Thanks to last week's "predictions show," this episode encompasses a whopping two weeks of news from the world of recruitment. On tap, let's start with some shitty optics from Indeed's newest toy, ClickIQ. Then let's move into news that Walmart is going all-in on robots and Taco Bell paying mad salaries to recruit and retain top talent. The dessert: A tasty acquisition and a fat new investment. As usual, show powered by Sovren, Canvas, and JobAdx.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Jim Stroud: 15 minutes ago. The world changed. Companies are microchipping their workers. Robots are hiring humans and brain to brain communication is a thing. This is all happening now. If you want to know what happens next, listen to the Jim Straub podcast.
Intro: 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 fun pack!
Joel: Aw Yeah. What's up boys and girls?
Chad: What up?
Joel: The predictions' episode from last week has put us behind two weeks in the new cycle. So we're all backed up and ready to spew! Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad 'I love guacamole' Sowash.
Joel: On this week’s show Phenom people get a phenomenally big check. ClickIQ has an optics problem and right after this I'm applying for a job at Taco Bell and if they don't hire me, I'm eating all the chalupas!
Chad: I'm going to Chipotle.
Joel: Put on your fat boy pants. It's another episode of HR's fattest and most dangerous podcast. And what's more dangerous than an advertisement? We'll be right back after we pay a few bills.
Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com that's S-O-V-R-E-N dot com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.
Joel: Yes, you will. And dinner talking about taco bell. We actually just dropped the 'Chipotle Cult Guac' episode.
Chad: Got to talk to a couple of guys Joe and Mike.
Joel: Holy guacamole.
Chad: Holy guacamole. Over at Chipotle. That is a great interview.
Joel: And we were not shy about adding queso, if you know what I'm saying.
Chad: Yeah or guacamole.
Joel: Shout out to a speaking of food Zume Pizza, many of you will not know Zume, but it's sort of a sad day in the world of robotics. Zume was a, they called it co-bots, so it was people and robots working together, creating pizzas. And these trucks would go around town making the pizza while it was coming to you. And then the person would come out and bring you the pizza. Well, they're in the Deadpool for the most part. This thing didn't work out. They're making pizza boxes now as a pivot which is interesting. But the dream of like the streets being filled with food making trucks that deliver hot, delicious food to your door is at least on hold for now.
Chad: It's not going away. Okay, let's just make this, make this short and sweet. Joel I will predict by definitely in the next five years, you'll definitely have trucks with pizzas that are actually being baked on the way there.
Joel: Look at us with more predictions. We just can't get away from this stuff. But yeah, I mean we already have the dominoes, you know, little R2D2 things delivering pizzas on college campuses. So yes, it's going to happen. Zume just didn't quite have the right recipe, if you know what I'm saying.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Whomp, whomp.
Chad: Well, I'm going to go into a long string of a bunch of overseas shout outs. First and foremost, maybe not overseas, just not in the U.S. Julie Ho over at JobAdX finally received her Chad And Cheese T-shirt, dude, she's in Canada. What the fuck is up with the Canada mail? I mean it just, does it take that long? Do you have to put it on a moose?
Joel: So I do have some experience with this because I'm married to a Canadian who has Canadian relatives. It does take that fucking long to get shit to Canada.
Chad: Good God.
Joel: However, I will say it to props to the postal service when we send out our Christmas cards this year, all the international cards, which I was sure would get there maybe right before next Christmas.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Actually got there in a pretty timely manner. So I don't know if they just juiced everything up for Christmas and the holidays, but yeah, for the most part the items delivered on moose back or beaver tail or something. I don't know what the fuck was going on.
Chad: A shout out to Cindy diesel listening from Johannesburg South Africa. She's with the PeopleSoft.
Joel: Is that it? She's a fan. okay.
Chad: She's a fan, she's listening.
Joel: Shout out to South Africa, South Africa, South Africa.
Chad: Big shout out to Pat Healey who is actually a staff writer and public publications officer and data scientists, believe that shit over at ESSA which is the Economics Students Society of Australia. He's a listener and he's just given a shout out for connecting on LinkedIn. The big thing for me is we have friends and listeners over in Australia, you know?
Joel: Sure.
Chad: Right now I can't but feel totally powerless with all of the fires that are happening over there. I can't imagine how they feel.
Joel: Yeah, you can go, you can donate money. That's not powerless. But I feel like the news doesn't even talk about it anymore or the fires out? I don't, I
don't even know. Did they get a good rain in?
Chad: They did get some rain. I don't think it's over in that smokes also a problem and inhalation and those types of things, so everybody over there in Australia who are listening. Yeah, man, dude, we're as much behind you as we possibly can, but again, other than feeling powerless from being a world away, it's hard watching the news about it.
Joel: A billion animals. How is that even possible?
Chad: Oh man, it's fucking crazy. It's like one out of three koalas are like dead now because of this shit.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Anyway, on an upward note, we're going to come back to the U.S. Tom Nolan in Jacksonville, Florida over at TextUs big shout out to him for listening.
Chad: Summer Crenshaw over in Cincinnati, pretty close to us [crosstalk 00:06:33] COO and CMO over at Tilr. And Nico's over at Next. Big shout out.
Chad: Again, thanks for listening everybody out there. Again, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn, get a ton of those things. I will mention a few every now and again, but feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. Go to Chadcheese.com. Go to wherever you listen to podcast and subscribe.
Joel: I love it. You know Tilr's been saying they've been, they're going to come to Andy to visit us for about two years and they haven't made it up from Cincinnati. We may just have to go to The Natti, get in a reds game cause there are seats available.
Chad: Yes, Of course.
Joel: And maybe go see the kids at Tilr at some point.
Chad: Yeah and see Matt Adam cause you know he's napping right now.
Joel: I won't tell him you said that cause he's the hardest working man in that company because I think he's the only employee left in that company.
Chad: He literally did a disrupt HR presentation on naps.
Joel: That's true. That's true. But I don't know if he himself naps fairly regularly.
Chad: Oh, he does.
Joel: And as someone who does nap regularly, I don't see the telltale signs of napping in him. I'm gonna do my bunch of shout outs, I guess if you're done?
Chad: Yep.
Joel: Get Optimal is our latest Death match entry signed up this week.
Chad: Woo! Death match!
Joel: We're going to see them in London. They're headed up by a former Indeed guy. So, uh.
Chad: Good that's awesome. Yeah.
Joel: Could be an interesting addition to death match. You've you failed to mention our new voices series that's coming down the pike. Maybe that was on purpose, but Robert Ruff, CEO of Sovren founder as our first voices participant.
Chad: El Presidente.
Joel: We have a sexy new celebrity intro for voices that maybe I'll, I'll go search the voice, the MP3 files and see if I can maybe play that at the end of the show. Mark Jones from our friends in Cleveland at Alexander Mann solutions. His podcast interview went out this week, so if you haven't checked that out, we talk all things our PO candidate marketing, yada yada.
Chad: Technology. So before we jump into topics, I have a quick rant that really for the whole HR and talent acquisition community.
Joel: We haven't had a chad rant in a while. I'm excited. Let me give the boxer sound on this.
Chad: On Twitter Wendy Berry seems like a very nice person. She had a great tweet, which was pretty much the epitome of what we've seen over the years and here's what it is. Quote, "just got a rejection email this morning for a job I applied for nine months ago and here I thought I had it in the bag. Smiley face. Try harder talent acquisition and recruitment folks." So I said, "Wendy, who the fuck are you talking about? What company is this? Let's let's name some names" and Wendy said, "everybody does it." Come on Wendy. Every other talent acquisition, HR and human out there. Everybody listen, unless we start naming names, what the fuck do we expect to change here? Unless we start pointing people out and holding them accountable and driving transparency, we will not see progress. So if you don't name names, you're bitching for nothing. So stop your bitching.
Joel: Shame away people. Shame away.
Chad: Stop it. Be accountable if they fucked up some kind of process or in this case, getting back with you nine months later, name the names and quit being wusses is out there HR talent acquisition.
Joel: Would it be too bold of a prediction to guess that Wendy is a millennial?
Chad: It would not.
Joel: I'm just going to put that out there, that they're a little bit less likely to offend people than other generations.
Chad: Yes, sensitive.
Joel: Yes, yes. All right, Chad rant people, get excited.
Chad: All right, let's get to the show shall we?
Chad: Let's do this - TOPICS!
Joel: So we did, we did predictions with Tim Sackett, which was an awesome show. It was fun to do and we invited listeners to submit their own predictions and I don't know any of these, so I'm going to be surprised by these and I'm going to let you just sort of read them off and maybe I'll comment.
Chad: Okay. You're going in blind. Well first and foremost, Jason Roberts, he actually quoted and said, we actually got one of those predictions right, that we thought we got wrong. Google is almost always the number one referral source of candidate traffic over Indeed. It actually was before they released Google for jobs as well. We, and in this case it was RSR, we saw a 30% increase in traffic after Google for jobs launched while indeed was flat to 10% down depending on the client. So Indeed stayed flat or they actually dropped 10%. Now again, this is coming from Jason's experience when he was at Randstad. Sure. There we go. We thought we went O for last year, we actually got one and that was like a second half to one of your predictions this year. So we can go ahead and wipe that off cause we already got it.
Joel: Well I'm still holding to the monetization thing. They're going to start pay per click. But yeah, it does matter depending on the organization, like some will not see Google number one, many will.
Chad: And a company like Randstad or Randstad SourceRight represents hundreds of companies. So what they can do is, what we've talked about over the years is that staffing and RPO does recruitment better because it's their business. They have to be more efficient, they have to attract with less amount of money. So I think if you are in talent acquisition and you're not seeing Google as your number one, that's because you haven't optimized enough. That's because you haven't focused on efficiencies. You haven't done things that the staffing professionals do because it is their business and that's how they make money.
Joel: Yep. So Indeed if you're listening,
SFX: That's it man. Game over, man. Game Over.
Chad: The second one comes from a good friend of ours and friend of the show, Michael O'Dell at talent.com or as we know Neuvoo, he predicts with all of the acquisitions that happened in 2019 there will be more programmatic entrants into the market because these new entrants can provide independent options that today are starting to dwindle because those programmatic companies are going under brands like indeed.
Joel: Hmm. Interesting. I agree. There's a need for more, although I also think it's not easy to just set up shop with a programmatic solution that's worth a shit. So yeah, we'll see. And maybe, maybe that's a little glimpse into what the folks at Neuvoo we were working on as well.
Chad: He didn't say they have to be worth a shit. He just said that there are new entrants. Oh, next prediction from Quincy Valencia, the queen of chat bots and stuff over at the Alexander Mann solution.
Joel: The chat bot queen.
Chad: She predicts robots will continue to encroach on recruiter and coordinated spaces, forcing companies to start to radically redesign how their talent acquisition teams are structured and how they operate.
Chad: I think she's early on this, I think personally, RPO. Yes. I think RPO, you're going to see this and I think companies who start to look at RPO are going to believe that this is kind of like table stakes, but for companies to do this themselves, I think we're still a couple of years early because hell we're already five years back as it is.
Joel: Yeah, and a very cerebral prediction from Quincy. I'm not even sure what I just heard, but I'm sure it was really smart.
Chad: So next coming from our millennial, Kyle Hager.
Joel: Yes!
Chad: He is predicting that a ton of small ATS's will consolidate due to Indeed starting to cut off. There are organic traffic. One of the biggest advantages for having an ATS for small or medium sized businesses today was candidate attraction. Currently is candidate attraction through organic. I'm not that, not the paid stuff. Apparently indeed is shutting the spigot off for small applicant tracking system companies and those ATS is are feeling it and obviously so are their clients.
Joel: So did I hear that right? They're going to join forces?
Chad: They're going to consolidate some form or fashion. Consolidate or die is pretty much what it comes down to.
Joel: Okay. This sounds very millennial from our buddy Kevin. They're going to, they're going to all get together, create one big death star and compete with the big boys. Yeah, we'll see how that works.
Chad: I think it's more if they don't consolidate, through mergers and acquisitions, they're going to die.
Joel: Well, it's usually a big fish that swallows the little fish. He's saying like all these little fish somehow evolve into one big fish. I'm just really confused at how this is going to work.
Chad: Next prediction coming from Mark Feffer over at hcmtechreport.com.
Joel: The Feff.
Chad: Yeah. Much like I think a Quincy, very cerebral.
Joel: Oh my God.
Chad: He is predicting that automation becomes table stakes. Last year and into this year's vendors talk more and more about tools that somehow streamlined the talent acquisition process. Usually by automating chores like interview scheduling, so on, so forth. By the end of this year, those features won't be differentiators anymore. They will be expected.Joel: I'll agree with that. I think that's a pretty good prediction. I think if you're a vendor and don't have that stuff like you're not even going to get a second glance. I don't think.
Chad: And you shouldn't.
Joel: I think it's going to be expected. Yeah. Like it's like mobile, Oh your shit looks like shit on mobile. Like fuck you. I'm not even going to play ball. Like it's just something you have to do.
Chad: Yep. Exactly.
Joel: So.
Chad: And last but not least, we have Josh Zywien a.k.a Jay Z is over at paradox. He predicts the growth of voice in video as dominant channels for transactions, automation and direct audience engagement. User generator videos and video telling the real authentic stories will grow exponentially, particularly as the cost to create and distribute it goes way down and people become more disenchanted with the traditional channels.
Joel: Yeah. I think a JZ might have 99 predictions, but that was not a good one in my opinion.
Chad: Dude.
Joel: Yeah. Videos just it's too, I don't know it's too far. We've had video for how long and it hasn't taken off. Right. We had this with higher view selling, it shit off and it's investors getting out. I don't know. I don't know dude. Like I'm just the jury, so out on video, I just, I don't pay attention unless it's really something significant.
Chad: Again, back to audio. I think that's where we're going to see some really cool shit, whether it's Alexa, Google, assistant w whatever it is. But also being able to do those things and podcast form. Something that's more portable. So yeah, I agree with partially with that. The video part's really hard to get on board with.
Joel: Well, either way. To all of our, I don't know, second rate predictors, thanks for chiming in. We love you.
Chad: Yeah, we love it. Love it.
Joel: By the way, is Kyle employed yet?
Chad: I don't know.
Joel: What's his deal?
Chad: I don't know. I think he's, he's like sucking off a trust fund or something. I don't know.
Joel: Somebody, somebody hired this kid. He's got game.
Chad: He's got more than game man. He's pretty legit.
Joel: I want 15% Kyle.
Chad: Next story is all about optics.
Joel: Oh God, Yeah.
Chad: Optics. Okay. People, let's talk through how to create a believable narrative and understand how optics apply. So our friend, friend of the show, CEO of ClickIQ, Richard Collins.
Joel: Sir Richard.
Chad: Has been adamant that opinions of ClickIQ turning into an Indeed buying house is absurd.
Joel: Trojan horse.
Chad: And that it literally makes no strategic business sense to piss off their network providers Adzuna, Neuvoo / Talent.com, all the different job boards by focusing on buying Indeed because they can get more money out of their network and then obviously leverage Indeed as well.
Chad: It makes good strategic sense. I understand that narrative.
Joel: Separation of church and state from a Brit, I mean what can be better than that.
Chad: So I understand that narrative and I believe it to be very sound, but here's the big but, remember Indeed has a history of building their empire through Trojan Horse tactics.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: And in December of 2019 just last month, a gentleman by the name of Joe burrows was appointed as Media Director at ClickIQ. Then just last week I received multiple emails and messages pointing to me to Joe's LinkedIn profile, which has changed from ClickIQ to Indeed. So many people say, but Chad ClickIQ was bought by Indeed, that makes sense. Okay. Step back from the table for a second. And this is where optics kick in. If you say you're building a Chinese wall to protect against bias buying behavior, the wall will be blown to smithereens by a stupid ass move like this.
Joel: Uh huh.
Chad: And Joe wasn't the only media staffer changing from ClickIQ to Indeed on LinkedIn on the profile. I don't understand how people don't get how this is a problem.
Joel: So I think it's Joel actually. Joe burrow is the LSU quarterback that just won the national title. So that's such an obvious mistake by a football crazed American as yourself. Yeah, I mean it. Yeah. I mean I see where it's harmless in that, Oh, "I'm an indeed ploy employee now." But to think that you're going to come off as unbiased, playing fair with everybody. If you're all, if all ClickIQ people are now properties of Indeed the optics are obviously bad.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Which goes back to, you know what we've been hearing from the likes of ZipRecruiter and I think a Neuvoo, slash talent, right? Like they're not going to play ball with ClickIQ because they don't want indeed to have their data. And if, if you, I mean, so to say you're Indeed now. Guess how many more companies are going to go, "wait a second, why am I playing with ball with these guys if it's indeed? Like that could be a bad move for me."
Joel: So for me, this is a real, cut your nose off to spite your face, by hurting your business, by claiming and touting Indeed as your ownership.
Chad: Overall though, when you have talent acquisition professionals actually sending us messages saying ClickIQ is unbiased. That's total bullshit. You know something's wrong.
Joel: Sure, sure. I mean the, and the plus side of this is at least Indeed isn't like stabbing you in the back and twisting the knife as they smile at you. All while cutting off job boards and staffing companies. At least this time they're full frontal stabbing as opposed to doing it in the back. So at least they've, they've come full circle to a new position in fucking people.
Chad: I'm not really sure they can sneak up on anybody anymore.
Joel: That's probably true too. Let's hear an ad.
Chad: There we go!
Joel: JobAdX folks. And when we come back we'll talk Walmart, robots and chalupas.
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Joel: Attention, Kmart shoppers. There's a blue light special on aisle. Do you remember that shit?
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: That was so awesome. Why don't stores do that anymore? Like flat channels within, within the retail space. I think that should come back, which is our segue into Walmart robots.
Chad: That's exactly right. And the flash sales could be really pulled off by these robots.
Joel: They could, sure the robots could have a blue light, it goes off. And then like attack robot on aisle four for flash sale information.
Chad: When we say attack robot, we don't mean with aluminum bats.
Joel: Well apparently they're being attacked by kids who hug them and like scrape up the mirrors and fudge up the mirror. So yeah, and their attackers are not quite what we thought they would be, but they are getting attacked apparently.
Chad: And so Walmart expands its robotic workforce to 650 additional stores. They have these self-scanning new robots that are joining the ranks of Walmart's increasingly automated workforce, which also include devices to scrub floors, unload trucks and gather online grocery orders. And in this online grocery order thing, we've talked about this before, Julie loves it. Right now humans are going through and they're picking things out of the out of the Isles and actually doing the shopping. They have robots that can do this 10 times faster.
Joel: Yeah. And so the new, it's a new fleet of a thousand that are going to these 650 U.S. stores. They're six feet tall. Bloomberg calls them a robot army so they sound very intimidating and they're trying to thin them up, which I thought was funny to like take up less space. So when they kill you won't see them apparently, cause they're so skinny.
Joel: They're not going to take away human jobs. Wink, wink. As the Walmart PR department claims. But yeah, whether we agree that or not, I don't know. But they claim that the robots will lead to a redeployment of employees doing less mundane roles, which is sort of the company line on everything robotic these days that people will be able to do more, I don't know, intelligent complex tasks. I for one thing, that's a lot of bullshit. People will lose jobs over their shit. And a thousand is a drop in the bucket for Walmart. This thing will be 5,000 probably by the end of 2022 or so. And these things will be everywhere.
Chad: Yeah. Well what they're doing is they're, they're doing things in two days that he used to take two weeks to do and that's restocking shelves. So they're going down and they're just scanning the shelves.
Joel: Yeah, 15 cameras on this thing.
Chad: Yeah. When, when something, when they go through an area or an aisle that needs restocked, they just automatically hit a human being who has a handheld device and then boom, they go and they restock it. So one of the things I think is pretty amazing is we, we talk about this a lot, the jobs going away, but yet you take a look at the unemployment rate, right?
Chad: This is what they call the lump of labor fallacy. Where over the years, either technology or just different types of process innovations have taken quote unquote jobs where they really haven't taken jobs, they've displaced workers to do something more technical. The problem that we have is not that jobs are going away. The problem we have is that every time those jobs go away, there are other jobs that open up that take different types of skills or evolving skills. The problem we have is we're not educating our workforce. We're not training our workforce for what we need next. Jobs aren't going away. They're evolving. We as human beings are shitty at adapting to this apparently because we always have this fucking skill gap that everybody always talks about.
Joel: So stay in school kids is what Chad's saying.
Chad: I think this is more on the corporate side than it is schools.
Joel: Well, corporate training, government training, education needs to keep up with the demands of the workforce. There's a disconnect between what education is going on as to what private companies and companies need in the workforce. No one's talking to each other as much as they should.
Chad: Companies should take more of a leading role in this. They should be, if they need fucking developers, they should pay for developers education. I want you just like the military does.
Chad: Hey, you're going to come work for me for three years, guess what? I'm going to give you free college. Here you go. If you need them that bad and they are that integral, that vital to you, to your organization, that's what you should do to be able to get them in the door. Then after they're in the door, you as the company should help that individual adapt to these new positions.
Joel: I love that you brought this up because today actually I got an email from Fiverr.
Chad: Okay.
Joel: Which I've been a user of Fiverr and Upwork like for a long time, but anyway they've just started Learn from Fiverr. So basically in this email I was learning sort of SEO fundamentals, the ultimate framework to be a successful optimizer of websites. Fiverr in this case is sort of taking the ball and running with it and saying we're going to have education with our workers, our giggers, whatever. So then they can learn new skills and take up gigs.
Joel: And I assume this is probably driven by the demand of, of people who want to SEO professionals and there's a lack of them on Fiverr, I'm assuming. So they're saying let's, why don't we train people who are internet marketers or designers to like learn more SEO? So I think to your point, companies and private entities or public entities, corporate entities are sort of taking the ball and running with it by educating via online. We've obviously seen Lynda being acquired by LinkedIn. I think that's been a sort of a missed opportunity by them. I don't see a whole hell of a lot going on there, but education and providing classes is certainly something that private companies are doing. I just think when you get to the level of I'm a cashier or I'm a janitor, you know, what kind of educational leap can you make from that? I think that's, that's a challenge.
Chad: I don't think it's a challenge if a company can understand where their gaps are and start to streamline into that and stop looking to government fucking handouts. I mean the government has been providing corporate charity for God's sakes for decades. So instead of looking to the government to fix this, companies should be fixing this shit. They should be able to identify the gaps that the issues that they're having in their organization and also predict where those gaps are going to be.
Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chad: They know better than anybody. They should be able to take care of this. Not to mention corporate profits are bigger than ever. They can use that money and invest back into their employees.
Joel: Yeah. I just think it's a little Pollyannish to think, "okay, we have 10 janitors, let's just train them to be whatever, restocking with computer tools." And do we need 10 janitors to overtake, you know, maybe there's only five openings on the automated side? Like at some point workers are going to be dispersed. They're not going to have a journey or a track available in Walmart or target or wherever. And what do you do for those people, I guess is the question.
Chad: I think. I think anybody who believes, and again, it's a difficult problem for a government to solve. A difficult problem for a company to solve because they know what they want, they know where they want to go and they should be able to get it. The problem is they're depending on government providing charity back to them for schools, universities, and hoping that there are public programs that they can actually pull off so that they can get their people for free. It's all fucking bullshit.
Joel: Well companies are going to act in the favor of their shareholders.
Chad: Yeah. And they're going to buy back fucking stocks and not put money into their employees.
Joel: Which is maybe why there's a space for government on this stuff.
Chad: Yeah. And that's to regulate these assholes, to be able to treat their people better.
Joel: But you know who's not hurting for opportunities.
Chad: People at taco bell.
Joel: People at taco bell, like let's transition to that. Taco bell is now offering a hundred grand salaried positions in an attempt to de recruit people and also retain people and also recruit and retain good people and also make a splash from a PR perspective. Obviously the news and news outlets are going to pick up $100,000 jobs at taco bell. So obviously that was maybe part of the decision to do this, but they're sort of testing this in the Midwest. Midwest and I think South Southeast, something like that. Obviously where they have taco bells that need to be need to be serviced.
Joel: So I think this is genius. If it works good on them because I know from, you know people I know in the restaurant industry it's like fucking war to keep people. They lose people, they got to replace people. And I'm sure somebody in the math department at Taco Bell said, actually it's Yum Brands! Said okay, we're losing this much on lost labor, lost customers being serviced. Like let's up these positions to this much. So in your point of the market working in capitalism, working, I think this is an example of yay capitalism. Like people are making a hundred grand working at taco bell now.
Chad: Yeah. Until the market goes back down and then there'll be $30,000 salary again.
Joel: Such a buzzkill.
Chad: That's how it works unless you actually put guidelines.
Joel: People like me keep taco bell in business, so I know what I'm talking about.
Chad: Yeah, we'll go. We'll go by that. For select restaurants in select areas for select positions. I got to say I do like it because there are very hard to fill, hard to retain types of positions, and these are hard fucking jobs. I have friends who used to be GMs at restaurants and also regional managers at different restaurants and whatnot. These are hard fucking jobs. And it was interesting because when I posted this out, there were people that kind of laughed and said, "Oh, I can't believe you can make $100,000 at taco bell." And it's like, you've got to be a fucking idiot not to understand how hard these people work. Not to mention the workforce that you have to be able to direct and retain and manage. I mean it's, it's, it's ridiculous. So yeah, good for good them.
Joel: And now, you know, think of the competitive angle on this, right? Like how many McDonald's, Wendy's, burger King, Chick-fil-A, whatever managers start looking at jobs at taco bell because they're making 20-25% more money?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And then does that spark all those restaurants to up their salaries to a hundred grand? And then you've got an interesting career track for people that would normally be on a traditional career track. So I think it's cool.
Chad: Yeah, it's definitely cool. It's being able to set, and we're talking about more of the upper wage, you know, let's jump down. I was reading an article from Fast Company for the push to increase the minimum wage. So these are the lower wage earners, right?
Joel: Yep.
Chad: In certain cities and States. And the benefits of doing so go beyond merely enabling people to afford their rent, which is, which is a very damn good thing by the way. A higher minimum wage could keep people out of prison, has been linked to fewer instances of child maltreatment because people are pissed off when they get home because they can't pay their rent and they're stressed out and they treat their kids badly.
Chad: It could literally keep people alive by leading to fewer suicides. A study actually showed a mere dollar increase in minimum wage is linked to a 3.5 to 6% drop in the suicide rate among Americans with high school education or less. So as we have the debate about minimum wage or a hundred thousand dollars for somebody working at taco bell, we have to better understand how this is linked to society through happiness. Are people going to be more happy because they have money that they can cover their rent?
Joel: Sure.
Chad: Cover food, cover school and those types of things. I just
common sense says yes.
Joel: Yeah. I mean, and we talk about sort of universal basic income, right? And I think that the people that are supportive of that would look at these numbers in terms of maltreatment of children, suicide rates, depression. I'm sure you could track some of the abuse of opioids and other drugs to some of this shit.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: They would probably bring a similar arguments to a universal basic income.
Chad: Agreed. Dennis Tupper actually recommended a documentary that if you're listening, it's fairly easy to remember. You can go to Amazon. It's called Happy. It's only an hour and 13 minutes. And I thought it was interesting because they actually focused on, one of the segments was focusing on, for our country, instead of focusing on GDP, they focused on creating a happiness index. That in itself the people are more happy. What happens? Well, they have higher production and that actually helped grow their GDP. So instead of focusing on product, right and GDP gross domestic product, they focused on what they felt would trigger higher GDP and that was the actual people who are responsible for growing, building all of that.
Joel: Do you think they have that in VHS format?
Chad: Maybe beta max.
Joel: Oh then I'm good. I'm good. Who else is good but our buddies at Canvas? Let's hear from them and we'll talk about people getting some money and acquiring some other companies.
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Chad: Money, money, money.
Joel: I talked to Jobvite's new CMO. Looks like we're going to be getting some new ads soon. So if you're a little tired and spaced out on a that canvas ad, get ready cause they're about to blow your socks off with some new stuff.
Chad: Not, I think Amber Ferrari in the canvas ad is awesome.
Joel: I wouldn't say she wouldn't be in the new ads.
Chad: Oh, okay. Cool. Cool.
Joel: I don't, I don't know. But yeah, she might be, the coolest name ever. But she's getting married and it's going away. So baby and what's her new name? Like Amber Jones or something?
Chad: Hopefully. Yeah, it's hyphenated Jones-Ferrari. So phenom.
Joel: Phenom, yes.
Chad: $30 million in series C funding, bringing them to a total of 61 million. Now listen to this long list of names and then we'll get into this after. The round is led by WestBridge Capital with participation from Alliance Bernstein private credit investors. Contributions from existing investors include AXA ventures, Sierra ventures, Amador, technology ventures, Sigma prime ventures and car Laney capital.
Joel: Holy shit, who doesn't have money into this thing right now? I think my dog peepers gave some money to this organization as well.
Joel: Peepers!
Joel: I don't know what to tell you about that.
Chad: Oh my God. So this is to support the global demand for AI driven talent experiences. Phenom people will use the investment for continued company growth and scale. Now obviously AI driven was in there, so go figure why they got $30 million.
Joel: So this is 61 total?
Chad: Yeah, 61 total.
Joel: That they've gotten?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Convenient.
Chad: That's, that's a lot of cash.
Joel: It is. It's not, I mean, for what they do when you look at what chatbots are getting. It's sort of on par with that. And phenom does a lot of other stuff. You know, I think what, what I've, what I find so interesting about this is I remember, so the guys who started this company were doing like mobile sites for career builder. Like 10 years ago. They were sort of the white label mobile solution for CareerBuilder.
Joel: CareerBuilder started doing their own thing and these guys were, were let go or the contract ended or whatever. And so they created a company called iMomentus.
Chad: Yep.
Joel: I don't know if you remember that or not, but so they did basically mobile development for companies and ATS's is, and then they super pivoted to Phenom people and doing so many more things than just sort of the mobile product. So to me it's like a cool story of just putting your nose down, learning what the market wants, continuing to iterate, pivoting to new opportunities. So for me, I say good on them. We know quite a few of the employees over there and we know they do good work.
Chad: 18 months ago they received 20 million. I mean, what's the burn rate at this point and what are we really, I mean this is IPO or bust for me.
Joel: Yeah, I mean when you said that I thought of uncommon going through 18 million in 18 months. So it can be done.
Chad: What happened there?
Joel: But yeah, I mean it could be part of like, "look, you know, a recession is coming eventually. Let's keep our powder dry. Let's have some money in the coffers." Obviously they're a private company. We don't know how much they're making.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But yeah, there could be a lot of different reasons to go get 30 million. But the general census says if someone will give you 30 million like go ahead and take it.
Chad: Whew, that's a lot of money. Somebody who didn't mind taking the money was HereFish who was acquired by Bullhorn.
Joel: Herefish, fish, fish, fish, fish. HereFish. We liked, we liked this acquisition. I think.
Chad: I loved this acquisition. And there's one quote that really just kind of knocks it out of the park for me. "On average here, HereFish automates 7.2 million actions per month in saves over time, two and a half hours per recruiter, per day." That's two and a half hours of not doing stupid shit. Rather, being able to have two and a half hours to do human to human stuff or you know, maybe just spend more time on tech talk. I don't know.
Chad: But overall that's what a company like Bullhorn really has to, has to focus on because of their clients. Their clients are staffing companies and RPOs. But mainly staffing companies and staffing companies. That's how they make their money. So you have to help them in different areas to be able to gain margin. And this is smart from Bullhorn's standpoint. To be able to say, "Hey look, we know that you have to be more efficient for all of your recruiters. We can give them back two and a half hours per day through this acquisition if it's implemented correctly, yada, yada yada." That's, that's a hell of a sales tool to be able to pull on more companies.
Joel: Yeah. To me it's great market forces, customer demand,
recruiters, staffing companies. They want more automation, more tech. It's not just about getting me more people or make this, you know, faster. It's automate shit and let me focus on this stuff that's more important. And the Herefish acquisition goes a big way into to helping their customers do that. So yeah, good on Bullhorn. We liked this acquisition.
Chad: Like it.
Joel: Terms not disclosed so we can't talk about that, but.
SFX: That's it man, game over man, game over.
C & C: We Out.
Walken: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast with Chad. The cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one Cheddar, Bleu, Nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grub cheese is so weird. We out.