LinkedIn's Trust Tree

This week, Chad & Cheese come in hotter than an Aaron Rodgers revenge tour. The boys break down:

• Indeed's full-on enshittification moment

• LinkedIn celebrates 100M verified profiles

• Findem acquires Getro, proving job boards value

• Walmart has receipts

• The NFL's Packers run a great parallel with high-performing companies - Talent

  
  

Fast, sharp, and a little dangerous. Just how you like it.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:33.956)

Yeah, this pot ain't for everybody. Only the sexy people. What's up kids. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel, Affordability Cheeseman.

Chad (00:44.131)

This is Chad, don't shit on my parade, Sowash.

JT (00:47.744)

And this is JT, I need cinnamon mints O'Donnell.

Joel Cheesman (00:51.672)

And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, LinkedIn verifies, Findem buys, and Walmart shows us why. Let's do this.

Chad (01:02.083)

Boom.

Are those called Altoids? I mean, cinnamon, peppermint. Okay, okay, I wasn't sure. What's your favorite? Uh-huh, yeah.

JT (01:10.222)

mean, it doesn't have to be Altoids. doesn't, but this, I don't know, this time of year, hear me out, this time of year, you're talking to all these people, like all the time. And this is when I get super self-conscious, because people get up in your face. And if your breath smells, it's bad, like it's a memory. So I mean, I'm packing the cinnamon mints everywhere I go, not necessarily Altoids, just saying. PSA.

Chad (01:30.647)

I'm telling you, space is important. So get out of my fucking personal space. That's a good idea. That's a good idea, Cheeseman. We'll leave it there. We'll leave it there. Yes. It is. It is. Talk to me. Huh?

JT (01:35.342)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (01:35.66)

Many uses for Altoids. leave that right there. Yeah, I'll leave lots of things you could do with the Altoids. Big moves in the news gang. Big moves. Today Disney, Disney a billion dollars in OpenAI and they license all their characters to Sora, the AI, I don't know, TikTok. JT, you as the creator kid.

Chad (02:01.1)

Just video creator.

Joel Cheesman (02:05.572)

What do you, curious. mean, soar has been around a while. got vibes at meta. People can make social media now without even being on social media. Does this impact the creator community? Does it create like competition, opportunity? What's your take on, on all this, slop out there?

Chad (02:14.382)

Mm-hmm.

JT (02:23.093)

Yeah, yeah. So first of all, I've talked about the second Renaissance. To me, this is digital artisans. You're talking about people being able to do fun things with their characters. I'm just, once people get into it, you know, they're obsessed, they're nerding out on it. And I think it'd be really interesting to see what people build. We've already seen what people can do with Sora, adding characters to the mix. I mean, it's going to be insane. It's really going to be insane. I see it as a good thing in the sense it's going to drive creativity.

Chad (02:43.054)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (02:49.992)

I've shared some videos with you Joel, from Sean over at Arkham Talent, where he's literally done scenes like Titanic scenes, but he's made it about the recruiters versus like, you know, kind of like the things that they go through. And then also Sesame Street where they have the Sesame Street puppets. So I mean, they're already doing this and there's some really funny content that's coming out of it to be able to then start throwing all of these characters into the mix.

Joel Cheesman (03:05.976)

Yeah. Yep.

Chad (03:18.266)

It's great. The biggest problem though I have with this whole Sora thing is I think it's great from something to talk about, right? But from a revenue standpoint, they need to be focusing on the, I mean, really hitting the ball out of the park. And the ball is on the large language model and getting to gen AI, super intelligence, whatever the fuck they want to talk about. This to me feels like a distraction.

Joel Cheesman (03:28.164)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (03:44.555)

It does feel like, we're going to be able to make money off of this. Yeah, but that's pennies on the million dollars that you should be chasing. So it is, it is cool. It's fun to talk about, but I'm not sure that this is going to save open AI to be quite frank.

Joel Cheesman (03:59.94)

JT on the day that someone takes your commentary from work at daily, some like switch it around a little bit. And, it's Elsa from frozen giving job advice. That's your advice sort of re rewritten. Is that a problem for you? And is that, is that coming? Cause I think it is.

Chad (04:04.942)

Mmm.

JT (04:14.666)

Yeah.

It's already happening. mean, every single day, no, no, every single day for years now on social media, my loyal followers will send me a link and say this person verbatim stole, like literally took word for word and copied it and produced it. And so they go after those people for me. But what it proves to me is that there's a flavor for everyone.

You know, somebody may need to hear Elsa give my advice for it to sink in. Fine. Because there's still plenty of people. You don't play scarce. You don't play scarce. If you're going to do what I do, you get out there and doing it. I mean, I, yeah, with all my free time, Chad. Yeah. With all my free time. Certainly maybe somewhere down the line, but I mean, I'm pretty busy now, but as AI evolves, probably. Yeah. It may happen.

Chad (04:47.214)

Shouldn't you be doing that though? I mean, shouldn't you be doing that?

I mean, it's...

Chad (05:00.462)

Well, mean, you and I'm using the royal you as the royal we, you have a team, you have people that do kind of this kind of stuff. So I mean, to me, it sounds like if there are different opportunities and you see on TikTok, people have many different channels and they have different content for different channels. And in this case, could be different, or it wouldn't be different content, it'd be different characters with the same content. just, I don't know, it seems really weird and sloppy.

JT (05:30.272)

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if somebody wants to invest and have me do that across multiple channels, bring it on. But, you know, there's just enough for everyone. Yeah.

Chad (05:34.84)

That's what it's about. That's what it's about. Invest people.

Joel Cheesman (05:38.825)

I think it's a slippery slope. What else big moves? Chad, you've sold your house officially from my understanding is that.

JT (05:41.39)

Call me.

Chad (05:44.875)

Yes, we're in the final throws. We're in the final throws. Been through the hard stuff, the inspection, that kind of stuff. We're actually looking at buying another place in Cabanis as well. So having a couple of places there, two or three. Yeah, so we're... Huh?

Joel Cheesman (06:02.084)

two or three. What are you, the Beverly Hillbillies now? Geez.

JT (06:03.576)

Wait, is that for us? Because you want us to come hang with you? No, we're gonna come do the podcast from there. You're just gonna keep guest suites for us.

Chad (06:10.446)

Yes, of course. No, we definitely would love to have that happen. That would be freaking amazing. Can you imagine doing some of this shit, some of the clips and stuff like that on the beach? Oh, it'd be awesome. It'd be awesome. Anyways.

Joel Cheesman (06:10.563)

my god, the clamp, the clampets are coming to Portugal everybody.

JT (06:19.266)

Yes, I can.

Yes, I can.

Joel Cheesman (06:22.564)

I have to say totally jealous. This is only this happens to you, Chad. Like everything works out for you and little insider baseball. Chad's getting to sell his house furnished so he doesn't even have to like worry about selling his shit or goodwill or trash. Like, we'll just pack a few bags and go to Portugal. It's all good. Like that's, that's how life works out for Chad. So wash all the time, all the time.

Chad (06:27.33)

What?

JT (06:37.367)

Ugh.

Chad (06:43.95)

Yeah, I mean, and it just makes sense in this situation for our house is really close to an elementary school, right? And more than likely, you're gonna get younger families moving in, they're upsizing their house, but they're not gonna be able to fill a house this size with their shit. And to be quite frank, I remember when I was that age, I didn't have nice shit. So we have nice shit. So I remember actually talking to the prospective buyer and he looked at me and he's like,

Joel Cheesman (06:49.028)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (07:13.998)

Is this true? You're going to, we're buying the house and the furniture. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, yeah. Cause remember the plastic plates that the kids had that we all ate off of when kids were growing up and that kind of stuff. And then we didn't want to buy really good furniture. Cause you know, you get like spaghetti sauce and shit all over it. Now it's just like, Oh, okay. That's cool. So anyway, that's how we spun it and that's how it was sold.

JT (07:19.988)

Hahaha!

Joel Cheesman (07:27.036)

huh.

JT (07:36.6)

Love it. Love it.

Joel Cheesman (07:40.292)

All right. Enough of that. Chad, you know, Chad life, I'll start off with shout outs guys. Guy is charm life is, disgusting. guys, it's the holiday season. I'm wearing my Christmas, factory fix miss, sweatshirt. And this is always a, always a time for nostalgia for me. Always a time to get sort of, sort of mushy and think about things. And, I want to give a shout out to John candy.

JT (07:45.006)

Hahaha!

Chad (07:54.619)

sexy. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

JT (07:56.002)

Dapper. Dapper.

Joel Cheesman (08:08.74)

People of a certain age won't even know who John Candy is, which is a crime. There's a new documentary on Prime called John Candy, Like Me. And it just talks about his life, just a grand figure, a real human being. So many of the comedians of that time were sort of out of reach or untouchable. The Chevy Chases, the Eddie Murphys, guys that were funny, but...

Chad (08:11.822)

Shame on you

JT (08:12.696)

Shame. Shame.

Joel Cheesman (08:37.356)

not really relatable, at least to someone like me. And John Candy was just sort of an every guy, know, the guy next door that was just funny as shit and could talk, you know, make you feel important and listen to what you're saying. So, I've got to ask everyone's favorite John Candy movie, which I'll, I'll get to in a second, but this guy runs the gamut of comedy. we met him in stripes, uncle Buck, everyone's going to watch home alone during the holiday season. the, the polka band.

Chad (08:39.874)

Mm.

Chad (08:48.248)

Amazing.

JT (09:00.109)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (09:06.008)

that saves the mom. mean, he's in JFK as a dramatic role, which I think is one of his best roles. Total range, great guy. SCTV, if you can see the old SCTVs from Canada when we had SNL as a treasure. I'm gonna go Uncle Buck as my favorite John Candy movie. What do you guys think?

Chad (09:12.072)

range.

JT (09:13.794)

Mm-hmm.

JT (09:22.955)

Yeah.

Chad (09:23.768)

I was a good one. Yeah, always a good one. Love it. I'm a big Plains trains guy. mean, it's always falling back to the those aren't pillows. I mean, it's just the funny little moments, right? That happened. And he was able to create them with a mate like the Bill Murray's, Steve Martin's. mean, he was also surrounded by amazing talent as well. But the thing is, it almost...

JT (09:31.074)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:35.16)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

JT (09:36.366)

Yeah.

Chad (09:51.778)

felt like he was amplifying them and vice versa.

Joel Cheesman (09:55.364)

And so human in that role, although comedy there, there are moments where, know, Steve Martin is rail, you know, just sticking him and he, you see the humanity and when he's sort of alone, he has no home. I mean, it's just, yeah, really great. Plane stories on them bills is a great one as well. How about you, JT?

Chad (09:57.404)

yeah.

JT (09:57.518)

Okay.

JT (10:12.406)

Yeah, I was torn between the two, but I got to lean towards Uncle Buck. just, there's so many good scenes in that. I like the one where he's dancing, right? The dancing scene, like I can't, he was just a classic, you know? And you're right, he was so lovable. Like you were rooting for him the whole time, even though he was such an F-up, you know? Loved it.

Joel Cheesman (10:15.417)

Yeah.

Chad (10:17.985)

Joel Cheesman (10:24.078)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (10:30.702)

Yep. And a co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts football team. little known fact with, with Wayne Gretzky, by the way. anyway, yeah, but the scene with Macaulay Culkin where he asked conservative questions, like what's your record for most like that's a great scene as well. anyway, shout out to John Candy kids. Take, take a break. If you haven't watched a John Candy movie this holiday season. Yep.

Chad (10:53.954)

It's the holidays, enjoy yourself.

JT (10:56.814)

Oh, wow. So I feel like I'm getting a little serious then. I'm going to give a shout out first to leanin.org's 11th annual report, kind of State of Women in Corporate America. It was partnership with McKinsey. It came out this week with some pretty dismal stats. Everything sliding back for women in corporate America. Probably one of the most significant one was, know, 88 % of companies were focused on these initiatives in 2017. It's coming in at 56 % right now. And, you know, it's just reflective of the climate.

Chad (10:59.671)

Okay?

JT (11:26.338)

But I want to give a shout out to News Nation. They had me on this morning to talk about this. And the one thing I did say is that we don't get progress in a straight line. I expected this setback. I think most people should expect this setback. What'll be interesting to see is whether we bounce back or not. But bigger is this tipping point. Women are done. They're done trading time for money. You can't win a game where the way you get rewarded is working 78 hours a week. So they're stepping out in droves. I am watching women leave in droves and go from a

traditional paycheck, time for money, to a knowledge paycheck. Hey, if I can solve your $10,000 problem in 10 minutes, pay me. And women are now leveling AI, doing the work of 10 people. So I kind of think this kind of data just fuels women to say, I'm not going to play a game that is rigged for me to never win. I'm going to go create my own game. And I'll be excited to see what comes out of that because already the comments on LinkedIn since I posted this morning have been pretty positive from women, which you never know. But that leads into it, a perfect example.

Chad (11:56.686)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (12:22.968)

Yeah. Yeah, good.

JT (12:24.898)

So last week, y'all let me get on there and talk about Vonk's unveiling, right? They did that big. And I was honest, y'all let me get to be honest about my thoughts around it. Yeah. But this, this, this shout out is to Ritu Mohanka, the CEO of Vonk, because she literally messaged me on LinkedIn afterwards and said,

Chad (12:29.026)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (12:33.154)

I had that at a doctor's office once, a vonk unveiling. Yeah. Geez.

Chad (12:33.902)

Of of course. You had a shot. You had a shot. I think a series of shots actually.

JT (12:49.806)

I'd really love to chat with you. I'd love to demo this for you. We took your feedback seriously. I want to hear how we can improve. Guys, I'm on your platform all the time. And when I'm honest, I usually get snark. Usually get somebody from the company making a snarky comment or wanting to tell me whether or not this is the first time in all of 2025 that a CEO same day came and said this. And again, a woman, just saying, just saying, pro, pro move, pro move.

Joel Cheesman (12:59.108)

Thanks

Chad (13:01.922)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:08.972)

huh.

Chad (13:15.694)

That's a pro move. That's a, that's a, that's that's a pro move. That's a pro move. And we've, we've said that it's about CEOs in the past where we, I mean, we get snark back and forth because we always give snark and if we get it back, that's great. That means you're listening, you're engaging, and that's all well and good. but you gotta remember, especially right now, you got three people that are on actually giving advice and recommendations, what they like, what they don't like, those types of things. there's value to that.

JT (13:20.056)

Mm-hmm.

JT (13:27.384)

Good, of course.

Chad (13:44.129)

Right? So you either take it and you use it or you kick it away and you don't. That's entirely up to you. in, in retus, retu also reached out to me, Bill Fisher, the CTO reached out to me and just a great group. I don't know if that's because they're, they're European for the most part. but a great group, who I believe are moving in the right direction.

JT (14:01.742)

Bye.

JT (14:06.338)

Yeah, agreed.

Joel Cheesman (14:07.908)

Bill Borman showed up at my door. wouldn't let him in. That's, that's, that's, that's all I got. JT, I'm curious. I'm curious. Yeah. get that hobo out of my yard. JT curious, curious on your first point. I don't know if you talked about this last week cause I wasn't around, but the women professional categories being deleted from the government, documentation. Did you guys talk about that? Or do you have an opinion on like nursing? I think is no longer a professional.

Chad (14:09.966)

Most hotels won't let him in.

Chad (14:19.307)

Love him. Love him.

JT (14:19.598)

Love you, Belle.

Joel Cheesman (14:37.54)

category. Yeah.

Chad (14:37.858)

Yeah, categorized.

JT (14:40.236)

We did not talk about it. think it's, you know, it's, would love to get into it maybe on another show, but I think what we're not understanding is we never started at the same starting line. So you've got to start to think about the fact that reason we're asking for these things is just to try to get to the same. I'm not trying to get ahead, you know, just get me there to the same starting lane. That's why those things were put in place. And so, you know, like I said, women are just jumping out. They're done. They are done. They're going to build their own game. They're going to play their own rules. And I honestly believe there's never been a better time to do it.

Joel Cheesman (14:41.87)

Okay.

Chad (14:50.126)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (14:50.254)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (15:10.114)

I think it's interesting because I did post about that on LinkedIn and I got a bunch of white dudes responding back to me saying, it's not a big deal. No fire here. You know what I mean? And for me, it's just like, dude, no one to shut the fuck up and sit down. I mean, seriously, just seriously. When somebody's trying to advocate for a primarily female workforce, which is getting hammered right now because of, you know, return to office and a lot of other things, right?

JT (15:25.048)

Yeah.

JT (15:38.52)

Right.

Chad (15:39.951)

Just know your fucking place. I mean seriously, either be an ally or shut the fuck up and sit out. And that being said, that's right, and that being said, my shout out is to enshittification. Yes, a word coined and a book written by Cory Doctro. The term is used to describe how platforms progressively worsen user experience and take advantage of their customers as a model.

JT (15:47.214)

Amen.

Joel Cheesman (15:48.452)

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. What you got, Sawash?

Chad (16:06.818)

Corey often uses Facebook as an example, and there are three phases of this. First and foremost, they give value to their users to grow that user base, right? Then phase two, they start giving value and shifting it to the advertisers to target the user base. And then phase three, the platform starts prioritizing its own profits over everything else, horrible user experience, and also

not providing the value to its advertisers that they used to. Well, this week, friend of the show, Mark Dries, from recruitmentmatters.nl used the same framework to highlight our friends over at Indeed as the company who has en-shitified our industry. We're at phase one. Remember, Indeed was free for everybody. Free jobs, get all their jobs here. Free for users, and it was easy. No friction for users at all.

Joel Cheesman (16:58.5)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (17:03.042)

You clicked on a link and went directly to the job on the applicant tracking system. You applied directly to the company. Wow. Phase two of that, phase two of that, the value started to shift to the advertisers. Jobseeker experience degraded with horrible job matches and hiring companies would pay for better placement of their jobs. Didn't make it relevant. They just were able to pay to get up higher, right? Then phase three, Mark says, Indeed's prioritization

of its profits over experience and outcomes, totally degraded free and organic jobs, Disposition, data grabs, and increased friction for everyone, just for starters. So shout out to Mark Dries for making us aware of the enshittification in the talent space.

Joel Cheesman (17:52.91)

Shame on you indeed. Shame on you. You know, if they would just give away free stuff, we might forgive all of this. I don't know.

Chad (17:56.248)

Shame.

Chad (18:00.364)

I doubt it, but yeah.

Chad (18:11.843)

Yes.

Chad (19:11.381)

Amen.

Joel Cheesman (19:14.126)

I want add to that Chad, Van Hack has graciously allowed us to rekindle the premium bottle giveaway that old listeners will remember. We used to give away really nice bottles over the holidays and we've been able to acquire three quality premium bottles of chicken cock. Yes, you know the three wise men. Well, how about the three cocks? The three cocks are coming to Chad and cheese.

Chad (19:18.198)

Chad (19:25.778)

nice.

Chad (19:37.368)

Hello! Three cocks? Whew! I fucking-

Joel Cheesman (19:43.332)

we'll be, we'll be putting that up, promoting that heavily here very soon, but, big shout out to Van Hack for helping us to rekindle the, the premium giveaway, who won't be getting anything this holiday season. However, is our friend, Jeremy Roberts, who, who should never play fantasy football ever again.

Chad (20:05.421)

haha

Still winless. Still winless.

Joel Cheesman (20:09.228)

Although he has one more chance to win a game and I would not want to be playing him this week because if you're the one team that like loses to Jeremy, you're in trouble. Anyway, here's a here's almost playoff time. Fantasy football, our friends at factory factory fix wearing my holiday sweater rankings haven't changed much. got Courtney Nappo, Mackenzie Maitland, David Stiefel making a big push at the end here for the to repeat as champion. I'm in that four spot just making the the playoffs.

JT (20:10.286)

Still winless!

Chad (20:15.459)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (20:38.318)

barely positioned Stephen McGrath at number five could still win the consolation prize in that second bracket followed by Jada Weiler, Chad Sowash. He might be facing you Chad in the consolation bracket. If that, if that happens, Jason Putnam out of the out of contention at the moment, Megan Radigan, William Carrington, Ginger Dodds, and my God, Jeremy Roberts. First ever to go winless, I think in fantasy football, but big shout out to our friends at factory fixed.

Chad (20:48.962)

Possibly, possibly.

Joel Cheesman (21:07.118)

for making fantasy football a reality for us here at the Chad and cheese podcast, which now brings us to play. that's right. A few layoffs to talk about guys. UKG announced the closure of its operations in Uruguay three and a half years after having landed in the country. 300 workers will be impacted as in gone, culture ramp.

Chad (21:16.334)

There we go.

Joel Cheesman (21:34.072)

laid off 60 people or 6 % of its workforce as part of a strategic realignment focused on AI powered products. Chad, any thoughts on the recent layoffs at UKG or Culture Amp?

Chad (21:47.565)

You couldn't wait till the first of the fucking year. I mean, seriously, we're in the holiday season. How else would you rather just fuck somebody just over as possible, the worst you possibly could, let's do it during the holiday season. Let's do that. You couldn't wait until like, I don't know, know, Q1 or some shit like that. mean, it's just, all this shit's gonna happen.

Joel Cheesman (22:01.006)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (22:11.598)

A lot of it has to do with optics. And when you are a CEO and you need to start, you know, really focusing on optics of your brand, this is not the fucking way to do it. I don't know who thought this was a good idea. I know a lot of it probably has to do with, you know, closing out the year and those types of things, but 15 days is not going to make a fucking difference, right? Focus on, mean, anyway, that's it.

Joel Cheesman (22:35.79)

So silver lining is I think everyone gets a leg lamp, the same one you saw in a Christmas story. So they'll feel a little bit better the holiday season with a leg lamp. Fragile. JT, any thoughts?

JT (22:39.692)

Hahaha

Chad (22:39.854)

I hope if they're lucky. Yeah.

JT (22:44.653)

Ha ha!

Yeah, next week when more people lay off, these guys will look like less bad. You know what I mean? Like it's still coming. You know, it is. mean, yeah. I mean, it's going to be way more next week because it's closer to the holiday. Like, hey, let's get them through next week and then let them go permanent vacation. You know, there's the mentality.

Chad (22:53.166)

Cause it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.

Joel Cheesman (22:54.212)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (23:01.816)

Yep. And the minute, the minute, the minute we blow up Venezuela, you're going to see a lot of layoff PR because nothing in the news says, layoff announcements more than a war. UKG was an interesting one to me, because they had acquired a company called Ascentus back in the early 2020s, which had a nice presence in, Uruguay and they had, they went from 40 employees to 300. They literally announced like,

Chad (23:02.062)

crazy.

Joel Cheesman (23:31.449)

growing to 500 employees in a local magazine, a business magazine, apparently. so to go from where we're going to 500 to we're just shutting the whole thing down. I don't, I'm not a Uruguayan expert on certainly business in that area or anything in that area. so I don't, there was something political locally. If there was competition that was something happened with UKG and Uruguay that just made them say we're shutting the whole thing down. So maybe more will come to light.

Chad (23:44.728)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (24:00.715)

on that one. Culture amp.

It's 6%. I think it's par for the course. It's just like AI is doing more of our jobs. Like it's just, uh, that's just the way that it is. I have nothing. Yeah. Nothing to say much about that. But yeah, I think you're right. JT, you were going to see a lot more. Layoffs.

Chad (24:12.942)

Just timing.

JT (24:20.494)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (24:26.21)

And where do you go after getting laid off? LinkedIn, right? Am I right? LinkedIn has surpassed 100 million verified profiles through its free identity verification program launched in 2023, empowered by partners, including Clear and Persona. The verification badge is now displayed on approximately 10 % of LinkedIn's total membership. With integrations such as Zoom and Adobe coming soon at no cost, Chad, we can finally trust the internet again. Am I right? Or not so much?

Chad (24:29.657)

my god.

JT (24:54.85)

HA!

Chad (24:57.336)

Well, yeah, I mean, this is much better than the faux verification you get on X on the Nazi porn bar we know as Twitter slash X. LinkedIn and Clear's partnership have actually, I mean, they're actually verified background checked over 100 million LinkedIn users as real people, unlike obviously the Nazi porn bar. This partnership is a clever way for Zoom to use LinkedIn's Clear partnership to catapult to the head of the class when it comes to interviewing verified candidates.

And this is great for all parties, great for clear as this means more people are gonna wanna buy into the clear to get verified. Great for LinkedIn who has millions of fake profiles and need to demonstrate they're making an effort to clean up the platform. And last but not least, this is fucking great for Zoom, who gets to use the advantages of clear verification through a just add water partnership with LinkedIn. Then you add the wrinkle of Zoom's bright hire acquisition.

And this all comes together quite nicely, especially since Zoom is already the number one video conferencing system in the world and holds about a 55 % market share. They're a market leader who is not getting complacent. And I love, love, love this partnership.

JT (25:56.375)

and

Joel Cheesman (26:12.433)

I'm so glad Chad's finally drinking the LinkedIn Kool-Aid. It warms my heart this holiday season. JT?

Chad (26:18.432)

I am not!

JT (26:21.664)

Yeah, you know, all of that. And for someone who works with job seekers every day, I'm really excited about the push to verify recruiters because there's just as many recruiter scams going on right now. And this, the, if you think about it, where they win right now is if they get recruiters verified and job seekers verified, that solves a major, major friction point that has been crushing us in ATS systems, you know, the AI bots, all of that. So knowing you're talking to a real human being and job seekers,

Chad (26:24.835)

Mm.

Chad (26:30.354)

that's good. Yeah. Agreed.

Chad (26:34.838)

Yes, ma'am.

JT (26:49.998)

me every day. They'll literally message me, is this person real? All right, how am I supposed to know that? But if they can force recruiters to do that and give preference to this is a certified recruiter, I mean, that's a big, big win.

Chad (27:02.38)

Applicant tracking systems should start doing this too.

Joel Cheesman (27:07.032)

Can we, can we bury blockchain finally as an ID? I don't like, can we finally put that to bed, to, the chagrin of sir Richard, I'm sure. But, what, what, what a gift for LinkedIn that they, that they could become the default verified person, human, thing, not Google, not, know, like it's not Facebook, not X like LinkedIn. What a position to be in.

JT (27:11.111)

Hahaha

Hahaha!

Chad (27:17.934)

Ask your crypto bros.

Chad (27:27.992)

Yeah, yeah.

JT (27:35.619)

Hmm?

Joel Cheesman (27:35.876)

So good, good for them. yeah, this, yeah, I don't, kind of by accident, like ID.me does this. Uh, I mean, there are certain, certainly ways that you can build some sort of trust here, but good on LinkedIn for kind of falling into this position.

Chad (27:47.651)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (27:51.823)

But if you think of clear, people who travel, they want to use clear in many airports, right? And that's the next step up because everybody's using TSA PreCheck now, right? So the lines at TSA PreCheck are just as long, if not longer than standard. So then you go through the clear line. everybody wants, I mean, they're just the advantages of it, especially if you're in business. And then in this aspect of it, I mean, I just love it. And again, applicant tracking systems, there are other applications that are out there where I think there could be great partnerships.

JT (27:52.11)

I'll just-

Joel Cheesman (27:56.761)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (28:04.708)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (28:20.93)

where literally clear could explode.

Joel Cheesman (28:24.59)

The application is there, just not the, the index, the, the, the Rolodex of people. Now clear could, could, partner with Meta, guess, and you could clarify your, your Meta profile. but anyway, I love, I love it when Chad's privilege shows what he's like, everyone has a TSA pre-check and everyone goes through the clear line. As somebody who just traveled, no Chad, everyone does not have a TSA pre-check or a clear account. All right. When we come back.

Chad (28:43.406)

59 bucks!

JT (28:49.678)

don't have it. I don't have it. Hashtag Chadlife.

Joel Cheesman (28:54.2)

When we come back, we'll find them if we have them.

Joel Cheesman (29:01.464)

Rolling on guys, Findem, an AI platform built for talent decisions has acquired Getro, a job network used by venture capital, private equity and professional organizations, otherwise known as Blue Collar. Blue Collar job boards, everybody aiming to combine Getro's relationship intelligence with Findem's tools. In case you missed it, Findem recently raised $51 million back in October, bringing its total funding to 110.

Chad (29:07.448)

Excuse me.

Chad (29:11.922)

Mm-hmm.

JT (29:14.744)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (29:28.632)

million dollars. Chad, find them if you got them. Your thoughts.

Chad (29:29.72)

Hello.

So, Getro, as you said, is a job board platform representing 800 VCPE, Economic Development, Chamber of Commerce, et cetera, et cetera. Just a bunch of professional networks. And I'd really like a breakdown of all of those because it would be nice to know how many actual professional networks are in there. There are a lot of VC and PE, but I believe the real value lies in the professional networks right now. And then,

think about it from the standpoint of, you know, Findem adding Getro's site to deliver hire ready candidates to companies. mean, Findem is already a sourcing platform. So now you're going to see value and distribution to job boards. They now control, not to mention having access to those resume databases.

to match qualified candidates and invite them to apply, screen, and then schedule interviews. It's like ZipRecruiter on steroids. I mean, well, back when ZipRecruiter was worth the shit. This just demonstrates that job board platforms who go aggressively into integrating AI, automated workflows, and apply paths into their system have massive value. And this is nothing new. We've been doing this with job boards for ages.

But the advent of automation and AI takes it to another level especially when you are connected to 800 fucking job boards so Congratulations to you know getro find them and our friends over at Akitian Ventures who are actually part of this deal

Joel Cheesman (31:17.156)

JT, I'm going to go next because I want to set you up for some commentary on my thoughts on this. So part of it is I think there's an agent race. There's an arms race and agents. Like everybody's got them. It's sort of like when chat bots, chat bots are everywhere. I don't know which ones are good, which ones are shit. Ultimately the market vetted that out. So what's interesting to me is

You had a, you had a commentary JT about quiet posting. and I'll paraphrase it, but basically saying companies are tired of, of robotic automated applies and they're sick of it. So they're not even posting jobs. They're just going right to the database, right to the source and then trying to find people that way. So when I see an agent partner with essentially a job board who I'm guessing is getting fewer and fewer job.

postings, it's like, do we monetize our job board now? And Findem is this sort of easy button to say, okay, we'll partner with these guys to now create monetization opportunities in our job board. And then you have Findem partnering with like an association, which is also part of the news. So it's almost like the old strategy of like, we'll put a jobs link on your association site, and then you can search for jobs, which are powered by us.

So it's sort of this strategy, the more I peel it, the smellier it gets, but also the more intriguing it gets. I'm curious about JT because I think you have some insight into what companies are saying and how solutions like Findem can help fill the monetization gap that's coming from fewer job postings.

JT (33:03.982)

Right. Yeah. So quiet hiring is huge right now, like you said, right? Then, then, and eventually we're not going to call it quiet hiring anymore. We're just going to call it hiring. And I say that because job boards are dead. I'll say it again. Get them. That's their name that just got bought. Smart, smart move. Get row smart move because they know they have to evolve. But what I like about them is the 800 niche areas of

Chad (33:19.128)

Get true.

JT (33:29.93)

expertise that they fall into, right? Like these aren't general job boards. These are niche based job boards on skills. So if you can take that, that access to that audience, put them with Findem and start to create that quiet hiring effect through that platform, that gets insane because they already have the niche content, the niche individuals to go and find. What they're going to have to do now is change the approach of how those people update themselves and make themselves

kind of like their career library so that it's searchable and they can find them. yeah, there's money behind this. It's niche based and it's going forward and I like it. I like where it's going.

Joel Cheesman (34:11.108)

All right. All right. Well, speaking of money, let's talk about Walmart, shall we? A little company out of Arkansas, you might've heard of. In 2015, Walmart announced a $2.7 billion investment in its associates, prioritizing wage increases, training and educational programs. This decision initially met with skepticism, has led to significant benefits for associates, executives, and yes, Wall Street. Here's Bloomberg with a deeper dive on the news.

Chad (34:11.982)

There you go, there you go. There we go.

Chad (35:02.328)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (35:26.007)

Hello.

JT (35:28.366)

Insane.

Joel Cheesman (35:33.284)

JT, who buys all of her subway tuna melts with a macadamia nut cookie on the side at Walmart, by the way. Your thoughts on this move? You're an advocate for the job seeker and the employee. You love this,

JT (35:46.304)

I wait, how did you know I love tuna melts? Can we hit on that later? Like, then I sang it.

Chad (35:48.974)

You don't want to know. You don't want to know. Yes. You don't want to know.

Joel Cheesman (35:52.344)

Bonding over tuna with JT, our new podcast dropping in January of 2026.

JT (35:58.015)

Yeah, I mean, you know I'm a fan of this. And anecdotally, I'll tell you a story. Before he took over, I remember being in a Walmart one day, packed, holiday season, couldn't find anyone to help you. If you walked up to somebody that clearly worked there, they gave you an evil eye and were like hanging out and talking. mean, the apathy that was going through that place at that time, it obviously made you not want to strap there. Fast forward to today, the stats are there. I mean, that is exciting, exciting stuff in a time where

People are, you you can have a job, a career or a calling. And the reality is there's a lot of people that just want a job. But when you take that job and you make it what it is there, I mean, that's crazy transformation. I mean, he is a comeback kid. That's impressive.

Chad (36:39.47)

He's definitely a comeback kid because he started working at Walmart on the warehouse floor. So the guy can get his hands dirty and he really serves as the living embodiment of, you know, the company's current promote from within philosophy. He has consistently championed internal development, elevating leaders like John Ferner, who's actually going to step into the CEO position in 2026. And that reinforces the pipeline first.

JT (36:50.167)

Hmm?

JT (36:53.806)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (37:08.078)

We always talk about talent pipelining in our space. It's totally bullshit because we don't do stuff like this. McMillan's philosophy extends to valuing all associates. Recent reports even spotlighting cake decorators as among some of the highest paid hourly roles that they have. And I can hear you now guys, I can hear now, that's great Chad, but what about capitalism? Under McMillan, Walmart's revenue surged from roughly 476 billion

JT (37:12.706)

Yep. Yep.

Chad (37:37.807)

in 2014 to more than 710 billion today, a huge leap for a company at that scale. Walmart's market cap quadrupled with shares delivering 300 plus percent gains, easily outperforming the S &P 500 during the time in the seat. And the company has also seen strong net expansion into a 4 % jump in the recent quarter. So highlighting

JT (37:38.328)

There it is.

Chad (38:06.55)

McMillan's ability to do all of this because they paid their people more. I do have a beef. I think he should actually not get paid as much as he does right now, but, start pushing that money back down to the people who actually had all of this and made this happen. But I'll save that for another day. I think this is great. This is amazing. Invest in your people.

JT (38:29.677)

Mm-hmm.

JT (38:33.077)

Ohhhh

Joel Cheesman (38:33.636)

Who remembers the nineties? Yeah. The nineties. I remember when Amazon or Walmart was killing every mom and pop in your local market. I remember local grocery stores. remember gross or local appliance stores. Yeah. Like, so I remember when Walmart was the devil and killing every and every, every job that it was replacing was a job that paid jack shit, had no benefits. like, so

Chad (38:35.951)

yeah, I'm here. There he is.

Chad (38:41.507)

Yes.

Chad (38:45.624)

hardware stores?

Chad (38:57.262)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (39:01.292)

So to see this transformation from what Walmart as a brand was to local markets that were seeing their economy destroyed, the businesses that they knew and trusted gone because of pricing, it's a fascinating turnaround. And the fact that we're even talking about Walmart as yay Walmart, it's sort of surreal to me because they were Satan. They were like the worst brand in many local markets throughout the world.

Chad (39:08.174)

Mm-hmm.

JT (39:20.778)

No.

Chad (39:22.062)

It is.

Joel Cheesman (39:28.94)

I am curious though, because we talk about brand and employment brand and holistic brand, and part of me thinks that the reverse can be true. If you have a strong employment brand, you can then become a strong holistic brand. We talk so much about big brands that attract good people. Sometimes good people can turn your brand around, and we're seeing that with Walmart.

Chad (39:38.626)

Mm.

Chad (39:51.503)

They do JT was just talking about a fucking instance where nobody fucking paid attention to her now They pay attention to people because they're actually making close to a living wage

Joel Cheesman (40:02.68)

Yeah. And when I see, when I see like a target struggle, it makes me wonder how they could follow this sort of blueprint and Starbucks and others that have labor issues that they can turn things around. But it's fascinating to me from a, from a branding, branding standpoint, but yeah, good for good for Walmart.

Chad (40:12.142)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (40:24.322)

Dig it.

Joel Cheesman (40:25.782)

And from Walmart to the NFL, Chad, you got your LinkedIn followers all fired up this week over a post on football. And I'm not talking about your seventh place, current ranking and fantasy football powered by our friends at factory fix, by the way, everybody. What, what did you post on LinkedIn that got everybody so ginned up?

JT (40:41.838)

you

Chad (40:46.702)

I'll talk about it after this ad break. be right back.

Chad (40:53.046)

All right, let me see if I can share something here real quick because this is gonna be helpful for all of the individuals that are out there who are watching on YouTube. If you're not watching on YouTube, you should be watching on YouTube. All right, so this is...

See if you can see that. you see that? Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. OK, so let's jump into this real quick. So I'm not a Green Bay fan Packers fan, and if you are listening, what we're looking at is literally it's just comparing Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings and the number of quarterbacks that they've had since 1992. The Green Bay Packers have had three.

Joel Cheesman (41:14.307)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (41:39.919)

Okay, three. So now that's the setup. I'm not a Packers fan, but I am a fan of their development program and using the quarterback position as an example where Green Bay has had three starting quarterbacks since 1992 and three of their conference rivals and most of the NFL have had five to 10 times more quarterbacks starting in that position. Why? Most NFL teams treat top talent as disposable.

And most companies and their talent organizations are doing the exact same today. And here's a great example. Green Bay drafts a top QB to learn from the QB that's currently in the position. They give him a clipboard and he sits on the sideline and he gets a chance to actually learn the game at the NFL level. Where most NFL teams, Cleveland,

throw their rookie QBs into the fire the very first chance they get, generally the first season, their rookie season, almost like they're disposable. That is exactly how many companies view talent today. They go through the process of identifying top talent, what that looks like, they then target that talent, they recruit that talent, they onboard that talent, and then they throw them into the fucking fire with no development whatsoever. So that is really my case. When we start talking about

sports and we always make these analogies back and forth. For me, this is probably one of the closest analogies.

JT (43:11.085)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (43:14.21)

You just had to throw my Cleveland Browns under the bus, you? The only reason you wanted to talk about this was to trash the Browns. Wasn't it? Wasn't it? Look, you're right. Look from, and the Packers, you could probably say they've had that many coaches, too. You could probably say they've had that many, you know, GMs and, and presidents like from top, this all starts at the top and like executives that know what they're doing, people that know what they're doing, and then recruiters that know what they're doing this.

Chad (43:20.67)

No, no, of course not, of course not.

JT (43:22.914)

Yeah, wait,

Chad (43:30.434)

Yeah, Yep.

Joel Cheesman (43:44.197)

There's no difference in, you know, Jamie diamond running, uh, know, JP Morgan or other executives and in doing that. Now what I do find interesting, by the way, the Browns are the exact opposite of everything I just said. They're a total train wreck on all of the fall, all of them, different owners, different GMs, different everybody. But what's interesting to me is the, the backstory and some of that is like Brett Favre did not like Aaron Rogers. He did not like them drafting Aaron Rogers because he was the replacement.

Chad (43:56.494)

Yeah

They are. Yes.

Joel Cheesman (44:14.038)

And it takes a strong organization to say goodbye when it's time to say goodbye to a Brett Favre. And I'm pretty sure and Rogers was not really excited when they drafted love because he wanted more receivers and other people that he could throw it to. can think also, Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh, another really strong, stable organization when they drafted Kenny Pickett, he had a lot of problems with that. Now Pickett didn't work out cause he wasn't, Aaron Rogers, but organizations also have to figure out when it's time to say goodbye to someone.

Chad (44:19.242)

yeah.

Chad (44:24.172)

He was not. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (44:42.424)

How do we do that and do it strategically and do it in a way that makes sense?

JT (44:47.694)

not being heavily involved in football. The first thing that came to mind was did that account for injury? I mean, you you're going to have turnover when you have injury and people at Lake out, you know, if if you have they were super healthy and they got to play every game. Yeah, sure. You'd have less people, but you know, just a thought.

Chad (45:04.46)

Yeah, that it, it did to some extent. mean, there, there were literally like the starters, right? And if they didn't play a few games because of injury, they didn't count that. So it was literally like the starters versus like the Cleveland Browns again, or the Detroit lions or what have you, that, that literally they went through changing their starting rotation entirely, not because of injury, but just because.

JT (45:27.052)

Yeah. Well, but.

Joel Cheesman (45:28.996)

I mean, it's a good point too, Chad. mean, here in Indianapolis, we had a generational quarterback in Andrew Luck, and we didn't surround him with the people that he needed to be surrounded with, linemen, to keep him upright. And he did have injuries like JT alluded to. like all these things, you can have the best quarterback of a generation, but if you don't have the pieces around him, it's not going to work.

Chad (45:40.802)

Well, still.

That's talent. That's talent.

JT (45:47.384)

Back there.

Chad (45:51.522)

Yep. Agreed. Agreed.

JT (45:51.671)

Yeah. And I'm going to throw one more factor in there. Football has been played the same way for how many years? Football has been played the same way. It is the same game. Business is not the same game. So when you're staying at the rate of change and you've got to stay on top of it and you wake up one day and your staff doesn't cut it, I get training. I'm so, you know me, I want you to retrain. I want you to redeploy, but at the world we're in now, that's just not always 100 % possible. So I don't know that I could do that.

Chad (46:17.344)

I depending on the company, but I don't agree at all because football started off as just a running game and then there was a forward pass, right? Not to mention now you've got RPO, you've got different types of offenses and defenses and those types of things. So I don't agree at all. We have to be smarter about how we, how we as an organ, as an industry develop talent and we're not doing that.

Joel Cheesman (46:28.644)

Wildcat.

JT (46:32.504)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (46:41.412)

Guys, you know what never changes? The quality of my dad jokes. That's what never changes.

Chad (46:46.003)

get it in, get it in.

JT (46:48.75)

I'm ready. I'm ready.

Joel Cheesman (46:49.406)

This one's for Cameron Levy who emailed me and said, bring the naughty ones back. Bring the naughty jokes back. a little bit. All right, here we go. Why doesn't Santa have kids? Why doesn't Santa have kids? Because he only comes once a year and it's usually down a chimney.

Chad (46:53.814)

Ouch. Fuck off, Cameron.

JT (46:54.975)

no!

JT (47:07.566)

Ha!

Chad (47:11.586)

Thanks, Cameron. Way out. Fucking Cameron.

Joel Cheesman (47:11.768)

We out!

JT (47:17.464)

Cameron!