Out-LinkedIn, LinkedIn?
Paris is Burning, Veritone is Burning Cash, the "Hiring Reject Machine" is Eating Candidates Alive and everybody tryin' to beat LinkedIn.
Ever wonder what happens when nearly $400 million in VC cash collides with pure, unadulterated recruiting chaos? Strap in, because Chad and Cheese are back to expose the absolute circus that is modern AI talent tech.
In this episode, we unpack:
Elon’s 5-Second Wonder
Veritone’s Burn Rate Blues
The Bullhorn Blackout
Eightfold’s Musical Chairs
Are any of these tech bros actually thinking about the poor job seeker getting ground up in the gears? Absolutely not! Tune in for the hot takes, the rage, and a bartender who definitively understands the assignment.
Listen now before your ATS turns into a sentient overlord.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Chad Sowash (00:31.82)
My Guinness? Holy shit, dude. yeah, so I'm a man in the bar without a Guinness. I'm getting a Guinness. I'm getting it. Don't worry. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Chad "Meet the Jetsons" Sowash.
JT O'Donnell (00:45.353)
And I'm J T. Is it Apple's 1984 all over again? O'Donnell.
Chad Sowash (00:49.39)
I think it is. And on this week's show, Paris is burning. Cars are flying. And everybody's trying to out LinkedIn LinkedIn. Let's do this.
JT O'Donnell (00:51.669)
I think it is.
Chad Sowash (01:08.632)
I haven't heard that enough, so I had to hear it. how you doing, J T? It's it's
JT O'Donnell (01:11.561)
It never gets old. okay. It's been like been a it's been a beat since you and I were at Wreckfest. It's been a beat.
Chad Sowash (01:16.382)
It has it has been a beat. We we were on the couch in Nashville together. Thanks to Shaker for that great backdrop. I love yeah. Yeah. Gina and the team over there, they really know how to do really good pop and style. so so so I love that. Wait, so you're down in Florida. What what the hell are you doing down there?
JT O'Donnell (01:23.553)
Amazing, amazing. Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (01:36.747)
I'm in Fort Lottie. I am down here doing a little biz that I can talk about, but eventually I will. so a little ND going on. Yeah, yeah. so down here doing business, but also I have a daughter that lives in the area. So, you know, double duty, it's all good. But today I am in the co work in Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, in the flow.
Chad Sowash (01:38.542)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (01:43.118)
Okay. Tease.
Chad Sowash (01:53.677)
I love it.
So do they know you there? Is it JT? Kind of like, you know, coming into cheers, huh? No, not yet.
JT O'Donnell (01:59.318)
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah. No, not at all. It's kind of pathetic. No, no, no.
Chad Sowash (02:07.916)
Aren't you aren't you gonna be down there for like months or something like that? Cause you're like practicing your your amateur pro am kind of yeah, yeah.
JT O'Donnell (02:11.955)
I golf. All right, right. Like I the goal was to be down here a lot more. Some exciting things are kind of happening in in the business that's making me think that travel is gonna pick up here a bit, but hopefully some of it will be here. so when all is revealed, it will be revealed, folks. But yeah, otherwise I'll be a I'll be a traveling gal through at least at least through January. So we'll see. I'll keep you posted on my golf game. What about you?
Chad Sowash (02:19.01)
Uh-huh.
Chad Sowash (02:23.8)
Okay.
Okay. Okay.
Chad Sowash (02:32.216)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (02:38.432)
I love it. I love it.
JT O'Donnell (02:41.567)
It's not pickleball. What's the thing you play out there in Portugal? Paddle.
Chad Sowash (02:44.024)
Paddle. It's paddle. It's kind of it's kind of like if if tennis and racquetball had a baby. it would be paddle. Yeah. It's a you're in an enclosed area. You can play off the back walls, but there's a net in the middle. so it's yeah, it's it's it's really cool. And it's one of the hottest sports in Europe, big in Spain, big in Portugal. starting to catch a little bit in the US, but I think
JT O'Donnell (02:51.403)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (03:12.226)
The pickleball has like taken over pretty much all the spots, which is wiffle tennis.
JT O'Donnell (03:18.037)
The big question is, does paddle make that annoying pickleball sound?
Chad Sowash (03:22.048)
No, because I mean paddle uses it makes another annoying sound. it doesn't have that that that little wiffle ball pop because they've got those little cheap ass rackets with the like the wiffle ball. we actually use their they're pretty much tennis balls. And then the the paddle is it's it's thick. so it's but it's shorter, but yeah, it does make it does I would say have an annoying sound, but definitely not as annoying as pickleball.
JT O'Donnell (03:51.873)
Got it. Okay, well that's good.
Chad Sowash (03:52.683)
Or or this guy passing by. Yes, again, guys, I'm in a bar. There's gonna be a lot of noise. Get used to it. okay, I tell you what, let's go ahead. We've got a busy, busy show. Let's go ahead and hit yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so shout-outs are brought to you by Proven Base. JT, everyone loves free bourbon. You know that. And Proven Base is spreading the love with two bottles of chicken cock whiskey.
JT O'Donnell (04:03.915)
We do. Huge.
JT O'Donnell (04:15.979)
Yes, they do.
Chad Sowash (04:21.088)
Two bottles of chicken cock whiskey, one from Chad, the other from Cheese, and get them delivered right to your doorstep. But you can't win if you don't play, so you have to head out to ChadCheese.com and get some of that bur bourbon brought to you by Proven Base. Provenbase, the AI powered. You're gonna be hearing a lot of this, kids, the AI-powered deep search that helps recruiting and sourcing teams uncover and engage specialized, hard-to-fill talent.
JT O'Donnell (04:41.297)
drinking game.
Chad Sowash (04:50.69)
Beyond traditional platforms across thousands of sources at provenbase.com. Thank you, Alex. Yes, it's here.
Delicious. Fucking delicious. so my shout out is is a little different. It's a little different. Did you did you see the flying cars? JT? God. So what did you think about it first? Because when I first thought it, I thought it I thought it was AI when I first saw saw it, because it I mean it was pretty unbelievable.
JT O'Donnell (05:10.313)
I did. Tell me more.
JT O'Donnell (05:22.205)
Yeah, I mean, okay, I always go back to the Jetsons. I feel like you can go back and anything you saw in the Jetsons is pretty much gonna going to come true. So you're not really surprised that you know the Jetsons called it. You're go you're going to have a flying vehicle. beyond that, I just I'm biased. I just I think I just watch the like I understand that he's a that he's a smart man. There's a lot of smart people in the world.
Chad Sowash (05:25.99)
yeah. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (05:50.638)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (05:51.02)
But just I I don't know. I don't n I know it's coming. I n I just don't know how I feel about all of it, if it makes sense. Just kind of watching it unfold. You shake your head. You know what I mean?
Chad Sowash (05:57.901)
I get it. I get it. I know how how how I felt that it escalated quickly. so my shout out goes to Ringmaster Supreme Elon Musk for building a car that was good for less than a 30-second demo. Don't get me wrong. it did fly. I did fly. I at least the reports and our eyes say it fied. it flew. but I asked Gemini, which you always do, about the viability of using gas.
JT O'Donnell (06:12.758)
Right.
Chad Sowash (06:26.082)
Thrusters, cold gas thrusters for a sustained five minute flight, because this was really short, you know, it was under 30 second flight. I was like, you know, you're gonna fly for at least five minutes. So what would that be? And this was the answer. Quote While a gas, cold gas thruster is highly reliable and excellent for short explosive burst of force, like a zero to sixty mile per hour launch or quick directional altitude adjustment.
JT O'Donnell (06:32.779)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (06:53.59)
It is completely unviable for a five-minute hover. Okay. So from my standpoint, nonetheless, I see this as innovation. Sure, the car can't really fly for a sustained period, but would it actually be allowed on the road anyway? No, not really. And bringing the innovation of SpaceX to a car is is more than necessary for Tesla because they've been getting their asses handed to them by
Chinese Eevee makers for a few years now. And it's getting worse for them, right? So a big shout out to Elon Carnival Barker Musk for a better demo and sleeker looking video than the Cyber Truck. I mean, if you gotta set if you gotta set a baseline, the Cyber Truck is shit. This was better than shit. So shout out to the cart, Carnival Barker, Elon Musk. What what you got, JT?
JT O'Donnell (07:49.208)
my goodness. Well, okay, I feel like my shout out sets the tone of today. because I joked about in my name, is it Apple's 1984 All Again? I would say yes. Because we know what ATS is, we know what CRM is, but do you know what HRM is? That's gonna be the new term which stands for hiring reject machine. The hiring reject machine is out of control. We're gonna talk about it today.
Chad Sowash (07:52.268)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (08:07.48)
Food.
Chad Sowash (08:12.014)
Woof. Mm.
JT O'Donnell (08:17.555)
AI powered recruiting could become a drinking game, as we will see today, as we start to play this. and I blame Jamie and the crew at Wreckfest for sending me down this rabbit hole, right? Because I walked the halls and met a ton of people at Wreckfest and came back and then started to do the due diligence. And it just kept coming, it kept coming. And then as you look these people up on LinkedIn, what does LinkedIn do to your feed?
Chad Sowash (08:20.238)
And every day. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (08:32.736)
yeah.
JT O'Donnell (08:41.451)
Gives you everybody that's got the latest and greatest. It's gonna change the world, solve every problem, AI recruiting tool. I sent you the screenshot yesterday. This one gal that works at a a venture capital company and said, This is the tech stack, the AI tech stack we're using for all of ours. Who do you like? 80 comments later, I did an analysis using AI, 45 different new tools. Yeah, 80 comments later in her response, 45.
Chad Sowash (08:59.502)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (09:05.611)
Eighty?
JT O'Donnell (09:10.997)
Different companies tagged. AI recruit 45. So what the actual heck? Honestly, the HRM is here. It's scary. It's 1984 all over again. and I know you and I are looking forward to I hate to say it, the fallout. Like, this is not sustainable. You know, this can't be. This is not sustainable. Somebody made a great point on her comment, and maybe we can bring it up. They were like, Why why so many tools? Like
Chad Sowash (09:13.592)
Ho ho ho ho shit.
Chad Sowash (09:29.387)
No.
JT O'Donnell (09:37.078)
A bunch of them are redundant, like you know, and they started pointing out. Anybody that knew AI well enough was like, that does that. And that and so this to me is just pure craziness. And as you're gonna hear today, you know who's getting screwed in all of this? And this is where I'm gonna get really angry. The job seeker, the candidate. Are any of these companies doing anything for the candidate? No, you're not. No, you're not. It's all because you're worried about who's gonna pay you. You're worried about the businesses, and I am telling you right now, and I will die on this hill, the company that's gonna win.
Chad Sowash (09:40.425)
Yeah.
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (10:06.101)
talk about that in a second is the one that's actually gonna do something for the candidate. That's who's gonna win this game. That is my prediction. So who Yeah.
Chad Sowash (10:07.16)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (10:11.956)
Okay. We're gonna talk about that, I promise. Right. Definitely we're gonna talk about that because at this point, it is it's crazy pills. It is, it is fucking crazy pills. And and I think, I mean, so a couple of things to add on there. First and foremost, in the US, it is so easy to start a company, everybody starts fucking company, right? And you do it out of Delaware, so you don't have taxes, right? So company, Delaware, LLC start out or what have you, you get to an S Corp later.
it's just so easy. So everybody starts fucking company. And the money flows so much faster in the US as well than it does in Europe, because obviously in the US we have a we have a single monetary system, and we have pretty much, you know, one and a half languages. Definitely Spanish is in there, don't get me wrong. in in Europe, you have you do have the euro that it that does reign supreme, but then you've got, you know, the the UK.
uses their stupid fucking pound and they don't get how, you know, that's would standardize and and help out the entire economy. Anyway, it's just easier in the US. So we have this redundancy left and right because it's just so fucking easy. And the money flows. Yeah, the money flows.
JT O'Donnell (11:22.303)
It's crazy. The money flowing, the seed round funding that I'm seeing right now, insane. Insane.
Chad Sowash (11:27.11)
Mm. Mm. Yeah. I know, I know, I know, I know. Well that being said, let's go ahead. We don't have events to talk about because my ass is staying home. I know you're gonna gonna be stay staying in that sunshine for a minute until business calls. But let's go ahead and do a little recap. A little recap of events. And remember, travel is always brought to you by those wonderful kids over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. head over to shaker.com check out those kids.
JT O'Donnell (11:43.926)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (11:56.149)
Joel and I are done with business travel in 2026. So here's a quick rundown of what we just did. We were all together. other than Emmy, we missed Emmy and we missed Leaving at Recfest. At Recfest. Joel and I were on the disrupt stage. We've got we already had content come out with Kayleen Weaver from American Senior Living, and Patrick. give me a second there. There we go. And Patrick Kelly from Healing Partners.
JT O'Donnell (12:05.833)
I know.
Chad Sowash (12:25.264)
that's come out last week. we were then on stage in Amsterdam talking the future of work with some heavy hitters. We're talking about Rika, CEO over at House of HR. Kiara with the European Commission. That's right, kids. On stage with the European Commission. Mina with the World Employment Confederation. And good old Glenn. We actually got somebody from LinkedIn on stage with us. We we suckered them in. Glenn was a sweetheart though.
JT O'Donnell (12:52.102)
yes.
Chad Sowash (12:54.76)
that episode dropped earlier this week. We also had interviews still to be published out of Amsterdam with Kobe from Heineken. That's right. Good beer, Heineken. Love that. I think I've got some coupons. then Ritu and Bill Fisher from Vonk. And at least well, the the last but never the least, we were
In Vegas for Workday's future of frontline event on stage with Mark from the Flynn Group, which is the biggest franchise owner in the world. I I believe I believe that's correct. Laura from Nordstrom, Mike from Johnson Controls, and Melissa from a little company you might never heard of called FedEx. there's probably about four or five more commercials coming out, not commercials, I'm sorry, events and interviews coming out.
So head on over to chadcheese.com. That's where you're gonna find them. And last but not least, I gotta tell you this story because you're gonna love it. We were getting ready to do a little piece of content before we went to the workday show. And Joel was in charge of this because I was just traveling like a madman. And he said, just come up to my room and then we'll we'll go ahead and we'll figure it out. So I I'm like, okay, cool. So I come up to the room.
And think that he's like in a suite or something because he's gonna go ahead and get everything set up in the suite. no, he's like in a a regular room. So I walk in, it looks like, and again, kids, we're in Vegas. It looks like we're getting ready to shoot porn. there's the bed, there's the lights, there's the cameras. I mean, there was don't get me wrong, there's a beautiful view out the window and whatnot, but it was fucking hilarious. I'm like, Cheeseman, you don't turn me on enough to be doing this shit. but anyway, it was
JT O'Donnell (14:24.203)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (14:39.306)
It was a great time. It w it was it was good fun. And that is all we have. Thank God for travel for travel this year. you do you said you've got some some bit some business happening. Do you got any anything anything you can say where you're going? Okay.
JT O'Donnell (14:42.039)
Put true.
JT O'Donnell (14:56.053)
Yeah, yes. I'm gonna Yeah. Florida, I'm gonna be in Dallas and Austin, New York, Boston. So yes, very exciting. More to come when I can talk about it.
Chad Sowash (15:02.616)
Hm. Okay.
Chad Sowash (15:09.046)
Okay, okay. I'm just trying to get it out of you. Well, since we're not gonna get it out of ya, let's go ahead and let's talk a little bit, a little bit of fantasy football. It's fantasy football time, kids, from our friends at Factory Fix. That's the number one recruiting platform for skilled trades and the manufacturing talent you all want and need. And guess what they didn't say in there? They didn't say AI. They have it, but they didn't say it, but they didn't say it. They didn't have to.
JT O'Donnell (15:33.313)
I know.
It's implied. It's implied.
Chad Sowash (15:39.181)
So the top three places this week stay the same as last week. We've got Jarrett. I'm number one, Joldurzma. Dejahn, better than pretty good, Amare. number three, Saginaw Scott Clark. Then Ben by six. Koontz takes over the fourth position. Nick laces out Livingston down to number five. Nicholas Goebirds try shack or Tishack.
Moves up to number six. Chad, that's me. Sowash moves up two spots to number seven. I jumped Cheeseman. Joel shut the front shador. Cheeseman stays at number eight. Bosco Baller moves up one spot to number nine. McKenzie Mac Attack Maitland moved down from number six to number ten. That's a big move. That's ouch.
JT O'Donnell (16:33.085)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (16:34.05)
That's a somebody put McKenzie on suicide fantasy football suicide watch kids. And then we've got Holly, or I'm sorry, Hail, Molly Sly, and any given Desiree Goldie rounding out the last of the 12 kids. That is fantasy football brought to you by our friends at Factory Fix. good times.
JT O'Donnell (16:57.843)
It's early. All you folks on the bottom, it's early. Stay strong.
Chad Sowash (17:01.962)
It it's it's early. Mackenzie, it's okay. You won last year, okay? So don't expect to win two years in a row. Just because you went from sixth to tenth, I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear
Chad Sowash (17:16.706)
Yes, okay, good God. It's LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn. While LinkedIn spends its time convincing 1.4 billion people to post and then punishes them for using the AI tools they handed them, a fresh class of venture-backed startups are racing to drink LinkedIn's milkshake. Toss around nearly $390 million in funding, almost $400 million, kids.
Slap together some agentic sourcing tools, and suddenly everyone wants to play talent broker. JT, you dug in deep on this. Tell me what you got.
JT O'Donnell (17:52.492)
Like the rabbit hole on this. Absolutely. I so, you know, story as I said, thank you, Wreckfest, started looking at all of these companies, then started looking at the money and the valuation. And I went, here we go. Here we go. this is going to be an incredible race. There are so many new players. In fact, I found seven new players that have just been built in the last two years worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Chad Sowash (18:20.536)
Whew. Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (18:21.887)
Hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Like, you know, think of MetaView, think of Juice Box, think of Jack and Jill out of London. These companies are getting mad money thrown at them. So you've got to ask yourself why when there's just so much out there, you know? And the reality is this I've you know that I've been on LinkedIn for 20 years, I've been a top voice on there for 13, I have partnered with them, they've been a client, but every single day, multiple people say, What is the alternative? And I'm honest, there should be one.
And the day that I see one, I will tell you. And this is what really got me because as I watch this all over again, watch this surge, you know what's missing from the whole thing? Focusing on the candidate. Once again, everybody's focused only on that employer side. And so I wanted to do a history lesson. Can I get the soundbite? Can I have it? We put it in post-production because I can't believe I'm doing a history lesson here. But I want to remind everybody how LinkedIn started. Because if
Thank you. It's okay. I think what we all have to remember here is that when they started, you got an invitation from somebody who was lucky enough to have an invitation on LinkedIn. And then you were given so many invitations to give out to friends. Do you remember that? Were you like around for that phase of it? And it became this mad dash, right? So we were all trying to be the first on the platform, and it was genius.
Chad Sowash (19:22.04)
Took me a minute. Sorry.
Chad Sowash (19:41.654)
Yeah, I was the first yeah. huh.
JT O'Donnell (19:51.018)
It was genius in that there was adoption so fast from the very people they needed on there to build the recruiting. It's different now. We can now see the technical debt. We can now see the challenge that they're face as a very large platform, right? It's challenged. So all of these companies in front of us have a chance to do it differently. But are any of them looking at what they could offer the candidate this time? No. I know two right now that are claiming they have stuff for the candidate. And most notably would be Jack and Jill.
Chad Sowash (20:06.342)
yeah.
JT O'Donnell (20:20.117)
Out of London, who has an agent, right? Jack talks to you. Jack then tries to guide you and match you. But only two out of 45 that I found so far. And my question to you is like, this is crazy. We're throwing money at something, and there's even though it's AI slapped on it, they're still doing it the old way and it's not fixing the problem, right? This hiring reject machine that's so bad that you're trying to do tighter and tighter filters to figure out if a candidate's real.
Right? But you're not giving the candidates what they need to authenticate themselves and give you what you need. So guess what they're gonna do? They're gonna keep gaming the system. You're gonna keep building stuff to outsmart them. They're gonna keep building stuff to outsmart you. It it it infuriates me, Chad. It infuriates me. So all of you out there trying to be the next LinkedIn, I hear you every day. We're gonna be the next LinkedIn. No, you're not. Because you're not addressing what needs to happen in order for you to become like that. I'm gonna stop there.
Chad Sowash (20:58.678)
It's a party.
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (21:18.854)
Ha ha.
Chad Sowash (21:21.834)
I I I'm gonna take this down a a different kind of path because I think the the models are changing and we're well within the convergence of want and capability. Okay. So back in the Resimex and and RecruitSoft days, employers wanted to build their own self sufficient hiring systems. But early on, those applicant tracking providers had horrible internal database searches. So getting to the candidate, you bought what
The searches were literally time out. So databases weren't really usable for enterprise customers. The apply process was also singular and horrible. High volume candidates go through the same hoops as senior engineers. And on the other side, the lack of workflows made it harder for recruiters who were hiring white collar versus high volume talent, right? So TA teams created workarounds outside the applicant tracking system.
JT O'Donnell (21:53.835)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (22:20.206)
became dependent on the likes of Monster, Career Builder, Indeed, LinkedIn, and others. And those behaviors became cemented in their daily work as the tech became more advanced and able and out to allow companies to build their own internal systems. It was already too late. The behavior had set in, the expectations had set in. The budgets were already locked in, right? if you think
JT O'Donnell (22:47.009)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (22:50.474)
If you think about the world we're in today, companies can choose from thousands of vendors, much like you're talking about, to create a better version of LinkedIn. One that doesn't feed off clicks and likes, rather, one that leverages the candidates in your system that you've already bought. Ones that focus on relevant engagement. They can weed out fake profiles.
And assess whether Canada is cold, warm, or high already. So those systems andor stacks can and are built today. So the biggest problem: we have old behaviors and spending patterns which benefit vendors like LinkedIn. So what companies want is finally matched by the capability of systems in the market. For example, UPS hired 150,000 people in six weeks.
30,000 of those were out of their own internal database. That was version one, right? Compass group increased their candidate capture rate by 10%. They saved $1.5 million in six months. That was candidate experience, but that was also something they bought into. the the key understanding the capabilities of your stack, not the roadmap.
The capabilities and the leveraging those capabilities, that's the key right now. And I don't think can companies are doing it enough.
JT O'Donnell (24:14.037)
I this I so I love that you bring this up because I, you know, I I sent you the screenshot, super smart recruiter throws it out there and says, Hey, this is my current AI tech stack, names them, and some people that really understand what AI is doing in our space point it out in the comments. You do understand that three of those overlap. What why are you paying for six things when you could be paying for three? But to your point, I'd say 95% of the people that are adopting AI tools right now.
Chad Sowash (24:18.764)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (24:29.272)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (24:34.99)
Yeah. Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (24:42.581)
Are adopting them, like you said, for this silo, for this silo, for this part of my process. And eventually they're going to realize they don't need to be spending that money. But now they've are we going to see this all over again? Are they entrenched? Are they is it a long cycle, sales cycle? Like it's all happening again. And it it's frustrating to me because none of it, none of it really helps the candidate present themselves properly and get through the process successfully. And so you're not really solving the problem. You know, you're you're putting a band-aid
Chad Sowash (25:08.014)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (25:12.709)
you know, on a huge gash. Like it's just it's not it's not right. But to your point, the egg I shouldn't say that word. That's not a nice word. The lack of understanding that people have as they're grabbing, you know, they're just grabbing tools. And I I get it. They're like, this is only five thousand dollars. My old thing was fifty. So in their mind they're like, I just saved a half a million dollars in my old budget and with 10 new tools that only cost $10,000 a piece.
Chad Sowash (25:22.56)
It's ignorance. I mean ignorance is not it's not a bad word. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (25:36.29)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (25:40.811)
But they don't understand what they're doing and they don't understand the impact on the candidate. And so it it is. I hope smart people pay attention to what we're saying here today because you you've got to be more careful right now.
Chad Sowash (25:44.664)
Well and that's
Chad Sowash (25:48.813)
What I I agree a hundred percent. And and it all comes down to in one of the positions that I've seen a lot of lately is recruiting ops, right? Talent ops. And talent ops has to do with process methodology and then also building stacks into those process methodologies. I've talked to several smart companies that have literally imploded their process. And what they've done is they've actually come to it from both sides: the recruiter experience and the candidate experience.
Because they know they're getting shit tons of drop-off, right? But the problem is this is happening onesie twosie companies. This is not happening at scale. So candidates are out there going, This sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And I agree for the most part, but what's happening is a lot of the, I guess you could say horizon companies, they've been waiting for this capability for years and they've started to institute it and it's working for them. And they are kicking their competitors asses.
and and that's a beautiful thing. And that's a beautiful thing. So I agree. Stephen McGrath has actually come up with and it's it's a T if you go to T A Tech Finder Yeah, TA Tech Finder dot Yeah. You go to TA TechFinder dot com, tatechfinder.com, and then you can click on check my stack, which is something he just created. I talked about to him about it.
JT O'Donnell (26:58.005)
Yep. It came up in my search. It came up in my search.
JT O'Donnell (27:10.548)
Amazing.
Chad Sowash (27:11.97)
last week and I'm like, dude, this is fucking amazing. so it's TA Tech, TatechFinder.com and just hit the, you know, the stack, the stack assessment. It's it's crazy. but the thing is, again, you have to be ready to understand what the the the overlaps that happen, because there are gonna be shit tons of overlaps. And then look at re-engineering your process to make it better for
your recruiter so they're not doing stupid shit like scheduling interviews and more importantly re-engineering it for the candidates so it's a great experience for them too because you w the great talent isn't going to take the time. They're not going to take half
JT O'Donnell (27:53.108)
It and I'm just gonna throw it out there. I I told you I did the deep dive. I have put together some really detailed documents. I'm not doing this for money. If you're out there listening and you're like, hmm, my company's starting to grab tech, not only should you use Stephen McGrath's tool and check, but will you message me? I'll send you what I've put together so that you can just read it, understand it yourself. I will also show you, and I think this is important, if you choose these tools, how your candidates will be impacted. Because you know what? Candidate experience is employer branding.
JT O'Donnell (28:21.761)
And if you don't think they're out there telling everybody the experience they had with your company, you're throwing together these AI tools, they're out talking about you. And you might think that's not a problem now, but we both know that it is. And so I would just love anybody out there putting your stack together. Let's check your stack and make it right. And also, would you let me just show you the impact it's having on your candidates before you make any rash decisions? Please. I deal with these job seekers every day. They're frustrated and they carry more weight than you realize. And you want to do right by them.
Chad Sowash (28:44.812)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (28:49.335)
Right? If they are engaging and loving you, they're gonna refer people, you're gonna get the best talent. That's employer branding one on one. This AI stuff that you're putting together is going to have a major impact on your employer brand. You need to be careful. So please message me. Please. I just
Chad Sowash (29:02.574)
Amen. And we'll put it we'll put it in the show notes too. You give a link to it and we can have it it it publicly available and it's all ready to go. While we take a ti a little break, we'll be right back.
JT O'Donnell (29:08.757)
Amazing.
Chad Sowash (29:20.588)
All right, we're we're going to get to the bullhorn news in a minute, but I wanted to quickly talk about why France is burning. So I I I didn't realize I see all these memes of the French flag and burning and it just it's it's crazy, especially the news. So apparently France has they have a perfect storm going on right now with student-led grievances over school conditions and broader nationwide back.
JT O'Donnell (29:30.411)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (29:38.391)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (29:49.037)
Lash against rising cost, cost of living, high inflation, fuel prices, and a proposed government spending cut. But the thing that caught my eye the most was 700 grocery store refrigerators were hacked. Hackers took over the refrigeration in interfaces and they actively turned those units into heaters, driving temperatures up to 122.
Degrees Fahrenheit using the defrost mechanisms as heaters, which spoiled millions of euros worth of fresh and frozen food, leading to empty shelves and empty supply chain rerouting. And apparently Bullhorn, the AI recruitment, ATS, and CRM powering 10,000 staffing agencies, which says on their website, are running the same cybersecurity measures as those grocery stores because last Friday.
They were hit with a successful cyber attack that took their platforms offline. CrowdStrike was called in to clean up the mess while recruiters were forced to stare blankly at walls while wondering if their candidate data had flown the coop. JT, it sounds like recruiters were able to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee, maybe a coffee break or two, de stress and maybe finally plan that vacation that they haven't taken in years. Is this really a big deal?
JT O'Donnell (31:15.583)
It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal. Okay. 10,000 staffing firms on their platform, two days fully down. As a Tuesday was still broken. Do we know if data's been stolen? No, we do not. Do they claim they have 800 million candidate profiles? Was that data stolen? We don't know. But my bigger question here is who's going to notify the candidates? And this is where it gets interesting, Chad, because if you get an email from Bullhorn, right, as a candidate, you don't know who they are. You don't know who they are.
Chad Sowash (31:43.118)
You don't know who fuck they are. No, no. Mm-mm.
JT O'Donnell (31:45.814)
Right? Because it bullhounds behind the scenes. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna probably toss it or think it's not real and not understand what's at stake here. So I you know, this really, really when you sent it to me, it's like, is it a big deal? I'm like, it's a huge deal, but is it again from the candidates? The candidates are getting screwed in these scenarios and nobody's talking about it. I mean, they're more worried about their recruiters getting their capacity back. So
Chad Sowash (32:02.232)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (32:12.981)
You know, I I think this is gonna get a lot bigger and a lot uglier than people realize. And again, you know, there's another page that I found can't justify it was on Bullhorn that says they have 1.1 billion profiles. If that's true, I'm sure a bunch of them are duplicates, but if that's true, this is enormous and nobody's talking about it.
Chad Sowash (32:15.342)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (32:27.576)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (32:31.596)
Yeah, yeah. I all I can say is, you know.
Chad Sowash (32:38.078)
It's I mean we're in a time.
That we're going we we just had it's it's it's really hard because as of yesterday, as you'd said, October 20th, five days, five days after the initial attack, all systems were running with degraded performance, and only bullhorn for Salesforce and time and expense systems were listed as operational on status.bulk bullhorn.com. Now I was kidding about the same grocery store-like cybersecurity measures, but
JT O'Donnell (32:46.999)
Brief.
It is
Chad Sowash (33:15.852)
But I wanted to make a I wanted to make a point that even the inane parts of our daily lives are getting hacked, like refrigerators. So maybe essential business platforms might want to double, triple, or maybe even fucking quadruple down on their measures. And I'm sorry, Bullhorn, you're definitely gonna take it with both barrels on this one, not just from us, but from from everybody. This is this is your job, especially since staffing companies drive revenue from placing candidates. And if you
Can't get your candidates. You can't drive revenue. If you can't get to your client lists, you can't sell more services. Plus, what level of data is held in these systems, right? So I did send five, five questions to Bullhorn. That was yesterday. I know they're busy, they've got really big issues going on right now, but I these are my five questions that I sent to them, and I hope they answer them.
what have the preliminary investigations shown with regard to who and how the platform was attacked? when will customers have a fully operational platform restored? Was any sensitive data extracted? If data was extracted, what is the process and timeline of notifying those customers and candidates? And will Owen Meehan, not to be mean, Owen, but will Moen Moen or Owen Meehan, the current interim CISO,
become the full-time CISO. again, they're they're very busy people, especially right now. But you know, the people deserve an answer and and hopefully we get answers back on that.
JT O'Donnell (34:52.321)
They do. They do. They d not only do we deserve an answer to those, we need to know that all of their customers are properly conveying to candidates what has transpired once they know for sure. And that that is very visible because candidates info is out there everywhere. This is what again, what I mean about the hiring reject machine. We're gonna see in everything we talked about today. Everything. How out of control this has gotten overnight, and we're not putting a spotlight on it. So I'm glad we're talking about it here.
Chad Sowash (34:59.395)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (35:20.056)
Yeah.
Big deep breath, kids, because we got more stuff coming. Okay, so next we have sponsor of the show, Veritone. on Tuesday, they announced the launch of Get Ready Career Sites within the Broadbean by Veritone platform. Broadbean Career Sites are an intelligent talent platform that helps employers understand which recruitment channels, campaigns, and investments are driving successful hires. Second item in the news.
This is a verified Veritone email. Quote, we are a strategic or I'm sorry. Quote, we are making a strategic infrastructure change across the Broadbean ecosystem by leveraging ClickCast as our back end programmatic DSP. That used to be Pando. Okay. They're now talking about leveraging ClickCast. Broadbean will continue to be the sh strategy, own the strategy.
Campaign management, optimization, customer relationship, while ClickCast provides a global distribution network. The plan is to move all clients and publishers over to ClickClack ClickCast by November 1st, 2026. And last but not least, Veritone announced yesterday 15 million USD through 20 million shares offering.
On October first of twenty twenty six. That's a lot to digest, JT. What the fuck is going on?
JT O'Donnell (36:50.633)
Yeah, well, so I feel like I'm the resident guest on this show that has to research things and give everybody the fifth grader version. So everybody get ready for the fifth grader version of what we just talked about, right? I know this is this is what I went through. So okay, Veritone owns Broadbean, okay? And you want to look at them as the plumbing. They're the plumbing that pushes the job ads out to dozens of job boards, okay? As part of the hiring reject machine.
Chad Sowash (36:56.344)
Ha ha ha ha
Chad Sowash (37:02.274)
I need it. I need the fifth grader version.
Chad Sowash (37:14.207)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.
JT O'Donnell (37:16.727)
Plumbing gets cut when companies, what, stop hiring? And that's the problem we have right now. Companies aren't hiring much. A lot of companies are going to quiet hiring because they can't take getting 10,000 applicants in a night. I don't know, sidebar really quick, but there was a a recruiter going around at wreckfest claiming that they put a business analyst position up at the end of the business day, went home, got up the next morning, came back, and the ATS was broken with over 93,000 applicants because these automated systems picked up the word analyst and business analyst and just sent.
Everybody, right? So you you think about this mess, right? So I get it. They go to HR Tech this week and Broadbean's launching a careers pages too. Now I like this because now you're following from the ad, right? So to the application, to whether or not you got hired. So I I get that they're going to t conceivably say, Hey, that ad made you money or not. Like this is what the hire cost you. Okay. But what you're telling me in the same breath this week, what we're slipping in is parent company short on cash and selling off pieces to pay its bills. So it's
Chad Sowash (37:45.422)
Boom. Yes.
JT O'Donnell (38:14.023)
It gets very interesting there. you know, where I think you know, the fifteen million dollars is going down to to restructure convertible debt, right? paying old bills, you know, funding growth. They Q two, they said twenty-four point three million in revenue, twenty two point one million operating loss. So that's a little interesting. But the thing that we talked about you and I before we got on the show, hundred and fifty million for Pando Logic in twenty twenty one.
Chad Sowash (38:23.032)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (38:34.381)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (38:42.229)
52 million for Broadbean in 2023, 2023, right? Run the numbers, people. That's $202 million. And the 150 million, they don't even use the the company name anymore. Gone. Gone. Not even used, right? I mean, they kept Broadbean's name, but that just to me is like, what? You know, there's there's way more going on in this scenario. And, you know, I really hope that.
Chad Sowash (38:42.299)
JT O'Donnell (39:08.425)
It works for them because I see what they're trying to do with the innovation of, you know, hey, this is where your money's being spent. But I also feel that we are at at a permanent shift. There has always been only one kind of hiring, it's called loud hiring. You put stuff on a job board and people, you know, you scream it out to everybody. Quiet hiring has been on the rise for the whole last year. It's permanent. There are far more ways for c people to go find the candidates that are a match so that they don't have to put up a job and get 10,000 applicants because it doesn't work anymore. And so
Chad Sowash (39:16.91)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (39:32.839)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (39:38.081)
For a company like Veritone, they have to make a change like this. They have to prove that that job placement. So I like that they're thinking that far ahead for the customer, but is it gonna be enough, Chad?
Chad Sowash (39:40.909)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (39:48.013)
I'm gonna need another beer for this. Can can I get another beer, please? good fucking night. So let's start with the good parts. career sites are smart. Owning the top of the funnel is smart. earlier this week I was actually behind the scenes. I got to see this product. It's a sexy product. It's a sexy product. And and being able to see these career sites, the lookbooks, those types of things that are actually created, it
JT O'Donnell (40:02.432)
Amen.
Chad Sowash (40:17.158)
It's just pretty amazing what you can actually build these days just so quickly, right? But pretty much all of their competitors already have career side offerings. Appcast, Jovio, Raden C almost invented them for God's sake. So this feels more like a Me Too move to protect their current client portfolio, but that's still smart, right? Because you're protecting your revenues and you're you've already landed those individuals. Now you're going to expand with a different product.
JT O'Donnell (40:39.339)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (40:46.776)
You're creating more sticky, not so transactional products. And with today's tech, the service is almost non-existent. I mean, it is pretty, pretty easy, pretty quick, and you have the agentic CMS that's available. So you're protecting, expanding, becoming more sticky, and and again, you're not adding to the burn. Okay. Now, on the not so good side of the house, this is.
Purely a model and burn play. Pandalogic is gone. This is not about the company being gone. This is about the platform being gone. That's where the partnership with AppCast comes in, using ClickCast, right? We've heard on from many pure play programmatic players that they're having problems with margin. So they have been going down funnel. The ones who've been going down funnel and owning the funnel for more than a few years, they're doing fine.
JT O'Donnell (41:21.089)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (41:45.155)
Because they already have that sticky, right? They're already there. because the margins for pando obviously weren't there, but the ones for for for Broadbean obviously are. you you noted that the Veritone acquired pando for 150. I mean, that's that's really huck that's really fucking hard to swallow. I mean, your product's gone, your headcount's gone. That's another piece of it, right? You've got engineers, you've got all that support stuff, they're gone. So they're looking to to to really stem the burn.
JT O'Donnell (42:01.245)
Ugh. Painful. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (42:14.644)
and then the hundred and fifty million is gone. And last but not least, the news cunt came out yesterday about that 15 million registered direct offering while the stock currently sits at 59 cents US. To me, to me, this means two things. They're obviously under a cash crunch. As of June 30th, Veritone only had 12.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. And number two.
JT O'Donnell (42:22.199)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (42:43.5)
Their burn rate was and or still is out of control. So the previous news of cutting an entire platform and support staff are all focused on stemming stemming the burn. Their Q2 net loss was 22 million and operational cash flow is negative 10.6 million for the quarter. Now, in closing, we've watched these companies grow up.
JT O'Donnell (43:05.228)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (43:11.468)
Terry turned Real Match into Panda Logic. Kelly and Dom made Broadbean, a UK and a US distribution powerhouse. So many friends worked there at both companies. Most still, many are still there. So I I I hope they they do well. I hope they can focus and I hope they can pull this shit together. Because as I would tell my kids, stop doing the stupid shit. Focus on the things that are making you
JT O'Donnell (43:39.616)
Yeah. And I just wanna I wanna end on a high note too with about this because you said it correctly. I'm with you a hundred percent. When you own your careers pages, take it back, right? I mean, we still always talk about the day. I still remember the newspapers killed themselves when they gave their their want ads to Career Builder, right? Nobody figured out I never need to go back to the the newspaper site again, I can go to career builder. Bring it back. Own own your page. But can I make a suggestion again for the sake of the job seeker? You may not have a lot of jobs on your page right now, but you want them coming back.
Imagine a world where we live in AI, where you can build an amazing career coach for them for free, where they could be coached on your careers page so they keep coming back. That's the kind of innovation that we're going to start seeing some of these companies do that is not hard to implement. But again, you have talked about it so many times. We need them engaged. We need them coming back. We need them updating us, telling us what the, you know, their new skill sets. And we need to do it and own our own data.
Chad Sowash (44:22.158)
Mm-hmm.
JT O'Donnell (44:36.875)
So they have to start looking at this. So I hope they're hearing me because I do think they have a real possibility now that they've got the careers pages. There's something there, but think about the candidate.
Chad Sowash (44:46.776)
Would you please?
JT O'Donnell (44:48.535)
Please.
Chad Sowash (44:50.078)
And next we're going to talk about Eightfold. And you know, when we talk about them, yeah, that that happens a lot of times. We'll be right back. All right. So I get a beer and I can't I can't show you, but my my bartender usually they put like a like a clover or something on it, maybe like a heart. No, he put a cock in balls. Yeah, that's that's my that's my that's my bartender.
Don't think I'm not gonna drink it, Alex.
Of course I am. Of course I am. Anyway, okay. So this let's get on the serious side. This from this from the pe yes, no shit, right? This from the People Matter site, Eightfold has appointed Joe Corngeible. I'm Joe Joe, I want you what I want you to do is I want you to go to LinkedIn. I want you to use that little record record my my my name.
JT O'Donnell (45:29.911)
No, we needed the levity.
JT O'Donnell (45:40.907)
I'm glad you said it first. I'm glad you said it first. I
JT O'Donnell (45:48.481)
Translation.
My name.
Chad Sowash (45:52.851)
thing, yeah. So people can click on it and they know how to say your name. So we're Joey K. Thank you. Thank you. He's former CTO, CTO at Workday. and now he's the new CEO. As co-founder Ashatosh Garg steps down after a decade of building the talent intelligence company. Joey K
JT O'Donnell (45:54.882)
We're just gonna call him Joey Kay. Just just nickname him. Little Joey Kay. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (46:16.418)
Brings nearly 30 years of experience in enterprise HR software, having held leadership roles at PeopleSoft, Workday, and Day Force. All big companies. He his appointment marks his first CEO position. JT, what do you make of this CEO change?
JT O'Donnell (46:35.639)
Okay, well, let's start with the fifth grader version of what we're talking about here, folks. So in case you wonder, Eightfold makes AI, everybody drink AI, that reads job applications and guesses who will be a good fit for the job. Okay, already scary. We've already talked about the judgment piece, okay? The guy that started the company. Okay, the guy that started the company just finally handed the keys to somebody, to Joey K, okay? And he used to run technology at workday, but he's not the first hire from workday.
Chad Sowash (46:38.456)
Please. Yes, please. For me.
Chad Sowash (46:51.502)
Here it is.
JT O'Donnell (47:05.471)
So what we had previous to that was the co he came in as co CEO with the founder, Chan I'm gonna say hopefully say at night, Chano Fernandez, who left after twenty minutes. Now he was a revenue guy.
Chad Sowash (47:11.49)
Uh-huh.
Chad Sowash (47:16.226)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (47:19.689)
Okay. So we're just gonna let exact twenty twenty months. He made it twenty months. Felt like twenty minutes, right? But meanwhile, while this is all going on, okay, so we're going from revenue guy being in charge to tech guy being in charge, two job seekers are suing eightfold, saying it secretly gave them a score that helped decide whether they got a shot and they never got to see the score. So what we're saying now, folks, is and it has to do with credit scores, is once again, candidate doesn't know where their data's going and doesn't know how they're being judged.
Chad Sowash (47:19.918)
Left after twenty minutes. Okay. Yes, yes.
Yes. Yes, yes.
Chad Sowash (47:32.291)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (47:42.306)
Yeah. Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (47:48.97)
This to me, I don't know. This is, you know, so why going back to work day grabbing workday talent two times in under three years? Right. And one of the things that was interesting to me was a quote from the CEO, the first message that they said, humans on the loop, not just in the loop. That was that was a quote on the loop, just not in the loop. Help me understand. Someone walk me through it. It, you know, right? Right. Yeah. And I just
Chad Sowash (47:57.154)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (48:11.624)
And it feels like a ride. It feels like a ride.
JT O'Donnell (48:17.365)
The f for me for Eightfold, what concerns me, so I stayed out of the the AI resume land grab. If you all know that, you're gonna see there are companies that realize really quickly, let's let's job seekers are not getting interviews, let's tell them it's their resume, let's charge them, let's make fake resumes and let's stuff ATS inboxes. That's what ruined us, folks. I never bought that land grab, could have, didn't, because ethically it was the wrong thing to do, because I love my recruiter brethren, right? But this is where Eightfold worries me, right? Because they're talking about
Chad Sowash (48:36.397)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (48:46.591)
scraping the data and and figuring out if a candidate's a fix where the candidates never had a chance to verify whether the data you're scraping is correct, be able to add to the data, or even know how they're being judged. So I'm gonna be very curious to see what this CTO now, CEO, first time being a CEO, does Joey K, we're watching you. because you do have this literally this lawsuit. And this lawsuit's no small lawsuit. I was looking at this. The
Chad Sowash (48:53.88)
Uh-huh.
JT O'Donnell (49:12.161)
They're saying the FCRA statutory damages can run a hundred dollars to a thousand dollars per willful violation. Per so if you multiply that by every applicant in eightfold's customer screening and exposure, that's that's some ching. That's some money. So I think they've got to be paying attention to that. So I you know, again, the HRM in full effect full effect.
Chad Sowash (49:18.478)
Her. Yes.
Chad Sowash (49:24.27)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (49:35.565)
Yeah, I mean, think about a class action, right? FICRA and and and trying to trying to get past that. And yeah, that's that that's hard coming into an organization as a new CEO. I mean, I and and I personally, I've been down. I've given Eightfold a hard time for a very long time. For good reason, because when they entered the fray, they became, you know, they were focused on candidate matchy matching, right? And and they were really focused on that.
JT O'Donnell (49:39.008)
Yes.
JT O'Donnell (49:55.211)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (50:05.312)
And then I believe it was around like 2018, after they received 18 million in funding, they started becoming everything to everyone. And they just that just doesn't happen, right? you don't move from being a focused niche player to everything to end-to-end hiring platform overnight. And I remember being at an event when an industry veteran walked up to me and and called Eightfold the Theranos of Recruiting.
And what they were pitching, he he was not buying, right? He was not buying. and then a couple years later at HR Tech, Eightfold went full thirsty mode. And what I mean by that is they didn't just buy and build the biggest booth at HR Tech. They built the largest booth in HR Tech, and then they built a very large support booth right beside it. And I'm talking bigger than SAP's booth.
JT O'Donnell (50:35.883)
Wow Wow.
Chad Sowash (51:04.076)
Bigger than Workday's booth, bigger than ADP's booth. Literally, companies that dwarf Eightfold from a business standpoint were outboothed. And it felt like a cry for help. You know, hey, over hey, big boy over here, buy me. Please buy me. Yeah. and then if they hadn't been thirsty enough, that's when they went out and they got Chano Fernandez, the co-CEO at Workday, to become the co-CEO of
JT O'Donnell (51:19.039)
Look at me.
Chad Sowash (51:34.593)
Eightfold of eightfold, right? Yeah. It's like that's not even close to a parallel move, right? I mean, or a lateral move. Not even I mean, that's down easily. So where's that dude at now? He was there for 20 months or 20 minutes, what you said. it's just it's crazy. And and after all that, there's no doubt that Ashatosh, his friends call him Ash, and you know, I've talked about him so much, I feel like I can tell call him Ash. Ash deserves a break.
JT O'Donnell (51:35.797)
Yeah, why?
Chad Sowash (52:02.602)
being that for that thirsty for so long, you deserve some time away. And now, and now we have a new guy, Joey K. and and what I like about this move is that they they're going away from the co-CEO territory, number one. The co the co-founders aren't in control because there's a point when a startup is not a startup anymore. You hit you you hit those different phases.
JT O'Donnell (52:12.567)
Show we can.
JT O'Donnell (52:21.001)
Agreed. Agreed.
Chad Sowash (52:31.498)
And you need an adult in the room, right? And hopefully that's what we're seeing here because a person with over 30 years of industry experience has to be better than a startup founder that caught a balloon startup. And and and good for Ash and good for those guys. The question is: how will Joey, the new face, change Eightfold's engagement, change their expectations? will they drop?
JT O'Donnell (52:33.687)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (53:00.77)
The Theranos of recruiting title because they're they they are being focused and they are saying no to people, which they didn't do before. How how will they handle community interactions? I mean, big booze and arrogance was pretty much the standard of before. and we heard a steady stream of eight-fold chatter for a couple of years straight. And now it's been nothing but crickets. And I mean nothing. So it's like they turn the marketing machine off. So personally,
JT O'Donnell (53:25.099)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (53:29.836)
I'm going to sit back and watch because I'm hoping, and I'm really fucking hoping that Joey K here can turn this thing around for eightfold because I feel personally they've been going in the wrong direction with the wrong leadership for a very long time. And it's not because I don't like Ash or any of the other guys, it's just because they the company outgrew the leadership.
JT O'Donnell (53:48.651)
Yeah.
JT O'Donnell (53:55.616)
Yeah. I know. And and again, I I know I'm a broken record, everyone, but when are you gonna think about the candidate? We just don't. Everyone claims that they do, but th they are such a beautiful example of the candidate literally has no control over their future. And this this hiring reject machine is so out of control because of AI right now. And folks, they're going to rise up. Candidates are going to find a way, things are going to get worse. But the companies that turn a corner and start investing in the candidates, every
dollar you spend to help candidates trust you, want to give you all their information, want to be matched, want to be there, it is gonna come back to you, not eightfold, tenfold. It's gonna come back tenfold. So yeah, so that is my dad joking. Yeah, yeah. Right? No, but seriously, it just I hope we end today's session on the note.
Chad Sowash (54:35.182)
and that and that's your dad joke, kids, because I don't need to have one after that one.
JT O'Donnell (54:49.867)
Think about the candidate. You can think I'm a crazy woman on here, you know, getting all wound up, but y you know, I'm telling you right now, go back to that original story. Who's gonna win this race is the one that thinks about the candidate and sticking to it.
Chad Sowash (55:02.188)
Yeah. And it and you have the tech to be able to make that happen. we know that because companies are already doing it. They're already, they're already lapping you and you probably don't even know it. and if you do know it, then good, because that's the first, that's the first step. Now get get the fuck out there. Look at imploding your process, and what would you actually build? Not just from the candidate side, but also from the recruiter side.
JT O'Donnell (55:06.485)
You do.
Chad Sowash (55:30.134)
And you know, there there's some compromises there. There's no question. Not to mention you have all these different types of positions. You have engineers, you have high volume, you've got all these things. Those are different processes. This is gonna take some fucking work. But the beautiful part about it is you get to build it and that's fucking fun.
JT O'Donnell (55:46.135)
Exactly. Exactly. No more one size fits all, right? It's so it's such an exciting time. So use it. Ooh. This is a passionate one.
Chad Sowash (55:49.912)
That's right.
Chad Sowash (55:55.84)
okay. I'm I've got to finish my beer and I appreciate you joining me again from Florida when you could be I mean we could both be sunning, but so you could be sunning or playing golf. but that's another one in a can, JT. We are out!
JT O'Donnell (56:01.495)
Thank you.
JT O'Donnell (56:09.697)
Yeah, yeah. We're out.
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