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