Live! RecFest USA 2026
Guilty Pleas, Autopilots and Iced Lattes
What do a big couch, a can of Stella, and four of the biggest personalities in recruitment have in common? They’re all live from RecFest this week, covering the hottest topics in the world of hiring.
Chad, Joel, Mo’, and J.T. are on hand to talk about everything from an HR tech founder facing up to 20 years behind bars to the great iced-latte-in-job-interviews debate sweeping the land.
First up, the crew covers all things RecFest USA live from the Shaker Recruitment Marketing booth, each offering a unique take on the world’s hottest recruitment conference. You may have heard about the recent controversy over an iced latte that made its way into an interview—and then drew criticism from a practitioner. Yeah, that gets covered.
Then it’s news time. The team discusses the recent guilty plea by the former CEO and founder of Joonko, who is looking at as much as 20 years in prison after allegedly ripping off investors to the tune of $27 million.Next, the gang turns to Harver’s acquisition of Symphony Talent, a move destined to rattle recruitment ad agencies for years to come. Does the future favor the agency? The group weighs in.
Then comes a Chad & Cheese first: a representative from Findem makes a sponsored announcement about the company’s latest product drop, Findem Studio.To wrap things up, the crew looks at ZoomInfo’s newly launched Talent Autopilot, a sourcing tool the company hopes will shake up the industry by tapping a dataset it calls second to none.
It’s a fun wrap-up from Nashville at the end of RecFest’s first big day. Now pass the hot chicken.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Speaker A [00:00:01]:
There we go.
Speaker B [00:00:02]:
Was I supposed to do that?
Speaker C [00:00:05]:
Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only 10 I see. What's up, boys and girls? This is Richard and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co host, Joel Cheeseman. Slash, wait. Joel. Nashville Hot Cheese.
Speaker A [00:00:18]:
Do it again.
Speaker C [00:00:18]:
I practiced that one. You want to go again?
Speaker B [00:00:20]:
I love it.
Speaker C [00:00:23]:
Oh, yeah. Are you a 10?
Speaker B [00:00:28]:
So good.
Speaker D [00:00:30]:
Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's Most Dangerous podcast. Chad Soosh and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Speaker C [00:00:51]:
Oh, yeah. Are you from Tennessee? Cause you're the only 10 I see. What's up, boys and girls? This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co host, Joel Nashville hot Cheeseman.
Speaker A [00:01:03]:
This is Chad. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Speaker B [00:01:06]:
So Wash, this is Maureen, AKA Mo. There's a new sheriff in town.
Speaker C [00:01:12]:
Wiley Clough, the Bedazzler.
Speaker B [00:01:15]:
Maureen, let's get you ready.
Speaker E [00:01:17]:
And I'm JT drinking pernicious IPA. O'.
Speaker A [00:01:20]:
Donnell. There it is.
Speaker C [00:01:21]:
And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous podcast Podcast, we are live from Wreckfest in Nashville, Tennessee. What's up, kids?
Speaker A [00:01:33]:
Okay, okay.
Speaker C [00:01:33]:
So, Mo.
Speaker A [00:01:35]:
Mo. Finally we're all together. We're doing this live. Mo is drunk.
Speaker E [00:01:40]:
Day one.
Speaker A [00:01:41]:
I'm eating skinny pop day one.
Speaker B [00:01:44]:
Cheers. Cheers.
Speaker C [00:01:45]:
Cheers.
Speaker E [00:01:45]:
Look in the eyes. Look in the eyes.
Speaker A [00:01:52]:
It's good stuff.
Speaker C [00:01:53]:
If you can't tell and you're listening. We are in the shaker booth.
Speaker A [00:01:56]:
Yes.
Speaker C [00:01:56]:
Who has graciously given us their facilities here.
Speaker A [00:02:00]:
Thanks, Joe.
Speaker C [00:02:01]:
Now that the show's over. So it's kind of an easy, easy thing to do to give us the show.
Speaker A [00:02:06]:
Yeah.
Speaker C [00:02:06]:
But let's. Let's hear. Day one is in the books.
Speaker E [00:02:10]:
Loved it.
Speaker C [00:02:11]:
Ladies first Takeaways, sessions that you enjoyed.
Speaker E [00:02:14]:
I mean, innovate. Stage rocked. We had 10amazing groups on our stage. Lots of interesting stuff. Super enjoyed. Scaleless. Just going to give that shout out. I thought they presented very interesting stuff. And the sleeper hit was our last one. Glenn from Ronstadt, like, put up some slides that people were snapshotting left and right. People totally missed it, so they should go. Yeah. It was really, really smart.
Speaker C [00:02:38]:
Was it Data?
Speaker E [00:02:40]:
It was. But he's like, he's thinking about AI in the way that everyone's going to be talking about next year. You know what I mean? Like, literally, he's doing the stuff nobody
Speaker B [00:02:48]:
else is Doing this screenshot at 4:45pm last session. That's like, that's legit.
Speaker E [00:02:53]:
Hold it.
Speaker A [00:02:54]:
So you didn't have to walk 20 minutes this time.
Speaker B [00:02:57]:
Thank you. Because you told me exactly where to go.
Speaker A [00:02:59]:
I'm here for you. I'm here.
Speaker B [00:03:00]:
I mean, last time they dropped me off like, literally probably like beyond the stadium.
Speaker A [00:03:04]:
Next area code.
Speaker B [00:03:05]:
Where am I? What's happening? It's not.
Speaker C [00:03:07]:
It's not super convenient. There's no address. It's just the fairgrounds.
Speaker A [00:03:11]:
Yeah, I was like, the dog park is the. Is the move. That's the dog park thing. So if you come to Wreckfest next year, get dropped off at the dog park. Was your phone blowing up last night? I got. As soon as I got here, my phone was blowing up. Everybody was out. Everybody was drinking. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Speaker E [00:03:31]:
No. Amen.
Speaker A [00:03:32]:
Oh my God. Showing up drunk this morning. I mean, rec fest is on, but not that early. Kids, tonight's the night you have a
Speaker C [00:03:41]:
different network than I do. Cuz I wasn't. I went to the hockey game solo. Fortunately, hooked up with Mike from Aaron, app sponsor of our T shirts. We got that off the checklist. We got our Aaron app promotion in there and ended up. Yeah. Having raising canes. Now I felt like hell in the morning.
Speaker A [00:04:04]:
Like not because of the raising canes, because of the beer or alcohol and or both.
Speaker B [00:04:09]:
Happens when in Nashville.
Speaker C [00:04:10]:
Now you have a early flight tomorrow.
Speaker A [00:04:13]:
Yes.
Speaker C [00:04:14]:
And I'm curious, was it just. I'm not going to go to sleep. Was it power nap and go to the airport? Dude, you're going to Cabo.
Speaker A [00:04:21]:
So. Yeah. So for me, this is not the party. And I know for a lot of people this is a party. I'm going to Cabo for five days. Buddy's getting married. I'm the best man. We are. I mean, this is. This is on. So again, it is America only.
Speaker C [00:04:34]:
Chad goes from Portugal to Cabo to good old party.
Speaker A [00:04:38]:
I'll get back to you.
Speaker C [00:04:40]:
What's the sense of the attendees? Are they hopeful? Are they ready to write checks? Are they a little more cautious? What's your take on the attendees?
Speaker B [00:04:48]:
I heard a lot of people talking about like five, 10 years out, which was really uplifting in the doomsday AI era. So I was like, sweet. You guys are optimists.
Speaker A [00:04:57]:
They did not think they were going to get killed. Okay, I like that. That's good.
Speaker C [00:05:02]:
It's like the new meme.
Speaker A [00:05:02]:
Where.
Speaker C [00:05:02]:
Where do you see yourself in five years? And it's the scene from The Terminator.
Speaker B [00:05:07]:
So good. So good.
Speaker E [00:05:09]:
That's funny.
Speaker C [00:05:10]:
Jt, any insight from the attendees?
Speaker E [00:05:12]:
I think people are here to get answers. I think they're done wondering, should I use AI? How do I use AI? People want to know what their new tech stack should look like. They're open to it. Like, I'm hearing people say, I'm ready to dump what I have. I want new stuff, and this is the place to be for that. So I think you're going to see some major breakups. I think some companies are going to dump some stuff that's been around for a long time and go for some of the new stuff that's here. And I'm here for it.
Speaker A [00:05:36]:
We're going to talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker C [00:05:38]:
Major breakups. We're going to talk about consolidations, jail sentences. There's some jump on today's show. Should we get into shout outs?
Speaker A [00:05:47]:
Yeah.
Speaker C [00:05:47]:
Yeah. Our shout outs, as you know, loyal fans, is sponsored by our friends at Proven Base. Oh, I love that. Just sent out two bottles of chicken cock this week.
Speaker A [00:05:55]:
Jim Stroud's over there.
Speaker C [00:05:57]:
Yes, Jim Stroud. Proven Base is locked and loaded for the marketing. Good. It all starts with bourbon from Chad and Cheese. So thanks to Proven Base. Who wants to go first on shout outs?
Speaker A [00:06:09]:
I will. Jamie, again, last minute, we had two legit new hype videos that we put out and they had them on screens all over. I sent them yesterday. Had them on screens all over the venue and we didn't have them as in time.
Speaker C [00:06:30]:
I walked into us. I walked in. I walked in. Yeah. Did you? And we were playing on the big screen.
Speaker A [00:06:35]:
So it was so Rec fest. Rec fest team did an amazing job. They did amazing as. As always. It was amazing.
Speaker C [00:06:43]:
I'm gonna shout out to iced lattes. I don't know if you guys have seen this on the socials.
Speaker A [00:06:49]:
Stop it. I just did an interview with someone
Speaker C [00:06:52]:
brought an iced latte. A labeled Gen Z candidate and higher than thou recruiter decided to put it on social media that that was a bad move that you don't bring it. You don't like just sort of casually bring in a latte into an interview as if it's like just part of your day. What do we think about lattes, sliced lattes and interviews?
Speaker E [00:07:12]:
You guys saw me on the phone when we were on the stage. That was me on the phone with a journalist at Forbes asking me about this. And I said, well, I had an event with thousands of recruiters. Would you like me to tell you my opinion? It Was insane. People are obsessed with this thing. I think it's polarizing. I think it pulls out the generations big time and how people look at stuff differently. My comment was this. I'm a Gen Xer. There was no way I wanted to wear a suit, spend money on something that I couldn't wear. Other days of the week, we instituted casual dress. Gen Z is bringing in their own stuff down the line and that might be bringing lattes maybe, but they gotta
Speaker C [00:07:48]:
wait their turn, man. We had to present ourselves to the models in the.
Speaker E [00:07:56]:
What is wrong with you?
Speaker C [00:07:59]:
You gotta know your audience.
Speaker E [00:08:00]:
Oh my gosh.
Speaker A [00:08:01]:
I gotta say, I gotta say. So I think, I think this is perfect because if you bring an iced coffee into an interview and that turns them off, fuck them. That's not the company for you, right? If that's not the culture, I mean, can you imagine being two weeks in, in that tight ass company, those guys, right? So I mean, I think this is a great, literally culture signal to say fuck you. I don't need to be in this company. It's just, it's dumb. It's dumb.
Speaker E [00:08:29]:
It's crazy. It's. I, I'm with you completely.
Speaker C [00:08:32]:
Don't dress for the job you have. Dress for the job you want.
Speaker E [00:08:36]:
I just want to dress.
Speaker A [00:08:37]:
It's in coffee, babe.
Speaker C [00:08:39]:
It's okay that I'm the angry old guy on this.
Speaker B [00:08:41]:
On this topic, I would, I would leave the iced coffee in the lobby. That's just me. I'm an elder millennial and I, I definitely wouldn't roll in with an ice coffee.
Speaker E [00:08:51]:
Job seekers. If you can instill that thing on yourself. No, don't bring it. You're going to distract it. Don't bring it in. Don't risk it.
Speaker B [00:08:58]:
But still, like, it's probably never going to be the reason you don't get the job. But it's not going to be in the pro column. So like, why do it?
Speaker A [00:09:05]:
To be able to have a newspaper call when we've got all this shit that's happening in the workforce, in the economy. I mean, things that actually matter and they're calling you about fucking iced lattes?
Speaker E [00:09:15]:
Yes, Forbes.
Speaker A [00:09:16]:
You're fucking stupid.
Speaker C [00:09:17]:
You're talking about the wrong sorts of people.
Speaker B [00:09:19]:
Because we need a break. And you know what? If she hadn't said Gen Z, this would have gone nowhere because of the generational label.
Speaker C [00:09:28]:
I feel like we're split. Like we're split down the middle.
Speaker E [00:09:30]:
We are.
Speaker C [00:09:31]:
Interesting. You got a shout out. You got a shout out there, J.
Speaker E [00:09:36]:
I am, but I'M going to circle it back to Rec Fest. And I just want to say that Mo and I got to work with Chloe and Andrew, and even though they were across the pond, they were absolutely amazing. Super attentive. Just need to say again, like, wreckfest. They're a 10 out of 10. I've loved every minute of it. So thank you, Andrew and Chloe, for making our lives easier.
Speaker A [00:09:55]:
Yeah, that's sweet.
Speaker B [00:09:56]:
It was really awesome. Great team. I'm gonna be insufferable for a minute.
Speaker A [00:10:00]:
Okay, that's it.
Speaker B [00:10:01]:
Will you allow me to be insufferable? I mean, I mean, something new and
Speaker E [00:10:04]:
different for me, you know.
Speaker C [00:10:05]:
Now for something totally different.
Speaker B [00:10:07]:
Very exciting news. You now are surrounded by not one, but two LinkedIn top voices.
Speaker E [00:10:15]:
Just announced, just announced the girls official, you know, exits.
Speaker B [00:10:21]:
I'm sure lots of money and glory, but anyhow, I'm just. I mean, I'm just so excited to be here with you.
Speaker E [00:10:27]:
I'm so proud of you.
Speaker C [00:10:28]:
How great at recruiting are we? I mean, these girls are getting called by Forbes. Business Insider. We're nobody, but we recruited them to be in our universe.
Speaker E [00:10:40]:
I feel like you pimping us on,
Speaker C [00:10:42]:
like, this is the whole thing. Get people that are better than you and you can just sit back and
Speaker B [00:10:47]:
the truth is, I got it because of you. I'm sure they were, like, awesome.
Speaker C [00:10:52]:
Yeah, they haven't given us that distinction yet. Chad, we know you're going to Cabo. What other. What other?
Speaker A [00:10:58]:
Travel plan events brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Where's Joe? He's already gone to dinner. Bastard. Brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing,
Speaker C [00:11:07]:
live in this booth.
Speaker A [00:11:08]:
This is nice. Yeah. So I'm off to Cabo then. We're in. Oh, I'm in Amsterdam. No, I'm in Dallas for SIA Collaboration X. Doing a Shark Tank there. Doing an expert roundtable there for like three days at the Omni in Dallas. Then we're going to Amsterdam.
Speaker C [00:11:28]:
Yep.
Speaker A [00:11:28]:
E Recruitment Congress. That is going to be a blast. They're actually going to have humanoid robots working. Oh, yeah.
Speaker B [00:11:35]:
They're going to have meta glasses, too.
Speaker A [00:11:37]:
The show.
Speaker C [00:11:37]:
They're going to have eyes.
Speaker A [00:11:38]:
That report, I don't know,
Speaker E [00:11:43]:
creeps me out.
Speaker A [00:11:43]:
And I'm going to go to. No, we're both going to go to Vegas for the Paradox slash workday Frontline hiring event.
Speaker B [00:11:51]:
Fun.
Speaker A [00:11:52]:
And that's going to finish out our year.
Speaker C [00:11:54]:
Is that it for you, too? That's it.
Speaker A [00:11:55]:
That's it for me. How about you guys?
Speaker B [00:11:57]:
That was a lot more than I got coming up.
Speaker A [00:11:59]:
That's fine.
Speaker B [00:12:00]:
I'm excited to like you have anything coming up.
Speaker C [00:12:02]:
You're going to nest.
Speaker B [00:12:03]:
Do I have anything coming up? I probably do. Is escaping me because I haven't limbo.
Speaker A [00:12:07]:
Not on the island.
Speaker B [00:12:08]:
I moved from the island back in the city. So I'm in the big city. And honestly, are you happier in the city? I think the move to the island was probably a little bit of escapism. If I. If I'm like being really honest about it.
Speaker A [00:12:20]:
I moved to.
Speaker B [00:12:22]:
I'm just going to.
Speaker C [00:12:22]:
I'm just going to unlock your problems. J.T. any travels?
Speaker E [00:12:25]:
Florida, baby. I'm gonna be there for about four months this winter. Yep. Yeah. Cuz the golf game is good and I can't lose it. And you know, October 15th, you can't golf in New England anymore. So this girl is going to be temporarily hanging her hat in Florida so she can get her golf game.
Speaker C [00:12:42]:
All right, well from golf to fantasy football. Cue the boats and hoes, everybody. I want to talk about it. Week two is in the books. I. I believe you don't want to talk about it. Here's our. Here's our. Our order of what?
Speaker A [00:12:54]:
First, first to worst.
Speaker C [00:12:56]:
Jarrett Holders. Holdersma. Why don't people have normal names?
Speaker E [00:13:00]:
Where are the nicknames?
Speaker C [00:13:02]:
I don't have the energy anymore.
Speaker A [00:13:04]:
Oh my God, you're so old.
Speaker E [00:13:05]:
Keep the names. We need nicknames.
Speaker A [00:13:10]:
Next week.
Speaker E [00:13:10]:
Yes.
Speaker C [00:13:11]:
Yeah, next week I'll make them up. Scott Clark. The Janamar. Nicholas Tisiak. I'm in fifth place. That was a nice move for me. Bosco Vujitovich. I feel like I said that one right. Nick Livingston. You'll like his nickname. You'll like his nickname. I got that one already. Mackenzie Mad Dog. There we go. Last year. Mad Dog.
Speaker A [00:13:30]:
She won last year.
Speaker C [00:13:31]:
Molly the Manslayer. Sly for you. Oh yeah. I love Molly. Ben the Slasher Kunts. I don't know. Chad. Number 11. You're not. You're not in the basement though. And the basement is our friend Desiree Goldie. And that is our fantasy. First to worst. Sponsored by our friends anyone's factory fix.
Speaker A [00:13:55]:
Factory fix.
Speaker E [00:13:56]:
Factory fix.
Speaker B [00:13:56]:
So fun.
Speaker C [00:13:57]:
Can I get a topics? I haven't gotten a topic. All right guys, here we go.
Speaker A [00:14:02]:
Yeah.
Speaker C [00:14:03]:
The founder and former CEO of Jimco Diversity, a New York City based AI powered job platform that connected clients with job candidates from diverse backgrounds, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in a scheme to defraud investors of a mere $27 million. Chad, your take on Junko's in the Clinko.
Speaker A [00:14:23]:
So 27 million. Forgery and fraud. And this is not over. I mean, there's still. What is there? They saw that this is just a settlement and it does not resolve the federal civil and criminal proceedings against her. Number one. Okay?
Speaker C [00:14:41]:
She's looking at 20.
Speaker A [00:14:42]:
She has, I mean, and we need, I mean, we, we, we really need to have these CEOs in orange jumpsuits. Here's the thing, okay? She's getting nailed while we've get. While we've got all these AI companies that are legally hacking other companies and we don't have any other CEOs.
Speaker C [00:15:02]:
How about the administration in the White House?
Speaker A [00:15:04]:
Yeah, well, I mean, they're all, I mean, they're all crooks, right? But anyway, we have all these dudes that are doing. I mean, she did some bad. Okay. And she deserves to go to the clink. She deserves it. 27 million some, you know, PE people over. I don't know. Anyway, but at the end of the day, that's happening, right? And then we've got Ronstadt, who fucked over 200 employees in Europe because they shut down Monster and they, they paid themselves out, remember that, in management fees. The executives got money and over 200 employees got over. Right. I mean, we are, we are not having the discussions about the big, the bigger deals. This is, this is 27 million. These other ones are like 200. Yeah.
Speaker B [00:15:59]:
Like potential doom million and.
Speaker A [00:16:01]:
Or in the billions. Right. So anyway, I think, yes, she needs to get nailed, but there are so many other out there that they, they deserve worse.
Speaker B [00:16:09]:
But we love to take down a woman in power, so, you know, there we go.
Speaker A [00:16:14]:
There are no.
Speaker C [00:16:15]:
I mean, they broke the law. I, I get, I get the female thing.
Speaker B [00:16:21]:
I want to believe that the clause won't always. When I want those.
Speaker C [00:16:25]:
If you're going to step on toes, just know what toes you're stepping on. And she stepped on the toes of some really powerful people with money. The people at Ronstadt have no power. They're not unionized. They don't have any cumulative power. Governments day, though, she, this is great. I love this from the judge. She said that she used. It was old school fraud, new school buzzwords like AI and automation to dupe investors. I mean, she fabricated numbers. She, she did mocked up different bank accounts. She did like totally. She told I didn't get switched and she screwed over employees, you know, and
Speaker A [00:17:03]:
again, I, I don't think anybody on this couch thinks that you are wrong at all. But what we're saying is that measure needs to be taken to all these other who are. They're criminals. Hacking is a get is hacking not against the law? It is and it's happening.
Speaker C [00:17:19]:
I mean, we're. We're in the under like we're on the upside down because we got Trump speech writer betting money on cow so he goes to jail. But crypto president, nothing happened. And the Melania coin, nothing happens. So we're in the upside down in terms of the label right now.
Speaker A [00:17:38]:
Somebody saved me. Do you have. Can you save us from this?
Speaker B [00:17:40]:
I don't think so, my friend.
Speaker C [00:17:42]:
By the way, Chad agrees with me on this, which is like every show and every topic. Let's take a quick break, get a refill if we need it, and we'll talk about Harvard and Symphony Talent when we get back.
Speaker A [00:17:51]:
Nice.
Speaker C [00:17:52]:
All right, guys. Harvard has acquired Symphony Talent, combining its predictive talent assessment and reference checking technology with Symphony Talent's recruitment, marketing, employer branding and candidate relationship management capabilities. Financial terms of the. Of the. Of the transaction was not disclosed. Chad, your take on Harvard acquiring Symphony Talent.
Speaker A [00:18:13]:
I can't allow this to go any further without a history lesson.
Speaker C [00:18:17]:
Okay, let's get a history lesson.
Speaker E [00:18:19]:
You guys are doing a really good job of this.
Speaker B [00:18:21]:
You never do that.
Speaker A [00:18:22]:
Yep, yep, yep, yep. So harbor and Symphony Talent, how did we get here? Well, let's start with the. The Harvard side. Okay. Their kids. There's so much history here. It is amazing. And there are so many companies wrapped up in this. So In May of 2022, Dallas based Digital hiring provider Outmatch acquired Harvard Harvard, which is an Amsterdam based volume hiring company. In November of 2022, they rebranded to Harbor. So outmatched, the acquiring company acquired Harvard and then they actually took their name.
Speaker E [00:19:03]:
Took the name.
Speaker A [00:19:04]:
Which hardly ever happens, right? I do like it. I do like it. So in 2022, Harvard acquired Pymetrics. Remember Frida Poly? Yeah, Frida Poly. She was also featured in the HBO Max documentary top titled Persona, the dark truth behind personality tests, which they did not look very good on, right? No, they. They had over $60 million in funding. And I'm going to presume that Harvard came in and literally just scooped them up for nothing. Right? So that's the Harvard side. Okay. There's a little history there.
Speaker C [00:19:41]:
That's good.
Speaker A [00:19:41]:
Here's some deep history, kids. This is where it gets crazy. On the talent. On the Symphony Talent side, there's so much breadth and depth. So first, let's talk about the roll up that happened from PE firm Symphony Talent Group Skill check Innovantage. What a great Name Q Social. And more notably, finally, which was Jason Kerr's hot recruiting new system. Pretty awesome. Hotis. Yes. They bought Bernard Hogus, the number two, like, recruitment advertising agency in the world at the time, HRLogix, which was a high volume applicant tracking system. Another huge portfolio company, but it was all high volume and then breezy hr, which was another new age kind of ats. So, you know, I always say I was with Monster before I was Monster. Well, I was actually with Symphony Talent before they were Symphony Talent. Do you know what their name was before they were Symphony Talent? No.
Speaker C [00:20:40]:
Initials? No. Okay.
Speaker A [00:20:42]:
No. Finally, Finally.
Speaker C [00:20:44]:
Finally.
Speaker A [00:20:45]:
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker B [00:20:47]:
And
Speaker A [00:20:49]:
so finally, Jason Kerr was the creator of Alliance Q and finally was the CEO. Jason is a brilliant fucking dude, but he's a creator. He's not a stitcher. Right? And these are all. They're all really good business models separately. And that's one of the things that we don't talk about in a lot of these roll ups is that there are some really good business models that are out there, but they just don't work well together. And that's generally what happened here. It was a fucking Mess. So in 2016, I was actually flown in to San Francisco to consult Findly. Yes.
Speaker C [00:21:28]:
Look at that. Flex.
Speaker A [00:21:29]:
It was a. This is definitely a Flex now. It felt like an emergency meeting because there were execs there, there were senior developers, there were ops people and whatnot. And it was all around, how do we tie this together and do it in a compliant manner? Right. Because that was huge, especially in that time frame. But it was a mess. Anyways. Jason tried to rebrand during this entire thing. Finally, the whole thing into finally, which pretty much fucked him because Bernard Hotis was one of the biggest names we knew in our industry. And he literally tried to erase that name from the map and it just blew up. It blew up in his face. So he was out. Then they rebranded with rupress.
Speaker B [00:22:18]:
I know you got to do this.
Speaker A [00:22:21]:
This is how much history is behind this. So Rupesh Nair came in and we know Rupesh because we worked with Rupesh. He came in and he was part of Symphony Talent Group, which is the PE firm. They rebranded everything to Symphony Talent. And then in 2019, they had another big acquisition, Smash Fly. Do you remember where we were when they.
Speaker C [00:22:41]:
Boston.
Speaker A [00:22:42]:
No. Oh, Paris. We were in Paris when they. When they acquired because Jay Z called me on the phone.
Speaker C [00:22:49]:
Okay.
Speaker B [00:22:50]:
Anyway, I'm sorry, Jay Z called you?
Speaker A [00:22:53]:
Not that Jay Z. Another series of Flex.
Speaker B [00:22:56]:
A lot of humble brags.
Speaker D [00:22:57]:
Okay.
Speaker A [00:22:58]:
Okay, almost there, almost there, almost there, almost there. And on August 30, 2026, Symphony Talent announced that they had spent a decade stitching together these softwares to be able to these different software pieces to be able to create this new and wonderful system. August 30th, that's not that long ago, kids, they were trying to make this flex, much like I think we saw from like smart recruiters before they were acquired.
Speaker C [00:23:27]:
Yeah.
Speaker A [00:23:28]:
And next thing you know, they're acquired by Harvard. For me, this is definitely a bargain basement kind of a thing from a PE firm where they are going to do a couple of different things. They're going to sell off what they can, and then they're going to do the Ronstadt model of trying to literally go into bankruptcy and fuck all their, the people that they owe money to and their employees.
Speaker E [00:23:53]:
So this is a prediction. You're throwing down a prediction.
Speaker A [00:23:56]:
It's what he does. Anyway. I'm sorry, that was very long.
Speaker C [00:23:59]:
We have about 10 listeners that were on the edge of their seat the whole time Chad was talking about that.
Speaker A [00:24:06]:
Everybody else is trying to go, what the fuck is he talking about?
Speaker E [00:24:09]:
Where'd he go?
Speaker C [00:24:10]:
So. So my two questions, the future of the agency. We're moving to a world where brand. What does that mean? Agents are interviewing agents. Companies are just trying to get their hands on. On the flood of candidates. I think people apply to jobs without knowing what a brand is, what a company stands for. It's just a mass. It's just a shotgun. So I don't. I question the future of the agency. Now, I say that in an agency booth that looks like they're doing very, very well. And I think that that's. That's attributed to their relationships with companies that trust their expertise and not trying
Speaker A [00:24:47]:
to buy a bunch of technology. Not buying a bunch of technology, too.
Speaker E [00:24:52]:
Aren't agencies a bunch of fortune tellers? Isn't that really what you're doing? Isn't that what you're buying in an agency is. I think to some degree you want that agent to.
Sorry, we could only create a partial transcription, because, well, it was a live show.
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