Randstad Screws Monster

Kiss Cams, Randstad Cash Grabs & Creepy Jokes

Maureen’s back—jet-lagged, moving, and still sharper than ZipRecruiter’s TV strategy.

In this episode:

• 💋 Coldplay Kiss Cam Chaos: HR affair caught on camera = internet meltdown = hiring boost? Yep.

• 💰 Ashby = Cashby: $50M raised, 0 haters. Suspiciously impressive.

• 🪦 Monster + CareerBuilder sold for peanuts: And Bold’s plan? Paywalls.

• 🇫🇷 Randstad & Apollo torch Monster. 

• 🤖 AI to kill recruiting

  
  

🔗 Subscribe before Randstad charges you an “integrity fee.”

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:37.07)

Going off the rails on a crazy train. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast, everybody. I'm your co-host, Joel, Quiet Cracker Cheesman.

Chad (00:46.129)

Chad "integrity fee" Sowash.

Maureen Clough (00:49.579)

And I'm Maureen, AKA Moe, crashing out Clough.

Joel Cheesman (00:53.57)

And on this episode, bold bids, recruiters bid farewell, and Ashby more like cashby. Am I right? Am I right? All right. Let's do this.

Maureen Clough (01:01.421)

hahahahah

Chad (01:01.533)

Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Chad (01:08.219)

That's good. That means we don't have to do the dad joke after that one. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (01:08.238)

That took me all night to come up with that one. That's It's the book, the book and dad jokes, cash B and you'll have to wait till the end for my official official dad joke.

Maureen Clough (01:11.659)

That was good, actually. I'm here for that.

Hahaha

Chad (01:18.269)

Most important, Mo is back. She's a mess. She's already self-proclaimed. Well, you're getting ready to move. I mean, you should expect to be a mess, right?

Maureen Clough (01:22.785)

I'm a huge hot mess, it's true. Yeah, it's... And I'm also coming back from Europe, so there's this massive jet lag. And I was like, I just, you guys, the fact of the matter was I missed you so much. I was like, I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna fight through it, I'm gonna push through it. I'm sorry for the listeners that have to endure this, but like, I really wanted to be back that badly that I was like, it's cool, we're gonna make it happen. So thanks for having me. I mean, despite the fact that it made me miss...

Joel Cheesman (01:24.108)

Messy Mo.

Chad (01:32.359)

There is that.

Chad (01:46.077)

How was the Disney cruise? How was the Disney cruise?

Maureen Clough (01:51.307)

Wreckfest UK, which was like very depressing. It was extraordinary. And for all of you who don't know this, Disney cruises are like the best parenting hack and vacation hack I've ever heard of in my life because they have, and I'm not kidding, they have kids camp from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. And my kids were like, peace out mom. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, don't you wanna like hang out with me at some point? They're like, nah.

Joel Cheesman (01:53.902)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (01:55.665)

Good.

Chad (02:12.797)

Yeah

Maureen Clough (02:16.555)

I'm good. I'm going to the pool. I'm going to hang out with my friends. And they had like a gazillion camp counselors and stuff. And so you actually get to relax a vacation on a Disney cruise. So this was not sponsored by Disney, but by God come find me. We can do it. It was awesome. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting the hell out of here.

Chad (02:25.777)

awesome.

Joel Cheesman (02:29.71)

All right. I have a question. You're, you're, you're moving. Is that what's going on? Well, are you, are you two viewers will appreciate this, but your, your room that you always record in is the same. You've got the Monet's and the Picasso's in the back. You might want to pack that shit up. If you're moving that might help.

Chad (02:29.743)

Excellent.

Maureen Clough (02:42.657)

Yeah. Yeah. yes. They're real. Mm-hmm. Yep. I know it's part of the brand. No, unfortunately it's not coming with me. So we're going to a small cabin and we're just getting the hell out of Dodge. We're going rural guys. We're getting out of the big city. We are so pumped.

Chad (02:48.657)

Hahaha

Chad (02:58.877)

Woo!

Chad (03:02.22)

She's prepping. She's a prepper.

Joel Cheesman (03:02.328)

So is this whoever buys this your place now gets a furnished apartment or furnished house? Ooh.

Maureen Clough (03:07.209)

Indeed they do. Indeed they do. We're renting it out. We're saying we're not keeping up with the Joneses anymore. We're going rural. We're getting out of the city. We're just, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for it. I'm like pumped.

Chad (03:13.871)

Amen. Yeah. Dude, I'm telling you right now, the slow down, the slow down for me has been magical. It's been fucking magical. So hopefully, same for you.

Joel Cheesman (03:15.374)

You're so bohemian.

Maureen Clough (03:22.899)

good.

Maureen Clough (03:27.201)

Fingers crossed, it might just be an escapist sort of dream, but we'll find out. No way to know unless you do it, so there we go.

Joel Cheesman (03:30.326)

It's, it's been an, it's, it's, it's been an emotional week. we said goodbye to Aussie, news across the wires. We're recording whole Kogan has, has passed away. And as you know, Chad, we, lost a dear friend in the industry, last week. And I know that you posted a video that just caught fire. I don't know how many views you can see it. can't, but it looks like it's, it's taken off and

Chad (03:30.405)

You

Yeah, yeah. It is, it is. Yep.

Chad (03:43.313)

Wow.

Yeah.

Mm.

Chad (03:55.777)

dude, it exploded. And I mean, the people that reached out, I think was the coolest and reading and hearing the stories that they had about what Matt meant to them personally. That was what really was heartwarming for me. I mean, we asked Sergey to and the team to pull together a short video in remembrance of Matt. So if you haven't seen it, we're going to go ahead and we'll play it right here.

Joel Cheesman (04:06.112)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (04:18.126)

Video boy.

Joel Cheesman (04:23.17)

Yep, and if you missed it, this was a dear friend, Matt Lavery of the show UPS Chicago Southside Kid passed away and we put together this little this little video.

Joel Cheesman (05:43.214)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (05:48.716)

Rest in peace, Matt. Rest in peace.

Chad (05:49.373)

man.

Joel Cheesman (05:53.294)

Hope you and John Candy are enjoying an old 96er there in heaven with the Leos.

Chad (05:53.467)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad (05:59.805)

Yeah. Okay, give me the shout outs before I start fucking, I've turned into a fucking mess after I became a dad. Whoa, jeez.

Maureen Clough (06:00.009)

man, sounds like a great guy.

Joel Cheesman (06:04.013)

Ha ha ha!

You are a mushy mushy mess.

Maureen Clough (06:07.987)

Yeah. Well, I didn't know him, but he sounds amazing. So, all right, let me save you. Let me save you with the thing that no one wants to talk about, but the whole world can't stop looking at. It's the Coldplay Gate. So, I mean, we are an HR podcast. We can't not talk about it, but let's just call it out. So obviously it's the video that broke the internet.

Joel Cheesman (06:12.542)

Save us, save us Moe. Pull us out of this.

Chad (06:20.413)

Jesus.

Maureen Clough (06:31.575)

Fair, fair, But it's like, mean, you cannot escape the memes. They're just like, circulating all over the net. It's just been an insane thing. So if somehow, someway you didn't know what happened, what happened was this couple got caught on the kiss cam at Coldplay's concert in Boston and they freaked the fuck out and like, literally ran and hid from the camera's view and everyone was cracking up because Chris Martin, Apple, or Apple, no, that's his daughter, right? Was that Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris, anyway.

Chad (06:58.333)

Yeah, I think so.

Maureen Clough (06:59.095)

Chris, I was like, where did that come from? See, I said hot mess today. I promise, I delivered. But so Chris Martin said out loud, wow, either these guys are having an affair or they're just really, really shy. And it turns out the affair part was right. So yeah, mm-hmm. And so.

Joel Cheesman (07:03.182)

It's alright.

Chad (07:13.383)

former.

Maureen Clough (07:16.329)

everybody just like descended into chaos and this video went completely viral because of their reaction. Like if they just stood there and smiled, no one would ever have heard a single thing about this. But unfortunately it was very clear. They weren't supposed to be seen together. So anyway, this sparked a lot of outrage. And I think the thing that I feel like hasn't been talked about enough is the reason for it. So it's not just that we're all assholes and we want to be like gossiping and watercooling and all that stuff. It's that.

Joel Cheesman (07:41.39)

Schadenfreude.

Maureen Clough (07:42.829)

Yes, it's that exactly. It's like we are so ready to see someone actually take the fall at the top because they seem to be setting these rules and then not abiding by them. It's like accountability. It only exists for people at the bottom and we're just like collectively fucking done with that. So I think unfortunately for them, like there are plenty of other corporate people who've done far worse than these guys have done with having this affair. But unfortunately for these two,

Joel Cheesman (08:04.854)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (08:07.949)

who I even heard from someone, six degrees of separation, someone who allegedly knows them, they're fully separated from their spouses, whatever, I don't know the full situation, but these guys are taking the heat because of all the bad corporate behavior. It's like the stuff about return to office at Starbucks, right? Everybody's gotta come back, but we've also been flying the brand new CEO from his house in California, two headquarters in Seattle on the private jet. There's kind of like the rules for the, but not for me stuff, and we're just, I think.

Basically, as a society, we're just fucking done with it. And I think that's what that's all about.

Chad (08:39.197)

That's a great take. That's a great take. mean, because from my standpoint, it's like they're doing things outside, let them do their thing. But again, you're right. It's like different rules for different strokes for different folks. And that's bullshit. And a lot of people are sick of it. I totally get that.

Maureen Clough (08:50.775)

Right?

Yeah. Yep. think that's a, the one other thing I'll say about it is I do feel like there's been a lot more heat reserved for the woman in this situation, which I so dislike because it feels like that's so frequently the case, right? So I'm super not into that.

Chad (09:04.311)

figure. Yes.

Maureen Clough (09:08.429)

And I just I feel for everybody involved because this really just sucks, right? You know, it's like it's blasted all over the internet for their families to see which just is like so painful if you can even imagine what that would be like and then for the whole company I mean, it's like so incredibly embarrassing. Although they did get a lot of PR I guess I guess everybody knows what astronomer is now

Joel Cheesman (09:08.558)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:17.198)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:27.522)

Which brings me to my take on this. They say there's no such thing as bad PR. And I think that's an interesting perspective. None of us knew about astronomer before this thing happened, I'm sure. And I was curious from a recruitment side of things. My hypothesis was, I wonder if they're getting more applicants than they were before. I wonder if more people want to work here than they did prior to this incident. So I went out to LinkedIn.

Chad (09:46.13)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:56.012)

LinkedIn shows you the jobs. show you how many applicants have applied to a job. And I don't know anything about this business, LinkedIn does show you other companies that are similar to that. So in the companies that are similar, according to LinkedIn, Astronomer was getting two to three times more applicants on their jobs than their competition was. so see CEOs out there, if you're looking to juice the applicant flow, you might want to have an affair with the, with the head of HR.

Maureen Clough (10:17.171)

Okay, there you go.

Get a side piece. my gosh. Yeah, it's really working for them. Really working for them.

Joel Cheesman (10:25.462)

and go to a mainstream concert. Just saying, just saying it's good for applicant flow, everybody. It's good for applicant flow.

Chad (10:32.669)

good for applicant flow. Jesus. I sure want those applicants.

Maureen Clough (10:35.585)

The other thing about that though, exactly, we wanna figure out who those people are. But like the other thing about all this is it also really highlighted the misinformation that's just like running rampant all over the internet, because there were so many things that got put out that were just false. Like the woman next to them who was laughing, everyone allegedly said that she was this woman at the company, a VP of people or something like that. That wasn't her. There was no one else from the company there. And I think because people thought it was a company sponsored event, at least I guess, did you guys think that when you saw it? I thought.

Joel Cheesman (10:46.67)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (10:58.936)

Yeah.

Chad (11:04.901)

No. There are no way in hell that was a company sponsored event.

Maureen Clough (11:05.279)

maybe are they in a box or something? Maybe not. Maybe that was just me. Okay, I was like, wait, but because they said that girl next to them, that woman next to them was the head or the VP of people, that's what everyone was alleging, I thought that there were other people in the company, which made me even more incensed. Okay, yes, yes, never again, never again. I'm done. Fair. That's fair.

Joel Cheesman (11:08.44)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (11:17.9)

Yeah, people are trying to say that, yeah.

Chad (11:21.765)

Alright, let's get away from Coldplay now. Jesus Christ, I've already heard too much of Coldplay for the last week. Jesus, come on.

Joel Cheesman (11:30.254)

I mean, if you're going to have an affair, might as well be with the head HR because who are they going to report you to? Okay. My shout out. Speaking of candidate flow, ZipRecruiter is saved, Chad. ZipRecruiter, I don't know if you saw the headlines. Forget about the fact that their stock is down almost 35 % year to date. Forget the fact that their podcast, which is still running every week, only has 20 reviews celebrating a year.

Chad (11:34.279)

Joel, what's your shout out? That's great, yeah. Fuck. Jesus.

Maureen Clough (11:37.133)

He's done.

Chad (11:47.674)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (11:59.918)

And only 20 reviews, only 10 reviews on Spotify. So it's not like the kids are into it and the old folks on Apple or not. No, zip recruiter has finally figured out that the key to success is going back to linear TV. I don't know if you saw this Chad, but Marcus Lamonis famous investor now has a show called the fixer. Where he helps company startups to fix their shit as the, as the name says, and he's partnered with zip recruiter to help these companies fix their shit.

Maureen Clough (12:07.213)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (12:30.114)

by using ZipRecruiter. That's right. What better solution than ZipRecruiter to fix your hiring woes. So here is a little tidbit from Marcus Limonis about his partnership with ZipRecruiter.

Chad (12:59.911)

Holy shit.

Joel Cheesman (13:26.146)

Boom, buy your ZipRecruiter stock today kids, cause this thing's going to the moon. Marcus Lamonis is in the house. Shout out to ZipRecruiter.

Maureen Clough (13:28.877)

Hahaha

Maureen Clough (13:34.971)

my god.

Chad (13:35.407)

I've used, I've used ZipRecruiter for bullshit. Bullshit. All right.

Joel Cheesman (13:40.216)

They've paid me a lot of money to say that they're awesome. And they are. That's right. That's right.

Chad (13:43.493)

Yeah, go fucking figure. yeah. My shout out is to integrity fees. Did you hear about integrity fees for tourist visas coming for tourists coming into the US? guys heard about this.

Maureen Clough (13:44.68)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (13:57.227)

no, sounds expensive.

Maureen Clough (13:58.295)

Are there any tourists coming to the US?

Chad (14:01.149)

Well, listen up, listen up. Apparently embedded into the big, beautiful turd. mean, Bill, now it's actually a turd. There's a provision that gives DHS the ability to charge fees on foreign visitors. And this from ABC News, quote, the new $250 visa integrity fee as defined in the legislation applies to travelers who are applying for non-immigrant visas to enter the U.S.

Maureen Clough (14:08.845)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (14:22.072)

Ouch.

Chad (14:30.245)

and cannot be waived." But if you're good, but if you're good, they might reimburse you, but don't hold your breath. I have no fucking clue. And you're not gonna get your money back, guys. Come on. I know it sounds like a cash grab for the US before 2026 World Cup in Summer Olympics, but this could literally kill tourism and hospitality in the industries, plus all the vendors that support them.

Joel Cheesman (14:38.104)

What does good mean?

Maureen Clough (14:38.733)

What's that? Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (14:41.879)

Okay.

Maureen Clough (14:44.639)

my gosh. No.

Chad (15:00.029)

plain stupid. Shout out to plain stupid legislation.

Maureen Clough (15:06.273)

That's like, God, don't we have enough going on? Seriously, you're gonna add that?

Chad (15:12.315)

I mean, we're already we're already fly over country now. mean, Canada is going to Mexico. They're not even stopping in the US anymore. I mean, it's just like, what else can we do to fuck over people anyway?

Maureen Clough (15:15.188)

Exactly.

Maureen Clough (15:19.67)

I'm scared.

It's so bad, it's gonna have such cascading effects. Thanks for bringing the peace and light. yay, free shit. That's right, I get to do that today.

Chad (15:25.669)

Well, you know, it is.

Joel Cheesman (15:27.406)

Well, the good news is that they can they can sell their free shit from us if they need to to make up that extra extra money. And before we get to that, Mo real clear real quickly. Our shout outs are sponsored by our friends up North. Kiara that's text recruiting made simple and cost effective. Thanks Kiara. Not a free shit.

Chad (15:42.171)

Fiora.

Chad (15:47.485)

Kia Ora.

Maureen Clough (15:50.763)

All right, who here likes whiskey? I don't know. I think we know that. Who think we know that? So the tech talent experts over at VanHack are going to throw us some bourbon barrel aged, wait, did I just screw that up? Nope, yep, yep. Wow, see, I told you I'd bring the hot mess. I told you, okay. All right. my God, all right. So whiskey from Chicken Cock, coming to you by VanHack. Did I do that?

Chad (15:53.305)

me?

Joel Cheesman (15:53.982)

I do. I love the cock.

Chad (16:08.797)

Two bottles of whiskey. All good.

Chad (16:20.071)

There you go. Boom. See? See? It's beautiful.

Joel Cheesman (16:20.6)

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

Maureen Clough (16:20.993)

There we go, there we go, all right. Boo's not your thing.

If you listen to this show and booze isn't your thing, I'm very confused, but I love that for you. There is bourbon barrel aged syrup out there that people can get. Sign up for free stuff. Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Kiura are bringing that to you.

Joel Cheesman (16:37.422)

Nice.

Maureen Clough (16:48.427)

I just love the word hoser, it's fabulous. All right, who likes t-shirts? Everybody likes a t-shirt, right? Guess who's bringing them to us?

Joel Cheesman (16:50.67)

It is great. He's come back.

Joel Cheesman (16:58.562)

We are.

Maureen Clough (16:58.593)

The folks over at Aaron, those peeps with the red shoes, you've seen them all over the place at those tech conferences, right? T-shirts from Aaron. All right. And then, my gosh, you guys, we're back to alcohol already. Craft beer, craft beer, who wants craft beer? From Aspen Tech Labs. Sound good, sound good. And yeah, so we got a lot of free shit. You should probably sign up to get some.

Chad (17:00.221)

you

Joel Cheesman (17:16.75)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (17:21.021)

And if it's your birthday, huh? Huh? Huh? A little rum from Plum. Don't forget about them. But you can't get it. Let's go to ChadCheese.com slash free. ChadCheese.com slash free. That's right.

Maureen Clough (17:27.437)

The best one.

Joel Cheesman (17:36.632)

That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating a birthday and man, are we getting a lot of fans for God's sakes. Here we go. Here's our list. Everybody. Dustin Carper, Jeremy bright, Drew Feld, Jim Schneider, Roy Marer, Joe Wilkie, Mary Lanahan, Sarah Berlin, Ashley Smith, Julia Levy, Leanne Pua, Damon Ashley, Ria Moss, Dez Prentice, Ryan foot, Jasek Krajewski, Jolene Schlaff, Daniel Flatla.

Chad (17:43.293)

you

Joel Cheesman (18:03.446)

Steven Reilert, Sir Richard Collins, Brian Chaney, Crystal Lay, Marron Hogan, and Serge Boutreaux, everybody. Happy birthday, happy birthday, everybody. That's a mouthful. That's one week of birthdays.

Chad (18:13.693)

Serj. Serj.

Maureen Clough (18:15.393)

Happy birthday!

Chad (18:20.167)

Topics, baby. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (18:25.966)

Getting, getting a lot of getting a lot Chad. So much love for us. All right. Let's get into topics. Everybody some more red meat. If you like the red meat from last week, uh, Ashby, a seven year old San Francisco startup has raised $50 million in a series D round, doubling its valuation from its $30 million series C back in 2024 and bringing its total amount raised to $120 million. It's custom made.

Chad (18:27.11)

There you go.

Chad (18:35.332)

A

Maureen Clough (18:45.005)

I'm bad.

Joel Cheesman (18:55.31)

customer base grew from 1300 to over 2,700 in the past year with a 135 % ARR increase serving clients like OpenAI, Shopify and Snowflake. The funds will enhance AI capabilities, product development and customer success. course, Chad, Ashby, Cashby, whatever you want to call it. What are your thoughts on this raise?

Maureen Clough (19:17.185)

You

Chad (19:20.925)

Let's be very clear kids, we hear shit about applicant tracking systems all the time. My applicant tracking system won't do this, my applicant tracking system won't do that. It took six months to finalize the implementation of a point solution into my ATS. The funny thing is, I've never heard an Ashby customer say anything bad about them. And I'm not shitting you. And in a segment where all we hear is bitching and moaning, right? So it's pretty damned refreshing.

Maureen Clough (19:42.573)

Hey.

Maureen Clough (19:49.13)

you

Chad (19:50.887)

to hear companies that are more satisfied with a company like Ashby.

Joel Cheesman (19:54.818)

You don't hear bad things, but do you hear good things? Okay, all right.

Chad (19:57.561)

yeah, I've heard really good things about being able to work with them, implementations, those types of things. And again, you start going to these conferences and you hear things and then you dig a little bit deeper because you know it can't all be sunshine, fucking rainbows and unicorns. so far it's all I got. But Aspie, as you said, has doubled their customer base in the last year, increased number of interviews scheduled in Aspie by 170%, which...

Maureen Clough (20:17.165)

Hahaha

Chad (20:27.099)

really means nothing. We need a baseline guy. So marketing, if you want to give real numbers with a baseline, that would be great. And again, their revenues are up 135%. It's fucking awesome. And they've barely touched their series C from last year. So the big question, you are doing so well. You've got a great pace. You're not even hitting or, you know, hitting the cash from the last time last year. Why?

Why more money, especially this time when you know that it's not a great time to raise money and then also dilution? Why do that to yourself?

Joel Cheesman (21:05.358)

Well, let's check in on the executive team, is, out on a yacht somewhere. Let's see what. they're a little busy, Chad. I don't know if they have time for our questions. we've been through this Chad. People hate their ATS is they're looking for the next, you know, hot chick in the bar. They went from ISIMs to smart recruiters to greenhouse to lever.

Chad (21:09.745)

Boats and hoes.

Maureen Clough (21:10.989)

You

Chad (21:28.796)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (21:30.324)

Ashby now is the hot babe at the bar that all the air ones like, shit. Who is that? Leaving their like leaving their current ATS for the hot new thing. Now time will tell if Ashby retains its hotness and can keep it going. but so far so good. So looking at some head count numbers, Ashby has grown their head count 195 % in the last two years. smart recruiters in comparison is up 14%.

Maureen Clough (21:58.185)

lot.

Joel Cheesman (22:00.534)

And iSIMS is down 8 % over the last two years. Ashby only has about 300 employees compared to smart recruiters at 720 and iSIMS at 1218. Greenhouse also not nearly as much growth in the last year, 8 % of headcount. They have about 876 employees. In summary, Greenhouse is doing a whole lot with pretty, very few.

Chad (22:20.157)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (22:29.166)

and it's working for them really, really Ashby is sorry. Who did I say? Anyway, so many ATSs, no, what, what they're doing, is working. mean, they're going to spend a ton of money on, salespeople, try to grow this thing out. and they're just, they're doing really, really well. I think that two things that I found interesting in the news, aside from the money is number one, they're adding features that should make a lot of startups shit their pants. they're launching, they're launching a note taker product.

Chad (22:31.227)

You mean Ashby?

greenhouse, it's okay.

Chad (22:56.231)

Note taker.

Joel Cheesman (22:58.988)

which if you're bright, hire Metaview, hone it, et cetera, should make you a little bit nervous. If you're a competitor to Ashby, you might want to think about an acquisition of some of those, some of those companies. And the other thing is they've really apparently, kind of figured out the user group customer thing. they have what would equate to local meetups. in fact, they have one, near you Mo in Seattle where customers come and they get, they, I'm sure they get free food and drinks. I'm sure they get a little education. I'm sure they can ask questions.

Maureen Clough (23:22.092)

Hey, hey.

Maureen Clough (23:25.869)

People like that. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (23:28.974)

But, but that community feel, you know, a lot, a lot of people can't afford to go to HR tech every year or go to like a national or global conference. So these local conferences people love and these companies leverage it smartly are doing very well. And apparently Ashby is taking advantage of that. So everything working for them. The money thing I agree, Chad money's expensive, but they see an opportunity to grow and, they're taking it. So this has been fun to watch. They're in 21 countries.

Chad (23:29.414)

edumacation.

Maureen Clough (23:34.636)

Right.

Maureen Clough (23:43.533)

That's a really good point.

Maureen Clough (23:51.597)

You

Joel Cheesman (23:58.67)

they're only in pretty much North America and EMA, EMEA right now. they're coming to Europe. They're coming everywhere. So, so get ready world.

Chad (23:58.855)

Yeah.

Chad (24:08.625)

They call it a Mia.

Joel Cheesman (24:10.848)

Amiya, Amiya, I don't even know her. Amiya. E-M-E-A.

Chad (24:11.933)

That's good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, 50 million, especially in the space that we are right now, we've, we've heard and seen, smart recruiters go over really a facelift with Winston, right? So I guess you almost have to wonder if they're trying to like, they're trying to focus on building reserves and, what the next build or what the next pivot looks like before they turn into legacy tech, right?

Maureen Clough (24:16.901)

my god.

Chad (24:41.885)

They've been around for what, seven, eight years? I mean, tech is moving fast.

Maureen Clough (24:41.901)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (24:47.084)

I mean, one of these companies got to go public soon. Like, I mean, we can gush about Ashby, but there's no track record of ATS is like going public and crushing it and making a lot of money. history says this isn't going to be a thing, but there's a first time for everything. So we'll see.

Chad (24:52.401)

Not this year.

Chad (25:04.029)

Cool.

Maureen Clough (25:04.459)

I'm just happy to hear a company that everybody likes out there these days. It's awesome. Don't hear much of that, I feel. If you dig.

Joel Cheesman (25:07.566)

We could find some people, I'm sure. We could find a few people.

Chad (25:12.283)

Yeah, it's really weird because you can go to a conference and people will talk shit about just about any company that's out there, even if they're having a good experience, they're going to have some shit to talk. I just haven't been able to find anybody to talk shit about Ashby. So good for those guys. I that's fucking awesome.

Maureen Clough (25:20.586)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (25:28.205)

Well, it's really awesome. I've got a buddy who works over there. He's also a podcaster, Shannon Ogborn. She loves it. She just thinks it's the best. yeah. Hey, hey. Good to be.

Joel Cheesman (25:30.059)

Yeah.

Chad (25:34.981)

Mm-hmm. There you go.

Joel Cheesman (25:39.118)

There you go. You can send those purple Nikes to me and I'll distribute them accordingly. Ashby, if you're listening. Sorry, I'm such a whore. All right, I didn't see this one coming. Forget the JobGet news. There's a different buyer for Monster. Bold Holdings won a $28.4 million bid for CareerBuilder and Monster's job board assets, beating JobGet's $27 million offer.

Maureen Clough (25:43.785)

Hahaha

Chad (25:50.631)

Not your whore.

Joel Cheesman (26:08.758)

they'll retain 350 plus employees as part of the deal. Valnet us acquired monster media assets for 27.3 million and Cheryl Lubinsky, Eddie net bought, the government assets for 13 million, no bids for the international business chat. So I say we just buy it. Let's just get some buddies and do it. court approval is set for, July 24th, is this week, Ron's dot disputes.

Chad (26:33.009)

think they just moved it back.

Joel Cheesman (26:34.604)

Run start dispute, 789,000 cure payments claiming $1.2 million owed. Bold led by X monster execs runs my perfect resume and flex jobs among others. Chad, your thoughts on this bold move by bold.

Chad (26:52.061)

But we talked about the bidding starting at 7 million and thinking, what the fuck? mean, Monster just in itself and how much it was worth. And then you have Career Builder. mean, the number one and number two, and they were one and two flipping back and forth for years. And the bidding started at $7 million just for those very key assets, by the way. Good Domains, SEO Juice is awesome. They do have obviously slumping

Joel Cheesman (26:56.865)

Yeah.

Chad (27:21.189)

revenues. Here's my biggest problem with bold getting those domains and the SEO juice. I've checked out some of the products like Flexjobs, which is probably the most well known. It has mandatory registration. And if that wasn't bad enough, you hit a paywall to actually have to see the full job descriptions and apply for a Yes.

Joel Cheesman (27:31.79)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (27:35.438)

Yeah, for sure.

Joel Cheesman (27:43.566)

Come on, man

Maureen Clough (27:45.641)

my gosh, are you serious? That's ridiculous.

Chad (27:49.917)

Yes. the and that's and that's pretty much how all their models are. Right. These are job seeker monetization models. So these types of models to me are incredibly predatory. Right. And I hate to see what could happen if bold can actually squeeze some Google juice out of those domains, brand recognition and then start preying on job seekers. I'm not a fan of it. Is it allowed? Yes. Does it make it right? Fuck you. Right.

Maureen Clough (27:58.445)

Gross.

Maureen Clough (28:02.153)

Yeah, no kidding.

Maureen Clough (28:13.335)

Yeah. ew.

Yeah.

Chad (28:19.485)

But let's see, let's see what they do with these properties. But I really wish JobGit would have walked away with this deal to be quite frank.

Joel Cheesman (28:23.672)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (28:27.98)

Mm-hmm.

So you may remember, I mentioned Chad in one of my comments on this was that I didn't, thought someone had leaked the job get acquisition and that they did that in order to get more money or get more bidders for the business, which appears like it may have, may have been the case. it also appears to be the case that someone may have tipped off bold. Remember there are two, two monster execs on this team. Somebody may have leaked how much the,

Chad (28:56.146)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (28:58.488)

job get bid was because it's really close. It's about a million more. I mean, is, is that a coincidence? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone called bold and said, if you want to get this done, it's gotta be over 28. Cause I think job get job gets

Maureen Clough (29:11.091)

Just little up.

Chad (29:13.661)

Well, was an auction. It was an auction so they could see what was happening. think the thing that actually pushed it over in looking at the actual bids was that Bold said they would take the 350 employees. And that wasn't something that I think JobGet wanted to do. Yeah, think so. So there was more than just the money, but the money was obviously good too.

Joel Cheesman (29:18.284)

Yeah, okay.

Joel Cheesman (29:29.009)

okay.

Maureen Clough (29:31.005)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (29:36.3)

Yeah. Good insight. Good insight. So I'd never heard of bold really. bold is just a holding company for all these job boards. Some of the, some I've heard of, bold.pro is apparently a LinkedIn killer and we haven't talked about that yet. but they've been around a while. Bold.com is a great URL. mean, I can't believe it's just a holding company. it's kind of like DHI with, with dice and clearance jobs. but anyway, they're, doing nothing basically with a really good URL.

Maureen Clough (29:41.345)

I hadn't either.

Chad (29:48.157)

No.

Maureen Clough (29:49.558)

Wow.

Chad (29:53.724)

It is.

Maureen Clough (29:54.176)

Sure is.

Joel Cheesman (30:04.302)

So I'm not sure they're going to do anything with monster now that they, now that they own it. But the, the recipe seems to be bringing these job boards, create efficiencies. It's probably one accounting department for all of them. It's probably one sales team for all of them. And they cross post and la la la, and they're, they're thinking that they can make this thing work. Now, my guess is the whole monster, a former executive thing. When these guys are at monster, they probably went to lunch. They probably had conversations about, man, if we ran the show.

Maureen Clough (30:06.263)

What a mess.

Chad (30:13.085)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (30:32.076)

What would we do differently? How would we make monster a monster again? And that probably got into the, the, case of bidding for this thing. have delusions of brand or they can bring monster back to what it was. We'll see what happens. but yeah, this is it's they're just, they're just passing around. you know, everyone's sloppy seconds on this one. I think, it'll, it'll fade away. Monster will fade away with the others. anyway.

Maureen Clough (30:42.637)

It ain't coming back.

Chad (30:47.101)

it.

Chad (30:54.267)

thirds.

Joel Cheesman (30:58.926)

It'll be just like flex jobs. You'll go to monster. There'll be a paywall. They'll have, you know, unique jobs and only you can find unique content. that you can find. interestingly, bold has, their head count has been pretty much sideways for a long time, but they've just recently, added business development people to the tune of a 400 % increase over the last six months. So it certainly looks like they're going to have an, army of salespeople start.

Chad (30:59.463)

Yeah.

Chad (31:14.962)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (31:22.647)

Biz dev people? Is that like...

Joel Cheesman (31:27.072)

stop bombarding. So get ready for the calls people. You're going to start getting the calls for the Monster Crew Builder job posting deal coming soon to you.

Maureen Clough (31:30.444)

us.

I'm laughing, I'm laughing because BD is so often a euphemism for sales and yet again there you go. BD people coming on in, alright. Okay, just call it sales. Come on.

Joel Cheesman (31:46.766)

Alright guys, let's take a quick break and get to some more red meat. I know Chad has been foaming at the mouth, ready to talk about Ronstadt France.

Chad (31:52.573)

Oof.

Joel Cheesman (31:58.99)

All right, Chad, I'll set this up and let you run because I know you've done a lot of homework on this, but Monster France announced its closure in Europe this week, impacting 200 plus employees as shareholders of Randstad own 49 % of the company and Apollo owns 51%. They withdrew funding for the post 2024 CareerBuilder joint venture, despite a 2016 Randstad acquisition and a 2027 employee support agreement.

No severance or reclassification has been offered with public funds covering costs. Ronstadt denies responsibility citing minority ownership status at 49 % while executives received $1.2 million in bonuses and 5 million euros in bonuses back in 2024. Employees demand ethical accountability criticizing the use of public funds and a lack of support. Chad, you've been reading up on this and have an opinion.

What you got?

Chad (32:56.477)

So this is, there is so much.

fucking around on this one and who got fucked on this? And there were so many that my brain was scrambled this morning. I had to break it up into three sections. So the first section, we're just going to talk about the employees in one chain. but first let's talk about Ronstadt, who actually came out yesterday touting, reporting revenue of $5.8 billion last quarter. Quarter.

Maureen Clough (33:22.349)

Joel Cheesman (33:30.744)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:30.767)

underlying EBITDA of 171 million euros and EBITDA margin of 3%. So it sounds great, right? Yeah, well, that's amazing if you're a stockholder, but how is Ronstadt treating their actual workers? Like, know, Monster employees that have worked for Monster for decades in some respect. Some of my friends have been there for 20 years.

Joel Cheesman (33:53.934)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:55.805)

And not just in the US, but as you had said, Joel, all over the world and even in France. So this lovely lady over at the job board doctor, she's the sexiest doctor ever. She wrote an article and the quote, in documents reviewed by the job board doctor team effective June 22nd, 2025, Monster dramatically rewrote its terms of separation just days before slashing sales and marketing.

Maureen Clough (34:06.669)

you

Chad (34:25.501)

positions in multiple locations. So just before they got ready to do a mass layoff, this is what their change was. The old version prior to June, June, 2022 or 22, 22nd, uh, one and a half weeks base pay per year of service, right? And the minimum was two weeks maximum was 16 weeks. Okay. So you got 16 weeks if you were there and that was the max.

Joel Cheesman (34:52.11)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chad (34:53.181)

New improved, let's fuck our employees version, two weeks base pay period. That's all you get. Doesn't matter if you were there for 20 years, doesn't matter if you're there for one year, everybody got the same. So like, think about this listener. If you make $2,000 per week with the old policy, that'd be $32,000. And then the new policy is 4,000. Right? That many weeks. 16 weeks versus

Maureen Clough (35:03.917)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (35:20.173)

It's not okay. Not, not okay.

Chad (35:23.057)

versus two weeks, right? That's a $28,000 difference. How would you like losing that amount of cash, right? Not just for you, but also for your family, right? And that's what they're going through. Just let that sink in. $28,000 lost because the company knows it's going to lay you and many others off in the next couple of days.

Maureen Clough (35:26.869)

ridiculous.

Joel Cheesman (35:34.562)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (35:48.148)

disgusting.

Chad (35:48.987)

That's the first segment. I'll let you guys marinate and talk that through before we get to the next segment.

Maureen Clough (35:54.295)

doing something to my body, doing something to my body hearing about this. So I'm bracing myself.

Joel Cheesman (36:01.646)

You know, this sounded very non-French, because Europe is very

Maureen Clough (36:06.291)

Hahaha!

Chad (36:08.315)

Well, this is, mean, this, is mainly this part right here is mainly on the US side. The French stuff in some cases is even fucking worse. Yes.

Maureen Clough (36:15.649)

That tracks. my god.

Joel Cheesman (36:16.78)

Right. So they basically engineered an ownership, set up where 49 % means you're off the hook for all of this shit, from public funding to treating employees like this, they've engineered it to where they can lay it on Apollo, us company. It's not our fault. and I'd say a lot of people aren't falling for the banana and the tailpipe. I would, does

Maureen Clough (36:41.069)

Thanks.

Joel Cheesman (36:43.81)

how the French government doesn't get involved in this in some way, would be kind of surprising to me. but this is so hard because our, our industry is about people. Our whole thing is treat people well retention. like that's what we preached all, all of our businesses, all of our customers. Like we, we repeat that in our sleep and then we do shit like this.

Maureen Clough (37:02.635)

huh.

Joel Cheesman (37:11.714)

and it makes us look like assholes. It's awful for everybody. I know it's sort of like, well, it sucks to be them, but this bleeds into everything. We're supposed to be the people business. We're supposed to be the take care of ourselves and everybody amongst us. And we fall flat every week and it just pisses me off.

Maureen Clough (37:19.659)

Yep.

Maureen Clough (37:23.799)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (37:28.295)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it. Okay, let's go ahead and dive into the next one, because that wasn't bad enough. Meanwhile, how did Ronstadt treat monsters abroad? So here's a comment from Xavier Hamlin on Ronstadt's new numbers announcement. He actually made this comment on LinkedIn. There's something deeply indecent, Mr. Sander Van Schnoodle.

Maureen Clough (37:28.951)

beautifully put. Yeah, I share your ire.

Chad (37:56.829)

I don't know how to say his last name and I don't give a fuck. He's the CEO of Ronstadt about posting this kind of publication talking about the amount of money that they're making while hundreds of employees across Europe are being brutally laid off without recognition, without real support and not even a word. Yes, your numbers are solid. Yes, your EBITDA meets expectations, but at what cost? At the cost of brutal disengagement of a rushed liquidation of teams.

Maureen Clough (38:06.113)

grotesque.

Chad (38:26.525)

who have been committed for 10, 15, sometimes 20 years. Monster Monster France was a compass in the HR ecosystem at one time. A company that stood for much more than figures. You believed it, you brought us in, then sold us. And now it's a dry shutdown without regard. It's great to have the best team in the industry, but such a team deserves to be treated that way in the end. And we also have a...

Video from the take Matteo Niccolo, who is the director or was a director of international EU sales at Monster. This is what Matteo had to say.

Joel Cheesman (41:02.254)

Was he at the Louvre? That looked like a nice location. To be mad.

Chad (41:02.813)

Thanks, Matteo. What is?

Maureen Clough (41:07.499)

Nice setup.

Chad (41:08.605)

What is legal is not always right.

Maureen Clough (41:12.557)

I loved that. That was a good mic drop.

Chad (41:15.089)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and also talking about how, you know, French taxpayers are going to be holding the bag. This is corporate welfare that we see in the US all the time. It's one of those bailout situations when you knew when you knew that you were going to run out of money. the next piece and the last piece, kids, in my dissection of all this fucking shit that's happening is what about the vendor community? Right.

Maureen Clough (41:21.613)

It's insane.

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (41:42.254)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (41:44.881)

companies that provide resources and services that probably won't get paid millions of dollars back. Monster and CareerBuilder ran up bills they knew they couldn't pay. And here's a quick timeline of one vendor that I talked to this morning. On May 22nd, email out to the vendor actually emailed to Monster looking for more insights, specifically whether it was having issues paying its invoices.

Maureen Clough (41:45.773)

Good point.

Chad (42:12.743)

due to merging overhead or deeper financial concerns. Monster came back, confirmed that everything was fine, they'll provide more clarity. They came back with more clarity saying that they'll get the oldest invoices and this is in May, December invoices, February invoices, right? So they're in the rears, not in a good way. And May 23rd, Monster provided an update.

to the oldest invoices and said that the other invoices would be paid in June. So this is late May and nearly a month later there in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, right? They wrote checks their asses couldn't pay. Now you'll notice during this entire block, Matteo mentioned it, but I haven't mentioned Apollo because Apollo is a PE firm that sucks companies dry from every industry, but Ronstadt,

Joel Cheesman (42:51.97)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (42:56.237)

Nice.

Maureen Clough (43:08.065)

what PE does best.

Chad (43:09.469)

Yeah, Ronstadt, they're a leader in our industry and they chose to fuck over taxpayers, vendors, employees all over the globe to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And until we see a CEO like Mr. Sander van der Schnoodle or Jeff Furman in an orange jumpsuit, the hardworking people of this world will continue to get proper fuck.

Hopefully monster and crew builder employees will continue sharing information and stories out there and get louder. That this all dies in the dark. So we got to make fucking noise.

Maureen Clough (43:46.285)

Yeah, it's really true. a mess. Such a mess.

Joel Cheesman (43:54.808)

Look, Ransard has an army of lawyers. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they would probably be cleared if it does, if there's a lawsuit, they'll probably drown in paper. If you want change, if you're a Ronstadt customer, if you're a vendor, employee of. Shareholder, you know, money talks, you know, go somewhere else, take your business elsewhere, sell your stock and buy something else. Like that's really the only, ammunition I think we have to make change. Yeah.

Chad (44:02.642)

yeah.

Maureen Clough (44:04.025)

Yep.

Maureen Clough (44:17.452)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (44:22.273)

the only way.

Joel Cheesman (44:24.226)

Be a pain in the ass if you're a RyanStack customer and ask why in the hell did this happen? Why did this happen?

Maureen Clough (44:26.485)

entirely accurate.

Chad (44:29.403)

I think the French, I think, we might see and hoping that we might see the French government do something because if any government's gonna do something, it will be the French government.

Maureen Clough (44:40.269)

Touché. We'll see. It's true.

Joel Cheesman (44:40.354)

Yeah, you should. I'm sure Ronstadt carries a lot of weight in that in France and has a lot of money and friends in government. So, but they have French, they have French that are working for them. I'm sure guys, we're going to take a quick break, take a quick break and come back. If you haven't subscribed to our show audio video version on YouTube, leave us a review, subscribe, share our shit. It's good stuff. We'll be right back.

Chad (44:41.191)

Yeah.

Chad (44:46.813)

They're not French. They're not French.

They're Dutch.

Maureen Clough (44:57.034)

That's rather Dutch.

Chad (45:02.095)

All of it.

Joel Cheesman (45:11.438)

Stop me if you've heard this one before guys, perplexity CEO, our event, Strava, service, predicts AI agents in their comet browser, which I don't know who uses that, will automate recruiter and executive assistant jobs, handling tasks like candidate sourcing, email outreach and scheduling with just, just one prompt.

Chad (45:13.533)

You

Maureen Clough (45:26.005)

What is that?

Joel Cheesman (45:37.026)

He expects full automation within six to 12 months, turning browsers into OS like systems. While he sees this freeing time for leisure, it risks displacing many white collar workers. The end of recruitment, Chad. Again, your thoughts.

Chad (45:56.007)

Yeah, mean, Comet is being tested right now. It is supposed to be something that's going to take Google or Google Chrome out. It's built on Chromium. So I don't know, maybe they could just be shut down, even though it's, yeah. But let's talk about the process first, because I think it's one of those things where we've got to focus on orchestrating workflows and tasks, because that's

Joel Cheesman (46:09.548)

Apple acquisition coming. Apple acquisition.

Chad (46:24.145)

what a recruiter does, right? That's what anybody does. They have their own set of tasks that they have to complete to be able to actually get your job done. the first one, the rec opens. Hiring manager uses market research tools to set requirements. How do you do that? Some companies are actually doing this now. They take a look at the actual requirements that they're putting on their job and they're setting that against the actual internal database system that they have to see

what it looks like and if it's way too many candidates, if they can actually put more requirements in or actually adjust, right? And then they can also do that against external candidate databases. So you can see what the ecosystem looks like instead of posting a job, waiting 45 days and asking the recruiter why the fuck this isn't done yet, right? So you can get a better gauge of that. Hiring managers can right out of the gate. Job is posted then internally.

Candidates are invited from the ATS and the CRM to those databases to actually apply, right? You don't need a recruiter to do that. The threshold is either met. If it is met, then it goes to the next stage, meaning I know that I need 10 candidates to fill this one position or 30 candidates to fill this one position. If that threshold is made, you're good. If not, then you go external and you start posting or doing programmatic external.

until you actually meet that threshold. Testing and simulations are knockout rounds. And then it's interview on demand. The whole interview scheduling, this is my prediction, in the next year, interview scheduling is gonna go away. 18 months, it's gonna go away. As soon as you are ready, you've passed the screening, you're gonna get an instant interview. Whether it's audio, whether it's audio video, it's gonna happen.

So everything works within the system and nobody gets swallowed into the black hole. It's gonna be a better candidate experience and yet you're gonna have humans, not as many, on the outside that are there to give white glove service to anybody who needs it. So I get what he's talking about. I don't know if it's gonna happen in the comet browser, but I can definitely see it with the agents and orchestration that's

Joel Cheesman (48:33.742)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (48:43.757)

My favorite.

Joel Cheesman (48:47.21)

So the whole tech CEO beating their chest around no more people. At some point, it's going to have to happen. Otherwise, it's just beating our chest for the sake of beating our chest and hopefully getting headlines. Now to Chad's point, there are fewer recruiters. Fact. I talked to Jamie at RecFest. I was like, hey, man, everyone's talking about the end of recruiting and recession and bad.

Like what's going on? What are you seeing on your end? And his comment was pretty prescient. said, the company wise, have the same companies and more attending, but they're, they're all bringing fewer people. So in the past where they might've brought 25, 20, they're bringing a dozen. So like there are still recruiters, but it's inevitable that there are fewer now. does it end it in like, does it, is it, does there really an end to this? I don't know.

Chad (49:26.717)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (49:46.295)

There was a really interesting interview, Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce was on Bloomberg, had some really interesting things to say about automation. Check this out.

Chad (50:33.311)

You know.

Chad (50:51.805)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (50:52.141)

Excellent question, Emily.

Joel Cheesman (50:54.348)

I hope so.

Maureen Clough (50:59.361)

Gosh, do you guys buy that?

Joel Cheesman (51:00.302)

So I said before that, that, mean, I'm torn on whether this is the end or not, but I am convinced that tech believes it is and tech will drag us kicking and screaming to at least try this non-human thing. that's those 30 or 50 % of the work at Salesforce now is automated. that, that matters. And that's fewer people. That's fewer people.

Chad (51:00.668)

Yeah.

Chad (51:10.283)

yeah.

Maureen Clough (51:21.517)

I don't know that I buy it. I don't know that I buy it. I think that that guy is trying to look like the man and he's trying, you know, this whole industry is pushing AI so freaking hard and that's their agenda, right? They all want to make more money. They all want to look like the darling. So I'm not sure I buy it. I think that a lot of it's just hype. And so I don't a hundred percent agree that that's what's actually happening. It's what he wants to happen, right? Like they're all saying things like it'll replace even me to see it. Come on.

Chad (51:32.701)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (51:48.493)

Seriously, we've already seen this happen where people continually say they're letting people go for AI because of AI doing work and being more productive. And then they claw them back. I think it was Klarna who let people go and then brought them back. And so I just, don't know. I think you have to think about the motives of these companies and the people who are saying these things and where they've invested their dollars and the shares they own and all of that. It's like, I'm not sure that I buy it.

Joel Cheesman (52:00.536)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (52:14.013)

So, mean, give one instance with GM when we talked to Eileen when she was over at GM. They had over 100 people doing one job, one task, and that was interview scheduling. And it was, I think it was 100, I think it was around 100. Yeah, it was a lot. Let's just say it was a lot. Paradox took it over. And next thing you know,

Maureen Clough (52:17.933)

You

Joel Cheesman (52:28.238)

200 people?

I was, oh, I thought it was more than that. Anyway.

Chad (52:42.641)

they were able to redistribute those people to different jobs, right? But the thing is, it's all about task orientation and orchestration. If you can actually have that agent or whatever you want to call it do the really pain in the ass work of scheduling and then hand off to whatever next agent is or even the human, then yeah, there's no reason, but we're seeing it happen already.

Maureen Clough (52:47.671)

There you go.

Maureen Clough (53:03.116)

Right.

Chad (53:11.857)

The question is, how far can it go? And I believe if you break it down into tasks for these agents and you can orchestrate them correctly, then it's just gonna hand one off to another agent, to a human, to an agent, and away you go. So I believe what he's saying, I don't know about 30 % right now. I mean, that's pretty awesome.

Joel Cheesman (53:30.69)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (53:31.405)

I'm not buying it. Yeah. I mean, that would be incredible. But I think that we also are failing to recognize like, so recruitment might shift. Like you said, like it's going to push people into new jobs. going to automate the painful shit that no one wants to do anyway and give them new jobs. And I don't see how that's necessarily different from past, you know, digital revolutions or, you know, people digitalizing their organizations. Like a lot of people freaked out about automation and

Joel Cheesman (53:34.689)

What?

Chad (53:41.72)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (53:52.35)

yeah.

Maureen Clough (53:57.259)

they still have jobs, they just have different jobs. So, I mean, I think there might be like a very painful contraction period where we're all kind of sorting this out and figuring out where people should go and what they should do and what the machines can actually reliably do and how many humans you do need in the loop and all that good stuff. But like, it's not, I just don't buy this happening right now. And I just hope that we can, I hope that I might be Pollyanna here, but I'm like, I really hope that we can eventually see all these changes funnel into new jobs we haven't even conceived of yet, right? So hopefully that's where it will go.

Chad (54:26.077)

We need taxes and UBI. We need AI taxes and UBI. Fast. Very fast.

Maureen Clough (54:28.577)

Yeah, I would like that. Yeah, and ethics, regulation, ethics, all the things, bring them.

Chad (54:34.706)

Yes.

Joel Cheesman (54:34.85)

Mo is not falling for the banana in the tailpipe. And speaking of bananas, guys, are you ready for this week's dad joke?

Chad (54:39.101)

It's not.

Maureen Clough (54:39.403)

I just don't buy it.

Chad (54:42.013)

Jesus.

Joel Cheesman (54:46.092)

What's the difference between a refrigerator and a butthole? What's the difference between a refrigerator and a butthole?

Maureen Clough (54:51.3)

boy.

Chad (54:55.515)

you only get into one of them.

Joel Cheesman (54:59.21)

A fridge doesn't fart when you pull the meat out.

Maureen Clough (55:03.144)

dear god.

Joel Cheesman (55:06.99)

Go back to moving, Mo. We out.

Maureen Clough (55:08.493)

Bye. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Chad (55:09.127)

That is creepy uncle joke. That's not dad jokes.

Chad (55:19.495)

We out.