Job.com: Follow the Money

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast…

💥 Job.com’s “Oops, We’re Bankrupt” Tour continues with reportedly missing W-2s, debts owed, and a founder flexing family vacation pics while employees can’t file their taxes.

🏢 Indeed lays off 1,300 while Glassdoor’s CEO exits stage left. Turns out running two redundant brands doesn’t build synergy. Who knew?

🔐 Paradox gets hacked through a 2018 test account with a password likely stolen from your AIM profile. Brass tcks is they owned it, patched it, and didn’t blame Russia, so… gold star?

🪦 We pour one out for Matt Lavery, a true TA badass, friend, and 3AM “ride-or-die” who made the world—and hiring—a hell of a lot better.

🛒 And in the fire-sale aisle: Monster + CareerBuilder—once worth billions—now yours for the price of a mid-sized Tesla. Thanks, JobGet.

🐐 Bonus? Christian Forman gives up his goat farm for TotalJobs. Spoiler: nobody believes he wants that gig.

It’s red meat, warm beers, bad passwords, and scorched-earth recruiting—just another week in TA with Chad & Cheese.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:36.216)

Old enough to know better, too young to care. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Epstein Cheesman.

Chad (00:45.666)

And this is Chad "snacky beers" Sowash,

Joel Cheesman (00:48.796)

And on this week's episode, job.com objects in deep cuts and paradox apologizes. Let's do this.

Chad (01:00.654)

So Berlin, huh?

Joel Cheesman (01:02.646)

I'm a Berliner. Yes. Yes. I'm a thing of currywurst. That's for sure. Good Lord. It is good. It is good. It's like a, it's either a rich man's hot dog or poor man's bratwurst. don't know which, but yeah. So listeners know we do breakfast every summer. Last two summers. This will be three that I've taken coal.

Chad (01:05.684)

You're a jelly donut.

Chad (01:14.259)

God, yeah, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful taste.

Chad (01:27.687)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (01:31.388)

my now 18 year old, uh, over to Europe. did England first year. We did Ireland last year and we picked, uh, we picked Berlin this year. So I'd never been, he had never been. Um, it was great. It's, it's a incredibly disjointed city. Um, I mean, 80 % of it is gone after world war two. So the rebuilding the cold war, um, it's old, it's new, it's conservative, it's liberal. The, the

Chad (01:48.568)

Yeah. Yeah.

It was blonde, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (02:00.284)

The architecture is confused. It's like part Eastern block, part old Europe's 19th century stuff. They're incredibly still shameful about what happened, which you go to England and they think it's 1882 and Queen Victoria is still running the empire. And Berlin, it's like, there's no...

Chad (02:03.349)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (02:28.344)

no chestiness at all in Berlin. They're very, very shameful, incredibly, incredibly worthwhile. If you're a history buff, World War II, Cold War, Napoleon, you know, walk through the Brandenburg Gate. Like there's so much really cool history there. There's a Soviet, there's a Soviet monument right in the middle of everything, which is kind of bizarre in today's world. No one's visiting it except kind of just passing through.

Chad (02:30.209)

Yeah.

Chad (02:42.253)

That's just awesome. Yeah.

Chad (02:49.261)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (02:55.996)

Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. couldn't blow it up. So it's just kind of there. there's a, there's a really cool monument, to the Jews, the slaughtered or the murdered Jews of Europe, think it's called very, very, very interesting. yeah, highly recommend Berlin. I assume you've been there, but if not, you should put it on your list for sure.

Chad (03:08.309)

Mm hmm. Okay.

Wow.

Chad (03:16.871)

No, just Munich. We need to go though. We do need to go. I need to spend more time in other places in Europe. That'd be awesome as well.

Joel Cheesman (03:19.579)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (03:26.106)

Yeah, did you find a certain shame in Munich? Probably not. It's probably pretty unique to Berlin. Yeah.

Chad (03:31.541)

Yeah, no, not as much, I would say. we really, didn't spend enough time there. We're like bouncing all around, but we do need to spend more time there.

Joel Cheesman (03:39.782)

Mm-hmm.

and the concentration camp that's in Berlin. Talk about haunting. Literally the where they train the SS troops, the the barracks are there, the field in which they trained. There's a Gestapo component to the the to the concentration camp. They still have the wooden post where they shot people. They still have the hooks. So, you know, this Gestapo would torture you. They they'd tie your hands behind your back.

Chad (03:45.453)

Hell, Dude.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (04:01.303)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (04:11.046)

And then they would hang you from your wrists and it would dislocate your arm, which I couldn't imagine how, but the hooks are still there, which is really weird. The, the kill pit, the pit, yeah, totally haunting. And, and they put, they put wood in the, like the kill pit, which I'm sure you've seen in movies because the bullets would ricochet and that the wood would catch the bullets and the holes are still in the wood.

Chad (04:14.003)

Mm-hmm. Backward, yeah.

Chad (04:20.895)

It's haunting. It's haunting.

Chad (04:29.901)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (04:38.148)

I mean, the bear, it's just super haunting. really, really, really a hat tip to Germany for keeping it. They could have torn it down long ago. they kept it for memory sake and that we don't forget. but yeah, make sure that you do that as well. If you're out there.

Chad (04:41.463)

Yeah.

Chad (04:50.359)

Yeah.

Chad (04:57.229)

Yeah. When we went to Poland a couple of years ago, we went to Auschwitz. and that, mean, it's just, it's, it's haunting. is completely haunting. but to get away from the haunting now, I've been on the beach since, as soon as, as soon as, as soon as we left, have, we always have friends that follow us down from rec fest. we have, a drink fest to be quite frank. I mean, I am trying to put as much water down as I possibly can right now.

Joel Cheesman (05:05.744)

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (05:17.872)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (05:23.748)

You look a little rough. You look a little rough, Chad.

Chad (05:26.765)

God, dude. Yeah. So anyway, had two sets of friends literally come down. First set came in and they stay with us. We have a good time and had like an overlap. Three others come down and we play paddle and we drink and it's just like, so we're breathing it out. It was an amazing time. We're a win, we're a win, but amazing time. And that's where the snacky beers come in because in Portugal, if you're watching on YouTube, got the little bitty beers, like the half beers.

Joel Cheesman (05:44.156)

Yeah.

Chad (05:56.008)

And you can just in Portugal, not much like the rest of Europe, they love their beer ice cold. And you get one of those little beers and you can just, I mean, obviously you can drink a lot more, but there's just so cold. And that's kind of like almost like a tradition, let's just say. Snacky beers.

Joel Cheesman (06:05.926)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (06:14.884)

Okay. Are they, were these industry guests or like just personal? Okay.

Chad (06:19.757)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I had Chris and Marin come down, been friends of ours for a while. And then the boys from Talent Nexus up in the UK, they love playing paddle, come down, we have a little strategy session with Snacky Beers. And it just had a fucking blast like we we always do.

Joel Cheesman (06:23.033)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (06:34.46)

Thank you, Bear.

Joel Cheesman (06:38.972)

Cool. So, yeah, take a little break, take a little pause. cause before you know it, we'll be headed to Nashville for rec fest, 2.0 and that's already shaping up to be quite a time as well. Thanks to rec fest had a great time. a lot of people I wanted to connect with didn't just cause it's busy and people want to talk to you and no Oasis cover band are on stage. So sorry for doing a chance to talk. I know Matt Alder.

Chad (06:47.467)

Yeah. Amen.

Chad (06:53.41)

No kidding.

Chad (07:01.545)

It's, yeah.

Hahaha!

Joel Cheesman (07:08.346)

Matt Alder, I usually sit down and have some, drinks with he was, he was, he was out, think before I got a chance. So sorry if we didn't get a chance to speak, but those who did had a great time, hottest shit, in, London, which yeah. And the tenant. was. Yes. Quite a bit, quite a bit nicer, but, yeah, this is, this is a red meat show. So, so let's get to, let's get to some stuff here. So an incredibly somber.

Chad (07:21.325)

In the tent, yeah. It was a little bit nicer outside. It's a little breeze. Yeah.

Chad (07:35.35)

It is.

Joel Cheesman (07:37.564)

Uh, shout out for, for both of us, Chad, listeners of the show will know Matt Lavery, uh, UPS 27, 28 years, uh, there, um, passed away, uh, last week in a, we know is a boating accident, a sailboat. Um, his funeral was, uh, this past week. Uh, it's been heavy on my mind, Chad, uh, curious what your, your takeaways are and how you're feeling.

Chad (07:40.653)

Mm.

Chad (07:48.141)

I'm get you here soon.

Chad (07:56.781)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (08:07.937)

Yeah, I mean, there aren't many times when you feel like a immediate connection with a dude or with somebody, right? And it was like we met him, I think it was in San Diego for the first time when we interviewed him. That's when we really got to spend time with him. And it turned into a bromance, like a throuple bromance right out of the gate. We're all from the Midwest. I mean, we all love sports, we all love food. And I mean, and he's such a smart.

Joel Cheesman (08:30.224)

Yeah.

Chad (08:37.835)

dude and he gets it and we can talk with him on a level that most talent acquisition people just can't. It's not that they're dumb, it's just that he has so much expertise. It's just that we melded so well. And so at that point, I literally reached out to him because I was like, hey, look, we'd to have you on more stages. I mean, what you're talking about is amazing. What you're doing is amazing. And I mean, we literally

became friends really fast and had texting all the time. He would always text me probably to do to always text me about this week show and had some you know some hot takes on some stuff and whatnot and we've had him on the show to actually you know review the Leo if you guys didn't didn't remember that good Italian beef, but. I was in total disbelief.

Joel Cheesman (09:18.459)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:23.292)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Chad (09:32.952)

for at least 24, if not 36 hours. I woke up and I sent the message to you as soon as I got it. And the obit wasn't out yet, nothing like that. So to me, just, it wasn't real. And I went to my texts and the first thing I did was literally just type his name with a question mark, just kind of like, are you there kind of thing. And, cause it,

Joel Cheesman (09:58.896)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (10:01.483)

I just couldn't believe it. And this was more selfish than it was anything else because he was, he was, he was a, I mean, he really was a friend. We were talking about, I mean, the reason why I was coming back early is because he was gracious enough and he was one of the most gracious dudes that would give his time to you. But he was gracious enough to offer us both to come to a Notre Dame game. And I was coming to a Notre Dame game to go with him. They're playing A on the 13th.

Joel Cheesman (10:02.843)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (10:17.5)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (10:31.025)

And I thought, fuck, I mean, I'm just never, you have those interactions, whether they're just basic texts or they're going to do something. You went out and had pizza with him. mean, we've done so much, right? This one just hits so much more different than many, okay? Not that he's more important, it's just the connection that we had. And he was so...

Joel Cheesman (10:34.054)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (10:46.374)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (10:55.857)

Yeah.

Chad (11:00.851)

so gracious in giving his time, not just to guys like us, but mentoring people. Just an amazing human being and we're gonna miss him.

Joel Cheesman (11:10.224)

Yeah. You know, when you, when you, when we started the podcast, the people who we would meet was not even on the radar and eight years of doing this, the people we've met have probably been the most valuable thing, from starting this podcast and we can go down the list and everyone's probably sick of hearing about all the people that, that we get to meet. And, and Matt was

Chad (11:21.643)

Yeah.

Chad (11:29.673)

Mm. Yeah. God, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (11:40.132)

one of those people that you just, you hit it off immediately. Sports fan, food fan, just a dude, just a guy, from, from South side, Chicago, very humble. you know, would I call these people three amers, the people who, the people who are three amers are, if they get a call from you at three AM one, they're going to answer it and two.

Chad (11:54.679)

Yeah.

Chad (12:01.143)

you

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (12:08.348)

They're going to do whatever they can to help you with whatever's wrong at three in the morning. And, and we have a few of those that we've met over the years and Matt was one of those guys and whether it's like, you got to come to a Notre Dame game. And I was, I was set to, you know, to watch the USC game, which is probably the most highly sought after game of the season. He wasn't throwing out the Navy game. You know, he was throwing out like whatever game you want. and that's the kind of guy that he was. He was a man of the people.

Chad (12:33.43)

Yeah, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (12:37.916)

Even though he was almost always the smartest guy in the room. One of the things that really, uh, was. On inspiring to me was that, uh, on his LinkedIn profile and keep in mind, he was, you he was at UPS labor unions, regular people doing, you know, hard jobs every day. And Matt was a Notre Dame grad and he had an MBA from the university of Chicago. Now, if you know anything about universities in America, those are

Chad (12:42.273)

Yeah.

Chad (12:57.73)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:07.866)

two of the top colleges in the Midwest, let alone the country. He did not have those on his LinkedIn profile. And I never asked him why and I wanted to, but I have to imagine knowing him that it was because I didn't want he, he didn't want people to sort of put him in a box that said I'm better than you because he didn't act that way. And I don't think he wanted that, that prejudice to be part of his meeting and interactions with people.

Chad (13:11.778)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:34.992)

I took Stella up to Chicago a few months ago and I just, I threw a shot in the dark. The Cubs were playing. They were in town. I've kind of used the Joe shaker, connection enough over the years. I was like, you know what? Maybe, maybe Lavery knows somebody or has a connection. And I said, Hey, do you know anybody that has tickets? He comes back, you know, I've had C he's like, I've had season tickets for 20 years or whatever it is. And he's like, I

Chad (13:47.297)

Hahaha

Chad (14:00.301)

Jesus Christ.

Joel Cheesman (14:01.542)

He's like, I just, gave that, I gave that day to my in-laws or niece or somebody. And he said, but let me call in some favors. And I said, okay, no pressure. Like we can get tickets. No big deal. Comes back. I got you tickets here. know, like they were in the email or the text downloaded. Fantastic seats. Somebody he, what he knew had some extras or whatever gave them to me. Like that's just the kind of guy he was.

Chad (14:28.717)

above and beyond.

Joel Cheesman (14:29.148)

yeah, above and beyond, like he knew people, but the videos he showed us, like he didn't have to do that. He's an executive at UPS, like, like he didn't have to give us the time of day, but he did. And he did that. He took every demo from every vendor that I knew of. He took every conversation at every conference, even though he didn't have, he didn't have to, and he did. And he is, he is a huge void, a tragic loss. I hope wherever he is, I hope he's with.

Chad (14:31.595)

in everything. Yeah.

Mm-mm. Yeah.

Chad (14:44.449)

Yes, yes.

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (14:58.916)

Walter Payton and, you know, name your Chicago sports icon. Belushi's got to be there. Like, I mean, I hope that he's, he's up somewhere up, up in heaven, having a good time with Belushi and Payton and everybody else, because just what a solid guy, man. Solid guy way too soon. Our age, we, we, we bonded on the gen X thing. I, could do a whole show on the guy, but man, total loss.

Chad (15:15.137)

and Italian beef sandwich.

Chad (15:23.425)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (15:28.39)

hearts out to his family. know, value the time you have guys and value the people in your life because you just never know. You just never know. You never know.

Chad (15:37.777)

Right. You never know, which is a reason why you have to sign up for free stuff. Okay. Matt, Matt signed up for free stuff. Matt loved free stuff, by the way. No, seriously. I'm gonna miss, gonna miss that dude. I'm gonna miss that dude.

Joel Cheesman (15:41.564)

What a transition. man, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (15:54.62)

totally miss that dude. By the way, he got, we sent him, we sent him rum on his birthday. Funny side story, sorry. And, and, what I, what I bought him online was not what he got. He got some shitty Captain Morgan, cinnamon, whatever. I'm like, no, no, no, we're not going out like that. So I got him like something really good. And I added a bunch of old style. Cause I knew he was going to the Cubs game that day. Like,

Chad (15:59.682)

Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Chad (16:06.367)

yes, yes.

Chad (16:20.257)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (16:20.944)

So that, so I think that kind of, brought us to, but like, that's the kind of guy Matt was, and loved it. Yeah. Cause the friendship that we had, but yeah, no shitty captain Morgan if it's your birthday Chad, but what else can they get from us for free?

Chad (16:25.292)

It's a great story.

Yeah.

Chad (16:34.059)

Well, whiskey, chicken cock whiskey. That's right. Not just one hand of cock. You've got two. You've got two bottles. Yes. And you should, Stephen, and you should. That coming from the tech talent experts over at Van Hack. Then there's bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends up north. Uh-huh. Bob and Doug at Kiora, who also, also are our shout out sponsor, by the way.

What is it? Texting made easy, made simple, made not so complex.

Joel Cheesman (17:04.75)

And cost effective, easy cost. If you're not doing text recruiting, you gotta get, give our friends at Cura a call for sure.

Chad (17:10.497)

Too easy. Too easy. New t-shirts. my God. I don't think there were any left. think Cole got to leave with an empty backpack, but new t-shirts, brand new Dr. Feelgood inspired t-shirts from those gentlemen and ladies and gentlemen over at Aeron App. Thanks to Mike and the crew over at Aeron App. Craft beer from the job data geeks over at

Joel Cheesman (17:13.756)

Hmm.

Chad (17:40.253)

Aspen Tech Labs. again, if it's your birthday, this is what this is what Matt did. Matt signed up. He got the he got the shitty ROM. But guess what? We gave him the good ROM from our friends over at Plum. Got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free.

Joel Cheesman (17:57.724)

By the way, your name looks good with an umlaut over it, Chad, Motley Crue style. All right. Celebrating another year around the sun guys is Jim Lowe, Randall Emory, Eli Carstens, Eva Zills, Karen Heatwool, Michelle Palermo, Wendy Dodd, David Anglikowski, Becky Rand, Leslie LeBlanc, Matt Staney, David Seagal-Bernstein, Jeff Hunter. And lastly, George LaRockout.

Chad (18:00.813)

It does.

Chad (18:20.614)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (18:24.602)

with your cock out. That's right. Happy birthday, everybody. And thanks for listening to the Chad and cheese podcast.

Chad (18:32.653)

That's right, and as we said, we're back from Wreckfest. We're gonna be talking more about events, luckily, from those fun kids over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing, but we're not gonna talk about it this week. We're just trying to recover.

Joel Cheesman (18:45.564)

We got a lot going on this week in the news. This is supposed to be the dog days of summer. We're supposed to be, uh, you know, at the paddle court and, uh, and poolside, but, uh, but Chad, we learned this week, you might have to take some sensitivity training. Uh, you, you've, you've ruffled ruffled some feathers because some of the things you said about job.com's, uh, bankruptcy last week, which I was not on, uh, had, uh, had their co-founder, Aaron Stewart, a bit distraught.

Chad (18:52.354)

Yeah.

yeah.

Chad (19:00.941)

Apparently.

Joel Cheesman (19:12.54)

after almost a year off LinkedIn, he posted quote, I don't condone the use of the company's challenges as a form of gaining views, likes, or attention, but podcast shows like the above, meaning you and me are here just for that reason. End quote. You're such a whore for attention, Chad. You want those clicks and likes you've had quite a few messages from the good folks at, present and past from job.com. What you got?

Chad (19:26.774)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (19:40.279)

Yeah.

So it's really interesting because there are a lot of people that say like, you you're trying to sensationalize things. And in this case specifically, it's bankruptcy. Right. And there are people that are going to be hurt. We talked about Monster and Career Builder and their bankruptcy. We talked about who they owe. There are debtors, there are unsecured debtors and they're secured debtors. Right. So we talked about that on last week's show, Emmy and I did. And then we talked about

the prospect of a buyer. And who would that buyer possibly be? Well, they're creating another company to buy job.com. So literally, you're going into bankruptcy to be able to scrub everything clean and all the people that you owe money to are getting fucked. And more than likely, the people that you work for, right? Not all of them, maybe. Maybe you get to keep some of them, but they get fucked too. And then you get to buy the company assets back for cheaper.

Joel Cheesman (20:27.74)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (20:42.012)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (20:43.553)

and then just continue to do operations. To me, that does not feel right. So that's not sensationalizing anything. That's just telling the fucking truth of what is, at least what they're looking to from a stalking horse standpoint happen. So yeah, and I think, and this is where I really wanna challenge anybody who says this. When it comes to attention, that post was actually created.

Joel Cheesman (20:51.42)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (21:11.789)

to try to talk to us about gaining attention. Well, we should provide the attention where it's due and it's due here because this shit shouldn't happen. And when people are owed money, it shouldn't happen. Since then, since then, I have been on the phone. I have been chatting. I've been on messenger. When we started this, I was actually on the fucking phone with somebody. And so this is from from Aaron's post, quote, I'm here to console.

Joel Cheesman (21:14.982)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (21:41.646)

those that maybe feel are feeling lost, frustrated, saddened by all that has happened, whether you've worked with us, partnered with us, or just in the industry, end quote, right? So it's all flowery and it's all, but it says nothing because it's interesting because I have, and it's actually out there in public as comments, employees are asking for their 2024 last year.

Joel Cheesman (22:05.072)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (22:10.785)

W-2s. They don't have them. They can't file their taxes. They can't receive tax returns. They can't use that money or pay bills. Everything that he said in that had nothing to do with the actual people. He said family. He posted a picture of his family in an airport getting ready to go on vacation. These people can't fucking afford that. These people are looking for their tax return dollars, right?

Joel Cheesman (22:30.075)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (22:36.813)

And then you start to go down kind of like the rabbit hole of, if a company can't provide the W-2, there's tax withholdings, right? So have tax withholdings, you have 401k withholdings, right? You have HSA, you have child support, you have all these different things that can be withheld from an organization. Now that's the record of it to the federal government. So you can show them, hey, look, I'm paying my taxes.

Joel Cheesman (22:51.557)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (23:06.864)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (23:07.191)

Can I get a return or maybe I need to pay a little bit, but this is something that we have to do, right? These people can't do that. And to me, making it about yourself, posting a picture with you and your lovely little girls and your lovely family, I think that's really cute, but that is not the point. You're getting ready to go on a vacation where a lot of these people, they're not going to be able to fucking afford it. And they don't want to be.

Joel Cheesman (23:25.986)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chad (23:35.872)

under possibly the thumb of the IRS, right? And, you know, a phrase that Aaron likes to say, you know, is all will be revealed. Well, there are a lot of conversations and actually things that I've been hearing about happening, you know, behind closed doors that I've been able to actually listen into. And I think all will be revealed. think he's a I think he's 100 percent right.

Joel Cheesman (23:55.942)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (24:04.412)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (24:05.057)

just not in the way he might be thinking they will be revealed. just in response, this is not about attention. When you see somebody doing something wrong in the industry, we talk about how Indeed does stupid shit and we make fun of them, right? This is incredibly different. This is owing bankruptcy, prospectively hurting vendors in our industry, which we talked about with Monster and Career Builder.

Joel Cheesman (24:20.134)

Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (24:32.725)

Right? So this is not something where we're picking on job.com. This is where we are shining a light and trying to add a little disinfectant to the fucking conversation.

Joel Cheesman (24:33.382)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (24:44.91)

Amen. look, we're a couple of meatheads. you know, this is, this is an attention game, but we don't make up the news. We don't make up the court filings. We don't make up lawsuits and, and layoffs. And I mean, that's, may or may not like what we say about it, but we're not making the shit up. we're talking about our opinion of, what goes on. And, you know, we, we have come across in our time,

Chad (24:57.751)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (25:10.598)

quite a few from carnival barkers to shysters to straight out criminals. I'm not putting them in any particular bucket, but someone, someone is probably going to do a deep dive on this operation and reveal a lot of really interesting things. think you've been bombarded, in the past week or so of, of past employees, investors, people that have been acquired like

Chad (25:30.187)

I have.

Joel Cheesman (25:36.048)

There's a lot of shit going on here and it's not just smoke. There's got to be some fire and between bankruptcy lawsuits, who knows what's going to come down the pike. This stuff will be revealed. It's, not, it's not for, I have better things to do than investigate job.com. What's going on, but I can tell you, we're not making this shit up. These are public records. These are things going on. These are things still in the court. look, there's a lot of diversion going on. You know, there's a lot of like,

Chad (25:45.825)

There's a ton of fucking lawsuits. Yeah.

Chad (25:59.768)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (26:03.644)

Don't look at this over here. Look at me and I'm, I'm a, he's Scottish, right? He's kind of like, I'm a fun Scottish guy. got a great family or English. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Scott's didn't mean to do that to you. Yeah. Sorry to star. I mean, look, uh, this shit will be revealed, but I mean, from what we know in terms of, mean, in addition to the public record stuff, he's got another co-founder. Look, if you look, if you go to glass door, uh, Paul Sloyan,

Chad (26:09.589)

No, he's, he's, he's English. He's English. He's English.

From Luton. Luton.

Joel Cheesman (26:32.284)

who I don't think we've ever talked to is CEO currently. He has a 4 % rating on Glassdoor. 4%, okay. Only 8 % of the employees would recommend working at job.com. A ton of comments about they don't pay employees, commissions are not paid. Again, this is on Glassdoor. This is not us making it up. You can take it for what it's worth.

Chad (26:32.577)

Mm-hmm. Now. Yeah.

Chad (26:40.695)

Holy shit!

Chad (26:49.698)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (27:01.328)

But all the signs and Chad, you and I have been around this game a long time. If it walks like a duck quacks, like a duck, it's probably a duck and there's some shit going on here. hopefully it'll come out at some point. but look, I would, I would, I would a buyer beware on anything job.com that's going on, whether you're an employee investor, looking to buy their services. Cause this thing, this thing stinks to high heaven.

Chad (27:30.414)

And again, we're taking a look at all of this from the standpoint of just being able to ensure that companies, listeners, and hopefully the real information comes out. I'm getting information like, what would you say, case files and those things that are actually pushed to me all over the place. I'm getting more information, but.

Joel Cheesman (27:52.348)

Yeah.

Chad (27:57.282)

I'm also reaching out to journalists so that they can do their jobs and they have different connections to be able to do that too. Because it is most important to me that if there is impropriety, we don't know that there is yet, right? But if there is propriety, it is sussed out so that it doesn't happen again. the employees, not the ones driving Ferraris, not the ones who are taking vacations.

Joel Cheesman (28:01.02)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (28:10.62)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (28:20.86)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (28:25.921)

with their kids, the ones who can't afford that stuff, the ones who doing the hard work, they deserve not to have to go through that shit, right? The next round of people who could prospectively be suckered into something like that. And again, all things will be revealed. Everything could be clean and great or not. We'll find out. We will find out. Time will tell.

Joel Cheesman (28:47.672)

I suspect, I suspect when the lights are turned on, there's going be a lot of roaches scurrying for safer, safer places. Uh, I mean, not since jobster, if we're going way back, I mean, when I, when I did a little bit of stuff on jobster, I mean, people came out of the woodwork. Um, it's kind of like when, you have harassment cases, like once one thing, it's just a house of cards and the whole thing comes down. Uh, and I suspect that that we'll be talking about this.

Chad (28:51.937)

Yeah.

Chad (28:56.023)

We shall see.

Chad (29:00.352)

Jesus.

Chad (29:07.693)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (29:14.406)

for a few more weeks because there is something there, I would think. think there's something there.

Chad (29:21.217)

Deep breath kids, deep breath.

Joel Cheesman (29:26.3)

All right. More red meat, everybody. announced a 6 % reduction in its workforce impacting 1300 employees across Indeed and Glassdoor. Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor CEO, will step down on October 1st. LaFawn Davis, Indeed's chief people and sustainability officer is also out the door. Indeed's last big layoffs in case you missed it. May, 2024, a thousand workers laid off roughly 8 % of its headcount at the time.

March of 23, they laid off 2,200 employees representing kind of a whopping 15 % of its workforce. And now you have, this. It's nice to know that the industry's top dog is so good at retaining, retaining top talent. Chad, your thoughts on the news out of indeed.com.

Chad (30:15.627)

Yeah, it really sucked. I mean, we were at Wreckfest. Indeed had a big booth, glass door, had a booth. Yeah, had a booth, right? And these things are happening all around us, right? So this sucks and sorry to hear it. And the thing that really sucks is that there are so many amazing people that are out of work right now. It's great for all the companies that are out there who need top talent.

Joel Cheesman (30:22.149)

And Glassdoor too, yeah.

Chad (30:44.493)

What I would do is I would look at the ones with the monsters, the career builders, so on and so forth, right? I mean, that to me, I mean, they're just great, great experience that's out there. So this really sucks, but I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna get this into, get it ready for it with Stephen, a history lesson.

Joel Cheesman (31:01.572)

Okay, okay, hold on, where's our history lesson? Here we go.

Chad (31:03.297)

Here we go.

Chad (31:08.845)

So kids, we've talked about this before, but back in 1998, TMP Worldwide merged online career center OCC and the Monster Board to create Monster.com. Why? Because Jeff Taylor convinced Andy McKelvey, the owner of TMP Worldwide, pretty much the holding company, it was better to combine efforts than to fight each other, right? Sibling rivalry, so to speak, wasn't great in this scenario. And Jeff.

Jeff, I know this was more complex than just that, right? I know that it is and we could have a whole half hour show. So don't beat me up too much over the retelling. But it was a smart move, right? To be able to put them together, to be able to create monster.com, that would have never happened. We would have never had blimps. We would have never had the Super Bowl commercial. They wouldn't have not had the ability to really combine marketing budgets, sales budgets, those types of things. So they were.

So fast forward to May of 2018 when Recruit Holdings, TMP in the story, acquires Glassdoor, a company with a very similar model to Indeed. Indeed was more job posting forward, right, but had reviews. And Glassdoor was more review forward, but it had jobs. So there was some redundancy there. Now, the Jeff Taylor in this story would be Chris Himes.

Joel Cheesman (32:22.64)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (32:35.709)

as he took over because Daco finally went back up to the mothership, which, you know, can't expect much out of a guy who's running the fucking holding company than coming running indeed. So Chris Himes, this to me is a fucking slam dunk to combine these incredibly redundant organizations and bring much of those redundancies under one roof and have huge efficiencies, a unified sales opportunity, a huge, huge cost savings.

Joel Cheesman (32:39.644)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:05.453)

But, Himes never did it, which is one of the reasons why I have been saying for years, he should have been fired. Glassdoor was a redundant brand, per se. Still had some brand equity. Yes, the domains are awesome. Yes, you can do SEO around it, and you can still do all the things that you wanted to, but again, just the redundancies didn't make any sense. This makes sense.

Joel Cheesman (33:19.1)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:34.749)

Sorry that 1300 people had to feel the sting on this one because if they would have done this much earlier, it might not have been this big of a cut.

Joel Cheesman (33:52.096)

I agree with all that. mean, before Indeed even bought Glassdoor, Indeed employees would have a laugh about how much more review content they had than Glassdoor. So when they bought Glassdoor, it was kind of like...

Chad (34:04.973)

Yeah, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (34:10.96)

We're taking a competitor off the board. We're putting our content on there. We'll get the SEO traffic. Let's eliminate some of the redundancies. And they didn't really do that. They kept it as a separate company for up until now, really. It had its own staff, its own CEO. So from a business standpoint, this makes a ton of sense. They should have done it six months after they bought the company or maybe a year into it.

Chad (34:27.095)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (34:37.547)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (34:41.038)

Chat GPT and AI, which I've said this for a while, really replaces the need for a review site. It's much more intuitive to go to your favorite AI solution and say, what's it like to work at GM and get that answer than it is to go to Glassdoor, which by the way is a user nightmare. You can't use it unless you log in. You got to join the company or you join the site.

Chad (35:07.831)

It's horrible. It's horrible.

Joel Cheesman (35:08.974)

It's horrible. It's horrible. Like they don't want you to see the reviews unless you give them your blood type and your, and your social security number. So people are, are probably not going to the site in droves that they were, they're using AI and other tools. So the only value that it really has, and I don't think the URL is that valuable anymore because of the way SEO has changed. but the only thing that that sticker that goddamn, we're a glass door best employer that I still see at airports and restaurants.

Chad (35:29.133)

Mm.

Chad (35:35.243)

Yeah. Yeah.

You see him on the side of the fucking planes.

Joel Cheesman (35:38.938)

Like that's yeah, billboards companies will put up like that's literally it. That's the value of the company. So, so, and that's probably, that's, that's probably fading away as well. So in addition to that, get rid of glass door, get rid of the redundancies. I also think this is part of the big swing that we talked about of indeed trying to own everything that you do. Glass door lost sort of is not part of that vision of the future.

Chad (35:42.975)

Yeah.

Great marketing. Great marketing.

Joel Cheesman (36:08.238)

And my guess is a lot of the talent that's there isn't prepared or able or skilled enough to take indeed to the next level. I've seen a lot of job boards where the salespeople, they know how to sell like single job postings. And when the job board says, Hey, we're going to sell more complex stuff. They're just not prepared or skilled to sell the bigger, bigger stuff. So part of this may be, look, we don't have the, we need different skills to come in. So we need to let go of the people who don't have the skills for our.

Chad (36:08.834)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (36:37.872)

future. good move. Sorry to the people that lost their job based on the past. They should have known that it might be coming. And people that I know it indeed, every time there's a layoff, I message them and say, you're safe. So far so good. But I'm waiting for any time to say like, nope, was part of this one. Let's take a quick break guys. Again, if you haven't seen our lovely mugs on YouTube, go subscribe, go to youtube.com.

Chad (36:56.311)

Yeah, totally, totally sucks.

Joel Cheesman (37:06.156)

slash at Chad cheese. You'll love the shorts. we're doing a great job on those and we'll be right back.

Chad (37:13.537)

Faces for Radio.

Joel Cheesman (37:17.868)

All right. More red meat. A Wired article uncovered basic vulnerabilities in McDonald's job applications on mchire.com powered by our friends and sponsors paradox by guessing a weak admin password and tweaking application IDs. The reporters accessed up to 64 million records with personal info like names, emails, phones, resumes, and chat logs to their credit paradox.

fixed the issues very quickly, confirmed limited data exposure and launched a bug bounty. Chad, your thoughts on a pretty bad couple of weeks at Paradox.

Chad (38:01.537)

Yeah, I think probably to some extent you and I are way too close to this. I mean, we know the Paradox staff really well. They're a sponsor. go, I mean, we do the AI sessions with those guys. This happened after we recorded last week. So I got a chance to actually take a beat and just kind of like dig into it.

Joel Cheesman (38:11.718)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (38:27.847)

And a lot of the reporting, the wired reporting is actually just totally incorrect and not factual. And there was a response that was posted on Paradox. And the beautiful part about what Paradox did is they said, shit, you know, we're wrong. We did have this security flaw and here's what it was.

I think it was interesting because it was a single instance. It was from a test account. They hacked into the test account to be able to access the API. But the most important piece that's here that I think that we kind of go crazy about is this is not a payroll data platform. This is a candidate platform. You're looking at phone date, phone book data. So kids, if you don't know what a phone book is back in the day, we had these yellow pages and phone books.

Joel Cheesman (39:20.902)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (39:25.355)

And it would have it would have really simple information. I'd have your first name, last name, your address and your phone number. Right now, we I guess we can put in phone book data, the email address. Right. Literally everything else and everything else not available. So this is not a launch codes type of situation. they got in and they got into our database and they got a bunch of names, a bunch of phone numbers and a bunch of emails. Well, fuck.

I could probably take less time and go buy that from somebody else like Millions right number one number two. They only accessed five Candidates and their chat history. That was it. So to me Let me get to the second part. So the second part they started talking about injection attacks and I was like, holy fuck That is where shit could go off the rails because in an injection attack there

Joel Cheesman (40:17.276)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (40:23.637)

many different, can't say that I'm an expert on this, but you can literally inject code into a code base, right? You can get into it and you can inject code into a code base, which really fucks everything. Cause think of all the different bugs that you can create, not to mention all the different phishing and I mean, there's so much that you can do. They tried an injection attack on Paradox. It didn't work. So the little thing,

Joel Cheesman (40:30.684)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (40:38.566)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (40:51.309)

which is literally 19, you know, late 1990 shit username password, right? That was a 2018 account. They said, mea culpa, we'll fix that shit. But it was, so they owned it, but it was phone book data. That's what it was. It was phone book data. It wasn't payroll data. It wasn't social security numbers. It was none of that shit. The thing that...

Joel Cheesman (40:51.42)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (41:19.155)

get out of this is it seems like in many cases, a lot of chief security officers are really, really, really focused on the big shit, like injection attacks and those types of things. And sometimes maybe the little things could kind of like slip through. But again, five, five candidate profiles and their chat histories were accessed versus the prospect of something bigger that could happen. So yeah, I think

Joel Cheesman (41:24.316)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (41:30.972)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chad (41:48.78)

I think we should get used to this from the standpoint of companies. They did a bug bounty. They said, they said, yep, that was on us. And away you go, right? So again, I am totally biased. No Adam, no Jay-Z, no Aaron. mean, just the list goes on. But again, I'm biased, but this is how my brain has worked.

Joel Cheesman (41:59.324)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (42:17.649)

You

Joel Cheesman (42:21.46)

so I have, I have three thoughts on this. the first one is, did McDonald's fire them? Like was what they did so great is that Olivia is now gone, from McDonald's. Well, no shocker. went to McDonald's, Olivia's still powering, the job search at, at McDonald's. So the ultimate, the ultimate justice here would be as if McDonald's said, this is so bad that we're firing you or there were out, we're out of the paradox business. Well, they're not. So that's the first point.

Chad (42:47.245)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (42:49.85)

The second point is, are we surprised that this shit happens anymore? mean, regardless of how we feel about paradox, like in the last month, 500 million LinkedIn user profiles were on sale in the, in the dark web, another 500 million Facebook profiles, for sale on the dark web. If you don't think the information that's on a job search conversation is, is out there anyway, on another platform, you are walking around blind without a cane pal, in our space.

Monsters had breaches before we talked about a few years ago. I had forgotten about this till I did a little bit of homework. Chad, do remember when career builder was locked down from a malware attack and they had to pay ransomware to get their site back? Like that's in just our space. So companies are dealing with this on a, on a constant basis. I think the fact that it was McDonald's

Chad (43:27.426)

Mm-hmm.

yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (43:43.44)

didn't help if this had been, you know, podunk's warehouse of, of, of clearance items, no one would have given a shit, but because it was McDonald's, I think it was sexy. It's going to hurt tech crunch fortune, like some legitimate companies are picking this stuff up. So it will be a story for a while. Of course, in Trump's America, it's not a story for very long because we're moving on to the next, the next thing. So I think, I think this is mostly going to fade away.

from the, from the scene. The most posts that I've seen have been technical people talking about sort of the nerdy logistical stuff around. would you like, why wouldn't you have sort of belts and suspended that suspended that to make sure that didn't happen in our space? This is my, my third point. you know, we mentioned my trip in, in, Berlin Chad, there's a, there's a great word that the Germans and only the Germans probably could have created. It's it's Schadenfreude.

And Schadenfreude is pleasure at the pain of other people, or in this case, an organization. Look, paradox has been kicking everybody's ass for 10 years. Now, now's your chance to kick them in the nuts. And you can bet that a lot of people are coming out. Really not a lot, but people are coming out and saying like, what a Bush league organization. This is supposed to be like a high level, you know, premier product. Let me tell you something real quick.

Chad (44:42.657)

yes.

Joel Cheesman (45:10.812)

We're in the employment business. There is no premier product, right? The best developers are working for Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. We get what's left. We'd love the best, but no one wants to work in employment. yeah, branded wise it might be, but like don't kid yourself and think that anybody has better developers that are up the level of the quality companies that we think about.

Think about who's commenting and throwing dirt and mud on Paradox and ask yourself, what might they have to gain from throwing shit at Paradox? Who are they advising? Who are their customers? What's their business? Be objective about this and don't just take comments at face value. Do your homework, do your background checks on people. There might be a reason why.

They've come out of the woodwork and talk trash about paradox. And those are my three things on this issue chat. And yes, we are biased, but they will survive this. And I think they'll be fine. They fucked up people. They fucked up. Most organizations have.

Chad (46:22.283)

Yeah, but again, it's one of those things. It's how fast you, mean, you're going to find, you're going to find loopholes. You're going to find, you know, some, some, something that needs a patch or something like that. How fast do you respond? How fast do you respond? And then what do you do beyond that to ensure that it doesn't happen again? Right. So to think that this is not going to happen to any other company or spaces, as you'd said is wrong. It's dumb. But yet how do they rectify it moving forward?

Again, the thing for me was any company coming out in Trump's America, as you said, saying that they're sorry. They just don't do that anymore. These guys came out said, that's on me. We own this. We fix the shit. We got it. Thank you.

Joel Cheesman (47:05.894)

Yep. Yep. It was, it was a master class in damage control. And I'm sure, I'm sure Jay Z and his team, the last thing they wanted to do during fourth of July, holiday was deal with, was deal with this. But yeah, it was, it was kind of the, the playbook of like, when you fuck up, here's what you do. Own up to it, fix it, say you're sorry. And they did that. And, I doubt it will happen again, to them. Now, speaking of not happening again, Chad, I was in Berlin. So.

Chad (47:15.947)

fuck, I can't imagine.

Chad (47:33.709)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (47:35.396)

Some news came out. got some, some wind stuff. looks like, looks like Foreman isn't done. What's going on with our friend, Christian Foreman.

Chad (47:46.082)

Yeah, so I heard rumblings. was kind of a rumor to some extent that Chris was actually going to another StepStone property, which I thought was odd because all the other StepStone properties are less than an AppCast, right? mean, AppCast is gold standard with regard to programmatic. And I mean, just name and all that other fun stuff.

Joel Cheesman (47:57.276)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (48:02.915)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (48:10.161)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (48:10.797)

Then you have StepStone, which actually the site itself, I come on, it's a fucking job board in Germany for, mean, they have others, but it's mainly a job board in Germany. And then you have Totaljobs. Yeah, then you have Totaljobs, right? So, and then you have some other smaller, and you're like, what's he gonna do? Well, apparently, and I don't know if this is just an interim scenario, but it's either a managing director or a CEO position at Totaljobs.

Joel Cheesman (48:18.588)

Yeah, even Baird.

Mm-hmm.

Chad (48:41.779)

Interesting because we talked to him about retiring and you look in the archives kid. goats, goats and chickens and whatnot. So I thought this was interesting just from the standpoint of Chris saying, yeah, I'm out. And then literally slumming it. Not that you're bad people, Total Jobs. You're not. You're not at all. It's just small market shit, right? He's a bigger market strategic type of guy.

Joel Cheesman (48:45.404)

Chick, chickens, right? Raising chickens? that what he, was, goats? Yeah.

Chad (49:11.583)

So being able to take, know, it's like putting, don't want to overdo it with making a foreman sound like a fucking genius, but God damn it. It's like taking a Ferrari engine and putting it in a fucking, you know, horse and buggy. know, I, he's a smart dude. He's a smart dude. I don't want to overdo it. I don't want it to overdo it.

Joel Cheesman (49:26.844)

He's a big swinging dick. It's okay. Yeah. I mean, he's up there. It's the employment space, everybody, but in our space, our little world here, yeah, he's a thing. He's a big deal. So yeah, I was really shocked because when we talked to him and we had a great conversation, if you haven't listened to that, check out the archives with our conversation with him.

Chad (49:36.301)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (49:54.332)

chickens, goats, cheese, milk. I don't know what it was. He, I forget, but he, he made this thing like he was going to farm the land and he was going to, he was going to lead a quiet life in the, in the Vermont or New Hampshire wilderness. And like, I've got my money. I'm, I'm fading in the sunset. And then, and then you come up with this. like, what, what does he owe someone money? I like what, does somebody have something on him? So there's,

Chad (50:02.56)

I'm out.

Joel Cheesman (50:24.688)

There's no way that he wants this gig. There's no chance in hell that he wants to run total jobs. so I don't know. mean, look, look, fame and recognition. It's a hell of a drug. And I can tell you from, from cheese head to leaving and closing down cheese head, people forget you very quickly. They forget, like they move on to the next thing quickly. So I'm not saying Chris is, is in there, but yeah, people forget about you.

Chad (50:31.297)

Yeah, unless he just wants some time in the UK or something. I don't know.

Chad (50:48.716)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (50:54.682)

I don't think he's an attention whore, but, to me, it's like one of three things happened here. He owes someone a favor. Someone's like, dude, please like help us. It won't be forever. We need a little bit of, we need a little, you know, plug of the hole for a little bit. number two, maybe he was promised like you get unlimited budget and you get to play mad scientist. Maybe

plug appcast with some agency shit with some job board, like do do some crazy shit. Maybe that maybe that had some appeal to him. And the other one, which is more likely somebody showed up with a bag of money and a Brinks truck and said, we need you. We're going to make an offer. You can't refuse. Here's a bunch of money and take it because there's no, there's no growth here. There's no growth story. There's no cool factor. There's no reason for him to want to do this gig.

Chad (51:40.685)

Chad (51:50.796)

Yeah, they're owned by PE, right? It's KKR, right? After they did the restructuring. Yeah, I don't see them saying unlimited cash to anybody. don't care who came down. I don't see them saying unlimited cash. Yeah, no, but I would say Chris watching Chris on stage and events and talking to him, he's definitely an attention whore.

Joel Cheesman (51:55.574)

I don't know. That's how much they matter. I have no idea what's going on at Total Jobs.

Chad (52:18.817)

And that's okay. A lot of founders, a lot of founders are attention whores. They are. I mean, they are. And there's nothing wrong with that. mean, are, are, are.

Joel Cheesman (52:26.872)

shi-

Well, total jobs ain't the gig to get if you want attention. my God. let's go see the CEO of total jobs speak. Yes, that's exciting. I want to see what, what they have to say. Maybe that goes back to the mad scientist. He's going to do some crazy shit and like Jeff Taylor's coming back. So I got to come back. I can't let the, let the stage be empty, man. I don't know. It's going to be a wild fall. anyway, Chris,

Chad (52:33.729)

know man, I know.

Hahaha

Chad (52:45.762)

I think.

Joel Cheesman (52:58.786)

open invite to the show to tell us what the hell is going on with Total Jobs. We'll be right back. If you haven't subscribed, guys, if you haven't left us a review, what the hell are you doing? If you like what you've heard today, please sign up. Please leave us a review. It helps us with the algo and we get more listens and we're needy, unloved people and need attention. Yeah, takes one to know one like my mom used to say. We'll be right back.

Chad (53:00.887)

Good luck. Good luck.

Chad (53:18.957)

Attention whores.

Joel Cheesman (53:29.12)

my God, more red meat, Chad. you talked about the, job get, deal, rumored at 7 million. Apparently, some things have come to light to verify that $7 million price tag. what have we learned about job get and the deal for monster?

Chad (53:31.478)

I

Chad (53:46.158)

Yeah, it was funny. Peter Zollman over at AIM Group reached out to me. He said, that's no rumor. That's true. And then he sent me the link. So if you go to AIM Group, if you're not subscribed to AIM Group, you should do that. It's aimgroup.com. Great guys, great contents.

Joel Cheesman (53:56.645)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (54:01.798)

By the way, aim group, if you're not investigating job.com, we invite you to, to turn on the lights, so to speak, please, please do some due diligence over there.

Chad (54:07.233)

Hahaha

Chad (54:10.903)

may or may not have already reached out. So, seven million from JobGet for the job board business of CareerBuilder plus Monster. Think of that. Think of that. At one time, that just the job board assets, because that's really all they were. And we're just talking about Monster, right? It was a billion dollar company. And this is 15 years ago.

Joel Cheesman (54:13.081)

Chad (54:40.749)

15 years ago and $7 million, not just for Monster, Monster and CareerBull, you're getting them both. You're getting them both. So for me, yeah, I mean, that is a, as Aim Group had said, it's a staggering drop in valuation. It's also interesting that Valnet US is buying military.com and fastwag.com for 22.5 million.

Joel Cheesman (54:42.064)

Made a billion, not valued. They were making a billion dollars, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (54:59.74)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (55:11.42)

three times more.

Chad (55:11.553)

What the living shit. Six million for Monster Government Services, which was literally just a piece of Monster. It was a growing piece and it was a nice size piece of business, but it was not the core of Monster. So to be able to see this fall the way that it has fallen, Career Builder has already been drawn and quartered and they've already sold pieces off.

Joel Cheesman (55:22.342)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (55:39.508)

of a career builder. Monster, not so much. Maybe some of the regional stuff, some of the international stuff, but still this, only $7 million. To me, that did not seem realistic. It was a rumor and Peter and the guys and girls over at AIM Group said, nope, not a rumor. This is a stalking horse bid that literally is happening today. So if Jobgit gets it, it'll be $7 million unless somebody outbids them.

Joel Cheesman (55:52.22)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (56:13.697)

And I know you're going to say his hip recruiter should outbid him or something like that. I don't know.

Joel Cheesman (56:17.66)

I have trouble finding words. When Monster went public, I want to say their valuation was $8 billion. They were making a billion dollars in the mid 2000s. They were sold, Ronstadt paid about $500 million for this. think CareerBuilder was bought for about the same price.

Chad (56:25.813)

It's hard.

Chad (56:37.896)

yeah.

Chad (56:45.396)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (56:48.27)

And to think that it has dwindled down to $7 million is just companies with no revenue at all are getting that an investment. Like companies you've never heard of are raising series A's at higher higher dollar amounts than that. The URL you telling me monster energy drink doesn't have 7 million in the cushions that they can just buy the domain and like do whatever the hell they want with everything else.

Chad (56:49.613)

560 I think.

Chad (56:54.285)

Woof.

Chad (57:08.032)

Yes!

Chad (57:15.949)

by itself. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (57:18.108)

you're telling me that, that indeed doesn't have that in the couch cushions. You're telling me like, job and, like some European, and talent doesn't have that. Like how I still hold faith that maybe someone will come along with a higher bid, but at this point, think, I think today or tomorrow, as we're recording this on the 17th, I think it's over like 15th was the, was the trial date or the court date. So

Chad (57:31.981)

Job and talent, yeah.

Chad (57:44.194)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (57:48.016)

Good on job get this is a steal like

Chad (57:52.569)

God, yes.

Joel Cheesman (57:53.114)

The names alone, the domains alone, mean, forget about the data and the SEO and all that. Like this is a, this is huge. I I'm shocked that this is where we've come, with monster and the military. mean, you know this better than I do, but like why, mean, the military military.com is a great domain, but what else is there that they're paying three X, what monster and Cribblet are getting? Is it data? it like,

Chad (58:18.547)

I know clue to be quite frank. I mean, the data is the data. I mean, it's like today we talk about data and it's all out there, right? I mean, it's all out there. So why buy a company when I can just go to a service and pay a hell of a lot less and then I have to go through all the technical debt and bullshit to try to get it. Yeah, so I don't know. But I think it's interesting. Job get is number five on the creditors list at about one point five million dollars. That's owed.

to them. So this is I think they'll they'll get out of this with the best with the best of both worlds, right? They might not get the 1.5 back. But if they get a they get a much lower price, I fuck I don't know.

Joel Cheesman (59:03.92)

I love that they've been quiet. Job get has I'm expecting our friends over there with this deal gets done to come on and tell us what they're going to do with this property because it's, it's fascinating. I guess so just the cheap stuff because $7 million will buy a lot of champagne. It's a, it's very confusing.

Chad (59:14.519)

pop the champagne.

Joel Cheesman (59:26.254)

All right, Chad, in honor of our friend, Matt Lavery, the dad joke today is inspired by him. And as you know, a fantastic big time bears fan.

Chad (59:30.604)

no.

Chad (59:38.765)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (59:39.484)

What do you call a room full of 32 Packers fans? What do you call a room full of 32 Packers fans?

Chad (59:48.919)

too.

Chad (59:54.889)

It'd be cheese something, I don't know.

Joel Cheesman (59:57.276)

A full set of teeth.

Chad (01:00:01.005)

very good. That was more of a dad joke.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:03.398)

Think about it. We miss you, Matt. RIP, baby. What?

Chad (01:00:09.037)

And so that was more of a dad joke than anything that you've done in a while. So I'm in on the lavery style, Matt, dad joke. I love it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for bringing Joel back to.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:20.156)

Too much red meat, too much alcohol, too many feels this week. Love you Matt, rest in peace. Tell Belushi hi for us. We out.

Chad (01:00:30.86)

Later dude, we out.