- I'm here at UNLEASH talking with Joe Cheesman
and Chad Showash. - We are unleashed at UNLEASH.
- From Chad & Cheese podcast - UNLEASH.
- Of which I'm a big fan by the way.
Guys, - As of four days ago.
- As of four days ago definitely.
- So how did you find out about us four days ago
and then start benching us.
- To be honest.
- We don't even get to question that.
We go right to the Q&A.
- I'm sorry this is our job. - This is her show.
- So how does that work?
- I did an article a while ago about HR podcasts,
and you guys are in it of course.
So I'd heard about the podcast,
then I saw who was speaking at UNLEASH.
I came across Joe and the speakers overview.
I thought, these are the guys from the podcast.
I contacted Joe, - And here we are.
- He answered I was like,
Oh God, they're actually going to talk to me.
- What did you learn from our podcast
'cause you benched it.
So you didn't listen to one and go,
okay, I get these guys are Americans and they're assholes
you actually started benching.
So what made you...-
Aside from Joe's voice is like Barry White
what else did you get from the podcast.
- Very white with nails on the chalk board.
(all laugh)
It's a good mash though.
- That's why we hit them where it hurts.
- It's a good mash yeah.
- Well I mean I like that you guys just,
you know just, you're not being politically correct.
So you just say what you think.
You also say if you think something is shit or not.
Which I find quite refreshing.
- Excellent. - Yeah.
- See even... - That's what I liked about it
and I really like-
- You're not facing the camera.
Feel like we should all be.
- You're supposed to be talking to me not to the camera.
- Okay.
- Even across the pond, which I love,
'cause I mean this is kind of like very American
where it's like you know,
we have some of these kind of conversations
but still in HR, everything is so straight laced
and it's so fluffy and there's so much bullshit.
So we actually, we did a podcast like 10 years ago
before the mobile phone, right?
- Yeah that's a yes.
So who was listening back then?
- Really nobody.
- Yeah, it was the embed on blogs.
Like you could only do podcasts within your blogs.
But back then it was embed code on your blog
and there were podcasts
but everyone had iPods and like classical stuff
so it wasn't, not nearly as dynamic as it is today.
- And the whole idea behind it even way back,
one was two guys at a bar at a conference,
what would they talk about?
Because it would be, they'd have a few beers and then
they wouldn't bullshit and it's just it would be straight.
So that's what we did and people love it.
In the US in, in the UK.
- The global adoption was crazy.
I didn't expect that. - Yeah, south Africa,
Australia. - And I think, you know,
part of it is we have 20 years experience,
going to Expo halls and shows and talking to vendors
so you can't just do that.
You can't just start a podcast
and have that kind of experience.
And I think we've had more than more times than that,
the chemistry is there,
and he and I work really well together it's love it.
- So I mean, that's good.
Let's continue on that then.
So you've got 20 years experience each
so that's a lot of experience combined.
- We're old
that's what you saying - You've seen a lot of things.
No that's not what I'm saying. - I'm young.
- You've seen a lot of things, of course,
in the recruitment business, since.
A lot of good stuff, I hope
and probably a lot of not so good stuff as well.
What are the let's say, three most promising things,
developments that you've seen in recruitment?
- So let's talk about today,
what we're going to see in the future.
Are you looking for companies or trends?
Trends is probably the better, - No, say technologies,
Yeah, trends, technologies
is it programmatic for example or is it...
- Yeah, I mean, what's turning now and agree or disagree,
it's automation, right?
Like how do I take my 24 hours in a day
and get as much out of that as possible, right.
And the tools that will help you do that,
whether it be chatbots
to help streamline the interview process,
whether it's programmatic it says,
hey, I've got a job, Let the robots figure out
the best place to put it, what the budget should be,
and all that good stuff.
And then I guess outside of that, you know, AI,
and what that means to people is different.
Vendors, it's different.
We're not, you know, it's sort of like SEO in 2004.
Like, we know, it's going to be a thing, but what is it
and, you know, so those are the trends,
certainly, that I see and I think
when I look at the startup pavilion, you know,
I see so many companies, instead of saving time
or giving employers or recruiters back their day,
they're making work for them, right?
Like, oh, implement this survey,
where your your employees have to do more work,
and then you have to do more work.
It's like analyze a survey that you've made them do.
So creating work is not a good business strategy.
You should be saving people time.
- Okay so and I think it was funny
because one of the panels we just had,
one of the guy says, you know, he said,
process automation's big, efficiencies are big.
Which is why he didn't understand like matching.
And from that standpoint, he just told me
he didn't know what the hell matching was about.
Because that is a huge process automation
from a sourcing standpoint, that should cut I mean...
So I think
there's a couple of different problems that we have.
First and foremost,
startups don't even know what the hell they're doing.
They don't know the problem they're trying to solve.
And they are very badly articulating
what they're trying to do, right.
And then on the other side,
talent acquisition, they don't have time
to be able to really learn something complex.
And if you're trying to sell something complex,
and you're not trying to save time,
get the hell out of my office, right.
So those are the things that you really have to focus on.
Take a look back a few years,
big data was like the big thing.
We didn't have the processing
to be able to chunk into that big data
to make anything out of it like that.
Today we do.
That's what machine learning, AI, RPA
that's what all that's about,
but don't worry about those acronyms, right?
Don't worry about that,
worry about what problem is being solved
and understand what your actual problem is.
Town Acquisitions looking for,
I need to chatbot, I need matching, I need this.
Why?
What problem are you trying to solve?
- I think on top of that the trend that we're seeing is,
can you create a one-stop shop for all that stuff, right?
So what if you're a startup
and you're looking at integrating with a system,
you're probably screwed, right?
Like you need to be integrated to an ETS
or some format where
they can easily access all of your stuff.
But then trend-wise also I'd have
that everyone is trying to be that one-stop shop.
So you see acquisitions in our space,
like Jobvite, you know, buying through startups
around messaging and referral systems.
Obviously, you see LinkedIn and Microsoft
trying to be the one-stop shop.
You see iCIMS buying TextRecruit and Jibe recently
to try to be that one platform.
So that's, we're sort of seeing really big stuff
on the high end and then this little stuff
and the idea is hopefully
that you're integrating with this big stuff.
So you're featuring that
as opposed to trying to survive the jungle on your own.
- If you're the little guy,
and you are not integrating with these big systems,
these big core-systems, then you're wasting your time
because what's happening
is that you're asking recruiters
to open up all these different tabs
to be able to play, you know, tab games
of what tab did I need to go to for this.
Everything should be all in that one system,
and that company, so let's say for instance,
that applicant tracking system
doesn't have to own that company
but if you were doing your job really well,
more than likely they're going to acquire you, right.
So I mean, that's like the recipe that we've seen.
- Yep.
- One of the other things that you guys
seem to be talking about regularly
with my recent experience of listening to your podcast
is the marketing on the one end
and recruitment HR on the other end
and that in terms of the brand, and...
- Top brand. - Exactly.
So please do tell me a little bit more about that.
- Yeah, the the catalyst for that was
we attended a conference called The Gathering last year.
And most of people in our industry won't know what that is.
But it's the top, definitely one of the top,
if not the top marketing conferences in the world,
according to Forbes.
And we were sitting there
listening to CEOs from really big, well known corporations,
and they all preached people.
People are our greatest asset,
our brand starts with people,
our employees are the, you know-
- And this has nothing to do - Frontline...
- with employer centric stuff, right.
It's all marketing and brand.
- Yeah.
And then when you get them in an interview
or talk to them, like there's a huge disconnect
between what you're telling us on stage,
and what you guys are actually doing with recruitment.
And we heard a lot of talk,
but not a lot of worth.
So Chad, and I thought,
how can we take what we know in recruiting
our relationship with The Gathering
and get CMOS at really great well known companies
and start talking about brand
and how employment plays into that
how it's all sort of one thing together.
Because right now, they're not.
And if we can try to be a bridge to that,
I think that's a good thing that we can do
for the industry and our listeners.
- Our panel today had Adam Lee from Red Bull,
we had Chris Ray from Sainsbury's
and Brandy Ellis from from SmashFly, wearing the gear.
It was that, again, that was all to be able
to come to an event like this,
and really challenge organizations
to think much differently.
I mean, we're so focused on
employer brand, employer brand, employer brand,
we're not thinking of the holistic experience.
Because that candidate in many cases,
not all but many cases, is a customer.
And if you have a shitty experience,
I'm going to stop buying your products.
And if you're going to start,
I mean that directly impacts in a negative way,
the bottom line, what the CEO, CFO and CEO care about.
Yet we're trying to get in to have conversations with them.
We just, we have to understand
the conversation much better, right?
And we need to bring them together
to be able to talk about stats.
And what actually matters.
- So are there any things
that you can share with us already.
Things that you've learned from this experience
trying to bridge that gap
that people shared with you?
- I think that, you know, part of it is
how do you provide a somewhat consumer experience
with the job application process?
So we talked a lot about, you know,
if you took 45 minutes to buy something on Amazon,
would you ever buy anything on Amazon?
- No. - No.
However, if you want to apply to a company, you know,
settle in and get comfortable
because it's going to take 45 minutes.
So how do we educate the market to do that.
If marketing needs to be involved,
what is the experience of that?
And even if, you know, if the follow-up
messaging around applying to our company is, you know,
Hey, thanks for applying to Red Bull,
we appreciate your business.
Here's $1 coupon, to go to go to your local store
and get a six pack of Red Bull.
- Or a Red Bull hat or something.
- Whatever, right?
Like there's that disconnect between
we sell stuff, and we employ people,
how we bring that together.
That conversation needs to happen in our opinion.
- And there are,
and this is what I think I saw most
at The Gathering, at the conference.
Was that there were organizations
that understood that the engine of an organization
is the people, the employees first.
And if if you focus on the employees,
everything else happens why,
because you have great experience outside, inside,
I mean all the way through
and and that's what creates a core brand.
Especially, I mean,
if your employees don't believe in your products,
who's going to believe in your products?
I mean, who?
These are people who get up every day.
If they don't have passion to go do what they're doing,
then how are your customers, right?
So if you think of the human experience, overall,
your keynote, I mean, all the humans that are involved,
how do you create a great experience for them say and again,
like the one click buy on Amazon,
how can there be a one click apply
that actually goes into a shortened version
that allows a candidate to know if they're qualified
against the RECs or not?
And if not, maybe puts them through another path
where there might be a job there,
or maybe there's non just say,
"Hey, we wish you could come work here,
but here's a can of Red Bull."
Whatever it is, right?
It's the experience.
- The good thing is marketing, I think,
wants to have the conversations,
whereas they sort of look down on HR
or HR is just this cost center that hires people.
What do you tell marketing, you know
Red Bull said they have 3 million applications a year.
That's 3 million people that could be buying Red Bull
or buying into your brand
or want to know more about who you are.
And once you talk to the marketing
about those kinds of numbers, they start saying,
well, maybe we should be having conversations with HR,
and how do we improve this process and get involved.
So the numbers are there from a consumer side.
I just think the conversation needs to happen.
- Which is where you guys come into play a little bit.
- Hopefully yeah.
- And trying to take the complexity out of it,
because I think we as human beings
try to make things complex.
And we're just two dumb Americans.
So we can dumb things down much easier, I think.
- Yes, that's the secret to our success.
- Yeah.
- We dumb shit down and everyone understands.
- Over a couple of beers. - Not bad guys, not bad.
So before I let you guys go to maybe have a couple of beers.
Last question.
What would you say...
What are you guys most excited about today.
What's happening in the recruitment space.
- This is being able to, as I said before,
taking all of that data that we've harvested over the years
and being able to do something with it,
I think is incredibly smart, necessarily and we can do it.
We have the processing power.
Not to mention the opportunity
to take these chatbots
and understand what they're actually used for,
as opposed to just having a cool chatbot.
I think all these technologies
are the most exciting part of this.
Being able to go through
and probably I would say,
a quarter of these brands won't exist next year,
because they'll flame out.
But the money being spent in this industry is amazing.
I mean, close to a billion last quarter.
- Yeah, I mean, I'll piggyback on that
and saying, three years ago,
Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26 billion dollars.
$26 billion, I mean, before that
a job or at most was worth $1 billion, $2 billion dollars.
- Indeed was one.
- So like Glassdoor just sold for 1 billion five.
That sparked interest in our industry.
So you notice Facebook is here, right?
So they're getting into the space.
They're not here, but we talk a lot about Google
and Google for jobs and Google search.
- Uber.
- Uber, right Uber.
What Slack is doing in our space is like,
they're here, right, what are they doing now?
So because of that, money is flowing in,
there's more, you know, like, they're more startups,
I don't want to say than ever but maybe,
that are doing really cool things
that are trying to piggyback on the interest in our space.
It's never been there up until
Microsoft writing a big-ass check.
- So thanks Microsoft. - So it's a huge amount of fun
for us right now, to ride the wave of podcasts,
but then ride the wave of
all the money and investment that's going on in our space
as well as a great economy around the world.
I mean, it's really a perfect storm
to talk about it for you and for us.
- Definitely.
Thanks very much, guys.
- Thank you. - And happy podcasting,
I would say - Why not?
- [Neelie] Cheers.
(soft upbeat music)