Will SAP and Workday Go Amazon?

AI isn’t a buzzword anymore — it’s a knife fight with Amazon in the middle of it all with a Tommy Gun.

In this episode, Chad, JT & Emi break down how Workday + Paradox and/or SAP + SmartRecruiters could go FULL Amazon by collapsing hiring friction the same way Amazon's Rufus collapses e-commerce browsing into instant buying.

Plus, Handshake is taking their $434m in funding, or what's left of it, and suddenly pivoting like Mercor into AI trainer temp labor at $100/hr while LinkedIn & Indeed battle for chatbot superiority inside a recruiting arms race.

This is where candidate journey, recruiter workflow, platform power, and the business model of recruiting itself goes from “tools” to AI commerce — real money, real scale, real danger.

Buckle in. This is the future of hiring becoming the future of automated conversion.

PODCAST TRANSCRITION

Chad Sowash (00:35.916)

Welcome back to the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your host Chad. Don't mess with his o-ron. So wash

Emi B (00:43.258)

And I'm Emi. For God's sake, please don't take my job, Beredigo.

Chad Sowash (00:52.982)

No, we're not doing that this episode, JT, not this one. Anyway, on this week's show, we're asking the questions. Questions like, could Paradox and Smart Recruiters convince their new sugar mama to go full Amazon? Indeed, or LinkedIn? Who's gonna win the JobSeeker Bot Wars? And why is Handshake copying Mercor? Hold on kids, it's gonna be one hell of a bumpy ride.

JT ODonnell (00:56.471)

Please.

Chad Sowash (01:21.398)

All right, don't mess with Azoron. For all those out there who aren't American or you've been holed up in a bunker for a while, on Tuesday, Tuesday night, the Dems got big election wins. Everybody on the show knows this, right? Okay, good.

Emi B (01:38.81)

Yep, 100%. I've been following. Good.

JT ODonnell (01:43.285)

New York in particular. That was a big one,

Chad Sowash (01:45.974)

Yeah. So Mondami, Zoran Mondami wins big with over 50 % as New Yorkers vote him in as the next mayor of New York City. They had the biggest turnout. I think it was like in over 50 years. California Prop 50, the proposition that negates Texas gerrymandering bullshit passed almost immediately with nearly 64 % of the votes. Abigail Spanberger.

who, she won over 57% of votes for Virginia's governor race and Mikey Sherrill wins New Jersey's governor race with over 56% of the vote. So JT, what does this mean to you and Emi, does this mean anything to you?

JT ODonnell (02:33.485)

Yeah, I think the turnout says a lot. I was saying before the show, I saw a stat recently that said depression is going to be the number one illness that we're going to be dealing with within four years. That doesn't surprise me based on everything that I'm seeing. And I think this was people's opportunity to voice and just feel like they had some kind of control over what was happening. So it'll be interesting to see the results of it, right? Like these individuals putting it into action, but definitely the people have spoken.

Chad Sowash (02:37.934)

Mmm.

Emi B (03:04.292)

They did, they're 100 % spoken. You asked me the question, does it mean anything to me? It does because my cousin is from New York and I was there recently, we're having a conversation about this issue. And that's when I first heard the name Zahra Mandani. I was like, I don't know who that is. Let me Google him. And I was like, this guy's young. Is he ready for this job? Is he ready to take on the likes of Trump? And so I started following him on TikTok and YouTube and I just thought he was great. So I think I'm...

Chad Sowash (03:11.534)

Uh-huh. OK.

Chad Sowash (03:23.593)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Emi B (03:33.758)

what does it mean to me? It means positivity, it means the beginning of change, it means the start of the Democrats pushing back. And so much so that he was actually my shout out for this particular week. Really because of his acceptance speech. Did you hear the acceptance speech when he said to Trump, turn the barley mark? Yeah. I like, I haven't heard someone speak like this since Obama days. He was like, yeah. He was like, I loved him. He was a scholar.

Chad Sowash (03:53.912)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Emi B (04:02.811)

Yeah, absolutely loved it. It does mean a lot to me.

Chad Sowash (04:06.286)

That is pretty amazing. I mean, what it says to me is that the Democrats are finally fucking paying attention for decades, for decades. They've been talking to the American people like they are fucking Rhodes Scholars. And some of them are, okay, some of them are, but their constituents are not, right? So they're talking to them about big things strategically using, you know,

JT ODonnell (04:30.935)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (04:35.886)

quarter sized words and all this bullshit. They're not talking down at the people's level about what they really give a shit about, right? And this time, all of these, all of these candidates, they won so big because they started talking like human fucking beings. And Jesus, thank you so much. The question is, what are the Republicans going to do?

moving forward because this has always been their game plan. They've always literally just focused on one thing. and they literally beat it to death. but they do it in a very, very plain old fashioned way. Right. What are they going to do now? How are they going to, because especially when they're matched.

JT ODonnell (05:17.216)

It won't. Let's study.

Yeah. No, it's funny you say that because the studies really show that people that use monosyllabic words are more trusted, you know, and the fact that people just don't recognize that and lean into it, you're absolutely right.

Chad Sowash (05:33.314)

monosyllabic. That's five syllables, JT. think that was about as irony.

Emi B (05:35.283)

Hahaha!

JT ODonnell (05:38.349)

I I was gonna... What else do wanna call it? One syllable words, okay.

Emi B (05:44.756)

words.

Chad Sowash (05:47.148)

Yes. So they're, they're definitely we're seeing change. We don't know if this is going to spill over. We hope it spills over. because again, you know, the, the cool thing was, you know, Mondami really focused on one thing. You might not like all the different ideas that he has, like, you know, you know, grocery stores, the grocery stores and whatnot. Okay, fine. But his focus was three things, affordability, affordability, affordability. He just nailed that.

Right. And then you also saw Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill and pretty much everybody was, lining up right behind that. So, that, that's, that's to me, that's really fucking cool. any, anything else or JT what's that?

Emi B (06:30.266)

It's talking about what people care about. He's talking about what people actually care about. Yeah, it's like that people are struggling. Even me going on holiday last couple of weeks ago, I was like, how expensive is this country now? It was not this expensive the last time I came to the States. And I'm thinking, how are people surviving? And these are the conversations I'm having with my cousin who lives in Manhattan. How do you live here? She's on a good salary. I'm like, and she's struggling.

Chad Sowash (06:36.822)

Yeah, which is what politicians should do.

Chad Sowash (06:43.96)

jobs.

Chad Sowash (06:50.254)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (06:59.588)

So I don't know how other people are. no, he was right. Affordability, that is what people care about.

Chad Sowash (07:05.036)

Yeah, well, JT, you're talking about job numbers. How many jobs have we lost?

JT ODonnell (07:08.257)

So we've lost over a million jobs this year. It's now surpassing the losses of 2020 during the pandemic. And the problem is, and we've been saying all along, the numbers were never properly presented. So this problem has been going on for a while, but the fake numbers for a really long time hid the reality. Now you add the inflation, the cost of things, and the sheer volume of people that have been unemployed for an exceptionally long period of time, and talk about it really hurting, right? Like really, really hurting. And so...

Chad Sowash (07:19.81)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (07:37.089)

You know, I don't think I've ever seen it this stressful social media is such a great pulse for that. The way people talk and what they react to and it's, bad. And unfortunately we're in layoff season, right? Like we're not done. We've got two more months here and they're coming.

Chad Sowash (07:45.336)

sentiments.

Chad Sowash (07:50.584)

Breathe, breathe and.

It's, it's, it, it, Emi's already given her. She's, she's, she's just blown right past it. That's fine. So go ahead, JT. What, what's, what's up?

Emi B (07:57.828)

have.

JT ODonnell (08:01.602)

Yeah, so I'm going to give a shout out to my two new buddies, Mike Pettito and Brandon Jeffs. I was at LinkedIn Talent Connect a couple of weeks ago. They were there and everybody knows I hate going to events like that alone. Both of them found me and we connected and just had a lot of good laughs and it just felt good to meet other people in the industry that are doing that kind of influencer content thing. So I told the guys I'd be shouting on them out today and I'm really excited to talk about it. will tell you.

Chad Sowash (08:04.771)

Nice!

Okay.

JT ODonnell (08:26.943)

That conference was insane. I left with my brain just fried with information and I know we're going to get into a lot of it today, but man, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on.

Chad Sowash (08:35.8)

It really is. There is a ton happening. I think the hardest part for us in many cases, because everybody's saying AI and everything, it's kind of like, it's like all melding together and you don't know what is fucking what, right? So that's the hard part. And yeah, we'll definitely get into that. My shout out is to Indeed. Yeah, that's right. Recruits Indeed's parent company, their quarter,

Their quarterly results came out this morning and just a teaser. next week we're going to dig into a new term. Indeed, as recruiters come up with average revenue per job posting and indeed's bid to continue squeezing the life out of customers with growth through sync or I'm sorry, double digit price increases. So, so stay tuned. and we've got to, we've got a special thing for free stuff today. Neither one of you have to actually.

deal with free stuff because we have a special, special.

JT ODonnell (09:37.271)

Good.

Chad Sowash (10:18.422)

if you're creepy.

Chad Sowash (10:59.854)

And if you're not watching on YouTube, just missed, first and foremost, Stephen was shirtless. Second, all the different costume changes. That was pretty amazing. So yes, that's the big surprise, guys. I know it probably wasn't that big of a surprise, although it was a load off of your free stuff shoulders.

Emi B (11:16.474)

Thank

JT ODonnell (11:17.111)

which is great, and he got the URL right, like the fact that he got it right. I've never done it.

Chad Sowash (11:22.421)

I don't know that he did that on his first try. So you never know. You never know. Okay, so we've got events coming out sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Whenever we travel, we always take a little Shaker with us. And if you're looking for experts in the recruitment, marketing, advertising, or even need tech experts to help you answer your questions on the regular, just visit shaker.com. Love those guys. Okay, so

JT ODonnell (11:27.981)

Well done.

Emi B (11:28.57)

You

Chad Sowash (11:50.838)

You've probably heard that the Chad and Cheese Roadshow is happening at three different locations. They're all RL100 events, San Francisco, San Diego, and Dallas. The RL100, for those who don't know, are small group sessions with high level practitioners who are looking for answers and sharing best practices, all behind closed doors. So if you're director or VP of talent acquisition or chief people officer, you've got to be in the room where it happens. And yes, go fucking figure. We're going to talk about AI.

that's in San Francisco on November 13th, San Diego, November 18th, Dallas on November 20th. Just go to Chadcheese.com and click register right there in the hero image. Check out the speakers, the topics, all that other fun stuff. We're pretty stoked. Pretty stoked.

JT ODonnell (12:40.429)

Nice.

Chad Sowash (12:42.286)

And god, Joel loves doing this portion. I hate doing this portion, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Yes, that's right. Let's get a quick fantasy football rundown brought to you by our friends over at Factory Fix. I do love Factory Fix. Number one this week, Mackenzie Maitland. She is holding onto that. Courtney Nappo. Those two are just killing it. Joel Cheeseman. He's holding bronze right now. Jada Weiler. Steven McGrath. He's a little bit better than half the pack. David Stifle. Megan Ratigan. William

Paragon at number eight, Chad Sowash sucking badly at number nine. Number 10, Ginger Dodds, Jason Putnam almost at the rear and Jeremy Roberts still at number 12 at the rear. That's this week's fantasy leaderboard and...

JT ODonnell (13:40.225)

Way to go ladies though, can we talk about one, two and four out of top five? Let's go, girlies.

Chad Sowash (13:43.748)

they're killing it. They are killing it. No, they are killing it. Megan is at seven. think Ginger, Ginger, Ginger's right on my tail. they're I mean, they're kicking ass and taking names. But guess what time it is?

JT ODonnell (13:50.487)

You're up there. Let's go.

Chad Sowash (14:03.523)

thank God. I love me some topics. Okay.

Who's going full Amazon? That's the question. Could Paradox and Workday or Smart Recruiters plus SAP go full Amazon? What the hell am I talking about? So Amazon doesn't want you browsing anymore. That's right. They want you chatting. Their new AI shopping assistant, Rufus, Rufus really, is already pushing customers into faster decisions. And Amazon claims it could drive 10,

buh buh buh billion in incremental annual sales. This is AI commerce in real revenue terms, not hype, not future someday. We're talking about right now, kids. Amazon is automating discovery, collapsing the buyer journey and turning conversation into conversion at massive scale. The big question is can Workday leverage paradox or maybe...

SAP leveraged smart recruiter to do the same thing on the hiring side of the house. Heightened quality and candidate conversion with better engagement through chat. JT, what do you think? Can we pull it off here? We've got the tools, but the question is, do you think Workday and SAP have the resources and also vision to pull something off like Amazon?

JT ODonnell (15:25.165)

Okay, well, I can't speak to whether or not I feel worked, whether they specifically can pull it off, but the overall concept of Kevin this being done is a big fat yes. mean, it's amazing what we're already doing conversationally. And it's so obvious too, right? What do we do in traditional old school recruiting? We screen a bunch of resumes and then what we do, we get on a call and screen and have a conversation with someone to decide if they should move on to a hiring manager. You're talking about creating that and being able to do it in with

Chad Sowash (15:33.774)

yeah.

Chad Sowash (15:50.392)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (15:55.084)

thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people, and then taking that and sorting it. Whereas a human recruiter just could have never done that. So yeah, it has to happen. It's already happening. You know, I, you know, talked about LinkedIn hiring assistant, I was given access to it full disclosure, four months in advance, to really play with it. And the fact that you have your own assistant that has a conversation is insane. And at any point in time, the person could be like, no, can you put me with human JT instead of assistant JT, but

Chad Sowash (16:13.454)

That's a flex.

JT ODonnell (16:22.399)

It's brilliant. just, it clears out so much. mean, it's giving back hours and hours of time, you know? If that one tool is like that, our whole industry should be leaning into this. Give us options, right?

Chad Sowash (16:28.59)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (16:36.173)

What do you think, Emi?

Emi B (16:37.818)

I like the idea of it. you know, because I heard about Rufus a little while ago, haven't used Rufus myself, wanted to know a little bit more about it. And on YouTube, they're going, yeah, the concept is great, but it's not fantastic. It's not finalized yet. But I agree when it is finalized, because I think it's still in beta stage, it will be great. And it should be something that the REC tech industry should be leaning into as well. Because like you both said, people want to have conversations.

Chad Sowash (16:43.085)

No.

Chad Sowash (16:52.322)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (17:05.518)

but they want to have a conversation within one same ecosystem. So let's say, for example, I'm a candidate, brilliant, I've applied for a job. I know nothing about the culture. I know nothing about the career prospects. I know nothing about the growth path for a particular job because it's not on the job description. If I can find that out on one platform rather than leaving to go to Glassdoor or Reddit, for example, that's going to make my whole

Chad Sowash (17:10.392)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (17:31.662)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (17:33.754)

job hunting experience, just a little bit more frictionless. And I'm going to go to multiple platforms just to find the same, you know, find the same answers. And yes, in an ideal world, it'll be better to speak to a human, but in the absence of a human in the first instance, or if we're short for time, I can just type in my question and you give me the answer anyway. And like JT said, when I want to speak to a human, if I feel the need to speak to a human, I can say, hey, switch me over. You haven't quite answered this question. So I think it's brilliant.

Chad Sowash (18:00.942)

So I'd like to first address the elephant in the room. Rufus. That's the name. Is this a bot from West Virginia? Was Rufus illegally selling moonshine from a still in Webster County holler? I Rufus?

JT ODonnell (18:10.349)

you

Emi B (18:18.202)

Chad, are you being snobby? There's nothing wrong with the name Rufus. Some people love that name. Yes!

Chad Sowash (18:21.782)

Rufus? I think it's a much more European name or at least English name than it is an American name. But anyway, all good, all good. Yeah, there are a lot of Rufus, yeah, Rufus puppies, yes. Before we get into Paradox Smart Recruiters, I'd like to say that I was totally fucking gobsmacked by Compass Group, who was on stage with us at RecFest.

JT ODonnell (18:22.733)

All the Rufus fans are gonna come at you now.

JT ODonnell (18:33.27)

A of dogs get named Rufus in the US.

Chad Sowash (18:48.526)

Shay and the team over at Compass Group saved $1.5 million in six months just by focusing on candidate conversion on their career site and taking it from 1 % to 12%. And this was using Paradox and Dahlia. If you missed that episode, it's called How Compass Group Reduced Job Board Spend, give it a listen. So Paradox are smart recruiters right out of the gate. I think...

JT ODonnell (18:54.573)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (19:17.718)

A shortcut, an easy button just to get to conversion faster. Go buy Dalia. That's a good start, right? And then a quick LinkedIn comment, because I actually asked the CEO, friends of the show, CEO Adam Godson and also Rebecca Carr, their thoughts on this. And Adam, he's the CEO of Paradox. The idea here is that conversational AI is UI that gives better results and that customer slash candidates like. I think the results are in and just like it has driven more results in shopping, it has also with candidates. We definitely look forward to continuing to scale at Paradox. But then we asked Rebecca, what do you have to say? So Rebecca is the CEO of Smart Recruiters. Her quote, Amazon's Rufus shows what happens when intelligence becomes invisible. This is, I love this. The biggest,

Business shift here, not in retail, it is in behavior. Once AI starts handling context and intent, humans stop navigating systems and they start just simply making decisions, right? In talent and hiring, that means moving from searching and filtering to simply asking and acting. That is the real impact in a no ego UI. Work that feels faster, smarter, and more human, end quote.

Emi B (20:31.054)

Bye.

Chad Sowash (20:47.054)

I agree 100 % and I also, if you take a look at what's going on, Google has infused Chrome with Gemini, their browser, right? What's OpenAI doing? What's perplexity? They're all building browsers, right? But these are browsers that are fed and fused with this AI. So much like Amazon is doing, we're seeing all companies do these in their respective areas. To me,

Emi B (21:14.522)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (21:16.214)

and I've been saying this for years now and it drives me crazy. Everybody's like, well, how's the recruiter gonna use it? They're not, it's gonna be happening behind the scenes. A recruiter shouldn't have to touch all these points. That's why it takes so goddamn long. That's why we can't scale, right? So much like Rebecca said and Adam said, we've already proven this works. I'm just excited to see him get there. How about you guys?

JT ODonnell (21:42.86)

Yeah, I agree. I think recruiters are going to figure out fast that they're going to do the parts of their job that love the most. They're going to have more time to do that. Right. Build those relationships. Find those honestly purple squirrels. Right. Like it's just you have to be leveraging that technology to be able to spend your hours doing the quality work that's going to fuel your brain and your creativity. So you think about the possibilities once you get over that. And it's amazing to me how many recruiters are still hanging on like

Chad Sowash (21:48.824)

Yeah. Agreed. Yep.

Chad Sowash (22:02.424)

Yeah.

JT ODonnell (22:11.273)

You know, I have my spreadsheet of Boolean searches that took me two decades to build. And if somebody comes in right now and I, you know, I'm sorry that I know that was like an, a massive asset for you, but overnight that became, you know, irrelevant. so people have just got to recognize it and lean in and find their way.

Emi B (22:28.888)

Yeah, and I think the new recruiters coming in, they're the ones who recognise it because they don't know any different. For them, it's just easy to adopt. Old school recruiters, well, if you don't adopt, you don't have a job very soon.

Chad Sowash (22:40.92)

Well, in this case, there's no adoption because it's happening behind the scenes. And I think everybody who is saying, you know, AI isn't going to take your job. A human using AI is going to take your job. That's step one. Step two is guess what? The bots are going to take your job. You're training. You're training the AI to do your job. Right. So all those people that are literally you literally you have to take a look at what they're invested in.

Emi B (22:43.652)

Well, exactly.

Emi B (22:56.346)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (23:06.638)

because I almost fucking guarantee you they have a lot of investment in Nvidia and a lot of the other AI companies that are out there. So they don't want you to think that your job's gonna be taken. We have to take a look at transformation, what this is actually going to do, how quick we can get through that kind of like that transition portal. That's the biggest key. As JT had said, we have already lost a million jobs this year, right? We cannot afford

to lose more jobs due to AI. So how do we actually get through that transition period in a very quick fashion instead of years, which it usually takes, how do we do it in weeks and or months? That's the big key. But for me, what Rebecca said, this is something that's happening behind the scenes. You don't even have to touch it. It's not just for the candidate and their journey. It's for the recruiter and their journey. They don't even have to know what's happening there.

Adam said, it's already working kids. It's been working for years. So yes, this is going to happen. JT.

JT ODonnell (24:07.465)

I just want to mention a stat that I heard. Lee Hecht Harrison had it in a presentation at the conference. 61 % of employees in the US, I think it was 69 in Europe, by the way, I even higher, said that they are just waiting for their employers to tell them what skills they should learn next. They're like, yeah, you want me to learn AI? want just, just tell me what to do. They're just sitting there. That apathy, that mindset.

Chad Sowash (24:30.958)

Yeah.

JT ODonnell (24:32.269)

that my employer who pays me is supposed to figure that out. That is one of the biggest problems we have. And if you don't believe me, there is a book everyone should read. It's called Punished by Rewards. The problems with, listen to this, the problems with praise, incentive plans, A's and other bribes. And this guy, Alfie Cohn, in 1993 predicted that this extrinsic model motivator that we're building in our society was going to ruin us. He's not wrong. People are just sitting around. They can't think for themselves. They don't see it. They're not trying.

Chad Sowash (24:45.006)

Yeah. Uh huh.

JT ODonnell (25:00.237)

they just want to be told what to do. So, I this is going be really interesting time as we see people fumble to be curious, right, to be proactive. So, as a warning bell for everybody out there.

Chad Sowash (25:10.84)

Yeah, I think from a societal standpoint, we used to, companies used to care about developing their employees. Not many do now. Not many do, right? So those individuals that are sitting back and waiting, yeah, that's a problem because there's no real financial incentive. Like there used to be to develop your employees, to retain your employees, right? There used to be incentives, tax incentives for that. Those went away, right?

JT ODonnell (25:20.237)

Mm-mm.

Chad Sowash (25:40.524)

So now the company focuses on one thing, right? Shareholder value. Shareholder value. That has nothing to do with you as the employee, right? Other than, you know, taking the bad end of the whip. That's pretty much it. So I agree. I mean, it's the apathy piece. And unless we actually start to get politicians in place that start to focus on getting us nudged back over to...

having a shared responsibility between the company and the employee, because it's not right now, right? It's not a shared responsibility. Your career, your path, your life at this organization. Right now, it's like we're all fucking disposable, which I think we should go back to ASMR, I'm sorry.

Emi B (26:32.154)

Thank you.

Chad Sowash (26:32.79)

All right, kids, we've got LinkedIn versus Indeed on this next segment. So listen, and if you haven't, if you haven't liked and subscribed, go ahead and do that, do that now. As a matter of fact, why don't you share, like and subscribe, because our favorite Sunday morning character always used to say, sharing is caring.

Chad Sowash (27:01.068)

All right, LinkedIn versus Indeed. AI isn't just about a buzzword anymore. It's about an arms race. From Indeed FutureWorks to HR Tech, LinkedIn Talent Summit, RecFest, and Unleash Paris, every major stage hammered the same message. AI is now the primary driver of the recruiting transformation that's happening. The platforms, the workflows,

the roles and the business models are shifting fast. The only question left, who weaponizes AI better, faster, and actually wins? So let's talk about the bigger platforms. LinkedIn just unveiled their hiring assistant, which JT's been playing with for a while now, and indeed has been pushing its talent scout for weeks now. So I guess the big question...

JT ODonnell (27:46.604)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (27:55.896)

Who's gonna win, JT? Your thoughts.

JT ODonnell (27:58.966)

Yeah. So right now, based on what I know, I would say LinkedIn is going to win. And the reason for that is that the hiring assistant is excellent. I've worked with it, but it's only as good as its data set. Right. So when you think about 1.1 billion profiles on LinkedIn, all of which have not been optimized for AI for hiring assistant, that then becomes their challenge. Now, the upside I believe is they have profiles. LinkedIn hasn't been

training people to be on their life. They've got people uploading resumes, whereas LinkedIn is really, you know, for better or for worse, called itself a social platform so that people have had this platform engagement. But here's where it gets the breakaway moment, in my opinion. Last week, they announced 360 Brew. And this is the biggest algorithm update they've had in a very long time. 360 Brew, you're drinking the brew. I'm not kidding. You're drinking the brew. And the reason...

Chad Sowash (28:34.702)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (28:45.71)

360 brew as in

Okay, gotcha, gotcha, the Kool-Aid in this case.

JT ODonnell (28:55.243)

And the reason for that is they are they have figured out how they want to reward behavior so that you will show up in the search results for recruiters. And so what they are trying to take down and I'm here for it are all those cringy posts like, well, I was walking through the woods today. Here are seven things I thought about when it comes to project management or well, I was baking my four year old's cake. I realized this about finance. Like, stop. This is not TikTok. This is not Facebook or Instagram. OK, so Tom, share your knowledge. This is your

Emi B (29:14.35)

You don't like those?

Chad Sowash (29:21.112)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (29:23.533)

career asset library and the algorithm is going to reward you when you talk about your industry and your skill sets and the three key areas that you are strongest at solving problems for. They've made it so clear in this blueprint. And if you just start doing this and if you do and you know a little hint to everybody, I teach everybody something called a document streak. If you know about streaks in social, it's where you don't skip a day. It is so easy to build a document streak on LinkedIn right now to game that algorithm that it's a sin if you don't do this. Like you're just going to.

rise to the top of search results. And I've been teaching people this and it literally they're like, you're not gonna believe this. You're not gonna believe what job I just got offered. It's not posted anywhere. I'm like, yeah, because nobody wants job boards anymore. It's like broken. doesn't work. So we're have to build a way where candidates, you know, document themselves on an ongoing basis, what they're learning, what they're doing so that we can find them. And to me, that is super exciting because I'm seeing it work already. So, you know, that's why I see them as the breakout.

curious to hear what you think about when it comes to Indeed and if they're doing the same things. But the fact that they dropped this algorithm that's going to literally get 1.1 billion people to do this is fantastic.

Chad Sowash (30:28.972)

Dig it, dig it, Emi.

Emi B (30:30.66)

Yeah, so I don't know, I don't, be honest, I don't know too much about the 360 algorithm. Is it 360 brute algorithm for 360 brute? Okay. But I'm listening to what you're saying and it does sound fantastic because there is a lot of crap that people are posting on their LinkedIn. And it's true LinkedIn, you know, it is turning into X, it is turning into Instagram and Facebook. And I'm fed up with people like writing rubbish. Like you said, you know, this is what I've learned about, you know, recruiting or

JT ODonnell (30:36.237)

360brew. Yep.

Emi B (30:59.936)

leading people from walking down the street or a fight that happened. It's like, no, that's rubbish.

Chad Sowash (31:06.616)

So beyond the rubbish, what about the chat bots? mean, they're both leaning heavy into the chat bots. Thoughts around that? Because I mean, that's really where I think they're looking for even more engagement.

Emi B (31:14.275)

Yes!

JT ODonnell (31:20.845)

I wonder, I would just say that I don't know a job seeker that is like, I don't want to talk to the chat bot. If it means if they can get an answer right now, like you were referring to earlier, I mean, if I can have a conversation with the bot and it's programmed to give me all the answers I want, yeah, I'll do it. No problem. Nobody has an issue with that, especially if they can say, okay, I'm not getting the answer I want. Can you send me to a human? You know, and I think that's built into that very nicely. People are sick of being ghosted.

Chad Sowash (31:47.022)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (31:48.92)

People are like, if you don't know how to play the rules of engagement, you break them. And we see that this year with people creating fake AI resumes and then using AI tools to spam ATS systems, like they literally crashed because they didn't know how to do it correctly. I think these companies are putting guardrails in place for both sides to bring them together. And that's exciting to me.

Emi B (31:57.967)

Hmm.

Emi B (32:07.63)

Yeah, what I would say just going back to the LinkedIn hiring assistant, I've had a play around with it. I do really like the tool as well. I think it's fantastic. So I think it's going to be a little bit of a game changer. So if we're talking about who's going to win between LinkedIn and Indeed from my point of view, I still back, I was still back LinkedIn in this situation.

Chad Sowash (32:27.202)

Hmm, so...

Chad Sowash (32:31.436)

Yes. Everybody knows I fucking hate LinkedIn or not LinkedIn. Indeed. I hate them both. It's it's so hard. mean, LinkedIn, first and foremost, has better data. Period. Better engagement, the type of engagements, those types of things. LinkedIn is what you would call a lifestyle platform.

Not for everybody, for many people though. They get on LinkedIn, they share, it's social media, right? Indeed's not. Indeed's not a lifestyle platform. Indeed is around for one purpose and one purpose only, shit, I need a job, right? Which means LinkedIn has huge advantage there because not only do they have all of your profile information and Indeed will have literally your like one or two pager resume, right? Big fucking deal. LinkedIn has

Emi B (33:09.924)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (33:22.306)

this verbose, in most cases, profile about you. Not only that, about what you post, what you care about, your thoughts, all those things. So being able to contextualize and use that into a conversational AI, I think is the biggest key and LinkedIn wins that. But if you're an enterprise company, you should be focusing on the Amazonification, I just came up with that, of your entire ecosystem.

Emi B (33:49.615)

Love it.

Chad Sowash (33:51.5)

better candidate journeys through conversational AI. just talked about, again, applicant tracking systems like Paradox and Smart Recruiters, and the list goes on, right? You should be able to build better candidate journeys through conversational AI, better conversion rates. I mean, again, we talked about Compass Group with Dahlia. $1.5 million in six months, right? And all you're doing, literally, is converting the people that are already coming to your website.

Your high bounce rates are killing you today kids not to mention not using your resume database that you've already spent millions Depending on how big you are could be billions on Creating your company should be building a Rufus not that name find a different name but for for lack of better names of course and get to it yet yesterday because that is I believe the future of where companies win

You don't want to be on these external walled gardens like Indeed and LinkedIn, right? Not primarily. Primarily you want to have your own walled garden and you want to be able to have conversational AI in it. You want to be able to have matching in it. And you want to be able to also provide that to the talent that already works for you for upward mobility, for the prospect of promotion and training and development and all those different things. So I think

Emi B (35:00.282)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (35:19.4)

Of the two, LinkedIn definitely gets the win because they've got better data, they've got more data, they've got more interaction, they are a lifestyle platform. But overall, candidates care about the brand. They care about the source of truth. LinkedIn is not the source of truth. Indeed is not the source of truth. Your website, your company is the source of truth. So hopefully...

Hopefully companies will start really focusing on getting that put together and doing more of that. We've seen big companies do it, save a shit ton of cash, get better conversion, get to talent faster, and that's what everybody wants.

JT ODonnell (35:58.827)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mop it.

Emi B (35:58.906)

Absolutely.

Chad Sowash (36:01.342)

All right, so gonna move on. Last week we talked about Mercor. And this week we're going to ask why is Handshake going to pivot like Mercor did? So they're two totally different companies and they're having the exact same holy shit AI is eating everything moment. Handshake, the former college career fair mall kiosk of the internet, suddenly realized that entry level job market

was basically a ghost town and said screw Goldman Sachs rotational programs, kids, you're going to train AI models. Now they spin up handshake AI, uh, slap a up to $100 an hour on a landing page. And overnight they become a temp agency for LLMs. Maricor on the other hand, again, we talked about them last week. Um, they went from AI recruiting platform to we supply the humans that make Skynet smarter.

in record time. It's, I'm not sure you can call what Mercor did a pivot. I mean, they went smoky in the bandit on this thing, full throttle trans am Burt Reynolds mustache in the wind, Corse banquet in the backseat. And suddenly they're at a 10 buh buh buh billion dollar valuation because they are supplying the humans that make Skynet smarter. and for me that

is give me one second I've I've gotta play this

Emi B (37:31.866)

you

Chad Sowash (37:36.14)

You gotta have some of that. That's a little Maracor. And Handshake just wants a little piece of that. They just want a little piece of that. What do you guys think? Emi?

Emi B (37:49.818)

Okay, so question for you, because I heard you say that they've done a complete pivot. Is that true? Is that they're no longer doing what they were doing before and then totally investing in handshake AI?

Chad Sowash (37:58.988)

Well, what had happened about a month or so ago, they laid off a hundred people and the CEO, I think actually made a comment or a post on LinkedIn that they were going to pivot hard into AI. Okay. So will they abandon their, their current revenue model and clients? I don't think so, but I think what they're going to do, what they're looking to do

is they're trying to get some of that, that Maracor juice, that Maracor cheese, because Maracor got 35, I think it was $35 million on top of what they already had just because they made this pivot.

Emi B (38:42.426)

Okay, well, okay. So what's my opinion? I see nothing wrong with pivoting and it looks like Handshake has, you know, noticed they're taking advantage of something and they are rolling with it. And what they're taking advantage of is the fact that, like you said, the early careers job market is rubbish. We've got so many people graduating, even people who are graduating from computer science, you know, degrees, whereas in the past that was a sure footing to a job. They're finding...

Chad Sowash (38:48.898)

No.

Chad Sowash (38:54.126)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (39:11.886)

that they're having a tough time getting jobs at the moment. And I don't think that's really changing anytime soon. And particularly when more more companies are adopting technology, adopting AI, those lower level entry jobs will start to disappear more more. So if you've got a pool of sitting there, entry level candidates sitting there, why not use them to train up models? Why not do that? And for the grads,

especially those who don't come from a technical background, because to train up these models, you don't need to be a computer science or tech graduate. You can come from music or pharmacology or chemistry. You can still use your domain expertise to train up the AI models. So I think it's a great opportunity for employers like Handshake. I think it's great for graduates who are looking to get into a job.

who maybe felt that a pathway into AI is actually not there for them. And they're getting paid well. Some of these, not all of these jobs are paying that well, but some of them are going up to like $160 per hour, depending on the role. So I see lots of positives from that point of view. What I'm not too sure is whether long-term there is a viable career path. You know, what happens next? Once you've done an AI trainer role, what happens next?

Chad Sowash (40:11.918)

Mm.

JT ODonnell (40:19.021)

Thank

Chad Sowash (40:20.366)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (40:36.376)

Now it could be that they learn AI skills, which is actually going to open up AI adjacent roles like, know, AI ethicist, for example, or a product manager. Maybe that will come down the line, but that's where my, I suppose, worry about where this type of role can actually lead to for graduates.

JT ODonnell (40:55.277)

Yeah. You know, if you go back and listen to some of the probably four or six months ago, we were talking about take some of your money right now before things get bad and invest in other things. And I think Handshake just made these extremists and yeah, this model isn't going to work anymore. So let's not sink into it. Let's cut our losses and let's pivot. I'm proud of them. I think more companies in our space need to own that right now. There's a lot of companies that I've talked to in our space don't know where they're going next. No.

Chad Sowash (40:56.078)

JT.

Chad Sowash (41:03.246)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (41:23.115)

that they are in something that's dead or dying and you need to cut and pivot. Like it's unfortunate and I don't like saying this because it means people lose their jobs. However, this pivot gave people jobs and to Emi's point, is it likely something that'll be there forever? No, but you know what it's giving them? Context, initial work experience and a way to understand where AI is going so that they can then start to think for themselves as I mentioned earlier, which.

Chad Sowash (41:42.754)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (41:49.678)

people have not been doing and start to think about, what would I really want to do with my time and energy? What's really interesting to me is the two generations that are suffering the most, in my opinion, in this whole A.I. are millennials and then to some extent Gen Z, these college educated individuals who were just trained on this idea that I'm going to go out there and I'm going to get all these great jobs. Gen Alpha, they're already entrepreneurs. They like they're already so leaned in to figuring out how to make money on their own and be independent.

that I think the harder will thing will be is as things shift at back, trying to get them to take full time jobs will not be an option. They are truly going to be like, no, no, no, we can partner, but I'm not going to be going to be your bitch. You know, like just how it's going to go with that generation. The middle generations are looking for still hanging on for the full time job with salary and benefits. So that group is at least getting something and it gives that company time to make a little money and figure out what it can do next. And I think to me, that is beautiful example of survival.

Right? And they'll thrive. I, I, fingers crossed for Handshake.

Chad Sowash (42:50.488)

think both are basically saying the quiet part out loud. They're not building candidate pipelines anymore. They're training the robots that will eventually replace many candidate pipelines. The thing for me is between Mercor and Handshake is Mercor is going after the more experienced and talented segment, right? And the big question is, you want that segment training your AI or do you want college kids training your AI, right?

I don't think there's really a choice to be quite frank. I don't want a college kid doing it. Yeah. Just got out, just did a lot of learning and that's awesome. But to be quite frank, I want somebody who's been, you know, had the feet on the street. So, I mean, my prediction for these two companies, Mercor, first and foremost, um, they've taken 133.6 million. Handshake, Handshake has taken 434 million. So here's the thing that we're seeing.

from many, many companies that are out there, is you slap AI on it, you do something like this, you're starting to run out of runway, you need to do something quickly, right? So the big question is will VC look at this, a real PE look at this and say, oh yeah, we'll give you more money. You threw AI on top of this and you got a pivot. Personally, I don't think so. I think it's gonna turn out to be something like...

Emi B (44:26.532)

full.

Chad Sowash (44:26.59)

Okay, so we're gonna enjoy a quick break after that and we're gonna allow the unicorn to die in peace. But on the other side of this, we have a little bit of Disneyland with Stephen Bartlett coming up. go ahead, take a listen to this next quick ad from our lovely, lovely sponsors and we'll be right back.

Chad Sowash (44:54.454)

Steven Bartlett, man, if you haven't heard of this guy's name, you have not been being, you haven't paid attention. Yeah, yeah, he just raised Disney level money to turn creators into pretty much an IP amusement park. Mickey better start doing reps. The influencer industry complex just unlocked by boss fight mode, Bartlett says, Steven.com, believe he got Steven.com.

JT ODonnell (44:58.743)

You're under a rock. Yep.

Chad Sowash (45:22.502)

is the creator holding company built to help high potential creators grow their audience, build IP, commercialize after their work, launch ventures and provide the technology to power it all. If you're an aspiring creator, please do get in touch. That's for, and he also said, my ultimate ambition is to build the Disney of the creator economy. JT.

Disney of the creator economy. Does that mean influencer theme parks? I'm so confused. I'm so confused right now.

JT ODonnell (45:56.814)

No, but I think it goes back to the thing I've been harping on in this every time I'm on here about the ecosystem that's being built. Like, we're so busy watching everything burn and people get laid off that we don't understand there's a massive economy that everybody's making money in. And he sees it. I certainly see it. I see it as the hope and the future. And you think about it, it truly is a second Renaissance. It's just a digital Renaissance. You're talking about a time where people could nerd out and learn anything they want to learn, document the journey, make money doing it. And that is real.

Chad Sowash (46:10.446)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (46:25.963)

And so, you know, him leaning into this is great. I was a big fan when I heard this come out. I immediately, I got beta and signed up for Flightcast, which is one of the multiple properties under this. What Flightcast did is we launched a podcast from zero followers. It has automated the distribution. It's video, so it has to be a video podcast, but then it takes the podcast and automatically clips it.

Chad Sowash (46:36.334)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (46:52.011)

distributes it onto YouTube shorts and then allows me to distribute it across platforms. I love being part of it. Steven, you're amazing. Rox, who runs Flightcast, you're amazing. But I will be honest, it's not without its flaws. We've certainly from the beginning working with them, there's been tech glitch after tech glitch, which I am happy to patiently work through with them because I see the potential as they fix these things that we're running into as someone who makes their living running a company that does this as well.

you know, it's exciting what he's doing. I think you have to go in and go like it was brilliant of him to say, I'm going to do the Disney of like, of course, like that kind of immediate mental like he's a genius to say that, right? Because we get talking about it. If he'd used monosyllabic words, you know, if he'd talked over everybody's head, wouldn't work. But instead, he he's really got it down to earth. And it's what makes him really great at what he does. So I have a lot of faith in it. I think it's going to be super interesting and honest where people should be looking.

Chad Sowash (47:37.166)

Ha ha!

Emi B (47:37.786)

What's he saying?

JT ODonnell (47:50.635)

because there's going to be a lot of really cool jobs that come out of that space.

Chad Sowash (47:56.5)

Emi, are you ready to join Steven?

Emi B (47:57.54)

Definitely.

Yeah, I love Stephen Bartlett. I've been watching him since the Dragon Den days when he just joined us. I was look at this little young pup. Now look at him taking over the world. And so I do, I know he's kind of fucked up sometimes, you know, in the last year with that kind of health stories that he's been promoting. But if I put that aside, I think what he's doing is actually great. And I think what he's doing is actually smart. And I can see how

I I can see how this kind of relates to the kind of employment of the future, because it sounds just like a media story. And when I first read it, I was like, oh, it's a media story. I didn't really think too deeply about it. But when I took a step back and came back to it, was like, actually, this is more than a media story. This is a talent story. This is actually going to change hiring in the future. Because when you think about the new startups in the future,

They are actually going to be individuals. They're going to be creators. are the ones building teams. They're the ones hiring producers, example, editors, marketers, data analysts, product people. They are the employers of the future and they're going to be now running small teams, doing all these individual jobs that used to just be a one person show in the past. So with steven.com coming on board, they're scaling this whole kind of enterprise up.

this Disney-like enterprise that's trying to build. So yeah, is it a business in a traditional sense in what we're seeing at the moment? Not necessarily, but is it going to be the type of business, a new kind of employer that we're going to see in the future that creates a led enterprise that's tied to your personal IP? Yeah, 100%.

Chad Sowash (49:41.602)

So we've been podcasting since 2017, right? Chad and Cheese. And have a radio background, so was lucky I kind of had some shortcuts to get in, understood format, a lot of different things, right? Production, very lucky just to have the kind of background and friends and connections that I have. The thing that gets me is we, and I have had conversations, we did have conversations about starting a network, right?

And then we started to work with different networks and we saw that it was hard as hell. mean, it was literally like herding cats. I mean, it is, it's not easy. And so we focused on us, right? Bringing other people in, having different voices as a part of the show, but being able to literally start up something like this is a huge.

huge initiative. And that's why he needs the money, right? You have a lot of these networks who they don't have the cash. Their whole business model is on future revenues, right? Which many, many are built that way. The hard part is being able to do that when you're hurting cats the entire time. It's so, so, so hard. A name like Stephen Bartlett.

probably the vetting process as well is, is also something that's probably good for him. But I also have to say for all those kids that, that are out there who want to do this, Bartlett put, purchased a mic back in 2017, back when we started, right? And the diary of the CEO has more than 13 million subscribers, 70 million monthly views and over 1 billion views on YouTube. According to this news release.

2017 kids, it takes work. Back in the day when Hillary Clinton says it takes a village, I just kind of like, what the hell does that mean? Now, being a little bit older, a little bit more mature, I fucking get it, right? It does. You can't do this by yourself. You need help, you need a network, you need experts to be able to get you where you need to be, which is one of the reasons why I love having JT on the show, because she does this as well.

Chad Sowash (52:06.092)

Your thoughts, JT.

JT ODonnell (52:07.149)

Yeah, no, you know, I guarantee you he's building the thing he wished he had in 2017. If you think about it, and I know how he feels, it just once you do this for a living and you see the rewards, not just financially, but honestly, professionally, the way it challenges your brain, the people you get to talk to, the opportunities that you have, look at the one I'm on right now, you know. And so that to me is exciting. He feels that same way. And he is really just trying to build something that will enable way more people to do this.

Chad Sowash (52:12.77)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Sowash (52:25.71)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (52:35.841)

And I actually think that's important because we've stopped networking, right? Like when you have remote work and all of this, how are we going to get people collaborating and thinking and doing together? again, I think it's what he's building that will give people that opportunity. so, I mean, I'm really here for it. I want to see it succeed. I do.

Chad Sowash (52:57.0)

I during going remote, I've been remote since 2012. that actually made me want to network even more, especially, you know, on LinkedIn and whatnot. and the connections that I had making those stronger because I wasn't in an office. so, you know, I think it really depends on kind of like the mindset that you, that, that, that you're working with and a lot of, let's say millennials and even Z's.

they, they didn't have to do the, you know, full time office, you know, five or eight to five or nine to five or whatever the hell it was. so yeah, it's, it's interesting to watch this metamorphosis, not just with, know, obviously from boomers to Xs to millennials to Zs, and then next alphas, but we're obviously going to continue to see change. And I think.

we're going to see at least more and more and more people try to do this podcasting thing, this content thing, but they're gonna need help to be able to get there because I mean, most of them die, most podcasts die within six to 10 episodes.

It's not easy. It's not easy. Well, I think it's time, believe it or not.

JT ODonnell (54:14.669)

It's true. It's true. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (54:22.893)

Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna?

Chad Sowash (54:23.17)

Maybe?

What was that?

JT ODonnell (54:27.149)

I don't know. Are you about to do a dad joke?

Chad Sowash (54:30.124)

Yeah, but I did my my drum rolls not playing anyway. Okay. So this week's dad joke. That's right. Joel's not around still doing the dad joke. this one's going to be more Thanksgiving style. What do you get when you cross a Turkey with a centipede? What do you get when you cross a Turkey with a centipede? Anyone? Anyone?

Emi B (54:52.346)

No, no idea.

Chad Sowash (54:55.96)

Drumsticks for everyone!

JT ODonnell (54:58.125)

You

Emi B (55:00.706)

I don't get it.

Chad Sowash (55:05.08)

You totally have to get it. centipede, a centipede has all the legs. Legs are drumsticks, All right, so that's another one in the can. Thanks, Emi, for, thanks for waking up on this one, JT. That's another one in the can. We out. Later, guys.

Emi B (55:06.714)

Do it!

JT ODonnell (55:07.373)

You snakes? You have

Emi B (55:09.634)

Yeah. good.

Emi B (55:17.245)

damn.

Emi B (55:24.675)

We out!

JT ODonnell (55:24.685)

You