As the dog days of summer drag on, industry news remains hot, hot, HOT! This week, the boys discuss:
- Indeed's strategy to stick-it to recruitment ad agencies,
- Programmatic buying spree break down
- Can companies control their employees social?
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Jim Stroud: Jim Stroud here and you are listening to my favorite podcast, I listen to it every day, it's amazing, it's wonderful, it's... Okay, help me out. Who are you guys again?
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 & Cheese Podcast.
Joel: All right. Because you are sick and tired of Robert Mueller news, take a break for God sakes. Welcome to The Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous, so help me God.
Chad: Well, hello.
Joel: I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad Sowash.
Joel: On this week's show, is Indeed sticking it to the ad agencies, TikTokers are sounding off on their employers, and Kelly gets cutsie with its latest ad campaign. We have to wait six months till the holidays, but boy does Canvas already have some goodies for you. We'll be right back.
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Chad: ... Oh, yeah.
Joel: This is the last week without football, till April of next year.
Chad: Thank God. There's nothing else to watch right now.
Joel: I'm including the XFL, which I guess we're still calling football at this point.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. Some kind of football, right.
Joel: How you doing, Chad?
Chad: Fucking awesome, dude.
Joel: Yeah, it's been a good week.
Chad: It has been a good week. It's been a good year, let's just put that out there [crosstalk 00:02:42].
Joel: It has been a good year, it has been a good year. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're actually at home for a week.
Chad: Yeah. The world tour has really kicked us in the nuts, every now and again. But it's been a good... I don't know if there's a good kick in the nuts, but anyway. It's been amazing.
Joel: We've been Tim Sacketted while we're on the road, if you will. Sorry, Tim.
Chad: Not so sorry, Tim.
Joel: Shout-outs.
Chad: Shout-outs. Shout-out to our buddy, Torin Ellis. So, we were at RecFest.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: Torin Ellis was onstage, did what Torin does. He captivates, he inspires, he kicks ass, takes names. Well, the guys from Talent Nexus said, "Hey, let's get Torin right after he's done, right off stage, and let's have a conversation." Within that conversation, I had an important question because I know at one time, I was asking myself this. "What can two white guys do about diversity?" Talent Nexus actually delivered a two-minute video that we posted on social, that had blown up, people are really rallying behind it. Because, to be quite frank, if you are a white dude but you do believe that something needs to happen for equity and inclusion, what the fuck do you do? Torin states it very clearly, very easily and I thought it was awesome.
Joel: What Torin does so well is, yes, he slaps you in the face with his message and his honesty.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But he also does a great job of empathy, putting himself in the shoes of a middle-aged white guy, which is what we are, and thinking, "I'm into diversity and inclusion, I want to do my part. But what exactly can I do, as a middle-aged white guy?" The video really encapsulates Torin's message, but also what Torin is all about. It's actually connecting with people, that don't normally think about this stuff.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: It's great.
Chad: Yeah. So LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, go out to the socials-
Joel: Or the podcasts.
Chad: ... look for me, look for Joel. Yeah, just look for it. Yeah, it's fucking awesome dude.
Joel: Yeah. Video podcasting, it's hip, it's cool, it's the new thing. I love it.
Chad: It's hip.
Joel: I'm going to give a shout-out to SHRM's Roy Maurer, my buddy there.
Chad: Oh, Roy. Love it.
Joel: He writes for them quite a bit and did a story on the Facebook news, about them having searchable ads and what they're doing there. Quoted your boy right here, so that's kind of why I'm giving him the shout-out. But the article is rather good, head out to SHRM.org if you want to check that article out.
Chad: Yeah, it's good. Even though, in spite of Cheesman being a part of it. SO, big shout-out to our friend at Shaker Recruitment Marketing, Mike Temkin. Mike Temkin posted, and it wasn't just specific to us, but it was specific to us. Yeah, where he actually had some data, [crosstalk 00:05:41] some research that showed by Hootsuite, that pretty much 39% of individuals 18 to 64, are reported listening to podcast each month and nearly as much as 47% reported to listen online, monthly.
Chad: So it's either via phone, online, either way. But podcasting is blowing the fuck up. If you haven't heard our interview with Mike Temkin, just google The Chad & Cheese Podcast/Mike Temkin, an awesome interview. Guy's a stud.
Joel: Yeah. I love that we're benefiting and profiting from the dumbing down of society. No one's reading anymore, they just put headphones in and listen to the news and the commentary.
Chad: Woo!
Joel: All right. shout-out to Ken Lazarus, CEO of Scout. Sort of a hidden gem in the HR Tech space. You might remember they raised $100 million last year, so we talk to Ken on one of our latest podcasts and get down to what they're going to do with that 100 million, and what exactly is going on.
Chad: Pretty awesome, pretty awesome. So we're getting ready to do a partnership, just going to tease this partnership with The Gathering, the event that happens in Banff.
Joel: You're such a tease.
Chad: Fucking amazing, by the way. But it's funny because we're starting to do some recording and there were some bits that didn't make it to the actual podcast, and we wanted to be able to share some of those with you today.
Joel: Ready?
Chad: Yeah.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Chad: Okay.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Joel: Damn it. I like the '80s sort of... [crosstalk 00:07:23] definitely.
Chad: It is, yeah.
Sibyl: Sorry. Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Joel: I'm ready to put on some leg warmers and Jazzercise.
Sibyl: Shit, damn it. I'm going to try that again.
Chad: I know. So the guys from The Gathering, actually these were outtakes, as they were doing some recordings. They actually packaged this up, obviously, because Sibyl is the one who's doing the voicing.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: But they sent it over to us because it's funny as fuck. We generally don't play outtakes and it was like, "Why the hell not?" So, shout-out to The Gathering and to Sibyl over there, for great outtakes. We appreciate it.
Joel: Yeah. One, we should do something like this.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And two, yes, we are stupid because we just listened to that for like five minutes and just laughed our asses off. We'll probably listen to it again after this podcast and laugh some more, like Beavis and Butt-Head style.
Chad: Of course.
Joel: Shout-out to Gerry Crispin. Gerry Tales, our fourth installment of the epic Lord Of The Rings-esk podcast interview with Gerry. Number four is up, it's as awesome as the first three and as awesome as the next two.
Chad: It's Gerry. That's all I have to say. Candidate.ID, shout-out to those guys because they are killing the crowdfunding game. They've nearly doubled what they've asked for and they still have about 30 days left. If you guys are into, obviously nurturing and building talent pipelines and that kind of stuff, they were on Firing Squad. I don't know if you remember or not, Joel. Remember?
Joel: Yup. And Death Match.
Chad: Yup, and Death Match. I gave them a rousing applause, Joel gave them a golf clap. But dude, I'm a huge proponent around companies like this. Getting out and actually demonstrating, "Is this idea really worth it? Will the community get behind this?" Not to mention, this is great from a PR standpoint. Right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: So, big shout-out to Adam in the team over at Candidate.ID, this is a winner. If you want to check it out, go to crowdcube.com/candidateid, all one word.
Joel: Do you know the numbers behind that, what they were hoping to raise and what they've actually raised up to this point?
Chad: Yeah, it was 50,000 for starters and they're over 100,000 to date, and they have nearly 30 days to go. That's in pounds, by the way, so they're actually over 100,000 US dollars. 57 investors, their target was 50,000. Yeah, so it's looking good for those guys. Like I'd said, if you're a company that really wants to demonstrate that, the community is getting behind this. Why the hell not? Either talk the talk or walk the walk or get the fuck off.
Joel: By the way, disclaimer, we are not financial experts. We are not recommending that you buy this company or say that you'll make money buying this company.
Chad: Thanks for that.
Joel: I don't want to get in trouble for someone losing their pants, investing in Candidate.ID or any company in the HR Tech space. I will say that, with the regulations around investing in companies, in this way sort of becoming loosened around the world, I think it'll be really interesting as we move into this next phase of startups and companies raising money. How that goes, how much money they raise, and getting away from the traditional VC, how companies raise money will be interesting and something we'll be talking about, I'm sure.
Chad: I haven't yet, I will put some money in Candidate.ID.
Joel: Will you?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Okay. Well keep us informed about the big payout. When you're sipping fruity drinks with umbrellas in Portugal, we'll know why.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Shout-out to the hashtag yoga. I don't know if anyone heard last week's show but iCIMS, as part of their Media Analyst Day, is offering a yoga session. I challenged listeners to hashtag out "yoga"...
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: ... or "no yoga" as whether or not I should do it. Obviously, "Do the yoga," is the reigning leader, or the leader right now. I don't even think "no yoga" has a vote.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So at this point, I don't know, I might have to head out to Lululemon, get some yoga pants. Get a little sweatband going and some wrist bands, wrist sweatbands and limbering up a little bit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I might be having to do some yoga in Phoenix.
Chad: Yeah. I have already committed to do the yoga, so in the registration process they ask what you would like to do.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: I've already committed to it because the listeners want us to do it.
Joel: If we could at least organize some beer to be at this yoga session, to take
away some of the pain, that would be great.
Chad: Beer yoga, yeah. That would be great. You know what else is great?
Joel: Tell me.
Chad: Chad & Cheese, The Movie.
Joel: Sundance, here we come.
Chad: Yeah, I don't know if it's quite great yet but we just received the link and I got to watch the first couple of minutes before we jumped on the podcast. Looks amazing, the guys over at Talent Nexus, go figure, they make us look good and that's not easy. So I'm looking forward to screening it, not to mention the promotion to get it out. Yeah, so there you
have it. Look on social during the next couple of weeks or so, and we'll be pushing it hard.
Joel: Yup. Robert Redford, we're coming for you. Sundance, 2020. Let's do this.
Chad: Events powered by our travel sponsor, Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
Joel: Who, I hear word they're making three-piece suits for us.
Chad: Yeah, they should. With just Shaker all over them. That would make so much sense, it would.
Joel: The backpacks are awesome. They're beyond age, gender, sex, race. Everybody loves a good backpack.
Chad: That's exactly right, and I'm taking mine to Malmö, Sweden where we're going to see Tengai. That's right, the interviewing robot. Also, TNG Staffing here at the latter part of August, pretty stoked about that.
Joel: Right, I'm ready for some salmon and capers and cheese, or whatever else they're eating there in Sweden [crosstalk 00:13:42].
Chad: They told you that they don't do capers. We just saw them in London and they said, "We don't do capers." So...
Joel: Oh. Someone sells capers in Sweden, I'm sure.
Chad: We've got TA Tech in Austin, Death Match where Job.com, asses first, I mean Assess First and a couple of others, soon to be named, are going to be on stage. The big sponsor...
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: ... is Alexander Mann Solutions.
Joel: Outstanding.
Chad: So I'm stoked about that.
Joel: Outstanding.
Chad: You did some work this week, on the actual trophies. Do you want to talk about that or are we just going to tease it?
Joel: Let's just say that the winner will get something spectacular, when they win. Something that will blow up the socials and be something that you might take to your grave. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, it's that amazing.
Chad: It's going to be retroactive, so we've got to make sure that we put one in the hands of Aman Brar at Canvas/Jobvite. Yeah.
Joel: Canvas, yup.
Chad: Then one in the hands of Andreea Wade at Opening.io. So, looking forward to that, as well as HR Tech in early October. We're going to be on stage two days, in the expo hall. Listeners, if you want $300 off ticket-
Joel: Chad Cheese.
Chad: The discount code, very simple. Discount code Chad Cheese.
Joel: We make nothing, so even if you hate us, save some money.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We don't get any of it, it's all good.
Chad: Yeah, it's all good. Then, the latter part of October, 22nd, 23rd, we're going to be in Paris. That's right, SmashFly is sending us to unleash in Paris.
Joel: [French 00:15:24].
Chad: Yeah, where we're again, going to be in the expo hall, on stage. Just making a shit-ton of noise.
Joel: [French 00:15:30].
Chad: I'm out.
Joel: News time.
Joel: We love inside information, don't we? We love talking to the sources that know the nitty-gritty and what's going on.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: We had the pleasure, this past week, of talking to two high-level insiders about two interesting topics.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Programmatic and what the hell is Indeed up to?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I'm happy to discuss either one first.
Chad: Yeah. Let's go ahead... I think they all come together, but what one insider said was Indeed is going direct, to companies. This is something that we saw from Monster, something we've seen from CareerBuilder, we've seen this from many companies. Where they're like, "Let's keep the 15-20% ourselves."
Joel: Yup.
Chad: But the thing is, when does that ever work?
Joel: It works for a while, maybe. But in the long-term, I think it's sort of shooting yourself in the foot because too many companies are just like, "Agency, you handle it."
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And if agencies aren't making their cut, they're going to slowly stop recommending you as a source for advertising.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel: That's the way it works.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Now, Indeed thinks their shit don't stink enough to think, "There's no way that an employer will not use Indeed," but that's giving a lot of employers a lot of credit. Thinking that they'll go outside of their agency, to go directly to Indeed for that advertising solution.
Chad: I don't see Appcast rocking the boat or StepStone rocking the boat and saying, "We're going to do things differently." I think this is a great opportunity for StepStone to start realizing revenue in the US and continue to do what they're doing in Europe, while pressing more performance-based ads, as opposed to duration-based. I just think, from the StepStone standpoint and from a German standpoint, they're going to be more methodical about this. More of a standpoint of, "No, we don't need walled gardens, we're just going to go ahead, continue to do business and grow the network."
Chad: On the other side, personally, because we know what Indeed does, is that they'll look at doing whatever they can to do one of two things. Either just push their product more, and other products, and force companies to buy their other products as well. We also heard from an insider that if you're pushing job fairs or anything of that nature out there, Indeed will automatically pull those down and say, "You have to buy our Job Fair Product." Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So, I see Indeed rocking the boat because that's what they do. But the big question is, do we need Indeed?
Joel: Yeah. I think for TMP as well and any other agency, we've heard agencies tell
us like, "Hey, we spend a shit-load of money with Clickcast."
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And if you're TMP, looking at, "Why don't we just keep all of it? Why not keep all the profits and take the cut that would be ours, maybe lower prices or become more efficient?" It's not only a strategic, looking at what's going to happen with the competitors and losing control over that. But it's also, "Geez, we're going to keep a lot more money if we own the programmatic solutions."
Joel: Our insider, I think we agree that buying Perengo was a great decision for TMP, that'll pay dividens in a lot of different angles. I'll be curious to see if another agency comes in and buys a JobAdX or a Joveo, or something like that. Our insider seemed to think that an ATS would be a buyer at some point.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We both agreed Jobvite and iCIMS have a history of buying up cool technologies or emerging technologies. So I don't think either one of us would be surprised at that, if that happens in the next six months or so.
Chad: I believe that when you take a look at, obviously, how Indeed's treated the market over the years and the numbers that we've received from some of our programmatic friends throughout the industry. Is that, they only comprise about 15%, around 15% of the overall candidate deliverable.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: So what can you do, to be able to... And again, this is contingency planning. Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Because we know Indeed's history, what do we do to contingency plan for that 15%? Programmatic is obviously the only way to go because you're leveraging a large network, versus just really focusing on that one pipeline.
Joel: I was pretty surprised that Indeed only served 10-15% of the sources, of candidates that companies got. I would have thought it might be quite a bit higher. Were you surprised by the 10-15% number? I thought it would be up near 25 or 30.
Chad: Yeah, no I was. But I think that's the thing, is that programmatic provides such a wide spread of the opportunity to pressure jobs into all these different areas and do it from a performance standpoint, not in all cases but in many cases.
Joel: Yeah. I also remember one of our informants, if you will, talk about I guess Zip Recruiter is beefing up their agency team. SO they're taking a different tack, in terms of getting in bed with the agencies.
Chad: Smart, yeah.
Joel: As Indeed exits the agency business.
Chad: So yeah, why would you want to bloat your organization with more and more and more direct sales people, when you can partner with agencies. Not just one agency, but agencies and have them be your sales people.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Now I understand from a control standpoint, they're not just going to sell your shit.
Joel: Yes.
Chad: But one again, that's exactly what you want. You want that non-bias. So if you are proving to, not just the agency but the end user, the direct employer, that you are worth it then that should work out for you. Now, if you're not, there's a problem.
Joel: Yeah. As Zip Recruiter gets more and more into enterprise, more into AI and technologies, the agency play makes total sense.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: The fact that they're coming in while Indeed exits is just really great timing, on their part.
Chad: The beautiful part from StepStone is that Appcast pretty much owns the agency, the recruitment ad agency infrastructure, today. Right?
Joel: Yes.
Chad: That was brilliant. They're looking for a play in the US. Instead of building job boards, fuck that, there's enough job boards, get into programmatic and make money off of that network.
Joel: Yeah. I will say that one of the things that I thought about was the two biggest programmatic plays that aren't in play yet but could, with the flip of a switch become a play, are Google and Facebook.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Which, as we know, are the two biggest online market places for advertising in the world. The minute that you can post a job on Google and then promote it out to their network, AdSense network, that becomes a huge play. They become the biggest programmatic player, and Facebook as well, if they ever decide to do that, would be a huge competitor in the "programmatic advertising business".
Chad: Now it's interesting that you mention Google because...
Joel: You like that segue?
Chad: Yeah. In a TechCrunch article, Area 120, which is Google's lab for experimental projects, launched Byteboard. If you want to know what Byteboard is, it's like HackerRank. Okay? For something that's been out there. It's a new tool that aims to make the technical interview experience less tedious and more effective.
Joel: Look, if anyone knows recruiting, employing tech people, Google's pretty good at it. If you want somebody to build something that's efficient, effective, easy to use, intuitive, something that tech people understand, you could do a lot worse that Google. So the fact that Google has essentially created a home-made interviewing tool for techies-
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: ... that they're releasing to the public, is awesome. I think you and I both agree, that it's just a matter of time before they roll this solution into their hire product. To where you can use your ATS and your talent funnel, to now interview people through Byteboard.
Chad: Oh, yeah. So the big question is now, who's going to buy HackerRank? Because we've been talking about that, Dice should have bought them a while ago. Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But HackerRank is a community, it is focused on it being able to provide realistic types of interviews, through coding.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: From my standpoint, when you're looking at trying to provide interviews for the future and we know development is not going away, this is an entity that everybody should be looking at.
Joel: If Microsoft is looking for a bridge between LinkedIn and GitHub, which they bought last year.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: They could do worse than HackerRank, to sort of bridge the gap between LinkedIn and GitHub, and provide a recruiting solution that benefits both audiences.
Chad: Exactly. Total funding for HackerRank, $58.2 million.
Joel: Okay. So that's probably out of iCIM's and Jobvite's shopping cart.
Chad: Possibly.
Joel: You think so?
Chad: Possibly.
Joel: Okay. But not Microsoft's.
Chad: No. Not even close.
Joel: Indeed?
Chad: Indeed would need to have an applicant tracking system, to be able to plug into something like that, that would make it worthwhile.
Joel: They do, it's free.
Chad: A real applicant tracking system.
Joel: Ouch. Anyway, we'll keep an eye on this and we'll let you know. Subscribe to the show so you get the shreds, we'll definitely shred this baby out when HackerRank gets acquired.
Chad: Hell yeah.
Joel: Advert, another potential acquiree, JobAdX.
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Joel: Did you know Google now has nine products with a billion plus users?
Chad: Fucking ridiculous. Yeah.
Joel: Isn't that crazy?
Chad: It's awesome, yeah.
Joel: That's crazy, right? Photos is the latest one, can you name the other eight?
Chad: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, not Hangouts?
Joel: YouTube, Search, Chrome... Two you mentioned, so Drive, you said Docs, Drive actually does, I think.
Chad: Nice.
Joel: Google Play and Android.
Chad: It's amazing just how entrenched... Again, they're a lifestyle platform. That's it.
Joel: Yeah, we're going to talk about Snapchat and Tik Tok right now, and not even close to any billion-type numbers.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: Google has nine products with a billion users. It's crazy. All right, so yeah. It wouldn't be a show without TikTok, so let's talk about TikTok. But let's talk about Snap real quick, Snap had a comeback quarter, releasing numbers this week. For the first time in their history, they had 200 million monthly active users. We had kind of written them off, we thought Instagram had taken them out.
Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joel: Younger people that I know, and there aren't a lot, had told me Snapchat was done, like it was over. Apparently not, people are still back, or people are coming back to Snapchat and using it in greater numbers. As we discussed, TikTok... I think TikTok is the only top 10, most popular app right now, that isn't owned by Facebook or Google, or is Snapchat.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: It's the only one outlier there that's not public.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We wanted to bring up something new that we saw on TikTok, is there's a guy on TikTok that works at Walmart. His user name is what? Tom at Walmart, or something?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: He wears his little Walmart vest in all the videos and he basically tells insights into the company. Some of them are funny, some of them are very dark. Right?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: He talks about minimum wage, he talks about the... What was the one about Pop-Tarts? When there's a natural disaster, they bulk up on strawberry Pop-Tarts or something?
Chad: Yeah, because they have buying patterns during those times. It's like, they know what to stock up on when the prospect of a natural disaster is on the way.
Joel: Yeah, and he makes fun of customers, he makes fun of... He basically pulls the veil off of a ton of stuff around Walmart.
Chad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joel: There's another TikTok video recently, a couple of girls were having... a lot of younger people are on TikTok. Teenage workers wearing the company outfit, company uniform, doing really stupid stuff and they were actually fired because the boss found out that they had posted these videos on TikTok. unbeknownst to the boss, at the time that they were getting fired, they actually were recording the firing. So they have on Tik Tok, the boss coming in and saying, "Hey, you can't do this. I got to let you go," et cetera. To me, this brings in a whole new era of the employer review, feedback stuff.
Chad: Transparency.
Joel: Yeah, transparency. For 10 years, employer reviews have been people typing out stuff on Glassdoor and Indeed and all the other sites out there.
Chad: Right.
Joel: It's morphing into social media, short videos, videos that disappear after 24 hours in many cases. I think it just brings up a totally new realm of managing brand for employers and how the hell do you get a hold of all this stuff. Do you just fire everybody? How do you monitor it, how do you find out about all these people on Tik Tok? Because you can't just do a Google search, you can't just go to Glassdoor and see reviews. You have to be super diligent, and it may even be impossible. It may be the hydra where you cut off one head and 10 grow back, or whatever.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I just think it's bringing a while new problem for employers, in terms of managing their brand.
Chad: Yes. Well, and I think this comes back to what we've talked about, and many others have, is if you are doing business the right way. If you're treating people the way that you want to be treated, if you have a purpose and that's where your business is focused, instead of profits then, I'm not saying that you should just breathe a sigh of relief because nothing bad's going to happen to you. But if you're doing things for the right reasons and you get caught on tape, so fucking what. That shouldn't be an issue. Okay? And if it is an issue, too bad. What are you going to do? Are you going to make everybody throw their smart phone into a lockbox every time they come in or every time... You can't manage that.
Chad: U know what you can manage? You can manage yourself, you can manage how you do things, the purpose and make sure that you're not a fucking asshole. That's what you can do.
Joel: Yeah. It's a little bit like, "There is no magic bullet." We've talked about Glassdoor getting essentially hacked, with good reviews and companies that are paying for good reviews and filling up-
Chad: Right.
Joel: At the end of the day, if you have a shitty work environment, it's going to come out and it's going to impact you negatively, in most cases. The growth of TikTok, Snapchat, and these platforms only underscores the fact that you have no control over your brand. Your brand is what externally happens. More and more, that's out of your control.
Chad: I don't agree to that, you're in control of how you treat people and what you do and how you pay people and fairness, and those types of things.
Joel: Totally.
Chad: I think if you focus on that, controlling that instead of controlling people, that's where we've come. We've gone from the, "You're controlling these people, they're on your team." To, "Now you have to control yourself and how you actually deal with people," because of the transparency of today. I think that's fucking great.
Joel: Yeah, I totally agree. I didn't mean you can't control your brand and your purpose and what you do. I just mean, the mediums and the tools that people have now, to communicate with the world are more than they've ever been.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And they're only going to get more, I assume.
Chad: Oh, yeah. Yup, yup.
Joel: So your ability to clamp down and control that is going away, so you might as well do your best, of what you can control. Which is how you treat people and your message and your purpose.
Chad: If you're focusing on being a good human being, I think that's the best we can all go for.
Joel: Yeah. And by the way, if you think TikTok is fringe, if you think this guy doesn't get any attention.
Chad: Oh, dude.
Joel: We're talking in the hundreds of thousands, in terms of... Or, tens of thousands, probably, followers. Hundreds of thousands of likes, on these videos. So these videos are out there and they're getting watched. SO if you think ut doesn't impact you, you're probably wrong.
Chad: You are wrong.
Joel: Well speaking of wrong, something outsourcing can be a bad decision.
Chad: Yes. Especially if you don't have QA/QC behind the individuals that you're bringing in.
Joel: Ah. Let's hear from Sovren, to talk about Yahoo! and Kelly.
Joel: But I think it underscores the risk that, if you're using Upwork, Fiverr, Freelance Solutions, Gigworkers, you need to be aware that these things are happening or could happen to you. This isn't something that the reviews on the site are going to reveal. When you hire someone on Upwork, you see, "Oh, they've got great reviews, five stars," the last three months or whatever, of clients, they've been really servicing them well. No one's putting on Upwork, two years later, if they don't even know what's going on that, "Oh, they put a logic bomb into our system."
Chad: Yeah. If you're allowing contractors to come in, unfettered access to everything and not doing QA/QC, that's on you.
Joel: Businesses are being built on contract work, make sure that you're not totally incumbent upon one person to do all your work for you.
Chad: Exactly. Or, one person to have access to your social media account.
Joel: Yes. Talk about that.
Chad: So, this is funny as hell. Jared O'Mara, he's a British politician. He's been in the British Parliament for the constituency of Sheffield Hallam since 8, June 2017 and was elected as a Labor Candidate.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: Well his Comm's Team went on Twitter and pretty much just laid into him. Here's a Tweet. "I cannot and will not defend you and your vial, inexcusable, contempt for the people who voted you in, you selfish, degenerate prick." That's one Tweet. There's a list of Tweets before the Comm's Team actually says, "Comm's Team signing off, forever. Jared, you are the most disgusting, morally-bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with. You do not care about your constituents, you do not care about anyone but yourself."
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Hello.
Joel: I'm assuming he was the only one that knew the password, probably, to the Twitter account? What do you do when this happens? It's just out there for a while.
Chad: Yeah. You get this kind of coverage, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So, yeah. When your Comm's Team actually comes back and says, "You're a lazy, vile prick," then, yeah. I guess that's all we can go by.
Joel: Yeah. And this is when, you mentioned Hootsuite in the shout-outs, a tool like Hootsuite would have helped remedy this situation, in terms of getting it down.
Chad: It's your social media account. Let's just make this clear, it's your social media account.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: If you want to be authentic, if you want to be genuine, then you should have access, you should have, really, part of at least, if not all, the actual Tweets or the posts or what have you. If you have a Comm's Team, you can have a separate channel for that shit.
Joel: Yeah, yeah. This is clearly why Donald Trump is so brilliant, because he has total control over his social media account.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah, so some of those Tweets actually sounded like they were talking about Donald Trump.
Chad: Yes.
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Sovren: We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner.
Chad: So simple, so clean, so smooth, Sovren.
Joel: SO you have some issues with Yahoo!'s recent advertising strategy?
Chad: Yeah, here it is. So this is from our friend, Audra Knight. She actually finds some of these gems and she shares them with me. So Yahoo! is doing sponsored posts on Facebook.
Joel: Yup.
Chad: This sponsored post actually says, "Job seekers can use Yahoo!'s search to start their job hunt. Search jobs." Then you click on the ad and it takes you to Yahoo! Search engine results page, which pretty much just has Indeed and Glassdoor. So Yahoo!'s spending money pimping Indeed and Glassdoor, what the fuck?
Joel: It shows the state of just utter misery at Yahoo!, that they have to use, what? Facebook? Facebook feed, is that where she found it?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So using Facebook, who they lost social media to, to drive traffic to their search engine that now is powered by Bing, so they lost search to Bing and Google. And they're sharing the revenue that they get from clicks with Bing, who I also think is their advertising platform. So, the state of Yahoo! is so bad that they have to drive traffic from Facebook to their search engine that they lost to from Google, to send people to job sites that aren't HotJobs, which they used to own and lost out to Monster.
Joel: So the whole thing is like a trail of death for Yahoo!, that is underscored by them spending money to do this whole process.
Chad: This is just fucking dumb.
Joel: And the fact that they have money to spend on advertising like that, is also amazing.
Chad: Well that money's actually going directly to Indeed, I mean all the clicks.
That's going to Indeed.
Joel: I'm hoping that they actually have paid advertisers, when you search for jobs.
Chad: There's still the margins. It's like, "What the fuck are you doing?"
Joel: They may be so good at advertising that they're spending... if they're spending .10 a click on Facebook and getting .50 a click on their search engine, I guess that's a good decision. But we're looking at nickles and dimes here, nothing that really moves the needle for Yahoo! It's a no imagination/creativity department. But you do like the Kelly ads that are out now?
Chad: I like Kelly. I like anything that is just not warm and fuzzy. Because we have so much of that now a days. But Kelly, yeah, they have a new campaign that's happening throughout the Midwest right now. From my understanding, it is happening here in Indianapolis as well, but a couple of their ads, they're bus billboard ads. So you know the little billboards that you walk by, as you go into the actual bus stop?
Joel: Sure. Yup.
Chad: And they're ones like, "Mondays don't suck, your job does, Kelly." "Here's a tip, you can wear headphones at work to drown out the sound of your soul being crushed or you could just get a new job, Kelly." "Pursue your dreams of leaving your job, Kelly."
Joel: Yeah. And they have a URL like, "Find a job that doesn't suck," or something?
Chad: Yeah, but that's not big enough. That shit should be much, much bigger.
Joel: Or they should have a text suck to a short code, and then be able to communicate with them via text. That's a different story.
Chad: Yeah. Or a QR code that leads them to a video that-
Joel: No, no QR codes. Nope.
Chad: Something, something.
Joel: Nope, nope. Text.
Chad: Something, text, whatever.
Joel: "Text Kelly to," whatever short code, "to find your dream job today," is what they should have.
Chad: They could have a myriad, they have plenty of room. Let me just say that.
Joel: So my beef with this, I know that you like this.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I don't find it all that imaginative. We've been producing ads that say like, "Your job sucks, Monday blows, your boss is a jerk." That's a message that people have been pimping for decades. Although, I guess it's effective, people hate their job, they'll go. I just don't find the campaign all that creative. Call me cynical and old, because I am. I assume the job ads work, but I don't find them as creative and imaginative and good as you do.
Chad: I didn't say anything about creative and imaginative, or anything like that. Shit that just works, something that gets your attention. Have I seen ads that say, "Your job sucks."? Yeah. Has it gotten my attention? Yes. So those types of things, very clear, very genuine, very blunt, I like them. If it's been used over and over, kind of like the dead horse, beating the dead horse. Man, if it works, beat it till you can't.
Joel: So we agree that there's no imagination in these ads?
Ed: Yo, that jawn is so lame.
Chad: It's simple, yeah. If you think about, just about everything, most of the ad campaigns that you'll see today, they're regurgitated from something else. There's not much original anymore. Take a look at movies, how many fucking reboots do we get, right? Are they still good movies? Yeah, I'll probably go see some of them. But at the end of the day man, to be able to say that it sucks because it's not new, is total bullshit. To say it sucks because it's not working, whoa yeah, no that makes sense.
Joel: You like it and you think it works. I'm just saying, if you're going to spend the
money to do this, be creative. Come up with something different.
Chad: I say, Kelly, you do whatever works. I don't give a shit if it's been used since back in the Roman times, fucking use that shit.
Joel: You know what I say?
Chad: We out?
Joel: We out.
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