ZipRecruiter Financial Gymnastics

Indeed Lives Large, ZipRecruiter Dances, MetaView’s Big Acquisition, and the Return of MySpace

Get ready for another unfiltered, fast-paced episode of "HR's Most Dangerous Podcast" with hosts Chad Sowash, Joel Cheesman, and guest co-host Emi B! This week, the trio serves up a blend of industry insights, spicy commentary, and hilarious personal mishaps.  

In This Episode:

• Beach Stairs & First Impressions

• "Skinny Privilege" & GLP-1s in the Workplace

• ZipRecruiter and Indeed Earnings Season Breakdown   

• Buy or Sell:

  • MetaView Acquires Reveal

  • CareerMinds Acquires Job Rapido

• The Job Doctor’s Diagnosis: A deep dive into Job Board Doctor’s critique of Maki People. 

• The Return of MySpace

  
  

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/O1c4XUNs7FM

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:34.037)

Ohhhh yeah! we're not sick, but we're not actually very well either. Hey kids, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host, Joel, not the not the my pillow guy, Cheesman.

Chad Sowash (00:44.93)

This is Chad. First impression sowash.

Emi B (00:48.646)

And this is Emi, I'll be whoever you want me to be today because I forgot my middle name.

Joel Cheesman (00:51.631)

hello. Hello. And on this and on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, indeed is living large. MetaView is living La Vita Loca. And Gen Z is just living in the past, man. Let's do this.

Chad Sowash (00:56.205)

Hello.

Joel Cheesman (01:14.281)

D are you are you getting the election results there in Europe? The the Michigan My Pillow guy running for governor? Yeah.

Chad Sowash (01:19.916)

No. No. I I can only imagine how funny that one is.

Joel Cheesman (01:24.181)

yeah, I I didn't see any of the political commercials, but I'm sure they're pretty entertaining. he Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy. Do you know who that is, Emmy? You probably don't. Okay. There's a guy here in the States. He's got this product called My Pillow, and it's a pillow, shocking. And then he has other stuff that he sells with. Anyways, he's a big time Trump supporter. And he he ran for governor, I think, of Michigan, in the Republican and lost, and now he's of course suing

Chad Sowash (01:28.942)

Mike Lindell, yeah.

Emi B (01:33.566)

have no idea, no. Sounds fascinating.

Chad Sowash (01:47.608)

Douchebag. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (01:51.926)

suing for wrongful election whatever. So yeah, it's a it's a whole it's a whole thing here, but yeah, it's he's such a joke. He's such a he's such an absolute just wanker, if you will, in my best English accent. He's a wanker Wanker.

Emi B (01:55.112)

God. Fake news!

Chad Sowash (01:56.814)

It's rigged. It's rigged.

Emi B (02:03.102)

Great words. He's a wanker. Yeah. yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:06.935)

anchor. On to on to fun stuff. Let's talk about I Mike the my pillowed asshole. it's it so we Yeah, bite my pillow. Sounds that's the bite my pillow episode of Chad and Cheese podcast. it th this morning, so we connect with people on LinkedIn all the time.

Joel Cheesman (02:15.753)

Bite my pillow.

Emi B (02:18.429)

Ha!

Joel Cheesman (02:22.921)

Ha ha ha ha.

Joel Cheesman (02:30.197)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (02:30.893)

And in and you do it and you find these kind of like weird connections sometimes. Like you grew up in the same area, you went to the same school, same company, but you literally never crossed paths while you were there. And you never met this person before, but there's no reason that you hadn't, right? And back in June, Diane Viangash, Matt, I'm gonna screw her name up big time. Sorry, Diane. Michine.

Joel Cheesman (02:40.437)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (02:41.34)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (02:52.969)

Yeah, bless you. What?

Chad Sowash (02:58.347)

connected with me on LinkedIn and mentioned that hey, you I I see that you're living in Tavira. We have a family home in On Lao, about 30 minutes away from me. About when I'm there in August, we come and you know have a have a little coffee. So I did that this morning. It was amazing. She had worked for indeed, I think, for a little over 14 years. She'd been in the industry for like 15 plus, worked at Handshake for a little while, but had great conversation, about an hour and a half over coffee.

Joel Cheesman (03:06.6)

Uh-huh.

Joel Cheesman (03:25.909)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (03:26.061)

and the whole first impressions thing, you're gonna love this. so I'm I'm going down, I'm like, we have a bunch of people that we know in common. I'm like, let's go take a picture, we'll send it to them. and they'll be all jealous because we're we're we're on the water, right? So we're walking down the steps to the beach, and the tide has just gone out. So the steps are a little wet, and you know, there's a little algae on the steps, and I

Joel Cheesman (03:39.058)

Uh-huh.

Joel Cheesman (03:48.051)

I I like where this is going, by the way. I like where this is going.

Chad Sowash (03:51.358)

I totally Charlie Browned that motherfucker. You know, when he's kicking the he's kicking the football. yeah. I'm like up, up in the air, speed up. yeah. yeah. And that's the only time you want to have those falls. You want everybody to see a fall of that magnitude, you want everybody to see. so anyway, she was okay. We went back up the stairs so that she didn't have to do that, but it was a great time. And again.

Joel Cheesman (03:53.865)

Ha ha.

Emi B (03:54.609)

No!

Emi B (03:58.173)

Did everyone see?

Joel Cheesman (04:08.831)

Nice.

Chad Sowash (04:15.615)

Anybody that you're connected to on LinkedIn, if you get a chance to go out have a coffee, a beer, dinner, go do it. life is too short. The world is too s it is not small enough, but when you get a chance, make it happen. And thanks, Diane. Really appreciate it. Sorry about almost falling on you.

Joel Cheesman (04:26.335)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (04:32.147)

Yeah, so so were you were you like the the only thing that the only thing that can cure my embarrassment is like some insider knowledge on indeed and handshake and and did she did she spill some dirt? Did she did she let loose?

Emi B (04:32.445)

Bye.

Chad Sowash (04:40.674)

Ha ha ha.

Emi B (04:44.561)

Did you get the tea?

Chad Sowash (04:44.621)

Well, if if she if she did, I'm not going to divulge any of my sources, cheeseman. That's not what we do around this joint. but yeah, I pr personally, I think like when I was in my twenties or thirties or something like that, and I fell, I got up and I was like totally embarrassed. Now I just laugh my ass off. It's like, what a dumbass I am. That was funny, right? For what?

Joel Cheesman (04:50.857)

That's a good point. That's I

Emi B (05:03.933)

It's like no shame. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (05:07.679)

Yeah. And then my back aches for the next three weeks. Yeah, that's what happens when I fall. Have you seen the the have you seen the memes where like somebody in in their middle ages or in middle age, not middle ages, like our age, like they'll dunk a basketball. I'm not talking to you, Emmy. Like like they'll dunk a basketball and then in their mind they're like, Yeah and then they look back and their real person is like on the floor, like hurt from what they did. Anyway.

Chad Sowash (05:12.245)

Yeah. We're still good. I'm keeping it warm. I'm keeping it warm.

Emi B (05:22.673)

Joel, I'm not your age by the way. So don't, yeah. Okay, just making sure, yeah.

Chad Sowash (05:24.727)

Yeah.

Okay. Uh-huh.

Chad Sowash (05:34.925)

Ha ha ha

Joel Cheesman (05:36.618)

Maybe I'm the only one whose algo is serving up serving up that kind of shit. Well let's get some let's save me and get to some shout outs unless you guys have any more banter. Nobody saw the Odyssey yet, right? No, no Odyssey pushback. All right. I'm waiting on that. I'm waiting on that. Cause yes, please go see it. Go see it. So someone could say something. Emma Emmy, you got s yeah. That's that's the test. If you go see a movie and you go, I don't need to see it ever again, it's not that good of a movie.

Chad Sowash (05:40.971)

I'm sure mine will now.

Emi B (05:47.769)

No, you said not to watch it. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (05:47.807)

No, not yet. No.

I'm gonna watch it. Yeah, I'm gonna watch it. Of course. Yeah. yeah. Looks like it's too long, but still.

Chad Sowash (06:04.919)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (06:05.087)

And I would bet that everyone who sees the Odyssey, very few are saying, like, I can't wait to see that again. It's not good, fellas, people. It's not good, fellas. Emmy, what you got for shout outs?

Chad Sowash (06:12.663)

Yeah.

Emi B (06:14.824)

My shout out is actually all about privilege today, my privilege. Yes. it's incredibly British. Now I'm just gonna like preface this because for anyone who's not watching the video, I'm gonna like paint a picture of myself. So I can't.

Chad Sowash (06:18.411)

okay.

Joel Cheesman (06:18.761)

How British of you? How British?

Joel Cheesman (06:28.287)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (06:28.321)

Did you say preface? Did you say I'm going to preface this? I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

Joel Cheesman (06:31.071)

Preface. I'm gonna preface

Emi B (06:34.974)

out for like not saying it properly. God I've lost my flow now. Wow.

Joel Cheesman (06:38.281)

No, she i you are saying it properly.

Chad Sowash (06:38.797)

I wasn't sure if that was English or if that was just like I I I'm ch I'm trying to get my European on over here and I was wondering how you actually say breakfast.

Joel Cheesman (06:43.825)

Americanizing it is not preface.

Emi B (06:45.214)

See, I'm not too sure now. I've been working with Americans for four years. I've forgotten how to say certain words in the English accent. So I'm just going to skip that word. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Anyway, I'm going to start this off by describing myself. So if you're not watching the video, I'm going to paint a picture of what I look like. Yeah. So I tried to tell people I kind of look like Naomi Campbell. That's a lie. But, you know, we can go with that. But I'm black. I'm a woman.

Chad Sowash (06:52.371)

if anybody's gonna fuck you up, it's gonna be us. Us or s or scousers. Scousers will too. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry.

Joel Cheesman (06:58.165)

Scoutsers. We brought scalcers into this.

Chad Sowash (07:07.117)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (07:11.277)

Yeah.

Emi B (07:14.64)

Okay. So paint any picture you want from there. But basically I said, as a black woman, we don't get many privileges. Yeah. So I'm going to take this privilege and I'm going to tell you where I'm actually coming from. Cause apparently I now, I now benefit from skinny privilege. Okay. And I said, yeah, yes, apparently. Yeah. And it's all down to my favorite drug in the world. GLP ones.

Joel Cheesman (07:18.229)

Thanks.

Chad Sowash (07:18.231)

Those parallel. For favor.

Chad Sowash (07:37.653)

It is a thing. It is a thing. It is. Yeah.

Emi B (07:43.983)

I love it. been doing, I had been on GLP ones for about two years and it's made me go, know, and apparently I'm now benefiting because there's some Harvard report that actually came out and I'll say the serious side of things. The Harvard report came out and unfortunately what it was saying now that all the people who have actually lost weight recently down to all the GLP ones, they're actually benefiting in a workplace. Okay. So when people used to talk about

Chad Sowash (07:48.407)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (07:57.162)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (08:11.624)

pretty privilege before and all the other types of appearance privileges. Apparently that gets your leg in and door, you know, doesn't actually benefit people like me who actually had a job beforehand because it doesn't translate into pay rises. But if you're in a marketplace, people are still judging you by what you look like. So and they and it's translating into salary. So more people who are more overweight, for example, earn less than people who have the same skills, same industry as you know, as good as

Joel Cheesman (08:14.805)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (08:40.494)

as the next person getting a job, but even if they do secure that job, they're getting paid less. So my shout out isn't, know, like I said, GLP one's fantastic. Thank you very much helping me to lose the weight that I couldn't lose beforehand, probably because I booze too much. So I went down the cheating route, but like I said, I'm privileged. I'm a privileged person now. So.

Joel Cheesman (08:40.853)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (08:44.471)

Thank you, Stefan.

Joel Cheesman (09:01.385)

I think the shout out is more like Emmy's looking hot, everybody. That's that's what the shout-out that's the shout out.

Chad Sowash (09:01.783)

Love it.

Well.

Emi B (09:08.794)

I will take that!

Joel Cheesman (09:11.465)

No, look, in all seriousness, I th I I've always thought that overweight people are the sort of underreported, underappreciated group of people who who are, you know, have prejudice against them. I mean, there's just there's discrimination and it doesn't get reported enough. So it's funny that now that they're getting skinny, it's it's a thing now like, they're getting jobs now. They're getting like they're not getting that kind of treatment. But yeah, good.

Emi B (09:21.01)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (09:21.282)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (09:24.712)

But it's sad though, isn't it? Yeah.

Chad Sowash (09:26.081)

Taken advantage of, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Emi B (09:31.506)

Nah.

Emi B (09:37.133)

fuck up.

Joel Cheesman (09:40.351)

Good for you. How long have you been on them?

Emi B (09:42.335)

Well, I'm not on it anymore because I stopped in October, but I was on it for two years. And I'm telling you, it is the best drug I've ever taken. Botox is the second best because when I lost the weight, I actually realized I had wrinkles on my face, which I didn't know about because the fat was filling it up. But like I said, it was the best, best drug I've ever taken. And so, yeah, I'm the biggest advocate for it. You know? Yeah. Are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could tell. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (09:44.414)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (09:55.477)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (10:00.33)

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm naturally a size two, so I don't have any much com comprehension to any of that.

Chad Sowash (10:06.775)

Yeah, right.

Emi B (10:12.52)

We have seen you, remember?

Joel Cheesman (10:13.685)

Yeah. That's that's not very nice. That's not very nice. Chad, what you got?

Chad Sowash (10:14.073)

A size two in Chris Farley, yes.

Joel, so there are many people in our industry that usually work behind the curtain. They create great shit and yet they don't get any fanfare. And today I'm gonna shout out a guy that's always one of the smartest guys in the room. That's Toby Dayton. If you don't know him, Toby Dayton, link up CEO, friend of the show, and former co-host of the Chad and Cheese Data Show. After 25 years, Toby has left the building over at Link Up and Global Data.

listeners, you might remember that last no or actually November 2024. LinkedUp was acquired by global data. That could have had something to do with Chad and G's. I don't know. Which means Toby took a pre-internet employment guide company, brought it onto the internet, started indexing jobs, pivoted into a data company, and then 25 years later got acquired.

Joel Cheesman (10:54.527)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (11:15.915)

That man did the fucking work. And that's one hell of a ride, guys. So shout out to shout out to to Toby Dayton. Congrats on one hell of a ride and good luck on whatever you do next.

Joel Cheesman (11:27.829)

That's right. The Bigfoot of big data, the Sasquatch of Statistics, is moving on shockingly about shockingly about a year after selling the company, because that never happens. Never happens a year after, like say Bye bye. Bye bye now. So yeah, I guess he's gonna do the Gen X thing and just disappear. just do have Chipotle bowls and listen to REM records for the rest of his rest of his days, I guess.

Emi B (11:29.15)

Congrats.

Chad Sowash (11:30.805)

Yeah.

The man.

Chad Sowash (11:36.821)

Yeah too. Yeah. Mm.

Chad Sowash (11:46.753)

Maybe, maybe.

Emi B (11:50.802)

That sounds like a beautiful life. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (11:52.21)

It does, doesn't it? all right, guys. So my shout out goes, I guess, to night owls. we talk a lot about automation and recruiting on this show. Some of it's negative, some of it's positive. One of the positive aspects I don't think we talk a lot about is that the flexibility that job seekers have is really something that we haven't known before. In the old days, if you wanted to get a job and you had to interview, if you already had a job, you had to sneak out during lunch, maybe you had to have a coffee before you went in.

Maybe a quick after, you know, after hours thing, happy hour. But new research is coming out. This is a article by Wired. So much of the interviews now, because they're automated, are happening late at night. And there's some data points around there. Alex.com, which is a sponsor of the show, 62% of their interviews are after work hours. Greenhouse had a a report that said 24% of its interviews happen between 10 PM and 2 AM.

Which means obviously this these are probably people with kids, have to do late night shit, and then like this is the best time that they do it. So I I think it's it's it needs to be said that that automation, being able to adhere to people's schedules, real life things that are going on, I think is a really great thing that's happening with automation. So shout out to the night owls, the people with lives that have jobs and can't get to to the phone easily. I think that the new technology is is great, great for them. Shout out, shout out to all of them.

Emi B (12:52.872)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (12:52.876)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (13:17.325)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (13:19.593)

By the way, Chad, that episode, that segment of shout outs was sponsored by Free Bourbon. Who doesn't love some free bourbon? That's right. Our friends at Proven Base are making miracles happen as we send two bottles of chicken cock, newly acquired, by the way. Google that if you need to. chicken cock to loyal fans of the show, but you got to go to Chadcheese.com backslash free again. Thanks to Proven Base for making miracles happen. We love ya.

Chad Sowash (13:19.765)

Amen.

Chad Sowash (13:23.232)

yes, please. Yes.

I love it, I love it.

Chad Sowash (13:47.125)

I love chicken cock so much I bought the company.

Joel Cheesman (13:49.877)

And I'm bringing it to Portugal.

Emi B (13:49.939)

Yeah.

Emi B (13:53.533)

He he.

Chad Sowash (13:53.847)

Yes. That would be fucking great. you know what's next, baby? It's events. Give me

Joel Cheesman (13:57.461)

Pour your cock.

Chad Sowash (14:01.548)

It's Frango here. events, baby. We've got Wreckfest and Party Time coming 23rd, 24th of September. Wreckfest. you know what's gonna happen. We're gonna be on the disrupt stage. JT and Mo are going to be on the innovate stage. So we've got two stages, day one, lockdown. and then on the first night, it's party time on night one.

At Old Red. We actually were we're upping the ante on the actual party place this year. Bigger rooftop, better drinks, and that all comes from our friends at Job Pixel. at that point, this is yeah, I love them. I I love them. I'm gonna jump on a plane, go to Cabo for a few days. My buddies getting married in Cabo. Then I'm going to go to Dallas at the Omni Hotel.

Joel Cheesman (14:40.287)

Job Pixel. Love those guys.

Chad Sowash (14:56.471)

29th of September through the 1st of September. SIA, we know staffing, industry, analyst, SIA, they've got this little event called Collaboration X and gonna be there. Actually, we're having a shark tank. Got some expert panels that we're gonna be a part of. Bunch of fun. Go to collaborationx.com for your tickets. And then let's talk about the musique about real quick. That's right, the e-Recruitment Congress in.

Joel Cheesman (14:57.62)

Uh-huh.

Emi B (15:07.813)

Chad Sowash (15:25.745)

Amsterdam. That is always a party, Emmy. That is always a party. October sixth, if you're na if you don't have your tickets yet, Emmy, we need to talk. We need to talk about you getting a ticket. October sixth. Yeah. Guess who else is gonna be there? Stephen McGrath. That's right. Yep.

Emi B (15:32.624)

I don't have a ticket. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (15:35.997)

Amsterdam in the fall.

Emi B (15:42.062)

What? I did not know this. I'm coming now.

Joel Cheesman (15:43.207)

What

Chad Sowash (15:45.964)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (15:48.713)

That's all you had to say. Steven McGrath is gonna be there.

Emi B (15:50.044)

that yet. Stephen McGrath, ticket booked.

Chad Sowash (15:50.05)

That's a that's events all brought to you by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. 75 years in business, kids. That's right. Happy anniversary to Shaker. Go to Shaker.com. If you want to know what you should be doing with this AI stuff, if you really want to take a look and get your your tech stack audited, go to Shaker.com. Talk to the best. 75 years. You'll you'll thank us. You'll thank us.

Joel Cheesman (16:12.245)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (16:16.561)

And say hi to them when you're at Recfest in Nashville. They'll they'll be out there. Really sexy, sexy travels there, Chad, but almost as sexy.

Chad Sowash (16:19.086)

god yeah.

Joel Cheesman (16:26.899)

As you know what, fantasy football is back, baby. It's back. So we're taking sign-ups now. If you don't know, Factory Fix is sponsoring the event. You gotta head out to chadcheese.net slash fantasy hyphen football to sign up. We're sending out messages. Check us out on LinkedIn. You can sign up if you you know, we're everywhere. So sign up. We'll be selecting a few lucky winners.

Chad Sowash (16:29.97)

yes Yes

Emi B (16:30.674)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (16:39.659)

Love some factory things.

Joel Cheesman (16:55.487)

We'll have our last year's champion back again to see if they can repeat. Of course Chad and I will be there. Emmy, I don't know if she's gonna play football, probably wrong football for you, but you know, if

Emi B (17:02.854)

Do you know what? Yeah.

Chad Sowash (17:04.437)

She has no clue what this American football stuff is. I mean, it yeah, she doesn't.

Emi B (17:07.55)

It's just something I've seen on TV, you know, I'm like maybe.

Joel Cheesman (17:07.805)

She

Joel Cheesman (17:11.733)

She can't do any wor she can't do any worse than Adam Gordon, who is like

Emi B (17:17.15)

I'll die.

Chad Sowash (17:17.341)

he's been called out. The gauntlet

Joel Cheesman (17:21.053)

Yeah, that was embarrassing. Ste Steven Stephen redeemed the country of Scotland, but otherwise it was not it was not pretty. It was not pretty. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. All right, guys. Should we get to some topics?

Emi B (17:21.306)

Love Adam but he was bad.

Chad Sowash (17:26.113)

He did. Yeah. He did a damn good job. Damn good job.

Emi B (17:26.301)

the

Emi B (17:30.2)

dude.

Chad Sowash (17:34.234)

yeah. yeah.

Joel Cheesman (17:38.748)

All right, it's earnings season, everybody. Good show, fodder. That's right. Zip recruiters Q2 showed $118 million in revenue. That's a plus 5% year over year and 12% up adjusted EBITDA margins and AI-driven engagement games while cutting debt. Recruit holdings, the owners of Indeed.com, crushed Q1 with a plus 19% revenue boost, record profits, and strong Indeed growth.

Chad Sowash (17:41.749)

Ooh.

Chad Sowash (17:58.378)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (18:08.425)

Then sharply raised fuller guidance on AI monetization and efficiency. Both highlight AI progress amid a soft hiring market. Zip is up almost 10% on the news while recruit holding spiked 30%. Holy shit, on the news. Let the good times roll, Chad. What's your take on earnings season at Indeed and Zip?

Chad Sowash (18:31.821)

Let's start with zip. This is financial engineering at its best and or worst. Call it whatever you want. ZipRecruiter owed banks roughly $295 million, but they paid them back early only $229 million because the banks were worried that zip might not be around. Maybe. I mean, that might be the might be the reason, but they paid much less than they owed, and we know why banks do that.

Joel Cheesman (18:53.055)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (18:57.483)

So ZipRecruiter counted that saved $65 million as profit. Without the one time saving, ZipRecruiter actually, by my math, would actually lost money this quarter, right? So this is all bullshit, financial engineering and smart, smart from the people at ZipRecruiter because obviously people don't pay attention. They don't look at the numbers, they don't see what's going on, and they're like, time to buy ZipRecruiter.

Joel Cheesman (19:25.343)

Too bad for them Chad doesn't fall for the banana and the tailpipe.

Chad Sowash (19:28.577)

I try not. I try not. but I do want to do a history lesson when we start talking about Indeed here because first off

Joel Cheesman (19:34.181)

Chad Sowash (19:38.786)

Well, first off, you'll notice that on the call, there was no mention of apply for me, the the the AI bot that was paused, right? They didn't talk about that. They don't want to get into that. But the history lesson I'm taught I I'm taking you back about 15 years when Monster and Career Builder were on the top of the mountain. Those companies were were not innovating, and yet they were still pulling in record revenues. Why? Was the product better than anything else out there? No.

Joel Cheesman (19:46.303)

Pause the paused feature. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (20:08.769)

Were a Monster and Career Builder offering better value propositions than years before? No. As a matter of fact, the value prop was worse because the prices kept going up for the same exact fucking product. So these companies were still riding high. Why? Why? Because human behavior. Monster and Career Builder were baked into buyers' behaviors. And then what happened? It wasn't Indeed, Indeed didn't kill Monster and Career Builder.

Their arrogance, constantly raising prices. Yes, constantly raising prices and treating customers like shit, all because of the where they're gonna go mentality. Customers don't have a choice, they have to use us. I remember that feeling and talking to monsters, actually, and being when I was at Monster. So I believe we're well into that same.

Emi B (20:39.902)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (20:40.201)

Hubris.

Chad Sowash (21:03.201)

Where are they gonna go phase with Indeed as their customers are looking for and finding ways out? Plus, hiring companies are starting to build systems that use the candidates they've already bought from companies like Indeed and have stored them in their CR at their CRM and their ATS. God rest his soul, Matt Lavery from UPS had to hire, I believe it was like 150,000 people in six weeks, and 30% of them came.

Joel Cheesman (21:28.415)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (21:31.849)

Out of his CRM and his ATS. I want to kiss the man on the mouth when he when he told me that. I mean, that is exactly what companies should be doing. Hiring companies are finally building these technical equ ecosystems where they own the primary source of candidates. As that happens, along with the where they're gonna go mentality, indeed becomes less necessary. Less part of the behavior indeed just becomes less, just like Monster and Career Builder. So the history lesson here, kids.

is it's not about competition. Yes, indeed was there to take over the mantle, but what actually how did they get the mantle? It was all the things that Career Builder and Monster didn't do from an innovation standpoint, but they did do from an asshole standpoint.

Joel Cheesman (22:06.719)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (22:18.598)

Joel Cheesman (22:19.487)

Sounds like you're going short on those two names, Chad. Sounds like you're going short on those two names. Zip, I mean, I agree with you. I I think zip there they want you to think there's some magic AI gobbledygook that's that's driving profits at ZipRecruiter. There's no secret AI shit here. In fact, if anything, they took a step back into the future. they got rid of Phil, the ridiculous AI job seeker buddy.

Chad Sowash (22:22.593)

Yeah. A little bit. A little bit.

Chad Sowash (22:35.745)

Yeah, nope.

Chad Sowash (22:43.709)

Yeah.

Emi B (22:45.011)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (22:46.391)

How is that a step back?

Joel Cheesman (22:50.035)

No, they got rid of them and went back to like traditional, put in a keyword and what so like they thought Phil was the future. So they thought Phil's Phil's out to pasture now. so they're back they're back to the old school search for a job, and then you gotta register as a user if you wanna actually see more jobs or apply to the job. So they're just like filling the bucket, fill in the funnel of with job seekers so that they can span them via email. the other thing is that they've increased their spend on marketing.

Chad Sowash (22:52.053)

I know. He was an anchor.

Emi B (22:54.588)

Chad Sowash (22:57.357)

Ha ha ha

Chad Sowash (23:08.819)

God.

Joel Cheesman (23:20.521)

They've reduced their cost. You'll remember that they laid off 20% of their workforce a couple of years ago. So they've cut costs, they're spending more. And they've always done this treadmill thing where like we'll spend more on marketing, we'll get more sales, reduce costs, like rinse and repeat and do this. inflation has a big part of this as well. Like we've seen how much inflation it's pretty steady at 3, 3.5% last year.

If I'm Texas Roadhouse and I have to deal with inflation, it means the meat that I buy costs more. What ZipRecruiter does isn't costing more, but they're able to pass increases on to their consumers because inflation, right? While they continue to cut costs. they have no transparency in pricing. If you go to ZipRecruiter's pricing page, it's a free trial. They're drug dealers now. The first hit is free.

Chad Sowash (24:11.361)

Yeah.

Emi B (24:11.571)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (24:12.561)

And then and then they they loop you in, and I'm sure based on the results and they s they source their candidates. I'm sure they're pulling in whatever AI, and then they drop the price on you based on probably the results that you've gotten. And you're you're sort of paying who knows what. And we talked about dynamic shopping pricing, surveillance pricing in the past. So all these things kind of go into let's take what was old, kind of repackage it as something new, and the bottom line is is is is is benefiting from that, but I would not

Emi B (24:15.184)

No!

Chad Sowash (24:15.201)

Cocaine, baby.

Chad Sowash (24:21.405)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (24:41.851)

So I still don't I still don't think this is any kind of buy or long buy. I do still think they're gonna hit ten bucks this year. that was one of my predictions for this for twenty twenty six. I thought I thought they were gonna go full meme, Chad. You might remember that. they they just might hit it now that they've they've done this. As far as Indeed goes, a little better s a little smarter on the the the engineering, financial engineering. they have a lot of smart people there. But I I I think most of it is just we're a duopoly. It's us and LinkedIn.

Emi B (24:53.982)

I don't got it.

Joel Cheesman (25:12.221)

people from what I can tell are leaving programmatic. They're leaving the vertical search folks, and we'll talk about job rapidot after the break. But people are like, where do we go? We can't do what we've done. Like 80% of our budget goes to indeed anyway, and now we're just gonna go all in because they're gonna increase c increase prices, so we can't spend more on the alternative stuff. They're putting all these different ways, talent scout and and results based pricing.

But I think this really is just a we're cutting costs. Indeed, had a lot of layoffs early this year. They've had every March for the last couple of years, they've had layoffs. Cost reduction, increased prices is all gonna be a a nice thing to the bottom line. I don't think there's anything secretive, nothing super AI awesome going on there. They're just moving the dials to profit. Good for them.

Chad Sowash (26:03.854)

Phil is the future.

Joel Cheesman (26:06.559)

Phil I don't even feel if you can get to Phil anymore. Man, that that dude, that shit's gone. That is gone. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. He's t teasing me with Phil. That's not cool.

Emi B (26:06.93)

Easy.

Chad Sowash (26:09.291)

No. He's he's sleeping. He's he's rip van fucking Winkle at this point. Annie, what you got?

Emi B (26:18.846)

Do you know what, as I was listening to you, you both summed up what I was going to say. And it's like, totally agree. yeah, I mean, exactly. Do I sound smarter? Yeah, I'll preface. But I think it is a great, I suppose a great show of kind of financial PR, massaging, moving money around, making it look like they're more profitable than they actually are.

Chad Sowash (26:25.761)

You're welcome.

Joel Cheesman (26:26.729)

Just just read it back in a British accent. So we f we sound smart.

Chad Sowash (26:28.781)

Let me preface

Emi B (26:47.708)

You know, and it's not like you said, there aren't many people who are going to look at the initial, you know, earning calls and dig behind the scenes and go, hold on a second. What happened before? Is this actually true? Not many people are going to do that, which is why they can actually get, get away with it. And you look at zip recruiter. mean, zip recruiter, like you said, they are not a company that's doing well. They're not, they've massaged their numbers around. It looks like they're doing well.

They're still struggling. Their products are still not innovative. They will still lean on this kind of AI route. But what they're churning out is actually rubbish. So is that going to work in the long term? Yeah, it looks good for this kind of short term period. Long term? No, I don't think so. I think they're still going to have to find ways to massage the numbers to make the books look good. So that's my opinion on ZipRecruiter. Wow. Not at all.

Chad Sowash (27:30.071)

Por eso el corrito, con este corrito.

Joel Cheesman (27:35.689)

You you mean it's not it's not rolling in the Glassdoor brand and to Indeed it was that that wasn't the secret sauce. By the way, did you guys see? I think this came out today that they're getting rid of the interview reviews on Indeed. Used to be able to like r like put reviews of how the interview process was. Yeah. Because guess what? That's going away. That's all gonna be automated. So they don't need reviews for that's my own take on that. But yeah, that's that dropped today, I think.

Emi B (27:50.565)

Are they?

Chad Sowash (27:51.051)

Yeah. Yeah.

Emi B (27:56.766)

my gosh. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (27:59.906)

I saw that announcement coming that came out with the Indeed Glassdoor kind of like merger and it's like it felt like it was from twenty eighteen or some shit like that. It's like Jesus Christ. yeah.

Joel Cheesman (28:05.546)

Yeah.

Emi B (28:09.286)

Yeah, some kind of old school kind of thing. you know, indeed, I actually think are terrible. Like I do, they're absolutely terrible. You know, the way they are screwing over the, the screwing over the industry. And I think companies do need to wise up. I feel sorry for the kind of SMBs, the small and medium sized businesses, because if they need to grow, they need to put bums on seats.

Joel Cheesman (28:16.884)

Yeah.

Emi B (28:33.308)

They just think automatically I'm going to go to Indeed. I've got no other way of attracting candidates. People don't know my brand name. Yeah, exactly. So they lean into that. They know they can inflate their prices and people are just going to have to pay it. But is the, yeah.

Chad Sowash (28:39.37)

Behavior.

Joel Cheesman (28:40.116)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (28:46.453)

By the way, what was what was their exposure at Wreckfest at London this year? It was like a single sign somewhere. They they've had a booth in the past, a lot of employees. This year it was just like a little sign. So so cutting those, cutting those, cutting those costs. My bet is when when Glassdoor stopped filtering in Google traffic to their jobs, N D was like, I just shut it down. It's just too much, too much of a hassle. All right, guys, let's take a quick break. We come back. we haven't played buy or sell in a while.

Emi B (28:50.878)

Yeah, yeah.

Now it's just like a little postcard almost. Yeah, exactly.

Chad Sowash (29:00.181)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (29:04.855)

Because if I'm making it show us a bucket by bucket. Yeah. Yeah. No reason.

Emi B (29:07.667)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (29:15.293)

So fire up for that.

Emi B (29:15.45)

Joel Cheesman (29:20.981)

All right, guys, this next segment is sponsored by our friends who supply free t shirts to the to the podcast. If you don't have a shirt, guys, you got to go to chadcheese.com backslash free. That's our friends at AirNap, the freaks and geeks that are wearing the red shoes all over social media. Go check them out if you need some referral help now to buy or sell. If you don't know how buyer sell works, everybody, we read two companies that are in the news.

Chad Sowash (29:26.667)

Love those guys. Love those guys.

Joel Cheesman (29:49.182)

And each one of us will either buy or sell that news. And I can't find the soundbite. There it is. All right. Now we can officially get to to buy or sell. First up, we got MetaView. They acquired AI native recruiting firm Reval to accelerate development of Fillmore. Not to be not to be confused with Phil from ZipRecruiter. It's autonomous AI coworker for recruiting. The acquisition expands MetaView's engineering team and brings Reval's founders.

Chad Sowash (29:57.704)

There we go, baby.

Emi B (29:59.644)

Hahaha

Chad Sowash (30:09.141)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (30:18.727)

Seth Tillis and Aditya Gupta on board. Chad firing squad alum MetaView is making some shit happen. Are you a buyer sell on their acquisition?

Chad Sowash (30:29.847)

So I have been a long time selling MetaView because they are just being the note taker, it's just like anybody can do that at any time. but they need people to build agentic an agenc platform. We need more of those specialized agentic platforms in our space. This is, I think, one of the smartest things they could do to to hopefully divorce themselves away from just being seen as a basic note take taker.

Joel Cheesman (30:39.573)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (30:59.901)

I think it's very smart. And for me, this is an aqua hire top to bottom. They they need the people to be able to buy to be able to build the new platform. it's it's a buy for me. It's it's a buy.

Joel Cheesman (31:13.279)

Well, I'm a little surprised by that, Chad, but

All right. So about a year ago, MetaView raised $35 million. That's a pretty good sum of money. That's a pretty good chunk of change. Reval was founded in 2023, barely out of diapers. And not just as a company, but their founders are also barely out of diapers. I think I think one of them like graduated last year from Duke. whatever it is. Like smart dudes. they bootstrap the whole thing. they clearly are intelligent.

Chad Sowash (31:33.517)

Ha

Chad Sowash (31:41.921)

That's a good school. Yeah.

Love it.

Joel Cheesman (31:47.39)

Just made some smart, you know, smart technology, probably didn't know how the hell to sell this thing. Like all a lot of people that get in recruiting tech, like how who this buyer sucks. How do we sell to them? Like, so to go to MetaView and sort of like offload the technology, get a job, I think is is smart for them. I all but I also think like is it that great if they sold already? you know, like the first

Chad Sowash (32:13.417)

Yes.

Joel Cheesman (32:15.017)

The first coming that waves a million dollar check in front of their face, like, okay, that's it. We're good. You know, it's like it's like when you're a teenager and you first hook hook up with a chick and you're like, That's it, I'm done. It doesn't get any better than this. Like they could've they should have waited a little bit, maybe, you know, gone on a few more dates. They probably could have got a better deal. But it might hey, it might have been red on top. Fire anyway, how the what how that goes. so MetaView has money to spend. Apparently

Emi B (32:19.262)

Let's go.

Chad Sowash (32:30.613)

It could have been really good, you never know.

Emi B (32:30.974)

No!

Joel Cheesman (32:42.367)

They're trying to build this technology. These guys maybe have the secret sauce and brought them on. It's fine. I I think it's not that big of a deal. I think, I think Reval could have h held out. I think MetaView spending on this is probably some sort of sign that they need to add more money to the bottom line by acquisition. So I I'm a little bit more on a sell on this one. I I just I don't

I'm not buying it. So, Emmy, can you break the tie on whether a buyer sell MetaView's acquisition of Reval and Fillmore?

Emi B (33:11.71)

do you know what? If you asked me even a month ago anything about Metaview, I would have just sold because I'm not a huge, it's not that I don't like the product. I actually think the product is, it's a decent product. You know, I don't think it's very different to any other note taker out there. However, what I don't like or what I haven't liked about Metaview in the past is their customer service.

You know, I've been always very honest about it. I just don't think they treat well. didn't. Yeah, they don't treat their customers exactly. Yeah. And so that's why I'm always like Metaview. No, sorry. I'm not. I'm not your fan. They know I'm not their fan. You know, so I'm never going to hide that. However, there's so many other vendors out there doing what Metaview are doing. They're now in a stage where they're having to differentiate themselves because they're now getting eaten alive by ATS vendors.

Chad Sowash (33:43.509)

That's big. That's big. That's big.

Joel Cheesman (33:44.255)

That's an insider take. Insider take.

Chad Sowash (33:53.483)

Yeah.

Emi B (34:08.944)

incorporating note takers into their platform. So they're going to, yeah, it's just becoming a point solution now. You know, that's the way that the market is actually going. And don't get me wrong, like I said, good point solutions. I understand note takers, I understand the benefits. We use it in our organization. But in a few years time, it probably is going to be a point solution. So then buying Reval, diversifying their tech stack, you know, apparently this is the first of many other

Joel Cheesman (34:11.411)

Yeah. Is it a feature or a product? Yeah.

Emi B (34:36.112)

acquisitions that's going to come down the line. I think it's a good move from Metaview. It's going to accelerate their growth. It means that they can just right now start making money, which apparently they have. So they have no integration issues and have only been acquired in the last three weeks. So already it looks like they're getting value. So, begrudgingly, I'm going to buy.

Chad Sowash (34:38.25)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (34:53.525)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (34:59.149)

You're saying there's a chance. You're saying there's a chance.

Joel Cheesman (35:03.593)

That's a brig that's a very non that's a very non-committal buyer, Emmy. All right, that's our first bar. So let's get to the next one. Career Minds has acquired Job Rapido, looking to strengthen CareerMinds' ability to help organizations navigate workforce transformation by combining career transition services with a large job marketplace. The deal brings broader access to career opportunities and labor market intelligence.

Terms were not disclosed, Chad buy or sell the career mines acquisition of job rapidot.

Chad Sowash (35:34.583)

So Career Minds acquires Job Rapido. And what I'm hearing, this is a rumor, kids, probably for no more than a dollar. they're out of they're they're out of Italy. it's really hard to get to be able to downsize your employee base in Italy. And from from what I hear, I'm not an employment lawyer. and it's it's it's been really hard for Job Rapido. This feels very bold like.

Right? You buy more job seeker traffic to sell job seekers to your resume and coaching services. And you know I hate those fucking predatory try to get money out of job seekers bullshit scam stuff. So this is a big, big sell for me.

Joel Cheesman (36:19.133)

Yes you do.

Joel Cheesman (36:29.333)

So I first heard of Job Rapido when you were at Job Central, Chad. I don't know if it was like one of the it was one of the sites you had your job. Yeah, it was a partner. You were kind of geeking on them at one point. this was 2006 that they launched. So we're talking a 20-year business. So that was the first thought that went through my head when I saw Job Rapido, because it's not like we get a lot of press releases from Job Rapido. So was I went back to 2006, which is always, always fun for me. And then the second thing I thought of was like,

Chad Sowash (36:35.011)

yeah, yeah. It's one of our partners. Yeah. yeah.

Chad Sowash (36:43.693)

Great global traffic, yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (36:53.687)

Nope. Nope.

Joel Cheesman (36:59.369)

Well, they're they're based in Milan. Shit, I could have gone and popped in and like, you know, got a got a tax break on my trip to Italy. So I was mad about mad about that. look, both of these companies have seen pretty good organic growth throughout the years. It's not like there's been a big crash in any of them. job rapido. The future of vertical search and aggregate job postings, like that is not a bullish.

Emi B (37:04.222)

Said, hey.

Joel Cheesman (37:27.613)

industry to be in. I mean, everyone is going to like, you gotta have the profile, you gotta have the job seeker stuff, you gotta have like it's the data that comes together that Indeed and LinkedIn have that's gonna be really hard for anyone else to compete with. Now that being said, I think Career Minds benefits from the data that Rat Job Rapido does have, which is what job postings and job data and historical data. So when they're looking to help their customers

off board people, consult, like having that data I think is a good thing to have. I agree with you, Chad, that the price was probably right. This was like the career or the the the the clearance rack of the clearance rack at the Chi J Max. so so if that that yeah, I mean that that that that being the case, I think that this is probably a pretty good buy.

Chad Sowash (38:08.843)

Yeah. It was in the back alley on the clearance rack. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (38:18.725)

for a career minds. And after twenty years job rapido, you can go chill in Italy, which is a pretty good country to chill in. Amy?

Emi B (38:26.616)

Absolutely. Now, first of all, I was told that it's not rapido by an Italian today. Yeah, it's rapido. That's my best Italian accent. rapido. So, no, I promise I was going to pronounce it correctly. So, Elisa, I know you're listening. I think that's Italian accent.

Chad Sowash (38:34.935)

What?

Joel Cheesman (38:35.433)

I got close. I think I went job. Rapido. Rapido. Ariba Ariba. Andale Andole.

Chad Sowash (38:39.485)

Yeah. Well most Europeans can't say Chad, okay, so if I get rap rapido wrong, I'm fine.

Joel Cheesman (38:53.535)

We've made a career on mis mispronouncing names and companies. Like it's all good. It's all good. Just plays into our dumb American brand. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (38:56.432)

yeah.

Emi B (38:58.306)

dear. yeah. Don't worry. So, okay. What do I think? actually, I'm gonna be the tiebreaker. I actually think it's a good sell. A goodbye, a goodbye. Sorry. my God. Okay. So I think it's a goodbye because the way that the market is going, obviously there's so many jobs going at the moment. know, obviously people's gonna blame AI, you know, taking over people's jobs, but the market is crap. There are more and people looking for jobs.

And unfortunately, what I'm seeing hasn't really changed in the last couple of years. I'm seeing lots of companies making redundancies, but not actually helping out their employees to get a new job. And the reality is, for some of the people, it's going to be hard to get a new job. Sometimes their job is not going to exist. There's going to be a downsize of certain jobs. So they're going to have to need, they need help to kind of re-candidate, is rebrand themselves, look at another direction to go down.

What, where can I upskill myself? What transferable skills do I have? So companies that actually provide that kind of outplacement support through companies like this one here that we're talking about, for them, they're going to look good. There is going to be great branding for them. So I think that, you know, I think that career minds understands that. I think them acquiring Job Rapido is a good complimentary service. If it's a cheap acquisition.

even better. They're just rounding out their services that they can actually offer to employees and to actually candidates. So I think it's a goodbye.

Joel Cheesman (40:37.429)

All right, guys, that was what I would call a spirited buyer sell segment. Let's get to our next story. Bend over and cough, everybody. The job doctor is in the house, and she's putting Maki people on the operating table. The company that provides AI hiring assessments has not conducted adverse impact analysis on its mochi outcomes based on disability or veteran status due to insufficient data. The doc.

Emi B (40:40.604)

Yeah

Joel Cheesman (41:04.945)

AKA Mrs. Sowash if you're nasty, argues that this omission is concerning, especially given Maki People's claims of fairness and inclusivity. Chad as the docks assistant, I'm sure you have some insight here.

Chad Sowash (41:06.733)

Yeah, it's very good.

Chad Sowash (41:20.109)

Maybe a little bit. I I mean first off, I gotta say I gotta commend Maki people for actually being transparent. Responding. Julie had questions. They said they'd be more than happy to respond. they did did not have a problem having those responses public. So I mean I've gotta give it to the the the group over there because most companies

That here, expert analysis, if it doesn't align with our current tech or business model, they literally just ignore it, right? They they ignore the entire discussion. And in this case, Julie is like a damn forensic scientist in analyzing the practices, technology, and compliance. And today, as her assistant, I'm literally just gonna go over certain aspects at very high levels.

Joel Cheesman (42:08.725)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (42:09.175)

but if you want the forensics of it, you want all the deep dirty stuff, go to jobboarddoctor.com to spell it out, jobboardoctor.com. She does all the stuff there. Thank you. Thank you. That's that's all her, man. She she's killing it. okay, so Julie asked Maxime, who is the CEO over at Maki People, a very specific question around audits performed on segments of the population like individuals with disabilities and veterans.

Joel Cheesman (42:16.885)

I like the new logo, by the way. Like the new logo. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (42:36.151)

their response was quote, as this audit site as of this audit cycle, we do not yet have sufficient voluntary self-identification data on disability status or protected veteran status to support statistically defensible adverse impact analyses on mochi, which is the actual plat or the product outcomes for these groups. This is not an omission by design.

It reflects the reality of where we are in the US market entry and the voluntary nature of demographic disclosure. End quote. My translation of that Maki People and their partner, in this case, Recruitics, who is the US entity, are not ready to sell this product in the US. When a company says, quote, we do not yet have sufficient voluntary self-ID data.

That should send off warning signals. Plus, even worse, if the partnership scheme of things with Recruitics, who is a very well-known entity, recruitment advertising agency, they're programmatically distributing jobs which lead to this mochi product, which is a part of the audit that did not get passed, right? So Recruitics knows better. But it feels like

Joel Cheesman (43:42.1)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (43:57.986)

They became prey to kind of like this whole move fast break shit dynamics of the current market. And we're going to see more of this. Startups without the expertise andor understanding of the new market that they are trying to penetrate, in this case, the US. Maki People's coming from France. They have an entirely different framework than we do in the US. Ours is all fucking wild, wild west shit. Theirs is very formulaic and very folk focused on

Joel Cheesman (44:25.513)

Regulated.

Emi B (44:26.589)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (44:26.661)

yeah, government control, right? Which is which is excellent. But it's in it's two different worlds. But then you're coupled with a well-established vendor who's not he they're trying their damnedest not to get outflanked by competitors. So they're trying all these different things without performing the due diligence necessary that they should be performing for these little startups, right? So one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this is that I'm seeing this

Over and over and over. Startups are coming into the US or going from the US to Europe. They don't know what fucking playing field they're on. They have no clue. And then they're partnering with these bigger names, and they think that that's literally just gonna make them legit. Unfortunately, it just it doesn't go that way. So I I just I hope moving forward that more startups and more established players start.

Focus and not br moving fast and breaking shit because that's exactly what's happening now. And I don't want to see big brands being their clients getting audited and nailed for shit like this.

Joel Cheesman (45:31.677)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (45:40.434)

You're you're way closer to this than I am, Chad. so my commentary will be pretty brief. But I I I think that companies particularly in in the current l landscape of America, look, regulation is happenstance today. and I I think that more and more companies are putting in their their their calculations of okay, it's gonna be cheaper to go to court than it is to like make changes and and do business in a different way. So I think more and more companies with with the le with the the administration that's currently saying no regulation on AI. And I don't think, Chad, we've talked about an AI regulation in hiring since Trump has been in office. I don't think there's been anything new or significant since that happened. So if I'm a company, it's like, well hell, it is the Wild West. If the government's not going to come and pinch me then then why do I care?

Chad Sowash (46:21.025)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (46:31.943)

And if companies take that lead and they don't care, nothing's going to change. It's really it's it's incumbent upon the the customer to be educated and shout out to Julie for having some real journalism, which is pretty few, you know, few and far between and rare in an industry like this, that companies can now go to Maki People or whoever their vendors are and say, look, we're concerned about A, B, and C. Here's a story I read, and here's some more research that I did.

What changes are you going to make? Because it's not going to be the government that slaps these companies. It's not going to be, you know, the state, local, or federal bureaucracies. It's going to be the customers. So if you're a customer of these businesses and listening to this, like do yourself a favor and ask some hard questions because that's the only way that things are really going to change.

Emi B (47:20.382)

Scary, isn't it?

Joel Cheesman (47:23.253)

Not in a British accent. Nothing's very scary in a British accent.

Emi B (47:23.39)

No, definitely. No, it is. Do you know why I'm quite, I was like kind of saying it's scary because this is the kind of thing that I kind of suppose deal with on a day to day at work. You know, we're constantly looking at our vendors. We're constantly looking at new vendors. We're constantly and I suppose in the last four or so years that I've been in my job, I've had to ask and think about how we implement technology.

in a completely different way, just because of their introduction of things like AI. We're trying to be more inclusive. We're trying to have a fairer process. So we're looking at every single stage of our hiring journey and all the tools that actually support the different stages of the hiring journey. And we're having to ask questions like this. And I'm thinking about other organizations like mine who know they have to ask questions, but maybe

don't know what questions they're supposed to be asking. And I worry about those people. And I think that those organizations, particularly the smaller ones, particularly the ones that maybe don't have an internal employment legal team or not working with the internal, like kind of DEI team, who can actually give them that different perspective, they're just trying to wing it. They're just trying to figure it out by themselves. And then because they're not the experts in their own eyes,

Chad Sowash (48:26.217)

Yeah, yeah.

Emi B (48:48.882)

they will put so much trust into their vendors. They're going, yeah, are you screening people in a fair way? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. And they'll take their word for it. So I think a lot of companies are going to get caught out just because they don't know what questions they're supposed to ask. And I suppose the biggest takeaway that I can say for people is ask other organizations, ask them what questions they're putting to their vendors.

ask them about, know, when they say they're actually, you know, not biasing or not discriminating certain groups, ask those other organisations, how do you actually verify that? Read stuff like Julie's article to kind of upskill themselves in that particular area. Because what will happen is if they don't start doing it now, even if they're in area like the US where there isn't that much regulation right now, I don't believe that's going to be the way forever.

is already in Europe. Other organizations, other soil territories will start kind of getting in line and understanding, right, okay, tighter regulations need to be in place. And if you're not starting to do it now, you're going to be way behind the curve.

Joel Cheesman (49:58.518)

I think what Emmy's saying is you gotta you gotta go deep, Chad. You gotta go deep. By the way, you want you want you want fear, Emmy? How about can I interest you in a story on the return of MySpace? We'll be right back.

Chad Sowash (49:58.925)

It's gonna be

yes. It's gonna be a new sheriff, kids.

Emi B (50:06.591)

Chad Sowash (50:10.957)

That sounds that sounds fun. Friendster? Friendster, huh?

Joel Cheesman (50:17.205)

Time to get reacquainted with Tom, everybody. MySpace, once the most popular social media platform by far, is planning a relaunch, reflecting nostalgia for a more analog time when algorithms were less dominant in our lives. However, analysts caution that it faces significant challenges in an overcrowded market dominated by algorithm driven feeds and short attention spans. Chad

I'll still be in your top eight friends when MySpace comes back, right?

Chad Sowash (50:49.335)

Yeah, just as long as Tom is my first connection. That's all that matters. That's all that matters. It was funny because I actually tried to go see if my MySpace was still out there. I think I like deleted everything. so I'm gonna have to start from ground zero, and that's fine. no, I think I think I literally just deleted everything. I think I did. it's interesting because you take a look at just the trust, and and this is what it's all about. nobody trusts Mark Zuckerberg.

Joel Cheesman (51:04.233)

Really it's gone? You don't have my spice guy my spice anywhere? Okay.

Chad Sowash (51:19.371)

Dude's a piece of shit. They they literally, New Mexico, I think in total it's close to a billion dollars that they're gonna have to pay in fines. That's one state. if that starts to roll up state by state by state, this could start to hurt some of those social media platforms if they don't really start focusing on the these these algorithms that have gone out of control. so yeah, I mean, we're looking for we're looking for, shall I say it?

the Gen X days, right? When it was life was simpler, things were easy. No. No. No. I'm I'm I'm saying I'm saying I'm saying Gen X from the standpoint of the y we were home when the lights came on. We knew what the rules were, just all those things. And today it's just so much fucking chaos, right? And I and I blame the millennials because the chaos came when they came. And so it's all their fault. It's all their fault.

Joel Cheesman (51:52.725)

It's millennial. It's millennial. I don't think Gen X can can lay claim to MySpace. I

Emi B (51:54.12)

Yeah

you

Joel Cheesman (52:15.143)

Obviously. It is it is all our fault.

Chad Sowash (52:18.167)

But yeah, I'll I'll be on I'll be on MySpace. I'm gonna check it out. If they still have I mean, they went really heavy into bands at one time and it was really like a band platform. But we'll we'll we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (52:25.445)

Sure. Sure. Arctic monkeys discovered off MySpace. Speaking of good British bands. in two thousand and and six ish, I wrote a blog post basically saying that there was no way that MySpace could be dethroned. Oops. I got got that one wrong. Jeez, yeah, that was that was not good. I was I was proven wrong on that one. I mean, like I don't

Emi B (52:29.81)

Were they?

Emi B (52:41.374)

That ain't age well.

Chad Sowash (52:46.975)

I don't know what

Joel Cheesman (52:50.333)

I don't think a lot of people when they use Facebook or Instagram go, I hate Mark Zuckerberg and I wish I wasn't using this. I think that I think it's more like I've lost control of my life. I like the cars drive themselves, the algorithm tells me like what to watch. Amazon tells me what to buy. Netflix tells me what I should watch next. So I've I've I'm losing control of my agency as a human being.

And I think there's a desire, particularly interestingly, with young people, to sort of connect with vinyl records, which I thought I'd never see in my life. Records coming back is a wild thing. Yeah. And like let's let's dress like in like we're grunge, grunge is coming back in fashion. So people are trying to embrace having control and some sort of an organic feeling to their life. They're not going to get offline. But if we can have some sort of balance, then that's great. If that's my space, I mean

Chad Sowash (53:25.913)

yeah. And it's so awesome. Yes.

Emi B (53:44.478)

you

Joel Cheesman (53:45.45)

Fine. I don't I like I think it's a novelty. I don't think people are gonna leave TikTok and the algorithm and big booty latinas and bug fights to to know like who my top eight friends are and like j mo juggle those around. So I think it'll have a a moment of a fifteen minute moment of fame, but MySpace coming back in a big way unless they really change things. I I just don't see it. Emmy, how about you?

Emi B (53:52.754)

Haha

You

Emi B (54:07.07)

To be honest, I had to go back and remind myself what MySpace was because no, really, like I keep telling you, I'm way younger than you. Like I never went on MySpace. I'm like, okay, what is this again? I kind of remember it, you know, from back in the day. I think I was in like in primary school back then. But yeah, I agree.

Chad Sowash (54:10.527)

Stop it You stop it You stop it

Joel Cheesman (54:10.815)

whatever.

Chad Sowash (54:22.358)

And whatever.

Joel Cheesman (54:25.993)

I can't believe you're trying to play this that you're too young to remember my space.

Emi B (54:29.288)

I am too young. I am too young. Listen, I will show you my passport. I'm way younger than you two, honestly. Yes.

Chad Sowash (54:30.477)

my God. my God.

Joel Cheesman (54:36.083)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (54:40.739)

I I I believe that, just not not too young to not know what the fuck my space is for guys.

Emi B (54:45.63)

It was just a name that floated around. never asked, like I said, I had to Google it.

Chad Sowash (54:48.727)

Friendster, if we were talking about Friendster, I'd be Yeah, no, she doesn't know who Friendster is. I totally get that. MySpace, no.

Emi B (54:53.562)

I don't know. Yeah. No, honestly. But I got it. You know, I did it. I did my Google. said, yeah, yeah. OK, right. I remember my space vaguely. But I get, you know, all the things that were called back in the day are coming back. You know, I was walking down the high street. I don't know what you call it in the US, but you know, it's like kind of stripper shops last week. And I'm seeing all the kids with the low cut jeans, know, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears style. And I'm thinking, like, pull it up. What are you doing?

Chad Sowash (54:59.618)

Don't believe you.

Chad Sowash (55:04.461)

Vaguely.

Emi B (55:23.178)

I'm seeing people with the mullets, I'm seeing people with the belly button rings. I'm like, all of that is coming back. So I'm not surprised that MySpace is coming back.

Chad Sowash (55:31.363)

Are you wearing mom jeans? The ones that are like up to your like, you know my god, those are the worst. my god, they're so bad. no. so bad.

Emi B (55:34.334)

Yeah, they're cool. Yeah, yeah. No, they're cool. They're fashionable. We might like kind of pull up socks. I was like, yeah, new balance trainers. I'm like, woohoo, go me. Yeah. Yes. Everything is coming back. People want authenticity. You know, they want to go back to the heyday, the good old days of authenticity.

Joel Cheesman (55:35.368)

dude, that's totally a thing. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (55:45.223)

Shopping with Stella, they have like dad jeans that girls buy now. Yeah, it's totally it's off the rails. It's off the rails.

Chad Sowash (55:48.886)

No.

Joel Cheesman (55:55.901)

I remember I remember stories, Chad, you probably do too, that of kids that would make backgrounds, custom backgrounds on MySpace, and kids would make a lot of money doing that. I also remember, Chad, you'll remember this. Remember when Simply Hired partnered with MySpace to do the back the jobs, the jobs tab of speaking of of back in the day. They did not, however, and this this would have changed everything, guys, if they had dad jokes on MySpace, if they had dad jokes.

Emi B (56:03.496)

Did they?

Chad Sowash (56:05.527)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (56:09.675)

Yes, yes, yes.

Emi B (56:12.924)

That could happen again. You never know that could happen again. But you know.

Emi B (56:21.061)

Chad Sowash (56:21.298)

low.

Joel Cheesman (56:23.709)

And I'll give them the first one. All right. All right. W why did the motorcycle take a nap? Why did the motorcycle take a nap?

Chad Sowash (56:26.113)

Okay.

Emi B (56:35.464)

Cause he, no, no.

Joel Cheesman (56:35.697)

It it was two tired. Two tired.

Joel Cheesman (56:44.117)

we out, everybody.

Emi B (56:46.24)

lord, we out!