What a week!
- Jobvite has a new CEO, enter Canvas
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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: Hey, kids, welcome to the too many Texas tacos episode of Chad and Cheese, HR's most dangerous and jet-lagged podcast.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And, I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show Finnegan can begin again. The Ladders is exposed and CareerBuilder loses another VP. Is anyone left over there? Hello? Grab a mint julep and bet on your favorite horse. We'll be right back after this word from Canvas.
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 Canvasbot 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 recruiter 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.
Sound Effects: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Joel: Do you remember the old Colon Blow commercial on SNL?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm thinking you don't need Colon Blow when you have Texas food, tacos and burritos, and enchiladas. That's a different podcast, but you know what I'm talking about.
Chad: Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't had a Colon Blow incident, so I don't know what exactly you put in those burritos, but ...
Joel: You didn't have the Micheladas, that's why.
Chad: Yeah, that's exactly right. Almost had a fucking-
Feffer: Such an asshole!
Chad: Almost had a head plant with one of those god damn scooters, though.
Joel: Oh, my god. Yeah, we got to tell the story. So Austin, like most metros in the US I guess, have these scooters, right? Lime, Bird, Lyft, and Uber, and Chad and I being old, middle-aged dudes-
Chad: Dude, I'm not old.
Joel: You know what? Well, we're older than the kids that typically ride around on these scooters and we said, "You know what, mother fucker? We're going to ride some of these scooters." And it took about four tries until we finally figured it out, but once we did, the Chad and Cheese show almost became the Cheese show because Chad almost died as evidenced by our buddy Kyle at Hireology who randomly saw us on the street riding around. But those things are pretty fun.
Chad: No, that was fucking hilarious. We're sitting at the bar after getting off the danger scooters and I get a text from Kyle. He's like, "Was that just you on Caesar Chavez racing on a scooter?" I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, that was me."
Joel: Somehow they always ended up at a bar. I don't know if it's a magnetic pull thing or something in the steering.
Chad: Pretty smart.
Joel: But yeah, those scooters always ended up at a bar.
Chad: You.
Joel: Crazy, crazy.
Chad: Thanks to our peeps at Tile Roof for actually having us down for an unplugged session.
Joel: How fun was that?
Chad: That was a blast, man. I love that shit.
Joel: Unplugged. I like that. I like that. It was a private event. No recording, no private cameras, secret cameras. It was only for the people at the event. That was kind of cool.
Chad: Yep, yep. Allows people to open up, say exactly what they feel. Maybe not exactly. It allows us to. But without the fear of being recorded and put on the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel: Let's keep it with the food trend. Our buddies at Talk Push - pushing it real good - announced a deal with McDonald's in what Asian country?
Chad: In the Philippines.
Joel: In the Philippines. How many stores? Or how many restaurants?
Chad: Over 635 stores. Fuck.
Joel: Yet another death match, DEMOpocalypse, friend of the podcast who's hitting it big, and couldn't be happier for Max and company out there at Talk Push. Big shout-out to them.
Chad: Yeah. Love it man. Have a Kelly Robinson sighting. He actually was tweeting at us, and I don't know where the hell Kelly and Maverick have been. I think they've just been heads down at the new startup called Content Apps. So guys, whenever you're ready, you can come on Firing Squad. We'd love to have you.
Joel: Yeah. We'll put you in front of the squad and see what happens. I think they'd probably fair pretty well.
Chad: And if you haven't listened this week we actually had Sam Fitzroy from Maia Labs. It's not that Mya, the M-A-I-A Maia, Maia Labs. So check it out.
Joel: Yeah, yeah. And of course we'll get on him for the fact that he's named after for another company in our space that has well-funded coffers and is pretty well known. But standing firm to his ideals, Sam is not going to change the name of the company.
Chad: I dig it.
Joel: They're still Maia. The road show continues next week as you and I head to Portugal for TA Tech Europe. I can't wait. I've never been to Portugal. The death match line up is just sick. We got a real robot with Tengai Unbiased. We've got Kilts with Candidate.ai.
Chad: ID.
Joel: We've got the original Mya chat bot that's going to be there, and I'm spacing on the last one, as I always do.
Chad: Yeah, so Opening.io with their crazy sourcing algorithm all the way from Ireland. So yeah man. We've got Mya, Tengai Unbiased. We have Candidate ID, and Opening.io.
Joel: And by the way did we give a shout-out to Gordon and his fundraising from Russia? Did we-
Chad: No.
Joel: Have we talked about that?
Chad: It wasn't from Russia. It was from Germany.
Joel: Let's give them a shout-out. Germany, sorry. It's probably being funneled out of Russia. Who knows?
Chad: Well, I mean, Germany's a top five, I think, GDP country? Where, Russia, not so much. But okay.
Joel: I don't know. Russia's been in the news lately. I don't know what to do. Adam, man, congratulations dude. I hope that money works out for you, and obviously winning death match would take you to the next levels so good luck next week.
Chad: Yeah, no shit, right? Shout-out to Ryan Christoi. Nice Chad and Cheese t-shirt there, buddy. Appreciate that. I got to love how he actually geared up with KRT swag for the pic. That's not a shot across the shaker bow at all, right?
Joel: Oh, it's a big FU to Joey Jr. as far as I'm concerned.
Chad: Joey loves it.
Joel: That may lead to a real death match at the next conference. By the way how does he have our shirt, but we don't have... well maybe you do, but I don't have any KRT swag. I got no hoodie. I got no hat. I got no t-shirt. What's up, Christoi?
Chad: Yeah, we're probably going to have to get through Olivia, because she's a solid fan, and apparently Christoi is not.
Joel: We know who the competent one is there at KRT to get this stuff done.
Chad: Last shout-out, Jacquelin Cooly. You saw the Key and Peel episode, the substitute teacher one?
Joel: We went over this before the show. I have not seen that skit, but I'll with it. Let's go.
Chad: Okay. So if you haven't, you've got to YouTube and look for Key and Peel Substitute Teacher, and it's fucking hilarious. But anyway, that is Jacquelin. Actually said she was listening to the podcast walking down the street or something like that, and maybe she was getting some funny looks because she was laughing at the stupid shit we were saying.
Joel: By the way what's your favorite Key and Peel skit?
Chad: Oh, man. There's so many good ones. The football one is really good, where not three pumps. You can't do three pumps. But I think really the best Key and Peel one is the substitute teacher one. It is fucking hilarious, so you got to check it out.
Joel: Yeah, I love the coach. When he's the coach, the stereotypical polyester shorts and the butterfly collar. That's fucking classic. And part of it's because my dad was a coach back in the 80s, and basically he looked like that in terms of his attire.
Chad: Just like that.
Joel: Good stuff. All right, you ready to get to the show?
Chad: Just about. Don't forget, Recruit Philly in May, Jobcase live, not to mention SmashFly Transform. If you don't have tickets to these things, kids, I don't know what your problem is.
Joel: Did you say Philly? Did you say Philly?
Chad: I said Philly. Yeah, we're going to Philly.
Sound Effects: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Chad: But if you want to know where we're going to be at because you want to check it out, go to chadcheese.com, click on events, and you'll see our world tour list. So check it out, buy some tickets, and see us there.
Joel: Let's do this.
Chad: Buy us a beer.
Joel: Yeah, definitely buy us a beer. You ready to get to the news?
Sound Effects: Ye be poo without Talroo.
Joel: All right, big news that hit our phones last night, actually. Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite applicant tracking system, is stepping down from the company. He's been there for over 10 years. He took it over when it was a 15-person company, and he joined the company after basically heading up Yahoo HotJobs, which old-timers like us remember being the third sort of player in the job board space after CareerBuilder and Monster. Took it over and shortly after the world took a big shit, so he leaves HotJobs, goes to this little startup. The economy goes to shit. He brings them out of the muck and the mud, and brings them up to a... I would say one of the top ATS's around currently. That's very debatable, and if you have 2% market share in the ATS world, you're like a major player. But certainly reputable ATS. They did a big deal a few months ago. They dropped $200 million to buy three companies, Rolepoint, Talemetry, and Canvas, which leads us to the segue that the new CEO will be...
Chad: Drum roll please. Aman Brar. So I think there's some semantics that we have to get into. So K1 spent the money, and that was 200 million. Jobvite bought three companies out of that, one of those companies being Canvas, Canvas CEO being Aman Brar. So awesome, awesome opportunity for an awesome dude. Obviously wherever Dan lands, if he wants to land anywhere... Hell, he might land on a beach and just retire. Who the hell knows? He can do what he wants. But a couple of great guys, but this couldn't happen to a better guy. Aman is amazing, so we're really excited to see what happens with Jobvite, Canvas, Talemetry, Rolepoint, and whatever they do with that platform.
Joel: Yep. So they currently have about 400 employees globally. We know that they're currently headquartered in San Mateo, California. They do have a nice footprint here in Indianapolis, and if you haven't listened to the podcast with Dan Finnigan, I certainly recommend that you do so.
Joel: So it's unclear as to... Aman's here in Indianapolis. The company headquarters is in San Mateo. What happens to the headquarters and the executives? Where do they go? Who goes what, and where? So we'll stay on top of that, but they're certainly in growth mode, and my guess is that they'll be growing in all parts of the world as they roll out these acquisitions into this year and next year.
Joel: The other thing that's interesting, I think, is that Aman does not come from the employment space. He launched Canvas in 2017, so let's give him nearly two years in the business. He became sort of an SMS expert at his time with Cha Cha, which no one will probably remember. It was an SMS-based search engine back in the day. And then launched sort of a SaaS support system. The basic point is that he's got two years in the employment space. Let's see what he does in terms of innovation, growth, and targeting, and what they do. I think that'll be pretty interesting, because most CEOs that take over in this space have some sort of employment experience. So I'm kind of excited to see what he does with very little employment industry experience at this point.
Chad: Yeah. I've heard a couple of rumblings that this has happened so close to the K1 investment that this is kind of like Shades of Apollo coming into CareerBuilder, where there's going to be some heads that fall. And from my standpoint, I don't see Aman as that guy. You know what I mean? I don't think he's the kind of guy that you bring in to chop heads. So obviously the rumors are going to be out there about anybody who gets any type of investment, and then the CEO goes away. But I think this is more of a vision play for them. Not to mention also having deep roots here, in a more cost-effective area, and developer-rich, and workforce-rich area, like Indianapolis. Maybe growing here, not only in San Mateo, but here as well might be a strength for the organization, and lower cost.
Joel: Yeah, that would be really interesting. K1 didn't come in as sort of a pennies on the dollar acquisition. This was a, "Here's a bunch of money. Buy these three companies, and let's roll." So I'd be really shocked if they start chopping heads at the company, although that does traditionally happen. So we'll have to see. It would be really odd to do that, and then start cutting things back. It looks like they're in growth mode to me.
Chad: Yeah, me too. Well that being said, we just mentioned Apollo and the whole CareerBuilder kind of fiasco thing that's been going on. We do know that Matt Grover, who has been at CareerBuilder and he's VP of Marketing for... He's been at Career Building for over a decade, and now at the VP level, is now leaving the organization. So it's interesting to see-
Sound Effects: Boo!
Chad: Again just constantly see top-tier talent who obviously were invested in CareerBuilder just say, "You know what? I'm going to hit the fucking eject button."
Joel: Yeah. So I don't know much about Matt. Did he take over for Richard Castellini, when Richard went to Australia? Or was he on Richard's team?
Chad: Yeah, I don't know exactly the hierarchy of the time and where he fit into it. I do know that when Apollo took over, he pretty much became the man when it came to marketing.
Joel: Yeah, and he was probably last man standing. I know, as we talked about in the podcast, they pretty much chopped off the communications component, Hope Gurion and I forget the guy's name. But yeah, they were both gone and replaced with a PR agency. He probably didn't feel like he had a lot of support and resources to do a whole lot of marketing.
Chad: Yeah. Well, and as LinkedIn, he still shows that he's at CareerBuilder, but he has close to 16 years. And again, it's just having a guy like that leave your organization, probably doesn't make the leadership and/or individuals underneath feel very good.
Joel: The good news, though, I guess is they can't make crappy commercials like Monster without a marketing person. So there's that.
Chad: Or they just can't do anything at all, which is pretty much what we've seen. Other than that big fucking monstrosity thing that they had at HR Tech,
which was just a fucking monumental waste of money.
Joel: Yeah, yeah. I heard that a lot of money is in the CEO's penthouse suite in Chicago somewhere.
Chad: I'm not touching that one.
Chad: So another CEO in our space... well, TechCrunch came out and said, "Hey, guess what Ladders? You just exposed 13.7 million user records with a basic security lapse."
Sound Effects: Boo!
Chad: So apparently, the information was on an Amazon AWS, and there was no password associated [crosstalk 00:17:55].
Sound Effects: Boo!
Chad: It was just free and clear data.
Joel: Where do you go with that? No password protection.
Chad: So names, email addresses, employment history, current comp, employer, job title, all that stuff. I mean, that's not really big stuff, and that's not that big of a deal, but... I mean, I don't want my email out there. It is anyway, but still. But some of the data contained personal and sensitive information beyond that of email addresses, like postal addresses, phone numbers, and approximate geolocations based off their IP address.
Joel: Awesome. Awesome.
Chad: That is where I would get pissed off.
Joel: Yep. So their CEO, Marc Cenedella, of which there's not a more miserable human being in our space as far as I'm concerned, confirmed the lapse, said the database has been secured. They put a password in. Good for them.
Chad: Good job.
Joel: And ensured the company would investigate for potential theft. Awesome.
Chad: Yeah, that's awesome.
Joel: Well if you were looking for a reason to not use Ladders, this is a good one. If you've been looking for a reason to dump them, this is an even better reason.
Chad: Yeah. I think the last thing that they actually put out that we made fun of them about was that they were doing performance-based advertising along with email campaigns and banner ads.
Joel: They started pay-per-click advertising and pitched it as innovative in 2019.
Chad: Oh, shit.
Joel: By the way I think we have another live view from the R&D department at The Ladders. That's always fun. That's always fun.
Joel: One of the comments I got that was really funny... and this was from an Indeed employee, and I can say that because it was on social media. He probably took it down because Indeed's really anal about their employees commenting on stuff. But he said, "Are we more surprised that they had an unprotected database, or that they had 13.7 million users?"
Chad: Well dude, I guarantee you... I mean, 13.7 users in the, what, 10 plus years they've actually been around? I mean, ah, fuck.
Joel: Yeah, they add up after a while. Anyway, yeah.
Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Joel: Let's get a word from JobAdX, and we'll talk about Google's foray into the enterprise market.
Chad: Getting Googley.
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Joel: Chad, this just in. We have a live feed from Ladders cybersecurity department.
Chad: There's a company that is making a lot of noise right now, and they surprised the shit out of me by taking Hire, Google's ATS, their SMB ATS... and we predicted that it would go enterprise, but not this early. They made a announcement that they're going enterprise.
Joel: Yeah. We're both shocked by that. I thought they'd kick the tires on the SMB market for at least three to five years. And fuck that. I'm sure they got a lot of big companies inquire about, "Hey, when is this going to be for us? We're ready to spend money." And that encouraged them to get on it, and put out an enterprise product. So good for them. I'm sure Microsoft is equally excited about it, but we'll see how they roll with the big co.
Chad: And I like... they've been rolling out feature by feature, month by month, to just keep the PR rolling. And they've been doing this whole brick-by-brick kind of a thing, "Hey, we're building a foundation here," and then boom. I mean, they just fucking drop a load in the cement truck. But the new, I guess, enterprise version has enhanced approvals for different workflows, a referral portal... and I'll say that again because it makes Sackett happy. A referral portal.
Feffer: Such an asshole!
Chad: It's weird, what gets Sackett off. Interactive reports, and then integrations with namely Sapling, and a bunch of others, and this is just the beginning. Not to mention, you've got to remember that this product has automatic candidate matching in it. So therefore, if you have a resume database, which you should, as soon as you post the rec, it's automatically going to go to your database, that's already paid for, and start bringing up candidates that fit for that position. So I mean, there are all these different pieces of tech that you can't even get in an applicant tracking system today, that they're rolling out in an enterprise. And one of the companies that they were highlighting was a 3,000-employee company across three continents, and then you had another one that was 11,000 employees across 30 countries. So not incredibly huge, but not small, either.
Joel: Isn't that one of your favorite company names?
Chad: What oh, TitMouse?
Joel: Yeah. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Now what was fun to me was they announced this on the same day that they announced quarterly results. So click traffic is declining. Google stock took a hit this week, 10% or so. I don't know where it is today. But I mean they do have a serious issue with revenue in terms of the amount of clicks going down, and part of that is simply they have competition, right? They have social media. They have Amazon getting into advertising. Snapchat and Instagram are taking a lot of the oxygen out of the advertising room.
Joel: But I think also it underscores that Google was looking for new streams of revenue. And to me, they're clearly motivated around employment because they see that there are dollars there, and there are opportunities to diversify what they do in terms of pay-per-click and their traditional advertising strategy. However I will say that I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing pay-per-click options for Google for jobs coming at least this year, in light of the declining revenues on clicks.
Chad: Yeah. Well, and they're also starting to power all the other platforms that are out there, whether they're job sites or even engagement management platforms, or candidate engagement platforms like Jive where they just put a case study out that demonstrated Seamen's, the company that uses Jive, received a 30% lift in qualified candidate applications after using the Google search within Jive itself. So it's not that Google's coming out... Google's strategy is not to come out and build these platforms to take over the world. They are wanting to power the platforms, all the platforms, but also lift them up, right? So I mean that gives Jive a great market advantage to go into a company and say, "Hey, great. We've got the best search in the world, and this is what we can actually do for you to be able to help you engage candidates, and have a better user experience."
Joel: Yeah, and I thought, because we were just at an agency meeting this week... I think all this bodes well for revenue opportunities for agencies. Pay-per-click experts for a long time have had certification on pay-per-click and Google, and I could certainly see a day where Google will certify people to do hire by Google, Google for jobs, optimization or getting jobs into Google, as well as the job search API. So I think it's opportunity for agencies as well as we go forward.
Chad: Again, they just want to be the engine that powers it. Whatever you build on top of it is entirely up to you. Get fucking creative, and go make money.
Joel: Do you think they'll ever offer backfill to job sites?
Chad: Yeah, there's a good possibility. I mean, why not? The content's there, and they've always been a content provider, right? So Google custom search? What is that, right? It's the same kind of thing.
Joel: I mean, it'd be super easy to do the API and then the first two results are Google pay-per-click off of Google for jobs postings.
Chad: Yep, sounds very familiar. Sounds familiar.
Joel: Just saying, Google keep doing what you do man. It's fun to talk about. As well as Facebook, privacy concerns be damned.
Chad: Yeah, where the hell have these guys been?
Joel: Global reputation be damned.
Chad: Yeah. I mean, they have an integration with SAP and success factors, and they launch it with one-applicant tracking system instead of multiple. But it's like, why haven't you been doing this for months? I mean, this should've been like the foray into getting more content into Facebook. And if you have more content into Facebook, then they can start banging you with that fucking marketing material, "Hey, if you boosted this sales position, you could receive X amount of eyeballs," or what have you. I mean, it's-
Joel: Oh, you know that's coming.
Chad: Well, yeah it is. I mean, if you use Facebook as a marketing platform, that's exactly what they do. Every time you post something, they just want to remind you that you could get more eyeballs, more qualified people, blah blah blah. So yeah. I mean, to me, it makes no sense why they waited this long, because they could've been driving revenue for months.
Joel: Now don't get too down on them. They've had some issues to deal with. Privacy, GDPR, hacking emails and shit. This employment thing is probably not as on the front burner as you would like.
Chad: It's a revenue stream.
Joel: But it's a nice little... ultimately, every ATS worth a shit is going to be integrated with Facebook and get their jobs on there. And I think as I look through listings recently, there's a good amount of shit there. And the more that they can have reputable applicant tracking system jobs, as opposed to some of the shit that's on there, that's going to be good for them. So yeah, kudos. Keep doing more of that shit, Facebook.
Chad: Well I think it's interesting because I actually reached out to Max at Talk Push, because their platform really right out of the gate was predicated on Facebook, and being able to get ads on Facebook, and being able to leverage Facebook along with the engagement chat bots that they have integrated into the system. I'm like, "Dude, why haven't you been doing..." He's like, "Dude, we've been doing this for well over a year." So it's almost like Facebook doesn't know what the fuck's even going on in their platform, in some cases.
Joel: I would not be surprised if there's enough craziness going on at Facebook that they don't. And they just had their annual F8 meeting, where - you saw this - they redesigned Messenger. They redesigned the mobile app, primary website. They got shit going on with this whole privacy stuff, and if they don't get that right, it doesn't matter if they get employment right, because nobody'll be on the service. They'll all be on Tik Tok.
Chad: I know you will.
Joel: Oh, don't play like you're not on Tik Tok at the airport, wasting time.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Because it's a huge waste of time.
Chad: It is.
Joel: Oh my god. I hate myself after being on that app. And speaking of not wasting time, let's hear from Sovren, and we'll talk about Caucasians, bigots, and Australians.
Chad: That sounds like fun.
Joel: Top that, other podcasts in the HR world.
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.
Sovren: Our engine thinks like you, so you don't have to learn how to think like the engine. To learn more about Sovren AI matching, visit sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com.
Joel: I can't tell if I'm laughing a lot because I'm tired as hell, or if our show's actually funny this week.
Chad: And dude, you are tired as hell because we had to run from C-terminal to B-terminal-
Feffer: Such an asshole!
Chad: -in Atlanta last night. And yeah. We didn't make it, guys. We didn't make it. They shut the doors, and Joel was so pissed, because he actually ran to get to that fucking gate. And the plane was still there. He was like, "Let us on!" They were like, "Sorry, dude. You're late."
Joel: Yeah, I'm so mad at Delta. Every airline closes the door at 10 minutes before takeoff. We missed it by three minutes. And you know that they know there's other people connecting with flights, and you know that they know it's the last flight of the day, and people want to get home to families and shit. So yeah, I was a little bit ticked off. But the running did not help, though I like to think I did hold my own a little bit with you.
Chad: Yeah, no. Remember what I said? I never leave a man behind. So yeah, I just went ahead and paced at you. I was at like a speed-walk.
Joel: Yeah, and no one out there get the vision that it was like Forrest Gump carrying Bubba. I was keeping up as best I could, which I was fine until about the last 50 yards.
Chad: Yeah, you were good.
Joel: Then I turned into... oh, nevermind. Let's get into preferably Caucasians and AI bigots.
Chad: Yeah, that sounds like blast. So Cynet, apparently, Cynet Systems... I'm going to spell that out for you so you guys can all check this out. C-Y-N-E-T, Cynet Systems, had a job description that they actually posted on LinkedIn for an account manager in Pharma, in Tampa, Florida. And one of the preferences was... get ready.
Joel: I'm ready.
Chad: Preferably Caucasian who has-
Sound Effects: Such an asshole!
Chad: Who has good technical background, including knowledge of RPA.
Sound Effects: Boo!
Chad: So the irony... it's not just bad that they were some fucking bigot put this shit out there, number one. But number two, you go to the company's homepage and right there in front of god and all that's holy, they highlight their supplier diversity program, which helps minority-owned businesses find employees. Right there on the homepage, and then on the carousel, one of the carousels actually say, "Promoting workplace diversity and inclusion."
Chad: I don't know if they understand that diversity and inclusion is not different shades of Caucasian. I have no fucking clue, dude.
Joel: I'd love to think this is just a one-off, idiot, stupid mistake, but we've talked about stuff like this before.
Chad: Yeah. Well the dude, the engineer from Google, who wrote the whole fucking paper up of why females are inferior when it comes to engineering software or whatever the fuck he was talking about. I mean, yeah.
Joel: I got nothing dude. I can't believe people publish this shit. It's one thing to be in a private meeting at a company and be like, "We need primarily Caucasian workers," and actually putting it publicly on LinkedIn. And I guess they got torched, as they should've, on Twitter, right?
Chad: Yeah. The company got torched and the, "employees who were responsible for the posting," were fired. But there's an underlying problem there.
Joel: By the way this was in the US.
Chad: Yeah. I mean...
Joel: So we can't even chalk it up to, oh, a foreign country that maybe - I don't know - has different language, or Caucasian means something different there. I don't know.
Chad: You go to Google and type in Cynet Systems, C-Y-N-E-T Systems, it pops up right at the top. Top stories from NBC, CNN, Fox News. I mean, they are getting fucking pounded. So yeah. Shit had better change, and change quick.
Joel: Someone needs to go to their LinkedIn page, and see how many employees are not Caucasian. Maybe we could do that in our spare time, which we don't have.
Chad: Yeah. I think the EEOC, and possibly the LFCCP - since they're in Virginia, they're probably a federal contractor - they might want to take a nice close look to these guys.
Joel: Yeah, a little red flag for them to check on what's going on there
Chad: Well then you ask yourself, "Okay, so no worries. AI is going to save us from all the bigots," right? Because AI's smarter. It's all-knowing. But then we remember that Amazon had to shut down their candidate matching algorithm.
Joel: Yep, yep, yep. Well we're going to see a robot next week, in the form of Tengai Unbiased.
Chad: That's right.
Joel: So we're going to put this to the test next week. The Swedish ladies better be ready to get this robot gear, because we're going to put it to the test.
Chad: That will be fun. It'll be incredibly interesting. We were actually watching a presentation this week at the Talroo summit, and the guy actually popped up Tengai and was talking about it. And it's like this is so kind of weird/cool that everybody wants... they want to know about this thing.
Joel: Yeah, and I loved how he sort of underscored that this is so European. Europeans are okay talking to a robot.
Chad: A robot. Oh, fuck.
Joel: Americans, maybe not so much.
Chad: Maybe not.
Joel: All right, well let's leave with a story from out of Australia.
Chad: Uh-oh.
Joel: EY in Australia has 12 weeks of, "life leave," for employees to travel, to take up a hobby, or just do nothing. And you and I, although most of our life and people would say is a vacation, are really into companies that are giving off that much kind of leave.
Chad: Yeah, so here's a thing. I mean, when you start providing employees... in most cases, not all. But employees with the flexibility and autonomy to not live their life through work, they're still going to work hard. And they're going to find more passion in that work if they don't feel like they're fucking forced to - I don't know - fucking punch a clock, or somebody's on their ass because you're not online when it's 5:00 PM, or what have you. The autonomy piece and actually understanding what drives a person, an individual, is incredibly important.
Chad: And I think in the US, we are fundamentally wrong in focusing on work as much as we do. Because there's so much out there that we need to experience, and that makes us more diverse. It makes us more open, and helps us understand how to troubleshoot problems better, in many cases. So yeah. I think the rest of the world's figuring this shit out while we're just kind of pounding away.
Joel: Well let's be honest. I mean, there's so much fun shit to do in Australia, right? You got Foster's beer. You can race kangaroo. You can wrestle koala bears. You can surf, and all that good stuff. So to me, it's like there's so much good stuff. How could you not take more time and just drink up all that Australia has to offer?
Chad: There's plenty of good stuff here. We've got stuff.
Joel: Unless you're in Philly.
Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.
Joel: Are we out?
Chad: We out.
Stella: Hi. This is Stella Cheesman. Thanks for listening to the Cheese and Chad podcast, or at least that's what I call it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe on iTunes, that silly Android phone thingy, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to give buckets of money to our sponsors. Otherwise, I may be forced to take that coal mining job I saw on Monster.com. We out.
Ed: I'm not angry. I'm from Philly.