Indeed's 'Dumb Tax' & Seekout Cuts

[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:11] Complete with breaking news, rash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheez Podcast!

[00:00:27] Awww yeah! Two guys who can't get enough of Scotland's Haggis, Neeps and Tatties.

[00:00:38] Hey boys and girls, this is the Chad and Cheez Podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Gus Cheeseman.

[00:00:45] And I'm Chad, 10 for 1 Sowash.

[00:00:47] And on this episode, Head's role at Seek Out is indeed finally taking away the heroin drip.

[00:00:53] And our Scottish Roundup.

[00:00:55] Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is if it's no Scottish, it's crap!

[00:01:00] Let's do this.

[00:01:01] How's the liver Chad? How's the liver? Did it alright? Liver?

[00:01:09] Yes. The liver's actually doing well. We'll get into that here in a second.

[00:01:13] But I think we did well on the training regimen to be able to get here in the first place.

[00:01:17] But I did wake up this morning and Julie said, we came back from breakfast. We did our prep for today's event.

[00:01:24] Breakfast came back and Julie's like, guess what? NVIDIA's splitting 10 to 1.

[00:01:33] Keep the party going NVIDIA. That's what I'm talking about. Keep the party rolling.

[00:01:37] Come on baby!

[00:01:38] Your liver's alright. I don't know maybe it's more quality booze here in the country.

[00:01:43] Maybe it's the full breakfasts keep you ready or maybe it's the Haggis.

[00:01:50] Which have you had a Haggis? Have you had Haggis yet?

[00:01:53] Have had Haggis. I haven't had Haggis fries like you and Christine.

[00:01:57] It's kind of like your version of Scottish poutine.

[00:02:01] Oh not just fries Chad. The dirty fries. Loaded with cheese, mayo, Haggis.

[00:02:09] They have Haggis on them so they're dirty.

[00:02:11] A little HP sauce. I don't know a lot of good stuff on that.

[00:02:15] I like the HP sauce.

[00:02:16] Surprisingly, maybe this is too much information but my poops have been really good here.

[00:02:20] I got some really good poops. I don't know if it's the diet or if it's no Chipotle for a week.

[00:02:26] I can't figure out why I'm so regular and so healthy right now.

[00:02:30] I don't know. Let's preserve it as I'm going to say.

[00:02:34] I don't know and I don't care. Moving on!

[00:02:37] Shoutouts.

[00:02:38] Shoutouts. Jesus.

[00:02:39] Shoutout!

[00:02:40] I'm going to go first. I'm going to shout out to Jobs on Google.

[00:02:44] I'm going to stop calling it Google for jobs from now on because I think that's a dead term.

[00:02:49] Jobs on Google, that's right.

[00:02:51] Google is still continuing to make changes to how it can effectively engage jobs on the search engine.

[00:02:58] How you as a user can.

[00:02:59] They introduced a jobs tab recently so that if you're searching for anything related to jobs on Google,

[00:03:05] the tab appears and takes the user to an unlimited scroll of jobs.

[00:03:11] It's only a subtle change here and there but those changes are signals

[00:03:16] and for all of you that are out there that are still hoping one day Google gets into the performance driven jobs markets,

[00:03:23] ads markets, well, they're still a chance.

[00:03:26] They're still a chance.

[00:03:27] I'm happy!

[00:03:29] Unlimited scroll on Google now for jobs and a link to jobs.

[00:03:34] That would have been apocalypse now 10 years ago for job sites.

[00:03:38] So I can't imagine.

[00:03:40] They would have been shitting their pants.

[00:03:41] If you're a small niche job site, I'm sure I'll get pushback on this but this isn't good and it kind of goes into our indeed story later in the show not to ruin it.

[00:03:50] But yeah, it's going to be harder and harder to get attention if you've relied on Google for the last 10, 20 years.

[00:03:57] My shout out goes to Workplace by Facebook.

[00:04:02] Oh, I remember those guys.

[00:04:04] This may be, I don't know, the final death knell of SaaS businesses in our space for big companies like Google.

[00:04:11] Remember Google for hire?

[00:04:13] Obviously there have been tools that have come and gone from bigger companies but this lasted for a while.

[00:04:19] They launched this.

[00:04:20] It was sort of they built it as like Facebook but for your company.

[00:04:23] So it was messaging, video stuff, groups, etc.

[00:04:27] They're throwing in the towel and the big winner from this move is going to be our friends at Workvivo who was acquired by Zoom, the popular video conversation tool that everyone knows about.

[00:04:38] So yeah, not an acquisition, not a merger but like they're going to try to funnel everyone they have over to Workvivo.

[00:04:46] So big win for them and they are the only integration partner that Facebook has blessed with this pairing.

[00:04:52] So shout out to Workvivo if you haven't checked them out and you're flinging for a tool that they provide, you might want to give them a look.

[00:04:58] That's pretty awesome.

[00:04:59] I'm not sure how many companies Facebook was actually had in workplace still.

[00:05:04] I think we saw kind of like the slow death starting with jobs and then it just kind of like, you know, died from there.

[00:05:10] But yeah, I mean, even if it's just a PR push, hell, that's a nice little PR push.

[00:05:15] So good job, Workvivo.

[00:05:17] It's a good day to be a Workvivo salesperson calling on a lot of Facebook customers that are using that.

[00:05:22] So good for them.

[00:05:23] Have you heard of Facebook?

[00:05:25] Okay, you might know us now.

[00:05:27] Mark gave me your name and wanted me to give you a shout.

[00:05:30] Mark says hi.

[00:05:31] Zuck says hi.

[00:05:32] Zuck says hi.

[00:05:33] All right, free stuff.

[00:05:34] Somebody who loves to say hi are our new t-shirts.

[00:05:37] That's right.

[00:05:38] We love to say hi because when you come and you register at ChadCheese.com slash free, Aaron App, our friends over at Aaron App,

[00:05:46] they're actually sponsoring the newest version of the Guns N' Roses Chad and Cheese t-shirt.

[00:05:52] All right, all right, all right.

[00:05:55] And friends, they don't listen to the podcast because I mean, they're not in this industry, but they got t-shirts.

[00:06:00] And the first thing when I saw them after they actually had worn their t-shirts, they're oh my God, those things are so soft.

[00:06:06] I can't believe they feel like butter.

[00:06:09] I'm like that's exactly right.

[00:06:10] Chad and Cheese don't fuck around with a t-shirt.

[00:06:12] And we already have the Ed Zatusky seal of approval saying this is the best t-shirt that we've done so far.

[00:06:19] So get your ass to ChadCheese.com slash free, click that free link and make sure you get on the list for free tees from Chad and Cheese.

[00:06:27] And beer from Aspen Tech Labs, those crazy kids over at Aspen Tech Labs.

[00:06:32] If you do any type of scraping for jobs into any types of databases, these are the guys to go to.

[00:06:38] Free beer, you could prospectively win a big package of free craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs once a month.

[00:06:44] And then once a month we have a winner for whiskey.

[00:06:46] You win two bottles of whiskey, one from Chad, one from Cheese.

[00:06:49] That is from our friends over at Tex Kernel, the parsing, scraping juggernauts that we know, that we know as Tex Kernel.

[00:06:59] And last but not least, if it's your birthday, you got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free, register to possibly win one from Plum.

[00:07:09] I can feel it all the way down in my blood.

[00:07:11] That's right. So last week I mentioned Matt Lavery, our friend at UPS was the winner of Rum with Plum.

[00:07:17] And they sent him some crappy Captain Morgan's bullshit.

[00:07:22] I'm telling you, I didn't select it.

[00:07:24] I don't know if the Uber Eats driver stashed the one I got and maybe he pocketed.

[00:07:29] I don't know what happened. So I said, we're not going out like that.

[00:07:32] So I sent Matt a new bottle of some premium shit and just as an extra added value threw in some old style, which if you've been to Chicago, you got to get old style.

[00:07:43] He was excited.

[00:07:44] He was on his way to a Cubs game that night.

[00:07:46] So Matt scored pretty well.

[00:07:48] The Cubs did lose that day, but Matt won with not only Rum, but we threw in some old style for my man, Matt.

[00:07:55] Amen. I love it.

[00:07:57] Yeah. So we've got events coming up here very, very shortly.

[00:08:00] And as Joel said, we're on the road.

[00:08:01] So we'll do birthdays next week.

[00:08:02] We'll catch up.

[00:08:03] But we have events that are going to be happening and you get a ChadCheese.com click on the events in the upper right hand corner or just ChadCheese.com slash events.

[00:08:11] You can see where we're going to be after we leave Scotland.

[00:08:15] Going to have a little bit of a hiatus.

[00:08:17] We're going to relax a little bit.

[00:08:18] I'm going to have some beach time.

[00:08:19] Joel's going to go and have some more Chipotle time.

[00:08:22] And then we're going to be at Wreckfest in Nebworth.

[00:08:24] That's right. Just north of London.

[00:08:26] And then right after that, we're doing like the double album.

[00:08:29] We're going to have Wreckfest in Nashville.

[00:08:31] So go to ChadCheese.com click on events.

[00:08:34] Look at what's happening.

[00:08:36] Register. Come see us.

[00:08:37] It's going to be a blast.

[00:08:38] Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

[00:08:41] Yeah, the voice is struggling for sure.

[00:08:48] Let's talk a little.

[00:08:50] Welcome to our thing Scottish.

[00:08:51] Our slogan is if it's no Scottish, it's crap.

[00:08:54] What a blast.

[00:08:55] Got here Saturday.

[00:08:56] I struggle with the European trip.

[00:08:58] I need I need a day to like get my sleep right and everything.

[00:09:01] But had a day went to Loch Lomond.

[00:09:04] It's not LeMond as I first pronounced it.

[00:09:06] Nice little boat tour.

[00:09:08] I had a drink called Iron Brew.

[00:09:10] I was like, all right, fuck it.

[00:09:11] I'll try it.

[00:09:12] Birds of prey exhibit did that.

[00:09:14] And then you came into town.

[00:09:16] We had a day of

[00:09:19] I don't know what to call it.

[00:09:20] It's a little bit of a

[00:09:37] We had a day of fun with our friend Stephen McGrath still and always our favorite Scott, by the way.

[00:09:45] I have to have to say that to rub that in.

[00:09:48] What a great time, man.

[00:09:49] I mean, we first off, we had breakfast with the poetry crew.

[00:09:53] Right. So we sat down, Adam Gordon, Stephen, whole crew.

[00:09:56] Mike had breakfast.

[00:09:58] And then right after breakfast, literally, Stephen's like, look, we've got five minutes.

[00:10:01] We've got to go catch a train.

[00:10:03] We catch a train, go to the Highlands.

[00:10:05] That's right.

[00:10:06] Went to the Highlands.

[00:10:07] It's about an hour and a half, a couple of trains.

[00:10:10] Really easy.

[00:10:11] Really, really easy.

[00:10:13] Got off in Patakery or Patakery.

[00:10:15] Yeah, I'm going to fuck it all up.

[00:10:17] Anyway, it was a beautiful little Scottish village.

[00:10:21] Went to a bar, got some drinks.

[00:10:24] Went to a distillery.

[00:10:25] Yeah.

[00:10:26] Did the distillery tour.

[00:10:27] Yeah, we had distillery.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:29] Blair Outoll, which is also owned by Diageo.

[00:10:33] I think everything's owned by Diageo around here.

[00:10:36] Diageo or Beam, it sounds like.

[00:10:37] Suntory.

[00:10:38] Oh yeah.

[00:10:39] Yep.

[00:10:40] But your classic distillery tour, which was awesome, ended up with some tastings.

[00:10:46] And we pretty much, I would say we drank all day.

[00:10:48] I mean, we had beer and scotch back and forth, but that was a blast.

[00:10:53] I had a good time at the distillery tour.

[00:10:55] Yes, had a great time.

[00:10:56] Interacted with some real Scots.

[00:10:57] A guy named Gus had a lot of fun with him.

[00:11:00] Drinking with Gus on the bus was a good time.

[00:11:02] I'm not sure the last time Gus had been to a dentist, but that's a separate podcast altogether.

[00:11:07] Any thoughts about Glasgow?

[00:11:09] Any kind of takeaways?

[00:11:10] We started the week in Glasgow.

[00:11:12] We're now in Edinburgh, but what are your thoughts on Glasgow?

[00:11:15] Yeah, I mean, we were told that you really can't find two cities that are so much apart.

[00:11:21] I mean, they're close, but they're not alike at all.

[00:11:24] And that is so true.

[00:11:26] I mean, Glasgow is, it feels more blue collar, very, very, I don't know if it's

[00:11:31] I don't want to say industrial, but it just has a much different feel of kind of like the pomp and circumstance that happens here in Edinburgh.

[00:11:38] Right?

[00:11:39] So I think it's surprising because we hopped the train over to Glesson an hour.

[00:11:44] And then we got some messages this morning who some of the guys are coming over from from Glasgow and they're like, I'm stuck in traffic.

[00:11:50] I'm like, why aren't you on the fucking train?

[00:11:53] Because there are Scots on the train.

[00:11:55] That's why I don't want to be on it.

[00:11:56] Glasgow to me is if I was explaining it to an American, it's like if you took like old Philadelphia and Nashville, Tennessee, and if they had a baby that might be Glasgow.

[00:12:07] It's a party with a little bit of old world flair, some class.

[00:12:11] On one end, you'll see a designer outfit, Giselle looking supermodel.

[00:12:17] And on the other side, you'll see like under armor, spandex suit, onesie with some crocs.

[00:12:25] I mean, it's like the opposite end of style.

[00:12:28] I know that Dexie's Midnight Runners were not Scottish.

[00:12:31] But if you watch the Come On Eileen video, that kind of felt kind of like Glasgow.

[00:12:36] Just the feel.

[00:12:37] Duckin' 1984.

[00:12:39] Some of the music is too.

[00:12:41] We love it.

[00:12:43] Love it.

[00:12:44] So we headed into Edinburgh and we met up with our friend Matt Alder who also has a podcast.

[00:12:49] Check his podcast out if you haven't yet.

[00:12:51] And he showed us a good time.

[00:12:53] What did we do there?

[00:12:54] We actually hopped in the mystery machine.

[00:12:57] That's right. We actually had a little van, Scooby Shaggy mobile.

[00:13:00] As usual, Cheeseman didn't show up in the right place so we had to go find him.

[00:13:05] It was like a Where's Waldo kind of a scenario.

[00:13:07] You're so dumb. You are really dumb.

[00:13:09] Had to go pick up Cheeseman and then we were off.

[00:13:14] And it was funny because again, we're talking about narrow roads.

[00:13:17] And this isn't like an RV. It was a camper van.

[00:13:20] Camper van, yeah.

[00:13:21] You could see the stress on Matt's face in driving that fucking thing through Edinburgh.

[00:13:26] And then some of those roads, right?

[00:13:29] It was a blast.

[00:13:30] But then we went to Glen Kitcheny, I believe.

[00:13:34] Kitcheny?

[00:13:35] Yeah.

[00:13:36] Kitcheny. Yes.

[00:13:37] That was an entirely different experience and it was one that I would like to do over and over and over.

[00:13:43] Tell us about that experience.

[00:13:44] I've done our fair share of distillery tours and they usually have some sort of like grain thing jar.

[00:13:51] They have a little bit of liquid. They show you the pot still.

[00:13:55] They show you the mechanics of it.

[00:13:58] This place had none of that.

[00:13:59] I saw no things of grain or wheat while we were there.

[00:14:03] They took us right into the tasting room, had some samples of what they were doing, went to I guess the warehouse.

[00:14:11] We learned what a hog's head was. It's a bigger barrel than the typical barrel.

[00:14:16] And the dates range from 88, I want to say 2007 or something.

[00:14:21] I mean, obviously ages in terms of age and gave us a choice of two to try.

[00:14:27] Obviously we went for 88.

[00:14:29] Good year for both of us as we talked about.

[00:14:32] And I think we went with the 97 and put the tool in, take the scotch out, put in a little pitcher.

[00:14:39] John, who was our guide, who was fantastic, gave us a little bit.

[00:14:42] It's just us three and I think three other folks that were on the tour saw the warehouse of $300 million worth of scotch, I think was it.

[00:14:53] And went, had a little bit to eat, had a flight.

[00:14:56] You ordered the sherry flight because you're sweet like that.

[00:14:59] And I ordered the smoky flight because I'm hot like that.

[00:15:03] Oh sherry.

[00:15:04] Oh sherry, yeah.

[00:15:05] Stinky like that.

[00:15:07] And Matt could not drink unfortunately because he's driving and there's like zero tolerance in this country for that.

[00:15:12] So they bottled, yeah, they bottled up for him.

[00:15:15] Well, he lives in Scotland anyways.

[00:15:17] Went to a castle, it was raining. We didn't go, recorded another podcast in addition to the distillery.

[00:15:23] Got back on a train, came into town for dinner with our lovely wives as well as Matt's wife Fiona.

[00:15:29] Shout out to her.

[00:15:30] Called it a night and here we are today.

[00:15:32] It's true Edinburgh.

[00:15:34] This place is like Harry Potter, Hollywood, staging, Downton Abbey.

[00:15:39] It's ridiculous.

[00:15:41] It almost feels fake.

[00:15:42] Like it's so amazing.

[00:15:44] Castles, old buildings, cobblestone streets.

[00:15:47] The whole place is ridiculous.

[00:15:49] It is.

[00:15:50] I want to go back real quick to the Glasgow event.

[00:15:53] The Glasgow event was amazing.

[00:15:55] We had about 50, 60-ish people.

[00:15:57] Very intimate discussions and it was good.

[00:16:00] It was kind of like a trust tree discussions, right?

[00:16:02] But the thing that constantly surprises me is just still how much alike we are even though, you know,

[00:16:11] Americans think that they're much more advanced than everybody else.

[00:16:14] We still have the same problems.

[00:16:15] I think we're going at them in different ways in some cases.

[00:16:18] But we still are having the same problems, talking about the same problems.

[00:16:22] And it's great to see practitioners get together to start to talk these things through.

[00:16:27] They get excited.

[00:16:28] I mean, there's a lot of energy that they actually get out of these conversations.

[00:16:32] And again, as we start to move toward AI and talking about taking jobs and those types of things,

[00:16:39] we realize once again and every day that people make this world go around.

[00:16:45] And these types of events are incredibly important, which is why I'm so excited to go to today's event too.

[00:16:50] I expect to go just as deep today as we did earlier this week.

[00:16:54] So a few takeaways from me on the Glasgow and we'll talk about Edinburgh, I'm sure next week to sum up that.

[00:16:59] But a few things that stuck out to me in the Glasgow event.

[00:17:02] Number one was that DEI is very different in Scotland than it is in America.

[00:17:08] Scotland is 95% white.

[00:17:10] 95% white.

[00:17:11] So diversity is focused on obviously sex, age, disability.

[00:17:17] Gender, yeah.

[00:17:18] So there's just a very different mindset when you're in a place that has a lot of white people

[00:17:22] in terms of what diversity and inclusion means.

[00:17:25] I think Americans take that for granted.

[00:17:27] The whole world isn't like America and they view this thing very differently.

[00:17:31] Second thing was automation is going to take recruiting jobs.

[00:17:35] I think there was a large agreement that it will take jobs.

[00:17:39] We shouldn't lie to ourselves about that.

[00:17:41] But optimistically, our friend Adam Gordon commented that things like marketing jobs and recruitment or data scientists or data analysts jobs will become more prominent

[00:17:51] in recruitment.

[00:17:52] So there is a little bit of silver lining in terms of the realization that we may be losing a lot of recruiters and the profession.

[00:17:59] Third thing was that the CV is dead continues to be an argument.

[00:18:04] 20 plus years in the making, this has been a thing since visual CV launched back in the 2000s.

[00:18:10] I think it's greatly exaggerated.

[00:18:12] As long as there is a LinkedIn profile, there will be a resume.

[00:18:16] I think that particularly with high turnover jobs, seasonal jobs, hourly jobs, those could go away.

[00:18:23] I could totally like they don't have or need resumes.

[00:18:26] But as far as the death of them overall is still a conversation.

[00:18:31] And then lastly for me, someone mentioned that they provide a like a candidate highlight deck to all of their interviews that get up to a certain level,

[00:18:41] which I thought was really great.

[00:18:43] If you're not providing sort of a five page summary of the company and the interview process, quotes from people, quotes from interviewers that had good things to say about the candidate,

[00:18:55] kind of a highlight hype deck, if you will.

[00:18:58] I thought that was a fantastic idea that came out of our time in Glasgow.

[00:19:02] So those were all highlights for me.

[00:19:04] I'm sure that we'll get some more here today in Edinburgh.

[00:19:07] And big, big thanks to sponsors, Daxtra, Poetry Solutions Driven, Ashby, Gigged.ai and Willow.

[00:19:16] And I would definitely be remiss if I didn't say once again, thanks to Matt Alder for again, this is Matt's English, but he lives here.

[00:19:24] And he helped us obviously come together to be able to pull this together with Stephen O'Donnell, who is leading the whole True Events thing here in Scotland.

[00:19:33] So thanks, Stevens, for having us at these True Events.

[00:19:36] And last but not least, yes, Adam, we still love you.

[00:19:39] We always will. Adam Gordon is he is a guy's amazing guys.

[00:19:44] Amazing. He lined up the practitioners, speakers.

[00:19:48] I mean, just so much work out of the community to make something like this happen.

[00:19:53] And it's funny because I talked to Bill Borman, we were messaging back and forth.

[00:19:56] And true is kind of his thing, right?

[00:19:58] And he's like, who's in charge of this?

[00:19:59] I'm like, well, Bill, it takes it takes a village.

[00:20:02] Right. And it really has.

[00:20:03] It's taken a village to put these two events together.

[00:20:06] But it's been a blast.

[00:20:07] So thanks to everybody for everything that they've done to bring two dumb Americans to Scotland.

[00:20:12] Indeed, indeed.

[00:20:14] And by the way, if you see Adam's black eye on social media, we had nothing to do with that whatsoever.

[00:20:19] Whatsoever. No. All right.

[00:20:21] That is our Scottish blog.

[00:20:23] Welcome to our thing. Until the end of the show, probably we'll talk about Scotland.

[00:20:27] Let's get to the real news. Listen to the sponsors ads, everybody.

[00:20:30] There is no show without the sponsors and we will be right back.

[00:20:37] All right, Chad, let's get into the meat of it with some industry news.

[00:20:41] Seattle based Seekout, an eight year old company once valued at one point two billion dollars

[00:20:48] has laid off 30 percent of its workforce to address significant cash burn.

[00:20:53] This is the second time they've had layoffs cutting about seven percent of the workforce back in October.

[00:20:59] The company employs 228 people.

[00:21:02] And in case you missed it, Seekout won one of our death match competitions pre-COVID.

[00:21:07] Chad, your take on the latest round of layoffs at Seekout.

[00:21:11] Yeah, I love a new guy is as smart as they come.

[00:21:15] But at the end of the day, you can't be great at everything.

[00:21:18] And I'm not sure. I think the discussion should revolve around is this a go to market problem

[00:21:23] or maybe is it just that the market isn't mature enough for this type of technology right now?

[00:21:28] Right. And so to be able to take a look at it, Restless banned it.

[00:21:32] Yeah. Died. Hiring solved. Died. Intel. Died. Hired. Dot com.

[00:21:38] All of these, the same kind of types of tech that are going after the market pretty much the same way.

[00:21:44] And then we have Eightfold, who got a shit ton of cash and I don't know what the fuck they do these days.

[00:21:49] But anyway, that happened from the standpoint of go to market going direct to brand.

[00:21:54] And then you have market leaders like Tex Colonel and then Daxstra,

[00:21:59] who's now starting to make a resurgence, who are in an entirely different go to market scheme.

[00:22:04] Right. And they are flourishing. Right.

[00:22:07] So to me, to me, I think it's fairly simple. I believe it's a it's a go to market problem.

[00:22:13] There is a market need for this type of tech to be baked into the system.

[00:22:19] It's obvious that selling these complex systems, onboarding, training to use outside of a core platform, it's a loser.

[00:22:27] Right. January of 2022, Seekout took $115 million in Series C.

[00:22:33] And then today talking about 30% down. Timing's not great. Totally understand that.

[00:22:39] Could they have sold before getting that big money? Possibly. I don't know.

[00:22:42] Behindsides 2020. But for me, this is a go to market issue and I'm starting to see them kind of like float all over the place.

[00:22:49] Wait a minute. We're for cleared candidates for national defense.

[00:22:52] We do health care, internal mobility, workforce planning.

[00:22:56] It's like, holy fuck, man. You know, you're all over the place.

[00:23:00] Focus, get some discipline. That's why you're burning all that fucking cash.

[00:23:06] OK. And take a look at the market and see who is actually flourishing.

[00:23:11] That is my point, because they're still pushing that they have 800 million public profiles, 330 million plus underrepresented candidates.

[00:23:21] Right. It's like the old they still won't let the old model go.

[00:23:25] It's just it's I don't know. I think personally, I think it's focus and it's got a market at this point.

[00:23:29] What do you think? 60% of the time it works every time.

[00:23:33] I love Anoop as much as you do.

[00:23:35] I think that you've already touched on the Deadpool of companies that sort of source people for jobs.

[00:23:41] The ones that are still around have pivoted and have seen varying degrees of success from that.

[00:23:47] But it was it was pretty clear when you looked at LinkedIn's appetite for destruction that we're going to get rid of everyone that's using our profiles.

[00:23:55] Anyone that's sputtering our shit is going to feel a world of hurt and high Q.

[00:23:59] Obviously, the case we've talked about ad nauseum ad nauseum on the show is proof of that.

[00:24:04] We always thought that seek out might be immune to that because of a new friendship with Bill Gates and Microsoft who owns LinkedIn maybe had a sort of a get out of jail free card that others didn't.

[00:24:16] And then we really thought at least I did particularly that Microsoft was going to come knocking with a check and that they were going to integrate sort of the technology and everything into into LinkedIn.

[00:24:25] Which makes maybe too much sense.

[00:24:27] That hasn't happened.

[00:24:29] You're eight years down the road.

[00:24:31] You're not a billion dollar company valuation anymore for sure.

[00:24:34] Tech hiring has dried up.

[00:24:36] There are fewer recruiters now to use your product.

[00:24:39] If they were, I think they're struggling to get any kind of traction in markets outside of tech.

[00:24:44] They probably waited too long.

[00:24:47] I mean, there's the formula now seems to be start a company two to four years and flip it.

[00:24:53] Take as minimal money as you can settle an ATS, sell to a platform and rinse and repeat the days of sort of the five to 10 year companies before they sell is a really challenged one.

[00:25:05] So we're in eight years of seek out.

[00:25:07] I don't know what they do.

[00:25:09] Unless the tech hiring comes back, which there's no guarantee of that.

[00:25:13] I don't know if they're going to get traction anywhere globally.

[00:25:16] Companies are relying more on upscaling.

[00:25:18] They're relying more on their existing talent pool, their current database, people that are already working to upscale and upgrade them.

[00:25:27] So everyone's moving away from this kind of sourcing model.

[00:25:31] And I think seek out is going to run just going to run out of gas and sell eventually sell on the TJ Maxx clearance rack.

[00:25:38] The percentages that they've done is it's not apocalypse.

[00:25:41] They've remained fairly flat overall in terms of hiring, but there's no growth at this company that I can see ahead of them or any in the near future.

[00:25:51] So, yeah, to me it's like run out of time.

[00:25:53] They can't run out of money.

[00:25:55] They're going to manage it intelligently.

[00:25:57] They're going to last as long as they can and try to figure out a way.

[00:25:59] They're not going to get more money.

[00:26:01] They're not going to go IPO.

[00:26:02] A company that's going to buy them is just going to wait for them to wither to nothing before they acquire it.

[00:26:07] There's no growth here.

[00:26:08] Like it's just a it's just a bad scene.

[00:26:10] I think they're going to start seeing executives bail because there's no bright future for the business and it's just going to be a sad story of a slow death.

[00:26:19] The whole go to market at this point is focus on core platforms that need your type of tech and integrate very closely.

[00:26:27] Now you're going to have to be incredibly specific on the types of partners that you have.

[00:26:32] You can't do this with everyone and you shouldn't.

[00:26:34] Right. Because you're looking for sugar daddy to actually buy you at the end of the day.

[00:26:38] Right. Once again, I just feel like it's been a scatter gun kind of like, you know, focus.

[00:26:44] It's been all over the place.

[00:26:45] They're really going to have to get laser focused.

[00:26:48] Tech isn't a thing, obviously, which is why they've pivoted into national defense and health care.

[00:26:53] But again, I mean, we're talking about two entirely different types of talent pools, internal mobility workforce planning.

[00:26:59] I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, we're all over the place.

[00:27:02] These might be good things if they were integrated into, you know, a platform and not a secondary platform.

[00:27:09] Right. Where are you?

[00:27:10] OK, I'm going to go into my seek out now and do workforce planning.

[00:27:13] Nobody's going to do that.

[00:27:14] It has to be a part of a core platform.

[00:27:16] Yeah. And I'll also add that programmatic is getting better and better and more cost effective to get in front of some of the candidates that you want to get in front of.

[00:27:23] And I think it's also a case where we talk about company, you know, people that are really smart, that come into our industry, that don't know anything about it.

[00:27:31] And as smart as they are and as many great blue chip companies that they've worked for can't quite figure out our space and can't quite find that secret formula to be successful.

[00:27:41] Yeah, I don't think they know what the real problem is.

[00:27:44] And the real problem is something that people will pay for.

[00:27:47] You done messed up, A.A. Ron!

[00:27:49] All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little Indeed news.

[00:27:54] All right, Chad, per a recent article by Jim the Indeed whisperer Durbin for AIM Group, Indeed is planning to shift away from providing organic traffic,

[00:28:07] aka free traffic, to its recruitment marketing partners and prioritize paid postings.

[00:28:13] This decision comes amid global macroeconomic headwinds affecting hiring budgets and a recent layoff announced from Indeed, which we talked about last week.

[00:28:24] Chad, your thoughts on the recent commentary on Indeed shutting off the free spigot?

[00:28:30] I mean, duh. I mean, how could you not see this coming?

[00:28:33] Indeed had an organic shutdown in 2019 for staffing companies.

[00:28:37] Then they saw profits rise from staffing companies after they made that move, right?

[00:28:43] So Mitch Gerson actually cites that some agencies had to raise their budgets 150 percent plus, right?

[00:28:50] So more than double what they were paying before.

[00:28:53] So staffing companies got fucked over and then they said, thank you, sir.

[00:28:56] May I have another? Moreover, you know, this happened out in the open.

[00:29:00] It's not like we didn't see this coming. We talked about it.

[00:29:03] Everybody was talking about it. But for some reason it's like, oh, wait a minute.

[00:29:07] They're shutting off organic for another segment.

[00:29:10] So what did 2019 staffing shut off teach us?

[00:29:15] Well, apparently nothing. But here's what I got out of it.

[00:29:18] Staffing companies, they were obviously leaning too hard on Indeed.

[00:29:22] And staffing companies were not using the tons, the hundreds of thousands and or millions of candidates that they've already paid for.

[00:29:31] Again, it just drives me crazy that these companies and again, it's their business, right?

[00:29:36] So you would expect staffing companies to get it right.

[00:29:38] Companies are now starting to understand this in some cases, at least like the creme de la creme companies like Matt over at UPS.

[00:29:46] We talked to him about how the first thing they do is they look for internal mobility.

[00:29:52] Why? Because they want to keep their people happy. They want to retain their people.

[00:29:55] No shit, that's awesome. Then when they're looking to fill positions after they've they've gone through that phase,

[00:30:01] then they go into their candidate database and then they re-invite individuals to apply for jobs that are like jobs that they've already been like a silver medalist or a bronze medalist to.

[00:30:12] And we asked and he didn't give us specific numbers on the interview, but we'll be publishing it here in about a week or so.

[00:30:17] They've saved tons of money, not just money from the standpoint of not having to spend programmatically externally,

[00:30:24] but also because they can fill positions faster.

[00:30:27] If you fill positions faster, your company saves money because you don't have a bunch of empty holes where people aren't doing the job

[00:30:34] and you're not stretching your people so thin that you're possibly going to lose them too.

[00:30:39] So, you know, from the standpoint of what Indeed's doing, every company that's out there today should be focusing on talent pipelining internally from an internal mobility standpoint

[00:30:51] and then also using the candidate data in their database.

[00:30:55] And instead of paying for Indeed, start to get into some of these SMS and chat bot engagement platforms that automatically match

[00:31:06] and then start to invite individuals back to your brand to apply. So there's no black hole.

[00:31:12] Indeed being Indeed, I say.

[00:31:16] Look, I remember a conversation early in my SEO days when someone commented to me, and this is SEO world, that eventually SEO will be dead

[00:31:25] because you'll pay for every ranking that you get.

[00:31:29] Now, until generative AI and open AI and chat GPT, a lot of Google's results were, you guessed it, paid results,

[00:31:38] which you kind of hardly realized were paid results. And that probably is the road they would have continued down.

[00:31:43] I'm also reminded by the old conversation on Monster where Monster envisioned a world where they were the only place where people went

[00:31:50] and they charged everyone what was it, $1,000 a job or like an end just and just scale that up considerably.

[00:31:57] I think that was in these plan all along, was to never really have organic results.

[00:32:01] And I can remember circa 2010, the first sort of scare shot across the bow of job boards

[00:32:09] when they started ranking direct employer jobs higher than they did job board jobs.

[00:32:16] And job boards freaked out because the free traffic that they enjoyed was now gone.

[00:32:21] And indeed slowly kept just tightening the screws on the free stuff, the people who were getting the free ride.

[00:32:29] And then Google came along and launched jobs.

[00:32:31] I think there was a period of like, oh, what the fuck are we going to do?

[00:32:34] Let's throw some shit at the wall, see what sticks.

[00:32:37] You remember Job Tracker where you had an app and you reported like help wanted ads in your local downtown market.

[00:32:45] And I mean, they got kind of crazy.

[00:32:47] And then you have Google say like, well, we're not going to do paid stuff.

[00:32:50] We're going to get out of that business.

[00:32:52] And now indeed can like continue to tighten the screws on the people that are still willing or too stupid or lazy to pay it.

[00:32:59] I mean, look, this is a tax on people who aren't willing to look at some of the alternatives that you talked about,

[00:33:05] whether it's your own database, your own employee talent pool, whether it's new tools and technology.

[00:33:11] It is kind of a dumb tax.

[00:33:13] It's a dumb tax.

[00:33:14] Just post it on Indeed.

[00:33:15] That's what we're going to do now.

[00:33:16] We have to pay for that.

[00:33:18] And we've obviously talked about the pricing questions and issues they've had there.

[00:33:22] There's a lot of confusion around what the hell am I paying?

[00:33:25] So this to me is par for the course.

[00:33:28] If you're not wise to alternatives to Indeed, well, you get what you deserve,

[00:33:32] which is a lot less budget to play around with recruiting, recruiting and marketing.

[00:33:37] Like I said, programmatic has become better and smarter.

[00:33:40] If you're not looking at that, you need to look at that.

[00:33:42] It's time if you haven't to stop the heroin drip of Indeed's free traffic because it's drying up

[00:33:49] and it's going to be a higher cost for you in the future.

[00:33:52] LinkedIn is doing the same thing, by the way.

[00:33:54] They're tightening the screws on free stuff, raising prices,

[00:33:57] trying to become a monopoly where you have no other options.

[00:34:00] It's time to get smart.

[00:34:01] And if you're listening to this show, you're already pretty smart

[00:34:03] and probably not just dependent upon Indeed.

[00:34:05] But if you're a first-time listener and sucking on the teat of Indeed,

[00:34:09] it's time to get off.

[00:34:11] Tell your dumb friends to listen to Chad and she's, seriously, I mean, this is the dumb tax.

[00:34:16] It's what it is because for individuals who aren't paying attention

[00:34:21] or they're making excuses not to change,

[00:34:24] I mean, you saw this coming or you knew this could happen.

[00:34:27] So this is, I mean, this is literally just the Indeed dumb tax.

[00:34:30] And if you don't realize that you are buying the same candidates over and over and over,

[00:34:37] just fire yourself.

[00:34:38] I mean, just get it over with.

[00:34:39] Speaking of dumb tax, Chad, let's end on a dad joke from Scotland.

[00:34:44] You ready?

[00:34:45] What's the difference between Robert the Bruce and Winnie the Pooh?

[00:34:49] Same person.

[00:34:50] Same middle name.

[00:34:52] That's right.

[00:34:53] Oh!

[00:34:54] We out.

[00:34:58] We out.

[00:34:59] Thank you for listening to what's it called?

[00:35:02] A podcast.

[00:35:03] The Chad.

[00:35:04] The cheese.

[00:35:05] Brilliant.

[00:35:06] They talk about recruiting.

[00:35:07] They talk about technology.

[00:35:09] But most of all, they talk about nothing.

[00:35:12] Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know.

[00:35:15] And yet you're listening.

[00:35:17] It's incredible.

[00:35:18] And not one word about cheese.

[00:35:21] Not one.

[00:35:22] Cheddar.

[00:35:23] Blue.

[00:35:24] Nacho.

[00:35:25] Pepper Jack.

[00:35:26] Swiss.

[00:35:27] So many cheeses and not one word.

[00:35:30] So weird.

[00:35:31] Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes.

[00:35:35] Spotify.

[00:35:36] Google Play.

[00:35:37] Or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[00:35:40] That way you won't miss an episode.

[00:35:43] And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com.

[00:35:48] Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese.

[00:35:53] So weird.

[00:35:55] We out.