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Chad Sowash

Handshake's Ultimate Hand Job


It's an episode full of head scratchers and high fivers. Oh, and a unicorn!

  • Handshake is now in the Billionaire Valuations Club... Really?

  • Outmatch acquired Harver, which sets them up nicely for The Great Reopening,

  • Glassdoor wannabe Blind raised a bunch of money

...and the post-pandemic segment:

  • Google's labor union keeps kicking ass,

  • Wendy's comes up short,

  • and UBI isn't happening anytime soon.

Another aural orgasm brought to you by Jobvite, Sovren, and JobAdx.


PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:


INTRO (1s):

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.


Joel (21s):

Oh yeah. The pipelines never get hacked on this podcast, baby. Welcome to Chad and Cheese boys and girls HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Joel "no gas shortage here "Cheeseman.


Chad (34s):

and I'm Chad, "you murdered Muderder" Sowash!


Joel (39s):

On this week's episode, Handshake scores the ultimate hand job blind finds the light and Oh hell really TikTok Jobs is born. Just fucking shoot me. Now.


2 (54s):

You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal"


2 (1m 38s):

like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.


Chad (1m 59s):

Hey, so, so all of those individuals who didn't watch Elon Musk on SNL, okay. Joel, give us that. That's what the murder McDurder is from, but give what, what did you think about the performance? Did you watch the entire thing?


Joel (2m 14s):

I did watch the entire thing. I thought he came off more human than I probably expected. He came off a little funnier than expected. Now it wasn't, it was a great layup from a PR standpoint and that his mom showed up and he rolled with the Asperger's comment, which apparently was really impactful for a lot of families that have that issue in there. I think the best skits gets that he was in were the ones that sort of really leveraged his mythology or his life's work. So the one where he's a cowboy and they're like, let's just go in there, guns blaze. And he's like, wait a minute, hear me out here. We could dig a tunnel underneath and then so like they don't get it, that feels really pertinent to the world now.


Joel (3m 1s):

And then the, the Chad skit, which I'm sure you love where he's like, okay. Okay. And then blows up at the end, taking his helmet off. Like those were, those are really good moments. And then of course like the, the mayor of East town, which if you're not watching, it's almost worth getting HBO max, just to watch that show was fantastic. Also enjoyed the gen Z skit, which was sort of the first one I've seen where we make fun of gen Z. So they they're gonna have their moment of ridicule here, soon.


Chad (3m 34s):

I'd like to say I haven't watched an SNL all the way through for years, usually a weekend update, we eject, but we watched the entire thing and I didn't expect this from Elon Musk. He did anything. He dressed up as fucking Wario. I mean, he just, it was like he was in all these stupid outfits and costumes and doing all these stupid, stupid skits. And I could see a guy like him going, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't know if they threw anything at him that he just wouldn't do. And also NBC must have made some major bank because every fucking electric car company that's out there, other than Tesla bought ads during SNL.


Joel (4m 19s):

Yeah. It didn't work out as well for the, the crypto currency guys. But yeah, the EV companies had a good run of it for sure. Oh yeah. That was good. Is that third highest rank show after a Chappelle and Chris rock. So shit, I want, I want to see your boy Bezos on the show. That's next.


Chad (4m 38s):

No that would suck. I, you know who else is getting some pretty high ratings right now? I believe is a governor of Ohio Mike DeWine, who is starting a lottery for everyone who has received their first vaccine every Wednesday for five weeks, two winners are going to receive a million dollars. What does that say about Ohio? Does that say?


Joel (5m 4s):

What does it say about humanity that we have to give cash prizes to get vaccinated?


Chad (5m 10s):

And look at what's happening in India?


Joel (5m 12s):

Oh, for sure. For sure. Like, yeah, that's totally reprehensible. But like I'm all for the beer companies that are like free beer for getting vaccinated or even a little cash payments or gift cards to Target. But when you have to have a lottery for millions of dollars, Holy shit. It's the end of civilization.


Chad (5m 34s):

And then McDonald's is actually working with the Biden administration to drive vaccine awareness with a, we can do this campaign, sporting ads in times square on a McAfee coffee mugs. There's a TV buy that's coming out. My big question is why haven't we just figured out a Big Mac and Whopper vaccine dosage and just put it in those fucking burgers by now. I mean, we'd have most of America vaccinated by now.


Joel (6m 4s):

Yeah. Yeah. It's noble that McDonald's is doing this, but don't hold your breath for that obesity awareness campaign from McDonalds.


Chad (6m 12s):

Wait, wait, wait, wait better yet. If, if they both put out MAGA burgers and dosed them, it would be over. We wouldn't be like a hundred percent at this point.


Joel (6m 25s):

MAGA awareness at McDonald's.


Chad (6m 27s):

Oh fuck.


Joel (6m 29s):

Well, shout out to, and you're going to think this is a total hustle job, but we have, we have a beer drop winner.


Chad (6m 36s):

Ooh.


Joel (6m 37s):

This month it's Dan Cheeseman. No shit. Randomly picked. He's a ZipRecruiter guy.


Chad (6m 45s):

Really?


Joel (6m 46s):

He's head of their agency relations. Dan Cheesman out of Chicago is this month's beer drop winner sponsored by AdZuna. We'll be scheduling that Zoom tasting soon. It'll be a double cheese edition of zoom tasting. Gotta love it. We could get Abby Cheeseman on and really, really triple cheese that shit up good.


Chad (7m 5s):

There are too many fucking Cheesemans in this world. Let me tell ya.


Joel (7m 8s):

It's weird. Right? It's weird. Right? We got some Spotify data this month. You want to let people know what, what we discovered about our listeners from Spotify?


Chad (7m 19s):

So we've been doing a lot of work in Spotify, creating playlists, doing a lot of really cool shit. So you know, how is in the actual backend, looking at the analytics and our listeners, it actually on Spotify, you can see the aggregate of your followers, music tastes, and here are the top five.


Joel (7m 38s):

I would have guessed one, maybe.


Chad (7m 40s):

Top five.


Joel (7m 43s):

Is this one to five or five to one?


Chad (7m 45s):

Number five, Elton John.


Joel (7m 47s):

Number five.


Chad (7m 48s):

Elton John number five, Fleetwood Mac number four. I get that. I get that.


Joel (7m 54s):

Ok, ok.


Chad (7m 54s):

Number three. Drake. Okay.


Joel (7m 57s):

Yeah, now it gets weird.


Chad (7m 60s):

Number two, Taylor Swift and number one, kids. Drum roll please. Justin Bieber.


Joel (8m 10s):

Oh, come on. Where's the wham listeners? God damn it. Okay. So our listeners primarily listen to Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Drake, Fleetwood Mac, and Elton John. Let that sink in for a second.


Chad (8m 28s):

It's hard. It really is.


Joel (8m 30s):

It is hard. It is hard. We're huge in Canada, I guess, Bieber and Drake. Jesus. Well, I'm going to give a shout out to tigers who are having a moment now. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a, there's a bad guy on the loose that, well, the, the bad guy has been apprehended, but his tiger is on the loose. I checked it this morning. And as of Thursday afternoon, they still haven't located this tiger, which is pretty fucking impressive for the tiger if can disappear in a major metropolitan area like Houston, but hey tiger king tigers on the loose tigers are still popular kids. And that makes me happy.


Chad (9m 5s):

Yeah. We have 5,000 tigers in captivity here in the United States.


Joel (9m 11s):

That we know of.


Chad (9m 12s):

Yeah. That we know of. And that's more than the 3,900 that are actually out running loose on Safari and whatnot throughout the rest of the world. It's like the redneck Riviera. That's all I got to say. Fuck. Yeah.


Joel (9m 28s):

Yeah. We talked about this on our zoom tasting with, by the way, I'll give a shout out to Jennifer Riley from New York and her husband, Kevin, we had a nice talk with them. She won the whiskey giveaway sponsored by Sovren on the show.


Chad (9m 46s):

Two bottles.


Joel (9m 47s):

We talked about this. We wondered if there were other countries where you can just like own a tiger or a lion. And we couldn't think of any. So here's a little, little help that we need from the community. If any other countries out there that, you know, have kids allow people to have tigers roaming in their backyard, let us know. Cause we're pretty sure America might be the only one.


Chad (10m 5s):

Fucking ridiculous. Oh, shout out to Chris Selah over a Great People, another leader making the Chad and Cheese required listening. Mandatory people.


Joel (10m 17s):

So you might've realized I had a little hard time remembering Jennifer Riley's name. So I want to give a shout out to Matt Alder, who I forgot last week I get Lou Adler and Matt Alder mixed up all the time. So I get a little confused there. So I called him the British guy, which I will forever now call him. Matt, sorry about that buddy, but the British guy I've called people a lot worse.


Chad (10m 41s):

Yes.


Joel (10m 42s):

He was very, very polite about it, which was nice. He was very British about it.


Chad (10m 46s):

He's an Evergreen Fellow. He's a part of the evergreen network with us.


Joel (10m 50s):

He's in the family. I forgot. Yeah.


Chad (10m 53s):

It's like Uncle George calling him, you know, the crazy uncle guy. But, that being said, apparently this communicator award that we won is a pretty big thing. Again, big, thanks to Evergreen and the, the team over at Evergreen and all the listeners giving us love on social media. Quick and fast list: Tracy Parsons, Debora Horowitz, Jamie Hornstein, Charlotte Overus. Aaron Stewart, Sean Horton, Shelley Careless-Whisper Billinghurst, Josh Zywein, Trent Cotton, Liz Scully, Manjuri Sinhih Christy Spilka, and Jasper Spannjart.


Chad (11m 36s):

Thanks so much that wasn't everybody. I couldn't get through them all. Thanks so much.


Joel (11m 41s):

What percent of those names do you think you said correctly now? 50/50?


Chad (11m 46s):

If I was lucky.


Joel (11m 49s):

I want to say a shout out/Sianora to Clubhouse. It was knowing you guys, if you haven't seen the number drop in terms of downloads and exodus of Clubhouse users, it's pretty impressive. I'm not going to put the nail in the coffin just yet, but the hammer and the nail are definitely out of the toolbox at this point.


Chad (12m 10s):

I have to say they just dropped the Android app and I downloaded it and I have attended a few sessions and I can now say, yeah, I don't fucking get it.


Joel (12m 22s):

And that is my opinion as well.


Chad (12m 27s):

What I do get though is we have an event and it's a pandologic events that we're hosting co-hosting and panel logic. They know how to throw a VIP event. They sent everybody, who's going to be on this event tonight, a spread of bourbon, we're doing a bourbon tasting and it's coming from Buffalo Trace. A Buffalo Trace employee's going to be on the line today and to go through some of that psychology and that kind of shit. But overall dude, we got Blanton's. We got Eagle Rare. We got Buffalo Trace.


Chad (13m 9s):

We got the White Dog.


Joel (13m 12s):

Is that that's just moonshine with a better label.


Chad (13m 15s):

Put the hair on your chest. And then the best thing for every single morning for your coffee, bourbon cream. I mean all of that, along with all the glass, the proper drinks.


Joel (13m 26s):

Yes. Yup, yup. Yup. The glass, the coaster. Jesus. If you're still sending out pins and calendars to people, Jesus, your way, your way out of bounds, man, you gotta, you gotta send good shit out to people.


Chad (13m 43s):

You're not in pando league.


Joel (13m 46s):

It's not a three package delivery. Just forget it. Just quit now. Yeah. So that's great. So you're on vacation next week. Why don't you gloat about that for a second for those of us who still are cooped up inside.


Chad (14m 2s):

It's time to live our fully vaxxed life, my friend, and obviously we're coming up on our birthday, our big Five-O Julie bought tickets to Costa Rica, baby. So we're going to be in Costa Rica for a week. Can't wait!


Joel (14m 18s):

And you're going to see some friends of the show while you're down there, allegedly.


Chad (14m 22s):

Yep. Yep. Nick from Hone It. Going to see Ethan he's been on. So Nick's actually been on firing squad. He did really well on that. You can check out, Hone It. And Ethan was on, Oh, I think late last year, early this year sometime. So yeah. Can't wait to see those guys.


Joel (14m 38s):

You do have a return ticket, right? This is a round trip vacation, correct? Just want to make sure I don't have to, you know, make scheduling changes to the podcas?


Chad (14m 54s):

Topics!


Joel (14m 58s):

All right. So you shredded this bad boy. Our buddies at Outmatch have acquired our buddies at Harver. What's up with that.


Chad (15m 5s):

So huge, thanks to all of our sources in Europe for providing amazing intel and insights. We actually dropped the news pretty much nearly a week before they planned, before Outmatch planned to drop the press release in itself. So all the props go to our fine friends and listeners over in Europe, keep the good stuff coming, we appreciate it. But since last September, Outmatch has acquired Launchpad, First Person, Checkster and now Harbor, can you dig into the press release a little?


Joel (15m 39s):

Yeah. So Harbor for those that don't know or don't remember, they basically help manage mass hiring for people. So that's their expertise and Outmatch is focused primarily on candidate experience. So if you, you know, if you combine mass hiring with a solid candidate experience should be a match made in heaven. So Harbor has raised around $25 million compared to Outmatches meager in comparison, $8 million. The combination is backed by existing Outmatch shareholders, including Rubicon, Technology Partners and Camden Partners, which is private equity. So similar to Jobvite, this definitely has the recipe of let's buy as much shit as we can to create one platform to rule them all.


Joel (16m 26s):

So we're watching a heavyweight match in the making with a lot of these companies. And I think it's fair to say that Outmatch is getting in the ring in a big way.


Chad (16m 36s):

Yeah, they're definitely in the ring. This is obviously filling core gaps with better technology than they already had. They're also growing their client portfolio and global footprint all through acquisition. So we've seen this with iCIMS as well with their acquisition of easier crew.


Joel (16m 55s):

For sure.


Chad (16m 55s):

They have 300 now, 300 global employees, 1300 combined customers and Harbor has big names like Peloton Teleperformance, McDonald's, Valvoline, KPMG, et cetera, et cetera. So Harbor actually raised, I think it was like 27 million euros, which is about 35 million USD. And my sources say that Harbor was actually prepping for a series C. So this wasn't, this was not a clearance rack sale. Harbor has been experiencing excellent growth just in the past couple of years, they have expanded their footprint in London and also New York, they're out of the Netherlands primarily.


Chad (17m 41s):

So this has been growth. And I think the combination between the two Outmatch already being a us organization and then Harbor being able to really focus, I think more on what they can do in Europe. It's a great concept to each other.


Joel (17m 56s):

Yeah. Listeners of our show will know that there's a bit of a hiring squeeze in these kinds of industries. And at some point the fed money is going to run out. The government checks are going to dry up. The Bitcoin millions are going to dry up as well, and people are going to go back to work. So having a technology to better manage the flow of candidates, as well as improve the experience that these folks have. It really feels like this deal is hitting at the right time. And these guys are gonna really, you know, hit the ground running with this partnership. So kudos to them for sure. And as a side note, yes, Harbor named us, this podcast, a 12 best recruiting podcasts to listen to in 2020.


Joel (18m 40s):

So good things happen to companies that suck up to us. I just want to add that to this new story, for sure. For sure. Yeah.


Chad (18m 49s):

We'll just use this as an isolated incident.


Joel (18m 53s):

Yeah. And we won't name the other 11 podcasts that they talked about in their show. So Handshake is also in the news. Jesus Christ, we just talked about them getting a bunch of money, but yeah. Unicorn alert, unicorn alert. We have a new billion dollar plus valuation company. So student focused recruitment site handshake has closed its second $80 million funding round in the last eight months. Listeners will remember that October was the last round. They now claim a valuation of $1.5 billion. The San Fran based startup has raised a total of 235.5 million since its founding in 2016.


Joel (19m 35s):

Handshake has more than doubled its revenue every year for the past three years and is nearing 100 million in annual revenue. The new funding Handshake says it will increase its footprint overseas. You remember the last round was all about virtual job fairs. Handshake says it has 18 million users, which is interesting because the total student population in the U S is around 20 million, so I'll let you do your own investigative research on that. They claim 1200 educational institutions and 550,000 enterprise clients. So Chad, are you ready for a Handshake job or are you looking for something a little more gratifying?


Chad (20m 15s):

I know hand jobs over here, kid. I want more than that. So from the Forbes article, it says "with the new funding Handshake hopes to create new features on Handshake that will help students and recent grads develop the skills they need to further their careers" end quote. Okay. So wasn't that what all of the college student debt was for in the first place? This is really weird first and foremost, to, to say that they have 18 million users. When I, I would like to say obviously 25% of that I would assume are maybe even a larger percent of a percentage of that actually falls off every year because they go into, they're leaving university, they're going into corporate America.


Joel (21m 2s):

There's a little claim of people still keep their email address and they still kind of keep touch. But it's a little, it's a little sketchy to say 18 million out of the 20 are you users.


Chad (21m 12s):

I have to say Handshake owns the college recruiting market for the university platform side of the house, especially around onsite event, scheduling virtual, virtual interviews, those types of things. But remember students can and will go anywhere and everywhere to search for jobs. And here's a quick quote from our friend, Steven Rothberg, over at college recruiter. Who's been doing this for a little while.


Joel (21m 40s):

He's been doing it for a minute.


Chad (21m 41s):

So quote, "They Handshake have almost no penetration after the day of graduation, but now say that they want into that. They can't succeed with that by leveraging career services as grads don't use career services," end quote. Again, Steven points out what pretty much they're not talking about at handshake, other than saying, we want to push forward into the post-grad side of the house, which again is an entirely different market that they, I don't think have a handle on.


Joel (22m 14s):

So we've dropped hand jobs, penetration and pushing in this new story and I'm going to drop another sexual innuendo and that's horniness. You know, I think part of this is investors are horny to go public. We're going to see ZipRecruiter go public. There's talk of a talent.com going public, which we covered on the show recently, why the hell not Handshake? So I think there's a lot of push from investors to get this company out into the public markets. And I think a lot of it is partly driven by there's still a lot of horniness by companies to grab these graduates sort of, off the tree. And I think that apparently Handshake has found some secret recipe to get companies really excited about the access that they have to college students.


Joel (23m 0s):

So something's working, this is a historically shitty business. There's no track record. You know, you mentioned Steve and doing this for a long time. We've had after college. That's also in the old school category. We have other companies that we've talked about, like Ripple Match. Recently companies just kind of come and go in this space, the ones that are long, long timers, you know, they're not big public billion dollar companies. They sort of find their niche and their groove and they get into it. So Handshake is going into uncharted territory. It'll be interesting to watch, but I'm not betting any money that they're going to come out on the other end, a winner in the long-term.


Chad (23m 38s):

Yeah, it's weird. I think the only company who had a hold on the market like handshake does today, job track back in the early two thousands before they were bought by Monster and Monster just fucked it all up with Monster Track and Monster Campus. So yeah, I think there is an opportunity here for organizations that we talk this about this and, and other shows about universities to be able to be more efficient. The problem with that is the efficiencies are going to lie within kicking career services to the curb, because this is a self-service platform instead of needing a full career services unit and/or department, you might just need a few people.


Joel (24m 23s):

Which is part of the challenge as well, right? You're you're working in an environment where tenure is a thing, right? Like where the status quo is embraced colleges don't want to get rid of their job placement and career hell plague. Nope, No, University wants to do that. So it's just a very hard balancing act of colleges and employers and keeping students engaged because they're always looking for the next big thing, which we'll get to in the end part of the show. But like, it's just a really hard business if they figure it out more power to 'em man, but the history is not in their favor.


Chad (24m 59s):

Yes. And I also think it's ripe for competition because I don't see, especially in what Handshake is doing with the universities, that there's really enough competition. So I think that it's right for competition in this space.


Joel (25m 12s):

Competition is good for business. Like the competition they might get from Jobvite.


Jobvite PROMO (25m 17s):

You know, Steve, it feels like we keep getting pushed to hire more and better candidates with no more budget. Right? I wish there was a way to get better results from what we're doing. Actually, I heard in episode of Chad and Cheese about this framework from Jobvite. Oh yeah. Evolve. It's a technology agnostic framework to help TA teams get better results from their recruiting efforts. And we don't even have to be a Jobvite by customer to use it. I bet we would get better results if we orchestrated all of our efforts. You mean like a centralized process and all of our channels working together? For sure, whether it's job boards, social, or even texting with candidates. Let's do that. jobvite.com/evolve.


Jobvite PROMO (25m 57s):

I'll send you the link. Cool. I'm going to finish watching this episode of Bridgerton. So what are you, what are you bingeing on these days? Chad,


Chad (26m 5s):

We are looking at was it the Mar of East town? That's what we we're looking to actually start. We just finished Jupiter's legacy, which was not amazing, but it was superheroes. So fuck it. We're going to watch it anyway. We binged through that in like, you know, the weekend. So there's just a ton of content that's out there. Winter Soldier, Falcon and Winter Soldier was amazing. So yeah. I mean, I'm just bouncing around for the most part. How about you?


Joel (26m 37s):

Yeah. Mayor of East Town, for sure. But that's sort of everyone's go-to now that everyone is watched the Queen's Gambit, I'll throw in one, that's a little bit off the radar. It's called White Gold. It's a Netflix show. It's like a 30 minute sort of sitcom takes place in the eighties. And it's about basically a bunch of English shysters that are selling windows to folks because apparently that was a thing in the eighties. If you lived in the UK or Europe, you had a lot of old windows and then there was an invention around plastic fiberglass windows. And, this comedy focuses on that phenomenon. I find it pretty funny and interesting so White Gold, kids if you're looking for a few laughs on Netflix?


Chad (27m 22s):

White Gold.


Joel (27m 23s):

Okay. So White Gold may be blinded by the light. So Blind is in the news, we've talked about them occasionally on the show. So the Berkeley, California based anonymized networking and employee chat site, that's a fancy way of saying Glassdoor want to be a raise 37 million in series C funding this week. Main street investor led the round and was joined by investors, including Cisco investments and pavilion capital. Total funding is around 62 million since its founding your member Glassdoor went for about 1.5 billion founded in 2013 when anonymous apps like Whisper, Secret and YikYak.


Joel (28m 7s):

That's one blast from the plast were all the rage. Most interestingly Blind is building what it calls quote "Talent by Blind" end quote, a platform for capturing hiring intentionality from its content and selling it to recruiters. The goal is to transfer people whose intentions might be to move off a big tech company to a startup environment. Blind says a couple of companies are currently using the Talent by Blind platform. Thoughts, Chad?


Chad (28m 39s):

So this is a somewhat anonymous platform, right?


Joel (28m 43s):

So you have to verify that you're with a company by sending an email to that company address, proving that you're at least with that company,


Chad (28m 52s):

They verify through company email?


Joel (28m 54s):

Yeah. It's like they say it's like a Reddit meets Glassdoor meets Slack kind of an experience.


Chad (29m 0s):

Feels like a scam to me because what you're doing is you're asking all of these individuals to come in in a pseudo anonymous kind of way. Cause you're not anonymous really. So in a pseudo anonymous kind of way, and you can have all of these great discussions and you can make these interactions. And then they also have this Talent by Blind thing that they're pulling together that you talked about where there's a hiring data play that's here. So this to me feels really scammy. Really Cambridge Analytica meets Facebook. It just doesn't feel right. Is there marketing to individuals?


Joel (29m 41s):

Yeah.


Chad (29m 42s):

About being pseudo anonymous and yet you're not really all of the signal data that you're pushing through that pipe every single day they're going to use on you period. So they're backing into building a LinkedIn kind of version by saying they're anonymous, but they're just bullshitting you. So I mean, looking at it from the outside, it's like, wow, this is really kind of cool. Then you dig into it and it's like, man, this is fu*ked, this is nasty. This is wow. I wouldn't want to have anything to do with this thing.


Joel (30m 14s):

Yeah. This is sort of a tale of two businesses for me. So on the negative side, I mean, this is a user base that doesn't seem to be able to get out of Silicon Valley. I mean, they've been around since 2013 and they're still sort of a niche Silicon Valley platform. Glassdoor and Indeed obviously, have escaped that niche and, and gone worldwide. I mean, eight years in a lot of people don't even know who Blind is, even in our industry, which may or may not be surprising moving out of anonymous chatter and getting into hiring solutions is probably the right move. But a lot of companies are bitter about Glassdoor and how they've been treated by Glassdoor.


Joel (30m 53s):

Like, so they'd rather not see another company rise from the anonymous review and comment, you know, platforms or universe. They'd probably rather see it die in the vine. You'll notice that TechCrunch who broke this story and talked about it failed to mention traffic numbers, which I think Blind probably doesn't want you to know because if it got compared to what Glassdoor and Indeed are getting, which is not apples to apples, but it would probably not paint a real favorable light. And on the other hand, on the pro side, you know, from what I'm seeing, even from, from data from Poach, that we're polling, there's a ton of engagement, at least in Silicon Valley and places on there, a fairly new review section.


Joel (31m 36s):

So if someone could dethrone a Glassdoor and Indeed, or at least maybe be a solid number three, I like Blind's chances over probably everyone else, including Fairy God Boss and Canoe and Comparatively.


Chad (31m 49s):

Yeah.


Joel (31m 50s):

They just need to figure out the marketing issues, making them friendly to companies, which good luck with that. So they have some huge challenges, but people, the kids do seem to like it and Glassdoor has an image problem in terms of looking old. And let's be honest since being, I mean, since being bought, like they're not exactly innovating over there, they're just kind of milking the profits and the traffic that they already have. So I mean, yeah, yeah. I like their chances if anybody's, but it's a really, really tough market that employers don't really, really like.


Chad (32m 24s):

It seems incredibly scammy also since they've already verified a person by their email, how do you know if that person has actually left the company or not?


Joel (32m 36s):

Yeah, it's challenging, right? Yeah. I don't know if they have temporarily. I don't think they have occasional reconfirming that they're with a company. It's also difficult because if you're verifying through a company address, then the company knows that you're getting verification emails from Blind, which does tip off the company that you're getting Blind emails and they can track where that email goes. So they can at least sort of funnel in if it's negative commentary about a company like who it could be. So semi-anonymous, semi in trouble. If you start talking shit too much. Yeah.


Chad (33m 14s):

Nice. I feel like I need to take a shower after talking about these fuckers. Let's move on to the next one.


Joel (33m 20s):

It may or may not help. I don't know. We got a lot of stuff going on.


Chad (33m 24s):

The question is, do we want to start with the jobs report, which was very paltry at 266,000 jobs? Chicago restaurants forced to pay $15 an hour, hear that forced to pay, which is exactly what the people getting paid by staying at home? Wendy's giving out free food coupons with every application or last but not least Google childcare workers who are pissed off because they're forced to go back to work without transportation? Pick your poison.


Joel (33m 56s):

Exactly. He's talking about a cornucopia of topics. Well, let's go with jobs report since that was kind of a week old story at this point. They were expecting a million new jobs created and last month and only 266,000 were created, which was horrible, horrible news. It seems like a combination of living off stemies and Bitcoin millions and gigging on the side in coordination with childcare issues, COVID fears. A lot of things are coming together to really kill the recovery from a supply side. A lot of States now are going to start killing the extra payments that they're getting from the feds in terms of unemployment.


Joel (34m 38s):

Those should start running out in June. The only comment I have on this, and I think it's a little bit outside of the box is this is a little bit of a UBI universal basic income experiment. And if this is what UBI is or isn't, it's going to be the perception of what UBI is going to bring the economy. And I think the bigger picture of what's going on with the economy right now means that UBI is not going to happen in our lifetime. I don't think any politician can seriously introduce a UBI after the last few months, I think they're going to get killed by getting called an economy killer.


Joel (35m 20s):

And they'll point to this moment as to why there shouldn't be an UBI initiative.


Chad (35m 24s):

Many people are seeing this as a vacation from a shitty fucking job that they don't want to run back to. And a shitty fucking job that had shitty fucking wages or both right. Could, could have been one, could have been the other, but they're not mutually exclusive. So overall, this is also showing here in the US, when you have restaurants who are saying, yeah, we're really forced to pay $15 an hour. Fuck, are you kidding me? I mean, you're forced to pay $30,000 a year. I want to go back to what I've said on earlier podcasts. If you cannot pay a living wage to the people who are actually providing the services, the products, whatever, right.


Chad (36m 9s):

Then you don't, you don't deserve to be in business, close up fucking shop. Okay.


Joel (36m 14s):

The companies that do care and in some cases can actually act accordingly are successful, are starting to move in that direction. I think interestingly, this past.


Chad (36m 25s):

They're being forced.


Joel (36m 26s):

Well market, market forces.


Chad (36m 27s):

I don't know if I would call it market force?


Joel (36m 30s):

I would, companies will pay, if they can't get people to serve food, they're going to have to pay them more money. But the point I wanted to bring up was I think Uber and Chipotle, I recently talked about, talked about quarterly reports and earnings. And Chipotle, which also recently increased minimum wage or entry-level salaries talked extensively on their call about, look, if you get in at Chipolte within three years, you'll, you know, you're on track in three years to be making six figures as a manager, store manager or something like that, which is real money.


Chad (37m 4s):

Tuition repayment. Yeah.


Joel (37m 6s):

That's relevant, to where I think both of us would like love to see the world go. The other thing was, was Uber talked about average payments, hourly payments for New York City. New York City is sort of a unique market, but New York City drivers of Uber were getting upwards of $38 per hour driving Uber. So some, some things are happening that are positive. I just wanted to point those out. We're a long way from, from being, you know, happy go lucky, but things are moving in the right direction in some cases.


Chad (37m 36s):

Those Uber numbers, for the most part, the, the right that like the Instacart, the Uber numbers, those are totally blown out bullshit for the most part, because they're not, they're not working eight hours making $38 an hour. Right. They might have three hours overall where they're sitting in their car for a certain amount of time. So, you know, again, numbers that they're pushing out there. I think for the most part they're, they're bogus, but I understand where you're coming from, but it's better than getting fucking free coupons for food.


Joel (38m 6s):

Yeah. Yeah. We've if, if McDonald's has given out $50 bills just to interview, I'm not sure Wendy's free breakfast sandwiches for an application is going to move the needle. But what are your thoughts?


Chad (38m 19s):

Yeah, I think Dave is rolling over in his fucking grave right now.


Joel (38m 25s):

Free breakfast sandwich with a job application. They couldn't even throw in like a double stack. It had to be a shitty breakfast sandwich anyway. Okay. So Google the workers who and take care of Google corporate employee' s children during the day are furious over being hit with additional transportation costs. As the company requires them to return to in-person work. Google has told it's 148 San Francisco Bay area children or childcare workers to return to the office starting Monday, despite the company shuttle services remaining shutdown, and many corporate employees being allowed to keep working remotely. This is according to a news story that featured Alphabet worker's union in a statement as a result, Google is forcing the childcare workers who a WVU for alphabet workers' union said earn an average of $20 per hour to find alternative ways to get to work.


Joel (39m 18s):

That could be costly, especially for many workers who live far from Google's campuses due to the high cost of living in the Bay area. The union is asking Google to provide a $1,500 monthly transportation stipend until the company shuttle services resume. As of Friday evening, the petition had gathered more than 250 signatures from workers at Google and other subsidiaries of the parent company. Alphabet. Seems like a fair request to meet Chad. If you're going to shut down the shuttle, at least at least give me a stipend for driving, you know, eight hours to Silicon Valley.


Chad (39m 53s):

But this is a knee jerk reaction of leadership, understanding that the only way that they can get people back into the office is to provide childcare. So they're thinking, okay, let's rush the childcare providers back to the office, but then they forgot that, you know, the childcare providers themselves so that the teachers so on and so forth, they have needs too. And the thing I thought interesting is that, you know, they earn on average $20 an hour in Silicon Valley where the living wage is $28 an hour. So not only are they working below the living wage, but they're also pretty much having to dig in their own pockets to come back to work because it's mandatory.


Chad (40m 35s):

So again, I think any company that's out there listening to this, learn from these organizations and their huge fuck ups, because that's what this is. I mean, we're talking about people who take care of your kids. Pretty important, pretty important, right?


Joel (40m 52s):

Have a good kind of a good retention tool for all the knowledge based workers.


Chad (40m 56s):

Keep them happy because you know, you, want happy people taking care of your kids, right? We need to think a lot of this through when we talk to Seth Feit from Spectrum, from Charter Communications about them returning to work. I mean, it's almost like they had this formulaic kind of, you know, way of making it happen. And they were really doing their best to think through all of these different steps. Companies have to do that. They can't just have these knee jerk reactions.


Joel (41m 27s):

By the way, are we ready to call the Alphabet workers union, the most influential union in America?


Chad (41m 33s):

It is.


Joel (41m 34s):

They're just about the best.


Chad (41m 35s):

Because it's just about the only union in America these days with any, with any chutzpah


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Joel (42m 32s):

Oh my God.


Chad (42m 33s):

Got to thank Daniel O'Neill for calling more attention to this story by the way on LinkedIn.


Joel (42m 39s):

Daniel had a little bit of a premature flex on this one now we'll we'll see. We'll see what happens. Okay. So my God, I can't believe I'm reading it. All right. So this is a report from Axios. They say that TikTok is testing a job service for gen Z. No, it's not the Onion, it's Axios. Okay, the pilot program is designed to help people find jobs on TikTok and connect with companies looking to find candidates. It's also meant to help brands use TikTok as a recruitment channel, the platform isn't a product that's integrated with TikTok itself.


Chad (43m 13s):

What?


Joel (43m 13s):

I think that's important, but rather a separate webpage accessible via the TikTok app where brands can post jobs, primarily entry-level listings. Users can post a TikTok video resume to the site rather than a traditional resume. TikTok will ask candidates to post their resume videos to their TikTok profiles if they wish to help publicize the new service. A Washington post article about gen Z is using TikTok to share career advice, inspired TikTok executives, to try to bolster their platform for job seekers. Where to begin Chad?


Chad (43m 53s):

Another knee jerk reaction from leadership to create something that is a ham fisted solution. It's a disconnected shit. It's not even integrated into their platform. It feels even more ham-fisted than Facebook for jobs or Google for jobs. There's no flex here. This is just a reaction that is a shitty reaction.


Joel (44m 12s):

Yeah. If TikTok was looking to become as uncool as possible, as quickly as possible this is a fantastic strategy. Historically,


Chad (44m 21s):

this shit doesn't work.


Joel (44m 23s):

I mean, remember when every employee, sorry. Remember when every company had to have like their own Facebook page for people to join and follow the company. Like nobody does anymore. I mean, remember when every employee was going to use Snapchat to recruit, you know, fast food employees, we talked about think McDonald's was doing that applications. Snaplications yeah. We, we touted that shit big time and they're gone. TikTok users. don't want to go to a separate section on TikTok to look for jobs. That's ridiculous. This is going to fade out. No employers are going to do it. Even if they scrape jobs, I just don't see people. I mean, how are you going to get the resumes that are in video format to the job postings that they're scraping them?


Joel (45m 4s):

Like, it's just this isn't going to work. It just, isn't going to work. Telling you 20 years of experience says, this is a shit show waiting to happen.


Chad (45m 10s):

Then that being said, I'm going to go get a beer and watch TikTok.


Joel (45m 16s):

And we'll enjoy bourbon in about four hours. Amen. And with that,


Joel and Chad (45m 22s):

We out.


OUTRO (46m 14s):

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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