2025 Holiday Show

🎄 Your 2025 Holiday Snack Platter🎄

This year’s Chad & Cheese Holiday Show serves up a greatest-hits platter of the smartest, spiciest, and most unfiltered conversations of 2025 all in one bingeable episode. From AI panic and fake applicants to job boards losing their grip, this one’s packed with takes you’ll be arguing about until January.

🔥 Inside this holiday sampler:

• Why 400,000+ applicants doesn’t mean better hiring

• How Marriott cut job board dependence and built organic hiring power

• Why recruiters are done paying for the same candidates twice

• AI fear vs. AI reality

• Where human touch still matters (yes, even with chatbots)

• How companies are slashing spend while improving quality

• Why “giving vendors your data” isn’t the magic fix they promise

• What HR leaders really think about automation, fraud, and fake candidates

• And why hiring tech is racing toward consolidation and convergence

• 
  

Featuring voices from Glean, Marriott, Domino’s, SmartRecruiters, Essentia Health, Compass Group, Rally’s, and more this episode is equal parts insight, snark, and hard-earned truth.

🎁 Consider this your holiday hiring cheat code. Press play, grab a drink, and enjoy the chaos.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:00.6 S1: 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 snacks., buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Happy holidays, everyone. Here at the Chad and Cheese Podcast, we like to bring our fans holiday cheer. And in 2025, Joel and I had the opportunity to have discussions with people who are much smarter and more influential than we are. Believe that. Umm, and we wanted to pull all that together and see, you know, some kind of highlights of those interviews. So we've constructed an episode that could be considered a holiday snack platter of sorts. Some of the best snackable content. All in one episode. That's right, all in one episode. Some of the best snackable content. Fixing, the candidate pipeline with Alla Mezvinsky, VP of People at Glean, is the first snackable piece. Enjoy.

0:01:12.0 S2: And we're hearing a lot of... Of horror stories, lazy apply, deep fakes. Job seekers getting pretty savvy around shotgunning, machine gunning their resume to companies. You have a lot of companies using gym. You get a lot of applications. Are you guys seeing this? Is the hype real and how are you fighting it? Or is it a lot of, hot air?

0:01:32.5 S3: Yeah, I mean, the stat you... You, umm, mentioned, which I think is like double... Double the applicants. We felt it in 2024, Instacart got 400,000 applicants. That was...

0:01:40.5 S2: What... What was that?

0:01:46.5 S3: 400,000.

0:01:46.7 S2: 400,000. Okay.

0:01:48.5 S3: Applicants in one year., and that was, I want to say, almost close to... To double, umm, from previous years. So smaller recruiting teams, more applicants on the market. If you don't bridge that gap with some efficiencies in the process. Unless you're able to hire large teams, which honestly still is... Is inefficient. Like, you don't want your teams, even if they're large, to be inefficient. But, umm, one of the things that I think you guys do really well on top of some of the things we've discussed is that analytics and Insights piece. And something that I've worked really hard over the last few years is making sure that, not just I'm able to get data and deliver that to our leaders, to our hiring managers, but every recruiter is actually able to understand that data, utilize that data, umm, you know, be able to send quarterly monthly business reviews to their managers proactively so they're understanding what's happening in the pipeline. So I'll give you an example. Umm, you know we had... We had a... A hiring manager that was saying, oh, it's taking too long, to fill this rack. What's going on? We're not seeing too many candidates, end up at the on-site stage. And for whatever reason like the... It's so easy to say, well, recruiting is not doing something.

0:02:56.1 S2: Oh, of course.

0:02:58.1 S3: Of course, right?

0:02:58.5 S2: Of course.

0:02:59.5 S3: It's always that.

0:03:00.7 S2: It's not the market, it's not your requirements. That's us.

0:03:01.3 S3: It's no bad intent. It just... Yes.

0:03:03.9 S2: Yeah.

0:03:04.9 S3: If you're not getting candidates to the on-site, something's broken in the recruiting side.

0:03:05.2 S2: Yeah.

0:03:08.0 S3: And umm, we had just started using gem, Insights, and so we were able to show the... The hiring manager like this funnel of like here's how many applicants, here's how many we reviewed, you know, here's how many talked to the hiring manager.

0:03:20.9 S2: Yes.

0:03:21.2 S3: And then we saw this crazy drop-off rate at the onsite stage. And so from hiring manager to case study to on-site there was this massive drop-off. And so it actually wasn't necessarily the recruit... It wasn't happening at the recruiter stage, it was happening later down the process. And so, but... But unless you have that data and... And... And it doesn't live in spreadsheets cause it's really hard to visually make it...

0:03:40.2 S2: Right.

0:03:41.2 S3: Appealing.

0:03:42.7 S2: Right.

0:03:43.1 S3: , but being able to pull, you know exactly which chart I'm talking about.

0:03:46.6 S2: Yeah.

0:03:48.6 S3: Being able to pull that and show that to the hiring managers and actually say actually here's the stage and let's dive into that stage. And what we realized is it's, true that it was taking too long, the case study was too hard, it was not consolidated with the on-site. And so people were like, you're going to make me go through this hoop and then do an on-site. No. Umm, and so we ended up consolidating and piling a few different processes and then all of a sudden it was like an unlock and we were able to get candidates to the on-site stage, get candidates into, you know, the offer stage. So it's... It's things like that. Umm, and you know, to your point, there's so many different parts of gem, but, that Insights piece I think is making recruiters not only more efficient, but just like be able to work smarter and lead with data and influence their hiring managers based on that.

0:04:30.2 S1: This next episode is entitled the Decline of Job Boards with Meghan Ratigan, VP of talent acquisition experience at little company you might have heard before called Marriott. Take a listen. And in light of that, we talk to a lot of bigger companies that are pretty, in some cases greatly reducing their reliance on, say, job boards.

0:04:50.9 S3: Yes.

0:04:51.3 S1: How has this new reality impacted where you guys spend your money or maybe take money away?

0:04:56.6 S3: So for us, like, we've put a lot. So we just... We launched a new employment brand, umm, a little over a year and a half ago. Organic traffic is king. I... I would say that we focus most of our efforts honestly on driving organic traffic just because paid traffic is so fucking fucking whatever.

0:05:19.7 S1: Yeah.

0:05:19.8 S3: Chad and Cheese, right.

0:05:20.6 S1: Yeah.

0:05:21.6 S3: You say that expensive.

0:05:22.6 S2: Yeah.

0:05:23.6 S3: And so for us, umm, I think we talked about this the last time. The SEO thing is a big thing. Paradox, actually does a really great job with their career site and SEO and driving that. But organic traffic gets us the best quality candidates., they're the ones who stay the longest.

0:05:38.5 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:05:41.5 S3: And we're running right now about 60 to 70% organic traffic, which is really, really, really good.

0:05:46.1 S2: Yeah.

0:05:46.2 S3: Umm, but we also are Marriott. But it's... It a very big focus for us.

0:05:48.6 S1: When you say organic, are you actively on Google for jobs?

0:05:50.6 S3: No.

0:05:51.6 S1: No.

0:05:53.6 S3: Organic means, like there are people out there that want to work for us. And so they're coming to our site.

0:06:02.6 S1: Directly.

0:06:03.4 S3: Careers... Career.com and they're saying, I want to work here. And they're engaging with Olivia and finding a job., but it's all about awareness too. So we do a lot through like, CRM campaigns...

0:06:13.2 S1: Yeah.

0:06:15.2 S3: And, silver, medalist candidates. And like second, we've got a housekeeping job open. We retarget the folks that just applied...

0:06:20.9 S1: In your database.

0:06:21.2 S2: In our database. Yeah.

0:06:21.9 S1: Yeah. Because you've already paid for them.

0:06:23.2 S2: Yeah, we don't... We don't. We don't... We don't buy, umm, or subscribe to an external database. We don't need to. We've got 10 million candidates on our own. And so we're just...

[overlapping conversation]

0:06:32.6 S2: Sister.

0:06:33.6 S3: Yeah.

0:06:35.4 S1: Something interesting this morning.

0:06:36.4 S3: Yeah, mm-hmm.

0:06:37.4 S1: I don't know if this is, standardized or not, but when I... I did a search on Google for Marriott jobs.

0:06:40.6 S3: Yeah.

0:06:41.1 S1: Expecting Google for jobs, and it was direct jobs to Marriott.

0:06:46.5 S3: That's... Yeah.

0:06:46.6 S1: Just their jobs.

0:06:47.0 S3: That's...

0:06:48.0 S1: So there were no job boards presented.

0:06:49.0 S3: That's right.

0:06:50.0 S1: In that search. I don't know if that's something Google's doing more and more of, but they just go directly to you from Google.

0:06:53.9 S3: That's right. Yeah, that's... And, by the way, it actually took a lot for that experience to happen., because originally you would... It was Indeed that was top. And then...

0:07:04.9 S1: Oh, yeah.

0:07:05.7 S3: Yeah.

0:07:06.7 S1: Yeah.

0:07:07.5 S3: And then we were second. And so we put a lot into making sure Indeed was not top.

0:07:10.8 S1: How did you do that?

0:07:12.8 S2: , we worked with Paradox. And actually did a lot of work on trying to see what was taking away our SEO.

0:07:19.2 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:07:21.2 S3: And, also with Indeed, umm, we do partner with them. We... We have to. Right. They're the 800 page gorilla., but we've started to pull back on sponsorship, quite significantly so that it actually does help our organic SEO., so that we don't have as much, competing, right?

0:07:39.5 S2: Right.

0:07:40.9 S1: Yeah.

0:07:41.2 S3: , SEO when it comes to job search. So we're like pulling back on the paid so that Indeed doesn't have as much leverage to come on top of us.

0:07:48.2 S1: What an interesting strategy. Reduce job board spend...

0:07:52.0 S3: Yeah.

0:07:52.7 S1: To help your own Google

0:07:53.2 S3: That's right.

0:07:53.9 S1: Traffic, build traffic.

0:07:55.4 S2: Build your own brand.

0:07:56.5 S3: Yeah.

0:07:57.5 S1: That's fascinating. Okay.

0:07:58.0 S3: Yeah.

0:07:58.5 S2: Well, not to mention I mean... And, how many... How many candidates do you have in the database?

0:08:01.6 S3: 10 million.

0:08:02.5 S2: 10 million.

[laughter]

0:08:04.8 S2: So if, I mean... So again, you've already paid for those.

0:08:07.9 S3: Yeah.

0:08:11.1 S2: And there are so many companies that are literally as soon as a job opens, they just sprayed out to the Indeed...

0:08:14.5 S3: Yeah.

0:08:14.8 S2: And the ZipRecruiters and whatnot. And they pay for the same candidates over and over and over and over.

0:08:18.2 S3: It's crazy.

0:08:18.3 S2: Same once.

0:08:18.7 S3: Yeah. And they're... And they're probably bad quality because there was a reason why you didn't hire them in the first place.

[laughter]

0:08:23.9 S2: See. So...

0:08:24.0 S3: Yeah.

0:08:27.4 S2: But I mean, it's the... And... And we... We've talked to companies about retargeting.

0:08:35.3 S1: Yeah.

0:08:35.5 S2: And Matt Lavery at UPS.

0:08:36.4 S3: Mm-hmm.

0:08:37.4 S2: They had to do 150,000 hire or 15,000.

0:08:38.1 S3: Mm-hmm.

0:08:39.1 S2: 15,000 hires in six weeks. And 30,000 of those were ones that they retargeted,

0:08:40.7 S3: Yeah.

0:08:41.7 S2: So they didn't have to spend money

0:08:43.7 S3: No.

0:08:44.7 S2: To get 30,000 of those. And that was like version one. He's like, it's going to get bigger and better. And we're... We're hearing the same thing from, umm, companies like, you know, companies using Paradox and Gem and Fountain.

0:08:56.6 S3: Right.

0:08:57.6 S1: Yeah.

0:08:58.6 S2: And it's like, that seems to be the big cycle where it's like, look, we know what we have... We finally know what we have.

0:09:08.0 S3: Yeah.

0:09:08.2 S2: And we're going to use it.

0:09:08.4 S3: Yeah.

0:09:08.9 S2: Do you feel the industry is kind of like moving that way quickly?

0:09:10.9 S3: Yeah.

0:09:11.4 S2: Yeah.

0:09:13.4 S3: I do. Umm, I... I shouldn't say this because we are an Appcast customer.

[laughter]

0:09:20.8 S3: But I mean, I... I would be worried like, if I wasn't... If I'm an Appcast of the world, even the Indeeds of the world.

0:09:26.4 S2: Yeah.

0:09:27.7 S3: I... I would be worried. Umm, because companies like us have... Have figured out and particularly now with the market being the way that it is, we're just like scraping it...

0:09:36.8 S2: Yeah.

0:09:37.8 S3: Like, give me more candidates, baby.

[laughter]

0:09:40.6 S3: Because I'm gonna need them one day.

0:09:41.5 S2: Yeah.

0:09:42.5 S3: But I don't want to pay for them. But like, it is... It's totally, like diminishing their relevance in a lot of ways.

0:09:46.1 S2: Oh, God. Yeah. Well, okay, so quick question. We've been hearing a lot from like Chris Forman.

0:09:54.6 S3: Yeah, yeah.

0:09:54.8 S2: Former CEO of Appcast and Indeed talking about, you're not going to be able to utilize some of these services unless you start giving them disposition data.

0:10:00.3 S3: Yeah.

0:10:01.0 S2: Which to me is total because it's none of your damn business who I hired. That's not your job.

0:10:08.4 S3: Right, right.

0:10:08.6 S2: That's my job.

0:10:09.2 S3: Because they're trying to get into the quality game. Like, so they want our disposition data so that they can put it into their database and... And be able to put like a quality marker on people.

0:10:18.0 S2: Yeah. But if they had good tech in the first place...

0:10:22.5 S3: Yeah.

0:10:24.5 S2: And they knew what the requirements are, they can match those up against the candidates that they have in their database. They're doing... They're trying to over... It feels like they're trying to over-engineer a solution...

0:10:30.2 S3: Yeah.

0:10:32.2 S1: Yeah.

0:10:33.2 S2: So that they can get to your data.

0:10:35.4 S3: Yeah, that's...

[overlapping conversation]

0:10:36.4 S1: Yeah.

0:10:37.4 S2: And they're saying, hey, hey, guess what? This is how we fix the problem. It's like, no, it's not...

0:10:40.7 S3: Yeah.

0:10:41.7 S2: The problem is up funnel.

0:10:43.7 S3: Right.

0:10:43.9 S2: It's not down funnel. No.

0:10:44.7 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:10:45.2 S2: So I would assume that you're... You're hearing a lot of that. Hey, we want the disposition data because it's going to be better for you.

0:10:51.5 S3: Right. Well, they're... It's not... It's not even disposition data. It's data up and down the funnel.

0:10:56.9 S1: Oh, yeah.

0:10:57.6 S3: Like, they... They want to see every... They want to see everything. And we're like, no, like, it's...

[chuckle]

0:11:06.8 S3: You cannot have... Like, why would we... Why would we give that to you?

0:11:08.1 S1: Sure.

0:11:08.6 S3: There's no benefit to us.

0:11:10.0 S2: It doesn't make any sense.

0:11:11.8 S1: In you having it. Yeah.

0:11:13.5 S2: , I... Other than they say it's better quality and I'm like, no.

0:11:15.9 S3: That's...

0:11:16.9 S2: Better quality is better matching. Go do your job.

0:11:18.1 S1: Yeah.

0:11:20.9 S3: Right.

0:11:22.5 S1: So percentage wise, how much less are you spending on sort of traditional job boards?

0:11:25.1 S2: We've gone down about 30% this year.

0:11:29.4 S1: Yeah.

0:11:30.4 S3: And I... And I honestly, I want to be at 50% by next year easily.

0:11:35.1 S1: Yeah.

0:11:35.2 S2: Here's Overcoming Recruiter Layoffs and Fear of replacement with Torin Ellis, principal at Torin Ellis Brand.

0:11:43.7 S1: I want to dig into this comment about fear of buying AI because it replaces us more so than we could get into trouble. And we've seen a lot of recruiters get laid off in the last few years. There's real fear about the future of my profession and what's going to happen to it. Should we talk more about that than the bias issue? Because to me that seems like that's personal versus that's something that can happen to the company, just your perspective on, the importance of getting replaced by AI and not buying it because of that reason, but putting the excuse on bias.

0:12:21.6 S5: I think it really comes down to we should have those conversations. And I don't think it needs to be an either or proposition. We... We can talk about the bias, implications, but we can also talk about the fact that if you are not keeping up with the technology, the application of the technology, how it can add efficiency...

0:12:39.7 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:12:40.7 S5: To the work that you are doing, the very way that Paradox does the work that they do. I just think that it's a fool's errand for us to ignore it, put our nose in the sand, and think that our fear is enough to protect us. You... You understand you... If you're trying to wear that fear like it's a cape, that's going to protect you, it's not going to work that way.

[overlapping conversation]

0:13:01.1 S5: We've been antithesis of that.

0:13:02.1 S1: We...

0:13:04.7 S5: Absolutely. We've read enough, we see enough. It is moving so incredibly fast. And so what I would hope is that when a person reads the research that Aptitude and TE have, ah, put together, that they walk away suggesting to themselves or reconfirming, how do I... How do I upskill my knowledge and awareness and ability to use and implement AI solutions in the work that I do? Umm, because there is always that piece where humans have to be involved. I was a recruiter first, I was a practitioner, and I used to always say, humans do the best job of hiring humans. I believe it. It's a sword I'm willing to die on., and so no matter what technology hits the marketplace, I know that there is a special thing that happens when a candidate, or when a decision maker or when someone is engaged with me.

0:13:59.4 S5: There's a certain energy that ex... Exchanges. There's a certain emotion that exchanges. AI is not going to replace that. So I'm never afraid that AI is going to do away with who I am. But I do believe that we just need to have more conversations that help people understand. Don't be afraid, or let's... Let's shape that fear in a way that allows you to be even more productive in the work that you do.

0:14:28.6 S1: This next one is called Domino's Human Touch versus Chatbot Automation with Matthew King, who is the director of HR Technology at Domino's.

0:14:41.5 S2: What... Is that a big step for... For Dominoes and the franchisees to think that, okay, we... We want real people having real messaging. Umm, if a chatbot takes over, it might not feel as real.

0:14:53.5 S6: It's a really hard question to answer because I think that it depends on how well the chatbot works and what you use it for. Umm, I don't think that, like automating a notification that we're waiting on your background check invitation to com... To be completed is something that a candidate feels is an important moment of human touch.

0:15:12.0 S2: Yeah.

0:15:12.7 S6: You don't want the chatbot to be a jerk about it.

0:15:13.5 S1: Like, you don't want it to be like, sort of totally cold. It has to sort of fit into like your sort of employment branding Persona.

0:15:15.4 S2: Right.

0:15:20.3 S6: Umm, but that's not something that you need human touch for.

0:15:23.7 S2: Right.

0:15:23.8 S6: You know, where... Where I think I see the line being drawn is there is a... There is a moment of human interaction during the interview that's really important because part of what I think we and our franchisees are selecting for is somebody who's going to like, represent the brand well, right? Like somebody who presents well, presents as dominoes. Umm, and you know, that takes many forms. But like, it's very hard to discern that from automated screening. It's very hard to discern that from, umm, somebody typing in, like, what's your perspective on customer service and having an AI sort of churn on that?

0:15:52.9 S2: Yeah.

0:15:56.4 S6: Like, that's... Those are vibes you get from interacting with a human being, whether it's through a video interview or an in person interview.

0:15:59.4 S2: Right.

0:16:01.6 S6: Umm, so I think, you know, it's about the... The moments where you choose to use it, right?

0:16:04.8 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:16:07.1 S6: It's some... Some asynchronous makes sense, some synchronous makes sense. Umm, it just depends on the sort of feel you're trying to create for your brand and how you drive selection based on that.

0:16:15.0 S2: Here's Generative AI adoption with Brad Williams, who was the SVP of franchise at Rally's Checkers.

0:16:24.0 S1: You were on the front line of the automation conversation.

0:16:29.0 S7: Yeah.

0:16:29.5 S1: And on a regular basis, you know, Flippy's doing burgers.

[laughter]

0:16:33.9 S1: I got a... I have a kiosk in my, you know, area.

0:16:35.0 S7: Yes.

0:16:36.0 S1: , McDonald's and... And at some point, AI's taking my order. We won't need people. Yes. I want to hear from your perspective. Are we going there or is it... Is it the distant future? Is it coming tomorrow? Talk about automation in your business.

0:16:47.8 S7: Sure.

0:16:48.4 S1: How many flippies have you bought?

0:16:48.9 S7: Yeah, it's... It's very interesting in the flippy thing's very funny because, you know, I mentioned I've been doing this 30 years and everything was by hand. Now we've simplified so much., that is very interesting to see. So I'm... I'm sort of in the middle.

0:17:00.8 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:17:03.8 S7: Umm, we do have, AI in our drive thrus. Umm, it's in approximately 80% of our corporate stores., and I think about 50% of franchisees have it. So it's really helpful for those times that someone calls out because she never misses work.

0:17:19.0 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:17:20.2 S7: So that's beautiful.

0:17:20.9 S2: Ahhh.

0:17:21.2 S7: And it's a learning, you know, there's ways, when they get an order wrong, we can hit a button on the headset and say, no, they said a big Buford with no cheese and they... They learned. So we... We're already on the front end. I do think, umm, you're not going to replace the frontline workers all the way., I don't think it's the same as building cars, you know, where it's... It's lines and... And ratcheting and different things. I think you're going to need the people. Umm, the reason we didn't have 100% adoption on AI in the drive thrus is because franchisees felt, no, I want my cashier taking that. I don't want to lose that person to person greeting. I want them to hear the smile through the speaker., so that was here.

0:17:54.7 S2: This next one was filmed on stage in Madrid and is called AI for HR Transforming Hiring with Rebecca Carr, CEO of Smartrecruiters. The landscape has changed so much. It used to be if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

0:18:14.2 S8: Mm-hmm.

0:18:14.8 S2: Today it's if it ain't broke, break it.

0:18:18.2 S8: Yeah.

0:18:21.6 S2: And that's exactly what you're doing with Smartrecruiters right now. You are meeting the markets because the old-style ATS needs to change.

0:18:28.9 S8: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:30.2 S1: What made you do that? I mean, everybody looking at, it's like, yeah, no, I get it. But that you... You... You took time to actually come to that decision. What led to that?

0:18:40.1 S8: Yeah, well, I'm a product leader.

0:18:43.6 S2: Yeah.

0:18:44.0 S8: I spent my entire career building applicant tracking systems. And I woke up one morning and maybe it was when I became a CEO, maybe it was when I became a CPO.

0:18:50.3 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:18:52.8 S8: And I had to hire and I hated using my own product. I'm just gonna like, I think it's a good product. I think that it checks all the boxes, it's highly configurable.

0:19:06.0 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:19:06.9 S8: It has a good candidate experience, much better than what I've seen from others. But as a product leader, I'm out to deliver a very specific outcome and that's to make hiring easier.

0:19:17.6 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:19:17.7 S8: And I think over the last decade or so it's gotten a lot harder. We just added more on top of more.

0:19:22.0 S2: Why?

0:19:23.3 S8: I think maybe because customers figured that if they added a button here, or if they allowed you to filter a list this way, then suddenly that problem would be solved. Umm...

0:19:34.7 S2: It created feature bloat.

0:19:37.9 S8: For sure. And it created a lot of transition in the market. People, if they didn't get the features they wanted from someone, they just went and bought someone else because they figured that they had that feature only to find out that they were missing five, six, seven of the other features that...

0:19:50.6 S2: They used.

0:19:51.6 S8: That were... Yeah. That they were using in the other one. So people are moving around, they're spending an unbelievable, amount of money...

0:19:56.2 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:19:59.2 S8: Expecting someone to be the silver bullet. And then we have AI and this becomes a much bigger conversation, especially in B2C technology.

0:20:05.7 S2: Yeah.

0:20:07.9 S1: And in the B2B world, there's a little bit of fear, regulation. What is this going to do? Is it going to come after my job? And the reality is that that could be the silver bull... Bullet to actually solving the problem that we're here to solve, which is to make hiring easy. But if you're going to go and implement that, you kind of have to go all the way. You can't just, I think we call it like sprinkling fairy dust, on a... On a product...

0:20:32.2 S2: Yeah.

0:20:33.2 S8: And hoping that, you know, you put this little, like, job description generator and that's going to be sufficient.

0:20:35.7 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:20:36.0 S8: I mean, recruiting is 80% administrative, like it shouldn't be. When we... When everyone started hiring, I was saying this to my team the other day. It was... I walked into a store, I said, I'm interested in working with you. They interviewed me, they asked me some questions, and I started the next day. There were really only a couple decision points in that workflow.

0:20:53.0 S2: Yeah.

0:20:59.0 S8: Now to hire that... For that same job, maybe a pizza delivery driver or a retail store clerk. It takes 10 to 20 hours a week to build a store over the course of two months. That's... That's insane. I mean, it shouldn't be that long. And so I... I think I'm out to solve that problem. I believe in making hiring easy, and I think it's going to take a bold move to get the market to go that direction.

0:21:21.3 S2: Our highly polished AI sessions episodes went into overdrive in 2025, and this particular episode is called AI Tools Fair Hiring and Healthcare Recruitment with John Higgins, VP of Talent Management at Essentia Health. Enjoy.

0:21:33.7 S1: We're hearing more and more about, bias and AI and the new... New tools. How do you guys think about that? I'm guessing you live in a fairly homogeneous area.

0:21:48.8 S9: We do.

0:21:51.9 S1: But how do you cast a wider net as you're looking for people in more areas and make sure you don't get in trouble with the EEOC. Yeah, you know, great question. Right in... In one of the... Umm, you know...

[overlapping conversation]

0:22:01.6 S2: Last one.

0:22:01.8 S9: It is... It's... It's in the same ballpark... It's in the same ballpark. The, umm...

0:22:09.7 S2: Diplomatic.

0:22:09.9 S9: , exactly. So, umm, we leverage, you know, from a casting perspective a, capability through, direct employers. Umm, one... One of the kind of premier players out there in getting you know, jobs out to the right places. Umm, from... From a diversity umm, you know, net perspective, umm, umm, it... Again benefit there is you know you're gonna drive all that talent back into, your career site. Umm, I think what's you know also really important that... That we pay close attention to is as we are looking at different AI tools is we're looking at you know, the... The science behind the tool, right?

0:22:53.3 S1: We... We have a legal department, an IT department that goes pretty deep, on... On the AI capabilities we're putting in to ensure that umm, that... That bias is not part of the process and more importantly that the tools aren't making selections for us, right? Umm, at the moment it's how do we get the right information in front of people, how do we help them apply? How do we make sure that that language that, is... Is getting in front of the candidate you know, is inclusive, umm, such that it... It... It... People seek to want to be a part of it.

0:23:25.8 S2: Okay, so I'm extremely excited and I was extremely excited to land this next interview., it's about Apple's role in China's rise with, Patrick McGee who is the San Francisco correspondent with the Financial Times and New York Times best-selling author of Apple in China. Check it out.

0:23:42.5 S10: Google around... Around this time says we're out of China.

0:23:52.4 S2: Yeah.

0:23:53.4 S10: Because we're not willing to give up our data and everything about Ch... Like they don't let Amazon in, Facebook doesn't get in. Did that not play into Apple's calculus on should we be in China? They did... It just the money and the... The share... Like it was just too much...

0:24:00.6 S2: Capitalism, baby.

0:24:06.6 S10: Yeah, I mean...

0:24:07.6 S2: Capitalism.

0:24:08.6 S10: Was there... Was there any... Was there any like...

0:24:09.0 S2: Yeah.

0:24:10.0 S10: Come to Jesus moment...

[laughter]

0:24:11.4 S1: At Apple where they said hey, all of everyone in the Valley is out on China, maybe we should be too.

0:24:16.9 S2: So no, I think it's a short answer. Umm, but their experience is really different. And let's just give a sympathetic view to Apple here. All the companies you mentioned are in some way content or services companies.

0:24:29.3 S10: Okay.

0:24:31.5 S2: And Apple hasn't necessarily had great success in content or services in China, but they are a hardware company. And so it's almost unfair to compare Apple a hardware company with true companies that are in their size and geography, because it's all Silicon Valley. Umm, but if you compare them to hardware companies, electronics companies, whatever, China is not. Apple is not unique, right? Everybody in electronics is moving to... To China. And if anything, Apple is late to the game, right?

0:24:58.0 S10: Mm-hmm.

0:24:58.5 S2: The likes of Dell, hp, Compaq, everyone's already working with... With... With Taiwan and China by the time Apple goes there. So they're not unique in that sense. What they're unique in is their business model, which is more hardware-focused than any of the companies you mentioned or any of the magnificent seven. This next one is talking about AI fraud. And we're on stage live at RecFest with Laura Stapleton, who is the VP of people at Foley, Jay Patel, senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Rippling, and Derek Gellidon, head of recruiting at Fantom. Check it out. Laura, you mentioned the human element of actually looking at a LinkedIn, profile. How much of yours is human versus you're relying on the tech to... To weed people out?

0:25:38.2 S11: So right now, umm, it's a combination, I would say we had Covey Engine. And again, I'm two weeks into my new role, so I don't have that inbound functionality.

0:25:49.6 S1: Okay.

0:25:49.7 S11: Today because we started with Outbound. And so now I'm feeling the real pain of, like, oh, God. I felt like I had solved this problem because we were catching so much through Covey at that top of funnel, which was amazing. We were still relying, like, the team then had the sophistication to know, like, something feels off about this interview, so they're going to go just double check on it, and then we relay that information back to our partners so that that, umm, tool gets stronger. But now not having it, it's like 100% of the team is doing it. So it's a problem, that, like, we essentially need to implement that tool as soon as possible because it's like we're... You know, 100% of it is relying on the recruiters who don't have the sophistication. When I got through the front door, they were actually telling me that they were asking candidates to show them their ID in the interview.

0:26:30.3 S1: Wow.

0:26:31.3 S11: , so I was like, please stop doing that immediately. Umm, but, like, it was... They didn't know what else to do, right? I don't fault them for that. They felt like they were putting the business at risk. Sort of similarly to what you were saying. Like, we, umm, we're a compliance organization, so we have access to all these motor vehicle records, all of these, umm, compliance forms, background checks...

0:26:47.0 S1: Yeah.

0:26:49.0 S11: Drug screening, the whole shebangs. Like, we have very sensitive data in our platform and the recruiters, I think just like they're well intentioned with trying to be the gatekeeper, but it's just really difficult to do. And when we ran into it at Engine, we called the team at Covey and basically said, like, we need your partnership to help us solve this problem.

0:27:04.0 S1: Yeah.

0:27:06.0 S11: And we were really effective in that. And so that's where you can easily go to an organization and see the value of, like, I know this works, I've seen it work. And you can really feel being back at sort of square one. The pain is super real. Umm, and I'm sure people here have their own examples of teams are just scrambling to try to figure out, like, what do you do to counter it, you know?

0:27:22.0 S1: Yeah, Jay, how much human element goes into the process for you?

0:27:26.5 S12: Yeah. So, umm, I think we started to operate with a linear inbound team, so I had fewer folks doing that. So for me, like, one of the big questions that came up from team is like, well, what if... What if we miss somebody? Like, what if the technology weeds somebody out? And I think the answer to me is quite simple. It's like, I'd rather miss somebody because if you have a good sourcing team, your team will just go find that person anyways, right? So, like, of course, like, somebody's coming knocking on your door, wanting a job, like, you want to capitalize on that.

0:27:49.3 S1: Mm-hmm.

0:27:52.6 S12: But with the... With risk so great, like, you're okay with technology having a miss and you might lose a candidate because if you have a good sourcing team, again, like, your sourcing team will just find that candidate regardless. It might be a month later, but we'll still go find the...

0:28:04.6 S1: Yeah.

0:28:06.6 S12: , good talent that exists. And when you're finding the talent, it's less likely you're going to run into that fraudulent bits, but at the application levels, you're definitely more likely to... To run into those. So to me, it's just a safer risk to let technology pass up on somebody for whatever signals they got. And the nice thing about platform like Covey is like, it tells you why somebody was rejected. So, one of the things that I did have my team do is do a lot of A, B testing, go look at, you know, candidates that were rejected, spot check every five, 10 candidates and really validate. Like, would that... Would that be somebody you would reject? Umm, and so with a lot of that A, B testing, we got more and more confidence that, like, look, even at this point, if there's a few percentage of the applicants that we do miss because technology got it wrong. Like, that's a margin of error we're okay living with.

0:28:45.4 S11: Mm-hmm.

0:28:46.4 S1: Derek.

0:28:47.5 S13: I think for us, especially because working in blockchain and crypto being such a nascent field, not all of the engineering resumes are going to, you know... Are going to kind of mirror what a successful resume may have looked like 10, 15 years ago, right? , especially if they're working in... In certain languages like rust, new things like that. And so we were often seeing less than a, 10th of a percent actually make it through. But that 10th of a percent I was making it through are superstars in... In the industry. And they're not floating on a LinkedIn. They may be on, like, Twitter, X, or like a clubhouse, right? And so they're finding their way in... Into our, umm... Into our applicant pool. So we have to... We have to find them. And by the time our... Our team is full cycle, where we're six people. And so when I started noticing we're spending probably four to six hours a week on inbound just to make sure we're not losing those people, right? That's when we're like, all right, we need... We need a tool that we can train, cross-collaborated on, umm, and can kind of compound our... Our learnings. And for us, that was covey. And so I think probably within the first three weeks, we trimmed down our inbound close to 80%, right? So, umm, and especially, like, once we added and that... That was over, you know. So to give an example, like, we're getting about 8000 applicants a week with just five job slots now that we have like 20 job slots as, we're... We're getting over 20,000 plus a month.

0:30:07.5 S1: Right.

0:30:08.5 S13: And a lot of our... We don't have a lot of evergreen roles or very niche... Niche openings. And so, we really want to get to those as much as we can. Of course we're going to do the sourcing end of it, but now it's actually giving us back the time to source more properly and honestly. Just, we want to spend as much time in person with the candidates, as possible. And so I think that's the biggest win for us is getting the time back with the candidates.

0:30:32.5 S2: Here's another segment from our AI session series called Hiring Expenses Reduction with Sean MacMillan, VP of HR at Captain D's. What problem made you move into the direction of technology?

0:30:41.8 S14: Yeah, I just wanted to take care of the people that worked for us and the people that wanted to work for us. And... And I knew we needed a better way to do that. And I went searching around, all around for the best places to have that done. And you know, we wound up going with Paradox rose to the top.

0:31:01.2 S1: So two years ago, you started. What did you walk into? What kind of processes, kind of what antiquated system did you come into?

0:31:04.8 S14: Paper applications.

0:31:07.0 S1: And talk about the... The... How did you sell it to the higher-ups that these are investments we're going to make and here's why we're making them.

0:31:14.0 S14: , it was just clunky. I think there were literally 18, 19 steps a candidate had to take to... To get... And we just knew that wasn't part of the future. It's not what the candidates do now, I'm on my phone, I want it to go fast. And we're competing for those people. And if we're going to be competitive in the space, we had to have a way to do that. And that's, you know, the pitch to the... To leadership was there's a better way to do this, there's a more efficient way to do this. And it's not... As a matter of fact, it's not going to cost us anymore. It's going to cost us less because we're less reliant on sponsored ads, things of that nature.

0:31:47.2 S1: I want to dig into the numbers for a second. Talk about the improvement from going to the old system to the new system. What did you see?

0:31:58.3 S14: Sure. We've been live not quite a year now in Paradox, and, we've already seen a 38% reduction in turnover, on our hourly roles., we call them guest specialists. Our team members, seen a 38% reduction in that already. So we're quite happy with the product. A lot of that we attribute to, again, we talked about targeting who we were looking for. We attribute that to, the assessments that you can maximize Paradox with the traitify assessments., it just gives our managers a better way to find out who's a... Who's a good fit for the organization.

0:32:30.1 S2: Everyone wants to modernize HR with AI, but how? Well, Allyn Bailey, senior director of comms at Smartrecruiters, she has some answers. Here they are. So for... For companies especially that have been piloting that you've been talking about, they're probably going to pilot a chunk...

0:32:47.8 S15: Mm-hmm.

0:32:47.9 S2: A task, a specific task that takes a lot of time and it demonstrates to the C suite, hey, look, we're making big progress, but we've only done this right. What is that task that you guys are seeing right now for these teams?

0:32:59.8 S15: You're not... You're going to... You know what it is?

0:33:02.2 S2: It's got to be something boring.

0:33:03.8 S15: Scheduling.

0:33:04.7 S2: Yes.

0:33:05.1 S15: It's scheduling. Which by the way drives me crazy. Because I'm like, is this seriously the biggest problem we have? But honestly it is the thing that people get most excited about solving because it takes time.

0:33:16.8 S2: Because it sucks.

[laughter]

0:33:18.8 S15: It sucks, it is horribly complicated, I got too many calendars, etcetera.

0:33:21.8 S2: Yeah.

0:33:25.5 S15: And I think this is a great example of approaching the problem differently.

0:33:28.2 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:33:28.3 S15: So scheduling is the issue and for most people it is because it is an efficiency problem. It is... It's complicated and it's hard to do just to get calendars to mesh up...

0:33:37.8 S2: Yeah.

0:33:37.9 S15: And etcetera, right?

0:33:38.4 S2: Yeah.

0:33:39.3 S15: We actually took a second lens onto it and said but okay, let's assume I can solve that because theoretically we can and we're already solving that, right?

0:33:45.2 S2: Right.

0:33:46.5 S15: What then becomes the next root problem? The next root problem that AI actually helps us solve is, who should be interviewing. How do I determine based on the role that I'm leveraging.

0:33:56.0 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:33:59.6 S15: Or looking for or based on the type of individuals that I'm looking to interview. And maybe that, differs for each role depending on the applicant, etcetera, who the best person is to pull into that interview cycle. How many times do we have people sitting there trying to figure out who should be on the interview team, what are the questions they should be asking, how do I then assess the information they brought it in some sort of simplified way so that everybody has a even playing card to look at. Those are problems AI can now solve.

0:34:28.5 S1: Yeah.

0:34:30.7 S15: So scheduling is the root issue, but we can actually go at it deeper now and provide intelligence and insights that allows it to be an even better process.

0:34:37.3 S2: Yeah.

0:34:37.5 S15: To me that's the exciting piece.

0:34:37.8 S1: Our resident analytics junkie talks. Fake applicants, AI fatigue and HR ROI. That's right. Fan favorite. Tyler Weeks, Managing VP of Tech analytics and Research at Marriott is back on the Chad and Cheese. On the ROI side of the house. There are many different points it seems like of light that you can start to pull instead of soft savings.

0:35:02.9 S16: Mm-hmm.

0:35:04.9 S2: You can... You can start to demonstrate perspective hard impact on bottom line.

0:35:05.7 S16: Mm-hmm.

0:35:11.9 S2: Is that something that I mean you're trying to formulate to be able to not just time means something, but generally it also means something with regard to getting somebody in a... In a seat faster. Because that seat that nobody in it there's no productivity, right? So what about that aspect of it as well?

0:35:27.6 S16: That... That... That... That one is like always been... Like if you're... If you're sort of like making a case to CFO...

0:35:30.2 S1: Yeah.

0:35:30.8 S16: Or you know, your finance controller about investing in software, that one's always a sticky one because I can multiply hours and take assumptions and no matter what assumptions you pick, I can save the company a billion dollars with onboarding faster. Like the... It just multiplies in a way that like, makes it look like it's a slam dunk.

0:35:55.3 S2: Okay.

0:35:55.4 S16: I should be able to buy any software I want, umm, based on that.

0:36:01.7 S2: Mm-hmm. Doesn't work that way.

0:36:02.2 S16: Umm, it doesn't... It doesn't work that way. It's hard because what you are... What you... Cost avoidance isn't nearly as powerful as cost reduction.

0:36:10.8 S2: Yeah.

0:36:16.3 S16: And the way onboarding, like that time to productivity often gets sort of accounted for is more like a cost avoidance. Like I brought somebody on and umm, they were less productive and I avoided that lack of productivity. So it just... It's a tough thing to... You can do it and people do do that successfully often, but you really have to do... You really do have to look at like, reducing software costs.

0:36:43.5 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:36:43.6 S16: Like overall. Umm, I do see like, as... As platforms have gotten more mature.

0:36:50.5 S2: Mm-hmm.

0:36:50.6 S16: Over the last 10 years. Like... Like really the HR tech space has... Has... Has consolidated in a type of way. Umm, not really around specific vendors, but around like bundles of capability.

0:36:56.4 S2: Features.

0:37:04.9 S16: Features are all...

0:37:05.0 S2: They are all looking like each other.

0:37:06.5 S16: Yeah. Like, umm... Can I name names?

0:37:11.2 S2: Sure, of course.

0:37:11.4 S16: I mean, like, if you told me six years ago, seven years ago, that Paradox, Hirevue and Phenom would basically all have the same features.

0:37:24.5 S2: Yeah.

0:37:24.7 S16: I would have like...

0:37:24.8 S2: Left you out of the room.

0:37:26.3 S16: Left. I would not have like, could have couldn't have conceived of a world where they would like.

0:37:31.3 S2: But it's convergence though, right?

0:37:31.5 S16: Yeah. They're kind of converging...

0:37:32.1 S2: Yeah.

0:37:33.1 S16: On a similar thing. I think. What... And with these agents that are coming out now, I think what you're going to start seeing is more companies sort of finding a happy medium between best in breed and enterprise, where you've got a good foundation that's... That enterprise centric. Umm, and then you've got overlays or plugins that are best in breed where they're going to make the most strategic difference.

0:38:00.2 S1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. How good was the content from Wreckfest? I mean, seriously. Here's another one live on stage, where Shay Johnson, who's the VP of strategic HR partnerships at Compass Group, tells us how they saved 1.5 million in just six months through Better candidate conversion. Talk about the quality. Did it stay the same, improve or get worse?

0:38:23.5 S17: No, it's, that... That's what I mean by the conversion to hire has improved from... From both sources because of not only the re-engagement that you're getting from someone like Dalia, but where we're able to now sit down and really see what's happening inside of Indeed. And kind of put the pressure on them to be like, if you want our money, the matching has to continuously get better. How you're working through us with... You know how we actually structure our jobs and how you're receiving them and how they're being... The visibility that you're giving to them. If you... If you want to keep getting money for sponsorship like that, we need to see candidate quality improve because we no longer have a volume challenge. We were... Three years ago it was like, volume is the problem. Now we're in the complete opposite end.

0:38:58.0 S1: Yeah.

0:38:59.0 S17: Where we're... We're focused on volume optimization, quality, all those things. So the quality has gotten better not only from the re-engagement strategy, but it's forced Indeed to be like, we've... We've got to get better with quality too.

0:39:08.3 S1: So for...

0:39:10.3 S17: They can't just look at us and be like, well, we already are getting your money, so what do we care?

0:39:12.0 S2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If they want their money, they got to rise.

[overlapping conversation]

0:39:16.7 S1: They're returning your calls. If they're spending a million and a half dollars less on, on their product.

[overlapping conversation]

0:39:20.6 S17: I would say that they're...

0:39:24.6 S2: They're very motivated.

0:39:24.9 S17: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

0:39:26.5 S1: Well, that's it, kids. Happy holidays and we will see you on the other side. Thank you so much for listening., tell your family, tell your friends, tell all your peers, tell your LinkedIn, tell whatever. Come and check out a little Chad and cheese. Sowash out.

0:39:35.8 S18: Thank you for listening to what's it called 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. So many cheeses. And not one word. So 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.chad cheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.