The Chad & Cheese Podcast 2024 Recap Show
In this special year-end recap, Chad and Cheese revisit the biggest moments and most talked-about episodes of 2024. Packed with insights, hot takes, and snarky commentary, this episode delivers a curated journey through the stories that defined the HR tech industry over the past year.
Featured Highlights:
"ZipRecruiter is Lost" (March 2024)
"Workday Sucker Punches Eightfold and Beamery" (March 2024)
"Bullhorn Strikes Back at Indeed" (June 2024)
"Monster & CareerBuilder Merger" (July 2024)
"Indeed Tomfukery" (August 2024)
Chad and Cheese also hint at exciting plans for 2025, promising new voices, brash opinions, and more in-depth analysis. Whether you’re an industry insider or just love the drama, this episode is a must-listen wrap-up of a game-changing—and occasionally ridiculous—year in HR tech.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION COMETH
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 Podcast.
[music]
Chad: Hey, listener, welcome to our 2024 recap show where we rip segments out of our most listened to shows of 2024. Here's number one, "ZipRecruiter is Lost," from March of 2024.
Chad: Which is ZipRecruiter. And this is somewhat of a downer, especially if you are a client of ZipRecruiter. This next one comes from a friend of the show, Tim Sackett, where Tim writes, "Hello, Chad and cheese." No, just kidding.
Joel: Hey dipshits.
[laughter]
Chad: ZipRecruiter, yeah. Hey, assholes. [laughter] "ZipRecruiter came out today, and is asking for price increases for current clients. Our current contract is roughly $92,000. And to keep the exact same products, they now want roughly $160,000. They aren't even a top source for us, so we'll be saying goodbye." So, Joel, is this really time for an increase?
Joel: Well, if you do it right, anytime can be a time for an increase.
[laughter]
Joel: But this...
Chad: Oh, so should they have done surge pricing? Is that what I'm hearing? [laughter]
Joel: Well, I'm surging right now after talking about deal. [laughter] There's price increases and there's desperation price increases.
Chad: Geez. Yeah.
Joel: You gotta know how to boil the frog, right? You gotta know how to do it at a degree at a time. Look, Netflix is great at this. Netflix is a great service. But over time, before you know it, you're not paying $7.99 a month anymore. You're paying $14.99 and you're like, "What the hell happened?" But it didn't hurt, so you keep doing it, and pretty soon before you know it, you're paying $29 a month. And if they keep having Mike Tyson fight, it might be 99 bucks a month. But the streaks of stupidity, you don't just drop it at 73% increase or whatever it is on your customers. And I'm guessing Sackett had been a customer for a really long time.
Chad: He had to have been. Yeah.
Joel: I'm guessing, yeah. So, let's take one of our... Let's take a customer that's been around forever, that is a figurehead in the industry, a lot of people know, and let's stick him with a big price increase. And now he's gonna cancel and not come back, and tell all his recruiting buddies, "ZipRecruiter is full of shit." And then they're gonna think twice about using ZipRecruiter. I don't know how you walk back from this. It's kind of tough. We talked about their quarterly earnings recently. Life is not great at ZipRecruiter, and this is gonna make it a lot worse. You gotta learn how to boil the frog. As much as we love Indeed, right? They stuck the price increase in the terms of service like the new thing, made it look... Did it right at least. And before you know it, you're spending a lot more at Indeed than you would otherwise, but it doesn't feel like it because they didn't put a 73% increase on you overnight. So, bad move, another bad move, and the many bad moves that we talk about from ZipRecruiter on a regular basis.
Chad: So, if you take a look at it, same product, almost double the price, at least Indeed is trying to fake, giving more value with the new price increases. We all know it's bullshit, but they're trying to fake it, right? We'll see if that actually passes. But we say it all the time. The SMB market is a bitch. It is. And that's where Zip, that's where they earned their bones, man, was on the SMB side of the house. Zip entered the enterprise market way too late. Bigger accounts, less transactional, and more sustainable, right? Expanding the total addressable market just isn't that easy, especially when you're going after it this way. Not to mention, they were spending much like, and this is very reminiscent of Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, spending loads of money on Super Bowl commercials for that SMB market to try to drive those single postings, those small job packs and whatnot. But that was more on the transactional side, spending that kind of money's just not sustainable.
Chad: Now, Zip didn't do Super Bowl commercials, but they were the biggest, and I don't know if they currently are. They were the biggest spender in podcast advertising across the globe, right? So, again, to be able to meet the SMB market, you have to spend tons of cash 'cause you have to be on the top of minds of those small businesses. 'Cause they don't need you every day, right? Enterprise needs you every fucking day. So, they went kind of backwards at it. So, it's kicking their ass right now.
Joel: Yeah, in many ways. And I know I've said this before, but they're a victim of their own success. They did such a good job of "Work for the small guy," "We're for that bar owner down the street that you went to school with," that "trying to pivot into enterprise, go public, try to be bigger than what you are" has bit them in the ass. And if they're giving these price increases to sack it, I can't imagine what the bar guy down the street is thinking about the price increases.
Chad: Yeah. Well, and if you take a look at it, so when I was at Monster, 75% of the revenue that we actually received was from staffing companies. And Tim's a staffing company, right?
Joel: Yep.
Chad: So, I guarantee you what they're trying to do... Okay, let me knock on wood. What I think they're trying to do is they're trying to juice the staffing companies.
Joel: Stick it to them?
Chad: Yeah. They're trying to juice the staffing company and say, "Hey look, they can't live without us, so we're gonna make them pay." Well, I think what they're gonna find is that they can probably live without you.
Joel: It's good for Indeed.
Clip/SoundFX: 60% of the time, it works every time.
Chad: Some great moves were happening in March of 2024. Our number two podcast is, "Workday Sucker Punches Eightfold and Beamery." Check it out.
Joel: So much for Workday acquiring Beamery, at least not yet. [laughter] Workday is acquiring HiredScore, an AI-powered talent solutions provider to enhance talent management. The deal aims to offer a comprehensive talent acquisition and internal mobility solution, leveraging responsible AI and focusing on human-centric decision-making. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by April 30th, subject to regulatory approval, of course. Chad, your thoughts?
Chad: So, congrats to Athena Karp and the HiredScore team who stayed disciplined and focused on the problem they were solving this entire time. HiredScore never played the "we can do it all" vaporware tam expansion game, which I've always respected. I've always respected that. What this all comes down to though is one thing: Timing. We've seen some big names, Rush, Generative AI products into the market to meet OpenAI and ChatGPT. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all either launching GenAI into the market or they're taking steps to do so. So, how does a HiredScore cut through all of those big names and the noise? The easy answer is they can't compete long term. They can't with those big names and those deep pockets. So, this is a perfect time to sell, right? This is the perfect time to sell. The question is, why HiredScore? When we take a look at like the Beamerys and the EightFolds and some of those other companies that are out there, why HiredScore and why now? What do you think?
Joel: Because AI bleeds into everything. And if you are a public company like Workday is and you're not talking about AI, introducing AI, using AI, profiting from AI, you're gonna be left; you're gonna be left out by the market. Shareholders and people who buy the stock are... I guarantee you, board meetings at Workday were like, "Where's our AI shit? Where's our AI? We need AI."
[laughter]
Joel: And somebody said, "Oh, well, we're working on that internally." And finally someone said, "Shit, it's not working. We need to at least buy something with AI in it, and we can announce on our earnings call," which wasn't awesome, by the way, "that we are now... [laughter] we've acquired this itty-bitty AI company." The market wasn't that impressed. Apparently, the stock... Well, it was earnings. I don't know. It wasn't AI but it was more earnings thing. Just, there wasn't a lot of people impressed that they had bought an AI company with 125 or 50 employees. But why did they do it? Because the market says, "If you're not AI, you're not with it, man. You're not hip." It's like the '90s: You need a dot com, you better have a website, you better have some e-commerce shit. It's just the future... The past is present now.
Chad: And when ADP applies pressure like they have over the past few months, and being able to talk about the GenAI that they're putting out and the data that they're actually crunching, not to mention... We're talking about HiredScore has mature matching algorithms complete with what Athena would call "defendability" or "explainability," right? Which is something that Workday does not have. [chuckle] And one of the reasons why they're in court, which we'll talk about.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But this is also interesting from the standpoint of a buying binge. Does this start SAP, Oracle, ADP? Will the dominoes start to fall? And then you look at the companies that were sucker-punched in this case. Eightfold, they have close to $400 million in funding.
Joel: Yep.
Chad: Limited vendors out there can afford them. This is one that is off the table now. This is off the table. Now they're even limited more. Beamery, 223 million, right? There's no way in hell they're buying Beamery. Why? Right? And then the vendor that I think has the most risk that we've talked about, for a while we haven't talked about here lately, is Textio. They have $42.5 million in funding, but again, these are all companies I believe are at high risk with tech and the velocity that's out there today. If they don't sell, they're gonna be worthless.
Joel: Yeah, yeah, you're:
Clip/SoundFX: Just the team.
Joel: HiredScore didn't take any official money VC-wise. From my understanding, they had kind of a sugar daddy or a few people that had money that kept them in the early days going. So, this was...
Chad: Rich friends and family, yes.
Joel: This was a sweet deal for Workday. Very little risk. Very probably small price tag compared to what you're talking about Eightfold. They do the deal. They probably get some employees. I think Athena's probably gonna move on after her year contract or however long she's there. I don't see her yet.
Chad: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Joel: I don't see her enjoying her time at a huge ass company like Workday.
Chad: [laughter] Yeah, yeah.
Joel: And look, Google's Gemini, I'm sure you saw this, hit a huge speed bump with its graphics and producing popes that were Black and Vikings that were... People lost their minds. And this is Google. This is like, who was testing this? How did they not catch that? And so I think there's real questions about if Google can't get AI right, how can a little company in the workspace get it right? I have my questions, but for Workday, it was a market situation where, "Let's do little risk. We can say we have an AI company... " A lot of our network lost their minds over this deal. They're like revolutionary, amazing...
Chad: [laughter] Yes, yes.
Joel: And people that we both respect. And I would caution everybody and throw some cold water on this deal and say, look, if you think that Workday, a 20,000 person company, is gonna change after this acquisition, eh, I don't know. Maybe. I'll be surprised if they do. I think they're gonna fade into the ethos of Workday. They're gonna get thrown into this machine when they're used to this startup culture. I think Workday, this is gonna just be another day at Workday. It's a huge deal for Athena and her team. Hopefully they got paid, they can go do other things, go work for a big company like Workday. For Eightfold, it's awful. For anyone that's like Unicorn-ish AI thing, it's bad because the market didn't love this. Workday could have bought one of those companies. They obviously decided not to; took a much safer bet. I just, I think at the end of the day, Workday's not gonna change and HiredSolve is gone.
Chad: Yeah. You take a look at any big companies...
Joel: HiredScore, sorry. I get them mixed up. "Solve," "Score."
Chad: You take a look at all of the big companies, let's just say the acquisition of Taleo. That thing's almost dead, right? And again, you see a lot of the bigger companies really suffocating a lot of the platforms that they've bought, and then they go away, right? Taleo is gonna go away. You take a look at Connexa, right? BrassRing... A lot of these big companies that were big in our space were acquired by larger organizations, and then they were just fricking... They were strangled. Not in the crib, by the way. But yeah, they were strangled.
Joel: Acquisitions are hard. You get company cultures, you get politics, you get things that you are not used to. Look, we both applauded when Andreea sold Opening to iCIMS.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Would either of us say that iCIMS is greatly different today than it was when they bought her company? I can't.
Chad: I would say from a technology standpoint, internally, yeah.
Joel: Yeah? Greatly changed?
[overlapping conversation]
Chad: You've seen some of the things...
Joel: You think so?
Chad: What's that?
Joel: Greatly? Like, greatly changed the business?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Okay. Well, maybe...
Chad: Yeah, 'cause, yeah, you've gotta understand what that foundational platform actually did for a lot of the other platforms, right, that they were actually working off of already. So, yeah, yeah. You can see, that's the thing, is that if you have a HiredScore like this, and we can start to kinda push into the next Workday lawsuit, they needed to do something. Their AI was already on trial.
Joel: Yeah. Or at least give the impression that we're doing something. We'll see. Time will tell if this really does change the company. And iCIMS is a much smaller company than Workday, by the way. Workday is a...
Chad: Oh God, yeah, yeah.
Joel: A big, big company. All right. All right. Well, time will tell, I guess, on this one. But we agree, Athena, great job. Great, hopefully, payout. And then in a year or so, you can go do whatever the hell you want. Good for you.
[laughter]
Clip/SoundFX: That escalated quickly.
Joel: All right, let's go to lawsuits. Derek Mobley has filed a lawsuit against Workday, alleging that its AI-powered hiring software discriminates based on race, age, and disability, violating federal laws. Workday denies wrongdoing, stating it ensures its products comply with laws. The case highlights concerns about AI bias in hiring. But wait, Chad, there's more. HireVue has been partially relieved from a class action lawsuit in Illinois. The court dismissed claims that HireVue profited from selling the data, focusing on software sales instead. The case highlights legal complexity surrounding biometric-data-use in hiring. Methinks a trend is developing, Chad. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Yes. So, Workday, we're just talking about it, hence the HiredScore acquisition. What Workday needs at this point is a show of contrition through this acquisition with a "will do better" statement, and then pay a pissy little fine. And thank the gods, this case was not filed in the EU. Because a 6% global revenue fine for Workday would've cost them $420 million. So, hopefully HiredScore helps Workday get through this shit together. So, I see this almost as an optics play as well. It does make sense from a tech play. I don't know if it'll actually work out that way for Workday, but we'll see. Show of contrition: "Sorry, we did wrong. We actually bought these guys over here who understand AI, they can explain AI," et cetera, et cetera. Now on the HireVue side of the house, collecting biometric data on candidates. Illinois was the first state to craft what I would like to call an "anti-HireVue" legislation. Right?
Chad: And then Massachusetts, the plaintiff, Jesus, claims that CVS... This is not a claim against HireVue. This is what all companies should be aware of right now. The plaintiff claims CVS, not HireVue, CVS violated state law by subjecting him to an AI-powered interview, HireVue, that analyzed his facial expressions, eye contact, voice annotation, inflection, et cetera, et cetera. So, notice that once again, that was not against HireVue, it was against CVS. The bigger issue, I cannot imagine... See, we know people who work there. We know people who have worked there. I cannot imagine CVS would be happy with the prospect that HireVue is collecting biometric information on CVS' candidates. So, the question is, is that actually happening behind the scenes? Just because that the biometric data product isn't available, or at least I don't believe it is anymore, doesn't mean that HireVue doesn't have the capability to actually collect that biometric information.
Chad: And that to me is the scary part if you are a CVS. Not only couldn't you be taken to court because of this, but wait a minute, are they collecting data that we don't know that they're collecting? And what are they using that data for? Right? So, then I reached out to a few practitioners and asked them about this, and they've freaked the fuck out. One said, it is going to be an interesting case to follow, as it could have huge implications on the tech space. No kidding. It's a fine line between... Listen, it's a fine line between biometric data collection, sentiment analysis, which we hear a lot of companies talk about, and lie detectors.
Joel: The recent news that Washington really cares about this issue is promising. It's an election year. We've talked about the chaos that could ensue with deepfakes, phone calls from Joe Biden that aren't Joe Biden. That really scares politicians a lot. Well, guess who makes the laws? The politicians. So, in the last 60 days, they have moved really fiercely [laughter] to make sure that Meta and some of these big tech companies... Number one, it's illegal now to do that. So, the FTC now, if you're a candidate and you deepfake politicians, you could be in trouble. We're not sure what those penalties are, but at least the government has said that's illegal. So, the fact that the government cares about these issues, to me, is a good sign. I don't know where it will go or how fast it will evolve, but Washington has their attention on this issue.
Joel: I don't know who's representing these these cases. I don't know if it's Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, and our friends Baron & Budd, but lawyers smell blood in the water. They smell an opportunity where they can go after companies. Like, "CVS has more money than HireVue, so let's go after them." Workday has a lot of money. LinkedIn, the lawsuit with them. So, I think it's more lawyers targeting, looking at these laws and saying, "Who can we get?" and "These are the top of the list." We need a healthy balance of laws so that everyone knows the rules. And we need, I think, a greater certification, a greater sort of third party that has everyone's trust that we're doing it the right way.
Joel: And FairNow and companies like that, I think, are in a really great position to say, "Look, we've worked with the government. We have all the AI stuff. We're making sure that every company is dotting their I's and crossing their T's. So, if you take us to court, we are certified FairNow or whoever it is, that they can go into court and say, "Look, we're the law of the land. We're doing this the right way." Until then, it's still the Wild West. We're gonna talk about more and more lawsuits. More and more customers like CVS are gonna be worried about using vendors that have AI because they're gonna worry about, "Am I gonna be dragged into court because I'm using this vendor?" Well, yeah, you are. And by the way, a lot of these terms and services on these companies say, "If you use our shit, you're at fault if it goes to court." Like, "We're not at fault if you use our stuff." So, something's gotta come to a head.
Chad: HireVue specifically did that.
Joel: HireVue specifically.
Chad: HireVue specifically did that, yes.
Joel: Yeah. Yeah. And more and more will, because nobody wants to be sued. That's not fun. It's bad for business, so to speak. So, I think government giving a shit about this is a good thing. And companies that are dedicated to like "Let's make sure everyone's following the rules" or "Let's certify people" is a good thing. But until then, there's gonna be some stories like this, and more and more stories like this because there's money to be made.
Chad: This next segment is from June of 2024 and is entitled, "Bullhorn Strikes Back at Indeed." Joel Lalgee and Tim Meehan step in for a great analysis on Bullhorn's Textkernel acquisition.
Chad: This is a pretty big one. This week, Bullhorn acquired Textkernel, an industry leader in sourcing AI solutions, better known as one of the biggest vendors in the world for parsing and matching, which is not an easy fucking business. Plus, longtime sponsor of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Textkernel's, their HQ is in Amsterdam and they power over 2,000 customers globally. And these customers, for the most part, are big vendors that we all know and love, that we think are doing the parsing and the matching. They're not. Textkernel is the one who's doing it behind the scenes, including eight of the top 10 staffing agencies worldwide. We were just talking about staffing. A longtime trusted partner to the staffing and recruitment industry, and one of the companies who have performed the heavy lift for many of the biggest tech platforms in the industry. So, before we get into comments, Joel, let's welcome back the staffing and tech leader, Tim Meehan, for his thoughts.
Tim Meehan: All right, guys. So, here's the deal. Years ago, I said that staffing companies had to become technology companies. I've worked for them and they don't understand. And now, acquisition from Bullhorn buying Textkernel, holy crap. The staffing companies and a lot of other techs are all using Textkernel to do their matching. Is Bullhorn gonna pull it off the market? And you want Textkernel, you want a matching algorithm, you got to use Bullhorn? That's gonna be a big game changer for the staffing industry 'cause if they're not using Bullhorn, they're gonna have to. And if they are using Bullhorn, quite frankly they've got them by the short hairs, and it's gonna force... It's like, what is that Japanese term? Seppuku. It's like it's gonna force them to cut their belly open. Either they become subservient to the Bullhorns of the world, or they become pure plain niche and they don't even try and do automated matching.
Chad: So, there's a choice, Joel. There's a choice. [laughter] You can continue to stay with Indeed or you can go with Bullhorn. Sounds like they're gonna have tech. It could help out. What do you think?
Joel Lalgee: As a former Bullhorn user, I feel bad for all the people who [laughter] are gonna have to use Bullhorn with that prediction 'cause I... Look, I think how you add on these AI tools and integrate is huge. Just in general, I think any AI tool, it all comes down to adoption and how people use them. And that's always the big question for me. Anytime I hear AI conversations, I don't even know if people are aware, the difference between automation and then AI, how to use tools, how to use these tools anyway. But I think it seems like a great move for Bullhorn. And obviously for Textkernel, it's gonna obviously open up more clients as well. But I don't know. I feel like Bullhorn has a better deal out of that one. What do you think?
Chad: Well, first and foremost, I guess, say congrats to Gerard and the Textkernel team. This is the type of tech that has performed, as I said earlier, some of the heaviest technical lifts in the history of recruiting, which is why there aren't many successful companies in the space. A quick and brief history of Textkernel, in 2015, CareerBuilder acquired 60% of Textkernel, and they liked them so much that CareerBuilder, then owned by Daddy Warbucks' Apollo, went all in and they acquired Textkernel in 2019. Then, Apollo started selling off bits and pieces of CareerBuilder, and Textkernel was sold to Main Capital in September of 2020. Then, Textkernel expanded their footprints into the US by acquiring parsing and matching powerhouse Sovren in November of 2021.
Chad: Now, I'm saying all of this because it's obvious that Textkernel tech is appetizing for many companies. The question is, can Bullhorn pull off an acquisition and technical execution of this size when players like CareerBuilder and Apollo just fucking fumbled the ball? The execution will be fucking massive. And I'm not 100% sure that Bullhorn can pull it off, but I hope they do. To Tim's point and our earlier Indeed staffing conversation, if Bullhorn isn't positioning themselves as an Indeed killer, they're doing it wrong. Staffing organizations spend tens of millions of dollars annually to attract candidates, and many of those candidates are already in their goddamn resume database.
Chad: So, now, again, if Bullhorn is smart, they will use the parsing and matching in every resume in a staffing firm's database. As soon as a rec is posted, they'll match it to those candidates with a high degree of match. Then they should automatically be invited to apply through email, text, or whatever messaging they choose. That will then lessen the need for the Indeeds of the world, plus Bullhorn can reach out to candidates that are going stale, to nudge them to add skills, expertise, and just build up their profile. But like I said, it's gonna be a massive undertaking, and I'm just not sure. I'm sure we'll talk to Bullhorn, but I'm just not sure they're up to this task. It is big. Not to mention, will they make Textkernel under Bullhorn, or will they keep it as a separate product? Because they already have a humongous portfolio, and part of that portfolio are other applicant tracking systems, right? So, it's gonna be an interesting dance. What do you think?
Joel Lalgee: So, you're saying then, so Bullhorn basically uses all of their resumes in all of their clients' databases as well. So, then when you open up a rack, it will match from not just your own database that you have, but everybody's, right? Is that what I'm hearing?
Chad: I didn't go that far, but that would be smart if staffing companies, especially smaller staffing companies, could work together to actually build pools like data lakes, is really what it is. But, yeah, I don't think the Adeccos or the Randstads out there would do something like that. I think they have big enough databases where they don't have to. It'll just be forced to be able to go into their database and the candidates that they already have there.
Joel Lalgee: Yeah. Well, look, I just... The one thing I wonder with everything right now is, in general, just outside of even staffing and recruitment, in general, everybody's mailboxes are being blown up. And candidates are the same way. They're getting the same... They're getting all of this. So, I just wonder if the challenge coming up is actual recruitment, and how do you stand out? Right? 'Cause I think finding candidates, to me, finding data nowadays is easier and you can do it pretty quick. But it's like reaching people, getting good with messages. Like you said, texting, calling, that to me, it's just, I don't see how we don't create a big problem with just candidates in general. Or what happens when candidates who are already... I do a lot of social media content. One of the biggest, one of the points that goes viral all the time is if I bash particularly LinkedIn and Indeed. If I say, "Are you sick of LinkedIn and Indeed? Here are three other platforms," those videos always go viral. So, I'm like, does this just compound? Do these tools, they just compounding that? And then how do you... Great, you found the person. How do you really even get a hold of them nowadays? That's what I'm wondering over the next year, 18 months.
Chad: Yeah, so I think at the end of the day, first and foremost, ZipRecruiter had it right years ago. And then they just went off the rails when they went IPO.
Joel Lalgee: ZipRecruiter had it right...
Chad: Way back in the day. [laughter] Not lately, not lately.
Joel Lalgee: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chad: What they did was, they actually had this model where they would go into their database and they would literally, they would invite individuals who matched up against the requirements of a requisition, right? Made a lot of sense. What they were looking to do, and they never did, was just create slates, the ones that are higher match in quality, then just deliver 10, right? Instead of delivering 30 or 50 or 300 to a recruiter, which is not manageable. I really think that if you get a really good score match up against the actual requirements and what the skill sets that you need, what can happen at that point is a recruiter gets more time to actually focus on interacting with that individual, right?
Joel Lalgee: Yeah.
Chad: One of the things right now is way too much administrivia, not to mention candidates are going into black holes because recruiters don't have enough time to respond to all of them. And in this case, if you get 10 or 15, you can actually take the time to be more human with those individuals. So, yeah, I think they've already applied for a job within your portfolio of companies, so more than likely you have contact information. And if they're smart, they're getting phone number, they're getting Messenger, whatever their chosen form of communication is, and they're gonna be reaching out to them. Then, you've got, and this is the fun part, to get into the chatbots of the world, the Talkpushes, the Paradoxes and whatnot, that can actually help nudge candidates not just for the interview, but also for that first day at work, and to get feedback and whatnot. And from my understanding, and talking to Adam Godson when he was at Cielo, not just now when he's at Paradox, but when he was at Cielo billing these systems, their ghosting went down dramatically just from those little nudge messages, which is pretty amazing. So, I think there's great opportunity here.
Joel Lalgee: I want to know with this validation of skills, 'cause I know skills-based hiring keeps everything up.
Chad: That's hard. That's hard.
Joel Lalgee: But I'm like, this is the other issue which I see is, on the other end, you've got candidates now that have tools as well that can make perfect resumes, they can match up to the job. At some point, where is the skills validation? And then how are you defining what skills are for jobs? How do you actually... Yeah, but for some of these jobs, you really need skills as well 'cause maybe that's... [chuckle]
Chad: Yeah. These companies have to understand they've been talking about skills-based hiring forever and they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Because first and foremost, they don't know what skills it actually takes within that job. Because what they haven't done is they haven't actually taken a look at the tasks that are performed by that job on a daily basis. When you do that, you understand that a job is literally just an amalgamation of tasks, right?
Joel Lalgee: Yeah.
Chad: Can the individual perform those tasks? And then what are the skills that are tied to those tasks? There's tech out there today that can do that. Tadeo, which again, I'm an advisor for, just to be transparent out there. But they are more performance-driven. You have to demonstrate that you can perform that task in a simulation before, boom, you get that skill, right? So, it's becoming more readily available and understandable, but the companies have to do the job upfront of even understanding what the job looks like for the person who's doing it task by task by task, and then they can understand the skills. Until then, they're literally just bullshitting everybody, I believe.
Joel Lalgee: So, I got defined skills and then they need it. I think right now they've got to get buy-in from candidates to get that data even. And I like the idea of inviting people to jobs. I like it when, like you said, when that idea first came out. I get invited all the time by LinkedIn to do different things. And it's so off every single time. So, I think they got to figure out a way of, "How do we gamify getting the right data even from candidates?" Otherwise, you're just gonna end up with just wrong matches on both ends. And then be like, "Yeah, it didn't work."
Chad: LinkedIn's matching tech is shit. I mean, they have more data on me than anybody does. They should be able to match me up very well. And they do a shit job.
Joel Lalgee: I get host of like Olive Garden, 'cause I have "podcast host" in my bio. I'm a hostess at Olive Garden. [laughter] But that's it. And this is where I think... One of the things I noticed with any kind of AI tools, one of the things I've noticed really quickly, is you have like one shot with users like myself, recruiters. And if they don't see, "Saves time, money," or "It works," you miss in that one shot. They just write you off as it not working altogether. And so this is where it's like, you have to... You got to deliver on that and...
Chad: Yeah, you do. You got to remember, though, AI is a puppy. I mean, it's gonna piss on the carpet a few times. You got to give it a little grace, but here's where TA leaders need to stiffen their spine, and all of these processes are gonna be happening behind the scenes, and they're gonna be delivered up to the recruiters. So, this should not be a decision made by the recruiters. It should be made by leadership, right? Now, recruiters should be a part of the process to ensure that it actually becomes more fluid; we get the best data to be able to train on the right data for the right jobs in the right positions in the right regions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, we can't... And I'll just give you an example. At Randstad, we had so many people who had LinkedIn seats, who weren't even using LinkedIn seats. And we were pushing them off. Oh, we almost had a fucking riot. And it's like, "Look, you guys aren't even using this and money's being spent," right?
Joel Lalgee: [laughter] Crazy.
Chad: Yeah. So, it's just like, you have to stiffen your spine. And I was there and I was like, "Fuck those guys." I don't care. We can find new recruiters. If they can't use the tools that you're giving them and then they bitch when you take them away because they're not using them, it's... My point is, leadership has to lead, right? And they're not leading today, period.
Joel Lalgee: Yeah. No, I agree, 100%.
Chad: On that being said, I gotta say:
Clip/SoundFX: Ma, the meatloaf!
[laughter]
Joel Lalgee: Yeah.
Chad: This next segment is from July, Monster and CareerBuilder merger. So much juicy meat on this one. Give it a listen.
Joel: Well, let's see, what could we possibly talk about this week as the first news item on the show? CareerBuilder and Monster are merging, Chad. I don't know if you heard about this. Led by Apollo, the deal aims to combine their strengths and create a stronger job board. Apollo will be controlling a shareholder, meaning Randstad who acquired Monster back in 2016 for $429 million, is essentially pulling out of the job board biz. The transaction, subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in Q3. Again, nice of them to announce bad news or interesting news or controversial news right before the 4th of July Holiday. Chad, I'm sure you have a few thoughts on the CareerBuilder-Monster merger as a former Monster employee.
Chad: Yeah. And also former Randstad employee. Kind of weird. What happens when two dumpster fires merge? Well, and they create a larger dumpster fire. Every single day Randstad walks into a big client meeting. They talk about fusing technology into staffing and into next gen hiring. Now, when they leave those meetings, after they close the door, they can hear an eruption of laughter knowing that no savvy business person takes them serious after buying Monster. And instead of reviving the brand, they ran the tech, the brand, and the market trust right into the ground. Then you have Apollo Global Management, who acquired CareerBuilder and successfully chopped it up into little pieces and sold it for an estimated, Whisper is about 10x the investment. Apollo still owns the hollow corpse of CareerBuilder, its brand tech assets and candidate database, which they have failed to unload on a dumb sucker enough to buy it, right, or somebody dumb enough to buy it.
Chad: So, on one hand, you have Randstad, a major staffing organization trying to unload Monster brand of yesteryear and gain back the prospect of not getting laughed at at client meetings, and when they want to talk about future tech. And on the other hand, you have Apollo who are trying to sell the bones, the cadaver, of CareerBuilder. So, don't be fooled kids. It's not a saver for Indeed and LinkedIn. It's just another Apollo scheme to sell two rotting corpses instead of one. That's pretty much it. It seems simple to me. And the whole timing thing, if they wanted to make this a big deal, two things. It came out on the Randstad press side of the house, and it came out before a big holiday, which, generally, you're trying to bury things. So, that to me is odd.
Joel: Yeah.
Clip/SoundFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Joel: So, quick question, we've been talking about Indeed getting into staffing, Recruit Holdings, obviously, and Randstad is a competitor to Recrute. Wouldn't it seem like they reviving Monster to maybe stick it to Indeed, or is this a "We need to really focus on staffing because Recruit Holdings and Indeed are coming for us, let's dump the dead weight"? Which obviously happened, but does that surprise you at all that with Recruit Holdings and Indeed coming after all the staffing firms that Randstad strategically didn't do something different than sell Monster 'cause they had that property?
Chad: Yeah, I think Monster leadership finally found out that they're not a tech company and they have no fucking clue what they're doing in this space. They had Monster under its own umbrella and kind of shielded for a year or two, and they couldn't do anymore because the losses were so great. They were trying to do all this crazy product fluffy shit that just didn't equal revenue or the prospect of future revenues. So, I think literally this is just, "Let's get rid of this fucking dog." Apollo knows how to cut up in pieces and sell shit, that's what they do for a living, "let's give them this other carcass with the carcass that they have, and maybe two carcasses sell, who knows?"
Joel: Well, here are my seven takeaways from the acquisition, Chad. Number one...
Chad: Oh, God, is this Stepstone? [laughter]
Joel: I promised myself I wouldn't. If it leads that way, so be it. But I do not have Stepstone in my seven thing. Number one...
Chad: Okay, okay.
Podcast Intro: This is big news for people of a certain age that have been doing this for quite a while. If you're under 40, this is a big nothing burger. No one of us, way younger than us, cares about this shit. Only old people like you, me, and Durbin, and Rothberg, and people like that really care about this stuff. So, number one, this is not a huge news in the big scheme of things. Number two, Scott Gutz is finally gone. Just like they did with Ferguson at CareerBuilder, it may take a year. He may transition to an advisory board guy, but Scott Gutz, as I think we've both been expecting or predicting for a while, will finally be gone. The CPA that's running CareerBuilder and crunching the numbers will be the leader of this organization long-term.
Chad: He's a facilities management guy. [laughter]
Joel: Whatever, man. He's a bean counter. Apollo loves that shit. It's like, "How can we squeeze more profit out of this turkey?" Number three, if you're currently an employee of Monster, you better be updating your resume, your LinkedIn profile. If you have a duplicitous position, that your time on this world is running out. Jump ship as soon as you can. Apollo gutted CareerBuilder, they're gonna gut Monster as well. So, if you're employed by Monster, keep that in mind and update your resume. Number five, oh sorry, number four. I love that they talked about regulatory issues, antitrust issues coming up in this case, as if this were 2004, there will be no antitrust issues.
Chad: Maybe, yeah. Maybe 15... Yeah, 15, 20 years ago, yeah.
Joel: That's silly. It's almost like, "We're so big, there might be issues." No, there's not gonna be any antitrust issues on this case. [laughter] Number five, the big question from a marketing standpoint is, do they keep both brands? Do they morph into one, and which one? A little bit of a prediction. But I think in the near term, nothing will change, let's call it a year. But I do think eventually the CareerBuilder brand will go away. Monster is still a decent brand. You can do something with Monster. CareerBuilder, there's nothing you can do. With Monster, you can kind of do some stuff, be cool, be hip, be edgy, connect with the kids. So, I think Monster is going to be the brand that they go with. Number six, I think they will, in addition to brand, condense all the jobs, similar to how Indeed postings are on SimplyHired. You're gonna see cross-posting. I think they'll probably try to increase the price on a double posting from that in that way.
Joel: And number seven, I'm sorry, Chad, yeah, StepStone is gonna eventually be the choir of Monster [laughter] as it becomes one single brand. Or they could take this Turkey IPO, who knows? Roll the dice and see what happens. Or they could look at rinse and repeating, and saying, "Well, okay, ZipRecruiter stock is now $4 or whatever it's gonna be in two, three years. Maybe we buy ZipRecruiter and bring them in the fold. Maybe Talent.com, which has not made a lot of waves lately. Maybe we suck them up." Yeah, this is a rinse and repeat for Apollo. They've made seven to 10X, according to rumors out there. And why not continue the trend and just buy job boards, suck them dry, and then just feed off the revenue that's there? Because all these companies are in every budget for a lot of companies, and companies just approve the budget every year, and this money just keeps flowing in. It's a nice little cash cow.
Chad: So, I have some listener comments around some of that. First and foremost, I gotta give props to Leah Daniels who said they're gonna ditch both brands and go with Jobs.com, which Monster owns. Then we had other listener comments and these were similarities between the Monster plus CareerBuilder. This is more like VHS plus Betamax. Friendster plus MySpace. PalmPilot plus Blackberry. Or your favorite Cheesman, White Castle plus Waffle House. That's right kids.
Joel: Oh, that's sexy.
Chad: That is what listeners think of this merger. And again, I think it's funny because there are some people that are pundits that are out there saying, "This is a data play," and I think that's the funniest shit ever. These companies do not have any data that anybody gives two fucks about and/or they can't get somewhere else. So, have a nice day.
Joel: Yeah. Some perspective, these were one time both the number one site in the US if not globally. They were both valued at over a billion dollars.
Chad: One and two.
Joel: They both sold recently for about 500 million. What do you think the value is now? I'm gonna say, if they're at a hundred million, it'd be giving them a little bit more than they are probably worth.
Chad: This one is called "Indeed Tomfuckery" and is from August of 2024. You knew Indeed had to make this list, right? Give it a listen.
Chad: So, we've seen Indeed's traffic waning, revenues waning, new business models like CPA and CPSA waning and then imploding. Then we hear about Indeed Flex marching into temp staffing. Then Indeed announces charging for API calls at three bucks a clip. And now, wait a minute, and now the following excerpt of an email comes from Eric Epling, strategic partnership manager at Indeed. And that was sent to us from a niche job board. Eric asks, "Would you," the job site, they're actually asking the job site, "be open to a content for traffic exchange? This would mean that we, Indeed, may not be able to compensate you, but your job site would benefit from top tier jobs while we receive traffic from your platform. Also, please note that our strategy now focuses on," get ready kids, "healthcare, tech, financing and accounting, and transportation jobs." What do you think about this, Joel? Sound a little fishy?
[video playback]
Joel: So, a little history lesson, kids, 'cause I know that's what you come to the show for. [laughter] Outside of SEO, Indeed's backfill model was really what ramped up the company to a different stratosphere. There was a time when pretty much any job board had Indeed backfill. There were very few that didn't. They were the only one that really offered it. You got paid on a click. It gave you content where you didn't have content before. I knew job boards that fired their whole sales and marketing staff because they could just supply jobs through Indeed. And a big problem with job boards is we need jobs, we need employers. Well, Indeed came along and said, "Hey, you don't need postings. You can get them from us." And by the way, this was a really nice Trojan horse where everyone that put backfill had a little link at the bottom that said "jobs provided by Indeed" or whatever. And that jobs link, guess what, was hot linked back to indeed.com. Well, Google loves backlinks. So, basically Indeed, I won't say "tricked," but they leveraged all these backfill relationships to get better search rankings, which ultimately tanked every job board that had enjoyed SEO rankings in the past.
Joel: It was very successful. I'm sure it was a pain to manage. There was probably click fraud. And fast forward to today, you have competition from the likes of Pando, Taoru, every programmatic solution out there. And they kind of ended it as far as... We talked about it. But then they launched these channels, healthcare, tech, and it's basically like a way to call their customers like, "Hey. Hey, hospital, regional hospital in Toledo. We have a new healthcare channel. You need to spend more money with us because we have these great partnerships." And now they want you to partner without money, as if they have content that can't be gotten anywhere else.
Chad: Exactly!
Joel: "Just 'cause we're Indeed, you should want to partner with us for no cost."
Chad: Top tier.
Joel: They've lost the script. They don't know what they're doing. It's more spaghetti at the wall. They have a few hits but mostly misses. None of this really makes sense to me. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Well, first off, you, the job site, get top tier talent, AKA send your job seeker directly to Indeed for no compensation. No compensation. And then they force the job seeker to register, meaning, you just handed over traffic and a job seeker registration for fucking free. So, if you're currently receiving compensation from Indeed, how long do you think it's gonna last? That's the big question. Also, even if you are selling clicks to Indeed, they're paying you to siphon your job seekers and build their database, right? Back to the quote, "only focusing on partnering with healthcare, tech, finance and accounting, and transportation jobs." Siphoning job seekers from niche job sites are the key.
Chad: Now, we've talked about this on the show for years. Job sites that are experts in specific spaces, they are much more valuable. In this case, Indeed sees that. They see your model, they understand your model, and they want to siphon it dry. They wanna drink your fucking milkshake, kids. So, at the end of the day, back in the day, Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the general job sites ruled the world. Now, Indeed sees that's not the case, right? So, all of those organizations, those niche job sites, companies understand that quality is better than quantity. The market has shifted. The landscape has shifted. And, last but not least, if you are a job site and you need content, there are plenty of places to go to get great job content. And if you're not sure where, message me on LinkedIn. I will hook you up with some great contacts to be able to get you great top-tier content so you don't have to play this bullshit game with Indeed.
Joel: Chad Sowash will make sure you do not fall for the banana in the tailpipe.
Clip/SoundFX: You're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe.
[laughter]
Joel: Oh, Indeed. Oh, Indeed.
Chad: There it is, kids. 2024 is over. Joel and I are excited about all of the new voices we have planned and bringing you in 2025, along with analysis and obviously brash opinion. Thanks again for listening. We out.
Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.