It's a party and nobody is invited - STAY HOME & LISTEN!
TOPICS!
How are ZipRecruiter and Indeed adapting to the ever-evolving employment landscape during coronavirus?
Plus:
- Mya gets more cash!?!
and WTF is HiringSolved doing with Paths.in? Seriously?
We're confused, which will sound familiar to our listeners anyway.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad and Joel are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Joel : Oh, yeah. Practicing social distancing since 2017. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most disinfected weekly round-up of the industry. I'm your co-host Joel germaphobe .
Chad : I'm Chad give me some of that sanitizer .
Joel : I love it. On this week show, yep, it's still corona time. Zip and Indeed are coping in their own special ways. Mya gets paid and eQUEST makes, God help us, a marky mark reference. I'm feeling the vibration. So that must mean it's time for a word from one of our sponsors. We'll be back. Yo, where's the Purell?
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Joel : You're still alive, Chad?
Chad : Yeah, I'm here. I'm here.
Joel : Good. Are you fevering?
Chad : No, I am not. Although, I now want to go out and get one of those thermometers that actually have an app that are associated to it because they're starting to use that to look for hot spots throughout the US. I thought that was fucking cool.
Joel : Nice, nice. I'm curious, what's your home office work set up with the family and other members? What's the layout?
Chad : It's a little easier for me because first off, I have kids that can go do their own thing. We have a downstairs. We have about a 4,000 square foot house. So I have my own office. Julie has her own office and we can go pretty much wherever we want. I mean we're pretty lucky in that respect. We don't have little kids running around all over the place.
Joel : Right. So you got Tristan at home. Is he at school or at home full time?
Chad : Yeah.
Joel : Does he have swim practice? What's that look like?
Chad : Yeah, no. All of that's called off, school won't happen, I would say probably, they're saying through the end of March, but I'm going to say probably through mid April at best.
Joel : Yeah, we just got the alert that May 2nd I think was the extension date from April 2nd. So is Kennedy, your college student, is she at home or what's she doing?
Chad : She's not and she will be home on Sunday, so they're actually kicking them out. They were
doing online courses there and she lives in the sorority. But they're like, "Everybody go home." So she's going to be on her way home on Sunday.
Joel : Get the hell out.
Chad : Yeah.
Joel : Yeah. I've got a ... So, my wife is a college professor, which means I have about three monitors at a makeshift desk upstairs in our loft area, and a nice addition, a 3D printer that she's brought home from the research lab. So, all kinds of fun I could have with a 3D printer. I'll keep you updated. And then of course we have a three year old who's pretty much just everywhere and it's hard to get shit done. And I know it's been a real hassle on our scheduling of podcasts, but unfortunately that's just the state of the world when it's corona time baby.
Chad : Let that little guy just be another co-host, bring him right on.
Joel : Well, the good news is he's three so he can at least talk and not stick his fingers in light sockets and pull the dog's tail and stuff like that. So, he's in much less danger than he would've been a year ago.
Chad : He's doing much better than you because you still have problems with those things.
Joel : Yeah, I still have problems going upstairs and pull the dog's tail. I know, I've got issues too.
Chad : All right. Let's get out the shout-outs.
Joel : Shout-outs.
Chad : Right out of the gate. Again, this is kind of coronavirus time. I want to give big shout-out to the parent company of Louis Vuitton. That company has converted three of its perfume and makeup factories into hand sanitizer manufacturers. It says it could produce twelve tons as soon as this week. All of it will be given free of charge to French health authorities who will in turn distribute it to 39 public hospitals in Paris. That is amazing.
Chad : And anybody who loved Louis Vuitton before are going to obviously be more indebted to that brand. Much like a not so well known brand called Bendt Distilleries, Lewisville, Texas. They shut down their distillery tours and tasting because of all the coronavirus concerns. But now instead of using the mixture, like their potent mixture to wash things around the distillery, which makes sense, they're turning that into hand sanitizers, which also keeps their people doing something and purpose-driven. So again, Louis Vuitton, Bendt Distilleries, right out of the gate, this is the kind of thing that community needs and just big shout-out, big applause to those guys.
Joel : Yeah. Love how corporate America and corporations all around the world are stepping up. Little known fact about Chad, he owns a pair of leather Louis Vuitton pants, which he rarely wears, but it's worth noting. Also, don't forget Elon Musk and Tesla who have offered their warehouses to make ventilators if necessary for hospitals around the country. And Google, who was caught off guard by our president, Donald Trump, that they were building a website for coronavirus when there had never been a conversation that took place. But Google, the good spot, they're making a website per Donald Trump's orders, good for them, we appreciate that.
Chad : It's making shit up out of thin air. It would be nice though if with all these offers if we just said, "Go do it." Yeah, we do need ventilators, that's going to happen. Do we care if we have a surplus? No. Go fucking make them.
Joel : Also it's great to see Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba over in China. He tweeted this week that a million some tests were coming over to the US from China and said, "Good luck. Good luck to our American friends." So it was a nice bit of diplomacy by Jack Ma, I think that was really worth noting, shoutout.
Chad : Yeah. And also hospital face masks, which we need. Protective gear, which we need as well. Moving onto the next shout-out, we were tagged in a tweet by, or actually a retweet by Bear Recruitment. So here's what the tweets said, and this is very specific to I believe what we're going to see more of, "For my next job interview, I'm going to ask my future employer, what are the things you've done for your employees during the COVID-19 community quarantine?"
SFX: Hell yeah.
Joel : Love to hear some of those answers.
Chad : Yeah, I know, right? So if you're a company like Louis Vuitton or Bendt Distilling, then I mean, you have a great story, not just from a consumer standpoint.
Joel : Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Another corporate shout-out, Starbucks introduced mental health support benefit for their workers. I thought that was a nice step forward in the right direction.
Chad : Yeah. Also, Facebook is offering its workplace services for free for coronavirus pandemic responder. So, another way, instead of using Slack let's say, to use Facebook, which everybody is probably pretty accustomed to, to communicate during this pandemic.
Joel : Yeah, not a shabby sales tactic either to get people on the heroin drip during a disaster. A group of shout-outs here for Paradox who we don't mention too much. A lot of people may know them as Olivia, the chatbot. But they made a pretty nice hire this week, Adam Godson, who we've interviewed for the show. Aaron Matos who is the CEO and founder of the company welcomed a baby boy to the mix
Chad : Well, hello.
Joel : ... this past month. I believe his name is Beckett, so good for him. And also they were in Forbes listed as a best start-up employer along with Joveo. So, Paradox is having some good news here in 2020, which is nice.
Chad : Nice. Well, that's two big guns Aaron Matos has acquired thus far. Josh Zywien, if you remember
Joel : JZ.
Chad : ... earlier this year from SmashFly, and now Adam from CieloAnd now that Aaron has a baby, hopefully the baby will take most of Aaron's time so that he can get the fuck out of these guys way. Because I'm telling you, you let JZ and Adam Godson do their thing and remove their obstacles, they will kick ass and take names. So great hires. Go play with the baby Aaron.
Joel : I did get a photo with the baby in a bassinet next to the home office desk. He is still working but maybe out of the way a little bit more than usual. Shout-out to Bill Ackman. If you're not scared enough already, I encourage you to go to CNBC and look at a 18 minute interview with Bill Ackman, a famous venture capitalist on the coronavirus. It was just very enlightening, I wanted to give a shout-out to him, because he was keeping it real to say the least.
Chad : Yeah. He was known as the golden boy in venture for a while until a little known, a big known pharmaceutical company slapped him around. Everybody's talking about remote working, remote working resources. We said last week and we'll definitely say again, go to recruitingbrainfood.com and subscribe because they have a great resource area for individuals who are now working remote. Personally, I cannot believe how unprepared we are as a workforce, especially office workers who have never worked from home and the companies, the managers who are not prepared on how to manage people that are not right in fucking front of them. This is 2020, how do we not have a handle on this, with a technology standpoint, and from a management standpoint?
Joel : Well, in most cases, with mankind we tend to be very near sighted, and have blinders on and don't really have a lot of foresight with things like this. So when we are caught off guard, we play catch up and I think that's a lot of human nature. We're not prepared, we get hit, then we react to it and then we ease up and think everything is fine until the next disaster.
Chad : And we're surprised even though we've been warned this shit is coming. Here's a great example from The Wall Street Journal. So The Wall Street Journal actually moved to a remote scenario for working from home. And here's an email that was shared and I quote, "While you're working at home, you should respond within just a few minutes to a Slack or group hangout message from your colleagues. Let your manager know where you are taking a break, conducting an interview, in a meeting or otherwise be unavailable for a while." Next one, "Make sure your cell phone number is readily accessible in your email signature, in your Slack status, in Workday, keep your phone ringer turned on and answer it when it rings. Now is not the time to screen calls." And last but not least, "Turn on your camera during Google Hangouts unless it weakens the connection to an unacceptable level." This is an email.
Joel : This sounds like a message I sent to my teenage son not too long ago to keep his
ringer on and actually answer emails and text messages, so yeah. We're all just children in the workplace I guess sometimes. Final shout-out from me, I wanted to send some love to my mother. People who know me really well know that my mother passed in January of this year. Today would have been her 79th birthday. So mom, shout-out to you, I'm definitely thinking of you and miss you.
Chad : Ooh, just a quick breath on that one. Yeah, big shout-out to mama .
Joel : She loved you Chad, by the way.
Chad : She just loved the hugs, which we're social distancing. So right now, Joel, you're not going to be getting a hug anytime soon. Events, we're not traveling, so this is the not traveling with Chad and Cheese segment sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
SFX: Hell yeah.
Chad : You went to Ace Hardware. I did a video from Kroger. I also did a video walking from one room to the next, just because that was pretty much demonstrating my commute. Times change, so you got to adapt, right?
Joel : By the way, I'm really disappointed you didn't take the opportunity for me going to Ace Hardware and my do it yourself icon on my picture to make fun of me like, "Yeah, really what are you doing yourself?" And then, but you didn't. The answer would have been, I'm changing some light bulbs so it's a pretty easy do it yourself project.
Chad : It is.
Joel : But nonetheless, Ace is still the place if you want to get some light bulbs.
Chad : Ace is the place for the helpful hardware man. And chadcheese.com is where you need to go for the t-shirt design contest. Now we got to remember, one day people, we will get back out to events and when that day comes, you're going to want the elegant feel of a Chad and Cheese custom tribe line tshirt as you glide through the expo hall. So go to chadcheese.com, vote on your favorite design and
Joel : It's free.
Chad : Yeah, I mean brought to our friends over at emissary.ai, because texting works every time. But seriously, last year we did our first t-shirt. We're really excited to do this years and get some more out to the people.
Joel : Ready for news.
Chad : Welcome to the corona block.
Joel : Topics.
SFX: It's corona time. It's corona time right now.
Joel : Oh my God. There's only one thing that's flooding the news and our daily lives and that's the coronavirus. Let's start out light, get a little heavy and then we'll take it into the industry. Chad : Yeah. Let's start out with not killing Mel Brooks. How about that?
Joel : Good idea.
Chad : Max Brooks, if you don't know who Mel Brooks is, good God, watch Blazing Saddles at least. Max Brooks, who is Mel son put out a video on Twitter explaining why social distancing was good. Mel was behind a sliding glass door, which was kind of funny, while Max explained that he's in his late 40s, he's in good health, but still could easily spread the virus to his dad, Mel, who is 93. Mel could then give it to Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke. And before you know, it, Max could have effectively wiped out a whole generation of comic legends.
Joel : Iconic treasures.
Chad : That's exactly right. The point when it comes to coronavirus is that you have to think about who you can infect, not about just how you are feeling, and that's important. So practice social distancing, avoid crowds, wash your hands, keep six feet away and stay home. And his big message was, don't be a spreader. Nobody wants a spreader.
Joel : I hate spreaders. And I'll throw in space balls just for good measure. And I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. My celebrity shout-out, well, first of all, Tom Hanks is out of the hospital and we talked about him.
Chad : Woohoo.
Joel : So big ups that Forrest Gump is out of the hospital. Kevin Bacon has partnered with an agency, you probably seen on social media. But everyone knows the six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. They've used that sort of pop culture reference to say, "Hey, don't be within any degrees of anybody unless they're family, close friends, et cetera." Kevin Bacon coming through with some nice comedic relief in addition to the Mel, the Max/Mel Brooks video.
Chad : Yeah. You got to love it. In USA today, layoffs accelerate, but not everywhere, which is
wonderful. Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Nordstrom, closing stores because of the coronavirus. Moms, small mom and pop shops shutting down because of operations. And in the restaurant sector alone, there could be
a deluge of job cuts.
Joel : Airlines, cruises, casinos.
Chad : Yeah, especially in the states that have shutdown dining areas and restaurants and bars, including California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and the list goes on. This is a big switch for us because I mean, even though we work from home, I like getting out of the house and we ate out probably more than we should and we have it. So this has been a big change for us, but it's also impacted the economy and not in a very good way, right?
Joel : Not in a very good way, unless you're healthcare or I guess food delivery services. Unemployment numbers came out today, they weren't crazy. However, the next round will probably be much worse. I mean, ultimately, and regardless of where you are politically, like in the Ackman video that I referenced earlier is really good at sort of clarifying like, we need White House leadership to say, everyone, unless you're really important, healthcare, food delivery, whatever, stay home, don't interact with people, stay six feet away. That's really the only way that we're going to take a 30 day hit and then come out of this.
Joel : If we string it along, it's going to last 12, 18 months. Businesses are going to go out of business. People are going to ... It's going to be a depression, which is really scary particularly for us who make our living with the employment industry being healthy. It's great to see corporate America take the lead on some of this stuff. It's great to see countries like Germany, South Korea, even China has leveled off and come back from the depths. There is hope, and so I'm optimistic. I know you are as well. But these stories continue to be interesting to watch and these are really interesting times to be alive for sure.
Chad : Yeah. We definitely need leadership on the federal level. We have governors who are taking head leadership when they should be focusing on just their state. New York is really starting to try to set benchmarks so that at least the states around them start to follow. We really need to have leadership in that area, not to mention we can't fight what we can't see. We've tested maybe 30,000 people while South Korea has tested over 300,000 people. As we are the super power, we need to fucking act like one, step up and take care of this shit, identify it and eradicate it.
Joel : I hate to go back to the Ackman thing again, but almost any business can survive 30 days of no business, right?
Chad : Yeah.
Joel : From airlines to restaurants to everything. What he was proposing was, look, shut everything down, send everyone home. Tell everyone that you don't have to make a mortgage payment for a month. You don't have to make a rental payment. You're not foreclosing on anybody, like car payments, like federal judgement down, make sure checks are sent out to people so they can feed themselves, so they can have basic necessities taken care of. And at the end of 30 days, hopefully we can look at this and come out of it. But I'm hopeful that we don't have to have bailouts like 2008, because then you get into some real bad situations.
Joel : I know you love the Mark Cuban interview from this week where he was talking about, if you take a bailout, there is no stock buy-back. There is no lining your pockets in the future through buybacks of stock, et cetera. So yeah, I mean, I'm hopeful that 30 days we can take care of a lot of this. I think we're going there. We're not quite there yet. And I hope that we don't have to do an extensive bailout of industries like cruises and airlines. I mean, Boeing for God's sakes, what's happened there is a tragedy. They're probably going to need help regardless of what happens in the next 30 days. But I'm hopeful that we don't have to take those extremes. I'm hopeful that they can send people, employees home. They get government checks, they ground flights, and then in 30, 45 days we come back and we're in a much better place. But if not, it's going to get really, really depressionarily bad.
Chad : Yes. And isn't it interesting? Okay. So first and foremost, I definitely want to throw out to Delta Air Lines that I see them in a different light than all the other airlines because they had a $1.6 billion check that they sent out to their employees. So I put them in an entirely different light than I put in all these other airline organizations who did stock buy-backs. But it's funny that a capitalist like you is actually talking about socialism in a time of crisis. I think that this is the time to have the conversation around not saying that we need socialism, we don't need capitalism, it is a blend. And I think this is a perfect opportunity. We need a good blend of this to ensure that we are prepared for times like this. We don't need socialism. We don't need capitalism. What we need is a better hybrid of those two working together. So hopefully we can have that discussion as opposed to the black and white bullshit we've been dealing with.
Joel : Yeah. Partisanship, it's a bad time for partisanship.
Chad : It is.
Joel : And you've brought this up before and I think where I'm coming from is there are certain problems that I think are just too big for enterprise to solve. The government has to get involved in. And we can debate whether or not they need to get involved with retraining of workers, right? They're going to be displaced by automation. This is essentially a war that we're fighting. And just like Roosevelt went to Whirlpool in World War II and said, "Can you guys make B17s and Ford made tanks. This is a very similar situation where it's only in partnership with enterprise and government and public works on the local and state level that we can actually get our hands around this and defeat it. And so I am a capitalist as I think you are as well, but some things are just too big for capitalism to solve on its own.
Chad : Exactly. Which is why we need to really focus on a hybrid approach. One thing that's also interesting, I want to get into the next pieces is that Amazon is looking to hire 100,000 workers and Kroger is looking to hire people right now as well. So what we're seeing is we're seeing a big difference. I guess you could say in really our supply chain logistics around our normal food necessities, day to day necessities with these big organizations who can actually pull it off. Where before in World War II, you didn't have supply chains like this. We do now and now these organizations need help.
Joel : Yeah. And there are unique industries that didn't exist in the 40s, that exist now such as food delivery. And I know that you and I are both appreciative of some companies that are doing zero fee delivery, like one of my favorite is Chipotle. Chipotle, which I've had twice already this week. KFC are two of eight restaurants. A lot of the others just sort of locally, like El Pollo Loco, which isn't everywhere. Moe's Southwest Grill, Blaze Pizza, Del Taco. There's a myriad of them, but shout-out to them. And thank you for getting my burrito bowl for free. I appreciate that very much.
Chad : Looking at our industry, let's take a look at the overall economy thing and now how is this hitting our industry? We're hearing that ZipRecruiter is moving fast. It sees the changes in the market and it looks like it's going to stop the bleeding by axing all of their contract recruiters.
Joel : Yeah. Like I said, I've said for a long time and you have as well is that, our industry is dependent upon employment happening and hiring happening. And the vendor side of our equation is very sensitive to the economy going to shit. And some of our leaders have been here before. They see around corners, they were around in 2008. They remember what it did to our industry. So they're acting quickly to hopefully save on expenses and they sort of see what's potentially coming. And ZipRecruiter this week allegedly, I haven't gotten confirmation, I've reached out to their PR person. But they've apparently laid off all of their contract recruiters, which makes sense because there's not going to be a whole lot of hiring going on at job boards or job sites if there's no hiring going on at companies.
Chad : Yeah. I mean, it's fairly simple. ZipRecruiter's more on the small to medium business side, or at least from this side of the house. And that's where they're seeing a good amount of their revenue coming in, hence all the podcast advertising that they're doing XM. They're really looking to try to get all of those small mom and pops. But when they're having issues like they are now, the economy is, they have to do something.
Joel : Yeah, a lot of it is, it's better to be safe than sorry. In your contract people, it's much easier to let them go for a lot of different reasons, so it's no surprise. Now if we start seeing and hearing stories about the full time employees getting laid off or the marketing folks, the customer service folks, that'll be sign of bad times ahead because once those people start going, then you know things are going to slow down significantly.
Chad : Yeah. If there's no hiring, everything else just backs up and starts to wither away.
Joel : On the other side of that equation, we have Indeed, and we got wind of a ... I guess an email marketing strategy, that they've enlisted to try to get some consulting work. So we have a letter going out, and I'll try to paraphrase it real quickly. But basically they're hoping to get some contingency plan consultant work, for say the next three months or so, to help companies deal with the coronavirus and what's going on. So a couple of things that they want to discuss with their clients are recruitment plan, how to keep churn low, how to keep employees motivated and mentally stimulated, how to move to an online interview and onboarding process smoothly. How to ensure a healthy pipeline of candidates to fall back on. At least Indeed's reaction to what's going on is, okay, if people aren't buying job postings and hiring, how do we get our salespeople into the mix in terms of getting money for consulting fees. What do you think about that strategy?
Chad : Yeah, reading the email itself, it's just one of those, it feels canned and it feels like
Joel : Oh yeah.
Chad : You really don't give a fuck. There's no empathy behind what you're actually saying other than just wanting to sell something. There was no real connection that was made there. And I understand, this was sent out I'm sure via marketing, probably through their CRM. And the problem with that is you show just how inhuman the process is. If your salespeople have relationships on the other end with these people, that's when you should have real discussions. Is this a way to drive leads? Yes. In a time of need? Yes. Do I think this is very Indeed? Yeah. It's cold and it's calculated. I'm not sure that that's what ... that's not what we need right now, but it's what you should expect from Indeed.
Joel : Yeah. And this isn't their lane, right? Their lane is technology, as little connection as possible with human beings. Pay, put a credit card in, buy some ads and keywords, that's their lane. This is out of their wheelhouse, so that's no surprise there. And I do think it's worth noting, historically when things go bad economically, the biggest of our industry players are usually the hardest hit. And with me just looking at the landscape, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, the Glassdoors, fill in whatever big job site you want, they tend to be hurt the most. And a lot of it is culturally because if you have thousands of employees and you lay off a quarter of them to half of them, that's a huge culture shock that some companies never recover from.
Joel : People who were around in 2008 remember that, that disaster created Indeed, because Monster, CareerBuilder and others were not prepared for the tsunami that came in 2008. Indeed was and has become Indeed of today, which is a lot bigger and more bloated than it was 10 plus years ago. If this downturn continues, I suspect the Zips, the Indeeds and others are going to be hardest hit from it. And in contrast is that automation may see it's time in the sun if the economy continues to do what it's doing. Chad : Yes. This is the time of AI.
Joel : Let's hear a quick word from Sovren and we'll get to some more industry news.
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.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.
Chad : Mya, this is from Business Wire and HRWins. They just stocked up on 18.75 million in series c funding and that's over 50 million overall.
Joel : Yeah. So good for them. I did hear that this round was a few months ago. Whether or not that's true, they've just decided now to sort of release that. Maybe the check didn't clear until now or something. But, so this was great. Our pal, CEO and founder, Eyal Grayevsky said in an interview that the funding allows Mya to accelerate its mission to create a far more efficient and equitable job market powered by AI. And also added that while hiring is slowing down in some industries given the current crisis, we are seeing large spikes in demand from customers and healthcare, e-commerce, light industrial, call center, logistics, supply chain and other industries that have urgent high volume hiring needs. So automation baby.
Chad : Well, and then Mya has helped customers automate the sourcing process with 10 times greater engagement, deeply screen and qualify 90% plus of applicants and has scheduled over 400,000 interviews with qualified and interested candidates. That's the money maker right there baby. It's process automation. Yeah, it's done through conversational AI. But I think when we talk about chatbots, we don't give them enough credit because they are so much beyond that. Conversational AI, but process automation is huge and we've seen an increase in demand from staffing businesses and corporations, while hiring is slow as you had said, there are different industries that are definitely going to need to.
Chad : Let's say for instance, from ZipRecruiter standpoint, they have all these contractors that they are currently cutting, but yet they're going to have a need. How do they automate that? And how do they plan for the future? This is a type of tech that you need to be able to do that. These are the types of companies I see withstanding a big blow to our economy.
Joel : Yeah. And I think outside of our industry, automation and chatbots in particular are really seeing their time in the spotlight, because with calls going to airlines to reschedule and cancel flights, you have folks calling on businesses or going to websites and trying to get information. And you hear about on the news how chatbots are really enabling companies to manage the expectations of consumers to answer questions and to be there 24 hours a day and to get instant access. So you see chatbots not just in our industry, but in other industries see their time in the spotlight and that's only going to continue. It's just going to be expedited because of the tragedy that we're currently going through.
Chad : Yeah. I mean, these are the times, right? You focus and double down and that's exactly what Indeed did during the last downturn. Let's see if they can do it this time. I really think that there are other companies that are really poised to explode this time around just because they are so focused.
Joel : Yeah. The question is how big is this asteroid and how long will the winter last and who will survive.
Chad : And who can you snuggle up with?
Joel : Yeah. And fortunately, I got my dog here with. Anyway, who is man's best friend by the way. This automation thing is also coming to advertising near you. And LinkedIn this week announced a new ad platform.
Chad : Conversational ads.
Joel : Conversational ads are coming to LinkedIn, LinkedIn's current message. So basically those who have used LinkedIn before, they have traditional sort of newsfeed ads, a little banner ads on the
side. They've had in message ads or InMail ads for quite a while. Apparently they're discontinuing sort of the email, direct email in your feed from your LinkedIn message.
Chad : Thank God.
Joel : And replacing those with a more conversational advertisement.
Chad : Fuck.
Joel : So imagine getting a message but then deciding answering or having a conversation with it and saying, "Hey, would you like to attend a webinar or would you just like the white paper on this topic?" And you can select what you want to do. So it's more interactive, it's more conversational. I think it's probably one of the better products that they've come up with in quite a while from an advertising perspective. And I suspect that a lot of people in our space will gravitate toward it and try it out.
Chad : Yeah. The email piece right now, the InMail sucks. I hate it. This really just sounds like a dumbed down version of Mya and just another way to get bombarded with shit I don't want. LinkedIn's conversational messaging, it's going to get smarter, but I don't see this as a huge win overall to say it's five times better than what they used before. Well, what they used before was total shit. So anything that you would throw at the wall I think at this point would be better than what they had, so good for them. But this to me just reeks of now I'm going to be in your messenger and really kicking things out to you that way, I don't want that.
Joel : Yeah. I think a lot of it have to do with how targeted it is, how relevant it is. And that's obviously a challenge that everyone's facing. A company called Hired that's in our place, a lot of people will know was one of their success stories from the news release. Their representative said, "Hired saw a big uptake in quality candidates entering the system." This was Chase Gladden, Hired's growth marketing manager. He added the click through rate was almost five times higher, like you said, than what we'd seen previously, which goes to show the level of engagement is pretty wild. I love that he said wild. When you're able to provide multiple opportunities to click, let's get wild with LinkedIn advertising folks. Anyway, if you try it out, let us know if you find success or hate it. Hit us up at chadcheese.com.
Chad : Because we're going to bitch about it because we're going to get bombarded with
shit, I guarantee it.
Joel : Do you get a lot of InMail ads?
Chad : Probably two or three a week.
Joel : Yeah, I might get two or three a month. So for whatever reason you're getting targeted a lot more than I am.
Chad : It's their facial recognition gorgeous filter.
Joel : Also on industry news, we both know Hiring Solved pretty well. I attended their event in New York, I know their folks, Shon CEO and Jeremy, their marketing guy. Anyway, they are launching something called paths.in, I-N, which is essentially like a job site. It's very sort of mysterious right now. You can sign up for early access by going to the site. Word from Shon is that this is sort of their moonshot to try to fix work.
Chad : I'm going to have to reach out to Shon and Jeremy because I have no fucking clue what this thing is.
Joel : Let's get them on firing squad for this new business that's [crosstalk 00:39:25.17]. From Shon, this is a quote, I got an email from him was, "Paths is our moonshot. All of our tech aimed at working
out how to modernize finding work."
Chad : Means nothing to me.
Joel : What the hell does that mean?
Chad : Means nothing to me, Shon.
Joel : So I will add that as sourcing and profile data becomes more commoditized and available and accessible, a lot of these sourcing companies are going to have to figure out how to pivot or make money elsewhere. We certainly know from our conversations with Hiring Solved is that they're going more into the ATS search solution.
Chad : I got nothing.
Joel : Just make sure Chad knows what the hell it is when you do.
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Chad : Okay. So we've been given Facebook shit about all the fake news that they allow to happen. But here, this last week, Facebook was marking legitimate news articles about the coronavirus as spam due to a software bug. And it just wasn't coronavirus stuff because I had friends that were saying, "I'm getting all of these different, I mean, just different types of posts that were being marked as spam." And I did too, but mine was of a dog video because I thought everybody was sick and tired of just all this coronavirus stuff and all the political stuff. So I posted a dog video because everybody loves dogs and it got marked by Facebook as spam. So I knew something was fucked up.
Joel : Yeah. And a story you shared or we shared with each other, it was great. It had all these examples of things that have been marked as spam and one was celebrating Tom Hanks and his wife being released from the hospital. Facebook needs to get these brainiacs on this algorithm and figure that shit out because it's broken.
Chad : Yeah, I appreciate that they're trying to cut down on spam, I really am. So I've got to kind of sat back for a second and my one dog video that didn't get out to the world, I'm okay with that. Just make sure that we get less fake shit, that'd be great.
Joel : So you're okay with a little screw up when Facebook messes up their algorithm. But if McDonald's launches, chat apply and it's a little bit off, that should be total scrap.
Chad : Dude, it was not a little bit off. Are you fucking kidding me? All you did was say, "I get a text on my phone to apply into their shitty applicant tracking system." That whole system is fucked up.
Joel : You are so easy to get riled up. eQUEST had us all hot and bothered this week too.
Chad : For a brand that doesn't matter anymore, I thought it was incredibly interesting, they just put out a video. It was an ad that might've been made 15 years ago, I don't know. But it was like this cringeworthy sales dude who was hitting on some chick at the office. It was like that whole kind of spiel. And I'm like, "Dude, I don't know if Harvey Weinstein had actually helped production of this." eQUEST just doesn't matter anymore. We're talking about programmatic distribution and then these guys come out and then they're like, I don't know if they're resurfacing an old video or if this is new. I mean that's even a much higher level of dumb shit.
Joel : Yeah. It was a little bit like if you remember the old Will Ferrell skit, Night at the Roxbury, where they're sort of dancing and then they pointed the woman like you and me, we're going to dance. And then like, no, okay. So it was sort of like that vibe where you saw the guy and he comes on to this
Chad : Cringey.
Joel : ... woman and he's like, "Hey, you want some mags on the deck and whatever. And then it's like, "Oh, well she said I got to post 300 jobs." And then what? You got to get eQUEST, you do it once and you post 300, whatever it is. So the irony of this antiquated eQUEST technology talking about antiquated posting manually, like the irony was just way too thick for it to be real. It felt really just comedic and fake and sad at the same time.
Chad : It was ridiculous. It's kind of like a young lady walking home and you're like, "No dude, you get on my horse and buggy. Yeah, get in the horse and buggy, we're good." It's like, dude, this is old, pathetic technology. Why are you even talking right now?
Joel : Horse and buggy, dude, you got to get out more. We out.
Chad : We out.
SFX: That's it man. Game over man, game over.
Walken: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. With Chad, and Cheese. Brilliant.. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts 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. There's so many cheeses and not one word. It's so weird. Anywho, 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 grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.