money on ads than anybody else will. Chad (18m 31s): Yeah, I think it's gonna be interesting to see how the power struggle changes, and hopefully, they just do direct employers at that point. If they do, I think there's a great opportunity for a shit ton of cash and a releveling of the landscape. It's gonna suck for smaller aggregators, but I think it'll re-level things. J.T. O'Donnell (18m 53s): All right. Visualize this for me though. It says ad clearly at the top, and then it says customer service rep, $17 an hour. What am I looking at? Joel (19m 5s): I think Chad's talking about the actual job listings. J.T. O'Donnell (19m 8s): Not just an ad. Do you think the whole listing's gonna come up when somebody Google it? Joel (19m 15s): Sales job at IBM. J.T. O'Donnell (19m 17s): They're all gonna come up? Joel (19m 18s): Four different job sites have that including IBM's main site, and you'll be able to pay to be first, second, whatever, in terms of the list that people can decide. J.T. O'Donnell (19m 27s): You can click on. Interesting. Joel (19m 29s): What I do like about it is Google's algorithm is based largely on engagement. The clicks that are gonna get the most, particularly if you're paid for them, are the brands that people know and trust. Those are probably the ones that are gonna be advertising. The advertisers will be LinkedIn, the job boards you know and love. Indeed may hold the hold the line for a few months or years, but they'll eventually crack. The shitty job boards that are fly by night and scamming the whole system are not gonna pay for clicks probably So they're gonna just dwindle away down the line in terms of sites you can pick to apply. I like it for Google, it's bad for Indeed or anyone that competes with them for job postings, but I also like it for the job seeker in that it will help weed out some of the shitty fake bullshit job sites out there, which you know, J.T. Joel (20m 21s): Talking to job seekers, they're sick of scams. They're sick of jobs they can't trust. J.T. O'Donnell (20m 24s): Right. Number one pet peeve is they never hear back. Number two pet peeve is the amount of weeding they have to do to just even find a job that's relevant. Yeah, I completely agree. They'd like to do away with job boards altogether, the job seeker. Joel (20m 39s): Good one, Chad. All right, so my first prediction, and by the way, I sacked up this year. My predictions are either right or wrong. There's no gray area. There's no I made two predictions. One's kind of right. Well, these are all like black and white predictions, all right. Chad (20m 55s): Good for you. I appreciate that. Carry on. Joel (20m 58s): You're welcome. You're welcome. This is the love I have for you. I sack up for, Chad, everybody. Okay, so my first one is UKG buys ISEMS. Count it. Why do I say this? The popular ATS that most of our listeners know brought in Marketo Steve Lucas in to run the company after Colin left. The idea was to go public, but in 2020, the pandemic came, the public markets crashed, things clearly did not go according to plan. Fast forward to today, Steve Lucas is out as CEO. He's already got a new gig, by the way. It's out of our space, which is pretty common. Joel (21m 40s): With with the same PE firm, by the way. Carry on. Pretty common. Yeah, okay. That'll bring me full circle maybe. He's gone. The IPO thing probably is not gonna happen. It's gonna be really hard up for the next two years, probably, especially in our space. Who do they bring in? They bring in Brian Provost to be CEO. Now, why is that important? Well, Provost helps scale a company called Ascentis, which ultimately led to the company being acquired by UKG. If you can't go public and you gotta sell the company for the investors, they've raised over a hundred million at ISEMS, what better way to sell the company to maybe a UKG than to hire the guy who sold a company to UKG being Brian Provost, which leads to my prediction that ISEMS will be sold to UKG in the year 2023. Chad (22m 32s): I think it's gonna take more than a year for UKG to bite, but yeah, I think your connecting of the dots there was brilliant. Very good. I'm gonna give you a golf clap right now. Yeah, I think that that's just way too fast for an acquisition of that size. J.T. O'Donnell (22m 54s): I agree. ISEMS has been doing a lot of buying. I feel like they wanna try to put that whole thing together, make a go at it, and do something with that. I don't see that happening inside of the year either. Joel (23m 7s): Under Steve Lucas, they made a lot of acquisitions. There's no evidence that Brian Provost is gonna start buying up companies. I think Brian's job is to sell the company, but these are predictions. We're having fun. We will know for sure because that is either a right or wrong prediction when we look back on 2023. We've all done our first ones. J.T., we're gonna go back to you because I'm too dumb to keep any kind of different order. J.T. O'Donnell (23m 31s): That's fair. Joel (23m 32s): What is your second prediction for 2023? J.T. O'Donnell (23m 33s): Keep drinking. All right. Second prediction is the Tiktokfication of recruiting. It's a thing. It is going to be a big solid thing. You're gonna know about it. Chad (23m 44s): She said big solid thing, by the way. Can we all just take a second? J.T. O'Donnell (23m 48s): Simply put, thank you. Here's the deal. Everyone gets on TikTok and says it's fate, right? "Oh, look, this landed on my for you page. It's fate." It's not fate, it's an algorithm. Chad (24m 5s): Fucking good algorithm. J.T. O'Donnell (24m 6s): Right, and we know how to hack the algorithm. You're gonna see, again, some smart companies start to put content that just stumbles into somebody's feed. They're gonna go down the rabbit hole. They're gonna look the company up on Google, and maybe, if Chad's prediction's right, they're gonna see the job posting there and they're gonna say, "I found my next job." That is because people don't wanna be job seekers anymore. They want to be job shoppers. They want to choose their next employer. Now, if that happens through fate while I'm sitting there on social media, and some story about a company warms my heart or gets me interested, I go down that path, and search and find them, then I controlled my destiny, right? J.T. O'Donnell (24m 47s): That happened. I really think smart companies are gonna figure it out. Tiktokfication is here. Whether it's on TikTok, LinkedIn, or Instagram, wherever, but I think the two biggies will be TikTok and LinkedIn. That's where that sudden, "I stumbled across my dream employer story," is gonna make it big. Chad (25m 3s): On anything other than TikTok, the algorithms fucking suck, especially LinkedIn. LinkedIn's algorithm is horror bowl. Other than TikTok, which I think you can get some really good targeting on, how do you think this is actually going to work out? To be quite frank, all the other, other than maybe Instagram, Instagram does a halfway decent job, but not great. It's really hard to target. Then Facebook doesn't allow targeting on the job side of the house so how do you see this actually coming to fruition? J.T. O'Donnell (25m 36s): I know I'm gonna have a lot of recruiters message me afterwards. I don't take Facebook into consideration because, for job seekers, that's not where they wanna be. It's gonna be TikTok or LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, and I'm not gonna reveal my third prediction because it's fire, but it has to do with where that's headed. All I will say is that there's a change coming and that change is going to make it very possible for people, that algorithm to dramatically improve for people over there. You just gotta trust me on that one but I'm holding my third one hostage. Joel (26m 10s): This feels a little 2022 prediction-ish. No? J.T. O'Donnell (26m 12s): No. Joel (26m 12s): Aren't companies using TikTok to recruit? Aren't they doing some phone videos? J.T. O'Donnell (26m 16s): No. Infantile, they dunno what they're doing. I think they've gotten comfortable having their employees get on there. That's not recruiting. Allowing your employees on TikTok is one thing. Having a strategy so that the stories find their way into my feed and I identify with that person and, "Oh my gosh, he or she's like me. I'm gonna go check this company out," that is what's going to happen next. Joel (26m 41s): Do you think we'll see a startup come with the sales pitch of we'll help you advertise or figure out TikTok? J.T. O'Donnell (26m 48s): Already happening. Joel (26m 49s): But for recruiting though. J.T. O'Donnell (26m 50s): Yeah. Joel (26m 50s): Well then it's not as much a '23 prediction if it's already happening. J.T. O'Donnell (26m 54s): It's there, but are they tractioning? Not yet. They're out there. 2023 is the year where you're gonna see it, know it, identify it, and say that is TikTokfication of recruiting. Chad (27m 8s): I guess the question is, instead of pointing out a company, could we actually point out a vendor that gains traction, maybe is even acquired in 2023 that is around the TikTokfication? J.T. O'Donnell (27m 20s): I know a company that might do that. Chad (27m 22s): Okay, I think one of the things we're looking at is like watermarks for being able to actually, Joel's talking about how do we say yes or no to this prediction? Joel (27m 38s): Sack up, J.T. J.T. O'Donnell (27m 40s): Absolutely, it's happening there. Okay, so let's tighten it up. There will be a company in recruitment marketing and employee branding that will be acquired in 2023 because of the fact that it's owning TikTokfication of recruiting. That's prediction. Joel (27m 58s): There's the sack. There it is. Chad (27m 59s): I love it when J.T. tightens it up. J.T. O'Donnell (28m 1s): Well, exactly. Joel (28m 2s): Can I make an off the radar anti prediction or anti rebuttal today? Chad (28m 9s): Yeah. Do it. Joel (28m 10s): I think Congress is gonna get serious about TikTok and their Chinese owners. There's gonna be potential legislation come down to Ban TikTok in the US, and even if it doesn't happen, I think it's gonna scare a lot of employers away from leveraging the platform to market to candidates and try to build an employer brand. I think the opposite. There will be a lessening of TikTok influence and those people will, to your point, maybe start going to reels, maybe start going to YouTube shorts, maybe going somewhere else, but I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure in the US to wean off of TikTok. Chad (28m 51s): See this right here? This is money. The US only understands one thing and that's the almighty dollar. TikTok can bring a shit ton of fucking cash. What they'll do is they'll look back at that Oracle deal or one of the other deals, they'll make a deal. This is not going away. J.T. O'Donnell (29m 7s): No, definitely not. I said, TikTokfication because what TikTok has done has taught us how to do storytelling, how to use humor, heart in order to connect and create call to action, create engagement. Joel (29m 20s): You can do that off TikTok. J.T. O'Donnell (29m 22s): You can do it off TikTok. That's why it'll happen anywhere. Bring on the drama around TikTok. Also, employers don't have to have their own TikTok account to use it. They're going to use influencers and creators who will create that content and get people there. Why would they have their own brand? They don't have to. There's so many other ways they can leverage TikTok in order to get those stories out and get people, again down the rabbit hole, searching and shopping for their brand. Joel (29m 50s): TikTok is out. Votes are worth more than dollars the next election cycle. I'm picking it. Chad (29m 55s): That's bullshit picking. I don't know if you know what Citizens United is, but that's just total bullshit that you spewed. My turn. Joel (30m 0s): I need a refill. Dammit. Chad (30m 2s): Prediction number two. Now let me set this up appropriately. Decades ago we heard big data, big data, big data, but the problem was that most of us didn't have the processing capacity or power to actually know what the fuck to do with big data we do today. Today, we're powering ML and AI in a bunch of other acronyms with big data. Then there was this new fanangle thing called Cloud computing. We heard it, we didn't know what the fuck it was, but it ran in the background and it worked. It just fucking worked. Then just a month ago, there's this little thing called chatGPT. Heard about it? Joel (30m 43s): Here it comes. Chad (30m 46s): The advanced AI general chatbot, which validates that we all know, when it comes to adoption, see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, and chatGPT demonstrated that. Looking back at all these examples, I'm gonna pivot hard on this one. I believe that Web three will call upon all of those lessons in 2023. I predict that there will be a major player in Web three that actually gains traction. It's gonna be entirely new. It's not gonna be somebody that we currently know, and they will actually gain traction. We will see Web three finally make an entrance, a real entrance into this market. Joel (31m 25s): Significant investment as well. Chad (31m 27s): Yes. Joel (31m 28s): Okay. Chad (31m 28s): Significant funding and traction around partnerships and just a total landscape because our industry is literally just so fucking thirsty for the opportunity to revolutionize, especially when we're talking about the LinkedIns of the world. I think they will grasp at something like this. This is a brass ring, I feel, for our industry, whether it's background checks, assessments, CV, and credentialing portability. Joel (31m 56s): You and Sir Richard didn't come up with this over some pints at the pub, did you? He's taking a really long drink. J.T. O'Donnell (32m 12s): He's like, "Hmm." Joel (32m 16s): I may go anti on this one as well. I think the FTX, the crypto crash, investors, people, consumers are scared to death of anything crypto, blockchain, coin. Chad (32m 30s): It's not crypto though. Joel (32m 32s): It's under the same umbrella. They're all gonna suffer. Chad (32m 35s): We're not doing tokens. Joel (32m 37s): They're all gonna get killed. Chad (32m 38s): You think humans are smart? I don't. Joel (32m 43s): That's why we have a podcast, but I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure. It's gonna be really hard to be successful in Web three and not just our industry, but anywhere. J.T? J.T. O'Donnell (32m 58s): The fact that you're saying Web three and a bunch of people on this call are like, what? Come on. Seriously. There's still so many people that don't get it. I played around with chatGPT a ton this week. It's crazy. It's crazy what it can do. Immediately, your mind starts going a million different ways. The whole Ryan Reynolds Mint commercial that he created, he said he created a script for Mint Mobile, let them know our holiday is still going on. Use a swear word and use a joke. You see the potential. We always want that kind of innovation in our space. Joel (33m 35s): Now, I think if there's a prediction, and this isn't one of mine, but it would be that someone will use openAI to create a job description improvement engine or a resume improvement engine that you can plug in. Is there someone official that's launched? I haven't seen any official company. Chad (33m 53s): No, I know behind the scenes, it's already been happening. It's happened before chatGPT. OpenAI is open source. People have been using that for years. It is amazing. The cool thing is that we haven't been talking about it until they actually put something that we could touch in front of us. I think the biggest key out of all of this, and I agree a hundred percent, J.T., is that you shouldn't have to go through a master's level fucking course on Web three to understand what the goddamn product is. I believe that there's going to be at least one product, there might be more, that comes out this year, 2023, that's Web three that will gain traction because it will stick with keep it simple, stupid. J.T. O'Donnell (34m 33s): Yeah. I have to say, just going back to chatGPT and thinking about that, imagine just saying, "What's it like to work for Amazon?" This thing just starts to answer you back like you're having a text chat with someone. Go try it now. It gives you an ear fall. Forget Glassdoor reviews, if that's what your company's worried about right now, I'm just telling you, you might wanna start worrying about this stuff a little bit more. Joel (35m 1s): Chad just needs something he can touch. All right, let's get to my second prediction here before we go on too much longer. All right, my number two, and again, this is a black and white prediction. It's either right or wrong. Okay? Greenhouse goes IPO. I know I said ISEMS wasn't. I think Greenhouse has to. Now how did I come up with this? Chad (35m 22s): In 2023? Joel (35m 23s): '23, yes. In December of '22, Greenhouse announced the hiring of Christina Salen as its Chief Financial Officer. What's a special skill that Salem has? Well, she helped Etsy go public back in 2015, and she has a core competency with public companies. With over a hundred million in funding and celebrating a decade in business, liquidation is gonna happen, and I think it's gonna happen in the form of an IPO in 2023 for Greenhouse. Chad (35m 46s): I gotta say that I'm impressed with your research on this. We should actually take more time away from each other because this is probably the best research I've seen you. Joel (36m 2s): You're picking up what I'm dropping, huh? You like this? Chad (36m 7s): No, I know. I like it. I don't like an IPO in 2023. Again, listen to the European podcast because StepStone is talking about it. It doesn't make sense because the market's not ready for it, but if you're desperate, what else are you gonna do? J.T. O'Donnell (36m 28s): I'm with you. I just feel like it's gonna be a wonky year, right? The layoffs are calming and they just keep coming and everyone's uncertain. Is that the year that you wanna IPO or do you wanna wait? I guess it's selling the numbers. Joel (36m 42s): Wait till it's too late? Is that when you wanna wait? J.T. O'Donnell (36m 46s): You're gonna take it to the next level, hopefully. You're gonna rebound quickly. Joel (36m 51s): I think it may be now or never. I think it's now or never for a lot of companies, at least in terms of their perception of the business. If I invested in Greenhouse in 2012, I want my money back. I want some cash. Ten years is enough time. Let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up, kids. Chad (37m 6s): Yeah, but if you're that rich, you can wait until there's a good market to be able to fucking IPO. Joel (37m 10s): Let's take a quick break and we'll get to the coup de gras, everyone's final, and what did you call it, J.T.? Fire prediction? J.T. O'Donnell (37m 17s): My fire prediction. Joel (37m 18s): The fire prediction is coming up after this quick break. Chad (37m 21s): I thought she said money shot. Joel (37m 25s): All right, kids. I say we talked about a certain order, but if J.T.'s got a fire prediction, I say she goes last. Chad (37m 31s): I want to hear it. Joel (37m 33s): You wanna hear it first? All right, J.T., it's up to you. Well, you're our guest. Do you want to go first or last? J.T. O'Donnell (37m 43s): I don't care because it's gonna be the best one. Joel (37m 45s): She's here to play, man. J.T. O'Donnell (37m 47s): If you're ready for it now, I'll drop it now. Chad (37m 53s): You drop it like it's hot. J.T. O'Donnell (37m 57s): Unlike Joel who came prepared. Chad (37m 58s): This is not new, by the way. This is not new. He does it at least once or twice a year. J.T. O'Donnell (38m 3s): Amazing, Joel. I feel so honored that you came so prepared for this one. No one has said this to me at LinkedIn. I have no proof of this, but my prediction is that they are going to start monetizing. They're gonna let creators monetize and make money off the platform, which is a huge deviation for them. The reason I say that is that they've got this whole thing called the creator mode that you can turn on, which by the way, do you have your creator modes turn on, gentlemen? What they've quietly been doing over the last couple years is turning up the functionality for people that have creator mode. I seriously think this goes all the way back to when Gary V. started working with them and probably told them, they were like, "Make our social media platform better." J.T. O'Donnell (38m 45s): Gary was like, "This isn't a social media platform," so he started giving them advice on how to turn it into one. I think they've listened to that advice. It's been amazing to see the features. Now, if you have creator mode, there's some really cool stuff that's available to you. I think the last piece of the puzzle is to monetize. You look at Google, which is now spending some really good money to give people more money on YouTube shorts, way more money on that than TikTokers can make on TikTok. That's their play, right? Google and YouTube are gonna try to get all the monetization by paying more. If LinkedIn introduced it, think of all the people that are in their spaces that could become influencers. They call them top voices now on LinkedIn. Become a top voice in your industry or your vertical and actually make money off it, and then think about how whoever hires you, you bring that audience with them, right? J.T. O'Donnell (39m 29s): You're sitting at a company, you're CTO. You've got this following, you move to the next company. That's big stuff. You're incentivizing. Chad (39m 36s): You're bringing assets? J.T. O'Donnell (39m 37s): Right, money. You've got video. You can stream live on there. You can do audio if you wanna do your clubhouse version. Chad (39m 44s): This is like YouTube providing revenue streams to creators. Is that what I'm getting? J.T. O'Donnell (39m 48s): Exactly, but it's gonna happen to people. Joel (39m 51s): If I'm an advertiser, I say, "Hey, I want to get my product or I want to advertise with this creator." It wouldn't be like, "Hey, company A. I did a blog post. I want top influencers and recruitment to share it." Do you say to the creator, "Hey, here's a post. If you promote it, we'll give you a hundred dollars." J.T. O'Donnell (40m 11s): No, you can do that. Joel (40m 13s): What do you think it'll look like? J.T. O'Donnell (40m 15s): I go to you and say, "Chad, Joel, I'm gonna give you each a thousand dollars and I want you to record a video and talk about my company and something about it." You can do it that way, or think of it this way. You just start getting views on content you create. Your podcast right now, you turn it into a video. You put it in your feed, Joel. It gets a million views and LinkedIn says, "I'm gonna give you a half a cent for every hundred views you get." Now, the content you're creating for yourself is making you a couple hundred dollars, maybe a couple thousand, whatever. That's how those TikTok creators are making bank just by having their TikTok viewed, not even including the sponsored posts that they're getting. J.T. O'Donnell (40m 55s): Imagine building follower.. My advice to everybody right now is turn your creator mode on, start pushing out content, and start getting followers, because if they start allowing monetization, you literally could have your very own brand in your space. Joel (41m 6s): Let me unpack this a little bit. The LinkedIn algorithm basically makes or breaks you. If you're saying, "Hey LinkedIn, I'll give you a hundred dollars," and they're saying, "Okay, creator, I'll give you 50 and we'll pump up the exposure on your post," isn't that money that LinkedIn could just keep because they control the algorithm? J.T. O'Donnell (41m 28s): That's the reason why they're not getting enough creative content and engagement on the platform. That's why every other social media tool now incentivizes creators by giving them a little money because they're going to keep creating content constantly for that one post that goes viral that makes them some bank. Why wouldn't we apply the same principle here? Going back to my earlier prediction about the TikTok application of recruiting and while work on LinkedIn is now you can have people from companies creating content or you can go to a really top-notch creator on LinkedIn and have them talk about your company and have that go viral, right? That third party credibility factor, that's so big. J.T. O'Donnell (42m 8s): It's coming, right? Already, the content creation is getting better and better. Yes, it's still overrun with ads and the ad placement, but if they made that switch and got that much more great content on there and incentivize them, it's peanuts for what they could make in terms of engagement and views. Chad (42m 27s): The biggest problem I have with this is that LinkedIn's algorithm is the shittiest algorithm in the world. The technical debt that they have from fucking 20 years ago, for goodness sake is just ridiculous. To be able to do something like this, it seems like there needs to be an entire overhaul of the system. J.T. O'Donnell (42m 46s): I'm not gonna argue with you on that piece of info, but what I also know is that if you start out early and you build your content, you can go pretty viral on LinkedIn as someone who's done it, right? Little fun fact, I take every TikTok that I do and I post it on LinkedIn because the most watched videos are TikTok videos on LinkedIn. We got a bunch of warriors on LinkedIn. They all wanna see what's going on in TikTok. Chad (43m 18s): Is it because of the watermark? J.T. O'Donnell (43m 19s): 100% the watermark. You do that and it gets the highest amount of engagement. The video's native. You're not taking anybody off LinkedIn so LinkedIn doesn't have a problem with that, but it gets sick engagement. Now that they've allowed things links in video, so I can tell you about something and you can click a link in my video and go straight there, they're competing on levels that other platforms don't even have. We can complain about the algorithm all we want, but the truth is there's a huge opportunity. Here's what we know. When you're on a new social media platform early, you can grab followers, you can grab that market share early. Now LinkedIn's been around forever, but it's not been a social media platform. Joel (43m 58s): Were you surprised that they they cut their stories? J.T. O'Donnell (44m 1s): No, because I tested it and I don't think stories is for everyone. You have to think about the purpose of a platform like LinkedIn. People are coming to LinkedIn now because they want a platform where, "Hey, I can learn something." I have people complaining about, "Hey, there's too much personal stuff on LinkedIn already." Well scroll past it. You don't have to look at it, but I think video's doing well, and don't underestimate. They have newsletter. I was mentioning this, so they turn newsletter feature back on. If you have that feature, people can subscribe to you. You can send an article directly to their inbox. In under four months when they turn that feature back on, I gained 400,000 newsletter subscribers. If you're out there right now and you wanna build an audience, this is the time to get on LinkedIn. Joel (44m 46s): You're gonna be really mad when they turn it off, aren't you? J.T. O'Donnell (44m 48s): Yeah, right. Let's hope they don't. Oh, I'm taking the risk. Joel (44m 52s): I do agree that LinkedIn's advertising has been floundering since they launched advertising and they need to do something to get people excited and maybe this is the thing. This is the fire. Chad (45m 3s): They need the Chad and Cheese fire. That's a problem. J.T. O'Donnell (45m 5s): That's what they need, which is why you need to be on video, Joel. Joel (45m 11s): No one needs that. No one needs that. Chad (45m 13s): All right, I'm going next. Joel, you can go last. Okay, my last prediction. Might not seem big, but it is big for the industry. It's that Syndio gets acquired. Who's Syndio? Syndio simply is a pay equity platform. For more insights, you can listen to some of our most recent podcasts entitled the Pay Equity Fix with Zev IGen, which dropped on December 19th. Anyhow, salary transparency is catching like wildfire with states like California and Washington joining Colorado in making it mandatory to provide basic salary transparency on job listings. This topic has taken center stage and last month, job search engine Lenzo reported that 70% of the US jobs available on their job search engine, they have millions of them, have salary data. Chad (45m 53s): It's working. No matter what, it's working, but once again, this is only the first step into pay equity. Starbucks worked hard on getting their employees to pay equity. American Airlines just announced that they received a certification for the Fair Pay Workplace for pay equity. What do all those companies have in common? Syndio. Syndio's CEO, Maria Colacurcio, came to Starbucks or she came from Starbucks where she was actually a part of the team that helped them to get to pay parody and American Airlines brought in Syndio in 2020 to help them do the exact same thing. Chad (46m 41s): Pay equity goes beyond just salaries on jobs and there are not many when it comes to competitors for Syndio in this space. I see Syndio getting acquired, gobbled up quickly in 2023. Joel (46m 56s): Syndio is awesome. I think you're right in terms of the timing and pay transparency. Pay transparency definitely have a moment in '23. The challenge that I have is the 80 some million they've taken in funding. With that kind of money raised, they're gonna have to get a lot a big check. How many people can write a check for that? We'll see. Chad (47m 24s): What's a bigger topic in our industry today other than pay transparency? Joel (47m 29s): ChatGPT. Chad (47m 29s): That's not just in our industry. That's general. J.T. O'Donnell (47m 36s): Help me out though. If 70% already have pay ranges, we got 30% more to get pay ranges. What? Chad (47m 43s): Here's the thing, those are pay ranges that are on jobs. That's not transparency actually in the organization. If we're already working with an organization, you don't know how much I'm being paid, right? The companies aren't actually doing the leveling internally to ensure that they have pay equity. They need a platform to be able to get there, right? If you take a look at how the government is pressing for pay equity, it only makes sense. You have to have a platform to get you there quicker today than tomorrow when you start getting fined for not having pay equity. J.T. O'Donnell (48m 16s): Do you think this is an ongoing thing forever, and ever, ever? As you even you get there, you've got your pay transparency, it's achieved. Now you're in maintenance mode, you're on subscription model? Chad (48m 28s): All indications demonstrate that it's gonna take 75 years to get to parody, okay? That being said, I'm gonna play the short-term ball on being able to get acquired and the long-term ball on equity. Joel (48m 40s): Long-term ball, short-term ball. Chad's playing all the balls. That brings me to my final, which I feel is a little anti-climactic. I'm gonna rock the drum roll on mine. Give it a little extra omph. Chad (48m 51s): Sack up Cheeseman. Joel (48m 52s): It's a black or white again. All right, here we go. Scott Guts. Who the hell is Scott Guts? Chad (48m 58s): I know that guy. Joel (49m 0s): Scott Guts is out as Monster's CEO. Chad (49m 3s): What? He's so nice. Joel (49m 4s): He is nice but nice doesn't get it done in job board land, Chad. You mentioned Monster getting sold by Ronstadt, which I also think is a very good possibility this year, but I didn't want to piggyback on your false prediction from last year. Randstadt is definitely consolidating ownership of the Monster brand. Making people change brands. They're definitely making moves to make it less or make it less problematic to sell the company. It would not surprise me at all. Monster's still a brand in Europe, in many countries, and I wouldn't be surprised if a little friend of ours maybe wrote a check to just take Monster off the table and make a little trip over to the Atlantic and have a ready made brand in the US. Joel (49m 47s): Anyway, that's a different prediction. Scott Guts is out. He's in year five of his leadership. Can you name any innovation out of Monster in the last five years? They haven't even brought Instagram for job search, which they've been promising since they bought Jobber. No innovation, not much growth. The only growth is basically market driven because the labor market is so hot right now. I think a lot of it is just found money for them. Randstadt is getting new executives from top to bottom all over the place. New CEOs everywhere, which means there's gonna be changes. If it's not sell the company, it's get rid of the CEO that's been dragging us down for the last five years. Joel (50m 30s): Nice guy for sure. Results aren't there. Scott Guts by the end of 2023 will be taking his talents to South Beach or wherever he can go, but it won't be at monster.com. That is my final prediction for 2023. J.T. O'Donnell (50m 44s): Oh, I'd never like to see somebody lose their job. Joel (50m 46s): He'll be okay. J.T. O'Donnell (50m 47s): Yeah, hopefully he's got a really nice parachute. Definitely not. I've never understood why they didn't name change. I'll be honest. I know they have a worldwide name recognition, but they also have some great SEO when you think of thousands of pages of content. It's just that the younger generations that I work with do not associate with Monster. Joel (51m 12s): It's an energy drink. J.T. O'Donnell (51m 13s): Right, exactly, so I never understood why they didn't rebrand into something cooler. Chad (51m 23s): Well remember that the company that bought assets from them in APAC, they rebranded entirely. J.T. O'Donnell (51m 28s): But kept all the SEO. There is an asset sitting there in Monster. I just don't understand why there's never been a rebrand. Chad (51m 34s): We'll never know. J.T. O'Donnell (51m 34s): We will never know. Chad (51m 35s): I would like to let you know that the Chad and Cheese actually ran for co-president of Monster and we were not elected. J.T. O'Donnell (51m 40s): What happened? Joel (51m 41s): We didn't get a call or a DM. Chad (51m 44s): Not even a call. Joel (51m 44s): No sliding into our DMs about the Monster job. We might have to revive the campaign to be co-CEOs of Monster, Chad. J.T. O'Donnell (51m 50s): Unbelievable. Your first thing would be to what? What would you do? Joel (51m 54s): Sell monster.com to the energy drink for about a hundred million dollars. J.T. O'Donnell (52m 1s): A million dollars. Chad (52m 2s): We would pieces parts the fuck out. Joel (52m 3s): Yeah, we would Gordon Gecko the shit out of monster.com. Chad (52m 3s): You take a look at what Apollo has done with Career Builder, and that's nothing. It it would be Dexter Ash. We would carve that fucker up. Joel (52m 17s): J.T. "Nostra Donnell" O'Donnell, thank you for joining us for our year predictions. For our listeners who want to know more about you, connect to you, where would you send them? J.T. O'Donnell (52m 26s): Oh, well. If they've been listening, they probably know TikTok and LinkedIn are a good bad, but they also can just hit me up at workatdaily.com Joel (52m 50s): Based on our audience, sorry guys, there's no MySpace page, so you'll have to get that TikTok account in quick order. Chad, Happy New Year. I'm excited for another 12 months of recruitment, fun-filled, liver crushing excitement. Chad (53m 13s): I love it. Joel (53m 15s): Love it. O'Donnell, thanks for joining us and we out. Chad (53m 20s): We out. J.T. O'Donnell (53m 20s): We out. Chad and Cheese Podcast (53m 21s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. 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. 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. While you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

A new year always brings new promise. For three companies in the employment space, it also means a new CEO. For Indeed, it means a new Terms of Service wrought with unpleasant surprises for those not paying attention. It also means new and interesting ways to quit your job, as Walmart recently found out. With Chad still getting his holiday hangover under control, Cheese is joined by industry veteran Sarah White, CEO at Aspect43, to help make sense of everything going on in the world of recruitment for the first week of 2023. 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 (2s): It may not seem like it, but Chad and I work pretty hard to bring you this show on a regular basis, and it's been an unwritten rule since we started the show that we take a few weeks during the holidays to step away from the show, as well as step away from each other so we can come back fresh and be the functioning derelicts, you know and love. Well, Chad spent the holiday polluting much of Europe with his Americanness and needs a few more days to recover. So no Chad means no editing of this show. It's gonna be like your favorite Pearl Jam bootleg tape from 1993, solid content, pretty shitty production value, and anything can happen. Joel (45s): Anyway, Chad will be back next week and things should be back to normal. Till then, I've invited a more than capable guest co-host to keep the seat warm for Chad until he gets back. Enjoy and here's to a kick-ass new year. Chad and Cheese - Intro (1m 2s): 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 slash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel (1m 23s): Oh, yeah, my New Year's resolution, less Chad, and I'm off to a great start. Hi, boys and girls, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is your co-host Joel "Running for House Speaker" Cheesman. Sarah White (1m 38s): And this is Sarah "You're Never Gonna Make It" White. Joel (1m 42s): On this week's show, cloudy with a chance of doom and gloom, Indeed's sneaky new terms of service, and a Walmart resignation gone loco. Let's do this. Guys, if you listen to our show, you know, Sovren has been a supporter for a very long time, but you may not know Textkernel who recently acquired Sovren. If you know Sovren, guys, you need to get to know TextKernel. That's Kernel as in corn, which Sarah and I both know a lot about. No one does resume parsing, matching, semantic search, talent sourcing, and more quite like Textkernel. Joel (2m 22s): They also have some of the best industry intelligence around all available for free on their blog at text kernel.com. Everyone in the US, you know Sovern, they've been a sponsor of our show for a long time, but it's time to get to know our friends at Textkernel if you haven't already. Do yourself a favor, head on down to www.textkernel, that's T-E-X-T-K-E-R-N-E-L.com and tell them Chad and Cheese sent you. Sarah, welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel (3m 1s): A lot of our listeners will know who you are, but for those that don't, you are CEO and founder of Blink 182, I mean, Level 42, I mean Area 51. No, no, no. Aspect 43. Happy New Year and welcome to the show. Sarah White (3m 16s): Happy New Year. We're not allowed to talk about the Area 51 stuff. Joel (3m 21s): We're not? Yeah. Sarah White (3m 22s): No. Joel (3m 22s): Sarah's in Idaho. I don't know what the fuck is going on in Idaho, dude. Like that whole, that whole desert, big sky. Yeah, that whole location. I hear Boise is nice though. I hear Boise is nice. Sarah White (3m 35s): Boise. Boise's about 10 hours away. So I don't know-- Joel (3m 39s): From you? Sarah White (3m 40s): Yeah. Joel (3m 41s): You're in the same-- What do you--? God, that's Texas. Sarah White (3m 43s): I'm way, way up north. Joel (3m 45s): That's Texas land, man. Sarah White (3m 46s): I am, oh, gosh, like an hour and a half south of Canada and a couple hours out of Glacier National Park and about three hours out of Seattle. Joel (3m 55s): Is it officially a panhandle? Sarah White (3m 57s): It is. Joel (3m 58s): In Idaho that stick that goes northward, is that? Sarah White (4m 1s): Yeah. It is officially called a panhandle. Joel (4m 3s): A panhandle. And you live in the panhandle? Sarah White (4m 5s): I do. We just call it Northern Idaho. Joel (4m 7s): Or Nordiho, Nordaho, Nodaho? I don't know. So Sarah and I have known each other, I thought it was 15 years. She corrected me. It's 17, apparently to the day when I signed her yearbook, "Stay cool dude. See you next year." Sarah White (4m 22s): Yeah, middle school. Have a great summer. Joel (4m 25s): Yeah, have a great summer, dude. See you at the pool. See you at the pool. Sarah White (4m 28s): I actually had my very first glass of wine the day we met. Joel (4m 33s): Oh, I thought you were gonna say you're drinking this morning. Like the holidays are rolling for Sarah White. So, Sarah, a lot of my listeners know you or know of you. You're quite an icon in the industry, but for those that don't know, give us a little Twitter buyer about you and a little bit about the company. Sarah White (4m 51s): Yeah, so we actually research work and so I've been in the industry, literally, I fell into it on accident. But we look at market trends, what's going on, try to talk to especially recruiting talent acquisition employees. And then we work with the tech vendors to actually make better products because a lot of them kind of suck. So that's where we spend a lot of our time. And if we could change work for the better, why not? Joel (5m 21s): And that is why invited you to the show. Everyone sucks. You have two beautiful children. I gotta mention that. Sarah White (5m 28s): I do. I do. Joel (5m 30s): You're too humble. You're too humble to admit it. So you're a Californian to Wisconsin via now Idaho. So you've got a nice mix of, I don't know, cheese and cow or something. I don't know. Sarah White (5m 41s): Cheese, yeah, I mean, California's a cheese place also. Joel (5m 45s): Cheesman. All right, well on the show we do some shoutouts. I'm gonna do one to get you acquainted to how this works. And then you apparently have a shoutout and then we'll get into some other housekeeping. So my first shout out of the year goes to the fans. Our fans, love them, love them. Anyway, every year we sent out a holiday card to our fans that have registered. And this year, if you haven't gotten it or didn't get it, it's Chad and I illustrated. Chad's on a great white shark. I'm on an eagle. We're riding a wave. We got some Christmas trees and candy canes and everything. Sarah White (6m 18s): Oh, my gosh. Joel (6m 19s): Our fans had some really fun ways of showing that they had put their holiday cards up for Christmas. And one fan in particular that got my attention had a wife that wasn't real happy about our card being among all the family cards and friend cards that they had. So this is my friend Brett Farmiloe, who I've talked about in the show. Sarah White (6m 38s): I thought you're gonna say Brett Favre. Joel (6m 39s): You know Brett the Farm-- Sarah White (6m 40s): I thought you were gonna say Brett Favre, yeah. Joel (6m 42s): Brett the Farm-- Yeah. My friend Brett Favre, he's a big fan. Anyway, yeah, Brett Farmiloe, my friend at Terkel, Founder and CEO at Terkel, he said, quote, "FYI, my Chad and Cheese holiday card is so front and center at my house that my wife is annoyed with it and comments about it once a week." Quote, "Who is Chad? Who is cheese? Can we take this down?" End quote. That's right. This episode of couple's therapy is brought to you today by the Chad and Cheese Podcast. My shoutout is to everyone who shared our holiday card. You can also send those bills from your shrink and marriage counselor to Chad and not me. Joel (7m 24s): Shoutout to the fans. Sarah White (7m 25s): Where is the card being placed that's causing--? I mean, is it in the bedroom? Is it on the nightstand? Joel (7m 30s): Come one. You probably have a little card thing where either around the fireplace or in the kitchen, you know. You like, you stick them and you sort of present them and virtue signal how many friends you have that are sending you cards. They're putting it with those cards. So amongst the scenes of sweatered families with woodland backgrounds is an animated Chad and Cheese riding a great white shark and an eagle. Sarah White (7m 58s): So mixed in with the people from high school you never talked to? Joel (7m 59s): It makes sense a few wives might get-- Sarah White (8m 1s): Okay. Joel (8m 1s): Yeah, a few wives might get a little bit distraught over such an image. Sarah White (8m 6s): I guess. Okay, we'll go with that. Joel (8m 8s): Your shoutout now. Sarah White (8m 10s): Okay. My shoutout is to all of the people ops and recruiting pros that have been laid off in the last 24 hours and are handling it with so much freaking grace on LinkedIn. And they're like, "Oh, I really appreciated the opportunity. It was so great to be here. I just got laid off via an email that I woke up to this morning," and we have, you know, three big companies have done layoffs between yesterday and today. And the grace of which these people are handling this after working their asses off for the whole pandemic through great resignation, everything else, is really amazing. So huge shout out to, not just the ones handling it well, but just everyone doing this. Joel (8m 54s): So I gotta ask, we talk a lot about Amazon on the show and Amazon just announced 18,000 today I believe, which is more than they had originally expected. Amazon more than most are doing an aggressive job of replacing recruiters. Any thoughts on the automation, the replacement of recruiters? Is that actually gonna be a thing our company's gonna follow Amazon's lead? Is this a failed experiment? What are your thoughts on that? Sarah White (9m 25s): I mean, Amazon's clearly had a number of failed experiments related to their tech and primarily because they try to build stuff in-house and have AI bias issues and blah, blah, blah. With that said, we're absolutely gonna see a lot of recruiting jobs go away because of tech. No differently, I mean there's probably one or two other people watching this that are old enough to remember when ATSs were coming in. We brought our ATS in-- Joel (9m 51s): We have a lot of old people listening to our show. Sarah White (9m 53s): Yeah, I'm with my people. You know, when we were bringing in ATS systems 2001, 2002, we were easily replacing 10 to 15 headcounts on our teams by bringing in one system. I had a person whose only job at one of my early TA roles, their only job was to print the resumes, staple, collate, count, and deliver them to me in a mail bin every single morning and after lunch. That was it. Like that was their whole job. And so, you know, there's going to be roles that are going to evolve and change and new ones are gonna pop up. Sarah White (10m 35s): So it's not all, you know, all doom and gloom, but things are gonna change, and it's not just in talent acquisition. I think we're gonna see it kind of across the board. Joel (10m 43s): Yeah. That person is now a greeter at your local Walmart. So they found somewhere else to go with their high-level skills. Speaking of high-tech, this brings me to my final shoutout. So this goes out to Bing and ChatGPT. Microsoft, in case you hadn't heard, gave ChatGPT in the open AI initiative $1 billion. In return for the check, they agreed that Microsoft could use the tech. So no surprise this week that news came out that Bing will be leveraging ChatGPT's technology to help compete with big G, Google. Joel (11m 25s): Meanwhile, Google is apparently freaking out about ChatGPT. Sarah White (11m 28s): They should. Joel (11m 29s): They're on DEFCON One. Hey, I say competition is good for business. Sarah, GPT Chat, horrible brand. I probably said it wrong. I always do. What are your thoughts? Not so much on the brand, but the technology and how it could impact humanity and/or recruiting. Sarah White (11m 48s): Oh, well, I don't know how much on humanity quite yet, but, yeah, it's going to be a biggie. I think on two fronts. I think it's gonna change the type of people we hire because it's gonna change jobs in general. It's gonna reduce the number of people, just like any other technology is. And I know we've been talking about AI, I feel like all 17 years we've known each other. It feels like we've been talking about the same thing and then all of a sudden it's happening and it's here and it's actually working. And so I think I took a lot of time playing around with ChatGPT over the holidays, and by a lot of time, I mean five hours because I got more done in five hours using that than we've had contractors get done in 70. Sarah White (12m 36s): So I mean it's changing how our company and roles that we were gonna be hiring for, we don't have to anymore. Joel (12m 43s): Really? Chris Russell, a friend of ours that we've known for a long time as well, apparently there's someone coding job boards with no developers whatsoever through some of the technologies that are out there. I assume that we'll be seeing rewrite your job descriptions with AI, rewrite resumes with AI. I mean there'll be a whole new cavalcade of startups that we'll be able to see and enjoy. Sarah White (13m 8s): Which means we're gonna see a whole bunch of LinkedIn influencers really pissed off in talking about how bad it sucks and you need that human touch. Joel (13m 16s): Which also means I have job security as a podcaster because I have stuff to talk about. Speaking of job security and having something to do, Sarah, if you haven't signed up for free shit from Chad and Cheese, you gotta do yourself a favor. We're talking free t-shirts from our friends at JobGet. We're talking about free beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, Whiskey from TextKernel. If it's your birthday, there's a chance to win rum from our friends at Plum. Just all kinds of goodness. You gotta go to Chad Cheese. We're on brand here, baby. We're on brand next year we're having a liver donation sponsor to the show. Joel (13m 58s): But you gotta go chadcheese.com, click the free link, sign up, in order to get all that stuff. And while you're out there, leave us a review on your favorite podcasting platform of choice whether it's good or bad, it is our oxygen and we love to hear from you. And we also love everyone who is celebrating a birthday this month. I mentioned Rum with Plum. One of these lucky people, maybe not this week, but someone in January is gonna win a nice bottle of rum. But this week, celebrating a birthday from our fan club, we've got Muir, Muir McDonald, that's gotta be like an Irish name or something, M-U-I-R. Joel (14m 38s): How would you pronounce that? Sarah White (14m 38s): Sounds Wisconsin. Joel (14m 39s): Muir? Muir? Sarah White (14m 39s): M-U-I-R? Joel (14m 40s): M-U-I-R. How would you pronounce it? Sarah White (14m 41s): Muir like John Muir. Joel (14m 43s): Muir. Muir. Okay. Sarah White (14m 46s): Like the famous photographer of Yosemite. Joel (14m 48s): You know better than I do. Hit us up, Muir, for how you pronounce that name. Mark Fogal, Zachary Larson, Steve Jewel, Rob Barn, Mark Katz, Peter Brooks, Mark Becker, Matt Luca, Shell Ford, Athena Carp, Peter Zalman, and Fish Dogs himself, Craig Fisher, all celebrate another trip around the sun this year. Sarah White (15m 10s): Man, what holidays in, what is that, in March? Oh, St. Patty's Day, those are all St. Patty's Day babies. Joel (15m 20s): Boom. There you go. That escalated quickly. Yes, St. Patrick's Day Babies. Congratulations to you. Sarah, we got to travel this year again, which is nice. Sarah White (15m 29s): We did, yeah. A couple of times. Joel (15m 30s): A couple times. So Chad is coming. Chad, the prince of Portugal is coming back to the States. Everyone, alert the authorities. He's gonna be back in States. I think he is actually right now as we speak. He's recovering from his hangover. But anyway, we'll be traveling again this year. Our travel is sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing and we couldn't be happier. Also, I want to point out that we are now in four different languages aside from English. If your main language is not English, maybe it's French, German, Spanish, or Portuguese, you can listen to the Chad and Cheese Podcast in your native language through the power of technology. Sarah White (16m 6s): I'm sure. Joel (16m 7s): And that is powered by our friends at Veritone. We wanna say a special-- Sarah White (16m 13s): That's awesome. Joel (16m 14s): --to them. Also, do you play Fantasy Football, Sarah? Sarah White (16m 16s): I did not this year, but normally I do. Joel (16m 19s): I know you're a football fan. Sarah White (16m 20s): Yes. Joel (16m 20s): Normally, you do? Okay, well, you didn't sign up to be on our Fantasy Football league. Hopefully, you'll explore that. Sarah White (16m 25s): I didn't want to embarrass anybody. Joel (16m 26s): Hopefully, you'll explore that next year. Sarah White (16m 29s): Next year. Joel (16m 29s): Yeah. Aaron Rogers will be off the board quickly if Sarah gets into the league as a Packers fan. But anyway, the tragedy from this week aside and the Damar Hamlin news is being beat to death, so prayers for him obviously, but not to spend too much time on that. It did make a mess of Fantasy. But Yahoo, our league that we used has sort of called it, and Dennis Tupper is our Fantasy winner from this year. But I want to read out the rest of the leaderboard, Sarah, mainly because I came in second place and I wanna like-- Sarah White (17m 4s): Well, then we have to talk about it. Joel (17m 8s): So, again, Dennis, the Gridiron Menace, Tupper is number one. Number two, Joel, Blue, Cheesman. Get it? I'm blue because I lost. But blue cheese is also a thing. So I sort of like wrapped it into a buy one get one on that one. Sarah White (17m 20s): I get it. I get cheese references. Joel (17m 21s): Yeah. Number three we got Smoke and Joe Wilke followed by Serge, the raging Acadian, Boudreaux. If you know, you know. Chris, middle of the pack, Manion, Chad, prince of Portugal, Sowash right there at number six. Factory Fix his own, Iron Mike Schaffer, Factory Fix is our sponsor for Fantasy Football, by the way. Christie killing it in the name of James Goony GooGoo Gilliam. Matt Fool on the hill. Jason, No Repeat, Putnam. He was last year's champion. He ended in 11th place out of 12 and number 12 the Caboose Dan, no-show, Shoemaker, who came up really short this year on Fantasy Football. Joel (18m 10s): So that is Dennis Tupper again is the winner. But let's get into some real news, shall we, Sarah? Sarah White (18m 16s): I think that was good news. Joel (18m 17s): That was good news but it's not really the news people tune in for. Sarah White (18m 21s): Really? Joel (18m 21s): We gotta get 20 minutes of bullshit before we actually talk about industry stuff. So, Sarah, you've been around the block a few times as we've already mentioned. What were your takeaways from 2022? It was kind of a nutty year. What did it look like from your perspective out there in panhandle Idaho? Sarah White (18m 42s): Oh, man. Well, oh, I guess I was here a full year. I've only been here a little bit, but I'll tell you what I think the word of the year for 2022 is delusional. Like everybody wanted to believe what they wanted to believe without looking at the facts of actually what was happening. I think that was my biggest takeaway. We were continuing to talk about like, "Oh, these jobs are growing so quickly. Oh, no, there's not actually going to be layoffs. Oh, everything is fine." We wanted to have such blinders on and kind of ignore stuff in part because of what was coming out from media and government and all of this type of stuff. But it was tracking things that were happening in an unprecedented way. Sarah White (19m 23s): And so we were making assumptions based off of kind of the wrong data. And so I think that was my biggest takeaway is that some of the standard ways that we were judging and looking and making decisions around growth and layoffs and investments and everything else probably needs to be reevaluated for a much more modern society and how things are going to work in the 2020s versus in the 1900s. Joel (19m 53s): So I'm assuming that you have investments in some sort of stocks somewhere. So it was a real shitty year for Wall Street. Sarah White (20m 2s): Yeah. Joel (20m 2s): But labor for the most part has remained strong. So delusional. Sarah White (20m 8s): But has it-- Joel (20m 9s): There were layoffs in Silicon Valley, pretty high-profile ones, but the labor market, at least in 2022, seemed to hold. Is that just a lagging indicator? Like we'll get to 2023 and I don't want to skip ahead, but like if labor is a lagging indicator, I assume that you think it's gonna catch up to the stock market and we're gonna see sort of labor catch up with the, I don't know, the cliff dive that we saw on Wall Street. But you will agree that people had a hard time firing people in 2022 even though they probably knew the writingis on the wall. Sarah White (20m 46s): Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. I think they were trying to get through and just be like, "No, no, no, we can do okay this year." You know, some of it, I don't know how much was tied back to like PPP rules or other, you know, there were multiple different types of funding coming in for keeping and you had to retain employees past a certain date. But it sure seems that as all of those rules fell off, we started seeing the layoffs and everything, start to kind of moving a little bit more aggressively. I do think that there's some lagging indicator here though because if somebody is underemployed, so let's say they, you know, get their hours cut back or get something else, if they even take a job so they go to work at Walmart as a greeter, for instance, right? Sarah White (21m 27s): They're removed from all of the lists that something's wrong with their labor and so it still looks like they're fully employed. But when you start looking into more detail around like number of hours people are working, how much they're earning, all of these other factors, those are kind of red flags that we look at to look at kind of what the 12- to 18-month numbers are gonna be. Joel (21m 50s): Yep. Are we undervaluing the effect of the gig economy on the world? You mentioned greeter but I'm sure a lot of those people are driving Ubers and delivering food on DoorDash and Bing. Sarah White (22m 6s): Yeah. And I think a lot of the people that are doing that are doing that as a supplement to other things or as a stopgap. But the second they start doing that, they also come off of all of those numbers. So if they are just not taking unemployment and they are making slightly more driving an Uber, DoorDash or anything, they show as they're fully employed, even though they don't have a job. I mean, I'll use a very small example. We're a small firm. We definitely don't pay high, you know, tech industry rates. We posted a job in October. I had to turn the job off within six hours because we had almost a thousand applicants, all highly qualified. Sarah White (22m 50s): I had posted the salary on there, the salary was, you know, maybe a couple years out of school, three to five years out of school, and not tech three years out of school, like normal-world three years out of school, and probably 70 percent of the applicants we got have been out of work since July, August, September. They've been on long-term. Joel (23m 11s): Are they all working for FTX or any other crypto exchanges? Sarah White (23m 14s): Most of them were not in tech at all. And I think that's where we're really, you know, the media talks a lot about the tech stuff because that's splashy and all of that. But we know of layoffs that were affecting all industries kind of across the board last year or small downsizings. Joel (23m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. Right-sizing. Sarah White (23m 35s): Right-sizing. Joel (23m 36s): I'll ask you this before we get to 2023. Sarah White (23m 39s): Yeah. Joel (23m 40s): We saw crazy money go to our space in '21. I mean, stupid money, right? Sarah White (23m 45s): Oh, gosh. Stupid money. Joel (23m 47s): I remember fielding questions about predictions for '22 about are we gonna continue to see money, you know, go into our space and more unicorns being created. I predicted no, which I ended up being right. But what's your sense on the money that came into the space? What's happening to those companies or what's your best guess in terms of, you know, down rounds, layoffs, people having stock options or stock that's worthless than from when they got in? Any insights from you in terms of the money that sort of dried up in 2022? Sarah White (24m 24s): Yeah, I mean I think we-- I have a little bit of unique perspective on this. In the last few years, we've done close to a billion dollars of M&A or investment support in the space. And so we've seen a ton of these transactions both working on pre- and post-terms with them. The money is a hundred percent drying up, but the money that was put out there into the companies, a lot of it they just blew, quite honestly. I think we're gonna actually see a huge number of acquisitions this year. Large number. There are still some strategic investors. We've had five either acquisition or investment groups reach out to us just this week already about decisions they wanna make this year. Sarah White (25m 10s): So there is still money and everything going on, and I don't wanna say it's going to be down, it's going to be back to where it should have been to start with. I mean it was 2020, 2021. These valuations were insane for stuff. I mean, if you're selling a recruiting tool for $50,000, a pop on the high end, and you get $200 million of funding for a 10 percent, I'm not picking on anybody in particular. I just randomly made up those numbers. If that happens to correlate, right? Like realistically, how many types of products are you gonna have to sell or you're gonna have to completely change? Sarah White (25m 51s): So I think it's going to be a really interesting year and I think it's super exciting because the consolidation you and I have both gone through, this will be our third big consolidation round in this industry, right? Joel (26m 1s): Yeah. Sarah White (26m 1s): We've gone through this a number of times. This isn't new, but when the consolidation happens, it always benefits the corporate recruiting teams and it benefits the businesses and it benefits the workers, and the applicants. And so I'm really excited because as soon as this consolidation around comes back, we're gonna have another round of really high-growth startups. And you and I were both in Paris and saw the stuff that is getting worked on that is going to be what is eligible in 2024, 2025. And it's some really amazing stuff. Joel (26m 38s): Yeah. Yeah. And fortunately, with a lot of the Silicon Valley and tech layoffs, all those people are either gonna start companies or go work for new and exciting companies. So that brings us into '23. You've already kind of made a prediction, consolidation. Any other predictions or insights into the new year? Sarah White (26m 57s): I'm gonna be Debbie Downer here for a second. We haven't even scratched the surface on layoffs this year. A lot of companies start planning for layoffs four to six months out. We're aware of layoffs right now that are going to run all the way through June that are already in process and getting worked on. And they are not just in tech. Like this is going to start crossing because once we hit one, the other big prediction, I'm gonna say totally off topic is eggs are gonna go absolutely insane. Like the cost of eggs, which is I think is gonna really piss people off. Joel (27m 35s): Eggs, E-G-G-S. Sarah White (27m 35s): E-G-G-S. So if you look at-- I think we're gonna have-- Joel (27m 38s): So buy your chickens now. Sarah White (27m 39s): Buy your chickens. We're gonna have quite a summer I think because we're gonna have a couple of quarters of really high layoffs, we're gonna have people not finding jobs in the way they have been used to. We've got a huge number of people that have never gone through a recession or major downsizing. Maybe they saw their parents go through it, but there's a huge, you know, we have 12 to 15 years of people that really have never gone through that in their career. Everything's getting more expensive, housing, blah, blah, blah. And then something that has been this like stable, I think can be this tipping point. Predictions are eggs are going to be $12 a dozen by summer. Sarah White (28m 20s): Like people are going to lose their minds because everything is going to be crazy. And eggs I think might just be the tipping point. Joel (28m 29s): Forget about that Ruby on Rails developer. Eggs are gonna blow your mind in terms of how much that's shit's gonna cost. Sarah White (28m 38s): Not everybody works in tech, right? Like we got people not making-- You know, it's hard enough as it is when something that, you know, what did we eat when we were in college? We ate 39-cent ramen noodles in 89-cent dozen of eggs and we would make-- Joel (28m 52s): Mac and cheese, eggs, yeah. Sarah White (28m 55s): Mac and cheese or whatever else you could do. Like, the basic stuff, like little stuff like that is what really pisses people off. So hopefully we don't also have another tipping point thing, but I think 2023 is going to be a year where a lot of people just kind of look at their life and think about, okay, what is actually necessary? How do I make work matter? Like at the level it should, how do I make decisions in my personal life? What do I actually need? And I think we're gonna see businesses making the same decisions. Like who do we actually need for employees? What type of clients are we actually gonna go through? Everybody's gonna get much more targeted and focused on every aspect of life in 2023. Joel (29m 41s): So we have a lot of vendors listen to our show. Sarah White (29m 45s): Yeah. Joel (29m 45s): Are we gonna see a bloodbath like we've seen? Now, in old days with job boards when they sort of ruled the world, if people weren't posting jobs, they were screwed. Sarah White (29m 55s): Right. Joel (29m 55s): But now we're in a little more diversity. You're a little bit more integrated into systems, you're a little harder to get rid of. How does that gonna impact vendors like in a big way? Are we gonna see an HR tech with two boobs? Like how is this gonna play out? Sarah White (30m 16s): You know, sometimes when economy is bad, economy is really great for HR tech, and what is going to make the differentiator for vendors is their go-to market in their positioning. If they keep trying to sell and talk the same story and pretend that it's all about like, "Oh, it's really hard to find candidates" if you're still going after that approach, you're gonna really struggle moving in. If you adjust to what is happening with current conditions and you meet the practitioners kind of where they're at, we just did focus groups with, I think we had 24 recruiting leaders, TA leaders, all-sized companies, only one of those 24 so their top issues still was not finding enough candidates. Sarah White (31m 3s): The expectations, and this is, I don't know, last month. So the expectations are changing and vendors can still have a lot of success if they change to meet those expectations and change with what is actually mattering in business. The companies that have failed, we've seen them right over and over, like amazing product, amazing sales teams, horrible messaging. They don't know how to explain what they're doing and what the value is. And if things are tightening up, you have to show your value and your impact without going to a point where everything turns into an ROI conversation. It's a really hard balance for people. Joel (31m 42s): And if you have to pivot, figure out how to get ChatGPT to make eggs and you're set apparently from Sarah. So, Sarah, I'm reading an article recently this week talking about programmatic advertising come into podcasts. So, wow, precedent, right? So, for once, recruitment advertising is a step or two ahead of, I don't know, regular advertising. Recruiting has been leveraging solutions. Programmatic job ad solutions like JobADX to promote their jobs for years. What's JobADX you might ask, Sarah? What do you live under a rock in Idaho? Sarah White (32m 21s): I do. Joel (32m 21s): JobADX is the one tool you need to analyze and manage your entire job advertising process. That's right. Whether you want granular control or to set things on autopilot, your job ads follow a set of rules to create the best results showing up on hundreds of job sites focused on your goals. If you're new to programmatic or maybe you're looking to replace your current platform, you owe it to yourself to check out JobADX at www.jobadx.com. That's right. That's just the letter X, not the end E-X as in ex-husband or ex-wife, something Sarah and I know a little bit about. Joel (33m 7s): Do yourself a favor, hit up jobadx.com today. Sarah White (33m 9s): I think programmatic is going to be big because companies that are going to, even if they're doing downsizing, everything, the companies that are going to have advantage in 2025 as we come out of this, are going to be the ones that continue to focus on their brand. And so even if they're running programmatic, not to post a job, but just keep their brand and everything out. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not trying to pitch the ad, it just made me think about the last conversation. Joel (33m 37s): And programmatic might help some of these job boards out there survive the oncoming doom and gloom that Sarah predicted for 2023. So if you're job board makes sure you're partnered with some of these programmatic solutions to keep the lights on if you need. Sarah White (33m 54s): Speaking of job boards. Joel (33m 56s): All right, Sarah, you may have heard a little company called Indeed, you've been around a while. A few people know who they are. So anyway, new year, new terms of service at our friends at Indeed. What first show of 2023 would be complete without talking about Indeed. By the way, obviously, no one reads Terms of Service. So we asked our resident Indeed whisperer Jim Durbin, his thoughts on what might be hiding in Indeed's Terms of Service. Here's what Jim told us. Number one, they're using ID.me for third-party verification, which means you have to upload a personal driver's license or other document when creating an account. Joel (34m 43s): That sounds like a real headache. Sarah White (34m 47s): Big Brother. Oh, I have so many-- Like ID.me just used anywhere. I just don't like at all. Joel (34m 51s): All right, we'll get back to that. Let me go to the rest of the-- Sarah White (34m 57s): I'm sorry. Visceral reaction on ID.me. Joel (34m 59s): The little surprises in Indeed's Terms of Services. All right, number two, the new salary transparency terms say that the information offered to candidates is a courtesy and not a warranty and they take no responsibility or liability for mistaken data presented on your job. So do yourself a favor, employers. Put those salary ranges on there because who knows what the fuck Indeed is gonna put on there and they're not liable for it. All right, number three, Indeed apply screening and assessments, has a section where they say they gather the data but won't hold it for you. For those government contractors dealing with OFCCP compliance, this is a problem. Joel (35m 40s): You can't track compliance inside Indeed's platform, even though they want you to use Indeed's platform to do everything. Number four, there's a section about stopping spam candidates by requiring a cover letter. That's not new. It's just funny. Thanks, Jim, for that little insight there. Number five, you waive your right to jury trial and class actions when you use Indeed. That's convenient, isn't it? Number six, pay per application section makes it clear. You need to set a limit on the number of applies because you will pay for all of them. Jim says he anticipates a lot of people messing this one up. They're going to be mega bills accidentally rung up because some lowly admin didn't limit the applies on every job. Joel (36m 28s): Sarah, I know you have to play nicely with all the vendors sometimes, but any thoughts on the updated Terms of Service or any thoughts on Indeed in general? Sarah White (36m 38s): Oh, I'm gonna just go super easy, right? The pay transparency thing. If you don't post it on there, they will put something on there. It's a law in a number of states. I mean pay transparency, just put it up and I know everybody's like, "Oh, well do a really small range." Like just put up a range, right? Just put something up. I'm a business owner, right? I don't always know exactly how much I'm gonna pay for a job because it depends if I find like a superstar like Joel, that's going to be very different that if my kid wants to work for me, right? And so put something up and put it in so that it's not up to them of what is going to be there and then you're having to deal with really angry people. Sarah White (37m 20s): So that's just a-- Whatever. Joel (37m 22s): Even if it's just the tip, put it in, kids. Sarah White (37m 24s): Oh, God. Joel (37m 25s): Word to the wise. And ID.me what are your thoughts on that? You got some opinions. Sarah White (37m 32s): Oh, here's my thing. I don't understand why we have to use all of this ID validation and verification to do all of this stuff now, but I still don't have to use it to vote, right? Like, I have to use ID.me to get like a card at Blockbuster to like pay my taxes. I have to do ID.me now to post a job on Indeed. I'm gonna have to upload my stuff and if they don't like what you uploaded or they have any question, you also, I was looking at this morning, you then have to record a video of yourself talking, which in my mind is like they want facial recognition on everybody. Sarah White (38m 16s): Like, uh-uh, no. So when we were headed to Paris in October, as we were boarding, they didn't even look at passports anymore. You walked in, scanned your face, and got on the flight which freaks me out. I don't, I mean, again, I live in Idaho. But this and I know it's like, "Oh, it's so advanced. How great is this? It gives validity." Now on the other side of this, there's a lot of creepers that we're using Indeed for not so great reasons, right? So I think as a candidate, maybe I would feel better knowing that the companies are ID'd. But are they also then running this through background check systems? Is there other validation? Sarah White (38m 56s): Are we double-checking? Like there's just a lot here that it feels more alike. You know, there's some side partnership. The other thing with ID.me is their employees hate working there. Like they have some of the lowest glass door scores I've ever seen. And if these people that hate being there have access to my personal data, right? Like, let's say there's big round of layoffs, are they gonna be downloading everybody's personal data and being able like, I don't know, it just weirds me out. Joel (39m 26s): By the way, Sarah hasn't joined our get-free-shit list because she lives in a bunker in Idaho and has no address whatsoever. So that's why that is. By the way, because all of our listeners are mostly degenerates, I was reading a story about ID.me, Kansas I believe has just passed a law that if you use porn sites or want to look at porn sites, you have to register through ID.me in order to do that. Sarah White (39m 53s): I mean, it makes sense. It should be much harder to look at porn than to vote for a president. Joel (39m 58s): Yeah. Sarah White (39m 59s): I mean that makes-- Joel (40m 1s): We gotta keep the kids safe, Sarah, keep the kids safe. Sarah White (40m 4s): It's all fake. You're gonna be Speaker of House so you know how it's all-- Joel (40m 8s): I should be Speaker of the House. I should be President actually of the world. Sarah White (40m 12s): Of the whole world. Joel (40m 15s): Speaking of presidents, we got some new CEOs in our industry. Sarah White (40m 20s): Yeah, a lot. Joel (40m 21s): So it's not only the season for gumdrops and candy canes, it's apparently the season of new CEOs. At least three vendors announced new leadership recently. First up, Workday announced the appointment of Carl Eschenbach to co-CEO effective immediately. Chano Fernandez has stepped down as Co-CEO and as a member of the Workday Board of Directors. Aneel Bushri, co-CEO, co-founder and chair will remain co-CEO through January 2024. Next up is Snagajob. They've promoted Keith Forshew to CEO. He led the company's Product and Operations team as Chief Product Officer. Joel (41m 2s): Prior to Snagajob, he was also Senior VP of Operations at Elance, which is now Upwork. And lastly, San Fran based When I Work has appointed Blake Adams as its next CEO, a Morehouse and Stanford grad. Adams, an African-American as previous stints at Google, Intuit and most recently Bain Capital. Sarah, I count three new ATS CEOs from last year and now three new CEOs step in as we head into 2023. What do you make of all this musical chairs? Sarah White (41m 36s): I think it supports exactly what I'm expecting to see in 2023. And we're going to see a lot more. If you look at the background of the people that are moving into C Suite in a lot of these roles, a lot of them come from a product background or from an investment background. And some of them have shockingly light backgrounds outside of pedigree, right? And so, you know, like-- Joel (42m 7s): Sequoia, Bain. Sarah White (42m 8s): You know, I went to this university so I'm clearly better for this job. And so I think it's going to be very interesting. I think the other trend we're seeing is a lot of people that don't come from the industry moving in, which has not typically been something that has been highly beneficial for vendors when they do this. As I said, we do a lot of the investment side work. The number of times we get called in as either a turnaround or like why isn't things going better after they've brought in a whole new executive team that has literally never had any experience in HR, no experience in recruiting, never sold products like this at all is significantly high. Sarah White (42m 49s): So I'm expecting we're gonna be quite busy in about 12 to 18 months doing some cleanup work after some of these hires. On the other case, some of them are really solid, some of the products need to fix or some of the companies need to fix the product. So having a leader that can be really product-focused is good. I don't know if I would take those steps when we're going into this type of thing. Unless their assumption is we're gonna double down and we're gonna focus on fixing the product, much like a lot of companies did in 2020. We know these are gonna be two slow years. We're going to build that next generation of tech and we're just going to like counter losses for the next two years. Joel (43m 31s): Yeah. Sarah White (43m 32s): Which is also something I know that some of the organizations are gonna be focused on. Joel (43m 36s): Yeah. A trend I see as well is people who know people who can write checks are being made CEOs. So I think some deals are gonna be done. So I think Workday is probably the most impactful of these announcements for people. It's a public company, huge company. A lot of people are Workday clients. So Workday stock is down 37 percemt year over year. That's not news for a lot of tech companies. But in a world where employment is strong, it seems like there was probably some pressure to fix that situation. On the news that they have a new co-CEO, the stock went down 2 percent on that news. So at least Wall Street is voting that this is probably not a great deal whenever you lose a co-founder, it's usually not good. Joel (44m 18s): So it's a sort of a double whammy here as you're losing a co-founder and you're gaining a co-CEO. None of this sounds good if I'm an investor in Workday. No, you know, you mentioned industry expertise. This guy is from Sequoia, he's got a great resume. I'm sure he picked up many chicks back in the day when that was, you know, the clubs in Silicon Valley. But anyway, he looks great on paper. He looks great on screen. Sarah White (44m 44s): Has a whole closet of Patagonia. Joel (44m 45s): We'll see where the hell that goes. That sounds like a real fucked up situation. In terms of Snagajob, they couldn't even go outside to get anybody for that job. They had to like pluck the nearest just scrub to come in and take that job. So this is the company that has fallen so far. Sarah White (45m 7s): Scrub, but-- Joel (45m 8s): Hey, this is a live show, man. Words just come out. It's just, you know-- Sarah White (45m 16s): But it isn't interesting. Yeah. Joel (45m 17s): Snagajob has fallen big time. When you and I started, they were probably top five or six job sites, right? And they've fallen off a cliff and now you have a relatively shitty product that hasn't innovated and you make this Chief Product Officer of the crappy product your CEO, like, I don't know how to connect the dots that that's a good thing for Snagajob. Like, this dude might totally blow my mind and fix the product, but I see that as a shitty job that they gave to someone who was like next in line and the dumpster fire in terms of my viewpoint is gonna keep on raging at Snagajob. Sarah White (45m 58s): Well, and I think the challenge specifically with Snagajob with him is, you know, again, he's relatively newer to the industry, right? Like 2019, he joined them, joined directly as Chief Product Officer. One of the challenges that we see with some of the legacy products that you and I knew back from the 2000s and kind of the turn of the 10s is that these founders and these investors and people that had success in 2008 to 2012, when the success starts slowing down, they doubled down on what they did right 10 years ago instead of looking at where the market is and they will not take outside opinion because they're so confident in what this is. Sarah White (46m 43s): And we see this so, so much. And I think that's when I see a lot of internal movement sometimes that's my concern. Now, when you have people from the outside come in, it is not uncommon for them to be completely thrown under the bus and nobody will make change because everybody's also so ingrained. It's kind of a no-win situation unless you have a total cultural shift and change of like, let's make some serious moves. But if you're not willing, I mean if I was Snagajob, I would be doing a massive rebrand. I would be updating my name, I would be really looking at my product strategy focus. I would be really kind of thinking about what do we wanna be in 2024, 2025 in order to make it out and be around for another decade. Joel (47m 31s): Yeah. But they're gonna be gun-shy doing that. I mean they released, remember the old CEO? They launched Snag, snag.co or whatever. It was an app. It was gonna be like service industry get paid with an app. Like they took a big swing a few years ago and pulled back on that quickly and went sort of like status quo. So I think it's gonna be hard for them to take a big swing. Sarah White (47m 54s): So they took a big swing on something and we see this with TA vendors all the time, right? They have really good ideas of stuff that work outside of TA and probably have a different type of buyer and would make sense for them to expand, but they want to not take the time to understand how those buyers operate. So the stuff that they did with kind of the same day pay and all of that huge market, like one we actually have a big report coming out on continuous pay, huge market, huge amount of growth, big investment. They could have sold that off so quickly had they done this right, made a ton of money off of it, but they were so set on selling it to the wrong people. And we see this all the time, like, you know, again, doubling down into what you know because you don't want to pull in the outside expertise to actually make money, right? Sarah White (48m 40s): Like I say all the time, my job is to make you money. I don't care if you listen to me or not, don't listen to me, whatever. Somebody else is gonna wanna make money. Joel (48m 49s): So if you're listening at Snagajob, it's time to create your TikTok account if you wanna save the company. Sarah White (48m 56s): No, please don't do that. Joel (48m 58s): So lastly, like I don't shit about when I work, they're not in crunch base. I don't know if they've taken money, bootstrap, whatever, but there's a new CEO. Sarah White (49m 6s): They're actually pretty cool. Joel (49m 9s): Like look, we talk a lot about, you know, diversity inclusion in our industry. We talk a good game and we largely more or less talk the talk and not walk the walk. So for me, anytime I see a person of color take over at a company, our industry, like I'm a fan, this guy's got a good resume. He's just getting started. But I'd say when I work is one to at least keep your eye on in 2023 and going forward, maybe we can get that dude on the show to talk about what's going on. Sarah White (49m 39s): The product's actually really good. So workforce management type of technology, not really a TA type of tool, but I think what they are doing and bringing in access to the contingent workforce also mixed in, they're going to be coming in and playing pretty hard against some of the legacy solutions. Joel (49m 57s): Gotcha Sarah White (49m 57s): So definitely should take a look at it. Joel (49m 60s): So it sounds like I'm buying one of the three CEOs and you're buying two of the three if I'm playing, would you rather or buy or sell? Sarah White (50m 8s): I am not buying any of them yet. I haven't seen what their plan is. I cannot, yeah. I like the products. Joel (50m 17s): So Midwest polite. So Midwest polite. Have some more cheese curds. And speaking of what you should be buying, kids, have you heard one of our foreign language shows, Sarah? Sarah White (50m 26s): I haven't. I want to. Maybe that'll teach me. Joel (50m 31s): Do you speak a foreign language? Sarah White (50m 32s): Bonjour. Joel (50m 32s): You speak French? Sarah White (50m 33s): Croissant. No, just, that's all I know how to do. Joel (50m 37s): No, English. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Again, yeah. Polite mid-westerner like me. We speak American. But anyway-- Sarah White (50m 47s): Give me a croissant, please. Joel (50m 50s): Give me a croissant, yeah. So I mentioned Veritone does our foreign language podcasts. Veritone acquired Pandologic a year or two ago. Now time flies by now that I'm getting, getting older. But Pandologic sponsored the show. I want to highlight that the things that Pando is doing and starting to do with Veritone is like pretty mindblowing. I mean, we're talking like prediction and targeting automation algorithms that'll blow your mind. Big data that makes big data look small if that makes sense. Sarah White (51m 24s): Yeah. Joel (51m 25s): If you haven't given a look at Pandologic, I can tell you that if you've given them a look before, it's time to give them another look because the stuff that they're developing, I've looked behind the curtain, I've seen the Wizard, some crazy good shit's going on at Pando. Do yourself a favor. Go, go give them a call, get a demo of the product, see what's going on new. If you're a current client, good for you. You're gonna see some really good stuff come down the pike in 2023 in terms of AI, voice recognition, different languages, like they're gonna do stuff that blows your mind. They bought a chatbot Wade and Wendy a while back. The stuff they're gonna do with that is really, really, really cool. Joel (52m 9s): So anyway, head out to pandologic.com. That's www.pando, P-A-N-D-O, logic, as in Spock, L-O-G-I-C.com. Tell them Chad and Cheese sent you. Sarah White (52m 22s): Can I just say--? Joel (52m 23s): Go ahead. After-- Way to go, man. Way to script the transition. Again, this is the raw version of this show. All right, Sarah, go ahead. Give us something about Pandologic. Sarah White (52m 34s): They are some of the nicest people that I have met, like their whole team. We meet with, I personally meet with about 250 vendors a year. So we're meeting with products and companies all the time. And I am not known as being the kindest person. You know, I will call them out, I challenge them. Joel (52m 57s): Stop. Sarah White (52m 57s): I know. I'm nice in public, but like I'll challenge them on their BS and their whatever. They are some of the nicest people, and everything I pushed on, they were able to answer, show me, respond to, not in a deck, but actually in the product. So yeah, very, very nice. Joel (53m 16s): And there's a legacy at this company that goes way back and the core competencies of that company. I mean, you mentioned nice, but from Terry Baker down, like knowledgeable core competency. They got something going on. Sarah White (53m 29s): Yeah. Like they have the skills. Yeah, none of these people were, you know, kind of "I could write a check hires." Joel (53m 35s): Gotcha. Yeah. Can I transition to the next story now? Sarah White (53m 37s): You can because I'm excited for the next one. Joel (53m 44s): Yeah. Okay, here we go. All right. So 2022 was the year of quiet quitting. And we've heard 2023 might be the year of the loud layoffs. But for one Walmart worker, it's the year of loud quitting. An employee took to Instagram last month in order to resign. We got the audio, take a listen and we'll discuss on the other side. Walmart Audio (54m 10s): Attention, Walmart shoppers and associates. My name is Beth from Electronics. I've been working at Walmart for almost five years, and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid. The attendance policy is . We are treated by management and customers poorly every day. Whenever we have a problem with it, we're told that we're replaceable. I'm tired of the constant gaslighting. This company treats their elderly associates like . To Jared, our store manager, you're pervert. Shame on you all for treating your associates the way you do. I hope you don't speak to your families the way you speak to us. Shout out to Monique, Patty Ardell, and so many more. Walmart Audio (54m 55s): Walmart doesn't deserve you all. fuck management. Fuck this job. I quit. Sarah White (54m 59s): I love her. Joel (55m 1s): All right. Yeah. Emily's not happy. So, Sarah, disgruntled employee meets social media. So many questions. Is Instagram and TikTok the new Glass Door? Did she destroy her career? Employer brand nightmares gone wild. I don't know where to begin. Where do you want? Sarah White (55m 18s): Okay, so one, I don't know if you-- She made the comment about elderly workforce, I don't know if you know this or not, but I don't know if they still do it, but for a long time, Walmart took out life insurance policies on their elderly door greeters that they were beneficiaries. Joel (55m 35s): They would be the beneficiaries of? Really? Is that legal? Sarah White (55m 39s): I don't know. Yes, so I was just reading about this week. So I don't know how this works, but so when she said that, I'm like, "Oh, I just learned about this last week." Second, Insta, like the kids aren't using Insta, it's us, right? It's us trying to be like, "Look at my 14 likes." Joel (55m 59s): They're on TikTok. Sarah White (56m 1s): They are on TikTok, which this was on TikTok. That's where, you know, it got shared on there. But you know what else is on TikTok? All of the layoffs that are happening are getting recorded and uploaded. All of the other stuff, the pervy managers, right? Like good for her for calling. This guy probably has had so many complaints about him, but he's probably, you know, his Karen in HR that is his buddy who probably has no HR experience, but he promoted into HR to cover for him. Like, yes, good for her, good for her. Joel (56m 35s): And she did not ruin her career as far as you're concerned? Sarah White (56m 39s): If she ruined her career by speaking the truth, it's at companies that you shouldn't wanna work for. And I think that's one of the things we have to start, you know-- I feel like we've all been gaslit by companies for a long time into pretending like we have to just be okay with whatever happens, especially as women. I was talking to a young woman this week who basically was like, I feel like I've been taught my entire life that I have to just like smile and nod and go along with whatever is happening. And I'm like, "Well, yeah, but you don't. We did, but we don't anymore." My goal for 2023 is calling out gaslighters on LinkedIn, by the way. Joel (57m 19s): So let me reach into my inner Grinch since we've just had Christmas. I wouldn't touch Emily with a 39-and-a-half foot pole. If one of my kids did this, I'd slap them upside the head, "Did I not teach you anything?" Sarah White (57m 32s): A hundred percent. Joel (57m 32s): What a dumb thing to do. I know it's great for likes and virtual signaling and the dopamine hit of social media, but this is a dumb thing to do, kids. If you're out there listening and you think about dropping some shit like this on TikTok or wherever, take it from your Uncle Joel, don't do that shit. It's stupid. There's tools now that will find this shit out. There's algorithms and companies that will find this stuff and people will not hire you if you do this. So it sounds great. And it's like, yeah, good for her power toEmily, but don't do this shit, kids. Just dont. Sarah White (58m 12s): Yeah, don't. Like, I would be pissed if my kids did this, but I would ask what happened to get to this point, right? Like what it was, did he do something that finally triggered this? Did something else happen? Like what was that? And I would look at that and I think if I am Walmart, I'm seriously looking at all of these accusations regardless of what this is. I'm looking at the store pretty closely and I'm looking at some of these things. And I think what other businesses should be doing is figuring out how they can create a true level of conversation. So I love this, not necessarily because her for her, but like in general, companies need to come up with a better path so that when things are not going right, I'll tell you again, I've been investigating TikTok. Sarah White (59m 6s): I sound like an elderly person, but I've been on that. Joel (59m 10s): Investigating TikTok. Sarah White (59m 11s): I have and seeing how it's being like used and done and like where all this type of stuff is. Employees do not like HR. They don't trust HR when stuff is going on. They don't trust HR to go complain about their boss that's being pervy. They don't trust HR to go do this because it's one, half of the HR influencers on TikTok are telling people not to trust their companies which I find that is incredibly fascinating on its own. But hopefully, this opens up some conversations. I think had this been in more of a corporate setting, like the girl that downloaded and destroyed all the files, I wouldn't touch her at all. Sarah White (59m 52s): Yeah. I think this probably a little bit different only because the type of job and the setting it was in, I doubt she will have as big of an issue finding her next job as somebody that, like the girl that went in and destroyed all of the files that she created because she was getting let go. Joel (1h 0m 14s): Is TikTok the new Glass Door? And if you're an employer, how do you plan damage control shit like this that happens? Sarah White (1h 0m 22s): You fix your shit before it happens, right? And so we have to get out of the mindset where everything is gonna be out about damage control. If you treat your employees correctly from the first place and you treat your candidates well, you treat your employees well and you build a company that actually cares and respects for its workforce, you won't have the same type of anger. This type of stuff happens after a breaking point of many months, years of quite honestly corporate abuse. And so companies even that are doing layoffs were doing a big layoff study. We're publishing on like ethical layoffs next week. We've talked to a lot of people that were laid off and many of them have nothing but positive things to say about their company. Sarah White (1h 1m 3s): Some of them go irate, right? But the ones that are irate talk about how much they worked, how much they were never appreciated. Everything about the end response comes down to like a much longer story. And is it the new Glassdoor, eh? I mean Glassdoor is what, 13 years old at this point? 14 years old. Joel (1h 1m 22s): It's a little gray. Sarah White (1h 1m 24s): You know, I think we are getting past the point of review sites. It's like, you know, TripAdvisor, all of these things. Huge. These are huge 10, 12 years ago. You know, now they're going directly to the source because they know everything else is orchestrated. Our age people I'm sure are still going to Glassdoor. Joel (1h 1m 50s): They're white, everybody. Did you have fun? Sarah White (1h 1m 52s): I did. Thanks. It's only taken 17 years to get on one of your podcasts. Joel (1h 1m 57s): I was not podcasting 17 years ago. Sarah White (1h 1m 59s): You did. You had Cheese. Joel (1h 1m 59s): It wasn't this though. We're on video now. We're like the kids now. We're like the kids now. Well, thanks for getting up early there in PandaHo or whatever it is that you live. For those that don't know you or wanna learn more about the company or connect with you, where do you send them? Sarah White (1h 2m 20s): Yeah, so Aspect43.com is my company and where you could find it. We publish a ton of research and reports and everything for practitioners entirely free. So there you don't have to sign up, you'll never get bothered again. Everything is free from that perspective. And we are also launching HR Tech Circle next week I believe. We're uploading everything in which is our brand new site, which is entirely for practitioners and it is thought leadership, resources, downloads, case studies from about 40 different vendors in the industry. So you can stop jumping around on Google in all of these places and just go to one place and find it all. Joel (1h 3m 4s): Thanks, Sarah. Everybody, Chad will be back. Things will be a little bit more back to normal. Until then, Sarah, we out. Sarah White (1h 3m 16s): Thank you. We out. Chad and Cheese (1h 3m 18s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts 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. Anyhow, 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. Chad and Cheese (1h 4m 5s): 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.

We get it. Tech is moving fast. From chatbots and conversational A.I. to automated video recruiting to the metaverse and more, it's exhausting to keep up. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's about to get a little more complicated. Meet Hour One, a company specializing in the development of virtual humans for use in professional video communications, including human resources. The company's head of strategy, Natalie Monbiot, joins Chad & Cheese for a wide array of questions, including Why waste your time on HR? Give your brain a good stretch, and let's do this. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? You know who it is. Your favorite meatheads, aka, the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman joined as always the Venus to my Serena Chad Sowash. And today we welcome Natalie Monbiot head of strategy at Hour One to the show. Natalie, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. It's Chad (47s): It's Monbiot [Mon-bot] Joel (48s): Get this? Are we sure she's real? Chad (51s): I'm not sure. Joel (52s): Our listeners don't know yet, but, but Natalie basically is with a fake virtual human organization, so we're not quite sure if she's even real. Chad (1m 0s): Fake! Joel (1m 1s): Natalie, are you there? Chad (1m 2s): Synthesized clones- that's what's synthesized clones. Natalie (1m 5s): Yeah. That's quite an introduction. Fake and virtual. Yes. So basically, yeah. My name is Natalie Monbiot, the irl. Me and my virtual alter ego has been known as MonBot for quite a few years now. Even predating Hour One. I've had a slight obsession with AI bots since the beginning. And in a way, what we're doing at Hour One is the kind of most advanced iteration of what AI bots can do. Chad (1m 33s): So you've manifested it is what you're saying. Joel (1m 35s): What is Natalie about? Let's figure that out before we get into the show. Natalie, give us a Twitter bio about you. What makes you tick? Natalie (1m 43s): Sure. Well, from a work perspective, I would say that everything emerging technology, I'm an emerging tech and communications buff. So how does AI and other emerging technologies, how does that shape, how we can communicate with each other in what might sound paradoxical in a more human kind of way? And I also, I am an avid outdoorsy person. I'm an adventurous skier. I play a lot of tennis. I sail and I have an 11 month old daughter. Joel (2m 15s): You sail. Talk about that. Where are you sailing to? Natalie (2m 18s): We just did a two day voyage, mini voyage with our baby to Block Island just off Long Island. So yeah, that's something very highly recent example. Joel (2m 30s): That sounds pleasant. Did you have a picnic when you got there? Natalie (2m 32s): We had all sorts of picnics, wine and cheese on a sailboat. We petted alpacas. We did it all. Joel (2m 41s): Dang, Chad (2m 41s): That's pretty sexy, but not as sexy as 20 million in the bank or what It looks like $25 million in total Natalie. Hour One just received some, some new, new cash, new funding. What was that for? Tell us more about Hour One and then start tying in that funding. What are you guys looking to do? What is Hour One looking to do to be able to disrupt a lot of different industries? Natalie (3m 12s): Absolutely. So we are a virtual human company where we basically make virtual humans based on real people for the world of work. And we do this in order to be able to scale and improve communication. So instead of communicating in text form, which is how the majority of business is taken care of these days, people who don't have any production skills, don't have any tech skills, can basically generate content for their business to help them communicate better. Content that being video featuring virtual humans, which could be their own virtual twin or it could be a virtual twin for hire and we can talk a little bit more about that as well. Natalie (3m 52s): And we also set these virtual humans is something very new and ties into our investment into 3D immersive environments. So just from plain text, you can now generate immersive video experiences to engage your customers, to engage your employees in a very flexible and pretty instant way. So you type in some texts into our platform, you select a virtual human or an avatar, you select from a variety of 2D or 3D virtual templates or environments and you add in your imagery and you hit a button and a few minutes later you have these complete videos which are more engaging than kind of text-based communications. Chad (4m 34s): Well, welcome back to the Matrix kids and Joel, the virtual twin for hire had nothing to do with you. Joel (4m 41s): That's the blue pill. Chad (4m 41s): Okay. Just so that you know, the virtual twin for hire is not a thing. Joel (4m 45s): That'll be our little secret, Chad. Chad (4m 48s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Using AI to be more human is what you guys have have championed. And, we believe that on our podcast, we've been talking about that for for years, but it might mean something different. So what does it actually mean to you and Hour One? How are you using AI and virtual humans to be more human? Natalie (5m 8s): I should probably start by saying the best way to communicate with somebody else is face-to-face in-person, live and, but that's not always possible or it's not scalable and the lacks flexibility and speed and the ability to translate content into different languages and all of that. So what we wanna do is be able to take some of the core elements of face-to-face communication and be able to scale that. And we use AI in order to do that. So you can basically, so how the AI works and how our platform works is you can just capture a little bit of footage of you or this is how we create some of our stock avatars. Natalie (5m 48s): We take a little bit of footage in video and we use that as the data from which to create your kind of virtual representation. And so there's AI involved in that. Chad (6m 1s): So training data? Natalie (6m 2s): Training data, exactly. And so, we take a little bit of footage and that becomes the training data for your virtual twin. So the AI is involved in generating your virtual twin. So that's sort of stage one of two of where the AI is really involved. And then stage two is the ability then to just through inputting lines of text to be able to generate new content as though you said it in front of a camera, but you didn't have to do that because that takes a really long time production, video production in the studio, you know, having to get actors, crew on location, shoot, reshoot, all of that is very time consuming and also very expensive and not very flexible. Natalie (6m 42s): So you can't update that content. So the ability to program your avatar to generate new content just from text also enables you to update and edit that content extremely flexibly. So you can keep your content fresh at all times. Joel (6m 58s): I'm really curious about the name Hour One. Is that like some 70 sci-fi movie hat tip that I wasn't aware of? Where'd the name come from? Natalie (7m 9s): It actually comes from a song by the Scorpions. Chad (7m 10s): Okay, I like it even more. Joel (7m 12s): I'm so glad I asked this question. Okay, go on, go on. Yeah. Song by the Scorpions. Natalie (7m 17s): It's basically that we are at the Hour One of sort of the future. So basically we're starting again in terms of what comes next. So it just felt like an apt name. Joel (7m 27s): Is this song called Hour One or is it a line in that? Natalie (7m 29s): I think it's called Hour One. I think it's called Hour One. Joel (7m 32s): Okay. I've got my homework ahead of me. Okay. Yeah, so we talked a lot of companies and know a lot of organizations that use video and recruiting, right? They're usually embedded into job descriptions. They're usually, you know, when you apply to a job, maybe a video from the hiring manager or who your boss might be, maybe a video from the CEO and the automated email that goes out to a an applicant. Those obviously have taken hold, but they tend to be organic in that it's real people at the company talking about, Hey, here's what I do for my job, or here's what you'll be doing for the company. You guys focus on HR. What are the case studies? What are the applications that are most prominent when you guys work with an organization in HR recruitment? Natalie (8m 19s): Yeah, so it's really at various stages of the HR experience. So starting with interviews or job posting, sorry. And as you say, embedding videos with each job listing. And that's something that is actually quite difficult to do if you have a lot of different job listings and you're posting new ones all the time. Now you have the ability to ingest the kind of the bullet points and you know, the key parameters from the job listing and convert that into a video presented by let's say your virtual HR representative. And it can be very on brand, tone of voice, the look and feel of the avatar that you've selected or that you even created for yourselves. Natalie (9m 3s): You know, your own company, virtual HR representative. And then you can also upload and in and integrate a lot of imagery and so you can bring to life the job listing, in a way that is, has not been possible before and to help you stand out basically from other companies. And you can make that very on brand. You can customize it, you know, your brand guidelines and all of that. So I'd say that's kind of the beginning stage. Then onboarding is another really popular area, the use of our technology because again, that's might be an area where there's just a lot of text and a lot of kind of a static experience and now you are able to upgrade that to make it more immersive and interesting presented by an on-brand character. Natalie (9m 44s): And then a lot of what we do as well is around learning and development. So that's kind of lot of dry content there that can instantly be lifted and made more immersive. Joel (9m 54s): Yeah, so UPS particularly upskilling is a hot topic in our space. So are these characters typically animated or are these real videos that are then sort of customized to what's being said or both? Natalie (10m 6s): So they, it's a really interesting question, like is it animated? Because I think that really gets to the core of content creation today. Joel (10m 14s): Well, cartoonish versus real life. Natalie (10m 16s): They're photo real. Our avatars or our virtual humans are photo-real and so they are designed to mimic a person's facial expressions, and mannerisms because we understand that that's, you know, a very powerful communications medium. So we wanna be photo-real then, cuz we also create the environments for the video, so the backgrounds, and that becomes a mix of animation and photo reel kind of borrowing a little bit from the latest in gaming, which is clearly, you know, very advanced computer graphics, but, photo-real as well. So it's kind of this blend I would say in the overall effect at this point. Joel (10m 53s): So an example of what a company could do if they were creative, let's say it's Progressive Insurance, I have Flo as my spokesperson, Flo could actually talk about a specific job and what they do embedded into a job description. That could be one creative way that a company could use your tool? Natalie (11m 10s): Exactly. So you, but you have IP like Flo, it's like how do you extend the IP of Flo and how do you embed her into a lot of different environments and all through, you know, various touchpoints of the company. And then you can also do things like have Flo speak in different languages to localize that content or have Flo create many different iterations of that job description. You can even be customized by name if you wanted it to be. Joel (11m 39s): How many languages do you guys support? Natalie (11m 41s): Around 50. Joel (11m 41s): Okay. Natalie (11m 41s): We can do, which is basically if there's any language that you wanna do, we can pretty much do it at this point. Joel (11m 49s): You guys recently launched, I guess, a news reading solution. What's your goal there? Like are we gonna end up going to channels and just seeing virtual humans read the news at some point? Or is there sort of a unique way that you're rolling this out to the world? Natalie (12m 2s): Funny you should ask that. We actually already do have, we've partnered with a news company called Defiance Media and they've actually been using our virtual human newscasters for a year already. And so that element of using a virtual human in news isn't necessarily new, but what we've just launched is a 3D news environment. So now you can customize any sort of 3D experience and it can be, it mimics a traditional news environment, right? You know, when you're watching, you know, news on whatever channel that happens to be on TV broadcast news. Natalie (12m 44s): So it mimics that, but actually there's greater flexibility because you can customize it and do things that aren't possible in reality because now we have these tools at our disposal to be able to animate and get more creative than ever. So yes, so we do expect, and we do already have news media customers and the benefit to them is they can stream news and they do every two hours around the clock. And that is something that would've been impossible for many reasons using live human news anchors. So they've actually created their own news anchor and they're also integrating kind of a futurist who's a real person in real life and then they're also, you know, leveraging him as a virtual twin within their content. Natalie (13m 25s): So it's pretty interesting and kind of blurry. But I wanted to add to that is that's the news environment being used literally for news. But if you are a company and you know, the HR department wants to be able to present information in a way that is more creative and interesting and immersive. A company can create their own virtual newsroom or virtual news desk and that's just kind of becomes an ownable format in which to deliver information. Chad (13m 53s): So why HR? You mean you've got these great marketing applications where you could go and prospectively scale Flo or a gecko or, I mean there are a hell of a lot of other, other ways to go out there and make the big money because the marketing has the big money. HR does not have the big money, not to mention HR is slow to adoption. Then you have this news piece where the obviously local and evening news, they want better ways to scale and to obviously grow market and margin. So why are you even messing around with HR in the first place? Natalie (14m 31s): That's really interesting. So basically we see HR as a place where there is a lot of flat content that can be transformed very quickly into something that is more immersive and interesting. And we do see quite a bit of demand for that. The other thing that's interesting about it is it's, while we do engage a number of different verticals outside of HR like news, as you, you mentioned HR is a horizontal function versus, you know, a verticalized function. So it's almost like every company of a certain size has HR and has HR needs. So it's sort of this interesting horizontal and we built some very simple tools designed to make it as easy as possible for an HR department that doesn't have, cuz we're really targeting people that don't have production or kind of digital skills necessarily, or developer skills. Natalie (15m 26s): So we see HR as kind of being that kind of fitting that sort of profile. Chad (15m 31s): HR is also seen as a cost center. So that's also a negative. But you know, many startups are creating solutions to problems that HR doesn't even believe exists because the pretty much the type of traction you need and adoption for HR usually is about five to seven years behind the curve. So what in the current landscape told you this was the market that you needed to try to crack and would they pay for it? Natalie (16m 0s): Yeah, well I think it's really that we've seen response. So we've seen HR departments actually respond and say they want this. So I wouldn't say that we necessarily kind of went out expressly to engage HR. We actually been engaging a number of different verticals ranging from e-commerce to actually e-learning is really where we've had a lot of early success and kind of upgrading e-learning content to keep, to basically scale instructor-led content and then kind of as a result of that learning and development seems a sort of a natural extension just by kind of being out there. And, we've found that pretty large, kind of pretty conservative seeming companies have actually seen what we're doing and have actively and proactively engaged us for HR needs. Natalie (16m 45s): So one of the largest health insurers in Europe, as an example, came to us and wanted to basically create more engaging onboarding materials, more engaging ways to invite employees into upskilling programs and to kind of personalize those programs more. So that's, you know, an opportunity that just came to our way without us, you know, having thought of it before. And another one, Israel's largest shipping company as well, had similar needs. So it's really that it's emerged that way and that's why we've kind of seen it as an opportunity to keep pursuing. Joel (17m 20s): So you talk about being more engaging and it strikes me that a dialogue is more engaging than a monologue. When do you guys get to the point where I can have a conversation with one of your virtual assistents I guess, or people, or is that something that you're not interested in doing? Certainly we've seen chatbots in our space where it's more of a conversation, right? It may be text-based, but it's a little bit more engaging that way where this is sort of a sit back and be spoken to. Where do you sit on being more of a dialogue that versus a monologue? Natalie (17m 50s): Yeah. So, that's totally right. We started in video and it's a bit more of a sit back experience, but certainly on our roadmap and our immediate roadmap is to create more of an interactive experience. And the way that we're doing that is we're becoming much more real time in our ability to generate videos from text. And I know you've interviewed very recently, you know, a chatbot company and you obviously know a lot about this space and you also know that a lot of these ai chatbot companies, it's not necessarily that they're inventing content on the fly, you know, these are decision trees with a lot of permutations and options within that decision tree. And so if we can just be quick enough to be able to generate the content, the video content to populate those decision trees, that's actually something that we can already do and already sort of doing in places is to integrate with some of these chatbot companies to be able to deliver a video base interactive experience. Natalie (18m 47s): So definitely something that we were starting to do and that is coming. Joel (18m 50s): So, the metaverse has gotten a lot of attention everywhere and I sense that a metaverse taking off would be really good for your company. Talk about how your product would engage or integrate with the Metaverse, if at all. Natalie (19m 7s): Yeah, so Metaverse is really interesting, an interesting theme that's come up in the last sort of 18 months I'd say, where I think it's driven a lot of acceptance for what we do this suddenly just like avatars. But of course, I mean it's, you know, people don't question the idea of kind of avatars in our lives because everyone's bought into this notion of the metaverse and avatars are essentially the protagonists of the metaverse. That said, I think people are kind of have got really obsessed with the metaverse without really thinking about what it's for and how useful it can be and, the kind of why of how you would deploy the metaverse in a way that's truly gonna help grow your business. So where we kinda look at it is we're the metaverse for work. If you're kind of looking at the metaverse as a whole and the metaverse, you know, is a kind of a nebulous thing and many people, you know, many companies have their own definitions for it, but in many cases it's a first person experience, which is largely around entertainment. Natalie (19m 60s): So you want to be immersed in this content, you want to be this fantastical creature because you are in this fantastical storyline if it's a game or some other kind of entertainment based metaverse experience. But then if you think about work, and that's what we're really focused on is virtual humans in the world of work, you as a human being don't want to spend all of your time kind of hanging out in a virtual world when you could be getting shit done outside of that. And so it's like, but what you would like to do is delegate to somebody else, delegate to your virtual twin. So that's kind of our position on it. It's like you create a virtual twin that can carry out certain tasks for you. And today what your virtual twin can do is it can go off into the virtual world or into the digital world and it can do things for you, like do routine presentations or answer routine questions, things that you- you and all your full kind of human faculties and you know, your full human creativity and potential is not required to execute those tasks. Natalie (20m 60s): So you can essentially delegate stuff to your virtual twin while you can basically do things which are uniquely human and this is all, you know, within the work context, handle sensitive negotiations, build relationships, all of these things. So in our view of the metaverse for work, you don't want to be immersed in this, you know, in the metaverse yourself as the human, you wanna be able to delegate to this virtual twin. So that's kind of how we look at it and we're constantly building towards enabling your virtual twin to do more things for you in a way that represents you very well. Chad (21m 33s): So how genuine is that though? I mean, if I want to have engagements and interactions with actual people, whether that it is, you know, meeting in real life or in the metaverse, I mean, if I'm just interacting with literally a chatbot, a decision tree, how genuine is that and how's that gonna look to my brand if I feel like I'm actually engaging with a hollow quote unquote "virtual human"? Natalie (21m 60s): Yeah, that's a really important question in that, you know, people are gonna be, if they were previously getting to interface with you and suddenly it's like, speak to my virtual twin, you know, that's not a good experience for that person. So what we're always trying to do is basically upgrade something that would be text, let's say, and to be able to upgrade that into an experience which is more interesting and immersive. So people are getting more than what they were getting before or they're getting more of your presence or you are able to generate more talks and more presentations and more content, which wouldn't exist otherwise. The other thing is certainly I would say from a tech perspective and also from just like a conceptual perspective, you're not really trying to pretend that your virtual twin is you, it's an extension of you and it's a representative of you. Natalie (22m 49s): But our guidelines are to disclose that this is a virtual twin. Chad (22m 51s): How do you lock that down? That's, that's the big question, right? So let's say for instance, I have a virtual twin. I'm the only one who has access on the platform, but yet, I mean I wanna delegate it so I want, you know, maybe admins or what have you to use it. How do you lock something like that down? Yeah, to ensure just doesn't get outta hand. Natalie (23m 12s): So I mentioned at the beginning that we're kind of building this virtual human economy and as with any economy there are legal frameworks and commercial models involved. If you have a virtual twin with us, we basically, you'll sign an agreement with us, which first of all allows, gives us the permission as a company to create your virtual twin with the data from your video shoot as a bill to that agreement. There will be permissions granted as to who can make that content using a virtual twin. So it could be just you, it could be your team, it could be specifically approved people. So in a way it's not so different from, you know, you are an exec, you know, high level executive and you have an admin who writes some emails for you and you basically authorize that admin to make to write those emails for you. Natalie (24m 2s): So this is kind of a build on that. Joel (24m 4s): Well, well I for one will be first in line when you create the zoom call doppelganger where I don't have to sit on mindless zoom calls all day. Anyway you talk about passive income on the site and it sounds like you're gonna be able to roll out virtual yous in a bunch of different languages and be able to scale this for celebrities and people that make money for who they are. Talk about the passive income opportunity at Hour One. Natalie (24m 33s): Yeah, so basically we have these stock virtual humans, some of which you see on the website and these people have signed an agreement with Hour One, whether essentially our virtual talent and brands that you know, wanna make videos on our platform, they can select from these virtual humans. And when videos are made featuring these virtual humans, the real people behind them actually get paid a small fee. So this is the passive income. So they do one shoot, they sign an agreement with us, and within business context, ones in which Hour One operates such as HR, such as some news media such as e-commerce, then they basically get paid a passive income. And these are kind of everyday people who are not professionals, they're not known, they're basically the equivalent of animated stock characters. Natalie (25m 20s): And then we also have is, you know, specific people can start like creators. So I think this is a space that is gaining a lot of interest and feel, you know, in the past year, again, there's a lot more acceptance towards this idea of, again, I think probably thanks to the metaverse, the idea that you will have a virtual you and you can operate this virtual you to help you with your business as a creator or as a celebrity. So one guy Ian B. Craft, he's a, you know, he's a futurist and he's a busy guy, obviously this is his territory. He's, you know, a futurist, he is very interested in AI and virtual humans and all of that. But, his virtual human has essentially been hired by Defiance Media, which is the news company that I mentioned earlier. Natalie (26m 3s): And every week he does a news segment and he does, you know, the tech update for Defiance Media and it's his virtual human doing it. He actually writes the script and he goes in the platform and he kind of assembles the video in a few minutes. And actually there was one, I think it was just posted earlier today, a six minute segment on everything that's going on in emerging tech, AI, and the world of virtual humans Chad (26m 30s): OOH. Virtual twins, avatars, clones synthesized humans. It's a cool and kind of scary world out there kids. sfx (26m 35s): Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Chad (26m 41s): That's Natalie Mombiot. I think it's MomBot. She's ahead of strategy at Hour One. Natalie, if somebody wants to find out more about Hour One or maybe even connect with you, where would you send them? Natalie (26m 52s): Sure, you can email me at natalie@hourone.ai. You can find us on LinkedIn and on Twitter mainly. Joel (27m 3s): Chad, that is another one in the can. Beep poop beep. We out. Chad (27m 8s): We out. I'm out. OUTRO (27m 7s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (27m 51s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

The year is almost over, so the boys are taking a second to nurse their holiday hangovers and reminisce about their favorite episodes from 2022. Included are shows featuring everything from Indeed to witchcraft to TikTok to killing Madonna and much, much more. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (25s): Oh, yeah. Christmas is over and business is business. Dilute the son of a bitch. Hi kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Gecko" Cheesman. Chad (38s): ThIs is Chad "Auld lang syne" Sowash. Joel (41s): On this episode, we recover from our holiday hangover and review our top three podcasts from 2022. Grab the Tylenol and join us for some recovery time. Won't you? Let's do this. Chad (56s): So the Chad and Cheese holiday cards are out. Is that what I'm saying? I'm seeing them all over social media. Joel (1m 4s): Yes. The US fans. Chad (1m 6s): Okay. Joel (1m 7s): Will be the first and have those are trickling in. So the social media is great. They'll get a postcard with our ugly mugs, and a little message from us on there. The international fans will hopefully get something at some point. Sending mail internationally is interesting. There is no - that I can find, and please hit me up if you do know of a, like direct mail, do-it-yourself card service that we'll send everywhere in Europe on one platform. Canada. Australia, we got a lot of fans, a lot of places. Chad (1m 37s): Oh, they're all over. Joel (1m 37s): I had to go to Walgreens, get it printed up, get the envelope, had to get the international stamps from the post office. I had to go old school. My 13 year old daughter who has great penmanship, helped me out with some of 'em. So international fans don't get upset, don't get sad. If it doesn't come or hasn't come yet. By Valentine's Day, it might show up. Who knows? Chad (1m 59s): Yes. Joel (1m 59s): Or might come back to me or end up somewhere in the Antarctic somewhere. But yeah, it's great. It's fun that we do that, right? I mean. Chad (2m 7s): Yes, yes. Joel (2m 8s): Major companies with marketing teams don't do that stuff, right? Chad (2m 11s): No. Joel (2m 11s): They just send the email. Don't put any heart into it at all. Like, we're just two dudes doing our thing. And I think that the fact that we do that is pretty cool. Chad (2m 18s): That's right. Joel (2m 19s): And I think we've actually done it since year one or year one or two. Chad (2m 22s): Well, and I have to say next year, I put the ugly sweater picture back out there. Joel (2m 27s): Yeah. Chad (2m 28s): And it had a lot of traction. As a matter of fact had a lot of people that actually said that they would wear the ugly sweater to their holiday parties. So we might have to take a look at doing ugly sweaters next year. Joel (2m 46s): If we get to fans wearing the ugly sweater, the next step is like rabbits boiling in a pot in our kitchen. Like we we're getting into Glen Close territory with our fans. And maybe, maybe we should pump the brakes a little bit on too much Chad and Cheese stuff. Chad (3m 2s): There is no such thing. You watch your mouth. Joel (3m 4s): Stickers on laptops T-shirts. You know, it's, getting crazy. Chad (3m 8s): You watch your mouth. Joel (3m 8s): It's getting crazy. Chad (3m 9s): Yeah. You watch "Shut your mouth" sfx (3m 12s): 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel (3m 15s): All right. So we're, I guess we're gonna have a a year end shoutout? Chad (3m 19s): Yeah. Joel (3m 19s): Just kind of a culmination of who we love. That's right. Chad (3m 22s): Oh yeah. Joel (3m 22s): And whatnot. I'll, let you go first. Chad (3m 24s): Well, I love all of you for listening. And I wanted to be able to share this intel that we've got from our megaphone platform. So here are the 2022 podcasts in review for Chad and Cheese. Joel (3m 39s): Do you want me to give us some background music for this? sfx (3m 40s): insert sexy music here. Joel (3m 41s): Here we go. Give us some. Chad (3m 46s): Total podcast listenership up 23%. Joel (3m 49s): Nice. Chad (3m 49s): 80% of our listeners use Apple Podcasts. Joel (3m 53s): Yeah. Chad (3m 54s): More than 60% increase in listens on Spotify. And last but not least, the foreign podcasts. Those things are creepy as shit, but they're cool as shit as well. Veritone, our friends over there, they Yes, they cloned our voices. It's ai. We did French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. We're putting them out weekly. Our weekly shows, they're being transformed into those native tongues. Joel (4m 22s): Yeah. Chad (4m 22s): Sounds exactly like us. It's creepy. It's cool. And we couldn't do this without all of you and your support out there. So thank you so much. And can't wait till we can do this again in 2023. Joel (4m 35s): The fans for sure get standing ovation from us. And we also couldn't do this, Chad, without out sponsors! Chad (4m 43s): Yes. Oh yes. Joel (4m 43s): Trust me, kids, if it don't make money, it don't make sense. And without our sponsors, we aren't doing this show. So don't fast forward through the ads. Take some time. Listen, we exist because of them and they are fantastic. Chad (4m 60s): Yes. Joel (5m 0s): Our retention rate for sponsors, is crazy! Chad (5m 3s): Knock on wood, Joel (5m 4s): Like, if, if we were a Fortune 500 company, we would be really impressive. We're obviously not. Chad (5m 9s): Yeah. Joel (5m 9s): But our sponsors, some have been with us since year one that are still Chad (5m 14s): Yes. Joel (5m 14s): Supporting the show, still loving us even through acquisitions, you know, brand changes. I mean, they stick with us and we can't do this without them. So a big, a big shout out to our sponsors. Hell yeah. All right, Chad, let's get to, we got three favorite episodes each. We did not cross the streams. There's no duplication. So, give us your first must listen to show from 2022. Chad (5m 40s): Well, first and foremost, I wanna know how you picked your top three, because I picked mine different this year than I did last year. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. I mean, this is our top pick. So, you know, last year I picked interviews only, we do about 35 to 40 interviews a year. This year I focused on the numbers, what our listeners actually was telling me what they thought the best episodes were. So I picked one of our weekly show, one of our European show, and one of our cult brand show with, with Julie Calli, and then obviously European with, with Lieven. That was my methodology, let's say this year. Chad (6m 22s): How did you come up with yours? Joel (6m 24s): Yeah. You and I have an interesting chemistry and anyone who listens to the show for any period of time will know that, you know, obviously some of our passions and what we are interested in, cross a lot. Yeah. But there's certain things that you really are passionate about, certain things I'm passionate about, certain things that are interesting to you and me. And so, it's an interesting chemistry, if you will. So I simply just go down and go, what do I remember? What stood out to me? What was interesting? Because you're the one who edits these shows. So you, you know, these shows more intimately than I do because you've listened to them multiple times. I don't think I've listened to a show of ours since about 2017. So, you know, these shows better than I do. Joel (7m 5s): So I just go through and say, what piqued my interest? What do I remember, what like, caught my eye? And then I go with those. So there's really no rhyme or reason. I have one interview with an author. Chad (7m 17s): Okay. Joel (7m 17s): I have one with a CEO and I have one kind of combo show that sort of went together really well as my picks. Chad (7m 24s): Okay. Okay. Well, I'm gonna roll into my first one. It's from the Chad and Cheese Does Europe. And this is back, back on June 8th of this year. Joel (7m 36s): Yep. Chad (7m 36s): It was entitled Indeed versus LinkedIn Battle for Europe. This was, obviously a Chad and Cheese Does Europe podcast that had German unions smacking Elon and Tesla's back to the office for 40 hours a week edict smacked that around. Levin's thoughts on Bain Capital investments and House of HR which was obviously huge. Florence the nursing shift app got funding and Lieven and I had a chance to talk about nursing and dig deeper into, you know, his thoughts on healthcare and obviously staffing within Europe and healthcare. Chad (8m 17s): But the coup de gras my friend of this episode was the Intelligence Groups 162 page survey that breaks down the job board market in Europe, country by country. This report also included labor force data, aging data, part-time contract workforce composition, labor costs, income inequality. And your favorite Joel, the Big Mac index. Joel (8m 49s): Ooh, the Big Mac index. Very nice. Chad (8m 52s): The report demonstrated that Indeed is gaining steam and becoming the number one job board in Europe, but they are only number one in six of the 40 plus market. So for me, this report continues to demonstrate just how hard it is to crack Europe as a vendor. Joel (9m 13s): Europe's tough. sfx (9m 13s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (9m 15s): And I think I speak for both of us when I say the European show has been fantastically rewarding. Chad (9m 22s): Yes. Joel (9m 23s): Not only from learning more about the continent and its news as it relates to our industry, but the people of Europe and engaging with them and getting to know them and creating relationships has been fantastic. Chad (9m 38s): Well, I remember our first foray into this, which was RecFest 2019, right when we really came to Europe, started really focusing on European tech, the differences between, you know, US and UK and Europe overall. I mean, that really opened our eyes. So when we got a chance to actually do the, the show with Lieven, I was pretty excited about that. Joel (9m 60s): Yep, yep. And by the way, the iCIMS acquisition of CandidateID almost made my top list for 2022. sfx (10m 8s): Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, if it's no Scottish, it's crap. Chad (10m 14s): You still gave him a golf clap. That's all I gotta say. Joel (10m 17s): Would you guys let that go? For God's sakes? Would you let it go? I don't think Adam is hurt anymore, by the way. All right, let's get to my first show. So one of the shows that we did was Dan Pink back in the day. Oh yeah. And sometimes we get guests on that are just interesting, energetic, they have a view of the world that's unique, that's sort of outside of recruitment. Somehow we're able to bring them in and tell stories about how it relates to what we do. And for me, right. Robert Kerbeck, author of Ruse Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street was just fascinating. Joel (10m 57s): Yes. It was outside the box of what we normally talk about. Just a little bit about the episode. Robert eighties actor, he was in New York to support himself. He was waiting tables. Apprenticeship, he became a corporate spy. So he would go and figure out what companies were doing in terms of recruitment, corporate secrets. Anyway, I'm not doing it justice, you have to go check this episode out. My favorite part was, we asked him three picks of who do you marry, who do you fuck, and who do you kill? And the one I remember was, is he would kill Madonna. So that gives you an idea. Joel (11m 39s): Talks about his sexual adventures of the eighties. He hung out with OJ. Chad (11m 44s): Yes. Joel (11m 44s): George Clooney. Chad (11m 44s): Oh, great stories, great stories. Joel (11m 46s): Paul Newman. Yeah. Just goes on and on. Chad (11m 48s): His wife worked for Madonna. Joel (11m 50s): Yes. Chad (11m 51s): His wife worked for Madonna. Yeah. I mean, it's just like so awesome. Joel (11m 56s): Madonna wouldn't let you look at her. The part of the book. So there's a description of the book. It says Kerbeck shares the lies he told, the celebrities he screwed, and those who screwed him, the cons he ran and the money he made and lost along the way. If that doesn't get your attention to go check out that episode, I don't know what will, but that was one of my favorite episodes from 2022. Chad (12m 18s): I'm with you there. I'm with you there. Joel (12m 21s): All right. When we get back, we'll talk about some more of our favorite episodes. Chad (12m 28s): All right, Chad, give us fave number two. All right. My top episode. This next one comes from weekly show that we dropped on September 2nd, and it's entitled Smart Recruiters Times Are Changing. On this episode, we were both surprised to hear that first and foremost YouTube is the number one podcast platform. I think that that surprised us both. And then we jumped right into CEOs being on the clock. Jerome stepped down as the CEO at Smart Recruiters while the CFO, Jeremy Johnson stepped in as the interim CEO. Chad (13m 11s): Also during that episode, Snagajob downsized and it seemed like CEO Machu Stevenson's shot clock was running out. Then right on cue this week, Snagajob appoints a new CEO, Keith Forshew, who was Snag's Chief Product Officer. So Snag was signaling back in September, but they kept the CEO in place without the need for a clunky move to an interim CEO like Smart Recruiters. What the hell happened at Smart Recruiters that they needed to actually kick the CEO to the curb like that? Joel (13m 45s): Yeah. Chad (13m 45s): Clients and shareholders want finesse. They want the air of control. And what they don't want is a dramatic move that happened months ago without a CEO in a seat. So, back to Snag real quick. I believe much like monster.com snag lost its way years ago, Machu was a guy who couldn't write the ship fast enough. I mean, it was, to be quite frank, Snag to me is a sinking ship. Joel (14m 15s): Yep. Chad (14m 15s): And he just couldn't keep it afloat. But why hasn't Snag and ZipRecruiter been knocking the cover off the ball? Those are, you know, those are the questions I have. Joel (14m 25s): And good questions they are. And maybe we'll answer them in 2023. Chad (14m 28s): Let's hope. Joel (14m 29s): But for now, let's move to my second fave of the year. So this is a little bit of, I'm gonna cheat a little bit. I'm gonna cheat a little, but I'm gonna put two episodes into one. But I think they compliment each other so well that, that you have to put 'em together. So. Chad (14m 42s): I appreciate it. Joel (14m 43s): Yeah. We talk a lot about Indeed on this fucking show, partly because people love it. When we talk about Indeed like the numbers are there that you guys love listening about or hearing about Indeed. So one of the benefits that we have on this, this show is that we are old and we've been through 20 plus years in this industry, which means we know some people. Chad (15m 1s): Stop calling me old fucker. Jesus. Joel (15m 3s): We have some context. Like, we were there, right? Like yes, we were at Woodstock so we can talk about it. And we know the people that were there with us. And the first one comes in, we interviewed Tim Dineen, who was, I don't know, let's call him the SEO guy at Indeed, which if you know about Indeed the thing was built on Google, like the thing was built on search. So if you want to point to someone who was integral in the success of Indeed, it was Tim Dineen who went on to found Recruitix, and we talked to him for a good hour I think, about the history of Indeed starting it up, you know, Craigslist banning them from scraping the site. Joel (15m 44s): Fear of, you know, Monster at the time, laughing at companies that do Superbowl ads, which is amusing because Indeed does so many ads today. But it really gives you, if you work in Indeed or interested in or like the industry, it's such a great historical perspective of how Indeed became the 800 pound gorilla in our space. And my tie in with that episode is our talk with Jim Durbin, the Self-professed Indeed whisperer. Chad (16m 12s):ti Indeed Whisperer. Joel (16m 13s): Yes, right? So, so he wanted to come on and he deals with them intimately with through customers and his own stuff and advertising and what, so we brought Jim on the show to talk about what's going on at Indeed. What are you seeing? What's your predictions for the future? Where are they going? What are they doing? And I think he helped frame from his perspective what's going on in Indeed. So we talk a lot about Indeed on the show. To me, these are the two episodes that really sort of tie in together really well and bring the Indeed news commentary, editorial opinion together on those two shows. Joel (16m 54s): If you're interested in Indeed, you gotta listen to those two episodes. Chad (16m 59s): Yes, great shows, great shows. And, I can't tell you how many people actually reached out after and said, thanks for bringing those guys on. Joel (17m 9s): Yep. No doubt. Let's take a quick break and we'll get to our final faves when we return. All right, Chad, let's get your final fave from 2022. Chad (17m 25s): Okay, my last pick for top episodes for 2022 is from our Cult Brand series dropped on October 3rd, which was entitled TikTok Is Glassdoor Gone Wild. The first topic on this show is about something that I believe is probably the biggest conversation in our space right now, and it's pay equity. In this episode, we start off talking about salary transparency, the actual article that Julie Calli wrote on recruitmentmarketing.com, and it quickly bleeds into wage equity. These are two different yet connected topics. Both of these topics will not go away no matter how badly employers want it to go away, especially with new New York City and California joining Colorado and dropping the laws that mandate salaries on jobs. Chad (18m 15s): Julie and I gotten into a little bit of a spat. Joel (18m 18s): Yep. Chad (18m 18s): On how, how hard or easy it is for hiring companies to make this happen. But no matter what, it's a hot topic. Awesome conversation, and the debate's definitely not going away. Then we talk about TikTok. Joel (18m 34s): Yep. Chad (18m 35s): We talk about TikTok just about as much as we talk about OnlyFans, it's all the rage. And TikTok is, every time a new platform comes, a new technology, something that is all the rage. The first thing a company asks is, how do I get my jobs on that, on TikTok or what have you? They just don't understand it. So this episode digs into what TikTok can actually help a company do not about posting jobs and doing the 1990s bullshit that we did back in the day, but actually evolving and learning how to use these new platforms. Chad (19m 16s): So really cool. I loved listening to it again today. Joel (19m 21s): Yeah, nice. So the question is, does TikTok get banned in 2023? And we stop talking about it because no one can use it in the free world, if you will. Chad (19m 32s): I'd say no. Joel (19m 33s): All right. Let's get to my, my final ooh favorite episode. That's right. Let's build the sucker up. All right, let's talk about assessments. Let start that over. Chad (19m 41s): I thought, I thought you were gonna say incest. I'm like, no, I we're not, we're not talking about incest on this show, Joel. Yeah. Joel (19m 48s): All right. So, I'd say a few times a year we have a guest that you book, and it's about something that frankly, when I think about assessments, sfx (19m 58s): 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel (20m 2s): And, you know, I was like, okay, let's do this thing. And we had Caitlin MacGregor. Chad (20m 11s): Yes. Joel (20m 11s): Who is CEO at Plum, as well as being a Canadian. And she came on and talked about assessments, which was fantastic. I was engaged the whole time. She's obviously very eloquent, she is very passionate about what they're doing. We're still using World War II technology. Like she went into the history of assessments, where we are today. She may or may not have thrown some companies under the bus, which was fun. And Hung Lee, our favorite porn star. By the way, if you, you know, haven't checked him out, sfx (20m 47s): push it. Joel (20m 47s): So Hung Lee does his newsletter and he highlights us occasionally, and this was one of his favorite episodes as well, whic held some weight to me. So this is what Hung Lee said about assessment witchcraft with Caitlin MacGregor . That episode so Hung said quote, Chad and Cheese are back with a great conversation on assessment with Caitlin MacGregor, which dives into history, sociology, and foundational tenets of assessments. It's fundamentally an assessment for an individual who we assess in isolation from others when we are social and will eventually work with others. So if you're even not that interested in assessments, I think this interview with with Caitlin was fantastic from a lot of different angles. Joel (21m 33s): And that rounds up my favorite three episodes from 2022. In summary, I've got the Ruse author, I've got Indeed with Tim Dineen and Jim Durbin, an Assessment Witchcraft with Caitlin MacGregor And your three were, again, Chad (21m 49s): My three were Indeed versus LinkedIn, Lieven and I had fun with that on the Battle for Europe. Then our weekly show had Smart Recruiters Times They Are Changing, talking about Jerome stepping down and Snagajob having issues. And last but not least, TikTok is Glassdoor Gone Wild where Julie Calli schooled us on Pay Transparency and TikTok: Recruiting a Different Way with TikTok. Joel (22m 21s): Shockingly, no unicorns were mentioned in this episode as our top three shows. Shocking. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Well, Chad, been a great year. We'll be back with our prediction show. We'll be back with real news and commentary when the world gets out of its holiday funk. Happy holidays to you. Merry New Year. Chad (22m 39s): Happy holidays! Joel (22m 39s): Happy New Year, all that good stuff. And looking forward to 2023 and all the great episodes yes. That we'll be able to talk about on this same show a year from today probably. And with that kids, we out. Chad (22m 56s): We out. 7 (23m 45s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

What's a holiday season without the boys giving their top picks for naughtiest and nicest stories, characters and commentary from the year that was 2022? Hot garbage, that's what! Featured are Slack, LinkedIn, pay transparency, Indeed and (of course) OnlyFans. The boys also give their picks for most binge-worthy content from music to podcasts to movies and more. Enjoy ... and don't shoot your eye out! 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (22s): Oh, yeah, big announcement, Chad and Cheese NFTs coming soon, only $99 a piece. Hi di, ho ho ho kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "Kringle" Cheesman. Chad (37s): This is Chad "release the hounds. No, no, no. I mean, Trump's taxes" Sowash. Joel (42s): And on this episode, we get a little festive and announce our naughty and nice awards for the year and give you our favorite binge-worthy content to go with your yummy cup of eggnog. Don't shoot your eye out. Let's do this. Chad (1m 0s): I love the holidays! Joel (1m 2s): It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Chad (1m 5s): It's beautiful. You guys are getting ready to get like this bomb or something that's coming up. Joel (1m 11s): Yeah, yeah. They're building this thing up, so it'll be like an inch of snow, but apparently we're taping this on Wednesday, Thursday. Late cold front snow. They're saying three to six inches in our area. If you're north of that, you're gonna get a lot more apparently. Cold temperatures, like negatives. Could be a white Christmas though, which would make the kids and everybody really happy. Chad (1m 37s): Hopefully it doesn't come too early because we have family flying out of Cincinnati to come to Paris to meet us. So Yeah, they're flying out on Thursday afternoon or so hopefully they'll get out Joel (1m 50s): Cinci's in that like one to three. So, I think Cinci'll be fine. Good, good. From what, at least the forecast we're getting. Chad (1m 58s): Yeah. We're looking at some of the radar on that. I'm like, holy fuck. Joel (2m 1s): Yeah. Yeah. Think of me when you're barefoot on the beach drinking a Duvel. Would you? Chad (2m 7s): I'll do my best. Joel (2m 9s): In your stocking cap. Yeah. Chad (2m 13s): So the first present we're gonna give to the listeners today is bingeable stuff, right? I mean, we're gonna talk about our favorite binges right now. Joel (2m 23s): Two middle-aged white guys are gonna tell you what's cool, everybody. What could be better than that? So Chad and I have talked, we've come up with a movie of the year, a show, usually probably a streaming show, but any show, an album or music of the year, and then a podcast, because that's what we do. And I'll go ahead and go first if you are okay with that Chad. Chad (2m 47s): Have it. Joel (2m 47s): All right. My first movie is Facing Nolan. If you're a baseball fan, if you're around watching that in the eighties, seventies, even into the nineties. Chad (2m 57s): Nice. Joel (2m 57s): You know the name Nolan Ryan, personally, my favorite pitcher of all time, grew up in Houston and watched him kind of play with the Astros and then the Rangers. Anyway, this is a documentary on Netflix that outlines his life. Early kid in Texas with just a gift. Married his high school sweetheart, has tons of records. Played 27 years, I think in the majors. Texas, Americana, sports like baseball. It's it all. It's a feel good story. And, side note about my father who I gave birthday shoutouts. He celebrated 83 years on Pplanet earth yesterday, my father, after he retired, moved to Austin. He owns a minor league team called the Express. Joel (3m 39s): My father was the clubhouse guy for the visiting team. So my dad actually worked for Nolan Ryan. So there's a little bit of a family connection. Chad (3m 47s): Nice. Joel (3m 47s): To this movie that's nice. But if you like sports docs, check out Facing Nolan. Chad (3m 55s): That's awesome. So my movie, it's on Netflix. It's called Bullet Train. So this is for the lovers of Snatch and Deadpool. You're gonna wanna pop some corn, grab a beer and hold on and enjoy the ride. Oh yeah, Joel (4m 10s): Yeah. Snatch is number one in your heart. Chad (4m 13s): It is. And Deadpool. I mean, it's just one of those things where you can turn your brain off, laugh your ass off. It's fast. It's fun. It's a blast. So check it out. Turn your brain off. Don't think too hard about this one. Joel (4m 27s): Sounds like holiday fun for the kids. Chad (4m 29s): Bullet Train. Joel (4m 29s): And, your wife will love it too, cuz Brad Pit is starring in it. I'll go to my favorite show of the year. Chad (4m 36s): Yeah. Joel (4m 37s): And I had a little bit of recency bias. I wanted to put White Lotus in, which is still great, but I was like, it was just on, just finished. I need to go back in the archives of the shows that I watched and I came with, my favorite show of the year was a show called The Bear. Stared the old guy or the one of the kids from Shameless. He's a chef in Chicago. His brother dies. He takes over the restaurant, which is, imagine this an Italian beef place, which appeals to me, obviously. Chaos ensues. Apparently it's as close to like a restaurant situation as possible. But if you love good drama, kitchen drama Chicago, a lot of flavor of the Windy City? Joel (5m 18s): The Bear is something that you should check out. I think it's already been green lighted for a second season, which should be coming next year. The Bear. Chad (5m 28s): The Bear. My bingeable show is on Netflix. It's called 1899. It's an eight episode series. It's about a ship that's headed to America in 1899, hence the title. That comes across it's a sister ship that was lost at sea months prior. It's a time and space bending journey, and it's just as creepy as it is cool. This is one that you're gonna want to turn your brain on for. The first one was brainless. This one's a thinker. It's pretty cool. Joel (6m 1s): Which means it'll be awful for our audience. But anyway, when you first said that, I thought it was one of the Yellowstone shows. They have like, oh yeah, 1893, 1923. I'm like, I thought that was one of these Yellowstone shows. But no, this is a separate, has nothing to do with Yellowstone whatsoever. Chad (6m 17s): No. Joel (6m 18s): Okay. Chad (6m 19s): Nothing. The cool thing about this is it's Netflix is doing really cool content all over the world. Joel (6m 24s): Yep. Chad (6m 24s): So, I mean, you're talking about like our foreign language podcasts, right? Joel (6m 31s): By Veritone. Chad (6m 32s): Right. Yeah. But they're all in these different languages, right? It's either Spanish or German or what have you. This one is multi-language and it is incredibly cool because you can tell that individuals are actually speaking different languages and if you turn the subtitles off. Joel (6m 48s): Yeah. Chad (6m 48s): I mean, it gets a little freaky, but it's really cool. At first we started watching it cuz we're here in Portugal, and for some reason it started right out of the gate in Spanish. And I'm like, what in the hell? And then some people were talking in English. I had to go in turn on the dubbing. It's, it's really cool. Netflix is doing some really cool shit. Joel (7m 4s): That's kind of a thing now, isn't it? Wasn't there a movie called Here, There and Everywhere that was hot that did kind of, that it'd go to English and then like different languages. Like, that's a thing now. All right, let's go to music, which I hate because as a younger man, I would watch the Grammys and they would get, like, in the nineties, they would give the album of the year to Bob Dylan. And I would think you guys are so outta touch giving awards to Paul McCartney, like they're so past their prime. So I'm a little hesitant as a 50 something to give my musical choice of the year. But, what the hell. So my favorite album this year was Arcade Fire's We. For all of our Canadian listeners, and we, we know that there are many out there. Joel (7m 49s): For my money the best Canadian band of all time, sorry, Rush fans. It's a great album. It's sort of recorded on the pandemic, but it has some like inspirational, positive, optimistic viewpoints of where the future's going. Sort of a double album that's not a double album. Another side note on this one is it's Lead singer Will Butler was caught in a scandal of sexual misconduct this past year. His wife is in the band, so I'm thinking that might be a little bit volatile for their future. So this may be the last Arcade Fire album for all we know. So that gave it a little bit of, you know, higher level of importance to me that this might be the Swan Song of Arcade Fire in their 20 some year career. Chad (8m 35s): Very Fleetwood Mac on that one. Joel (8m 37s): Yeah. Yeah. Chad (8m 37s): Yeah, mine, it's a throwback, but it's my favorite. I went to my Spotify to see what I listened, to the most this year. And it's Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. It's not new, but it's probably one of the most amazing albums that's out there. 1959, I believe it actually came out. John Coltrane played on Kind of Blue. Again, it's a staple and it's something I listen to just about on The Daily. Joel (9m 7s): All right. All right. If we're going back that way, I'm gonna throw in Revolver, which was reissued this year. Oh, it has some really, Ooh, really great stuff. Arguably the best Beatles album of all time, but that's a whole separate podcast. All right, well, let's get to our favorite podcasts of the year, because we know a thing or two about podcasts. So for me, I think the most digestible podcast for anyone, I listen to politics stuff and, and technology. But the one I think anyone that's listening could gravitate to is the 60 songs that explain the nineties. They're well past 60 songs at this point, but if you enjoyed nineties music, every hit song is covered. Joel (9m 49s): They just did Vanilla Ice, Ice, Ice, Baby. They did Salt and Pepper recently. He's just great. There's no ads. He's a journalist. Great sort of setup for these songs. Just pick your favorite songs from the nineties and there's an episode on it. It's very digestible. Check it out. That is 60 songs that Explain the Nineties and it's way past 60 because the nineties was complicated. You need more, more songs than 60 to explain the decade. Chad (10m 21s): Totally. Exactly. My podcast is Pitchfork Economics. I've talked about this podcast several times over the years, mainly because it's how it relates to recruitment, employees and business. The specific episode that I think that you will enjoy, Joel is Nick Hanauer. Again, a billionaire just had Scott Galloway on to talk about his new book. America Isn't Lost, It's Adrift. So, I think it's a great podcast to be able to really get into economics and obviously opinion as well. Pitchfork economics. Joel (10m 59s): All right, kids. And that is our binge worthy content from 2022. Let's get into our nice and naughty list Chad by starting with the things we thought were nice from 2022. Chad (11m 13s): All right. First and foremost, it's transparency to the people kids. So on the Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelly, we recorded a 2022 recap podcast episode that dropped earlier this week where you predicted that pay transparency will have a moment in 2023. Well, I think it had some pretty damn good moments in 2022, earlier this year that US Women's Soccer team received pay equity and parody with the US men's team. And that was mainly due to pay transparency. New York City, California and the EU have dropped regulations in the EUs case, a proposal for all EU nations around pay transparency. Chad (11m 60s): And in the US, California, and New York City join Colorado in dropping actual regulation. In California and New York, New York City, those pay transparency regulations go into effect January, 2023. That's next month A couple years behind Colorado, who actually dropped the same types of regs in 2021. Specifically in our industry though Adzuna added salary to jobs and they also launched a salary transparency petition while reaching out an engaging US and UK politicians. So, UK, NYC, California, and everyone who is driving real salary and pay transparency, including the women's soccer team. Chad (12m 48s): You go on the nice list for 2022. Joel (12m 51s): Alright, transparency on the nice list. Alright, well, incarcerated workers, getting a second chance has been a theme of our show every year since we've been doing this I thing. But my nice list starts with Slack, the workplace messaging app, in case you didn't know. They have a program called Next Chapter that train formerly incarcerated people to become software engineers. The program which has trained 30 apprentices so far, as we reported a few months ago, has helped all of them secure full-time tech jobs at companies such as Slack, Dropbox, Square, and Zoom. In a partnership with the Aspen Institute, Slack is launching Rework Reentry, a project that aims to make it easier for other companies to follow their model. Joel (13m 37s): The project will provide a tactical playbook for companies, host events between tech leaders and justice reform advocates, and release short documentary films about the experiences of formerly incarcerated people after they leave prison. Shout out to Slack and they made my nice list. This is in light of 70 Million Jobs, by the way, if you wanna look back on our archives, an interview with Richard Bronson talks about their company, they went out of business last year due to covid and pandemic issues. Also, throw in that we talked about an advertisement by Mod Pizza, which featured a worker with an ankle bracelet, which I thought was a fantastic message for the kids out there. Joel (14m 21s): Fortunately, there are sites like Honest Jobs out there and Indeed have also created similar goals, but more corporations getting involved is a great thing. And Slack is driving this initiative. So they make my nice list for 2022. Chad (14m 36s): Yeah, The only way to get this, get this taken care of is for companies to actually get into the game. Vendors are great, love it, but the company's got to be involved. Joel (14m 49s): When we get back, we'll get to what everyone wants the naughty list. All right, Chad, who's the first recipient of a naughty award from 2022? Chad (15m 0s): Well, I'm gonna talk about LinkedIn's snuff film that they made this year, much like a Rob Zombie movie. It took about six years for LinkedIn to finish its snuff film with IQ and was finally wrapped up and in the can in 2022. So after this snuff of HighQ, we now see a world closed innovation when it comes to data and HR tech platforms. And it didn't have to be this way. Instead of snuffing out a startup like HighQ who would have liked access to LinkedIn's public data to create more innovative point solutions, LinkedIn could have created a marketplace, we've heard of these, which would have spurred innovation and given LinkedIn embedded information on how well these new startup platforms and ideas were performing instead of finding a way to just kill innovation. Chad (15m 55s): So LinkedIn, with the help of the US courts have snuffed out HighQ, they've snuffed out innovation and new blood and ideas that our industry desperately, desperately need. That's why LinkedIn is on my naughty list for 2022. sfx (16m 14s): That escalated quickly. Joel (16m 15s): Yeah, that's naughty. That's naughty. Chad (16m 16s): Yeah. Joel (16m 17s): We'll miss that topic. That's been a zombie topic for us for five years. Chad (16m 21s): Yeah. Joel (16m 22s): That we won't get to talk about anymore. LinkedIn has put a head of every startup on a spike outside of its headquarters to warn everyone about don't fuck with us. Thanks LinkedIn. Thanks LinkedIn. All right. Chad (16m 33s): Not cool. Joel (16m 33s): Let's get to my naughty and there were a lot of candidates for this topic. Chad, there was Hurricane CEO, there was United Furniture that laid everybody off with a text message in the middle of the night. Chad (16m 48s): Oh yeah. Joel (16m 49s): The 70 K year CEO that was misconducting himself with the ladies at work. Chad (16m 54s): The ladies. Joel (16m 54s): I wrote these down. I went through the year and I said, okay, I'm gonna just dump these on a page. And I got to one that was Chris LaVoy of a formerly top recruiter reality show. And I thought, well, I'm gonna go dig into this. And I spent about two hours last night in a wormhole going over this story. So a little context, Chris LaVoy is a guy that came into our industry. He actually started as a recruiter. He did some film stuff. He started a show in 2014 called Top Recruiter. Some people that we know and people that are listening to this, know some of the people on the show. It had three seasons, I don't know even where to start with this. Joel (17m 35s): A guy named Nick Fishman, who I worked for, talked about getting pitched by Chris back in the day for $50,000 to do this show. Chris had these trailers and previews on YouTube. These trailers shows had like 500,000 views. Very few comments, right? I mean, totally bought these impressions and views of these YouTube videos. So Nick Fishman, to his credit, said, no, I'm good on sponsoring this show. But we know some of the members on this program. Anyway, this guy got money shows really weren't produced. People were told that it was gonna be on Netflix, Apple TV, Google Play. Unfortunately, most of shows on streaming services are only on one service. Joel (18m 18s): So like very few shows go across multiple, Chad (18m 22s): Platforms. Joel (18m 22s): Platforms, right? So people could have asked those questions. Anyway, he moved into other shows called Four Days to Save the World. And his scam was, he would have telemarketers call influencers and sell them on the idea of paying $25,000 to $50,000 to be on these shows. Chad (18m 40s): Ooh, wow. Joel (18m 40s): They would build their brand, they'd be on Netflix and all these major, you know, platforms, they'd be famous and get their time in the sunlight. So these telemarketers in terms of, there's a five piece story in the Toronto Sun, which I encourage anyone to go read if they wanna know more about this. He cleared about five to $6 million in this scam. So he would get people to come to Toronto, or sorry, Montreal, on their own dime. And I came across the name Aaron Stewart, which we all know as listeners of the show is the CEO of job.com. Aaron was one of the participants, as I'm reading this story that actually went to Montreal. Aaron was convinced to bring out a guest, fly out on his own dime to Montreal. Chad (19m 22s): Hello. Joel (19m 23s): They show for this show. It's a total crackerjack operation. People are totally scammed. Then they sign this NDA that says, don't talk about the show until it's released. Right? So it there's this inbed. People are silent about the scam because they're afraid to get sued because if they talk about the show, that's gonna be a bad thing. They actually had cameos, we're familiar with Cameo where celebrities give messages. So, this cat had Cameos by Ray Lewis and Elijah Wood, or Frodo as someone know from Lord of the Rings. Chad (19m 55s): Jesus Christ. Joel (19m 55s): So, part of the pitch was like, you know, Ray Lewis, Hall of Fame football player saying, you know, he's behind this organization, good luck with it, da da da. And so he makes it look like such a legitimate thing. People came out that are brands to be judges just for like the hell of it. They wanted to be involved in this project. Anyway, I don't wanna go on, I don't wanna give a similar oxygen than it's worth, but Chris LaVoy, who was Top Recruiter, people will maybe know the show, his organization, or if you go out to Human to Human is the website that's still around. Most of the shows are just trailers. But you can watch the Top Recruiter shows Chris's LinkedIn page is gone. Any kind of social media is gone. Joel (20m 38s): The Top Recruiter TV website is gone. You can go into archive.org and look at some of the old pages. But this guy has done stuff in recruiting. So if you're listening and Chris LaVoy calls, please do yourself a favor. Do your homework and act accordingly. Chad (20m 57s): Hang up! Joel (20m 58s): Act accordingly. Yes. This guy has a weird history of doing some shady shit and he, I think deserves aptly a Naughty Award from me for just being a douchebag, I guess. Like Chris LaVoy. Congratulations. Chad (21m 14s): The Douchebag Award. Okay. No. Joel (21m 16s): Okay. All right. Let's go back to the nice list. Chad (21m 21s): Ooh! Joel (21m 21s): Who makes your nice for 2022? Chad (21m 24s): Well, this one I'm calling the Bridges of Skills Gap County. Joel (21m 31s): Clint Eastwood reference. Nice. Chad (21m 32s): Yes, Exactly. Thought you'd like that. Ever since the US and other governments around the world started narrowly focusing on prepping kids for university and pulling focus away from the trades, we have started to see a huge gap in talent in the skilled trade area. This year, Home Depot created the Path to Pro program, where the Home Depot is helping businesses around the US to amplify skilled trades careers, and also surface educational programs to help people choose a path that might be different than going to university. The Home Depot's Path to Pro program should be a template for all other organizations who are experiencing a skills gap in talent pipeline shortage. Chad (22m 19s): This program itself could be an easy template and picked up by companies who need to drive talent into software, jobs, pharma jobs, engineering jobs, and the list goes on. So I think the Home Depot for me is definitely much like Slack on the nice for 2022 list. Companies have to step the fuck up and they've got to stop looking for corporate welfare from the government. You gotta do it yourself kids. Joel (22m 50s): Well, my nice recipient is a little bit naughty. Chad. Chad (22m 55s): Ooh, sfx (22m 55s): What are you doing? Step bro! Joel (22m 58s): All right, my nice for '22 goes to OnlyFans. OnlyFans had a minute in 2022, Chad? Chad (23m 4s): Oh yeah, oh yeah. Joel (23m 5s): The great resignation story after story. I encourage you, if you're interested, go Google, you know, OnlyFans, side hustle, success stories, whatever, but we've talked about on the show teachers, you know, side hustles, nurses, cops, Carmen Electra, GenX, you know, fireball starting an OnlyFans page, millions of dollars extra income. Like this was a huge story, sadly, in part because a lot of these women got fired for what they were doing. Now this is an adult site, they're adults. Kids should not be on these sites, you know, for teachers, you know, do you really care if your police lady is doing something on the side? Joel (23m 50s): Look, men are stupid people, stupid creatures. And you know, they're profiting off that stupidity, which let's be honest, they deserve, because we've been running the show for so long, they might as well get a little bit of something from us, from a cash standpoint. We remember Ukraine? OnlyFans banned Russian accounts. Ukrainian women in droves went to the platform for extra funds as they were under attack from Russia. 23 year olds are making millions of dollars buying investment properties. Bad baby. One of your favorite stars out there had receipts or proof that she had made $52 million on OnlyFans last year. Joel (24m 33s): The great resignation was a huge story in '22, which former porn star Bre Olson thinks is all traceable back to OnlyFans. So I want to end my nice with s share from Bre Olson, who, if you know Charlie Sheen, she was his girlfriend for a period. So she has a little bit of history there. You can Google her, but she has this to say about the great resignation. sfx (24m 55s): I'm watching 60 Minutes and they're like, where are the Gen Z female workers going? That is like the biggest one besides boomers. Where are they? Like they're quitting their jobs and they're not coming back and they're interviewing someone from LinkedIn and they're like, well, what they're quitting the most is service industry jobs and retail jobs. It's like, have y'all not heard of OnlyFans? Do you know the millions of women on there, on Fan Centro on all these other websites? Like, finally, now that sex work isn't stigmatized the way it was when I started when I was 18, why go put yourself through 40 hours a week when you can work five hours a week and make even more? sfx (25m 41s): Like, why is this a discussion in the news still? Really? Why? Joel (25m 44s): That's right. Kids OnlyFans. It's my second nice list award. Chad (25m 46s): Was she on a gondola? It sounded like she was in Venice and there was like music playing in background. Joel (25m 54s): She was in my living room, dude. We were playing Jenga. Chad (26m 4s): Jenga. Joel (26m 4s): All right, man, let's take a break from our naughty and nice list and get to our final naughties for 2022. Chad (26m 12s): Good idea. Joel (26m 13s): All right, Chad, you know, our fans want to end this on a naughty note. So who gets your second naughty award for 2022? Chad (26m 23s): I'm gonna surprise everybody. Joel (26m 26s): Ooh! Chad (26m 26s): I'm gonna surprise everybody. Joel (26m 28s): Yeah. Chad (26m 29s): Okay. Not so much. So my next one's called a new level of Indeed Jujitsu. So for years, indeed has demonstrated it's business jujitsu skills, and all coordinated to this one statement. It's for a better job seeker experience. Using that phrase, Indeed has cut off direct feeds of jobs from direct employers, stopped allowing free feeds from job boards and staffing companies because it was better for the job seeker, although if the job boards or staffing companies paid the ransom, then Indeed allowed their jobs on the site, which meant somehow magically those same jobs were better for the job seeker at the time. Chad (27m 15s): Then Indeed re-engineered from a job search engine to a job board when introducing the two paying upgrade, which literally stopped taking job seekers directly to jobs on hiring company sites to apply in one click and gave them an interstitial job description, landing page, just like a job board, and still charge the company's a pay per click as if the candidate was still landing on the corporate career site and they were not. All to this year, in 2022, the Ultimate Jujitsu move happened. Chad (27m 56s): Indeed introduced the Pay per Apply Start, which literally was the exact same model the Indeed Job search engine had prior sans the interstitial page. What this means is that Indeed just added another click and changed the term ppc to pay per apply start or ppa start. The exact same shit while raising prices dramatically. So therefore, Indeed made my naughty list for 2022 Joel (28m 27s): And aptly so. sfx (28m 28s): Merry Christmas. ya filthy animal. Joel (28m 29s): All right. My second naughty. Here's a hint. sfx (28m 32s): bell chime. Joel (28m 32s): Alright, let's talk about fast food. One of my favorite topics, but not Taco Bell, who I was gonna say almost a nice recipient. Wow. And they're the lead on favorite for 2023 because they're releasing two different versions of the Mexican pizza, which, you know, I love. They're gonna add a spicy version apparently, and a triple decker crispy version. Chad (28m 59s): Ridiculous. Joel (28m 60s): Let's get to Burger King as my naughty. So Kevin Ford, an employee at Burger King in Las Vegas, has received over $100,000 in donations on GoFundMe. Why you ask? A video of him receiving a goodie bag on his 27th work anniversary went viral on TikTok and Twitter. Let me remind everyone, 27th year of work at Burger King. Okay, the bag contained, get this a movie ticket, a Starbucks cup, and some candy. Many online criticize the gift as inadequate. No shit. For an employee who had worked at the fast food chain for almost three decades. Joel (29m 43s): Ford's daughter created the GoFundMe page to allow her father to visit his grandchildren in Texas. The fundraiser quickly exceeded its original goal and received donations from comedian David Spade and others. Burger King say that the gift was a quote, "reward and recognition of a short-term positive performance experience". And that the company has a quote, "robust employee recognition program" end quote for such milestones. Robust employee recognition program, including, again, a movie ticket, a Starbucks cup, and some candy. Chad (30m 18s): Not even a lifetime supply of Whoppers? Joel (30m 26s): That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Burger King, man. Come on. Come on, man. sfx (30m 31s): Merry Christmas you filthy animal. Joel (30m 32s): Oh, man. All right. That I think, ends our annual show where there's little news to talk about and Chad and I review the year. That was 2022. Chad, that is our naughty and nice list and our binge worthy content from 2022. Happy holidays. It's been a good year. Chad and Cheese (30m 56s): We out. We out. OUTRO (31m 40s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Maybe you've noticed that we're on the doorstep of another holiday season. If not, what's wrong with ya', ya' filthy animal? As such, The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing, featuring Julie Calli, President at RecruitmentMarketing.com, dives into the movies and songs that make the season so special (or a nightmare, in this case). Specifically, the gang shares their favorite and least favorite flicks and tunes. Hallelujah! Where's the Tylenol? 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. sfx (0s): Merry Christmas, a filthy animal and a happy New Year. INTRO (8s): 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 (33s): Oh, yeah. Support for Trump is cratering. England is out of the World Cup and Elon just got booed at a Dave Chappelle stand up. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol? Hi, kids. You were listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your co-host Joel "cuddly as a cactus" Cheesman. Chad (53s): This is Chad "Lethal Weapon is a Christmas movie" Sowash Julie (57s): Julie, "bringing joy to the world" Calli. Joel (1m 1s): On this episode it's sugar plums in your pie hole and coal in your stocking. Let's do this. Happy holidays, kids. Chad (1m 14s): Happy holidays, all the holidays. Loving life here in 20 degrees Celsius weather, which is about 68 degrees Fahrenheit for you. Joel (1m 23s): You suck, dude. Nobody likes you. sfx (1m 25s): booooooo. Joel (1m 25s): This is why no one invites you to the parties, Chad. Julie (1m 28s): Meanwhile, I'm in New England with a beautiful snow covered atmosphere. Chad (1m 34s): See! She loves it. Joel (1m 34s): That's lovely. Yeah, Chad (1m 35s): There's nothing wrong with that. Joel (1m 36s): You should be in the spirit for this one. All right, so we're taking a break from the hard-hitting news and commentary. Chad (1m 42s): Yes. Joel (1m 42s): That we're known for and we're gonna do a little holiday fun. We're gonna go through each of us and we're gonna talk about our favorite holiday songs and movies, but also, cuz it is the Chad and Cheese with Julie Calli. We're also doing the worst holiday songs Chad (2m 2s): Yes. Joel (2m 2s): And holiday movies. Chad (2m 3s): According to us. Joel (2m 4s): Are you ready for this? Chad (2m 5s): Let's do it. Joel (2m 6s): Before we get to the list. Oh, yeah. I wanna highlight the folks at Recruitment Marketing are putting on a little vote, little contest. Chad (2m 17s): Little awards. Joel (2m 17s): Julie, tell us about that. And how the kids out there can vote. Give a gift, if you will, to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (2m 24s): What do we win? Julie (2m 26s): Yeah. Do you enjoy this podcast? Well you should go to rmvote.com. We're doing a survey for the audience to find out what is their favorite podcast? What is their favorite job site? Ask a couple questions to find out what people love, what shows they love, what sites they love. So we can give out some awards to the industry in January. Joel (2m 50s): Conferences. Conferences are on there. Julie (2m 51s): Conferences as well. Joel (2m 53s): You guys cover all the bases. All the bases. RMvote.com Kids. Chad (3m 0s): But do we win alcohol? That's the question. Joel (3m 3s): We win glory. Julie (3m 5s): You win glory and bragging rights. Joel (3m 7s): Glory in the metaphorical gutting of our competition. Julie (3m 9s): Okay. Joel (3m 9s): That's what we get. That's what we get to do. Shall we get to the list people? Chad (3m 17s): Let's do it. Joel (3m 19s): All right. First up, let's talk. Favorite holiday films? Chad, you're up. Chad (3m 23s): Oh, yeah. So a staple that we have watched ever since I was a little kid. 1954's White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kay, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen. This is a standard for all Christmas movies. It's even in Technicolor and VistaVision, which in the 1950s was the ancestor of 4K movie resolution, for all you kids out there. Anyway, White Christmas is a comedy, a musical, and a love story, set just after World War III, Danny and Bing find themselves snowed in a lodge in the hills of Vermont, much like Julie Cali is probably right now. Chad (4m 6s): And it is just a great film and it's one that you can watch over and over and over and just get you in the Christmas spirit. So I love, and the kids love White Christmas. Joel (4m 17s): So great that you've lost everyone under 40 on our podcast. That's Chad's vote for best holiday film. Julie, what's your fave? Julie (4m 26s): This is really hard to pick because there's so many that I love, but yeah, what I really enjoyed, and I watched a lot when I was young, was Scrooged. I am a huge Bill Murray fan. Joel (4m 40s): Bill Murray. Julie (4m 40s): I love. Joel (4m 41s): And the eighties Hair, the Mullet with Bill Murray. Julie (4m 44s): Yes. He did have a mullet in that. There are so many lines from that movie that we quote in our house on a regular basis. So I'd say that is a daily part of my life that movie. Joel (4m 56s): Scrooged came out in '89, I think. '88, '89. Julie (4m 58s): Oh really? Joel (4m 59s): That was. Julie (4m 60s): My, I remember it was like a new and modern movie for Christmas. Yeah, it's a good story. It's a good comedy. I I really love that. Joel (5m 8s): Trust me, it'll be new for a lot of our listeners. They'll, they'll consider that one new, especially after Chad's pick from 1824. This is a really new. All right. All right kids. So my favorite movie for the holiday season, A Christmas Story. Chad (5m 26s): Ralphie, Joel (5m 27s): Who Doesn't Love Ralphie Red Ryder came out in 1983, which Ralphie was roughly the same age as I was when the movie came out. So there's a little bit of a special yes. Sort of bond that I have there with Ralphie in Ohio. If you haven't seen the movie, Ralphie hopes to get a Red Ryder, BB Gun for Christmas. Insanity ensues with dogs in the neighbor, bullies in the lot, et cetera. The film also took place, or filmed partially in Cleveland, Ohio, where I lived for 10 years and still have a special place in my heart. If you're ever in Cleveland, the house that this movie was filmed in is a museum that you can go visit. Joel (6m 10s): The Bumpus' house next door where the dog, the Bumpus' dogs, that is also available to tour. And you can also spend the night in the Bumpus' house if you're so inclined to do so. Chad (6m 25s): Can you buy a leg lamp? Joel (6m 26s): Terminal tower if you're in Cleveland is at the beginning of the movie. There's a parade that goes through downtown Cleveland. A little history on the movie. Jack Nicholson was supposed to play the part of the father who instead was playing by Darren McGavin, a famous actor. But because Nicholson had just gotten done filming The Shining, they didn't think that him being like a holiday Christmas dad was really something that made a lot of sense. Peter Billingsley, who plays Ralphie in the movie, beat out Will Wheaton for you Star Trek fans. Chad (7m 1s): Okay. Joel (7m 1s): And Stand By Me fans. Chad (7m 3s): Wow. Joel (7m 3s): For the part of that. And to me it's just a great American classic thirties and forties. It's supposed to take place in northern Indiana where I live today. So there's a lot of connections to the Midwest, but for me, a Christmas Story is just a great movie. National Lampoon's Vacation was a close second for me, but a Christmas Story does win out on this one. Chad (7m 28s): Yes. Christmas Vacation. Yes. Shooter's full Clark. That's always Joel (7m 31s): Shooter's full Clark. Yes. Yes. Holy shit, there's Julie (7m 33s): So many things we could relate to with our families in that, right? That play out. Yes. Joel (7m 40s): No one picked Die Hard, which I was,I thought somebody might do that. All right, let's get to the the worst holiday movies for everybody. Chad, who? You got? Chad (7m 54s): It's the pure antithesis of what Christmas films represent. Christmas films represent family togetherness, tradition, much like White Christmas. But that movie is Bad Santa from 2003. Billy Bob Thornton plays a conman and he and his partner pose as Santa and his little elf, and they rob the department stores on Christmas Eve. They try to turn this into kinda like this anti-hero kind of movie thing with Billy Bob. Joel (8m 25s): Feel good. Chad (8m 26s): When he befriends this little fat kid who's getting bullied. Anyways no family, no togetherness, no tradition. Just incredibly awkward scenes in one line that I've never heard in a movie before. Quote. "Yeah, Mary, you're not gonna shit right for a week. That escalated quickly, I believe Bad Santa set out to do. Julie (8m 51s): You are selling me on it being a bad movie. Chad (8m 55s): Exactly. What they wanted was to create the worst Christmas movie of all time. And they did that. Joel (9m 2s): All right. Bad Santa. All right, Julie, who you got for worst holiday film? Julie (9m 7s): I think it's whenever somebody tries to put a sequel, you know, and Joel, I'm with you. I love the Christmas Story. And they just came out with the sequel Christmas Story Two. Not a fan. Joel (9m 19s): Another history, there's been three remakes of that movie, which no one has ever seen, and that's perfectly fine. Julie (9m 25s): So I guess there's all the, between one and two. Joel (9m 27s): You can watch on Netflix now. Yeah. Julie (9m 28s): But yeah, all of them. Joel (9m 30s): So I'm with you on the sequels, Julie (9m 32s): Man. Don't, there's Jingle All the Way Two, there's Home Alone Two, there's Santa Claus, Santa Claus two. Joel (9m 36s): How many of those are there? Julie (9m 38s): Whenever they try to do a sequel, it never goes. Joel (9m 44s): Martin Short couldn't even save that. Awful, awful, awful movies. All right. All the sequels get a big Boo. Chad (9m 52s): Wow. Joel (9m 52s): On Julie Calli. All right. So my worst movie also happens to be my wife's favorite holiday movie. Chad (9m 58s): Oh my God. Joel (9m 60s): And I need to make sure that I'm loaded up on Buffalo Trace and Old Forester whenever we watch it. If I wanna make it through there. So my wife's favorite movie and my least favorite is Babes in Toyland. Chad (10m 16s): Oh. Joel (10m 16s): From 1986, this movie starred a probably coked out in drunk, 11 year old Drew Barrymore, as well as Keanu Reeves. So if you haven't seen this, it's sort of a Dorothy Wizard of Oz thing where Drew Barrymore lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Yes. I've got a fuo Ohio combo for my best. Chad (10m 38s): Drew Barrymore in Cinci. Yeah. Joel (10m 40s): Cinci. Yeah. And there's a horrible song, Cincinnati, I don't always sing it cuz I'll throw up on the podcast, but she gets knocked out. She goes into this mystical land where there are police bears and battling toy soldiers. There's a bad guy named Barnaby who in the real world is like a sexual harassing boss that she has at work. Keanu Reeves, which frankly is the only star and stand out in this movie that's worth watching, is on it. Drew Barrymore is forced to marry this Barnaby guy who's also apparently related to her in some way. Joel (11m 22s): It's just, there's some sort of like bottle of evil instead of, instead of a witch or it's just really bad in there. Chad (11m 30s): Are there dragons? It sounds like House of Dragons. Joel (11m 32s): No Dragons, I don't think. Okay. I mean, I'm about four Old Fashions in by the time the end of this thing goes down. But she comes to, remember when Dorothy came to and the whole family's there and like, Hey Dorothy, you just had a bad dream. Right? So Drew Barrymore, I think is in a car wreck and gets like a major head gash. She wakes up at home, not in the hospital. Right? Like, you gotta love the eighties, like rub some dirt on it and get over it. Kid, you'd be fine. Yeah. Again, horrible movie Babes in Toyland 1986. The only redeeming thing is Keanu Reeves, who is so eighties cool. I can hardly stand it. You can have Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze and Andrew McCarthy. Joel (12m 14s): For me only River Phoenix was cooler in the eighties, but this movie is a big stinker Babes in Toyland 1986, we'll be right back to talk about our worst and favorite holiday songs. Alright, let's get musical with it. Talking about favorite and least favorite holiday songs. Chad, what's your favorite holiday tune? Chad (12m 48s): Merry Christmas off the album Merry Christmas by Mariah Carey, 1994 Christmas album. First and foremost, you, you just got to check out the album cover and then listen to this sexy sultry sounds of Mariah Carey's. Joel (13m 2s): What's on the cover? I don't know, Chad (13m 5s): It's a hot little Mariah Carey in a tight Santa outfit. Let keep going here. Joel (13m 9s): You're in the zone, man. I'll let you go. Yeah, Chad (13m 11s): Yeah. So the most played song, all I Want for Christmas is You, which is probably one that Julie hates because she heard it over and over and over. It makes $600,000 every year in royalties alone. Joel (13m 28s): Geez. Chad (13m 28s): Just that one song. $600,000 dollars. Julie (13m 32s): Goodness! Chad (13m 32s): Plus again, check out the album cover. That's my favorite. Mariah Carey love the album. But the song, all I Want for Christmas is You and the album cover. Thank you. Joel (13m 41s): Alright that's a Chad fave. Although I think we need a category for best cover, according to Chad and his commentary there. All right, Julie, let's get to your favorite holiday tune. What is it? Julie (13m 54s): My favorite is definitely the Christmas Song by Nat King Cole. Like his version of it. I just love his voice. I hear that song and I just wanna snuggle under a blanket with a hot chocolate by the fire looking at the Christmas tree. I just feel all the feels when I hear that song. Joel (14m 15s): So you should watch Chad's favorite movie from 1749 in your favorite song and feel really old in your La-z-Boy and your slippers. That's nice. Are you a fan of Nat King Cole Chad? I know you are right? Chad (14m 27s): Yes. Anything, I mean, again, we're talking, we're talking about Christmas, we're talking about tradition. So therefore. Joel (14m 31s): Yeah. Chad (14m 31s): You know, you gotta get some tradition in there. Joel (14m 34s): I feel it, man. I feel it. All right. Chad (14m 36s): I think you do. Joel (14m 37s): Well, maybe with this one you'll think I do. All right. My favorite song. So I thought about going old school on this. Yeah. I thought about Bing Crosby - White Christmas. I thought about Elvis's Blue Christmas or maybe, maybe some newer stuff like Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus's Coming to Town. No. Or maybe even Cold Play's Christmas Lights, which I know Chad's a big fan of. But I landed somewhere I didn't think I would as I dug into this issue. The best holiday song ever is You Are A Mean One Mr. Grinch sung by Thurl Ravens Croft in the sixties cartoon that I watched growing up, and I know Chad did as well. Chad (15m 16s): Yes. Joel (15m 16s): Again, here's why it's such a great song. Chad (15m 20s): Traditional. Joel (15m 21s): Well, if you love Yo Mama jokes, self-loathing and being dead inside, and who doesn't? This song helped blaze a trail to all of those things. Here's a hot list of personal attacks from the song. You're as cuddly as a cactus. You're as charming as an eel. You got termites in your smile. Your heart's an empty hole. You got garlic in your soul. Your heart's a dead tomato splotch with moldy purple spots. And the coup de grâce on this song was, you're a three decker sauerkraut and toad stool sandwich with arsenic sauce. Stink, stank, and stunk, the best holiday song ever is your mean one. Joel (16m 5s): Mr. Grant sung by the Deep throated Thurl Ravenscroft. Chad (16m 7s): Very much, very much so. I've gotta throw in a close second cuz you're gonna love this Cheesman. Joel (16m 17s): Oh, okay. Chad (16m 18s): You're gonna love this. I love Christmas and Hollis. 1987, bring on Run-D.M.C. Joel (16m 25s): That's it's Christmas time in Hollands Queens. Chad (16m 28s): Oh yeah. Mom's cooking chicken and greens, rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese. Yeah. Love it. Christmas and Hollis. Joel (16m 34s): So not Last Christmas by Wham, that's not your close second. Your Honorable mention. Chad (16m 42s): And now that's a little bit further down my list. Yes. Joel (16m 47s): All right. Well, what everyone's been waiting for is everyone's worst. Worst. We're talking about the real stinkers here. Everybody, the worst holiday films or sorry songs. Chad, you're up. Chad (16m 60s): Okay. So for the band that was obviously trying too damn hard in 1989, the New Kids on the Block released the worst Christmas song of all time called Funky, funky Christmas. Just listen to the chorus. Joel (17m 16s): Oh my God. Chad (17m 18s): Just listen to the chorus of Have a Funky, funky Christmas. And I can confidently say that it's only rivaled by Tiny Tim's. Santa Claushas got the aids this year. This album was released, I think, at the peak of New Kids on the Block, and this was signaling that they were jumping the Shark. Joel (17m 36s): Yeah, that was a bad album. I remember that. I forgot that song until you mentioned it. Yeah. All right. That's awful. Okay, before I jump out of a window, Julie, what's your least favorite holiday song? Julie (17m 51s): Well, my least favorite, I mean, I know it's a traditional favorite for many, but for me It's the Most Wonderful Time of Year by Andy Williams, is it brings back memories of working in retail. And that song would play on repeat. I'd be on my feet for 16 hours a day, line out the door, people screaming at me. Everybody's running outta patience. And all I could hear is, it's the most wonderful time. Is it torturing you as you're in like a state of absolute stress and frenzy to hear that song on repeat? So that one is the absolute worst for me. When I hear it, it brings back trauma. Joel (18m 26s): Those are two pretty good, bad ones. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to top those, but I'm gonna try, I'm gonna get some pushback on this. I think so. I love the Beatles. I think The Beatles are a gift from God. I don't even know if they're human. They may be from another planet. Chad (18m 44s): They could be. Joel (18m 44s): Kids. If you haven't done this, go listen to every Beatles album from Rubber Soul to Let it Be. And everything you need to know about the human condition will be revealed to you in song. John Lennon's, Happy Christmas War Is Over, is one of my favorite songs. Yeah. However, Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas Time from 1979 is so awful. Chad (19m 10s): Oh, come on. Joel (19m 11s): It breaks my heart every time I hear it because it's such a stain on the Beatles. Oh, legacy. Let me count the ways that this song sucks. Number one, you simply expect more from a Beatle, you listen to this and think, what in the hell is a Beatle doing singing a song that's not named Ringo? Number two, the synthesizers make even 1979, seem over disco and cheesy. It's awful. Number three, the lyrics are so sophmoric with kids singing in the background in the chorus. Joel (19m 51s): Ding ding, dong ding. Shoot. May so many reasons why this is bad, if this wasn't a Beatle singing, it wouldn't even get played on the radio. What makes it mower sickening? You mentioned the royalties on one of your songs, Chad. Forbes says, this song has made Paul McCartney nearly $15 million since its debut in 1979 in royalty checks, it sucks. And I'm sure Paul is crying all the way to the bank as I'm saying these words. Wonderful Christmas time by Paul McCartney is my least favorite song of the holidays. Thank you very much. Chad (20m 31s): It set the standard for how not to use a synthesizer, but it did have a hook that just doesn't get outta your fucking brain. And it's incredibly soft work. There's no question because it's for kids and it's a holiday song. So yeah, it's like a coloring book. But through the vocal chords of Paul McCartney. Joel (20m 50s): If you remember the Cassio keyboards from the seventies and eighties. It gives me nightmares still. So let's wrap up here and review everyone's favorite. Chad, your favorite movie was? Chad (21m 6s): Oh my God, white Christmas. Joel (21m 7s): Julie, your favorite movie was? Julie (21m 8s): Scrooged. Joel (21m 9s): My favorite movie was a Christmas Story. Chad, your worst movie? Chad (21m 13s): Bad Santa. Joel (21m 13s): Julie's worst was every sequel made. I'll just go ahead and throw that in there. My worst movie is Babes in Toyland, in 1986, believe it or not, it's a remake from probably a worst movie from I think the forties or fifties. And then we had favorite songs. Chad, you picked. Chad (21m 29s): Mariah Carey. Just go by the album. Okay. The first off by one album, take Joel (21m 36s): Or just save it on your computer wall screen and have it as your, as your wallpaper. Julie, your favorite holiday song. Julie (21m 46s): The Christmas song by Nat King Cole. Joel (21m 50s): Mine was, You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch and our worst holiday songs, Chad? Chad (21m 54s): New Kids on the Block, Funky, Funky Christmas. Joel (21m 57s): Oh oh oh, Julie, your? Julie (21m 58s): Andy Williams. It's the Most Wonderful Time of Year. The most, except for when you're in retail. Chad (22m 5s): The most Wonderful time ... Joel (22m 6s): And mine as much as it breaks my heart goes to Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas time. And with that Happy Holidays everybody. We love you. We'll get to some real content in the new year, but until then Chad and Cheese (22m 27s): We out. We Out. sfx (22m 29s): Merry Christmas, A Filthy Animal and a Happy New Year. OUTRO (23m 14s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Think empowering organizations to solve the gender and racial pay gap, cutting costly unwanted attrition, reducing bias in employment decisions, and improving true engagement and collaboration was something you couldn't quantify? Think again. That's why Chad & Cheese grabbed Syndio's CEO and Chief Data Scientist, Zev Eigen, while at UNLEASH in Paris to dive into the topic of pay transparency. The technology around the issue being developed is fascinating, making this a must-listen. ICYMI listen to our Pay with Equity episode with Maria Colacurcio. 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 (0s): 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 (20s): All. Oh yeah. What's up everybody? We are back live from Unleashed World in Paris, France, and we are just giddy to welcome Zev Eigen. Chad (31s): Eigen, Eigen. Joel (32s): To the Spartan. He is founder and what Chief Science Officer. That's very, very official at Syndio Chad (40s): Founder though too, Zev (41s): Right? Yeah, I'm the founder. Joel (42s): For those that don't know Zev first welcome to the show. The chubbier less hairy version of me apparently from what he explained. Chad (50s): No, no, no, no, no, no. He's the less hairy version of you. He's the chubbier version of me. Zev (56s): I'm the after picture for you Chad. And then I'm Joel (60s): The before picture for me. Zev (1m 2s): Maybe. I don't know. Chad (1m 3s): The hairless version. Zev (1m 4s): I don't know. I'm trying to help you guys out. Come on man. Joel (1m 6s): It's way too early with the time change. We don't know what the hell's going on. Chad (1m 10s): You'll remember Syndio kids as we actually interviewed Joel (1m 13s): And if not, go to the archives. Chad (1m 17s): Maria Colacurcio. I never say that, right? But it's, I try. Joel (1m 19s): You can still give us an elevator pitch. Pretty amazing. Chad (1m 22s): I know We definitely want to, she's the CEO. You actually said to me off camera. Joel (1m 27s): I'm the smart one. I think that's what he said. Zev (1m 30s): That's what I said? Chad (1m 31s): You said the smart one. Yes. Zev (1m 33s): No, she's the smart one. Chad (1m 35s): That she was your best hire. Zev (1m 36s): We have a lot of great hires. Maria's one of many, but yeah, very. Chad (1m 40s): She fucking smart. Yeah. Zev (1m 41s): Maria's amazing. Joel (1m 41s): You can't put him on the spot like that. Chad (1m 43s): Of course I can. Joel (1m 43s): Okay. I guess you can. Chad (1m 45s): That's what the podcast is for. Zev (1m 46s): As you know. I will be honest with you. But Maria for sure. There's nothing to hide. She's amazing. Chad (1m 52s): Yeah. Zev (1m 52s): Amazing leader. Amazing hire. I'm so excited that she's our CEO. Chad (1m 55s): So let's just dig into that just really quick. She was at Starbucks. She helped them get to pay equity, right? She actually, I mean her program Zev (2m 5s): Kind of, so the connection there. Joel (2m 7s): Can we get the elevator pitch before we get? Chad (2m 8s): Not yet. Not yet. Zev (2m 8s): You want that first? Oh, you want this first? Sure. Right. So founded in 2016 and we were doing a CEO search in 2017 and at the same time I was pitching to everyone, including Starbucks and I knew Rob at Starbucks and was trying to get him to become a licensee, you know, buy our software on behalf of Starbucks. Chad (2m 31s): Yeah. Zev (2m 32s): And at the time we were an ONA tool, an Organizational Network Analysis tool. And we had a nascent pay equity tool. And I said, I showed Rob the ONA tool and I said, Hey, let me demo this pay equity software. We got, it's new. Unbeknownst to me, he and Maria were conspiring. So Maria and Rob were both at Starbucks. They were conspiring to start their own startup that did pay equity. And the story goes, and I'm not, this is secondhand, so I don't know, but I was told, Maria told him, ah, don't worry. Like this guy's a lawyer. He is not, they can't make products that are are useful or good. Like don't worry about it, we're just gonna see it. Chad (3m 2s): It's a good point. Zev (3m 3s): We'll just do our own thing. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the short version of story is I demoed the product for the early version of the product for Rob and Maria and was trying to, at some point work with both of them in any way. Right? Any way possible. Maria came on as a consultant to help with marketing and positioning and messaging, cuz her background is in comms. And I really, really liked her from the start. She's a hustler. She works incredibly hard and I think she has all the qualities of what we really need in a CEO, every company needs a leader like Maria. Truthfully, she's great. So when we were doing the CEO search, we did a formal search. We were looking at people with lots of CEO experience. Maria's never been a CEO before. And several of us on the board were lobbying very hard to give Maria a shot, which was I think a very smart move. Zev (3m 46s): And I think we've hired a lot of people at Syndio like that who didn't have their past role or past whatever in that exact role. But you look for qualities, look for things that matter and less indexed on like, oh, were you a CEO for a company before then? You can be a CEO now. Nonsense. Like there are plenty of CEOs for companies that I would never hire in a million years. So why should that be a requirement for this job? Chad (4m 9s): So now the genesis of what is Syndio right? Zev (4m 11s): Sure. Chad (4m 11s): Give us the genesis of Syndio. Zev (4m 14s): Yeah. So we're a workplace equity platform. That's the short version. And, Chad (4m 17s): That's big right now. Zev (4m 19s): Well, I hope so. Yeah, I mean, we've been growing a lot and we're very good at seeing around corner. So, we've been building to where the puck goes in that famous Wayne Gretzky quote. Chad (4m 28s): Very nice, very nice. Zev (4m 29s): But the idea is there are only three levers you can pull if you're trying to treat your people at your company consistently, objectively, fairly equitably. So coffee C-O-F-E only three levers. You've got comp so you can fix how you're paying people, you can adjust your headcount, your people, you can, you know, hire more people in certain roles or levels and policies, you can adjust policies. So we help companies identify which lever to pull and how to pull those levers in a way that's optimal, fair, equitable to help companies comply with laws and regulations that are always evolving. There is an HR component to this, so how you attract and retain your top talent. And then there's a PR component. We have lots of companies who are either afraid of negative press or want to be heralded as doing the right thing. Chad (5m 10s): Yeah. Zev (5m 11s): And, of course there's just ethics and I think there are a lot of leaders, especially now with ESG like we were talking about before, where it's a board component. It's a kind of component of how they need to be as a company. Like that model of being like capital no matter what at all costs and screw everybody, screw the employees are just a resource, like the resource to be destroyed. Chad (5m 30s): Gordon Gecko baby. Zev (5m 30s): Like I don't think that model's a good one. And you see it with this tight talent market. That's why it's a big thing because Chad (5m 36s): yeah Zev (5m 36s): you can't get away with that kind of business model these days, I don't think. Joel (5m 38s): Whether you like it or not, it's coming. And I want to talk about the pay transparency piece and we talk quite a bit on the show about whether it's government regulation around salary has to be on job postings or at least a salary range. We talk about Indeed, you know, putting a range on there, whether you put it on as the employer or not. Chad (5m 60s): Forcing the issue. Joel (6m 1s): What are you guys seeing from your vantage point in regards to employers embracing this, hating this? Zev (6m 5s): Yeah. Joel (6m 5s): What's your take? Zev (6m 6s): And by the way, now you have EU regs, you know, we're sitting here in in Paris. Joel (6m 12s): Yeah. Zev (6m 13s): They're EU regs on transparency that are really, really increase the enforcement regime for that and require employers to share a lot of information. Look, I I'm a big fan of transparency. Syndio is a big fan of transparency. The thing that I find fascinating about this is just like anything else, you talk to recruiters who say this is impossible. We can't do this, we can't recruit if we have to have these constraints. And then sure enough, they start complying, they start doing it and amazingly it actually improves how they can attract and recruit people. Joel (6m 42s): Yeah. Zev (6m 42s): Why? This idea of blind bidding in a negotiation process as a person who's looking for a job is bananas bad? It's so bad. Think about this. So if I hold all the cards, I'm hiring you, right? You're a prospect. I'm gonna hire you. I know exactly what the range is for my job. Like you're gonna be an engineer, the range is between a 100 and 150. I know that. You have no idea what that nut range is. Right? Right. And I say to you, what'd you make at your prior job? Now that's a fraught question. And no matter what you say, it's gonna be like you have no idea what my range is. Yeah. What if I ask you for expectations? I say, what's your expectation? Blind bid? What's your expectation of this job? Now you're hoping. Joel (7m 16s): What's your requirement? Zev (7m 16s): What you're gonna get within my range? I don't, you know, I know my range. You don't. Chad (7m 21s): Oh yeah. Zev (7m 21s): So no matter what you say, it's a bad situation. Let's say you come back and say 140, I go offer accepted. Offer accepted. You got it. You walk away going, oh my God, Chad (7m 29s): How much money is on the table? Yeah. Zev (7m 31s): You have no idea what the range is. Yeah. Now what if you say 200, I go, Ooh, greedy, greedy, greedy. No, no, no. Now you're like, oh my god, they hate me. I'm greedy. I'm a jerk. I over bid, there's no conversation you've ever had or anyone's ever had where you're asked that question. Blind bid where you walk away feeling good. Why are you trying to make people you wanna hire feel crappy day one? It's the dumbest thing conceptually. Chad (7m 53s): It is. Zev (7m 54s): People don't get it. Yeah. So I think transparency is great. Joel (7m 57s): But companies do it. Why? To get a better deal, to get, why to get 150 for 180. Zev (8m 1s): Well some of it's a better deal. Yeah. Some of it's status quo. This is how they've done it in the past and I've heard recruiters say it's a way of avoiding wasting time. This is wrong. The better way to avoid wasting time. And by the way, you can look at Syndio's website, we do this. Joel (8m 12s): Yeah. Zev (8m 12s): We say the range for the position is between X and Y. We base the difference in that range on A, B and C criteria. Like how many years of experience you have or your educational, whatever it is. Legitimate things. Chad (8m 22s): Ah-huh. Zev (8m 22s): So if you come in and think, okay, I want to interview for this job, you know what the range is. So now if I ask about expectations or what you think or why, you know how, it's not a blind bidding situation, that's all it is. It's just switching the timing of the questions from blind bid to like having some information to then have a conversation. All the difference. Chad (8m 41s): That's step one. And that's for anybody coming into the organization. What about all the inequity that's already happening in the organization? Zev (8m 46s): So that's where math helps, right? Because, well this is what Syndio does, right? So we help you figure out where the problems are and fix the problems. Chad (8m 52s): Okay. Zev (8m 52s): Find and fix. And then in terms of maintain. Chad (8m 53s): Yeah. Zev (8m 54s): So we've got a product for, I mean I'm trying to sell the software, but like we built a product that's called Pay Finder. It helps you identify precisely what the range is that's optimal. That's both internally equitable. Chad (9m 5s): Yeah. Zev (9m 5s): And optimal from like a market perspective. So, I mean, software helps. Chad (9m 10s): So yeah, at that point a company can actually start to focus on the equity piece. Zev (9m 15s): Yeah. Chad (9m 16s): So that you can start like if you have females that are getting paid $10,000 less per year, you can start to at least try to make that up. Zev (9m 22s): I would say first level to playing field, like best practice would be to identify those groups where you have that historical inequity, identify that, figure out who is, who are the right people within that subpopulation who need to be fixed, right? Yeah. You're comp fixed. Yeah. And then after that, now you have a level playing field. Now when you're hiring, you know the range, we can show you mathematically the range that's safe for you to hire people in. And by the way, we say this all the time to companies. Let's say you gotta hire Joe, he's the hottest technician on the market. If you don't hire him today, the business is gonna collapse into the ocean. And he's demanding your range is like a 100 to 150. He's demanding 200, but you gotta hire him because otherwise he's gonna go to competitor and screwed. Chad (9m 59s): Yeah. Yeah. Zev (9m 59s): Hire Joe. I'm not saying don't hire Joe, but there's a cost model there. So if you're hiring Joe and he's above that range, our math will show you what that does to other people. And maybe in certain circumstances mathematically, maybe there are three or four women in that group who also need to be brought up. Chad (10m 10s): Yeah. Yeah. Zev (10m 11s): Cause that's not fair to say, oh Joe, you're gonna come in doing the same job as these people. Chad (10m 16s): Right? Zev (10m 17s): You're creating inequity. So it's just a cost model. Right? Chad (10m 20s): And that goes along with negotiation. So we've always seen research that men negotiate better than women. Women just do not want to negotiate. They just want the job. Right. Men are not to mention they'll apply for things where they're not even close to qualified. But anyway, it's the being able to level the playing field for people who just, they just don't wanna fucking negotiate in the first place. Zev (10m 39s): Well also, here's the other question. So I've been at conferences where they subdivide pay equity conversations between like the employer stuff that they can do to fix problems and helping train women, people of color to be better negotiators. Chad (10m 49s): That's bullshit. Zev (10m 50s): I taught negotiation. I love teaching people to better negotiators. I'm a big fan of the research line you mentioned Cheever, but here's the problem. This is the only area of law that I'm aware of, please tell me if I'm wrong, where we put an onus, even even an assumed onus, on the rights holder to negotiate for their rights. Like think about overtime or wage an hour. Chad (11m 7s): Yeah. Zev (11m 7s): We say, Hey migrant farm workers, you know what the problem is? You know, you're not getting overtime, you're not good at negotiating. Why don't you go to your boss and be better at negotiating for time and a half. Chad (11m 16s): Yeah. Zev (11m 16s): No, it's legally mandated. You get time and a half. No one, no one said, no one legislative has ever said, as far as I know, hey, we should put the burden on the rights holder in wage an hour claims to be better at negotiating for those rights. This is the only area of law where legislators say, Hey, we should have training for women to be better at negotiating for this. Nonsense. I mean, great, I want people to be better at negotiators, but that has nothing to do with the employer getting this. Right. Chad (11m 39s): Not for this. Not for this! Zev (11m 41s): Great negotiate, please negotiate, get better at negotiating. I taught negotiation, please get better. But if you, if your right is to be paid equitably, the employer is the sole burden holder to find those problems and fix those problems. Chad (11m 50s): Yeah. Zev (11m 51s): Not the rights holder. Chad (11m 53s): Yeah. Zev (11m 53s): That's bananas. Chad (11m 54s): Yeah. Joel (11m 54s): So one of my initial thoughts when you were saying that was unions. You need unions. Where are you with unions? Do they have a place in the future? Do they have a place in pay transparency or is it all going to technologies and government setting the standards? Zev (12m 10s): So full transparency, I was a labor lawyer for a while. I was in-house council for 20th Century Fox in the labor relations group. Joel (12m 18s): Was that pretty popular with the girls? Zev (12m 20s): I wanna say no. Joel (12m 21s): Okay. Alright. Moving on. Chad (12m 22s): You can see me in the credits. I'm all the way at the back. Yeah. Zev (12m 26s): But you know, labor organizations in Europe are very different than they are in the states. In the states, their roles have, I mean I wish they would play a bigger role. I feel like sort of this, as the saying goes, they don't miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This is one of those things where I'm like, I feel like they could have done more and been more forthright. They've done some work in this space, but not a lot. Chad (12m 44s): Yeah. Zev (12m 44s): As far as I I I can tell maybe I'm wrong, but for sure they have a clear place here. In fact, in the EU directive, there are three objectives for the EU directive on pay transparency. One of them is literally enumerated in the statute to increase representatives, the dialogue between the employer and workers representatives about this issue. So I think here in the EU, when I say here I'm talking about the EU, you have way more opportunity for workers, representatives and works councils. Joel (13m 11s): Yep. Zev (13m 11s): Where they already have a place really in this conversation. In the states, I feel like it's like unions miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Joel (13m 20s): One of the things that you didn't mention in terms of what goes into calculating salary is location. Certainly in a work from home world, we're in Paris right now. A lot of companies are very specifically. Chad (13m 30s): Oh here comes. Joel (13m 31s): You know, where you live and it doesn't matter. We can employ everyone. And Chad and I go back and forth on this, you know, a developer in Toledo, Ohio shouldn't command the same wage as a developer in Silicon Valley. I feel like the world is moving to Chad where it doesn't matter where you live. Chad (13m 52s): The job is the job, is the fucking job. Joel (13m 53s): Where are you on this issue in terms of geographic location and pay equity? Zev (13m 57s): I'm sad to report, I don't have much of a dog in the fight on which is the correct thing to do. I think it is dammit, employer specific. Right. Like I feel like it really is, I hate to bail on that issue, but, I feel like it's employer specific. Like look, if you're running a retail establishment, you're running a restaurant or a hotel, you can't, like, you have to pay attention to market and cost a living. Right. Because if you're hiring people to be your front of house manager in Ohio. Chad (14m 24s): Yeah. Zev (14m 24s): It's different than your your FoH manager in New York City, right? Chad (14m 27s): Yep. Zev (14m 27s): Like you can't hire like you have to account, so certainly there's variation by jobs. If I'm hiring a developer, why do I care if you're in Palo Alto versus you know, a small pueblo in Mexico, like who cares? You're doing the job, the job's the job. Yeah. Chad (14m 46s): Yeah. But, we just did a story on a little organization called Freshie in Canada. Zev (14m 51s): Yeah. Chad (14m 52s): Where they're actually using iPads for order takers right behind the register. And those order takers are in Nicaragua. Zev (14m 59s): Anywhere? Chad (14m 59s): Oh geez. So they're paying them $3.25 an hour when obviously Joel (15m 3s): It's Canadian healthcare. Chad (15m 5s): Much more for them. Zev (15m 7s): Yeah. I feel like that's a global policy problem, right? Like this is the problem with having. Like really low rent wages in developing nations and technology allowing you to do stuff like that. But this is also true with tax, like tax regimes. Like you have this similar problem with like favored nations issue with taxes, right? Cause like you, you know, some countries have like really, really low or no taxes and of course they become tax shelters that empower organizations to be tax free and have an organization like in one of those countries, but then operating in the United States where the tax rate would've been much higher to avoid taxes. It's the same kind of concept that's a policy like regulation issue. I think. Like, I don't know how to fix it. Probably there is no way to fix it. Joel (15m 45s): All the crystal balls are telling us that the economy is going to shit soon. Or if it hasn't already. Chad (15m 53s): He's such a bright shining star. Joel (15m 54s): I just keep it real for the listeners. How does that impact pay equity? Do companies care less when they're laying people off. Like we're gonna pay you whatever the hell we can't, you know what we do. It's, you know, suck it up. It's a bad economy. Like where does that all play out with Syndio's technology and where you look at the world? Zev (16m 10s): Yeah, that's a good question. So obviously we track these things pay attention to a very carefully, we just did a survey that's, I think, you know, a report you can download from our website or something that shows like 50 something percent of companies still care and are increasingly caring about pay equity even in this economy and looking forward. So I think again, it's the confluence of pressures. If you think about the confluence of pressures, you've got legal compliance, transparency is part of that. You have HR, so how do you attract and retain talent? And that's a big component of it. Cuz if you have a tighter talent market, how do you keep the people you love and then the PR, like if you have ESG and pr if you're not doing those three things, I think those things together make it such that even in a down economy, maybe for some organizations you have to pay attention to this even more. Zev (16m 53s): There's nothing more personal than how people are paid. Like it is a primary exchange of work. Like people are saying, your time is valued at X amount. Tell me any exchange in this life that is more clearly an empirical valuation of how much you're worth. Like it's literally saying time is the only thing you can't exactly make more of. Jeff Bezos can't buy himself more. Well I guess he can buy himself a little more time on the earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like Chad (17m 14s): Him and Walt Disney. Zev (17m 15s): Other than transferring your conscious to like a robot or something like this is it, I got like x number of years, Joel (17m 19s): The Venus rocket is going to bend time and space. Zev (17m 21s): It's gonna bend time and space. But until that moment, and I'm working on a time machine, I'll let you know when I get it done. But like until that moment, like how much I get paid for my time is so personal. It's so personal to everybody who says work is not personal is lying. It's personal. And how do you retain your talent if you're not paying people equity? The the thing I always mention to people, just observationally. If I told you, and you can ask anyone this, think about yourself. If I told you, Hey, you're at your job now I have bad news, you're paid under market, what's the reaction to that? Some people react by going, oh, okay, that's not great. But like, I don't like that. Maybe I'll look at LinkedIn for another job. Chad (17m 59s): Ah-huh. Zev (17m 59s): If I tell you, Hey, I have bad news, you're paid 30% less than people at your job because of your race or gender or ethnicity. Most people when they hear that are posting their job on they're on LinkedIn that day. Chad (18m 9s): Oh yeah. Yeah. Zev (18m 9s): They're like, burn this place down, they're looking for a box, they're quiet quitting, they're out. They're mentally out or they're checked out or they're angry or they're looking for a plaintiff's lawyer. That's a different reaction. So internal pay equity, if you're trying to attract and retain talent in a bad a down economy. Chad (18m 25s): Yeah. Zev (18m 26s): There is no better way than doing it and then showing that you're doing it right. Chad (18m 29s): Okay. So I agree a hundred percent. I think that the time is the key. You're a hundred percent right. Doesn't matter how rich you are, there's still only 24 hours in a day. Zev (18m 36s): Exactly. Chad (18m 37s): It doesn't matter. Right. That's the only thing that's constant. Zev (18m 40s): But like these ideas that you're gonna like win people over by putting a pool table in or having a pizza party. Like anything I see on social media is so reacting against that. It's like, thanks for the pizza party guys. Like, I'm way underpaid. Chad (18m 52s): Why's everyone hating on pizza parties? Man, I love pizza. Zev (18m 55s): I mean you love pizza, Chad (18m 57s): But who doesn't like pizza? Zev (19m 0s): I just think people would prefer to get like paid fairly and equitably before they think about having two slices of pizza. Chad (19m 11s): Well I'm gonna switch gears entirely. This industry has never been so fucking noisy ever. Zev (19m 15s): Hr? Chad (19m 15s): Yes. Yeah. So many point solutions. So much ai, ml, every fucking acronym that's out there. But there's a lot of this shit that is just, it's total bullshit. It's based off of, you know, shit that just doesn't make sense. Joel (19m 27s): Vaporware. Chad (19m 27s): You've watched this industry. Give us your take on some of this. Zev (19m 31s): You know, I used to love going to conferences and this is like maybe five, six years ago, walk down the halls and talk to vendors and they'd say we have proprietary ai. Like what is it? I'm a data scientist. Like tell me like little more detail. They're like proprietary. It's proprietary. Cool. Finally you get to the bottom of it and it's like just a random force, it's like something literally that's like on Wikipedia. And I've been at conference where I pull up my phone on Wikipedia. I'm like, is this, what's your proprietary thing? And I show up my phone. It's like on Wikipedia the method they're saying is proprietary. Joel (19m 56s): You're that guy. Zev (19m 57s): I am that guy. Okay. And they're like, yeah, okay. So there's a lot of nonsense, there's a lot of BS. I think there's a lot of companies that are built on very kind of tenuous, like you're right, it's like vaporware or like they start building stuff out and it's not really solving a solution that's just kind of there. Chad (20m 12s): Yeah. Zev (20m 13s): It's like graphs for the sake of graphs. One of the things that I'm strong on in our product development is like there is nothing in our product that doesn't have a specific use case that answers a specific analytic question. Like it asks and answers a specific question that then you take action on. Like actionable insights. I've seen so many things that are just like a graph and I'm like, what do you do with this graph? Like what do you, okay cool. It's a pretty picture. What do I do with that? They're like, well this is insight with the AI and then you talking around nonsense. Like who's paying for that? Like I don't get why people buy it other than having a nice graph. Chad (20m 45s): Well, that's the question. So as a company's spending money on tech, right, trying to build their tech stack, there's a lot of noise out there. How do they see through the bullshit? That's the hard part. Zev (20m 52s): Right. It's really hard. I mean, and I used to do a lot of this when I was at the law firm I worked at, I helped vet a lot of the HR tech companies. It's hard because you need someone who speaks, there's a compliance component too because some of these. Chad (21m 6s): Oh god yes. Zev (21m 7s): Some of these entities I've seen are like really problematic from a compliance perspective. Like they're doing things that are either illegal or likely biased or problematic from a whole host of like compliance perspective. And then also the math and data science is often problematic. I think we've evolved a lot since those days and I think things are getting better. I think vendors are getting wise to that and I think the sales cycle is forcing them to, so you have more like legal and sales cycle. You have more compliance and sales cycles that force them to pay attention to these issues I think. Joel (21m 36s): The best tech money can buy. So talking about the business still, you guys have raised around $85 million. Series C round. What can we expect in further fundraising? What kind of runway are we looking at if the economy goes to hell? What have you done with the money that you've raised? Talk about the business. Zev (21m 51s): Just all goes to me, just in my bank account. Joel (21m 54s): Nice! Nice. And it clearly goes into your wardrobe. Chad (21m 56s): It's good to be the king. Zev (21m 57s): You wearing a t-shirt? I got a sweater on . Joel (22m 2s): Yeah. Yeah. We haven't raised $85 million. That's all matters. Chad (22m 6s): Maybe we should. Maybe we should. Zev (22m 7s): No, but it goes right to my wardrobe. That's right. This sweater is $80 million. Joel (22m 12s): Don't be so defensive. We make jokes on the show, Zev. Roll with it. Zev (22m 14s): It's okay. Don't worry about it. I'll just cry myself to sleep for a few weeks. You know, don't worry about my mental health. You don't have to worry about that. I get it. You guys are uncaring. Joel (22m 24s): As long as you're paid equitably. Zev (22m 25s): You're hard and uncaring people. Chad (22m 26s): Yeah. Zev (22m 26s): And I respect that. Chad (22m 25s): Yeah. Zev (22m 27s): I respect that. We have a substantial amount of cash and reserves, so we're using that wisely. And to be clear, Maria's the CEO, I'm not the CEO, I hang out and do math and build some products and get on podcasts. Joel (22m 40s): He's avoiding and passing the buck on the question. Zev (22m 41s): You had Maria on, why didn't you ask her this question? I feel like you can bring her back if you want. She'll give you the investor relations update. Joel (22m 48s): Is more money going into the science. Let's talk about that as the science guy. Zev (22m 52s): For sure. We're an R and D focused company and I think we're always a step ahead. Like one thing I really love about how we build is like we're looking ahead and building things that are a little bit cutting edge. Like when we built pay eq, like this was at a time when companies were, like everyone I asked before I built Pay EQ was like, that's our pay equity solution was like, nah, bad idea. Don't do this. This is for statisticians, labor economists, experts, software for this bad idea. Yeah. Like these HR people can't handle access to this kind of stuff. It was all that kind of negative nonsense that I didn't listen to. And we're the industry leader in this space for a reason. We've been doing this for a long time. Chad (23m 29s): Yeah, because everybody else is using Excel spreadsheets. That's fucking horrible. Zev (23m 31s): It's hard to do what we do. I think some entrants in the market have taken for granted how hard it is. But that now was standing, I think the things we're building next, the things we're R&Ding now are like that. Like we're looking ahead trying to build to things that make sense, that are deployable. Our product team has a strong discipline around building to things that are solving a specific problem and doing it in a way that's very actionable. Like I don't like just showing you information, like who cares? That's not helpful. If it's not solving a problem and showing you how to fix the problem. And by the way, this isn't just HR tech. I feel like a lot of tech where I've been asked like look at it or see it or look at it. I always ask the question, what does this do and what do I do with the information? And if someone can't answer that question very clearly and succinctly, why are you paying money for it? Zev (24m 10s): Like I don't get it. But yeah, we're growing. I think even in the down economy, like I said, we're very good stewards of the money for sure. And we're not just like, I don't think we ever, were just like spending to grow like for the sake of doing that. Very R and D focused, very focused on like how to build out the next piece of tech in a way that's smart and wise and saleable that solves problems. Chad (24m 37s): Personally. Zev, I am a huge fan. That's it. That's all the time we've got now. Joel (24m 42s): Zev Eigen everybody, theater guy, at Syndio. Chad (24m 43s): Chief Data stud at Syndio. Joel (24m 45s): For our listeners who want to know more about you or the company, where would they go? Zev (24m 53s): So the website synd.io or syndio.com. I think we own that now too, which is exciting. So syn.io and I'm just me. Joel (25m 4s): Just some dude. Zev (25m 5s): Just a guy. Chad (25m 5s): Zev! Joel (25m 6s): Another one in the can. Chad and Cheese (25m 7s): We Out. OUTRO (25m 47s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Unicorn alert! It's been awhile since a new unicorn has come on the scene, so it's refreshing to see Beamery enter unicorn territory as we close out 2022. Should the ATS market be worried? We discuss. Facebook, which entered the jobs space in 2017, finally calls it quits. We discuss what could be next for the social media giant. Then it's time for some Who'd ya' rather? with Kadence and Outdefine. Afterward, we discuss Side Hustle Nation, highlighting a recent survey from Upwork, and the boys saved the naughtiest for last with "Porn Cop." You're welcome. 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 (0s): 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 (22s): Oh, yeah. Meta has ended its Lyft ride perk for workers while JCPenney has added childcare benefits like in-home daycares, nannies, and babysitters. Penny's is back. Baby toughskins for everyone. Hi kids. You're listening to the Chad & Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Rico, blaze Cheeseman. Chad (43s): And this is Chad "pay your damned rent" Sowash. Joel (46s): And on this week's show, be Beamery Me up Scotty. Yeah. That one never gets old. Facebook out and porn cop. Let's do this. Chad (57s): So apparently your ability to pronounce Harry Kane didn't help the English against France. Joel (1m 2s): Harry Kane. Chad (1m 4s): The English are out, Canadians are out. Netherlands are out, and France and Argentina are rolling into the final. So who you got? Joel (1m 11s): It's gonna be a great matchup. Chad (1m 12s): Yeah. Yeah. Joel (1m 14s): I've felt ever since Argentina lost that first game, that first stinker, that they've been on a mission. Oh man. They've got machismo turned up to 11, Messi's clearly on a mission. The country is yearning, you know, for that World Cup title. France is a little bit comfortable since they just just won the last one. So I'm gonna think Argentina has a slight edge in the championship, and I think Morocco probably wins the third place. Chad (1m 42s): Hmm. Yeah. I'm gonna go with Croatian, France. I think France just has too many weapons. Not too much in they're young. I mean, Mbappé versus Messi. I mean, wouldn't hate to see Messi winning, obviously, but it just seems like they have way too many weapons on France. Joel (2m 0s): Yeah. Now, you know the sport better than I do, but it feels like France kind of just grinds you down. Like they just, they play really sound fundamentally good football. And eventually when you make a mistake, when you are caught, you know, sleeping, they're gonna get you. Whereas Argentina feels like a sports car to me. So it's gonna be a really interesting sort of defensive offensive matchup from my point of view. What are your thoughts? Yeah, Chad (2m 25s): Yeah, yeah. No, I think you take a look at France and then you take a look at, in England, from the standpoint of Chris passes, I think France had had a little bit more speed on the outside. I know England does have speed on the outside, but I don't think that Argentina can keep up with and Buffy, you know, around the corner. They just have some really, really good players. And Drew, he's just been lighting it up with those little blonde tips and everything. Joel (2m 56s): His highlights. Chad (2m 59s): His highlights. Joel (3m 1s): Their goalie's really good too. France. Yeah. That, what are they called? Scorpion kicks where it's kind of reverse when you spin backwards? Chad (3m 9s): Oh, you mean bicycle kick. Joel (3m 11s): Morocco almost had that goal yesterday. That would've been the goal of the pay the tournament. Chad (3m 15s): Yeah. Pele made That made, that made that famous. It was a bicycle kick. Joel (3m 19s): Yeah, bicycle kick. Yeah, Chad (3m 20s): It's is. That was pretty awesome. Not to mention, I mean, the amount of shots that went off the crossbars were like fucking crazy. But great saves, great saves. That happened all the way around. Joel (3m 32s): Speaking of checking stuff out, the last episode we talked about ChatGPT and it had just come out. I haven't really played with it yet, and I've been sort of digging into it. Oh, good. It's equal parts scary and equal parts impressive. But there's a really good article in the Atlantic by a journalist 20, you know, 20 year veteran in journalism. And, if you check that out, go search at the Atlantic and ChatGPT. But the guy in the story actually queries what professions are at risk because of this technology. Yeah. And it literally answered, and I wanna read this excerpt from the story. He said, I asked ChatGPTto list 50 jobs that could be replaced by ChatGPT, it spit out a list in less than a second it shot out. Joel (4m 17s): Customer service representative, technical support specialist, sales representative or sales representative, receptionist, data entry clerk, call center agent transcriptionist, legal secretary, medical secretary, executive assistant, personal assistant, journalist, novelist, travel agent, insurance agent, retail salesperson, bookkeeper, court reporter, marketing manager... Chad (4m 39s): Is that the whole list? Joel (4m 41s): Public relations manager, advertising manager, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 50 professions. Chad (4m 45s): Jesus Christ. Fuck. Joel (4m 46s): And I would probably agree with all of those after just a short period of playing with it. So this thing has the potential to really disrupt a lot of people's lives. Chad (4m 55s): Yes. I, I agree. And I bet, I bet that question's been asked a million times thus far. So the ability to spit that out for you quickly was probably very, very easy for Chad being G B T. Joel (5m 10s): Yeah. Chad (5m 10s): Something else that is incredibly, I don't wanna say disruptive, it's probably, well, it is disruptive, but, but Twitter, Elton John leaves Twitter. Elon Musk is getting booed offstage at Chappelle show. Yeah. He isn't paying rent for offices that he's demanding people come into. He's not paying severances, or at least that's what the report was. He was thinking about not paying severance. He's allowing propaganda accounts back on Twitter, losing advertisers who don't want their ads associated with said propaganda accounts. And, but yet, Elon is launching a new version of Twitter blue that literally nobody is excited about. Chad (5m 51s): So we've got the excitement of ChatGPT and the drama of Twitter happening. Joel (5m 57s): Well, if you just watch Fox News for a night, you'll think Elon Musk is a genius and the greatest benefit to society in the last a hundred years. So, balance out some of your news there, Chad, because yeah. Elon's not that bad of a guy. He's not that bad of a guy. Chad (6m 16s): No. No, neither was Donald Trump. Anyway, shout outs! sfx (6m 20s): 60% of the time. It works every time. Joel (6m 23s): All right. Chad splits or swallows. Chad (6m 25s): Oooo Joel (6m 26s): Anyway, a new Gallup survey. Chad (6m 28s): I like those. Joel (6m 31s): Yeah. Splitters and blenders. Two different relationships with work highlights the preference for flex jobs. Shocker. Right. Gallup found that nine and 10 employees prefer some degree of long-term remote flexibility and nearly eight in 10 expected from their employer going forward. The study also found that hybrid work policies vary widely, and that there is not a universal solution for the optimal number of days per week that employees should work on site. Finally, the study found that employees and managers should both have a say in determining hybrid work policies, no matter what Gallup says, advantage remote work. Joel (7m 12s): Shout out for splitters and blenders. Chad (7m 14s): Yeah. Joel (7m 14s): In the workforce. Chad (7m 15s): I love it. We'll talk a little bit more about that, just about every single fucking week. I guarantee it. My shout out is to put your hands together for Ukraine. Kids, the US might be equipping the Ukraine military with patriot missiles. But what about the Ukrainian people? They still need food, warm clothes, medical aid. So if you remember back and not Taco Bell, please do not send those poor kids Taco Bell. Get them hooked on the Taco Bell crack. Oh my God. If you remember back when the Ukraine War started, I did an interview with Andrew Stetsenko,, who was an HR tech leader in Ukraine that was actually running supplies from the border. Chad (7m 55s): And I say was a tech leader because he's focused on nothing but helping Ukrainians since the war started food, clothing, medical aid. And that's not possible without people like you, me and our listeners, in the safety of our own homes, giving donations to help Ukraine get fed, get medical supplies, and win this monstrosity of a fucking war. Now, Steven Rothberg, fan of the show and of College Recruiter fame actually pulled together a GoFundMe page that you can find on our website, Chadcheese.com. Click on the Ukrainian flag and give, give, give. So shout out to Steven for coordinating with Andrew that big shout out for Andrew for doing all this work. Chad (8m 38s): It's his people. I get that. But man, it's a hard fucking job. The fund, the fund hit $24,000 yesterday, but that's not gonna make a dent in the needs of the Ukrainian. So get out there, go to Chadcheese.com, click on the Ukrainian flag and give, give, give. Big, big shoutout. Joel (8m 60s): There you go. My shoutout goes to urine in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That's right. Kids, Chad (9m 5s): They go together. Joel (9m 6s): Yeah. Residents of Ann Arbor home of the Michigan Wolverines are complaining about the problem of public urination in the city's downtown area. The issue has been attributed to a lack of ample public restrooms. Chad (9m 19s): Yeah. That'll do it. Joel (9m 21s): With people often turning to alleyways to relieve themselves in response, the Ann Arbor City Council recently passed a resolution asking the city administrator to look into the development of public restrooms. What a concept? Across the downtown area. The cost of such restrooms and how they would be maintained is still being discussed. Shout out to Pee Pee and Poo Poo and Ann Arbor, a city that was pretty putrid to begin with. Chad (9m 49s): My last shout out goes to Andrea Wade. That's right. Kids friend of the show Death Match winner, and now the VP of Product Strategy at iSims. Congratulations, Andrea. Joel (10m 2s): That's awesome. That's awesome. We should give her some free shit. Chad (10m 5s): Yes. Joel (10m 7s): And we might, if she's signed up for free shit atchadcheese.com, click the free link. I haven't checked. Click the free link. We got Whiskey from Textkernel. We got beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. We got T-shirts from JobGet. And if it's your birthday month, you might win some rum from Plum. Chad (10m 25s): Yes! Joel (10m 25s): But either way, you're gonna be a winner if you go to Chadcheese.com/free. All right, let's get to some, some birthdays. Speaking of who should have a beer, I'm just gonna read the rest of December. Chad (10m 37s): Okay. Joel (10m 38s): Cause our next few shows are like Naughty N Nice. And wrap up and whatnot. So, so here we go. Celebrating a birthday throughout the rest of December. We've got Holland McKee, friend of the show. Yes. Jack Mahoney. Monica evg. I always say that incorrectly. I know Ev, Evie fg. Anyway, Nick eight is enough. Bradford, Alison Paget, Michael Smith. Mike Pollich. Yes. Fsla mtz. Tina Davis, Angela Aguilar. Jeffrey Taton. Chad (11m 9s): What? Joel (11m 9s): He's born on Christmas Day, so he's our Christmas baby. Wow. Nick Hutchinson. Kim Gray, who was our rum winner for December. Lex Kremmer, Bob Scruggs, Phil Larkin, Allie Rossen, Anoop Gupta of SeekOut there he is. Happy Birthday to him. Lauren Sharp, one of our favorite Aussies. Rathe Sinia. Jonathan DuArt. And Mr. Will Cheesman my father turns 83 this month. Chad (11m 38s): Very nice. Joel (11m 39s): Happy Birthday all birthday kids. Chad (11m 41s): Very nice. Joel (11m 42s): Out there in December. Chad (11m 43s): And we're getting ready for 2003 with events. Thanks again for Shaker, for ensuring that we have Joel (11m 52s): 2003? Chad (11m 53s): Oh yeah. 2003. Jesus Christ. Back to the Future kids. Here we, we go 2023. Can you believe that shit? Joel (11m 59s): We only look like we're in our thirties. Chad (12m 1s): Oh My God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have five events already locked in for 2023. And after those, yeah, we'll probably be looking a little more haggard. Joel (12m 14s): Well, chances are you've been up late voting at rmvote.com. Chad (12m 17s): Oh! Joel (12m 18s): If you haven't heard about this kids, our friends at recruitmentmarketing.com are having a vote for your favorite podcast, conference, blog. Yeah. I mean, all kinds of stuff sound off at R as in recruiting, M as in marketing, vote RM vote.com. Yours truly are there. We'd obviously love, love your vote as well. Chad (12m 37s): Throw the hat in the ring. Big boy Joel (12m 40s): And I hope that we get some foreign language voters, Chad, because we are in multiple language. Special shout out to our friends Chad (12m 49s): Yes. Joel (12m 50s): At Veritone for producing the German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish versions of our show. If that's your language of choice, feel free to check those versions out. They sound eerily and creepily like the real thing for KIDS. Chad (13m 3s): Veritone are wizards. It's just witchcraft. It's amazing. I mean, everybody who speaks, speaks French that I know speaks Portuguese, German, what have you. I always say, Hey, listen to this. Tell me what you think. And they're always, that is pretty, that's fucking good. And that's creepy as hell. Yeah, Joel (13m 20s): It is. It is creepy. What is creepy as hell is our rankings on the leaderboard for fantasy football? Chad (13m 25s): Oh God. Joel (13m 25s): We are getting to the end of the season after this week. It's the final four for the top spot in fantasy football. But here is our leaderboard for last week in fantasy football. First to worst, we got Dennis the Gridiron Menace. Tupper, Chad (13m 44s): wow. Joel (13m 44s): Broadway Joe Wilkie, Christie, girl power Kelling, Chris "by the Skin of my Teeth" Manion stairs like Warren Moon and Doug Flute came south to kick some ass. Boudreaux. Joel, thanks a lot" Stevenson Cheesman, Chad "as always, just a little bit short of Cheesman" Sowash. Mike, Tom, Zach Schaffer, Matt, Stafford Hill, James Laid Gilliam, Jason like Notorious BIG Ready to Die. Putnam Dan, open toe Shoemaker. That is the leaderboard for fantasy football, which is thankfully almost over for everyone who's sick of fantasy football. Joel (14m 25s): Yeah, you're about three points from me. I think we both have a chance if things fall correctly. I'm not all that hopeful. Chad (14m 33s): Yeah. Christie's team played out of their fucking minds last week and ended up beating me. So yeah. Good game, Christie. TOPICS! Joel (14m 53s): Holy shit, I've missed this one. That's right. There's a unicorn alert people! London based talent recruitment company, Beamery has raised $50 million in series defunding led by Teachers Ventures Growth total raised is 223 million for the company founded back in 2014. The funding round gives the company a valuation of more than 1 billion dollars thus unicorn status. The company has seen a 250% increase in Fortune 500 clients since its series C funding round in June of '21. Its clients include General Motors, Johnson and Johnson and the BBC where Chad gets all his news when he's in Europe. Joel (15m 39s): And it has recently added Uber. Beamery says it's AI powered talent platform uses ethical AI to help companies plan for business needs, understand workforce skills and capabilities, and attract and retain staff. The company employees 400 or so people. Chad, your take on the Beamery news. Chad (15m 60s): Yeah, can we stop the ethical AI bullshit? My God, it's just, please stop it. Okay. When Beamery took their sea round at 138 million June of last year, I said that they had obviously looked past a SmashFly like acquisition from a bigger possibly, you know, like agency player or something like that. But they've been forced at looking toward acquisition by a bigger platform like adp, sap, or Oracle, or just becoming that bigger fish now adding another 50 million, totaling $223 million in funding. They're focused has to be on moving toward a core talent platform. Chad (16m 42s): Something that would replace the artifact we know as ATS. Beamery says, you know, if you go to their website, you see that they have a broad portfolio of solutions, which I believe could perspectively be their, they're ultimately their, their downfall because a jack of all trades means you're a master of nothing. And, it's not a great way to evolve a product. Plus Beamery is using the build versus buy strategy. Unlike Phenom who has four acquisitions under their belt, Beamery has one, which means more funding increase headcount to build product and gain traction in different markets all around the world. So I think like many vendors over the last couple of years who were waiting for that 10 x payday and they didn't get it, that Beamery only had one option, get more funding. Chad (17m 30s): But the question is why? If Fortune 500 revenue growth is 250% and their retention is at 135%, which means they retained and they actually gained wallet share. Is this responsible growth or is this hedging against a possible tight market and hoarding cash, while it's still available? So my big question is why do they need, need the money if they have this great growth? Are they just trying to hoard cash to ensure for a long winter? Or are they really going to be talking about the growth in tech? Joel (18m 5s): So I've been critical of Beamery in the past. Chad (18m 8s): Okay. Joel (18m 9s): And I think, I'm gonna push the pause on Beamery. Adam Gordon gave me a hard time for being tough on them. And maybe that's just cuz they're a UK company and he's loyal to everything UK but I think this is a, a move that is in part because they realize that times are gonna get tough and raising money now is better than trying to raise it later. It's kind of impressive that they were able to raise this much money in the environment that we're currently living in. We talk a lot about needing a bigger boat when we talk about companies that are competing with Remote, DEEL, Oyster, et cetera. And I think that Beamery is looking to compete on a scale equal to that, kind of global platform. Joel (18m 54s): Everything in one, all one platform to rule them all. And this round basically backs up one hell of a big super yacht into the water. I'm a big fan also of Allison Holbrook been a big fan of her for a long time. She's cut her teeth at Monster Scout. Vistaprint, Fidelity, she's currently their VP of corporate marketing. And if she buys into the company she joined a year or so ago, she's been there two years. I think that says a lot to me. Her quote on LinkedIn in terms of the funding round was "the latest round of funding will allow us to continue innovating our product, expanding our team, and pursuing our mission to give everyone access to meaningful work skills and careers." Joel (19m 36s): I'm just gonna like think that this is gonna work out. I've been really critical of them. I'm gonna push the pause button. They're clearly doing some good things in terms of the clients that they have, the tech that they have. I think to your point in terms of where they go with innovation, they need to have a marketplace. They need to open up the platform to third party developers to build onto the platform. If they do that, I think that they've really got something good and hopefully some of that innovation and money goes toward building a marketplace that other vendors can build on top of it. Chad (20m 11s): Yeah. Well, a couple of things listening to the CEO and then also some of the quotes from the CEO and other leaders in the organization, that was not even close to being a part of the dialogue. It was all around talent, analytics, upskilling, those types of things, which means they need to move toward L and D. Right? They, I mean, they're these things that they need to do and they're not going to build L and D or maybe they are, fuck, nothing excited me about anything that I heard. Just that they got funding. And I think that again, it's like storing away the nuts for the long cold winter. The the next piece is, you know, I think that the market is so gray out there with all of these names you mentioned Remote, Deel and Oyster. Chad (20m 51s): I don't see these guys in the same realm as I do a Beamery. I see Beamery being with Phenom, Eightfold and Paradox, where they are more shifted toward the next generation of what we now call an applicant tracking system. Joel (21m 5s): What I like track system. Yeah. Well, I like to call a core talent platform, right? Where the, that applicant tracking is such a small piece of what these systems do nowadays. So I see Beamery and Phenom and Eightfold and Paradox. I see them as really the the new crew coming in to build tech stacks of today and perspectively, you know, kicking some of those old ATSs to the curb. Chad (21m 31s): But I mean the Remote, Deel, Oyster, I see them as more EOR pay onboarding. I think perspectively you could see consolidation or acquisition by one of those one way or the other for a convergence. Joel (21m 48s): Yeah. Could you see K1 or Apollo or somebody that owns ATSs back, back the truck up and acquire Beamery? Chad (21m 54s): You know, I'm gonna throw a curve ball. I think it would be Main Capital or Bain, you know, so ones that are more globally focused, right? Joel (22m 2s): Yeah. Chad (22m 2s): I'm not saying that K1 and that they're not globally focused, but they do so much in the US because the US is such a large market. I think this play, and I think every other play when you're talking about total, you know, addressable market is going to be global at this scale. And I think that Bain and Main Capital, both of them have demonstrated that they're really looking at the global market. Joel (22m 24s): Oh, Main Capital's a good call. It's gonna be fun to watch and talk about Chad. Chad (22m 28s): Hell Yeah. I love it. Joel (22m 32s): You know what else is fun to talk about? Facebook and I don't know, they're foray into jobs, I guess what we'll call it. All right, so in the news this week, a note from Facebook headquarters went out to users, the jobs on Facebook product is changing on February 22nd, 2023. What kind of changes are you asking? Well, they're shutting it down, Chad, that's the change that we're looking at from the company. Jobs on Facebook will no longer be available on the Facebook app, Facebook mobile website or Facebook desktop site for both employers and job seekers. Yep. No more jobs on Facebook. They'll be history February 22nd. Joel (23m 14s): While that was a fun ride while it lasted. Will Google for Jobs be next? Chad, your thoughts on Facebook Getting the hell out of the job space. Chad (23m 23s): I thought it was funny that David Cohen from Adweek wrote quote, "when you come at the king, you best not miss Facebook came at LinkedIn and missed" end quote. Okay, so let's try to get something straight here. David. LinkedIn's ad revenue is $3.8 billion in 2021. Okay, 3.8, not even $4 billion yet, right? Facebook ad revenue $115 billion. Okay, so let those numbers marinate for a minute. That's the difference between over $110 billion dollars. Plus also, remember, Facebook found themselves in the government's crosshairs with the ability to hyper-target job seekers. Chad (24m 4s): So even though there are dollars there to grab, is it worth the risk in the optics around employment where Facebook has no fucking clue what they're doing? Then remember Google came in with talents and recruitings and Google hire and the Google job search API and that got canned all together. Well the risk versus reward just isn't there for companies who see piles of cash in other areas of the business. Google's ad revenue in 2021, $209 billion. Google's cloud profits, which they've shifted a lot of their resources to profits. Chad (24m 46s): $19 billion dollars in profits, not revenues, profits, $19 billion in profits. So yes, LinkedIn does have the reins on the professional net ad network, but you have to understand that $4 billion dollars in a product is small beans compared to things like general advertising in cloud business. So LinkedIn isn't the king, it's just the best noblemen in the village. Joel (25m 8s): By the way, we have some some hidden footage of the meeting at Facebook before they launched their jobs product. sfx (25m 18s): 60% of the time it works every time. Joel (25m 20s): So Facebook introduced their jobs platform or solution in Canada and the US in February of 2017. We had fun talking about that on the show. They expanded over 40 countries one year later. However, Meta shut down the feature in February everywhere except Canada and the US and removed the ability to distribute free jobs via a partner integration with the Facebook jobs api. Life is hard for a job board. Chad, look, Facebook has issues. It's stock has crashed this year. Young people are moving away from using Facebook. It's a legal minefield. The job's part of it, the metaverse is failing. Joel (26m 1s): Employees are leaving and recruiting is challenging. Throwing the fact that selling to HR people sucks and job search really wasn't worth their time in terms of the reward financially. I certainly agree from your perspective on that. However, I'm gonna throw a little curve ball to you from the looks of it. Their workplace product is evolving nicely, their little Slack enterprise dashboard. So I don't see any reason to think that they're gonna shut that down. They're gonna continue to grow that. I'm gonna take you back to 2000 and something, maybe 2003 where you went back. You had some premonition of what we're gonna talk about. Joel (26m 43s): So remember when Google had a video product, Google video, and they realized that YouTube had a much better mouse trap and they just decided let's just drop a billion plus on on YouTube. What if Facebook shut down the jobs component because they want to build up their workplace solution and maybe they're gonna buy a job board on the cheap to plug into their workplace solution. I don't know, it's a little crazy. It's the holidays. I've got some eggnog left in my liver, but I'm just gonna throw out that maybe Facebook could buy a job board and that's the reason why they shut down their jobs component. Chad (27m 19s): Yeah. Joel (27m 19s): Thoughts? Chad (27m 20s): Nah, I would say there's no way in hell, I think anything that they're doing would be to be able to have like connectivity for workplace to get more engagement into Facebook. Like Slack, right? And Slack was an easy, I think buy for Salesforce. Yeah. So I don't see that. I see them trying to go more toward engagement, dragging people in again, making it really what it used to be for most people, which was a lifestyle platform you rollover in the morning, you check your Facebook, people don't do that anymore. They roll over in the morning, they watch puppy videos on TikTok, right? So I think that would be the play. Joel (27m 57s): By the way, here's some hidden footage of me waking up this morning and checking my phone. sfx (28m 2s): What are you doing? Step bro. Joel (28m 4s): Anyway, we'll be right back and you better hope that I'm wrong on this prediction cuz I'll never let you live it down if I'm right about this. Chad (28m 16s): Oh my God. Joel (28m 17s): Stay tuned kids. Chad (28m 17s): I thought it was gonna be like the, I thought it was gonna be like the Blazing Saddles around the campfire. Joel (28m 30s): The bean footage. Yeah, the beautiful bean footage. sfx (28m 33s): Oh shit. Joel (28m 33s): All right, Chad, let's play a game of 'Who'd you rather'? Everyone loves a good game of of who'd You rather one of those. So here's how we play kids. We talk about two companies that have received funding recently, and we'd basically pick one of them in terms of who'd you rather you ready to play check? sfx (28m 52s): Hell Yeah. Joel (28m 53s): All right. In one corner we've got Out Define the San Francisco based startup Out Define has raised $2.5 million dollars to build a decentralized hiring community for Web3 Talent. The round was led by Web3 investors, TCG Crypto and Jump Crypto that sounds reputable with participation from Big Brain Holdings, Formless Capital, Bluecore Mask, eco Fund, crypto Angels, and some syndicates. Out Defined as building a token backed hiring marketplace on the Solana blockchain. Could I put any more buzzwords in this? Joel (29m 34s): Where talent directly negotiates the scope and compensation of their job and receives tokens as a reward that is Out Defined. And in this corner we have Kadence. That's Kadence with a k, the startup that just launched out of the Charge of Fi, wireless charging network. That's called a pivot. Chad, they've raised $10 million dollars in seed funding. The company will use the funds to coordinate people, places, and projects to enable hybrid coworking within teams. The startup pulled in 300 customers in the 18 months since its relaunch, including Calibra and Starling Bank. That's where you do your banking, isn't it Chad? Joel (30m 14s): Kadence claims its software can reduce office space by 68% while increasing the number of employees coming into the office to collaborate by 25% month over month. So Chad, Out Define or Kadence, who'd you rather? Chad (30m 29s): So first and foremost Out Define, do we agree that Web3 is gonna be big one day? sfx (30m 34s): crickets Chad (30m 34s): Do do we not think is? Joel (30m 36s): It may be the most overhyped tech in our lifetimes. I don't know. Chad (30m 39s): Until it's not. I think. I think until it's not. Joel (30m 43s): But the problem is I need to see some real world applications. Chad (30m 46s): Yes. Joel (30m 46s): You know what I mean? The web died, but at least I had bought something on the web. At least I had email. There was some proof that I was gonna use this thing. Web3. Yeah, not so much. Chad (30m 57s): You've gotta ask yourself at this point, if it is something shouldn't Dice be the predominant place for Web3. So I went there to do a search and just did basic Web3 and they had 19 jobs, 1-9, 19 jobs. And I went to Indeed and I got a smattering of shit that just had made no sense whatsoever with regard to, you know, Web3 development and, and whatnot. So I thought, you know what, there might be kind of like an Upwork for Web3 three talent and anybody who wants to be on Web3, they love the tokens thing and all that other junk. So yeah, this this might actually be a thing. Now I checked out Kadence. One, one thing that we didn't see or didn't say on Kadence is that Chargify had $27 million dollars prior to this pivot. Chad (31m 47s): Yeah. Right. So there's $27 million dollars that's already in this repurposed tech that they've been pushing since 2013. So this is interesting and because hybrid will be the easy compromise for most companies, but hybrid work presents an entirely different set of logistical problems. Companies want to downsize their office space, which means knowing capacity, planning for capacity, desk swapping, scheduling in-house client meetings and the list goes on. Zero to 300 clients in 18 months Sounds good. But at a $4 a month starter price, that's not a big MRR to go with, but it could be leading into something bigger in bleeding into to organizations. Chad (32m 31s): I'm going to bet on hybrid over Web3, which is why I would rather all Kadence, all day and all night, baby. Joel (32m 42s): All right, you got Kadence on that one. Yeah. Dude, seriously Out Define has literally on their website quote, "hire global talent across Web2 and Web3. Seriously. So, FTX, I assume that if you listen to the show, you know what the hell's going on with them? FTX and their ilk kill the idea of decentralized in the blockchain. People gave FTX their money and then saw it be get embezzled gone into thin air. The whole trust system that blockchain touted just smells like bullshit now. Out Define has access to this quote, "decentralized community". It's not some in the cloud, no management, no one owns it kind of thing. Joel (33m 23s): Just like companies, who are saying AI are soon going to have to face the music with government regulators. If they keep saying they're AI and they're not really. I think some pain is coming for bullshit vendors like this who are basically LinkedIn wannabes in an unmarked van luring candidates and with some fake crypto candy. Call me crazy. But yeah, like there's no way that I'm gonna go with fucking Out Define as my who'd you rather? By the way, Cal Anderson, co-founder and CTO at Slack is a new Kadence investor, which I found rather interesting. So yeah, who'd you rather? It's a little bit of a lose lose on both of those maybe. Joel (34m 4s): But if we had to choose after a few drinks, we're going with Kadence. All right, Chad, let's talk about Upwork and Side Hustle Nation. Shall we? There's a lot of attention going there. All right. So our friends at Upwork that's at stock ticker UPWK are starting to ask questions. 39% of American professionals participated in freelance work this past year. That's up from 3% in 2021. And it's also a record high. That percentage was 34% in 2014 when the survey was first done. And the company said a total of 60 million Americans did at least some freelance work in 2022. Joel (34m 49s): As people continue to want flexibility, freelancing became more appealing and essential as it represents a shifting mindset in the workforce. The autonomous nature of freelancing becomes more evident as more companies usher in a return to the office. The real appeal in freelancing is quite simple: Money. A majority of respondents, 83% cited earning extra money as the top reason for freelancing. And 73% cited control over one's financial goals and future dealing with inflation and stagnant wages. More Americans are looking to side gigs in order to stay afloat. Some other highlights from the survey, over half the work is knowledge-based, such as computer programming, marketing, IT, and business consulting. Joel (35m 33s): And 26% of all US freelancers hold a postgraduate degree that's up from 20% just a year ago. Big impressive numbers, but you're not typically a big fan of surveys. Chad, where do you come down on Side Hustle Nation? Chad (35m 46s): So OnlyFans has been the biggest payday side hustle that we've talked about on the show thus far. But there are more options than freaky foot fetishes for our money on OnlyFans. Right? And let's be clear, this podcast started as a side hustle, right? So we couldn't make it on OnlyFans, so podcasts had to do. But you talk about surveys, LendingTree literally just did a survey that showed 44% of Americans have a side hustle. Who are the side hustlers? Mainly, You've got 62% of, were Gen Zs, 55% millennials and parents with children younger than 18 that was 54%. Chad (36m 28s): So there's a good amount of Americans who are looking side hustle and there's sites out there sidehustle.org that are available to help people find their hustle, to be able to answer questions around legal entity types, marketing your side hustle, how to monetize, how to build, taxes. And then there one that you didn't mention was online tutoring, which seems to be you can get up to $180 an hour on platforms like Outskill, Wyzant Lesson Face for doing a tutoring side side hustle. From time talked about referees, sports referees like soccer, football, getting anywhere from $1,500 a month. Joel (37m 12s): Are there sites for refs? Chad (37m 14s): Yeah. And then, and then one lady is making $22,000 a month by making art and working about two hours a day. She sells her art through her website, Etsy, Society6 shops. And she's also gotten into retail stores like Target and Home Goods. So I mean, these side hustles have actually blown up into something bigger. And they're starting to be platforms that are out there to take advantage of to some extent, but also to amplify some of the really good side hustles that are out there. Joel (37m 44s): Okay. I think you have to consider the source a little bit. Upwork makes more money. Chad (37m 49s): Oh yes. Joel (37m 50s): If everyone thinks everyone is on Upwork doing gigs. So I'm taking some of this with a grain of salt. However, the side hustle is real. Smart people are learning to use these services to either make additional money, like the survey says in addition to their day job or making a living on their terms. You mentioned our side hustle that turned into, I guess "a job" in quotes. And the increase in layoffs that we've seen means more people are going to investigate the option of going gig. You'll remember LinkedIn really blew up in 2008 when the big recession hit and everyone was looking for jobs. At some point, I think we'll hit a ceiling where there's so much competition and it's too tough and just too numerous for people to cut through the clutter of the gig economy. Joel (38m 35s): But I don't think we're there yet. It's real, you know, my kid works food service and it's fair to say he's not a big fan of it. I would be surprised if he's not driven to how do I make money on the side, on my terms, on my time without a boss looking over my shoulder. By the way, Upwork and Fivver stock, they're both public companies have been in the shitter all year, which could be further evidence that these services do have a ceiling on growth or at least Wall Street sees a ceiling on it. So it's gonna be fun to watch, but I think it's real. I think more and more people, I think more interestingly from that is a lot of the side hustlers are now professionals, people with MBAs, people with, you know, advanced degrees. Joel (39m 22s): That's important. And companies should be very aware that those folks are moving to gig because those folks traditionally have had a job with benefits and retirement and all that good stuff. So if that's switching, that's a big red flag for employers to be aware of. Chad (39m 39s): Yeah. Well you mentioned money, but autonomy is obviously huge when it comes to actually being able to, if you can, if you can survive on your side hustle and you can, I'd rather do that any day than actually having to clock in. Joel (39m 58s): We'll be right back with porn cop. It's getting hot in the desert Chad. A Phoenix police officer is under investigation for allegedly creating and distributing pornography while on duty and working from home. sfx (40m 14s): What are you doing? Step bro? Joel (40m 17s): Officer Christian Goggins 30 years old is accused of disseminating adult videos through a public Twitter page using the handle Rico Blaze. That was your nickname in high school, wasn't it Chad? By the way, his profile page bio is in quotes, "I create art and my insert eggplant emoji is the pin" and he has 24,000 followers if you could believe that. Goggins allegedly had been traveling to Las Vegas to produce and star in his own hardcore pornographic videos. The Phoenix Police Department has confirmed that Goggins is the subject of an internal investigation, but would not further provide details. Joel (41m 0s): Chad, I'm sure you fought the urge to insert a bunch of gun jokes into your commentary, but what are your thoughts on Rico Blaze? Chad (41m 13s): Yeah, I just think it's interesting that poor Officer Goggins is going to have to experience an internal probe. But, seriously, we actually had a story where a female cop was ousted out of the force for having a sexy OnlyFan's account. Yeah, but she wasn't filming on the clock. So when you're a police officer, you should not be trying to get your baton wet. I mean, that's all there is to it. Joel (41m 37s): He's got a big gun, man. You know, unfortunately Upwork doesn't have a porn category, otherwise we could have gotten some data from their latest survey on this one. Anyway, I'm a kid from the seventies, so were you, I frankly just assumed all cops were doing porn on the side. Like are you telling me Eric Estrada in Chips, the cop in the Village People Starsky and Hutch, William Shatner as TJ Hooker weren't doing some low-budget skin flicks on the side. Chad (42m 4s): Oh hey. Yeah. Joel (42m 6s): On the side. And don't even get me started on Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice, please. Chad and Cheese (42m 14s): We out. We out. OUTRO (43m 1s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

What do Home Depot, New York City, and LinkedIn have in common? They're all topics of discussion on this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Recruitment Marketing with Julie Calli, President at RecruitmentMarketing.com. Specifically, Home Depot has cracked the code (maybe) on how to develop more laborers while increasing the number of loyal customers to their business, New York City is putting employers' feet to the fire when it comes to using A.I. in recruitment and LinkedIn has published it's Global Talent Trends report. We dig into each accordingly. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. INTRO (0s): 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 (21s): Oh, yeah. Adidas says it plans to release more Yeezys just under its own branding. Sweet. I can still wear my 10 fifties guilt free. Hi kids you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast, does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your co-host, Joel "college dropout" Cheesman. Chad (41s): This is Chad "afternoon delight" Sowash. Julie (43s): This is Julie "rocking my new Chad and Cheese shirt" Calli. Chad (47s): Yeah. Joel (48s): Yes. And on this episode, we put the Ho, ho, ho in Home Depot. Man versus machine in New York City. And LinkedIn's got trends. Let's do this. Chad (1m 2s): Well, that's a sexy T-shirt right there, let me tell you. Joel (1m 5s): Woo. Julie (1m 6s): Isn't it great? Joel (1m 7s): She looks so comfy. She looks so comfy. Julie (1m 9s): I love it. Joel (1m 11s): It's like the Snuggie from back in the day. That's how she looks. Likes she's rocking a Snuggie on the Lazy Boy. Chad (1m 18s): Ooh, we could actually come out with those. That'd be cool. Joel (1m 21s): No, no, no, no. Don't do it. Chad (1m 25s): Chad and Cheese Snuggies for Winter. Joel (1m 26s): No, sir. Negatory. Julie (1m 30s): It's a blanket with sleeves. Chad (1m 32s): Oh, man. Joel (1m 34s): Remember the family ones where it had like multiple, oh God. Chad (1m 38s): That was pretty bad. That would be awesome though. Talk about great marketing. Joel (1m 42s): Speaking of marketing, I once met the owner, the founder of Jeggings. Do you remember jeggings? They were like jeans, but leggings. Chad (1m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. Joel (1m 49s): And his secret to success was late night TV advertising, which is super cheap. And he knew that if he just did this and paid, you know, a little bit in marketing, that the media would pick it up, which they did. And he said those late night 2:00 AM advertisements led to, you know, the Today Show and all this media. So anyway, random. But yeah, the founder of Jeggings I met once. Julie (2m 15s): Should we take that tip into recruitment marketing and start doing 2:00 AM cheap commercial advertising. Joel (2m 21s): There's an HR tech vendor out there that's getting some knowledge that will be advertising late night during Maury Povich reruns. I'm sure. Chad (2m 31s): Maury Povich. Joel (2m 32s): Is Maury still on? Oh God, Chad (2m 34s): I don't know. That's where I think, like the DNA tests just exploded. The daddy tests. Joel (2m 42s): Yeah. Chad (2m 42s): They just exploded. Nobody knew they even existed until then. They thought they still had to kill rabbits. Joel (2m 48s): DNA exploding everywhere. Exploding everywhere. Who knew? Chad (2m 53s): That could be our new slogan. Joel (2m 54s): Speaking of exploding, should we get to some shoutouts? Chad (2m 58s): For the show? Let's do it. Let's do, let's do it. Joel (3m 0s): And speaking of exploding everywhere, my shoutout goes to women. Yes. Oh, nobody relates to women more than me. So giving them a shout out makes perfect sense. So we're all aware there's a serious shortage in truck drivers, right? Well, like most things, men fuck up. Women are here to fix all our shit. That's right. Women are helping to close the driver shortage here in America. The number of women employed in the trucking industry hit 1.6 million in October. That's a record since the BLS started tracking the numbers back in 1990. Chad (3m 33s): Wow. Joel (3m 33s): Women share of the trucking industry workforce is now at an all-time high of nearly 18% of trucking jobs. Also a shout out to more women, the women of Crocs. Yes. Chad's favorite footwear maker. He typically wears them with starched white socks, by the way, has women to thank for its strengthening employment brand. This is from Forbes since implementing, its come as you are strategy five years ago, by the way, that's more than 15 years after Kurt Cobain saying, Come As You are women now make up 67% of its global workforce with half of their executive team identifying as women. Joel (4m 13s): Another side note about Crocs, 50% of US employees identify as people of color, with black and Hispanic workers representing 19% and 24% of its US workforce. Put on those Crocs and wear them with pride. Shout out to women, trucking and Crocs. Chad (4m 32s): Nothing turns me off more than a woman wearing Crocs. Joel (4m 36s): Crocs and mom jeans are the absolute boner killer of all time. Julie (4m 41s): But what about driving a truck? Joel (4m 44s): Oh, now we're talking. Chad (4m 45s): That's different. She's got her own place. Joel (4m 47s): A girl in a Jeep Wrangler is super hot, by the way. Chad (4m 51s): Oh, not just a truck. They've got, you know, the little sleeper in the back too. Joel (4m 55s): As long as there's a monkey in the passenger seat named BJ. Chad (4m 59s): That's BJ and the Bear, that's what I'm talking about. All right. Enough of this. My shout out's going to go to AI generated portraits. Okay. Is this not the creepiest shit that you've ever seen? I don't know where it's like on all of my social feeds. All I see are these, these ai, I guess AI generated portraits of people pushing them out themselves. Oh, yeah. Joel (5m 24s): Astronauts, rock stars. Chad (5m 26s): Does anybody know what this is about? How did this even start? Julie, this is a marketing coup because they are everywhere, kinda like Chad and Cheese t-shirts. But how, how in the hell this is thing working? Joel (5m 38s): Which will never be AI generated, by the way. Chad (5m 40s): I don't know. Julie (5m 41s): Well, you know, in a population of people who take selfies, they're looking for a way to level up all that content. And this is a incredible creative way to see yourself done in different forms of art, in different forms of expression. But there's been some backlash on this because when you go into it, you identify male, female or other, and if you identify as female, it sexualizes all the images that it generates. Chad (6m 8s): How so? Does it put you like in boudoir photos? Joel (6m 11s): Or would it turn Chad into a woman? Julie (6m 13s): So I would employ those who have subscribed to this service to try doing another submission, but submit it as a different gender and see what it does to your photos. Chad (6m 24s): Wow. Joel (6m 24s): By the way, how long before we start seeing companies about us webpages with AI generated portraits of the CEO and the CFO? You know, it's coming. Everybody, everybody. You know, it's coming everybody. Chad (6m 36s): Not in France though, because you don't have to have fun in France. Okay, let's just talk about that. Julie (6m 42s): No fun for the French? Joel (6m 43s): France. The no fun country. Chad (6m 47s): Anyway, shout out Julie? Julie (6m 48s): Oh, I wanna give a shout out to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. Joel (6m 57s): Bless you. Julie (6m 57s): He just was declared Times person of the year. Truthfully, I'm so glad for that, because what a phenomenal leader. He has been just a perfect example of how to lead people by being directly involved, by communicating constantly, by leading with purpose. Oh my goodness. He's just been such an incredible demonstration of being a good leader, and I'm so glad to see him take man of the year. Joel (7m 23s): Yeah. Not bad for a two bit actor at one point. I don't know if you've seen some of his Ukrainian television footage, but it's quite entertaining. You wouldn't expect him to be Winston Churchill 2.0. That's for sure. Chad (7m 35s): I tell you, crisis brings out character, my friends, and you don't really know a person until you put 'em under a little pressure. And I tell you what, this guy, he's turned into fucking Superman is what he's turned into. And, I gotta give it to his wife as well. I mean, they are getting out as much as possible. Obviously he's staying in, you know, in in Ukraine doing his thing, making sure that they all know that he's on the battlefield with them. And she is out from a diplomatic standpoint. She's all over the place. And I mean, it's the smartest duo I think I've seen in a very long time. Joel (8m 11s): I don't need a ride. I need bullets. Chad (8m 17s): TOPICS! Joel (8m 18s): All right. We had a lot going on at recruitmentmarketing.com Julie. Let's talk about Home Depot, shall we? So you penned an article entitled Home Depot launches, virtual Career Marketplace for Skilled Trades People. Home Depot recently launched its Path to Pro Network, a job seeker forum that aims to connect skilled workers and employers through the platform. Workers can post their credentials and examples of prior work to generate interest from potential customers and businesses. The program also offers a free training program for those interested in pursuing and growing a career in the skilled trades and prepares them for their first job. Joel (8m 58s): Chad and I touched on this story on our weekly show, but like most shows, we go about an inch deep. You went way deeper on this, the roots of this problem. Go way back. Tell us about the article. Julie (9m 9s): No, I had to write a whole article on this because I am, first of all, this strategy is genius and I absolutely wanted to recognize Home Depot for that. Joel (9m 20s): Yes. Julie (9m 20s): The other is that this is a significant example of there's a problem and there's an opportunity for brands to step in and be the solution. We are running short on trades people, skilled trades people, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But just like any homeowner knows, you know, in the world, you need someone to come fix something within your home. You're gonna struggle to get good quality work done, because we're short on people to do that. The businesses that actually serve are struggling to get talent. Doing trade work is actually a skill we run on those services, our heating, our air conditioning, you know, all kinds of work that's done on our vehicles that transport everything that we have. Julie (10m 9s): We absolutely depend on trades people to keep our lives functioning and we have a significant shortage of them. That's actually gonna hurt Home Depot's bottom line, if they have less tradespeople, they're gonna have less sales. So how do they fix that? They need to make sure there is the gap in tradespeople is being filled. Now that isn't just about, you know, let's connect people to jobs, where they're really doing an outstanding job here is they're also connecting people to free training. You know, in a world where we have, I'd say in the past, we've told people, you won't be successful in life unless you go to college. Right? Like, I know that I grew up in a generation where I was told that repeatedly, the only way you're gonna get a great job is if you go to college. Julie (10m 56s): And that was, I believe, built on a foundation that the only way to get an education was to pay for it. But I was also of a generation where information became very accessible. And the internet that you could educate yourself simply by going out and seeking out the information that was out there. This is creating an opportunity for people to connect, to learn real skills where there's a real market need for that. And Home Depot has just put themselves right in the center of that entire ecospace for tradespeople. The training, the finding the job, the finding a place, you know, to be an apprentice, to get that skill and that learning. And then of course, they have all of the supplies needed to do the actual job. Julie (11m 42s): It's genius. Chad (11m 43s): Yeah. Joel and I were on the cusp of vocational schools in high schools. I know we had a vocational school in our high school that actually was being flushed out again because everybody was told at that point that you needed to go to college. And, I mean, my cousins, I mean, pretty much my entire family were carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and that's just what we had in very blue collar, Mansfield, Ohio. But then what happened? You started yanking that funding out of the actual schools. And then today it's harder then hell to find a plumber. Luckily, I live next door to one. I can go over a knock on the door and hope he has some time for me. Joel (12m 26s): Yeah. Chad (12m 27s): But other than that, man, it's not easy. This from Home Depot standpoint is incredibly smart, as you'd said, because you've got construction clients that need talent because without talent, they can't accept jobs. If they can't accept jobs, they can't spend money on materials, if they can't spend money on materials. Home depot's not making money. Joel (12m 48s): Bingo! Chad (12m 48s): Yeah. That's where it comes down to. Right? So it's incredibly smart for them. And then if they can just connect more of these individuals with training, it just makes sense. You know, the training schools, not to mention unions. I mean, we need to have a more robust training program that, again, is infused in our schools. Joel (13m 12s): One of the things I found really interesting in the article, Julie, was the no Child Left Behind legislation from 2002 and how that moved so much money into STEM, which is a good thing, but it took away money from the programs that we're talking about. And I think that, you know, Chad and I have talked about my local high school down in, you know, southern Indiana. It's sponsored by auto parts store, right? Like, literally the store sign is on the school teaching people how to repair cars and things like that. So this marriage of commercialization and education, I think has been necessary partly because of government decisions to take away money from these programs into other things. Joel (13m 57s): The other thing that I found really interesting was the amount of boomers that I think we take for granted that have been doing a lot of these jobs. Oh man, in the past, they're retiring at a rate of 2.2 million in the US every year. One question I did have for you guys is, you know, the amount of mentorship programs, whether it be, you know, VR headsets that can teach you how to, you know, change a rotator whatever of a break pad or, you know, are those gonna re be able to replace the education? Can we deal with technology? Can we do it with mentorship programs? Is there a place for those in this issue? Yeah. Julie (14m 33s): You know, on your, can those do it yourself videos, like replace, well, there's a foundational knowledge you need to do with anything. Right. And, you know, and then you apply your epoxy, right. But epoxy's actually a very dangerous thing to work with if you don't know how to use it. So if you don't have the foundational knowledge of how to use it and you simply want you to do it or yourself. Joel (14m 54s): Yeah. Julie (14m 54s): And oh, it just looks like this sticky little liquid, it's like blue. Yeah. That can also, you know, take the flesh off your, your hand if you're not careful. So there's a foundational knowledge that needs to happen in trades, but then yes, just like anything else, we build a foundational knowledge, but then we can learn a lot ourselves. We will have to constantly upskill and look for new knowledge no matter what trade you're in, because everything in the world is evolving so quickly. And as the internet of things becomes involved with everything, there is a greater level of knowledge that'll need to be had to interact with things as well as information and skill they'll have to be acquired to stay ahead of that. Joel (15m 37s): I think that's a great point because it's this, the trades are one of those things where you can't just see a video or read some code and then sort of tinker around on your laptop to figure it out. Like, you can't work with a toilet unless you actually touch a toilet and unscrew things and and whatnot. So it's a unique problem with the trades where you actually have to have someone show you or have the actual physical thing there for you to learn it. So I think we can't just Coursera, we can't just LinkedIn learning our way to more tradespeople in this country. There has to be mentorship programs and apprenticeships. Julie (16m 14s): Yeah. And your, your point on boomers, I mean, so many of them are retiring so quickly, that's missed opportunity for all of the people who could be learning from them right now. Chad (16m 24s): Oh yes. Julie (16m 25s): Because, you know, there's an absolute truth in, you know, you pay someone $200 an hour to come in and, you know, do some work on your house in trades. A very experienced person's gonna walk in point right at the problem and get it done within an hour. But someone who's not is gonna turn into a six hour job as they're trying to figure it out and, you know, yeah. Navigate through things cuz they just don't have the experience to act on it and, and solution it as quickly. Chad (16m 50s): Yeah. There's still a lot of Xers that were in those trades, although we don't have the population that the boomers do, so to be able to fill that gap, there's just no way in hell that's gonna happen. Now, from a branding standpoint and a brand loyalty standpoint, think of how an individual actually, you know, how loyal they are to a Home Depot if they actually go through a matching and, or a training program. I'm not saying it's a training program by Home Depot, but I mean, if you, if you take a company like Home Depot and they know they need this segment to grow, they might a actually make a little bit more formalized actions in being able to drive some of these training programs. Chad (17m 39s): This might be the first step of a few more steps. Julie (17m 42s): Yeah. I actually hope this catches on in other areas where we have significant talent gaps, you know, and just spending more money on advertising or building really cool TikTok videos is not going to solve the to talent problem. Chad (17m 57s): No. There's the reason why a company can't do this, just like Home Depot is. I mean, and again, you know, my daughter found a training program at the local hospital and they trained her up and now she's, you know, a lab tech, she's a phlebotomist. So I mean those, they're out there. The problem is access and discoverability. Julie (18m 20s): Yeah, I totally agree. And how can we? We have such a huge supply of fresh, young minds coming into the workforce that are just confused. They're confused by, do I go to college? You know, do I, you know, drive for Uber? What do I do with my life? And how can we present more opportunities to them? Because I just don't think that we're educating them in all of the ways that they can be successful in their future, in their life. We're still giving them traditional paths into the future of work, which is not the same. Chad (18m 59s): Round peg square hole. Joel (19m 2s): All I know is, thank God IKEA acquired Task Rabbit. Otherwise I'd be that retiree sitting on the floor without furniture. We'll be right back. Man versus machine. Wow. You got medieval on this title. Julie, from recruitment marketing entitled Man versus Machine: New York City law attempts to eliminate bias in artificial intelligence. Well, we talked recently about transparency and pay. Well more New York City talk, everybody and New York City law will soon require businesses to conduct audits, designed to assess biases in all AI-driven systems that are used for recruitment, marketing and hiring. Joel (19m 44s): Under the new law scheduled to take effect on January of 23, the hiring company will be liable for potential biases and subject to fines for violations. Nearly one in four organizations now make use of some form of automation, ai, or both to support their HR activities. Regulators have begun to take notice and seek to ensure that companies don't accidentally introduce the potential for further bias through AI technologies. Julie, you go on to talk about examples of bias. Tell us more about this article. Julie (20m 17s): Oh, I have so much I wanna say here and yet like so little is known, I'll start with AI and research that's been done has proven that there is bias in AI. Joel (20m 32s): Amazon, there's a cut. Sorry. Julie (20m 36s): But they're not alone. So there is research that proves that AI can have bias and some of that is because a lot of visual AI has not yet been mature enough to accept that there are different kinds of people that look different. So there's some that are associated with that. That's the visual. And the other is that a lot of AI has learned based on data that we already have. Chad (21m 1s): Biased data. Julie (21m 2s): And that data is based on humans and the work that they have done, which has included bias. So we've taught AI to be biased. So there is legitimate reason for us to raise eyebrows to AI and say, Hey, you know, we need to make sure it we're accountable for what we're building here to not progress the future of recruitment into continuing on with bias. We want to use technology to eliminate that, not carry it on. So there's reason for that, but there's also one in four companies is using some form of AI in the recruitment process. Julie (21m 42s): So it's, there's an adaption taking place. So it's real that AI is in recruitment marketing and 67% of all HR leaders believe it's going to improve the experience. So people believe it, in ai, people are using it, but there's also this fact that it can have these problems. So this is all the truth. So how do we make sure, right? The best way to make change is to mandate things. But this is also where this gets a little dangerous. There are people making these mandates that are not fully educated on how it's used throughout the industry. How are we going to instruct people to do these types of audits? So that's where we arrive today. Julie (22m 23s): We have good intentions for there to be a mandate in New York that all AI is audited. Okay, so how do you conduct that audit? Who conducts that audit? What does that audit in include? What? There's no information. So although it's a wonderful act to mandate that we don't wanna see bias in AI and you must review on audit all your systems, you know, within a few weeks. That's great, that's commendable. But with no instructions and no details and no information or path of how to do that, this is going to be a problem and it has everyone scratching their heads. I gave a talk last week at TA Tech and I spoke on this and you know, who I was addressing in that audience were the people who build this technology, the people who create this tech for this space. Julie (23m 16s): And what I had said to them is, you know, accountability is the end of the process. First it begins with ownership and we own that technology. We're the ones building it, we're the ones buying it, we're the ones using it. So we have to be responsible. Our actions, the ones that we take, need to be responsible. So we shouldn't be waiting for the government to tell us what we should be doing here. We should be being proactive in saying, what AI do I have? What does it touch? What decisions does it make? How does it come to those decisions? And then I wanna look at those outcomes to make sure I don't see that there's any bias happening. Julie (23m 56s): AI is going to be transformational for us and that's fantastic, but that is not gonna just happen at the flick of a switch. So I've lots to say on this, but truth, what do you do by January 1st? I don't know. There's really not a lot of information on how to conduct these audits. Chad (24m 11s): Well, there isn't a standard or real governing body that's gonna enforce it anyway. So to think that this is an end solution that's going to go into place on January 1st, it's fool's gold. Okay, so let's just go there first, what we're doing is, is we're actually jerking a knot in the industry's tail saying, Hey, get ready for this. This is coming. Think about it from this standpoint, from a government standpoint, it went into effect on January 1st, 2023. If I come to your place of work in 2024 and we by then have some sort of a standard in place, you better have it ready and audited. Okay? So for everybody to say, well we don't even know, I totally get that. Chad (24m 51s): But I agree, we need to be able to look at third parties to do the audits. Not doing these bullshit internal audits ourselves, calling our shit ethical ai, which nobody fucking understands what that even means. So I, I agree a hundred percent, but this is nothing more than a get ready signal for the rest of the industry to get their shit together to start working with and an opportunity for some companies who already do audits today to be able to take some of those older standards that they have around bias, because those laws haven't changed. Julie (25m 26s): Right. Chad (25m 26s): They haven't changed, they're still enforced. So if you use the older laws to be able to start to look at audits for now, have a nice day kids quit bitching and moaning, just get into work. Joel (25m 39s): We have an EEOC, we have a commissioner named Keith Sonderling. If I'm an employer, how are these rules different from those rules? Do I need different council like that? That to me creates some confusion if I'm an employer. And my fear a little bit like with the transparency thing was maybe I just need to get the hell outta New York? And every job that was posted in New York is now gone. I'm using a staffing firm, I'm using a third party to recruit. Now do you guys see that issue coming where companies just get the hell outta New York or have some other vendor or third party handle it? Cuz I don't wanna deal with this shit. Julie (26m 16s): I mean, AI is gonna find its way in everything that's gonna be hard to do. And I think you Chad (26m 21s): You can't run. Julie (26m 22s): Somebody might say, Hey, you know, not being in New York today might solve my problem, but it will not, the problem's not gonna go away. It's gonna spread and it's gonna be everywhere and then it's gonna become federal mandates. So I love what Chad said is like, hey, pay attention to the signal. It's a big flashing light warning you this is coming. Joel (26m 43s): Do you see fewer vendors promoting ai? If there's this sort of legislative danger associated with it? Julie (26m 50s): This is probably one of the things I'm most excited about now, is that there is some accountability in using the buzzword of ai. You know. Chad (26m 59s): Not just ai, AI and D E I. Because when you put those both together, then it's like, oh wait a minute, our platform is bulletproof. We're using AI and we're using DEI now you're looking to get smacked upside the head by the regulation ballbat. I mean that to me is the stupidest fucking thing you can do if you're, if you're a vendor in this space. Julie (27m 19s): Oh yeah, there's so many out there who claim to use ai, right? And then those of us who really understand the technology are like, no, you're not. So, but you know, people make these claims, but now there's accountability to that claim because now when the employer's knocking on your door and saying, Hey, I need to audit your technology because you claim to use ai and it's part of my process now, oh actually we don't use ai. Like you're gonna get caught, you're gonna get caught in like using a term as a buzzword when you don't actually have the data to back it up cuz you're gonna be audited. Joel (27m 54s): And by the way, not just government auditing, like how many lawyers in New York you think are going through websites that say DEI and AI and like researching them and who's used their service and blah blah blah for class action lawsuits and legal action. So the government's one layer of fear. The other is, if you're promoting and marketing these services, be beware that the lawyers might be coming after you as well. Julie (28m 22s): Yep. So accountability goes along with ai. Now it is not just a buzzword, it is not just something that we can throw in and say, Hey, cool, didn't that just make our lives easier? No accountability needs to come with ai. Joel (28m 35s): You can't just say the snake oil heals everything. You have to actually back this shit up. I'm curious, lastly for me on social media, you talk a lot about that in the article as well. Facebook obviously was in the news years ago around you can't advertise jobs or employment opportunities without having sort of certain tag or going through a a particular process. TikTok and Snap don't really have the same as far as I can tell, legislation and strictness around advertising. Talk about what you saw in the article around if you're gonna advertise on TikTok because those algorithms impact who your ad shows up in front of and what companies should be looking for if they're using social media to advertise, you know, jobs or build their employment brand. Julie (29m 23s): Yeah, so this is where I think there's gonna need to be definition around different types of recruitment advertising. Because when you're actually promoting a specific job or a role, right, you have to create a posting for that. And there are requirements that speak to that specific job right? Here it needs to include these things. It cannot include these things, right? There's a very specific thing to a post, but that's how we traditionally did recruitment advertising. We just made a job posting and then tried to get it out there. But that is not what do now we have to do more than that. We have to do storytelling all around that job. Julie (30m 5s): That job might be an artifact that is critical to the process and compliance. But you know, we have to do shiny sparkly things to get people to pay attention to those jobs. And that is where social media comes in, right? We do good storytelling on TikTok, experiences, but these are not directly job advertisements. They are employer branding videos. So when does it go from a job post to an employer brand video? There's a very different area there. Those two things can't all be lumped together with the same compliance. Pay transparency like that's something, like how much are you supposed to disclose when you create an employer brand video that's very general for hiring? Julie (30m 54s): Yeah, we're hiring! Right? But if you're not speaking about the specific role, do you have to then keep all the same compliance? So I think there's gonna be different, Chad (31m 2s): It's on the job. Julie (31m 4s): There's gonna need to be a standardization of the different types of advertising we do in recruitment marketing and which ones are connected to that and which ones are not. Now Facebook is a great story on this one because, you know, Facebook started coming in and saying, all right, you know, we recognize that a job advertisement is different than all other advertisement. So if you select that you were advertising for the purpose of jobs, they take away a lot of features. Like you can't target by race or gender or age, right? Good, you're not supposed to. So that was a really great thing. But then as they started to get deeper into the rabbit hole, they were started saying, great, you know, we'll take all jobs, we'll post all jobs up on Facebook. Julie (31m 45s): And then they said, nevermind. And then earlier this year they completely pulled out and they're not doing job feeds any longer with Facebook. So. Chad (31m 56s): Right. Julie (31m 58s): `I think they realized how deep the rabbit hole of danger can be as this industry is changing by the minute new laws are coming in, it is very difficult to be a provider in this space with so much change and so much danger that if you don't provide the right features and services, you are absolutely accountable for running ads that are non-compliant. Chad (32m 20s): It's risk versus reward is really what it is. The risk that we're looking to take versus the reward, which isn't really a lot of reward compared to the actual money that's being spent on other types of advertising. So yeah, just pull it, it's just not worth it for them. In this case. Julie (32m 34s): I would love to see the numbers that were put in front of Zuckerberg to make that decision, right? Like, well there's about, you know, $12 billion of opportunity in the recruitment advertising space, but there's also a 3 billion lawsuit potential, right? So we gotta make a decision here, which one we wanna lean in on further. And there was a decision made to not continue on the job feed side. So I would've loved to been a fly on the wall in that room to hear that decision being made. Joel (33m 7s): Well, speaking of Zuckerberg and rabbit holes of danger, let's talk about LinkedIn, shall we? Ooh, LinkedIn recently released its global Talent trends report, where they surface data insights from both LinkedIn's economic graph and their own member community to better understand how labor market trends impact candidates, employees and workplaces. Some of the highlights include: hiring is leveling off after historic highs, workers are bracing for an economic downturn, internal mobility increases employee retention. And here's the shocker, candidates consider compensation and benefits their top priority. Julie, what stood out to you most on the LinkedIn talent trends report? Julie (33m 51s): Well, a lot of things there are really just validating things that we already know. So, you know, did I walk away from that? Like I learned all these new things, not really just validation to a lot of things that we already know, but the one that I really gravitated to and loved the data on was candidates increasingly want remote work. Seeing the data on this, there was a story there that I was able to absorb instantly looking at their graph that they showed. Because in February, just this year, 20% of all the jobs on LinkedIn were remote. Okay? So now, so now few months later, it's September, 14% of their jobs are remote. Julie (34m 31s): So what that tells me is that companies are pulling back on remote jobs, okay? We know that this is happening as companies are trying to get back into the office, they're pulling back on hiring as many remote workers. So we're seeing that come back and retract a little bit. But what was really interesting is, I'm sharing in addition to that, at the same time in February, 50% of all the applications on LinkedIn went to those remote jobs, right? Joel (34m 56s): No word on how many were bait and switch, by the way, no word on it. Yes. Chad (35m 2s): No, that's not the point. Julie (35m 2s): But, then what happened? Right. There's less jobs on LinkedIn for remote work. What happens, the amount of application share to remote jobs actually increased. So 52% of all the applications on LinkedIn went to the remote jobs. What this is telling me is that people are not changing their desire for remote work, right? They are continuing to apply the majority of share to remote jobs. Those remote jobs are starting to decline. So if your job is not remote, you are competing against that significantly because the application volume is going there not to the other jobs. Julie (35m 45s): So, I mean, think about that. 50% of all the applications are only going to 14% of their jobs. Those poor other 86% of the jobs, no one's paying attention to applying to them. Joel (35m 56s): And by the way, this is a global phenomenon. This is not just US. This is a global issue. Julie (36m 2s): Yes. Joel (36m 3s): Yeah. Chad (36m 3s): Yeah. Take a hint. Take a hint. Employers, for God's sakes. I mean, if you do have these positions, and they can be, and again, we've seen so much research demonstrating that remote jobs or individuals who actually went remote, especially during the pandemic. They actually were happier, they had better outcomes, the company had less problem around this, but yet we still want to try to force that round peg into a square hole. Joel (36m 29s): And by the way, throw in a four day work week with the work from home stuff, then you're golden baby. Then you're golden. So one thing that I thought, one thing I thought that was interesting, we've talked a lot last few years about climate change, diversity, companies getting political. None of that showed up in this survey. Like, people want to be paid more, they want good benefits and they want flexibility. I'm curious if these issues of, I don't know, societal undertones, are gonna like just start to fade or they'll still be trumpeted by the media and people in our industry? Because what I saw in this report was we give a lot of oxygen to these social issues, but at the end of the day, they don't mean a whole hell of a lot to employees thoughts. Julie (37m 17s): So this is a global report, you know, looking at all things. So the things that surface are global. Now that statistically includes multi-generation, I would say that a lot of those social responsibility areas are not as heavily weighted in some of the older generations as they are the younger. So it matters more towards the talent that's emerging and the talent that is the future of work than it does to those who are more senior and experienced in aging out of the workforce. A lot of the people who are of an older generation have had a lot of tenor at companies. Julie (37m 58s): So they build loyalty even at a company that might not be socially responsible. There's a loyalty still. Like that is something that has, you know, been known as a trait for people who are in older generations is that they are tremendously loyal. So that's been a real value, but that is not the case when you look at emerging generations who are very distrusting of leadership, of companies and they're looking for that social responsibility. So, I think you're right, it didn't show up on this report, but I think if you went and took smaller segments of specific age groups, you'd see that change, that report would look very different. Chad (38m 39s): Did they even go into it though? I mean, because this could have been slated specifically to everything other than social responsibility, right? So I mean, that could have just been an aspect that was not a part of the conversation, which I mean, that makes sense why it came out the way that it did. It was all focused really on the old timey version of what a job was versus what it's turning to, right? Joel (38m 60s): I think it's fair to say a baseline is if you're not paying well and giving good benefits, you're at a disadvantage to everybody no matter what your political stance on any of this stuff is. The other thing that stood out to me is the importance of upskilling. We've had a lot of companies, startups get a lot of money in terms of this area of upskilling. It is a really important thing according to this report. People are asking, you know, how can I do better? Do a better job so I can get paid more, get promoted, land my next dream role? If you're not having the conversations of how do we take you from here up to here at your current job, you're gonna lose those people over time for companies that do care about upskilling and giving people more mobility in work. Chad (39m 48s): And, again, it's all about transparency: wage transparency, career path transparency, upskilling transparency. You have to know what the next step is on your skilling to be able to go from sales into marketing, marketing into sales and to development or what have you. And it's just not there. The mapping we have seen, like the guilds of the world, some of those upskilling and also transparency kind of, you know, internal mobility platforms start to rise. I don't think they're rising enough. We need more transparency, obviously. Julie (40m 21s): I love the conversation of internal mobility, especially because there is this traditional, right? And this is what keeps, you know, recruitment marketing well funded, but there's this traditional view of, you know, we need talent go out and hunt, right? Go find that talent and let's bring that talent into the organization. There has not historically been this view of we have talent here. How can we help grow and nurture them into the talent we need for the future? We do more hunting than we do farming and gardening. And the truth is, is that you can take seeds and plant them and over time nurture them and they will grow into the forest that you need for the future. Julie (41m 3s): That's exactly what Home Depot is doing. But we still have this, oh, we need a skill, this person doesn't have it, let's go hire the person. How about? It takes 90 days sometimes to make a hire and you could probably teach someone that skill in 90 days. And that not only will create greater, you know, retention and satisfaction with the employee that you invested in to grow that skill, but you're also saving a ton on hiring costs and bringing in someone new. So it absolutely makes sense to do more to create internal mobility. It's just not been traditionally the way that we've operated. Joel (41m 44s): Did we mention Julie Calli's in a Chad and Cheese t-shirt everybody? Holy shit. Julie more goodness from recruitment marketing.com, let everyone know where they can find you or connect with you. Julie (41m 57s): Yeah. Recruitmentmarketing.com. It's a free resource for people who work in the industry. Come join and subscribe. Joel (42m 4s): Julie Calli, everybody! Chad, that's another one in the books. Chad and Cheese (42m 9s): We out! OUTRO (42m 57s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Turn down the lights and turn up the Marvin Gaye, because we're talking about VR in recruiting on this episode. Turns out, there's a really cool organization called VisionThree that's raising $80 million to advance virtual reality in schools and partnering with corporations and local governments to increase the level of talent in the workforce. Heather Jackson, chief revenue officer at VisionThree breaks it all down for us. Spoiler alert: It's all Mark Zuckerberg's fault. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (22s): Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite meatheads, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, the Stockton to my Malone, Chad Sowash. And today we welcome Heather, Mrs. Jackson, if you're nasty Jackson. She is the CRO, that's Chief Revenue Officer, kids of VisionThree. Heather, welcome to the show from Plano, Texas of all places. Heather (50s): Yes, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And Chad and Cheese, it's appreciating that time and it's good to be here. Joel (56s): No problem. Now you're in Plano, but you do live in Indianapolis. Correct? Heather (1m 1s): I actually live in St. Pete, Florida, and I'm in Indianapolis pretty regularly for business with VisionThree. Joel (1m 7s): Woman of the world. You should get to know Chad. He's got like eight homes around the world. Chad (1m 12s): I do not. Heather (1m 14s): Every one of them comes with a yacht and there are some extra features. Right? Joel (1m 21s): So, so ultimately what's probably you next to a plate of fajitas and a lone star cold one. Give us a little bit about Heather Jackson, what makes you tick, and then we'll get into some of the news. Heather (1m 33s): Well, that might take up the whole show. I'll give you the abbreviated version. Joel (1m 37s): Twitter, we call 'em Twitter bios. Heather (1m 38s): Yeah, the Twitter bio on me. I've been with VisionThree for three years. I am what I typically term a chronic entrepreneur. I've been doing entrepreneurial endeavors across a number of different verticals for a really long time. And I tend to like very off the wall crazy ideas that nobody else has thought of. Those are the types of things that I tend to gravitate toward, and I never would've imagined starting with VisionThree that there would become this really cool intersection of my previous work. Some of my businesses were involved with education, teaching kids, and the intersection of those things with virtual reality and the ability to change this recruiting game, you know, has has just been on an absolute fast track ever since it sort of came together for us. Joel (2m 26s): I'm sorry, Heather,did you say virtual reality? I, Heather (2m 29s): I did. I wasn't sure if VR or virtual reality qualified for the music. So, Joel (2m 34s): So listeners of our show will know we talked about this news, but let's refresh everyone. So the headline here is VisionThree announces $80 million Initiative to Reimagine Recruiting through the Power of Virtual Reality. Tell us what VisionThree is exactly and then talk about this initiative. Heather (2m 53s): Sure. So VisionThree, we've been around for 20 years, so we've been doing this for a really long time. Not all of it in VR. We started out as an agency doing everything from app development, web development, kind of cutting edge flash, which now sounds very, not cutting edge, but at the time we were pushing the envelope and you know, we rolled into doing a lot more work with Touch Interactive, custom touch glass and, you know, those types of things. And we did a lot of trade show work. And then one of our clients, Rolls Royce said, Hey, you know, we'd really like to try to do some stuff in VR. And we said, Well, so would we, So we all put our heads together on some VR training and figured out that it was pretty much the coolest thing we'd ever seen. Heather (3m 32s): So, we started our new product called V3 Reality or newer product where we started out in touch interactive, built a platform for that. Now we've built a platform for VR. I don't know if you need to throw the soundbite in there, but Joel (3m 46s): We're gonna spare Chad. Chad (3m 47s): Thank you. Heather (3m 49s): We built a platform for VR that makes several different really cool tools that are used by Rolls Royce and a lot of our clients that we can bake content on top of, meaning that then those tools become available regardless of industry. And the networked capability is one of the key components of that, meaning that you can use it for sales training and recruiting. And as we started talking with clients about V3 reality and really pushing that into the marketplace over the last couple years, the answer, we keep asking to the question getting back from people when we ask the question, you know, Hey, what's your biggest problem? What's the challenge you're trying to overcome? It was recruiting, talent pipeline, recruiting talent pipeline, time and time and time again. That was the top problem that they needed to solve. And we realized that because of what we know how to do in the storytelling agency world paired with this digital technology, we probably had the right set of tools to figure out and the right storytellers to figure out how we change that storytelling approach using this new, new technology. Heather (4m 46s): And we've always been a holistic solution. We know we're hardware dependent, so we've always built that part of it into what we do. So we just figured why not do that and drop it into schools and make this something that then is really universally accessible. And the minute we talked about it to a couple of key stakeholders like Ivy Tech and others who have kicked this off with us, everybody said, Yeah, how quickly can we get on the train and hit go? You know, so, so it's just been a whirlwind ever since. Chad (5m 13s): Okay. So I can see the practical application for training. That to me is easy. In the military we used VR for training on the battlefield and those types of things. So that makes a lot of sense. But for recruiting, how does this work for recruiting, especially when you're trying to recruit somebody, do they have to have goggles? I mean, how does this all work? What's the practical application? Heather (5m 35s): Sure, great question. And so I'm gonna separate the two pieces of it. Right? So there's the talent pipeline development, which we're giving a bit of, we're getting a giving of a different treatment than our V3 reality platform. And so I'll start with V3 reality. The way that we approach recruiting there is, you know, it's all about getting to the prospect fast. Now, that's the other complaint we hear is how, how do we get them before somebody else gets them, right? There's that huge competitive factor. Well, if you've gotta fly them in and, you know, give 'em a room and all that and you know, there's just a cadence to that that slows down the process. What you can do with V3 reality is I can be here in Plano, and you guys can be in Timbutu, you can be in Indianapolis, you can be in Florida, you can be on the east coast. Heather (6m 20s): I ship you a headset, I have my concierge service, walk you through how to set that up and turn it on and use the controllers if you're not familiar for just a couple of minutes. And then I meet you in VR. And so we are standing together in a room, we are avatars that are just headsets, which strips away some element of bias potentially. And then we could be standing in a solution room. We could be standing in a lobby for your company. We can be standing next to one of your pinnacle products, which you're training on. But we're just seeing a really cool version of, and maybe we just wanna explode it and stick our heads inside the engine or you know, do some things we couldn't do in the real world while we're talking. Then 30 minutes later, one of my, you know, partners in another city, chimes in on their headset, comes into the space and takes over the interview. Heather (7m 3s): So we have an opportunity to actually have very one-to-one realistic, it feels very real. Our version of VR feels very real. So when you're sitting in that space, you really feel like you're there and you can really talk with people and you can see, get an idea of gestures, nods, all those types of things. So you can accelerate that process to connect with a prospect on the recruiting side. So does that answer your question on that piece of it? And then I'll talk about pipeline? Chad (7m 27s): Yes. So we're talking about mainly the interview process at this point? Heather (7m 33s): Correct. I mean you could also do introductory meetings, but you know, to me it's, you kind of qualify the lead, right? And then you decide to send them a headset because you wanna show them how cool you are. In the talent pipeline version of this though, this is gonna be a little more what we call Disney ride. So not a rollercoaster cuz everybody will throw up. But, this is where we approach the content in a self-guided way. It's not network, okay. For a number of reasons one of the biggest ones being security. But we wanna give the users, I say kids, but we've gotten interest all the way from, you know, can we talk to kids in the sixth grade and younger and can we talk to people at work one who've lost their jobs or wanna see, you know, make a change in their career? Heather (8m 13s): So we're focused right now cuz we know that we can't be all things to all people outta the gate. So our messaging and our approach right now is gonna be focused content-wise on ninth grade and high school through late twenties. You know, like basically that's the Ivy Tech average student age. So we're focusing on speaking to that particular group of people right now. So I'll say kids or you know, younger users, when they go into the headset. What we are doing now is spending a ton of time with a Vanderbilt researcher named Chris Kaufman and also Rich Whitney, who's a Cummins, he's been at Cummins for years doing global leadership and strategic training for them, developing a lot of their empathetic approach to product development as well. Heather (8m 54s): He's a human designer. And so what we're doing is taking our learnings from these two gentlemen and meshing it into our process to develop this message, craft this message and say, Hey, we know how to talk to businesses selling b2b, but do we really know how to talk to kids? I mean, as a teacher I know that I may think that I knew how to talk to kids, but at the end of the day, are they gonna give you a review that tells you, you did a great job with that. What we're really trying to focus on now in the talent pipeline conversation is we're serving up, I'll call it a social media feed. When they enter the headset, there's gonna be an age relevant. Like right now it's gonna be some more casting, very energetic young man named Carrington who's gonna welcome them into VR. He's gonna, you know, tell them how cool it is. Chad (9m 35s): Is the character a unicorn? That's the question. Heather (9m 38s): You know, I wish that he was, he's actually, when you see him in virtual reality, you might be like, man, that guy really kinda is a unicorn. Like when we all saw him, like in his audition tape, we were like that guy! So a bit of a unicorn, but not in the way. You may wish. Okay. Although I could dress him up. I mean it is virtual reality there. Anything's possible in the metaverse, right? Chad (9m 58s): Yes. Heather (9m 58s): So, you know, what we're doing is welcoming them. We wanna set the space, it's very modern, sleek room and once they've gotten acclimated to how we're using hand tracking with Oculus headset as opposed to trying to deal with controllers. So we're working on our interface to optimize that feature and then they'll actually be brought into this social media feed. I've gotta figure out a name for that. Our team has been working on that. We are all trying to come up with different ideas. It'll look kind of like Instagram or Facebook, but it's meant to be a kind of non-confrontational, non quiz like assessment tool that tells us a little more about what they're interested in. So if it's a kid that's more mathematically inclined that they're gonna see content that's more relevant to them as they move through the experience. Chad (10m 38s): Okay. Okay. Heather (10m 39s): And so, so they go through this social media feed, they tell us a little bit more about what they like out of these different posts that we've created, and then they're gonna be brought into a room that will kind of shift around and you're going to be presented with all of the companies that have job opportunities that would be related to you! And, it could just be, it doesn't necessarily have to be companies, it could also be industry focused, right? So we're talking with the electrical workers unions or you know, trades, entrepreneurship. We're gonna capture those types of stories as well as traditional company stories. Working with different stakeholders in the community to identify who owns those pieces. Inside our experience. Once the student selects what they want, then they're gonna be presented with some crafted messaging around each of those companies that's designed to help them understand the mission, vision, values, purpose over paycheck. Heather (11m 28s): And then when they go into what I'm calling the opportunities room, this is where we really get to play around and have a lot of fun with the corporate partners because, or I'll call them content partners because if it's in our pilot version, Acme Engine let's say, or in the aerospace, we're making up a name making up a client there, they're gonna be able to explode this engine and interact with it a little bit, but we don't want 'em get too distracted. And then we've created customized panels that show all the different job opportunities that are available right now inside the headset for that particular content partner. And so then they'll be able to open up a hotspot, we call 'em hotspots. And then there's more rich media content that tells them information about career tracks, shows them what the entry level looks like, what's the growth opportunity, what's the pay scale gonna be for this type of a job, What's the type of person that would be the right fit for this job? Heather (12m 17s): And then there's gotta be a there there. So cool. We don't want it to just be like, wow, that was really nice billboard that I got to watch in VR. So when they come outta the headset, we're partnering with Pivot CX and Field of Talent to actually have a connection point. So if they're interested in more information about what they saw right now, it'll be a bit more of a manual process. But in the final iterations they're gonna actually be connected through the V3 Connect app and they can actually say, I want more information about this job opportunity at Pace Dairy in Crawfordsville Indiana. Or I wanna go, you know, learn more about opportunities at Lilly and then they will be connected with a human who will help them get connected to the other humans that can help them make that happen. Chad (12m 58s): So it sounds like every single company would have an entirely different experience, which you guys need to build from the ground up. Is that correct? Heather (13m 6s): Exactly. Chad (13m 7s): Okay. So I mean that in itself, especially at this stage is, I would assume that's not cheap VR, you know, is, I know it's not new new, but it's still new compared to most of the other technologies that are out there. Do you have a huge dev team that actually, who do you interact with with the company to actually build these experiences? Heather (13m 28s): We have a really interesting structure internally where we have what I call the storyteller team and Jason Morris who leads that team, he's brilliant. He's really, really fast on his feet at listening to the company's story, understanding the need and figuring out how we translate that to VR. We've spent painstaking time figuring out why VR, right? Like if it's just watching a video, is that really worth it in VR? Identifying the right benefit for the customer. So we focus on it from a storytelling aspect and then he works with our 3D artists, you know, UI designers, production artists, and also with the development team to figure out which pieces of this make the most sense right now. That's our approach with B2B content, generally speaking. What we're trying to do now is bake down what are the key elements that make this more impactful for the corporate partners so that there's a little bit more plug and play to this than there would be in our V3 reality conversations? Heather (14m 19s): So that we're not reinventing the wheel every time, but also so that there's still that uniqueness to the experience. So if it's gonna be a healthcare partner, you know, and there's a hospital room and they want that room to do a few things, it's maybe not as complicated as it is with a whole engine. We figure out how to tell those stories more appropriately in not a cookie cutter fashion, but at least in something that gives the corporate partners, content partners an opportunity to understand what they need to give us to be successful. Cause what we don't wanna do is create an experience where only the big guys, look good. So, there's an MVP component to it. Chad (14m 52s): So, quick question around the content, because the type of content that you are creating sounds amazing and could be used more than just in a place where somebody has VR goggles, right? So you could be able to do like little teaser videos and those types of things. Are you repurposing some of that content outside to be able to drive more of a value proposition outside of just being in VR? Heather (15m 14s): Absolutely. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, VR is just cooler than anything else. I'm not just saying it cuz that's my business, but there, that was the right moment. Yes, thank you. Perfect moment showing pictures and slides and doing videos and YouTube. It's never quite the same. But what we've built into our core platform already is the ability to actually video inside the experiences. So there is a very, it's not easy to get it off the headset if it's not tethered cuz they don't make that as easy with mobile units. But there is the ability for us to then yes, optimize those experiences and put them in the the 2d, irl you know, be able to showcase those things to share, you know, we, I mean we anticipate there's an advertising component, right? Heather (15m 58s): You have to let young people know that this is available to them and it's not lame. Chad (16m 2s): Right. Joel (16m 2s): Okay, so, so help me visualize this. I know Ivy Tech was one example, but I wanna break it down to like the high school level. Are you envisioning this as, you know, hey, I'm a student and I can pick a few, you know, not extracurriculars, but classes and specific areas of study. Like I might take journalism or engineering or robotics, that this VR would be something that I could do during the day and from that VR experience based on what I wanted to do. It could be build to learn, you know, a V8 engine or learn how to code through VR. Like help me like from an experiential irl, how does this thing play out for a 16 year old kid at, you know, Carmel High School? Heather (16m 46s): What I would say is that we're not anticipating, well we would think of this as, I'll call it more of an exposure tool, right? We're just trying to expose young people wherever they are to opportunities they might not have known about. But where VR can go and where we see this opportunity going is if you've already got headsets in the school and you've already got people doing VR, then there's an opportunity to expand content, to be training focused. And we are talking with a lot of groups about type of content at Ivy Tech, for instance with Ivy Tech Academy. So, I wouldn't anticipate that the goal of V3 connect in and of itself is to train them on anything. It's meant to be more of a high level exposure tour that's constantly got fresh content in it, but then it's meant to help guide their choices in terms of what they're gonna pick to do when they're in school. Heather (17m 30s): If I'm a 16 year old Carmel High school and I'm not totally sure should I take robotics or the EMT class for instance, then what we are gonna do is either pair them, I mean, at Carmel High School I'm sure they probably, and I could be misspeaking and making assumptions here, you know, the statistics is something in their neighborhood, I think statewide of one guidance counselor to four or 500 students. Chad (17m 53s): Yeah. Heather (17m 53s): And that is an insurmountable number when you're trying to talk about personalized conversations. So, you know, I feel like there's pressure in certain schools and I would lump Carmel into this cuz, I'm from there originally, but is that there's a, I gotta be a doctor or lawyer, but I grew up in a tiny little town in northern Indiana where it was like, well you gotta do what girls do, right? So, so getting exposure to those young people, whether they are in Carmel, Indiana or they are in a rural America type of environment, or they're in urban Gary for instance, giving them that equal opportunity to see what's possible. And then what privacy X allows us to do is not put a burden on the guidance counselors necessarily to have to figure out what they do when they figure out they wanna do something they've never heard about before. Joel (18m 34s): So it may be more like something at in the library, like you would have headphones and you could listen to albums or something. Like there might be a corner in the library where you could, VR, what would it be like to be an engineer and here's Cummins explaining how that would look to you. It's not an actual class that you would take. Heather (18m 50s): We're imagining this to be something that integrated, like let's say a STEM teacher wants to give extra credit for doing more experiences in VR. Everybody's forced to integrate that way, right? We can, and you can't see me, but I'm putting this in four air quotes, gamify cuz that word gets dropped a little too much and used inappropriately, but gamifying the experience later, right? So we have the opportunity to add points, badges, you know, the more things you do, the more IRL opportunities maybe that you get. So, we wanna see it expand to that we're not starting there, but that's definitely where we see it going. Joel (19m 21s): In the release, you said that you were looking to raise $80 million, is that mostly from companies? Are there some government funding? Like talk about raising the money and then what are you guys plan to do once it is raised? Heather (19m 32s): All of the above. We have some really exciting conversations going on at the philanthropic level that I can't really spell out a whole lot about, but I mean it's had me jazzed the whole weekend! Our conversations last week with this particular group. And then on top of that then, so there's the philanthropic piece in the middle, right? And that may go towards helping, that could be state funding, that could be individual philanthropists, can be foundations, can be community economic development corporations. We're in talks with all of those groups as well as at, just at the state level. And every stakeholder's got a little bit different interest, right? So what we wanna do is make sure that that rural high school in Indiana can have, we call them pods. So we envision that every school has at least four headsets so that it looks significant, right? Heather (20m 17s): It's not just a stand with a headset sitting in the corner by itself looking lonely. So, it's got this pod component to it, there's a touch screen there, it's interactive, it tells them more about what's happening and that's using our touch interactive technology to tell those stories and then those the schools could opt to pay for that. And we have some schools that are willing and have budgets that are available to pay for the ongoing cost to cover that. But we have many who aren't. This is where philanthropy comes in. This is where state funding comes in, is the opportunity to make sure that that's sustainable for those schools to keep the headsets there. And then on the other side of that, there's gonna be, we hope some of this economic development type funds that would go towards helping smaller corporate partners not have to share, like carry the load where if a Lilly or a Cummins maybe can afford that because they have that kind of budget, but a Paysterier and Acuity Lighting cannot. Heather (21m 7s): So, we anticipate that central bucket of community partner funding, philanthropic funding, helping to aid on both sides as well as then each side funding some portion of what they're doing as well. Chad (21m 17s): I could see some real awesome connections and synergy between not just high school but university and the college to be able to try to, first and foremost, if I'm, you know, a university and I want to be able to draw great talent from, you know, obviously local high school levels throughout the entire, you know, United States, let's say into my university because Cummins engine company or Rolls Royce or whoever it might be, they want engineers coming outta Purdue. Right? So to be able to tie that together, and this is one of the things that I think that we have not been able to execute on here in the United States. We used to have a great vocational program that would automatically send kids pretty much as plumbers or carpenters or electricians right out into the community to do jobs, right? Chad (22m 5s): Well we fell down on that and we allowed that to go away and die. Now we can do the exact same thing with that old version for plumbers and carpenters. But we can also do that from an engineer standpoint. And instead of just going into the local community to be able to have those positions, they have to go to school, what schools support that? And then after that, what companies need that type of talent that actually support that as well. I mean, I see this as an ecosystem more than just, you know, little, you know, rural school here and there. Heather (22m 39s): That is exactly how we see it being an ecosystem for talent, talent pipeline. Absolutely. You're hired, Chad, you got the whole thing down. Chad (22m 48s): So this also sounds like something that government would just be clawing for because again, they have fallen down over the past few decades, not just a president, all the presidents left, right, center, they've all fallen down when it comes to being able to focus on ensuring that, you know, we keep hearing about the quote skills gap. So is there any opportunity for government to be able to spur on this, other than just funding? Heather (23m 17s): Yes, a tremendous amount of opportunity. I mean the conversations we've had, it's really just a matter of getting everybody in the same room because from the DWD to the CHC, again the, it's, you know, the acronym salad of all of the different stakeholders at the government level that are interested in this. We've spoken with all of them at a high level at separate moments, but what we wanted to be able to do to bring them all together is have our initial experience in the headset. For that exact reason I was saying earlier that you just gotta see it in VR. And so yes, they are clamoring to figure out exactly how they wanna structure state fundings. I think there's probably bigger opportunities for funding talking with like federal transportation, you know, they're all different kinds of groups and stakeholders who can benefit from this and every one of them is interested. Heather (24m 2s): We haven't talked to one that's like, oh no, I don't think that's for me. So, I think they all see this as a solution too, without putting words in the mouths of any of the great partners that we have been speaking with already. For sure there is just, they see this as a pathway. One of the gentlemen that I've been speaking with called it the backpack of opportunities and I love that. Like the visual of that is for me just makes my hair stand up actually. Just very cool. And so I think everybody sees this and the key is just showing them at it in VR so they can continue to imagine the art of the possible. Joel (24m 40s): So the release focus is specifically on Indiana, but also hints at national sort of growth. What does that look like? What's the timeline for that? Talk about global domination of this program. Heather (24m 53s): Well, you know, as I said, I may not have mentioned this in my about me, but global domination definitely on my sort of bucket list. So in the past to that, Thank you. Thank you. I'm bowing. sfx (25m 6s): What did you say? Chad (25m 7s): You're gonna need more than $80 million, but okay. Heather (25m 9s): Right. Yeah, I don't think anybody's handed me the keys to that kingdom anytime soon. But our path to global domination, as you say, you know, we're focused on Indiana and part of that was just, you know, we put this out out there earlier this year and had no idea. I mean, you come up with something new and as every entrepreneur hopes that it takes off and everybody gets it and you don't have to explain yourself a lot, but that has ended up being what's happening. So we set the goal of two years, we're gonna have this out there knowing that there's a herculean effort between here and there and all of the barriers just keep falling away the minute that we make that announcement, right? So what I see happening is that not only are we gonna hit that goal, but what we're talking about now is expanding beyond just the high schools and the colleges and putting them in libraries and putting them in chambers and putting them in other accessible areas, Boys and Girls clubs, YMCAs, opportunities like that, that there's a lot of interest in at the state level because it helps to just expand the reach, right? Heather (26m 10s): You make the content once and you can project it to as many different headsets across the world as you want. So we're focused on the US first obviously, but I don't see that there's a boundary necessarily. Does Indiana wanna attract people from Ohio and you know, Illinois to come to Indiana? Absolutely. So, I see that growing kind of organically that it just starts to expand as we put the word out. We have had so many schools reach out to us completely cold, just like we saw this, we want in, we haven't pushed it much beyond Indiana. We focused our press release on Indiana. So once we focus outside of that, I think that very naturally progresses. How fast? Really is only limited by obviously who wants to write the checks in at what level. Joel (26m 54s): And what Heather meant to say was, we heard about you on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Heather (26m 57s): Yes. Joel (26m 57s): That's what she meant to say. Heather (26m 58s): We heard about you on the Chad and Cheese podcast, therefore. What's totally gonna happen, actually, I mean, like I said, one of our stakeholders from actually from PivotCX was like, Hey, did you guys hear you were on the Chad and Cheese podcast? I'm like, we're everywhere, so maybe you are. So, the point being though, I do think what we're attempting to arrive at in Indiana though is a rinse and repeat, right? Let's understand how we effectively get these messages out there, make it faster, make it updateable, continue to expand. The metaverse doesn't have a limit. So how far can we go? You know, those are questions that we're gonna continue to answer, but in terms of the geographic boundaries, I don't think there is a limit, especially at least within the contiguous US. Chad (27m 44s): So you bring up the metaverse and one of the biggest opportunities in the metaverse today are platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, right? Are are you guys looking at perspectively allowing or starting to inject apps into, you know, those versions of the metaverse so that, you know, you might be able to drag them into the VR, but at least they're getting a taste of it. Heather (28m 9s): Yes. The app side of it is something, actually our CTO was just kind of, he was like, Hey, I don't wanna pull us way too far off topic, but I'm just thinking about app development. And I said, my brain's there already. What that looks like. Definitely no idea. You know, I do think there's a, there, there. But, I wouldn't jump ahead of Eric and say for sure how he sees that playing out. But I do think that an app makes a lot of sense and at least gets them enticed to wanna go maybe actually physically see a headset at a facility. But as people have more and more headsets, you know, I realize they try to say that it's still emerging tech, but I forget, there's, you know, what, 16 million headsets or something. Heather (28m 50s): There's a lot of headsets out there. I do think that that becomes a bit of a ubiquitous tool. I know that meta themselves would like them to be in every household and replace your iPhone. I don't know if that's gonna happen, but it does definitely expand your reach if we're already in the headsets and maybe there's an app that you can just download at home to see this content. Joel (29m 8s): Heather, you say $16 million is impressive and I say it's a little underwhelming and I don't wanna like throw a total wet blanket on this conversation. Chad (29m 17s): He always does. Heather (29m 19s): That's a bit of your job though, right? Point, counterpoint. Joel (29m 21s): Agree or disagree that it's underwhelmed at this point. I assume that you disagree, but if you do agree on the outside chance, what do you think turns VR around as a real ubiquitous, in every home kind of solution. If you disagree outside of $16 million, do you have any other metrics that might change my mind in terms of what VR has done up to this point? Heather (29m 44s): I agree with you in that I thought meta would do a better job at it. Joel (29m 48s): Where have they failed? Heather (29m 50s): Well, I mean I just don't think, you know, they came out and announced it, but it was like, I don't know if they had an action plan. I mean, maybe Mark Zuckerberg's gonna call me tomorrow and be like, Hey! But you know, I just, I expected them and I really feel like a lot of people in the industry expected them to, because of their reach and, and just sheer advertising power and connection to people across the world that they were going to deliver at a bigger level on what Meta was supposed to be doing. And I think it's just been kind of cloudy, you know? So I think that actually what happens is, I mean, we were all already out here doing it to begin with, right? They jumped in the fray like we're the cool cats Meta, Meta, Meta. Heather (30m 31s): Honestly, I think what it takes is organic growth. When you're trying to do something like this, there's just exposure and understanding. And, it's the same battle that we fought as we've made our way into the business clients and business partners that we have, is that there's just a resistance to stuff people don't know. There's also, I think, and to your point about what changes it, it is conversations, it is getting people in headsets with which a program like this can do. Because what we have found is, first of all, there is crappy VR, right? Like there's really not great VR, just like there's not great websites and if it's crappy VR, people are gonna get sick, they're gonna have problems with vertigo. Heather (31m 14s): They're, you know, that's too busy and so they don't understand what the heck they're doing there, you know. So there are a lot of efforts that we're actually putting in that's part of our Vanderbilt research to figure out why we do it better on a messaging side and how we craft the story. And also using, not getting super brainy, but he calls it our researchers looking at seductive detail and desirable difficulties. Thank you. I'm snapping too in the background. Chad (31m 38s): Seductive, Yes. Heather (31m 39s): Seductive. I just like being able to say seductive. So, so, you know, we're trying to really, it's a wild west out there and I I think until there start to emerge and we feel we are one of those thought leaders who are changing the conversation to this as a powerful tool instead of just a fun video game. That's what starts to change. Joel (31m 60s): Sounds like you're saying we're in AOL and dial up days and the good old days are around the corner. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Basically. Heather (32m 9s): It's not quite Napster, but you know, I mean maybe we're halfway in between Napster and streaming on iTunes, right? Chad (32m 17s): Well Heather, I have to say we have the answer for you. It's called the Chad and Cheese Virtual Experience coming to you in 2023 by VisionThree. Heather (32m 26s): I love it. Chad (32m 27s): Heather Jackson, everybody CRO at VisionThree. Heather, if anybody wants to find out more about what you guys are doing over there, this is exciting stuff. No question. Where would you send them? Heather (32m 39s): I would send them to Visionthree.com. You spell it all out, all one word and they can email us, contact us there, our phone number's right there. And you know, reach out and tell us a little bit more about you and let's get connected. Joel (32m 50s): Mrs. Jackson, if you're nasty. Heather (32m 52s): We out. Chad and Cheese (32m 52s): We out, we out. OUTRO (33m 48s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Ya' know how mobile developers have to build for two distinctly different platforms iOS and Android? Well, you'd better get ready for strategizing and building for Indeed ... and then everyone else. That's the vision Indeed laid out for attendees at their recent annual meeting, and RecruitmentMarketing.com's Julie Calli is here to lay out all the details from the event. If you use Indeed, it's a must-listen and a nice alternative voice to what Indeed is doing from what Chad & Cheese are droppin' on the topics of CPA, RPO, Flex, Hire, and more from Indeed. And if that's not enough, the gang dives into a new advertising option from LinkedIn that should not only get the attention of B2B marketers everywhere but also the attention of savvy employers. We even throw a little Elon and Kanye in there for some additional employer brand commentary. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel 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 (25s): Oh yeah, Media post reports TikTok is Gen Z's favorite brand proving once again big booty Latinas and bug fights are universally loved by old and young alike. Hi kids you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast Does Recruitment Marketing. I'm your cohost, Joel "future jerks" Cheeseman. Chad (45s): This is Chad "still not drinking the Kool-Aid" Sowash. Julie (49s): This is Julie "love to watch men Let it Grow for Movember" Calli. Joel (53s): And on this episode. Chad (54s): Wait a minute. Joel (56s): Diving into Indeed Future Works conference, bias laws and LinkedIn's document ads. Let's do this. Chad (1m 6s): That was good. Letting it grow for Movember. You might want to explain that one, Julie. Julie (1m 12s): Movember? You don't know about Movember? Joel (1m 14s): You know Movember Chad (1m 15s): You said making it grow for Movember. It might have sounded, sounded like November. It sounded very, very much a porn reference, is what I'm saying. Julie (1m 23s): Well, if you're not aware of what Movember is. It's supporting men's health and cancer research. Prostate cancer right? Yes. Well, all men's health and cancer research and you know, a lot of people show their support by growing beards and mustaches in November. And I have a lot of people in my life that do that. And I absolutely love this time of year to watch everybody awkwardly grow it in when they're not used to doing it. But yeah, I love men with beards. I love to see everybody's facial hair Joel (1m 58s): That escalated quickly. It has to be a mustache account. You can't do the beard. You gotta have like the stash, the cheesy seventies porn star stash. If you're really gonna make a statement for Movember. Julie (2m 8s): You, got a problem with the whaler? That's the look without the mustache. Joel (2m 14s): Whaler's good. The evil villain twirl at the end. The Raleigh fingers. Remember that one, Chad? Chad (2m 20s): The Raleigh fingers Joel (2m 21s): Seventies picture reference. Chad (2m 22s): That's read some wax for that. Yeah. Julie (2m 23s): Are you guys gonna be styling with some wax? A little, little twirlies on the end? Joel (2m 28s): I tried. I've tried that one and my wife hated it. I've tried the little curl at the end and my wife was like, Nope, no, nope, nope. So wife's gotta look at it. Happy wife, happy life, so no more twirlies on my mustache. Sorry kids. Chad (2m 42s): Twirly free. Joel (2m 43s): And speaking of twirly free, let's get to shout outs, shall we? Chad (2m 47s): Okay! Joel (2m 47s): I'm happy to go first. My shout out goes to Adidas, the company ended its partnership with Ye. Last week, also known as Kanye West. I guess that's how the kid, the kids pronounce it. Exterminated with immediate effect. Adidas stock is down 60 something percent so far in 2022. By the way, the YE partnership hasn't gone very well. It seems from our recruitment marketing perspective, it brings into question the wisdom of bringing celebrities who might invariably muck up the brand, if you will. One, hello layoffs for all the employees who were supporting all the easy ye products. Chad (3m 28s): Layoffs? Joel (3m 28s): As well as retention in this case how do you feel being a Jewish employee at Adidas, partnering with someone like Kanye West? There are employment brand ramifications to getting in bed with celebrities. Chad, you'll also remember Intel and Will-I-am not exactly being the best fit in terms of spokesman and partnerships with companies. Think first before you get in bed with that celebrity, employers, it could damage the brand. Shout out to Adidas. Julie (3m 56s): All right, Shout out to New York City for Joel (4m 1s): The city so nice they named it twice. Julie (4m 9s): salary transparency legislation starting from November. Chad (4m 11s): And that is sexy kids. That's right. Julie (4m 14s): New York City and Westchester County. So two of them with their very close relation to each other, meaning there's going to be a lot of people hitting websites, checking out how much compensation is being paid in their own organization as well as others. Chad (4m 30s): Yes, exactly. Joel (4m 31s): I can't wait to see how companies get around this new law. That'll be the funnest part. Chad (4m 36s): Yeah. Joel (4m 36s): Our salary range is zero to a million dollars. They're complying with the law. Chad (4m 40s): They have to have legit pay bands. Right, Julie? Julie (4m 44s): Well, yeah, so there has to be a reasonable pay band. That doesn't mean that they can't go over it. They can. There certainly has to be justification for that. But you just said Joel, something that I am hearing quite a trend from. Oh, I will share that. In talking with a lot of people about, you know, companies trying to understand what pay transparency is and like, how am I gonna address this? A lot of them are not prepared and they feel there's a really high risk that's going to be associated with them trying to comply within the timeline and they're not ready. So there's been a lot of, I'd say activity happening that companies are doing to respond. Julie (5m 29s): And one of them is like, you have to disclose compensation on the job posting. So what if you don't post the job? Right? So that's something that's happening. Chad (5m 38s): Well, you have to post the job if you're a federal contractor. So, I mean, that's one of the things. So there's a large bulk of companies that will have to, they're mandated to. But if you're not, there's kind of like under the radar you could fly. Right? Julie (5m 52s): Right. So it, you know, the choice is you have to disclose it to post it. So companies are weighing that and saying, Well what is the risk to me to disclose this right now? It's not worth the risk. Pull the job. So there is, I think it's gonna muck up a lot of the data of companies saying, Oh, companies are, you know, cutting jobs and there's less jobs out there. Well, there's a couple of reasons why that's happening. Yes, there might be some softening in the market, but I think it's gonna get mucked up with a lot of response to transparency cuz people are taking down jobs that they don't want to disclose compound right now. They're not posting them. Yeah, they're taking them down. Julie (6m 33s): They're also taking down pipeline jobs. Right. There's a lot of jobs out there that people post just to pipeline talent and those are coming down because they just create risk that they don't want to address right now. And then a lot of the executive level positions, a lot of really higher paid and compensated positions. They're just saying, we don't wanna disclose that right now. Send that off to an outsourced company, send that out to a staffing company. So all these things are happening. That means there's gonna be less jobs posted in these locations and people are gonna say, Oh it's cuz the economy's softening. No, it's cuz companies don't know how to respond to transparency. They're taking their jobs down. Joel (7m 12s): Who's gonna organize the people to come out and say that we need to get this law off the books because jobs aren't being posted. Somebody's gotta organize that. Right? Julie (7m 22s): Oh yeah, I bet there are already people who are feeling growth from this right now. They're feeling activity come to their business looking for ways to get around this and they're gonna find ways. Joel (7m 34s): The real winners are New York City employment lawyers. Julie (7m 38s): Yes. Oh, I'm sure there's a lot of council going on right now in this area. Chad (7m 43s): It's so ridiculous. Companies saying that they are never ready for things. I remember before this whole pandemic thing, companies were never ready for remote work. And guess what? Within two weeks everybody was working remotely. So I call bullshit once again to all these companies who say that they are not ready. They're looking for excuses not to do what they should have been doing for for decades. It is total bullshit. The risk that they have right now in not paying people fairly, currently in their organization is much greater than them actually putting salaries on the jobs. Julie (8m 19s): Oh, you're so right. And that's exactly what's happening though. These companies that are like, Wait a minute, we can't post this job cause half of our employees aren't even paid in this range. Chad (8m 29s): Exactly. Julie (8m 29s): Yeah. And as they're realizing that, they're like, wait, pump the brakes. Don't post the job with the comp, but we are gonna have to figure out what to do with all these people. So, the behavior that we want is happening. They're turning around and saying, Uhoh before we can do this, make it public. We better go back and fix the problem inside the box of us not paying everybody in the same role. Fairly. So good news that making the right effect, bad news that postings are gonna go down a little bit, which could affect the industry quite a bit as things try to normalize. Chad (9m 6s): And just a big shout out to our friends over Syndio, which is the platform that you plug all this shit into and then it just shows you where your fucking things up. It's simple guys. We have tech that does this. So all you companies that say, Oh, it's too hard to be able, it's total bullshit. You can, you can go out and get it done in the snap of a finger. Well, maybe not that fast, but pretty fast. Joel (9m 26s): Pretty. But Julie's got a great point where some people aren't even in that range. And how do you have a conversation with them when jobs are posted well above that range, you Chad (9m 36s): Pay them the gap. Yes. And then you do back pay. That's what you do. You, you unfuck the situation is what you do. Joel (9m 43s): You're making people think, Chad, you're making people make hard decisions. This isn't how it's done. Chad (9m 48s): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. GDP over happiness. I get it. I get it. Okay. Big shout out to our friends over at Twitter kids. That's right. Shout out really at to Twitter's new employer brand. And you might be asking new employer brand? What are you talking about? Julie, you gotta agree with me. After last week, Elon Musk officially taking over his owner of Twitter, that leadership change has to change the brand. Wouldn't you agree? And especially just the impact on hiring individuals, especially after coming out saying that he was going to fire 75% of the staff. Joel (10m 26s): Which he's apparently doing. Julie (10m 28s): So a statement like that, everyone's afraid for their job and questioning why they're even there. You know, and I was just listening this morning about how the entire product leadership team might roll over. So that's your product leadership, right? That what's that gonna do to all the other product developers that fall underneath that and the experience that they have. So it's gonna have quite a rippling effect. There's gonna be people I think that they're gonna choose to, you know, toss out of the company. There's people that are gonna volunteer to leave, but isn't our having an employer brand being authentic to a cause or a purpose. I think they're actually gonna draw people in who support what he's trying to do and the changes he's trying to make. Julie (11m 13s): So I think it's a culture change and you're gonna detract people and you're gonna attract them. Joel (11m 18s): Interesting. Chad (11m 18s): So you're gonna see a big slew of people that are going to be leaving or fired or what have you. I think they're gonna a lot of people that just hang on to see what kind of cash they're gonna get. Joel (11m 28s): Oh, I'd stay around for the show, Julie. There's some, there's some, there's some thought that if Twitter lays off that many people, you know, Pinterest is next, Snap is next. Like you're gonna see mass layoffs at at companies that hire a lot of tech people and that impacts our industry, right? Like our unicorns, the Eightfolds, the Deels, the Remotes. Like what's your take on, is that gonna spill over into our space and others? Julie (11m 56s): Well I think what's happening at Twitter is a little more unique than what a lot of the other companies might experience, right? Every company needs to find a way to be profitable. And I think, you know, Elon's gonna make some very big moves to make sure that $44 billion dollar investment has some value to it. So he's gonna be pretty dramatic in the changes that he looks to make, where others might be creating investment towards what they see for the future. And, I just see that as a he needs to monetize the business he has and others might wanna build to compete for the future. Joel (12m 34s): I guess the caveat to that is if he's successful after laying off 75%, everyone's gonna go, Okay, he did it and was successful, now let's copy that. As opposed to now it might be a wait and see approach to what that does to the product. Julie (12m 48s): You know, I hope that that's not the way that things work, that people look to one and what one person did and one business and they copy that. I actually think he has incredible influence like that. Joel (12m 60s): He does. Julie (13m 0s): You know, most business leaders might have common sense to not follow just what somebody else did, but he really does have influence and a lot of people look to him as a incredible entrepreneur. Chad (13m 12s): Sure. Julie (13m 13s): An investor. So yeah, he could create ripple effect if he shows really positive results in the action he takes. I mean, one thing I will credit for him is he is authentically him. He says what he thinks he, you know, takes action on what he believes. And that's not something that you always see from someone leading in a position like his, where they play it safe, they stick to their talking points. Chad (13m 35s): Yeah. But when you have that kind of money, you can do that. You can afford to do that kind of shit. And he has, I mean, I'm really surprised that the SEC and the government has to, hasn't come after him for, you know, hitting stock and whatnot. I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. Joel (13m 50s): What's the old adage? Money doesn't change you, it just brings out who you really are. This is who he is. Chad (13m 58s): And he brings syncs to work. Joel (13m 60s): From a recruiting perspective. Like should do people still care about Twitter? I mean, there was a time where there was a lot of recruiting going on on Twitter. Like is it your sense that it's still a hot place to find people? I mean, everyone's doing webinars on TikTok and have we just moved on from Twitter from a workforce perspective? Julie (14m 19s): Yeah, I've never really seen Twitter as like a significant source for recruitment. It is where people do some personal branding. It is certainly where they make sure that they're seen and they're connected to, you know, whatever the hot topics are and the trends, but I have not, I have never seen Twitter be a, even in my top 10 ever on any customer's list of best sources. I wouldn't call it a recruitment major, recruitment marketing player. Yeah. There's just too many other channels out there and people aren't interested in like reading short messages even anymore. They want short videos like TikTok is. Julie (15m 0s): TikTok's driving more results right now than Twitter ever did. Joel (15m 3s): It's more about the twerk than it is the work people. Julie (15m 7s): Well said. Chad (15m 7s): Just as long as you're not twerking Cheeseman. Joel (15m 16s): Oh, don't worry about that man. Don't worry about that. Chad (15m 18s): Topics! Joel (15m 18s): All right, let's get into this for the third time on our show this time. Totally, we got an insider on this one. All right. So Indeed had its annual event. For those who don't know, earlier this month, they've changed the name from Interactive Indeed to Future Jerks. I mean Future Works. Sorry. Chad (15m 38s): More porn references. Joel (15m 39s): Yeah, the new name apparently represents a new and fresh approach to its annual marque event, which I'm guessing needed a fresh new approach. So they brought in Ryan Reynolds. He keynote the event. Chad still has a boner about the news on that one. Ryan's talk was entitled Levity in Leadership and focused on how to pivot careers, build brands, and blaze a trail in business with authentic connections. But the new Deadpool movie aside, the biggest news was that Indeed is going full on pay per applicant in their pricing. In short, starting next year, employers using Indeed will pay only when a candidate starts or submits an application rather than when they click on a job ad. Joel (16m 19s): Julie, you were actually in attendance. What was broadcast on the stage and what was whispered over happy hour? I'm guessing they're two different things. What was your takeaway from your time at FutureWorks? Julie (16m 34s): Well, Ryan Reynolds certainly was quite, you know, and I would say his presence in that, in the way he spoke on the stage. I loved him before, but I loved him more after. Chad (16m 44s): Yeah. Julie (16m 45s): Because he was fantastic. I loved that Indeed had the CMO asking him questions, but he didn't care what her questions were. He had his own things, clearly wasn't there to say. And he had a lot to say and I thought, great perspective. So, great to have Ryan Reynolds there. I'd been to all of the Indeed interactives, I think I maybe one that I had missed ever that they had had. And this was very different. Usually it would be a few days, Austin, you know, couple thousand people would be there. There'd be a lot of breakouts where you'd go and you'd hear people from the industry, people who are practitioners, given talks, giving little round tables. There was all kinds of experience to interact with other people. Julie (17m 28s): What was very different about this conference was it was all Indeed, every breakout was Indeed every room was about Indeed in a product and a success story. So there wasn't really a stage for others. It was all Indeed. And I think that's because they had so much to communicate, they needed that whole day to like bring all that messaging out. They Chad (17m 51s): Had extra Kool-Aid. Joel (17m 52s): Now were there breakouts in different rooms or was it all one stage? Julie (17m 56s): Yeah, there was one one main stage. Joel (17m 59s): Yeah. Julie (17m 60s): You know, where the main presentation, keynotes and things happened and then there were some breakouts where you could like choose your own adventure to the things that you were more interested in learning about. But they were all about Indeed products and Indeed success stories. They were not presented by others, which was very different. That's not how the conferences had been in the past. So yes, you know, Indeed going CPA was probably the biggest announcement there, but they've been doing objective based campaigns right, for almost all of this year. But their statement was very bold that next year they'll be moving to a CPA model. But that was news to many even Indeed employees, right? Chad (18m 40s): Yeah. Julie (18m 40s): Like leadership got up on the stage and said, here's what we're doing. And all of the employees said, I would like to learn more about that. Chad (18m 50s): We don't know how many Indeed employees messaged us after our two podcasts over the last few days. And it was like, I learned more from your podcast than I did from our fucking company. Julie (19m 1s): Yeah, yeah. The communication did not make its way down enough, which is probably, and I hear empathy for the Indeed employee, right? That there's a lot of empathy for that because everybody wants to call their rep the next day day, Oh my God. And say, how does this work? What is my cost per applicant gonna be? How is this gonna change? I have to budget for next year, Right? Chad (19m 20s): Yeah. Julie (19m 20s): Recruitment marketers and TA people are trying to budget for next year, but there's changes coming and we don't even understand how to respond to that because there's not enough information, there still isn't enough information. By the way. Chad (19m 32s): The CEOs of the big programmatic companies that are out there didn't know what was happening either. Julie (19m 38s): Yeah. It most of the companies have been wired into Indeed that do, you know, programmatic, we're aware of objective based campaigns, but the fact that they're gonna go to complete CPA. Chad (19m 52s): Yes. Julie (19m 53s): Honestly, there's not enough information to be clear about what that's going to look like because, this is, right now they're saying this is only when they have significant data. So what about when you don't have significant data? Chad (20m 7s): Yeah. Julie (20m 7s): Well, there's not an answer for that yet. So what is significant and what is that data set, right? Because not everyone's application process is the same. Some keep it really simple, click a button. Chad (20m 21s): And the Indeed Pixel doesn't fire on every single system that's out there. Julie (20m 24s): Right? So what data set is this working off of is a very big question. I would love to know like where, what data are you using to calculate this and what changes, right? Chad (20m 39s): Yeah. Julie (20m 39s): It makes me very nervous that someone's gonna dictate for the market what the cost per applicant should be. Chad (20m 44s): Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you saying? Indeed might do that. Come on Julie, that would never happen. Julie (20m 50s): Well, who decides the cost per applicant? Who decides? Chad (20m 52s): Indeed does. Of course they do. Of course they do. Well and here's the thing, there's again an evil genius behind being this gray is because you don't have to have a solid answer. You don't have to have rules to live by and work by you just make 'em up as you go. Call by call. And that is again, part of the evil genius of Indeed. Julie (21m 15s): You know, in theory some of the things that they're looking to put into play really will improve the job seeker experience, closing the gap on how long it takes to hear back from someone about a job, hearing back at all. I mean, I think these are some really positive things that they might be able to address with this because if you're paying per application, you paid for it, you got 48 hours apparently, or 72 hours to get a credit back if that candidate wasn't a good candidate. But you have to give feedback. These are things that we're not used to doing it in TA's space, getting back to people within three days and making a decision and then giving feedback. If this really happens, that could be awesome. Joel (21m 55s): Some people don't know what that is and I don't even know what that is, is that if, if you apply through the Indeed system, there's an automated three day response. If you don't put a specific resp, like is it just they do it if you don't do it, kind like putting salary ranges on a job? Julie (22m 11s): There are deal breaker questions that you put on your job. Right now, how is this gonna connect to an ATS? Nobody has any idea. Right, exactly. So you're gonna have to use the Indeed platform and then you create these deal breaker questions and if somebody answers one of the deal breaker questions or you know, then they're not qualified for the position. And if you come back with candidates 72 hours and you say, Hey, these candidates are not qualified, Indeed's gonna say, well why? Joel (22m 38s): Yeah. Julie (22m 38s): And that means you either need to change your job description because you're not being clear enough in your description or you need to make different knockout questions. All of this can speed up the time to respond and hire, but it puts all of the, you know, the controls in with Indeed to, to really dictate that. Chad (22m 59s): And their platform they want. They're trying to move people away from their ATS into the Indeed hiring platform. Julie (23m 5s): Yes. And if this product does work the way they say it does with Instant Match and the ability for people to get response within three days, the job seekers are gonna be happy and people are gonna be enjoying that experience. It's only going to lead to adding more people becoming loyal to using Indeed as a candidate because they get a great experience there that's consistent that they can predict and then that's gonna create a dependency for everyone to continue to use that. Joel (23m 32s): And then I'm guessing they'll be some sort of consulting business where if you don't know how to improve your job, we'll come in for a fee and help you improve the job. Is that coming or has that been announced? Julie (23m 47s): Well I would say. Joel (23m 49s): Because you get into RPO territory, staffing territory? Julie (23m 52s): Most people I think walked away thinking the biggest announcement in there was, you know, the Indeed CBC going away moving to a CPA model. Joel (24m 1s): Yeah. Julie (24m 1s): But there were two other things that I saw really kind of come out at this. I would say. Chad (24m 10s): Talk to me. Julie (24m 11s): Well Indeed Flex finally, I'd say came out of the closet. Indeed Flex has been a thing that Indeed has been doing for some time now. It is an independent business to Indeed, but it is still owned by Recruit has Indeed the name, but it's a little bit separated from it. Joel (24m 25s): So for those that don't know Indeed Flex, give us a quick elevator description of that. Julie (24m 34s): So Indeed Flex is a way for you to be able to post hourly worker temporary positions and then be able to fulfill them on the platform. Where you're able to say, here's the shifts that I'm looking for, here's the type of work that I'm looking for. And then these are more hourly wage type roles and then they're able to fulfill against those based on matching people. But, what's very different about this is not, I'm looking for applicants, this is, I'm looking for people to start on Friday. So Indeed is really operating as a temp staffing agency in this way. Chad (25m 10s): Yeah. Yes. Julie (25m 11s): And if you go look at the privacy policy on Indeed Flex, it says staffing agency. So that tells you right there, this is not Indeed, which is about advertising. Chad (25m 22s): They're the employer of record. Correct? They are the employer of record. Julie (25m 26s): The 1099 worker. So you think about all of the people out there and the gig economy, right? They can now go to Indeed Flex and work in the gig economy through finding opportunities through Indeed. So that's one that I thought was like, hey, this has been brewing on the back burner quietly. I believe it's in, I forget how many, two dozen at least states and growing. But yes, that is a competition to temporary staffing agencies. Then Indeed Hire has been around for some time now, but really took more of a main stage with this. Julie (26m 7s): And now if Indeed is able to manage the entire experience with all of their tools, they're also going to be able to use them to create placements and build predictions against that and then charge people to say, Hey, we'll handle the whole thing for you. Just pay us a percentage of the person we place. So that, you know, goes direct competition with staffing. Chad (26m 29s): We haven't seen this before. i.e. CareerBuilder, Monster. I mean they all did this, all of them did this. Joel (26m 40s): Hubris. Yeah. Chad (26m 40s): Only I can fix it. Indeed. Joel (26m 43s): Julie did. Did you come away from the show being optimistic about Indeed? Were you sort of skeptical, cynical, Did it wreak of desperation or did it reek of like a company that knows exactly where it wants to go and it's moving forward on everything? Julie (26m 58s): I think it's really smart what Indeed's doing, for Indeed. Joel (27m 2s): Evil genius smart as Chad says? Yeah, okay. Julie (27m 6s): No, I really think a lot of the changes that they're making are to address real problems and some of them are completely valid. Like the candidates have a terrible experience hunting for jobs. The complaints they have about black hole ~ waiting too long to hear back from somebody never hearing back. There's so much time wasted from people applying to jobs and then companies are saying we don't have enough candidates. Right. So, they're making a lot of changes that I really think can solve some of these problems. The thing that's, you know, a little uncomfortable about it is that it's all going to be dependent on their tools. Joel (27m 45s): Yep. Chad (27m 46s): It's all forced is what it is. The uncomfortable feeling is that this is being forced. That's what it is. You don't have a choice on this. Joel (27m 52s): Yeah. Chad (27m 53s): It's being forced whether you like it or not. And what they're saying is, and we actually talked about this on one of our earlier shows this week, is, you know, as you think about it, we've been heralding Indeed for, you know, mandating salary or putting on itself, well to be quite frank, they're just pumping their own gas pedal because salary they know will get more applies. How are they gonna get paid on more applies? So they're taking advantage of a situation that yes, town acquisition has fucked up over the last 20 years, they are taking advantage of a situation, but there's going to be no choice in this whole scenario. You're going to be forced. Joel (28m 32s): They want to be monopolist. Julie (28m 35s): This is why they, you know, people get great results from Indeed. Why? Because they do things to make the candidates feel great in their search with Indeed. Way above the competition on other job sites. And that's why they leave them in the dust is that they are always looking at how can we make it a better engaging experience for the job seeker? How can we make sure that the job seeker is getting the best quality experience on our platform? And if they keep continuing to take those actions, then job seekers are gonna continue to favor their site. That's why they people get such great results when they advertise. Chad (29m 13s): Yeah. I think it's more that they have more traffic and they have more candidates coming to them because they were ahead of everybody else going into the downturn when everybody else got killed and they came out of it on top of the hill and they've been ahead ever since. I don't think it has, I think you're fresh out of the Kool-Aid bin. You need to get off the Kool-Aid a little bit, Julie. Julie (29m 38s): No, sorry. I believe that Indeed climbed the mountain of success it is on today. It got there with great SEO. It got there winning all the traffic for the most common job seeker terms on Google, cuz that's where everybody went. They went to Google search for a job. That's how they climbed the mountain. But then they built a brand and a name that job seekers knew, and then they maintained that with great experience. So by delivering all that right, which is what we say any brand should do, that's how they became, But now they are gonna stay there because they are gonna improve that experience that goes beyond just find the job. It's find the role, get hired. Joel (30m 20s): It feels very much like, I guess, you know, Apple's strategy of everything you need to do is gonna be right here and you're gonna pay us a premium to have that convenience. Be with that brand that you trust. It's a fine line to continually walk that premium and brand trust. If they can do it more power to 'em. But history generally says when monopolies are created, monopolies fall and there's innovation dies, pricing goes, you know, through the roof and people start looking for an alternative if they can pull this off, you know, great. But I mean, just from the sounds of internally, they didn't know this was going on. People got caught flat footed on this. Joel (31m 0s): To me that doesn't reek of, hey, we're introducing the new iPhone and everyone's excited. It's like, what the fuck are we doing? You know, to me it's not excitement. It's like, oh my God, what does this mean? And that is not a good footing to be on. I mean, we'll see. Maybe you're drinking Kool-Aid, we'll give you a month to settle down, but you're, you're obviously sort of pro on this and I think a lot of people will like it. A lot of people won't. Julie (31m 23s): Yeah. Joel (31m 23s): A lot of people like Chad will be, I'm an Android guy and fuck all y'all and I'm going the alternative route. Chad (31m 29s): Yeah. And single point of failure, baby. Julie (31m 33s): I love that you just brought up the Apple phone thing on that because people have to build apps, right? For Droid or iOS, right? They have to play in both markets. That's exactly what's going to happen here. People are going to have to have two processes. One with Indeed and one with everything else. Joel (31m 52s): Interesting. Julie (31m 52s): Right? Because you are going to have to operate your career site, your ATS all of your screener questions and all of those things that you do from start to finish to manage your experience with all of the other vendors. And then you're also gonna have to have a process that's inside Indeed, using Indeed hire, using all of Indeed's tools where they deliver you the applicant and they never touch your ATS and they never touch your career site and all that tech that you pay for is irrelevant in that case. Joel (32m 17s): Yeah. And like Apple, if you don't want these users, you don't have to bet on our platform, but good luck not being on Apple and in this case, Indeed. Julie (32m 26s): Yeah. Joel (32m 26s): So maybe, maybe they've got the industry by the short and curlies, you know, maybe they, they're in the right place to do all this stuff and we have nothing to say about it. Chad (32m 43s): Evil genius, baby. Joel (32m 43s): All right guys, let's take a quick break and talk a little LinkedIn when we get back. All right. LinkedIn and Indeed, is this not the show that everyone's gonna listen to? All right. LinkedIn recently announced some new ad tools. Indeed isn't the only one announcing new shit. These tools help you maximize LinkedIn ad campaigns, including document ads, offline conversation, data integration, and a new media library for storing and sourcing ad content. For this conversation, let's focus on document ads. LinkedIn will now enable advertisers to promote long form documents, direct end users feeds, which can also be made available via signup. Joel (33m 27s): I see benefit to vendors and possibly employers looking to get a little bit creative in their advertising. Julie, more importantly, what's your take on LinkedIn's new document ads? Julie (33m 37s): Well, I'm glad that they're formalizing this into a product. It's probably one of the most common ways that people do B2B lead generation right now on LinkedIn is like, Hey, I got this really cool white paper, this really awesome piece of information that you want. So click here so that you can get access to it. And then who knows what that experience might look like that you get taken down the rabbit hole from when all you wanna do is just give 'em your information and get that stupid white paper. So well, they're gonna accelerate the potential for this to happen by making this a much better experience. Click a button, your information gets passed to the provider and then you get the asset that you're looking for. So streamlines it. Julie (34m 17s): I think it's a great thing. Chad (34m 19s): So lead gen pages are pretty much dead after this then. I mean, everything again just goes straight through LinkedIn cuz it'll be much easier. You just go ahead, you have your campaign set up, you put your document in and then if I go and I want it, I click, you know, I download and then it automatically sends my information to them and bang, bing, bang, boom, you're done. Julie (34m 38s): Yeah! Great. That's a great experience. Joel (34m 41s): Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like it. Yeah. Now what I love is, so Instagram has been doing this for a while, Facebook as well, but you typically just see a little ad, right? Hey, find out eight ways to optimize for TikTok or whatever, right? Like click here if you're interested and they pull in your Instagram account and then it automatically goes into the company and then you're, you know, then you're in the drip campaign. What I like about this is you actually get to sample, you know, up to three pages of the actual paper or content that you're downloading. And I think that's one thing that people would rather see, right? It's nice to get a good little headline and add about eight ways or 10 best ways and then put your shit in. Joel (35m 21s): But that typically isn't what you've actually signed up for. This gives you an actual piece of what you're getting. I think you're right in terms of B2B content marketing works very well. A good piece of content written by someone that they know and trust is a great way to fill that funnel. Where I think that it's missing is on the employer side in particular, there's a real opportunity for employers to produce content that's relevant to the people they're trying to recruit. So for example, if you're looking for technical people, you know, having your, your CTO or someone you know, write a paper about a programming language or you know, a new way to look at blockchain or you know, something that's relevant to your business, people are more likely passive job seekers in particular, more likely to download, you know what a CTO at a company I know is saying about something I care about than I would a job posting written by a recruiter employing, you know people at this job. Joel (36m 24s): And so I think a savvy employer is going to understand that they can get into the content marketing game and provide really good content and load their funnel up with good candidates that could be more, much more effective than, oh, let's just put a job posting up. Like employers need to get creative around how they get candidates into the funnel and I think this is a really cool way to do that. Julie (36m 45s): Yeah, I think there's potential for recruitment marketers to think about how to be creative with this. I mean, one that I would throw out there that I'd absolutely do right now is there's so many companies right now doing pay analysis, they're doing pay analysis of their own team and of the market. Chad (37m 3s): Yeah. Julie (37m 3s): Right? Chad (37m 3s): Yeah. Julie (37m 4s): So what if you were the company that said, I have a pay analysis report for these types of roles and here's where we sit, right? People would absolutely drool over that. If you're working in a certain type of role, you want that report so that you could see what it looks like across the market. And then to see that a company was being so openly positioning themselves as here's where we stand. We are not the top, we are in the middle, but here's why we think that's good. Like you're eating the candy and the Kool-Aid at the same time. Yeah. So I think that there's some really creative ways that might be able to be used Joel (37m 45s): And those creative companies will probably be on recruitmentmarketing.com sharing those insights in case studies or learning about more from their peers. The only thing I'm more sick of than the Halloween candy that I ate last night is talking about Indeed fucking cost per applicant. I'm gonna be on a break from Indeed for a while, probably not cuz they're news all the time. But otherwise, I'm Joel, he's Chad, she's Julie. Chad and Cheese (38m 14s): We out, We out. Julie (38m 16s): We out. OUTRO (39m 0s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Share, share, share! Everyone's sharing everything on social media. Employers and recruiters who are sharing, however, aren't really doing it right most of the time. That's why Cliquify was founded. Think of them as "Canva for Recruiting." Amit Parmar, CEO at Cliquify joins the boys to pitch his company, and its concept, on Firing Squad. Are employers ready to embrace The Share? Does he make it out alive? Gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. Fring Squard Intro (0s): inLike Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Level. Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite degenerates, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman, and as always, the Bert to my Ernie. I am joined by my co-host Chad Sowash and our victim today, everyone, let's please give a warm round of applause. Joel (42s): We have Amit Parmar. He's the CEO at Cliquify, spelled like Liquefy with a C. Amit, welcome to the Firing Squad. Amit (54s): Yeah. Hey guys, glad to be here Joel and Chad, been waiting for this. I, hopefully I don't walk away with too many bruises. Joel (1m 1s): Geez, Chad (1m 1s): No promises. Joel (1m 2s): I hope it lives up to your expectations. Hope it lives up to your expectations. Well, before we get into all the company stuff, give us a quick Twitter bio about what makes Amit tick? Amit (1m 13s): I grew up in India, lots of travel, so I love traveling, exploring different cultures outside of work. Flag football. So I've been coaching for the last seven years. That's the NFL Play 60 for those in America. And I will say, I do like to read, articles, not books, like short form articles. Joel (1m 34s): Real intellectual, Chad Intellectual. Chad (1m 37s): Blogs. Joel (1m 37s): Well, tell him what he is won today, Chad. Chad (1m 41s): Well Amit welcome to Firing Squad. It's actually the post Us election edition. At the sound of the bell you're gonna have two minutes to pitch Cliquify. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you up with about 20 minutes of A and A. Be sure to be concise or you're gonna get hit with the crickets, and that is the signal for you to pull your shit together. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna receive either a big applause, the polls are closed, the results are in, and it was a runaway win. Pack your bags and get ready for all that lobbyist money flowing into your bank account. Golf clap. You haven't won yet. Actually, it looks like you're going to a runoff. Chad (2m 23s): More shaking hands and kissing babies is necessary. Just make sure that you keep that concession speech handy. Or the firing squad. No time for a concession speech on this one. You'd better exit stage left because you're gonna be run out of town on a rail. Are you ready? Joel (2m 41s): Jeez, Amit (2m 41s): I am ready. Let's go. Joel (2m 44s): All right, pitch this baby in three, two. sfx (2m 47s): Ding, ding, ding. Amit (2m 48s): All right. Hey, thanks guys. I'm Amit Parmar, co-founder and CEO of Cliquify. Been in the HR and talent space for over 17 years in large enterprises. So what's Cliquify? We're basically an employer branding platform that helps enterprises build, activate, and measure their employer brand to attract talent. What's the problem that we're solving? Well, Cliquify was born out of a need that I had as a talent leader, along with my recruiting teams, which was really, how do you attract talent through networks on social media channels? There's tons of tools out there that'll automate your content and stuff. And what we're finding, and we all know that candidates trust workplace content about three X more than any sponsored ad out there. Amit (3m 32s): So the problem that we had, and my recruiters had around the world, was, how do you easily create content? The marketing department simply or no help. They're too busy. The employer branding person was a team of one supporting hundreds or thousands of recruiters. Any piece of workplace related content took days to curate. And, we lost, we used at least three different tools to elevate our employer brand. So for example, we used to use Adobe and/or Canva earlier and a separate tool for capturing employee videos. And yet a third tool to activate employer brand content across the social channels. So this caused a lot of confusion for my teams and friction with hiring leaders and employees, and ultimately just heard it adoption. Amit (4m 18s): We simply weren't able to scale content. So with Cliquify, what we created was an all-in-one platform that helps in a very easy way, you don't need to have a marketing degree, for employers, recruiters, hiring managers to create content, activate it across their employee base through social media channels. And ultimately, the most important thing, which is how do you measure how it's all performing? How is content resonating with candidates out there? Anybody can post content, but really what we're driving is a big data play around what kind of content will get you the most engagement. So I'll wrap this pitch by saying, according to LinkedIn study done recently, marketing is the number one skill required of recruiters of the future. Amit (4m 60s): That's what we're helping build through Cliquify, through recruiters and hiring leaders around the world. I'd welcome the list us, cliquify.me. Joel (5m 9s): Thanks. All right, Amit, thanks. Thanks for the pitch. Pretty tight, pretty tight, pretty tight. Let's get to the name. That's what we always cover first. So Cliquify with cliquify.com, which is spelled correctly. C L I CK is an Australian ad agency. Chad (5m 27s): But is that really a word though? Is Cliquify really a word? Joel (5m 30s): Well, if you were to spell Cliquify on a game show, you probably wouldn't use q but either way. Chad (5m 37s): Just wondering if it's in the dictionary. Okay, guys. Joel (5m 39s): Talk about the Q, the qu, but, but more importantly to me, you own the.com with the QU, but you're promoting it as the.me. Help me understand that even more so than where you landed on Cliquifywith QU. Amit (5m 56s): Yeah. Yeah. So the.me is really about how do you personalize your content? Everybody is moving towards personalization. So the.me is really about a more personal touch to your content, which is what candidates are in a favorable way reacting to these days, right? So that's the.me and the Cliquify is the C L I Q is, it actually comes from, you know, forming cliques and, and that's the whole networking element of what we're trying to drive. Joel (6m 25s): Ah, okay. All right. I I can buy that. I guess I can buy that, I guess. Sorry, let's talk about money. You guys are founded in '19, apparently our totally bootstrapped at this point. Who's funding this baby? Is this seed round coming? Talk about the financial situation. Amit (6m 40s): Yeah, look, we couldn't have launched at a better time. You know, just a lot of need out there for companies to get efficient with how they're attracting talent and smart with how they're attracting talent through scalability. We got AE Ron from Ben Franklin Tech Ventures, which is a Pennsylvania state fund. We we're actually based in Pennsylvania. So we got a hundred k. That's you know, gone a long way for us along with revenue from operations. And we are raising a seed round of $2 million at the moment. Joel (7m 10s): Have you nailed down the $2 million or you're shopping it for $2 million? Amit (7m 13s): Yeah, we're shopping it at the moment. We've got a lead investor interested, but of course it's, we're going through some valuation discussions at the moment, and that's always gonna be a discussion. Joel (7m 23s): Okay. So it's not, it's not a firm $2 million at this point. Okay. I just wanted to clear that up. Amit (7m 30s): Correct, yeah. We're actively raising it and we have a runway of about 24 months at the moment, so we're not, we're not too worried yet. Chad (7m 38s): Well then you have, you have revenue then, which is a good thing. So talk about revenue. What's RR or ARR look like today? Amit (7m 46s): Yeah, so we, we launched our product in September of 2020, so literally 2022 is our second year in business. We broke even in our first year on revenue. And currently our ARR or our MRR rather is around $25k is, is what we're at right now. We're tracking some big logos or deals at the moment, or clients that should move up our MRR to close to $35 to 40 K. Chad (8m 13s): Okay. So you were the VP of talent at Unisys, Global Director of talent at Thermo Fisher Scientific, HR consultant at IBM. Why the hell did you even think about getting into the vendor space? I mean, you're not an old dude, okay. You might have a little gray, but you're still not old. Okay. You got plenty of time to get your ass into a C-suite position. Why did you switch over to the dark side? Amit (8m 40s): Oh, man, you know, I'm a problem solver ultimately, you know, I saw white space, I had a $30 million budget in my previous job and I would go to these HR tech events and just see all the massive amount of fragmentation that's happening in the HR tech space. And frankly, this was an idea or a problem that, along with myself, a lot of my peers, my former peers I guess in the industry now, struggled with. And it's a huge opportunity that I wanted to just take a leap of faith and try this out. And so far it's been a great ride. Chad (9m 14s): Okay. Okay. So you actually told us what problem you're trying to solve. I was kind of confused. Are, are you actually creating content? Are you a conduit for distribution after somebody else creates it? What do you guys actually do? What do you perform on the platform? Amit (9m 30s): Yeah, so we are able to create content on the platform. We do have a services engine where if a client needs our help, we can actually create branded templates right within our platform. But, we do have clients, if you're a large enterprise, nine out of 10 times, they already have a branding person who's creating the content on a platform. We're driving scalability. So there's a lot of controls, as you know, that need to be put in place with content. We're crowdsourcing it in one place. So we're basically a content management engine. And that's essentially what we wanna be is the content engine that drives it. Chad (10m 11s): Are you curating or creating? Amit (10m 13s): We're creating, we're not curating. Yeah. Joel (10m 15s): So you're like an agency. Amit (10m 16s): Yeah. Chad (10m 16s): How are you creating, you, you actually have like free agents doing this or how are you creating? Amit (10m 22s): Yeah, so we have a survey. We have designers, not in-house, literally like contractors, just like Canva does, where we're actually creating templates that are very specific to that company's, you know, vision statements, they're benefits, like basically everything that you end up that ends up on a career site that frankly never sees light of day. So we take a lot of that content and basically bring it back to the company and say, here are your assets that, you know, they might have already created their EVP or their value prop statements and so on. So our go-to place is the career site initially to start to build that content. Chad (10m 59s): Okay. Okay. So, well that being said, it sounds like you're a social amplification platform, really. You did more distribution, better content. So took a look and on LinkedIn, you guys have 728 followers. Facebook 135 followers on Insta 82 with about 141 posts, and on Twitter 30 followers with a hundred posts. So why are you not eating your own dog food? Amit (11m 31s): That's a great question. So we have we've actually had content and we want, you know, there are a lot of these automation tools out there. We believe you need to have a person creating the content to drive that one-on-one, you know, followership, it's a longer end road and that's essentially what we tell our clients as well. It's not like your recruiter's gonna start using Cliquify, and like, you know, a week later you're gonna get a thousand followers. That is not the business we're in. Chad, the business we're in is how do you slowly help build quality talent and the followership, with amazing content that people want to resonate with. You know, there are all these tools. Amit (12m 11s): I mean, you know this Chad, right? I could go out there and buy followers. A lot of companies do that for 200 bucks, I'll get a thousand followers, right? That's not what we wanna do. We wanna actually have content that resonates with people. Chad (12m 25s): Well, and that's all well and good, but if I'm throwing great content that's resonating with nobody because it's hitting nobody, shouldn't you also be the engine to drive following? Amit (12m 41s): Absolutely. You know, that is certainly a case, but we're not in the business of driving followership through the Cliquify's followership, right? We're in the business of driving followership Chad. When you use Cliquify, we're basically telling you, we're enabling you to create followership. So when the end user interacts with the content, they have no idea whether it's Cliquify, all they see, it's Chad's content. Does that make sense? Joel (13m 5s): I thought for sure he was gonna give us the old, it's always the cobbler's kids that have the worst shoes. Cause he's so busy fixing other people's shoes. But he didn't, to his credit, he didn't bring that one up. All right. Admit it. You're a younger guy. A little history from my perspective, I interviewed Jobvite15 years ago, and their whole thing was like, we're gonna put share buttons on jobs. We're gonna give people the ability to, you know, throw the jobs all around their social media. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna kill job boards, you won't need job boards anymore, et cetera. It turns out that people don't really like sharing jobs to randos in their network. I mean, if it's my family, why do they care about you know, an accounting job at my company? Joel (13m 50s): Like, it just didn't take off. And you rarely see, I mean, you still see share buttons on jobs occasionally. Why is this different? I get that it's more a little bit visual, a little more billboardy. Convince me how this is different thanJobvite touting. Hey, we're putting share buttons on all the jobs and we're gonna change the world. Amit (14m 10s): Yeah. Great question, Joel. So right off the bat, we're actually not about just sharing jobs, we're about telling stories about your culture, right? So jobs just happens to be one little component of what can be shared and built through Cliquify. So it's what we're finding, actually, we have data on this. We're finding that when candidates see other content, like flex work benefits or say environmental responsibility that the company is driving, those are the types of assets that are actually driving more engagement than just, Hey, I've got this job that I'm looking to share. And that's a big difference from like, we don't even compete with job boards, Joel, right? Amit (14m 50s): Nor the ATSs actually, because the ATSs are so focused on the job, which is super important. What we're here to do is actually tell a bigger story of what your company's about beyond just jobs. Joel (15m 1s): Okay. What's the call to action on on these images? Like what's typically, is there a URL on the image or you just building brand talk about that? Amit (15m 10s): Yeah, so the URL is hardcoded as Cliquify. So, that's the tracking mechanism that we do automatically so the recruiters don't have to worry about it. It could be anything if it's a post related to your benefits, maybe it's linking to your career site that has a benefits section in it. If it's a post related to your corporate social responsibility initiatives, maybe it's a video from your CEO talking about on YouTube, right or wherever video? Talking about how they're protecting the environment. So the beauty of what we've built is a super flexible tool where the user can decide the CTA. Joel (15m 50s): Okay. How often do you refresh the content? Because obviously you can't just share the same image every week. How often are people refreshing these images? And also resizing, because every different social media has different sizes. Talk about how you manage that. Amit (16m 5s): Yeah, great. Great question. So, the resizing our software automatically takes care of, so there's no need to think about the resizing. That's something that is something we do on, on the backend from a software standpoint. Joel (16m 17s): So if I wanna share something about our D E I program, I'll get it in a Facebook size, II'll see it in a Twitter size and, and I'll share those each accordingly. Like you just automatically make different sizes. Amit (16m 30s): Exactly. Joel (16m 30s): Okay, got it. Amit (16m 31s): All the user has to do is which channels they wanna publish it on. All right. Joel (16m 35s): So talk about the refresh then. Amit (16m 37s): Yeah. And then the refresh piece is super important cuz you don't want content getting stale. And the way we handle that is through variety of content. So we have about 10 different EVP categories or value prop categories. And before the tool even goes live internally for an enterprise, you're looking at at least a combination of about 800 plus assets that are already preloaded before the first user even accesses it, right? So there is a dearth of content already. And then we also allow so that the enterprises can allow interchangeability for the user. So they can say, okay, within this card, I want my user to have the ability to change this piece of the content or that piece of the element, if you will, or the content. Amit (17m 23s): So we do allow that level of flexibility for the user to actually put their fingerprints on it. Joel (17m 30s): Okay. So if I'm a recruiter, my network is probably people I went to school with, people in my local area, people that are also recruiters. But if I'm recruiting something that isn't any of those three, for example, what value do I get sharing something my company that isn't really connected to my network of people? Do I have to build a whole different network of Ruby on Rails Developers because that's what I'm recruiting for and hope for the best. It just seems like there could be a real disconnect between what my network is is in companies and what I'm trying to actually recruit for. Amit (18m 1s): Oh yeah. And that goes back to our earlier conversation with Chad around, you know, we're in the business of this long-term followership based on the domain of that recruiter. Meaning, you know, today that recruiter might not have that followership, but that is the reason why with Cliquify, they're able to start to build that followership. So if I'm hiring Ruby on Rails, you know, or developers or n AWS architect today, I might have five followers, but the more content I start to share and, and you know, through my network or maybe the hiring managers network, because this is not just for recruiters, Joel, this is also available to hiring managers and employees. Amit (18m 42s): You are starting to build that followership and we're seeing that, you know, we've been in business now two years. We're actually seeing data where one of the recruiters had about 1500 followers when they first started, and now their followership makeup has completely changed to their domain and they have about 3,500 now. Chad (19m 2s): Okay, So you kind of turned your nose up when I said, do you curate content? So it's like, is there something wrong with curating content? Why don't you curate content? Talk to me about that Amit. Amit (19m 16s): Yeah. You know, it's, look, there's nothing wrong with curating content. A lot of companies do it. We're believers in our DNA is , when you build content, like when a recruiter or hiring manager builds the content, they own it. Like there's this whole like personal aspect to being involved in the sourcing or the attraction process. Look, we can go out there and purchase, I mean there are all kinds of tools to curate content. We just, we feel, and we actually believe this in our DNA at the core of who we are, is enabling the recruiters and hiring managers to actually get involved in the recruiting process through content. Chad (19m 58s): Yeah. Okay. You do both. I mean, because here's the problem that I see in our industry right now. We create too much fucking content. And, here's the problem. We create content and then instead of planting the seed, watering the seed, allowing it to grow, going back to it, having more conversations around it, we go on to the next piece of content, we go onto the next piece of content. It is total content bullshit. Man, it is ridiculous. So why, why don't we reuse the same content, parse it. I mean, there's just so many opportunities that we have to be able to use curated content, not to mention old content that we've created that is still relevant for today. Amit (20m 38s): That's right. No, you're right. I mean there, and it's not 'or' proposition, it's an 'and' proposition. But Chad (20m 46s): Is it with Cliquify though? Can you do that with Cliquify? Amit (20m 50s): No, not at the moment. Chad, maybe in the future, potentially if we see a need from our clients that hey, there's a need for us to start to curate content automatically for them, we can certainly explore that. But at the moment, Chad, we're built to get recruiters and hiring managers engaged in the process early on. Chad (21m 9s): Okay, I can feel you on that one. So what's the process? I create content. You guys create content. How is it shared? Do I use my mobile phone? Is it sms? Is it an app? How does everything actually get to the point of execution where I'm getting it out to our network? Amit (21m 27s): Yeah. Because we have a build component. We actually tried this on the phone, so mobile first and the feedback we got from users is it was too difficult to create content on the phone. So we're a desktop version only, at the moment. You can certainly access, Chad (21m 41s): So not creating content, but distributing content. So let's say for instance, somebody within the actual hub staffing hub comes out with some great content that's relevant content. Can I actually receive that on my phone and share it out to my network? Amit (21m 56s): Yeah, you would get that in your phone through an email. There is an app version we are looking to build in the near future here where, you know, people get notified of new content, but at the moment it's through an email notification that goes out to like a hiring manager just, you know, from a recruiter that says, Hey, I just posted this, you know, let's say something about, you know, what you are as a leader, right? Can you review it? And so they'll actually get a link in an email that'll take them to Cliquify to start to actually edit and build that content. Joel (22m 29s): Video is becoming more and more prominent in social media. I don't have to tell you that gifs or gifs, however you pronounce it, are also becoming. Chad (22m 38s): It's gifs. Jifs is peanut butter. Joel (22m 39s): Yeah, GenX says gifs. Yeah, Jiff is peanut butter. Like that obviously creates a whole level of comp, you know, complexity to your product. Talk about video. Amit (22m 50s): Yeah. Video is super critical to us. We're super excited to be launching it. We're actually just finalizing the finishing touches on it, what we have done with video. So I, by the way, in my previous job, I actually had a video solution that I paid a pretty penny for it. I paid $50,000 a year for it. The biggest challenge I had was people just didn't wanna submit videos. Right, there's something about videos that, and what we found was, I think it was just ultimately how easy you make the process frictionless for people to just submit videos in the rawest form. And that's what we're building and have built is a crowdsourcing. Amit (23m 32s): So now clients and prospects will be able to crowdsource videos straight from Cliquify based on various assets. It's not just about the job, it's the culture attributes and all of those things. And the employee will just receive literally an email that says, Hey, Amit has requested you create, you know, submit a video and it'll be on your phone back to Chad's point. So it's very mobile friendly all the employee has to do, and they'll get those key questions that are, that the admin has asked for the employee to, to provide and they'll just record it on their mobile device and submit it. My job as an employee is done the raw footage on the receiving side. You'll be able to, as an admin or creator within the platform, you'll be able to take hundreds of footages and figure out what makes the most sense for you to actually curate within Cliquify to be able to then share it outwards with your employee base to then share it with their networks. Joel (24m 28s): So these are actual employees that you're targeting to create content as opposed to like say stock footage of videos or gifs, which is sort of different than how it currently works. Where you guys are making the images and they're easily sharing, there's a lot more complexity with the video portion of the program. Who is your normal client? Is this an SMB thing? Because I tend to think of this kind of stuff being very big company. We have an agency do this, like they're the ones that handles this. Is this a small midsize business play in terms of customer? Amit (25m 5s): Yeah, you know, ironically that's how we started when we launched it was our target market, was the SMBs. But we're starting to, I mean, 90% of our accounts right now are large global enterprises. And I think the reason for that Joel (25m 20s): Do they have agencies? Amit (25m 21s): Yeah, they do. Which is very interesting. Joel (25m 24s): They use this alongside the agency. The agency's not managing this for them. Amit (25m 28s): No, the agency's not managing it for them. Maybe in the future that's a possibility, but what we're finding is there isn't, there's this gap or this need for people to scale this content in a controlled way. And that's the sweet spot that we're providing, so the bigger the organization, the bigger this problem is for you. And that's what we're seeing right now. Now having said that, we do have a mid-market play where, you know, companies, you know, that can't afford an agency, companies people have never heard of, but they're amazing places to work for. There's a whole market there that we haven't even tapped into Joel at the moment just because of where we are in terms of our scalability. Joel (26m 10s): Talk to me about automation. Any plans of the future to say, Hey, you won't have to manually go in and share these things. We're gonna integrate into your account every week, every Wednesday at three or whatever time you set it, we're gonna share this stuff without you manually doing it. Is that something in the roadmap or is that something you don't want to touch? Amit (26m 31s): So it is something we have discussed internally and with our existing clients, and generally speaking, about 60% of our clients we spoke with, they actually prefer that, you know, they wanna be able to touch and feel the content. So, you know, we'll continue to monitor the automation component, Joel, but we're not sold yet that that is the answer to attracting talent Joel (26m 57s): Boosting posts or advertising. Is there an element of that either currently or in the works? Amit (27m 1s): Yeah, so we actually have a relationship with PandoLogic. If a client is interested in taking our content annd doing sponsored ads with that content, they have the ability to do that through PandoLogic. Joel (27m 17s): And that's advertising on Facebook and Instagram, not job boards or? Amit (27m 25s): Well, Pandologic is job boards specific, Joel. And so there's a whole social media element to that, that they're not yet able to sponsor if they wanted to take that content. It's their content, our client's content, they're welcome to do that directly with LinkedIn and so on. Joel, Chad (27m 41s): Joel, this sounds expensive. Joel (27m 41s): So expensive, and the pricing isn't on their pricing page. So I'm scared to know how much this is. Chad (27m 47s): I gotta know. Yes, if you can't put the pricing on the pricing page, I'm just not, I'm kind of afraid to ask, but I'm gonna ask. Amit, how much would this cost me? Amit (27m 56s): Yeah, so, you know, as a buyer, I'm very, very, you know, cognizant of the pricing, you know, the budget pressures that all of the HR leaders are under, currently, and they will continue to be. The way we price is unlimited users, unlimited content. So it's like an unlimited data plan with your cell phone. We don't charge by the seat. And so the basis of our pricing is based on the size of your organization. So, and we'd cap it. So if you are an organization with a thousand employees and hiring on an annual basis, let's say 500 employees, this product will cost you $10,000 a year, right? If you're an organization that is, you know, 50,000 employees and hiring, you know, 8,000 people a year, this product is capped at $75,000 a year. Amit (28m 45s): That includes the video capability. So what we're doing, Joel and Chad, is we're basically consolidating all these point solutions that you have to, you know, measure your manager employer brand. We're basically consolidating it all and saying, you don't need an Adobe anymore. You don't need a separate video solution anymore. You don't need a social engagement tool anymore. We're basically more play to try that. All right, I'll stop. I just heard the crickets. Joel (29m 14s): Before we go too long. I don't normally do this, but I'm on the fence. I want you to answer this question concisely for me. Talk about the numbers. You guys track results, talk about that. Amit (29m 26s): Yeah, so there's so many ways to cut your brand, right? Your, your employer brand. We're seeing roughly 11 x more candidate engagement than any sponsored ads that that's out there, with the same piece of content. We're seeing 11 x more candidate engagement. We're basically driving cost down of ads so you don't no longer need to spend on ads because you can get your employees involved in the recruiting process. We're driving the cost per click down about three x at the moment. Joel (29m 56s): Okay. And what do you want to be when you grow up? Amit (29m 59s): We wanna be the content engine, Joel. That's essentially who we are, is a content engine that basically enables attraction right now of candidates. But there's a use, there's a whole, you know, use case there around the marketing function. Joel (30m 15s): All right, Amit, you've had your time with the firing squad and it's time to face that firing squad. Are you ready? Amit (30m 21s): I am ready. Joel (30m 23s): So I'm gonna go first. I always look historically at companies and Chad and I have part of the magic of our show is that we're old and we have context to like startups and what's come before and what hasn't. And sometimes it's just a bad idea and sometimes time catches up with the idea, right? Mobile catches up or technology speed, video, you know, things kind of catch up to these ideas that are early. And I wanted to go into this hoping that, you know, maybe the social thing and the sharing thing, maybe the world is just cut up to that. And I also think about culture, originality, authenticity. And I think that today is really, really important in what we do and companies that want to just out of the box, build a brand with, you know, either stock photos or different fonts, and we do different images. Joel (31m 12s): Like I, like I get the value of images on social media and creating simplicity around that. The question for me is, the world is changing so fast, what is this product actually mean? And, is it a product or is it a feature? And to me, social media is so fast moving. Video is so relevant to people, ages different ages. You know, what shares on LinkedIn isn't necessarily effective on what shares on Instagram. And I fear that people just think, I don't have to think about this, I just have to like, share this thing everywhere. And it's sort of this mass post and pray mentality, fire at everybody and hope that, you know, 1% responds. So on one hand, I like the simplicity, but I also, you know, just having a Crello or Canva account and having somebody in marketing like create these things every week that's more custom to my brand, more about us, actually taking pictures of who we are and as the company. Joel (32m 8s): To me, this is a shortcut to thinking and actually doing the work, that has to go into building a brand. I think that the sharing can happen without the piece of it. I think the automation piece is a way that you should focus on. I think the boosting of post is something that you should focus on, but for me it's just not enough to get me excited. I think there's a lot of work to do. I think the seed round, hopefully you have some visions of more sexy shit that'll get me excited. But for me, as of right now, man. sfx (32m 38s): Firing squad rapid fire bullets Amit (32m 39s): Oh no, Joel (32m 39s): It's nothing personal, but I just, I can't get on board, man. I can't. Amit (32m 43s): It's all good, man. Hey, I appreciate that, Joel. No worries. Joel (32m 47s): All right. Maybe Chad. He Chad's in Portugal drinking beer. He's gotta be nicer than me. Chad (32m 53s): I'm chill man. It's my, it's almost end of the day here. Joel (32m 56s): Chad, chill, baby. Chad (32m 57s): That's right, that's right. So let me tell you what I love. I love 25,000 MRR. You're about a third of the way there. You get to around a million then people are gonna care. They're gonna want to look at prospectively buying you, right? Get to $2 million. There's no question. I love the engagement numbers. Content is king. So you're going down the, the right path. But on the chess board of life, my friend, you want to be the queen, and to be the queen on the board, you need to start pulling in and blending brands like Forbes, right along with your current content that adds validation for any stream of content. Chad (33m 38s): And everybody will understand that. Having a Joel Cheesman blog right next to Forbes, makes Forbes look so much better anyway, so yes. Joel (33m 48s): True. Chad (33m 48s): There's a need for content blending. Invalidated names, email for distribution. Come on, man. 2010 called and they want their process back. Email is not mobile friendly. Quit telling yourself that. Text is mobile friendly. WhatsApp is mobile friendly. I mean, Facebook Messenger for goddamn sakes is mobile friendly, right? These are the areas that you need to go down. And I can't say this enough! Do not have a page on your website that says pricing and does not give me pricing. That is the most clickbaity shit that drives me crazy. Put the pricing out there and if it's too complex, then you have a problem with your pricing. Chad (34m 29s): Right? Simplicity. Amit (34m 29s): That's fair. Chad (34m 30s): Keep it simple, stupid. Okay. And finally, if you're gonna focus on content, you need to be the shining example for content. And I believe that you have the heart, you have the soul, you have the idea, but I believe it's a feature at this point, not a platform. Work those relationships with core talent management platforms. Get tight in there with integrations. Get that ARR around or one to 2 million. And I think you are going to find a quick exit because content creation is not easy. I agree. Cliquify i is pretty damn cool, but keep the concession speech handy because it's a golf clap for me. Amit (35m 11s): Oh man. No worries guys. Hey, look, I enjoyed the conversation, of course. As we always do, we always learn from these conversations and we'll take, I hope so. We'll take it from there, right? Joel (35m 19s): Take it for what it's worth, man, it's nothing personal. I hope you come back in a few years and tell me to stick it up my ass. Cause you just, you just sold for a hundred million dollars! Chad (35m 29s): Or maybe you took some of those changes, you implemented those changes and you took off like a fucking rocket ship. You're welcome man! Amit (35m 35s): And, you know what? I'm optimistic. So it's gonna happen. I love you guys regardless. I look forward to seeing you guys in person at the next event somewhere. Joel (35m 43s): All right, we appreciate that. For our listeners that wanna know more about Cliquify Amit, where do you send them? Amit (35m 51s): Cliquify.me. Joel (35m 53s): We out. Chad (35m 53s): We out. Outro (36m 45s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Our robotic overlords are closer to running all this shit than you think. Have you heard of OpenAI and ChatGPT? If not, Chad & Cheese are here for an introductory lesson. To say it might change writing job descriptions, resumes, and interviewing forever is an understatement. Yeah, really. Then it's time for a little Who'd Ya' Rather with Allwork and Hunters Club (no, not the Polo knock-off from the '80s) and a little good-cop / bad-cop with LinkedIn and ending with a roundup of the good, the bad, and the ugly on the current state of global corporations. Ho-ho-holy hell it's a great episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. God bless us, everyone. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (19s): Oh, yeah, Brittany Griner is free. Harry and Megan are Unleashed and New York, Yankee Aaron Judge is really, really rich. So how's your week going? Hi, kids. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "why is the carpet all wet, Todd?" Cheeseman. And Chad (39s): This is Chad "Is it live or Memorex?" Sowash. Joel (43s): And on this week's show. Who'd you rather? You will know LinkedIn by the Trail of Dead. And OpenAI is here to kill us all and I feel fine. Let's do this. How was your week, Chad? Chad (58s): It's been a great week, man. Joel (59s): How's Christmas time in Portugal? Is it just like the Midwest? Is it just like it is back in Indiana? Chad (1m 6s): Yeah, not so much. Yeah, no, no. Snow got a bunch of sunlight. So I actually get vitamin D here, which is nice. Yeah, yeah. I don't have to bundle up to go for walks or anything like that. Yeah. Joel (1m 17s): I mean, are there at least some lights up? I don't know, something festive. Chad (1m 21s): Oh, we'll go to Tera tonight to see the lights. It's all lit up. The bridges and all that other fun stuff. And then we'll go, you know, we'll go eat on the town. It's amazing. It's much easier, let's say stress free when you don't have kids, cuz you don't have to buy presents. Think about the toys, you go out to the malls, do all that shit that you used to have to do, hang up stockings and lights and any of that stuff. You just enjoy life. Joel (1m 48s): I feel like you're taunting me with all these comments. I'm guessing you don't even have a tree up in Portugal. Chad (1m 55s): No, no reason. We're doing Christmas with the kids in Paris, so we're bringing the kids into Paris for Christmas and the best lights at the Eiffel Tower. We're gonna be staying fairly close there, so that'll be nice. Joel (2m 10s): Yeah, that doesn't suck. That does not suck. Christmas in Paris probably does not suck. Well, I assume you're gonna be enjoying some World Cup this weekend as you have every week. Big match that even I'm paying attention to is England and France. Chad (2m 25s): Yes! Joel (2m 26s): Who you got in that one? Chad (2m 27s): It's gotta be France. France, they're defending champs. Julie, her favorite football player is Kylian Mbappé, guy is on fucking fire. The English I just think that the US took the lion down for some reason. I don't know. They just haven't been playing the same. So yeah, I think France, Brazil looks amazing. Portugal finally woke up this week, six to one over Switzerland. I mean, so there, there's a lot of good, a lot of good matches to be played. Joel (2m 58s): And I'm sorry Chad. The correct answer is England, unlike Mbappé or whoever you said, I can pronounce Harry Kane and I can say that in a pub. So the correct answer is England will win against France this weekend. Let's get to shout outs, shall we? Chad (3m 19s): That's right, baby. Here we go. First shout out. Here comes shout out to the US Army. Joel (3m 27s): Oh Man. sfx (3m 28s): We do more before 9:00 AM than most people do all day. Be all that you can be, Hey, first sergeant, good morning. You can do it in the army. Joel (3m 41s): Holy eighties. Flashback Batman. You shout out to the army. Okay, this should be good. As an army veteran, I can't wait for this. Chad (3m 49s): Yes. That jingle makes me smile so much. I never smiled so much actually serving in the military. But the United States Army is the best recruiting program in the world. And it's harkening back to the old days, olden days with a throwback advertising campaign. Be all that you can be, that jingle played everywhere for years. That's like ingrained in our psyche. Oh yeah. What do you think about when you actually hear that, other than just having to smile because you remember when you were a kid. Joel (4m 20s): Well, obviously it takes me back to the eighties in a more simple, simple time before all the things you just talked about, kids and presents and everything else. So, and it also makes me think back to Stripes with Bill Murray when they sing. Chad (4m 36s): That's a fact, Jack. Joel (4m 38s): Yeah. When they they sing it on the bus, I think to, to bootcamp. But yeah, a lot of eighties flashbacks for me when I hear that, because that ad was prevalent and everywhere and before social media, it was the days where everyone watched the same TV shows. Chad (4m 55s): Yep. Joel (4m 55s): And that ad ran at every popular TV show back in the eighties. Chad (4m 59s): Yes and I mean, it was on every radio station, so that ad that jingle was everywhere. So shout out to the US Army for bringing it back. Joel (5m 8s): I'm glad it gives you good memories and not like cold sweats and, you know, screaming in the middle of the night. That's good. That's good. All right. My shout out. Much less patriotic. Kristina Salen Chad (5m 20s): Oh, Joel (5m 20s): Who the fuck is Kristina? Kristina Salen you might ask. Yeah, well, she's the new CFO at popular ATS Greenhouse. Why should we care? Repeat after me? Chad IPO. Greenhouse has raised over a hundred million dollars and has hit the 10 year mark. So their investors are obviously looking for a little liquidation event likely to happen in the next, oh, I don't know, 12 to 24 months. A little trip down to Wall Street as soon as the IPO market loosens up. Salen was at Etsy when they went public. One of your favorite craft sites that you liked to buy embroidered scarfs from. Joel (6m 1s): Obviously they've also just hired a chief legal officer and added a new board member. All of this is Latin for IPO. Shout out to Kristina Salen and the inevitable journey to the public markets for our friends at Greenhouse. Chad (6m 17s): Yeah, I see more on the 24 month side of the house than I do the 12 months. It's gonna take a minute. It's gonna take a minute. Joel (6m 25s): Well, like most of my predictions, Chad, sfx (6m 28s): 60% of the time it works every time. Chad (6m 33s): Shout out to Chris Manion, who knows how to say he's sorry. He sends alcohol. Joel (6m 38s): Yes. Chad (6m 39s): I love that. I can't even remember what he did to be sorry for, to be quite frank, but he sent Port and here in Portugal, obviously that's where Port comes from. We've just found out this new port in tonic mixture that is fucking delightful. It's called Portonica. So something we'll bring back with us, Joel, so that we can enjoy. Joel (7m 2s): So it's a pre-made drink or it's a cocktail that gets mixed. Chad (7m 5s): Yeah. It's a cocktail. It gets mixed. Joel (7m 7s): So a little tip for me, if you're a Guinness drinker. Chad (7m 11s): Oh. Joel (7m 11s): Add a shot of port to your Guinness. Mm. It's quite lovely. It's quite lovely. Yes. And next on the cocktail show with Chad and Cheese. No, no, that's good. Yeah. Port, it's not just for lunch people. Chad (7m 25s): I'm doing it later tonight. Joel (7m 27s): Well, thanks Chris. And happy birthday belated by the way. Chad (7m 29s): Yes. Joel (7m 29s): Which I think is the third or fourth shoutout to his birthday. So he should be feeling a lot better. My, my last shoutout goes to billionaire Ken Griffin. Chad (7m 39s): Oh. Joel (7m 39s): Ken is the founder of Hedge Funds, Citadel and Citadel Securities. But that's not why he's getting a shout out. Griffin paid out of his own pockets of his own pockets for about 10,000 of his staff and their families to converge on Walt Disney World in Florida for three days of celebration at the Magic Kingdom and other theme parks there at Disney. He picked up the tab for airfares from New York, Houston, Paris, Zurich, and other cities, and paid for hotels, park tickets and meals ranging from lamb chops to sushi and paella. Paella? Chad (8m 15s): Paella. Joel (8m 15s): Paella. Yeah. Sorry, I go to Portuguese from my paellla, to applaud blockbuster returns and big anniversaries. Chad fave, Coldplay even played a private show for the Citadel workers. Don't worry about Ken though. Citadel manages about $60 billion in assets, so I think he's still gonna be able to make that Red Rider BB gun payment for Ralphie this coming Christmas. Hurray Capitalism. Shout out to Mickey Mouse loving Ken Griffin. Yeah. Chad (8m 47s): And a bunch of radio flyers I'm sure with the BB gun. Yeah. That motherfucker needed a tax write off. Good for him. Yeah. Good for the rest of his staff. My God. He's like, looking at his returns. He's like, sweetheart, we're gonna have to do something dramatic for some good tax write-offs. Joel (9m 5s): I'm feeling a real golf clap on this one from you, Chad. Chad (9m 11s): So I've gotta give a shout out to Spotify marketing. They are amazing. They've created a way to, I guess you could just say sexualize podcasting data. They make it sexy. That's what they do. Oh, Joel (9m 27s): Yes. They make it sexy. Chad (9m 28s): So at the end of the year, you know how they do these wrap-ups for everybody? For us. They actually packaged everything and they showed us we were the top 5% of all podcasts globally. We increased over 60% in followers. Nearly 60% rise in listens and some other cool stats. 167 episodes to date. That's thus far in 2022. Joel (9m 54s): That's a lot. Chad (9m 55s): That's a lot of fucking episodes. 4,900 minutes of content. Fuck and transcriptions to go with all that. Don't forget about that. Plus we're in nearly 850 listeners top 10 podcasts that they listen to. Joel (10m 14s): Yeah. Chad (10m 14s): That is just sexy. So we put it out there in the LinkedIns. People are are soaking it up. I love it. Spotify knows how to market their platform. Joel (10m 23s): That's right. That's what happens when you're fueled by Taco Bell kids. That's what the secret is. And a lot of booze as well, Chad. Chad (10m 32s): Yes. Joel (10m 33s): Which brings us to the booze winners for this month. All right. Do you know how this, this works? We got whiskey from Textkernel. Peter Simandl, I think I'm saying that correctly. Was our winner. Simandl You say Simandll. I say Samundle, let's call the whole thing off. He won our whiskey for the month. Our beer winner from Aspen Tech Labs. Tracy Morris from West Virginia University. Chad (11m 1s): Oh! Joel (11m 2s): A fine, nice, fine educational establishment. And rum with Plum goes to Kim Gray, happy birthday to her as well. We also have t-shirts where pretty much everybody wins. Chad (11m 13s): Yes. Joel (11m 13s): Frankly. And if you haven't signed up for those, you just gotta head to Chadcheese.com, click the free link, submit your information, and wait for the goodies to start flowing in kids. That's how this works. Chad (11m 26s): Yeah, that's what Mannion was having a problem with. He didn't put his birthday in when he actually submitted for free. Again, kids, if you want Birthday Rum from Plum. Yep. You gotta do that. You gotta do that. Kids. Joel (11m 39s): Yeah. We can't read minds people. We can podcast and talk shit, but we can't really read your minds. Chad (11m 46s): We're not going to the county courthouse to look through your shit to see when your birthday was. Okay. Just not gonna happen. Joel (11m 52s): We're not monitoring you through your webcam. We don't know when your birthday is, but we do know the following birthdays. Chad (12m 1s): Yes. Joel (12m 2s): Because these folks did actually submit their birthday information. sfx (12m 4s): Happy Birthday! Joel (12m 4s): Now, if you listen to last week's show, you'll know that I forgot last week's birthdays because I was so busy with Chris Mannion whining about how he didn't get called out for a birthday. So. Chad (12m 18s): Hey, he paid up. Joel (12m 19s): Here's two weeks of birthdays. We got James Hickman, Deidra Pitts, who got her T-shirt. Finally I'd like to report, by the way, she was whining about that. Chad (12m 31s): She was not happy. Joel (12m 33s): Frank Wittenauer, Matt Grafflin, Mary Kelly, Michael Cox, Nathan, Lana Schumann, Terry Kahler, Stephen Branch, Matt Miller, Kim Stewart, Lars Kuze, Chase Johnson, Patrick Hodgdon, Ryan Cook, John Jorgenson, Matt Stubbsy Stubbs and Torin Ellis. Everybody that is the birthdays. Chad (12m 56s): Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. It's a also, you forgot the most important one. Joel (13m 2s): I did. I did. Well, let me get a drum roll for this. Chad (13m 7s): Okay. Get ready. Happy birthday to a hot and powerful blonde with bad eyesight. Yeah. That's my wife, Julie Sowash. sfx (13m 16s): Happy Birthday! Joel (13m 17s): Julie Sowash. Yes. Chad (13m 18s): And I, I know who should be winning the rum with Plum this month, by the way. Joel (13m 24s): And we know who wins rum with Plums every day of the week everybody? sfx (13m 31s): Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down to my plums. Joel (13m 38s): Oh, and speaking of way down to your plums, let's do a leaderboard report on fantasy football, shall we? Chad (13m 44s): Here we go. Joel (13m 45s): This is brought to you by our friends at FactoryFix. Guys, we are in the back nine of the season. There's two weeks left before the playoffs. This is your leaderboard from first to worst at number one in the new spot, Dennis. And number one in our hearts, two Tupper is our top spot, followed by Joe. How is this guy with Kirk Cousins in second place? Wilkie, Chris Port Authority, Manion, Joel claim to playoff position Cheesman. Chad, I have Pat Mahomes and you don't Sowash. Christie from Utah with Love Kellling. Joel (14m 25s): Matt doing about as well as Colt's qb Matt, Ryan Hill, Serge racing to the bottom as fast as Austin Matthews crashes the net Boudreaux. Mike, how does someone with Jalen Hertz and Justin Herbert get stuck in such mediocrity Schaffer? Jason, I beat Cheesman by 30 last week and I'm still in 10th place Putnam. James, like cutting crew, I just died in your arms tonight Gilliam, and Dan must have gotten run over by a reindeer Shoemaker. That is. Chad (14m 60s): Yes. Joel (15m 1s): Your leaderboard for fantasy football everybody. Chad (15m 2s): It's been a fun season. It's been a fun season. It's not over yet, kids. It's not over yet. Joel (15m 7s): No. Chad (15m 8s): You still have an opportunity. Joel (15m 10s): We're all about this same record. It's mostly points now that separates anyone. Chad (15m 13s): Yes. You and I are separated, but I think four points. Joel (15m 17s): Four points. That's it. Chad (15m 19s): Yeah. Joel (15m 23s): Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be a fun couple of weeks with Fantasy Football. Chad (15m 28s): TOPICS! Joel (15m 29s): All right. If you're not somewhat aware of Open AI and more specifically chat G P T, then you're apparently too busy buying NFTs and creating AI generated portraits of yourself. Chad (15m 41s): Jesus. Joel (15m 42s): To do so. Anyway, Wikipedia defines chat. GPT as a prototype. Artificial intelligence chat bot launched just last month. Its garnered attention for its detailed responses and historical knowledge. It's been called everything from a Google killer to dumber than you think by popular media outlets. Chad, you are all over this one. What say you? Chad (16m 10s): Well, this is our, is it live or Memorex portion of the podcast. Remember that? I mean, we don't know what's real anymore. That's the thing we have. sfx (16m 19s): Shall we play a game? Chad (16m 22s): Chad and Cheese podcasts that are coming out that aren't really our voices. We have poems that are being written by ai. It it is fucking amazing. But I gotta say, dude, our AI overlords have taught us the best ways to drive product adoption. It's too easy. It's vanity and it's coolness. Vanity, you just talked about it. Have you seen all the new AI generated picks that are littering the inner webs? People are paying for this service and they're giving the app and the company all their facial data. But hell, we've been doing that for over a decade by posting selfies into social media. Chad (17m 2s): But the vanity to look like an astronaut, a Blade runner, or I don't know, a character from Game of Fucking Thrones is so alluring that people are using those pictures as their profile picks. Vanity is training the ai, right? We're so easy as human beings, then we have the cool factor AI that can write screenplays, sonnets, poems, essays. I mean, that's cool enough that over a million new users have logged in and are using this new version in open AI chat GPT bot, whatever they wanna fucking call it. Chad (17m 42s): But the coolness in vanity are just to the bedrock factors around adoption to a new product. And it's something that our industry is really bad at. We put stuff out there, but we don't wrap it in vanity, in coolness enough. I think these two plays that I just threw out there are amazing. Then we can start to talk about the big stuff that this can do. But let's talk about the actual product itself. Does it surprise the fuck out of you that everybody who's been bitching about facial recognition and AI taking over shit, they're just glomming onto these things. Joel (18m 19s): It does make you look really good in visual form. I'm refusing at this point to do it. We are vain creatures. We love novelty and new shiny things. Chad (18m 30s): Yeah. Joel (18m 30s): You wrap that into what some have called a horrific dystopian future that's ahead of us with this thing. It doesn't surprise me that human beings, this is what happened. It's like in 2001 where the ape man picks up the bone and sort of, you know, playfully breaks the bones of a dead animal, which then turns into full on killing of another tribe. It went from fun to serious really quick, I want to underscore that this thing is a month old. Yes. I remember when Clubhouse was cool for about a week. Chad (19m 6s): You cannot put them in the same category. You just can't. Joel (19m 9s): I use Alexa now mostly to turn my lights off. And that was gonna change the world too. So, so I'm gonna reserve some opinion on this until it gets some legs on it. I remember when bored apes were all the rage and people were using that as their profile pictures on social media. Now, I will say clearly, if you are in the content creation, writing stuff, blog posts for SEO, papers for school, script writing, if you're in any kind of the content creation business, this should kind of scare the shit out of you. Chad (19m 49s): Yeah. Joel (19m 49s): If you create stuff that has no nuance, like news summaries or press reports, like this should scare the shit outta you because this thing can spit those out pretty easily. I'm impressed with, you know, like, hey, write a summary of the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm not sure which one is the plump and stubby one in the description. But that said, it got pretty close. And, maybe we'll post that poem on the socials, so our friend or on the website so people can see it. But you know, if you start thinking about, okay, let's take the robots that are scaring us to death. Let's take this AI that's scaring us to death, and then let's take the Chad and Cheese podcast in five different languages or whatever. That scares us to death. Chad (20m 30s): Yeah. Joel (20m 30s): And if you put all those elements together, you got a robot that can make sense and talk in multiple languages, and this is maybe the future and it should maybe scare us, maybe excite us, I don't know. But again, this thing is a month old. It has a branding problem because chat GPT is awful. Yeah. Whoever creates stuff from this, and I think applications are gonna be built as I understand. Chad (20m 56s): Yes. Joel (20m 57s): Models are gonna be created through this stuff. So, you know, we talk a lot about jobs being lost, you know, to ai. This is gonna be a whole new app marketplace companies created around this stuff. So yeah. This is weird wild stuff. We're gonna have fun talking about it. We're gonna have fun talking about how startups come around. Like, Hey, create job descriptions with ai. Hey, create, you know, if I'm a chat bot, if I'm paradox, this probably concerns me a little bit unless I can plug its technology into me. Chad (21m 32s): Yeah. Joel (21m 32s): There may be a whole new group of chatbot competitors that use this as their API or application to build bots around employment. So exciting. A little scary. Lot of fun to talk about. Welcome to the world of OpenAI people. Chad (21m 52s): Yeah. Well, the practical uses are really gonna revolve around the secret sauce. So as you talked about, like chatbots with Paradox. Paradox already has a huge set headstart because of all the secret sauce that they have developed, right, with all the training behaviors and whatnot. And if you think about it, it's just like everybody uses AI today. The big difference between everybody's AI is how they've trained it. So it's going to be the same kind of thing. How they trained it, where they trained it, what kind of information they trained it on. Yeah. It's gonna be amazing. So yeah, job descriptions. It's funny, people are talking about, as a matter of fact, Lieven said something about job descriptions this week. And I was thinking about that and I'm like, you know, if we're training it off of the data, the historic data that we have, it's just gonna come up with more shit job descriptions, right? Chad (22m 41s): So, we're gonna have to actually curate job descriptions that are worth the shit. Yeah. And then start to feed the machine that way because there's so much fucking garbage that's out there. We saw this actually thus far with code debugging. You know, there are, they've been asking. Joel (22m 60s): Yeah. Chad (23m 0s): The AI to debug code. It's been doing it right in some examples, but wrong in others writing essays. It wrote a Glassdoor review. I mean, it's just so freaking amazing. The big question is though, you know, is it big enough to take, and it's different than, but is it almost like an evolutionary step for Google? Because it becomes more, could become more of a chatbot, a voice chatbot that you could ask to do things, to write things. Joel (23m 37s): Yeah. Chad (23m 37s): Tasking, those types of things. Joel (23m 38s): Sure. Imagine, you know, voice command, Hey, OpenAI or whatever, update my resume for me. And it goes into your social media, your LinkedIn profile, whatever update stuff. It says, Hey, write a job description based on the 10 most effective ads on the internet. And it goes out to whatever sources and says, okay, here's the lingo that works with the most applies and most efficient and effective ads. And then it makes an ad for you based on that data. I mean, yeah, the where this thing is gonna go is gonna be mind blowing, I'm sure. And a lot smarter people than us are gonna be building stuff around that. But yeah, as a start, it's pretty impressive. Joel (24m 18s): As a first month, it's pretty impressive. Chad (24m 21s): I'm stoked. I can't wait to see where this thing goes and watch while it burns down society. Joel (24m 28s): No doubt. No doubt. All right, let's play a little, who'd you rather? Chad (24m 31s): Ooh. My favorite. Joel (24m 31s): Which I don't know that we've done in a while. So who'd you rather? How does this work? We take two companies in this case, two that have recently gotten funding. And then Chad and I pick who'd we rather, and I'll let everyone use their own imagination for what we'd rather do with each of these companies. So without further ado, who'd you rather. All right, in this corner we have Hunt Club. And by the way, speaking of the eighties, wasn't Hunt Club a Polo knockoff? Chad (25m 1s): Yes. Joel (25m 2s): In the eighties? Chad (25m 3s): Yes. Joel (25m 3s): Yeah. Okay. So anyway, Hunt Club, a Chicago-based talent platform that utilizes referrals announced a $40 million series B funding around this week. This brings total funding to $51.8 million. Founded in 2014, the new funding will fuel the company's national expansion and technology platform enhancements. The company says it's a new category of search firm that leverages the power of relationships and referrals to find you the best talent that is Hunt Club. And in the other corner, we have AllWork. New York based AllWork, an end-to-end platform that helps companies more efficiently and compliantly onboard, manage and pay their freelancer and contingent workforces has announced the completion of a $4.9 million series a funding round. Joel (25m 55s): This brings total funding to $8.7 million. Founded in 2016 the company will use the funds to expand its software, payment services and team to meet the increasing need by companies in freelancers for quote "a better way to work together" end quote. So Chad, Hunt Club now on sale at Sears and JCPenney or AllWork, who'd you rather? Chad (26m 20s): It's gonna be AllWork kids. It's another easy button platform for freelance workers, either W2 or 1099. Their leadership looks solid and everybody wants to outsource their crappy jobs. Compliance, payment, manage all of those giggers in a single platform. So yeah, I'm going to tap that. I'm AllWork all day, all night tapping that AllWork. On the other side of the house. And I gotta say with the Hunt Club, literally, it's mostly just another referral platform wrapped into a social grab packaging. Chad (26m 59s): It's not a recruiting agency. It's not a automation matching platform. It's a referral platform. That's what it is. And there's only one company right now that I know, and that's probably because I'm actually advising them, Real Lengths that they are attacking the biggest issue in referrals and that's engagement. They're the only ones I know who's actually doing that. So knowing this, I've gotta push away from the Hunt Club. No JCPenney for me. Joel (27m 26s): I'm sorry. It was AllWork, all night, all the time. What the hell was that? sfx (27m 29s): That escalated quickly. Joel (27m 30s): Geez. Chad (27m 30s): I'm tap that. Joel (27m 31s): I'm still thinking about that. Oh, I'll tap that. AllWork. All right. Alright to me, this is a question of competitors reading up on AllWork, I couldn't help but think why not just do all this with Upwork or Fivver, you know, publicly traded companies or even Freelancer? Out of France, which we've talked about on our European show. Well, maybe AllWork pulls in all those platforms together into a single dashboard. Well, that would be cool, wouldn't it? No, it doesn't do that at all. So now let's go to Hunt Club. Competitors are names like WorkStream, Ashby, and Circular. Not necessarily into sneeze at, but not exactly Upwork and Fivver. Joel (28m 14s): So basically AllWork is in the NFC North and Hunt Club is in the AFC South. Who'd I rather the company with a significantly easier road to the playoffs. I'd rather Hunt Club. And that is another round of, who'd you rather? Let's take a quick break. Hate on LinkedIn for a little bit. That's always fun. Chad (28m 40s): Yes. Joel (28m 40s): All right. Chad. LinkedIn was good cop and bad cop this week. Do you want to hear the good cop or the bad cop first? Chad (28m 48s): Start off on the good note. Let's go with a good cop. Joel (28m 55s): All right, good cop. LinkedIn's latest updates include new analytics data on top performing posts and expanded audience insights. Specifically LinkedIn's audience tab now shows the demographic makeup of accounts, follower bases, and how these bases increase or decrease over time. Users can also check out their posts tab to see which three posts had the most interaction or gained the most impressions during set periods. For us that will be references to alcohol, by the way. Most of the time. Chad (29m 30s): Always. Joel (29m 30s): LinkedIn is usually a follower of social media trends. Remember stories and scheduling posts. They may not hit a lot of threes or throw down a lot of tomahawk dunks, but they can do layups Chad. And this is a good cop version of the good layup. That's the good cop version of LinkedIn. Let's get to Bad Cop now, which is much more entertaining. You have, you chose correctly by ending on the bad cop note. So we've been covering, we've been covering the HighQ lawsuit with LinkedIn for six years now. Yes, we've been doing this that long. That wow. The last time. The last time we talked in just November. Joel (30m 10s): HighQ was on its last breath. Well, death is finally upon us. Chad, this is from Sarah White vp legal litigation Competition and enforcement at LinkedIn via a post on, you guessed it LinkedIn. Quote "Today we won a six year legal battle against HighQ on behalf of every member on LinkedIn. Thank God they're fighting for the little guy. HighQ has agreed to a permanent injunction requiring HighQ to stop scraping and to destroy all source code data and algorithms created when HighQ scraped member profile data in violation of LinkedIn's user agreement. This is a final decisive victory against a company that illegally scraped our members' profile data, used fake accounts, and attempted to build a business on abusing LinkedIn's platform and our members' privacy. Joel (31m 3s): This establishes an important legal precedent to stop this kind of abuse on the future and reaffirms that LinkedIn's user agreement unambiguously protects members from unauthorized data scraping and fake accounts. We remain committed to protecting the people who use our platform and to fighting to ensure that control of personal data remains where it belongs with our members." end quote translation, I quote, the lyrical genius of House of Pain mugs lifts a funk flow. Someone's talking junk. Yo, I bust him in the eye and then I'll take the punk's ho. Joel (31m 47s): HighQ's head is officially on a spike outside of LinkedIn's headquarters. Everyone, you have been warned. Chad (31m 51s): Wow. And this is the reason why they rolled out with those new analytics because they weren't sure whether it was going to be information that they were going to expose, could be scraped and could be used by other startups or more innovative companies to actually do some shit with the data. And that's the biggest problem with LinkedIn. They have all of this data, but it's like a horse and buggy. I mean, they need a Ferrari. They need these startups to be able to gather that data to actually fucking do something with it. What LinkedIn should do best out of all the organizations that are out there, because they have more data on us than probably any of the other ones, they should be able to match us with relevant jobs. Chad (32m 38s): They're probably the shittiest of any organization out there in the actual, just the basic matching of relevant data. They suck at that stuff. So the thing is, this really kills competition. This does exactly what capitalism does not want to happen. It is killing innovation and all of these smarter, more nimble startups that that LinkedIn could perspectively buy are never going to exist. And that, to me is sad and not how the system's supposed to work. Joel (33m 8s): Yeah. You know, to me, it's funny how they spun it as a victory for the people. The, people of LinkedIn have won the, the battle against the evil, evil scrapers. At the end of the day, you're right, LinkedIn is a monopoly in this space. They're stopping innovation. This is a loss for the startup world that are using this data to create really cool products. It's a loss for consumers who can recruit better people through products that are built in this way. I see both points of view, but ultimately LinkedIn is the 800 pound gorilla. And any startups that we're thinking about using their data are not going to do it anymore. Joel (33m 50s): And it's gonna stifle innovation and it's gonna hurt the marketplace ultimately, which is why we need blockchain Dammit. To come in. Chad (33m 56s): Yes. Joel (33m 56s): And kick LinkedIn and the balls and we will be talking about it if and when that does happen. Chad (34m 4s): Richard and Beverly Collins get that shit pulled together quick kids. Come on. Joel (34m 9s): No, no big task. Nothing major. Nothing major. Chad (34m 12s): It's okay. Joel (34m 12s): All right. Now to the ba hung bug portion of the podcast. Chad (34m 19s): The Joel Cheesman version. Joel (34m 21s): Okay. Chad (34m 22s): Yeah. Joel (34m 22s): Some highlights from corporate America this week. No goofing off. A woman posting on TikTok allegedly declined a job interview after doing some research on a remote position and discovering the company, quote "made employees install software that took a photo of their face every nine minutes to ensure that they weren't goofing off" end equote. Also, there's no boundaries in corporate America, according to a survey of more than a thousand Americans, nearly half admitted to going to an event in 2022 that they actually wanted to skip with work events coming in the top five. And bosses are one of the top people that are hardest for us to say no to. Joel (35m 7s): Also, there's no balance. A tech writer recently pinned. I've struggled to separate my work from my downtime. So I went all in on a new tv. That's right that's what we've come to people. Yikes. The beatings will continue unless morale improves. Unless you work for Citadel life can be pretty tough. Chad, what's your take on embracing the holiday spirit at corporate America? Chad (35m 30s): I'm not sure if this was all about goofing off and being able to, you know, take the picture. I just, I think that they, they were just safeguarding against individuals perspectively tubing. You know, they just wanted to be safeguarding. Now seriously, you know, if you're a company and you can't already monitor the work that's happening day to day on your user systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and hundreds of other platforms, then you don't deserve to be in charge. Cuz you're dumb. Any smart manager can have their staff perform log in and usage checks within the VPN. And again, all these different systems that you're using, all these different vendors that are using, you're using, they have usage reports, you know, activity, all that other fun stuff. Chad (36m 19s): Kids, I mean, hell Monster back in the late nineties, early oughts for goodness sakes, they knew the activities that we had going on. So if you can't do it today, you can't use that as an excuse because it's just total bullshit. And then it comes down to the boundary segment. It's interesting because as I was reading through this research, you know, 58% have trouble saying no, 63% are people pleasers. And I thought, well how does that actually balance between, you know, males and females? Well women, 37% of women versus 28% of men have boundary issues. Women are trying to please more than what men are. Chad (37m 2s): And then you also took a look at, if you take a look at the age, the younger the individual was, the more they felt obliged to come to the event. So they had Zs then millennials, then Xers and boomers just didn't give a shit. I mean, it was just, it was one of those things. So, it was really interesting to look at the data. Joel (37m 25s): Power to the people, Chad, the people are having a moment in the world. Chad (37m 32s): Yes. Joel (37m 32s): I find it fascinating, whether it's the people of Ukraine rising up against the bigger bully next door. Granted they got a pretty big stick from their friends in America, but rising up against a bigger power, Iranian protests, I dunno if you saw this, they got rid of the monitor police or the police that went in and monitored all that stuff. Now that might be They did. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get in. But the people protested in Iran and apparently got some change. China, the people rose, apparently they're loosening the ties on the lockdowns that are going on there. And in our own little corporate world, America, the people are rising against the corporations. And the corporations don't really like it. They don't like that you're working from home. They don't like that you want a four day work week. Joel (38m 14s): And, that's becoming a trend. They were just happy with you being in khakis on casual Friday. Like that was sort of their level of freedom that they wanted to give you. So the people are having a moment of freedom, they're embracing it. It's no surprise that corporate America isn't really happy about it. They want to control you. They wanna watch you. They don't want you to get 'em into court. They don't want you to get 'em into trouble. They want to be, you know, totally belts and suspenders on knowing what you're doing. And we've talked about a myriad of companies that exist to like, engage with you and keep you interested while you work from home. Some of those obviously are built to keep track of you and what you're doing and keystrokes and all that shit. Joel (38m 54s): So, so it's a real tug of war to me that's fun to watch. I don't know who's gonna win. I think the people ultimately, because the best people are gonna want environments that encourage freedom. Chad (39m 7s): Yeah. Joel (39m 8s): And independence. Because that's just who we are as human beings. So, I'm a little bit inspired by the people that are rising up, although the news was kind of a downer. This was our Ba humbug session. I'm gonna end this on a good note and we're gonna take a quick break and definitely end this holiday edition of Chad and Cheese on a positive note. Chad (39m 33s): There we go. Make me happy. Come on. Joel (39m 35s): All right, Chad. No, no, OnlyFans, no PornHub News this week. Chad (39m 39s): Come on dude. Joel (39m 39s): We saved that for the summer months when we're all frisky and not closed in our flannel pajamas. All right. Like casual Fridays in the nineties, the four day work week is also having a moment in addition to the people. Business Insider recently covered a pilot program out of Ireland that required companies to embrace the four day strategy. They found that workers got more sleep, felt less stressed, and spent more time exercising and volunteering. Barry Prost, co-founder of Participant Rent a Recruiter, that's a great name told insider, the reduced workweek offered small businesses like his quote "a competitive advantage" Joel (40m 24s): end quote, when hiring talent. Before the trial rent, a recruiter had a staff turnover rate of 20%. Quote, "we were losing staff to bigger companies so we felt we had to do something quite bold" said Prost. A recruiter has retained all two dozen employees in the six months since bringing in the four day work week. If my math is correct, Chad, that's a hundred percent of the people stayed at the company. Prost` told insider that internal metrics showed a rise in employee satisfaction and a 50% increase in average productivity. Chad is Europe's newest and biggest cheerleader. I assume you love this news out of Ireland, right? Chad (41m 4s): It's fairly simple. Kids. And, this also, they had a much larger, I guess you could say campaign that they did with 70 companies, with 3,300 employees throughout the entire UK. And here's the big win here. And it's a business win. happy employees make happy clients, happy clients are easier to retain, plus happy clients spend more money. So you're not just retaining employees, you're retaining clients, you're increasing wallet share. This is a business move. Joel (41m 39s): And by the way, I'd like to report since implementing a four day week here at Chad and Cheese, my nap time has increased by 80%. Chad (41m 52s): What? Joel (41m 52s): And I'm happy about that. Chad and Cheese (41m 55s): We out OUTRO (42m 42s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

"Coming to America" isn't just a great Eddie Murphy movie from the '80s. It's also the rallying cry for many European companies looking to grow their bottom lines in the world's biggest economy. Enter Leapsome out of Germany who is the latest industry player to make their way across the Atlantic, opening up and promising to hire well over 50 people in New York City this year alone. As you expect, there's very little agreement with the move being a good one or not. Then the boys play a little Buy-or-Sell with iFeel, Vektor and Surfboard. (Spoiler alert: There's almost no agreement by anyone.) Closing the show is a discussion on a recent court decision out of France that ruled companies can't fire their workers for failing to be sufficiently "fun." Well, that's no fun! This episode, however? Loaded with fun! 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. INTRO (6s): 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 (25s): Oh, yeah. Apple is expanding self repair program to most of Europe and the UK. It's about time Europe did some shit on their own. Top of the morning kids. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your co-host Joel "self-serve since 1984" Cheesman. Chad (44s): I'm Chad "upset in the making" Sowash. Lieven (48s): I'm Lieven "soon to be an AI powered poet" Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (52s): And on this episode, Leapsome's gets some big Apple, buy or sell, and France is no fun. Let's do this. sfx (1m 1s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Joel (1m 5s): What's up, boys? Chad (1m 6s): Oh, baby. My liver is killing me from all this World Cup soccer. I never thought, oh, I'm sorry. World Cup football. I never thought a sport would hurt my liver so bad. Joel (1m 18s): By the way. You can't see it, but Lieven is like full on Europe today. The black turtleneck, like the suave hair. It's, it's, I'm very in the mood for this podcast now. Very in the mood. Guys, let's just, I need some Duvel, some dictatorship in 1930s. I don't know. Chad (1m 37s): Okay, back to World Cup Soccer. Oh my God. Joel (1m 39s): Yeah. So we got France and England. Chad (1m 41s): Jesus. Joel (1m 41s): That's gonna be a fun matchup, right? What else we got that's coming up? Chad (1m 45s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, well, first and foremost, let's get through this real quick. I can't believe that first and foremost Canada makes it, but Belgium is only one spot better than Canada. They went into like the last FIFA as the number one team. They were highly ranked this time, but they didn't even make it out of the groups. The USA. Say this again The USA actually made it outta their groups. We got beat by the Dutch, but still, but still. Joel (2m 14s): By the way, my, wife here who's Canadian, I think a lot of listeners know that said one of the most Canadian things ever after Canada was bounced. She said, at least we scored a goal. So we did something good. Like that's one of the most Canadian things I've ever heard in my life. At least we scored a goal. Chad (2m 33s): That is awesome. Well, I'm gonna keep everything rolling with my first shout out, which is to Germany and to a couple of my German friends, Arno and Stefan. They bet me that Germany would actually make it further than Portugal in the World Cup. Much appreciated, gents. I'm going to be enjoying a lot of alcohol on them again. World Cup. Oh my god, alcohol. Let's try that again in four years. I love it. Joel (3m 1s): The Germans really disappointed, you talk about the Belgiums, or the Belgium, I mean Germany, I guess Italy not even getting in was the worst of the European countries. But Chad (3m 11s): That was bad. That was pretty bad. Joel (3m 13s): That was bad. Well, my shout out to get back to what this podcast should be about and that is work. I'm gonna give a shout out to the four day work week. In case you missed it a hundred UK companies have signed up for a permanent four day work week for all their employees with no loss of pay as part of a larger study by some major universities. The hundred companies employ only 2,600 people, a tiny fraction of UK's working population. But it may be enough to spark a bigger trend. Here are some of the results from this survey: A four day work week led to higher sales to the tune of 8% higher by the way. Lower burnout rates and improved attendance with employees using less sick or personal time per month. Joel (3m 59s): As someone who remembers when Casual Friday was cool. I expect this will be a trend for smaller companies to recruit better talent at first and then something bigger companies adopt to compete as well. I can hear China now saying, enjoy your three day weekends. You entitled bunch of Western sissies. Shout out to the four day work week. Chad (4m 20s): When they're not in Covid lockdown. For God's sakes. Joel (4m 23s): Jesus. Yeah. That's insane. That's insane. Chad (4m 27s): It is fucking crazy. The shot. They've got it. I mean they've got it. I don't know what the problem is? Joel (4m 31s): Anyway. They don't have the shot. It's part of the problem. They don't wanna buy it from us. Chad (4m 35s): They have a shot. Yeah, they have a shot. It's just maybe they got the Sputnik from Russia. Fuck. I don't know. Joel (4m 42s): It's gonna hit 'em eventually, they're just postponing the inevitable. I don't Anyway. China. Chad (4m 47s): I dunno Lieven. You got a shout out? Lieven (4m 50s): Yep. My shoutout goes to Marc Thibaut who's a colleague from Bain Capital. So their new colleagues, they're actually our owners and he just posted Joel (4m 60s): Sugar Daddy. Lieven (5m 1s): Yeah, he's a sugar daddy indeed and Mark just posted and I was pretty impressed ~ a poem. He didn't write himself, but he had open ai write a poem for him about House of HR. And that's not really impressive. But the poem actually is, it just puts House of HR into the better version of open ai. And the tool went all by itself looking for information about House of HR and wrote a poem about it, which doesn't even suck that hard. So I'm going to write to. Chad (5m 34s): It doesn't suck that hard. Lieven (5m 35s): If you ask Open Eye to write a poem, you think it'll suck, but the redness more or less, okay. And it makes sense to a certain extent. So I'll just give you two verse and then you can comment on it. So the only thing we said to Open Eye was write a poem about House of HR. And it came up with this, "A House of HR, a magical place. It's a bit of Christmas parade, you know, at House of HR, a magical place where all the special people race to work each day providing care with a knowledge of all employee affairs. A House of HR, a beacon of light gathering data and shining bright, making sure, et cetera, et cetera. And so it goes on. But actually it did figure out, I think it's visited our website or something. Lieven (6m 16s): What we were doing, what our business was, that it was about people, about taking care and this I think could offer opportunities for writing vacancies. It could make our people's life if they could write a poem about each vacancy. Joel (6m 30s): Can we put in there, don't suck so hard and see what comes out of the ai? Chad (6m 36s): Yeah, Lieven (6m 36s): I think you're Chad (6m 37s): Gonna get some pictures. Joel (6m 38s): It won't be used for job descriptions. It'll be used for stupid shit like that. Lieven (6m 42s): Probably. Chad (6m 43s): Here's a message that I received from Martin Lentz, the CEO over at Jobi Co. He actually asked open AI the question, who is smarter Chad Sowash or Joel Cheesman? And this is what came out. "Both Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are renowned leaders in the HR recruitment industry. And they both bring a unique perspective and expertise to their field. That is impossible to say who is smarter as the two offer different perspectives and skill sets that are beneficial in their own right." That was written by open ai, which just proves it's bullshit cause I'm much smarter than Cheesman is. Lieven (7m 24s): But you, you to care, not to mention my name. Chad (7m 26s): No, we're not gonna do that. Cause we already know it's gonna say Joel (7m 28s): We would but we don't know how to spell it. We'd have to look it up. We can't. Lieven (7m 35s): Which answers the question. Of course. Who of the three the most, the most intelligent one Chad (7m 42s): Topics! It would kick out cause it'd say there's too many vowels. Joel (7m 47s): This show's going off the rails quickly. Let's try to get some news here. Let's talk about Leapsome. After taking on funding $60 million to be precise for the first time in over eight years of operation, Berlin based people enablement platform, Leapsome has fully committed to its promise to accelerate its US market presence with the opening of a dedicated office in good old New York City. Leapsome is stepping up. Its American market presence with a 25 person staff all working out of a Madison Avenue office, most likely WeWork. And plans to increase that number to 50 plus people by the end of this year. Joel (8m 31s): Recession be damned. Chad America remains the land of boats and hoses for many global companies. What's your take on Leapsome coming to America or just companies in our space generally coming to us and end? Chad (8m 45s): Leapsome, I don't even know them. You're welcome. You're welcome. I'll be here all week. Try the lamb chop. This is a great series, I mean, for an HR star startup, for goodness sakes, and especially an HR startup in Germany. So kudos to Leapsome's leadership team for getting them cash and starting what they said in the article would be a "hiring spree". The current staff is at 25 and they have over 50 positions listed on their career site. So I dug into 'em and I want to break it down into three fairly simple points. Number one, stop the spree. Chad (9m 26s): We're seeing a ton of vendors already cut away the bloat right now because they received cash and then they went into an hiring spree just like this. So my advice is, slow the fuck down, grow responsibly. Look at what's happening around you so that you're not cutting 40% of your staff in 12 months. Number two, win at home first. Here's a quote directly from the article. The US software market is the largest in the world, and companies here are already focusing more on the potential of the people enablement category than in the European market end" quote. So, okay, if that's truly the case, then why the fuck did you start a people enablement company in Germany in the first place? Chad (10m 10s): That just screams no due diligence. I know vendors are going to continue coming to American shores. I totally get that because they're gold in them are hills, but most of these companies weren't even prepared to win in Europe. So why in the hell do they think they even have a chance in the US? Number three, get a bigger boat. Lattice has about $330 million in funding outta San Francisco. They're already in the US. BetterWorks 130, around $130 million in funding outta Menlo Park, California already in the US. 15five $94 million in funding. San Francisco, California already in the US. Chad (10m 50s): Now CultureAmp out of Melbourne, Australia they got a bigger boat at around $260 million. I love to see companies get funding, but I hate to see shitty go to market in place. I hope Leapsome actually find some industry experts to help guide them on this journey because just getting an office at a WeWork in New York does not account for actually invading the US. Joel (11m 15s): So seeing Lieven in a black turtleneck and talking about German companies makes me think of sprockets, which makes it hard to talk about anything business related. But Lieven (11m 25s): It's actually navy blue. It's not black, it's navy blue. Joel (11m 29s): It looks black on my tiny screen, Lieven. Chad (11m 35s): Touch my monkey. Joel (11m 36s): Touch my monkey my Leapsome there's good news here. The HR tech market globally is expected to grow from $24 billion in 2021 to 35, roughly $35 and a half billion by 2038. And it's clear that having boots on the ground and one of the biggest economies on the planet ie the USA is a nice thing to not even think about, but a nice thing to do. And it's something that a lot of investors are pushing companies to go into, whether they like it or not or whether they are ready or or not. Leapsome already has 20% of its revenues from the USA, so it makes sense that you would try to grow that exponentially. Joel (12m 22s): However, here's the bad news. The US is an unforgiving and challenging market. Many companies have come here and died or felt the wrath of America. The people part I think is the toughest. It's easy to think, well we have this cool software, it goes into multiple languages, like we can easily get some people in the US and make it work. Unfortunately the people is the hard part. We've seen companies like, HiBob and Vonq come here and seen staff shakeups shortly after coming over. We've seen HireEasy a company mainly outta China, hire the right people in this case Shannon Pritchett, to be the face of the organization and grow accordingly. Joel (13m 4s): So getting the people thing right is really, really challenging, but not a slam dunk. Throwing the fact that New York is a very expensive city, the looming recession and this venture by Leapsome becomes that much tougher. So I say good luck. I agree with Chad. You're gonna need a bigger boat. Go step by step. Try to grow organically, but don't get too excited now that you're here in America. Good luck to you. Leapsome you're going to need it. Lieven. Lieven (13m 34s): Well, whatever brings those expensive dollars to Europe is a good thing, I think. So if Leapsome is opening an office in New York, it was and it raises some money there and they transfer it back to Europe, I'm all pro. But as you both mentioned, probably those Joel (13m 53s): Strong dollars are good for Europe, aren't they? Lieven (13m 55s): Yeah, if need them, we need them. So bring 'em on, bring on. Come to Brugges and spend them all was thinking about, okay, so 500 out of their 1,500 customers are US based already. So I think it's about time they opened up their, then again, if they could have 500 customers without having an office, why doing the efforts? Why opening in the end? But like you say, New York is expensive and at different levels. A friend of mine called me last week, very proud. He's opening his first office in New York and he has got a growth agency with, I dunno, 50 people working. So a small agency and his opening in New York, because he had one major client who only could work with him if he had an office in New York or in the United States at least. Lieven (14m 42s): It's about legislation. I'm not sure what, maybe it's a company policy, but they needed an office, if they wanted to have a long term collaboration. And then he said, okay, but we, so the friend of mine said we got a grant from Belgium government for 70,000 euros to get us started in New York. So 70,000 euros is like a few months only opening one office. But it's a good idea. Personally, I don't like those grants because it's my tax spends money of taxpayers money going to support those little startups. If I wanted to support a startup, I'd buy some shares and then I'd got shares. No, I don't even have shares. But I don't think government should be supporting startups in that way. Lieven (15m 26s): They could promote. You get my point? So I think Leapome brings some money. Joel (15m 30s): The the good news is there's a lot of available commercial real estate all over the country. So I guess if you are gonna look to come to America, it is a good market for commercial real estate. Lot of opening. Chad (15m 42s): It just seems like a mirage though. We're gonna plan our stake in a WeWork and Joel (15m 47s): Very alluring. Chad (15m 48s): To me it doesn't feel real. Not, and again, you know, I go back to if you started the company in Europe and you can't even, and you can't even get a foothold and beyond Germany, what makes you think that you can come to the US and do it? I mean, 20% is great, but if you take a look at just the revenue that they get, I think the mrr just to get started, it starts at eight bucks, right? So it's kind of like a freemium plus model, let's just say that. Joel (16m 15s): I mean, speaking of German companies, we love Personio. Chad (16m 17s): Yeah. Joel (16m 18s): And part of the reason why we love Personio is they're laser focused in the European market and looking at others like, HiBob. And I mean, we'll see how it plays out. Again, America is very alluring, a lot of money here, a lot of sexy. Companies are really attracted to that and investors are even more attracted to that. I'm guessing a lot of investors want some office space in the US from investments that they make overseas as well. Chad (16m 40s): Well. Well, I'll give you a great example. This morning I was talking to a CEO in our space who they have received funding in the last year or so, and in the release they said that they were gonna come to the US and I asked them about, okay, when you coming, how's it going? And he is like, I have no clue just yet, right? So I mean it's like this opportunity to be able to get more cash and/or the PE firms are like, well you know what, we're just gonna throw the US in there as kind of like, you know, and into the grab bag. So it's like everybody's saying it, whether it's actually real or not. Again, I don't think a WeWork is real, but if it's actually real, I guess we'll find out. Joel (17m 22s): Yeah, it's tough. And even our friends at RecFest coming to America, it's gonna be fun to watch how they spin their conference to an American audience. Chad (17m 34s): I can't wait. Joel (17m 35s): I can't wait either, frankly. But it's not my money. All right guys, how about a little buy or sell? One of our favorite games for our listeners that don't know how this works. Chad (17m 44s): YeS! Joel (17m 45s): We talk about three companies that have recently gotten funding. I read a quick summary and then all the boys chime in on whether it's a buy or sell from their breadth of experience in the recruitment market. Let's play a little buy or sell, shall we? All right, let's talk about Surfboard, London-based Surfboard, because when you think of surfing, you think of London, don't you? Surfboard is raised $5 million in a seed round. The startup is a planning tool intended for customer service teams. Surfboard says, quote, "creating happy and healthy working environments result in great customer service" Joel (18m 28s): end quote. Founded in 2021, the company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development, grow its team and deepen its integrations. They employ 20 people. Chad, are you ready to hang 10 or is Surfboard destined to crash into the competitive waves of HR tech? Chad (18m 48s): 4.8 million euros in seed funding is pretty damned respectable, especially in Europe. I love the focus on solutioning for a huge industry like customer service. One of the biggest industries in the world. If you can get this right, then you can iterate into other closely related industries like sales and others like that. And a great example is Salesforce wasn't just a sales platform. It iterated into customer service and marketing. So if you get this right, and again, you're focusing on already a big industry, so your tam's bigger than than any other niche. Chad (19m 28s): The ability to tie together different systems and then provide transparency to the management team is key, for managing remote workers. Understanding the impact of new products that are rolled out, and even planning for what size the team might need to be in about 12 months. I think this is smart all the way around. It's definitely a buy for me. Joel (19m 53s): Very nice, very nice. Well, I don't know much about the intricacies of keeping a customer service team happy, but I know it's important and I know it also must be challenging. I like that Surfboard is laser focused on that single problem. I like that customer service impacts businesses all over the world. However, here's what I don't like about Surfboard. It smells a lot like a commodity in something any platform could add if they wanted to. The pricing is really low in my opinion, and I think the commodity aspect will only drive prices for this product even lower. Also, technology is getting better about addressing customer needs, which means fewer customer service human beings because, well tech can handle it, making this, in my opinion, a low growth opportunity. Joel (20m 41s): The best they can out for is some platform buying them out. All I need in life are some tasty waves and a cool buzz. But I'm a sell on Surfboard. All right, Lieven. Tiebreaker. Lieven (20m 57s): I am in a buying mood, but after looking at Surfboards, to me, it's just another hybrid's remote work planning platform, like we've seen so many past year. They're founded in 2021 and they're so 2021. I mean, we are beyond that now. They got 4 million, which is a lot. You're right! Seed funding stage, that's a lot. But London based, so they'll spend it in six months on own rent and partying. So I think I sell, but if they move to Scotland, I might reconsider. Joel (21m 37s): Nice, nice. All right, let's get the feels with Madrid based ifeel, an emotional wellbeing platform for companies. They announced a 10 million Euro series A round that brings their total to 18 million euros founded in 2017. I feel aims to address the much needed gap in the market as employers look to address the emotional wellbeing of their employees through their web or app, available on iOS and Android. They'll use the funds to expand the business into new markets, introduce new products, and increase sales capabilities. Chad is, ifeel a warm hug or a cold shoulder? Chad (22m 18s): Given me the feels. So the pandemic allowed companies like this to launch and gain quick traction in a more remote world with even more detached leaders, it's much harder to identify when employees are going to, when they're going through a hard time, when they need help. So offering access to a network of therapists is brilliant and probably one of the best quote unquote "take care of people". Easy buttons for any HR leader in today's market. Just an easy buy. ifeel works in 23, 3 countries, 21 languages, and has a team of more than 600 psychologists, who specialize in 30 different areas of of therapy. Chad (23m 1s): The pricing looks affordable. And this also helps therapists scale their time and business as well. So growing the network should be easy. I'm not sure of the pricing model, but this could be pretty amazing MRR business that caters to almost like seats in some cases? They have 800,000 users. I don't know if that's like, or if that's just like over the year, but with those types of numbers, I see a large healthcare system coming in for a big payday in the next 12 to 18 months. So for me, this is an easy, easy buy. Joel (23m 38s): Man. Being in Europe is making you really soft, Sowash. All right, so you mentioned some of the numbers, 800,000 users, which to me sounds just a little bit suspect. 800 hundred thousand users anyway. 600 therapists, 23 countries, 21 languages. It sounds really hard not to love this company, which obviously my co-host loves this company. The question for me, however, is where is this trend of employee wellbeing going? With Covid Mental Health went to the front of the class because people were stressed as hell at home, day caring their kids and dealing with all the shit that Covid brought with us. Joel (24m 23s): But with offices opening back layoffs and hiring freezes a plenty, is the need still going to be there in mass for employee wellbeing? I say no. Companies are going to cut and warm and fuzzy tech like this is gonna be the first tech that gets cut from budgets. And I don't think it's coming back for many employers. I think it's a luxury that many are gonna pass on. It's too niche for me. I'm not feeling the feel. I'm a sell on Madrid based ifeel. Chad (24m 57s): You should be Joel Bah Humbug Cheesman is what it should be. Joel (25m 2s): And you say that like it's a bad thing. All right, Lieven break this tie. Lieven (25m 6s): Okay, Now the problem is only companies actually care about people will use a platform like that. And the companies who really need a platform like this, they just don't care. So they won't invest in it. So they've got a business problem there. And I think, I wonder if I'm gonna make sure this is a decent investment, I have to ask myself, are there enough companies who care? And I'm really afraid, no. So the business probably is rather small, like you say, it's a niche. And also, I've got a problem with names. I'm very sensitive to names, company names, and ifeel, I mean, if you want to troll a company? A company like ifeel it's so easy to troll, let's say ifeel like shits, ifeel miserable. Lieven (25m 49s): ifeel? It's so easy. So they always say there's no such thing as bad advertisement, but there is, believe me, I don't think I would invest my own money in it, maybe someone else's. Chad (26m 2s): So as just in the US alone, mental health is over $200 billion industry. That's how niche it is. Lieven, just to let you know. Joel (26m 11s): Getting defensive, my my. Chad (26m 12s): I just did little research, wanna make sure that these people, ifeel. ifeel. Joel (26m 20s): I know, I know, I know. I right. Lieven (26m 23s): ifeel your pain. Joel (26m 24s): I love a spirited buy or sell, which brings us to our third and final company. What's your Vector? Victor London based Vector has raised 2 million pounds in a pre round. Indeed, co-founder Paul Forrester is an investor found in 2021 by husband and wife team, Anna Bull de Cova and Victor Bull Decove. I don't know why one has an A at the end and one doesn't. I don't know. Vector provides a mentorship platform, which aims to enable people to grow in their career that they're passionate about across skills like engineering, design, product, et cetera. Joel (27m 3s): The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand operations. Chad, is this vector of victory for mentorship platforms or is it destined for the agony of defeat? Chad (27m 16s): People are getting money, man. I mean, 2.5 million in pre seed funding. I think we used to call that angel funding. Fuck, I don't know. I've been a part of mentorship platforms before and in theory they sound great, but in a day to day scenario, they just fall flat. Why? Because they are not generally connected to just a just ad water type of source of mentors. For example, if you have a community like GitHub and then you start a mentoring platform on top as an engagement layer, it it makes more sense because the community of users are already there, obviously the platform's there. Chad (27m 58s): So it just makes sense. So adding mentorship flows easily, but starting a standalone mentorship platform just doesn't make any sense because people who register, if you're lucky, if they'll register, they never come back. So for me, and again, from my experience in using these standalone platforms, it's gotta be a sell for me. sfx (28m 21s): Boo, boo. Joel (28m 21s): Interesting. All right. Okay. Boomer has been a popular put down for the past few years, but there are a lot of mature and educated people around the world who are going to be looking for something to do with all their knowledge that they've accumulated throughout life and services like Vector are primed to take advantage of this demographic shift. They're gonna help these folks make some money in retirement, ultimately. Have a ton of generation Zs and Alphas who are going to need some guidance and you have a recipe for success on a lot of different levels to me. Joel (29m 2s): Think of this as Tinder, bringing old folks with experience and young people with no knowledge together in a happy marriage. There will likely be a lot of competition in this space, but Vector is off to a great start, which is for my Money Vector bringing old folks and young folks together is a buy. Break the tie Lieven. Lieven (29m 23s): I think you have just too much money, if you wanna buy it all. I checked our website and actually I liked our website, but I just couldn't figure out how their business model works. If you look at our site, you can't find anything about who is going to pay who, how are we going to make money? So maybe I missed it, but then again, if I miss it, many people will. But that's raising some dots for me. And as Chad said, I've been also mentor on some of those mentoring platforms and after a few times it gets annoying because basically all you got is ambitious people asking the same questions. Hi, I want to get a raise. Lieven (30m 4s): What should I do to get a raise? And don't tell me I need to work hard and don't tell me I need to learn something. I don't have the time. I was just going to suggest work harder and learn something. But that's what I don't wanna do. And then my mentoringship stopped. So I think this could work if LinkedIn would that a mentoring component at our website that that could be something. Maybe if the people from Vector are listening, I'm sure they are. Just contact me and let me know how your business model works because I couldn't find it. Joel (30m 44s): Are you a buy or sell? Dammit. Lieven (30m 46s): Yeah. Yeah. Sell. Joel (30m 47s): Okay, Lieven (30m 48s): Sell. Sell. Joel (30m 48s): All right. Who's ready for fun? Lieven (30m 50s): Yay. Fun! Chad (30m 50s): Everybody. Except well, unless you're in France. Unless you're in France. Joel (30m 53s): By the way, buy or sell is now over everybody. That was spirited. I don't know if we've ever had like three tiebreakers in a row. That was fun. Or anyway, more news from the world of recruiting. A French court has ruled that companies cannot fire their workers for failing to be sufficiently "fun". The ruling comes after a man referred to as Mr. T, I try, I Pity The Fool was fired from the Paris consultancy firm, Cubic Partners in 2015 for refusing to participate in after work drinks and team building activities. Joel (31m 38s): Fun values included regulatory, obligatory social events that culminated in excessive alcoholism, encouraged by colleagues who made very large quantities of alcohol available, as well as practices pushed by colleagues involved involving promiscuity, bullying, and incitement to various excesses. This sounds like the best employment branding message of all time. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, the court ordered Cubic Partners to pay Mr T a whopping 3000 euros for his troubles. Chad, you like fun values? What's your take on this story out of France? Chad (32m 19s): Fun values including simulation of sexual acts and the obligation to share a bed with a colleague. Yeah, the court also found that because Mr. T's lack of participation in these fun values types of events actually got him a critical behavior reason cited for his dismissal. This is more hazing, I think, than it is fun. I could be wrong. Joel (32m 43s): I thought it was a CareerBuilder sales meeting in Cabo when I first read it that escalated quickly. Lieven, what's your take? Lieven (32m 56s): They were damn right to fire him but, I think. For 4,000 Euros, I think good rids, no fun at all. Joel (33m 5s): You know the, the real Mr. T played B. A. Baracus on the A team which stood for bad attitude, which is what this Mr. T suffers from as well. We out. Chad and Lieven (33m 21s): We out. We out. OUTRO (34m 8s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Chad & Cheese are reunited after a couple weeks apart, and it feels so good. (Side note: If you've been waiting for the episode with a Duncan Sheik reference, well it's your lucky day.) Aside from that, it's a show filled with cash-money, layoffs, robots and Big Macs. What could possibly be more fulfilling? Specifically, the boys are talking about Sapia.ai, WorkJam, and Job.com getting new funding, then jumping to Amazon replacing their recruiting teams with bots, tech layoffs galore and what it means for the recruiting industry. Next up: Firing people via email in the middle of the night right before Thanksgiving, a McDonald's Gold Card offering food for life, Pickle, Nuro and so much more. 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. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (20s): Oh, yeah. The debate is over. It's called Soccer everybody. Hi, boys and girls. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "elimination round" Cheesman. Chad (33s): This is Chad "it feels so empty without me" Sowash. Joel (37s): And on this week's show, cash rules everything around me, layoffs, robots and McDs for life. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus. Let's do this. What's up, Chad? You look a little subdued, a little tired. Chad (55s): Little travel happening and right outta the gate. I want to thank Jonathan Duarte for stepping in for me last week. It gave me time to breathe a little bit while I was traveling, so thank you so much, Jonathan. Vusy week and half. Joel (1m 9s): It's good to get different perspectives. Chad (1m 11s): Oh yeah, of course. Joel (1m 12s): Yeah. You and I should maybe do that more often. Mix it up a little bit. I think the feedback, Chad (1m 17s): Take some time off. Joel (1m 18s): The feedback was good. Jonathan was transparent and Adam was good as well on your end, I'm sure. If you haven't checked those episodes out, make sure that you do. But you've been traveling quite a bit, which is the reason Jonathan was on. You wanna talk about your travels? Chad (1m 35s): Thanks to Peter Weddle and Steven O'Donnell for having me over in London last week to MC the TA tech event with Katrina Hutchinson-O'Neill. It was a tech vendor event focused on the industry, the current economic landscape and where we should go next. But mainly, you know, talks were were held by leaders from brands that we know in Europe, like Martin Lentz over at Jobiqo JOB-i-CO, Chris Adams from Madgex, Simon Wingate from Reed, Roy Jaques from Appcast. And they all had data that supported their theories. But I think it also demonstrated somewhat of a misalignment that we have in this space. Chad (2m 19s): I think especially after COVID So I think we need to have more of these events to be able to align better. Because I think we all get into our silos and then once we get together, it's like the silos just don't align, you know? And, it doesn't seem like enough of this is is happening in the bigger spaces. Joel (2m 43s): Yeah. Silos. Silos, people. Silos. Chad (2m 45s): Not good. Joel (2m 45s): Well, good to have you back, man. It's been a couple weeks that we've been on a show together. Chad (2m 49s): Yes. Joel (2m 50s): So we're a little rusty. The listeners need to forgive us if we mess up a little bit. Chad (2m 54s): Yeah. We've only been close to like a thousand episodes thus far. Joel (2m 58s): This is good. We typically take a little time off during the holidays. I think people believe that we just live together like stepbrother style in a bunk bed in the basement. But we really do have separate lives. Chad (3m 10s): We do. Joel (3m 10s): It's kind of good to step away and enjoy family and travel and do all that stuff while we can. Chad (3m 16s): Space for activities. Yes. Joel (3m 18s): That's right. So many activities. And speaking of activities, let's get to some shoutouts shall we? Chad (3m 24s): Sure. Joel (3m 24s): So many shout outs. job.com. Who doesn't love us some job.com. Shout out. So our friends at job.com, don't call 'em a job board. Chad, don't you dare do that. Chad (3m 34s): Oh my God. Joel (3m 36s): They have raised an undisclosed sum of cash that they say will go towards the ongoing acquisition of staffing firms across the globe. Normally I hate press releases where there is no dollar amount listed. Chad (3m 48s): Yeah. Joel (3m 48s): But my guess is that job.com is funded on a quote "when acquisitions happen basis" end quote. They have some sugar daddies ready to pony up when a deal is imminent and our friend, ArranStewart is more than happy play the sugar baby and use that money to buy some staffing firms. So shout out to our friends at job.com in that undisclosed amount 'wink wink' of money that you just raised. Chad (4m 14s): Yeah. We've gotta get Arran on. Love Arran to death, but I don't like job.com at all. I, at least from the standpoint, from the standpoint that, you know, we were originally pitched right in Austin, where, you know, they're gonna take the staffing industry and they're going to, you know, make it more digital. What it's turned into is really just an acquisition fest and good for them that that's awesome. But their original vision, I do not see coming to fruition, at least the 20% fees to 5%. And then the sharing with the job seeker. I just don't see any of that coming to fruition. So I'd like to know where they're at now. Love me a little Arran time. So maybe we can get 'em on and he can tell us. Joel (4m 52s): Are you saying the credit card is not gonna work? Chad (4m 58s): From what I've heard it's shit? Joel (4m 59s): I think it's discontinued. If anyone actually has a job.com credit card, please let us know. Cuz we wanna picture of that thing. Chad (5m 6s): Yes, we do. All right. I'm gonna get into a laundry list of shout outs here from my travels. First shout out goes, I had breakfast with Jamie and Bobby Leonard. We were talking Recfest. We were talking Recfest USA. We had a blast. Julie and I went out for beers, darts and dinner with Jem, Thomas and Rob from TalentNexus. A really cool game. It was almost like Top Golf with darts, beer, food, all of it right there. It was genius. Thanks to Sheila from Total Jobs for allowing Julie and and I to crash their agency holiday party. We love an open bar. So shout out to Sheila and Raj from TotalJobs, aka StepStone AKA Axle Springer. Joel (5m 49s): Yeah. That must have been a hell of a party. Chad (5m 51s): Well, it wasn't too bad. Joel (5m 52s): With their budget that should have been a hell of a party. Chad (5m 55s): Wasn't too bad. Joel (5m 56s): Not too bad. Chad (5m 58s): Rooftop accessible. It's kind of cold, but still rooftop accessible. Met with Mikhil Raja from Sonic Jobs for coffee. Had a very posh time with Richard and Beverly Collins talking about blockchain over drinks and sushi samba. And then our, our old buddy Max Armbrewster over at Talk Push, he messaged me the day I was before I was gonna come back to Portugal. And he is like, man, you're only an hour away, you know, flight wise, why don't you come on over. So he invited me over to Dublin, spent a few days and while I was there, I got a chance to enjoy the town of Dalkey, which is gorgeous. Joel (6m 37s): Sorry, town of Donkey. Yeah, Chad (6m 38s): It's what it looks like. Joel (6m 41s): It's Dalkey. Okay. Chad (6m 43s): D A L K E Y. Yes. Got to see our pal, Shane Gray, have some beers. Watched some World Cup football with him. Then Death Match winner, Andrea Wade got to have dinner with her, watch some World Cup football. So big thanks to to Max. He's got an amazing layout there in Dalkey. They've got like five pubs that are walkable. Yeah. So I had as much Guinness and Beamish as I possibly could. And now I find myself back in the Algarve. Joel (7m 12s): So whose yacht did you ride on Shane's or Max's? Which yachts did you select? Chad (7m 17s): So I'm waiting until it's nice until I actually get on a yacht. It's too fucking cold for that shit, man. Joel (7m 26s): Everyone's after those lucky charms, that's for sure. My next shout out goes to LinkedIn. Chad, you know I love me some LinkedIn. Chad (7m 33s): You do. You've got the Kool-Aid baby. Joel (7m 35s): I'm gonna give 'em a little spanking this weekend. They've been sort of naughty. They've rewritten the book on innovation, if you can believe it. Did they fix their job search? You ask? Oh, no, no. Not that kind of innovation. You may need to sit down for this one, Chad. They're giving users the ability to schedule when their shares go live on the feed. That's right. Chad (7m 58s): You mean their posts and stuff? Joel (7m 59s): Yeah, LinkedIn is rolling out a new feature that allows users to schedule posts to send at a later time. Woo. Chad (8m 7s): Wow. Joel (8m 7s): I'm glad you're sitting down for that one. Chad (8m 10s): Wow. Joel (8m 11s): Here's to innovation and here's to our friends at LinkedIn or out for setting the bar really high for our industry on innovation. Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Chad (8m 25s): That's horrible. Joel (8m 26s): So I got another one real quick. Rob Bursey fan of the show. Oh, okay. Yeah, homie just sent me some bourbon randomly and I gotta give him a shout out for it. Like, he sent me a message. He said, you guys do such a good job of just randomly sent bourbon.... There might be one at your house, man, I don't know. Chad (8m 40s): They're better to be one at my house. What the Fuck, Rob? Joel (8m 42s): I don't know. So, so he sent me a nice, a wood, a nice Woodford, I think it's a single barrel. Very nice for the holidays. So Rob, big shout out to you buddy. I really appreciate it. And for those of you that want to send me bourbon as well, just hit me up on the dms. I'll be happy to share my my home address if you'd like to do that. Chad (9m 2s): Oh, well, I do. Yeah. My last shout out, I actually forgot I had Thanksgiving meal with the kids over at Crouton. That's right kids, Crouton the new startup that I'm sure we might be talking about. We might not. Who knows? Gemma and Steven over at Crouton. We had had an amazing meal in London at the Swan and they literally, they did have Thanksgiving dinner on the menu. Julie had that. I had something entirely different, but it was good. It was, it was really good. They brought gin, they brought us vodka and they brought us rum, the gin there were two things, a gin. Chad (9m 43s): Max and I drank the small gin. So too bad for you. The rum. Joel (9m 49s): Yeah. Chad (9m 49s): Was horrible. I'm not gonna put you through that, but the gin is really good. So that's all gonna be drank before it comes home. But I'm sure they will send you some to Indianapolis. Joel (10m 1s): Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure, you're gonna get on Rob Bursey, and then talk about all the free gin and rum that you got. So you had dinner with Crouton. There's so many dad jokes there that I won't even start. It's just too easy. Did you ask him about the goofy glasses that everyone wears? Chad (10m 20s): Oh, I've got pairs for you. I know, I've got pairs for you. Joel (10m 25s): Oh shit. Chad (10m 26s): Yeah. Oh yeah. Joel (10m 27s): Oh Shit. Did they, everyone on LinkedIn that works there has these glasses on. I don't know if it's brilliant marketing or like? Chad (10m 33s): We'll see. Joel (10m 34s): It's kind of weird. It's kind of weird, man. Crouton, the sunglasses. England. It's all very, very Benny Hill to me. Chad (10m 43s): It's meta is what I'm gonna say. Joel (10m 45s): Yeah. Speaking of free shit and booze and everything. We gotta put this in every show. You gotta sign up. If you want this stuff from us, go to chadcheese.com, click the free link. We're talking whiskey from Textkernel. Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. T-shirts from JobGet. If it's your birthday month, you might win Rum from Plum, but you gotta sign up. Chad (11m 7s): Okay. Joel (11m 8s): Chris Manion, who's playing fantasy football with us, and we'll get to him in a second. It was his birthday last week. Chad (11m 13s): Okay. Joel (11m 14s): And he bitched about not being mentioned. Well, you can't get mentioned people if you haven't signed up. We're not mind readers. We don't know when your birthday is unless you sign up. Chad (11m 22s): What do you expect Chris? Joel (11m 24s): Yeah, everybody sign up and you win free shit. Like, it's great. Yeah. What can go wrong? Chad (11m 28s): And we ask you the birthday question, that's where you put your birthday in and then therefore we know what month and all that other fun stuff. So Yeah. That just follow the directions kids, you'll be fine. Joel (11m 38s): Yeah. And more logic. If you don't put your birthday in, we're not gonna wish you happy birthday. So don't say you signed up and then we didn't wish you happy birthday. You gotta fill out the whole form everybody, and by the way, our travel, speaking of sponsors, our travel is done. But we want to give a special shout out to our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing for sponsoring our travels for picking up the beer tab on I don't know how many airports around the world. We, love us some Shaker Recruitment Marketing, and you love those foreign language podcasts, Chad, as you travel the globe. Chad (12m 9s): Oh my God, dude, it's so fucking hilarious. So last week and the week after, I wasn't on and you weren't on, and only our voices are trained for the ai. So they used Stock Voices for Adam Godson and Jonathan Duarte. So I was listening through them and it was so fucking funny because it's us and speaking in all the, you know, in German and Spanish and Portuguese and, you know, and what was the other one in Spanish for anyway? Joel (12m 36s): German. (French) Chad (12m 36s): And German. (French) And then you have this, like, this stock voice, which is speaking in German is so awesome. sfx (12m 46s): Shall we play a game? Joel (12m 46s): That's a sneak peek. So thanks to our friends at Veritone for sponsoring those podcasts. Chad (12m 50s): Dude, Veritone is the shit. Joel (12m 52s): They're gaining steam. I'm watching the metrics a little bit. They're they're catching on. They're catching on. I love it. Chad (12m 58s): Tell you what, it's not just a novelty kids. It is amazing. Not to mention we're bitching at people about not innovating all the time We do. So what do we do? The Chad and Cheese podcast, the most dangerous podcast in hr. We go out there and we innovate like motherfuckers because of companies like Veritone. Joel (13m 16s): It's saying that we innovate every week as two guys in their fifties is a little bit audacious. Chad (13m 24s): I'm cutting that out. sfx (13m 25s): Boy, that escalated quickly. Joel (13m 27s): And speaking of innovation and blazing a trail, let's talk about fantasy football. Chad (13m 31s): Oh! Joel (13m 32s): Because week 13 is in the books and we have our leaderboard and it's changed quite a bit since last week. All right, here's our one to last. Chad (13m 42s): Fuck! Joel (13m 43s): We got Chris “Kringle” Mannion again. Happy birthday belatedly Chris but you gotta sign up. Joel “Heading for that No. 1 spot” Cheesman. That's right Dennis “On my ass” Tupper. He's right. Number three “Not Your Average” Joe Wilkie is head up the charts like a bullet train. Matt “Steady Eddie” Hill, he just keeps in that little middle area there. Serge “Falling Like Canada in the World Cup” Boudreau has gone from number one now, but down to number six. Chad “Sticking around” Sowash you got the points but not the wins buddy. Sorry. You gotta have victories. Joel (14m 24s): Christy “Get your Damn Bench straight” Kelling. Mike “More points than you” Schaefer. James “Like Duncan Shiek, Barely Breathing” Gilliam. Jason “this guy won last year?” Putnam and Dan “Anyone home?” Shoemaker and that round up the fantasy football sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. Chad (14m 52s): Loves me some FactoryFix. Joel (14m 54s): Alright. Chad (14m 55s): Stop it. Joel (14m 58s): Cash rules everything around me baby. Let's get to some fundraising news. Melbourne based sapia.ai, the artist formally known as Predictive Hire has raised $17 million in a series A round. This brings total funding to $21.5 million. In case you missed it. Sapia is Paradox down under, providing conversational AI to Fosters chugging Aussies everywhere. Okay, you don't have to be in Australia to buy their tech. But I couldn't pass up a chance to say Fosters chugging. Specifically sapia.ai screens candidates and provides employers with a short list of candidates. Founded in 2013, the company intends to use the funds to continue overseas expansion. Joel (15m 41s): Hello America. Chad, your take on our friends down under at Sapia.ai. sfx (15m 45s): Coming to America - Neil Diamond song... Chad (15m 47s): The artist formally known as Never Gets Old. So keep using that please. Congrats on a legit series A. We've been talking about how series A been looking a little weak, little wilted. And this is big. So CEO Barb Hyman, she has done a tremendous job in focusing in on one narrative, right? She's not all over the place. She's focusing on one thing: that's unbiased and fair hiring. Barb and Company beat the drum better than most. And I have to say the brand move to Sapia was smart, especially the color change, which when you're in an expo hall, you and I have been there. It actually stands out very, very, very nicely. So I gotta give them that. Chad (16m 29s): Here's where everything goes off the rails, okay? Oh, this is from the sapia.ai website quote "As soon as people start answering questions, our smart interviewer discovers personality traits, behaviors and communication skills from their stories automatically shortlisting them based on the qualities you need" end quote. None of that says the person meets my requirements. It literally screams I'm creating a biased experience. Just because you exclude dominant words and remove the human from performing the actual interview, it doesn't make your platform blind and/or fair. Chad (17m 9s): Trying to align personality traits into a job is nothing more than aligning the same types of people, same types of people, does not equal diversity. And it sure as hell doesn't tell me whether they can do the job or not. So I believe you can't lean this hard on something like DEI and they're focusing incredibly heavy on everything, but the actual requirements itself, can you do the job right? So really feel like right now, Barb is incredibly smart. She will spin this narrative in a very smart way, but she's gotta get to requirements and shit that actually matters cuz all the fluff on the website just doesn't fucking matter. Chad (17m 52s): And as soon as you tell me that behaviors matter and personality traits matter, I'm gonna go ahead and say, guess what? Hey Keith Sonderling does that sound like? I don't know bias? Oh it does? No. Oh look it does. Yeah. No, stop it. Joel (18m 8s): You my friend, are not on Barb's holiday card list. You love Barb though. Chad (18m 12s): She's such a sweetheart. Joel (18m 13s): Let alone getting that pony keg of Fosters sent to your house. That is. Chad (18m 17s): You can have that. Joel (18m 18s): I love you took the diversity, Paradox, cuz that is, that is you, I'm gonna take it to a little bit more of the competitive tech side. Look, should Paradox be shaking in their little Arizona desert boots? I would say probably not. And I can give you about 250 million reasons why Paradox reigns Supreme. 250 million reasons mean they have a lot of money. Chad (18m 44s): Yes. Joel (18m 44s): As opposed to the money that Sapia has risen. And they didn't go with Homosapia.ai. I don't, I mean, they shortened it. They they could have done that. Chad (18m 53s): Yeah. Joel (18m 53s): But they need a niche. They don't have paradoxes money. They don't have the brain power that's there in aggregate they don't like, so they need to create a niche and what I'm hearing from you is that niche is gonna be the unbiased provider. It's not, Hey, we're the SMB provider. We're not, you know, this a tech, different tech. It's the diversity angle. And according to you, and I go to you for all my diversity, spin it. It's not looking good for our friends at Sapia. They may just have to stay down under and cater to that APAC audience, which isn't the worst place to be in the world, although I'm pretty sure Paradox has an office in APAC somewhere. And we'll be coming to your neighborhood soon if they aren't already. Joel (19m 37s): So maybe look for a new niche if you're Sapia, because Paradox is the 800 pound gorilla and you need a different spin than just we're diversity. If my boy Chad Sowash says it's garbage, that's not a knife. This is a knife. Chad (19m 50s): It's our job to challenge the market. And when I see shit like this, I question myself. Dude, I'm a 50 year old white man, okay? So I can't say that I'm diverse just because I'm a veteran has nothing to do with it. Right? So that's why I reach out to my peeps and I ask them, okay, this sounds shady. I have been in diversity, equity, inclusion, all that other fun stuff, especially compliance from a compliance standpoint. Very important, yeah. For a very long time. So I use my network for the most part. And again, this just to me, and anybody who's been in TA for long enough to understand compliance and diversity, understands that, you know, behaviors and personality traits, warning bell's start going off when you start talking about bias and then you're saying anti-bias and blind. Chad (20m 38s): I mean, it just, none of it makes sense to me. Joel (20m 41s): Well, the good news is that just slapping diversity and inclusion on your website doesn't mean that you do it or do it well. And it sounds like the market is rising up. You can't just put it on your site and claim that you do it. So the market is being educated, which I think is great. Chad (20m 59s): That's our job. Joel (20m 59s): Yeah. I just think Sapia needs a different boat man, a bigger boat, different boat, I don't know, but they need to find a different spin. I mean, it makes sense. I'm a salesperson. Like, how are you guys different from Paradox or some of the others? Well, diversity we're unique in that way. I mean, but it probably works on a few of the pitches, but more and more people are getting educated, so that dog isn't gonna hunt for the long term. Chad (21m 27s): Well, and you'll be surprised the mirage of, well, they're hiring more diverse candidates, right? That happens with these platforms. Because when you start to actually do employer brand, you start messaging differently than those individuals feel like they can come out more. It's a mirage. They were there the entire fucking time. The thing is you're allowing them to come out. This is about being able to build that, but that's not sustainable. Okay? So this is more about building that funnel out to be able to do more than just focus on behaviors and things that really don't matter for the job. It's about talent pools and the communities that you reach into. So if Barb wants to help, she can actually bring the communities to the companies. Chad (22m 7s): That's the big key. That's what those companies need. Joel (22m 9s): The need is Work Jam. Chad, let's talk about our next fundraising news item, by the way, WorkJam sounds like the worst summer camp ever. Come to WorkJam kids where we build log cabins and canoes. Chad (22m 25s): And iPhones. Joel (22m 26s): Yeah. And iPhones. Yes. Child labor at WorkJam this summer. Anyway, the Montreal Canadian based company, by the way, what's up with the Quebec Province, man? They're, they're spinning out companies and innovation like something's in the water. Chad (22m 38s): Qua-beck Is that what they are? Joel (22m 41s): What are they? The qua are, oh, they're Quebecois. Lighting it one on fire. Anyway, they raised $450 million in a series D. This brings total funding to $147 million. The company ts itself as the world's leading digital frontline workplace, helping retail, hospitality, manufacturing, and other industries improve workforce engagement, retention, job satisfaction and wellbeing. The company intends to use the funds to expand its reach into Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the US as well as accelerate product innovation and business growth. Chad, you love some essential worker news, but do you love the WorkJam? Chad (23m 21s): I love the WorkJam from the platform standpoint. I don't like it from the standpoint of their inability to really understand where they need to go next. We're gonna go to Europe, we're gonna go to the US, we're gonna go here, we're gonna be everywhere. Bullshit. Okay? You don't have that much, you don't have that much cash. Okay? So focus, and the best way to focus is to just come south for God's sake. You speak the language, kind of. Joel (23m 44s): Kind of. Chad (23m 45s): You know? Yeah. You know the us right? You know, you're our redheaded step, you know, brother, and that's all cool. Don't be everything to everybody. Just focus on what you know. I thought it was interesting that generally in a press release, you at least see some nonsensical business growth metrics, right? Joel (24m 4s): Yeah. Chad (24m 4s): Something that you don't have no base against. And in this one, there was literally no metrics. So it was like, they weren't even trying at all. It's almost they were very Canadian. They're like, well, no, we can't give you the whole story, so we're not gonna give you any story. Joel (24m 21s): Yep. Chad (24m 22s): But very smart growth over the years. They've grown through acquisition with companies like Perio and Forge. So they've been able to demonstrate that they know how to grow that way. They have companies like American Eagle Outfitters, Aramark, Circle K, Devita, pretty big, very big, enormous. Joel (24m 40s): And Ulta Beauty where you get all your beauty products from. Chad (24m 45s): Oh yeah, yeah. All the corn silk from my head. So, I mean, many tasks, cool tasks, management and communications are happening in this platform. The release doesn't say anything about getting into the talent acquisition side of the house, which I thought was interesting. Joel (24m 58s): Hmm. Chad (24m 59s): So, you know, that's another broadening of the total addressable market that they could get into. So I didn't see that. Imagine this, listen up kids. If a platform like FactoryFix became like the TA front end for a platform like, like WorkJam, right? And I mean, these types of partnerships could actually happen. They've demonstrated that they can acquire, if they want to come into the US and they want to be able to gain some traction in the US, start looking at these types of organizations for partnerships and perspective acquisition because right now it's, it is definitely about retention and growth and those types of things. But I'm telling you man, if you're not on the talent acquisition, actually getting the people in the door side, you're missing a huge, huge part of the formula. Joel (25m 49s): I just love Canadian news. So remember when Handshake raised a shit ton of money, like a round of series D and they were gonna take on LinkedIn and, you know, like become LinkedIn for a new generation. Like, this is what happens when you raise, you get into Series D, the investors are like, okay, how are we gonna grow? And in this case, it looks like we're taking on the world, baby. That's what we're doing. We're taking on the whole world. Okay, we'll write that check. So whether they're going to try to conquer the world or not, may be left to to be news or not. Handshake, as far as I know, hasn't knocked LinkedIn off the mountain yet. So, we'll watch that. But I think to me, this sounds a lot like, hey, let's build some hyperbole into this release and get the investors excited. Joel (26m 34s): We're gonna take on the world. Look, there's not a lot to dislike about this company. They're hitting things at the right time. We're gonna talk about layoffs after our next break. The layoffs are hitting tech workers and knowledge base workers really hard, but it's not hitting the people that WorkJam is targeting much at all. In fact, those industries are growing and their prime to take advantage of that. So there's not much to hate about the Montreal based company WorkJam. In contrast to the Montreal Canadians of the NHL WorkJam is getting it done. Good luck with that world thing, but we'll be watching you come to America and probably Europe on the European show in a episode soon to be aired. Joel (27m 24s): All right, Chad, let's talk about layoffs. Chad (27m 26s): Layoffs, layoffs? Joel (27m 27s): That's right, that's right. Chad (27m 29s): That escalated quickly. Joel (27m 30s): Here's some recent highlights from the world. In India and a company in our space Hirect, a chat based direct hiring platform for startups has laid off 40% or around 200 people in what the company termed an organizational restructuring and a strategic change in its business model. They should have come on Firing Squad maybe they would've had a different outcome. Historically, bulletproof Google is now rumored to be laying off upwards of 10,000 underperforming workers. That is a drop in the bucket for Google, who has a lot of employees. But, nevertheless. Neuro, an autonomous vehicle delivery company with deployments in California and Texas, laid off about 300 employees or 20% of its staff last week. Joel (28m 19s): An Irish FinTech Unicorn WayFlyer is laying off 40% of its global workforce, or about 200 people. And United Furniture, and you'll love this one, Chad, they fired 2,700 workers right before Thanksgiving via email and text messages sent during the middle of the night. Yeah, if you guessed, this sparked a lawsuit, well, you'd be right. Layoffs everywhere, lawsuits everywhere. Chad, what's your take on all this cutting and slashing? Chad (28m 50s): Well, first and foremost, United Furniture. How the fuck, I mean, seriously, the saddest display of leadership I've seen since Elon's take over and human resource hack job at Twitter. I predict that we're gonna see a lot of these ambulance chasing attorneys moving more toward the wrongful termination side of law. Companies like United Furniture make it way too easy for politicians to create legislation around these types of stupid practices. Onto Hirect 495 fucking employees. What the actual fuck? Without going too deep into the organization and landscape. This is called Bloat Kids. Chad (29m 31s): We're seeing it all over the place. This is what's happening with Nuro. Bloat, bloat, bloat. This is what happened with Facebook and Twitter, and it's happening with prospectively with Google. The problem is that most of these startups are just growing way too fast. It's not responsible growth. The biggest problem with Nuro, which is the autonomous car and delivery, the delivery system, is that they have a physical product that they have to manufacture, sell, and then ship to customers. Unlike code which you manufacture, yes you do develop, but customers can download it all over the world pretty quickly. Chad (30m 12s): You don't actually have to send the code via, you know, shipping container. So it's a scale issue. And we're going to start to see this in the robotics area. I really see that all of these companies who are getting a shit ton of cash, which Nuuro has $2.1 billion in total funding, and they still can't get this right. So money doesn't make it all right kids. I think layoffs are definitely gonna happen, but the only reason that these layoffs are happening is because we have mismanagement and incredibly bad leadership. If we're not firing the leadership, we're not getting rid of the real problem. Joel (30m 53s): So we just highlighted Sapia and WorkJam for getting funding and you know, who they cater to. Chad Essential workers in restaurants, retail, trucking, warehousing, and the like. This current set of layoffs is impacting the Patagonia vest, wearing crowd. Hat tip to prof G. And it's probably just the beginning. Twitter layoffs and get back to the office, Meta layoffs, Snap layoffs, and get back to the office. It looks like the party is over for the tech elite, the big boys layoff first. Then everyone else follows their lead, including our industry. I'm sure we'll see more layoffs from our companies. Joel (31m 35s): The good news is the great startups of the future will be born out of the carnage of today's layoffs. Not till there's ample pain in the near term, but ultimately I think this will be a good thing. One example is who we talk about quite a bit on the show. Our friends over in Germany just hired a Meta executive at the company. So some of the companies in our space will be getting some good talent to help grow that company. Otherwise it's gonna be pain for a lot of people. Happy holidays, everybody. All right, let's get to automation. One of your favorite topics. sfx (32m 12s): Shall we play Game? Joel (32m 15s): So how much does automation have to do with all these layoffs? Well, let's talk about it. Some highlights from the past month leaked Amazon memo may help explain why the tech giant is pushing out so many recruiters. Hmm. Turns out Amazon has quietly been developing AI software to screen job applicants known internally as automated applicant evaluation or AAE. The tech was built by a group of Amazon's HR division known as the artificial intelligence recruitment team, and was first tested last year. Now unlike the biased AI of Old Chad, the new stuff apparently works just fine. Joel (32m 58s): Thank you very much. And it doesn't need peepee breaks like other human beings. Also, the UK based startup Pickle robot company has raised 26 million in a series A round. This brings total funding to 37.5 million for the company. Pickle creates robots meant for unloading cargo from trucks. Also, we have self-serving technology company ISEE, they've raised $40 million in a series B round, which brings total funding to 70 million since the company was spun out by a bunch of MIT grads in 2017. ISEE is focused on automation, the 500,000 yard trucks that operate globally. I have no idea what a yard truck is, but I know it's important@ work that is challenging, repetitive and dangerous will be replaced by you guest it robots. Joel (33m 50s): And maybe the best for last, the San Francisco Police Department submitted a proposal that would give robots the ability to use deadly force in dangerous situations. Hello Robocop. Chad, what do you make of all this? sfx (34m 5s): Shall we play a game? Joel (34m 7s): Robo insanity. Chad (34m 7s): My god, this is a cornucopia of robot craziness. So I'm gonna go with the supply chain pieces first because they fit together very nicely. So, it's a pretty bold and impactful statement that ISEE can deploy trucks in four weeks with no customer infrastructure changes and no disruption to yard operations. And, and really quick, it, it's, it's fairly simple. When container trucks or or containers come off of the ships, they have to go into yards before trucks can actually pick them up and take them. Well, they have to be put in these grid patterns and that's what these little trucks do. So they put 'em in grids, it's pretty much storage and then they pick 'em up and they, and they deliver them to the actual truck that's gonna take them on the long haul. Chad (34m 55s): That's what's happening. Then moving down the supply chain, you have Pickle, which you talked about, which unloads the shipping containers into a warehouse. We've already seen warehouse robots which pick and pack. Then further on down the chan the chain you shop and then what do you do? You do the self checkout. So we're getting to the point where most of the supply chain will be fully autonomous, and I believe that's a good thing. These are thankless jobs that are painstaking and backbreaking. I I enjoy seeing that happening. The the San Francisco deadly force piece, I mean the robot is remotely operated and is an extension of the human officer. Chad (35m 40s): It's not autonomous. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not Robocop. Joel (35m 45s): That's what they're telling us. Chad (35m 47s): Yeah. In 2016, a bomb disposal robot was armed with an explosive device to kill a suspect who shot and killed five police officers and wounded several others. The robot carried a bomb into the lap of the killer. So the major issue were, is not being addressed here, which is nearly 400 million guns in the US today. We should be talking about that. At the end of the day though, when we talk about our space, this Amazon recruiting thing, tell me if you heard this story before I started reading it and I'm like, wait a minute, is this from was it 2014, 2016? Oh my god, this is the same shit. Chad (36m 27s): But, but seriously, this is merely a bandaid solution put in place until Bezos can get to the humans phased out portion, robots running the show. Then they won't have to hire humans anymore. Only the third party maintenance people walking the floors, fixing the Amazon bots. They're gonna be the only humans, but they won't be employees, they're just gonna be vendors. So, you know, it's, I don't know, it all seems fairly dystopian, but we gotta remember robots can't replace the human touch. But you always have to remember that not every culture cares about human touch. I.e. remember the United Furniture story we just talked about. Chad (37m 9s): Amazon only cares about one thing, the super yacht on Mars, which actually I guess is a humongous Land Rover, because they don't have bodies of water. That's the thing we always talk about humans, we always need the human touch. Well, that's not always the culture of a company and some companies just don't give a fuck about human touch at all. They just want efficiency. And that's what we get. And we, a lot of us, all of us, are paying a lot to Amazon every day and we're paying into that fund. The robotics, no more human touch fund. Joel (37m 45s): So I can't believe you're dismissing the San Francisco robot. Remember it was Robocop who was part human part robot, and on the back scene they were building this all robotic badass kick ass machine that robocop eventually had to fight. So I'm not gonna dismiss the robots using full force in San Francisco or anywhere else, but ... Chad (38m 6s): I appreciate that. Joel (38m 7s): ... to my point, That I wanna get to, yeah, I recently watched a video of some English school children from 1962. Chad (38m 15s): Yep, okay. Joel (38m 15s): And these kids were asked to make predictions about the world in 2000. They all pretty much said robots would be doing everything for us and that we would just be like lounging around and enjoying life. Now these are small kids answering this question, but I'm not sure that the kids were wrong they might have just been 30 to 40 years off. Every week on this show, we tend to talk about more robotics and automation and the wheels go faster and faster and I think we're headed toward that future. Now, if the Patagonia vest wearing crowd is feeling the pain of layoffs today, essential workers are gonna feel a lot of pain in the future if robotics happen in a way that we continue to talk about on this show, as you and I have talked about before, there's simply too much money in automation and robotics for all this shit not to happen on some level. Joel (39m 13s): And the news and the brains continue to show that. Ironically, it's the laid off tech workers of today that will be fueling the automation companies of tomorrow that will impact the robotics industry and put a lot of the essential workers out of work. How bizarre. Chad (39m 33s): How bizarre? Joel (39m 34s): How bizarre. All right man, how does free Mickey D's for life sound to you? What did Chad (39m 41s): You say? Oh my god. Joel (39m 43s): Well, your nightmare is another man's wet dream. Meet the McGold card like Willie Wonka's Golden Ticket McGold card entitles the holder to free food for a month, a year, or sometimes even a lifetime. Just in time for the holidays Chad, the golden arches have unveiled its season of sharing contest where three runners will receive the Fable McGold card offering holders two McDonald's meals a week for the next 50 years. Yes, 50 years isn't life, but if you're eating McDonald's that often, you've probably only got 50 years anyway. It's life to get a chance at winning the McGold Card fans need to spend a minimum of a dollar on the McDonald's app every day between December 7th and Christmas. Joel (40m 31s): I'm loving it. Chad, what are your thoughts? Chad (40m 33s): Yeah, well, I think McDonald's is changing their slogan. I don't know if you saw their new advertising slogan or not, but they're changing it from, 'I'm loving it' to 'make America Fat again.' That escalated quickly. Joel (40m 50s): I say, why wait till December 7th to start spending that money? I'm gonna start with a Smokey BLT Double Quarter Pounder with cheese right now. As we get off of this show. Chad (41m 5s): We out. OUTRO (41m 0s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (41m 47s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Everyone is talkin' internal talent mobility and workforce agility these days ... and for good reason. Empowering your current talent pool to fill the opportunities of the future is an incredibly powerful tool for blowing up the bottom line. That's why we had Jo Mills, Chief Experience Officer at Fuel50, to help us make sense of the topic and explore ways companies can take better advantage of this exceptional opportunity. If you're looking to make the most out of your current workforce - and who isn't? - this interview from UNLEASH in Paris is a must-listen. TRASNCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (21s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? You know where we are? Unleash World, Paris, France. The Chad and Cheese podcast is what you're listening to. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always Chad. So Washington today we welcome Jo Mills, co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Fuel50, and also a Kiwi? Jo (41s): Yeah that's right. Joel (42s): New Zealand. Very nice. I think our first New Zealander? Chad (44s): So do you go by CXO? Because they're all the C-suites? Is that what it is? Jo (51s): Yeah, so basically I'm responsible for the experience our customers have with our product. So post-sale, they come into my hands and my team do all of the onboarding, all of the consulting work and basically care take them from there as well. Chad (1m 4s): So customer success on the Chief level? Jo (1m 6s): Yes, correct. Chad (1m 7s): Okay. I mean cuz that says something about the organization. Jo (1m 9s): Yeah. Chad (1m 10s): That from a retention standpoint they care. You don't see most companies take it up that far. You might have a VP of Customer Success, but you never have somebody in the C-suite. Joel (1m 20s): Yeah. Chad (1m 21s): Focused on retention, customer success, those types of things. Joel (1m 24s): Agreed. So a lot of our listeners don't know Fuel50. Give us the quick elevator pitch. Jo (1m 28s): Sure. So we're an HR talent management talent marketplace software. So what we do is we help people figure out what they're good at, their skills at work and then we help them to match that to opportunities within the organization. So gigs, mentors, roles, journeys, et cetera. And then at the HR lens, they're able to mine that data to fulfill talent vacancies, et cetera. Joel (1m 49s): Upskilling. Jo (1m 49s): Yeah! Joel (1m 49s): All the kids are doing it. Chad (1m 51s): Data. Well it upskilling, you can use the data for just about anything within an organization, right? Jo (1m 56s): Yeah! Chad (1m 56s): Depending on where you want to go. Whether it's spot on, upward mobility, all that other fun stuff. So question is, everybody's talking about skills. Jo (2m 7s): Correct. Chad (2m 7s): Skills. Skills. It seems to be the new AI this year, right? So tell us about skills. How do you guys actually ingest skills so that, you know, because I mean to me it seems like if you look at somebody's resume, how can you actually absorb skills out of it? Do you have like a certain questionnaire? Do you have a chatbot? How do you actually absorb that data? Jo (2m 27s): Yeah, it's a really good question and you've hit the nail on the head talking about AI as the buzzword of the last few years ago. And now everyone is talking about skills for a very good reason cuz what is fueling your AI but data and if you've got really rubbish data around skills Chad (2m 41s): Yeah. Jo (2m 41s): Basically your AI is meaningless. So organizations are now looking to what's under the hood? What's behind the surface, and what skills are fueling that marketplace and that data experience. So what we do really differently is we fuel the AI with a really robust data source. We have a team of IO psychologists outta South Africa who basically research and understand what's happening in the world of work. They look at today and tomorrow. We of course leverage big data as well, but we apply a level of human intelligence, which means that the skills data that people are assessing themselves against, that they're looking at for learning as a really robust foundational skills data. Chad (3m 21s): Okay. Jo (3m 21s): That means that the data you're getting is useful for the organization. Chad (3m 23s): You said the human layer, what's the human layer? Those IO psychologists in South Africa? Is that what you're talking about? Joel (3m 29s): Human league? I love that band. Chad (3m 31s): The Human league. Yes. They're fueled by human league. Jo (3m 33s): Yeah. It's a level of human intelligence over big data. So they curate the data and we also apply a DE and I review so all of our skills data goes to a third party and they look at it to make sure it's not got biased language, it's not really dated skills language, and that it is gonna serve the company well when they're helping people to focus in on those skills for their own careers. Chad (3m 55s): Gotcha. Joel (3m 55s): If I'm a company that's looking to get into this, leveraging my current workforce to the best of my ability, what are some things that I should be doing? What questions should I be asking? How do I sell this to upper management? What are the numbers around the benefits? Like just get me started on how to get involved with this. Jo (4m 13s): Yeah, and I think that's a really important question of how do you sell it to upper management? But the answer is really around what are we thinking of in terms of our future organization? What are the pain points that are stopping us as a business being successful? And the number one pain point is obviously talent retention and talent acquisition. So you really wanna make sure that you're understanding the workplace and the workforce that you've got today. Chad (4m 34s): Uh,huh. Jo (4m 35s): What are the skills that you need that are your unique selling point? What's gonna differentiate you in the market? And then make sure that you're developing people for those particular skill sets. You don't want a generic list of skills, you don't wanna a list of skills that your competitors have in identical. You really wanna make sure you're focusing in on what makes you different and growing people for that differentiator. Joel (4m 56s): Any numbers on that? I mean, bottom line stuff. Here's what kind of numbers we're gonna expect with retention and recruitment. Have you guys done that research? Jo (5m 5s): Yeah. So employees that use Fuel50 more than five times have a 60% higher chance of retaining, staying with the business. We also have Joel (5m 13s): Six zero. Yeah, that's a big number Chad. Jo (5m 15s): That's significant. And you think about it like you're tapping into what's important to people. You're helping them to focus and have that clarity. But where they can go. Chad (5m 22s): Yeah. Jo (5m 23s): Why wouldn't they stay? Joel (5m 24s): Sure. Chad (5m 24s): That's a good question. But one of the biggest problems we've seen in the industry is that who's in charge of retention? Is it talent acquisition? Is it HR? Is it the actual departments themselves? That's been the pain in the ass for most organizations. Like our retention sucks. Who's responsible? I have no clue who's responsible. So you being the organization that you're trying to get penetration into these organizations to preach and teach, who do you talk to? Jo (5m 50s): Yeah, so we have a number of different buyers. So historically it has been the talent management team who are looking to really support internal mobility within their organization. Increasingly talent acquisition are part of that process and for good reason. One of the challenges that our TA clients are coming to us with is that they don't know the skill sets of people in their business and they're embarrassed because they know there's talent out there, but they've got no way of tapping into it. Chad (6m 17s): Right. Jo (6m 17s): And when they do tap into that talent, the information they have is really dated. So what they're looking for from us is up to date employee profiles and the ability to mine all of those folk that they didn't even know about. Chad (6m 30s): There's upward mobility. Jo (6m 31s): Yeah. Chad (6m 32s): Which means retention. Jo (6m 33s): Yeah. Chad (6m 33s): Right. Okay. What else? Because there's more. Joel (6m 36s): But wait, there's more. Chad (6m 38s): Do you help employees understand the skills that they might need to be able to go to different departments, to different positions and those types of things? Jo (6m 44s): Yeah. So employees are really crying out for an understanding of what they should focus on. So they've got masses of tools at their disposal. Chad (6m 52s): Yeah. Jo (6m 52s): Whether it's learning or gigs or mentoring that they, they've got all these things they can use, but they dunno where to focus their attention. Right? So what we do is we provide a curated experience which surfaces up these opportunities in a really targeted way and gives them options because at the end of the day, that's what employees are looking for. They wanna know that as the world changes, they've developed the skills they need to have options for their own future. And to feel confident that no matter what the world throws at them, you know, we've seen so much turmoil over the last few years. Employees want that confidence that they've got the skills they need to protect themselves and to have choices. Joel (7m 25s): Let's talk about that for a second. So the world has changed for sure the last couple years with the pandemic. We're more work from home than ever before. We're more remote and companies are struggling with engagement. How do we engage with employees that aren't in an office, you know, five days a week? How has Fuel50's view products evolved over that time to help companies find that engagement and create that mobilization, that retention and recruiting benefit? Jo (7m 52s): It's actually really interesting. So our original product was really focused around career engages, like, what's important to you at work? What gets you outta bed in the morning? So that was our foundational product. And that's the product that's really coming to life right now. Because what's important to employees is feeling that purpose and being heard by their leaders. And so Fuel50 allows leaders to have meaningful conversations about what drives me at work, what's important to me, where am I satisfied right now and not satisfied. And as a leader, how can you facilitate micro-changes in my working environment to make me feel more satisfied? And so it's those conversations that are becoming more and more important now as people work from home. Jo (8m 32s): You know, we need to facilitate moments where leaders can really deeply understand their people and hear them and respond in a way that helps them to get what they need from their current role. Chad (8m 43s): So why did you and Ann start this company? What was the major reason? Was there a lot of research and development or did you just have an experience that was like, this is bullshit, we need to change this? Jo (8m 56s): Yeah. Joel (8m 57s): Female co-founders. Jo (8m 57s): Yeah. A bit of both. A bit of both. So Anne's probably got a slightly different origin story than I do. Chad (9m 3s): Okay, good. Jo (9m 4s): But basically we were working together post the GFC crisis and we were doing a lot of work with people whose roles had been disestablished or made redundant. And the people I was working with, were really shocked and surprised by the fact that they were out of a job. And it really resonated with me because when I was a young girl, my father had his role restructured and he was also shocked and distressed. Chad (9m 29s): Ah. Jo (9m 29s): And we sat down and it felt like there must be a better way. We were like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. But if we'd helped people understand their skills, grow their capability so that they had options when change happened. Chad (9m 42s): Yeah. Jo (9m 42s): They would be in a much better state. And so the technology has really just enabled us to do that on mass. So as opposed to coaching individuals and helping them grow their careers, we're now coaching millions of people across the globe through the technology. Chad (9m 57s): Scale! Jo (9m 57s): Yeah. Chad (9m 57s): Scale. Did you think that you would get to this kind of scale when you started? Cause that's massive. Jo (10m 2s): Yeah. I mean we always had such a big vision and dream and our purpose is really around how do we help people have a better workplace experience? And enterprise organizations is where we have the most impact because there's more people. Chad (10m 14s): Yes. Jo (10m 14s): So scale was always part of our journey. But yeah, I'm amazed. Every day I wake up and I'm like, I can't believe we're working with these incredible companies that share our vision, that are getting these results for their people. Joel (10m 25s): More and more companies now are having their own events, their own in person conferences, if you will. And, you guys are no stranger to that. You have a conference called Fuel X that's coming up in November. Chad (10m 37s): What a great name! Joel (10m 38s): What can attendees expect? Where can they learn more? Talk about Fuel X. Jo (10m 42s): Yeah. Well definitely we have a Fuel X conference every year. The current one in November the 11th is in London. Go to our website Fuelfifty.com to register and learn more. It's gonna be really cool. But what we find is the most benefit for attendees is that they just work a walk away with such amazing networks. Our clients love to collaborate with each other. They really love to support each other in terms of learning and growth and ideas. And every conference I have our clients coming back to me and saying, you know, I loved it, I love the speakers, but gosh, I met some amazing people who now I can tap into to help me with my job. Joel (11m 15s): That is Jo Mills everybody. Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Fuel50. Jo, if our listeners want to learn more about Fuel50 or Fuel X, where do you send them? Jo (11m 25s): Come to our website, fuelfifty.com. We've got lots of thought leadership, white papers, lovely case studies to learn more. And also you can register for Fuel X. Joel (11m 33s): Thanks for joining us, Chad. Another one is in the can. Chad and Cheese (11m 38s): We out. Outro (12m 30s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Hiring globally is all the rage, thanks to a pandemic that supported the growth of an anywhere workforce. To compliment this growth, many organizations are looking to grow their footprint of products and services all over the world. That's why we brought Oana Iordachescu, Head of Talent Acquisition, Technology and Analytics at Wayfair (you've got just what I need!) on the pod while hangin' out at UNLEASH in Paris this past Oct. Turns out, creating large technology teams when no consumer or employer brand exists in new markets is no easy task. But don't worry, we got you. Well, technically, Oana's got you, but you know what we mean. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (21s): Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? We are at Unleashed World in Paris, France, day two. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman joined as always, Chad Sowash, and we grabbed Oana Iordachescu Chad (36s): You're getting good at this. Joel (39s): She is head of talent acquisition and technology and analytics at Wayfair. You got just what I need. Chad (45s): And analytics. I mean, I love the wrapping of all of that. Oana (48s): Yes. Chad (49s): It's like I don't just do the technology Joel (50s): So much for one person. Oana (51s): I'm doing commercial now too. It's, I feel I'm betraying my craft. No, no, I love it. Joel (58s): I hope your bonus at the end of the year is nice with all this advertising you're getting on the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (1m 5s): And we're gonna be your hype men. That's what it is. We're gonna be your hype men. Joel (1m 8s): We share. So Oana, we wanted to bring you over. You're doing a presentation in an hour or so. Chad (1m 14s): Expansion. Joel (1m 15s): Called geo expansion and talent acquisition is having no brand in new markets a challenge or an opportunity. Give us a summary of that session. Chad (1m 24s): Especially Wayfair. I mean everybody in the US knows Wayfair, but outside of the US Oana (1m 29s): Almost nobody knows Wayfair. Chad (1m 31s): Okay. Okay. Joel (1m 31s): So that, but we don't know it as an employer, I would say. Chad (1m 34s): No, but I mean they're a brand. Joel (1m 36s): They're a brand. So let's get out. Oana (1m 37s): They're a brand. Cause a consumer brand does help your employer brand by default, right? Chad (1m 42s): Yeah. Oana (1m 43s): But when I joined two, like no. When somebody reached out to me two years and a half ago, Hey, I think there's this cool opportunity. Chad (1m 51s): Opportunity. Oana (1m 52s): For you to join Wayfair. I'm like, who's Wayfair? I'm sorry. What? I work for Zalando. We, you know, I work for Facebook, like people know these names. Like I can brag my mom and she knows what I'm talking about. Chad (2m 3s): These are global brands and Wayfair's not that, okay. Joel (2m 5s): I can brag to my mom about it. It's this. Oana (2m 9s): But I cannot brag about Wayfair. Right? Not yet. So that's why I'm here. But truly, I think it's interesting to understand what actually happens in the background for organizations when you're really doing well at home. Chad (2m 20s): Yeah. Oana (2m 20s): And then you're like, oh, it's time for me to go beyond. And then you realize you, nobody wants you, nobody cares about you. It's very difficult. And you need to completely reinvent even your EVP, even your promise, right? So. Chad (2m 32s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oana (2m 33s): We're gonna talk about that later. Joel (2m 35s): So is your consensus that you can build a new market without a brand? Or does the brand come before building the market where the summary of your presentation is what? Oana (2m 44s): The summary of my presentation is more around, you have already a brand in your home country. How do you go to other countries? Joel (2m 49s): Okay. Oana (2m 50s): Do you copy paste? Which I'm giving it away. Do not do that. Chad (2m 53s): Yeah. Oana (2m 54s): You're gonna fail. Chad (2m 55s): Yeah. Oana (2m 56s): Terribly because cultural awareness. Chad (2m 56s): Think of that with brands in our industry like Monster. So monster.com tried to do like the American model totally failed. Oana (3m 4s): Yes. Chad (3m 5s): So from the Wayfair standpoint, and here's a quick question. When it comes to building, because you said that the actual brand itself, you know Wayfair, you got just what I need. That's the American we all know. Oana (3m 16s): Yep. Chad (3m 16s): Do they come into the market first with that brand and they do some heavy consumer marketing so that people know and then you get a nice springboard off of that? How does it work? Oana (3m 28s): It doesn't work like that. It's completely opposite. You need to really, it's marketing, right? So you need to understand your audience. And for example, in the European space, so we do sell in the US and then we sell in Germany and in the UK. Chad (3m 40s): Okay. Oana (3m 40s): But we have more other countries for other reasons, suppliers and talent. So that's why we're here `at Unleash. What's interesting is that you need to understand what do people resonate in this market and for example, the European markets they are not really resonate with Chinese products for example. Chad (3m 55s): Oh, okay. Oana (3m 55s): They want the craft, they want the local shop, they want the mom and pop still quite a bit, but I want it online. Chad (4m 1s): Yeah. Oana (4m 1s): So I want the best of both worlds. So there was an adaptation on the customer promise, but there is an adaptation as well on the employer brand, which I think is really necessary to try to understand what does it mean for each of the countries. And we are having a EVP for let's say Western Europe, but we have a different EVP that's gonna go out for China because it just doesn't resonate. Chad (4m 23s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean different cultures, different experiences. I mean hell in China you pay for shit with your face. Oana (4m 31s): Yes. Chad (4m 31s): Right? Oana (4m 32s): And you talk not through the channels that we talk between ourselves. Chad (4m 35s): Right, right, right. Oana (4m 36s): We have all different platforms. We have different features. Chad (4m 38s): They have the WeChat platforms, we have WhatsApp. Oana (4m 42s): Yes. Chad (4m 42s): Yeah. Yeah. So it's... Joel (4m 43s): Chad and I debate a lot on the show about having sort of a monolithic brand overseeing everything. Oana (4m 50s): Yeah. Coca-Cola. Joel (4m 51s): And then also a brand for consumer and a brand for employer. Where are you in regards to the monolithic versus an actual employer brand? Oana (4m 59s): I think we think there's always a monolithic brand, but all these monolithic brands like if you look at McDonald's or Coca-Cola, they always have an employer brand underlying, when you go on the career side, when you apply, when you talk to recruiters, they will sell you what you're gonna do there and how you're gonna grow in your career, not how the product is. Chad (5m 18s): Would you liken that to like, you've got the Coca-Cola brand and then you have other brands underneath it, like Coke Zero and you know, Dasani or whatever. Oana (5m 27s): We also have that. Chad (5m 33s): Yeah, okay. I've never thought of it that way before, but that, I mean, that does make sense. So if you look at, like a brand strategy. Joel (5m 40s): Yeah. Oana (5m 40s): Even in Facebook, right? We start in Facebook or you apply for Meta and then you end up in Instagram or you end up in WhatsApp or you end up in Facebook or you end up in their network development under C optical network things. Right? So Chad (5m 54s): Or the Metaverse. Oana (5m 55s): Yes. Chad (5m 55s): Oh, that's where Joel wants to go the Metaverse. Joel (5m 58s): Not yet. Not yet. We talked to Bill Borman yesterday and he talked about how at the entry level, at the entry point of applying to a job, people don't care so much about brand. They look at the description. What am I doing? Where is it located? How much am I getting paid? After they get through that, then they get into who am I working for, what are they about? Chad (6m 19s): Yes. Joel (6m 19s): You're nodding your head yes. Do you agree with that or should? Oana (6m 22s): I do. Joel (6m 23s): Or should more branding come at the forefront of before applying to a job? Oana (6m 27s): It's interesting, right? I think we do a selection before we do the selection. If that makes sense, right? Chad (6m 32s): Yeah. Oana (6m 33s): So you already, in your mind as a potential employee, you know what you don't wanna do. Whenever I was working in agency, I was, you know, calling people for, I have a plethora of jobs. Which one do you want? Right? Chad (6m 43s): Right. Oana (6m 43s): And they're like, I don't want banking, I don't want, I dunno, adult entertainment and I don't want whatever, some something else. So you already have some allergies built in your brain against some topics or some industries or some players. So you make that selection already and then you kind of go from that one and you narrow it down. But it needs to align with those, whatever values you have, whatever you are again comfortable to speaking about at home. Chad (7m 6s): Yeah. Oana (7m 7s): Whatever your friends value. There's so much that you filter through before even going to a specific brand. Chad (7m 11s): Well in that whole line of thinking, you really have to have good bait. Yeah. Which is your job description. I mean you can't, you can't have all this bullshit fluff. Oana (7m 20s): Yeah! Chad (7m 20s): It has to be right to the point. So if you are a Wayfair who doesn't have a brand in Europe or China or something like that, I mean you can really get ahead of the game by just focusing on the basics because job descriptions are the bait that actually pulling good talent. Oana (7m 38s): Yeah. And that is so true. If you look at, we have a couple of providers around here, like HorseFly, I dunno if we can advertise other brands. Chad (7m 44s): Sure. Why not? Sure. Horse Fly. We've heard Horse Fly a lot. Have you ever heard of Horse Fly? Joel (7m 48s): Nope. Oana (7m 48s): Check them out Chad (7m 49s): I haven't either. Yeah. Oana (7m 49s): So it's the option to LinkedIn Insights, but global and not so expensive. Chad (7m 54s): Oh okay. Gotcha. Oana (7m 54s): But if you have some insights and you are trying to compare, I dunno, India to China, what do employees want? We look a lot at the US polls stability, financial, like reward, flexibility, remote work, whatever. Right. Chad (8m 10s): Huhuh. Oana (8m 10s): But these aspects are differently graded in other regions by country, by city sometimes. So just knowing that you can like laser focused. Chad (8m 19s): So do you use like intelligence group data at all? Oana (8m 22s): We do LinkedIn insights. Chad (8m 22s): LinkedIn insights. I to say, because they, I mean they put out like a, what was it, 162 page report. Joel (8m 27s): It's a lot of information. Chad (8m 29s): On, on all of the countries. And I was astounded how different every country was. I feels like researching that you have to do like market research in Europe than you do in the United States. Joel (8m 43s): And then you customize your job description based on what people want. So if it's America and my salary is the most important, that's what you're gonna highlight in another country, it might be something very different. Oana (8m 53s): I'll give you a very specific example with Wayfair, because it's such a household name in the US we didn't necessarily put the benefits on the job description in the US anymore. It's like it's a big player, they will have everything kind of, but coming to Europe, people don't know you and you're like, okay, I need to prioritize for Germany. Maybe family is a bigger value than in the UK. And even in the UK I might need to adopt this. Chad (9m 16s): Right. Oana (9m 16s): So even if we had the same sets of benefits, we would just swap them around knowing how people read job ads, right? The eye-catching tracker, whatever. Yeah, you try to organize. Of course, it's a bit of a bet, but at least you can, you can look at those things. Joel (9m 30s): Talk about video for a second because I think it's much easier to customize a job description. But if you're posting videos or social media, how is that strategy implemented at Wayfair? Oana (9m 43s): We don't do it. Joel (9m 44s): You don't do it? No. So that's interesting, you do no social media at all for recruitment? Oana (9m 50s): No. No. Not the video part. Joel (9m 51s): Obviously Wayfair has their own consumer brand and they're doing that. Oana (9m 54s): Yes exactly. Joel (9m 54s): But you do no employment marketing on there. Oana (9m 56s): We did a bit here and there, but I think where the challenge is, you wanna have the authenticity. So you want to have the people who do the job to be on the videos. And a lot of people do not wanna be on videos. Chad (10m 9s): Ah, really? Joel (10m 9s): Yes. So if we go to your career site Chad (10m 13s): Really?? Oana (10m 13s): Especially in Europe or China. Chad (10m 15s): Really? Joel (10m 16s): You know, there are job posting services that'll embed video on your job. It'll have your manager. Oana (10m 21s): Not yet. Joel (10m 21s): You're not? But is it something you wanna implement or is it something that you're against? Oana (10m 26s): I, no, I would recommend it if you know how to do it right. If you have the right advice, if you have, I think it's a different type of marketing. Chad (10m 34s): Right. Oana (10m 35s): It's a whole game. Joel (10m 36s): Okay. Oana (10m 36s): A whole new game versus language versus like reactions and reading and kind of buying into that. Chad (10m 40s): Right. Oana (10m 40s): And then what I'm also a bit concerned sometimes when it comes either to pictures or videos, like these people sometimes leave and then you have that video for like ages on your website. Chad (10m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. Oana (10m 49s): What do you do? Do you redo the video every two, three years? Chad (10m 54s): There's some, there's some great platforms that are out there that allows you just to have, you know, the app and go to your employees and do that stuff and then manage it, right? And you say, oh Jeff left, so we gotta kick Jeff off the site. You know, now we gotta throw Joscelyn on because she's the new hire. That kind of thing. So I think we're starting to see platforms that make that much easier. Although what you said was in Europe, I can't imagine that, you know, Instagram and TikTok aren't a big thing. Are they not? Oana (11m 24s): They are a big thing. Chad (11m 25s): Okay. Oana (11m 25s): Yeah, I think some brands really play with it a lot and we're just not there yet. Chad (11m 29s): But there, but there's, I guess there's a separation of what we would call in the US of church and state. Where that's my personal. Oana (11m 36s): Yes. Exactly. Chad (11m 37s): And this is my, this is my business. So I'm not going to mix those two. Oana (11m 41s): That's a lot. Okay. And there's a degree to that. So let's say Europe is a little bit more comfortable, but China is really like, no. My home is my home. My work is my work. Yeah. It doesn't mix ever. Chad (11m 54s): So what do you feel is the biggest impact for an organization like Wayfair coming into such a diverse set of countries like the EU? Oana (12m 6s): Understand the regionality of things. So while you think EU, we think - couple of different countries, different languages, different labor laws. Chad (12m 13s): Yes. Oana (12m 13s): And of course different values, but in the same time, yes, it is a very interesting market from a consumer point of view. Second, understand that you need to lead with people first, because you have no brand. So the people you hire, those first 10, 20 hires, they will be your brand, they will be your amplifier, they will be the trust. Chad (12m 33s): Isn't that always the case though? Oana (12m 36s): I think it is. Right. Joel (12m 38s): We talk occasionally about employees at companies that sort of go their own way with selling the company and the job that they're in. They talk about, Hey, I work at Wayfair, here's what my day's like. And they do it outside of the corporate approval. Oana (12m 54s): Correct. Joel (12m 54s): Where's your stance on employees sort of going their own way and marketing the company as an employer? Would you guys squash that or would you welcome it? Oana (13m 2s): We're welcoming it and I think every organization should, and I do have a point in the talk later. Chad (13m 9s): Yeah. Oana (13m 10s): Personal brands are much easier to change than your corporate brand. So a personal brand you can amplify, update, be very responsive to market, have a say in very kind of situational conversation. Chad (13m 21s): It's more genuine too, right? Oana (13m 22s): Yes. Right. Yeah. And somehow, like you have your corporate band who says, we have hybrid work and we have, I dunno, this set of benefits, but then me, I can tell the story, how am I actually using those? How am I enabling this type of values to live through the day to day? And I think, yeah, personal branding is sometimes maybe even more effective than the recruitment campaign. Joel (13m 43s): Do you have a corporate policy around employees posting about the company? Oana (13m 46s): Not really, but we do have, let's say like for these type of events, a bit of a just be mindful of some aspects, right? Joel (13m 52s): Some guide rails. Oana (13m 53s): Yeah. Joel (13m 54s): Okay. Oana (13m 54s): Don't smash the brand. Chad (13m 56s): So yeah, because there have been a couple of instances, we actually talked to a dude who had a TikTok who has a TikTok account with over 2 million followers. Oana (14m 7s): Yeah. Chad (14m 7s): He was doing Sherwin Williams paint mixing paint videos. Oana (14m 9s): OK. Chad (14m 10s): Yeah. And, he was showing and it's very, I mean you're just sit there and watch it. So like relaxing, you know, and Joel (14m 17s): He's throwing strawberries and things. Chad (14m 20s): Yeah. And he was doing this in his off time. And Sherwin Williams fired him. Oana (14m 25s): Oh. Chad (14m 25s): T-Mobile just a couple of weeks ago told one of their employees who was in the off time, he was talking about new products and how they were really cool cuz he was like this tech geek, right? And he loved it and they said, stop that. Oana (14m 38s): That's insane! Chad (14m 38s): Isn't it? Because I think, and you said something that, you know, when you don't have a brand, your people are your brand. I think we lose it when we get, we get too much of a big head because we get this big brand. Our people are always our brand and they can, they can amplify what it's like to be who we really are. Oana (14m 60s): In that space. Right? Chad (15m 1s): Yeah. Oana (15m 1s): Totally. Yeah. I think there's a, there's a balance. And of course corporate should not even like go into the private life of people. This is where probably the anxiety in Europe a little bit more. And we were talking yesterday as well. Chad (15m 15s): Yeah. Oana (15m 15s): On the AIP and how we protect people. But ultimately there is a co-existence that we can't get away from. Joel (15m 23s): I'm listening to this podcast. I'm relatively new to the industry. My boss has just told me we're growing into these two or three countries. What resources should I access or can I access? How do I understand how this market is different from the one that I'm currently in? Any resources or tips you can give that person? Oana (15m 43s): It will sound very boring. But McKinsey has some very interesting. Joel (15m 46s): McKinsey Okay. Oana (15m 47s): Has some very interesting resources. And then of course if you have any tools for talent intelligence, go for that. And then ask your people. You will probably have very diverse people in your organization, second generation migrants, people who worked with other markets, they will know more than you do. Joel (16m 4s): Oh, I smell a LinkedIn poll. Chad (16m 4s): Wayfair. You got just what I need. Joel (16m 7s): Do you smell a poll? Chad (16m 8s): Oana Iordachescu. Oana (16m 9s): Well done. Joel (16m 9s): Oana Iordachescu. Chad (16m 10s): Oana Iordachescu. Yes. Thank you, thanks so much for on. Good luck on your talk later. I'm sure it'll be amazing. Oana (16m 21s): Thank you so much. See you next time. Chad and Cheese (16m 24s): We out. OUTRO (17m 8s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

It’s been a year since Textkernel acquired Sovren, creating a Wonder Twin-style deal that brought the two most well-known resume parsing solutions together. So, what better time to catch-up with Textkernel CEO Gerard Mulder to see how things are going while we were in-person at UNLEASH in Paris in October. Lots going on, a lot of growth globally, and maybe even a scoop or two. Enjoy this frank conversation with a Chad & Cheese longtime sponsor. 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 (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (26s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? We are back at Unleashed World in Paris, France. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman with me as always, Chad Sowash. Chad (38s): So exciting! Joel (39s): Our buddy, our buddy's back Gerard Mulder, CEO of Textkernel. Chad (44s): I like a little parsing and matching to go parsing Joel (46s): And matching. That's right. That's right. Gerard, how are you? Gerard (50s): I'm great guys. I'm great and it's really good to see you. I'm so sorry I missed you guys in Vegas. Joel (55s): Translation: Sorry I couldn't make it to Vegas. Not so much about you guys, but I like the gambling and the food. Chad (1m 1s): Sorry I missed the blackjack table. Gerard (1m 4s): Yeah. Yeah. Joel (1m 5s): Dutch, doesn't quite have a Vegas alternative, do they? Yeah. Chad (1m 8s): Yeah. No, they've got the red light district, Joel (1m 11s): Amsterdam. I guess you gamble with other things when you go to, when you go to the Red Light district. Chad (1m 15s): You might catch the VONQ. Gerard (1m 21s): All of the Netherlands is one big party. You know, it's like we don't need a Vegas, it's nice to go there. Yeah. Joel (1m 28s): So when we last spoke on the European show and last saw you guys, the Sovren acquisition had gone down. Obviously, all of our listeners know Sovren and now we're learning about you. Give us an update on the US expansion, the challenges, where we are in the timeline. Just a general overview of what's going on with the American. Chad (1m 51s): The Dutch invasion of the US. Joel (1m 54s): The Dutch invasion. Yeah. Gerard (1m 55s): Well, we were there first, right? New York ones was New Amsterdam. So. Chad (2m 1s): That's a very good point. Yes. Okay. Gerard (2m 4s): Anyway. No. Chad (2m 5s): What was old is now new. Gerard (2m 7s): Yes, exactly. Joel (2m 8s): Full circle. Gerard (2m 9s): Yeah, full circle. That's right. It's going really well. So yeah, when you look at acquisitions, like the thing is of course, like how our customers reacting to such a change, but also very much the team, right? So the people at Sovren and we haven't lost anybody on the team. They're all really, really great people. And at the same time, you know, we were doing roughly the same thing. So we understand what Sovren was doing. Chad (2m 39s): Different business model, like, I mean, the way you were carrying out business entirely different. And, that's to be expected. You've got a US organization, European organization, you guys, I mean, there were huge differences. Were there not? Joel (2m 52s): Sovren was not your typical organization. Chad (2m 54s): No, that's a good point. Joel (2m 55s): Things ran a little loosey goosey. So you can do that when you have a money printing machine in the closet Chad (2m 59s): On scale. I guess you could could say, I guess you could say no. Talk about that. Gerard (3m 3s): Yeah. So I mean, Sovren I think was really happy with where they were. Yeah. And we're a little bit more ambitious and we want to get closer to the customers. Chad (3m 12s): Yeah. Gerard (3m 13s): And although I must say Sovren always responded really well and the customers really appreciated to service they were providing. I think they proactively were like, Sovren, it wasn't in their DNA to kinda like go to customers and talk more about like what their plans are, and what they're looking for, and how the product could be expanded into, you know, the strategic directions where all of these customers are going. And remember the customers are customers that are either tech providers. So this is primarily an API business with an OEM strategy. Chad (3m 47s): Yeah. Gerard (3m 47s): And the really large, large customers like Facebook or Google, Uber and others that are using that technology. So, the great thing about TextKernel is that we're we, even though we also do parsing and searching and matching, we do, you know, a couple of things more than then Sovren, and our approach to customers is different. So we're implementing that and that works really, really well. So we're seeing a lot of growth coming from that. And because the product of Sovren is so well engineered, it's really easy and it's got a great engineering team, it's really easy to add the functionality that Textkernel has around, for instance, skills normalization or professional normalization or more advanced capabilities around matching into the software and mix. Gerard (4m 36s): So customers can just keep using what they were using. Keep using the same great, by the way, because like Textkernel's also learning from Sovren. Chad (4m 45s): Yeah. Gerard (4m 45s): So we're gonna stay with their API structure, which honestly was better than ours. And we're gonna actually adopt that. Chad (4m 52s): Good. Gerard (4m 53s): Put that as a layer over the Textkernel technology. And so we got a great product on parsing, on searching, on matching on data enrichment APIs and jobs data and sourcing that we can actually start servicing for this really, really easy to integrate software API ware. Joel (5m 9s): Speaking of gambling, I'm gonna guess you haven't had a lot of attrition. I'm guessing most people stuck around after the acquisition. Right? Gerard (5m 17s): All. Literally all. Joel (5m 21s): Literally all. Gerard (5m 22s): Okay. Chad (5m 22s): Yeah. Gerard (5m 22s): And we're expanding that team. So, that's so great. Chad (5m 24s): I'd love to hear like the meshing, because one of the things that you can see for a lot of M and A that happens. Gerard (5m 31s): Yeah. Chad (5m 31s): Is the company comes in and they like exact their will on the company that they actually just bought and all the like really cool features and benefits of that culture. Joel (5m 41s): The culture and... Yeah... Chad (5m 43s): It is fucking gone. And you guys have, like, you've like dovetailed this and said, "Look, we do some things really well. You guys do some things really well. Let's see what we can do to round this out." Gerard (5m 54s): Yeah. Chad (5m 54s): And teams respond to that instead of seeing their baby get smothered in the crib, which is what a lot of companies do when they come in, you guys are like, no, love the baby, let's go ahead and feed it. Let's see, you know, let's grow. Joel (6m 6s): Let's grow that bad boy. Gerard (6m 8s): Yeah, that's exactly right. The good thing about it is that the model Sovren uses also in terms of like go to market and delivery model, actually I should say it's not so much you go to market by market delivery model, honestly, to an extent was really better than what we were doing. I think it was, you could say like the best kept secret in the HR tech, in my opinion. Chad (6m 30s): Yeah. Gerard (6m 30s): So, if you see something which is better, then you know, why not adopt, even though you might be four times the size, you know? Joel (6m 38s): So we have a little bit of insight as a sponsor of the show that most interviewers might not have. How is the transition to one brand? Are we gonna keep two brands separate? I know that you're hiring resources and people in the US. Talk about that transition of brand and where that is right now. Gerard (6m 57s): Yeah. So we, were not in a rush because both businesses are good and I honestly believe that by providing value to the customers in terms of functionality and you know, we did introduce things like a very clear roadmap for our partners and customers so that they can actually see and comments and give feedback on where we think we should be heading. And of course for the Sovren customers, that meant a lot of quick progression because there is a lot of functionality Textkernel could add on to the value proposition of Sovren. So we kind of thought like, hey, let's, you know, focus on that first because then we know exactly where we're heading as a company. Chad (7m 40s): Yeah. Gerard (7m 40s): And it becomes a lot easier to, to then actually start giving a meaning behind the brand that you actually want to become because the value proposition is clearer. So, that's been our goal. Now, we're ready and we're saying, okay, next year we're gonna go into one brand. Chad (7m 59s): Okay. Gerard (7m 59s): Because actually Textkernel has four brands right now that we're operating, and that's way too much for a company our size. Joel (8m 7s): What are the other two? Gerard (8m 8s): So it's ela, so that's the staffing mid office application that we acquired. Joel (8m 8s): Yep. Gerard (8m 10s): And job feed, which is our labor market data product. Joel (8m 12s): Okay. Gerard (8m 13s): So, so those four brands. Joel (8m 17s): Under one brand Textkernel that we can expect that in 2023. Gerard (8m 22s): Yeah. Hopefully Joel (8m 23s): We won't hold you to it, but that's the direction. Gerard (8m 26s): Putting this out there is kind like, but Joel (8m 28s): It's there now. You need to do it. Gerard (8m 30s): Need to do it. I actually need to, we're we're hoping June next year that it's all kinda like Chad (8m 37s): Unleash. We've seen a lot of skills talk. Gerard (8m 40s): Yeah. Chad (8m 40s): You have the parsing, you have the matching, but I mean all pretty much predicated on skill, right? And being able to line out taxonomies, ontologies, all that other fun stuff. What are you guys doing to be able to amp that up? Because you've been doing this forever. Now that everybody else is talking about it, it's like. Gerard (8m 55s): Now it's cool. Chad (8m 56s): Yeah. Now you guys, you guys should be up on the stump, right? Saying that yeah, this is, Gerard (8m 60s): No, it feels like we need to dust that thing up that we like did like 15 years ago and, but the market wasn't ready yet. Yeah, no. Joel (9m 8s): Dust off the leisure suit. It's back. The parachute pants are back. Gerard (9m 12s): Yeah, no, we're full force on it. So, so it's basically a new, and we kind of came up with a new product line that we've introduced this year. We're calling it data enrichment APIs. Chad (9m 23s): Okay. Gerard (9m 23s): And these data enrichment APIs are about, you can send any piece of text to it, so it's not just a resume or a job. It can be like a year review or, or a mid-year review of a person. And we can conceptually recognize in any kind of text the skills that are mentioned and then normalize that against our skills structure. And this skills structure relates also to our profession structure. So we know for every job what are the typical skills that are being expected for a given job. Chad (9m 53s): Right. Gerard (9m 53s): And so, you know, like, so you have this structure and then you can start building an ontology. And the ontology is, is really great because that tells you like, Hey, today I might be this, tomorrow I want to become that. Chad (10m 6s): Yeah. Gerard (10m 7s): Which skills are transferable? Which skills are not transferable? Which ones do I miss? And, then the next step is kind of like 40 skills that I miss. What do I need to learn and where can I learn that to acquire those skills? Is that in house or do I need to actually go outhouse? Now we're not a learning platform and we're not a talent management system. Joel (10m 27s): Yeah. Gerard (10m 27s): So, so what we really want to do as a company, and this is kind of like our parsing and matching OEM strategy. Chad (10m 35s): Yeah. Gerard (10m 35s): We want to kind like create a common understanding of this language of skills for the industry. And it's starting to work because quite a few systems are starting to adopt this. And the more that adopt it, the easier it becomes to talk to each other and to actually create network. Chad (10m 52s): Are these L and D systems, these are learning and development systems. Gerard (10m 59s): So learning and development systems are starting to adopt it. Tele-management systems are starting ATSs. Chad (11m 5s): Okay. Gerard (11m 5s): So and that's really great because, so just a really practical example, say your tele-management system or learning and development system and you talk to a large corporate, they might have their own skill structure. Adopting that into your own system is really hard if you can't, if your technology is not able to automatically turn their data into a structure that is in terms of concepts the same as what your system is using. Chad (11m 31s): Right. Gerard (11m 31s): And adopting to all different kinds of skill sets is really hard to maintain and customers are not maintaining it. Yeah. But, but in fact it's actually the foundation on which many of these applications are built and decisions are made. So that's what we're trying to accomplish. Chad (11m 49s): Applicant tracking systems and some of these systems are already your clients. Yes. So therefore this is, this is expanding the capabilities with clients that you already have for needs, which is obviously also increasing wallet share for you guys. Gerard (12m 3s): We're not, you know, like we do wanna make money. I mean we definitely do. Joel (12m 8s): Imagine that. Chad (12m 9s): Yeah. Joel (12m 9s): So I'm hearing, I'm hearing a lot of focus, a lot of, you know, consolidate brands and really focus on that. But I we're also seeing a lot of companies on sale. Chad (12m 18s): Yeah. Joel (12m 18s): We're seeing the economy, you know, take a dip. Chad (12m 19s): M and A. Joel (12m 20s): Yeah. Let's talk M and A for a second. Is that on the radar? Are you always looking at opportunities? Maybe what kind of categories are hot right now that's on your radar? Talk about M and A for 2023. Gerard (12m 33s): Yeah. So for us, yeah. As we are kind of like, we have a component strategy, right? So, so we offer our components and of course these components all work together. There's a great story I can tell you about a recent deal we did with Telephonica in Germany. It's, I love that example, but I'm going into that now. So what we're trying to look at are companies like Aquila, who is a best of breed mid office solution where we could add a lot of value with our AI technology and capabilities to kinda like expound our offering for certain market segments. And so mid office in staffing was an interesting one for us to enter into. Joel (13m 14s): OK. Gerard (13m 14s): And, but another one where I'm looking at right now are topics like conversational ai, things where we believe we can actually really. Joel (13m 24s): Hello! Gerard (13m 24s): Really make a difference. Chad (13m 25s): Yeah. Joel (13m 25s): Wow. Chad (13m 26s): Because we can make those chatbots much smarter than they are today. We did some like, in the past with Mya, you remember Mya, by Stepstone, so we did some tests with them at some customers where we were feeding Mya with kind of like, you know, say compare like a hundred profiles to a job. Right? And then so what are these profiles missing? So these are rich data sets that you're providing them that they have no clue of what's even happening and then therefore they can fill the gaps. Gerard (13m 60s): Yes. Through the questions. Yes. Yeah. And initiate the conversation. Yeah. So that's what I that's like the new out I'm looking for. Joel (14m 8s): You have a red phone that in the main castle, don't you? Just, a direct line into the sugar Daddy. That's exciting. That's exciting. We're gonna be watching that in 2023 for sure. That'll be really cool. Really cool. Chad (14m 18s): Amen. So, when you take a look at the landscape today, other than what you guys are doing, cause that's exciting. I love how you're looking at different ways to inject the technology data sets, I mean, into all these different areas. But beyond that, what do you think is exciting out there that's not just noise. Cause there's a shit ton of noise. What is not noise? What is real? I mean you've, there's so many things that are happening. Joel (14m 43s): As he looks out over the expo for it. Gerard (14m 45s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel (14m 46s): It's most the who's who is here I would say. But yeah, if there's anyone outside of the conference. Gerard (14m 53s): Well, apart from you guys, of course always right? Joel (14m 55s): We're a rocket ship. Chad (14m 55s): It's crazy. Gerard (14m 56s): Yeah, I'm not gonna call out one particular one, cuz you know, I work with all of them. That's so hard for me guys. So hard for me. It's a bit preaching for my own choir, but I really think that today what's happening around skills and making, so I think a lot of companies are touching upon a really important topic around how can we make the economy better able to kinda like respond to talent shortages in the future, right? Especially like in the US it's a little, I mean there's huge talent shortage and there's also skills gap, but in Europe it's even worse and it's gonna become much worse because our kind like build buildup of the population is just the vertical, right? Gerard (15m 42s): There is no pyramid there at all. So we're going to have to be extremely efficient in developing people and using people's capabilities to the fullest. And I think that's actually, I see that trend happening here. Chad (15m 54s): Yeah. Gerard (15m 54s): And I and that's also why we're into this topic very much because I think it's going to be so important and so needed to kinda like solve this huge gap. And you know, it used to used to always be kinda like when we were talking about us ourselves as an AI company and I think we're gonna change that a little bit into a company that's creates this common understanding and connect people in jobs better. But because it's ai but it's not only ai, right? But when we were talking about AI in the past, we were always a little bit careful like, we're the AI that's not stealing your job, we're actually helping you find the job. You know what I mean? But nowadays, I actually think we're gonna really need a lot of AI and robots to get the work done because otherwise we're all going be like waiting forever. Joel (16m 44s): Supply chain supply chain failures and that kinda shit. Oh my god. Robots conversational ai. I love talking to Gerard. Always a pleasure. Gerard fur listeners that wanna know more about Textkernel, where would you send them? Gerard (16m 55s): I would send them to Textkernel.com and they can connect with me on LinkedIn. Anybody in the team? We have a team in the US. We have a team in Europe. Other spoiler probably next year will be have a team in APEC. Joel (17m 11s): Oh Chad (17m 11s): That's expansion kids. I feel M and A happening there too. Joel (17m 18s): Remember Chad, if it ain't Dutch it ain't much. Chad and Cheese (17m 23s): We out. OUTRO (18m 9s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

This week on a lactose-free Chad and Cheese podcast we have questions... Luckily, tech and product stud Adam Godson joins us to answer questions like... Will The Miami Heat Bang and Blame? Will iCIMS finally give us The Bird? Can robots be taxed? Will Jeff Bezos be able to keep his super yacht with all of the Amazon layoffs? Most important of all, is the age of social media end? Man, I hope not, what the hell would Joel do without big booty Latinas and bug fights? Plus Woven, Keka, and Adway get funding! Enjoy! TRANSCRIPTION SPONSOR: Disability Solutions helps businesses find qualified candidates with disabilities for their job postings. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (24s): Yeah. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Chad "Bang and Blame" Sowash. This week is a lactose free Chad and Cheese podcast, but we have questions, questions like, will the Miami heat bang and blame? Will iCIMS find their inner humanity? And is the age of social media ending? Man, I hope not. What the hell would Cheesman do without big booty Latinas and bug fights? Let's do this. All right, kids. So today I'm not alone. There is no Cheese. So all you lactose free kid, you, you'll be okay for tomorrow. Chad (1m 7s): But we do have a special guest. The special guest today is our friend. Get ready. Drum roll please. Adam Godson. Adam, how you doing man? Adam (1m 20s): Hey Chad, great to be with you. Chad (1m 22s): So for all the kids at home who have never had the pleasure of knowing Adam Godson would give us a little Twitter bio of you. Adam (1m 30s): Well, I'm happy to be here. I feel like I'm substitute cheese today. I'm that substance that no one knows exactly what it is. But Chad (1m 37s): You're vegan cheese? Adam (1m 38s): I'm Vegan cheese, yes. Yes. I have fake cheese today. But yeah, it's great. I've been in the recruiting space a long time, spent many years at CLO as their leading technology there, and now I'm chief product officer at Paradox. And so we've known each other a long time. So happy to be here on the show. Chad (1m 56s): Yeah. Well, give us a little bit about you though, kids. Where do you live? That kind of stuff. Adam (2m 2s): I live in southeastern Wisconsin and I've got two boys. They are 13 and 10. My wife Andrea is, we live in her hometown in Wisconsin. And yeah, I've been in recruiting technology a long time and that's mostly what I do for fun. Chad (2m 16s): Yeah. That's what you have to do for fun in Wisconsin. I mean, come on. Adam (2m 20s): Winter is coming. That is true. Chad (2m 23s): But, but you're, you're in Sweden. What in the hell are you doing in Sweden at ABBA concert, right? sfx (2m 36s): ABBA music Adam (2m 40s): That is true. I am in Sweden, actually, I'm at the Workday Rising Conference, which is in Stockholm this week. So I had a session, I spoke at this morning, and, but on Tuesday, one of the members of ABBA did speak at the Rising Conference. So you're you're right on. Chad (2m 57s): No shit? Adam (2m 58s): Yeah, it was great. He was staying alive. Chad (3m 1s): They spoke and they didn't sing. They didn't have all of, wait a minute, is ABBA, are they all still alive? I can't remember. Adam (3m 8s): I'm not entirely clear on that, but yeah, they sort of did an interview kind of a thing, they talked about what they're doing these days. Chad (3m 15s): I love it. I love it. Well, that's one of our most favorite soundbites and hopefully we'll never get in trouble for it. Let's go ahead and let's jump to shout outs. My first shout out's gonna be to FBI director, Christopher Wray, who told congress this week that he is "extremely concerned", I'm using air quotes there, "extremely concerned" Beijing could weaponize data collected through TikTok, which is owned by, we all know, ByteDance in China during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on worldwide threats. Tuesday, Ray flagged the risk that the Chinese government could harness the video sharing app to influence users or control those devices. Adam (3m 59s): Boy, that escalated quickly. Chad (4m 1s): This just seems to be like way out there. Sci-fi shit. Adam (4m 6s): Yeah, this is wild. I mean, I think we saw how much in previous elections, other things, social media can influence the way that people think. And certainly TikTok has a pretty wild algorithm that draws people in. So there's a lot of things to be concerned about there, but it is wild to hear government officials starting to openly talk about it. I think people have talked for years about algorithms being optimized for science and useful things in China, and then pranks and bouncing boobs in the US. So trying to make sure that we have different algorithms for different folks based on what they want them to know. Chad (4m 43s): Yeah, no, their algorithm is addictive. And I do mean addictive. I just don't know what Cheesman would do without big booty Latinas and bug fights. Cuz, I mean, that's his thing. So he's gonna have to figure that one out. If TikTok gets shut down in the US. Adam (5m 2s): Joel will need new hobbies or he'll get like the Chinese version and like, it'll be about science projects and useful things he can do. So he'll be all into new hobbies. Chad (5m 11s): Yeah. I don't think Joel is in the useful space anymore. It's all beyond this point. You gotta shout out? Adam (5m 20s): I do. So I'm in Stockholm and the sun sets at three 15 every day. So I have not seen the sun in many days, so I'm giving my shout out to the sun. So Miss you buddy. Chad (5m 31s): Well, I have it down here in Portugal with me. This is what blows my mind. We're two guys from the US You're in Sweden and I'm in Portugal and we're doing the show. So just so, you know, you can come down after you're done. We've got plenty of sun here. Adam (5m 45s): Well, yeah. I'll be down. Chad (5m 47s): Okay. All right. We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna jump into the Chad and Cheese Fantasy Football League, powered by our friends at FactoryFix. Adam FactoryFix is located in Chicago, and they're all Bears fans over there. FactoryFix loves them some Bears. So growing up in Iowa and now living in Wisconsin, what are your thoughts on the Bears, especially this season? Adam (6m 8s): Well, the season doesn't really matter. The Bears are kind of always the same. As a Packers fan. I can say that the Bears usually enjoy watching the playoffs from home. And so I hope they'll continue to do that this year. Chad (6m 21s): So do you think the Packers are gonna make the playoffs this year? Adam (6m 24s): That's yet to be determined also, but as a Packers fan, as bad as things are, at least you're not the Bears. Chad (6m 32s): I gotta say, I don't think the Packers are gonna make it, number one. I doubt that the, I doubt that the Bears will, but our Ohio State University, Buckeye alum, Justin Fields has been lighting it up last week against the Lions. He had 13 carries for 147 yards, and the week prior, 15 carries for 178 yards against the Miami Phins. Who? I Are they still undefeated? Adam (6m 58s): They're not, they're having a good season, especially on offense for sure. Chad (7m 2s): Yeah. Damn. Anyway, I think Fields has found his groove. So I'm just gonna leave it there and say go Bucks. Here's the rundown of this week's Fantasy Football FactoryFix one to 12, number one Chris "top of the pack" Mannion. number two, Matt "Climb that" Hill. Number three, Serge "Boudrar" Boudreau. Number four, Joseph "SpaceX" Wilkie. Number five Joel "This is America Jack!" Cheesman. Six. Christy Kelling in the name of... Seven Dennis "middle of the pack" Tupper 8. Chad "I won last week and still lost 3 spots?" Chad (7m 46s): Sowash. James Gilliam's Island. Jason Von Putnam. Mike "checking out the basement" Schaeferand Dan "Come on in the basement is fine" Shoemaker. That's our factory fixed one to 12. I still don't know how these rankings work. All I know is I'm not in the bottom where I was last year. So it's getting better. Are you on any fantasy football leagues? I think you have to be. Adam (8m 12s): I am. Chad (8m 12s): A rule. I think it's a law in Wisconsin. Is it not? Adam (8m 16s): I think that's true, yes. In fact, I actually have played fantasy football since 1991 when we grabbed like a flyer off of like a case of beer at a gas station that described what to do. And we like used to go to the newspaper and do it all by hand. So yeah, it's pretty awesome. Chad (8m 35s): My, my father-in-law still, he's in I think four leagues, one of his league is still a paper league. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? He's like, it's a blast. We have a whiteboard, we do it on paper. I'm like, that's just ridiculous. Adam (8m 49s): Yeah. Chad (8m 50s): That's ridiculous. That's like saying I miss my horse and buggy. Adam (8m 53s): Right, right. We didn't do it by choice. It was all that existed at the time. Chad (8m 56s): Back then. I'm talking about now. He still has a paper league. That's wild. Adam (9m 1s): That's crazy. Chad (9m 1s): Anyway, anyway. Okay, so birthdays this week, kids, Joel is the birthday guy, so he can double down on birthdays next week. But if it is your birthday this month and you haven't signed up for free stuff, you're missing a chance to win a bottle of rum from plum.io. The platform that makes your night better with rum and the platform that makes talent decisions with proven science. That's right. Kids, we also have more free stuff. You can also win t-shirts. Adam, do you have your new Chad and Cheese T-shirt yet? Adam (9m 30s): I don't have one yet, but I need one for Chad and Vegan Cheese. Chad (9m 36s): Well, I'm gonna tell you right now, they're soft and cuddly. That's what the Chad and Cheese podcast t-shirt is all about. Making sure it's like being spooned by Chad and Cheese. It's warm, it's cozy, and it's awkward all at the same time. Adam (9m 50s): You're really selling it. You're really selling it. Chad (9m 53s): What? Spooning the Chad and Cheese is not. Adam (9m 55s): Okay. Chad (9m 55s): Maybe not. You can also win a box of craft beer brewed by Aspen Tech Labs. Okay. So maybe they didn't actually brew the beer, but they're buying it for you. You're welcome. And last but not least, two bottles. That's right. Two bottles of whiskey from our Dutch friends at Textkernel. Don't worry, the Dutch are not sending Dutch whiskey, I promise. It's the good stuff. Chad and Cheese are actually picking it. All of this delivered to your front door by Joel Cheeseman himself, or more than likely a proxy for Joel dressed up like a FedEx or UPS employee. Anyway, go to Chadcheese.com, click on the free up in the right hand corner so that you can register to win. Chad (10m 45s): Tell me you are registered at chadcheese.com/free Adam. Adam (10m 47s): Of course, I'm registered. My winning streak is, is not good, but I've definitely registered. Who isn't registered? Why would you not be? Chad (10m 55s): That's a very good question. It's free stuff. Adam (11m 1s): Exactly. Who doesn't like free stuff? Chad (11m 3s): Good topics. All right, Adam, this remember last week's rumor about iCIMS changing CEOs. It's not a rumor anymore. Straight outta Homedale, New Jersey that is iCIMS announced that Brian Provost will join as CEO effective December 1st, 2022. That's pretty fast. Brian, the former CEO of Ascentis, brings more than 20 years of executive leadership experience in rapid growth to SAAS technology companies. In his role, Brian helped scale Ascentis a provider of full suite HR and workforce management solutions over three times that, which ultimately led to the company being acquired by a little company called UKG Steve Lucas, current CEO of iCIMS will remain on the company's board of directors. Chad (11m 53s): Adam, your thoughts on Lucas being replaced by Provost? What the hell is happening over at iCIMS? Adam (11m 60s): I think this is mostly a normal private equity type of things where Steve is headed on to another portfolio company and then there's the next guy in. So I think it's one of those things that's looks a little bit routine. It's not like a cool ship blowing up. It's not Twitter. There's nothing of that level of excitement happening there. But it certainly, it'll be a shake up and there's always new leadership. People always have new ideas. So I'm super interested to see what new leadership Brian brings and what the new strategy might be. Chad (12m 33s): Well, and they also have a new CMO. His name is Ari Osur, I believe. Anyway, we'll get that right someday taking over for Susan Vitali, which is another big move. And Ari spent six years marketing at ADP. What are your thoughts around that? Adam (12m 51s): Well, certainly Susan's been around a long time so that those are big shoes to fill, but Ari's got a big decision to go with Bird or no bird. So iCIMS had the bird, the red bird is their on their logo for forever since then, sort of the beginning until last year, two years ago, they did a rebrand to go with a sort of light green color and a different, there was no bird. But, then the bird showed up at HR Tech and so now we're half bird. So I think Ari's gonna decide if he's going bird or no bird. Chad (13m 27s): So my, my question to you is, do you go with bird or no bird? Adam (13m 32s): I like the bird. I think I'd go, no bird, I think iCIMS is a point of seriousness where they're trying to compete with enterprise clients, the upper level. And so I, well, I like the bird. I think I'd probably go no bird. It's also a new chapter for Brian to usher in something new. Chad (13m 50s): Yeah, well, I'm gonna have to say, well, I think we need the bird and here's why. So I've heard from some who remember the Colin Day era that say that iCIMS, they're just not the company that they, they knew and loved, and they truly understand that, you know, there's been changes, but I've got, you gotta remember, it's not 1999 anymore. So I understand that the no bird. The change to Steve Lucas I think was incredibly smart. But this move has the stink of PE all over it because Steve and Brian are literally at this point, I think you didn't say it, but I'm gonna say it, they're pieces on the chess board. You know, you've got these portfolio companies, you got these CEOs, and you're moving the pieces on the chess board. Chad (14m 34s): And what what I mean about that is it's starting to feel more robotic in PE than human and Collin Day. And there's gotta be a balance. The brand must feel more human, less robotic. The addition of Ari as the CMO taking over for Susan Vitali, again, it's a big move. So, you know, there's no judgment on Brian and and Ari yet because hell, they haven't even warmed up their chairs yet. But here's my message to both of them. The industry needs to see iCIMS as a leader and not as a robotic one. So get out there, press the flesh, kiss the babies, do the things, the things that will humanize the brand. Chad (15m 17s): A brand that has unfortunately over the last few years has started to feel kind of cold and distance. So I think we have to go with a bird. Adam (15m 29s): Love it. Love it. Chad (15m 31s): What do you think about that though? Because it seems like when PE starts taking over, it just becomes less human. Adam (15m 37s): You make a good argument sort of from an identity perspective. If PEs going gonna change the CEO every three years based on, as you say it, moving pieces on the chess board, then they need an identity. I mean, it was Colin for so long. If it's gonna happen where it's a frequent switch, maybe the bird is that identity and that can be, you know, what clients find is that consistency over time. Chad (15m 57s): You put it much better than I do. Very more concise. I like that. All right, we're moving quick kids, we're moving quick. We're going to the next one. And that's funding. Woven, going back to Indy. Indie. Indie, yeah, I don't think so. That's right. Kids Woven out of Indianapolis, Indiana announced, it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Glow Brands. Wasn't Glow on Netflix. That was a show on Netflix, wasn't it? Anyway, with this funding oven will further accelerate its growth to streamline people management, operations and facility and asset management for franchisees and independent multi-unit business globally. Chad (16m 44s): Wow. That's a lot to do and say. Multi-unit business management has been a widespread challenge within the franchise industry, resulting in low productivity, high employee turnover and disjointed systems. Woven has 100% bootstrap prior to this funding has 98% customer retention and services get this 700 plus Planet Fitness Clubs, 35 Bluff City soap locations and other brands such as Pet supplies plus, Great Clips and yada yada, yada. So Adam, this is right up your alley. You guys have worked in the franchise space before you, you still do. Chad (17m 24s): Is this funding a spare or a strike? Oh, Adam (17m 26s): I think it's a strike. It's early, so it's just a million and a half in Series A, but the franchise space is very underserved. So you've got a lot of growth in that market yet to come as well. But a lot of people looking to run small businesses and a lot of systems that aren't really made for that type of environment. So I say strike. Chad (17m 47s): Yeah. Well you guys, you are dealing over at Paradox, you're dealing with franchises now. What are the big differences and and why have they had such disjointed systems thus far? Adam (17m 58s): Well, sure it's really like running a small business. And so, think of it as there's sort of a tension between all the things we do together at the corporate level, like the branding and the marketing and those things. And then there's the autonomy that happens underneath at the franchise level that a person that owns 10 stores of something gets to decide on their own. So the fundamental problem is that tension and for all the different franchise organizations that exists, those tension points exist in different places. So they all make decisions about what corporate controls and what's locally controlled. And it's always different. And that makes it hard to make software that serves franchise well. And Chad, I have a question coming back at you. Adam (18m 39s): You mentioned that this is Indianapolis based. Does that make Indianapolis the new HR tech hotbed? Chad (18m 43s): Well they have been since day one. I mean, online career center was there. We have so many companies, monster.com. Nexxt has people there. I mean, we've been really the center of internet recruitment, internet recruitment tech for a very long time. And you'll notice that any company that wants to scale throughout at least the US and you're noticing this from brands like Vonq outside the US, if you want to get back into the US you need to get people with great experience and connections. And a lot of those people are actually in Indianapolis and in and around the Indianapolis area. Chad (19m 25s): So I say yes, it definitely is. Back to you though. I took a look on the pricing page and it starts at $70 per month per location and on the high side it's $220 per location per month. And I mean that's less than $3,000 a year for a platform. What do you think about that? That that seems like bargain basement pricing. Adam (19m 48s): It is, but again, to serve that market margins tend to be relatively thin. They tend to be price sensitive. As you roll that up there, there's lots of money to be had there, but you have to build software that can actually handle the franchise complexity and build to that. So it not often done, but there's a lot of market there if Woven can can help figure it out. Chad (20m 7s): Yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay, we're gonna go to the next company who received funding this month. That's right. Kids straight outta Sweden. I'm gonna keep this up until we actually get a startup out of Compton, by the way. Anyways, AdWay, an automated social recruitment marketing solution announced today that it, it has raised a 10 million Euro in a Series A from Octopus Ventures and existing investors. AdWay's, unique recruitment marketing platform empowers talent and recruitment leaders to attract talent at scale and speed. Chad (20m 58s): Adway simplifies talent acquisition processes while building deep diverse social talent pools, reducing cost per hire and removing reliance on traditional talent acquisition and attraction methods and tools. Adam, that's a big word salad for me. I'm having problems digesting it. What does that actually mean to you? Adam (21m 16s): Yeah, it means looking to use social media for targeted advertising and being able to use new methods to get attraction for businesses. And I think this is something that companies are struggling with in that organizations want to use TikTok and Snapchat and certainly Facebook and Instagram for recruitment. But a lot of it is done manually today and we're not doing a great job as an industry of measuring ROI ofthe effort that we're spending there. So there's definitely room for solutions, always a little bit skeptical about the ability to execute there and actually tends to come when companies start to see the bill for what it actually costs to compete, to advertise on social media. Adam (21m 57s): Just because you're then competing against everything else on earth, not just in the job board context where you're competing against other employers. Your cost per clicks can get really high and your conversions can be barely low due to the fact that people aren't necessarily looking for that. But it is the part, you know, should be part of everyone's plan to think about their strategy to get new people for certain scenarios. Chad (22m 17s): Do do you feel like something like this is more of a brand strategy than it is a talent attraction or acquisition strategy and being that you need to be able to get your brand out there so that it is top of mind before you start really getting the attraction engines moving. And those attraction engines might actually be happening out on job boards, but you need to soften it up. You need to soften up the battlefield before you actually go on it. So doesn't social media feel more like a marketing and branding tool these days than it does attraction? Adam (22m 53s): It does. And that can go two ways, right? So being able to market to people once they're familiar or if they're not familiar and to push impressions to them once they've visited your site or some in some way communicated with you or for you to target them. But yeah, absolutely it's about brand, it's about reach. So the traditional metrics will never compare to job board world. The intent of job seekers on job boards is so high cuz they're on a job board that you won't match the pure metrics of it, but it's about reach is how do I find people that are not gonna be looking and so be able to build that over time and then eventually convert them into an employee. Chad (23m 34s): So this is the big passive play. And my question is, if you are one of those programmatic players and you don't have a social solution, does Adway become a target for you right out of the gate? Especially after they just received this $10 million now we sit back, we prospectively integrate and then we watch for the prospect of acquisition down the line. Adam (23m 57s): Yeah, I think so. I think it makes sense and people are thinking about solutions there and I think it's not just a programmatic, but to your point about brand other folks that are involved in the employer brand world, how do we take the brand and the creative that we have made and then push that to social in a way that's more automated than we have people doing that today. So I think absolutely. Chad (24m 20s): Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, so the new funding will be put toward developing the product suite makes sense, but also supporting continued expansion into international markets. They're in Sweden, everything around them is in an international market. They didn't say USA they didn't say specifically Europe or anything like that. So it's gonna be interesting to see where these guys go. I am definitely going to be watching very closely because I think, again, they're perspectively filling a brand gap. That's a lot of branding platforms don't have, not to mention a lot of programmatic platforms don't have, so there could be blood in the water for an acquisition, who knows. Chad (25m 7s): All right, we're jumping to the next one kids straight outta Hyeprabad. That's right. Keka, K E K A. Keka Technology startup has raised $57 million in a series A funding led by WestBridge Capital. It is the largest enterprise tech Series A funding round in India. That's pretty big. The investment will help the company in R and D and it expands its engineering product and customer service teams and improves its products. Keka assists, Indian SMEs with 20-5,000 employees. Chad (25m 49s): That's a hell of a span right there. And streamlines and automates payroll, recruiting, leave and attendance, performance management and more. That is also a span. My god, Adam, Joel and I aren't generally big fans of vendors focused on the SME market, but India has more than 7.9 million micro, small and medium companies, which might make the calculus a little bit different. What do you think about this? Adam (26m 16s): It's tricky cuz that's a big round for India. I like that they said they topped the previous largest series by $1 million. So they were looking at what whatever the last person raised and said, I want $1 million more than that. So to be the record. But, this is a crowded space and certainly, it seems like they're having some good success. The piece with India is about, can you get the return on that investment and you've gotta scale really quickly. So if they can be the platform that becomes a standard for all those 7.9 million small businesses, in India, that absolutely can work. But certainly you don't, you don't get the sort of price per employee or the pricing that you get for businesses in other parts of the world. Adam (27m 0s): So a big bet on being able to scale the platform and being able to go do customer acquisition and becoming the standard for small businesses in India. Chad (27m 11s): If you're a company that is focused just on India and especially this many companies, do you just focus on India or is there a play? With this kind of cash really to look outside of the borders of India? Because I mean, India has a lot of people, has a lot of companies, which we actually said 7.9 million micro to medium. But is that really where the cash is? Adam (27m 34s): Yeah, that's the trouble is what's the total addressable market in India versus heading outside those borders? My guess is there's a whole lot of business to pick up in India, so they can probably do that for some time, but also to make the money that they will want to eventually make. They'll need to go to other markets and they may pick other developing markets to enter that as well. That would make a lot of sense for rather than go to compete with Workday and SAP and, and others. So thinking about the near term strategy, I'm sure there's lots of money in India, but likely they have to go to new countries to meet their financial goals. Chad (28m 11s): Yeah, I tell you man, their Tam around automating payroll recruiting, leave an absence, performance management, and oh, by the way and more, I mean that to me it automatically signals warning bills because that is so much to do. And even before they had $57 million, right? So getting this kind of cash, and you've seen it before, getting this kind of cash means that you're gonna have to broaden up your TAM more because you've gotta promise more than what you've done before to be able to get more money than what you've actually gotten before. Is this to, to you, when you're looking at companies like this, not saying that Keka is a bad company, but does this just like an alarm bill to you when you see companies who already have a pretty broad TAM and then they get new money, especially this kind of money? Adam (28m 59s): Not, not always. It can be depending on how they're planning on spending it, but but also if they've got momentum and they simply need to to scale to be able to service that, to continue to develop that really depends on what their penetration looks like. So far, I think they've got 6,500 customers, so 6,000 out of, you know, 7.9 million. They've got ways to go. So, there's definitely some scale to get inside India yet, but they must have a larger vision to go and be a platform and other parts of the world as well. So certainly always wanna be sure that the vision is aligned with the future. And as a customer of a company that raises funding Chad (29m 47s): And who knows, the next time we talk about Keka, they might be sfx (29m 52s): Pink fluffy unicorn music. Chad (29m 52s): All right. Adam, the question is social media dying? Here's a little excerpt from the Atlantics article entitled The Age of Social Media is Ending. Seems fairly ominous. It's over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter is in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg's empire has lost hundreds of billions. That's what the B kids Ba, ba, billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people. And I'm predicting that more are going to be coming soon. With its ad business in peril and it's metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform running to Mastodon. Chad (30m 39s): It's never felt more plausible that the age of social media might be soon to an end. Is this chicken little or was social media a flame thrower bound to burn itself out? Adam (30m 54s): I think it's mostly chicken little to be honest. Certainly there's lots of chaos at Facebook and Twitter, you know, lots has happened there in the last month, but there's still massive platforms with incredible reach and incredible influence over our society. And I think you actually can look at TikTok, to say one that has incredible growth rates to say actually social media is not dying. Simply the preferences are changing, and what people are doing on social networks is is different. The article actually talks a lot about what's different between a social network. Maybe LinkedIn is the best social network, you know, to people. I wanna connect with people that I know and the social media. Adam (31m 36s): So I want to give content and produce user generated content for that network. And I think the shift is TikTok in some ways is much more of a social media. Watching things from people you don't know and consuming media in a different way. So I think preferences are changing, but I don't think it's the end. Chad (31m 54s): I agree. Remember the globe back in the late nineties? It opened my eyes to the ability of hyper connectivity, but mainly that was just a one-to-one scale, right? So it wasn't really scalable, but it was one-to-one. I was having discussions with people all over the globe. It was amazing. Then Friendster and MySpace demonstrated that connectivity could be one to many. I agree a hundred percent. Social media is doing nothing but evolving. I think what we've seen in the weaponization of social media over the past years, we're going to have to put some guardrails in place, whether those are companies that are actually creating these guardrails or the federal governments actually starting to put guardrails in and I see Europe doing that first. Chad (32m 43s): What do you think? Because we're seeing Europe really put the smack down on big companies. Adam (32m 49s): Absolutely, absolutely. And thinking about like the regulation of media has been regulated for a very long time in our society with radio and television and there's not really much reason that social media and it's different forms shouldn't have some regulation as well. So the scale problems get harder with user generated content and other things, but absolutely Europe tends to want figure these things out first and and good for them. They create the framework for everyone else. Chad (33m 17s): Yeah, it is interesting because, you know, we've talked with our friend E E O C, commissioner Keith Sonderling around AI and hiring. I think, I think the bigger conversation, AI is almost like a smoke screen at this point. The bigger conversation is the problem that we're having right now. It's really social media and I mean there are actual background quote unquote "background check" companies that are out there that check your social feeds. Now I know there are some lines that are painted around that to ensure that, you know, you're not hiring some white nationalists or what have you, but at the end of the day, I mean, it is still the wild west out there in social and I'm not sure that even the European government has a laser focus on this problem. Chad (34m 10s): What do you think about that? Is there just way too much tech that's out there and we just can't get our arms around all of it? Adam (34m 17s): Yeah, no doubt. The explosion of it makes that problem really difficult and governments are aren't exactly wizards at always of making technology. So, as time, time will come where we'll figure out how to ingest content and have some supervision or regulation of certain types of tech to flag things. But this is all a natural evolution of an industry, to call it the death of social media is presumptive. It's absolutely changing, but it's definitely not going to die. Chad (34m 50s): Yeah, I gotta say man, actually having discussions in 1996 with newfound friends that were in Australia blew my fucking mind, at the time. And then watching the scalability of social media today still blows my mind. It's continuing to happen. The evolution is just amazing, but we've gotta go on to something else that is even more mind blowing. Amazon layoffs and robots. Those things are going to slowly meld into, I think the same word after a while. Amazon is planning to layoff around 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week. Chad (35m 32s): In what would amount to its biggest such reduction to date. In other news Amazon is currently testing Sparrow a warehouse automation at a facility in Texas where the robot is already sorting products for customer orders. The company says Sparrow can handle 65% of more than 100 million items in inventory. Amazon is downsizing on the white collar side and on the blue collar side, they have robots coming in. Adam, it sounds like Amazon will be changing its name to Skynet soon. Any thoughts? Adam (36m 8s): Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on that one. I think it's a little predictable. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Amazon's looking to use robots to think in their fulfillment centers to do that. I think everyone's just curious about how far along we are and looking at a lot of companies in this space that are doing logistics, robotics. I think we're a lot further along than people realize for that particular problem. How much technology is in a modern day warehouse and the sorting in the technology that goes to that. Of course today labor is still needed, but that is fundamentally changing and how much of that is automated? Adam (36m 49s): And you know, I think it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Amazon is is thinking about that as a way to continue to be efficient and to save labor. Chad (36m 57s): Oh yeah, no, Jeff Bezos, as soon as he can get a T2 terminator, it's overdue. He's going to do it every step of the way so that he can build an even bigger super yacht. It's pretty amazing. And to me it's also evolution, right? We talk about, again earlier, we were talking about the horse and buggy. These are things and these are jobs that are backbreaking jobs in many cases and they're just more fitting for robots. Let's, I would love to see governments as opposed to focusing on trying to give Amazon tax credits to be able to come to their state, to be able to actually have Amazon pay their taxes so that we can, oh, I don't know, maybe educate our people to fill these quote unquote "skills gaps" Chad (37m 47s): that need bridged there. There's just so much that we can do. Again, I don't think the answer is either on the corporate private side or the public government side. We have to have a melding of the two. It's hard to look on the horizon and see that anything like that's gonna happen anytime soon in the US. Your thoughts, anywhere else in the world that could prospectively be doing this better without trying to stifle innovation at the same time. Adam (38m 15s): That's pretty tricky, to think about doing it without stifling innovation. But there are some interesting long term questions that happen there. Certainly Amazon knows this problem really well. They've got lots of labor market economists who measure labor market decay, where if they come to your town and put in a big facility, they know it's a matter of time before they've employed everyone that's employable for their type of job in that area. And so then they're off to a different spot Chad (38m 41s): And they burn 'em out. Adam (38m 42s): And, there's just only so much that they can do. And, so it is, there's a structural labor market problem. The point you bring up is an interesting one about robot taxes. So how do we start to think about paying for education and skills training other things and also the taxes that are lost, that went from workers that used to be doing that work. And how do we think about recovering, that's certainly been one that's talked about as well. Being able to think about how do we still tax labor in quotes, I guess in some ways. And how do we have different societal functions for than we think of today. So lots of interesting questions to chew on there. Chad (39m 22s): Yeah, how do we do that? And Jeff Bezos still keeps his super yacht. That's the question. And it keeps me up at night, Adam. It keeps me up. All right, we're gonna be right back and we're going to bang and blame. Welcome to Miami, Bem-vindo ah Miami, the popular adult film website Bang Brothers offered the Miami Heat $10 million. Adam (39m 51s): Boy that escalated quickly. Chad (39m 53s): 10 million bones, that's right for naming rights with the heat serving severing ties with FTX because of its recent collapse. Bang Bros has once again made another bid via social media. The Heat has been with FTX since June of 2021. Not very long, but decided it was better to part ways after the company's downfall. Aka they didn't have a fucking choice. Adam, is this a PR stunt by Bang Brothers or just good marketing? Adam (40m 23s): I mean, it's both. So there's no way that the Miami Heat would ever allow the arena to be called that. Chad (40m 30s): It's Miami though, come on. Adam (40m 31s): Although like the two counterpoints are that it's Miami and they also did a 19-year deal with FTX, which I think existed for 20 minutes when they did that deal. So, I maybe there's questionable judgment there that it could be possible, but it is Miami so you never know. Chad (40m 48s): Well, you know what, it doesn't matter if this is a PR stunt or not, like you said, because if TikTok goes away, I predict at least one premium Bang Brothers membership coming and that'll be in the form of Joel Cheesman. Bang and blame everybody. We out. Outro (41m 59s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Sometimes Chad & Cheese get so far up their own asses, it pays to take a step back and look at the big picture. Luckily, there's no better place to take a deep breath and ponder than Europe, which is why the boys look at the job board landscape across Europe. Inspired by an article from show favorite Geert-Jan Waasdorp entitled “Why the European job board market is on the verge of a major transition,” we dig into the rise of Indeed across Europe, programmatic becoming more and more popular, the gig economy gaining influence and even Web3's increasing impact on employment. It's a lot to digest, so a little Buy-or-Sell is in order to relax and let off steam. This episode, CloudPay, Job Protocol and EarnHire get put under the microscope. Lastly, we end with Lieven's take on European success-story and news item Beekeeper's recent raise. 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 (5s): 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 (25s): Oh, yeah. Russia is retreating and the European winter is forecast to be warmer than normal. Welcome to the Good Vibe Show, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe, I'm your cohost, Joel "Copernicus" Cheeseman. Chad (40s): This is Chad "watch out Europe, Indeed is creeping Sowash. Lieven (44s): And I'm Lieven "no verification" Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (49s): And on this episode, Lieven opines, buy or sell and Europe's job board Market transitions. Hey, no judgment here. Let's do this. sfx (59s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Chad (1m 5s): Hello. Joel (1m 7s): Hello. Lieven (1m 7s): Hello, hello. Chad (1m 8s): Hello. It's time for a beer. Oh, Lieven (1m 11s): Right. I already have one. Joel (1m 13s): Yeah. You guys in Europe. Happy hour here. I'm eating my chicken nuggets for lunch. You know how we do? Chad (1m 20s): You're silicon nuggets? Joel (1m 21s): No more KFC for me. You'll find out in shout outs why? Chad (1m 27s): Oh shit. Well, the World Cup is coming soon, and Joel, you just said that in and the good old us of a Indianapolis, Indiana, Chatham Tap is doing what? Joel (1m 39s): Yeah. So one of our only legit sort of British style pubs here, in at least central Indiana is called Chatham Tap. Yeah. So this year, Chatham Tap is actually selling tickets on Eventbrite to be able to go to the event, which I think is pretty smart. They're gonna sell that baby out and earn a little extra income and not piss people off in the process. Chad (2m 0s): Yeah. We just have a bunch of crying Americans after they get beat by the Brits. Joel (2m 4s): There's a lot of Brits and British fans. You'd be surprised they're all from Columbus. Probably. They all come up from Columbus. Chad (2m 12s): We'll be lucky to see the US get out of their group. They're in group B, so they're, they're gonna play Wales first and they've got England and then Iran. That's gonna, that's gonna be fun, Iran. Educate the, you know, ill informed Americans out there who's favored to win? What predictions? Belgium's usually good right Lieven. Lieven (2m 32s): Well, usually it's maybe overstatement, but we've been not too bad last time, I guess. But normally we are not that good for small country, but we've done some decent seasons. Chad (2m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. And group F with Morocco, Croatia in Canada. So, I think possibly only Canada should give you a run for your money. Joel (2m 53s): That's Belgium's bracket. Chad (2m 54s): Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty weak. It's pretty weak. Lieven (2m 58s): Never underestimate Canada. Joel (2m 59s): I could get a team together and compete with those guys. Lieven (3m 2s): Do you know when I was sitting in the car earlier, I was listening to the radio and there was a discussion on the radio about, about the soccer cup, because it's going to be during the daytime in Belgium, in Qatar. So in Belgium will be during working hours. And people had questions. What's of all those people working from home are watching the football instead of working? And how can we control it? Can we put, can we ask people to put their cameras on to check if they're actually working? Joel (3m 28s): Geez. Lieven (3m 28s): For the record, it is not allowed to ask people to put their cameras on to check on them. Chad (3m 34s): Amen. Lieven (3m 34s): People can watch and pretend Joel (3m 36s): They're watching Belgium, Canada. Dammit. Lieven (3m 39s): Yeah. Joel (3m 39s): All right, let's get to the real shout outs, shall we? Chad (3m 42s): Let's do it. Joel (3m 43s): I'll go first. All right. My shout out is a bit of our sarcastic shout out everybody. It goes to KFC, guys, who doesn't love a good meal, a fried chicken? Who doesn't love a good holiday promotion? And of course, who doesn't love a good marketing screw up since our last show, Kentucky Fried Chicken, popularly known as KFC to the kids out there, sent out the following message on social media. Quote, "It's Memorial Day for Kristallnacht. Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KF Cheese" end quote. For the historically uninitiated 'Kristallnacht or the night of broken glass' was the night Nazis carried out an organized massacre of Jewish people. Joel (4m 28s): An estimated 91 Jews died and 267 synagogues were destroyed with many businesses. Looted KKK, I mean, KFC deleted the message and apologized blaming a semi-automated push notification system. Semi-automated? The semi part of that is a little scary. Am I right? So some element of human participation did happen apparently. I'd say the Colonel must be spinning in his grave, but dude was a well known racist, so I doubt that is happening. Our sarcastic shout out to Kentucky Fried Chicken everybody. Chad (5m 6s): Yeah. When AI goes wrong, kids. Yes. My God. Lieven (5m 10s): Do you actually believe it's ai? I can't believe it. I can't believe they let AI decide on what to send to thousands of people. Joel (5m 18s): Semiautomated. Yeah, Chad (5m 18s): But here's the thing. I could actually see that, where they just go ahead and just tap it into like the holiday calendar and then it just goes off the rails. But still, somebody's head's gotta roll for this shit. Joel (5m 32s): Some 24 year old that doesn't know shit about history saw that come up and go, Okay, approve boop. And that went out. And then they went, Oh shit, what's Kristallnacht? Chad (5m 42s): They've been crying in a hump in the corner for days now. We've got a rumor alert. We've heard about CareerBuilder going into major clearance sale mode and I have heard major rumblings about the sale of Broadbean by the end of the year. So any guesses, Joel leaving on who Broadbean, who Career Builder is going to sell Broadbean to? Joel (6m 10s): I'm going back to Canada with my prediction. Our friends at the artist, formerly known as NuVue, currently known as talent.com, could use a little, a little technology like Broadbean has. And we know they have a few bucks in the bank because they paid how much for talent.com. Anyway, my guess Canadian company talent.com buys up Broadbean. Chad (6m 33s): Hoo. Okay Lieven? Lieven (6m 34s): Hmm. Could be. I can only say one thing. It's not us, it's not House of HR that's going to buy Broadbean. It could have been us. I mean we bought 16 companies this year, but it was not us. Chad (6m 44s): It was not us and it's not going to be. Joel (6m 47s): So don't call us Broadbean. Chad (6m 49s): Okay, well all of the arrows, all of the indications are pointing at Axle Springer, aka StepStone AKA Appcast. Appcast. So there we go. Kids again, rumor alert by the end of the year CareerBuilder going ahead and lopping that off. Joel (7m 7s): Is it to kill it? Cuz app cast doesn't need Broadbean technology, right? Or distribution channels. Chad (7m 13s): Well, you gotta remember not all of Europe. Joel (7m 19s): Yeah. Chad (7m 19s): Is ppc, right? So if you wanna be able to broaden up into duration based, not to mention if you have portfolios, so you have infrastructure there, it might be a decaying infrastructure. Okay. But you do have a brands and a portfolio business. Joel (7m 33s): Got it. Got it. And they got it off the clearance rack at TJ Max. So there's that. Chad (7m 39s): Pretty much, Yeah. Joel (7m 41s): Everything must go at careerbuilder.com everybody. All right Levien you got a special shout out one that's close to your heart. What's up? Lieven (7m 47s): A special shout out for a special person? No, it's a shout out to Rika Coppens our CEO. So it's the gentle art of kissing one's ass because she's my boss. Rika became 50 last week. I'm not sure if she would like it when I'm saying this publicly, but she became 50 on November 11. Joel (8m 8s): 29. Lieven (8m 9s): And my wife is actually, her birthday's on the same day. She was also born on November 11th. So I always say my two bosses are having a birthday on the same day. And it's actually pretty true, but more important not the birthday is important. Rika has been nominated to become manager of the year and she was about to decline the nomination, but her management team, of which I part said, not Rika, you're going to win. We like parties, you're going to accept the nomination. So the organizing party is tense. It's a magazine in Belgium and it's actually in Belgium. It's a big deal becoming manager of the year. The name of her website is far too difficult. So right now I'm trying to register Rikarocks.be. It was free and I think by now we should have it. Lieven (8m 49s): And by the time this is actually live, this should be redirecting to the right website. So I'll go to www.rikarocks.be. Vote for Rika. And I could give you tons of reasons why you should, but just believe me, she deserves it. Chad (9m 3s): Which just means yes she does. You'd be doing more ass kicking. That's Rika. Lieven (9m 8s): She does the asskicking. I do the ass licking. Joel (9m 13s): Yeah. Chad (9m 13s): Rika. R I K A rocks dot be. There you go. Joel (9m 17s): Isn't the 11th Armistice day? Yeah, that's a big deal in Europe apparently. Lieven (9m 21s): Definitely. I didn't know it was called Armistice Day in in US. In France it's called, Jour de l'Armistice so it's the same but it's Indeed it's still a holiday in Belgium and and most of Europe I think, except in the Netherlands because they didn't participate. They didn't participate in World War I. Joel (9m 40s): We're gonna set that one out. Yeah, it's not really celebrated here either. It it is in Canada. Lieven (9m 46s): Lest we forget something like that. Joel (9m 48s): You gotta travel to find that stuff out. Chad and travel is one thing we know really well sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. You're gonna be somewhere next week. Chad (9m 59s): London. London, London kids, that's right for TA Tech business accelerator. You just go to Chadcheese.com, click on the events and you can register, come on over, buy us drinks, all that other fun stuff and going to be there during Thanksgiving, which means nothing to anybody in London, which means we should be able to get a very good meal out there. So should registration should be good. Not Taco Bell. Joel (10m 25s): Oh, that's Thanksgiving at my place. Okay! Sorry about that. Yeah, in the rare case that you listen to this on Wednesday, Thursday of this week, I will be at iCIMS Inspire in sunny California, far, far away from London and whatever weather is plaguing it. And yeah, you and I got a little sneak peek at all the stuff iCIMS is gonna be talking about. I'm sure we'll be discussing them on the show of the future and be, I'm looking to get a couple interviews, talk to some people, soak in some sun. But yeah, I'll be in California. If you're gonna be there, stop by and say hi. I'll be in a beautiful Chad and Cheese t-shirt. I'll be easy to find. Chad (11m 4s): And don't forget kids. The weekly show you can now find in four additional languages courtesy of Veritone. That's right French. You're gonna want to go ahead and soak in a bath while you listen to this one. Get some candles going. German, probably not so much. Portuguese. And then also Spanish. So wherever you listen to podcasts, all you have to do is look for the Chad and Cheese and then pick your language of choice. Joel (11m 30s): What's your language of choice Lieven? What language do you like hearing us best? Lieven (11m 36s): Depends for what purpose. Chad (11m 37s): I don't want to, I don't wanna go down that rabbit hole. Joel (11m 42s): Let's kill this right now. Lieven (11m 44s): I wasn't talking about Swedish. Chad (11m 45s): Topics! Oh my God. Joel (11m 47s): All right guys, let's talk a little transitioning. It's not probably what you think. A recent article by our friend Geert-Jan Waasdorp, also known as GJ, that's right, entitled quote, "Why the European Job Board Market is on the Verge of a Major Transition," grabbed our attention. It has the subtitle, the European job board market is in a golden age for active job seekers in Europe. It is still the most dominant way for looking for a job, but for how long will its rain continue in a market that is undergoing change at a rapid pace? Here are a few highlights from the article. Number one, job boards losing ground to Indeed, LinkedIn and Google. Joel (12m 29s): Number two, growth of programmatic. Three, the birth of blockchain CVs. And number four, the growth of the gig economy to just name a few. Chad, what were some of your takeaways from our friend GJ, which you can also find that article at twotalent.eu. Chad (12m 46s): Yeah, I think all of his points made a hell of a lot of sense. I guess the biggest question is in their current state, will job boards be viable in 10 years? That's what I was thinking. I don't think so. But you know, if they're going to transition, what type of evolution needs to happen? Market pressures need to happen to be able to push them into this evolution. I think the biggest market pressure is Indeed creeping three years ago Indeed was number one and only one of the 40 plus countries in Europe. It is now number one in six of those countries that was three years type of progress. Chad (13m 26s): Now that's a creeping, and if that happens and they can continue that, they can pretty much capture the entire market. So I think that gives job boards just another reason to change. You take a look at, obviously programmatic, there's so much happening there on cost per click and you know, pay per click and then being able to also transition to that before Indeed prospectively gobbles up, you know, pay per application or applications start or wherever the fuck they want to call it this week. I think the biggest thing out of all of this for job boards to be able to transition is we see so many companies talking about the death of the CV and there are so many startups that are proclaiming the death of the CV, but how we need infrastructure to move forward. Chad (14m 15s): And if you take a look at tech that's coming out today, some of the startups, one of them from Richard and Beverly Collins, they just announced CV wallet. I mean there's just so much that I think job boards need to think about, but they have to transition because if they don't, I think Indeed's gonna creep and kill. Joel (14m 33s): Yeah. You know what's interesting so much historically and Chad and you and I have been around long enough, is that that America is typically a window into the future of Europe. Whether that's technologies or where money's gonna go or startups that that come around. And I feel like particularly since we've been doing this show that the gap between when something happens in the US to when it sort of, you know, gets to the European market is getting closer and closer. Where it used to be like, I don't know, five to 10 years before something sort of caught on in Europe, that that bridge is now maybe three to five years or possibly even less in some cases. And I think that programmatic, obviously Appcast getting acquired by a huge ass European company, you're gonna see programmatic grow tremendously in the next few years. Joel (15m 16s): I think with the work from home and anyone can work anywhere phenomenon is, you know, companies don't need tech talent in San Francisco to hire developers. They can do it anywhere in the world. You see the mass, you know, migration of Russian and Ukrainian developers occurring. I think that's gonna be really exciting in terms of energy, and mojo around Europe and startups and things that are created there. I think that that what's unique is because you have, instead of states that speak all the same language and it's like that's not an issue with the states. You have certain things in Europe that are unique to Europe. I'm thinking of QR codes and I'm sure you're laughing, but QR codes were huge outside of the US. Joel (16m 1s): They're currently sort of gaining steam back in the US. But when you mention the blockchain CV, to me it seems to make a lot of sense that in a continent with a bunch of countries, a lot of different regulations, a lot of different companies or things that could sort of change what a CV is. If you have something that's almost essentially like a passport. Chad (16m 22s): Yeah. Joel (16m 23s): Where any country, you know this QR code or this CV is gonna go across any country, it's gonna speak the language of any country. It's gonna have all of my endorsements, all of my certifications. If you can create a passport that goes across all those countries, to me that technology's gonna take off much faster in Europe than it will in the US just because it's not as big a deal here. So, the blockchain thing is gonna be really interesting to watch. To me though, you know, looking forward as well, you know, a lot of these questions that haven't been answered in the US let alone the UK are job seekers better off in this new world? I think that question is still out there in terms of has the technology really helped job seekers? Joel (17m 5s): Will a recession swing the pendulum back from job seekers to the employers? You know, with Elon laying off everybody, with Elon saying, Hey everybody back to work, does the pendulum go back to corporations having more power? I mentioned the flood of Russian and Ukrainian workers and how that'll impact things. Ultimately I think the things that JG outline are inevitable, but what does the future hold for not just the US but also Europe I think is really gonna be interesting to watch. And I think that the changes that happen in the US are gonna happen almost in coordination with Europe because the tech divide is so much shorter than it used to be. Lieven (17m 42s): Mm, I agree. But Europe sometimes is kind of different just because it's so fragmented. You know, there have been waves of disruption our business since ever, and if you look at one that the job boards came to existence was like the end of the nineties, early two thousands when print became online and it was pretty sudden then 2003 you had LinkedIn, then you had the aggregators, you had Google for jobs, it was all going very fast. But in Europe, those local job boards, they still exist and some of them are still doing very, very good. And I just did a survey at our own company, we have 52 brands in 10 countries in Europe and I checked which boards the job boards are you using and what is the inflow? Lieven (18m 22s): And those local job boards are still doing pretty well. I was surprised in fact. And it's mostly because you need the local approach. If you want to reach blue collar workers, the white collars, you can reach through Google Organic, you can, you have Google for jobs, you have Indeed. Those people are actively looking for a job and they know how to do it. But those blue collar workers use still different channels and they mostly go through in Belgium as a Flemish labor department, each country has its own. And those people sometimes are, I'm not going to say archaic, but a bit slow. And they still promote the job boards, which were active 20 years ago. So I don't think it's going to change that fast. It should have, it's been changing forever. Lieven (19m 4s): But it's not going to disappear that fast. I do think that Google for Jobs is going to keep growing. We have about 30% of the inflow is coming through Google for jobs, which is big. Chad (19m 16s): Wow! Yes. Lieven (19m 16s): Yeah. But our websites are really optimized for it. So most of our clients, their sites aren't, which is a good thing for us because for Google for Jobs is an inflow channel and it's not really a competitor. But for Indeed of course it's a big competitor and for the local job works as well. And then programmatics, I totally agree it's going to become huge and it's going to be there fast. Joel (19m 37s): I think two things that Lieven said, I think that Google for Jobs has been a really good thing for the niche job board, the local job board. I think that. Chad (19m 46s): Oh yeah. Joel (19m 46s): The free traffic that they're getting from Google. Whereas before they were trying to outran, you know, Indeed or LinkedIn or other big sites. I think that probably has had a lot to do with the success of those local niche job boards. And the second thing is the government sort of influence on these job sites. I was surprised when we went to House of HR in Belgium how important and how, how well trafficked those government sites are. Whereas the US they're an afterthought. Government job boards and check and speak more to that cuz that's more of his wheelhouse. But we never talk about local state job boards in terms of influence with getting people hired. So I think those two things are pretty unique to Europe Chad (20m 28s): I would say to some extent. And also the types of individuals that you're trying to actually connect with in the US but specific question to Lieven, what do you think about the actual blockchain CV? Again, this is something that you would own, it's portable for you, it's your app. Whenever you get background checks, you get accreditations or anything like that, they stay with you. They don't actually go into somebody else's database. What are your thoughts around something like that? Lieven (20m 56s): This is something we definitely need and we should have headed by now. And we're working on this WC, world employment configuration. It's working on a thing like that, on a global scale, but in Belgium we are actually taking the lead. I think House of HR is with the federation for the employers, not the staffing companies. So it's such a stupid thing that when people want to apply at let's say House of HR, they need to fill in so many forms and then they go to Adecco, they go to Randstad, and they need to do it once again and again and again. So it's annoying. So it makes sense that people have one data sets, which they can share with whoever they want. And like you say, they have to be in charge. Lieven (21m 39s): It's a web 3.0 thing. It's about decentralization. I'm owner of my own data and I decide who has access to it and their blockchain will be a big player. I'm sure it's difficult to get it realized because there are so many people involved. Chad (21m 55s): Oh yeah. Think of it from the standpoint of assessments and background checks and those types of things too. So if I've taken an assessment already, I can have that assessment in my wallet, I can have that background check, it's within the last three weeks or six weeks or something like that. So I mean, being able to carry it, this isn't just about, you know, your information and being able to make it easier to apply. Right? This is being able to ensure that those individuals do have those skills. And because we always talk about requirements and we look at a resume, it doesn't mean that person's not lying on their requirements or they're outdated or what have you. I think this, this could be a very large ecosystem that goes beyond just an easy apply. Lieven (22m 40s): Yeah. But it starts with easy applying, it's convenience. And also these, this data should be accessible by governments to a certain extent for pension funds, for example. How long have you been working? Where have you been working? Once it's on a blockchain, it's proven it should be right. Then it could be used by government as well. It could be used maybe by unions if they want to, if they get access to, there are so many people who could be involved and it's the hard part is getting everyone aligned. Joel (23m 9s): That's an interesting dynamic that's sort of European in nature, right? Chad? We were start talking like, government should have access, Labor union should have access, whereas the American attitude would be it's blockchain nobody can get to it. Like it's mine. No company. No government. Like this is my data. Chad (23m 24s): Unless they're gonna get paid. So if the union or you know, the government is actually looking to provide you with benefits or something like that, you're like, Oh fuck yeah, you can have my information. Yeah, Joel (23m 32s): Of Course. Because I don't know, I think it could be a thorn in the process. I don't know, and I'm no blockchain expert, but what would stop LinkedIn from saying, Hey, here's your LinkedIn blockchain passport and you can use your LinkedIn resume test everything elsewhere than having the Indeed blockchain verification. Lieven (23m 52s): And this is something we need to avoid. I mean, you could have tons of blockchains. No, no, there should be one blockchain, like all kinds of blocks, but just a single block. I mean, I've been working at House of HR for six years, this is documented and I should get a blockchain for that. But if you have tons of different blockchains, then we're back to start. Yeah. It's just a different way of doing the same thing over and over again. Chad (24m 14s): Yeah, I think we've had, we've had companies talk about this year after year after year, Joel, we remember being at iCIMS headquarters where they were talking about the blood passport, the passport, right? And this, I mean, shit, that was in 2019? Joel (24m 28s): '18 maybe. Chad (24m 28s): We haven't seen any of that shit happen. Yeah, it might have been '18. So yeah, no, I think it's one of those things where, first off, if Indeed comes out with a blockchain, you've gotta remember all of the other organizations that also need to participate in this blockchain. This is also for assessments and being able to drive applies and those types of things. Other job boards are not gonna wanna participate in something like that. So it's going to have to be a third party. Same thing with a LinkedIn or something of that nature. Yeah. So it's gonna be some type of a third party that does it. Lieven (24m 59s): I agree. Joel (25m 0s): Yeah. I think ideally it would be an open source thing that wasn't really controlled by anybody and how you build that, I have no idea. But it's like building WordPress for blogs. Chad (25m 9s): Sounds like cryptocurrency and I don't wanna have anything to do with that at all. Joel (25m 12s): I need to take a break to work all this shit out. Let's do something. I'm more comfortable with little buy or sell when we get back. All right guys, who's ready for little buy or sell? Chad (25m 24s): Yes! Joel (25m 24s): I know I am. You know how this works everybody, we talk about three companies that have recently gotten money or gotten highlighted. Hey, we read a summary and then each of us will either buy or sell that business. Are you guys ready to play a little buy or sell? Chad (25m 42s): Bring it. Lieven (25m 44s): Yep. Joel (25m 44s): All right. First up, we have CloudPay. London-based employee payroll software firm CloudPay has announced a $50 million funding round that brings total funding to $255.5 million for the company founded back in 1996. That was a good year, wasn't it Chad? CloudPay connects all employee pay processes, including payroll payments and on-demand pay through a unified platform available across over 130 countries in 168 currencies. Chad, are you gonna buy or sell CloudPay? Chad (26m 20s): 130 and 168? That's all I needed to see. This is a fast moving sector. It it really is/ to be able to pay somebody quickly. I mean, what do people want? They want their pay and they want it now. To be able to provide that hours after they clock out or maybe even minutes after they clock out again through verification, getting that paid. This is tech of the future. It's today. This is something that we're all going to get used to. Buy, buy, buy. Joel (26m 49s): Yeah, so my initial thought was that this sounded a little bit like a feature that maybe HiBob or Personio, or one of the other sort of global platform that they could just sort of tap in there. You and I talked about Beekeeper on the weekly show. We'll talk about it towards the end of this show as well. But I love these companies that organically sort of grow. They put in the hard work, they get, you know, customer by customer, they raise money over a long period of time and these guys being founded back in the nineties, Summer To Beekeeper, the world has come to them. The world has come to them in that we're hiring and employing people all across the globe. We need a way to pay these people and pay them quickly. Now what what sets them apart for me in terms of going from feature to full on product is their recent partnership with Visa Direct. Joel (27m 40s): That partnership will enable them to connect these multiple debit accounts, credit card accounts. Chad (27m 43s): Yeah. Joel (27m 44s): They'll be able to pay people all across the globe in a easy way. They're almost leapfrogging the whole platform that might gobble them up by going right to the companies that pay people. Chad (27m 53s): Yes. Joel (27m 54s): For their work. So for me it's like the world is caught up to them. They're ready for the world. Oh, Sheila, you know how it goes. This one also, Chad I can't believe I found a way to bring ready for the world into this podcast, right? Leaving Chad (28m 10s): And before it even hits this, I just wanna make sure that everybody knows out there, especially in the US when they say, you know, American Express, don't leave home without it. That's only if you're not coming to fucking Europe because they don't take American Express over here people. Visa's the way to go. Lieven (28m 28s): Yeah, MasterCard. Joel (28m 29s): You can leave home without it. Lieven (28m 31s): American Express. I always thought it was something like eighties. Joel (28m 33s): It was huge in the eighties and then Seinfeld relaunched it in the nineties. Yeah, sorry. All right man, you got two buys on this thing. Where do you stand? Lieven (28m 41s): I like it when people pay me. I prefer when they pay me on time. I'm really not interested in the tech technicalities. It's, CloudPay is paying in the cloud, who cares? But as long as they pay me, it's fine. But the only thing that concerns me or that worries me is when I'm thinking about clouds, I think about Amazon. Amazon cloud services. I think about you have Visas, I think about centralization of data and I don't think whatever people pay me should be on their servers. So I'm going to go against the flow here now. I will sell. Chad (29m 16s): Lieven has all of his money in mattresses. Joel (29m 21s): I think Lieven is letting his adoration and love for Elon to cloud his. Lieven (29m 26s): I must say. Elon is screwed up a bit. He's screwed up a bit. Joel (29m 31s): You think the quickest personal brand destruction in history. Yeah, you think so? Chad (29m 36s): Just a tad. Joel (29m 37s): Alright. Lieven (29m 38s): He's gonna surprise us. I still believe he's going to surprise of a big scheme he's hiding for now. But I'm getting a bit worried. Joel (29m 45s): A little bit worried. Wow. I'm worried if Lieven's a little bit worried. All right, let's get to Job Protocol. Lieven (29m 54s): Ah. Joel (29m 55s): London based decentralized employee recruitment portal Job Protocol has announced a 1.5 million Euro precede round ahead of its official launched that occurred on November 8th, just last week. Job Protocol's, core service works with companies to advertise new positions with a quote, "Recruitment Bounty" end quote encoded as a web three smart contract. The startup says, after listing on a Job Protocol or listing a Job Protocol, you'll get a ton of candidates. We go through all of them and push the most relevant ones straight to your ATS or email inbox. It sounds too good to be true. And we're throwing in Web3 Lieven. You've got some strong feelings on this one. Joel (30m 35s): What you got? Lieven (30m 39s): Indeed. Because the two founders are Belgians. Those are two young Belgium guys. sfx (30m 44s): Sexy music. Lieven (30m 45s): I know, I know if it's Belgium it's got be good. But one of the founders is Jacob Claerhout. He was mentioned in Forbes 30, below 30 last year. He lives in London, but he's Belgium. And he used to be active as a venture capitalist at Bartech. And during nights, and I believe during weekends as well, he was building a platform for aspiring venture capitalists to prepare for the job. And the other founder is Boris Gordts, he's also a Belgium who used to work at Data Camp and he launched some kind of an app for students. So those two guys decided to do something, I imagine myself, that we were setting in a pub drinking beer and thinking we need to make some money for ourself. Lieven (31m 25s): Let's launch a company, let's do something with blockchain recruitment web 3.0. And they came up with a great idea and it's called Job Protocol. And at first I was kind of skeptical. I mean, young people launching a company Job Protocol, stable coin, blockchain, who cares? But I started reading into it because the De Tijd, the financial newspaper in Belgium wrote an article on them this weekend and they asked me for a comment. So I had to do my homework and I got really excited about it. It's really an interesting concept. So for those who don't know, and maybe in Europe still many people don't. Web 3.0 is a concept. It's like going back to, in my opinion, the worldwide web in the early days, the almost an artistic days of the internet. Lieven (32m 9s): It's against big tech, it's against centralization of data. Now data is mostly owned by big tech companies, but Web 3.0 is about decentralization. It's about taking ownership of your own data, et cetera. No authority but myself. Power to the people. You know, if you don't wanna be numbered, don't give your name, privacy all Web 3.0. And I'm really a big fan of the whole concept. Job Protocol they want to be a decentralized community. So they want people who are using it to be involved also in decision making. It's like almost communism, but in a good way. And it's a referral system. So they're going to use their platform to recruit people for the web 3.0 industry. So it's kind of an niche site. Lieven (32m 49s): They're going to use their community and people are going to get a referral fee on average 10,000 euros and 10% percent on top of that fee is going to the platform. And there will be tokens used and people can use tokens to vote in the decision making process. To raise this community heading to the process or the people will be involved in making decisions. I'm not sure how it's going to go and very detailed, but I really like the concept. They're going to pay the bounties and some kind of a crypto stablecoin. Normally I'm not a big believer in crypto, but in this case, since our aiming for people for the web 3.0 community thing, those people probably will believe in crypto and they will trust it. Lieven (33m 31s): I thought if I was going to launch something like that for a normal community and I was talking about crypto, people would just not believe me. And it's all about trust. If you want to give people a bounty for bringing the right candidates, then it's about trust. And in this case it's could work. So I'm definitely, as you can imagine, a buyer. Joel (33m 53s): That's a strong buy from Lieven. Going in the hole on that one, I felt a little differently and Chad I guess you can break the tie. So the URL is JobProtocol.xyz, which is so very web three, don't you think? So we talk about European stakes on the show and usually how bad they are, at least from my perspective. So apparently there's a stake in Belgium that will change my mind that Lieven has told us about. Anyway, Job Protocol is basically bounty jobs with blockchain and web three attached to it. Another startup called Brain Trust. And we've talked about Sir Richard's CV wallet are on the blockchain trend as well. At this point, to me, the jury is out on web three as it relates to employment. Joel (34m 38s): I think meltdowns like the one at FTX this week are not gonna help any blockchains cause. Only the metaverse right now is surrounded by more hype than the blockchain. Time will tell. But if I were putting my money down, I would have to pass on Job Protocol. Lieven (34m 56s): You just didn't get it Joel. You just didn't get it. Joel (34m 58s): Oh, that's very likely. Yes. Chad (35m 1s): That's what it is. I all I have to say is word salad, baby. Just because you use the term web three, smart contracts, you throw in crowdsourcing and then you pay people in crypto at the end right there. I don't fucking trust that in a heartbeat. Then it says candidates are vetted by Job Protocol. How? Smart contracts, I mean, again, you can't vet unless you actually have the connections and the infrastructure set up with all of the assessments, all of the educators, those types of things. What are you gonna vet? How do we actually know? So from my standpoint, one of the things that I hate is looking at organizations that are built, startups that really have no background in this business. Chad (35m 48s): And I'm talking about more of the recruiting and HR and talent-management side of the house. So if something new comes along, they'd better have deep experience in this. And I don't see it here again. Can't trust them. It's a sell. Lieven (36m 6s): More for me, more for me. Joel (36m 7s): Tell your buddies to call us. We'll get, we'll get a demo. We'll bring 'em on the show. They can sell us on the idea. Lieven (36m 16s): It's racism. You just don't like Belgium people. Joel (36m 17s): We love Belgium people. Chad (36m 19s): I don't know if you've met, I don't know if you've met Rika Coppens, but I I love that one. Joel (36m 26s): Yeah, but Rika Rocks. Lieven (36m 28s): Rika Rock. Don't forget to vote. RikaRocks.be Joel (36m 31s): All right. In the spirit of always bringing OnlyFans into our show. How about the OnlyFans of job candidates? That's right. Rather than assuming the value of a match to the tune of thousands of euros for intermediaries and employers. Startup Earn Hire chooses to pay the owners of a resume when their resume is viewed. Founded in 2017, Earn Hire says it's the same revenue job boards Indeed, LinkedIn, etcetera used to thrive. And that earn hire innovates job search by providing you equity and ownership in your own content. No money raised, but they were mentioned in the European job board transitioning article. Joel (37m 13s): Money for resume views and your chicks for free. Chad, are you buy or sell on EarnHire? Chad (37m 19s): I heard GJ talk about it, or at least I read him talk about it. And I thought this seems pretty interesting. So I go to the website and I click on a button that says learn more about resume profile. And I got a 404 every button that I click to try to learn more is a job seeker. I got a 404 error, not good, right out of the gates. Joel (37m 40s): Yep. Chad (37m 40s): I jumped into the actual resume profile area where the employers go. This is where they actually take a look to see if they can find any talent and then they'll pay for viewing. It was all junk test like accounts. Then I go to the about page and it talks about this company called Bintl Hire in the FAQs. So this company is all over the place. Yeah, I don't know what GJ was looking for. Plus, if you remember, job.com actually had a pay feature, right? And they had these great credit cards and all this other fun stuff and what did Aaron say they did with the credit cards? Chad (38m 23s): They fucking killed them because nobody wanted them. So this whole thing to me just seems like a hot steaming pile of garbage that I want to have nothing to do with. sfx (38m 33s): machine gun bullets Joel (38m 33s): Yikes. Yikes. All right. Yeah, you frankly stole a lot of my thunder. A lot of 4 0 4 errors. Just a lot of not ready for prime time. The design of this thing looks like somebody did it in 2003. It looks like a one man shop, one man show. So there's the business commentary. These guys clearly aren't A+ like level business. Chad (39m 0s): No. Joel (39m 1s): Yeah. Let's put that aside. Let's talk about the idea of paying people for access to resumes or whatever. And you mentioned job.com, which is basically like when you get hired and like it was really confusing. You had a lot of complexity of this stuff. I was gonna bring in Purple Squirrel, the business where you can pay money to talk to someone at, you know, Apple or Google. And apparently that's gonna give you the inside track on how to get a job at these companies. I think the employees that use the company brand to like make money on the side is kind of bullshit, but that's aside the point. Yeah. Chad (39m 34s): And then you have another company called 21.co. I don't know if you remember these guys or not. Yes, Yes. Joel (39m 40s): So they start out as you set a price, you email me and I promised to email you back. So this was fun for entrepreneurs or companies that wanted to talk to investors. You know, if I wanna get an email from Mark Andreson, I'm gonna pay a hundred and whatever dollars it was to get an email back from him. Well that company now in line with the blockchain theme of today, now they're a crypto company now. So, that business model didn't really take, so I think as a business it's hot garbage, as an idea sort of a business idea as well, it's equally as bad. So for me, Earn Hire is a sell and I need to talk to GJ as to what he was thinking when he touted this company. Lieven (40m 28s): Okay, let's get beyond Earn Hire as a company and the 4 0 4s, let's just think about the concept. The owner of Resume gets paid every time his resume was looked upon. Something like that. That is the whole concept. Sounds good, but it's so easy to fraud on this. I mean, I can just look for what skills our company is looking for the most right now. Let's say you're looking for a Java developer.net programmer as a recruiter and you're using this database and nine out of 10 of the resumes will be fake because people have been uploading them to make some money. So just because of this. I would say definitely sell. Chad (41m 8s): Anytime you have to try to manage whether you The applies or the candidates that you're getting are real or not, just like the whole Indeed bullshit that they're talking about right now. Lieven (41m 16s): YES. Chad (41m 17s): Exactly With the paper apply Start, you have to go back and you have to check that and you have to submit that back to Indeed. And you've gotta manage the whole process, which makes it even worse, but yet they're trying to make it better. This is the same hot steaming pile. Joel (41m 33s): Keep it simple people. Yes. Keep it simple. All right. That's another round of buy or sell. The one that you know and love as always, we agree on at least one of those companies, everybody. And that brings us to the end of buy or sell. All right guys, big news last week out of Europe. Chad and I covered this on the Weekly show, but wanted to get Lieven's take on Beekeeper. A little company that Chad and I were really, really high on. Here's a refresher for those that didn't hear. Beekeeper, a Swiss based company that connects the non desk workforce to operational systems and communication channels has raised 50 million in a series C funding round, bringing total funding to $146.5 million. Joel (42m 20s): Since 2020, Beekeeper has seen growth with thousands of frontline business locations now using the platform in more than 150 countries. Lieven, what are your thoughts on Beekeeper if it were buy or sell? Are you a buyer or seller? Lieven (42m 30s): No, I just, I really, I really, really, really loved it and I think I'm going to introduce it to my own company. I've never seen an app this complete. It's, wow! Chad (42m 43s): Makes me feel good about all the adoration I gave it last week. Lieven (42m 48s): Yeah, it's involving chat stream campaigns. It's about inbound outbound. Analytics. It's everything is in is involved so it's great. Chad (42m 55s): Pretty Fucking cool. Lieven (42m 56s): And something I read, my first opinion was the same as something I read on your podcast. It's like an internet but in an app accessible and that's true. And the best thing was that when I tried to start my trial version of the app, I could install it on my phone. This is something I have never seen before. It asked for my email address. I gave it and then it's suddenly it showed my email. Sorry, my, my logo from House of HR and my, color, just because I'm Lieven at House of HR. It probably went to the website. It got the logo and it got the primary colors and it suggested the look and feel of the app without me having to upload anything at all. Lieven (43m 39s): I've never seen something like that. Chad (43m 41s): It stole your css. Yeah, Lieven (43m 43s): Yeah. Sort of indeed. Yeah. Chad (43m 45s): Hijacked the CSS? Yeah. And hijacked the css. Lieven (43m 47s): That's awesome. It's extremely convincing that our service will be great. I'm definitely a buyer, Joel (43m 51s): Boys. It's been fun. Another one is in the can Chad have fun in London. I'll be thinking about you when I'm in Southern California. Chad and Cheese (44m 5s): We out. Lieven (44m 5s): We Out. OUTRO (44m 51s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Who doesn't love a good underdog story? LinkedIn, apparently. It's starting to look like King Kong has finally won its legal battle with spunky start-up HiQ Labs, which we cover this week. Moving from 800-lb. gorillas to tiny bees, Beekeeper has raised $50M to grab a huge chunk of the mobile workforce management market. What's more? New York City's pay transparency law is off to a rocky start, buy-or-sell with 5MINS, WorkTorch and Sparkplug, and those crazy Swedes at Tengai are back, so cue the ABBA! 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 (1s): 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 (21s): Oh, yeah. Florida is where woke goes to die and this podcast is where your IQ points go straight to hell. Hi, boys and girls you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "no wave" Cheeseman. Chad (38s): This is Chad "Pink Splash" Sowash. Joel (41s): On this week's show, LinkedIn gets high IQ as a kite, Beekeeper finds the Honey Pot and New York salary transparency law is off to a rocky start. Forget about it. Let's do this. Wave that's the first. Or what was it you said? Chad (1m 5s): Pink Splash. So Stephen Joel (1m 6s): Pink Splash. Chad (1m 7s): Yeah. Stephen Cobert actually said the Red Wave was actually a pink splash, kind of like when Republicans accidentally washed their clan robes with their MAGA hats. Joel (1m 17s): Was that what Cobert said or is that a Sowash original? Chad (1m 21s): No, that was Cobert. That was very great. Joel (1m 24s): That was Cobert. Chad (1m 24s): I mean, I gotta say, I would love to see more balanced politics in the US, but it's hard to ask for balance when one party is full of election deniers, racist and Jewish space laser enthusiasts. It's really hard these days. Joel (1m 41s): Best news is Trump may be done. I'm probably saying that a little bit early. He has a big announcement on Tuesday, which I'm sure we'll talk about on the show as well. But Chad (1m 53s): Yeah. Joel (1m 54s): His candidates got smacked around. Chad (1m 55s): Yeah. Joel (1m 56s): The party is not happy with him. From what I understand. DeSantis totally cleaned up in Florida. If it means the end of Trump, so be it. Chad (2m 7s): Yeah. The hardest part is you have a Trump lackey who's a hell of a lot smarter than Trump is. I mean, DeSantis is a incredibly smart dude. I mean, imagine, Trump was the president for four years. Imagine if he had half a brain, the shit that he could wrecked. All the shit that he already did wreck. Right? Joel (2m 26s): Yeah. I mean, if I'm just sort of looking at it, you know, non-politically, I know the Dems are really happy about the result, but you know, they may have gotten rid of Trump and gotten DeSantis in return. I'm not sure that's something that you would prefer to have happen, and you're probably more likely to have Biden run again, which I'm not sure a lot of people on either side of the aisle wants to see happen. So it'll be an interesting two years. Chad (2m 52s): It will. Very. Joel (2m 53s): It's getting kind of hectic. You'll be on a beach in Portugal and you know, who cares? Chad (3m 1s): Who cares? Joel (3m 1s): Who cares? Who cares? Well, let's get to Shoutouts. Chad (3m 4s): Shoutouts, okay. Okay. Okay. Joel (3m 5s): Aside from the election piece. Chad (3m 6s): Geez, I gotta start out with something fresh right out the oven. It's hot so be careful... I mean, literally. Joel (3m 12s): Bring it. Chad (3m 13s): This hasn't been dropped yet, so it looks like iCIMS is looking to make a BIG BIG move as Steve Lucas steps down from the CEO position and sources tell me that Brian Provost will be the successor. Brian's company, Accentis was just purchased by UKG earlier this year, and prior to that in 2014, he was the CEO of Convey Compliance, which was acquired by guess who Joel? Joel (3m 41s): I don't know. Chad (3m 42s): Vista Equity Partners. Joel (3m 44s): Vista. Chad (3m 45s): Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So bringing your boy in is what it sounds like right now. It's kinda interesting because you're gonna be at ICIMS next week. So the timing's kind of weird, right? Joel (3m 56s): Yeah. It's a volatile time at iCIMS. We've talked about, you know, a lot of longstanding employees leaving, Obviously there was a failed IPO, whether that's, you know, market forces or just the business itself. Steve came in with a lot of hype, you know, with his Marketo background and marketing and some big acquisitions that we've talked about on the show that we've been very complimentary of. And now it sounds like Steve is out the door. So now they're having their annual event. Lots of speakers, lots of people we know. I've been invited to come out. I'm gonna have the mics handy. So I should have some good content from iCIMS, but it sounds like a lot of big things going on. Joel (4m 41s): That's a big deal. CEO leaving a company is not a little thing, and companies that are crushing it usually don't have their CEO leave. So hopefully we'll get some answers around all these questions surrounding circling iCIMS. Chad (4m 57s): It is a very interesting time. I think you could look at it two different ways. Obviously, have the new CEO come in, start to meet a lot of the analysts, a lot of the big clients. I mean, there are tons of different ways to spin this, but I, I think really at the end of the day, this is Vista's call. Obviously Vista wants to make shit happen, and who knows, maybe you know, Steve is going to go to another Vista company down the road, take it a little sabbatical, go to another Vista company. You know how that shit works. I mean, it's all just pieces on a board. Joel (5m 33s): Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's another story of someone that doesn't have the core competencies in our business coming in and trying to, you know, sort of put their spin on what they think we should be doing and ending up in an exodus. There's something to be said for people that take over companies that have actually done some of this stuff and have sold to these customers that holds firm. Chad (5m 58s): Experience counts. Joel (5m 58s): Experience counts. Well, shout out for me a little on the lighter side. Mine goes to Matt Shaver, if that's really his last name, The Cleveland, Ohio based comedian. He went viral this week on TikTok after creating a parody video, impersonating a Twitter employee getting fired via email. He made up a fictional HR lady and a gift on the email of Elon saying, "Time to leave the nest, you are fired." end quote. The parody was so good he had lawyers replying they wanted to represent him against the company. In response, Shaver said, quote, "I'm not surprised it went viral. I'm surprised that so many people believed it." Joel (6m 42s): Of course, it's mostly believable because Elon's mostly a jackass. A shout out to Matt Shaver of beautiful scenic, Cleveland, Ohio. Chad (6m 52s): Scenic, very scenic, big shout out to Ling Wu for pro promoting the brand spanking new German version of the Chad and Cheese podcast, to all of her German peeps in German, by the way, on LinkedIn. It's still incredibly surreal to me that Veritone could clone our voices. And the next thing you know, we're speaking German, Spanish, French and Portuguese. I kind of feel like a kid watching a sci-fi movie in the eighties. Joel (7m 24s): Yeah, that's an apocalyptic science fiction movie, by the way. My friend Chad (7m 28s): Terminator. Joel (7m 28s): I forget who said, but someone said, we're more appropriate in German. Our angry, angry demeanor comes over better in German. Anyway, so I expect us to be huge stars in Germany. Chad (7m 41s): I tell you what, Matt Alder also said that listening... Joel (7m 44s): That British guy. Chad (7m 45s): ... to you speak French is amusing. And what I'm gonna go ahead and hit the sexy sacks if you have it there. sfx (7m 53s): Saxaphone music. Chad (7m 54s): By amusing, I think he means drawing a hot bath, putting on some Luther Vandross and having a soak. Joel (8m 3s): Oh, yes, yes, yes. That is Scottish for dead sexy. Yes. I think, and Matt Alder's mother tongue. Chad (8m 10s): Amusing there. Joel (8m 11s): Shout out to the job board doctor. The guy we know and love is Jeff Dickey Chases. He's got a survey that he does every year of job board owners. Apparently there are still enough job board owners to make this a statistically significant data set. Surprise to me, I'm sure it is to you. A couple highlights from the survey. Number one, duration based job posting still make up over 50% of revenue for job boards. And number two take away, 81% are either very or somewhat optimistic about their site's opportunities in the next 12 months. Recession be damned the job boards are pumped. Joel (8m 51s): Shout out to the job board doctor and his survey Chad (8m 56s): Job boards still got money coming in, still got the monies. Joel (8m 59s): And speaking of money, we're not yet giving money away, Chad, but we are giving away some pretty good shit on the website. If you haven't signed up at chadcheese.com? Click the free link or just go to back slash free. We're talking whiskey from Textkernel, we're talking beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. We're talking t-shirts from JobGet, and we're talking rum with Plum. If it's your birthday month, a shot at getting that. Tons of free shit, you gotta sign up to get it though. And while you're doing that, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform of choice. We love reviews. We love those stars whether they're one or five, it's our oxygen. It's how we get better. Joel (9m 39s): And I don't think that we have enough reviews, so please do that. If you get a chance while you're signing up for free shit. Chad (9m 47s): Review us in German, Portuguese, Spanish, or, or French as well. I mean that, that'll work. Joel (9m 55s): There you go. Everyone at Jobigo, whatever is, that's our amigos and in German. So make sure that they get out there and review us. Chad (10m 2s): Our amigos. Okay, so we're gonna slide into events. We talked a little bit about what you're doing next week. I have to go back to last week because the Web Summit was ridiculous in Lisbon. 70,000 plus attendees, five pavilions, at least three stages per pavilion and more startups than you can imagine. And they changed those startups out every day. This is a three day event. The speakers lounge was larger than most expo halls that we see in any HR or expo conference in our space. Chad (10m 41s): Yeah. The speaker's lounge, they had chefs, they had wine and champagne. And this is all thanks to our friend Keith Sonderling, the E E O C commissioner that's over there for inviting Julie and me. This was literally at another level. I understand it's tech in the broad scope, so it was tech, everything. We saw recruitment tech there. We saw Ecotech, we saw obviously, you know, the metaverse types of tech, everything that you can think of. So it was very broad, so it was big, but my God, it was fucking amazing. Joel (11m 11s): Yeah. And I love, you mentioned this last week, how they swap out the vendors every day. So I love that you have Chad (11m 16s): The startups. Joel (11m 16s): One day to get your vendor on your startups. Yeah, I think that's really cool. By the way, the pictures of the lounge that you shared, you'd have to like drag me out there to do a presentation or do an interview because that shit looked dope. That shit looked dope. Chad (11m 33s): Yes. Yes. And when you have a chef that's sitting there and they're fixing things up and they got the little squirt bottles and they're doing the little thing and then they present it to you, you're like, Oh my god. Joel (11m 44s): Yeah. You remember the little baguettes in Paris, right? The little chocolate filled? Chad (11m 46s): Yes. Joel (11m 47s): That was, how hard was it to get me out of the table from those things? That'd be the same thing. Yeah. Heading to Santa Monica, California next week. Chad (11m 57s): Nice. Joel (11m 57s): Our friend Tyler Weeks, big fan of the show. Shout out to him. He has agreed to wear a Chad and Cheese t-shirt on stage when he presents next week. Chad (12m 4s): That's what I'm talking about. Joel (12m 8s): Big ups to our boy, Tyler, my man, always good to see him. And unfortunately, Stephen McGrath our favorite. You know what, sfx (12m 14s): Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, If it's no Scottish, it's crap! Joel (12m 18s): Stephen will not be there, which means my liver gets a pass on this one. Chad (12m 22s): What? Oh man. Joel (12m 23s): Thank God, man. But we will, we will be missing. Stephen. Stephen, big time. Chad (12m 27s): That's no shit. Joel (12m 28s): Also, who will be missing some deal with birthdays will be missing some cake I guess, on this one. But a few few fans are celebrating another trip around the sun this week. And you remember, rum with Plum. If it's your birthday month, there's a chance to win. Our friend Mason Wong won for this month and he's enjoying a nice bottle of rum hell yeah, thanks. Thanks to Plum, but also celebrating a birthday this week. sfx (12m 57s): Happy Birthday! Joel (12m 58s): Jennifer Ravalli, good friend of the show. Jamie Carney, Charles Hillman, Mike Vogel. And today, as we record this, our friend Julie Calli celebrates a birthday. And by the way, if you haven't checked out our latest interview, Future Jerks with Indeed or by Indeed, make sure you check that out. Julie was actually at the event, has some super insight, is a great conversation. If you haven't listened to that, make sure you go back into the archives. Chad (13m 23s): Yeah. We did say t-shirts by JobGet right, because those things are. Joel (13m 27s): We did. Chad (13m 28s): They're like a hug from Chad and Cheese. Joel (13m 32s): JobGet gets some free promo at the iCIMS event with Tyler Weeks and me wearing T-shirts. Chad (13m 38s): So don't forget birthdays sponsored by Plum. That's plum.io. Get out there and take your plum. Is that what the kids say? Now these, these days, take your plum. Joel (13m 48s): Take your plum. Chad (13m 49s): Get your plum. Joel (13m 51s): It sounds like something grandma, grandma might have said back in the day, her error. What is it makes you regular? Something juice? Plums. Chad (13m 60s): Prune juice. Joel (14m 0s): That's it. Prune and Plums. That sounds like a snack made in heaven. All right, Week nine of fantasy footballs in the books. Everybody, our friends at Factory Fix are nice enough to support our bad habits that we enjoy every Sunday here in the States. Here's the leaderboard from number one to the cellar. Number one, we got Chris “C’ Mon” Mannion and number onesSerge “Gretzky” Boudreau number two, Matt “Sugar” Hill “Gang”. Dennis “Rodman” Tupper, “Smokin’” Joe Wilkie, “Republic of” Chad Sowash, Joel “It’s all gouda” Cheesman, “Chris” Christy Kelling, Jason “Statham” Putnam, Mike “Huckabee” Schaefer, James “Bond” Gilliam, “Oh” Danny Boy Shoemaker round out the 12 players in Fantasy Football with Chad & Cheese, and we're about halfway. Joel (14m 53s): Well, we're halfway through the season now, getting close to the end. It's been a fun trip. You and I are right there in the middle, hoping to get up to the top. The final four will be in the playoffs, so you gotta be in one of those four spots to make it happen. Chad (15m 14s): Topics! Joel (15m 14s): All right, stop me if you've heard this one before. The legal fight that's about as old as this podcast may finally be coming to a close. linkedIn last Friday announced a win in a six year lawsuit against HighQ Labs Incorporated. A now dormant company that had scraped LinkedIn data. Quick refresher. HighQ was scraping LinkedIn profile data to analyze and predict the retention risk for employees. LinkedIn issued a cease and desist letter to HighQ and a bunch of similar companies back in 2017. HighQ, which was founded in 2012, went dormant in 2019 after being unable to find further investors. Joel (15m 58s): Shocker. And the loss of major clients according to court records. The case isn't officially over, however, it's still set for trial because the central question it raised, whether HQ's action violated a federal anti-hacking law remains unresolved. Who's paying the legal bills at this point? Who knows? Does anyone still care? Chad, what's your take on this never ending saga? Chad (16m 25s): Well, it seems like, at least from these reports, that LinkedIn succeeded in diverting the real issue. They obviously presented evidence specific to how HighQ was extracting data and the focus of the trial should not have been on the how. But the bigger question, who? Who does the data belong to? Is my data on LinkedIn mine? And focusing on the method instead of the bigger overarching question, the court has created a precedent that might be hard to overturn. Not that it can't be, but it might be hard. Now think of this though. What is the impact for startups? Indeed scrapes. Google scrapes, but they are past the point where, you know, companies are rebelling against them. Chad (17m 10s): Nobody wants to push away Indeed in Google. But what would've happened if this was enacted back in the day when Indeed was just a little baby aggregator, right? So this could be a problem. How's this gonna impact companies that could perspectively be more innovative? Not to mention who does the data belong to? In this case, they're saying it belongs to LinkedIn, it belongs to the actual vendor, not us. Joel (17m 38s): Look, this is America Jack, and we may love a good underdog story, but the overdog is king in the legal system. LinkedIn did exactly what they wanted to do, use our resources to smother this smart mouth startup into oblivion. And that's exactly what happened. HighQ is outta business, it's investors are burned and its customers are back to paying out the nose for you guessed it, LinkedIn, God bless America. So where do we go from here? Number one, status quo. LinkedIn stays the 800 pound gorilla. Number two, King Kong gets a Godzilla, maybe Indeed or Slack or Twitter or Google or whoever you want to put in there might enter the picture and become a competitor. Joel (18m 29s): Or number three, something totally new takes over. Whispers of blockchain, for example, are being floated around. And our own homeboy, Sir Richard Collins, has just launched CV Wallet to possibly try and do just that. My guess, at least for the next decade or so. LinkedIn stands alone. King Kong ain't got shit on LinkedIn. End of story. Chad (18m 55s): Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because the defacto resume for many nowadays is just send me your LinkedIn. So that's what people are using and yeah, talking about Richard and Beverly and what they're doing with CV Wallet is something that, you know, should have been done a long time ago. The only problem is I don't think the tech was available to be able to do that. So I think we're gonna see some new products pop up. The question is traction, right? And being able to thwart the huge fucking monstrosity we know as LinkedIn. Joel (19m 31s): Yeah, I mean the economy is a scale and if LinkedIn was just, Hey, here's your profile page, and that's it. Like, it used to be sort of like, remember MySpace when it was just, Hey, here's my online profile and the only thing you really did was check out new bands or adjust your top nine friends or how many top friends you had. I mean, LinkedIn has this, you know, economies of scale, everyone's on it, network effects, they got the dopa hit when you post something. People like it, people share it. The communities there. If it were just, Hey, it's a resume, I'd say it could, it could be dethroned. And I think the idea of having like a resume in your Apple wallet or your Android wallet is really appealing, but it has none of that other stuff, right? Joel (20m 16s): It's not a B2B sales channel, it's not a dopa hit. Like if, if, if blockchain can solve that sort of, or bridge that gap, I think there's something there. But otherwise I see nothing on the horizon that's gonna dethrone LinkedIn. Chad (20m 34s): Well, and it's interesting too because the malice now toward Facebook and Twitter, you know, the Zuckerberg and fucking Elon Musk there are more people that are flocking to LinkedIn for more social interaction than they have been with Twitter and Facebook. Joel (20m 50s): Yeah. Yeah. You joined what, Mastodon this week? Chad (20m 53s): Yes. Joel (20m 54s): That's the Twitter killer. How was that? What was your take on Mastodon? Chad (20m 57s): It feels like a mom and pop shop, to be quite frank. Yeah, sometimes the servers are slow. I mean, you have to pick the server that you want to be on, which is kinda weird, you know? So it is definitely different, but it's worth checking out. I think I have maybe five people I connected with on Mastodon. That's about where I'm at right now. Joel (21m 18s): Yeah. As much as I love the fact that you can actually edit your tweets or your masts or whatever, Mastodons Chad (21m 27s): They're tweets. Joel (21m 28s): Or whatever they're calling it, I don't think, like, I'm too old and I've built like too much on these, I guess old in quotes, "social channels" to like go try and build a new one. I just don't have the energy or the care. Like you're on TikTok and you're doing stuff on TikTok. Like, I don't have the energy. I'm too busy looking at, you know, you know what? Chad (21m 51s): I look at big booty Latinas and bug fights. Yes. Joel (21m 54s): That's right. That's right. And speaking of bug fights, let's talk about Beekeeper. Damn, that's a good segue. The 10 year old Zurich Switzerland based startup that connects the non desk or desk-less workforce to operational systems and communication channels, has raised $50 million in a series C funding round. This brings total funding to $146.5 million dollars. The company intends to use the funds to continue to invest in product and development and establish its leadership in the frontline success category. Since 2020, Beekeeper has seen growth with thousands of frontline business locations now using the platform in more than 150 countries. Joel (22m 44s): Desk-less. It's a thing. Chad, what's your take on beekeeper? Chad (22m 47s): So Beekeeper was founded in 2011. It took a pandemic for this segment to explode. It took the great resignation for employers to understand how important this segment is. Think of how disconnected some of those employees felt, how little control or influence they actually had as well. And then employers were like, eh, oh, wait a minute, this could actually make employees' day better, which means we might be able to retain them. Not to mention we might be able to provide some efficiencies that are in there. Oh, wait a minute, this might be good for business? It takes a goddamn pandemic for companies to start to understand this and for a platform that made sense the entire time to actually gain traction, I mean, humans are just fucking stupid. Chad (23m 37s): Anyway, Beekeeper revenue raised 100%, aka double during the pandemic. They just opened a marketplace in June of this year. So they, much like we've seen with applicant tracking systems and core talent platforms, this is a great way for an organization to not have to build or buy, they partner until they actually get to the point where they can start buying shit. But I mean, overall, I think, to me, this is something that has been long, long overdue. Joel (24m 5s): Yes, your Honor. It's true. This man has no desk. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. A little Ghostbuster's reference. I gave a mobile presentation back in the early 2010s. And one of the slides that I had in my presentation was eBay, who had actually built an intranet app for the iPhone and Android so their employees could go on this app and get everything on the internet on the go, Right? It was a cute little idea, but it was very cool. And you could see like where this thing could go for a single enterprise. What Beekeeper did was let's take that idea and give it to an entire company. Joel (24m 47s): And what was a cute idea, really way ahead of its time in 2012, the world is caught up with beekeeper, and now it's like, Oh, they've been doing that for 10 years. They're super entrenched, they've grown organically. Their client list is just jaw, jaw dropping, especially for a little company in Zurich, Switzerland that's made inroads like this. The world has come to them. I love these stories where these companies grow organically. It's a good idea. And just over time, what was way ahead of the curve has finally come to roost, to fruition. Joel (25m 28s): Beekeeper is a great success story. I love these stories versus the ones that's like, Oh, they launched three years ago. They're a billion dollar valuation. They've hired a million people in 12 months. Like, I love these, grow organically stories that the world catches up to them and they had a good idea that came to fruition a decade later. Sometimes good things come to those who wait and do the good work and put in the time. Congratulations, Beekeeper! Chad (26m 1s): Something to be said about discipline and patience and being able to actually put a business plan together that is not high on burn. Joel (26m 18s): And imagine a company in Switzerland being ... Chad (26m 27s): It's like clockwork. Joel (26m 28s): So rigidly committed to a vision. Chad (26m 30s): Like clockwork. Joel (26m 31s): German, Austrian, Swiss DNA. Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Slip it in. Chad. Oh, our new segment. We introduced it last week. We got some stuff we wanna slip in to the show here. That is sort of unofficial news. What you got? Chad (26m 43s): Julie was like, leave it to you and Jewel to sexualize everything. And I'm like, what are you talking about? We're just slipping in some news. I don't understand. Joel (26m 53s): Hey, if her mind's in the gutter, that's not our fault. Chad (26m 58s): That's what I said. That's what I said. Joel (26m 59s): That's not our fault. So Twitter, Meta all kinds of stuff. Meta, 11,000 layoffs. Letter from Zuck. Chad (27m 5s): Geez. Joel (27m 5s): Which I'll give him some credit. It was sort of humble pie, you know, we got ahead of our skis. Chad (27m 13s): He's learning. Joel (27m 14s): I feel bad now. Now they hired 40,000 people during the pandemic, apparently. Chad (27m 19s): Yes. They hoarded talent. Joel (27m 20s): This is a small fraction of the 40,000 that they hired. Chad (27m 23s): Exactly. Joel (27m 25s): I suspect there'll be more. Chad (27m 25s): Yes. Joel (27m 26s): Layoffs as we go on. But yeah, tough times at Meta continue. Chad (27m 31s): Amazing. Yeah, I I gotta say that this, with Elon's antics that are out there. I mean, he used to look like the smartest man on the planet. Now he looks like the goddamn village idiot with him making those stupid moves. Guys like Zuck, who literally, I mean, he was framed as the enemy and the bad guy forever. Now, you know, he can do these things and he looks like the adult in the room. Joel (27m 58s): Elon is now the cloud cover for Zuckerberg. Zuck cannot be happier to have Elon in the social media space. Chad (28m 6s): Exactly. Joel (28m 6s): But yeah, we've got so 50% layoffs at Twitter. Apparently they're hiring people back that he fired because he realized, Oh, we need those people to do some of these things that we needed to do. Chad (28m 18s): Trainwreck. Joel (28m 18s): He killed the whole work from home thing. Remember Twitter was like, we're a hundred percent forever work from home. Elon said, Psych, get your ass back in the office. He's fighting with AOC on Twitter, which is kind of hysterical. Chad (28m 34s): He blocked her. Joel (28m 35s): Yeah. Mr. Free speech, Mr. Free speech blocks a congresswoman. Does he let Trump back on the platform? Maybe that's the big announcement on Tuesday? Chad (28m 46s): No. Joel (28m 46s): I don't know. I don't know. Chad (28m 49s): No. Joel (28m 49s): It's crazy. I also wanted to slip in there, a company called Island is doing enterprise web browsers for companies. So you got a mobile workforce or work from home. Do you really want 'em on Chrome? Do you want 'em on Safari? Do you want 'em on, you know, Firefox where they can kind of get into trouble? These guys are making a corporate web browser for security reasons, for monitoring. I'm sure they just got $60 million or a billion and half valuation. I think it's a cool idea. No one, the fact that no one's thought of it, I thought I'd slip it in to this segment. That Island doing enterprise browsers is kind of cool. Chad (29m 25s): You did a double slip in there. Joel (29m 30s): Yeah. Chad (29m 30s): Just so the listeners can hear that. You did the double. Joel (29m 35s): I did a double D on that one, didn't they? I did a double. All right. Speaking of slipping it in and double Ds. Let's talk about New York City. Chad (29m 49s): New York City? Joel (29m 49s): Listeners will remember that New York City's salary transparency law went into effect earlier this month. And I'm absolutely shocked, Chad, it hasn't gone as smoothly as planned. As numbers started rolling out this week, New Yorkers began calling out some companies for posting extremely broad salary ranges. $50,000 to 145,000 for a reporter opening. $125 to 211,000 for a senior technical writer and $106,000 to 241,000 for a general counsel position. In one case, Citigroup listed several jobs with a salary range of zero to $2 million. I think we both predicted that was gonna happen, although none of us said zero. Joel (30m 35s): I think it was $1 to a million. Anyway, some companies just stopped posting altogether. Chad, I'm sure you're shocked that this is happening. Employers are testing the limits of the law. Imagine that. What's your take on the rocky start to New York City's salary range transparency law. Chad (30m 48s): Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you're gonna break some eggs. It's what's gonna happen. You're not gonna get it right, right out of the gate. I mean, again, this is a shot over the bow. And for companies to start doing this and to start playing these games, they again demonstrate that they really don't give two shits about the job seekers that are out there. I mean, seriously, from zero to $2 million, Give me a fucking break. They said it was a glitch. They said it was a glitch. Yeah, but then they went back and there was like another hundred thousand dollars. You know, Well, wait a minute. That's not a glitch. That's just us being dumb asses. I think what's going to happen, is you're going to start to see individuals who spy this out and they start kicking it over to New York City officials. Chad (31m 40s): As soon as that starts happening, as soon as the enforcement starts happening, that's when it's over. Obviously, there'll be court cases, that's where this is going. It's gotta go to court. Welcome to America! Attorneys get rich and all this other bullshit when really all the employers have to do is be transparent with the people that they want to bring in. This to me is incredibly foolish. It's very Elon Musk like you can say shame on you, but they don't give a shit, man. They just don't care. Joel (32m 9s): Yeah. What does it show me? A 10 foot wall and I'll show you an 11 foot ladder. That tends to be the default for most Americans. You see, you talk about lawyers. How many lawyers do you think Citi Group has? Chad (32m 19s): Oh yeah. Joel (32m 19s): Couple hundred at least in house. So they probably had a lot of fun with that one. Let's throw out zero to $2 million and see what happens. See what they do. I actually do think that the, the public shaming is a little bit embarrassing for companies more so than the legal battles or the fines some of these companies, I think, I think being called out does matter to, to some of them. You know, some of this is growing pains that you mentioned, but some of it is just flat out avoidance. I'm not sure those companies can be helped. The ones that are like, let's just take the jobs down and hire a staffing firm to find these people or just source these people. Joel (32m 59s): But sometimes government has to save business from itself. Yes. The capitalist is saying that. So more than half of job seekers said they have flat out declined a job offer after they found out the salary. That's according to recent survey from our buddies at Adzuna. Chad (33m 18s): Yeah. Joel (33m 18s): What's more, another survey show that over the last five years, US workers have wasted 480 million hours applying for jobs with the wrong salary. At the end of the day, salary transparency is not only good for people, it's also good for business. And I'm optimistic that at some point we'll get 90 plus percent of companies happily, willingly, voluntarily abiding by laws like the ones in New York City. Call me the Eternal Optimist, but I am optimistic. Chad (33m 47s): Really? Hope so. I think it's gonna take a couple of cracks from the bat first, and then they'll get moving. Joel (33m 53s): Yep. Some shaming on social, some fines, some legal battles and, we'll see. But it is good for business. It is good for business. Chad (34m 2s): It is. Joel (34m 3s): It's good for screening. It's good for retention. It's good for all kinds of stuff. Chad (34m 5s): Treating people right is never a bad thing. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Joel (34m 8s): Get with the program people. All right, Chad, let's play a little buy or sell, one of our favorite games. You know how it works? We talk about three startups that have recently gotten money. We read a summary and then you or I buy or sell that company. Are you ready to play a little buy or sell? Chad (34m 29s): Let's do this. sfx (34m 31s): Ding, ding, ding. Joel (34m 32s): All right. Number one, we got Sparkplug. The San Francisco base provider of an incentive management and wage supplementation platform for frontline workers has raised $8 million in a Series A round. This brings total invested to $11.5 million. Well known media guy Jason Calicanis is an investor. The new money will go towards hiring key executive hires and making investments into data development and behavioral science expertise. The company works with more than 1000 US retailers and over 200 brand partners. Chad are you buy or sell on Sparkplug? Chad (35m 9s): I didn't have to go too far down the rabbit hole for this one after being in sales for my entire life. Sparkplug is a solution looking for a problem. A platform like Beekeeper would do more for an organization than Sparkplug does. Sparkplug is like a rat hitting a button for a pellet and good to great salespeople. They're not motivated by the quick fix. So for me, quick message to the co-founders, Andrew and Jacob. If you want to understand what really make people tick, read Dan Pink's book Drive. Chad (35m 50s): This one to me is a sell. Very easily. Joel (35m 53s): Oh, I saw this one a little differently. Wanna make essential workers feel really essential? Make them feel like part of the business? The platform gives frontline workers the ability to earn like owners by rewarding them with cash for every sale they make. The customizable incentive software also empowers brands and retailers to drive sales by mobilizing in-store employees to serve as influencers while delivering real-time campaign data to track and manage efficacy. The big question will be adoption. Will companies who think, you know, we pay enough forego this as an option, is it too complex to implement for most businesses? Joel (36m 38s): Aside from those issues, I think it has a lot of promise. I'm gonna buy Sparkplug. Chad (36m 45s): Earn like owners. You just drank the fucking Kool-Aid. Joel (36m 49s): WorkTorch, the Wichita, Kansas based startup has raised $2.2 million in seed funding. Formerly known as Quick Hire, WorkTorch is a career discovery platform for the service economy workforce. The funding will support growth into new markets, including Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Dallas National, and Atlanta, led by two African American sisters. The platform currently has a roster of over 40,000 service industry applicants actively looking for jobs. Chad buy or sell WorkTorch? Chad (37m 20s): So last week we talked about Qwick, and that to me made complete and other sense from Jump Street. But WorkTorch? Is this a placement platform? Is it a career discovery platform? Is it a retention platform? I get that employers need all of those, but the messaging, especially in early startup mode, they're all over the board. The founders don't have any background in the recruiting and talent management space, but the timing is right for hospitality industry focused platforms like this. Another thing was the rebrand from Quick Hire to WorkTorch really necessary at this point. It just feels like they're all over the place for me. Chad (38m 0s): I love the idea and I love the concepts they're pulling together here, but I cannot handle founders without focus, without discipline. So unfortunately, even though I like the aspects of this, it's just way all over the board and it's a sell. Joel (38m 16s): Yeah, even their testimonials on the site still talk about Quick Hire instead of WorkTorch. So they need to do a little updating and you mentioned focus as a thing. Look, it's a cute story. You know, shining a light on diversity, on businesses and startups is important. I think that we do a good job of that here on the show. That said, I don't see anything here that gets me outta bed in the morning, if you know what I'm saying. Look, there's lots of competition, including some well funded players who are already entrenched in this space. I don't think they're doing anything all that sexy or interesting. I'm extinguishing the light at WorkTorch. Joel (38m 57s): This is a sell for me as well. Chad (39m 0s): It is very hard to get you out of bed, I would say. So, you know. Joel (39m 10s): Come on, man. I said I'm extinguishing the WorkTorch. That's good Dad humor. Chad (39m 17s): Good Dad humor. Yes. Joel (39m 18s): All right. Let's go to Five Mins or minutes. The London-based digital upskilling platform has raised $5.7 million in US dollars in a seed round for its micro-learning platform. Founded in 2021 the company uses social media techniques to train staff in education technology. It hosts employee training content that staff engage with in a similar way to how users engage with social media content. It is presented in a similar way to TikTok. Using scrolling videos that are presented to users via a personalized algorithm. Are workers more likely to engage with and finish courses if presented in a way that mimics videos used for entertainment? Joel (40m 1s): i.e. Big booty Latinas and bug fights. Chad, are you a buy or sell on 5min's? Chad (40m 8s): So if TikTok has taught us anything, it is that short, snackable content is addictive. Training content is usually boring and hard to get through, but if you can make that content snackable, then it's easier to get through. Not to mention when you're chugging through one video, one short video after another, it feels like you've gotten through more, right? As opposed to sitting through an hour worth of boring fucking content. So, you know, if I were an L and D platform, I'd be contacting 5minutes ASAP within the next five minutes because this baby is a buy for me. sfx (40m 49s): Applause. Joel (40m 49s): All right. Attention spans are dead. I remember my first job at McDonald's. They sat me down in a training room, they put in a VCR tape and I had to watch like eight hours over a couple days. Chad (41m 7s): It was horrible. Joel (41m 8s): Of training videos. Chad (41m 9s): So Horrible. Awful. Joel (41m 9s): Oh God, it was awful. Look, our pre-internet, pre-mobile brains are gone building an upscaling solution that's mobile first, TikTok like, and video-centric is not only timely, but it's pretty brilliant. The name kind of blows. It'll be confused with 15five, which is sort of in the same space as well. But for me, man, it's another buy. All right, that concludes another episode of buy or sell. When we get back, let's go to Sweden. Joel (41m 49s): All right, Chad, those nutty Swedes are back. Chad (41m 51s): Gotta love them. Joel (41m 53s): Straight outta Stockholm. The company that brought us the real life digital recruiting robot head has pivoted to a more scalable model. Avatars. The new Humanlike Tengai avatar and candidate app, which Tengai says has a friendly appearance and human-like voice that candidates will like, provides on-demand access to an AI powered interview process complete with efficient screening and assessing candidates personality traits related to work performance. Chad, are you down with this pivot or are you going to miss the bald plastic, creepy androgynous digital face of Tengai? Chad (42m 30s): First and foremost, Tengai was amazing, but this is about scale, scale, scale. The robot was literally the best way to get attention for their unbiased recruiting framework, which t and g has had for decades. But, the robot could never scale. The avatar can scale. So I think what we're seeing here is that this, maybe some people see it as a PR stunt, but it's an evolution. Really. And when we were there in Sweden, I think it was back in 2019, you know, we had this discussion about scalability, maintaining, you know, the physical robots and those types of things and being able to move in this direction. And that was already on the roadmap. So to be able to see it actually come to, you know, fruition is pretty awesome. Joel (43m 17s): Yeah. If the pandemic where people don't wanna talk to other people or you wanna have, like a physical robot interview, people, if the pandemic didn't make the real life plastic head a thing than nothing will. You know, scalability, repairing these things, like a total nightmare. So this is a good move and one they probably had to make, but they get to go from a small pond where they're the only fish in the pond, to a much bigger lake where they have some apex predators to deal with. Chad (43m 47s): Yes. Joel (43m 47s): The good news is T and G, their parent company and sugar Daddy can wheel out some big guns if necessary. Either way, it'll be fun to watch. And if this metaverse thing ever takes off, it could be a huge business opportunity for Tengai. Plus talking about Tengai means we get to dance like the queens we are Chad. Chad and Cheese (44m 18s): We out. We out. OUTROS (44m 19s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTROS (44m 60s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

eBay did it with Flea Markets, Netflix to Blockbuster, but can the old stodgy multi-trillion-dollar staffing industry be changed overnight? Brad Hill, President of Digital at SkillGigs is betting on it, but will he and SkillGigs have what it takes to get past the Firing Squad? You've gotta listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. Firing Squad Intro (0s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (23s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure with another episode of Firing Squad. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, the Ren to my Stimpy, Chad Sowash. And today we welcome to the Firing Squads SkillGigs President of Digital Brad Hill. Brad, welcome to The Firing Squad. Brad (48s): Hey guys. Hey Joel. Hey Chad. Looking forward to it. Joel (51s): Oh, glad to have you here, Brad. Brad listened to his first episode this morning over his Wheaties, so we're not sure how this is gonna go for Brad, but Brad, for our listeners tell us a little bit about Brad, the person. What makes you tick? Brad (1m 4s): What makes me tick? So, let's see. I'll make it in some couple of bullets. I feel like, you know, from a professional perspective, I'm a recovering corporate executive, loving the world of startups today. Shade tree mechanic, struggling to do that, trying to improve my car karaoke capability and not doing a very good job of that. So, but you know, from a standpoint of what makes me tick and listen, I love the passionate about what we're doing in the industry. I love being able to construct and build things. I've always kind of thought that, you know, you've got a couple of options in a career, and the more that you can basically be able to drive and build something and change and disrupt, I enjoy that piece of it. I've got two wonderful boys. Brad (1m 45s): I've got a big spread on them, I got a 17 year old and a four year old. Joel (1m 49s): Oo! I feel you dog, I feel you. Brad (1m 52s): Just praying my 17 year old doesn't make me a grandfather while I'm still got a teenager in the house. So Chad (1m 58s): Good luck on that one. Joel (1m 60s): He will. Brad (2m 1s): Yeah, so I'm a Southerner, born and bred in the state of Mississippi, but I've been in Texas for 22 years. So that's a little bit about me. Joel (2m 8s): Who hails from Tupelo, Mississippi, your hometown? Brad (2m 11s): Other than me? It would be Elvis. Joel (2m 13s): Oh yes. Brad (2m 16s): He's got the claim to that small town in north Mississippi for sure. Joel (2m 20s): And your And your favorite Elvis song is? Brad (2m 24s): Oh gosh, actually that's a good one. Suspicious Minds. Joel (2m 27s): Oh, that's mine too. That's mine too. Chad? Chad (2m 29s): Jailhouse Rock Baby. Joel (2m 30s): That's, Oh, I like that one. I like that one too. Chad (2m 33s): Old school baby. Joel (2m 34s): Alright enough of the pleasantries, Chad, tell him what he is won today. Chad (2m 38s): All right, Brad, well welcome to Firing Squad at the sound of the bell. sfx (2m 43s): Ding, Ding, Ding. Chad (2m 44s): You're gonna have two minutes to pitch SkillGigs. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you with about 20 minutes of Q and A. Be sure to be concise or you're gonna get those crickets, which means tighten up your game and move out swiftly. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna receive either big applause, it's raining skills. Hallelujah. Woo baby. A golf clap. Yeah, there's a slight chance of scattered Benjamin showers, but forecast is not so lucky. And last but not least, the firing squad. Joel (3m 17s): Oh! Chad (3m 18s): It's bone dry out there, baby. No cash showers happening on this one, but you need to get your ass back the drawing board. And better luck next time that's Firing Squad. Are you ready? Brad (3m 29s): Let's do it. Joel (3m 30s): Your two minutes starts right now. sfx (3m 33s): ding, ding, ding. Brad (3m 34s): So Skill Gigs an e-commerce style talent marketplace. So listen, our goal is to basically seamlessly connect healthcare professionals and IT professionals. We use AI to match those work opportunities. I think the most important thing is understand what we're here to disrupt. We're really driving to disrupt the third party agency business model. That business model ripe within inefficiencies and really designed to serve itself, I spent 25 years in that industry. Our main focus to be able to create transparency and empowerment between the buyers and the sellers. So if you think of a buyer as an employer, seller is talent. So we want to crazily create a connection between the two that removes a lot of those middle layers. So arguably what we're saying is like no more recruiters, we're not a job board and we're not a staffing company. Brad (4m 17s): If you think about, you know, we are, you know, kind of from a job board perspective, we are the eBay to the flea market or the iPod to the Walkman, when you think about that as a staffing organization. We want to basically converge the entire process of being able to connect with talent and basically empower that transparency between the two buyers and the sellers to connect. What does that mean? That means we're giving the talent an environment to have something that they've never had before, which is the freedom to be able to choose their pay rate, the freedom to be able to remarket themselves and no longer outsource their fate to a third party recruiter. From an employer perspective, bypassing that relationship with the third party agency allows you to have better cost controls, direct access to that talent and the ability to redeploy that talent. Brad (5m 1s): Now to a buyer and to an employer, from an e-commerce perspective, we offer a lot of discounts and incentives based on the hiring consumption that they would have over the period of time that you're using the platform. But again, I think our biggest component is really the inventory and the talent that we bring in the marketplace. We're now enabling them to have direct access to a corporate recruiter or an employer, not a third party agency. They are able to control their pay rate, they're able to control the ability to remarket themselves and through our 3D resume, which is a patented component of our platform, it gives them a brand, a brand that they can build on over time. And if you think about this from an e-commerce perspective, they have a product. Brad (5m 42s): Their product is their talent. Joel (5m 43s): All right, Brad, your two minutes is up. Thank you for your pitch. All right, let's talk about the name real quick. In scheduling this, I think Chad went with SkillsGigs, SkillsGigs, SkillGigs. It's a little confusing. Like talk about the genesis of the name skills gigs.com looks like no one's using it. Did you try to buy it? Like talk about the name? Brad (6m 9s): Yeah, so you know, we've been around about five years and one of the number one things that we wanted to promote in our marketplace was the skills of the talent, right? We're getting away from some of the abstract connection points and we're wanting to promote that person's talent through the skills that they have. So we really wanted to hone in on the term skill. Now in the last five years, you know, we've seen the growth in the expansion of the gig economy. I like to say being in the staffing industry for 25 years, it was the original gig economy. We just never claimed that terminology. The gig economy has kind of been associated to B2C as well as thinking about the 1099 worker today. But there is a huge population of workers out there that work contract to contract. Brad (6m 51s): And that scenario that we wanted to basically take advantage of, kind of pulling those two terms together to say we wanna promote skills at the main, most component part of your capability as a talent. And we want to basically take advantage of the gig economy kind of terminology that's become very pervasive today. Joel (7m 9s): A five year old company is owning the gig economy acronym there, Chad. That's good. That's good. So you've raised about 1.5 million according to CrunchBase. You took a seed round, not a lot of money. You guys are mostly bootstrap, like talk through that. Brad (7m 25s): Yeah, so we've been bootstrapped since we kicked off about five years ago. What makes us unique I think, and thinking about a startup is kind of where we're at today. So our run rate is a little over $80 million currently today. And we're a profitable organization. So if you think about a tech startup, which is really how we identify ourselves. We are a software as a service (SAAS) kind of platform. Having an organization that is profitable, that's generating that level of run rate in five years, that's over 400% growth. So we're in a unique position to where we've got this stability, the product market fit between the buyer and the seller environment with our customers that we're working with today, and the talent that's seeing this as an alternative that they've never had before to grow that part of our business. Brad (8m 8s): But we also are in the process of raising really our first, most significant round going into next year. So we're looking for a significant raise. And a lot of this is just to take advantage of basically what we believe is a disruptive event in the marketplace, which is basically being able to tell employers, don't call an agency, become your own agency. Give them a platform to build their contingent workforce directly and to be able to redeploy their internal resources and their own talent pool if necessary. So our system is complete end to end. Almost think about a convergence of a VMS system, an MSP system, as well as a job board all into one from the point of publishing a job in the marketplace, curation, hiring. Brad (8m 51s): And then basically what also makes us unique is we handle the EOR component. So we have the payrolling component at back end of the process. Joel (8m 58s): Sounds to me like he's ready to announce some sort of a series A round on the show Chad. I don't know if you're welcome to do so, Brad, if you'd like to. Chad (9m 5s): Said he has a run rate of 80 million. I don't know that he wants anybody else in his pie. That's what it sounds like. Okay. So Brad, how big is the staffing industry? Revenue wise? Brad (9m 18s): The well global tams about a half a billion, a half a trillion dollars, right? $500 billion. Chad (9m 24s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. So big question for me. When you know that the staffing industry is antiquated and they need really a new age operating system, why go head-to-head and try to compete with them instead of just becoming their operating system? Because everything that you've said thus far really meets a head-to-head component as opposed to doing what Indeed did to the job board industry as they came in and they now own it. Why are you going down the go-to market that you are now versus being the operating system for the entire industry, which is a much larger chunk, even though 80 million's a lot, a much larger chunk? Brad (10m 4s): Yeah, that's a great question Chad. And we get that from time to time, right? I mean, we can think about our technology as just basically a platform to utilize for staffing companies to basically aggregate talent. I think the biggest driver for us and one of the unique components of our platform is the way you engage, right? We're envisioning a world to where employers and talent can connect seamlessly, but with the most important components that are to the talent, which is, here I have a job and this is what you're gonna pay. So one of the pieces that's kind of a twist in the way our put system works, kind of where this eBay component comes into play is the way you bid talent. So our customers own their bill rate. We don't tell 'em what they're gonna bill. They basically, ee use AI to curate and match that talent to their jobs. Brad (10m 47s): There's a skill density built into the job that they publish and a skill index that quantifies the skills of the talent. Once they bid that talent, the talent's gonna receive the job on their mobile device as well as their pay rate. So if you think about in the world of digital or in healthcare, when the demand is high and supply is low, you have to promote something that's gonna be the most important attribute to that talent. And that's one of those components which now the talent is able to accept, deny or they can actually rebid that. So we see this component that is bigger than just being able to provide the next generation AI platform to a staffing company to basically go out there and curate talent. And we also see a changing shift in the way corporate recruiting's starting to look. Brad (11m 30s): Corporate recruiting is starting to have to build elasticity in their workforce, not just through permanent hiring. They want more control of their contingent hiring capability. So we're basically allowing them to have their platform to build that contingent workforce, lower their total cost of acquisition. Cuz guys, let's be frank, I think I worked in that industry. I think maybe you guys worked in that industry. The third party staffing agents businesses does not care as much about the talent and the employer as they do the profitability that they hold between it. And so we're around to move that layer to allow those two components to connect, to pass along the value to the talent, which is most important is I own my fate, I own my pay rate and I own my ability to remarket myself. Brad (12m 12s): I'm no longer outsourcing it to a third party agency, to an employer. I'm no longer outsourcing that to a third party agency as well, which basically is meaning that I'm having to work at their pace, their urgency. So one of the things that really we believe is a changing in a shift is that, there's gonna be an award. And we've got customers today that look at it this way is that I'm building my own contingent workforce in North America and globally on my terms and I'm lowering my cost of acquisition. So we are really trying to kind of go in there and create a place for this business model that doesn't exist. Chad (12m 46s): Okay. But there still is a third party. I mean you get paid, right? Brad (12m 50s): We get paid. So the third party is the payrolling component. So our compensation, the way we make money is descriptively, you pay to access the platform, based on your hiring and consumption that you would have as a buyer or an employer. You have a discounting program that comes along with the consumption that you hire, right? So the more people you hire, we apply discounts to your finalized rate that you would use to negotiate with the talent. We handle the EOR. So once everything is done, everything's negotiated. We don't be in the way the talent's negotiating with the buyer, the buyer's negotiating with the talent, with our bidding functionality. Once they agree to work together, we step in and bring that contractor on board to SkillGigs as a SkillGigs contractor for the length of the assignment. Chad (13m 34s): Okay. Are you in the US? Are you actually working worldwide? Brad (13m 40s): Our marketplace today we have about 125,000 profiles in our marketplace today. A large portion of that's gonna be in North America, probably over 80%. We are starting to proliferate into Asia and to other parts of the country. Basically central South America and and eastern Europe. And one of the cool things about that is just when I add to that is like, you know, me coming from the IT staffing outsourcing world, if you wanted to access talent abroad, you had to predominantly either build brick and mortar there or go through an outsourcing relationship. We're now allowing companies to be able to staff augment out of India from North America. Covid changed everything guys, you know that, it went from an employer market to an employee market. Brad (14m 23s): It went from an experiment of working from home to the point to where India had to change the way their business model worked in that country to allow people to work from home. We're taking advantage of that, enabling people to hire talent in India to do staff augmentaion work here for contingent labor in North America. Joel (14m 42s): You've talked a lot about staffing firms. My initial thought in terms of your competition was, you know, Upwork, Fiverr, those guys. Where do you consider them in the competitive landscape? Brad (14m 55s): That's a great question. So I think competitively we're similar because we're a marketplace business. They're a marketplace. We're a marketplace. We don't see them as a direct competitor cuz they're focusing on micro projects and 1099 workers. I believe there's a gap in that they would struggle to bring to the enterprise cuz enterprises have more need to basically extend their staff through utilizing contingent labor that doesn't come with the risk of employee misclassification. We're watching legislation right now happen in real time in the world of the gig economy around employee misclassification. If you're a traditional enterprise and you need a contractor for six month time materials underneath your management, you cannot use a 1099 worker. Brad (15m 35s): You're gonna misclassify them immediately and create exposure for you. So we focus more on the component of the worker that is going to be looking for that contract position. It could be a contract to hire position as well that enables them to pick up that contract work, build that contingent workforce for an employer and do it directly. Joel (15m 53s): You really just sound like a staffing firm. Am I like, you might have some different tech and you throw out ai, but essentially you're calling on employers to fill spots. You have a database of 175,000 workers that you're placing in there, but then, you let go. Is that where you stop being a staffing firm? I guess? Are you a hybrid? Like where do you fit in the ecosystem? Brad (16m 16s): Yeah, so I think the closest thing that makes us look similar to a staffing company is that we handle the payroll and the EOR at the end of the negotiation process, which is basically what a staffing company does. What we don't have as recruiters. So think let's talk about how we build our marketplace. We use traditional B2C ad campaigns and marketing that basically bring talent into the marketplace and build a profile. We also have a three to one ratio of referrals. So for every one person that signs up, they bring three people with them into the marketplace. Talent is, it's free to be in our marketplace and to build their brand. From there what makes us also massively different is we don't handle any of the connection between the buyer and the seller. Brad (16m 56s): The technology's doing all of that for it. So if you think about, no, no different than the way Uber disrupted the ride sharing business or the way Airbnb disrupted the travel agents business and we took the middle layers out, we replaced it with technology, we put it in the hands of the users. Joel (17m 12s): Okay, talk to me about acquiring talent. Like for example, I went to Google and searched nursing jobs, I didn't see you guys there. Like what's the marketing strategy and are you doing the same with employers or are you calling them directly? Brad (17m 26s): Great question. So on the B2C side, we basically have three or four different means that way we go about doing, we of course we do Google SEO for travel nursing and et cetera, Instagram, Facebook, are the two other very large areas that we use for marketing as well. Again, we also promote a lot of referral business into the marketplace as well. We want, that network effect is really starting to take hold. We're bringing in between four and 6,000 new members every month into the marketplace. Off of those three areas that we have. We've experimented with some other, you know, more creative things, Joel, like sponsoring eSports events to kind of generate people that want to be in the marketplace as well. We're gonna be hosting hackathons as well to kind of promote opportunity for people that are IT professionals for that, for example, that would want to be in the marketplace. Brad (18m 14s): And we also have a proprietary team and a technology we call Skills Radar that we can do spot inventory management. So as an e-commerce business, we're in the supply chain business buyers and sellers. And so we have to constantly be able to manage inventory against the way our buyers are actually hiring that inventory. And so we can go into that and kind of spot manage inventory and target skills, whether it's an RN or whether it's a, you know, a MER developer, a full stack developer to make sure we're managing that. On the B2B side, it's been a little grassroots the last couple years. Part of our raise that we're looking to do next year is to basically really pump a lot of B2B marketing into the marketplace. Traditionally, like any other organization, we have a sales team that's focusing in on demoing the product and then obviously selling the subscription access to the technology through a user license model. Chad (19m 2s): You take a look at the technology, you don't have any recruiters. That's where most of the money's spent on the staffing side of the house, right? So when you take a look at that, obviously the margins are gonna be much, much larger, but you're probably not going at 15 to 20%. So where are you usually hitting? What's your main margin point that you're trying to target? Brad (19m 21s): Yeah, so main margin for we're trying to cart is somewhere between 20 and 25% on margin. Now, one of the things to think about having worked for two of the largest global staffing companies in the world, let's break this down even more. For every billion dollars they generate, it takes about six to 700 people to produce it. So we believe we can go generate that same amount of value with half as many people. Cuz you just made a comment, Chad, in the staffing industry, when you want to go bring customers and talent in, what do you do? You throw bodies at it, I'll go hire another salesperson to get a req, go hire another recruiter to find a resume. We don't have to basically make that same investment to generate the income that we're looking for in the marketplace. Brad (20m 2s): Also, uniquely it's descriptive, right? So we have descriptive revenue because to access the technology from a buyer perspective, you pay to access it and you basically will receive consumptive benefits and rebates, discounts on your hiring over time. You keep your discount by the way, as long as you're subscribing. Our discounts for our largest enterprise buyers are 15%, right? So if I'm a buyer, I'm a CIO, I'm an administrator, I'm like, you're gonna tell me I can lower my cost of acquisition over hiring, say my first 15 people, which the cost savings pays for our technology and I can keep that discount as long as I keep using the system along with our percentage rebates that we offer them every year. Brad (20m 44s): Another cool thing that we do is you can publish a permanent job in our marketplace. You can, if you choose to, we look at that as a, something similar to a restocking fee. We charge a low flat rate if you hire full time out of our marketplace. And that flow flat rate is not a percentage of the first year's salary. It allows me to basically use the B2C dollars I need to go replace that person that you just took outta the marketplace. Chad (21m 11s): So talk to me about partnerships. How are you, other than you know, Google, SEO, SEM, how are you driving candidates through partnerships? Not to mention how are you driving sales through partnerships? Brad (21m 24s): Yeah, so on the candidate side, we're exploring some new things currently as we speak with allowing companies that may be holding, let's say for example, there's companies that hold H1B visas for a lot of their employees. We're allowing them to be in the marketplace through a core to core relationship with us, to be able to help bring in a embedded talent in the marketplace that can be utilized through our buyers. So that's one area that we're exploring some partnerships that we can do to help drive basically the growth of the talent marketplace itself. On the outbound side, on the B2B side, we're really starting to explore what those new partnerships look at. We're talking to other companies that are in the industry and talent marketplace, businesses that are kind of peripheral to our skill set categories as partnerships. Brad (22m 8s): One of the other areas that we're really excited about is the systems integrating world for the digital side. Systems integrators are some of the biggest buyers of IT staffing. And so their relationship with us to be able to utilize our technology to directly source talent, not indirectly do it through a staffing agency, lowers their cost of acquisition that actually increases their margins. We also give them the ability to talent pool their head count in our marketplace to help reduce their overall cost of their bench that they're utilizing on a regular basis. Joel (22m 37s): What the hell is a 3D resume? Brad (22m 40s): Great question. So one of the things, Joel, that we want to do is that that 2D resume that could be five pages long that a recruiter or someone has to go through, wanted to eliminate that. So, we patented this technology, which allows someone to build a profile for free, and we basically take each one of their jobs that they've done and then we ask them to wait and build an index in an indicese against all the skills that they've used across all those jobs. We then create a three dimensional picture, a three-dimensional visual of that. So if you're a recruiter or a hiring manager, you're gonna see two big things. As soon as you look at their profile, you're gonna see basically a three dimensional view of all the skills and index that are most prevalent for that particular talent. Brad (23m 23s): And we're gonna break that down in an industry density. So what we're saying is you can review someone's capability with our 3D resume in less than 15 seconds versus getting a highlighter and a pin and looking at your job and going through and highlighting a bunch of texts. That enables us to also do another thing that's very important in algorithm, that index that they build on a thousand point basis is what we run the algorithms against, the skill density of the job that the employers publishing. That waiting system is what drives the curation, just like any other e-commerce business, the more you buy, we start to see elements that are creating the interview process and the hiring process, and we continue to build a proprietary algorithm for that particular buyer. Brad (24m 8s): And we also match bidirectionally, so the buyers get matched through the system based on their published jobs and then the talent get matched to jobs based on their skill sets being in the marketplace. The last thing I'll mention on the 3D resume is the product, eye site productization of it. If you're a talent, and let's say you're a technical talent, you might have been, you know, a project manager, an architect, a web developer, we allow them to create multiple products. We call it a skill listing. So you can create multiple products off your skills that you've collected over your career and use those promote in our marketplace. So you may have multiple profiles, you may say, I'm open to doing a project manager job, but I'll also take a scrum manager job position. Brad (24m 49s): I create two products, I put them into the marketplace and allow the buyers to be able to curate to them. Joel (24m 57s): In one of your promotional videos, you claim to be the world's biggest self sourcing talent marketplace. What does that mean, self sourcing talent marketplace? Brad (25m 8s): Great question. So we hear the term direct sourcing a lot, right? It's kind of becoming something more commonplace. We look, throughout the lens of more of an active sourcing to where we're truly empowering the buyer and the seller to basically self source together, to basically have direct access removing all those elements. And again, the biggest twist, the most unique component of our marketplace, which makes us different is the bidding functionality. So we watch competitors, all the time we're watching the way platforms are being developed, we're looking at the way talent markets are being developed. There is not another technology out there that provides full self-service bidirectionally that's allowing a bidding process to happen in order to create that connection. Brad (25m 51s): So we allow the buyers to control their hard dollar costs. We allow the talent to control their pay rate, once they basically agree on that, after that, it's an interview, are we a good match? We take all the pricing ambiguity out up front. That's what makes us unique, which makes us, even though our size today, we have not seen another competitor out there that's truly creating that level of self-service between a buyer and a seller. Chad (26m 15s): Talk to me about threats. Who are your threats that are out there? Other than the the old lumbering staffing organizations? Brad (26m 24s): Yeah, so we get investors ask us this question a lot, Chad, it's a good question. So you named one that kind of comes up a lot. What about the big five, right? I won't name 'em. We all know who they are. Are they not going to go build this or are they not a threat to this business model? And my answer is, having worked for two of 'em is that their ability to pivot against the Titanic that they've built is a challenge, at the end of the day. Can they buy their way into a marketplace like this or buy a system like this? And it also is gonna mean that I'm gonna have to basically say, no more recruiters, no more salespeople in my organization. So it's almost as if there's a Blockbuster/Netflix effect there, right? Those big guys are Blockbuster and then, and we're the Netflix and we all know the story. Brad (27m 9s): Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50 million and they said no, right? So those big agencies, they're gonna find ways to use technology to accentuate their business model. They're not gonna change it. So the other threats are gonna be, I think, you mentioned two other marketplaces out there that are predominantly 1099. When we start to see more legislation that's starting to come down for the gig economy, they're gonna have to pivot their business. Today they don't handle EOR, we handle EOR in house. They outsource that to another third party if you wanna do it. They bank their money off of micro transactions. Brad (27m 51s): Their average invoice per per buyer is about $5,000 a month. Ours is much larger than that. So our threat's gonna be the legislation coming down causing the larger marketplaces that are doing predominant 1099. Two of those big ones are public, they have a lot of funding to start pivoting towards how do we take our business to the enterprise in a way that's gonna allow us to operate probably much more similar to the way we operate today, which is reason why we're wanting to raise money so we can get out in front of this anticipated change probably happening in the next 24 to 36 months. Chad (28m 26s): Okay. So do me a favor and list out your total addressable market. What are the different industries that you're hitting? Industry tech, what are you covering right now? Brad (28m 37s): Yeah, so our categories are healthcare and digital today. So we have two direct marketplaces. I would say the total addressable marketplace. The size of that North America is about $180 billion total addressable market size. We're obviously trying to go after somewhere between, you know, three to 10% of that to basically kind of continue our growth. We are thinking about also other categories. So SkillGigs is going to be a multi-category marketplace, business model, healthcare, digital. We're looking at finance and accounting and we're looking at some other marketplaces as well as sales and marketing. This allows companies that are early adopters to this business model that are willing to empower their corporate recruiters to build their contingent workforce through our technology the ability to add more categories. Brad (29m 26s): Of course, IT and FNA are very close to each other. Healthcare, we're very focused on the clinician side, but there's also an IT component to the healthcare world too as well. So we see that kind of helping us provide us a diversity into it. There's a lot of companies out there that'll just be gonna kind of be one specific category. We see at least three categories over the next 36 months. Joel (29m 51s): Chad, this sounds really expensive! Brad, you mentioned subscription model, but let's dig into that. What can a company typically expect to pay for your service? Brad (29m 60s): Well that's a great question. So we have three plans that we look at and what we look at this from, there's three enterprise plans, what we call a recruit pro plan. Recruit pro plan is gonna be for a small/medium business, and it's our most affordable subscription that we have. It's two licenses, $12,000 a year. Okay? That comes with our standard fee structures, our standard, what we call bring your own contractor rebates, which is basically allow you to payroll through our technology as well as our standard fixed fees for permanent hiring. When you move up the scale, we have three enterprise plans based on hiring volumes. So whether this is hiring spend contingently or non contingently or actually count spend, we basically increase that. Brad (30m 44s): So it'll go all the way up to $120,000 a year. That's for our largest plan. So it's $10,000 a month, $120,000 a year, you get three discounts, five, 10, and 15%. You get a 1% rebate, you get a fixed monthly cost structure at $4,000 for every person you hire permanently. And the cool thing about this is because we already take 30 to 40 points of cost out before you hit a discount because we removed all those layers from the buying process, what we're seeing is it takes three hires in our marketplace to cover a hundred percent of the capital cost of that investment on the technology. Joel (31m 25s): And be on the lookout for a Groupon for the holiday season everybody. All right, Chad, you know what the bell means. Brad, I don't know if you know what it means, but it's time to face the firing squad, my friend. Are you ready? Brad (31m 39s): I'm ready, man. Let's go. Joel (31m 40s): Yeah, Chad, are you ready? Chad (31m 41s): Let me snuggle up to this microphone here real quick. Okay, so Brad, one, I think one of the most important things for any organization is experience and, you and Kashif have great experience, leadership in the space. Pretty awesome to see you guys come in and really shake things up. Timing, I think it's perfect timing. There's no question to be able to challenge the big names out there, you have to do it with a model that is entirely different. Like you said, you have to, you have to be the Netflix, you have to be mailing discs and then being online, the taxi to Uber, the flea market to eBay are all great examples. Chad (32m 24s): Margins? Being able to cut count, to be able to scale. This is something that Joel and I talk about every single week on the show, is how do we use tech to better scale, to be able to increase margins, efficiencies, and those types of things? Go to market, I think there's some opportunities there, but the biggest thing for me, is I believe that you have a proven model. You have revenues, you have a portfolio of clients. You could be the operating system for the staffing organization. And again, think Indeed what they were to job boards back 15 years ago. Chad (33m 4s): That's really my biggest dig on you guys is that I think that now that you have a proven model, you can take that and you can go and shoot for the stars. But to be quite frank, man, I love what you're doing. You're taking an old slow titanic industry and you're adding a speedboat into it. It's a big applause for me. Brad (33m 25s): Oh, thank you man. Joel (33m 26s): And that's, No, no, no. Brad, you don't talk yet. You don't talk yet. I know, I know. It's your thing, man. You like, to do the thing, but it's not your turn yet. Okay. All right. It's my turn now, Brad, there's a great line in the movie Jerry McGuire where Jerry is talking to Rod Tidwell. I'm assuming a lot of our listeners know this movie and they're walking out from a game and Rod asks Jerry, why he is not at home with his wife and Jerry answers and he says, Well, it's an answer. And Rod says basically, it's not sexy, but it's an answer. That's what I kept thinking through your whole pitch. Like, none of this is sexy unless profits are sexy. Joel (34m 9s): Like, I'll echo everything Chad said. You guys are a well manicured machine. You're gonna raise a Series A, you're profitable, you're gonna grow into new markets. Healthcare and tech are only gonna be, you know, tech maybe with layoffs is interesting. Nurses leaving healthcare is interesting, but you guys sound like you're diversifying into new markets. If I could create a new grade where the crickets are in with the applause, I would do that. But since I can't, this business is boring as it is for those that typically come on the firing squad is a big applause. Chad (34m 48s): I think. I think it's sexy, Brad. I think it's sexy. I'm a big fan of making money. Joel (34m 53s): It's not sexy, but it's an answer. Brad (34m 55s): I like to call it new hotness. Joel (34m 57s): Brad firing squad's over, man. You don't have to pitch anymore. It's over. It's over, it's over. Save your 3D resume, your ai, your self sourcing marketplace for another day. Chad (35m 10s): You can ditch all of that. Joel (35m 11s): Save it for another day. Chad, For us. It's another firing squad in the can! Chad and Cheese (35m 15s): We out. We out. OUTRO (35m 15s): 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.

Love a good Qwick-y? Then this episode is for you. That is, restaurant staffing platform Qwick landed a $40 million round to take on the staffing woes of restaurants in the U.S. Not quite as exciting, the boys move on to AtlasJobs, which might make you long for 2009 (or 1999) all over again. Lastly, PaintJet takes aim at the $175 billion painting industry by taking people out of the equation and filling that void with a big-ass painting robot. Welcome to the metaverse, Dorothy! Plus, it's a double-LinkedIn shoutout session and the boys introduce a segment called "Slipping It In." Yeah, what could go wrong with that one? 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 (1s): 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 (23s): Oh, yeah. Powerball Jackpot is now $1.5 billion. Value of tuning into this week's show? Priceless. Hi, boys and girls you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Midterm election" Cheeseman. Chad (40s): And this is Chad "I'd forget my ass if it wasn't attached" Sowash. Joel (44s): And on this week's show, who's in the mood for a Qwick-y? Atlas Shrugs. And we paint it black. Let's do this. Chad (57s): So here I am listeners can hear. I don't have my podcast mic before, because I forgot it at our place in Cabanas. Joel (1m 7s): You forgot. Chad (1m 9s): Yes, Yes. Fucking stupid. Joel (1m 11s): Oh man. Oh man. Chad (1m 13s): I deserve that. Joel (1m 14s): Like I told you in, in the pre-show, you, you've lost that fireside chat feeling that you had, you have on most shows. It's a little hollow this week, but it's okay. Chad (1m 26s): Little hollow. Joel (1m 27s): I'll make up for the sexy with my own voice. Chad (1m 30s): Thank God. Thank God. Joel (1m 32s): So you're in Lisbon at this big ass show. Chad (1m 34s): Yes. Joel (1m 35s): I will interject that. It's cool how they're doing the vendor swap. Talk about that and whatever else takeaways you wanna share. Chad (1m 43s): Yeah. So if you go to the biggest conferences in our space, I mean, talk about Unleash and/or HR Tech, and then you think of how many startups they have in their startup booths. There are probably 50 times that here. Now saying that, this is a three day show and they change all of those booths out every day. That's how many fucking startups they're showcasing at this place. The other booths that are out there, like the Indeed Booth, which is just ridiculous, because they're all about wellbeing. They have nothing to do with wellbeing. But anyway, that's their marketing spiel. But these booths are freaking amazing. Chad (2m 22s): They've got VR all over the place, but to me, having that many fucking startups and then rolling through different ones every single day is just, it's amazing. Joel (2m 31s): Did you say VR? I think you did. Chad (2m 37s): Sexy Baby. Joel (2m 39s): All right man. You wanna do shoutouts? Chad (2m 42s): Shout outs! Joel (2m 42s): It's a LinkedIn heavy shout out this week. I'll go ahead and go first. So, you know, I love a good poll. Chad Chad (2m 49s): You're always on my poll. Joel (2m 50s): Yes. Did my poll reach you in Portugal this week? Did my pole get there this week? Anyway, we're all talking about Elon and Twitter and this week it was announced that Twitter will start charging $8 a month for the blue check and some other benefits like fewer ads and longer posts, et cetera. Well, I was curious how many in my network on LinkedIn would be willing to drop $8 a month for Twitter? Well, with over 500 people weighing in, which I was frankly a little surprised at, 90% said, No way, Jose, to Elon, they're not gonna pay $8 for Twitter or mostly anything for Twitter from what I got. Sounds like a disaster, right? Well, maybe, maybe not. Joel (3m 31s): Typical freemium models have five to 7% of its users who actually pay for it. And the ones who said yes on my poll, although I won't mention the names of who was on my poll, it was a large group of CEOs, entrepreneurs, VPs, people at in influential companies like Google and Uber. So if the cool kids do it, does it influence more to follow suit? Probably. Studies tell us worldwide, about 39% of LinkedIn users have paid for premium subscriptions at some point. So it's not crazy to think Twitter could at some point have 25% or so users paying for the service. We'll have to see. Joel (4m 12s): Chad, I'm curious, are you ready to drop $8 a month to Elon's Slush fund? Chad (4m 18s): No, not even close. Twitter has no to no value for me other than watching people get in food fights. That's it. I mean, literally there's not much interaction. Unless you get like into food fight events and then it happens. So, no, I just, not into it. Joel (4m 36s): Yeah, and they totally lost the big boot Latina and bug fight bus. They totally missed that. Miss that train. So that's my poll. Shout out for the day. Chad (4m 46s): There it is. So your LinkedIn poll to my LinkedIn audio event. Shout out. That's right. Kids where you can host live interactive conversations with people all over the world. Remember when Clubhouse was valued at about a gazillion dollars for like five minutes? Joel (5m 5s): I do. Chad (5m 6s): Twitter created Spaces, which actually allows you to record your audio events, which Stupid Ass Clubhouse wouldn't do. But where is Clubhouse today? I don't even know if it's still alive and kicking. Anyways, shout out to LinkedIn for creating their very own clubhouse knockoff. Joel (5m 24s): Just a year too late. Chad (5m 25s): Yeah. Whatever happened to LinkedIn podcast? They were talking about that. Joel (5m 29s): Yeah, I mean, I, I talked to all about their live video product. Chad (5m 33s): Yeah. Joel (5m 33s): That they should be launching that. And with Microsoft having, you know, a video product themselves, why that hadn't integrated into LinkedIn. Chad (5m 42s): Weird. Joel (5m 42s): Our friend Hung Lee is big on videos, but you have to integrate it with, you have to integrate it with other services. Yeah. Strikingly our favorite porn star is good at the video services on LinkedIn. Yeah. He's got a few poles of his own, by the way. Yeah. I don't know. I guess what you're saying is, unless somebody writes a really big check, you're not gonna hear the Chad and Cheese show on LinkedIn livestream audio events anytime soon. Chad (6m 7s): No. Joel (6m 8s): Alrighty. By the way, I deleted Clubhouse a long time ago. I got sick of getting alerts about people talking about stuff I didn't really care about. Chad (6m 14s): Yes. Joel (6m 14s): And I didn't really have time to just drop everything I'm doing and listen to what they were talking about. Chad (6m 20s): I have to say that Twitter spaces, which is kinda weird because the news organizations hold spaces and those are actually pretty good because they have reporters that are on there and they go into the statistics and actual data. So I think spaces, depending on what spaces you jump into, are pretty good. The question is, will LinkedIn be able to pull that off? I they haven't been able to pull anything else off. So Joel (6m 42s): Yeah, you need to be able to schedule them, be able to sign up to attend, get an alert when they start and then, and then archive them to listen later. The whole sort of, it's live now listen in or you miss it seems really antiquated to me. Seems really stupid. Yep. Chad (6m 58s): We're in a Netflix society kids. It's all about on demand. Joel (7m 1s): That's right. And you know what's on demand, Chad? Chad (7m 5s): Free stuff. Joel (7m 5s): The booze giveaways from Chad and Cheese. That's right. We can announce the latest winners of our booze giveaways. Pretty exciting this month. So our beer winner actually went to someone named Michelle Beer. Go figure. She was happy about some free brew from us. As everyone knows, our free beer is sponsored by Aspen Tech Labs. Thanks to them. Our whiskey winner of the month goes to Warren Sukernek. I don't know. That sounds a little naughty to me. Maybe that's a porn name too. Anyway, he's at Flo Career who we featured on the show before. He got some free whiskey from us that's sponsored by our friends at Textkernel and Rum with Plum. Joel (7m 49s): We're doing a free birthday bottle of Good Rum to anyone who celebrates a birthday. And this month our friend Mason Wong at Lyft. It's a nice premium bottle of rum from our friends at Plum. If you can't win liquor kids, you're probably gonna get a t-shirt from us. Head out to chadcheese.com/free. Everyone seeing the shirts on social media, getting rave reviews from people. People love how soft and warm. It's like a hug from us, Chad. Everyone loves it, but you can't get it unless you go to Chadcheese.com/free. Chad (8m 25s): Yes. Joel (8m 26s): And sign up. Chad (8m 27s): And those t-shirts kids are brought to you by our friends over at JobGet. That's right. They're getting all the love at every event. You see the ChadCheese T-shirts, you see JobGet on the way out. It's good. It's love. Joel (8m 40s): Yep. Chad (8m 41s): It's soft. It's cozy. It's ChadCheese. Joel (8m 44s): Yeah. And speaking of Mason Wong's birthday, let's get into who else celebrates a birthday. Chad (8m 49s): Yes. Joel (8m 50s): This week in addition to Mason Wong, Elizabeth Hill, Dale Grahan, Graham Ferguson, Louis Gleixner. I'm gonna guess on that one. Jarvis Karel, David Roddy, David Jorge, Shally Steckerl, Libby Sartain and Chloe Rada. I'll celebrate another trip around the sun this week. Happy birthday kids. Chad (9m 12s): Love it. Joel (9m 12s): You're in Lisbon. Chad (9m 13s): Yes. Joel (9m 13s): I'm going to California in a couple weeks for the iCIMS Inspire conference. Chad (9m 20s): Ooh. Fancy. Joel (9m 21s): Some of our friends will be there. A lot of stuff going on at iCIMS. Looking forward to digging into that and interviewing some folks maybe to find out the ins and outs of what's going on at iCIMS these days. Chad (9m 35s): Yep. I'm gonna be in London for the TA Tech Business Accelerator on November 23rd. That's right. Kids, I'm gonna be doing Thanksgiving in London. So if you haven't got your tickets, get your tickets and buy us a drink. Julie and I will be there and we will be more than happy to sit down, tilt one back and who knows, maybe even get a little stuffing with you. Joel (9m 58s): Yeah, I was gonna say, so assuming our American friends don't know that there's no Thanksgiving in London or England. What's the dinner plan? A little shepherd's pie. I mean, are you gonna try to find some turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes? What's the plan for the meal on Thanksgiving in London? Chad (10m 15s): Well just good food. London has good food, so we're gonna go find good food and have our Thanksgiving Day. I mean, it could be Indian restaurant, Chinese restaurant. Could be very, you know, Christmas story where we have duck. Who knows? Joel (10m 29s): London has okay food. Let's be honest. It's okay. Chad (10m 33s): It's okay. Joel (10m 34s): But what's better than okay is our Fantasy Football league. Week eight of fantasy football with Chad and Cheese is in the books. Everybody here's your leaderboard. Powered by our good friends at Factory Fix. Number one to last place goes like this. Chris “Who’s Da” Mannion, Serge “Penalty Box” Boudreau. Matt “Western Kentucky” Hill-toppers, Joel “It’s all Gouda” Cheesman, Chad Sowash “Your Hands”, Christy Kelling “in the name of” (uh-uh-uh!), Dennis “Kucinich” Tupper, Jose “One-Eyed” Wilkie, Jason “Kidd” Putnam, Mike “Ditka” Schaefer, James “Dean” Gilliam, Dan Shoemaker’s “Mark” Mark round out the top 12 in our fantasy football league. Chad (11m 27s): Wow! Joel (11m 27s): Congratulations everybody. Unless your name is Dan Shoemaker. Chad, you're clawing your way back in. I like it. I like it. Chad (11m 33s): I'm on my way up. So congratulations to all of those listeners that are out there that can now listen to Chad and Cheese. In German, in Spanish, in Portuguese, in French. That's right. We have four new languages! Joel (11m 53s): Oooo French! Chad (11m 54s): All by Veritone. No shit. They cloned our voices. Veritone cloned our voices, then they translated the voices and we are working with it because it's not perfect kids. You gotta give us a minute. We are working with, cuz there's so many nuances from language to language, right? So we're working with them on speed, on delivery, on a lot of different things. But we're really excited. We have two podcasts that are out a trailer and two podcasts. Go find 'em on Spotify, on Apple. They're getting distributed to all of those massive platforms and we're excited. I don't know how many people have actually reached out and said, this is fucking witchcraft. And it's awesome. Joel (12m 31s): I love it. I get a hot bath drawn, I get some candles, a little, little set, and I listen to us in Spanish. It's very relaxing. Very sexy. Very sexy. Chad (12m 48s): Yes. Joel (12m 48s): Who's in the mood for a Qwick-y? Chad (12m 51s): Me? Me. Joel (12m 51s): That's right. Staffing platform Quick, that's Q W I C K, who describes itself as the leading staffing as a service platform that connects service industry professionals directly with food and beverage shifts in real time, has announced the closure of its 40 million series B investment round. This brings the grand total to $59.1 million for the startup founded in 2017. The Arizona based company will use the financing to step up growth, both in its existing markets and by rollout to new cities. It will also swell head count. I love a good swollen head count, you know Chad. At its Phoenix headquarters and in market specific locations around the US. Joel (13m 34s): So far this year, the company has expanded from 13 to 23 active markets, more than doubled its client roster, increased its worker pull by nearly 70% and growed head count by 123%. Chad (13m 49s): OOO! Joel (13m 49s): Chad, you know, a thing or two about Quickies? What's your take on Qwik? Chad (13m 53s): What is the definition of a Qwick-y? I mean, is it, how long anyway? Well, we'll get back Joel (13m 58s): Before the kids wake up, that's the definition. Or the parents wake up, Chad (14m 3s): Get it done. Yeah. So if you're Randstad right now, the number one staffing company in the world, are you trying to sell Monster and then buy platforms like Qwick? I think you'd be dumb not to because these types of platforms are the future of staffing. Now I understand Qwick is focused on hospitality and Randstad does more than just hospitality, but it seems pretty fucking simple. Buy the tech, start with hospitality and then expand. And the beauty of expansion Qwick, remember the beauty of expansion is that you can keep it in hospitality. Focus on that and expand geographically. Get that bigger footprint that way and/or you can start to add new industries like tech, right? Chad (14m 48s): Staffing's biggest expenditure is headcount. How many heads do we need to source, place and pay the talent? Everything scales faster through tech and there's less headcount needed, which means bigger margins and ebitda. So for companies who need talent, they want fast and easy. So do people hail cabs anymore? Not generally. They go to their Bolt or their Lyft app and they look that way. This is exactly what's happening in the staffing industry for workers. The exact same thing. Are you looking are you gonna go out to the newspaper and look? Are you gonna go out to some of these other crazy ass job boards and look through scores? No. Chad (15m 28s): You're gonna let a system match you with jobs, with gigs, with shifts that are already there and available. I'm also biased though, I gotta tell you because longtime friend Jill Erickson is the CEO or CRO, which means they have industry experience and industry connections that every startup needs. So I love everything about this organization. And if you're a staffing company that's out there, I don't care if you're big, I don't care if you're small, you should be building, partnering, or buying something like this. Because if you're not, you're gonna be gone. Joel (16m 2s): Lot of swollen headcount going on in this commentary today. Love that stuff. So this feels a little bit like Back to the Future. Listeners might remember when Snag a Job sort of launched an app-based service industry like on demand, pick your shift, get paid quickly, earn badges around what you do well. So if I have a burger chef badge, I can go work at any burger place pretty easily and command a premium because I can flip a burger like nobody's business. Somewhere along the lines Snag went off the rails and it simply failed. We've talked about Plated before. There's some other businesses. Joel (16m 41s): I can't believe that this isn't a business that it's just not going to happen. I have to believe that somewhere along the lines Snag fumbled a great opportunity that it sounds like Qwick is now picking up and, and just crushing it. It gives workers the freedom and flexibility to work on their own schedules. Lets them get paid within 30 minutes. Chad (17m 2s): Yes! Joel (17m 3s): By the end of their shift it offers companies a 97% shift fill rate and quote, "immediate access to a pre-vetted and certified sharing workforce." Serves thousands of businesses across the US. It's significantly lower cost than what you get a staffing company. There's so many things to love about this model. It's just a question to me of who's gonna get it right. And at least from what I can tell on this news item Qwick is crushing it and they are one to watch. Aaron Matos in Arizona better watch his back. Some of his people might be it at risk of getting poached by the Qwick, the Qwick-y team because they are growing and making things happen. Joel (17m 44s): If this were buy or sell, it would be a buy for me for sure. Chad (17m 48s): All day long. Joel (17m 51s): All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk about 1998 or 2003 jobs. I don't know, we'll be back. Chad (17m 58s): All right. All right. Joel (17m 59s): Slip it in, Chad. Chad (18m 0s): All right. Yeah. Joel (18m 1s): A new segment. Chad (18m 2s): I think we're gonna start a new segment called 'Slip It In' because this is something we weren't intending to do, but we've gotta slip this in. Not to mention we were just talking about swelling the head count. So it needs to swell and then slip it in. Anyway, we might make this a segment. This might be a regular thing. Anyways, this week it has been reported that Gem has downsized by a hundred people and layoffs.com has a rumor that iCIMS is reducing staff as well. So I reached out to a few internal to be able to see, you know, what it was looking like and it looks like about 5%. So they're doing a slight reduction, gonna be maybe 70, 80 people, but that's the 'slip it in' for the week kids. Joel (18m 48s): Something I'll ask about when I go to iCIMS Inspire in a couple weeks. What's going on with the head count? By the way, the Deel layoffs about 20% or so. They had about 425 employees according to LinkedIn. They laid off about a hundred. I don't think our friend Richard Cho was on that layoff list. He certainly should not have been. If he is somebody grab him real quickly cuz he's valuable. But there were quite a few recruiters that sort of sounded off on LinkedIn about getting laid off at Deel. We talked about Eightfold layoffs not too long ago. I'm guess Oyster, Remote, Velocity Global, like all these unicorns are gonna start announcing layoffs in the 20 to 25% range before the holidays. Chad (19m 33s): Yep. Well there's a lot of bloat in the industry, right? And this is what happens. We finally get back to right sizing. Whether you're a company that's been around forever, like iCIMS or a unicorn, that's just, you get bloated fast. Joel (19m 46s): By the way, it also looks like, speaking of our friend Elon, it looks like he's gonna land on 50% headcount. Slashing it was 75 than it was much lower. Fifty's a pretty big haircut for Twitter. So I assume a lot of other tech leaders are gonna follow suit and lay off a bunch of people as well. Happy Holidays everybody. Happy Holidays. Yeah. Well let's get to AtlasJobs. Talk about innovation part of, the innovation portion of the show here. All right, Pod the company behind AtlasJobs has raised 2.5 million in seed funding. That brings total funding for the company that does a few other things to 7.5 million. Joel (20m 27s): The LA based company will use the funds to expand its customer base in the US and expand globally to support its multinational clients. AtlasJobs was launched in Q2 of this year. The mobile first technology provides job seekers real time access to opportunities anywhere in the world thus the name AtlasJobs. To date, they have around a thousand Android downloads and 15 reviews. Woo, I hope they have servers that can handle that kind of influx of users. The Pod family also includes the STEM connector and Million Women Mentors Network. Chad, give us your take on AtlasJobs. Chad (21m 9s): These guys are all over the fucking place. I went just to check out AtlasJobs and they had Jo Webber as their, as their CEO. So I went to Jo Webber's finally found Joe Weber's LinkedIn after I looked at Atlas Jobs and there were no employees under AtlasJobs. So I was like, what the fuck? So I found hers and she doesn't even have AtlasJobs listed on her profile. So I don't know if AtlasJobs is literally just a feature of Pod or what, but when you want to go to the Pod website, it's atlasjobs.com. So I mean they, they are all over the place. There's no continuity here whatsoever. Chad (21m 49s): Then I checked out this revolutionary app and I have to say that it is a masterclass on 1998 recruitment technology. It's bad. It is bad. They have a whole, like you said, 1000 downloads on Google Play. I didn't even take a look at reviews. It looks like they're using Google heat maps, APIs or something like that as a search plugin, which is all keyword driven and not context, not skills. Keyword. Hello Atlas jobs 1998 called an online career centers once their job search tech back. Chad (22m 30s): This is horrible. I've gotta ask myself what venture PE, VC, who gets sucked into spending $2.5 million on a piece of shit like this? You might as well go ahead and just burn that cash guys because this is going nowhere. Joel (22m 46s): So I actually met these folks at HR Tech, they were in the startup pavilion and I kind of had like scratched my head and think, Am I on drugs right now? Is this, am I really looking at like a geo targeted? Chad (23m 3s): Yes! Joel (23m 3s): Map job site? Chad (23m 4s): Nobody searches that way. Joel (23m 4s): I was kind of, you know, sort of critical there at the booth and they came up and said, Hey, we're about to announce a round, you know, I think you'll be excited and da da da. So this is the news that I was supposedly gonna be, you know, impressed by. Sometimes ideas are too early. Sometimes, you know, they fail early and then it takes a while for the market to sort of catch up or the technology, you know, there was an iPad before the iPad, right? It just, the tech had to catch up, the chips had to catch up, et cetera. However, sometimes ideas aren't too early, they're just bad ideas. And you'll remember, I won't go as far back as '99 cuz the GPS and the mobile thing didn't quite happen yet. Joel (23m 50s): But if this company had launched in '09 or 2010, it would've been kind of hot shit, right? It would've been like, Wow, I can go on my phone and see jobs really near me. We've talked about CareerBuilder's, Pokemon Go, which is a little more of like a VR from where you are. But there were job sites at the time that would sort of show you the jobs and where they were and the address and that was pretty cool. The fact that 10 to 12 years plus later someone is now launching this as if it's a novel idea is, is frankly ridiculous. I mean, most of this geo-targeting happens invisibly. Chad (24m 26s): Yeah. Joel (24m 26s): If I go to Indeed or wherever, right? Like it knows where I am because laptops have GPS now. So it sort of automatically fills in, oh, you're in this zip code or you're in this area and I do a search and it just automatically shows me jobs near me because it knows where I am. I don't need to like click or go into a map or whatever, right? So even though they're selling this as hip and cool and forward thinking, it really isn't. Chad (24m 54s): Yeah! Joel (24m 54s): What I got the sense I got from talking to them is that they're really selling this to Gen Z, which I guess means we're gonna try to like put this thing in the microwave, warm it up and sell it to a new generation. The mobile first platform for Gen Z is not this. Chad (25m 12s): No. Joel (25m 12s): It's big booty Latinas and bug fights like I've always talked about. So this is a quote from their site. "This mobile first platform is designed to meet Generation Z where they are with an intuitive, pleasurable design to improve discoverability of jobs globally." It probably does none of those. It probably does not appeal to Gen Z. It is not pleasurable. It is not improved discoverability. And it's really actually not jobs globally, it's more jobs in the US, from what I saw. Chad (25m 42s): Yeah. Joel (25m 43s): So I can't imagine Gen Z doing anything other than spending six seconds on this site and then jumping right back into TikTok or going to Indeed or LinkedIn to find their job. Chad (25m 54s): So we talked about doing this at Direct Employers 15 years ago and the reason why we couldn't do it, and the reason why you still can't do it. So let's say for instance, Starbucks, tell me what Starbucks that job's at. You can't pinpoint that shit. I mean, you want to, but you can't and you don't get enough. Again, it's garbage in, garbage out. The information that you get from a job description is for the most part is fucking garbage. So just from a technical standpoint, it didn't work 15 years ago, it's not gonna work today. The job descriptions aren't any better. The tech's better, I get it. But we need context, we need skills, we need things more around those areas. Not trying to pinpoint me on a fucking Google map. Joel (26m 36s): And if it is, it should be invisible. It should be something in the background that works. There's a great book from that period that we're talking about, '99, 2000, it's called Don't Make Me Think. Chad (26m 48s): Yes. Joel (26m 48s): And it's a book about designing websites, which is still relevant today about don't make people think this site makes you really think about where the hell am I? I gotta zoom in, zoom out. Like it's horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible. Chad (27m 3s): Well I downloaded the app and it's shit too. Joel (27m 6s): Oh, you did download the app? Chad (27m 7s): Yeah. Joel (27m 8s): Oh, good for you. You'll be deleting it after this show. Chad (27m 12s): I already deleted it. It is fucking horrible. Joel (27m 14s): All right, maybe we can save this show with something that we're excited about. We'll be right back. Chad (27m 24s): Robots, baby. Give me the fucking robots. Joel (27m 26s): Here we go. Chad, we regularly talk about the automation of, I don't know, everything, baristas, trucking, food delivery, warehouse management. But what about painting? This is a first for the show, but there's a startup out of Nashville, which is in Tennessee and not Texas for our international listeners. Chad (27m 50s): Yes. Joel (27m 51s): That's going after the $175 billion painting industry. Holy shit! PaintJet, A robotics company has raised 3.5 million in seed funding. The US currently needs more than 100,000 painters to meet demand. And that will only continue to worsen with more than 41% of painters in the workforce expected to retire by 2031. Chad, are you excited about this $175 billion opportunity? Chad (28m 19s): Dude, I was so excited. Then I started reading it and watching the videos on YouTube. And here's a quote, "by utilizing a national network of local painters". Those are humans by the way. "PaintJet is able to perform commercial jobs anywhere. It's fully remote controlled system keeps operators on the ground eliminating the possibility of falling from elevated positions." So this seems like the, the the 1.0 version of painting robots. When I thought painting robots, I thought you give it a building, it goes, it scans it, it does AI and all this other stuff. But if you watch the video, you'll see that a person still needs to remote operate the equipment from the ground. Chad (29m 7s): Meaning a guy operates the lift on the ground. Yes, it is, there's less risk because the actual robots doing the spraying three stories up. But do you really need AI for that? They're talking about AI and I'm like, this looks like a no AI necessary. I don't get it. Joel (29m 25s): So are you a cell on PaintJet? Chad (29m 29s): I think PaintJet is, again, this is 1.0, I'm gonna be a buy on 3.0, but I'm gonna sell on this one. Joel (29m 37s): Okay. The videos are very entertaining, by the way, very hypnotic, sort of mesmerizing watching these things paint these huge warehouses, which by the way are popping up all over the place and need painting all the time, I assume. Chad (29m 52s): Yes. Joel (29m 52s): This one to me was one of those duh companies. Like, why didn't I think of that? When you see it produced in the wild. Painting is monotonous. It's time consuming, it's dangerous, it's nasty work, it's hot, it's cold wherever you are in the country. I mean this one is like just built picture perfect for automation. I agree with you that, I mean, it's someone that's there, but I assume the skillset of running a machine is different than the skillset of wax on, wax off with a paintbrush. I think at some point this could definitely just roll up on a warehouse and paint it, whether it's picture the size and width and do all the measurements of it and just go ahead and do it. Joel (30m 34s): But how many people are comfortable with that today? Just kinda like with automated truck, you know, self-driving cars, people want people there. Or we talk about restaurants with food. Someone needs to be near the fryer so it doesn't burn down the restaurant. So I don't know if this is gonna be something that's always there, but you can paint a warehouse with a lot fewer people, which translates into a lot of savings for companies that are buying these products. So for me, like this is a buy, automating this to me is a no-brainer. I can't believe we're just now talking about it on the show. It's not as sexy as, you know, pizza deliveries from R2D2, but the profits this thing will make is going to be sexy as hell. Joel (31m 18s): And for my money, almost as sexy as big booty Latinas and bug fights. Baby, we out. Chad (31m 28s): We out. Chad (32m 16s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Think unicorns only roam the plains of America? Well, think again. This week, the boys discuss Factorial, Europe’s newest workforce startup to hit $1 billion in value. Then it’s time to break down some unicorn wannabes with buy-or-sell, covering Easop, Enate, and Jomigo. Rounding out this episode is looking at Indeed’s new PPA and its impact on the European market. Oh, and of course, we must chat some Elon and Twitter. TRASNCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions works with employers each step of the way as consultative recruiting and engagement strategists for the disability community. INTRO (8s): 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 (29s): Oh yeah. Elon promised Twitter won't be a free for all Hellscape. Lucky for you this podcast will forever be a free for all Hellscape. Hi Yugen. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your co-host Joel "room 237" Cheeseman. Chad (47s): I'm Chad "American Werewolf in Portugal" Sowash. Lieven (50s): And I'm Lieven "not into Halloween" Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (55s): Boo. On this episode. A new Euro unicorn, Europe bra braces for Indeed's new ad model and a little buy or sell. Let's do this. sfx (1m 5s): Europe has a bunch of countries in it. Chad (1m 8s): Okay, so I got comment. That's a nice all Hallow's Eve t-shirt. Joel (1m 12s): It's scary though, right? Chad (1m 13s): Is it Cheeseman original? That's a question. Joel (1m 16s): This is a custom Cheeseman, maybe a Chad and Cheese original for next season. But yeah, I put the names of some of the scariest things on a t-shirt. So I've got Freddy Kruger, I've got Jason Vorhees, Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Myers and of course, the scariest of all Indeed is at the bottom of. sfx (1m 39s): You Cannot leave. Joel (1m 40s): You cannot leave. Yikes. Yeah, That's what they tell their companies when they wanna leave for the new ad model. But we will get to that in the show a little bit later. Chad (1m 53s): It's coming! Joel (1m 54s): Speaking of scary shit. Chad (1m 56s): Yeah. Joel (1m 56s): We learned that Lieven is not a fan of the horror movies. He can't get through 10 minutes of The Shining. Lieven (2m 3s): Did you say horror movies? Chad (2m 6s): Didn't say horror. Lieven (2m 8s): I thought you said horror. I'm a fan of horror movies. Chad (2m 12s): Best Little Hore House in Texas. I'm sure you saw that a few times. Yes. So why couldn't you get past 10 minutes of the Shining? What the hell stopped it for you? Lieven (2m 23s): I've just got a two vivid imagination and I saw the little kids on the tricycle doing something scary in the hallway, like just using its tricycle. But I knew something was coming and after 10 minutes, I shut it down and I went to bed. So I've never seen The Shining and I've never tried again. Chad (2m 39s): Did you have an incident when you were a kid, like on your big wheel? I mean, was that what scared you off? Lieven (2m 45s): No, not even just, I know kids are scary. Joel (2m 50s): Speaking of The Shining guys, my nickname was Room 237. Today, a great documentary on The Shining, I think it's on Netflix, is called Room 237, which is the room in the movie. I won't ruin the movie, but that is a famous room number of the film. If you're into like Stanley Kubrick and conspiracy theories. Did we actually Land on the moon? All kinds of good stuff in the documentary room 237. Chad (3m 17s): Nice. Okay, so Cheeseman, what's your favorite scary movie? Joel (3m 21s): Yeah, mine's gonna be pretty lame, but if I put it into context, I think it might make sense for you. Chad (3m 26s): No doubt. Joel (3m 27s): Mine is Jaws. Chad (3m 29s): Okay. Joel (3m 30s): The reason why Chad, you and I are the same age. Jaws came out in '76. Yep. You and I were five years old. I may have saw when I was six when it came out, but it was before PG 13 movies. It was not an R movie because the booby and the nude scene was behind shade or something. But my dad, for whatever reason, thought it was a good idea that my sister who's five years older, take me to the educational film Jaws. Chad (3m 57s): Yes. Joel (3m 57s): By the way, there was no National Geographic, there was no Discovery channel. I didn't know what a shark was. I knew kind of what a dinosaur was. And then I saw this movie where this thing eats people. I was totally traumatized for a decade. Going into pools was a thing. Lakes were scary. I could hardly walk through puddles without getting a little nervous. I would have nightmares thinking my bed was on the ocean. It was just really traumatic. So Jaws for me, even though it's totally lame at my age now, was a total emotional carnage inducing movie when I was five or six years old. Chad (4m 33s): And still wetting the bed today because of it. Joel (4m 36s): Yes. Still oceaning the bed. Yes. That's what mommy called it. Lieven (4m 43s): Oceaning the bed. Chad (4m 44s): Mommy dearest. Joel (4m 45s): Did you ocean the bed again, son? Chad (4m 46s): Oh my God. Okay, let's try to get out of this fast. Joel (4m 48s): How about your movie? No, no, no, no, no. You're not getting off that fast. Chad (4m 52s): Okay. Joel (4m 52s): Favorite horror film? Chad (4m 54s): Okay, the original 1968 Night of The Living Dead. I love that movie. It is amazing. It is definitely a classic. 1968, they had color back then, but the entire thing was in black and white. But if you haven't seen it, you've definitely gotta spend some time watching the Night of the Living Dead. Not the remake by the way. Joel (5m 15s): Really kind of the bridge between the old cheesy mummy, you know, werewolf movies to like present day really scary as shit kind. Chad (5m 25s): Bella Lagosi. Joel (5m 26s): Yes. Yes. Like, Abbott and Costello mee the drag, whatever, the werewolf. Wasn't there a whole series of Abbott and Costello movies meet the? Chad (5m 36s): Yeah. Dracula. Frankenstein. Joel (5m 36s): All right. Jesus. Let's get to shoutouts before we go off on a real tangent. Chad (5m 41s): Shoutouts! Alright you go first. Joel (5m 41s): I'm gonna go first. My first shout out, and you know me, I love the Canadian news stories. So this is a bridge between Canada and France. It's a Canadian European love story. If you will, Chad. Vancouver based people analytics and workforce planning platform Visier, that's spelled V I S I E R. I thought it might be Vizier because of Chad (6m 2s): I think it is. Joel (6m 4s): And it is kind of French Canadian, although Vancouver doesn't equate much with them. Anyway, they've acquired the French base company Boostrs, that's Boostrs without the e, they're an API focus skills mapping engine founded back in 2017. Terms were not disclosed, but I'm sure a lot of loonies came into play on this acquisition. Visier was, has taken on tens or 10 of boosters employees who will continue working in Paris, what is now a Visier satellite office. Visier also operates in France, Germany, UK, Canada, and the US. In July of 21, Visier became the first Canada based HR tech unicorn. Joel (6m 44s): You know what that means, Chad? That means I get to play: sfx (6m 50s): Pink fluffy unicorns. Chad (6m 51s): My God. Joel (6m 51s): Oh yes, that's right the first in Canada, when it raised 125 million SD in Series E, totaling $216.5 million in funding. They have quite an appetite. By the way listeners may remember they acquired eva.ai back in May. So I suspect there are more European companies on their radar. Shout out to Visier. Our friends from the great white North Chad (7m 18s): And the company they acquired Boostrs. They're URL already redirects to Visier. It was quick man. It was quick. I'm gonna shout out to the Dutch. I'm sure this is exactly what Lieven was thinking about. Okay, so check this shit out. Chetu, A company located in Florida hired a telemarketer in in the Netherlands. The company demanded the employee turn on his webcam while working. Joel (7m 46s): What? Chad (7m 46s): When the employee didn't comply with being monitored via webcam for nine hours a day, he was fired for quote unquote "refusal to work and insubordination". The employee took Chetu to court. Horrible fucking name for a company, by the way, Chetu in the Netherlands for unfair dismissal and the court found in his favor, which includes Chetu, paying for court costs, back wages, paid for unused vacation days, a fine of $50,000. And in order to remove the employee's - the non-compete clause. Yeah, here in America, we know Florida's gonna Florida, but Chetu and other American companies won't be pressing this kind of bullshit in Europe. Chad (8m 30s): Big shout out to the Dutch for sticking it to Florida. Joel (8m 34s): Love it. And I I also heard that they utilized Jeffrey Toobin's legal team on this case. All right, Lieven and what's your shout out? Lieven (8m 44s): Shout out to Elon Musk. Of course. Chad (8m 48s): Of course. Joel (8m 48s): Jesus, of course, your boy. Lieven (8m 49s): If Musk says, I'm going to buy a stupid company for $40 billion, then he buys a stupid company for $40 billion. Chad (8m 56s): He's forced to, Yes. Lieven (8m 57s): Well, okay, maybe he had second thoughts, but in the end he bought it so Musk is a man of his words. But what I found intriguing, was the first thing he did after saying he's going to fire like 75% of all employees. But the first thing he did was trying to make some money out of it. And now he wants to make users pay if they want to have a verified account. So from now on, it'll be part of Twitter Blue, you know, the little blue, what's it called? Check sign. Chad (9m 22s): Yep. Lieven (9m 23s): It's a paid service. And it used to be $5 a month, if you want to be a verified user, it'll cost you $19.99 a month. So I guess inflation is a bitch, but he's going to make you pay if you want to be famous, which I kind of like. Joel (9m 38s): So does that mean, are you already paying for the blue check leaving? Lieven (9m 42s): No, but I think now I need one. Joel (9m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Chad? Lieven (9m 45s): If it doesn't come free, I want one. Chad (9m 47s): I don't need a blue check. I definitely don't. Joel (9m 51s): I'm on the fence. I'm on the fence. I think it'll boost your tweets. I think Elon is gonna do some interesting things. So obviously Lieven loves the deal. Chad (9m 59s): Oh yeah. Joel (9m 59s): We're gonna play a little buyer sell later. Chad, if you're playing buy or sell Elon buying Twitter, turning around the company. Are you a buy or sell on Elon taking over. Chad (10m 9s): You know, it's amazing. You see a guy like Elon Musk who comes up with Tesla and SpaceX and just he's so amazing and innovative and then you see stupid shit like this and you're like, Who the fuck is this guy? Right? Yeah. I mean he could have legitimately just focused on things that changed the world and then he's focusing on stupid shit like the prospect of allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter. Which I don't think's gonna happen, I think he's mainly doing it just for the media piece of it. But yeah, I'm gonna sell Twitter and I'm at the point right now where I'm just waiting for more stupid shit to happen and then I'm just going to deactivate my account or go numb on or whatever the fuck it is. Chad (10m 53s): But I mean, just it's kind stupid. Joel (10m 56s): Go numb on it. Chad, go numb on it. So I'm in Lieven's camp on this one. This one's a buy for me. All right, so if we can go back in the time machine, you'll remember that when we first talked about this, I said, Elon is going to get this deal done. He's gonna let Trump back on the platform. Fox News is gonna celebrate this. Every GOP candidate is gonna love is gonna love Elon Musk. Chad (11m 17s): He's gonna turn into Parlor. Joel (11m 18s): There's gonna be a Republican back in the White House release. That's what the bed is in 24. We're gonna have a Republican house and watch the government contracts for electric cars, the boring company satellites, sky links, solar panels, all these businesses that Elon owns are gonna get major government contracts. And this $44 billion is gonna look like a drop in the bucket in terms of the profits that Elon is gonna make outside of Twitter, let alone what the hell he can do with Twitter. Which, you know, there is some money there, but I think in the bigger picture, Elon's businesses as a whole is going to rake in the cash and that's one of the reasons why he bought Twitter. Chad (11m 57s): And so what you're saying is he is pretty much buying politicians with buying Twitter, which is the standard for the US. Joel (12m 4s): Welcome to America. Chad, welcome to America. I know you've been gone for a couple weeks, but this is how we do shit. Chad (12m 13s): I think I'm gonna stay. Lieven (12m 14s): I think I'm going to sell after all, you know, I never really liked the company Twitter and I thought it was just going to let it go broke. Joel (12m 24s): You're changing your mind. No, no, no, no. Lieven. Come on. Lieven (12m 27s): No, I still like Elon. I just don't like Twitter. Joel (12m 30s): Alright. That's a thing. Well, speaking of Chad and Portugal, what kind of travel schedule do we have coming up? Oh Chad (12m 36s): Dude. Going to the web summit this week. Keith Saundorling, our friend and podcasts, commissioner, one of the commissioners of the E E O C and he's speaking in Lisbon this week at the biggest technology conference in the year. Had no fucking clue. Actually gonna see Gert Jan and about 50 Dutchmen there as well. He has a huge contingent that's coming from the Intelligence group and around the Netherlands. And then also Martin Lentz from Austria or Buddy from JobioQ, we can't even say that right? But they're bringing people as well. So it's gonna be a big party and I can't wait. Joel (13m 17s): Good God, you're fancy now. What's next? You in meetings and Davos like I just, I can't fucking Chad (13m 27s): TOPICS! Joel (13m 28s): All right boys, let's talk about, let's talk about Factorial. Chad (13m 34s): Fact what? Joel (13m 35s): A Barcelona Spain based provider of an HR software. They've raised $120 million in series fee funding, which officially makes them, you guess it a unicorn. sfx (13m 50s): Pink Fluffy Unicorns Joel (13m 51s): At a $1 billion valuation. That's right. Founded in 2016 the company intends to use the funds to expand and improve its functionalities and strengthen itself in the existing markets of Spain, the UK, the US, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Mexico and Brazil. As well as open up a new office in Miami and expand into new markets worldwide. They claim to serve more than 7,000 businesses in 65 plus countries and employee 800 workers in offices in Brazil, Mexico, and Spain. Yep. Sounds like unicorn to me alright. Lieven, what's your take on Factorial? Lieven (14m 30s): I think I like them. I looked into them and I gave them some thoughts and I think I like them, and the reason why is because they claimed in their press release or market share is ridiculously small. And that is something which caught my attention. I mean most people claim and they try to make their company look bigger when they try to get venture capital. But our day said, our market share is ridiculously small. But the good thing is we only have 7,000 customers. We could potentially sell it to 10 million. After looking into it, I actually agree it's a nice company and given their main market is Spain, their Spanish speaking, the Spanish speaking countries are huge and are mostly green fields. Lieven (15m 16s): I mean if you look at most of South America, it's a growing continent. There are Spanish speaking and if they aim at that markets, I definitely am a believer and it's like a blue ocean. Totally there are many companies focusing there within HR technology. So I think, it could be a good idea. Yeah, Chad (15m 35s): I gotta see SMB or SME as we call it here in Europe. It's a bitch man. And we talk about this just about every week you have to spend tons of cash just to gain awareness, market penetration. And that's even harder in Europe. The EU has 24 official languages. So you're trying to penetrate the small to medium size market in several countries and in several languages and yet you're also going to try to invade the United States, all of that at the same time kids. Now just let that digest for a minute because here's an even bigger problem. Vendors like Oyster have also expanded into the employer of record business. Chad (16m 20s): Along with Deel, Remote, Atlas and other unicorns. So I don't see EOR services anywhere on their site, meaning they are at an extreme disadvantage as those medium sized businesses want to be bigger and they want to hire remote across borders. I know we're not in the buy or sell segment, but I'm hearing warning bells all over to the go to market strategy and would be running for the hills and definitely not investing in, oh boy, this organization. Yeah. Joel (16m 51s): Oh boy. I do think it's fair that we can throw Factorial in the big swinging dicks in Europe category with persona and HiBob. I think that's fair to do at this point. I think persona's got a really nice laser focus on Europe. I think. HiBob wants to be in the US, they're really focused there. Decent presence throughout Europe. Chad mentioned all the US names Deel, Oyster, Velocity Global. Others that are just like, great footprint have gotten, you know, I guess the smart money. This feels a lot like the following money, sort of the dumb money that's coming into this space. I do agree with Lieven that I think that that South America and Spanish speaking parts of the globe, if they can sort of unlock that there isn't a lot of opportunity and I don't think that we have companies that are really focused on that niche. Joel (17m 43s): So I do think that with that many potential customers that they can get a nice little foothold into the Spanish speaking world. Hit South America. I think they're wasting their time in America. Opening up in Miami sounds fun. And maybe it's a bridge to South America. Chad (17m 60s): It's expensive. Joel (18m 0s): Yeah, expensive, yeah. But it is a nice bridge to South America as well as keeping a foothold in Europe, which I'm sure their investors, like and a lot of their customers might be open to them being a US based or have a a operations in the US. So for this one, if we were playing by or sell, I'm gonna go with an applause for Factorial to make some waves in South America and the Spanish speaking countries. Well let's take a quick break cuz that was a lot of talk about horror movies and unicorns. When we come back, we will place some official real buy or sell. Joel (18m 42s): All right boys, let's play a little buy or sell. You know how it's played. But our listeners may not. We pick out three companies that have recently gotten some funding. We summarize the news and then each of us buys or sells the company. Are you guys ready to play a little buy or sell? Chad (19m 1s): Yes. Joel (19m 1s): All right. Let's talk about Jomigo. What the Berlin based Jomigo has raised 10 million euros from an investment from Berlin based VCIBB ventures. Founded in 2020, Jomigo assists businesses and freelance recruiters and mutually benefiting from what each other has to offer. The company wants to make actively recruiting specialized profiles easier, faster, and more modern in sync with new talent generations and the gig economy. Jomigo will use the funds to further develop in scale up their B2B recruitment marketplace. Jomigo employs 41 workers, that's according to LinkedIn. Lieven are you buy or sell Jomigo? Lieven (19m 42s): Hmm. This is actually a business we know pretty well because one of our companies, Fiji is doing something similar. You're matching recruiters with opportunities at companies with vacancies at companies. And the first thing which I really liked about Jomigo was they're matching you with three different and dependent recruiters and they will work together or independently, I don't know, but they will all three be working at your vacancy and this way reducing the time to hire and like twice, that's what they claim. Cause the idea is nice having three different recruiters working on the same case, but it's also a very big problem to me because you don't have a clue who those recruiters are and you're going to use the name of your company for their recruitment. Lieven (20m 32s): Those people have 20 different nationalities. So basically they're from all over the globe. You don't know who they are and they're going to call someone and say, Hi, I'm he or her from this company, and they're going to start talking and that could be kind of a problem. What about discrimination? What's if they misuse your name? I'm not sure. So that's something I find rather dangerous. They focus on tech, marketing, sales, basically specialized recruitment stuff pretty easy, but should work. I think for the recruiters it's easy. It's hassle free. No need to do your sales, you just get the the vacancies and you try to find someone. Lieven (21m 13s): For the companies. I see some problems, but I like the idea. It's a difficult one, but I think I would buy. And nice to know, I had some thoughts about their pricing system. So I mailed the company a few hours ago and they replied and they said, okay, it's 23% hiring fee, out of the total annual salary, which I think is a lot for a platform, but still, if people are willing to pay, why not? It's a buy. Joel (21m 41s): All right, That's a buy from Lieven. All right. All right Chad, what do you got on Jomigo? Chad (21m 49s): Jomigo. So only one of the founders seem to have any experience in the people space. And so that's pretty thin obviously, until you dig deeper and see that their investors are heavily experienced in the space, which tells me two things. Number one, experienced staffing people don't just throw money at three dudes with an idea, especially staffing professionals. Number two, recruiting is missing one main ingredient in driving explosive growth. And that's the ability to scale. And if you can find tech that can help you scale and cut headcount, then you have a winner. So staffing and consulting experts in the mix as investors, they've been bootstrapping so that they haven't taken a lot of money. Chad (22m 35s): And you've gotta remember that if staffing professionals get behind your product, it's not an aspirational investment like we see with most of HR Tech. It's a business decision. They've sharpened their pencils, they've created pivot tables, and they have to see this as a real opportunity. And if the experts in the German staffing market are behind it, then it's a buy for me. Joel (22m 60s): All right, two buys for Jomigo. All right guys, this to me sounds like a new Bounty Jobs or maybe a Scout, which by the way pulled in a hundred million in funding from TRI ventures back a couple years ago, which is also now, which was connected to Aquent, which now looks like they own Scout. I did find that it was 10 million euros in terms of what Jomigo had raised. Assume that's correct. So this is more or less a flyer on something that can garner a hundred million dollars in funding, even if they just create a nice footprint in Europe. To me it's incredibly good opportunity and a good flyer to have a business like this in Europe. Joel (23m 44s): Lieven has a better sense of sort of customer appetite for these kinds of things, but if he's on board and it sounds like he is, then to me, 10 million euros on a business like this seems like a no-brainer. I'm ready to call Jomigo, my amigo, everybody, and I'm gonna buy the company out of Berlin. Lieven (24m 6s): Nice. Joel (24m 7s): All right. Let's talk about Easop. Not to be confused with AEasop Fables, which a lot of your Europeans know. So anyway, the Paris France based startup that allows US based companies to grant equity to international hires has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The company intends to use funds to further invest in product development to build the team and expand into new markets. Customers can currently offer and manage equity incentives to employees, contractors, and advisors in some 50 countries. And $5 million is currently being managed among a small group of beta users of the product. Joel (24m 48s): Lieven are you a buyer sell on Easop? Lieven (24m 52s): I am most definitely a buy on Easop and just because I know how hard it is to get all these things arranged. I mean, in Europe you always say a bunch of countries, legislation is a bitch concerning tax and tax instruments. And we just had an exit at House of HR and I know I was very glad I wasn't part of the legal or the financial team because those people still are working literally day and night to get all the paperwork done. Yeah, so yesterday evening at 11:00 in the evening, I got a mail from someone from Finance during the weekend with some documents he needed me to sign and return. I would get a shit lot of money. Lieven (25m 33s): Okay. I always love it when people send me documents if they give me return, you know, but I felt sorry for the guy if he had to do that at 11 o'clock in the evening. It's so a hustle. And I think Easop, I looked into them if they can actually make it happen, if they offer a platform and if it can enable as SMEs to offer their own employees those stocks, that would be great. Also, from a just emotional point of view, I mean, if this will encourage startups to share equity with their employees, that's a very good thing and it'll make it easier. So it'll happen more often, which I like. So definitely a buy. Chad (26m 13s): Yeah, I'm surprised and glad that Lieven went this way because I love when you can see people spot holes in the market. The big question here is, is it too early? You know, are these guys going to suffer the slings and arrows of the discoverers? You know, the first ones on the field and you know, personally, I'm gonna go back to the names that I mentioned before, Deel, Oyster, Remote, Atlas. These are all companies with a lot of fucking money. And what are they looking for right now? They're looking for appointed differentiation and they're not finding it. I mean they're pretty much all the same platform at this point with different names, different, you know, bigger booths, those types of things. Chad (26m 60s): They need to be able to look for organizations like this, which have only taken $2.5 million. So it would be cheap with the kind of cash that they have. So I see Easop actually being acquired within 12 months by one of these organizations, which is an easy ad for a Deel or Remote or Atlas. So this is definitely a buy for me. Joel (27m 22s): No, there it is. Folks that's two buys, we are a beneficent group this week. Look, there are a lot of residual businesses that have been created out of the work from home phenomenon. And the means by which you can manage equity to employees, you know, it's grown into the same complicated issue, right? You can't just say, Hey, we're headquartered in San Francisco. Everyone's in San Francisco. So all the equity is managed through a US based provider. And it's fairly simple now you have people in multiple countries that are employees or want equity. You wanna be able to grant equity to those folks. Carta right now is I guess the brand name that everyone thinks of in terms of this service. Joel (28m 7s): If you're not familiar with Carta, they've received over a billion dollars in funding. So, there's ample room to say that there's some money in this business and that there's incredible opportunity to take a 2.5 million flyer on Easop just to be able to create a brand that says, Hey, we'll help you manage your international markets. There are a lot of people that don't know what the fuck Carta is. There are a lot of startups created every day that can embrace this service. So for me, like it's a huge buy, I think it's an incredible business and there will be competitors that we'll be talking about in the future as well. So three buys for Easop. Joel (28m 49s): Let's see if Enate garners the same kind of vivacity from the group. The Cheltonham, easy for me to say. Maybe it's next to Wrexham, UK based digital workforce management platform Enate has raised 2 million pounds in a funding round to fuel the company's expansion across the UK and beyond. Enate software product is designed to manage hybrid workforces of digital and in-person workers. The platform can be used by enterprises to manage workflows and provides data insights into company performances. The company raised 2.2 million pounds in an earlier funding round back in May of 2020. Joel (29m 32s): Lieven are you a buy or sell on Enate? Lieven (29m 35s): I'm a sell, definitely. So after being very excited about Easop, I looked at Enate and it was utterly boring and I thought it's like 13 and a dozen. And after watching their websites for five minutes, I still couldn't figure out exactly what are we doing differently than other companies and I just didn't feel like getting more information. So I thought let's sell, we already have two buys. Joel (30m 0s): That's a sell from Lieven. Chad? Chad (30m 3s): Yeah, like Lieven, I almost fell asleep reading the description on the homepage. We are talking about business automation. It should be exciting. I mean everything that we talk about around automation is exciting and these guys make automation sound boring. And here's an example quote "Enate has been at the forefront of championing the value of process orchestration software, which is reflected in the richness of its technology for the hybrid workforce and the fact they are one of the very few providers who can evidence process" Lieven (30m 42s): THROW THE OUT! Joel (30m 42s): Is this a sell? I'm very confused whether or not you like this company or not. Chad (30m 46s): I'm good with a sell. I'm gonna go with sell Joel (30m 48s): This. It's a sell, so it's two sells. Yes. The most exciting part about this company is that they're from Cheltonham, UK. I guess I'm saying that correctly. The site, if yeah, we're all looking at the website, they might want to redo their website, right? The site claims quote "Solve the talent crisis. Empowering business users to deliver their own solutions means that technology talent can focus on extraordinary digital customer experiences and accelerate through the backlog of work across old systems." Really that solves the talent crisis. Well thank God for that because we've all been trying to figure that out. Joel (31m 28s): But Enate is apparently figured out. Chad (31m 30s): Worst marketers ever. Joel (31m 31s): I go to the pricing page and I get quote, "the page you were looking for is not found." End quote. All right, call me when these guys are ready for primetime because Cheltonham, UK apparently is not ready for primetime. This is a big sell from me as well. Chad (31m 58s): Are you looking to buy this one? That's the question. Joel (32m 1s): Are we talking about Indeed? Chad (32m 2s): Yes. Joel (32m 2s): Okay. Alright guys interested to hear Lieven's take on this. So listeners of our weekly show know about Indeed's new advertising model, but here's a refresher. In 2023, employers using Indeed will pay only when a candidate starts or submits an application rather than when they click on a job ad as is currently the case. Indeed says the main advantage of a pay per applicant model over a pay per click model is the reduction of unqualified, uninterested, and even fraudulent clicks that the employer pays for. With the new model, the employer pays only for what is truly wanted: a qualified candidate. Joel (32m 43s): That's according to LinkedIn of course. Sounds great, right? Well maybe or maybe not, especially when we're talking about the European market. Lieven, I can't wait to hear your take on Indeed's new pricing strategy. Lieven (32m 55s): My first impression was this doesn't make sense at all so I must have been missing something and I reread the whole sentence again and I'll read it out loud, "employers will pay more for this upgraded experience as the value of a legitimate candidate is higher than that of lots of unidentified clicks. But in the long run paper application will save employers money as recruiters can zero in on more quality candidates faster." Okay, so look at this. So basically you used to pay per click and then at the end you've got a shitload of bad candidates, but now and then one was okay, and now instead of paying per click, you pay per candidates. But it's not like this is going to change anything. Lieven (33m 36s): I mean you still get a shitload of bad candidates and only now you have to pay for those bad candidates, which will make it a very annoying experience for me. And what I say about fighting fraud, this is ridiculous as well. I mean this will encourage frauds, pay per click was like 30 cents per click or something. But now how much will the charge replication? I mean 15 euros, maybe more? For 15 euros I can write a Biden script which will totally send bullshit applications to my competitors constantly and for 15 euros per applicant, this is worth my time. Lieven (34m 16s): So this will encourage fraud. 10 cent per click I want, but 50 euros per applicant, okay, 10 applicants, 150 euros, 365 days a year. It might cost them some money. So I just, think I must be missing out on something. Those people aren't stupid, but they weren't able to convince me so probably, it's me. Joel (34m 37s): I don't think, I don't think it's you Lieven. Chad (34m 41s): Dude, they think they gave it a different name, but it's literally the same shit. There's nothing different here kids. And, as we look at Indeed and their evil mastery of this industry, they've been able to over the years do whatever they want and companies continue to pay. Doesn't matter what the freight is, right? So they're on this sugar high of being able to do whatever they want and knowing that companies are gonna pay for it. So to be able to say that the applications, the people who actually finish the applications, which we know is less than 10% who actually start are gonna be more qualified. Chad (35m 22s): That's total bullshit. You can't predict that. As a matter of fact, the people that go all the way through the apply are not gonna be the most talented. Why? Because they don't have time to go through that application process. But yet remember this is a started application. This has nothing to do with a completed application. So you're still gonna pay for incomplete shit as well. I mean this is, to me again, a masterclass on evil recruiting vendors when it comes to Indeed they are the best of it. They are the best at being evil and doing shit and just calling it something different. It's nothing different. Joel (35m 58s): Evil genius I think was the term he used on the weekly show. Lieven (36m 2s): Yeah, I don't see why the quality of the applicants would improve by changing the monetization model. Chad (36m 8s): It won't! Lieven (36m 8s): Because that's basically what they're doing. Just changing monetization. Chad (36m 12s): Yes. Lieven (36m 12s): Just won't have an impact at all on the quality of the applicants. It's weird. Joel (36m 15s): Well, what's worse, I think Lieven you, you talked about this, right? So back in the days where there was a flat fee for job postings, people knew they were gonna get a lot of shit candidates. Right? And then pre-screening occurred and there are ways that like people got used to it and then pay per click, it's like, you know, I'm gonna get 10 to 20% shitty candidates, but I know that I'm not paying a lot per click. So that's sort of in my algorithm or or my math for what I'm paying for. When people start paying 20, 40, $50 for these crap applications, you're gonna see, you know, the the pitchforks and the fire start because people are not gonna be real happy about that shit. Indeed's gonna get a lot of calls around, I'm not paying for these applicants, these are shit and they're gonna have to deal with that, but that's their problem. Joel (37m 2s): But that you raise a really good point in that people are gonna have to expect people to get their head around $20, 40, 50 plus dollars for an applicant. That's bullshit. They're not gonna be real happy about it versus paying 20¢, 30¢, 40¢ cents a click. Chad (37m 17s): Well, first let's talk about Europe though. Let's talk about Europe. Europe has not fully embraced PPC pay per click and now they're moving toward pay per application, right? So Lieven your thoughts on Europe because they haven't even fully embraced PPC yet. What I mean now they're getting thrown a huge curve ball with PPA. Lieven (37m 39s): No, at first glance it's normal evolution from pay per credit to pay per click to pay per applicants. It's only getting better, but it should be like that. Chad (37m 49s): But it's not right? Lieven (37m 50s): When you pay per click and you get shady applicants, the company like Indeed could say, okay is because people click on your ads but for some reason they didn't want to apply. Now when you pay per applicant, you actually see the value you have to throw away shitty applicants. People want to it, they definitely want, it'll suddenly stand out more how much a bad applicant costs you. Pay per click. Yes. Yeah, but Indeed it's like they click on your vacancy and they see the texts, they see the whole vacancy. And if people just don't apply, well it's because your vacancy was bad, you could sell it like that. But now one, you have to pay for shitty applicants. You can't blame the company, people apply and it's just the wrong kind of people. Lieven (38m 34s): I don't pay for the wrong kind of people applying. So I think Indeed, they might have to reconsider. Chad (38m 39s): So that being said, reconsidered, do we think that this is gonna last a year to 18 months before they have to step back and go back to maybe a different new version of PPC that is just a more cost effective? Lieven (38m 56s): I dunno if they actually succeed in upgrading the experience and and making the candidates quality bigger. Why not? Joel (39m 2s): This is not just the tip. When they make a move like this, this is all in. Dude, they are Meta style, Zuckerberg. We're all in with this model and you know, it may deep fix them like Meta, who knows? But I don't see them walking back from this. You know, two perspectives from a European standpoint is, I think although programmatic is new to Europe, it's coming. We'll remember StepStone acquired Appcast for $79 million, which by the way looks like the steal of a century at this point. Appcast could have held out for a lot more than $79 million. Joel (39m 43s): But that's a different program. Look, programmatic is coming in a pay-per-click world where indeed is competing with a greater platform, a greater ecosystem of cost efficiency, which is programmatic. They have a really hard time competing in that world and they would rather pivot to something brand new that confuses the marketplace, that obfuscates, you know, what they're doing creates more of a black box to what they're doing is smart when they see that programmatic is coming to Europe in the way that we do on this show. The other thing I think that is maybe being discounted as far as Europe and maybe the global economy as a whole is LinkedIn here. Joel (40m 23s): LinkedIn is in China. I think we can all agree that, would we be surprised that China boots out every US tech company on the planet in the next 12 months? I don't think anyone would be shocked. That's a lot of money that LinkedIn has to make up. And in doing so, they're gonna be looking at, I don't know, democratic countries where there's rule of law where you know where they're safe to do business. To me, I really see LinkedIn coming into Europe much stronger than they have in the past. LinkedIn is a pay per click model that's gonna compete with Indeed and I don't think indeed once that smoke in Europe. So the combination, the one two punch of programmatic and I think LinkedIn getting a lot more serious about Europe has Indeed scared to death. Joel (41m 8s): And I think that spurred let's agree, a desperate move to go to this pay per acquisition model. Chad (41m 15s): And it is Halloween so therefore this would be a great time to be scared to death. Joel (41m 21s): I'm scared but I love you guys. I love Halloween. Have some candy Europe godammit, it's a fun holiday. Dress up and Lieven watch the Shining for God's sakes. I'm not here to hurt you, I'm just here to bash your fucking head in. Chad and Cheese (41m 44s): We out. Lieven (41m 45s): We out. INTRO (41m 47s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. INTRO (42m 33s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

To say Indeed has made changes this year would be a gross understatement. Here's a roundup: 1) changes to bid optimizer, 2) changes to their resume reward system and 3) alterations to Geo and Title expansions. And to say some people are unhappy with the changes is also an understatement. That's why we invited Jim Durbin, the man Indeed calls "The Indeed Whisperer" to the podcast to get to the bottom of what's going on at the world's most popular job site. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSOR: Disability Solutions helps businesses find qualified candidates with disabilities for their job postings. INTRO (1s): 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 (21s): Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite degenerates, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, the Scooby to my Shaggy. Chad (34s): Yes. Joel (34s): Chad Sowash and today we welcome another old white guy to the show. Jim Durban is the Recruitment Marketing Director at PSG Global and self-proclaimed Indeed Whisperer. And for the old timers out there, Jim was associated with the original recruiting.com, and some may know him as the Social Media Head Hunter. Jim, welcome to the podcast Chad (59s): Blogger extraordinaire. Jim (1m 0s): Thank you. Thank you. Joel (1m 2s): He recently thought about starting a podcast, but he found his brain and decided against that, but he does have a nice shiny mic that he pulled outta the box for this interview. So, Jim, for those that don't know you, give us the Twitter bio and we'll get into your problems. We're gonna do a little, little therapy today, but tell us about you. What makes Jim tick? Jim (1m 22s): 22 years of staffing, sales, recruiting. I quit about halfway through to start a marketing firm that I couldn't get outta my blood. So I started doing executive head hunting for digital marketers. I then dove into AI and chatbots and all that. And now I end up in RPOs running advertising, hiring hundreds of thousands of people a year. So kind of full cycle, touched everything in the industry, and now I'm back to playing with spreadsheets. Chad (1m 47s): Touching it all. That's exactly what we like to hear here on the Chad and Cheese Show. Jim (1m 52s): Yeah. Chad (1m 54s): Joel's closing his eyes right now. Anyway, so you have an ax to grind with our friends over at Indeed. So we thought, you know, we'd give you a little space. You're doing this on the Daily, this is a, you know, new slash rumor slash you know, the shit that's going on in the industry. And obviously Indeed's a pretty big fucking player in this industry. So let's talk about it. What acts do you have to grind? Jim (2m 18s): We've just seen a lot of changes this year. I mean, obviously Indeed's the number one source of all your hiring, for almost everybody. They're cheap, there's lots of volume in 'em. But they've made a series of decisions in the last year that have been poorly communicated. And I don't know who I'm angrier at Indeed for running these out or the TA world for not talking about them. Cuz these are huge, substantial changes in how we market, advertise and spend our budgets. And when no one's talking about it, what it usually means is you weren't paying attention, but we're talking about millions and millions of dollars sometimes for individual clients and they're just not even aware of it. Chad (2m 54s): So, recruitment marketing agencies, aren't they like a part of this, you know, piece on the play board as well? I mean, shouldn't they be advocating for their clients? I know they make more money as more obviously budget gets spent. Joel (3m 8s): Ding ding, dinging. Chad (3m 10s): Right? But at the end of the day, shouldn't they be advocating for the client and making a bunch of noise? Jim (3m 16s): They should, shouldn't they? Chad (3m 18s): Fiduciaries. Jim (3m 18s): Yeah, that's a whole different story. The problem there is that TA just likes to write checks and thinks the problem's solved. Chad (3m 24s): Okay. Jim (3m 25s): They're not looking at the things they're actually doing. And it's shocking when you guys hear some of the numbers I'll drop on you, you're gonna have to, Oh, better show me that. Cause we're talking about cutting your costs 90% for some of these folks, or a CPA that's $35 that I can deliver you at 50 cents. That's not me being a super genius. That's people doing things so badly and not paying attention and just, oh, just hand it to the vendor to write a check. So it's definitely a problem. And, but that's what's happened this year is these three or four big things. I don't understand why people aren't losing their minds when their costs have gone up so much? Chad (3m 58s): All right, number one, let's hit it. Jim (4m 2s): In January, Indeed switched off the CPC. So they took off the manual granular view of your campaigns and forced everybody to the bid optimize it, which is basically their version of Indeed hosted jobs. There are lots of reasons why they did it, but they took away that granular piece from us. And so I used that granular piece to drop cost for desktop remote people from $2 and 14 cents down to 50 cents. So when they took that away, I was like, well, now what do we do? Right? In all fairness, the reason they did it is because 99% of their corporate customers just handed off to their customer success manager and they were doing it anyway. So only a few, it's like owning a McDonald's and everybody uses Uber Eats. Jim (4m 43s): Nobody goes into the store. So why keep the store open? So they just cut that CPC thing out and nobody said a word because they weren't using the dashboard at all. They were just handing it off to somebody else. Joel (4m 55s): So just so I'm clear, Jim, historically you would post a job on, Indeed you would pay, I think initially it was like 25 cents minimum per click and then bids would go up or the cost would go up depending on how competitive the market was. And what you're saying is that's gone now it's just we're gonna do the bidding for you based on the job you're looking to fill, et cetera. Jim (5m 17s): Absolutely. Indeed's created, they've simplified their algorithm, but now it's created to identify what they think your ideal spending profile is. That's a dangerous word. Cause it's not your best interest, it's not the best candidate. It's what is your risk tolerance. And that's what the bid optimizer ultimately does. If you're not watching it, it keeps pushing the ceiling up. It'd be like, you know, you go to your store and like, it's $2 for a Coke the next day it's $3. You don't say anything by the time it's eight. You're like, when did Cokes up? Joel (5m 46s): Boiling the frog. Jim (5m 47s): Because you weren't paying attention because you basically told them algorithmically, I don't have any problem paying for this. And changing that CPC to the bid optimizer absolutely does. And this why you see costs move up in the middle of the year. It's not job postings. It's literally your campaigns are creating a better risk profile based on your past behavior. Joel (6m 7s): And is this because companies, they don't really care about ROI in that sense. They care that they get enough candidates and enough hires hopefully to pay for it. In other words, if I'm spending a thousand and I'm still getting the same results, like who cares? But I'm getting fewer candidates and less traffic because of that. And, my Indeed sales rep calls me every month and says, Hey, if we increase that budget, we can get you more candidates. Is that what's happening? Jim (6m 34s): But it's what they've been doing for the last 10 years, but it's far more complicated than that. Now there's 30 different triggers that can go on it. There's 30 or 40 different things you can do for your jobs. Whether they're indexed, how are you using your titles? Do they have the right schema for your post? Are you creating something with template, blah blah blah. Lots of tactical stuff no one but me cares about. It's far more complex now they're making it easy because why not make it easy? Nobody cared anyway. Chad (6m 60s): Well nobody was paying attention. Yeah. And now they are in a situation where they just have to throw money at a problem. That's all they've got. And it sounds like there is no sound. So looks like Indeed wins again. Joel (7m 12s): Yeah. Jim (7m 12s): Well that was just the first one in January. So let's go to the second one, see if the changes reminded. Joel (7m 17s): Number 2. Jim (7m 19s): Okay. As on its own. That's defensible. We're doing it for the job seekers. Yeah, we made a bunch of money, but let's not talk about that. The second one was the change of the sourcing pieces to the getting rid of the rewards. So traditionally they've always complained cuz the dollar wasn't enough for them, but it was a dollar or resume credit and you'd get rewards if you sent it and people responded to you. Chad (7m 39s): Right. Jim (7m 39s): So I did that at Marriott. We were able to generate perpetual motion machines where we'd have a hundred percent response rates because you get two credits back for sending it. I'd have people sending three or 4,000 emails out on a hundred credit account, which is great for us, right? Yeah. Then they all went free during the pandemic. Now they're like, they went far on the other side. It's, they raised their cost 20%, which isn't that big a deal. Everybody did. But they took away the rewards. And that functionally is a 300% increase in your sourcing budget cuz each contact usually gets about 300 contacts a month. sfx (8m 13s): What did you say? Jim (8m 14s): Yes, 300. So imagine I go to my CEO and I say, I know that we budgeted $200,000 for Indeed resumes, but it's gonna be 600 this year and 800 next year. And again, nobody said anything. Joel (8m 26s): Because they're still cheaper than LinkedIn, right? Jim (8m 28s): No. No, not anymore. Not anymore. It's why everybody's moving off that resume. They bought a bunch of contacts. But that's a fundamental change in how and all of our CPHs, it's too expensive to source unless you're a smaller, medium sized business. Chad (8m 42s): When is talent acquisition going to fucking smarten up? That's the big question. Because they keep paying for the same goddamn candidates over and over. They're in their database. They don't keep 'em fresh. They allow 'em to, to go into a black hole. I mean, Indeed's prosperity is really off the backs of just laziness or stupidity. Am I wrong? Jim (9m 1s): Their tech is better than the other stuff out there because they're a search engine. It's the same reason Google dominated everywhere. You're only as your dumbest competitor. So, while I'm complaining here, right, I have to admit I haven't had these problems. My costs keep dropping. My applications go up. We're doing great. I'm just shocked watching other people, because I sit and talked to a lot of folks in that position and oh God, we spent a hundred thousand dollars Indeed this month. What do I do? The answer is, well six months ago you should have sat down and fixed all these problems and they aren't doing it. So it's happening. I was, CEOs are just saying, yeah, shut Indeed off for the rest of the year. Which is funny cuz that might have the effect of doing more hiring because managers don't have 30 candidates to play with. Jim (9m 44s): Right? But it's not healthy for anybody and they can't figure it out. Like how do we fix it? The answer can't just be spend money. We know we have less candidates. We know the entire industry is telling us we are gonna give you less candidates and more cost. Everyone's saying that and we get that and as an industry we have to kind of turn into marketing in 2005, the good thing is we already know the the playbook. We have to focus on conversion because impressions and clicks and analytics don't oppress anybody anymore cuz B2B freaked out now they're all doing content marketing with those stupid cadences because they can't figure out how to get people to, to sign up for a hundred thousand dollars ATS kind of stuff. Right? So we know the roadmap and we've seen it before, but I mean you guys, well Joel, you know, I mean I've been trying for 15 years to tell people, recruiters need to turn into marketers. Jim (10m 29s): It doesn't work. We're not the same people. Joel (10m 31s): You mentioned Google, but Google doesn't have a lot of competition. Would you argue that Indeed doesn't have any competition either? Cuz I look at the landscape and go, geez, there's a lot of players out there. Are they just not good enough to compete with? Indeed. Like what's going on with the competitive landscape right now? Jim (10m 47s): The pay per click model isn't something that anyone's been able to beat. So with programmatic stepping up obviously and a lot of money that comes through programmatic runs through Indeed. But now you took me to my third problem. Joel (11m 1s): Let's go. Chad (11m 1s): Here we go. Jim (11m 2s): So one of the concerns that's coming out of Indeed is job seekers need the same type of jobs. And what programmatics big push is, is geo geo expansion and title expansion. I can put a job all across the country. A warehouse worker is the same as a warehouse worker, associate, a fulfillment specialist, a picker packer, same job, different title. So by doing title expansions because we haven't figured out how to stop people from typing titles into to search engines, right? Until that's done. Those job expansions help us do that when we're doing remote roles are statewide roles. You need those geo expansions if you're gonna do them correctly. And they're now saying we're going to one to one. Now here's the thing, in January that bid optimizer also forced the programmatic advertisers to go to bid optimizer. Jim (11m 48s): This one to one seems like it's attempting, and I could be wrong about this cuz certainly the programmatic people aren't admitting this. It seems like they're trying to cut their throats that one to one because it's not a fixable problem on the search engine side without a lot of cash. Making us post one job for one entry doesn't work for everybody. And I, how does programmatic, I don't need programmatic If I can't do geo and title expansions, what are they possibly gonna do for me? So, and again, no one says a word. I'm like, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. And the worst is the whole time that they're doing it, they're telling us it's for the job seekers while they rake in cash. I dunno about you guys. When someone tells me how they're gonna change hiring in the industry, like tell me how to do my job. Jim (12m 30s): I start cursing a little bit, you know, and Jim Joel (12m 33s): Goes to church every day, so this isn't something he does Jim (12m 36s): Regularly. You know, I'll say, gosh darn and nephew, but no, but seriously, don't tell me how to do my, and especially when you're raking money hand over fist, it's so, it's so obvious. It's like in the old days when someone started talking about a social issue, you knew them we're gonna hit their quarterly profits. Now it's the exact opposite. They're raking in money hand over fist. I'm like, oh, we build a hospital. Aren't we good for ourselves? Like I I don't trust people who tell me that they're doing it for my own good n nor should anybody. That's the real question. Are we pivoting away from Indeed? Chad (13m 4s): They've been saying that for 20 years Jim. Or at least close to 20 years. I mean, what the fuck did any of us expect? This has been always we're doing it for the job seeker since Paul Forrester. It's always been, we're doing it for the job seeker while we rake in the cash and it doesn't matter. So you know, this is about the crack job boards got addicted to the crack staffing companies got addicted to the crack. Yeah. Employers got addicted to the crack. Now that you're all addicted to the crack, Indeed start stepping on it and who knows what they're putting in the crack nowadays, but what the fuck are you gonna do? We've been talking about this for Jim (13m 39s): Years. I'm worried about what they might do next because I mean I call myself the Indeed whisperer. I've gotten Indeed to start calling me that. And it's kind of funny and I love brands obviously, but what happens when they do something I can't fix? Cause the answer can't just be, Hey six x your budget. You know, it can't be a, hey let's go to who's terrible. Every other job board out there Joel (14m 3s): Who's terrible every other job board Jim (14m 4s): Out. Well their problem is they're all swapping traffic. They're stuck on the Indeed Crack too. Yes. If you go to, they're buying so much of their traffic from Indeed when I, I diversified our tech stack cuz my goal is to have no more than 50% of candidates come from a de just, just for safety reason. Integration breaks, things go wrong. They get mad at me cuz they say something on a semi-popular podcast by a guy. 4 (14m 34s): Oh no. Chad (14m 34s): Let's go into some of the things that Indeed has been doing to be able to push employers to really do a better job and rethink. I mean again, employers talent acquisition, you, you've been lazy. Let, let's just put it out there. There's no getting around it guys. They are starting to force salary for salary transparency. That's a good thing. Everybody should fucking be doing that anyway. Doesn't matter. Forcing that the application process sucks. So what did Indeed do? They started to paying for the first process of trying to gather more information so that they can do more cost per, you know, whatever. Not to mention interviewing. I mean it's one of those things where they are trying to actually insert themselves into the process more for a couple of reasons because the current process is shit from company to company. Chad (15m 23s): I'd say 95% of the companies that are out there. So they see a window and they can say our favorite it's for the job seeker talent acquisition is creating this fucking problem because they're not actually fixing the problems that have been around for 20 years. Most of these problems have been around since the late nineties. Jim (15m 44s): Yeah, that's absolutely true. However, except Chad (15m 46s): For the programmatic piece. Obviously Jim (15m 47s): This is my concern when you go back to Indeed about it, this, they did the salary ranges, which is very bold of them to assume that they understand what's going on. Yeah. By the way, if you make a fight about that on LinkedIn, every compensation analyst in the world has come yell at you. And my only response to that is, well how can you be a compensation analyst? Isn't there still a gender wage gap? So you're bad at your jobs, Right? They don't like to hear that. Yeah, the but that, that's that pitch to salaries. Oh we're doing this. What happened is that they can't track it anymore. So the Indeed Pixel, which never fired correctly because how are they gonna put it into 300 different, you know, all their clients, they wanna know the hiring so they can come back and say, see look how good we do, give us more money now they wanna drive everything internally to their platform. Jim (16m 32s): So they're Indeed hiring platforms there. They want you to, they want all of your recruiters to be in Indeed. And I'm like single point of failure first off. And two, why would I trust you and three, why would I give you my data? There's an example for them. Like I see where they're going it, but they're like, give us your data. Like no, Chad (16m 49s): Yeah, you can't, you can't trust them. Jim (16m 52s): I, I have to manually download reports every day to be able to look at stuff the way I want and that's just Excel and Power bi. Why would I trust them to look at their own dashboards when that ideal spending profile is not based on what I want, it's what on makes most sense to them and good for them for building an algorithm that's as good as the airlines when they change your rates if you go back to IT or Amazon, which charges you differently if you return to much stuff. But just because they want it doesn't mean that it's good for me. And I think that's what people are finally starting to see. We are seeing some companies begin to hire recruitment advertising cuz that that was like, what was that for years it was just job posting and then we had recruitment marketing and all the money goes to employment brand, which is very difficult, very difficult to track cuz creative is, but advertising we're talking about million, 2 million, 5 million budgets that you can cut 10, 20, 30% without even thinking about just basic things. Jim (17m 46s): Well what do you do? This is my problem. I can't walk into a company and say you're overspending by 90% because then everybody gets fired, right? I made that mistake years ago. I walked into a very large beer company and I told them I will give me $200,000 and that $15 million a quarter you spend on banner ads, you can drop 5 million of it. Cause I'm gonna triple your page views. Guy threw me out of his office, told me I was an idiot not to talk to anybody on the way out because I was telling a 60 million guy this young 30 year old was telling this 60 million guy that he's really a 40 million, $200,000 guy. Which was not what you did back in those days. Marketing. But that's the question is how do we make small fixes so we can put our money towards hiring people, training up, getting recruiters are gonna actually ask what the salary is without offending the person or immediately low balling 'em cuz their last company paid. Jim (18m 38s): Well I mean those are all things we should be putting money towards, but instead we're just feeding it into the mall of of vendors. Joel (18m 44s): I want, I want to zoom out for a second, Jim, Why is Indeed doing this? Are they just a greedy corporation looking to milk this thing for all it's worth Capitalism baby? Or are there macro events that are making them, I don't know, I don't know if panic is the right word, but maybe get, you know, get it while the gittens good cuz they realize that the writing is on the wall. The two things that I think of, and maybe less so than I did five years ago, Google for jobs taking over sort of the search space on job searches. But I think more and more the programmatic landscape is really impacting Indeed's profits from a macro perspective. Why do you think Indeed is doing these things so quickly and so quietly? Jim (19m 27s): I think there is that fear of careerbuilder, monster for a lot of people actually. So, so long ago they don't realize Monster was number one and then Career Builders started giving CEOs sports tickets and they became number one. Yes. And then, and then they started taking those remote work from home jobs before it was real and they got mad cuz there were so many scams. And so career builder really just fell off I think. And then the job search came along, you know, Indeed was just a scraper and they ended up being number one. So I think there was that fear. Perhaps I, I don't have insight into the heads of the senior executives, but that company's grown a lot. It was a billion then it was two last I heard it was six. It's probably bigger now. They have tried staffing, they have tried a higher.com thing. Jim (20m 10s): All these things they keep adding that. They try that don't really come to it. Joel (20m 16s): Don't forget Job Scout, the Android app that set the world on fire. Sorry, go ahead. Go Jim (20m 20s): Ahead. Right. No, huh. The whole app stuff and you know, that's the whole other thing of what they're, how good their app is. Here's one for you. If, if I apply to Indeed with the fake address, I'll get 24 emails in the next 22 days. Ah, tell me what other jobs pay more than the one I just applied for. Like what? Because I think what it is is they're so big at this point that you have the management which you is owned by, was it Crude Inc. And Employee Recruit. Yep. Recruit Holdings. Yeah. So there, there is a big aspect of that. There's a hedge against it. It's different, it's a Japanese company owning stuff here that growing they didn't have to do, but they did hire those 2,500 salespeople to grow to that size and chase the small business market. And they did that cuz they were afraid of Google for jobs. Jim (21m 0s): And there was no question. That's why we've gotta lock down the small business market before Google for jobs launches, something that works now I think they're big and they don't know what to do next. So now it's what do you do when you have all the money in the world? I'm gonna change things. You know, they're, they probably watch Bill Gates and go, Oh he's making a lot of good in the world. We should, we should be like him. That's, I'm guessing I'm making this up, but I think that's part of it. They don't know what to do. But the same time they still sales targets, they still sales, sales managers, it's still a growth oriented company below the executive leadership. I think that is a, that's a different set of if anything splits up, that's what's gonna cause it. Well that and eventually ta waking up and saying one person can't have this much power or one company can't have this much control over us. Chad (21m 45s): TA will never do that. I, I hope, I hope we do. And I hope we get to the point where, Jim (21m 51s): You know, we're Chad (21m 51s): Mature, we understand what's actually going on around us. We start paying attention first and foremost for those who haven't paid attention, obviously, you know, this is a smack in the face and it should be. But yeah, it's, it's one of those things, again, when you give a monolithic organization like Indeed Recruit holdings, Indeed reasons to come after you and charge more money, they're gonna do it. They're just gonna do it. And all those things that we pointed out earlier were because either talent acquisition or recruitment marketing didn't pay attention or they just allowed shitty processes to happen. Chad (22m 35s): Indeed saw that job seekers won't, weren't getting a great experience. We all knew that and they just started saying, Hey, it's for the job seeker, we're gonna charge you more and we're gonna change X, Y, and z. Jim (22m 45s): What if they're right? Chad (22m 46s): I'm not saying they're wrong, that that's the thing. I think they are right. I'd Jim (22m 50s): Like better communication about the changes they're making, but I can't say that they're distrustful. But I mean, the truth is we do do a bad job. You know, I think our average to talk to people is three to 14 days after they applied. Actually I don't think that I know that cuz it's one of our sales decks. It's three to 14 days. Imagine calling a waiter and you're, I can't get anyone to come work for me 14 days later you call. Oh it's, it's horrific. Chad (23m 15s): Well imagine spending $2 million on marketing. Let's say a CMO spends 2 million on leads that send in a database and nothing happens to 'em. They are gone because they paid for those leads and they sat there and they atrophy. What do we do? We put job seekers into a shitty experience then into a black hole and then we stop using the actual database. We've been spending millions of dollars to build. Oh, as a matter of fact, we, we collect that, that individual, that one job seeker 4, 5, 6, 10 different times because we're spending all this money on outbound advertising to try to suck in hell. We've had 'em for years. Jim (23m 50s): Think, think how bad this is. I can go on my phone right now and get $30,000 in cash because I have a w2. Takes about 15 minutes to go to a lending club or whatever and have and money deposited my cash in three days. They verify they know who I am. It's easy to do. They call KU money like that. I can buy a car in 15 minutes on, on Auto Navigator and have it delivered to my house. It takes me 45 minutes to fill out something in an ATS system Chad (24m 17s): That Jim (24m 17s): We can't search is badly done. I mean we're, we are choosing, and this is why when you look at the quote better ATSs, it's just ones with better code base. I think that's a big part of it. So it's, they're just, they're just new and there's so much nonsense in the back end. Here's one for you because if you, you can be integrated and your jobs go directly into your ATS or you can post jobs and drive them to your careers website. What percentage is good for a corporation that's driving traffic to its website? What conversion of those? That traffic is considered good. Chad (24m 51s): Yeah, well that's the big question is if everybody looks at traffic as good, look at the actual, the hires that you get out of said traffic, but Jim (25m 0s): No applicants alone though 20%, you're losing 80% of your applicants at your career website. That's horrific. And, Chad (25m 8s): And well AKA's latest data is it's 92%. So it's only 8% that are, that are Jim (25m 14s): Completing down Chad (25m 15s): The application process. No, no. Right. So there's that, Jim (25m 18s): There's no excuse for it. I mean there it's just, it's hard to figure out what's going on because what's funny is, is like we joke around people Oh no Indeed and all this stuff. When I show my marketing friends what I do for a living, they laugh at me. They're like, I I've got a 19 year old that's doing that just as effectively as you are. I'm like, but I'm making more. Right? So it literally is a refusal to, it's this stuff isn't hard, it's not new. I'm not doing anything that someone working for group M's gonna go, Wow, that's something I really learned today. No, nothing like that at all. Basic stuff. Chad (25m 52s): You've gotta remember complexity costs more too, right? So you, you take a look at consultants, nothing that you talk to a consultant about is easy. Everything is complex. Whether it really is or not because it's gonna cost more. That's Jim (26m 4s): True. Joel (26m 5s): Hey Jim, what did you read into Indeed killing their api? Jim (26m 8s): Anything? I think it was the same thing that LinkedIn was going through. They didn't want people building stuff off of it cuz they can't control what happens and their singular focus for their pro. So it's like factions of the government, right? It's not Indeed it's, Are you talking about product marketing? You talking about client success? Are you talking about small business and Indeed flex, whatever it is, they all have different things they're trying to accomplish. Their RPO system is different than their client system. Not system, but the way they get paid and who they add and stuff like that. So the API takes away control and they want everything going to their dashboard so they can read what's going on. Anything anything outside of that becomes lost. Joel (26m 47s): Yeah, I got tired of dealing with fraud, crappy traffic, bad candidates and just said fuck it, we already got the seo, you know, rankings. Which is really what the api, one of the powerful things was is that every, every job board had a link that said jobs by Indeed with a hot link that went from jobs to Jim (27m 5s): Indeed. And you think Google might have had something to do with that Joel (27m 8s): Too? Yeah, Google might have, They still have great rankings though. They're all, they're paying Google a shit ton now also. But another question, what's your state of LinkedIn right now and why they have such a hard time taking it to Indeed? Well, Jim (27m 20s): My pitch for, I think LinkedIn was bought to be the new data.com for Microsoft Dynamics for dynamic crm. And I think the pandemic created a big issue with that. I'm surprised they haven't walled gardened that off already because they're just, their revenue stream means nothing to Microsoft. So when they bought it, and it's funny is like, I wrote about this recruiting daily. I didn't make it up, I just went to the Microsoft announcements on their, and they basically, they this big universe and this tiny little dot, it's like showing the earth in the micro, in the Milky way. It's this tiny little dot that's linked in. I don't think they're thinking about it at all. I don't, I don't think it matters. There's just not enough money unless they can tie that into performance. And you can't because the back end, the sales and marketing is never tied into your accounting. Jim (28m 2s): You gotta remember a lot of these ATS decisions are made by accounting and the growth of TA. We came from CFOs looking at CMOs swallowing the world and going, Well you can't have recruiting too. Let's create an department call it talent acquisition. That was like 2005 and 2006. You track your Google trends, I get an unwritten white paper. I just can't seem to finish talking about it. But watch what happens. We we're from the CFO side of the business, why can't we understand how to cut cost? Joel (28m 30s): Another quick one. I'll let you get outta here. What happens to Glassdoor from now? Are they around any year? Like what, what the hell's going on with glass? I Jim (28m 38s): Think they sit around. Well, they're swallow. They owned by Indeed. Right? And they're technically separate. They're not all the original people left from it. They're, they're like simply hired. Joel (28m 48s): Really? Jim (28m 48s): They're sticking around cause it gives them something, but there's, there's no reason for Joel (28m 52s): Them. You think they're, that they're that low in the totem pole Jim (28m 55s): That far, but they're not Joel (28m 57s): Yet. Wow. Jim (28m 57s): Yeah, they're, they're just, there's not nearly enough money in that. For some reason, we're better at Glassdoor than we are at Yelp and determining who's bad and who's good. Like we get glass doors mainly made up, but for some reason for Yelp, you know, we still go to restaurants. I I just don't think it's important to them. They, they were bought just to make sure they weren't a competitor. Joel (29m 15s): Yeah. Then they buy zip next once the stock hits $10. Jim (29m 21s): Oh God. Geez. Come on man. Don't do Joel (29m 23s): It. Don't do it. Jim (29m 24s): Don't put that out into the universe. Oh God. Joel (29m 27s): Our prediction shows coming up. Jim (29m 29s): That's a Oh, that's terrifying. Joel (29m 30s): All right, last one Are is Indeed still number one 10 years from now? Jim (29m 33s): I'm gonna say yes, but they're gonna be down to 30% I think. I think the growth of AI and real tech coming into HR and HR or ta ta becoming closer to a marketing function. I think in 10 years we don't, we're not relying on all this stuff we were doing before and our assessments and projections are a lot Chad (29m 52s): Better. Yeah, well I think as soon as marketing finds out that there's an opportunity here, because we're fucking up a huge experience for a but millions, hundreds of millions of people that are actually interacting with their brand, they're gonna be a little pissed off Jim (30m 9s): Just a little bit. Well, they, they do, they get mad at us right now. But marketing's so full of themselves. You can't have marketing come help you. You have to hire marketers into your TA organization, which is a very slow process. Yeah. But once you get there, Joel (30m 23s): I'm calling it now the return of Jason Goldberg and Job. Chad (30m 31s): My God, Jim Durbin everybody. Jim (30m 32s): Thank you guys. Joel (30m 33s): Jim, for those that want to connect with you or learn more, where would you send them? Jim (30m 37s): Go to LinkedIn. They're LinkedIn and look me up. Jim Durbin, Chad (30m 41s): The Indeed Whisperer. Joel (30m 42s): The last thing, he's a man of few words. The Indeed Whisper everybody. Chad, it's in the can we out? We 5 (30m 50s): Out. Thank you for listening to, what's it called Podcast, The Chad the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of 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 chatter. Blue Nacho Pepper Jack Swiss, the song, 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. 5 (31m 32s): That way you won't mess an episode. And while you're added, visit www.jetcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grill cheese is so weird. We out.

The wait is over! It's our Halloween show, full of dad jokes and bad soundbites. You're welcome. We even get to some news, covering the iCIMS acquisition, Indeed's pivot to PPA, Voilà! coming to America and Oracle's new Booster. Also, Bloomberg says self-driving cars are headed for a fatal crash, while Bloomberg then publishes articles about Waymo coming to Los Angeles and Intel's Mobileye going IPO. Oh, Bloomberg, such a two-face. Unlike the two faces you really love: Chad & Cheese, the podcast that 'ghosts' it's fans on Halloween week. TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions provides full-scale inclusion initiatives for people with disabilities. INTRO (3s): 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 (25s): Oh yeah. You've waited a whole year for our Halloween show. Support yourself a bowl of Franken Berries and all hail Satan. Hey, trick or treaters, you're listening to the Chad Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel "Redrum" Cheeseman. And Chad (39s): This is Chad "no Michael Myers here" Sowash Joel (43s): And on this week's show, iCIMS has treats, Oracle has tricks and Indeed leaves a flaming bag of dog shed on customers doorsteps. Let's do this. What do you mean? There's no Halloween in Portugal? Chad (1m 1s): Think about it. The US commercializes everything so that you can, you can buy the pumpkins, you can buy the candy, you can buy, buy, buy, buy outfits, all that other fun stuff. Just not how they do it down here. It's a much simpler life. Joel (1m 16s): Less commercial. Perfect for you. Chad (1m 18s): Yes. Joel (1m 18s): Perfect for you. I'm excited about Halloween. Chad (1m 21s): I do want to say what we do have here, and I was saving this for you. Joel (1m 25s): Oh, speaking of Devils, the Devil of Beer straight out of Belgium. A little Duvel. Oh, of course. We record this show now when it's happy hour in Portugal. So. Chad (1m 40s): Yes. Joel (1m 40s): Chad's take on stuff is a little bit different than when he stateside when it's 10 in the morning. Anyway, we love Halloween in our house. I'm dressing as a convict, as usual. I got an old timey Shawshank outfit. My five year old's going a Spiderman. I know, that's very cliche. My wife's going as a bee. She usually picks some sort of insect for what she does. Chad (2m 5s): Yeah. Joel (2m 5s): And I think the big kids are just gonna terrorize little kids, at this point. Chad (2m 10s): They've got a little brother to terrorize, so that's good. Joel (2m 13s): This time of year is the best time of year to be in the Midwest. The colors on the trees, the Yeah. Gorgeous air. It's a really, it's a really good time of year. Other 11 months, eh? Chad (2m 25s): Or you can be in the mid seventies here, you know, with a beach. I mean, Joel (2m 30s): Yeah. Chad (2m 31s): It's a little different. Yeah. Joel (2m 33s): Yeah. I'm in my puffy vest, you know, taking the dog for a walk. And Chad'ss on the beach. Chad (2m 40s): Shout outs! Joel (2m 40s): Shall we do some shout outs? We got a lot to cover this week. A lot of stuff going on. I'm gonna give a shout out to layoffs since it's Halloween and that feels a little bit scary. Chad (2m 51s): Layoffs? Joel (2m 52s): So our boy Elon Musk, and I'm sure we'll talk about this on the European show cause Lieven can't talk without talking about Elon. So, so my man is buying Twitter. It looks like it's gonna close maybe even today, but probably this week. Chad (3m 6s): Right. Joel (3m 6s): He's expressed laying off 75% of the workforce, which didn't go very well with the current workforce. Chad (3m 11s): What do you expect? Joel (3m 12s): The best of the best tend to leave when you say you're gonna lay off 75% of the people, which would leave them 2000 employees from 7,500. He has walked that back. Duh. He's walked it back. But it, here's what I think is gonna happen. All the other tech companies whose shareholders think Elon is smarter than they are, are gonna go through big layoffs. And we're fans of the Pivot show and Scott Galloway, he's predicting Pinterest and Snap going through similar, you know, cuts in their staff. Chad (3m 44s): Yeah. Joel (3m 44s): Obviously this stuff in affects our business in terms of if all these companies aren't hiring anymore, because that's gonna trickle down to all the tech companies saying we don't need as many tech people. Yeah. And the companies in our space, the unicorns that have gotten a hundred million plus dollars and have hired a lot of engineers, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna lay off these folks? Now, the good news is a lot of startups that can't afford good talent are gonna be able to grab up some of these folks. And the next great startups will be born from this period of recession and doom and gloom. So that's the good news. But there will be some temporary pain. So on this Halloween episode, I thought layoffs would be an appropriate. Joel (4m 24s): Shout out everybody. Chad (4m 26s): So scary. So scary. My shout out is to Veritone and sponsor Pandologic. Joel (4m 31s): Yes. Chad (4m 32s): What could, you might remember that earlier this year we dropped a podcast called Deep Fake Recruiting with Ryan Steelberg. He was the CEO of Veritone. And less than a year later this is happening, Kids roll that beautiful bean footage. Joel (5m 10s): (Joel speaking in French and Spanish) Chad (5m 11s): Now German... Joel (5m 20s): (Joel speaking in German) Chad (5m 21s): And Portuguese (Chad speaking in Portuguese) Joel (5m 28s): I've never wanted to have sex with myself so badly as I do right now. Chad (5m 34s): Oh, that is so fucking awesome, dude. So our new voices are Veritone powered. Joel (5m 44s): Wow. Chad (5m 45s): French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. It's truly surreal. We know our listeners are from all over the world and many of them, their first language is not English. So we're trying our damnedest just to make sure that they can have little Cheese, little Chad in the morning with their native tongue. So here's the caveat though. Kids gotta remember. Yes, it is incredibly new and it's incredibly cool, but it's ai, which means it's learning and we're learning too. So for example, you know, we had a recommendation, we were at dinner with the TalkPush guys and Luis said, What. Joel (6m 22s): The French folk. Chad (6m 23s): Yeah, yeah. Well, Luis said, you know, you, you should probably speed up that audio about 1.2 or one and a half times because native speakers are more fluid and they speak faster. So we tried it right there with him at the table and he was like, he gave us the thumbs up. So now we've made that adjustment. So if you're listening, if you are listening in your foreign tongue and you have adjustments or ideas or what have you, send it our way. Last but not least, every weekly show. So we drop a show every Friday, then we're going to have that show translated into four different other additional languages. So you will get that show on the very next Wednesday. Chad (7m 6s): So you can go to wherever you listen to podcasts. We're now getting into Apple and Spotify and so on and so forth. So we're very early on. But you gotta ask yourself, Joel, is any other podcast out there? I don't just mean in our industry, any other podcast doing cool shit like this? Joel (7m 25s): None that I know of. And we, I know we both listen to a lot of well funded manicured, professionally produced. Not that ours aren't professionally produced, cuz Chad does it, he's a pro at this point, but a lot more resources and the folks at Veritone have been really kind and generous, amazing to help us launch these, these programs. I think we're, we're trailblazers. I think this is gonna be something that a lot of podcasts start doing. And these are separate shows. So if you're in German, you know, German speaking country, whatever, you can subscribe to that show and have it separately in your feed. So you know that all those shows come up. I'm amazed at how they were able to make us sound like we do. Joel (8m 8s): It's not like a robot just saying our words in a like a robot voice. It's actually our voices. Chad (8m 14s): It's crazy. Joel (8m 14s): And the biggest, the biggest challenge for us I think was, is it the Chad and Cheese show in France? Or is it the Chad and Fromage podcasts and we eventually landed on Cheese cuz you know, cheese kind of plays in multiple languages. But yeah, I'm just, amazed that we, that we've done this, that the technology is there and that we have friends generous enough to help us do this. So yeah, big, big round of applause for our friends at Veritone. Chad (8m 42s): When, to your point, when you're looking for this show, it's the Chad and Cheese Espanol, the Chad and Cheese Deutsche, the Chad and Cheese Francais and the Chad and Cheese Portuguese. We're trying to make it as much as the native tongue as you can. Joel (8m 56s): Yep. Chad (8m 56s): Check it it out man. Joel (8m 58s): Yep. And shout out to our friends at Evergreen. Every show has a different image, different flag in the background. So you know, we still have that same knucklehead melon look on the image, but a little different flag in background to help everyone figure that out. So thanks to Evergreen for that as well. I have one more shout out and we can get to the good stuff like finding Fantasy Football and birthdays. Chad (9m 21s): Oh, Good God. Joel (9m 23s): Our friend, our good friend Sir Richard Collins has posted on LinkedIn recently, I quote. So after three years of selling ClickIQ to Indeed, we are finally out excited to be able to move on and do what Beverly, Joan Collins, and I do best disrupting and building some cool HR tech, bring on the Blockchain. Was his little teaser there. I think both of us are getting a little sample of the new technology, but Maserati on Sir Richard and keep us abreast of this Blockchain that you speak of. I'm sure that he'll be on the show soon discussing his new stuff and also a shout out. He put a big image that said 'we out'. I dunno if that was a little hat tip to us or not, but we're watching Sir Richard, we're watching. Joel (10m 8s): Oh yeah. Chad (10m 9s): And we're rooting for you. Events. Next week I'm going to the web summit with our buddy Keith Sonderling. You know the EEOC commissioner? Joel (10m 17s): I do. Chad (10m 17s): He's going to be in Lisbon. He's on a "How to Regulate AI" panel with a couple of heavy hitters. One is in Parliament in the UK House of Commons, and the other one is a senior key expert with the "EU International Outreach for Human-Centric Approach to ai". My God, these people need help with titles. And last but not least, the person who's going to be moderating is a tech reporter from Bloomberg. So I'm really stoked next week. Joel (10m 47s): Nice. Chad (10m 47s): Go to Lisbon and go to the web summit. Joel (10m 50s): By the way, we have some, some footage from an EEOC meeting where a company that was behaving badly tried to leave a meeting. Spooky Voice SFX (10m 60s): Joel (11m 0s): That's right. That's what you hear at the EEOC when you try to get out of the clutches of Mr. Sonderling. Chad (11m 8s): He says it with a smile though. He says it with a smile. Joel (11m 10s): He does say it with a smile. By the way, if you've joined our free list, you cannot leave, you will get free stuff. We're talking t-shirts from JobGet. We're talking whiskey from our friends at Textkernal, we're talking free beer from the folks at Aspen Tech Labs. If your birthday is in a particular month, you might win rum from our our friends at Plum. You gotta go to chadcheese.com/free to get that. It's free to sign up. We just need your vitals, we need your address if we're gonna send you something and text messages if we're gonna let you know that you have something coming to you. Chad (11m 45s): Blood type. Joel (11m 47s): Yeah, blood type. We don't have semen? We don't want that either. It's all good. It's all good. Chad (11m 51s): No semen samples. Joel (11m 51s): It's all good. And speaking of birthdays, let's get to to that real quick. So a few fans and listeners are celebrating another year around the sun. Let's get to those folks. And again, you can win rum from Plum if it is your birthday. And November's coming up Chad, so there's gonna be a new winner announced very soon. But celebrating birthdays this week we got Ryan Moffitt, Garrett Friedman, Sean Horton, our boy, Dennis Tupper. Oh, Jeremy Roberts. Also our boy Peter Gold, one of our favorite Scottsman. sfx (12m 26s): Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, if it's not Scottish it's crap! Joel (12m 35s): Clap. That's right. Stephen O'Donnell celebrates a birthday and our boy from Sense Pankaj Jindal, was born, although they might not celebrate it in his country on Halloween. So Happy Birthday to Pankaj and everyone else that's celebrating a birthday this month, also celebrating this month the Canadian 🇨🇦 , that's right, who's continue to make a strong showing in fantasy football. Week seven is in the books Fantasy Football sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. Here's our leaderboard. Number one to last place, Chris Who’s Da Mannion is in the new number one spot followed closely by Serge “Strange Brew” Boudreau 🇨🇦 Oh, and my wife got mad at me for pronouncing it. Joel (13m 24s): Serge, It's Serge or some shit like that. We need, we that in the foreign language edition. Number three, your boy Joel “Nacho” Cheesman, Dennis “The Menace” Tupper, Christy “Makin’ a” Kelling, Matt “Mole” Hill, Iron Mike Schaefer, Chad Sowash-ed Up, King James Gilliam, “Average” Joe Wilkie, Jason Vorhees Putnam, Appropriate for the show of Putnam and Dan “Akroyd” Shoemaker who's starting Ghostbuster's Shoemaker. That is the roundup of the leaderboard of fantasy football. Thanks again to our friends at FantasyFix, FactoryFix. Fantasy Fix might be something totally different. Joel (14m 6s): FactoryFix our friends there. Thanks for sponsoring. And with that, Chad (14m 9s): TOPICS! Joel (14m 9s): We got so much shit this week. All right, let's, great. Let's talk about iCIMS. So great. The popular ATS announced the acquisition of skill survey this week. Terms were not disclosed. Skill Survey is a pioneer in skills verification and digital reference checking. They tout 2300 companies as customers. It's patented reference checking solution, verify skills and delivers feedback from references in a much quicker and more candid way that can be used earlier in the hiring processed. Pennsylvania based Skills Survey was founded all the way back in 2001 and had previously raised a grand total of $3.6 million. Joel (14m 50s): Chad, another Savvy acquisition by iCIMS or are they just compensating for an ipo that may never happen? Chad (14m 56s): Seriously, this is not sexy, but I think it's incredibly smart. As you'd said, SkillSurvey has been around since 2001. They've only only taken 3.6 million in funding according to Crunchbase. And that funding was incremental. Half a million here, a quarter of a million there. And the most funding they received was 1.8 million in 2008 all the way back in 2008. Joel (15m 22s): That was a lot of money back then kids. Chad (15m 24s): Which tells you somebody's making some money. So we've gotten so drunk on funding over the last three years that we forgot how a stable and reliable business is built. And it's not from us playing the unicorn song. Ray and the crew over at SkillSurvey built a company to last. And if somebody came along with a check big enough, well, you know, they'd obviously sell. As you'd said, they have well over 2000 customers, a great portfolio and an ARR play with only about a hundred employees according to LinkedIn Insights. So this is a great ad for iCIMS and their bottom line. Chad (16m 5s): I think it's a big thumbs up for them. Joel (16m 9s): I love that after remember, we talked about the Spark Start lawsuit over the video and the acquisition Yeah. That they highlighted in this release the patented reference checking solution. So they're trying to ward off all those lawsuits that could be coming for the reference check. So that was good. Yeah, look, probably no one in our space does the subtle small scale smart fit acquisition like iCIMS. They look at their marketplace, they see what's trending, you know, they see all the things that customers use, what they like and then they go kind of pick out the diamonds that aren't, you know, valued at a billion dollars and then go pick out what makes a lot of sense. Joel (16m 55s): They did it with TextRecruit, they've done it with opening.io, they did it with Candidate ID and now they're doing it with SkillSurvey. Whoever's doing the M & A at iSims deserves a raise because they're setting the standard for all the other ATSs that are, you know, buying other ATSs and doing things that frankly are a little bit weird and wacky and really expensive. And doing it right. I think that our friend Kyle Lagunas, who a lot of our listeners know, said it probably best on this. So he said quote via LinkedIn, "The data collected in this process has never been used beyond the final hiring decision. And a big part of that has been the gap between these types of systems and the core system of record itself, ie. Joel (17m 43s): the ATS. But this data can be aggregated and utilized at a macro level to drive smarter talent marketing, sourcing, interviewing and on boarding." end quote. Again, a smart buy, not sexy, it's an answer, but it's not sexy. I think it's a good deal. iCIMS keeps setting the standard for those like really smart savvy buys and this is just another notch in their belt. Chad (18m 6s): Here's where they're getting it wrong though. And this is the big problem for my, for iCIMS. They don't know how to peacock. They have no clue on how to peacock, spread your damn feathers and show off for God's sakes. And here's a great example. Remember when they bought opening.io? Joel (18m 24s): Yeah. Chad (18m 24s): And we talked about all the possible applications within the grander scheme of the iCIMS ecosystem. Yeah. And then we've heard little to nothing since. I remember a sitting in the room in New Jersey talking about this Al Smith who is one of the smartest guys probably in our goddamn industry. And they're doing some amazing things. And from what I'm hearing from some of the internal contacts that we have that that tech, just the opening.io piece has been a game changer for them internally. The problem with iCIMS is they do not know how to peacock. They've gotta get out there, especially as they're moving toward I P O. If they want to continue to move toward IPO they have to, they have to seem bigger, they have to seem bolder, they have to push that chest out. Chad (19m 12s): They have to stiffen the spine and they have to be the biggest bully in the fucking ring. And we haven't seen that at conferences. We haven't seen that in press. We haven't seen that in marketing. All I can say is Steve, listen to me, big guy, you know, marketing, you know him right. Peacock. Joel (19m 30s): Interesting. Take, take some notes from our friend Shannon at HireEazy on how to peacock because ever since she's joined HireEazy, Amazing. They are peacocking like a motherfucker. So take some notes from Shannon on that. I agree our iCIMS is really, really quiet and there's some honor to that I guess of keeping your head down. But in this day and age with podcasts and blogs and social media, if you're not shouting it from the hilltops, it's not getting talked about unless there's a big news item. So I agree with that. Well, someone who doesn't have a problem, peacocking, maybe not. Chad (20m 2s): No they don't. Joel (20m 3s): But in general is no they don't are friends that Indeed. That's right. So Indeed has had its annual event in New York City, October 12th through the 13th. They've changed the annual event name from Indeed Interactive to Indeed Future Works because they said in the new name quote "that the new name represents a new and fresh approach to its annual marque event." Just what the world was hoping for. A new fresh name for the Indeed event. Anyway, aside from Chad's man crush on Ryan Reynolds keynote in the event, the biggest news one in was Indeed going full on pay per applicant. Joel (20m 43s): Reported by our friend Roy Mayer at SHRM quote "in 2023, employers using Indeed will pay only when a candidate starts or submits an application rather than when they click on a job ad, which is currently the case" end quote. Chad Indeed pioneered PPC in our industry and now they're abandoning it. Next they'll be changing their name to Meta. Right? What's your take on this move? Chad (21m 10s): First and foremost, let's give Indeed a big applause for this bullshit. It's better for job seekers narrative. They are so good at this. They find data to be able to back it, but nobody in our space can spit and spin the bullshit better than Indeed. This is, this is a wow moment right here. So first off, let's be clear and start to clear up some of the differences you've got. You have pay per application, which is pretty much the job is on Indeed. And you're looking more at the easy apply method, right? And then pay per started application. So the job's not on Indeed. You click through and you start the application on the corporate site. Chad (21m 50s): Okay. Makes sense. Right? And just to set the tone, PPA pay per application is more expensive than pay per click, right? Joel (21m 58s): Yeah. Chad (21m 58s): Okay. Okay. As it should be. So, this is where it all comes together because these are some evil fucking geniuses behind this move, which literally just adds one click into the process and charges employers more. Take note kids adds a click into the process and charges employers more. Let's go back in the way back machine stick with me here. Remember a time before Indeed's current two pain model where a job seeker clicked on the link and went directly to the company's career site to review the job description. Back then that was called what? PPC. Yeah, it was pay per click then Indeed switched their user experience to a two pay model, which kept job seekers on Indeed to view the job instead of going to the corporate career site. Chad (22m 50s): Now, Indeed says if job seekers click apply and go to the career site, that's considered a started application, now known as a PPA, right? Pay per application. When before their two pay model went into play that was called PPC. They just did a switch o fucking change o on everybody. Indeed literally added a click in the process and they're charging companies more for the exact same thing they did 10 years ago. Joel (23m 23s): Yeah. Chad (23m 23s): The exact same shit. And the evil goes deeper. Okay, so how deep make the apply easier and mandate salaries on jobs? We've been heralding this, but let's dig deep into this. Application sucks so Indeed creates, Indeed Apply for quicker and easier applications. Indeed apply makes it extremely simple to apply for jobs, whether you're qualified or not. Easy Apply will increase applies on every job, whether you're qualified or not. Then how does Indeed increase applies even more? Well, they make salary compulsory on every single job. So yes, mandating salaries is a move to drive more applies or started applies whether you're qualified or not. Chad (24m 9s): So what do these moves do? They make applying easier, which is what Indeed's been doing for decades. You can see it in their roadmap, whether you're qualified or not, none of that matters. And what did Indeed change to make this possible? They added one click. You're paying more today kids than you did 10 years ago, because it was named PPC back then. Now it's PPA and you're going to be charged more. Merry Christmas. Joel (24m 41s): That's great insight. And I think like you, I've been chewing on this since the announcement and it's led me to a lot of different places. Some dark and damp, others, not so much. But, so I want to take us back and I did this last week, little but a little bit of history here, Pay per click cuz a lot of people may not realize it. Pay per click used to be, there's a company called Overture powered Yahoo and some others. And, and the idea was that if you paid more than the other advertiser, you got to be at the top of the list. So if I paid 11 cents and Chad paid 10, I got to be on top of him. It created a pretty cool like, you know, pissing contest where I'm gonna spend more for the click. Joel (25m 22s): And you kept going up and down, Google came along and put an algorithm behind Paper Click. So you didn't really have a bidding thing where I could be on top. They had a thing where, well, if your ad is better, if your landing page is better, you'll get better ranking because it's a better experience for the user. Basically creating a lot of confusion around why am I not the first ranking, I'm gonna spend more money. A lot of confusion Indeed, historically has used Google as a way to like, you know, generate their own business. This is a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Like you said, Indeed pioneered pay per click in our space, when they started doing this, everyone was doing flat price, you know, $300 for a month ad a package of whatever. Joel (26m 6s): And they spent a lot of money in resources educating our space on the value of pay per click. While they were doing that in 2006, Google tried a paper basically action model, which works a lot easier in e-commerce because I only, I'm only gonna pay you if people buy the shoes that I have for sale, right? And Google has a lot of really smart people as well as Facebook and others. They've more or less abandoned this model probably for a lot of good reasons that we can't go into time wise on this show. But Indeed grew this paper click model, they educated the industry, they put backfill on job sites all around the world. Joel (26m 46s): People made money when people clicked, there was an ecosystem that they profited handsomely from and now they're changing direction. And to me, you gotta ask why would they do that? They've become Indeed on this pay per click model. People understand it, people get it. Why are they changing? And to me, it it, the core of this is in the fact that when you talk to people at Indeed around what are they most scared of? What's, what's taking the biggest chunk out of their bottom line. It's not Google for Jobs, although there's a little bit of concern on that. And if Google has a pay per click thing, that'll be interesting. But the thing that scares Indeed most is programmatic advertising. Joel (27m 29s): They cannot compete in an aggregate ecosystem where people are paying less for a click and that they're optimizing those clicks in a global ecosystem that's not Indeed, they can't compete on a pay per click basis in that model. And all the agencies that represent all the Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 1000 companies that are spending dollars on advertising, all the agencies are smart enough to say, Look, we're way better off cost-wise going with AppCast or Pando or Recruitology or whoever than we are with IndeedIQ, which is formerly, you know, ClickIQ our friends Sir Richard as I mentioned earlier. So, Indeed to me is like, we can't compete with programmatic, all the Fortune 500,000 are leaving us and spending less with us because of that. Joel (28m 15s): We have to pivot to something that is not that, that we can profit from. Confuse the marketplace, confuse the customer, and to me, this is where they're going. It reeks of hubris, it reeks of, we're the biggest, you know, gorilla in the jungle and people are just gonna bend to what we want them to do. Historically that does not work out. Just to ask our friend Mark Zuckerberg and META what it's like to change sort of what you're doing and confuse the marketplace and confuse the buyer. So I think there's a lot of layers to this and we're not in tune with the Indeed meetings and what the discussions were, but this just reeks of desperation and fear. Joel (28m 57s): Companies pivot like this when they're scared, not when they're in a strong position. So for me it's like, Indeed, good luck. I don't think it's a good move. I think it's desperation and I think the marketplace is gonna smell this and act accordingly. Chad (29m 11s): I just don't think they will. I think that they're still on the crack, unfortunately. But again, I just wanna throw this out there, kids, they did one thing, they added a click into the process from what they did 10 years ago. And they say that they're trying to make this easier and better for you and they're charging you more for it. And guess what? You're gonna pay it. And that is the sad thing because we need to, as an industry, whether it's recruitment marketing agencies or direct clients, Fortune 500 companies, we've gotta back away and we've gotta look at new ways to actually not just try to target talent, but also to manufacture talent, which we talk about all the time on this show. Chad (29m 53s): We need to get out of what we've been doing for the last decade because it's not working and it's making us slaves, these evil fucking geniuses over at Indeed. Joel (30m 14s): Voila. Chad, we're on Canada News Alert baby. All right. It's a Canadian news alert straight out of Quebec workforce management platform. Voila. Has raised 13 million Canadian dollars or nine and a half roughly US dollars in a series A round. This funding round will allow the company to further its mission to help businesses combat labor shortages and accelerate the company's growth in, you guessed it, the United States as well as the rest of Canada. Released in 2016 Voila, delivers workforce optimization tools to simplify schedule management, staff replacements, as well as time and attendance tracking the Quebecois are coming. Joel (30m 59s): Chad, your thoughts. Chad (31m 0s): Having access to your schedule through an app that also allows you to send messages, take on extra shifts, ask for time off and, and perform most of the mundane and yet important task on your mobile phone is essential today, especially for shift workers who aren't usually pinned their computer. It feels like the pandemic made these types of platforms even more necessary as we're moving more toward a crowdsourced scheduling version of work. And I think that's awesome. Joel (31m 31s): Well, first of all, what is it with companies in Quebec and names that Americans can't spell or say? So first we had New VU or New VO, Neuvoo or I don't know what the hell it was. Now we've got Voila Chad (31m 44s): Voila Joel (31m 45s): Voila by the way, because I care about this shit. The URL is voila.app. If you go to voila.com, it redirects you to a dot.ca and it's apparently a grocery store food delivery service in Canada. So anyway, Voila. Next, give us something we can spell and say Quebec please, Americans aren't that smart. So tell me why you've heard this before. Chad. Voila is an all-in-one workforce management platform, helping busy managers save time, engage employees, and increase profits. Sound familiar? Like everyone else in our space. So there's a great line and die hard that we love to quote. Joel (32m 26s): It's when Bruce Willis says, "Welcome to the Party pal." Well welcome to the party of Voila. You're gonna be competing with a lot of well-funded, well-resourced businesses and you've got nine and a half million US dollars to compete in the US. Another great movie we love to quote, "You're gonna need a bigger boat" unless you've cracked some nut that only Quebecois can understand. It's gonna be tough row to hoe to come to America. You're gonna need a little more funding. Like Chad, I love the idea. It's a great wave to be on. People in America love Canada. We love your quirky little technologies and your little names, and we generally love what you do. Joel (33m 12s): So we will welcome you with open arms, but you're looking at a country that's a lot bigger than yours with a lot of companies trying to elbow out some space. Good luck. Go raise your Series B and come back to me when you've got a hundred million. Chad (33m 27s): Well, just some advice for an organization like that. Be specific in niche and then own that niche and then start to build off of that. I mean, that's the the easiest way to actually start, not just obviously gaining more revenues because you're focused on that specific industry, but also going after more revenues for broadening your tam. Joel (33m 50s): And though I'm a little critical, I love Quebec and I'm rooting for them. Chad (33m 54s): Oh yeah. Joel (33m 55s): And because if I don't, my in-laws won't bring me good Canadian whiskey for the holidays. So I am rooting Voila. Chad (34m 5s): Is there really good Canadian whiskey? Joel (34m 6s): There is. Chad (34m 7s): Oh, okay. Joel (34m 7s): Okay. There is. You can only get it in Canada or, I mean, you could probably get it in, I don't know, Vermont or some border town, but yeah, you can, Alberta has some nice ones. Quebec has some great, great whiskey. Yeah, you can, It's not bourbon, it's not Laphroaig, but it's good. It's all right. It's not Aberfeldy, but it's alright. Chad (34m 30s): Do they have any self-driving cars or taxis there? Joel (34m 35s): Oh, self-driving cars, Chad. Well that's scary. Scary Voice SFX (34m 38s): Joel (34m 39s): That's right. You cannot leave this issue. Conflicting news coming out of the self-driving car space this week, Chad. Chad (34m 46s): Oh, oh. Joel (34m 47s): On one hand, self-driving cars are heading for a fatal crash. A Bloomberg article says quote "Six years after companies started offering rides in what they’ve called autonomous cars and almost 20 years after the first self-driving demos, there are vanishingly few such vehicles on the road. And they tend to be confined to a handful of places in the Sun Belt, because they still can’t handle weather patterns trickier than Partly Cloudy. State-of-the-art robot cars also struggle with construction, animals, traffic cones, crossing guards, and what the industry calls “unprotected left turns,” which most of us would call “left turns.” However, also in Bloomberg, Google's Waymo announced new service in Los Angeles this week, and Intel's self-driving company Mobileye went public this week at a 23 billion valuation. Joel (35m 45s): The stock opened at $26 and 71 cents and closed at $28 and 97 cents, almost 40% above its initial public offering price. So Chad, who's right? Bloomberg or Bloomberg? Chad (36m 3s): I'm gonna go with Bloomberg. Joel (36m 4s): Okay. Chad (36m 4s): This is too big not to work. And let me explain to you. Joel (36m 10s): Explain it to me. Chad (36m 11s): I'm gonna explain it. Joel (36m 13s): Chad splain it. Chad (36m 17s): The market size of just the taxi and limousine service is around $41.7 billion just in 2022. So that's just a taxi service. But we have to remember the end game here isn't the taxi industry. It's the car industry, logistics and defense, for starters. Again, car industry, logistics and defense, huge fucking industries. And a lot of those industries get money from the US government. They're just using the data captured from the taxi experiment to feed more lucrative prospects, right? I mean, that's what is happening here. So this is too big of a nut not to crack. Chad (36m 57s): This is not about taxis. This is definitely about the car industry, but it's much bigger than that. And the biggest nut to crack here is defense. And they definitely want to crack that nut. Joel (37m 12s): Too big and too sexy, Chad. That's right, that's right. Chad (37m 15s): That's what everybody called you in high school. I get that. Joel (37m 20s): Big sexy. That's right. So let's talk about another Canadian company that I think we all, we all know and loved at some point. So Blackberry and iPhone, a little history here. There's a, a book called Losing the Signal that I recommend. It's about sort of the phone wars back in the early 2010s when the iPhone came out and Android. But there's a mostly focus on how Blackberry lost the war to the iPhone. And when the iPhone was being talked about, everyone at Blackberry thought it can't be done. You can't have a full screen, full colored touch screen phone. You can't have battery life long enough. Joel (38m 1s): You can't have like the chips, like it's just everyone at Blackberry I convince themselves that this just can't be done until Apple did it right? And then once Apple did it, everyone figured out, okay, here's how you do it and blah, blah blah. And of course nobody did it as good as Apple. I feel like the self-driving car industry is like that. You have a lot of people saying it can't be done, it's too hard, it's too expensive, whatever. And you have some people that are abandoning the initiative, but there's gonna be somebody, there's too much money in this, to not crack this nut. Somebody is going to figure out how to do it. And we keep talking about it can't be done until it will be done and there's too much money to be made in this for it not to be done. Chad (38m 42s): Yeah. Joel (38m 42s): It may not happen this week, it may not happen next year, but sometime in our lifetimes, I believe self-driving cars will be a thing. It'll be normal. We'll drive to, you know, to our parents' house, two hours away and we'll we'll sort of be in the behind the wheel, but the car will be doing the driving. I think that we talk about trucks at Walmart in Arkansas taking that little trip at night in the truck, like that's gonna be a thing. So I'm on the side of Bloomberg as well, that Waymo and Mobileye, and these companies are gonna figure it out just like Apple figured the iPhone out and killed Blackberry and became a big winner. Joel (39m 23s): There's too much money in victory here not to get her done. Chad (39m 26s): Yeah. Yeah. Well I I will not be one of those guys cause I enjoy driving too much. So I will be driving a stick shift and I will be driving Miss Julie until I die. It's just the way it is. Joel (39m 42s): Stick shifts are a dying breed. Chad (39m 44s): Not here in Europe. They're not. Joel (39m 46s): Oh really? Okay. Well, no, no Halloween, but you have stick shifts. That's right. That seems like a fair, fair transition. Chad (39m 51s): And plenty of this. Joel (40m 0s): And Duvel. Yeah. We do have in the states as well, but Yeah, Yeah. You ready for some booster? Chad? Chad (40m 7s): Did you say Rooster? Joel (40m 10s): Rooster Booster Juicer. I don't know what the fuck is going on? Oracle. Good God. Oracle has launched its new talent acquisition product and it's called Oracle Recruiting Booster. That's right. Get that shot right in your arm. Recruiting booster promises to help talent acquisition teams improve engagement with candidates, build talent communities, accelerate the hiring process and personalize the recruitment experience for all candidates. It includes the ability to create event listings, registration pages, and pre-screening questionnaires as well as send SMS messages. In other words, it does all the stuff we've been talking about others doing since we started the show back in 2017 and before that. Chad (40m 55s): Wow. Yes. Joel (40m 56s): What we were talking about in bars and pubs around the world. Chad, wake up the rooster and jump on the booster. What do you make of this event? Chad (41m 9s): Avature called from 2004 and they want their talent community back. This is fucking ridiculous. But wait, there's more. Quote" The idea here is to make it easy for recruiters to create event listings, registration pages, and pre-screening questionnaires for specific job requisitions." End quote. Saying easy doesn't make it easy. Okay. Especially when you're piling on 2004-like tasks. These things, it's almost like, what did they do? Did they wake up Rumplestiltskin again for God's sakes and say, What would you like in your recruiting platform? Chad (41m 51s): They do mention though two-way messaging, but it makes me think that, you know, they're talking about walkie talkies. Joel (41m 58s): Yeah. So we have Recruit Rooster and now we have the recruiting booster. Don't confuse the two. Although they sound very similar Chad (42m 5s): They both suck. Joel (42m 6s): So this is a little bit of the anti iCIMS, you know, who builds stuff on Oracle's clusterfuck of a marketplace? It's big companies with a lot of resources to deal with the red tape and the bullshit that is building stuff on Oracle. You know, who doesn't build stuff on the Oracle marketplace? The other 80% of companies. Chad (42m 25s): Innovative companies. Joel (42m 26s): They are building on Greenhouse and iCIMS and companies that make it much easier to build shit on their platforms. It's also the ones doing cool shit that Oracle just decided to kind of build on 20 years, 10 years later. Because their customers are clamoring for this stuff. They have to have an answer. And the answer isn't, let's make the marketplace easier, more accessible to companies. It's, Hey, we have a ton of engineers, let's just build this shit ourselves and then give it to our customers. You know, hot garbage on a silver platter. They're gonna love it. I promise they're gonna love it. g Joel (43m 6s): So, Chad, the odds that Oracle's Recruiting Booster is worth a shit, Zero. The odds this podcast is over and I'm gonna go trick or treating 100%. Chad (43m 20s): Fuck Yeah. Joel (43m 21s): We out. Chad (43m 22s): We out. OUTRO (43m 23s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (44m 6s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

If you attended UNLEASH in Paris earlier this month, you know what a must-attend event it is. If you didn’t attend, well, we’d better see you there next year. Marc Coleman, the man behind the conference, sat down with Chad & Cheese for a rundown of the highlights, as well as preview the show in Vegas next spring. AMERICA HERE WE COME! 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 (1s): Hi, 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 (24s): Oh, yeah. What's up buddy? You know where we are. It's Unleash World, Paris, France. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (31s): He's like a kid with candy. Joel (32s): I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman, with my sidekick Chad Sowash. And we have Marc Coleman, CEO of this very conference that we are in attendance. Unleash. Marc, welcome to the show. Marc (45s): Thanks guys. Great to be back. Chad (47s): He loves it.Loves it. Marc (48s): It's great to be back. Joel (49s): It's great to be back. Marc (50s): It is. That's the way to enter. Joel (52s): You're smiling so big. Not just because of how this show is gone, but I'm sure after a year or two of virtual events, it's so much better to have people face to face rubbing elbows and shaking hands. Marc (1m 6s): Hundred percent. I've just been going around telling everyone I've been holding the bull by the tail for the last three years. Chad (1m 11s): Oh yeah. Marc (1m 12s): It's been three years since the last Unleash World. So Yeah. It's amazing. Everyone, you can see it in everyone's face. Yeah. Joel (1m 19s): Yeah. Marc (1m 20s): For most people, this is their first event back and yeah. Just the faces, everything. The smiles. I've seen a lot of crying at this one. I didn't see that in Vegas. Joel (1m 29s): Tears of joy. I hope. Marc (1m 30s): Tears of joy. Yeah. Chad (1m 32s): Tears of joy. Marc (1m 33s): Yeah. I mean, well exception to the maybe some of the exhibitor services. Joel (1m 37s): And it's not just because of the dessert tray, which brought me to tears of joy. The French pastries. Chad (1m 44s): Oh yes. Joel (1m 44s): Which make me want to cry. Chad (1m 45s): Yeah. If you're an American, you know, a long John. This is like the basic. Oh, it's amazing. Joel (1m 50s): I've had more sugar in the last two hours than I've had in the last two years, I think. Thanks Paris. Chad (1m 56s): Yes. Joel (1m 57s): Thanks Paris. I got to watch all of and more cheese and more wine as well. Yeah. Marc (2m 2s): Yeah. World capital for gastronomy and lots of other things. So yeah. We're spoiled rotten here this week. Joel (2m 7s): Amazing city. Do you ever think about other cities for Unleashed? Do you ever think about expanding? I know we'll talk about the US expansion in a second, but are are you pretty set with the one show in Paris every year? Marc (2m 18s): I think so. We've options go to other places. Like we were in London for seven years, but yeah. You know, that's squirt shirt now at the moment. The government have kind of screwed up a little over the last decade. So they're in for a horrible winter. Not to be Game of Thrones or anything, but it's going to be tough. And I think there's, Yeah. So there's no point in being in the UK next year. And I'd feel for anyone in the events industry that that will be. There are obvious places like Middle East and Asia Pacific, but, you know, just planting a flag out there for the sake of planting. Like we do get asked a lot. Chad (2m 56s): Yeah. Marc (2m 56s): We get inquiries every week asking us to bring Unleash to another country or region. But for me it's, Yeah, I think we're kinda really celebrating Western values, Europe and America. Joel (3m 7s): And I love, I love the focus as well. I love the focus. We were talking to Kate earlier. Chad (3m 11s): Oh yeah. Joel (3m 11s): And she talks about how as soon as this show's over, we're gonna be talking about next year in Paris. And it's that kind of laser focus that I think makes the show so successful. Marc (3m 20s): Yeah. Joel (3m 21s): You don't get spread too thin. Marc (3m 22s): Yeah. I mean, you just met the girls from Coca-Cola. Joel (3m 26s): Yeah. Marc (3m 26s): They're coming from West Coast America. Joel (3m 28s): Yeah? Marc (3m 28s): Like, you wouldn't expect that over here. Chad (3m 31s): Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was funny because we actually had comments. I can't believe there are so many Americans here. Yeah, yeah. I mean they're people from all over Europe, but there were Joel (3m 41s): Do you have any numbers around that? Like what percentage are Americans or Marc (3m 46s): Yeah, our US percentage is around 18%. Joel (3m 50s): Wow. Chad (3m 50s): OK. Marc (3m 51s): So, yeah. It's good. Chad (3m 52s): Not too shabby. Marc (3m 52s): No, it's good. Joel (3m 53s): I bet it knocks on the door of 25% next year. Yeah. With so many listeners of our show alone, we'll probably drive that much increase. Chad (4m 4s): Thank God. Yes. So three years ago, what's different today, other than the obvious, you know, pandemic stuff. What is different today doing a show in Paris versus 2019? Marc (4m 16s): Well, I think finally the face-to-face, the difference of that and, you know, the big trends that have happened. Cause you know, I have to talk about, we've time traveled, everything we talked about in 2019. Even things like flexible work, all the big trends. Chad (4m 31s): Oh yeah. Marc (4m 32s): Felt impossible to a lot of employers. Chad (4m 34s): Yeah. Marc (4m 34s): And then it happens. Chad (4m 35s): It took about five minutes for them to figure that shit out. Joel (4m 38s): Look at some of the biggest, you know, booths here. It's DEEL, it's Eightfold, it's Remote. Some companies that weren't even here in 2019 are now really prevalent in our industry now, just three years later. Marc (4m 50s): Yeah. All the scale ups are here and they've been given bags of money and they have to go and prove themselves now. Joel (4m 57s): Yes. Marc (4m 57s): Yeah. Or their investors are gonna stick to them. So it's good. It, like, shakes up the market quite a bit. Yeah. And I see the behavior of the big elephants, you know, the old guys in the industry and that's changing too. Joel (5m 10s): Say more about that. Marc (5m 11s): I see that, you know, if you look at Oracle, Workday, UKG, Cornerstone, you know, if you look at all of these guys, SAP SuccessFactors, they're all new crew. Joel (5m 22s): Yeah. Marc (5m 22s): The Cornerstone team here, it's all new. Joel (5m 24s): Yeah. Marc (5m 24s): It's a new crew. Success Factors the same. They have a different shape now. I only found that out today. They've got president of product, a CMO, and I'm trying to remember what the other position, I think customer success in the third one. Joel (5m 35s): New vibe. Marc (5m 38s): Yeah. Joel (5m 38s): New energy. Marc (5m 39s): Really new vibe, leadership. Really great team. Chad (5m 41s): Yeah. Marc (5m 42s): Yeah. Loving it. Yeah. And the same over at Oracle. Like Chris Havre and the gang have gone like, you know, there's a lot of change going on in the marketplace and these guys are looking to rewrite work. Chad (5m 54s): Yeah. Marc (5m 55s): And be a part of the future of work. So, and the energy, they're all turbocharge and the pain that's in the market, they're looking to fix that. The conversations are like, this is the first time we get to talk about it out loud scatter. So there's no bullshitting. There's no bullshitting amongst these people. They're in the industry a very long time. So, yeah. I'm really excited by what we can now do. Cuz it feels like for us as well, those, those partnerships are cemented only by the face to face. Cause everything we've done so far has been looking at Zoom. Yeah. And phone calls and stuff like that. So it's our first time getting face to face with this as well. Chad (6m 32s): So what about startups? What's different? We're there more startups this time? We're there less startups this time? Marc (6m 37s): Yeah, there was, well we were last minute.com being very honest in all of this cuz we just did Vegas. Chad (6m 42s): Yeah. Marc (6m 42s): My guys were completely burned from it. Chad (6m 43s): Yeah. Marc (6m 43s): My guys are coming. Chad (6m 45s): That's a hell of a turnaround. Marc (6m 47s): My team are totally new. Chad (6m 48s): Yeah. Marc (6m 48s): The old team unfortunately had to go because of, I had to leave them go the pandemic. There was no work for them. So there was no events and that was two years long. So the whole team are virtual working, they've never done this before. Chad (7m 2s): That's gotta be weird for not just you, but I mean, but for the team, just getting used to creating like a new culture because Marc (7m 10s): Absolutely. A hundred percent. Chad (7m 11s): Yeah. Marc (7m 11s): I was talking to Aaron Meyer about it this morning actually trying to get some ideas from her. And Amazon and our marketing team, our marketing team is shocked by the scale of the show. They didn't expect any of this. Chad (7m 27s): Yeah? Marc (7m 27s): Yeah. I think they were expecting something similar to what we did in Vegas. So they've been shocked. And that's my marketing team. So they're learning, they're actually only learning by doing an experiencing. Yeah. Joel (7m 38s): So yeah. You know Chad, you mentioned the startups here and I think you guys do a really great job of, you know, they don't have the money for a full-fledged booth. Marc (7m 46s): No. Joel (7m 46s): So you set up sort of kiosk or islands for them that they can they can be here. Yeah. Talk to the buyers, talk to decision makers. Talk to people like us who have aa voice. Is that gonna be, are you, I guess from an economic standpoint, are you seeing more startups come because I think you have a really good feel of the European market and the economy. Like what's sort of your sense based on startup interest and even maybe the big guys, what's the economy gonna be looking like in Europe in 2023, 2024 by your estimation? Marc (8m 18s): I think economy-wise, UK's going to take the brunt of it. Joel (8m 21s): Of the pain? Marc (8m 23s): Of the pain. Yeah. Just because of what's happened in recent weeks as well. Brexit's catching up on them. You've got that instability of government. Chad (8m 32s): Yeah. Have the instability of their commerce too. I mean, when you, when you have 40 ish countries on one, I mean there's stability there and they broke away from the stability. Marc (8m 42s): Yeah, exactly. So, and I think we'll be better at weathering that we'll still feel the pain. Yeah. Putin will turn off the gas this winter. Yeah. And I think over to you guys in America, I think you'll have a mild recession. I think all of this has been tackled along the way the economy has taken its hits. So I don't think it's the Armageddon that you hear from certain economists. Joel (9m 2s): So Yeah, I know we keep talking about companies getting money. We think every week like, oh, it's gonna end eventually they're gonna stop getting money and the money is still flowing. And I talked to someone even in the venture space, he thinks that the powder is so dry going in the next year that we're gonna keep hiring, there's still gonna be low unemployment and there's gonna be a massive money coming to our space as if there hasn't been in the last two years. So I think it's real exciting for people like us to talk about and for you to showcase you. Marc (9m 30s): You've nailed it there. Like there's, I know the number and it's a stupid number so I'm not gonna say it on this call. There's a lot of money sitting on the background. Joel (9m 39s): Yeah. Marc (9m 39s): Because they see this space as the kind of, it's been the last, it's a HR thing. We're kind of always last to the table slow. Yeah. And the investors, there's a lot of money sitting in the background. Joel (9m 53s): Yeah. Marc (9m 53s): Ready to come back into the industry. So I think it's about consolidation. I think it's about the scale ups, the unicorns having to prove themselves now. Chad (10m 1s): Yeah. Marc (10m 1s): Yeah. Because they're, you can see how aggressive they're being. Yeah. It's healthy. Like if I look at it 10 years ago it was only Kenexa, Taleo, and SuccessFactors. Joel (10m 10s): Right. We remember. Marc (10m 12s): The Unicorns. Right? Joel (10m 13s): It was a simpler time. Chad (10m 13s): Yeah. Well that being said, this is not 10 years because the pandemic but the 10th show. So let's talk about evolution. What did Unleash, Unleash look like 10 years ago versus what you've evolved into today? Marc (10m 29s): Yeah. Well 10 years ago, it's a funny one. I was telling this story to the guys on the HireVue stand, the CEO on the higher review stand earlier. And we started at the Okura in Amsterdam. And yeah, when I thought back on it, there was lots of things. Like I originally signed up at the Hilton Hotel and that fell through, they canceled with me like about three months before the event. I kind of felt like, this is gonna Marc, you've really like, this is the one. This is the one that's gonna put you behind bars. And I was like, okay. I said to Vicky, we were the end of August, I remember going down an escalator in Budapest, down to the underground and I said, What are we going to do we have no delegates on board? Marc (11m 15s): And it was just, the event was in November back then. And we sat down, we figured it out, we worked with our partners. Workday was the belle of the ball. They didn't have an office back then. It was the start of the cloud. So we jumped on that wave. That was our surf. They were very good to us. And we got 420 people into the Okura. Okay. And it was weird things that happened. Like Oracle spent nine grand for a roll up or something like that. I'm not kidding. A roll up. Like they don't look like roll ups. Chad (11m 47s): No, you can't see these booths. But these are legit and just looking at them, there's so much color, so much space, so much diversity. Joel (11m 56s): And there's a good amount of space. Like if I go to some shows, everyone's crammed together like a bunch of Brownstones. Yeah. Here I can go to four corners of the conference and see pretty much everybody from those corners. I don't have to go design aisle. Chad (12m 10s): That's a design thing right? Joel (12m 11s): Yeah. Design wise, very European, very good design on this show floor. Marc (12m 14s): So there's exactly that. And, we're working more on that cuz again, we're learning by doing and I like SAP are looking at next time they want to do more activations, more around customer experience and not just have this big massive stand in the middle of everything. Yeah. They, so and that's great. I like that. I really enjoy that. But if I look at Oracle back then, it was like they gotta deal with control risks that was worth 90 million off the back of that nine grand investment. Right. So, and that's why we scaled after that. Yeah. Like that was the amazing thing that happened. So it was, and we screwed everything up like, and okay, we messed a few things up here this year in Paris as well as did our suppliers. Marc (12m 55s): But back then it was things like, I remember Thomas Otter trying to get, you know, the projector to work and he had to shout to the sound guys at the back of the room over the audience to go to the next slide. Or the lanyards. The lanyards. We tangled them all up. So when, and just in time for everyone arriving. So. Chad (13m 14s): You had untangling duty. Marc (13m 14s): With untangling and that was one hour of untangling. We were doing drops at 4:00 AM in the morning with the lads at Cornerstone. That was hilarious. And so we had about one hour of sleep. We were wrecked the next day. So, it's knowing that and then, you know, I talked to Ryan Visier yesterday and their biggest customer, Deutsche Bank comes from this show in 2019. Chad (13m 37s): Holy shit. And tying all that back is amazing. Marc (13m 41s): I know. We gotta have fun with this now. Chad (13m 43s): Yeah. Marc (13m 44s): And which it was Pfizer signed with them after the Vegas show in May as well. So it's like that. And that's what it's all about. We're looking at product and buyers. That's what I'm really after with the show now. So we didn't know that was going to be the outcome in 20, you know, 10 years ago. Yeah. Now that's what we're chasing after. So. Joel (14m 4s): So you mentioned America, let's talk about the next event. Chad (14m 6s): Ought oh, here it comes. Joel (14m 7s): You have some announcements that you may or may not want make public, but tell us what to expect in in Vegas. Chad (14m 15s): Too bad. Marc (14m 15s): Vegas. So yeah, the big move is we're moving to Caesars Palace. Yeah, sorry. Joel (14m 20s): Is that in May again? Marc (14m 21s): Caesar's forum, the new convention center. Joel (14m 23s): What are the dates on that? Marc (14m 26s): 26th and 27th of April. Joel (14m 28s): April. Oh, April. Okay. April. Right. Chad (14m 30s): Caesar's forum. Talk to us about that. Marc (14m 32s): It's this amazing new venue. Oracle world is there next week, so they're test driving the place for us. And I was at the NFL draft there a few months ago and that happened there and it was just amazing. I loved it so much. Joel (14m 45s): Really tiny screens from what I saw. Chad (14m 47s): Jesus Marc (14m 48s): We're looking to bring the festival vibes. So we're building the main stage on the car park outside and then the plaza is where we're going to do all the hot daytime hospitality and night summit. Chad (14m 56s): Yeah. Marc (14m 56s): Shannon from HireEazy's kind of getting in there and helping us get that off the ground. Yeah, Chad (15m 4s): Of course she is. Joel (15m 5s): She's the best. She's brilliant. She's awesome. Marc (15m 6s): Awesome. And yeah, she is, she's really good. And then we've got the high roller so we can do whatever we want with that. Chad (15m 15s): Big ass Ferris wheel. Marc (15m 16s): Yes. But it's like you get to experience, you can do cocktails and kind of just have, you know, analyst meetups or you could even do a standing podcast or whatever you want. Joel (15m 27s): Sign checks over some bourbon. Always nice. Chad (15m 29s): There are bars in some of the pods. Marc (15m 31s): Yeah. Yes. So you get that outside area and then it's a bit like a mullet. I hate saying this cuz I'm probably putting my, you know, it's not a good marketing ploy but it's business to the front and party to the back. Although I love about the party is you never see daylight in Vegas. You never get fresh air. So's gonna be able to deliver fresh air, really good ambience, keep people awake and energized. And then inside you've got the exhibition a little bit like this, but we've learned so much from this. We'll probably change up the floor plan for that one as well. We'll have podcast areas as you guys know. Joel (16m 3s): Excellent. Chad (16m 3s): I love the podcast area by the way here today. Joel (16m 6s): I love this, you guys crushed this little corner here for us. Marc (16m 11s): And to your point on startups, then we invest in the startups because that's our youth program. That's our youth academy. Joel (16m 16s): The farm system over there. Marc (16m 16s): And I love it. Yesterday, you know the guy that won the competition yesterday, he wasn't expecting the $150 grand. I have to give a shout out to Jason and Thomas Oder, Jason Carello and Thomas Oder at Acadian. Cuz they put a hundred grand in. We always put 50 grand in. Yeah. And so it's 150 grand. The guy who was absolutely shocked. Chad (16m 36s): Hell yeah. Marc (16m 36s): Didn't expect anything. Joel (16m 36s): Yeah. Marc (16m 36s): He just wanted the trophy or the recognition. Chad (16m 38s): Yeah. Marc (16m 38s): So, and I'd like to talk to them. I don't wanna do it the way we used to do it in the old days and just have them in a corner. They bring great energy to all the big vendors and the big vendors all have their venture funds. So they're looking to see where they're gonna pick up these startups. Joel (16m 53s): Yeah. Oh yeah. The next acquisitions and investments are over in the corner. Marc (16m 58s): About startups is they're filling a hole in the market. They know the pain in the marketplace and they're going right after it. And even if I tell them their product is crap, they're going to change the world. Is it, you know, they're going like we hurt a lot of feelings. Any of the 40 startups that didn't progress to the five finalists, they're pretty pissed off. So that was a valuable there we need to get our arms around them a little bit more. Joel (17m 22s): Yeah. Marc (17m 22s): We just sent them a kind of sorry note you didn't get to the 905. Joel (17m 26s): Yeah. Marc (17m 26s): So the stuff that we need to work on to help them and give them the feedback. Cuz there was this serious rigor in the judging. Oh yeah. There was far more people in like Chad (17m 38s): 10 judges. Right? Marc (17m 39s): Well here on the day but before I think it was like something like 19 or 20. Chad (17m 43s): Oh wow. Marc (17m 43s): Right. And all the kind of thought leaders or influencers and analysts in the industry. So it was good. There was a lot of rigor went into it. But yeah, we've learned even after all our years of doing it, we've learned a lot to kind of how to kick it up. But yeah, we've gotta invest in our startups. We've gotta give them a leg off. Joel (17m 59s): Yeah. They're getting kicked where it hurts every day. I think they'll get over the not winning the startup competition. Chad (18m 4s): They'll be Okay. Marc (18m 5s): Back in 2011 they weren't allowed into any of the HR events so we were the first event to take them on. Joel (18m 11s): Yeah. Marc (18m 11s): And the first to do a competition in the industry. So I'm very proud of the legacy we there. Joel (18m 18s): You should be. Marc (18m 19s): And I think we can dial it up actually, especially now that we're working with Thomas and Jason. They've been really great. And it's last minute.com So this partnership has only been like six weeks ago. Yeah. That's all. Joel (18m 31s): You guys work fast. Marc (18m 32s): We pulled it together that quickly. Yeah, it's been really good. Chad (18m 37s): That is amazing. Well it was funny, we were just talking to Lieven from House of HR and they own about 50 companies under the umbrella. And Lieven was looking around, we're like, what are you doing? He was like maybe a little shopping. Joel (18m 52s): A little shopping. Marc (18m 54s): I love that. Chad (18m 55s): Yeah. Yeah. Marc (18m 56s): You know, and they need schooling. They come here very green, they go onto the competition, they get tough questions cuz there's the pedigree or the DNA is like analyst. Practitioner. Chad (19m 5s): Yep. Marc (19m 6s): Thought leader. You know, everyone is there that has the know-how and experience. So they get asked tough questions and then they can go home. Whether they've been beaten to that, we're not setting them up to fail. Chad (19m 15s): Yeah. Marc (19m 16s): That's the most important thing. Right. So you can actually go home and tweak and rebuild. Yeah. Or you know, and it's just that one thing that could change instead of going two years that way. Joel (19m 29s): Yeah. Marc (19m 29s): There's always shortcuts. So I think, and look everyone here is trying to prop up the startups and give them a good chance. Joel (19m 35s): No doubt, no doubt. Well Marc, we know you're a busy guy. You got this whole conference thing, but we thank you for stopping by. For any of our listeners that wanna know more about Unleash, where should they go? Marc (19m 54s): Unleashed.ai. Joel (19m 54s): And we'll see you in Vegas. Chad (19m 58s): In Vegas baby. Chad and Cheese (19m 59s): We out. OUTRO (19m 60s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (20m 42s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out

After a weeklong hiatus, thanks to a little trek to Unleash in Paris, the boys are back and badder than ever. On this episode, they dissect the recent acquisition of Paycor and Talenya, the investment in Ten Thousand Coffees - which has nothing to do with actual coffee, by the way - and then play a little thumbs-up / thumbs-down with The Muse acquiring Fairygodboss, CareerBeacon buying Ruutly (a Canadian double-double, Tim Hortons-style), Glassdoor filters and TaTiO grabbin' that paper. Amazon is in a pickle again and Robot Baristas take on San Francisco (boycott THIS! workers). 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. Joel (22s): Oh, yeah. An Indiana woman just got 115 years in prison for poisoning her baby daddy's oatmeal and then strangling him with his favorite tie. Boy, I'm glad I swipe left on that chick. Hey, kiddies, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "Apples and Cinnamon" Cheeseman. Chad (41s): And this is Chad "Tudo Bem" Sowash. Joel (44s): And on this week's show, 10,000 Maniacs drinking Coffee. You're not the Fairy God Boss of me. And a new report says Attrition costs Amazon $8 billion a year. Alexa, we have a problem. Let's ride. How's the Prince of Portugal doing? Chad (1m 3s): Loving it. Loving it. Another day in Paradise, my friend. Joel (1m 6s): Yeah, you're like an adult Happy Meal. Lovin' it. Which is a thing now. Chad (1m 12s): It's a good thing. Yeah, it's a the adult Happy Meal. They should actually also have booze in that fucking thing. Joel (1m 17s): Dude, the toys are selling for like tens of thousands of dollars on eBay. It's insane. America! Chad (1m 29s): Stupidity. Joel (1m 29s): You and I are old enough to remember the first Happy Meals, by the way. Chad (1m 34s): Oh yeah. Joel (1m 34s): That was awesome. Chad (1m 36s): That's pretty spectacular to be quite frank. Joel (1m 38s): Yeah. Playgrounds and happy meals. And thus began America's childhood obesity problem. Chad (1m 46s): Yes. The demise, let's just say, So last week, no demise. We were in the thick of Unleash during our last week's episode. We had Matt Alder on. We were on the floor. I mean, we were drunk with Paris Love and also wine. After you had a chance to kind of digest it. How do you feel? Looking back, how do you feel about last week? Joel (2m 10s): Yes. Like a good French onion soup. We were in the thick of it, for sure. No, it's great. I mean, it's been sort of a sugar rush for me to be back in front of people and just being a human being again. And Unleash was, you know, sort of the cumulation. Culmination? Chad (2m 30s): Culmination. Joel (2m 30s): Culmination. There you go. There it is. Sorry. It's still morning here in the states of just getting back to being human again. And, you know, it's great to see fans. Chad (2m 41s): Yes. Joel (2m 41s): And I think we have two kinds of fans. We have the fans that are like industry people that are very open about listening to us, telling us we're full of shit or here's where we got it right. Okay. And then there's the fans that are like, the kids that don't want their parents to know about the, the heavy metal band that they listen to when their parents are asleep. It's the fans where you're in line at the buffet and someone pulls up to you and goes like, Whispers, I love your show, man. Keep doing that shit. And it's like, because they work for somebody or have a boss, like, they don't want to come out and be real vocal about being a fan. And it's kind of those fans that I love. Joel (3m 21s): And those are the ones that you get when you do events. So that's some of my unleash takeaway. Chad (3m 26s): Yeah. They do a drive by on the booth. It's like, love what you're doing and they just keep moving. They don't stop. Joel (3m 31s): Yeah. We have some closeted fans for sure. It's cool. Chad (3m 34s): I definitely love all the people who came up and they were like, give me my t-shirt. You know, It was pretty awesome. Joel (3m 40s): People love the t-shirts, man. They're very soft and comfy. It's like a hug from us. Chad (3m 43s): They are soft and comfy. Yeah. Yeah. So how did, how did Normandy go? You had a chance to go to Normandy. That was pretty awesome. Joel (3m 49s): Oh shit. Yeah, that was a bucket list thing. Chad (3m 53s): Oh, fuck yeah. Joel (3m 54s): Took a bus. I thought it was a shuttle. It was a bus full of bunch of people. We drove out to Normandy, Normandy Beach, and we had a historian on the bus and it was cool, you know, they sort of pointed out things on the trip there. But actually getting to Normandy, you go on Omaha Beach, which was our first stop. Chad (4m 14s): Yeah. Joel (4m 15s): And it's equal parts, depressing, inspirational, awe inspiring. You go on the beach and you turn around and you pretend like, what were they looking at when they got off? Chad (4m 30s): A hail of gunfire? Joel (4m 32s): Yeah. And you see the pill boxes there, you see , the bunkers. You imagine machine guns everywhere. And, it really just puts in perspective the sacrifice that a lot of brave men and women, actually I think four women died on D-Day, by the way. It's real inspiring. The cemetery. I mean, it's like heart wrenching. Chad (4m 52s): Yeah. Joel (4m 52s): You know, the dog tag numbers are on the crosses and the stars of David, you know, where they came from, the numbers and their rank. The unknown soldiers that are there. The chapel is really cool. The artwork is there. And then you go down to Juno, which was the Canadian Landing. And Yes, yes. The sand is very different. Like Utah and Omaha very like solid sand. And you get to like really, you know, sand that gives away, it's like a beach, kinda like you would think of in the Caribbean. So there's a cool like pillbox right there. You can actually go in. Definitely do it in your lifetime. Joel (5m 33s): It's well worth the trip. I know you enjoyed it. So yeah, That's my Normandy takeaway. Chad (5m 39s): One, one of my favorite places to go in all of Europe. Just again, just from a history standpoint and just to be able to sit back and really just take all that in. So that's pretty awesome. You got a chance to do that. Joel (5m 51s): Just really awe inspiring. The human condition was all in focus on that day in June of 45. Chad (5m 59s): Oh, well the human condition continues. Have you watched Welcome to Wrexham yet? Joel (6m 6s): I have. And you can't get enough. Chad (6m 8s): No, no. It, it is literally a marketing master class. If you haven't seen this, Rob McElheny who was in, you know, Sunny and Philadelphia and then Ryan Reynolds, this is literally a marketing master class. So first and foremost, you, you learn about football and all the different tiers, Right. And they're like on the bottom tier of that. And then how to get, you know, relegated or promoted, you know, all these different things that, you know, us Americans really don't understand. So they take you through. It's incredibly smart. Not to mention, you know, these guys are making money. They start with Ifor? Williams who's like the main sponsor, like a trailer manufacturer in Northern Wales. Chad (6m 53s): And the next thing you know, I mean, they're the ones with the Williams logo on the front of their uniforms. And next thing you know, they have TikTok and Expedia and then, you know, it's just amazing they start getting those bigger players. But I mean, it is legit marketing masterclass. So if you believe in good marketing and understanding how to wrap into a narrative and then start to drive revenue off of it, this is something you gotta watch. This is on Hulu. Joel (7m 21s): Yeah. Apparently Ryan Reynolds was at the Indeed event last week. Chad (7m 24s): Yes. Joel (7m 24s): I dunno if you saw that. So I haven't heard what he said. I'm sure he was funny and engaging and handsome as he always is. But yeah, the whole big star buying sort of up, up and coming sports, either franchises or like the pickleball thing. I knew it was a thing, but Tom Brady, LeBron James, like the list of famous athletes that are buying into pickleball. So I'm sure there's gonna be a pickleball reality show here at some point with LeBron James. That'll be hot. That'll be your new favorite show. Chad (8m 0s): It's like badminton with a wiffle ball. It is a horrible fucking sport. I hate pickle ball. I hate pickle ball. I came here and they introduced me to this thing called Paddle, which is a mesh between tennis and racquetball, which are two sports that I fucking love. Yeah. So, so I've been playing that and it's been a blast. But pickleball it is fucking worthless. Jesus Christ Joel (8m 27s): The old people love it. Chad (8m 28s): Yeah. Cuz they don't have to move. I mean, you go up to the, the little thing they call the kitchen and you just sit there and it's, it's fucking stupid. Joel (8m 37s): 77 million baby boomers say that's gonna be a sponsor dream when pickleball becomes a big thing. Chad (8m 43s): Well, I could see that. Well, that being said really quick, I've gotta give a shout out to our friends at Adzuna who have the signed the Salary Transparency petition. They are going hard and heavy and fast after this. I gotta love it. Doug and team, this is something that's important, right? This is something that obviously Indeed's starting to require. Doug wants to go further than that. He wants to be able to drive regulation off of this. So big props to Adzuna on that one. Joel (9m 13s): Yeah. Yeah. Sign the petition. I know we sent an email. Make sure that on social media. But yeah, make your voice heard America. Chad (9m 20s): Make it heard. Joel (9m 22s): And speaking of Unleashed, I have a cavalcade of shoutouts from the French show. So number one, our boy Lieven, great to see him as always. Chad (9m 34s): Yeah. Joel (9m 34s): Went to Moulin Rouge. You were in the sick bay. Chad (9m 37s): Yes. Joel (9m 38s): Couldn't come out. But Moulin Rouge is quite an experience. Three hours of variety, boobies, you know, everything that's good in life. Champagne and good food. That was great. Max Armbrister our French, you know, connoisseur of fine wine and food. Chad (9m 56s): Love that man. Joel (9m 56s): Took us to a really great restaurant. Yeah. Thanks to Max. Chad (9m 59s): Talk . Push it real good Baby. Joel (10m 2s): Mark Coleman Unleashed crushed it. Did a great interview that I know we'll be publishing at some point. Look out for that. Keith Sonderling, Commissioner of the EEOC came out, he loves us and we love him. Oana Iordachescu, I think I said that correctly. Yeah. Chad (10m 20s): Iordachescu. Joel (10m 21s): She came out and she is no nonsense man. Don't mess with her. Chad (10m 24s): Love her. Love her. Joel (10m 26s): Especially when is pronouncing her name? Alex Murphy. The kids at Vonq were great. They had a great party, rooftop gig that we got to be a part of. Matt 'that British guy' Alder all the fans that stopped by. It was just a great time and I can't wait to go back next year. Chad (10m 44s): Amen. Amen. And if you didn't get a t-shirt at at Unleash. That's okay. Go to Chadcheese.com/free. T-shirts by JobGet. Oh yeah, there's beer. You don't forget about the beer by Aspen Tech Labs. Joel (10m 59s): Oh yeah. Chad (10m 60s): And bourbon aka any type of whiskey that we feel like sending you. That's one from Joel, one from Chad. You get two bottles of whiskey by our friends at Textkernel. So get out there chadcheese.com/free. Get your free stuff. Joel (11m 16s): That's right. That's right. You get one good bottle from me and one shit bottle from Chad. If if you're getting bourbon. Chad (11m 24s): I don't send Laphroaig. Joel (11m 25s): And speaking of good and bad, Chad, I got another LinkedIn poll that I wanna share with everyone. Chad (11m 31s): Always share your polls. Joel (11m 32s): Spread the LinkedIn poll with everyone. So you and I have this ongoing debate about which Val Kilmer character is better. Jim Morrison from the movie The Doors or Doc Holiday? Chad (11m 49s): Yes. Joel (11m 49s): From the movie Tombstone. Well Chad, you came out on top on this one. So Jim Morrison voted 31% of our listeners. Doc Holiday had 69% of our listeners. By the way, it's always good when a LinkedIn poll lands on 69. I just wanna underscore that. Here's why the 69% are wrong. By the way, they're wrong because Jim Morrison was a person of recent history where there's video interviews, people know what Jim Morrison acts like. Chad (12m 21s): Oh get off your freaking shit. Oh my God. Joel (12m 26s): It's much harder, in my opinion, to recreate a known figure than Doc Holliday who no one actually knows what the hell he was like aside from a few stories. So it's really easy to create a new character. So anyway, the 69% are wrong, but we love a good LinkedIn poll and we love it when people come out and share their opinion on important business issues. Which is the only thing you should share on LinkedIn kids, by the way. Chad (12m 49s): Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Really quick, we gotta hit the event train cuz we've got, we still have these things going on kids. It's sponsored by our travel Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right. I, here in a couple of weeks, I'm gonna be at the Web Summit, the largest tech summit in the world. Didn't know this, didn't know this. That's happening in Lisbon. The first week of November I got tickets. Keith Sonderling, our friend, aka the E E O C, Comish is speaking and hooked Julie and I up with tickets. So we're going to that. And then since we are not gonna be in the states for Thanksgiving, we are going to London for the TA Tech Business Accelerator on November 23rd. Chad (13m 31s): Can't wait to see everybody there. So if you are close to London, if you're in or around the area, hell go to tatech.org, check it out. Register. Hopefully we see you there. Joel (13m 44s): Hopefully we see you there. Chad (13m 46s): Bring me some turkey. Joel (13m 47s): We got birthdays, Chad. Chad (13m 47s): Birthdays. Joel (13m 47s): That's right. Another trip around the sun for some of our fans. And by the way, you mentioned free alcohol. Our friends at Plum have graciously agreed to give a fine bottle of rum. That's rum with Plum and that's marketing genius, Chad, to a lucky birthday winner each month. So if you haven't, put in your info at Chad cheese.com/free. Make sure you do that and put in your birthday. You might win some rum. Celebrating another year on the planet. Happy birthday podcast fan Gary Gray, Cheryl Callaway, Jamieson Stark, Thom Kenney, Ryan Beck, it's been a while since we've seen him. Joel (14m 28s): Ryan Beck. Gareth Thiveux, hopefully I'm saying that correctly. Probably not. Chad (14m 33s): Excuse me. Joel (14m 34s): Charlie Judy, Jeff Waldman your favorite. Dr. John Sullivan. And wait for it! sfx (14m 38s): Welcome to All Things Scottish. Our slogan is If it's no Scottish it's crap.! Joel (14m 45s): That's right. Our friend Stephen McGrath from CandidateId celebrates a birthday and I can't wait to have a bit of scotch with my favorite Scott when I see him again. Happy Birthday everybody from your friends at Chad and Cheese Chad (15m 3s): Happy B Joel (15m 3s): Birthday Fantasy Football, Chad. Chad (15m 4s): Oh, good God. Joel (15m 6s): We got some Fantasy Football news. Week six is in the books and our friends at FactoryFix have graciously agreed to support this insane meathead adventure that we are on. Okay, number one on the list. That's right. Serge "Spirit of 1812" Boudreau is in first place out of Canada. Why did that happen? Chad (15m 34s): Wow. Joel (15m 35s): Followed by Christie "still making a killing." Cris Cross "the MacDaddy make you jump" Manion. Dennis "Tupperware Cheese Mania". You know him and you love him. James, "he's the Skipper I'm Gillum" Jason "Mamoa" Putnam. Joe "Wilke or Won't he?" Matt "don't make a mountain out of a Molehill." Mike Shaffer. Hanging Chad Sowash and in the cellar, Dan "the torpedoes" Shoemaker. Congratulations everybody. Or not so much in playing Fantasy football sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. Chad (16m 22s): TOPICS! Joel (16m 23s): All right. Is it Inya yet? Talenya that is Paycor. Cincinnati based human capital management software provider announced the acquisition of Talenya a Hoboken. Can you name the most famous Hoboken son of Hoboken? Frank Sinatra. Chad (16m 36s): Old, Blue Eyes. Joel (16m 38s): I see that you didn't have the answer as I was looking at you. Anyway, they're AI-based recruitment platform terms were not disclosed. Founded in 2016, Talenya had raised a total of $9.5 million. The acquisition will enable Paycor to reduce time to fill critical roles by sourcing candidates actively looking to change jobs and passive candidates using Talenya's AI platform. Paycor expects to begin offering an integrated solution in the first quarter of 2023. Chad, is it Talenya or isn't it? Chad (17m 17s): Or is it Tadontcha? I don't know. Talenya's co-founder and CEO - Gal Almog was the founder and CEO of RealMatch, which became Pandologic so he's a veteran of the space. PayCor w/ FY’22 total revenue was $429.4 million, which is an increase of 22% year-over-year and sees automation in recruiting a good opportunity to sink their teeth into. Paycor, like any other platform, offers "custom hiring workflows" Chad (17m 58s): which have always creates bottlenecks for hiring companies who thought they knew how to build efficient workflows, but just plain suck at it. Well now clients of Paycor can possibly pay to skip steps, in their flawed bespoke workflows, and just allow automation to take the wheel around sourcing, engagement, prequalification, and other front-end tasks. It's a smart move by Paycor. But much like most HCM platforms, the big question is, will they fuck it up? Joel (18m 38s): Mm. Little known fact I met Gal back in 2003 or 4 when he was starting what was then Red Match. Chad (18m 47s): Red Match, Yeah. Joel (18m 48s): And then eventually Pandologic. So the dudes got some core competencies. He had called me up in 2018 and said, I got this new thing called Talenya, I wanna show it to you. And so I have known Gal for quite a while. I think this is a little bit of timing. They've taken less than $10 million so price tag wise, they had a lot of opportunities to find buyers. Yeah, look, we've talked a lot about the pricing pressure on sourcing tools, the automation of sourcing tools. So I think timing-wise, you know, five years he probably saw the writing on the wall that was time to cash out on this puppy and Paycor was there to catch the company. Joel (19m 32s): So Chad (19m 33s): Sugar daddy baby. Joel (19m 34s): Yeah, so they have, so Talenya has some really tight bonds with the Cleveland market and Paycor is Cincinnati based. I don't know if there was some connection there maybe. As far as Paycor is concerned, Paycor is a public company. It's valued at $5 billion market cap. It's stock has been going sideways pretty much since it went public. It needed to goose or at least try to goose the stock a little bit. And this deal does a few things. Okay. It gets on two hot trends, advanced recruiting tools, sourcing automation, and also DEI, which is is a big spin on what Talenya promises. Joel (20m 17s): The cost of this is immaterial. It probably brings $5 million. This was an analyst that talked about the deal. $5 million in revenue to a, by the way, $5 billion market cat company. So we're not talking about a huge deal. Chad (20m 33s): No. Joel (20m 33s): For them to take in terms of risk. The deal was priced assumed at around $25 million or less. So they paid about two x, maybe two and a half X for the deal. Again, immaterial for a 5 billion valued company like Paycor. It hasn't moved the needle in terms of shareholders time. Time will tell. But to me, this is just a marriage of a company that, you know, was seeing pricing pressure on sourcing and automation, wanted to find a buyer and a company in Paycor that has a lot of money to spend on, you know, taking some deals, taking some shots at goosing the stock. So far it hasn't done that, but. Chad (21m 12s): It won't. Joel (21m 12s): I'm not real bullish on this. I think it was, you know, two desperate people that found each other and you know, we'll see if they find love or not, but I'm not real confident. My guess is Gal will be gone in 18, 24 months and starting something new. Chad (21m 31s): Yeah. Joel (21m 31s): And this deal will be a silent footnote in the history of recruiting. Chad (21m 35s): Yeah. This was, I don't see that this is anything that's large enough to do any goosing to any stock whatsoever. I mean, they're way too big and Talenya is way too small. Joel (21m 47s): Yep. Chad (21m 47s): This is literally around recruitment automation and everybody is doing it. So if you can get it cheap, I'm not saying that they did, but I'm gonna say they probably did since again, Gal only took around $9 million. Why the hell not? They've got plenty of cash to be able to throw at it and I'm sure Gal got a good price. So yeah, I I don't think anybody had the anticipation or thoughts that this was going to kick the stock in the nuts cuz it's just not big enough. Joel (22m 14s): Mostly a big snoozer on this one, Chad. Well let's get to something that might wake you up like a good caffeinated drink. 10,000 coffees either in New York or a Toronto based company. It's a little bit weird in terms of the press release anyway. Chad (22m 31s): Like the name? Joel (22m 32s): So we'll get to that. So they're a provider of talent experience offering mentoring and skills development solutions. They just raised $56 million in funding, which from what I can tell is their first and only round of funding. So good on them for getting that much money. Chad (22m 45s): That's a big round. Joel (22m 48s): Yeah. The company intends to use the funds to build out its product roadmap and further scale its solutions globally. They've served some 200 customers according to a news release. Chad, is this a hot cup of Joe or just some lukewarm mud in your mug? Chad (23m 2s): Well, it's really young and it's really broad. And when you look at it, you ask yourself what is it really right out of the gate? And it, what it looks like is an internal LinkedIn. LinkedIn has, obviously with Lynda, it has has educational platform, so L and D. It has all those things that a LinkedIn would have, but it's more for internal, right? So you can hit with mentors. I mean you could mentors on LinkedIn, all this stuff that they're looking to do is kind of like, creating that social media for the internal kind of like the new intranet. So I ask myself, you know, have any of these internal social media platforms fared well over the years? No, not really. Chad (23m 42s): I mean, what have they done? Where have they gone? Are they necessary? You know, I think it's one of those scenarios where there's so much going on. You need automation to be able to drive engagement, but then you can't have automation do everything. Because if you have webinars or you have things that are outside of the system, how do you drag that back into the system? You need a Love Boat Activities Director pretty much. So you have to get people, human beings actually managing these platforms because the other managers that have all these learning development webinars and sessions and stuff, they're not gonna do that shit in the system. Chad (24m 27s): They're just not going to. So unfortunately, I think 10,000 Coffees, there's great ideas behind this. The hardest thing, much like most platforms that have failed over the years is engagement and stickiness. How do you get people into this like a lifestyle platform as opposed to something that's really cool for about five minutes and then it gets kicked to the curb. Joel (24m 48s): Yeah. Did you just make an Isaac from the Love Boat reference? Chad (24m 54s): It was Julie. It was Julie from the Love Boat. Joel (24m 58s): Julie, Yeah. Just when I think we've jumped the shark on this whole like, big investment, crazy valuation shit like this keeps happening. By the way, there is an actual company called 10,000 Coffee from Sydney, Australia that is coming to America. They just opened up in Los Angeles. So there might be some issues, either branding or legal with an actual coffee company called 10,000 Coffee or 10,000 Coffees. We first met these guys at inspire HR down in Nashville and now we know how they got the money to sponsor drinks at Margaritaville. It's this funding round that we are talking about now. Joel (25m 41s): So they got all the buzz words on the press release. They've got connectivity, mentoring, DEI onboarding, early talent and leadership development. I think they've covered all the bases in terms of buzzwords and companies that get stupid valuations and crazy funding from companies. I think you've summed up the business as itself pretty well. And we're pretty long in the tooth on this show anyway. So I say let's just wait and see on 10,000 Coffees or 10KC as the kids call them. And we'll take a quick break and then go into something Chad and I are calling thumbs up or thumbs down. Chad (26m 20s): Well, real quick, I, I've gotta slip this in YA an acquisition mention ARC acquires HR tech. That's big in the event space. So that's gonna be interesting to watch. Joel (26m 28s): Yeah, I agree. Oh, you slipped that in. You slipped that in very quick. Chad (26m 32s): Very quick. Joel (26m 32s): Put it in Selena. Yeah, just the tip. We'll be right back, everybody. All right, Chad, let's play a little thumbs up or thumbs down. Here's how it works. Okay, I'll read a news item, not a funding news item. That's why we call it thumbs up and thumbs down and not buy or sell. You ready to play? Chad (26m 55s): Let's do it! sfx (26m 56s): ding, ding, ding. Joel (26m 56s): All right, let's do this. All right. Career Beacon acquires Ruutly. Moncton, New Brunswick based Career Beacon where my wife is from, by the way, not Moncton, but New Brunswick. They've acquired employer branding platform, Ruutly, that's R U U T L Y. Terms were not disclosed based in Toronto. And apparently bootstrapped from day one Ruutly promises to automatically transform static text job postings into interactive, sexy, delightful candidate experience whenever a new job is added to a company's ATS. Chad, are we a thumbs up or down on Career Beacon acquiring Ruutly? Chad (27m 37s): And Ruutly not being double U, but a you, you as a Joel (27m 41s): It's a Canadian double banger baby. Chad (27m 44s): It's a thumbs up man. I think this is a very smart move by the very smart move by the Canuucks to start buying platforms that connect CareerBeacon and Alongside with UX. Using Ruutly inside of Alongside to create rich content - aka job postings and social shares that are then distributed to CareerBeacon could provide better attraction to brands using those platforms through a much better job search experience. And when you're looking to, and I'm not saying that this is going to, you know, this is going to do a ton of moving of the iceberg, the Indeed iceberg, but when you're a company who is going against Indeed, you're just trying to chip away, right? Chad (28m 24s): And these guys are chipping away with this type of, this type of acquisition. Good job. Thumbs up. Joel (28m 33s): I think it's a thumbs down for me. An employer branding business called Ruutly. Really? That's the name of your company. I think we're going overboard on job postings, man. We we're talk like video embedding this thing has little drop down JavaScript shit. Like Google for Jobs does not like this stuff. Keep it simple. Give me a text base job posting, like I understand the sexiness, but just like resumes, we're getting too fancy with job descriptions. Let's keep it simple. Let's let the robots do what they need to do with the indexing and the scraping. I don't know, I I think I'm a big sell on these two fine Canadian companies. Joel (29m 13s): By the way, I was in New Brunswick this summer and we passed by Moncton. Dammit. Why didn't I stop by the CareerBeacon headquarters and say hi. Chad (29m 22s): But just to throw this out there the robots aren't applying for jobs, Okay? So until they start doing that, we have to be sexy for those kids out there humans. So it's still a thumb up. Joel (29m 33s): It's fine. We disagree on this show. It's okay. It's okay. Now that you're European, we're gonna disagree a lot more. All right. The Muse acquires Fairy God Boss employer branding site. The Muse has acquired Fairy God Boss, a similar business, but one that focuses exclusively on women and has reviews terms were not disclosed. Fairy God Boss founded in 2015, had previously raised $14 million. The Muse says they'll keep the two brands separate, due to the value of each community while giving employers a single relationship to meet their hiring goals. Chad, is this deal a thumbs up or thumbs down? Chad (30m 13s): It's a big thumbs down for me. So selling to The Muse is like grabbing onto an anchor while you're already drowning. I mean, I love everything that Fairy God Boss stands for, but I cannot understand why they or others like them, like the Mom Project haven't blown the doors off of D E I B and the entire industry. They should be leaning into driving advocacy for initiatives like wage transparency and closing the wage gap. I mean, hell, companies like Adzuna are doing more for pay transparency and equity than Fairy God Boss has. And to me, you can't be in the middle of the road when you're in one of these types of platforms. Chad (30m 57s): So if you're trying to press an entire cohorts, you know, females, an entire gender space, you have to stand for something. And every time we've talked to Fairy God Boss, I love 'em to death. They're great people, but it's like they wanted to try have one foot on the advocacy side and one foot on the employers side, and you've got to stand for something. And to me, they just never stood for anything. Joel (31m 26s): Let's go back in time to 2015 real quick. When I had a little less gray hair in my beard. Yeah, so Glassdoor was eight years old in 2015. There was a lot of consensus, I think I was on this boat that the employee review sector would get segmented. That there would be reviews for women, there'd be reviews for African American, Blacks, Asians, everyone would get their own little niche of employee reviews. That didn't really happen. Glassdoor was acquired. And Indeed and Glassdoor probably have 80 plus percent of the review market. And if you're looking for reviews, that's where you go. Joel (32m 8s): One of those two sites. Enter the pivot for Fairy God Boss. Yes, we have reviews, but we're more about pay equity and equality and inclusion. And they rode that whole wave, which is sort of fading a little bit in terms of value of that. A lot of people are doing a lot better than someone that started out as a review side and wanted to pivot. Now we are, if my math is correct, seven years into this business, seven to 10 years usually is the time when your investors say, all right, let's cash this puppy out. I'm guessing they called New York based The Muse down the street and said, 'Hey, what do you think about and buying a female review site with some other shit sprinkled in?' The Muse who's always down for a dumb deal, said, Sure. Joel (32m 55s): And now you're gonna have two sites. By the way, I don't think Muse wants reviews on their site. They're very heavy into glorifying companies. They don't want anything negative to come on onto their site. So these, these guys are gonna be separate. They're gonna try to sell both these sites and one one's fail swoop. We know that historically salespeople trying to sell two different products have a hard time doing that. So we'll see how that works. But to me, this is just like the time ran out on an idea that just didn't happen for very God boss and they found a sugar daddy in the muse and case closed. I think Fairy God Boss will be a footnote in history, much like the other companies we're talking about today. Joel (33m 41s): So that one is, I guess that's a thumbs down for me too, Chad. All right, Tatio Recruitment sourcing company. Tatio has raised 5.3 million in a seed round, founded in 2019. The company uses AI to power its job simulation platform to help recruiters access underutilized but qualified workers in the us. And to help those candidates find the right job, it gives employers access to pre-qualified candidates to interview friend of the show. Maya Hubbert Tat CEO said quote, instead of vetting people out, we vet them in. Chad, are you thumbs up or thumbs down on Taio? Chad (34m 21s): Well, full transparency, I am an advisor to Maya and the gang over there, but a very early start getting seed funding of 5 million is, is a huge thumbs up for me. They, they've got a long way to go as much early, early startups do early stage startups, but Maya and the gang now has some cash and we can see what they're going to do. So it's time to turbo that bitch up. Joel (34m 46s): That's a thumbs up from Chad. I agree. By the way, no one, no one can support the open bar party like a good TA party as people at HR Tech will remember. Great tech, great team, great, great. First round by the way. Very solid, but not, but not too much. A nice little taste, A nice little start. I think this is a great deal. Thumbs up for me as well. Tatio. The name is Little Suspect, but I'm learning, I'm learning to, to deal with it. All right, let's talk about Glassdoor filters. We talked about Fairy God Boss. Let's talk about the og. Joel (35m 26s): Glassdoor users can now search for companies by workplace factors or demographic group ratings. That's right. Users can now customize their job search by workplace factor ratings such as work life balance, culture and values, diversity and inclusion and more, or by overall ratings from demographic groups including race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and more. The data is compiled based on millions of insights publicly available on Glassdoor. Chad, thumbs up or down on the filters? Chad (35m 57s): Thumbs down. I mean, we're talking about a company who can't, a tech company who can't even match jobs and they wanna create these advanced filters. I mean, again, it's, it's kind of like what is old is new again. The the, these were the browsable pieces that were on the side of most of those. Indeed, back in the day. Remember when Indeed had all of the sure. Everything over the side, right? Related, That's all this, that's all this is, right? So, you know, it would be great to see a technology company actually do something that was innovative as opposed to, you know, 19 shit 10 years ago. Chad (36m 37s): So, thumbs down. Joel (36m 38s): Yeah, Glassdoor is good at two things, PR and scaring companies into buying shit. This is great. PR filters, everyone's into filters, right? These aren't Snapchat filters, however, these are like search filters, which aren't as sexy. Yeah, But filters are good headline. People are all into like, inclusion. So they love that this is something that's gonna get covered. So for, for a, you know, punching above your, your weight, this is some good pr, so good on them that they're good at pr. And number two, getting more money out of their current clients, scaring their clients into buying more shit. This is one of those things, right? Like, Oh, we better buy some of this. We better make sure we're in these filters. We better make sure that, that people like us in these filters that we show up and that we then, then we can tell our, our execs and feel good about ourselves that we are having jobs posted in these filters that are, should I say woke? Joel (37m 31s): I don't know. Chad (37m 32s): Such a scam. Joel (37m 33s): Anyway. Yeah, it's like, let's get more money and get more press. They're good at those things. This is a perfect example of what Glassdoor does to get good press and get companies to continue wasting money on their dying solution until they just become indeed and go away. Let's transition that good stuff. Stuff Chad (37m 51s): That thumbs up, that thumbs up, Joel (37m 52s): Thumbs down. No, no, no, that's, that's still good. I mean, I guess it's good if you're totally just PR and, and getting money from Be able, but this is just some more bullshit at a glass store. But keep that PR department strong guys. It's going, it's going well. All right, let's get to something totally different. Amazon, Chad, your favorite organization is having some issues. According to in Gadget, Amazon's attrition costs $8 billion annually. This according to some leak documents and it gets worse from there, Chad. The documents also indicate potential lapses in the company's learning and development data. Joel (38m 36s): Quote, only one out of three new hires in 2021 stay with the company for 90 or more days, and Amazon's turnover was approximately 150% annually. That's according to another story by the New York Times. Amazon declined to confirm or deny any of the specific claims made by in Gadget. But wait, Chad, just like a good Ginsu knife collection, there's a lot more. Amazon says it will close all but one of its us call centers and shift hundreds of office employees to remote work in an effort to save on real estate. The call center's currently planned for shuttering, rn, Kennewick, Washington, Lexington, Kentucky, and Phoenix, Arizona, Huntington, West Virginia, beautiful Huntington, West Virginia or Houston will remain open. Joel (39m 24s): We got a story or two on Amazon. Chad, go! Chad (39m 27s): First and foremost, attrition is costing an estimated 8 billion. That's just attrition. So can I get a fucking amen over here for God's sake? Seriously, why aren't companies regularly creating these types of reports? Hey, talent management peeps out there that are listening, wake up and duplicate this formula. What is your inability to retain talent costing your company? Do you think that eight, the 8 billion number is gonna go unnoticed to the C-suite? Now yours might be less, but it doesn't matter if you start to actually demonstrate how this is affecting the bottom line. That's the case, right? Chad (40m 8s): So come on, people, get your heads outta your asses and start creating better business narratives around talent acquisition and talent management. If you can't keep the seat filled and fill in a timely manner, you are losing money. You have to go deeper than cost per hire, time to hire. You gotta get your peeps in business and sales and marketing and and, and product. All those, you gotta get 'em together to calculate attrition and your inability to hire and what it's costing the company. So attrition is huge. This is to me something that every company should be looking at. I'm, I'm glad that whether Amazon says, you know, they, they, they deny it or not. Chad (40m 51s): This is obviously happening back to, to the, the point of remote. I see this as them actually going to offshoring. This is the first step to offshoring. They are going to start closing down and then they're gonna go to remote and then guess what's gonna happen? Kids? Oh, we can't find enough people. Oh wait a minute, I can pay them a quarter of what I'm paying. You know, an American, let's go ahead and do that. That's, it's got Jeff Bezos strategy written all over it. So you see the attrition, Here's the narrative that's being created. Here's the, the attrition. Yes, we have to close things down, then we won't be able to hire people and then we're gonna start, start offshoring. It's clear to me what the fuck's happening here. Chad (41m 32s): Yep. Joel (41m 32s): So two things. So net profit at Amazon last year was 33 billion. So 8 billion. Chad (41m 41s): God, Joel (41m 41s): It means something, you know, it's not a drop in the bucket even for Amazon. It's, it's legitimate cash. So it's simply, it's unsustainable. I you're, you're running out of people to hire. You have 150% attrition every year. Unless the robots are coming faster than we know, this is just unsustainable. The they gotta fix shit. They gotta, they gotta ma I don't know what, what the hell they're doing. I don't know how how you can go into work as a recruiter, the, the, you know, talent team at Amazon and go, Oh, this is a great track. Like we're on the right track people, they need some Matt Foley over at Amazon, Chad. That's what they need. They need to get on the right track on this. Joel (42m 23s): Cuz unless the robots are coming, they're, they're screwed on this. They gotta fix it. They gotta fix the retention issue at Amazon. No question. Now the remote, Yes, you took it right outta my, the words right outta my mouth. Look, Amazon gets bku tax incentives to open shop in these cities, in these states, right? They get tax breaks, governments throw shit at them to get them to open shop in their, their cities. Yeah, the whole work from home remote. Like this is the future, whatever. What a fucking smoke screen. Like it's part gen, it's evil genius, let's be honest. But they can go to these cities and states and be like, you know what, this is the world as it is the pandemic. Joel (43m 6s): Sorry, good luck suing us in court. And then over time it's that boiling the frog. These people that leave their jobs, they're gonna start going from Phoenix to the Philippines. Like these jobs are gonna slowly, you know, thing go from Lexington to Laos, they're gonna do it. And this is the, the evil genius that is Amazon. And these jobs are gonna slowly get out of the US and go into other countries. And you, you are spot on my friend. I'm just sorry for all the governments that took it in the ass in tax incentives and deregulation, whatever else they had to do to get Amazon to come to my city, come to my city. Joel (43m 53s): All right, let's take another break. And speaking of robots and coffee, this is a great book into this podcast. Robot baristas everybody. All right Chad, for three days last month, 1000 food service workers at San Francisco Airport went on strike over wages and working conditions during the walkout. Not a food service worker could be found, except that is for the robots serving up espressos and green tea lattes at two automated coffee kiosks with the ominous name Cafe X. During the strike, the coffee bots operated 24 hours a day taking orders via attached touchscreens or phone apps, worrying quietly behind glass even while they're fellow laborers, chanted slogans and marched outside due Android's dream of electric higher wages and better benefits. Joel (44m 45s): No, because they never sleep. Chad, what's your take on robotic baristas at San Francisco Airport? Chad (44m 50s): In all of our travels, we've seen these robot baristas everywhere. I've seen them in Cincinnati and Austin. I mean they are everywhere, right? Can they fix a pumpkin spice latte? I sure as hell bet they can. So at the end of this, once again, I I see, I see we have robot coffee machines, baristas. Yeah, this is, this is gonna happen. And will, the big question is, where else will we start to see these baristas pop up other than just airports? Joel (45m 20s): Yeah. Speaking of going to Normandy Beach on our way there, we had pit stops at gas stations. And guess what? Every gas station in France has automated coffee machines and no one serves a good cup of Joe like the French. So if you want a latte, espresso, cafe ole whatever you want. Cafe Mocha, one of my favorites. Chad, you can get it from a robot in France, by the way, Lines at Starbucks. How pissed do you get when you're headed to a flight and you want to get a coffee and you gotta wait in line at Starbucks? Oh yeah, while they, while they fix your drink and write your name on the cup. Like, not anymore kids, they don't give a shit, right? So, so anything that's sort of this quick serve like get me what I want, get me the hell outta here is gonna be roboticized and coffee is just one of the many that will, I think that the jury's out in terms of robots making burgers, salads, your smoothies that you get after your workouts, Chad or your your favorite quinoa bowls. Joel (46m 21s): But in terms of coffee, ice cream, I've seen those any kind of that fast. Get me what I want. Give me hell outta here. Robots. Also, Chad cannot make you an adult Happy meal and McDonald's and I'll end with this. The Ghost Pepper Whopper with the black bun is coming to a Burger King near you. Just in time. I'll pass just in time for Halloween. I just hope your anus can handle the Ghost Pepper Whopper coming out the other end. We out. Chad (46m 58s): We out.

We joke about VONQ sounding like an STD our "roommate" caught in college, as well as saying their executive teams look like the bad guys from the Bruce Willis classic Die Hard, but truth be told, they're a company making waves in the employment space. That's why we recently sat down with CEO Arno Schäfer to dig into what's going on at the company. Turns out they're doing some really interesting things, like private labeling their tech so applicant tracking systems can make even more money. What a world, amirite!?!?! Enjoy this one, live from UNLEASHworld in Paris. 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 (1s): 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 (28s): Oh, Yeah. What's up everybody? We are back live, Unleash World, Paris, France, and we are talking today with Arno Schäfer, our favorite diehard villain and CEO of VONQ. Chad (40s): I'm drinking beer in France. It doesn't feel right. Joel (44s): Drinking lukewarm European beer. Chad (47s): Italian though, right? Italian beer. Joel (48s): We're getting, we're getting Italian beer in a company run by Germans, founded by the Dutch. So we're all confused. Arno welcome to the show. Arno (59s): Thank you for having me. Joel (1m 0s): He's being very polite, German in the corner there. Arno (1m 3s): Yes, yes. Chad (1m 4s): It's not my turn to talk. Joel (1m 6s): Yes. Arno (1m 6s): No, it's Europe, you know, so it's, you know, a lot of countries, so Italian beer, you know. Chad (1m 11s): All over the place. Yeah. Germans, I just finished some champagne, so that should, Yeah, that should go well with warm beer. Joel (1m 16s): So give us a little bit about you, and then we'll get into the company and what you guys are doing right now. Chad (1m 20s): Long walks on the Rhine. Yeah, Arno (1m 22s): We all walked on the Rhine. Exactly, exactly. Joel (1m 24s): It's Octoberfest. It's a Schäfer hause all year? Arno (1m 28s): I was actually picked up on the street to run VONQ. No, actually my story. It's a good, good question. So basically, I mean, I am now running VONQ since one and a half years, since February last year. I actually have a background in advertising technology and marketing technology, and had basically nothing to do with HR tech. So I approached and I thought, you know, what VONQ is doing that's really interesting, but you can develop that in a certain way, you know, and basically use the knowledge from Ad how long has VONQ been around? Because you're new to the US. Arno (4m 1s): Yeah. Chad (4m 1s): How long have you been around in Europe? Arno (4m 3s): Well, VONQ actually is a pretty old company. It's was founded 16 years ago, 2006. Chad (4m 8s): Oh, it's old enough to drive. Arno (4m 11s): Yes. And basically. Joel (4m 12s): And drink. And you're Germany. Chad (4m 14s): Germany. Yes. Arno (4m 15s): No, actually it was founded by three Dutch guys at that time. Yeah. And then, you know, of course the company went to some, developments started to kind of digitalize the whole, let's say recruitment process. Then they became shortly an ATS and then they said, Well, you know, maybe that's not a good idea. Let's, you know, just stay neutral. And then we basically became the VONQ of today. And, you know, with the clear positioning, with focus. Joel (4m 42s): Are we talking sort of programmatic distribution or just kind of dumb we're gonna put it on job boards and see what happens? Arno (4m 47s): We can do both. I mean, yeah, we can do both. And I mean, one of the biggest milestones was probably, you know, 2019 or 2020 when actually VONQ, was before my time bought a company in Koning in Netherlands, which was a multi poster IGB. And that became basically the backbone of our technology today and of our offering what we call Happy, the hiring api, which is a wide label solution, which can be easy be integrated into ATS. Chad (5m 16s): See what he did there? Joel (5m 17s): He did segue there, didn't he? Chad (5m 21s): Happy. Joel (5m 21s): Leading the witness and branding appropriately. Marketing guy. Chad (5m 25s): That's a great brand. So the market is amazingly different in the US than it is in Europe. Right. And it's funny because most Americans don't realize it until they go to Europe and then they start doing business in Europe, and most Europeans don't understand it until they try to invade the US. So talk about the difference, if you would, of how you were working in Europe versus the US. Arno (5m 49s): Yeah, so basically, I mean, VONQ is originally, as I said, a European company and we didn't even dream of going to the US until, you know, Joel (5m 58s): Bullshit. Arno (5m 57s): The beginning of next year. Okay. Joel (5m 59s): Yeah. Okay. Arno (5m 59s): So, the thing is actually Chad (6m 3s): Saw the pot of gold. Arno (6m 4s): Exactly. So I think the issue is, I think, I've seen a couple of companies again, I mean, it's the ad tech technology moving from Europe to the states and most everyone failed because I mean, it's such a different market. Chad (6m 20s): Well then why do it? Arno (6m 21s): Yeah. Chad (6m 21s): You see it happening? Joel (6m 21s): It's the pot of gold. Arno (6m 21s): But then sometimes you have to learn from mistakes and basically do it maybe a little bit smarter than others. Chad (6m 26s): It's like sirens with the ships is like. Arno (6m 31s): Those times are over, you know? So, no, but actually what we did, because we said, well, we could do it different way. I mean, first of all, we could have just bought a company and we can just say, you know, let's have, you know, five guys, you know, sitting in a New York sales office calling people with no connection, no name, no brand. I mean, that's probably not gonna work. So we actually decided to buy people, so to speak. So we started with Josh, I mean, one of, you know, the persons in the US everybody knows in the HR tech world. And basically he brought a team together. And so we basically, you know, started with the established team. So they, you know, the team is growing and we know of 15 people and basically with their connections, with their, you know, network, it's what's much easier for us to basically succeed in the US than building it completely from scratch. Chad (7m 20s): Well, we talked about it on the podcast a few weeks ago. I mean, big, big hires. You got Richard Castellini, Doug Ries, and we're talking about guys who have decades in this industry. Joel (7m 34s): Deep roots. Chad (7m 34s): So, I mean, that was in incredibly smart, but not just the people are different. You're coming at the US in an entirely different fashion than Europe. Can you tell us how? Arno (7m 45s): Yeah, so basically, I mean, in Europe we are mainly direct. So basically we are talking directly to enterprises. We work for DHL, BSF, and you know, of course you name it. Over a thousand enterprises we are working for. And we thought, look, I mean, if you now go to the US and start to call enterprise by enterprise, it's gonna take a while with a long sales cycle in HR. That's not gonna work. So basically we chose a different approach and we went indirect into the states. So basically we said, well, let's just reduce the number of people we have to call. Chad (8m 19s): Touch points, yes. Arno (8m 20s): Just the touch points, and maybe just focus on the top 10, top 20 ATSs, because they actually hopefully do the sales for us. And so that's what we did. And then, we could use of course, the network we built, you know, with the people you just mentioned. And basically it was a pretty easy access to the ATS because we told them, look, I mean, there are ways in the industry you can make money. I mean, one is the one you're doing, but the other one we can tell you because basically why don't you just add a marketplace, a store into your offering, into your, basically into your flow and use our technology to post media. And that actually is incremental revenues for them. Arno (9m 3s): So it's a win-win situation. And we gave them like a revenue share. So they built with our API, a store in the ATS and basically can sell media to their clients, which reduces churn for the ATSs. And actually it's also beneficial for the enterprise. Joel (9m 21s): You know, we talk a lot about ATSs that have marketplaces, they have the data, they know what's hot, they know what people are buying. And in historically what happens is an iCIMS text recruit thing where, oh, well text recruiting's kind of a thing. Let's just buy the most popular solution in our marketplace. You guys are actually helping them become their own most popular app in their marketplace. Arno (9m 47s): Yes. Joel (9m 47s): By saying, Okay, you're buying this, here's your menu of items, and here is the Greenhouse job distribution product or whatever. Arno (9m 55s): Yes. Joel (9m 55s): So me as a buyer, I've already bought the brand Greenhouse, you guys are wrapping your product into Greenhouse. Chad (10m 1s): It's like a super app. Joel (10m 3s): We could dig into that. Yeah. I mean it's helping them become the head of their own marketplace. Chad (10m 10s): Yeah. Joel (10m 10s): Double dipping if you will, because they know what kind of traffic and leverage these apps have and they can do the math and go, Gee, how much money would we be making? Because most of the marketplaces are free. Chad (10m 23s): Yep. Joel (10m 23s): Right? It's not the Apple iOS where we get 30% and they're looking at you guys there with a solution of saying, We'll brand at you, we'll be the technology. Why wouldn't an ATS do this? I assume this has gotta be like shooting fish in a barrel. Arno (10m 36s): Yeah, that's exactly the point. I mean basically it's, you know, it's incremental revenue, it's incremental business for the ATS. And I mean, honestly, I mean, I speak to a lot of CEOs of ATS and say, I mean basically, would be stupid not to do it because I mean that's basically, you know, you know, it's the easiest way to, Joel (10m 52s): I mean, I'm not gonna build it myself. I mean, do you guys handle the customer service if someone says? I mean, the service side of it? Do you guys support that or is like? Arno (11m 3s): Yes. Well basically it's a completely flow after we do the delivery, we do the operations, we do the support. Partly that's, you know, depending on contract to contract and yeah so it's a certain flow. And so there Chad (11m 14s): There are build versus buy scenarios. This is nothing that you would ever want to fucking build because there are way too many partnerships that you have to deal with. Arno (11m 24s): Exactly. Exactly. Chad (11m 25s): You think of all the niche and big player job boards and job sites. If you build this, you have to like, you have to herd all those cats corral. And that just fucking sucks. Yeah. If you can corner that, I get what you're saying. Joel (11m 42s): And I gotta think this is going to inspire some competition. Is anyone else doing this? Are you seeing some competitors? Arno (11m 50s): Yeah, there are other companies also. I mean, it's always difficult to speak about the competition. I mean, there are other companies doing that, Joel (11m 55s): And we will destroy them. Arno (11m 56s): I mean, if it's working, then it's working, then there's no reason to, you know, to go. Joel (11m 60s): You guys are the first to market on this stuff, right? I had not heard of a white label. Arno (12m 6s): I think so, yes. Chad (12m 8s): Well now eQuest did this back with Taleo 15 years ago and they got complacent now. I mean the thing was, Joel (12m 12s): But it was one product Chad (12m 13s): They came out, but it was one product and they had an exclusive with Toleo. Yeah. And they got complacent and then the market just opened up. Joel (12m 21s): So don't be complacent is what Chad is saying. Chad (12m 26s): He's German, they're not gonna be fucking complacent. Joel (12m 28s): So what services do you white label currently? I assume job distribution, but what else are ATS is plugging in? Arno (12m 33s): So basically, I mean, so to five seconds ad, we have a VONQ suite and then we have a Happy suite. So Happy is our product and we do the, you know, do the core, which is the marketplace. So it's the pure duration post, that's something which is built in, into the ATS. You can just click on it, like at, you know, if you buy something at Amazon, click, click, check out by. So it's as simple as that. What we also do, by the way, is we are offering with one ATS a payment, a wallet. So basically recruiters or the company can actually, you know, put money into a wallet. Chad (13m 7s): Like an Apple wallet? Arno (13m 7s): Yeah. Like a Apple wallet, Chad (13m 9s): A VONQ wallet? Arno (13m 9s): The VONQ wallet and maybe an ATS wallet and they can just use the money which is in the wallet and basically use it for their media buy. So that's something which is actually a product we built, you know, in a couple of months because we saw there's a need. So that's one thing. And Happy Job post, which is the multiposting part. So basically, own contracts from an ATS can be uploaded or from a client. And that's also product what we offer. Yeah. And what we also see, and it's also a thing in the states especially, is social impact and compliance is a big piece of our offering. So social impact, I mean, the trend probably right now, you know, D and I, you know, making sure you reach all the, you know, special sites. Chad (13m 56s): Do you find that bigger here in Europe than in the US? I mean, because the US companies talk about it. Arno (14m 4s): Yeah. Chad (14m 4s): But it's all warm and fuzzy bullshit, right? I mean, it seems like the EU really wants to put this in place. Do you feel that? Arno (14m 11s): I think there are two ways to kind of approach it. One is the regulation because, and in the states it's further down the road with the OCCP compliance needs. So if you do business with the government, you have to, you know, make sure that your audit proof post all jobs on those special sites. We don't have that in Europe yet. Yet. I assume that's gonna come. In terms of social impact D and I, I don't see, there's so many differences between Europe and the states. I actually think that the regulation in the states is probably coming to Europe. It actually also will help us offering that product in Europe. Chad (14m 47s): Yeah. Arno (14m 47s): And so I don't see that as a trend. Chad (14m 54s): One thing I see though is that there could be problems for programmatic vendors in the US because of their ability to target where jobs go and then where jobs don't go. Arno (15m 6s): Right. Chad (15m 7s): And there could be inherent bias in those distribution models. Obviously the smarter ones that are out there are already thinking about this. But do you see that as Europe starts to mature into programmatic, do you see that as automatically just baked into what you guys do? Arno (15m 21s): I think in general, in way. I mean, it's like, you know, performance marketing and Adtech you know, kind of. I see that a lot of people talk about it, but you know, very few actually using it. So I mean, we offer that as well, and, but we see the market doesn't really demand it that much. Chad (15m 43s): Yeah. Arno (15m 43s): So it's not our first priority. Chad (15m 46s): Gotcha. Arno (15m 46s): I think still a lot of recruiters and enterprises and clients still wanna just post their job on Indeed, on StepStone, on the big portals just to, you know, see them there. Joel (15m 55s): Let's talk about MNA for a second, because if I'm sitting where you guys are, I have the relationship with the ATS, I have their trust, I have a technology suite, I would be on an M&A binge to say, how many products can we plug into this ATS that we already have a relationship with. So how many companies are you looking to buy in 2023? And what services? Chad (16m 20s): 27 Joel (16m 21s): Are in your crosshairs right now? Arno (16m 22s): I mean, we did buy a company already, you know, like a couple years ago. So of course we always assessing and looking, you know, in the market if there are any targets, but that's it. Joel (16m 32s): He's very tight lip. Did you see how tight the lip got? Yeah. Chad (16m 36s): Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well that's sending me signals right now. So we're at Unleash, we're here, we're here in Paris. What have you seen here that has surprised you about some of the tech that's happening now? And what do you feel like where the landscape is actually going from a recruitment tech standpoint? Arno (16m 54s): I think in terms of what I just said, I mean the DEI stuff that I think that's the whole area of being, you know, compliant, related, I think those tools are probably, you know, gonna be super important in the future. So I see that as a trend. And I think that's it, basically. I mean, I don't see anything that, maybe it's because I'm kind of single minded and No, but I. Chad (17m 17s): I appreciate that. Arno (17m 18s): No, but I think it's what I actually think is super important, if you want to be successful, is to focus. And I mean, I say that basically every four weeks and in our all hands, you know, we need to focus, focus, focus. Because I think if you're just on too many, you know, different areas, you just not gonna be successful because you have to have one special area where you're good at and that, you know, explore that. So I think we are top of the funnel and we wanna stay there. So we don't wanna, you know, move into a competition mode with ATSs or with CRMs or with other systems because actually we wanna partner with them. Arno (17m 58s): So we don't wanna create a competition. Chad (18m 0s): So no buying of any assessment platforms anytime soon. Arno (18m 3s): No. Oops. Did I say something wrong? Joel (18m 5s): We're seeing a lot of interesting things, particularly in the states with the ATS business. We see a lot of really big venture firms spending a lot of money to sort of consolidate ATSs. The I P O market is sort of on hold, iCIMS sort of teased that a couple years ago. How do you guys look at the macro environment for ATSs? Is it the consolidation gonna continue? Is the IPO market gonna heat up? Where are you on just the general market? Arno (18m 32s): I think, kind of, what's secure right now is that it's unsecure, you know? So I mean, the only content is changed right now, you know, Joel (18m 39s): Isn't that Nitche who said that? Arno (18m 40s): So I think, I mean, to be honest, I mean, first of all, I think there are of course macroeconomic external factors. Nobody would've, you know, predicted half a year ago with the war Ukraine with, you know, upcoming recession and inflation. And so I think that's of course, something which we still don't really see in our business. But I mean, it's probably gonna come. And I mean, the second thing is with, I still think that the ATS will be a crucial and central part in the whole ecosystem. So I think more and more services will move into the ATS and basically that they need to ramp up with, you know, services to basically become competitive. Joel (19m 24s): Yeah. ATSs may not be going anywhere, but they're getting a lot more competition. Arno (19m 30s): Yes. Joel (19m 30s): We're seeing the one platform to rule them all. We're seeing CRMs, we're seeing chat bots. Arno (19m 36s): Yeah. Joel (19m 36s): Becoming conversation ai. I assume that you don't limit your opportunities to the ATS market. Do you see all of these platforms becoming an opportunity for VONQ? Arno (19m 45s): Yes. Yes. So we basically, we can partner with, you know, most of them. So what we also, you know, will do, which makes it super easy in the future to implement our service, is basically a widget, which is can be easily be, you know, integrated into the ATS or the CRM or whatever partner and they can actually make use of our, you know, services. So that's also something that we will release pretty soon. Joel (20m 9s): They're going to single-handedly bring back the job board industry by white labelling it. Chad (20m 15s): I can't wait. Oh my God. The big question here, is the Bundesliga better than the English Premier League? Arno (20m 22s): Well, I think in terms of, you know, football superstars, probably the Premier League is, you know, still more attractive. Of course. Chad (20m 27s): Well, because they're stealing the big ones, right? They they just got Holland from the Bundesliga. Arno (20m 32s): Exactly, exactly. Yeah. They got big ones and yeah, I mean they have, you know, Ronaldo in his late days, you're still, you know, playing there. Chad (20m 39s): Still. Yeah. Arno (20m 40s): I think it's still, and to be honest, I actually prefer to watch Premier League over the Bundesliga because the Bundesliga is actually super boring in terms of championship, because only by Munich since, I dunno, 10 years, 11 years. But anyway, so I think the play is also faster and it's more attractive to watch. Chad (21m 1s): Yeah. Hey, it's sexy. More goals being scored. You're seeing nine goals, right? Instead of like the mill mills that are happening, which are for any American, we like to see scoring, right? And I think that's just a human thing. Arno (21m 12s): You like to score. Joel (21m 14s): Dude, pull a joke, you like to score, You totally miss that. You like to score. That's German humor right there. You like to score Chad Hahaha. Are they gonna do any good in the World Cup? Arno (21m 25s): Well, actually it's in a couple of weeks I think. I fear that probably nobody really cares, you know, about that World Cup because it's... Chad (21m 33s): Really? Arno (21m 33s): Yeah, it's, I don't know, it's in Qatar, and, you know, it's winter. Chad (21m 37s): That's a good point. Arno (21m 38s): But anyway, I mean, our team is the German team, it's like, you know, you just don't know what's coming out. I mean they're, Chad (21m 48s): Well that's why he doesn't care because he knows his team sucks. Joel (21m 52s): Exactly. Exactly. Arno (21m 52s): Well, let's make it bet. I mean, Joel (21m 55s): Oh here we go. Arno (21m 56s): Is the US even qualified? Chad (21m 57s): No way. I'm Portuguese now. Okay, You're Portuguese Arno (21m 60s): Now. So you want a be who's more advanced at the end? Portuguese and the German team. Chad (22m 3s): Oh yeah. We'll do a C note. Okay. A Euro note on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Arno (22m 9s): Let's bet about the bottle of whiskey. You know which team is gonna be, you know, further advancing? Chad (22m 17s): Oh yes. Arno (22m 17s): Portugal or Germany? Chad (22m 18s): I'm down. I'm down. Joel (22m 19s): Arno Schäfer everybody. CEO of VONQ. Arno for those that want to know more about you or VONQ, where would you send them? Arno (22m 30s): Just to our website I guess. And to arno@VONQ.com. That's me. Joel (22m 36s): VONQ.com. Chad and Cheese (22m 37s): We out. Arno (22m 39s): Thanks. OUTRO (22m 39s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (23m 25s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

How often do you hear an interview with a recruiter who’s done time at Cisco, Facebook, Docusign, eBay, Robinhood and now Gem? Well, today’s your lucky day. Chad & Cheese has a chat with Richard Cho, Chief Recruiting Officer at Gem to talk about a wide variety of challenges around being a CRO, like recognizing that the bottom-line rules all, navigating the Chief People Officer and managing a down economy. We even veer off course down Memory Lane once or twice. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Chol 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 (21s): Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Chol Cheeseman, joined as always. Chad (31s): Hello! Joel (32s): The Christy to my Janet Chad Sowash. Today, geez, we're going back in time and bringing it to the present day with Richard Cho, Chief Recruiting Officer at Jem, also known for his senate, Cisco, Facebook, Dropbox, and Robinhood, and a short six months at eBay. Richard, welcome to the podcast. Richard (54s): Thanks, Chol. Thanks, Chad. Thanks for having me, Chad (58s): Dude. So we need, we need a little bit more about Richard. We need a little deep dive into the yoga vegans. Joel (1m 5s): He's a complex person. Chad (1m 6s): Meditation. 108 degree heat. Tell us a little bit about you. What are you dealing with today? Richard (1m 12s): Oh, man, I'm a, you know, square peg in a round hole. I've always been that way growing up. Told I was supposed to be an engineer, didn't wanna be an engineer, and then I fell into recruiting and I had an engineering brain and I felt like, wow, I really suck at recruiting so how do I marry these two together? So, you know, really my bio is, you know, I'm a recruiting leader, trying to use engineering data and insights to be better at my job and we'll see how that works. Chad (1m 42s): Well, I have to tell a quick story because Richard Cho blacked out the first time that we met. He was so scared. Joel (1m 51s): Me too. Chad (1m 52s): I, yeah, Chol's met me just way too many times. That's the problem. That's the problem. Joel (1m 56s): I'm still blocking him out. Chad (1m 58s): I actually came off stage after doing a presentation around the most exciting thing in the world, OFCCP compliance. Oh, and Cho you were at Facebook at the time, you came running up, maybe you weren't running, but you had a pep in your step and you said, "I just learned Facebook was O F C C P and I don't even know what that means. Can you help?" And the look in your eyes, it was the difference between scared little kid and a longingness of, 'Can you help me?' That's how I remember our first time meeting, Cho. Richard (2m 30s): I'm glad I made a lasting impression. That's, you know, and it was rooted in fear, which is typical. Joel (2m 39s): That's how most people meet Chad. Fear, despair. The end. Richard (2m 46s): Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, really what I was trying to figure out is how do we get out of this, right? Having done some O F C C P at Cisco for many years. Joel (2m 56s): And you went to Chad for help for that, geez? Richard (2m 57s): Oh yeah. I'm like, Chad looks like a guy can get me out of this pretty easily, right? Yeah. Chad (3m 2s): Well when you take millions of dollars from the US military, you ain't getting out of that big boy. Richard (3m 7s): That's right. That's right. Joel (3m 9s): Finally, the seed to Facebook's demise has been revealed. It was Chad Sowash back in the oughts. Nice, nice. Chad (3m 15s): Not so much. Joel (3m 18s): Well, Richard, my immediate question is, I mentioned the brands at the beginning, Cisco, Facebook, Dropbox, Robinhood. Chad (3m 25s): Oh yeah. Joel (3m 25s): Why, Gem? And not that that's anything against Gem, but it wouldn't necessarily, like if I was playing, which one of these does not look like the other? Gem would kind of stand out to that. And I do agree that we do need more people like you in our industry, just like, I think we need more vendors in the recruiting, you know, corporate recruiting. But why, Gem? Why now? What was it about this opportunity that really got you interested? Richard (3m 49s): Yeah, if you were to say five years ago I was gonna join the recruiting tech company, I would've called you a liar. So basically the path to Gem started with my relationship with Steve, one of the co-founders. And, then I had an opportunity to work with Nick, but I don't remember him at Facebook cuz he was a rising star and I was in a different role at the time. But what I remember about Steve is he was just so adamant about getting recruiting, right? Like, why is this hard? What is it, what's so difficult about recruiting? Isn't it just about posting jobs? And he really was engaged in learning as an engineering manager. Richard (4m 30s): So fast forward a few years later, when he came to me when I was at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and said he was billing this product, would I be open to be a beta user and provide some input into the direction of the product? I said, Yeah, absolutely. I remember how engaged you were. And it turned out to be a product that my recruiters and sourcers, but specifically sourcers loved. And I really didn't think much of it until I got to Robinhood. And, you know, the path to growth was you need to double hiring every year, year over year indefinitely. And I realized how much we're relying on Gem. Richard (5m 10s): But the thing that kept me thinking about Gem was like my sourcers were just so fanatically impressed with the product. And then, you know, fast forward a few more years later, when they reached out to me, I said, I have to take this call. This is a recruiting tech organization that has the people, the technology, it's a beautiful product that people love and it's delightful. And one conversation with Steve about the future of recruiting, that really, you know, was it for me, I needed to be a part of this. Chad (5m 43s): So what is the chief recruiting officer? Are you actually just focused on recruiting great talent into Gem or is it beyond that? Is it product? Are you part of, you know, the product and marketing and messaging and understanding of what recruiters really need in a product? Richard (6m 1s): Yeah, I want to answer that question in two different ways cuz like, there's one where I truly believe chief recruiting officers should be a trend in every industry. So I'll answer it in that way, but also I'll talk about, you know, my unique role here at Gem because my background and the implications of how it can help with the product. But just generally speaking, chief recruiting officer, all that means is the, the executive staff recognizes that we need someone in the room that can actually give us real talk about strategy or recruiting, right? Most of the time recruiting is an afterthought or is results driven? Have you made these hires? And why have you not? Richard (6m 43s): What's the problem? And it took very persistent recruiting leaders to say, let me show you the data. There's actually some trends. There's a cause and effect to compensation, equity, our brand positive pr, negative pr. And here are the things that you need to do to be more strategic. And so what I truly believe is one of the hardest things for companies to deal with right now is how do you create a strategic recruiting organization that actually flows with market trends, able to be super effective and bring in the right people and have real talk with C level members as a peer, as an advisor to be able to really shape the direction of talent. Richard (7m 26s): And so I actually think that's an important trend that most companies should heed. Chad (7m 32s): I think the CRO is definitely somebody you should model off of. And that being the Chief Revenue Officer, as you start talking about real talk, the only thing that the C-suite really responds to is the bottom line talk. And when you start talking about market trends, you need to talk about revenues and impacting the bottom line as talent. Because one of the things that we don't do in this industry enough, we hardly do it at all, Cho, is we don't talk about the talent that we bring. We are the heart and soul of every organization. If we don't have talent in an organization, we can't produce product, we can't create new code, we can't sell, we can't monitor, we can't use customer service to retain without us the bottom line doesn't exist. Chad (8m 20s): So why is it this real talk isn't bottom line talk. And I do love, again, the reference to CRO, we need to start thinking like Chief Revenue Officers instead of HR. Tell me what you think about that. Richard (8m 35s): Oh, I think that's a great analogy, Chad. Cause like I was around when the senior most level go to market position was SVP of sales and that was also just results driven. It's like, Hey, did you make sales or not? And when the advent of the Chief Revenue Officer really became popularized, they talked about how marketing affects sales, how lead generation affects sales, how pricing affects sales. And they were invited to the table to talk about, in order to increase revenue, we need to, you know, modify our pricing and so and so forth. And that is the perfect analogy, Chad, to what a Chief Recruiting Officer does because again, we think that we're just results oriented only. Richard (9m 22s): That we're not just a service organization. We actually have insights as to what we can do to bring in the best talent. And every CEO that I've spoken to, when I say, well, you know, like, Hey, what are you most proud of? They're not like, Oh, I'm most proud of the new logo release. They're most proud of the people that they hired and the people, the impact that they're making. And, so this is the reason, exact reason why the CRO is, is something that every company should be considering. Chad (9m 50s): Well, you can tie that talent to actually revenue generation. So that being said, when you have positions that are open, let's say for instance vital positions that are open that do impact the bottom line, why aren't we demonstrating to the C-suite that hey, every day that position is open, we are losing X amount to the bottom line, or we are losing X amount of opportunity to the bottom line. It doesn't seem like we're taking, because we focus on cost per hire and all the quote unquote "HR metrics" that the C-suite think are cute. We're not using that, taking it the extra mile and going to real business analytics and numbers. Richard (10m 35s): Yeah, it requires us to actually have the knowledge and the competency to be able to do that. When I first fell into the recruiting, leaders of recruiting were mostly leaders that cared about almost like, you know, mid-level sales where there's like, did you make the hire or did you not? And that's how you are graded by with this new advent of strategic recruiting I grade by recruiting teams based on how strategic of a partner were you to the hiring manager. And that includes, hey, the amount of time you have this open is the amount of time we're losing revenue or not shipping the product. Richard (11m 17s): We're involved in those discussions. And then we also challenge are do you have the right profile? Are you looking in the right areas? You know, like you don't have to have the purple unicorn, how about, you know, a blue unicorn with purple polkadots and they're gonna grow into the role that you need and you need to be able to speak intelligently about the talent. So you have to deserve to be there. So to your question, Chad, like why haven't we been a part of that conversation? There's only small percentage of leaders and recruiters and sourcers that had the competency to be able to have that conversation. Joel (11m 55s): The struggle for power is something that tends to be a narrative in corporations. And I saw the Social Network, Richard, so don't tell me I'm wrong. So, I'm curious in regards to, you know, devil's advocate would say, Well we already have a chief people officer or we're we already have a C H R O. You guys at Gem have a head of people, Chief People Officer as well as you, what's the division of labor there? Is there power division? Who has employment brand? Who has marketing? Like how is that divided? Because I think a lot of companies will say, Well we already have that. We already have the chief recruiting officer, we just call it something different. Richard (12m 37s): Yeah. So you know, if we think about the people organization in general, there's so many moving parts. Internal sentiment, attrition, compensation, market changes, and recruiting is one part of that. Most companies in the past looked at recruiting as a service organization that's just filling open roles based on a forecast that finance created and hire managers are advocating for and validating and recruiting was never part of that discussion. And partially, as I mentioned, the competency wasn't there. But the other is like A C H R O only has so much time in the day to be able to advocate for the most important things across all of people. Richard (13m 20s): So, you know, at Gem, the way Heather and I delineate duties is like I live and breathe talent acquisition, you know, 24/7, 365 and we partner around what's important not only for our executive staff, but also for the board. You know, what do we wanna share with the board that is important so that they have confidence that we're moving in the right direction. She includes me and conversations ahead of time around shifts in hiring forecasts and I'm invited into the table, all the senior leaders, around how this impacts our goals, our revenue. Richard (14m 0s): And having that visibility and being able to create a strategy before most recruiting teams are even aware is a game changer. And this is another reason why most companies should shift to this model because instead of the head header recruiting, finding out in March of the beginning of the year, what their head count target is, having that conversation earlier is a strategic advantage. Joel (14m 25s): Sounds like Richard is not a quiet quitter. Chad, it sounds like he's working all the time. Curious about most executive positions are solid whether times are good or bad, right? You always need a CTO and these things, right? But when there are layoffs impacting businesses, when there's a hiring freeze, which we've been hearing a lot more often in the news, what role does the CRO have when there's a hiring freeze or we're going through mass layoffs. Or is there a role? Richard (14m 55s): Yeah. Oh yeah, right. This is something that I've even written blogs about, like right now is the time for CROs or even heads of talent to think about how do you set up your recruiting team, your processes, your system to be ready for the rebound, which is inevitable. And every time in that rebound, hiring is exponentially harder. Again, and I wrote about this in my blog, I've been through three recessions in my recruiting career. Yes, I'm that old Chol. You don't have to, you know yeah. Chad (15m 30s): Join the club, Cho. Richard (15m 31s): So, but every time I looked back and said, man, I really would've loved to have been better prepared because we laid off all of our staff, we went down to, you know, two recruiters and all of a sudden those two recruiters need to take on 10 times the amount of recruiting until they can find recruiters to help ease the load and processes are broken and you know, the data is not there and it's just, you're trying to catch up. So what we've been advocating for, and I'm really excited to hear that a lot of companies have been doing this as retain your recruiting staff, move them into roles that will make them better recruiters long term, whether it's in HR or other places. Richard (16m 13s): Also spend the time to do all the projects that you said, Man, if I had more time, we could recruit better. If I had more time, we'd have a better brand. If I had more time, we'd be better at diversity. Now you have more time. Go work on those things so that when it comes back and it comes back with the fury, that you're better prepared. And that that's the role that CROs play is to advocate for that and to clearly articulate why that's a value add for the organization. And that's been something that Gem has really supported. Chad (16m 46s): What I'm hearing, Cho, is that we need to be thinking more around scalability on the talent side. I mean, we hear scalability for product, right? But we've gotta scale talent before we can scale product. So the big question for me and many of the individuals out there in TA, is how do we actually use automation to better scale? Today? Not tomorrow, but today? Richard (17m 17s): You know, obviously I'm biased. You, know, you should think about tools like Gem to be able to automate away the mundane things. I will say this, my position is you can't take humans out of a human-centric business like we have. sfx (17m 34s): Applause. Richard (17m 34s): With only one that can really sell the value and the mission of a company. But if I'm spending 10 hours just setting up emails and you know, making sure my calendar tickler reminds me to reach out to Chad, you know, in October, that's wasted time. I'd much rather have my recruiters and sourcers really have the meaningful conversations right now so that we can set up a relationship for when we are ready to hire to execute, right? So yeah, I mean those are things that are important, but here's what is always 100% of the time always behind and messy, data integrity is never there, right? Richard (18m 16s): Like if you look at every ATS, no one has cleanly used their ATS so when you try to do reporting or create dashboards, you spend, you know, a chunk of time just trying to clean up the data. Well why not clean up the data now? You have poor processes, interview processes that you've kind of let go because really it was just about how fast you can hire. Let's fix those processes. And then finally recruiters, recruiters and sourcers, they would love nothing more than to build out more skills. Like, you know, I care a lot about recruiters and sourcers, not just their craft of sourcing or recruiting, but I also want them to have high business acumen, have, you know, deep knowledge around the technology that they're recruiting for and that requires some training and mentorship. Richard (19m 4s): Why not do that now? So that when they come back they're better prepared and that's what scale needs to me. Chad (19m 13s): That's a hard conversation because as we've talked about, a lot of HR and recruiting leaders aren't competent in the first place. So it's really hard for them to be able to expect everybody around them to be growing when they don't even know what growth looks like. So getting back into automation and white glove, one of the things that we talk about a lot on the show is really when tech first came and the interwebs first came to recruiting, all corporate America did was take a application form and put it into digital form. They did nothing really to change the process in itself. Now the thing was more people could obviously have access to that application cuz they didn't have to walk through a front door. Chad (19m 58s): So you had more applications and then we didn't scale. So we have that tech to be able to scale now, which we talked about. And there's no doubt recruiting and human resources needs to stay human. But what does that look like from a CRO standpoint? From a technology standpoint? Because what we do is we sit there and we put a piece of technology in and we walk away when we know the market is fluid, but yet we are not fluid. How do we change that as being a CRO? Richard (20m 32s): Yeah, I love this question. You hit a nerve so let me, hold me accountable to make sure I don't go for an hour on this. Chad (20m 39s): Chad's good at hitting nerves. Richard (20m 41s): Yeah, I'm gonna take it a little different route cuz I believe it's not just about the CRO, it's actually a trend that I seen in the market. So, you know, dinosaurs weren't roaming the earth in 1998 when I first fell under recruiting. And remember, Chad (20m 58s): What did he just call you? Joel? Joel (21m 1s): That's a T-Rex, Chad. Richard (21m 2s): Joel and I were fighting for the one brontosaur meat that we were trying to have for lunch. What I remember back then is it took better part of two weeks to generate 10 great candidates for any slate. So I spent, my entire focus was to develop a relationship with those candidates. I got to know their aspirations. I got to know, you know, their background, and many of them proactively shared their family stories and what they want. Why they, they care so much about the careers that they're in. And that's really what I see is really the human side of the work that we do. So when I place them, I knew imminently that they were not only qualified, but their careers were going to thrive as a result. Richard (21m 47s): Now let's fast forward in this world of digitizing the interview process and the selection process. I can push a button and find 500 qualified resumes. Now it's just a lot of averages. I reach out to 500, maybe 50 of them might respond to me and then maybe of the 50, ten of them might be interested in hearing about a job. Right now it's about transaction. So I'm like, great, you know, you're interested. Let me just tell you, here's a stock script of why you should join us and then let me put you in the interview process. We fast forward, live averages and then lo and behold we make an offer and that person says, Well, I don't know how to differentiate your offer from the 15 other offers I have in hand. Richard (22m 31s): We're in a historic labor shortage crises that we've never seen in the US in decades and decades. So now they're saying, well the only way to differentiate is you need to pay me more. And so CHROs and heads of talents, like I don't understand our offer acceptance rates drops and we have to pay way more for every talent. This is just a crazy labor market and has a hundred percent to do with the fact that we took the human out of the human-centric role. I remember talking people out of 40% of their guaranteed annual salaries to join a small little startup called Facebook. Richard (23m 12s): And they did that gladly. Fast forward many years later, they're, boy are they glad, that they made that decision. And I wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't spend the time developing that relationship. So to your question Chad, you should automate away all the mundane things, all the tactical things, give your recruits and sourcers time to build that relationship because that's what's gonna differentiate you, especially in a world where candidates or employees are quitting without another job, vis-a-vis great recession, great resignation, whatever the, you know, term is, people are spending more time now that there's layoffs, making sure that your company's solvent, that they have, you know, a mission and values that they're aligned to and they want, you know, flexibility in that. Richard (24m 1s): But understand the culture. If I work in, you know, Bentonville, Arkansas or San Francisco based company, I want to know that they care about time zone and the culture that I care about and the values, right? And that is something that a lot of CROs or heads of talent needs to think about and advocate for at the C-suite. And that's the only way companies are gonna win in this war for talent. Joel (24m 26s): Did you recruit Chamath Palihapitiya? Richard (24m 28s): I did not. Joel (24m 30s): Oh, you did not. Ok. Well, I had to ask. Settle a debate that we have on the show in the last few years. There's, in one corner you have the back to office all the time crowd. In another corner you have the hybrid folks and then in the other corner you have the work from home forever. What's your take on that debate and where do you fit? Richard (24m 55s): I'm gonna give an unsatisfactory answer. It depends on the role. So, and this is what creates a lot of consternation right now. A lot of people think that they know absolutely what candidates and employees are going to act like before we're all back in the office. No company has been 1000% back in the office, unless they were already, you know, even during the pandemic. And so we're all making these like assumptions like, oh no, we're gonna lose candidates if we're a hundred percent back in office or employees if we're a hundred percent back in office and people are making assumptions like, we'll we'll lose more than half of our candidate pool if we're back in the office. Richard (25m 38s): And the answer is, we don't know though. What we do know is people are kicking ass from home for specific roles and you know, recruiting is one of them. But you know, can you do a highly collaborative role where, you know, it might work out better that you can shoulder tap a product manager and a designer, if you're an engineer? Like should you be working side by side for some parts of the day? Absolutely. Joel (26m 4s): Let me ask this a different way, Richard. Cause you're dancing around this and I wanna get to the point here. You're a recruiter. Which company would you rather recruit for? A back to office company, a hybrid or a work from home forever company? Which one gives you the best advantage to recruiting? Richard (26m 21s): I think it has to be hybrid. Chad (26m 25s): The middle of the road. You just gotta get it again. Joel (26m 29s): What I sort of circle around here, is when you were at Robinhood, you scaled the shit outta that company. I think you mentioned it was 400 something to 4,000 something. Chad (26m 37s): That's the technical term by the way. Joel (26m 39s): For companies that are looking to do that. Give us like two or three tips in doing that. I would think that work from home would help you scale significantly, but maybe you feel differently. For high scale organizations what sort of tips would you give? Richard (26m 54s): For back to, you know, the future work conversation? What I probably meant to say was you need to make sure you trust your employees like professionals. Give them the choice, right? Chad (27m 5s): Autonomy. Richard (27m 5s): Yeah, they'll report with their feet. Like they'll vote with their feet. They'll either leave because you either mandated it or they'll stay because they agree with it. But back to the scale question, you know, a lot of that had to do with the fact that Robinhood had to think about what is their overall, you know, value proposition for the employee regardless of if you're from home or in office. Are you going to be better? Are you gonna be paid fairly? Are you gonna be part of a culture that you really, really care about? And I think we did that really well. The vast majority of our growth actually happened during the pandemic years. So I can't say it was because we allowed flexibility, cuz everyone worked from home. Richard (27m 47s): I can't say it's because we ask people to come in the office and there's, you know, really great snacks in the office because no one was there. This is the reason why I'm saying no one has this data and if they said that they know definitively you should be in the office, they're lying to you. No one knows definitively. Cause we don't have the data yet. Chad (28m 12s): Yes, I love it. That's Richard Cho, everybody. Chief Recruiting Officer over at Gem. Cho if somebody wants to connect with you or maybe, I don't know, come work for you at Gem, where would you send them? Richard (28m 27s): I would actually have them email me directly cho at Gem. Cho@gem.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm not great with my Twitter, but my Twitter is @chorichard and those are the probably the best ways to get ahold Joel (28m 41s): Of me. Are you sure you don't wanna throw out that OnlyFans account, Richard? Richard (28m 46s): Oh yeah. That's for a different podcast by the way. Joel (28m 50s): My bad. That's that's not our show, Chad. That's another one in the books, baby. Chad and Cheese (28m 57s): We out. OUTRO (29m 45s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

An American and a Finn meetup on Reddit and a startup is born. Finland-based Hireproof promises to make anyone a world-class interviewer just by clicking a link. Really? Yeah, really. Cofounder Nick Barth joins Chad & Cheese for a lively episode of Firing Squad, pitching his product that promises "delight," "happiness" and "less bias" in the hiring process. Is Hireproof primed to set the world on fire, or is it a wet blanket. 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. Shark Tank INTRO (0s): Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Joel (22s): Oh yeah. What's up? Freaks and Geeks. It's your favorite guilty pleasure. The Chad and Cheese podcast with another edition of Firing Squad. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Starsky to my Hutch" Chad Sowash. Chad (37s): Hello. Joel (37s): Today, our victim, I mean our guest is Nick Barth, co-founder at hireproof.io. Nick, welcome to the podcast. Nick (47s): Yeah. What up? What up? Joel (48s): What up, what up? Give us a Twitter bio about you. We'll get to the company stuff in a second, but you've got an interesting story of globetrotting around. Tell us what's up. Chad (58s): He's currently broadcasting out of Anne Frank's closet. Is that what I've heard? Yes? Joel (1m 4s): Built in 1248 apparently. There's a lot of creaking going on in Nick's house. Nick (1m 7s): Tiny space, but it's cheap. I can't complain. I've been a software developer for 10 years, lived in Europe, Asia, and America. Currently living in Amsterdam. Worked for startups big and small, currently live streaming my workdays on Twitch. Personal interests are long walks on the beach and poetry. Chad (1m 23s): Live streaming your work days on Twitch. Joel (1m 24s): I'm sorry, I was gonna go back to that too. Chad (1m 28s): Live streaming your workdays on Twitch. Okay. Joel (1m 31s): Are you making bank on that or why? Chad (1m 33s): Yeah, How, how, why? The big question is why I wanna hear that. Nick (1m 37s): Yeah. A lot of huge advantages I've got from a great productivity. You can't really fuck off if people are watching over your shoulder the entire time. Chad (1m 43s): Okay. Nick (1m 43s): And it's great for my code quality cuz I have like 30, 40 nerds like yelling at me every time I make a mistake. So you can't really mess up because everyone's gonna be like, Sir, online 47. And so that's nice too. Chad (1m 58s): Oh, Joel (1m 59s): That is Fortnite fan 99. Nick (2m 3s): It's roasting me. Chad (2m 4s): So, So you've got QA/QC that's running live while, I mean, what you're doing right now is literally a business model because, you know, employers all wanna sit over their developers, first and foremost. If they could crowdsource that, That's right. And, and then QA/QC it at the same time I think are, do we really need to talk about Hireproof? Joel (2m 25s): I think you just discovered a new startup space. Nick (2m 28s): Working on it. Joel (2m 28s): Working on it. The Twitch employer whatever huts or something. Nick (2m 34s): I'm making about 150 a month from it. So, I'm not ready to quit my job, but it's nice money and, but most of it's going to Bezos, so. Chad (2m 44s): Imagine that! Joel (2m 44s): The more I live, the more I see, Chad. Chad (2m 49s): That's amazing. Joel (2m 49s): Alright Chad, I don't know where we go from there other than telling the rules and what he's won here on Firing Squad today. Chad (2m 55s): Well Nick, welcome to Firing Squad. At the sound of the bell you will have two minutes to pitch Hireproof. At the end of two minutes, you're gonna be hit with about 20 minutes of Q and A. If you're slow or you're just meandering along, we're gonna hear the crickets. We want conciseness here. Joel (3m 15s): Tighten it up. Chad (3m 15s): Tighten it up, and move on swiftly. at the end of Q and A, you'll receive one of these three from both of us. Big applause. The fire of this product is hot, hot, hot. Golf clap. It's smoldering, but this product is not at flame level yet, so keep working on it. Or the Firing Squad, you might be Hireproof, but you're not firing squad proof. Hang it up and try something else. Maybe, I don't know, a little Twitch action that's Firing Squad. Are you ready? Nick (3m 48s): Sure am. Joel (3m 48s): All right, Nick. Pitch in three, two. Nick (3m 54s): Everyone knows hiring is broken. Hireproof offers a platform-based assessment, solution centered around structured interviewing. Structured interviewing is a best practice interviewing methodology that allows employers to improve candidate experience, reduce bias, and get better hires. We use our platform to educate our users and guide them through a hiring process with a library of interviews and questions, an interview builder, an interview assistant and the ability to compare candidates on skills and behavioral competencies. Interviewing isn't going away, but we can make it better for everyone. No more scribbled notes, messy Google sheets, judging candidates on the firmness of their handshake, stuff like that. That's out. We want nothing fancy, no machine learning, no ai. Just to focus on the fundamentals of extracting decisions from human interaction. Nick (4m 37s): Our three main value ads are: one, we're ethical candidate first. Seriously, we're not doing any weird shit. We aren't trying to offload HR work onto candidates. We're only doing stuff we would like ourselves as candidates. Two, by using the platform, every interviewer becomes a professional with our interview assistant. This is especially important for long processes where many interviewers are involved and these interviewers, they're subject matter expertise, is not interviewing, it's their job. So we wanna help them out and make them professional interviewers. And three, providing insight into the interviews for hiring managers in HR. You can see exactly why candidates receive their score from skill and competency perspective instead of just a bias pass fail, we liked them or we didn't. Nick (5m 20s): So that's it for us. You can check us out if you're trying to hire. Chad (5m 24s): Where would you find you? Joel (5m 26s): It's the most anti-climactic ending. Give us a URL or something. Jesus Nick (5m 32s): Hireproof.io. But I'm gonna get made fun of now for the io so I was avoiding it. SFX (5m 38s): Ding, ding ding. Chad (5m 38s): Okay. I gotta say, Joel, I need a big applause for the monster truck voice that actually transitions into Fred the accountant. Nick (5m 46s): Yeah. Thank you. Joel (5m 47s): He tried to out sound bite the sound biters. That's the first for the show. Alright Nick, all comedy aside and this has been comic relief for me. Yeah, we gotta get to the name. Okay, a few things. You got the dot.io, the.com, I don't think it's available. Somebody owns it out in Toronto apparently. How'd you come up with the name? Does it get confused with, you know, H I G H E R? And lastly, what's up with the logo? Dude, I, it, it looks like one bird head upside down. One bird head right side up. Two blobs. I wanna buy some Ikea furniture, like what's up with the logo and what's up with the name? Nick (6m 30s): Okay. Logo first. It's two dialogue bubbles upside down. It can also be two faces upside down like the Spider-Man kiss situation and privately we think it kind of looks like 69, which is funny to us. But in terms of the domain, it's, we emailed him, we said, he said, I'm looking for substantial offers. We said, okay, $8K. He said $25K. He's owned it since 2006 and we aren't ready to to hit that yet. Maybe once we raise our next round. And then the name. So it's funny because fireproof is what we based our name off of and that would mean that you, if hireproof is the same as fireproof, that would mean you couldn't get hired. Nick (7m 11s): And we also thought that was funny but we're sticking with it cuz we we mark it down whenever people bring that up. And it's only been once so far, so only one person has been like, doesn't that mean you can't get hired? And we are like, oh shit. Chad (7m 25s): Yes. Nick (7m 25s): Yes. Yeah it does. But we've still been liking it. I think we're sticking with it. Joel (7m 29s): Ok. You had me at 69, Nick, you had me at 69. Let's, you mentioned our next raise, but according to Crunchbase, you guys have been totally bootstrapped up to this point. Is there some news you wanna drop on this, on this episode? What's going on with the funding of this company? Nick (7m 47s): We raised pre-seed round of $350K from Icebreakers VC in Finland in September of last year. And we've been working through that right now, burning through it as fast as we can and we're gonna raise soonish, I wouldn't say now, but soon-ish. Chad (8m 3s): Soonish. Nick (8m 4s): Any investors out there? Joel (8m 4s): Well, if you're burning through it as soon as you can, are fast as you can. Nick (8m 9s): We're trying. Joel (8m 10s): Fundraising. Nick (8m 10s): We're trying. And if I made grandstand for a second, I listened to a few of your other podcasts, three in a row the other day actually, where people said that they were totally bootstrapped and then mentioned that they had a family and friend round. And I want all the listeners to know that while a family and friend round does fall within the legal definition of bootstrapping, generally these people built amazing products with tons of money. It's not like they did this in their spare time, they got $500,000 from their father or something. Joel (8m 36s): But you're not bitter at all, are you, Nick? Nick (8m 38s): That being said, we're completely boots strapped except for a small raise. Chad (8m 45s): Okay. So as we talk about the small raise, let's talk about the team. How big is the team? And how did you meet your founder, your co-founder? Sorry. Nick (8m 54s): There's four of us now, three co-founders and we've hired a customer success lead and the co-founders we met on Reddit. Our co-founders, there's a co-founder Tinder on Reddit. And most of the ideas are stupid. Most of 'em are like, Hey, I wanna make it out for it's Uber for dog dentistry or something and just ignore this immediately. And then sometimes once a month you'll see a well written post that strikes, that strikes you, that's like, Hey, I need this actually. And that's how I found Max. Chad (9m 23s): What about the other co-founder? You said you have three, so you found, you found one on Reddit, Tinder, interesting. How'd you find the other one? Nick (9m 32s): Yeah, same kind of deal. We actually got funding when it was just the two of us, so it was a lot easier to find a third co co-founder when you can brag about getting funded. We did it the same way. Joel (9m 43s): They can invite the Finland PM to that. She's ready to party. Chad (9m 49s): Only if you're lucky. Let's talk about experience. So out of all three co-founders, your experience in this space, actually being in HR and TA tech? What kind of experience do you have? Nick (10m 4s): I have almost none. The HR person here is Max. He was an early employee at UiPath. He's really into it. He thinks of himself as a thought leader in HR and we didn't bring, instead of him coming on the show, he rambles a bit and he's too pure for YouTube credence. So I'm here, but basically I saw the problem he was having and I was hiring 30 people at a time and this was also a problem I was having. So I was happy to join in and I'm happy to be in this world now because I I've learned a ton and I'm really enjoying it. Chad (10m 40s): Okay, so there are a shit ton of interviewing platforms that are out there today. I'm sure you already know this, you've probably done, I hope you've done all the research. What makes yours different than all of those, other than not having all the acronyms, ai, ml, nlp, et cetera, cetera. What makes you different? Nick (11m 0s): Most of our competitors are like conversational analytics. So that's the approach they take. They record and analyze the interviews and then they give suggestions on what could be improved and then tell them how the interview went. We've kind of got the opposite approach where our starting point is that we're building these interviews with science back frameworks. And so anyone can run an easy interview without the need to do a few and get feedback on those. So we have a guide of what a good interview should look like off the bat. And additionally they're filling it out. This isn't a scorecard situation where you look back and you're like, Whoa, was he good at that? No, you're filling this out as you go through the interview as it's holding your hand through the interview. Nick (11m 42s): So that's the difference between us and I guess we can mention video interviewing as well, which we don't, we don't support anything that would change the candidate candidate's experience from a normal interview. Right. So the candidate never knows they're using Hireproof. It's only for the hiring managers, the interviewers. Chad (12m 1s): So you said this is a science back framework, two things. What does that mean? Number one, I mean science back framework? But what is there like a standard that we don't know about? Number one. And number two, is this a synchronous interview that is really just leading the human through a structured interview process? Nick (12m 26s): Two, Yes. I think that's a pretty good description of what we're doing. And as for one, the science stuff, we're basing this off of a 1998 paper by Hunter and Schmidt and then they had a 2016 update or whatever that was what was the highest validity for predicting job performance, in interviewing. And that's what we're basing most of our decisions around when we're talking about how we want these interviews to go. Joel (12m 49s): I wanna go back to the money real quick cuz you got on your soapbox there for a second. Nick (12m 55s): Yeah sorry. Joel (12m 56s): How much are you looking to raise in a next round? I mean, are you looking for like five to six? More than that? What's it gonna take to get this thing off the ground? Nick (13m 4s): No, I think it's gonna be less than that. I think it's between two and four if we would love four, but we'd be over the moon with two as well. Joel (13m 13s): Okay. So who's your target customer? I mean, who's the typical size? Geographical location? Industry? Like who's the typical user of this product and how many customers do you currently have? Nick (13m 25s): I'll answer the customers we currently have right now, we launched about four months ago in early May or something. And right now, we've been averaging 25 active organizations on our app, which we're quite proud of and they're using it pretty heavily. So we're really proud of that. And we've done that with no marketing budget, literally no marketing except for Twitch. So we're quite happy with that. And in terms of target demographic, we're slamming hiring managers right now. We can't accommodate big enterprises at the moment. We don't have the features built for 'em and we don't have the integrations with the ATSs that they would require. Nick (14m 6s): So right now we're getting like rogue hiring managers that don't like what HireVue's doing or whatever. And those have been our evangelists and we're really enjoying them right now. And in terms of where? Europe. Joel (14m 23s): Northern Europe primarily? Nick (14m 23s): Yeah. Joel (14m 24s): The Nordics. Okay. Yeah. So currently guys are in beta. Very little integrations that I see. Is that part of your strategy going forward or are you looking to be the platform? Nick (14m 34s): Oh no, we wanna do integrations. Chad (14m 36s): Who would you do integrations with, especially in that part of the world? Have you focused on that yet? Nick (14m 42s): Yeah, that's a great question, and I'd love to hear advice from you guys as well, but we've been prodding this out and trying to figure out who we want. I think we want smaller ATSs that are just starting who want to do a more tightly coupled integration because our biggest fear is that we put integrations into Greenhouse or whatever and they just sit in a marketplace collecting dust and cobwebs. So I think we're gonna shoot for the up and comers. I think Personio, that ships already sailed, they're a bit too big now, but yeah. Chad (15m 11s): People. Nick (15m 11s): Yeah, people a little smaller than them is who we're shooting for. Joel (15m 16s): So you mentioned that sort of rogue recruiters hiring managers are finding you. Talk about marketing, I mean it's easy to say we don't do any marketing, but you have to be doing something and I'm guessing it's not social media because your Instagram page has a whopping two pictures on it and 25 followers. So talk about marketing this thing. Nick (15m 34s): Yeah. We're doing well on LinkedIn. I think I'm quite happy with our metrics on LinkedIn for engagement. We our Instagram's gonna be purely social, so that's for the career page is what we're not trying to advertise on there. I don't think people are hanging out there, but mainly we just trying to structure the content we have on our website to appeal to keywords of these rogue hiring managers who want like, data driven solutions without AI and machine, without unethical stuff. So we've been going pretty hard on ethics and candidate first. Joel (16m 7s): Okay. And your website says quote, "Hireproof makes anyone a world class interviewer just by clicking a link" end quote. I mean your explainer video is three minutes long. T`alk to me about the truthfulness of that statement. Nick (16m 20s): Yeah, it's actually quite interesting. As you can see, I'm an extroverted confident guy. I thought I was great at interviewing, right? It's simple arrogance, we all think we're good drivers or whatever. And then after using the tool, you realize that you're just asking whatever you wanna ask without regard to how your hiring manager wants you to evaluate these people. And how your hiring manager wants you to evaluate these people must be consistent between all the other interviewers. So just by like slapping everyone and getting them in line, you're already increasing the validity of these interviews because they're consistent. So I think it's really important that everyone is on the same page and can run these consistently. Nick (17m 1s): And this is the feedback we constantly get from people who have used it. Chad (17m 6s): Yeah. Well let's talk about fair and unbiased. So there are plenty of other interviewing platforms that are out there that say that they're unbiased. What makes yours so unbiased? Nick (17m 19s): Yeah, actually, once again, I mentioned those two papers earlier and I think they should be mandatory reads for anyone who's doing interviewing, but indeed they're the methodologies that that feature the least amount of bias. And also when we say unbiased, I wanna once again go back to no fancy stuff. So all the machine learning and AI that we're not doing, which sounds like a negative, is actually, in my opinion, a positive. I think I'll quote you guys when you say 'bias at scale is what these things bring to the table'. And we think interviewing's gonna continue to be one-on-one, real talk, let's say in the future. And we just wanna do this and reduce the bias as much as we can in there. Nick (18m 0s): Obviously it's impossible to eliminate bias. That's not what we're claiming. Chad (18m 4s): Okay. Well let's talk about more than just integrations with applicant tracking systems. What other types of platforms or partnerships do you see coming down the road? Where's your focus on partnerships? Nick (18m 18s): Our focus on partnerships is definitely ATS stuff because we don't wanna become another ATS. So I know you said aside from that, but I want to clear that's absolutely our focus. We need before we can get this into the hands of HR, we need these HR people to not have to duplicate work, right? We need those integrations. But besides that, one of the ones we're interested in, is deciding, which we don't have a solution for tech hiring, we don't have a solution for the tech part of the interview. We have non Hireproof interviews where you can just put in arbitrary scores, but we wanna do actual integrations with the leak code or the interview or whatever we find to be our favorite tech interviewing. Chad (18m 59s): Okay. So that being said, obviously tech interviewing's not your forte. That's cool. What is your forte? Nick (19m 5s): Yeah, it actually has been tech interviewing. Yeah, the nice part about that is that those are generally pass / fail, so they're quite easy to implement into our system without having to do them in our system. So we've been having a ton of people who have a blank second interview or whatever it is in their process that they just say pass foul on and continue on the next. What the sweet spot is, is the actual behavioral competencies we're, we're checking for people. So it's been the soft skills has been what people have been really happy with. Chad (19m 36s): So what about code testing? I mean you can ask questions in a structured way, in a more fair way, but what about testing, especially around tech because yeah, I can answer the questions, but can I actually code? Nick (19m 50s): Yeah, it would fall under the same solution. We would try to find an integration for company that does code testing, right? So these tech interviews are usually comprised of two behavioral ones and one actual coding interview and most of the time, as I said, they're pass fail. So we just find whatever we like the most or continue letting people put in arbitrary results for the X stage of the interview. Joel (20m 12s): How big of a threat do you see automation in the interviewing process in your product? Or are you looking to go more of an automated product in the future? Nick (20m 23s): Yeah, that's really interesting. I think we saw the pendulum go all the way towards automation eight years ago and now it's finally across halfway back towards having HR departments instead of skeleton crews running automations. So hopefully that trend continues and we're kind of banking on that, quite frankly. We're kind of banking on the fact that candidates hate pre-assessments one way video interviewing. These are things that are not liked by candidates. So I'm hoping to ride that wave into doing the right thing and having actual interviews where the companies are reciprocating the effort that the candidates are. Joel (21m 1s): Yeah, you say things on your site, like you create a delightful interview process and your product will make candidates happier. So I think you gotta stick to the human thing unless the robots get good enough to make us happy, which I guess they could, but maybe not online. You guys are still in beta, you're a young company. What's next for you guys in terms of product development? When we talk a year from now, what new things is Hireproof gonna have to offer? Nick (21m 29s): Yeah, we need to, I don't know if you noticed, but we have a library of pre-made interviews and we wanna expand that both in quality and quantity. So we wanna get a lot more out there and have those look a lot nicer. We wanna have a simpler onboarding and because you have to create these interviews yourselves, which most of the time are evangelists, it's easy for 'em, right? Because they're capable, they have a notepad where they have all their questions already written down, but we need a better system of recommending you type in your job title and we give you, we think there should be three interviews with X questions. So we wanna do stuff like that, machine learning like that, and then integrations, that's gonna be what we spend the next chunk of the year on. Chad (22m 13s): Okay. Let's talk about revenue real quick. What's the business model and who really are you guys going after right now? Are you looking for partnerships to be able to hit a bunch of different brands and integrate, you know, the platform with a bunch of different brands? Or are you focusing on just straight direct brands? Nick (22m 34s): Right now it's, the pricing is free 99. We're in beta, we don't even have it implemented. We plan on sending our first invoices next week and our invoices are gonna be around 150 euros per month. That's for one seat. And we want a freemium model as well because right now our greatest asset is how beautiful our product is. Quite frankly, I'm sorry, I implemented it. So, but that's really our greatest asset. So we need a freemium pretty much ASAP that's gonna be coming within the month. We've been in beta for a while now, almost a year. So I think it's time to get out of there and then yeah, direct to brands for the start, right? We want word of mouth. We made this thing to be beautiful and we want people to talk about it. Nick (23m 15s): So that's what we're gonna try. Chad (23m 17s): So what does a yank like yourself know about go to market in the Nordics? Nick (23m 24s): Yeah, not enough. SEO and organic growth is my forte, but we're counting on getting some people in who know this a bit better than I do. Joel (23m 30s): What do you wanna be when you grow up? We usually get the yearbook answer on this one, but sometimes we're surprised, like, what's the end goal of this company? Nick (23m 40s): Don't investors don't listen to me. We view ourselves as an acquisition target, quite frankly, because we don't wanna make another ATS. That's not what the world needs. What the world needs is standardized interviewing, that's good for everyone, right? And that's what we wanna accomplish and that's what we're gonna try to do. So I don't see us branching out into becoming a full service ATS at any point Joel (24m 3s): Thanks for your honesty. SFX (24m 3s): Ding, ding, ding. Joel (24m 4s): And with that, it's time to face the firing squad. Nick, are you ready? Nick (24m 11s): Sure am. Joel (24m 12s): All right. Chad, get 'em, Chad (24m 14s): Man. I gotta say, you missed up your standup career if this doesn't work and, and Twitch, you know, the back to Twitch business model doesn't work, then you always have standup. Man, that's good. We don't need another ATS. You are goddamn right, we don't. I I love that you are thinking of making something that is pure, that is fair, that is unbiased. No ai, no ml, no n l p. Library of interviews. Structured, because there are so many companies, so many companies who do not want to use one way interviewing. I know from a scale standpoint, especially much larger companies, they might have to go that way, but many companies do not want to go that way. Chad (25m 3s): So they just want better standardized processes. But where you're really gonna need a lot of help, obviously is go to market and the rogue recruiters and managers isn't a great business model. I think you probably know that already. And staffing, to be quite frank, I think is your quickest road to adoption, especially in the Nordics. So overall, this is gonna surprise you, Cheeseman, overall, you, there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but you are so young in this journey. I think you're hitting all the right notes. This is a big applause for me, Nick. Nick (25m 44s): Thank you. Joel (25m 44s): There you go. Look at that, look at that. All right, Nick, don't get too comfortable. Nick (25m 51s): Now comes bad cop. Joel (25m 52s): It's my turn to address your startup. Well, first of all, I can never look at your logo again, the same. For that I to thank you or curse your name forever. Anyway, let's get back to the business. Look, you guys are super, super in diapers, baby young, and it's always hard to sort of give a rating or give opinion and commentary about such companies. But when I look at your business, I see a company that is well diverse in terms of technology. You're obviously a great salesperson and Chad is right when he says you've missed your comic window. Joel (26m 33s): Maybe it's still open at some point? But I look at this thing and I see acquisition written all over it. Chad and I do a show that covers just the European market so we know intimately how much money is going into Europe, how many cool ideas and startups are being developed in Europe. Frankly, there's not enough Finish companies. So frankly, it's nice to, to see something come out of Finland. Companies like House of HR who do the Euro show with us, have a lot of money to acquire businesses like yours. You mentioned Personio, we talk about HiBob. There are lots of companies in your neck of the woods that are gonna be looking for technology like you guys are offering. Joel (27m 14s): I like that you're not raising too much money in the process. I think that could strangle you if you raise too much. I think going lean and mean, billing something that's applicable. I think the marketing is probably only ding against your company. I don't, you know, outside of organic SEO and what you're doing on LinkedIn? I know that can get better and if you guys raise some money, you can get out there in a real way and build your brand and obviously lean towards acquisition, which I think is where you're going. You're not spinning us on ruling the world. You're not trying to convince us that you have the next best mouse trap. So for me, based on what you guys are looking to do and what you've built so far, for me as well. Joel (27m 58s): Big applause, Nick. That's a double applause if you're keeping score at home. So congratulations, Nick. How's it feel? Nick (28m 4s): Yeah, it feels great. Thank you very much. Big fan of the podcast. I also want give a shout out to Salih Mujcic. He's one who introduced me to this podcast and we talk about pretty much every episode. So thanks guys. Joel (28m 16s): Thanks for brown-nosing after the fact that we've both given you a big applause. Nick (28m 23s): There you go. Joel (28m 24s): Nice refreshing thing from companies . Alright Chad, another firing squad is in the books. Nick, thanks for joining us and good luck to you. Keep us informed of what you guys are doing. We're happy to take 15% of whatever the final sales price is of this company. Chad, we out. Chad (28m 42s): We out. OUTRO (28m 58s): 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.

Live from Paris at UNLEASH World, the boys are on stage with Keith Sonderling, EEOC Commissioner & Oana Iordachescu Associate Director, Talent Acquisition - Technology Europe/Asia at Wayfair Deutschland. And they’re talkin’ A.I. issues in hiring, focused on Europe. We’re always keeping you away from land mines, no matter the continent. What’s more? How about a special show summary with fellow podcaster Matt “That British Guy” Alder? You’re welcome. INTRO (1s): 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. Matt (26s): Press record now. Chad (33s): You are mispronouncing it. It's called shit. Joel (40s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? We are at Unleash World. You know the game. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. Chad (48s): Gay Paris. Joel (48s): I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, "the Laphroaig to my Aberfeldy" Chad Sowash. And we are, if you can stop laughing. Welcome Matt "that British guy" Alder popping in for a visit. Taking a break from podcasting. Matt, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Matt (1m 9s): Thank you very much. I can hear the whole of Scotland now up in arms about the way that... Joel (1m 13s): How many kilts just went up in flames? Matt (1m 16s): Mispronouncing some of their greatest love brand names Joel (1m 21s): Fellows. Chad (1m 23s): Aberfeldy Joel (1m 24s): Prince Aberfeldy. Chad (1m 25s): Really don't enunciate things in Scottish. Right. Everything just kinda like runs through. But it's got this wonderful. Joel (1m 31s): You're offending him. Look at how red's getting, stop offending it. It's a Chad (1m 33s): It's a very rich kind of like robust guttural. Joel (1m 37s): Yeah. Chad (1m 37s): Love is what I feel when I hear somebody speak. Joel (1m 39s): I've never been. But we're gonna change that. Chad (1m 41s): But we know Scotts. So Joel (1m 43s): We know Scots. We like all the Scots. We know it. Chad (1m 46s): You're really Welsh though? Right? Matt (1m 47s): English? I'm English. Chad (1m 48s): Oh, I thought you were Cardiff. I had Cardiff by the sea. No? Matt (1m 50s): No, no, no, no, no. I'm English. Okay. I used to in Cornwall, but that's part of England. Chad (1m 55s): Sorry about that. Matt (1m 56s): So, I now I live in Scotland. Scotland, okay. Yeah. So I'm not a Scottish, but my wife and family are all Scottish. Oh yeah. Chad (2m 2s): But you live in Scotland. So Matt (2m 4s): I'm becoming assimilated slightly. I'm not wearing a kilt, yea. Joel (2m 7s): They accepted you yet? Matt (2m 8s): Just very open, accepting inclusive country. So you'd even be welcome. Chad (2m 12s): I don't know about that. Joel (2m 14s): Wow. That's saying something, cuz I offend everybody. Chad (2m 18s): Yes. We're here today kids, in liEU, let's say of the Friday show. We're gonna go over a Unleash recap, talk a little bit about all the fun parties. People are back. We're in Paris. But at the end of the day, listeners want to hear how this shit went. Yes. The FOMO is real. Kids. Joel (2m 36s): Well, fomo all over like we're in EUrope. Fomo. We're Paris. Chad (2m 40s): Is that a song? Joel (2m 41s): We're at Unleashed? It could be a song. Let's write a song right here, right now. Chad (2m 46s): Fomo all over. I'm gonna FOMO all over. No, sorry, go ahead. Joel (2m 51s): I'm going to get the Vonqin' FOMO on you. It's great to be back in person. That's all I have to say. Chad (2m 59s): It is. Yeah. Joel (2m 60s): We're human beings. We need to socialize. And for two and a half years we didn't get to do that. Especially as podcasters, we talk to people, we speak into the ether to no one and it's great to come and see people. Chad (3m 13s): Yes. Joel (3m 13s): I don't want to break my own arm patting myself on the back, but to have fans come by the booth, I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. Like, you know, love you guys keep, keep doing what you do. Chad (3m 25s): Matt's big in Europe. Joel (3m 26s): You're full of shit on my startup that you talk shit about. It's great to get all that feedback. Matt (3m 31s): I Think that's well it's great to have. We've got this podcasting area with these kind of branded backdrops. Chad (3m 37s): Pretty sweet. It's pretty good. Matt (3m 38s): Yours is kind of bright yellow. Chad (3m 40s): Ours is like screaming. Matt (3m 41s): The people coming by my booth have mainly been coming to plug their phones in to recharge cuz I've got a spare socket. Chad (3m 47s): We covered ours up so people couldn't see it. Matt (3m 50s): Yeah, absolutely. But it's, no, it's a really, it's a really great event. I mean there's lots of interesting companies exhibiting. I was hosting the recruitment stage yesterday. There's some great content. Chad (4m 1s): Yes. Joel (4m 1s): Tell the listeners what that is. What kind of content were you overseeing? What were they? Matt (4m 7s): So it was a string of very senior TA people. Joel (4m 10s): Okay. Matt (4m 11s): Talking about their various challenges. We had a great panel on first up talking about all the things that are affecting talent acquisition at the moment and how large companies are dealing with them. We heard from Deloitte, we heard from Deutsche Bank all kinds of other, you know, large, large EUropean or large multinational companies looking at all kinds of different areas of Talent Acquisition. Joel (4m 34s): They all say we're in a hiring freeze for the next 12 months. Matt (4m 37s): No! Not at all. There was still. Joel (4m 39s): Actually activity. Matt (4m 39s): Yeah. Joel (4m 39s): Cuz there was a lot of Americans think it's doom and gloom over here in EUrope and not so much. Matt (4m 43s): I mean it is but that doesn't translate. Chad (4m 45s): Doesn't stop us. Joel (4m 46s): But we're still hiring. Matt (4m 48s): It's still really the sense was that, you know, there's lots of economic pressure recession in quite a few countries, recession coming into ones that aren't there yet. Joel (4m 57s): Yep. Matt (4m 58s): However, still very difficult to attract and retain talent. So, you know, companies may not be hiring in the numbers that they were hiring before, but they've still got all the same problems they had a year ago. And so interesting to see people linking TA also and employer branding with retention. So retaining people still big issue. How do you build Joel (5m 21s): Upskilling. Matt (5m 21s): cultures? Had you upskill people all kind of thrown in the same presentation, which we didn't see before. That would be three different presentations, like two or three years ago. So, that was really interesting yesterday to see that. Chad (5m 34s): Pretty amazing. I mean we see the big names. They're all over the expo floor here. Joel (5m 39s): Not all the big names. Chad (5m 41s): All of the brands that are now, especially cuz we're in EUrope that are the Atlases, the Remote, the EOR companies. Joel (5m 50s): Yeah. Chad (5m 50s): Who are popping up and like exploding. Well probably because they got hundreds of millions of dollars, but exploding because EUrope, there's a bunch of countries and it's not easy to hire in EUrope for all of the different countries. But when you're looking for talent and you have the problems that you were just talking about, Matt, you need that those types of services. So we did see them in the US at HR Tech, but they, I mean they're big and strong here. Talk about that a little bit. Matt (6m 20s): Yeah, absolutely. It, you know, again, going back to the speakers that I saw yesterday and the people who've come on my podcast that I've sort of interviewed over the last couple of days, you know, they're all recruiting in multiple countries. All kinds of issues with, you know, different regulations. Lots of different things going on. Chad (6m 37s): Yeah. Matt (6m 38s): And yeah, just an explosion of tools, you know, to help that and also to really help people tap more into, you know, global workforces and, you know, borderless working and all that and all that sort of stuff. So yeah. Really interesting. Chad (6m 53s): We have a drive by listener Joel (6m 56s): A drive by. Chad (6m 56s): Who are you sir? Lieven (6m 58s): I tried to stay anonymous. Joel (7m 2s): We don't do anonymity. Matt (7m 4s): But we can see you. Chad (7m 6s): So Lieven. So yeah, Lieven is here, but for some reason he's been trying not to get on the mic, so I had to get him on the mic. So about this show, other than not going to the champagne tasting. Well what's been great? Lieven (7m 20s): The exhibition basically it's marvelous. So many companies I never heard about and I'm trying to hear about now. Joel (7m 27s): Lieven's making a shopping list for House of HR acquisitions in 2023.0. Lieven (7m 31s): Buy this and this and this and we're gonna buy all something like that. And I was trying to build the best I recruitment congress in the world and now I think have some work to do. Chad (7m 41s): Oh. which is going to be where next year? Lieven (7m 46s): Amsterdam Joel (7m 47s): Hold on. So did I heaer him the eCongress is gonna be this size at some point. Like you have bigger ambitions than what it is? Lieven (7m 58s): Smaller yet better. Joel (7m 60s): Oh. Kinda like Belgium. Smaller but better. Matt, liked that one. Lieven's taken us to Moulin Rouge tonight. We need to be nice to Lieven. Chad (8m 8s): I need to work through that. Yes. Joel (8m 11s): Boobies and Champagne tonight apparently is what was on tap. It's France. Chad (8m 15s): It's France. So that should be standard. So yeah. So we started off with the Vonq rooftop party. matt, you were there. You were there. Matt (8m 22s): I was there. Chad (8m 22s): You were there. Joel (8m 22s): You were there. You got in a day before. Yep, I got in the day of the party. Did you come in on Tuesday? Matt (8m 29s): I literally came in, I landed an hour before the party started. I came straight to the party. Chad (8m 33s): So talk about last minute. I mean, Jesus Cheesman comes in like a few hours before. Then Alder makes. Joel (8m 41s): I ride in, I make my plans well in advance. The show starts on Wednesday. I come in on Tuesday. That gives me like 12 hours. Chad (8m 51s): Gotta know that something is happening prior. Joel (8m 52s): Get adjusted prior and then a month before a party gets scheduled or hey, somebody's doing it. So then it's like, Chad (8m 59s): It's Paris! Joel (8m 60s): I got two hours. Chad (9m 1s): It's Paris. Joel (9m 1s): Instead of 12 hours. Chad (9m 3s): You got a little nap. Yeah, Joel (9m 4s): Unfortunately I have a five year old, it's harder for me to, Matt (9m 7s): But you know, I'm on an hour time different. So I didn't really need it. Didn't really need a nap. Chad (9m 12s): Okay. That's good. Joel (9m 15s): That's good. And Matt always parties all the time. So he's ready to go. Chad (9m 19s): Yeah. Joel (9m 19s): At a moment's notice. Chad (9m 21s): Always. So that was a blast. Rooftop. Joel (9m 25s): Dude. Paris rooftop. Eiffel Tower. Sun setting. Perfect weather. Chad (9m 29s): Free drinks. Joel (9m 31s): Perfect weather. Yeah. Free drinks. French whiskey and fried chicken. Chad (9m 35s): French whiskey. Surprising. Joel (9m 36s): Surprisingly good. Chad (9m 37s): I could not believe the fried chicken. Joel (9m 41s): Some fried chicken at this party. Chad (9m 42s): You know what it tasted like? It was from some upscale shake and bake. That's what that shit was. Joel (9m 47s): Yeah, you're right. Chicken breast. And there was some steroids in these chickens cause they were huge. Chopped nicely. Breaded exquisitely. Chad (9m 55s): It was shake -n - bake. Joel (9m 56s): A nice little dip. Chad (9m 58s): Yep. Joel (9m 58s): It was fantastic. And the French whiskey, I'm kind of convinced that it's Irish whiskey aged in some sort of French barrel. Chad (10m 5s): New label. Joel (10m 6s): Yeah, it's made in Bush Mills distillery. And then they aged over here. Chad (10m 9s): See I got Matt one of those and he was like, I'm not drinking that shit. I'm like, Matt, really? I'm like, Matt, Matt, try it. Matt (10m 16s): I really wanted a beer. That was why I really wanted a beer. They had a very nice IPA so it was good. But actually the whiskey was very nice. It'd be nice to know what it actually actually was. Joel (10m 30s): It was Irish whiskey? Matt (10m 31s): Irish generic French whiskey. Yeah, Maybe, Maybe. Joel (10m 34s): Maybe. Matt (10m 34s): Yeah. Joel (10m 34s): Definitely not scotch and definitely not bourbon. Chad (10m 36s): Say it was. Yeah, I know it was, it was a little, it was much smoother. Joel (10m 39s): It was light. Triple distilled for sure. Chad (10m 43s): Yeah. More of a sweeter. Joel (10m 44s): Yeah. So thanks to Vonq for having the party. Yeah. Supporting, supporting that. After that we had a nice Italian dinner that you took me to in Paris. Cuz that's what you do in Paris. You have Italian food. Chad (10m 56s): When you're going somewhere with Julie Sowash, that woman wants pasta. I mean, and she hadn't had pasta for a couple of days, so we had to make sure that she got it. Joel (11m 5s): She loves the noodle. Chad (11m 6s): Yes. The rigatone noodle. So yeah, no, that was a good time. Plenty of wine. Plenty of good time. The first day of the show got in here. I was really expecting to see more of kinda like a downsize because you know, people coming back. Is it gonna come slower? It didn't. Joel (11m 22s): This one might be a tad smaller, a tad more intimate. No? Matt (11m 26s): I think it's a similar size to the one there were three years ago. Yeah. I mean it's difficult to remember anything that happened before the pandemic. But it seems familiar at this kind of size. Joel (11m 35s): The Eightfold booth is smaller. Maybe that's why they didn't go with the 380 by 380 booth at this one. Chad (11m 42s): Maybe, they actually limit. Joel (11m 43s): Oh that would be very European. Chad (11m 45s): Yes. The amount of booths that you can have in one fucking space. Joel (11m 49s): Don't be too American with your booth size. Chad (11m 51s): No. Then we did dinner with Max from Talk Push last night. Joel (11m 56s): Yeah. Well we did a session with our friend Keith Sonderling, which was great. And that was well received. A good crowd. Chad (12m 3s): Which you're gonna hear right after this short update. Joel (12m 6s): Which will play for you after this. But yeah, funny story you, you took off to get ready for dinner, which we had with Max. I had the intention of going to the Eightfold party talking about Eightfold. And there are apparently two hotels of the same name that both have a rooftop bar. I went to the wrong hotel. I did go to the rooftop bar and I go up and I say Eightfold party and they spoke French so they didn't know what I was saying. Luckily I saw Sarah White and Lagunas. Chad (12m 37s): Kyle Lagunas? Joel (12m 38s): Yeah. In the corner there. And I said, yes, this is where I belong. They let me in. I had some Laphroaig. Matt (12m 45s): You got it right! You got it right. Joel (12m 47s): And it was great. I met some new friends and then left and met up with you at a real French Cafe, Bistro restaurant, whatever they call it. Chad (12m 55s): It was very small. As a matter of fact, Max Arm Brewster was actually spent a good amount of time. Joel (13m 4s): What did he have? Sheep brain? Chad (13m 5s): Some brain something. Joel (13m 5s): Gorilla Brain. That was a weird French. Chad (13m 7s): French will eat everything. Apparently. Apparently. They'll eat everything. Joel (13m 10s): Drink and eat everything. Chad (13m 12s): Yes. But yeah, to Talk Push thanks to Talk Push for dinner last night. Woke up this morning. I felt like shit not because of the alcohol. Joel (13m 18s): Yeah. Chad (13m 19s): Little bit of a cold. Joel (13m 20s): Yeah. You're dragging a little bit. Chad (13m 23s): Little bit. Little bit. But other than that, Joel (13m 24s): Chad dragging is like everyone else's 100%. So it's not too bad. Chad (13m 30s): And a shit ton of interviews we had Zev from Syndio. Oana was on stage with us. Yeah. Joel (13m 39s): Fuel 50, Textkernel. VONQ. Yeah. It was a parade of influencers and companies making miracles happen is what we had. Chad (13m 44s): Yeah. And we got some Wayfair too, so that's good. Joel (13m 47s): They got just what we need, Chad. Chad (13m 48s): Yes. Joel (13m 48s): That Wayfair. Chad (13m 49s): And then we got Bas on and we had to cut him to 10 minutes. Joel (13m 55s): I don't know. We need to get Bill Borman and Boss to go bowling. Chad (13m 59s): Jesus Christ. Joel (13m 60s): The eight hour bowling match is what that would be good. Chad (14m 6s): Yes. Joel (14m 6s): God, those guys could talk. A Brit and a Dutchman go into a bar and stay there for 24 hours and talk apparently. Chad (14m 13s): Any parting shots, Matt? Joel (14m 14s): Words of wisdom because they generally don't get that from our show. Matt (14m 16s): Yeah. Well I just, you know,I did go to the Eightfold party last night, so. Joel (14m 22s): Okay. Matt (14m 23s): I went to the right place. I read the instructions properly, but also I just wanna make a big shout out for Social Talent who had an amazing dinner last night. Possibly the smallest room I've ever been in in my life with the most amount of people. Joel (14m 37s): Did you say sexual talent? Matt (14m 38s): Social talent. Joel (14m 38s): Social talent. Matt (14m 39s): Social talent. Sorry, I think you're hearing is going. Chad (14m 42s): He's always hearing what he wants to hear. Matt (14m 44s): Absolutely. No, definitely Social Talent. So shout out to them cuz you know, that was some great conversations there. Joel (14m 49s): Tell the story about their booth or lack thereof. I think that's a funny story. Matt (14m 53s): I don't know that story. Joel (14m 54s): The booth next to us is having a barista and they have really nice coffee. Matt (14m 57s): Yes. Joel (14m 57s): So, Dave is over there. I'm like, Hey guys, where's your booth? Da da da. So apparently someone I don't know, forgot to like, have the booth delivered if there is even a booth. Who knows? So they have no booth over there. They've totally just like gone with it. Fortunately everyone there wears these green like super green shirts with the ninja thing. So Yeah, that's my funny story. They have no booth, but they have a booth and they're making it work like truly Irish. Matt (15m 25s): Leaning into not having a booth. Joel (15m 27s): Yeah. Like a true Irish, like let's just roll with it. No booth. Matt (15m 32s): Yeah. Joel (15m 33s): Which is a great conversation starter. Chad (15m 35s): Which I love is what Johnny said. He said, it sucks, but nobody died. Let's make this work. And that my friend is how this shit should work in the first place. Matt (15m 43s): I think that should be the motto of the next 12 months. Chad (15m 49s): Amen. Joel (15m 49s): Chad's words to live by. Take a step back, take a deep breath and ask yourself, did somebody die? And if they did, call 9 1 1. But generally no one died. Chad (15m 59s): What is it here? Is it 211? 112 or something? Matt (15m 60s): Anyway it's different. Chad (16m 5s): You can gone on that one. Joel (16m 8s): Nine one. Somebody call 211. Cuz this podcast is dead. We out. Chad (16m 13s): We out. 7 (16m 14s): Good afternoon, guys. Welcome to the Influencer stage. You'll see that this is down as a panel, but the two guys that lead this, obviously the most hrs most dangerous podcast, never have a panel. Plus it definitely is a fireside chat. And they will be unpacking. Can you trust hiring with AI? Over to you guys. Chad (16m 39s): Hello Paris? Joel (16m 40s): Oh Yeah. Chad (16m 40s): Hello. Where's the free, where's the free champagne? That's the question. Everybody should be getting free champagne at this point. I am Chad of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (16m 50s): I am Cheese, Joel Cheeseman of the Chad and Cheese podcast. If you don't know about us, you can check us out on any podcasting platform that you currently enjoy. And we are just giddy, giddy as hell to introduce these two guests with us. First and foremost, Oana Iordachescu. Did I butcher that too much? Chad (17m 10s): Oh yeah, that was too much. That was horrible. Joel (17m 16s): She's associate Director of Acquisition Technology in EUropean Asia at Wayfair. Chad (17m 18s): Wayfair. Joel (17m 18s): Wayfair. If you haven't gotten your furniture at Wayfair. What are you waiting for? Chad (17m 23s): You gotta sing it when you say it. Joel (17m 24s): Wayfair, you've got just what I want or need. Want or need. I don't know. And you, go ahead and introduce Keith. Chad (17m 33s): Okay. So Keith Sonderling. Yes. A commissioner at the EEOC. We actually had bring the US over to have a conversation around EU. Keith (17m 40s): Taking the show on the road. Chad (17m 42s): Yes. Joel (17m 42s): America. Chad (17m 44s): Keith, give us a quick Twitter bio of you. Long walks on the beach. Joel (17m 50s): That's right. Chad (17m 51s): Frequent Keith (17m 51s): Thats's right, frequent Chad and Cheese. Joel (17m 54s): He loves a good perp walk. That's right. Keith (17m 56s): Hello. My name's Keith Sonderling, I'm commissioner at the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And what that means is we are the premier civil rights agency in the United States, responsible for enforcing all workplace discrimination laws. So everything from the "Me Too" movement, to pay equity to disability, you name it. Everything relevant to HR professionals. That is my agency. Joel (18m 17s): And a Twitter bio from Oana. Is that enough characters? That's good for now. That's good for you. Oana (18m 23s): You do all the cool stuff. Chad (18m 26s): He's in government. You just said he does all the cool stuff. Really? Oana (18m 31s): Yeah, I mean, Me too. Discrimination. Lawsuits. I love that! Oana Iordachescu for those who want you're the try harder next time. Chad (18m 43s): Oana Iordachescu. Oana (18m 44s): I live currently in Berlin. I'm originally from Romania and worked in technology recruitment for the past 10 years with booking.com. Facebook always building technology teams in this organizations, of course as part of TA we use a lot of these tools that they are trying to regulate. And that's a good thing. So we're gonna talk about that. Chad (18m 60s): Oh, regulation's a good thing. We must be in the EU. Joel (19m 5s): She kept it professional, didn't she? Chad (19m 8s): We must be. Keith (19m 8s): I don't hear that often in America. Here get away from us. Chad (19m 12s): Yes. Joel (19m 13s): Oana also loves disco, dancing and dressing like a rock star. Let's get to the Q and A, shall we? Chad (19m 19s): Let's do this. Joel (19m 20s): So the AI technologies that many attendees are seeing here today are filled with a minefield of potential risk. Chad (19m 28s): Are you saying risk? Joel (19m 30s): Risk? I'm saying risk. Risk is out here everywhere. Keith, what are some prevalent risks that people should be looking for, from an EEOC perspective as they're talking to these vendors around the expo hall? Chad (19m 38s): Even here in the EU? Joel (19m 38s): I mean, yeah, and I wanna take a step back and it's really important to, you know, put the context of where we are and how we got here. So artificial intelligence, as we all know, it's a buzzword. It's throughout the industry. So the other sides of your businesses outside of HR have probably been using artificial intelligence to make your business more effective, efficient, make more money. And there's been so many products to out there under the AI side that your C-suite and your board of directors have loved because they've implemented that. It's saved costs. It's just made companies more profitable. So now we're seeing AI coming into a different area, which is our space and human resources with the promise to eliminate bias. Joel (20m 23s): And I think that's a really thing. Chad (20m 25s): Promise. Keith (20m 25s): With a promise. Promise to eliminate bias because you have these very smart computer engineers who have figured out to make the other size of your business better. And now let's make HR better. And how do we do that? What do we have to eliminate? Now I'll ask the questions, Chad and Cheese. What do we have to eliminate to make? Chad (20m 44s): That's not how our show goes. Keith (20m 45s): An AI product, super effective. Eliminate bias, eliminate discrimination? The H or the R? Which one do we wanna eliminate? Chad (20m 49s): Probably the humans. Yeah, we don't need the humans right? Keith (20m 53s): Why do we wanna eliminate the humans? Joel (20m 54s): They're a pain in the ass. Keith (20m 56s): They're a pain in the ass, but they're also, you know, full of potential bias. So in all seriousness, where a lot of these products are being sold is to eliminate the human from the decision making process. And if you eliminate the human, you also eliminate some of the longstanding biases that have plagued the workforce. The reason my agency exists in the United States and similar agencies here in the EU, is because employers discriminate. And whether they intend to do it or not, they're going to be liable for those decisions. Both from a government enforcement perspective and a publicity's perspective of discriminating against women, discriminating against agents, you name the protected characteristics. Keith (21m 36s): It's not good news for any of that. Chad (21m 39s): So getting back to your question, artificial intelligence out here, and a lot of vendors are now creating a product to eliminate that bias. To just use nEUtral characteristics, whether it's the characteristics related to applying for the job, succeeding in the job, to make the products have less bias. Yeah. Does that sound simple? It does, but I don't, I don't think Oana buys that. Do you buy that? Keith (22m 1s): I'm not selling anything. I'm the government. Chad (22m 3s): Are you buying that, that it's eliminating risk? Oana (22m 4s): No, absolutely not. Okay. It's not eliminating risk. I think actually it's probably creating some interesting side effects. And a lot of these tools we're talking about, they're not actually being sold to us to eliminate bias. They are sold to us to make the process more effective, faster. Right? So I think the different products that we can use, promise that while whatever you're trying to solve, speed, quality, volume, whatever, it's not generating more bias than you would with humans, Right. Because you're liable if you do discriminate without the ai? Chad (22m 34s): With the humans. Joel (22m 35s): Yeah. Which is a great point because I think a lot of people believe, well if it's their product, am I on the hook for it? Because I didn't create it. It's not an Amazon situation where we, this is a homemade technology. So I think a lot of these people are here concerned about what questions should I be asking these vendors to make sure that I'm not in trouble when shit hits the fan? Keith (22m 56s): And in the United States, the employer is liable for the employment decision. So whether it's made by a computer or whether it's made by a human, you can't say, Well yeah, we discriminated, but the computer did it so we're off the hook and we can't get in trouble. That's just not how it works. And I don't think anywhere in the world they're going to buy that. So the challenge is now with all these very innovative products coming online that truly, and we'll talk about if they're designed properly, whether you know it's the right data, the very diverse data set to help you recruit, or if it's an algorithm that that doesn't let you filter based upon somebody's sex, their national origin, it can actually help companies with their diversity can actually eliminate some of the bias. Keith (23m 38s): But if it's not, it can scale discrimination larger than we've ever seen before. So there's always two sides of the equation here. But you know, that oversight is what's gonna be critical. Chad (23m 50s): So to Oana's point is that humans are biased. There's no question there, they're biased. But guess what humans can't do well? Scale. So when you start using ai, if the AI is biased because of human developments, guess what? You're gonna scale bias, which means your opportunity to be more biased goes up dramatically and it goes up Fast. Keith (24m 12s): Yeah. And there's a stat that the average talent acquisition person takes around seven seconds to look at a resume, right? Chad (24m 17s): Yes. Keith (24m 17s): That's six. Okay, we lost a second. And that's not because of, you know, they have short attention spans, right? It's because of sheer volumes of resumes you're getting. Chad (24m 25s): Yeah. Keith (24m 25s): So think about if you have an HR manager or talent acquisition manager who doesn't wanna hire older women, right? And so they have to look through, okay, when do they graduate college, what's their name? Okay, here's one in the trash. No here's the trash. With an algorithm in 0.7 seconds, probably even faster, you can scale discrimination from what that one person takes the look through resume in a millisecond to thousands and thousands of resumes. Chad (24m 51s): Which is what we saw on Amazon. It's exactly what we saw at Amazon. I mean they were scaling it, but Amazon to their credit, found it and shut it down. Oana (25m 1s): But I'm gonna go back to his question. What questions should we ask when we wanna design or buy? Chad (25m 8s): Yeah. Oana (25m 8s): And I think a problem with what Amazon did was which data was fed into, right? And I think this is also where we need to ask our vendors, providers, is it structured data, unstructured data? Are you working only with our company data? Are you working with a certain nationality? Regionality? There is so much option there that you need to understand before even considering a product. So you can make some decisions where you can say, yes, I can take this risk. Because I think we're still in a phase where everything has a risk. We just need to quantify, is this a risk I can take? And I can work with this vendor on that because you need that continuous maintenance or not. And I'll wait another five years and I'll see what happens. Chad (25m 48s): Yeah. Well, so as I have Joel (25m 49s): A questionnaire at the EEOC, right? Questions to ask in terms of your recruiting, I'm sure the EU has similar. Keith (25m 52s): Yeah, we've put out a lot of guidance on that. But I think to your point, you're making a very good point and I think we need to just set the stage. There's basically two ways AI can discriminate. Chad (26m 5s): Only two? Keith (26m 5s): Well, two, like, let's just go two major ways. Okay. And that's, you know, either on the data set so you can have a data set that's not diverse. And in the Amazon example, it was a resume set of mainly men. So what happened, it lowered anyone who was a female or had any characteristics related to being a female. And that's because it was, you know, bad data. And that data, even though the data, the characteristics were nEUtral, that was the predominant characteristics. So that's due to the data discrimination, which is what largely everyone is talking about. But the other type of discrimination really occurs from the algorithm itself. So you could have the most neutral, perfect, diverse data set that is representative of your area, that has all the candidates you want. Keith (26m 48s): But if you're only then showing those job advertisements to certain people through an algorithm, let's say younger recommender system. Chad (26m 54s): Like a recommender system? Keith (26m 55s): Or you have a bad HR manager who wants to go in there, like the example I gave you earlier and filter out certain people. That is not based on a bad dataset. That's based on intentional discrimination and that's no different than a human discriminating against by what they see on their resume. So it's very much, it's so important to keep, when you're thinking about AI discrimination, a lot of it is not that much different than human discrimination, right? Chad (27m 20s): No, just scales faster. Right? Oana (27m 21s): But then is it the system or is still the human? Because I was actually thinking about this, I was putting some people in a LinkedIn project for a recruitment in a certain area, and then I get all these recommended people which are from the same school and I'm like, LinkedIn, I don't need this, I need diversity, please. Because I selected one person and the second maybe tangential. Chad (27m 44s): More like Bob. Oana (27m 45s): Right? Right. Chad (27m 47s): More like Bob. Oana (27m 47s): More like Bob. Yeah. Be more like Bob. So in the end when we have this option of people training the algorithm, right, this is the problem as well. Chad (27m 58s): Right. Okay. So we've set the table, I think from the standpoint of obviously humans are biased, no question. AI can scale that bias. One of the things that he said though was that right now the employer is on the hook, right? In the EU there's actually guidelines that are being proposed that are being put forth that the vendor will actually be put on the hook as well. So there will be a shared responsibility. So can you talk a little bit about that? Keith (28m 28s): Yeah. So this is a really critical issue for companies looking to go all in on AI for, you know, whatever the benefits are, whatever the potential drawbacks. I think with HR technology, we can all agree it is the future. Companies are gonna have to use artificial intelligence in HR, no matter what. But what we're trying to raise awareness of and really the point of this panel is to be competitive, you're gonna have to use some of it, but what do you use it for and what purpose and how do you not discriminate while using it? So you know the regulatory landscape and it is appropriate to start with me on this one because I am a real regulator. It's really. Chad (29m 6s): As opposed to a fake regulator like Joel and I. Keith (29m 9s): Yeah, exactly. Chad (29m 9s): No, I got it. Keith (29m 10s): That's what I was hinting at. But you know, in the United States there's exist, like my agency was created outta the civil rights movements in the 1960s. And I've been arguing that our laws from the 1960s still apply to this new technology that's not even that's being developed and will be developed in the future is the same way it applies to decisions made by human, by pen and paper since the 1960s. And a lot of that is just how do we apply these decisions made by algorithms and compare them to the decisions made by humans, which we know how to do. Which a lot of it is results. Chad (29m 46s): Which is outcomes. Keith (29m 48s): Which is outcomes hiring. We see discrimination. And how did that discrimination occur? Was it based upon, was it it if it's an algorithm involved, was it the bad dataset or was it a discriminatory algorithm? But liability and the discrimination's gonna occur. So what you, what you're seeing across the United States, which we'll talk about on a state and local level, and especially here in the EU, is this rush to make new laws related to artificial intelligence. And probably not a surprise to anybody in this audience. The EU, like they did with GDPR, wants to get ahead of the United States and wants to get ahead of other countries. And they've done that through their proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Keith (30m 28s): And in that act, it basically different types of AI use is goes into different risk categories. So they've said that the risk of using AI and employment is in the highest risk category, which subjects it to robust disclosures, auditing, and other requirements. But one of the key differences in the EU if this proposal goes through, is that there will be liability towards the vendor, either those who put it on the marketplace for sale or created and use it themselves. And that's far different than the United States where the vendor does not have liability, the employer has liability. So we are at such a critical time here and this conversation is so relevant and why I'm really excited, I think we're all excited to be here to talk to all of you, especially based in the EU, is that if that goes forward, it completely changes the game when it comes to HR technology. Chad (31m 18s): Yeah. A race to regulate is what I just heard. Oana? Oana (31m 22s): In the risk of making this EU versus US competition. Chad (31m 26s): Let's go. That's fine. Oana (31m 28s): You said the EU us? No, I don't think so. I think the EU cares more about its citizens. Can we maybe Chad (31m 35s): Agreed. Yeah, agreed. Wait a minute. Wait. Citizens versus the almighty dollar. Oana (31m 38s): Yes, but no, I think whatever what Keith said actually is correct and this is happening, it's in discussions technically in the next two years we will know if the law passes or not. But what I'm actually dissatisfied with this law is that it puts everything on the employee or the impacted person. You have to go and say this algorithm from this provider within this company with the lawyer, you know, prepared for all this battle, you need to prove, which I don't think it does anything to be honest. Like right. There will be so little action, like real action that we can interpret this without, like, unless you are, I don't know, you bring some Bloomberg in it or something, right? Oana (32m 21s): Like big stuff, but it doesn't really fix the problem of protection and prevention as much. Keith (32m 26s): Yeah. But it's put us all on notice. And your point is that the EU even putting a proposal on this really makes us all have this conversation. And it has a different context now of not, you're not just buying a product, but what else do you have to do once you buy the product? And who is going to do that for you? Is it you as the employer? Is it the vendor's responsibility? To your point, is it going to be an employees hiring a lawyer to force those audits to happen? But if this law passes, it adds a whole additional layer onto this conversation, onto the sales and purchase of these products that we're not talking about yet. That doesn't exist right now in the United States, even though the law may from the 1960s may require that audit to occur. Keith (33m 10s): So it's just gonna completely change the dynamic around purchasing and developing AI technology. Joel (33m 15s): Do you see American companies following suit with European laws in terms of companies being on the hook? Or do you think that they'll continue to get a pass from the US legal system? Keith (33m 25s): I think they're gonna follow, obviously in the United States, a lot of these products are being developed, designed there as well. And I think they're gonna keep continue following the US legal standard, but very much like GDPR and how it affected all US companies. I mean as you know, when we're in the United States, we have to click through all those popup GDPR things in the US even though most of us don't even know what it means. Chad (33m 49s): Thanks Europe. Joel (33m 50s): Accept all. Keith (33m 51s): Right. But in all seriousness, I think that when it comes to this, if vendors and employers are gonna have to start doing these audits and paying for the audits here in the EU, the question then purchasing it in the United States, we wanna see those audits. Well you've done an audit and if your audit doesn't show bias, then do it for us here in the United States. So it's certainly will have that effect of adding that additional layer on, if a company has already paid for and done an audit. Joel (34m 16s): Can we focus on audits for a second? Yes. What do you mean by an audit? And I think companies being on the hook means you can't just buy an audit from a third party and say that it's legitimate. It becomes a different weight in terms of what an audit is. So define it and what's the future and risks of an audit? Keith (34m 37s): Well, from our perspective, from the, at the E E O C and under US law, any types of employment audits, we look at only that individual employer. So any of these generic audits done on, you know, statistical basis of the workforce as a whole does not matter to us. When our federal investigators show up to your business, you know, we're asking only for your data set. We're asking only for the snapshot of your employees. Who applied, who you hired, and that whole chain and looking at those results. So any of these aggregate audits or audits done for other companies or by other vendors mean absolutely nothing to us. And what does that look like? That's the hardest question to answer right now because Joel (35m 18s): Everyone's, I wanna, I wanna underscore means absolutely nothing to us, meaning the government agency, that's an important, I think, thing to highlight. Keith (35m 24s): We only care about your company and if you come and show us a brochure that it was audited by somewhere else or worked at somebody else's company. Chad (35m 31s): Just what it is, is a brochure. Keith (35m 33s): We don't, it doesn't fly. And I think that is really, and I'm not saying that, you know, to, to scare everyone. I'm just saying what the, what the law requires and what the reality is. We only look at your employer and everything else that's not going on there. If the product works for somebody else, great, that's great. But we care how it works with your business, with your employees, with your diversity. And that's so critical for everyone to understand. There's not just this, once it's certified, it works. Joel (36m 1s): Will there ever be a government agency that audits these AI technologies? Chad (36m 7s): Hell yeah. There will be. I mean, okay, so let me give you. Joel (36m 11s): Are you sure? Chad (36m 11s): Oh yeah, I can guarantee you. Here's why. So back in like 2008, the United States actually shut down a site called America's Job Bank, which was a distribution mechanism for jobs, but it was a part of compliance. So what they did was really the private sector took that on and it became a product. It was productized, although that product had to complete within audit, right? So you had an infrastructure for job distribution and then you actually had auditing information that you had to provide to your clients. I mean to me, from an AI auditing standpoint, every single one of these companies that are out there today should they, they could have a market differentiator if they had a audit and also third party audits to provide to a company which, which again doesn't save you although you go through the mechanism and you actually understand what you're looking for. Chad (37m 10s): So that when the guys come in the door looking to do an audit or to check to see if there is discrimination, you at least have information to start to go by. Some type of infrastructure. Keith (37m 20s): And I wanna go back to Joel's question. What is an audit? It sounds great, right? Audit, audit, we did an audit, we paid for an audit, we're audited, right? Okay, that's great in accounting, that's great with your finances. Yeah, but what does that mean in employment? And this is what the most difficult part is. And this is where the EU does look to the United States and most regulators around the world in employment. And they look to the E E O C. Because in 1978, that's right, in 1978, the EEOC came out with guidelines in coordination with the Department of Labor and Department of Justice on how to do audit testing in employment. Okay? But that was created in 1978. Chad (38m 1s): That was before Oana was even born. Keith (38m 3s): And that is the standard around the world. So in New York, for instance, New York City, as you probably a lot of you have heard of, it's the only real auditing law that is about to go into effect in January, 2023. And it's for use of AI systems for recruiting, but then limited to New York City where their jurisdiction is. And they said it's gonna be, if you're using this, you're gonna have to do a yearly bias audit. Well, what does that mean? And everyone's pushing New York, pushing New York, tell us what that audit means because we're gonna have to do it if we're in New York City. So New York just two weeks ago finally came out with what an audit is and you know what they said? Look to the EOCs 1978 guidelines, because nobody has come up with a better system or anything. Keith (38m 45s): And that system was really designed for pen and paper Scantron tests, assessment tests, and whether we've all taken one, a lot of companies used to give that, you know, you wanna work here, take this psychological test developed in the 1940s and fifties, you know, the Wonderling tests. There's a lot of different tests and we're gonna see if those tests are biased based upon their results. So that's how those tests were designed. But that's a big overhaul to do that. There's a lot of other things going on. So right now the really the worldwide standard for what is an audit is these 1978 guidelines made for pen and paper tests. Chad (39m 18s): Oana how are you auditing bias today without AI or with ai? I mean. Oana (39m 23s): That's what I was gonna, is the audit gonna be done by ai? Keith (39m 27s): Right. Well there's a lot of companies out there who are, they're now developing ai, right, to audit AI and? Oana (39m 32s): Yeah. Keith (39m 32s): Sort of a half a joke, but there's really now vendors coming online building AI to see if your AI is biased. And then do we need another AI to check that AI? Chad (39m 42s): Startup in the audience. Keith (39m 43s): When does it end? Chad (39m 44s): There's a startup already in the audience doing that? I'm sure. Oana (39m 47s): I don't remember the question, but Chad (39m 50s): How do you currently audit? I mean what to what standards? Because there oh yeah, there's still standards, right? And just because it's happening with AI doesn't make the standards any different because it's all about outcomes. Oana (40m 0s): But in a way, at least here, we basically if you are a ProducT, dunno HorseFly for example, or Candidate ID or things like that, they need to go and submit their product and say, I am GDPR compliant, I am AI compliant, I am also local regulation compliant because German is different than the UK than France and so on. So in a way, as an organization, usually you're like, are you compliant? Great. Then we do our own compliance with our own legal team. But that's the third party that you say we shouldn't care about, right? So if you work with your PWC or whoever, right? If you can have that, that's good. But a lot of organization do not, especially small and medium, you will not pay PWC X amount to say, Keith (40m 42s): Well you're asking companies with smaller budgets to buy these sophisticated products. And then you're asking them to go, like for instance, company like yours, you have a lot of outside auditors, but what about for the smaller companies and how is that dynamic going to work and where is the cost shifting gonna go there? And a lot of these questions aren't answered because no one has forced them to do it yet. The EU law is just a proposal to probably no surprise of anyone in this audience. The state of California is also trying to implement, under their labor department auditing requirements and vendor liability. But we haven't really seen that requirement happen outside of New York. Keith (41m 23s): But again, it's just for those New York City residents. So we haven't seen push come to shove on how it's going to then be part of the whole, we're selling you an AI package in HR, does it include this? And where is the cost? So I really think it's gonna be so fascinating coming back to this conference in a couple of years from now. Chad (41m 42s): Yeah. Keith (41m 43s): To see how that dynamic has changed. Chad (41m 45s): Yeah. So, so we're seeing, we're seeing a wave though. The EU we see big, I mean huge states and cities like New York, California, I mean this seems like inevitable. Keith (41m 53s): Talking, if it's inevitable. The laws still apply right now and so much of this AI discussion. So. Chad (41m 58s): Yes! Keith (41m 59s): It's now you can't use AI to discriminate right now. And a lot of people are in the meantime thinking, well we don't have, you know, this New York law is not in effect, California's proposal, the EU. We're okay right now and you're not in no sense. And those requirements to make sure that AI is not discriminating. And there's more than just use in hiring, right? It's being used across the board for managing employees to making pay decisions for employees to even terminating employees. It's being used across the board. And from my perspective, from Washington DC we have to make sure that there's companies in every use of AI in the workplace all are still complying with the laws that have been on the books where started from the 1960s. Keith (42m 41s): And whether there's new auditing requirements required by law, it doesn't matter. You still have to this second be making sure they're not discriminating and the second being diligent in who's using the systems and how you're buying them and how you're implementing that. And I think that really gets lost in the conversation when you start talking about the future of AI regulation because there's laws right now that prevent discrimination. Oana (43m 2s): What is though being added now, which I think is very interesting from the EEOC. You always add this equal employer statement, right? So you have an obligation, and we do that in Europe as well. Each state has its own kind of guidance. But now at least with this European law, we need to add that we are using product with AI to judge your selection. Like you have to have this statement in your job description throughout your recruitment process so people are aware how they've actually been through a process and what they can action if they want action, anything. And I think that's interesting, but probably in 20 years, 30 years from now on, everybody would've been using it. So the statement is void, right? Keith (43m 43s): And I'll quickly take the contrary to that because yes, that you can't discriminate in hiring, everyone needs an equal opportunity. But now with the AI disclosure requirements that New York's having that some of the, you know, the proposals have that, if you're gonna be subject to artificial intelligence, you need all these disclaimers. You have the ability to opt out. Okay? Well now we're going further than how it works now or say if you're dealing with a hiring manager who's racist, a hiring manager who doesn't wanna hire you because you're pregnant or you have a disability. There's no disclaimers now that's saying you're being subject to a somebody in talent acquisition with bias. And you know, you may not get hired, you may think, well I just wasn't qualified. But the real reason you weren't hired is because you're pregnant or you're disabled. Keith (44m 27s): And how are we supposed to know that? How do we get into the human mind, the black box of the human mind? But now when it comes to AI, we're holding AI to a much higher standard in a sense where we're making it a lot more confusing because of the black box of AI. Well, I could also argue that AI is more transparent than the human brain, right? So is anyone ever going to admit, I didn't hire you because you're a woman? Is anyone gonna ever gonna say, I'm not hiring you because my bias. But now we're we're saying that the AI will, you know, it needs to prove it on that side. So you know, where are now the different standards of putting AI that is actually potentially more transparent on a different level playing field than a human when the human is the one actually building and designing the AI and I think that's another very complicated conversation. Joel (45m 13s): Come back next year when we'll be talking about AI hiring for squirrels and dump trucks in the metaverse. Everybody give it up for Keith and Oana! Guys, particularly Keith, maybe you as well. If they wanted to learn more about these issues, where would you send them? What's a good resource that they can tap into? Oana (45m 29s): Half of the vendors here have AI component in their promise, machine learning, deep learning. We will see. Go and check them out. I think, they're gonna teach you what they do and then you can take it from there. Keith (45m 39s): If you want to go back and listen to the Chad and Cheese podcast, we did a whole deep dive for an hour. Joel (45m 45s): Yeah. Chad (45m 45s): About how the technology's being used in different kind of technologies and the regulations. But it's really important for me as a regulator. And from here I'm going to another conference with EU regulators and regulators from around the globe. I think we really want to get this right. I think we're at a really interesting time where, you know, how do we make sure that employers, like you buying these software, have the tools they need, have the questions. How do we make sure that the vendors who normally the EEOC doesn't have jurisdiction over and doesn't deal with, have the tools they make? Cause I truly believe that nobody wants to build a product or sell a product that violates civil rights laws, right? So how do we get to that group as well? So as this conversation continues, I'd really like to hear from all of you, what you would like from all from us, from the regulatory perspective. Chad (46m 30s): What questions we can answer, and then what we should, the questions you need to ask a vendor? You know, run them by us. And I think that's how we're gonna be able to make great guidelines as well. Joel (46m 45s): I'm Cheese, he's Chad, we are the Chad and Cheese podcast. Thank you everybody. We'll see you soon. Keith (46m 53s): Thank you. Joel (46m 53s): We out. Chad (46m 54s): We out. OUTRO (46m 54s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (47m 33s): Is so weird. We out.

Over 8 million workers in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+. Spoiler alert: That's a lot! Yet, corporate America isn't very hospitable to this influential demo when it comes to work. In fact, a recent UCLA survey found 50 percent of LGBTQ+ employees are not 'out' to their supervisors, and 34 percent of LGBT have left their job due to treatment by their employers. What's the problem? Never fear, we have answers. That's why we invited Sara Grossman, founder & CEO of CODE-MKTG, and Sabrina Kent, EVP of programs and external affairs for the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) to come on the pod and set us straight. Did we learn a lot? You bet we did. And you will too. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. INTRO (0s): 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 (21s): Oh Yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite meatheads, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the Ed McCaffrey to my John Elway Chad Sowash is in the house and we are happy to welcome. We got two guests today, Chad, this might blow everyone's mind. Let's welcome Sara Grossman, founder and CEO of Code Marketing and Sabrina Kent, EVP of Programs and External Affairs for the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce or Chad is the cool kids call it the Neglect or whatever the NGLCC. I don't know. Joel (1m 1s): Ladies, welcome to the show. Sara (1m 4s): Thanks for having us. We're super excited to be here. Sabrina (1m 6s): Yeah, thank you so much. Joel (1m 7s): How's the Rocky Mountain State? You're both in Denver. Sara (1m 10s): The Rocky Mountain State is doing pretty well. The rain finally subsided. It is sunny and dry. Sabrina (1m 17s): See, Sara, I was gonna say the opposite. I was so thankful for the rain cuz it means another day that my house doesn't burn down, so Chad (1m 23s): Oh, that's always nice. Yes, that's a very, that's a very nice thing when your house does not burn down, especially these days. Joel (1m 29s): It's kinda a dark perspective on life. I'm glad my house isn't burning to hell. Sara (1m 33s): That's Sabrina for you. Joel (1m 35s): I've known Sara for over a decade and we're connected on LinkedIn and I got a point this out. I know that Sara was, but now I found out that both of you ladies were listed as LGBTQ plus leaders under 40 in Colorado. So congratulations on that recognition. Your mom and dads must be proud. Sara (1m 60s): Thank you so much. Yeah, my mom, you know, is my biggest fan and asked if I could send her the certificate so she could frame it and put it below the shrine of photos of me at her home. So Joel (2m 13s): Yeah, she have the kindergarten coloring pictures that you did then, and Sara (2m 19s): It's beyond that. There are photos of me from every age. It's just, it's a lot. Joel (2m 26s): That's a nice segue before we get into the, the hard-hitting Q and A that our show is known for, why don't you both give us sort of a Twitter bio about you? What makes you guys tick? Sabrina (2m 37s): I'm Sabrina Kent. I use she/her pronouns. I'm the Executive Vice President of Programs and External Affairs at NGLCC. I think that used up about half of my 280 words for Twitter. Joel (2m 46s): It's characters actually. And yes, you did, but keep going. Sabrina (2m 49s): Oh, okay. Well, you can see that I don't use Twitter, but I get the great privilege and luxury of working with LGBTQ owned businesses like Sara's in helping to connect them with contracting opportunities with corporate partners. So it's pretty exciting and rewarding work. Joel (3m 4s): Sara? Sara (3m 4s): So I am on Twitter a lot. So here are my 280 characters. I, in addition to running code marketing, which is social impact and social media digital marketing for the LGBTQ community, their businesses and nonprofits. I also am on the board of the Dru Project, which is a nonprofit organization that we started shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting to honor Drew Leinonen, who we lost there. We give out scholarships and grants to students going to college, as well as offer curriculum and money to help gay straight alliances across the country thrive. Chad (3m 46s): Wow. So quick question, Quick question. Do you guys, do you guys do any lobbying at all? I mean, what's the power behind the organization? I obviously helping the community is one thing, but also being able to press and educate our stupid ass legislators, that's something entirely different. Do you guys do that or do you work with organizations who do that? Sabrina (4m 6s): I'll jump in from the NGLCC side. We don't lobby, but we work with local, state and federal governments on LGBTQ issues. We also will ban together with other LGBTQ national organizations and our local affiliates. We've got 54 across the US on issues pertaining to the LGBT community and the LGBT business community, like the Equality Act and all those good things that we need to be fully functioning and recognized citizens in this country. Joel (4m 37s): Outstanding. So this show we're gonna deal a lot with employment, but I think it could veer into other areas as well. Just as a general question from an employment perspective and maybe just employment branding for Sara to jump in there as well, what are companies doing right and what are companies doing wrong from your perspective with recruiting and retention of employees? Sara (4m 57s): Sure. Well, I think it goes a little bit further than simply recruiting and retention. I think it has to do with branding and DEI as well. Things that companies are getting right are, they are showing up to, for instance, the NGLCC conference. They are putting themselves out there and ensuring that they are hiring and retaining contractors who are diverse. What companies are getting wrong, especially from the branding, communications and marketing side, is pink washing, which I'm not sure if Joel and Chad know or have heard of what pink washing is? But it's essentially when companies throw a rainbow over their logo for the month of June, do not donate or participate in anything PRIDE wise. Sara (5m 47s): Do not give anything to LGBT organizations in exchange for using our flag and simply just want to show out for PRIDE. Chad (5m 56s): What about the organizations even going beyond that? The organizations who do do pink wash, but then they also give to legislators who are against the community? I mean, we've seen a lot of that. We've seen big names. Sara (6m 11s): Yes. Chad (6m 12s): They want to throw the colors out there. They want to throw their fist up in the air, but behind the scenes they're given money to, it feels like undermine the community. What has to happen? I mean, as again, a straight cisgender, you know, white dude, I can see this. So obviously you guys are living this, what needs to happen? Transparency. I mean, I don't know what we can do to get these assholes to stop. Joel (6m 39s): Shame, shame 'em. Chad (6m 41s): Yeah. Sara (6m 42s): Yeah. So, you know, politically that is a really big issue across the board. You see these companies and organizations giving hand over fist to people who are coming for our rights on the daily while also trying to, you know, turn around and sell things to the community to which they are harming. So that is definitely one of the things that folks are getting wrong and it's becoming transparent. There are non-profit organizations and even, you know, media outlets that keep track of this, that will put out charts and infographics every June on how much money say Walmart is giving to organizations and politicians who come for LGBTQ rights while also marching in the parade. Sara (7m 37s): Now, you know, from the perspective of somebody who does fundraising for these queer organizations in addition to communications, one of our thoughts can be, you know, I'll take money from the devil if it means one less queer kid getting beaten up. But at the same time, these companies really, they need to answer for why they're doing it both ways. You, we're kind of in a place in time right now where money and politics have become our morals and they're giving very, very mixed signals to those of us who are trying to move the needle forward for the community. Sabrina (8m 18s): I think if I, yeah, if I could just jump in? I think too, so often when we talk about the LGBTQ community broadly, not just on this issue, we talk a lot about the doom and gloom, but there are so many companies I think that are also standing up and doing the right thing. Those are the companies that, you know, we're proud to partner with at NGLCC, in the work that we do. And I think, you know, it also goes beyond employment protections, marketing to the LGBTQ community. But I kind of think of the ecosphere of business inclusion from the LGBTQ perspective being both of those things and also buying from our community, right? Like, it's fantastic to wave a rainbow flag during the month of Pride. Sabrina (9m 1s): Is that source from an LGBTQ vendor? Who's doing your marketing and storytelling for your pride marketing campaigns? Is it a company like Sara's or is it, you know, a non-diverse owned, non LGBTQ owned business? And where we also, you know, taking our dollars as these large companies and investing them back into the communities that we claim to support. So I think there are two sides of where this is sort of headed in the corporate world, folks that are pretending to walk the walk but they're not, and folks that are walking and talking. Chad (9m 32s): So are there any lists that are out there that, I don't know, maybe you guys create or somebody else creates that actually show the top 10 bad versus the top 10 goods so that we know who to buy from and who to celebrate and who not to buy from. Joel (9m 46s): And who to work for. Chad (9m 46s): Yeah. And who to work for. Yeah. Sabrina (9m 48s): Yeah, that's actually a fantastic question. So annually the Human Rights Campaign HRC publishes the corporate equality index and it basically rates companies down from the negatives. Meaning you are doing harm to the community all the way to 100, which means you're sort of the model of perfection in terms of LGBTQ inclusivity holistically, and supplier diversity. What I do is a standalone scored piece of the corporate equality index. So meaning if a company's not actually sourcing from the LGBTQ community or being intentional about sourcing from the community, they can't actually achieve that 100. So they, HRC corporate equality index is a great place to look. And then NGLCC also spearheads the National Business Inclusion Consortium, which is us and our sister diverse business organizations representing women, ethnic racial minorities, veterans, folks with disabilities, et cetera. Sabrina (10m 38s): And annually we honor the top 50 corporations for cross segment inclusion. They're called the best of the best corporations for inclusion, not just for the LGBTQ community, but across the board. Because obviously as LGBTQ folks, we're not just LGBTQ, we're women, we're people of color, veterans, folks with disabilities, et cetera. Chad (10m 56s): Intersectional, right? Sabrina (10m 57s): Yeah. Absolutely. So it's important to recognize that as well. Joel (11m 0s): What's your sense for how tuned in the community is to companies that are doing it right and doing it incorrectly. So in other words, are there conversations happening where you see a logo that's been rainbowed and saying, Oh, that's bullshit. They did X, Y, and Z last year, or companies that are friendly and you see the Rainbow logo saying, yeah, they, they fucking get it right. Or yes, I'm not, why would you work for them after they did X, Y, and Z? Are those conversations happening? How in tune is the community? Sara (11m 29s): Absolutely. These conversations are happening all the time, whether it's in a Facebook group or a group chat or somebody's blog, Twitter, anywhere on the internet. There are people who really, really keep track of and pay attention to this stuff and then disseminate the information to the rest of us. Sabrina (11m 49s): Yeah, I mean I think, I think Sara's spot on there. I'll also say, you know, I think sometimes too we're so quick to highlight the negative and it's important to do that because we need to understand what companies are doing and are they really putting their money where their mouths are. But it's important, I think that we have social media as a tool to be able to recognize when these things are happening. But I think the other side of it is, I would also like to recognize when companies are doing the right thing. And I think just like human beings, companies are entities in and of themselves and they mess up big time. And I'm by no means condoning any kind of discrimination or violence against our community. But I think it's also important that we take a look and see, okay, what have these companies done to correct these actions? Sabrina (12m 31s): Or have they done anything to correct these actions when they've been called to the carpet? Like are they learning their lessons? Sara (12m 36s): I wholeheartedly agree with that. In fact, a couple of weeks ago when we were in Las Vegas for the N G L C C conference, I was very surprised to see Barilla there, because there was a huge uproar when something homophobic came from their camp, I think back in like 2015. And it seems like they've really done the work and been very intentional in ensuring that they fixed that mistake and are bringing more folks in, especially from the community, which is fantastic. Joel (13m 11s): Sara, I think you mentioned, you know, everything's politicized and it's all about money now. And the pandemic has created a dynamic in the workforce that people are more mobile than ever. You have red states becoming redder than ever before. You have blue states becoming bluer and then there are purple states. How has that affected your community and how they select states to live? You know, companies that are in these states that take stands against legislators and laws. Are they aware of what's going on sort of nationally with states and making decisions to move to states and work for companies that are in locations that are friendly to them? Sara (13m 48s): Oh, 100%. So I used to work for the Matthew Shepherd Foundation before starting Code Marketing and Dennis Shepherd would always talk about the brain drain in Wyoming and talk about how as Wyoming became redder and redder and redder, they would see people leaving for opportunities in bluer states. They would see people who were smarter and more determined to make their businesses work, leave. Because as the younger generation is moving up into the workforce, they are more awake to the issues of discrimination and the issues of homophobia, et cetera. Sara (14m 30s): And so they don't wanna be in a state that is ruled by folks who are discriminating against them. They wanna be somewhere where they and their friends can be free to be whoever they want, love whoever they want. Joel (14m 45s): And their families want more and more. Sara (14m 46s): And their families. Exactly. If their families can't thrive, why would they stay? Sabrina (14m 50s): Sara? I mean, look at you and me. Sara and I both grew up in Florida. We are not, I mean, I'm not gonna speak for you Sara, but I think I can pretty confidently say unless there was a major, major shift in that state, which is highly unlikely, we are not going back there. 100%. Sara (15m 6s): To live. Sabrina (15m 6s): Yeah, our families might still be there, but we're not going back there. We're not going to contribute. Like when I go there, I do as much as I possibly can to not even put money back into the Florida economy, which sucks because there are people like my mom who are business owners in the state of Florida, who could benefit of people like me coming in and spending their money there. But I don't want to go back. And actually speaking of the conference, a recent report was released by one of our corporate partner, well I don it was actually publicly released, so I'm this anonymously on their behalf, but they've a comprehensive survey of LGBTQ across the country and talking about the talent drain and where people are headed. Sabrina (15m 49s): I was surprised to see that as of this year, Colorado actually has the highest LGBT population per capita at 11% here surpassing even California, which is 10 point something. Joel (16m 1s): Wow. Chad (16m 2s): Wow. Sabrina (16m 2s): Because we're leaving and we're going that are make us feel included where we can hold partners on the sidewalk, express our genders in a way that align for our identity and we're not going to stay in places that don't serve us in our community. And I think the other piece of that too, that's often left out is allies as well, right? I mean, if I'm the parent of a trans or queer child, I don't want my child if I can help it, if I have the means to be able to change that, I don't want my child to grow up in a place that teaches them that they're wrong or bad or makes them feel ashamed for who they are and my family members or whomever I care about in the LGBTQ community, I don't wanna participate in that. So I think it's a broader discussion too, rather than just focusing on, you know, the LGBTQ community. Joel (16m 48s): Sing it, sister, I'm ready to run to a brick wall after that. Can you get a good Cubano in Denver? That's the question. A good sandwich. Sara (16m 56s): Actually, I, yes, you're looking specifically for a Cuban sandwich. I just found this year a really delicious Cuban place that does the sandwiches and the pastries. Chad (17m 11s): Ooooo. That's what I'm talking about. Sabrina (17m 14s): Sara, have you, have you been to Cuba Cuba? Sara (17m 16s): I have. And this place is better. Chad (17m 18s): Ooooo. Sara (17m 19s): It's a hole in the wall in Aurora. I'll have to take you when you get back from Burning Man. Chad (17m 25s): I also have to share, Joel and I work with a lot of different event companies and you know, they are one of two things. They might actually be going to a state or holding an event in a state that, you know, we, we just don't align with. So, you know, we've told event organizers Yeah, we're not gonna come right? Unless you find a state where we wanna spend our money. And I agree right, if you're, you know, whether you're a straight cisgender male and, but yet you are an ally, you gotta show it, right? And I think we're seeing a lot more of that. Now Kind of switching back, Joel talked a little bit about remote work earlier, but there's a new new story coming out from our friends over at JP Morgan Chase and Jamie Diamond actually said that returning to the office will aid in diversity. Chad (18m 20s): Now is this just a bunch of bullshit? Or did we feel like pre pandemic things were becoming more diverse organically because we were all in the office? What? Gimme gimme your your thoughts on that. Sabrina (18m 36s): Yeah, I'm just gonna say that I don't believe that that's the case. I think if we're talking about diversity, we're also talking about the types of people that make up our companies. If I'm a single parent for example, it might be a lot more advantageous for me to work from home. If I'm a person with different levels of ability, it might be necessary for me to work from home. So I think, you know, I don't know that I agree with that. And I will also say that NGLCC, we were a 95% in person office prior to the pandemic starting. And about halfway through 2020, we close our office space, we've leased it out, we're landlords now, and our team has never been more connected or more productive. Sabrina (19m 20s): And we're also able to source talent from around the country and not just, you know, the DC metropolitan area. I used to live in DC and then I lived in New York. Now I can live in Colorado, live my best life and also, you know, put my best foot forward in my work life. And I know that my talent pool isn't just limited to a small area. So I would disagree with that. Chad (19m 41s): Okay. Okay. Anything to add, Sara? Sara (19m 43s): No, I definitely agree with Sabrina on the fact that talent pools can only be more diverse and talented if you get to source from everywhere. Could you imagine being here today and only hiring people from your city for things that you need? That, I mean the, like forget about diversity. The talent pool is, you know, expanded a million-fold for the simple fact that you're able to work with people from around the country and around the world. I mean, I don't even have any clients in Denver right now. Chad (20m 21s): So Joel and I have this argument all the time that he believes that the iPhone could not have been created remotely by remote teams. And I don't believe that. I think remote teams are an evolution of what we should have been doing years ago. Do you believe that the iPhone in today's remote work environment, that the new innovations will happen just as fast as they did as when we were together? Sabrina (20m 48s): I mean, in the first four months of covid we experienced five years of digital transformation. So in short, I would say yes, I think you can still collaborate effectively. You can still put ideas together, you can still make things happen in a remote environment. That doesn't mean that there aren't essential roles that are required to be in person, right? I mean, we still need to see certain roles be in person or be in person part of the time. But I still think the innovation is there. I think the creativity is there and I also think the flexibility allows people to feed that energy more within themselves and bring that to work with them. Chad (21m 24s): Tell 'em Sabrina! Sara (21m 26s): I wholeheartedly agree with that by the way. Joel (21m 30s): Sara, you trader. Sara (21m 32s): I'm sorry. I firmly believe in a results only work environment. Chad (21m 37s): Amen. Sara (21m 37s): I firmly believe that given flexibility, people are able to innovate and be more creative and, you know, when it comes to a typical nine to five, 48, 50 hour work week, I also very much believe that that's defunct because we have technology now. We aren't typing on typewriters. Joel (21m 57s): Speak for yourself. Sara (21m 59s): Yeah. Oh, oh, well, you know, I am on the 40 under 40 list. So, Chad (22m 4s): So, so it's interesting cuz we, we ask this question to a lot of people that we interview and mostly, and Joel correct me if I'm wrong, most of the responses we get from men are that no, they don't believe that the iPhone would've been created in, you know, this current environment, right? It's just not as innovative. We have to be together, right? But this is a more diverse kind of like, I think innovative thinking, I would say response that we've heard from you guys more so than the dudes. Don't you think? Sabrina (22m 38s): Well, I think tying this back into what we were just talking about previously as well, when you have a diverse and inclusive work environment, you actually have more innovative thought. There are studies that are published on this very topic, right? So, I mean, I'm not surprised, I'm going to assume that it's white cisgender men that you're talking about that are giving these responses that, you know, statistically speaking. Chad (23m 1s): The guys in charge, you mean the ones who want everybody back in the office. Sara (23m 5s): The Man. Sabrina (23m 7s): Statistically speaking, they are actually not the most innovative as it is. So like if you look at Silicon Valley, the percentage of trans people, Asian American people, other minority identified people, women working in the workforce there that are creating some of these incredible technologies that have changed our lives, they're not always the white men. And that's not to say that white men are not great love you guys, Joel and Chad, but, but you know, it takes all of us to play ball together to, to create the most innovative products, to create the most talented workforces and places and spaces that people wanna work and, and companies that are effectively changing the world. Joel (23m 48s): Cool. So I wanna stick with that sort of retention in the workplace topic. And in doing my homework for this show, I learned from a recent UCLA study that 50% of L G B T employees are not out to their supervisor. And I learned that 34% of L G B T have left their job due to treatment by their employer. What can companies do to create a more open environment? I know we've mentioned, you know, sort of lunch and learns or education, like give companies some tips to help cut that number down. Those are crazy percentages to me in 2022. What tips would you guys give for employers improving that number? Sabrina (24m 27s): Joel's stealing my stats over here. I just gotta say that, but Sara, you start and then I'll jump in. Sara (24m 33s): Okay, well I wanna point out first that currently in I think 28 states, you can be fired simply for being gay. sfx (24m 42s): buzzer. Joel (24m 43s): That's bad. Sara (24m 44s): Yeah, it's bad. So back when gay marriage was passed and made law of the land, Justice Kennedy said that everybody is now entitled to a constellation of benefits that marriage gives us. And that's all well and good in theory, but in practice that constellation is missing a lot of stars, particularly in the south and the Midwest, where these laws state that you can get married on Sunday, come into your desk on Monday and put a picture of your new Canadian wife and somebody can not like that and fire you point blank just because you're gay. Sara (25m 28s): And so I think that a lot of those statistics are coming out of those states where it's not safe to be yourself at work. Sabrina (25m 34s): I think I would just add and say, I mean it's a bottom line issue, right? Because I mean, you just talked about folks leaving, folks not feeling comfortable coming out at work. And part of, I believe it's also the UCLA study, over 30% of an LGBTQ employees productivity goes out the window when they can't bring their full selves to work, right? That's, I'm not just saying, Oh, you know, I can't use the bathroom that aligns with my gender identity, which is incredibly important that we do provide these spaces, but it's also things like, hey, we're standing around the water cooler, we're sending a Slack message back and forth on Monday morning and you're talking about what you and your opposite sex partner did over the weekend and I can't talk about my same sex partner or I can't talk about my trans child or whatever that may look like. Sabrina (26m 22s): And ultimately it's a human rights violation, but it's also a bottom line issue, right? So for people who are in charge of companies, that's 30% of your employees productivity, that's 30% of their time spent at work. It's a retention issue that means that you're gonna spend more money trying to train and develop these individuals who are going to be their ultimate replacements. So we know that, you know, places that are inclusive are seeing better results, are seeing employees sticking around for a longer term. And to answer the other part of your question, what does that look like? That does look like lunch and learns. That does look like creating space for conversations around diverse communities. But it also looks like me seeing as an LGBT associate in a company, LGBT folks in the higher ranks of the company, right? Sabrina (27m 8s): From managers to directors to C-suite and above. So it's not just a matter of, okay, we've got these people in place, it's a matter of what are we training our people on? Are we creating a culture and environment where people do feel safe to come out at work? Do they have somewhere to report any kind of discrimination? Do we have a culture of accountability? Are we investing back in the communities that we claim to support? I think these are all things that companies can look at outside of just the basic policies of inclusion that they practice. Chad (27m 40s): So talk a little bit more about that because we obviously saw, you know, ROE versus Wade struck down and those are rights that are taken away from, from females. I would assume many in the community feel like the right to actually being married could also be reversed and or struck down. If you're an employer, what do you do to try to help? Because these are things that are, that are incredibly distracting to your employees, obviously, because it's their life, right? What do they do to make it easier and better on them to to to let them know that they're behind them? I mean, this is a really, really big struggle that individuals are going through right now. Chad (28m 22s): How can employers help them? Sabrina (28m 24s): Yeah. The reproductive health conversation is so important and I think one of the big things that we saw companies do after the SCOTUS reversal on Roe was provide assistance to their employees to travel out of state if they were living in an area that they would be prosecuted for trying to seek an abortion and reproductive healthcare. I think that is a huge benefit that these companies are able to provide. And it's a huge stance against what I believe is an incredibly unjust ruling by the Supreme Court. I'll also say, you know, if we look back at the HB two bills in North Carolina, so many companies pulled their major operations out of North Carolina because of the discriminatory anti-trans bathroom bills. Sabrina (29m 9s): They said, Nope, we're not gonna spend our money here. Kind of like what you were talking about, we're not going to go to events and support places that are not inclusive to LGBTQ folks. And these companies said the NBA, Bank of America, huge companies said, we are not going to be investing in this state until this rule is reversed and that ultimately led to a lot of change. So outside of providing that support to employees, spaces for them to be able about these issues, but also to have support navigate these issues. Companies, ultimately you know, small businesses and large corporations drive this economy and therefore our politics as well. And so major companies have, I think, a huge responsibility to stand up against discriminatory bills policy, et cetera, to try and make good. Chad (29m 59s): So stand up in public, not just behind the scenes. That's that's awesome. Sara? Sara (30m 4s): Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that as well. We saw a lot of major companies and corporations come out after the Roe reversal and say that they support and will pay for and not penalize, et cetera, et cetera. But then again, this kind of goes back to the brain drain thing and the different laws in the different states. So now Colorado is essentially an island out here in the mountain west when it comes to protections. And it wasn't always that way, especially for LGBTQ folks. You know, we are talking about how Colorado is now the gold star state when it comes to laws for the community. Sara (30m 49s): But 25 years ago, 30 years ago, Colorado was the hate state and had very similar laws on the books that Florida does currently. That's definitely something to look at when it comes to the hope for change. We have come a very, very long way and it came from longstanding political action and ensuring that we had more progressive folks in our local government. But at the end of the day, the thing that we're really fighting against is the government is essentially trying to pit businesses versus law. At the end of the day, you know, you saw how it came down with Disney and DeSantis in Florida. Sara (31m 29s): I don't think that's the last time we're gonna see something like that. Joel (31m 32s): Let's talk some marketing. Sara, what do you say? Sara (31m 34s): Oh sure, my favorite. Joel (31m 35s): Sure. Okay. So in terms of recruitment marketing, you know, what tips would you give companies in terms of, you know, language on job descriptions, imagery or messaging on their career site? Maybe their social media presence? Because I would think it's a fine line between pandering and being sort of genuine. What tips would you give? Sara (31m 56s): Yeah, so definitely there is a very fine line between being genuine and pandering and that is intention. So it's little things like ensuring your graphics have diverse people in them, whether it's a pamphlet, your website, social media, et cetera. If you're only seeing white people and you're only seeing able bodied people and you're only seeing straight people, you might think, well maybe this isn't necessarily the environment for me to apply to. Joel (32m 24s): I'm guessing you'd say stay away from stock photos, however, there should actually be employees? Sara (32m 31s): You know? Yeah. Yes. And I do know that Adobe has an initiative to make their stock photos more diverse. I actually have a chat with them on Friday about it. So, but definitely stay away from stock photos anyway because like a woman eating a salad isn't necessarily going to relate to your job posting. In the job posting the language itself, there are places where companies make sure that their prospective employees know that they're specifically hiring and encouraging diverse folks, people of diverse abilities, sexualities, genders, races, religions, etc. Sara (33m 16s): to apply for these jobs. And I think that kind of language is incredibly important to keep up and to push forward and to encourage other businesses that are hiring employees to do the same. Joel (33m 30s): And how about social media? Sara (33m 32s): Social media, I always depends on, you know, the brand and the company. But similarly, there's calendars everywhere of the different celebrations within different communities that your social media manager should be aware of. And when you celebrate these things online, it's good to also celebrate them in person. Continue to walk the walk instead of just talk the talk and don't make it performative. Joel (34m 3s): Sabrina, any opinion on marketing? Sabrina (34m 5s): Yeah, I mean, I just would add to that and say in the job posting itself, we may not realize it, but we can use language that is very much skewed to gender or different ethnicities and so forth. And so there's actually tools out there to ensure that language in job postings becomes neutral and more welcome and friendly to all. Like for example, I think, I don't know the exact statistic, but for example, if your job has 10 requirements, a woman will probably read that and say, Okay, well I only meet seven of those, so I'm not gonna apply to that job. Whereas a man might meet four of those requirements and say, Great, I'm just gonna throw my hat in the ring and see what happens. So there are actually companies that you can work with to work on that language. Sabrina (34m 48s): And I think it's also important to put directly in there, you know, if you are a woman, person of color, minority, a differently-abled individual person of differing sexual orientation or gender identity, we strongly encourage you to apply. You know, put those values right up front so folks know that they're welcome to be there and can bring their full authentic selves to the interview process. Joel (35m 9s): Awesome. Chad (35m 10s): Excellent. Well, Sara, Sabrina, we appreciate you coming on and again, we, you know, need as much education as we can, not to mention our listeners. Yes, please help us. But if our listeners wanna find out more about you or I don't know, maybe even your organizations, where would you send them? Sara (35m 28s): You can find me anywhere online. Joel (35m 30s): I can vouch for that. I can vouch for that. Sara (35m 35s): On Twitter I'm SoSaraSaid. On Instagram, I'm SoSaraSaw. On Tinder I'm SoSaraSwiped. No, just kidding. I, you know, that's branding baby. Joel (35m 51s): Yep. Sara (35m 51s): That is branding and Code Marketing is online everywhere at code C O D E-mktg. Joel (35m 59s): Excellent. Sabrina? Sabrina (36m 1s): ngcc.org or NGLCC on all different social media platforms. Joel (36m 7s): Thank you ladies. Sara (36m 9s): Thank you so much for having us. Joel (36m 10s): Yep. Chad, another one in the can baby. I learned something. I know you probably didn't. Chad (36m 14s): Oh yeah. Chad and Cheese (36m 14s): We out. We out. OUTRO (36m 16s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (37m 1s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Recording from downtown Nashville and nursing a hangover, the boys cover a plethora of topics, including iCIMS settling a legal battle, layoffs and “layoffs” at Indeed and Eightfold, SHRM playing kingmaker with vendors and the World’s Worst CEO. Raising money this week is Erin, Grayscale and Workstream. Pass the Hot Chicken! 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 (1s): 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 (28s): Oh yeah. Justelle has hired a divorce lawyer so you're saying there's a chance. Hey, Kitty's, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost Joel "show me to the nearest Hatty Bees" Cheeseman. Chad (44s): And this is Chad "my brain hurts" Sowash. Joel (47s): And on this week's show, iCIMS settles, Sherman vests, and Florida is gonna Florida. Let's do this. Your head hurts, man? Chad (57s): My head fucking hurts, man You don't drink wine and then have bourbon. That's just stupid. And then we both did that of it. Yeah, we both did that. I was just not smart. That was dumb. Joel (1m 9s): The good news here. We're in downtown Nashville for those that haven't been following. And the good news is, apparently all the birds and the lime scooters lock up after around nine o'clock. Chad (1m 20s): Thank God for you. Joel (1m 21s): Because everyone I tried to get on, I don't even know what time it was last night, denied me. So I had to walk all the way back to my hotel. Thanks, Bird. Thanks. Chad (1m 31s): Yeah, that's a big shout out to Bird Scooters. Joel (1m 32s): I give them the Bird Chad (1m 34s): To Bird Scooters. My shout out. First shout out goes to Debbie McGrath. I really appreciate you having us here in sunny Nashville for Inspire HR. We're on stage later with KristyAnne Boyd, Andres Translavina. Joel (1m 49s): GESUNDHEIT. Chad (1m 49s): I'm sure I didn't say that right. Steven White and Matt Charney. How did Matt get on stage with us? How'd that shit happen. Joel (1m 58s): He's just kind of like pilot fishing us everywhere. Chad (2m 2s): A dangler. He's a dangler is what he is. So yeah, we're here in Nashville, loving it and yeah, excited, excited to get on stage and talk about not quiet quitting. I fucking hate that. Joel (2m 13s): Yeah. I'm hoping a little barbecue or some hot chicken helps me get through today's session. Chad (2m 19s): We'll do that next. Joel (2m 21s): Somber shout out from me. This one goes out to John Zap. Anyone that's been in the space for any period of time has probably read John's work at some point. Chad (2m 33s): Yep. Joel (2m 34s): Anyway, John passed away kind of suddenly last week. And this is the notice that was on ERE, John Zap an award-winning journalist who was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and later helped Nightrider, Below Interactive, and the LA newspaper group developed leading online media sites, died this past week. He was 70 years old. Chad (2m 56s): Wow. Joel (2m 56s): A brain tumor, apparently. Now when I was going back into my mind, a couple things here. We were set to interview John. Chad (3m 3s): We were. Joel (3m 4s): He had written two or three articles about Indeed and I think maybe Zip Recruiter. Yeah. And I had reached out to John and said, Hey man, we gotta get you on. Let's Talk. He was all scheduled, and I think the day before, he just messaged me and said, Hey, I've got some personal issues to take care of. We'll have to postpone the interview. I didn't ask anything of it. It's none of my business. Chad (3m 25s): Yeah. Yeah. Joel (3m 26s): And of course, that interview was never rescheduled. So that's a somber memory of him. I was first introduced to John back in the early oughts with Cheesehead. He's a legitimate journalist. Chad (3m 37s): Yes, he is. Joel (3m 38s): And I know that it irked him to no end that this blogger thing could empower knuckleheads like me to write about the industry. But we had a nice, fun, competitiveness about us. He would get mad if I would scoop him. I would give him kudos for his scoops. He will be missed. And he's a dying breed. There aren't very many journalists covering our space anymore. And rest in peace. John, you'll be missed Chad (4m 3s): Definitely. Rest in peace. John. They so many stories from so many people he was in the industry for so long, wrote about everything. Joel (4m 12s): Yep. Chad (4m 12s): Stuck his nose into everything. Joel (4m 13s): Yeah. Chad (4m 13s): Which was exactly what he should have been doing. It was awesome. So he was objective. He wasn't prone to hyperbole was just the facts. Joel (4m 22s): Yep. Chad (4m 22s): And he was a breath of fresh share. He'll be missed. He will be missed. I'm gonna try to try to bring these up. Joel (4m 27s): Bring it back. Chad (4m 28s): Try to bring these up a little bit. My first shout out goes to Prime Time Jon. That's right a T-Mobile employee at a retail location. He put together some really cool TikToks about T-Mobile until get this, you've heard this one before. T-Mobile told him to stop. They didn't fire him, but they told him to stop. Joel (4m 47s): Yeah. Chad (4m 48s): So I, I know, I know Jon was, you know, he was making TikToks on the clock. I'm sure you know, he should have been working. There had to been something. No, the guy was doing this on his own time. Prime time Jon wasn't on the clock. He was TikToking. And yet T-Mobile said TikTok, you do stop. Shout out to prime time Jon for understanding what local promotions should look like in a big Boo to T-Mobile for being a shitty employer. Joel (5m 16s): I wonder if Prime Time is the name he gave himself or if he had earned that with his inner circle. Cause when you call yourself Prime Time, you really put a burden on yourself. Chad (5m 26s): Well that's his hashtag to bring the A game. If you wanna check it out, it's Prime Time Jon, J O N on TikTok. Joel (5m 33s): And the cease and desist letters from Dion Sanders are enroute. Now shout out to our recent monthly winners of free stuff. Chad (5m 44s): Love Free stuff. Joel (5m 46s): Rum with Plum. Our first winner, Karen Heatwole. Chad (5m 51s): Oh Joel (5m 51s): Yeah. She celebrated a birthday recently. iCIMS's employee. Our beer winner, this month was goes to Deb Linley. Of course, beer is sponsored by our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. And last but not least, our bourbon winner goes to Liz Newman. As our listeners know, TextKernel is our sugar daddy for the bourbon bottles that go to our listeners. Yeah, you can win too, folks, if you just head out to Chadcheese.com/free, putting your info and good things will probably happen, including free t-shirts, which I brought with me. Chad (6m 26s): Oh yeah. So sexy! Joel (6m 28s): To Nashville. Those sponsored by our friends at JobGet really nice t-shirts, high quality. Oh, they're nice. No Haynes beefy tees. Nope. In our, in our Warehouse. Nothing but good stuff as these people know that have gotten shirts, Chat cheese.com/free. Everybody. Chad (6m 43s): There it is. I, my, my, my last shout out goes to Low Hilton, Another talker. Yes. I am toing the hell out of this. Geez. Who shared her quote, Come back to the office on unquote company culture. Looks like Story on TikTok, her sitting in an empty office all by herself on the TikTok, you see quoted text that says, We really need everyone to come into the office at least twice a week to contribute to company culture. And that My friends was an empty fucking office for, for Low Hilton. Joel (7m 20s): Yeah. It reminds me of the story about people taking Zoom calls in the office. Yes. Like to go and being alone. Being alone there. All right. Well, we got some, some, some birthdays to announce. Not very many. It's a light week Okay. For us. But again, rum with plum sponsors our birthday winners. Mark Jenkins and Denise Adams. Celebrate birthdays this week. That's the list. Chad (7m 42s): Those are easy names too. Yeah. They didn't get any easy Joel (7m 45s): Names. Shortlist. This is my kind of podcast so far. Chad (7m 49s): Oh. As we sit here by the pool, The drewry in That's right. Kids in Nashville. We're thinking about next week when we're going to be on a rooftop. Joel (7m 59s): Probably won't be by a pool with country music. Chad (8m 3s): Probably I would say not country music, although there will be in the skyline. The Eiffel Tower. Ooh, yeah. That's right baby. We're going to catch the Vnk. Joel (8m 11s): Yes, we are. Yes, we're, Yes we are. Chad (8m 12s): Yes. We're gonna do that first. As soon as we get in town, even before the conference starts, we're catching the vnk on the top of a top hotel. Rooftop. Joel (8m 23s): Rooftop. Chad (8m 23s): Yep. Rooftop party. Joel (8m 24s): We're gonna get to see the whole Eiffel Tower, not just the tip. I, Chad (8m 26s): Chad, I hope. Yeah. I I hope so. I hope so. It's now or never kids. I mean, if you're in or around Paris, and that means Europe, Really. I mean, come on. You gotta be there. Grab your tickets. Go to Chad cheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner and get 20% off of goddamn ticket kids. What? Come on. What Now? We're gonna be on the floor doing this podcast thing. We'll be on the stage doing the talking thing. So come to Paris. Joel (8m 55s): Also not in Paris, along with the country music, more than likely will be fantasy football, American style. Well, another week is in the books. Everybody. And here's your leaderboard powered as always by our friends at Factory Fix coming in three weeks in a row at number one. Christie killing it. And she is killing it. She faces me this week. So she's, she's outta the number one spot as far as, I'm number two, The Uck Surge Strange Brew Bre, that's easy for me to say in the number two spot. Followed by Jason Vorhees, Putnam, Joel Nacho Cheeseman, James Hatfield Gillum, Chris, come on. Joel (9m 41s): Manion. Dennis Tupperware. Matt Henry Hill Smoking. Joe Wilke, Chad Prince of Portugal. So watch Mike d Shafer and Dan Marino Shoemaker. Oh, Chad (9m 51s): So Factory Fix is not in the basement anymore. Joel (9m 53s): That's not in the basement anymore. Okay. They can, they can get back there this week with another epic loss By, by Mike Schaffer. Good luck to everybody. Awesome. Chad (10m 3s): Awesome. All right. I think it's, it's it's time, isn't it? Topic. Joel (10m 11s): All right. Let's talk a little isms. Spark Start. A recruitment marketing video platform announced this week that it has settled the patent infringement lawsuit. It brought against iSims. The case involved iSims video Studio product, which is built on the technology of the former All True Labs Accompany iSims acquired a few months ago, and we talked about that on the show. Chad, give us some judgment on this news. Chad (10m 39s): Oh my God. First and foremost, let me say that I'm not a patent lawyer and I have never played one on tv. No. So first off, I reached out to iSims and I got some attorney response mumbo jumbo Bowl shit. Yes, it was, it was, it was horrible. But then I reached out to friends. Yeah. And I asked business questions, not legal questions. And luckily we have friends over at isim, so, so I asked them, you know, whether this was gonna impact their business, if they were gonna have to change anything, et cetera, etcetera. And it was pretty much, this will not impact our roadmap or operations of the video platform. So they free and clear. Joel (11m 20s): Yep. Chad (11m 20s): It's interesting though. I also reached out to, to Spark start for a comment and specificity around the settlement and was pointed to the patent, which didn't help a fucking bit. Yeah. From everything I currently understand about this, and again, not a patent lawyer, it's, it's more about the video approval process than anything else. Okay. Technically, the article says specifically and points out, quote, large enterprises need secure approval processes and the ability to manage video at scale end quote. Okay. So this was more about process instead of like infringing on trying to copy somebody's text. Chad (12m 0s): I don't think anybody's trying to copy Spark Star Tech. Joel (12m 3s): No, I mean, when I look at the, the solution, it's basically in embed code on a job description. I mean, it's generally, it's basically take a YouTube video and embed it. So I didn't, I'm glad that you, you clarified exactly what was going on. It'll be interesting to know if whether it's sort of an ongoing licensing fee that iSims has to pay to do this or whether it's a flat fee terms Were not disclosed. No. Shocker. There. Patents in our, in our space are really interesting. I remember back in the mid two thousands company called Employee on, Oh yes. Ond patent for scraping job postings company called Get the Job was founded Scraping Jobs, An Indeed competitor their time. Joel (12m 45s): And, and I written, I had written many letters like, Oh, they're gonna put Indeed out business, they're gonna like, you know, make 'em stop doing what they're doing. Nothing changed. No. Even though they had this patent around scraping jobs. So yeah, this to me is probably much to do about nothing. Write a check. I'm sure iSims didn't want any sort of legal issues with the potential IPO coming up and other issues that they're dealing with. So it Chad (13m 10s): Is interesting that she didn't launch this, that Spark start didn't launch this against all true. Joel (13m 15s): Walter didn't have any money. That's exactly Chad (13m 19s): Right. Joel (13m 19s): This Chad (13m 19s): Money, they're sitting back waiting for somebody to get acquired who has cash and then lay this out. So my, my first thought was this is pretty weak. There are many patents out there that are just weak as hell. Yeah. Again, I'm not a patent guy, although from a process standpoint, it's like trying to tell somebody that can't open the, the, the door with their right hand because you have a patent on it. Right? Yeah. That's the process. I'm right-handed. What do you mean? Yeah. I reached out to a guy who owns several patents and I asked him, why wouldn't iSims just kick this in the nuts? I mean, literally just, just kill it. Yeah. And then, you know, the patent would, would fail possibly at that point. And he said, Well it might, it might actually cost less to settle Yeah. Chad (14m 2s): Than go to court. Not to mention the optics. Yep. But there was something else that he said that I thought was interesting is that, look, first and foremost, if it's cheaper to settle than go to court, you also have the opportunity to start to build a mote. Now all the other video platforms that are out there that might actually have a similar approval and management system, now they have to, they have to try to navigate around this. Isim doesn't Joel (14m 29s): Yeah. In terms of iSims buying or, or Spark starts Chad (14m 31s): The, the settlement actually going with the settlement and saying, Okay, let's keep the patent in place so that we don't have to worry about it because we've already paid through this, but everybody else that's out there now has to navigate around it. Yeah. Joel (14m 43s): Yeah. A lot of people just exist to get patents on shit and then wait around to sue people when they when they do. So that's is that, that's a business model. I remember a Shark Tank episode with a guy who patented a hole in a jacket so that you could run your headphones Yes. Through the jacket. Yeah. And literally had a, a patent on that. Now of course with Bluetooth speakers and, and AirPods and whatnot, that's kind of irrelevant, but people Yeah. Create these things and stifle innovation. I think it's a bad thing overall. Overall. Well, speaking of stifling innovation, you got some, you got some insider scoop on Eightfold and Indeed what's going on there? So there Chad (15m 22s): Are rumors flying around that eightfold are laying off about 20% of their staff. And we take a look, it, it says at least on LinkedIn, which is not a a, a great way to go. Best we got, but it's the best we got. Says that they have around 650 employees. So I mean, we're looking at sounds about right. Well over a hundred people that are, that are hitting the bricks and then also hearing that indeed are going through voluntary redundancy, which pretty much to me is what happens before you start laying people off. Right? Yeah. You can take the money now and run or you can, you can hope that you're not a part of a riff. Chad (16m 4s): Yeah. Joel (16m 4s): It's the cage free egg, the doors open if you leave, you can, you know, keep your, keep your dignity and your eggs with you. But yeah, so the first thing I thought was, I hope no one that was working the eightfold booth at HR Tech was one of the, Chad (16m 20s): Oh my Joel (16m 20s): God, so much money went into that booth. Yes. And they're laying the groundwork for the, you know, certain certainty of it's the biggest booth at every HR tech that next year, you know, the decline starts happening rapidly. But yeah, I'd be really pissed if I was working the booth and saw that thing and realized that I was losing my job on the Indeed thing. I don't know, we talked about the Google for Jobs AC acquiescence last week. Yeah. And having Google do that kind of makes me think things might be cracking at Indeed. I hear that things are great there, but I also see things with my own eyes like this and the Google for Jobs thing that, that makes me think like either they're economists are saying, Hey, shit's really gonna get bad, we gotta prep forward. Joel (17m 7s): Or the business isn't as as robust as it used to be. I don't know. Let's keep her on Indeed and you know, we will. Yeah, Chad (17m 13s): Yeah, yeah. It's, it is, it is interesting, like you said, this to me just seems like the first step. It just seems like the first step. So there's going to be, there are going to be things that are happening in Indeed and you know, they're big organization who make, make a shit ton of cash. If they do falter a bit, there's gonna be changes. Yeah. Joel (17m 31s): Yeah. And they got a lot of real estate to kind of work through as well. I think they made some, some leases before the pandemic hit and their work from home. Totally. So let's see how that works out. Let's take a quick break. Refill these waters cuz my body needs it. Yes. And we'll talk about people getting some money. Chad (17m 53s): Money, money. Money, money. Joel (17m 53s): All right Chad, despite the economy, people are still getting lots of checks. They, they are to fund their businesses. Let's talk about a few of them. Extreme a mobile first hiring and onboarding platform for remote workers has extended its series B funding round by $60 million, bringing its total series B financing to 108 million. The funding will be used to enable the company to expand into new industries and develop new products for the increasing desk list workforce. Its customers include fast food, quick service restaurants, including some of my favorites, Burger King, Dairy Queen, and Jimmy Freaking John's. Joel (18m 34s): They also service hotel chains such as Marriott International. Chad, what are your thoughts on work stream? Getting some cash? Chad (18m 38s): Yeah, I said it before and I'll say it again. I don't understand the need to create a new term, like desk list employees, number one. Anyway, I see Work stream as another one of the, those platforms that could easily take the place of an ATS for hourly types of positions. We've seen Fountain who they have about 220 million in funding and Paradox has over 250 million in funding just to name a few. And these platforms are, are creating really just a, a new process and style for, for high volume. But I see this moving into, into other types of roles in the future as well. Chad (19m 19s): But I, this is, this is all the craze. Joel (19m 22s): Yeah. It's, it's where the world is going. I think we saw some early shakeout with the Allos and the Mayas and maybe companies that weren't sort of built for, for scale and slings and arrows too. You mentioned Fountain and Paradox. I mean, these guys are, are in the same ballpark and if, if, if the model is proven, I think it kind of is at this point. Yeah. Then it's like a matter of getting money behind players that are, are making, you know, making inroads into the business. So I think this is, you know, if, if Paradox and Fountain are looking to be Coke, Pepsi, I mean I think these guys are in a pretty good spot to be Fanta or maybe Dr. Pepper. So Chad (20m 0s): There's plenty, there's plenty of fucking business out Joel (20m 3s): There. Plenty of business. Yeah. Especially in the space about, I mean healthcare. Yeah. Lots of room for this messaging style, re recruiting and onboarding, just employee. So much sense. Yeah. Makes sense. Alright, let's go to Firing Squad Alum Gray Scale Labs. Chad (20m 24s): Tie, Joel (20m 25s): Tie Abernathy. Yeah. The tech recruiting solution and Atlanta based Grace Scale Labs is raised 7.5 million in a series A bringing its grand total to 13.3 million, which also includes some debt financing. Founder Ty Abernathy said they will be investing in product enhancements in building out their team, hiring in all areas of the business, including enterprise sales, product engineering, and customer success. Chad Gray Scale's doing pretty well. What's your take on their news? I Chad (20m 54s): Think, I think he was a double applause, wasn't he? Yeah, I know. I gave him big applause. You gave him big applause. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, things happen for those companies who come on firing squad, right? They, they, they just, they continue to happen. Ty Ty's got great experience, very smart, very simple platform, which is what I loved, I think the most about it. And to see them get, get a little bit more cash to, to get things rolling, I think is, is awesome. And can't wait to see what they do with it. Joel (21m 22s): Yeah. It's amazing that we're still sort of talking about text recruiting, you know, 10, 10 years. Hence listeners will obviously know text recruit, they'll know Canvas. Gee, shocking. People are still texting. There's still 95% open rates on text messages. 80 plus percent are read within 15 minutes of receipt. I can speak as a father of some teenagers that they don't read email anymore. They don't answer the phone if they don't know who you are. Text messaging seems to be the way neither do you. Yeah, well I'm, I'm young at heart. That's why, that's why I don't do it. You know, I think the, the only threats to this business really are if, if spam gets out of, out of hand, I'm getting more spam messages sort of random and my phone, the, the, the companies do not, the carriers do not want this to become an email spam issue. Joel (22m 16s): So companies that enter in this business have to tread lightly, be very careful. International growth is also a challenge for companies like this. And that's why you're seeing a lot of them gravitate toward WhatsApp and messaging services because it does get really costly to do international texting. So yeah, like you said, core competency and recruitment, they've grown organically slowly. I think they probably raised just enough to grow the business the way that Ty wants. And these guys are gonna be in acquisition at some point down the road. I'm sure once the dust clears of around the, the economy and the recession fears or that sort of wanes, these guys are gonna get gobbled up and, and that investment dollar amount is gonna be really palatable for a lot of companies to go grab a text recruiting solution. Joel (23m 7s): Next up we have Aaron Pittsburgh based Aaron, an employee referral platform is raised 5 million in a series A round. The startup touts over 1.5 million employees in a hundred countries, including companies like Pinterest and GoDaddy. The company says it offers an advanced feature set that allows customers to completely automate employee referrals from the point of referral through bonus payment. Chad, no one's really made it big in the referral business. Is Aaron gonna break through and be the first? Chad (23m 38s): That's a good question. Okay. So I was, I was wrong in blaming Deb for my hangover. It should actually be Mike because we met Mike, the ceo, founder, CEO last night, and he gave us drink tickets, kept feeding us drink tickets. So I blame Mike. It's a good question with regard to employee referrals. Because employee referrals, the biggest issue that the whole process or any platform has had is stickiness, is engagement, right? So if you can get somebody to use the platform once, that's awesome, but how the fuck are you gonna get 'em back, right? Yeah. So you have to get that engagement, It has to be a part of a process that continually pings you about friends or your LinkedIn contacts or things like that that might be good, good fits. Chad (24m 25s): You have to get that interaction. And that is, that's where these platforms have fall fallen down over the years. So, you know, if Mike and team can get that shit straight, maybe, but it's not easy. It's not easy. Joel (24m 37s): Yeah. We've been kind of front row in the evolution of this space. You and I both remember H three, which was the first, I guess internet technology introduction into referrals. And I thought it was a fantastic idea. I actually got money for referring someone a check showed up at my door, which was pretty cool. And then that business collapsed. The next phase of it was, social media is gonna be the next referral engine and people are just gonna share jobs on social media, Chad (25m 8s): Be known. And Joel (25m 8s): You know, unbeknownst to them that, gee, it's not really cool to just share jobs randomly on social media. So a lot of those players went by the wayside. Yep. This new, new crop of referral solutions, and I think that Aaron is, is in a good spot if it does happen, is number one, the native applications that they provide for their companies. So literally when your company signs up, you download the app on the app store, Android or iPhone. So it's a native experience, which is good. It's branded to the company. I think that they are doing a good job with giving little, little rewards, right? So they, they try, it's their, their play is mobile and gamification. Joel (25m 54s): So little bits of gift cards, donations, you know, things that are little to kind of keep people engaged. They're hoping they're gonna be able to take, take that to the bank and have a successful company. Time will tell, but they're off to a good start. Nice Series A a little low I guess for Series A. Maybe that's a series A for 2022. These, maybe these, these series A are gonna be a little less robust than they, they typically are. But yeah, three, three pretty good companies there that we covered and three trends that we see, you know, being hot in 2022 and 2023. I think as we talk about upskilling, people trying to keep their employees, I think that referrals are gonna continue to be hot because companies want to leverage their own employees to get more people in the door. Joel (26m 39s): And speaking of more people in the door, let's talk about Sherm for a second. Chad (26m 44s): Okay. Do we have to, Joel (26m 46s): We do. This one really caught my attention. So Sherm, for those who don't know, the Society for Human Resource Management has acquired a company called Linkage Inc. Their leadership development firm based in Boston Linkage is used by more than 250 clients across many industries. Sherm said in a release that Linkage is committed to advancing women and accelerating inclusion in leaders and organizations. Your buddy Johnny Taylor, Jr. President and CEO Sherm said this acquisition strengthens sherms position as the go-to global organization for all things work workers and the workplace. And quote, the linkage deal follows two recent investments by SHRM in Virgil, HR and HR compliance platform and gig and take who we recently talked about a startup that manages flexible workforces, both Virgil HR and Gig and take received a hundred grand from shrm. Joel (27m 43s): Chad, what's your take on this Sherm News? Chad (27m 45s): Yeah, I mean it's, it's interesting because Sherm is a nonprofit, They don't act or run like a nonprofit. Joel (27m 53s): So they have a nonprofit arm, but they themselves aren't nonprofit. Yeah. Chad (27m 58s): It's, it is interesting that they're sherm the Society of Human Resource, you know, management, Joel (28m 5s): They are the association. Chad (28m 6s): They're, they're the association, but they're also picking winners and losers at this point. Right. I don't know how people feel about that. You know, they are a company, but then again, they are more than a company. You know, they're supposed to represent the HR industry and is this going too far? That, that might be the question. Joel (28m 24s): Yeah. This to me is a gross conflict of interest. Yes. They're not, They have a, a nonprofit arm. They're not a nonprofit, but even you who's been around a while, thought they're a nonprofit organization because they, they kind of walk and talk like that duck. I think that if you have a conference where you expect vendors to pay money and exhibit at your show and pay you money to advertise on your site and leverage your marketing platform, that you should not be in the business of acquiring vendors and investing in vendors. You said it, you were spot on when you said, look, picking winners and losers. Do these companies now get access to Sherms database? Joel (29m 7s): Do they get emails from Sherm saying, Hey, by this company they're great. You know, a little disclosure at the bottom, we're an investor. Yeah. I just think it's sort of picking the players on both teams, if you will. And it's just wrong. They, they should have a policy, how the board allowed this and how the management and executive team allow them to invest and buy companies in this space. I just think it's wrong. They shouldn't do it. They should be Switzerland. It feels Chad (29m 34s): Weird and wrong. Yeah, you're, you're right. I mean, especially when it comes down to, let's say for instance, there, there are, there are thousands of companies that are out there that would love to be able to partner with Sherm to be able to use their database and do a bunch of different things Sure. To drive and market their, their, their company. Right? Yeah. For the most part, it's not easy at all to partner with Sherm to be able to do those types of things. No. But now there are these organizations that sherms buying into that are gonna be fucking super powered. Joel (30m 3s): I mean, would you like to be a salesperson and say, Yeah, we're invested, which, and Sherm is invested in our company. Would that be nice, like a nice little hook to get someone to call you back or answer the phone? I would think so. Chad (30m 15s): Yeah. I, I think, I think it more goes to like their marketing, their their marketing arm. Because when it comes to sales, it's, it's all about awareness, right? Yeah. And being able to get into a trusted company like Sherm and have their, their logo and their brand represent you. Yeah. That's big. Yeah. Right. That's big. And then you can get into many more doors using the name, using the marketing, using a lot of it. Joel (30m 43s): Yeah. Every startup is looking for that, that edge. Yeah. That hook, that one thing that's gonna get a call back or get a demo scheduled and being able to say that Sherm invested in your company is a great way to do that. So. Yep. All right. Let's take another quick break. I am going through this water way too fast and we'll talk a little Florida from Nash Vegas. Chad Florida's gonna Florida at all times if they, Chad (31m 6s): If they anything right? They Florida. Have Joel (31m 9s): You done the Google search of your birthday and Florida man can see what comes up? No. That's always, that's always fun. Do that at home. If you, if you're at a Google, If you're at Google screen, put in your birthday and, and put Florida man and see what comes up. All the CEO of the year competition is now officially over meet Joy Jen doa. I'm gonna call Rhymes Lake Medusa. Chad (31m 32s): I'm gonna call her Medusa. Joel (31m 35s): She's the CEO of Clearwater, Florida based marketing company. Postcard mania. This from Vice. The headline company asked employees to bring family pets to office to work through Hurricane Ian or Ian, whichever you prefer. I think both are correct. That's right. Nevermind the fact that Ian was the strongest hurricane to hit the Tampa area in a hundred years. She also encouraged children to join the Insanity saying quote, We are not closing, we are working. We'll make it super fun for the kids. Yep. Not since comedian Dan Aros, bag of glass and Johnny Switch blade. If kids had this much fun, the company insisted that the media was Overhyping Hurricane Ian, and then employees were still expected to work through the storm. Joel (32m 21s): Chad, is this just Florida being Florida or is this a unique case of just stupid Chad (32m 28s): Thi this lady is the worst leader in the world. Move over Kim Jong Un. I mean this Joel (32m 34s): Move over Jeff Bezos. Chad (32m 36s): Go back to the Google machine kids. Google, Clearwater, Florida. You will notice that it's on a peninsula that is more exposed than even fucking Tampa for hurricanes. Right? So she, she's saying, Hey, we've got this great, this great office that you can bring in and we can hunker down together. No, you know what you do, You get the fuck outta Dodge. And then she also had a video where she was dropping F bombs. This was like an, an all hands call where she was talking about, it was during Covid and they apparently weren't following Covid protocols. So you know, an employee go figure, it's a fucking pandemic. They actually reported her and she was fucking pissed. Chad (33m 18s): And she was, she was mad about it. And dropping FBOs Joel (33m 21s): One rotten apple about Chad (33m 22s): These assholes that a couple of you know who you are. I believe it's a private company, which, you know, it makes it a little bit harder to get rid of an asshole like this, but I don't know how she survives. Joel (33m 34s): Yeah. The company changed course after a little media scrutiny. Employees who spoke to Vice News said that workers were still expected back in the office Friday after the storm had subsided and that they were still expected to hit their 40 hours of work, even if that meant working through the weekend. The anonymous employee that spoke to Vice summarized the general feeling among workers as concern and frustration. I say that the CEO should be thinking her lucky stars, that no one was hurt by keeping them in the office because lawsuits are plenty if that were to happen. Chad (34m 10s): If you take a look at their glass door score, it's actually pretty, pretty high. Yeah. But one of the rankings is a is a one star ranking and it says all of these other rankings are bullshit. They have them within the first two weeks write a review and also for the company and for the ceo. So it's one of those games that companies play to be able to get a, a high Glassdoor rating. I posted this on social. Medusa blocked me. That's just fucking crazy. Joel (34m 43s): All right, see, I'm Medusa, you're on notice and we will not be buying services from Postcard Mania. Chad (34m 53s): We out. We Out. OUTRO (34m 50s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (35m 35s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out

If you were building a perfect podcast episode, what ingredients would you include? An acquisition? Some VR? And a side of offshoring? Well, today’s your lucky day, because Lieven and the boys cover all that and much more on The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Europe. 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 (9s): 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 (30s): Oh yeah. Tesla delivered over 340,000 vehicles in the third quarter and only four of them ended up in Lieven's driveway. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast, does Europe. I'm your co-host Joel "Mussolina" Cheeseman. This Chad (47s): Is Chad "Holy Manchester, Batman" Sowash. Lieven (51s): And Lieven"still recovering from Rika's birthday party last weekend" Van Nieuwenhuyze Joel (55s): On this episode, Adecco keeps it virtually real in Belgium, an acquisition four way. And would you like a sight of offshoring with that? Let's do this. Chad (1m 5s): All right guys. Did you see the Man U versus Man City match over the weekend? I mean it was nine goals, four goals by Man City in the first half. No goals by Man U by the way. But I mean it was what in the US, what we call a shellacking. Joel (1m 22s): Hey Chad, you'll be surprised. I watched football in Europe this weekend. It was the Vikings versus the Saints and what real football is American football and God bless us for taking it to London. That's a real sport people. You're welcome and a great game with a double joint at the end. Chad (1m 41s): Anybody who loves football would've loved that game. Usually what happens is we send the Jacksonville Jaguars over there and they have some shitty performance. But this is great even did you watch either one of those? Lieven (1m 53s): Nope. Never. I tried to avoid it. Joel (1m 55s): What I do love about them is they're sprinkled with every Jersey imaginable in the NFL. Like there's no super loyalty to the same. Obviously people go over and watch the game, but everyone has their own player team and they just come out to watch some American football. Lieven (2m 11s): I've basically, no fucking clue what you're talking about. Chad (2m 15s): You had an interesting weekend Lieven. Lieven (2m 17s): Yeah, I did actually. I did. You know, Rika who's been the show sometimes before the CEO of House of HR give a pretty spectacular birthday party. She's going to become 50 soon. If maybe I shouldn't be mentioning this, but sorry again. Amazing party and I'm still trying to recover. No, Joel (2m 35s): That's cool. She doesn't look a day over 29. Lieven (2m 37s): Never. Exactly. Chad (2m 38s): Shout outs. Joel (2m 40s): Shout outs everybody. Lieven (2m 41s): My shout out is to on Annelies van Ruymbeke. You don't know who Annelies van Ruymbeke? I didn't know either until recently. Joel (2m 48s): Rum Springer. What? Lieven (2m 50s): Something like that. Ruymbeke Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Flemish. So she's a business developer at SAP, what's it called? Success factors. And she noticed I was going to join you in Unleash or Unleash and she invited me for champagne tasting, after the Congress, which I think is a very good idea cuz you think being Chief Digital and invited to champagne tastings all the time, that's not true. You think people would invite me constantly. They don't. So it's a very good idea from Joel (3m 20s): Chad. Did you get an invite to this thing? Chad (3m 21s): I, yeah, I did not get an invite. Joel (3m 23s): Let me get this straight. She heard you were gonna be there from our show. Invited you but not us? See that's some bullshit right there. I drink champagne. Lieven (3m 34s): I can only state the facts Chad (3m 36s): It alcohol? Of course you drink it. Lieven (3m 39s): No, but so shoutout Louise! Thanks a lot. And we'll meet in Paris and if you want to invite Chad and Joel, then basically you can, I guess Joel (3m 47s): Can you crash a champagne party or is that really a no no in Europe? Lieven (3m 51s): Oh definitely. We do it all the time. Joel (3m 53s): I got a shoutout for going back to England. Our friends at CV Library, one of the most prominent and oldest job boards in the UK. It's been around since, wait for it, the year 2000. They've acquired programmatic platform. Brilliant Jobs. Can you think of a better British company name than Brilliant Jobs? Chad (4m 12s): Smashing! Joel (4m 13s): I guess Jolly Jobs would be better, but the move which follows the likes of Indeed acquiring Click IQ means the red coats are also coming to America and the rest of the world. The new product will be initially launched in October through CV Libraries growing US business Resume Library because we don't say CV in the states. People don't even know what that is before being rolled out in other markets over the next 12 months and they're not done. CV Library says it has over 9 million US dollars set aside for acquisition and platform transformation over the next two years. Sounds like we'll be watching Resume Library here in the states for years to come Chad. Chad (4m 58s): That's interesting. I've never heard of brilliant. Whatever they call it programmatic jobs, whatever it is. That's interesting. Is Brilliant Jobs, is that actually a European company or is that a US company? Joel (5m 12s): Yes, I believe it's the UK as well. The benefit of the programmatic businesses you can, you know, wash and rinse and repeat into any general area you want to because you don't have to actually build customers and job posting content. You can just open shop in other countries. So the job board buying a programmatic solution is sort of gaining steam. It certainly has in the US I don't think even knew what programmatic was when we first started the show. Lieven (5m 39s): I learned it all from you guys. Joel (5m 41s): Appcast got acquired, Click IQ before that Brilliant Jobs. So it's, you know, the days of back filling it with Indeed and growing into areas is gone. You gotta have your own shit and programmatic is a way to do that. Yeah, Chad (5m 54s): I think the only way right now programmatic is really getting used is through organizations like Talent Nexus in the UK is where they're actually being led in to to organizations as consultants. So much like we've seen recruitment advertising for years. Instead of just saying, here's my stuff, throw it in your platform, you actually have a consultant kind of like baby step you in. So it'll be it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. Joel (6m 21s): It's not a House of HRs bucket of money, but $9 million is nice for some acquisitions I guess. Lieven (6m 27s): Yeah, but with an inflation and inflation of 10% a bucket, it's is getting smaller. Joel (6m 33s): It's true. Chad (6m 34s): Yeah. Kidding. If Joel (6m 35s): Costs are getting cheaper, Lieven a lot of clearance rack companies. That's Lieven (6m 39s): That's true. Chad (6m 39s): A lot of that due to our friend Liz Truss maybe. I don't know. So what's the over under that we think Liz is gonna stay in position as PM in the UK. Any bets? Joel (6m 50s): Well, she's gotta have at least a year, right? Chad (6m 52s): They could switch in December. Isn't there like a vote coming in December? So that could be one way that she gets kicked out. But I mean the, the interest rates are rising due to inflation caused by stupid, stupid Russians. She cuts taxes, which seems to be counterintuitive. Joel (7m 8s): She reversed that today, didn't she? Chad (7m 11s): She had to look at the sterling pound. It is pretty much on parody with the US dollar today. One of the things I think happened with Brexit was that, you know, it wasn't about stability, it was about the the ability to use volatility to either shoot up or shoot down. Well they on the way up everybody was like, Oh, it looks Brexit looks like Brexit looks like a smart, smart deal. The problem is they lost a hell of a lot of stability and there's always strength in numbers. So being able to be a part of the European Union. I just wonder how the UK is going to fair in the coming years. Joel (7m 50s): So basically she took over for Boris and there's a new election soon which will either put a new party in power or not and they'll decide who the prime minister is. So yes, she could have a really short tenure is what you're saying Chad (8m 3s): In Liz, we do not trust. Joel (8m 5s): Yeah. Lieven (8m 5s): Anymore. Joel (8m 6s): Levin, what is the continent? Think about Italy's new leader? Chad (8m 9s): Oh that's a good question. Joel (8m 10s): Was it Giorgia? Giorgia Meloni? Lieven (8m 13s): That is something else, indeed. She used to be part of the party, which was the direct successor of the fascist party. I mean the party from Mussolini, she is extremely right winged, but the moment she was elected, she made a statement in which she said she was going to support Europe, she was going to stay supporting Europe, she was going to support Ukraine, et cetera. So she probably will be less extreme as people were afraid of. But it's, it was kind of a shock for many people, I think. Joel (8m 45s): And by support Europe she means take it over. Lieven (8m 48s): That's one way of supporting I guess United Europe, something like that. Chad (8m 52s): We are talking about Italy, right? I don't think that we're gonna gonna see Italy over Europe anytime. Lieven (8m 58s): Not yet. Chad (9m 0s): Not really The military powerhouse that we've seen in history. Joel (9m 5s): Well it's gonna be very different. Not very different but a little bit different Europe than we're used to seeing when we went there last time we were in Paris, Chad. But we're heading back there. What for? Chad (9m 16s): Unleash World, which happens in Paris, it is an amazing time. If you are in Europe and you haven't registered yet, come on people go to Chadcheese.com, click in the upper right hand corner where you see events. So we have a 20% off coupon that you can actually use. It is an amazing show. Levin's gonna be there. What what other reason than than meeting Lieven for goodness sakes. And wait a minute, there's a rooftop pre-party conference where you can actually meet Lieven and catch the Vonq. Lieven (9m 51s): A champagne tasting where I will be present and so far you won't be, Joel (9m 56s): He can't get you into that. He's just virtue signaling that he's going and we're not. Chad (10m 0s): Yeah, that hurts. That hurts. Joel (10m 2s): There's no Groupon for the champagne. Champagne tasting. Chad (10m 5s): That's it. That's it. Okay, I'm just gonna focus on the Paris Skyline rooftop party with our friends at Vonq. Again, this is a pre Unleashed party, so it's an Unleash party Vonq's. Gonna be there. Chad and Cheese, Lieven. I might have the bouncers throw 'em out unless we can get into this champagne tasting. Joel (10m 25s): You'll get to see all the Eiffel Tower from the rooftop, not just the tip. Chad (10m 32s): TOPICS! Joel (10m 34s): Alright guys, we got a four way! Can I interest you in one of those> a new recruitment group formed under the brand Tellent, that's T E double L L E N T has been created through the acquisition and connection of several hiring software, HR management system, and employee performance management software companies. The collaboration is between Recruitee, an ATS based in Amsterdam, Sympa, a Finish HRMS firm and Javelo, a French SAAS platform for HR performance management along with their acquisition of Kiwi HR. Founded in 2017 who provide HRMS for small businesses. Joel (11m 16s): The aim of the collaboration is to establish a major HR tech ecosystem in Europe and brings together over 500 employees across 11 offices serving over 6,000 customers in more than 100 countries. Four way is not just a way I order my skyline chili Chad! What's your take? Chad (11m 37s): It's a reference that nobody in Europe's gonna understand. So the article in EU startups mentions market fragmentation, which you know, we're obviously seeing all over the place. How can smaller organizations actually compete with some of these larger core talent platforms or these huge organizations who have many different brands underneath them. Apparently this is how they create an umbrella group Tellent and they start collecting companies like Recruitee, who's Dutch, Sympa, Finish, Javelo Parisian, and then Kiwi HR, which is German. Chad (12m 17s): I can see an organization trying to fight more well funded platforms with alliances like this, but it then turns into, it could turn into a convoluted mess unless it's managed correctly. So these organizations will operate separately if I'm getting this right, but how are they gonna market share leads and sell together and I gotta pass this over to Lieven because this is something that you guys deal with in your masters of over at House of HR, you have like 50 different companies under the House of HR brand. How do you guys manage all of this? The House of HR leadership team in itself, you guys have to manage all these brands, the leads, the continuity. Chad (13m 3s): How do you do it and how do you see an organization like this perspectively being able to manage it or just go crazy? Lieven (13m 10s): Well, I think the first choice you have to make is do you wanna stay multi-brand company or do you want to evolve a one brand company? And it's like we always decided we were buying companies because they were outperforming the others and they were the best in class and we bought, so we didn't wanna change them. And I wonder if this is the same strategy these people are going to use? Are they just going to stay different companies or are they going to merge someday into one company having a pan-European approach? Because I think that's the way to go. They have a local base spread around Europe, but working separately. Working independently, but working together. And if they can fix their own software and if they can make sure that at least their own products are working seamlessly together, they might have good products. Lieven (13m 59s): But that's the problem always with HR, HR software packages, they just don't talk to each other one as AME can have five different systems not collaborating at all. So if those far companies now can deliver something at least their products working together, they could be often a very well track. Joel (14m 17s): What I first thought of Chad is Employee Inc. Bringing together Jobvite and Lever and Jazz HR and some others. The pull to be multi-brand is a powerful one. I think where this one is different is, as opposed to having a bunch of ATSs under the same umbrella, it's a bunch of different companies that do different things. So I would have to imagine they're gonna pull these things together and be complimentary to each other as opposed to have this ATS is for small business, this ATS is for enterprise, they're gonna try to pull the same together. And I agree like it's a cluster fuck to buy companies and acquire companies in the US. You have different cultures, you have different processes, different ways of doing things and you throw in a bunch of European companies together. Joel (15m 4s): I gotta think that goes to a different level because you're looking at different languages, different cultures in general. It's not just, you know, the south and the west coast. It's like really different things. So I mean, I think this is something that a lot of customers are driving. I think customers want a lot of services under one umbrella. They don't want a bunch of different accounts, a different bunch of different invoices. But this has trouble written all over it. If they can pull this off, more power to them, but I think the Tide is against them to get this thing done and and be successful. I think it's gonna be very challenging. Chad (15m 38s): House of HR does it every day. They have 50, right? Joel (15m 41s): They have different brands that they keep separate. Chad (15m 44s): You know, these are all different brands underneath Tellent, right? So they're different brands underneath Tellent much like no. Joel (15m 52s): Well, I don't know if we know that. Chad (15m 52s): Yeah, yeah. I mean from what it looks like they're going to operate separately as all of these brands underneath Tellent. Now House of HR is the umbrella brand with 50 brands underneath it. That's how House of HR works every day. Which is why I ask Lieven, how do you guys manage this mess? And also you take a look at it, it's Dutch, Finish, French and German. So it looks like they're doing much like what House of HR is trying to do, they're trying to spread out get brands in those specific markets that are known in those markets. Lieven (16m 27s): From a marketing point of view, I think one brand is so much easier if you want to put one brand into the market, it's fun, it's easy. If you have 52 brands like we have, that's something else. But from the company's point of view, they have their own identity and we don't wanna change it. And I think this is what they're going to try to do with Tellent four different companies, one umbrella. If they wanna stay for different companies just working together a bit, then basically they just keep doing what they did. What I was intrigued by, and maybe I just got the press release wrong, but do I get it right? Those three companies, Recruitee, Sympa and Javelo were independent companies and they just bought together a fourth company. Lieven (17m 10s): And that's a strange, we are working, they weren't together before buying the fourth, if I get it right. Chad (17m 15s): Yeah. Recruitee acquired Sympa back in 2021. They've kept separate brands. Lieven (17m 22s): Okay so they, it's not like they already had some kind of structure. It was already one company with two brands. I, I thought when I was reading the press release and I was looking into it, I thought it's like three CEOs sitting in a bar talking damned how do you feel about the KiwiHR? How we like them, we wanna buy but they're too expensive. Why don't you just put all our money together and let's buy together? I thought it was something like that. Joel (17m 44s): Well if we're confused, think of the market, when they go to market with this thing, how confused the buyers are gonna be and the consumers are gonna be? Chad (17m 51s): Yeah. That's what's incredibly interesting to me. Again, as we look at House of HR, they have 52 brands and how many different countries? You guys have a strategy in place. I'm sure you know, there's a symbiotic relationship in some cases with from brand to brand where you can share leads, you can actually expand wallet share. There are certain things that you're doing, but that didn't happen overnight. I mean, what does a company like this have to do to be able to mesh? It doesn't seem easy. It seems more like a pain in the ass. Lieven (18m 25s): Sometimes. Some of our brands are even competitors in certain areas. We have a Abylsen doing engineering. Belgium, we have Continu doing engineering in Belgium, we have Control F doing engineering, Belgium. Those people are colleagues but are also competitors. In this case it's, I think if they could deliver one single point of contact, one solution, including different brands, different options, different proposals, it could work, but they have to make sure all those systems work together seamlessly. And that's always the problem. It's the interactivity, which mostly sucks. Joel (19m 2s): Feels like to me and Lieven correct me if I'm wrong, that Europe tends to be more let brands live in their own ecosystem, in their own country or their own market share. Whereas America, I think we tend to say like, you're gonna be under the main brand, we're gonna, you know, take your tech and everything. We're gonna take away what you thought of ie monster, you know, blowing out OCC, right Chad? Like we're gonna take your tech and the brand is gone. I feel like Europe has a little bit more of a house of brands mentality than the US does. Agree? Lieven (19m 33s): I don't think it's European thing. I think it's a decision each company has to make for itself. I used to work for USG people back in the days and they had a different approach. They bought companies and then they all, for example, within Belgium had USG professionals, about 10 different companies. But in the end they all got the same logo, the same name. You had legal professionals, finance professionals, some other professionals, they all became XXX professional. Now it seems it didn't work and at House of HR we are very sure about what we're doing now, letting those companies, which were so good from the beginning, let just be whoever they are and don't force them to be something they're not. And it's a mistake many companies make. Lieven (20m 15s): And you say it's more often Europe than in the America. So I dunno could be, but it's definitely not always the case in Europe as well. Chad (20m 23s): Don't you see from country to country that, let's say for instance the French or more territorial versus Germans. I mean, because we don't see that in the US. If it's an Ohio company doing business in New Mexico, nobody cares. It's all the same language. It's all the United States. But in Europe you have a French company trying to do business in Germany or visa versa. There can be some territorial kind of like, no, I'm not buying German tech. Do you see that? Is that something that actually exists or is that just us looking from the outside in? Lieven (20m 58s): I don't think many people will say, I'm not going to buy something German. I'm not going to buy something from Norway. It's more about approach and about languages. Sometimes it's just easier, even for me, to work with a company who lives close and who speaks my language. And everyone speaks English to a certain extent, as you can hear my accent is different than yours. We understand each other more or less. But being able to speak to someone who speaks your exact same language is easier. And that's something, a problem you just don't have. Chad (21m 27s): Yeah, well I gotta say English is probably Lievin's fifth language, which makes us dumb. Cuz I think Joel and I maybe speak bits and parts of Spanish and German every now and again. But you have amazing English. Let's just say that my, my Flemish and my Dutch nonexistent. Lieven (21m 46s): Yeah, but then again, why would you learn Dutch? I mean French. French maybe it sounds a bit, if you're going to a champagne party, it's good to speak a few words of French. But you're not going to the champagne per, sorry, to repeat it. But it helps when you speak French then, but no, it's true. It's true. And English is the world's language. I once had a professor saying this class will be taught in the most spoken language in the world, bad English. He was right. Joel (22m 16s): So it was in American is how the class was taught. Lieven (22m 19s): It was a guy with my accent I guess. Joel (22m 21s): Okay, yeah, let's take a quick break and work all these cultural issues out and we'll talk about virtual reality, everybody. Yep. Chad (22m 31s): I don't know that there's enough time to work all the cultural issues out, although talking about VR is always something I love doing. Joel (22m 38s): Yes sir. Yes, sir. All right. Some news out of Lieven's home base of Belgium, a little company called Adecco, is starting a pilot project in Belgium with three large mobile virtual reality simulators with the aim to train more than 400 forklift truck drivers and order pickers every year. Why? Well, there are currently 4,000 forklift truck driver vacancies in Belgium. Adecco wants to prepare 200 drivers for the Belgium labor market by 2022 and at least 400 per year from 2023. After the pilot project in Belgium, the VR training will be rolled out in the rest of the world. Joel (23m 20s): Chad, are you ready to get your forklift on and your Oculus in Belgium? Chad (23m 26s): IOkay. So I trained in VR simulators in the military for squad tactics, firing ranges. But this is 10 plus years ago, they were great from the standpoint of being able to record and replay the training. It didn't take place on the real ground for training, rather it supplemented our training. We could always take a squad back into the VR training set to go over basic tactics. I mean, it gave you an opportunity to get more repetition. It gave you more training time without the high expense in this case of owning a bunch of forklifts. So I'm very surprised that staff and companies haven't used this or different methods to start training in a variety of different positions. Chad (24m 10s): If you think of it, when Adecco starts creating forklift operators, they could have somewhat of a corner on the market. So what if they did this on the, you know, other skills to fill positions, healthcare engineers, I mean, the investment could be substantial, but if they are partnering with certain organizations, they could easily alleviate that cost. So, you know, Lieven, this is something that we've talked about on several podcasts before. Why isn't staffing doing more of this? They could corner the market in some areas. Lieven (24m 44s): We are starting to do it, all of us. House of HR, our competitors are. For example, Accent, one of our staffing companies has bought a training company called Atrium, and they're actually specialized in training people into logistics, truck drivers like you have here. What's it called? Forklift drivers, but also also warehouse people, those kinds of things. That's not really new. And, in our business, we definitely need to be able to identify people and identify their skills and re-skilled them when necessary. We have to identify potential, not skills which are present yet, but potential. And this is something our people are getting pretty good at. Lieven (25m 24s): And then by acquiring a training company like they did with Atrium, we can re-skill them and put at our clients whenever the needs arise. So it's not really new. The new thing here is the VR component. And I like VR sometimes in this case I think it could work, but only for people who are already truck or forklift drivers. You're not going to learn how to drive a forklift with a VR headset because it's just not the same thing. I mean, I play golf or I hit a ball from time to time. There's no way that a VR set is going to train me how to play golf. No way. It might look similar from a distance, but it's not the same thing. Lieven (26m 5s): But VR is, in my opinion very interesting to simulate potential dangerous situations. So you can give existing forklift drivers an extra training. How would you react if this happened? I'm just imagining something your lot is wiggling or what's it called in English? The lot is moving on your truck. How will you react? Chad (26m 27s): No, he's not talking about big booty Latinas Cheeseman, get your head up. Joel (26m 33s): Forking forklifts. Yes, I know. Lieven (26m 35s): I never talk about big booty Latinas, believe me. But no, so I say VR is interesting to simulate potential dangerous situations. I think it can be handy to get people acquainted with new environments. Let's say we're going to place 10 forklift drivers at a certain client, but they don't have the time or the space to get them acquainted with their warehouse. So recreate it in a VR environment, that's a possibility too. But I don't believe that, for example, a driver license for a car, that you can become a decent driver by learning on a VR, you'll crash into the first car you encounter, I think. Lieven (27m 19s): So it's good to help people learn, but it's will never be at complete substitutes today. I mean, never say never, but with the products we have today, I don't think so. But maybe that's not their intention. Joel (27m 33s): Lieven brings up a good point with the safety issue. But you also think about the space issue. You know, you think about jobs, that training with VR, you need a lot of real estate to do that, right? You need a lot of warehouse space to train people in person with forklifts and how to drive around and take boxes to other places. And not everyone has that kind of real estate. It's just like with a plane, you can't just fly planes around. It's a lot easier to just put someone in a virtual cockpit. Same with battlefields, right Chad? It's a lot easier to put 'em in a virtual headset reality. To me this seems a lot more of an issue around branding this job and paying it in a way that people would find it desirable. Joel (28m 14s): It's a shitty job. You sit in a chair all day and you move boxes around. It's an important job. It's a job that we need to be done, but branding it is a job that's cool or interesting or you're helping the economy to me would go a lot farther and paying these folks a wage that's competitive would go farther. No one comes out of school thinking I wanna be a forklift driver. Whereas a pilot might be sexy, a surgeon or you know, a soldier or sexy. Do I really wanna put on a virtual headset and learn how to drive a forklift that's gonna be really popular with the girls down at the champagne toasting. Lieven (28m 49s): It's pretty french. Joel (28m 50s): While, I agree this is a great way to train people for this job and the technology is there to do it. I think it's covering up a bigger issue in that the job sucks and the pay probably sucks even more. Fix those and I don't think you'll have the problems with how you train people, you'll have a line up the door of people that wanna do it. Chad (29m 9s): Yeah. I think this is gonna be a robot takeover at one time and yeah. And but virtual reality and let's go back to it. You talk about flight simulators, pilots use that to augment their time and they're put into those situations much like Lieven had talked about, those dangerous situations. How would they actually fare in those dangerous situations? But I see VR as this great augmentation to real world, to be able to get more reps to be able to be put into, again, a battlefield scenario that you might not ever see, but you could always be ready for because you actually went through simulations. Chad (29m 49s): Nursing, I mean all these different skills that we today have problems filling jobs with. This is all about repetition. So how do we get them repetition and how do we do it cost effectively and with a, with an opportunity to perspectively flex quickly as well. That's another thing that our training in our schools are not keeping up with Moore's law in the technology, right? Moore's law is moving technology so fast that schools can't keep up with the new tech. And I'm not just talking about developers, I'm talking about nursing tech, right? Things like that. VR could help, I think be that augmentation piece to be able to help with a quicker transition. Joel (30m 35s): It's a great point. I mean I think robots are eventually gonna do these jobs and the job will eventually become, you're sitting in an office with a virtual headset and you're going to forklift number one and you're doing forklift number one and it's a robot doing it, but you're the human in the brain, you know, doing that one. Okay, done. Let's go to number two. And you're virtually lifting that and taking it to where it needs to go. So in a way, making this job cool is to say it's like you'll play a video game and the video game is take the forklift and take the materials to the, the right warehouse, et cetera. I don't know this job, so I'm speaking outta my asshole. But that's kind of like a way to solve this problem is train these people in VR because the job is inevitably going to be a video game, putting boxes where they need to go. Chad (31m 22s): Every box will have a QR code, the robot will scan it, they'll know exactly where it needs to go. They won't need somebody in a trailer in Nevada doing it like drones do. Joel (31m 33s): And they'll have their own TikTok account so as you're putting boxes up, you're gonna get likes and comments from your social media about how good of a job you're doing and that'll create the dopamine hit that everyone needs to do their jobs. Oh, that went out in the left field, didn't it? Chad (31m 50s): Lieven, you guys are currently doing this at House of hr, which is, which is awesome. The question is much like Joel was talking about some of these jobs just aren't sexy. How do you get people into these jobs? Lieven (32m 3s): The struggle is real. I mean, for these kinds of vacancies, we get a handful of applicants each time and most of them aren't even qualified at all. So it's hard. But, and this might sound very cynical, there are always jobs which are even worse. So for some people there's actually is a big improvement and sexy is what you make of it. I mean Chad (32m 24s): Right. It's all relative. Lieven (32m 25s): Yeah, It is relative. I've seen on a television show a guy who with a forklift who was able to strike a match so they taped a match on his, on the fork and he was able to strike a match without breaking it and putting on a candle. I mean, that's a fraction of a millimeter I guess. So he was very proud of his job and it was kind of a challenge. And two forklift drivers challenged each other in doing tricks because they all thought they were the best. That's great. And those people very proud in their job. So I think it's even arrogant of us to think that these jobs are something people don't want. Chad (33m 0s): It's a very good point. Lieven (33m 2s): But we call them the burger flipping jobs. Joel (33m 4s): But there is a reason why there's a shortage. Lieven (33m 7s): Definitely. Yeah, of course. And there are always jobs. It's not fair. I mean, the best jobs, the most fun jobs, like my jobs are well paid jobs and that's not fair. I mean, some people have to work extremely hard, long hours in a difficult environment and they still get paid shit. Chad (33m 22s): Well, and we're talking about supply chain in this case, which we've had issues with that. I mean, these positions do deserve great pay and not to be treated like shit because they are the reason why our supply chain even works. Lieven (33m 39s): Yeah. At the moment you don't have any truck drivers left, we won't get any food in the store. Joel (33m 44s): At least they suffer nearby as opposed to our offshoring story where you can suffer from thousands of miles away. A lot of restaurants took a hit during the pandemic and when they struggled to find workers, some found surprising solutions, such as offshoring cashiers. Earlier this year, the fast food chain Freshy came under fire for using virtual cashiers to ring up customers in Toronto, Canada. Instead of a friendly clerk standing behind the counter, there was a face on a screen asking them what they wanted from a different country, thousands of miles away. This felt really off to a lot of people, but it also feels like the future. Chad, what's your take on offshoring of cashiers? Joel (34m 26s): Apparently you have a real life story to tell. Chad (34m 29s): Yeah, Julie and I were checking into a boutique hotel in London and we walked up to where the desk clerk should be and there was an iPad. It flickered on as we approached and a nice man who was sitting in India actually greeted us. It was interesting. The experience wasn't great. It was disjointed. It was really kinda weird to be quite frank. And in this case with Freshie, you know, this is, you know, a Canadian story with a London spin from my personal experience, it seems as if obviously they're saying that this is a staffing issue where they can't find people to actually work the cash register. Chad (35m 14s): But then again, they're paying people $3 and 75 cents an hour Canadian. This is an interesting way to offshore some jobs that we've never seen offshore before to be able to build more margin and to perspectively and, I don't know, get rid of some jobs that people don't wanna do. I don't know, it's a weird twist. Lieven (35m 36s): Yeah, I was wondering while you were talking Chad, why didn't anyone steal the iPad? I mean, if the guy wasn't even there, you could just take the iPad and run away and the guy could be yelling, don't steal me and steal me. Joel (35m 49s): Security cameras Lieven (35m 50s): Seems like he could do anything. No, no. But I think it's actually a pretty ingenious idea and for some jobs it makes sense that they, people can't work remote. I mean if you're a cashier, you have to be in the shop and you have to to help the people. But if one out of five cashiers would be virtual, those people could work one out of five days from home. And we have, and I'm sure they have it everywhere in our retail stores or grocery stores, we have something called self scan. You'll know it, you just scan yourself and there is one person watching over seven or eight self scans and it goes and it's a bit, it's not very social. Lieven (36m 29s): I mean it's, you do it yourself. You say bye, you leave. I mean there is a social aspect in this iPad stuff. I mean you actually talk to someone. So it's for elderly people. I think it would be more fun to do your self scan while there's someone you can talk to. It's a different approach. And I also thought it would be very interesting for like say the clerks at railway stations, now you can buy your ticket in a vending machine, but sometimes you have a question and you need to know where do I need to get off the train and where would I need to get on the train? And those people are sitting there in this boring little, I dunno what the name is in English, (something not in English :), those boring little, it's not offices, but you know what I mean. Chad (37m 9s): Yeah. Lieven (37m 9s): That could be done by a screen, someone explaining, Okay, where would you like to go? I need to take it to, to Paris because it's almost Unleash and you need the tallies is leaving at six past 10 and if you enter this button, then you'll get your ticket there. Okay, but is is the direct No, it's going to stop in Brussles South out. And this is something which could easily be done by people working remote. And that actually would be a pretty interesting experience, I think. You don't need the person live in front of you, but you do need interaction. You could get the interaction by video, I think. I think it's worth trying out in some ways. Joel (37m 47s): I think it's the future. I ordered sandwiches at a place called Jimmy John's, which Chad knows Lieven may not. I ordered it on my phone. I walked into the restaurant, I saw a bag that said Joel on it. I took it and I walked out. The last time I was in Shake Shack, I went to a kiosk. I tapped out my order, I put in my credit card, I sat down until they called my name that my food was ready. I think this is just the way that it's gonna be. I think Chad, in your case, it's gonna move from offshoring paying $3 an hour to a virtual person and they're gonna scan your face or they're gonna know your credit card or something and they're gonna say, Hey Chad and Julie, welcome back to whatever. Joel (38m 28s): We got your room ready. We're excited to have you back. We've given you complimentary whatever because it's your 10th trip to our hotel. And you're gonna feel like it's more personable. It's not gonna feel like someone a thousand miles away. So the tech is gonna catch up to all this. I think the virtual offshoring whatever thing is a bridge to where we're going. But frankly, I'm perfectly fine not talking to people. I know that I'm pretty antisocial in general, but I'm fine tapping an order on a screen and then just being served what I ordered. That's a future I'm cool with. Now. I think there's some places like I don't wanna go to In and Out Burger and do the kiosk. Joel (39m 9s): I think the whole personal culture of in and out warrants people that are in white outfits and are really nice. I think Chick-fil-A is gonna have a hard time going totally digital because of their culture and how they service customers. But by and large, most places you can go, give me a kiosk, give me a mobile app, I'm good. And at some point a robot's gonna do all the cooking. There may not even be any people at all in these places, let alone people that are a thousand miles away. Chad (39m 38s): Yeah. What you're talking about is very minority report. And when we start talking about facial recognition, I think that's where everything breaks down is because maybe in China, they're doing it in China and it works well for them in China, but they don't have quite the privacy regulations that Europe has and then the US has. Joel (39m 58s): Yeah. Chad (39m 58s): I think from a scale standpoint, it's smart, it's amazing. The problem where this all falls down is wages and taxes. In this case the Freshy case, these individuals were actually working from Nicaragua. They weren't getting paid the minimum wage in Canada. And were they paying taxes in Canada? I don't think they were. They, you know, so it's one of those things. Joel (40m 23s): Are they getting healthcare from Canada? Chad (40m 24s): Yeah, of course not. Joel (40m 26s): Of course not. Chad (40m 27s): So course not. That's the thing is Canadians want to know how does this actually impact positively or negatively their economy? How can you do something like this at scale and offer Canadians. Let's say for instance, Canadians an opportunity to do this kind of job where instead of being just a cashier for one Freshie, you're a cashier for all the Freshies in Toronto, right? But you're getting paid a good minimum wage, taxes are getting taken out. Those types of things. These are the conversations that we need to have, I think. Lieven (41m 1s): Yeah. Joel (41m 1s): It's a very Canadian thing for them to think, are they getting paid our minimum wage? Are they getting our healthcare benefits as Canadians? Americans wouldn't have such care, I don't think if we saw a Nicaraguan virtual person on the screen. I think it would be as long as I get my $5 biggie meal, I don't care where they're coming from or what they're being paid. Lieven (41m 21s): Yeah, but it'll become a problem for your people if the people who are actually doing these jobs right now are losing their jobs because someone else in Nicaragua can do 'em for $1 a day and then things will change because this will impact economy. And that's the same problem I've got with platform economies. Like Fiverr. I mean with Fiverr for $5 I can have a logo designed by someone who's living in a city where a house only costs 100 euros a month. So it's just, it's not fair to have those people compete. That's Joel (41m 52s): Your choice of who you hire. Lieven (41m 53s): Yeah. Joel (41m 54s): You can hire only local contractors if you wish. Lieven (41m 57s): And pay 200 times as much. Joel (41m 59s): But that's on you. If that's on your conscious, then you can go ahead and pay more for a local contractor. Chad (42m 5s): The thing is though, when you talk about the US we used to manufacture things, then we outsourced it. So we don't do that anymore. Now we have a plethora of what? Fast food jobs. So we moved, this is the outsourcing of another aspect of jobs. Maybe they weren't as well paying as the manufacturing jobs in the US it's much different than in Europe. We're more focused on rugged individualism. Where in Europe you guys are more focused on the community. Joel (42m 34s): The collective. Chad (42m 35s): Yeah. Which to be quite frank, you know, this is gonna be a different discussion as the US starts to do something like this, it's all about how much, how much you know, can we pad the margin versus in Europe, who's paying for this? Where are the taxes going? Those types of things. Lieven (42m 51s): We do have rules and rules just to avoid social dumping. And this would be a new way of social dumping. Of course we have more experience with the problem given the situation Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The huge differences and wages 10, 15 years ago was getting better now. But all those people came working in the west because they earned more, even if we paid them less. And then there were new legislations about equal pay for, if you work for, even if you're from Romania, if you work in Belgium, you get the minimum wages from Belgium. Of course now it's evident it didn't was a few years ago. But this could be new kind of social dumping. Lieven (43m 32s): It could become a problem. Joel (43m 34s): Social dumping. Is that what Florida did to Martha's Vineyard? Chad? Is that the same thing? Chad (43m 39s): That's more human dumping, which is even worse. Joel (43m 43s): And with that Lieven Chad and Cheese (43m 44s): We out. We out. We out. OUTRO (44m 45s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

The winds of change isn’t just a killer Scorpions' tune from the ‘80s. It also defines recruitment marketing in 2022. Pay transparency is trending, TikTok is on the top of every employers’ lips and CEOs actually stand for something … both good and bad, depending on how you view the world. Jump on and enjoy the ride, as Julie Calli, President at RecruitmentMarketing.com President joins Chad & Cheese to dive into what’s hot. Pay Transparency article 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 (0s): 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 (24s): Oh yeah. Reports say around a hundred workers left Twitter after Elon Musk pitched his vision for the business. And Jeff Bezos could not be happier. Hi kids! You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does recruitment marketing. I'm your co-host, Joel "only the underwear is transparent" Cheeseman. Chad (43s): This is Chad "Give it away. Give it away. Give it away now" Sowash. Julie (47s): And Julie "show me the money" Calli. Joel (50s): On this episode, the joy of paid transparency, Totally tubular TikTok tips, and Patagonia gives it up. Let's do this. Chad (1m 1s): Totally tubular. Joel (1m 3s): Tubular TikTok tips. Chad (1m 5s): This to me is very Valley girl Joel. I kinda like it. I kinda like the Valley Girl. Joel (1m 10s): Joel Valley girl. She's a Valley girl. Okay, fine. For sure, for sure. Chad (1m 15s): Julie, were you ever into the Valley Girl scene? You probably are too young for that. Joel (1m 20s): She's too young. Julie (1m 21s): Oh, well that's flattering, but yeah, totally tubular. That's a flashback there. Joel (1m 28s): Gag me with a spoon. Chad (1m 29s): What was the movie that Nicholas Cage was in? That was Valley Girl. Joel (1m 33s): It was Valley girl, Yeah. Remember the show square Pegs? Square Pegs. Chad (1m 39s): Yes. Sarah Jessica Parker. Joel (1m 41s): Yes. Yeah. Julie (1m 42s): I think that those movies are responsible for destroying the human language of adding 'like' into every other word. Joel (1m 50s): Totally. Totally. Like, oh my God. Chad (1m 52s): Yeah. Very nice. Woo. Joel (1m 53s): Thanks for the trip down memory lane kids. So Chad (1m 58s): Shoutouts! Joel (1m 58s): Shoutouts. Love it. I'm gonna go first if that's okay? Chad (2m 1s): Okay. Joel (2m 2s): My shoutout goes to Jamie Diamond. Chad (2m 4s): Oh God. Joel (2m 4s): CEO of JP Morgan Chase. One of Chad's favorite CEOs. Chad (2m 8s): Jesus Christ. Joel (2m 10s): Took to Capitol Hill with a handful of other stuff shirts last week and was asked by representative Rashida Tlaib, a democrat of Michigan, whether JP Morgan has a policy against funding new oil and gas products, Diamond replied, wait for it, absolutely not and that would be the road to hell for America. Say what you want about Diamond, he stays in his lane. And you know that appeals to a certain demographic that loves the red meat that he tosses around. Recruiting and retention Genius. I say recruiting and retention genius. Chad (2m 45s): That's the one lane to hell is the lane he's on. Joel (2m 50s): It's the Road to Profits baby. That's that road. Chad (2m 54s): Gordon Gecko. Julie, what you got? Julie (2m 56s): I'd love to give a shout out to the Rothberg family and how at College Recruiter, they were very early adapters to pay transparency in jobs requiring it on all jobs posted on their site. And their purpose for doing that was to close the pay gaps. And that is really great purpose. And now as it becomes law, people are being mandated to do that. But they did it for a greater good. Joel (3m 24s): Doesn't saying the Rothberg family sound really prestigious? Chad (3m 27s): It does. It does. Joel (3m 29s): I'm a friend of the Rothberg family. Yes. Chad (3m 32s): Then you meet Steven, you're like, whoa, what's this? Joel (3m 35s): Yeah. Not quite the Roth Childs, but Julie (3m 38s): Well, hopefully your privileged enough to make their wonderful acquaintance. Chad (3m 43s): Wonderful. Especially faith. Especially Faith. My shout out to is get get ready, Julie. Recruitment marketing.com has new digs, so, Oh yeah. Julie, you and the team made a major upgrade to the look and feel of the site. So first and foremost, big, big ups for that. Thank you. How many contributors do you guys have on the site now writing for you, providing content? And last but not least, how can recruitment marketing and branding leaders request to contribute? Julie (4m 14s): Yeah. We have over 50 people in the industry who've contributed to content already. These are individuals who work in the space, who have some kind of experience in some area of recruitment marketing, and they're telling their stories. How did they get involved with the recruitment marketing? You know, what do they wanna share with the world? We're all trying to learn from each other and I think the best place to learn this rapid evolving industry is from each other. So thrilled to be providing a platform that elevates and celebrates recruitment marketers. So if you're interested in contributing, just email us@inforecruitmentmarketing.com. Joel (4m 54s): What will we see next? Any teasers on new additions to the site? Hint hint. Wink, wink. Julie (5m 2s): So we recently launched an event page, which allows you to look at all the events that are going on in the industry. And if you go to the event page and you see that you have an event or you know, an event that is not listed, you can submit that to us so we can add it to the index. It is free to have the events listed there. Why? Because how else are you going to look for all the things that are going on in the industry to decide what's best for you? You need one place to be able to find that. Joel (5m 32s): Yeah. Stop emailing me. Stop emailing me about events that you should go to. Go to recruitmentmarketing.com. They're all there. Jesus, they're all there. Can I interest anyone in some pay transparency? Oh, Julie recently published an article entitled The Benefits of Salary Transparency. Hello good SEO Practices. Hello, ood SEO Practices. In it, Julie outlines everything from improved workplace happiness and better diversity, while also highlighting a handful of companies doing it the right way. Julie, tell us about the article and a little bird told me a webinar on the topic recently took place as well. Julie (6m 18s): Yes. Pay transparency and required disclosure is quite a topic right now for people who work in recruitment marketing. This article was all about the benefits. There's so much to talk about in pay transparency, but a lot of companies are trying to convince, you know, people that are working in employer brand and recruitment marketing are trying to convince their companies why this is valuable. Why is this important? So this article was primarily put together as a resource to help people talk about why this is a good thing. The primary purpose to why pay transparency is becoming mandated is because we still, after 60 years of putting in the Civil Rights Act and creating equal opportunity and equal pay for all. Julie (7m 7s): 60 years later, we still have not closed the gaps. So more laws are coming into place to help close those gaps. And by disclosing compensation in the job descriptions, we, it is believed that this is going to help close some of those gaps. Chad (7m 22s): So I love reading this. I love the subtle kinda like sweet approach. We're not there a hundred percent right, from a regulatory standpoint. Mainly this is the carrot versus the stick. But do we really believe that lining out the reasons why paid transparency, salary transparency, will move the needle? No, not a bit. For, for example, we've heard for years that diversity helps companies drive innovation and bottom line profits. Growth, but the needle has barely moved on diversity. $9 billion with a B dollars spent every year in training alone and nothing kids zip zero nada. The case has been made over and over and again, little to no movement. Chad (8m 5s): So, you know, we're looking at female CEOs, really no bump there. We get one or two every now and again, we applaud. Nothing happens, right? So laying out the facts doesn't move old white men, the C-suite or the board of directors like Jamie Diamond, who really doesn't give two shits about what's happening other than his profits, right? So where salary transparency does work is shaming. Another example of the US Women's National Soccer Team found pay parity with the men's national soccer team only after through transparency, they sued and then they went public with their voices about fair and equal pay. Chad (8m 47s): They laid out the reasons why pay parity was necessary, but nothing happened until the shaming started. I only see one way forward, and that's legislation that makes pay transparency compulsory. I love the layout, but I just don't see the carrot working. We need the big stick of the government to force everybody into pay parity. Julie (9m 10s): Yeah, I would say if pay equity is about fairness, pay transparency is about accountability to fairness. Because right now, yeah, most companies, well, cuz you can have, you can be transparent and expose how inequitable you are, right? That's why most companies do not expose that. We did a survey in our webinar about pay transparency. It's about how many companies have done pay equity analysis and it was less than half, right? So how do you know that you're being equitable if you've, unless you've actually done an analysis to make sure that you are right. Is someone sitting in a room saying, Yeah, we're being fair? Julie (9m 50s): The only way to know that is to actually look at the data. And companies are often so surprised when they look at how much they have gaps. Gaps because of age, race, disability. You know, it's not just about men and women. It is about all types of discrimination that happen. And I'm an optimist. I believe in the good of people. I do not think people are out there intentionally paying people differently because of this person or that, but I think that things happen that create unconscious bias. I think that there's flawed process and there is a lack of accountability. Chad (10m 25s): Well, if they can get away with it, they will. Yeah. If they can get away with it, they will. Now, we also need to differentiate between the salary transparency that's going on jobs, like college recruiters doing, we've seen Indeed do, versus actual the individuals who've been working for those companies and demonstrating pay transparency within the organization. There's a huge difference between the two. So this is really just small little trickles into seeing what new people are getting paid. You have no clue what the person beside you is getting paid. That'se another step forward that we need to take. Julie (11m 1s): Yeah. Well, from a thousand of miles away, a mountain looks small, right? But as you get closer, it's gonna get bigger. And this is, I mean, Colorado talking about mountains, you know, they were the first and shout out to Colorado to be the first statewide required compensation be disclosed on the job description. Joel (11m 25s): Who else we got Colorado, New York City? Julie (11m 28s): Well, right now, Joel (11m 29s): I know we've talked about on the weekly show quite a bit. Julie (11m 32s): Right now, there are states that require disclosure upon request for certain circumstances and that's Connecticut... Joel (11m 39s): New York City. Julie (11m 41s): Maryland, Nevada, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Toledo, Ohio, not the whole state. And then Rhode Island is gonna start on the first of the year. But those are only during certain conditions, the ones that are requiring it on the actual job posting. Colorado was the first, we had New Jersey. Jersey City get added this year in April. New York, Ithaca was the most recent on September 1st. We have West Chester County on November 6th, and that's in New York. And then New York City, November 1st. But California, there's a law pending right now with the Governor. He has until September 30th to sign it. And that will really change things for California because they are not only the first to disclose it on the job description. Julie (12m 28s): They actually, in California on this bill, are proposing that companies have to disclose their pay equity gaps. That's a first. Joel (12m 39s): There's always unintended consequences when laws like this are passed. I think that we talked about Colorado where companies just said, Okay, we're not gonna post jobs in Colorado, which obviously doesn't help anybody. Where there's new laws, there are loopholes, there are companies that get a try to get around these things. What's your take on how companies are going to try to avoid, you know, following this law? Julie (13m 2s): Yeah, first I gotta say it great intentions, right? These laws are put in place for great intentions, but that does not mean it's gonna be easy, right? Technically, financially, operationally, companies may not be ready to do this. And I would say Colorado was the first one. I was in seat, I remember the moment someone came up to me and said, this is happening. And I knew the tech stack for a very large employer I was working with, who has very high levels of compliance required. And we didn't know how to solve it with the tech stack that they had. They did not have a way to only put salary on the Colorado distributed jobs. Julie (13m 43s): So we had to solve for, to close the gap and then just be compliant right away. We just stopped sending jobs that were available nationwide to Colorado because we didn't have a way to put it on there. We couldn't distribute it to the whole nation. So just don't send it to Colorado. Well, Chad (13m 60s): They could've easily just posted a, a specific position to Colorado. That would've been an easy fix. Julie (14m 5s): Well, they had hundreds of jobs they would need to read. Chad (14m 9s): I mean, they want, if they're looking for talent. So what? I mean, they're all these damned excuses for companies not to do the right thing. That's bullshit. I don't want to hear that. You have resources do it. Julie (14m 21s): Yes. Well look at, you can see tha it's a problem. There's so many job postings where in the bottom of the job posting it says, excluding Colorado. Joel (14m 31s): Wow. Wow. Wow. That's a note for the vendors. That's for the vendors too, Chad, not just the employers, vendors need to make it easy. Chad (14m 38s): Well, the only way vendors are gonna do it is if employers push them to do Joel (14m 43s): Yeah, yeah. And, it's the Spider-Man gif, right? Where there's three Spider-Man pointing at each other, Spiderman's, Spiderman's, whatever. So everyone's like, it's the vendor's fault. No, it's the employer's fault. They're not telling us to do it. It's the state's fault. It's the government. Like, Julie (14m 55s): Well, in the end, it's the employer. The employer is responsible for being compliant and they need to disclose it. So where I think, you know, tech companies be warned, that's where the employer's gonna come forward and say, Hey, I pay for this tech and it needs to do this. Chad (15m 11s): Yeah, it needs to comply with the regulations and it's not, and that's on you. And we're seeing regulations like as we talk to, like Commissioner Sonderling and the E E O C where they're talking about different regulations that are happening locally that will actually keep the vendors will start to pull the vendors under the microscope, which I think is, which is big. Julie (15m 32s): Oh, I'd say, you know, this is where the trifecta comes into place, right? Recruitment needs an ATS. HR needs to be compliant and marketers need to market. We need ad tech. So ATSs are not built to be ad techs. And and that's where you could say, Hey, we need to run different ads than the ATS. The ATS, many of them are built one rec, one posting and they can't understand that one rec may need 50 different ads, one for each state to have different compliance and different laws. It's still one job. It's the evolution to ad tech meeting recruitment tech. Joel (16m 13s): I'm optimistic as is Julie. So cfo.com article came out recently that said 62% of companies are planning to disclose pay rate information. Now planning to and doing it are two different things, but that's at least over 50% if you're being pragmatic about this issue. We saw that LinkedIn reported that when people put remote jobs or work from home in the title of their posting, the number of views went way through the roof. Is there some argument to say like, this is just a good business strategy? Chad (16m 43s): It is! Joel (16m 43s): If you put pay, you know, if you put salary range on a job posting, you're probably gonna get more traffic and you're probably going to attract the right people who know that they command this salary. Or you know what, that's way too low for me. So you're actually pre-screening with salary ranges. Like, are companies getting this or not? Chad (17m 5s): But this is like a kid who won't eat his peas. The peas are good for you. Now when mom tells 'em to go out to the tree and get and fetch a switch, then guess what they start doing? They start apologizing and then talking about how they're going to eat their peas. That's how all this shit's working. Joel (17m 22s): Did you say fetch a switch? What is this 1942? Chad (17m 26s): Yes Joel (17m 27s): Fetch a switch. Chad (17m 28s): Fetch a switch. Julie (17m 29s): Well, this is the same coin, but with two sides, right? We're companies, this is fact are now going to be mandated to disclose compensation on jobs in certain states or locations right? Chad (17m 44s): Here comes the stick. Julie (17m 45s): There you go. There's a stick, right? So you're gonna have to do that as an employer. You have to, it's the law. But if you flip the coin around the other side and you say, Okay, now what about your employees? What does it say that you're going to disclose compensation to the public, right? Cause once it's on a job description, it's out to the world. Everyone can see it. Your competitors. Job seekers. Maybe even your customers, see what you're paying your people. But then what does it tell your employees? If you don't tell your own employees what the compensation potential is for them in an organization? Are you going to leave them to shop your competitors and what jobs they could have there and make more? Or are you going to create a path to increase compensation based on a plan that you can communicate and control inside your organization? Julie (18m 32s): So, there's gonna be a lot of question of trust. If companies only disclose where it's mandated and they don't provide that trust to their own employees to see that information. That that's what's on the table is these same coin, two sides. These things are interconnected. Joel (18m 49s): By the way, the CFO article outlined the, the number one reason for companies not giving a salary range, it was administrative complexity, was the number one reason. Chad (19m 0s): Total bullshit. Julie (19m 1s): Yes. Chad (19m 1s): Why they weren't doing it is what it is. Julie (19m 4s): It's hard. Chad (19m 5s): No, it's not. You don't know how many companies I've talked to and their ADP systems don't buy that shit. Do not buy it. It is not as hard as everybody wants to make it seem to be. It's an excuse. Julie (19m 18s): The larger organization, the more difficult it is. I Chad (19m 21s): I've worked with companies that are 200 hundreds of thousands of people. That is total craziness. Joel (19m 26s): All right, you too. Take your corners and we'll be right back. Let's take a breather and we'll talk about TikTok. Chad (19m 35s): TikTok? Did somebody mention TikTok? Joel (19m 37s): All right guys. More content gold from our girl, Julie Calli. She published an article last month on How to Get Started with Recruiting on TikTok. She outlines how to build an audience, the power of storytelling, dives into the algorithm and much, much more. Julie, tell us about the article and wasn't there also a webinar about this topic? Chad (20m 4s): Webinars galore. Julie (20m 4s): Yeah, talk the talk. Joel (20m 7s): Ooh, Julie (20m 7s): Talk the Tok. We, I mean everybody has been messaging me. I mean this is like a very common question. My boss told me, I need to get our ads up on TikTok. How can you help me? What? Right. That is the most common thing that people are just trying to follow up with is that their boss told them that they had to get up there. Why? Why do you need to be on TikTok? Joel (20m 28s): By the way, you can't just post jobs on TikTok, right? Julie (20m 32s): No, you cannot. It is not a jobs platform. But I understand why, right? There's so much media attention has been given to TikTok because of its incredible rise in such a short period of time. It has over a billion active monthly users, over 552 billion videos viewed each month. That means 167 million views per minute. Yes, there is an audience there. So fish where the fish are, there's a big pond fully stocked right there. Joel (21m 7s): And Chad and are only 2% of those views by the way. So what was on the webinar? Was it just the how-tos? And so talk about some of that stuff. Julie (21m 15s): Well a lot of people just need education on like, what is this? Right? Can I expect it to be like LinkedIn or Facebook? Is it like YouTube? People are trying to understand what is it similar to and where is it in the market? And I would say that it is more similar to YouTube than it is to Facebook or LinkedIn. Chad (21m 38s): Say Instagram. Julie (21m 39s): Yes, it's a form of entertainment really, primarily the users are there for entertainment and it's short form video, which we, you know, are finding that people are digesting in tremendous amounts. Because it's short form you can watch a lot of videos in a short period of time. Chad (21m 55s): Didn't they just extend it to 10 minutes? They're talking about actually having 10 minute videos? Which is weird because you're used to just flipping through and seeing like the next video, the next video, the next video. So that could change the algorithm, which I think is their secret sauce. Julie (22m 13s): Yeah, they're testing that 10 minutes. Chad (22m 16s): The best algorithm in any social media I think that's out, there cuz they just feed you what you want. Now that could be feeding you hate, it could be feeding you joy. It could be feeding you Joel's favorite big booty Latinas/ Joel (22m 30s): And bug fights Chad (22m 31s): And bug fights and bug fights. But I think, their algorithm is just far beyond what anybody else has out there. Julie (22m 36s): Yeah, well, you know, as humans we just wanna constantly devour new things, right? Try and taste sample. I mean, look at our streaming activity. Do we just sit down and watch one episode of something that's streaming? No, we stay up all night and we binge watch the whole thing. That's what they're doing, they're feeding that nature of us looking to constantly consume. And they've been doing it in short form bites and yeah, they're testing 10 minutes because I think what they are finding is people want more context into what they're viewing sometimes. And that 10 minutes might provide that opportunity. So Joel (23m 7s): I think the algo is a really great opportunity and something that really sets sort of traditional social media apart. Because companies generally think, Oh God, I have to build an audience, I have to get followers. You know, I have to do all these things before anyone will actually see my video. Well, with TikTok you could have nobody following you at all and have a great video with great content and the algorithm will make sure that your video gets viewed. And I don't think companies realize you don't have to build a huge following to have major impact on TikTok. And whether it's, you know, our boy at Sherwin Williams that was doing paint, you know, paint videos, it got him fired. But that's a great example of like, if you just create good content that people want to consume, you can have a tremendous platform on TikTok. Joel (23m 53s): But I'm also curious about, TikTok was making a lot of noise around getting into the employment game about a year or so ago. What do you know have an idea of where they are with that now? If they still care about employment, like they said they did? Chad (24m 7s): TikTok resumes. Joel (24m 7s): Yeah. Like what's going on on that front? Any idea? Julie (24m 11s): Yeah, there were a few, I'd say very large consumer based organizations that they brought into a very private beta last year to test out doing, you know, using TikTok for recruitment. It was very exclusive. I happened to, you know, be very close to an organization that was in that beta and it had a tremendous response. But it is overwhelming, right? We don't, we're very used to in this space digesting applicants and in ATS using all of those tools to identify the right candidates and bring them through our process. It is very hard to take short form video today and turn that into a process that we ingest. Chad (24m 55s): It's not scalable. It's not scalable right? Julie (24m 59s): At this time. No. Chad (24m 59s): So if we think about it and being able to provide practical use and application for TikTok, it should be more around, and correct me if I'm wrong, it should be more around the messaging, not selling, but the messaging of the organization, the purpose of the organization and what I saw, what I've seen from Costco, and this is actually an employee not from the corporate account, but the employee who was a manager was going over benefits, was going over the first day, was going over things that actually matter to somebody who might be wanting to to look for, you know, a job at Costco. But this wasn't in an apply here thing. And that's where I think we get like mixed up talking about resumes and I mean, that's just not scalable. Chad (25m 42s): But what is scalable is your voice and your message. So I guess when you're talking to companies and they ask you about this, what do you tell them about TikTok? How to use TikTok, how not to use it? Julie (25m 53s): Storytelling, you know, as you were saying right there, storytelling is the ideal use for it today because you can communicate a message, reach a large new audience with your story in a short digestible format. The storytelling can create influence and awareness. Right? Someone may not have thought of you as an employer of choice and you can now influence and make them aware of that. They weren't searching a job site, they were on a platform being entertained and now you made them think about it. That is influence. And when we talk about having, you know, very low unemployment rates and you know, talent gaps to fill, you might not be able to poach people that are working outta organizations by just posting a job. Julie (26m 37s): You need to influence them in places that they are. Like TikTok, where there's a huge audience that you have the opportunity to get in front of. Joel (26m 44s): I think a lot of companies are just gonna be lazy about it and just do ads on TikTok. Any talk about like strategies around ads on TikTok? What are companies doing that yet? Or is it sort of a green opportunity? Julie (26m 59s): Ads is probably the easiest way to do it right now is cuz you can control your content a little more, be more targeted with it. Yes. And that doesn't mean you have to commit to having a profile and all of those pieces, but you will need video. You need video, it's short form video. That's what the platform is. You can't use a job posting to advertise on TikTok. So we pulled our audience to ask them, are you using video today? And 52% said yes, we're using it a little 21% said yes everywhere and 25% said no, but someday. Julie (27m 38s): So that gives you a sense of how ready the market is. Joel (27m 45s): And this is a webinar for recruitmentmarketing.com and I'm amazed that's only how many are using video. Chad (27m 51s): These companies understand that they can't, first and foremost, they can't control what's being said about them, right? Joel (27m 57s): Yeah. Chad (27m 57s): They can only control yes. What's being said, you know, through their own pipelines and then also being able to enlist other employees to be able to share their stories, right? So I think, it's incredibly important as we sit and wait and we watch being corporate America while they watch, they'll see TikTok firings and leavings and I mean, just all the other bullshit that happens on day to day because this generation is much more transparent than us Xers were, or definitely the boomers were right? Everything is stuffed in a closet. We don't say a thing about anything. Our laundry doesn't go out for the public. Oh, hell no. That's not how Gen Z does business. Julie (28m 38s): Yeah, I would say there are things you can control and there's things that you can't, but you can influence. Social media? You cannot control it. You can influence it, right? You can put things out in your name and your brand and provide paths for your own employees to evangelize a great story of what it is like to work for you. Now you can provide that. But you're a fool, if you think that people aren't already talking about you. I mean there, talk about the dark web and things like TikTok, where people are openly transparent. Oh my goodness, I am so entertained by watching all of these people just spill what it's like working at organizations, people saying, I'm three days from my last day let me tell you how it is at this company. Julie (29m 28s): This is Glassdoor gone wild. Joel (29m 29s): Glassdoor, gone wild. I like that. Julie (29m 32s): There's like that. The truth is, is that people are being so transparent and consuming all of this. A great example is salary transparent street. Young woman just hit the street. She was trying to figure out how to negotiate a higher compensation for herself and realized that she really didn't have access to enough information on how much people make. So she created a whole profile on TikTok where she just walks up to people randomly on the street, asks 'em who they are, what they do, how much they make. And it is unbelievable how many people are willing to provide that information. It now is creating this path. Julie (30m 12s): She has millions of likes on her videos for people consuming, trying to understand the marketplace and how much do people make and what do they do? Chad (30m 21s): They wanna know it. Julie (30m 23s): So it's out there, it's already it. Transparency and compensation is viral on TikTok. So if you think that you're gonna hide that information and control it, not in the future, you won't be able to. Chad (30m 34s): Not everybody's good at negotiating, okay? Not everybody wants to negotiate, but they do want to be treated fairly. And over the years, all we've done is this, well, individual negotiates for their own shit. And again, that is nothing but a corporate narrative to be able to actually allow females to get paid less because females don't negotiate like us dumb men do. We're we're dumb, but we're boisterous, right? So we ask for more and we get it. So, I mean, it's one of those things where yes, now there's this transparency that's out there, not just from the federal government, but from TikTok, the Chinese government. And, here we go. Joel (31m 11s): Sounds a lot like my five year old. You can't control him, you can only hope to contain him. All right, One of Chad's favorite brands, Let's talk a little Patagonia. This is from the New York Times. A half century after founding Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard has given the company away. Rather than selling the company or taking it public, his family has transferred their ownership of Patagonia valued at about $3 billion to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization that were created to preserve the company's independence and ensure that all of its profits, some $100 million a year are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe. Joel (31m 59s): Call him the anti Musk and the anti Diamond. Julie, what's your take on this move and what having a founder like this means for recruitment marketing as well as maybe some retention strategies? Julie (32m 14s): Can a clothing company save a planet? I think this is tremendous. I mean, this is the market leader, certainly here in the us No company's ever done anything like that before. We talk about how important it is to have purpose in your employer brand and connect to real meaning and influence of creating a better world. And that candidates are attracted to that. Employees wanna work for a company that has strong purpose. How can you get any better than that? Save the planet. Not only are they a sustainable company in the way that they act and they stand, but they, they're actually giving everything back to that purpose. Julie (32m 53s): So every dollar made is saving the planet. Who wouldn't wanna work for them? Absolutely an aspiring leader. Joel (33m 2s): JP Morgan obviously have no interest in working for Patagonia. Chad (33m 6s): So right on their website, the new pretty much vision statement is "Earth is now our shareholder" right there on the website. That's inspirational. Apparently not all old white dudes are assholes. Take note Jamie Diamond, have you, have you, have you read Yvon's letter on the website? I mean, it's pretty moving. I mean, you know, he says if we could do the right thing while making enough money to pay the bills, we can influence customers and other businesses and maybe change the system along the way. He laid out his options and first was selling, possibly selling and then donating the proceeds. Chad (33m 46s): But that was short term. Going public. But then he thought, you know, that's more of a disaster than anything else or what he would like to call 'going purpose', which is exactly what they're doing now. And I thought that was pretty amazing. And to be quite frank, I mean, they are a cult brand and company. It's all about what you believe in. The basic premise can compel or repel talent in the words of Charlotte Marshall, if you haven't heard that episode, it's entitled Should You Repel Candidates? But, seriously, this is a huge positioning statement for Patagonia. Chad (34m 26s): Not just for attracting talent who believe in their move movement, but also customers. As soon as I heard this, I love Patagonia as it was. I I went back out and I bought more Patagonia. You know, I have to say that this is something that will drive people who believe in the movement, not just to go work, but also to go buy and maybe buy and work. Julie (34m 50s): Yeah, I mean, it makes you wanna buy from them as a consumer. It makes you wanna support them as a company. They're championing, you know, they're setting the bar for everyone to follow. Joel (35m 3s): We talk a lot about sort of the cult of brands and employers of choice and we're getting more and more into CEOs leading the vision and that cult brand we talked about Elon Musk on the show, Jamie Diamond. So CEOs tell that story about what our company is about and ultimately that opinion, attitude, that vibe, that mojo, whatever is going to appeal to certain employee and retain a certain employee. And I think if you don't have a CEO that has an opinion, that has, you know, a voice you might be losing out to the companies that do have CEOs that do express opinions, whether they're against or for whatever you believe in, it does direct the company in a certain way and it appeals to a certain employee and it retains a certain employee when you do that, for good or bad. Joel (35m 56s): So I think companies that don't have visual, you know, out in the open CEOs are losing out to those that do. Julie (36m 6s): Yeah, I mean, and Patagonia has only 4% turnover and retail and product sector, right today averages over 13%. So I mean that shows not only can they attract the talent, but they can also retain them. They are a hundred percent retention rate among working women mothers. Chad (36m 29s): Whoa. Julie (36m 29s): And that's because they have women in leadership roles. They're paying to send nannies on business trips to embrace and support work life and they host childcare right on their facilities. I mean, things like this make a difference in people's choice of where they wanna work. Joel (36m 47s): It's taking care of your people. Julie (36m 50s): And, you know, you said something before Chad about attracting a talent. I think they're pretty upfront about that. You know, Patagonia doesn't usually advertise on job sites. They don't attend job fairs or hire corporate head hunters. This straight from their website says, we prefer instead to seek out people through an informal network of friends, colleagues, business associates. We don't want someone who can just do the job. We want the best person for the job. And we don't look for stars seeking special treatment and perks. Our best efforts are collaborative, a culture of reward and ensemble of players. Joel (37m 30s): Look at us solving all the problems of recruitment. Chad (37m 34s): In one podcast! Joel (37m 35s): Post your salaries, stand for something and you can't post jobs on TikTok people. Chad (37m 41s): And don't be a fool. Joel (37m 44s): And on that note, another one in the can we out everybody. Chad and Cheese (37m 47s): We out. Julie (37m 48s): We out. OUTRO (37m 49s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (38m 35s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

No need to get into specifics, but we all know about the walk of shame. Turns out, corporations aren't immune to taking the proverbial shuffle home, still wearing last night's now-wrinkled clothes. Just ask Indeed, who's become Google's latest corporate conquest. Don't worry, it'll make sense, just have a listen. Also this week, Calendly gets in the employment game, the nursing shortage is real (but we have solutions) and Walmart tries to hypnotize the metaverse-lovin' youth of America (spoiler alert: it doesn't go well). Then it's time for a little Buy-or-Sell with TurboHire, Hofy, and Remofirst. You're welcome. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. INTRO (1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel 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 (22s): Oh, yeah. Taco Bell's bringing back a discontinued item and letting the people choose which one? Vote enchiritos everybody. Hey kiddies, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your cohost, Joel "Gangsters Paradise" Cheeseman. Chad (39s): And this is Chad "It's the end of the world as we know it" Sowash Joel (43s): On this week's show, Indeed's Walk of Shame. Calendly schedules some hire time, and we take a little trip to Walmartland. Let's do this. Julio's dead man. Dude, Chad (56s): I saw that this morning. How old was he? Joel (59s): 59. Chad (1m 0s): Oh, come on, dude. Joel (1m 2s): They said he went to the bathroom and never came out. Chad (1m 4s): It sounds like an Elvis kind of thing. Joel (1m 6s): Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Like was eating fried banana sandwiches in the bathroom or what? Chad (1m 12s): Banana sandwiches. Joel (1m 14s): I don't know. I don't too, too young to go, Too young to go. Chad (1m 18s): I'm definitely too young to go, man. Yeah. Gangsters paradise. We need to be playing that today. It's gonna be on, it's gonna be on loop at the Sowash house, that's for sure. Joel (1m 26s): Yeah. You gotta, you gotta throw in some Amish Paradise by weird Al Yankovic in occasionally in that loop. Chad (1m 32s): So shoutouts! Joel (1m 33s): What you got, man, The world's crazy, right? Chad (1m 35s): The world is crazy. Joel (1m 37s): Well, this is really crazy, Chad. Yeah, my first shoutout goes to former Vice President Dan Quayle. Work with me here. You'll get it when I get done here. So. Chad (1m 49s): Okay. Joel (1m 49s): You probably saw in the news that NASA recently slammed, danced into an asteroid to see if they could knock it off course, which is totally crazy in its own like podcast show. But we're not in that lane. Well, we have Dan Quayle to thank apparently in 1991, the then VIP endorsed the idea for the federal government to buy telescopes to track potentially hazardous asteroids and use modified strategic defense initiative, anti missile weapons in orbit to destroy them. People laughed like they did with most things. Dan Quayle back in 1991. Joel (2m 28s): But. Chad (2m 30s): Potato. Joel (2m 30s): Here we are. Vox Media said quote, "by today's standards, Dan Quayle would basically be George Washington" end quote. Potato, potato, Chad. Here's the fellow Hoosier Dan Quayle for saving mankind. Chad (2m 47s): The world is fucking crazy this week, dude. We had that. We had Hurricane Ian hits Florida. People are fleeing Russia, not Ukraine. Citizens are fleeing Russia. Then we have Iran, this one where the morality police have stoked outrage. Here's, we actually had one of our listeners who's Iranian born, she reached out to us and we'll let her fill you in on what's happened. Joel (3m 15s): Yeah. She wanted us to said light on this issue. And we said, Absolutely. So here is Sepi describing the state of Iran. Sepi (3m 24s): Here's what's going on in Iran. A 22 year old girl named Mahsa Amini was arrested on September 13 by the so-called morality police for having some of her out of her scarf or not wearing a proper hijab. She was beaten by the police and was moved to a hospital where she went in a coma and died shortly after on September 16th. The Islamic Republic and the notorious morality police have been oppressing women for more than 40 years. Women and men who have had it with all the injustice and corruption of the regime are protesting against the regime for 10 days now, not just for the mandatory hijab, but for a bigger picture, to break free from a government, a ma-functioning system that has turned a rich, beautiful country to this poor state. Sepi (4m 16s): What's happening there is scary. Brave people of my country are fighting empty handed with an army that has all the weapon and zero mercy. They don't mind killing everyone just to stay in power. So far, 60 people have been killed and many arrested. The regime has shut down the internet to block any gates to the free world. Us that live away from our homeland are hoping that people around the world will be our voice. The strongest message we have for you is that Iran is not Islamic Republic. Please understand the difference and help us by sharing this message. Chad (4m 55s): It's amazing. If you take a look at pictures of Iran before 1979, when the Islamic Revolution happened, it looks like the United States. It's trendy, it's stylish. free. I mean, it's amazing over four decades, what has happened to Iran. Joel (5m 14s): Yeah, it's a beautiful country. Pictures of Tehran are just breathtaking and it's amazing. You know, things like this are equal parts heart wrenching, but also I think you feel sort of helpless as an American. And so, we're happy to share the message, but also, you know, I think in terms of if you want to be active around this, you know, write your member of Congress, your senator, you know, I know that Canada, for example, placed some, some restrictions on trade with Iran in light of this issue. I'm sure there are causes out there that help, you know, women that are escaping this situation. But yeah, it's sort of helpless as an American, and you feel like there's not much you can do. Obviously, we're not going to invade the country to, you know, free the citizenry. Joel (5m 59s): She brought up a good point in terms of, you know, the government has all the guns, you know, and like it or not, our country was, you know, founded on the basis of let's give everybody guns, which obviously leads to bad shit. But it also shines a light on this where, you know, if they're populous, you know, had arms, would it be different? Not an argument about Second Amendment, but it just a lot of people in other countries wonder why the hell America is why America is, and things that are happening around the world in places like Iran, shed light on why our founders wanted our public people to be armed. But anyway, that's my soapbox. Chad (6m 37s): I think it's important that we think about this from the standpoint of we just took rights away from women number one and January 6th. It's not easy to find this balance. And we're kind of teetering the United States as we look at Iran, as we look at it was Italy who just elected a very far right individual into government. So, you know, it's we have to be aware of this. We can't just sit in our HR rooms and just focus on what we do. We have to understand what's happening world abroad. Joel (7m 9s): I think it was Ben Franklin when asked what kind of government we would have, He said, a republic, if you can keep it. So it's a fine line between authoritarian governments and freedom. Chad (7m 20s): It is. Joel (7m 21s): Well, now that we've dragged everyone down to the emotional depths of hell, I'm gonna try to bring us back with some more lighthearted, shoutouts if I may. Chad (7m 31s): Some Chad and Cheese stupid shit. Joel (7m 34s): Our friends over in Manchester, England. , the Gorilla marketing extraordinaire, are added again, the job board that once since sent you and me, bikini briefs and condoms has now dressed up local statues and gave them signs that say things like, "Is your career standing stellar than me? Perhaps it's time to download ". Then not quite as good as the truck with the sign that said, Download for a better BJ and better job under bj, but still a solid effort from our friends at . So shout out to them. And my last one goes out to a friend of mine named Brian Moore, who was a coworker at Jobing back in the day. Joel (8m 20s): He was so well loved. They actually had shirts made up that said, "be more like B. Moore. Anyway, I worked with him back at Jobing and he's one of the most positive dudes you'll ever meet. Anyway, he started a company called Anthym. That's Anthym with a y - it's a team building experience company. And they have been selected to present it at TechCrunch, Disrupt. Chad (8m 42s): Cool. Joel (8m 42s): One of only 200 companies to present at the Startup Battlefield. And they're the only Arizona based company to make the cut. So good things happen to good people. Shout out to my friend Brian Moore out there in Phoenix. Chad (8m 56s): Go get him. Joel (8m 57s): He deserves some free shit. Chad (8m 58s): That's right. And you do that at chadcheese.com. Go up to the upper right hand corner, click on free, or we'll talk about events in a minute. But there are plenty of things to do at chadcheese.com, especially win free shit. Joel (9m 10s): It's almost like Walmartland. There's so much to do. Chad (9m 14s): Don't jump ahead. Joel (9m 15s): I know I gotta tease, I gotta tease the audience of where we're going next. Well, some other people that deserve some free shit. We got some birthdays. Chad (9m 23s): Wait a minute before we get there, we gotta say free shit brought to you by Aspen Tech Labs who will drop beer at your front door. Textkernel. Two bottles of Whiskey kids, one from Chad, one from Cheese and JobGet is our Chad and Cheese t-shirt sponsor powering the coolest Chad and Cheese T-shirt yet! You're gonna love these. Joel (9m 51s): Yeah, they started shipping this week, Chad. So we should hopefully start seeing some social media gold and some fine looking people wearing the new Chad and Cheese t-shirts. And some of those people are celebrating birthdays this week as well. Let's get to them. So, as you know, our birthdays are sponsored by our friends at Plum sfx (10m 11s): Happy Birthday! Joel (10m 12s): Who have graciously decided to give one lucky birthday each month a bottle of premium rum! Rum with Plum! Everybody thanks to them for sponsoring our birthday Shoutout. So number one, Stella Cheeseman celebrates a birthday. Yes. My little girl celebrates 13 years on the planet this week and everyone tells me that has daughters that that 13 is when they hate you and they know more than you and you're the the nerdiest person in the world. So I'm really looking forward to my daughter despising me in light of her 13th birthday! Chad (10m 48s): I think that happens more with mom than it does with dad though I think it's kind of flips from one to the other. Joel (10m 53s): I'll report back. We'll have ongoing ongoing reports of how my daughter feels about me on the show. Also family specific, my sister-in-law and also Canada's best employment lawyer, Casey , celebrates a birthday this month as well as our favorite European Lieven celebrates a birthday this week. So we'll have to have a drink or 10 in Paris to celebrate his birthday when we go to Paris this month. Kevin Grossman, Brett , another former Jobing guy, Chuck Liam McGuire. And our friend Daniel Fellows, don't call him Brian out of the UK celebrates a birthday. Joel (11m 36s): So congratulations everybody. Another trip around the sun. sfx (11m 40s): Happy Birthday! Chad (11m 41s): Excellent. So you already, you talked a little bit about going to Paris, but before we do that, before we do that Inspire HR is happening in Nashville this coming week. We're gonna be on stage, we're gonna be in the bars, we're gonna be on Broadway, you name it. We're gonna be all over Nashville. If you're in Nashville or even close! Message us and we can possibly get you hooked up with tickets. Joel (12m 4s): We can definitely hook you up with tickets. Who sponsors our travel? Chad, who do we have to thank for that? Chad (12m 11s): This little firm's been around for over 50 years for God's sakes, named Shaker Recruitment Marketing. I don't have my hat close to me, but Shaker Recruitment Marketing makes us feel good and look good as we travel, because we're gonna be going to Paris after Nashville. Unleashed World in Paris. If you haven't attended Unleashed in Paris and drop everything, go to chadcheese.com, click on the events in the upper right hand corner, get registered. There's actually a 20% discount there kids. Then you can catch the Vonq with the Chad and Cheese. We've got a rooftop pre-conference Unleashed party powered by our friends over at Vonq. Chad (12m 52s): Invites are limited. Invites are limited. So if you want to tip back a few drinks with the Chad and Cheese, hit us up on the dms and we can get you the registration link. Joel (13m 3s): I think we're gonna have our friends at send some condoms so no one catches the Vonq while they're in Paris. That'll be nice. Chad (13m 11s): We're gonna be on the floor at Unleashed. Joel (13m 13s): Face down on the floor, probably. Chad (13m 17s): More than likely. Chad and Cheese podcast pit is going to make a return, but it's also going to have Matt Alder, the Tech Talk podcast and also John Canard, who will be pimping out the Unleashed Cast podcast. Keith Sonderling, EEOC commissioner and Louise Riondel might be news for you. Joel, who is the co secretary to the Council of Europe's Committee on Artificial Intelligence. Man, can I get a fricking title there? Yes. Kids we're bringing the big guns to Paris to have big in real AI conversations. Joel (13m 56s): Well, if our friend Matt Alder, that British guy doesn't bring you some of the most peaty earthy charcoaly Scotch possible? I'm gonna be pissed off. Chad (14m 6s): I want some ABERFELDY. I want some ABERFELDY. Joel (14m 10s): Left, right? Chad (14m 11s): Oh, God. Joel (14m 11s): All right Chad, it's football season and you know what that means? It means fantasy football with Chad and Cheese. So let's quickly go over the leaderboard for the league sponsored by our friends at FactoryFix. All right, starting from first to worst. Here we go. Christy, "back to back" Kelly. That's right. She's been number one for two weeks going Rick "James" Gillum Ya boy "Cheesy does it". Jason "Bateman" Putnam. Serge "order me a double double from Timmy's Boudro" "Broadway Joe" Wilke, Chad "Powers" Sowash. I know you like that one. Christopher "Robin" Manion. Dennis "like Rat out of the cellar" Joel (14m 51s): Tupper, Dan "Aykroyd" Shoemaker, Matt "hamburger" Hill, Mike "D" Schaeffer. The only winless team, by the way, doing FactoryFix the football sponsor proud. Chad (15m 3s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel (15m 3s): They should have had something in the closet that said, we cannot be last in this league, but here we are. Yeah. Chad (15m 9s): And just put this out there. I beat Christie last week, so she was number one, but I still gotta win off of it, so. Joel (15m 16s): Hmm. Now she, number one and number two face off this week. Yeah. So if she can hold her crown that's saying something. Chad (15m 24s): That's pretty solid. Joel (15m 28s): Get 'em Christie. Chad (15m 31s): TOPICS! Joel (15m 31s): Dude, what's up with Indeed? Chad (15m 33s): Okay, so I want you to picture this. Indeed wakes up with a bad hangover in a totally random room, peaks over and sees Google for jobs laying asleep right beside them. They cringe, get up trying their damnedest not to make any noise, to wake up Google for Jobs, grab their clothes and find their way out of the room. Indeed is experiencing the Google for Jobs walk of shame because every job site in the world has been in bed with Google for Jobs and Indeed was the star volleyball player who proudly said they didn't need to get in bed with Google for Jobs. And then at a point of weakness, it happens. Chad (16m 13s): Indeed, not the Glassdoor backdoor, but Indeed is now officially listing jobs in Google for jobs. Joel (16m 24s): What? Chad (16m 24s): Yep. Joel (16m 24s): What? Chad (16m 25s): It's happening. Joel (16m 26s): That only took five years to get together. So yeah, for some context, Google for Jobs launches in 2017. Indeed famously says, we're not playing, we're taking our ball and going home. They've held pretty firm. There's been some conjecture that maybe their Glassdoor jobs are being over there. I love your backdoor Glass Door referenced by the way. How have we not used that on a title yet? And yeah, so one of our listeners let us know that, hey, Indeed Jobs are now being seen on Google for jobs. I did my own little research and by God they are there so Indeed has acquiesced and put their jobs up there. It's worth noting for the kids out there that in 2006, I believe Craigslist blocked Indeed Jobs or Indeed from indexing their jobs, if only Monster and CareerBuilder had done the same, Indeed may have not have become what they were. Joel (17m 21s): You know, I think that Indeed had to make a choice, you know, either keep spending huge amounts of money on TV spots and AdWords or succumb to Google. My guess is Indeed is feeling a lot of pressure as they raise prices to generate traffic and Google is at least a partial remedy for those expenses. I sense they're spending a lot on programmatic solutions as well. The likes of , for example, I think are getting checks from Google to promote their jobs. It also supports the notion to me that people have zero brand loyalty when it comes to job sites and it also supports the power of Google when people go to find a job. Chad (17m 59s): Yeah, yeah. Well I think it's interesting because Indeed's apply spot isn't like far to the left. If you take a look at it. Well, all the jobs that I've seen is they've been not at the number one apply spot because Google has this shitty, we're gonna allow everybody to have a button on the apply of the actual job description. And if Indeed I think was involved early, they probably would've had that number one spot. They would've been right there. But now they've waited and taken the walk of shame and their button's gonna be pretty much pushed far to the right for a while. I mean, the user experience, it hasn't gotten any better for Google for jobs, I mean, at least from the apply process standpoint. Chad (18m 45s): So I guess Indeed, as you'd said, needed to acquiesce because they needed more traffic. And the big question is for all of these other companies, these other vendors who have been in bed with Indeed for so long, how do they feel about this? Joel (18m 58s): You know, it's a good point that you mentioned the Google, I guess, placement or ranking in those results and yeah, it's like Indeed is a brand new site in regards to that algorithm, and they're gonna have to prove, which I think they'll eventually do. People will see Indeed, they know Indeed or recognize it. I think more people will click on that. I don't think Google has to change that much. They're fucking Google. They can have a substandard product and they're still gonna get people go, Oh, I need a job. Where do I go? Well, like I find everything else I go to Google. So as long as it's a a decent product, their review stuff isn't Yelp, their maps, you know, I mean, things they have aren't as good, but because they're Google, they can do that. And then, did you have a question there? Joel (19m 40s): Sorry, the cold meds are kicking in. I'm nursing a cold. Did you have a question in there? Chad (19m 44s): My question was, what do you think? Yes, I did. What do you think the other job board vendors think of now Indeed getting in play? Joel (19m 51s): I'm sure they don't like it. I'm sure that they think well Indeed spent all this money on ads. People do know their brand a little bit still, people are gonna click there. But I think LinkedIn has a strong brand, I think ZipRecruiter does. It's these sites that are like, you know, job Wolverine and shit that I'm just amazed that they're getting traffic like Job Donkey, let me go there. That always surprises me. So I think they're gonna be in there, but they're gonna have to compete with the LinkedIns of the world, the Dices, et cetera, that people know. But I don't, if I'm a job board, I'm not real happy about Indeed finally, you know, taking it in the, you know, what to then have their stuff on, on Google. I'm sure it was a fun day at Google though. Chad (20m 32s): Yeah, I wonder though, because Glassdoor's job feed is pretty much Indeed's job feed, so that means it's just replicated. So it's duplication. So if it's duplication, does that rank them worse because they're showing the same jobs? Does that rank them worse, or is Indeed pulling some Indeed type of trick, which I'm sure they can and they probably are to try to make their jobs look different. They're not, but to make their jobs look different than the Glassdoor version's. Joel (21m 2s): Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of those jobs are duplicates. I think companies just copy and paste. So the same job on ZipRecruiter, whatever is the same job on Indeed. So Google's just saying, Hey, the same job is on Glassdoor, it's also on Indeed. Oh, by the way, it's also on Monster. Like, you as the user can pick where you want to apply to that job. So I think it's a matter of who can give you the easiest, least friction way to apply to a job that's gonna win. Chad (21m 30s): They're all the same. You get a job distribution, you're in your applicant tracking system, you click post and then it goes poof. I mean the same fucking job everywhere, right? So yeah, I mean that's the hard part. Duplication is everywhere. Joel (21m 44s): Yeah. And I think we both thought for a long time that the corporate site will be where most people end up and that's who they're competing with. So yeah, I haven't seen a date on that. Maybe we can get our friends over at what's the site that optimizes job postings? Chad (21m 60s): Shit, Joel (21m 60s): We'll put in the show notes. Everybody. Chad (22m 4s): Jobdescription.ai. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel (22m 5s): Was that their url? Chad (22m 6s): Yeah. Joel (22m 6s): That's their fun url. I think that's all right. You're ready to move on from Indeed? Chad (22m 11s): Yeah, we need the sound effects. sfx (22m 14s): woosh. Chad (22m 15s): There it is. Joel (22m 17s): All right. Scheduling software Calendly has acquired San Fran based Prelude terms of the deal were not disclosed. Prelude says they "transform how companies approach hiring strategy by modernizing every candidate touchpoint from communications and prep to scheduling and logistics to interviewing". Over 10 million users across 116 countries are already using Calendly to schedule meetings. So it's safe to say Prelude is about to have a few more users in the near future. Chad, Calendly is getting into our space. Your thoughts? Chad (22m 52s): Yeah, so, so basic scheduling, here's my link, find a time. That's easy. But interview scheduling is more complex and, and something Calendly couldn't really get right. I mean, many HR tech vendors built their own versions because Calendly couldn't effectively support enterprise customers. Prelude has figured all of that out and they are integrated with G Suite, Office 365, Microsoft Office from a calendar client standpoint. And then you take a look at iCIMS, Workday, Lever, Greenhouse from a core talent platform standpoint. So this is a very good move for Calendly. And if you take a look at it, this is very, very close to the CandidateID in iCIMS, CandidateID, you're taking a product to thousands of people where there should be just quick traction from a startup standpoint. Chad (23m 45s): Same thing's gonna happen here. You have all these organizations that are buying into using Calendly. Now they go ahead and they start buying into Prelude from an HR and interviewing standpoint. So I think it's pretty amazing. The question is, what happens to the goodtime.dot.ios of the world? Good Times taken nearly $17 million in funding. Prelude took about $2.4. Now Calendly, a company with $350 million in total funding and 3 billion valuation. This is the unicorn thing right here. sfx (24m 23s): Pink fluffy unicorn. Chad (24m 24s): They, they're really not gonna be coming after the good times of the world. I mean, they're kinda like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park where they just step on shit and kill it. I mean, that's just really what's gonna happen here. Joel (24m 36s): You know, I think this had to be either data driven or user driven. Either. Calendly had to know that a lot of their meetings that were being set up were job interviews, which I'm sure that they are. I'm sure a ton of small companies or small businesses use Calendly to schedule meetings because it's so intuitive and easy and ubiquitous. Or it was users saying, Hey, you know what? It'd be great if you guys could help us with our employment interviewing and having some sort of, you know, product like that. So yeah, I think they got user and or data feedback and said, Hey, let's go shopping. And they looked at a Good Time at $17 million in funding and Prelude at $2.4 million and said, Hey, equal kind of tech, like we can plug this in really quickly and do it really nicely. Joel (25m 23s): An email went out that said, "you can expect to see Prelude's product ultimately merge into Calendly's platform". If that happens. I think that this really becomes, this is a home run opportunity, Aaron Judge style for Calendly to get in our space in a good way. If I'm Good Time or any others, I'm calling up every Calendly competitor and saying, Hey, they're getting in the game. What do you guys think? The downside is, if I ask you to name a Calendly competitor. Can you? I can't. They're not. I mean, I Googled and I thought, I've never heard of any of these companies. So Good Time is in a bad time, a bad place in terms of where they're gonna go from here, but at least they have a business that is acquirable is just a matter the the price tag. Joel (26m 10s): But yeah, I think this is good for Calendly. It's one of the more interesting stories in our space. There aren't a lot of companies that do sort of general either marketing or business stuff that just dives into recruitment. The ones that do usually fuck it up and fail. So, we'll watch this closely, but for me, Calendly, this is a good move and probably driven by data and users begging for it. Chad (26m 32s): Yeah, I was talking to a friend about this and wanted his opinion and he said it'll be interesting because there are two ways to go here for Calendly. Calendly grew through their freemium model. Everybody getting a chance to kinda like, feel it, touch it, taste it, and then buy into it from a business suite standpoint. Will they go that way or will they just go ahead and since they've, they've established who they are and the tech will, they just go straight to mid-market and enterprise? I think it's the latter. I think they're gonna go straight to mid-market enterprise and then just start crushing it. Joel (27m 8s): Yeah, they'll take all the people and enterprise accounts that use Calendly today and say, Hey, have you heard about Calendly Recruits or Calendly interview scheduler something? And just try to move as many people over to that as possible. So they have a huge client base. I'm sure a lot of people would be fine with the user experience of Calendly and plug that into a recruitment process. So yeah, I think good on them. It's gonna be fun to watch. Welcome to the Thunder Dome Calendly, welcome to the Thunder Dome. So let's take a quick break and digest all this shameless walking and competing and we'll talk a little buy or sell, which I know all of our listeners love. Joel (27m 48s): Buy or sell time Chad. Buy or Sell time. You know the rules, but if you don't, we take three companies that got funding this week. We'd rate a summary and then Chad and I will both either buy or sell that company. Are you ready? sfx (28m 4s): Hell yeah! Joel (28m 5s): All right. First up, we have Hofy. London based Hofy, and I'm assuming that's how you pronounce it. I did some, some YouTube searches and didn't find any sort of what, but I'm guessing it's like holy with an F. So it's Hofy. Anyway, London based Hofy has raised $15 million in series B. This brings total funding to $30.2 million found in 2020. The company provides office equipment to remote hires. They promise to manage the entire life cycle of your remote equipment from delivery to recovery, all in one place. Hofy will use the funds to expand their team to 120 employees by the end of the year, up from around 85 today. Joel (28m 44s): Knock, knock. Here's your at home office. Chad, are you a buy or sell on Hofy? Chad (28m 51s): Dude, I can hear IT Departments all over the world now praising Hallelujah. So when you said holy for Hofy, Yeah, no, I totally get it. Holy shit. Yes! Do you understand what a huge pain in the ass is for huge enterprise organizations to onboard new employees with equipment, maintain the equipment, and then provide the process to return the equipment? Dude, it sucks not to mention how much this sector of work increased during the pandemic and as remote gains. So will this company. So Hofy is what they like to call an equipment as a service platform. Again, it's a fucking pain in the ass to buy, manage equipment. Chad (29m 35s): And I've always said companies are looking for platforms that relieve them of said pain. Good timing. It would've been better timing three years ago, but still good timing. Smart vision, remote isn't going away. And their website, it was surprisingly sexy. It's a buy for me. Joel (29m 52s): So in addition to looking to YouTube, I tried to find how to pronounce this company and I ran across the Urban Dictionary, which I tend to use more than the actual dictionary. And it says that Hofy is a short and form of whore, for sure. Or as the kids on the street say hoe for show or simply Hofy. So I'm not sure if they thought about that when they named the company, but the name is a little bit suspect now. What about the product? Well, if you believe a large part of the workforce today and the future is going to be work from home and we both do, then standardizing the at home office for workers anywhere in the world is a pretty valuable service. Joel (30m 35s): I don't know much about the office furniture and equipment space, but this seems like a can't miss in today's environment. There's surfing a wave that is a can't miss wave. So for me as well, Hofy is a buy. Chad (30m 52s): It's a two thumbs up kids. Joel (30m 54s): All right, TurboHire the most nineties tech brand I've heard in a while. By the way, let known fact, East Band, my old job board employer was almost called Cyber Hire instead of Job Options, which it later became. Anyway, memory lane people. Memory lane. India based TurboHire has raised $2 million in a pre-series A funding round. This brings total funding to $3 million. Founded in 2019, the company provides an AI powered recruitment automation platform. TurboHire will use the funds to ramp up the product and boost revenue across the globe. TurboHire employs 78 folks. Chad, are you ready to get behind the wheel and buy TurboHire? Joel (31m 33s): Or are you driving that thing in the ditch? Chad (31m 37s): How many times have we heard the words AI recruitment automation platform in the last two to three years? Joel (31m 46s): A few. Chad (31m 47s): Yeah. Joel (31m 47s): A few. Chad (31m 48s): So here, here's a quote from Deepak Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of TurboHire. Quote, "When it comes to recruitment automation, we do not focus on what has been done by others so far. Rather, we focus on redefining what's possible." end quote. What the fuck does that actually mean? Other than I have no clue what my own company does. This theme carries on as TurboHire has questionable support. The mentors in this release that TurboHire listed aren't from our industry and I'm doubtful they even understand what a go-to market strategy looks like for such a slow to adopt space like ours. Chad (32m 32s): TurboHire has clients globally, including India, UK, US, Sweden, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, and more claimed by the statement, there's no real message. The site is a mess. No real experience on the team, no real focus on a region or even country in which they want to penetrate. Deepak, you have $3 million and you're going directly against unicorns like Eightfold. As you can tell, this is probably I think one of the worst startups we've seen in Buy or Sell in 2022, which is why it's gotta be a sell. Joel (33m 11s): All right, so again, with the name, they couldn't even acquire the domain, TurboHire.com, it's TurboHire.co. If you go to their accolades page, which you touched on, they have quotes from trusted business sources like Jewish Life News, Telling Ghana Today and Inc 42, which I think is the company that the band Level 42 created after their music career ended. And if you click on any of these endorsements, it doesn't link you to the actual story in the publication it just keeps you on the same accolades page on TurboHire. There's no transparency and pricing. There's lots of competition that you mentioned. Joel (33m 52s): This is why sourcing is now erase to the bottom and becoming a commodity. TurboHire is a turbo turd. This is a major sell for me as well. Chad (34m 2s): I wonder if turboturd.com is available? Because they could actually buy that. Joel (34m 10s): Probably is. Chad (34m 10s): And actually use that. Yeah. Joel (34m 13s): All right, Remofirst. Chad (34m 15s): Oh God. Joel (34m 17s): San Francisco based Remofirst has raised $14.1 million in a seed round. This brings total funding to $14.4 million. Founded in 2021, Remofirst helps companies build global remote teams in 150 countries by allowing them to hire talent in countries where they do not have an entity. Remofirst's services include onboarding, payroll, benefits, taxes, and local compliance. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Remofirst will use the funds to expand its team and its global footprint. Remofirst employs 37 workers. Chad, buy or sell Remofirst? Chad (34m 56s): Wow, we just talked about Atlas raising $200 million in this space last week. And a quick reminder, remote.com has about $500 million in funding, Oyster about $225 million in funding and Deel around $680 million, just to name a few kids. And now Remofirst wants to join the party with $14.1 million. Is there market validation? Yes. Hell yes. Is their market saturation? I say also. Hell yes. Where do funders actually perform their market due diligence these days? Jesus, anyways. This is obviously a great space, but it's a space that is crowded with unicorns. Chad (35m 42s): It's a space with several 800 pound gorillas and as I continue using animal metaphors, I see Remofirst as a sacrificial lamb. The CEO and COO are idea guys, you can tell they have a lot of ideas. They've spun out a lot of companies, but they're not business leaders. At least in my view, late to the party makes you a meal in this case kids. So it's a sell for me. Joel (36m 7s): All right. We said last week that a lot of the global hiring platforms getting money today is largely the dumb money that didn't get in on the Deels, the Remotes, the Oysters, and the others. I think the same thing with these guys. Their CEO said, "Remofirst is the most cost efficient provider, which fills a crucial gap with current market conditions." However, pricing for everyone is by employee. So I'm not sure how that will go. Granted, Remote is $599 per seat Deel, however, is $99 per seat, which is cheaper than Remofirst. Oyster has a light version at $29 per seat. Joel (36m 51s): Those are for contractors, and I think it's only $199 for the regular seat. So Remofirst is $199 per seat. Is that really a differentiator? Like their CEO has said. Remofirst should be called Repofirst because they're going to have trouble making those loan payments. I too am a sell on Remofirst. All right, Chad, let's talk a little nursing crunch, shall we? A new report from Shift Med, an on-demand workforce marketplace for nurses, paints a pretty dark future for the nursing profession with nearly two-thirds of nurses indicating that they are likely to leave the profession within the next two years. Joel (37m 37s): That's a significant increase from the 49% that reported the same intention in 2021. What's more, more than half of nurses surveyed, 52% say there is a considerable or severe staffing shortage at their workplace with nearly all nurses, 99% reporting a staffing shortage of some degree, and nearly half reported that they're concerned patients aren't getting the adequate care needed, while 40% report a negative impact on their own overall mental health. Baby boomers aren't getting any younger, so this is kind of a big deal. Chad, what's your take? Chad (38m 14s): That is kind of a big deal, but first off, let's say the sample size was 500 people against, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the nursing population is 3.6 million who are actively employed. So take it with a grain of salt, although there is a problem, don't think that there's not a problem. We have 203,000 new registered nurse positions created each year. And let's be clear, kids, this could, again, I don't want to go down into a deep dark hole, but this could be a national crisis, national healthcare crisis. What kind of measures do we need to actually put in place to curb this? I mean, I appreciate the survey and the research, but as we see this coming kind of like, you know, I don't know, warming weather and those types of things, what the fuck do we do about it? Joel (39m 3s): Bring on the bots. I say bring on the bots. sfx (39m 6s): Shall we play a game? Joel (39m 7s): So I have aging parents, one that passed away a few years ago. They both spent time in the hospital as well as one of them in assisted living. And I can tell you it's no fun being in the hospital. Like job seekers putting their resumes down the black hole, patients can feel ghosted, just like job seekers when nurses don't show up for hours on end to check in on patients. And just like job seekers, Chad, who would rather talk to a chat bot than no one at all. I think it's gonna be the same for patients. They'd rather see a robot come in, say hi, check on them, get their temperature, their vitals, see if they need anything, and then check out. Joel (39m 49s): It's the augmentation of the nursing profession I think that is going to take hold, just like we're not gonna see the end of recruiters, but we're gonna see the dawn of the augmented cyber robo cop like recruiter. We're gonna see that with nursing. There's gonna be some super nurses that know how to manage the robots and who needs help and who doesn't. They're gonna have their time much more efficiently monitored. Robots don't get tired, they never get down and depressed. You can do a lot of basic checking activities that waste a nurses time. Frankly, this company is a gig marketplace for nurses to sort of select their time and they spend a lot of time talking about how that's the solution to the nursing shortage. I think it's a piece of it for sure, and I think if you can bring out retired nurses to like do a few hours a week, I think that that really helps the situation. Joel (40m 38s): But I do think just like the service industries of restaurant work and warehousing, the robots are coming to a hospital near you, and I think a lot of patients will be happy to see robots come and check in on them. Chad (40m 52s): Yeah, I really believe that we have to harken back to the days when we had vocational schools and high schools and local healthcare systems need to start training earlier. I think it's too, too easy for us to not identify that, hey, here are gaps. We have skills gaps. Okay, whatever. We need to be able to start filling those gaps at a much younger age and start getting kids focused on doing things that they want to do without perspectively having to go to a four year college degree, being able to train as a phlebotomist right outta school like my daughter did, and then, you know, go ahead, and catapult into the nursing profession or something else in the healthcare system. Chad (41m 39s): I really believe that we have missed the boat in driving the whole college education piece when we need plumbers, carpenters and nursing. Joel (41m 45s): I'm spitballing here, but this just came to mind. Why don't we just load up a bunch of Greyhound buses at the border of Iran and say, all right, who wants to come be a nurse in the US? Load it up, let's go. We could also cure our teaching shortage crisis maybe in the process. Anyway, that's just me. Coming up next kids. I gotta take a break, take some meds or something. Man, my head is floating and we'll talk about Walmartland. All right, Chad, this one's from CNBC. Walmart is entering the metaverse with not one but two experiences, Walmartland and Walmart's Universe of Play. Joel (42m 33s): They're building these on the platform roadblocks, which my kids love. I can't really understand it, but I get it. The retailer is experimenting with other ways to reach shoppers, including shoppable recipes, live streaming events, and an augmented reality feature for furniture. Yippy! Walmart's marketing chief William White said the company will use Roblox as a testing ground as it considers other moves in the metaverse and beyond because nothing excites the Roblox demographic like a trip to Walmartland, right? And this was underscored by a video shared on Twitter that showed the Walmart CMO on a digital stage playing too, get ready for this one person in the audience, one person for a Walmart Metaverse event. Joel (43m 16s): Chad, I got nothing. Chad (43m 18s): I think there's, there's way too much vanity here for William White who's he actually trying to reach out to? Who's he trying to touch, right? It's not old white dudes like him. So why turn himself into a Roblox ? Why not maybe, I don't know, have one of your kids actually give the presentation? How cool is this talking to their people or what have you? Or find somebody who actually works at Walmart, who is a Gen Z, which is really the major focal and target point right here. And have those individuals be the ones who are carrying the message? I mean, I think this is a huge, huge disconnect for Walmart. They put a lot of money into this. Chad (43m 58s): This is, I don't think it's a failure, don't get me wrong. They're just launching it. But if they understand and he's the fucking CMO, he's gotta understand that his voice isn't the one that the individuals who are using this platform want to hear. As soon as they get that, I think they will get some traction because people like to buy shit in in the metaverse. If you go to, I think, oh shit, PlayStation, they make millions of dollars a day off of in store app buys. So I mean, it's there, the market's there. But the thing is William, dude, you're not the guy. Joel (44m 34s): Yeah, when I think of William, I think of Will.I.Am and our friends at Intel who decry the moment when will.I.am became the spokesperson for Intel computer chips. Companies who try to get a cool factor because they have someone that's a pop culture icon, whether it's Kanye with Gap, will.I.am with Intel usually fall flat on their face and it works the other way when companies try to set up shop in places where the cool kids hang out. Walmart is one of the least cool brands I could think of. So for them to be in whatever Roblox, Metaworld, Walmartland, if I'm 18 years old, the last place I ever want to go is some place called WalmartLand. Joel (45m 17s): They should have made a separate brand, some sort of metaverse store that was sort of hip, not have Walmart. Chad (45m 23s): Good point. Joel (45m 23s): Associated with it whatsoever. They could still sell products under a different brand. So this was hubris of a big company thing. Well, if we just set up shop in the Metaverse, the kids are gonna come. And as we saw by the video shared on Twitter, one person showed up to this announcement. It's really sad. And it's a lesson that big companies never learn. Unlike Taco Bell, who listens to the people, democracy rules at Taco Bell, who's hungry for Quesarito everybody? Chad and Cheese (45m 59s): We out. OUTRO (45m 53s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (46m 37s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

If you want to learn how to be an exceptional recruitment marketer and employment brand superstar, it might help to listen to a pro at a company that knows a little bit about marketing. That's why we invited Ashlee Gerow, Senior Manager, Employer Brand at HubSpot, to the podcast. From implementing diversity to dicing-up data to creating rich content and much, much more, this Cult Brand series gives hosts Julie Calli, president at RecruitmentMarketing.com and Chad & Cheese plenty to talk about with their guest. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps support and educate your workforce through disability awareness and inclusion training. INTRO (1s): 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 (21s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody. It's your favorite meathead? AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. The cult brand series. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always the more recent Robin to my Berry. Chad Sowash and Julie Callie President at Recruitmentmarketing.com. Everybody welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. We are happy to welcome. Holy cow. HubSpot is in the house. Everyone welcome Ashlee Gerow Senior Manager of Employer Brand at HubSpot. Ashlee. Welcome. Ashlee (57s): Thanks so much. Chad (58s): Just for the record. I wanna be Andy. Okay. Let's just put that out there. Joel (1m 2s): That's fine but you know what he did with his life. Right? Anyway. Chad (1m 6s): That's fine. Joel (1m 7s): So more important things. I know Julie is chomping at the bit in doing my research about you, Ashlee. I see that you went to Appalachian State University. Ashlee (1m 16s): I did. This is not how I thought we were gonna get started, but I did. Joel (1m 19s): Yes. So more importantly, you were a student there when Appalachian S`tate beat the then number five football team in the country, 2007, you went into Ann Arbor and beat the Wolverines by score of 34 to 32 on September 1st. Ashlee (1m 40s): Yeah. Joel (1m 40s): So I just wanna get the coolest thing outta the way. Ashlee (1m 43s): Oh my God thing. Yes, I was there. That was a big day. Chad (1m 46s): I bet it was a big day. Jesus. Joel (1m 48s): Did you burn some couches? Did you like what happened? Ashlee (1m 53s): I actually, I was at a bar watching it and we just went cuz why not? No one was actually expecting us to win. And then we won and it was just pandemonium cuz everybody was just so shocked and it was a great day. Joel (2m 8s): I can tell you that Chad and I, as big Buckeye fans remember that day and we were just as happy as you. Ashlee (2m 14s): It might've been a bigger day for you guys to be honest. Joel (2m 17s): It might have been cause we still bring it up when we see Wolverine friends. Ashlee (2m 22s): I bet you do. Joel (2m 23s): Okay. Sorry about that. All right. Ashlee, for those few listeners that don't know HubSpot. Yeah. Tell us about HubSpot and maybe a little bit about you. Ashlee (2m 31s): Sure. Yeah. So for those who don't know HubSpot, HubSpot's a CRM platform. We're the number one CRM platform for scaling businesses. We have about a hundred and what's the latest tally, 150,000 customers across 120 countries. So our goal is really create crafted solutions for our customers that are really driven by their feedback and works for the ways that they need to grow. But yeah, I've been at HubSpot since October prior to that, I guess almost a year. Wow. Prior to that, I led the global employer brand team at a company called Red Hat, which is now owned by IBM. And then prior to that, I spent about 10 plus years in the B2B marketing agency space. So I come from a brand strategy B2B background. Chad (3m 10s): So only 150,000 clients. You guys are just getting started I guess. Huh? Okay. That's awesome. Ashlee (3m 17s): Baby steps. You know, we're just really taking our time just taking it easy. Julie (3m 21s): I'm one of them. Ashlee (3m 24s): Awesome. Joel (3m 24s): Julie, would you like to do the honor of asking the first question? Julie (3m 27s): Oh, well I will say I have been a huge fan of HubSpot for so long in my career. I can barely remember when it was not an influence and that's cuz it's always put out such great content for marketers, marketers in general. How to create great landing pages, how to turn them into conversion and then how to work them into, you know, a CRM and then give them relevant content. There's always been such great material out there to learn, but this is such a great topic because these same practices that HubSpot is so great at or everything that people in recruitment are hungry for. So that's why I was like so excited to talk with you today. Julie (4m 7s): Did you see that same opportunity and get excited by that the same way? Like coming over to HubSpot? Ashlee (4m 13s): Oh absolutely. You know, HubSpot, especially if we're talking in the employer brand space, if you look at tech companies that are doing employer brand really well, HubSpot has always been a little bit of a pioneer in a lot of ways, in employer brand and as somebody who was working at a different tech company, kind of the gold standard in a lot of ways. And so for me, it was a really exciting opportunity to come in to really see what are the practices that we were using that were pulled from our traditional marketing at HubSpot. What are the opportunities, especially as the recruiting landscape has changed, how do we kind of evolve, not only as a company, what we're doing kind of in the brand space, but also as an employer brand and how those things are connected. It's a really interesting challenge and it's really interesting time to be at a company like HubSpot. Julie (4m 55s): Yeah. I can imagine because you know, HubSpot is so great at the marketing component for, and being flexible for so many different types of businesses, but recruitment is a very different animal. So the potential there is huge. Yeah. And then here you are working at the company that has such strong competency in marketing. Now you just need to apply to employer brand and recruitment. Joel (5m 15s): Yeah. So what, what specifics can you give us? I mean, as a marketing company, you get to kind of cheat a little bit, right? You get to put embed code on the career site, you have drip campaigns, your social media advertising. Like give us the top two or three things that a lot of companies don't do because they're not a marketing software provider that you would recommend sort of using that's worked really well for you. Ashlee (5m 40s): Yeah. That's a great question. I think the number one thing that has worked really well for Housebot from an employer brand perspective is that we run our team as a content marketing machine. We don't run our team as a recruiting function. That is our number one stakeholder, but we run it as a traditional content marketing machine and partnership with teams like our brand marketing teams who live in a different part of the company. But that allows us to really lean on traditional marketing principles to drive our work forward. So it's all about right content to the right audience over the right channel at the right time. And that's just, that's a pure marketing principle, no matter what audience audience you're talking to. And so we lean into that and that's why you see us pump out so much content through our social media channels, our career sites, through our media teams, we're constantly pumping out new and relevant content. Ashlee (6m 28s): And that is absolutely in line with who we are as a company and what we talk about with our customers. Chad (6m 32s): Well, that's awesome. The big question is who do you report to? Do you report to marketing or do you report to HR? Ashlee (6m 38s): Yeah, that is the million dollar question and no matter who you ask, the answer's probably different. So we are in the HR function at HubSpot. I don't report in through recruiting. I actually report directly into our Chief People Officer as a separate function. But our number one stakeholder is recruiting and I work, our whole team has deep partnerships with recruiting leadership because if you're not aligned to those goals, then you're not impactful as an EV team. Chad (7m 1s): Obviously working very closely with marketing, I would assume? Ashlee (7m 5s): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially, you know, there's kind of two ways we work with marketing. Number one is just, Hey, from a company brand perspective, like we did a brand relaunch earlier this year, we wanted to make sure we knew what was going on there strategically where they're headed in terms of how they're promoting HubSpot as a brand. Cause we wanna make sure that from an employer brand perspective, that it's authentic, right? When we're talking about the company and the experience, but then also just from a tactical delivery perspective, we really lean on our brand and marketing teams to help us create templates, make sure things are branded. And that team is really wonderful in terms of getting us what we need so we can work pretty autonomously. We use Canva, which is like the dream machine. And so for us, our marketing teams, they get us the messaging, the templates, the assets that we need and then we're able to pump out stuff and move really quickly and autonomously, which is key in employer brand, especially in a market right now where you have to move fast. Joel (7m 51s): Some of the things that speaking of content, some things that stood out to me as I was visiting your career site is you have things like, you know, what is it like to work here? Which wow, how revolutionary that that should happen. But I think a lot of companies don't do it. You have an actual page dedicated to what it's like to work there. You talk about the importance of diversity on your careers page and have documentation on that. And then some, you know, things around ESG and, and you know, I don't think with you that they're just sort of topics du jour, it sounds like it's stuff that you guys really lean on with your recruitment and maybe even as well as your retention. Why were those things sort of targeted? And what was the thought around actually providing content around these three areas? Ashlee (8m 34s): Yeah. And this is the type of stuff that we partner really closely with our communications teams on. We have a separate ESG team. We have a hybrid team, we have a culture team. All of those teams come together. We are a highly collaborative function by just the nature of what we do. But you know, for us, the number one, the most important thing for everything that we push out is authenticity. Because we've all been in situations where we have interacted with content from a company and then we get into an interview process and we kind of realize it's a little bit of a bait and switch. We wanted to make sure that we weren't doing that and the easiest way for us to do that is to operate with what I call like radical transparency. And everything's out there for you to see. Joel (9m 10s): Including salaries. Ashlee (9m 11s): Including salaries now, which that is something that is relatively new too, we wanna show the compounds of every us role right now. Yeah. And just so it's not only about what works for us at HubSpot, it's what works for you as a candidate and is this the right fit for both of us, but you know, things like our diversity report that we put out every year. That report is not always shiny and it's not meant to be this big, shiny thing. It's meant to be very authentic and transparent about what we're doing and the needles that we have moved and where we have work to do. And we're very upfront about that. And that's something that resonates with candidates when they're looking for the next step in their journey that honesty, that transparency and kinda that values driven approach tends to work best for us. Chad (9m 51s): So I see that you guys use video pretty much all over the place, which is awesome, but, but you have like a video embedded I'm just on this inbound growth specialist, job posting, and there is a video right beside it. I would assume this is the hiring manager at this point. Is this the hiring manager that you guys actually put on the job descriptions themselves? Ashlee (10m 15s): Sometimes it depends, honestly depends on the hiring manager and you know, how involved it they want to be, but that's all done through iCIMS video suite. We wanna get technical about the tools, but we have a huge library behind the scenes of Hub Spotters across the org, whether they're hiring managers or they're doing that role themselves, or they're part of the team, some of that is unique to the role. You know, we'll hit a hiring manager and say, Hey, let's put you on this other times. It's we have a repository of people who are doing that job and talking about that experience that we can use. So it really just depends on what we have, but yeah, we try really hard to lean on video and to lean on the real experiences of people who are doing the job again, pulling all the way, pulling that all back through to this idea of authenticity. Chad (10m 56s): So when it comes to video and using video, do you see that you actually get more engagement and more applications when you use that content or does it really matter? Ashlee (11m 9s): Yeah, it matters now, does it matter that it's video? I don't know, but it certainly matters when we're putting content out that is specific to the experience of the role, whether that is the video on the page, or it is a careers blog that we put up about that specific role. Anytime we can make it as specific as possible, it makes a big difference. And we continue to invest in things like iCIMS Video Suite and video tools, because we do see an uptick in engagement when we're able to serve that type of content. Joel (11m 35s): I will highlight as well. I actually apply to a job in research for this call. After you apply to a job, you get an automated email, which has a video. It looks like from the founders or executives at the company and talking about the company. So yes, Chad is right. You guys use video, but you use it through the entire funnel of the process of applying to a job, which I think, is great. Yeah, Julie (11m 57s): No, I saw the video and the job descriptions and I was really curious, are you seeing down funnel improvements? Like, are you getting better quality? Ashlee (12m 7s): Yeah, absolutely. I think whenever we can put upfront and be very, very transparent and open about what the job actually is and what the experience is, we tend to get better quality down funnel than when we just kind of when we're just sourcing in general, because typically the people who are applying have a good sense of what they're applying to. I think when you look at a job description, we've all been there. It sounds good. It sounds nebulous enough to think that I'm qual. I think it could be cool. Like you don't sometimes you don't really know, but when someone's sitting there kind of telling you exactly, this is what my day's like, and this is what is a good fit for our team. It does kind of shuffle some out who can acknowledge that I'm not a good fit for this or this isn't a good fit for me. Joel (12m 49s): A lot of companies sort of shy away from, I guess, branding that might be considered a little bit political or one side or the other, but you guys seem to be fairly open around, you know, there there's photos of you guys at a gay pride parade. On your job descriptions I believe, I mean, you're very upfront around disability statement. Talk about the impact of that. Whether it be pro or negative in some cases what that's meant to your recruitment, but also maybe more importantly, your retention at HubSpot. Ashlee (13m 22s): Yeah. I mean, we prioritize being a great place to work for all, and that is not something that we say that is something that is built into the DNA of who we are as a company, you know, from a personal perspective, I'm a member of the LGBTQ plus community and it was really important for me when I was making a move to find a company where that didn't feel performative. And I would say HubSpot more than any other company I've ever worked at how we support different diversity mentions. And the idea of inclusivity is paramount to everything we do in a way I've never experienced anywhere else. And so it's really important to us that we show that in ways that we show it and we don't just say it. And so that's why you do see us at things like Boston pride. Ashlee (14m 3s): For example, Boston is our US headquarters. You see our global initiatives around things like disability pride month that was in July and the employer brand team. We are the external marketing team for all things DEIB. And so that is absolutely paramount to how we present ourselves as a company, because that's absolutely paramount to how we operate. Joel (14m 18s): And I have to point this out, Chad, because we talk about this a lot on the show, their executive team actually walks the walk. They are a very diverse executive team. So applause for HubSpot on that one. Julie? Julie (14m 32s): No,I, you know, love hearing and showing it too, but a lot of work, you mentioned having culture teams and CSR teams are these all part of the employer brand team? Because I know employer brand can support attracting candidates, but it also has a lot to do with the employee's experience. So where does that live in the organization? Ashlee (14m 55s): Yeah. So at HubSpot, we have a separate culture team and that is led by an amazing group of individuals whose entire charge is to really enhance and grow and sustain our really award-winning employee experience. But we have to work really closely with that team to make sure that what we are pushing out from an employer brand perspective matches the experience that someone's gonna have when they come, because otherwise it you've essentially just bait and switched people and people will leave, especially in this market right now, where they have options. So it's really important that we work with our culture team, our communications teams, our hybrid work teams to really make sure that everything we're talking about is as specific as it can be because everybody's talking about things like hybrid work and what that means for culture right now, but the experience of that and how it shows up at HubSpot, I do think is unique. Ashlee (15m 43s): But how do you show that is the real challenge that we have as an employer brand team. Chad (15m 49s): Okay. So real quick, we, I just digging into the diversity report. I mean, one thing that we're seeing is all of these companies are saying that, you know, they're obviously talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk like HubSpot is actually demonstrating good, bad indifferent transparency around the actual demographics of your workforce composition. So question, when you got there, was it, was this already done? Was this something that they had already embraced? If so awesome. But I mean, how did that come to fruition? Because most companies, they like to back away from the table, there's way too much risk there for them. Ashlee (16m 30s): Yeah. So this is, I believe are fourth annual diversity report. Someone's gonna fact check me on that, that might not be right. But that's something that we've, we've been doing for years. And so that was well underway when I joined and something that we have really tried hard to have baseline data and grow from and every year we're adding new data. So the report from 2022 has even more data than the year before. And there's certainly parts of that we're super proud of. You know, we are at near gender parody, you know, 50.50 company wide. I think it's like 53% men, 50 or 47% women or something like that, which is great. In the tech sector that's amazing. And we break that down even further by what we call pillars. Ashlee (17m 11s): So by our product and engineering group, by our sales group, and there's certainly work to do depending on kind of how you wanna slice and dice that data. And to your point, we're really upfront about that. Like here's where we've really seen an uptick and here's where we have more work to do. And then here's what we're going to do to do that, which I think is the missing piece that we see a lot with other companies is, you may have companies that acknowledge, this is the work we have to do, but we put a stake in the ground to what we're actually gonna do. And then we measure ourselves on that in the next report in a very transparent way. Chad (17m 38s): So this is what drew you there really is that they were so upfront and I mean out front and transparent about how they felt about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Ashlee (17m 51s): Yeah, certainly that was part of it for me. I mean, there were, there were several different factors, but yeah, I mean, like I said, for me as part of, of the LGBTQ plus community, I mean, I wanted to make sure that, that it was a company who was, who was walking the walk and who was, who not only believed in that idea of inclusivity, but, but that it was, and it wasn't just one team doing that work. I mean, at HubSpot, but it's connected into everything that we do. It's part of our listed goals as teams. How are we leaning into DIE&B and what are we doing to help the organization move forward in that way? And that's a really powerful thing for a lot of people that you just don't see everywhere, especially I would say in the tech sector. Joel (18m 25s): Yeah. That's fantastic. You talk a lot about teams. How big is the team exactly? Ashlee (18m 29s): My team right now is. Joel (18m 30s): The marketing team. Yeah. Cuz I'm sure a lot of companies are listening to this going, like we don't have this kind resource at our fingertips. How big is the team real quick? Ashlee (18m 38s): So the employer brand team, we are six strong including myself and we are a global team. So we have four people in the US and two people India, one in Dublin and one in Berlin. And then we are part of the larger kind of HR. Yeah. We're six person team, which is relatively large. The team. I, yeah, the team I led at Red Hat was about that size as well. But yeah, I mean, I talked to a lot of people in EB who are like, one man strong, and they're just trying to figure out how to get it started because employer brand is still a relatively new space. If you look in the grand scheme of things and I would say it's really kinda taken off in the past year or two with the changes in the talent market. But yeah, we have a fairly large team by most comparisons. Joel (19m 20s): I also think the thing that really pushed that even, you know, going further back was employee review sites and you guys have really sort of gone all in on, you know, Glassdoor. It's on your homepage, on the career site. You know, you're pretty visible about different awards that you've got from Glassdoor. Talk about that strategy and its importance. And additionally, and to Glassdoor, I mean, you guys are on InHerSight, which is for those who don't know an employee review site for women, almost 900 reviews, which most people don't even know what InHerSight is. So for you guys to have that kind of penetration, was that a strategy, is that by accident? And then also talk about your opinion on the future of employee reviews. Joel (20m 2s): Is it gonna be Glassdoor for the next decade or do you see things like TikTok becoming more influential? Ashlee (20m 8s): Those are two really great questions. I think, you know, from the review site perspective, we are really fortunate to have an associate population. We call them Hub Spotters who are brand champions and not just brand champions from like a tool perspective and just the company, but also champions of loving working at HubSpot. We don't have to do too much to get them to write reviews. We remind them, we do a couple pushes for Glassdoor and Comparably, for example, to make it as easy as we can. We do widgets and Slack for them where they just click a few buttons and it's done. So we do have a strategy for how can we make it easy? How can we make it consistent? But we're also fortunate enough that it's not something, it's kind of a self sustaining thing in a lot of ways, because we are fortunate enough to have associates who wanna talk about working at HubSpot. Ashlee (20m 57s): Now, how do I think review sites are going to work in the future? You know, I think Glassdoor's always gonna be a biggie. It's still where most people go, but I also think there's Comparably as popping up as well. There's also to your point, TikTok, there's Blind, there's all of these different sites where people are starting to chatter about the experience of working at companies outside of what I would call more formal review sites. And I think that's the stuff that we're keeping our eye on right now to really think, okay, what is the chatter like by people who wanna work here? And they're talking about a recruiting process? People who have left people who wanna have kind of more private conversations? And we wanna make sure that when those conversations are being had, that they match what people are doing more formerly in review and that they match kind what we're hearing from our associates. Ashlee (21m 43s): And I think that's an area that we have maybe like just started to dip a toe in because it is kind of, these sites are kind of popping up left and right. Chad (21m 53s): Amazing. So let's get into the process a little bit, but on the candidate side, the actual people who are interacting with your brand now, Joel went ahead and he applied for a job. Definitely gonna get hired by the way. Ashlee (22m 4s): I'll put in a good word for you. Joel (22m 5s): Thanks Ashlee. Ashlee (22m 5s): You should have come to me. I've given you referral link. We could have figured it out. Chad (22m 11s): Please do that. That would be great. So data demonstrates that over 90% of applicants on most career sites that are out there today, actually eject before completing the application. Just because the application process sucks for the most part. And then if they do complete, they find themselves in a black hole. Now they might have gotten an email or something like that to say, thank you for applying, but they still find themselves in a black hole and they don't know where they are in the process. And this is all about experience, right? And this is really impacting many companies brands' out there. How do you at HubSpot actually focus on the application process and the non-black hole process? Ashlee (22m 58s): Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think for me, employer brand has happened in a silo. It has to happen in conjunction as part of a larger candidate journey, which to me, the candidate journey is like an infinity loop, right? Like you have candidates we are trying to attract. If all goes well, they're in the interview process, they convert they're onboarded. At some point they're gonna leave the company become alumni and maybe hopefully circle back around maybe back infinity loop. When I'm thinking about what we're doing from a brand perspective, if that's not pulled through by a positive candidate experience through things like the communications you get or the application is, you know, 50 pages long, and you're just having to upload a resume and then retype everything like that type of stuff. Like if we're getting fall off there, then I can do top of funnel, talent attraction stuff all day long. Ashlee (23m 43s): But if 90% of people aren't converting because the process is difficult or that part of the journey is off, then we're wasting a lot of time and resources that aren't impactful. And so that's where we really work with teams like our recruiting ops team to understand, okay, what is our candidate journey? What are the communications that they're getting? What is the cadence of that? What is the messaging? What are the assets that you need to make sure that all of that is pulled through? Like I said, we have separate teams who really own and run that, but if we don't work with that team, we have no idea if we're even, if our efforts are even impactful because measurement of employer brand is really tricky too, because we measure our content through traditional marketing metrics really it's very top of funnel. Likes, clicks, shares, engagements. Ashlee (24m 23s): But to equate that, to kind of butts in seats at the end of that journey is dotted at best. We'll say it's correlated, not causal. So we have to make sure that we're aware of what that journey is and if there's a breakdown in that journey, or if there's an opportunity to enhance that, we have to make sure that we're able to call that out and pull that through. Julie (24m 40s): Do you have specific metrics that you look at or are there specific metrics the company brings to you and say, we wanna approve these? Ashlee (24m 49s): I kinda look at two separate groups of metrics. First. I just look at what I would call traditional marketing metrics to see if our content is effective. Are we getting the engagement we want? Are the channels we are using effective? All the same ways of really a traditional brand marketing campaign. And then there's recruiting data that I wanna look at. Not because I can make some solid line connections, but that's the data that has to inform our strategy overall. So for example, if I'm looking at conversion rates and I see I'm gonna make this up, for the sake of conversation, but I see that we are converting engineers, mid to senior engineers in the bay area we just can't convert them, for whatever reason, whether that's opportunity or comp or whatever, but we're doing a really great job converting on the east coast. Ashlee (25m 35s): I'm gonna put my time and my money and my resource as an EB strategist on the east coast, cuz that's what the data's telling me we can convert. And so when we're looking at data, that's how we tend to use data, but we really have to do a lot of internal communication, particularly to leaders who are unaware of the difference between employer brand and recruiting to say, Hey, this video rollout that we're gonna do, we are not gonna be able to say this video hired five people. That's just not how this works. And so there's a lot of figuring out what data can actually be connected versus what do we use strategically? Joel (26m 8s): I love the point about data and I don't think a lot of companies utilize it as much as possible. Chad and I talk a lot about companies, vendors, new solutions are coming into view that are dedicated to keeping the old candidates fresh. My guess is you guys would do a better job at keeping sort of a constant contact with your past applicants as probably anybody. Can you talk about that strategy of keeping in contact with folks that have applied in the past and maybe moving them into, you know, candidates of the present? Ashlee (26m 41s): Yeah. I think the topic of, really we're talking about there is like pipelining and how do you continue to communicate with your pipelines. And I think there's some companies that are, that do that better than others. I think we do a great job at that. And I think a lot of that and I don't wanna speak on behalf of my recruiting partners, but I will, for a moment. I think a lot of that is the expectation at HubSpot is that because we are, you know, a CRM company that is built to communicate regularly, that we pull those same practices into how we recruit and yes, we have templates and we have communications and we have things that are automated, but we also are a high touch recruiting organization. And so we're constantly working with our recruiting teams from an EB perspective, say, okay, Hey, what are you seeing? Ashlee (27m 26s): Like what's the boots on the ground conversations you're having? What are candidates caring about? Okay, here's some messaging and content that you can use organically to keep people engaged. Particularly if you find a candidate that is a good fit for the company, but may not be a good fit for the role or the timing wasn't right. Or whatever, our recruiting teams are doing a lot of that organic kind of high touch engagement and it's our job to make sure they have refreshed content that's relevant to do that. Julie (27m 50s): You, I imagine that you have many recruiters in your organization trying to hire for many roles. Are they all in line with a number fighting for your attention? Are you trying to feed all of them at once? I mean, how do you even support such a large organization probably has such a great desire for that material? Ashlee (28m 7s): Yeah, that's a great question. And I think to be transparent, we're still figuring some of that out. I think, you know, we have scaled as a company in a major way in the past year, one to two years, and that includes our recruiting org. Our recruiting org has grown exponentially. And so we're really focused as a team on moving from one to one solutions to one to many solutions. And a lot of that is creating sustainable and repeatable programs, template work, making sure that recruiters are also armed with guidance and the tools that they need to create their own content when they need to. Because we are so top of funnel when we're talking like team and role-specific content, we are not creating that on a one-to-one basis, but we are looking at how we can create a grab and go solution for recruiter who to the earlier conversation we had wants to send a group of candidates, a video from the hiring manager, how do we create that video? Ashlee (28m 56s): How did they do that on their own? So it's really arming them with consistent branded and kind of QA materials to do some of that lifting on their own so we can focus on the larger kind of more enterprise wide, one to many solutions. Joel (29m 9s): You touched on how much the world has changed in the past few years. And that's, you know, putting it lightly. A lot of your jobs are labeled as remote. Talk about your work from home company strategy. How does employer branding and how you sort of connect with a work from home or remote workforce change the game. And you also have a lot of global global locations. How does employment branding sort of get customized or does it get standardized regardless of where the office is? Ashlee (29m 42s): That's a big question. I'm gonna tackle it in parts. Joel (29m 44s): That's what we do on the show, Ashlee, that's what we do. Ashlee (29m 47s): I appreciate you for it. You know, I think at the beginning, HubSpot has always had part of our workforce working remotely. It wasn't a new thing when the pandemic hit, but pretty early on in the pandemic and I wasn't even at HubSpot at the time, the company doubled down on the idea of hybrid that we could get our work done and we could really do great work for our customers no matter where we were located. And so we started to move from a hub location format into a more hybrid approach. And so every employee, when they come to work at HubSpot, you have a choice. You can be an in-office employee, which means 90% of your time is spent in an office. You can be a flex employee, which means clearly you can flex between an office and home, or you can be a remote employee. Ashlee (30m 27s): I'm a hundred percent remote. I'm based in Raleigh, North Carolina. There is not a HubSpot location in Raleigh, North Carolina, but every employee has the power to choose that and to evolve that preference as kind of their location and what they want changes. So from an employer brand perspective, we're talking about hybrid. This is one of the situations where it becomes super important that we are working in lockstep with our culture and employee experience team, because how hybrid shows up at HubSpot has to be led, like how we communicate that has to be led by what it actually looks like. And I think HubSpot has done a phenomenal job of really walking the walk there. And we talked about DI & B diversity, inclusion, and belonging as an area that was important to me right up there was what it meant to work remotely for our company. I had never worked remotely before pre pandemic. Ashlee (31m 9s): I never thought I wanted to. I was an in-office soldier. I liked it. I liked that energy. And so for me, going to a company that really prioritized hybrid, not just in a, you can work from wherever you want kind of way, but here are the tools. Here are the programming. Here's how we stay connected. Here's how we embrace our remote employees and our in office employees in a way that's consistent to create culture, no matter where you are. Those things are really important to have as a company, which makes my job easier quite frankly, from how we market it, because it's making, it's just externalizing what we're actually doing. Julie (31m 42s): Yeah. I think that's wonderful. What advice would you give to companies that are aspiring to be that? Ashlee (31m 50s): Aspiring, to be like a successful hybrid company? Julie (31m 53s): Well, it, you know, companies want to do more for diversity equity and inclusion. They see the value in that. Certainly there's many trying to find a way to communicate that, to become more diverse in their recruitment marketing. And they'r wondering like, well, do I just start telling people that in my job descriptions, like how do I actually do that? You know, being someone who made choice and actually works in an organization and employer brand, is there any advice you'd give to companies to really make that message more sincere? Ashlee (32m 24s): Yeah, absolutely. I think, the first thing is to really take, take stock in what the experience is for diverse individuals at your company and own that. If you're working at a company where your diversity metrics, aren't great, then you can't shout from the rooftops that they are. So I think you have to really honest about where you are as a company. For us, the way that we find success in telling our story. Yes, we have the diversity report and yes, we have specific things that we do to talk about those efforts. But for me as an employer brand practitioner, I don't have projects and then diversity projects. Every project I have should feel diverse. Every face that we show, every story we tell every message that we're sending should be rooted in what diversity means to the organization. Ashlee (33m 5s): And so, you know, I get that question a lot. Like you know, what does HubSpot do to market, you know, diversity and inclusion. And, and I think for us, it's everything that we do should be rooted in that because as a company we're rooted in that and we believe really strongly in that. And so when we're putting together our content strategies for the month, we're looking to make sure that we have representation from all of the groups and also age diversity, by the way, gender diversity. Those are things that we're looking at from a content perspective, to make sure that it feels authentic and that it feels compelling. Chad (33m 40s): Those old bastards, like Joel in there. Ashlee (33m 41s): We gotta have the Joels, you know, the Joels have to show up too. Joel (33m 47s): Hell. Yeah, you do. Hell. Yeah, you do. Chad (33m 50s): The part is just the showing up. And then the napping. Anyway is Ashlee Gerow everyone. Ashlee, if listeners wanna find out more about you, I don't know, maybe even take a look at what HubSpot's doing? Where would you send them? Ashlee (34m 3s): If you wanna know more about me, go to my LinkedIn, you can find everything about me there. Please reach out. We'd love to connect. For HubSpot connect with our HubSpot life channels. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We're on Facebook. Instagram, I think is the one that serves up the most content. That's probably exciting and relevant to the audience, but please follow us, check out what we're doing. Comment. Send me a note. If you think there's something that you love or something that you think we should be doing, I'd love to hear it. Joel (34m 30s): Thanks for your time. Ashlee. Excellent. Julie, Chad, another one in the can. Michigan fans suck it. Chad and Cheese (34m 38s): We out, we out. OUTRO (35m 29s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

The boys recently held a private event at HR Tech for around 40 people with ThisWay founder and CEO Angela Hood. Luckily for you, the mics were on, so we caught the whole conversation, just for you. We discuss what happens when you become a Google accelerated startup, what unbiased recruiting really looks like, the dos and don'ts of crowdfunding and much more. It's like you're a fly on thet wall. Enjoy. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Joel (0s): You guys act like you're in church Angela (2s): With whiskey? What kind of church has whiskey? That's a good one. Joel (7s): That's a church I wanna join. So should we talk about the format? Like can they heckle? Can they clap? Chad (14s): Why not? This is live. This is a live show. Just do. EXcept for you. Ethan. Shut the fuck up. Ethan. Joel (22s): This is a train wreck you guys get to watch. INTRO (42s): 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 (46s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure. Your favorite knuckleheads AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always the "Pen to my Teller" Chad Sowash. Let's hear it everybody. And today we're recording live from the HR Tech conference in beautiful Las Vegas with Angela "boys in the" Hood, founder and CEO at ThisWay Global. Angela. Angela (1m 16s): Howdy guys. Joel (1m 17s): You hardly started to drink. Angela (1m 18s): I I know Joel (1m 19s): Show's only gonna get better. Angela (1m 20s): I should have taken a few shots before this thing. I want Chad (1m 22s): I want everybody to look at Angela's face. Once she starts drinking whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna just wait. You'll you'll you'll get the joke. Joel (1m 29s): Did something we called brew review. Yes. Which we've only done once for whatever reason. Angela (1m 35s): It was just minde. Was that it? Joel (1m 36s): So this is what we did was we had a flight of beers we had to drink. And then we talked business. Chad (1m 43s): And Austin Craft, Austin, beer Craft. Joel (1m 46s): Austin, beer and barbecue was involved, which was great. So we're going to pour a little bit of whiskey for each of us. We're gonna have some and we're gonna talk shop. So Angela, for those that don't know, or know very little about ThisWay Global, do you prefer ThisWay or ThisWay Global. Angela (2m 6s): So ThisWay Global's the company name. Joel (2m 8s): Yeah. So ThisWay is sort of what you want to be Angela (2m 10s): Known as. Yeah, no one ever says ThisWay Global. Joel (2m 13s): Okay. Angela (2m 13s): Unless it's a contract. Joel (2m 14s): All right. So, so for those that don't know or know little about ThisWay, give them the elevator pitch. Angela (2m 20s): Short story is I'm an engineer that got fed up was being overlooked as a woman. And I said, I'm just gonna fix the problem for just other people like me. And I thought it was a small group. And then I found out it was the majority of people were being overlooked that were fully qualified and I was completely fed up with it. So I started a company that sources and matches talent and it's unbiased and bring it on all your questions about AI and bias. I got your answers. Chad (2m 49s): Everybody says I'm biased though today. I mean, everybody is slapping DEI, like a sticker on every platform go downstairs. There's gonna be DEI like on everything. So for the most part, it's bullshit. What makes yours not bullshit? Angela (3m 4s): Yeah. Okay. Well, not bullshit because I actually care, that it works. That's number one. That's a good start. Yeah. That's a, yeah. I care. If you also know our company, I really suck at marketing. So there's no way I could actually do a marketing pivot on that. Chad (3m 19s): So you started out this way. Angela (3m 21s): Yep. I did. Okay. Okay. So I started out 2012. I was at Cambridge University in England and I took me about a year to identify bias was the problem. And I started getting booed about the topic in 2013. Chad (3m 35s): Booed? Where were you getting booed? Angela (3m 37s): People do not like it. Joel (3m 38s): This British boo like, booooooo. Angela (3m 41s): No, no. It is a British boo in like parliament. It is that kind of move. Okay. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch parliament five minutes. You'll get that's what happened? Or the Joel (3m 50s): Princess Brian, you can watch that, that too. Angela (3m 51s): There you go. Perfect. So yeah, that's what I got booed and I said, right, and now I'm onto something because people that have a lot of money you're booing me, which means they don't like what I'm about to do, which bring it on. I'll challenge it. If I had had any idea how long it would take me to get traction, I probably would have said, what are you thinking? But ignorance is bliss. And so here I am. Chad (4m 15s): Talk about traction real quick. Why do you think it took so long? Was it the industry? Was it the tech? Was it just because it was burgeoning and new? I mean, why? Why did it take so long? Angela (4m 25s): Honestly, I think it was finally, the public told companies you don't have a choice. Chad (4m 30s): The public or the federal government? Angela (4m 32s): Both. Okay it started with the public. It did. It really did. It started with the public. It started with talent. That was diverse. Instead I've had enough, I'll go to work for all the cool companies that hire diverse talent. And all the big companies were like, wait a second. Why can't we hire these really great people? And so then 2020 hit, a lot of people think there was a social justice thing that caused all of this. It it's part of the accelerator. But the real fact is our population is more diverse and people like to work, like people who are like them. Yeah. And so if I'm more diverse, I wanna work with people that are more diverse, therefore, guess what is required? You better be. Joel (5m 11s): And by the way, more buyers are diverse. Angela (5m 13s): So that's right. Joel (5m 14s): So the money. Angela (5m 14s): There you go. Joel (5m 15s): You might wanna have people look like your customers. You started in '15, right? 2015? '16? Angela (5m 21s): ' 16. We founded the company. Yeah. Talk Joel (5m 23s): Talk about the landscape of sourcing tools at the time. Like yeah. What did that look like when you started the company? Angela (5m 30s): A lot of people were talking about giving a lot of assessments to really dig in and identify if someone was talented or not. And there was so much pushback by the talent that everyone was like, well, maybe we shouldn't be doing that. By 2018 people were catching on that. Okay. There might be something to this, but we're not gonna invest any money in it. We're just gonna say we're doing something 2020. You get people saying I'm going to, I think somewhere around 50 billion with a B. $50 billion is pledged to solve diversity problems, but only half of 1% actually gets deployed as of today. Angela (6m 11s): So a lot of talk, no action. Joel (6m 13s): But when you started the company, it wasn't about finding diversity or diverse candidates. It was just finding people. Angela (6m 20s): It was finding people without bias. Joel (6m 23s): In 2016. So the company was founded on that premise. So that was groundbreaking at the time because. Chad (6m 29s): She got booed. Joel (6m 30s): She got booed and you stuck to that core promise. Has it been hard to see other companies come along and say, they're unbiased? Chad (6m 42s): You mean all of them? Joel (6m 42s): And a lot of it in light of 2020 and the things that happened, societally, talk us through your, your thought processes. These companies started coming out is we're unbiased recruiting. We're the diversity platform. How did you react to that? Angela (6m 55s): So I would look and see what they were doing. And I'm like, no, you're not. And then I would think, right. So the customers are gonna buy, they're gonna do a two year contract. So I've gotta get them on our platform as soon as they find out that that doesn't work. And that's the strategy we took. And that's why we have so many customers. Chad (7m 11s): You've gotta be the contingency plan. Angela (7m 12s): That's right. Chad (7m 13s): Pretty much. Okay. Angela (7m 14s): Yeah. Chad (7m 14s): Okay. You can start with what doesn't work and then you can come ThisWay. You can come ThisWay. So talk about, talk about the actual, the go-to-market strategy with partnerships, because you have done an amazing job with companies like Salesforce. There's a little company probably nobody's heard of called IBM. So, I mean Joel (7m 31s): I think they have bottles on the table. Cause nothing's cooler than an IBM water bottle. That's right. Nothing says I'm cool at the gym, like an IBM water bottle. Like I go to the gym. Anyway. Chad (7m 46s): That's what you've heard. Joel (7m 48s): She was thinking it. I said it. Chad (7m 50s): Oh yeah. Angela (7m 50s): I can't believe I have to drink this whole thing of whiskey. Oh my God. Chad (7m 53s): That's just the first one. Angela (7m 55s): I know The one someone's gonna have to carry me out of this suite. Except for it's my suite. So no. Joel (7m 60s): There's comfy chairs. You might just stay here all night. Integrations. Yes. Start with Salesforce. That was the first big one. I think we talked. Chad (8m 7s): She's gotta take a drink first. Yeah. Oh shooter. Joel (8m 10s): Yeah. Oh she nailed it. That's how they roll baby. Chad (8m 14s): Big applause everybody. Big applause. Chad. I, that is good. Joel (8m 21s): Angela time. Chad (8m 21s): That is very good. Joel (8m 23s): That is, that is. Angela (8m 25s): It was this one. Chad (8m 28s): Yeah. Yeah. But now we're God Joel (8m 30s): Salesforce go because a little, a little context. When companies integrate, it's usually Greenhouse, iCIMS. It's the ATSs that we all that we all know and love. You guys took a little bit of a different track. You do integrate with those, but Salesforce was a bit unique. Talk about why and the results that you've gotten. Angela (8m 48s): So we honed in on Salesforce because they have 150,000 customers. Chad (8m 53s): Say what? Angela (8m 54s): A lot of people don't know this. And, they're companies that do what? They adopt technology. That's awesome. And they adopt technology all in the exact same way, not, you know, 150 different methods for trying to get in integration. So for us as a small company, we have to be agile and we also have to be very focused. So that was the way we could hit 150,000 company TAN. Joel (9m 21s): And how has the relationship integration worked for you guys? So have it been a home run or yeah, a little bit of an air ball. Angela (9m 27s): So this is the really fun part about being a founder is you plan all of these go-to markets and then you have a thing like a pandemic. So I'm not kidding. When I say the launch for Salesforce was the day after we announced that we had a pandemic, the world health organization said, oh yeah, it's official and so I sat on sofa and like gave myself 20 minutes to panic. And then I called Salesforce and we said, let's not do this launch cuz no one cares. They didn't care about anything other than what's going on with the pandemic. So it stalled completely. And then we started getting traction with staffing and there's a big, very big announcement coming out next month. Angela (10m 13s): Can't share right now. But Chad (10m 15s): Teaser. Angela (10m 15s): I know Joel (10m 16s): Just between us? Angela (10m 17s): I know. Chad (10m 18s): Between the kids in the room? Yeah. Angela (10m 22s): No, but it does have very real legs and it's been a long time to wait, but it will be global. Joel (10m 28s): I'm not sure you answered my question. Yeah. In regards. Okay. I'm Angela (10m 31s): Okay. I'm gonna run for office then. Joel (10m 33s): Should we roll into IBM and that integration and what that is? Angela (10m 39s): I will answer those questions maybe. Joel (10m 42s): Okay. All right. Angela (10m 44s): So IBM, I identified them again, huge footprint, very technically smart company has all the customers that we really wanted to work with. And there was this little hurdle called Kenexa/ Brassring and we couldn't really get past it. And then one day I hear that Kenexa/ Brassring has been sold off and I thought, okay, maybe just maybe we set our OKR for our company that quarter for us to be the HR function for IBM and within so who's counting? 52 days we had the deal and we launched tomorrow at two o'clock is kind of like the big coming out party for Watson Orchestrate powered by ThisWay Global. Chad (11m 35s): Good for you guys. So love so, so, okay. Talk about IBM Orchestrate is really a business process enhancer, right? Angela (11m 46s): No. Chad (11m 46s): No. What are you guys doing? That's what the guy told me on the couch yesterday. Angela (11m 50s): He doesn't know what he is talking about. Chad (11m 53s): All right The IBM guy. Didn't okay. That's right. Okay. Angela (11m 57s): No, what it is. So I think everyone knows who Ironman is and Ironman has Jarvis and Jarvis does things for Ironman, right? So he can go off and do cool things like fly. Jarvis is back there doing the data on the background. That's essentially what automation is when IBM talks about Watson Orchestrate, is let the user do the strategic work, the work that they love doing and let Watson take off that load and do all the monotonous and the biggest part about it is you can integrate between different tools. So I'm gonna give you an example. You have a job description inbox. Angela (12m 39s): If you need to get candidates from ThisWay, and you're using Gmail for your email, all of that can happen in matter of a second. And you can reach out to candidates and start introducing your company in the position to them. And you can be at your kid's soccer game and have work life balance again. Chad (12m 59s): So, and you could do this externally and also internally. Angela (13m 1s): That's right. Chad (13m 1s): So you can, you can use this with some of the partners that you have externally that actually outreach. So, but let's talk about the internal piece real quick, because most companies don't focus on the millions of dollars that they spend every single year because they're building this candidate database and nobody is using it. And so it's just staying there. It's atrophying. So how are you guys actually focused on being able to help them dive back into those candidates and spend less money and then stop trying to pull the same people in through recruitment marketing. Angela (13m 39s): So if we had more customer demand, we would be doing that for every customer that we have. Chad (13m 44s): So why do you think there's not customer demand though? Angela (13m 49s): Because procurement sits on the throne of lies and says that it smells like Chad (13m 56s): Meat and cheese. Angela (13m 56s): This sounds like smells exactly like that. And they sit up there and they say, oh, they're gonna grab our data. They're gonna do this. What I'm like really? Do you not think we have anything better to do with our time than try to grab your data? That is unstructured, messy and outdated. Yeah. It's so valuable. So we just don't get that much customer demand for it. And so Chad (14m 18s): Do they think they're they own the launch codes or something? Angela (14m 21s): Absolutely. Yes they do. Yeah. And so we said, you know, why keep hitting your head against the door. We still have the technology to do that. But only about 20% of our customers use it. Every single one of our customers uses our product called Discover, which is what we launched with Watson Orchestrate first. Chad (14m 41s): Okay. Angela (14m 42s): This is the passive database of candidates, 169 million profiles all structured exactly the same way. You cannot see any of the biasing data, age, pictures, gender, ethnicity, all that kind of stuff. And then you get to a certain point where you're committed to recruiting or actually engaging with these people. Then you can see information. And we hope by that point, you have learned enough by seeing the quality candidates that are also diverse, that now the bias is kind of washing out of your system. That's what we see at least from our current customers. Joel (15m 15s): What are you guys doing with Google? Angela (15m 17s): We were a Google accelerated company at the end of '21 and I, okay. I was so suspicious. I'll just be honest about this. I thought they're probably just trying to sell us Google Cloud or something. That's what all this is about. Joel (15m 37s): Then Larry Paige called? Chad (15m 38s): Sergey? Angela (15m 38s): And then we got vetted over and over and over by their engineers and by the AI department and by security and data protection and all this stuff. And at the end of it, they're like, you know, you're doing an amazing job and we want to continue to help you. So for the duration of the company, for the life of the company, Google continues to accelerate us. And it's one of the coolest incubation kind of platform arrangements we've ever had. And my entire team has everyone in Google they have their contact details. They can go on to a portal that we have access to and request help on anything. And we do it on a regular basis. Chad (16m 19s): So they have some pretty awesome support behind this? Joel (16m 23s): ThisWay Global accelerates. Angela (16m 24s): So they, how Joel (16m 25s): Money? Talent? What? Angela (16m 26s): Basically it's us doing the work, but it's them telling us this is what you're doing wrong. So I'll give everyone a tip. So GA four, which is Google analytics, but GA four is a total different platform than Google analytics. And if you are not on it, you're missing out. And there are so many people that don't know this and thanks. That is the same thing. It's just a different version. It is not. And the other really good piece of data that I will share is that when you are using Google AdWords, absolutely keep your ad live for exactly eight days on the eighth day. Learn from that, then make changes, never stop before eight days. Angela (17m 6s): Otherwise you've lost all of the benefits of Google AdWords. Joel (17m 8s): I want the record to show that she said, here's a tip. And I said nothing. Angela (17m 15s): I thank you Joel. Chad (17m 16s): Just wipe that clean by saying that. Angela (17m 18s): That means he's saving a doozy for later. Joel (17m 21s): That's right. One of the things you've done that I think is really intriguing is the way that you've raised money. Okay. And you've raised a, just shy of $4 million. Angela (17m 30s): Nope. More. Joel (17m 31s): What is it? Angela (17m 34s): Eight and a half. Joel (17m 37s): Is that news? Angela (17m 38s): I don't know. Maybe to you. Joel (17m 41s): This is my show. Angela (17m 42s): I've known it for a while. Joel (17m 44s): Apparently. It's how much is crowdfunded? How much isn't talk? I think a lot of companies, startups listen to our show or companies are like, gee, crowdfunding looks cool, but do we do it or not? Like, would you steer people that way? Tips, tips to do it. Sorry. I said tips again, but you said anything that you would do? Would you still do it again? Are you gonna raise another round of crowdfunding? Angela (18m 7s): So the truth is it wasn't planned. We had an investor that was, again, this is a pandemic story. March was not a good month for me in 2020. I'll just tell you, I don't think any of us had a great month that month. We had a round that was closing. It was supposed to fund on the 18th. And on the 14th, I got an email, super warm and fuzzy, got an email and said, Hey, we're not gonna send that check after all. And I was like, what? And we just, you know, like if you've ever led a company, you know what this means anyway. So again, another 20 minutes panic, and then maybe another 20 minutes in panic? Joel (18m 47s): It could be at your door in about 24 hours. Angela (18m 51s): A whole bunch of them. Yeah. But what, so I have an advisor that always says there's always another gear. And sometimes I just have to be reminded of that. And so I said, okay, I am not going to allow this company and my staff as we're going into a pandemic, not have a job. Like that was like, it was not okay with me. And so I said, I will go down with a fight and it might be really ugly, but I'll figure it out. So by two weeks later, I had identified, there was two companies that do crowdfunding. One's called Republic. One's called Wefunder. And I liked both of them. Angela (19m 31s): But the reason why I picked Wefunder is very, very specific. We have VCs and we have angels in our rounds and I needed to simplify my cap table if I was ever going to raise money in the future. And so Wefunder has a policy or a process where you can have a lead investor and every investor underneath them is all one line item on your cap table. This is incredibly important. If you plan on having any VC money, private equity, money acquisition, and we plan for all of the above. So then I was like, wait, we don't have a big social media presence. So this is gonna be really tough. I found this great guy , who's a, a good friend of mine now, his name is Chris Gravy. Angela (20m 16s): And I said, I need for you to help me market in the crowd marketing fund or in the crowd marketing way. We ultimately raised just under three and a half million. Is that right? We raised three and a half million dollars. And I have now a couple of thousand people that absolutely love my company. Love my team. Oh yeah. And they show it every day. And it's awesome. Joel (20m 42s): Yeah. So that sounds like a recommendation. So it goes a crowd funding route. Angela (20m 46s): So there's downsides to it. It's hard from an accounting perspective. My CFO maybe cusses me out on a daily basis for this or whatever, but our company is still here and we're better for it. So I, you know, sometimes you do things you don't necessarily wanna do to keep your company alive and your people employed Joel (21m 2s): Is the crowdfunding closed currently, or can people still? Angela (21m 6s): It is closed also because my CFO, I didn't want to be killed by them. And so maybe one day we'll do that again. I don't know. I think probably our next round is much bigger round and you know, we've had lots of interest, especially after the IBM announcement. It was interesting how all of a sudden I was super interesting and I wasn't in 2020, but I dunno I will make a call in the next couple weeks. But I think that we will probably raise a Series A we've raised eight and a half give or take and three and a half of that is crowdfunding. And I would say this, if you want to know, if people care about what you do as a company, do a crowdfunding campaign, you will find out you will find out immediately. Chad (21m 54s): Yeah. So talk about, talk about again, female funders or female founders. Angela (21m 58s): Or both. Chad (21m 59s): Yeah. Well, I mean, we're not seeing a lot of female founders getting funded very well. Joel (22m 2s): We're a glass ahead of you, Angela, by the way. Chad (22m 4s): No. She's oh, is she caught up? She's on. Yeah. Angela (22m 8s): I'm about to do a shooter. You're not gonna able to keep up with me. Joel (22m 11s): We're midway there. Angela (22m 12s): Sorry. While I can still cheers. Is that what you're saying? Joel (22m 17s): Yes. Keep going. Chad (22m 19s): Imagine the old white guy to, you know, interrupting during the female founder conversation. Angela (22m 23s): I'm used to it. Okay. Chad (22m 24s): So talk about that though, because coming out, it's not easy being a female founder, what did you run into? But now you find yourself you're getting ready to go to London on Bloomberg. I mean, you, you it's like, oh, now she's, she's risen up. Now we should actually pay attention to her. How did that happen? First and foremost, just take us through kind of like how it felt to be that female founder at first and then where you are today. Angela (22m 50s): It was bullshit. Yeah. But I'm used to it because I came up through the engineering and construction ranks. I don't know. It's like, whatever, like if you have some attitude about me because I'm a woman, then I don't really need you in my space. So it is a great eliminator of crappy people. So I can just look like, how do you treat me? Yes. You're you just talk to me normal. Cool. If you're gonna be an as then out. And so I think sometimes it's an advantage, but now it's kind of funny because people will call me and they're like, Hey, we want you to give a talk. You know, you're a female founder. I'm like, am I, oh my God, I didn't know this. It's amazing. And that's annoying when you like, get asked to do things because you're a female. Angela (23m 32s): I'll take it though, because I'll take any stage where I get to talk about what we're doing and the problem we're solving. I think I will have to say this. And this is absolutely legitimate. IBM is probably the most diverse company I've ever been around, like shockingly. So I've never seen a company that's diverse. Yeah. And they don't seem to honestly care men, women, you know, you could be a blues Smurf, as long as you can do the job. So I, I don't know. I like that part. The talk that I'm giving is in it's November the 17th, it's at London on Bloomberg and it's the second time I've been on Bloomberg. Angela (24m 17s): And it is largely because of the work that we're doing as a company. And the fact that we've now partnered with IBM, because it makes it really easy for companies to access the tech. Chad (24m 27s): Was, was that the tipping point? You think though? The, the, the name IBM or what do you feel like the tipping point was where people actually started paying attention and giving a shit Angela (24m 39s): Google accelerator. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We got highlighted. We got some really good press from Google and people started paying attention and like what, maybe they're actually a real deal. And then at the end of the accelerator, we had a lot of offers of acquisition and we listened to all of them. And we said, Nope, because everything that they wanted to do was basically rip out the actual part of the solution that companies really cared about. Okay. And they just wanted our database of people. And I was like, that's not why people are in our system is to have you scavenge it. So Chad (25m 15s): Beside crowdfunding, obviously the other funders that are out there, do you find out that they really don't know what the hell is going on in this industry in the first Angela (25m 24s): Place? No, they have no clue. They assume this is so funny. Everyone in this room is gonna laugh. They assume that because it's HR and because it's people and people run companies that obviously there's a lot of investment in the HR tech space. And everyone's like, what? They just can't believe that people are not investing in this because they've invested in technology in every other aspect of the business. But not that I, I don't know. I find it a joke. So, Chad (25m 56s): So in not understanding that, why do you, why do you think it's taking them so long to actually see any attention for HR TA that type of tech? Because they're over in FinTech and there's more money over there. I mean, is that they're just going where the money is? Angela (26m 16s): No, they don't. 5 (26m 17s): That would be the four roses. That was four roses. Single barrel. Yes. That Chad (26m 22s): And anybody who's listening, that was an Angela choke by the way. Angela (26m 25s): Can't see the expression. Thank God. 5 (26m 28s): This Angela (26m 28s): Is not video. Wait until we 5 (26m 31s): Get the Chad (26m 32s): Scotch next. Don't Angela (26m 33s): Worry. Oh my God. Okay. So I think that, so the, the deal with foreign investment, I will say the UK has cared about being more neutral on gender. Okay. Well, before the us was, Europe was required to be more neutral and we are really late to the party, you know? And so we get a lot of money that gets invested in systems like ours, overseas, and then they come into the us market. And I will say that a lot of them have a lot of trouble because they don't understand how you, us companies buy. Joel (27m 9s): So you touched on Europe, Americans have pretty short memories and they're onto the next thing pretty quickly. And I think we talked about on our show of, of the whole diversity play and the George Floyd and everything that was happening, that eventually we would move beyond that, that we would sort of be on to whatever was next. Right. And you saw companies dedicate budget and you saw, you know, verbiage and companies coming out. I'm guessing that you still feel like there's a lot of energy around diversity in America or, or not like where what's the state of, of that mentality in our country. Have we, are we moving on or are we still focused on diversity? Angela (27m 47s): The companies or the people? Joel (27m 50s): The companies. Angela (27m 50s): So the companies, I think my view is most of them are faking it. So they are not investing. Go Joel (27m 58s): On. Okay. Say more. Angela (27m 59s): Okay. They are saying all kinds of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, diversity, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You know, whatever. They don't actually mean it. You can see it. And the reason why people do not apply for their jobs is because they look fake and no one wants to work for a fake company. I mean, they just don't Joel (28m 17s): Explain that a fake job posting. So a legitimate company with what makes it fake or look fake. Angela (28m 24s): So the, the comp the, no, it's not the job posting as much as it is the, the careers page. Oh, look, we did an stock photo. Did that. Right. Top stock. Yeah. Well, you see how big we paid extra for the big format, stock photo. Yeah. Don't you see, we care with Joel (28m 41s): Every representation of Angela (28m 41s): Everyone in it. Like, and people look at that and they're like, seriously, there's nothing on there. Oh, there's a person. This is the other part. Here's a person of a, a beautiful black person. And here's two Latinas. They are talking and here's oh, absolutely. Oh no veteran. Oh. And he's wearing his cammies at work because normally that's happened. And yeah. Chad (29m 3s): And he's got his and is, got his hat on inside or something. Angela (29m 9s): Of course he does. Oh. And his insignias completely wrong. It's army with Marine insignia on it, you know, whatever. But it's that kinda stuff where if you're thinking, you're trying to attract a person and the person is actually a veteran and they look at that and they, their brain just blows up. It's like watching top gun and you see all the wrong, you know, I'm a married to a pilot. So here's the thing, like when we go see Tom top gun, I have to listen to all the things that are wrong about the movie. So it's the same thing with their careers page for a veteran. Yeah. Joel (29m 41s): So talk about that. So you have a service, that's an unbiased recruiting tool. Yeah. Are people buying your product just to say, Hey, checklist for everybody we're buy we're unbiased or do people really care in organizations to use your product? Cause what, what I hear is that no one cares. They're paying lip service and they're just paying you to check the box to say, Hey, we're unbiased. Chad (30m 4s): Drink your drink, Joel. I guess what you're behind Angela (30m 7s): 30% of our customers, I think are wishy-washy about whether they care or not honestly, the, the rest of them. I know they care because they're on the phone with our team going, okay, we got this. Oh my God. We were so happy. We found this person, you know, they were like ecstatic that they found some person that they didn't know it existed. So we hear that kind of stuff. Or when they're having trouble finding someone, we hear that too. Yeah. So that part, but it's more of when we're talking to customer prospects, that's when we find the person we're talking to legitimately cares. Usually that person is like, I have to have this. They go to the boss, the boss goes here is $5,000. Angela (30m 50s): Please make sure that all 2,500 of our hires that we have out right now are all diverse. And the person is like, what are you talking about? But they don't get budget. And so like, what is that about? I, I mean, it's the most disconnected. Yes. And it's embarrassing. Sometimes when I listen to companies that are really big brands and they're just Jack wagons, Chad (31m 16s): Jack Angela (31m 17s): Wagons, wagons. I know Chad (31m 19s): I Angela (31m 19s): It's real everyone from Texas knows what a Jack wagon is. Okay. Okay. So move to Texas and then you'll know. Okay. Chad (31m 24s): Jack wagon, not okay. Is Joel (31m 26s): This an American thing or are you seeing the same mentality in Chad (31m 30s): The Jack wagon? Joel (31m 32s): Not Jack wagon. I'm no, I can't Jack Chad (31m 33s): Wagon. Can't get off the Jack wagon. Joel (31m 38s): Chucklehead Jack wagon. Yeah. So you talked about your, is it, is it similar, different globally? Angela (31m 44s): So it's interesting. There are tax incentives and all kinds of other things in other countries that I think cause companies to behave a certain way. Yep. Yeah. So how much of that is authentic and how much of it's because of tax benefits? I don't know, but they do spend more money and they, they're more proactive and they seem to understand which should be obvious that a careers page stock photo will not cut it. Chad (32m 12s): Yeah. But transparency is key though. Right? I mean, we we've started to see transparency slowly here in the us. I think start to move things forward just on the pay equity side. Now, if we could actually be more transparent around workforce composition because you guys would help with that dramatically. I mean, if we, if, and again, it's, it's shaming, but who, who gives us shit let's, let's get to where we need to be. Right. So what do you, what do you think about that? About utilizing your tech or any tech to be able to provide something where it's more transparent and it gives that organization really more of an edge to be able to demonstrate that, Hey, we are diverse. Chad (32m 52s): This is not a stock photo. This Angela (32m 58s): Is who we are. Right. So the thing I worry about transparency done incorrectly Chad (33m 1s): Lies. Angela (33m 2s): Yeah. Lies. Hey, I was trying to be nice. Okay. Chad (33m 4s): After the Jack wagon came, yeah. Joel (33m 7s): We're four drinks into it. We'll be on being nice at this point. Angela (33m 12s): All right. So if you, if you're going to lie, people will figure that out. And so, alright. Let's talk about some demographics for a second. Right now the majority of the workforce that employers care about, which is an important part are millennials. Chad (33m 29s): Because, because they're a huge segment into the population. Angela (33m 32s): That's right. Millennials do not give one shit about your lives. Like they are like, you know what? You are a loser. I won't even buy any shoes from you now because you lied to me during the career process. Right. I mean, you're over, you're done. And they'll, and they'll tell all their friends and they'll get on social media and they'll tell every single person, they might even do a TikTok dance about it. You know, like they might, and then you're ruined with an entire category of people. But I think that's the part that companies have not figured out is that if you're gonna lie about how you feel about your people and you're not gonna pay them, equity pay and pay parity and all of this. Angela (34m 13s): Right, right. If you are not gonna get into that zone and be legitimate about it, you will be punished and you'll be punished. You may not even know that you're getting punished. Right. You may just go, why, why have our revenues fallen off? We haven't changed anything else, right? Yeah. But you're shitty. Joel (34m 35s): And that's a hidden camera from Victoria's secret strategy meeting. And speaking of Victoria's secret, Angela (34m 40s): Wow. That's quite the transition. Joel (34m 42s): This is what I do for a living Angela. So segue. So there's a, there's a case study of, of first love on your site, which I believe is a Bre. It is company. So talk about that case study, how they were able to cut time, hiring time significantly. And, and Chad's touching Angela, which is a little bit does, Chad (35m 4s): Does anybody Sayir anymore? Okay. I just, I had to get that out there. I know everybody was thinking it. I'm thinking, did my mom just step in the room? No, it was Joel, go ahead. It was on a Joel (35m 13s): Feld fan. What are you doing? I'm trying to keep it classy. Angela (35m 17s): When he said Brazil. I had to think for a moment. I was like, what? What's a Brazil Brock. Okay. Got it. Joel (35m 28s): First love. I thought it was Angela (35m 29s): SCO. Okay. All right. So first of all, this is an interesting y'all okay. Everyone should go look at the website after I say this. Okay. Chad (35m 40s): The first love website or yours? Yes. Okay. First Angela (35m 43s): Love website because they refer to themself as intimates technology, I believe. Okay. Now, Joel (35m 49s): Do you prefer intimates over Brazil? Angela (35m 50s): It's their branding. Not mine. Chad (35m 50s): It's gonna stick with him forever and Joel (35m 52s): Says yes. So we'll go with, we Angela (35m 54s): Go with that one. I, I would not be surprised if the founder does not send you a bra now let's just be clear. Right. And she will ask you what size you are. Yeah. Which I can't wait in your 6 (36m 13s): Day. Joel (36m 13s): It's the one without the metal under Angela (36m 15s): You don't want under wire? Joel (36m 16s): No, the under wire. Chad (36m 20s): Here's at least a sea cup. Let's go ahead. Joel (36m 23s): I want, I want comfort. Angela (36m 26s): Comfort. Okay. So they reach out to us because they said we're having a really hard time finding people to work in our warehouse. And we're like, okay. Why? And they're like, well, we don't know why. And so then it comes out that everyone that has worked in, they want someone that's worked in an intimate warehouse. So here's the thing. When you put an ad out for intimate warehouse worker, just the people that fly it's magical. And I had my entire engineering team just on the floor laughing because they would just see these little, those Joel (37m 5s): Job titles are important. Angela (37m 7s): Yeah. They they're really important. Right. So we said like, okay, here's the deal? Let's let's restructure some of this. So we run it through our AI. AI says, call it this job description looks like that people come in, they apply. They're like, oh my God, these are great people. Awesome. They're old. They were like, what? And they're like, they're old. I'm like, how old are like, this is mean. And someone, the person who we're talking to, which was, I'm not joking was about 20 said, well, this person was over 30. I was like shock. You know? So, and also a man. Angela (37m 46s): And so then there was a problem. We didn't realize that they didn't want men touching the underwear and the braziers. They did not. Okay. Chad (37m 54s): Because they would call them braziers yes, Angela (37m 59s): That's right. Did not want them touching that. And we said, why? And the person explained, and then fortunately their company and our company share an investor. So I went to our investor and I said, can you please call the founder? The, so there's, co-founders their husband and wife. I said, can I have a conversation? So have a conversation with the founder. And she had no idea that this was going on. Like someone had made this executive decision as an entry level job. Who'd been there for six months that the person was too old and they were male and they were 30. So I, I was like, we need to like shake things up a bit and let this person who had worked for Victoria's secret. Angela (38m 40s): Ironically, as you brought Chad (38m 41s): Them up, I'm gonna that's. Joel (38m 43s): We did that. Is anyone else thrown off that? 30 is someone old in this scenario? Right. Okay. Hey, all right. Keep going. Angela (38m 48s): If you're 20, 30 is old as hell, I guess so. Okay. So we break down what the problem was. The problem was someone had not received adequate training or other issues. And then we fixed that problem. And then magically all of this talent showed up because the job description actually didn't sound like something that was completely inappropriate. And 30 year old men were allowed to work in the warehouse. And so, I mean, that, that kind of stuff is Joel (39m 17s): Just, I had no idea when I asked that question, but that was where that was gonna go. Thank you for Chad (39m 24s): That. So that, that's Angela (39m 25s): The reality though. Joel (39m 27s): Let Jeff Angela (39m 27s): Fun. No. Joel (39m 29s): With the interview. Not, not, not. She's gonna have Angela (39m 33s): Not talking about Bres. Chad (39m 34s): No. And that's your fault. All Joel (39m 36s): Comfort. Which one was our favorite? First we got for the listeners. We got this sent to, we got the angels envy, the four roses and the Glen Livi. Chad (39m 45s): Yeah. The four roses is always a staple too easy, but I've never had the Japanese said sent Tori. Okay. That was delicious. That it tasted very Irish. Joel (39m 56s): Yes. Chad (39m 56s): Right? Yes. Joel (39m 57s): Are you Angela (39m 57s): Talking about, why are you talking about Joel (39m 59s): It's light? Like an Irish. Angela (39m 60s): I think your lack of hair has gone to your head. Chad (40m 3s): You didn't think so. You didn't think that tasted like, I like Angela (40m 6s): That. What, what hell I know. Did you see my face? Joel (40m 10s): All right, Angela, we picked, Angela (40m 11s): Aren't listening to me about, okay. I gotta go single mom. Oh, Chad (40m 15s): Okay. The scotch. Okay. She already nailed it. Joel (40m 17s): Okay. I think the Angel's envy was pretty solid. I gotta say, I gotta say Chad (40m 21s): It's always Angela (40m 21s): Solid, but no, for roses. I actually did not. Okay. So here's the thing. I thought all of them would be horrible because I don't like whiskey, but I was surprised by that one. Was it for roses? Yeah. Yeah. Chad (40m 32s): Very calmly. You liked Joel (40m 33s): That? I was surprised. Cause that's the one that choked you up a little bit. No's one that Angela (40m 39s): I didn't say. I liked it. I said I was surprised Joel (40m 49s): By. Gotcha. Gotcha. Angela (40m 50s): It's like, I'm surprised by you, Joel. Chad (40m 52s): Oh, Joel (40m 52s): Angela Hood. Everybody give it all. What's here. Angela, for everyone listening out there, where can they find out more about ThisWay? Angela (41m 0s): So right now my marketing guy is just dreamy because you said that ThisWay Global.com. But if you go to contacted ThisWay, global.com, it goes to the magic person in our company, Michael Coates, who will definitely get the message to me. It's not like some email that goes on to the outer webs. And I mean like the Chad (41m 19s): Black hole of applying for a job, that's Angela (41m 21s): It does not do that. Yeah. So it'll actually find it your way to us. And we would actually love to hear from you. Like, you know, you, you're welcome to send me some nasty Graham. I do get those on occasion. I won't respond to it, but you're welcome to send Joel (41m 35s): It. Just don't send her a first love Brazil. Chad, I have, I know you did too. Everybody. Thank you. And we out 4 (41m 54s): Now, everybody out. No, I'm kidding. 8 (41m 57s): Thank you for listening to what's it called podcast with Chad, the cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one chatter, blue, macho pepper, Jack Swiss, the so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who we should subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen, the podcasts. 8 (42m 40s): That way you won't mess an episode. And while you're added visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese is so weird. We out.

DEI is failing. That's the opinion of Dr. Tiffany Brandreth, and that's also why we had to bring her on the podcast. Among the topics Chad & Cheese discuss with "Dr. T" include 1) why leaders are simultaneously advocating and oppressing DEI efforts, 2) how oppressive decisions have no consequence and are concealed through visible DEI activities, and 3) what are the five unconscious biases are leading DEI yet driving it into the "death zone." What's the "death zone"? Gotta listen. It's a no-holds, honest take on the state of DEI in Corporate America. 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 (0s): 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 (21s): Oh yeah. What's up everybody. It's your favorite knuckleheads? AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast as always. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined by the Eddie van Halen to my diamond David Lee Roth, Chad Sowash. And today we welcome the doctor, Dr. Tiffany Brandreth, DEI expert, and a leadership and organizational psychologist to C-suite and senior leadership teams. Chad (49s): Yes. Joel (50s): Was a lot smarter than us, Chad, and it's good that we have these guests welcome, Dr. Tiffany, can I call you Dr. Tiffany? Or do you like Dr. Brandreth better? Dr. Tiffany (59s): No, no, actually I'm affectionately referred to as Dr. T or Dr. B by clients. Chad (1m 5s): Like Mr. T like Mr. T. Dr. Tiffany (1m 7s): Yes, exactly. Chad (1m 9s): But Dr. T I pity the fool who messes with Dr. T. Joel (1m 16s): Well, Dr. Thank you for joining us today. A lot of our listeners aren't aware of you or know you, can you give us a quick bio on what makes Dr. Tiffany tick? Dr. Tiffany (1m 25s): Ooh. Okay. So in short form, I'm gonna say I am off the chart introvert, but come across as an off the chart extrovert. And what makes me tick is I'm super passionate and convicted in general about life and who we're trying to be in this world and making a difference and doing that through the work that I do while also having fun. Chad (1m 46s): And you're also, you like the food though. You like the food and you like the water. Tell us a little bit about that. Dr. Tiffany (1m 52s): I think about food from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep. And I'm thinking about when I'm gonna be eating every day, all day long. Chad (1m 60s): Are you a food snob? Are you a food snob though? Will you do the fast foods or will you just do any foods? Dr. Tiffany (2m 5s): I will. Well, okay. So I have a funny, real quick story. I went and ate what is that Michelin store restaurant in Napa Valley. Joel (2m 15s): Yeah. Crickets. You're gonna get crickets. Dr. Tiffany (2m 18s): Well, there's a, and it was a five hour exceptional dining experience where? Oh yeah. Right. Okay. Matching champagne, wine food, all that. Oh, with exceptional food. Five hours. Yes. I went home the next day. I ate tater tots and ramen noodles. Chad (2m 37s): That's good balance. Dr. Tiffany (2m 39s): That's good. And I barely cook. Joel (2m 41s): And you said the perfect woman didn't exist, Chad. Chad (2m 45s): And she does. She's here we call her Dr. T. Joel (2m 48s): And so we can hate her more. Where are you calling in from Dr. T. Okay. Dr. Tiffany (2m 53s): I am. I live in Orange County in California, but I'm originally from a very small town called Bottle Grand, Washington. And we just had our 30 year reunion. So I looked up the population back when I was graduating, I graduated '92. The population that the US census says was 3,700 people when I graduated. It is now 21,000. That's what? 2020. In 2021, what the census said. So that gives you an idea of growth. Joel (3m 22s): I like how she diverted us from California to Washington. She did a really nice, nice deflection on that one. Chad (3m 29s): But also she gets a big applause because she's an GenXer. Dr. Tiffany (3m 33s): That's right. Gen X. Very proud of that. Joel (3m 36s): Oh, well, whatever, never mind. Dr. Tiffany (3m 38s): Amen. Do you remember? I don't know if you remember this. So the way gender identity is being spoken about today and really emphasized is the way generational diversity was being spoken about and educated on back in the early two thousands. And I remember gen X had had no part of the conversation. Everyone was paying attention to baby boomers. Chad (3m 56s): We still don't. Joel (3m 57s): Yeah, we still don't. Dr. Tiffany (3m 58s): Right. So, and millennials, and I remember going, Hey, what about us? But because our numbers are so low, we still, they still don't care. sfx (4m 6s): What did you say? Chad (4m 7s): You've been in the DEI space for nearly 18 years, but probably more than that? Dr. Tiffany (4m 15s): Longer! Mid nineties. Chad (4m 16s): Being in the DEI space, even before that acronym even existed, what's been the biggest change? Dr. Tiffany (4m 24s): Hmm. Ooh, good question. I'm gonna say the biggest change is probably the receptivity today versus back in the mid nineties, late nineties. So terminology of course continues to change. In fact, the department was called Multicultural Affairs and it was in a renowned medical school and hospital. And we were the first team to design and deliver diversity training. So the biggest change is that it started off as training. And now it's a, you know, entire initiative being funded, I mean poorly in general, but being funded by corporations. Chad (5m 2s): Well, that being said, okay, we're seeing billions and billions of dollars on DEI training every single year, but yet we're not seeing the outcomes. Can we go ahead and just put a stake in it and say that DEI training just doesn't work. Dr. Tiffany (5m 18s): Okay. So yes, I'm gonna, and so prior to 2020, right, May, 2020, it was reported that we're spending $8 billion a year and oh my gosh, that's so much money, but in comparison to $166 billion that is being spent on leadership development. And we know that Gallup continues to report engagement level, disengagement is around 70% based on poor leadership and management. Yet we never ever say leadership development training is failing. Joel (5m 49s): One of the points you make that dei is failing and you talk about in a LinkedIn place, that we are simultaneously advocating and oppressing DEI efforts. Can you explain that? Dr. Tiffany (6m 2s): Yes. Okay. So we've only been doing research on, right what's working, what isn't working? We haven't been researching and focusing on the people that are committed to diversity and the decisions that are being made to advance it or to prevent it because those decisions are concealed. And we aren't transparent about that. Right? And so the field has been led through what I refer to as good intentions, right? Well intended people who want to be able to make a difference yet without the qualifications to actually be leading this work. And I'm gonna say there's different facets. Dr. Tiffany (6m 42s): So let's just say organizational change, right. Requires and organizational psychologist, who knows how to do conflict management, who knows leadership development and also diversity inclusion. DEI experts weren't trained in org psychology and leadership development, leadership development, people aren't trained in DEI and or psychology actually doesn't train in DEI either. Chad (7m 6s): So what we're seeing is a bunch of figureheads who literally have no fucking clue what they're doing. And let me liken into this as something real quick, I'm a veteran and I'm also on the, you know, obviously the talent acquisition recruiting side of the house. Just because you put a veteran in a spot doesn't mean they know how to hire veterans and what the actual issues are. Is that what you're saying with regard to the other aspects of DEI? Just because you put somebody in that space and they could be a person of color or a female doesn't mean they know what the fuck they're doing. Dr. Tiffany (7m 40s): Ooh. So you're just touching on something highly controversial, but spot on. So you just named one of what I'm referring to is five unconscious deceptions, but highly uncomfortable truths of what is leading DEI and driving it directly into what I've trademark and coin as the "DEI death zone" analogy to Mount Everett's death zone. So experience is one of those five. And the way I define this as ''being from a marginalized classification, qualifies to hold position and are exempt from making oppressive DEI decisions. Joel (8m 17s): I love how you sort of frame death zone with Mount Everest. Can you dive into that just a little bit and then we'll get into the other four biases that you talk about? Dr. Tiffany (8m 28s): Mm, okay. So Mount Everest is the highest peak right in the world. And hundreds of people go and see to climb that the death zone is near the highest elevation peak, where the elevation is so extreme and the altitude levels are so high that people are actually dying. So you can only spend a certain amount of time there in order to summit and get to the peak. So this is the place where most climbers die now, Sherpa, right, are the navigation experts, guiding individuals and climbers up the mountain to get to the peak. So they're also carrying all the supplies and you have a range of people who are highly experienced experts at this, but then the younger individuals that don't have the experience at. Dr. Tiffany (9m 14s): So people are paying a discounted rate to have a Sherpa that will take them up the mountain and take their direction versus take the direction from the Sherpa. And so what, there's two parts of the dust zone. The initiative itself is falling into the dust zone without it being known. So this is what I call advocacy. Advocacy is all the feel good efforts that are happening. I ship one bias training that's an hour long speakers coming in recruitment. Everyone wants to share their recruitment numbers, but the desk zone is where all the inequity and the non-inclusive behaviors are being permitted and allowed. Dr. Tiffany (9m 57s): So the death zone is happening, but unbeknownst to the larger body and then the death zone for diverse marginalized individuals. So, you know, this whole notion speak truth to power. Joel (10m 7s): Yes. Dr. Tiffany (10m 7s): So I was doing that way, way, way before it was even coined to term. And the reason why coming out with all of this as well is I'm really bored by all the recommendations and all the articles that keep coming out, because there are the same redundant solutions that are only topical and surface level. And we're defining the problem in the wrong way. So when all the speakers like you go to these conferences and such, and so all the speakers talk about, be courageous, speak your truth, be authentic, and look I'm up here. So, because I made it so can you, and all the people that didn't make it aren't on stage. Dr. Tiffany (10m 49s): And so by telling people speak truth to power, you can do it when power won't even speak truth to power. So these 35 executive teams that I've worked with, there's a power dynamic within the executive teams where, when I'm doing my informational meetings and so forth, the number one thing that executives ask me is this going to be kept confidential? So if executives aren't willing to speak the truth among the executive team, why the hell are we advising people who are already disadvantaged at lower levels to speak truth to power when they're being penalized in really subtle ways, identified nine behaviors that are happening by DEI, by advocates, for DEI in senior leadership roles that are penalizing people for doing that. Chad (11m 37s): So, your research reveals that women, women are the highest demographic representing the people who are oppressing real change. Talk to me about that. That to me is surprising as hell because .the exact people who are being oppressed, maybe this shouldn't surprise us because Jeff Bezos, everybody says, I want to be that. And everybody knows you're not gonna be that. Right. But why are women oppressing this, any of this? Dr. Tiffany (12m 6s): Okay. So it goes back to what we just talked about regarding experience being one of the right unconscious, deceptions and truths. So the reason why this is so prominent is because when you're from a marginalized classification, such as being female, so you experience sexism, there isn't a reflection on am I, could I be a racist? Could I be homophobic? Right. So people from these classes say, because I experience racism, therefore I'm not, I'm not a racist, so I'm not a sexist because I've experienced sexism. I'm not right. So that's the reason why this is happening. And then I've. So I have so much that I wanna unpack here. Chad (12m 46s): Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This sounds like the, I have black friends. Dr. Tiffany (12m 53s): Oh, God. Chad (12m 53s): Conversation from white dudes. Is it the same thing? Dr. Tiffany (12m 57s): Yes. Okay. So I, this is, what's really interesting regarding the group that came out as being one of the highest in advancing DEI were males. 73%. Chad (13m 13s): Wow. Dr. Tiffany (13m 14s): Of those representing advancing were males. Whereas 27% of women were advancing DEI. Joel (13m 19s): I have my finger over the applause soundbite, but I'm afraid to get canceled if I do that. I just, I can't do it. Dr. Tiffany (13m 25s): I know, I know this is what I'm saying this is so controversial. This is really controversial. And okay. So I have to, I wanna share this. So compliance is my other, is one of the other unconscious deceptions. Chad (13m 38s): Oh, talk to me. Dr. Tiffany (13m 39s): Okay. So I'm gonna bring in HR here. So being stewards of the law equates to having expertise and being qualified to supervise and oversee DEI, that is false because HR leaders are also oppressing people and DEI. So what we've done is we, and I understand, so when you talk, ask, what, what, one of the biggest changes are we equate bias and discrimination as the same thing. So because HR is responsible to protect the organization again, and people against discrimination, we believe, okay. So of course, DEI belongs there actually, it's a complete conflict of interest because yes, HR is about the people, but who are they first for the company? Dr. Tiffany (14m 30s): And, and so, and we know that by, so there's a major conflict of interest. When an employee raises a claimant discrimination after leaving the organization, they don't hire the internal lawyer and defense lawyer. They have to get their own plaintiff, right. Employment attorney. And so the corporate attorney at no point ever represents the employee. And in fact, and we saw this, let's use the NFL as an example, right? We saw Brian Flores's text messages. And what did the NFL come out with a statement saying, we will defend against these claims and which are without merit. This is the stance, the HR, the legal department and the company takes every single time. Dr. Tiffany (15m 14s): So all the counseling that HR does when there's employee relation problems, what are they doing? They're documenting, why are they documenting? They're documenting because in case they ever need to be able to use that, to defend against any claims. So the legal advisement that's happening is at the detriment of actually helping in developing employees and managers. Joel (15m 38s): So what I'm hearing is, so HR largely is to keep the company outta trouble, IE, keep it outta court. But also if you look at DEI initiatives, that's a fairly disruptive strategy by most companies like accounts, right? So am I hearing you say that HR who traditionally is in charge of keeping the company like 'risk averse' is now in charge of totally shaking things up and injecting diversity, inclusion and equity into a company, which by its nature is sort of rocking the boat. So is HR, am I hearing that correctly? And secondly, is HR the wrong department to be instilling DEI initiatives in a company? Dr. Tiffany (16m 22s): Absolutely. Because, so it goes back to the conflict of interest regarding if their job is to reduce risk, minimize, and conceal risk, why are they going to make decisions that will uncover and create vulnerability to create change? So HR actually rejects transparency. So everywhere in all the literature, what do we hear? DEI we need transparency and accountability. So therefore, and this is where, when I talk about, even, I'm gonna say this, the he powerhouse manage global management consulting companies, because they're industry leaders, right. Dr. Tiffany (17m 5s): Should be leading in creating disruption yet. They're still also following the same formula, meaning transparency, everyone is loves. So this is the advocacy. Everyone loves to be transparent about the billions of dollars that they're putting back into the community and the recruitment numbers, which are always what mid-level and below never, never above, right? No one is being transparent around the decisions that are being made to not advance DEI by us practitioners. They're not being transparent regarding the discrimination claims, regarding turnover, litigation costs, settlement, and employee engagement numbers. Chad (17m 45s): They just wanna show the numbers that look, make them look good, as opposed to the ones that really are the true numbers of what the company actually is. Dr. Tiffany (17m 57s): Yes. And so Diversity, Inc, which is the right renowned, so they are perpetuating this and all the other companies that are rewarding. Chad (18m 5s): This bullshit is what you're is what I'm hearing. Joel (18m 8s): Yes. Dr. Tiffany (18m 9s): Yeah. Okay. So this is my new analogy regarding the feel good and then the not so feel good. Is everyone is playing offense and communicating offense and no one wants to communicate defense because it gets you disliked and blackballed. So, right. We are applying positive psychology, which of course we need to, of let's focus on the good let's focus on , what we know. And I'm gonna, I'm really bad at it talking about analogies, but what I've heard is in football, right? Offense is what sells the tickets, but defense is what wins the game and yes. Joel (18m 43s): Yeah. Dr. Tiffany (18m 44s): Offense and defense require two different skillsets. So all the recommendations and all the solutions that we hear is what always on the offense, cuz no one wants to talk about the defense cuz it's the bad underbelly of DEI. And so even, oh gosh. Okay. So Deloitte just came out with a 2022, right, DEI report. So I was in shock when I saw that their entire, the majority of their focus, was on all the recruitment. Their equity section had a complete, it was a small paragraph and so this is equity in talent reviews and succession planning. Dr. Tiffany (19m 28s): And this is where the majority of the bias sits, that HR is not qualified because they're not bias experts. To do talent reviews and succession planning and leadership development you have to be an expert in behavior bias and diversity, right? And so even Deloitte couldn't speak to that. They said equity is an outcome and I understand they could be using inclusion and equity, you know, interchangeably. And, but they weren't touching on anything about succession planning, which tells me the fact that you were able to be detailed and comprehensive in all these areas but that, tells me you're missing that you're missing that expertise, but I'm used to that. Dr. Tiffany (20m 10s): What I was really I'm gonna say offended that Deloitte would say, I wanna find in this section at the very end, they said, okay, here it is. "Ultimately selecting the most qualified candidate is always the objective." I literally went, holy shit. Did Deloitte just print this on paper? Chad (20m 37s): Yeah. Meritocracy baby. Meritocracy. Dr. Tiffany (20m 39s): They're promoting implicit bias. So any time, right? The sequence of essence is they only talk about most qualified candidate when they're talking about diversity. And so how are they perpetuating promoting implicit bias that has been, I call it psychological conditioning us since affirmative action that then diverse candidates from the starting line are inferior? That's what that sentence implies. Chad (21m 3s): That's the loophole right there, baby. That's a loophole. So, let me hit bias with some unconscious bias. So we just dropped an amazing interview with Steve Pemberton, the C H R O over at Work Human today. And he asserts that unconscious bias doesn't exist anymore. So does that mean first and foremost? Do you agree with that? Secondly, does that mean that people are hiding behind the term unconscious bias while they're still just plain bias, racist and misogynist? Dr. Tiffany (21m 30s): Okay. So I listened to the Steve interview. Excellent. And I disagree. Chad (21m 36s): Okay, okay. Dr. Tiffany (21m 37s): OK. I disagree. And, but I think it's because of the, so this goes to the micro aspects of diversity that's getting ignored. So we focus on the macro. We don't focus on the micro. What I mean by that is unconscious bias means I have an attitude that is in complete contradiction of what I fully rationally am espousing committed to and believe myself to be as part of my identity. So people see themselves a certain way and without realizing there's blind spots, behaviors, right? Dr. Tiffany (22m 17s): Attitudes, mindsets that are in contradiction to their value system. So yes, unconscious bias still exists. But to his point, conscious bias is also existing. We actually need to stop talking about bias without addressing oppression. So I think what he's saying is, we're all comfortable with bias because bias is actually, it's a thought that is still contained internally, that hasn't been released out in the world. So when bias is exhaled, right into a word of behavior, a decision, that's a micro-aggression. However, when it's done by leadership, what is that? Oppression. But as soon as we hear oppression, we're like, oh shit, that's a four letter word, and now you have to be penalized because you said oppression when we actually have to see oppression as not good or bad. Dr. Tiffany (23m 5s): I mean, even though it's bad, right. But we have to get people, to stop judging people, stop labeling people and actually say, okay, this is the outcome and the result of a bias, which is oppression. Let's unpack that and dismantle this, but we're not training. So when you mention training is ineffective. Yes it is. Because this whole notion of changing hearts and minds, I don't know if you saw all my website, I'm like, oh my God, can we stop saying changing hearts and minds because that is not changing behaviors and decisions for people and people management roles, knowing how that pertains to hiring, developing, evaluating performance, talking about behaviors and leadership characteristics that are leading to succession planning. Chad (23m 52s): Okay. Okay. So how do we change this? You have been advising companies for over two decades, right? So how do we change this? How are you telling companies that we need to change this? How do we become different? Dr. Tiffany (24m 8s): Oh man. Well that that's like five more episodes. So I'm gonna go. So I'm gonna go to the two, the areas that cost no money, because the excuse always is we don't have budget, which by the way, I started removing that barrier so that they could not use that excuse of we don't have the budget. And I said, you know, what, if you really wanna reach the summit right of DEI, which no one has, everyone is still at base camp. So until oppression is dismantled, everyone will be at base camp and they won't even be ascending the climb up to the peak. So I'm gonna only give advisement that will not take any budget. The very first one is as human beings, what we are motivated by pain and pleasure. Dr. Tiffany (24m 53s): So, and we have to identify an incentive and a consequence to becoming inclusive. So right now people are getting promoted based on right, a set of skills, making diversity, I'm gonna say DEI, being skilled in DEI is optional. So you get to be in your position and whether or not you are, is optional and your intention is good enough for us. So we have to have some type of incentive or consequence first that's identified. And for every leadership team and company, that'll be different. Second, we've talked about this. We have to remove the authority of DEI out of HR so that HR doesn't supervise and oppress decisions of DEI. Dr. Tiffany (25m 38s): And it has to only be under the CEO, but it also, I'm gonna plug the most damaging and detrimental unconscious bias leading DEI. And that is power, right? So it's a misuse of power. The way I define this is being in a position of power, authorizes and qualifies to make credible DEI decisions. We have to remove the decision making power away from the person who's not qualified. And so it can be under the CEO, but the person who's deciding where the budget allocation should go. It shouldn't be, if you're gonna do billions externally, cut that in half and invest that internally to the development of the culture and the people. Dr. Tiffany (26m 26s): And then I have five advocacy behaviors that the 20% of the executives that were actually advancing DEI and not oppressing it, they had five distinctive behaviors that nobody else was doing. And then we have to, so the other one, this is really, really tough, but I was gonna say, it's one of the biggest dilemmas I call 'em diversity dilemmas. So one of the biggest diversity dilemmas that is happening across the board, what happens when you have a executive or leader that is producing exceptional results for the company, but exhibiting poor leadership behaviors that are biased. Dr. Tiffany (27m 7s): So you have, so HR in general are, is not able to distinguish between, let's say a really bad micromanager, but also having bias against marginalized groups. They're putting it under the umbrella of, well, they're just a bad manager that needs to be better developed, not realizing well, yes, they have poor leadership skills and they're also biased and creating oppression. So I wanna share an analogy. Let's see if I can deliver this right. Cause this is sort of my aha regarding we actually have to stop making, being an inclusive leader optional, in terms of rising into position, which is different also than diverse. Dr. Tiffany (27m 51s): So we are focusing on hiring diversity, which is absolutely critical. Of course, being diverse does not mean that you're inclusive. Right. And, so think of it this way. We say diversity training is failing all of that. When have you ever heard? So let's take the driver's license test, right? When you fail your driver's license test written and driving, do we say that the driver's license test failed? Or do we say that the driver failed? Joel (28m 25s): The driver? Dr. Tiffany (28m 26s): Okay. So then for all the people, right, who fail their driver's license, then would we allow them to drive on the road without continuing having their permit? Joel (28m 38s): NO. Chad (28m 39s): Well, no, it's illegal. Dr. Tiffany (28m 40s): Right. Well, no, it's not. So I'm looking at it from the safety. We don't let them drive without a license or without an authorized adult because it's irresponsible for the safety of the individuals. Now, the other part that that is always talked about in diversity, is mandatory. So because it's a mandatory training, it's creating more resentment. So therefore we have to remove the mandatory nature of it. And I agree. We would never say though, to get your driver's license test, we are gonna remove the mandatory nature because it's pissing off drivers that they're not passing. So we're gonna let you go ahead and drive. And then we are going to trust your intention and commitment to become a responsible driver and eventually pass your test. Dr. Tiffany (29m 20s): Hell no. Chad (29m 21s): Yeah. You might wanna start doing an analogy with gun laws around that. I'm sorry. Go Ahead. Go ahead. Okay. Dr. Tiffany (29m 28s): Oh yeah. Let's let's not even go down that road. Okay. So, but that's what we're doing with diversity. We're saying we are not gonna make this mandatory and you can still become a leader. You can fail class, but you didn't fail bias class. It's the class that failed and the curriculum that failed, which yes, I agree we need to improve the curriculum. Absolutely. Because there's a formula that's being used that's ineffective, but it's because we're only targeting one segment of a learner when I've identified four different segments. So the people who are more advanced in development and diversity in general, that nobody's getting developed because everyone's still focusing on the, let's say entry level, knowledge of DEI. Joel (30m 10s): All right. Alright. Alright. You're you're, you're bringing up, you're bringing up driving tests. You're bringing up the eighties for me and we're talking gen X. So, so I'm gonna pivot to this real quick, Dr. T as a card carrying gen Xer, I assume you've seen the movie Boomerang starring Eddie Murphy. Dr. Tiffany (30m 27s): I'm pausing, laughing. I, this is because I was just talking about Boomerang and how my feet would pass, Eddie Murphy's test. Joel (30m 35s): All you haven't. If you haven't seen, you gotta watch it. But one of the things at the time was Eddie works in an all black advertising agency, which at the time was a little bit controversial, but it reminds me of our conversation and an interview that Chad and I did a year or two ago with Cindy Gallup and Cindy Gallup said sort of defeatedlyr. Nothing's gonna change until businesses are started and become successful with diverse people. So women owned businesses, black-owned businesses, et cetera. Where do you stand on that? Should there be more of that? Does the government need to get more involved with diversity businesses? Joel (31m 20s): What's your take? Dr. Tiffany (31m 21s): We're focusing on the benefit and value of diversity, of highly diverse organizations, which I agree with. We're completely negating the middle part and I'm actually highly concerned with all the diversity that's coming in because there's no investment of the development of the people. So what I mean by this is, we know that there's four stages of high performing teams, right? Forming norm storming before they get to the high performing stage. We also know the five dysfunctions of a team, right? And yet we are not applying those principles to the diversity, that is happening. So, and I've been in companies where highly diverse and there was, it was beautiful and it was ugly at the same time because there was so much dysfunction that wasn't being managed because when you increase differences, what is that going to do? Dr. Tiffany (32m 16s): It's gonna increase conflict unless people are skilled at managing diversity. So before we get to the innovation and the creativity and the business result for the diversity, we actually have to be able to manage through the conflict and the storming period and the dysfunctions that are there without diversity and only amplified with diversity. Chad (32m 40s): And that is the DEI death zone kids with Dr. T AKA, Dr. Tiffany Brandreth. Doc T can you please let our listeners know where they can find out more about you? And then also learn a little bit more about this death zone. Joel (32m 57s): Death zone. Dr. Tiffany (32m 58s): Yeah. So my website, Dr. Tiffany Brandreth, but then LinkedIn, I've literally, I have no social media marketing and such, but I've just started on LinkedIn to shell out this data and these findings and these discoveries and solutions one step at a time, because there's so much, so LinkedIn is where I am starting to publish. Joel (33m 22s): Love it. Chad (33m 22s): Excellent. Joel (33m 22s): Chad, another one in the can, baby. Chad and Cheese (33m 24s): We out, we out. OUTRO (33m 19s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (34m 4s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

The HR Tech Conference hangover is cured and it's back to business. Fortunately for you, there's a lot of cover. Namely, big funding for Polywork, Atlas, The Muse gets lots of attention, followed by some Buy-or-Sell with Gig and Take, Knoetic and Ashby. Spoiler alert: Selling, lots and lots of selling! Oh, and robots ... gotta talk about robots. 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 (1s): 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 (26s): Oh yeah. Hey, where's my free trip to Martha's vineyard. Hey kiddies you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "partial mobilization" Cheeseman. This Chad (39s): Is Chad "power of the podcast" Sowash Joel (43s): And on this week's show Atlas shrugs. Polywork's a cracker and investors find their muse. Let's do this. Chad (52s): Dude. What a great week I feel. Do you feel fully detoxed after Vegas? Joel (59s): I feel pretty good. I feel pretty good. Yeah. It's good water. We have here in the Midwest. Really cleans out your system. It's good. Chad (1m 7s): You need it. And you need it bad. Oh my God. Joel (1m 9s): You do need it. Well, you probably had a good time on your anniversary yesterday with your beautiful wife celebrating year 7? Chad (1m 17s): 6. 11 together, and six married. Yeah. It took her five years to finally say yes. Joel (1m 28s): Or five years for you to ask, which Chad (1m 31s): Yeah. Could be that. Joel (1m 32s): If I asked her what would the answer be? Chad (1m 34s): It would be the latter. Joel (1m 36s): Okay. Okay. Let's get to some shoutouts. We got a lot of stuff to cover this week. Listeners. We're looking at each other for the first time on a podcast. So this may be a whole new dynamic. Chad (1m 48s): I wouldn't say the first, the first time I want of our podcast on other people's podcasts they have videos. Joel (1m 53s): Yeah, that's true. I'm kind of discombobulated. I don't know how this is gonna go. So quick Shout out. You know, we love the lists. We love the lists. TA tech, top 100. I'm right above your wife. I don't know what that means in the list. There's no numbers, but you and I are both on it as well as your wife. So team Sowash is fully represented. Chad (2m 15s): Represented Joel (2m 16s): On the list there. Good for you guys. Honor, to be recognized. Chad (2m 23s): An honor, an honor, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what's an honor. Shout out to the Serial podcast. One of the podcasts that really got me into listening to podcasts. Joel (2m 33s): That's the new clapping sound bite, Chad, I don't know if we'll keep it or not, but Chad (2m 38s): I don't like it. So Adnan Syed walks free after 23 years in jail, the dude was 17 when he went in. He was accused of and convicted of killing his girlfriend. Even after presenting shotty, detective work and evidence full of holes. There was, was a new law that actually just came out. That said, if you were, if you were actually convicted and you were under the age of 18, that the court could reassess your case, well they reassessed or they were going to the process of reassessing. And the prosecutor said, no, we won't even prosecute. They started looking at the evidence and they looked at evidence that was withheld, which is against the law. Chad (3m 25s): So there was evidence that was withheld. And this poor 17 year old kid went to jail for 23 years because of a shitty system. So kudos to Serial, kudos to podcasts. And that's 23 years of his life lost, but it's good that he's free. By Joel (3m 42s): The way, Chad Cheese Never Convicted was a tagline that we considered early on in the show. Just, we didn't go with anyway. I got The Mom Project (TMP) as a shout out. They're not calling themselves TMP, which I'm sure Radancy loves. Yes, the mom project or TMP as of September, we're in September, The Mom Project says they've attracted and served 1 million moms in search of a better work experience. Thanks in large part to the pandemic. Women have accounted for a staggering 11.9 million in lost jobs and TMP has $116 million in funding and Serena Williams in its corner to make a difference. Joel (4m 27s): So shout out to The Mom Project or TMP as the kids like to call them. Chad (4m 33s): They should come out with a TMP kinda like McDonald's sign that starts with remember the number where they used to have served millions. It was like so many million served. They should do that and put Serena on there. Joel (4m 45s): Remember the mom ads in the eighties, it was like, you deserve a break today at McDonald's and had like the working mom. And she was all in her power suit with the shoulder pads picking up McDonald's for dinner. All the eighties. Chad (5m 2s): Just the start to the fast food industrial complex we know today, kids. Joel (5m 6s): Yep. Chad (5m 6s): Big shout out to our friends at Vonq, they're hiring industry, heavy hitters. They've got Richard of CareerBuilder fame, and also Doug Reese guys have been in the industry for a very long time. And this is big because Vonq has invaded the US. And you haven't heard anything about this. Joel (5m 29s): It's spreading. The virus is spreading. Chad (5m 31s): The Vonq is spreading in the US. Well also, I was actually watching one of the iCIMS videos of some of their newer releases. And they're talking about their job distribution, like their job distribution backend, and I'm watching it. And I'm like, that's Vonq. That's Vonq. Joel (5m 52s): You can't hide, man. You can't. When hide, when you pull off the undergarments, you see the Vonq, it can't, you can't hide from it. Yeah. There's some big, you know, what energy going on with the personnel at Vonq, it's quietly becoming quite a roster of vets and experts. So keep your eye kids on the Vonq and wear protection whenever you do. Chad (6m 16s): Get your shots. Shout Joel (6m 16s): Shout Out to what I'm gonna call OG Americans. Ah, for the first time in 230 years, Congress has full us indigenous representation. That means they have a Native American, an Alaskan native, and a native Hawaiian in the House of Congress fully represented the United States, indigenous people for the first time ever. Suck it old European white guys, shout out to OG Americans. Chad (6m 45s): It only took how long? Joel (6m 47s): 230 years. Chad (6m 48s): Jesus Christ. Joel (6m 48s): How do you feel if you're in Hawaii and some white dude is your representative. I don't know. We've come a long way America. Chad (6m 58s): Shout out to secret admirers. Now I got home from Vegas, actually went to this weekend and took a trip to Ohio to visit the fam and got back and had a box. It was, it was a box that was filled with Blanton's goodness with gold edition Blanton's. There's no card. I looked at the return address. There's pretty much nothing that you could actually see where this came from. Joel (7m 26s): Well, you messaged me and asked if I got the same thing. And of course I'm like, fuck you. No, I didn't get the same thing. So yeah. Go ahead with your story. Chad (7m 34s): I'm just saying secret of admirers out there if you did send me this very expensive bottle of Blanton's. Joel (7m 41s): Was it your wife? Chad (7m 41s): No, no, no, no. Joel (7m 42s): I thought it was an anniversary present. Chad (7m 46s): No, when I said that on Facebook, obviously nobody was taking credit so she automatically did. The incredibly smart woman that she is. Joel (7m 54s): Well, look, I'd be getting some questions if I got a blank, you know, bottle of you know, Blanton's at my doorstep. Chad (8m 2s): For what? Joel (8m 3s): Who's that from? Well, I don't know, shit because I have so many secret admirers. Chad (8m 9s): Yeah. So secret admirers. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (8m 10s): Like so many in the kitty. Chad (8m 12s): Come on. I mean, it's one thing to send me, like, you know, some Makers Mark or something like that, but this is, this is an expensive bottle of Blanton's that I believe comes from Japan. So Joel (8m 24s): Yeah. That's no joke, dude. Yeah. If you're out there listening, keep it a mystery or let us know. It's kind of more fun as a mystery, but Chad (8m 31s): It is, send another one. Joel (8m 32s): I'd love the mystery to come to my doorstep. If you're listening well. Chad (8m 36s): Whoa, By the way. Yeah. I, I don't know about that one. Joel (8m 39s): Not Chad's mystery. I want a new mystery. Give me a new mystery. Scooby doo mystery for me Chad (8m 45s): Row row raggy. Joel (8m 46s): All right. Let's talk about free shit, cuz we got more free shit than ever before. All right guys, you know the deal go to Chadcheese.com click the free link. You gotta sign up to get a t-shirt. We have new ones sponsored by JobGet we have whiskey. We had our lucky winner post picks this week. That's from our friends at Textkernel. We got Aspen Tech Labs helping us to send out free beer to everybody. We got Plum sponsoring rum, which we'll get to birthdays in a second, but we got all kinds of people wanting to give our listeners stuff for free, but you can't get it unless you go to Chadcheese.com/free. Joel (9m 27s): And while you're at it, go to your favorite podcast platform and give us a review. We love those. Chad (9m 34s): Exactly. That's right. Aspen Tech Labs bringing beer to your front door, Textkernel two bottles, two bottles, kids of whiskey. And you gotta love JobGets, they are powering the new Chad and Cheese t-shirts. Joel, when are we getting the Chad Cheese t-shirts cuz they didn't make it to HR Tech. Supply chain issues. That's what we're gonna claim. That's what we're gonna claim. When are we gonna get t-shirts? Joel (9m 57s): T-shirts are in. Chad (9m 58s): Oh. Joel (9m 59s): Eight boxes came to my house. Speaking of boxes, coming to your front door. None. None contained whiskey by the way. Oh, okay. But we have t-shirts I ordered a little little card to go into the bags. Chad (10m 14s): Oh, okay. Joel (10m 15s): Telling people basically thanks for listening. Visit our sponsored JobGet post a picture on social media, et cetera. So those should come today. So we will start packing these babies up, going into the weekend and next week. So those will start dropping next week for those that have signed up. Be patient. They don't all, we're not a warehouse. Amazon warehouse. Like it takes some time have some patience, but yeah. Shirts will be going out soon. Chad (10m 43s): So you don't have a trash can in your garage that you're made to piss in because you've gotta get ahold of these put out. Joel (10m 49s): No, we only do diapers at our house. We only do diapers size five is what, what we have here at our place. Chad (10m 57s): Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you have to pin a few together to make that work? Joel (11m 6s): No, just it's like a cup. You just put a cup, little rubber band around it. It's nice. It's like a red hot chili peppers album. Chad (11m 15s): All right. Alright. All events, events, events brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Joel (11m 22s): Yes. Chad (11m 22s): My new trucker cap is legit. I love it. Yeah. So shout out to Keegan, Joe and the crew over Shaker. We are here very soon kids going to be in Nashville. Yes. We went to Vegas. Now we're going to Nashville, which is this side of the world's Vegas. Joel (11m 39s): Yep. Chad (11m 40s): October 5th through the seventh with Keith Urban concert, Vango Immersion Experience and Sixth and Peabody whiskey tasting. You have all of this going on. Obviously the content happening during the day. I mean, that's, you know, at least what you're, why you're telling your boss you're there. But if you're a practitioner and you would like a comped ticket, listen kids. If you're a practitioner and you would like a comped ticket message, Chad and Cheese, we can get you a link. We can get you some comp tickets because if you're close to Nashville or you just wanna fly in, enjoy some time in Nashville, get some credits, all that other fun stuff. Do it, go to Chadcheese.com. You can register there. Or you can just reach out to us and we can help you out with a link to comp tickets. Joel (12m 24s): Before you get to Paris, I have a question about Nashville. Okay? Dude, is Elvis coming back from the dead and doing a concert because hotel rooms are ridiculously expensive in Nashville when we go there? Chad (12m 35s): Yes. Joel (12m 35s): When we go there, something has to be going on. If you're a listener in Nashville, like hit us up on what. Is Johnny Cash back from the dead? Maybe they're touring together. I don't know what's going on, but, but man, like thousand plus dollars for some of these places. I'm staying in a gutter, I guess on Broadway is where I'm gonna be staying. Chad (12m 55s): Which is normal, which is what we're used to after a good night on Broadway. Joel (13m 1s): That's true. Tennessee whiskey goes down really nicely sometimes. Chad (13m 3s): Here's here's the problem. We only have a couple of days after that, then we're gonna both be jumping on planes to go to Paris kids, September 12th and 13th. You can catch the Vonq with Chad and cheese in Paris. First and foremost, we're gonna have a rooftop pre-conference party overlooking the Paris skyline. More details coming your way soon. Joel (13m 26s): Yep. Chad (13m 26s): In the meantime you get can go to Chadcheese.com and click on events in the upper right hand corner. If you register through our website, you'll get 20% off. And if you're not already going to Paris and you're in Europe, what are you waiting for? It's Paris. It's Unleashed. It's amazing. It's probably one of our favorite conferences. What do you think? Are you psyched? Are you stoked? Joel (13m 48s): Totally stoked. Yeah. Three years since we've been in Paris. Yes? Chad (13m 54s): Guess. Yeah. For this Joel (13m 55s): Maybe favorite city. Definitely top three or four for me. We're going in October. Yeah. Trees, you know, it's changing little, little crisp in the air. Yeah. I'm totally down some Bordeaux on in the cafes. I might even start smoking cigarettes. I don't know. That's that's how inspiring Paris is. Chad (14m 13s): It would be very European of you. Joel (14m 15s): And I'm excited to see Lieven. It's been a few months since we've seen Lieven. Chad (14m 21s): Yes. Joel (14m 21s): Our Euro homeboy. He's all. He's all fired up to hang out with us in Paris. Chad (14m 24s): Oh, he's stoked. Oh yeah. And he's got his tickets to the Moulin Rouge, everything. So this is going to be an exciting time. If you don't have tickets to Unleash, get tickets to Unleash, go chadcheese.com. Click on events. Have at it kids hope to see you there. And not to mention, we are also going to be in the podcast pit on the Unleashed expo floor joined by, you might not know this yet, Joel. Matt Alder that British guy's gonna be with us. Joel (14m 54s): There you go. That British dude. He better have scotch or some gin. Chad (14m 59s): Yeah. Matt, listen up, man. Bring some scotch. Joel (15m 1s): All right. You want birthdays or fantasy football first? Chad (15m 6s): Let's do birthdays and then we're gonna finish it off. sfx (15m 7s): Happy Birthday! Joel (15m 8s): All right. Celebrating a birthday this month. And we have a few cuz we didn't do 'em last week cuz we were hung over in Vegas. Chad (15m 16s): So very hungover. Joel (15m 17s): Again. Thanks to Plum for sponsoring a lucky winner every month for a bottle of rum celebrating this this week. Randall Emery, Eli Carson's Betty Norris. Robert St. Jacque. Chad (15m 31s): Ooh. Joel (15m 31s): That name is gotta be hot with the girls at the bar. Karen Heatwoleo . I think she wrote that in right into our database. Michelle Palermo, Shannon Siri, John Sumpser, old timer. Allison Holbrook, Katrina Kibin, Kelly Robinson, our friend of the show. Kevin Plantin, Eva Zils. Is she still doing videos? I don't see her videos anymore. Chad (15m 56s): I don't either. Since she left France and she went back to Germany. I don't know if Germany's not big on video, but I haven't seen, I haven't seen them. Joel (16m 6s): Germany's big on video. We know what you are doing. Craig Silverman and Theresa Ferris, all celebrating happy birthday another a trip around the sun, which I guess leads us right into fantasy football. Chad. Ugh, where you, you saw a drop, but we'll get to that in a second. Yeah. From first not to worst, but you're on your way. All right. Week two of fantasy football with ChadCheese in the books. Here's your leaderboard powered by our good friends at FactoryFix. Number one this week, Christie "don't call her moon" killing it. The only woman in our league is in first place. Imagine that? Chad (16m 45s): Killing it. Joel (16m 47s): So followed by Broadway Joe Wilke, Jason "and the Argonauts" Putnam, "Hailey Joel Osmit" Cheeseman. I like that one. "James Dean" Gillum. Dan "the magic man" Shoemaker. Chad, "not just a country in Africa" Sowash. Christopher "man down" Manion. Serge "second fiddle to Shelly" Boudreaux. Matt "king of the hill." "Pass the mic" Shafer and Dennis "basement bitch" Tupper. Oh, round out the leaderboard of our fantasy football league sponsored by FactoryFix. Chad (17m 21s): I blame Tommy over at FactoryFix for my loss last week. I was way out of focus because I was laughing so hard after the FactoryFix video. Obviously Mike was in Vegas. Guy actually goes everywhere with a green screen with him for God's sake. The guy's a pro. Mike and Tommy if you haven't seen the FactoryFix fantasy football league updates, they are fucking hilarious. Check 'em out on LinkedIn. They're all over the place, but check 'em out. They're fun. sfx (18m 0s): TOPICS! Joel (18m 0s): All right. Chicago based Atlas technology solutions firmly known as Elements Global Services. I guess that's a good change. That's they were elements global services up until this past June. Well they raised $200 million in a series B. This brings total funding to $220 million. This is where the unicorn soundbite comes in. sfx (18m 21s): Pink Fluffy Unicorns. Joel (18m 23s): Founded in 2015, the company is a cloud-based human resource management platform that aims to ease international expansion initiatives for companies. Atlas operate subsidiaries and 160 countries and will use the funds to enhance their platform's capabilities and add more self-service and automation features, they employ 308 people according to LinkedIn. Chad, what are your thoughts on Atlas? Chad (18m 47s): So you said their name was Elements Global Services? Joel (18m 50s): Yeah. And Atlas Technology Solutions they thought was better. Chad (18m 55s): Yeah. Okay. So Atlas technology solutions and the URL that they went with kids was Atlashxm.com. They changed their name. And then when they went with that shitty ass URL, I guarantee they knew that the money was coming in. So that's kind of odd. Anyways, this is a rapidly growing and broad segment edit. Is it focuses on helping companies scale quickly by hiring wherever the talent is in any country. So the Tam is huge from a global standpoint. Now Atlas, it's thrown its hat in the ring against other startups like remote.com with about $500 million in funding Oyster with about $225 million in funding and DEEL around $680 million just to name a few. Chad (19m 36s): So this space Joel (19m 38s): It's actually minus about $10 grand for their booth, Chad. Chad (19m 40s): For their 10 by 10 booth. Yeah. This space is, is crowded. It's starting to get crowded, put it that way, but it is extremely hot. Are we finally getting to a saturation point with the global/remote work platform, do you think? Joel (19m 56s): I was reminiscing, not just cuz we were at HR tech and got to see Jerry Crispin, but I was reflecting on, remember the old additions of career crossroads, the book of top job boards. Yeah. This came out in the nineties. They stopped doing it around 2001 or two I think because it got too crazy, Chad (20m 18s): Too fast. Joel (20m 18s): It got too much of a headache for Jerry and company to write this book every year about job boards, because there's so many fucking job boards. This is what this feels like. There are too many global platform. One to rule them all. Velocity's in there. Velocity Global, Eightfold you could argue is in there. Chad (20m 42s): Nah. Joel (20m 42s): This space to me is overfunded. It's time to prune some hedges. I'm surprised they're still getting money, frankly, based on what the investment community, you know, news is like and what we've seen in our own in reporting, but money keeps going in but less so of the 200 plus a hundred plus million Flavor. And I just, I just think it's too much, man. I just think like these guys are gonna run outta money at some point soon they're gonna get consolidated. It's gotta be confusing for customers. That's period. I mean, look, I quoted, I wrote down a quote from the CEO. Quote, "the future of work thrives across borders and cultures. Joel (21m 23s): Atlas is enabling companies to seize the opportunity to be competitive, flexible and borderless." You could pretty much plug in any CEO of any of those companies you mentioned and it'd be the same fucking thing. Exactly. They all do the same thing. Chad (21m 36s): Yes. Joel (21m 36s): They all have a ton of money. Look, you talked about zigging when everyone is zagging on the European show. Chad (21m 41s): Yeah. Joel (21m 41s): Somebody in this group needs to zag because everyone is zigging and it's hard for consumers to figure out who should I use? How are you different? What's going on? It's kind of a mess and it'll work itself out in the next, I think two or three years. And we'll have fun talking about it, but it's a cluster as far as I can tell. Chad (21m 57s): Yeah. Well it's gonna be, it's definitely gonna be interesting. As we see some companies focus on remote/hybrid and being able to, especially in European countries, being able to go cross borders and make it easy, especially if you're American and you're going into Europe, you need some type of an infrastructure to do that. Companies like Atlas and all the other companies that we just listed do that. The question is saturation point, right? I did notice though. Yeah. As we talk about Vegas, that Atlas had a very large booth. Was Remote there? I didn't see Remote. I didn't see Oyster. Joel (22m 31s): I didn't see Oyster. I didn't see Velocity. Chad (22m 33s): Deel had a 10 by 10, which was pitiful. They should have probably just stayed home in the first place. Joel (22m 42s): Yeah. Chad (22m 43s): But I mean, it is interesting because these organizations are getting money much to the tune of like HCM. So outside of talent, we'll talk about money still being flushed into talent platforms. But now you take a look at these, these types of platforms and they're getting HCM type of cash. Joel (23m 1s): Well, if I can't interest you in an HCM, can I interest you in a LinkedIn killer for our next company? Watch out LinkedIn here comes Polywork raising 28 million this week from the likes of pretty impressive. Former GitHub CEO, Nat Friedman, the founders of Stripe Lyft, Clubhouse, Instacart and Minted as well as Andreesen Horowitz. Polywork has now raised a total of $44 and a half million since it's launch in April of 2021. Many are labeling them as a new gen LinkedIn, when a user registers, they are invited to choose identity badges that describe themselves as things such as dog dad, foodie, author, front end developer and black lives matter. Joel (23m 53s): Some numbers for you. No revenue currently they won't discuss their user metrics or how many users they have. They have 20 employees altogether. Okay. Boomer. Chad, your thoughts on LinkedIn for a new generation and most importantly, Chad, what are your identity badges? Chad (24m 15s): Yeah. It'd be dad. Podcaster. Veteran. Dog owner. Yeah. Yeah. Football fan Joel (24m 18s): Cheese Wrangler. Chad (24m 19s): Well, it is funny because I'm in Polywork. When, when we talked about them last year, I joined, I think it was before that I joined, I just wanted to see how it was, it was going to work. And it's interesting because most of the hits that I'm getting in there and there most recently just literally within the last week are around podcaster. Nothing else. Around podcaster. I think it's interesting that, you know, if you think about it, how did LinkedIn grow? And, I know that , we're talking about entirely different decades, but how did LinkedIn grow? LinkedIn, they spent a lot of money building infrastructure for this six degrees from Kevin Bacon thing that they were doing back then, remember that? Chad (25m 3s): And they did not. Much like Facebook at first. They did not have any revenue plans right out of the gate. They were just building infrastructure and then product came later. So I see the same kind of strategy here. I'm just not sure that how long you can wait for revenue streams in this current environment. I think LinkedIn was lucky in timing in being able to build and have very patient funders. I'm not sure that that's gonna happen with Polywork. Last August, we talked about Polywork, receiving their Series A. I said back then, let's see if we're talking about them in 24 months. Chad (25m 43s): Well, this is obviously they they've made it 12 months. And with this $28 million, they're easily gonna make it another 12 months. But the only time that we've talked about them in the last year is now, receiving funding, right? Again, they're babies and I get it, but nothing newsworthy has happened. So I believe, you know, the continued LinkedIn killer is a strong and smart narrative because you want to align yourself with an organization that is making a shit ton of cash. And LinkedIn is, but they're more of a side hustle version of LinkedIn. They're not a full-time, they're not a full-time platform. Chad (26m 25s): At least they're not pushing themselves as that. And CEO, Peter Johnson actually said, if LinkedIn was built for nine to five generation, we are built for the collaboration generation. So this is almost like a side hustle platform per se. Joel (26m 38s): Yeah. I hated the company. When, we first talked about him and I, I still hate them. Look, I, I think you have a lot of hip Silicon valley investors who clearly believe that we can TikTok LinkedIn with something cooler, something newer. The kids will leave the old, the old social network for us. The problem is, whereas Facebook has kids leaving them because it's not cool anymore. Kids need to go to LinkedIn because guess what? That's, who's gonna give you a job. That's who's gonna mentor you. That's the contacts you need to make to sell shit, to get a job, to work your way up into the professional ranks, connecting to younger kids, cuz they're cool isn't gonna help your career like LinkedIn is. Joel (27m 22s): And guess what? LinkedIn has already achieved the status of being the professional network. So that's where, I mean, no one graduating college is being told, go to Polywork to grow your career. They're being told, go to LinkedIn because that's where you're gonna build a network of people who can help you grow your career. I just don't really know where this thing goes, to be honest with you. I think it's a Silicon Valley Cool idea. But I just don't see, you know, if, if they were releasing numbers of like, Hey, we're up to 10 million users, Hey, we're at 20 million users. I might get a little excited. I might get a little interested, but they don't even release numbers about how many people are on this thing. You know, I'm super connected to the youth of America and I never hear about Polywork. Joel (28m 2s): So, I just, I don't get, I feel like Tom Hanks in Big when he says like, I don't get it. I just, I don't get it. Maybe I'm just too old to get it or this is just a really dumb idea that a lot of dumb money is following. Chad (28m 16s): Could be? But I, I think you can definitely use both. You can use LinkedIn as your full time, nine to fiver, but then you're also looking for side hustles, which you're not gonna find usually on LinkedIn. Peter and his investors are, are betting on work to drastically change from nine to five to more than likely project based types of work. Not entirely of course, but we do believe after the pandemic and side hustles exploding that the collaboration generation will be making major revenue. At least that's what their bet is is that this new side hustle generation is gonna make a lot of cash. Chad (28m 56s): Can there be more than one LinkedIn platform out there? Of course, especially if they're not directly competing with LinkedIn, they're not gonna dethrone LinkedIn again. That's just narrative to push themselves up for people to talk about them like us, right? And again, I think this is a long-term play more than more than a short term play. Joel (29m 17s): If they pivot to big booty Latinas and bug fights, I might change my mind. Other than that, let's go to the next news story on our list. The Muse New York based The Muse has raised 8 million this week. That's a grand total of nearly $32 million since launching way back in 2011. They say they're going to use the money to continue investing in values aligned hiring, and fund consolidation in the next gen hiring space, with 10% of fortune 500 companies using The Muse and it reported 75 million people using the service. That sounds a little high to me. Chad (29m 55s): Yes. Yes. Joel (29m 56s): Yeah. Whatever. We'll go with it. We'll go with it. Chad (29m 58s): I call bullshit. Joel (30m 0s): What's not to love with those kinds of numbers. Chad, what are your thoughts on The Muse getting a little extra cash? Chad (30m 7s): What was the percentage of fortune 500 companies? Joel (30m 9s): 10. Chad (30m 9s): 10%. Joel (30m 9s): So they're, they're getting 1% a year since they're founded. Chad (30m 12s): Oh, okay. So I think we should refer to The Muse as the old hotness is what we should really do. I mean, cuz remember five or six years ago they were hot. Joel (30m 23s): It's Jennifer Aniston is what you're saying. It's Angelina Jolie. Chad (30m 27s): Still hot. That's changed dramatically. As they try to stay relevant as much as Polywork, we were just talking about the, we haven't talked about The Muse since they received a $3 million fund from Dice from boat anchor Dice a year ago. Anyway, as you read it and I myself was thinking, I don't think I'm reading this correctly is Muse CEO Katherine Minu saying that they're looking to acquire startups and consolidate? Cuz she's talking about all these smaller platforms and what they really need to do is they need to drive more traffic to The Muse site. That's what they need more traffic. Chad (31m 8s): I don't believe those user numbers. I believe that's a culmination of over 10 years. You know, that's not a daily, that's not a daily user. There's no fucking way. Joel (31m 17s): They said annually 75 million users. So, I was curious, Chad, I went to the way back machine and I wanted to see what The Muse look like in 2012. And if it had really made any strides to change its look and feel so. So this was the headline on the site in 2012. 'What do you want to do with your life?' And then put in search whatever box and search stuff today, the headline is 'find work that's worth it'. So what do you want do with your life to find work that's worth it. This is a job site. Chad (31m 57s): Yes. Joel (31m 58s): They can put whatever shit, but they're in the game of traffic. Chad (32m 4s): Yes. Joel (32m 5s): Getting traffic as cheaply as possible, spending less than you bring in, hoping that demand rises, that competition stumbles. And it's an endless cycle of hell. Just ask CareerBuilder and just ask Monster the kind of hell you're in. When you have to keep spending, oh, ZipRecruiter, I'll throw them in too of just spending to make money. And then when you stop spending money on advertising, the money slowly goes away and goes somewhere else. And for what I can tell 10 years, The Muse has been in this endless hell of like they're making a little more than they're spending. They're able to raise a little bit more because they are profitable. I haven't seen anything new and exciting coming out of them since I guess what virtual job fairs during the pandemic. Joel (32m 48s): They can't IPO, they can't sell to anybody. They're just sort of existing. Have fun with that. I mean it's, it's fine. But. Chad (32m 52s): It's like a lifeline dude. Joel (32m 54s): I don't know what investors are hoping to get out of it. If you and I had this, it'd be a great business. What is Dice want? Chad (33m 2s): Yeah. Joel (33m 2s): It's just weird. Chad (33m 5s): And I don't understand what the actual fuck is values aligned hiring. I mean, our industry comes up with the stupidest shit. It's like Muse leadership were all sitting on bean bag chairs in front of a whiteboard smoking weed and came up with this shit. Nobody understands what it actually means, but it sounds good, right? Yeah. Just like when the band Chicago were so high, they didn't know if it was 25 minutes or six minutes to four o'clock hence 25 or six to four. It worked for Chicago, but it's not working for The Muse. These guys are stoned outta their brains. And I hope they use that $8 million to get high and just fade away. Joel (33m 44s): Does anyone really know what time it is? Chad? Chad (33m 46s): It's time for a break. Joel (33m 47s): Let's take a break. We'll be right back. All right. Kids buy or sell time. You know how this works. We pick three companies that have gotten funding this week and we talk about 'em and we either buy or sell what they're dropping. First up Gig and Take Chad (34m 10s): Gig and Take Joel (34m 12s): Pennsylvania based Gig and Take has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round. Founded in 2021 the company manages flexible workforces for factories and warehouses. Founded last year they will use the funds to wait for Chad, continue growing and expanding the business Gig and Take employs just nine folks. Chad, are you a buy or sell on slap and tickle? I mean, Gig and Take. Chad (34m 39s): So remember when American families were single income families? After 40 years of wage stagnation, trickle down economics that that never trickled down to the actual working families, a single income home, isn't a choice anymore, but some parents can't work a full-time job and working at Walmart seems to be their only choice. Unless there are new part-time gigs that are exposed, which provide more flexibility. So take a look at some of these different examples. One, think of all of the full timers, who are also out there, who might actually pick up a shift at the last minute or on weekends, if they have flexibility or an app to be able to see what's there, right. You know, maybe plans fell through on the weekend. Chad (35m 23s): They and huh, why not go work four hours and pick up, you know, a few extra bucks? Founder and CEO Rahil Siddiqui does have an HR background and it is also in manufacturing. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania also gives the brand some legitimacy for manufacturers in the Heartland instead of just another run of the mill Silicon Valley startup. The timing is good for this segment. I like the vision. The website sucks. I hope they use the money to focus on the site and on the tech, but from the vision, from the timing and from the actual experience of the team, it's a buy for me. Joel (36m 6s): Wow. So their site says, quote "manufacturers in the US are facing an unprecedented labor shortage". Yeah. "What most factories are missing is flexibility" or maybe enough robots "get access to workers who are leaving traditional jobs for gig jobs." For the times, this is great. Like, I mean, I think they're gonna have to spend more than 1.5 million on marketing to get enough warehouse workers. I don't know where the marketing's gonna come from because they're gonna need a lot of people in this platform to make it worthwhile for the warehouses that are hoping to fill these people into their warehouses because warehouses employ a lot of people. And if this platform has, you know, a thousand folks, it's gonna be hard to really scale this thing up. Joel (36m 47s): So they need to take a lot of money to do that. I'm not sure that 1.5 is gonna do it. I'm also concerned with them in regards to timing. Okay. We talk a lot about robots on this show. We're gonna talk about robots later in the show. We both know that Jeff Bezos is just biting the time before he can get rid of all the human beings in the warehouse, minus the VP of whatever, some managers and replace these folks. So I think robotics are coming for this business and I think that's bad timing. And I also think that if unemployment ever gets to like normal times, they won't have the luxury of all these people being able to have gig jobs or work warehouses when they want. Joel (37m 30s): It's gonna be, if you don't want the job, we got plenty of other people that will. So for the time being robots aren't there yet, people still have flexibility that the workers are still in control, but if I'm buying or selling this, I'm looking at it from a long term perspective. So for me, I don't think history is on their site. I do hope that they use the $1.5 million to at least have a contact page as opposed to just info@gigandjob.com for the users. You're right. The site is straight out of a WordPress theme in 2004. So hopefully they can update that one. All right. That is Gig and Take. Let's go to Ashby. So Chad (38m 9s): Is that a sell or a buy? Joel (38m 12s): That's a sell. Chad (38m 13s): Okay. Joel (38m 14s): That's a sell. Sorry. The sound effects usually make it really clear. That is a sell from me. Let's go to Ashby. The San Francisco based company is raised $21.5 million in a Series B round. This brings total funding to $34.5 million. Founded in 2018 the company has a mission of redefining the applicant tracking system category. Ambitious. Ashby's product, incorporates candidate sourcing and outreach, automated scheduling and customizable reports. The round will go toward growing operations, engineering and go to market teams. Joel (38m 54s): They employ about 60 folks. Chad, are you by or sell on Ashby? Chad (38m 57s): So the CEO and founder has software development, recruiting ops experience, and the other co-founder Akhil looks like he's just a run of the mill product guy, you know, which is what you need. The big question is, do we need another applicant tracking system? Big, deep breath. I appreciate the need to jump into a broad total addressable market and trying to say that your product is SMB enterprise, but that's more of a fantasy than reality. And we've seen over the years, last couple of decades to be quite Frank with companies like iCIMS and Taleo, who, you know, they had the itch, they scratched the itch and it was a bad itch. Chad (39m 37s): And they gave up, especially on the SMB side because the enterprise animal is so much different than the SMB animal. It's also why you see Employ owning three different applicant tracking system platforms, Jobvite, Lever and JazzHR. So unfortunately the limited experience this group has in the space, isn't enough to steer them away from the biggest icebergs. So therefore it's a sell for me. Joel (40m 4s): So the good news, Chad, they claim 500 paying customers. It's not too, too shabby. Although they've taken, what are they paying? Although they've taken $34 million. Chad (40m 11s): Yeah. Joel (40m 12s): Their selling points, I guess, are pricing and analytics aside from what you can get in any ATS. So let's talk about pricing for a second. I'm of the camp that if you're doing SMB, small business stuff, not the enterprise level, like there's a commoditization of the ATS. And while they're priced very competitively, I feel like it's erased to the bottom in terms of pricing for ATSs playing in that space. So I don't think the pricing is that much if any of a selling point for Ashby. The second thing is analytics. I mean, are there pie charts better than Greenhouse's pie charts? Joel (40m 52s): I doubt it. I mean, maybe there's some secret sauce that I don't see, but for me, yeah, unless we're talking about Alan Ashby, catcher of the Houston Astros in the eighties, I am a sell on this Ashby. Chad (41m 7s): Alright. Quick advice to ask Ashby though. Get some advisors in there that are not yes people on telling you exactly what you want to hear, focus on your Tam, ridiculous Joel (41m 18s): Chad and Cheese are for sale. If you need advisors, by the way. All right, let's go to what I thought originally was Knowetic. No, it's Knowetic we'll get to that in a second. All right. Knowetic the startup that calls itself the number one, chief people officer platform and "single source of truth" for people analytics today announced it's $36 million series B. This round closely follows their $18 million Series A back in August of 21. Since it's founding in 2020, the New York based company has experienced rapid expansion. This is from their release, including five X year over year, ARR growth, 20 X community growth and three X year over year headcount growth. Joel (42m 6s): Building on this momentum Knowetic will use its new funds to invest in its two main product lines, people analytics and its global network of people, leaders and CPOs. They employ 220 workers. Chad, are you by or sell Knowetic? Chad (42m 20s): So man, it's, it's hard to pull together all the data points a CPO's gonna need. I mean, from all the different, all the different systems that don't talk, that should talk and then trying to get that, that data's a pain in the ass. All those gross growth numbers, they're grown from zero. So yeah, they look impressive. But to me, that's a, so what if you're gonna gimme numbers, give me real fucking numbers. Those are not real numbers. Going after chief people officers though is I think a very smart tactic as they're always exploring ways to be more relevant and truly strategic in the suites in the C-suite and in the boardroom. Chad (43m 3s): CROs and CMOs are way ahead of CPOs in creating business narratives around data. The problem isn't data though, it's understanding and relating proper business narratives, which HR sucked at. TA has sucked at. So to Knowetic, this seems to be a pivot out of Twine Labs. The founder and CEO, Joseph Kwan seems to be a strategy guy, which I like, but he has no understanding of the real need of the CPO and how to make them more relevant. Cuz that that's the problem CPO needs to be relevant in the C-suite so that the board gives a shit so that, so the CEO gives a shit. So this isn't a data problem. It's a vision and narrative problem for the chief people officer. Chad (43m 46s): You can give CPOs data all day, but if they don't understand how to form business narratives like CROs and CMOs, hint, hint, they will continue to be out flanked in C-suite discussions. To me, this is another platform being built that is addressing a problem, which really isn't even the problem. And as for the Facebook like support community in no in Knowetic for CPOs, it will only get use if admins can gain access, cuz they're not gonna jump in and they're not gonna use those communities. So unfortunately, idea's great. It's just not fully formed. They don't understand what the real problem is. Chad (44m 27s): So it's gotta be a sell for me. Joel (44m 29s): So these guys are so far up their own asses. It's kind of hard to actually be objective and review these guys. I mean whoever's writing their releases and shit is Chad (44m 43s): Yeah. Joel (44m 43s): Speaking of being on something or someone, or I don't know. Chad (44m 46s): Maybe they visited The Muse. Joel (44m 47s): Yeah. So this, this is a first. Let's talk about the name real quick. I thought it was Knowetic when I first saw it. It's spelled K N O E T I C. Right? So you go to their site and there's literally below their logo rhymes with poetic, with an arrow to the logo. If your logo, if your name needs something that says rhymes with, whatever, you might have the wrong name, but literally their logo has rhymes with poetic. So it's Knowetic. That's a problem to me. So they tout two primary things. Joel (45m 29s): One is people analytics. There's quite a few competitors in that space. Many of whom are well funded, Lattice LeapSum, Cruncher, et cetera. I'm not sure that they can cut through that clutter and be a better people analytics platform than some of those companies. And then they kind of go to the other side and it's almost like a content play, a people - like community play and, they hope that they both kind of support each other. Like, Hey, you're gonna buy the product. If you're in the, if you're in the community, which to me is like, it's a LinkedIn group. I don't know what they're providing that I would pay for that. I could get that I'm not getting in a LinkedIn group. I know LinkedIn groups kind of suck and they could improve them quite a bit. Chad (46m 14s): Yeah. Joel (46m 14s): But, I just don't know. There are not more CPOs in this community than there are CPOs on LinkedIn. So I think that's not a, a huge selling point for me. So I don't get those two businesses very well or how they compliment each other. I love their pricing page, which is basically, you're either gonna get a demo of the people analytics or you're going to ask for an invite to be on in the community. So guess what? There's no pricing on the pricing page. And we know that we both love that Chad. For me, Knowetic, this is a hat trick for me. Three cells on these three bums of a company. Chad (46m 54s): Wow. Joel (46m 55s): Yeah. On buy or sell. Let's take a quick break and talk about something that does make some sense to me. Chad (47m 1s): Robots! Joel (47m 2s): Robot fries. Well, Chad, as usual, you and I are way ahead of the curve on this one. The Washington Post is finally on the robot bandwagon with a story this week entitled, "the robots are here and they're making you fries". Meet Flippy, Sippy, and Chippy, the newest technology, stepping into a dress, a protected labor crunch, a protracted labor crunch, excuse me, in food service. The good news about your robotic fry cook. He doesn't take breaks. Never shirks when the boss isn't looking, won't call out sick or lean heavy on the company, health insurance. Joel (47m 45s): The bad news flippy, the robot costs $50 million to develop and costs companies about $5,000 for installation and $3,500 per month to rent the machines as well as get customer service. According to the national restaurant association, 65% of restaurant owners are still say, finding enough workers is a central problem. So the incentive and the demand to augment or replace human labor means costs will eventually come down. Concerns with bots, working alongside people are prevalent however, with the post highlighting a slack channel devoted to why Flippy freaks out sometimes when he has to drop a row of tacos in the special metal perforated taco tray. Joel (48m 31s): That sounds like a first world problem Chad. What's your take on the current state of robots cooking up a side of fries? Chad (48m 38s): Flippy, Sippy, and Chippy. I can't say it enough. So this is robots as a service, which I I think is incredibly smart. You know, the $5,000 for installation $3,500 per month for rental is genius. Because if you take a look at the actual cost for, you know, anybody staying humans that you're paying to do that, you know, I think that's a wash plus. I mean, you're looking, you know, you hear the MRR cash register ringing. I also like this creates an entirely new segment of mechanic. You know, a technician that's going to have to come in here and be locally servicing all of this. Chad (49m 17s): I mean, this isn't, you know, we're losing fry cooks, oh, darn being a fry cook fucking socks. Right. But now you're gonna be a technician fixing robots on robotics. So I think this is a, this is a scale up. I, I love this. And I think this is a great evolution of fast food, getting them out of the fucking food and getting them onto the, the technical aspect. And, that's the rub here that says, you know, Flippy, Sippy and Chippy never take breaks. Well, yes they do. When they're down for maintenance, right? So, you know, you, you have to get those things scheduled. You do have Flippy freakouts, those types of things. So for me, I love the idea of this because those jobs, I remember being a kid being a 15 year old flipping, you know, fries being on the fry station, I fucking hated it. Chad (50m 4s): I went, I went home every day, full of oil in my pores being, it was horrible. Have a robot do it and then have kids train to be more technical to fix these robots. I love it. And I hope this continues to happen. Joel (50m 20s): It doesn't only suck to be a fry cook. It's actually really dangerous. I had no idea how many injuries happen, which I used to cook fries and chicken nuggets and shit. So it shouldn't surprise me how dangerous it is, cuz that shit is hot. So I'm glad the Washington Post is on this story. We're ahead of the curve on this one. A lot of the people in our community, I do feel like we're ways from this being something that's mainstream. They talked about Jack in the Box, which has 2,270 restaurants in the US. They only have one Flippy. And they're only looking at adding five to 10 new robots in locations by the end of 2023. Joel (51m 1s): So this shit's gonna have to scale really fast, which it may, I think it's gonna scale faster than we think for a lot of these restaurants. I think costs are gonna come down as they standardize, you know, developing these things, producing these things, getting 'em out. So costs are gonna come down, but people are still gonna be a pain in the ass. So robots to me are, it's a storm coming, man. There's nothing gonna stop this train. It's just a matter of how fast it's gonna happen. I do love your point about the workers of the future. You're gonna have to know something about robotics. You're gonna have to know something about control alt delete. How do you reset this thing? How do you know, how do you set the clock on the VHR or the VCR like that kind of like minimal knowhow is gonna be really important for workers. Joel (51m 48s): It's not just gonna be dunk salt serve. I mean, there's gonna be some real skills. I think that go into these things and there's gonna be a ton of customer service, jobs and maintenance guys that go to these restaurants and fix these machines. Or like people are gonna have to call Miso robotics, customer service, holy shit, Flippy flipped out again. How do I fix it? Whatever, like those are gonna be skills and new jobs that are created out of this, which I think is the optimistic side of what's going on. We're gonna have fun talking about it. If you're a listener, you're welcome. Joel (52m 29s): Robots, Chad and Cheese. sfx (52m 31s): Shall we play a game? Chad and Cheese (52m 33s): We out, we out. OUTRO (52m 33s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. OUTRO (53m 18s): And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.

Believe it or not, minimum wage debate is not exclusive to the U.S. Europe, it turns out, has their own set of issues, so it's no surprise European Union lawmakers have adopted new legislation aimed at guaranteeing “decent” minimum wages for all workers across the 27-nation bloc. The boys discuss and come up with a variety of angles to view the challenges faced by the EU. Then it's Buy-or-Sell with Benivo, MVP Match and GoJob (spoiler alert: things get pretty ugly). And how could be not talk about the queen the week following her passing ... we just do it in a way only The Chad & Cheese Podcast can. 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 (12s): 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 (31s): Oh Yeah. Germany's chancellor says they must become the best equipped, armed force in Europe. What could possibly go wrong? You were listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel "Barbosa" Cheeseman. Chad (45s): I'm Chad, "when they Zig, you Zag" Sowash. Lieven (48s): And I'm Lieven "in control of the buttons today" Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (53s): And on this episode, the EU gets serious about minimum wage, a game of buy or sell. And of course the Queen. Let's do this. Chad, what's the Zi and Zag. Chad (1m 5s): Well talk about it. This is, you know, I'm leading up. This is Joel (1m 7s): A tease, the tease. Okay. My bad, my bad. Chad (1m 10s): It's all the teases, all the tease. So Lieven. How do you feel about being in control? Lieven (1m 14s): It's a big responsibility. I mean, it's stress and there's so many buttons I want to push and I'm not allowed to push him because it's not the time had to push him. I would like to do the applause, for example. Chad (1m 25s): Yeah. Lieven (1m 25s): I not supposed to do the applause, but you get a point it's stress. Totally stressed out. Chad (1m 31s): Totally stressed out. Joel (1m 33s): You look stressed, Lieven. You look really stressed. Yes. Lieven (1m 35s): I know. I know. My glass is empty. Joel (1m 40s): Will some shoutouts relax you a little bit? Would some shoutouts ease your mind? Lieven (1m 46s): Shout your way. Chad (1m 47s): Excellent. Lieven (1m 47s): Chad. Chad (1m 48s): First shout out, goes to my wife. That's right. Happy sixth anniversary to Julie on this 21st day of September. Lieven (2m 3s): Really don't get on fire. Chad (2m 5s): The name of the song is September, which is what we are. And they talk about the 21st of September, which is the day we were married. And the day this podcast comes out. Lieven (2m 15s): Okay. So romantic. Joel (2m 16s): Was that done on purpose? Like when you were thinking about dates to get married, did you say Earth Wind and Fire inspired let's do the 21st of September. Chad (2m 23s): We actually met on the 21st of September. Joel (2m 28s): Wow. That's pretty romantic Sowash. I like that. Chad (2m 30s): That's what I got. Joel (2m 31s): And you know what else is romantic? David Beckham's love of the Queen. That's right. My shout out goes to the England footballer and pop icon David Beckham. He talked to CNN last week and revealed that he had spent over 12 hours waiting in line to pay his respects to her majesty. He told CNN quote, "something like this today is meant to be shared together. So, you know, the fact that we've been here, we're eating Pringles, we're eating Sherbert, lemons, whatever the fuck that is, sandwiches and coffee" Pringles by the way, is proudly made in America. So I'm glad that the Brits are eating Pringles, Posh Spice, however was not in line with her man like your woman would be with you Chad. Joel (3m 15s): Posh had better things to do. She shared her love for the Queen on Instagram. Kept it simple. But I regardless, no one Royals like the Royals and no one Royals like David Beckham, shout out to Becks. Chad (3m 29s): We're giving a shoutout for a guy for finally being able to be a regular human being and stand in fucking line. I mean, that was a shout out. David Beckham way to go. You're acting like you all the other citizens. Joel (3m 40s): Just wasted everyone's time with your anniversary. I can waste everyone's time with a Pringles reference. Chad (3m 45s): That's not a waste. Everybody wants to know when you know, we have little things. Joel (3m 50s): I wanna know what Lieven's is, cuz he didn't have one when we talked about shout outs two minutes ago, Lieven (3m 56s): Not gonna waste anyone's time with shoutouts. That's go to the topics. Joel (4m 1s): Where are we going next month? Chad? Chad (4m 4s): Oo? Well we're actually, I think we're actually gonna see Lieven this time around when we go to Paris on September 12th and 13th. Lieven (4m 12s): Yep! Chad (4m 12s): Are you in Lieven? Are you finally locked in? Lieven (4m 15s): I'm totally in. Even though those people from Unleash, they keep ignoring me, but I'm totally in. Chad (4m 20s): I told you, we got you covered, man. Lieven (4m 22s): Don't worry about it. No, no. You got me covered. Chad (4m 24s): That's that's what? This is all about family. We got you covered. Lieven (4m 28s): That's nice. Chad (4m 28s): You gotta, you can also catch the Vonq with Chad and Cheese in Paris. We're gonna have a rooftop pre-conference party overlooking the Paris skyline and we'll have more details coming your way. If you do not have a ticket, what's your problem. It's Paris. It's Unleash. Go to Chadcheese.com, click on the events in the upper right hand corner. You go down to Unleash Paris, click on that. And we have a 20% discount link kids go there, get some money off. Lieven (5m 1s): I pressed it, right. Joel (5m 2s): I was really pushing for a party at the top of the Eiffel Tower and calling it just the tip with Chad and Cheese. But unfortunately Eiffel Tower's way too expensive for our budget. So we can't do that, Lieven (5m 13s): But we are going to the Moulin Rouge. Aren't we? Chad (5m 17s): We are. Lieven (5m 18s): We are! I'll already made reservations! We're going to have dinner in the Mullan Rouge and that's why we're going. Joel (5m 22s): I don't really know what to expect. Is it just dancing women? Chad (5m 26s): Yeah. Well, first off you haven't been there before, so we can't tell you because this is a surprise. Lieven (5m 31s): I've been there tons of times. Joel (5m 33s): Well, I can Google it. Chad (5m 34s): Why would you do that? Just enjoy the experience. Joel (5m 39s): You want me to go in totally blind. Chad (5m 40s): Of course, of course I can do that. Like most of what you do. Joel (5m 45s): Like the Americans on Dday we're going in blind people. We don't know what we're gonna find. Chad (5m 48s): That's right kids it's time for topics. Joel (5m 52s): All right. Topics. You wanna do that one? Chad? I gotta get in the mood, man. Give me a topics. Chad (5m 55s): Okay, give a second. I got to, Lieven's got the news thing there. You have the sound effects? Lieven (6m 1s): Do we have the sound effect for news? Chad (6m 3s): I think so. Yeah. Lieven (6m 4s): No, I don't think so. Chad (6m 5s): Okay. We'll just go without it. TOPICS!. Joel (6m 10s): All right. All right. Chad (6m 13s): There we go. That'll work. Joel (6m 16s): All right guys, the European Union or as the kids call it, the EU, their lawbreakers have adopted new legislation aimed at guaranteeing decent in quotes, "minimum wages for all workers across the 27 nation block," minimum wage across the EU varies widely. The highest minimum wages are in Luxembourg, Ireland, and Germany with the lowest in Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia. And the EU 21 out of 27 countries have a statutory minimum wage while the other six Australia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Sweden have wage levels that are determined through collective pay bargaining. Under the new law member, companies will have to guarantee quote "that their nation minimum wages allow workers to lead a decent life, taking into account the cost of living and wider pay levels" Joel (7m 6s): end quote. Guys, what do you think about the EU getting tough on minimum wage? Chad? Chad (7m 13s): I think they've been very tough, not all countries, but most, most countries have been much more tough on minimum wage than the United States has. If you take a look at the Intelligence Group, they just did a survey of like over a hundred thousand people or close to a hundred thousand people through, through all the European countries and go to intelligence group, look at their surveys. For the most part, I was astounded by the parody that was happening in some countries around wages. You know, the big question is what's the definition of a decent wage, according to the new rules, you know, EU members, state that they have to measure the existing lowest wage that provides a decent living wage. Chad (8m 0s): The hard part about this is? What about the countries that voted against it? You know, does the EU have to provide manpower to audit and enforce this? If the company doesn't enforce it, or if the country doesn't enforce it, who's going to enforce it. I think it's great. And I think the EU is well beyond some of the things that we've done here in the US, but I, I just don't know of those countries who didn't vote for it, how they're going to audit, manage and enforce. Joel (8m 29s): Yeah. There's to me, a lot of politics in this, I mean, look times are tough in Europe. Apparently they're gonna get really bad here in the coming months as winter overtakes the continent. And when that happens, politicians like to say shit and pass shit that makes them sound really good. That makes the people happy and gets them votes. And to me, this sort of reeks of politicization of minimum wage. Like you said, Chad, what exactly does a decent living mean? I think it's very subjective. How are you gonna gauge this? Is it gonna be left up to the countries? Is Sweden gonna be able to tell Estonia that they're not paying enough and is Estonia gonna give a shit what Sweden thinks about their wages? Joel (9m 16s): I mean, it's very similar to the US where Texas says, you know, they're a sovereign nation or what you make in Mississippi isn't the same as you're buying power in California. This is this just so politicized. I mean, they've given the themselves two years to pass this. I'm guessing that in two years, one, the economy is gonna be better. And number two, all these people will have won reelection and more or less will kind of forget about it and times are good and whatever. So sounds great. A lot of politics. Yeah. Let's wait and see in two years, if anything actually gets done.I was surprised to see the big spreads between the lowest and the highest minimum wage. Joel (9m 59s): I mean, if you look at Bulgaria, there's like 363 Euro a month. That's the minimum wage, 363. And in Luxembourg, it's 2,313. So that's quite a big spread. And with travel agreement everyone can travel around. So I would expect people from Bulgaria, be happy to move to Luxembourg. Of course, if they would find a job there, But it costs more to live in Luxemburg. I'm guessing. Lieven (10m 26s): Definitely, but still I think the spread is too big to make up for that. Joel (10m 31s): Do you bring Luxembourg's you set the floor. So now Estonians are gonna make the base level that a Luxembourgian makes? Chad (10m 39s): No, they're not, they're not talking about going base across all the EU they're talking about in the different countries having set up a system that's fair in that country, right? Joel (10m 50s): As long as Estonia or whatever can say, Hey, we're paying a decent wage. It's subjective. And so Chad (10m 56s): It's like in the states, you look at a living wage is much different in San Francisco than it is in Omaha, Nebraska, right? But we know what those living wages are just the mean in itself. So I would assume the EU said they actually have that they're putting in place controls and fueled inspections to ensure compliance and address, you know, abusive subcontracting, bogus self-employment, non recording overtime, increased work intensity, those types of things. So it sounds like they're going to try to manage and enforce this. But man, that sounds like a lot of manpower. Joel (11m 31s): I think you have to set a base and then increase it for inflation year over year. Cause if the US just said, Hey, Texas, pay your people, a living, a decent wage. There's no enforcement there. I don't know how you would. Chad (11m 43s): Well, they, they know how to calculate it. We already know how to calculate what a living wage is. It's being able to enforce that it's actually happening. That's the hard part from country to country. It might be easier here from state to state, but they know how to calculate what a living wage is. Joel (11m 59s): For that state. Yeah. Chad (11m 59s): Oh yeah. For, well, not just for that state also for the Metro. So let's say for instance, Austin versus Dallas versus Omaha, Nebraska, right? Yeah. So the question is Lieven. You guys have, I think there's a hell of a lot more transparency in Europe than there is in the us. So to be able to set those living wages, decent wages, do you think that is something that could be fairly transparent and everybody could see fairly easily. Lieven (12m 28s): If you wanna see it, you can see it, it's published, but I guess most people will never even try to find out. But if you look now, there are three groups and you have group one with a minimum wage above 1,500 euros. And Belgium is a proud part of it. You have Luxemburg, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany and France. Those are the sixth biggest paying countries. You have group two over 1000 euros, but lower than one thousand 500 with Spain, with Slovenia and the others are below. And I was surprised the see the United States, they would be in group two on average. I'm not sure if you even know it, but at federal level, apparently I just read it. Lieven (13m 9s): There is 1,210 euros a month is the minimum wage in the United States. I thought it would be much more. I mean, living conditions are at least comparable with Western Europe. I guess it's more expensive in some ways with a minimum wage like that. It's not like you have a fairly decent living, I guess. Chad (13m 28s): Well, and those people generally who are living off that minimum wage don't have healthcare either. So, I mean, you're talking about an entirely different set of problems. Joel (13m 37s): Now, the good news is the market dictates that most salaries are above the $7.50 or whatever it is in the US. But $7.50 is miserably low. I think the last time we moved, it was what the Obama administration. Chad. Yep. 2010 or 11, somewhere around there. Chad (13m 53s): 2008, I think. Joel (13m 54s): Okay. Like, come on. Lieven (13m 55s): I know, sorry. I was thinking Europe. The good thing is that the economies who are growing the fastest are the small ones, the ones who are paying the least now. So probably within the coming 10 years, those average wages will grow to each other, but still the gap is huge. It's not really fair. Chad (14m 14s): Again, we see it here in the US so I'm not really surprised that it's happening in Europe. Although once again, you know, just the transparency, there's more transparency in Europe than there is here in the US, which means you guys can move the needle much faster than we can. Joel (14m 30s): Put the needle on the record. Put the needle on the record. All right, guys. How about a little buy or sell? Chad (14m 35s): Why don't we take a break first? Joel (14m 36s): All right. Let's take a break and we'll play a little buy or sell. All right guys, listeners, hopefully know how this works. We have three startups that have gotten money. Recently we do a summary and then each of us buys or sell that startup. Are you ready to play buy or sell? Lieven (14m 55s): Yes. Joel (14m 56s): First up is Benivo. The London based company has raised $12 million in a funding round led by Up Data Partners. This brings total funding to $25 million founded in 2010 Benivo is an end to end employee mobility management platform. Benivo will use the funds to grow their teams in the US, UK, Armenia, and India, and continue to expand their unified mobility solution to address customers in key pain points. Benivo employs 94 people. Chad, are you a buy or sell on Benivo? Chad (15m 31s): Am I getting this right? A pivot from apartments to global mobility? Is that where we're going right now? How do these people get money? Seriously? Are they holding investors over a barrel saying that the either give us money for a pivot or your initial investment is gone. The CEO has no experience in this space. And the pivot happened because at least this is what was actually in a story. The CEO said, quote, "it was a chance meeting with a Google HR person", not in depth market analysis or an understanding of the industry. This feels more like a money laundering scenario than anything else. Chad (16m 13s): So I can't sell this one fast enough. This is horrible. Joel (16m 18s): Horrible, but you love the name, right? Chad (16m 20s): Oh Jesus Christ don't even get me started on anything like that. Joel (16m 23s): Something for my prostate. Sounds like something to shrink my prostate. Well, Chad, you know that I usually like waves that are strong and I'll take, 'em, a mediocre surfer over with, on a good wave, better than a pro surfer on a shitty wave. And I'll give them this, they're on a good wave. However, I'm kind of with you on this man. I tried really hard single platform. They're saying some right things. What really makes me wanna sell this company though, is that they literally have an explainer video on the homepage about how they raised money. I've never ever seen that before the entire above the fold of their homepage aside from like one little snippet of what they do is how they just raised money. Joel (17m 8s): They have the TechCrunch article. They have their press release. I mean that just screams of like, don't look at our stuff. We just made money or we just raise money so, give us your business. The single platform is hot, but this just reeks of like, our investors need a new, a reason to give us more money. We need to stay alive. We're gonna sell them on this one platform, mobility, whatever. And I also love the fact that they call automation of repetitive tasks, auto magic. So they literally have 'auto magic' on their homepage to sell this shit that they're trying to put a lipstick on I'm with Chadman sell, sell, sell Benivo and shrink your prostate in the process. Joel (17m 58s): This is a bad company. Lieven (17m 60s): Yay. I'm always happy when I come to the soundbites. Okay. Joel (18m 3s): Nice explainer video by the way, there it is. Say it. Lieven (18m 6s): Yeah. I, I know for the people watching the video. Joel (18m 11s): 12 million. Yeah. Lieven (18m 12s): Cool. Okay. I was kind of surprised when I was looking for a company and I first saw this Benivo cruelty, free pet foods. So I thought this is kind of weird, but then I noticed it's Benivo with I and not with E Benivo. So we got to the right platform and I must say, I like colors. I mean the magenta and the midnight blue. It's interesting. I liked it. I saw the scheme and I thought, okay, this looks interesting. And I actually read it for the people watching the video right now and bottom left now, right of your screen, you can see what I'm looking at right now. Lieven (18m 52s): And I read everything and I read it to interest and then I decided to sell anyway. That's about it. Joel (18m 59s): Even though you like the colors. Lieven (19m 0s): I did like the colors. Yeah. Joel (19m 1s): You're a stronger man than I am. Chad (19m 5s): Hit the Boo button. sfx (19m 6s): Boo. Lieven (19m 7s): Okay. Where's booers boo. Yeah. Boo. Joel (19m 8s): There it is. There it is. All right. Lieven (19m 12s): No, buy for me. No. Sell. Joel (19m 15s): Double boo from Lieven. All right. Go Job a recruitment firm based in France announced a Series B round of financing to the tune of 23 million euros this week, that brings total funding to just over 40 million euros. With this new fundraising GoJob will accelerate its R and D investments, as well as the growth of the US and French markets. The group, which describes itself as a workforce, as a service platform, aims to achieve more than 60% growth by the end of the year and profitability by 2023. Founded in 2015, the company says it has more than 1000 customers. Joel (19m 56s): Chad, are you a buy or sell on, GoJob? Chad (20m 0s): I don't see the connection. It's like France and the US. Okay. We'll get to that. So Lieven this looks like a digital staffing company. Am I right? Lieven (20m 9s): I think it's even just a staffing company, not even very digital. Chad (20m 14s): This is a staffing company who needs additional funding after one of the best markets in a generation. So Lieven you're in the staffing sector. So does this sound kind of fishy to you? I mean, this is been a killer market and it sounds weird. Lieven (20m 29s): If they wanna grow, they can grow probably anywhere. Today they're just active I think in France, as far as I know, it's just France, their major are there spreading all around Europe, I'm not sure. I know them from France and they claim to have 500,000 people under contracts or temping, which is quite a lot. Okay. France is big 67 million people, something like that, but still it's a growing market. It's a good market. And they want to invest in education and training people and having people, reentering markets. So people who are struggling with whatever people struggle with. Joel (21m 5s): Is this a buy or sell Chad? Yeah. Chad (21m 6s): Well, I'm trying to, I'm trying to understand it cuz it just doesn't make any sense Joel (21m 9s): To me. Well then it's a sell. Cause if you can't figure it out, it's a sell. Chad (21m 14s): Whole, the total Tam from France to the US seems like bait and no, I'm not taking a bait. It's a sell for me. sfx (21m 29s): Booo. Joel (21m 29s): Chad, you know, damn see it's addictive. Lieven (21m 32s): Buttons are addictive. Joel (21m 33s): You know, buttons are addictive. So Chad, Chad, you know, I talked a lot of the show about the clock that ticks when you take money. And what stood out to me was these guys launched in 2015. So they're getting on that eight year mark. Maybe they're getting a little pressure from the past investors to make money. So now it's like, Hey, we're gonna grow in America. The biggest economy in the world. Well, America's not exactly clamoring for our French digital staffing agency. Okay. It's not like we're lining up like we're buying baguettes or croissants from France. So, so here's, here's some French. Joel (22m 13s): I do know. Fuck a you okay? This is a bad idea. No one good ever makes it in the US hardly. Definitely not. Yeah. What's their name again? GoJob. Yeah. Okay. GoJob go home. I'm a sell. Lieven (22m 30s): And I think already said so. I think entering in France is something House of HR should buy. So if you don't buy them, we will someday. Someday we will buy them. Joel (22m 43s): There you go. Lieven (22m 43s): Yeah. But we won't let them go to United States. I realize you're not waiting for just not a company trying to sell interim and US, but we'll keep them in France. Everyone happy. So we buy and no, I can push the applause, but where is the applause here? Yeah, we buy, we buy, we buy. sfx (23m 1s): applause & cheers Joel (23m 1s): And the good news. If they're 10X, then 400 million is nothing to House of HR. So that's pocket change. They'll be able to pick them up pretty easily, pretty easily. All right. Well, we've been lukewarm on the first two. Let's see how we do on the third company. That's MVP Match. The Berlin based provider of a marketplace and community for matchmaking companies with vetted tech, raised 5 million euros in seed funding. MVP Match is a marketplace for companies to hire vetted tech design and product talent globally. If we're being specific, the company intends to use the funds to expand operations with a talent pool of over 6,000 professionals. MVP Match says they're working with more than 100 companies, including tech unicorns, global enterprises and leading professional services companies Chad are you a buy or sell on this MVP or are you trading it? Chad (23m 54s): It's developers, designers and project managers so very focused. About 3000 designers, 170 projects completed 1200 positions filled still small. Still small for even for just Germany, but from TechCrunch, quote, "MVP Match plans on using the funding to grow its reach with a new hub in Egypt that MVP Match will use to tap talent in Africa with the aim of creating more networks in the region. The hubs, which include the existing ones in Lisbon, Portugal and I've gotta say this right Tbilisi, is that it? Is it, did I say it right Tbilisi? Tbilisi, that's it Tbilisi, Georgia. Chad (24m 34s): We gotta get these right, right? And are intended to help. It's more than 100 clients hire local talent without having to establish operations in those jurisdictions" end quote. First off, I love the focus on developers, designers and project managers. Second building a hub in Egypt and then expanding into Portugal and Georgia is incredibly smart. Plus, those are two great wine countries, by the way. Anyway, we're always saying that when your competition zigs, ya zag. So this isn't the common coming to America's Zig, which everybody's saying they're doing in their bullshitting with their total addressable market. Chad (25m 16s): This is something that I can get behind. So MVP Match is a match and a buy for me. sfx (25m 27s): applause Joel (25m 28s): Yep. So yeah, I talk about waves a lot. I just talked about it five minutes ago, the whole wave of vetted tech talent that can be employed all around the world is a wave that I love. And I love Touring. I love Mandela, which are companies that we talk about on the show that are doing some of the same stuff, high demand for what they're selling, sprinkle it with some German engineering and attention to detail. It's a small amount to raise. I gotta think that a Series A is coming early next year to the tune of 20, 25 million euros. But this is a JV. I think they're gonna move up to the varsity soon and start competing with the big boys at Turing and Andela. Joel (26m 8s): And some of the others MVP for me is a MVP in training. I'm gonna buy it. Chad (26m 16s): There it is. Lieven (26m 17s): Yep. Chad (26m 18s): What do you think Lieven? Lieven (26m 21s): I'm gonna follow. I'm gonna buy also. German, 6,000 people already working for them, going to the right markets. It's a buy. You already said everything. I'm not going to repeat it again. So I'm following you. Just because I'm following you, boo. No, I just pushed. I pushed the wrong button. I was supposed to push applause. Yeah. Oh yeah. There we go. Joel (26m 46s): Lieven. I'm curious. Are they, to me, they look primed. Although they're looking at Africa and middle east, I mean they seem primed to really have a nice footprint in Europe. Agree. Lieven (26m 57s): Yeah. But the choices they made, aren't the most easy, I mean, middle east, it's always risky because it's not the most stable place in the world. Egypt is middle east, maybe a real choice. But then again, those are the growing economies. Joel (27m 12s): It's also where a lot of tech talent is Lieven (27m 16s): Sometimes. Joel (27m 16s): And a lot of those sometimes. Lieven (27m 19s): But no, no, it depends. But I was looking of course, Lisbon and Portugal are of course, they make sense, Georgia and Egypt? It's yeah. It's not the most common choice, but maybe that's why they're interesting to me because it's a place where growth, potential is still big, already working with more than a hundred companies, tech unique unicorns. It sounds good. It sounds good. And I didn't need more today to buy. I was in a buying mood. Joel (27m 44s): They need, they need more money, which I'm sure they're gonna get here soon. Did we take a break before the last story or not? I forget. Go and roll right into it. All right guys, let's talk about the Queen. While parts of the world are morning Queen Elizabeth's death. A few are thinking about the economic impact her death has and will have Queen Elizabeth's state funeral will close businesses, cancel sporting events and redirect flights. And the estimated hit to the British economy has been reported to be 2.3 billion euros. That's $2.6 billion for our US listeners, even orientation week at Prince William and Kate's Alma mater St. Joel (28m 25s): Andrews has been canceled, which reportedly will hurt universities bottom line's from a loss of liquor sales at the student union. This of course with an already ailing British economy and impending energy cost this winter is gonna be additionally painful. Tourism however, is expected to increase in light of the Queens' passing. But I have my doubts. Guys what are your thoughts on the Crown's impact and the British economy? Yeah, Chad (28m 53s): I say a week of being down is worth, is gonna be worth it. I think we're gonna see months of individuals coming back and not just back for the funeral like today, but in waves. Right? So I, I think personally the week that let's say for instance, the premier league isn't playing, they come back, the stadiums are gonna fill up the flow into, the UK itself, I think is going to be at a much larger level than it would've been in the first place. So I think this is you give away a week and you gain months. Joel (29m 25s): This was great for me because I've heard anecdotes about, you know, it's worth it. It's not worth it. And I've never really sort of dug into the numbers. And although some of the numbers are pretty subjective. I may go to London, not for the Queen, but I'm going. And then I go visit, you know, the artifacts or whatever while in there. So costs to Britain, it costs Britain around $120 million yearly from what I researched, which comes out to about two or so dollars per resident. So if you ask most residents, is it worth two bucks a year to have the monarchy? I think most would say probably yes. So what does it bring in to the monarchy? Joel (30m 7s): The monarchy itself is reportedly worth $73 billion. That's all the gold and shit that they have. That's a huge amount. You could sell that shit off and make a good profit. The Queen's net worth as a individual is 370 million pounds. A campaign group called the Republic asserted that the full annual cost of the British monarchy, I saw 120 million, $120 million to $345 million or yeah, $ million per year. The annual income from the monarchy is estimated at 1.76 billion pounds. So if we're doing the math around this, it's roughly five X, the return on what it costs to have the monarchy. Joel (30m 52s): That's a pretty good return. So whereas the American in me can't understand the monarchy and thinks it's incredibly stupid. The capitalist in me says it's a good business and they should keep it around. I'm not sure how good the prince or the King Charles reign is gonna be. He seems fairly lame and boring to me, but I do think the king, the King William era will be a huge moneymaker for Britain. There's my take. It's worth it. It's a good investment Brits keep doing it. Lieven (31m 24s): And I think she behaved better than most of your presidents. Chad (31m 27s): Easily. Lieven (31m 27s): Easily. No, no. And you were talking about the gold and you Joel (31m 34s): Her Twitter account sucked. Lieven (31m 35s): Probably, but you should look at the real estate. I mean, when I was in Scotland this summer and did I already mention, I left Scotland when I was in Scotland this summer, I went to visit Balmoral just a few weeks before she arrived and died. I mean, it's a coincidence of course, but still touching, but they have so much, they have the gold we're talking about, but also all those castles, the heritage, I love it. I'm sucker for all school monarchy. I think it's totally undemocratic. I mean, my kids could never become kings so they should marry a princess. They'll never become Kings. It's old school. It's outdated, but it's tradition and we in Europe love tradition. Lieven (32m 16s): So is it? Will it have an impact on the economy? Probably not. I mean, it's just a protocol. I'm still, it's the end of an era. I'm sad. She's gone. Not really sad, but it's she's old enough, 96. I'm sure she had a good life, but anyway/ Joel (32m 34s): Think of all the shit she's seen, man, World War II, cold war Lieven (32m 39s): Churchill, Churchill Chad (32m 39s): Knew Churchill fucking Churchill. Yeah. Churchill. I mean, God, come on, man. Lieven (32m 42s): Those are the days. Yeah, of course. I'm sure she had an opinion on it, on everything. Joel (32m 47s): Can you name the only us president she did not meet with? Chad (32m 51s): Oh, Joel (32m 51s): Lindon Banes Johnson, random American quiz. There you go. Lieven (32m 53s): Who was in rain when she was, because there were so many presidents she didn't meet Joel (32m 59s): That she was alive for obviously. Lieven (33m 0s): That's what of course she met. Okay. Joel (33m 3s): The only one she never met is queen was LBJ. Lieven (33m 5s): Okay. And why? Chad (33m 6s): Was that a Vietnam issue? I mean, did she not meet with them? Lieven (33m 10s): Hey, Hey LBJ. How many kids did you kill today? Something like that. Joel (33m 13s): Knowing LBJ is, I know from history, I'm not sure he would've cared a lot about meeting the queen and I'm not sure she would've cared much about meeting him, but yeah, I'm sure Vietnam had something to do with it. Civil rights. I don't know. Maybe just she didn't have time. Chad (33m 30s): She's busy. She's a busy lady. Joel (33m 32s): He's busy. Anywho guys our first video podcast. How do we feel about it? Little rough. Lieven (33m 37s): I think we could do better. I'm really sure we could do better. Chad (33m 40s): It's our first time. Come on, give us a break. We're used to this audio thing, this video thing's new. It's okay. Lieven (33m 48s): Someday, we're going to look at this and say, damn we sucked. But by then we will be so good that we won't mind. Chad (33m 56s): Go back to our very first podcast. Lieven (33m 58s): Oh yeah. Chad (33m 58s): And listen to that one versus the ones that we put out today and you'll say, okay. Yeah. Joel (34m 3s): I will say that this is better as a first than our first podcast was as a first. Chad (34m 10s): Easily, Joel (34m 15s): Easily. I'll let the listeners and the viewers decide. Chad and Cheese (34m 20s): We out. We out OUTRO (35m 8s): Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.