The year that was 2021 didn't turn out exactly as expected. Business travel didn't come back, the Delta variant threw a big monkey wrench in the party that should've been and we'll have to push pause on another Roaring '20s. The industry, however, kept us talking. We were busier than ever, and these are five episodes that really stood out in a year of standouts. This Best of has it all: Indeed, CareerBuilder, feisty recruiters, dumb employers and, of course, the ZipRecruiter IPO. Here's to a great year with an eye toward 2022. Enjoy!
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INTRO (21m 28s):
`Yes sir! Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman 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. irls.
Chad (32s):
Welcome to the Chad and Cheese, top five picks of 2021. Joel's picks. That's right. Joel, cut his nap short today to curate this show just for you. Take it away Cheeseman.
Joel (45s):
One of the things I look forward to every year is the Superbowl. Yeah, I enjoy the game and I'm sure this is the Brown's year, but I also enjoy the commercials and I really enjoy the commercials when they include companies in our industry. While the days of CareerBuilder and Monster dropping major coin on ads is over Indeed and Fiverr took the plunge in 2021. And this was our hot take on the move. Enjoy. I don't know what that means. Let's get to the news shall we?
Chad (1m 20s):
Topics!
Joel (1m 21s):
Chad, you remember 1999, don't you and the first Superbowl ad?
Chad (1m 25s):
Yeah!
Joel (1m 26s):
You remember it very well and you've, I think you've told the history lesson pretty, pretty well in the past, but Indeed has decided they're going to get into the arms race. So they've announced the first half of the big game, they're doing a 30 second ad, reportedly at a cost of roughly $5.6 million. There'll be utilizing the hashtag #nowhiring in coordination with the ad, which means every job board in staffing agency in the world is going to be trolling the hashtag #nowhiring up until the game, going for the warm and fuzzy. Actually it's a 60 second spot. Forgive me so they're going to drop roughly 10 plus million on this thing.
Chad (2m 6s):
Have you seen it?
Joel (2m 7s):
I have not seen it. It's warm and fuzzy, right?
Chad (2m 10s):
Yeah. I've seen it. And it depicts everyday people overall. The big theme behind it is, it's called "The Rising," but the song Rise Up is behind it, it's playing in the music bed. It's very well done. It tugs at the heart strings and the product is woven into the story itself. This is really a super flex against the rest of the industry. Hindsight being 2020. Why do this?
Joel (2m 36s):
So I wrote a post on this over at Poach and historically speaking, and you and I are old enough to have sort of this context to the issue. You know, there was a day in '99 when all this happened, you know, before YouTube, before social media, before really Google was a thing, where the mindset was really, you have to be Coke or Pepsi, or you're just going to be feeding on the crumbs of whatever industry that you're in and a way to become number one or two was well drop a bunch of money on the Superbowl and Monster had this vision of being sort of this monolithic brand that was every job was posted there, right? And they could increase prices accordingly and you know, be the 800 pound gorilla.
Joel (3m 16s):
Hot jobs advertised sort of for a different reason. Now they definitely shot themselves up into the top echelon of job sites, but then they sold off to Yahoo a couple of years later. So I think they sort of achieve what they wanted to do. Whereas Monster had a little bit of a longer horizon. And for the, you know, next up until about 2008 or nine, I'd say we talked about CareerBuilder and Monster ads on the Super Bowl almost every year. And it was part of that same sort of mentality. Well, the 2008 happened 2009, there've been very few Super Bowl ads since the great recession, probably for good reason, the world has changed.
Joel (3m 57s):
There's a lot more fragmentation. There's Google, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn. So it's really hard to sort of justify an investment like that because it's not just the ad itself. It's the making of the ad. It's the followup stuff. It's the branding and things you do after that. So I, I feel like whereas 1999 was more of a, Hey, we want to make a big splash to be number one today. It's more like we want to make a big splash to keep hold of number one for as long as we possibly can, because we kind of feel like the ice is melting under our feet. And we want to get a life raft if we can possibly do it. So to me, it's much more of like a desperation or a clinging to power than it is a new kid on the block.
Joel (4m 39s):
And we want to be the big swinging dick. Your thoughts?
Chad (4m 44s):
One thing this does is it provides, it's a job seeker specific commercial, right? The call to action, everything that's happening around it is for job seekers. Indeed has bigger problems than traffic. So this commercial in itself is very well done and on point, but unfortunately we're when hearing from employers using Indeed, they are already providing enough traffic. It's just overwhelmingly the wrong candidate. So Indeed needs to bolster its matching tech and much less ZipRecruiter deliver better match candidates. I mean, companies don't need more, they need more targeted.
Chad (5m 27s):
So much like Monster, Hot Jobs and CareerBuilder. It looks like Indeed doesn't really understand what the real problem is for customers. And it could be their downfall. I remember when we looked at CareerBuilder and we looked at Monster and we thought, God, these guys are going to stay on top forever. They didn't. Is this predicting the demise of Indeed in 2021? No, it's not. But the crumbling starts when you can't understand what the real problem is. When you spend money on something like this, which really defeats the whole purpose of why an employer's using you in the first place. It's not for quantity. It's for quality. It's for matching, it's for the right types of individuals.
Chad (6m 9s):
And what we've seen with Indeed is they have no discipline. The Indeed of old had discipline. They had focus, they had strategy. They were the Trojan horse strategy and they've lost all of it.
Joel (6m 21s):
Yeah, to me, it smells a little bit like jumping the shark. It fits smells a little bit like a peak. I feel similarly about Indeed today, as I did about Monster in 2006 or 2007. Obviously it took 10 plus years for sort of that demise to happen or that downfall to happen. But to me, this sort of reeks of desperation and also a good level of hubris. They have a new CEO, I think, with the organization, so maybe a little bit of him making his mark, could be part of this, but yeah, I, I can't find many good things about this move.
Joel (7m 1s):
Good stuff. By the way, the Superbowl isn't that far away and a hot economy means there should be more ads from companies in the employment space. The big question is, will we see some of the unicorns from the past year on the big game? Or how about ZipRecruiter who's now a public company? Hell maybe even a background check solution will show up to the party, stay tuned. It's commercial time.
Chad (7m 33s):
It's show time.
Joel (7m 36s):
TikTok was super hot last year and made it into our show more times than I can count. However, one story and interview really stood out. Meet Tony Piloseno, know a then senior at Ohio University who was working part-time at a local Sherwin-Williams paint store and mixing paint for his TikTok followers, which then numbered 1.2 million Did Sherwin-Williams, fast track Tony to their executive farm system as a result. No, they fired him.
Joel (8m 14s):
Crazy Right? This is Tony's story. Enjoy.
Chad (8m 25s):
Oh yeah, we got paint boy on the show today.
Chad (9m 36s):
What's up everybody. This is Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast always joined by my Tonto, Chad Sowash.
Joel (11m 56s):
Proudly. Chad, how are you, man?
Joel (12m 38s):
We got a follow up to one of our weekly stories.
Joel (13m 56s):
I can't wait to get into this one now.
Chad (14m 59s):
He's he's paint, dude. He's not paint boy, because he's in college.
Chad (16m 23s):
He's a senior.
Joel (16m 44s):
He's a content creator.
Chad (17m 12s):
Here's a little bit of an intro from Buzzfeed.
Chad (18m 16s):
Okay. So an Ohio University, senior who worked a part-time job at a local Sherwin-Williams store was fired after the company discovered he was mixing paint on a Tik Tok channel where it's At @tonesterpaints, which currently has 1.5 million followers.
Chad (21m 26s):
So that's, that's kind of like the backstory. We talked about that on the weekly show. Let's go ahead and bring it's Tony Piloseno.
Joel (21m 26s):
Tony, how you doing bud? Hello, Tony Piloseno.
Tony (21m 28s):
I'm in Ohio. Where are you guys?
Joel (21m 28s):
Are you in Ohio network?
Tony (21m 28s):
Yeah, I'm going to Athens, Ohio right now. I'm still at school for the next couple of weeks.
Joel (21m 28s):
Beautiful, beautiful school, big, big party school.
Tony (21m 28s):
Yes sir!
Joel (21m 29s):
It's home of Roger Ales, which is always nice to talk about.
Chad (21m 30s):
Known for its painting apparently. So, so Tony give us some, give us some, some backstory on this. I mean, we, we hear what's, you know, the Buzzfeed story, so on and so forth, you go in to work and then somebody gives you a call and you're like, what the fuck's going on here?
Joel (21m 31s):
Were you always a painter dude or was Sherwin-Williams like just, it was a job.
Tony (21m 31s):
Well, yeah, I mean, when I first started at Sherman Williams, about three years ago, I didn't know shit about paint. I and I fell in love with the job immediately, man. I mean, I love the industry. Loved helping people with their projects, picking out colors, the process. It was all good. My whole career path was going to lead down through Sherman Williams corporate chain doing all that. But last year, last December, I had downloaded TikTok and I saw that other people at paint stores were doing these paint videos, just the process of a mixing gallon paint. And it fell into like the oddly satisfying category.
Joel (21m 31s):
So was this like, Oh, I don't know. Lowes, paint. Yeah. TikTok account versus.
Tony (21m 31s):
Oh no, no. They were just some part-time workers too making the videos at the store.
Joel (21m 31s):
OK, so same thing.
Tony (21m 31s):
Right.
Joel (21m 31s):
Okay.
Tony (21m 31s):
So, you know, the videos took off almost immediately. I think my sixth video got like a million views.
Joel (21m 32s):
Christ.
Tony (21m 32s):
So what I, what I tried doing was I wanted to basically change the digital marketing game for the paint industry and just make interesting content to younger people. And SW didn't really like that. And they canned me for it.
Chad (21m 32s):
Get a little deeper into this, this wasn't like your manager saying, Hey, you're screwing around on company time. This isn't good for us, blah, blah, blah. This was somebody from loss prevention. I mean some, some suit who had no fucking clue, probably what Tik Tok even is today. Well, he probably does today, but probably didn't even know what Tik Tok was. They were saying that you were a harming the brand.
Tony (21m 32s):
Well, yeah, dude. I mean, I had made a presentation to show to marketing I showed it to my manager and sales rep. Damn. Yeah. I mean, it was legit. I showed it to all my marketing professors here at OU and they said, move forward with this, get it to marketing. And I tried and basically got blown off for it. They didn't even look at the presentation. So I just kept making videos. And then apparently someone had called customer service up in Cleveland at their headquarters and said, was complaining that I was mixing...
Chad (21m 32s):
Was it the blueberry? Did the blueberry get you in trouble?
Tony (21m 32s):
It was the blueberry video.
Joel (21m 32s):
Wow. So talk about the blueberry video.
Tony (21m 32s):
Well, what I wanted to do is, I did a bunch of research on like the history of paint and they used, they used to use like natural, they call them natural pigments, as like dyes for the paint, like berries, roots. So I figured, it'd be cool for a video. So I bought, I was buying my own paint for those kinds of videos and thought it would be a cool concept to make a video for. And that video took off that one, got like 20 million views. That's how Sherwin-Williams found out about it.
Chad (21m 32s):
They weren't excited about this, that they were, that their brand was actually getting out and seen by 20 million different viewers.
Tony (21m 32s):
No.
Joel (21m 32s):
Yeah. How was the brand represented? Were you always wearing a Sherwin-Williams shirt? Hat? Was the paint always there? Did you always mention like, Hey, the new paint from Sherwin Williams da da da?
Tony (21m 32s):
Before, I made that presentation, I was literally trying to promote Sherman Williams, like, Hey, come into the store and get these school colors. But then once the marketing thing didn't work out with trying to show off that presentation, I just took away the label completely. And then yeah, they, they still found out about it because I didn't want to be doing videos like that, that wasn't really approved of without what their brand and you know.
Joel (21m 32s):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (21m 32s):
It's interesting because first and foremost brands are always trying to look at new, new mediums. Right. They're looking at, they're trying to, they're trying to actually get out into new mediums.
Joel (21m 32s):
Especially consumer companies.
Chad (21m 32s):
They're trying to gain traction and, and you had a just add water solution. Cause you already had this, this user base who wanted to see this. And Sherwin Williams, I mean, hell they could have easily just grabbed this up. I mean really just taking it from you to be quite Frank, but no, they kicked you out the door. How did that tell me how that felt, man, because I mean, you were really, you're passionate about what you're doing. How did that feel?
Joel (21m 32s):
You got to think you're on the fast track to like corporate job in Cleveland, which, who doesn't want that. But I mean, the minute you got a million views and had a million followers, you were like, dude, I'm set. I'm going to be corporate Sherwin Williams for the next 20 years if I want it.
Tony (21m 32s):
Well, dude, I mean my whole career path was going to go through Sherwin Williams, go. I had an internship lined up, was going to go into management sales. I literally loved the job. It almost felt like I got like betrayed.
Chad (21m 32s):
You did.
Tony (21m 32s):
By the company. I did a lot for them, I worked there for a very long time. And then I have some dude in, I like to call them the "paint police" - loss prevention. He basically interrogated me, wanted to know if I was stealing, which I wasn't. They found out that I wasn't, but then they pulled some BS, excuse. Like I was like, what was it? Serious embarrassment to the company. And yeah, it sucked. But honestly I think it's almost like a blessing in disguise at this point. Like you said, they probably wouldn't take taken that from me.
Chad (21m 33s):
Yeah. Let's talk about the blessing. Because as soon as this hit, not who, who, first and foremost who picked it up? And then after it was picked up, it seemed like it just like exploded. Tell me about that, because this does seem like almost like a blessing in disguise.
Tony (21m 33s):
If they were to take, if they would've went with that TikTok or my presentation now, after all this had happened, they would have made it into some corporate, I don't even know bit saturated with corporate.
Chad (21m 33s):
They would have fucked it up. Yeah. There's there's there's when it comes to social media and these platforms, you have to have authenticity to it and they would have completely screwed that up. So yeah.
Joel (21m 33s):
And they still don't have an account right on TikTok?
Tony (21m 33s):
I don't think so. I don't think they're going to now.
Chad (21m 33s):
You had, you had this broke and you had a bunch of big brands actually get in touch with you. Tell us, tell us about that. And you found a home, tell us who you picked and why you picked them.
Joel (21m 33s):
Yeah. And what was the TicTok reaction were a million people like, fuck Sherwin Williams?
Tony (21m 33s):
Oh dude. It was insane. I made that the initial video that blew up and got a whole, the media got ahold of was the story about how I had gotten fired. That video really took off and people were like bashing Sherwin Williams about it. My goal, I don't know if you guys had seen that initial video, but my goal wasn't even to bash Sherwin Williams and be like, Hey, like screw you guys. It was to basically develop like an emotional connection with my audience.
Chad (21m 33s):
Yeah.
Tony (21m 33s):
Basically give them a reason why I do what I do.
Chad (21m 33s):
Yeah.
Tony (21m 33s):
And people put two and two together, found out it was Sherwin Williams and took it from there and they got grilled on the internet.
Chad (21m 33s):
Oh, yeah. So tell us, tell us about those big brands that came to to you and why you and where you went and why picked it?
Tony (21m 33s):
So I, after that video broke out, I got basically partnership offers and deals from basically every major paint company in the United States, like Behr, PBG, Benny Moore, a few smaller ones. And I went with a company called Florida Paints down there in Orlando.
Joel (21m 33s):
They didn't want to hire you necessarily, but they wanted to sponsor?
Tony (21m 33s):
Right sponsor the videos.
Joel (21m 33s):
Okay. So nobody said, come work for us. It was like, Hey, let's partner. I'll pay for you to post videos and promote our paints.
Tony (21m 33s):
Well they did, they did offer like mainly year contracts. And after I had graduated, I would graduate they would offer me a job. But man, I wanted to steer away after that whole thing was Sherwin Williams from the big corporate culture.
Joel (21m 33s):
I don't blame you.
Tony (21m 33s):
Hey, those big companies, man, there's too much of a chain of command. There's too many people you got to filter through it.
Joel (21m 33s):
Too many lawyers.
Tony (21m 33s):
Exactly. And so I went with the company, Florida Paints in Orlando. I met with the founder, Don Strubey and he it's a smaller company. They only have a, I think about 25 to 30 stores down in Florida. And Don had called me and he was the only one only person that I talked to through all these companies that I felt connection, like a shared passion for the importance of paint and the art of it. And that was something that really, I felt like connected with me. And I've wanted to work with them ever since that.
Chad (21m 33s):
He got you. Is what it was.
Tony (21m 33s):
Yeah. Right.
Chad (21m 33s):
You know, this is definitely a message to all of those brands that are out there that we talk to all the time. This wasn't just a consumer play, from the standpoint of Sherwin Williams. This was a guy who wanted to spend his life, give 40 hours a week, plus blood, sweat, and tears over time, all this stuff because he had a passion for what he was doing and they just threw all that shit in a can. And now a company, Florida Paints, I definitely want to give those guys some love. They understood they weren't corporate. They weren't buttoned up in bullshit about this. They understood that you were actually just demonstrating passion in who you were and that's what they wanted in their culture. And that's why you pick them.
Tony (21m 33s):
Exactly. That is exactly what happened.
Joel (21m 33s):
It's commercial time!
Chad (21m 33s):
It's showtime!
Joel (21m 33s):
Steer your content at all. How has your content changed if at all?
Tony (21m 33s):
Well, when I go to, I'm going to be moving down there within the next few weeks, but it's basically going to be tones of paints powered by Florida Paints. They're going to give me all the supplies and resources. I need to express my creativity through my content.
Joel (21m 33s):
Gotcha.
Chad (21m 33s):
What's the position title? I mean, what are you actually going to be doing for them above and beyond TikTok? Or is it just that?
Tony (21m 33s):
Well, I'm going to be working like a, almost like a sales associate job, like I was before in the store. But along with that, I'm going to be doing digital marketing. Basically creating content.
Joel (21m 33s):
Gotcha, awesome. Gotcha. I have to, I have to note Tony, I want to back up a little bit. We have hundreds of companies that would love to blow up like you did on social media. So one of my questions is like, what tips would you give a corporation? You mentioned authenticity, which I think is important, but what are some tips you would give a company to sort of blow up like you did? Cause a million is no is no joke. That's legitimate blown up on social media.
Tony (21m 33s):
Well, you know, I have always followed three rules of social media after doing research, learning just the platforms and all that. And it really all kind of comes together, no matter which platform you use, my three rules are consistency, you have to post about every day. Quality of content, you got to make sure it's stuff people want to see. And then the third one, is engaging with your followers, making it feel like, they belong there and like they're a part of the page.
Joel (21m 33s):
Gotcha.
Chad (21m 33s):
Well, and you mentioned connection though, too, because you said that you wanted to make a connection with your user. So it was the content, but you felt it was really important to make a connection, a human connection as well.
Tony (21m 33s):
Exactly, exactly. I mean, I hadn't really done that before either. I had basically just been making paint videos and I just, like I said, I wanted to give my audience a reason why I do what I do. I'm not just mixing paint in some basement for no reason.
Joel (21m 33s):
No, I'm curious as a, because you're a young person, we don't get young people on the show that often, break down for me, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and then, you know, like Facebook and Twitter, like where do you spend most of your time? Where do you see most of your peers spend time? Which ones are sort of like way passe and we're over that. And are there any platforms that we should be looking at in the future to take off like TikTok has?
Tony (21m 33s):
I mean, dude TikTok I think is, is really in the past year, changed the game completely. It's almost turning into like a, I don't know if you remember Instagram, that kind of, it's almost like I'll TikTok is now. There's not really any like business to or anything, but on Instagram and stuff, now you can shop, you can, it's basically a search engine. Now, Instagram, you can look up anything on there.
Joel (21m 33s):
Predict you there'll be a day where there'll be a Sherwin-Williams ad come before or after your TikTok on paints. So yes. Are you Snapchatting, like Instagram is still hot, right? Like what's the temperature and all these sites.
Tony (21m 33s):
I've been sticking to YouTube, Instagram and Tik TOK. I haven't really gotten into Snapchat yet. Maybe Twitter I would get into, but I mean, man, it's, it's a full-time job trying to manage and upload content to all these, all these platforms, but TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, or like the video platforms, which I try to stay, stay with the most.
Joel (21m 33s):
And where do you sort of, where do you expect to be in five years? If we had this interview five years from now, where to, where do you hope to be and what do you hope to be doing?
Tony (21m 33s):
That is a great question. I guess what another reason I had chosen Florida Paints is, was cause I'm going to be able to develop my knowledge and understanding of the paint industry and become more of like a respected personnel in it. Obviously my name's already known throughout the industry, but I just want to grow my knowledge. So maybe, I mean, if the digital marketing thing doesn't work out cause things die, but I'm going to keep at it and keep going with that. But maybe like becoming in sales. I, yeah, it's just something like that. You know, just something.
Chad (21m 33s):
Has that changed that you want to go up through the ranks in the same organization or are you pretty much open to do whatever now?
Tony (21m 33s):
Well, I'm open to do whatever, whatever, wherever life takes me, how this whole thing plays out. I'm still not really sure. I mean this whole thing has happened.
Chad (21m 33s):
Quickly.
Tony (21m 33s):
Quickly. It's not even been a year since I made my first TikTok.
Chad (21m 33s):
Wow.
Tony (21m 33s):
So who knows?
Joel (21m 33s):
Well from my standpoint, you know what you're doing could not have been done when Chad and I were your age. So it's fascinating. It's fascinating to see. And the fact that you have so many followers on a, on a platform that is not going anywhere anytime soon is, is obviously a big positive to your career. And my guess is you'll be able to take that, you know, that portfolio to anywhere and, and create a living for yourself or create opportunity for yourself. So consider yourself lucky, but also you're talented right place, right time. But I I'd love to talk to you again in five years to see where you are because I'm betting that it's going to be someplace pretty cool.
Tony (21m 33s):
I mean, yeah, I'll be open for it if you guys want to have me back.
Joel (21m 33s):
I'm setting my reminder now.
Chad (21m 33s):
We'll come down to Orlando for that one, but seriously, Tony, you know, I think if anybody who is paying attention right now is really getting a lesson in brand, in how to be human and how to more like just step away and allow your employees to really demonstrate their passion, the way that they demonstrate their passion instead of trying to fit them into a box.It's commercial time.
Tony (21m 33s):
Exactly.
Chad (21m 33s):
So we appreciate you taking time to come on the show. I mean, this is really short notice. We talked yesterday and I just saw it.
Joel (21m 33s):
He's a college kid. He's got nothing going on. He's got finals coming up, dude, but seriously, man, thanks so much. If somebody wants to check out TikTok or YouTube, tell him where should they go? Where should they subscribe? Unreal, right? Tony should be a marketing manager at Sherwin-Williams today. Their loss, but Tony seems to be doing just fine. In case you are wondering, Tony still works at Florida paints as a content creator, and he's up to 1.8 million TikTok followers. You can also buy his custom paints now at tone stir that's T O N E S T E R.com. Chad and I first met Rick Carsley over Swedish meatballs at an Indianapolis Ikea, where he was working out of the Philly office. The food was fantastic, but the interview was even better.
Joel (22m 14s):
So hot that we had to get Rick back on the show in 2021, just a year after our first interview. Now at Freedom Mortgage, we love Rick for his insight and his candor. Dude is all gas, no brakes. Enjoy. I'm guessing the mortgage business is pretty busy these days.
Rick (22m 34s):
It's absolutely insane. You know, I grew up in the mortgage industry, that's how I learned like what recruiting was, which was just completely random. I don't know if I ever told this story? Right after undergrad, I was a loan officer, like dial for dollars call center. And there was a flyer, it was bright orange and it said $500 referral for any loan officers that we hire. And so I went out, I joined my alumni association. I would go to like happy hours around Chicago and brag about how much money I made as a loan officer, because you're clueless at that age and like in 45 days I hired about 18 loan officers.
Rick (23m 17s):
I caught the eye of another company who hired me to run their like huge, huge branch that they were building. And the way I got into this show that we call recruiting was, the owner was like, Hey, not you don't just how your loan officers here, you have to hire all the other jobs. And my only question was I'm like, so those jobs have base salaries, right? He's like, well, yeah. And I'm like, well, that's easy. Yeah. I can do that. No worries.
Chad (23m 44s):
That's like cheating. Right. You're starting with a leg up already.
Rick (23m 46s):
Yeah. So then like 16 years later, this is how I pay my mortgage now. But the industry just, you know, blew up financial services and essential retail have been like the two things and warehouses that have kept, you know, the economy moving kind of since March. And when you have record low interest rates, when you have rising home prices and Freedom, kind of based on our size, we had to hire and hire quickly. We hired like 6300, 6500 coworkers last year. And the kind of skilled positions in the mortgage industry, underwriting kind of being a huge one, the overall salary of a job like that, you know, a year ago, underwriter was say, two years of experience was on the market for say 70 to $75,000.
Rick (24m 34s):
That same job now, that base salary is around a hundred and you have quarterly bonuses. You know, that you're all in number.
Chad (24m 39s):
Is it virtual now, is that a remote job?
Rick (24m 40s):
Oh yeah. Freedom had always really been remote. So that was kind of our leg up previously.
Chad (24m 45s):
Fuck Yeah!
Rick (24m 45s):
But now that everybody is remote, there's like 10 to, like 12 to 15, really big players in our industry and it is a constant battle of us kind of outbidding each other. A candidate for underwriting, if they throw the flag up on LinkedIn that they're looking or toss to their resume on Indeed, they're gonna get hit by like 10 companies in a matter of days. And then your staffing partners, which is huge in financial services, there there's no industry that gets dominated by staffing, like financial services does just because of the volume and the constant ebb and flow, they just drive the price up further and further.
Joel (25m 29s):
So it sounds like you guys were sort of familiar with interviewing through technology, whether it be video or some other means, would that be correct? And if you're doing that in some companies that are sort of new to doing that, what are some tools that you find sort of invaluable? What may be changed for you with video and I guess longterm wise, it's going to stay that way for you.
Rick (25m 53s):
I mean, last time I talked to you all, I was just singing the praises of how HireView, which seems to be a reoccurring theme since I stole that idea from the Hilton, back in 2011. And it's funny, the person that runs Ikea now is from the same lineage, but it's completely different. You know, like when you think about just where candidates come from, Ikea could spend $1 on any pay-per-click site and they're going to get 2 million impressions and thousands of thousands of applications a month.
Chad (26m 27s):
And that's brand, yeah.
Rick (26m 28s):
That's not the same in financial services, regardless of who you work for. And in our business, the bigger you are, the worst reputation you have, like no one wants to go work for Quicken. So, you know, in my old world of Ikea, you had so many applicants. It was like, well, how do we not take the recruiter's time? And that was just, I'm going to send you that, Hireview, you're going to do it yourself. And I'm going to gauge your participation in our process. And then from there, I'm going to make you take a video game assessment so I can tell the business why I'm making the hiring decision based on math versus you.
Rick (27m 10s):
That just doesn't work in our business. But you know, the financial services industry, there's times where it's set with the same amount of fraud that you have in your normal C to C game, if you're hiring like international for dot.net developers or whatever. And it, so you're doing zoom video interviews for recruiting, you're still taking them through an assessment, but that assessment is very skill specific for that exact job. So, you know, I really don't have a video based solution outside of Zoom right now. I've been playing with LinkedIn's new ad-on. Did you all see that with the two behavioral based interview questions that you can add in there?
Rick (27m 50s):
Like when you post the advert directly on their site, have you guys played with that at all?
Chad (27m 57s):
Haven't played with it. How was it working?
Rick (27m 59s):
So, you know, the problem with LinkedIn, I don't, that would take like four hours for me to answer my own statement right there. But so, you know, you post your advert and maybe one to 2% of those applications are anywhere near relevant in your job. So what you can do is as part of your application, you can set up to video based questions, but you only have like 25 to 30 questions to actually choose from. So what it's been good for is kind of lower level positions, right? Where you're able, like my whole big thing was always evaluate people and not paper because especially coming from retail, those people aren't resume writers like resumes continue to get worse and worse and worse.
Rick (28m 39s):
So it's like let's give candidates the ability to push themselves up from the pack and show that they are willing to do the gig and that they want to do the gig. And if you're remote and remote, full-time, you're going to have to interact on video with your manager, with your peers, with your customers. And it was free as part of LinkedIn. And now that I no longer have the Ikea budget free is very good. So it's still, you know, like it's that same old adage, you know, a hundred people apply. If you reach out to all a hundred, you know, knock out 35% that aren't gonna respond because we've made applying so easy. And then just keep going down that funnel. So participation for the pilot, you know, I probably get maybe 18 to 20% of the people actually fill out the video part of it.
Rick (29m 26s):
You know, what I've seen both LinkedIn do and Indeed recently, for the first time in forever is one improve their interface and to give away things for free. All the years I've been doing this, like if LinkedIn even thinks of a new project, do you see it on the invoice before you've ever even opened up the site?
Chad (29m 45s):
Don't you think that's based around competition now, though. And not to mention if LinkedIn doesn't go to video before your applicant tracking system automatically integrates, acquires, and then integrates interviewing and video. I mean, they're fucked. So, I mean, they have to beat them to the punch don't they.
Rick (30m 5s):
It's a cool idea, you know, and I really like it, the one thing, and I don't know if it was really that hard to program, but only giving me like 30 questions that I can actually ask.
Chad (30m 19s):
That's lame.
Rick (30m 21s):
You know, like, you know, might as well be like, Hey, tell me about your biggest hero or do you know all these fluff questions? You know, there's stuff where like, you know, where do you want to be in five years?
Joel (30m 40s):
And three people you'd like to have dinner with dead or alive.
Rick (30m 50s):
It's so similar to that, but where we've been using it is just to one, when you have a market that you're just not going to find good people in. And when I say good, I just mean have done the, a very similar job before at a competitor. So when you're going to go off of people that don't fit the script from, you know, a to B, then you need something to get in front of the hiring manager. The one cool thing is when you have a big LinkedIn contract, you know, the old hiring manager seats that were just never used.
Rick (31m 28s):
And it was really just like, oh, I'm sharing profiles. Like you'd always have your executive recruiters do that nonsense. I shared twenty-five profiles with the hiring manager, he wants to talk to three you're like, cool. Does he know that that website has a one part, two, 1% participation rate outside of recruitment. And we're never going to talk to those people anyway, but I hope he looked at those profiles. So with this, at least you can create a project, you can make the hiring manager part of that project and they can actually view the video. So it added a little bit onto that.
Rick (32m 10s):
You going to LinkedIn too. Did you guys see the new resume builder function that's like plugged into Microsoft word?
Joel (32m 18s):
Yeah.
Rick (32m 18s):
I thought that was just kind of a cool add on it sets up for a world of plagiarism in regards to resumes that already existed. And now we just made it one click away.
Joel (32m 30s):
It's commercial time.
Chad (32m 31s):
It's show time.
Joel (32m 31s):
Great stuff. Hopefully we'll get Rick back on the show in 2022 for his state of the industry, hot takes with housing, cooling off a bit and interest rates rising recently, I'm sure his challenges at Freedom Mortgage have changed a bit, but his brutal honesty is most certainly the same. Stay tuned. I've been predicting a ZipRecruiter IPO for years and 2021 finally proved me, right. And to say there was a hot take on the IPO is the understatement of the year. Here's the weekly show that followed Zip's invasion of Wall Street. Enjoy. Alright, so ZipRecruiter finally went public on the New York stock exchange on Wednesday under the ticker, ZIP that sexy and entered the market at around $20 a share, which it went below one point, and then creeped back up to a little over $21 a share, where it's a sort of hovering at the moment.
Joel (33m 22s):
ZipRecruiter management thinks the stock is worth around $25 a share, which will give the company a $3.3 billion valuation. It seems like things have settled at a roughly $2.8 billion valuation. Some headlines really touted the spike in price one Barron's headline read quote, "ZipRecruiter stock surges on debut" end quote. So Chad, after the Glassdoor head fake pre pandemic IPO, are you ready to buy some ZIP?
Chad (33m 43s):
So I have to give it to you. You called this about three years ago. Right?
Joel (33m 47s):
And every year, since then.
Chad (33m 48s):
Zips going IPO, I've got to say setting this up ZIP is far in a way, the best brand in our space period. They have the best brand. I, and I've also said on the show many times, I also believe Zip is a better, more evolved platform than Indeed. This is what Indeed should have become, right? Instead Indeed, regressed into the early 2000s job board that it is today, where Zip is more of a relevant delivery system of talent so that the difference in their tech and models are stunning, right? The big difference I think that that we have to, also elephant in the room, is revenues. Indeed is obviously still killing it, but I buy there's no question you buy it now, buy it now, buy it fast because you have to remember, there's a lot of jobs that are going to be needed to fill.
Chad (34m 34s):
This is the time, right? So maybe early next year, take your buyout and sell all your stock.
Joel (34m 43s):
So this is when we say Chad and I are not financial experts or advisors, and don't take stock tips from us. Don't call us or tweet at us or sue us for God's sake.
Chad (34m 53s):
That'd be dumb.
Joel (34m 54s):
All right. So I have three takeaways from the ZipRecruiter IPO. I'm not nearly as bullish as you are. So my first take is, you know, this was not a disaster, but it also, wasn't a major firework show either. And I think that, that's an indicative of the market we're in now in terms of you being a job site. And I'll talk about brand for a second and I think number three, but anyway, so this wasn't a disaster. You know, one of my takeaways was, you know, if Glassdoor sold for 1.5 billion a couple of years ago, when I think investors, so I think investors are struggling with putting a $3 billion valuation on ZipRecruiter. And I think that sort of came out in the IPO. There's also a significant competition.
Joel (35m 35s):
You mentioned Indeed killing it. And they have a lot of challenges in terms of finding growth. Although the economy is growing, I think they're gonna have a nice 12 to 24 months to do that. They're also dealing with, we mentioned people coming to America. So whereas in ZipRecruiter is going to have to grow internationally where established players aren't. They're also going to have to, you know, manage the beachhead here in the U S is you have players like Vonq and StepStone sort of knocking, knocking at the door. So, you know, it was sort of a meah, 1st day. My second takeaway was that it was just sort of meah. So Stocktwits was StockTwits, which is a pretty popular site where people talk about stocks and people can follow stocks.
Joel (36m 17s):
Now, this is not a scientific commentary, but it was very telling that a name like ZipRecruiter, which is a brand name, people have seen the ads, they've heard the ads. They know, they know the name. There are only about 400 people following ZipRecruiter at the end of yesterday, which is less than actually are following Dice.
Chad (36m 36s):
Wow.
Joel (36m 36s):
Which I thought was interesting. People like Roadblocks and Slack, and some of the more recent names have tens of thousands of followers. So I thought that was sort of telling of the market just saying like, eh, a job board. Okay, great. I think people would rather invest in Roadblocks or Snowflake or Snap, or even Bitcoin. I think a job site IPO in the nineties, it was cool. It was.com. It was, you know, where the world was going. There was no social media, there was no AI and all this other shit. So today I just don't think it's that exciting. Number three is I think this goes back to your point of tech, is that I thin they're losing the narrative, that they're not a job board.
Joel (37m 20s):
I mean, they want to grab the quote marketplace matchmaker, which was a quote that I <inaudible> said in many interviews, but I'm not so sure the market is buying it until they're viewed as a tech company, they're going to have a hard time capturing the interest of today's investor. So all these ads that people know of, you know, the bar owner with the flags of colleges in the background saying, Hey, I posted a job on ZipRecruiter. And I had, you know, the, the woman that was hired walks in, like everyone knows these ads, right?
Joel (38m 2s):
They need to, they need a marketing campaign to get people thinking of them as, you know, Workday or LinkedIn or a tech. Because as long as they're in this job board posting thing, I think it's going to be really hard for them to break out of that. So those are my three takeaways from Zip. I would not, not buy. Not that I give advice. It might be a hold at this point. I think it probably hovers around the twenties for a while, maybe gets up to 30.
Joel (38m 44s):
If the economy really fires up and they have some good quarterly earnings report, but it was exciting to see an IPO and I think bigger picture is like, is this going to spur, you know, talent.com, who's rumored to be going public, or iCIMS, who's been rumored to go public. Does this motivate them to do it quicker? I don't think it scared them, but I don't think it was awesome. I don't think it was, oh shit, we got to do it today. Kind of thing.
Chad (39m 21s):
Thing. I think iCIMS is going there. No matter what. Yeah.
Joel (39m 24s):
I Sims is more in that Workday bubble then ZipRecruiter is like Post Jobs. Post Jobs isn't getting anybody excited on Wall Street. Yeah.
Chad (39m 33s):
They've gotta be seen as, instead of a board, which is really a single dimension into more of a multi-dimensional type of platform. That's what people want to see, the tech the platform, instead of just like Trump's social media platform that turned into a blog.
Joel (39m 51s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this marketplace matchmaker, that's kind of sexy, like push the hell out of that and show how it works. You know, like magic to match people to jobs. And I think he got something. So we'll definitely be watching their progress in the months and years to come.
Chad (40m 10s):
Yep.
Joel (40m 10s):
So, so fast forward to present day, ZipRecruiter stock is now hovering around $28 a share after hitting the market at around $21. So performance has been better than my initial take back in May. I'm not qualified to give financial advice, but things should be fine for Zip as long as the economy remains red hot. For 2022, look for iCIMS to go public, which we'll certainly be watching as well. What can I say? CareerBuilder is the gift that keeps on giving. If there's one certainty, since we launched the podcast a little over four years ago, it's CareerBuilder is going to keep us talking. What was the highlight of despair in 2021?
Joel (40m 51s):
Now you got to listen.
Chad (40m 54s):
Topics!
Joel (40m 54s):
Oh boy, how long has it been since we've talked about CareerBuilder?
Chad (40m 59s):
Too long.
Joel (40m 59s):
Probably about four months, the last time they announced a new CEO. So "industry icon," I say that in air quotes CareerBuilder is rebranding itself, Chad, most notably there's a new logo. Some people are calling this the fourth new one, I'm calling it the third. As part of their new brand identity the company is launching a TV, radio and digital campaign with the trademark tagline "let's job at up," which will be featured on programs like CBS, NFL Sundays, and the People's Choice Awards. CareerBuilder CEO, Susan Arthur said in a release quote, "this relaunch is a celebration of the ways CareerBuilder can support evolving individual ambitions with a modern, empowering brand."
Joel (41m 43s):
Chad, are you ready to celebrate CB's Rebrand?
sfx (41m 48s):
Buzzer.
Chad (41m 48s):
Not even close. So Tim Sackett did a compare and contrast on the new logo against its predecessors. And it was funny, but it's not the point at all. This isn't about how ugly the logo and colors are. This to me is about the new CEO, Sue Arthur. This is about what's broken at CareerBuilder and the color scheme and logo should not be the new CEO's priority. As a new CEO, you cannot allow this type of stupidity to happen on your watch because it demonstrates that you are not focused or you have no control over your fucking staff, from a priority standpoint. Just for a second let's say all of this was nearly or maybe finalized by the prior regime. Right? I can hear that excuse right now. Well, that was all done through the prior regime. Well, it doesn't matter because as the new CEO, you have to understand optics as a customer or a prospect or a stakeholder.
Chad (42m 35s):
I look at this move and say, this was her first fucking move. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with her? Now I see that Sue Arthur has a wonderful list of brands and positions that she's held over the years, just check out her LinkedIn for God's sakes, but none of them have readied her for becoming the captain of a sinking ship. She's having the staff apply a new coat of paint, the Titanic after it hit the fucking iceberg dude. So that's my rant. This whole logo and color thing is really just a symptom of a much larger problem at CareerBuilder.
Joel (43m 15s):
Yeah where to start? If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone here it is a common question. So it's very, it's very telling that outside of a ad age and ad week, this news saw no major news outlet cover the story on Google news. That's how far this brand has fallen.
Chad (43m 38s):
Yeah.
Joel (43m 38s):
Brands change because of damage control or things are antiquated, they need to freshen shit up. They don't just happen on a whim like they've seemed to happen at CareerBuilder and the original brand, which by the way, they spent millions of dollars, you know, promoting and building with Superbowl ads and tons of other shit. And then by total surprise, they changed it up to like some trivial pursuit pie icon with the C because they were going from a job board to a software company.
Joel (44m 19s):
Well, that didn't work out so well. So I would have had more respect if they would have gone back to the old logo and said, we're going back to our roots of being a job site and being the best job site we can be, as opposed to, I don't know, looking like an ink stamp on a piece of paper, it has no equity to me, starting over from scratch is hard to sort of fathom. Now they're gonna have to, you know, spend more money on that.
Joel (45m 3s):
"Let's job it up." I don't know if that really rolls off the tongue that well, we'll see how that goes. The Superbowl ads, are the ads that they have, at least they're sort of being funny. The one thing that I think that struck me really quickly was in the ad that they promoted the guy who's in the break room and the boss is cooking fish or something. The guy, the employee, the disgruntled employee applies to 15 jobs at once on his mobile phone, through his CarrerBuilder app. Now that is not really the message.
Chad (45m 3s):
Scattershot.
Joel (45m 4s):
That's certainly not the message most employers want to see.
Chad (45m 4s):
No.
Joel (45m 4s):
It's all in all this is lipstick on a pig. I wanna see some innovation out of CareerBuilder that doesn't involve Pokemon Go. To me, that's really going to change the story about CareerBuilder, not a new tagline and not a new logo.
Chad (45m 3s):
New coat of paint on a sinking ship Fucking diversion.
Joel (45m 4s):
A few weeks ago, I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking who had actually seen one of the new CareerBuilder ads on TV. I live in Indiana, which isn't exactly a hotbed for commercial activity, so I wondered if my connections in the bigger markets had seen it, not surprisingly, only 4% said they had seen the ad. So CareerBuilder apparently doesn't have Indeed or even ZipRecruiter type money to drop on ad buys. Maybe in 2022, they'll spend some real coin on advertising, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Either way we're likely to continue talking about CareerBuilder and the dumpster fire well into 2022, stay tuned. And thanks for listening.
OUTRO (45m 4s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo 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. Is so weird. We out.
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