Indeed's Staffing Shakeup

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[00:00:22] Get the job done. Ka-ching! 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.

[00:00:45] It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Oh yeah! Welcome to the lactose-free Chad and Cheese, oh no, Chad and Leave It does Europe. That's right kids. This week Joel is sunning himself on the beach in Vietnam, but on this week's show.

[00:01:08] Carve and artisan go head to head and who'd you rather? And Leave It helps everyone understand why you should never go full indeed. That's right kids, you should never go full indeed. Let's do this. European. Talent. Intelligence. What does it mean?

[00:01:30] Imagine a world where it's easier for you to find and know your target group. Where it's easier to recruit and attract the talent you need from a European talent pool. Every year, thousands of corporate recruiters, HR departments and intermediaries rely on

[00:01:48] Intelligence Group to make that dream a reality. Intelligence Group is the European market leader in recruitment talent intelligence. With innovative dashboards and tailor-made research in 28 European countries, it is our job to empower you as a state of the art data driven recruitment business partner.

[00:02:11] Recruiting with data is great. Recruiting with Intelligence Group is better. Learn more about our services at intelligence-group.nl. Intelligence Group. Market leader in European talent intelligence. Alright, Leven. So a couple of things. First and foremost, just you and me this week.

[00:02:34] Joel is on the beach in Vietnam, a beach in Vietnam. And I actually just got some audio. We apparently have audio from Joel's first interaction with people from Vietnam. I haven't listened yet so beware kids. Here we go. Hey baby. You got girlfriend Vietnam? Just this minute.

[00:02:59] Baby, me so horny. Me so horny. Me love you a long time. Joel. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So I didn't vet that. I should have vetted that better. That source sent us some wrong information. That was actually from a movie, Full Metal Jacket. But anyway.

[00:03:26] You're missing, I can see you're missing Joel, Leven. So we had to do that. We had to do that to liven things up. How are you? I'm fine, I'm fine. How are you? Yeah, it's been a while man. What you been up to? I know you've been busy.

[00:03:39] You've been galavanting all over the world. You've got busy things. You've got work to do. What's going on? It's all about AI as we speak. Really? Yeah. I'm teaching a lot now. We're training our employees in the use of generative AI.

[00:03:53] Because according to McKenzie, every white collar job will be done 40% more productive by using AI. So we have to make sure that we stay ahead of the pack. It's pretty time consuming but it's also very fun to do. So how do you do that?

[00:04:08] I mean you've got 50 different companies. Do you work at corporate first and then just kind of like work down, you know, downstream? How does that actually work with a company as large? And all the different brands that House of HR has? It depends.

[00:04:22] We have a professional streaming broadcasting studio in our headquarters. So I can use YouTube Live to stream to our people. But also visit all the companies. So we train the people in small groups, 50 people, 20 people, 30 people depending.

[00:04:37] Yesterday for example, I did the whole day on what we call the fire starters. So which is like the high potentials of House of HR. It's a select group, 21 people who are getting prepared. They already have all management functions but they're getting prepared for the C level functions.

[00:04:54] So very important people because they're the future of House of HR and we are training them and then they can train their own people. They are the trailblazers. They should be. So busy but it's fun.

[00:05:07] It's fun and each day I learn something new and it's like a full time job just to stay tuned. I would think so. Things are just moving so fast. So trying to ensure that you're getting not just information disseminated down through the ranks fast

[00:05:23] but also being able to train. Because getting information down is one thing but being able to train is something entirely different. So that's a big lift for you guys, I'm sure. It is.

[00:05:36] Well I tell you what. Let's go ahead and let's get into a little shout out action. Shout out! First shout out, I'm going to go ahead and shout out to Zing for the possibility of being delisted. Delisted! First they try to be the German LinkedIn.

[00:05:53] Then they eject out of that model and they pick a smaller job board total addressable market and go after Indeed. We're going to talk about Indeed later this show kids. Are these guys nuts or is it just me? What the hell is going on over at Zing?

[00:06:09] It seems like they had a good model starting off. Very big TAM. And now they're literally just closing that TAM down and going after Indeed. They tried LinkedIn and it didn't work out. So then they tried to become Indeed and that didn't work out either.

[00:06:25] Now they're just slowing down and closing down and that's it I guess. Thank you Zing. See you next time. Yeah or not for very long. Maybe we won't see you next time. I don't know, it's very interesting.

[00:06:41] They got a new CEO and the guy automatically started closing the TAM. If you think about LinkedIn kids, it has a much larger TAM because you have recruiting but then you also have advertising, broad based advertising. And they just closed all of that down.

[00:06:57] So they were having issues obviously hitting the revenues that they were looking for in a much larger addressable market. And then what do they do? They shrink it. Now I do believe that focus means a lot, although they're not a new company.

[00:07:11] Right? So this isn't like a kind of like a quick pivot of a startup. They've been around for a very long time. So this is to me it's very odd. To me it's very odd. Do you have a shout out? I do. I do. Excellent.

[00:07:25] My shout out goes to Rafa Alstad who is the CEO from TLDV. You might not know TLDV. That's a bad, bad name. It's a difficult name. TLDV but it stands for too long didn't few. So too long TL semicolon didn't few. And then it makes sense.

[00:07:42] It's a transcription tool. In fact, it's a great transcription tool. So we're in plenty of meetings and we have interviews with candidates. So we need to use AI to transcribe all those meetings. And TLDV has a very special feature.

[00:07:55] You install it and then it's connected to Zoom, to Google Hangouts, to Teams. And I don't even need, once a meeting is in my agenda, I don't need to be present. TLDV is going to log into the meeting on its own. And it's going to transcribe everything.

[00:08:14] And then when the meeting ends, the moment it ends it's going to mail me all the transcriptions. And people will actually see Leven's virtual assistant TLDV as a participant in the meeting. But without camera of course. Just the little bullet. It's a great tool.

[00:08:30] It works and I've been testing plenty of tools, but why does my shout out go to that one, to Raphael Alstad? Because I was interested in it and I checked her website and I went to the testimonials. And then one of the testimonials said,

[00:08:44] I'm in love with this app. And I'm saying this because I need to hit my product activation targets. Signed Raphael Alstad CEO. And it made me laugh. It made me laugh. That CEO has a sense of humor.

[00:08:57] I liked it so I got in touch with him on LinkedIn. 20 seconds later he answered already. Very nice guy. He said if you have any questions, I'm your personal contact. Let me know whatever. Great guy. The software is great. I'm testing it right now.

[00:09:10] And I hope I'll be helping him with getting their product activation targets on point. Well if anybody could, it could be you. Because you have so many. And again, you were just talking about your entire staff and trying to help them better understand and become more efficient.

[00:09:27] This is right. Yesterday I think I had three calls and there were note takers on those calls. AI note takers on those calls. It's a big thing, huh? Yeah, same thing. It was a different company but same thing. And they do the transcript obviously.

[00:09:41] And then they automatically summarize and give you an executive overview with that transcript. Right? It is incredibly smart. I was talking to somebody just yesterday on the amount of time that I'm saving using ChatGPT. And not just writing but coming up with ideas

[00:10:02] and different ways to actually go after certain content and shows and things like that. To me, like you guys are doing at House of HR, being able to get this type of tech instituted into the normal flow and routine is just amazing.

[00:10:21] So yes, big shout out to him for being funny and being truthful. But at the end of the day, to be able to get your attention, leaving von Nivenhausen, and to be able to perspectively utilize that tech through how many employees do you guys have? Six thousands.

[00:10:39] I mean come on man. That's a fucking windfall for a company like that. So yeah, that's a big shout out. That's a big shout out. Yeah, my problem is always, is it safe? I mean we are having some pretty confidential meetings.

[00:10:52] If my virtual assistant is entering the meeting and I'm not even there, it's going to make a transcription of something that could be really hush hush. And with a German company, I feel if they claim it's safe, I tend to believe them and I checked it

[00:11:06] and it seems okay. If it was a Chinese company, I would never be using them. Just you can't be sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean there are just so many different aspects to that discussion from a trust standpoint, right? From an access standpoint, IP.

[00:11:20] I mean there's a lot of conversations to be had. But still, you're starting the conversation. Most companies are not. Follow livens lead kids. Get everybody to understand how tech can make them better. Not take their jobs, but make them better.

[00:11:37] My next shout out is more news from Canunu. In a groundbreaking decision, the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled that Canunu, a well-known employer rating portal, it's the glass door of Germany pretty much, they must release names if ratings are questioned by the companies who are rated.

[00:12:00] So until now, Canunu has only provided anonymized evidence from reviewers. This approach is now changing fundamentally how these systems can do business. So as I've been telling Joel forever, I think that first and foremost, Canunu hasn't been lighting the world on fire.

[00:12:23] They've actually, they've contracted instead of expanding because they have not had a winning model. But companies like them and Glassdoor, I pretty much, I believe this is the death of them. What do you think? Strange thing is I didn't even know Canunu until yesterday.

[00:12:41] The fire started meeting with our colleagues. One of my German colleagues told me about Canunu and it's just a pity I totally forgot what she said about him, but she was talking about Canunu. And I said Canunu, Canunu, yeah,

[00:12:53] she said something like Glassdoor and I, yes, yes, okay. We were talking about it. But Canunu, it didn't ring a bell to me. So if you say they're shrinking, they never got my attention apparently. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were expanded out into as far as Australia.

[00:13:11] They were trying to actually get a foothold in the US and they have just been contracting their footprint dramatically, dramatically. So yeah, I personally, you know, as transparency becomes the cool fad of the day, anonymity is the uncool thing. Not only just for people who are using it,

[00:13:36] anti-TikTok or what have you, but also for those companies. And obviously this to me, companies being able to use the judicial systems to be able to go after companies like Canunu, to be able to get the information from people like you

[00:13:51] and I who are giving them anonymous ratings, that to me is a, it's dead. It's dead. I'm going to check them out so that I'll know what you're talking about. I was gonna say there's no reason to. You know Glassdoor, you know Canunu, they're a dying breed.

[00:14:05] At least that's what Chad thinks. But my interest is growing because of the changes in Google's algorithm. Google is changing from a focus on content to a focus on trust and authority. And those reviews like maybe Canunu can offer, actually they will help you build your trust ranking.

[00:14:24] So as many people write a review, all those individual reviews are traceable to existing persons. And if they all claim you are a good company, then your website might benefit from it and the ranking from Google. So for us, those ranking websites like Trustpilot are very important now.

[00:14:41] Canunu might be an alternative, I'll check. Yeah, I think if they can get out of this, this anonymous side of reviews. It has to be traceable to a person, not anonymous indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And it's gotta be verified because one of the things that we've seen,

[00:14:57] especially with Amazon reviews, is there are bot reviews, there are fake reviews. I mean, it's just nothing to pump up a person's score, right? So there's gotta be some type of verification process that actually happens. And I think most of these companies, the Canunus and the Glassdoors,

[00:15:15] they're not great at verification. No, Glassdoor is the same thing. I can write a review, a bad review about a company that's never worked. Yeah? They tried to offer some barriers, but you can circumvent them. Well, I have something that I believe

[00:15:31] that you're going to give me a good review on, okay, Léven? After the success of Keibu this year at the eRecruitment Congress, I think I found the next musical group for next year's eRecruitment Congress. Are you ready? Are you ready? I'm ready. Here we go. German techno.

[00:15:52] That's an alphorn. That low brr, that's an alphorn. It sounds so noisy. Oh yeah. That's it, man. That's it. Okay. Why not? Why not? They had multiple instruments. There were three dudes, multiple instruments, drums, cowbell, keyboard, synthesizer. You know, you love the synthesizer and the alphorn,

[00:16:23] that big ass horn that they use on the top of the mountains? I've seen a video about them right now. I know we were talking about German techno, right? Yes, German techno. This could be next year's eRecruitment Congress. It could be, actually. It could be.

[00:16:37] They will never replace Keibu, of course not. Of course not, of course not. That's not what we're trying to do here. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to expand and diversify. Yes. It's actually a good idea. It could be fun on stage. I think so.

[00:16:53] I think so. That being said, not just the eRecruitment Congress, which we will be talking about once we get a date and once we get a venue. Wreckfest is happening on Thursday, July 11th at Nebworth Park. Joel and I are going to be on the disrupt stage.

[00:17:10] Unfortunately, you're going to go on a beach somewhere. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for you. Yes. I'll be sitting on the beach in La Gomera. It even sounds more sexy coming out of your mouth. It's like the fancy version of Tenerife. Well, no matter.

[00:17:31] We're going to be Nebworth Park kids. If you have not been to a Wreckfest, this is an all-hands kind of situation where you bring your staff 10, 20, 30. It doesn't matter. Bring your staff. Have an all-day learning session. This is a single day all-day learning session.

[00:17:49] Going to be there talking about technology. Going to be talking about best practices. Going to have an opportunity to be able to have your peers interact with them each other, obviously. All hands today. Not to mention with other companies who are in the space.

[00:18:03] So go to Wreckfest.com. Two events this year. One in the UK and one in Nashville. Check it out. And that being said, it's that time. Nothing! Okay. So right out of the gate, we're going to get into the world of technology

[00:18:27] with a little game we call Who'd You Rather? Here's how the game's played. I will give a quick overview of two startups who has recently received funding. Picture this. It's the end of the night. Lights are low in the bar. It's already well past last call.

[00:18:44] And these are the only two options you have to take home. So the question is, who would you rather? Okay, first contestant is Carv. This from tech.eu. Amsterdam-based Carv has raised 10 million to offload admin from recruiters following the launch of its recruitment platform in March.

[00:19:06] With the seed funding, 10 million a seed. That's not bad. With the seed funding, Carv aims to accelerate its growth and expand the capabilities of its platform into different domains of the recruitment life cycle. Industry data shows that anywhere between 20 to 40% of recruiters day-to-day is spent on admin tasks,

[00:19:27] which we were talking about earlier. Carv hopes to automate these processes in order to free up recruiters to focus on the candidates they should be interacting with. Among the investors are Global Founders Capital, GFC, and several independent angel investors, wow, who previously backed companies like Slack, Miro,

[00:19:51] and Revolut, some pretty big names. The founding team previously built Harvard, a market leader in technology. Wow, that's pretty big. And in this corner we have Artisan. UK founded Artisan AI. That's right, AI is in the name, so it's got to be good. A startup building, AI employees,

[00:20:18] and software for enterprise companies has raised 7.3 million in funding. The Y Combinator-backed company is founded by 22-year-old Jasper Carmichael Jack, who's the CEO, Oxford PhD graduate Dr. Rupert Dodkins, who is the CTO, and IBM product and engineering veteran Samantha Stallings, who is the CPO.

[00:20:47] The company is now based in San Francisco and is building Artisans. What are Artisans you might ask? Good question. Fully autonomous AI employees and a unified platform to replace the entire SaaS stack so that humans and AI can work together seamlessly and enterprise teams can stop context switching.

[00:21:11] Okay, Leven, Carve or Artisan? 2 a.m. in the bar, who would you rather? 2 a.m. Carve would remind me of Carve and when it's curvy I'll take it home, so definitely Carve. But I checked them and I kind of like Carve. I was very skeptical in the beginning

[00:21:30] because looking at their press release it said something about Carve hopes to eliminate admin from the hiring process, maximizing interaction between recruiters and candidates, and after reading the whole press release I didn't know what they were actually doing. It's just some explanation. But then I checked the website

[00:21:49] and I slowly grew into it, so I checked it out and there's a very convenient tab saying how it works, which sounds promising, so I clicked on the tab and it says, step one, identify tasks. We start by identifying the tasks you want to delegate to Carve

[00:22:03] and by determining the context, Carve needs to handle these tasks effectively. So I think, okay, in my case what would I be doing? I would tell Carve I wanted to write vacancies, to transcribe interviews, to transcribe meetings, write personalized thank you mails when someone applies.

[00:22:18] I would like the information from an interview being parsed. I would then like it to add the structured information to my applicant tracking system. That's basically it. And then it says, step two, customize AI. Next up we customize Carve's AI to follow your style,

[00:22:32] output format and overall tone of voice. So basically it's just going to predefine a prompt like make vacancies no longer than one page, use the following structure and don't use words that might be too difficult to read because our candidates aren't the brightest grains in the pack,

[00:22:48] something like that. And then you have step three, embed Carve. Finally, Carve becomes part of your workflow through a calendar connection and if preferred, an ATS integration. And now it's getting interesting because the first two steps are something we're already doing.

[00:23:03] We are using different tools to do all those tasks. But the third step, embedding it in existing software and in existing flows, is tricky. Here is where you'll be spending mental amounts of time and money if they screw up.

[00:23:18] But it's also where you can make the big difference. If they actually succeed in it, that's where the big money is. Suddenly it's more than just a fancy layer on top of the tools we're already using like ChatGPT, Copilot, Whisper. If they succeed in integrating this,

[00:23:34] the whole flow in our existing products, it's nice. And I checked it, I looked a bit deeper into it and I got really interested. They offer automated calendar meeting transcriptions like TLDV I was talking about, which is nice. They do a lot more.

[00:23:50] And they also have the plug and play integration with the major ATSs like Bullhorn, Greenhouse, SAP, Recruity, etc. So I'm going to invite them to give them a demo with the connection with Bullhorn. And if they can convince me,

[00:24:06] then maybe next time we can talk about how it actually works. But to make a very long story short, I'll take Clarivee home with me. What are you doing, step bro? Decision time for me. If you're looking for someone to help you get your life in order

[00:24:21] or make your day-to-day operations run well, like a well-oiled machine, I believe Clarivee is definitely your pick. They're practical, efficient, and ready to take care of the nitty-gritty details around recruitment. And I do believe if they get it right, there's a huge payoff. No question.

[00:24:39] But if you're in the mood for adventure, someone who's pushing the envelope and thinking about how to transform the future, Artisan is the one for you. They're bold, ambitious, and their eyes are set on a horizon filled with autonomous AI employees.

[00:24:56] And that could change the way we do work and live, kids. So it's 2 a.m. And I'm in need of some adventure. So I am picking Artisan. Ooh, but do I get it right? Artisan is actually going to create virtual employees who are going to replace existing employees.

[00:25:15] Chat, that is very bad for my business. I won't take her home. Well, I think it could be good for your business, though. And at the end of the day, I think it could be good for your business from the standpoint of there are different sets of tasks

[00:25:30] that could prospectively be jobs, right? So what you could do is you could make your people more efficient by taking a lot of those things off their plate like schedulers. By offering each colleague like a virtual employee, a virtual colleague, an assistant. Like a virtual assistant, right?

[00:25:48] So instead of having these schedulers, let's say, in your different business units, you now have AI doing all your scheduling, right? And then you can really focus on the things that matter. And that's interaction. But at the end of the day,

[00:26:03] I think both of these organizations, especially CARVE, I really like what they're doing. And yes, I mean, if I was not making a 2 a.m. option and looking for adventure, I would definitely pick CARVE. We're not doing any investing here, kids. But that's the one I would pick.

[00:26:22] But I'm looking for adventure this time. I'm looking for adventure. All right, kids, that is who'd you rather? And we shall be right back. All right, Levin. So recently, Joel and I highlighted that Indeed announced during their investor update,

[00:27:09] they will be making big moves into the staffing industry, noting their current recruitment advertising total addressable market is $32 billion, which is only 10% of the entire recruitment market spend. So Indeed is now making big moves into the staffing industry.

[00:27:27] And we're going to be looking at the next few months of the entire recruitment market spend. So Indeed will first be expanding into Temp staffing, which adds, listen up, $128 billion to their $32 billion total addressable market. The vehicle for making this move is Indeed Flex,

[00:27:50] which was born out of the UK startup SIFT, in January of 2019, and which has been working as a temp and gig hiring skunkworks ever since. So during the investor update, Indeed explained their main goal will be to become the primary hiring partner for all employers. Are you surprised?

[00:28:14] What are your thoughts? Am I really surprised? Maybe not. Is it a problem? Definitely yes. Oh, yeah. They want to hire a rate take of every successful hire through their platform. That's fine, but the way they're going to approach it is basically they're going to use our candidates.

[00:28:31] They're going to steal our candidates and they're going to sell them to their own clients or maybe even to my clients. And I'm going to pay for it. Yeah. I mean, you already have been. I mean, you in staffing companies all over the world.

[00:28:43] So give us a rundown of just kind of like how you started interacting with Indeed and kind of give us a timeline, if you would, of House of HR, leave in, from where you started and where we are today. So for someone who doesn't really know

[00:28:59] how where Indeed came from and what it works, how it works and what's the big thing about this, I'll start from the beginning. So I think 10, maybe 15 years ago, we started using Indeed without even knowing it because they grew by scraping job listings. They came to our websites.

[00:29:16] We were working for a competitor of House of HR back in the days. And they came to our sites, they copied our jobs and they created the biggest possible job database in the world. Yeah. Okay. And then they optimized each job, each single job for Google.

[00:29:34] And because of Google, they got lots of traffic and they became a huge traffic machine. And fair is fair, they gave the traffic for free to us. They copied our jobs and people applied to the jobs, true Indeed, and they sent the applicants to us. Very nice. Cool.

[00:29:51] We learned against it. And then a bit later they called us and said, okay, listen, last year we gave you so much traffic and I could check it. Indeed, yeah. Indeed gave us so much traffic. Yeah. Nice. Okay, if you still want that,

[00:30:05] you'll have to pay at least for part of it. So we're going to do some organic listings. We are going to scrape all your jobs, but some of those jobs you'll have to promote, you can choose which ones, and then you'll get the traffic

[00:30:17] and we'll still continue working like that. Okay? It was about 10 cents per click back in those days, and no cure, no pay. So we used to work with StepStone and Monster where we had to pay much more. So we were still pretty happy

[00:30:29] and we slowly got hooked to the traffic, the inflow from Indeed. And times passed and years passed, and suddenly a few months ago, Indeed communicated to us that they would no longer offer organic traffic to the companies from the staffing industry. They will no longer scrape staffing companies,

[00:30:47] we now have to pay for all our jobs, which is kind of annoying because for our average company, everything becomes three times as expensive. Yes. But we got a lot of inflow through Indeed and fair is fair, it's their job board,

[00:31:01] and why would they give us free traffic? Okay, it's a business model. If they want to make it three times as expensive, it's their choice. We might look for different solutions, but okay. But now suddenly everything is becoming clear. Why did they stop offering free traffic?

[00:31:17] Why did they stop scraping us? Because they had the cunning plan to become a staffing platform themselves. And if they would scrape our jobs and use our jobs without our knowledge and use it to attract candidates and then use those candidates from our jobs for their own clients,

[00:31:35] that would be totally illegal. In Europe, I'm not sure about United States, but in Europe you have a legislation about scraping that says if you scrape a database with commercial value, you can't use it to compete in the same commercial sphere. So that is what they're doing.

[00:31:53] If they would scrape our jobs, use our jobs, and they would use those jobs to attract candidates and then steal the candidates for their own gain, that would be illegal. So suddenly they said we're going to stop scraping, but you can still pay for the jobs.

[00:32:08] And of course, if we pay for a job being put on Indeed, we can't claim we didn't know about the job being there. We are giving consent by paying. It's the best consent you can give. So obviously now with the new way of working, every company,

[00:32:26] every staffing company will have to stop using Indeed because it's like paying your competitor for stealing your candidates and your clients, which would be beyond stupid. And the problem is, of course, Indeed represents up to 50% of our inflow as we speak. And we are pretty good in e-recruitment.

[00:32:44] Some of our companies only use 20% from Indeed, but we have Decent SEO, we have intensive social channels, we have some other stuff, but I can imagine other companies being even more dependent on Indeed. So this is a problem in Indeed. Indeed is a problem in Indeed.

[00:33:01] So I was thinking in an ideal world, all major staffing companies would work together now to launch their own version of Indeed in some kind of cooperation. Why not Adequan, Randstad and Haasev H.R. and all the others work together? We launch a cooperation, our own Indeed,

[00:33:17] and immediately we offer all our jobs, all our vacancies. So we offer, we have the volume, we promote it so we have all the traction, we have all the candidates. It would work from the start. And then we could just share the cost, we could share the profits,

[00:33:31] and instead of calling it Indeed, I would call it Absolutely. So absolute jobs, that reminds me of the better kind of vodka. Absolute jobs. Absolutely. And it would have to be a blue label. It would have to be a blue label too.

[00:33:46] Yeah, of course, and a nice bottle in which we would sell our jobs. A bottle of the jobs. But you get the point. I mean, we have to do something. I think it's maybe the right moment to sit together with the whole industry

[00:33:58] and figure out how to cope with this. Yeah, I think it's been interesting to watch. Like let's say for instance, Ronsod and Adeko, they both tried to get into the tech space and they failed. Ronsod bought Monster. They didn't focus on it like a separate business unit

[00:34:17] like they should have. And hired, who the hell knows what happened with Veterian Hired, for God's sakes, with Adeko. So I mean, they've both failed dramatically. I think a lot of that has to do with they're trying to run those tech companies like traditional staffing companies, right?

[00:34:36] And they have to break out of that. And again, big kudos to you guys at House of HR because you are constantly looking at trying to break your traditional models with tech and with anything that's out there. I don't see these guys doing that.

[00:34:51] I see that what they've tried to do is they've just tried to assimilate tech into their tradition, right? And that just breaks the whole fucking system. You can't do that. You have to evolve. So the big question is, do you think Adeko, Ronsod,

[00:35:08] do you think they have the capacity, not just in their brain, but with their investors and with their leadership to even think about breaking their traditional model? Do you think they have the capacity to do that? Because I'm not sure they do. I think it's even better.

[00:35:27] They should do it because of their investors. If you look at Adeko, they're holding above indeed. They have a market capital value of, I think it's last time I checked, I could be wrong, but I think it's four times the one from Ronsod.

[00:35:41] And Ronsod is so much bigger, their revenue is so much higher. So by being considered a digital platform instead of a traditional staffing company, your market capitalization goes up. So investors will love it. I think if I was Adeko, if I was Ronsod,

[00:35:56] I would talk to my investor and say, we need to act right now and we're going to do it this way. And for them it would be perfect solution. So I don't even think they just have the capacity they have. They should be doing it.

[00:36:09] But the biggest issue is the capacity of a leadership and how they lead. And we're seeing that with CEOs who can't get their head around trying to lead remote workers. I see this almost as the same thing. You get used to a tradition,

[00:36:26] you get used to a routine, you get used to a way of making money, and then you're told you can't do that anymore. That CEO is almost worthless in some cases. So I don't know. We'll see if they have the capacity. I'm not sure that they do.

[00:36:40] One thing I want to add in about your story with Indeed is Indeed started off as exactly as you had said as a really Google for jobs. That's how they coined themselves. Google for jobs, there was no resume database, none.

[00:36:53] And then out of nowhere after they started getting all of this traction, guess what they did? They added a resume database. That's where you guys started feeding the beast. So you were feeding them with your candidates. Then, then, wait a minute, then they made registration what? Mandatory.

[00:37:11] Then they made it mandatory. So they were truly stealing your shit. We should have seen it coming. Yes. Of course. But they're not only stealing the candidates, right? They're stealing the leads because they can put two and two together and they know who these companies are

[00:37:28] so they can go directly after these companies. So I think in the progression, yes, if you didn't see a company owned by one of the biggest staffing companies in Asia Pac recruit holdings. They're number five in the world now. Are they five in the world? Oh my God.

[00:37:46] If they, they're that big, right? And you know they have designs on where? Oh, the US. They have designs on the US. So therefore how do you do that? The infrastructure is already there with Indeed. So to me it just makes sense. But staffing dollars, staffing dollars built.

[00:38:06] I remember when I was at Monster early on, 75%, that's right kids, 75, 75% of our revenue in the early Monster days came from staffing companies. Staffing companies built this technological industry, right? So now you have guess what? Indeed who is turning that on the people who actually built them, right?

[00:38:33] So the thing that got me the most was, you know, Chris Himes in the investor update said, look, we're getting about 1% of the take. Where staffing companies are getting 20%, maybe even more in some cases. What if we just go from 1% to 10%? We will undercut the staffing companies,

[00:38:52] and this is me all paraphrasing, right? We will undercut the staffing companies. We will do it with their candidates. We will do it with their money. And there's not a goddamn thing they can do about it. I mean it was almost like he was staring in the camera

[00:39:07] just begging staffing companies to do something about it. I don't know, man. This to me was literally just, it was a duel at dawn. And the question is will staffing companies show up for the duel? And I've watched the whole episode.

[00:39:23] You sent me the video from their investor relation call where they actually explained what are we going to do about their reasoning loss. And I watched it and I was like, are they actually telling me they're going to use my clients to fill in? And it was that.

[00:39:38] I watched it three times to make sure it was. It's amazing. And to be honest, if I was indeed, I probably would be doing the same thing. It makes sense from their point of view. It's perfectly logical. They have everything.

[00:39:50] Like you said, they have the resumes, they have the vacancies, our vacancies, and now they can capitalize on it. But it's a decent thing to do now because they're backstabbing their own clients. The ones who have built them, who have made them what they are,

[00:40:04] are just putting them a knife in the back. Yeah, well, I really believe this is a call to all staffing companies. I don't care if it's temp staffing. I don't care if it's executive. I don't care what it is.

[00:40:16] This is where you're going to have to evolve because indeed's first step is into temp staffing, which is $128 billion TAM. But this is just because that's the lower side and they already have technology.

[00:40:32] They've been trying to shift now flex, indeed flex, to be able to really focus on that. And hell, they've had a skunkworks. They've had this in kind of almost stealth mode for years now since 2019.

[00:40:45] So they've been trying to perfect this thing so that they could get to this point. So I think it's interesting. But will this force traditional staffing companies like Kelly to actually evolve? Are they just going to literally be a lead machine for the indeed flex people?

[00:41:04] I can't imagine many big staffing companies working with indeeds, let's say within six months. Everyone is going to look for a way out now and we still need them until we found a different way or an alternative way to get the traffic, to get the candidates.

[00:41:20] But I can't imagine one of my colleagues and our competitors not having the same stream of thoughts right now. We're all looking for something, I think. Well, I tell you what, in closing, Leven, I'm going to ask you to do this.

[00:41:34] Make a plea to the staffing industry as a whole in what you would like to see the entire staffing community do as an ecosystem as opposed to separate pieces. What would you like to see them do to be able to respond to indeed?

[00:41:50] As I said before, I would sit around the table with the biggest staffing companies in the world and say we do it. Indeed used to work. It gave us the traffic we needed. Why don't we launch around Indeed, a corporation. The five biggest ones take all 20 percent.

[00:42:07] We share the profit. We share the cost. We all got better out of it. And we have it in our own hands. We're not depending on a company who might do what Indeed has done right now.

[00:42:18] Because we couldn't let this, we couldn't leave this to LinkedIn, for example. They would do just the same thing. LinkedIn is in the perfect position to do just the same thing. It's not like I'm trusting them either. I definitely wouldn't.

[00:42:31] And I think for any startup that's out there today who we've, Joel and I have been talking about the staffing, the staffing industry needs to have an operating system, much like an Uber operating system, right? They need to have an operating system.

[00:42:46] If you are that company and there are many of them that are out there, by the way, if you are that company, this is your time in the sun. You better be calling Levin. You better be calling Ronside.

[00:42:56] You better be calling a Deco to have these discussions about how your technology can obviously help leapfrog that of what Indeed in this in this non cheeseman world of the Chad and Cheese podcast, the Chad and Levin does Europe. I want to leave you with this, Levin.

[00:43:18] Hey baby! You got girlfriend, Vietnam? Oh, Joel. Oh, you enjoy yourself, Joel. And all I gotta say, Levin, that's another one in the books. Way out. Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast.

[00:43:43] 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.

[00:43:59] Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads 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.

[00:44:20] And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out. The Jim Stroud Podcast explores the discoveries and trends forming the future of our lives. Brain-to-brain communication, robot bosses, microchip implants for workers, and artificial intelligence replacing human workers are all happening now.

[00:44:50] If you want to know what's happening next, subscribe now to the Jim Stroud Podcast.