Hungry Like The TechWolf : Juicebox is Thirsty : LinkedIn's 'Entrepreneurs R Us'

0:00I have 25 days holiday and that is great. That is fantastic. Yep. But I kind of used it all up in Brazil earlier this year and I was like, ooh, where am I going now? Nowhere. Like just in the UK. It's like, great. So I need to do better next year, basically. Yeah, no one's crying for you, Emi. All right, all right, all right. I feel hurt. I feel hurt. I feel triggered. I feel triggered. I'm going on vacation. Yes. I'm going to the Poconos. Anyway. Just a tip. Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Soash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts.

0:40Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.

0:53Oh, yeah. Business in front. Emmy in the back. What's up, everybody? It's the Chet and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel. Pray for the Pope Cheeseman. And this is Emmy. Please stay away from the Tigers, Beradigo. And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, hungry like the tech wolf, thirsty for some juice box, and make it as fast as humanly possible. Let's do this. What's up, Emmy? Hey, how you doing? I feel like I haven't been on here for ages, at least a month now. Yeah, you're going to have to carry the show today because I'm three trips in four weeks, two of those being Vegas and Nashville and one to Europe.

1:36So I'm licking my wounds and trying to recover. So I hope you're spunky and ready for energy. Oh, I will try. But let me just ask you, when you say you're trying to recover, is this from jet lag or a hangover? Yes. I mean, let's hang over the day after. but um i mean it's a lot of things i mean the time zone change jet lag uh jet lag's not so bad in the u.s yeah i travel in the u.s i mean the time zone three hours so if you're into vegas from the east coast you know you get up at 5 a.m and you're like shit uh and try to go back to bed and then you know it's three o 'clock in the morning and then you're just going so yeah i mean it's just a whole thing and i'm not i'm not 30 anymore uh so it's uh what are you 35 35 36 32 32 actually yeah of course with the liver of a 94 year old but uh you look great you look great you got the the hair color uh you look you're shining burgundy red for what'd you say we say autumn but is it fall in the in the u.s i think both work but fall is probably more prominent than yeah i think maybe where you are in the country if you're in jt's neck of the woods new england it's probably more autumn here in the midwest it's uh it's definitely fall but why thank you yes it's my news my new fall look yeah so you mentioned that you mentioned the tiger thing um this happened in your neck of the woods what what kind of uh he was kind of mentally ill right he was and you know what i haven't read the whole story because you know when you just see a headline and read a few lines of a story you just go i well i do this i thought i can't i can't read this this is too much but somehow this poor guy went to a zoo asked someone to kind of film him and the person filming him had you know didn't know what she was filming next thing you know somehow managed to climb over some kind of barrier to go to the tigers and you know instead of and this is how you know that something's wrong because you're saying to tigers don't be naughty stop being naughty i'm like how did you how did to get there what kind of security do we have so it's appalling and you know unfortunately the poor guy died but it's like i don't know how this happened so that is my you know this is why i put in my middle name you're like if you got any kind of inclinations to kind of stroke big cats don't you know please don't do that yeah yeah well it's probably if england's probably a zoo built in 1894 uh victoria's zoo of whatever and uh it's probably not the most locked down zoo in the world So, yeah, but put some fiberglass up.

4:16Just put something that people can't. And why do they jump in with the tigers? Like jump in with the flamingos or like the penguins or something. The pigeons. Like something less dangerous. But just anything. I mean, oh, my God. Yeah, this keeps happening. Oh, this is a nice cat. It's like, no, not this type of cat. This is the type of cat you stay away from, you know? So let's pivot off away from death and destruction. mutilation you you got recognized recently i did uh on my travels i didn't get the specifics so give us give us what uh what what bestowed upon you so i got recognized as um because it's uk black history month and um i got recognized as one of the top 30 black professionals to watch out for in the uk so watch out for it's like yeah exactly watch out here she comes you know and in fact i I think one of the messages, well, thank you.

5:13It's very exciting. But, you know, one of the comments on the post was, you hear her before you see her. I was like, oh, my God, you know, thanks. Very, very true. But, you know, it's very exciting to be recognized. You know, it's been in a field that I, you know, I love, I enjoy. I've been doing it for many years. So, yeah. You feel the aura. I think that it will be news to most Americans, A, that there's a Black History Month in England, and two that it's in october or last month of september yeah it's in october is there i think the u.s one is february yeah it's it's ironically the shortest month uh of the year and shorter on most yeah you can have this one yeah yeah and chris i think chris rock has a great bit on it's like the coldest month it's the shortest month like it's the worst month arguably uh so why did the black people get that month uh chris rock has a good bet i didn't kind of look at that Now, was there a cash prize or a plaque or trophy?

6:09No, I got nothing. I got the recognition on LinkedIn. And my mom, my mom recognized me. She was very happy. Yes, my mom. Mom was there. She goes, ah, look at my daughter. One of the top professionals in the UK. And I was like, for anyone who doesn't know, that's a Nigerian accent. But I was like, oh, yay, exciting. No, it was good. Yeah, it was very good. Congratulations. Congratulations. This is great. Thank you. You're winning awards. Mo's getting LinkedIn voice. JT LinkedIn. Like Chad and I are getting second fiddle on this show. I have seen your two names everywhere. So don't even try that.

6:44Don't even try that. There's always top podcasters, Joel and Chad. They'll be like, hey, we're here too. Hi. Hang on with the cocktails. Yeah, we're old news. You guys are carrying us. It's good stuff. Good stuff. Let's get to shout outs, shall we? Shout outs. All right. Our shout outs are sponsored by Proven Base. I'm wearing the colors today, if you're watching on YouTube. Everyone loves free bourbon. Proven base makes miracles happen. You get a bottle of chicken cock, one from Chad, one from me. Oh, I love chicken cock. I do. In your inbox. But you got to play. If you want to win, head out to chadcheese.com slash free to get some of that proven base sponsored bourbon, if you so choose.

7:25Emmy, you got a shout out. I have a shout out. And I kind of look a bitter shout out. You know, following on from that kind of the traveling theme Because I've run out of PTO And, or people in the UK or Europe I've run out of that And I'm seeing you guys, obviously, Wreckfest US And then the House of HR And I'm like, I also want to go on these trips I want to go on these conferences I have FOMO You know, I'm just sitting here going Oh, okay, you lot are having fun Great, thanks Remember me? You know, so, yeah get my violin out so the shout out is for me remember me please take me along to the next trip just just remember that the next time you're on your trip to uh dubai or uh bangkok or yeah vietnam whatever luxurious location wait a minute there's actually a limit to pto days in england i thought europeans just got as much time as they wanted i wish like i have 25 days holiday and And that is great.

8:28That is fantastic. But I kind of used it all up in Brazil earlier this year. And I was like, ooh, where am I going now? Nowhere. Like just in the UK. It was like, great. So I need to do better next year, basically. Yeah, no one's crying for you, I mean. No one's crying for you. I feel hurt. I feel hurt. I feel triggered. I feel triggered. I'm going on vacation. I'm going to the Poconos. Okay. Anywhere. Anywhere. All right. My shout out. Well, I mean, you know, you know that teaching jobs are in high demand now. There's a shortage everywhere. But I think we may have hit a limit on our ability to not turn away anyone for these teaching jobs.

9:07My shout out goes to goes to Amy Jones. Who the hell is Amy Jones? Well, Amy Jones went into, I guess, a high school and told them that she was a substitute teacher. And she she went a bit unhinged. This is a local story out of Milwaukee that just made me laugh. So check out the deets on this shout out. This morning, a Wisconsin woman is accused of posing as a substitute teacher and making lewd and disturbing comments to students. Amy Jones is charged with six felonies after authorities say she walked into this Milwaukee high school and told the office staff she was a sub. She was then assigned to a class where students say she used profane language, racial slurs, and organize students by race and gender in the class.

9:53According to the complaint, she told one boy he was fat, told others they were the types of people to have incest, and told one girl she would either become a stripper or a hooker. This case is very concerning as a parent. Concerning? No shit. You know, we send our kids to school expecting them to be safe and not exposed to harm. Jones was removed from the school by the third period. after students reported her. The 23-year-old, who's a former student at the school, told police she was bored and hates kids and just wanted to mess around. Her lawyer blames her mental health issues. Ms. Jones manages bipolar disorder and was experiencing an acute manic episode.

10:34The principal says the staff did not follow protocol and the school is in the process of reviewing our safeguards. If convicted, Jones could face 20 years in prison. Oh! six felonies for that wow how how how how did that happen how could someone just stroll into a school and just start teaching kids i have kids in school and they're it's locked down like no school wants shootings or criminals coming in so yeah this school fell down uh is not is not right and the fact that she was a student there three years ago did no one say like hey hey amy what's up nobody nobody remembered her after three years okay well whatever oh my god wow yeah you're yeah yeah do you think she's mentally ill you think she's got some issues or does she just really hate kids and i think she's bored she hates kids she's like no fuck this what should i do today yeah i'm just gonna see what happens i'm gonna cause some chaos yeah that chaos may get you 20 years in jail yeah all right let's talk about events so it's a shout We need more teachers.

11:46Oh, we need teachers for sure. My oldest is studying education at Indiana. So he'll be, he'll be, he appreciated that story. He liked it. As you can imagine, you can imagine. Well, events for us are done. Another shout out to Workday Paradox for having Chad and I come out and talk to some big companies about a really, about really important issues to a lot of people that are making important decisions. I can't believe Chad and I got into a workday event. I don't know how you got into it. I mean, they never listened to you. We, yeah, we don't get the time of day from the work days of the world.

12:24And the fact that paradox got us in, we didn't embarrass ourselves. We were fine, but like, it's just, we never get invited. Like LinkedIn. Nope. Never got an invite. Indeed. Nope. They've never invited us to anything. SAP phenom. Like we don't get invited anywhere. That like is a big thing. We get to the fun events. you know, rec fast and house of HR and those guys. But anyway, so thanks to, thanks to work day. I never thought I'd say that for letting us come and hang out. Otherwise our travel for the year is over. Thanks to shaker for making our travels all possible. We love you guys. Emmy, anything in your, in your future, any trips to exotic locations, any ski trips, nothing, nothing in 2026, unless I do something around the UK and, you know, I hate winter.

13:11So if it rains, snows, I'm not leaving my house. So no. What's your take on Amsterdam? Do you know what? I feel really bad saying this. Don't say you've never been. Oh, I've been. I've been three times. Yeah. I'm not a massive fan of Amsterdam. Yeah. I'm really, I don't know. I think I find it too similar to London. I'm just like, if I'm going on holiday, like I don't hate it, but if I'm going on holiday, I want to go somewhere that's vastly different to the UK. you know and i go there and i go yeah it's cool i could do this for two days you know i've had great work trips and most of the time is work trips i've gone um but yeah it feels a little like a mini nashville or vegas yeah the red light district yes the the contact high i mean like it's a pretty loosey-goosey uh place but all europe's kind of loosey-goosey right yeah it is you know they're all that kind of freed.

14:09Ooh, but yeah, no, it's like, it's not a, it's not a right of passage for teenagers to like go to Amsterdam and smoke pot. I think it is. I mean, the first time I went, I was at uni and I managed to convince my Dean of university that we were going on a cultural trip. You know, unfortunately I lost someone in Amsterdam and they had to leave them there. You know, so I got in trouble for that, but you know, I thought someone died. You left someone there. yeah yeah we left them there yeah we're gonna find them no we had to we were in the uk no we got a ferry so we got coached down from the north of england where i was studying down to the south got a ferry because you know we're students we got no money and then the day that we're supposed to arrive i'm doing that in the register and i'm like where is this person well this person no one's seen since the day before when we dropped him off at the red light district i was like we gotta go i've got a coach people you kevin mccallistered somebody you someone got home alone uh thanks to emmy in amsterdam honestly you need to see straight in front of the dean and explain explain why you left someone in the country another piece of the puzzle put into place for emmy and farad to go let's switch topics let's go to fantasy football shall we uh we missed we missed the leaderboard last week.

15:31We did a show on Monday, of all things, but week five is in the books. Thanks to our friends at Factory Fix for making fantasy possible. Here is your leaderboard from first to worst. Number one, we have Jarrett the Jet Jildersma. Number two, we have Ragin' Dayjan Amare, followed by Scott Clark Griswold, then Nick the Kick Livingston, Breaking Bad, Benjamin Kuntz, McKenzie Mad Dog Maitland, Nicholas Don't call me horse shack tie shack joel it's all good achievement the chat so wash bosco booyah booyatovich molly marauder schly and last desiree the destroyer goldie that is your leaderboard for fantasy football sponsored by our friends at factory folks let's get to topic shall we yeah what are we talking about

16:29well the most hottest recruitment news in the world emmy of course that's all we talk about on this show of course of course unless chad's on then we throw in some ai open ai uh something into the world stuff anyway all right uh big news from last week that we missed talking about on monday uh sap signed an agreement to buy tech wolf for an undisclosed amount of money the platform will integrate into SAP's success factors to power skills-based hiring, workforce planning, role redesign, and SAP's AI assistant, Juul. TechWolf will remain an independent entity headquartered in Ghent, Belgium. You don't hear a lot about companies out of Ghent, Belgium.

17:11They're led by co-founder and CEO Andreas Deneuve and will continue serving both SAP and non-SAP customers. Emmy, a big European acquisition. What are your thoughts on TechWolf getting married with SAP? Well, to be honest, I had to actually, I've heard of SAP, obviously, and then I've actually used SAP SuccessFactors and not a big fan. It was a long time ago that I used SAP SuccessFactors, but I was like, looks shiny, looks fantastic. In reality, very hard to kind of work with as a HR professional. but TechWolf is not an organization that actually kind of actually knew about. So I had to do a little bit of research on that.

17:52And I kind of like this acquisition. Okay. It's great for SAP and it's great for, you know, their product success factors, because like I said, I don't think it was a great product, but what I like about TechWolf is that what they're doing in there, I suppose is skills space, you know, and everybody's talking about still talk about skills-based hiring, particularly because it's so hard to recruit, you know, especially, you know, there's lots of like kind of niche, hard to fill roles still out there. And what TechWolf does, for anyone who doesn't know, is that they actually, an organization has actually been around for a while, but they actually gather data on the skills of an organization, you know?

18:34So what skills do people have? What skills are, what projects are they working on? And what skills are actually required to be successful on that project? and then what that data is pulled together in a kind of dashboard or graph and then organizations or leaders within organizations can use it to predict okay where do i what kind of skills do i need to hire for for the future where do i need to upskill my existing people where do i need to redeploy people for example and that's fantastic data and especially if you're in the recruitment field you're going to use that data to hire better people within your organization so i think it's a fantastic product that they have joining with a big player like sap gives them their kind of suppose their the backing to kind of grow even more they're going to stay as an independent entity for the you know the short term but at least they can grow their products with the backing of sap but sap hopefully adds some i suppose that some legitimacy to their portfolio because like i said as an ATS platform, as a HR platform, I don't think substance use factors is that great.

19:42So, yeah. Yeah, I think to your point, there's an ongoing need for companies to figure out the jobs of like pre-AI aren't the same jobs, but we want to keep the people that we have and put them into new roles and new needs of the company. So I think these products or these services are becoming really more and more important. And I think it's a bit of an arms race. Obviously, we talked about Workday with Sana and HiredScore, Paradox. ServiceNow bought MoveWorks. Fuel50 just got acquired by Phoenix Education, which is a totally different industry. But Fuel50 is a competitor of TechWolf. So we're seeing a lot of things from a big picture perspective that says, okay, we're going to have to get people in new roles.

20:38We're creating new jobs. Now, how do we keep the people at the company but doing something new? And having context around someone's career, someone's abilities and skills, where they can fit into new ways is something that companies are begging for. Yeah, exactly. So I think some of the housekeeping on this deal is really interesting. I mentioned they were from Ghent. Have you ever been to Ghent? Never. It's a cool little town. It's a middle age old town. There's a castle, of course. There's some really good chip shops, like some freets shops, really cool church, etc. But it's a small place. And this is apparently the largest acquisition of a venture-backed software company in Belgian history, which is really cool.

21:24So they raised about$55 million. According to a Belgian media outlet, they got around$550 million for the acquisition. So they 10X'd this bad boy, which is a really good exit for them. This is not a TJ Maxx clearance rack kind of situation. This is a company that grew organically, that grew sort of steadily over the time they've been around. And they have big clients already. Yeah, they have big clients. 2018 was when they were founded. So this is kind of time. They grew to a point where we're going to shit or get off the pot, and they found a really good buyer, really good timing. And I think good for them that they've been able to exit.

22:10They employ about 150 people. Headcount's grown about 40 % over the last two years. according to LinkedIn. So I think good for them. They were able to be a piece in the arms race of SaaS companies that support the employer industry. So I think good for them. And all good. I have really nothing bad to say. I mean, I think this is, how does this integrate with smart recruiters, which SAP bought last year? Do they add any more pieces to the puzzle. It'll be fun to watch. What is, what is, what does Oracle do? What is some of the other big ones do? Do they get in on this LinkedIn? I have to think at some point might need to make a move on the acquisition front, but all, all in all, this is great.

22:57And a big win for Belgium. Yeah. Which is never a bad thing. Go Belgium. All right, man, let's take a quick break. I need a water refill, replenish my, my fluids. And we'll be right back to talk about some more acquisitions Guys, if you haven't subscribed to us, what the hell are you doing? Give us a like and a follow. Check us out on YouTube while you're at it. All right, Amy, the deal machine is just getting started, apparently. Also in the news this week is Juicebox acquiring Fetcher's intellectual property and business assets as Fetcher winds down its existing product and operations. Terms were not disclosed.

23:36founded in 2016. Fetcher raised over$30 million in total funding and served more than 1 ,500 customers globally. But wait, there's more on the acquisition front. Humanly has acquired CareerArc, aiming to link recruitment marketing with its AI hiring platform, creating a continuous pipeline of qualified candidates for high volume employers from early outreach through screening and interviewing. Okay, Emmy, what do you make of all this matchmaking? Matchmaking. Well, I'm seeing that with all this acquisition, it's actually echoing the fact that people don't want to work with multiple platforms. They want an all-in-one solution.

24:16So I think we're going to see a lot more acquisitions taking place for the next kind of year, two years or so. And, you know, like I said, people don't want all this kind of single point solutions. I definitely don't. We implement a lot of technology within our world, but it's annoying integrating different products. So I like this acquisition news. Does it reduce competition? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens. But if we're talking about the Juicebox acquiring Fetcher, I think that's a good deal as well. I think it's a really good deal. I hear good things about Juicebox. I've seen some of their demos.

24:53I don't know. I've never used their products, but I always hear great feedback. So I think them adding Juicebox to their portfolio is a really good thing. You know, it makes them a stronger solution. It gives them a more wider solution that they can offer their clients. It's actually showing that, you know, again, it's building upon the AI technology that they use that they have to kind of source clients. So source more candidates. Fantastic acquisition, I think, there. And then, yeah. And then what was the other one? We're talking about Humanly. Humanly and CareerArc. And CareerArc. Again, this is not two companies that I know too much about.

25:31Yeah, and most don't. No, I mean, like, I'm like, who are they? That's why they listen to us. Yeah, exactly. Come, we'll tell you about them. Not something on Bloomberg that you're going to see. No, and I tried. I looked, and it's like, is there any published news stories? Is there press releases? No, not really, you know, but. In fairness, it dropped today as we're recording this show. So it is pretty fresh. How did you get this news in? Yeah, it's because we are who we are. It's called an embargo. They give you the news ahead of time and we can check it out. But, you know, from what I gather, if I look at Humanly, what I know about Humanly is that what they're trying to do is eliminate candidate drop-off, you know, across the kind of hiring cycle.

26:17So anything from applicants, taking an applicant from an initial engagement through to screening and all the way through to scheduling and onboarding. Yeah, I mean, to put it in and to summarize it, CareerArc drives traffic and Humanly manages that traffic. So they need more data. Yeah, brings them together in that way. Yeah. And Humanly has done a bunch of kind of requisitions. Requisitions. I'm thinking too much about hiring. They've done a bunch of acquisitions in the last couple of months. So it looks like this is another one. You know, they've got Qualify, Sprockets, OurWork. You know, so, you know, they're added to their portfolio.

26:52They're making their portfolio stronger. I'm interested to find out what's going to happen over the next couple of months. Will I hear more about them? Yep. Well, I'm going to go to Juicebox first. And unlike you, I'm not falling. You're not going to fall for the banana and the tailpipe. The banana and the tailpipe. Look, this was a TJ Maxx clearance rack acquisition. So Fetra was found around 2016. It's a sourcing tool, much like all the ones that you have come and gone over the years. Hiring solved, hire tool, which is now hire easy, seek out struggling. This was found in a time where sourcing was really cool.

27:35And now, not so much. LinkedIn doesn't like it. The data is so similar. The companies are getting commoditized. like the profiles of each of these aren't much different than the others. And the people I talked to that use them aren't like, oh man, this one is way better. The data is so much different. Like that's just not happening. So these companies are in a position where like the value of what we provide is less and less. LinkedIn hates all of us. We can't rely on not getting sued. You see companies like Penn and Jim, which are now apparently banned from LinkedIn. And so they're getting pinched from that.

28:11We've talked about IQ. queue like fetcher was like 2016 it's been 10 years uh there's nothing in their their data that says that they're growing and that they're you know uh doing anything all that all that interesting so i think they were like the money's funny and the credit won't get it anymore and we got to find a sugar daddy and they called juice box and said hey guys will you will you take the scraps of this company and save us as much as we can from our investors they raised 30 million dollars uh which is a good amount of money um i they did not get 10x like tech wolf did uh not even close to that so this was a fire sale they're just taking apparently the the ip um the brand fetcher shutting down um i didn't see any uh any higher or any uh any current employees that were going to go over to juice box maybe they'll take some sales people with them but there was nothing in this that said this was a hell of a company that juice box just acquired this was what are you hearing about juice box as a brand because it's interesting because what i'm hearing is that you know people like them well i don't think it's necessarily a ding on juice box it's more of a ding on fetcher um and i think fetcher probably called everybody in town to say hey who's gonna buy our shit and juice box had had some money in the couch cushions to say yeah we'll we'll we'll take this thing up and and again it's like timing wise i think a lot of these companies know that their their time is you know uh not long for this earth uh linkedin is going after all of them sourcing as a commodity uh the data that all these companies have as a commodity so i think i think juice box just said sure we'll take your customers uh we'll add a little bit to the bottom line we'll maybe take some ip or if they have trademarks or uh anything they've done um from that perspective great but this was not a impressive acquisition at all juice box fine i think juice box is juice box is just the next cool sourcing tool yeah it is it's what people like at the moment it's gone from hiring solve to hire tool to seek out to pin and it's it's like the ats game there's a new cool ats every year that we talk about yeah this is just uh this is just the next line so yay yay for fetcher could exit their their people can do something else and i guess maybe uh juice box got some stuff but this is a total scrap heap now going back to the career arc thing um really interesting history uh from this company um time for a history lesson so career arc made a big splash in 2011 do you remember when charlie sheen was doing his crazy shit back then he had like three girlfriends and he was like tiger blood and winning and And I'll remember that period of Charlie.

31:12So career arc owned internships.com. And one of, they had a contest to be Charlie Sheen's intern on internships.com. So they've always been kind of a weird company. They, they sold internships.com to Chegg, which is a college textbook company, which made sense. But there's also a company called tweet my jobs, which old timers will know there was a period in our industry where like everyone was going to search a job on twitter everyone was just going to go to twitter and hashtag like sales jobs toledo and find the next opportunity so yeah shockingly twitter said nope we're not doing that and went out of business but there was a company called tweet my jobs um that career arc acquired which I think became part of that.

32:05So the CareerArc company has always been sort of in the social thing. I think they're out of LA. So they've really been into the social thing. How do we get jobs? So then they founded a company called Job Maps and Hire Social, which as you can imagine is like, oh, map out jobs and hiring social. Like how do we use social media for jobs? And I think part of that business is really challenged because with automated apply and companies absolutely dying because of robotic applications, it's like we actually don't want our job everywhere. We actually are thinking twice about programmatically throwing our job all over the place because we are getting killed with automated responses.

32:55I think more and more companies are like pulling back where they're posting jobs. They're saying, hey, let's just keep to Indeed and LinkedIn and like maybe shrink those budgets a little bit. But the whole like programmatic game is really getting hit hard because of the automated applicant thing. So I think a little bit of timing wise with this one, humanly, as you mentioned, has made some acquisitions over the years. Nothing gangbuster, sort of, I guess, probably businesses that are challenged. I mean, qualifying our work, we knew here, Chad and Cheese, we knew them pretty well. I know our work was struggling.

33:32Qualify or qualify was probably less so. But I mean, they're not exactly buying big companies. No. They're buying strategic things to get more traffic to then support the business. Nine of CareerArc's employees will join Humanly, which employs about 50 people. So Humanly is not a huge company. They're doing pretty smart things with not a lot of people and resources. So whereas I like this acquisition better, I'm not sure the future is all about we want more and more traffic. I think it's more about like strategically going after people. It's like, how do we use our current, you know, pool of folks and put them in different places.

34:15So for for career arc, again, which has been around since 2009, it was probably a good time to get out because things weren't looking great for the future of like mass publication of jobs. And let's use more social media to get employment opportunities. So timing wise, great. I think humanly probably a good strategic buy for them. But the real the real news here on the show is the Tech Wolf SAP SAP buy for sure. Yeah, definitely. All right. From from one to another news story. Lots going on at LinkedIn these days, Emmy. Ryan Roslansky is leaving the company after 18 years, six of which he was the CEO.

34:59And from one resignation to a firing, McKinsey removed Chris Bradley, a senior partner from its leadership role at the McKinsey Global Institute, after he questioned the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon on LinkedIn. Want more LinkedIn? Well, it's your lucky day, Emmy, because LinkedIn has launched the Academy of Economic Opportunity, a 14-week training program to help workers become their own bosses. The program, which focuses on practical skills like handling PR crises and pitching investors, aims to provide economic independence in an uncertain job market. So resignation of firing and launching entrepreneurs or us at LinkedIn this week.

35:45What's your take? My take is there's a lot going on in the LinkedIn world. I mean, okay, so let's go in order. So LinkedIn CEO leaving after 18 years. So this guy, obviously, you know, he's a veteran. He's with Microsoft. He's led LinkedIn, as you said, for 18 years. 18 years. 18 years. Yeah. And he was successful. You know, he increased the numbers. He increased the number of people on the platform. What I found really interesting is the reason for him leaving. And the reason for him leaving is because Microsoft is actually insisting, mandating that people work in the office. And I was like, really?

36:30It's like we're in 2026 and you are insisting on that. We have now, how many years past COVID? Six years past COVID. Are we still on the bandwagon that you must be present in person in order to succeed? You know, it's like, come on. I thought we would have moved past that. But no, we kind of, they're not even doing hybrid work and you must be in person. And because of that, they've lost someone who's very successful. Do a couple, I think it's like a year ago, openly said that, you know, that like jobs need to be more hybrid. There's a lot of positivity. There's lots of positive benefits to having a hybrid or remote organization.

37:10And now you've lost one of your, the people, the person. Do you believe it though? Do you believe it though? So his thing is, I don't want to move to Redmond. He lives in San Francisco. I wouldn't want to leave San Francisco either. You know, my, my wife is in charity stuff and my kids. And do you, do you believe that? I'm not skeptical like you. I'm skeptical. Why? I think, yeah. It could be a legitimate reason. You don't spend 18 years at Microsoft slash LinkedIn and leave because you're family. And you don't let someone like that go at Microsoft. I just, I think there's something there. I think if he announces, if we hear in six months that he's now running a startup or he's executive somewhere else, I think this was a nice way to tell the internal folks like, Hey, you know what?

38:06It's just warm and fuzzy. He doesn't want to come here. So he wants to stay in San Francisco where it's all good. It's all good. I don't think that's a good internal PR to tell your organization. Oh, he's leaving because he doesn't want to work in office and people go, hold on. Well, yeah, because that's the reason is what the reason is he thinks we suck and he's going to leave us for another company. Like no one wants to say that it's got to be a fun, furry reason i don't know i don't know maybe you're right maybe i'm just i'm an old angry man and i'm jaded but i wouldn't be surprised if in six months to a year family and then wants to like sure he can love his family in seattle for you know 20 raise i it's kids in high school in in san francisco yeah travel it's not that far like you can commute like yeah yeah me from Seattle, San Francisco?

38:59You're much struggling with flying recently. Well, I'm not making the kind of money that he's probably making. You know, you can buy a lot of time with a private jet getting you to San Francisco. All right. So, all right. So, Kiba, we got more LinkedIn stuff. Keep going. I'm sorry. Okay. So, then we got the guy, Chris Bradley. Yeah. So, Chris Bradley, he was fired. Not from LinkedIn, but it's to do with his LinkedIn post. So, I had to look up Chris Bradley. He was a leader at McKinsey. McKinsey were doing research about, have been doing research about female leadership, females in the workplace.

39:35And this, I've got to say, idiot. Yeah. Despite the fact this is an organization that has been publishing research about female leadership, the challenges of female leadership, why it's difficult for some females to progress past a certain level, openly said that this phenomena of a glass cliff. Have you heard of that before? To be honest, no. I've heard of glass ceiling, so I had to go away. But when I did the research, I was like, oh, okay, this is what it means. So essentially, it's people from underrepresented backgrounds, females from underrepresented backgrounds. It's not that they're not necessarily getting into a position of leadership.

40:15They are at a lesser rate than males. So I'll read you the full definition. So the term glass cliff was coined by academics to describe the phenomenon in which female leaders are more likely to be offered CEO jobs at shitty struggling companies. Yes. In other words, it becomes, OK, well, we fail because a woman's in charge. Yeah. And that's why not because we're a shitty business. So that is the glass cliff that we're talking. Yeah. And that's what this Chris Bradley saying is that we're basically saying, oh, you know, why do why a female? being the victim you know they're just basically shit at their jobs and that is why they're not doing well you know and i was like what the what the fuck is this it's like hold on a second you're going to get to the actual ethos and values of your organization and they've this research showing that this actually happens so i was trying to like kind of go away and think about why why are females is that is it people deliberately putting females in a shitty job why would that happen and when i had a kind of thing it's like i don't think anyone's necessarily doing on purpose but sometimes i think when you get an organization that's struggling you know not doing so well for whatever reason maybe the organization wants to show that they're doing they're making a visible change yeah so a visible change would be just bringing someone that's different so maybe it was a white man middle-aged man that was in that job before what am i going to do i'm going to bring in a black brown whatever woman to do that job but the jobs are very hard the job and if they're not given the time to turn things around because it's a very difficult situation if they're not given the support if they're already under huge amounts of pressure and expected to turn things around immediately then they are more likely to fail are you are you surprised we're not seeing more of like this kind of social media posting um because my my take is since sort of what since trump has been back in office i think i think there's a lot of old white guys that have some pent-up opinions yeah and that somehow trump has made it okay to drop these these bombs on people i know i'm gonna say anything i'm shocked this doesn't happen every month um you would agree i assume yeah yeah i would be surprised if you're not in your like typical uh interaction with people aren't like i can't believe he said that yeah i can't believe because people think it's okay you just like kind of go sorry what did you just say yeah i was like oh you know and i you know if i'm trying to look for a positive out of it at least the the racist the the people who discriminate at least you can see them they're visible now they're not hiding they're not hiding behind like you know like you know words and not on linkedin apparently exactly no now they're like oh no it's okay we have someone like trump who makes it okay to say that you know we have an organization that's dismantling dei but you know what actually pisses me off about this though because i think this is something this is a fireball offense yeah and i can see how other people may go no it's like free speech i think it's a fireball offense because of what the organization that she stands for he's going to get his actual company ethos but what do they do they just demoted him they took him off the leadership um out of his leadership role he's still got his partner title so they're not really doing anything you know to kind of reprimand this person they're not yeah yeah so yeah i think they kind of fucked up do you do you think that there's align between LinkedIn and all the other social media platforms because you are representing your company technically more on LinkedIn?

44:03What are your thoughts on that? Like if he had posted this on X, do you think the same thing happens? I think that despite the platform, yes, okay, LinkedIn is a, you know, you are representing your organization, but whether it's Insta or Facebook or Twitter or X rather, I think that you have a responsibility to think about how you're coming across, you know? I agree. I just don't know societally, culturally, if he had posted it somewhere else, if we would have had the same response. No, I don't think he would have got the same response. I think he might have got away with it if he's on X, for example.

44:40Yeah. And my guess is this guy got away with a lot of stuff which led to this. Like they would say the drunk driver, like he's been drunk driving. He or she has been drunk driving for like seven, you know, a lot. He just got caught for it this time. My guess is this guy. This guy has had a life of comments at lunch and meetings. And finally, he just he crossed the line. So the entrepreneur school and LinkedIn, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I kind of. OK, what do I think about this? So LinkedIn is that launching their own school. They're saying, oh, yeah, you know, basically we're going to teach you the real world skills, the practical skills that you need to succeed in a modern world.

45:21And you don't need a degree, you know. And it reminded me of a conversation I had recently with somebody. And I was like, you know, I have a degree. I love going to university. Do I use my degree? No. When I graduated, I didn't do work experience, which I always like, you know, I would always recommend that graduates do or soon to be graduates do. Because I just know when I when I graduated, I was like, yeah, great. I went to good university. I've got my got my certificate. I knew nothing about how to succeed in the workplace. You know, I had theory. And this is what I think is lacking. Definitely the UK education system.

46:01And when I speak to other people around the world, that is lacking. I, as an ex recruiter, I would much rather hire someone who's got practical real life skills than someone who just has theoretical knowledge. So what LinkedIn is doing by launching this school academy to teach people those real life skills that doesn't actually require a degree. That doesn't mean that people are going to put themselves into huge amounts of debt to learn those real life skills. I think it's great. Is there an ulterior motive for LinkedIn doing that? I don't know. But as a someone as young, you know, young person entering the workplace.

46:38Cool. Go do it. Go learn those real life skills. That's what's going to set you apart more so than your qualification. It's great. 60 percent of the time it works every time. So I think this is. First, I would say follow the money when you're asking for why is LinkedIn doing this. we're seeing a real spike in this country for sure in regards to applications for new businesses. In fact, in July, total business applications reached a record high of about 576 ,500 in the U.S. And I think ever since COVID, people have started to learn either I better find my own thing, I better get a side hustle, I better understand this whole business thing.

47:27and being at home enabled them to like, oh, this Zoom thing's kind of cool. Like, how would I do? Like, oh, this marketplace. So I think people got interested in entrepreneurship. And then you had AI taking everyone's job. You had vibe coding, so it's easier to create websites. You saw layoffs happen. So all these people that got laid off are like, well, do I find a new job or do I just start my own company? young people are buying franchises interestingly in this country uh at a rate they never have before yeah i mean a lot of young people are like you know i i don't want to start my own thing but i don't want to work for somebody so a happy medium is like i'll just open up a sub shop we're all you know create a clothing whatever it is right like uh dry cleaning uh franchise or whatever Um, so, so the trend, at least in this country, I think most, most countries is like, we have like entrepreneurship is on the rise mostly because out of just, I have to not just because they woke up and said, everyone said, let's now the, the, the pushback on that is like, just like any other business, 90 plus percent of these are going to fail.

48:38And in two to three years, we're probably going to talk about like, oh, everyone's like coming back to work who had failed franchises and businesses and website and apps that didn't quite take off. But I think for now, there's definitely a trend in this country where people are trying to learn how to deal with being an entrepreneur. So I think from that perspective, LinkedIn is totally spot on with where the world is going. Teach them those practical skills so they're less likely to fail. Yeah. Look, I'll pay LinkedIn a little money to learn how to deal with the PR crises or to deal with taxes or things that I have to deal with.

49:12Yeah. So I think it's a good move from LinkedIn's perspective. What is interesting to me is that LinkedIn, you know, its core business is connecting employees with employers. So if you're saying you're your own boss, how many people are they now going to hire? So I guess you could look at like, hey, if we're just, if we're empowering all these entrepreneurs, it's an easy bridge to say, hey, we helped you build your business. Now let us help you build with employees. So I think from that perspective, it's really smart from LinkedIn to reiterate, I don't believe this guy just left because of his family.

49:53There's something there that Microsoft doesn't want to. Who do we know about LinkedIn? You can tell us the Google course. And then I made my opinions clear about Mr. Glass Cliff, which is an interesting new term that we all learned today. Let's take a quick break, Emmy, and we'll end up with AI interviewers gone wild. All right, Emmy, we've all seen the AI interviewers, the videos, some created or manufactured on purpose. Well, this week, a TikTok user intentionally spoke gibberish during a job interview with an AI avatar, causing it to become visibly frustrated and eventually end the interview.

50:35I'll just show a clip. It's like three minutes. I'll cut it short, but this will give you and the listeners, viewers, an idea of what we're talking about.

50:47I'm Sarah. We have a lot to get through and very little time. So let's start. Why are you qualified for this assistant manager position?

51:09You know what it's saying, right? I have no idea what you were talking about. That was complete nonsense. Do you think this is a joke? I asked why you are qualified for a management position, not for a string of random words. Try it.

51:44Stop this immediately. I am not in the mood for games or baby talk. You are wasting my time and you are wasting my company's time. Either give me a professional, coherent answer as to why you are qualified for this role, or we can end this call right now. Which is it? Okay. I message people. I know I was like who's this vendor um is this real or not and it's right it's I think it's on the futurist website so by all accounts this is real um this isn't some faked Hollywood style like uh tell the AI to talk mean to me so I don't I don't know what to make of it Emmy what are your thoughts I can't tell if it's real either I literally went everywhere I went on every website I went on YouTube.

52:32I was checking the comments. I don't know. All I do know is that this is actually quite scary because more and more organizations are bringing in these AI avatar interviewers, you know? And I remember a couple of months ago, we talked about it when I was on the show and, you know, I was saying, I don't want to do this. I don't, I don't want a world where candidates are interviewing with AI avatars. and but I questioned myself at the time you know am I a dinosaur am I not keeping up with the world am I not understanding where the world is actually changing when it comes to AI in the hiring process I thought I was and to be honest my mind has actually changed over the last couple of months because when I started to think about it in our day-to-day lives we are actually speaking to AI you know and and that realization came when I was on my phone and I was like hey Siri and I'm like oh what am i doing i'm talking to my phone and my you know my phone's talking back to me actually oh my god my phone's next to me so it looks like it's about to talk now you know so that is that is happening so if that's happening in our personal lives obviously can happen in hiring you know however when we do implement this kind of technology we need to take into account the the candidate experience we don't want to turn off candidates we don't want people to go that we have we're not giving in the human experience they and so having a ai interviewer this is funny this is cool this is making me laugh you know it's talking gibberish but imagine if the ai interviewer started just going off on one being rude not representing the organization that's not a good thing that's not a good thing to your foot before you employ a brand but organizations need to think about you're implement it have you tested these tools properly have you tried this just getting and seeing what happens or are you trusting what bender's saying let's have a have a couple thoughts on this any new technology goes through a period of like what the hell is this uh and then you sort of get used to it you get numb to it uh perfect example when i was in vegas this week uh there's a auto you know waymo we've talked about waymo a lot on the show and there's there's one now called zooks which is connected to amazon or besos so you're going to see more of this it's more of a traditional weird sci-fi car there's no steering wheel you just it's like there's four seats uh facing each other two facing each other on each side a big sliding door like look on your face Oh, that's weird.

55:09But I guarantee you a few years from now in Vegas, like once these things become normalized, it'll just be another car. It'll be another taxi service that you call. I think we're going through a little bit of that with the AI interviewers. we're seeing a lot of fringe accounts of like young people hate it. They all, you know, half of them eject AI interview, which may be true. I don't know. And I don't know if that's, I hate AI and I'm out of here or I'm not right for this role. I know that I'm going to get dinged. So why stick around? Why waste my time? So I don't know exactly why they're leaving because the narratives that I hear at conferences and although, although they are employer focused is that.

55:52People are applying at 10 p.m. at night. Right. Yes. That's a convenient thing for people. I can I can wait till the kids in bed and I can get a coffee or whatever. And then I don't have to take a day off. I don't have to go to lunch and run and do an interview and hope that it gets over by the time I can come back to work. Like, I think that if we I think AI interviewing is a net positive. And I think what isn't positive will eventually will get used to. and that people will realize like, oh, they're getting tons of applicants. They can't handle it. So this is sort of how they're how they're doing it.

56:26This is how they're going to get feedback. I think we'll normalize this. I think it will just be something that we deal with. I don't think companies are going to abandon AI interviewing. It will get better. The second part of this is. AI is weird, man. The whole the whole like smiling face, happy face, whatever it was that, you know, ai jumped out of the sandbox it kind of did its own thing it went rogue like this if that's what happened here where an ai just said screw this you people suck and don't waste my like did it just do it on its own did the company program it to do this because they were like that's what scares me because i can't think of any company that would be like oh tell this person off if they're going to talk gibberish to us did the ai just on its own decide this is bullshit and you're asshole because that's something to worry about um and i don't have that because i know i know because we're close with paradox there's a great sponsor and i like they've talked to us about the responses that olivia has gotten like they people talk dirty to olivia they talk crazy shit but olivia never gets an attitude it's always like i don't know you know it's nice right it just um just goes with the flow so i is this ai go rogue and then we shall be concerned like yeah there are a lot of questions here to be answered i still think there's a really good chance that this is fake that uh someone got really fancy with the with the ai video yeah and um just decided to get like a viral thing and go but i'm going to keep studying to see if this is fake and we'll report back on the show but until then emmy how about a dad joke oh come on i knew you're gonna say that

58:18why didn't han solo enjoy his steak why didn't han solo enjoy his steak it was chewy oh no it was chewy oh it hasn't got any better Joel it's still shit I'm low T right now so you gotta bear with me until then we out we out thank you for listening to what's it called? the podcast the Chad the Cheese Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word.

59:22So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Or wherever you listen to your podcasts That way you won't miss an episode And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese It's so weird We out!