Layoffs, acquisitions and world-destroying A.I. … Oh, my! Veritone spreads its wings and snags Broadbean from CareerBuilder for a reported $52 million. Dice and ZipRecruiter initiate layoffs and a CEO takes a 30% pay cut. Experts say AI could soon be smarter and more powerful than us and it is time to impose limits to ensure they don't take control over humans or destroy the world (don’t worry, we talk you off this ledge). And Elon’s brain chip has been cleared for FDA testing. Wait, what?
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Intro: 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: Oh yeah it's National Donut Day and Leave The Office Early day. So, Chad, I will meet you at Dunkin's baby. Dunkin's it is. You're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host, Joel Bear-claw Cheeseman.
Chad: And this is Chad. What the fuck just happened, Sowash?
Joel: And on this week's show, Veritone flips the bean, Zip and Dice chop some heads and Elon invades your brain, let's do this.
Chad: Oh shit, dude, we gotta hurry up. I've got paddle. I've got competition here going on.
Joel: Is that a boat thing, paddle.
Chad: It's like racquetball and tennis, all-in-one, that pussy pickleball stuff that you guys do in the US is fucking ridiculous. This is real true sport that happens here in Europe.
Joel: I'm sorry. That you guys do in the US, you aren't totally European yet. You're not even a citizen as far as I know.
Chad: I have a place, that's close.
Joel: Good God, I'm gonna... Racquetball and tennis, what is the ball like go 20 feet?
Chad: No, it's a tennis ball.
Joel: Well tennis and racquetballs are bouncy I mean like 200 feet not 20 feet.
Chad: Yeah. Oh yeah dude. No, they can fly. It's a pretty awesome, awesome sport. You go to YouTube check it out paddle ball. But yeah, no pickleball is for pussies.
Joel: We got a lot to cover so.
S?: Shout out.
Joel: Job openings, my man, job openings in April...
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Saw the highest number of US openings since January, indicating a labor market that cannot be killed. Call it the Dracula job market. The Job Openings...
Chad: Zombie.
Joel: And Labor Turnover survey or what the kids called JOLTS...
Chad: JOLTS.
Joel: Reported 10.1 million job openings for the month. All of this means the Fed is likely to raise interest rates in June. I'm headed to Chipotle before the chicken burrito hits north of $10 Chad, how about you?
Chad: Oh yeah, this is the recession that never happened, I mean, it just continues knock on wood okay kids. But yeah, it's great to hear and enjoy your time at Chipotle. My first shout out goes to rust out. Now, what the actual fuck is rust out?
Joel: Excuse me.
Chad: Yeah, exactly. Well according to HR Grapevine, it's the opposite of burnout. It means employees are bored and have been in their job far too long and that they're starting to experience job dissatisfaction, which I mean you probably have experienced in marriage a few times.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: According to HR Grapevine, [laughter] ensuring your employees are engaged decreases absenteeism 41% and increases, this is the big one, profitability by 21%. Okay. You mean that employees that aren't absent from work and are actually at work create more profits, really? Shout out to HR Grapevine for creating a narrative for HR and TA leaders to go get more budget.
Joel: Rust out.
S?: Does anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Chad: The great rust out.
Joel: Rust out is what I do every morning when I get out of bed. I got to get the rust out, you know what I'm saying. All right, I got a shout out to Jon Taffer.
Chad: Who's that?
Joel: Who the hell is Jon Taffer? Maybe you've seen the show Bar Rescue, where this angry guy comes and fixes your bar and tells you, you suck and whatever, well anyway.
Chad: The Gordon Ramsay of bars. Yeah.
Joel: He was interviewed recently about the state of restaurants, and talent, and automation and I thought it was worth sharing with our audience as a shout out. So take a listen.
Josh Gampe: Jon Taffer is with us this morning by the way. He knows all about this. Hotels and restaurants that are supposed to see a record number of customers this summer, bouncing back to pre-cap pandemic levels. Jon Taffer's with us. He's nodding his head. Is there a boom in restaurant and bars?
Stuart: Incredible Stuart. Since April we've hired over 900,000 employees, we need a lot more but we're forecasting record travel this summer, record hotel occupancy. Restaurants are booming, but we're challenged because we need people to fulfill all the business that we have now. So I'm at the National Restaurant Association convention now and it's all about robotics, and automation, and technologies to help solve those issues.
Josh Gampe: Okay you tell us, how are you using AI in your restaurant business?
Stuart: Well, in my restaurant business we're using it more in the back of the house, for purchasing and pricing and things like that. Here I'm standing in a SkyTab booth now, this is all new transactional technologies that connects third parties like DoorDash and Uber Eats into the POS system frequency programs, credit card programs, all connected into one system now and then robotics are huge. Wendy's is about to launch a Chatbox program in Europe for automated ordering. They're the restaurateurs, they're going crazy already Stuart.
Josh Gampe: You see we always think of AI as some kind of a negative, a threat to us, but to you it's very much a positive. It can enhance your profitability, right?
Stuart: Well, not only that we can't find the employees, Stuart, so we have to solve the problem. If we can't solve it with employees then we're gonna go to automation.
Joel: And there you have it we talked about this a lot on the show obviously Chad, but here's an industry expert at an industry conference talking about it. And what you don't get in the audio, when he says there that the restaurateurs are cheering, like it's obvious that they want this to come. People who own restaurants the efficiency, the cost savings, the lesser pain in the ass, the filling positions like they will... They are visibly excited about this future, so I think it was very telling to watch that interview as I did, and hopefully the audio came across of how important it is that automation is taking restaurants by storm.
Chad: Yeah, automation... Yes, human suck, we totally get that. We'll talk more about that later in the show, my next shoutout is to life, my friend. I actually received this message from Josh Gampel, who is stepping away as President of Talivity, the parent company of Recruitics, "why?" you might ask. Here's a message from Josh. "For two decades, I've dedicated my career to assisting businesses in finding exceptional talent, I've served in multiple roles, a recruiter, a marketer and a leader, now my father and I, who collectively bring over 50 years of recruitment experience to the table, face our most daunting task yet, recruiting a kidney for my mother. In 2019, she was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder that severely damaged her kidneys. Her condition has only worsened over time, exacerbated by COVID-19 and subsequent complications, the urgent need for a kidney transplant has never been more pressing and, although the outcome remains uncertain, we are steadfast in our determination to give this our all, we've established a straightforward website"
Chad: Take this down, kids recruitakidney.life, recruitakidney.life to provide more information and raise awareness about the critical role of living donors. If we succeed in finding a kidney through this platform, we plan to replicate this process for others in need, potentially forming a foundation for a broader initiative. However, we recognize the importance of approaching this one step at a time. To all the talent acquisition professionals tuning into this podcast, I extend my sincere gratitude, your ceaseless evolution has kept us at Recruitics both challenged and motivated, and your commitment to a purpose-driven field of work is inspiring, it has been an absolute privilege to share this journey with you". Okay, well, this is a tearjerker, I'm gonna stop right there. There's more, Okay? But if you're listening to this podcast right now, connect to Josh on LinkedIn, he will be posting more there. That's Josh Gampel, G-A-M-P-E-L. While you're doing that, go to "recruitakidney.life" and check out how you might be able to save a life through kidney donation, shoutout to Josh, life, his dad, and most of all his mom, Debra, "recruitakidney.life" I'm about ready to tear up here kids.
Joel: I'd say it's worth the applause, yeah definitely did. Great cause. Let's go from saving kidneys to killing livers, Chad, you can win free booze on Chad and cheese. Sorry, that's a bad segue, but this is what we do on the show. If you are interested in free bourbon from our friends at Textkernel, free beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, or even if it's your birthday this month, you might win some rum from our friends at Plum, either way, if you don't drink, you can get a T-shirt sponsored by our friends at JobGet, but you can't win unless you play Chad, you gotta go to "chadcheese.com", click the free link, fill out the form, and then wait for the goodies to arrive. That's "chadcheese.com". Click the free link.
Chad: Yes, and everybody loves the Chad and cheese t-shirts. Obviously, everybody loves free beer, they love free whiskey, I mean, obviously rum from Plum, especially in your birthday. How can you not love that? The big question is, do we have enough t-shirts for RecFest? That's the big question.
Joel: Yeah, I'm gonna have to get my inventory manager, I.e my 13-year-old daughter, to give me a rundown of t-shirts that we have for that...
Chad: Nice, nice.
Joel: Also, I know we'll get to travel, but I'm headed to SHRM in a week or so, and I'll be at the Arin Booth. Arin is printing up exclusive SHRM t-shirts of that, so I might be able to get some Arin supply if they overstock.
Chad: Do I have my big head on the front?
Joel: Yeah, your big cardboard head we'll send that to Europe, so you can have a Portuguese copy for your records, but yeah. People love the t-shirts, we may have to get some more because the Europeans love them, some soft, supple, cotton combed, fabric in their dresser drawers. Do they call them dresser drawers in Europe? It's probably something weird.
Chad: I have no clue, just where they put their clothes. So do we have birthdays? No Birthdays this week?
Joel: Oh no, we have birthdays my friend...
S?: Can you feel the tension in the air right now?
Chad: Yes I can.
S?: I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums.
Joel: That's right, that's right. If It's your birthday, and you're in our list, you could win a tasty bottle of rum from our friends at Plum. Celebrating another trip around the sun, we have Ander Storman, Andy Peterson, Rodney "don't call me Rodney", Martin Dangerfield, Reese Wessel, Jim Stroud. Our favorite cartoonist of the industry, Bosco Vojotovich...
Chad: I love Bosco.
Joel: Olga Nasreva, J. Arnold, Jane keeran and Matt "that British guy" Alder...
S?: Happy birthday!
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Happy birthday everybody have one on us.
Chad: Exactly, and well, we're gonna see that British guy, Matt Alder very soon at RecFest. That's right kids. RecFest, July 6th at Knebworth Park. You can't but be there, if you're in Europe, if you're in the listening of this podcast, if you're downloading this now, go get your tickets now, go get your tickets now, it's crazy.
Joel: Matt Alder, Stephen McGrath, Cole Cheeseman, Liven...
Chad: I'm sure Hung Lee is gonna be there, yeah. Oh, Liven?
Joel: Our favorite porn star Hung Lee is gonna be there.
S?: What are you doing step bro?
Joel: That's right. Knebworth is gonna be off the chain kids.
Chad: Amazing!
Chad: We have topics. That's right.
Joel: All right, we'll pick your headline, I guess. CareerBuilder sells Broadbean, or Veritone buys Broadbean, whichever you like. Our friends at Veritone...
Chad: Flicking the Bean.
Joel: Are acquiring Broadbean, a job distribution solution for $52 million. Veritone aims to combine Broadbean with its previous acquisition, PandoLogic to form Veritone HR solutions. Here's a soundbite from Veritone CEO and President Ryan Steelberg on the deal. Have a listen.
Ryan Steelberg: We are obviously very excited about this acquisition. We expect it to close in just a few weeks from now. But a little background though, this is a target and a company that we've been looking at Veritone for over a year now. And actually we were hopeful to try to actually acquire this at the end of last year but at Veritone we had a move in a different direction for a period of time. So we are thrilled that Broadbean through Apollo's divestiture of different CareerBuilder assets was still available. We remained in close communications with Alex and his team over there, and we're obviously thrilled that we're able to get to this point of signing. This deal is very strategic for Veritone and our vision of how we intend to continue to bring AI-based automation and intelligence to the HR space and specifically the talent acquisition marketplace. Broadbean obviously has a very large installed base, thousands of customers spanning many countries with a large international presence, which is very complimentary to not just PandoLogic and in our, I'd say heavy skewed North American focus, but for all of Veritone. We look at HR based solutions as being ubiquitous, they're not limited to a single market vertical. And I think the combination of BroadBeans' broad-based job distribution platform and PandoLogic's.
Ryan Steelberg: Programmatic job advertising platform is a perfect marriage. One thing that may not be obvious to many, is outside of the obvious of bringing more programmatic to the installed base of Broadbean customers is this very rich data sets that we're bringing together here. Which is obviously from our perspective of leveraging our expertise and know-how in the AI space and on the programmatic side is something that we're just so excited about. We are very confident that Pando and our solutions they're are gonna get better, they're gonna get smarter, they're gonna get more automated, and ultimately bringing more efficiency and benefit to our end customers. But we also think that there's a multitude of net new exciting product and services. As we take advantage of Broadbean's extensive integrations with over a hundred ATS platforms, we're envisioning a lot of exciting attribution and down funnel opportunities that we're gonna continue to investigate, invest in, and ultimately bring to market.
Joel: And the sale of Broadbean and CareerBuilder's International Unit, which we reported on a while back, will leave the once mighty job board with just its core US based recruitment offering. Chad, there's a lot to unpack here, what you got.
Chad: Yeah. CareerBuilder stands alone with a facilities manager. Pretty much Jeff he's sweeping up, he's getting ready to turn off the lights 'cause that thing's sold. Okay. It's sold. I don't know who bought it yet, but we're gonna find out. Okay, so why buy? It's fairly simple, from my standpoint, four major points portfolio, 3000 customers, access to Europe, which they didn't have before, five billion data points. Veritone is an AI company that means everything to them and for the future. And then integration into 100 applicant tracking systems. These are all points that are incredibly valuable. And to look at the $52 million deal at the annual revenue that they were looking at around 35 million seems like a deal, right? So the portfolio in itself, take a look at transitioning thousands of clients from duration based to performance where necessary. Then Europe slow to adopt performance driven recruitment advertising compared to the US, so they can start that nudging, the nudging with keeping the duration around, but yet nudging toward performance. Did mention Terry Baker is out, and Alex Fourlis is in. This is a well-deserved rest for Terry Baker, for god's sakes. The guy's been in the industry for fucking ever. Jesus Christ. I hope he finds an island somewhere and enjoys a year off the grid.
Joel: Lot more Padre's games in Terry's future, I believe. [laughter] Lot more Padre's games, which is good.
Chad: But Alex came to CareerBuilder through the Greek job site, which we talked about career.gr He moved up through the CareerBuilder ranks as managing director of the UK and then over to Broadbean in 2019 and was given the reins as president of Broadbean in May of 2022. So Alex has seen the CareerBuilder/Apollo shit show from the inside out and for a very long time. And Ryan obviously has faith that the post-traumatic CareerBuilder syndrome won't be a problem. If you think about it, you're looking at trying to transition a lot of these portfolio clients, right? So you want to be able to try to keep the same team, same faces, those types of things. Do you ever think that ex CareerBuilder employees wake up in cold sweats, screaming El Chapo in the middle of the night? Or is it just John Smith.
Joel: Former CareerBuilder 'cause if it's current, it's like six people or something. [laughter], but yes. I know for sure a lot of the old guard at CareerBuilder. Just, yeah, have voodoo dolls of Irena and Company in their bedrooms that get stuck every night before bedtime for sure.
Chad: From that standpoint, you take a look at the Veritone stack now, we've got performance-based recruitment marketing, duration-based recruitment marketing, chat with Wade and Wendy. And why that's important is because if you start to integrate chat into, much like we see with Paradox for the apply process, it's much easier, it doesn't have to be synchronous, it can be asynchronous. There's just a better way to collect data. It's just more fluid, it's better. Then you have Veritone's AI backbone with voice and video, I mean, that's just the tech stack that I'm covering now. I'm sure they have much more than that. So what are your thoughts on the actual acquisition itself, the portfolio and the things that I just ran through?
Joel: Sure, Sure. So full disclosure, we love Veritone. They're a sponsor.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We've been on their boat, so take that for what it's worth. But I like to think that, we'd set that aside. We would both be very excited about this acquisition. And I can also probably speak for both of us in saying that, when Veritone first bought PandoLogic, there was a little bit of head scratching, a little bit like, "How is this supposed to work? Got this AI company with video and then we have this like job thing. How is this gonna fit?"
[laughter]
Joel: And it was a little bit tough, but you and I both know Ryan, Ryan sort of sees into the future like you and I cannot, he saw where this thing was going. And I find it really intriguing that as we come out of the pandemic, as we come into what is a challenging time for our industry, I mean, we're just, we're almost ready to say goodbye to CareerBuilder, like who woulda thunk that when we started this podcast six years ago?
Chad: And Monster's still living.
Joel: The old guard is going, Indeed's freaking the fuck out every week, we're gonna talk about layoffs and all of them are talking about challenging economic times, challenging with hires. There's an interesting picture here, where we come out of this season of our industry and Veritone is primed to be one of the major players in employment. And I find that incredibly exciting and the fact that they've embraced HR and hiring the way that they have with all the other things in their portfolio and all the other things they do. And how they've sort of been able to figure out, "We can combine this with hiring and it's an incredible opportunity globally to be an industry leader in that space." So we may come out of the end of this and say like, Veritone is right there with Paradox and whatever Indeed is doing at the time, and whatever Workday is... Whatever the major players are doing, Veritone is primed to be in that spot, based on what they've been doing. And I like to think that I would say that irregardless of the spicy cocktail shrimp that we had on the boat.
[laughter]
Joel: You mentioned all the in's and out's with Broadbean, the footprint that they have, the management team that's coming over I think is gonna be very valuable to Veritone. What was interesting was that the street, Wall Street, there was about a 10% decrease in stock when this deal was announced. Now what is interesting is it coincides with a downgrade that the stock had recently, which, based on the earnings call, there's a lot less Amazon dependency because Amazon is not hiring the way that it was before and there might have been a heightened dependency on Amazon dollars. So we don't recommend stocks on this show, and please don't buy this or sell it based on our recommendation, but it seems like a stock that, if this thing comes to fruition, is gonna be up into the right for the foreseeable future, if I had to guess. So, yeah, all around we know the people there are excited for them. I'm excited to see how this deal plays out. We talked before the show and I'm sure you wanna talk about competitive landscape now, this certainly shakes some stuff up. I know you have some thoughts around that.
Chad: Oh, yeah. So think of this from a Stepstone standpoint. They invade the US with the acquisition of Appcast, only to find their US market weakened and their European, performance-driven flanks exposed. I feel like there's a marginal-line analogy in there somewhere. Anyway, Stepstone has missed a huge opportunity in solidifying a strong US market and then transitioning us slow to adopt European markets. They just couldn't pull it together. They just couldn't pull it together. They were retreating from France. They just couldn't get their shit together. They were... They're trying to get ready for IPO. They're firing CEOs at Totaljobs. I mean, all this shit, so that's the big name. And Appcast is still major, major fucking player, but they have not wielded Appcast like they should have. But then you have a small, a much, much, much smaller player like VONQ, and this is only going to ignite a fire under Stepstone and Appcast asses. So VONQ needs to find a buyer fast. They've been able to, while Stepstone's been sleeping and not using that big axe, which is Appcast, to be able to gain market share and do some things, but they don't have the firepower to fight a two front war. And then last but not least, you have Radancy, a player in the recruitment market in programmatic tech space in the UK. To me, in the UK and Europe, I'm sure they've been gaining, but it's nothing compared to these two powerhouses.
Joel: And we talked about, in our visit with them, the number of sort of non-programmatic or just traditional job postings that go through Broadbean. It's...
Chad: Duration. Yeah.
Joel: Yeah. Like there's a huge opportunity to move a lot of these posts into programmatic solutions, which is a huge opportunity for Veritone now. And then you start thinking about, how do we plug in our conversational AI capabilities, our AI capabilities into that process? And it becomes really scary because this is something... We talk about how Google has things that Indeed can't compete with. Well, Veritone has things that none of them can compete with. So now that they're on a equal footing from the job posting programmatic perspective, how do they then take it to the next level and plug in all the other shit that makes our jaw drop when we see it and check it out. So exciting times at Veritone.
Chad: It's amazing. And then we're starting to see these brands where Veritone is going to be not a house of brands, but a branded house. And so PandoLogic, the brand's going away, Broadbean, the brand is going away. And I think Ryan and team believe it's better to build a branded house rather than trying to manage all of those brands, just that simple focused tech, focused message, and they're gonna need that, because again, I really believe that Appcast and StepStone are... They're gonna get a fire under their ass after this because they were vying for... Everything that I've heard over the last 12 months, I've heard many companies who were trying to buy Broadbean. It was just way too expensive. I think this is a luck in timing kind of scenario, where Ryan and team were right at the table. It just didn't happen at the end of last year. Then this year happened, shit started to go south. Prices came down and they got a hell of a deal.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Steelberg doesn't play, people. Ryan Steelberg does not play around. And by the way, this is a great time to mention that Veritone powers Chad and Cheese in four additional languages, including Portuguese, French, German, and Spanish. So if you'd like to hear us in sexy Spanish...
Chad: That's the kind of fucking tech they have. That's the scariest shit.
Joel: If you want a little taste of what they can do, go check out Chad and Cheese in German. It's angry and fun, everybody. And have a sauerbraten while you're there.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: We'll be right back. Oh yeah. It's that time of the podcast Chad.
S?: Layoffs.
Chad: Layoffs?
Joel: That's right. We got layoffs. ZipRecruiter is eliminating about 20% of its workforce and giving its top executive a pay cut due to a broad slowdown in hiring. They plan to cut about 270 roles, about half of which are in sales and customer support. CEO Ian Siegel will also take a 30% cut in his base salary, which was $550,000 last year. Meanwhile, DHI group, the parent company of Dice and ClearanceJobs is reducing its workforce by 10% in a move expected to generate annual cost savings of between 8 and $10 million. Your boy, CEO, Art Zeile said they must do what is best for the health of the business by managing their investment and expenses, adding, they don't anticipate hiring more positions this year. Chad layoffs. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Does Art have pictures of everybody on the board doing crazy shit in like a donkey bar's or something like that? 'Cause there's no reason this guy should still be in power.
Joel: Hey, there's no cost reduction in Art Zeile's salary, that was not in the press release.
S?: All right. All right. All right.
Chad: Oh, anyway, I'm gonna get away from Art just because there's just no reason to talk about Dice anymore. They had plenty of opportunities to evolve into what they could have been, for God's sakes, and they're still a fucking job board today. Anyway, when it comes to Zip, the question is why is Ian still there? I mean, wow. What a ride. Taking Zip from a little email blasting company startup to an innovative matching job board to IPO. I mean, that is a huge feat. What's he still doing there? Not all CEOs are meant to be in the seat past startup. He strapped in past IPO. Good for you, man. But I think it's more apparent than ever, "Stop taking fucking pay cuts and go enjoy some time with Terry on a fucking island somewhere. [laughter] You both deserve it." Seriously.
Joel: Well, they both know the Southern California coast pretty well. They both know California pretty well.
Chad: I'm sure. I'm sure.
Joel: So stocks weren't hit real hard on this news, either way, in either direction. I mean, Zip has been a sideway stock since about February when they spiked and Dice was down about 2% on the news. This seems like perfect storm time for our industry. We've got inflation, we have fed rate hikes, we have no cheap money anymore, and those are all bad signs for any business, especially in our dotcom hiring businesses. But both of them talking about the hiring business being challenged is probably something that everyone in our industry should note because when hiring goes down, everyone feels the pain. So that's always a bad sign. And you and I lived through 2001, we lived through 2008, we've been waiting for a similar situation, which hasn't come. And remember my shoutout, which talked about the strong labor market.
Joel: So we have tale of two cities, where one is strong labor market, but then we have companies in the industry that see the trends and see what's going on, talking about a challenged environment. So something to keep your eye on. I think another thing that's interesting that didn't exist in 2008 or 2001 was Google's influence in this marketplace. And I had a contact reach out to me, who will remain anonymous, but he had an interesting comment that I wanna read to you in regards to Google and sort of their activities around this. So, "I have confirmation, Google is still pedal down on job ads. General availability, which means for everybody, will be in 2024. Google is much smarter this time around compared to its original jobs mess. My unsubstantiated guess is Indeed is doing CPA to not just fleece their customers, but also to distinguish themselves from Google becoming the jobs CPC king." Which you and I have talked about on the show.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: "From internal materials, Google sees advertising to passive job candidates as their next big advertising opportunity." Which we actually don't talk about a lot. Google has a lot of properties. If they start plugging in job postings on YouTube and Gmail and everything else that they own, like that's again, something that Indeed can't really touch. So Zip is on Google for Jobs. All these other sites are. They might be seeing the power that Google for Jobs has. I notice in my own usage of Google for Jobs that they're limiting the number of sites that they are showing when you can apply to a job. I don't know how that's impacting Zip and Dice and others, but there's a lot of things coming to a head here that's all negative. And these layoffs sort of encapsulate what's going on in the industry. We've also had Indeed, Glassdoor layoffs. We've talked about LinkedIn layoffs. I'm sure every small company that isn't public or big is having layoffs that we're not hearing about or talking about. But this is cascading into everybody's business and we're here to talk about it on the show.
Chad: Yeah. As Google continues to focus on the top of the funnel and they will, that's just what they're doing, that's what they will continue to do 'cause that's what they do best. Indeed, they're playing the CPA game. They should be playing the next round of, instead of just sending you traffic, "I wanna be able to send you qualified traffic." They talk about that shit and it's total bullshit. They don't have the tech at the top of the funnel to be able... They give you these bullshit screener questions. Who gives a fuck about that? I don't care about what the person says or what's on their goddamn resume, show me what they can do. There's tech out there today that we've talked about over and over and over, they should be funneling, they should be siloing, they should be buying, but guess what? They're doing business like they did 10 years ago. They're trying to change the name of their product so that they can 10X it and try to charge a hell of a lot more, again, and fleece their clients, much like your contact said, we've gotta stop doing business like it was 10 years ago and just calling it something different. It's total bullshit and everybody sees through it.
Joel: Yeah. You mentioned it's a good time to buy. And I think we've addressed that on the show quite a bit. Some of these sites, some of these companies are gonna be clearance rack-type opportunities and like you mentioned, Indeed should be acquiring these companies. Indeed, historically is a pretty good acquisition strategy with Workology and Glassdoor and some others. They've gotten away from that. Who's gonna buy CareerBuilder? Indeed kind of makes sense. Just shut it down. You'll kill a competitor or just...
Chad: Do the SimplyHired model.
Joel: Yeah, do it SimplyHired. Just put all the Indeed jobs on CareerBuilder. Funny enough, our friend of the show, Chris Russell, opined that ZipRecruiter could buy CareerBuilder. I'm thinking after the news this week, they're probably not in the market for that. I'm still holding out for a European company. I'm still holding out for a Jobandtalent or SEEK maybe, which is Europe South and Australia.
Chad: Well, and if you think about it, we were just talking about Stepstone and being able to, again, solidify a foothold more than Appcast here in the US. You would get it for cheap. That's for fucking sure. But anyway, that's just a two guys who don't hold the purse strings.
Joel: Yeah. Let's move on to AI. Shall we, shall we?
Chad: Oh God.
[laughter]
Joel: All right. Experts, AI experts, I will add, issued a dire warning this week. "Artificial intelligence models could soon be smarter and more powerful than us, and it is time to impose limits to ensure they don't take control over humans or destroy the world." [laughter] That's right. Pretty sure North Korea didn't get the hold up development memo [laughter] Oh, North Korea. Love that. All right. But don't jump off the ledge yet, kids, 'cause Chad and Cheese are here. The National Eating Disorder Association has taken down its chatbot called Tessa, after concerns grew from a viral social media post revealing the bot was promoting unhealthy eating habits. End of humanity, go humans or somewhere in between. Chad, what's your take?
Chad: Earlier this week on the Europe show, we talked about BT, aka British Telecom group, their plan to replace human employees with AI. Well, I'm going to refer to Mark Twain's embellished quote, "The tales of my demise are greatly exaggerated." And in this case, the tales of AI taking human jobs are greatly exaggerated. Here's the scary part about AI for those who don't understand AI, and here's a quote from the story that was actually on Vice, "So far more than 2,500 people have interacted with Tessa," that's the chatbot that they used. "And until yesterday, we hadn't seen this kind of commentary or interaction. We've taken the program down temporarily until we can understand and fix the "bug" and "triggers" for the commentary." This is where HR and talent acquisition professionals need to listen. When the CEO comes to you after hearing about BT and they want to install generative AI, here's the story that you need to have in your back pocket.
Chad: It's one thing to install conversational AI, which has solid guardrails, but when you move into generative AI, that space, you better understand what the actual fuck you are buying, how the actual tech works, what safety mechanisms are in place. After 2,500 conversations, not a lot kids, 2,500 conversations, that chatbot went rogue. Can you imagine replacing all your human customer service positions or even half with AI and then it goes rogue. What happens? What happens when you don't have customer service anymore? Because you gotta shut the whole fucking system down. This is a story where BT, I think they were more pumping their stock than they were anything else. But still, if you're trying to think about this and you have the head shed coming to you saying, "Hey, what about this generative AI thing?" Pull this story out of your back pocket and say, "Look, this was only 2,500 interactions."
Joel: This is a complex, deep issue, Chad, and I'm just not sure I'm ready to go all in.
[laughter]
S?: Just the tip.
Joel: So every week we have a show about AI's gonna take over, AI's gonna kill us, and then we have another story. It's, was it Paul Bunyan who beat the machine with the Blue Ox?
Chad: Yeah. Then he died after. Yeah, Blue.
Joel: Yeah. Okay. That's apropo. But it feels, this sure feels like a constant tug of war between technology and human beings. Frankly, I'm gonna go with something in between. We're gonna have AI and robots that make a lot of sense, that don't hurt people, make my cheeseburger, love that, mental health issues, maybe it's not the right thing to throw into. Amazon was too early with hiring in their AI solution. Clearly AI, whether it's pumping stocks or legitimate or somewhere in between, it's gonna take jobs for sure. I'm confident it's taken marketing jobs and customer service and content jobs and social media managers. It's not hard to go, "Hey, write 20 tweets about Ron DeSantis entering the presidential election." It'll give you 20 tweets and seven of them are pretty good, so writing content is obviously taking a hit. College kids are using this ad nauseam to write papers, and there's literally programs that will put misspellings in your content to make it not look like a robot wrote it.
Joel: This is the future that we're going into. None of us know exactly how this is gonna shake out, but I think it's important to look at mental health, eating disorders, children, for sure. Children is a huge one. And there needs to be age gating of social media. And that's gonna happen. One day we'll look back and go, "How the hell did we let 8-year-olds on Instagram or social media?" That's, it's like the smoking of today. So anyway, I'm opining, dragging this on, I don't need to, we don't know where this is going, but really smart people says, "AI's gonna kill us." And then really smart humans, "Push the pause button for mental health and eating disorders and caring for people." It's gonna be somewhere in between. It's gonna shake out. And Chad, we're gonna be here to talk about it every step of the way. Let's take a quick break. If all this doom and gloom AI wasn't enough, Chad, [laughter] can I interest you in Elon Musk in your brain?
Chad: No.
Joel: All right. So Elon Musk's brain implant company, Neuralink, how many companies does this fucker have? Like how much time does... Anyway, on Thursday said it received Food and Drug Administration or the FDA approval to launch the first in human, in human. Not in monkey, Chad, not in pig, in human clinical study. In case you missed it. Neuralink is developing a brain implant. It hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. Musk said he'd implant a chip in his own children's brain. But what about your brain, Chad?
Chad: Who in the hell would even think of putting a chip in their head? I understand spinal issues. I mean, the opportunity is so amazing. And those are the types of individuals that are going to be the guinea pig. Think about it. A chip in your brain. Have you ever, I mean, ever had a piece of tech that didn't get a little buggy? What happens then? We're talking about physiology here. Humans aren't made the same. Our brains are all different. I mean, we know that from just between you and our wives. I mean, there's a huge shift. They're much smarter than we are, that kinda thing. Anyway, so who would actually put a chip in their head? Well, guess what I did? Went to LinkedIn and I did a poll. [laughter]
Joel: Yes. A good poll, baby. That's what I'm talking about.
S?: What are you doing step bro?
Chad: Well, after a 110 votes and I put it out there, and it hasn't been out long, but 75% said no fucking way would they put a chip in their head, but 25% said, "Sure, I'm down." So even more interesting, that was only 3% of the people who actually saw the poll. So the rest of them are just sitting around like lemmings waiting to see what everybody else does. So, I mean, this to me is an easy, hard no. I don't want somebody in my brain. Maybe I've watched too many sci-fi movies, but no.
Joel: Oh, Elon. [laughter] We're so worried about AI going to destroy humanity. Have we ever considered the fact that Elon Musk might destroy humanity?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Maybe he's a AI conduit to the end of mankind. Can someone check if Elon bleeds or not? Are we sure he can't transform into some cyber truck? Maybe he is the Twitter algorithm. This is not gonna end well, Chad. We out.
Chad: We out.
Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap, because you'll be back like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, "You can't quit them either." We out.
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