Indeed Smart Screen Dumps

When Indeed launches “smart” screening, you expect precision. Instead? It’s more like tossing spaghetti at the wall and calling it innovation. Between half-baked features, pulled products, and black-box scoring that screams legal risk, the boys dig into why Indeed keeps rolling out tech… then quietly yanking it back.

Is this product evolution — or a staffing company pretending to be a tech company? Grab your popcorn.

Also in this episode:

• LinkedIn tries comedy (yes, really) while battling an AI-driven SEO apocalypse

• Google flips the monetization switch on Jobs — because Google isn’t a charity

• Phenom goes bargain hunting for AI with another acquisition

• White-collar job extinction panic: hype, reality, or vendor marketing?

• AI moving from “tool” to fully embedded system and why that changes everything

• Towards Justice legal clouds gathering over AI hiring tech and candidate scoring

• Plus: history lessons, hot takes, and the usual bourbon-fueled chaos you didn’t ask for but absolutely need

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:34.539)

Never trust a big butt and a smile. What's up boys and girls? This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel. I love the smell of napalm in the morning Cheesman.

Chad Sowash (00:45.086)

and this is Chad that talked to me like I'm a 12 year old. So wash.

Joel Cheesman (00:49.417)

And on this episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, LinkedIn finds its funny bone, Google for jobs finds its profit motive, and white collar workers better just find another line of work. Let's do this.

Joel Cheesman (01:08.267)

What's up, Chad? You settling into Europe?

Chad Sowash (01:10.894)

Yeah and just the two of us. Just the two of us. We can make it. Cream baby. her I'm sorry. Peaches and herb. Yep. Peaches and herb. That's how we go together. Yeah. I miss her already. miss her already. yes.

Joel Cheesman (01:14.815)

Just the two of us reunited and it feels so good. Peaches and herb. Peaches and herb. Peaches and cream was you and Julie last night. That's you and Julie last night is the peaches and cream.

So, banter. got Olympics, we got people passing away, we got, what else? What else, what do wanna talk about? What's going on?

Chad Sowash (01:39.778)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (01:44.117)

yeah. I gotta say, you know, it's very sad seeing a guy like James Van Der Beek die young, and he did. But when you die with, in and around, Robert Duvall and Jesse Jackson, it's just like, that's a great group, right? So put a positive spin on it, okay? Hollywood stars.

Joel Cheesman (01:52.221)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Joel Cheesman (02:00.917)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (02:12.098)

You know, Duvall and Vanderbeek and then this this magnet, this this Jesse Jackson ran for president twice for goodness sakes. You know, it's just hate to see hate to see great people leave this earth. Although James Vanderbeek, he stepped the level on this one.

Joel Cheesman (02:18.73)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (02:28.243)

Mm-hmm. Were you a Dawson's Creek fan chat? I have a hard time seeing you sitting down with a bowl of popcorn and watching Dawson's Creek. How about Friday Night Lights? Was that something that, the movie, right, that he was on? Yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:34.868)

No, no, I did not watch Dawson's Creek.

Chad Sowash (02:43.598)

I did not watch it religiously. Yes, I did watch the movie. Yes, I just, I couldn't get into the whole, you know, episodic thing. And there was, mean, back then, kids, might not believe this, but back then TV, we didn't have on demand. So you couldn't just watch it when you wanted. You actually had to watch it when it came out. I, yes, yes, no.

Joel Cheesman (02:50.76)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (03:02.645)

Premeditated, yes, you had to do that. You and I talked about the Olympics, Winter Olympics. Portugal apparently doesn't have anybody participating because they have no medals. Maybe they are. They're drinking, I guess.

Chad Sowash (03:08.741)

yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (03:13.806)

The Portuguese are good at many, many things, but when it comes to the Olympics and or sport, generally, generally, it is what we call the European football. And for a country of 10 million people who are ranked well above a country that is 340 million, being the US in soccer, you know,

Joel Cheesman (03:28.081)

Okay, yeah.

Chad Sowash (03:42.754)

You just you got to be disciplined and you got to pick your sport. Not to mention it's not the most it's not the most let's say lavish country right there. It's not a very rich country. So playing a game like soccer is much easier than trying to buy pads for football or golf clubs or or a toboggan. There is that yeah there really is.

Joel Cheesman (03:46.067)

Alright.

Joel Cheesman (03:53.14)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (03:57.226)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (04:01.259)

I'm guessing there's no skiing anywhere in Portugal. There's no like fake snow. Is there really?

Chad Sowash (04:12.234)

Up in the inner belt, I guess you could say. Yeah, there's, because there's so much elevation, but yeah, there's definitely snow.

Joel Cheesman (04:15.069)

inner belt.

Joel Cheesman (04:21.789)

Who knew? Who knew? Well, the US US is doing really well in metal count. I think they're up there. And by the time we record this and it goes, it's published, there will be a new women's hockey gold medalist team, which will either be Canada or the US. So we'll be we'll be watching that at our house on opposite sides of the living room probably on that one. But but that's Favorite Robert Deval movie or role?

Chad Sowash (04:34.124)

that's big.

Joel Cheesman (04:53.471)

You got Godfather, Apocalypse Now.

Chad Sowash (04:55.99)

Yeah, God apocalypse now is great. Don't get me wrong. Godfather. mean, being the consigliere. I mean, that is he's that that's definitely what he's known as. But it's really hard to come down to a single movie for a guy. It's like Al Pacino, right? I mean, just it's like what movie it's like, there's not one. He's so good in so many movies. I just I love the guy. He was so amazing. He reminds me of kind of like Gene Hackman, who was in so much.

Joel Cheesman (05:12.383)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (05:24.458)

in a certain time frame, like in the 80s. So many good movies, so many good movies. It's like you just can't pick one. It's amazing.

Joel Cheesman (05:25.449)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (05:30.867)

Yeah. When I was in 1984, my my, think I was in sixth grade, fifth grade. Anyway, we had an assignment, there was a presidential election. And our assignment was to cut out newspaper articles. Remember those kids cut out newspaper articles, put them in a sort of a book of sort of chronicling the election. And Jesse Jackson was a prime figure in that election. So anyway, I was I was thinking about

Chad Sowash (05:43.032)

Yeah. Yeah, Reagan.

Joel Cheesman (06:00.491)

some quotes that he had and I wanted to leave Leave this banter on one of Jesse's quotes in 1984. He said as a candidate He said quote our mission to feed the hungry to clothe the naked to house the homeless to teach the illiterate to provide jobs for the jobless and to choose the human race over the nuclear race I thought that was an appropriate solid quote from Jesse Jackson

Chad Sowash (06:04.995)

Yeah.

Please do.

Chad Sowash (06:28.342)

And still, still good for today. Still good for today. Yeah. Because we have not achieved any of those.

Joel Cheesman (06:31.369)

Still good for today. Nuclear's taking on a whole different role today, but yes, yes, yes. 40 years later, we'll still working on all of that stuff, gang, all that stuff.

Chad Sowash (06:46.328)

Yes, yes, please.

Joel Cheesman (06:46.571)

All right, I'm going to go first on shout outs. This is a this is an odd one. You're probably familiar with Cal she polymarket. This isn't a commentary on betting and the values of or the the not so valuables of. So calcium is interesting. If you don't know, you bet on things that aren't necessarily sports, you can vote on sports or bet on sports, but also, you know, when will the Supreme Court give a verdict on tariffs or

Chad Sowash (06:53.634)

Yes. this is horrible. Yes. Yes. Anything.

Joel Cheesman (07:15.179)

Who will the democratic nominee be in 2026? Like you can bet all these things, societally, culturally, politically, and business-wise, you can bet on things. And I was shocked to find out that our industry is represented on Cal-She, Deal and Rippling specifically. So interestingly, Deal at the time of this recording is the number two most likely to IPO this year.

Chad Sowash (07:43.732)

wow.

Joel Cheesman (07:44.069)

after OpenAI. Rippling is down, down a ways at a 17 % chance. Rippling or a deal right now is a 44 % chance. Interesting. We've talked about that on the prediction show. So we'll see if it finally comes true. According to the markets, it will. The other one is will Rippling win its lawsuit against deal? Right now that is that is at a 60 % chance of yes, they will win.

Chad Sowash (08:04.878)

That's a good one. It's a very good one.

Joel Cheesman (08:11.573)

their lawsuit against the shit show that is the lawsuit with Rippling. So I thought that was interesting. out to Kalshi and the markets and especially Dio, the gift that keeps on giving even in the betting markets.

Chad Sowash (08:15.086)

Hahaha

Chad Sowash (08:32.504)

Like we're in the seventh ring of hell when we start talking about fucking those markets. My shout out, a little different, a little different, but because here at the Chad and Cheese podcast, we go deep, right? Not just the tip, we go deep. That's right, that's right. Seriously, we wanted to go deeper into better understanding the different legal aspects of the eightfold lawsuit. So we invited Rachel Dempsey, the associate director of Towards Justice.

Joel Cheesman (08:45.631)

Not just the tip, people.

Joel Cheesman (08:56.032)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (09:01.31)

onto the show this week. Go ahead and play that footage.

Chad Sowash (09:46.51)

That's a teaser, kids. That's a teaser. Shout out to Rachel and her team over at Torch Justice who are fighting for the people, the little people, the little guy class action, in helping and also helping us understand, at least the industry understand better how these new AI platforms should be treating candidates, their data and the transparency around all of it. And you can check that full episode out, which is entitled Unfolding the Eightfold Lawsuit. That was a great title, Cheeseman.

Chad Sowash (10:15.649)

Wherever you get your podcast. Check it out.

Joel Cheesman (10:18.719)

Such a tease, such a tease.

Chad Sowash (10:20.526)

Yes, that's what we do.

Joel Cheesman (10:24.005)

I got another shout out that came to me while that was that was playing. know, you know, I, you know, I love a good a good poll, Chad. And nothing, nothing like a LinkedIn poll. Anyway, I asked, I had a had a poll question last week. The the labor, the jobs numbers came out from the government, which were quite contrasted to the private numbers like ADP in the Jolt report, etc. And I just wanted to know, do you believe the January numbers?

Chad Sowash (10:47.008)

Imagine that.

Joel Cheesman (10:52.971)

About 400 people replied, 80 % don't believe the numbers. So even if they're real or not, the perception out there is that it's all bullshit. And that's a bad road to be on when the world's professionals don't believe what the government is telling them.

Chad Sowash (10:55.822)

Yeah, not bad.

Chad Sowash (11:12.49)

It is. Yeah, it is. Well, and it's it's also interesting that this administration is the one who said everything was rigged and then we're looking at them and going, hmm, it feels like you're doing a good amount of the rigging.

Joel Cheesman (11:28.587)

Yeah, mean when you recalculate it to 800,000, I think that was the recalculation in 25, I mean like yeah, it's just messed up. What is true in the numbers, Chad, is the number of free stuff that we give out. Let's hear about that.

Chad Sowash (11:32.226)

Yeah, give me a fucking break.

Chad Sowash (11:44.576)

sexy man.

Joel Cheesman (12:35.029)

Catholics.

Chad Sowash (12:53.742)

The forward slash. I mean, I love he just he went for it on the forward slash.

Joel Cheesman (12:58.283)

He forgot to mention that our t-shirts look great in a kilt. That's the next video and I want to see him stand up and see what's going on underneath that table.

Chad Sowash (13:03.534)

they do.

I'm not sure I wanna see him stand up because we might see too much. might see too much. Real quick, we got some travel, kids. We got some travel. And just in case you forget, travel is sponsored by our friends.

Travel sponsored by our friends over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. If you're tired of agencies that just slap a logo on things that call it employer brand, take a little field trip over to shaker.com. They actually know recruitment, marketing, beyond buzzwords, mixing brand, talent attraction, martech, and real insights into something that you know works. So March 24th through the 26th, I'm going to be at Here for Share. I don't know if that's how you say it.

I'm new to this European thing, this European thing. If you're American, the way that it's spelled and the way that we would say it is Hertfordshire, England. Yeah, it's north of London and between Cambridge and Oxford, which it just feels like that's my place. The kids that bring us Recfest, they are introducing the Resourcing Leaders Exchange, which is the RLX. It's something new. What is the...

Joel Cheesman (13:53.737)

It probably isn't.

Joel Cheesman (14:02.571)

Hartfordshire.

Chad Sowash (14:22.324)

RLX you might ask, well that's a good question. It's a fully hosted two day retreat for senior TA leaders. No vendor pitches, no expo halls, no wasted time pretending a stress ball as innovation kids. Just smart people, real strategy, pure insights and practical takeaways with actual time to think and explore solutions and maybe over a whiskey, an Irish whiskey or a smooth scotch with your buddy Chad. Your bond by the way.

If you're one of those high level recruiting leaders and you'd like some time away to talk to your peers, learn more about AI, agentic, and all the other cool stuff that kids are talking about, just roll over to resourcingleaders.co and sign up today.

Joel Cheesman (15:08.767)

Nice. Have you been to Cambridge? Are you going to spend some time there or just in the space between, if you will?

Chad Sowash (15:10.894)

I'm not, not yet.

Yeah, depends on how much time we have in country. So I got to take a look. There's a lot of events that are coming up. So pretty stoked.

Joel Cheesman (15:23.849)

Yeah, it's cool. There's Newton's apple tree is there. You can enjoy a punting boat ride, I think it's called. There's a nice ghost tour. It's quite pleasant. Yeah, quite pleasant.

Chad Sowash (15:31.212)

Okay.

Chad Sowash (15:39.892)

love a good ghost tour. Love a good... When you go on the ghost tour, is there anything like the ghost apple? mean, because Newton's there. Is there any Newton-ish kind of ghosts?

Joel Cheesman (15:45.738)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (15:52.275)

I don't. Did you know Isaac Newton died poor? This is a total side note. Something I learned. There was there was a stock. I don't know, a meme stock in the day. South the South something company. Anyway, it spiked in price. Newton bought a bunch. It went up again and crashed and Sir Isaac Newton.

Chad Sowash (15:57.878)

Really? No clue.

Joel Cheesman (16:19.999)

died, I don't want to say penniless, but very poor and people don't know that story about him. It can happen to the smartest people out there. He wasn't listening to Chad and cheese and advice on companies and what's going on. He wasn't into listening to our topics, which leads us to

Chad Sowash (16:29.998)

Apparently.

Joel Cheesman (16:42.109)

I did not have Sir Isaac Newton on my bingo card today. All right, Chad, Phenom has acquired BeApplied, a developer of AI-driven cognitive assessment solutions to enhance its skills-based hiring infrastructure. The acquisition will integrate adaptive assessments into Phenom's AI platform to validate candidate capabilities and reduce hiring bias. Terms were not disclosed. All right, Chad.

Chad Sowash (16:45.026)

Did not either, I did not either.

Mm.

Excuse me.

Hmm.

Chad Sowash (17:08.61)

Surprise.

Joel Cheesman (17:10.239)

Big deal, little deal or no deal, Phenom acquires Be Applied.

Chad Sowash (17:15.992)

Yeah, I think it's a deal. Let's just let's put it. Let's put it that way. Skills based hiring structure. mean, so many times vendors talk at a PhD level about their products when in reality you should be talking to us like we're in the sixth grade, right? Like we're 12 years old. So for the listeners out there, I'd like to I'd like to do a little bit of that for myself. Right. So I can better understand this. So if you just stick with me here.

So the B applied cognitive based assessments, well, cognitive based assessments refers to an evaluation of an individual's mental abilities, such as memory, reasoning, attention, and language to understand how their brain processes information. So these assessments are used across diverse fields to predict performance, identify impairments or

tailor different development strategies. I'm a huge proponent of assessing skills that are specific to the job. Use of systems, troubleshooting, problem solving, much like our buddy Quincy Valencia was talking about when she brought up Tadia in her last interview last week. A platform that focuses on proving actual skills that an individual can do what they say they can do.

Joel Cheesman (18:34.677)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (18:42.794)

And that's a big reason why I started advising Taddeo a few years ago. But unlike Taddeo's methods, over the years, cognitive tests have demonstrated significant demographic bias, legal and ethical risks, and a negative impact on candidate experience. And I don't know if that's the case with Beaplied, personally, because I haven't audited it. Let's just say that. But.

Joel Cheesman (19:04.746)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (19:09.294)

It's always something that keeps me away from most cognitive assessment vendors, right? Needless to say, this company has been around for a good amount of years, right? And has skills, jobs-based tests, which again, I'm more focused on the jobs-based. Is it actually necessary for the job or is it something that you want just to kick somebody out? It'll be interesting how Phenom pulls this into their ecosystem, what they use and what they don't use.

Joel Cheesman (19:32.81)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (19:38.976)

So I think much like their last acquisition, there's a lot, as we had said, this is a time of consolidation. There's going to be a lot of this. And Phenom, obviously, they're out there on the clearance rack and they're picking stuff up. Good for them. Good for them. Let's see how they use it, though. That's the big key.

Joel Cheesman (20:02.283)

So I have two sides of this coin. I'll start with B applied. They just call it applied. I don't know where the B comes in. They just needed it to get the URL, I guess. But yes, you're right. This company has been around for 10 years. They're VC backed. Pretty modest 2.4 million, a little over 2.4 million invested, which I guess in 2016 was a pretty good nut. They ran out of time.

Like 10 years for with VC is a really long time. So they were getting to that end of the road anyway, um, that they needed to liquidate this thing. Um, two years ago, they had 32 employees, nice little business, nice little startup on a nice trajectory. Uh, as, as, as of the sale date, they had 13 employees. So if you're good at math, 32 is a lot more than 13.

So this was not a company on a growth trajectory. They were cutting costs. People were like, this is a sinking boat. I'm out of here. Little thing that I look at is what's going on on their social media.

Chad Sowash (21:11.14)

nothing.

Joel Cheesman (21:12.395)

It's a, it's a dead giveaway. If you have a Twitter account and there's nothing on it, like it's a dead giveaway that there ain't shit going on at your company, particularly today when there's AI tools to like automate posts and shit. Um, the last Instagram post from be applied was in March of 24. That should tell you that the lights were off. Uh, there might've been some people home with the lights were off. So as far as I'm concerned, the VCs were like,

Chad Sowash (21:14.392)

Yes. Nothing. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (21:40.115)

Let's go get rid of this. Maybe there was a connection to phenom and they started ship selling this thing, started getting on the phone and phenom bit and acquired this company. I have no idea about their, their technology. I don't, I don't think I've ever seen them at a conference or that we've talked to them. They're in London. So I don't remember them ever being at rec fast. Maybe they were. So there's, there's nothing there. I can't really speak to their technology now to phenom.

Chad Sowash (21:59.096)

Mm-mm.

Joel Cheesman (22:08.587)

Phenom seems to be like a poor man's workday in terms of strategy. They're like, okay, we gotta be like workday, but we don't have workday dollars. We can't buy paradox. like, so let's go to Marshall's, let's go to Ross and see what we can get. And they seem to be scooping up these companies that are on deep discount. Don't dis Goodwill, they do a good service. so look, I...

Chad Sowash (22:25.57)

or the goodwill.

Chad Sowash (22:30.03)

They do! I wasn't dissing them.

Joel Cheesman (22:36.693)

There are pre-chat GPT companies and there are post-chat GPT companies and Phenom is very much in that pre-chat GPT world. The software universe as we know is under pressure, like valuing these companies and Phenom, if it's happening to Salesforce, it's happening to work day or it's happening to Phenom. And their investors are saying we need to like get some value into this company. So like, let's go buy some AI businesses, this skills assessment businesses.

Chad Sowash (22:40.718)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (23:06.569)

When you watch the video on phenom, from, think it's mahi is, their CEO talking about his acquisition. It's kind of sad. It's kind of like he was in between lunch and like a meeting and they pulled him in to do this video. And it almost looks like a hostage video. It's it's just like, I can't, I can't really do it justice. You just got to go out and if you're, you if you want to go, go search the phenom video of

Chad Sowash (23:23.746)

That's a male on his chin.

Joel Cheesman (23:33.407)

the announcement. And yes, it is. It's a sad, I don't know if the background is the real background. It works like a, like a, it's one of the, you know, pre pre precondition backgrounds, but yeah, it's, it's about, so in short, I think this was a company that had no other options. They're probably really lucky that they cashed out a little bit on phenom and for phenom, it's like, it's, I don't want to say desperation, but man, it's, we got to like justify our valuation.

Chad Sowash (23:34.765)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (24:03.285)

their annual conference is coming up. I'm interested to see who shows up, what kind of buzz it gets, what kind of heat it, heat it, heat it, heat it.

Chad Sowash (24:15.022)

They spend a lot of money on it. They spend a lot of money on it.

Joel Cheesman (24:19.829)

For Philly, yeah, it's a lot of money. I am phenom. Let's go.

Chad Sowash (24:25.326)

Are you dissing, dissing Philly? that hurts. you're gonna get the John. You're gonna get the John. Yeah. Well, we talked about this last week with Workday, right? I mean, the market today is not reality, but yet they're getting, we're still getting pressure and Workday is getting pressure. And even though Phenom is not a public company, they're still gonna get pressure from it, right? Because that is what's driving the mindset of all these organizations.

Joel Cheesman (24:28.647)

I love Philly. It's just not a high rent district. It's not a high rent neighborhood. It's not a high rent neighborhood.

Joel Cheesman (24:48.587)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (24:54.058)

especially companies who want to buy. And for me, it's not real. But unfortunately, these CEOs have to act like it's real and they have to react like it's real. yeah, mean, again, being able to buy these companies on the cheap, why not? Especially if they've got good tech. think, and I've told many startups that I've talked to, there are so many startups that die not because they have bad product, they've got amazing product.

Joel Cheesman (25:21.675)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (25:23.02)

It's because their go to market is shit. this is for all my European startups that are out there that I love, that I love you to death. You guys generally do half-assed go to market compared to US companies because of the type of money that they actually get in seed, pre-seed and seed in series A. Now, it's not your fault, obviously, because the EU has to do a much better job of coming together to be able to pull some money.

Joel Cheesman (25:44.331)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (25:52.866)

But at the end of the day, go-to-market's generally the thing that kills these organizations. They might have amazing tech, amazing smart founders, but they just don't have the go-to-market.

Joel Cheesman (26:03.243)

Well, I will delegate all of our European commentary to you since you are the European on the show. Look, the pressure is real. Workday downgraded today as we record this. The market is not impressed with the new CEO or the strategy around specifically the AI companies that they've acquired. The market is not convinced. So Phenom is sort of a mini workday and I think they're under mince pressure.

Chad Sowash (26:07.534)

I love you all. I love you all. It is shit. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (26:16.238)

I'm crazy.

Chad Sowash (26:25.186)

Ridiculous.

Joel Cheesman (26:33.109)

They've raised a ton of money.

Chad Sowash (26:33.198)

Over the last two years, over the last two years, their revenue is up, oh, like 35%. Yeah, it's like 35, it's like, what the, that's real.

Joel Cheesman (26:40.243)

Work day, yeah. We don't know phenom.

Joel Cheesman (26:45.499)

It's the future, man. People are convinced the future and we'll get to the future with some other. Yeah, stay with us kids. We'll talk about the future. If you want to really feel like, you know, jumping off a building. All right, let's move on to LinkedIn. They've reportedly undergone a major shift in the marketing strategy over there due to significant declines in organic search traffic driven by the rise of AI powered search tools like ChatGPT.

Chad Sowash (26:49.654)

Anyway, anyway, anyway, okay. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (27:14.531)

They apparently suffered a 60 % drop in B2B non-brand awareness driven traffic despite maintaining strong organic rankings. Maybe traditional advertising will help as this new ad is now hitting the airwaves, Chad. Check it out.

Joel Cheesman (28:03.711)

All right, Chad, what's your take on all things LinkedIn this week?

Chad Sowash (28:07.566)

I'm gonna go with the funny ads first, okay? So for all of those people throughout the years that would comment on other people's posts or even create their own posts themselves about content that they believe did not belong on LinkedIn while clutching their pearls, all I have to say is ha ha ha, and now you can fuck right off.

I love it. And it's like from a social media standpoint, I mean, yes, LinkedIn's been a great, it was was branded as a professional network at one time. Nobody can tell me how to be a professional. Right. And that is my space. And but there are always people on LinkedIn, these these influencers or whatever the hell they call themselves at the time, LinkedIn experts on how you should actually treat your LinkedIn. Well, I am me and I will treat it the way that I fucking want to. And I love watching it go from

Joel Cheesman (28:32.671)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (28:58.19)

the professional network to, you know, battle bots at lunch. That's fucking awesome. So all of you again, who told all of us that we couldn't say or do what we wanted on Lincoln, LinkedIn, oh, you can fuck right off. The abandoning SEO side of the house. So with the Gardner predicting a 50 % drop in traditional search volume by 2028 and 94 % of B2B buying groups already using AI.

Joel Cheesman (29:10.517)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (29:25.774)

The keyword first strategy is dead. To me, the research that LinkedIn did was very insightful and literally something that we're going to have to say over and over and over and over and beat into every employer's head because they've got to get it. Content is queen. It is the strongest player on the board. You have to see everything as, and treat it, and treat everything as content.

So something that I love about Gemini is that I can feed YouTube videos in there, right? So this isn't just text. This is also audio. This is video. This is all the way around. I do love, no, I'm not drinking the LinkedIn Kool-Aid. Don't do it. Yeah, I'm not.

Joel Cheesman (30:14.571)

Are you sure? Because it's cherry flavored. I think it's cherry flavored.

Chad Sowash (30:19.692)

I'm not doing it. I do like that they're actually trying to push and help people understand, look, there's another way of doing things. It's not keyword based anymore. It's much different. And they did research and pushed it out. So that was pretty cool. Not too bad by the kids over at LinkedIn.

Joel Cheesman (30:20.616)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (30:37.449)

Yeah, that was that was transparency. That's pretty rare these days. And we've talked about no click search for a long time and that it's obviously impacting tons of websites. I click a lot less. I'm sure I'm just a small, you know, percentage of what's going on. The kids probably aren't clicking. Look, AI gives you the answer. If I go to Google, like I get a summary and that generally is what I need. Now you can click the little, you know, chain link and

Chad Sowash (30:39.712)

yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Joel Cheesman (31:07.273)

see the side or it'll give you references to what's going on. But apparently LinkedIn is saying not a lot of people are clicking those links. And as a result, SEO has changed. we're hearing a lot more about. A E O answer engine optimization kids. And some of the sites I talked to, they're getting more and more traffic from chat, GPT and other, AI, LLMs, et cetera. But it's clear that if you don't have a strategy.

In addition to whatever SEO you're doing, you're doing it wrong. And you're probably seeing your traffic dip. If you're not on social media, if you're not creating multimedia videos, I don't tell people to start a podcast, but it is a way to get extra content out there if it is good content. Unfortunately, if it's zip recruiters podcast, it's not good content. But look, I mean, the game has changed and also makes more important.

Chad Sowash (31:56.174)

lot of content.

Joel Cheesman (32:04.115)

your subscriptions, like email is more important than ever. Direct mail is gaining some steam. SMS marketing, like make sure you have a diverse marketing strategy. And LinkedIn is really showing the way because there's not many more trusted sites like a LinkedIn that's getting really good search results. So they're struggling. I can't imagine what other sites are doing on the, on the ad front.

I love a funny ad. Our ads in our industry have historically been funny. The monkeys at Career Builder. You know, when I grew up was funny. Like we do funny pretty well. LinkedIn has traditionally not done funny well. And this is sort of funny. Like choosing a celery stick at the workplace is kind of funny, I guess. But what struck me as interesting is the target of SMBs.

Chad Sowash (32:35.854)

Yeah, yeah. When I grow up.

Joel Cheesman (32:56.587)

Cause LinkedIn has historically not targeted SMBs. I have wax poetic about zipper crew dropping the ball on being sort of the brand where SMBs go to post their jobs. They left that space long time ago and the world loves a vacuum. So LinkedIn, here we go. Let's fill some of that vacuum. And as we're going to talk about later, white collar jobs are less than they used to be. Those were the sweet spot for LinkedIn. So if LinkedIn is saying like, well, geez, if we think

Chad Sowash (33:07.502)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (33:25.363)

white collar jobs are dying or there's going to be a lot fewer of them in the future. We better focus on SMB jobs and more like essential working jobs because we don't do that very well. So this is a nice step into that world. we'll see if they can make a dent, blue collar people joining LinkedIn. I'm not sure that's, that's happening in any big way, but if they can make shit funny, everyone can, join in on the fun. That's my comment on LinkedIn and I'm stick.

Chad Sowash (33:56.182)

That's perfect.

Joel Cheesman (33:58.336)

Guys, if you like what you've been hearing, please subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. You can see our ugly mugs on YouTube. If you want to just go to youtube.com slash at cheese. We'll be right back to talk a little Google.

Joel Cheesman (34:18.123)

All right, Chad, hat tip to fanboy and SEO junkie Alexander Tchaikovsky for finding sponsored results when searching for jobs on Google for jobs. He saw links to job descriptions being advertised by Indeed in Munich and other Europeans are reporting similar findings. Quick reminder, Chad, Google is not a charity. Your take on the recent development of ads on Google for jobs.

Chad Sowash (34:24.226)

Good stuff.

Chad Sowash (34:46.306)

Yeah, it just looks like they flipped on the monetization switch. mean, also like someone forgot to flip on the monetization switch at some time. Like, turn that on. But this this makes damn good sense because all of the large language models are spending tons of cash. They are burning cash and knowing Gemini isn't less costly. Google's going to be turning on all the revenue engines that they can. So.

Joel Cheesman (34:56.063)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (35:12.55)

This is a great way to monetize and pay for the coming Gemini jobs elements that I'm sure is going to be blending with Google for jobs in the pipeline, right? So we've already heard about chat GPT's version, like the unimaginative got to sign into your Indeed account first, and then it just sends you to a job on Indeed. We'll call that the basic bitch version, Indeed version. But there are other versions that are out there. I just saw yesterday.

an amazing pilot where hiring companies. Not yet, not yet, not yet. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. no, you can feel it. see, we've been together too long. But I literally just saw a pilot yesterday where hiring companies will be able to feed their jobs directly into Chad GPT. Candidates can search for the company's jobs and then applying to the ATS using an agent, not going through the forms and all that other bullshit, but using their own agent.

Joel Cheesman (35:44.139)

Are you dropping a history lesson? Is a history lesson coming? Okay, I smell it, I smell it. All right, all right.

Chad Sowash (36:10.478)

specific to the company that's built for that company. It's fucking cool. And it's all cool, but why is all of this important? Now it's time for a history lesson.

Chad Sowash (36:26.134)

Okay, kids, back in the late aughts when talent acquisition couldn't spell SEO, literally stole the search results page away from actual hiring companies. So when you would do a branded search for jobs like Coca-Cola jobs, Google would serve up links to Indeed, not Coca-Cola. Why? Because TA didn't understand the power of search optimization and it took some hiring companies

over 10 years to win back their top search results back from Indeed, their own names. They had to win back from Indeed. Now, we have a similar type of a situation from an optimization on the AI side of the house. But instead of search optimization, much as you had said, answer engine, AI optimization, whatever you want to call it, Indeed is creating apps within the LLMs and they are trying to steal those results away. InChat GBT.

in Claude, in Gemini, for all of the big brands that are out there. So if you're listening to me today and you are a brand, Indeed is trying to fucking drink your milkshake right fucking now, right? So job seekers will go to them instead of you, right? Companies can't allow this to happen. So you're going to have to, listen up, instead of losing like you did on Google and Indeed took all your traffic,

On Claude, on ChatGPT and on Gemini, you're going to have to build apps that actually engage those large language models. I saw one demonstrated yesterday. I know that they're coming out into the market. So get ready for due diligence because you're going to want to have your own app within ChatGPT, within these large language models that you don't have to go and like navigate and find you literally there's, there's different search text functionality that does it.

but you're gonna wanna do that now because if you lose it again, you're gonna have to go back to it indeed and spend more money with them instead of keeping it to yourself.

Chad Sowash (38:31.429)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (38:33.035)

Chad, what do I say every time we do the prediction show? There are no wrong predictions. They just haven't happened yet. I don't know how, I don't know if we both predicted this at one point or just one eye, but yeah, Google monetizing Google for jobs was a layup. Uh, it's easy for them to do. Um, I'm surprised it took this long, although it going back to the, the LinkedIn story, there are fewer people clicking shit.

Chad Sowash (38:36.43)

That's right. hasn't happened yet.

Joel Cheesman (39:01.375)

which means they're clicking fewer ads, which means Google is like, how do we, how do we put more ads in there? What's an easy button for more ads? jobs classifieds. That's an easy one. Right. So here in enters paid ads on Google, does not surprise me. In fact, I have a history lesson of my own chat.

Chad Sowash (39:10.22)

Everywhere.

Joel Cheesman (39:24.949)

some of the younger viewers won't know that I was a, an SEO in a previous life and, and loved it and was pretty successful at it. And I remember a conversation probably in four with one of my mentors, Paul Elliott, who doesn't listen to the show. But anyway, Paul shout out to you. I remember conversation with Paul when he, when he made a statement, Google, I think it just fairly recently come out with their pay-per-click stuff. And he said, there will be a day when everything on Google.

Chad Sowash (39:39.99)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (39:54.856)

Is an ad it's paid for by somebody. And I was like, come on. You remember the days when there were no ads on Google, right? Or the ads they did have were, were highlighted in purple and green and crazy colors and shit. Like you're like, come on. Google's great. Cause it's good organic. Well, let's fast forward 20 years. Everything organic is below the fold. with Google, we didn't even envision AI stuff, back then. and here we are with jobs. Like it's all going to be paid shit and,

in, uh, in the screenshots that I saw everything above the fold is an ad on jobs. And this is the where, this is where we are now. Um, so the good news is indeed is going to have to spend more money. Uh, zip recruiter doesn't have any money. So I don't know what the hell they're going to do with their ad spend more LinkedIn ads, more ads everywhere, everybody. Um, so it does not surprise me. Um, at all. What, what I do find interesting is now when you search

Chad Sowash (40:40.014)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (40:54.793)

Before the actual job description, you just see the listing and then where the primary spot is for that job. However, Google decides that. So you're not initially seeing a lot of options until you click on a job, but then you go like, so they're moving you towards more ads. I think they want you to click more ads and this is just where Google is. They are not a charity people. They are here to make money. They are here to make money.

Chad Sowash (41:03.882)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (41:24.649)

Which is good, because pretty soon no one's gonna have money, which leads us to our next story, which, my God, we are just all screwed, everybody.

Chad Sowash (41:28.366)

Hahaha.

Joel Cheesman (41:37.918)

All right, Chad, the narrative around white collar jobs going extinct escalated this week. Thanks to some pretty smart people. Ex presidential candidate Andrew Yang took to Substack to say AI quote will kick millions of white collar workers to the curb in the next 12 to 18 months and quote not to be outdone. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman said all all white collar work will be automated by AI.

in 18 months. Chad, what's your take on all these naysayers predicting the death of white collar work and is podcast host considered a white collar job?

Chad Sowash (42:19.596)

God, that's a very good question. Well, we'll say no, just for the sake of this conversation, to keep anxiety down. There's been so much contradiction of research and information and AI's not working and AI's gonna take everybody's jobs and blah, nobody knows what, yeah, nobody knows what to believe, right? So.

Joel Cheesman (42:39.563)

A lot of it on this show, on interviews we've had. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (42:44.738)

you know, whether you're a true believer like Microsoft's AI CEO, you know, Mustafa Suleiman or just one of those, you know, AI Kool-Aid drinkers, which I think we all are.

Joel Cheesman (42:56.585)

the Kool-Aid today.

Chad Sowash (42:59.756)

I think it's important to go over how smart vendor companies could make widespread AI adoption actually happen because we're seeing reports like MIT saying, know, CEOs aren't seeing any ROI. Well, there's a reason why they're not seeing ROI. We keep talking about how AI isn't giving us the ROI. Well, that's because we're using it as a tool instead of an integrated part of the system.

What's the difference? A tool, very simply, workers have to manually engage the AI, right? I want to write something up. I've got to go to chat GPT. I have to write it up, right? I have a job description. Well, I post a job description. It goes directly into poetry. Our friends over, Adam Gordon and Stephen McGrath, it automatically sucks in.

the job description and it creates all these assets and gives it right back to me. I didn't have to do any of that shit. I didn't have to prompt it. I didn't have to do any of that stuff, right? That's the second part. AI as a part of the system, right? It picks up and does the heavy lifting for you without you having to even lift a fucking finger for God's sakes. Now imagine if you break all that down, all those tasks down into an AI system and the AI can actually execute those tasks.

Joel Cheesman (43:58.559)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (44:22.668)

This is going to be different from company to company, position to position as cultures are different. So, you know, there's going to be different complexity for some jobs. But the point is. Vendors who are smart will build the AI as an integrated part of the system instead of just tools. And if you do that, Mustafa's prediction and how it will be carried out will be much clearer. It will be seen much clearer.

Every time I hear somebody say, well, how's a recruiter going to use it? I automatically think you're missing the fucking point. A recruiter shouldn't be using it. It should be happening in the background. It should be engaging and actually taking tasks off the plate, right? So for me, it's just that simple. That's how technology, that's how AI, that's how automation and agents are literally gonna take over in the background if...

Joel Cheesman (45:04.938)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (45:21.738)

If we execute, if we execute in that manner, if we're creating tools, I think we're fucked. If we're creating integrated systems, then I think we're going to blow up. It's going to be pretty amazing from maybe not a job standpoint, but from a stock market standpoint for maybe a workday.

Joel Cheesman (45:42.623)

And are podcasters okay? Are we safe?

Chad Sowash (45:45.72)

I think we're fine. mean, I personally, I've listened to some of these automated podcasts where they're created, they've generated the Chat GPT script and it's fed into, you know, notebook LLM and they're sterile. They're boring. They're like most other podcasts, right? I think you have to bring, you have to bring character. You have to bring expertise. have to, yeah, I mean, it's,

Sure.

Joel Cheesman (46:11.871)

Not us. Nuance. History lessons.

Chad Sowash (46:14.994)

It's going to be what it is. Yes, exactly. They don't give you a history lesson, and if they do, yes, exactly. They don't have shirtless Scotsmen,

Joel Cheesman (46:21.011)

No history lessons. They don't have a Scottish sound bites for everybody. I'll also add, I just remembered, one of the anthropic security heads, think quit to do poetry. So like people who should know are either making really wild statements or doing things to really upend their life as they know it. I'm with you, dude. Fear and certainty and doubt is real.

I can read this and be like, we're screwed. Or I can listen to an interview that we've done and say, well, it's just because the fed rates are fucked up. Or, or you know, like, are we over hired? And we're just recalibrating that. I mean, that everything makes sense when you hear it. But the more and more smart people, I mean, these aren't crazy cat ladies on the corner. Like these are people with real credentials. And they're they're scared to death.

Chad Sowash (46:58.4)

Yeah. Yes.

Joel Cheesman (47:17.469)

So I don't know what to think other than keep doing what I do. I know AI has made us more efficient. I know that it makes us produce more stuff and save more time and get back a lot of our lives. And maybe that's where we're going. We'll just have chocolates and bourbon every day and just have the notes and everything done and we'll just read it. But what makes me think historically,

Chad Sowash (47:36.142)

You

Chad Sowash (47:40.482)

I already do that.

Joel Cheesman (47:45.67)

my God, are we gonna do another history lesson? What the hell? I love the soundbites so much. In the 1930s, 20 % of the jobs in this country, the US, were agriculture jobs. Flash freezing became a technology, bird's eye, around the 1920s, which I'm not a scientist, basically allowed you to freeze produce.

Chad Sowash (47:47.753)

God, see again.

Joel Cheesman (48:13.619)

and have it taste fresh. Like it wasn't soggy and moldy or whatever, which I guess would have been the case beforehand. So when that technology came out, there were, there were doomsayers talking about the end of agriculture and so many jobs were going to disappear. Well, sure enough, fast forward to today and under 2 % of jobs in the U S are agriculture based. So you could basically say 20 % of the jobs from 1930 are gone because of this technology.

Now it's been a while since the 1930s, a hundred years, and maybe this change will happen a lot quicker and people will have to adapt a lot faster. But we can survive if something really bad does happen. The world wasn't always an eight hour work day. The world wasn't always five days a week that you worked. mean, like things will change and we'll adapt hopefully, but this shit is scary, but there is some scientific historical relevance to say like we will survive.

I think the pain is going to be real for a period of time and maybe we'll adjust and adapt out of it. I don't see a future where we're all on our Oculus headsets, Ready Player One style and living in trailers stacked upon each other in Columbus, Ohio, but I could be wrong. The good news is, Chad, we probably won't be alive to see the demise of humanity. It'll be something our kids will get to view, probably.

Chad Sowash (49:37.91)

Yeah, I have heard many naysayers in that saying that's agriculture. That's that's one industry. That's one segment. This is across all segments, which could be more scary. Right. But again, I think there are opportunities for growth in those in those industries. I hope so. And I also hope that we get an equalization or

something that actually helps is going to have to be the government that actually forces higher pay because when people get paid more they spend it on stuff you know and as we see wages not grow because they have not been growing with regard to inflation versus you know the the upper echelon the the fucking executives if that money is finally gotten down to the people who are going to pay for stuff then that

Joel Cheesman (50:21.599)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (50:36.15)

turns the economy. So, I mean, we have answers to fix this shit. We just have to fix it.

Joel Cheesman (50:42.099)

Yeah, they're not vibe coding at Arby's just so you know, Chad, I know you're concerned about your roast beef getting automated, maybe making it. Guys, guys, if you haven't left us a review, what are you doing? Let us know what you think good or bad. We love to hear from you.

Chad Sowash (50:49.592)

Hmm, maybe 3D printed.

Chad Sowash (50:58.584)

Do you love the history lesson? That's the question.

Joel Cheesman (51:01.34)

us because we love you.

Joel Cheesman (51:09.327)

Have we sounded like old crotchety fuckers in this show? feel like the history lessons, the...

Chad Sowash (51:13.41)

I don't, all the history lessons, I think is, yeah, we're gonna have to cap the history lessons per show.

Joel Cheesman (51:19.883)

All right, well, we're bringing the red meat regardless. Let's talk about Indeed. They've updated their smart screening product. They've temporarily suspended the third-party license verification feature to facilitate quote, more enhancements. During this time, clients won't be charged for their smart screening subscription. Chad, what's Indeed up to with all these updates and these failure to launches?

Chad Sowash (51:23.136)

Okay, okay, okay. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (51:47.026)

Yeah, I think some people in the industry have been confused. And I appreciate and understand the confusion. But I wanted to talk about this for some one single reason, the confusion, because throwing spaghetti at the wall doesn't equal innovation. Taking advantage of customers with quote unquote, new, that's right, air quotes, kids, new sales models.

Joel Cheesman (52:02.357)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (52:14.378)

doesn't equal innovation and creating half-assed tech and launching it to the world and then having to reel it back in doesn't equal innovation. We all need to recalibrate how we think about Indeed because remember after being bought by Recruit Holdings, Indeed is proving to us on a daily basis they are not a tech company. They are a staffing company with shitty tech.

Joel Cheesman (52:41.857)

Which is weird because we had a hidden camera and microphone in the boardroom and here's some unreleased Deco audible. Check this out.

Chad Sowash (52:45.099)

You

Joel Cheesman (52:56.277)

So I don't think they think there's a problem, Chad. I don't know. I had a little bit different take on this and maybe it's because Eightfold is on the brain. But if you look at the smart screening product on Indeed's website, it says the following, and I quote, Indeed smart screening screens and scores candidates based on your objective criteria, then delivers them directly to your ATS so your team can evaluate the right candidates faster. Do I smell sort of a black box...

Chad Sowash (53:23.692)

Hmm, FCRA, FCRA, huh?

Joel Cheesman (53:23.839)

...grading thing going on or some potential risks there to indeed and saying, Hey, let's back off of this and figure it out before this this eightfold thing happens. If they are taking data of profiles and mixing them up and giving you scores like that is a potential threat to indeed as I think we believe it's a threat to everybody who's doing anything like that, which is probably 80 % of our industry at the moment.

Chad Sowash (53:41.314)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (53:47.566)

Yeah, yeah, but in again teaser, so you'll hear this when you listen to the Rachel Dempsey interview is that, and this is the funny part, what you just read is out there in the open, it's marketing, it's the sales. This is when Torch Justice wanted to create this suit and do their research against Eightfold, all they had to do was look at their patents and look at their marketing material. And that really put them in a jam. And when I mean them, I mean Eightfold.

Joel Cheesman (53:54.272)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (54:17.506)

The same thing with Indeed. The shit that they sell, they spin, they say they can do, that's gonna come back, perspectively, and bite them in the ass. Especially when they're talking about disposition data. They start talking about this, any company that is talking about taking disposition data right now on a grand scale. There are many companies right now that are doing it by, almost like a consultancy.

Joel Cheesman (54:21.355)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (54:41.944)

to be able to clean up data, to be able to give companies specific signals that's their client, kind of like an agency, right? But if you're doing it like Indeed, and you're coercing broad spectrums of companies to give you that disposition data, you could be fucked pretty quick.

Joel Cheesman (54:48.651)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (54:59.955)

Yeah, this case is one to watch and we will continue to be reporting on it. Doing the good work, like the good dad jokes that we are always doing on this show, Chad. This one is Olympics themed. What's the problem with the Winter Olympics, Chad?

Chad Sowash (55:19.245)

The winter.

Joel Cheesman (55:22.047)

They always start okay, but then they go downhill fast. It's a slippery slope, unfortunately.

Chad Sowash (55:25.997)

No.

It is a slippery slope. Yeah, it's a slippery solemn. We out.

Joel Cheesman (55:32.159)

Go USA! We out!