You want some PPC? How about Porn, Politics, and Canvas.
Boy, this week's show has it all. Firing Squad alums Canvas (no, not that Canvas) and Humanly grabbed some
investment money and some juicy new valuations, while Glassdoor makes a fishy acquisition that Chad compares to Dice's dumb stake in The Muse. A battle is brewing between traditional ATS's and the bots of the future. Who ya' got? Chad & Cheese sound off. Also, Salesforce messes with Texas and gets political, as they have a tendency to do. Of course, we had to end on a story, a cautionary tale, deep fakes and revenge porn 2.0. Creepy? Oh yeah!
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 (20s):
Oh yeah. Two guys who will never win a recall election. What's up kiddies? It's your favorite Gavin Newsome lookalikes, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "Turd Ferguson" Cheeseman.
Chad (36s):
This is Chad "just chilling" Sowash.
Joel (39s):
And on this week, show Glassdoor smells fishy. Salesforce messes with Texas and get ready for revenge porn 2.0, and you thought Bitcoin was complicated. All right, Chad, I'm going to introduce a new segment called where is Chad in Europe? We all know you're in Portugal, but give us the deets on what's going on with Chad this week.
Chad (1m 6s):
Yes, I am in a little town called Tavira, which is just east, about half an hour east of Farro, If you take the train. Just loving it! It is old world. It is cobblestones, has a river right down the middle of town. There's beach. There's great food, wine. I mean, I just, I can't get enough, man. I just can't get enough.
Joel (1m 32s):
So I mentioned in the green room that you've gone from like happy vacationer to you've crossed over into just this is zen-like state that you may never come back from. So I'm equal parts, happy and jealous that you found this new Chad. It's interesting. I'm willing to explore the new Chad, Applebee's misses you though. Applebee's misses you. That's that's the problem.
Chad (1m 56s):
I don't miss Applebee's one fucking bit.
Joel (1m 60s):
One thing you might miss is college football, which is going to lead me to my first shout out. I don't know if you even saw this or not, but did you see the cat at the University of Miami football game?
Chad (2m 11s):
I did not.
Joel (2m 12s):
You did not. Okay. That's why I brought it up. Okay. So, the Miami Hurricanes are playing a big game, obviously. And there's a cat. I don't know how cats keep getting into professional venues or sports venues, but they do. So it's a cat and it looks like it got into, I don't know the luxury suite of some alumni and it's literally hanging like by its claw on the edge. I'm like, hang on the edge. Right? It's gonna fall. They can't get to it. Everyone in the stadium sees this cat hanging for its life and someone below it. I'm going to say 25ish feet below. So it might not have killed it, but definitely would have, would have injured it.
Joel (2m 54s):
Someone had an American flag and they did like the old style, like firefighters, where they had the trampoline at the bottom of the building. So they spread out this flag and the cat fell into this flag. Unharmed. It was magical. I thought you, he missed it. He missed this. We'll get a big applause. You know, I'm kind of a cat guy. Anyway, this was humanity at its best. And I wanted to give him a shout out.
Chad (3m 23s):
That's fucking awesome.
Joel (3m 24s):
Save the pussies.
Chad (3m 27s):
Always, always. I want to give a shout out to fantasy football since we're talking about fantasy football, because I blew everybody away in week one and that's, it's all downhill hill from here. So I quit, that's it. I'm done. I quit.
Joel (3m 43s):
I think you've kind of quit on everything at this point. Chad, every photo I get a view on a beach drinking wine in your bathing suit tells me that you're quitting.
Chad (3m 52s):
That's not quitting.
Joel (3m 54s):
Out to lunch. Yeah, we'll get to fantasy in a second. We'll get the leaderboard. I want to give a shout out to Taco Bell. You probably missed this one too, over there in Europe. So, so Taco Bell is launching its taco lovers subscription service. That's right. For $10 a month, subscribers can pick up one taco per day for a 30 day stretch. Chad. I'm in heaven.
Chad (4m 18s):
That's smart.
Joel (4m 19s):
That's the taco lovers subscription. $10 a month gets you free tacos every day.
Chad (4m 24s):
So do they have a Joel Cheeseman nacho supreme subscription? Because I could see you getting into that.
Joel (4m 30s):
I have my own line at the drive through basically. Get the free cinnamon twist ready. It's in it twists.
Chad (4m 40s):
So you love Taco Bell. Well, I love our listeners. We received a great message from Chase over at CHG Healthcare. Sorry, buddy. You missed out on the fantasy football cut, but there's always next year. And yes, as soon as we start doing live events. I promise you we'll sit down for a beer or whiskey and that's an open invite to any of our listeners. If you want to buy us beer whiskey at the bar, we are here for you. We will drink with you. That's who we are.
Joel (5m 8s):
No doubt. And you probably miss this one as well. We love our listeners and we love our sponsors. Symphony Talent sent me some brownies. I assume that there's some waiting for you at home, if your house guest hasn't eaten them all, already. So thanks for the thanks for the sweets Symphony. We appreciate it.
Chad (5m 25s):
Yeah. They might have. More than likely who knows, who knows? Shout out to the Job Board Doctor this week. He, he validated our what? The actual fuck thoughts on DHI, Dice's parent company for throwing 3 million at the Muse. Again, a head-scratcher not just for Chad and Cheese, but pretty much for everybody who is who's listened to the podcast thus far.
Joel (5m 51s):
Yeah. And I think Adam Gordon was it, kinda defended the move. I'm forgetting exactly who or what he said, but he's drinking a lot of scotch apparently from where he is in the world. I got a couple of LinkedIn's for you since I don't think they actually make any of the new stories this week. Number one, LinkedIn articles for pages. Yes. You've been writing articles on LinkedIn as a person, but now you can do it as a company. And I'm going to go off on a little tangent here, but every company listening to this probably has a blog section on their company page. This is the vendor side, not necessarily the employers, but most people are writing blogs and they're emailing their list and everything else.
Joel (6m 37s):
And as someone who's been doing it for a long time, I can tell you that the exposure that your posts get on your own site now is shit in the days of like no social media, like SEO and people search shit, and that you could share something and actually got exposure. Those days are gone. If, if you, if you're not publishing on the platform that you're on, if you're linking out from a post that you're sharing, you're getting about a 10th of the exposure that you would normally get if you posted on the platform. So my word of words of wisdom here is that if you are a company, a vendor that's blogging on your own site, that might be fine, but I would seriously consider posting on whatever platform you want.
Joel (7m 22s):
And let's be honest in our, in our world. LinkedIn is where everybody is and you should consider posting those articles on LinkedIn, because they're going to get a lot more exposure because they're actually on LinkedIn. So if you're doing it old school blog on your site, reconsider posting these things actually on the platform. Off my soap box. Thanks for listening.
Chad (7m 44s):
I, there are a couple of things here. I think the first off it's your content, but you're giving it to them. So you've got, you've got to be cognizant of that first and foremost, second, I think there's a better way from a marketing standpoint, to tease in articles on LinkedIn, and then draw people back to your website. There are different ways to do it. Not to mention from an SEO standpoint, it doesn't hurt either, right? That having those backlinks. So don't just, I don't think it's an "or" situation. I think it's an "and" situation. You don't want duplicate content. What you do is you massage it differently for LinkedIn and you make it shorter and you lead into something longer on your site.
Chad (8m 24s):
And you know, maybe we start doing that with transcriptions, a little mini transcriptions on LinkedIn, which actually bolster more site traffic for us. Maybe we'll check it out. I don't know.
Joel (8m 33s):
Yeah, look, you need to rethink it. If you're doing it like it's 2011. If you can play the game correctly, then you can win. But you can't, I see too many companies that just repost a link on whatever and they're done. And if you go to their main site, there's no comments. There's no likes. I mean, you can tell there's very little engagement, so just rethink your content marketing strategy.
Chad (8m 58s):
I agree. What else do we have at LinkedIn?
Joel (9m 1s):
So I've got another LinkedIn thing. So every now and then I throw on a little poll, which I think are kind of fun. I should, I have a question. So you and I have been talking a lot about, does a developer and, you know, Mishawaka, you know, does he make the say, or she make the same as someone in Minneapolis or Seattle or so. So I've been kind of coming to your side of the fence on this, that, okay. You know, if we're going to go all remote, then kind of, yeah. It's hard to post a job and say, okay, well, depending on where you are is what you're going to get paid. So I threw the question out on LinkedIn. It was basically will a developer in rural America make the same salary as a developer in Boston or Seattle by let's say 2030.
Joel (9m 43s):
I had 415 responses, which isn't bad. That's George LaRoc territory in terms of significance.
Chad (9m 49s):
Not too shabby. Yeah. That's good.
Joel (9m 50s):
So we got 30, 35% said, yes, but we had 65 said no. So I thought that was worth mentioning that we're still a ways away from people accepting the, you can live anywhere and make the same salary as someone in a high market
Chad (10m 7s):
Here in the US we've been conditioned to think the way that companies want us to think. I mean, we've been taking the narrative of whatever the company says as this is how life works and we're starting to see, I think 30% is great to be quite Frank. I mean, because we're nothing but a bunch of fucking robots at this point. Oh, you're going to pay me what? Oh, I'm so, so thank you. Thank you so much, sir. We're out of that now. We're like, fuck you work. I'm going to go somewhere else, especially in this kind of market. So I think 30% is good. And we're starting to understand that, you know, we're working our way out of that you know, being conditioned by corporate America narrative. I mean, it's just, it's total bullshit.
Chad (10m 48s):
It doesn't matter where you do the work. It's the work, it's the same work. And it's about the person's value. Not about where they choose to live.
Joel (10m 56s):
Enough said. Shout out to Jessica Lee. Oh, she's a long time. Or she's been promoted to SVP of Global Talent Development at Marriott International.
Chad (11m 6s):
Big applause.
Joel (11m 7s):
But she is climbing that ladder. Go Jess go!
Chad (11m 15s):
And big shout out to Erik Kostelnik over at postal.io, CEO, postal.io. You might remember him for selling a little company to iCIMS years ago, but he just got $22 million in funding for postal.io. So go, Erik, go!
Joel (11m 35s):
Nice. So those that don't know, postal.io is old school direct mail, basically. I mean, there's some other pieces of it, like donating to charities and stuff like that. But when he started the company, I thought that doesn't make sense on its surface, but yeah, like direct mail, like you get so few junk mail pieces, at least I do that. You kind of pay attention to most of it. Whereas the email gets filtered out. You delete it without even looking at it. So there, you know, take a look at direct mail if you've not looked at that.
Chad (12m 8s):
Postal.io, you can do gifting, and schwag. And I mean, there's all kinds of shit that you can send through the platform itself. So it's definitely a sales slash marketing mechanism that is in real life instead of just sending emails.
Joel (12m 24s):
Yep. And in light of the email discussion, shout out to MailChimp, one of the OGs in email marketing, and they've evolved into more of a platform for all things, including direct mail. Intuit bought MailChimp for $12 billion this week. So,
Chad (12m 43s):
Wow!
Joel (12m 43s):
If MailChimp is worth 12 billion, you can do the math and consider what some recruiting companies that do the same thing are worth. And shouldn't Text Recruiting, be worth more than direct mail anyway, or email. Anyway, anyway, $20 million is a lot of emails. So congratulations to MailChimp.
Chad (13m 1s):
Yup. Great "How I Built This" with Guy Roz podcast about MailChip. Listen to that and it'll give some pretty great fucking contexts. It's good stuff up. And tell me about free stuff.
Joel (13m 13s):
Free stuff. Well, if you haven't signed up for free shit, we got t-shirts from Emissary. We got beer from Adzuna and we got whiskey from Sovren. You need to go to chadcheese.com/free to get that. And also, while you're doing that and thinking about us, leave a review on whatever podcast platform you enjoy.
Chad (13m 34s):
Oh! Yeah!
Joel (13m 35s):
It's our oxygen and give us feedback, let us know we're doing a good job or what you want to hear more of. Or maybe if you hate these shout-outs, tell us in the review that you leave on whatever platform that you want.
Chad (13m 46s):
We'll give you a shout out.
Joel (13m 48s):
And I have a melancholy shout out. I don't even know if you heard this one being in Portugal, but Norm MacDonald, SNL fame passed away this week at 61 after I guess, ten year battle with cancer. If you're not familiar, we got some youngsters listening. If you haven't seen Norm McDonald's Burt Reynolds, impression of Jeopardy on SNL with Will Ferrell is some absolute awesomenous. So take a break, go to YouTube and search that and have a good laugh on us. And then let's get into fantasy football. You touched on it there at the beginning. So it's sponsored by Poach.
Joel (14m 29s):
That's an insiders deal here.
Chad (14m 30s):
A reeach around.
Joel (14m 31s):
We're playing fantasy football. Week one is in the books. Here's the leaderboard. Are you ready? Okay. Number one is you heard Chad, so he's I guess, out of the league now. Cause he's going out on top. Number two, we have Pete "don't call me douchey" Suchi. Number three is Christie "don't call me Jackie moon" behind her is Bill "fantasy" Fanning. I'm right behind Bill, which is where I love to be. Next up is Chris "got game" Cox. Ms. Q is who I'm calling "Chatbot Queen" Quincy. She's in there. After that. Next up is Makin' Benjamin's Koontz after him as Jason "punter"
Joel (15m 11s):
Putnam and back in the rear. If you know what I mean is Chris "I love Aaron Rodgers" Russell who,
Chad (15m 20s):
Wow!
Joel (15m 20s):
as a Virgin picked a quarterback first, which is never a great idea. It's also not a great idea when your quarterback has turned into a emo, a musician can get you three fantasy points in week one. So hopefully he bounces back against I think Detroit this week, but Chris, you got nowhere else to go, but up and fantasy football, we're having a good time.
Chad (15m 44s):
And the best fantasy football team name goes to Pete Suchi. Roy f-ing Kent.
Joel (15m 52s):
You would, you are obsessed with that show. And I'll end my segment here with birthdays. We got Lucas Roscoe works at Factory Fix and we got to Olivia Marquette. Who's basically a zygote listening to our show. She was born. She was born in the first of the month. So we missed her, but she was born in 1999.
Chad (16m 14s):
What?!
Joel (16m 15s):
Works for Lifetime Fitness? Olivia, thanks for listening. And assuming you don't know who norm McDonald is, make sure you go back to YouTube and watch some of those clips.
Chad (16m 25s):
Roscoe sounds like the guy has a barbecue joint and also sells used cars. That's awesome. Topics!
Joel (16m 38s):
Don't call us goCanvas.io. Canvas.
Chad (16m 43s):
Yes. Canvas. The world's first DRP diversity recruitment platform announced a series C round of 50 million. That's right kids, five zero million and a 400 million valuation led by Al Ventures with participation from a little goup you might know called Sequoia. Lachy Groom, Zoom apps fund. Hi, Sage Ventures, Bam Elevate, and Fifth Down Capital. All I got to say is DRP baby DRP.
Joel (17m 20s):
So the grand total now is 82 million that they've raised apparently 400 million. That's a shit ton of money. So they were founded back in 2017. They service companies like Lyft, Headspace, Airbnb, and Dropbox, and their play is diversity and you also should mention that they were a Firing Squad alumni. They were on the show.
Chad (17m 39s):
Ben was on the show.
Joel (17m 40s):
I believe that they got golf claps from both of us. Is that correct?
Chad (17m 45s):
I think I know I gave him a golf clap.
Joel (17m 47s):
Yeah. So I mentioned the European show and we talked on the European show about sort of diversity and the globalism of diversity initiatives. I think that we tend to be a little bit shortsighted in the US, imagine that we think only of ourselves. And it was really clear to me in talking to our European guys that this is an initiative that's global and we see money flowing into it from companies. This is legitimate sort of strategy. This isn't just lip service, you know, to the Wall Street Journal. And the proof is in the budgeting, right? So money's going into these services and is, and as long as diversity is legitimate and it's the real deal in terms of strategy companies that are building technologies to service diversity recruiting are going to be big winners.
Joel (18m 34s):
And clearly Canvas is sort of at the forefront of that movement. So yeah, I think this is a space to watch. I'm sort of calling it a new, a new acronym. Chad, you ready for this? I'm going to call them RAD companies. So right now, if you're, you better be remote, automation focused, or diversity focused, RAD. You like that.
Chad (18m 57s):
So eighties.
Joel (18m 58s):
Yeah. So we're gonna, yeah. We're watching these RAD companies for the future because this definitely seems where things are going and Canvas also, I'll note that they actually own Canvas.com.
Chad (19m 10s):
They did. They bought it with their last funding round.
Joel (19m 13s):
Yeah. They're not myCanvas, you know, dot.ai or something. So like good on that. And if Aman's listening from Canvas, if he had just gotten the.com, he might've gotten 10 X what he got from Jobvite, that's a different part,
Chad (19m 28s):
Doubtful Aman, doubtful. But Canvas also announced the launch of a new product, Canvas Diversity Analytics and Benchmarking already adopted by companies like Airbnb, Bloomberg Lyft, yada yada. But how does analytics help Canvas score 50 million with all? Guess what kids new sec rules, baby. That's how, and these are 30 years in the making today. Public companies must divulge human capital metrics considered to be material and an understanding of the company's business, including diversity and inclusion, which makes Canvases total addressable market solid baby.
Joel (20m 8s):
That's Tam for another acronym.
Chad (20m 10s):
Oh my God. So yeah, you've got the RAD Tam. So you're not just talking about budget. You're talking about forcible budget. SEC is going to force this shit. So the budget just exploded
Joel (20m 22s):
Yeah. So Chad, we, I think we both gave him a golf clap, I think. Is it fair to say that on this news, we might both go rousing applause for Canvas.com at the moment.
Chad (20m 32s):
The federal government is mandating that you do this. Yes.
Joel (20m 39s):
All right. Well let's, let's move to another firing squad alumni. We're on fire this week.
Chad (20m 44s):
That's awesome YES!
Joel (20m 45s):
Yep. Yep. So Seattle-based Humanly. I think they're humanly.io. So they got close has landed $4.2 million to help companies automate parts of the interview process. Total funding to date is 5.3 million launched in 2018 and co-founded by former Microsoft and Tiny Pulse employee Prem Kumar. Yes rumor has it the idea was hatched at a White Castle anyway, Humanly's technology aims to reduce the time it takes to find talent. Dad jokes, that's what you get here. Provide a better experience for potential employees. Once a company engages with a candidate, Humanly automates repetitive conversations at the top of the funnel before a human steps in to complete the hiring process.
Joel (21m 30s):
Chad, this one got arousing applause from both of us.
Chad (21m 35s):
Unhuh
Joel (21m 35s):
I assume this one is no surprise to you. You're still a fan of Humanly.
Chad (21m 40s):
I'm a fan, but I gave him a golf clap. So in October of last year, we spoke with Prem, right? The CEO and the dude is super smart, has industry background and I gave him a golf clap because of one piece that he needed that I didn't think he had yet, but it was incredibly important, it was validation. And that validation would be cash. Guess what? Kids, he just got it. Now he gets a big applause for me. Awesome.
sfx (22m 8s):
Applause
Joel (22m 9s):
You just made Prem smile, I think.
Chad (22m 11s):
Yeah, I'm sure. But remember, remember kids we've been talking about this, do the boring shit, do the shit that people don't want to do. And scale! Humans don't scale well, but tech does. So Humanly does screening, incredibly boring engagement. It's not boring, but humans can't scale it well. Records check, nobody wants to do that shit, that's boring as fuck. Employee engagement again, scale. So what they're doing is they're looking at different areas where they can hit and they can actually go after budget because it just makes good sense. Especially right now in this market, when you can't find fucking recruiters, what are you going to do? You got to use tech to scale.
Joel (22m 51s):
By the way, Prem, if you haven't called up a Anoop at Seek Out there in Seattle, you guys should hook up at a Starbucks. I think they have a few in Seattle and have some coffee and talk about the things you have in common and where the future could go. Anyway,
Chad (23m 5s):
Microsoft.
Joel (23m 7s):
Yeah. You know, if Canvas is riding a wave of diversity, Humanly is another RAD company as well, right? In the automation space. So to me, there are, there are the riding, the right wave. This doesn't surprise me at all, this move. To me the question is we've sort of seen conversational AI or let's call it the chat bot trend and how that played out. So you had like version 1.0 and the Mayas, the AllyOs, the Wade and Wendy's et cetera, were all acquired. There was, there was no additional funding rounds. There was no big terms disclosed.
Chad (23m 39s):
Clearance rack, mostly.
Joel (23m 40s):
So does version 2.0, the Humanly's, the Predictive Hires who we've talked to out of Australia, the Hourlies, the Talk Pushes, et cetera, is this wave going to catch on? And I feel better about this wave of companies than I did about the first one.
Chad (23m 57s):
I do too, even though I did love the first ones. I think there's no question. You say it all the time. The pioneers get the slings and arrows, right? They get the arrows. The thing is about this group and that is different than the first group. The first group got so much money so fast they were incredibly undisciplined. They were all over the place. They had no focus and they were trying to do everything for everybody.
Joel (24m 19s):
Yeah.
Chad (24m 19s):
This group, I feel, I could be fucking wrong and I hope not, but I feel these guys are more disciplined. I feel like they're not going to try to please everybody and do everything, but they're going to focus and they're going to do what they do well in their lane. And I think that that is key for any startup.
Joel (24m 36s):
Yeah. And paradox did a lot of things right. But one of the things that they did particularly right was taking a little money, bootstrapping, as long as they could, they didn't have sort of that downward pressure that a Maya had and an AllyO had really early. So yeah. Similar to how Indeed was really focused and disciplined around funding and all that good stuff. Speaking of Indeed, let's talk about Glassdoor.
Chad (25m 2s):
Oh my God.
Joel (25m 3s):
So we actually debated whether or not to cover this one, but our listeners love a little Glassdoor banter. So here we go. Recruit Holdings, parent company to Glassdoor, and Indeed has acquired Fishbowl, an app that gives users an anonymous option to provide frank employee feedback as well as joint interest based conversation groups to chat about work and search for jobs, Glassdoor, which has 55 million users is already integrating Fishbowl content into its main platform. Although Fishbowl with its 1 million users will also continue to now operate as a standalone app. Terms of the deal we're not disclosed. Shocker, but Fishbowl founded in 2016 has raised around $8 million.
Joel (25m 47s):
TechCrunch said "integrating Fishbowl into Glassdoor could attract a population of users out there looking for a new kind of LinkedIn" end quote, Chad, you tried out Fishbowl. You're not a fan. Your thoughts.
Chad (26m 2s):
Yeah, I think it's horrible. I also think it's pretty much akin to the employer forums that we had back in the day where it should just went crazy and me because there are anonymous con comments that can happen. So what you're doing is if you start to, if LinkedIn starts to add this kind of chaos to their platform, they said that they're not, they're going to run it separately. But if they start to add this kind of chaos of their platform, it's just going to blow it up. It makes no sense to me. I would add this one to the list for possibly winning a Darwin award for acquisitions for Glassdoor. This is just fucking stupid.
Joel (26m 42s):
All right. So we talked about a Dice giving The Muse $3 million last week. And now we have this news, which is the worst move by a company Dice or Glassdoor.
Chad (26m 56s):
That's a hard one. That's a hard one. Obviously you didn't ask me this before.
Joel (26m 59s):
You don't know the price tag of Fishbowl so that's hard to answer without
Chad (27m 5s):
I'm going to have to say it's a draw. These are both. Some of the stupidest moves that I can see from either side DHI with the Muse, Adam Gordon might think this is smart. I think he's gone nuts. And then, and then when we're talking about Fishbowl, adding the pro the possibility of chaos into a system right now, LinkedIn, which already has enough chaos in it as it is, but there are names attached to it so, therefore, it's kind of managed chaos, right? So I think equally stupid. I don't like either one of these moves.
Joel (27m 38s):
So, so here's my take. So isn't an interesting how Indeed isn't mentioned at all benefiting from this deal. This was a Recruit Holdings acquisition. Although they chose to spun it as a Glassdoor thing to the media. So Recruit dropped $1.2 billion for Glassdoor in 2018 and the platform is I think losing market share, not only companies like blind ZipRecruiter, ZipRecruiter partnering with Comparably, which we talked about, that's gonna inject some energy into that company. And more and more even social media sites like TikTok. I mean, whereas where people are sounding off about their company, but to me like small bets, like this probably makes sense for them.
Joel (28m 26s):
You know, while you still have 55 million engaged users, you might as well add some tech that might energize them. And if you can bring on maybe some fresh development blood that's okay too because I think since the acquisition innovation at Glassdoor has pretty much died. So if this can help that, then that's nice, but.
Chad (28m 46s):
Why don't they just fucking buy it 4chan. They should just buy 4chan. I mean, I mean, come on seriously. This is the same shit. Annonymous chaos. It's stupid. It's fucking stupid.
Joel (28m 58s):
Hail Mary let's. Let's take football's themes this week. Okay. Let's take a quick break. Get into some battle bots, I guess ATS versus versus bots. We'll be, we'll be right back.
Chad (29m 12s):
We talked last week about recruitment automation and there's been a discussion. That's been a running rampant through recruiting circles about the ATS, not being able to auto reject someone. Now here's where those two things collide us talking about it and recruiters talking about it as well. Our buddy Mason Wong, who is in recruiting over it at Lyft had a tweet thread that was 18 tweets long. That started out like this quote thread "a recent Harvard study about hidden talent is reframed by the Verge as a automation, mistakenly mistakenly, rejecting millions, then echoed by Joel Cheeseman and Chad Sowash, as how some systems automatically reject candidates.
Chad (30m 3s):
This perpetuates a myth that needs some clearing up." There are 17 other tweets after that, but first and foremost, making them
Joel (30m 12s):
Comments just to clear that up. These are like 17 a row that Mason put, okay.
Chad (30m 16s):
Thread. Yeah. So first and foremost, Mason, love you brother. But remember we actually made fun of the Harvard study. It was a bumbling attempt to gain our attention, which it did because of the Verge article. So I guess the mission accomplished, but at no time, did we perpetuate a myth? And let's say, well, I guess, unless you're part of the throngs of recruiters who are saying that the ATS doesn't reject candidates, which is a rabbit hole that sends you back to the fucking 1990s for fuck's sake. I really believe we should stop this old fashioned talk about ATS because we live in a world of tech stack within that world are varying degrees of tech and capabilities.
Chad (31m 2s):
For instance, iCIMS acquired opening.io, a matching system that could easily screen qualified candidates out or in. Paradox and Talk Push are evolving into systems that really can't be called an ATS, but can they screen candidates in and out? Yes, they fucking can. Humanly could quite possibly be in that same bucket of new and evolving tech. HelL, Canvas trademarked, DRP, because they are more evolved and they do not want to be labeled as an ATS. Right? So my point is that this entire discussion is a false narrative.
Chad (31m 42s):
We've moved past the ATS as we knew it a decade ago. And we're now looking down the barrel of a multitude of variations in a tech stack. I can't believe I'm saying this, but companies like Paradox, Talk Push, iCIMS, Jobvite, Humanly, and even the DRP Canvas, they need to be labeled as something more than an ATS, something like a core talent platform. So you had an acronym and now I have an acronym, a CTP, a Core Talent Platform, a term that allows evolution and stupid diversionary conversations like this are rendered null and void.
Chad (32m 23s):
We've got to evolve as the tech has because our brains haven't, we're having the same conversations we had 10 years ago.
Joel (32m 30s):
Yeah. I think, you know, you and I being old guys, you know, we remember the days of newspaper ads and transitioning over to the internet. And part of that was price. Part of it was, you know, more content or more, you know, you could put more in a job description online than you can in a five line, add a newspaper. What really drove the transition was the user. Job seekers, particularly tech job seekers, at the time that were really in high demand, we're online. So to connect with them, to have something online, made a lot of sense. So companies started to transition over to the internet. Well, if I can put a job on a job board, I can also create my own job board on my own website.
Joel (33m 11s):
So all these corporations figured out, oh, I can have my own job site. And this thing called an ATS will allow me to post jobs, take applicants, manage them, et cetera. And for 20, 20, 25 years, we've never really questioned that dynamic. I remember talking to a CEO of a chat bot early on in this evolution and asking the question like, okay, at what point does the candidate go into the ATS? And the answer was, it doesn't yet, and does it really have to? And I thought about that for a second. I thought, well, I guess it, it doesn't. I mean, if you're gathering the information, it goes into a database that's searchable, et cetera.
Joel (33m 52s):
It doesn't have to necessarily be an ATS. It can be this chat solution. And so as, as I've come to see this and companies, companies do it, I think, holy shit, this is becoming the next platform for hiring people. And as I look at the latest video from Paradox, and I encourage listeners to go check this out, it's literally, I'm asking about, you know, maternity leave or parental benefits and you know, windows pop out from the chat bot or chat window with videos that I can go like, look at a video. And I can actually go see locations and view the office virtually. And like, so, so this whole thing is going from, oh, I'm chatting.
Joel (34m 33s):
And here's my name and here's my date of birth and upload a resume to like, I can actually customize what I want to know. And it serves it to me as I ask these questions. And I think it's pretty, pretty interesting, pretty miraculous how we've seen this evolve. I think you and I are on board of saying like, this could be the future. And in 10 years it may be what job search looks like.
Chad (34m 54s):
There are so many different layers and you talked about conversational AI, but within that conversational AI, there's also a lot of parsing that happens. There's also a lot of matching that happens. There's also a lot of intelligence and contextual information that is pulled together to make sure that you're having the right type of conversation. And throughout that entire process, Mason, and all you recruiters out there, guess what? Yes, decisions are being made. It's the humans setting bullshit and stupid parameters, for an example, looking at job descriptions and requirements that are out there. The robots only take those decisions, that horrible data that humans have already made. Those decisions that humans have already made and they provide scale.
Chad (35m 37s):
That's how this works. So to say that, well, the ATS doesn't make the decision. Okay. Let's talk about the tech stack. And let's talk, start talking about a Core Talent Platform that is a stack of tech, where guess what? Kids, the humans are making the decisions at scale through algorithms. This is not 1999.
Joel (36m 0s):
Yeah. And we haven't even talked about the scheduling piece, the onboarding piece, like from, from cradle to grave. So to speak a conversational AI can take a candidate through the whole process. It's really fascinating. Well, Chad, moving on worlds are colliding. Politics and business are engaged, like I've never seen. And it's going beyond what our Superbowl ads say. This time, Salesforce and its let's call them combative CEO Mark Benioff are telling employees in Texas where a very conservative anti-abortion law or strong pro-life law, depending on what side you're on has been enacted that they've agreed to relocate staffers based in Texas who have concerns about their reproductive health.
Joel (36m 45s):
Ohana. This is a quote from Benioff. Ohana if you want to move, we'll help you. Exit Texas. Your choice. Ohana is Hawaiian for family. In our own home state, Indiana where Salesforce's name is on the tallest building in downtown Indy. Yup. Could benefit, right?
Chad (37m 6s):
Yeah. In 2015, Indy got slapped by Salesforce for making some stupid fucking decisions, some religious decisions. And Mark Benioff said, Look, we're going to pull money out of your fucking state. If you don't start changing your shit. But you know, we have to understand that not all companies will react this way. And as an employee, you have to make a decision. Do they fit within your moral and ethical beliefs or not? So if you're looking for a non-action type of organization, well, Salesforce probably isn't the place for you. But there are companies that are going to stand for something, which is, you know what I believe turns brands to be into iconic brands, while others pretty much find a corner, get into the fetal position and wait for the whole storm of stupid to pass.
Chad (37m 58s):
We did also see Uber and Lyft set up legal defense funds to cover a attorney fees. If drivers get entangled with Texas' new tattletale law around anti abortion. So the people in Texas who live in Texas, who don't believe in what is happening and they believe in the right to their own body, they're going to leave. And I hope they do in droves. So that actually shows the state they're going to lose workforce. Hell we can't even get females back to work right now. Do you think this is going to help?
Joel (38m 31s):
So just out of curiosity, I wondered where else in Salesforce, at least in North America, an employee in Dallas, Texas is, which is where they are in Texas could go to? Alternatives, include Atlanta, Chicago, DC, our own Indianapolis, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, or as labeled on their website, Canada. So you kind of have to dig into Canada to see exactly where in Canada. They treat it like it's just one big state, but it's basically Toronto, Halifax or Vancouver. Anyway, all of those potentially sound better to me than Dallas, Texas. But anyway.
Chad (39m 11s):
Yeah.
Joel (39m 11s):
You mentioned 2015. So you and I sorta sorta saw this firsthand in Indianapolis, which was basically a law that businesses could turn away customers based on their sexual preference.
Chad (39m 23s):
Right.
Joel (39m 24s):
Salesforce, in addition to a lot of other big companies here in the area, I think Angi's list, Eli Lilly, there are quite a few particularly tech
Chad (39m 33s):
Cummins.
Joel (39m 33s):
Tech businesses that are in there, cummins was in there, that took a stand and Salesforce actually canceled their sales event or their company event that was to take place the next year, and took it somewhere else. And the impact was that the law was actually amended, although maybe not as strongly as some others had hoped, but the law was amended based on a lot of the pushback. So the question is, is Texas Indiana? No.
Chad (40m 0s):
No.
Joel (40m 0s):
No, not only culturally, but also just by population size.
Chad (40m 5s):
Yeah.
Joel (40m 6s):
So it's obviously, it's a great stand to take. How many will take him up on this? I don't know. There's also a nice little PR piece of this that he gets. He's going to get headlines, you know, for doing something like this. It's a great recruiting statement. It's a great retention tool as well. So I mean, it's part marketing is great, but, but companies that believe in this stuff can actually make a difference. There's again, there's going to need to be a lot more in Texas to make a difference, but it can happen. And it probably will move a few employees to reconsider the state they live in. If their company is willing to relocate them, which is pretty expensive by the way, to a, to a different location. So, you know, I applaud the move on a lot of different levels.
Joel (40m 48s):
I'd like to see a lot more companies be political. I don't have a problem with companies being political, frankly. There was a time where they wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, but those days are gone.
Chad (40m 58s):
And you have the companies who want to be, they want to stand for something. I totally get that. And then you have the companies like base camp who just don't.
Joel (41m 6s):
By the way, Texans Torchy's Tacos is now in Indiana. So if you need a reason who knows Water Burger might be here next? I don't know. I don't know. People didn't leave the US in mass to Canada when Trump got elected. I don't know if they'll be leaving Texas in mass because of this either.
Chad (41m 22s):
It took a few years, but I'm in Portugal right now. So I don't know.
Joel (41m 27s):
Good point, good point. Well, let's take another break and get creepy on your ass. All right, Chad, this one's from MIT, so it's pretty legit. Disturbing knew this was going to be a short one, but hang with us here, there's a lot to uncover. Okay. A district I disturbing new AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click, I guess it does the same for men. Deep Fake researchers have long feared this day would come. The article wouldn't even name the site for fear of giving it too much promotion. They just called it "y" in the article, the tagline of the website, proclaims its purpose, quote, "turn anyone into a porn star by using deep fake technology to swap the person's face into an adult video, all it requires is the picture and the push of a button,"
Joel (42m 21s):
a research company Sensity.ai estimates between 90 and 95% of all online, deep fake videos are non-consensual porn. That's crazy. And around 90% of those feature women. There have been other single photo face swapping apps. You've probably seen them on Facebook called like Rephase or Zile that place users into selected scenes from main street movies or pop videos. I know you were in that, in that scene from the Godfather recently with your face on Marlon Brando, but as the first, but as the first dedicated pornographic face swapping app, "y" takes this to a whole new level?
Joel (43m 1s):
The results are far from perfect. Many of the face swaps are obviously fake, with the faces, shimmering and distorting, as they turn different angles. But for a casual observer, some are subtle enough to pass and the trajectory of deep fakes has already shown how quickly they can become indistinguishable from reality. Creepy, scary shit, but something HR is going to have to face at some point.
Chad (43m 27s):
Yeah. This is where again, with technology, when we see things happening, whether it's there or not. So they just talked about them. This is a great example. So they just talked about the tech not being that great, cause it was kind of glitchy and it wasn't like perfect. Well, it doesn't matter. We know where it's headed, right? We've got to stop that much. Like we were just talking about ATSes and robots picking and not picking or kicking people and rejecting people, whether companies are using it in mass or not. We know the tech exists. Some companies are using it because they have to scale. We have to do something about it. To be able to sit back and say, well, it doesn't exist in broad base so it's not a big deal.
Chad (44m 8s):
No, it's a big fucking deal. This is an issue we need to take care of it. And I, any type of regulation we could put in place that actually says any deep fakes that are not of yourself are illegal and could be punishable by law. That's what we should do.
Joel (44m 24s):
Yeah. I mean, the challenges is going to be cross border. These sites are going to be hosted somewhere else. Like this is going to get pretty ugly.
Chad (44m 31s):
I'm ready to hit the pool.
Joel (44m 32s):
So just what we do here on Chad and Cheese, we prepare people for creepy shit. Chad, enjoy Portugal. I know you're halfway to coming back home. I know your dogs, miss you.
Chad (44m 45s):
Yeah.
Joel (44m 45s):
Yeah. And the Applebees and everybody else misses you. So enjoy your final few weeks in Portugal. And I'll just be sitting here in my Midwestern, abode, humble abode, waiting for you to get back.
Chad (44m 57s):
But you'll be eating Applebee's so that you will be one up on me.
Joel (45m 1s):
Dude. I got my Taco Bell subscription. I'm going out for a taco right now. See you there.
Joel and Chad (45m 9s):
We out.
OUTRO (46m 0s):
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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