Indeed's 'Dumb Tax' & Seekout Cuts

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[00:00:53] Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and

[00:01:00] Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with

[00:01:05] breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese Podcast!

[00:01:20] Oh yeah! Two guys who can't get enough of Scotland's haggis, neeps, and tatties. Hey boys and girls,

[00:01:33] this is the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Gus Cheeseman. And I'm Chad,

[00:01:39] 10 for 1 Sowash. And on this episode, Head's role at Seek Out is indeed finally taking away

[00:01:46] the heroin drip in our Scottish roundup. Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is,

[00:01:52] if it's no Scottish, it's crap! Let's do this. Okay listener, how can you help your

[00:02:03] employees become more productive? I have answers. How about automating manual and repetitive tasks,

[00:02:10] giving meaning to data, then allowing that data to actually drive decisions? And how about

[00:02:16] matching people to your jobs quicker? Well wait, the Chad & Cheese has a new LLM?

[00:02:24] No Cheeseman. I'm talking about Tex Kernel. Ah okay, that makes more sense. What I'm hearing

[00:02:31] is the groundbreaking concept of, wait for it, simplicity. Seriously though, seriously,

[00:02:38] Tex Kernel cuts through the complexities like a tortilla chip through some hot nacho cheese.

[00:02:45] Really? Nacho references already. Anyways, Tex Kernel brings efficiency and productivity

[00:02:51] to your operations. Tex Kernel seamlessly unifies your tools and data to drive

[00:02:57] efficiencies and success. Tex Kernel is creating new opportunities for your

[00:03:03] recruitment journey. Kind of like adding guac to my barbacoa burrito. Oh my god. How about

[00:03:10] extracting meaningful insights from data? I mean that's something. Swiftly matching people

[00:03:15] with jobs, automating repetitive tasks. Who knew such advanced concepts were even possible in the

[00:03:23] land of human resources? We did Chad. We did. Dude, wrap it up. I'm a little hungry. Imagine

[00:03:32] that. Okay listener, get ready to use today's tech to drive efficiencies and productivity.

[00:03:38] Visit TexKernel.com. That's T-E-X-T-K-E-R-N-E-L.com.

[00:03:48] Nachos. How's the liver Chad? How's the liver? Did it all right? Liver?

[00:03:55] Yes. The liver is actually doing well. We'll get into that here in a second,

[00:03:59] but I think we did well on the training regiment to be able to get here in the first

[00:04:03] place. But I did wake up this morning and Julie said we came back from breakfast. We did

[00:04:08] our prep for today's event. Breakfast came back and Julie was like, guess what? NVIDIA's splitting

[00:04:14] 10 to 1. Yes! Keep the party going NVIDIA. That's what I'm talking about. Keep the party

[00:04:23] rolling. Come on baby. Your liver is all right. I don't know maybe it's more quality booze

[00:04:29] here in the country. Maybe it's the full breakfasts keep you ready. Or maybe it's the

[00:04:35] haggis. Maybe it's the haggis. Which have you had a haggis? Have you had haggis yet?

[00:04:40] Have had haggis. I haven't had haggis fries like you and Christine. It was kind of like

[00:04:44] it's kind of like your version of Scottish protein. Oh not just fries Chad. The dirty

[00:04:50] fries. The dirty fries loaded with cheese, mayo, haggis. They have haggis on them so they're dirty.

[00:04:57] A little HP sauce. I don't know a lot of a lot of good stuff on that. Like the HP sauce.

[00:05:03] Surprisingly, maybe this is too much information but my poops have been really good here. I got

[00:05:07] some really good poops. Maybe I don't know if it's the diet or if it's no chipotle for a week.

[00:05:12] I can't figure out why I'm so regular and so healthy right now. I don't know. Let's preserve

[00:05:19] it as I'm going to say. So yeah. I don't know and I don't care. Moving on. Shout outs.

[00:05:24] Shout outs. Jesus. Shout out. I'm gonna go first. I'm gonna shout out to

[00:05:28] Jobs. Jobs on Google. I'm gonna stop calling it Google for jobs from now on because I think

[00:05:33] that's a word. That's a dead term. Let's just say that. Jobs on Google. That's right. Google is

[00:05:38] still continuing to make changes to how it can effectively engage jobs on the search engine.

[00:05:44] How you as a user can. They introduced a jobs tab recently so that if you're searching for

[00:05:49] anything related to jobs on Google, the tab appears and takes the user to an unlimited scroll

[00:05:56] of jobs. It's only a subtle change here and there but those changes are signals and for all

[00:06:03] of you that are out there that are still hoping one day Google gets into the performance driven

[00:06:08] jobs markets, ads markets. Well, they're still a chance. They're still a chance.

[00:06:15] Unlimited scroll on Google now for jobs and a link to jobs. That would have been

[00:06:21] apocalypse now 10 years ago for job sites. I can't imagine. They would have been shitting their pants.

[00:06:27] If you're a small niche job site, I'm sure I'll get pushback on this but this isn't good and it

[00:06:33] goes into our Indeed story later in the show not to ruin it but yeah, it's gonna be hard

[00:06:38] and harder to get attention if you've relied on Google for the last 10-20 years. My shout

[00:06:44] out goes to Workplace by Facebook. Oh, I remember those guys. Yeah, this may be,

[00:06:51] I don't know, the final death knell of SaaS businesses in our space for big companies like

[00:06:57] Google. Remember Google for hire? Obviously there have been tools that have come and gone from

[00:07:03] bigger companies but this lasted for a while. They launched this. It was sort of they built

[00:07:07] it as like Facebook but for your company so it was messaging, video stuff, groups, etc.

[00:07:13] They're throwing in the towel and the big winner from this move is gonna be our friends at Work

[00:07:18] Vivo who was acquired by Zoom, the popular video conversation tool that everyone knows about.

[00:07:26] Not an acquisition, not a merger but they're gonna try to funnel everyone they have

[00:07:31] over to Work Vivo so big win for them and they are the only integration partner that

[00:07:36] Facebook has blessed with this pairing. Shout out to Work Vivo if you haven't checked them

[00:07:41] out and you're flicking for a tool that they provide, you might want to give them a look.

[00:07:44] That's pretty awesome. I'm not sure how many companies Facebook was actually

[00:07:49] had in workplace still. I think we saw kind of like the slow death starting with jobs

[00:07:54] and then it just kind of like died from there but yeah, I mean even if it's just a

[00:07:59] PR push, hell that's a nice little PR push so good job. Yeah, it's a good day to be

[00:08:04] a Work Vivo salesperson calling on a lot of Facebook customers that are using that so

[00:08:08] good for them. Have you heard of Facebook? Okay, you might know us now. Mark gave me

[00:08:14] your name and wanted me to give you a shout. Mark says hi. Zuck says hi. Zuck says hi.

[00:08:19] All right, free stuff. Somebody who loves to say hi are our new t-shirts. That's right,

[00:08:24] we love to say hi because when you come and you register at ChadCheese.com slash free,

[00:08:30] Aaron App, our friends over at Aaron App, they're actually sponsoring the newest version

[00:08:35] of the Guns N' Roses Chad and Cheese t-shirt. All right, all right, all right. And friends,

[00:08:42] they don't listen to the podcast because I mean they're not in this industry but they

[00:08:45] got t-shirts and the first thing when I saw them after they actually had worn their t-shirts

[00:08:50] they're oh my god those things are so soft that I can't believe they feel like butter.

[00:08:55] I'm like that's exactly right. Chad and Cheese don't fuck around with a t-shirt.

[00:08:58] And we already have the Ed Zatusky seal of approval saying this is the best t-shirt that

[00:09:04] we've done so far. So get your ass to ChadCheese.com slash free, click that free link and make sure

[00:09:10] you get on the list for free tees from Chad and Cheese. And beer from Aspen Tech Labs,

[00:09:16] those crazy kids over at Aspen Tech Labs. If you do any type of scraping for jobs into any

[00:09:22] types of databases these are the guys to go to. So free beer, you could prospectively win

[00:09:26] a big package of free craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs once a month and then once a month

[00:09:31] we have a winner for whiskey. You win two bottles of whiskey, one from Chad, one from Cheese. That

[00:09:36] is from our friends over at Tex Kernel, the parsing scraping juggernauts that we know

[00:09:43] that we know as Tex Kernel and last but not least if it's your birthday you got to go

[00:09:50] to ChadCheese.com slash free and register to possibly win one from Plum.

[00:09:55] I can feel it all the way down in my blood.

[00:09:57] That's right. So last week I mentioned Matt Lavery, our friend at UPS was the winner of

[00:10:02] Rum with Plum and they sent him some crappy Captain Morgan's bullshit. I'm telling you,

[00:10:09] I didn't select it. I don't know if the Uber Eats driver stashed the one I got and maybe he

[00:10:15] pocketed the, I don't know what happened. So I said we're not going out like that.

[00:10:19] So I sent Matt a new bottle of some premium shit and just as an extra added value threw

[00:10:25] in some old style, which if you've been to Chicago, you got to get old style.

[00:10:29] He was excited.

[00:10:30] He was on his way to a Cubs game that night. So Matt scored pretty well. The Cubs did lose

[00:10:36] that day, but Matt won with not only Rum, but we threw in some old style for my man, Matt.

[00:10:42] Amen.

[00:10:42] I love it. Yeah. So we've got events coming up here very, very shortly. And as Joel said,

[00:10:47] we're on the road. So we'll do birthdays next week. We'll catch up, but we have

[00:10:50] events that are going to be happening. And you can get a chadcheese.com, click on the

[00:10:54] events in the upper right-hand corner or just chadcheese.com slash events. You can see where

[00:10:59] we're going to be after we leave Scotland. We're going to have a little bit of a hiatus.

[00:11:03] We're going to relax a little bit. I'm going to have some beach time. Joel's going to go

[00:11:06] and have some more Chipotle time. And then we're going to be at Wreckfest in Nebworth.

[00:11:11] That's right. Just north of London. And then right after that, we're doing like

[00:11:15] album. We're going to have a Wreckfest in Nashville. So go to chadcheese.com,

[00:11:19] click on events, look at what's happening, register, come see us. It's going to be a

[00:11:24] blast. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt.

[00:11:33] Yeah. The voice is struggling for sure. Let's talk a little.

[00:11:41] What a blast. Got here Saturday. I struggle with the European

[00:11:44] trip. I need a day to get my sleep right and everything, but had a day, went to Loch Lomond.

[00:11:50] It's not LeMond as I first pronounced it. Nice little boat tour.

[00:11:54] Saw the Highlands. Saw some island that William Wallace apparently hit out on. Hit up a fair,

[00:12:01] Bouncy House, my Dirty Fries in Haggis. I had a drink called Iron Brew, which everyone

[00:12:07] in this country will know what it is. It's a soft drink. And in pure Scottish fashion,

[00:12:12] I go, what does Iron Brew taste like? And he says, it tastes like iron brew. What do you

[00:12:17] think it tastes like? So I was like, all right, fuck it. I'll try it. Birds of Prey exhibit

[00:12:21] did that. And then you came into town. We had a day of fun with our friend, Steven McGrath

[00:12:27] still and always our favorite Scott, by the way, I have to say that to rub that in.

[00:12:34] What a great time, man. I mean, we first off, we had breakfast with the poetry crew,

[00:12:39] right? So we sat down, Adam, Gordon, Steven, whole crew, Mike. I had breakfast and then

[00:12:44] right after breakfast, literally Steven's like, look, we've got five minutes. We've

[00:12:47] got to go catch a train. We catch a train, go to the Highlands. That's right.

[00:12:52] Went to the Highlands. It was about an hour and a half, a couple of trains.

[00:12:56] Really easy. Really, really easy. Got off in Patakery or Patak- yeah, I'm going to

[00:13:02] fuck it all up. Anyway, it was a beautiful little Scottish village. Went to a bar,

[00:13:09] got some drinks. Went to a distillery. Yeah. Did the distillery tour.

[00:13:13] Yeah, we had distillery. Yeah. Blair Atoll is also owned by Diageo. I think everything's

[00:13:20] owned by Diageo around here. Diageo or Beam, it sounds like. Centauri.

[00:13:24] Oh yeah. Yeah. But your classic distillery tour, which was awesome, ended up with

[00:13:31] some tastings. I would say we drank all day. We had beer and scotch back and forth, but

[00:13:38] that was a blast. I had a good time at the distillery tour.

[00:13:40] Yes, had a great time. Interacted with some real Scots, a guy named Gus. Had a lot of

[00:13:45] fun with him. Drinking with Gus on the bus was a good time. I'm not sure the last time

[00:13:49] Gus had been to a dentist, but that's a separate podcast altogether. Any thoughts about

[00:13:55] Glasgow? Any kind of takeaways? We started the week in Glasgow. We're now in Edinburgh,

[00:14:00] but what are your thoughts on Glasgow? Yeah, I mean, we were told that you really

[00:14:05] can't find two cities that are so much apart. I mean, they're close, but they're

[00:14:10] not alike at all. And that is so true. I mean, Glasgow feels more blue collar.

[00:14:17] I don't want to say industrial, but it just has a much different feel of the

[00:14:21] pomp and circumstance that happens here in Edinburgh. So I think it's surprising because

[00:14:27] we hopped the train over, took less than an hour. And then we got some messages this morning

[00:14:32] who some of the guys are coming over from Glasgow and they're like, I'm stuck in traffic. I'm

[00:14:36] like, why aren't you on the fucking train? It's so easy.

[00:14:39] Because there are Scots on the train. That's why I don't want to be on it. Glasgow to me is,

[00:14:44] if I was explaining it to an American, it's like if you took like old Philadelphia

[00:14:49] and Nashville, Tennessee, and if they had a baby that might be Glasgow. It's a party with a little

[00:14:55] bit of old world flair, some class. On one end you'll see a designer outfit,

[00:15:01] a Giselle looking supermodel. And on the other side, you'll see like an under armor,

[00:15:07] spandex suit, onesie with some crocs. I mean, it's like the opposite end of style.

[00:15:14] I know that Dex's Midnight Runners were not Scottish, but if you watch the Come On Eileen

[00:15:19] video, that kind of felt kind of like Glasgow. Just the feel.

[00:15:23] Duckin' 1984. Some of the music is too.

[00:15:26] We love it.

[00:15:27] We love it. So we headed into Edinburgh and we met up with our friend, Matt Alder,

[00:15:33] who also has a podcast. Check his podcast out if you haven't yet. And he showed us a good

[00:15:38] time. What did we do there?

[00:15:39] Yes, we did. We actually hopped in the mystery machine. That's right. We actually

[00:15:43] had a little van, Scooby Shaggy mobile. As usual, Cheeseman didn't show up in the right place.

[00:15:49] So we had to go find him. It was like a where's Waldo kind of a scenario.

[00:15:53] You are so dumb. You are really dumb.

[00:15:55] Had to go pick up Cheeseman and then we were off. And it was funny because again,

[00:16:01] we're talking about narrow roads and this isn't like an RV. It was a camper van.

[00:16:06] Camper van, yeah.

[00:16:07] You could see the stress on Matt's face in driving that fucking thing through Edinburgh.

[00:16:13] And then some of those roads, right? It was a blast. But then we went to Glen Kitcheny,

[00:16:19] I believe is-

[00:16:20] Kitcheny? Yeah.

[00:16:21] Kitcheny. Kitcheny, yes. That was an entirely different experience and it was one that I

[00:16:27] would like to do over and over and over. Tell us about that experience.

[00:16:29] Well, you and I have done our fair share of distillery tours and they usually have

[00:16:35] some sort of like grain thing jar. They have a little bit of liquid.

[00:16:38] They show you the pot still. They show you the mechanics of it.

[00:16:43] This place had none of that. I saw no things of grain or wheat while we were there.

[00:16:49] They took us right into the tasting room. Had some samples of what they were doing.

[00:16:55] Went to, I guess, the warehouse. We learned what a hog's head was.

[00:16:59] It's a bigger barrel than the typical barrel. And the dates range from 88,

[00:17:04] I want to say 2007 or something. I mean, obviously ages in terms of age.

[00:17:10] And gave us a choice of two to try. Obviously we went for 88.

[00:17:16] Good year for both of us as we talked about. And I think we went with the 97

[00:17:20] and put the tool in, take the scotch out, put in a little pitcher.

[00:17:25] John, who was our guide, who was fantastic, gave us a little bit. It's just us three

[00:17:29] and I think three other folks that were on the tour saw the warehouse of $300 million worth

[00:17:36] of scotch, I think was it. And went, had a little bit to eat, had a flight.

[00:17:42] You ordered the sherry flight because you're sweet like that.

[00:17:45] And I ordered the smoky flight because I'm hot like that.

[00:17:49] Oh sherry.

[00:17:49] And oh sherry. Yeah. And-

[00:17:51] You're stinky like that.

[00:17:53] And Matt could not drink unfortunately because he's driving and there's like

[00:17:56] zero tolerance in this country for that. So they bottled up for him.

[00:18:01] Well, he lives in Scotland anyways.

[00:18:02] Went to a castle, it was raining, we didn't go. Recorded another podcast in addition

[00:18:07] to the distillery. Got back on a train, came into town for dinner with our lovely wives

[00:18:13] as well as Matt's wife Fiona. Shout out to her. Called it a night and here we are today.

[00:18:18] It's true Edinburgh. This place is like Harry Potter, Hollywood, staging, Downton Abbey.

[00:18:26] It's ridiculous. It almost feels fake. Like it's so amazing. Castles, old buildings,

[00:18:32] cobblestone streets. The whole place is ridiculous.

[00:18:35] It is. I want to go back real quick to the Glasgow event. The Glasgow event was amazing.

[00:18:41] We had about 50, 60-ish people. Very intimate discussions and it was good.

[00:18:46] It was kind of like a trust tree discussions, right? But the thing that constantly

[00:18:51] surprises me is just still how much alike we are even though Americans think that they're

[00:18:58] much more advanced than everybody else. We still have the same problems. I think we're

[00:19:02] going at them in different ways in some cases, but we still are having the same problems,

[00:19:07] talking about the same problems and it's great to see practitioners get together to start to

[00:19:12] talk these things through. They get excited. There's a lot of energy that they actually

[00:19:16] get out of these conversations. Again, as we start to move toward AI and talking about taking jobs

[00:19:23] and those types of things, we realize once again and every day that people make this world go

[00:19:30] around and these types of events are incredibly important, which is why I'm so excited to go

[00:19:36] to today's event too. I expect to go just as deep today as we did earlier this week.

[00:19:40] A few takeaways from me on the Glasgow and we'll talk about Edinburgh I'm sure next week

[00:19:45] to sum up that. But a few things have stuck out to me in the Glasgow. Number one was that DEI is

[00:19:51] very different in Scotland than it is in America. Scotland is 95% white. So diversity is focused on

[00:20:00] obviously sex, age, disability. So there's just a very different mindset when you're in a place

[00:20:07] that has a lot of white people in terms of what diversity and inclusion means. I think

[00:20:12] Americans take that for granted. The whole world isn't like America and they view this thing very

[00:20:17] differently. Second thing was automation is going to take recruiting jobs. I think there was a

[00:20:23] large agreement that it will take jobs. We shouldn't lie to ourselves about that,

[00:20:27] but optimistically our friend Adam Gordon commented that things like marketing jobs

[00:20:33] in recruitment or data scientists or data analysts' jobs will become more prominent

[00:20:38] in recruitment. So there is a little bit of silver lining in terms of the realization that

[00:20:42] we may be losing a lot of recruiters and the profession. Third thing was that the CV is dead

[00:20:49] continues to be an argument. 20 plus years in the making, this has been a thing since

[00:20:53] visual CV launched back in the 2000s. I think it's greatly exaggerated. As long as there is

[00:20:59] a LinkedIn profile, there will be a resume. I think that particularly with high turnover jobs,

[00:21:06] seasonal jobs, hourly jobs, those could go away. I could totally like they don't have or need

[00:21:11] resumes, but as far as the death of them overall is still a conversation. And then lastly for me,

[00:21:19] someone mentioned that they provide a candidate highlight deck to all of their interviews that

[00:21:26] get up to a certain level, which I thought was really great. If you're not providing

[00:21:31] a five page summary of the company and the interview process, quotes from people,

[00:21:38] quotes from interviewers that had good things to say about the candidate, kind of a highlight

[00:21:43] hype deck if you will. I thought that was a fantastic idea that came out of our time in

[00:21:48] Glasgow. So those were all highlights for me. I'm sure that we'll get some more here today

[00:21:52] in Edinburgh. And big, big thanks to sponsors, Daxtra, Poetry Solutions Driven, Ashby,

[00:22:00] Gigged.ai and Willow. And I would definitely be remiss if I didn't say once again, thanks to

[00:22:06] Matt Alder for again, this is Matt's English, but he lives here and he helped us obviously

[00:22:12] come together to be able to pull this together with Steven O'Donnell who is leading the whole

[00:22:17] True Events thing here in Scotland. So thanks, Stevens for having us at these True Events.

[00:22:22] And last but not least, yes, Adam, we still love you. We always will.

[00:22:26] Adam Gordon is, he is, guy's amazing. Guy's amazing. He lined up the practitioners,

[00:22:33] speakers. I mean, just so much work out of the community to make something like this

[00:22:38] happen. And it's funny because I talked to Bill Borman, we were messaging back and forth

[00:22:42] and true is kind of his thing, right? And he's like, who's in charge of this? I'm like,

[00:22:46] well, Bill, it takes a village, right? And it really has. It's taken a village to put these two

[00:22:51] events together, but it's been a blast. So thanks to everybody for everything that they've

[00:22:56] done to bring two dumb Americans to Scotland. Indeed, indeed. And by the way, if you see Adam's

[00:23:01] black eye on social media, we had nothing to do with that whatsoever, whatsoever. No.

[00:23:07] All right. That is our Scottish blog. Welcome to all things Scottish.

[00:23:10] Until the end of the show probably we'll talk about Scotland. Let's get to the real news.

[00:23:14] Listen to the sponsors ads, everybody. There is no show without the sponsors and we will be right back.

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[00:24:18] go to pandologic.com. That's pandologic.com. All right, Chad, let's get into the meat of it

[00:24:30] with some industry news. Seattle based Seekout, an eight year old company once valued at

[00:24:36] $1.2 billion has laid off 30% of its workforce to address significant cash burn. This is the

[00:24:45] second time they've had layoffs cutting about 7% of the workforce back in October. The company

[00:24:50] employs 228 people and in case you missed it, Seekout won one of our death match competitions

[00:24:58] pre-COVID. Chad, your take on the latest round of layoffs at Seekout.

[00:25:03] Love a new guy is as smart as they come. But at the end of the day, you can't be great at

[00:25:08] everything. And I'm not sure. I think the discussion should revolve around is this

[00:25:13] a go to market problem? Or maybe is it just that the market isn't mature enough for

[00:25:18] this type of technology right now? Right. And so to be able to take a look at it,

[00:25:22] restless bandit died, hiring solved, died, Intel, oh, died, hired.com, all of these,

[00:25:30] the same kind of types of tech that are going after the market pretty much the same way.

[00:25:35] And then we have Eightfold who got a shit ton of cash and I don't know what the fuck they do

[00:25:39] these days. But anyway, that happened from the standpoint of go to market going direct to brand.

[00:25:45] And then you have market leaders like tech colonel and then Daxtra, who's now starting

[00:25:50] to make a resurgence, who are in an entirely different go to market scheme, right? And they

[00:25:56] are flourishing. Right. So to me, to me, I think it's fairly simple. I believe it's a

[00:26:03] go to market problem. There is a market need for this type of tech to be baked into the system.

[00:26:10] It's obvious that selling these complex systems, onboarding training to use outside of a core

[00:26:17] platform, it's a loser. Right. January of 2022, Seekout took 115 million in series C.

[00:26:24] And then today, talking about 30% down. Timing's not great. Totally understand that. Could they

[00:26:30] have sold before getting the big money? Possibly. I don't know. Behindsides 2020. But for me,

[00:26:36] this is a go to market issue and I'm starting to see them kind of like float all over the

[00:26:41] place. Wait a minute. We're for cleared candidates for national defense. We do health

[00:26:44] care, internal mobility, workforce planning. It's like, holy fuck, man. You know, you're

[00:26:50] all over the place. Focus, get some discipline. That's why you're burning all that fucking cash.

[00:26:57] Okay. And take a look at the market and see who is actually flourishing. That is my point

[00:27:03] because they are still pushing that they have 800 million public profiles,

[00:27:08] 330 million plus underrepresented candidates. Right? It's like the old,

[00:27:13] they still won't let the old model go. It's just, it's, I don't know. I think personally,

[00:27:18] I think it's focused and it's got a market at this point. What do you think?

[00:27:21] 60% of the time, it works every time. I love Anoop as much as you do. I think that

[00:27:27] you've already touched on the Deadpool of companies that sort of source people for jobs.

[00:27:32] The ones that are still around have pivoted and have seen varying degrees of success from

[00:27:37] that. But it was, it was pretty clear when you looked at LinkedIn's appetite for destruction

[00:27:42] that we're going to get rid of everyone that's using our profiles. Anyone that's

[00:27:47] spidering our shit is going to feel a world of hurt and high Q. Obviously the case that we've

[00:27:51] talked about ad nauseum ad nauseum on the show is, is proof of that. We always thought that seek

[00:27:57] out might be immune to that because of a new friendship with Bill Gates and Microsoft who

[00:28:02] owns LinkedIn maybe had a sort of a get out of jail free card that others didn't. And we

[00:28:07] really thought at least I did particularly that Microsoft was going to come knocking with

[00:28:11] a check and that they were going to integrate sort of the technology and everything into,

[00:28:15] into LinkedIn, which makes maybe too much sense. That hasn't happened. You're eight years down

[00:28:21] the road. You're not a billion dollar company valuation anymore for sure. Tech hiring has

[00:28:26] dried up. There are fewer recruiters now to use your product. If they were, I think they're

[00:28:32] struggling to get any kind of traction in markets outside of tech. They probably waited

[00:28:37] too long. I mean, there's the formula now seems to be start a company two to four years and flip

[00:28:44] it, take as minimal money as you can settle an ATS, sell to a platform and rinse and repeat

[00:28:50] the days of sort of the five to 10 year companies before they sell is a really

[00:28:55] challenged one. So we're in eight years of seek out. I don't know what they do. It's

[00:29:00] unless the tech hiring comes back, which there's no guarantee of that. I don't know

[00:29:04] if they're going to get traction anywhere globally. They had companies are relying more

[00:29:08] on upskilling. They're relying more on their existing talent pool, their current database,

[00:29:16] people that are already working to upskill and upgrade them. So everyone's moving away from

[00:29:21] this kind of sourcing model. And I think seek out is going to run just going to run out

[00:29:25] of gas and sell eventually sell on the TJ Maxx clearance rack. The percentages that they've done

[00:29:31] is it's not apocalypse. They've remained fairly flat overall in terms of hiring,

[00:29:36] but there's no growth at this company that I can see ahead of them or any in the near future.

[00:29:42] So yeah, to me, it's like run out of time. They can't run out of money. They're going to

[00:29:46] manage it intelligently. They're going to last as long as they can and try to figure out a

[00:29:50] way. They're not going to get more money. They're not going to go IPO. A company that's

[00:29:53] going to buy them is just going to wait for them to wither to nothing before they acquire it.

[00:29:58] There's no growth here. Like it's just a, it's just a bad scene. I think they're going to start

[00:30:02] seeing executives bail because there's no bright future for the business. And it's just going to

[00:30:07] be a sad story of a slow death. Yeah. The whole go-to-market at this point is

[00:30:13] focus on core platforms that need your type of tech and integrate very closely. Now you're

[00:30:19] going to have to be incredibly specific on the types of partners that you have. You can't do

[00:30:23] this with everyone and you shouldn't, right? Because you're looking for a sugar daddy to

[00:30:28] actually buy you at the end of the day. Right? Once again, I just feel like it's been a scatter

[00:30:33] gun kind of like, you know, focus it's been all over the place. They're really going to have

[00:30:38] to get laser focused tech isn't a thing obviously, which is why they've pivoted into

[00:30:43] national defense and healthcare. But again, I mean, we're talking about two entirely different

[00:30:47] types of talent pools, internal mobility workforce planning. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ,

[00:30:52] we're all over the place. These might be good things if they were integrated into,

[00:30:57] you know, a platform and not a secondary platform, right? Where you are, okay,

[00:31:02] I'm going to go into my seek out now and do workforce planning. Nobody's going to do that.

[00:31:05] It has to be a part of a core platform. Yeah. And I'll also add that programmatic is

[00:31:09] getting better and better and more cost effective to get in front of some of the candidates that

[00:31:13] you want to get in front of. And I think it's also a case where we talk about company,

[00:31:18] people that are really smart, that come into our industry, that don't know anything about it.

[00:31:22] As smart as they are, and as many great blue chip companies that they've worked for

[00:31:27] can't quite figure out our space and can't quite find that secret formula to be successful.

[00:31:33] Yeah. I don't think they know what the real problem is.

[00:31:36] And the real problem is something that people will pay for.

[00:31:40] All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little Indeed news.

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[00:32:39] All right, Chad, per a recent article by Jim the Indeed Whisperer Durbin for AIM Group,

[00:32:46] Indeed is planning to shift away from providing organic traffic, aka free traffic,

[00:32:52] to its recruitment marketing partners and prioritize paid postings. This decision comes

[00:32:58] amid global macroeconomic headwinds affecting hiring budgets and a recent layoff announced

[00:33:04] from Indeed which we talked about last week. Chad, your thoughts on the recent commentary

[00:33:09] on Indeed shutting off the free spigot? I mean, duh. I mean, how could you not

[00:33:15] see this coming? Indeed had an organic shutdown in 2019 for staffing companies.

[00:33:20] Then they saw profits rise from staffing companies after they made that move, right? So

[00:33:26] Mitch Gerson actually cites that some agencies had to raise their budgets 150% plus, right? So

[00:33:33] more than double what they were paying before. So staffing companies got fucked over and then

[00:33:38] they said, thank you, sir. May I have another? Moreover, you know, this happened

[00:33:42] out in the open. It's not like we didn't see this coming. We talked about it. Everybody was

[00:33:46] talking about it, but for some reason it's like, oh, wait a minute, they're shutting off

[00:33:50] organic for another segment. So what did 2019 staffing shut off teach us? Well,

[00:33:58] apparently nothing, but here's what I got out of it. Staffing companies, they were obviously

[00:34:03] leaning too hard on Indeed and staffing companies were not using the tons, the hundreds

[00:34:10] of thousands and or millions of candidates that they've already paid for. Again, it just drives me

[00:34:16] crazy that these companies, and again, it's their business, right? So you would expect staffing

[00:34:20] companies to get it right. Companies are now starting to understand this in some cases, at

[00:34:25] least like the creme de la creme companies, like Matt over at UPS, we talked to him about

[00:34:30] how the first thing they do is they look for internal mobility. Why? Because they want to keep

[00:34:36] their people happy. They want to retain their people. No shit, that's awesome. Then when they're

[00:34:40] looking to fill positions after they've gone through that phase, then they go into their

[00:34:46] candidate database and then they re-invite individuals to apply for jobs that are like

[00:34:51] jobs that they've already been like a silver medalist or a bronze medalist to. And we asked

[00:34:55] and he didn't give us specific numbers on the interview, but we'll be publishing it here in

[00:34:59] about a week or so. They've saved tons of money, not just money from the standpoint of

[00:35:04] not having to spend programmatically externally, but also because they can fill positions faster.

[00:35:10] If you fill positions faster, your company saves money because you don't have a bunch of empty

[00:35:14] holes where people aren't doing the job and you're not stretching your people so thin that

[00:35:20] you're possibly going to lose them too. So from the standpoint of what Indeed's doing,

[00:35:26] every company that's out there today should be focusing on talent pipelining internally

[00:35:32] from an internal mobility standpoint and then also using the candidate data in their database.

[00:35:38] And instead of paying for Indeed, start to get into some of these SMS and Chatbot engagement

[00:35:46] platforms that automatically match and then start to invite individuals back to your brand to

[00:35:53] apply so there's no black hole. Indeed being Indeed I say. Look, I remember a conversation

[00:36:01] early in my SEO days when someone commented to me and this is SEO world that eventually

[00:36:07] SEO will be dead because you'll pay for every ranking that you get. Now until

[00:36:13] generative AI and open AI and chai GPT, a lot of Google's results were, you guessed it,

[00:36:20] paid results which you kind of hardly realize were paid results and that probably is the road

[00:36:24] they would have continued down. I'm also reminded by the old conversation around Monster

[00:36:29] where Monster envisioned a world where they were the only place where people went and they

[00:36:33] charged everyone what was it, $1,000 a job or like and just scale that up considerably.

[00:36:39] A job.

[00:36:40] I think that was Indeed's plan all along was to never really have organic results.

[00:36:44] And I can remember circa 2010, the first sort of scare shot across the bow of job boards

[00:36:52] when they started ranking direct employer jobs higher than they did job board jobs

[00:36:59] and job boards freaked out because the free traffic that they enjoyed was now gone. Indeed

[00:37:05] slowly kept just tightening the screws on the free stuff, the people who were getting the free

[00:37:11] ride and then Google came along and launched jobs. I think there was a period of like,

[00:37:15] oh what the fuck are we going to do? Let's throw some shit at the wall, see what sticks.

[00:37:20] You remember JobTracker where you had an app and you reported like help wanted ads

[00:37:26] in your local downtown market. I mean, they got kind of crazy.

[00:37:30] And then you have Google say like, well we're not going to do paid stuff. We're going to get

[00:37:34] out of that business. And now Indeed can continue to tighten the screws on the people

[00:37:39] that are still willing or too stupid or lazy to pay it. I mean, look, this is a tax

[00:37:44] on people who aren't willing to look at some of the alternatives that you talked about,

[00:37:48] whether it's your own database, your own employee talent pool, whether it's new tools

[00:37:53] and technology. It is kind of a dumb tax. It's a dumb tax.

[00:37:56] Yep, just post it on Indeed. That's what we're going to do. And now you have to pay for that.

[00:38:00] And we've obviously talked about the pricing questions and issues they've had there.

[00:38:05] There's a lot of confusion around what the hell am I paying?

[00:38:08] So this to me is par for the course. If you're not wise to alternatives to Indeed,

[00:38:13] well, you get what you deserve, which is a lot less budget to play around with recruiting,

[00:38:18] recruiting marketing. Like I said, programmatic has become better and smarter. If you're not

[00:38:23] looking at that, you need to look at that. It's time if you haven't to stop the heroin

[00:38:28] drip of Indeed's free traffic because it's drying up and it's going to be a higher cost

[00:38:34] for you in the future. LinkedIn's doing the same thing by the way. They're tightening the

[00:38:37] screws on free stuff, raising prices, trying to become a monopoly where you have no other

[00:38:42] options. It's time to get smart. And if you're listening to the show, you're already pretty smart

[00:38:45] and probably not just dependent upon Indeed. But if you're a first time listener and sucking

[00:38:50] on the teat of Indeed, well it's time to get off.

[00:38:53] Tell your dumb friends to listen to Chad and Cheese. No, seriously, I mean, this is the

[00:38:58] dumb tax. It's what it is because for individuals who aren't paying attention

[00:39:03] or they're making excuses not to change, it's, I mean, you saw this coming or you knew

[00:39:09] this could happen. So this is, I mean, this is literally just the Indeed dumb tax. And if

[00:39:14] you don't realize that you are buying the same candidates over and over and over,

[00:39:20] just fire yourself. I mean, just give it a go.

[00:39:22] Speaking of dumb tax, Chad, let's end on a dad joke from Scotland. You ready? What's

[00:39:28] the difference between Robert the Bruce and Winnie the Pooh?

[00:39:32] That same person. Same middle name. That's right.

[00:39:36] No.

[00:39:40] We out. We out.

[00:39:42] Thank you for listening to what's it called? A podcast. The Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant.

[00:39:49] They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about

[00:39:55] nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening.

[00:40:00] It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar, blue, nacho,

[00:40:08] pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe

[00:40:17] today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That

[00:40:24] way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com.

[00:40:32] Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.