It's Corona time! On this week's show, Indeed flunks an IQ test, Tengai, the recruiting robot, passes its validation test, the world's immune system is getting tested, and Chad is feeling testy.
Temper, temper!
Grab the Purell and tune-in. You'll be glad you did, and sponsors JobAdx, Sovren, and Canvas will stay happy and healthy.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
SFX:
It's Corona time. Hey, it's Corona time right now! It's Corona time.
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 opinions and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Chad:
You can keep that Corona shit to yourself.
Joel:
Oh, yeah, it's Corona time. Welcome to the Purell edition of the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Flu-Shot-Baller Cheeseman.
Chad:
And this is Chad Quarantine Sowash.
Joel:
On this week's episode, Indeed gets an IQ test, Tengai takes a validity test, and everyone's immune systems are being tested. Grab a bar of soap and wash for at 20 seconds people. We'll be right back after a word from JobAdX.
JobAdX:
Nope. Nah. Not for me. Not for me. All these jobs look the same. Oh, next. This is what perfectly qualified candidates are thinking as they scroll past your jobs. Just half-heartedly skimming job descriptions that aren't standing out to them. Face it, we live in a world that is all about content, content, content. So why do we expect job seekers to react differently while reading paragraphs and bullets and templated job descriptions? Stand out in a feed full of boring job ads with a dynamic, enticing video that showcases your company culture, people, and benefits with JobAdX. Instead of hoping that job seekers will stumble upon your employment branding video, JobAdX seamlessly displays it in the job description while they're searching, building a connection, and reducing candidate drop off. You're spending thousands of dollars on beautiful, informative employment branding videos that just sit on a YouTube channel begging to be discovered. Why not feature them across our network of over 150 job sites to proactively compel top talent to join your team. Help candidates see themselves in your role by emailing joinus@jobadx.com. That's joinus@jobadx.com. Attract, engage, employ with JobAdX.
Chad:
I literally just went to the bathroom and I washed my hands for 20 seconds. I had plenty of time to come back. Thank you, JobAdX. I appreciate it.
Joel:
That's why I picked that ad, dude, so everyone could go get those germs off those hands baby.
Chad:
Good public service announcement, I appreciate that.
Joel:
It's Corona time, baby. Shout outs!
Chad:
Yes. Okay, so right out of the gate, I'm going to give a huge shout out to one of our sponsors, our transcription sponsor, Disability Solutions. So PepsiCo, who is a client of Disability Solutions, they've hired thousands, that's thousands with an 'S,' of individuals with disabilities, have retained them at higher rates and continue to drive hiring through the most diverse single-demographic in the world. That's individuals with disabilities.
Chad:
The US Government's Office of Federal Contract Compliance and Programs under the Department of Labor has awarded PepsiCo with the DOL Gold Excellence in Disability award. This is the first year that they're doing this, but what this does is it's almost like bringing back one of the old awards that they had is they're kind of placing Pepsi in this security dome and saying, "look, you don't have to worry about audits for five years," which is fucking amazing.
Joel:
When you said "security dome," I automatically thought like coronavirus protection. It's the kind of world we live in.
Chad:
Protection from audits, which is probably in some cases worse than the coronavirus depending on where you're at in the world.
Joel:
Those awards sound impressive, so way to go.
Chad:
Yeah. Good job Disability Solutions.
Joel:
Good job. Have you seem their SHRM commercial?
Chad:
No.
Joel:
So it's all about diversity and inclusion.
Chad:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Joel:
Your wife should love it and most people will. They scan through four or five different offices and they have different diverse people in each office and talks about diversity. All the numbers you just started to rattle off, like retention rates and all that good stuff.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
So yeah, SHRM is hitting the DNI stuff really hard, so the time is right apparently for all that good stuff.
Chad:
The time is right, yeah. She's not the very big SHRM lover because of them taking Koch brother money. So yeah, we'll go ahead and we'll go with that. Great ad, great ad, but we think you're full of shit, SHRM.
Joel:
Ouch, man.
Chad:
Hello.
Joel:
Shout out to LinkedIn. I'm thirsty for some Kool-Aid. Someone posted on LinkedIn, imagine that, about LinkedIn sending a congratulatory box with a little water thing and notes and some other stuff saying congratulations on the new job. So somewhere in LinkedIn's algorithm, they're seeing when people change jobs and they're sending little gift packets, which is really great marketing.
Chad:
Yeah. That's pretty cool.
Joel:
So shout out to them for working that algorithm in the right way.
Chad:
Yeah, no question. I don't think they have... Maybe they do have my snail mail address. I never thought about that. I don't think that I've ever put my actual physical address into LinkedIn. I'm going to have to check that out.
Joel:
Well, they probably have work addresses if it's a big company.
Chad:
Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Good point. Big shout out to Brandon Ford, the chief accelerator director at Lubrizol. We met Brandon at The Gathering and became fast friends. Wanted to give him a big shout out, he's a new listener. Great people and amazing times at The Gathering, great meeting you Brandon.
Joel:
And shout out to his beard, it's a glorious thing. I love it.
Chad:
It is, yeah.
Joel:
Shout out to Levi's, they not only make a fantastic denim wear, they announced paid family leave for their workers.
Chad:
Woo-hoo! Yeah, that's good shit.
Joel:
So a step in the right direction there in the retail space.
Chad:
Good shit.
Joel:
Good job, Levi's.
Chad:
Shout out to Steven Rothberg who loves the Voices podcasts. They're about 10-20 minute pieces of conversations we have with awesome fucking people. You can check out the latest, it's called Culture Is The New Discrimination with Robert Ruff. It's about 16 minutes long and it's a great segment of conversation. Having guys like that come on with their opinion and then we just talked to Rick Carsley from IKEA, a pod that actually dropped today, he had an entirely different opinion on it. So it's awesome to not just talk to a set of people that think one specific way, but we have varying opinions. And again, you just continue the conversation.
Joel:
And now I just got really hungry for some Swedish meatballs from the IKEA cafeteria.
Chad:
Oh, God. Damn it.
Joel:
Shout out to Dan Price. No one will know who this cat is, but we talked, I don't know, a few months ago, about a company that gave everyone a minimum of $70,000 a year salaries. So, that's big news.
Chad:
Even himself.
Joel:
Yeah, even himself. He's a millionaire, but that's beside the point. The company is Gravity Payments. As a result of this, in terms of the benefits, they're seeing three times growth, I believe, in the last one or two years from that, retention rate's through the roof. No surprise there, their Glassdoor score is 4.5 out of 5 stars, they're doing all the right things. So I just wanted to give him a little shout out. Dan Price, keep it up there in Seattle, good vibes to you. Love it.
Chad:
Yeah and $70,000 is not a lot of cash for that market, so to be able to have, first and foremost, that kind of pay transparency and that equity throughput the organization is awesome, but for people to be retained only making $70,000 a year... And I say only, but you've got to remember Seattle's a little bit more expensive than most of the markets like we're in, in Indianapolis, so that's pretty amazing.
Joel:
Yep. He had a great quote and story and to get it right, five years after they've initiated this, the business has tripled for the company. But Dan Price had a quote, he said, "people are starving or being laid off or being taken advantage of so that somebody can have a penthouse at the top of a tower in New York in gold chairs." It's bullshit basically. So we like Dan.
Chad:
Yes.
Joel:
Let's get him on the show and talk about this sit.
Chad:
That's a good idea, we should do that.
Joel:
Because we don't have enough content, goddammit.
Chad:
Yeah, no shit. We'll talk about that later.
Joel:
Yeah.
Chad:
So somebody else we also like is the JobBoard Doctor, we haven't heard from him in a little while. He tweeted, I quote, "#chadcheese smartly pointing out that candidate retention is often up when formally incarcerated are hired."
Chad:
That's right, there's no reason why we shouldn't be looking at individuals who have been in prison and have served their debt to society. Ban the box. If it makes sense, Get them into your organization. Stupidest thing in the world that we still have individuals who have been in prison, they come out and they can't feed their family. What do we expect them to do at that point, right?
Joel:
Go back to jail.
Chad:
Yeah. Yeah. And again, putting money in the Koch brother's tiller. Go ahead.
Joel:
By the way, that's also part of the SHRM ad that you haven't seen and the organization that you hate. I'm going to say adios to Facebook chatbots.
Chad:
Oh, yeah.
Joel:
We talk quite a bit about chatbots, but Facebook making some major changes this week. Many of you may remember Poncho, which was the chatbot automation weather app from back in the day. It was a big epic fail. People really don't like automated messages from companies or apps. So chatbots take a bit hit I guess this week in terms of chatbot sort of shutting that whole thing down and moving in a different direction for their discovery on Messenger.
Chad:
Yeah, I think what we'll see is a movement from that to voice-activated. We talked to Gordon Collier this week about voice interaction on job search. I think that's going to be ubiquitous when it comes to just needing information. I don't need you to just push information to me, we've been used to pushing information forever. All I want to do is when I want it, I want to ask for it. And from a voice standpoint whether you have your phone or your Google Assistants or Alexa, I think that's what we're going to be transitioning to.
Joel:
And speaking of push, I want to give a quick shout out to Talkpush.
Chad:
Push it!
Joel:
Our buddies put out a really great blog post this week about surviving the impending recession.
Chad:
Nice.
Joel:
Spoiler alert, automation is the future folks, in case you haven't been listening to the show.
Chad:
Go figure. Heather DeLand, or DeLand, DeLand? I don't know, she's over in the UK. You could say it a bunch of different ways. She's a new listener from AIA Worldwide. Thanks for listening, now go and make sure that all of your office is listening right now. together right now. Make sure they're all listening.
Joel:
All right, and then we're going to talk about robots in this show, but I had to give a special shout out to our robot friend Sophie.
Chad:
Oh, yeah. She's four!
Joel:
She turns four years old. This is the robot with the transparent head. She did a really funny video with Will Smith a year or two ago, which you should check out if you haven't seen that yet. She has legs and arms now, so it's getting creepier and creepier by the year. Happy birthday, Sophie. Can't wait for your fifth birthday and your tenth birthday when you get automated weapons and kill all the humans. I'm excited.
Chad:
More of that to come. And an anonymous shout out to all of those people out there who keep us informed. I know that yours does, my phone blows up when anything is happening. I mean, anything. So keep up the good work Chad Cheese Heads and keep the intel flying our way.
Joel:
That's a deep throat shout out if you will.
Chad:
Yes.
Joel:
For you Nixon fans out there.
Chad:
And for all of those who want to be on the show and we've been getting shit tons of requests, thank you so much, thank you, I have four words for you: be patient and thank you.
Joel:
Well, I'm out of shout outs. I'm going to mention my first travel trip.
Chad:
Yes.
Joel:
I've already talked a couple times about a trip to Vancouver. The name of the event has a name, it's Recruitment Jam, which makes me want to breakout the MC Hammer pants and the Michael Jackson zipper jacket for my trip there and my presentation. So Vancouver April 6-7, I'll be out there for Recruitment Jam.
Chad:
I think they should go with the Space Jam motif really. I mean, that to me makes more sense. We got to also remember that all of our travel brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right, gear again upgraded this season, kids. Soccer Jersey, North Face vest, Nike, [inaudible 00:13:34]. I mean, we've got Shaker stuff out the wazoo. Not to mention last year's backpacks and this stuff.
Joel:
Soccer Jersey.
Chad:
Yeah, no it's good stuff, so thanks for keeping us outfitted Shaker.
Joel:
I'm rocking the vest right now and frankly, for men of a certain age, I think the vest is a really good look.
Chad:
The problem is, he's only rocking the vest. Yes, so let's put our hands together and do a little prayer, wish, or whatever it is, Unleash and TA Tech has a mega conference happening in London this month currently for Death Match by Pontoon Solutions at TA technology. We have JobSync, Get Optimal, SBOJ, that's "jobs" backwards.
Joel:
SBOJ.
Chad:
And SonicJobs, who just joined into the fray.
Joel:
Oh, Sonic.
Chad:
They're all competing for the European Grand Champion and to get the Chad and Cheese Chain of Champions, which has arrived at the Cheeseman residence this week, right?
Joel:
Chains or Champions in the house.
Chad:
Woo hoo!
Joel:
I've been wearing that along with my Shaker vest, it's a really nice look.
Chad:
We need that picture. We need that picture. So you can get your tickets at tatech.org and unleashgroup.io. Once again, big thanks to our friends at TA Tech and Pontoon Solutions for making Death Match actually happen. Topics!
Joel:
Topics! Neuvoo tells ClickIQ to take a hike this week.
Chad:
Yes, would you like to read the actual statement or would you like me to?
Joel:
I can read it.
Chad:
Go ahead.
Joel:
It was in their LinkedIn feed.
Chad:
Yes, yep.
Joel:
Okay, here we go. Neuvoo says, "After much thought and consideration, we regret to announce that Neuvoo/Talent.com will be discontinuing our partnership with ClickIQ. This will take effect as of 9th March 2020. This decision was not taken lightly as we strongly believe in the power of collaboration within the TA Tech industry where it makes sense. On this occasion with ClickIQ, it has not proven to be successful or mutually beneficial." Ouch.
Joel:
"As Neuvoo/Talent.com and ClickIQ do share many mutual clients, please take this post as confirmation that your company jobs, be they organic or sponsored, will no longer be visible via ClickIQ on Neuvoo Worldwide. Being that we believe in the idea of transparent marketplaces within the performance-based advertising space, we will continue to work with the other programmatic platforms across the globe."
Chad:
"Other."
Joel:
"A notification email to all our valued clients will be going out on this subject detailing how you can still maintain your candidate traffic flow," blah, blah, blah. And this was the kicker, "Again, as of 9th 2020 March, Neuvoo/Talent.com job seeker traffic will no longer be available through ClickIQ nor its channel partner Indeed.com."
Chad:
That's the big kick in the nuts right there, kids. This really has nothing to do with ClickIQ until Indeed bought the store. That's what it comes down to. Not to mention, I know for a fact that Neuvoo has been trying and ClickIQ has been trying to be able to make this work, but it's one of those relationships that just wasn't going to work. I mean, if you can think of it, you know how aggressive Indeed's sales people are. One of those things that we've seen over the years who are selling against their partners, right?
Joel:
Yep.
Chad:
And it's like, don't spend money with them, just give it to us and we'll make sure you get your talent.com clicks, right?
Joel:
Yep.
Chad:
So it's like, funnel through us, we will be the agency and then hopefully talent.com will receive the clicks overall. And that's not something that obviously talent.com is very happy about.
Joel:
Yeah and don't forget, people don't want all that data being funneled and seen by Indeed.com. We talked a little bit a few months or weeks ago about ZipRecruiter allegedly saying we're the hell off this thing, because if Indeed thinks we're going to show our data, they can go ahead and piss up a flagpole. So yeah, these big companies don't want to share the data with Indeed.com and who can blame them?
Chad:
Yeah, it makes no sense. Especially since there are so many different programmatic networks and platforms that are out there as it is.
Joel:
Exactly.
Chad:
I mean, we've heard the rumors around Zip, but every time we reach out to Zip, they don't have the guts to actually tell us what they're doing. Fucking weak sauce, Zip, very weak sauce. This isn't surprising to me and to see these types of brands leave, I would think that the Adzunas of the world and some of the other organizations that are out there who probably feel the same way, they're going to make moves. They're going to have to make moves or maybe they actually get more clicks out of this because the other ones are going away.
Joel:
So the question is, do more programmatic companies look to sell because the value of them is going up, do they remain independent because that's where the value is because if people can trust them, they'll continue to use them?
Chad:
We know, over the years, that Indeed, they have a history of playing the Trojan horse game. And there's no way I would ever be comfortable with allowing them to have any of my data whatsoever to be able to prospectively scheme off of me when I'm trying to actually compete against them. It just doesn't make any sense.
Joel:
Yeah. Yeah. Basically, if you're a job site, that's a pretty broad term, don't go buy a programmatic solution because the value of it will go down because no one will trust you. If you're an agency or some other conduit that plays nice with everyone, I guess buying that programmatic solution is okay.
Chad:
Yes. I would tend to agree. And the thing that I'm not agreeing with, not only are they showing the industry just where ClickIQ is headed, but they're doing even more by starting the rebranding process, so ClickIQ, from what we've seen and different sources of what we've heard, is going to become IndeedIQ.
Joel:
We've seen screenshots, right?
Chad:
Yeah, we've seen screenshots. Do these idiots want this to fail or is it just me? I mean, optics at the very least, right? It doesn't make any sense to me.
Joel:
Yeah, that doesn't really scream Switzerland, does it?
Chad:
Yeah. No, we're going to be totally unbiased. Indeed's going to be there on the other side, they're not going to touch your data. And ClickIQ, I mean, I'm sorry, IndeedIQ, will make sure that everything is done right. Again, optics guys, if that is really the case in what's happening, that's probably the stupidest fucking move you could make.
Joel:
Yep, yep. I was talking to someone that's been around for a long time, pretty high up and we were talking about the impending recession, because that seems to be a thing that with the stock market and coronavirus and all that good stuff people are talking about. Anyways, his prediction was when recession comes, Indeed is going to take a big shit. Not that recession is coming for sure, but recessions have a way of calling the herd and it'll be really interesting to see all these businesses and all these pieces of spaghetti that Indeed has thrown at the wall to see when the economy goes to hell what exactly happens to Indeed, ZipRecruiter and the others.
Chad:
Yeah, Indeed will tighten up and start to refocus. That's all there is to it. They've got a shit ton of cash, they will start cutting the frayed edges and get back to business.
Joel:
And layoffs.
Chad:
Yeah. But talking about rebranding, this is something that actually the Job Board Doctor threw our way, has Snag reverted back to the Snagajob brand after spending all of that money on snag.co and trying to push toward more of an app environment?
Joel:
Yeah, so listeners might remember we actually had the CEO on I think when they basically launched a marketplace. They still had post jobs for retail, part-time work, et cetera. They were big vision talking about platform, where it's like an Uber Works or any of the other platforms that are out there. And they had a URL snag.co, which was their new thing and they launched an app in certain areas. Snag.co now goes to snagajob.com, so from that perspective it looks like they're going to keep the job posting business, the old traditional way is not going away.
Joel:
However, I also came across late-February Snag Shift or Snagajob Shift. So the solution is still there and if you go to the app store and search Snagajob Shift, you'll see their platform site. It doesn't look like it's restricted by region, it doesn't look like it's super out there.
Joel:
There's one press release that I've seen out in the world, but there isn't any sort of major PR push or news push. It looks like they may have just said, "hey, we have the technology, let's just launch this secondary app and see what happens." Maybe they have some customers using it. It looks like Five Guys is using it in terms of the screenshots. So I guess they've definitely refocused on the posting business, which was their bread and butter and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. But they do continue to have their toe dipped in the marketplace for retail hourly seasonal jobs.
Chad:
Yeah. If anybody knows what the fuck Snag is doing out there, or I'm sorry, Snagajob, please, feel free to fire some stuff our way. It seems like they are a headless chicken at this point.
Joel:
If their relatively new CEO wants to come on the show and tell us what the fuck is going on, you're more than welcome to join us.
Chad:
It's time for a break.
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:
Acquisitions.
Chad:
So this is from Yahoo Finance, "M3 USA has acquired NAS Recruitment to expand its portfolio into recruitment marketing." Into recruitment marketing, not that it was doing that shit before. "Stone-Goff Partners announced that it has sold NAS Recruitment Innovation ("NAS") to M3 USA, a leader in healthcare digital solutions for hospitals, health systems, and physicians." And this doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
Joel:
It's a bit of a head-scratcher for sure. The only synergy really is they have a physician recruitment business.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
So do they take the recruitment marketing and just sell it into hospitals? I know NAS has a fairly strong footprint with some hospital clients.
Chad:
Right.
Joel:
But the NAS thing is really close to home for me, because when I started out in the business, ESPAN/JobOptions, our sister company was NAS.
Chad:
Right.
Joel:
And we were both owned by the gun group out of Cleveland. So I've seen NAS as a huge company when display advertising, newspaper advertising was really at its zenith in the mid-late-90s.
Chad:
Oh, yeah.
Joel:
I can remember having a good laugh at trade shows where their booth was literally a velvet background and then they would literally have newspaper ads velcroed to the fabric background of like a 20 by 10 booth, which was really funny if you think about it. So tons of employees, tons of offices. They're down to about 200 employees, which frankly, I was kind of surprised they had that many listed on LinkedIn. A good guy named Matt Adam out of Cincinnati has been there for 25 years.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
I've seen the height of this thing, they've gone through at least three or four owners since I've known them. This looks like a total private equity dump. So I wish them the best, but I mean, this feels like the last breath of NAS in that recruitment market business.
Chad:
This has shades of the Relentless Bandit acquisition, where Relentless Bandit, I'm sure on the clearance rack, was sold to a healthcare, more on the recruiting side, the healthcare recruiting side. More from the article, "NAS has shifted from a traditional media services model to an end-to-end digital offering with the development of the ACTIVATE platform." I love Matt Adam, but I really need to better understand what the fuck they mean by end-to-end, because there's no way in hell the active platform is an end-to-end attract-to-hire platform.
Joel:
Yeah and how brutal to be a marketing agency and have to just deal with healthcare. People like Shaker doing shit with McDonald's and cool companies. Like I got to get up and market hospitals all day.
Chad:
It's money.
Joel:
Fucking kill me, dude.
Chad:
That being said, I think shades of what happened with Shaker and The Arland Group actually happened with Mamu merging with Haley Marketing.
Joel:
Yeah. Make sure it Mamu and not Mamu or Mamu.
Chad:
Like Shamu, Mamu.
Joel:
Shamu.
Chad:
Mamu. Mamu Marketing, now that would not be allowed. There are no orcas allowed, okay?
Joel:
Yeah, no mascot orcas on the site.
Chad:
No, no. I really believe this is a smart way for smaller orgs to compete through combining talent, resources, hunkering down and just doing business. So I really think we'll see more of this. It just makes sense. There's great talent out there, do we do it separated and try to fight small tribes against the bigger fucking monolith tribe? You know, the TMPs or the Symphonys, right?
Joel:
Yeah.
Chad:
Or do we start to combine, specialize and then you know, start to kick ass and take names. I love what KRT did when they really focused heavily on programmatic and obviously that spun into a merger/acquisition with recruiting, so I see more of this happening.
Joel:
Yeah, Mamu, I guess I'm saying it right, is a pretty interesting company. I mean, it's entirely content and they just do content that looks like for staffing companies. So they're doing magazines, webinars, obviously video shit, blogging and newsletters, email stuff, but that's all they do for staffings, so this is like a super niche business and it seems like a fairly interesting company. I'm surprised that they can make fucking magazines for staffing companies. But hey, they apparently are, so this looks like a little bit of a aquihire, a bit of a nice little business that they're going to wrap it into this marketing company. But yeah, good for them, interesting marriage. It's more interesting than NAS and M3, that's for sure.
Chad:
Marketing needs content and if you have a content engine, you put those two together, I mean, again, you can really focus heavily in that area. So I guess we'll see.
Joel:
By the way, there's a great quote, this is sort of out of left field, but at our time at The Gathering last month, there was a great quote, it said "You've heard content is king. It's not king, community is king, content is queen." That was kind of an interesting quote. So yeah, take that for what it's worth.
Chad:
Yeah, I would say content is king, community is queen. You've got to remember the chess board, what is the strongest piece on the chess board? It's the queen.
Joel:
Look at you.
Chad:
So therefore, yeah, content is king, community is queen. It's the bad bitch on the board baby. And that being said, the bad bitch on the board right now, and we don't want to get too crazy and get people scared, but coronavirus.
SFX:
It's corona time. Hey, it's corona time right now. It's corona time.
Joel:
And I won't tell your wife you said bad bitch.
Chad:
Yeah, she's hearing me say it right now. So on Twitter this week, Tarquin Clark, who we all know as one of the studs over at Google, posted a picture on Twitter of a parking garage at SFO, so San Francisco Airport, it was desolate. Usually packed on a Monday. Dude, there were parking spots open all over the place and we talked about it last week, Salesforce canceling their big sales meeting, Facebook canceling the San Francisco F8 marketing summit that they have. Facebook and Sony both pulling out of the March Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Joel:
Yeah, Mobile Congress.
Chad:
Google canceling Google I/O, I mean, all of this is happening and I think personally, not to scare anybody, this is incredibly smart. I mean, what would you do from a risk standpoint?
Joel:
Well, from a business standpoint, you don't want your whole workforce to get sick and/or scared shitless.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
So, I can't blame any corporations. I know Nestle, who I think has 30,000 employees around the world has basically banned travel. My wife, who's a college professor, you can imagine how concerned they are with, you know, they have students as well as employees.
Chad:
Oh, yeah.
Joel:
I know they banned all travel to Italy, South Korea, and Iran, and China.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
So, that's going to be a no-brainer I think for a lot of people. Most people know Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter as well as Square, Square has stopped all in-person job interviews, so this is good for the HireVues and all these sort of web/video interviewing folks.
Chad:
Perfect for Tengai.
Joel:
I'm sure meetings... Yeah, right. Tengai doesn't get sick.
Chad:
Yeah.
Joel:
But yeah, I mean, ZoomInfo and conference software in terms of those stocks are going through the roof, it's good for Slack and any kind of communication device, stay-at-home stuff is hot. I mean, the only way this is going to stop is people don't interact with each other, the weather gets warmer and viruses go dormant until we get a vaccine for this thing. But yeah, it's a scary time, I can't blame companies for doing what they're doing. Airlines, bad energy companies, it's a rough time for sure. Corona time is no-fun for a lot of people man, even though the song rocks.
Chad:
Microsoft is actually recommending that all its Seattle-area employees to do their jobs from home. So for the next three weeks, so "through March 25th, in the latest effort to thwart the spread of the coronavirus. The company employs nearly 54,000 people in the Seattle region, most of them is at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The guidance, issued Wednesday by Microsoft executive vice president Kurt DelBene, excludes workers in data centers, retail stores, and other jobs that require them being on site." So if you're in the retail area, just a shit ton of hand sanitizer, maybe one of those totally encapsulates suits or something like that, you'll be fine.
Joel:
Think about it, I mean, March Madness is right around the corner, we got the Olympics coming up this summer, like this is going to be really interesting to see how this affects turnout in some of these big, popular sporting events.
Chad:
It's smart to be educated, to understand, yes, the flu does kill people, but it is at a much smaller percentage than what this virus does. What you need to do is just go to who.int, the website, so The World Health Organization. They have information, a special area there to be able to educate yourself. And that's the biggest key is don't sit around, watch the news, and get scared shitless because it's very easy to do. Go to who.int, focus on yourself if you're in one of those populated areas that perspectively has some of those outbreaks. Personally, if it was me, and again, this is just me, I would keep my fucking kids home.
Joel:
And for god sake, don't go to the Johns Hopkins Interactive Map of how this thing is blowing up all around the world. Alright, let's take a break on that note and we'll close this thing out and shut down, batter down the hatches and go into hiding I guess.
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 the Bitmoji.
Canvas:
We make compliance easy and are laser-focused on recruiters' success. 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.
Chad:
So do you remember when the movie Top Gun came out?
Joel:
I do.
Chad:
Kelly McGillis.
Joel:
Paging myself. '85? Summer of '85 I believe?
Chad:
She was hot, Tom Cruise, Goose dies.
Joel:
Val Kilmer. I think he's in the new one.
Chad:
The F-15 motherfucking Tomcat. The best, baddest fighting machine that was out there.
Joel:
Goose.
Chad:
Yeah, so the biggest problem with pushing the boundaries with those fighter jets are human beings. Human beings cannot withstand the G's and we're the ones that actually handicap the equipment. I mean, that's one of the reasons why some of the actual fighter jets, they're not allowed to do what they can actually do because there's a human inside, right? And Elon Musk has said "the era of the fighter jet has passed" and he said that the US Military's vaunted F-35 stealth jet "would have no chance" against a drone remotely piloted by a human being.
Chad:
That's one step away, first we get the human out of the vehicle because that's handicapping performance in the first place. Next, we put them in the seat to do it from far away. Then we just take him out of the seat entirely.So think of it from this standpoint, now, we have robots that have passed validation studies with flying colors.
Joel:
Yes.
Chad:
And those validation studies are focused all on AI interview robot Tengai. So the social AI interview robot Tengai can, without human interference, conduct and measure standard and objective blind interviews. The conversational technology can assess personality traits correlated to work performance, all according to a new research validity study conducted by two doctors of psychometrics in Sweden. There are 420 Tengai robot interviews. 84.6% feel interview was serious, so this wasn't just kind of like a bullshit throw-a-robot-in-front-of-me, but it was a serious interview.
Joel:
Yep.
Chad:
And 74.3% felt they could give more honest answers because it was a robot and it wasn't somebody sitting there fucking judging me.
Joel:
You know, I don't think there's a conference that I attend where somebody doesn't come up to me and ask, "what's up with Tengai, dude? You don't really believe that thing's going to be a thing, right," or give me some sort of criticism like that. And ultimately, yeah, time will tell whether it's a thing and I think you put people's bias into this thing and do I really want to interview with a robot. I don't really know, but no one can deny that this thing is slowly but surely becoming a thing that works and is relevant.
Joel:
One of the doctors, and I'll attempt to say his name, Dr. Anders Sjöberg, Psychometrics Sweden AB, said "the validity study confirmed that Tengai can ask questions that correlate to work performance and interpret the answers independently without any help from human. This means that Tengai is validated and should be used to achieve a more unbiased interview process. It is a first step toward replacing the traditional job interview with an unbiased robot interview." I'll throw in the fact that an English version of this robot will be released in a few days or weeks.
Chad:
Yeah and for all those people who are looking at the robot saying, "well, that's going to be biased," I think it's time for us as humans to look in the mirror and realize we are the most flawed and biased things on this earth. If we can actually use technology and tools to be able to do our jobs better, faster, then great. I mean, why do interviews in the first place, especially if we know we're going to add bias into it and some people say "well, bias is good." Okay, well, if bias is so good, then go completely transparent and show everybody your workforce. Is it really an unbiased workforce? Is it really a diverse workforce? If it is, then it should be transparent already. In most cases, that's not going to be the case.
Joel:
Dude, your views in the mirror are very complicated if that's what you're thinking when you do that. I think about how my ears and nose don't stop growing as I get older.
Chad:
Well, after all the naps, I hear that naps actually make your nose grow.
Joel:
All right, dude.
SFX:
It's corona time. Hey, it's corona time right now. It's corona time.
Chad:
It's corona... No.
Joel:
Let's take it out with a little corona time. We out.
Chad:
Be safe, we out.
Walken:
Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast with Chad, with 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, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. With so many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today or 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 grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.