Straight off Halloween's sugar high, the boys are in rare form this week and talkin' about
- Facebook's rumored Workplace.com
...and get your lazy asses out to VOTE!
I'll say it again VOTE!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Announcer: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listing 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: It's to come down from your Halloween sugar high, and tune into the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheeseman.
Chad: I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's episode, Facebook is launching, Google is protesting, and Handshake is raising. Gotta stay tuned to know what the hell we're talking about. Grab a Kit Kat, and relax to the sweet sounds of this Sovren ad.
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Chad: I already do.
Joel: Chad, I'm a little bit scared for the future. Last night, Halloween, as you know. I'm sure you had trick-or-treater's, you were doing the whole thing like I was. I've got to tell you, the costumes were pretty weak by the teen and preteens that came to the door. There was an entitlement like, just give me candy. I might throw on a baseball cap, or maybe I'll throw on some boots to look like a cowboy, but I was really unimpressed, and I feel like this is millennial 2.0 that we're getting ready to see, if Halloween is any indication from what I saw last night.
Chad: Our kids went all out. I mean full body suits, I mean the blood in some cases. Yeah, I mean it was rainy down here, so yeah anybody who was coming out, I mean they also wanted to go the extra effort to be able to get candy, right?
Joel: It's because you live in Mayberry, and Uncle Jed and Ed Clampett come over in their outfits. Yeah, you're small town America dude, I'm big city urban area up here, up in the big city, so yeah, maybe that's the problem. All right, let's get to shout outs.
Chad: Lazy kids.
Joel: We're moving beyond Halloween, we're going into November, and it feels like Christmas in my house dude. I've got major shout outs to LinkUp, particularly their CEO, Toby Sasquatch Dayton. We call him Sasquatch, because no one's ever sees him, and we finally saw him in New Orleans. A Sasquatch T-shirt was part of my goodie bag, as well as a little bit of refreshing beverages.
Joel: Also Judge, The Shred sponsor. By the way, if you're not listening to The Shred, what the hell's wrong with you? These are great little appetizers of news done only how Chad and I do them. Shout out to Judge and LinkUp for some great goodie bags, making it feel like Christmas already.
Chad: Yeah, you have to subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts, to be able to get The Shred. It's not just something that we're going to throw out there all the time, so if you're not getting The Shred, that's because you haven't subscribed to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. What the fuck is your problem?
Joel: There's a velvet rope, because it's so valuable.
Chad: Yeah, and it's free by the way. Ty Abernethy, CEO of Grayscale, and Gretchen Lindlau of Quad/Graphics, both fans of the show, big time shout out. Thanks for listening guys.
Joel: Yeah, I think that's two weeks in a row for Ty Abernethy. He's doing all the right things for us. HIREconf.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Hiring Solves annual conference is going on next week in New York. You and I will be doing something. As anyone who knows Jeremy Roberts, knows it feels like it's this the seat of your pants, but it all comes together at the end. Whatever we will be doing there will
be awesome. November 7 and 8th in New York, come check it out.
Chad: It's only $250 to get into this bad boy, if you go to chadcheese.com, you click on the banner, and it automatically has the discount code in it. If you do go to Eventbrite, just use ChadCheese, and that is the 50% off discount code. We'll be live on stage, and it should be a blast.
Joel: I mean come on, $250 in New York? That's what you pay for lunch. Yeah, just get under the seat cushions there of your studio apartment, and get $250, and show up.
Chad: Yeah, so Jared ... I think it's Glubin. Is it Globen, Glubin? Over at ZipRecruiter, yeah fan of the show. He nearly caught me on the wrong day though, sorry Jared, but it was Monday, so you should know better. You get snarky with me, the snark's going to come back, there's no question. Bill Boorman, dude thanks for sharing this fantastic T-shirt.
Chad: Here's what it said, don't blame the foreigners, you were shit at your job.
Joel: Bill is the quintessential English, snarky, self-deprecating person. It's been way too long since I've seen Bill, hopefully I'll run into him soon, but yeah he's well known for the snark.
Chad: Very nice.
Joel: He could be on the show at some point, we need to start upping our game on guests I think.
Chad: We've got great guests.
Joel: They're all ... Hung Lee should be on, there should be a whole British invasion of the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Chad: Well, I mean Hung Lee, is ... He can't get off a God damn plane to do the podcast, that's the problem, the guy is everywhere. Big shout out to Max Armbruster, the CEO of Talkpush, for tweeting a response to last week's texting shower rant that Joel had. His response was, "While regulators may struggle to protect SMS as with email from spammers, Facebook is equipped to fight them efficiently on Messenger and WhatsApp."
Chad: What he's saying, is his platform doesn't need that texting bullshit, they have messaging.
Joel: Yeah, I'm going to back up on my rant, which I totally stand by. I got some pushback, and I just want to make sure it's clear what I was talking about.
Chad: Oh, okay.
Joel: Okay, I understand that politicians don't have the same laws that marketers have, and people have, which is bullshit, but that's its own little rant. What I'm talking about, is today, I could get a Twilio account, set up a phone number to text people, plug in 100,000 phone numbers, and text those numbers through that Twilio 10 digit phone number, and there's nothing currently that I'm aware of that can stop that from happening.
Joel: If it can happen, it probably is happening, it will happen more. I'm just saying that needs to be addressed, or else people are going to start freaking out, because texts are going to be coming in at an escalated rate for sure once that starts happening in mass, that's all.
Chad: That's all, that's all, yeah Max, says, "Don't worry about it if use Messenger."
Joel: By the way, new legislation out of AT&T, that you can't use shared short codes. The companies that allow people to send one number, and have multiple clients sent through that same short code. AT&T apparently is starting to crack down on that. I'd say even the short code text messaging that we've seen is under fire. I'm just saying, this whole space could blow up really fast, if regulators, and phone companies, which phone companies like that you're texting, right?
Joel: Phone companies don't want texting to become email. They're going to do everything they can to make sure it doesn't.
Chad: Yeah, but unfortunately the regulators don't self regulate, and they just do whatever the fuck they want to do, which is another reason why ...
Joel: Phone companies do, phone companies don't want spam texts.
Chad: They're not the regulators overall, right? They're not, they can be regulated by government. That's what I'm saying, that's why the vote counts. Moving on, we'll get more into those rants. Big shout out to the U.S. Army for continuing to be the most bad ass recruiting machine ... If you're talent acquisition out there, or you're a vendor, and you're not reverse engineering the shit out of some of the major pipelining, or branding methods that the U.S. Army has come up with over the 100 plus years they've been around for God sakes, you're stupid, seriously.
Chad: These guys are the best recruiting machine out there, and as we talk the clients, as I talk to companies daily, weekly, it's amazing how many deer in the headlight looks I get when I start to point toward, "Hey, are you trying these pipeline methods?" It's ridiculous, look at what's happening out there. Look at the companies who are kicking ass and taking names, and have for over 100 years, and try to mimic that shit, idiots.
Joel: By the way, your recruiting better be good, if part of the value proposition, is you could die.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I'm going to give a shout out to our buddies at TAtech, who are launching TAprose. That's prose, as in the writing prose, not like pro football players. P-R-O-S-E. Apparently this is going to be a publishing arm of the organization. Yeah, so shout out to them, we'll wait to see exactly what it is, and what's gonna unveil from that. We always love what TAtech and the Weddle's are doing, so this is one more thing that they're diving into.
Chad: Yeah, and that being said, if you haven't checked out Peter Weddle's new book, "Circa 2118," check it out. What humans will do when machines take over. We're going to have him on the pod here in about a month or so, but check out that book, it's pretty cool. My last shot out, is for beer.
Joel: Yay.
Chad: I told this person I would not say their name.
Joel: You can't anonymize.
Chad: I can anonymize whatever I want, it's my fucking beer. Thanks for the beer, always welcome guys. Audra, thanks also for being a smart ass on Facebook. James Ellis, dude you gotta learn how to podcast better. That's one of the reasons why you're not getting beer man.
Joel: For the record, I disclose my alcoholic gifting, and people know that if I talk about the company or person that gives me alcohol, that, that's disclosed. Way to go Chad, way to hide and veil who's gifting you beer, that's great.
Chad: This is a listener, not a company.
Joel: I bet they work for a company.
Chad: Not one that sponsors the show.
Joel: One we might talk about.
Chad: No, they don't.
Joel: Bullshit. All right, I'll trust you man, because we have a show together.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm done with shout outs, I'm ready to do the show.
Chad: Let's do it.
Joel: All right, you're big on the whole voting thing, man I'm going to let you just run with this.
Chad: Okay, so how are we not all fucking big on this voting thing? I mean seriously, how can we not be?
Joel: Is someone anti-vote?
Chad: Voter participation has been at a low 36% in recent years, and that often has to do with work life obligations. I mean work is important, right? We need that paycheck, managing kids, and the normal routines before work and after work is important, and sometimes gets in the way. Especially in these midterm types of elections, they just don't seem to matter as much, right? They're not Presidential elections, but they do matter.
Chad: Not to mention our right to vote is pretty God damn big, when you take a look at it from a global standpoint, but we don't do it. I definitely wanted to take the time to say, "Look, we have early voting, not every state, but most states have early voting." If you haven't voted yet, and you don't want to be in the long lines on voting day, do it now. Don't put down the podcast, just take the podcast with you, and go vote now.
Joel: You and I are generally I think opposed to big government regulations, and bureaucracy. I think we're probably in agreement that election day should be a national holiday.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: There should be something to help motivate, because yeah, the latest numbers I've seen, is 48% of people don't vote. That's insane.
Chad: It is.
Joel: A lot of really good people died for us to be able to have the government and the country and the world we live in. I know we're a US-based show, and people from everywhere listen, but they're in similar situations as well. Yeah man, make your voice heard. I mean Donald Trump in aggregate won by the skin of his teeth, and it made a huge difference. If you think that you don't matter, you probably do, and this election is going to be a big one, so get out there and vote.
Joel: Companies, if you own a company, let your folks, especially the small businesses that listen, let your folks have some time to go vote. Don't pressure them, you can incentivize them or however, but voting is important. We wanted to get that word out, next Tuesday go to the polls, do it.
Chad: People are happier when they know the culture supports this type of activity. That's all there is to it. It's pretty fucking simple, and this leads into ...
Joel: Get woke. Get woke is officially nerdy now, because people like me know what it means. No one's going to be saying get woke anymore, but we're going to say it, because it seems to be a hot topic in employment, in retention. News story out last week? Yeah I believe, basically how you feel as a company about the likes of Colin Kaepernick, and other such socially responsible folks in companies, is a really important thing.
Joel: Let me read you some of the survey results here for you. A whopping 62%, and the survey asked 500 business professionals what they thought. 62% said they would not work for an organization, if they disagreed with their stated beliefs. 65% said they wouldn't buy from a company, if they disagreed with their state of beliefs. A mere 5% stated that what an organization says about an issue, would not influence their interest in working for them, which means 95% are interested in what a company says.
Joel: While most, 56% said their organization has not ever taken a public stance on a political or controversial social issue, 30% said that their organization has. Times, they are a changing.
Chad: It's pretty amazing, I mean what you say matters as an organization, and when you say nothing, that matters as well. When we take a look at how you treat your employees, how you actually have a message from a culture standpoint. I know here in Mayberry, in Columbus, Indiana, where a Cummins engine company internationally is headquartered, they have a big stance with regard to diversity overall, and they make it clear.
Chad: When the states started taking stances against the LGBTQ community, right? Cummins actually was a huge voice in saying, "No, we will not stand for this as an organization, as a Corporation of people. This is something we won't stand for." The entire community got behind them, as well as other companies like Salesforce, and that meant something.
Chad: That makes you puck your chest out, and believe in not just the country, but also the organization that you were affiliated with. I don't work for Cummins, but it makes me feel good that they are truly a part of this community.
Joel: Yeah, it reminds me of when we were younger, and a famous quote by Michael Jordan, who would not get political when he played, said, "Republicans buy shoes too." That sentiment seems to be changing. The likes of Lebron James, and other stars are much more vocal than generations past. I think it's time ... It's getting to a time where companies are needing to take stands on issues.
Joel: The Levi's example of gun control, having statement about that.
Chad: Right.
Joel: We've seen Silicon Valley companies talk about the immigration policies of the current office. If you're not seeing it externally into government policies, you're seeing it internally. This week, more than 200 Google engineers are apparently planning a, "Women's walk," where they will walk out in protest of the company's alleged protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct.
Joel: This is according to BuzzFeed sources. An internal message board indicates the group plans to walk out on Thursday, which is the day of this recording, so we'll see what happens, talk about it next week maybe. This was big in response to executive Andy Rubin, who was given apparently $90 million in an exit package after an investigation found allegations against him credible on the sexual-harassment front.
Joel: If you're not handling stuff externally, it's going to handle itself internally, if you're not being more responsible, and less tone deaf with social issues.
Chad: Yeah, no question, not to mention from the standpoint of trying to actually hire let's say more female engineers, how do you think this impacts that endeavor? I mean it's going to negatively impact it, no question. As Google is probably already having issues in that area trying to hire female engineers, or really any types of employees, it's going to become even harder as they have these things pop up.
Chad: You have to change your culture, and giving somebody a $90 million parachute, I don't know if that's always the best of answers.
Joel: By the way, I'll mention that social media gets a lot of slack, and deservedly so in many cases, but I think this individual empowerment, and group empowerment, is happening only because we have social media. I don't think that any of these things would have the prominence that they do, without people having a voice that they never had before with social media.
Chad: Transparency, there's no question. There's a new form of transparency. They're the pros and cons of social media, right? Being able to, from the standpoint surface problems that have been happening for years, probably decades. Also, on the other hand, the ability to falsely influence somebody with a bunch of bullshit that never happened.
Chad: I mean it's going to be our job, to be able to do better from a research standpoint. When you see a company is going through ... Let's say for instance you see a story or, "You think it's a story," do your research. I mean that's what it all comes down to, make sure that it's real first. Again, you're right, from a transparency standpoint, there's much more information coming out.
Joel: You as a company get to deal with it, and it affects recruiting and retention, amen. Handshake this week, a lot of people don't know Handshake. I didn't know about them until probably eight months ago or so. Raised $40 million this week, they raised them from the likes of Zuckerberg's Fund. He and his wife I believe, Chan Zuckerberg have a fund.
Joel: The guy that founded eBay has a venture fund, so they both donated money, or they invested money, sorry, not donated. The company now has about a $300 million valuation. For those who don't know, it's essentially a software that colleges use for their students to connect with employers. What I think is unique about it, is they have Glassdoor type reviews on these sites.
Joel: They're behind a walled garden, so only interns, or college students can see these reviews.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Whereas, if you go to Glassdoor, or Indeed now, it's difficult to segment just interns, so this is a neat way to do that. They also have a system where you can give a review anonymously, or you can choose to sign your name to the review, which I think is good. I think you'd probably be surprised by how many ... They're all good obviously, but how many interns will put their name to a review, and don't have to be anonymous all the time.
Chad: Yeah, remember the days of JobTrak? Do you remember that?
Joel: I do remember JobTrak, but I can't say I was an expert on what they did.
Chad: College recruiting, I mean that's what it was, and then Monster bought it, and they fucked it all up. They called it MonsterTrak. Yeah, it's interesting the Handshake's of the world, and the domain is joinhandshake.com. They've really gone through a metamorphosis per se of really just being a job board equipped with interview scheduling a platform. An employer would come in, post a job, and then they would go ... If they were coming on site, on campus to do any types of interviews, or what have you, they could use the interview scheduling system, to be able to do that.
Chad: There were some other functionality that was available too. I think today, and you start to see with some of these newer platforms, it's much more robust from a feature standpoint. It's easier to do that, because again, you're building from the ground up now, versus something that is 10 to 20 years old, so it's interesting. What do you think they're going to do with this 40 million fricking dollars?
Joel: Probably what it said, is they're going to try to get into more companies. I mean I think they've done a good job with getting into colleges, and obviously if the colleges are on board, then they've got the students, which is a nice byproduct of that. Now they have to get more companies using the service. I will say if we're going historically on things like this, I think that when the economy is great, these college recruiting sites do very well.
Joel: Companies need these folks, need these students to come right out of
college, and join the workforce.
Chad: Right, right.
Joel: When the economy is in the shitter, no one seems to care as much about college recruiting. Now there's always outliers, right? There's always MIT and things like that, but on a grand scale, college recruiting takes a little break when recessions hit, and economies get bad. I think Handshake is doing well right now, partly because of the economy, but when things go badly, we'll see if Handshake can weather the storm, and come out the other side.
Chad: Yeah, I think they're going to spend some of this money ... You said they have the colleges, they really don't have the colleges, they have the college career centers. The college career centers don't represent, in many cases, the lion share of the individuals who are actually looking for jobs. Back in the day before the Internet, yeah, the college career center was the place to go, because where the hell else would you go to try to find internships?
Chad: Now it's much easier, they can bypass the college career center. Yeah, having those relationships with the college career center is huge, there's no question there. You also have to spend money to try to hit that, in some cases, lion share of those college students who are not going to go through the college career center. That's through their different colleges, so I think they're going to have to invest in being able to sure up those types of relationships even more, to ensure that they're getting the talent in.
Chad: I mean that's their product, right?
Joel: Do you remember going to the library on Sunday, and looking at multiple cities newspapers, and looking at job postings, Five Line postings, and then applying to those jobs through the mail?
Chad: Fax.
Joel: How long ago does that sound? How antiquated does that sound? Holy shit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Going to Kinko's and getting your resume printed on really nice paper, and actually typing out a cover letter.
Chad: Using a typewriter, is that what you did?
Joel: I had a word processor, but yeah. I mean you did that shit, like a custom typed envelope, where you actually signed your name, or letter, you signed your name. Anyway, thank God those days are gone man, because that sucked.
Chad: Connectivity really sucked back then, not to mention I think from a recruiter standpoint, trying to go through all that shit would really suck, versus the technologies that are available today. Even the ones, the newer technologies, a lot of the startups that'll just automatically go through those hundreds of resumes, and just get it down to the qualified ones, and push those into your inbox.
Chad: Yeah, I mean it's definitely an entirely different world, but the coolest thing, is we have been able to live through that, and through the whole Moore's law theory of watching things just progress so quickly. Our kids haven't had that opportunity, so it's really interesting, they don't understand how a lot of this actually came to fruition, but we watched the entire thing.
Joel: Oh, we're going to be telling stories 30, 40 years from now about ... Anyway, in summary, we're old and getting older, but you know what isn't old? Is JobAdx's technology. Let's hear from them real quick, and we'll talk a little bit Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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Chad: Ah, the best, ah. Ah.
Chad: Facebook.
Joel: Facebook continuing to be serious about employment.
Chad: That's what they say.
Joel: New evidence, new evidence leaked out this week that they announced to some of their bigger companies, customers, I think in this case it was Walmart who leaked it. Facebook is apparently launching a separate URL called workplace.com, where currently their messaging system, their slat competitor will be an offering on that. I just have to think, if they're serious enough to launch their own domain around this, that they're getting really serious about solutions for the enterprise.
Chad: Yeah, I think they need to move away from the Facebook brand, which isn't the greatest brand at this point number one. To be able to make it seem at least like it's going to be viable, as opposed to just something that Facebook's thinking about. Yeah, I think changing the URL is big, but we're going to have to see how this really affects the product itself.
Chad: Will it actually be more safe? Will it be something that companies engage with, and start to implement?
Joel: By the way, wouldn't a separate domain work really nicely with an acquisition? ZipRecruiter. They could buy an existing service, move it over to workplace.com powered by Facebook, and really crush it I think. I'm speculating, but it would work really nicely if they did that.
Chad: Backing up a little bit, I think ZipRecruiter is so ripe at this point for a big company, and I think Facebook is ripe at the same time to be able to put something like that together. There's no question where Zip's going, and where they're going quickly. They're doing it better than anybody else that we're seeing in the industry right now. They are not a job board, they are more of a programmatic outreach tool, and one click apply SMB.
Chad: Where Facebook has been, and where they have been focusing on the SMB side of the house, this is a perfect start for them, and would provide them core technology and business, and pretty much a business model they could kick ass with.
Joel: I think it's fair to say that ZipRecruiter has at least brought a pistol to the gunfight.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: Although someone with a howitzer is LinkedIn, and there was a post this week that caught your attention that I fully disagree with, so why don't you set the table for what you like about this opinion.
Chad: Yeah, I just like it, because it was different than yours.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Holland McCue, she does some pretty good stuff. She put herself out there, she said, "Yes, I'm an optimist, and you might think I'm full of shit." I'm paraphrasing, but the top 1%, and this is through her blog, and through what she's seeing from the LinkedIn blog. The top 1% on LinkedIn, the Richard Branson's of the world, were getting all the algorithm love, right?
Chad: LinkedIn finally understands the trickle-down effect for the 1% just doesn't work, right? LinkedIn understands that the regular users like schmucks like you and me, when we receive more likes, we engage more, and we actually push more content out there. Again, it releases those chemicals in the brain, oh, they like us. Yeah, this was Holland's take on it after reading some of the propaganda that LinkedIn was putting out.
Chad: Why the hell not? It does make sense, why push all the one percenters shit out there, and make us all feel like we're looking up at the ivory tower, as opposed to feel like we're at the party in the ivory tower?
Joel: Okay, so I feel like we're probably in more agreement than not. I feel that the algo's are not defaulting to giving your content a lot of exposure, just because you put it on LinkedIn. In other words, the video example that we talked about. You and I did a quick video at a party, and it got way more views than it deserved, and way more views than we thought it would.
Joel: Part of that I think, is because LinkedIn wanted to push its video solution, it wanted to get people energized around doing it. Holy shit, I put a video up, and I got a bunch of views. Over time, that's going to wear on people, like this is just a dumb video, why am I seeing all these video? If it's good quality, if people do like it and share it, then yes, you're going to get some really nice exposure, and engagement on LinkedIn, especially for people like us, who want to be in front of recruiters and employers who, let's admit it, are on LinkedIn.
Joel: If we were nurses, we would not be saying LinkedIn was the place to be, but we are in the recruiting business, so it's obviously going to get responses when we talk about Monster revenues decreasing, or so-and-so acquired so-and-so. That's gonna get a lot of attention and engagement, partly because of the audience that we're in. If we're still posting crappy stuff, I believe the algorithm is going to ... Just like it did on Facebook and anywhere else, just start pushing that out of view, because no one cares.
Joel: When people care about what you post about, you're going to get engagement, I do agree with that. We're in more agreement than not. I think what Holl is talking about, is content that does engage, and it's good, solid content, not just we're throwing stuff up there, just throwing up a blog post on LinkedIn, because it's getting viewed.
Joel: We're just throwing up a video, because it's getting viewed, it actually has to be good.
Chad: With these new algorithms though, and if they do flip it for the 99% getting more perspective views and whatnot, or more engagement, then they're going to have to, LinkedIn is going to have to worry about the same shit that Facebook's going through with this fake news, make your own shit up meme situation that they're in right now. People loved the hell out of that, but it's still bullshit, it's still lies, right?
Chad: They still love it, so yeah LinkedIn, I mean if you do flip it, there could be some unintended consequences around that, where people are liking a bunch of shit that is just totally false.
Joel: LinkedIn benefits from the fact that most of its users, particularly the ones that are engaged, are, let's be honest, smarter than the average user that's on Facebook. Fake news has less of a chance to get through on LinkedIn than it does on Facebook.
Chad: You're giving way too much credit to the human race, I think that's bullshit. I think at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the reason why we have a President, he was a TV show President, is because people who are working every day, don't get enough time with their Maury Povich, and their Jerry Springer, or what have you, right? They don't get that, so now they get it during the news times.
Chad: I think we're giving way too much credit to the human race. Are there smart people out there that can do research and get through that? Yes, but it hasn't been proven yet.
Joel: You don't think on average that the LinkedIn user is more educated than the average Facebook, or Twitter user?
Chad: Education has nothing to do with it, people are engaging with these things, because it's hitting something inside of them, right? It's triggering something inside of them, it has nothing to do with their fucking education. Now, if they take the time, and they want to go the next step to actually see if this is true or not, that's entirely different. Being educated and having triggers, has nothing to do with being uneducated and having triggers.
Joel: I think you've been reading Circa 2118 too much, and have way too little confidence in the human race. If you want to join Chad, and enjoy the doom and gloom of robotics and automation taking everything over, read Circa 2118.
Chad: I'm saying be careful people, do your research, and don't post stupid shit, that's what I'm saying.
Joel: I mean PT Barnum famously said, "There's a sucker born every minute," and that was in the 1800s. We've been dumb forever, we will continue to be dumb. Anyway.
Chad: It's amazing.
Joel: Who's not dumb is our sponsor Canvas, and their supersmart technology. Let's hear from them, and put the show out of its misery, and talk about eHarmony, and the Ladder's.
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Joel: Speaking of dumb, I feel like the last sponsor ad is the best one, because we saved the dumbest stories for last. Sometimes I think people just fast-forward to the end, and listen to that final ad, and then the stupid stuff we talk about at the end.
Chad: I think with Canvas, the humans will be able to save so much more time, they can take that time to watch Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, and get their fill. Then we don't have to worry about all this shit on social media.
Joel: Your ability to text fake news to mass quantities of people, is that much easier with Canvas.
Chad: That's not how it works.
Joel: Make sure you throw in a Bitmoji when you do it.
Chad: Okay, so what are we talking about first here?
Joel: EHarmony sells for $85 million to a German company, and we thought, not only that news, but it was a good time to revisit Elevated Careers, which was eHarmony for jobs.
Chad: Yeah, good stuff.
Joel: Candidate.guru, who acquired them when they did, which I don't know, over a year ago, right? Easily over a year ago, so eHarmony selling for $85 million, any comments on that?
Chad: It seems like a low price tag. I mean I thought dating was the shit, and there were so much engagement, and there was so much revenue. I mean just $85 million? They sold to a German broadcasting company I believe called ProSieben, and they're just going to emerge eHarmony with their current dating app called Parship Elite. I mean it's like eHarmony really is dying.
Joel: 85 is ridiculously low. I bet from 2000 when they launched to a year ago, the amount of advertising that they've done with that goofy founder on the ads, which was not inspiring anyone to date. Anyway, he's on these ads, I bet they spent $85 million a year on ads over that time, and now to sell for $85 million. This just shows again, people just want to swipe left and right dude.
Joel: They don't want to fill out a form and a profile, and maybe that speaks to employment as well. People don't want to work for this stuff, and in eHarmony's case, you might actually have sex. We're not even talking about filling out a resume, or some lengthy assessment test.
Chad: What's at the end of that swipe? That's what people are really caring about, but yeah, eHarmony, $85 million, ridiculously low. I mean just crazy, ridiculously low.
Joel: Crazy, ridiculously low, and by the way, remember Facebook is getting into this dating game too. EHarmony may have thought well, Tinder took away how much value from our company? How much is Facebook going to take away from our company? We better sell as soon as possible to get as much as we can. Elevated Careers, let's revisit them real quickly. Candidate.guru was really big on the acquisition.
Joel: There's an interview somewhere in our archives with their CEO, or founder.
Chad: Steve, yeah.
Joel: Yeah, Steve, and they've been pretty silent since the initial acquisition. We visited their website today, they've had no press releases anytime in the past year that I've seen. There's been no new features or technology. We visited the site, the most recent blog post is from May. I don't know, it's not a good sign from where I sit that the acquisition took place, or that they're doing anything with it.
Chad: Yeah, they pivoted into something entirely different. I mean the site looks goods, it's nice, it's polished, but still, is that just new lipstick on the pig?
Joel: It might be, we'll keep our eye on that. Speaking of press releases that come across my desk, this one caught my attention.
Chad: Oh God.
Joel: I'll read you the headline and the subhead to get you titillated and excited. Ladders, who we know, Ladders announces new, "Tap2Call, spelled T-A-P, the number 2, so you know it's good, C-A-L-L," feature, that allows recruiters to instantly connect with job candidates from their profiles. Holy crap, talk about innovation. Subhead reads, this one-of-a-kind mobile feature gives recruiters the option to call candidates immediately from Ladders mobile site with, get this, a single tap.
Joel: Holy cow, talk about progressive.
Chad: Okay stop, okay stop, so let me make this point again about Ladders. I've made it before on other podcasts, mainly about how bad their branding is. I mean remember Ladders used to be known as what?
Joel: TheLadders.
Chad: TheLadders, right, right, and why was that? Because they bought the URL, theladders.com, right? Then they backed off to just Ladders, so guess what's on ladders.com?
Joel: Not ladders.
Chad: A ladder company, no shit, right? It's the stupidest thing you could ever do in the world. You spend all this money for TheLadders to be able to brand it, and then you back it off, and you don't even have the domain to be able to do what you need ... Okay, that just is a framing of how stupid this fucking company is.
Joel: Frame it brother.
Chad: Tap2Call, didn't every mobile phone enable this specific technology and connectivity about five years ago? I mean I don't need Tap2Call to be able to do that already, and I haven't had to for years on my android. I'm sure on the iPhone as well, so how much money did their developers actually spend in putting something like this together?
Joel: This is innovation man, I don't know what you're talking about. What I think is funny, is I think it was last week, or recently, we poked fun at CareerBuilder and Monster, because the stuff LinkedIn and Google are launching, is crazy cool, and intelligent. CareerBuilder and Monster's answer to that, is resume jobs, Instagram for jobs, or augmented reality to point my phone down a main Street, and see, ooh, wow, Starbucks is hiring, who knew?
Joel: If we're making fun of CareerBuilder and Monster, what the hell is Tap2Call? That's so bad, and the fact that you're putting out a press release saying that this is once in a generation technology, just shows you how bad things must be at TheLadders, or excuse me, at Ladders.
Chad: Yeah, at Ladders, so all of our listeners out there, when Joel and I were setting up the show, we had to talk about this, because it was so fucking stupid. For everybody that's out there from a vendor standpoint, this is your key. If you are not truly going to impact something in the recruiting industry, do not put a press release out, and don't make it look like it's a feature that is the first ever, because guess what? This is the stupidest shit that we've seen in a while.
Joel: By the way dude, we have some live footage from Ladders IT department. Oh God, we out we?
Chad: We out.
Joel: Thank God.
Chad: No shit.
Tristen: Hi, I'm Tristen, thanks for listening to my stepdad, the Chad, and his goofy friend, Cheese. You've been listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss out on all the knowledge dropping that's happening up in here. They made me say that. The most important part is to check out our sponsors, because I need new Track Spikes. The expensive gold shiny pair that are extra, because well, I'm extra. For more, visit chadcheese.com.