To say this week's episode is a bit disjointed would be an understatement. But hey, we just comment on what we see happening in the world of recruitment. So, here's a taste:
- CareerBuilder throws a few logs on the dumpster fire - RUMORS!
- Robot baristas
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Announcer: 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 works. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Chad: Here we go.
Joel: Let's do this. We just got back from Austin, and boy, are our arms tired. Hi-dy ho, kids, and welcome to Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel Cheeseman.
Chad: And I'm Chad "Foosball" Sowash.
Joel: On this week's extremely disjointed and random roundup, the dumpster fire at Career Builder rages on. Stop me if you've heard that one before. Robot baristas, Uber for humans-
Chad: What?
Joel: And the greatest advancement in desk technology ever. Strap an iPad to your head and get geeked. We'll be right back after a word from JobAdX.
JobAdX: This is the sound of job search. This is the sound of job search defeat. Job search can be frustrating. Job seekers run into the same irrelevant ads, page after page, before they find a match. When job seekers aren't engaged, conversations are low. Budgets are wasted. Jobs go unfilled. No one wins. But job search doesn't have to be defeating. JobAdX's smart search exchange references 400 data points to select the most targeted jobs and delivers what job seekers really want to premium ad units across our network.
JobAdX: Score!
JobAdX: That's the sound of JobAdX's relevant results, attracting a qualified candidate and filling your job faster. Find out how to improve your job advertising campaigns and increase candidate attraction and engagement by emailing us at joinusatjobadex.com.
JobAdX, today we can save job search.
Chad: Yeah, I still think the guy should be saying, "Fuck yeah," instead of score. We need to get that edited.
Joel: The first "ugh" sounds a little bit like you, when you get frustrated with me. Ugh.
Chad: I think I'm gonna talk to our buddies over at JobAdX and see if they don't mind if I actually cut out "score" and then I'll just say, "Fuck yeah," and then I'll just go ahead and insert that in there. I think it'll be great. It's awesome.
Joel: Aren't we gonna see them in Phoenix next week?
Chad: Yeah, we are. I think over a few drinks we can probably get that done.
Joel: Yeah, get them all lubricated and agree to a totally not safe for work ad.
Chad: We just got back from Austin and I can't remember the last time I've done a podcast without looking your ugly mug right beside me. This is interesting. This is pretty refreshing.
Joel: I'm going to enjoy a weekend free from Chad Sowash, because I have to turn around and see you again in Phoenix and hope to God, unlike Austin, it doesn't rain in Phoenix with fairly, moderately neutralized cold-ish weather. I say that because we came from Canada, so it did feel warm, but it would have been nice to see a little more sunshine.
Chad: Yes. But as in Austin, and thanks to the amazing hospitality from Talroo. We had great opportunity for amazing food.
Joel: Franklin's Barbecue.
Chad: Yeah, they brought Franklin's Barbecue in. We worked our ass off while we were there. We were playing Foosball, we were racing down the hallways on scooters.
Joel: Corn hole.
Chad: Ping pong.
Joel: I showed you how to hover board. Good god.
Chad: If you're not following myself or Joel on Twitter, you need to. Go to Twitter, just ... I mean, I'm the only Chad Sowash on Twitter. Obviously probably the only Joel Cheeseman. Follow us, there's some hilarious fucking videos, I think I might have put them on Linkedin, too, of Joel trying to hover board. That was awesome. That was worth the entire trip.
Joel: I don't know how kids can just zoom around on these things. They're like death traps.
Chad: It's practice, man. It just takes practice.
Joel: Yeah, I guess so.
Chad: I gotta say, the Talroo team was awesome, treated us like a couple of podcasting kings.
Joel: How many cases of beer did they buy for us?
Chad: Yeah, yeah, if you go on Twitter or LinkedIn, probably or Facebook, we might have put it on our Facebook too.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: You will see the pile of beer cases ...
Joel: Stacks. Stacks.
Chad: It was awesome, dude. Yeah, so there's gonna be some great content coming from Thad. Probably next week we're gonna drop an interview with Thad Price.
Joel: CEO.
Chad: Yep, CEO over at Talroo, and then we've got some super-secret stuff that's gonna happen in the weeks upcoming, and that's all we can say about that.
Joel: Gotta wait for it. Get 'em all hot and bothered, baby.
Chad: Lube 'em up.
Joel: Got some super-secret detention coming up, coming your way.
Chad: Oh, shit. Okay, shout outs.
Joel: Another shout out to Neuvoo, I still don't know if I pronounced that correctly.
Chad: I think it is, yeah.
Joel: Some French Canadian thing. Sent me a pair of socks, I think sent you also a pair of socks.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And with all the swag I'm getting, I'll never have to buy clothes ever again. Except for maybe pants. I have not gotten a pair of swag pants yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Get me some nice daisy dukes, somebody, for the summer. And I will ...
Chad: I hope nobody ever does that.
Joel: And I will rock those bitches.
Chad: Yeah, so thanks for thinking of us Michael Odell and the team over there at Neuvoo. John Headland, so John fired off a message to me. He watched our, the Gathering panel intro. We did it on video, and he provided some solid feedback on what Chad and Cheese actually means to him. I had said something random ...
Joel: What are we, Santa Claus now? What Chad and Cheese means to him? Like, God.
Chad: Hey.
Joel: They're fans now, right? I love it.
Chad: You've gotta allow them.
Joel: What we mean to you, that's great. Okay.
Chad: We've gotta allow them to bear their soul to us, Joel, come on.
Joel: I guess.
Chad: But yeah, gave us some great feedback. So thanks, John, appreciate it.
Joel: Fantastic. So I got a package from FedEx today.
Chad: Oh, nice.
Joel: And it had our travel sponsors' swag in it, at least delivery one, Shaker Advertising. For those of you who don't know, they're sponsoring some of our travels and are equipping us with some of the highest tech gadgets on the planet, including trucker hats, new carry-on luggage, polos.
Chad: Backpacks.
Joel: Backpacks, yeah. They're gonna outfit us like a couple of middle schoolers as we venture around the world. And so my luggage and shirts were delivered today.
Chad: Nice.
Joel: So not as exciting as the trucker hats, which are stuck in China, I guess, being made. But the luggage is really nice, so Shaker man, thank you guys. The polos are great, I think they're Nikes. I'll be looking great on the green this summer. Much appreciated, big shout out.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And by green, I mean Top Golf.
Chad: Yes. Traveling with Chad and Cheese. You'll be seeing more videos and all that fun stuff, brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Advertising.
Joel: Shaker Recruitment Advertising.
Chad: Shaker Recruitment Advertising.
Joel: Chicago owned, Chicago based.
Chad: Hung Lee, he loved the iCIMS throat punches Indeed line, and he gave us some love on Recruiting Brain Food. So that was pretty awesome, thanks, Hung.
Joel: The Brits is like the violent nature of us Americans, so they always love that. They're way too proper to have a headline like iCIMS throat punches Indeed.
Chad: Yeah, but they can share that shit, though.
Joel: Which by the way, shout out to Indeed, who is right next door to Talroo, which is kind of an interesting dynamic. We went by, gave 'em a big cheers, waved to them, we didn't get past security, of course. But we did see the building and said hi, so shout out to our friends at Indeed.
Chad: Yeah, fuck them. Allen Fleur, hey, man.
Joel: Such an asshole.
Chad: Allen wants more virtual beer toasts, which brings me to we need to do more Demo-pocolypse. We need more Demo-pocolypse. So if you're out there in your company and you want to highlight new features, new platforms, products, whatever it is, and you want to do that via Chad and Cheese Video, then reach out to us. Go to the website, hit the little contact us area, and let's talk about Demo-pocolypse.
Joel: Demo-pocolypse. I just made that up, it's great. Shout out to Lily Valentin. There's no E at the end of it, so I don't know if it's Valentin or Valentine. So I'm not sure. Lily Valentin works for Adzuna.
Chad: Oh, okay.
Joel: Big fan. She says the whole office listens, the company's a big supporter of the show, so Lily and the group at Adzuna, shout out to you guys. Thanks for listening.
Chad: Well, you guys, you need to have a listener party that's kind of like a book club. You get together and you bear your soul and you talk about the Chad and Cheese podcast that really moved you.
Joel: We're bringing together companies like never before.
Chad: That's exactly right.
Joel: It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Chad: Yeah. My last shout out to Holland Dombeck and James Ellis, both branding lovers. You are going to love, enjoy some of the Gathering pods we're going to be dropping in the next week. So once again, we were in Banff for about a week or so, probably the best branding, awesome conference, and we're going to have some really cool interviews that we're going to be dropping, so stay tuned.
Joel: Did you know Forbes rated the Gathering the number one conference to attend for business professionals?
Chad: Well I know why now, because I actually attended. And I have to say that at the end of conferences, I am fucking conferenced out because of talking with people. They're just so much, right? But at this one-
Joel: Dealing with me.
Chad: Yeah, being with you. This time, I was total, I was fucking fanboy. It was ridiculous how cool it was and the type of content that was brought to stage. We go to great conferences throughout the year in the recruitment industry, but this was something entirely different and new, so it was really cool.
Joel: For sure. And we're gonna be spitting out some great content from that show here in the coming weeks. And speaking of the show, shout out to Laten Davison who was a volunteer from the show. He was there for our segment, he became a fan during the segment, wanted to connect on LinkedIn. We were like yeah, sure, dude, and he thought, "Wow, that's really, really cool." College student, just getting a start, nice, Canadian kid. Laten, this shout out's for you, and I will end my shout outs with a company in Japan called Piala, which I'm probably misspelling, but it's spelled P-I-A-L-A. As a non-smoker, I've always complained when I was in the workforce about how much time smokers got extra by smoking. I mean, it's literally like an hour a day-
Chad: It is, it is.
Joel: That they get not working. So anyway, Piala is giving non-smokers six extra days off for vacation, because they have I guess so many smokers and they want to reward the non-smokers who have been complaining. Apparently there are a lot more smokers in Japan than there are in the U.S., so it's a little more culturally different, but I applaud them for taking a stand for non-smokers and giving them a little extra perk, which they've been deserving for a long time.
Joel: And with that ...
Chad: Really quick, on the event side, go to chadcheese.com, click on the events link all the way in the upper right, and you're going to see that we're gonna be at TA Tech next week, we're also going to be at TA Tech in Chicago in April, in Lisbon in May, in Austin in September. We have a discount code there for you. We're going to be at SmashFly in June, Transform, then Recfest, which is going to be in London and about 3,000 fucking attendees strong, and Unleash in Paris. So go to chadcheese, click on events, and there's some discounts that are there for you, not to mention it's where we're gonna be, you should be there, too.
Joel: We're saving you hundreds on your conference traveling this year.
Chad: Easily. Easily.
Joel: Love us.
Chad: So there's some gossip out there. We got some gossip.
Joel: Big gossip. We love gossip. And our sources are pretty solid. Like ...
Chad: Oh, they are.
Joel: We have a trusted group of anonymous people who trust us to keep their names out of it, but are more than willing to let us know what's going on. So we got some new gossip out of Career Builder this past week. Apparently some more big names in the C-Suite are getting axed. They gotta be running out of C-Suite executives to fire. I don't know, there must be so many, because every month, there's gonna be a firing. So anyway, the gossip is Pete Janson, who was VP of the New Biz Group, was axed. We got Megan Moobach, hopefully I'm saying that right, who was VP of sales, and we got Alex Madison who was a manger of enterprise sales. So the heads keep rolling at Career Builder, and thank you guys, our anonymous sources out there. Hopefully you don't get fired any time soon because we love the info that you're giving us.
Joel: Which clearly states that our sources aren't necessarily VPs. They're like in the trenches, and I kind of like that.
Chad: No, totally dig that. So it's like adding more logs to the dumpster fire.
Joel: I want to add, 'cause we're having a running list of companies that won't talk to us ...
Chad: Uh-huh.
Joel: Should we add Irena, CEO Career Builder to this list?
Chad: Oh, yeah. There's no question. I mean, you reached out to them through PR, right, to be able to see if she would be on a panel or even do an interview with us, and it was a big fucking no, right?
Joel: It was a no, but it was a no like oh, she's busy. And we'll send somebody else. So it wasn't like we're not gonna talk to you. But yeah, I think Irena, if you're listening, and obviously the title of this will be like, "Heads Roll at Career Builder" or something, so we know that you guys are listening. Irena, we want to get you on the show, we want to find out what's going on, the Tex Colonel acquisition, what's going on there, what's going on at Career Builder. So if you're out there, Irena, give us some time, come on the show. We'll be nice, we promise. We will be tough as usual.
Chad: Tough but fair. I mean, the only opportunity you're going to get to be able to actually get your message out there on this show is to be on the fucking show, so there it is.
Joel: Yep, yep. So all those people who won't be on the show ... It's back, baby.
Chad: Fuck. Okay. So that should be, I think that was actually IBM for apologizing for using ethnic labels like yellow and mulato in their applicant tracking system. So this goes under the what the actual fuck happened here? IBM apologized Tuesday after one of its recruitment web pages powered by Brass Ring, who they own, gave applicants the option of using racially insensitive terms to identify themselves. The process took job seekers to a dropdown menu that included, among Caucasian, black, and other options, yellow and mulato.
Joel: This is almost a joke. I hope somebody in technology copied and pasted a list of nationalities from the 1940s.
Chad: Oh, fuck.
Joel: And then jokingly copied and pasted it as the new code for the dropdown, 'cause this is totally ridiculous. Like yellow, seriously?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Seriously? Mulato?
Chad: They said it was copied over from an area of the world where those are used commonly, I'm paraphrasing, but still. This is what happens when you don't give a shit about QA and QC and the process, right? They're a global organization that has downsized considerably over the years and I know the guy who would have been in charge of ensuring that this did not happen. Needless to say, he doesn't work at IBM anymore, but dude.
Joel: Pretty sure I know who you're talking about.
Chad: Yeah, no, dude, he would have been 100% QA, QC behind this entire fucking thing and he got axed and laid off like over a year ago or something like that. So dude, all I have to say is, what the fuck? Not just to IBM, but you and I were talking about, you know, on the Brass Ring side. Do you not have triggers to be able to say, "Oh, wait a minute, you're a dumbass. Don't do this."
Joel: Well, and it's a word of warning to anybody. IBM is a big-ass company with a lot of committees and fail safes, allegedly. It's probably a good time, if you haven't, go check your ATS, go to the dropdown menu for nationality if you ask it or whatever, and make sure that everything is PC and not gonna piss anybody off. Because literally a job seeker recorded this on video and put it on Twitter and totally called them out, and so everybody embedded this video so it's there forever, which is great. But yeah, don't put yourself in a place where somebody like IBM can be embarrassed and really quite offensive, actually.
Joel: Yellow is nuts.
Chad: If you're a company and you're not doing quarterly audits on the actual process, especially before you do any type of rollout, first off, that's when audits should happen. But still, if you continue to do the audits not just on content, but on process ...
Joel: Well, it doesn't help that IBM's brand is kind of crusty and old anyway, right? So now when I apply, I see references from the 1950s of yellow and ... Are you ... Yellow? Was red on there, too?
Chad: As we talk about the 1950s, then we're going to slam this podcast into like, 2118 really quick with this new telepresence human Uber thing that you posted that just totally freaked me the fuck out. So where did you find this thing?
Joel: Like, I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April Fools. But apparently there's a company that you can hire someone to go to things for you. So a literal person will go somewhere, in this case it's an office. Let's say you're traveling and you want to be at a meeting, maybe an all hands thing or something, and you can't be there. So you hire someone to go for you, and they strap a tablet/iPad to their face.
Chad: To their face.
Joel: And then your face is on the tablet, so like you're actually there, and you can see the event, or basically you see what they're seeing, and your face is basically replaced on their body. And it looks ... It's almost like slave labor that you strap a tablet to these people and they're walking around and being there for you. I guess it's Uber for humans. But I think we're sliding so far down the wormhole that we're just struggling to find startups and businesses that aren't just totally ridiculous, and this is one of those. Uber for humans.
Joel: I'm waiting for this to intersect with Tinder-
Chad: Oh, god.
Joel: Where you go on multiple dates with multiple people at the same time and other people strapping tablets to their face or maybe it's like you can go on dates but not be on dates and then-
Chad: Oh, that's too far.
Joel: Someone else dresses up for you and it's like two tablets speaking to each other on a date.
Chad: Yeah, but does the person who's wearing the actual iPad face get lucky if it's a good ... I don't understand. See, that just to me doesn't make any sense.
Joel: Do they have to have sex with the tablet on?
Chad: I would say yes. I mean, I don't know. I think you've gone a little bit too far there, so I'm gonna take a step back.
Joel: That's where we're going, dude. We're going so far. We're talking about yellow on a dropdown for nationality and now we're talking about sex between people with iPads on their face.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. So probably everybody out there has seen those little robots, those rolling robots who have the iPad attached to the top of it. You see them in commercials and that kind of shit. This is like that next step. I thought it was creepy before, but now they're calling it a chameleon mask and the surrogate humans are actually really the vehicle versus this rolling bot thing. The actual creator in Japan, go figure, said it provides a way to attend events remotely using another person's body. It's surprisingly natural. What? It's surprisingly fucking creepy is what it is.
Joel: Yeah. If I start walking around the world and I see people with tablets on their face, I'm gonna lose it. You're gonna start seeing this in school, like college kids are gonna send these people to tests and shit. Fucking absurd.
Chad: We should get these guys on Firing Squad.
Joel: Yes, oh hell, yes. And it's gotta be some video component to it, 'cause they have to have somebody else's body with their face doing the interview. We have to do TA Tech in Japan, and we'll get these guys to do some employment angle and we'll get them onstage.
Chad: We'll talk to Peter about that next week.
Joel: Oh, god. It just gets weirder when we come back. But let's take a break, listen to a word from Canvas, and we'll talk some silly automation stuff.
Canvas: Canvas is the world's first intelligent text-based interviewing platform empowering recruiters to engage, screen, and coordinate logistics via text, and so much more. We keep the human, that's you, at the center, while Canvas bot is at your side adding automation to your workflow. Canvas leverages the latest in machine learning technology and has powerful integrations that help you make the most of every minute of your day. Easily amplify your employment brand with your newest culture video, or add some personality to the mix by firing off a Bitmoji. We make compliance easy, and are laser-focused on recruiters' success.
Canvas: Request a demo at gocanvas.io, and in 20 minutes we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent.
Joel: Dig it, Canvas. A little teaser, we're scheduling a face-to-face interview with Aman Brar, CEO and founder-
Chad: Spoiler.
Joel: Of Canvas to get to the bottom of this whole acquisition thing and what's in store for that company as well as text messaging automation AI for his business and the industry as a whole.
Chad: Yeah. It's always fun to sit down with the cool cat and have a cool conversation about the industry. And Aman is definitely a cool cat.
Joel: Totally cool, and I want to see how many shrimp cocktails at St. Elmo's he can down, because if you've had those, you know they're pretty spicy.
Chad: Horseradish extraordinaire.
Joel: The automation apocalypse is real.
Chad: Yeah, but you know what they won't do? They won't be making St. Elmo's shrimp cocktail, but they will be making coffee.
Joel: So we're in Austin and totally freaked out when we saw this.
Chad: In the airport, yeah. So last week, we talked about Pepsi, and they're spending b-b-billions to re-org and aggressively automate, right? And that's get rid of fucking humans, right? Now Joel and I go into the Austin airport and we see, guess what? A robot barista. So it is this big machine, really cool looking, and you have this app on your phone, and all you do is go to the app, pick what you want, pay for it right there, and it makes whatever you ordered right in front of you.
Joel: Whatever you want, man. Whatever you want.
Chad: Whatever you want.
Joel: Now you say really big, I'd say it's about the size of a 60s Volkswagen van.
Chad: Yeah, one of those love vans.
Joel: Yeah. And it had really nice, looked like a big tablet screen, pick your shit, had windows to see, you could see you making your coffee. But this is the future. I could see this for anything. I think food courts could eventually become these screen touch, tell me what you want, here's service, you're good, bye, and you're good.
Chad: Yeah, we're already seeing that from McDonald's to an extent, where you're walking up ...
Joel: McDonald's is a nightmare.
Chad: Right now it is, but when we were in France, and we were on our way to Normandy, we had to have a quick bathroom break and we're familiar with the McDonald's, so we just jumped in there, and they've obviously had them around for forever because it was very fluid for them. Now it takes longer, it's not fast food in Europe. Don't get me wrong. But it seemed fairly fluid. You didn't have somebody there that was like a liaison saying, "Oh, have you used our touch screens?" It was all just happening. And it's been happening there for a while. So yeah, I think right now it is a mess, but it'll be something that is fairly fluid for everybody who's probably not a boomer.
Joel: It feels like coffee is specific enough that automating that is pretty easy. Automating chicken nuggets versus Big Mac versus so many menu items ... I will say I like the mobile app for McDonald's where you order on your phone and then you pull up into a designated numbered spot at the restaurant and then you check in, and then five minutes later, your food comes out and you go on your way. I do think that works.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But being in an airport, dealing with a screen of so many items was a total nightmare.
Chad: That works for Walmart, too. Like I said before, that's how we grocery shop. We grocery shop on the couch, we fill our cart up, and then we go to Walmart, we open up the trunk, they load it into the trunk, you just sign, and boom, you're gone, right? So this is how Walmart is combating Amazon, and I think this is how some of these different coffee companies and fast food companies are really battling their number one cost, which is overhead. All right, what's next?
Joel: We're putting journalists out of work. Open AI, baby.
Chad: Open AI but a text generator that's so good, it's considered too dangerous to release. And there are a bunch of people that are pissed off about that, because Open AI is a not-for-profit that's open-sourced and they're not going to release this. They said its new natural language model GPT2 or something like that, it was trained to predict the next word in a sample of 40 gigabits of internal text. The end result was the system generating text that adapts to the style and context of the conditioning text, allowing the user to generate realistic and coherent continuations about a topic of their choosing.
Chad: So this is pretty much AI that you gave a topic to and they would create contextual articles, or even just smaller than articles, around this premise.
Joel: Yeah, and in many ways, it may not be this software, but at least being tested in terms of journalistic writing and reporting. We sort of joked before the show that this wasn't going to put journalists out of work, but I enlightened you and said a lot of journalism is just regurgitation of press releases. And by the way, most press releases could probably be automated, aside from quotes from the CEO and whatnot. But there's no reason that publishers, newspapers, etc. couldn't use something like this to just spit out news based on press releases that are submitted to a numerous number of sites that are out there already and just make it slightly original.
Joel: And by the way, it's also potentially a great SCO tool to just spit out original content that's made by an AI and create tons and tons of pages of original content. That doesn't mean people are going to like it or share it or link to it, but it could obviously create a lot of pages that Google would have to deal with.
Chad: Yes, and Watson is doing this already on the sports side of the house, and they've done this with tennis. So they will just feed in information about the score and Watson will go out on the web, obviously pull in data from the individuals who are playing, and they'll create a recap about what happened. So they'll have all the information, and then push it out and it was done by Watson.
Joel: Was it Watson recently that did a debate with a professional debater?
Chad: I think you're right. I think it has Watson in it, but I don't think it's full Watson. But it's called the Debater Project and it's beaten humans, but I think it just took its first loss from a human.
Joel: Yay, humans. Way to go.
Chad: Do, humans.
Joel: Way to go. I'm going to add to the AI conversation here. I saw a post this week about artwork that was created by AI, and I haven't seen artwork more horrifically creepy and scary as artwork created by this AI. It was sort of like the Fly, where Jeff Goldblum, he just was off, right? He was human kind of sort of but he was a fly, ears were falling off, stuff was melting. And so-
Chad: Very Picasso.
Joel: Really creepy stuff. So AI has a long way to go to replace artists for dominance, so that's a good bit of news for the artists out there.
Chad: So anyway, Open AI, they said they're going to revisit this whole allowing this new open source algorithm to possibly be pushed out later, but they did warn governments they should consider expanding or starting initiatives to monitor the societal impact of AI technologies, especially when it comes to fake news. Because you can actually have an algorithm like this and spit out a ton of fake shit easy. Just automatically give it subjects and make it tainted toward the fake side of things, deniers or whatever the fuck it is, and boom, let it go. And then the machine just does it and obviously, you can plug that into some type of sharing software and then it's just pumping that shit out.
Joel: The potential for evil in making that much more efficient goes up
exponentially when AI is brought into the mix.
Chad: Sons of bitches.
Joel: Let's hear from Sovren a bit of AI that is good-
Chad: I love the good AI.
Joel: ... for humanity and recruiting, and then we'll talk about benefits for contract workers.
Chad: Hmm. That sounds fun.
Sovren: Sovren AI Matching is the most sophisticated matching engine on the market because it acts just like a human. You decide exactly how our AI Matching engine thinks about each individual transaction. It will find, rank, and sort the best matches according to your criteria. Not only does it deliver the best matches, it tells you how and why it produced them, and offers tips to improve the results. Our engine thinks like you so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine.
Sovren: To learn more about Sovren AI Matching, visit sovereign.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N .com.
Joel: So topic with the whole gig economy is what are these people going to do for benefits? And it's a very real issue because I know a lot of people who are stuck at their job because benefits. They can't leave because I got kids and I got healthcare and I've been there and you have too, I think. A family of four, you're talking about 500 a month for healthcare, and that's not really great healthcare as it is. It's just making sure that if you get really hurt, you're not really bankrupt.
Chad: Yeah, that's what you wanna safeguard against, right? You don't want to have to get sick and then go bankrupt. That's the thing.
Joel: Imagine universal healthcare in this country, what would happen to the workplace. How many people would leave? I mean, we talk a lot about the gig economy is overrated and it's not, but if corporate America lost five to 10% of its workforce because those people would now have healthcare, that's going to be a big hit on corporate America.
Chad: Yeah, well, I think corporate America needs to think differently about work anyway. I mean, if that did happen, they would evolve. The thing that got me was, about this, was Thumbtack getting out in front of all the other platforms, because how many other platforms are out there now that are gig-type platforms? And if I'm a gig worker, and I fit within the Thumbtack realm of types of jobs, then that's going to ... I'm gonna go there first, and I'm probably going to work that platform much harder than any other platform. So I thought that was smart for them to be able to focus on okay, how do we not only get people to register, but also retain them and get more activity out of them?
Joel: So they're sort of tiptoeing into this. They're partnering with somebody to do it. They're only offering it currently for I believe house cleaners in New York and California, which excludes a lot of people on Thumbtack. I don't know if you've used Thumbtack or know about it, but it's all kinds of handy people, do it yourself-ers, repairmen and women, obviously cleaning houses and whatnot is part of that. But what I thought was interesting about the model partially was that when you hire a contract worker, you have the ability to voluntarily give them a tip basically that will go towards their healthcare. So to rethink about when I hire someone to fix my deck or plumbing or whatever if hiring them on a contract basis says, hey, do you want to add five bucks for their healthcare? Do you want to add 10 bucks for their healthcare? That's something that I would probably do.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: So to put it in the hands of the consumers is pretty cool, and I like that idea a lot.
Chad: Yeah, we've been using Uber and Lyft a lot lately, and that little tip functionality that Lyft had first, I mean yeah, of course I'm going to give my driver a tip, right? But if you do something like this, would you tip for healthcare? Fuck yeah. I think this is kind of the evolution hopefully that we'll see more platforms start to play with this and adopt it, because it just makes sense, because that is, you're 100% correct, that is the void of why some people don't get into gig work, because of that benefits piece. And if it allows more flexibility, even better work conditions, why not?
Joel: Yeah, I agree, and in this case Thumbtack will match if you donate. So it incentivizes donation because you know that okay, I'm going to be able to double this because of Thumbtack. And obviously there's a limit to that, but I think both the platform and the consumer teaming up to provide some healthcare component to the contract worker is great, and I think you could throw in even hey, donations made to your contractor's healthcare are tax deductible. Why not? And then that incentivizes you to give more, because you're deducting it from your taxes. I think that's a really cool system that I hope takes hold. I'd like to see that.
Chad: Do you think you could get more gig workers if they had an opportunity to have benefits? Well, fuck yeah, you could.
Joel: Sure. Put it in a health savings account. You could potentially have so many contractors that ... I mean, Thumbtack could, I think, negotiate cheaper rates because all their contractors are on a central healthcare system. I'm sure that gets difficult when you look at different states and who's in certain states and whatnot, but it could potentially be done, I guess.
Chad: Yep, yep.
Joel: All right, moving on to money, money, money.
Chad: People got money.
Joel: People got big money. Let's start with the least amount of money and work our way up to the crazy money.
Chad: Threads.
Joel: Threads, well, they're not the least. Sapling is the least.
Chad: Oh, little bitty Sapling.
Joel: Yeah, Sapling, onboarding company. We don't talk a lot about onboarding, but it is important. Enboarder is one that's doing some cool things out of Australia that I think was recognized recently and/or got money. But yeah, onboarding is a big thing, creating efficiencies and technology and automation around onboarding are cool. I guess Sapling is tackling some of those challenges, so congrats to them. We'll be watching. Threads is next on our list, with 10.5 million.
Chad: A cooler platform I would say. Sapling, yes. The onboarding thing is a must and you have to have a good onboarding process and hopefully you have a good onboarding tool, but Threads is more of kind of the cooler platform design to work, to be more inclusive by empowering teams to discuss and make decisions at scale. What the fuck does that mean? It's a messaging platform.
Joel: It's a Slack impersonator.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: It's a slack competitor, basically.
Chad: For the work [crosstalk 00:39:08]
Joel: We're going to see these things come out of the fucking woodwork, dude.
Chad: Yes, we will.
Joel: Once Slack goes IPO, man, you're going to see all kinds of competition around that.
Chad: Yeah, well think about it just for a ... All of these, we'll hit Landit next, but they all are great acquisition targets if they can execute on their plan from a technology standpoint and revenue generation standpoint.
Joel: And what better startup to get money for than one that can be acquired? Crazy.
Chad: Makes sense.
Joel: We've got Landit, 13 million for the warm and fuzzy soft skills of executive coaching, career advancement.
Chad: Blah, blah, blah.
Joel: Furthering education, etc. Always boring, but always people will pay for that shit. Sapling by far is the worst name of the three. Threads is kind of cool I guess. I don't really think of corporate messaging or enterprise messaging system when I think of Threads, but yeah, let's go with that.
Chad: Sapling's one word though. So that's kind of easy, right? I don't like the connotation of ooh, Sapling, but it is easy, right? So I don't know.
Joel: Landit. Landit sounds like a space startup. Landit on the moon. Okay, so the big daddy, 100 million dollar investment.
Chad: Million.
Joel: Yes, Job Case, I don't think we've had 100 million dollar investment since Scout got it last year. It was actually one of the bigger news stories, but they're never anywhere. Scout is never at a show. Scout never calls us. Scout never is out there. Job case is more so out there. You know a little bit more about them than I do, but they're basically a blue collar job platform marketplace. There's a ton of blue collar workers and Job Case is now going to have 100 million dollars to figure out how to employ those folks.
Chad: Yeah, like over 70% of the workforce, right, is on the blue collar skill trade side of things, however you want to categorize them. Yeah, I worked with Fred over a decade ago when he was at Precipio, and I believe this is really what was spawned off of Precipio. Job Case employs about 200 data analysts, scientists, software engineer, and they're really close to MIT. They're actually an affiliate of MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory. I believe that's probably a nice selling point when you're trying to get 100 million dollars.
Joel: And by the way, when you look at the professions that are gonna be harder to automate, plumbing, construction, building shit, those kinds of jobs, although some of that is very automatable, a lot of those things are gonna be really hard to automate. So I think to take a bet on a blue collar sort of marketplace makes a little more sense than some of the others. They have some hot competition obviously with Snag and some of the others that are out there trying to solve this blue collar hourly contract kind of work. But yeah, there could be worse spots for sure. A lot of these folks aren't on LinkedIn.
Chad: Well, and that's the thing, is that I think what they're trying to do, and I think this is a hard objective to achieve, is become the LinkedIn for blue collar skills-based workers, just trying to reach out to them and draw them into a platform. Not that they don't have a mobile phone or what have you, it's just do they generally, from a lifestyle standpoint, use these types of platforms to find jobs? Big question. So I think it'd be great to get Fred on he show, so I'm gonna reach out to Fred and see if we can get him on and talk a little bit more about it.
Joel: Yeah, we got a lot of companies that have gotten money, whether acquisition or investment, that would be great to get on the show, so yeah, let's get him. Let's get him. And I think that we'll be seeing a lot more from Job Case thanks to this money. I think we'll probably see them more at conferences and events and advertising. Not quite ZipRecruiter exposure, but maybe we'll see much more of them in the future. So our show just tipped the scales at an hour, I know you're going to edit that down, which is great. I think this is a great segue to our last story, which is the greatest invention since maybe plumbing, we just talked about that. Maybe the printing press. Maybe compares to the computer, maybe the car.
Chad: Gutenberg is rolling over in his grave right now.
Joel: It's called the Nap Desk. A lot of us have probably seen the Seinfeld episode where George has a bed built under his desk, complete with alarm clock shelf, a little magazine rack for reading materials. But a company has finally made this thing commercial, the Nap Desk is a regular desk on top and it's a sweet dream on the bottom, baby. You've got a bed, mattress, pillow, your stuffy that you love to sleep with. Whatever you need, the Nap Desk will provide, and frankly I think it's maybe the greatest invention of all time.
Chad: I can't see, and this is just me, I can't see wanting to actually get under my desk where I work and take a nap, 'cause I don't think that I could sleep knowing that I have work to do. I've got to separate myself from my work environment. I don't take a nap in my office. I have a couch in my office. I have a TV in my office. But I don't take a nap in my office. I would need to get the fuck out.
Joel: Some of us can't be as mentally strong as me when it comes to the discipline that it takes to nap anywhere, including under your desk or in your office. Hey, it takes mental strength to shut down and take a break.
Chad: I'll give you that one. That's awesome.
Joel: We out?
Chad: We out.
Ema: Hi, I'm Ema. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad, and his buddy Cheese. This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors, because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com.