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Forget “digital transformation”—this is full-on AI combustion. Allyn Bailey from SmartRecruiters joins Chad & Cheese to explain why breaking your ATS is a feature, not a bug, and why TA pros secretly need therapy every time someone says “compliance.” Inside this episode: Why legacy HR tech is basically a zombie apocalypse in slow motion AI safety councils that sound more like Fight Club (but with lawyers) Global wildcards like Kenya proving Silicon Valley ain’t the only AI show in town And the sad reality that scheduling is still the hill recruiting tech dies on Season 3 isn’t here to whisper sweet nothings about AI. It’s here to rattle cages, spill beer, and roast bad tech until it cries. Buckle up, kids. The Kraken has been released. 🐙 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the shotgun seat. And this is the Sessions AI frontline series. And we welcome Allyn Bailey, Senior Director of Communications at SmartRecruiters. Allyn, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Allyn Bailey: I am so excited to be here. I feel like I haven't seen you guys in so long. Chad Sowash: What? Allyn Bailey: Well, I see you all the time. Chad Sowash: We were just in Madrid together. Allyn Bailey: I haven't talked to you on a couch in a very long time. Joel Cheesman: She's guilting us already. Already the guilt trip. Chad Sowash: I went to Madrid for her. Allyn Bailey: You did, you did. But I don't talk to you guys very much anymore. I feel like I'm not in the talking space anymore. Chad Sowash: I blame you. I blame you. Joel Cheesman: Let's talk now. Let's talk now. Allyn Bailey: Okay, we'll talk now. Joel Cheesman: But before we get into that, a lot of our viewers won't know you. So give us the elevator pitch. Allyn Bailey: Okay. So I've been in the talent acquisition space now for almost a decade, which I cannot believe. It's probably longer than a decade. I don't want to add it all up. I came from the practitioner side of the house, was at Intel, worked there for a very long time doing talent strategy and talent design work. Then was off doing my own spiel for a while, doing some consulting, working with all sorts of different types of companies. And then landed here at SmartRecruiters, where I've really been kind of working on the intersection between what's really happening in the practitioner side of the house and what are we building from a tech perspective and got deep in the weeds. Chad Sowash: So we see a good amount of practitioners come out of big names like Intel, and they go into a vendor, right? And they usually flame out because it is a different world. It is a different world. You've not done that. I mean, you've been in, this is... I mean, you've absorbed this. What's the difference? Because there's a huge difference, right? What's made it a little bit more sustainable for you as not just a job, but really, I mean, something that you put your life into from a career standpoint? Allyn Bailey: Well, I think even when I was on the corporate side of the house, right, kind of living in that practitioner side of the house and the corporate world, I was never one that was kind of just doing one thing all the time. Chad Sowash: And you were very much in the tech, too. Allyn Bailey: That's right. I was very much deep into the tech. I was always shifting and trying new things. I came from the user design and the user experience side of the house. That was what I was, my focus was at. And so I think now working at a tech company in a much more specific frame, it allows me the opportunity to do lots of different things, to pivot around very quickly, which works with my style. So it's actually probably even a better fit than the corporate world was and kind of working in a very structured setting. Joel Cheesman: I'm probably dating myself when I say she's the EF Hutton of her company. When she speaks, people listen because I don't think a lot of vendors hire people from the actual customer side and more should do it. I assume that you've been a real benefit... Chad Sowash: They try. Joel Cheesman: Of being on the vendor side. Talk about that. Allyn Bailey: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I've always, one of the things, I was a big proponent of SmartRecruiters before I even came over to this side of the house. That was part of that was part of the deal for me. Right? I wasn't going to work for anybody. I think people know that about me. I am pretty frank. I say what I'm thinking. Joel Cheesman: No. Allyn Bailey: I know, right? So that's been, just is who I am. I'm not going to not do that. And I think SmartRecruiters has been a company that has been very welcoming of that. They've asked me to say what I think. They've asked me to be part of that conversation. And so, yeah, that's been that's been a big benefit, I think, for both of us, right? I started when I first came over, started working on the consulting side of the house with them and working with companies to help them understand how to use the tech more effectively and then quickly pivoted into actually doing services and implementation. And that was all because we quickly realized it wasn't just about kind of quick fix consulting solutions. There was a deeper conversation we need to have about how to actually implement technology. Having been on that side of the house and driving that conversation, SmartRecruiters was very open to me having that dialogue. And then that transitioned into, okay, well, here's what people are really trying to do. So let's have a conversation about what type of tech we're building. Chad Sowash: So SmartRecruiters is also open to a very large pivot. Now, we take a look at the model was built literally on legacy process. Right? And you guys have well over 2000 customers. It's hard, which is why we see a lot of applicant tracking systems, just a lot of platforms. They literally, and I always use the Taleo instance, is that literally they just atrophy and die, you know. But you guys made a huge decision already being in a specific architecture, already having a portfolio of 2000 companies and customers to be able to make that pivot. That is risky as hell. As a comms director, it's got to be somewhat exciting, but also it's risky. Tell us about that change. Why was the change made necessary and how exciting and or scary was it? Allyn Bailey: So it wasn't scary, at least to me, because I like to shake shit up. So I'm going to do that anyway. Here's the deal. I think it was and has been a process of really understanding what people were trying to accomplish with the tech and realizing that we are, because of what technology is now capable of doing, we're in a once-in-a-generation moment where we can actually do stuff with the technology that we've been talking about as a TA profession, as a human resources profession, literally for decades, right? We've been saying, well, I want to talk about great candidate experience, or we want to talk about being able to engage hiring managers so they can actually understand what and how they're hiring, provide them insights that are at a moment's notice. These were all things that we were creating technology for and leveraging technology to do, but we had all these workarounds built into it, and it was complex and bloated and frustrating to use. And then at the end of the day, people just weren't using it because you start adding too many components to it, people just go back to the basics and say, whatever, right? I'm just going to do it the way I've always done it and I'm not going to shift and change. Chad Sowash: It's almost impossible to navigate when you have feature bloat at that point. Allyn Bailey: That's right. You absolutely can't. So I think having a strong leader come in, and that's, you know, we brought Rebecca in, or, you know, Rebecca came in back into the fold. She had a strong vision, but also a strong enough presence to be able to say, in a sense of kind of where we were in this moment to say, it's okay. I'm going to trust all of you if you trust me. Let's break it and fix it. Let's say, if we didn't do it that way, what would we do? That's a hard question for anybody to, one, ask or to be really willing to accept the answer to. And then when we all started talking about it and saying, well, what would we do, we realized, oh, shoot, we'd do something completely different. Let's do it. So on that level, that part was easy. I think what you're pointing to is a second part, which is really complicated. I can tell you part of these conversations that we're having now and the conversations we're having with our All In for AI series across all sorts of different groupings and with customers and with people across the industry who are in this space... Allyn Bailey: It is about that second part of the conversation, which is if I am already a customer, if I'm already embedded in how we do business today, convincing you, dear customer, convincing you, TA practitioner, that the way we're doing it today may not be the best approach and we can do it a different way and here's the new technology to do it. That is a whole change management process that is difficult, right? That's a paradigm shift from the normal vendor strategy, which is, dear customer, tell me what you want and I will build it for you as you have asked. Instead, we are looking at it and saying, listen, we've been watching for a long time. We understand where the industry is going, but we also understand what needs to happen in this space. We understand what can be helpful for you. We're going to propose and give you some new options and new ways to do this and it may not be how you've done it before and it may put you in some uncomfortable conversations in your own teams. Chad Sowash: Well, I feel like the agents, though, makes it a little bit easier because everybody wants to feel special with their own process. Allyn Bailey: Absolutely. Chad Sowash: And now they can feel special with their own agents and being able to actually adopt those own agents that could be more standardized to a better process methodology that you guys have actually seen over the years, but then still it's that customized feel of having an agent, much like ChatGPT feels like. For anybody who uses it. Allyn Bailey: Yeah, of course. Right, right. And the more you start to leverage it and you start to get comfortable with it, companies are starting to realize they can create experiences that are unique to them, both inside and outside their company, leveraging these tools. Joel Cheesman: One of the things that I've found really fascinating is when you have technology in our space that has sort of gotten on in the years and got some age under it. Chad Sowash: It's old. Joel Cheesman: It tends to entropy, excitement leaves, the energy sort of goes somewhere else, and you guys somehow harnessed a win attitude. We're playing to win, we're not playing just not to lose. And I'm curious, where did that come from? Was it the vision? Was it a concerted effort to say, you know what, look, we've been around a while, but we're going to shake it up and we're going to win again? Because it's permeated not only in the company that I see, but with the customers and people taking a second look at you. Where did that come from? Was that Rebecca on down? Was it the whole organization? How did that come about? Chad Sowash: Everybody hates the prevent defense, by the way. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: The Four Corners, remember that? Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Allyn Bailey: Oh, yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. It's a great question. I think it is a perfect storm. It's a perfect storm of moments, right? The right team, right? And it's an interesting team. People would say, you look at us and say, we're pivoting, we're looking at doing things in a different way, we're looking at things in a new way. You would think it's a whole new group of people who have shown up on the plate. That's not the case. Our senior VP of engineering has been with the company over a decade, almost 12, 13 years. He built the original components of the platform, right? Rebecca is a returner into this space, right? Kind of the old product leader coming in and taking over the helm as the CEO. Our tenure across our organization is vast, right? We have everything from new people in the door to people who have been there five, 10, 15 years, right? So the energy really comes from an alignment around the vision. When we start to see it work, and we're starting to see it work, we're seeing customers who are in our design labs who are actually trying this stuff out and are getting excited about what they're capable of doing. Allyn Bailey: It creates momentum and excitement, right? And we have more and more of that dialogue and conversation around it. We start to see it working with these use cases. And then we start to operate in a new way that says, what if? When you start asking people what if and you release the handcuffs and say, you've been doing this for a while. You maybe have some ideas that we've been talking about in the back rooms and behind closed doors and in different alleyways. And we have all those dialogues, right? We sit in the conferences and all these conferences, right? Everybody says, listen, you can go sit in all the sessions, which are fabulous and are great, but where do the real conversations happen? They happen in the hallways. They happen in the booths. They happen around the corner. Joel Cheesman: In the booths. After hours. Allyn Bailey: After hours, right? I think our company has started to build this energy around saying, if we took all those after hour conversations, what could we do? That gets exciting. People get energized about those. So vision, a little bit of seeing it actually come to fruition, and that's exciting. And then really great leadership coming in and saying, I release the handcuffs. What would you do? Joel Cheesman: "Release the Kraken." I love "release the Kraken". Allyn Bailey: "Release the kraken." That's a great way. Chad Sowash: So the AI council in itself, talk a little bit about that and, I mean, why AI safety? I mean, obviously adoption is happening much faster than I think most of us thought it would happen because of OpenAI and people really using it on their phones every single day. So it's not, I don't think it's as hard for us to be able to push for adoption. What was the safety, the risk part of that that you guys wanted to try to wipe out of there? Allyn Bailey: Right. Well, first off, I don't think we can wipe it out, and that's been part of our honest dialogue with both our customers and, by the way, just general people within the industry. AI is really cool. It's going to do some really neat stuff, right? We're really excited about it. But it also has the potential to do some really scary things because at the end of the day, we're looking at all this great tech, but all this great tech is based off of what we've been doing already. When we talk about large language models, what are they learning off of? They're learning off of data and processes and systems and behaviors that's biased because we as humans, I hate to tell everybody, we are really not great. We are horribly biased, right? We just, by our nature. Technology is going to be biased too because technology is built off of how we operate and think. So if that's the case, you add that challenge in. Now you also add in the challenge of we're a global company. Our footprint is in over 100 countries, right? We are all over the place. Allyn Bailey: Every country today, every state today, every region today is starting to build its own set of AI guidelines, laws, regulations. That's very complex, very hard thing to navigate. At its root, talent acquisition, HR in general, has been based on a compliance methodology, right? So we are a group of people who like to say that we're really cutting edge. When I say group of people, I'm talking about talent acquisition, but we're really deep down a whole bunch of rule followers. So it's freaky, right? It's scary. So we've got this challenge. As a comms director, I look at it and say, okay, you've got a lot of people who are interested in having backroom conversations about AI, but they're also very scared, very worried, unsure of how this is all going to work. Rebecca says this really well. You only get one chance to put AI into your organization or to start to implement it without it leaving some sort of taste in everybody's mouth. It feels good and it feels comfortable and I trust it or something goes wrong. It only needs to go wrong once for everybody to freak out about it. So if that's the case, we need to have open conversations about what are the risks? What are the challenges? How do we solve these problems? Allyn Bailey: We don't know all the answers. We didn't want to go into a black box and create all the answers ourselves. So we invited customers in, customers from around the world, customers from our big companies, from our small companies. We invited practitioners who are not even customers to come in. We invited, we have some legislators in the conversation. Chad Sowash: Smart. Allyn Bailey: And we're having open conversations. Again, we're doing it behind closed doors. We told, listen, we're not going to talk about it. We're not going to have you come out and tell everybody all the great legislation that we're having conversations about. We're not going to have a conversation about the choices that we're making, but we want you to have a safe space to have a real conversation about how do we trust this and what do we need to know as people building this tech that's going to make it valuable, trustworthy, and usable for you. And usable is the key because... Chad Sowash: Are these people piloting? Allyn Bailey: Some of them are piloting. Chad Sowash: Okay, because that would be a nice little bait to come into the, you know, I get to use the new stuff. Allyn Bailey: Well, so to get to the new stuff, the Trust and Safety Council, that's really about, let's talk about the challenges here and let's debate how we solve them. We have a second group of people who are a series of customers. They are part of our design group and our design lab. You're going to talk to Matt a little bit later. He's part of that team from Domino's. Listen, they are using the early stuff. They are helping us design it from the root up. We're having conversations about how it works inside their businesses, and then we're learning from them and helping expand that out to everybody else. So those people, those people in the design groups, yeah, they're getting early access. Joel Cheesman: You've always been a big picture thinker, and I'm curious your thoughts on who's embracing the technology, who's a little bit more timid around it, whether that's small versus big co, parts of the world that are sort of embracing it more than others, businesses maybe that are embracing it more than others. What are you seeing from sort of a macro perspective on the adoption of AI? Allyn Bailey: It's a great question. I think there are two things that I think are unique in this AI adoption space. I think whether it is regions, countries, companies, or kind of just groups, right, that are most likely to leverage AI today, they are the spaces where they have less governance and traditional processes that are embedded so deeply. We see that even just in the evolution of AI in general, the best AI evolutions right now from an AI explorer perspective are coming from countries and spaces most of us aren't even paying attention to. The work going on in Kenya, fascinating. The work they're doing, you know, in some of the former Eastern European countries, huge, right? So that also translates to who do we see in terms of customers and potential customers who are raising their hand and saying, I'm willing to try it. Let me figure out how to do this. They're the people who have less repetitive process they have used for long periods of time that they have to break before they do something new. Because the thing that we're not always talking about yet, is the tech is cool, but the tech isn't going to work on your old processes and with your old roles and with your old systems. Allyn Bailey: And so if I don't have a lot of technical debt or process debt to navigate, it's easier for me to adopt. The other big adopters, interestingly enough, they're not my TA and CHRO teams, right? It is mandates coming from CEOs, CFOs, CTOs. And the challenge there is they don't always know what's possible and what isn't possible. They just want it to happen. Chad Sowash: Is this productivity and efficiency? Is that... [overlapping conversation] Allyn Bailey: Productivity, efficiency, and modernization. I would say modernization of their businesses and a belief system. I don't want to say it's hype. They are listening to the entire world out there telling them that business is changing. You need to be on this new technology bandwagon. You need to understand and have AI operating within your company. AI-first companies are going to be the ones that win. And so they are telling all of their leadership on down the path, go make that happen. And there's a challenge there, not all of those business areas are ready to go. Chad Sowash: So when it comes to being able to AI your process, you're not going to go from start to finish, right? So for companies, especially that have been piloting, that you've been talking about, they're probably going to pilot a chunk, a task, a specific task that takes a lot of time and it demonstrates to the C-suite, hey, look, we're making big progress, but we've only done this, right? What is that task that you guys are seeing right now for these teams? Allyn Bailey: You know what it is? Chad Sowash: It's got to be something boring. Allyn Bailey: Scheduling. Chad Sowash: Yes? Allyn Bailey: Scheduling, which by the way, drives me crazy because I'm like, this is seriously the biggest problem we have? But honestly, it is the thing that people get most excited about solving because it takes time. Chad Sowash: 'Çause it sucks. Allyn Bailey: It sucks. It is horribly complicated. I got too many calendars, etcetera. And I think, this is a great example of approaching the problem differently. So scheduling is the issue. And for most people, it is because it is an efficiency problem. It's complicated and it's hard to do just to get calendars to mesh up and etcetera, right? We actually took a second lens onto it and said, but okay, let's assume I can solve that because theoretically we can and we're already solving that, right? Allyn Bailey: What then becomes the next root problem? The next root problem that AI actually helps us solve is, who should be interviewing? How do I determine based on the role that I'm leveraging or looking for, or based on the type of individuals that I'm looking to interview, and maybe that differs for each role depending on the applicant, etcetera, who the best person is to pull into that interview cycle. How many times do we have people sitting there trying to figure out who should be on the interview team? What are the questions they should be asking? How do I then assess the information they brought in some sort of simplified way so that everybody has a even playing card to look at? Those are problems AI can now solve. So scheduling is the root issue, but we can actually go at it deeper now and provide intelligence and insight that allows it to be an even better process. To me, that's the exciting piece. Joel Cheesman: No one seems to want to stay in their lane these days. Today's chatbot is tomorrow's ATS. You know, today's job board is tomorrow's scheduling solution, etcetera. How do you guys look at that from a competitive standpoint, from a product perspective? I know Winston is a product that you've released lately or recently. How do you think about it competitively when it seems like every month there's a new ATS that wasn't an ATS before, but everyone's trying to be everything to everybody? How do you look at the competitive landscape from that lens? Allyn Bailey: That's a great question. Let me tell you what I think. Well, one, if they're walking out today, cramming a new ATS, we'd tell you, well, that was so 10 years ago. That was a mistake. We're already past that. Yeah. I think competitively, the challenge here is focusing on the use cases that the tech is trying to solve rather than trying to define or to over-scope what something's going to deliver. Great example. We know this. If everybody's going to raise their hand today inside that conference hall and say, what is your biggest challenge, for example, with HCMs, right? What are they going to say? They're going to say, well, they try and do everything. Nobody gets the right investment into any particular component of the product, whether it be... Chad Sowash: They do nothing well. Allyn Bailey: And they do nothing well, right? So we all know that's the case. Why did we end up there? Well, there's a lot of reasons, right? It has to do with how CFOs want to buy, the idea that I want to have a simplified tech stack, all of those reasons. But we know from watching that, that that's a mistake. It's a mistake to try and do everything and do nothing well. So from our perspective, and as we look out there into the competitive framework, we say, listen, there are two ways to approach this. There is end-to-end hiring solutions built for hiring use cases. We think we're the only ones out there. I can have that conversation a whole 'nother time. And then there are best in breed point solutions that can be in space, right? Like maybe I have a really great video interviewing component that can be added on or tapped on or etcetera. I think our approach is to look at this and say, you can be an HCM and try and hit the full suite end-to-end. You can be a hiring end-to-end platform and then understand how you're going to approach that from a very specific use case perspective to say, how do I look at four big decisions that have to get made, right? Who do I need to hire? What type of skills do I need, right? Who am I going to bring in to assess? Who am I going to then decide is the right choice? And then how am I going to get them onboarded? Allyn Bailey: End of the deal, right? If we can handle that, we do it well. We focus in on the people who are working in that space. Joel Cheesman: All right, we will end it there. Allyn, thanks for hanging out with us. And this has been the Chad & Cheese Podcast. I'm Joel Cheesman. He's Chad Sowash. And this has been the Sessions AI Frontline Series. We out. Chad Sowash: We out.

Remember Suresh Naidu, the professor of economics and international and public affairs at Columbia University? If you haven't heard our first interview with him, search it and thank us later. Anyway, he's back, and he's badder than ever. This time, he's talkin' past, present, and future regarding the topic of minimum wage. Put your thinking caps on and turn up your earbuds, this one is special. All of this learnin' powered by Nexxt... Do you need targeted candidates ? Then you need Nexxt ! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions helps forward thinking employers create world class hiring and retention programs for people with disabilities. INTRO (0s): So for a long time, it used to be thought that like minimum wage workers, they're just like teenagers in middle-class homes. Yeah. And you know, a big chunk of them were in like the sixties and seventies, but increasingly, partly, you know, since Reagan for all the reasons you talked about an increasing share of minimum wage workers are like older workers, workers with families, that you know, are trying to live on a minimum wage job. Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (46s): Aw. Yeah. What's up everybody. This is your favorite podcast. The Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost? Joel Cheeseman is always joined by my cohost at arms Chad Sowash and today he's back. He's bad. He's out for blood. It's part two of our interview with Suresh Naidu. It's Chad's biggest crush, Man. Crush it all. Suresh. Welcome back to the show. You have a PhD, but I question your intelligence coming back on the show. How you been man? Suresh (1m 19s): Totally legitimate to question my intelligence. So, yeah, I'm great. How are you? I'm fine. Chad (1m 25s): Excellent dude. Excellent dude. So give us a little, Joel gave us a, you have a PhD, but gives us again, listeners, a little bit of background about you and then we're going to jump into today's topic. Suresh (1m 36s): Yeah. So I'm, I'm an economist. I, my area of specialty is economic history and particularly of, of labor markets. So I've studied everything from American slavery to unions in the 20th century to the minimum wage and did the gig economy today. So I'm kind of a Jack of all trades as they come in economics. Yeah. Joel (1m 55s): With that background, you're the life of every party that you attend. Right. Suresh (1m 59s): You'd be surprised how much that's actually true. Chad (2m 3s): Get Suresh over here. Tell us that story short. I, so that's what we're going to do today. Today. We're going to have like a party discussion and it's going to be around minimum wage. I mean, it's in the news today, it's in the social discussion. Everybody's fighting about it, but you have the history behind this Joel (2m 19s): A unique perspective. Chad (2m 20s): Yes. And, and I'd love to be able to go back from a history standpoint and then just kind of like ramp into today and have that discussion. But I think it's important that, you know, we all better understand and we're more educated around the topics we're actually discussing. So therefore that's why we bring smart dudes on like, like you to talk about that. So how did this whole thing start? Was it, was it FDR? Was it before that. Suresh (2m 45s): In fact in the, you know, before the new deal, for example, like most labor law was the domain of state and local government. And so different States had different minimum wages. So that sort of starts, I think in New York state law in 1905, there's a, there's a background. So the Supreme court during this early 20th century period was super hostile to labor legislation. So, you know, there's this famous case Lochner versus New York where like New York tried to pass a statute, that limited, that was like a maximum hours law. Like, you know, that that bakers can work too many hours and the Supreme Court was like, this is an unconscionable restriction on freedom of contract and struck it down. Suresh (3m 26s): What that then led reformers of the day push for is like minimum wages for women and children, especially, and so the first minimum wage is like in Massachusetts in 1912. And then, you know, you kind of get a whole bunch of other minimum wages, always sort of restricted to women and children. The exception might be like Oklahoma in 1937, but also all of them exempting, almost all of them, exempting agricultural workers and domestic workers for, you know, which has sort of happened to exempt also a large fraction of the African-American population from coverage by the minimum wage. It was probably not an accident, you know, and there's like state level laws and, you know, in carving out exemptions for, for domestic and agricultural labor. Suresh (4m 14s): But then in 1937, the Supreme court determined that all of these are unconstitutional and basically strikes down all of the minimum wage laws. It's a 1936 or 1937. And then they like have another case where they find that it is constitutional. And then that basically leads FDR to put a federal minimum wage and the federal labor standards act of 1938. And that's the first federal minimum wage. It also has an exemption for agricultural and domestic work, but it's like kind of the, for the first time that you have like a blanket minimum wage that's binding in Mississippi the same way it's binding in like New Hampshire. Chad (4m 53s): So why did they put that in though? So what was the, what was the reason for that? Was it because poverty was running rampant? Why did the government feel like they had to step in from a federal standpoint and actually override everything the States were actually putting in place? Suresh (5m 10s): Well, so there was like an argument of the time, that it was the term was sweated labor. So it was basically like sweat shops in the U S and that people are like, we need to eliminate sweatshop. And it's a moral imperative to like end quote unquote sweated, labor, and Roosevelt was talking about the need to end starvation wages. So there was a real, like moral case for the minimum wage. And that's kind of always been there for, in the background of the minimum wage. It's not just like a, it raises wages for low income workers. There's also a real sort of sense in which it like the dignity of a minimum wage is part of like what, you know, you're trying to establish as like a democratic polity is like, need to have it, the people that work like can actually have a decent standard of living as a result of that. Chad (5m 56s): They can survive. Suresh (5m 57s): They can survive. Chad (5m 58s): That's the first time I've ever heard starvation wages, but that in itself, I mean, that's pretty damned impactful. Was that like what they use today, we use quote/unquote "living wage," which is kind of like a softened version of that. Is that was that the term that they were actually using starvation wages? Suresh (6m 17s): They talked about starvation wages, like reformers were like, we need to end starvation wages. And like, you know, there's like a quote from like the department of labor, "certain basic standards of adequacy, or generally recognized as inherent in the concept of a minimum wage based on the cost of living." So it's just like, you know, the government was talking about basic standards of living as a part of the reason to have a minimum wage. And then I think, like in the context of the recovery from the depression, there was also kind of a Keynesian Agra demand point that, Hey, maybe by raising wages of workers that will raise demand for products, and that will kind of have a stimulative effect on the economy. And that was just kind of in the air in the 1930s. Joel (6m 57s): Was this something that sort of appealed to both sides of the political spectrum, or was there a debate back then of, okay, well, yeah, if the Dems pass, you know, more money, that means more votes, so we gotta be against it. What did politics sort of come into play or was it an overall broad sense of, we need to help people. Suresh (7m 15s): It was politics got in the way, but not Republican versus Democrat. It was North versus South. And so basically both Northern Republicans and Northern Democrats were like pro a higher minimum wage while, you know, most of the South is Democrat at this point, remember, African-Americans, can't vote. And, they're like very, very much opposed. And so you just think that even though agriculture is exempt, like there's a whole bunch of low wage textile industries, for example, in North Carolina and South Carolina that are paying basically really, really low wages and know that they're going to get hammered by the minimum wage. Joel (7m 51s): You mentioned children. And I also think about sort of indentured servitude, right? Like the little towns that, dug coal and, you know, you bought the same stuff from the company that paid you money. And it was just sort of this, you know, bubble that you lived in. Did minimum wage laws pass before child labor laws and indentured servitude issues? Suresh (8m 10s): Yeah. Yeah. So the nature servitude stuff in the U S and in the UK just like ends way before we have minimum wages. We've gotten rid of it indentures, in the U S before independence with the exception of the US blacks in the U S office. Right. If you're white, you're not indentured worker, in the US. So, and then the minimum wage is sort of coming. It's like a beginning of the 20th century kind of thing. When you have this, you should just think of like, like at the beginning of the 20th century, it's been like two generations of just industrialization happening in the US after the civil war. It's just like big factories going up, used to think of like, Upton Sinclair's writing, like the jungle, a period where like, people are like really grappling with the consequences of industrializing the economy at a breakneck speed. Joel (8m 58s): And you had similar today, you had very wealthy companies, right. In that period, it was, you know, trains and steel and things like that. But we had a similar situation when these laws were passed. Maybe we look at today with a different lens. Suresh (9m 13s): Yeah. So I think like, it is similar and it's actually similar a couple of different ways. So like actually the Northern big businesses that are basically the Northern backing, the Northern Republicans, they're in favor of a federal minimum wage, in the 1930s. And even, so even before in the 1910s, they're important for these minimum wages because they're high wage employers. And that's like the way, I don't know if you guys have seen this, like Amazon's running like, basically full on ads in the New York Times talking about how it pays a $15 minimum wage and supports raising the federal minimum wage. Joel (9m 48s): Yeah. They just want to allow their workers to take a bathroom breaks other than that. Yeah. Suresh (9m 52s): Yeah. But you'll get $50 an hour, but they're also like busting a union in Bessemer, Alabama at the, you know, while they're like taking out ads, being like, Oh yes, we should raise the wage. So I think that's telling it's, they're willing to pay high wage. They're not actually willing to like, recognize any kind of, any kind of unions. And that's also similar, I think in the late 19th century, early 20th century, you have like, you know, Frick and Carnegie and Rockefeller, and they're like, you know, they're reformed, they're open to reform. They're open to like these minimum wages, because they're not actually that dependent on child labor or low wage, sweat, sweat shops. So they're like, yes, sure. Take, you know, and it's more like their competition that's that might actually depend on that, much more than them. Chad (10m 36s): Unions actually start to come in to play, to be able to drive wages, because again, collective bargaining, all that other fun stuff. I mean, there's kind of like this rolling need to focus on the employee, the actual people versus the corporation. Does that come in? You know, Suresh (10m 55s): That's in the 1930s, really unions are part of a broadly part of like the progressive Alliance is pushing for minimum wages in the tens and twenties, but they're small. There's not a lot of them. And the way they really like take off is in the 1930s with the Wagner Act. And it's part of the same moment, right? So the Wagner Act is passed in 1936, Supreme Court upholds it, 1937 Supreme Court and it's all because like result was a basically threatening to pack the court. And so you all of a sudden got a very compliant Supreme Court that was like, yes. Okay. Maybe, you know, maybe, the federal minimum wage is constitutional. Fine. And so in that sort of like, pitch year of 1937, the Supreme Court basically allows big chunks of Roosevelt's policy agenda to be passed. Suresh (11m 39s): And so you get this huge upswing in unions and you're getting an increase in the minimum wage. There's an interesting sort of, there was some unions, I wouldn't say all like some unions were like, no, no, no, we can't have the federal government setting wages, that's our business. We set wages. You can't take that away from us. And sort of like reminiscent about how unions were like, kind of mixed on Obamacare and Medicare-For-All, because they're like, no, we negotiate fabulous healthcare benefits for our members. You can't take that away from us. That's our domain. Chad (12m 8s): That's our business. Yeah. We collect dues and that's an added value. Suresh (12m 16s): But, you know, back then it was like, wages, but I think like, particularly the CIO type unions just kind of got that, like the minimum wage was good for like they were going after high wage firms and the biggest threat to their high wage firms was like low wage firms that could enter and take away the business from the unionized shops. So minimum wage, just like damps down the threat of the unionized, the competition facing unionized firms. Joel (12m 43s): Yeah. So we get out of the thirties and into the forties and fifties. And how do things change? Suresh (12m 48s): Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I just, this morning on Twitter, I posted a graph from the 1940s just showing like the CEO to average worker pay and just like it collapses between 1941 and 1945. It's just like CEO pay gets crushed. Chad (13m 2s): What was it? Suresh (13m 2s): It went from like 60 times to like 30 times. Chad (13m 5s): So 60 times, and then today we're talking about ... Suresh (13m 9s): So 400 times or something to just imagine driving up average worker wages so much so fast and driving down CEO pay so much so fast that you cut the ratio by two, in like three years. What a radical transformation in the economy that was. Joel (13m 26s): Was that simply a reaction to we're paying workers more so there's less money on the bottom line to pay the executives. Suresh (13m 34s): Yep. And there's taxes and salary caps and union. Like basically if you're producing for the war, you basically have to recognize a union and they're going to ask for higher wages. And so, like, I would say like the economy is kind of firing on all cylinders in a way to reduce inequality. And it's difficult to know exactly which margin is doing the most work. I think unions are doing a big chunk of it. Taxes are doing a big chunk of it. And then just the fact that like, you know, 6% of the prime age workforce is abroad. Chad (13m 60s): But this is a time of prosperity. Am I wrong here? Suresh (14m 3s): It's difficult to say that World War II was a time of prosperity because people are eating canned rations. And it's just like, you know, like a lot of the economy is basically in high pressure. Chad (14m 13s): Or after, after World War II is definitely a period of prosperity. So like the 30 years after World War II, or, you know, everyone knows that was kind of like the golden And the same rules we're applying? Am I correct? Suresh (14m 23s): Well, that's interesting. No, cause they, they actually took away the rules. Chad (14m 27s): OK. Suresh (14m 27s): A lot of the rules like actually get changed, but a lot of the effects persist. And I think that's really interesting. It's like even though tax rates go up, the tax rates stay high, until Kennedy, but you know, unions are no longer as protected under, after World War II as they were before to the Taft-Hartley and things like that. But they stick around and they don't like immediately disappear and that has important wage boosting forces and just the economy is growing really quickly. Like we're exporting a lot to Europe. There's a whole rash of like, and we're innovating. I mean, I should also tell you this, like, because of probably the cold war, the US had just spending a ton of money on like research and development on universities. Suresh (15m 9s): People are going to like GI bill is just sending a bunch of people into school. So just like a lot of innovation and like new technologies just showing up all over the place. And I think that's an under-appreciated part of the post-war boom, is that we just plowed a ton of money into the university system because we were competing with the Russians. Chad (15m 27s): Yeah. Well that was to an extent a social program. Suresh (15m 31s): Yeah. It wound up having lots of beneficial spillovers to the both workers and companies. Chad (15m 35s): Yeah. So we then fast forwarding into like the seventies and then the, obviously, you know, we have some dips there in the economy. Where's really the big sticking point where we find ourselves in a very different landscape today. Suresh (15m 53s): Let's get to Reagan. Yeah. So, well the federal minimum wage peaks in 1968. Okay. And then it like, has this like a jigsaw jigsaw pattern, you know, it's like, because it's not indexed to inflation, we should come back and talk to that. It's like interesting story about indexation actually. So it says not indexed to inflation. So it's like real value is just deteriorating all the time. And then it has to get like re-upped to like keep pace with inflation. It gets re-upped, but it's never like keeping pace with inflation and by activity, since 1968. So it gets increased. Generally the Democrats tend to tend to favor raising the minimum wage and when they control the government, they tend to raise the federal minimum wage. One important thing that does happen in the sixties though, is that a lot of these exemptions for various sectors for domestic work and agricultural labor are taken away. Suresh (16m 41s): And so a lot more like African-Americans get covered by the minimum wage. And there's a recent paper by that kind of shows how that actually had a really big effect on converging the black white wage gap was just like using the minimum wage to raise the wages at the bottom where a lot of black workers are. And that just like pulls up a whole bunch of workers that were like locked out of the kind of higher wage sectors that whites were dominated in. And just really, you know, as much as civil rights, it's like just covering black workers with the minimum wage, just did a made a huge dent in racial inequality without any job loss. Chad (17m 22s): Was that part of the civil rights legislation? Suresh (17m 24s): No, no. It's actually just totally a federal that just totally something about like it's a change in the federal labor standards act. Chad (17m 31s): It's amazing when you start paying people equitably, how you can lift them out of poverty. Suresh (17m 37s): One of the kind of really interesting things about the economics research on the sort of same time, is that partly because the federal minimum wage was deteriorating and States, and later cities, began passing their own minimum wages that were higher than the federal minimum wage. And so what this gave starting in the nineties was just, again, gave the economist a laboratory for we're like, okay, now we can finally kind of run something closer to like a controlled experiment where you can sort of see when, when a state raises the minimum wage, like there's a famous New Jersey - Pennsylvania study that looks like at fast food restaurants on two sides of the Susquehanna river. What happens when New Jersey raised its minimum wage and Pennsylvania didn't what happened to employment of those restaurants and found this found that actually implement, went up more in New Jersey, fast food restaurants, despite this increase in the minimum wage. Suresh (18m 28s): That's one of the big impetuses to this interest in economics and monopsony is that, that's one of the, kind of, monopsony this idea with the employers that wages and are trying to like set wages so that they can save on payroll while, tolerating a bit of turnover is one of the kind of explanations in economics that can generate that kind of, that kind of result and so we've got a whole lot of lists and then that just kept going. So we had like California increasing minimum wage. Then we have like federal changes in the minimum wage that then wound up only affecting some States and not other States. So we were just finally getting like a chunk of variation and workers that were affected by the minimum wage versus ones. Chad (19m 7s): That weren't quick question though. I mean, so during the Reagan times, we were pitched trickle down economics, which was supposed to feed more money and trickle down to, to everyone that obviously did not work. And during that timeframe, we really haven't raised the minimum wage to pass starvation wages. So I guess, you know, the big question around just the economic landscape of today, as we have more money going to CEOs, boards, then again, 3000 times that of, of a quote/unquote "essential worker." So it is the force of a minimum wage to $15 an hour, which is equal to about $30,000 a year, for God's sakes. Chad (19m 54s): Is that the only way that we can really get our citizens out of poverty because we're in bad state right now, especially after COVID Suresh (20m 3s): Yeah. So the real place, the minimum wage, like makes a dent, in inequality is between like the average worker and low-income workers. So really like crushes, it's like really a tool for like pulling up the bottom, not pulling down the top. Chad (20m 17s): Right. Suresh (20m 17s): So if you're real concerned of CEO pay, that's probably not gonna be fixed by like raising the minimum wage. You probably are going to need something like, because not necessarily like that many workers get covered by the minimum wage where it currently stands and so to really put a dent in the top incomes, you would need to like drive up wages for a lot of workers. Chad (20m 37s): Gotcha. Suresh (20m 38s): And the minimum wage is probably not the best tool for doing that. Chad (20m 40s): But it does take the bottom half, really the people that are in starvation slash not in living wage territory, it brings them up to at least where they're not starvation wages. Suresh (20m 51s): Yeah. And, and yeah, so for a long time, it used to be thought that like minimum wage workers were just like teenagers in middle-class homes. And, you know, a big chunk of them were in like the sixties and seventies, but increasingly, partly, you know, since we're, again, for all the reasons, you talked about. An increasing share of minimum wage workers are like older workers, workers with families, that, you know, are trying to like live on a minimum wage job. Chad (21m 18s): Right. Suresh (21m 19s): And it's really, really hard on the federal minimum wage. Nexxt PROMO (21m 27s): We'll get back to the interview in a minute. But first we have a question for Andy Katz, COO of Nexxt. Andy, if a company wants to actually come to Nexxt and utilize your database and target texting candidates, I mean, how does that actually work? Right? So we have this software to provided two different ways. If an employer has their own database of opted in text messages, whether it's through their ATS, we can text on their behalf, or we have over eight and a half million users that have opted into our text messaging at this point. So we can use our own database. We could dissect it by obviously by geography, by function, any which way some and sometimes we'll even parse the resumes of the opted in people to target certifications. Nexxt PROMO (22m 11s): So we really can dive really deep if they want to hone in on, you know, just give me the best hundred candidates that I want to text message with and have a conversation back and forth with, versus going and saying, I need 30,000 retail people across the country. And that's more of a yes, no text messaging back and apply. Apply for more information, go to hiring.nexxt.com. Remember that's next with the double X, not the triple X. hiring.nexxt.com. Suresh (22m 49s): In fact, there's a paper that sort of shows that like that when you raise the federal minimum wage, you actually get workers leaving, like they use less food stamps, they use less of the earned income tax credit. So you kind of get like a budget kick-back to the government from raising the minimum wage because you lower a dependence on the social safety net. Joel (23m 8s): So I was going to say historically, in times of raising the minimum wage or introducing a minimum wage, did the economy ever tank because of that, because I think that's a common argument against raising the minimum wage is that unemployment is going to rise, companies that go out of business. Did any of that happen on a grand scale when, when these policies were introduced? Suresh (23m 26s): No. Well, I mean like, you know, one of the cleanest experiments we have is actually the effect of the federal minimum wage in 1938. And what you do see is like, you know, the minimum wage did have a big effect in the U S South. And it did looks like it killed a lot of jobs, but it's not clear that it actually like raised unemployment. Like those jobs have actually just reappeared at the new minimum wage. And so like, you know, we didn't see like a giant crisis of black unemployment in the South with the increase in the minimum wage there, which was hitting low wage workers, low wage black and white workers. So, I mean, partly it's like also, would we pass a minimum wage? If it was like anywhere in the realm of like, actually going to crater the economy, like, if it was so obvious that it was going to like destroy the economy wouldn't, kind of, people just understand that. Suresh (24m 14s): Yes. So the fact that it's not that we have a debate and an argument around it, suggests that it's not obvious that it destroys the economy. Chad (24m 23s): Well, it feels like, it feels like these are conversations that are engineered by corporate America to try to scare the shit out of everybody. Overall, it's not going to crater the economy. It's actually going to raise people out of poverty. I guess, I don't understand why other than sheer greed, we're not looking at, what it costs to live in cities and starting to set living wages for everyone across the nation. Why can't we be more transparent? I don't understand from an economic standpoint and from a political standpoint, it seems like it makes sense, especially to be able to serve your constituents. Suresh (25m 3s): Well, yeah, so the minimum wage is hugely popular with voters. I mean, Florida said, you know, goes for Trump and is completely red and yet passed the $15 minimum wage, in the last election. Chad (25m 14s): Good point. Suresh (25m 14s): So like, you know, Republicans, even Republicans love minimum wages. And I think it's, you know, actually it's really interesting, like in the UK, the Tories have really been big proponents of minimum wage increases. So they just kind of owned it as like a policy that they're into. And so I think it's actually not obviously, remember this thing about Amazon being in favor of raising minimum wage, Walmart, and Target, and a bunch of other companies actually have their own internal voluntary minimum wages where they just don't, their starting wages are uniform across the country. Walmart starting wage is like 11 bucks everywhere from Mississippi to Seattle. Suresh (25m 54s): And so I think it's more ideology than it is greed, because there are like businesses that like the minimum wage is like not a big deal. And I think it's more that there's just this like hard libertarian and a small business, small business probably does get hurt by the minimum wage. Joel (26m 11s): Well, and the counter argument would be if it's so popular, why hasn't it been done on a federal level in over a decade? And to me, is it a market situation where States are competing for workers or city? I think Seattle recently in the last five years or so, increased it to a pretty, a nice wage. Are cities competing for workers? Does, how much does that come into play? Suresh (26m 35s): I don't think so. I think, I don't think cities are like, one thing you see is that when you have like cities that sit across the state borders from each other, and one state raises the minimum wage, you see wages go up in that, you know, on one side of the border, but they stay up like relative to the other side of the border for like five years after, so it's like there's maybe four years after. Like, so there's like not a sense in which, you know, even to places that are right next to each other, when wages go up in the other place, the other city across the way feels the need to raise its wages to compete. So that, I just don't think that happens very much. Joel (27m 10s): And people don't move across the border to work in the other state. Suresh (27m 14s): And firms don't like reopen their businesses at the other side, you know, they don't just change their mailing address or something. So, I think it's interesting that I don't think cities are competing for workers. I think it's much more like, it's much more of a reflection of what's active, much more of the economic growth in America is happening in cities. And so. Joel (27m 35s): And Florida. Suresh (27m 37s): And so like housing prices are going up and the cost of living is going up disproportionately tasks for low wage workers in cities and a responsive cities to do that is to raise wages. Chad (27m 50s): The last question for me,Suresh, and this is, I think more of an opinion. I don't know. Maybe hopefully you've got some evidence based to answer this, that'd be awesome. But Kroger recently closed four locations because they were pretty much forced to pay their essential workers, $4 more per hour. And so Kroger, once again, they're our whipping boy for now. Their CEO makes, I think anywhere from $12 to $14 million a year, and the organization is like over $120 billion organization. How does a minimum wage in boosting the minimum wage, get organizations like that to start being more fiscally responsible for their employees at the bottom, as much as they are to the ones at the top? Suresh (28m 43s): Well, I mean, it doesn't convince them, it forces them. Chad (28m 46s): Is that what we need to do though? We need to force them to do the right thing. Suresh (28m 49s): For some of them yes. For others no. And that's the interesting thing is that, you know, in the labor market, there's like lots of room for different companies to pursue different priorities, around their workers. So, you know, you can have companies like Costco and Walmart kind of existing at the same time. And so like if Kroger, I think Kroger is like also responding to like prop 22 that basically, you know, I think they're basically like firing all their full-time employees and hiring them all back at like Door Dash. Yeah. Chad (29m 20s): Instacart. Yeah. Some of their people they're actually, they're using Instacart for some of those in California. Suresh (29m 26s): Yeah. So I think, that's not like the Kroger thing is not so much a minimum wage problem, I think it's much more of a reclassification problem, that their incentives to like cut their workforce in response to like a hazard pay requirement was partly driven by the opportunity to basically substitute gig workers with that you don't have to pay any benefits on. Chad (29m 48s): Gaming the system. Suresh (29m 49s): Yeah. And so that's why I was like kind of important for the kinds of laws that platforms are responsible for unemployment insurance and health benefits and all of the normal stuff that comes along with the job for their platform workers. Joel (30m 4s): Good luck with that. Suresh (30m 5s): I mean, California did do it. And then the tech companies ran this like prop 22 campaign to basically get it overturned. Chad (30m 10s): Spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Suresh (30m 12s): Yeah. $200 million. Joel (30m 14s): Alright Suresh, I'm gonna, I have so many questions, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna limit it to this last one. So I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you three issues and you rank them in terms of like the most impact on employment and wages. Okay. You're ready? Suresh (30m 29s): Yup. Joel (30m 29s): Number one is globalism, with the pandemic, this is being, you know, on hyper-speed, right. Like if I can work in San Francisco, I can work in Denver. Ultimately though, if companies realize that you can put a job in Denver, you can also put it in Delhi and wages will sort of balance out effectively. Number two is automation, right? So as companies have the resources to automate much of this stuff, whether it be with robotics or software, that's obviously going to impact the number of people working although you get, in contrast, you get people saying, there'll be more opportunities built with automation and robotics so that actually helps out with wages and employment. Joel (31m 10s): And the third thing is the gig economy. So we've touched on it a little bit, but, you know, as companies realize, well, okay, to game the system, somebody won't be an employee. If I'm having them as contract workers to come in and serve food or cook, or, you know, wash clothes for that, you know, time that they're still a part-time worker. And I'll just have more workers on the gig economy and won't have to pay a full-time wages or wages that are fair or minimum wage. So we have globalism, we have automation, we have the gig economy, and I'm asking you to just rate those biggest to least impact on wages. Suresh (31m 48s): Come on. I'm like, come on, give me, give me climate change. Give me demographic change. As like, as, as, as 4 (31m 56s): Is it too soft ball of a question? I thought it was a good question. Suresh (31m 60s): It just kind of like, I mean, they're like. Chad (32m 1s): What's your top three Suresh? Suresh (32m 3s): So my top three is like, I mean, climate change, I think is just gonna, yeah, just look at Texas, we're just going to get stuff like that happening all the time and what do we do? And that's just going to like move the labor market because we're going to need jobs to adapt to this stuff. So it's like, you know, Green New Deal stuff, even if you don't like that term, it's going to be like, we're going to need a lot of like construction workers. Joel (32m 29s): Okay. Loosely globalism. Chad (32m 31s): Quit trying to fit in, in a box. Let the man answer the question. Joel (32m 33s): Well he's going outside the box to answer my question. Suresh (32m 35s): I am going outside the box because like you put, you put these like three things that I don't even think are like necessarily the most important. They're like kind of a little bit of a grab bag of things that are not necessarily the biggest thing. So if you have to thing, for example, in response to the automation point, I just say like the aging of the American population so that we simultaneously need more nurses aides, more people in nursing homes, more healthcare aides, that like the supply of people that we need to take care of other people, which cannot be outsourced and cannot be remote worked. That's actually just going to go up. Suresh (33m 15s): And that's like, the future of work is not like a robot. It's like a CNA. And so I think that's like the big, a big offsetting thing against the years of robotics is just the caring labor part of the economy is just gonna become larger and larger. Joel (33m 31s): And the gig economy doesn't keep you up at night either. Suresh (33m 34s): It doesn't keep me up at night. It's a symptom of like a bunch of other stuff. That's something that we could fix with policy if we want it to. Joel (33m 40s): So what I'm hearing is the world is falling apart so we'll continue to rebuild it. And people are dying and getting sick and old so we'll need people to take care of them. And don't worry about the gig economy. Is that what I'm hearing? Yep. So it's the end of the world, as we know it, and Suresh feels fine everybody. Chad (33m 57s): And Suresh feels fine. Big applause. Well Suresh, Hey dude, we appreciate, we don't get enough time with you. Let's just say that. But we appreciate you taking the time coming back on the pod. We'll definitely have you back loved the discussion. If somebody wants to follow you, find out more about you, maybe you don't want stalkers on social. I don't know. Joel (34m 18s): Wants to attend Columbia? Chad (34m 20s): Who wants to attend, yeah, to attend one of your classes, where would they actually find you? If you, want them to find you? Suresh (34m 25s): I am on Twitter at, at S A I D U N L for the analysis for Newfoundland. Joel (34m 32s): That's a whole other podcast, Chad. Chad (34m 35s): Another one in the books. Love it. Joel (34m 36s): We out. Chad (34m 38s): We out. OUTRO (34m 37s): This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast, subscribe on iTunes, Google play or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show and be sure to check out our sponsors because they make it all possible. For more visit Chadandcheese.com. Oh yeah. You're welcome.

The "skills gap" is a lie and we've all been duped. Well, everyone with the exception of Suresh Naidu. Suresh is a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Columbia University as well as a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, for starters. Needless to say, this interview is heady so prepare to take notes as we talk deep workforce economics, monopsony, market power, unions, and believe it or not the Company Town still exists. Na na na na na... Our podcast is smarter than yours! Seriously, this genius power is powered by the crazy amazing parsing and matching of Sovren . Sovren, software so human you'll want to take it to dinner. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire. Sovren (0s): You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser , but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine ? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored . And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable , completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner . INTRO (1m 1s): Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel (1m 23s): Ivy league in the house. What's up peeps? Chad (1m 28s): I don't think they do that. I don't think they do. Joel (1m 32s): He's not Marxist. He's just Canadian. Chad (1m 35s): Or both, or both. That's right. All right, kids. We have Suresh Naidu in the house today. He holds a Bachelor's of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, a Master's of Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a PHD in Economics from a little University of California called Berkeley. He's a professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, as well as a fellow at, I'm losing my breath here, man, Jesus, at Roosevelt Institute, external faculty at Santa Fe Institute and a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Joel (2m 20s): And right about now, he feels like he's been punked because he was on the wrong show. Suresh Naidu (2m 23s): Yeah. Chad (2m 23s): We don't these, we don't give these types of intros, but we don't. We talk about economics in the, obviously the vein of workforce, but we don't have economic professors on very often, but quick story. I was, I got up one Saturday morning and I did my normal routine. I was listening to one of my favorite podcast, Pitchfork Economics, and the, it was called the powerlessness of forced labor. And there was this really cool concept of a forced labor. Not really cool, but it was something that I really hadn't heard before. And this Professor Naidu was on talking about it. Chad (3m 4s): So I thought, man, this is pretty awesome. I went down to the family room, turned on Netflix, and I wanted to watch this documentary for a few weeks called Capitol. And the next thing you know, about five minutes in there, you are looking at me square in the face. So you should probably add Netflix and podcast star onto that bio. Joel (3m 24s): And then he FaceTimes me like he he's a four year old who just saw Santa Claus. Chad is still excited for this interview right now. I hope I hope you're up to it. Suresh Naidu (3m 35s): Oh, I hope I can fulfill expectations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are going to do a lot of post-processing so I know I'll sound good. Joel (3m 43s): What did we miss about you, Chad rattled off your degrees and all, you know, all your little labels, but what do we need to know? Suresh Naidu (3m 50s): I, then I, then I'm from Newfoundland. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm substantially less than that list of titles, but yeah, actually I, a good way to like spring board into this is actually like how I got into economics was actually like, I worked, I was a math major and I wound up spending a summer working on a vegetable farm in Northern Ontario with all these guests, migrant workers. I remember one of the things that like really sort of stuck with me there, was one guy he liked cracked his wrist while cutting lettuce, but he didn't report it because he knew that if he sort of said, I've got a problem with my wrist, he'd get sent back to Mexico and wouldn't get reinvited next year. Suresh Naidu (4m 31s): And, you know, for him, a guy with a bachelor's degree, actually in Mexico, but for him like working, like doing lettuce cutting in Northern Ontario was a more lucrative gig than an office job in Mexico. That just stayed with me. And I think it was one of the things that motivated me into becoming an economist and particularly like interested in labor and development and these issues. Chad (4m 51s): So you've, you've performed a ton of research around a term called monopsony. Now we've heard the monopolies before, but, but monopsony, isn't something that rolls off the tongue. Well, first and foremost, but can you tell us what that term means and how that actually affects really wages the workforce, the economy overall? Suresh Naidu (5m 11s): Basically, if monopoly's is basically when a company has, is not facing so much competition, so that it's able to raise the price, it loses a few customers that aren't willing to pay that price, but it makes more profits off of those that it keeps. You know, that's why monopoly's has an incentive to raise prices is because they can and because they make additional profits. So monopsony is basically that's, that's what a monopoly is selling a good I'm an abstinence is a buyer of a good, and they, again, face sort of limited competition from other buyers of the good. And so that means they have an incentive to pay a lower price or wage. They're not going to be able to keep as many workers as they might have. So you're going to see higher quits. You're going to see it takes a little bit longer time to fill a vacancy, but you're making profits off of all the ones that stay with you, so that it's worth it. Suresh Naidu (5m 59s): And so it used to be thought that like monopsony was just a property of these like company towns, like Butte, Montana, where you have like a copper mine, and basically all the workers have to work for the copper mine or nothing else. And it was only thought that monopsony was a property of the sort of weird one shop town. But I think basically starting in the late nineties and sort of accumulating momentum came this idea that actually we should just think of like the laissez fair labor market as being characterized by having some degree of market power. Because from the point of view of a worker, you know, finding a job, as good as a job that you got is actually not super easy. You've got to both spend some time searching jobs, are complicated. Suresh Naidu (6m 44s): They're like your house, there are these what we call quote unquote, "high dimensional". There's like lots of characteristics about them that matter for whether or not you like it or not. It's like, do you get along with your boss, you go along with your coworkers, does it work with your childcare, with the commute? All of these things matter. And so that means the jobs that perfectly substitute for each other, a few and far between. And so that means that every employer is facing this kind of, has a degree of this monopsony power that they're able to like lower the wage a bit. Some people quit, but a lot of people stay. And so they're willing to tolerate the additional turnover, in exchange for the higher profits they make off of every worker. Chad (7m 23s): But you know, let's jump into that real quick. So, you know, in reading some of your, your writings, one of the things that really hit me hard because we were talking about the company town and we thought those were all pretty much gone by now, that the days of the coal mines and a town rising up behind the coal mines. But, you know, then I started to think about nursing. So the median wage for a nurse is about $68,000. And given what we know about the labor markets and the power of medical institutions, the true competitive wage for a nurse should be about $90,000 to $200,000, depending on the experience level. Chad (8m 2s): However, because most areas have few hospitals, they can suppress nurses wages without the nurses having an opportunity to move anywhere outside an actual medical system, or even teaching. We have the Bartholomew County Consolidated School Corporation here, which pretty much is all of the schools. So where is a teacher to go? Is that what we're talking about? What we're talking about, suppressing wages and more of a company town mentality. Joel (8m 33s): And by the way, in recruiting, that's what we cover. We hear a lot about, we can't find enough nurses. We can't find enough teachers. So logic would tell you that they should be higher priced because they are so hard to find. No? Suresh Naidu (8m 45s): Yep. And that's partly why this looks like as it relates to what we're going to talk about later, but the myth of the skills gap, it's like whenever somebody's complaining about shortages, it's like, have you tried raising the wage? And it's very rarely floated as a solution to shortages, is raised the wages. you have to just think about it from the perspective of the employer. They're like, you know, we're willing to tolerate this, this shortages because we're making profits off all the existing workers. And if we want it to bring in more talent, we'd have to raise the wage. And that would entail raising wages for all the other workers. And that would be costly. Joel (9m 20s): Casue we do know that like three out of four nurse nursing degreed professionals don't actually practice nursing. And it might be the same with teachers. I don't know. Suresh Naidu (9m 29s): I think there's a lot, I mean, it's interesting, right? Both nursing and teaching are like sectors that are, that were historically quite female. And it used to be the case, that actually the theory of monopsony was, was sort of invented and determined coined by this famous female economists of the 20th century, John Robinson. And one of the original applications of it was this idea of explaining the gender gap. Because the, I, you know, the norm was always that men would move their whole family's for their jobs, but women would not move locations for their jobs and employers know that. And so they're able to chisel away at women's wages, not because they're sexist, but because they know that women are just less likely to leave in response to a low wage. Suresh Naidu (10m 13s): And so that was kind of an original motivation for monopsony was this like way to explain gender gaps. And that's why you sort of see it and then sort of compound that with these occupations, like nursing and teachers, where the credentialing is often like, it's in a very limited set of employers. And so when you don't have a union kind of offsetting the power of employers, what you'll get is that employers are quite willing and that employer, it could be a government that's very interested in skipping on its budget to keep cut costs, tolerate higher turnover, tolerate fewer recruits, but be saving money on wages, their incentives to do that are more, the less options those workers have. Chad (10m 58s): So let's dig into that because, that's interesting to say that, look, we can have fewer workers, which means less, the less we have to pay out in wages, but we can have not as high as production, but even just enough production to increase the profit margins. Is that what I'm hearing? Suresh Naidu (11m 18s): Exactly. So this is like one of the things about monopsony is that it tells you where there's a wedge between profits and production. So like things like reducing monopsony power can increase, you know, your willingness to hire, it will increase your output and your sales, but it might cost you in profits because that comes at the expense of like additional wages, a higher payroll, et cetera. And so companies might not want to be employing all the workers that they can because they want to make sure that payroll isn't exploding. And so they don't necessarily try to maximize revenue, total revenue. They try to maximize revenue per worker understanding that there's like a cost of hiring additional workers. Chad (11m 59s): So the theory of wage growth is interesting because in capitalism, the theory is wage growth is flat because of rising competition from low paid workers in foreign countries, aka globalization and automation. How does that jive with what's actually happening? Suresh Naidu (12m 15s): Yeah. So I think they're complimentary, it doesn't have to be one, one or the other, for example, like one of the things that, and let me just kind of give the, the, the general story is that a lot of the ways in which simultaneously, when you have what we call in economics, like a labor demand shock, a negative labor demand, shock, where like, people don't want to, like employers just don't need that many workers. There's a simultaneous thing that's happening, which is that often like a bunch of businesses are going under. And so that's raising say concentration in that labor market. So you can imagine places that got hit by NAFTA, by Chinese manufacturing, though, it's not just that, like employers didn't want their workers. It's also that those employers that were left standing now had additional market power. Suresh Naidu (12m 58s): And so there's two, there's two things happening. It's both that employers are like, you know, I don't have the volume of sales needed to hire all of you, sorry, but it's also the case that because a whole bunch of employers have like exited from the labor market. There's now like each, though, the employers still standing have like a higher degree of market power. Joel (13m 17s): Suresh you mention labor unions. And I've always been surprised, you know, Chad and I grew up in the seventies and I remember, you know, stories from my grandfather about Jimmy Hoffa and Cesar Chavez and things like that. And unions seem like they're just not around anymore. And I'm always surprised as to why, why don't all the Amazon workers get together and improve their position in life. And it doesn't happen. And I'm curious your take on why, why are unions so weak? Why are they not, you know, growing what's going on that is making them so stagnant and neutral in this whole equation. Suresh Naidu (13m 56s): I've done a bunch of work on unions. So let me give you some cross-country of it. So it's not the case that unionization has declined to the same extent everywhere. You actually have the sort of subset of countries in, in Western Europe that are called like Ghent system countries. So the Ghent system was basically a system that administered unemployment benefits through labor unions. So this meant that when the country, all countries were going through this recession in the seventies and eighties, but in the countries with a Ghent system, union decline didn't happen at all, because everyone's had to stay with the union in order to get there in order to get their UI. But in the non-Ghent system countries, union density got hammered because those jobs just went away. Suresh Naidu (14m 37s): And if they ever came back, they were not coming back as union jobs. And that's a little bit like symptomatic of like the particular strange, like legal architecture of unions in the U S kind of inheriting from the 1930s and forties, where we kind of have a model of unionization that isn't based on unionizing, a whole sector or whole industry instead like unions in the U S kind of go like establishment by establishment. Like you run an election, you win union recognition at a given establishment, and then you have to do it again. And so this makes it really hard for, I think, service sector employers in particular, to get unionized, because like, if you only unionized one establishment in the service sector and you drive up costs, it's very easy for new competitors to come in and take away and at lower cost and like take away your business. Suresh Naidu (15m 30s): And so you kinda need like a collective bargaining model that lets you sort of cover a whole bunch of employers at once. So that new employers are like, can't compete on lower wages. They have to pay the same wage standard and then force them to compete on like better products and other costs, but not compete on lower wages. Chad (15m 50s): But one thing, Suresh. And this is the thing that I think has been defunked by the new Rand research, Rand corporation research, is that we're always talking about, well, if you pay, if you pay workers more than you have to raise the product prices and that is turned out to be utter bullshit. And the reason being is the 1% has been siphoning wages from the lower 90%. So the money is there. It's not about giving the money to the 90% that's not there. It's about the 1% who's been taking it all in the first place. So there's this huge disparity in wages and the wage gap has grown so much and it, it seems like it's happened all around the ability to break up the unions and not to ensure that individuals are actually getting living wages. Chad (16m 41s): I mean, the wages have been stagnant since, since, I mean what the '70s? Suresh Naidu (16m 45s): '73. Yeah. So, so my academic hat comes on and I'm just like, well, it's more complicated. Like I, you know, I'm really have to like, feel like I have to disabuse of my students. A lot of my students have less sort of like ideas, like, Oh, there's this big conspiracy of the 1% to like take money from everybody else. And it kind of, as, as an economist, I'm like, I'm really skeptical of strategic stories like this because man, most people are incompetent at everything. And so yeah, if it was a conspiracy remarkably poorly executed. So I, and I think it's more that there was this, like, you know, there was definitely a reconfiguration of political power by the right and by business, but in some ways it actually wound up biting you in the ass some ways. Suresh Naidu (17m 35s): And like, so for example, like a lot of the energy behind sort of Reagan, was kind of coming from the national association of manufacturers and then they get hammered by globalization. So it's like they wanted this thing. And then they kind of, you know, it winds up coming back and hurting them. And so I think it's not, and that's just an example of like, there's lots of places where the 1%, for example, people like, you know, they include, they're mostly, they're mostly CEOs. Let's be clear that, but there's ways in which like the they're also like doctors and like the highest paid like a good chunk of the 1% is really high-end doctors that are catering to, you know, say the upper middle class and charging an enormous amount of money, money to both those patients and also Medicare & Medicaid or, and particularly Medicare and sort of pocketing that. Suresh Naidu (18m 32s): And so there's, there's so many interesting and complicated mechanisms by which the 1% has pulled away from everyone else that I almost think like we lose how it, how we don't keep sight on the tools it would take to fix inequality if We just kind of pose it as like a 1% taking everything. We need to kind of like adjust so many and we can do it, I think it's like, but we, we need to have like specific tools for adjusting the pulling away of the 1%. And I can go through this, like taxes, it'll be, anti-trust, there'll be a Medicare for all, you know, all these things and as well, like pushing up wages at the bottom. Chad (19m 9s): Well, unions. Suresh Naidu (19m 10s): And unions. Yeah. Unions are the big, our big tool. Chad (19m 12s): Yeah! Suresh Naidu (19m 13s): And, you know, if there's one thing I hope of the, you know, the one time the U S really put a dent in inequality was in this period between 1935 and 1947, where like union density went from like, you know, something like seven to 10% to like 30, 20 to 25 to 30%. And it goes up in very particular States. It goes up in like Michigan, Connecticut, New York, California. And those are exactly the States that inequality falls in. This is like a recent paper, I finished where we basically, you know, advertise it, it's that economist couldn't really look at unions before 1973, because the census Bureau never asked it. So what we did in this paper is we found old Gallup polls. Suresh Naidu (19m 57s): So it turns out Gallup was always asking, are you a union member? In all of it's poll's back to 1936. So you could put all these Gallup surveys together and actually measure, who is in a union all the way back to like 1936. And you can kind of show like, you know, that people that are joining unions in the thirties and forties are much lower education than non-union members. They're much more likely to be black than non-union members. And so like that pressure of increasing union density for low wage workers, just did a huge lift in kind of creating this 1950s and 1960s period of relative equality. Joel (20m 37s): And I'm curious, CRS your take on, we talk about the gig economy quite a bit, and logic would say, Hey, if there are more gigs available, more opportunities to make more money, more competition, to pay people more. So, you know, my driving for Lyft or my driving for Uber while I get paid more here so then my wages go up. We're seeing, you know, cases out in California where they want to treat gig workers as employees. So that throws a whole different mix into what's going on. Are you pro gig economy, anti how does this play into the whole equality? Suresh Naidu (21m 10s): Yeah, so, I mean, we should recognize that it's like, a lot of these platforms are not, you know, it's like they take something off the tail, right? So there's like a 20% like claw on top of every transaction and the gig economy, that's going to the platform. And we should ask, like, how did they pick that number? And they picked that number because they are the sole platform providing that service of matching. And so that gives them a fair amount of market power, Vis-à-vis, both like say the drivers and the customers. And you can kind of see this by looking at it. This is like strange, but like ride Austin is like a ride sharing company that was like a nonprofit that basically just charged like a fixed a dollar per ride. Suresh Naidu (21m 51s): That is what they took. Yeah. And so it's interesting that that could work pretty well, and it didn't necessarily require, you know, and could offer a pretty good deal for customers without requiring taking so much off the top. I am suspicious of platforms that sort of, advertise themselves as like, we're just an algorithm, because if you are just an algorithm then nothing, then why you're taking this 20% off the top of why not just like, let anybody enter with their own algorithm. Joel (22m 22s): Can anybody? I mean, you're basically saying that Lyft and Uber are racket. Suresh Naidu (22m 26s): If they were just the software company, it would be very easy to like it, you know, to open source their software. And so they're trying to claim that they're like just a software company, but in fact, they're actually employing drivers and you can kind of see it and, you know, it's coming up in this prop 22, you can see it in just the descriptions of the tasks of what they ask from drivers. If you like saw that in any employment contract, you would think that's an employment contract, but because it's like mediated through the app, Uber kind of gets to put itself at arms length and say, no, we're like just, you know, we're just a platform. Joel (23m 0s): So the other defense on that I'm hearing is basically franchising drivers. And there's a great Planet Money. I don't know, if you listen to that podcast or not, where they actually interview a truck driver. And she goes through the whole education of being a truck driver and then at the end, they say, do you want to be an employee? Or do you want to sort of be a franchise and have your own truck? And they sort of steer her into the franchise model. Of course, she wakes up and says, I'm getting more bills from the company. I'm in debt. And eventually she just, she drove the truck back to where she got it and left the keys in the car and left. Is that kind of where the gig economy is going? Suresh Naidu (23m 40s): I think so. I think that is a good, I mean, there's a good book called the, the Secret Life of Groceries that sort also talks about the trucking industry is just kind of this, this hot mess of putting people into these debt contracts and says you're an independent contractor and then forces them to bear all of the risks of the job. You kind of see it with around the response to COVID. I mean, in talking to people, you sort of see like people that were actually employees could get on UI much more easily had employers that help them with UI while the people that were on like franchising models were just like, you know, just nothing and even had a hard time getting UI. Suresh Naidu (24m 20s): And so we're lucky that they actually like during the pandemic unemployment assistance, like did cover gig workers, but note that no platform paid into payroll paid any payroll taxes to pay into that. So like if you are going to have your workers have the benefits of unemployment insurance, for example, then you gotta be paying the payroll tax. Chad (24m 45s): So back to monopsony real quick. I mean, because you talk about a monopsony tax where individuals are actually getting paid lower wages and the company keeps the, let's just say, it's pre-taxed, they just keep it. The individual still gets taxed, but, and they're getting paid the lower wages that company doesn't have to, obviously, if you're an Amazon, you're not paying taxes. So we start to see that the eroding of infrastructure of public schools, of all this that we have that government pays for, because monopsonies happening. Can you explain that a little bit better? Suresh Naidu (25m 24s): A bit of background there. So one is that I don't know and I think we don't know as whether or not monopsony itself has increased over time. I think there's like, but I think what has happened is that a lot of the countervailing institutions that restrained monopsony. Think unions, but also think things like internal labor markets, the fact that you used to have, like your janitors in-house and now you've outsourced them. You know, I think they're, you know, other things about like employers being much more willing to like differentiate wages between high skilled and low-skilled workers. A bunch of these other things have happened that made the monopsony power that was in the background now becomes more used. Suresh Naidu (26m 8s): And so it might be before, you know, there was, you always had some monopsony power, but you weren't really quite able to use it, or you didn't have the incentives to use it. But then as these other countervailing forces have diminished, now you're kind of able to see, now monopsony is kind of the thing that's operating in a way that it wasn't before. And so let me give you an example of that is now that you can employ a lot more of your, you can surveil your workers a lot better. So it used to be like in order to keep your workers from stealing from you, for example, let's imagine that you pay them a higher wage so that if they quit, if you know, so that if you caught them shirking or stealing, you would just fire them. Suresh Naidu (26m 50s): And the fear of being fired would be enough to like deter employer slack, workers slacking off. But then as you get better at surveillance and you put in more electronic cameras in your shop and just monitor your workers on closed circuit television all the time, you don't need to pay them that higher wage in order to make sure that when you catch them, they're like afraid of being fired. You can now just catch them, much more easily. And so that means that you don't, you know, now you don't pay that what we call that an efficiency wage. You don't pay that anymore. So now you're much more just worried about their propensity to quit or leave in response to like your wage. And so now monospony becomes the binding constraint, as we say, in economics. Joel (27m 35s): Well, Suresh, we know you're a busy guy. We greatly appreciate your time. We need to have you come back on because I got about 50 questions that have gone unanswered. So if you can come back sometime, we'd certainly love it. But for those, for those listeners out there who want to know, want to know more about you and your research, where would you send them? Suresh Naidu (27m 55s): You can go to my website, which is santafe.edu/snaidu/, or you can find me on Twitter. It says probably a better place to get into Joel (28m 6s): Yeah. For our, for our audience. That one's easier. Suresh. We appreciate it, man. And Chad, We out. Suresh Naidu (28m 13s): Thank you so much. Chad (28m 14s): We out. OUTRO (28m 14s): Thank you for listen to podcasts with Chad and Cheese. Brilliant! They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.

Gas, grass, or ass—nobody listens for free. The boys are back with: Workday gobbling up Paradox (don’t call it a chatbot, Karen) Employ’s latest round of CEO musical chairs (spoiler: Cox is out, Dara’s in) Dayforce going private with Toma Bravo (because nothing says innovation like private equity “restructuring”) Zuck’s AI babysitters gone wild (romantic convos with kids, medical advice straight from a fever dream, what could possibly go wrong?) Plus: Cracker Barrel logos, fantasy football team names that suck, and Travis Kelce proving you can literally  marry more money in five minutes than you can earn in a lifetime. 1,500 episodes in, and somehow the world’s even dumber than when we started. Strap in. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.03) Gas, grass or ass. No one listens for free. Hi kids. It's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel wannabe dictator cheeseman. The Chad (00:44.357) This is Chad, biscuits and gravy so long. Joel Cheesman (00:47.766) And on this episode, Paradox sells, Employee CEO bails, and Zuck should just go straight to hell. Let's do this. The Chad (01:00.923) Oh shit. So, yeah, 1,500 episodes. That's what's up. I mean, we're past that now and usually we don't talk about how many episodes we do, but I saw that. went into, yeah, yeah. I went into our hosting platform and I just noticed like the amount of, and I'm like, shit, we just hit 1,500. So why not? Let's go ahead and celebrate that, especially listeners wise because. Joel Cheesman (01:01.91) What's up, dude? Joel Cheesman (01:13.1) like Fight Club. The Chad (01:27.771) They're the ones that make this shit happen. So thanks listeners for giving us to 1500. Good luck on the next 1500. Joel Cheesman (01:33.454) Thanks listeners. I feel like we should actually be apologizing to the listeners for 1500 episodes, especially, especially you've been with us all those 1500 episodes. Shock shockingly, we haven't achieved world peace or cured cancer after 1500 episodes. Pretty, pretty crazy. In fact, the world may be even crazier than when we started. Trump is still in office somehow from when we first started, but are you getting, how do you feel in Europe? The Chad (01:40.235) Hahaha The Chad (01:44.614) They're masochists. They love this shit. The Chad (01:49.531) Damn it. The Chad (01:57.546) Yes. Joel Cheesman (02:02.05) Are you guys similarly anxious and is the news as dire as it is over here as crazy? The Chad (02:08.475) I don't know because I'm not there, but I but but I do know that everybody wants to know what I think because I'm an American. Right. And and it's fairly simple. I think it's fucked up. Why do you think I'm here? Right. Kind of kind of the part. But yeah, I mean, crazy shit. mean, first off, what the actual fuck is going on with Cracker Barrel? I mean, you've got the president of the United States who's weighing in. Joel Cheesman (02:10.331) huh. Joel Cheesman (02:27.874) Yeah, let's. The Chad (02:36.569) on a fucking logo. I mean, what's the big deal? It sounds like it's big news. I really don't know much about it. It just seemed like a what the actual fuck moment to me. Joel Cheesman (02:36.765) huh. Joel Cheesman (02:42.2) Yeah, the... Yeah, the therapist is in. We have by far the most interventionist president with corporate affairs that we've probably ever had. Well, aside from the golden whatever vote with Nippon Steel, you've got taken 10 % of Intel. By the way, Trump tweeted out or truth out, The Chad (02:47.808) Hahaha! The Chad (02:57.753) Logos? Joel Cheesman (03:12.078) That Intel CEO should be fired. And then a week later he's got, you know, the government has 10 % of the company. Like you think that doesn't have any sort of connection. Uh, so, so is Trump going to start like threatening CEOs and then getting a piece of the company, uh, in return? It's just, it's. It's it's fascism. I think it's Benito Mussolini, uh, territory, but let's get back to, Cracker Barrel, which, which I know you frequent all the time, Chad, uh, the biscuits and gravy, which. The Chad (03:21.039) Mm-hmm. The Chad (03:35.355) Yeah. The Chad (03:39.323) It's been a while. It's been a while. Joel Cheesman (03:41.824) In your, in your current state of slight hangover probably sounds pretty good right now, actually. Yeah. logos are a funny thing. sometimes people have emotional connections to logos. you know, if Nike got rid of the swoosh tomorrow or turned it into, I don't know, an Apple Jack, would you, would you be mad? Clearly there's an emotional connection that people have with Cracker Barrel as, as well as I eat. haven't been to Cracker Barrel in like 10 plus years. The Chad (03:45.237) it sounds delicious, yes. The Chad (04:11.693) yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:11.734) So I feel like I'm probably not the demographic. I feel like they probably want to look younger and hipper because their audience or demographic is largely fading from this earth. So I get the business sense of it. are younger. I mean, but to turn into Panera, I don't know if that was the way to go. I probably would have found some way graphically to keep the barrel. The Chad (04:20.367) Yeah, makes sense. Joel Cheesman (04:38.08) or uncle Herschel, I think that's his name, uncle Herschel, something that would at least connect people to the, to the original one. but Trump, a bad logo is a bad logo. Yeah. I mean, the, thing is these companies pay so much money to rebrand. They didn't just rebrand the logo. All their restaurants are getting a makeover. They're all, they're all turning into Chipotle basically. so The Chad (04:44.379) Yeah. A bad logo is a bad logo. Who gives a fuck? The Chad (04:56.421) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:06.862) They made a decision, the people spoke and they back down. Um, but I don't know if it's going to change their, uh, their lot in life. It's still a shitty, it's still kind of a slowing business. It's not growing. Um, they've they're in every place they can possibly be there at every exit that they could possibly be in. Unless they turn into McDonald's. So I. A lot of these restaurants are going to fade like the Outbacks, the Applebee's, they're all, they're all racing to the bottom. The Chad (05:39.963) Don't get rid of Bob Evans, come on. Joel Cheesman (05:42.178) Yeah, as soon as the boomers go away, I don't know if they have an audience. I don't know if they have a consumer. The Chad (05:44.615) that's a point. Yeah. Well, I mean, we grew up and this is the thing that gets me because living here in Portugal, there are family restaurants all over the place. They are everywhere. We don't have chains. In my little village, we have more restaurants here than we have in Columbus, Indiana. And Columbus, Indiana is probably 10 times the size of this place. But this place has more restaurants and they're all family owned. Joel Cheesman (06:01.646) Mm-hmm. The Chad (06:11.867) restaurants, right? And I remember growing up and going to Mansfield Diner, right? Mansfield restaurant. And a family owned, it's a family restaurant. And we just don't have those in the US anymore. Everything's fucking free to try. Everything's fast food. Everything's overly processed. I mean, it's just, it's just so weird. Joel Cheesman (06:12.014) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (06:21.944) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (06:26.168) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:32.492) Yeah. And it's really hard when like, you imagine, automation at Cracker Barrel? Like that would really blow people's minds up. So, so they're in a position where they can't go kiosk. They can't go like robots bring in your, your iced tea. They're stuck. They're stuck with people, man. They are stuck. Yep. Uncle Herschel is on the payroll for eternity. so I, I get it, man. It's, it's not a stock I would buy. The Chad (06:40.873) Jesus. The Chad (06:47.56) Unless they look like Uncle Hershel. Unless they look like Uncle Hershel. Ha ha! Joel Cheesman (07:00.664) Not like we give stock advice on this, on this show, but damn, got some big red meat speaking of fast food. Let's get to some shout outs. Shall we. The Chad (07:02.543) Yeah. The Chad (07:10.521) Yes. It certainly is. it. Joel Cheesman (07:12.92) Sponsored by our friends at Kiora, by the way. That's text recruiting made simple and affordable. Thanks, Kiora. The Chad (07:18.383) made simple and sexy. Have you seen those guys? ooh. Anyway, my shout out, don't say it, my shout out goes to AI crash and burn. You've been waiting for it, kids. You've all wanted it. You want to see this AI thing crash and burn. Well, guess what? An MIT study titled, quote, the Gen AI Divide, State of AI in Business 2025. finds that 95 % of generative AI pilot programs fail to deliver any measurable return or investment or move beyond limited testing phases. Only about 5 % achieve what's deemed rapid revenue acceleration. So what's the problem here? Simple answer, kids. It's the fucking humans. Poor integration. So AI tools. Often don't mesh with existing workflows. Yeah, no shit. AI should be working to enhance workflows. It shouldn't be an additional step and or layer. Right. So we've got these idiots that are trying to jam AI into the process. Build versus buy imbalance. One of the things that drove me crazy working with CTOs in I mean, every company that I've worked with, they always think that they can build things better. Right. Joel Cheesman (08:34.83) Mm-hmm. The Chad (08:37.581) And many times they fucking can't, right? And that's what's happening in many cases. These companies are trying to actually build it in-house. Stop trying to build that shit in-house. Go to a vendor who has an expertise in this. then again, none of this is an AI problem. It's a human problem because we're all wanting instant gratification instead of analyzing workflows, re-engineering them with AI. So just take a beat, relax. Joel Cheesman (08:40.44) Sure. Joel Cheesman (08:58.018) Mm-hmm. The Chad (09:07.339) Bring in some fucking experts for God's sakes and shout out to all those vendors out there who should be using this MIT report to their advantage This is not your disadvantage stupid humans get in there fix it for them. Shout out to AI vendors Joel Cheesman (09:23.182) humans, I'll tell you. And I've seen articles about a great shortage in people who understand AI, not just on the development side, but on the usage side. And that's a huge, huge divide from where we are today. doesn't spread. You talk about CTOs. One there, they have a little bit of a God complex. Let's be honest. I mean, for 20 years, they like, they were the magicians that like popped out websites out of their ass and people were amazed. And now. The Chad (09:25.595) Stupid humans. The Chad (09:33.029) Yeah? yeah. The Chad (09:48.41) yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:52.642) they're getting replaced by stuff that does coding better than them. So I get, I get the whole pride thing. I can do it. Like don't fire me. I can do all this stuff. And then shocker shocker. they can't, they can't, but you know, you know who can chat. let me set this up. My, my dad used to tell me, son, you can marry more money in five minutes than you can make in a lifetime, which brings me my shout out. The Chad (10:06.075) It's always been a thing. Who? Joel Cheesman (10:21.454) Forgive me for my jaded impression of love, but Travis Kelsey gets my shout out this week. The Cleveland native has made good by proposing to Taylor Swift. Talk about money. Kelsey's no slouch. He's worth apparently around $90 million. Not bad. Not bad for a kid from Cleveland Heights, Cleveland Heights and Cincinnati grad. The Chad (10:26.235) There we go. The Chad (10:44.565) change for Taylor. Joel Cheesman (10:49.762) However, Taylor is worth around $1.6 billion, according, according to some, some reports. So the guy is definitely marrying up, the only celebrity couple, with worth more care to take a guess, care to take a guess. Jay Z and Beyonce. So he's now in Jay Z and Beyonce, territory. Look, it's. The Chad (11:02.127) Yes. The Chad (11:08.411) no, who? Who could it be? good fucking po- yeah, good co- Joel Cheesman (11:18.414) It's fair to say that, uh, Travis will be able to afford the meatloaf at Cracker Barrel whenever he wants for the rest of his life. Shout out to Travis Kelsey. By the way, he is now undraftable in fantasy. Like I am not touching him with the, with the engagement and the news and the hoopla. Like stay away if you're a fantasy draft drafter this week. Just me, just me. The Chad (11:29.016) and more mass caddies. The Chad (11:46.277) Just you. Well, maybe not marriage, but it feels like marriage when you get free stuff. Joel Cheesman (11:54.208) Everybody loves the free stuff, Chad. They love the free stuff. The Chad (11:57.49) and The Chad (12:01.957) So this week we're actually going to announce the fantasy football owners, right? So we've got 12 slots. You and I are take two of those. take two of those. Dave Stiefel won last year. He's coming back. So he's coming back. That's one. They always have a returning champ. And then we have nine more. Now who, who are they? are they? Let me know. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:19.468) Mm-hmm. Yep. I got them. I got them. I got I got the players and I got their team name. And I got to tell you, Chad, the quality of the team names are a little bit depressing. They're they're they lack. They lack in and in. So okay, here are our players and their team names and you tell me what you think of them. Okay, we got David. His is Olivia's pool, which you had last year. It's fine. He won. The Chad (12:45.53) Okay. The Chad (12:51.439) Yeah, get it. Joel Cheesman (12:52.032) Use the same name. you, you went with Lavery's legends, which I think is a fantastic homage, to our friend, Matt Lavery. went with shut the front should door Cleveland, should or Sanders. Okay. But now it goes, it goes south from there. Okay. Well, William Carrington, who is the factory fix, person, whatever his name is factory fix. Yeah. The Chad (12:55.579) Yes. Thank you. The Chad (13:07.108) Okay. The Chad (13:13.391) He'd better represent. Come on. Come on. Joel Cheesman (13:17.74) No creativity. Mike Schaefer gave us a guy whose name is factory fix. Okay. after him, got Courtney Nappo, is Malone touchdown solutions. Okay. Jada Weiler mascot maniacs, a little generic for my taste. Jason Putnam, Jason Putnam's grid iron, which I'm pretty sure is just Yahoo's default name, that he kept. that's, that's super lame. Jeremy Roberts. The Chad (13:23.163) Come on. The Chad (13:44.187) Probably, yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:48.024) Just Jeremy. Yeah, just Jeremy. The just isn't there. It's Jeremy, okay? Just Jeremy would have been better. Megan Rattigan, I thought she was gonna bring the heat. Megan brings the heat. Smooth route Megan. okay, not bad, not bad. Mackenzie Maitland, which has tons of potential. Mad Dog Maitland, whatever. Ice Run Mackenzie, I don't know. The Chad (13:54.885) Jeremy. The Chad (14:00.825) Yes. Yeah. The Chad (14:07.675) Yeah, okay. Yeah. yeah. yeah. I kinda like that one. I kinda like that one. Yeah? Yeah? Hmm. Joel Cheesman (14:17.758) ginger Dodds are friends from shaker. You know, we travel on shaker, so it's gotta, gotta be hot. So, drop dead ginger. Not bad. All right. Not bad. The Chad (14:25.243) I like it. like it. Yes. Joel Cheesman (14:28.918) Now, the highest hopes I had was for one, Stephen McGrath. Joel Cheesman (14:44.172) I'm very hopeful that he can exercise the ghosts of Adam Gordon and his just anemic fantasy football play. So Steven McGrath out of the gate disappoints on the name. His, his name is Stevens play action. All right. Let me help you get help. Let me help you guys out. Okay. There's this thing called AI just so I put in, I put an AI said, me some good fantasy football names for a guy from Scotland. It came up with, okay. So it came up with Haggis, Hudders, not bad. It came up with, we came with Glasgow grid iron gladiators. Not bad. And my favorite was the tartan touchdowns. I liked that tartan touchdowns. The Chad (15:04.9) Huh. The Chad (15:13.087) huh. Yes. The Chad (15:18.747) like that, like that. The Chad (15:28.859) nothing like a tartan touchdown. Joel Cheesman (15:31.599) It's it's a little meta. It's a little cool. The flows nicely. So guys, if you're listening and you're playing fantasy, congratulations, go work on your name. Switch it up draft day. want good names in there. If you need AI help have it, but, uh, I'm excited for fantasy draft is the second, I believe I'll send out notes, but, uh, we should have draft grades for our next podcast. And then we're off to the races. Then we're off to the races. The Chad (15:57.093) Can't wait, can't wait. Yeah, so thanks again, Factory Fix for sponsoring this year. Can't wait to kick some Factory Fix ass, to be quite frank. And while we do that, we're still giving away free stuff. We're giving away whiskey, two bottles of whiskey from those talent tech experts over at Van Hack. They're up north as well. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends over at Kiaora, those sexy kids. Joel Cheesman (16:11.0) Yeah, we are. The Chad (16:26.503) sexy kids see Bradley shirtless I can only anyway, t shirts. yeah. I want to see I want to see that on LinkedIn t shirts from our friends over at Aaron app, you know, you know, you want to they feel good wrapped in a hug from Chad and cheese. craft beer from the data geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs, you want data you want? I don't know you might want some jobs you might want some scraping. Joel Cheesman (16:30.594) He's in the birthday list, so don't tempt him with a good time. All right, keep going, keep going. The Chad (16:55.823) You go to Aspen Tech Labs. And if it's your birthday, yeah, no shit, dude. Yeah. Go get some fucking Aspen Tech Labs for God's sakes. And get some rum with plum if it's your birthday, Go to ChadCheese.com slash free and register. Joel Cheesman (16:57.614) Well, the government's not helping you with real data anymore, so call Aspen Tech if you want some real shit. The Chad (17:15.629) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (17:19.122) All right. Another trip around the sun for Sean Kelleher Tracy Cole, Bradley Clark, who you just mentioned. we expect that topless pick any day now. Andrea Wade, Genevieve Davis, Katie Erdman, Birch Faber, Elisa Abner, Tashwer, Laurie Trompeter, Funky Cold, Medina Medeiros and Trisha Lannan. Did I say that right? It's don't call her Lenane cause they'll be held to pay. It's Trisha. The Chad (17:30.373) There we go. The Chad (17:34.011) Search. The Chad (17:45.915) Don't call her what name. Joel Cheesman (17:50.638) Lannan. Happy birthday, everybody. If you didn't get picked for fantasy, a lot of people signed up. The first year we had to beg people. This year was like a flood of folks that wanted to play. So I think around 60 or 70 folks signed up. So if you didn't get picked, come back next year and you'll get another chance to play. Otherwise, you go. The Chad (18:05.179) fucking awesome. The Chad (18:10.255) Take a beat, take a beat. Then we have events, events. We've got a chicken cock in Louisville. Looks like October 13th, who we're doing that with Havas people. We'll have more about this. This is still well over a month away. Wreckfest in Nashville, October 15th and 16th. And we've got a party at Redneck Riviera the night of the 15th brought to you by. Joel Cheesman (18:20.046) 13. Joel Cheesman (18:34.892) Woohoo! The Chad (18:37.515) Yeah, brought to by Havas people and those crazy video kids over at JobPixel. Omar is like, hey, make sure you get JobPixel's name in there more. I'm like, Omar, we say JobPixel enough, okay? So there's some JobPixel. Anyway, that's where we're going to be in October, kids. Joel Cheesman (18:54.094) you Joel Cheesman (18:58.19) And that's events again, sponsored by our friends at Shaker recruitment marking. dude, we have some red meat for the listeners today. Let's get to our topic, shall we? The Chad (19:02.423) shaker. Joel Cheesman (19:16.778) All right. What, what story could we possibly start off with this week? If you're watching on a YouTube, know, work day is acquiring Chad and she sponsor and BFFs paradox. Don't call them a chat bot. It's a conversational AI to simplify the job application process, particularly for high volume hiring. In case you missed it, this acquisition. The Chad (19:17.53) Woo! The Chad (19:37.339) Mm. Joel Cheesman (19:42.241) Along with the recent acquisition of flow wise will enhance workdays, talent acquisition suite and aims to help companies attract, engage and retain talented transaction is expected to close by October 31st. That's Halloween kids, by the way of this year. Terms were not disclosed, Chad. I suspect you have a thought or two on what went down, what you got. The Chad (19:59.163) Trick or treat. The Chad (20:05.477) Big congrats to the team over Paradox and Workday. I mean, this is a baller move from Workday as they're facing class action mobility case. They double down on AI with Paradox. Ballsy, yes, but also smart because every conversation we've ever had with the Paradox team always ends with their focus on technology, facilitating tasks, not hiring decisions, right? Their focus. This also sends a message to the market. Workday is pretty much saying, hey, AI is here and there's no putting the toothpaste back in the fucking tube. So guess what? We're all in. After Smart Recruiter's acquisition announcement, we talked about two of their pivotal moments, right? Their dominoes moments and their Apple moment. And I believe those stories and how they delivered those stories were big reasons why they were required. Story is incredibly important and I would say that only paradox has a better story is a better better storyteller in our space. You go to their website or better yet go to YouTube. What do you see their clients telling their personal stories that include go figure paradox. If you go to rec fest one presentation that always is standing room only. Yep it's a paradox presentation. Why. Joel Cheesman (21:27.416) Fill the house. The Chad (21:31.163) because their clients tell the story, not Aaron, not Adam, not Jay-Z, their clients, right? So if you're a founder and or CEO, you have to understand that you're not the main character. You're a supporting character, right? Vision this, strategy that, blah, blah, fucking blah, right? TA and HR people don't wanna hear from you. They wanna hear from their peers that are using your platform. That's where you get in there. And that's where paradox has knocked this out of the fucking park. Paradox gets it, which is why their clients are the story. Yes, the tech matters. No question. But the story and more importantly, who tells the story matters even more. as we see, like smart recruiters do what they did with their storytelling. And really, mean, Rebecca came in February. They made an announcement that they're Trash and everything and they're going, you no more roadmap. They're going in a different direction. Six months later, acquisition, right? And then you take a look at Paradox. They've just been doing business right for a very long time. And I definitely attribute it to having great tech people, great engineers, but you can have all of those things. If you don't tell the story and you don't have the right people telling the story, guess what? Doesn't fucking matter. Doesn't fucking matter. Joel Cheesman (23:03.342) I love that you went went to stories. All the management at Paradox, I believe, is a Gen X. Jay-Z is a little young, by and large, a lot of Xers. And just like you and I, Chad, they grew up listening to a little Kenny Rogers, who taught us know when to hold them and know when to fold them. And I think there's a really interesting history lesson in here that's worth telling. The Chad (23:13.586) yeah. The Chad (23:22.299) You The Chad (23:27.067) Mm-hmm. The Chad (23:31.181) Joel Cheesman (23:31.897) Cause I can't believe this is 20 years old now, but a lot of people don't remember jobbing. Jobbing in 05, 06, 07 was a high flyer in our industry. They were arguably a top five job board for sure. And this was in the days when hot jobs was still around. they, they blew it up at shurm. They raised a bunch of money at the time they were on, they were on track. had their name on a sports arena. The Chad (23:34.991) Yeah. The Chad (23:57.445) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:57.741) They were on their, they're on their way to, crushing it and being a major player in the business. Their model was. Boots on the ground, local markets, people that you knew taking to the games, taking it to lunch, et cetera. They were sort of like the newspaper. They had someone in all these markets and that was, that was their model. They were hit with a double whammy. Great recession plus indeed. And it, it. It was a gut punch that they never really came back from. had to shut down offices. They had to sort of go indeed on it, put some backfill, so like go, go more indeed. And they couldn't out deed indeed, right? The cover band is never as good as the actual band. And through that period, Aaron founder, I think learned a ton, right? And, and success is only getting up one more time than you fall and. The Chad (24:49.613) yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:54.796) The dude is a picture of grit, determination, could have sold it, could have packed it up. He didn't. And I remember in 16, I think I was at a Shurm event, which when they launched Paradox, I think it was just Olivia. I don't know if they had Paradox at the time. They had bought recruiting.com from the Jobster folks, which they also bought that portion. So there's a long history there that Aaron learned from. The Chad (25:11.744) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:23.81) But I think that he learned a lesson and I think they all did because they remembered in that you have to know when it's a good time, when is the timing right to sort of like say goodbye. And I really think that they see the agentic future. They see a geopolitical and employment arena that is just kind of weird. So you have a decision of like, The Chad (25:37.307) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (25:52.761) We're 10 years into this, our investors took a risk. By the way, a lot of their investors were jobbing investors that took another swing on this. So it's like 10 years into this, know we can sell for a good amount of money, or we can try to go through the storm and see where we come out on the other side. I think they picked the right time to sell. think that when we look back on this, we're going to go, man, they timed that really, really well. The Chad (26:12.059) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:20.142) And, I think smart recruiters timed it really, really well also. And I'm guessing there are a lot of other people of their ilk who are trying to time it really, really well, because the companies that can buy these businesses are dwindling the IPO windows. Eh, I don't know. Raising more money. I don't know. Private equity is your next stop. And we all know what happens when private equity comes to town. So I think this is a great. The Chad (26:36.259) Yep. Joel Cheesman (26:49.454) It's history lesson, a great story around timing, building a great business, fantastic people, great tech. They told a good story as you talked about. They built bridges with the community, which a lot of these startups don't do. Let's be honest. A lot of them could give a shit about who you and I are or who LOROC is or anybody. So they covered all the bases. I think a lot of that was learning from jobbing, but I agree like super happy for all of them. The Chad (27:03.323) Yes. The Chad (27:09.851) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:18.894) Now there's another side of the coin and that's Workday. You love the move? Say more. The Chad (27:24.463) Yeah. yeah, no, I do. I do love the move. mean, because they had everybody knows that their recruiting module is really just gift with purchase is really what it is. It's something that's there that a CIO buys the platform. Right. And like, well, we get this. We get this recruiting module for free. But that's always been a piece of shit. this is going to upgrade them dramatically. And I think they have like around 11,000 customers. So now the customers are actually going to have a platform that works, right? Works. It's not something that recruiters hate going into and using. It's gonna be something that again, if you're doing AI right, which I talked about in my shout out, it's going to enhance. It's your effectiveness, right? And it's going to do the little things that you need it to do as opposed to you having to do all that admin bullshit. So, yeah, I think I think this is incredibly smart from from Workday. They are having some issues now in the courts with Mowgli. Those are those are AI decision making issues. I don't think paradox is going to be a problem here. I don't think that's going to be a problem at all. Yeah. So what do you think? Joel Cheesman (28:49.038) I love that we're seeing so many big swings in the industry, whether it's Indeed, whether it's SAP and Smart Recruiters. To Workday's credit, big swing time. That's either going to pay off big or we're going to look back and go, oh shit, they made the wrong moves. Their stock is still down 8 % year to date. It's been in the doldrums for a while. The legal stuff doesn't help. From roughly 2021 to 2024, Workday made zero acquisitions. was status quo, keep it as it is. And while they were doing that, the whole world was changing and new flowers were blossoming all over the landscape. 2024, someone said, let's step on the gas. They bought Hired Score, Evasort, Flowwise, and now Paradox. These are all AI plays. The Chad (29:25.573) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:48.747) SAP was not an ATS buy, it was an AI buy. Everything that I just mentioned for Workday is an AI buy. So everyone is putting all their cards in this game on AI. I think it's a right move. We'll see. I also think it's interesting that Workday is starting to go downstream. They launched Workday Go a couple of weeks ago or maybe a month ago. The Chad (29:52.047) Mm. Joel Cheesman (30:13.646) targeting SMBs, whoever thought Workday would have a product targeting SMBs? Well, Paradox lets them do that. Paradox, think is a fantastic, fantastic tech for small businesses and they haven't unleashed that yet because they're a startup. If Workday can turn the key and scale that thing up with small businesses, I think that is a huge opportunity. By the way, you listening, ZipRecruiter, because Workday and Paradox are coming for you. I'd be really worried about that. The Chad (30:15.289) Mm-hmm. Yeah. No. Yes. The Chad (30:38.523) Ha ha! Joel Cheesman (30:41.486) I love the big swing. I hope it works. Has Hired Score worked? I hear some people say yes. I hear some people maybe no. What happens to the brands and all this? Hired Score now goes to Workday. So your paradox.ai URL, that's likely going to go to Workday. When you take cultures, technology, businesses and put them into one brand, like there are challenges. We'll see if they can, they can handle it. I don't know how long a lot of the paradox people will stick around. I don't know how long the hired score people stuck around. I'm guessing a lot of the execs will be around for a year, but this is a long-term play and I think they are taking the right bets. And it'll be fun to talk about the evolution and where they go, where they go from here. Now I do think, the unicorn dance. that we've been talking about is going to get really interesting. I've already given a little bit of my two cents where the window for IPO acquisition, et cetera, is closing. If you're at eightfold, if you're at, you know, name it, what are you thinking today? The Chad (31:52.079) Yeah, well, mean, you've got two players off the table now, SAP and Workday. Will UKG, Oracle, ADP, and others build their own, or will they buy something? Dayforce has a new owner. Will they get into the game? What about Rippling, Deal, Upwork, and the other EOR companies? I mean, they're moving up funnel towards staffing. They're going to need recruitment tech, right? So I still think there's a ton of opportunity that's out there. But there are so many players, iSimps, Greenhouse, you've got all the employee, know, Lever, Jazz, Jobvite, Beemery, Eightfold, Phenom, Gem, Fountain. mean, and so many. I think the ones that are really kind of screwed have just taken too much money. We've given Eightfold a lot of shit on this show for years and they've taken too much money. Joel Cheesman (32:30.666) Employ, we'll get to them. Joel Cheesman (32:42.19) Mm-hmm. The Chad (32:50.297) You know, they I don't know who's going to be able to afford them. I think you get you get organizations like a paradox, a fountain, a jam. You get those types of organizations that do something really, really well. And then they just knock the cover off the fucking ball. An eightfold is trying to do too much. Right. We talked about them opening the TAM way too far too fast. And I think those models and that. kind of vision and focus is really going to be, unfortunately, their demise. Focus disciplines the key, and I think that's what's going win the day. Joel Cheesman (33:29.442) Yeah. The big wild card to me is the IPO market. If rippling deal or somebody goes public and goes bonkers, you're going to see eightfold. You're going to see all these guys go public. if, if, if the first one out of the gate falls on its ass, it's bad for everybody else. It's bad sign for everybody else, but congratulations to work day and the paradox crew. Give us a, give us a quick break. And man, the, the train keeps humming with red meat. The Chad (33:48.549) Yeah. Hahaha Joel Cheesman (33:58.383) for the listeners. The Chad (33:59.442) yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:03.918) All right, you mentioned Jazz, Jobvite, like all those under one umbrella. Anyway, we barely knew Yee after taking the reins of employee, know, Jobvite, Jazz, HR, Lever, et cetera. Steve Cox is out. He's out as CEO. He posted a resignation letter on LinkedIn saying he'd say more about where he's going at a later time, leaving the, guess, The Chad (34:07.435) yeah, yeah. The Chad (34:18.299) Steve talks. Wow. Joel Cheesman (34:32.64) interim or ICO role to Dara Brenner, who was chief product officer at employee before this happened. Cox replaced Pete Lamson. You might remember who served as CEO for a whopping three years prior to him. Chad, your take on this tale of musical chairs. The Chad (34:36.187) Mm. The Chad (34:51.993) Yeah, well, it's my turn. Get that history lesson ready for history lesson. yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:55.982) I do love I do love a good history lesson chat. The Chad (35:03.595) So back in February of 2019, K1 invested over 200 million in rolling up jobvite, telemetry, rollpoint, and Canvas, right? Then in April of 2021, was created during another rollup with JazzHR and NextThing RPO. Then, Lever was acquired in August of 2022. So K1 made a bet back in 2019. buy all the toys and try to own all segments of the market with Enterprise ATS, mid-level and SMB ATS. That was a baller move. Unfortunately, rolling up that many companies, integrating all that tech, including point solutions, getting your sales and marketing teams on the same page and aligning your tech teams just for starters. That's a fucking mess, dude. That's a mess. So, I mean, you can imagine. managing all those fucking code bases and on the Steve side of the house, yeah, year and a half. Maybe because K1 doesn't like that employee feels like the antithesis of paradox or smart recruiters who feel young and nimble and vibrant employee feels old, slow and riddled with tech debt. Maybe we saw Rebecca Carr come in, make a big and bold change. Joel Cheesman (36:12.493) Mm-hmm. The Chad (36:26.395) almost overnight, right? Now, now the new CEO, or at least interim CEO, Dara Brenner, like Rebecca, she was the chief product officer, and she also has a great deal of experience in our space. The question is, will she have a dominoes and Apple moment like smart recruiters did? Will this unwieldy beast of a company become a cool new player? Joel Cheesman (36:35.256) Mm-hmm. The Chad (36:54.341) Will they be able to shed that old facade and start telling a new, more cool story? There's something here. K1 has a lot of money. They wanna offload this fucking thing, okay? There's gotta be big changes. hope, Dara, I hope you're listening, I hope you get that interim ripped off and you are the full CEO and you take this the exact same, maybe not the exact same way, but the same way that Rebecca did. Joel Cheesman (37:06.869) Mm-hmm. The Chad (37:23.547) And you knock this bitch out of the park Joel Cheesman (37:31.31) So Chen, don't share notes before the show and you stole a lot of my thunder on that. This is definitely a smart recruiters to electric Boogaloo moment for Dara. I hope she has Rebecca on speed dial. Do people still have speed dial? That's such a 20 year old thing. Anyway, you get what I'm saying. The Chad (37:41.455) Feels like it. Joel Cheesman (37:54.925) No one wants these jobs, man. Like if, when you hire someone from out of our space, it's like they come in and go, what in the hell is this shit? Like I'm used to marketing stuff or customer, like whatever it is, what something about HR tech is just toxic to people who aren't from our space. So yes, I think K1 looked at smart recruiters or at least where the trend was going and said, we need a product person. Dara was there. Look, a lot of these people don't want these jobs. I mean, she was in the office next door probably. Yes, she's, she's got the chops for sure. I've never met her or talked to her. If you're smart, uh, you'll come on the show like Rebecca did, uh, and good, good things happen. I, you say, you say you don't know if they have to, to follow the script. I think they do. I think the script is there. Like, look, bring in an industry person. The Chad (38:26.501) Yeah. She was a fucking UKG dude. Who needs who need right? Yeah. The Chad (38:40.187) Tell your story. Joel Cheesman (38:50.402) Your next, your next thing is hire people that know what the hell they're doing. And by the way, smart recruiters and paradox now that they're bought might have some people looking for new opportunities. If whoever's recruiting for employee needs to be on the phone with those folks and say, Hey, let's do it again over here. And we can, and here's how we're going to do it. They need to pump up the marketing. They need to get some heat. even if it's, you know, The Chad (38:57.925) Yes. Joel Cheesman (39:16.054) Not there yet. They need to tell the story. Like you said, what is our story? What is our vision? Smart recruiters followed through on that with the, with the change that they made. Employees do that too. They need to figure out the branding question that dude, it is. You go to each one of these companies and their LinkedIn profile stuff and insights. They are all a mess. Head count reduction. Like no one's hot. Like they are just. The Chad (39:31.261) fuck yeah. The Chad (39:40.165) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (39:44.621) These are awful businesses. Now to me, it looks like every logo has like job bite by employee. Jazz HR by employee. Usually when you see buy something, means eventually it's going to become employee. So I have to imagine this will just be employee and all these technologies will come, come under that. Interestingly, I looked, I wanted to see who owned employee.com. It redirects to a LinkedIn profile of some guy named Slade Mishalak. The Chad (40:00.347) Good man. Joel Cheesman (40:14.926) Anyway, don't, but look, so I did some work for you. Either go pay Slade a bucket of cash or employee.tech is available for a pretty reasonable price. Like that's a pretty easy fix. Get all this technology and brands under one and eventually go make it easier on yourself. But I think the roadmap is there. The blueprint is there. Just follow up on the same thing. These are good. These are beloved brands. The Chad (40:22.107) Slayed. Joel Cheesman (40:42.638) lever beloved for a long time. Jobvite was the original sort of cool hip, uh, you know, when Finnegan was running the show. So there's stuff there, but it has become a mess. I agree with you. K1 wants to dump this thing or get rid of it. I think they've wanted to get rid of it for a long time. Uh, this is the plan. This is your 12 to 18 month plan. Now go do it. The Chad (41:04.792) I would say that you don't have to go to a Paradox or a Smart Recruiters. Those people are very high on life right now, and that's great, and they're not gonna wanna leave just yet, right? There are so many good people that are out there now, right, that you can pick. You just have to be able to get, you have to be able to understand the vision and the actual strategy that these companies put together. And don't get me wrong. Joel Cheesman (41:11.758) Mm-hmm. The Chad (41:32.589) Smart recruiters and paradox had had different, different visions, different types of companies, but they pulled off the same type of storytelling in big bold moves, right? They, did those things. You can do it. I mean, you can do it. I look forward to seeing that. Yeah. Well, yeah. And K1, if you're listening, just let Dara do her thing. Let Dara do her thing. Joel Cheesman (41:49.07) I think they have to. I think they have to at this point. If they don't, it's going to be chopped up and adios. Joel Cheesman (42:00.153) Okay, one. And from one evil private equity company to another, Toma Bravo, no relation to Johnny Bravo from what I know, is acquiring DayForce for $12.3 billion, including debt in a take private deal. The acquisition aims to accelerate DayForce's focus on, you guessed it, AI capabilities in human capital management. The Chad (42:02.203) Yeah. Ugh. Joel Cheesman (42:27.65) The deal, includes a minority investment from the Abu Dhabi investment authority is expected to close early next year. Dayforce CEO David Osip said going private would enable them to accelerate their focus on being a, you guessed it, AI leader in HCM. Chad, what is your take on the move? The Chad (42:48.699) I mean, this is such an interesting story because Ceridian has been around for 30 plus years. And Dayforce, which was acquired by Ceridian back in 2012, is now 17 years old. So it took 12 years, just last year, to kill off the Ceridian brand and move to Dayforce. It's interesting. So Asap, who is, I think it's John Asap, he's the CEO. Joel Cheesman (43:01.538) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (43:07.756) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (43:15.896) Mm-hmm. The Chad (43:16.443) He's obviously very patient because he was the CEO and seller of Dayforce originally, right? And he became the CEO of Ceridian. Anyway, Tom Abramo is in the top 10 of PE firms. And as of July, 2023, the company had completed over 440 software deals. And as of 2020, that's five years ago, oversaw a portfolio of over 70 software companies. And as of June of this year, Joel Cheesman (43:23.16) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (43:31.0) Yeah. The Chad (43:46.245) They report having 181 billion assets under management. So big question is why go private? Well, I mean, it is private equity, hence private. Plus, it feels like day force is going to have to pivot or rebuild or do some things that you really don't want to do in the public eye. Not to mention they enhance scrutiny that you get, the quarterly earnings calls, all that shit. when you're public, right? So if you want to, and Ceridian's done this before, they were public, they took it private, they're public again, they're gonna take it private. That's the perfect time going private for a reorg, for a rebuild, and then for what? For Tom Abrava to get a big paycheck at the end of it. That's what they wanna get. Joel Cheesman (44:40.974) I'll go you one better on the, the 2012 Chad day force actually traces its roots to control data corporation or CDC founded back in 1957. So yeah, you talk about an old home on the block. Uh, this thing has been around for a while, uh, culturally very, very old. Uh, look, the, the stock has been an absolute shit show, uh, since COVID, um, while other players that are so, so they, they The Chad (44:51.653) What the fuck? Joel Cheesman (45:10.41) Ever since COVID they've sucked. And while they've sucked, they've gotten to see new players, new sexy companies like Dippling, Rippling and Deal, crush it. it's like, we're this old house with old infrastructure. The pain is chipping. We need a new AC. The roof is falling apart. Like, shit. We can't repair this thing in the public markets. Let's shut it down. Put the big drape thing over the house. The Chad (45:17.691) Mm-hmm. The Chad (45:28.069) Demo, baby. The Chad (45:38.427) No! Joel Cheesman (45:39.087) And, and to me, this is going one of two ways either. really is going, we're getting the, the, the 18 construction group in here. We're going to like put on new, new stuff. We're going to add on. We're putting a pool in the backyard, whatever it is that they need to do to get this dog looking like it's, it's, it's ready for the, for the public markets. And then they go public and that may be spurred partly when rippling and deal and all those guys start going public. Cause there could be a little bit of a feeding frenzy. I do fear that they could go. into the house and be like, there are too many skeletons, too much, too much mold. got termites in the walls. Like let's just sell off the windows because they're in good shape. Let's throw out, you know, these certain parts and they're going to, they're going to career board or career builder and monster this thing. And, day force will be a footnote in the history of our industry. So I think it could go either way. I don't know as much about, Bravo. As, I do about K1 and Apollo and those guys. So I can't really tell what their history is, but I think it'd go either way. you think it'll be like a resurrection and Jesus is coming back and day forces is going to be the shit. I hope for them that that's the case, but private equity, story is we know Chad usually doesn't end very well, for the people that get acquired by the private equity folks. The Chad (46:47.692) Go try. The Chad (46:58.139) Yeah. Yeah. Good luck guys. Joel Cheesman (47:07.47) All right, guys, if you haven't subscribed to our audio channel from your favorite podcasting platform of choice, or if you want to see our beautiful faces, check us out on YouTube at youtube.com slash at Chad cheese. The Chad (47:10.477) What? Joel Cheesman (47:26.464) All right, Chad, your boy, Zuck is back up to his old tricks. Meta has paused hiring and it's AI division after bringing on over 50 researchers and engineers. The company says the pause is part of organizational planning and yearly budgeting and planning exercises. Uh-huh. But wait, there's more. Zuck goodness. A Reuters review of an internal Meta policy document reveals that the company's AI chat bots. have been permitted to engage in provocative behavior, including romantic conversations with children, generating false medical information, dough, creating content that demeans individuals based on protected characteristics. Metta refutes the report, Chad. Do you refute the report? Your thoughts. The Chad (48:14.555) I don't refute it. It's hit the hiring real quick. mean, Metta, they hired 50 new AI researchers that they poached from competitors for a lot of fucking money. They've split one organization into four different AI labs. Yeah, it's probably smart to just take a beat, take a breath, assess the talent that you have, build the teams and what their focus is going to be before you Joel Cheesman (48:26.158) Mm-hmm. The Chad (48:44.507) We, you know, start the the poaching frenzy, which they'll probably do here and there. On the chat bot side of the house. mean, let's face it. Mark Zuckerberg could give two fucks about you, your kids or any community. Right. It's all about the Benjamins. And after Cambridge Analytica, mean, nothing this asshole does should surprise us. And with less governmental restrictions, expect more of this. Joel Cheesman (48:47.436) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:12.123) huh. The Chad (49:13.627) Porn is still a huge moneymaker and getting into porn like chat does nothing but increase engagement. Even if it's totally fucking repulsive, Zuck doesn't give a fuck about you or your kids. I mean, that's just what it is. And if you choose to use these platforms, again, it's your choice and that sucks. But this is what's happening. Joel Cheesman (49:19.342) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:30.53) Mm-hmm. The Chad (49:40.281) while this administration is still around, they're not gonna put any restrictions on you. We've heard that. They've actually admonished Europe for trying to put restrictions on AI. And this is just gonna be seen as another restriction. Yeah, it's bullshit. Joel Cheesman (49:44.398) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:58.703) By the way, did you see the story about the OnlyFans founder or CEO? He's, he's got like 700 million in dividends over the last three years. And just dividends, just free cashflow. They, they, they make like $24 million per employee. They only have 46 employees. anyway, totally different topic, but, talk. it's better than Apple. It's better than Google. It's better than Nvidia. Like it's insane. anyway, so. The Chad (50:02.212) No. The Chad (50:11.429) Jesus. The Chad (50:19.471) That's better than Craigslist. Jesus. Joel Cheesman (50:27.81) So the hiring thing, there's, there's a, there's a line in ghostbusters, where, they go, if, if, if someone asks you, if you're a God, you say, yes, I said this to accurate. If someone offers you a hundred million dollars, take it, take it that that doesn't come along every day. They were offering a hundred million dollars, allegedly, open AI claims this to. The Chad (50:50.874) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (50:55.534) potential AI employees to come in. That window is closed. I have to think that Zuck has been burned by the metaverse, action. You remember metaverse we're all going to live on headsets. they put a ton of money into that. They, they billions of dollars in, in R and D and their stock went to shit and everyone was mad at them. And I don't think Zuck wants to relive that. So The Chad (51:11.611) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (51:21.75) I do think there is a potential undercurrent of AI and you talked about it the MIT thing. Sam Altman is talking about a bubble in AI. There's more and more anecdotal evidence that AI is not going to happen immediately. It may be like the dot com thing. It may start in 97, it may not actually hit till about three, four or five. So Zuck, I think, sees some of that and says, we need to like chill out, take a breath, get stuff. The Chad (51:42.971) Mm. Joel Cheesman (51:51.343) To speed, get our people up. So to me, this is little bit of a warning sign. I know it's a Facebook crazy, whatever the hell's going on there, but I do think it could be a little bit of a canary in the coal mine for what's going on with AI. Maybe these big companies are biting off more than they can chew and stuff isn't ready for what's happening. the chat bot thing, this is going to give me the second opportunity for a history lesson. So if you've seen the social network, the movie and I know, I know you have Chad. I can't believe that's like 15 years old now. Zucks Zuck started hot or not basically for Harvard. the D he has, he doesn't have that gene. He doesn't have that, like, this might be bad. so he launches it and to his credit, he's gotten not much more than a hand slap every time that he's done this. So whether it's depressing our kids, whether it's making, The Chad (52:20.161) yes. Joel Cheesman (52:47.724) minorities feel like shit. so I, like you, I'm not surprised at all that he's done this. I think it's like really crossed the line as you dig into the story, apparently they accepted standards that would let their chat bot write, quote, paragraph arguing that black people are dumber than white people. Like to me, that's a line even Zuckerberg, is too, is too like aware to cross, but apparently not. The Chad (52:54.139) Mm-mm. The Chad (53:16.496) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (53:16.622) Apparently there's no borders, no guard rails at all. And when the dude is behind Donald Trump at the inauguration speech, it tells me like, nothing's going to happen from a federal government standpoint to, to slap this guy anyway. anyway, loose. think you and I agree until one of these fuckers gets in an orange jumpsuit, nothing's going to change and our kids are going to suffer for it. Our, our, our dialogue is going to suffer for it. Just our humanity is going to suffer for it. The Chad (53:36.507) Yeah. Nope.

What happens when you mash up AI, a million hotel workers, and the fourth-largest restaurant chain in the world  (yes, that’s what Marriott technically is)? You get Tyler Weeks, Managing VP of Tech & Analytics at Marriott, trying to wrangle HR chaos that makes Outback Steakhouse look like NASA. We dig into: Why Ritz-Carlton still won’t take Joel’s reservation (seriously, Tyler, explain). How Marriott’s HR looks less like a corporation and more like the Little Rascals in a trench coat  trying to get a bank loan. Why AI doesn’t make rockstar recruiters better, but it does turn your B-team into something resembling the A-squad. The ROI fantasy math CFOs pretend to believe (“Sure, this software will save us a billion dollars… right after I sell you this bridge”). And yes—fake résumés, deepfakes, lazy applies, and how the ultimate fix is… wait for it… having candidates show up in person. Revolutionary. If you’ve ever wondered how to herd 9,000 hotels, 40 languages, and a tsunami of fake applicants into one semi-functional talent machine—this is the AI Frontline you don’t want to miss. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house, and this is the Sessions AI Frontline Series as we welcome Tyler Weeks, Managing VP of Technology, Analytics, and Research. Tyler, welcome again to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad Sowash: He's back. Tyler Weeks: I'm so excited. Joel Cheesman: So let's get down to business. Why won't the Ritz-Carlton take my reservations? Tyler Weeks: That's a good question. Joel Cheesman: All right, we'll circle back to that. For our viewers out there that don't know Tyler Weeks, give us the elevator pitch. Tyler Weeks: The elevator pitch. Well, what I can tell you is, so I work for Marriott International, and I've been with them about three years. And it is a scale of a problem like I've never tackled before. Chad Sowash: Talk about that. Tyler Weeks: It's a lot of fun. So we've got over 400,000 employees worldwide. We're in 140 countries. The languages that we have to translate for, even just to issue a survey in the US, I have to translate about 40 languages, just given our workforce. Chad Sowash: Hello. Tyler Weeks: If you took, and I can't verify this, but I've heard from multiple sources internally, that if you took just our restaurant business, we'd be the fourth largest restaurant chain in the world, which I don't know why being the biggest hotel doesn't sound as impressive as being the fourth biggest restaurant chain, but in my head, it does. Joel Cheesman: Because your experience at Outback is much better than your experience at the average hotel. Tyler Weeks: Than at Ritz-Carlton. Joel Cheesman: Not Ritz-Carlton, because I haven't been there, Tyler. We'll get back to that. Put a pin in it. Chad Sowash: He loves an Alice Springs Chicken. Tyler Weeks: So we're huge, and that's only half of our business. So the other half, we also franchise. And if you take the franchise side of our business, we're closer to a million people wearing our badge around the world. And so if you're in HR and you're worried about their experience, about their training, about onboarding, hiring, recruiting, the scale of that problem is a lot of fun. Joel Cheesman: How big is the TA department in and of itself? Tyler Weeks: That's a... It's huge. Well, what I can tell you is that we've got about 8,000 HR professionals worldwide. Chad Sowash: There's that. Tyler Weeks: And that doesn't include sort of outsourced BPO or sort of business process support that comes in with TA and with benefits and some other. Joel Cheesman: It's big. Tyler Weeks: It's huge. It's a big operation. Chad Sowash: You're all over the world. And they're just all the same business. So I'm sure it's just one standard process. Everybody uses the same stack. It's easy, right? Tyler Weeks: I like to joke that we're not really a business. We're like the little rascals stacked up under the overcoat, like doing an impression of an adult trying to get a loan at the bank. Because we're, there's like... Joel Cheesman: I get froggy vibes from Tyler. I don't know about you. Tyler Weeks: We've got, you know, almost 9,000 hotels. Each one is kind of a medium, small to medium-sized business on their own. And some of those hotels have 2,000 employees. So they can be a very large operation. I mean, if you think about, if you're familiar with like the Gaylord Resorts in the US. Chad Sowash: Yeah, Joel can't go there either. Tyler Weeks: Huge. Huge. Joel Cheesman: Some with the Hee Haw girls back in the day. Tyler Weeks: Huge operation, right? And so, you know, the HR team there alone is a large team in its own right. And so they've got unique challenges. They've got owners and investors that are part of managing that hotel that have some say in how we operate. So we try to drive as much uniformity as we can for scale. But we do have to respond kind of at a very granular level. If you, just at the risk of ranting here, if you think about from like a TA perspective, our talent that we're competing for isn't just other hospitality companies. Joel Cheesman: It's yourself. Tyler Weeks: It's ourselves. We might have two hotels across the street or like hospitals, right? Hospitals are a lot like a hotel, just worse beds and more beeps. But, you know, like you've got a lot of the same. Joel Cheesman: Worse food too. Yeah. Tyler Weeks: Worse food. You got a lot of the same roles or even an Amazon fulfillment center going in down the street can pull a lot of our hourly talent away. And that's based just on commute, not on like, I can't ship housekeepers across the country. Joel Cheesman: But Tyler, I read headlines all the time. This is all getting AI'd. There are robots going to fold, clean my towels. Is that not... Am I not reading the right headlines? Like what is automation and AI meant to this whole quagmire of an organization that Marriott is? Tyler Weeks: The next Roomba is going to make your bed. Look, that is actually one of the most sort of exciting sort of fun parts of thinking about how we operate. And from a research analytics standpoint is kind of fun because, you know, I've worked at like software or hardware companies before, tech company. And when you're a large monolith of a company, you don't have a lot of opportunity to experiment, right? Because you're sort of looking at one big entity and trying to figure out how it operates. Within a hotel company, we're kind of like, it's more like sports statistics because I've got all of these repeating units that have a lot of the same positions. And what's different is their context, like where they are, the brand, the size, the political climate, all those things. And so we can look at all kinds of stuff about how those hotels are operating. And some of the things that the folks doing research on my team are looking at are some of that, like that interplay between how you even bundle roles together. Like, does it make sense to still have a bellhop be separate from concierge, be separate from eight other roles that are kind of doing similar things? Chad Sowash: Yeah. Tyler Weeks: And then how you fold AI into that and how you really help your front desk talk to people like they know you. Welcome back, blah, blah, blah. All that sort of personalized experiences is some exciting work that's happening kind of top to bottom. Chad Sowash: Well, being able to feed those large language models, you've got to have structured data. Is there a way that you can actually do that in aggregate or do you do that country by country? How does that, actually, how do you try to roll something out that big that's so compartmentalized? Tyler Weeks: Yeah, actually, that's where I feel like one of the... There's been so much focus on with the new AI models around chatbots, I think mostly because it was called ChatGPT. So it just sort of set the context and we just talk about chatbots. That and prompts. That's kind of dominated the conversation around those two things. I think the less well sort of debated or in solution problem is knowledge management. It's always been a problem in HR, like documenting in TA, like documenting all your processes, local variation, making sure that it's actually real, like represents how people work. This makes it twice as, 10 times more critical because if somebody is going and asking, I need it to give the right answer and I need to give the right answer in Brazil, not just kind of a generic answer that's sort of roughly true everywhere. Joel Cheesman: The nuance of the location. Tyler Weeks: Exactly. Chad Sowash: In data and not anecdotes. Tyler Weeks: Data and not anecdotes. So it's connecting to data sources. So we are actually, I just formed this year a new team that we call process transformation and it sits side by side with my technology team because I see the work that they do is just as critical to the technology effort, engineering both the processes and the document, how we store that documentation. So we've started this effort to not only create a knowledge library that we could take any model, AI model and put it on top of, that it could answer quite, because I want to stay on top. I want to always have the best one and so I need it to be sort of like plug and play. Like I've got the library. Chad Sowash: Well, testing all the different models and then being able to switch in and out. Tyler Weeks: Right. And so if I've got all of my knowledge architected in a way that I could swap in any model anytime and have it be ready to go day one. So we've kicked off an effort to do that and what we're doing is we're building in how we're structuring it, places for local teams to add their documentation. So how do you modify the TA, like how is TA different in Austria than in the US or in California? Because even within the US, state to state, there's so much nuance. This is going to take us years to do, but I think it might be the bigger technology problem is knowledge management. Joel Cheesman: Tyler, this sounds really expensive and complicated, but what I'm hearing from you is this is a cost savings. Talk about that. Tyler Weeks: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly an investment. I've been in this space now for about a decade, which is crazy to me. I still feel like a rookie in the HR world and I'm going to use the new guy card for 20 years. Joel Cheesman: That's over. Tyler Weeks: The promises of 5, 10 years ago of AI and TA, or HR more generally have always been more of like a soft dollar, soft savings. It's like we're going to give you time back for your recruiters to have those meaningful conversations. We're going to give you time. Time doesn't do me any good. And the reason is, there's a paradox in that. You've probably heard of it. Parkinson's law says that the time to complete a task will expand to fill the time allotted. Right. You've heard this in kind of a joking terms, but it's real. You can automate somebody's work or part of it, they will feel just as busy. So here's the irony is that if I spend a bunch of money to automate half your job and I'm successful in doing that, but I haven't actually changed what you do. I've made you less productive because now you're doing less per hour. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Tyler Weeks: And I'm spending for your salary and the software and you're doing less work. Chad Sowash: So you have to formulate on both sides of it. Tyler Weeks: Both sides. Yes. So what I've started to say is that I feel like the place to innovate and the place that I really see my contribution to the company is I want to hand time back to my employees and I want to hand dollars back to my company. And I think that HR sits in a place to really drive that. And I think some of the places that's going to happen in the future, and this is just us, I think in general is higher functioning sort of shared service models. Because the research that I've seen around these new AI models is that they don't tend to improve performance of your highest performers. Chad Sowash: Right. Tyler Weeks: They know their stuff. You take your best recruiter AI isn't making them significantly better. They're good. They know how to connect with people. They close offers. But what it does do, it gives a disproportionate bump to your lowest performing recruiters or your new recruiters, people earlier in their careers or less familiar with the field because it equips them with what to say. That's magic. Joel Cheesman: How close can it make them to the top level recruiter?  Like, what's the percentage difference?  Tyler Weeks: I think they're. So the research I saw was more around call center. Some experiments with a call center. And I think I'm going to misquote this, but I think they saw like a 30% productivity bump on your low end and almost zero on the top end, which is kind of backwards with how it gets talked about, right, and experimented with is its got to give your top performers the AI and be like, okay, find some efficiencies. Chad Sowash: So we should just be hiring B players and equipping them with AI to give them truth to that? Tyler Weeks: Absolutely. And I don't mean B players as in they're not ambitious or they're not good. But I need to get a critical mass of people that are supporting TA and other HR functions. I can get more creative in where I look and what education levels I need. And that's where I think I've got a big opportunity around handing dollars back to the company and handing time back to our employees. Chad Sowash: So on the ROI side of the house, there are many different points, it seems like, of light that you can start to pull instead of soft savings. You can start to demonstrate perspective, hard impact on bottom line. Is that something that, I mean, you're trying to formulate to be able to not just... Time means something, but generally it also means something with regard to getting somebody in a seat faster because that seat that has nobody in it, there's no productivity, right? So what about that aspect of it as well? Tyler Weeks: That one has always been... If you're making a case to a CFO or your finance controller about investing in software, that one's always a sticky one because I can multiply hours and take assumptions, and no matter what assumptions you pick, I can save the company a billion dollars with onboarding faster. It just multiplies in a way that makes it look like it's a slam dunk. I should be able to buy any software I want based on that. Chad Sowash: Doesn't work that way. Tyler Weeks: It doesn't work that way. It's hard because cost avoidance isn't nearly as powerful as cost reduction. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Tyler Weeks: And the way onboarding, like that time to productivity, often gets sort of accounted for is more like a cost avoidance. Like I brought somebody on and they were less productive and I avoided that lack of productivity. So it's a tough thing. You can do it and people do do that successfully often, but you really do have to look at reducing software costs overall. I do see as platforms have gotten more mature over the last 10 years, really the HR tech space has consolidated in a type of way, not really around specific vendors, but around bundles of capability. Joel Cheesman: Features are all looking like each other. Tyler Weeks: Yeah. Can I name names? Joel Cheesman: Sure. Of course. Tyler Weeks: If you told me six years ago, seven years ago that Paradox, HireVue and Phenom would basically all have the same features, I would have... Joel Cheesman: Laughed you out of the room. Tyler Weeks: I couldn't have conceived of a world where they would like... Chad Sowash: But it's convergence though, right? Tyler Weeks: Yeah. They're kind of converging on a similar thing. I think what, and with these agents that are coming out now, I think what you're going to start seeing is more companies sort of finding a happy medium between best in breed and enterprise where you've got a good foundation that's enterprise-centric and then you've got overlays or plugins that are best in breed where they're going to make the most strategic difference. Joel Cheesman: I want to go back to your breadth of the organization and the amount of stuff from the job seeker side that you see, target, eliminate, whatever. Lazy apply, deep fakes. We hear so many stories about on the job seeker side how it's a tsunami of stuff. Chad Sowash: It's scary stuff. Tyler Weeks: It's real. Yeah, it's real. Joel Cheesman: So you see it all all across the globe. What are you seeing in terms of what job seekers are doing and how are you combating some of the malpractice? Chad Sowash: The Jason Voorhees of AI. Joel Cheesman: Yes. Tyler Weeks: You know what's... I wish I had more on this around like a real trend or real research but I can speak anecdotally like internally because yeah, just like anybody else, we've started to get this uptick in fake applicants. Or sort of, it's a real applicant but there's sort of this out there, like a front for this outsourced thing where there's like you know you've seen the headlines around all that stuff. You know what's kind of like the lo-fi thing? It's just in-person interviews. Joel Cheesman: Sit in by a Kinko's and a FedEx package. Chad Sowash: How do you break that? Just have them come in. Tyler Weeks: Just talk to them. Joel Cheesman: Have them come in. Tyler Weeks: Yeah. You just have them come in. I think that's... Joel Cheesman: So you guys are doing more of that? Tyler Weeks: We are doing more of that. Yeah. We are doing more of that. We do have more people than, you know, we kind of think hit a high point during COVID like everybody of doing everything remote, everything online and I think we're seeing a bit of a correction of that even in our own practices around like, it's hard to deep fake it. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Tyler Weeks: Although I am a hard... Joel Cheesman: So aside from the Marriott and the Ritz in North Korea, all the other operations are suffering from that. We'll leave it at that. Tyler, thanks for hanging out with us. Tyler Weeks: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: This has been The Chad & Cheese Podcast. For Chad Sowash, I'm Joel Cheesman. This has been the Sessions AI Frontline series. We out. Chad Sowash: We out.

The Chad & Cheese Does Europe ShowPack your passports, kids—Europe just got dangerous. Chad’s rolling solo (Joel’s busy launching Cole at college), but he’s got backup: Lieven, Belgium’s royal court jester, and Stephen McGrath, Scotland’s deep-fried philosopher. They’re tackling the big questions: Why did Upwork blow €20M on “Bupty” (yes, that’s really the name)? Can Denmark stop Nic Cage from stealing Viggo’s face? Did the UK just invent “TGIF Forever” with the four-day work week? Plus: Americans are loud, entitled, and apparently Portugal’s least favorite tourist (sorry, Chad). 👉 Europe, hold our beer. Upwork buys Bupty, Denmark bans deepfakes, UK drops Fridays—Europe gets snarky with Chad, Lieven & Stephen. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION The Chad (00:35.31) here we go kids. Welcome to the chat and cheese podcast does Europe. I'm Chad giggity giggity. So wash. Lieven (00:44.527) I'm Lieven supporting my local royal family Van Nieuwenhuyze. Stephen McGrath (00:49.482) and my name's Stephen, not built for skiing, McGrath. Lieven (00:52.435) You The Chad (00:53.218) And on this episode, have questions. Questions like, will Upwork go full enterprise? Who is getting giggy? Can Denmark protect Vigo's async? And I don't know, which country is pushing for a four day work week? TGIF is in danger, kids. Let's fucking do this. The Chad (01:16.192) All right, so guess what? No Joel leaving. Don't start tearing up on me. Don't start tearing up on me. We do have another European that is stepping in to Joel's big shoes. Long awaited, heavily requested, and never, never duplicated. Who do we have? Lieven (01:22.225) don't know. The Chad (01:45.1) That's right. It's Stephen McGrath. Stephen, the first time on the show. Well, not really the first time on the show because you're on the show every week, but the first time live on the show. Well, thanks. Thanks for thanks for coming on in. Stephen McGrath (01:57.249) Yeah, no problem. I had to put on a bit of weight and chuck on some glasses just to make sure that the shoes were properly filled. But here I am, yeah. The Chad (02:01.24) Ha probably need some lifts too, because Joe's a little taller than you are. Stephen McGrath (02:07.094) Yeah, yeah, I'll just jump. I'll jump. The Chad (02:12.14) Yeah. Yeah. So Joel, everybody, Joel's okay. Joel's fine. He's dropping Cole We all know Cole Cheesman off at college today. So he's going to IU in Bloomington. And that has been known for years, for years as one of the best party schools in the nation. I should you not. In Bloomington, Indiana, which is literally like 45 minutes from, from my house. Lieven (02:35.699) That's important. The Chad (02:41.838) when I'm there. But yeah, yeah, it's, did you guys, when you went to uni, was it all party all the time? Was it a party school? Lieven (02:55.807) Steve New first. Stephen McGrath (02:56.038) you go. I didn't go to uni mate, I'm not, I barely made it out of high school. Yeah, but I certainly went to uni's two party when I could, know, so that was, I moved to Canada when I was 16 by myself and made friends with people at universities and ended up at university parties in and around there. So, although Col Cheeseman famously The Chad (03:00.398) That makes two of us. I went into the military. Yeah. The Chad (03:07.012) Hahaha The Chad (03:17.934) 16 Stephen McGrath (03:23.946) does not party as far as I'm concerned. He has very much told me that that is not the case. Lieven (03:26.633) Hmph. The Chad (03:29.966) Dude, I'm gonna tell you right now. I'm gonna tell you right now. He's gonna find some of the hottest chicks he's ever seen in his life that come to the university and he's gonna start partying because I mean, again, he's just gonna follow the lead of some hot chicks and good for him. Stephen McGrath (03:38.718) Hahaha Lieven (03:39.656) You Stephen McGrath (03:50.483) He's already got a leg up, he's about seven foot tall with a good buzz cut let me go so he's all good, he's ready. The Chad (03:53.806) What about you, Leaven? Were you at a or was it? Did you have party boarding schools before you actually went to to uni? Lieven (04:03.544) I think it's totally different than in the US. We have very serious universities and we study from day one until the end and then we graduate and we start our careers. No, no, the first week I joined the shrink, which was the faculty club of psychologists. And I never left the pub in five years, I think. I mostly, I almost lived there, but it was fun. was fun. The Chad (04:06.211) Yeah. The Chad (04:15.304) Okay, well that Stephen McGrath (04:25.44) Hahaha Lieven (04:29.683) But I think we don't have so... It's different than in the US, definitely. But by the way, what's a little cheeseman going to study? You're talking about partying, but is he going to study something? The Chad (04:39.318) Yeah, from my understanding, he's looking to get into higher ed himself. So he wants to become a teacher slash professor. Joel's wife, which many you listen to the show probably know she is a professor, smart as hell. So I don't know how she made that decision with the whole cheese thing. But yeah, mean, she's she is incredibly smart. So maybe he's just following in her footsteps. We'll see. All right. Are we ready for some shout outs, Leven? Lieven (04:46.665) Yeah. Lieven (05:03.711) Hmm. Lieven (05:11.391) Shout out, okay. Shout out this week goes to Princess Elisabeth of Belgium. And she just got official clearance from the United States government to return to Harvard. She is doing a master two years. Harvard, yeah, that's not the biggest part of university, think. Well, maybe it is, I don't know. But while 6,000 other foreign students were denied entry, America rolled out the red carpet for royalty. So I think a little reminder to... The Chad (05:23.448) Harvard. No. No. The Chad (05:36.673) Mmm. Lieven (05:40.273) The one in Florida, not all immigrants are coming to steal your jobs. Some are wearing crowns and had better grades than he probably has, but time to make America royal again. Stephen McGrath (05:49.131) You The Chad (05:49.304) So. Well, yeah, and hopefully Belgium can help. Did they use the same red carpet that he used in Alaska for Putin and Putin's little visit? Lieven (06:00.901) I definitely hope so. It would be a waste if he didn't. The Chad (06:02.926) It'd be ecologically sound. Yeah, I think so. think so. Well, I mean, off the back of that, I've got a perfect one, Stephen. So we'll have you go last. My shout out is to American tourists. What does this have to do with Europe? You're going to find out here in a second. Reader's Digest. Yes, that still exists, kids. Reader's Digest published an article about what Europeans think about American tourists in 2025. The Upgraded Points Survey polled two... Lieven (06:07.305) cracked. The Chad (06:30.606) 2,200 people in 22 European countries. That's about half the countries in Europe, about their views, including whether politics plays a role. What do Europeans dislike about American tourists the most? I'll let you guys, what would you think number one is? What do you think they do not like about Americans the most? Stephen McGrath (06:55.958) If I had to guess, not from personal, very lived experiences, is that they could possibly be loud and obnoxious. The Chad (06:57.515) Yeah. The Chad (07:03.52) Yes. Lieven (07:06.643) Yeah. But then again, that's the same with Germans and Scottish people. So. Stephen McGrath (07:10.262) Yeah, well, I don't know what you mean. I'm not loud or obnoxious at all. Lieven (07:17.779) Nope. The Chad (07:18.658) Yes, so loud loud. We're too loud. We're just too fucking loud. Number two is that we act entitled. That does not surprise me at all. I don't know how many times and I have some amazing friends that come over and they they visit us here in Europe and they pull out dollar bills like, you know, like a 50 or something like that. And they try to play pay with usd and I'm like, guys, they don't take that here. It's like It's fiat currency. They take this anywhere. I'm like, no, this is not how it works. It's the euro, which literally is actually worth more than US dollar right now. But I mean, the entitled piece, right, is something that didn't surprise me. On the other hand, Europeans, what do they like about Americans? Number one, we're friendly. So we're loud, but we're friendly. That's good, because we don't get want to get thrown into, you know, German prison or something like that. Lieven (08:16.126) Number two, this is... The Chad (08:16.83) Number two, this is funny. 42 % said, because we're curious. Now this almost sounds like a throwaway. Kind of like, which one do I pick that, okay, yeah, they're curious. That doesn't seem like a real one. Lieven (08:30.353) It was suggested, it was like a list they could... Stephen McGrath (08:32.776) Yeah, tech box exercise. Yeah. The Chad (08:32.942) It probably was. It was a drop down. It's probably first on the drop down list. And then as for the countries that find Americans most annoying. Number five is Denmark. Number four, the Netherlands. Number three, Ireland. Number two, your people up there in Belgium. That's right, leaving Belgium is number two and number one. This really. Lieven (08:57.556) The Chad (09:02.87) surprised me and then I realized I live here. Portugal. Yeah, so Portugal is the number one country in Europe that finds Europeans annoying. And I don't think that has anything to do with me. Stephen McGrath (09:06.029) wow. Stephen McGrath (09:17.0) Yeah, I mean, the list wasn't published until you lived there, is that right? Then all of a sudden it got... Lieven (09:17.759) That's it. The Chad (09:21.356) Yeah, no, that's a good point. Thanks for pointing that out, Steven, asshole. Lieven (09:23.955) But I think it's strange. I if there's one thing I like about the Americans, it's their dollars. If they want to wave them around, let them come, bring them on, all the dollars. But I don't think they're louder than anyone else. mean, drunk tourists are loud. Obnoxious, yeah. No. Stephen McGrath (09:31.124) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. The Chad (09:34.446) Yeah, just. The Chad (09:41.506) Definitely not louder than Brits. Yeah, not louder than Brits. Stephen McGrath (09:43.573) No, that's why England and Scotland are not on that list, right? The loud and obnoxious part is we match that, tier for tier, we're ready right there with you. I also think that the entitlement thing doesn't just come down to like, we're the US, it comes down to your communication style, which is quite direct. And lots of, I mean, the Netherlands and Belgium, they're quite direct sometimes as well. Lieven (09:53.469) And yeah, I'm sure. the Dutch... The Chad (09:55.011) yeah. The Chad (10:06.311) yes. The Chad (10:11.288) Yes, especially, yeah, especially the Dutch. Stephen McGrath (10:13.29) But I think other countries in Europe tend to fluff. They fluff around things. British people will gladly stand in line behind someone just because a line has formed because they think something is going to happen at the end of it. That kind of scenario. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me, but it's funny to match it against each other. Lieven (10:14.729) Yeah. Lieven (10:18.345) French. Lieven (10:27.843) The Chad (10:28.856) Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (10:38.828) Yeah, but very good point though that the Brits were not on that list. Yes, because they are extremely loud. I know because it's August here in the Algarve and the Brits fucking flood this place for God's sakes. Stephen McGrath (10:45.322) Yeah. Yes. Well, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Lieven (10:55.999) when I was in Martinique on holiday, the little Caribbean island, which is French. The Chad (10:56.44) What? Yeah. That's a little flex there, little flex when I was in Martinique. Yes. Lieven (11:02.719) Yeah, no, no, no, no, it's not flexing. It's very important. It's a part of France. And then there was an American tourist, a woman who was loudly complaining at the reception that she plugged her some air cleaner or something she brought from America. She plugged it in and it exploded because it's a different voltage. It's European system. they use, like in the UK as well, they use something weird, doesn't, whatever. So the thing exploded and she demanded. Stephen McGrath (11:02.806) I know, I was just... Lieven (11:30.783) refunds. You have to pay it because you didn't tell me that this wasn't 220 or what is it? Whatever 130. So and the people said yeah but it's not our fault that you brought in whatever and she couldn't get it. That's weird. Oh well. Stephen McGrath (11:36.436) Yeah, a hundred and a hundred ten. Yeah. The Chad (11:38.136) Yeah, one time, yeah. The Chad (11:46.762) And or you can't read, yeah. Stephen McGrath (11:48.319) Yeah. The Chad (11:52.206) Steven, shout out. Stephen McGrath (11:53.921) Yeah, so my shout out is to Gigged AI, who very recently, kind of last month or so, raised one million pounds, not dollars, because this is a European show and we're talking real money. So pounds they raised. So yeah, absolutely great work they're doing. I think we'll dive in maybe a little bit later to what exactly they're doing. But it's great to see people from the land of deep fried pizzas doing well. The Chad (12:04.632) Mm-hmm. Lieven (12:23.135) Hehehe. Stephen McGrath (12:23.574) in any shape or form. The Chad (12:27.554) my God, I can't tell you how pissed off Joel was when we went to that Chippy and you talked him out of whatever he was gonna get. I have no clue. It just, yeah. And then you said, get the deep fried pizza. He got it. He was so pissed. He was so pissed, yes. Stephen McGrath (12:30.998) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (12:36.512) Just getting a regular pizza. I told them they can't do that. Stephen McGrath (12:45.27) well. And the thing is, the good thing about Joe is he lets stuff go really easily and he doesn't remind you about it all the time. And it doesn't send memes about how horrible the food is or anything like that at any point, despite the fact that he eats at loads of delicious restaurants here in Glasgow. He just chooses that one to focus on. But hey, that is what it is. Lieven (12:53.971) Hahaha Lieven (12:59.903) you The Chad (13:01.646) Uhhh The Chad (13:06.306) Yes. Yeah, I mean, and just so you know, kids, there was no sarcasm there whatsoever. Real quick, I just have to say because we generally we usually hit Paris for for for Unleash and we're going to have to unfortunately skip that this year. Sorry, sorry, Unleash World, but we're going to have to skip. We, Julie and I are going back to the US and we're prepping the house for sale. Stephen McGrath (13:14.131) none. The Chad (13:37.72) That's right. We're prepping the house for sale. So we couldn't make Unleashed this year. So sorry about that. But while we're in the U.S., we thought we'd go ahead and just make some hay while we're at it. We're going to be at Wreckfest. Steven's going to be there. He's going to be on stage. I don't know. Maybe leaving will pop up. You never know. He's so stealthy. He shows up at places sometimes and you have no clue whether he's going to be there. And he shows up like behind stage. Ask for a t-shirt. Give him a t-shirt. And then he's gone. It's like fucking ninja, man. Lieven (13:38.939) home Lieven (13:56.119) Suddenly. I might surprise you. You The Chad (14:07.128) like a ninja. We're going to be at Wreckfest. So we're going to be at Wreckfest and then we're going to do three shows, RL 100 shows, San Francisco, San Diego and Dallas. So we had to fill our time since we're going to be in the US and unfortunately we couldn't go to Paris, which sucks, but hopefully we will be back there next year. How about you guys? Steven, you're going to Nashville. You're going to be on stage. We're also, little teaser here, kids, we're to have an event at where? Where, Chicken cock? Stephen McGrath (14:39.306) Oh yeah, right sorry. I thought you were like pure pressuring me about the actual event there. No, we're going to the chicken coop. Is it a distillery or is it just the headquarters? The Chad (14:48.846) I think it's their speakeasy. Stephen McGrath (14:52.294) okay, well, I don't know what one of those is, because I'm not that American, but it sounds cool. The Chad (14:59.918) Well, back in the day, when we had prohibition and nobody was allowed to drink, there would be these little underground bars where people could go do the... yeah. Stephen McGrath (15:15.222) Is that the password to get in? Is that what it was? You had to knock the door and say that. Lieven (15:15.881) chicken cock The Chad (15:18.35) It might be on this one. You might have to have your very own Stephen McGrath with you just to get in. Just to get in. So yeah, again, hate that we're missing Paris. We love Paris. Next year, put that on the calendar, kids. Hopefully, we will have many, many more European shows on the docket. How about you, Levin? You going to any shows or you just going skiing somewhere? Stephen McGrath (15:20.922) Ha ha. Stephen McGrath (15:25.896) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lieven (15:48.89) Both. skiing season hasn't already started yet. No, no, I'm going to some venues, but please don't ask me which ones. I'm going to Scott for our speakers, in fact, because we're having the E-Recruitment Congress next year, 2026, and I'm looking for speakers right now. So, Steven, you joined us a few years ago in Austin, it was, I guess. Yeah. You were... The Chad (15:50.414) Ha The Chad (16:05.027) Yes. Stephen McGrath (16:12.448) Yeah, I did. Yeah, was, was I not voted the best speaker at the entire event or something like that? Yeah, uh-huh. That's all I remember. Yeah. Lieven (16:16.607) You have a great memory. I already forgot, but you still remember you were voted the best speaker. Such a memory. Anyways, I would like to invite you to be present in October, 2026 in Amsterdam, like last year. Chad was there too. Chad always is there, but it will be in Amsterdam again. The Chad (16:23.758) Hahahaha! Stephen McGrath (16:26.518) Yeah. The Chad (16:38.552) Yes, again, the Chad and cheese return to the recruitment Congress. can't wait. Now it's time for. Stephen McGrath (16:38.794) Yeah, sounds good to me. Lieven (16:42.303) Yeah. The Chad (16:51.022) All right, time to dig in. Upwork just went shopping in the Hague, snapping up Dutch platform Bubtee. Yeah, that's Bubtee for 20 million, 20 million. Born out of the pandemic to fix freelance or chaos, Bubtee now fuels Upwork's enterprise push with private talent pools, onboarding and payroll built in. Pair it with Upwork's acquisition of EOR company, Ascen. and it feels like they're building a staffing powerhouse that doesn't want to play by the old rules. First, Ascend and now Enterprise player, Bupdi. Levin, it feels like Upwork is revving up the engines for a full global staffing play. What do you think? Do think they have a chance? Lieven (17:38.163) First of all, I followed the Dutch market pretty intense and I never heard about Bubty, which doesn't have to be a problem at all, but to be honest, until today or until I was preparing for this show, I didn't hear about Bubty at all. So it can't be that big. Maybe I missed the environments they hang out, but I never heard about them. And then the other one, Upwork. The Chad (17:41.422) Mm-hmm. yeah. Lieven (18:04.287) is a big better known, but still if you look at the numbers, it's not like they're competing against Adecco, Randstad or even House of HR. It's, have a revenue of, I right? About 700 million, something like that. 750, yeah. So if you compare them to someone like Randstad, 28 billion or to even House of HR, 3.6 billion or something, they're still pretty small. So. The Chad (18:06.179) Yeah. The Chad (18:17.422) 750 this year so far. Yeah. Lieven (18:31.943) It's always interesting to see what those companies are doing because they are the growing companies and these are the ones we need to pay attention to. The others are so big that they are hardly innovating. They just buy whatever is successful. But if they buy something I don't know, then I'm getting curious. What is Bupdi doing? So I'm going to look into it because why didn't I know them if Upworks know them? So it's amazing. But they're definitely into the right business and it's all about platform economy. It's about matching platform. So we'll see. The Chad (18:51.224) Yeah. Lieven (19:00.681) But I'm very sorry I can't give you a very in-depth presentation about them because I just hardly know. The Chad (19:06.798) That is weird because that's your part of the world and you know tech. mean, that's your job to know tech in that part of the world. that is odd. What do think, Stephen? Lieven (19:09.042) Yeah, definitely. Stephen McGrath (19:15.638) quite a big price tag as well, isn't it? When you said they acquired Bupty and my brain said who, like everybody else is going to probably, but again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I didn't actually know the price tag until you said it 30 seconds ago and I was kind of like, all right, wow, okay. So they classify themselves as an enterprise player. The price tag must justify that. The Chad (19:18.19) 20. The Chad (19:24.46) Yeah. Same. Stephen McGrath (19:44.029) somewhat to be relative to where Upwork is. It looks like any sort of company that has kind of its claws into this freelance marketplace world is being taken really seriously, you know, by investors, by acquirers, you know, and that's an interesting trend that's been consistent probably since kind of last couple of years, but But if companies are now buying the bupties, please change that name, please guys. I can't be a Scottish guy saying buptie, that's just not gonna work for me. So just something else. But anyway, buy the buy. It's interesting that that market's moving and shaking quite a lot with some of the news that we're going to talk about today. Lieven (20:17.841) You The Chad (20:36.098) Yeah, I think it's interesting because first off, they bought Ascend, which is an employer record company. And we've talked in the past about how a lot of these EOR companies could really reimagine themselves as staffing companies, but more with the technical infrastructure, right? You have a Rundstad, which we are talking about, Liden, that they've proven they have no fucking clue what to do with technology. I mean, you have a basic bitch job board like monster, right? And you can't even get that right. I mean, it was basic. The models were basic. You could have evolved some of those models, no question to be able to kind of like come in to the same pattern of staffing, but they didn't do that. They ran them separately and that was a very simple model to be able to run. they couldn't even do that. you know, we've been talking about. before Rippling and Deal went to war, for God's sakes, we thought those two companies would actually start to pronounce themselves as staffing organizations, right? Where they are doing everything on the down the funnel first, payroll being the hardest, right? Being able to make sure that you get the payroll right, you do everything in an app, and then you start working your way back up the funnel to where hiring is, because there's not as much money in hiring as there is on the down funnel. Right? But those guys are, I mean, they're killing themselves right now. So Upwork, sounds like they've got an EOR and now they've got the Enterprise puzzle that's there in Bupki. The Chad (22:16.609) yeah, they're getting some cash. I mean, they're getting some cash out of this thing. Stephen McGrath (22:21.546) wonder if it's going to be a bit of a renaissance of like, know, staffing when I joined recruitment, you know, 15 odd years ago, staffing had a pretty established negative name, you know, in the industry, it was, you know, that was the bad side of recruitment, quote unquote, it was transactional, was impersonal, you didn't, you know, you didn't need to be a specialist in anything. And you just you know, fill jobs as fast as you could. It seemed like internal TA roles were the glamour roles at that point, because you had arrived at, you know, why I now work for a company and I represent, yeah, I represent a brand and I'm, and there's maybe this kind of shift helped by technology now and the implementation of everything that we've got going on, where there's going to be a much larger. The Chad (22:52.174) Mm-hmm. The Chad (23:02.798) corporate. Stephen McGrath (23:17.558) of monetary value either down the funnel with the payroll and things like that or the actual hiring itself where a lot of these people that find themselves out working from an internal environment might go back to being agency focused specialists that have their vertical and they know it really well and they know their candidate pool and it will be very interesting to see how that maps out in the next couple of years because Technology obviously plays a huge part in that, but I do think you always just need people that know the market, know it well, and are able to use their connections to represent you. And that might not happen in-house, it might happen external. The Chad (24:00.494) Yeah, well, in I mean, at least in the UK, it seems like staffing is a part of everybody's process period, right? Unlike the US where it runs in cycles. Leven, so House of HR, I mean, you're and I think by design, you're more fragmented, right? So that you can be specialists in specific areas where Ronstadt tries to jam everything together to some extent under one brand and, you know, one focus. So with you guys moving forward, Lieven (24:11.671) and The Chad (24:29.57) You've always been incredibly tech forward. When you see these types of things happening, especially with EOR associated to it, what are your thoughts? Could House of HR start moving in that direction as well? Lieven (24:44.732) We are already moving in the direction, I think. One of our values is we're trailblazers, so we try to stay ahead of the pack and they can follow. And everything is moving extremely fast right now. we are, it's always buy and build, so we're constantly on the lookout for new technologies which might make a difference, but we want to buy them before they are too expensive. So actually... The Chad (24:52.686) Mm-hmm. Lieven (25:08.101) One of the very good things about this podcast is it forces us also to constantly stay aware of what's happening because I have to prepare for them. So I have to prepare for the episodes. So I need to look into everything which is happening. It's nice to see. But could you repeat your question? I've forgotten it by now. The Chad (25:27.734) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just with House of HR, again, being more fragmented and specialized, do you see this easier for you guys to move? Because it feels like you're a lot more nimble than in a Deco or a Ron stuff. Lieven (25:31.451) I know. Yeah. Lieven (25:41.417) We still are, and that's a good thing and it's necessary. We have 52 companies and we have one holding House of HR, but all of these companies have their own marketing teams, their own IT teams to a certain extent, definitely their own sales around recruiters, they're doing their own stuff. It's like a whole fleet of little speedboats going more or less in the same direction. We try to guide them a bit, but they know their own business by heart and we bought them because they were best in class. And if they want to... The Chad (25:45.166) Mm-hmm. Lieven (26:09.297) invest in a certain technology because they feel this is going to make the difference for our clients and for our candidates, then they definitely should. And I believe in this kind of specialization. have to, they know them the best. If you are one big brand with very long communication lines, if some young enthusiast guy has a great idea by the time it reaches someone in charge, we have done it. And that's, that's a fact. The Chad (26:34.52) Yeah. Yeah. Stephen McGrath (26:34.87) It's interesting that you just said that, and this is the last I'll say on this, but I worked for Adecco, and Adecco are actually actively doing, or spent the last several years doing the opposite of what you just said. So they had specialist agencies, the Spring Engineering, the specialist white collar workers, the office angels of the world, that they just left in their own brand, with their own marketing team, with their own heads of department. Lieven (26:49.961) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (27:03.828) and actually everything is now being drawn back to a deco, and that being the flagship of you all represent us as a brand. So what from the inside scoop of people I know that are still there, quite a lot of those people feel like they've lost their brand identity and therefore their power within the market. I am no longer an engineering specialist, I work for a deco. And what that... Lieven (27:23.847) Exactly. Stephen McGrath (27:32.213) then means is that makes their BD harder because people have negative experiences with an Adecco brand, they don't necessarily have negative experiences with the X engineering brand or whatever that is. So it's interesting to see that you guys really firmly are stood on that model still when a lot of these randstads, Alexander Mans, Adeccos of the world are like, no, it's back to us, it's back home, baby, that type of thing. Lieven (27:57.139) Yeah, and... And I get why they do it. mean, it's from a marketing point of view, it's so much easier to just promote one brand than to promote 52 brands. It's cheaper, it's easier. But if you buy a company because it's great, then why would you change it into something it's not? It doesn't make sense. Especially in Europe indeed. Yeah. The Chad (28:16.59) especially in Europe, especially in Europe, because you have all the different cultures, you have all the different languages. mean, and again, I think that's when we first started talking, Levin, and we got a chance to sit down with you and Rika and start talking about strategy. mean, that to me, as an advisor in better understanding Europe and how much different Europe is from the US that to me just seemed like pure genius. you know, an aspect that you know, the the Deco's and the Ronstadt's were missing and to be fair around a Deco, they've also bought technology, Vetere, Hired, and they've, they've shit the bed on those two, right? So not only Ronstadt is shitting the bed with a big name like Monster, but so is the Deco with Vetere and Hired.com. Back to Upwork real quick. Yes, they are at the point and this is the thing that I think is important. We didn't really see this happening. Lieven (29:02.825) Yeah, but don't. The Chad (29:13.612) But they're seeing, because it felt like a race to the bottom with Upwork, right? Now they're getting reported record revenues. And they're starting to gin up again with an EOR and also Enterprise, Perspective Arm. Let's see what happens. All right, and we're going to move since we have a Scott on the show today. We've tailored the content just a tad and the next story is straight out of Glasgow. Stephen McGrath (29:38.998) you The Chad (29:44.514) Yep, leaving. Did you know that 54 % of CIOs are saying staff shortages are taking time away from strategic and innovative work? I didn't know that. Well, they are apparently. And that's why gig.ai launched SIA, the AI agent. I'm sure kids you haven't heard of these things called agent yet. The AI agent that doesn't need PTO, coffee breaks or even the need to circle back on Monday. Built on Microsoft Azure and plugging straight into enterprise tech stacks, lets hiring managers query their workplace like it's chat GPT for talent. Want to know who's free for cloud migration next week or how many Python nerds we have in our database? SIA costs that answer up in seconds after a beta with Fortune 500 companies like Lytos and Concentrics. GIGDAI is rolling SIA out to everyone, promising ROI in under four weeks. I'm gonna say that again. Promising ROI in under four weeks in a workforce that's equal part human, contractor, and AI. With last month's, as you just talked about, Stephen, the fresh one million pounds sterling investment to scale. CEO Rich Wilson says, this is the next step in blowing up old school hiring models. We'll go to the glass region first on this one. Alright, Stephen, do recruiters get an AI teammate who never sleeps, or is this just a replacement? Stephen McGrath (31:24.182) So, look, I am the world's biggest critic when it comes to agentic technology that is not agentic. I actually hate it with a passion. I hate the marketing speak around it. I hate that quite often it's just decision tree based models with a dress on. I hate all of that. But, SIA, which is the Skills Intelligence Agent, is from what I can see, maybe one of the closest things to legit in the market from what I've looked at from demos, from my understanding of how the technology works and kind of reading about it from things that Rich has posted and some others. You put in a request, it goes and does the work, it does it until completion and it comes back with results. that, it can then... perhaps pass on to later parts of that process or trigger a hiring process, et cetera, et cetera. But it does what it's designed to do in totality, right? And that's half the battle because let's just put that a check and a win for tech. Where it's kind of gonna come into play, I think, right? And this is based on what I was kind of talking about earlier is with TA teams shrinking and they're just shrinking by default. Right, like that's just, you guys talk about that every week. We all talk about it all the time. We're gonna need things like this just to supplement us somebody. But the trick will be how well can it do it? The ROI in four weeks thing, have to see about that. not, you know, I would love if it was true, absolutely. I love that kind of marketing speak. Absolutely, let's see the results. The Chad (33:14.318) That's pretty ballsy. Stephen McGrath (33:21.11) But I think, you know, in terms of whether it's going to, you know, replace people, unfortunately, that's pretty much what all of these things are designed to do at this point in time, isn't it? And they need to be, because if they're not, then it's just supplementary technology that's a nice to have that nobody's putting in their balance sheets at the end of the day. The Chad (33:47.544) Yeah, that's what happens when you tell me you're gonna take my job away, Stephen. Stephen McGrath (33:48.535) Can I just say it's really jarring hearing yourself when you're on this, like just randomly just coming out with things, things that I don't even remember saying, but anyway, we'll just keep moving. Lieven (34:00.031) You The Chad (34:03.342) What do think, Levin? This is, I mean, this literally seems like kind of a similar infrastructure, not just around hiring, but also, you know, the purposeful around staffing. Lieven (34:15.124) for when it's done? ill and pregnant and all, everything. An agent is stable, 24-7 available, you don't pay taxes when it works, et cetera. So it's a problem. But you still need people, and this is a cliche by now, but you still need people operating these agents. So what we started to do is checking what do our clients need and make sure the people we put at work come in that company with a backpack filled with agents and tools and the education to know how to use them. The Chad (34:45.74) get sick. Lieven (35:09.395) And this works amazing. So we've seen a rise in salaries from 25 % for people we put at work who have these tools because they bring a new knowledge to the companies. This is only going to take, I think, two, three years. By then the companies will know how to do it themselves. But it's the spirit. We need to just set it out. But according to the World Economic Forum, there will be so many more jobs created than jobs being lost because of AI. And I so hope they're right because now The Chad (35:19.118) Really? Lieven (35:40.849) I think we have almost a moral issue. Young people not finding jobs anymore because their jobs are being taken by agents. This is problematic. And one person actually can do the job of five others if you provide them with the right agents and with the right tools. The Chad (35:44.706) Ciao. The Chad (35:54.114) Yeah, taxes. Stephen McGrath (35:55.127) So there's a really important thing about this that came out quite recently as well. I'd have to find the name of the study. But actually there are financial implications to letting technology have free roam of all of the things that you want it to, right? And a company like Gegged will gate that and will control that and will do it within their pricing model. but these companies that are enterprise level that are gonna say, we'll just go out and build our own agents. If you just let that have an infinite loop throughout all of your whole tech stack and every call is 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, and it just keeps doing that, right? It just goes into this infinite cycle. It might have been cheaper hiring that grad at a uni to do the job in the long term because yeah. Lieven (36:44.254) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (36:48.704) three months down the line, it's cost effective. Six months down the line, it's looking a bit okay. 12 months down the line, we could have actually hired somebody for 30 grand to just have a look at that. it becomes, now obviously that's at scale, but there are actual studies that I would encourage people to, I've not come prepared enough with the name. I'll post it maybe somewhere on this when I see it. But you'll go and find those studies because quite often if you're just building, and technology that you're not buying, that's really important, right? Building technology yourself that you're not buying. Then you might be in for a world of pain down the line with somebody breathing down your neck saying, hey, what's this uncontrollable spend and what is the recruitment agent 2.0 thing that we were wasting tens of thousands on? The Chad (37:38.444) Gotta have thresholds. I've got... The Chad (37:44.802) So about 20 years ago, you guys probably remember you were in diapers, Steven, big data was a big thing, right? Everybody was talking about big data and they had so much of this data. The problem was they couldn't process through it. They didn't have what they needed to be able to process through the data. Now they have it, right? And I think for me, I've seen the same thing happening with hack a job. Lieven (38:06.911) I think it's for me. The Chad (38:11.234) Right? They're more specific to niche in tech. Started in the UK and they're really making some strides in the US. Being able to be a skills or talent intelligence platform and what that really means is it gives you the opportunity. Let's say for instance, you go and you know this, Steven, you go to your hiring manager for an intake meeting or an intake call or something like that and they give you the requirements and the requirements are shit. Right? And they give you shit requirements. Well, if you have a talent intelligence or skills intelligence platform, you can literally pull it up on your on your phone or on their desktop and say, OK, what are the requirements? Let's look into the ecosystem, our internal database. And let's say, for instance, in this case, gigs, gig dot AI, their database as well. Let's take a look at these and see what it actually looks like. Right. they're two motherfuckers that can actually do this job. Stephen McGrath (39:04.33) Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (39:06.112) Right. So instead of wasting two weeks or a month or longer and then a hiring manager coming back to you saying, where are my people? Well, they didn't exist in the first place. OK. So you can do that in real time and have at least a market kind of like a landscape view of the types of people that you're looking for. And you can tweak that right then. Right. So you can do this. And I think gigged. Lieven (39:17.539) Yeah The Chad (39:31.19) hack a job, a lot of these companies are starting to do that. And when we see the indeed's of the world, what's that? Okay. I don't know bupkis about bupty. I know is they were bought for 20 million. But I mean, at the end of the day, I'm really excited about these types of platforms because we did have, again, 20 years ago, we were talking about big data. Stephen McGrath (39:34.998) Don't forget Bupty. Bupty are doing that as well. Sorry, sorry, keep going. Lieven (39:51.968) about these types of platforms because we did have, again, 20 years ago, we were talking about big data. These piles of data that we just couldn't... The Chad (39:57.752) these piles of data that we just couldn't process through. Now we're processing through it much faster. Sometimes it is costly, but at the end of the day, this to me is a problem that is being fixed at the top of the funnel instead of what Indeed's trying to do, trying to fix things at the bottom of the funnel where they shouldn't be fucking around, right? So good on these startups. Hopefully they can help some of the bigger companies do business in a much better way. All right, we'll be right back right after this. The Chad (40:36.662) it goes. Will it go? There we go. All right. So this one, this segment is called Denmark's Facial. Denmark just went full face off. But instead of John Travolta and Nick Cage swapping mugs, lawmakers are telling deep fake makers, keep your tech off the Danish faces like Mads Mikkelsen and Viggo Mortensen. Stay away from their voice or even their walk. A bill would give Danes copyright style control over their own likeness, turning every citizen into a one person IP portfolio platforms that don't play ball. They get big fines. It's Europe's first shot at protecting digital doppelgangers and shutting down the AI versions of black market face swapping. Levin, is this the first step for the EU in moving this direction or just something to make Danes feel good about their government? Lieven (41:36.384) I think it's an amazing idea and I hope the rest of Europe will follow and since they're so eager to launch new laws, I'm sure they will follow. But who is this going to target to impact? think in my opinion, the biggest problem with DeepFake is actually the bad guys using DeepFake for scams, for all kinds of phishing campaigns, et cetera. And those campaigns, mean, those people, won't stop them with a law because they're already illegal and they don't care. we could. So platforms like Facebook, like Meta, like, like all the others, when they still accept deep fake videos from shady companies. see it every day when I go to Facebook, I see videos from The Chad (42:06.946) Mm-hmm. Lieven (42:23.999) I mean, deep fake videos from famous Belgian people who are telling me to invest in crypto, for example. And each time I click on reports and this is a scam and this is illegal and this is a deep fake, Facebook doesn't do anything. And it just keeps going on for weeks. So I'm sure they are aware because all the kind of people are reporting it, but they don't give a fuck because they get the money. So if this law is going to target those companies, that's great. But if they hope to target real bad guys, I mean, not a shady bad guys like Facebook, but the real bad guys, this is not going to work. It's not going to stop criminals. It's not going to stop fraudsters. It's not going to stop even those state actors who are using fake news to, to tell Joel that Republicans are right. And this kind of stuff, but it's not a silver bullet that is slow. It's just going. Stephen McGrath (43:12.811) What? Lieven (43:15.807) It's going to put things into attention, which is good. And I like it. In fact, I don't like too many loss, but this, in this case, I'm totally pro. Stephen McGrath (43:24.918) Do they all have to throw their iPhones in the sea? What happens with those types of things? Because that scans your face. Does it? Is that the same thing? The Chad (43:32.586) It scans your face, but it doesn't automatically create deep fakes, right? So I mean, that's the... Stephen McGrath (43:36.447) Yeah, but I just like so there's there's the kind of thing of like, what's the trade off? That's what interests me about all of this, right? So what's the trade off? So the trade off being, hey, we don't want companies like this to create stuff. How do we control that? Right? Do people then have to upload their data so that that's stored somewhere so that the companies then can't use it? Right? Like, let me just pay. Where's Joel's tinfoil hat when you need it? Where's he got a store of those, right? The Chad (43:42.51) Mm-hmm. The Chad (44:03.353) Hahaha Stephen McGrath (44:04.79) Let me just put that on for a second. So I'm the government and I say, hey, we're gonna stop AI deepfakes. All you need to do is upload your face, your fingerprint, your this and your that into our database to make sure that if an AI deepfake is ever registered against that, the biometric data will match and we'll stop it from happening. But I've already just done it. Right, so that's an interesting thing for me to think like, that's where my brain goes is like, how are we going to stop it? Lieven (44:28.415) Hmm. Stephen McGrath (44:33.942) Like what is the actual technology behind it? And is it just about Danish people or are we rolling out the red carpet to Harvard for just famous Danish people, right? Like, you know, there's that like, where is the line? Does it go? So that's the kind of stuff that I like to think about. My brain kind of gets a little bit sore with is like, yeah, look, it sounds lovely. And I like the idea of it. How's it going to be implemented and how are we going to monitor it? The Chad (44:44.054) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (45:01.588) and what's the real life kind of consequences behind it as well. So, yeah. The Chad (45:04.526) Well, even the enforcement piece, right? I mean, how are you going to enforce? And I think this is the biggest key. know, Denmark is a great, a great start and it's good on them for taking this step, but it's not enough. If, if more countries get involved, even get the EU involved, then you can start to get other countries involved. Will this stop China, Russia and North Korea from creating deep fakes of, as I'd said, Mads, Michelson or Viggo Mortensen? No, that's not enough pressure with just Denmark. Lieven (45:27.763) No. The Chad (45:32.654) There needs to be more that happens. How that actually happens from a semantic standpoint, from a logistical standpoint, I no clue yet, but I got to say big applause to these guys for going that extra mile. And big applause to, guess what? The UK, South Kimbernshire. I don't even know if I said that right. It's because they try to... Stephen McGrath (45:50.656) Yeah, absolutely. Lieven (45:56.265) South Himlenshire. I don't even know if I said that right. They're almost as as The Chad (46:01.25) jam sum, they're almost bad as Germans in some cases with those long ass freaking street names and whatnot. Jesus. Yeah, that's an entirely different language. South Kimbershire just broke the mold permanently locking in a four day work week. Same pay, fewer hours and so far it's working. Independent analysis shows performance improved in 21 out of 24 services turnover tanked. Stephen McGrath (46:08.118) Hey, you'd freak out in Wales, let me tell you. Lieven (46:11.217) Yeah. The Chad (46:30.644) And when I mean turnover, I mean people leaving, not revenue. Turnover tanked, which means people stayed. Applications spiked, go figure, and taxpayers saved nearly £400,000 a year. Central government grumbled, but with labor dropping its objections, this could be the first domino in a nationwide long revolution. I expected this out of France, Levin, but I didn't see this coming from the UK because the UK to me has always felt kind of like a little United States, right? A little US. So what do you think? Do you think the UK will start to adopt this or not? Lieven (46:58.124) Yeah. Lieven (47:05.991) Yeah. Lieven (47:14.731) It's like the royal version of the US, right? But the French first of all are going to be so angry because they wanted to be first and they were so proud with their 35 hours working week and now those stupid... How do you call them? How do the French call the British? The frogs? That's the other way around. Yeah, there's a French... Okay. I don't know. They had a name too, but I've forgotten it. The Chad (47:17.467) Hahaha The Chad (47:27.116) huh. Brits? I don't know. No, that's the French, yeah. Stephen McGrath (47:33.526) frogs is the other way around, yeah. Lieven (47:37.875) But they will be complaining, but probably they'll come up with a three-day working week. Four days is better than five, then three is better than four, something like that. We'll see. But I think it makes sense. And definitely, no, I'm serious. mean, Stephen McGrath (47:48.054) You Lieven (47:55.2) I think in ages of AI, if tech replaces 20 % of human tasks, we should see a shrinking workweek and not some kind of an expectation creep. And this is what's going to happen. If people can do the same in less time, we should allow them as long as they do whatever is needed to be done. Of course, people in boardrooms will think about they can be more productive and they can come up with more. We have to find some kind of a balance in between, but I think four days, it's definitely fine. It's not like we're living in the, like before the industrial revolution. So I think. The Chad (48:33.134) Yeah, real quick, just so you know, I just did a quick look up on Gemini and the French called the British people Les Roast Beefs, which is translates to the roast beefs. Lieven (48:42.591) That was beefs. Lieven (48:47.079) Yeah, okay. The frogs and the roast beef. Stephen McGrath (48:48.47) I even hate it. I'd munch some roast beef right now on this podcast if you'd let me. So I'm okay with it. I'm all good. Lieven (48:53.503) We have it each Sunday, the Sunday roast, we love it. The Chad (48:56.238) What do you think, Steven? Are you gonna take this to Adam and see if he can go ahead and squeeze through the four day work week? Stephen McGrath (49:03.784) I've already moved to whatever it is you said. So he has to implement it by default. Look, I think everything that we've talked about today in terms of like skills intelligence, With agentic moves, with going back to find real people that can do real jobs in a task-based way. And this, like Leven says, it all links together and it all links together by default. I just, be honest with you, I'd scrap the whole thing. know, like contracted work hours should be contracted tasks. You know, that should be, I want you to achieve X in your job role. You know, it's outcome based. And actually, if you can do in 12 hours where it takes somebody 15 to do, then you can do it in 12 hours and off you go play paddle and I'll see you later. Like, you know, that is that type of thing. The Chad (49:45.312) It's outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (49:58.914) Amen. Lieven (49:59.999) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (50:02.358) You know, I'm probably a bit of a proponent of it because my role is pretty much entirely, you know, outcome based. Everything I do from a work point of view is outcome based. But I also have an employer that can say to me on a Monday, hey, we really need that done by Friday and it will be done. You know what I And look, sometimes that might take me 50 hours because, that, then next week it might only take me 30 to do the next thing. And it's just that that's the kind of balance that I prefer. Lieven (50:20.905) Mm-hmm. Lieven (50:27.23) Yeah. Stephen McGrath (50:31.318) that I like and I'm not I'm not making anything I'm not sewing the bottoms onto you know soles of shoes and I'm not you know making doughnuts for people to eat like I don't need to work in a manufacturing based environment that requires quotas and limits I just get my job done and in whatever time that takes me so I don't it's funny right and as I said this the first time we spoke on this podcast in Belgium at the The Chad (50:31.47) Okay. Lieven (50:52.734) Yeah. Alright. Stephen McGrath (50:59.658) you know, eCongress is we have been talking about the same things and different things in recruitment for like 20 odd years. And it's like, sometimes it's just got a click and sometimes we've got to be the powerhouse in the industry that needs to the world, know, adopt it and move it forward. If all these, you know, all these kind of agencies and RPOs and large kind of companies The Chad (51:16.919) adoption. Stephen McGrath (51:29.15) start advocating for it, if recruitment technology providers start advocating for it, your ATS and things like that, things will start to shift a little bit elsewhere, because we'll trickle down from talent into other worlds, I think. it'll be, You ask me if I'm a fan, I'm a fan. I like the idea, but for me, jobs should always be outcome-based anyway. Lieven (51:59.642) Thanks for The Chad (52:00.672) Yep. So gents, I appreciate you both coming on. Joel obviously definitely appreciates that. I'll do that by his proxy. If anybody wants to actually reach out to you, talk a little bit about poetry, a little bit about House of HR, where you going to send them? Steven, you go first. Lieven (52:11.743) If anybody wants to actually reach out to you, talk a little bit about poetry, bit about the House of H.R., what are you going to say? Steven or J.P.? Stephen McGrath (52:23.412) LinkedIn really is the only place to find me unless you come up to my house and I'm not telling you where that is just yet. Not until a few LinkedIn messages down the line. But just please be warned that my content in there is not for everyone all the time. The Chad (52:29.678) Ha The Chad (52:37.792) If you like sing, if you like sing a Scottish man singing in the shower, then you're definitely going to want to follow Stephen McGrath. Yeah. Stephen McGrath (52:43.124) Yeah, hey, stop on by, baby. I got you covered. Lieven (52:48.179) He single-handedly made LinkedIn fun. It's content you wouldn't expect on LinkedIn and it's an improvement. So I like it. Stephen McGrath (52:51.104) Yes. The Chad (52:55.746) Yeah. So if there are companies out there who do know bupkis about bupti, leaving, they might be a good fit, who knows? Where can they actually connect with you? Stephen McGrath (52:55.99) There we go. Lieven (53:07.081) Yeah. Lieven (53:10.727) The biggest problem is my name. How to pronounce and how to spell my name. would say LinkedIn as well. Leven is a pretty common name in Flanders, but Flanders is very small. But Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze, there's only one, which is very good, but you can misspell it so hard. So you probably won't find me. But if you go to houseofhr.com and you check on the XCOM or anything, there are only seven people in there. You might discover my name, Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze. The Chad (53:15.778) How many Lievens are... Is it? Okay. The Chad (53:37.998) There's always, it's always spelled right in the podcast notes. We appreciate it. Thanks guys. And again. The Chad (53:50.626) Have a good one, we out. Lieven (53:52.137) We out.

🎙️ This week on Chad & Cheese: Will SiriusXM suit drag iCIMS be into the hot seat (again)? 🔥 Upwork cosplays as Blockbuster’s worst nightmare 📼 Deel clones employees like it’s a bad Black Mirror episode 🤖 And somewhere in Atlanta… a meteor picked the worst Airbnb ever 🌎💥 Plus, Joel cries at college drop-off (on the inside), Chad yells at Apple, and we both wonder why DOL is handing out Corporate Welfare, did America just go full socialism? Buckle up, kids—humans are cooked. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.974) This podcast ain't for everybody, only the sexy people. Hey boys and girls, this is the Chat and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel. Make a deal for me, Cheeseman. The Chad (00:46.35) This is Chad, be kind rewind, so wash. Joel Cheesman (00:49.532) And on this episode, iCims is under fire, Dill extinguishes a fire, and humans are so fired. Yeah, we had a good run. Let's do this! The Chad (01:03.079) We had a good run. God, I hope your son doesn't listen to this. Joel Cheesman (01:05.49) We look like the most disjointed sports podcast in the world. The Chad (01:09.272) We do, yeah. For everybody listening, you can go check it out on YouTube when we publish it. Jill's got our new 2025 Fantasy Football League jerseys on. These are the best. I haven't even been able to put mine on this wonderful frame yet, although when I get home, I'll have it. Joel Cheesman (01:29.886) Crying your Portuguese beach of choice. Yeah. The Chad (01:32.834) Yes, look at this baby. Look at this. I've got my, I've got my Porto. I'm not a big Porto fan, but if you can see the back, it's a Jota jersey. Yeah. It's a Jota jersey. Had to get it. Had to get, was the only Portuguese team, I believe the only Portuguese team he played for, at least in the, in the A-league. But anyway, yeah, beautiful. We look good. How did Cole look? How did Cole look? Joel Cheesman (01:38.451) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (01:41.768) Jota. Joel Cheesman (01:53.298) Yeah, we look, we look good, man. We look good. We look good. Back to that. Good. Good everybody. Yeah. So, took my first born to college this week on Tuesday. my ex wife and wife and I helped him, move into the dorm at Indiana university. it was a bit emotional for me. I did. The Chad (02:05.261) Yeah. The Chad (02:13.975) Okay, nice. The Chad (02:19.654) god yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:20.198) I cried on the inside, not, you know, I didn't let, didn't let him see me cry. The Chad (02:25.069) It's okay these days Joel. It's okay. You can cry. Joel Cheesman (02:28.358) Yeah, it's a, and a lot of people, our age are putting shit on social kids going to college and things like that. So it's sort of equal parts. You're really proud of what they've done, where they're going. They're starting this new chapter in their life, but it's also a very bittersweet moment in that, you're saying goodbye. Kinda to a kid like for that, for that part of their life is now over. Fortunately, I have two more that are still a pain in my ass, but for one of them. The Chad (02:40.492) Yeah. That's awesome. The Chad (02:49.676) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:57.15) it's gone and you just, you just kind of worry as a parent, like, they going to be okay? And they're in the big, bad world now. I can't, I'm not there to sort of be via support system. So anyway, super happy for him. super great school and campus. I hope that he, excels and engages and finishes maybe first and foremost finishes and, he'll be on onto his life, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a moment for sure. It's a moment for sure. The Chad (03:01.367) Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah. The Chad (03:22.615) Yeah. He's like what two hours from you now? I mean he's not he's not that far away Which is nice cuz just in case shit goes sideways dad can be there in no time whatsoever You don't have to pop on a flight or nothing like that. So that's Joel Cheesman (03:38.226) Yeah. And, for those, for those of us in Indiana, 69 opening up has been really, really nice to get down to Bloomington. The Chad (03:44.078) yeah. yeah. So what does it take now then? How long? Joel Cheesman (03:49.99) I mean, so I'm on the far north side of Indy more or less. So it's probably two hours, but would have taken two and a half easily at the old system, the old road. The Chad (03:52.129) Yeah, right. Okay, not bad. Not bad, yeah. Don't worry, don't worry, Cole, when Uncle Chad is in Indiana, it's only 45 minutes, so you can always call the Batphone and I'll be there. You know that, you know that. You need a wingman? I'm there for you, brother, it's okay. Joel Cheesman (04:07.014) Yep. Uncle Chad is there too. So I think he's okay. How was the European show? Stephen McGrath, I'm a little bit bummed that the first time our favorite Scott comes on the show and I'm not even on it. So how did... The Chad (04:20.641) It's kind of apropos though. I mean, it is kind of apropos. Yeah, it is. mean, because you gave Adam Gordon, you know, the golf clap and this is just coming back around as a... But no, he did a really good job. He had fun and can't wait to have him on stage with us in Nashville. We'll talk more about that in weeks to come. But yes, we've got some big, big stuff happening. Joel Cheesman (04:23.674) Is it? You can't have that much sexy on one podcast, I think. The Chad (04:50.823) around Nashville and even Louisville, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas. Got a lot of shit coming up. So we're pretty stoked. Joel Cheesman (05:00.2) Yep. And you posted something from our friend, Toby Dayton, at link up recently. Is he okay? Can we check on him? He's, he's so mild mannered. And ever since Trump took office, he's, he's been dropping grenades everywhere. I I just want to check on it, make sure he's okay. The Chad (05:04.799) yeah. The Chad (05:09.879) Yeah. The Chad (05:17.837) Yeah, no, should, he's probably in a safe room right now. But I mean, it's hard when you look at numbers in the economy and you do what Toby does, right? And you know, being on the show with him for a year doing the jobs numbers before they got acquired and you know, he's got the money pit in the sky. He's really close to this stuff. So I can't imagine. Joel Cheesman (05:22.29) you Joel Cheesman (05:29.598) Mm-hmm. The Chad (05:46.574) how hard it would be to divorce yourself from watching an economy really on the verge of collapsing. Because that's pretty much what all the indicators are looking at right now. So how the fuck do we come out of this? And the tariffs are literally just starting. We haven't even felt that yet. Joel Cheesman (06:04.594) Mm-hmm. And he, the BLS, he was obviously upset about if the numbers aren't real or we can't trust the numbers. Like we got a problem. and, and he knows data. He is his, he's the big dog of data. And when he sees that the federal government is saying like, let's mess with the numbers, to quote Mark Twain, there are lies, damn lies and statistics and, The Chad (06:11.425) Jesus, yes. The Chad (06:16.695) Yeah. The Chad (06:20.63) Everything's rigged. The Chad (06:24.78) Yes. Joel Cheesman (06:35.582) That is coming true in the numbers. mean, if people can't trust them, we have a real problem. have a problem. So if you're out there, Toby, give us a shout out. Let us know you're okay. I don't know. We'll send you a Jersey or something. The Chad (06:47.691) Yeah, send us a smoke flare or smoke signal or something like that if you're not, okay? Some type of flare would be good. We just want to make sure you're okay, bub. Joel Cheesman (06:55.39) Thankfully football season's around the corner and he's a big Vikings fan, so maybe that'll help calm him down a little bit. We're thinking of you, Toby. Thinking of you, man. Thinking of you. The Chad (06:59.371) Yeah, we shall see. We shall see. Joel Cheesman (07:07.942) It is time for shout outs. Sponsored by our friends up North. Kiora, that's techs recruiting made simple and affordable. The Chad (07:08.179) It is. is. Kiora. The Chad (07:19.063) I'm gonna go first because this one's kind of fun. My shout out is to relocation. So a cherry sized, cherry tomato sized ball of flame crashed through the roof of an Atlanta home in June, which was classified as a meteorite 20 million years older than the planet earth. And kids. The planet Earth is estimated to be 4.5 bu-bu-bu-billion years old. So this is 20 million years older. Anyway, think about that. 20 million years older than the Earth. And it chose its final resting place, its relocation place, Atlanta. Are you fucking kidding me? Not the Bahamas. Not Machu Picchu. Not Santorini. Not French Alps like Levin would love, the French Alps. Not Bora Bora. Joel Cheesman (07:47.326) Mm-hmm. The Chad (08:11.519) Not Bora Bora, Atlanta. So shout out to relocation. Yeah, Jesus. Shout out to relocation. It's not always what it's cracked up to be. Joel Cheesman (08:13.638) Atlanta, GA. Joel Cheesman (08:21.668) Atlanta. Nothing would ruin your day like a ping pong ball size meteorite just coming through the house, would it? The Chad (08:30.139) yeah, no shit. Joel Cheesman (08:31.41) That would be a bad day, bad day. But, Chad, I'm here with good news. I'm here. I'm here with good news on my shout out. It's, it's back to school season conference seasons picking up. know people are looking for, for something new to wear something stylish, something cool. And I'm here to help. Fashionize our audience chat. I was out. I was on the internet, perusing randomly, fast food, fast food sites and came across Arby's. The Chad (08:33.005) I mean, it seems seems apropos, though. Go ahead. Good. huh. The Chad (08:47.405) Mm-hmm. The Chad (08:52.649) The Chad (08:58.177) huh. Joel Cheesman (09:01.022) When was the last time you were in an Arby's, Chad? The Chad (09:04.909) A decade maybe, I would say. I guess. Joel Cheesman (09:05.086) A decade? Okay. Well, you're, well, you're missing out because, if you head out, if you head out to Arby's shop.com, you can outfit yourself and get a whole plethora of fun stuff. So here's just a sampling Chad. You can get a hat that just says beef, just says beef. Nothing else. Just a hat that says beef. They have polo shirts with curly fries on them and, and beef and Cheddar's. The Chad (09:15.168) No way. The Chad (09:25.695) That's all you need. Joel Cheesman (09:33.01) There's a 10 gallon hat. Now who can't use a 10 gallon hat for that back to school attire, but it's more than just clothes, Chad. It's more than just clothes. have wrapping paper that looks like roast beef. So if you want your Christmas tree to really look really good this year, put some roast beef wrapping paper on those gifts. And by the way, they have a Christmas skirt with meat, various meats and deli meats on the actual tree skirt. They have Christmas ornaments, of course. They have a jamoca shake bath bomb. I know you love a good bath bomb, Chad. Why not? Why not coach yourself in a Jamaica shake? sense. And, and here's one Julie would love sporting, on the streets of Portugal. Chad, they have a t-shirt that says, quote, hot girls eat Arby's. That's right. Hot girls eat Arby's. Is there anything better than that? Shout out to Arby's. I'm feeling like a French dip right about now. The Chad (10:06.433) Your mocha's shake. The Chad (10:20.215) Hmm. The Chad (10:27.245) Well, they're, everybody loves a French dip. That makes more sense then because Laura Loomer actually tweeted out that Marjorie Taylor Greene had roast beef in her pants. Maybe she just meant that she was wearing roast beef pants. I don't know, I don't know. Anyway. Joel Cheesman (10:43.678) That is wrong even for our show and that's saying something. The Chad (10:49.229) Hey, that was a tweet from a long time. Anyway, none of that is free, but what is free first and foremost is we've got fantasy football. It's that time of year kids, sponsored by our buddies over at Factory Fix. they look at, dude, first off, look at the jersey that Joel has on. Joel Cheesman (10:51.239) Boo! Joel Cheesman (11:01.767) I football. Joel Cheesman (11:12.102) It won't stop, it won't stop. The Chad (11:16.653) Look at that that jersey that Joel has on that is finally stitched. The factory fix on it's got the Chad and Cheese logo, football logo. It's got Cheeseman on the back. 33 big factory. That is fucking gorgeous. And that is above and beyond. And I also want to talk about something else. that's nice. Factory fix hat. Look at that. That is fucking gorgeous. OK, so we're going to go even above and beyond that. And I want all of. Joel Cheesman (11:29.765) It is very nice. Joel Cheesman (11:35.826) More above and beyond the coaching hat, the eighties coaching cap. The Chad (11:45.513) not just our sponsors, but also our future sponsors to watch this as well. Go ahead and roll that beautiful beam footage. Joel Cheesman (11:48.542) Mm-hmm. The Chad (11:59.978) You The Chad (12:09.271) The singer. Joel Cheesman (12:11.762) The Immaculate Reception. The Chad (12:18.231) catch. Saekwon. Joel Cheesman (12:18.568) Ha ha ha. The Chad (12:24.557) Look that game face. Look at that AI game face. The Chad (12:29.899) Now anybody who's ever been to Akron, to the NFL football hall of fame, you know that voice, or Canton, can, Akron, Canton, whatever, Akron, Canton, you know that voice from NFL films, freaking awesome. The coolest part about all this is look at all the love and detail factory fixes, not just put into that jersey and those hats, but also that Joel Cheesman (12:37.456) It's Canton, Chad. It's Canton, not Akron. Close. Joel Cheesman (12:50.632) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:57.982) Mm-hmm. The Chad (12:59.805) that little movie that we just threw out there. These are great promotional pieces and we're just talking about fucking fantasy football. mean, big applause to the team over at Factory. I mean, come on, come on. Joel Cheesman (13:13.054) They take it the extra nine yards, know, Chad, the extra yard. Why'd you go with 22? Your jersey is 22, mine's 33, I'm just curious. Was that your number in high school? The Chad (13:15.926) Well, I... The Chad (13:23.885) That was my number in high school. 22 was my outside linebacker and that was my number in high school. Joel Cheesman (13:25.659) Okay. Joel Cheesman (13:29.092) Was did you have a hero growing up that inspired 22 because 22 wasn't really a linebacker number back in the day. The Chad (13:35.341) No, it wasn't. wasn't. actually started, mean, and you know that in the US we start playing football very young. And when I was young, that was just the first number that was given to me. And I just, it just, it carried along. So it was, it was always my number. What about yours? Yours is 33. Did you just... Joel Cheesman (13:44.221) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:48.146) OK. Joel Cheesman (13:51.711) It just worked. So, so 33, a lot of people, including Mike Schaeffer at factory fix thought it was a Larry bird homage. Uh, I love me some Larry bird, but this, this is, this is a tribute to Chicago lands. Greatest underappreciated grid iron. Great. Polk highs. Al Bundy was number 33. So this is a hat tip to Bundy. The Chad (14:00.97) OK. Wrong sport, but yeah. The Chad (14:17.613) Ha ha ha. Joel Cheesman (14:23.736) Al Bundy, the greatest Chicagoland football player of all time. The Chad (14:25.537) Married with children, for all those who don't know, watch Married with Children. You'll get that. Joel Cheesman (14:30.866) How sad is it that Matt Lavery is still not with us to appreciate that joke? Because he would appreciate that joke immensely. Curious, the picture of you smoking, do know what that's from? The Chad (14:36.087) I know, I know he would. The Chad (14:40.865) Yes. I can't. I do remember seeing it, but I can't remember the I cannot remember the player who was actually doing. Joel Cheesman (14:48.486) It was, it was Lynn bias quarterback of the chiefs in the super bowl during halftime. He had a smoke and there's a famous picture, football fans will know of that. So that was, that was great. That was great. The Chad (14:51.749) yeah. Half time, yeah, half time. The Chad (15:01.015) All right, and for all of our other sponsors who also do a great job and yeah, we help them with the giving of good stuff. That's right, because with free stuff, go to ChadCheese.com slash free, you could prospectively win two bottles of whiskey from those talent tech expert people over at VanHack. look, chicken cock. Here comes the chicken cock. Bourbon barrel aged whiskey or aged, yeah, aged syrup in whiskey barrels. Joel Cheesman (15:08.27) Mm-hmm, sure do. Joel Cheesman (15:22.75) There it is. The Chad (15:30.249) from our buddies up at Keyura. T-shirts, those red shoe wearing kids at Aaron App and craft beer from the job data geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. Love those guys. Last but not least, we all know it. We all love it. If it's your birthday, you might actually win some rum from Plum, but you got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free. Joel Cheesman (15:57.861) All right. Celebrating another year around the sun. got Candice Miller, Brian Thompson from our friends at Cure, Marley Huckabee, Peter Suchy, Alex Campo, Julie Personius, Brittany Kaiser, Cassia Newman, Bill Casco, Chris Long, your boy, Richard Cho, Beverly Collins, Nick Livingston, Jerry the Godfather Crispin, and Captain Picard, AKA Christine Cheeseman. The Chad (16:03.885) Yeah. The Chad (16:13.089) There he is. The Chad (16:20.215) There he is. Joel Cheesman (16:24.944) celebrate another trip around the sun. Happy birthday, everybody. The Chad (16:27.981) Love it. Love it. We will kind of squeak by events this week, but you've got something happening and you've got an announcement for ERE. Joel Cheesman (16:37.692) Yeah, yeah, I'm going somewhere. The Chad (16:40.695) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (16:42.302) So it's official. mentioned I was headed to ERE in November to get on stage in San Diego, the whale's vagina. Anyway, it's confirmed our friend, Jeff Taylor, founder at monster.com and now Boom Band will join me on stage. What could be more fun than Jeff Taylor and Joel Cheeseman on stage, live, unfiltered, anything goes, cage match. The Chad (16:45.325) Mm-hmm. The Chad (16:51.937) on the other. Joel Cheesman (17:09.896) That would be fun actually if a show would put a cage and put the people in the cage. Anyway, might be some pushback on that, but I'm excited. you'll be doing your thing elsewhere, but I'm sure you'll be, giving me questions to ask hard balls to throw at Mr. Taylor while I'm, while I'm on the road. The Chad (17:23.861) yeah, yeah. And Jeff, I know you're listening, man. None of this warm water and warm water shit. I mean, we need some better analogies. We need some hard-hitting stuff. Nothing weak need. We need you to go right to the point and tell us how you feel, okay? That's what we need, Jeff. That's what we all expect. Joel Cheesman (17:41.074) Jeff needs to bring the heat is what you're saying. He needs to bring the blimp. He needs to bring some blimp-sized attitude on stage at ERE. The Chad (17:42.679) These bring fucking heat. Some water skiing behind the blimp attitude. Yes. Yes. Which he was in the Guinness Book of World Records for, by the way. Joel Cheesman (17:53.628) That's right. Speaking of attitude, Chad. Joel Cheesman (17:59.709) It's fantasy football time, Chad. There's about a week left to sign up for a chance to play with us. We've got a lot of people interested. A lot of people want a piece of that, of that chain of that chain. Everybody wants the chain. Nobody wants to finish last Adam Gordon. Nobody wants that last place, finish. So, if you have a week left to sign up our friends at factory fixer pulling out all the stops, as Chad said, go out to Chad cheese.com click the link. The Chad (18:03.042) Yes. The Chad (18:07.063) Hurry up. The Chad (18:12.727) the sexy chain. Joel Cheesman (18:27.944) Hit us up on a social media to sign up, but time is running out and pretty soon we'll be listing the draft grades and who the players are for this year's fantasy football. I can't wait. I can't wait. Frankly, I can't wait. And speaking of can't wait, let's get to. The Chad (18:39.521) Here we go. Alright. The Chad (18:49.665) Bye, folks! Joel Cheesman (18:52.784) All right. A job applicant is suing Sirius XM radio for alleged racial discrimination in its AI hiring technology powered by ICIMS as its ATS, by the way, the plaintiff, Arshin Harper claims the AI tool, which evaluated candidates based on data points like education and address perpetrated past bias and disqualified him for qualified positions. As for ICIMS, They said in a statement, quote, we can share that the customer reference does not use iCIMS AI or machine learning for applicant screening and matching. Chad, you're hot on this one. Your thoughts. The Chad (19:26.509) Mm. The Chad (19:32.418) Yeah, there's no question. ICIMS was not named, but since we've seen a clash accident case against Workday, Mobley versus Workday, and then HireVue was also named in a suit earlier this year by civil rights advocates who allege Intuit used HireVue's discriminatory AI hiring technology, violating the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, the ADA and Title VII. So this is... They might not be named, but it is important to know who the players are in the game, right? So that's very important. Personally, in the SiriusXM and Workday cases, I don't believe AI... Give me a second here. Weird. I don't believe AI is truly the culprit here because it's human actions that are used to train AI. And we're probably just going to experience the discrimination that's been... Joel Cheesman (20:25.97) Mm-hmm. The Chad (20:31.501) computer scale, fucking crazy. The discrimination that's been happening for years, happening for years, but it's happened in smaller doses due to humans inability to scale well. So now that discrimination can happen not just in small sample sizes, but AI can now explode it by scale. We're gonna start to see larger sample sizes. Using the same behavior and saying, shit, this is discriminatory. Well, it always has been. It's just happening where we can know it now, right? We can see it now. So what's the answer? I mean, it's really audit audit audit for God sakes. Now take a look at the higher view case. I think that this one's entirely different ball of wax as the case is laid out by the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, that this is on the website, quote, DK, who's the claimant. Joel Cheesman (21:15.932) Mm-hmm. The Chad (21:26.889) is an indigenous and deaf woman who is currently pursuing a master's degree in data science. She communicates using American Sign Language, ASL, and speaks English with a deaf accent. Since 2019, DK has held seasonal roles for Intuit. So she's worked for Intuit, receiving positive supervisor feedback and bonuses every single year, end quote. So why is this a problem? Back to the ACLU website, quote, DK was forced to use HireVue's video interview platform, which features automated speech recognition systems to generate transcripts of applicants' responses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is she was not provided an accommodation to be able to go through another process. She had to go through this process, and she's deaf, right? She was later rejected for this specific position and received feedback telling her, get this. Joel Cheesman (22:13.886) Hmm. The Chad (22:25.899) She needed to work on her quote, effective communication to provide quote, concise and direct answers end quote, to adapt her communication style to different audiences and to, this is the worst and or best depending on how you're looking at it, practice active listening. She's deaf. She to practice her active listening. Last but not least, practitioners no matter what tech they're using, Joel Cheesman (22:41.778) Mm-hmm. The Chad (22:55.743) should be focusing on the process first and then AI. Again, I doubt the AI is the problem in many of these cases. It's already discriminatory, but it's the processes, human behaviors, and protocols that we need to really focus on. So again, audit, audit, audit. That's all I got. We're gonna see a lot of this though. Joel Cheesman (23:15.742) So last week we talked about the re-emergence of newspaper ads and I should have put threat of AI lawsuit as part of the resurgence of newspaper ads. Look, the most shocking piece of this news is that SiriusXM still exists and they're actually hiring people. But aside from that, have more thoughts on this than I thought I would. in the old days and maybe it's time for a history lesson. Joel Cheesman (23:51.273) People would apply and if they thought they were discriminated against, was sort of like he said, she said, okay, who saw the resume, who interviewed you, how was the process done in the company? You had to have multiple people that were maybe color of color, maybe of sex, something that there was a trend of all of these people of this similar whatever of this. The Chad (24:15.693) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:17.97) minority was discriminated against and it was very hard to do. Now this guy alone can apply 150 times different email addresses saying, you know, like he can change certain things up. He alone can hope to prove that he was discriminated against based on just what that one person did. AI has made it scalable to create lawsuits like this by, doing things like applying with different The Chad (24:27.725) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:47.26) different things, but having that one thing is the same in this case. think it was the education and being a historically black college. If I'm reading the case, right. That, that, tipped him off that it was, it was a case to your point. This is not some evil AI. This is people training the AI to do this, but in the old days, it was really hard to prove because it was behind the company wall. Now it's out in the open that people can leverage the technology and then prove through the technology that something is going on. The Chad (24:55.597) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (25:17.658) I don't know if he's going to win this case. he did get one interview. I think the company at least has that to fall back on. but we'll, we'll see these cases, whether it's work day, this one, this is going to set a precedence for companies going forward and vendors going forward that is either going to really set this industry back or it's going to free it up to, to, run, to your case, the audit system. There'll be audit. have fair now. The Chad (25:33.837) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (25:46.687) Uh, we have warden AI and others are going to come around. Well, that will, as far as I can tell, none of those audits are coming up in court to say, Hey, we we've been audited. Our, our, stuff is safe and, and unbiased. Um, at some point it's going to have to, um, but, but companies are going to want to protect themselves no matter what. What I do find on the ICEMS example, I get the impression that someone that's integrated with ICEMS The Chad (25:48.916) Mm-hmm. yeah. Joel Cheesman (26:14.03) Is the one doing the interviewing or the, AI or the whatever the automation. Yes. So, so AI is sort of the head, but it's, if it's a marketplace provider, an integrated partner that creates an additional layer of risk for marketplaces because historically marketplaces are like, build your app on greenhouse, build your app on whatever. But now if your app is potentially going to be a bias solution, your ass is on the line. The Chad (26:17.367) So a point solution. The Chad (26:25.303) Yeah. Yep. The Chad (26:36.941) Mm. Joel Cheesman (26:42.568) for letting them in your marketplace. So how are ATS is going to respond to marketplaces? We've had talks with Paradox in the past about why don't you have a marketplace? And they are much more partner focus where they sort of vet the partner, they know who they are. It's not just free for all to build apps on the marketplace. So I think that's going to be a really interesting piece of this. Historically also, we know the EEOC does not have a great track record of AI cases. They only have one confirmed settlement back in 2023. We talked about that with our friend, Keith Sonderling, when it happened. So I didn't see the EEOC listed on this lawsuit. So it made me think our lawyers or legal team saying, look, we can't rely on the EEOC. The Chad (27:21.096) yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:34.163) to help us. They have no good track record of that. I don't know if the current administration has anything to do with that, but it seems like lawyers and firms are going directly at the company as opposed to leveraging the EEOC to bring those cases up. So to me, that was a really interesting development in all this. And then I guess my last point is we talk a lot about AI taking jobs, which is certainly the case. It will also create jobs. And I think The Chad (27:47.179) Yeah, being claimant. The Chad (27:57.678) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (28:03.038) A new, a new, a new title in TA that we're going to start seeing is AI governance. They're going to be people brought in that their specific job is to make sure that we don't get our ass pinched from the legal entities for a biased lawsuit. And that will be, I think that's going to blow up. Like that's going to be a position that's going to, that's going to happen in a big way. So I will, I have more thoughts on this than I thought I did when I first saw it. This is an onion and it's going to be peeled. over the next 12, 24 months and we'll obviously be on this case. The workday case is really big because that's just workday. This one SiriusXM again, they're still around. I guess podcasters have saved or at least Howard Stern and others have saved SiriusXM. But anyway, it's interesting and you posted this on LinkedIn and you got a lot of interesting feedback. The Chad (28:38.903) Yes, class action. Joel Cheesman (28:58.878) that I saw. So people are energized around this topic for sure. The Chad (29:02.709) Yeah, well, they want to see what's going to happen. It was funny somebody actually commented that, know, ISIM has passed the, you know, the New York, the New York City government's, you know, the audits and whatnot. I'm like, yeah, but this isn't Detroit. This is is this is different, right? So, I mean, it's going to be incredibly important that we as as. Joel Cheesman (29:12.35) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:16.008) Yeah. This is the D. Yeah. The Chad (29:26.805) recruiters as hiring managers have been really loosey goosey around certain things like requirements, right? And if you put on requirements and you don't actually test the market with any market intelligence tool or what have you, and you don't know what you're gonna get, you can get thousands of resumes. So then you will turn down a bunch of people who actually meet their requirements and you could be in fucking hot water. That's the hard part, right? Then you might have them too tight. I mean, it's just one of those things where we're going to have to be smarter. Joel Cheesman (29:32.83) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:48.254) Mm-hmm. The Chad (29:54.966) about how we start the process and then how we become more efficient through that process. AI can help, it should help. We don't need AI in every bit of it, but at the end of the day, we really need to be imploding a lot of our process methodologies and really just starting from scratch, making it easier, making it smarter and more compliant. Joel Cheesman (30:14.122) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, think, I think you mentioned in that, in that stretch and that thread that, uh, you know, the worst thing that could happen is that people just stop. Like just don't use it. Uh, let's just go back to the stone ages and post newspaper ads. Uh, that's, that's, that's not a recipe for success. This stuff is going to get messy. Protect yourself, uh, by any means that you can, um, the precedent will be set and there'll be some rules of the game at some point, but for now. The Chad (30:24.609) death that one. Won't happen. Joel Cheesman (30:41.904) It's going to get messy. It's going to get messy. The Chad (30:44.429) toothpaste is out of the tube. Joel Cheesman (30:47.644) All right. Upwork has launched Lifted, a subsidiary targeting the enterprise staffing sector. Lifted combines talent sourcing, contracting, and workforce management for contingent work utilizing Upwork's talent pool and integrating with existing workforce programs. The announcement follows Upwork's recent acquisitions of Bubti, a freelance management system and staffing platform provider and employer record provider ASIN. The stock is up around 3 % on the week. Chad, your take on Upwork's pivot. The Chad (31:23.137) Yeah, I think this is more traditional staffing model being under attack and deservedly so. It's old, it's slow, and it needs to be reinvented. And the first major attacker isn't Upwork. It's Indeed, owned by Recruit Holdings. Some would say Recruit has a staffing monopoly in Japan, and they're using Indeed to bypass staffing companies and go direct. to the client in the US. So the hardest part to believe of all of this, knowing that Indeed is attacking staffing companies, is that staffing agencies are dumb enough to keep paying Indeed billions of dollars a year, which is doing nothing more than fueling their own demise. It's like they're sharpening the goddamn axe for the executioner. Now, Edward Upwork, with these acquisitions, I can say Upwork ain't fucking around, They bought an EOR company, right? An employer of record company. And this is something they used to have other companies do for them. Now they're doing it in-house. And then they bought an enterprise version of themselves, a Dutch version called Bupdi. I don't know Bupkis about Bupdi. I just know it's the enterprise version. And you and I have talked... Second, my God. Joel Cheesman (32:30.642) We know Dick Butkus, famous football player from Chicago. Second only Al Bundy in record holdings, The Chad (32:38.605) We've talked about EOR companies on this show for years now and easily it could be the new staffing model and before Deal and Ripling started their feud and we cast them as the best suited to really up and start the staffing market because obviously they're on the payroll side, cross borders. mean, they're just doing everything. Now they're going up to the top of the funnel, which means they can help companies through the entire talent lifecycle, which is pretty exciting. but also scary if you're staffing firm. Plus, we've seen the biggest staffing companies in the world, like Ronsod and Indeco, they have no clue what to do with technology. Case in point, their failures with Monster, Vetteri, hired. The president and CEO, Hayden Brown of Upwork said, we generated our highest ever Q2 revenues, $194.995 million, which was... performance driven AI focused. They've got so many different monetization models that they're focusing on. They're doing things that the staffing companies are not doing. So they're looking at honing in on that huge staffing TAM, but also there's advertising in there as well. Now, yes, I understand. Ron Stodd last year made $26 billion. So 200 million means nothing. A deco, 25 billion. Totally get that. But if you remember, Netflix was really small. Blockbuster had 9,000 worldwide locations, 9,000. They were smug when Netflix walked into their offices. But now they're not fucking smug, right? Every staffing company should be, should actually have posters that say, kind, rewind all over their place, all over the place to remind them that a 9,000 pound gorilla like Blockbuster fell to a little bitty Netflix. And now that we're in the era of AI, agentic orchestration, whatever you want to call it, it can happen so much faster. So I see this as literally an assault on the staffing, on the staffing industry. Joel Cheesman (34:57.566) Have you seen the videos online where they take teenagers and they ask them about things from the past? Like what are yellow pages? And one of them is what is Be Kind Rewind? And they have no clue. Anyway, we just lost a few of our few members of our audience on that one. This is a bold move. No matter how you slice it, it's a big move. It's the adage, you know, the innovators dilemma. The Chad (35:02.677) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rewind. Yeah. The Chad (35:14.315) Looking up kids, Jesus. Joel Cheesman (35:25.086) If we're going to disrupt somebody, we're going to disrupt ourselves. And that is what Upwork, uh, as far as I can see, is hoping to do. I think AI has flipped the, their old model on its head. Upwork went public before the pandemic. It spiked during the pandemic because everybody was like doing three jobs and a full-time job and doing stuff on Upwork. at least the, you know, things were good. And then AI happened and the, the, you know, The Chad (35:25.389) Yes. The Chad (35:41.195) Mm-hmm. The Chad (35:52.301) Mm. Joel Cheesman (35:54.435) used to go to Upwork. I need a, I need a page developed. I need a banner ad. I need a logo. I need like all these sort of little things that small businesses need. And to some degree, bigger businesses would go to Upwork. Well, AI does a lot of that. AI will make your image for you. AI will write your email for you. AI will do all of that. So Upwork clearly, yes, Upwork with us, you know, recreating Lynn Dawson's, smoking addiction. Like clearly Upwork said, The Chad (36:13.549) promotional video. Joel Cheesman (36:24.186) shit. Like fewer jobs are coming in. have fewer, fewer contractor freelancers that can charge what they used to charge. So we're making less money on fewer jobs. think this was a desperation move to say, look, we have to take a huge swing here or else we're going to be out of business in 10 years. And that's what this whole thing is. They're taking a swing, not only at staffing, from my perspective, they're going after. Uh, the deals of the world, the big, just the bigger companies, this is a $650 billion market. And Upwork is hoping to take a piece out of that 650. They have a ton of competition. They do have some name recognition. They do have core their website, 25,000 companies that use the service or have used the service, the Upwork, not the lifted. So, so they're making a play for a really big market. Time will tell if it, if it up works, if it up works, I don't know. Uh, but, but, uh, yeah, this is, uh, this is a big swing and I, I got to applaud them to do this. mean, uh, indeed it's taken big swings. These guys you got, these are desperate times for a lot of companies and they're, they're putting their money where their mouth is and making big moves. I can't hate it. I can't hate it. The Chad (37:23.245) Ha ha. The Chad (37:42.702) And we're starting to see staffing companies actually saw a report today that Hayes, a big staffing company, I believe just in Europe, took a huge hit. And that's going to happen. What happened when Indeed actually overtook Monster and Career Builder? We had a huge market hit, right? We had the financial collapse in 2008. That's an opportunity for these new companies really to reinvent an industry. Is this the time? That's the question. Joel Cheesman (37:59.988) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (38:11.154) Yeah, can't hate it. Can't hate it. And I can't hate the people that leave us good reviews. Guys, we're going to take a quick break. Listen to the ads because there's no show without our sponsors. And while you're listening, to your podcast platform of choice and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from The Chad (38:12.971) No. Huh? The Chad (38:21.09) We love them. The Chad (38:28.257) You I do like to say we're getting a lot of comments on Spotify and YouTube and so that even if you're not giving us reviews, you're commenting, you're engaging, we fucking love that, so keep it up. Joel Cheesman (38:43.07) Chad, Deal is back in the news. Bozo's back, Bozo's back. Sorry, Deal's back. Deal's back in the news. A Florida judge dismissed a lawsuit against Deal, not that lawsuit, alleging it helped Russian entities evade US sanctions. Deal's attempting to link this case to a separate lawsuit filed by its rival, Rippling, which also alleges RICO violations. But wait, there's more, Chad. Deal announced AI workforce this week. The Chad (38:45.282) Jesus. The Chad (38:49.261) You Hmm The Chad (39:09.197) Mm. Joel Cheesman (39:13.182) It's a new product enabling customers to create and manage AI agents for automating HR and payroll tasks. The tool currently in beta, you got to sign up for it, covers things like recruitment, payroll compliance, and time off management. Let's check out a promo from the company. The Chad (39:34.907) Jesus. That's creepy as fuck. The Chad (39:44.429) That's creepy. The Chad (40:15.725) I mean, does it feel as creepy to use it does to me where they're actually, they're creating like, you a second you. I mean, the whole cloning thing. I mean, to me, it's just creepy. Joel Cheesman (40:33.102) I wasn't hating the twin redheads, but maybe that was just my own personal bias. What stood out to me on that video, did you see anyone over 40? Did you see anyone that looked over 40? There was not a gray hair on any of the employees. Moe is going to be on this like a pit bull on a bologna sandwich. That stood out to me. But what are your thoughts about the news and the lawsuit and deals back? The Chad (40:35.725) That was kind of... That might have been bias, The Chad (40:44.47) no, no, it did not. Yeah, wow. Age discrimination already, deal. Good job. Get Mo, get The Chad (41:03.129) Well, first, the agents, see our last segment, right? We talk about deal, rippling, up work. I mean, all of these companies, right? They're all going after a much larger TAM. And staffing's a part of that TAM now. They're moving up, right? And this is just going to be the first foray of them going into agents and they're going to go up the funnel with it. Same thing. you know, I believe staffing will try to do something. Unfortunately, they do have the innovators dilemma, much like, again, Blockbuster had and Netflix beat him out. Monster and Career Builder had innovators dilemma and indeed came and swept them up. So it can happen. And again, I think that tech is moving so fast right now. Joel Cheesman (41:47.966) Mm-hmm. The Chad (41:58.338) that it can happen much faster than it used to. The court case dismissed, mean, Dio really doesn't understand optics, do they? I mean, don't comment, don't blame Rippling, just allow the dismissal to fade away and get back to doing fucking business. We've always heard, and the person who said this is a fucking idiot, we've always heard, any PR is good PR. That's total bullshit because anyone in PR understands, they're wincing. They understand, Optics and the impact on the brand on sales and on company growth. So for me, it's Just shut up and dance kids. Shut up. Get back to business Get back to business Ridiculous. Joel Cheesman (42:43.614) they're spinning it as a PR move for sure. look, they're getting calls from customers and prospects. What's this lawsuit shit? What's going on? They're going to spend this to customers and prospects of like, did you see the court case got thrown out and they're going to try to like wrap it in some rippling lawsuits. So the customers just go, the lawsuits over like it's all good, but it has nothing to do. The Chad (42:52.279) drama. Joel Cheesman (43:11.1) with the Rippling case. just another court case that Deal has to deal with. I love the Mean Girls component to this. Rippling CEO, Parker Conrad, our favorite, he's on Twitter. He tweeted, quote, this litigation has nothing to do with Rippling. We're not party to it, did not fund it. And then he's also calling out CEO Alex and his father. The Chad (43:11.405) Stupid. Yeah. The Chad (43:24.205) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (43:40.283) who was chairman and CFO, Philip Boise and saying that they're both going to go down when the truth comes out, et cetera. And then, and then there's this whole, like, our boy, Keith O'Brien over in Dublin who said that he was getting harassed by, I don't know, people watching him. it's, it's, yeah, it's a total, Maxwell Maxwell situation. Everybody's watching me and it cut. The Chad (43:47.885) Haha. The Chad (44:02.423) fucking It's a telenovela. Joel Cheesman (44:06.93) But it comes out, it apparently came out in the press in Ireland that they did perform, quote, discrete surveillance on Keith O'Brien. So like he's getting surveilled. There's a Twitter war. Like this is just Mean Girls to the hilt and I'm here for it. I think it's hilarious. I can't believe that these companies make so much money and have like so much money in the bank. So that's fun to watch. I also think that. With Upwork making the move to go sort of this route and as a public company, we're going to see more of what that business has entailed for deal and rippling when they go public. This is sort of a little bit of a window into what that kind of business is going to do on the public markets, but I digress. On the AI agent thing. The Chad (44:46.775) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (44:59.282) This is going to be the new SEO. It's going to be the new automation. It's going to be the new AI. Like everybody's going to have agents. It's going to be up to the consumers to find, to figure out whose agents are real, what agents are worth the shit. who, cause just saying we have agents is not going to be the same as we have agents that actually do shit. It's like chat bots, right? We all have chat bots, but some are better than others. And it's, there's going to be a real period of like whose agents are better and whatnot. I do think the ad was kind of whack. The Chad (45:18.377) Exactly. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (45:29.09) The guy in the cowboy hat. I don't know what that was about the dude with the arms that came out and then like no, no people over 40 as a gen X or I'm very offended, offended by that, but, I'm here for it. think it's, I think it's fun. I think it's fun. I can't wait for the rippling deal case to go to court and that's just going to be fucking circus. Yeah. yeah. Yeah, please. Please God. All right, let's get to our next story. The Chad (45:43.149) Get back to work. Get back to work, God damn it. The Chad (45:49.517) Can't wait for the Netflix series. Joel Cheesman (45:55.359) the U S department of labor announced the availability up to 30 million in funding for the industry driven skills training fund grant program. the grants will provide outcome based reimbursements to employers for training and high demand and emerging industries, including AI, advanced manufacturing and shipbuilding. Chad, your thoughts. The Chad (45:55.49) Okay. The Chad (46:16.385) I didn't realize this administration was a socialist party. That's what I don't get. What kind of corporate welfare bullshit is this? Apple spends $55 billion in China every single fucking year, and they've trained 28 million employees in China. 28 million. If you need more background to check out, just go ahead and you can see we did interview. Patrick McGee, who's the author of Apple in China. That gives you a little bit deeper dive. if this administration, Keith, listen up, buddy. If this administration wanted to move the needle, they should pull all the tech bros into the oval, slam your fucking fist on the table and say, where or what are you doing to train your workforce? Hey, Tim, Tim Apple, you're spending $55 million in China. What are you spending here? Zuck, you fuck. What about you, Elon, Teal, Sundar? You know, what kind of money are the biggest companies in the world investing in their current employees, in their community and in their fucking country? That's a baller move. This is not a baller move. A piss ant, piss ant. Thirty million dollars. That's fucking. That's shameful. OK, number one. Number two. Joel Cheesman (47:27.006) Mm-hmm. The Chad (47:42.156) The companies can pay for this shit. Call those motherfuckers onto the carpet and get them to invest in our country. They're already investing in other countries. Billions and billions of dollars. And yet, what do we do? here's some corporate welfare. Fuck that. Fuck that. Joel Cheesman (47:50.014) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (48:02.718) So you're not buying it, Chad? Is that what I'm hearing? You're not buying it. The Chad (48:05.057) Keith, come on man. No. Joel Cheesman (48:07.838) mean, that's my first thought. was like, how many zeros did this headline leave off? $30 million? I mean, look, ICE is getting 8.7 billion increase from the big, beautiful bill. The 30 million, literally for the federal government, like they just made that in like, I don't even know why this is a story. The story should be like, why are we only spending this much on these items? The Chad (48:14.765) Still. The Chad (48:37.547) We shouldn't be spending it. Joel Cheesman (48:37.988) What, what, well, so, okay. So there are many layers to this from, in my opinion, there, there are certain things. Government gives benefits and pay payola for when they want something to happen. So the chips act, we want chips made in this country. We want like from a security perspective, et cetera. So like we're to spend money to give benefits to companies. And then Intel of course buys back at stock or whatever the hell they did. So, so. The Chad (49:03.179) Yes, exactly. Joel Cheesman (49:04.286) So both sides do this, uh, and it either works or it doesn't. mean, what, what's, what stood out stood out to me as the ship building component. And I know you think I'm crazy and I'm a conspiracy theorist, but like that, that is a so China, uh, defense move. China, China's shipyard manufacturing. The Chad (49:06.327) corporate welfare. Yeah, they're all wrong. The Chad (49:22.337) It is. It is. Joel Cheesman (49:27.504) is approximately 23.2 million gross tons annually. This is reported by the US Office of Naval Intelligence. 23.2 million gross tons. You know what the US produces? 100,000 gross tons. So China is manufacturing 232 times greater capacity for shipbuilding. You know why the Allies won World War II? There's an old saying, they won it with Russian blood. The Chad (49:39.531) Maybe a tenth of that. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (49:56.863) British intelligence and U S industry. We have no industry to fight a war like we did in the past. And if, if a conflict comes out with China, we're in trouble, uh, because it's going to be far in the oceans. And we're just at a point where we have to put the government behind some efforts to make shipbuilding a thing again. By the way, if you're a kid looking for a job or business, shipbuilding is going to be a thing. Cause I think. The Chad (50:00.311) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (50:22.142) I just don't think 30 million does. 30 million is like what a missile. mean, it's just like such a small amount of money to make a difference. I don't know if it's like, let's put a little bit out there, like make a little seed investment. Let's see what companies or organizations kind of rise to the top and then we'll put more money into them. I mean, it just feels really weird to have such a small amount of money towards such an effort. The Chad (50:46.061) We used to, in the United States, spend money in our communities to develop our communities. We don't do that anymore. Apple's spending billions of dollars developing communities in China, okay? So I don't care if it's $30, 30 billion or 30 million. That shouldn't be something that the US spends. We should demand that fucking companies, the tech bros, are spending that kind of cash here. Right. They trained 28 million employees, Apple employees during the time that they've been there. How many employees have they trained here? I want to see those numbers here. Right. In the U.S. So anyway, I don't think that is a responsibility of the United States. I think we have bigger things to do. We have moonshots to deal with. Right. We have Internet to build. We have lasers. We have I mean, we've got all the big shit. Right. Not this. This is this is. This is really just. Joel Cheesman (51:46.214) If so, if Tim Apple showed up at your house with a million dollars worth of gold, would you change your mind about Apple? Would you change your mind? No. The Chad (51:49.346) Hehehehehe No, mean, first and foremost, I'm in a good position. mean, if I had a million dollars, it'd be great. It'd be great. But no. Yeah. That's unfortunately that that's it. Joel Cheesman (51:58.205) I'm saying that rhetorically. know you wouldn't, but that's, that's the game we play now. Here's a million worth of gold. Look the other way. we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna start making shit in India. So, so look the other way. All right, guys, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, you don't see things like this Jersey. You don't see the videos that we're sharing with you all the goodness, the Chad's, don't know. Chad's got so much just Chadness going on. I don't know what else to tell you, but, The Chad (52:12.653) The Chad (52:16.107) Look at Joel Cheesman (52:26.128) Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be right back. Joel Cheesman (52:33.086) humans are so fucked, Chad. here's a sampling of the humans are human humans are. the dad joke is a good note. okay. Here's a sampling of the humans are cook news from the week. number one is startup called Mac. Micro one introduced Zara, a digitized self-proclaimed quote, world's best recruiter. number two, move over human influencers, meet VTubers. Virtual YouTubers are making their creators millions. The Chad (52:38.903) Let's end on a good note. Joel Cheesman (53:02.91) powered exclusively with AI and three LinkedIn. Our friends, continue to be a virtual playground for both job seekers and employers virtually with one inc.com writer saying he triggered a bot army. That's a robot army, Chad, a fake recruiter spamming him after just one interaction, on a, on a post Chad, do you miss the eighties as much as I do? what are your thoughts on the humans are cooked news from the week? The Chad (53:32.824) I always love not having to be home until the streetlights come on. The hardest part about this is that we are humanizing all of these different things, right? Let's say, for instance, like the AI influencer, millions and millions of people watch them, right? And I watched a couple, they were fucking horrible. I mean, they were bad, but that's happening. I kinda liken this to, which I always thought was crazy, when my kids would watch Minecraft videos on YouTube. Right? So it's almost like it's something that they're used to, watching somebody else do something on YouTube. It's not really a human, it's just a game. This is almost the same kind of feel, but it's almost like we're humanizing it, whether it is bots, and we have... Joel Cheesman (54:08.878) huh. Yeah. The Chad (54:28.301) really good reasons for that on the hiring side of the house because we threw candidates into black holes for years, right? They deserve some type of interaction. We can't give them interaction at scale because we're humans, we don't scale well. So what do we do? We use bots and we try to give them at least a good experience. The thing is though, through that whole process, we're humanizing the technology and when it starts creating clones, like a deals little commercial there, Joel Cheesman (54:35.518) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (54:54.718) Mm-hmm. The Chad (54:57.675) It's not gonna be a big deal. it's almost like AI is creeping into our lives very stealthily and it's not leaving kids. It's never gonna fucking leave. Ouch. Joel Cheesman (55:13.234) world is getting so dystopian. do long for a simpler time of Jolt Cola and, and, and our Atari video games. The Chad (55:15.646) I do. The Chad (55:24.509) yeah. Joel Cheesman (55:26.962) First and foremost, why is Zara a blonde, blue-eyed, straight out of college, best recruiter in the world? Could we not? DI is dead through technology. The machines are deciding that DI is over for us, based on the deal video and this best recruit in the world. The Chad (55:43.266) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (55:50.057) There's a there's a cartoon sausage. If you have some time, go search TikTok for nobody sausage. It's just a, it's not an actor dressed as a sausage. It's not an actor voicing a sausage. It's just a sausage, disco dancing, going to dinner, chairing at a game. He has 22 plus million TikTok followers. He has a brand deal. The Chad (56:01.419) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (56:19.046) He's going to Instagram. If you're, if you're an influencer and now this, this nobody sausage is out social marketing and, and, and, you know, like, how depressed are you? And we're, going into a world where we trust nothing. No one has any, any power, any agency. And it's just, we're, we're just going to be consumers and that that's sort of the end game. The Chad (56:21.101) Jesus Christ. The Chad (56:29.879) Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (56:41.088) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (56:47.258) And not to be conspiratorial, but you talked about socialism. I'm going to quote Karl Marx. And if you haven't like, if you have Karl Marx on your bingo card, make sure you, you stamp that out. But Karl Marx described, a future of alienation. he, he predicted this back in the 1800s and he said, there'll, there'll be a time where individuals seek meaning through buying goods rather than through creative or communal engagement. The Chad (56:59.149) have been Marxism. The Chad (57:04.525) Mm. The Chad (57:16.215) Here we are. Here we are. Joel Cheesman (57:16.708) What the hell is happening? we don't, we don't engage anymore. We don't create things anymore. We just buy shit for meaning. And that's just kind of a sad, sad commentary on the state of what's going on. wow. We got deep, deep in that one. Jeez. The Chad (57:28.013) Keeping up with the Joneses. The Chad (57:33.697) Well, and to bring it out of that, I gotta say, and this is good, bad, or indifferent, Sasquatch and Yeti on TikTok, funny as hell. Not to mention, have you seen the dog podcasts where they've got dogs sitting up in chairs? Okay, so they've got dogs now, dogs now, and they're all over my fucking feed. It is hilarious. I love dogs. They obviously know I love dogs. So the algorithm literally has me pinned. Joel Cheesman (57:43.379) Yep. Joel Cheesman (57:47.922) I've seen Baby. I've seen Baby. It's probably similar. Joel Cheesman (57:58.898) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (58:02.962) Does your feet have The Chad (58:05.773) No, I've got you for that. I've got you for that. Joel Cheesman (58:08.958) Okay, this is a good one. Okay, we're keeping him clean again. All right, Chad. What did Tennessee... What did Tennessee... The Chad (58:13.249) Ha ha ha ha! The Chad (58:22.477) River? Joel Cheesman (58:23.762) The same thing Arkansas. The Chad (58:26.825) Jesus. That was good. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (58:28.84) Hahaha! Joel Cheesman (58:35.422) At least football is played by real people as well as soccer. We have that at least Chad. We out The Chad (58:39.115) Yes, thank you. We out.

Pizza, AI, and the Noid walk into a podcast… and yes, it gets weird. In this episode of The AI Sessions , Domino’s HR tech boss Matt King dishes on: Why speed isn’t just a hiring goal—it’s literally the brand (because nobody’s waiting 45 minutes for a “hot, fresh” ATS). How Domino’s escaped the clutches of Kenexa BrassRing (aka the AOL dial-up of recruiting systems) and slid into SmartRecruiters’ DMs. Franchisees with strong opinions (shock!) who actually helped shape Domino’s tech stack—and occasionally roast bad AI “match scores.” Winston, SmartRecruiters’ new AI sidekick, and why trust is harder to earn than a free breadstick. Chatbots that know when to ping you and when to shut up, because nothing says “brand value” like not sounding like a jerk. And the ultimate question: should Domino’s resurrect the Noid as its candidate-facing chatbot? (Spoiler: we’d apply just to see that chaos unfold.) If you like your AI talk topped with sarcasm and pepperoni, this one’s for you. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Riding shotgun is Chad Sowash, and this is the AI Sessions Frontline Series as we welcome Matt King, Director of HR Technology at Domino's. Matt, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Matt King: Pleasure to be here, fellas. Joel Cheesman: Glad to have you here. A lot of people will know Domino's Pizza, but they may not know Matt King. So give us the elevator pitch on you and what you're doing at Domino's. Matt King: It's been a long journey. So I got my start in educational technology and made a big career pivot a few years ago, and went into HR technology, and found myself at Domino's. And I manage our HR tech stack. So I manage our SaaS applications, hiring, learning systems, workforce management systems, talent systems, and I also help manage our core HCM. And one thing that's interesting about our tech stack and the way we deploy it to our US system is we play both in the corporate space and the franchise space. So we have managed deployments of some of these platforms to our franchisees. Make them available to them as well. Chad Sowash: Make it available to them, but they don't have to actually use it? Is that what I'm hearing? Matt King: It depends, yeah. So in the case of our learning systems, they're optional for our franchisees to use. For our hiring systems, to help us create brand unity and a centralized branding experience for potential Domino's employees, either at our franchise organizations or for our corporate organizations. We do mandate the use of an ATS solution, smart recruiters, and we have a centralized career site that covers the whole brand. Joel Cheesman: And Domino's was tech before tech was cool, right? I mean, they were doing mobile ordering before anyone else. Does that mentality permeate into the recruitment set? Matt King: Yeah, it certainly does. You know, we have a lot of technology differentiators in our brand, and our hiring technology, recruitment technology, is no different. But we've been on an interesting journey. Like, I think that one of the things you observe is there are changes in how you think about the engagement of candidates, the level of engagement that's appropriate to have with candidates. Sometimes you want a lot of human touch. Sometimes you want a lot of automation. It's hard to really connect those two things. So we kind of ebb and flow in terms of the amount of automation that we enable. And one thing that's interesting about our business, too, is it's not just automation. It's not just ease of candidate experience that we think about. It's also extensibility to our franchisees because these are independent business owners. Our franchisees are incredibly entrepreneurial. They're incredible operators. They're coming to us all the time with ways that they've optimized their hiring processes that we're considering for our corporate locations as well. So we want to make sure that we're giving them tools that are forward-facing, really cutting-edge, but also have a lot of flexibility for them to manipulate them to satisfy the needs that they have as unique independent businesses. And that can be a real challenge. Chad Sowash: So being in the... How many corporate stores versus franchises? What's the percentage around? Matt King: Yeah, so we have about 7,100 locations in the United States, about 21,000 internationally. In the United States, it fluctuates, but anywhere between 250, 300 corporate stores, and then the rest is franchise. Chad Sowash: Yeah, so the bulk is franchise. So, has there been kind of like a draw for people wanting to use AI in your space to be able to help them actually prospectively become a standard throughout all of Domino's? Because we're seeing restaurants using chatbots at the drive-through. I mean, they're all over the place. So, is this almost kind of like a cool factor they might be able to get into now? And it might allow you, from a corporate standpoint, to get more standardized across all the franchises?  Matt King: I think so. I think in terms of the candidate job search and application experience, my perspective on this, and I think that our corporate recruiters share this perspective, is that conversational applications is essentially table stakes in our space now. That's no longer sort of cutting edge or cool. I guess it will always sort of be cool. But we started with a candidate-facing chatbot that allows for job search application, answering screening questions all within that one experience. What I'm seeing there is, there's kind of two evolutions I'm observing. One is just that experience has gotten a lot better. So it's not quite as scripted. It doesn't feel like it's automated responses to very specific prompts. Joel Cheesman: The decision tree is leaving. Matt King: Exactly. And it feels a lot more human. Joel Cheesman: That was a dad joke, Chad, leaving. Matt King: Well, the other thing that's nice about it, is that it gives you opportunities to add in additional validations that weren't possible before. Like this doesn't look like a real social security number, that kind of thing. I say that in a nice way. But the other thing that I think we're starting to see is the workflow orchestration that happens, that's conversational assistant-assisted. That really touches the recruiters and the orchestration of the candidate experience as they go through the hiring process. Because our goal is to get the initial touchpoint with the candidate into the applicant tracking system as quickly as possible. We don't want to bombard them with a 20-question application and capture all this information up front. We want to capture it only if we need it. And I think for the most part, that's been our objective is appropriate information at the appropriate time. Capture it through an omnichannel, multichannel experience that meets candidates where they're at. Chad Sowash: So from the recruiter standpoint... I mean, because we always talk about candidate experience. We never talk about recruiter experience, right? And that's pretty important because we want to keep them around. We want to make sure that their job doesn't suck. So, on that side of the house, have you seen that this could make a much better recruiter experience? And then how are you currently structured? Do the recruiters only hire for corporate? Do they also help out with franchise? What's that dynamic look like? Matt King: Yeah, it's interesting. So our recruiters don't advise or support our franchisees in any particular way other than best practice sharing. So if we're doing something in the corporate space that we think is beneficial for franchisees to be aware of and think about whether they want to adopt for their organization, we certainly will make that information available. And our recruitment team has relationships with our franchise recruitment teams that operate within these franchisees. Beyond that, I think that we've really endeavored, especially after the switch to smart recruiters, to bring franchisees much more into the mix in expressing their needs to our vendor partner. So we've had on-site sessions where we've brought in some of our major franchisees to speak directly with smart recruiters. Brought in their entire recruiting teams, and had them speak directly with smart recruiters' product teams. And that has been a pretty unique experience because we can make a lot of assumptions sitting at corporate headquarters about what our franchisees need. But I think the thing that I always keep in mind is the persona of the franchisee. It's a privilege to some extent to be a dedicated recruiter. But these franchisees are responsible for the P&L of their entire business. They may have a recruitment team. They may not. They may be a single store operator who's doing everything from recruitment to managing their store to ordering food. So there's a lot on their plate. Joel Cheesman: You highlighted speed, and I think that's incredibly important. My guess is if Domino's takes too long, I'm at Pizza Hut, or Papa John's, or McDonald's, or any other sort of fast food or hourly job. But I know that you're also very aware of your brand and what Domino's means and the promise. I mean, even when we were kids, it was like 30 minutes or less, which I know has changed. Those things stick with you, and I think that they stay with you in the job search experience. So how do you balance speed, but then also the experience is something that Domino's supports? Matt King: Yeah. I guess I would start by saying it is a balance. And I think across the entire US footprint, it's hard to find one size fits all. Because, as I mentioned, there's variations in how franchisees choose to run their hiring. I think that in terms of how we identify as a brand, there are certain things that are core tenets of who we are. Operational efficiency, speed, customer service. These are the types of things that we tend to select for in terms of our hiring as well. And every franchisee and every business unit and corporate makes some of their own decisions about how to prioritize those different factors. But that's the DNA of the brand. It's customer focus. It's amazing product. It's hiring at the speed of our business, and our business moves very, very fast operationally. So I'd say that l because that is part of who we are, that focus on efficiency, that focus on accuracy. Joel Cheesman: It almost sounds like speed is the brand. Chad Sowash: The speed is the brand. Joel Cheesman: You're killing two birds with one stone. Not only are we fast, but we're supporting the brand with efficiency. Matt King: Exactly. But I think the other thing too is like you walk into a Domino's store, and you expect the store to be clean. You expect the people to be friendly. You expect your pizza to be made with a smile. You expect the same pizza every time, and you expect the same level of value every time. And so I think that there is a representation of that in how we choose to run hiring as a corporate entity and our franchisees choose to run hiring. And I think one of the things that really helps us create the centralization point is the brand-wide career site because that allows us to tell the EVP within the context of our branding. Our career site tells the story of who we are. It tells the story of what we're about. It tells the story of our history. It tells the story of prospective candidates of like if you're into these values, if you're into these priorities in a job that you work, there's opportunity here for you. And so I think regardless of how franchisees choose to structure their hiring processes or how we do on the corporate side, you can still tell the same story about what it's like to work in a Domino's store. And I think that's really critical. And I think part of the reason that having a centralized employment branding focus at least at the high level has been really advantageous for us. Chad Sowash: So talk about choice because there are plenty of platforms that are out there. You've chosen Smart Recruiters. You obviously did due diligence around that. What was that process? What did it look like, number one? And then from a not just corporate but also from a franchisee standpoint, I mean, how much did they get to weigh in? And then also what's the penetration rate right now for usage? What does it look like? 90% franchises are using, 100%. What's that look like? Matt King: Yeah. So, the selection process. It helps to understand where we came from. So we were on Kenexa before. And we had a victory... Chad Sowash: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Kenexa Brass Ring, 37 other names. Yeah. Matt King: Yeah, and it was like IBM, Kenexa BrassRing on Cloud, which when we implemented it was... I wouldn't say it was a cutting-edge system, but it was relatively modern compared to what else was in the space. The problem was we grew a lot of other technologies around it and integrated them. And so what we ended up with was a very unwieldy tech stack. And so you'd have your automation layer. You'd have your communication layer. You'd have your core ATS. You would have the recruiter-facing hired score-driven overlay to Kenexa. And it all sort of worked, but it was very expensive. It was incredibly unwieldy to maintain. And it was, candidly, just quite expensive. And so what we were looking for was... Well, we were seeing a lot of movement in the ATS space into more integrated solutions where a texting engine, a communications automation engine, CRM, these things are sort of baked into the offering. And so we found that in Smart Recruiters. We did a lengthy RFP process. You asked about franchise involvement in that process. When we source technologies like this, typically we'll have franchisee focus groups that will weigh in on behalf of the system. And they're deeply involved in the requirements definition and design and validation of the solution. Joel Cheesman: You're saying the franchisees have an opinion on that stuff. Matt King: They absolutely have an opinion. They do. They do. And they call out things that we miss. Because they're on the front lines. They see things we don't see. Chad Sowash: Day to day. Matt King: Day to day. And the other thing, too, is we can be very prescriptive about how we want hiring to work for the people that work for Domino's Corporate. We can't be prescriptive about that for our franchise operators. They have different needs. And you don't know what they are until you bring them in. The great thing is Smart Recruiters was fantastically receptive to having those conversations. So it was almost like we were doing two implementations simultaneously, one for corporate, much more prescriptive, much more buttoned up in terms of the rigidity of our hiring processes, and then one for our franchisees, which was about maximizing flexibility. And by and large, that's what we've gotten. Smart Recruiters, I think, has been on a journey of evolution. I think they've learned a lot from us and vice versa, especially in the high volume space. Chad Sowash: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you're actually helping them through the piloting of Winston, which we've seen Winston all over the place lately. Talk a little bit about that, especially the genesis of that conversation of, hey, we're looking to do a big pivot. I mean, they literally were modeled off of legacy systems, and they're pivoting very hard into Agentic. Was that exciting for you, knowing that they were your platform? A little risky, maybe? Talk a little bit about that, because you got involved. Matt King: Yeah. I mean, I have a sort of internal debate raging all the time of like... Joel Cheesman: Me too. Matt King: Am I a Luddite about this stuff? This is about KFC or... Joel Cheesman: Chipotle or Taco Bell. It's usually the two. The fight within. Sorry, Matt. Go ahead. Matt King: No, I feel your trauma, man. Yeah. I mean, I think that... Look, I mentioned earlier that I think that conversational application experiences are table stakes now. I don't think that those are edgy or cool or differentiating. And I think what has been reassuring, I think, about the realization Smart Recruiters has had about their position in the market is I think there's a pretty important space there for them to occupy. You're going to have your big enterprises that have Workday, and they're going to use Workday as their ATS, but they're going to have a really nice candidate-facing front end, and they're going to optimize the recruiter experience with other bolt-on tools. But what about companies that are in a position where they're either in the process of choosing a new enterprise ERP, new HCM, they may not want to invest in something like Workday because it's a little bit bulky for their needs. They want to go with a tier 1.5 or tier 2 HCM vendor. Chad Sowash: More nimble, maybe? Matt King: Yeah, exactly. But they really need super high quality, minimize the complexity of your tech stack, ATS solutions. And I think Smart Recruiters is poised to really be impactful in that space. In terms of the design relationship, from the moment Winston was a glint in the product team's eye, we've been, I think, on the same page that this is something that is necessary to make sure that they remain competitive in this space. There are a lot of brands and companies out there who want to take the same approach we did, which was, we want one vendor we can work with who can do all this stuff reliably. And so what are the things that are going to make you competitive if that's what people are looking for? Conversational application, recruiter enablement, both of those things are the places where I see the most value in Winston and seem to be the places that are focusing. Chad Sowash: How important is the asynchronized messaging versus synchronized? Because it seems like we try to push really hard on the synchronized to get everything done, human to human, but then we're going chatbot and it's more async. And we can do more to try to enrich profiles and things like that, ask questions later on down the road, not to mention nudge them and remind them their first day is starting in a couple of days. Is that a big step for Domino's and the franchisees to think that, "Okay, we want real people having real messaging. If a chatbot takes over, it might not feel as real?" Matt King: It's a really hard question to answer because I think that it depends on how well the chatbot works and what you use it for. I don't think that automating a notification that we're waiting on your background check invitation to be completed is something that a candidate feels is an important moment of human touch. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Matt King: You don't want the chatbot to be a jerk about it. You don't want it to be totally cold. It has to fit into your employment branding persona... Chad Sowash: Right. Matt King: But that's not something that you need human touch for. Chad Sowash: Right. Matt King: Where I think I see the line being drawn is there is a moment of human interaction during the interview that's really important. Because part of what I think we and our franchisees are selecting for is somebody who's going to represent the brand well, right? Somebody who presents well, presents as Domino's. And that takes many forms, but it's very hard to discern that from automated screening. It's very hard to discern that from somebody typing in like, what's your perspective on customer service and having an AI script churn on that. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Matt King: Those are vibes you get from interacting with a human being, whether it's through a video interview or an in-person interview. So I think it's about the moments where you choose to use it, right? Some asynchronous makes sense, some synchronous makes sense. It just depends on the feel you're trying to create for your brand and how you drive selection based on that. Joel Cheesman: Going back to the franchisees for a second, not only are they probably opinionated on what you're going to do, they're opinionated on what they think you should be doing into the future. So, what is Domino's wish list for what it wants to be doing from a recruiting standpoint? Let's call it two to three years from now. Matt King: That's a great question. The first thing I would say is it's in our interest and in our franchise's interest to deliver optionality that allows franchisees to push the limits of what's possible within our brand. We have driven so much innovation in our brand with the help of our franchisees—product innovation, operations innovation. They're critical partners. It is not a top pushing down on these things. It is the corporate entity working with our franchisees to enable this. I don't think that you get that kind of innovation coming out of our franchisees without providing the optionality for our franchise operators to try things, make mistakes, and maybe discover new things that work better. So, for us, it's not just the need for us to deliver solutions that allow them to run their businesses the way they want. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Matt King: It's also the need to create a sandbox for them to try new things that help us to innovate hiring across the whole brand through their feedback and through their willingness to try things, make mistakes, to adjust. It's just that entrepreneurial spirit. If I'm thinking about what I want the candidate and recruiter experience to be a few years from now, I think that that's where I'm comfortable making some predictions about where that's gonna go. I do think that the perceived necessity on high human touch, retaining some actions as manual actions that take place, and the avoidance of automated screening for certain things, I'm talking pre-interview, I think that it's likely that there's gonna be some softening on that. You see it happening across our industry. It's always useful, I think, to take a snapshot, comparison snapshot of where we are versus our competitors in terms of our willingness to entertain those solutions. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Matt King: I think the critical thing is, well, how do you build the trust there? So as we work with SmartRecruiters, as an example, we were early adopters of their matching tool. So this is like pre-Winston. I forget what the name of it was, but it gave you a match score. And so we found that this thing didn't work very well, in all honesty. Our franchisees said, "Hey, this doesn't match up to what this candidate actually is. It's producing summaries that are completely nonsensical. Must have been using LinkedIn tech." [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: Not good, not good. Chad Sowash: Yeah. [laughter] Matt King: It's like it's saying that we require a motor vehicle report for this position in the job description, and then it's assessing what the candidate has put into the application, and it's saying the candidate has never worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles... Chad Sowash: Yeah. [laughter] Matt King: So... [laughter] There's some trust rebuilding, is my point. And so I think the thing is we're just very mindful of that, right? As we work with SmartRecruiters, the message has been, "Look, the outputs of these things have to be things we can trust. They have to be consistent. We have to know how you got there." And most critically, you can't rely on us to train that. We're always training these tools through our interactions with them, but it's got to be better out of the gate. And so they've been very receptive to that feedback as we've gone through the Winston journey period, right? The ability to show the math has been critical. Matt King: The other thing that I'll say is in terms of the design partnership, they've been very assertive about bringing us in early and often. So we have a lot of touch points with their design team. We shovel a ton of feedback to them. I think a lot of it sometimes may be a little bit overwhelming, but they always receive it very graciously. And then we're given the opportunity to kind of battle test these things and test environments. And typically they give us the optionality to do like limited deployments of them and basically test them at a pilot capacity ahead of time. Matt King: And so that for us is like, that really gives us the foothold to say, "Yes, we think this is something that can scale. We think the trust factor is there." We've had an opportunity to bring in our council and legal teams and privacy teams, and they've had a chance to pick apart the solution. So that to us is like, it makes us feel more confident that we may land in a position with Winston where we can actually deploy this thing and actually use it. Joel Cheesman: The future is in QR codes, Matt. I want you to remember that your next meeting. [overlapping conversation] Matt King: QR codes, that is the comeback story of the decade. [laughter] Joel Cheesman: That's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying.  Matt King: Yeah, I'm all about it. Joel Cheesman: Chad doesn't agree with me. I'm glad you're on my team, Matt. [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: I totally agree with you. I was always on board with QR codes. Always. Even before COVID. Joel Cheesman: Can I ask the question I've wanted to ask Matt? Chad Sowash: No, I do, I do, I do... [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: Okay, you go first. Chad Sowash: Stuffed crust or traditional? Matt King: New York style. Chad Sowash: New York style. Matt King: Yeah.   Joel Cheesman: Ooh. Topping choices? Matt King: Pepperoni. OG. Joel Cheesman: Straight pep? Matt King: Straight pep. Maybe some banana peppers if I'm feeling fancy. Joel Cheesman: And when is the Noid coming back? Matt King: Ooh. I mean, I... Joel Cheesman: Bonus points if you say the new chatbot is named Noid. [laughter] But I won't push you on that. Matt King: So, I think the Noid—but this is my personal opinion—I think the Noid would be a fantastic candidate-facing representation of our brand.  [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: Talk about a throwback, right? I mean, just awesome. Matt King: People love the Noid. Chad Sowash: Yes. Matt King: Yeah, the Noid is great. I mean, he... You know, he's...  Joel Cheesman: Kids love the Noid. Matt King: His morals are debatable. I don't know if I can support an entity... Chad Sowash: [laughter] "His morals are debatable." [laughter] Have you seen that on a strip? [laughter] [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: And I know you're a fan of this show, Matt. Our morals are debatable as well. Matt King: That's why I knew I would get this question. [laughter] Look... [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: Are you gonna dance around this or really answer "the Noid coming back" question? Matt King: Oh, well, I mean, I don't... [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: He wants it back. Matt King: Truth be told, I don't know. I think it's a fantastic idea. If anyone's listening to this, I mean, you've got your... Joel Cheesman: You make it happen, Matt. You tell them Chad and Cheese want the Noid back and make it happen. [overlapping conversation] Matt King: I'll see what I can do. I mean, we do... [overlapping conversation] Chad Sowash: You tell 'em the Pep and Cheese Podcast. Pep and Cheese podcast. [laughter] Matt King: Would you be satisfied if the Noid is the candidate-facing chatbot in the Winston deployment? Joel Cheesman: Amen. We will pump that shit up on the show every week, Matt, every week. [laughter] [overlapping conversation] Joel Cheesman: All right, let's leave it there, Matt. Thanks for hanging out with us today. This has been the Chad and Cheese Podcast for Joel Cheesman, Chad Sowash. This has been the Sessions AI Frontline Series. We out. Chad Sowash: We out!

Hold onto your headphones, folks, because the  Chad and Cheese Podcast  is serving up a hilarious, hot-mess buffet of insights that’ll leave you laughing and maybe a little worried about your career! This episode, your hosts sling snarky banter like baristas tossing espresso shots, breezing through early chit-chat about travel woes, Coldplay’s drama-fest, LinkedIn’s questionable career tips, sports shout-outs, Walmart’s employee discount PR stunt, free swag, and fantasy football. But the real meat hits after the 15-minute mark, where they dive into the chaos facing recent grads—think degrees collecting dust while the job market laughs. The future of work gets a roasting, with the creator economy shining as the cool kid at the career fair, while AI and economic shenanigans threaten to swipe jobs faster than you can say “pivot.” Teaching’s future? It’s AI’s new playground. Silicon Valley’s traded ping-pong tables for “purpose,” but don’t get too cozy—tech employment’s a rollercoaster, and global competition’s got everyone sweating. Job boards like ZipRecruiter are wheezing in the dust, outrun by AI, and in a plot twist nobody saw coming, the hosts ponder if newspaper job ads might stage a retro comeback. It’s a wild, witty ride through the workforce’s new reality—adapt or get left behind, and maybe grab a newspaper just in case. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.542) Yeah, it's not a beer belly. It's a fuel tank for a sex machine. Hey, boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co host Joel caught in 4k Cheeseman. JT ODonnell (00:39.473) You Maureen Clough (00:40.512) What? Maureen Clough (00:45.759) And I'm Maureen, I can see Canada from my house, WileyClough. JT ODonnell (00:50.321) And I'm JT, I got no name and no game or don't. Maureen Clough (00:54.145) you Joel Cheesman (00:54.338) And on this episode, the kids are not all right, Silicon Valley gets hard, and our newspaper classifieds back from the dead. Let's do this. Joel Cheesman (01:07.202) Hi ladies. Welcome to Chad free, the Chad free episode here, Mr. Yeah. I like my odds. like my odds. So Chad is a gallivanting around in Lisbon, port Portugal. So, he's enjoying a little time with Julie, which gives me more time with the ladies, banter. How's everyone? Maureen, you've gone full native. You've got the, the maple leaf. Maureen Clough (01:08.917) Hello? Yep. Yep. JT ODonnell (01:12.795) Joel's outnumbered today. Maureen Clough (01:30.923) Thank you. Maureen Clough (01:36.715) I'm all in. I'm as close as I can get to that border. yeah, this was actually what I wore around Europe and it was helpful, I would say. Joel Cheesman (01:36.716) Hat on. Joel Cheesman (01:41.068) You Joel Cheesman (01:48.366) Was it helpful? Yeah? People friendlier or they just didn't give you a hard time? Okay, okay. Maureen Clough (01:48.641) I think so. think so. Friendlier, yeah. A little friendlier, JT ODonnell (01:55.826) When I was in Europe, the only people that gave me a hard time was a couple from Canada. Can't make this up. I'm watching the hurling championships in Dublin, the national sport. And when they found out that a couple, a pair of Americans were in front of them, they launched into politics and somehow it was all my fault. The entire country was my fault. And I just turned around and went, Oh my gosh. Yeah. They were the language. Maureen Clough (02:01.085) really? Well there you go. There you go. Maureen Clough (02:11.905) It really is. It's your fault. Joel Cheesman (02:12.748) That's interesting. I mean, they had a, they had booking.com CEO on CNBC recently and talking about how no one's coming to the U S I mean, it's funny, but it's also horrible because there are a lot of people whose livelihoods are dependent upon Canadians and Europeans come into America and they're still traveling. Canadians are apparently just going to Mexico and Europe and Europeans are going to Asia and other places. So it's. Maureen Clough (02:25.089) It's rough. Maureen Clough (02:36.896) they are. Maureen Clough (02:41.985) It's sad, but I want to say I'm doing my part. I'm going to this thing called Hands Across the Water, which is like a flotilla from the US going up to Canada and staying on Salt Spring Island and actually hanging out and telling everybody, hey, we're here. We're buying your stuff. We love being here. Don't hate us. So that's happening soon. So I'm just going to go ahead and be the diplomat for our country. Joel Cheesman (02:42.222) kind of geopolitical. Joel Cheesman (03:08.494) So is the Coldplay drama over you think? That was really hot. I'm not seeing as much of it on social media. JT ODonnell (03:16.613) I've definitely seen it dying down, you know, I mean, there's got to be more follow-up coming and I'm sure we'll hear every juicy detail. What have you found? Joel Cheesman (03:18.253) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:22.178) Well, so, so, you know, me, I like doing my, my dirty, dirty homework. And so was curious, cause the, the, the HR head, Kristen Cabot had not left when we last spoke about this topic. She has since left the company apparently, and she is off LinkedIn. so as an HR person to leave it, to leave LinkedIn is like the land of misfit toys. Like you are banished forever. That's, that's, that's pretty rough. Maureen Clough (03:22.984) Ha ha ha ha! Maureen Clough (03:49.037) man. Joel Cheesman (03:51.718) And interestingly, the CEO, Andy Byron, who was also fired or left from his job, he is still on LinkedIn, but no picture. So he's sort of, I'm here, but not here. And interestingly, what's really funny is there's another guy on LinkedIn named Andy Brian, Brian or Byron. And his, his title is literally not the Coldplay guy. Maureen Clough (04:05.601) Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Maureen Clough (04:19.137) That is epic. That's like well played. Joel Cheesman (04:22.221) Yeah. JT ODonnell (04:22.745) That's incredible branding. That is genius. Joel Cheesman (04:24.94) Yeah. Yeah. So, so we, we do have a sense of humor here on LinkedIn occasionally, occasionally. All right. Well, well, JT's on the clocks. Let's get to, let's get to some shout outs. As you know, guys, shout outs sponsored by our friends up North, the Cura that's techs recruiting made cost-effective and easy. My, shout out goes out to Jen Powell, 48 year old who made history this week in the major league baseball, Maureen Clough (04:30.526) man. Joel Cheesman (04:54.526) Record books for being the first female to call a game as an umpire behind the plate It's a long time coming. You can say what you want. It is progress Major League Baseball is well over a hundred years old It just took a little bit of time to get a woman behind the plate As many of you know that watch sports every other major sport in the US has women referees except except hockey Maureen Clough (05:06.676) yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:22.058) at this point. So hockey, we're still waiting. I understand it's a little dangerous guy, big guys on ice. You know, the refs don't have sort of a buffer there, but we'll see if women get a, get a nod in, in hockey anytime soon. Maureen Clough (05:35.553) Well, I love to hear that about the female umpire that's rad. I'm a huge baseball fan. So it's about, it's about damn time. It's about damn time. Oh yeah. For sure. Of course. Of course. So I know Ichiro. Oh, he's the best. I mean that guy 2001 Ichiro that's peak. I was, he was tops. Yeah. It was amazing. Oh. Joel Cheesman (05:41.23) Who are you? Mariners? Okay. They just retired Ichiro's number, didn't they? He's in the hall? HRO is good. Joel Cheesman (05:56.814) See that that hurts me because I was in Cleveland at the time and that was when they had their like super season and they beat the Indians I think in a final game and the Indians lost in Cleveland and I was at that game. yes, each year I was great but as a Cleveland fan that one hurt. 2001 hurt quite a bit. Maureen Clough (06:13.852) The man, he's the man. Well, it hurt for us too. We didn't exactly win the World Series. you know, we're still, we're still waiting on that one. It's going to be. Joel Cheesman (06:21.516) No, you did not. Those damn Yankees. JT ODonnell (06:25.361) So I'm obviously a huge Red Sox fan, especially when they broke the curse. And I was a career coach at the time. And I ended up that year, that first year that they won, getting a young man coming to me for coaching saying, I can't get any jobs. I looked at his resume, he's working for the Red Sox. Like you work for the Red Sox. He goes, yeah, that's the problem. I said, what are you talking about? goes, I get interviews, but all they do when I get in there is they're like, what was it like when you won and why would you ever want to leave this job? He's like, I can't get out of it. Maureen Clough (06:43.265) you Maureen Clough (06:51.337) Hahaha! JT ODonnell (06:55.121) What a crazy Chris. I'm like, this is the only time I've heard this problem ever. You know, and he's like, no one will hire me. They're like, no, no, we're never going to live up to what you have, but we just had to hear from you. He's like, I went on so many wasted interviews. So he, yeah, he was like in the marketing department, right? So just run branded stuff and they pick his brain and they're like, it won't be as good as there. So no, we're not going to hire you. Can you imagine just wasting his time? Maureen Clough (06:55.143) That's amazing! Maureen Clough (07:05.984) Ha ha ha ha! Joel Cheesman (07:08.408) What was his position? what was his profession? Maureen Clough (07:15.349) Ha ha ha. Joel Cheesman (07:20.513) Interesting. Maureen Clough (07:20.671) Ooh, that's pretty hilarious. can say having actually worked as an intern at the Seattle Mariners, that it's not all that it's got to be. I mean, working in sports, you are there constantly. They're like, hey, and this was back in the day when internships were not paid. And so they'd be like, hey, why don't you work all day and then you can come to the game later for free. And I'm like, but I've been here since like 8.30 AM and then you want me to stay till. Joel Cheesman (07:37.451) huh. Maureen Clough (07:48.034) and that's like, no. So trust me, it's like, it's all glory. It sounds so cool, but as is true of most things, it's like, well, once you get behind the scenes, it's not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. Joel Cheesman (07:57.126) Yeah. When I was a job options, this is, this is totally in right field. But, uh, speaking of baseball, the CMO of the calves, the Cleveland Cavaliers became our chief marketing officer. I was like, why would you leave professional sports to come into a.com like risky option? And he said sort of the same thing you do. Like you work all the time. You like base baseball. It's nice if they go on the road trip, you get a little break, but if, if there's constant games, like Maureen Clough (08:17.728) all the time. Maureen Clough (08:21.968) Yeah, it's so true. Joel Cheesman (08:24.694) You're working all night. You're up early with the press and dealing with all that. So yeah, it is glamorous from a title perspective, but it is a hard job. It is a hard job. JT ODonnell (08:33.199) This is when he told me that this is referred to as a dirt church job, where you work in the dirt for six days and it's absolutely horrible when on the seventh day you got to go to church and say what you do for a living and everybody praised you. And I was like, dirt church job. Maureen Clough (08:33.321) Yeah, the love of the game can only get you so far. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (08:46.954) Yeah, the dirt church. Maureen Clough (08:49.791) Never heard that. Joel Cheesman (08:51.456) Wow, we got way off shout outs. Mo, I don't think you even got your shout out in. So let's go back to what you originally were. Maureen Clough (08:55.967) yeah, that's right. So my shout out goes to the sandwich slinger in DC. I don't know if you guys have heard about this, but a dude was out in the street and he was shouting at all the feds there and all the police there. And he was holding this subway sandwich. And at one point he just lost his mind and threw it at the officer and hit the officer in the chest. So he then took off running. I mean, there's a video of this on TikTok and whatnot, and it is absolutely hysterical. It's like peak absurdity. And all I to say is like, thank you for the entertainment. I mean, you have like Jean Perrero or whatever her name is. She's doing videos. She's like, so you can stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else. I mean, it's just like, thank you so much for this hilarity, because we all needed a little bit of comic relief right now. And what's even funnier is Joel Cheesman (09:24.466) huh. Maureen Clough (09:50.218) Rumor has it that this guy who threw the sandwich works in HR tech. So we'll see if those dots can be connected later, but that's a rumor I heard. I don't want to get in trouble. So I'm not saying the dude's name or anything else, but yeah. So there you have it. It's tied back in. a hundred. Yep. Yep. We'll take it. Joel Cheesman (09:56.27) oooo Joel Cheesman (10:03.25) If anyone has some insight info out there, let us know about the Sandwich Slinger. By the way, probably the best ad Subway's had in about 20 years. So take that for what it's worth. JT ODonnell (10:10.373) Hey, sandwich gate. It's I love it. Hey, I'll dive in speaking of food. Walmart giving its employees 10 % discount on food. Heck yeah. Okay. That's a way to give people a raise. They don't pay taxes on it. Taking them some food, you know, it's out of control right now. I think that is really awesome. Joel Cheesman (10:24.302) That is a raise for sure. Maureen Clough (10:26.465) We're solid. Joel Cheesman (10:31.628) Walmart doesn't get a lot of love on the show. that's, that's good. That's good to, to give them some love, almost as much love, almost as much love as we give on the show here when it comes to free stuff. Maureen, what can our listeners get if they sign up for free stuff? Maureen Clough (10:31.937) I hadn't heard that. That's New and different. Maureen Clough (10:46.903) man, you guys just braced yourselves. All right, again, I know I just saw a headline that said that people in the US are drinking less than ever before, but I don't think that includes the listenership of this show. So for those of you who still like to imbibe, we've got some Van Hack whiskey, okay? That's the chicken cock thing that you guys have heard a thing or two about, so you can get that. We also have some beer from Aspen Tech Labs, so another. JT ODonnell (10:56.784) solitude. Maureen Clough (11:14.057) Sweet shout. If you don't like drinking as much as you like cool duds, you can get a t-shirt from Erin. You can also, if you're into food and if you like Canada, you can get some maple syrup aged in Poppy's bourbon. Back to the booze, man. Poppy's bourbon barrels from our friends up north at Kiora. And if it's your birthday, you could win rum from our friends at Plum. So just head to Chad and Cheese. Joel Cheesman (11:37.55) Yeah. Maureen Clough (11:44.165) Chad cheese, just kidding, chadcheese.com . Hit the free link and sign up and it's all gravy from there. There we go. I told you I'd screwed up. Told you I would. Joel Cheesman (11:51.374) I think Chad did acquire chadanchese.com . So we are good marketing lesson out there kids. Make sure you get as many URLs as possible for the mistyping. So yeah, celebrating another trip around the sun this week is Kevin Kirkpatrick, Bill Peterson, Mark Dubel, Peter Simondel, Amy Chagrin, Andrew Hyland, Patrick Morgan, Ilya Brodsky, Shane Bamfield, Lana Schuman, Chris Muth. Maureen Clough (12:00.162) True. Domain sit, baby. You gotta do it. Joel Cheesman (12:20.428) Russell Weaver, Kim Luss, Carmen Hudson, Jason Putnam, and no relation, Abby Cheeseman is celebrating a birthday. JT ODonnell (12:30.223) Happy birthday. That list is getting long. It's taking the whole show. That's a good sign. Lots of followers. Joel Cheesman (12:32.832) It is so many, so many fans. So many people want free stuff. So if you're not on the list, what the hell's wrong with you? All the cool kids are doing it. Abby cheesing, by the way, not my wife, not my sister. I know she gets questions as do I, we are both doing our best to populate the world with Cheesemans though. I think we're both three kids, three. Maureen Clough (12:38.337) you Maureen Clough (12:52.427) Hahaha! JT ODonnell (12:53.745) So her LinkedIn says not associated with Joel Cheeseman in the headline. Is that what it is? Maureen Clough (12:59.463) amazing. Joel Cheesman (13:00.802) I think she's making a name for herself. think she's, she's making it over there at skill scout. They're making a name, a name for themselves, which brings us over to, to travel. Where the hell are we? Well, they're able to go in now. So our travel is sponsored, sponsored by our friends at a shaker recruitment marketing. we'll be at rec fest. I think at least one of you guys will be too, right? Nashville Nashville. Yeah, both of you guys. Okay. So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna rock out with our cock out. We'll have plenty of chicken cock. Maureen Clough (13:03.489) you Maureen Clough (13:20.201) Woohoo, I'm 100, finally. Joel Cheesman (13:29.036) They're in Nashville. that's, that's in mid October. And then, now, now confirmed I will be in San Diego, the Wales vagina at ERE. I will be on stage with monster.com founder, Jeff Taylor. That's right. You, you probably heard the episode with him a while back while I'm to be live on stage with the man. So get ready, get ready for that. Almost exciting for me as what's coming up ladies. JT ODonnell (13:29.893) the ladies. Maureen Clough (13:39.649) What movie was that? Maureen Clough (13:44.776) Wow. Maureen Clough (13:52.011) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (14:00.216) Let's get us some football football seasons around them right around the corner, which means it's time for fantasy football with Chad and cheese sponsored by our friends at factory fixed you ladies play little fantasy football. Maureen Clough (14:13.215) Do not, do not. Joel Cheesman (14:14.2) Do not, JT is silent on this one. So luckily. JT ODonnell (14:17.361) No, the only time I ever did fantasy football was in high school and I sat down, the guys needed extra money. So they saw me coming in, said, what you have to do is pick and I go, okay, well tell me the color of everybody's shirts. And so they went through, I picked the colors of his shirts, I won the pool, nobody spoke to me, nobody allowed me to be in the pool again. So they needed the money. Maureen Clough (14:17.397) Hahaha Maureen Clough (14:28.457) Ha ha ha! Joel Cheesman (14:29.196) There. Maureen Clough (14:33.963) That's amazing. I love it. Joel Cheesman (14:34.346) They needed the money. They needed the money. Well, luckily, luckily for us, there are plenty of women out there who do play fantasy and have signed up for a chance to play with us. If you'd like a chance, go out to a few places, hit us up on social media, go to Chadcheese.net slash fantasy hyphen football. You can go to Chadcheese.com , click some links, sign up for a chance. This is our third year with fantasy fix. They are in it to win it and they are sending us some custom jerseys. Maureen Clough (15:03.317) Ooh. Joel Cheesman (15:03.362) which we're sure to be dawning any day now. So who's ready for some football and who's ready for some topics? JT ODonnell (15:04.688) Nice. Maureen Clough (15:05.697) That's pretty sick. Maybe I should join this year. Joel Cheesman (15:16.59) All right guys, AI's rapid adoption and a post pandemic hiring slowdown are making it tougher for recent college graduates to secure entry level jobs in competitive fields like tech and finance despite strong resumes and internships. Unemployment rates for grads now exceed the national average as well, but wait, it gets worse. Check out this recent clip from Bloomberg. Joel Cheesman (16:32.301) All right, JT, you're hot on this topic. What you got? What you got? JT ODonnell (16:34.125) I am. I'm angry. I just because we continue to feed this societal line that, you know, having a college degree guarantees you better paying jobs or putting people in the massive debt over that. As we've talked about on previous shows, 60 percent of the grads are women who we've told get a degree to close a wage gap that we're already behind. And it just the fact that they're the emotional damage like you joke about that. But you sat there, you've spent maybe your parents money, certain your money, your in debt. and you can't even get a job to pay the loan. mean, my feed blows up with the story after story of people figuring out that the interest rates alone on these loans aren't being covered off on their two years into paying off a college degree and they haven't even paid down the principal. It's ugly, it's terrible, and it's not gonna get any better, right? It gets worse before it gets better, I think AI, I am optimistic AI is gonna create an incredible amount of opportunity in the future, but that's not gonna help now in the next 24 months. And so to me, this is a cute, I think it's a wake up call that things are shifting. And certainly I'm doing everything in my power with my platform to bring awareness around this and showing people what they can do instead of, because there are none of those entry level jobs for these kids to get. Joel Cheesman (17:49.038) Let's go into that silver lining for those out there that have kids or if you're in that boat yourself. Like what advice do you give people that aren't? Maureen Clough (17:52.54) Hahaha JT ODonnell (17:55.522) Yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing that it's hard for people to realize is that AI is going to bring about a Renaissance era, which means we're all going to be able to study things and learn about things that we want to learn about and actually monetize on it. You know, we already know that a very robust creator economy exists. What people don't realize yet, but we do, is that a 480 billion with a B dollar knowledge creator economy is coming. And so a great example of that is most people don't understand that TikTok in China is education based on. They're learning and sharing knowledge. We have a massive opportunity to pivot in that direction. And you might think, well, how does it happen? These young people, well, first of all, they're very tech savvy. They were raised on this technology. And two, they do have something to share. They can show what they're learning as they're learning it and monetize that. so right now there's a lot of technology. I'll give a huge shout out to one of my partners, subs.com . Tim Stokely, the original creator of OnlyFans has built something bigger, better, for the knowledge economy worker, right? And saying, hey, let's take what you know, whether it's project management, Excel, you know, anything, cybersecurity, and let's put it out there. And this will create an economy and economy feeds itself. And so these young people are figuring this out and saying, all right, I'm going to get on and tell my story and learn as I go. And the income opportunities that open up from that, the monetization that's already happening is mind blowing. You know, we're already seeing it with the white collar workers that we've signed and the former FBI investigator, cyber psychologist, you know, AI product designer. These people are saying, forget the full-time job that I'm not going to go fight for scraps anymore. right? Bare-knuckle brawl to try to get a job, the humbling experience of applying with 5,000 other people. I'm going to pivot and I'm going to share my knowledge and I'm going to get paid for it and I'm going to do it on my own terms, right? And so stop trading time for money, start trading knowledge for money. And if I can solve a problem and it's worth a thousand bucks to you, but it takes me 10 minutes, it's a win-win. That's where we're headed. There really is a huge robust future coming and it's been paved the way by the creator economy. It's just going to take a while for people to understand it, embrace it and adopt Joel Cheesman (19:54.126) So you're saying my hours of viewing big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok are not helping my professional options. JT ODonnell (20:02.513) It makes you're helping somebody else. You're lying to someone else's pockets, right? And that's the interesting thing about it. So thank you for giving to the economy, Joel. Thank you. Maureen Clough (20:10.145) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (20:10.859) No problem, I'm happy to do my part. Mo, what are your thoughts? Maureen Clough (20:14.229) You know, I just, my heart breaks for Gen Z right now. And not only do they have all of what just JT has explained to us and just an uphill battle as well as some silver lining for sure, but they also are facing a really intense ageism. People are always shitting on Gen Z and it's deeply unfair. And I hope they can tap into what I have seen out there, which is that Gen Z confidence and just like go forward with, you know, gusto and, and feel like they can go out and change the world because We need that energy right now. just, I really, I think back to when I started my career and how valuable it was for me to have mentors and to be in the workplace and all of that. And I just, I really feel horrible that they're not getting the opportunity to learn the ropes that way. And I do think if we can continue to focus in on the opportunity, that is a great thing. You know, we want to force the, we want to. bring people into the creator economy for sure. But I do think when it comes to sharing professional advice and professional knowledge, it's hard to do that if you haven't had professional experience, right? And so I think about some of the things they're up against. And yes, it's all changing, but I just hope that, I don't know, I'm just also worried about the fact that college as it is today, I'm like, I don't know in my heart of hearts if I could look at a child today and be like, you should 100 % go to college. And when I think about how instrumental college was for me in learning how to be an adult, in creating community, in being out on my own for the first time, I think there's something lost in society when we don't have that as more of sort of the go-to. And I know that's always been something that's been a bit of privilege, right? Or you're willing to take on that risk financially to get the debt incurred to go to college. But I just, wonder. how that's going to shift things. I just, I don't know, it's hard for me to envision what my life would have looked like not going to college, but it's a new world now. It really is. And when I think about having gone through my whole career, it's like, how often do we even talk about where someone went to college or think about it, right? It's like, especially when it comes to those really expensive universities with the name brands, it's like, I really think that the value isn't there anymore. The value I think is more in the network that you unlock. Maureen Clough (22:37.621) by being in a certain place, right? So I don't know, a lot of thoughts, rambling, but I'm just, you know, my heart really breaks for them, period. Joel Cheesman (22:48.814) So it's a little bit of a perfect storm, right? You have AI taking particularly tech jobs, lot of intra-level marketing jobs and more sales and customer service, but you also have geopolitical stress. have tariffs, have inflation, economic headwinds are all over the place, uncertainty. And for everyone that's laid off is another person that creates supply. And if demand doesn't change, it's just more and more supply and no demand to take that on. So it's sort of a perfect storm. Maureen Clough (22:52.011) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:18.67) Financial Times reported recently job postings for entry level in the US and UK have declined 43 % in the US and 63 % in the UK. That's since 2022, almost half a million tech jobs have been lost globally since I think 2022. So it's real for tech people for sure. It was interesting this week, LinkedIn released their top 50 colleges. It wasn't best colleges. was best colleges for career advancement or to find a career. And as you're looking through them, it was like great network, great entrepreneurial opportunities or now. So it's becoming less about the name and what the college can do for you after and not just the credential. So even colleges, and I think the media is starting to think about if you're going to college. Maureen Clough (24:03.777) Totally. Joel Cheesman (24:10.56) It's gotta be something other than just, learned X. It has to be what happens after college. And this sits home for me, because I have a kid that's checking into, into IU Indiana university next week. And he is thinking a lot about how AI is going to impact his, his profession and his adult life. And he's getting into at least now, and we all know that as a freshman, it's not necessarily what you're going to be, but he wants to go into teaching. partly because he's very confident that teaching is not going to go away, that people aren't just going to hand over their kids to machines anytime soon. think that he's right. But I also do think that teaching will be augmented with AI. And what I told him is like, all the older teachers will not know AI as good as you do. So the one advantage that you have as a young person, Maureen Clough (24:39.851) Wow. Maureen Clough (24:48.777) you soon Joel Cheesman (25:02.478) is that you will know AI better than the 45 year old teacher that's been there for a long time. there is some silver lining for youth. You do know something better than the older folks and that's AI and how to use that for your job. take that for what it's worth, but it is bad, adapt or die, right? Darwin, adapt or die. Maureen Clough (25:22.014) Yeah. JT ODonnell (25:23.331) Yeah, I agree with you. Those that survive this will come out stronger. You know, the bigger the disruption, the bigger the innovation. This is a huge life disruption. I think it'll make them grittier and hopefully hold on to a happy note. Maureen Clough (25:37.012) I hope so too. Let's hope so. I'm on board for that. But yeah, I love the teaching idea. I think that's a really excellent one. I think that we need to look for meaning and for purpose and fulfillment too in work. I think a lot of people are having these moments and these crossroads where they're like, what is this all for? What am I doing? And so for your son to be looking into that field, I think is a really good call. Because that's something that's always going to be important, right? Joel Cheesman (25:37.183) We'll see. Joel Cheesman (26:01.72) Yeah. Yeah. If you have kids, you have kids, let them know like, is AI going to take this or how can AI help you in that job? And speaking of technology and jobs, let's go to Silicon Valley, shall we? The New York Times this week released an article that says Silicon Valley has shifted from the web 2.0 era of lavish perks and consumer apps to a quote, Maureen Clough (26:05.385) actually make the world a better place for real, not like tech companies say that it will. Maureen Clough (26:14.783) important. Maureen Clough (26:20.543) Ha Joel Cheesman (26:33.784) hard tech in quote AI driven age with a focus on complex technologies like neural networks and defense systems. the tech hub moved to San Francisco where AI startups like open AI thrive, layoffs that giants like meta, a rightward political shift and competition with China, Mark a leaner, more serious industry, though optimism persists amid ethical and job displacement concerns. Mo as our West coast correspondent. Maureen Clough (27:01.983) Ha ha ha ha! Joel Cheesman (27:02.476) What are your thoughts on tech getting hard? Maureen Clough (27:05.779) man, has it ever gotten hard. I remember when I was working in tech, my friends, my family, they'd be like, dude, your job is so cussed. You can work from home. can WFH, work from Hawaii, do whatever you want. It's so forward thinking. You have the Nerf guns. You got the bean bags. You got the free this, free that, all that stuff. Perks galore. Those are just gone now. Just 100 % gone. And it seems like it's been replaced with this mentality and this sense of, hey, if you have a job here, you're lucky. you should consider yourself lucky. And it's been replaced with this intense micromanagement and fear-driven culture. And it's really, I think, going to stifle innovation and creativity at these organizations because people are holding onto their jobs and they're looking over their shoulder and they're wondering if they're next on that layoff list. What's that going to do to these companies' ability to innovate? I think it's gonna be really disastrous for them. And it's such a stark. change. And I know there was over hiring during COVID and all of that, and that they've slashed the workforce accordingly. But the pendulum has swung so freaking far from like, let's treat people like humans, and let's give them some perks and some reasons to want to come and be at this company. And let's compete in the marketplace that is set by places like Google, right? Like in the, in the day, Google was setting the standard, the gold standard, and every other company had to kind of like rise to that level. And now it's all being just taken crashing down.  it's, know, people are just seeing what's happening and they're like, why the fuck am I working in this industry? Like, I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to lately who were like, this is not what I signed up for and this is not what it was supposed to be. And, you know, I wish I had never done it to begin with. I wish I'd gone into something that had more purpose and meaning, you know, and people are shifting their lives. They're going into the creator economy as JT was talking about. That's a huge push to solopreneurship, entrepreneurship. So I guess the silver lining from tech going hard and hardcore, right? And being all about the year of efficiency and whatnot is that we are going to see brand new companies and entrepreneurs emerge out of this that I believe are going to start creating the company cultures that they wish they had seen in tech. And that perhaps were there a little bit earlier in time, but that culture, it's decimated and it's just insane to me. Yeah, it did. It sure did. So. Joel Cheesman (29:27.244) Don't get a job at the Red Sox. Right, JT? What are your thoughts? JT ODonnell (29:28.849) Right. Well, you know, so, you know, a big article came out this week saying it's an end of an era of large companies. You know, there's one predictor. said, look, there's 80,000 jobs right now at Microsoft that have human beings in them that can be replaced by AI. And we've said this all along. Companies don't want more employees. They want less. Employees are expensive, unreliable. They talk back. Right. You know, we've just seen enough in the news. They all want to go the way of AI. But I see why it's an even bigger deal in tech. And that's because Maureen Clough (29:30.657) you Maureen Clough (29:36.469) Mm. Maureen Clough (29:50.664) my god. JT ODonnell (29:56.236) I ran a division of Ronstadt in the late nineties in the heart of Silicon Valley. And the demands that tech workers made when it was still booming blows my mind. And the biggest one I recall is that, you know, they would steal tech workers and the tech worker would stay for four months with a signing bonus. And the month was over, they'd go to the next one. It was just a crazy game. But we had one guy that they wanted really badly and he said, fine, but I need an office with no windows and a door that locks. And that's the only way I'll come program for you. And we were like, why? And he goes, because I program in the nude. And they gave it to him. And they gave it to him. And so you think about that whole world out there. I just think everybody's so done with it. Everybody wants to work with four or five of their besties and outsource everything else to AI. Let AI be the staff. That is literally where everybody's thinking it's going right now, because they're just so done with people. to me, it doesn't surprise me. I think it's going to be fascinating. Maureen Clough (30:29.373) my God. Wow. Okay. Maureen Clough (30:50.666) Yeah, people do. JT ODonnell (30:54.221) when they need to start to meet people again, how they're going to bring them back. But it's a whole different breed out there. Let's just call it. OK, it's a different breed out there. Joel Cheesman (30:57.442) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (30:58.273) Ha ha ha! Joel Cheesman (31:01.87) I want to podcast in the nude, but Chad won't let me for some reason. don't know why. Maureen Clough (31:05.761) Only fans, man. That's your platform. That's your platform, Joel. JT ODonnell (31:06.683) Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Chad. Joel Cheesman (31:10.86) Maybe. So I want to quote the Minneapolis poet Prince when I say parties weren't meant to last. on the periphery, there are some things working here. think remote has failed to a large degree in Silicon Valley. You have Eric Schmidt of Google fame going on interviews saying remote stupid and companies that have a work life balance are going to fail. Again, you have Maureen Clough (31:21.825) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (31:39.714) displacement of tech workers, the year of efficiency, like Maureen said, which we've talked extensively on the show. And then again, the wage pressures of oversupply, the more unemployed tech workers, the lower you have to pay them because there's more supply than there is demand. I do think a bigger, picture thing here is China. Look, I think BYD, I think DeepSeek, I think TikTok. Maureen Clough (31:41.377) I Maureen Clough (31:54.697) Yep. Joel Cheesman (32:06.026) Even Luckin coffee has opened stores in the U S where they have $2 coffee, right? Which is gonna, which is going to disrupt Starbucks and Duncan and everything else. look after world war II, America was in the catbird seat. Things were good. The fifties man were good. Not for good for everybody we know, but they were good times for Americans. And then in 1957, Russia launched Sputnik and America said, holy shit. We need to get our act together and we need to get serious about what's going on in the world. And I do think that China doing what it's doing. And I haven't even talked about the military aspects of this have really told Silicon Valley like, we have some real, real competition and we need to get serious, get rid of the ping pong tables, get rid of the, you know, the, the, the chef catered lunches and get serious. And ultimately competition is. Maureen Clough (32:53.057) you You Joel Cheesman (33:01.12) affecting Silicon Valley in a way that it probably isn't in other parts of the world because of what China is doing. Guys, we're going to take a quick break. If you haven't subscribed on your podcast platform of preference, please do that. Mo is going to play us little song on the piano and we'll be right back. Maureen Clough (33:09.771) that make sense? Maureen Clough (33:13.921) Maureen Clough (33:18.801) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:23.822) All right guys, ZipRecruiter, because no other podcast on the planet will talk about ZipRecruiter but us. No one even listens to their own podcast over at ZipRecruiter. So they reported their 11th consecutive quarter of year over year revenue decline, attributing it to depressed labor demand. It was a real optimistic call. It's focused on smaller employers. However, the company noted stabilizing quarter on quarter trends and expressed optimism. JT ODonnell (33:25.937) Who? Maureen Clough (33:27.602) Hehehehe Maureen Clough (33:32.769) You Joel Cheesman (33:50.944) about a potential return to modest year over year revenue growth in Q4. turns out that the floor is a pretty good stabilizer and that's kind of where they are, the basement. They also launched Breakroom, who were they acquired a year ago in the US. help Breakroom, you don't know, helps companies monitor employee sentiment, similar to sort of an internal glass door. JT, you talk to a lot of job seekers. What's your take on Zip's future? Maureen Clough (33:58.722) You JT ODonnell (34:19.761) So I don't know if you saw the article this week in Business Insider about, they're calling it quiet cracking. And that the amount of people that are literally cracking under the pressure of being in a job, hanging on with two hands, white knuckles, because they're fearful of losing their job because they know there are no other jobs out there. And that depression that's coming in. the data in break room is going to be, I think we can pretty much guess what's going to come out of that data. Do we need it though? I guess is my question. Isn't it pretty obvious where we are with this and how people are feeling and our company is even in a position right now to utilize that data in some way, or form. Do they care? Are they worried about retention? I'll say it once. I'll say it again. Every job is temporary. You are a business of one loyalty to his debt a long time ago. Right. And so why don't we just call it what it is? Right. I'm a business of one selling my services to you in some capacity. Stop thinking it's a full-time long-term job with benefits. It's, you know, day by day, week by week. And as long as the partnership works for both parties, great. If it doesn't, it doesn't. just think this whole idea of this whole employee and we care and we're family. I just think it's gone. I think we need to rip the bandaid off and get a lot more us to that. These are partnerships. Make sure the partnership works for each side. If it doesn't decide, it's not happy needs to do something about it. Like that's where we're at with this. It's not family. Family doesn't throw you out in the street when you're hitting hard times. It's not family. And so I think this is a wake up call. Do we need this break room to know that? I personally don't think we do, but prove me wrong guys. Maureen Clough (35:57.922) Totally agree. The contract is just completely broken between employer and employee. We know that. We all have to adopt, adapt to it. It sucks though. I want to say, I wonder what is going to change in our society by virtue of the fact that we no longer have any stability when it comes to jobs. Think about what that's going to do to families, right? People are already struggling to, you know, get food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. And now you don't have at least Joel Cheesman (36:00.716) Mo? Maureen Clough (36:26.847) the option of staying with a company for all that long. Many, many people do not. Some of course do. But it's just, you think about how that stability has allowed society to continue and the fact that it's going away, that there's gonna be this sort of gigification of all employment. It makes you wonder, like, well, how do we support our future? Like, how do we support the kids, right? And that's when I start getting pretty freaked out about it because the truth is, Joel Cheesman (36:38.531) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (36:54.777) As someone who's a solopreneur or a content creator or entering the creator economy, you have to wear a gazillion different hats. And a lot of people are not very skilled at things like selling, right? Like everybody has to become a salesperson if you're looking for the next gig constantly. I mean, going into consulting is great until you realize, my gosh, like I put out several proposals and they're not coming back and you know, or even if I get one, like that has a, an end date. And then you have to keep on filling up the ability to continue going on to other places. it just seems like, it just saddens me when you consider the fact that in yesteryear you would be able to go and have a 30 year career and get a gold watch and that provided such an incredible stability. And when you have two household incomes and you have two people trying to figure this all out, that puzzle just seems really difficult. But I agree with JT. JT ODonnell (37:54.469) Yeah. Maureen Clough (37:54.634) We are where we are. It's very unfortunate, but I think we have to wake up and we have to change our behavior knowing what's coming. Joel Cheesman (38:02.84) Yeah, JT. JT ODonnell (38:02.949) Yeah. And Joel, before you jump back in, I just want to say, for me, I always saw this as the future of staffing. Because if you worked for a staffing company, like that's what got me into staffing. When I, when I realized when I joined Ronstadt is the first time I understood these weren't the underemployable. These were talented people that we could redeploy bench. started hearing about all of that. I love that idea for us in the future. What if you could work some place where you could just constantly be redeployed? Cause that takes away some of that stress that you talked about Mo. I hope that that's where we end up. that. Joel Cheesman (38:12.174) Mm-hmm. JT ODonnell (38:32.173) that we can give people continuity, which I think is the fear, but also the variety to rescale and to work on various different projects. That's my hope is where it ends up, but who knows? don't know. Joel, what do think? Maureen Clough (38:33.131) I too. Joel Cheesman (38:45.614) So I'm going to bring us back to ZipRecruiter, which was our initial summary. And that's what most of our listeners come here for. Anyway, they want to know how much Zip sucks. So I'm going to leave that alone. so I bet I get little alerts on my phone about when stocks hit lows or highs and big highs and lows. I've recently got a lot of ZipRecruiter hits all time lows. JT ODonnell (38:48.675) Sorry, Zev. Maureen Clough (38:48.731) that's right. My bad. Hahaha. Joel Cheesman (39:12.674) So I post this on LinkedIn and just like, haha, or bye bye bye. Or, you know, I, I little snarky comment and, there was an old adage or someone said like, Hey, is it really time to buy? Is it bottom? And there was an old thing we say at the fraternity when a girl was like, not very attractive, we would say, I wouldn't fuck her with your dick. You guys probably never heard that. So when they asked me, would I buy this? I'll say it a better way. I wouldn't, I wouldn't catch this falling knife with your hand. now they had, they had a little. Dead cat bounce this week. Goldman Sachs sort of was more optimistic about them, but look, job boards had a hard time when times were good. You think they're not going to do when times are shitty, which we can all agree times are getting pretty challenging in terms of what the data has said. I zip stability. Sure. The basement is a good, is a good stabilizer. I wouldn't, I would not touch this thing with anything. I'm not bullish on it. On the, on the, the break room thing, I just don't see how glass door indeed reviews for anybody is going to survive AI. It is so much better to go to AI and say, what's it like to work at Salesforce or GE? It will give you a thorough answer based on all kinds of data from all over the web. Why would I go to a single point of data and say like, what's it like working here? It's just so antiquated. I just don't see how that's going to get any, any traction in the future. I just don't see it. Maureen Clough (40:41.237) I don't know, that's where you get the good stories. That's where you get the tea. You see the angry ex-employees who just go on the rant. But it has to be condensed. You could, but are they gonna give you the blow-by-blow account of what happened? I don't know. They're gonna probably pull a, you know, sort of a summary, right? Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (40:46.668) You can still get that on AI. You can say, me the pros and cons of working at this company. Joel Cheesman (40:59.118) They're going to pull a banana in the tailpipe again on you. Yeah. All right. Let's take another quick break guys. and we will talk about, well, if you had, if you had a revival of classifieds in the newspapers on your bingo card, it's your lucky day.  That's what we're going to talk about when we come back. If you haven't subscribed to us on YouTube, head out to youtube.com slash at Chad cheese and get our pretty mugs all over your computer screen. Maureen Clough (41:10.793) Okay. JT ODonnell (41:13.349) Ding, ding, ding, ding. Joel Cheesman (41:27.136) All right, guys, it's back to the future. A recent Wall Street Journal topic. guess they're running out of topics. Highlighted reviving newspaper job ads amid AI fueled application overloads and recruiter burnout. Employers use print for fewer higher quality applicants in tech and finance roles in particular, bypassing ATS issues and adding filters like hidden instructions. Maureen Clough (41:33.601) Ha! Joel Cheesman (41:54.21) Job seekers benefit from less competition, but experts doubt a major comeback due to declining print readership and demographics. JT, you remember newspapers. What's your take? JT ODonnell (42:06.513) I do. So I remember when newspapers, we've talked about this before, outsourced their classifieds to CareerBuilder and said, we'll make your digital classifieds for you and you'll make money with every click. you know, the first three months they make all this money and then all of a it was gone because their entire newspaper base didn't go to the newspaper anymore. They just went straight to CareerBuilder. I mean, it was a genius play on CareerBuilder's part, right? But it decimated newspapers, decimated income. And so... Joel Cheesman (42:27.064) Mm-hmm. JT ODonnell (42:31.953) I think it's funny that they're thinking it'll make a comeback. I just think job descriptions being publicly posted as a whole will die. I do. I think that there's going to be far more sophisticated platforms where you're going to put in what you're about. You're going to authenticate your knowledge, your skillset, and the AI is going to be able to read that, interpret it, and then present to you opportunities that are automatically a 90 % match. I just think we're going to start hiding jobs that you're not a match for because, you know, I posted one yesterday. This company hosted an internship at 9 a.m. at 11 a.m. HR said, it down, we have 5,000 applicants. Maureen Clough (43:08.897) my gosh, it's brutal. JT ODonnell (43:11.121) I mean, this is, stop posting jobs, stop. Like the AI won't be here in two years. It'll be within the year. People are going to be showing us a tool that says, Hey, you know, just talk to us a little bit, you know, answer these questions and we'll match you to jobs. And these will be the ones you see. That's the future.  So, um, the one thing I'm excited about in the midst of all this is that, you know, sites like HireVue that force you to. Maureen Clough (43:15.627) Yeah. JT ODonnell (43:35.696) you know, open a video link, record a video, your video goes away, you don't know where it goes, and somebody decides if they're going to interview you has left a really bad taste in the mouth of the job seekers, right? That has made them lose control. If we're to learn anything from this is you get more flies from honey than vinegar. So what you do instead, is you build opportunities where you say, if you want to work for us, if you like our company, the way that you're going to definitely get viewed is if you choose voluntarily to record some video where you talk about what you know and how you know about it and submit it, you will get preferential treatment over somebody who doesn't do that. And the reason I say that is because for the longest time, the first thing you did was a recruiter phone screen. And what was the purpose of a recruiter phone screen? It was the interview before the interview to decide if you were qualified. The new interview before the interview, the new recruiter screen is going to be you doing video in your LinkedIn feed or wherever it lands. And that's how AI will decide whether or not you should meet with the hiring manager. That is coming in the next year already seeing with apps like McCoy. So for me, job boards are dead. Why build them? They're not going to live. know, Monster Curve Builder been gone for a really long time. They're going to continue to die. Hopefully those bigger companies use the money they have to pivot and do something else with their brands before they're too far. Joel Cheesman (44:49.486) All right, JT is out on the Five Line newspaper ad coming back. Maureen, what are your thoughts? Maureen Clough (44:56.277) I mean, I love a printed paper. I really do. got to say that. But I think the point, it's so Northwest. It's so Northwest. And I actually do subscribe. I do subscribe to the Seattle Times with the print edition on Sunday because it's cheaper that way. So I do enjoy sitting down with that. I think two bigger points. I haven't looked. Joel Cheesman (45:00.738) That's so Northwest of you. That's so Northwest U.S. you. You and your flannel drinking coffee, you read the newspaper. Joel Cheesman (45:19.564) And what's the classified job section on that Sunday newspaper? What is that like? Well, please look and come back to us on that. JT ODonnell (45:23.386) pages. Maureen Clough (45:24.403) I'm going to be honest with you. have not looked. I will. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. Yeah, I'll give you, I'll do some research. But I mean, I think when, when push comes to shove, this whole topic is about like how ridiculously like easy it is to apply to jobs and why this creates a proliferation of applications for people, from people who are unserious and creates a complete headache for the recruiters and the hiring managers out there. Right. And if you make it harder to apply for a job, that means fewer people are going to do it. Right. And the people who do. JT ODonnell (45:28.677) Research that. Maureen Clough (45:54.41) are going to be serious about it. And so I know there was a company I read in an article that had actually had within its job description a link at the bottom that was like, you need to actually apply here, right? Like this is all fake, here's the real link. And like that got 90 % or so of the people out of their pool, right? Because people don't read. And the reality is if you want something hard enough, you're gonna go the extra mile. When I think back across, all the times I've like spray and prayed with, gosh, I keep hitting that. It's like, sorry, everyone, I've gotta figure out my new pod studio here. But so I spray and prayed my resume everywhere. know, all that, whenever people are just like going out into the ether and just like kind of looking at anything that looks relatively reasonably, you know, good for them as a professional option, like that, I was not serious. If I was serious, if I were serious about a job, I was looking up who the heck did I know who worked. there, who could give me an introduction to the hiring manager. was trying to figure out who the hiring manager was. I was writing freaking fan fiction about working there in the form of a cover letter, right? Like I tried. And so I think actually making it harder for people to apply means you're going to get better, higher quality candidates and there are going to be fewer of them to sift through. So I'm actually all about it. If you want to put those in the newspaper, go for it. It's actually going to probably help older people, right? Who are facing ageism to get jobs. So there you go. Joel Cheesman (47:17.954) There you go, one for the old folks. The one for the old folks. All right guys, you know what time it is. JT ODonnell (47:18.843) There we go. Maureen Clough (47:19.745) There we go. There we go. So. boy. I thought it was the dad joke. I was worried. That's coming later. That's next. JT ODonnell (47:27.025) Ugh, we are not escaping one. Dang it! I thought we were getting out of one. Yes, Professor Joel. Joel Cheesman (47:27.52) That's right. That's right. No, no, no. That, that's, that's, that's after this, but let me, let me, let's gather, gather on the fire here, kids and, learn how, learn how uncle Joel applied for his first jobs. And JT, you're gonna, you're gonna, this will sound familiar to you on Sunday. You got the Sunday paper. you only got jobs that were local. Okay. the ones you, you circled them or you highlighted them. And then on Monday you went to Kinko's. And you got a good, nice little copy of your resume, a little one pager. And then if you're really good, you created a specific cover letter for each of the jobs that you're interested in. You put it in a nice little envelope. If you're really smart, you send it FedEx and then you knew when it got there. And then you could follow up with a call and say, Hey, I know you got my resume, dot dot dot. Right. And, and so you did that and you applied to maybe five a week and it was a nice system. Maureen Clough (48:00.162) Hmm. Maureen Clough (48:07.929) yeah. Maureen Clough (48:15.169) Good old days. Joel Cheesman (48:23.938) Companies only had one avenue to market. You had one avenue to find out about the jobs and like life was pretty good. And then the internet happened and all hell broke loose. So, back to my history lesson, the benefit was it was efficient and we've gotten away from that, but newspapers are not the answer. People, people are not going to start flocking back to the newspapers. This is a call out to HR tech. This is a cry for help that re Maureen Clough (48:34.561) Dude. Easy apply. JT ODonnell (48:41.785) Amen. Joel Cheesman (48:53.92) recruiters are there too many applicants and AI is fucking this shit up. So many applicants, so many, like it's just too much. So HR tech, this is your call to say, give us a product that will pre-screen, filter out whatever you want to call it, all the bullshit and you'll make a mitt. But people aren't coming back to newspapers. Sorry. JT ODonnell (48:59.483) green. Maureen Clough (49:03.169) It's intense. JT ODonnell (49:16.905) Can I just, I can't believe how much I'm agreeing with Joel, like, but at the same time, can we add in there every time you post those jobs and that job seekers convinced they're a match and they don't get called or picked, they're mad at you. Like we have to, you are bringing home the point. Not everybody should know about your jobs. They just shouldn't all know about your jobs. Okay. You gotta hide them to some degree so that only the right people see them because they get so angry. Maureen Clough (49:17.577) Hehehehehe Maureen Clough (49:34.433) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (49:35.918) Mm-hmm. JT ODonnell (49:43.281) I have to listen to them every day. I was an 80 % match for that job and I could do the rest. Okay, you and 10,000 other people who were a 90 % match, know, put your ego aside, but try coaching those people on that right now. You can't make your jobs hidden. Hidden. Joel Cheesman (49:49.251) Yeah. Maureen Clough (49:54.672) that's brutal. Yeah. But make sure that it's not biased. Joel Cheesman (49:56.11) Yeah. And I, I've seen, you know, hidden, hidden words and texts. And I've seen where like, people will put like, if you're an AI, you know, right green licorice before your application and it will do it like, so we're playing this weird game of whack-a-mole and, listen, there's, there's no legs. There's no future in it. And by the way, that's the second show in a row that JT and I have been on that she has agreed with me. want to, but she may or may not like, she may or may not like. Maureen Clough (50:08.385) Hahaha! JT ODonnell (50:17.999) I know! Maureen Clough (50:20.097) It's a good streak there. I am, I'm worried. I'm concerned. boy. JT ODonnell (50:24.069) I know I'm not going to like the next part. Joel Cheesman (50:25.346) this week's, she may or not like this week's dad joke. As you might know from a couple of weeks ago, we've cleaned them up. We've cleaned up the dad jokes. So, so hopefully you like this one. What do you call a can opener that doesn't work? What do you call a can opener that doesn't work? A can't opener. JT ODonnell (50:28.187) Go ahead. Maureen Clough (50:48.534) that's, that's, I like that one. Good job, Joel. Growth. We out. Joel Cheesman (50:53.44) And with that, ladies, we out. JT ODonnell (50:56.337) We out.

Being in HR right now is like being the drummer on the Titanic—your job is to keep things upbeat while the whole ship’s going down. In this episode, Sarah Needleman joins Chad & Cheese to talk about mass layoffs, AI eating HR’s lunch, return-to-office mutiny, and why immigration raids are the new fire drill. Oh, and yes—someone’s still trying to make Coldplay tickets a perk. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:38.064) This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. You know what's up. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Sarah Needleman. She's the leadership and workplace correspondent for Business Insider. She was at the Wall Street Journal for 23 years. Sarah, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:46.337) Sup. Sarah E. Needleman (01:00.994) Thank you for having me. That's quite the intro. Joel Cheesman (01:03.726) Now, before we get into you a little bit, I've got to set the table here. Sarah and I met 20 some years ago. we bonded over my space at the time and we bonded over, the band arcade fire. And I have to tell you, Sarah, you have a lot to do, with, with my stock rising within the family because at the time I was doing SEO, I was blogging and no one in my family knew what the hell I was doing. And you quoted me in an article in the wall street journal, and I was able to show my parents and my grandparents. I was in the wall street journal, which totally legitimized whatever the hell I was doing that they didn't understand must be important. So thank you, Sarah, for making the last 20 some years of my life a little easier at the, family picnics and the reunions. Sarah E. Needleman (01:51.288) You're welcome. I'm happy to be a part of the Cheeseman history. Joel Cheesman (01:55.344) Oh, Cheeseman history. That's something you don't want to be a part of. so Sarah, aside from being a, an awesome journalists and I've, I've respected your reporting for so long. And I know it's been an effort after an effort after an effort to get you on the podcast, but it sounds like a business insider is a little more flexible. So we're happy to have you, but aside from the reporter stuff, what should our listeners know about you? What makes Sarah tick? Chad (01:58.086) No, no. Sarah E. Needleman (02:21.166) Let's see one more Jersey girl lifelong always lived in Jersey different parts of Jersey, but 100 % I am a music lover. I still like the arcade fire very much and Music is a big pastime of mine going to see live performances. I'm mostly punk and indie bands. That's that's my bag I have a dog of a labradoodle. She's actually on the front page of the Wall Street Journal once a picture of her But I'm also secretly a cat lover Joel Cheesman (02:31.343) Me too. Sarah E. Needleman (02:50.507) And I have a collection of vinyl and plushy toys. That's pretty outrageous for somebody my age. Joel Cheesman (02:58.99) You don't need to be a secret cat lover. We accept cat lovers on the show. It's all good. Dogs are always welcome on the show. Always welcome on the show. Chad (02:59.743) Vinyl? Sarah E. Needleman (03:02.19) Well, my dog just doesn't really want to hear that, but yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (03:10.414) toys. well, just figure figurines like the I collect figurines of characters are the Simpsons Nightmare for Christmas, video game characters. No, that's not what I meant. That's another conversation for a different podcast. Chad (03:20.417) wasn't sure if it was latex or okay, cool. okay. Well, that's the next podcast. So why are we here today? Not to talk about latex, but you just wrote an article called, if you think your job is hard right now, try working in HR. This is something we've been telling people for years, although it seems to be getting harder. Why the hell does that happen? Joel Cheesman (03:34.782) you Sarah E. Needleman (03:49.934) I think a big part of it is the mass layoffs that we're seeing just over and over. It hasn't ended and you keep thinking it's going to die down and then you hit another, you know, Microsoft laying off another 9,000 people. the HR people are the ones conducting the layoffs in many cases and that's really hard and I thought about looking at it from the other side of the table and trying to understand where they're coming from because I know they don't want to do it. It's not fun for them. And then you have on top of all these other factors like the implementation of AI. And that's driving a lot of people crazy and people are afraid of losing jobs. And then the ICE raids, the immigration enforcement, that's creating another headache. And then this is all after some of the challenges HR people had during the pandemic. They were leaned on for a lot of help for remote access and keeping things together. So it's just piling on. to their workloads for very sensitive matters that other occupations don't necessarily have to deal with. I mean, everybody has their challenges. But when you're with people and people's lives, their families and their health and things of that nature, it's pretty tough on those people emotionally. And that's what I heard when I started reaching out. And that's how the article came together. Joel Cheesman (05:16.752) Well, the good news is they're getting tickets to Coldplay concerts now. So that should be considered for the next article. Didn't quite happen. Chad (05:17.238) So. Yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (05:20.59) you Yeah, that's another black eye in the profession. That does not help because that has a negative connotation and it's a different perspective on it. And it doesn't help people lower down the HR chain at all. Chad (05:24.253) Chad (05:36.441) no. And we've been known for years of being human resources, but not having a lot of really humility and or humanity behind some of the decisions that are made. And I'll give you a great example. This is talking about bankruptcy and layoff that literally just happened. And this is from an HR professional on LinkedIn out in the wild. He says, I get the point that timing sucks. However, we must remember that severance is neither guaranteed nor a right. It is strictly at the discretion of the company. I mean, these are the kind of things that are put out there by HR. I mean, they sound more like litigators and or attorneys than they do somebody who is there to to literally help the humans. And this is literally what we hear a lot of times. It's like, well, I'm not going to go to read human resources because they're just the snitches. Right. So yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (06:38.638) It's a good cop, bad cop thing, right? Like when the cop, when you're in trouble and you need a police officer to help you because someone's breaking into your home, then you love the police officer. Thank God you're here. But when they're pulling over for speeding or whatever, it's the opposite. And HR, think there's a lot of similarities. You need them when you want help with your benefits, you want to help with answering questions about your paycheck. But when they're the ones enforcing rules, Chad (07:04.32) Mm-hmm. Sarah E. Needleman (07:07.79) that you don't like, then they're the bad guys. So it's not a fun position to be in for these people. that's where, you know, that's the spotlight I put on them. Joel Cheesman (07:17.006) Yeah. And one of the spotlights you had a guy named Evan Loveless, who went through seven rounds, seven rounds of layoffs impacting hundreds of people. Talk about his story in the conversation and kind of give us a sense of the emotional, turmoil that he went through in that process. Chad (07:22.069) What a name. Sarah E. Needleman (07:34.094) Yeah, he talked about how just doing it over and over is hard. You look into these people's eyes. Sometimes he said that their spouse had just been laid off. A lot of times there's tears. The emotions are tough. And HR people aren't psychologists. They're not, you naturally go into the profession to do layoffs. That's one function. But when they're happening over and over, it can get you. And he said, he recalled one particularly really soul crushing conversation. with someone he was laying off, this woman confided in him that she thought the meeting that was on her calendar was about a promotion. And instead, she's getting laid off. And he said it was just the look in her eyes, the devastation. It was really hard for him. so, he just talked about how doing it over and over has made him Joel Cheesman (08:16.388) Dope. Sarah E. Needleman (08:33.763) It just breaks his heart. feels like he's constantly under a dark cloud. And it's been really hard. Joel Cheesman (08:41.124) Another layer to that that we notice with what we do is HR departments are getting smaller because of replacing with AI. I assume that would add an additional layer of stress, but not only are you laying off departments, you're laying off your own people. Did you get a sense for that being an extra layer of stress? You talk about automation and AI in the story. Chad (08:41.385) I mean, they're being asked. Sarah E. Needleman (09:05.845) Yeah, certainly that is an issue. They have to lay off some of their own peers and that's extremely awkward. For another story, one woman in HR told me that her HR colleague made a remark, something along the lines of, now's not a good time for anybody to buy a boat. None of us should be buying a boat right now. And she looked at her and she goes, huh. And then a few weeks later, indeed she was laid off. And that was the HR person's kind of way of hinting to her colleague. things are not good right now. She knew something that the other one didn't. And so that was another piece I did about like, try to ask your manager HR if a layoff is coming and one of the way to do it. Cause oftentimes they can't say they're under some sort of NDA, but they can kind of maybe give little hints because again, these are people's lives we're talking about. And it's not just other people in the organization, but just other HR people too. mean, when companies are laying off people, don't need as many recruiters, right? recruiting if you're letting go people. Of course, sometimes they are, but a lot of times when you see HR people being cut or recruiters being cut, that's a sign that labs are coming at your own organization is what I've been hearing. And so yeah, it's a double whammy. Chad (10:19.179) So, and then back that asset, where we start talking about downsizing the HR department, obviously looking that, you know, everything runs in cycles, right? So the, you know, scaling up later might happen with AI, not with human beings. And as you had said, you know, some of these individuals are being asked to do things that they are not qualified to do. I mean, they're just not qualified. They're not counselors. I mean, to be able to provide the human empathy, you know, I get if you're a human, you should have some empathy, right? But to ask them to be the counselor and the cop is really just a bridge too far in many cases, right? Sarah E. Needleman (11:04.014) I mean, that is the profession. So you have to know what you're signing up for. But I think a lot of HR people aren't expecting to be doing layoffs over and over and over. You may have to every now and then. You know that's part of the gig. But in the case of the gentleman you mentioned in my story, he was like, wow, it just doesn't end. It just keeps going. doing it a couple of times is one thing, but doing it over and over and over, then it starts to really chip away your soul. Joel Cheesman (11:30.34) Yep. Let's talk. Chad (11:31.339) Well, and then that leads to something else that you talked about in the article was incivility in the office space, because again, you're seeing your friends slowly leave you, right? And then you feel like you're on an island. And then the next thing, even if you haven't been downsized or laid off or what have you, you still are going to feel that. And I would assume that incivility is up with employees even before they're let go. Sarah E. Needleman (12:00.96) because in tough times people get disgruntled and HR is the messenger. They say don't shoot the messenger, but HR is usually the one who's delivering the news, enforcing the rules. They may not be making the rules, they may not like having to enforce them, but that is the job. And at least one HR person I spoke to for that piece said that he had a let go of someone he had up until this point had a good rapport with someone they were friendly with, chat at the water cooler, different departments, but they... They got along, maybe had some history or lived in the area, knew each other's kids, whatever. And when it came time to the layoff, he said, look, he felt really bad, even worse than, and then in other cases, because he really knew this person, he said, look, I really want to help you. I'll edit your resume. I'll give you some leads. But this person just turned around and just spewed out a ton of horrible things. great. And this HR person, He said, you know, I have a thick skin, but this one hurt because he really thought he had reported the guy and really thought the guy understood that it wasn't his decision by any means and there's nothing he could do to prevent this. And he wanted to help. But the personality took a very big change and it was maybe a moment of frustration, anger, maybe in hindsight, this person, you know, look back and maybe have regret. I don't know, but it's human nature. We get angry and we... Chad (13:25.161) Mm-hmm. Sarah E. Needleman (13:25.282) we feel hurt and sometimes the messenger is the one who ends up taking that. So it's really tough. you know, the, another woman I spoke to said that when she had laid off someone, the person didn't take it well, looked up her phone number and got her parents landline. Cause that was which this person found and just harassed the parents over and over and over to the point where she changed her name. And, you know, I think the parents had to change their number. But this is, Joel Cheesman (13:49.245) my God. Sarah E. Needleman (13:54.606) This is sometimes what happens. It's tough. Joel Cheesman (13:56.122) Wow. So, so I'll file this one under the, tell me I'm laid off without telling me I'm laid off. you talk about the return to office mandates at companies, which for a time that was headline news on a regular basis. talk about how that has impacted HR as a profession, employees that I'm sure are pissed off about that as well. You're right in the heart of it at New York. You've got JP Morgan Goldman. So like this. RTO is a big story in New York. Tell us your perspective on that and how it was a stress for HR. Sarah E. Needleman (14:29.824) Yeah, it's a huge stress for HR because again, they're the ones enforcing these policies. They may be talking to managers and telling them, your employees coming in and pressuring them to make sure attendance is happening. Some of the HR people I've talked to said they're getting a lot of phony excuses as to why people can't come in or real exaggerations. And another case is that sincere, they talk about traffic, like they're spending three hours a day commuting. Now part of this is because people move far from where they are and now the callback is like, okay, I have to get in the car and drive really far. And then of course you hear about the extreme commuters who will get in airplanes to get to work. But some people just can't do it. But the HR people, they're torn. They don't wanna lose good talent. What if it's one of your best people who is pushing back against RTO? Then you're really in a pickle. And it's hard to make an exception for one person and not another because that drives up resentment. Chad (15:19.744) you Sarah E. Needleman (15:28.118) You can see a lot of this on Reddit if you go to some of the different subreddits for RTO topics and you'll hear people say, I'm tempted to snitch on this colleague, he never comes in, I schlep in every day, it's not fair. Now we don't know, maybe the colleague has a health issue, but a lot of times people just don't want to go in and so it's a real tough spot to be in for HR. One HR person I spoke to just the other day said he really pushed to give an exemption for two people who had extremely long commutes, but that were very important to the company. And so he said it was really hard because again, the other people who want the same thing and you can't do for one, not for the other. It's again, good cop, bad cop, being mom and dad, being the messenger, it's a tough spot to be in. Chad (16:17.729) Well, and it also sounds like, mean, because obviously we had, you know, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, COVID. Now we have, you know, we have probably one of the biggest labor market imbalances we have ever had, at least in our lifetime, we have ever had. We are pushing out immigrants who are doing jobs and now we have all these jobs that are open. Then we have hundreds of thousands of white collar workers that were kicked out of the government. that are not gonna do those jobs. And then we've got all these tech guys from the bloated metas of the world. They kept them around just so that they could keep them off the market. And now they're back out. it just seems like it's incredibly hard with all of this like tsunami of different things that happened over the past, not even 10 years for God's sakes. Sarah E. Needleman (17:13.742) Yeah, it last happened just since I'd say 2020. So much that that's why the story says that it's one of the toughest times ever to be HR. I mean, it's hard to, it was a little fluffy statement, hard to quantify that. But you talk to people who've been in it for decades, know, 30, 40 years, and they're saying that it really, it says something, it's meaningful. You know, you can't quantify it, but the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong. Chad (17:18.432) Mm. Joel Cheesman (17:41.668) The profession at large you sort of touch on as being challenged. You mentioned the declining number of jobs on platforms like indeed.com. Is this going to be an impact that we'll see for years and years to come or is this a little blip in the profession of HR? Sarah E. Needleman (18:01.55) mean, are always hard to make, but it does seem like this could be doing some serious damage to the HR profession, the interest in it, people going into it. The data we saw from the Indeed was showing that fewer people are looking for work in HR. I think even though people are desperate for jobs right now, if you have a choice between two different ways to go, HR not. may not be attractive. Or if you're a college student thinking about what field to go into and you find out you're going to be the one responsible for enforcing rules that are unpopular, maybe you're not going to go into that profession. So it's hard to say because we're talking about a very big sea change. But when you have many years now, at least five really tough years, that's a whole class of a whole cohort of people going through the college education system. Chad (18:56.161) Yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (18:56.302) And by this, the time they started it, now that they're graduating in the market, their thoughts may have changed. So pay bill may have considered HR as a profession in these past five years, in the college system may have pivoted. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. And I think we could see that next few years at the entry level, a decline in HR people. And so over time, that can present a problem. Joel Cheesman (19:23.426) I'd love to know how many students, how fewer students there are in HR and how big the Shurm ranks are today versus 10 years ago. Chad touched on the political side of this, but you go fairly deep into immigration, H1Bs, deportation fears. This is something HR people probably weren't expecting, at least to this degree. Talk about the political aspect of the job of HR. Chad (19:23.487) Me. Me. Sarah E. Needleman (19:53.432) Sure, yeah, some of the HR people I spoke to at companies where they have a lot of immigration labor, immigrant labor, sorry, said that workers are starting to come up to them, sometimes with tears in their eyes. And she would say to them, this one particular one, said they were qualified to be here. She's like, you have the correct documentation, but that doesn't stop them from being afraid or for their families being afraid. Just being rounded up even if it's 24 hours, I let you go they find out that 24 hours in detention is extremely Difficult for people to endure What if they have medication that they need on a daily basis? know my mom takes a pill every day. It misses that one day She's in big trouble because she has no thyroid Children to pick up just all that sort of stuff. We there was a Joel Cheesman (20:27.824) Yeah. Chad (20:33.216) Mm-hmm. Sarah E. Needleman (20:45.102) a in the news the other day, I can't remember what outlet where there was a raid and someone panicked and they ended up falling to their death off a roof because they were running. so another story I did recently was how a lot of companies, you know, they have emergency response plans for tornadoes, workplace violence, a chemical spill, but they didn't have one for ice raids. But now they're starting to have them because Chad (21:12.542) Wow. Joel Cheesman (21:12.682) jeez. Sarah E. Needleman (21:13.422) Think about it, in a manufacturing plant, you're dealing with heavy equipment. Ice comes in with guns. People panic. Even if they're perfectly legal to be here, maybe they're just afraid. Or maybe they're legal, but they had a DUI a couple months ago. Whatever the case, they run. And next thing you know, machines are operating, and people's hands could get cut off or whatever. HR people don't want that to happen. So they're setting up these response plans. Chad (21:33.568) now. Sarah E. Needleman (21:41.678) you know, their rights, knowing what the difference between, I'm sorry, what kind of warrant is acceptable and there are certain warrants that are okay and certain that have to be signed by a judge before you can let them in. But it's not often that we have many uniforms, sometimes masks showing up with guns and big guns, not little handguns like. Rightfully, you these big guns coming in that could be disturbing Whatever the reason is whether it be immigration or anything else It's it's not something we see every day in the workplace. And so HR people now that's like another thing They're dealing with the emotional aspect of employees coming to them with tears and fear And then you know, the actual ways themselves can be terrifying if they happen and they are happening They are happening at workplaces and I said said so on their other news page on their website. It's not a secret Chad (22:15.648) Mm-hmm. Sarah E. Needleman (22:30.894) So and now that the Trump's recent bill has passed, the big beautiful bill as he calls it, there is a lot more funding for ICE and the spokesman for the White House very clearly said they are going to go after illegal governments and by going through companies, going through workplaces, sometimes parking lots, sometimes the actual place of work itself. Chad (22:40.064) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:58.731) So HR, number one, we need these individuals to do the jobs and that's why we've had them here for years, immigrants, right? Whether they're immigrants that are doing truck driving, dock working, or they're working in the fields or what have you, or as Joel said, with H1B visas. It is again, more pressure on HR, the talent and recruiting function of HR, to find the people that now don't not just don't want to come to the country, they just can't come to the country, right? Even if they wanted to, those H1B visa individuals are going to Canada or they're going to Europe. mean, hell, France is like, come on, we want all your smart people. We call this the genius visa for the reason, for that reason, but yet we're kicking geniuses out and HR can't find the people to do the jobs. Sarah E. Needleman (23:56.78) Yes, that other problem there's especially certain occupations where immigrant labor plays a significant role. And so that's, yeah, that's a hard problem for HR filling positions that maybe local talent doesn't want or isn't qualified for for whatever reason. And then there's just the added burden of getting those 1099 to make sure they're accurate. Even a clerical error could put one of your employees in jeopardy. So like you have to have those documents up to date. Now you should always have them up to date, but you're not expecting rates or checks. So maybe occasionally you may have the federal government will come in and want to see your documentation. But now that they're coming in for other reasons, they may use that as an excuse to probe further. And if your records aren't up to date, if there's an error. That could be doing a real serious disservice to your employee. So as an HR person, that's a lot on your shoulders. That's big burden to carry. Joel Cheesman (24:54.416) Yeah. Anybody talking about sort political uncertainty? So we talk about the tariffs. We see a lot of businesses pausing hiring. We're waiting to see what's going to happen. That's stressful. Like, did that come up in any of the conversations, Yuhad? Sarah E. Needleman (25:10.092) That was, it did come up, it wasn't high on the list of the issues just because it's not a direct concern. That's more like at the decision making level. But in terms of what they can do in terms of filling roles that they have to put in pause. And that is a problem because you have job hunters, you put out the application, we're applying, you're not responding. And then their answer is, we don't know if we're going to fill it right now. And that's another awkward. Joel Cheesman (25:13.583) Yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (25:39.918) position of being you, you want to help people get jobs, you want to fill the roles with the best people, but you're not sure you can do it right now. And there's this constant limbo state. And again, it makes them the boogie man, right? If you're the job hunter and you're you're their silence. It's not necessarily because there's something wrong with you. It's because the position is frozen, they can't fill it. And again, the HR person is the boogie man that goes back to the civility. All these things are tied together. And you can see it, especially, like I said on Reddit, there are many, posts about the horrible recruiting experience. It's not always the HR person's fault, but they certainly are almost always the one to be blamed. Joel Cheesman (26:19.972) Yeah, I'll let you out on this one, Sarah. Can we end on a positive note? Was there any silver lining in your reporting? Give us something good to leave off. Chad (26:20.147) yeah. Sarah E. Needleman (26:25.185) Yes! Chad (26:28.2) thank God. Sarah E. Needleman (26:30.42) Yes, there is a silver lining. A lot of the HR people I spoke to had a very positive spin on it. They said, you know, this is the profession they signed up for and that they love helping people. And some of them see this difficult time as a calling. It's that they need to stand up and help and do the things they need to do to keep people employed or if they're being laid off to help them with the best outplacement services possible. They feel like now's our time to stand up and be a real leader, real helper. And so, you know, people go into HR in many cases because they do care about people. They care about the human element of the workplace. And so this is a time for them to shine if they look at it in that perspective. And many of them did since that was the time where they really need to rise to the level. And some of them are happy to go ahead and do that. I mean, happy in the sense that It's their calling, it's but yeah, it's their calling. Yes, it's a noble profession. That's how they see it. And that's, that's what the ones who are sticking with it and standing up to this moment. Joel Cheesman (27:29.978) Yeah. A noble profession. Chad (27:42.197) Do you hear that HR? It's time for you to shine. So if you haven't read the article yet, it's called, If You Think Your Job Is Hard Right Now, Try Working in HR. That's Business Insider. This has been Sarah Needleman. Sarah, if somebody wants to connect with you, maybe they want to read your stuff. I don't know. Where would you send them? Sarah E. Needleman (28:04.214) love to hear from HR people, whether you're the payroll benefits person or the talent recruiter, I want to hear about the challenges you're facing, the trends you're seeing, fun culture stuff. And you can email me at sneadleman at insider.com or sneadleman like sneezing but S-N-E-E-D-L-E-M-A-N. I'm also on LinkedIn and you can message me there. yeah, I'd love to hear from you. Chad (28:23.361) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (28:32.546) interview almost eight years in the making. Sarah, thanks for hanging out with us. Please come back soon. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (28:32.929) Excellent. Sarah E. Needleman (28:39.448) Absolutely. Chad (28:41.915) We out. Sarah E. Needleman (28:43.534) Thank

SAP just bought SmartRecruiters—because nothing says “innovation” like a 52-year-old German ERP giant panic-buying its way into AI. #smartmove Meanwhile, Indeed’s latest “innovation” is… wait for it… adding logos to job posts. Groundbreaking stuff straight outta 1999. What’s next, a dancing Clippy to help you apply? And over at LinkedIn, member growth is up, video views are booming, and nobody seems to care that they’re quietly morphing into a corporate TikTok for midlife crises and humblebrags. In this episode: SAP shells out for SmartRecruiters—will it be a glow-up or a graveyard? Indeed’s earnings are up, but only because they laid off thousands (Wall Street swoons 💰). Branded Boost: proof Indeed thinks you’re too dumb to know what you’re clicking on unless there’s a logo. LinkedIn’s strategy? Less jobs, more influencers. Grab your Surge soda and crank up the dial-up modem—this episode is going full retro. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:36.718) Yeah, the podcast that's like rain on your wedding day. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel total bullshit Cheesman. The Chad (00:43.641) Good luck. The Chad (00:47.673) And this is Chad, video killed the radio star, Sowash. Joel Cheesman (00:51.148) And on this episode, smart recruiters gets hitched, indeed gets boosted and workday gets bent over. Let's do this. The Chad (00:59.193) Watch. to have some lube. Welcome. Joel Cheesman (01:04.525) I'm going to, feel good. I'm in a good mood today. I'm in a good mood. summer, know, summer's winding down. School started again. Football season's right around the corner. there's a lot to be excited about. And in cheese land, cheese land is very, is a good place to be right now. And you got, you got the sunglasses on your, your tanned rested and ready. The Chad (01:09.399) Hey, a little rested, little rested, The Chad (01:17.506) dude, yeah. And there's a lot not to be excited about. There's a lot not to be excited about, like the cost of living. Oh dude, I had a hard night last night. Let's just say that. Yeah, play, So this, it's tourist season here in the Algarve and I play in a paddle league. so usually we can play like around eight or something like that. But all these fucking tourists come in. Joel Cheesman (01:35.368) do tell. I mean, don't go too detail, but do tell. Joel Cheesman (01:44.034) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (01:53.134) Mm-hmm. The Chad (01:56.151) and they take all the spots if you don't get them fast enough. So I had to wait till 9.30 last night to play and it was an hour and a half session. That and then after that is where the real work happens because that's where the beer drinking is. So yeah, didn't get that into bed till after one or so and yeah, it was a school night. Anyway, yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:09.324) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (02:15.726) I love that you as an expat are bitchin' about the tourists taking all the shit. The Chad (02:19.796) You No, spend money kids, spend money, I love it. Joel Cheesman (02:25.878) Spend money. what's what did I miss in the news? We got the BLS numbers. That was, that was crazy. That was crazy. Are you getting that news? Are you going to like tap in with your dodgy stick to get a CNN over there? The Chad (02:30.329) Jesus Christ, It's yeah. No, dude. mean, it's it's all over the damn place and it's fucking crazy. mean, so here set it up. We've been talking about this for a while now. Economists have been sounding warning bells for months that tariffs kicking or scaring immigrants out of the country and chopping hundreds of thousands of federal government workers could significantly dampen growth in the coming months. Well, it's done more than that. As a matter of fact, manufacturing jobs, we lost eleven thousand. We were supposed to be building manufacturing We're losing this shit. Like I said, we've been talking about this for months. The biggest workforce imbalances in history are happening in the US right now, which is going to impact the supply chain. I mean, imagine having workers not picking crops, driving trucks, working the docks, not to mention, know, how... Joel Cheesman (03:08.845) Yeah. The Chad (03:32.461) are you going to go into an economic war with the entire fucking world? Which is what we did, right? I mean, we pretty much said everybody. Yeah, it's an economic war and we opened every single fucking front we could, right? So, I mean, for me, it's just like, Jesus, can we just stop the goddamn madness? The only people who are doing really well right now are the tech bros, because they don't have to pay tariffs, right? They're, you know, fucking... Joel Cheesman (03:38.082) Yeah, it's a war. It is a war. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:57.656) Yeah. The Chad (04:00.655) You know Tim Tim Cook, you know throws a lump of gold shit on Trump's desk the other day I mean, it's just it's like fuck man. It is it is crazy You've got all of these companies the the big three the Fords that you know, the the Chevy's etc, etc ones who actually create Make goods and have a shit ton of employees. They're getting fucking they're getting killed Joel Cheesman (04:25.388) Well, if you're going to, if you're going to invest, where are you going to put your money in something that makes stuff or software? And yeah, so that's a, that's an add on for that. to me, it's like, it's just the erosion of trust. mean, America for all its faults, it, we're pretty trustworthy in the data. We're no one views us as China that we're kind of spinning it to make us look better than we are. And when you start politicizing. The Chad (04:29.741) It's gotta be. Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (04:40.911) Especially with the Allies. Mm. The Chad (04:51.886) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:54.592) labor statistics. That's a really slippery slope. The good news is it sounds like the Fed is bulletproof, that Trump can't fire Powell, that is at least for now, not politicized. But when you start saying all the numbers are rigged and it's all like, that becomes really, really dangerous. Although I do think if it does lead to an updating of how we get the numbers, that would be okay. The Chad (04:55.907) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:22.988) because we talked to Toby Dayton, Aspen Tech Labs, like the way that they're getting data is much better than what the government does. And it would be kind of nice if the government came into the 21st century when it came to data. The Chad (05:32.573) yeah. The Chad (05:36.429) Would they cut the BLS budget though? So it's like, first and foremost, you hamstring the motherfuckers and then you give them a hard time because of their revisions, which, you know, everybody has revisions. They've always had revisions. Yes, should we update it? Of course, but there should be a transitionary, there should be a planning thing. It kind of feels like this administration. No, no, Jesus. I mean, and it all comes down to whether he likes it or not, right? Joel Cheesman (05:39.394) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:54.926) Well, it shouldn't be the president saying you're out. Yeah. The Chad (06:04.033) So it's that one authoritarian kind of like figure who is like yes or no. And that's again, that goes back to the trust in the US. There's always been that trust because we've had institutions, had a Congress, you we had a judiciary and then we had the executive branch and they would check each other. Now nobody's being fucking checked. Joel Cheesman (06:04.536) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:13.442) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:25.356) Yeah. Yeah. Ouch. Ouch for sure. we got a lot to cover today. We got lot to cover today. Let's get to shout out. Shall we shout out sponsored by Cura, Chad, you know, cure our friends, our friends from the great white North. They're doing, they're doing text recruiting, cost-effective and easy to use. I got boobs on my shout outs. can you, can you Trump that one? The Chad (06:28.207) Ouch. big ouchy. Yeah, we do some shout outs. Yeah. Yes. The Chad (06:52.179) no, I did. I know I cannot and I won't because everybody, everybody loves boobs. Joel Cheesman (07:01.71) True. Boobs, boobs, boobs always. All right. Uh, so August is national breastfeeding month. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Still looked a little homework, but so there's a survey came out recently. Only 44 % of workers felt supported, uh, at work when it comes to breastfeeding, which is just not good. So companies need to sort of get on the ball with this. There is a federal law called the pump act. The Chad (07:01.967) Yeah, everybody. No reason not to. The Chad (07:08.095) that's news. The Chad (07:18.543) Mmm. The Chad (07:24.975) Mm. Joel Cheesman (07:25.464) I don't think that's the official name, but that's what the insiders call it. So there's a, there's a law that protects nursing for employees. Companies need to provide reasonable break time and private space for pumping, pumping breast milk for up to one year after giving birth. So companies out there, it's breastfeeding month, get on, get on it and make sure your, your mothers and mothers to be feel supported in the workplace. Thank you very much. The Chad (07:50.799) Yeah, and make sure there's a lock on that door because we don't need creepy Jeff coming in and stumbling in when Martha is trying to pump. Okay. Not cool. Not cool. Joel Cheesman (07:59.598) Yeah, that comes into the safe space, the private space. make sure the two-way mirrors are taken out of the office for that one. The Chad (08:08.815) Please, Jesus, please. All right, my shout out, not as fun. I'm gonna try though. Shout out to the Buggles and Video Killed the Radio Star, which was the very first video on MTV 44 years ago, back on August 1st, 1981. But little did they know, video would also kill the customer service star. How? Ask Atlassian CEO, Mike Cannon Brooks. Joel Cheesman (08:20.962) huh. The Chad (08:36.015) who just laid off 150 employees via pre-recorded video because nothing says we care, like being lumped by a YouTube video, right? What happened after the video ended? Well, I would call it 15 minutes of hell because employees were instructed to chill for 15 minutes. because their fate would be known, right? We would contact you and let you know if you still had your role. And then they said, it's not AI replacing all the roles, just most of the roles, which is very comforting, very comforting. Joel Cheesman (09:01.71) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:14.04) Just 99%. The Chad (09:15.215) Yeah. Meanwhile, execs are busy sponsoring an F1 team and hyping the AI like it's 1999. But for the laid off workers, it's more like Orson Welles, 1984. So shout out to just bad, horrible, stupid treatment of employees. Bad on you, Atlassian. Joel Cheesman (09:35.886) By the way, the, the nostalgic, concerts are coming in hard in Indy. I don't know if you get these over in Europe, but, we got Toto. Minute work. we got Cindy Lauper. we got Rod Stewart and cheap trick. Like it is just a parade of aging wrinkled rock stars that are coming to town here in Indianapolis. The Chad (09:35.951) You The Chad (09:44.246) nice. Jesus. The Chad (09:51.363) God. The Chad (09:54.765) Ridiculous. I didn't even hear sticks or a speed wagon either. And those are usually like standards. Joel Cheesman (10:03.052) Yeah, they've, they've maybe been here already. as, as the fall comes and it gets a little cooler, they tend to like show up more often. the Doobie brothers with Michael McDonald are coming, to town. Anyway, anyway, good stuff. Good stuff. The Chad (10:11.983) Jesus Christ. I mean, in kids, if you don't know Michael McDonald, just go ahead and go to Spotify, choose any Yacht Rock playlist. He's either lead or background on just about every single one of those, by the way. I no question. Still. yeah. he looks good. He looks good. Joel Cheesman (10:28.928) and definitely keyboardist on all of them. Maybe the best head of hair for his age group in the world. That guy's got a silver mane that could kill baby, kill baby. So good concerts. I don't know if they're giving away free stuff or not, but we are here on the show. The Chad (10:46.873) Well, let's talk about the new free stuff, and it's a different kind of free, kids. It's called Fantasy Football, sponsored by our buddies over at Factory Fix. Love those guys, and you can register for free, but, but, see, I look at Joel's, if you're watching on YouTube, can see Joel's Fantasy Football t-shirt. This one, Joel. This one's a little bittersweet for me. As you know, last year's David Seifel is he's a lock for this year and we have 10 spots. So he takes the first spot and I had the second spot locked for friend and sports fanatic, Matt Lavery, but he tried to tragically passed away last month. So in honor of Matt, I'm changing my team's name from. Joel Cheesman (11:10.156) yeah. Uh-huh. Yep. Joel Cheesman (11:27.342) Yeah. The Chad (11:31.757) Ronaldo football team to Lavery's legends. So if you wanna play, sign up, just go to our LinkedIn feed, you'll be able to see that's how we posted some links to the factory fix fantasy football or hop on Chadcheese.com and click on the register button in the header. Moving toward the more traditional free stuff. And I know you guys love this. Whiskey. Joel Cheesman (11:33.496) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (11:43.49) Mm-hmm. The Chad (11:58.241) from the talent tech experts over at Van Hack, those Canadians, you love those. more Canadians, bourbon barrel age syrup from our buddies at Keyura. That's right, text recruiting made simple. T-shirts, if you're watching on YouTube, once again, I've got my Aaron App T-shirt on. I love this thing. It's nice. Red, wearing shoes, kids over there, the Aaron App. For the T-shirts, craft beer from those job data geeks over at Aspen Tech. Joel Cheesman (12:07.096) more Canadians. Joel Cheesman (12:18.606) Yeah. The Chad (12:32.655) labs and if it is your birthday you know you want a little rum from the swamp. The Chad (12:42.394) I can. The Chad (12:46.147) Go to ChadCheese.com slash free. That's right, free. Joel Cheesman (12:50.368) I miss football. Okay, here's our birthdays for the for the week. Everybody we got Wendy daily Kim Bates, Christie Kelling, Stephanie Pindress, Michael Malady, Sally Millick, Christopher Cleland, Micah Clark, Joel Stupka, Alistair Neal, Lena Bradshaw, Victoriano Cable, Brianna Amantia, John Higgins, Neil Costa, Mark Coleman, Jessica Lee, and Brendan Crickshank Redemption everybody. The Chad (12:51.962) Hahaha The Chad (12:58.671) Mm. The Chad (13:09.006) Mm. The Chad (13:18.767) There he is. Joel Cheesman (13:20.802) Happy birthday, everybody. The Chad (13:22.189) Really quick on events, we're gonna be going to RecFest in Nashville October 15th and 16th. We'll be talking more about that as we get closer. We're gonna have our favorite Scott there, Steven McGrath, so that we have sound effects, because we don't have Steven, we don't have sound effects. Then we're gonna do a West Coast-ish tour in November where we're hitting San Francisco, San Diego, and Dallas. We'll have more. event details on that RL 100 amazing. I go to Chad cheese.com events. Plus I think Joel's doing a solo you're you're you're doing a solo. Joel Cheesman (13:59.532) Yeah, it's, don't want to give too much away as it, as it formulates, I will give more, but, it looks like I want to be headed to ERE in San Diego, the whale's vagina, Chad, as you know, San Diego to interview, on stage, a famous person in our industry. I'm not sure if it's solid yet, but as soon as it does, I will, I will share that, that information. It is, it is not Steven McGrath. The Chad (14:07.98) San Diego. Yes, yes, there it is. The Chad (14:23.343) This better not be a chump. That's all I gotta say. Better be famous person. Joel Cheesman (14:28.908) By the way, that I am not- The Chad (14:32.783) I'm not going to. Joel Cheesman (14:33.506) By the way, how has he not been a guest host on the show ever? The Chad (14:37.168) don't worry, that's good. That's gonna happen. That's gonna happen. Yeah, we're gonna make that happen. Joel Cheesman (14:39.116) Okay, okay. That might have to be in person. We might have to do a little something special for that one. The Chad (14:43.471) We will, we will. But real quick, I saw David Manister just posted that he is in Granada, Spain right now. And I've got a little advice for the kids out there. If you're coming to the Iberian Peninsula, being Spain or Portugal or anywhere over on this wonderful little peninsula, this time of year, Joel Cheesman (14:56.248) Hmm. The Chad (15:07.075) go toward the southern coast where you get the nice cool breezes. Because David said as hot as balls and Grenada. And I'm like, yeah, dude, you know why? Because you're inland. You got to go to the water. So if you do any type of visiting in Spain or Portugal, look at what time of the year it is. This time of the year, you definitely want to be closer to the water. January, February, something like that. Really doesn't matter. Just beautiful weather. Joel Cheesman (15:32.942) And that has been Chad's travel tips sponsored by TripAdvisor. Joel Cheesman (15:42.446) shit, let's get to topic, shall we? The Chad (15:44.569) Yes. Joel Cheesman (15:49.108) All right. Real quick, Chad, just saw this today. Do you know the site StockTwits? It's basically just a vomitous, massive content about stocks. And I was reading up on ZipRecruiter and someone had commented that Zip had just laid off its entire enterprise team. Total rumor, not credible potentially at all, but still interesting. People kind of know this stuff on the crap, but let's get to the real news. We'll keep an eye on. The Chad (15:59.183) Yeah. The Chad (16:05.583) Thanks. Jesus. Joel Cheesman (16:18.164) on zip recruiter as its stock goes to all time lows this week, by the way. S big news. SAP has agreed to acquire smart recruiters. That's right. Yet another chat and she's sponsor, that's getting, getting paid everybody. terms run disclosed, smart recruiters will remain a standalone, brand, closing expected in Q four this year, CEO Rebecca Carr, Chad and she's favorite expressed excitement about advancing. The Chad (16:22.329) Jesus, so bad. Train wreck. Joel Cheesman (16:47.832) hiring globally. Chad, you got a few thoughts on this deal. What you got? The Chad (16:52.591) Yeah, well, first off, let's talk a little bit about Rebecca. The first time we talked to Rebecca was in May of last year when she was the interim CEO. After their last CEO ejected due to an ISIMS deal that turned sour, just gone. I don't know where, poof. Joel Cheesman (17:07.17) Mm-hmm. The Chad (17:12.847) All right, so Rebecca, an industry veteran, a product pro and someone with a genuine fucking vision, which is definitely rare these days for God sakes. We'll talk about it deeds bullshit later kids. Anyways, Rebecca was in the C suite and by the end of that conversation, I was a true believer man. Joel Cheesman (17:27.662) Okay, yeah, we will. The Chad (17:34.049) And as a matter of fact, I believe we both said, rip that interim label off and let Rebecca run. And they finally did, which is great. Then earlier this year in February, I was over here in Portugal and they asked me to come to Madrid to sit down and actually do some interviews with Rebecca and the executive team. And that's when Rebecca, February this year, announced to the world that smart recruiters would be making a dramatic change. Joel Cheesman (17:41.198) They listened. The Chad (18:03.973) literally taking the core of their platform, their system and rewriting everything, throwing the roadmap away per se, right? I've got a little video, go ahead and roll that beautiful beam footage from Madrid. Joel Cheesman (18:06.349) Mm-hmm. The Chad (19:42.893) Okay, so nearly six months later, SAP announces their intent to acquire Smart Recruiter. Question is, was it the chat and cheese? Huh? Huh? Joel Cheesman (19:57.058) you The Chad (19:58.082) OK, so let's start breaking this down around really what I think happens next. So some are saying that SAP will keep success factors around and start an employee-like strategy with multiple applicant tracking system platforms. And others are talking about SAP clients transitioning into smart recruiters as an evolutionary step and then them sunsetting. success factors, right? know, here are my thoughts. I've got a history lesson. Joel Cheesman (20:27.202) Yep. Yep. shit. History lesson. I love those. Old guys giving history lessons. The Chad (20:38.093) Okay, so at, that's right, that's right. So SAP acquired success factors in 2011, 14 years ago. Now in most cases, HCM providers, they don't put much time, thought or money into recruiting platforms. So those ATS platforms usually just collect massive amounts of tech debt, wither and die. To me, it's time to sunset success factors, because trying to keep two sets of code alive for the same purpose is just dumb. my predictions, that's what's going to happen. They're going to sunset success factors. Probably going to take about two years to be able to make that happen. Additional predictions, Oracle. acquired Taleo in 2012, right after SAP put pressure on them through their acquisition of success factors in 2011. SAP makes the first move again while Taleo today is dead and bloated and Workday is flailing with their gift with purchase version of an applicant tracking system. So these companies have piles of cash and they want and they need a good AI story, much like SAP has now. my question to you, who do you think is next? Do you think iSIMs, eightfold, phenom, paradox, any ideas? Joel Cheesman (22:00.179) well, that's interesting. I think a lot of this was AI driven. think that success factors is not an AI trendsetter whatsoever. So, I have to think that SAP talked to a lot of companies and sort of landed on smart recruiters in terms of Winston and what Winston could do. And we knew from talking to Rebecca early on that the transition was going to be AI generated, was going to be AI focused. The Chad (22:10.415) No. No. The Chad (22:28.333) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (22:29.71) I got to think that SAP called paradox. They called eightfold. They called some of the companies that you mentioned and we don't know the price tag of any of stuff or how the negotiations went, but they had to have talked to all those companies. I think they're all on the table. I Sims would love to be acquired. and I have a little bit of thoughts on what the recipe is to do that. which I think smart recruiters played at played out to a T, The Chad (22:48.632) god, The Chad (22:53.505) huh. Joel Cheesman (22:57.826) You're going to continue to see this consolidation. question is, is it the pure play ATS or is it the AI? think there was much more appealing about this deal with the AI than the ATS success fetters are in there already an ATS, like there was something there that they knew they needed and didn't have and, and smart recruiters could provide that. So when you say who's going next, I lean more towards it's an AI player than it is a conventional. ATS. The Chad (23:08.067) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:28.238) I Sims needs to get on it. And if they're on it, they need to let us know they're on it. Cause they're not letting us know it, which goes back to sort of my recipe. You look, I Sims, not an industry CEO. you know, when Colin left, they brought in a marketing guy. Then they brought in a, what, an ex hockey player. Then they brought, I like, who are they bringing in, dude? There's no, like bring in a person that knows the industry, bring a person that's rooted in, the business and what our customers want. on product, focus on the future, focus on the message and pushing that message out. said months ago, smart recruiters is playing to win. I Sims is playing sort of not to lose. And there's a huge difference and smart recruiters is being rewarded for what they've done. And part of that is just the recipe of like the leadership. The Chad (24:07.588) Yeah. The Chad (24:17.711) Yep. Joel Cheesman (24:24.952) Bring bringing in a Len who knows everyone in the industry and getting them around what the message is and the vision is and creating content and marketing around that. So, to answer your question, I don't know if you had more commentary, but yeah, I think they're going to lean toward more AI players than they will, conventional ATS players. Cause ATS is our club pretty commoditized at this point. I know that they try to sort of like we're SMB or we're enterprise, but a of that stuff, mean, The Chad (24:31.855) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:53.836) Fountain is an ATS, Paradox is an ATS. Like all these companies are just sort of copycatting what that is. So what's the differentiator? It's AI. The Chad (25:03.523) Good ones too, the fountain and gym. Throwing those in there. I mean there there are just more like new So i've got two moments that I want to say that that smart recruiters did incredibly Well, number one the one that you just watched with rebecca That was their domino's moment when domino's ceo ate the pizza and said this does not taste good, right Rebecca just said this does not taste good. We need to make this better I do not like using my own system. Does it check all the boxes? Yes, but this pizza does not taste good So they had a domino's moment right there Joel Cheesman (25:06.85) Yeah, Harry. Joel Cheesman (25:26.83) Yeah. The Chad (25:35.681) Then they did the unveiling, which was their Apple moment. They had the onstage, they had the pretty much the single talking head doing the, know, all the different aspects of what to expect with Winston and this new AI platform. So they really, and to me, that was fucking masterclass. First off for... Joel Cheesman (25:53.731) Mm-hmm. The Chad (26:01.807) Rebecca to say, pizza doesn't taste good. And then them to come out with a very polished, very polished. mean, fucking screen looked like it was a goddamn football field long, for God sakes. To be able to do those things. And again, we have friends over there, so on and so forth. We have friends at ISOMS too, but we talk shit about those guys, right? It doesn't matter. When you see these things happen, you just gotta give them big fucking applause. Joel Cheesman (26:30.338) All right, that cues my big applause right there. Joel Cheesman (26:37.006) So, happens now, I think is the real interesting question. SAP doesn't exactly have a great history of taking products they acquire to the next level. They sort of become pieces of like check boxes of, okay, now we have AI, now we have an ATS, now we have this. Remember they bought jobs to web back in 2012 as well, which was pretty revolutionary at the time. Yeah, yeah. Of course, Doug left. The Chad (26:55.513) Mm-hmm. The Chad (26:59.681) yeah, a slap on top of success factors. Joel Cheesman (27:06.702) Does Rebecca stick around because she's really the, the, the force behind a lot of this vision. Um, so we'll see a lot of people were saying success factors goes away. I think that's a really big boat to turn around. I think that's really hard. Uh, employees become a house of brands, lever job, bite, et cetera. Does this become another brand? The Chad (27:29.198) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:32.045) That's really hard to do as well. so rolling up pieces of smart recruiters, do they keep the success factors brand, but get rid of like, we'll see what happens, but that's a really tough question. you mentioned some of the haters out there and a lot of the marketing pieces that we've seen about, you know, Hey, smart recruiters is done. This is the death, you know, it's time to shop for a new ATS. Yeah. our friend Max at talk push, had a, had a message. The Chad (27:52.815) Come on over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:58.937) He had a yawning icon and said, this isn't progress. That's a, that's a market grab, a land grab. And there's probably some truth in that as well. but we'll, but we'll see. I, the challenge is they've done such a good job at innovating. Do they hit a brick wall now and just, okay, we're done. We sold it's over. Like that's the end. or do they keep the ball rolling? And I guess, I guess we'll see. The Chad (28:00.559) You The Chad (28:23.307) Yeah, the question is, you know, can let's say I'm going to use Ronstadt monster since Ronstadt fucked monster so badly. Can can the old guard get out of the way of the new, more technical, more hip, cool nimble? Joel Cheesman (28:31.052) Yep. Yeah. The Chad (28:40.407) kids that they just brought on, right? Ronstadt couldn't, right? They couldn't. They didn't have a vision of the future. They had a vision of the past and they wanted to try to color code some of that with what looked like the future. It was total bullshit. if SAP allows these guys to run outside, Joel Cheesman (28:42.414) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:53.442) Yeah. The Chad (29:00.335) I think there's a good opportunity for them lasting long and for success factors to be able to last since 2011. I mean, it's still dead bloated to some extent, but yeah, I mean, they just got to get out of the way and hopefully start to turn. And a great example is back in the day when TMP switched to Monster, right? TMP was the big, bad Joel Cheesman (29:09.603) Yep. The Chad (29:28.501) agency, right? And they were TMP worldwide in the fucking stock market. They changed the goddamn ticker symbol to monster because they wanted the cool kids out front. I don't see that happening with SAP. Don't get me wrong. They're a German company. Okay. That's not going to happen. Yeah. So, but can they let the kids run? That would be the cool. Joel Cheesman (29:29.708) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:37.922) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:43.404) Ja, sehr gut. Joel Cheesman (29:49.069) Yeah, it's tough. I liked it. I got to think that there was, there were conversations with success factors, leadership and smart recruiters because there are synergies there. They're, they're both in the same business. It's not like, we're staffing. We're buying a job board. We don't know about each other. And we w we like, we don't get it. Hopefully there, I assume there were discussions about, Hey, we do this really well. You guys do this. And then there was a cohesion of like, we're going to meld the brands or this brand's going away or we're going to The Chad (29:55.67) yeah. The Chad (30:01.22) Yeah. The Chad (30:17.525) Smart Factors. Joel Cheesman (30:19.476) Okay. Okay. There you go. You heard it first, from, from the Chad smart factors. It was odd. It was odd to announce this on a Friday as well. Most of these usually happen on a Monday, Tuesday. So the industry has a week to talk about. Yeah, I was going to, that was my next point is like somebody, a leak, there must've been a leak and someone said, well, shit, we got to go now or else it's going to be, it's going to be in the rumor mill. But, yeah, this one's, this one's interesting. The Chad (30:22.125) You're welcome. The Chad (30:36.345) was getting out. The Chad (30:42.733) Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Joel Cheesman (30:47.96) We're going to see, we're going to see what happens. hope Rebecca doesn't leave. hope that she sticks around and we have many more discussions with her, but she's been a lifelong industry person. I don't think that, that she's going to leave anytime soon. Don't fuck this up. S a P. The Chad (30:52.398) Yeah. The Chad (30:59.289) She's fucking solid. Joel Cheesman (31:05.838) All right, Chad, it's earnings season, baby. It's earnings season. I mentioned Zip, Zip hit an all time low this week. They, report on the 11th. So next week, maybe we'll be chatting about what Zip recruited, reported, but let's talk about Indeed and LinkedIn per recruit holdings and Microsoft. So recruit holdings reported a 20.3 % increase in operating income and a 13.6 % increase in net income in Q1 despite The Chad (31:14.351) horrible I'm sure Joel Cheesman (31:35.875) despite a 2.5 % decline in revenue. The HR technology segment, includes Indeed and Glassdoor, saw revenue growth at 3.6 % year on year. Meanwhile, LinkedIn revenue rose 10 % year over year. The profitability details are not disclosed because it's Microsoft. Highlights included accelerated member growth at LinkedIn, 1.5 million content engagements per minute, and 34 % year-over-year video upload growth. Chad, some of your thoughts from earnings season. The Chad (32:10.767) So member growth, that's the things that Indeed and LinkedIn are gonna love because everybody's gonna be out looking for jobs and they're going to be flush with candidates, right? That's what they want. There are more candidates, that's where the money's at. It's pretty amazing though that when the job market looks like it does, and we just talked about this, that they're still able to trudge on, right? So I think there are a lot of... organizations that are out there today that are really feeling the hit, where indeed in LinkedIn are squeezing as much money as they can out of the market, that's going to leave some others in really tight times. Advice to anybody out there that is in niche? or if you're not in niche, find a way to get in the niche because that's going to be a great way to get to those dollars because there's more money in a niche and an expertise than there is broad-based. So if you're trying to sell a product to a broad base of organizations, number one, it's incredibly hard to manage. Number two, how are you going to fight against Indeed? How are you going to fight against LinkedIn? You've got to really find your superpower. And I got a great example talking to Mark over at Hackajob earlier this week. These guys are kicking ass and taking names. And the reason being is they are not only mastering that niche on the tech side of the house, which is not doing great by the way from a market standpoint, but they're still doing great. Joel Cheesman (33:32.622) Mm-hmm. The Chad (33:46.859) Also from a tech standpoint, which they're gonna come out with some pretty big things pretty soon. So I really think that getting into that niche and being an expert in a specific area is gonna get you through some of these very, very rough times. Joel Cheesman (34:01.656) go niche, there's money in niche as, the job or doctor, I'm sure knows that niche businesses can be successful. what, caught my on the, on the indeed thing is that there's been a 2.5 % decline in revenue, but net income has increased. And this is why wall street loves layoffs, because you can not grow your income, like your income, but you still are more profitable. by mock. The Chad (34:08.111) Yeah, she does. Joel Cheesman (34:30.978) By my calculations since 2023, there have been 4,500 people laid off just at Indeed. The back of the napkin math tells me that's $450 million a year if they're making $100,000 per year. And if you throw in healthcare and everything else, that's probably a decent estimate. So to me, I don't see a growth picture at any of these, even if they are more profitable. I think that they are engineering the finances to look to look like they're making more money, but make no mistake, like this is a challenging environment for almost everyone in our industry and particularly for Indeed and Glassdoor and the staffing business. So that's sort of my takeaways on that. think we're going to see more of that going forward. The LinkedIn stuff was interesting because none of the highlights were about employment. Pretty much it was about How many more members we have, how many more, video views there were in the last, whatever. mean, it feels, it feels like the narrative that they're spinning is we're a, we're a meta competitor. We're doing things that met is doing because let's be honest, investors don't want to flock to job stuff. They want to flock to AI cool video stuff. The Chad (35:38.199) Engagement, Joel Cheesman (35:57.683) And LinkedIn is clearly spinning the business as growing members, growing, you know, premium features, more video, we're meta. We're not. Or indeed, or some other job sites. So that was interesting to me. I want to know to me, the big story is going to be who's going to come out with a gentic solutions. We know that Microsoft is in bed with open AI. The Chad (36:05.667) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (36:25.218) We know that they're a leader in this stuff indeed is not. I need, I need LinkedIn to come out with, you know what? You got a profile on LinkedIn, pay whatever per month for a Gentic job search. we'll use your profile. What we know you'll apply to jobs that are for you. We'll interview for you through, through LinkedIn's pro solution. And if we find a opportunity that's ideal and the company wants you. The Chad (36:25.326) Yeah. The Chad (36:54.681) Mm. Joel Cheesman (36:54.776) then you can talk to them. Like LinkedIn needs to do that ASAP because everyone talks about passive job seekers. Like how awesome would it be to say you can passively look for jobs, keep your current job, we will apply for you, interview for you, and if something is awesome, we'll let you know about it. That is gonna like unlock a flurry of. people who already employed up, start applying to jobs and companies would love that shit. They would love to know that, Hey, passive job seekers are applying. so I'm waiting for the link or the LinkedIn, Microsoft, whatever comes out with job search agent, and you can pay 99 bucks a month or whatever it is, 29 bucks a month for LinkedIn to like search jobs, apply to jobs and interview for you all on LinkedIn. think that'll be a really interesting conversation that we have if and when that ever happens. I don't think you're as optimistic that it will based on LinkedIn's past, but somebody's going to do that and they are primed to do it, whether they will or not. The Chad (37:57.987) Now, going back to the financial engineering, there's no question when you have a shit ton of employees, you can literally just start skimming off the top. Joel Cheesman (38:04.366) Mm-hmm. The Chad (38:07.043) and then make it look like everything is running much better, right? Much tighter. What you talked about with regard to supply and engagement. I mean, that's really what it is. You're getting more members, more users, so on and so forth, and you're getting more engagement. That's where LinkedIn is kicking indeed's ass because if you go to LinkedIn, not a big fan of it, but still they have all these different ads that are not employment ads, which means they're getting cash. Joel Cheesman (38:23.342) Mm-hmm. The Chad (38:33.451) in ways that there's no way that Indeed's gonna get cash, right? Because they are a social network. So yeah, I mean, that's definitely, think LinkedIn's superpower. It's not technology at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:47.118) It's the network and engaging that network. The Chad (38:51.297) Exactly. So supply and engagement. think those are the two big market factors that LinkedIn is probably, well, that and the addressable market with regard to marketing can kick indeed's ass. Joel Cheesman (39:04.782) Yep. Well, indeed we'll continue to throw shit at the wall to see if it sticks. And when we come back from our first break, we'll talk about some of that spaghetti. Guys, listen to the ads. There's no show without the sponsors. So listen to the ads, write blank checks to our sponsors so we can continue to stay out of the real workforce. The Chad (39:08.559) yeah. The Chad (39:20.879) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (39:29.55) Boost it, baby. Boost it. All right. Indeed launched branded boost. Not quite as cool as our little bump product that we launched recently, but almost. It's an employer enhancement feature for its featured employer tool. That's a mouthful. This feature allows employers to add their logo to every Indeed job post, index job post, increasing visibility, and as they say, brand credibility. Chad, are you ready to boost it? The Chad (39:32.654) Thank The Chad (39:37.743) Hahaha The Chad (39:49.091) Huh? Joel Cheesman (39:59.107) or not so much. The Chad (40:01.679) Oh my fucking God adding a logo to jobs in the feed. That's the product. That's the right. So my God. So wax Burt, who is the product manager who has been at Indeed for nine years was proud to announce this 1998 technology. Number two. Joel Cheesman (40:24.174) You Uh-huh. The Chad (40:29.825) from the press release, quote, applications start increase, application starts increase by 53 % on mobile and 27 % on desktop for featured employers, end quote. Yeah, nothing like more unqualified candidates. That's one of the biggest bitches that we hear from practitioners on a daily basis is we're already getting a shit ton of candidates from Indeed and they're fucking unqualified. So. Indeed is not only promoting 1998 technology that I believe online Career Center, Monster Board, Career Mosaic, and even probably eSpan where you were at had in 1998. The same shit. Okay, maybe it was 20 years ago. Maybe it was 2005. We definitely had it by 2005. But then Indeed finds more ways to get unqualified candidates to click on your job so they can charge you more, right? Last but never least. Joel Cheesman (41:08.302) Let's not get crazy now. Let's not get crazy. The Chad (41:25.441) for all the suckers that are out there who believe that the failed CPA or CPSA product was innovation instead of what they really were were repackaged, renamed, bullshit products. I bet you're going to love Brandon Post. Fucking idiots anywhere. OK, so no, I do have one last thing. That was the last thing, but this is the last last thing because at the end of their press release, indeed press release or whatever the fuck this thing was, Lacks writes, Joel Cheesman (41:43.438) Okay. The Chad (41:54.283) And her name is Lacks, or that's what she goes by. Like X, Lacks, anyway. The Chad (42:03.897) Quote, as hiring continues to evolve, so must the tools that connect employers and talent, end quote. Come on, Lax, stop pissing on employers and telling them that it's raining. This is fucking ridiculous. This is, this is fucking crazy. Joel Cheesman (42:24.43) All right. So I have three thoughts on indeed's new branded boost. Uh, you're right. This is some eBay 2001 shit. Look, I sold, I sold shit on eBay back in the day and they gave you the option like, Hey, do you want to highlight it? Do you want to like add a little product, uh, picture to it? mean, literally this is 25 year old stuff. Um, so, so good, good job indeed. Um, The Chad (42:27.183) my god. The Chad (42:34.849) You The Chad (42:44.825) Mm-hmm. The Chad (42:50.799) Yes. Joel Cheesman (42:54.926) Number two, humans are visual creatures. I did some job searches and shocker. Yeah, these things do stand out. They do get your attention. It's sort of like how Chrome had the tabs with the little favicon. You're like, oh, that's a lot easier to go through my tabs because I can process images a lot faster than I can before. so as if the two pane wasn't bad enough to be able to like just ram, like just The Chad (43:06.126) Duh. Joel Cheesman (43:22.978) gunshot through applying, this is gonna make it even better. My third thought, it pains me to say this, it's gonna work. Companies are gonna pay for this shit. Companies are gonna foot the bill to have their logo on there, the marketing people are gonna love it, the CEO's gonna love it, and as more and more companies do this, people are gonna go like, well, how can we be the only one without the logo? So at some point, The Chad (43:24.377) Yes. The Chad (43:28.143) Stupid. The Chad (43:38.701) Minsters stupid. Joel Cheesman (43:51.543) Something that should just be that something that they do put your logo in the, in the, in the search results to make it more appealing to the, to the user. Okay. Now it's going to be just a money grab, which something that should be just included, in indeed stuff. So yes, it's old. Yes. It plays into humans behavior and God damn it. They're going to make more freaking money, doing this shit. They're going to make more fucking money. The Chad (44:18.505) As hiring continues to evolve, so must the tools that connect employers and talent. Jesus fucking Christ. Joel Cheesman (44:26.336) It's the same as the fucking categories that they launched. you gotta be in the healthcare channel. You're not gonna be in the healthcare channel, but you need healthcare people. you're not gonna be in the tech channel? What's wrong with you? Write a check, come on. This is another thing like, you're not gonna have your logo? What a loser. Put your logo on, man. All right. The Chad (44:32.375) Yes. The Chad (44:38.063) No. No. No. No. The Chad (44:49.552) Employers, they are pissing on you and telling you that it's raining. It's not raining. Joel Cheesman (44:56.93) Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's go to more losing. Well, maybe a recent court ruling in the Mobley versus Workday case requires Workday to disclose a list of employers using its hired score AI features. This expansion of the collective action lawsuit could include thousands of job seekers that may impact Workday's use and revenue. Chad, your take on this court case. The Chad (45:00.984) of Jesus. The Chad (45:11.919) Ha The Chad (45:22.639) So they're also asking for a list of companies that are using it. This is a holy fuck moment. mean, file this under a quote unquote, not a good AI story. Okay, so here's the timeline. This lawsuit started back in February of 2023. A year after that, Workday announced its intent to acquire hired score. And in February of 2025, this year, Mobley was allowed to expand the claim to a class action, meaning impacted individuals could join along with him, possibly making the case even bigger, right? So the lawsuit started a year before the intent to acquire Hired Score was announced. Now, I was pretty confident that Hired Score's CEO Athena Karp, who lives in Breeze, explainability and defendability would take care of this situation in short order and my fucking God was I wrong. Not only is this case still alive, it's grown into a class action stoop. And now clients, client lists are going to be outed. So back to my first reaction. Holy fuck. Joel Cheesman (46:28.44) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (46:40.27) Does does some some of this seems to me like a hit job? This this dude applied to like apparently hundreds of jobs that were all on the workday platform and got like automatically kicked out of stuff, which it could. It just reeks of like a law firm saying, hey man, why don't you go apply to jobs as a 40 year old black guy and see what happens. And if something bad happens, we'll sue the pants off of workday anyway. The Chad (46:49.283) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (47:09.516) That's a side note. have no proof here. But was it a, is it, was it an innocent? Like I'm looking at the jobs and I just sort of noticed that they're all on work day and they're all, I know it does. It just, it just feels. Yes. Yes. Every company should con should. Yes. If we do this, how could we get, how could we get destroyed? Right? Like let's do some damage control. Let's like. The Chad (47:10.575) But it did. But it did. The Chad (47:18.005) It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That's how you stress test systems. They didn't stress test systems. The Chad (47:31.725) Yeah. QAQC, baby. Joel Cheesman (47:37.335) Let's walk through this. How could we get totally fucked? And Workday didn't do that. And hired score, like, I don't know, but this is getting bad. And if Workday gets pinched for this, man. I mean, you're gonna see the audit solutions, like, print money, print money. Even if it doesn't happen, the fear is there. The Chad (47:39.267) Yes. The Chad (48:01.007) Okay. Warden Fairbanks. Joel Cheesman (48:06.434) Yeah. But if, if work day does win, they've tried to get this thing dismissed. They've tried everything so far to sort of like hope that it goes away and it's not. And this, this has the implications of being maybe the most important court case in the last 20, 25 years in our industry, legal precedent of AI and hiring like huge implications. So we'll watch this really closely. It probably won't. It'll be like five years before a verdict comes out because the wheels of justice grind slowly. The Chad (48:24.697) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (48:34.882) But this is like potentially huge. And if you're, if you're an audit service, which there aren't many, there aren't many, I suspect we'll see more, but this is going to be huge for the business. Companies are going to get scared to use AI tools. Yeah. It's going to be a mess if workday gets ultimately pinched in this court case. It'll affect who you, who you acquire. Are we going to acquire AI? Well, shit, we might end up in court in a class session lawsuit. Maybe we should think twice about buying that AI solution. The Chad (48:42.031) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:04.322) This is potentially really, really ugly. The Chad (49:06.871) That's the future. You gotta do it. You just gotta be smart about how you implement stress tests and QAQ fucking C people. Jesus. Joel Cheesman (49:13.794) belts and suspenders. And by the way, Chad, speaking of ugly, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, you can look at our beautiful faces, lime in the real. that's a youtube.com slash at Chad cheese. And obviously if you haven't subscribed, to the main podcast left us a review, whatever, please do that. We love to get your feedback. Cause we're just talking in mics here. We just look at each other. We hope, we hope people are listening, but we don't know. The Chad (49:19.503) Yeah. The Chad (49:38.831) people. Joel Cheesman (49:46.827) And then the dystopian segment of the show today, a viral video with over 2 million views shows a guest at a La Quinta in Miami checking in via a virtual front desk worker on a screen allegedly outsourced to India, prompting social media backlash over job outsourcing. Wyndham Hotels is investigating the franchise location. The Chad (50:00.793) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (50:11.596) stating it's not brand approved and violate standards requiring on-site staff. Similar virtual check-ins have been reported at other Wyndham properties and hotels abroad with mixed reactions. Let's watch a quick video. Again, a reason to be on YouTube. You get to see the virtual check-in. The Chad (50:28.963) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (50:51.5) Yeah, Lakinta and Wyndham don't know anything about this. It's some franchise doing it on their own. The Chad (50:54.371) That's bullshit. Total, total bullshit. You know this is a pilot, right? It's gotta be. Joel Cheesman (51:01.346) Yeah, it's not broad-based yet, but it's coming. The Chad (51:09.911) You know he's not wearing pants. Joel Cheesman (51:11.566) I like his tie shirt combo though. That's pretty sweet. That's pretty sweet. I wonder if that's in the training manual. The Chad (51:16.761) So in London two years ago, we had the exact same thing happen. We checked in, there was an iPad, clicked on the iPad, boop, a wonderful, very nice Indian fellow was on the other side. I mean, so yeah, I see this happening more. The outsourcing piece, it's interesting because we talk about hospitality. Joel Cheesman (51:27.246) Mm-hmm. The Chad (51:43.753) in being able to outsource hospitality. Shit, you can't do that. They've got to be there, right? Well, not in this case, not for reception. Joel Cheesman (51:56.783) Welcome to 2025 people. Uh, look, the hotel industry is tough. Uh, they got Airbnb breathing down their neck. Like they need to cut costs. Uh, Windham stock is down 14 % year on a year to date. This is a cheap hotel. I don't know if you ever stayed at a La Quinta, but it doesn't really wreak Ritz Carlton. Uh, so, so there's going to be a, there's going to be a line where if you stay at the red roof or the super eight or the holiday in like The Chad (51:58.82) Oof. Joel Cheesman (52:26.69) this is what you're going to get. Eventually it will be, it'll be AI and it won't be an Indian thousands of miles away. It'll be a computer that looks like Cindy Sweeney checking into your hotel. Maybe it'll customize it based on if you're male or female or whatever, but like, this is the future. I don't know where the line is. What hotel level can you like, you can't go to the Conrad and do this. Like those guests don't put up with that. You can't go to the Ritz or the Four Seasons. and get, this, this space. But if you go to the, like the motel six, this is just going to be business as usual. Just like when you go to the McDonald's or the Taco bell, you're on the kiosk, you're ordering your shit. Now, hopefully there's a human on site somewhere. just like when you go to the checkout at Kroger, the self serve, there's at least somebody there when you're, when your bananas don't scan. And I know you're to say like you eat bananas cheeseman, but yes, if you scan your bananas. The Chad (53:04.322) Yep. Great. The Chad (53:18.767) you Joel Cheesman (53:21.42) And it doesn't work. Somebody is hopefully there that can help you. Otherwise they're going to have some, real problems. They're going to get some Louisville sluggers on the screen, destroying these things that they don't have somebody on site. The Chad (53:21.817) Ketchup potassium. The Chad (53:31.279) Well, yeah, and that's it. I think for me, that's the biggest issue is that you allow. We talked about this with robots on the sidewalk delivering pizzas. People started hitting them with fucking ball bats, right? Same shit's going to happen. People are going to come in. It doesn't matter if you have good fucking, you know, cameras or not. They're going to have freaking masks, ball caps, whatever. They're going to fuck shit up. Humans are stupid. Joel Cheesman (53:55.98) And they're going to fuck with this guy on video. And, I don't see how Wyndham can say this is a rogue franchise. There's no way that that system was set up by some rogue franchise of the company. That's a total, total bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can't deny Chad that everyone loves a good dad joke. Now I've been criticized lately about the dirt. The Chad (53:58.573) OK. The Chad (54:09.528) Part of the standard these days, deny, deny, deny. The Chad (54:15.599) Mm-hmm. Jesus. I do. Joel Cheesman (54:24.174) That my jokes have been have been driving me so I'm gonna go clean this week Maybe we'll go on a clean a clean bench. So this is if you're watching on YouTube This is a dad joke book that my kids got me for dad's father's day So we're gonna we're gonna go into the book here of really clean jokes and give you this one today Why Chad why why couldn't the art dealer pay his rent? Why couldn't the art dealer pay his rent? The Chad (54:28.813) The Chad (54:34.593) Nice. Aww. There we go. OK. The Chad (54:51.843) I don't know. Joel Cheesman (54:53.282) He ran out of Monet. The Chad (54:59.311) Being a French Impressionism lover, that was great. I love that. Keep that coming. We out. Joel Cheesman (55:04.781) We out.

AI is less biased than humans—shocker, right? Turns out the robots might  be better at hiring than Chad after three Old Fashioneds. Seriously? Doubtful... This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Jeff Pole from Warden AI drops data that’ll make your head spin and your DEI team weep. We’re talking real-world audits, AI bias stats that beat out human stupidity by 45%, and yes… the Workday lawsuit that could make vendors soil their Terms of Service. 👉 Is Workday’s "AI" really just glorified RPA wrapped in marketing glitter? 👉 Are vendors about to get sued into the compliance stone age? 👉 Will HR finally care about bias beyond race and sex? Spoiler alert: probably not. But hey, at least Jeff’s Scottish, so the truth sounds charming. Tune in or get audited. 🎧 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:29.742) Yeah, you know what time it is. The Chad and Cheese podcast is here. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Jeff Pole. He's the co-founder and CEO of Warden's AI. Jeff, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:47.708) And he's not Latin at all. Let's just go. Let's just get that out there right now. He's not, nobody's calling him Poppy. Okay. Let's just. Jeff Pole (00:53.902) You Joel Cheesman (01:00.046) You may be right. You may be right. You may be right. But I love the name. love the name. Jeff, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. For all listeners that don't know you, what should they know other than co-founder and CEO of Org? Jeff Pole (01:14.446) Hi guys, good to be here. Well, I'm originally Scottish, as you can probably tell from my accent, based in London, but moving to Austin, Texas. I'm originally from Scotland and I'm still Scottish, yeah, very much so, despite moving to Austin. Absolutely not, never. Only get stronger over time. The further you get away from Scotland, the more Scottish you become, actually. Joel Cheesman (01:21.762) You're still Scottish, right? You originally, you're still always, you never leave it, right? Yeah. Okay. Good. Chad (01:27.836) It's like you're trying to leave the scots behind, Jeff. That's what it sounds like. Okay. Okay. Okay. Joel Cheesman (01:32.076) No, no, no. Joel Cheesman (01:41.688) I have heard that. I've heard that. Chad (01:43.194) Yeah, so a little bit more about you. London, Who? Edberg, yeah. They're a solid six, aren't they? Or something like that. Jeff Pole (01:45.382) Sure. Heart of Melovin actually. Edinburgh team called Heart of Melovin. Yeah. Not a great team, I don't think anymore. Yeah. I'm not up for football anymore, but not the best. But yeah, my background's in NEI, even before it was cool, and building startups, particularly in regulated industries, which led me to... Joel Cheesman (01:46.316) Rangers or Celtics? Chad (02:12.924) Mm. Jeff Pole (02:14.318) to ward any eye in what we're doing here. Chad (02:17.18) So what brings us here today? We're actually talking about the state of AI bias and talent acquisition and things. mean, we've been talking about this for years now. I mean, we've had the, you know, at the time it was the EEOC commissioner, EEOC commissioner Sondraling, we talked about at the time, on stage, we're at compliance events. And this is the thing in everybody's head is what... kind of bias is actually happening in talent acquisition due to AI versus what we've been used to with humans for so long, right? So you guys actually did this data-driven review of AI bias, compliance, and responsible AI practices in TA. Give us, let's start hitting some of the key findings. We'll go one by one. Jeff Pole (03:07.598) Sure, so we a pretty comprehensive report, lots of different angles to go down. We found that the concerns about bias is one of top concerns from HR and TA leaders when they're considering adopting AI and evaluating vendors. So was second only to data security and data privacy. So big, big issue, which may be not surprised given all the headlines and just the sense of nature of. Chad (03:11.782) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:20.38) Mm. Jeff Pole (03:35.734) of AI and HR, but that was what we found from people's responses. Chad (03:40.518) So when we talk about, and in the actual survey, you did some AI scores versus actual humans. Let's go ahead and hit this square in the face because everybody believes that AI, and there's no question, AI could take human bias and it could scale it very fast, right? Because we don't scale well as human beings. So there is this fear that, hey, we're already biased and we're doing biased things. but it's very little bias because only a dumb human like us can do that kind of stuff, right? You put it in AI's hands and it just, it erupts. It explodes with bias, right? So what did you find out in this survey? Jeff Pole (04:24.621) Right. And actually, the survey was just one part of it. We actually had real data on it. the core findings we wanted to share about the state of AI and bias and human bias was based on audits from our customers sharing their data, but also from what we could find from published audits online as well. So we had data of real-world AI systems in TA. And we also have human benchmarks of human bias from various academic studies. Chad (04:28.804) Okay. Ooh, I like real data. Yeah. Huh? Chad (04:51.462) Gotcha. Okay. Jeff Pole (04:52.686) So we can go into more of that in detail, you wanna double click on it. What we found is that yes AI bias is real, like the models can be shown to be bias and that real systems in 15 % of cases had a bias in one or more protected group that would be below fairness thresholds, commonly in and safety of your thresholds. So real issue, however, when you flip that 15 % round, Joel Cheesman (05:10.552) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (05:17.858) you have 85 % of real-world AI systems in television that met fairness thresholds for all the protected groups that were tested on. So already, you know, probably less bias than you would think. And then we compared that to human benchmarks using the same metrics. Please jump in. Chad (05:38.08) So real quick, I want to be able to hit on this. Only 15 % of AI systems failed to meet the actual fairness metrics or benchmarks. Is that what I'm getting? OK, OK. OK, gotcha. But then you did a head-to-head analysis. Human versus the AI. This is what we've been waiting for, Joel. This is what we've been waiting for. OK, go ahead, Jeff. Play it on us, Jeff Pole (05:48.642) That's right, of one or more, one or more benchmark. Jeff Pole (06:02.67) So when you look at the data and compare on average between human bias in the same use cases and AI bias, we find that AI performed more fairly, but up to 45%, like the numbers would be 45 % better if an AI was used on average than the benchmark that we found from human biases up to the same use case. Chad (06:06.49) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:29.155) So. Joel Cheesman (06:29.422) But there's still significant, I guess, skepticism, cynicism about AI, but your number's saying the machine's won. They're less biased. We should trust them more than humans. that what I'm Chad (06:35.271) yeah, of course. Chad (06:42.608) or at least in his sample set, right? Jeff Pole (06:44.43) Right, obviously we always caveat things with the base of the data set and go into great detail on that to bring it up. But yes, that's what we've found based on this particular metric. You're essentially at disparate impacts, looking at impact ratios, which is a way that you can evaluate human selection processes as well as AI selection processes. Chad (06:50.94) Mm. Jeff Pole (07:05.806) And then when we looked at data for humans based on academic studies, so there may be question marks about the validity of academic studies, but we looked at many, aggregated them into a blended benchmark. And then we looked at all the AI bias audits that we've done and we could find online across all vendors. Then the average number differences between them were up to 45%. Joel Cheesman (07:25.934) So this is really timely, Jeff. Workday's in a little bit of a pickle. They're in a case right now, Mobley versus Workday. Give us sort of a summary of that case. And I guess if you were advising Workday, how do you see the case unfolding? This is going to be a huge case in terms of precedent for cases on A.O.N. hiring down the road, yes. Talk about your take on that case. Jeff Pole (07:35.374) I've heard of it. Jeff Pole (07:53.27) Yeah, that's a big topic. you know, guess key things are that, as you guys probably know, it's only at the allegation stage, right? So there is no yet any evidence we brought to table about whether the AI in this case was biased or not. So can comment on that. But I think the biggest implication, as I see it, is the impact on liability that this will have, particularly for vendors. Before this, it's been because AI and vendors is a new thing to the legislator. Employers are on the hook for any potential discrimination they might bring about. But what I think will happen is it should, because of this, is that be a bit like a car manufacturer, where if there's a systemic fault in the car that leads to whatever damage done out there. Chad (08:39.324) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (08:42.446) You don't blame the drivers, right? There's a recall, there's a fix on the systemic fault. If there's not a systemic fault and certain drivers drive in a reckless way and lead to damage, then they're liable. And that I think is a simple analogy, but the way that we should be thinking about AI systems, which are very powerful, can be used incorrectly, but also there's... Chad (08:42.46) Class action, yes. Chad (09:02.748) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (09:05.782) There's a need for the developers to be liable if they have done something systemically wrong, which I think is what we will see, find out. Chad (09:11.28) Have you dug into this from a technical standpoint? Have you had a chance to at least take a look at it or at least dig into the case to see whether it was even AI or not? Because to be quite frank, a lot of cases, there was already a ton of bias as it was in just basic filtering, which could have been RPA or even something less technical. Have you been able to dig into this to see if it was really an AI scenario or was it just a a shitty process by not just workday, but also companies using the technology. Jeff Pole (09:47.298) Right. So obviously, Workday is not a client of hers, so I can't come on that perspective. Yeah. And yeah, I've heard mixed rumors as to different parts of Workday that may or not have been at play here. Some people are saying that it wasn't even an AI system, and that was one of the defenses that they gave to try and dismiss the case. But then, know, quite interestingly, we found Chad (09:51.132) Not yet, knock on wood. Jeff Pole (10:11.906) that the judge said that what he says AI will over your marketing material. So it's at least potentially AI, which I think also is a good takeaway from this is that, you know, make sure you call it what it is. Although I also think the definition of AI is probably rightfully getting quite broad in a good way. It basically almost means like in automation, which I think even though some people rally against like real against that because it's not technically accurate to the perspective of like Joel Cheesman (10:15.629) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:16.09) Ha ha! Chad (10:19.804) What you get? Chad (10:28.571) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (10:39.842) the world and risks and so on. What does it really matter if it's truly like a clever AI or just an automated system? If the impact's the same, then it should be treated in the same way. So I wonder if that's not as significant a point as people might think it is in this particular case. Joel Cheesman (10:43.203) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:56.974) One of the things that I find interesting is they're suing workday and not the companies using workday. that they made the connection that it's the technology, not necessarily the employers. And we saw a trend early on, um, with the likes of higher view and their terms of service that was basically trying to shield them from any wrongdoing, right? Like we're just a technology. You choose to use us. This is on you, not on us. What are you seeing? Cause I know you talked to a lot of vendors. Are they really nervous about this workday case because it puts them on the hook? Does it create a heightened level of sort of activity and interest in what you do? Or is it sort of whistling past the graveyard? They think this is nothing, nothing to fear. What's your take? Jeff Pole (11:41.826) I think that most responsible vendors do overall take this issue seriously. And one of the findings in our report looking beyond just the AI's bias stats, but looking into the responsible practices governance. So like there is investment in there promising progress. I personally think. they still obviously try and put, as you mentioned, they're trying to put as much as possible liability on the end employer. And that's one of the things essentially with this case that court has also tried to do it. And the essentially said that might not be the case. And I think people underestimate, the witness and vendors underestimate how significant this could be. for them and how much they can't just say, well, it's up to user error kind of thing, that there is material responsibility on them to get things right and demonstrate it. Joel Cheesman (12:29.816) So workday loses, there could be a lot of hammers come down on lot of vendors. Is that what you're saying? Jeff Pole (12:36.78) I think so. I think the Hammers take different forms, right? It's like they take the form of like customers asking more difficult questions. So, then we had injury adoption and sales. And they also take the form of, this going to be the only AI bias lawsuit we ever see against a vendor or even an employer? Probably not, right? Like one of the other stats from our study was that, you know, we looked at all the discrimination, basically claims and deployment. Joel Cheesman (12:37.621) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:55.758) No. Jeff Pole (13:05.208) from the EOC over the last five years, roughly 100,000 a year. And about 14 in the last five years have been somehow related to AI automation, if I remember the numbers correctly, is less than 99, sorry, 99.9 % were not based on AI. So if you just imagine, if we even just have a small fraction of those human-related claims now apply to AI, we've got at least a thousand a year, if not more than that, right? So yeah, interesting, see what happens next. Joel Cheesman (13:23.438) Yeah. Pain. Chad (13:23.867) Yes. Joel Cheesman (13:28.632) Pain. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (13:32.38) Well, it seems first and foremost, and we talk about, I mean, as marketers put AI all over everything, which, you know, Workday is getting kicked in the nuts with now because they were marketing that all this stuff was AI and they're like, no, no, no, it wasn't AI. Well, you said it's AI. So there's the whole truth and advertising aspect of it. We'll put that over here for a second. But the thing that matters is the outcome of the solution. And it doesn't matter how you got there. Joel Cheesman (13:45.784) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:02.298) Right? Whether it's AI, whether it's just your shitty process methodology. And in this case, I can see where the government could come down on workday because if there are many companies that are using literally a standard process methodology that workday puts in place, well that... is that that's workday, right? That's that's SOP, that standard operating procedure. Right. So you could see where that happens. But we also need to go down the road of there is a shared responsibility here. And as we say, it's either the employer's fault or it's the vendor's fault. I call bullshit. This is a shared responsibility. The vendor needs to make sure that their shit is tight before they go out to market without all this, you know, AI marketing bullshit. Either way. They got to make sure that their shit's tight. And then on the employer side, they have to do the appropriate due diligence to make sure that they can remain compliant. So there's a shared responsibility here. I think Workday Yes should take a hit because if there are a multitude of employers that have used their standard operating procedure and that got them in hot water, two things. Work, they should be nailed, no question, but so should every single one of those employers because it was their job to be able to do the appropriate, perform the appropriate due diligence to make sure that it wasn't all fucked up. So from your standpoint, who are you mainly working with? Are you working directly with the vendors to make sure that that come to market? go to market is where it should be. It's tight and it's nice and it's not going to be something that's going to hurt employers. Are you working with employers as well to be able to do that due diligence? Where do you guys sit? Jeff Pole (15:58.882) Yeah, so our approach works equally to both sides, right? In a day there's a system, AI system as we call it, in a high risk use case like a talent acquisition use case, that has these legal risks, has these discrimination risks, et cetera, and those should be audited and we have a technical solution to help do that. As of today, most of our customer base is in talent acquisition with vendors who have Chad (16:04.955) Mm. Jeff Pole (16:28.802) I guess like we're saying the challenge and responsibility and I guess we're facing the concerns from their customer base to demonstrate that their shit's in order ultimately. And so we help them. And so what we're not going into too much, we're essentially helping to evaluate and audit and certify a wide range of... scenarios that that AI system might be used in. But obviously we can't test every single potential candidate, know, potential scenario, potential job in the world as part of that auditing process, right? There's a limit to the volume we can do for one vendor. And that's where our solution to work with each company that deploys one of our customers, one of the vendors on a real applicant pool. on real scenario, on real jobs, on real, you know, what have you, that that should also be audited. And that is something that we're starting to do. There's less demand for that in our world at the moment than with vendors, but it's very much our direction of travel. Joel Cheesman (17:24.45) Jeff, you mentioned budgets in one of your answers. And I'm curious, are budgets getting freed up for this stuff? You talked to both sides of the equation. I'm not hearing a lot of budgetary enhancements to AI and bias. Like, what are you seeing on the front lines? Jeff Pole (17:47.246) Yeah, well, we're an early stage business, year and a half old and growing well. So we're happy with our growth. I mean, when you look at the macro amount of capital deployed into AI compliance and AI bias compared to other issues out there, it is still tiny. Like it's very small and we think it's going to grow hugely. Obviously that's why we're here. But right now, yeah, it is. It's a new budget, it's a new market, it's a new budget actor, but it's not something that has had an historic budget. And let's be honest, who wants to spend money on compliance, Who's building cool software in AI, and says, want to spend lots of money on compliance here. So it is something that's coming gradually. Joel Cheesman (18:27.032) So I'm hearing growing, but not maybe as quickly as you would like. And certainly as a businessman, I can appreciate that, which leads me to the political aspects of your business. When Biden was in California, New York, Illinois, we saw state regulation on a regular basis. A new administration, Trump signed the executive order restoring equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Chad (18:33.858) It should. Joel Cheesman (18:56.931) in the first few months of his administration. How does politics play into what you do? And how do companies look at politics in terms of are we going to make a decision to do this or not? Jeff Pole (19:11.182) It's a great question and tangibly we've not, we've only seen an uptick in over the last, just a steady uptick over the last year or so. So it's not in any discernible way in our, from our point of view changed since the administration came in. And I think there's a couple of factors. One is that a big part of what we do is really looks at human laws, right? Like in the case of discrimination, we've got plenty of civil rights regulations about this. While it's important to add in the new AI regulations, Colorado, New York City, California, et cetera, doing that EU act, they're still planning to go on even without those. And what's really interesting about the diversity question is... it still relates to discrimination, Well, that's without getting too into it. I we don't get into politics here, but that's still saying that there shouldn't be positive discrimination. Well, that's a form of discrimination. So you need to measure your level of discrimination or not in your process. in the AI system, it's actually quite straightforward to do that kind of measurement and demonstrate it either way. And so yeah, what we do doesn't kind of connect to those political decisions, but we're not going to get involved in what fairness should be, whether it should be positive discrimination or not. We're just saying here's how this AI technically behaves and here's what it looks like in terms of AI bias. Chad (20:30.246) So as you dig in deeper into the survey and the results and all the data and audits that you performed, what really stuck out to you other than the AI performing better, way better than the humans? What else stuck out to you? Jeff Pole (20:49.006) So that was the biggest finding. Although there's a caveat that was quite striking, which is that only 95 % of those audits that we looked at were only actually looking at sex and race as protected characteristics. Chad (21:04.24) Bah. Mm. Jeff Pole (21:05.998) So that can be out there. One the reasons for that is the 5 % that did more was, I think, mostly our audits. And we looked at few others, or some of our customers, who take more than that. We can do up to 10 different protected characteristics at the moment. But most people are not doing that. They're doing the minimum, which in New York City law kind of requires sex and race to be looked at. So they're missing quite a big part of discrimination. there weren't any cases, a good example of that, where it's actually a disability, sorry, age, age disability, or two of the three that are in there, and age in particular. And that wasn't even covered by the majority of all this that we were able to access. So there could be much bigger gaps in there. And we find that's quite striking. The fact that people are like, this New York City law says, you must audit AIS systems for sex and race. OK, we'll do that if we absolutely have to. Chad (21:46.832) Yeah. Jeff Pole (21:55.628) But then there's these, I think it's six others under the civil rights law and the other ones have others. And people are like, meh, not sure we want, not sure we're worried about that. Even though it's a 50 year old law. But it is changing and people are coming around to it and we're getting a of appetite now from those. Chad (22:14.524) So I seem to remember earlier this year, it might have been a survey from late last year that they published for 2025 in the lists thing, where CEOs, 80 % of CEOs said that they are looking to institute some form of AI into their workflows, into their systems and whatnot. But yet, what I'm hearing from you is that they're not pushing budget that way. to ensure that these systems are actually working the way they should. So give me a little bit of background around that. What do you think is gonna have to happen? Is Workday gonna have to get smacked really hard, possibly with a class action suit, and then everybody starts running for, know, running for Katie Barthedore? I mean, get ready, Jeff Barthedore, I mean, Jesus, is that what it's going to take? Yeah, my brother's gonna shit. Joel Cheesman (22:56.641) Yep. Joel Cheesman (23:05.602) My brother's gonna shit. If he's gonna shit, then he's gonna kill us. Sorry. Chad (23:10.108) Is that what it's going to take? Is it going to take one of those big companies getting slapped really hard before people start taking this seriously? Joel Cheesman (23:22.764) And is the opposite true? If Workday doesn't get pinched, does everyone go, sweet, we're good. Workday one, we're going to win two. Yeah. Yeah, true that. Chad (23:28.176) Yeah, until the next administration comes in. Jeff Pole (23:33.71) Yeah, good question. think there's a couple of different like, like overall, this is a bit about adoption of an unsexy thing, right? Adoption of compliance. And even if you've got AI thrown in there to make it sound a little bit more cool, it still has compliance. And that's always like a slow thing that happens. Regulations come around after risks emerge, after technology is doing exciting things. Chad (23:57.925) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (23:58.19) And then once regulations are in place, actually material compliance with the regulations lags behind the actual regulations being put into place. So enforcement and just people just becoming aware of it, the budget's coming and so on. So there's just that trajectory, of modest but steady that's new and is going to continue for a long time. The analogy there is if you look at how, and maybe this isn't a world you're close to, but in software, Chad (24:04.284) Enforcement, yeah. Jeff Pole (24:25.674) how intense the scrutiny is on data security, data privacy, and really secure even for, you know, tiny systems, barely any data or any real risk of data. So up to, you know, IT teams digging in like loads of stuff on that loads of money spent over the world about data security and privacy, which is a real risk, but even then slightly modest, I would argue. But that took a long time to get there from when software and when the internet's been around for over 25 years. It's a similar trend. Then the other, I think more exciting vector of growth here is litigation. So, you know, we're not originally from US, but when I said to investors, what makes us big? was like, is it the AI regulation? I was like, not really. It's actually US litigation. US litigation is what is going to make this a much bigger problem. And we're seeing the first of that with the workday lawsuit, but I think that's the first of, you know, if not a landslide. a common issue in the world that there'll be like a regular stream of of of education that involves AI in some capacity. Joel Cheesman (25:31.97) Jeff, you talked about race and sex being sort of the highlight or where people are really focused on. we seem to be falling down on disabilities, on age, on religion. Like some of other things that you talked about, why is that? It's just, there's less money at risk. Like why are we falling down on so many angles around bias? Jeff Pole (25:54.754) think it's to do with the enforcement and the regulations. So people I think are doing the minimum, which is often the way with compliance. yeah, the minimum on that New York City law, is actually currently the only law in effect in the effects of HR and TA space is this one law in one city, not even the state, right, of New York City, about bias auditing and it prescribes auditing to be done on sex and race. Joel Cheesman (26:10.552) Yeah. Jeff Pole (26:21.838) and nothing else. So that's the main driver. Why they've chosen that is partly because, you know, equal employment opportunity surveys tend to collect that over any other data point. Sometimes you may have a couple of others. And so then that's the available data that is more readily available data. And I suppose that's not, I'm not an expert on EOC stuff per se, that's because it is two of the most, arguably the most important protected characteristics. Not that we need to get into a ranking game on that. Joel Cheesman (26:34.542) Got it. Joel Cheesman (26:50.906) So it's the government's fault, basically. The rules they have say sex and race are important and the others not so much. So companies are going to focus on that. Jeff Pole (26:51.521) yeah. Chad (26:58.554) Well, I mean, take a look at history. I mean, that was a good place to start, know, sex and race. was white dudes who pretty much had to lay the land, got to do whatever the hell they wanted. And it was like, no, it's time to change. So yeah, then individuals with disabilities came later, then veterans came later. And then it was kind of like just a stepping stone. Jeff Pole (26:58.786) They push that more. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:03.671) Yeah. Jeff Pole (27:19.864) Right. Right. Joel Cheesman (27:20.75) But with all the old people in government, you think age would be a bigger issue with them. What's, yeah, I guess so. I guess so. Screw everyone else my age that doesn't have what they want. Jeff, I want you to look into your crystal ball. You know, we talked to fair now years ago, you guys, not to speak for Chad, but I'm surprised there aren't half a dozen to a dozen of services like this. I don't know if it's because the expertise isn't there. Jeff Pole (27:23.534) You Chad (27:24.7) Yeah, but they've got everything that they want. So they're good. Yeah. Jeff Pole (27:27.79) They're fine. Jeff Pole (27:32.75) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:48.216) or the demand isn't there. think the workday case is going to be a huge driver, depending on how that goes with, with businesses like yours, but get the crystal ball out. What is, what does bias and AI look like in the future? Do we rely more on AI? Are we more scared of it? Like what, what do you think the future looks like? Chad (27:54.566) Yeah. Jeff Pole (28:07.278) And before I answer that question, I think the reason for that is because compliance is so boring, right? It's like people don't know, no cool entrepreneur is waking up and like, I'm going to start a compliance business. it's just boring people, Scottish people like me who, who love boring industries like compliance and can't come from that background. Chad (28:25.786) don't know any boring Scots just so that you know. Jeff Pole (28:33.94) Anyway, to answer your actual question, I think it will be a big issue, not dissimilar to data privacy and security, as for my previous analogy. And I think, though, there's a great opportunity. And that's what we found in the early signs up in the report, a great opportunity for AI to be better. So it's not just about faster, more efficient. It's also potentially, if you get this right as an industry, as a society, Chad (28:52.027) Mm-hmm. Jeff Pole (29:00.992) about improving on these consumer outcomes like fairness. And I do genuinely believe that if it's uncrackly, this will actually be the next step change of fair and equality in the world, actually, because we can monitor like, and it goes all to beyond DHRMD and TA and generally we can, with AI, tools like ours can constantly monitor all these AI systems that will increasingly do what humans do. in way that we don't really monitor, right? We don't want to be big brother and monitoring like every HR person's like day to day, know, inputs and outputs, but we can do that with AI and we can make sure it's actually fair and make sure it's actually compliant and so on. So I do perhaps overly optimistic see a world in which we get through this and actually it's a better outcome for everyone, but we'll take some time to get there. Chad (29:48.636) So Jeff, back in the day where you were in diapers, we had this thing called VEVRA 503 and then the Bush administration put a big push on enforcement. And then that industry created a, it became a much larger cottage industry. And I'm going to make a prediction, here it comes, that within the next at least year to 18 months, that there's going to be a revving up of the engines, not just from an enforcement standpoint, but just from an awareness standpoint. So get ready. Like I said, Jeff, bar the door. But in the meantime, if kids want to find out where to hook up with you, to connect with you, and or get this wonderful advice and also survey and data and find out about audits, Jeff Pole (30:36.907) you Chad (30:45.456) Where would you send them? Jeff Pole (30:47.283) So then go to warden-ai.com to learn more, download the report for free. You don't need to sign up or anything. It's open to everyone. I'm personally on LinkedIn and if anyone wants to email me, they can do so at jeff at warden-ai.com. Chad (30:50.331) Okay. Joel Cheesman (31:03.63) Chad, that's Jeff Pohl. I think you're saying you're predicting a big push by the Bush by your last comments, Chad. I'm not sure. Well, maybe, maybe dig into that a little bit later. And old people and old people. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad (31:11.845) You said, were talking about race to sex, okay? That's all I have to say. We out.

On this week's show: BOLD.com ’s “thoughtful transition” = RIP Monster Europe. Sites offline, employers ghosted, and Jamie & Doug hiding behind an email like two guys who definitely peaked in middle management. Job.com update: Turns out the only thing “automated” was screwing over employees. Anthropic just 3X’d their valuation to $170B by cozying up to Gulf dictatorships. ServiceNow CEO gives a TED Talk from hell about replacing humans with bots. Astronomer CEO + HR Head caught on Kiss Cam, and the PR team summoned Gwyneth Paltrow for a Goop-soaked distraction campaign. Shockingly? It worked. 🚨 This is your wake-up call. AI’s not just coming for your job—it’s taking your lunch break, your health insurance, and your dignity. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad (00:33.792) wake up kids, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. Cheeseless this week, by the way. I'm Chad, thoughtful transition, Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:43.738) I'm JT and a Diet Coke for the haters of O'Donnell. Emi B (00:47.63) And I'm Emi, why am I still struggling to find a middle name, Beredugo? Chad (00:51.914) That's a good question. That's a very good question. my God. So on this week's show, Bold pulls the plug. Job.com pulls a fast one. Anthropic pulls a ridiculous valuation. And ServiceNow pulls an Uncle Baby Billy. Let's do this. Emi B (00:54.464) I don't know, I really don't know why. Chad (01:13.934) All right, so we're back from Wreckfest. This is the first time we're having a discussion. You guys have been all over the place. JT, you just got back last week. Emmy, first to you, because you've attended before. But now you got to MC. How was that experience at Wreckfest? Much different, assuming. Emi B (01:19.246) Whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop! Emi B (01:30.102) I have attended before a couple of times. Emi B (01:36.398) Okay. It was different. To be honest, I felt like a pop star, you know? I was like, yeah, here's me with my microphone, just warming up the crowd. Honestly, I absolutely loved it. So like we said, I've been there a few times. First couple of years, I was just an attendee. Last year, I did a talk. This year, it was brilliant. Just being on stage, seeing the crowd, listening to the people on stage. I mean, I always love breakfast, but... Chad (01:40.878) Hahahaha Chad (01:54.68) Yeah. Emi B (02:04.044) because of the hosting gig, made it just a little bit more special. Yeah. Chad (02:07.448) No, I'm sure it did. Not too much and you had fans coming up. Emi B (02:11.114) Yeah! J.T. O'Donnell (02:11.905) girl I crowd read some shade. I did. I like bombed it and in behind it was like did you get photographs? I was so excited. was terrible. She's full bead of makeup on and what am I doing? I'm rushing at her. Chad (02:23.18) Yeah, that's- Emi B (02:26.039) Yeah Chad (02:27.49) Well, JT, this is your first. I mean, again, you have not experienced Wreckfest before. So tell us a little of your virgin experience. How was Emi B (02:29.166) Yeah J.T. O'Donnell (02:35.705) Yeah, I think I must have said to you all 10 times, now I get it. I get it. I get it. I did. I think I said that 10 times. For all of you that haven't been, you have to go. And now that we have a US one coming up, like you have to go. I don't care. Go to your boss, beg for the money, go to the take, because it's so much in one day and the way it's set up, you're going to learn a ton, a ton of things. Shout out to Dave Hazelhurst. I didn't realize he started a whole new company. Emi B (02:40.045) Yeah. Chad (02:43.138) What do you get? Chad (02:47.384) Mm-hmm. You're J.T. O'Donnell (03:01.371) who literally was on any stage talking about recruiting with TikTok, which is something I, you my company has were obsessed with. There was just so much good cutting edge stuff going on that it was really worth it. And it's just party vibe. Like that's what you want. You know, you want that party vibe and the swag. I mean, like the little, the highlight for me was the fans. You know, I dragged my husband running around with his, you know, it was, it's just incredible. It's so worth it. You're going to get a lot out of it in your career as a recruiter, especially with everything that's going on right now. Chad (03:07.352) Mm-hmm. Emi B (03:21.36) that was brilliant. J.T. O'Donnell (03:31.055) You know, it's just so crazy. But the vibe, the best vibe I've ever seen at a conference. Chad (03:37.452) It is a really cool vibe. And Nashville, is coming up soon, we'll talk more about events next week, but it's coming up soon. It's the third year that we've had it in the U.S. and in the UK, it's 10 plus, right? So in the UK, it's been more mature, you know, one of those things. The beautiful part about the U.S. is if you like, like ground floor kind of events, and then being able to say, well, I was there when it was like year three or year two or what have you, that's the coolest thing. And one of the things I love about Emi B (03:50.018) Yeah. Chad (04:07.426) Fest is like, as you had said, you get an opportunity to go to these different tents, right? It's very festival kind of feeling. You go to these tents and you get a chance to learn. know, bars open up, you have some drinks with your friends, with your peers, with your boss, and it's like an all hands meeting, right? And it's literally, to be quite frank, it's kind of like a cheater all hands meeting. We need to have... this morale booster thing that's going on or what have you. You've got one a year, maybe two a year that you're allowed to have breakfasts. Like the easiest kind of like plug and play, right? J.T. O'Donnell (04:42.481) I totally agree. And like you said, when they're smaller like this and they're only getting bigger, you're going to meet people. mean, I've been, we've all been in the industry way too long, too long. And I'm still so close with people that I met the first time I was going to those things, right? And I'm still in touch with them. Now's the time to start making your contacts at a conference like that one, or a festival, a true festival. Chad (04:50.414) Hahaha Chad (04:54.626) Da, da. Chad (05:01.454) Yeah. Emi B (05:01.95) 100%. And I've bumped into so many people that I haven't actually seen in years. I remember there was one lady, Hayley, who I know from Dubai. And I just saw her in a crowd when I was on stage. I was like, oh my God, hi. You know, we like went over, ran over to each other, hugged each other. Fantastic. As well as people that I've met in the four years that I've been back here. So absolutely love it. Agree with both of you. People who haven't been before, definitely get your tickets, get your tickets, do whatever you can to get your bosses to agree to let you to go. Chad (05:09.311) wow. Chad (05:19.182) and J.T. O'Donnell (05:29.349) Yeah, and I'm just going to volunteer because a lot of people go, I don't want to go by myself. I'm going go to this event and I'm not going to know anybody and I don't want to go by myself. I'm a personal tour guide in the fall. If you're by yourself, you come in with me and we'll just get all the loners together and we will be the funnest party there. I am just calling it now. So if you're loner and you're getting a ticket, message me on LinkedIn, you're with me. Chad (05:35.864) Yeah. Chad (05:39.59) Ha Emi B (05:39.888) Ha Chad (05:49.602) Okay. I can see JT is like, she's got the tour guide. She's going to have the little flag where everybody can see her. She'll have like the little earpiece that everybody can be like, she can talk into. Yeah. She can go through. Yeah. No, that's, that sounds great. We should actually talk to Jamie about that. That would be, that would be amazing. But before we go to Nashville, Emmy has, she has a little bit, a little bit more of England that she would like to talk about. So go ahead, Emmy, go hit it, hit it. Emi B (05:50.936) JT's gonna have 50 people behind her. Yeah. Meh. Emi B (06:16.654) Yes, yes. So my shout out is for the England Ladies football team. So, AKA the Lionesses. Now, just for anyone who doesn't know, this is an incredible achievement for the England Ladies. And I'm not even a hardcore football fan. You I'm one of those people who's like, oh, you're a well-carved, then I watch it. You know, I'm not going to watch football every single week, but the whole is like the whole of the UK, whole of England, but behind the England Ladies and. Chad (06:38.99) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:44.418) Okay, okay. Emi B (06:45.014) If you weren't there, if you haven't read the news, if you didn't watch the TV, the football match on TV, basically it was dramatic. it was after full time against Spain, it was a one-one draw, which, and then it means it was going to go to extra time and then it went to penalties. And that's what I hate. This is why I can't watch football every single week because my heart is like, all the time. So it got to penalties and then we had amazing saves from the keeper, Hannah Hampton. Chad (07:01.614) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:13.25) No, no. Emi B (07:14.626) two incredible saves. And then the last winning goal was by Chloe Kelly. And because of that, we beat Spain. We got to that title. So I just want to say amazing, massive, massive, massive win. So again, like I said, shout out to the Lionesses. Chad (07:23.852) big win. Chad (07:30.862) And I got to say momentum is a lot in sports, in business, in everything, because they look like utter shit early in the groups. They got destroyed by France. got, I mean, but they pulled it together. And I love that you can get knocked down, but I get up again. You know what talking about? Emi B (07:39.401) yeah, yeah. Yeah. Emi B (07:45.23) Because they're resilient. Yeah. Get knocked out. Why do I keep singing on this show? I love it. Chad (07:54.796) You know why you keep singing, because you love it. All right, I'm to go ahead and hit My Shoutout, sponsored by Kiora, by the way. If you need powerful messaging made for your applicant tracking system, check out Kiora. That's K-E-E-Y-O-R-A. That's a spelling, kids. Wow. They make hiring faster and provide a much better candidate experience. That's kiora.com. My Shoutout is to understanding workforce, the workforce landscape as a whole. And let me set this up for you, because I've got a question for both of you, because this is perfect for both of you. So Tim Sackett, who you probably all know either from online or you've met him, he posted the following on LinkedIn, quote, 60 % of new grads are female. If this chart was flipped, we'd all be losing our minds about how unfair this is. Why is no one paying attention now? Emi B (08:29.485) Okay. Chad (08:48.376) question mark. So Tim is sounding the alarm about how this isn't fair for men. Now, when an old white dude is hollering about equity and equality and discrimination of dudes, I usually just tune it out, right? But then I saw a list compiled from a Fortune magazine article of the top 20 highest paid CEOs in the US. And guess how many of them are female? Emi B (09:16.942) Please tell me there's more than one. Zero. Okay. Chad (09:18.51) Zero nada nada none. So JT, JT, I'm gonna go to you first. I'm gonna hit you up first because you are the resident American. What do you think? Are Tim's thoughts valid? Should we be quote unquote losing our minds because women comprise 60 % of the new college grads this is unfair to men while the boardroom is still predominantly male? What do you think? J.T. O'Donnell (09:42.364) So when I saw that stat, my head went to a totally different place. And if you let me play this out, you'll see, if 60 % of the women are getting degrees, right now there's a huge trend saying, do we really need degrees anymore? They're expensive, they're not getting anybody anything. So what I see there is we're forcing women to take on massive debt for jobs that may or may not ever help them repay that debt. So are women slow to the curve, right? So first of all, we were slow to getting in and getting the... degrees. Now we think the solution is to get the degrees when it actually isn't. And that the reason is down is that guys have figured that out and said, I can go start companies and I don't need a degree. I mean, I just think you see that that data and it's too surface. I look immediately beyond it and say, I actually think there are implications for women in that data that are not good. Certainly based on what we're seeing right now, the unemployment rate, the fact that there are no entry level jobs for recent grads. And you're talking about all these women entering the force and not being able to get them. Is it going to get worse? So Chad (10:23.852) Yes. Chad (10:30.199) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (10:39.194) That's my take in it. think you've got to look way beyond and try to understand the data from a different Chad (10:44.014) Gotcha. Emmy? Emi B (10:46.094) think it's really sad, you know, like it's disappointing. I'm one of those people, know, yeah, I was told go to university, get a good job. And I'm hopefully, you never know, one day I might be striving for that CEO role. And I want to know that I can actually get that role. But unfortunately in 2025, it looks like that glass ceiling is still there for females. Their bias against females getting those senior level roles is still there despite everything we're doing to have a more equitable workplace. Chad (11:12.558) Yeah, when you look at the number, a number like this in a vacuum, I really believe you're doing yourself and others a disservice. For instance, something that dramatically impacts that number are men going into the trade. So in 2019, trade supported over 41 million jobs in the US alone. J.T. O'Donnell (11:24.379) Huge. Chad (11:40.204) representing roughly one in five jobs in the US. And women only make up 4 % of those trade workforce jobs, okay? While men are obviously the other 96%. So which means what? Men can receive certifications in weeks and or months, not years. And in many cases, the company pays for their certifications. While women, to your point, JT, are going deep into college debt. So there are many, many, many things that one solitude graph just won't tell you. I really, one of the things when I have discussions with people, whether online or like this or on calls or what have you, I always ask them to go deeper. Taking quote unquote research or hot takes at face value. Emi B (12:20.27) in Chad (12:38.146) That's not enough. your research, research, research, research, think deeper. And that was my shout out for today is I appreciate Tim throwing that out there because we can have this discussion. But again, it goes deeper than just that 60 % number. We have CEOs, we have debt, we have trades, and that's just a few points. There are many other points, but if you do the research, you know that. If you don't, You get pissy about one. J.T. O'Donnell (13:09.457) Totally agree. Yeah. You know, there's a stat in the U S really quick to kind of bounce on that. So the vast majority of small businesses are owned by women. They're started and owned by women, but the number of small businesses that do over half a million dollars a year, right? Not even over half a million dollars a year that are owned by women. It's like some ridiculous number, like 0.2%. It's like not even, do you see what saying? So these, these small businesses, they're doing it because they can't get the real job. So then you imagine, okay, so they go get degrees, they're debt-laden. It just. Chad (13:13.677) Yeah. Emi B (13:26.798) Mm. J.T. O'Donnell (13:38.009) It's a bad stitch that we need to pay more attention to. Chad (13:39.726) Well, not to mention you're talking about today, and I don't see you see all over the news, all of these individuals, men and women who are getting degrees that can't find jobs, right? So kind of like to what you're talking about, fast followers, JT, where you're like, at this point, they're just saying that they, know, and maybe they don't want to pay for going deep into debt, number one. Number two, take a look at the trades. But again, there are so many aspects to this. Emi B (13:50.509) Mm-hmm. Emi B (14:05.966) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:06.85) Another aspect which you're going to talk about is people like us. Gen Z or Gen X. I'm sorry, I'm not Gen Z. Gen X. think Emmy might be Gen Z. J.T. O'Donnell (14:11.227) Yeah. Gen X. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, we were like, you know, Gen X was the first one to say, you know, screw business attire. We're going, you know, casual Friday. We're bringing jeans to the office, all that kind of stuff. And, know, we were like, we don't want to run companies. We just want to do our own thing. And we're the smallest generation between boomers and millennials and like all this great stuff. And now Wall Street Journal comes out and says, guess what? Chad (14:22.915) Yep. You J.T. O'Donnell (14:37.423) Now you think you're ready. Now you think you're ready to take over that C-suite role and make the big bucks. Not going to happen because those boomers are keeping the jobs. Darn it. They're just staying in the workforce and you're going to completely skipped over. And this is true. You're going to be knocked out and they're going to give it to millennials. So my Gen Zers out there, hey, know, our, you know, eff it attitude is coming back to bite us right now for sure. Emi B (14:45.55) . Chad (14:45.944) Tons of bitches. Chad (15:01.25) Yeah, I don't think it's the F it attitude. I just think it is that the fucking boomers are sucking up everything they possibly can. Houses, boats, wives. mean, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, I'm just talking about. So I mean, yeah, the overall it's like boomers do me a favor, get the fuck out. J.T. O'Donnell (15:10.095) Retire. Retire. Emi B (15:11.054) Hahaha Emi B (15:17.582) Did you say wives? J.T. O'Donnell (15:19.183) Yeah, boats and hoes. Who's going to be playing the boats and hoes track right now, right? J.T. O'Donnell (15:30.287) Next chapter. Emi B (15:31.438) BLEH Chad (15:31.468) Yeah, okay, you can't afford the five houses that you own unless you keep your job. Sell two of them. The housing market needs it. Emi B (15:39.65) Yeah, but they may not be able to afford the one that they have. You're assuming that they have five houses. It's a tough old world out there at the moment. People don't have money. They're going to have to stay in jobs forever. Chad (15:48.174) Yeah, boomers have money, bastards. All right, Emmy, you've got a little... Chad (15:57.666) There we go. J.T. O'Donnell (15:57.778) Yes, I am so excited and honored to be doing it today. I am actually wearing the new t-shirt and dang, she is comfy people. You want this t-shirt, you want this free stuff, let's go through the list and kick it off with some whiskey. The tech experts over at Van Hal. Yeah, that's some yummy, yummy whiskey right there. So good on the lips. And you know, if you want to try to keep it pure, you can go with bourbon barrel aged syrup. Chad (16:01.537) GT, nice. You Chad (16:09.592) Yes. Chad (16:19.438) You Chad (16:25.004) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (16:25.533) over at Kiora, you already talked about them. Great sponsors. Amazing. mean, syrup with liquor in it. Come on. You know you want some, right? You know you want some. No kids. This is, this is mommy syrup. Erin App. I love y'all. These are the t-shirts, right? The new ones, am I right? And they are so good. So good. okay. So if you don't want to do the hard alcohol, it's okay. We'll just get you some craft beer. You're just going to go on over and you're going to get that from Aspen Tech Labs. Thank you. Aspen Tech Labs. Craft beer is still hot. Chad (16:32.684) It's delicious, kids. It's delicious. Emi B (16:37.838) you Chad (16:43.255) No. J.T. O'Donnell (16:55.609) And then of course you'll hear it next week when Joel's back, but birthdays, it's always good with little rum from Plum. How'd I do? I only forgot one thing. I'm waiting for Jill to break. Chad (17:07.318) That's right. Wonderful. you know I can. Chad (17:15.574) Yeah, we'll get back on birthdays next week. know Joel's always bitching about how long our list is. That's a good and a bad thing. That just means we have an amazing listener base, but yeah. Emi B (17:21.902) That's a good thing. J.T. O'Donnell (17:21.925) I know. That's a good thing. I did forget to say Chadcheese.com slash free Chad cheese. There's no end in there. Chadcheese.com slash free. Go sign up so that you can get your free very cool shit. Emi B (17:25.262) Yes. Chad (17:36.99) Excellent. Wait a minute. I've now got to look at for my stuff. there it is. Chad (17:49.262) All right, we've got some industry updates, kids. First thing we're going to talk about is Bold. You might know them as the new Monster slash Career Builder. Monster employees received an email this week from Jamie and Doug. That's right, Jamie and Doug, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Bold. Jamie and Doug, they sound like real down-to-earth kind of names, right? Anyways, the email was long and boring, which I would... to assume that you would get a long and boring email from a Jamie and or a Doug. But there was one part that caught my eye around the quote unquote transition plan, which bold is working with existing career builder plus monster executive team that we call that the zombie team and pledges a quote unquote thoughtful transition to avoid confusion during this period. They will temporarily temporarily pause the international job board portal business in their current form. However, they intend to extend offers to hundreds of CareerBuilder plus Monster teammates, mainly because they have to, in the US and abroad, specifically mentioning the Czech Republic, India, and Malaysia. This aligns with court documents, see, court documents, indicating that Bold is obligated to hire several hundred employees from the back rub company. Okay, so let's dig in a little bit deeper into this thoughtful transition and how it's going. Fairly simple, you can all do this right now. Go to your browser, type in monster.com. You will see a big image that pretty much takes up the whole top of the fold, which says your launch pad to what's next. And literally it just goes through and starts talking about bold services, okay? boost your chances with handpicked job wrecks and let recruiters come to you, which sounds very much like the ladders, which was a very scammy job site back in the day. I think it still is. Then there's a little register button and you can register now, right? Last week we talked about Bold's Jobseeker monetization models where they're making money off of Jobseeker subscriptions like FlexJobs, where they have a mandatory registration. Chad (20:08.088) to get into site number one, then they charge job seekers to review the full job and apply for said job. So it sounds like they're poised to meld the bold model into Monster plus Career Builder. And then you pop over to any of the European Monster sites and yep, they're all down, pulled the plug, no access for anyone. If you were an employer that had a job credit or posting balance, I hate to say it kids, but guess what? Chad (20:48.438) Not a neeks, not a fucking thing. France, UK, Italy, Germany, and the list goes on. Sites are down and, I mean, paused, my bad. Now, models, European sites, Ronstadt, a European company, abandoning their employees, EMI, this is impacting the European market more negatively than the market. So what do you think? Emi B (21:08.824) Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, I don't even understand why bold is actually in cahoots with career build and monster, because I don't understand that model at all. Why? But this is what I don't understand. Yeah. And I don't know where they're seeing the value out of these two dinosaur brands. mean, I don't know if it's they're thinking, they've got massive data lakes that they can take advantage of. it their massive existing customer base? Is it the fact that global footprint, even though Chad (21:19.96) Big bottle. The juice, Emi B (21:41.848) they're shutting down their international job portals. So that's my first thought. My second thought is I don't understand why they're screwing over candidates in Europe. I don't understand the thought process behind it. I don't understand if candidates are going to get their job credits back. I'm really confused by this whole strategy. Yeah. Chad (22:01.71) Well, that's employers, employers for job postings that had them on Career Builder and Monster possibly. Greenlee Monster, yeah, it was employers. Emi B (22:06.476) Sorry, yeah, yeah. So what happens? Do those job credits go back? Is it, how long is it temporarily on pause for? You know, there's so many unknowns there. And I just don't, I can't see how this is a good strategy for bold. I just think it's something that's going to fail. And like I said, I'd love to understand why they went down this particular route. Chad (22:31.822) What do think, JT? J.T. O'Donnell (22:32.313) Okay. So first of all, I'm to go back to the letter. Will people stop doing letters and just record a darn video? I'm so, I'm so done with the letter. It's from Jamie and Doug. Jamie and Doug, get on a video. Talk like normal people. Authenticate that you're real. Let us get to know you. Right? Chad (22:48.11) In flannel shirts, because Jamie and Doug would think would have flannel shirts, right? J.T. O'Donnell (22:53.937) That's my point though, right? You know, we've this is from Jamie and Doug get on video enough with the archaic letter that obviously somebody else wrote I'm just Alright, second thing is where I see bold going is they're taking a page from LinkedIn No one talks about that LinkedIn makes a half a billion Half a billion with a B dollars a year off their job seeker premium Services, right? So they have this they give it away for a month for free and then you start getting charged per month They have a community, they have courses, right? You get a few freebies on your profile. And they're making tons of money in this market. So everyone's finally looking and saying, wait, okay, we can't make money off the employers anymore. AI is going to crush everything, simplify everything. Where's the revenue stream? There's all these people that need jobs and the market's bad. Let's go make some money off them. So my prediction is that they're capitalizing a monster and career builders, massive amount of job seekers. are struggling remembering those names and then you start to pull in and you already said some of the services that they're going to start to utilize. So it doesn't surprise me at all that that's where they're headed. Emi B (24:00.654) Do think it'll work? J.T. O'Donnell (24:03.067) I mean, sadly it does work because job seekers get so desperate. If you know how to market it to them, they're going to go ahead and they're going to, they're going to purchase it, especially with a brand name like, you know, LinkedIn or whoever, you know, so they're, think they're totally capitalizing that in the reach. the churn won't be great. So if you're going to evaluate them on their lifetime customer value and you know, subscription levels, they're going to see massive amount of churn, but do they care because if they can build a profit model and just at any given time have that many people going through. they're gonna make a lot of money. so, yeah, I think it's gonna work. It's gonna work. Emi B (24:35.512) See, I'm not sure if it will because I think from a candidate point of view, like I get the model that works with LinkedIn, but Monster's a shitty brand name. So the candidates want to go and spend, if they're going to spend their hard earned, well, the little cash that they have because they don't want to waste it because they're not working, why put your money into an organization with a brand name that you just don't trust anymore? But yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (24:59.365) Yeah, no, and it totally great point. I just look at the amount of people that are spending money on stupid, stupid AI stuff. Like let me create your resume and send it out to a thousand jobs a night, you know, for $39 a month. You know, that kind of stuff is gumming up our system, messing things up, but job seekers are buying it because it's not even. We want to coin them lazy, but it's, don't know what they don't know. And so if these, if they do a good job of marketing it in a certain way to a bunch of desperate people, they're going by it. Emi B (25:14.531) Yeah. Chad (25:21.806) Yeah, exactly. Chad (25:29.39) Yeah, I mean, I was watching like a 30 minute video of a market this morning. It was CNBC. There were economists on there that sound like fucking idiots. were, mean, even the experts that are trying to get into this space to better analyze the space have no fucking clue what they're talking about, right? And I think that's the key thing here to think about like a job seeker coming into it. And you're 100 % right, JT. There's the level of desperation is starting to. I mean, it's not just hot, it is inferno right now, right? And these individuals need jobs. So they're gonna do whatever it takes. You take a look at the market, right? Now, to answer your question with regard to Monster and CareerBuilder having bad brands, it's almost like the under new management sign that you see at some of those restaurants that you know, like, that's gonna change everything, right? Under new management. That's where they're gonna try to go. Emi B (26:25.27) Chad (26:26.218) on the European side, I don't see those sites coming back. When you shut those sites down and Google sees it and they don't have access to the footprint that you had there before, even though they've been around for a very long time, it's gonna start to atrophy with Google. Now, I really believe, and I could be wrong, but I believe the smart way would be to sell those because I do know for a fact, and talking to lovely people over here in Europe, There are other companies who wanted to buy those specific monster URLs, monster France, monster Germany, monster UK, because they did have really good business models that were there. So I think there's a difference in Europe than there is in the US. But at the end of the day, it's going to be really hard. It's going to be hard to. J.T. O'Donnell (27:20.911) I think Jamie and Doug, if you're listening, I know you are. You need to pull a Red Lobster. I want you to go watch Red Lobster and their CEO just brought the Red Lobster comeback. I think you take a page from him and you got a shot at it with Monster and Career Builders. So there you go. You can pay me later. Emi B (27:25.806) you Chad (27:32.002) Yeah. Chad (27:39.906) Very nice. Okay, we're gonna jump on to one that we have to keep out there so people are noticing and listening and understanding. Job.com. This is an update and let me preface with, I never thought this story went so deep and the impacts on employees were so damaging. I posted the very first message on LinkedIn and literally thought it was about bankruptcy. Then it went deeper and deeper and deeper. And I received the following information from ex job.com employees. So currently around 30 job.com employees have found, have come forward to share that they are still owed $127,000 in payroll alone from job.com. This does not include health insurance withholdings, 401k, garnishments and state and federal tax withholding. So over the past couple of weeks, I've heard personal stories of individuals owed in excess of $50,000 and other individuals didn't realize their healthcare coverage, know, the thing that we pay monthly insurance premiums for. Yeah, those withheld premiums weren't paid to the insurance company. So individuals, because they didn't have coverage, had to pay medical expenses out of their pocket. And if anybody in the US knows about US medical expenses, they're fucking sky high. Other individuals, who had child support garnishments from their paychecks, their families never received the child support checks. And then there's the tax problems, John.com withheld state and federal taxes. And here's what ex-employee and HR pro, Lauren Braddock had to say in a comment on LinkedIn, quote, that means John.com stole tax deductions, stole tax deductions and didn't report. or pay them to state or federal government for Q2, Q3, and Q4. believe this is for 2024. We have no W2s, but we have paid all of our taxes to job.com, end quote. So dude, I've been talking to ex-employees for weeks. Their stories all line up. They're getting louder. All I can say is that if you are an employer that does wrong like this, Chad (30:07.958) employees can't stay quiet. That's not the answer. More than likely, you're not gonna get what you were earned in the first place. So more importantly, you have to go get more people. You have to get them together, which is exactly what job.com was doing. It was a bunch of people that were sporadic. They all had the same issues. They all had the same problem. Now they're starting to come together. Hopefully we're gonna get the group into the DOL and DOJ and get that taken care of, but. Again, get loud people because companies who act this way want you to be silent. J.T. O'Donnell (30:42.521) It's true. And it's sad that, you know, it's one of those things that isn't going to necessarily make national news until you cause enough stink about it. Right. So I commend you for working that all of them out there that came together, like you said, that found each other and said, maybe we need to start telling this up and using social media to build visibility around it. So, so very important. Right. That is one of the things that I think is great about social media, what it's allowed us to do. We didn't have that before. You know, think about that. This would have they would have never had a shot. Chad (30:50.893) Yeah. Chad (31:00.515) Yeah. Emi B (31:06.594) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (31:11.281) But now thanks to that and certainly, you know, platforms like this reminding people that's not good business, know, somebody should pay and that's like jail time. Somebody should pay, you know. Emi B (31:20.364) Yeah. And hopefully they will. And I think, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that this is the same company where their execs were posting pictures, family vacation pictures on social media. So yeah. Okay. So the insensitivity of that is outstanding because you're thinking you've got enough money now to take your family on these beautiful holidays. But what about your employees who haven't been paid for weeks, who are now going to be, you know, haven't received their checks, who are struggling? What about them? Chad (31:30.466) Yes. Emi B (31:50.554) They don't care about them. They don't care. I don't think they're understanding that they are impacting individuals. Their impact is broken trust, it's damaged careers, it's a terrible brand name now. It's financial headaches for their employees who basically did nothing wrong and their livelihoods are now on the line whilst they're setting it up somewhere in the sun. Chad (32:11.128) Yeah, well, the optics for employees who got shafted, right? That's an incredibly tone deaf. I mean, you're driving around Ferraris, you have yachts or boats, whatever classification you want to make. You have yachts, you you you're posting pictures of you and your beautiful family. And that's awesome going on vacation, but you're saying this is all for the family and whose family? Because... Emi B (32:36.012) Whose family? It's not their, not the employee's family. Chad (32:37.85) Exactly. This is not for the, this, this was never for the people who worked for job.com. It was for the executives. Right. And that's, that's the hard part in every single story that I hear just literally corroborates all the other ones because they all line up. So it's really, I mean, it's, it's been depressing. Don't get me wrong, but to have those types of discussions and to push them into a group so that they could actually have a group. Emi B (32:43.854) Yeah. Chad (33:08.032) of people to hopefully figure this out. That's again, hopefully we can continue to shed light on this and not just, know, obviously job.com gets what they deserve, which to be quite frank, I feel like it's orange jumpsuits, but that's not for me to make a decision. That's not for me to make a decision. But until we start to see huge impacts on white collar crime, it's going to continue like this. It's continue. Big deep breath, kids, we'll be right Emi B (33:40.994) Yeah Chad (33:44.526) All right, have you heard of Anthropic? If you haven't, kids, have you been in the fetal position in the corner for a while? don't know. Anthropic, also known as Claude, is back at the AI ATM, reportedly raising up to five bu-bu-billion at a jaw-dropping 170 bu-b-billion valuation, nearly 3X. J.T. O'Donnell (33:49.925) What? Chad (34:13.674) It's March worth. Earlier this year, 3X March with annual revenues surging to 4 billion and big name investors like Iconic, Amazon, and even Gulf sovereign funds. That sounds shady. In play, the clawed creators are gunning for elite status. A couple of weeks ago, I gave a little history lesson about the dot com Emi B (34:17.976) Can you Emi B (34:41.166) Okay. Chad (34:43.65) Boom, I don't know if you remember that. Emi B (34:45.792) No, I'm too young. yes. Chad (34:48.59) Of course you were too young. Anyway, the dot com gold rush failed with victims like pets.com. And I really feel that the early days of AI are kind of running almost on the same rails. Do you think so? Do you think that we're putting way too much money into this way too soon? Or do you think this is how we get to AGI slash super intelligence slash Skynet? Emi B (35:17.654) I, the latter, I don't think we're putting too much money into it soon. I think that's the way that the world is actually going. So I get it. I get everybody kind of investing in this field. What I don't get though, is the fact that they're going down the middle Eastern route to actually raise money. Because you know, yeah. And I'll tell you why, obviously I'm a massive fan of the Middle East. I lived in Dubai for 12 years, absolutely loved it. However, this is a company that said, I cannot invest. We can't take money from. Chad (35:21.272) Okay. Chad (35:34.978) Chad (35:39.725) Yeah. Chad (35:46.434) Yeah, Yep. Emi B (35:46.7) you know, dictator, dictator, like countries and, you know, this is goes against our ethics and we are a morally sound organization. But now, because you got other people competing against you, you realize and shit, okay, if I need to stay ahead, I need that Middle Eastern money. That is all the ethics have gone out the window. Interesting. Chad (36:07.276) Yes. Well, I think I can hear the anthropic co-founders now. Emi B (36:15.758) I love those. Chad (36:16.332) Yeah. Chad (36:21.624) What do think, JT? J.T. O'Donnell (36:23.985) So I'm with you because sadly I was around for the dot com. was I was in Silicon Valley working at the time, right around the time the dot com bust. I think about the wave that happened with smartphones and apps. Remember that whole like everybody needed an app and that boomed for a while. I absolutely believe we're in the beginning phases that I think the next 18 to 24 months we're going to see the craziest types of AI companies come about. It's always interesting to see who wins, you know, but Chad (36:36.13) Yeah. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (36:52.581) with that comes a lot of losers. And I think you're right. I think we're about to see a lot of AI losers out there, especially in our space. mean, people are every single day have the AI solution to recruiting and they built it themselves on an app for $0. Chad (37:09.496) I mean, to that point, yeah, I mean, to that point, I mean, we talked about last week, we talked about MetaView who literally it's $50 a month for like an AI note taker, like on steroids, right? An AI note taker on steroids. And then I compared it to Riverside. This is the platform that we're using right now and the deliverables that's only $24 a month. And it's just like, we're not even close to the rest of the industries at all. We are literally scratching the fucking surface at this point. J.T. O'Donnell (37:42.097) 100%. And as we all get more sophisticated with it, I look at how much more I use it now than I did three months ago. It's incredible the way it's ingraining itself into my life and everybody else's. Emi B (37:42.798) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:47.884) Mm. Emi B (37:54.562) It's your every day is like planning your shopping, like putting together recipes, putting together your holiday itinerary, you know? Yeah, a hundred percent. couldn't live, I don't even remember life without this. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (38:05.585) Honestly, I used to Google everything, tell me this, tell me that, and now it's just the Chad GPT app going there. No ads, no ranking, just give me an answer in my voice. Chad (38:09.571) Yes. Emi B (38:11.373) Yes! Chad (38:12.47) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just give me a goddamn answer. mean, Anthropic is at about 21 billion in funding right now, 4 billion in ARR. OpenAI is about 12 billion in ARR. And if you think about it on the Amazon side of the house, because Amazon's got some pretty tight ties, if you can start to pull... Emi B (38:15.32) Yeah? Chad (38:41.858) developers, right? AI developers into the Amazon cloud, into AWS to do updates, right? How quick can that happen? And how many people can you now push toward forward thinking development versus updates and those types of things. So yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent, JT, I believe there are going to be winners and losers, but I also agree with Emmy because at the end of the day, that's exactly why. Emi B (39:11.064) They need the money. Chad (39:11.758) When say this, they're taking this dirty money. And because they know if they do not, they could be proper fucked. They could be proper fucked. Emi B (39:13.955) Yeah. Emi B (39:19.246) They're going to be left behind. They're literally going to be left behind. Yeah. And I think this is where companies now have to start thinking because it's not just, it's not just this company taking Middle Eastern money. Other, other people are taking Middle Eastern money now. So the companies now have to think, okay, if they want to grow, do they, they got to, you know, that little balancing act between company values versus growth. So they need to ask themselves, am I going to stick to my values? You know, even if it's going to slow my organization down or. Chad (39:41.078) huh. Emi B (39:48.014) Are we willing to compromise? Are we willing to make peace with those gray areas if it helps us to scale? That's what companies are going to have to start asking themselves. That's what Anthropic has asked themselves. And it means for TA teams, talent acquisition teams, when they're speaking to candidates now, how are they going to explain to top AI candidates why they're taking this dirty money that they're calling? And how is that part of their responsible innovation strategy? How are you going to spin that? Yeah. Chad (40:14.574) They're hoping that nobody's paying attention is what you're doing. They're hoping that nobody's paying attention. Exactly. Everybody's going to know. Another company who is saying things and probably hoping that people are going to forget what they just said is ServiceNow. So we're going to go ahead and play a video from ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. Emi B (40:19.854) Too late, we're talking about it now, so everyone's gonna know. Yeah. Chad (40:40.706) who has been making some waves with some of these comments. Here we go. Chad (40:59.438) Tell me that's not Uncle Baby Billy. Chad (41:13.582) 80 % Chad (41:50.582) Okay, so let's start out with how he looks like a TV evangelist. Can we start there like a character out of righteous gemstones? that Uncle Baby Billy? Does that not look like? Emi B (41:56.366) you J.T. O'Donnell (42:05.893) Right now, I'm struggling. Emi B (42:10.914) He looks like an avatar. Like he looks like a... Chad (42:11.0) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (42:12.497) Who told him to the glasses on? Chad (42:14.862) Dude, mean that's that's like his look now. That's like his look. I mean, you know, but you know soul-crushing jobs Did you did you like how good old bill the tell? Evangelist framed soul-crushing jobs into that whole thing. What did you take from? J.T. O'Donnell (42:34.161) okay, so first of all, we've said for the longest time, I mean, I tell job seekers all the time, companies don't want more employees, they want less. To them, employees are unreliable and expensive. You know what I mean? And he literally just said that. He didn't try to hide it. I mean, they're just done now. I think CEOs are like, no, we're just gonna say what we really feel. So clearly he just confirmed that, and he's proud. I don't have to pay the benefits. Yeah, it works 24-7. Chad (43:01.09) No lunch times? Bathroom breaks? No. J.T. O'Donnell (43:02.545) they're my favorite employees. glasses. What? Just yikes. I man, man, man, man. It just okay. But can I just say he did video? He video Emi B (43:03.662) No! Chad (43:16.972) Am I? Yes. Emi B (43:20.387) He did a video, yes! He did do an email. Chad (43:21.986) with a really shitty background. mean, for God's sakes, you're the CEO of a fucking major organization. Everybody knows it's a fucking, it's a, first and foremost, it's a software-esque company, a SaaS company. Give me a fucking break. Are you kidding me? Emi B (43:36.43) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (43:40.433) I just can't, mean the whole optics didn't, it just, there was nobody there coaching that. Nobody there coaching the optics on that one. Zero people present. Did he that on his own maybe? He's just gonna push that one out. Emi B (43:54.956) He probably went on to chat GBT and go, yeah, write me a script. Go, yeah, this sounds good. I sound really intelligent. And it's like, no, you sound like a dick. You sound like an insensitive dick. You're talking about taking away people's jobs. It's like, what are you doing? You're talking about employees which are in your organization right now who are going to shit themselves thinking, maybe my job, my job, which I actually love is actually soul crushing because my CEO told me my own job is soul crushing. Idiot. It's like. Why? Like you said, who taught him? No one. Where's your media training? J.T. O'Donnell (44:28.509) No. And then, mean, it's like, they probably were like, it's not soul crushing until they outsourced it. And they're like, you're right, it wasn't soul crushing. We don't want to say anything to you. Yeah. Emi B (44:34.688) Yeah! Chad (44:37.582) It's, we are getting the quiet part out loud more than we ever have. And just doing some basic research with BLS says three million jobs in the U.S. for customer support. Okay. Three million. Security and risk management. These are just some of the ones that he talked about. About 200,000 in the U.S. alone. Go to market. He's talking about sales, number of sales jobs. Good God. We're talking about, depending if you can even wrap in retail, which they will start doing, we're talking about around 13 million jobs, US alone, right? So think of that from a global standpoint, because this is going to happen globally. But here's Billy's real motivation, quote, agents work hard 24 by seven. You don't have to pay them. They don't need the lunch and they don't... have any healthcare benefits. So they're very affordable. So for me, welcome to late stage capitalism, which is more like a feudal system, automate to get rid of wages, benefits, off time, sick benefits, but what about the taxes? Nobody is mentioning the taxes because we still have police, fire departments, education locally, Roads. J.T. O'Donnell (45:51.313) Mmm. Chad (45:59.734) infrastructure, all these different things that we have to pay for. If we don't have people paying taxes, whether it's employers or employees, how the fuck does any of that even work? J.T. O'Donnell (46:15.269) Yeah, where you gonna get the money? Chad (46:15.874) How does it work? J.T. O'Donnell (46:19.257) Yeah, I think and I think what's hard to just bigger picture. People just aren't fully grasping how many jobs are going to be lost. You know, like people are nervous. They know the economy isn't good. They're nervous. But people, they're just still not studying and understanding AI nor do they understand business enough to know that they're coming for your job too. And it's Emi B (46:21.176) Sad world. Chad (46:40.844) Yeah, but I think they're saying shysters that are out there like the CEO from Klarna that says they're going to cut 700 jobs for AI, right? And it was a total lie because all they did was offshore them, right? They offshore them and they're like, this really isn't happening. You know, so they're kind of lulled into a false sense of security. Well, when they understand that Klarna is just, mean, they're amateur-esque when it comes to the rest of these companies, right? We just talked about an anthropic. Emi B (46:51.307) Outsource it. Yeah. Chad (47:10.018) You get that kind of money, some shit's gonna happen. So, I mean, for me, I agree. There are many jobs that are at risk. And it's interesting because I actually saw an interview with Matt Alder not too long ago. And he said that like 18 months ago, he thought, yeah, no, this is gonna be the perfect like Iron Man suit. Everybody's going to have a great opportunity to have an assistant to be able to help them do what they want. Now he believes, no, those motherfuckers are gonna take some jobs. Right? So they're starting to become this, this, this idea of, shit, this is happening. J.T. O'Donnell (47:48.666) Yeah, I mean, but the futurists were saying out of the gate, look, we're going to lose 86 million jobs. We're eventually going to gain 93 million, but that's not happening at the same time. We've known it was coming, right? Like we will bounce back and have lots of new interesting jobs with job titles that we can't even imagine yet. And that's exciting. That's not happening in the next 18 months. I don't know what's in the next 24. Chad (47:56.6) Yes. Chad (48:05.452) Well, the transition though, what does that transition look like and how many people are actually thrown into poverty while all of that is actually happening? Not to mention if people are thrown in, not just the people that are thrown in poverty, the people that are actually kicked out of jobs, again, taxes aren't paid. We don't have police, we don't have firemen, we don't have teachers, we don't have infrastructure because that's what taxes pay for kids. Your local tax, I mean, your community is supported by all. Emi B (48:05.582) Mm. J.T. O'Donnell (48:13.392) Yeah, Intel and Elixir. Chad (48:35.035) And we don't think of it as from our standpoint local. Emi B (48:39.852) And organizations aren't going to though, because all they're thinking about is their bottom line. They're not thinking about that. No, no, no, they're not. They're thinking that I've got an organization to keep afloat. So what are the numbers? can keep, can make, you know, increase the numbers by decreasing head count and bringing in machines. That is what they're thinking about. They're not thinking about the social, you know, the social, I suppose the social. Yeah, no, yeah, that's not, that's not, that's not up to them as they, as, you know, as far as they're concerned. That's somebody else's problem. J.T. O'Donnell (48:39.963) Right. Chad (48:43.244) they don't Chad (49:01.452) ramifications, yeah. Chad (49:09.565) Okay, we're we're gonna, we're gonna, we're we're gonna get positive on this next one. We'll be right. Emi B (49:14.766) haha Chad (49:19.188) Okay, so this one, I gotta say, last week, and I'm sorry, Mo, but I actually cut Mo and Joel off last week, because they wouldn't stop talking about this fucking astronomer Coldplay thing. I just was like, I've seen it everywhere. I'm reliving it. But guess what we're going to talk about? Jesus Christ. Okay, so. What do you do when your CEO gets caught embracing the chief people officer on Kiss Cam during a Coldplay concert? Well, you call in Gwyneth Paltrow, who else? Here, take a look at this, kids. Chad (50:15.534) my god, what the actual fuck? Chad (50:25.068) Not what they ask. Chad (50:34.21) How is your social media team holding up? Chad (50:41.295) Hahaha Chad (50:49.422) yeah, for all the audio listeners that aren't watching on YouTube, Gwyneth, and I was trying to interject in there, she actually didn't answer any of questions. That's one of the reasons why we were chuckling. And it was very, very much politician-esque. So she might be running for politics, who knows? So, okay, ladies. J.T. O'Donnell (51:07.296) yeah. Chad (51:12.61) Many people are calling this a masterclass in marketing. What are your thoughts? Emmy? Emi B (51:18.926) I think it's hilarious. I actually love it. The first time I watched it, I was like, I don't know what I'm watching here. And then I had to watch again and again. I thought this is too funny. This is a great way to like, when you've got shit, or you've got, what's it, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I think that is this scenario here that we're watching. And then when I dug a little bit deeper, I actually found out that the agency that they're working with is actually Ryan Reynolds Agency. Chad (51:34.318) Uh-huh. Chad (51:46.892) Emi B (51:46.956) So that's why they've got that kind of sarcasm. I was like, okay, cool. I get it. Because Gwenner Peltcher by herself is not that funny, but I quite like Ryan Reynolds. So I, be honest, I think it's good. I cause what are they gonna do? They're all over the press. Everyone's talking about them. This story is not going away. And I think that, you know, it's a great, if you're gonna spin it from, you know, what can companies and organizations learn from this? I feel like from an employer brand perspective, there's always gonna be, where your employer brand is tarnished in some way to various degrees. So the lesson that I get from here is that, you know, if you're faced by scandal, whether it's your CEO, you know, getting on with a head of HR, just don't panic. Own the narrative, you know, and flip it into something positive, like what they're doing. So I love it. I think it's a great, great exercise. And it means that from a recruiting perspective, people are I showed them, yeah, let me just... Chad (52:19.65) Yeah. Emi B (52:44.91) click onto their website. Oh, let me click on their careers page. All of a sudden, I bet the applications are going up. Yeah, okay, there you go. Yeah, it's working. Chad (52:50.026) there they are. there they are. JT? J.T. O'Donnell (52:55.567) Yeah, I'm with you. When she gives up the acting thing and goop and her, you know, billion dollar empire, she can go into PR because the way she just pivoted every one of those questions was brilliant. I fell in love with it because you just think about what a really great piece of social media does. First of all, you had to watch it multiple times because you wanted to catch everything. To her being the acts of Chris from Coldplay, immediately catching that vibe. Right. And then in and for the astronomer to say, Emi B (53:01.858) Yeah. Chad (53:17.688) Yes. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (53:24.337) look, we're not going to take ourselves too seriously. We're a business, something happened. So, you know, why don't we use this as a moment for people to know what we do? Cause honestly, did you know what they did? Did you know what they did as a company? No, but now you're in Apache server and you're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right. So they just, was brilliant. It was absolutely fire. And yeah, I think I watched it like six times. I gave it airplay every time it came across my social feeds because it was just really well done. And it doesn't. Emi B (53:34.062) No, never even heard of them. J.T. O'Donnell (53:52.079) Ends us on a happy note for sure. I went so much faster. Chad (53:53.886) Well, there's no question. Nobody knew who the hell Astronomer was a few weeks ago. So definitely to Emmy's point, this is lemons into lemonade. Last week, Joel actually talked about how astronomers getting more applications, candidate applications that he's seeing on LinkedIn versus all of their competitors. Again, didn't see that coming. Gwyneth, yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (54:14.853) Yeah. You know, the CEO is suing, right? He's suing for mental, emotional, yeah, no, for emotional damage or not even kidding. It's for like emotional damage and. Emi B (54:22.134) please. Chad (54:24.366) Yeah, because that's somebody else's fault, Because yeah, okay, take a little responsibility for your own junior. But as you'd said, Gwyneth is Coldplay's frontman, Chris Martin's ex. So that's funny. They did have probably one of the most amicable divorces in Hollywood. She's loved by women all over the globe for goop and vagina-scented candles. J.T. O'Donnell (54:28.153) Exactly. Emi B (54:40.184) Christmas, yeah. Chad (54:54.37) I mean, it's, I don't know. I think this to me was just great. And I loved it from the standpoint of they're obviously getting a lot of people understanding who their brand is and they really don't care. mean, people really don't care about the love that's happening behind closed doors. They just want to find out what was happening with the company new brand. So how do you continue to extend that with something more funny? You embrace it like you'd said, Emmy, and you make lemons into lemon lemonade and these guys, they did it. They did it. J.T. O'Donnell (55:26.865) 12 out of Emi B (55:28.056) I want to speak to their PR team. Sorry, I was going to say they need a pay rise. Like I'm like, yeah, well done. Well done indeed. Chad (55:36.226) Well, in our lemons into lemonade this week is that Joel's not around, so we don't have to suffer through dad jokes. So thanks again, ladies, for coming on. We had a great time and we will see you next time. We out. J.T. O'Donnell (55:45.446) and you're. Emi B (55:52.632) We out. J.T. O'Donnell (55:53.529) Bye.

This Week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast – Live from UNLEASH America 2025 We’re joined by Meghan Rhatigan, VP of Talent Acquisition Experience at Marriott, for a no-fluff look at how hiring is really  changing. Meghan unpacks 15 years of transformation at Marriott—tech upgrades, shifting candidate behavior, and a serious rethink of the old job board addiction. 🔥 In this episode: Chatbots vs. search: what candidates actually  want The slow death of job boards (maybe Indeed) How Marriott drives organic traffic without gimmicks DEI beyond the buzzwords—global, real, and political What HR tech Meghan wishes existed right now From politics to platform fatigue, we’re getting honest about what’s working, what’s broken, and where recruiting is headed. 🎧 Press play if you’re tired of hearing “candidate experience” from people who’ve never filled a role. Meghan’s the real deal. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION 0:00:00.2 Meghan Rhatigan: If I'm an Appcast of the world, even the Indeeds of the world. 0:00:03.3 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:00:04.1 Meghan Rhatigan: I would be worried because companies like us have figured out, and particularly now with the market being the way that it is, we're just scraping it give me more candidates, baby because I'm going to need them one day, but I don't want to pay for them. But it is... It's totally diminishing their relevance in a lot of ways. 0:00:23.3 Chad Sowash: Oh, God. Yeah. 0:00:27.0 Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are live from the Gem booth at Unleash in beautiful Las Vegas. This is the hungover edition... 0:00:35.5 Chad Sowash: Yes. 0:00:36.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh yeah. 0:00:36.5 Joel Cheesman: Of The Chad & Cheese Podcast. 0:00:37.5 Chad Sowash: Thank God for HiBob coffee. 0:00:38.2 Joel Cheesman: I'm Joel Cheesman, your co-host, always with me, Chad Sowash, as much as I try to get rid of him. And we are just ecstatic to welcome... 0:00:46.5 Chad Sowash: You can't quit me. You can't quit me. 0:00:47.3 Joel Cheesman: Can't quit me. That's right. Meghan Rhatigan, VP of TA at Marriott. Marriott like Chariot. 0:00:55.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Chariot. There you go. 0:00:55.0 Joel Cheesman: Just so I got it right. 0:00:55.7 Chad Sowash: Get it right, kids. Get it right, kids. 0:00:57.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Marriott like Chariot. 0:00:58.8 Joel Cheesman: Meghan welcome again. 0:00:59.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Thank you. 0:01:01.0 Joel Cheesman: Two time guest on HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. 0:01:04.6 Chad Sowash: The first one isn't out yet. 0:01:05.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:01:06.0 Chad Sowash: So we can't count it till it's actually out. 0:01:09.0 Joel Cheesman: Is there a chance we won't release it? 0:01:11.4 Meghan Rhatigan: It's very possible. 0:01:11.5 Chad Sowash: No, but it's gonna be we... It's... 0:01:13.2 Joel Cheesman: She's still been a guest twice. 0:01:14.6 Chad Sowash: It's a part of a... It's a part of an AI sessions, which is season three. It's a very special season. It's gonna probably... It's gonna come out later this year. So you're gonna see her again. 0:01:23.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes. 0:01:24.1 Joel Cheesman: So she's not live yet, but she has been a guest twice. 0:01:27.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. 0:01:27.8 Joel Cheesman: Is that fair... 0:01:28.0 Chad Sowash: Let's just say she's been exposed to Chad and Cheese. 0:01:30.6 Joel Cheesman: Which means if it hasn't aired yet, our listeners, viewers don't know who you are. So give us the elevator pitch. 0:01:37.3 Meghan Rhatigan: All right, so I have been within the HR space about 20-ish years. 15 of those years with Marriott. I've done the rotation between TA, organizational change management, back in TA now leading the tech operations strategy area. So everything that touches a candidate, hiring, manager, recruiter, falls under my space. 0:02:00.9 Chad Sowash: Change Management. Okay. 0:02:02.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh yeah. 0:02:02.3 Chad Sowash: So this for me is the most interesting because we don't focus enough on change management in TA and we're literally changing all the time. 0:02:11.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:02:12.3 Chad Sowash: So, I mean, how long have you been doing change management inside of TA? 0:02:20.5 Meghan Rhatigan: I have been doing it for about three years. So I did it within Marriott for about five years. And then I made the transition into TA when we were needing to do a big transformation post pandemic, like we weren't hiring fast enough. We didn't have the right technology, we were totally caught flat footed and we needed to basically transform everything we were doing. And so I came in to help do that and drive that forward. Yeah. 0:02:50.2 Chad Sowash: So talk a little bit about that because after COVID, huge... I mean, huge transformation necessary because obviously that pandemic bomb dropped. But then moving forward now with tech and how fast tech is moving and how tech stacks are being skinnied down, they're being added to, did you just automatically flow into those positions around technology as well as just basic ops? 0:03:17.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes, I mean... So Marriott, like other companies right now, we're trying to figure out how to do more with less. We're in growth mode right now. So we just acquired citizenM last week. We're trying to figure out how do we continue to scale, but from an HR perspective and directive, we're not adding headcount. So we got to figure out how to double in size without adding headcount. And that is applicable of course, through our recruiting team. And so we need to figure out how do we continue to scale using technology and other opportunities. But headcount's not the option. Can't do that. Not anymore. 0:04:00.0 Joel Cheesman: So 15 years, which means you started when you were 10 at Marriott. 0:04:04.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh yeah. Totally. 0:04:04.6 Joel Cheesman: You've seen a lot of things come and go. And I always love the veterans that come on the show for perspective for the kids. Talk about the industry when you started. 0:04:13.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh God. 0:04:14.4 Joel Cheesman: And what has changed in that 15 year period? 0:04:17.6 Chad Sowash: History lesson. 0:04:18.9 Joel Cheesman: Yep. 0:04:19.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Well, when I started in HR, I was inputting information from fax forms. So you know... 0:04:28.1 Chad Sowash: Ooh. I remember those days. 0:04:29.3 Joel Cheesman: Wow. 0:04:30.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Started there. 0:04:30.8 Joel Cheesman: 2010, you were still doing faxes? 0:04:32.8 Meghan Rhatigan: No, that was before 2010. But in 2010, let's see, we... That was the world of outsourcing. Like everybody was looking at BPO outsourcing shared services and taking all of like the administrative tasks off of HR and trying to put into this gigantic shared service model. We did that like including in recruiting and we had a big RPO like for 15 years. But post pandemic we made the decision to bring that in house for a number of reasons. Like it was very easy to scale back in those days, like by outsourcing everything. But then you got too far away from the business. Like we were basically like glorified vendor managers instead of like running a recruiting shop. And that's actually part of what got us into trouble post pandemic is because like we weren't close enough to the work to even know what to begin to scale or how to move faster. 0:05:31.7 Chad Sowash: You didn't have the infrastructure, you didn't have the connections? 0:05:34.0 Meghan Rhatigan: No. 0:05:35.1 Chad Sowash: I mean, the connective tissue. 0:05:36.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. 0:05:36.7 Chad Sowash: Goes away when you go into an RPO scenario. 0:05:39.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Correct. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, like 15 years ago, it was about outsource. Get it out, get it out, get it out. But I think we actually... We took it too far and we needed to pull it back real quick. 0:05:50.3 Chad Sowash: It's usually how it works. 0:05:51.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:05:52.0 Chad Sowash: Usually how it works. 0:05:53.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:05:54.0 Joel Cheesman: So the pandemic hits, you guys take control. What learnings did you have in the last five years in terms of technology? What works, what doesn't, what was the vision? I know branding is really important to you. Talk about that five-year period of how things evolved. 0:06:08.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So when the pandemic hit, we were in the hospitality travel industry. We were severely hit. Like we closed at one point, like 70% of our hotels just shut down. 0:06:19.5 Chad Sowash: Wow. 0:06:20.3 Meghan Rhatigan: When... 0:06:20.9 Chad Sowash: 70? 0:06:22.1 Meghan Rhatigan: 70. Yeah. 0:06:22.6 Chad Sowash: Wow. 0:06:23.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Insane. Right? 0:06:23.9 Chad Sowash: Yes. 0:06:24.4 Meghan Rhatigan: When the world... 0:06:24.5 Joel Cheesman: And the Ritz-Carlton still wouldn't take my reservation. Just so, you know. I'm very... 0:06:27.9 Chad Sowash: Well especially then. 0:06:29.3 Joel Cheesman: Very upset about that. 0:06:29.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Exactly. When the world started to come back and people were now itching to travel, like leisure travel went gangbusters. But because we couldn't hire fast enough, we actually couldn't open up the door. So we had... Our customer demand was like skyrocketing. 0:06:47.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:06:47.4 Meghan Rhatigan: But we couldn't meet the customer demand because we couldn't hire fast enough. And like us, like everybody else was dealing with this employment market where there wasn't... There weren't people to hire. Like, nobody was really that motivated to come back, particularly to frontline. 0:07:00.3 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:07:01.1 Meghan Rhatigan: And speed was everything. And we did not know how to operate in a like fast paced recruiting environment because we were living in la la land of being Marriott and having like, you know, 300 people to choose from and taking our time. And no matter how shitty our application process was or how long it took, they were still like really excited. 0:07:21.8 Chad Sowash: It is what it is. Yeah. 0:07:23.0 Meghan Rhatigan: It is what it is. But then... 0:07:24.6 Chad Sowash: Until it's not. 0:07:24.9 Meghan Rhatigan: In the pandemic... Until it's not. Like, then it was like, no, wait, actually like, you're one of like 15 options I have and you didn't get to me first. So therefore I'm not coming on board. So like, we were in a major problem where we couldn't open hotels. And so we were like, all right, we gotta basically like clear the slate, start over. We gotta figure out how to do this quickly and introduce automation. So that's where like the Paradox piece started to come in. Because when we looked at our process, like the biggest time suck was interviewing. It's just like hiring managers weren't motivated to do it. It's a pain in the ass to have to deal with candidates and all their like, scheduling requests and all that. So we're like, let's start with interview scheduling. And by the way we called it automation, not AI because nobody was wanting to touch AI. Still is a little bit that way. 0:08:18.5 Chad Sowash: So that was a way to actually get the project to go further without questions. 0:08:25.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Correct. Yeah. 0:08:26.1 Chad Sowash: Okay. 0:08:26.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Because it was like, it was a process that nobody cared about that was very low risk but had high impact in terms of like, that was what was taking the most amount of time. So, yeah, that was kind of the first impetus to us moving a bit faster to be able to meet the customer demand with hiring. 0:08:44.4 Chad Sowash: Here at The Chad & Cheese Podcast, one thing that we love is obviously you watching, but also like and subscribe. 0:08:52.4 Joel Cheesman: How long have you been on Paradox? 0:08:55.0 Meghan Rhatigan: About a little over two years now. 0:08:57.3 Joel Cheesman: Two years? 0:08:57.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:08:58.2 Joel Cheesman: So a little bit of historical data. I'm curious. So when I go to your career site, I have sort of a traditional search box and then I have Olivia in the corner. 0:09:05.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:09:06.4 Joel Cheesman: What, what's the divide between the people who are engaging with a chatbot versus I'm just going to put in my search and do it that way. 0:09:13.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah it's... 0:09:14.2 Joel Cheesman: And how has that evolved? 0:09:14.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, so it's interesting. We actually see higher conversion rates with the people who use Olivia to do their job search than we do with people who just like start with the bar. And I think that's because people are honestly like, the chatbot is there. People are used to seeing it on the consumer side. We're now finally introducing it on the employment side. And it's just easy. And I'd rather have... I'd rather ask a question. Show me housekeeping jobs in Scottsdale, Arizona and I get a bunch than me having to like type in my zip code and like, I don't know, whatever else it's asking me to do, I can just ask a question. And I think like for us, like that whole agentic ideas is very appealing. 0:10:00.1 Joel Cheesman: But do you know a divide between what percentage does the search versus the chatbot? 0:10:04.1 Meghan Rhatigan: I would say if I were to just like ballpark it, I would say like honestly, 60% of the people are using the search. Because the way that we've designed it, and this is a design choice. We have that pop up, actually overlay the search bar. Like when you're on a mobile phone, you'll see the actual chat pop up first and foremost. 0:10:24.1 Joel Cheesman: So 60% are using Olivia, the chat experience? 0:10:26.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Yeah. 0:10:27.1 Joel Cheesman: Okay. Are you surprised by that number or is that kind of what you expected? 0:10:31.0 Meghan Rhatigan: I'm a little bit surprised by the number because honestly I... The search bar thing was something that people are so used to, and I thought, I don't know if they're going to want to talk to somebody. But no it's actually been easier for them to have the conversation. 0:10:45.5 Chad Sowash: I mean, candidates don't feel like they're heard in the first place. So it kind of, if you think about it, it's like, oh, wait a minute, I can now be heard. 0:10:53.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes. 0:10:54.1 Chad Sowash: Whether it's a chat bot or not a chat bot, at least if I want to ask questions, I have the ability where before it was just a search box. 0:11:01.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. 0:11:02.0 Chad Sowash: I could just apply. Now, what's the difference between the application process. I would assume that it's huge. Because you were looking for speed. Are most applications happening through conversational AI, or is that literally just helping them understand and then they're going through more of a traditional type app... 0:11:20.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. For us right now, it's just the traditional type apply. 0:11:23.8 Chad Sowash: Okay. 0:11:25.2 Meghan Rhatigan: I will tell you, though, we want to get to that conversational experience, but the market isn't driving that right now. Like, we have too many candidates at the moment. So putting our focus... 0:11:39.5 Joel Cheesman: So no incentive. 0:11:40.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. On that type of technology at this moment, where the market isn't necessarily one where we want to spend a whole lot of time. But, you know, from a candidate experience, it makes a lot of sense. It's just like I always get told the second I bring it up, "Do we really need more candidates?" I'm like, "Okay, you're right, we don't." So... 0:11:59.6 Chad Sowash: So but the thing is, you can't be caught off guard because... 0:12:02.9 Meghan Rhatigan: No you can't. 0:12:03.0 Chad Sowash: When the market turns, the market turns. 0:12:04.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. Yeah. 0:12:05.3 Chad Sowash: And if you can't meet the market where it is... 0:12:07.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Then we're screwed. 0:12:08.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah, then you're screwed. Right? 0:12:09.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Exactly. 0:12:10.5 Joel Cheesman: And in light of that, we talked to a lot of bigger companies that are pretty, in some cases, greatly reducing their reliance on, say, job boards. 0:12:18.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes. 0:12:18.5 Joel Cheesman: How has this new reality impacted where you guys spend your money or maybe take money away? 0:12:23.8 Meghan Rhatigan: So for us we've put a lot. So we just... We launched a new employment brand a little over a year and a half ago. Organic traffic is king. I would say that we focus most of our efforts honestly on driving organic traffic just because paid traffic is so freaking, fucking, whatever. 0:12:45.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:12:46.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Chad and Cheese. Right? You say that expensive. 0:12:48.4 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:12:48.9 Meghan Rhatigan: And so for us I'm... I think we talked about this the last time, like the SEO thing is a big thing. Paradox actually does a really great job with their career site and SEO in driving that. But organic traffic gets us the best quality candidates. They're the ones who stay the longest. And we're running right now at about 60 to 70% organic traffic, which is really, really, really good. 0:13:11.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:13:11.8 Meghan Rhatigan: But we also are Marriott, but it's a very big focus for us. 0:13:15.9 Joel Cheesman: When you say organic, are you actively on Google for jobs? 0:13:20.0 Meghan Rhatigan: No. 0:13:20.4 Joel Cheesman: No. 0:13:20.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Organic means like there are people out there that want to work for us and so they're coming to our site.... 0:13:27.7 Joel Cheesman: Directly. 0:13:27.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Marriott.careers.com and they're saying, I want to work here. And they're engaging with Olivia and finding a job. But it's all about awareness too. So we do a lot through like CRM campaigns and silver medalist candidates. And like the second we've got a housekeeping job open we retarget the folks that just applied... 0:13:47.0 Chad Sowash: In your database already? 0:13:48.9 Meghan Rhatigan: In our database. Yeah. 0:13:49.4 Chad Sowash: Because you've already paid for them. 0:13:50.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. We don't... We don't... We don't... We don't buy or subscribe to an external database. We don't need to. We've got 10 million candidates on our own and so we're just... 0:14:00.8 Chad Sowash: Amen sister. 0:14:01.4 Joel Cheesman: Something interesting this morning. I don't know if this is standardized or not, but when I... I did a search on Google for Marriott jobs. 0:14:07.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:14:08.4 Joel Cheesman: Expecting Google for jobs. And it was direct jobs to Marriott, just their jobs. 0:14:13.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Correct. That's... 0:14:13.6 Joel Cheesman: So there were no job boards presented in that search. 0:14:16.2 Meghan Rhatigan: That is right. 0:14:17.2 Joel Cheesman: I don't know if that's something Google's doing more and more of, but they just go directly to you from Google. 0:14:20.6 Meghan Rhatigan: That's right. Yeah, that's... And by the way, it actually took a lot for that experience to happen because originally you would... It was Indeed that was top. 0:14:32.7 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. 0:14:33.3 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:14:33.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Yeah. 0:14:34.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. And then we were second and so we put a lot into making sure Indeed was not top. 0:14:38.0 Joel Cheesman: How did you do that? 0:14:40.2 Meghan Rhatigan: We worked with Paradox and actually did a lot of work on trying to see what was taking away our SEO. And also with Indeed, we do partner with them. We have to, right? They're the 800 pound gorilla. But we've started to pull back on sponsorship quite significantly so that it actually does help our organic SEO so that we don't have as much competing, right? 0:15:08.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:15:09.0 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:15:10.4 Meghan Rhatigan: SEO when it comes to job search. So we're like pulling back on the paid so that Indeed doesn't have as much leverage to come on top of us. 0:15:15.3 Joel Cheesman: What an interesting strategy. Reduce job board spend to help your own Google. 0:15:19.4 Meghan Rhatigan: That's right. 0:15:19.9 Joel Cheesman: Traffic. 0:15:20.5 Chad Sowash: Build your own brand. That kind of thing. 0:15:22.9 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. That's fascinating. Okay. 0:15:24.0 Chad Sowash: Well, not to mention, I mean, in... How many candidates do you have in the database? 0:15:28.8 Meghan Rhatigan: 10 million. 0:15:29.7 Chad Sowash: 10 million. So if... I mean, so again, you've already paid for those. And there are so many companies that are literally, as soon as a job opens, they just sprayed out to the Indeeds and the ZipRecruiters and whatnot. And they pay for the same candidates over and over and over and over. 0:15:44.0 Meghan Rhatigan: It's crazy. 0:15:44.8 Chad Sowash: Same ones. 0:15:44.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. And they're... And they're probably bad quality because there's a reason why you didn't hire them in the first place. 0:15:51.5 Chad Sowash: See. So, but I mean, it's the... And we've talked to companies about retargeting and Matt Lavery at UPS. They had to do 150,000 hire or 15,000. 15,000 hires in six weeks. And 30,000 of those were ones that they retargeted. So they didn't have to spend money to get 30,000 of those. And that was like version one. He's like, it's going to get bigger and better. And we're hearing the same thing from companies like... You know, companies using Paradox and Gem and Fountain. And it's like, that seems to be the big cycle where it's like, look, we know what we have. We finally know what we have and we're going to use it. Do you feel the industry is kind of like moving that way quickly? 0:16:38.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:16:39.0 Chad Sowash: Yeah? 0:16:39.4 Meghan Rhatigan: I do. I shouldn't say this because we are an Appcast customer, but I mean I would be worried if I was... If I'm an Appcast of the world, even the Indeeds of the world. 0:16:52.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:16:53.4 Meghan Rhatigan: I would be worried because companies like us have figured out and particularly now with the market being the way that it is, we're just like scraping it. Like, give me more candidates, baby, because I'm going to need them one day, but I don't want to pay for them. But it is... It's totally diminishing their relevance in a lot of ways. 0:17:13.3 Chad Sowash: Oh, God. Yeah. Well, okay, so quick question. We've been hearing a lot from like, Chris Forman, former CEO of Appcast and Indeed talking about you're not going to be able to utilize some of these services unless you start giving them disposition data. 0:17:27.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:17:28.2 Chad Sowash: Which to me is total bullshit because it's none of your damn business who I hired. That's not your job. That's my job. 0:17:34.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. Right. Well, because they're trying to get into the quality game. Like... So they want our disposition data so that they can put it into their database and be able to put like a quality marker on people. 0:17:45.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah, but if they had good tech in the first place and they knew what the requirements are, they can match those up against the candidates that they have in their database. They're trying to... It feels like they're trying to over engineer a solution so that they can get to your data. 0:18:02.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:18:03.2 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:18:03.3 Chad Sowash: And they're saying, hey, hey, guess what? This is how we fix the problem. It's like, no, it's not. The problem is up funnel, it's not down funnel. 0:18:11.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. It's not. No. 0:18:12.6 Chad Sowash: So I would assume that you're hearing a lot of that. Hey, we want the disposition data because it's going to be better for you. 0:18:18.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. Well, they... It's not... It's not even disposition data. It's data up and down the funnel. 0:18:24.1 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. 0:18:24.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Like, they want to see every... They want to see everything. And we're like, no, like it's... You cannot have... Like why would we give that to you? 0:18:35.3 Joel Cheesman: Sure. 0:18:35.8 Meghan Rhatigan: There's no benefit to us in you having it. 0:18:37.2 Chad Sowash: It doesn't make any sense other than they say it's better quality. And I'm like, no. 0:18:42.4 Meghan Rhatigan: That's... 0:18:43.0 Chad Sowash: Better quality is better matching. Go do your job. 0:18:45.2 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:18:46.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. 0:18:46.7 Joel Cheesman: So percentage wise, how much less are you spending on sort of traditional job boards? 0:18:52.3 Meghan Rhatigan: We've gone down about 30% this year and I... And I honestly, I want to be at 50% by next year easily. 0:18:59.7 Joel Cheesman: Yeah, 25 to 50 is where a lot of companies are landing, which is interesting. 0:19:04.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:19:05.0 Joel Cheesman: So a lot more organic, a lot more quality. What else are you doing organically? I know you guys have a really strong social media footprint. What are you doing organically and other ways to drive traffic and brand awareness. 0:19:16.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So utilizing our CRM, putting out campaigns around... So we've got this whole blog about life at Marriott. So like the realistic job preview, it's a big untapped market, I think, particularly for us in frontline. Like the reason why people quit, like the quick quits happen because they don't... They didn't know what they were getting into with the job. Not because like... 0:19:45.0 Chad Sowash: Expectations. 0:19:45.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Expectations. 0:19:45.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah. 0:19:46.4 Meghan Rhatigan: And so if we... As much as we can do upfront to set the expectations around like what the job is the better off we are because then we've got better quality coming in. People actually know what they're getting into and they're not going to quit. But it also helps us too, from an attraction standpoint to be able to target like, hey, these are the people who actually want a job with us. Like I don't... It's not about volume per se, even though, yeah, we got 10 million candidates. But I actually want the people who have an idea of what it's going to be like, are attracted to that and then apply having already seen some of that content. And so for us, that's really what we're trying to get into is like giving the people the expectation, having those people apply anyway and being able to track those people who see and engage with the content and be able to target those in terms of like who we're actually scheduling for an interview because we know that they want it. Yeah. 0:20:35.2 Chad Sowash: Well, we're starting to see, and we should have known anyway, but we're starting to see that transparency is a superpower. 0:20:41.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh, for sure. Yeah. 0:20:41.8 Chad Sowash: Because they know what the salary is. 0:20:43.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. 0:20:44.7 Chad Sowash: They know what the actual job is like. And we talked about like some of these startups that say, hey look, you're going to work 80 hours a week. And they say that upfront, and that's just so that you don't get in there and then the expectations are, what do you mean I'm going to be working 80 hours a week? Right. So it automatically allows you to self extract... 0:21:02.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Exactly. 0:21:03.4 Chad Sowash: You know, out of the whole process. So I mean it just, it makes more sense. And I mean even though we're... I mean we're looking at Europe and there's some regulations in the States being more transparent. It really feels like we're still moving in that direction. Even though employers have more power now just from the market dynamic, it still feels like we're moving that way. 0:21:24.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, and I was talking to Joel about this. I've got this idea in my head and I'm really, really excited about it and that's like designing for the disappointed. Because we've got, we spent a lot of time on the 1% meaning like putting our focus on what is our hiring experience for the people who actually get a job. But what about the 99% of people who don't? They're the ones who actually should be... We should be more transparent, transparent with them as to why, like what can they do better and stuff like that. So like totally agree with the transparency and even it's applicable not only to the people who are looking for the job and have an engage, but also the people who maybe got like halfway through the funnel and fell out. Why? Like they, they want to know why. And right now it's like a big black hole and it's a shitty experience for most people. So yeah. 0:22:14.2 Chad Sowash: Don't want that. 0:22:14.9 Meghan Rhatigan: No. 0:22:15.3 Joel Cheesman: And you... Are you guys using anything like Dalia to capture people that aren't... 0:22:19.7 Meghan Rhatigan: No. 0:22:20.1 Joel Cheesman: You're smiling as if you've gotten a pitch from them at some point. 0:22:22.7 Meghan Rhatigan: I have. Interestingly enough, I have. There's a couple... 0:22:25.3 Chad Sowash: I'm sure there aren't many that you haven't gotten a pitch from. 0:22:29.5 Meghan Rhatigan: True. 0:22:29.9 Joel Cheesman: We'll get to vendors in a second. 0:22:31.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. Oh gosh. Yeah. 0:22:32.8 Joel Cheesman: But capturing those people... 0:22:34.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:22:34.5 Joel Cheesman: Is something that you're talking about. 0:22:35.9 Meghan Rhatigan: But I... So I see the value and there... In Dalia. And there's, you know, there's a lot of companies who really benefit from them. I think for us, because of our database and the use of our CRM, it's not a need that we have and not an immediate need that we have to layer in an additional provider there. We can just use our CRM and kind of organically engage and keep track of them that way. But I'm not... I don't know. I don't need them quite yet. 0:23:02.8 Chad Sowash: Not there yet. 0:23:03.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Not there yet. 0:23:03.8 Chad Sowash: It's not priority. 0:23:04.9 Meghan Rhatigan: It's not a priority. Yeah. 0:23:05.6 Chad Sowash: What is priority? 0:23:08.2 Meghan Rhatigan: So for us, I would say that it's like, the experience has been a big thing. Our application is still a slog. I want to provide more transparency into our process. 0:23:22.3 Chad Sowash: So why is it still a slog? Because, you know it's a slog. 0:23:25.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, it's a slog. Because we've got... I would...We're attached to an HCM. 0:23:31.7 Chad Sowash: Okay. 0:23:33.0 Meghan Rhatigan: And the HCMs haven't necessarily put a lot of focus on... 0:23:38.3 Chad Sowash: Experience? 0:23:38.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Their experience. Right. And so for us, it's. It's looking at, is there a layer? Is there, like an overlay? Like, really, that's where my focus on. Like is there an experience layer that I can look at that would go over that ATS that I can't get rid of? I can't get rid of my ATS, but at least I can make my application experience a little bit better. Also, looking at the agent thing is really interesting to me. I'm not... Nobody's quite gotten there yet in terms of their ability to execute, but I'm really excited about agents and what it can do not only for the internal recruiting aspect, but also externally in the candidate experience. Like, it seems as though the agents have really evolved on the consumer side. 0:24:22.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:24:23.3 Meghan Rhatigan: But for us, on the HR recruiting side, they're just... They're really frustrating. And if... It's so interesting to me, the dichotomy between an agent that sits on a recruiting tech and how quickly you get to a roadblock there. But then when you engage with an agent that's on the consumer side, it seems... I mean, you can have a 15-minute conversation and not run into a roadblock because like, where are we... What's the gap? So that's... You know, that's... I went on a little tangent there, but it's like real frustrating me. It's like the technology exists. 0:25:02.4 Chad Sowash: Get there. 0:25:02.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Get there. 0:25:03.2 Chad Sowash: Get there. Yes. 0:25:04.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Get there. Yeah. So yeah, experience for me is what I'm focused on between agents and layers and all that. Yeah. 0:25:12.9 Joel Cheesman: Let's get political for a second. 0:25:14.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Oh boy. 0:25:15.4 Chad Sowash: Oh no. 0:25:16.0 Joel Cheesman: Obviously a lot of issues on... That are in the headlines affect you. 0:25:19.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:25:20.3 Joel Cheesman: Immigration, I'm sure you count on a lot of immigrants to do a lot of the jobs at your hotels. The attack on diversity. I know you guys are really focused on a diverse workforce. 0:25:30.0 Meghan Rhatigan: We are. Yep. 0:25:32.1 Joel Cheesman: I don't know if tariffs impact you. Like, what are some of the political topics that impact you guys on a great scale. 0:25:39.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So from a consumer perspective what we've seen... I mean, we have seen a slight, I mean very slight decline in international travelers, but it's been at kind of within our lower segments. So within our select service brands and what... Like our mid tier brands, our luxury haven't seen any impact really. It's kind of interesting. Like... 0:25:59.9 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah, rich people still have money, right? 0:26:01.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, rich people still travel. 0:26:02.3 Chad Sowash: It's everybody else, they're like, oh shit. 0:26:05.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Right, what is that? The $10 million visa? Like that... I mean you can go anywhere. But it's... So yeah, it's kind of interesting the divide that we've seen. From a diversity standpoint, we have not changed our stance on diverse hiring, nor will we. We've been committed to that since the very beginning. 0:26:27.3 Chad Sowash: Well, you hire... I mean you... When you hire, like Marriott hires, I mean, you look like the community. 0:26:33.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Exactly. 0:26:34.3 Chad Sowash: You look like the community. Right? 0:26:35.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. 0:26:36.0 Chad Sowash: So I mean, and I would assume, and I could be really wrong, that that was just blended into just the regular hiring practices anyway. 0:26:44.6 Meghan Rhatigan: It totally is and it's interesting. It's like, yes, of course, like we put focus on our diversity efforts. 0:26:51.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:26:52.1 Meghan Rhatigan: But it almost like came organically. Like there was a lot of organic... And that's actually what you want. Like, you know, that's the... The dream. Right? 0:27:02.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:27:02.8 Meghan Rhatigan: And so forth us, like we haven't changed it. We don't need to. We have a wonderful diverse workforce and we're going to continue to have one. 0:27:08.2 Chad Sowash: Right. 0:27:08.5 Joel Cheesman: We're at the Unleashed conference And Chad and I've talked to a lot of people. I know you have as well. 0:27:14.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:27:14.8 Joel Cheesman: And my takeaway is there are two schools of thought on the future of recruiting. 0:27:20.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:27:20.9 Joel Cheesman: And I can listen to both of them and agree with both of them. 0:27:23.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:27:24.3 Joel Cheesman: I'll lay them out for you. And I want to get your two cents on this. So one side is today 80% of recruiting can be done with automation, AI, etcetera. And that recruiting as we know it is going to be gone. There will be new jobs created, but what we know of recruiting today is going to be history. History sooner than we think. The other side of it is AI won't take your job. Someone who understands and can utilize AI will take your job and recruiting will just evolve to that reality. 0:27:58.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:27:58.5 Joel Cheesman: Where are you in that argument? 0:28:00.3 Meghan Rhatigan: I think it's both. I don't think it's... I don't think it's one or the other. I think you're going to see a combination depending on the workforce and who the company is hiring. So FedEx is already doing this. Right? So they've completely automated their hiring process for package handlers. Why? Because package handlers don't talk to anyone. They have a requirement to lift and, you know, that's about it. But for us, like we are in the hospitality industry, we have people who talk to guests. And so it's important for us to keep a bit of the human element there. Because we need to know whether or not they smile and they're nice and they're polished and whatever else we look for so that we wouldn't ever offer automate completely. And so we're on the latter camp. But like, there's a lot of other companies that probably would benefit fully and do fine from completely automating everything. So I don't necessarily think it's going to be a world where we see like 100% automation or like or not. It's really going to just depend on the company and at the end of the day, like who they're hiring and what they're looking for. 0:29:11.8 Chad Sowash: Right. 0:29:12.8 Meghan Rhatigan: And the degree of trust that they have in AI, like that's a whole nother thing. Like in the startup world, like they... There's a lot more comfort level with AI and so they're willing to take more risks. Just that's like embedded in who they are. Right? 0:29:27.8 Chad Sowash: Right. 0:29:28.1 Meghan Rhatigan: But for a company like us, it's like well established. Like our risk tolerance is really, really, really low. And so we've... It's funny because we set up this AI Council finally, but it's almost like they're looking for reasons not to use AI. 0:29:44.7 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. 0:29:45.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Instead of like helping us. 0:29:48.1 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:29:49.1 Meghan Rhatigan: It's like... It's like the... You know. 0:29:50.9 Chad Sowash: Are they a bunch of attorneys? That's the question. 0:29:52.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. 0:29:53.4 Chad Sowash: Okay, well that's the problem. 0:29:55.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Well, they're... They're part of it. But like, can you really have an AI Council without one? I don't know. But... 0:30:00.3 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Unfortunately you're right. 0:30:02.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So it's, it's just funny. We have to... It's like the five layers of no that you have to get through. 0:30:08.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:30:09.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Before actually introducing something. And so I... That's another part of it too. Like there's a lot of companies that are just never going to get there. 0:30:14.5 Joel Cheesman: Okay. So if I could summarize what you just said. 0:30:17.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:30:17.9 Joel Cheesman: There will be fewer recruiters. 0:30:19.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Yes. 0:30:20.1 Joel Cheesman: Some organizations will go fully automatic. 0:30:22.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:30:23.2 Joel Cheesman: Others, probably because of brand experience or things that humans need to be a part of it will not go fully automatic. 0:30:32.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:30:33.7 Joel Cheesman: I got it. Okay. I like it. 0:30:34.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:30:35.0 Chad Sowash: Well, and I like... I like it because we keep getting these black or white options and everything happens in the gray. 0:30:42.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:30:43.2 Chad Sowash: Right? So it's like, depending on like RTO, right? 0:30:47.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:30:48.4 Chad Sowash: You're... You had... Your employees had to come to the office anyway. Right? Because they had to come to a hotel. They had to do the job. Right? 0:30:54.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. Yeah. Right. 0:30:54.9 Chad Sowash: So you know what the culture is at Marriott now. The question is though, you have to run a steady balance of, yes you can't just hire everybody who comes through the door. 0:31:05.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:31:05.7 Chad Sowash: Right? Because they... Obviously you're a hospitality company, but you also have to be fast because speed kills. Right? And if your competitor gets to them faster, you're done. 0:31:14.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:31:14.4 Chad Sowash: So how do you balance that? That's going to be almost like a high wire act. 0:31:17.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So the way that we go about it is like, honestly, like I have a expectation on my recruiter, so I don't have AI screening. That's not something I've introduced yet. But I have a expectation of my recruiters that they move fast. Like I want them eyes on the application. That's a stacked rank by the way. Like I'm only having them look at qualified people within 24 hours. 0:31:41.2 Chad Sowash: Right. 0:31:41.6 Meghan Rhatigan: And then within that 24 hours, I want an interview request sent out. So interviews should be scheduled within 24 hours of the apply happening because otherwise... 0:31:51.3 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah, they're gone. They're gone. 0:31:52.4 Meghan Rhatigan: They're gone. They're completely gone. But once you get that one hook, like once you get the first engagement, then they're willing to stick with you. But even then from the time that we have that interview reach out to the time the interview is complete, no longer than three days. Like, it cannot be longer than three days. And then we want to get them hired and in the door within a week easily. And I think the biggest opportunity for us, it's like a totally unsexy topic, but freaking background checks take forever. 0:32:23.3 Chad Sowash: Really? 0:32:23.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh, God. Yeah. 0:32:26.2 Chad Sowash: Well, it blows my mind because a lot of these people already have background checks, and it's like you would assume that you could kind of have a repository. I know the background check companies are like, no, we want to continue to do more and more and more. But I mean, if that background check or the credentialing could actually stay with the individual and it's good for six months or what have you, you would think that there would be a fucking service for that. Right? 0:32:48.8 Meghan Rhatigan: You would think. Right. Exactly. But there's not. But to your point, that's how background checks make money. Like... You know. 0:32:53.8 Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. Well, like everything else, pay per click, they don't want to send you the best quality because they just want fucking clicks. Right? 0:33:00.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. 0:33:00.1 Chad Sowash: Or pay per app. You're going to get a ton of apps that just aren't qualified. So, yeah, I mean, it's like the model. 0:33:07.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Right. Exactly. Right. 0:33:07.8 Joel Cheesman: Totally. So in light of that. 0:33:09.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. 0:33:10.6 Joel Cheesman: I know that you use a lot of products. We're here in the Gem booth, which you're a customer of Paradox you mentioned. So you see a lot of products. I'm sure you have a lot of products that you wish existed. A lot of holes that you could fill that aren't out there yet. What would be on your wish list if you could wave a wand for products that you could use today? 0:33:31.3 Meghan Rhatigan: I would say agentic AI that actually works from the standpoint of... Okay. Here's my pipe dream. It's actually looking at the flow of work. Meaning I'm Meghan and I go and I get a job somewhere else. The system knows that I've left it pops up a message to my job. Hey, do you want to replace Meghan? 0:33:57.6 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:33:58.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes. Okay, great. The requisition's created, the job's posted. All I said was, yes. Candidates start coming through. They've been screened, they've been vetted, they're scheduled for an interview. I go from yes to interview. 0:34:13.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah. 0:34:13.6 Meghan Rhatigan: I engage, I do my interview. I get another thing. Do you want to send an offer out? Yes. Great. Another yes. 0:34:24.0 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. 0:34:24.5 Chad Sowash: Voice recognition and you're like on your phone and it's like, Meghan, would you like to... Yes. 0:34:31.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. I want to say yes twice and do an interview, hire someone. Like literally that's like... That's my dream. 0:34:39.4 Chad Sowash: That's... We should buy yestwice.com. 0:34:41.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes, exactly. 0:34:42.2 Joel Cheesman: Yestwice.com. 0:34:43.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Do you want to hire and do you want to offer. 0:34:45.5 Chad Sowash: Yestwice.com. 0:34:46.4 Joel Cheesman: There's a billion dollar idea just from that Meghan. 0:34:49.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Exactly. 0:34:51.4 Joel Cheesman: We are live at the Gem booth at Unleash in Las Vegas. Meghan, for those that want to know more about you, maybe apply to a job at Marriott. Where do they go? 0:35:01.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So careers.marriott.com. Find me on LinkedIn. Happy to engage, ask questions anytime. But it's been a pleasure gentlemen. Thank you. 0:35:09.7 Joel Cheesman: And these new Ritz-Carlton yacht, big yacht cruises. 0:35:12.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh yeah. 0:35:13.3 Joel Cheesman: If you could put in a good word for me, I'd appreciate that. 0:35:14.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Of course. Yeah. 0:35:16.1 Joel Cheesman: I'd appreciate that. 0:35:16.1 Chad Sowash: Don't do it. Don't do it. 0:35:18.1 Joel Cheesman: Chad that is another one in the can. 0:35:20.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. 0:35:21.1 Joel Cheesman: We out. 0:35:21.2 Chad Sowash: We out. 0:35:22.5 OUTRO: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast. The Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

Ready for a transatlantic romp through HR tech, football drama, and corporate clownery? In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Europe , Joel “Slaughterbot” Cheesman, Chad “Euro Chad” Sowash, and our favorite chicken-roasting Belgian, Lieven, go full Euro-snark on: ⚽ Chelsea’s surprise victory and why Lieven would rather talk Tour de France 🔥 Monster’s international meltdown—and Randstad/Apollo’s disappearing act 🇫🇷 HelloWork vs. Indeed: The battle for France, pride, and job board relevance 📉 Why some PE firms should come with a “contents may be stripped for parts” warning 💸 Three startups face the Buy or Sell gauntlet: MetaView, Traxlo, and Ordio. And yes, there’s a Coldplay sex scandal, reverse auctions for banana-checkers, and the best lemon chicken recipe this side of the Rhine. 💥 Come for the HR gossip, stay for the geopolitical smackdown and gratuitous Tour de France references.🇪🇺 It’s Eurotrash meets Talent Tech—what more do you want? 👉 Press play before your ATS gets ghosted by Indeed. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:38.062) Aww. Joel Cheesman (00:43.854) Yeah, finished with my woman because she couldn't help me with my mind. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel slaughterbot Cheesman. Chad (00:56.226) Chad, Euro Chad, Sowash. Lieven (00:48.123) I'm Lieven "My chicken is more succulent than your chicken" Van Nieuwenhuyze Chad (01:08.558) That sounds sexual. Joel Cheesman (01:08.942) And on this episode, indeed gets worked, the Spanish acquisition and a little buyer sell. Let's do this. Lieven (01:10.086) Yes, it does. Joel Cheesman (01:22.19) Succulent chicken leaving. Tell us more. Are you a breast guy or like a bone in? Oh. Chad (01:26.146) I don't know that I want to hear more. Lieven (01:31.61) Both, both. I go for the full option. Breasts and thighs and bone-in. Chad (01:32.726) yeah. I just go breast first and then bone in. Joel Cheesman (01:37.622) You Is the skin off or has it been cut off? Of course, European skin on skin on. get it. What's going on guys? What's going on? What's up in Europe to the two Europeans here? Lieven (01:44.614) It's on, it stays on. It's crispy. It's canon. Chad (01:52.526) Skin on the bone. Lieven (01:58.886) I just came back from not Europe, I'm back from holidays. wasn't, is it the United States? No, it's not United States. Martinique is, it's France, I know, but is it geographically spoken? it what continent is it? It's the Americas, I guess. Yeah, so it's across the pond. it's, I'm back to Europe now. So everything is okay. Chad (02:06.798) I'm not Martin Eek. Joel Cheesman (02:09.142) Artnick. Joel Cheesman (02:15.013) yeah, Central, Central America. Chad (02:15.276) I don't know. That's a question. Joel Cheesman (02:21.806) Geography lessons with Chad and cheese. Where is Martinique? Chad (02:21.985) Caribbean. Lieven (02:24.431) Yeah. Lieven (02:28.132) Hmm? Chad (02:28.17) Yes, or we're finally back from the from the UK and Joel was actually in Germany Both in the UK. So we're fine. Yeah fine finally back on I'm back in Portugal, but Joel's back across the pond other than that It's I think it's all good Joel Cheesman (02:34.998) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:44.27) Yeah, so Leaven's over here. Chelsea, Chelsea's over here hanging out with Trump on the on the victory stage. That was kind of awkward, huh? That was kind of weird. Apparently he took a medal. Did you see that? He like he snagged a medal. It's weird. Just just bizarre. Just bizarre. Congrats to Chelsea. I thought PSG was gonna was gonna roll him but no. Chad (02:48.204) Jesus Christ. Lieven (02:52.942) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:54.175) Chad (03:00.046) He steals shit, PSG was supposed to dismantle Chelsea and they had been just killing competition. yeah, that I mean they yeah, turn the tables man, turn the tables on on on PSG three nil Chelsea really really kicked it into high gear. Joel Cheesman (03:12.814) Well, they put it to Real Madrid, right? That was kind of like a big, big W for them. Joel Cheesman (03:26.136) Cole Palmer, two goals baby. Bring on, bring on the World Cup. The English squad baby, the English squad's gonna roll. Chad's like, I don't think so. No, no, that's probably not gonna happen. Okay, okay. Lieven (03:30.662) if Chad (03:31.537) Bring on the wor- Chad (03:37.214) No. No. We're missing, we're missing Jota, but we still have a pretty damn good squad down here in Portugal. Now Belgians, I mean, you guys, a couple of years ago were like a top shelf and it's withered since. What's going on in Belgium? Lieven (03:59.022) I don't know, I'm not following it, I don't care. Chad (04:00.686) See you don't get to see you're not giving them the support they need the support leaving Joel Cheesman (04:00.942) You Lieven (04:06.404) People, you're talking about soccer whilst the Tour de France is going on. This is something. Tour de France, cycling, yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:11.47) Tour de France. Chad (04:12.637) yeah, now that is. Okay, so tell us who's in the lead during the Tour de France. Joel Cheesman (04:16.6) Yeah, what's going on with the bike race leaving? Is a Belgian in first? Lieven (04:19.206) Ah, well, you stopped watching when Lance Armstrong was out of grace. Yeah, back in the day, since we haven't seen any Americans, I think. But, it's, it's, yeah. Chad (04:25.698) blood doping. Haha. Joel Cheesman (04:34.798) Remember Greg Lamont? Wasn't he a big time biker before? Yeah, Lamont. Chad (04:38.41) Le Mans Le Mans Lieven (04:40.549) Now it's Pogacar is going to win I guess. But we had a great Belgian but he just left the tour. had to give up. We won't get into that. no, that won't do it. Chad (04:51.062) I think it's been a while since Armstrong or we've really had, think, top Americans on the Tour de France. But going beyond that, think Europe is just getting stronger. And there are probably two people, maybe more, but two main people, I think, that we can go ahead and either blame or attribute that to, one being Trump and the other one being Putin. Joel Cheesman (04:51.074) Beltings don't give up. What? Lieven (05:18.36) Not challengeable, Chad (05:19.694) Not chenjol. No, we we we make it great. We've been making it great for years. Yes But Putin obviously start to kinetic war with Ukraine the EU pulls together and then something unheard of happens Finland and Sweden joins NATO Trump starts at economic war with Europe and the EU pulls together and the unheard of happens again the EU's trust rating goes through the roof. It's the highest it's been in 20 years. and Trump Joel Cheesman (05:22.082) I like where your head is though. I like. Lieven (05:25.573) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:46.189) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:49.484) threatening to invade Greenland probably didn't help anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy not to mention Europe is working to sign a bunch of different trade agreements with countries like Mexico, South Korea and Indonesia. while we're having this bullshit trade battle economic war, it seems like the Canadians and the Europeans are really trying and to be quite frank, the Chinese, unfortunately, are also just kind of clean sweep in this thing. Lieven (05:53.582) Incredible. Joel Cheesman (06:19.138) I think the Europeans have figured out how to speak Trump. When they call him daddy at the NATO meetings, he really, really likes that. He really likes being called daddy. Chad (06:22.83) Hahaha! Lieven (06:25.186) my god. That's disgusting. Chad (06:32.27) that's good. That's good. Joel Cheesman (06:32.461) good things in Europe, good things here. Well, a of things to talk about guys. Shall we get to shout outs? Lieven (06:33.167) No. Chad (06:41.12) It is. Hit it. Joel Cheesman (06:42.872) So I got one guys, you probably saw the it's it's burning up the HR feeds everywhere. the Coldplay concert with the CEO and the head of HR, getting, caught. but in full Oasis Liam Gallagher fashion, he, had this to say it their latest concert. Chad (06:48.078) No stop. Chad (07:07.33) Hit it again. Lieven (07:23.462) god. Joel Cheesman (07:30.872) That's right. full Liam fashion, that's what he had to say about the Coldplay controversy. Chad (07:36.206) Shout out to those two. Oh, by the way, the astronomer CEO has since resigned. Lieven (07:36.976) Thank Joel Cheesman (07:45.356) I bet he has his shares. I bet he still has his shares. Lieven (07:45.892) Am I the only one who feels sorry for the guy? I mean, everyone is making fun of him, but who am I to judge what he's doing? Chad (07:53.868) Yeah, mean, that's I mean, there there are always and let's go ahead and throw this out there. There are always little escapades that happen within the the office. Right. There's there's cheating that happens inside the office outside of the office. Do you condone it? No. Is it any my fucking business? No. So, yeah, watching it on a big screen and then pretty much watching their lives. It's like, do we not have anything? Lieven (08:12.57) No? Chad (08:20.408) better to fucking worry about. mean, the world's on fucking fire and we're worried about a Coldplay concert and two people who are, you know, doing dancing between the sheets. mean, this is the problem with human beings today. We care about shit that we should not and we don't care about the shit that we should. Anyway, rando. Lieven (08:32.591) You Joel Cheesman (08:41.294) but it's juicy for our space, let's admit that. when HR, like if you're gonna have an affair, it might as well be HR. I mean, who is she gonna report you to? She's HR. Like it can't go anywhere else. Like, I mean, if you're gonna do it, you might as well go to HR for your affair, I say. Lieven (08:44.358) Chad (08:49.358) Yeah. Lieven (08:50.022) I mean. Lieven (08:55.524) That nature is a human business, the man was doing. Chad (08:55.694) They're they're they're they're two grown adults. Yeah, they're two grown adults. If they if they if they weren't doing retaliation against somebody else or, you know, treating people unfairly, who gives a fuck who they're fucking? I mean, I don't know. That's my personal opinion. Joel Cheesman (08:58.793) they got human, all right. They got human. They got human. Lieven (09:12.88) Yeah, I share it. Chad (09:16.342) Joel doesn't, he loves the juicy stuff. Joel Cheesman (09:17.642) I don't ca- I s- I don't- Lieven (09:18.086) Okay. Joel Cheesman (09:21.528) I mean, our space is off just out, just out of their minds. Like this is a huge topic for our, our industry. Yeah. I get it. And she's still there. So like they're, they're trying to figure out, can we fire her? We probably can't. I mean, it's a lot of HR layers going on with this, with this thing. Chad (09:25.454) Yeah, it's a thing. Yeah. Well, yes. Yes, because again, we're stupid. Chad (09:37.282) Yeah. So off to my shout out, something that does matter. This week, my shout out goes to Monster Europe and the other international Monster Worldwide properties. These Monster properties weren't just job boards. Many were cornerstones of the labor market for many of the countries that they operated in. They helped millions of people find work. They supported thousands of companies. And now Monster can't even pay their own damn employees. What's truly disgusting is that Ronstadt and Apollo, the corporate overlords raking in billions of dollars, are walking away like nothing even happened. No financial support, no transition help, no basic human decency, just cold calculated abandonment. This isn't just mismanagement, it's corporate cowardice. Monster deserved better and monster's people. who actually did the hard work deserve better. So shout out to all of those workers all over the world that made Monster happen on a daily basis. yeah, Ronstadt and Apollo, you guys fucking suck. Joel Cheesman (10:48.66) escalated quickly. Chad (10:50.366) Hahaha Leaving, you have a chicken shout out? What are you doing? Lieven (10:55.526) No checking shout outs later Joe later we're going to stick Joel Cheesman (10:57.602) Yeah, what's the recipe? Give us the recipe. What do do? You put a little little little leaving love on it. Little lemon maybe a little. Chad (11:02.893) He can put it on his LinkedIn. Lieven (11:05.35) I of course you have to you have to put the lemon inside the chicken before putting it in the oven so it gets all juicy and tangy and whatever but I'm going to focus now on my shout out I love it you have to punch or some little holes in the lemon so the juice can come out but anyways anyways we're talking about my shout out and my shout out goes to another product of Finland so we're not talking about NATO this time but we're talking about Mina Malari Joel Cheesman (11:11.394) Yeah. Squeeze the lemon. Yeah, got it. Chad (11:30.318) Hmm. Lieven (11:33.136) who is the new executive director of the World's Employment Confederation. So this is like the federation above the national federations and they're trying to do some public affairs to lobby for our business, for our industry. So the staffing industry, tamping. And she's focusing on not getting strangled by even more regulation. And she's got impeccable taste because her first move was asking me to chair the whole global HR tech task force. Yes, it was I. Chad (11:33.2) okay. Chad (12:00.713) stop that. Lieven (12:03.106) She asked me and I said, yes, I said yes. So I think it's a smart start, Mina. Thank you so much. And we definitely need her. She make a very good impression. We love Mina. Lieven (12:17.283) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:17.71) Congratulations, Leaven. Congratulations. Chad (12:19.592) That's awesome, Levin. Good job, man. Lieven (12:20.282) Thank you. Joel Cheesman (12:28.43) All right, lots to go through today, guys, or this week. Hello Work, a French recruitment marketplace, is suing Indeed for cutting off its applicant tracking system, something we talked about a few weeks ago. Job fee without any warning whatsoever. The move, which affected multiple recruitment sites globally, occurred after Indeed changed its ATS XML feeds. Chad, your thoughts on Hello Work striking back. Chad (12:53.836) Yeah, mean, gone are the days where we just had job boards and we just had applicant tracking systems and everything was divided. I mean, we're starting to see ecosystems that are being created. Hello Work is one of those. They have an applicant tracking system. They have a job board. have different modules. Same as Harry, same as many of these organizations are doing this now. Right. But this isn't about that. It's about control for Indeed. Indeed took control away from the job boards. years ago. took control away from staffing companies years ago. Indeed is now taking control away from agencies, recruitment marketing agencies. And next, listen up employers, Indeed will take away your control as well. Don't give them your disposition data because it's none of their damn business who you hire. I remember back in the day when Andy McKelvey was still alive, he headed up TMPU Worldwide. Now, Raidency. But back in the early 2000s, Andy wanted monster job postings to be a thousand dollars a piece. Right. And that was the thing. He said that to everybody. He wanted to be able to control the market and he wanted to be able to control the price and get it up to a thousand dollars. Right. Well, if indeed get your data, Mr. and Mrs. employer hiring company, if they get your data, they can charge you whatever they damn well. please. And it's like lambs to the slaughter. I mean, we really have to support organizations like Hello Work and continue pointing out the evil bullshit that indeed is pretty much pulling on a daily basis. Hello Work, I'm in your corner. We should probably get them on the show and do a top to bottom on this. Lieven (14:36.422) you Joel Cheesman (14:41.144) I like that. And thanks for the history lesson, Chad. I've got one for my one, one, one, one as well. So let's go back to say 2010. I was working with job boards and I was in the industry and I remember specifically a day where all the, organic free job board traffic at indeed basically stopped. Chad (14:45.358) you Chad (14:51.212) Uh-huh. Chad (15:03.576) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:05.4) They were pushed down to page nine, 10, 11 of the search results. All the top results were either people paying indeed, were direct employers, going, going right to the, the ATS. And there was an uproar of like, can't you do something? Can't we like, can't we fix this? And it's like, no, you can't. This is a private company. It's not a public service. They're not doing this for the good of the community. Like this is a decision that they could have made and you should have seen it happening. Lieven (15:28.835) you Joel Cheesman (15:34.924) You should have seen this coming from historical purposes. So this is just indeed being indeed like they continue this onslaught of like screwing over people after they've serviced them or benefited them for many, many years. And this is the next round of big screw from indeed and hello work. God bless them. They'll go to court. I'm sure this is the number one and two player in France, indeed, and HelloWorks. This is kind of a clash of the Titans in France, so it should be interesting. But I will defer us back to Job Index, a job board out of the Netherlands, I think, who tried to sue Google for jobs, saying that they were a monopoly, that they were screwing over the industry. Of course, we said that's bullshit because, you know, you don't have to be in Google. don't like, you don't have to be in the index. And they lost. to Google for jobs. if this goes to court, if this goes to some kind of, you know, body in France, I have a hard time imagining that indeed is going to get screwed on this and have to reverse course. think Hello Work is probably wasting its time and should be doing other things to try to submit its market share because this is the wrong tree to bark up. Monceau. Lieven (16:54.874) Hmm. Hmm. It's not like this is Coke versus Pepsi. It's Amazon versus your neighborhood shop. mean, they're pretty big. HelloWorks pretty big in France, but it's only in France. And Dita is worldwide and Dita's revenue of about I think 5 billion or something where Joel Cheesman (16:57.004) Mosse. Chad (17:14.818) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (17:15.107) Yeah. Lieven (17:22.742) I think Hello Work has 90 million. So this is a totally different league they're playing in. So they can hire the best lawyers. They probably will still lose or it will just take years and then nothing will happen. But I think indeed doesn't really care. You complain, but you'll still pay and you need something like that. But in the end, think Hello Work can play Robin Hood and definitely in France, they will be the winner because their clients will support Hello Work and they will Joel Cheesman (17:29.102) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (17:40.942) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:47.854) Mm-hmm. Lieven (17:51.278) step away from Indeed. And it's an ecosystem. Just Hello Work is an ecosystem, like Indeed is an ecosystem. It's Indeed just is becoming a new paying channel like all the others. If there's no free zone anymore, then why should you pay them if someone else can fill in the gap? And I think Hello Work will be the big winner. So just in France maybe, but it's a start. Joel Cheesman (17:57.646) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:15.582) I do like the market power kind of like antitrust angle as well, whether it actually wins or not. If you play that in the market with PR and you're pushing that, right, that means something. mean, Google, that was, we talked about that on the show for probably three or four times for God's sakes. Job Index did a shitty job in setting that whole argument up. In this case, Lieven (18:19.11) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (18:27.97) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (18:37.41) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:44.962) I don't think so. mean, they've been cut clean out of Indeed. So who knows? I mean, it's great from a narrative standpoint, hopefully for hello work. And much like you said, Levin, the French love the French and they love French business, right? So I think there's a great opportunity for them to spend this again from a PR standpoint, hopefully get something going on in the courts, but from the PR standpoint and actually more revenues. Joel Cheesman (18:48.706) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (19:00.344) Mm-hmm. Lieven (19:01.19) Absolutely. Chad (19:12.642) People are going to move with their feet and they're not Franks anymore, but they're Euros. Lieven (19:18.106) No euros, yeah. That's right. Joel Cheesman (19:19.138) Yeah, that's, that's a great point, leaving. mean, if, if, if they know they're not going to win a court case, but they're going to win the PR battle, then this is a great move because not only will I assume French companies, you know, sort of back the nationalistic, overtones of that, but also the job seekers. If you pitch it to the job seekers of like, support a French business, support French companies, this big. Chad (19:27.49) Mm-hmm. Lieven (19:39.27) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (19:45.462) nasty American companies coming in and pushing us around. think that's a message that the French will certainly embrace. But the only question I would have is how many, how many of the customers at Indeed France are international and could give a shit about French nationalism. They just want to bodies, which I think is why it's important to go after the job seekers. But yeah, as a PR move, this is not bad. This is not bad. As a legal case, I don't like it. I don't like it very much. I don't like it very much. Lieven (20:11.792) Hmm. No, but I think the money they're expanding on lawyers will be like some marketing budgets. It might work. It'll give them some attention. Joel Cheesman (20:20.674) Yeah. Following a lawsuit probably, it's a probably pretty good. mean, they're getting a lot of headlines, I assume in France and the business sections and whatnot. So yeah, more power to them. We'll keep an on this one, guys. We'll keep an eye on, on this one, but until then let's play some buyer sell, shall we? It's been a while. All right. Let's take a break after all this French nationalism talk. And when we get back, when we get back, we'll do a little buyer sell. Lieven (20:28.432) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:36.462) Let's take a break first. Let's take a break. Lieven (20:36.856) Yeah. Chad (20:42.574) You Lieven (20:42.828) you Joel Cheesman (20:53.454) All right, guys, who's ready for a little buy or sell? That's right. If you don't know how we play the game, if you don't know how we play the game, we talk about three companies that have recently gotten funding and each of the boys on the panel here will either buy or sell. Let's play. First up is London based MetaView. Chad (20:57.186) Leaving is... Lieven (20:58.393) I am. Chad (21:00.317) buying chicken. Lieven (21:02.454) and Joel Cheesman (21:14.39) an interview intelligence platform. raised 30 million euros in funding led by GV, bringing its total funding to 43 million euros. The company plans to triple its team and open office and you guessed it, the USA, specifically San Francisco. Chad, are you a buyer sell on MetaView? Chad (21:35.992) First off, the founder's great. The guys got great charisma, good on stage, but I don't see a moat for a startup like this. Note takers are a dime a dozen, but I want to be able to compare MetaView to a piece of software that we are using right now during this podcast, Riverside. Now, MetaView, for only $50 a month, the pro note taker works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, WebEx. has GDPR and CCPA compliance, works with phone calls, SOC 2, unlimited conversations, unlimited history, unlimited members, advanced search filtering, and centralized billing. That's an important one. My favorite actually is GDPR and CCPA compliance along with SOC 2 because it's like saying you have food in your restaurant. Yeah, no shit. You have SOC 2, GDPR. Of course, right? Anyway, so now let's take a look at this podcasting platform that we're using right now called Riverside. Up to 4K video quality, high audio quality, magic audio clips. It's literally they take the audio and the video, make clips in one click, AI transcriptions over a hundred languages, AI generated show notes, magic clips with editing controls. Joel Cheesman (22:42.648) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:03.182) AI voice teleprompter. mean, it goes on and on and on kids. Guess how much? Half the price of MetaView. Right. This technology, which does all that shit, right, is half the price of the note taker we know as MetaView. So, yes, it's very basic for $50 a month while the rest of the world is doing audio, video, note taking, transcriptions, audio, AI voiceovers at half the price. So for me, it's a sell. great guy, great charisma, but there's no moat. And what really does this thing do? Joel Cheesman (23:41.106) Ouch, ouch. So I'm a little biased here. Full disclosure, I'm an advisor to Bright Hire, which is the Coke to the Pepsi of Metaview. I agree. We did a firing squad a while back. Chad, I think you sold, I think I bought, or maybe it's a golf clap. But anyway, I love that you're staying firm on that stance. Chad (23:54.499) Mm. Joel Cheesman (24:06.754) For me, it's really hard because I'm an advisor to the competitor. So I'll sort of look at the overall business in and of itself. There are going to be some companies and we've talked about them that are going to go full AI, full automation, full chat bot, like humans are more or less out of the picture. However, you're going to get a segment of the population that still wants human beings to be part of the interview process and note taking and sharing with, collaborating with coworkers and whatnot. Chad (24:19.886) Mm. Joel Cheesman (24:36.672) I do think this is more of a feature than it is an actual, just a standalone product. So I think both of these guys are going to be acquired by an ATS or somebody, somebody's going to come along and add this to, the feature set. so for that purpose, I love a good wave chat, you know, I love a good wave. So for me, Meta view, and this, this trend is a buy. Chad (24:42.296) Good point. Lieven (25:01.894) Thank Chad (25:03.15) You just had $35 million of dilution, by the way. Go ahead. Sorry. Joel Cheesman (25:03.31) Break the tie, Levin. Joel Cheesman (25:08.448) It's a lot of money to get sold. agree. Who's going to pay up the money for that? guess we'll see. Lieven (25:08.582) Thank Lieven (25:12.613) That's a start. That's a start. Chad (25:14.126) Also dilution, Lieven (25:18.296) Okay, so what do they offer? They have an AI note taker, they have AI reports, funnels optimization dashboards, whatever AI answers. It's like a Q &A on candidates. They have AI job posts. They have tons of things we already have and we made ourselves and it didn't take too long to do it. So it's pretty easy to copy this. It's pretty easy to launch it, but for $50 a month, why would you do it yourself? That's a good thing. So they offer something, they've done it, it works. Chad (25:37.134) Mm-hmm. Lieven (25:48.006) You can use it, $50, at least try it. So that's great. But the only reason why I would buy it is, and they're probably from a legal point of view, not able to do this, but they have recorded 3 million interviews already. This data interests me because you could create a AI recruiter based on that data. If you have tons and tons and tons of interviews, and you can use that to have an AI study on, then you have the perfect recruiter. And this is something which interests me. Chad (26:10.2) Mm-hmm. Lieven (26:17.402) But I guess within the European Union, they're just not allowed to use the data, which is something we can. In our company, we have hundreds of thousands of interviews ourselves, but these are our interviews with our candidates, and we need to use them. So we are working on something like this, but they have more data because they have many more companies and their clients. I need to look into this. It's interesting. But as I see it right now for me, it's a sell. Chad (26:30.264) Yes. Lieven (26:45.286) It's too easy to copy if not something we need. Joel Cheesman (26:52.238) All right. That's two, that's two selling one by for our first couple. Let's go to our second everybody tracks low, a Lithuanian platform, transforming physical labor into verifiable tasks has raised 1.6 million euros to expand its paper task labor infrastructure across Europe. Tracks low says it has already delivered over 300,000 tasks and is expanding into the Czech Republic and Romania. Chad, are you a buyer sell on tracks low? Lieven (26:52.558) We'll see. Chad (26:58.232) Tracks low. Chad (27:21.228) I love Lithuania. yeah, I think I still have some. Yeah, Lithuania, Romania, Czech. Okay, so to me, this is like welcome to TaskRabbit 2.0. Tracks, low touts, hyper flexible staffing for dynamic needs, pay for performance, pretty cool with the task-based payments and reduce. Joel Cheesman (27:21.942) And did you wear track slow back in the eighties, like all the other, all the other poor kids. Joel Cheesman (27:36.514) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:48.59) carbon footprint with local gig workers. love how they throw the carbon footprint in there. Traxlo is also going heavily after retail and warehouse operations. I like the idea for pulling people in for outcomes-based projects. But my fear is that companies will try to run a business this way. And at least in the US, people don't want these jobs in the first place. at least the warehouse jobs. And knowing that huge companies are trying to automate and roboticize these operations, there will be fewer and fewer and fewer of these jobs available. So I love gig work, side hustle opportunities for people to make a little extra cash on the side, but I'm not sure they're hitting the right industries. you know, it feels like just bad timing for me. So again, I can't wait. As a matter of fact, I'm planning a trip to Lithuania. And maybe I can talk to the track slow people, but until then it's a sell for me Joel Cheesman (28:50.156) And if you get a pair of tracks lows, make sure you pick up a pair for me. Would you love me? Love me some tracks lows. it's an interesting concept. It's sort of gig work, in the real world. And I don't think I ever sort of like we think about seasonal work and UPS needs a ton of people because Christmas and Amazon needs a ton of people, which they hire for seasonally, but Chad (28:50.861) You Chad (28:54.479) I will, I will. You Chad (29:16.845) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:18.444) the jobs this company started outlining, I never really thought of as like, yeah, you need shit like that. Like people that go into grocery stores and check expiration dates for everything. That might not be something you want your, you know, full time employee doing, but if you can like contract that out, you know, once or twice a week to come in and check the milk. Another one is like e-grocery picking up, like go get some bananas and likes. So these jobs that you don't think of being contract, I think is pretty genius. If you can get traction on this track slow. Think about how many baby boomers are leaving the workplace and will quickly realize that they need they need money. Well, these people can't go to Upwork and start developing or building banner ads for you know, for for companies, but they can sure go in, you know, granny can go into to the Kroger and check the bananas and what's expiring and she she's probably pretty good at it as it is because she did that for a living. So I think this is a hell of an idea. I'd love to see it come into play here. I think it's different than then TaskRabbit TaskRabbit is like, Hey, my my toilets overflowed, which never happens to me, by the way, Chad. Lieven (30:31.236) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:31.501) Good plunger. Joel Cheesman (30:31.906) The toilet stopped up. need some help with that. This is a little bit different. So I like, I like this idea quite a bit. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it a bye everybody. I'm gonna give it a bye. Chatting or leaving another tiebreaker, baby. Lieven (30:47.412) so it's up to me again, nice. You referred to gig work, I immediately thought about Fiverr. It's a weird idea in fact. It's like, labor is broken into micro jobs and they're offered on a first come first serve for a priority basis and paid per results, not per hour. So it's like Fiverr where you can say, I will develop your logo. And then people can, I do it for 20 euros, I can do it for 15, et cetera. So you have kind of erosion of salaries. And to me, the whole concept where it's first come first serve basis, it's a bit medieval. Am I pronouncing it right? Medieval? It's like back in the days, mean, the Lord of the Manor came to the town square and he said, I need 20 people today. And then the people could introduce himself. Okay, I'll take you, you and you. Chad (31:15.405) Yep. Yep. Lieven (31:40.25) Let's go and work on the field. Okay. And now it's like the same thing, but it's a product manager with a dashboard and your competitor as a candidate might be a shelf stocking robot, something like that. I will be really interested the moment they add a reverse auction system. So allow open bidding where multiple workers compete to win the job by offering to do it cheaper. Then it's totally evil. So I've got a job, I will do it for 18 euros. I can do it for 16, I can do it for 15. Okay, you got the job. It's disgusting in fact. It's like your digital sweatshop, something like that. Raise to the button indeed. But Evo often works, so for me it's a buy. Chad (32:18.221) race to the bottom. Joel Cheesman (32:19.128) Disgusting. Joel Cheesman (32:26.562) You Chad (32:27.05) Ha ha! Joel Cheesman (32:32.258) Sorry, I gotta keep that one going there. Lieven (32:33.478) Good. Chad (32:35.413) as we were talking about. Joel Cheesman (32:37.646) That whole, that whole time I had my finger on like the cell button and then he just did a one 80 and like, like evil by by all right. Yeah, it's not, it's not thunderdome where these old people fight each other to check bananas. Anyway, let's go to audio, German based audio, a people operating system for deskless industries raised 12 million euros to launch quote. Lieven (32:41.996) Hahaha Chad (32:42.271) I love it. Lieven (32:46.446) It's like... It's like the Minions. Chad (32:57.773) or a Dio. Joel Cheesman (33:05.314) payroll plus an automated payroll solution for you guessed it deskless workers. The platform designed for hospitality, healthcare, and retail aims to revolutionize payroll automation by integrating real time processing of bonuses, legal requirements, and those pesky tax complexities. Chad, are you a buyer sell on ordio? Chad (33:26.669) It's interesting. mean, in the US, we've heard, you know, this tackle or this problem being tackled left and right. But I also love that the founder was the owner who managed 135 employees at a sushi ninja restaurant. What a great name. A restaurant chain sushi ninja. I love it. But remember, kid, most founders that crash and burn. Lieven (33:45.018) Excellent. Chad (33:54.862) have great ideas on paper, but they need industry know-how to actually make it happen. So do I think managing deskless workers payroll quickly and simply is a problem today? Yes. But here's the math. The highest subscription tier is 149 euros per location per month, which is a poultry 1,788 euros a year for one location. Joel Cheesman (33:59.342) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:19.189) Ordeo says they have 1,500 companies using the platform. So that's 2.6 million euros per year. So yes, there might be some other locations, but my point is that for 1,788 euros a year, a hospital, how many employees does a hospital have? A hospital has shift planning, time recording, team terminal, tablets. broadcast push notifications checklist tap maybe there's an employee app there's all this stuff wage and rules and bonuses absences and requests I mean there's all this stuff that you get for $1,788 a month per location okay ADP ADP has revenues of 19 billion dollars USD most of which is their payroll product audio needs to stay affordable I agree but change into an active profile model that charges on the amount of individuals using the system. So in this case, getting paid through the system. The current model is a loss leader until they change it. I mean, it's a sell for me. So sorry, sorry, Ordeo. If you change the model, give me a call. But until then, leaving a lot of money on the table. Joel Cheesman (35:39.052) Interesting. Chad, do remember the old SNL Belushi skit where he came out as a samurai and he was a chef and he would like slash the table and like, that's so anyway, I'm sorry, old guy stuff. Go look it up on YouTube kids. I love these, I do love these European companies that sort of look at, at us based or companies that are getting like tens, hundreds of like big, big money. Chad (35:45.921) Yeah. Chad (35:54.669) Sushi Ninja. Joel Cheesman (36:06.67) to do this work. And when I look at this, I think of, I think of Harry raising 43 million fountain, a hundred million beekeeper, 35 million. And these guys come in, you know, with a fraction of that. And so many of these European businesses feel like poor man's fill in the blank, poor man's paradox, poor man's fountain, poor man's whatever. And I think it fits with the, continent and the culture. We talked about. France being in love with France. And I think Europeans in general are love with Europeans. And if a business can come along that's European based, I know a lot of people feel weird about the Germans and German based companies, but I think that if you can come in at a lower price point, you understand the culture, you service your clients better than maybe an American company can. I think you have a real chance to be successful. I I love the idea of managing deskless workers. There's a ton of them in Europe, over a hundred million people work in deskless jobs in Europe, capture a fraction of that. And I think you have a business, I think they can grow into many more products and features. think this is a potential platform that they can grow, grow that market share and grow that dollar per client. so for me, man, I'm, I'm down. I think I'm down with, with, with audio. I'm a buy. I'm a buy. Chad (37:26.445) That's three buys from Joel. He is in a happy mood. Joel Cheesman (37:28.64) It's summer. I got a pool in the backyard. Leaven's chicken is getting me all hot and bothered. Yeah, I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood. Lieven (37:28.884) Nice! Lieven (37:35.024) Thank you. Chad (37:37.165) Is is leaving chicken is that code for something? Lieven (37:38.02) Nice one. We'll get back to that later. Joel Cheesman (37:41.89) You got to ask Levin. His wife comes home. Are you fixing chicken tonight? Chad (37:43.223) You Lieven (37:47.364) Hmm. Chad (37:48.597) I could see you, you and him at a Coldplay concert. that, Joel Cheesman (37:49.666) Another night, I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight. Lieven (37:54.818) My chicken is your favorite chicken. Anyways, Joel, you were saying something and mostly I totally agree with you, but not in this case. said European, French like the French people like buying French stuff, which is totally right. But Europeans not necessarily like Europe. mean, we in Western Europe, think we used to think, and I definitely do not, but on general, we think in Eastern Europe, there are alcoholics and the South of Europe, they're all lazy. And the Norths are just arrogant assholes. So. We would buy Western European stuff. I would buy something in Germany because the Germans are whatever. I would definitely not buy this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this. And they're probably following the rules. So I don't need to check if they're GDPR compliant. They definitely will be GDPR compliant, et cetera. And I might buy something in the Netherlands because they speak the same language as we do. Joel Cheesman (38:33.014) Efficient. Efficient is the word I think you were looking for. Joel Cheesman (38:44.742) huh. Lieven (38:49.934) I might buy something in the UK because that's almost America and we still do kind of look up to America. French from time to time, France comes up with something cool. So that might work as well, but there it ends. I would not think about buying something in Spain or in, in, in, Portugal because it's Spain or Portugal. That's like a different role to us. It's Europe, but like you always say, Europe has got a bunch of countries in it. So I don't think that's. Yeah. It's not an argument to me. Joel Cheesman (39:14.04) A lot of countries. Lieven (39:19.224) Anyways, but I was following what Chet was saying that Coyin Hoffa, the guy who launched this tool, he owns a chain of restaurants. And that makes all the difference because the guy isn't some kind of an HR tech tourist. He was desperately looking for software to manage his own systems and he couldn't find it. So in the end, he decided to develop it himself. So he had it developed. Chad (39:38.903) Mm-hmm. Lieven (39:46.18) And then probably in the end, costed like 10 times as much as they promised them. So he needed to find a way to get it paid back. So he decided on commercializing it. I think it went something like that. And so he knows what he needs because he's in the business. So I guess the product will do what most of these kinds of companies needs. And then Dasklerzka is booming. It's over 100 million workers in Europe. So the market is big enough. It's a... Joel Cheesman (39:57.048) Uh-huh. Lieven (40:16.184) It's something many people need and if it works and he knows what he's doing and he's got enough money to to market it, why not? So I think it's a buy for me. Even though I think... I always think that payrolling is very boring but in this case it could be a good thing. Joel Cheesman (40:32.878) Boring is profitable, typically. Chad (40:33.247) It's, it is if he raises his prices. Lieven (40:37.958) he will in the end. Joel Cheesman (40:39.754) I was trying to think as he was talking what the equivalent would be in the States. I don't buy from Southerners because they're a bunch of redneck idiots. Like, could you get away with that? Chad (40:47.649) That's the big difference. That's the big difference is we don't have the history that they have, right? We did have a war North and South, although it's all just one country. We don't even think of where it's manufactured anymore. Lieven (40:51.238) Bye. Joel Cheesman (40:53.88) That's right. We did have a war, but, but yeah. Lieven (40:59.322) Bye bye. Joel Cheesman (41:00.322) Yeah, if Montana and Washington went to battle, I could see them having some bad feelings towards each other. Chad (41:04.481) Yeah. Lieven (41:06.031) But I can imagine people saying the manga people are not buying from Democrats or anything. That's something else. Joel Cheesman (41:11.438) Sure. Sure. Sure. That's why Chad has so many MyPillow products in his house because he loves that guy. All right. Let's get to the acquisition news guys. The EQTX fund has agreed to acquire Adventa's Spanish operations, which include info jobs and other traditional classifieds like real estate. Chad (41:12.993) Yeah, do that for a minute. Lieven (41:21.926) All right. Chad (41:22.637) Nobody ever, yes. Chad (41:28.919) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (41:37.81) EQT plans to support growth through product development, improved user experience, and enhanced AI and technology infrastructure, utilizing its experience in the online classified sector and established presence in Spain. Expected to close in Q1 of 2026. EQTX is anticipated to be 60 to 65 % invested following the deal. Chad, your thoughts on EQTX and Adventa. Chad (42:06.721) having PE buy a job site. It'll be interesting. I think whether you have new leadership or obviously new buyers, in this case, PE, PE follows a pretty, pretty easy playbook where they come in, they're going to look at stuff, they're going to cut the hell out of stuff, mainly headcount. And then they're going to look at where money's being spent on what projects are gonna look at the roadmap and look at all that stuff. Hopefully they have the mindset that they can build something for the future because they're just gonna look at the sell up three to five years anyway. And let's hope it's not like either a monster or career builder scenario where literally they sell it off as pieces or they they just drain it so badly that it just doesn't have the kick that it used to. So hoping, hoping they do the right thing. They actually build a job site for the future. But I don't know, it's hard when PE comes in. Joel Cheesman (43:06.231) Joel Cheesman (43:17.59) Yeah, hope. Hope is not a strategy people. You can hope that they're going to, I love the press release growth and product development, improved user experience and enhanced AI. They don't give a fuck about any of that shit. Guys. Listen, listen, if you're, if you're an employee at, at Adventa, if you're an employee, re refresh the LinkedIn profile, go to, maybe go to your own job site and see what kind of opportunities are out there because, because hell is coming people. Chad (43:20.119) That's not. Chad (43:31.031) You Joel Cheesman (43:47.438) They're going to gut this thing. They're going to sell it for parts. going to, they're going to cut heads. Like we've seen this movie so many times in this space. So do yourself a favor. have nothing else to add in terms of what Chad said, except if you are employed by this organization, get the hell out, get the hell out. The sooner the better. Chad (43:56.173) Mm-mm. Lieven (44:09.282) except of course if you have some shares then wait until the private equity leaves and then you can greedily take some some droppings for the money Joel Cheesman (44:19.31) Spoken like a European. Do it for the money. Do it for the money. Chad (44:19.511) Yeah. Yeah, unless you go down the path that Monster did, obviously. Joel Cheesman (44:27.31) I'm sure my guess is if you're a shareholder, you're an ex, you're an executive. Like you probably have a golden parachute. I'm talking about the, the, the workers in the, in the trenches, like get the hell out. Cause you are an expense and they're going to get rid of you. Lieven (44:29.318) Bye. Chad (44:33.545) yeah. Lieven (44:38.704) Yeah. Chad (44:40.939) I think Monster is a cautionary tale, obviously. I mean, it's going down in real time now. We're watching it happen in real time. This is happening in fucking France and in all over countries all over the world, but in Europe, where usually there are protections in place and those protections are going are being blown while, you know, executives are making millions of dollars walking away. you know, unfortunately, the workers are not the ones who spent. Joel Cheesman (44:44.726) and CareerBuilder. Joel Cheesman (44:57.506) Hmm, yeah. Chad (45:10.369) decades working under a brand. That's gotta hurt. Joel Cheesman (45:16.536) Good point. Regulation could slow this thing down. I still say get the hell out. Lieven (45:16.975) Mm-hmm. Chad (45:19.703) Good. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (45:22.958) All right, let's go to tele performance. Unless, Leven, you have something to add to the. Lieven (45:23.813) Yeah. Lieven (45:28.006) No, no, but I was just thinking, I agree, they're going to carve it up and make the most out of it. But was I, I read somewhere that they had a valuation of 15 times the EBITDA. A multiple of 15. That's amazing. They paid a lot. But in fact, I'm very happy that finally something is moving again in the business because it's been very quiet for 18 months now. Joel Cheesman (45:31.63) Mm-hmm. Lieven (45:50.758) It's a good thing that people are starting to buy and sell again, like we are showing them how to do, buy or sell. No, it's interesting, but no more intelligent remarks. Joe, please go on. Joel Cheesman (45:56.248) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (46:03.086) I mean, it's like if you want to buy a job board in Spain, Infojobs is in play, trust me. Like make some calls, there's an opportunity. Chad (46:10.06) Yes. Lieven (46:10.604) Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. But do you believe, Joel, this is the time to buy job boards? I think things are moving away from job boards very fast. I wouldn't invest in one right now. Joel Cheesman (46:17.104) you- Joel Cheesman (46:22.446) Yes, but if you're private, look, the money made on CareerBuilder was insane. Cut expenses, off the pieces. mean, that was a good investment for the shareholders and the private equity. So I have to guess they're going to do the same thing. And when we look up after the wreckage, they're going to have made a ton of money for themselves and their investors. yeah, if your goal is to have a business for 20, 25 years, Lieven (46:34.309) Yeah. Lieven (46:42.789) Mm. Joel Cheesman (46:52.12) This ain't your thing. If it's like, let's, let's cut this thing up while there's still a business and there's still an opportunity to do that. That's what they're going to do. And I can't, I don't, I'm not an expert on the other pieces as well, but I have to think that real estate and cars and any kind of classified business is in a similar boat as jobs. So they're going to cut this thing up and sell real estate to whoever and sell this business to that. And they're going to make a ton of money for sure. This. Lieven (47:01.37) Yeah. Lieven (47:20.27) Yeah, but you have to find someone who's willing to pay. I think you can still... Joel Cheesman (47:22.776) Sure. There are businesses there that are worth money. mean, it may be monster 7 million, but after you've sold it off for parts, mean, it's story as old as time, man. Lieven (47:28.485) No. Joel Cheesman (47:38.978) Take a business that's making money, cut it, cut it to shit, sell it for parts. And when, when there's no money left, you light a match and you burn it down for the insurance money. Watch good fellas for the, for the strategy. We'll see. We'll see. Rica is going to make a call. You guys are going to get into the Spanish, job board business. I can feel it. I can feel it. Let's talk about, Paris based. You'll discuss it. Yeah. Lieven (47:39.014) We'll see. Lieven (47:50.63) We'll see. Okay. Chad (47:52.663) Teleperformance. Lieven (48:01.51) I'm sure we'll discuss it. Joel Cheesman (48:07.202) You will. There you go. There you go. Info jobs. All right. Let's talk about Paris based teleperformance, a global outsourcing firm with 11 billion us dollars in 2024 revenue. They've acquired agents only a Vancouver based staffing company, specializing in online workers for AI data annotation and customer service. Chad, your thoughts on the teleperformance deal. Chad (48:33.677) This is evolution. mean, Tele-Performance is pretty much a slaughterhouse for anybody who's in the customer service business, right? I mean, they're the outsource, one of the biggest, if not the biggest outsource for customer service companies in the world. It's being able to move that, much like we talk about Amazon moving to robots in the warehouses, being able to move to agents. to be able to slim headcount and to be able to actually slim headcount also push up your margins. It only makes sense. And so this is just basic evolution. see many sales companies doing this as well. So yeah, I mean, this is sign of the times, man. Talk about waves. is a huge wave and everybody's getting on this fucking wave. Joel Cheesman (49:31.628) Yeah, I was amazed at how much work and body manpower goes into annotation of AI data sets. Humans are really creating what's going on with AI. I mean, to me, this is like, let's buy a business that is human heavy, but has no really connection to these people. They're all freelancers. Let's get all the freelancers to train our AI models. Chad (49:56.717) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (49:59.446) And then when we're done with the people, we can just close down shop and they have this incredibly profitable AI business with tons of people that have gone into to create this thing in the first place. So for me, this is, this is pretty interesting. think customer service being a people business has a limited lifespan and AI is going to do a lot of these jobs. And if these guys can create the infrastructure. through the people to create something that's incredibly valuable and they can scale it to other businesses. Like it's a potential gold mine and I think it's a really, really smart move by these guys. Lieven (50:39.782) I agree. I think it was buy, build or die and they bought. So I hope they bought the right thing. Joel Cheesman (50:46.83) Good point. Joel Cheesman (50:52.642) Good point. All right, let's go to a dad joke, shall we? Chad (50:57.307) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (51:01.752) Keeping with the French theme, everybody. What's the difference between a French woman and a basketball team? What's the difference between a French woman and a basketball team? Chad (51:14.349) I don't know that I wanna know. Joel Cheesman (51:16.832) A basketball team will shower after four periods. Lieven (51:22.822) Okay, there goes our last French listener. Chad (51:25.313) Yes. Joel Cheesman (51:26.606) They'll tune in for the chicken. We out. Chad (51:32.129) We out. Lieven (51:32.198) Cool. Cool. We out.

Kiss Cams, Randstad Cash Grabs & Creepy Jokes Maureen’s back—jet-lagged, moving, and still sharper than ZipRecruiter’s TV strategy. In this episode: 💋 Coldplay Kiss Cam Chaos:  HR affair caught on camera = internet meltdown = hiring boost? Yep. 💰 Ashby = Cashby:  $50M raised, 0 haters. Suspiciously impressive. 🪦 Monster + CareerBuilder sold for peanuts:  And Bold’s plan? Paywalls. 🇫🇷 Randstad & Apollo torch Monster.   🤖 AI to kill recruiting 🔗 Subscribe before Randstad charges you an “integrity fee.” PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:37.07) Going off the rails on a crazy train. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast, everybody. I'm your co-host, Joel, Quiet Cracker Cheesman. Chad (00:46.129) Chad "integrity fee" Sowash. Maureen Clough (00:49.579) And I'm Maureen, AKA Moe, crashing out Clough. Joel Cheesman (00:53.57) And on this episode, bold bids, recruiters bid farewell, and Ashby more like cashby. Am I right? Am I right? All right. Let's do this. Maureen Clough (01:01.421) hahahahah Chad (01:01.533) Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Chad (01:08.219) That's good. That means we don't have to do the dad joke after that one. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (01:08.238) That took me all night to come up with that one. That's It's the book, the book and dad jokes, cash B and you'll have to wait till the end for my official official dad joke. Maureen Clough (01:11.659) That was good, actually. I'm here for that. Hahaha Chad (01:18.269) Most important, Mo is back. She's a mess. She's already self-proclaimed. Well, you're getting ready to move. I mean, you should expect to be a mess, right? Maureen Clough (01:22.785) I'm a huge hot mess, it's true. Yeah, it's... And I'm also coming back from Europe, so there's this massive jet lag. And I was like, I just, you guys, the fact of the matter was I missed you so much. I was like, I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna fight through it, I'm gonna push through it. I'm sorry for the listeners that have to endure this, but like, I really wanted to be back that badly that I was like, it's cool, we're gonna make it happen. So thanks for having me. I mean, despite the fact that it made me miss... Joel Cheesman (01:24.108) Messy Mo. Chad (01:32.359) There is that. Chad (01:46.077) How was the Disney cruise? How was the Disney cruise? Maureen Clough (01:51.307) Wreckfest UK, which was like very depressing. It was extraordinary. And for all of you who don't know this, Disney cruises are like the best parenting hack and vacation hack I've ever heard of in my life because they have, and I'm not kidding, they have kids camp from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. And my kids were like, peace out mom. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, don't you wanna like hang out with me at some point? They're like, nah. Joel Cheesman (01:53.902) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:55.665) Good. Chad (02:12.797) Yeah Maureen Clough (02:16.555) I'm good. I'm going to the pool. I'm going to hang out with my friends. And they had like a gazillion camp counselors and stuff. And so you actually get to relax a vacation on a Disney cruise. So this was not sponsored by Disney, but by God come find me. We can do it. It was awesome. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting the hell out of here. Chad (02:25.777) awesome. Joel Cheesman (02:29.71) All right. I have a question. You're, you're, you're moving. Is that what's going on? Well, are you, are you two viewers will appreciate this, but your, your room that you always record in is the same. You've got the Monet's and the Picasso's in the back. You might want to pack that shit up. If you're moving that might help. Chad (02:29.743) Excellent. Maureen Clough (02:42.657) Yeah. Yeah. yes. They're real. Mm-hmm. Yep. I know it's part of the brand. No, unfortunately it's not coming with me. So we're going to a small cabin and we're just getting the hell out of Dodge. We're going rural guys. We're getting out of the big city. We are so pumped. Chad (02:48.657) Hahaha Chad (02:58.877) Woo! Chad (03:02.22) She's prepping. She's a prepper. Joel Cheesman (03:02.328) So is this whoever buys this your place now gets a furnished apartment or furnished house? Ooh. Maureen Clough (03:07.209) Indeed they do. Indeed they do. We're renting it out. We're saying we're not keeping up with the Joneses anymore. We're going rural. We're getting out of the city. We're just, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for it. I'm like pumped. Chad (03:13.871) Amen. Yeah. Dude, I'm telling you right now, the slow down, the slow down for me has been magical. It's been fucking magical. So hopefully, same for you. Joel Cheesman (03:15.374) You're so bohemian. Maureen Clough (03:22.899) good. Maureen Clough (03:27.201) Fingers crossed, it might just be an escapist sort of dream, but we'll find out. No way to know unless you do it, so there we go. Joel Cheesman (03:30.326) It's, it's been an, it's, it's, it's been an emotional week. we said goodbye to Aussie, news across the wires. We're recording whole Kogan has, has passed away. And as you know, Chad, we, lost a dear friend in the industry, last week. And I know that you posted a video that just caught fire. I don't know how many views you can see it. can't, but it looks like it's, it's taken off and Chad (03:30.405) You Yeah, yeah. It is, it is. Yep. Chad (03:43.313) Wow. Yeah. Mm. Chad (03:55.777) dude, it exploded. And I mean, the people that reached out, I think was the coolest and reading and hearing the stories that they had about what Matt meant to them personally. That was what really was heartwarming for me. I mean, we asked Sergey to and the team to pull together a short video in remembrance of Matt. So if you haven't seen it, we're going to go ahead and we'll play it right here. Joel Cheesman (04:06.112) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:18.126) Video boy. Joel Cheesman (04:23.17) Yep, and if you missed it, this was a dear friend, Matt Lavery of the show UPS Chicago Southside Kid passed away and we put together this little this little video. Joel Cheesman (05:43.214) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:48.716) Rest in peace, Matt. Rest in peace. Chad (05:49.373) man. Joel Cheesman (05:53.294) Hope you and John Candy are enjoying an old 96er there in heaven with the Leos. Chad (05:53.467) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (05:59.805) Yeah. Okay, give me the shout outs before I start fucking, I've turned into a fucking mess after I became a dad. Whoa, jeez. Maureen Clough (06:00.009) man, sounds like a great guy. Joel Cheesman (06:04.013) Ha ha ha! You are a mushy mushy mess. Maureen Clough (06:07.987) Yeah. Well, I didn't know him, but he sounds amazing. So, all right, let me save you. Let me save you with the thing that no one wants to talk about, but the whole world can't stop looking at. It's the Coldplay Gate. So, I mean, we are an HR podcast. We can't not talk about it, but let's just call it out. So obviously it's the video that broke the internet. Joel Cheesman (06:12.542) Save us, save us Moe. Pull us out of this. Chad (06:20.413) Jesus. Maureen Clough (06:31.575) Fair, fair, But it's like, mean, you cannot escape the memes. They're just like, circulating all over the net. It's just been an insane thing. So if somehow, someway you didn't know what happened, what happened was this couple got caught on the kiss cam at Coldplay's concert in Boston and they freaked the fuck out and like, literally ran and hid from the camera's view and everyone was cracking up because Chris Martin, Apple, or Apple, no, that's his daughter, right? Was that Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris, anyway. Chad (06:58.333) Yeah, I think so. Maureen Clough (06:59.095) Chris, I was like, where did that come from? See, I said hot mess today. I promise, I delivered. But so Chris Martin said out loud, wow, either these guys are having an affair or they're just really, really shy. And it turns out the affair part was right. So yeah, mm-hmm. And so. Joel Cheesman (07:03.182) It's alright. Chad (07:13.383) former. Maureen Clough (07:16.329) everybody just like descended into chaos and this video went completely viral because of their reaction. Like if they just stood there and smiled, no one would ever have heard a single thing about this. But unfortunately it was very clear. They weren't supposed to be seen together. So anyway, this sparked a lot of outrage. And I think the thing that I feel like hasn't been talked about enough is the reason for it. So it's not just that we're all assholes and we want to be like gossiping and watercooling and all that stuff. It's that. Joel Cheesman (07:41.39) Schadenfreude. Maureen Clough (07:42.829) Yes, it's that exactly. It's like we are so ready to see someone actually take the fall at the top because they seem to be setting these rules and then not abiding by them. It's like accountability. It only exists for people at the bottom and we're just like collectively fucking done with that. So I think unfortunately for them, like there are plenty of other corporate people who've done far worse than these guys have done with having this affair. But unfortunately for these two, Joel Cheesman (08:04.854) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (08:07.949) who I even heard from someone, six degrees of separation, someone who allegedly knows them, they're fully separated from their spouses, whatever, I don't know the full situation, but these guys are taking the heat because of all the bad corporate behavior. It's like the stuff about return to office at Starbucks, right? Everybody's gotta come back, but we've also been flying the brand new CEO from his house in California, two headquarters in Seattle on the private jet. There's kind of like the rules for the, but not for me stuff, and we're just, I think. Basically, as a society, we're just fucking done with it. And I think that's what that's all about. Chad (08:39.197) That's a great take. That's a great take. mean, because from my standpoint, it's like they're doing things outside, let them do their thing. But again, you're right. It's like different rules for different strokes for different folks. And that's bullshit. And a lot of people are sick of it. I totally get that. Maureen Clough (08:50.775) Right? Yeah. Yep. think that's a, the one other thing I'll say about it is I do feel like there's been a lot more heat reserved for the woman in this situation, which I so dislike because it feels like that's so frequently the case, right? So I'm super not into that. Chad (09:04.311) figure. Yes. Maureen Clough (09:08.429) And I just I feel for everybody involved because this really just sucks, right? You know, it's like it's blasted all over the internet for their families to see which just is like so painful if you can even imagine what that would be like and then for the whole company I mean, it's like so incredibly embarrassing. Although they did get a lot of PR I guess I guess everybody knows what astronomer is now Joel Cheesman (09:08.558) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:17.198) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:27.522) Which brings me to my take on this. They say there's no such thing as bad PR. And I think that's an interesting perspective. None of us knew about astronomer before this thing happened, I'm sure. And I was curious from a recruitment side of things. My hypothesis was, I wonder if they're getting more applicants than they were before. I wonder if more people want to work here than they did prior to this incident. So I went out to LinkedIn. Chad (09:46.13) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:56.012) LinkedIn shows you the jobs. show you how many applicants have applied to a job. And I don't know anything about this business, LinkedIn does show you other companies that are similar to that. So in the companies that are similar, according to LinkedIn, Astronomer was getting two to three times more applicants on their jobs than their competition was. so see CEOs out there, if you're looking to juice the applicant flow, you might want to have an affair with the, with the head of HR. Maureen Clough (10:17.171) Okay, there you go. Get a side piece. my gosh. Yeah, it's really working for them. Really working for them. Joel Cheesman (10:25.462) and go to a mainstream concert. Just saying, just saying it's good for applicant flow, everybody. It's good for applicant flow. Chad (10:32.669) good for applicant flow. Jesus. I sure want those applicants. Maureen Clough (10:35.585) The other thing about that though, exactly, we wanna figure out who those people are. But like the other thing about all this is it also really highlighted the misinformation that's just like running rampant all over the internet, because there were so many things that got put out that were just false. Like the woman next to them who was laughing, everyone allegedly said that she was this woman at the company, a VP of people or something like that. That wasn't her. There was no one else from the company there. And I think because people thought it was a company sponsored event, at least I guess, did you guys think that when you saw it? I thought. Joel Cheesman (10:46.67) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:58.936) Yeah. Chad (11:04.901) No. There are no way in hell that was a company sponsored event. Maureen Clough (11:05.279) maybe are they in a box or something? Maybe not. Maybe that was just me. Okay, I was like, wait, but because they said that girl next to them, that woman next to them was the head or the VP of people, that's what everyone was alleging, I thought that there were other people in the company, which made me even more incensed. Okay, yes, yes, never again, never again. I'm done. Fair. That's fair. Joel Cheesman (11:08.44) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (11:17.9) Yeah, people are trying to say that, yeah. Chad (11:21.765) Alright, let's get away from Coldplay now. Jesus Christ, I've already heard too much of Coldplay for the last week. Jesus, come on. Joel Cheesman (11:30.254) I mean, if you're going to have an affair, might as well be with the head HR because who are they going to report you to? Okay. My shout out. Speaking of candidate flow, ZipRecruiter is saved, Chad. ZipRecruiter, I don't know if you saw the headlines. Forget about the fact that their stock is down almost 35 % year to date. Forget the fact that their podcast, which is still running every week, only has 20 reviews celebrating a year. Chad (11:34.279) Joel, what's your shout out? That's great, yeah. Fuck. Jesus. Maureen Clough (11:37.133) He's done. Chad (11:47.674) Okay. Joel Cheesman (11:59.918) And only 20 reviews, only 10 reviews on Spotify. So it's not like the kids are into it and the old folks on Apple or not. No, zip recruiter has finally figured out that the key to success is going back to linear TV. I don't know if you saw this Chad, but Marcus Lamonis famous investor now has a show called the fixer. Where he helps company startups to fix their shit as the, as the name says, and he's partnered with zip recruiter to help these companies fix their shit. Maureen Clough (12:07.213) Ha Joel Cheesman (12:30.114) by using ZipRecruiter. That's right. What better solution than ZipRecruiter to fix your hiring woes. So here is a little tidbit from Marcus Limonis about his partnership with ZipRecruiter. Chad (12:59.911) Holy shit. Joel Cheesman (13:26.146) Boom, buy your ZipRecruiter stock today kids, cause this thing's going to the moon. Marcus Lamonis is in the house. Shout out to ZipRecruiter. Maureen Clough (13:28.877) Hahaha Maureen Clough (13:34.971) my god. Chad (13:35.407) I've used, I've used ZipRecruiter for bullshit. Bullshit. All right. Joel Cheesman (13:40.216) They've paid me a lot of money to say that they're awesome. And they are. That's right. That's right. Chad (13:43.493) Yeah, go fucking figure. yeah. My shout out is to integrity fees. Did you hear about integrity fees for tourist visas coming for tourists coming into the US? guys heard about this. Maureen Clough (13:44.68) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (13:57.227) no, sounds expensive. Maureen Clough (13:58.295) Are there any tourists coming to the US? Chad (14:01.149) Well, listen up, listen up. Apparently embedded into the big, beautiful turd. mean, Bill, now it's actually a turd. There's a provision that gives DHS the ability to charge fees on foreign visitors. And this from ABC News, quote, the new $250 visa integrity fee as defined in the legislation applies to travelers who are applying for non-immigrant visas to enter the U.S. Maureen Clough (14:08.845) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (14:22.072) Ouch. Chad (14:30.245) and cannot be waived." But if you're good, but if you're good, they might reimburse you, but don't hold your breath. I have no fucking clue. And you're not gonna get your money back, guys. Come on. I know it sounds like a cash grab for the US before 2026 World Cup in Summer Olympics, but this could literally kill tourism and hospitality in the industries, plus all the vendors that support them. Joel Cheesman (14:38.104) What does good mean? Maureen Clough (14:38.733) What's that? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (14:41.879) Okay. Maureen Clough (14:44.639) my gosh. No. Chad (15:00.029) plain stupid. Shout out to plain stupid legislation. Maureen Clough (15:06.273) That's like, God, don't we have enough going on? Seriously, you're gonna add that? Chad (15:12.315) I mean, we're already we're already fly over country now. mean, Canada is going to Mexico. They're not even stopping in the US anymore. I mean, it's just like, what else can we do to fuck over people anyway? Maureen Clough (15:15.188) Exactly. Maureen Clough (15:19.67) I'm scared. It's so bad, it's gonna have such cascading effects. Thanks for bringing the peace and light. yay, free shit. That's right, I get to do that today. Chad (15:25.669) Well, you know, it is. Joel Cheesman (15:27.406) Well, the good news is that they can they can sell their free shit from us if they need to to make up that extra extra money. And before we get to that, Mo real clear real quickly. Our shout outs are sponsored by our friends up North. Kiara that's text recruiting made simple and cost effective. Thanks Kiara. Not a free shit. Chad (15:42.171) Fiora. Chad (15:47.485) Kia Ora. Maureen Clough (15:50.763) All right, who here likes whiskey? I don't know. I think we know that. Who think we know that? So the tech talent experts over at VanHack are going to throw us some bourbon barrel aged, wait, did I just screw that up? Nope, yep, yep. Wow, see, I told you I'd bring the hot mess. I told you, okay. All right. my God, all right. So whiskey from Chicken Cock, coming to you by VanHack. Did I do that? Chad (15:53.305) me? Joel Cheesman (15:53.982) I do. I love the cock. Chad (16:08.797) Two bottles of whiskey. All good. Chad (16:20.071) There you go. Boom. See? See? It's beautiful. Joel Cheesman (16:20.6) There you go, there you go, there you go. Maureen Clough (16:20.993) There we go, there we go, all right. Boo's not your thing. If you listen to this show and booze isn't your thing, I'm very confused, but I love that for you. There is bourbon barrel aged syrup out there that people can get. Sign up for free stuff. Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Kiura are bringing that to you. Joel Cheesman (16:37.422) Nice. Maureen Clough (16:48.427) I just love the word hoser, it's fabulous. All right, who likes t-shirts? Everybody likes a t-shirt, right? Guess who's bringing them to us? Joel Cheesman (16:50.67) It is great. He's come back. Joel Cheesman (16:58.562) We are. Maureen Clough (16:58.593) The folks over at Aaron, those peeps with the red shoes, you've seen them all over the place at those tech conferences, right? T-shirts from Aaron. All right. And then, my gosh, you guys, we're back to alcohol already. Craft beer, craft beer, who wants craft beer? From Aspen Tech Labs. Sound good, sound good. And yeah, so we got a lot of free shit. You should probably sign up to get some. Chad (17:00.221) you Joel Cheesman (17:16.75) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:21.021) And if it's your birthday, huh? Huh? Huh? A little rum from Plum. Don't forget about them. But you can't get it. Let's go to ChadCheese.com slash free. ChadCheese.com slash free. That's right. Maureen Clough (17:27.437) The best one. Joel Cheesman (17:36.632) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating a birthday and man, are we getting a lot of fans for God's sakes. Here we go. Here's our list. Everybody. Dustin Carper, Jeremy bright, Drew Feld, Jim Schneider, Roy Marer, Joe Wilkie, Mary Lanahan, Sarah Berlin, Ashley Smith, Julia Levy, Leanne Pua, Damon Ashley, Ria Moss, Dez Prentice, Ryan foot, Jasek Krajewski, Jolene Schlaff, Daniel Flatla. Chad (17:43.293) you Joel Cheesman (18:03.446) Steven Reilert, Sir Richard Collins, Brian Chaney, Crystal Lay, Marron Hogan, and Serge Boutreaux, everybody. Happy birthday, happy birthday, everybody. That's a mouthful. That's one week of birthdays. Chad (18:13.693) Serj. Serj. Maureen Clough (18:15.393) Happy birthday! Chad (18:20.167) Topics, baby. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (18:25.966) Getting, getting a lot of getting a lot Chad. So much love for us. All right. Let's get into topics. Everybody some more red meat. If you like the red meat from last week, uh, Ashby, a seven year old San Francisco startup has raised $50 million in a series D round, doubling its valuation from its $30 million series C back in 2024 and bringing its total amount raised to $120 million. It's custom made. Chad (18:27.11) There you go. Chad (18:35.332) A Maureen Clough (18:45.005) I'm bad. Joel Cheesman (18:55.31) customer base grew from 1300 to over 2,700 in the past year with a 135 % ARR increase serving clients like OpenAI, Shopify and Snowflake. The funds will enhance AI capabilities, product development and customer success. course, Chad, Ashby, Cashby, whatever you want to call it. What are your thoughts on this raise? Maureen Clough (19:17.185) You Chad (19:20.925) Let's be very clear kids, we hear shit about applicant tracking systems all the time. My applicant tracking system won't do this, my applicant tracking system won't do that. It took six months to finalize the implementation of a point solution into my ATS. The funny thing is, I've never heard an Ashby customer say anything bad about them. And I'm not shitting you. And in a segment where all we hear is bitching and moaning, right? So it's pretty damned refreshing. Maureen Clough (19:42.573) Hey. Maureen Clough (19:49.13) you Chad (19:50.887) to hear companies that are more satisfied with a company like Ashby. Joel Cheesman (19:54.818) You don't hear bad things, but do you hear good things? Okay, all right. Chad (19:57.561) yeah, I've heard really good things about being able to work with them, implementations, those types of things. And again, you start going to these conferences and you hear things and then you dig a little bit deeper because you know it can't all be sunshine, fucking rainbows and unicorns. so far it's all I got. But Aspie, as you said, has doubled their customer base in the last year, increased number of interviews scheduled in Aspie by 170%, which... Maureen Clough (20:17.165) Hahaha Chad (20:27.099) really means nothing. We need a baseline guy. So marketing, if you want to give real numbers with a baseline, that would be great. And again, their revenues are up 135%. It's fucking awesome. And they've barely touched their series C from last year. So the big question, you are doing so well. You've got a great pace. You're not even hitting or, you know, hitting the cash from the last time last year. Why? Why more money, especially this time when you know that it's not a great time to raise money and then also dilution? Why do that to yourself? Joel Cheesman (21:05.358) Well, let's check in on the executive team, is, out on a yacht somewhere. Let's see what. they're a little busy, Chad. I don't know if they have time for our questions. we've been through this Chad. People hate their ATS is they're looking for the next, you know, hot chick in the bar. They went from ISIMs to smart recruiters to greenhouse to lever. Chad (21:09.745) Boats and hoes. Maureen Clough (21:10.989) You Chad (21:28.796) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:30.324) Ashby now is the hot babe at the bar that all the air ones like, shit. Who is that? Leaving their like leaving their current ATS for the hot new thing. Now time will tell if Ashby retains its hotness and can keep it going. but so far so good. So looking at some head count numbers, Ashby has grown their head count 195 % in the last two years. smart recruiters in comparison is up 14%. Maureen Clough (21:58.185) lot. Joel Cheesman (22:00.534) And iSIMS is down 8 % over the last two years. Ashby only has about 300 employees compared to smart recruiters at 720 and iSIMS at 1218. Greenhouse also not nearly as much growth in the last year, 8 % of headcount. They have about 876 employees. In summary, Greenhouse is doing a whole lot with pretty, very few. Chad (22:20.157) Mm. Joel Cheesman (22:29.166) and it's working for them really, really Ashby is sorry. Who did I say? Anyway, so many ATSs, no, what, what they're doing, is working. mean, they're going to spend a ton of money on, salespeople, try to grow this thing out. and they're just, they're doing really, really well. I think that two things that I found interesting in the news, aside from the money is number one, they're adding features that should make a lot of startups shit their pants. they're launching, they're launching a note taker product. Chad (22:31.227) You mean Ashby? greenhouse, it's okay. Chad (22:56.231) Note taker. Joel Cheesman (22:58.988) which if you're bright, hire Metaview, hone it, et cetera, should make you a little bit nervous. If you're a competitor to Ashby, you might want to think about an acquisition of some of those, some of those companies. And the other thing is they've really apparently, kind of figured out the user group customer thing. they have what would equate to local meetups. in fact, they have one, near you Mo in Seattle where customers come and they get, they, I'm sure they get free food and drinks. I'm sure they get a little education. I'm sure they can ask questions. Maureen Clough (23:22.092) Hey, hey. Maureen Clough (23:25.869) People like that. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:28.974) But, but that community feel, you know, a lot, a lot of people can't afford to go to HR tech every year or go to like a national or global conference. So these local conferences people love and these companies leverage it smartly are doing very well. And apparently Ashby is taking advantage of that. So everything working for them. The money thing I agree, Chad money's expensive, but they see an opportunity to grow and, they're taking it. So this has been fun to watch. They're in 21 countries. Chad (23:29.414) edumacation. Maureen Clough (23:34.636) Right. Maureen Clough (23:43.533) That's a really good point. Maureen Clough (23:51.597) You Joel Cheesman (23:58.67) they're only in pretty much North America and EMA, EMEA right now. they're coming to Europe. They're coming everywhere. So, so get ready world. Chad (23:58.855) Yeah. Chad (24:08.625) They call it a Mia. Joel Cheesman (24:10.848) Amiya, Amiya, I don't even know her. Amiya. E-M-E-A. Chad (24:11.933) That's good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, 50 million, especially in the space that we are right now, we've, we've heard and seen, smart recruiters go over really a facelift with Winston, right? So I guess you almost have to wonder if they're trying to like, they're trying to focus on building reserves and, what the next build or what the next pivot looks like before they turn into legacy tech, right? Maureen Clough (24:16.901) my god. Chad (24:41.885) They've been around for what, seven, eight years? I mean, tech is moving fast. Maureen Clough (24:41.901) Mm. Joel Cheesman (24:47.084) I mean, one of these companies got to go public soon. Like, I mean, we can gush about Ashby, but there's no track record of ATS is like going public and crushing it and making a lot of money. history says this isn't going to be a thing, but there's a first time for everything. So we'll see. Chad (24:52.401) Not this year. Chad (25:04.029) Cool. Maureen Clough (25:04.459) I'm just happy to hear a company that everybody likes out there these days. It's awesome. Don't hear much of that, I feel. If you dig. Joel Cheesman (25:07.566) We could find some people, I'm sure. We could find a few people. Chad (25:12.283) Yeah, it's really weird because you can go to a conference and people will talk shit about just about any company that's out there, even if they're having a good experience, they're going to have some shit to talk. I just haven't been able to find anybody to talk shit about Ashby. So good for those guys. I that's fucking awesome. Maureen Clough (25:20.586) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (25:28.205) Well, it's really awesome. I've got a buddy who works over there. He's also a podcaster, Shannon Ogborn. She loves it. She just thinks it's the best. yeah. Hey, hey. Good to be. Joel Cheesman (25:30.059) Yeah. Chad (25:34.981) Mm-hmm. There you go. Joel Cheesman (25:39.118) There you go. You can send those purple Nikes to me and I'll distribute them accordingly. Ashby, if you're listening. Sorry, I'm such a whore. All right, I didn't see this one coming. Forget the JobGet news. There's a different buyer for Monster. Bold Holdings won a $28.4 million bid for CareerBuilder and Monster's job board assets, beating JobGet's $27 million offer. Maureen Clough (25:43.785) Hahaha Chad (25:50.631) Not your whore. Joel Cheesman (26:08.758) they'll retain 350 plus employees as part of the deal. Valnet us acquired monster media assets for 27.3 million and Cheryl Lubinsky, Eddie net bought, the government assets for 13 million, no bids for the international business chat. So I say we just buy it. Let's just get some buddies and do it. court approval is set for, July 24th, is this week, Ron's dot disputes. Chad (26:33.009) think they just moved it back. Joel Cheesman (26:34.604) Run start dispute, 789,000 cure payments claiming $1.2 million owed. Bold led by X monster execs runs my perfect resume and flex jobs among others. Chad, your thoughts on this bold move by bold. Chad (26:52.061) But we talked about the bidding starting at 7 million and thinking, what the fuck? mean, Monster just in itself and how much it was worth. And then you have Career Builder. mean, the number one and number two, and they were one and two flipping back and forth for years. And the bidding started at $7 million just for those very key assets, by the way. Good Domains, SEO Juice is awesome. They do have obviously slumping Joel Cheesman (26:56.865) Yeah. Chad (27:21.189) revenues. Here's my biggest problem with bold getting those domains and the SEO juice. I've checked out some of the products like Flexjobs, which is probably the most well known. It has mandatory registration. And if that wasn't bad enough, you hit a paywall to actually have to see the full job descriptions and apply for a Yes. Joel Cheesman (27:31.79) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:35.438) Yeah, for sure. Joel Cheesman (27:43.566) Come on, man Maureen Clough (27:45.641) my gosh, are you serious? That's ridiculous. Chad (27:49.917) Yes. the and that's and that's pretty much how all their models are. Right. These are job seeker monetization models. So these types of models to me are incredibly predatory. Right. And I hate to see what could happen if bold can actually squeeze some Google juice out of those domains, brand recognition and then start preying on job seekers. I'm not a fan of it. Is it allowed? Yes. Does it make it right? Fuck you. Right. Maureen Clough (27:58.445) Gross. Maureen Clough (28:02.153) Yeah, no kidding. Maureen Clough (28:13.335) Yeah. ew. Yeah. Chad (28:19.485) But let's see, let's see what they do with these properties. But I really wish JobGit would have walked away with this deal to be quite frank. Joel Cheesman (28:23.672) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (28:27.98) Mm-hmm. So you may remember, I mentioned Chad in one of my comments on this was that I didn't, thought someone had leaked the job get acquisition and that they did that in order to get more money or get more bidders for the business, which appears like it may have, may have been the case. it also appears to be the case that someone may have tipped off bold. Remember there are two, two monster execs on this team. Somebody may have leaked how much the, Chad (28:56.146) Mm. Joel Cheesman (28:58.488) job get bid was because it's really close. It's about a million more. I mean, is, is that a coincidence? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone called bold and said, if you want to get this done, it's gotta be over 28. Cause I think job get job gets Maureen Clough (29:11.091) Just little up. Chad (29:13.661) Well, was an auction. It was an auction so they could see what was happening. think the thing that actually pushed it over in looking at the actual bids was that Bold said they would take the 350 employees. And that wasn't something that I think JobGet wanted to do. Yeah, think so. So there was more than just the money, but the money was obviously good too. Joel Cheesman (29:18.284) Yeah, okay. Joel Cheesman (29:29.009) okay. Maureen Clough (29:31.005) Okay. Joel Cheesman (29:36.3) Yeah. Good insight. Good insight. So I'd never heard of bold really. bold is just a holding company for all these job boards. Some of the, some I've heard of, bold.pro is apparently a LinkedIn killer and we haven't talked about that yet. but they've been around a while. Bold.com is a great URL. mean, I can't believe it's just a holding company. it's kind of like DHI with, with dice and clearance jobs. but anyway, they're, doing nothing basically with a really good URL. Maureen Clough (29:41.345) I hadn't either. Chad (29:48.157) No. Maureen Clough (29:49.558) Wow. Chad (29:53.724) It is. Maureen Clough (29:54.176) Sure is. Joel Cheesman (30:04.302) So I'm not sure they're going to do anything with monster now that they, now that they own it. But the, the recipe seems to be bringing these job boards, create efficiencies. It's probably one accounting department for all of them. It's probably one sales team for all of them. And they cross post and la la la, and they're, they're thinking that they can make this thing work. Now, my guess is the whole monster, a former executive thing. When these guys are at monster, they probably went to lunch. They probably had conversations about, man, if we ran the show. Maureen Clough (30:06.263) What a mess. Chad (30:13.085) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:32.076) What would we do differently? How would we make monster a monster again? And that probably got into the, the, case of bidding for this thing. have delusions of brand or they can bring monster back to what it was. We'll see what happens. but yeah, this is it's they're just, they're just passing around. you know, everyone's sloppy seconds on this one. I think, it'll, it'll fade away. Monster will fade away with the others. anyway. Maureen Clough (30:42.637) It ain't coming back. Chad (30:47.101) it. Chad (30:54.267) thirds. Joel Cheesman (30:58.926) It'll be just like flex jobs. You'll go to monster. There'll be a paywall. They'll have, you know, unique jobs and only you can find unique content. that you can find. interestingly, bold has, their head count has been pretty much sideways for a long time, but they've just recently, added business development people to the tune of a 400 % increase over the last six months. So it certainly looks like they're going to have an, army of salespeople start. Chad (30:59.463) Yeah. Chad (31:14.962) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (31:22.647) Biz dev people? Is that like... Joel Cheesman (31:27.072) stop bombarding. So get ready for the calls people. You're going to start getting the calls for the Monster Crew Builder job posting deal coming soon to you. Maureen Clough (31:30.444) us. I'm laughing, I'm laughing because BD is so often a euphemism for sales and yet again there you go. BD people coming on in, alright. Okay, just call it sales. Come on. Joel Cheesman (31:46.766) Alright guys, let's take a quick break and get to some more red meat. I know Chad has been foaming at the mouth, ready to talk about Ronstadt France. Chad (31:52.573) Oof. Joel Cheesman (31:58.99) All right, Chad, I'll set this up and let you run because I know you've done a lot of homework on this, but Monster France announced its closure in Europe this week, impacting 200 plus employees as shareholders of Randstad own 49 % of the company and Apollo owns 51%. They withdrew funding for the post 2024 CareerBuilder joint venture, despite a 2016 Randstad acquisition and a 2027 employee support agreement. No severance or reclassification has been offered with public funds covering costs. Ronstadt denies responsibility citing minority ownership status at 49 % while executives received $1.2 million in bonuses and 5 million euros in bonuses back in 2024. Employees demand ethical accountability criticizing the use of public funds and a lack of support. Chad, you've been reading up on this and have an opinion. What you got? Chad (32:56.477) So this is, there is so much. fucking around on this one and who got fucked on this? And there were so many that my brain was scrambled this morning. I had to break it up into three sections. So the first section, we're just going to talk about the employees in one chain. but first let's talk about Ronstadt, who actually came out yesterday touting, reporting revenue of $5.8 billion last quarter. Quarter. Maureen Clough (33:22.349) Joel Cheesman (33:30.744) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:30.767) underlying EBITDA of 171 million euros and EBITDA margin of 3%. So it sounds great, right? Yeah, well, that's amazing if you're a stockholder, but how is Ronstadt treating their actual workers? Like, know, Monster employees that have worked for Monster for decades in some respect. Some of my friends have been there for 20 years. Joel Cheesman (33:53.934) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:55.805) And not just in the US, but as you had said, Joel, all over the world and even in France. So this lovely lady over at the job board doctor, she's the sexiest doctor ever. She wrote an article and the quote, in documents reviewed by the job board doctor team effective June 22nd, 2025, Monster dramatically rewrote its terms of separation just days before slashing sales and marketing. Maureen Clough (34:06.669) you Chad (34:25.501) positions in multiple locations. So just before they got ready to do a mass layoff, this is what their change was. The old version prior to June, June, 2022 or 22, 22nd, uh, one and a half weeks base pay per year of service, right? And the minimum was two weeks maximum was 16 weeks. Okay. So you got 16 weeks if you were there and that was the max. Joel Cheesman (34:52.11) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chad (34:53.181) New improved, let's fuck our employees version, two weeks base pay period. That's all you get. Doesn't matter if you were there for 20 years, doesn't matter if you're there for one year, everybody got the same. So like, think about this listener. If you make $2,000 per week with the old policy, that'd be $32,000. And then the new policy is 4,000. Right? That many weeks. 16 weeks versus Maureen Clough (35:03.917) Yeah. Maureen Clough (35:20.173) It's not okay. Not, not okay. Chad (35:23.057) versus two weeks, right? That's a $28,000 difference. How would you like losing that amount of cash, right? Not just for you, but also for your family, right? And that's what they're going through. Just let that sink in. $28,000 lost because the company knows it's going to lay you and many others off in the next couple of days. Maureen Clough (35:26.869) ridiculous. Joel Cheesman (35:34.562) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (35:48.148) disgusting. Chad (35:48.987) That's the first segment. I'll let you guys marinate and talk that through before we get to the next segment. Maureen Clough (35:54.295) doing something to my body, doing something to my body hearing about this. So I'm bracing myself. Joel Cheesman (36:01.646) You know, this sounded very non-French, because Europe is very Maureen Clough (36:06.291) Hahaha! Chad (36:08.315) Well, this is, mean, this, is mainly this part right here is mainly on the US side. The French stuff in some cases is even fucking worse. Yes. Maureen Clough (36:15.649) That tracks. my god. Joel Cheesman (36:16.78) Right. So they basically engineered an ownership, set up where 49 % means you're off the hook for all of this shit, from public funding to treating employees like this, they've engineered it to where they can lay it on Apollo, us company. It's not our fault. and I'd say a lot of people aren't falling for the banana and the tailpipe. I would, does Maureen Clough (36:41.069) Thanks. Joel Cheesman (36:43.81) how the French government doesn't get involved in this in some way, would be kind of surprising to me. but this is so hard because our, our industry is about people. Our whole thing is treat people well retention. like that's what we preached all, all of our businesses, all of our customers. Like we, we repeat that in our sleep and then we do shit like this. Maureen Clough (37:02.635) huh. Joel Cheesman (37:11.714) and it makes us look like assholes. It's awful for everybody. I know it's sort of like, well, it sucks to be them, but this bleeds into everything. We're supposed to be the people business. We're supposed to be the take care of ourselves and everybody amongst us. And we fall flat every week and it just pisses me off. Maureen Clough (37:19.659) Yep. Maureen Clough (37:23.799) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:28.295) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it. Okay, let's go ahead and dive into the next one, because that wasn't bad enough. Meanwhile, how did Ronstadt treat monsters abroad? So here's a comment from Xavier Hamlin on Ronstadt's new numbers announcement. He actually made this comment on LinkedIn. There's something deeply indecent, Mr. Sander Van Schnoodle. Maureen Clough (37:28.951) beautifully put. Yeah, I share your ire. Chad (37:56.829) I don't know how to say his last name and I don't give a fuck. He's the CEO of Ronstadt about posting this kind of publication talking about the amount of money that they're making while hundreds of employees across Europe are being brutally laid off without recognition, without real support and not even a word. Yes, your numbers are solid. Yes, your EBITDA meets expectations, but at what cost? At the cost of brutal disengagement of a rushed liquidation of teams. Maureen Clough (38:06.113) grotesque. Chad (38:26.525) who have been committed for 10, 15, sometimes 20 years. Monster Monster France was a compass in the HR ecosystem at one time. A company that stood for much more than figures. You believed it, you brought us in, then sold us. And now it's a dry shutdown without regard. It's great to have the best team in the industry, but such a team deserves to be treated that way in the end. And we also have a... Video from the take Matteo Niccolo, who is the director or was a director of international EU sales at Monster. This is what Matteo had to say. Joel Cheesman (41:02.254) Was he at the Louvre? That looked like a nice location. To be mad. Chad (41:02.813) Thanks, Matteo. What is? Maureen Clough (41:07.499) Nice setup. Chad (41:08.605) What is legal is not always right. Maureen Clough (41:12.557) I loved that. That was a good mic drop. Chad (41:15.089) Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and also talking about how, you know, French taxpayers are going to be holding the bag. This is corporate welfare that we see in the US all the time. It's one of those bailout situations when you knew when you knew that you were going to run out of money. the next piece and the last piece, kids, in my dissection of all this fucking shit that's happening is what about the vendor community? Right. Maureen Clough (41:21.613) It's insane. Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:42.254) Mm-hmm. Chad (41:44.881) companies that provide resources and services that probably won't get paid millions of dollars back. Monster and CareerBuilder ran up bills they knew they couldn't pay. And here's a quick timeline of one vendor that I talked to this morning. On May 22nd, email out to the vendor actually emailed to Monster looking for more insights, specifically whether it was having issues paying its invoices. Maureen Clough (41:45.773) Good point. Chad (42:12.743) due to merging overhead or deeper financial concerns. Monster came back, confirmed that everything was fine, they'll provide more clarity. They came back with more clarity saying that they'll get the oldest invoices and this is in May, December invoices, February invoices, right? So they're in the rears, not in a good way. And May 23rd, Monster provided an update. to the oldest invoices and said that the other invoices would be paid in June. So this is late May and nearly a month later there in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, right? They wrote checks their asses couldn't pay. Now you'll notice during this entire block, Matteo mentioned it, but I haven't mentioned Apollo because Apollo is a PE firm that sucks companies dry from every industry, but Ronstadt, Joel Cheesman (42:51.97) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (42:56.237) Nice. Maureen Clough (43:08.065) what PE does best. Chad (43:09.469) Yeah, Ronstadt, they're a leader in our industry and they chose to fuck over taxpayers, vendors, employees all over the globe to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And until we see a CEO like Mr. Sander van der Schnoodle or Jeff Furman in an orange jumpsuit, the hardworking people of this world will continue to get proper fuck. Hopefully monster and crew builder employees will continue sharing information and stories out there and get louder. That this all dies in the dark. So we got to make fucking noise. Maureen Clough (43:46.285) Yeah, it's really true. a mess. Such a mess. Joel Cheesman (43:54.808) Look, Ransard has an army of lawyers. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they would probably be cleared if it does, if there's a lawsuit, they'll probably drown in paper. If you want change, if you're a Ronstadt customer, if you're a vendor, employee of. Shareholder, you know, money talks, you know, go somewhere else, take your business elsewhere, sell your stock and buy something else. Like that's really the only, ammunition I think we have to make change. Yeah. Chad (44:02.642) yeah. Maureen Clough (44:04.025) Yep. Maureen Clough (44:17.452) Yeah. Maureen Clough (44:22.273) the only way. Joel Cheesman (44:24.226) Be a pain in the ass if you're a RyanStack customer and ask why in the hell did this happen? Why did this happen? Maureen Clough (44:26.485) entirely accurate. Chad (44:29.403) I think the French, I think, we might see and hoping that we might see the French government do something because if any government's gonna do something, it will be the French government. Maureen Clough (44:40.269) Touché. We'll see. It's true. Joel Cheesman (44:40.354) Yeah, you should. I'm sure Ronstadt carries a lot of weight in that in France and has a lot of money and friends in government. So, but they have French, they have French that are working for them. I'm sure guys, we're going to take a quick break, take a quick break and come back. If you haven't subscribed to our show audio video version on YouTube, leave us a review, subscribe, share our shit. It's good stuff. We'll be right back. Chad (44:41.191) Yeah. Chad (44:46.813) They're not French. They're not French. They're Dutch. Maureen Clough (44:57.034) That's rather Dutch. Chad (45:02.095) All of it. Joel Cheesman (45:11.438) Stop me if you've heard this one before guys, perplexity CEO, our event, Strava, service, predicts AI agents in their comet browser, which I don't know who uses that, will automate recruiter and executive assistant jobs, handling tasks like candidate sourcing, email outreach and scheduling with just, just one prompt. Chad (45:13.533) You Maureen Clough (45:26.005) What is that? Joel Cheesman (45:37.026) He expects full automation within six to 12 months, turning browsers into OS like systems. While he sees this freeing time for leisure, it risks displacing many white collar workers. The end of recruitment, Chad. Again, your thoughts. Chad (45:56.007) Yeah, mean, Comet is being tested right now. It is supposed to be something that's going to take Google or Google Chrome out. It's built on Chromium. So I don't know, maybe they could just be shut down, even though it's, yeah. But let's talk about the process first, because I think it's one of those things where we've got to focus on orchestrating workflows and tasks, because that's Joel Cheesman (46:09.548) Apple acquisition coming. Apple acquisition. Chad (46:24.145) what a recruiter does, right? That's what anybody does. They have their own set of tasks that they have to complete to be able to actually get your job done. the first one, the rec opens. Hiring manager uses market research tools to set requirements. How do you do that? Some companies are actually doing this now. They take a look at the actual requirements that they're putting on their job and they're setting that against the actual internal database system that they have to see what it looks like and if it's way too many candidates, if they can actually put more requirements in or actually adjust, right? And then they can also do that against external candidate databases. So you can see what the ecosystem looks like instead of posting a job, waiting 45 days and asking the recruiter why the fuck this isn't done yet, right? So you can get a better gauge of that. Hiring managers can right out of the gate. Job is posted then internally. Candidates are invited from the ATS and the CRM to those databases to actually apply, right? You don't need a recruiter to do that. The threshold is either met. If it is met, then it goes to the next stage, meaning I know that I need 10 candidates to fill this one position or 30 candidates to fill this one position. If that threshold is made, you're good. If not, then you go external and you start posting or doing programmatic external. until you actually meet that threshold. Testing and simulations are knockout rounds. And then it's interview on demand. The whole interview scheduling, this is my prediction, in the next year, interview scheduling is gonna go away. 18 months, it's gonna go away. As soon as you are ready, you've passed the screening, you're gonna get an instant interview. Whether it's audio, whether it's audio video, it's gonna happen. So everything works within the system and nobody gets swallowed into the black hole. It's gonna be a better candidate experience and yet you're gonna have humans, not as many, on the outside that are there to give white glove service to anybody who needs it. So I get what he's talking about. I don't know if it's gonna happen in the comet browser, but I can definitely see it with the agents and orchestration that's Joel Cheesman (48:33.742) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (48:43.757) My favorite. Joel Cheesman (48:47.21) So the whole tech CEO beating their chest around no more people. At some point, it's going to have to happen. Otherwise, it's just beating our chest for the sake of beating our chest and hopefully getting headlines. Now to Chad's point, there are fewer recruiters. Fact. I talked to Jamie at RecFest. I was like, hey, man, everyone's talking about the end of recruiting and recession and bad. Like what's going on? What are you seeing on your end? And his comment was pretty prescient. said, the company wise, have the same companies and more attending, but they're, they're all bringing fewer people. So in the past where they might've brought 25, 20, they're bringing a dozen. So like there are still recruiters, but it's inevitable that there are fewer now. does it end it in like, does it, is it, does there really an end to this? I don't know. Chad (49:26.717) Mm. Joel Cheesman (49:46.295) There was a really interesting interview, Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce was on Bloomberg, had some really interesting things to say about automation. Check this out. Chad (50:33.311) You know. Chad (50:51.805) Yeah. Maureen Clough (50:52.141) Excellent question, Emily. Joel Cheesman (50:54.348) I hope so. Maureen Clough (50:59.361) Gosh, do you guys buy that? Joel Cheesman (51:00.302) So I said before that, that, mean, I'm torn on whether this is the end or not, but I am convinced that tech believes it is and tech will drag us kicking and screaming to at least try this non-human thing. that's those 30 or 50 % of the work at Salesforce now is automated. that, that matters. And that's fewer people. That's fewer people. Chad (51:00.668) Yeah. Chad (51:10.283) yeah. Maureen Clough (51:21.517) I don't know that I buy it. I don't know that I buy it. I think that that guy is trying to look like the man and he's trying, you know, this whole industry is pushing AI so freaking hard and that's their agenda, right? They all want to make more money. They all want to look like the darling. So I'm not sure I buy it. I think that a lot of it's just hype. And so I don't a hundred percent agree that that's what's actually happening. It's what he wants to happen, right? Like they're all saying things like it'll replace even me to see it. Come on. Chad (51:32.701) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (51:48.493) Seriously, we've already seen this happen where people continually say they're letting people go for AI because of AI doing work and being more productive. And then they claw them back. I think it was Klarna who let people go and then brought them back. And so I just, don't know. I think you have to think about the motives of these companies and the people who are saying these things and where they've invested their dollars and the shares they own and all of that. It's like, I'm not sure that I buy it. Joel Cheesman (52:00.536) Mm-hmm. Chad (52:14.013) So, mean, give one instance with GM when we talked to Eileen when she was over at GM. They had over 100 people doing one job, one task, and that was interview scheduling. And it was, I think it was 100, I think it was around 100. Yeah, it was a lot. Let's just say it was a lot. Paradox took it over. And next thing you know, Maureen Clough (52:17.933) You Joel Cheesman (52:28.238) 200 people? I was, oh, I thought it was more than that. Anyway. Chad (52:42.641) they were able to redistribute those people to different jobs, right? But the thing is, it's all about task orientation and orchestration. If you can actually have that agent or whatever you want to call it do the really pain in the ass work of scheduling and then hand off to whatever next agent is or even the human, then yeah, there's no reason, but we're seeing it happen already. Maureen Clough (52:47.671) There you go. Maureen Clough (53:03.116) Right. Chad (53:11.857) The question is, how far can it go? And I believe if you break it down into tasks for these agents and you can orchestrate them correctly, then it's just gonna hand one off to another agent, to a human, to an agent, and away you go. So I believe what he's saying, I don't know about 30 % right now. I mean, that's pretty awesome. Joel Cheesman (53:30.69) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (53:31.405) I'm not buying it. Yeah. I mean, that would be incredible. But I think that we also are failing to recognize like, so recruitment might shift. Like you said, like it's going to push people into new jobs. going to automate the painful shit that no one wants to do anyway and give them new jobs. And I don't see how that's necessarily different from past, you know, digital revolutions or, you know, people digitalizing their organizations. Like a lot of people freaked out about automation and Joel Cheesman (53:34.689) What? Chad (53:41.72) Mm-hmm. Chad (53:52.35) yeah. Maureen Clough (53:57.259) they still have jobs, they just have different jobs. So, I mean, I think there might be like a very painful contraction period where we're all kind of sorting this out and figuring out where people should go and what they should do and what the machines can actually reliably do and how many humans you do need in the loop and all that good stuff. But like, it's not, I just don't buy this happening right now. And I just hope that we can, I hope that I might be Pollyanna here, but I'm like, I really hope that we can eventually see all these changes funnel into new jobs we haven't even conceived of yet, right? So hopefully that's where it will go. Chad (54:26.077) We need taxes and UBI. We need AI taxes and UBI. Fast. Very fast. Maureen Clough (54:28.577) Yeah, I would like that. Yeah, and ethics, regulation, ethics, all the things, bring them. Chad (54:34.706) Yes. Joel Cheesman (54:34.85) Mo is not falling for the banana in the tailpipe. And speaking of bananas, guys, are you ready for this week's dad joke? Chad (54:39.101) It's not. Maureen Clough (54:39.403) I just don't buy it. Chad (54:42.013) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (54:46.092) What's the difference between a refrigerator and a butthole? What's the difference between a refrigerator and a butthole? Maureen Clough (54:51.3) boy. Chad (54:55.515) you only get into one of them. Joel Cheesman (54:59.21) A fridge doesn't fart when you pull the meat out. Maureen Clough (55:03.144) dear god. Joel Cheesman (55:06.99) Go back to moving, Mo. We out. Maureen Clough (55:08.493) Bye. Bad. Bad. Bad. Chad (55:09.127) That is creepy uncle joke. That's not dad jokes. Chad (55:19.495) We out.

Live from UNLEASH America, we're talking talent turbulence with Steve Bartel, CEO of Gem, and Alla Mezhvinsky, VP of Talent & Workplace at Glean—and let’s just say, this ain’t your standard LinkedIn thought leadership fluff. 👀 Steve shares how he scored Gem.com  (hint: it involves bold moves, not fairy dust).🎢 Then we dive into the real rollercoaster: AI automation vs. TA burnout Resume spam that reads like ChatGPT gone rogue Deepfakes, ghost candidates, and tech stacks that need therapy Transparency that doesn’t suck 💰 Shrinking budgets, shifting tariffs, and clients who want it all yesterday? Yeah, we go there. We wrap with the big Qs: Is your tech stack helping—or just hemorrhaging cash? Are you building a hiring machine or just duct-taping broken processes? If you’re into real talk, smart guests, and a future where data doesn’t just sit there looking pretty—hit play. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION 0:00:00.4 Alla Mezhvinsky: So you have to find the tools that make the process more. It's not that you're changing the workflows, it's that you're finding different ways to get to that same step, right? So for example, sourcing. We posted a role at one of the companies, 14,000 applicants over one week. 0:00:16.8 Chad Sowash: How many? 0:00:17.4 Alla Mezhvinsky: 14,000 applicants in one week. 0:00:22.8 Joel Cheesman: All right, let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. You know him as Chad Sowash, and we are here with Steve Bartel , CEO and founder of Gem, and Alla Mezhvinsky , did I say that correctly? 0:00:38.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: That's perfect. 0:00:38.9 Joel Cheesman: She is the VP... 0:00:40.4 Chad Sowash: He's been working on that. He's been working on that. 0:00:42.8 Joel Cheesman: Of talent and workplace at Glean. Guys, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. 0:00:46.4 Alla Mezhvinsky: Thanks for having us. 0:00:47.2 Steve Bartel: Good to be here. 0:00:48.9 Chad Sowash: Excellent. So right out of the gate, how in the hell did you get Gem.com 0:00:53.4 Steve Bartel: That's a good story.  0:00:55.2 Chad Sowash: Oh, got to hear that because that is, I mean... 0:00:57.8 Steve Bartel: Yes. 0:00:58.8 Joel Cheesman: And then we'll get into who the hell you are. 0:01:00.3 Chad Sowash: All right, so this is the big question right out of the gate. 0:01:02.1 Steve Bartel: So who here has heard of us as ZenSorcerer? 0:01:05.3 Chad Sowash: As a ZenSorcerer?  0:01:06.7 Steve Bartel: Yes. Did you know that? 0:01:07.4 Chad Sowash: Yes, yes, yes. I remember. 0:01:09.4 Steve Bartel: That's bringing it way back. 0:01:11.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah, I remember the transition. It was like, holy shit, how'd they get Gem? 0:01:13.3 Steve Bartel: Gem.com. Wow. All right. So we started with ZenSorcerer. I mean, the story goes way back to then because we were applying to YC.  0:01:22.4 Chad Sowash: And this is what year? 0:01:23.8 Steve Bartel: This  is 2017. 0:01:24.5 Chad Sowash: Okay. 0:01:25.4 Steve Bartel: Summer of 2017. We're like, oh my gosh, we could apply to YC late if we get an application in in the next 12 hours. And so we were looking at the application. It was like, well, we need a name. We need a website. We went on some sort of domain site. We started searching. We're like, oh man, a lot of companies are naming their things Zen these days. And so we looked for ZenRecruit, ZenRecruiter, and then they were all taken and we're like, oh, ZenSorcerer. Perfect. All right. So we have a name, but we knew that that name would just get us started because... 0:02:02.0 Chad Sowash: Paint you into a corner. 0:02:03.2 Steve Bartel: Exactly. Our vision was to become like an all in one recruiting platform to become the salesforce for recruiting. And we're actually like, you know, basically there today. So I'm excited to talk more about that. But a few years in, we had just raised a series A funding, and we're like, this is the perfect time to rebrand because how do you get the word out about a rebrand? You pair it with a hot fundraise announcement because otherwise nobody cares. Nobody cares when you're a Series A company and you're changing your name. So raising a bunch of money from top tier investors was like the perfect time to get the word out. Then began the journey of trying to find Gem.com. I mean, I could go into the long story, but... 0:02:43.3 Joel Cheesman: Just let us know the check amounts. That's good enough. 0:02:46.4 Steve Bartel: That's maybe the one thing I can't share. But here's the one thing I can share. 0:02:51.9 Chad Sowash: Yes. 0:02:52.6 Steve Bartel: Normally, a company name like Gem.com would sell for $2 or $3 million. Three-letter. Spellable. It's a.com. . $2 to $3 million. 0:03:04.7 Joel Cheesman: No question. 0:03:05.1 Steve Bartel: When you're a Series A company, you don't have that kind of money. 0:03:07.7 Chad Sowash: No. 0:03:09.3 Steve Bartel: We did find a really creative way to structure a proposal, though. We framed it out almost like a lease on a house. 0:03:16.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: Did you offer up some stock or something or what? 0:03:19.3 Steve Bartel: No stock, but we gave a down payment. 0:03:22.9 Chad Sowash: Okay. 0:03:24.3 Steve Bartel: And then we structured the payments over seven years. 0:03:27.3 Chad Sowash: You don't have a balloon payment, though, right? 0:03:29.3 Joel Cheesman: No balloon.  0:03:30.1 Steve Bartel: What's the balloon payment? 0:03:31.1 Joel Cheesman: Oh, the end. 0:03:32.7 Steve Bartel: Well, actually we do. So at the end of seven years, we have the option to buy it for the remaining amount. 0:03:37.8 Chad Sowash: Oh, okay. 0:03:38.4 Steve Bartel: And first of all, we got it way less than $2 million. But we also got to space out the payments over seven years, which is great for a startup from a cash flow perspective. Because either you make it and you go on to raise hundreds of millions, which we did, or you don't. And then you give the domain back. So that's the story. 0:03:58.4 Joel Cheesman: Can we do a quick intro, because... 0:04:00.4 Chad Sowash:  We've got to get the listeners sucked into the good stories. 0:04:01.5 Joel Cheesman: Not everyone knows you guys. A lot of our listeners, viewers out there. Let's start with Alla. Just give us the elevator pitch on you and your experience and where you're coming from on a recruitment side. 0:04:12.1 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. So I'm currently the VP of Talent and Workplace at Glean. I've just been there for about seven weeks. Prior to that, I spent 15 years in hyper growth companies. So I started my career at Zynga, then went on to Square, a couple of smaller startups. And most recently, I spent six years at Instacart. So that's my quick journey. 0:04:31.0 Joel Cheesman: That's a pretty light resume.  0:04:32.3 Chad Sowash: Just a little bit. 0:04:33.0 Joel Cheesman: How did she make it onto the show? I don't know. 0:04:36.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: It's been a fun ride. 0:04:38.1 Steve Bartel: Well, maybe the way I'll humblebrag is Square, Instacart, Glean, all Gem customers. So thanks for being a Gem customer. 0:04:46.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: Loyal Gem customer. 0:04:49.8 Steve Bartel: Love to hear it. I'm the founder CEO of Gem. We've been building Gem for about eight years. We've got thousands of customers. We partner with some of the best brands out there like Glean, Instacart, and Square. But also a bunch of Fortune 100s, companies like Walgreens, McKesson, Salesforce, Workday's own exec recruiting team uses Gem. And then a lot of that fastest, hottest, fastest growing AI companies. So Glean, of course, being one of them, Anthropic, Scale AI, the list goes on. And then most of the private tech companies as well. 0:05:24.3 Joel Cheesman: So we're here live from the Gem booth. We're at the Unleash conference. I know we're barely into it, but what are some initial takeaways, things that have caught your attention? What's your sense on the show at this point? 0:05:37.3 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think maybe to zoom out a little bit, I would say being in this industry for the past 15 years, in the last five to six years, I'm so incredibly proud of how much innovation has happened in this space. Like if I remember back in the day when I first started Zynga, you had your ATS and you had spreadsheets and everything else in between was not really solved for. And it's just good to be here to see all of these different products out there. So much innovation happening, so much tooling that's accessible for both recruiting leaders, recruiters, sourcers, you name it, there's something for everyone. And so I think just being here and feeling that energy and seeing all of it is really great.  0:06:14.4 Joel Cheesman: Steve? 0:06:14.6 Steve Bartel: Yeah, totally. I mean, the industry, I mean, every industry out there is going through unprecedented disruption. And so, of course, the talk of the town is AI and how that's changing recruiting. You know, I really think that there's this dividing line that's being formed between the teams that are adopting AI and the ones that are being left behind, quite frankly. So there's a lot of talk about that. There's a lot of talk about replacing recruiters. My take is AI is not going to replace recruiters, it's going to enhance recruiters. And actually, what's going to happen is the ones that adopt AI, that become AI fluent. 0:06:48.6 Steve Bartel: They're going to replace the recruiters that don't, right? So it's not about replacing recruiters, it's about the ones that adopt AI will be the ones for this new era. But you know, my favorite part about these conferences is like, wow, it's just so awesome to get to spend in-person time with folks from the industry, talk to our customers, talk to future customers, other folks from the industry. I mean, that's why we all got into this profession in the first place, right? We're people people. Most of us. 0:07:16.4 Joel Cheesman: Love people most of the time. 0:07:17.7 Chad Sowash: Over 80% of you watching right now, you watch over and over. We know you do, but you haven't liked and you haven't subscribed. Let's do that. Let's do that now. 0:07:27.1 Joel Cheesman: So you talk about it empowering and then also kind of like powering up recruiters, but aren't there stats around teams getting smaller? 0:07:38.6 Steve Bartel: Oh yeah. I mean, that's why it's even more important. So recruiting teams are smaller than ever before. If you look at the data from 2021 to 2024, take the average customer from SMB to enterprise, the average recruiting team has dropped from 29 to 24 over the last three years, but they're facing so much more work. So on average, recruiters are per recruiter owning 55% more job recs. Applications have gone up nearly three X. They're 2.7 X per recruiter compared to 2021. And guess what? Here's the thing. Everybody knows they're getting more inbound. What people might not realize they're feeling it, but they can't put a number to it. Is it's taking eight days longer to hire each role and it's taking 43% more interviews to make one hire. 0:08:30.4 Joel Cheesman: Ouch. 0:08:31.2 Steve Bartel: Ouch. It's a perfect storm of smaller teams being asked to do a whole lot more. I mean, a lot of people are, especially people outside of the industry, they're looking at the industry and they're thinking, Oh, like there's less hiring happening. Recruiting teams must be having a good time. I mean, all I can attest is quite the opposite. 0:08:51.1 Chad Sowash: So talk about the squeeze Alla. I mean, the teams are getting smaller, recs are getting more, more applications. How do you balance that knowing that more than likely you're not going to get more resources? I mean, how do you actually balance into all of this? 0:09:08.6 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah. I mean, the word that I heard for the last two years especially is efficiency. I mean, you just have to figure out how to make that workflow more efficient for you. 0:09:17.6 Chad Sowash: And have you changed workflows? 0:09:19.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: Absolutely. Absolutely. In so many ways. 0:09:21.5 Chad Sowash: I think it's many companies, they don't change workflows. They just continue to do it and they just push harder. And it's, I mean, it's like you're going to break the system. So talk about how you do that and how you get your teams to actually receive that well. 0:09:35.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, absolutely. So adoption is a very big part. We were just talking about it. But so you have to find the tools that make the process more efficient. It's not that you're changing the workflows, it's that you're finding different ways to get to that same step, right? So for example, sourcing. We posted a role at one of the companies, 14,000 applicants over one week. 14,000 applicants in one week. I don't care how many recruiters you have on the team. It is actually not efficient for them to go one by one by one by one trying to figure out which of the ones move forward and which ones don't. 0:10:10.2 Joel Cheesman: I thought AI was going to solve all that. We're going to AI everything. Is that not the case? 0:10:16.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: I mean, yes, but you also, you know, these AI tools are new. And so there's a lot of like trust and, you know, verify and how do you really go about this? And did AI go and filter it in the right way? And so you still have to have a lot of oversight. But I think what's been interesting is trying that, right? You have to lean in and you have to try and figure out, okay, so let's set an AI tool or let's do some AI filtering or let's figure out how we can decrease that 14 to 5,000. And then that 5,000, you know, what are some of the other knockout things that we could do, whether it's knockout questions or very specific things that you start to calibrate on a little bit more with your teams. And then you start to see, okay, actually the AI tool or the filtering that we use did work. So then the next time you lean into it more and you lean to more and you start to trust it a little bit more. So those are the types of things that you end up leaning into. 0:11:06.9 Alla Mezhvinsky: There's also, you know, technical assessments that are now automated, you know, whether that's with code signal or, you know, a couple of other different companies that come to mind. It plugs into the process. You're no longer utilizing the hiring manager's time or the technical interviewer's time or the recruiter's time. You're able to get through some of those stages in a little bit more of an automated, consistent way. And then you add the human touch to it. Then you add all the other layers like the onsite, like the hiring manager screen, which are still really important. And I don't want to say never, but I don't see them going away in a short period of time, like eventually, maybe. But right now, it's how do you automate some of the administrative work, like reviewing resumes, doing some of the initial screening, so that recruiters have the time to actually focus and give candidates a good experience. So I think that's what you're leaning into, is just automating the admin work that you can automate. 0:12:02.4 Steve Bartel: I love that. Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it on the head. There's so much talk. If you just go on LinkedIn and scroll for a few posts, you're going to see everybody talking about how candidate experience has gone downhill. But the thing that nobody's talking about is recruiter experience. Recruiter experience has gone way downhill, and we can't solve candidate experience unless we first solve recruiter experience, because when you're drowning in 15,000 applicants for a single role, how are you going to get back to everyone? How are you going to provide a personalized touch? And so, yeah, automating the busy work, automating the manual tedious work, the parts of the job that frankly kind of suck. 0:12:41.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, the scheduling, the manual stuff. 0:12:44.5 Steve Bartel: Exactly. And then that frees up teams to provide a better candidate experience and be more strategic to the rest of the organization. And you talked about using AI to automate inbound. One of our customers, Zillow, just rolled that out. They're saving 75% time on inbound app review. 0:13:03.1 Chad Sowash: Is this external sourcing only? Is it a hybrid between external and internal in their database that they have? 0:13:12.7 Steve Bartel: So that's for just their applications using AI to rank their applications. And the cool thing about that is not only do they save 75% of their time, but also, like we were just talking about, there's no way every single applicant can get a look. And now whether you're applicant number 8 or 800, you get the same fair chance to get reviewed by an actual recruiter if you've got the right qualifications for the job. And so on the app review side, they're saving 75% time. On the sourcing side, they're actually also using us for sourcing. I know that we were just rolling that out at Instacart before you switched to Glean, but their results there are even more astounding. I think they're seeing a 58% match rate on folks that Gem AI sourcing finds for them. So you think about that, compare that to going manually on LinkedIn one by one by one, where you might reach out to like 1 in 10 or 2 in 10. Now with like these new AI models that take natural language, you can just say, here are the five to 10 things I care about. Start ranking my inbound, take those same criteria, apply them to all the public profiles out there on the internet, and get a shortlist of 200 people to review every week. 0:14:29.7 Chad Sowash: Well, it's important though, because the job description has sucked for how long now to be able to get those things, those requirements that are actually what you need. And I mean, so, I mean, it's almost like a change in thought process. And I almost think that like this whole replumbing of the system is making TA rethink, and then also challenge hiring managers. Do you really need this, this, and this? Is that not happening in broad base? Are you guys seeing that? 0:15:00.3 Steve Bartel: It needs to happen. So the first thing that needs to happen is folks need to get more specific about what they're looking for. And actually that helps with the inbound problem right out of the gate, because if you post a more specific job description, you're gonna get more specific candidates that are actually a good fit for that role instead of like a generic inbound. Now, the other reason that's helpful is because the way these new AI models work is you can take in natural language. And so if you have a very specific job description, you can pass that into the AI and it can actually produce remarkable results based on natural language. And one of the things that we build in though, cause like not every team is gonna really nail the job description and make it super specific, even though we'd love them to, we build the ability to ingest an intake doc or like a hiring manager spot doc or whatever you wanna call it. There's like 20 different names for this doc. It's the internal doc that you have with your hiring manager where you've collaborated with them on requirements. Sometimes these are things that you wouldn't wanna post on your career site, but if you put those in, the AI can get even more specific about matching. 0:16:10.6 Joel Cheesman: And we're hearing a lot of horror stories, lazy apply, deep fakes, job seekers getting pretty savvy around shotgunning, machine gunning their resume to companies. You have a lot of companies using Gem, you get a lot of applications. Are you guys seeing this? Is the hype real and how are you fighting it? Or is a lot of hot air? 0:16:30.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, I mean, the stat you mentioned, which I think is like double the applicants, we felt it. 2024 Instacart got 400,000 applicants. 0:16:41.3 Chad Sowash: What was that? 0:16:42.5 Alla Mezhvinsky: 400,000. 0:16:44.7 Chad Sowash: 400,000, okay. 0:16:47.3 Alla Mezhvinsky: In one year. And that was, I wouldn't say almost close to double from previous years. So smaller recruiting teams, more applicants on the market, if you don't bridge that gap with some efficiencies in the process, unless you're able to hire large teams, which honestly still is inefficient. Like you don't want your teams, even if they're large, to be inefficient. But one of the things that I think you guys do really well on top of some of the things we've discussed is that analytics and insights piece. And something that I've worked really hard over the last few years is making sure that not just I'm able to get data and deliver that to our leaders, to our hiring managers, but every recruiter is actually able to understand that data, utilize that data, be able to send quarterly, monthly business reviews to their managers proactively so they're understanding what's happening in the pipeline. So I'll give you an example. We had a hiring manager that was saying, oh, it's taking too long to fill this rack, what's going on, we're not seeing too many candidates end up at the onsite stage. 0:17:50.2 Alla Mezhvinsky: And for whatever reason, it's so easy to say, well, recruiting is not doing something right. 0:17:54.4 Chad Sowash: Oh, of course. 0:17:56.6 Alla Mezhvinsky: Of course. It's always that. 0:17:57.5 Chad Sowash: It's not the market, it's not your requirements. 0:17:59.5 Alla Mezhvinsky: And there's no bad intent. It just, yes, if you're not getting candidates to the onsite, something's broken in the recruiting side. And we had just started using Gem insights. And so we were able to show the hiring manager like this funnel of like, here's how many applicants, here's how many we reviewed, here's how many talked to the hiring manager. And then we saw this crazy drop-off rate at the onsite stage. And so from hiring manager to case study to onsite, there was this massive drop-off. And so it actually wasn't necessarily the recruit, it wasn't happening at the recruiter stage, it was happening later down the process. And so, but unless you have that data and it doesn't live in spreadsheets, because it's really hard to visually make it appealing, but being able to pull, you know exactly which chart I'm talking about, being able to pull that and show that to the hiring managers and actually say, actually, here's the stage and let's dive into that stage. And what we realized is, it's true that it was taking too long, the case study was too hard, it was not consolidated with the onsite. And so people were like, you're gonna make me go through this hoop and then do an onsite? 0:19:03.4 Alla Mezhvinsky: No. And so we ended up consolidating and piling it a few different processes. And then all of a sudden it was like an unlock and we were able to get candidates to the onsite stage, get candidates into the offer stage. So it's things like that. And to your point, there's so many different parts of Gem, but that insights piece I think is making recruiters not only more efficient, but just like be able to work smarter and lead with data and influence their hiring managers based on that. 0:19:28.8 Chad Sowash: Well, turning that around though too, can you also show the hiring manager the time that they took in the process to help them say, look, I understand, we want this, we wanna squeeze this a little bit more, but your portion, can we work on that as well? Because I think it's a team effort, right? They don't understand if you have the insights, that's beautiful. And are the insights something that can be generated like right off of like the historical data? If it's something that you've hired for before that you understand this might be a long and here's the drop-off rate, those types of things. 0:20:06.2 Steve Bartel: Totally, yeah. And so the way the insights work, and I know exactly which chart you're talking about, that's our like pipeline analytics report. The cool thing about Gem is we can take all the data at the top of the funnel from your sourcing, your CRM, your talent marketing efforts, any of the different Gem products that you're using, and then marry that with the data from your ATS, whether you're using Gem ATS or, you know, greenhouse in your case at both of your previous roles. And we can take all of the conversion rates from your recruiting funnel, combine that with your sourcing efforts, your recruiting event strategy, your branded emails, and piece together a full funnel. 0:20:45.8 Chad Sowash: Everybody wins at Gem. 0:20:49.2 Joel Cheesman: Looks like there was gems for everybody. 0:20:50.9 Steve Bartel: Somebody just won some headphones back there. That is cool. This is why I love doing this stuff live. It's so fun. But yeah 0:20:59.5 Alla Mezhvinsky: I thought that was people getting excited about Gem analytics. 0:21:02.9 Steve Bartel: We'll take it. Yeah. Gem analytics, there it is. The cool thing about this though is it democratizes data, right? Previously you either had to track this stuff in spreadsheets or you had to like talk to somebody on recruiting ops or the people analytics team. 0:21:19.2 Chad Sowash: Just to get the data. 0:21:20.0 Steve Bartel: Just to get the data. 0:21:20.9 Chad Sowash: Yes. 0:21:21.4 Steve Bartel: Now a recruiting manager or even an individual recruiter and sourcer can pull up their funnel and they can bring it to their hiring manager and they can have an educated conversation and you get out of this game of like pointing fingers and guessing. 0:21:34.3 Alla Mezhvinsky: It's just all there. 0:21:35.9 Steve Bartel: It's right there. 0:21:37.4 Alla Mezhvinsky: I think the adoption piece is something important too. We've all worked for companies and had tools that accompany on boards and they do a quick little training and they send some sort of instruction guide and then you're expected to go at it. We did that in 2019 with Gem and we did a very lightweight introduction and all of a sudden we were like, well, there's only a couple of recruiters that are actually using it. You have this question of like, okay, is it the system or is it us? Did we do it the wrong way? I wasn't ready to hang my hat up on Gem and so we decided to relaunch it and we knew that we actually wanted to use it more. So we leaned into it quite a bit and really made sure that all the recruiters knew where to go, how to use the system, but more importantly, why? The why is if you're going into a meeting with your hiring manager and they're asking you these questions, you should be able to answer them. They shouldn't come to me. They shouldn't have to go to the top. Every recruiter should have this at their disposal. 0:22:41.2 Alla Mezhvinsky: And so doing that training and you guys did a great job of partnering with us and we're doing ongoing trainings. Well, maybe not we anymore, but Instacart continues to do ongoing trainings to make sure that all the product releases that Gem is doing, Instacart and whatever other company can actually take advantage of. Because otherwise the product knowledge gets stale and you end up only using the tools that you know about or the features that you know about. But as we talked about innovation, things are moving very quickly. And so kind of having this continuous partnership and continuous training is really helpful. 0:23:15.0 Steve Bartel: Totally. And there's so many new things coming out, but there's also so many new recruiters that join the team over time. And so that's why we always love to show up as an extension of the team. And I think you nailed it on the head. Like adoption, having a good product is only half the battle. The other half of the battle is like, you know, how do you get people enabled? How do you do the change management, especially if you're adopting something really powerful? It's a new way of working. And so especially with our larger customers, but also for folks that maybe haven't used sourcing automation, haven't used a CRM yet, haven't had like data at their fingertips before, maybe, and especially with this new wave of AI where every recruiter is trying to learn how to become AI fluent and how to use AI, how to prompt well, that kind of stuff. You know, that's where we like to show up as like a strategic partner. 0:24:04.6 Joel Cheesman: Steve, this one's for you. I know you talk to your customers a lot intimately. We're taping this at the beginning of May, so I don't want to hold you to anything from future perspective, but the geopolitical scene is pretty volatile right now. Tariffs, people worried about empty shelves, et cetera. It's no secret. Are you hearing from your clients a lot of concern or changes in their behavior at this point with how they do business? 0:24:30.9 Steve Bartel: Great question. It's impacting some in really obvious ways. I mean, take Wayfair, for example. I mean, they import 95% of their furniture from overseas. And so, you know, some companies are just in a really tough space. I think it's especially impacting larger enterprise companies. They tend to just do more global business. And so those folks are already seeing an impact. For your average, like, mid-market tech company, for like an AI startup, those folks are all pretty much business as usual. But we'll see. Like, a lot of that depends on how this develops over the next year. If there continues to be more unpredictability with, like, the tariff situation, with the geopolitical situation, you know, you could see us enter a recession. And then now there's going to be trickle-down effects to every company because every B2B SaaS company that sells to enterprise companies that do business overseas, they're going to see less sales. They're going to have to slow down their headcount and stuff like that. So, you know, really hard to see how this stuff shakes out. There's the really obvious first-order effects for a company like Wayfair. For anybody that's doing a lot of importing. But then there's the second-order effects, and those are, like, way, way harder to predict. 0:25:49.2 Joel Cheesman: How about Walgreens? Are they worried about empty shelves? Obviously, pharmaceuticals, like anything from Walgreens that you're hearing? 0:25:55.9 Steve Bartel: I haven't caught up with Walgreens about this personally, but thinking from first principles, yeah, that is a little bit uncertain. 0:26:04.1 Joel Cheesman: Doesn't impact you at all, I assume, from where you sit. 0:26:09.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: I think the theme is efficiency. Like, no matter what happens, I think teams are just continuing to focus on how do you get the most bang for your buck. And whatever happens, I think that continues, that has been the trend for the last two years, three years, and will continue to. And so I think that's, like, if you just focus on that, you're almost immune to a lot of things that are happening around you. 0:26:32.2 Steve Bartel: Yeah, totally. I mean, we saw this two and a half years ago when hiring really slowed down. We saw this when COVID first hit, and everybody froze hiring. A lot of layoffs happened. And the name of the game for both of these hiring slowdown cycles was efficiency. But the other thing that really accelerated was consolidation. I think that folks realized, first of all, you can save 30% to 50% on your stack by consolidating more things. But now I think a lot of people are really bought into the vision that an all-in-one consolidated stack is just better because your recruiters only have to learn one system instead of, like, 9 or 10 different tools. They don't have to jump and swivel between 10 different tools to do their job every day. So you actually get efficiencies by streamlining all that. You get better data because everything's fully integrated. To our conversation about data earlier, you get the most complete source of truth when everything's under one roof. That gives you better analytics, but it also gives you better AI. And so for folks that are trying to leverage AI, the really interesting piece, the hard part about AI is no longer the algorithm. 0:27:40.1 Steve Bartel: OpenAI, Anthropic, like they've kind of solved that with their new foundational models. The hard part is what context does the AI have? What data does it have access to? Right. And so for a really like simple example, if you were going to use an AI sourcing bot to automate some of your sourcing, you wouldn't want it reaching out to somebody that your team was already in contact with two months ago. You wouldn't want it reaching out to somebody that was rejected in your ATS seven months ago. And what you would want it doing is if somebody were attended a recruiting event, or if you met them on campus three years ago, or if they had a great conversation with a hiring manager 15 months ago, you'd want it to reference that in the reach out and offer a hyper personalized approach. And so where I see this stuff headed, whether there's an upmarket, recruiting teams are hiring like crazy or a downmarket where everybody's slowing down, looking to get more efficient, looking to consolidate is towards AI first all in one. And that's where we're positioning Gem in the market. 0:28:40.2 Chad Sowash: So when it comes down to all of this, right, it seems like there are two schools of thought and there always are. One platform to rule them all and then just having a very integratable solution, right? And it seems like agents are everywhere, right? Agents are everywhere and it seems like there are good point solutions that could prospectively integrate and kind of help instead of you trying to be everything to everybody to try to pull in some point solutions. Is that kind of like part of the partnership ecosystem that you guys are building? And for you, how important is that for the organization to know that, hey, look, the system that we're using is adaptable? 0:29:29.4 Steve Bartel: Yeah, it's a great question. So I think there's pros and cons. I think that if you're stitching together 10, 15 different tools that don't talk to each other super well, that's not a great status quo. And that's why I think consolidation is really appealing to people. Now with Gem, we never want to be building a product that isn't the very best, right? And so our take is to focus on the most important things and do them really well so that companies don't have to choose between a subpar product and an all-in-one. 0:30:03.7 Steve Bartel: But then partner with leading players for other parts of the stack that we don't do. For example, I think really highly of the call intelligence space, companies like RideHire and MetaView that are doing call intelligence and transcription of interview notes. It just saves you so much time. And we don't have that. We partner, we integrate. We're always going to integrate with any player in the stack. And so even though we have scheduling automation as part of our platform, if you prefer good time or modern loop, you can plug that into Gem ATS. No problem. They already integrate. We just think things will work a little bit better together if you use everything from Gem. It's kind of like Apple. You can pair an Apple headphone to an Android phone. And you can kind of pair these devices, but they just work a little bit better if you use the same system.  0:30:57.8 Joel Cheesman: Sort of Spotify versus Apple Music, right? This works a little bit better with Apple products, Apple Music. 0:31:03.0 Steve Bartel: Although Spotify is better.  0:31:06.6 Joel Cheesman: Yes. But does it integrate better? I can't interact with Siri and ask it to play songs on Spotify. 0:31:15.0 Chad Sowash: Oh, you can't? You should have Android then. 0:31:19.2 Steve Bartel: I guess we just all use Androids. 0:31:20.6 Chad Sowash: Thank you. Alla, for you, the most important piece, how is it? We keep hearing about the slimming of the stack because it just keeps growing and growing and growing. How important is that for you guys? How often do you reassess the stack and the process? And then also the nimble question. 0:31:41.4 Joel Cheesman: You're not making a comment about my weight, are you? Slimming of the stack? No? You're very passive aggressive sometimes. 0:31:47.8 Chad Sowash: I didn't know that you would catch on to that, but kind of. But anyway, the slimming of the stack, less cheeseburgers. Is that important? Have you guys focused on that? And then also, how often do you reassess? 0:31:59.2 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I reassess every year just because you have to. You're looking at your budgets. You're looking at your team. You're really trying to figure out what's the best path forward. And I think you're doing it right. For different reasons, companies may not be able to just go all in. They might be embedded with a system already that they've used for many years, and it's hard for them to come off of that. They might not have the resources. They might have a long-term contract that is hard to get out of. 0:32:25.2 Chad Sowash: They might be forced to use workday.  0:32:26.9 Alla Mezhvinsky: They might be forced to use whatever. And so not limiting yourself to saying, no, you only have to do all Gem or nothing, I think allows you to be great partners to whatever client's needs are. But you also are a subject matter expert and a leader in a lot of these different other components. And so it allows customers to still sign on with you for those things. And I think as I think about myself and all the other leaders that I talk to, that is important. That flexibility, being nimble and being able to kind of pick and choose what you need for this moment, for your budget, for your team's needs, is what we're all looking for. You know, we all obviously want something that consolidates everything. That would certainly be the best path forward, but it's not always a perfect world. It may be eventually, right, as we continue to add on different products. And as I talked about training our teams in different features, ultimately that's the goal. But I don't know that we're like trying to get there as quickly as possible and really just solving for what the team needs are today. 0:33:25.6 Steve Bartel: I think that's really key. And that's actually one of the differentiated approaches that we take at Gem is we're the only all-in-one recruiting platform that can meet you where you are today. We're the only all-in-one that can be your ATS or can sit alongside your ATS. And that's really important. I mean, because like, think about like an ATS migration. That's already such a huge lift. If you're talking about ripping out your entire stack and doing that at the same time. 0:33:50.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: And onboarding, you know, something new... 0:33:53.7 Steve Bartel: That's like a huge undertaking. And so one of the cool things about Gem is you can get started with sourcing, CRM, analytics, like we were just talking about. You can layer on scheduling automation, maybe some of the talent marketing. You can use some of the AI products. And then now the team is like using the full power of Gem alongside their ATS. We flip a switch and now you're on the ATS. And like the change management for that piece is so much lower because you're already using Gem across the entire recruiting team for all these other workflows. 0:34:24.6 Joel Cheesman: I'm hearing a...  0:34:26.2 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah, I was going to say, I think to add to that is companies may not even realize that certain tools do these things. So I'll give you an example. Last year, we went on this whole journey of looking for a sourcing tool. And frankly, we just didn't even know that Gem does it. And so going through that exploration, looking at all the tools and then Gem saying, oh, we do this as well. It allows you to really understand what the market and compare and again, like pick the right product for you. And of course, Gem made a lot of sense because we were using it. It solved all of our problems, but you don't... It's like hard to just say, well, I'm only going to choose Gem because this gives you a bigger picture to make more educated guests. 0:35:07.6 Joel Cheesman: So hearing a lot of analytics, data, statistics, etcetera, from you. And what we've heard from a lot of recruiters and TA professionals is in order to get that seat at the table where our opinion matters and we can evoke change, data is paramount. Proof. Proof. Not just how I feel, this is what's happening. So I'm curious in terms of when you build these products, is that part of what you want to deliver to your clients? Like here's a story through data that you can show your C-suite to get things done. And for you, are you using such data to go to the table and get things done? You're nodding your head yes. 0:35:43.6 Steve Bartel: So I'm actually going to let Alla answer that because I think the work she did at Instacart is like a prime example of how to do this well.  0:35:51.8 Alla Mezhvinsky: Yeah. So I talked about it earlier in the session today, but I used to wake up in the morning and have this pit in my stomach that I was going to get some sort of a ping. And I would. I would get a ping and it would be anything from hiring managers asking me, hey, how's a certain role going? How's that pipeline looking? Or, hey, the recruiting team isn't going fast enough. Do you have any data for pipeline analytics or what we have? And in order for me to get that data previously, it would be a combination of pulling a report from our ATS, looking at various manual trackers, and then downloading some information from the recruiters' heads that was pretty anecdotal. And it would literally take me hours, days, weeks, nights, weekends to pull this data together. And I'd cross my fingers that it would actually be somewhat correct. And so we spent a lot of time at Instacart trying to figure out how to automate this. And we started the partnership with Gem in 2019. And that was a big part of it is this analytics, the insights. How do you pull all the information together from, as Steve mentioned, your sourcing efforts, your ATS, everything that you're doing? How do you pull that into one source of truth and actually be able to get data that is, first of all, at your fingertips, isn't outdated on a daily basis, and isn't just for me to use? 0:37:08.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: I think that was the part that was really important is, yes, I want the data to be able to do these questions, but how do I enable the team to have access to this data as well, to understand where to pull it from, how to slice it and dice it, and be able to actually proactively provide that to their managers? And so we built great dashboards that included everything from time to fill, level of hires, broken down by every which way you can think of, whether it was tech versus non-tech. And then recruiters can slice it and dice it for their specific teams, for their specific roles, for their specific functions. And that became our format for all of the monthly business reviews, the quarterly business reviews. And it took that pit out of my stomach, but the recruiters were much more educated, much more able to influence with data and actually show much easier sort of the narrative behind the work they were doing. 0:38:01.8 Steve Bartel: Yeah, I love that. At Gem, we talk a lot about democratizing data, so putting it in the hands of recruiting managers, rec ops. We also talk a lot about elevating the function and helping our customers show up as strategic partners to the rest of the organization. And it was really cool to get to partner with you all on that. 0:38:18.2 Joel Cheesman: So let's talk about the future for a second. I know at Gem you have a roadmap of what you want to build. Alla, I know you have a wish list of what you want to see companies build. I'll let you pick who goes first, but I want to know what the future looks like or what we hope the future looks like. 0:38:34.5 Alla Mezhvinsky: Hey, I'll start and then you can say if that's on your roadmap or not. 0:38:37.8 Chad Sowash: Take notes, Steve. 0:38:39.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: I mean, the notion, you know, we talked about efficiency. We talked about efficiency. We talked, you know, one-stop shop for all. Like, if we can get those right over the next few years, I think we're going to be in a really good, I think Gem's going to be in a good position, but I think recruiting teams are going to be in a place where they're not having to chase all of this information. They're not having to demo so many different products. They're able to just trust one partner and really hit all of the different challenges that they have and solve them. So that's, you know, it's a little bit high level, but there are still a lot of systems that we're working with and it would be great to consolidate. 0:39:16.6 Steve Bartel: Amazing. That's music to my ears. I mean, at Gem, we're building the only AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. And so the newest things that I'm most excited about, the ATS, it's coming along super quickly. We already have hundreds of customers, but that's a big part of our roadmap because we're bringing it up market really quickly. Today, it is in general availability for companies of up to a thousand customers, but we actually have an upmarket ATS design partner program with 15 incredible brands that you would all recognize. Not allowed to talk about them publicly yet, but they're on a multi-year journey with us of pre-purchasing the ATS. 0:39:55.9 Joel Cheesman: I think you're talking about OnlyFans, Chad. I think OnlyFans is going to be on it. OnlyFans? It's pretty big. 0:40:00.2 Chad Sowash: It's pretty big. 0:40:01.0 Steve Bartel: Fingers crossed. All of them are migrating in the next year as we continue to build out the enterprise readiness requirements for companies of up to 3,000 and then up to 10,000. And so I'm really excited about that. I'm also really excited about the new AI products. We talked about AI app review. We talked about AI sourcing. Those two are in the product today. We're making tons of improvements. In terms of analytics, we talked about data on top of your hiring funnel and on top of your top of funnel. We're also adding talent insights on top of public market data to round out that picture. And then on the AI side, we're adding in, in the next month or two, we're adding rediscovery. So imagine this. 0:40:40.5 Chad Sowash: There we go. 0:40:41.3 Steve Bartel: Boom. You can set up your AI search. Yes. It starts ranking your inbound. You get it calibrated. Now it goes to work on top of your ATS and your CRM to surface all of the folks that have already raised their hand. And then that same AI that you've already calibrated goes to work externally to start shortlisting 100, 200 people a week. And that is, I think, the true power of an AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. The AI works better together, and it works across all of your different channels. 0:41:10.1 Joel Cheesman: Did you guys have fun? 0:41:12.5 Steve Bartel: Yeah. 0:41:13.0 Alla Mezhvinsky: That was great. 0:41:13.5 Joel Cheesman: Cool. That was the warm-up. We're going to do it for real now. Pretty good. 0:41:15.7 Alla Mezhvinsky: As long as I can do it for my flight. 0:41:17.5 Joel Cheesman: Guys, we are live from the Gem booth at Unleash. That is Steve Bartel with Gem. That is Alla Meshvinsky with Glean. Chad, another one in the can. 0:41:27.7 Joel Cheesman: We out. 0:41:27.8 Chad Sowash: We out. 0:41:28.0 Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? A podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast… 💥 Job.com ’s “Oops, We’re Bankrupt” Tour continues with reportedly missing W-2s, debts owed, and a founder flexing family vacation pics while employees can’t file their taxes. 🏢 Indeed lays off 1,300 while Glassdoor’s CEO exits stage left. Turns out running two redundant brands doesn’t  build synergy. Who knew? 🔐 Paradox gets hacked through a 2018 test account with a password likely stolen from your AIM profile. Brass tcks is they owned it, patched it, and didn’t blame Russia, so… gold star? 🪦 We pour one out for Matt Lavery, a true TA badass, friend, and 3AM “ride-or-die” who made the world—and hiring—a hell of a lot better. 🛒 And in the fire-sale aisle: Monster + CareerBuilder—once worth billions—now yours for the price of a mid-sized Tesla. Thanks, JobGet. 🐐 Bonus? Christian Forman gives up his goat farm for TotalJobs. Spoiler: nobody believes he wants that gig. It’s red meat, warm beers, bad passwords, and scorched-earth recruiting—just another week in TA with Chad & Cheese. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:36.216) Old enough to know better, too young to care. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Epstein Cheesman. Chad (00:45.666) And this is Chad "snacky beers" Sowash, Joel Cheesman (00:48.796) And on this week's episode, job.com objects in deep cuts and paradox apologizes. Let's do this. Chad (01:00.654) So Berlin, huh? Joel Cheesman (01:02.646) I'm a Berliner. Yes. Yes. I'm a thing of currywurst. That's for sure. Good Lord. It is good. It is good. It's like a, it's either a rich man's hot dog or poor man's bratwurst. don't know which, but yeah. So listeners know we do breakfast every summer. Last two summers. This will be three that I've taken coal. Chad (01:05.684) You're a jelly donut. Chad (01:14.259) God, yeah, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful taste. Chad (01:27.687) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (01:31.388) my now 18 year old, uh, over to Europe. did England first year. We did Ireland last year and we picked, uh, we picked Berlin this year. So I'd never been, he had never been. Um, it was great. It's, it's a incredibly disjointed city. Um, I mean, 80 % of it is gone after world war two. So the rebuilding the cold war, um, it's old, it's new, it's conservative, it's liberal. The, the Chad (01:48.568) Yeah. Yeah. It was blonde, yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:00.284) The architecture is confused. It's like part Eastern block, part old Europe's 19th century stuff. They're incredibly still shameful about what happened, which you go to England and they think it's 1882 and Queen Victoria is still running the empire. And Berlin, it's like, there's no... Chad (02:03.349) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (02:28.344) no chestiness at all in Berlin. They're very, very shameful, incredibly, incredibly worthwhile. If you're a history buff, World War II, Cold War, Napoleon, you know, walk through the Brandenburg Gate. Like there's so much really cool history there. There's a Soviet, there's a Soviet monument right in the middle of everything, which is kind of bizarre in today's world. No one's visiting it except kind of just passing through. Chad (02:30.209) Yeah. Chad (02:42.253) That's just awesome. Yeah. Chad (02:49.261) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (02:55.996) Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. couldn't blow it up. So it's just kind of there. there's a, there's a really cool monument, to the Jews, the slaughtered or the murdered Jews of Europe, think it's called very, very, very interesting. yeah, highly recommend Berlin. I assume you've been there, but if not, you should put it on your list for sure. Chad (03:08.309) Mm hmm. Okay. Wow. Chad (03:16.871) No, just Munich. We need to go though. We do need to go. I need to spend more time in other places in Europe. That'd be awesome as well. Joel Cheesman (03:19.579) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:26.106) Yeah, did you find a certain shame in Munich? Probably not. It's probably pretty unique to Berlin. Yeah. Chad (03:31.541) Yeah, no, not as much, I would say. we really, didn't spend enough time there. We're like bouncing all around, but we do need to spend more time there. Joel Cheesman (03:39.782) Mm-hmm. and the concentration camp that's in Berlin. Talk about haunting. Literally the where they train the SS troops, the the barracks are there, the field in which they trained. There's a Gestapo component to the the to the concentration camp. They still have the wooden post where they shot people. They still have the hooks. So, you know, this Gestapo would torture you. They they'd tie your hands behind your back. Chad (03:45.453) Hell, Dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (04:01.303) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:11.046) And then they would hang you from your wrists and it would dislocate your arm, which I couldn't imagine how, but the hooks are still there, which is really weird. The, the kill pit, the pit, yeah, totally haunting. And, and they put, they put wood in the, like the kill pit, which I'm sure you've seen in movies because the bullets would ricochet and that the wood would catch the bullets and the holes are still in the wood. Chad (04:14.003) Mm-hmm. Backward, yeah. Chad (04:20.895) It's haunting. It's haunting. Chad (04:29.901) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:38.148) I mean, the bear, it's just super haunting. really, really, really a hat tip to Germany for keeping it. They could have torn it down long ago. they kept it for memory sake and that we don't forget. but yeah, make sure that you do that as well. If you're out there. Chad (04:41.463) Yeah. Chad (04:50.359) Yeah. Chad (04:57.229) Yeah. When we went to Poland a couple of years ago, we went to Auschwitz. and that, mean, it's just, it's, it's haunting. is completely haunting. but to get away from the haunting now, I've been on the beach since, as soon as, as soon as, as soon as we left, have, we always have friends that follow us down from rec fest. we have, a drink fest to be quite frank. I mean, I am trying to put as much water down as I possibly can right now. Joel Cheesman (05:05.744) Yep. Joel Cheesman (05:17.872) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:23.748) You look a little rough. You look a little rough, Chad. Chad (05:26.765) God, dude. Yeah. So anyway, had two sets of friends literally come down. First set came in and they stay with us. We have a good time and had like an overlap. Three others come down and we play paddle and we drink and it's just like, so we're breathing it out. It was an amazing time. We're a win, we're a win, but amazing time. And that's where the snacky beers come in because in Portugal, if you're watching on YouTube, got the little bitty beers, like the half beers. Joel Cheesman (05:44.156) Yeah. Chad (05:56.008) And you can just in Portugal, not much like the rest of Europe, they love their beer ice cold. And you get one of those little beers and you can just, I mean, obviously you can drink a lot more, but there's just so cold. And that's kind of like almost like a tradition, let's just say. Snacky beers. Joel Cheesman (06:05.926) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (06:14.884) Okay. Are they, were these industry guests or like just personal? Okay. Chad (06:19.757) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I had Chris and Marin come down, been friends of ours for a while. And then the boys from Talent Nexus up in the UK, they love playing paddle, come down, we have a little strategy session with Snacky Beers. And it just had a fucking blast like we we always do. Joel Cheesman (06:23.033) Okay. Joel Cheesman (06:34.46) Thank you, Bear. Joel Cheesman (06:38.972) Cool. So, yeah, take a little break, take a little pause. cause before you know it, we'll be headed to Nashville for rec fest, 2.0 and that's already shaping up to be quite a time as well. Thanks to rec fest had a great time. a lot of people I wanted to connect with didn't just cause it's busy and people want to talk to you and no Oasis cover band are on stage. So sorry for doing a chance to talk. I know Matt Alder. Chad (06:47.467) Yeah. Amen. Chad (06:53.41) No kidding. Chad (07:01.545) It's, yeah. Hahaha! Joel Cheesman (07:08.346) Matt Alder, I usually sit down and have some, drinks with he was, he was, he was out, think before I got a chance. So sorry if we didn't get a chance to speak, but those who did had a great time, hottest shit, in, London, which yeah. And the tenant. was. Yes. Quite a bit, quite a bit nicer, but, yeah, this is, this is a red meat show. So, so let's get to, let's get to some stuff here. So an incredibly somber. Chad (07:21.325) In the tent, yeah. It was a little bit nicer outside. It's a little breeze. Yeah. Chad (07:35.35) It is. Joel Cheesman (07:37.564) Uh, shout out for, for both of us, Chad, listeners of the show will know Matt Lavery, uh, UPS 27, 28 years, uh, there, um, passed away, uh, last week in a, we know is a boating accident, a sailboat. Um, his funeral was, uh, this past week. Uh, it's been heavy on my mind, Chad, uh, curious what your, your takeaways are and how you're feeling. Chad (07:40.653) Mm. Chad (07:48.141) I'm get you here soon. Chad (07:56.781) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:07.937) Yeah, I mean, there aren't many times when you feel like a immediate connection with a dude or with somebody, right? And it was like we met him, I think it was in San Diego for the first time when we interviewed him. That's when we really got to spend time with him. And it turned into a bromance, like a throuple bromance right out of the gate. We're all from the Midwest. I mean, we all love sports, we all love food. And I mean, and he's such a smart. Joel Cheesman (08:30.224) Yeah. Chad (08:37.835) dude and he gets it and we can talk with him on a level that most talent acquisition people just can't. It's not that they're dumb, it's just that he has so much expertise. It's just that we melded so well. And so at that point, I literally reached out to him because I was like, hey, look, we'd to have you on more stages. I mean, what you're talking about is amazing. What you're doing is amazing. And I mean, we literally became friends really fast and had texting all the time. He would always text me probably to do to always text me about this week show and had some you know some hot takes on some stuff and whatnot and we've had him on the show to actually you know review the Leo if you guys didn't didn't remember that good Italian beef, but. I was in total disbelief. Joel Cheesman (09:18.459) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:23.292) Mm-hmm, yeah. Chad (09:32.952) for at least 24, if not 36 hours. I woke up and I sent the message to you as soon as I got it. And the obit wasn't out yet, nothing like that. So to me, just, it wasn't real. And I went to my texts and the first thing I did was literally just type his name with a question mark, just kind of like, are you there kind of thing. And, cause it, Joel Cheesman (09:58.896) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:01.483) I just couldn't believe it. And this was more selfish than it was anything else because he was, he was, he was a, I mean, he really was a friend. We were talking about, I mean, the reason why I was coming back early is because he was gracious enough and he was one of the most gracious dudes that would give his time to you. But he was gracious enough to offer us both to come to a Notre Dame game. And I was coming to a Notre Dame game to go with him. They're playing A on the 13th. Joel Cheesman (10:02.843) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (10:17.5) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:31.025) And I thought, fuck, I mean, I'm just never, you have those interactions, whether they're just basic texts or they're going to do something. You went out and had pizza with him. mean, we've done so much, right? This one just hits so much more different than many, okay? Not that he's more important, it's just the connection that we had. And he was so... Joel Cheesman (10:34.054) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:46.374) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (10:55.857) Yeah. Chad (11:00.851) so gracious in giving his time, not just to guys like us, but mentoring people. Just an amazing human being and we're gonna miss him. Joel Cheesman (11:10.224) Yeah. You know, when you, when you, when we started the podcast, the people who we would meet was not even on the radar and eight years of doing this, the people we've met have probably been the most valuable thing, from starting this podcast and we can go down the list and everyone's probably sick of hearing about all the people that, that we get to meet. And, and Matt was Chad (11:21.643) Yeah. Chad (11:29.673) Mm. Yeah. God, yeah. Joel Cheesman (11:40.132) one of those people that you just, you hit it off immediately. Sports fan, food fan, just a dude, just a guy, from, from South side, Chicago, very humble. you know, would I call these people three amers, the people who, the people who are three amers are, if they get a call from you at three AM one, they're going to answer it and two. Chad (11:54.679) Yeah. Chad (12:01.143) you Yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:08.348) They're going to do whatever they can to help you with whatever's wrong at three in the morning. And, and we have a few of those that we've met over the years and Matt was one of those guys and whether it's like, you got to come to a Notre Dame game. And I was, I was set to, you know, to watch the USC game, which is probably the most highly sought after game of the season. He wasn't throwing out the Navy game. You know, he was throwing out like whatever game you want. and that's the kind of guy that he was. He was a man of the people. Chad (12:33.43) Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (12:37.916) Even though he was almost always the smartest guy in the room. One of the things that really, uh, was. On inspiring to me was that, uh, on his LinkedIn profile and keep in mind, he was, you he was at UPS labor unions, regular people doing, you know, hard jobs every day. And Matt was a Notre Dame grad and he had an MBA from the university of Chicago. Now, if you know anything about universities in America, those are Chad (12:42.273) Yeah. Chad (12:57.73) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:07.866) two of the top colleges in the Midwest, let alone the country. He did not have those on his LinkedIn profile. And I never asked him why and I wanted to, but I have to imagine knowing him that it was because I didn't want he, he didn't want people to sort of put him in a box that said I'm better than you because he didn't act that way. And I don't think he wanted that, that prejudice to be part of his meeting and interactions with people. Chad (13:11.778) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:34.992) I took Stella up to Chicago a few months ago and I just, I threw a shot in the dark. The Cubs were playing. They were in town. I've kind of used the Joe shaker, connection enough over the years. I was like, you know what? Maybe, maybe Lavery knows somebody or has a connection. And I said, Hey, do you know anybody that has tickets? He comes back, you know, I've had C he's like, I've had season tickets for 20 years or whatever it is. And he's like, I Chad (13:47.297) Hahaha Chad (14:00.301) Jesus Christ. Joel Cheesman (14:01.542) He's like, I just, gave that, I gave that day to my in-laws or niece or somebody. And he said, but let me call in some favors. And I said, okay, no pressure. Like we can get tickets. No big deal. Comes back. I got you tickets here. know, like they were in the email or the text downloaded. Fantastic seats. Somebody he, what he knew had some extras or whatever gave them to me. Like that's just the kind of guy he was. Chad (14:28.717) above and beyond. Joel Cheesman (14:29.148) yeah, above and beyond, like he knew people, but the videos he showed us, like he didn't have to do that. He's an executive at UPS, like, like he didn't have to give us the time of day, but he did. And he did that. He took every demo from every vendor that I knew of. He took every conversation at every conference, even though he didn't have, he didn't have to, and he did. And he is, he is a huge void, a tragic loss. I hope wherever he is, I hope he's with. Chad (14:31.595) in everything. Yeah. Mm-mm. Yeah. Chad (14:44.449) Yes, yes. Yep. Joel Cheesman (14:58.916) Walter Payton and, you know, name your Chicago sports icon. Belushi's got to be there. Like, I mean, I hope that he's, he's up somewhere up, up in heaven, having a good time with Belushi and Payton and everybody else, because just what a solid guy, man. Solid guy way too soon. Our age, we, we, we bonded on the gen X thing. I, could do a whole show on the guy, but man, total loss. Chad (15:15.137) and Italian beef sandwich. Chad (15:23.425) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:28.39) hearts out to his family. know, value the time you have guys and value the people in your life because you just never know. You just never know. You never know. Chad (15:37.777) Right. You never know, which is a reason why you have to sign up for free stuff. Okay. Matt, Matt signed up for free stuff. Matt loved free stuff, by the way. No, seriously. I'm gonna miss, gonna miss that dude. I'm gonna miss that dude. Joel Cheesman (15:41.564) What a transition. man, yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:54.62) totally miss that dude. By the way, he got, we sent him, we sent him rum on his birthday. Funny side story, sorry. And, and, what I, what I bought him online was not what he got. He got some shitty Captain Morgan, cinnamon, whatever. I'm like, no, no, no, we're not going out like that. So I got him like something really good. And I added a bunch of old style. Cause I knew he was going to the Cubs game that day. Like, Chad (15:59.682) Yeah. Yeah. Good. Chad (16:06.367) yes, yes. Chad (16:20.257) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (16:20.944) So that, so I think that kind of, brought us to, but like, that's the kind of guy Matt was, and loved it. Yeah. Cause the friendship that we had, but yeah, no shitty captain Morgan if it's your birthday Chad, but what else can they get from us for free? Chad (16:25.292) It's a great story. Yeah. Chad (16:34.059) Well, whiskey, chicken cock whiskey. That's right. Not just one hand of cock. You've got two. You've got two bottles. Yes. And you should, Stephen, and you should. That coming from the tech talent experts over at Van Hack. Then there's bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends up north. Uh-huh. Bob and Doug at Kiora, who also, also are our shout out sponsor, by the way. What is it? Texting made easy, made simple, made not so complex. Joel Cheesman (17:04.75) And cost effective, easy cost. If you're not doing text recruiting, you gotta get, give our friends at Cura a call for sure. Chad (17:10.497) Too easy. Too easy. New t-shirts. my God. I don't think there were any left. think Cole got to leave with an empty backpack, but new t-shirts, brand new Dr. Feelgood inspired t-shirts from those gentlemen and ladies and gentlemen over at Aeron App. Thanks to Mike and the crew over at Aeron App. Craft beer from the job data geeks over at Joel Cheesman (17:13.756) Hmm. Chad (17:40.253) Aspen Tech Labs. again, if it's your birthday, this is what this is what Matt did. Matt signed up. He got the he got the shitty ROM. But guess what? We gave him the good ROM from our friends over at Plum. Got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free. Joel Cheesman (17:57.724) By the way, your name looks good with an umlaut over it, Chad, Motley Crue style. All right. Celebrating another year around the sun guys is Jim Lowe, Randall Emory, Eli Carstens, Eva Zills, Karen Heatwool, Michelle Palermo, Wendy Dodd, David Anglikowski, Becky Rand, Leslie LeBlanc, Matt Staney, David Seagal-Bernstein, Jeff Hunter. And lastly, George LaRockout. Chad (18:00.813) It does. Chad (18:20.614) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (18:24.602) with your cock out. That's right. Happy birthday, everybody. And thanks for listening to the Chad and cheese podcast. Chad (18:32.653) That's right, and as we said, we're back from Wreckfest. We're gonna be talking more about events, luckily, from those fun kids over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing, but we're not gonna talk about it this week. We're just trying to recover. Joel Cheesman (18:45.564) We got a lot going on this week in the news. This is supposed to be the dog days of summer. We're supposed to be, uh, you know, at the paddle court and, uh, and poolside, but, uh, but Chad, we learned this week, you might have to take some sensitivity training. Uh, you, you've, you've ruffled ruffled some feathers because some of the things you said about job.com's, uh, bankruptcy last week, which I was not on, uh, had, uh, had their co-founder, Aaron Stewart, a bit distraught. Chad (18:52.354) Yeah. yeah. Chad (19:00.941) Apparently. Joel Cheesman (19:12.54) after almost a year off LinkedIn, he posted quote, I don't condone the use of the company's challenges as a form of gaining views, likes, or attention, but podcast shows like the above, meaning you and me are here just for that reason. End quote. You're such a whore for attention, Chad. You want those clicks and likes you've had quite a few messages from the good folks at, present and past from job.com. What you got? Chad (19:26.774) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:40.279) Yeah. So it's really interesting because there are a lot of people that say like, you you're trying to sensationalize things. And in this case specifically, it's bankruptcy. Right. And there are people that are going to be hurt. We talked about Monster and Career Builder and their bankruptcy. We talked about who they owe. There are debtors, there are unsecured debtors and they're secured debtors. Right. So we talked about that on last week's show, Emmy and I did. And then we talked about the prospect of a buyer. And who would that buyer possibly be? Well, they're creating another company to buy job.com. So literally, you're going into bankruptcy to be able to scrub everything clean and all the people that you owe money to are getting fucked. And more than likely, the people that you work for, right? Not all of them, maybe. Maybe you get to keep some of them, but they get fucked too. And then you get to buy the company assets back for cheaper. Joel Cheesman (20:27.74) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (20:42.012) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:43.553) and then just continue to do operations. To me, that does not feel right. So that's not sensationalizing anything. That's just telling the fucking truth of what is, at least what they're looking to from a stalking horse standpoint happen. So yeah, and I think, and this is where I really wanna challenge anybody who says this. When it comes to attention, that post was actually created. Joel Cheesman (20:51.42) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:11.789) to try to talk to us about gaining attention. Well, we should provide the attention where it's due and it's due here because this shit shouldn't happen. And when people are owed money, it shouldn't happen. Since then, since then, I have been on the phone. I have been chatting. I've been on messenger. When we started this, I was actually on the fucking phone with somebody. And so this is from from Aaron's post, quote, I'm here to console. Joel Cheesman (21:14.982) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:41.646) those that maybe feel are feeling lost, frustrated, saddened by all that has happened, whether you've worked with us, partnered with us, or just in the industry, end quote, right? So it's all flowery and it's all, but it says nothing because it's interesting because I have, and it's actually out there in public as comments, employees are asking for their 2024 last year. Joel Cheesman (22:05.072) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:10.785) W-2s. They don't have them. They can't file their taxes. They can't receive tax returns. They can't use that money or pay bills. Everything that he said in that had nothing to do with the actual people. He said family. He posted a picture of his family in an airport getting ready to go on vacation. These people can't fucking afford that. These people are looking for their tax return dollars, right? Joel Cheesman (22:30.075) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:36.813) And then you start to go down kind of like the rabbit hole of, if a company can't provide the W-2, there's tax withholdings, right? So have tax withholdings, you have 401k withholdings, right? You have HSA, you have child support, you have all these different things that can be withheld from an organization. Now that's the record of it to the federal government. So you can show them, hey, look, I'm paying my taxes. Joel Cheesman (22:51.557) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:06.864) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:07.191) Can I get a return or maybe I need to pay a little bit, but this is something that we have to do, right? These people can't do that. And to me, making it about yourself, posting a picture with you and your lovely little girls and your lovely family, I think that's really cute, but that is not the point. You're getting ready to go on a vacation where a lot of these people, they're not going to be able to fucking afford it. And they don't want to be. Joel Cheesman (23:25.986) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (23:35.872) under possibly the thumb of the IRS, right? And, you know, a phrase that Aaron likes to say, you know, is all will be revealed. Well, there are a lot of conversations and actually things that I've been hearing about happening, you know, behind closed doors that I've been able to actually listen into. And I think all will be revealed. think he's a I think he's 100 percent right. Joel Cheesman (23:55.942) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:04.412) Mm-hmm. Chad (24:05.057) just not in the way he might be thinking they will be revealed. just in response, this is not about attention. When you see somebody doing something wrong in the industry, we talk about how Indeed does stupid shit and we make fun of them, right? This is incredibly different. This is owing bankruptcy, prospectively hurting vendors in our industry, which we talked about with Monster and Career Builder. Joel Cheesman (24:20.134) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (24:32.725) Right? So this is not something where we're picking on job.com. This is where we are shining a light and trying to add a little disinfectant to the fucking conversation. Joel Cheesman (24:33.382) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:44.91) Amen. look, we're a couple of meatheads. you know, this is, this is an attention game, but we don't make up the news. We don't make up the court filings. We don't make up lawsuits and, and layoffs. And I mean, that's, may or may not like what we say about it, but we're not making the shit up. we're talking about our opinion of, what goes on. And, you know, we, we have come across in our time, Chad (24:57.751) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (25:10.598) quite a few from carnival barkers to shysters to straight out criminals. I'm not putting them in any particular bucket, but someone, someone is probably going to do a deep dive on this operation and reveal a lot of really interesting things. think you've been bombarded, in the past week or so of, of past employees, investors, people that have been acquired like Chad (25:30.187) I have. Joel Cheesman (25:36.048) There's a lot of shit going on here and it's not just smoke. There's got to be some fire and between bankruptcy lawsuits, who knows what's going to come down the pike. This stuff will be revealed. It's, not, it's not for, I have better things to do than investigate job.com. What's going on, but I can tell you, we're not making this shit up. These are public records. These are things going on. These are things still in the court. look, there's a lot of diversion going on. You know, there's a lot of like, Chad (25:45.825) There's a ton of fucking lawsuits. Yeah. Chad (25:59.768) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:03.644) Don't look at this over here. Look at me and I'm, I'm a, he's Scottish, right? He's kind of like, I'm a fun Scottish guy. got a great family or English. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Scott's didn't mean to do that to you. Yeah. Sorry to star. I mean, look, uh, this shit will be revealed, but I mean, from what we know in terms of, mean, in addition to the public record stuff, he's got another co-founder. Look, if you look, if you go to glass door, uh, Paul Sloyan, Chad (26:09.589) No, he's, he's, he's English. He's English. He's English. From Luton. Luton. Joel Cheesman (26:32.284) who I don't think we've ever talked to is CEO currently. He has a 4 % rating on Glassdoor. 4%, okay. Only 8 % of the employees would recommend working at job.com. A ton of comments about they don't pay employees, commissions are not paid. Again, this is on Glassdoor. This is not us making it up. You can take it for what it's worth. Chad (26:32.577) Mm-hmm. Now. Yeah. Chad (26:40.695) Holy shit! Chad (26:49.698) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:01.328) But all the signs and Chad, you and I have been around this game a long time. If it walks like a duck quacks, like a duck, it's probably a duck and there's some shit going on here. hopefully it'll come out at some point. but look, I would, I would, I would a buyer beware on anything job.com that's going on, whether you're an employee investor, looking to buy their services. Cause this thing, this thing stinks to high heaven. Chad (27:30.414) And again, we're taking a look at all of this from the standpoint of just being able to ensure that companies, listeners, and hopefully the real information comes out. I'm getting information like, what would you say, case files and those things that are actually pushed to me all over the place. I'm getting more information, but. Joel Cheesman (27:52.348) Yeah. Chad (27:57.282) I'm also reaching out to journalists so that they can do their jobs and they have different connections to be able to do that too. Because it is most important to me that if there is impropriety, we don't know that there is yet, right? But if there is propriety, it is sussed out so that it doesn't happen again. the employees, not the ones driving Ferraris, not the ones who are taking vacations. Joel Cheesman (28:01.02) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:10.62) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (28:20.86) Mm-hmm. Chad (28:25.921) with their kids, the ones who can't afford that stuff, the ones who doing the hard work, they deserve not to have to go through that shit, right? The next round of people who could prospectively be suckered into something like that. And again, all things will be revealed. Everything could be clean and great or not. We'll find out. We will find out. Time will tell. Joel Cheesman (28:47.672) I suspect, I suspect when the lights are turned on, there's going be a lot of roaches scurrying for safer, safer places. Uh, I mean, not since jobster, if we're going way back, I mean, when I, when I did a little bit of stuff on jobster, I mean, people came out of the woodwork. Um, it's kind of like when, you have harassment cases, like once one thing, it's just a house of cards and the whole thing comes down. Uh, and I suspect that that we'll be talking about this. Chad (28:51.937) Yeah. Chad (28:56.023) We shall see. Chad (29:00.352) Jesus. Chad (29:07.693) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:14.406) for a few more weeks because there is something there, I would think. think there's something there. Chad (29:21.217) Deep breath kids, deep breath. Joel Cheesman (29:26.3) All right. More red meat, everybody. announced a 6 % reduction in its workforce impacting 1300 employees across Indeed and Glassdoor. Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor CEO, will step down on October 1st. LaFawn Davis, Indeed's chief people and sustainability officer is also out the door. Indeed's last big layoffs in case you missed it. May, 2024, a thousand workers laid off roughly 8 % of its headcount at the time. March of 23, they laid off 2,200 employees representing kind of a whopping 15 % of its workforce. And now you have, this. It's nice to know that the industry's top dog is so good at retaining, retaining top talent. Chad, your thoughts on the news out of indeed.com. Chad (30:15.627) Yeah, it really sucked. I mean, we were at Wreckfest. Indeed had a big booth, glass door, had a booth. Yeah, had a booth, right? And these things are happening all around us, right? So this sucks and sorry to hear it. And the thing that really sucks is that there are so many amazing people that are out of work right now. It's great for all the companies that are out there who need top talent. Joel Cheesman (30:22.149) And Glassdoor too, yeah. Chad (30:44.493) What I would do is I would look at the ones with the monsters, the career builders, so on and so forth, right? I mean, that to me, I mean, they're just great, great experience that's out there. So this really sucks, but I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna get this into, get it ready for it with Stephen, a history lesson. Joel Cheesman (31:01.572) Okay, okay, hold on, where's our history lesson? Here we go. Chad (31:03.297) Here we go. Chad (31:08.845) So kids, we've talked about this before, but back in 1998, TMP Worldwide merged online career center OCC and the Monster Board to create Monster.com. Why? Because Jeff Taylor convinced Andy McKelvey, the owner of TMP Worldwide, pretty much the holding company, it was better to combine efforts than to fight each other, right? Sibling rivalry, so to speak, wasn't great in this scenario. And Jeff. Jeff, I know this was more complex than just that, right? I know that it is and we could have a whole half hour show. So don't beat me up too much over the retelling. But it was a smart move, right? To be able to put them together, to be able to create monster.com, that would have never happened. We would have never had blimps. We would have never had the Super Bowl commercial. They wouldn't have not had the ability to really combine marketing budgets, sales budgets, those types of things. So they were. So fast forward to May of 2018 when Recruit Holdings, TMP in the story, acquires Glassdoor, a company with a very similar model to Indeed. Indeed was more job posting forward, right, but had reviews. And Glassdoor was more review forward, but it had jobs. So there was some redundancy there. Now, the Jeff Taylor in this story would be Chris Himes. Joel Cheesman (32:22.64) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:35.709) as he took over because Daco finally went back up to the mothership, which, you know, can't expect much out of a guy who's running the fucking holding company than coming running indeed. So Chris Himes, this to me is a fucking slam dunk to combine these incredibly redundant organizations and bring much of those redundancies under one roof and have huge efficiencies, a unified sales opportunity, a huge, huge cost savings. Joel Cheesman (32:39.644) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:05.453) But, Himes never did it, which is one of the reasons why I have been saying for years, he should have been fired. Glassdoor was a redundant brand, per se. Still had some brand equity. Yes, the domains are awesome. Yes, you can do SEO around it, and you can still do all the things that you wanted to, but again, just the redundancies didn't make any sense. This makes sense. Joel Cheesman (33:19.1) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:34.749) Sorry that 1300 people had to feel the sting on this one because if they would have done this much earlier, it might not have been this big of a cut. Joel Cheesman (33:52.096) I agree with all that. mean, before Indeed even bought Glassdoor, Indeed employees would have a laugh about how much more review content they had than Glassdoor. So when they bought Glassdoor, it was kind of like... Chad (34:04.973) Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:10.96) We're taking a competitor off the board. We're putting our content on there. We'll get the SEO traffic. Let's eliminate some of the redundancies. And they didn't really do that. They kept it as a separate company for up until now, really. It had its own staff, its own CEO. So from a business standpoint, this makes a ton of sense. They should have done it six months after they bought the company or maybe a year into it. Chad (34:27.095) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:37.547) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (34:41.038) Chat GPT and AI, which I've said this for a while, really replaces the need for a review site. It's much more intuitive to go to your favorite AI solution and say, what's it like to work at GM and get that answer than it is to go to Glassdoor, which by the way is a user nightmare. You can't use it unless you log in. You got to join the company or you join the site. Chad (35:07.831) It's horrible. It's horrible. Joel Cheesman (35:08.974) It's horrible. It's horrible. Like they don't want you to see the reviews unless you give them your blood type and your, and your social security number. So people are, are probably not going to the site in droves that they were, they're using AI and other tools. So the only value that it really has, and I don't think the URL is that valuable anymore because of the way SEO has changed. but the only thing that that sticker that goddamn, we're a glass door best employer that I still see at airports and restaurants. Chad (35:29.133) Mm. Chad (35:35.243) Yeah. Yeah. You see him on the side of the fucking planes. Joel Cheesman (35:38.938) Like that's yeah, billboards companies will put up like that's literally it. That's the value of the company. So, so, and that's probably, that's, that's probably fading away as well. So in addition to that, get rid of glass door, get rid of the redundancies. I also think this is part of the big swing that we talked about of indeed trying to own everything that you do. Glass door lost sort of is not part of that vision of the future. Chad (35:42.975) Yeah. Great marketing. Great marketing. Joel Cheesman (36:08.238) And my guess is a lot of the talent that's there isn't prepared or able or skilled enough to take indeed to the next level. I've seen a lot of job boards where the salespeople, they know how to sell like single job postings. And when the job board says, Hey, we're going to sell more complex stuff. They're just not prepared or skilled to sell the bigger, bigger stuff. So part of this may be, look, we don't have the, we need different skills to come in. So we need to let go of the people who don't have the skills for our. Chad (36:08.834) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (36:37.872) future. good move. Sorry to the people that lost their job based on the past. They should have known that it might be coming. And people that I know it indeed, every time there's a layoff, I message them and say, you're safe. So far so good. But I'm waiting for any time to say like, nope, was part of this one. Let's take a quick break guys. Again, if you haven't seen our lovely mugs on YouTube, go subscribe, go to youtube.com. Chad (36:56.311) Yeah, totally, totally sucks. Joel Cheesman (37:06.156) slash at Chad cheese. You'll love the shorts. we're doing a great job on those and we'll be right back. Chad (37:13.537) Faces for Radio. Joel Cheesman (37:17.868) All right. More red meat. A Wired article uncovered basic vulnerabilities in McDonald's job applications on mchire.com powered by our friends and sponsors paradox by guessing a weak admin password and tweaking application IDs. The reporters accessed up to 64 million records with personal info like names, emails, phones, resumes, and chat logs to their credit paradox. fixed the issues very quickly, confirmed limited data exposure and launched a bug bounty. Chad, your thoughts on a pretty bad couple of weeks at Paradox. Chad (38:01.537) Yeah, I think probably to some extent you and I are way too close to this. I mean, we know the Paradox staff really well. They're a sponsor. go, I mean, we do the AI sessions with those guys. This happened after we recorded last week. So I got a chance to actually take a beat and just kind of like dig into it. Joel Cheesman (38:11.718) Mm-hmm. Chad (38:27.847) And a lot of the reporting, the wired reporting is actually just totally incorrect and not factual. And there was a response that was posted on Paradox. And the beautiful part about what Paradox did is they said, shit, you know, we're wrong. We did have this security flaw and here's what it was. I think it was interesting because it was a single instance. It was from a test account. They hacked into the test account to be able to access the API. But the most important piece that's here that I think that we kind of go crazy about is this is not a payroll data platform. This is a candidate platform. You're looking at phone date, phone book data. So kids, if you don't know what a phone book is back in the day, we had these yellow pages and phone books. Joel Cheesman (39:20.902) Mm-hmm. Chad (39:25.355) And it would have it would have really simple information. I'd have your first name, last name, your address and your phone number. Right now, we I guess we can put in phone book data, the email address. Right. Literally everything else and everything else not available. So this is not a launch codes type of situation. they got in and they got into our database and they got a bunch of names, a bunch of phone numbers and a bunch of emails. Well, fuck. I could probably take less time and go buy that from somebody else like Millions right number one number two. They only accessed five Candidates and their chat history. That was it. So to me Let me get to the second part. So the second part they started talking about injection attacks and I was like, holy fuck That is where shit could go off the rails because in an injection attack there Joel Cheesman (40:17.276) Mm-hmm. Chad (40:23.637) many different, can't say that I'm an expert on this, but you can literally inject code into a code base, right? You can get into it and you can inject code into a code base, which really fucks everything. Cause think of all the different bugs that you can create, not to mention all the different phishing and I mean, there's so much that you can do. They tried an injection attack on Paradox. It didn't work. So the little thing, Joel Cheesman (40:30.684) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (40:38.566) Mm-hmm. Chad (40:51.309) which is literally 19, you know, late 1990 shit username password, right? That was a 2018 account. They said, mea culpa, we'll fix that shit. But it was, so they owned it, but it was phone book data. That's what it was. It was phone book data. It wasn't payroll data. It wasn't social security numbers. It was none of that shit. The thing that... Joel Cheesman (40:51.42) Mm-hmm. Chad (41:19.155) get out of this is it seems like in many cases, a lot of chief security officers are really, really, really focused on the big shit, like injection attacks and those types of things. And sometimes maybe the little things could kind of like slip through. But again, five, five candidate profiles and their chat histories were accessed versus the prospect of something bigger that could happen. So yeah, I think Joel Cheesman (41:24.316) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:30.972) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (41:48.78) I think we should get used to this from the standpoint of companies. They did a bug bounty. They said, they said, yep, that was on us. And away you go, right? So again, I am totally biased. No Adam, no Jay-Z, no Aaron. mean, just the list goes on. But again, I'm biased, but this is how my brain has worked. Joel Cheesman (41:59.324) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (42:17.649) You Joel Cheesman (42:21.46) so I have, I have three thoughts on this. the first one is, did McDonald's fire them? Like was what they did so great is that Olivia is now gone, from McDonald's. Well, no shocker. went to McDonald's, Olivia's still powering, the job search at, at McDonald's. So the ultimate, the ultimate justice here would be as if McDonald's said, this is so bad that we're firing you or there were out, we're out of the paradox business. Well, they're not. So that's the first point. Chad (42:47.245) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (42:49.85) The second point is, are we surprised that this shit happens anymore? mean, regardless of how we feel about paradox, like in the last month, 500 million LinkedIn user profiles were on sale in the, in the dark web, another 500 million Facebook profiles, for sale on the dark web. If you don't think the information that's on a job search conversation is, is out there anyway, on another platform, you are walking around blind without a cane pal, in our space. Monsters had breaches before we talked about a few years ago. I had forgotten about this till I did a little bit of homework. Chad, do remember when career builder was locked down from a malware attack and they had to pay ransomware to get their site back? Like that's in just our space. So companies are dealing with this on a, on a constant basis. I think the fact that it was McDonald's Chad (43:27.426) Mm-hmm. yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (43:43.44) didn't help if this had been, you know, podunk's warehouse of, of, of clearance items, no one would have given a shit, but because it was McDonald's, I think it was sexy. It's going to hurt tech crunch fortune, like some legitimate companies are picking this stuff up. So it will be a story for a while. Of course, in Trump's America, it's not a story for very long because we're moving on to the next, the next thing. So I think, I think this is mostly going to fade away. from the, from the scene. The most posts that I've seen have been technical people talking about sort of the nerdy logistical stuff around. would you like, why wouldn't you have sort of belts and suspended that suspended that to make sure that didn't happen in our space? This is my, my third point. you know, we mentioned my trip in, in, Berlin Chad, there's a, there's a great word that the Germans and only the Germans probably could have created. It's it's Schadenfreude. And Schadenfreude is pleasure at the pain of other people, or in this case, an organization. Look, paradox has been kicking everybody's ass for 10 years. Now, now's your chance to kick them in the nuts. And you can bet that a lot of people are coming out. Really not a lot, but people are coming out and saying like, what a Bush league organization. This is supposed to be like a high level, you know, premier product. Let me tell you something real quick. Chad (44:42.657) yes. Joel Cheesman (45:10.812) We're in the employment business. There is no premier product, right? The best developers are working for Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. We get what's left. We'd love the best, but no one wants to work in employment. yeah, branded wise it might be, but like don't kid yourself and think that anybody has better developers that are up the level of the quality companies that we think about. Think about who's commenting and throwing dirt and mud on Paradox and ask yourself, what might they have to gain from throwing shit at Paradox? Who are they advising? Who are their customers? What's their business? Be objective about this and don't just take comments at face value. Do your homework, do your background checks on people. There might be a reason why. They've come out of the woodwork and talk trash about paradox. And those are my three things on this issue chat. And yes, we are biased, but they will survive this. And I think they'll be fine. They fucked up people. They fucked up. Most organizations have. Chad (46:22.283) Yeah, but again, it's one of those things. It's how fast you, mean, you're going to find, you're going to find loopholes. You're going to find, you know, some, some, something that needs a patch or something like that. How fast do you respond? How fast do you respond? And then what do you do beyond that to ensure that it doesn't happen again? Right. So to think that this is not going to happen to any other company or spaces, as you'd said is wrong. It's dumb. But yet how do they rectify it moving forward? Again, the thing for me was any company coming out in Trump's America, as you said, saying that they're sorry. They just don't do that anymore. These guys came out said, that's on me. We own this. We fix the shit. We got it. Thank you. Joel Cheesman (47:05.894) Yep. Yep. It was, it was a master class in damage control. And I'm sure, I'm sure Jay Z and his team, the last thing they wanted to do during fourth of July, holiday was deal with, was deal with this. But yeah, it was, it was kind of the, the playbook of like, when you fuck up, here's what you do. Own up to it, fix it, say you're sorry. And they did that. And, I doubt it will happen again, to them. Now, speaking of not happening again, Chad, I was in Berlin. So. Chad (47:15.947) fuck, I can't imagine. Chad (47:33.709) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (47:35.396) Some news came out. got some, some wind stuff. looks like, looks like Foreman isn't done. What's going on with our friend, Christian Foreman. Chad (47:46.082) Yeah, so I heard rumblings. was kind of a rumor to some extent that Chris was actually going to another StepStone property, which I thought was odd because all the other StepStone properties are less than an AppCast, right? mean, AppCast is gold standard with regard to programmatic. And I mean, just name and all that other fun stuff. Joel Cheesman (47:57.276) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (48:02.915) yeah. Joel Cheesman (48:10.161) Mm-hmm. Chad (48:10.797) Then you have StepStone, which actually the site itself, I come on, it's a fucking job board in Germany for, mean, they have others, but it's mainly a job board in Germany. And then you have Totaljobs. Yeah, then you have Totaljobs, right? So, and then you have some other smaller, and you're like, what's he gonna do? Well, apparently, and I don't know if this is just an interim scenario, but it's either a managing director or a CEO position at Totaljobs. Joel Cheesman (48:18.588) Yeah, even Baird. Mm-hmm. Chad (48:41.779) Interesting because we talked to him about retiring and you look in the archives kid. goats, goats and chickens and whatnot. So I thought this was interesting just from the standpoint of Chris saying, yeah, I'm out. And then literally slumming it. Not that you're bad people, Total Jobs. You're not. You're not at all. It's just small market shit, right? He's a bigger market strategic type of guy. Joel Cheesman (48:45.404) Chick, chickens, right? Raising chickens? that what he, was, goats? Yeah. Chad (49:11.583) So being able to take, know, it's like putting, don't want to overdo it with making a foreman sound like a fucking genius, but God damn it. It's like taking a Ferrari engine and putting it in a fucking, you know, horse and buggy. know, I, he's a smart dude. He's a smart dude. I don't want to overdo it. I don't want it to overdo it. Joel Cheesman (49:26.844) He's a big swinging dick. It's okay. Yeah. I mean, he's up there. It's the employment space, everybody, but in our space, our little world here, yeah, he's a thing. He's a big deal. So yeah, I was really shocked because when we talked to him and we had a great conversation, if you haven't listened to that, check out the archives with our conversation with him. Chad (49:36.301) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (49:54.332) chickens, goats, cheese, milk. I don't know what it was. He, I forget, but he, he made this thing like he was going to farm the land and he was going to, he was going to lead a quiet life in the, in the Vermont or New Hampshire wilderness. And like, I've got my money. I'm, I'm fading in the sunset. And then, and then you come up with this. like, what, what does he owe someone money? I like what, does somebody have something on him? So there's, Chad (50:02.56) I'm out. Joel Cheesman (50:24.688) There's no way that he wants this gig. There's no chance in hell that he wants to run total jobs. so I don't know. mean, look, look, fame and recognition. It's a hell of a drug. And I can tell you from, from cheese head to leaving and closing down cheese head, people forget you very quickly. They forget, like they move on to the next thing quickly. So I'm not saying Chris is, is in there, but yeah, people forget about you. Chad (50:31.297) Yeah, unless he just wants some time in the UK or something. I don't know. Chad (50:48.716) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (50:54.682) I don't think he's an attention whore, but, to me, it's like one of three things happened here. He owes someone a favor. Someone's like, dude, please like help us. It won't be forever. We need a little bit of, we need a little, you know, plug of the hole for a little bit. number two, maybe he was promised like you get unlimited budget and you get to play mad scientist. Maybe plug appcast with some agency shit with some job board, like do do some crazy shit. Maybe that maybe that had some appeal to him. And the other one, which is more likely somebody showed up with a bag of money and a Brinks truck and said, we need you. We're going to make an offer. You can't refuse. Here's a bunch of money and take it because there's no, there's no growth here. There's no growth story. There's no cool factor. There's no reason for him to want to do this gig. Chad (51:40.685) Chad (51:50.796) Yeah, they're owned by PE, right? It's KKR, right? After they did the restructuring. Yeah, I don't see them saying unlimited cash to anybody. don't care who came down. I don't see them saying unlimited cash. Yeah, no, but I would say Chris watching Chris on stage and events and talking to him, he's definitely an attention whore. Joel Cheesman (51:55.574) I don't know. That's how much they matter. I have no idea what's going on at Total Jobs. Chad (52:18.817) And that's okay. A lot of founders, a lot of founders are attention whores. They are. I mean, they are. And there's nothing wrong with that. mean, are, are, are. Joel Cheesman (52:26.872) shi- Well, total jobs ain't the gig to get if you want attention. my God. let's go see the CEO of total jobs speak. Yes, that's exciting. I want to see what, what they have to say. Maybe that goes back to the mad scientist. He's going to do some crazy shit and like Jeff Taylor's coming back. So I got to come back. I can't let the, let the stage be empty, man. I don't know. It's going to be a wild fall. anyway, Chris, Chad (52:33.729) know man, I know. Hahaha Chad (52:45.762) I think. Joel Cheesman (52:58.786) open invite to the show to tell us what the hell is going on with Total Jobs. We'll be right back. If you haven't subscribed, guys, if you haven't left us a review, what the hell are you doing? If you like what you've heard today, please sign up. Please leave us a review. It helps us with the algo and we get more listens and we're needy, unloved people and need attention. Yeah, takes one to know one like my mom used to say. We'll be right back. Chad (53:00.887) Good luck. Good luck. Chad (53:18.957) Attention whores. Joel Cheesman (53:29.12) my God, more red meat, Chad. you talked about the, job get, deal, rumored at 7 million. Apparently, some things have come to light to verify that $7 million price tag. what have we learned about job get and the deal for monster? Chad (53:31.478) I Chad (53:46.158) Yeah, it was funny. Peter Zollman over at AIM Group reached out to me. He said, that's no rumor. That's true. And then he sent me the link. So if you go to AIM Group , if you're not subscribed to AIM Group, you should do that. It's aimgroup.com . Great guys, great contents. Joel Cheesman (53:56.645) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (54:01.798) By the way, aim group , if you're not investigating job.com, we invite you to, to turn on the lights, so to speak, please, please do some due diligence over there. Chad (54:07.233) Hahaha Chad (54:10.903) may or may not have already reached out. So, seven million from JobGet for the job board business of CareerBuilder plus Monster. Think of that. Think of that. At one time, that just the job board assets, because that's really all they were. And we're just talking about Monster, right? It was a billion dollar company. And this is 15 years ago. Joel Cheesman (54:13.081) Chad (54:40.749) 15 years ago and $7 million, not just for Monster, Monster and CareerBull, you're getting them both. You're getting them both. So for me, yeah, I mean, that is a, as Aim Group had said, it's a staggering drop in valuation. It's also interesting that Valnet US is buying military.com and fastwag.com for 22.5 million. Joel Cheesman (54:42.064) Made a billion, not valued. They were making a billion dollars, yeah. Joel Cheesman (54:59.74) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (55:11.42) three times more. Chad (55:11.553) What the living shit. Six million for Monster Government Services, which was literally just a piece of Monster. It was a growing piece and it was a nice size piece of business, but it was not the core of Monster. So to be able to see this fall the way that it has fallen, Career Builder has already been drawn and quartered and they've already sold pieces off. Joel Cheesman (55:22.342) Mm-hmm. Chad (55:39.508) of a career builder. Monster, not so much. Maybe some of the regional stuff, some of the international stuff, but still this, only $7 million. To me, that did not seem realistic. It was a rumor and Peter and the guys and girls over at AIM Group said, nope, not a rumor. This is a stalking horse bid that literally is happening today. So if Jobgit gets it, it'll be $7 million unless somebody outbids them. Joel Cheesman (55:52.22) Mm-hmm. Chad (56:13.697) And I know you're going to say his hip recruiter should outbid him or something like that. I don't know. Joel Cheesman (56:17.66) I have trouble finding words. When Monster went public, I want to say their valuation was $8 billion. They were making a billion dollars in the mid 2000s. They were sold, Ronstadt paid about $500 million for this. think CareerBuilder was bought for about the same price. Chad (56:25.813) It's hard. Chad (56:37.896) yeah. Chad (56:45.396) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (56:48.27) And to think that it has dwindled down to $7 million is just companies with no revenue at all are getting that an investment. Like companies you've never heard of are raising series A's at higher higher dollar amounts than that. The URL you telling me monster energy drink doesn't have 7 million in the cushions that they can just buy the domain and like do whatever the hell they want with everything else. Chad (56:49.613) 560 I think. Chad (56:54.285) Woof. Chad (57:08.032) Yes! Chad (57:15.949) by itself. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (57:18.108) you're telling me that, that indeed doesn't have that in the couch cushions. You're telling me like, job and, like some European, and talent doesn't have that. Like how I still hold faith that maybe someone will come along with a higher bid, but at this point, think, I think today or tomorrow, as we're recording this on the 17th, I think it's over like 15th was the, was the trial date or the court date. So Chad (57:31.981) Job and talent, yeah. Chad (57:44.194) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (57:48.016) Good on job get this is a steal like Chad (57:52.569) God, yes. Joel Cheesman (57:53.114) The names alone, the domains alone, mean, forget about the data and the SEO and all that. Like this is a, this is huge. I I'm shocked that this is where we've come, with monster and the military. mean, you know this better than I do, but like why, mean, the military military.com is a great domain, but what else is there that they're paying three X, what monster and Cribblet are getting? Is it data? it like, Chad (58:18.547) I know clue to be quite frank. I mean, the data is the data. I mean, it's like today we talk about data and it's all out there, right? I mean, it's all out there. So why buy a company when I can just go to a service and pay a hell of a lot less and then I have to go through all the technical debt and bullshit to try to get it. Yeah, so I don't know. But I think it's interesting. Job get is number five on the creditors list at about one point five million dollars. That's owed. to them. So this is I think they'll they'll get out of this with the best with the best of both worlds, right? They might not get the 1.5 back. But if they get a they get a much lower price, I fuck I don't know. Joel Cheesman (59:03.92) I love that they've been quiet. Job get has I'm expecting our friends over there with this deal gets done to come on and tell us what they're going to do with this property because it's, it's fascinating. I guess so just the cheap stuff because $7 million will buy a lot of champagne. It's a, it's very confusing. Chad (59:14.519) pop the champagne. Joel Cheesman (59:26.254) All right, Chad, in honor of our friend, Matt Lavery, the dad joke today is inspired by him. And as you know, a fantastic big time bears fan. Chad (59:30.604) no. Chad (59:38.765) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (59:39.484) What do you call a room full of 32 Packers fans? What do you call a room full of 32 Packers fans? Chad (59:48.919) too. Chad (59:54.889) It'd be cheese something, I don't know. Joel Cheesman (59:57.276) A full set of teeth. Chad (01:00:01.005) very good. That was more of a dad joke. Joel Cheesman (01:00:03.398) Think about it. We miss you, Matt. RIP, baby. What? Chad (01:00:09.037) And so that was more of a dad joke than anything that you've done in a while. So I'm in on the lavery style, Matt, dad joke. I love it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for bringing Joel back to. Joel Cheesman (01:00:20.156) Too much red meat, too much alcohol, too many feels this week. Love you Matt, rest in peace. Tell Belushi hi for us. We out. Chad (01:00:30.86) Later dude, we out.

What happens when the American Dream gets outsourced to Instacart and Uber? Chad & Cheese dive into the gig economy with Ankit Kalda, Associate Professor of Finance at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business — and occasional Taco Bell survivor. 💸 Can driving for Uber really replace a paycheck? 🧘‍♂️ What do meditation, depreciation, and desperation have in common? 💥 Are states secretly cheering for gig workers to keep UI payouts low? 🥤 And why is Joel always gassy during deep conversations? Forget your influencer dreams and your Bozo-the-Clown ambitions—this episode digs into why your side hustle might actually be hustling you. Listen in as Chad asks the hard questions, Joel holds back farts, and Ankit politely watches America unravel—one freelance job at a time. 🎧 It’s gig work, baby. But not the good kind. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:32.014) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. You know what's up. This is Joel Cheesman, your cohost, followed and joined as always by Chad Sowash, who's riding shotgun. And we are excited to welcome Ankit Kalda, Associate Professor of Finance at the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University. Professor, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:45.214) Thank you. Ankit Kalda (00:55.109) Thank you for having me. It's pleasure. looking forward to having a fun chat. Chad (00:59.57) All the way, halfway across the world, Joel Cheesman (00:59.618) We appreciate it. Joining us from India. Yes. So a lot of our listeners won't know you. Give us sort of the elevator pitch on who, who is Dr. Calda. Ankit Kalda (01:02.102) Yep. Ankit Kalda (01:11.574) Sure, so I did my undergrad here in India in Econ. I moved to the US back in 2012. I did my PhD at WashU in St. Louis, had a great time. And then joined Kelly as my first job as an assistant professor. Started really liking Bloomington with time, not immediately. But right, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Chad (01:37.362) different than I'm sure what you're used to, right? Joel Cheesman (01:39.134) Indiana Ankit Kalda (01:41.716) Yeah, I mean, the university is great, but it's a college town, so it's a bit of an adjustment. But it grows on you, so I've sort of fallen in love with the place and I guess I'm there. God knows how long. Yeah, in my free time, I love to do some meditation and just think about like big questions like, what are we doing on the planet or why are we living, why are we breathing type things? Chad (01:46.73) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:10.82) And don't whenever whenever Joel looks like he's meditating, it's only because he has bad gas. Joel Cheesman (02:11.97) Holy shit. Joel Cheesman (02:16.266) Usually I'm passing a taco, a taco bell. Taco bell did not agree with me that day. the way, kids, if you have meditation on your bingo card for the Chad and cheese podcast, make sure that you, chip that off. Cause that, I don't think that's ever been mentioned on the show. So, so yeah, let's, let's get ready for some deep conversations here. so Ankit you wrote, you wrote an article recently called a gig economy gig economy may serve as a substitute for those seeking other more. Ankit Kalda (02:16.81) hahahahah Yeah. Chad (02:29.098) That's a good one too. Or your Scrabble deck, yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:45.294) permanent work and we obviously talk a lot about the gig economy on this show, what was the Genesis for the article? Give us a summary. What was it about? Ankit Kalda (02:54.602) Yeah, absolutely. So the article is based on a research paper that we wrote. So we were essentially just thinking about when somebody gets laid off from their job, how do they cope with that situation? And that's where it essentially all came about. And so traditionally, people have either relied on unemployment insurance or they have relied on just credit to sort of keep up and smooth their consumption, right? Chad (03:12.394) Mm. Ankit Kalda (03:24.65) I'm not going to get my paycheck today or this month. What can I do about it? I can either rely on unemployment insurance or I can borrow on my credit card or home equity line of credit or whatever to keep up my consumption. But then we started thinking, well, both these alternatives have issues with them. So if you take on a lot of debt, we have seen what happened with the Great Recession back in 2007. through 2009. And with unemployment insurance, there's all this talk about, if people rely on UI, then their incentives to work declines. And so when gig economy came in, we started thinking of gig economy as providing insurance through a private marketplace, which potentially might not have these downsides which these traditional instruments have had. And so that's how we sort of started thinking about gig economy. And in the paper, what we do is we essentially look at people who lose their jobs and then look at whether access to Uber allows them to rely less on UI and rely less on credit while they are searching for another job. Chad (04:52.564) So from the article, a little bit kind of like brushing over some of what you just said, anecdotal evidence from recent government shutdowns suggest many income shocked workers view the gig economy as a short-term solution to buffer consumption, end quotes. The problem for me is that most situations seem short-term until the bottom falls out of the economy like right now and short-term turns into long-term. Ankit Kalda (04:55.361) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:21.77) How do we see this affecting not only the workforce, but the state of the union, if people have to string together several jobs and go without contributing to savings, retirement, or even afford healthcare coverage? I mean, how does that actually affect the state of our union? Ankit Kalda (05:38.669) Right, yeah, no, that's a great question. And there's a lot of research that talks about like if people lose jobs, there's a ton of costs associated with it, right? So for example, when they come back to the labor force, let's say if there's a three month break, on average they get a job which pays them 30 % less, right? So forget about savings, forget about consumption, just in terms of the overall labor income that they are going to generate through their lifetime is going to get tremendously affected by if they get displaced. And unfortunately or fortunately, gig economy is not going to be like a perfect solution to it. But I think it can fill in that gap a little bit. That decline that they are going to see, so if this becomes a long-term issue, so suppose instead of being displaced out of, or instead of being out of workplace for one month, they're out of workplace for a year, I don't think gig economy is powerful enough or offers enough options to them to sort of recover the potential losses that they are going to. generate from getting displaced. Chad (07:04.202) Well, talking more to that, even before we hit this crazy economic time that we're in right now, we see states like Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, the list goes on. Mainly, most of them are southern states. They are hovering around 15 to 20 % poverty even before that. Ankit Kalda (07:11.615) Right. Ankit Kalda (07:26.998) Right. Right. Chad (07:30.666) from my standpoints and from looking at the overall market, especially where it's incredibly povrish, these individuals aren't getting a life. They have to jump from job to job to job to job just to make ends meet. They don't even get healthcare, right? So to me, it really feels like in the pockets of the country that we really need robust economic restructuring, we're getting the gig economy. Ankit Kalda (07:37.526) Mm-hmm. Ankit Kalda (07:46.261) Right. Chad (07:57.106) And the gig economy is just not going to do what we need to do. But yet it's almost like we're being promised over and over and over. We'll just go get another gig. It's OK. It doesn't seem like enough. What do you think about that? Because for me, it's not about the states that are doing incredibly well, right? It's about the states and the people who are in poverty today. Ankit Kalda (08:17.364) Right. And that's absolutely right. Because if you think about the long-term solution, I think there are estimates out there that if you're driving or for a ride-sharing platform, if you account for the loss in assets, like the depreciation for your car, then you're not even making, in several places, not even making minimum wage. So in that sense... Chad (08:22.058) Mm. Joel Cheesman (08:42.094) Hmm. Ankit Kalda (08:43.66) gig economy cannot really offer like a long-term solution to or like a structural long-term solution to the labor market in places where the labor market is not going strong, right? All we are saying is essentially it just acts as a buffer if somebody already has a stable job and if they lose their job and while they're looking for the next stable job, it's sort of acts as a stepping stone to the next job, right? I sort of agree with you. I think the way gig economy works right now, I don't believe that even though it's sort of outside the scope of our research, my personal preference or my personal judgment aligns with you that I don't think in the long run it provides it provides a viable solution to a formal labor market as it stands right Joel Cheesman (09:48.61) How does the government track gig work versus full-time employment and other types of employment? mean, every, we always get like unemployment is low, things are great. And I don't think people understand exactly how gig work is calculated into those figures. Can you enlighten us on that? Ankit Kalda (10:05.672) Right, yeah. So when you think about unemployment and how unemployment rates are calculated, they are essentially based on the Joltz data, which essentially comes from different states are going to provide this data through their offices that administer UI. So if I'm somebody who goes and I live in the state of Indiana, I go to their UI office. because UI is administered at the state level, not at the federal level. And so I go to their office and I fill out a form for requesting unemployment insurance that is going to tell the agency and the federal government through the agency that I've been unemployed for however long. But if I end up using gig economy jobs, and I just don't go and apply for UI, then I'm going to be counted as an employed person and not as an unemployed person. But I think there are a lot of people who use a mix of both. if they do indeed lose their job, they are going to go apply for UI. then that is going to provide maybe 30 to 50 % of their, that is going to replace 30 to 50 % of their original income. And so they are essentially then going to supplement that with some other jobs, like kid jobs. Joel Cheesman (11:39.054) Okay. So is it your consensus that gig work is inflating or is it, so in other words, is it inflating the number or is it deflating the number or is it kind of even out with people that do declare and people that don't declare? Ankit Kalda (11:55.721) Right. would think it is, that's an interesting question. Are people more or less likely to apply for UI? Yeah, so, okay. So I would think it's deflating the number. So that is a direct result from our paper where essentially if you lose your job, then the likelihood that you even apply for UI reduces substantially if you have access to driving for Uber. So in that sense, it is going to deflate the Joel Cheesman (12:21.304) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:25.346) Okay. Joel Cheesman (12:29.802) Okay. That was my expectation. Glad you supported that. We talk a lot about Uber and driving sort of those jobs, but it's also impacting thought, you know, jobs and, development and marketing and things like that. I'm curious your thoughts on companies like Upwork and Fiverr, which are public companies. they provide gig work or contract work. They've been really challenged in terms of their stock values and prices. Ankit Kalda (12:31.82) Right. Joel Cheesman (12:59.938) What in your mind is happening that's challenged those companies to be more successful than they are? Ankit Kalda (13:08.992) I think the biggest challenge right now is this debate about whether or not to treat these workers as contractors versus full-time workers and providing benefits. And I mean, to be honest, it's a really difficult problem to solve. Because if you think of, from the company's side, if you force them, like several states have already done, Chad (13:22.665) Yes. Ankit Kalda (13:38.381) to treat these contractors or these workers as employees and provide benefits, it's obviously great for the workers and we want our workers to get those benefits, right? And there's no question there. I guess the issue lies in how do these companies then absorb the shock, right? Like it is going to be more costly for them. How are they going to respond to that? Are they then suddenly going to put a cap on the number of workers that they are going to allow on their platform? In which case we lose the flexibility that we have right now with the gig economy where anybody can just, that's the whole point, right? I can work any time and however much I want as long as there's demand for my work. But... If there's this cost, another way that the companies can deal with this is maybe they can increase the prices and then pass on this cost to their consumers. So while it's definitely great for the workers and we do want that to happen, it's not really clear if you look at all players involved, what or how should this be designed. Joel Cheesman (14:59.916) It sounds like what you're saying is that these are both temporary solutions and not lifestyles. In other words, I'm laid off. go drive a car or I go make some banner ads. They're both temporary, regardless of whether they're blue collar, white collar, no collar. And that's impacting or creating a ceiling of how successful these companies can be. Is that what I'm, is that what I'm summarizing? Okay. Chad (15:00.17) It's Ankit Kalda (15:22.826) That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's another great way to think. Chad (15:27.338) unless you have a landscape like today where jobs are going away, especially for hundreds of thousands of white collar workers. But it is interesting though. You talk about absorbing the shock and as we have with tax on tips, right? Or just tipping, the tipping culture that we have in the US anyway. We're talking about Europe before we got on, before we went in the green room. Ankit Kalda (15:51.328) Yeah. Chad (15:53.096) And Europe has this incredible tip culture where you really don't have to tip, right? But it's something that is almost mandatory because that's how people live, right? And now instead of, and this is where the absorb the shock part comes in that you'd said, is that can the companies absorb the shock? Well, pardon my French, fuck the companies. The employees have been absorbing the shock the entire time. The tips are things that the employer should be paying into anyway. Ankit Kalda (15:58.028) All Ankit Kalda (16:03.072) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (16:22.952) And we're talking about tipping individuals who more than likely don't have health care in the first place. So we are trying to, we are trying to, as consumers, make up for the companies and what they're not doing for the actual employees who are doing the hard work in the first place, while Brian Nicol at Starbucks gets $100 million in signing shares and bonus and that kind of stuff. So there's this huge imbalance. But yet, we've got to worry about the employer's shock. Ankit Kalda (16:23.509) Right. Ankit Kalda (16:28.308) Right. Yeah. Chad (16:53.354) I think we got to get away from that. If a company cannot afford to pay their people a living wage, they don't deserve to be a company. If they can't figure out new models in which to pay their people that way, right? And as Joel had talked about, it's funny, because I remember growing up, and Joel might've been a little different, but I doubt it. It was either being, I wanted to be in a rock band, a professional football star, something of that nature, right? You know, that's what you wanted. Today, kids are, they want to do gig jobs until they can be an influencer, right? It almost feels like gig jobs are a part of their way to get to where they want full-time job, which is again, our dream job was being on the football field. Their dream job is being on TikTok, right? We're almost, we're setting up, Ankit Kalda (17:42.604) That's right. Joel Cheesman (17:45.102) wanted to be Bozo the Clown, but that's a different angle. Ankit Kalda (17:47.599) Hahaha Chad (17:50.512) unrealistic expectations for the next generation. So what do you say about that? Especially being a professor and being in front of these kids, really feels like we're setting up expectations that are something that really aren't attainable. Ankit Kalda (18:06.324) Right, yeah. Look, I think there are two sides to this coin. So definitely the advantage with gig work is the flexibility, right? Like there's no other job that I can think of, even though I'm sitting in India on a work day while working at the university, right. But I guess there aren't many jobs that offer the type of flexibility that gig. Chad (18:21.864) Just become a professor is what you're saying, right? Yeah, just become a professor. It's just that easy. Ankit Kalda (18:35.232) jobs do, right? And that's why we see so many people and like you're saying, so many kids just using gig jobs while they are trying to figure out whatever their dream is and sort of chasing their dream. But coming back to an important point that you raised, with companies, I would agree with you. I mean, I don't know how regulation can be made. to do that, but I think if you increase the cost on the companies by sort of forcing them to pay higher or forcing them to pay benefits to these workers, chances are they are going to pass on that cost to their consumers, right? So I'm a frequent Uber user, for example, and I mean, I obviously... would hate to see the prices for Uber go up, right? And that's going to be an issue. Sorry. No, but yeah, guess you are right that these workers are tremendously underpaid and something needs to be done. Chad (19:35.166) being a cheapskate, Ankit. Stop being a cheapskate. yeah, professor salary. Joel Cheesman (19:39.96) Teacher's salary. Ankit Kalda (19:59.917) All I'm trying to say is that the solution to that problem is not that straightforward. Chad (20:07.338) So real quick, now in California, they raised the fast food minimum wage to $15 an hour. Everybody was going crazy saying, oh my God, my Big Mac's gonna be $20. What happened? It went up 20 cents, okay? So I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe you. I've heard this mythology for years and it's not playing out in the real world. So should we continue to listen to business school rhetoric or should we actually look at what's happening on the ground? That's the hard part, man. Ankit Kalda (20:18.293) Right. Chad (20:37.328) And for us, we're trying to find the truth here because we've been told as Gen Xers, all of this trickle down bullshit for years, right? And we're trying to find out what is real anymore. And that's the hard part. So when you take a look at what's happened in fast food in California, what's happened in Seattle for well over a decade now, I mean, they were up at $15 an hour in Seattle over a decade ago. What do you really feel? is going to happen. Are we going to have to take governments and start to make laws and regulations around this to be able to bump it up? Or do you think we're just going to have to deal with it the way it is right now? And if you can't find a full-time job, you got to Uber to Instacart to whatever else. Ankit Kalda (21:29.79) Right. Yeah, I guess there is that notion of having like a base minimum wage even for these types of companies. But I think what complicates the issue is I guess it all just comes back to the fact that these are contractors and not workers, right? And so I guess there's, sorry. Chad (21:50.74) Unless they're states where they're workers. Right? Ankit Kalda (21:55.573) Sure, sure. Yeah, you're right. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But I think that is going to be the straight off and I don't know how it is, how it's working out in California where these are then treated as workers in the sense that are we losing out on some flexibility? are there caps that companies are putting in in terms of the number of people that they can absorb within their company, right? Like I said, it seems pretty unlikely that if you are putting on... Chad (22:32.35) Couldn't that be a personal choice though? I mean, we already say how many, when we're doing our taxes, right? We go ahead and we choose. Why couldn't we choose whether we wanna be a contractor versus full-time employee? Now, we'd have to worry about retaliation from an organization. If you were a contractor and then the next year you flipped over to a full-time employee and then got canned. Ankit Kalda (22:39.626) Right, right, right. Ankit Kalda (22:48.67) interesting right Chad (22:58.57) Would there be an option because it almost seems like we're always talking about black and white. You have to be either full time or this and then the state is going to determine what that is where it's like, well, can the people can actually make a choice? Ankit Kalda (23:03.969) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:13.142) Can I jump in here real quick? Cause this triggered something for me. What really, what was really interesting about the research that you guys did is how much States save from not having to pay out unemployment benefits. And like it's, it's, it's a doge situation, right? Which is obviously on the mind's view, but okay. So if state, let me put my tinfoil hat on real quick. If States are saving so much money. Chad (23:17.529) God, he's triggered. Chad (23:26.25) Ankit Kalda (23:27.541) Right. Chad (23:32.809) You Joel Cheesman (23:42.99) Is there an incentive to make them employees or do what California did? Because states are benefiting so much. Their unemployment numbers stay low because of the gig economy. They're saving money on benefits and uninsured or unemployed insurance. And my second sort of weave around that is, is there an incentive for states to make it harder? for things like Waymo and robo taxis to take off because if we start, if we unemployed every Uber driver, we have to pay them, we have to pay them an insurance rates. Our unemployment rate is going to go up. Like there's a big negative to letting automation happen in the driving sector. Curious your thoughts as I kind of weave that with Chad's, but it seems to me like there's an incentive for States not to interfere with what's going on unless it's make. Chad (24:14.366) Tax them, tax them. Joel Cheesman (24:35.776) more gig workers happen because that's good for us and our economy. Ankit Kalda (24:40.548) Right. And that is, and I guess that goes back to the point that we were discussing earlier, that this is definitely a benefit, but it's only a short-term benefit, right? So it benefits people while they are looking for other jobs. In terms of long-term solutions, like Chad was earlier talking about states like Mississippi, where you need some structural change to sort of make the labor market stronger. this thing is not going to work out. So while I do agree with you that there are incentives that states will have to sort of let this continue, but it's only going to help those people who are going from one stable job to another stable job, right? It's not going to be a good long-term solution. So in that sense, states also have an incentive to come up with a solution that is going to work for all long-term. Chad (25:38.408) Yeah, the whole UI, the whole kind of like piece of UI too, does that also include healthcare and those types of things? Because again, one of the things that we forget about, we always thinking about money. We don't think about the healthcare. We don't think about how that actually is more costly long-term, right? Because we're, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, but those are things that we can twist and that we can hear in it's... Joel Cheesman (25:38.648) How do you see? Joel Cheesman (25:55.064) Yeah, that's a great point. If people are sicker, that's costing everything. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a great point. Ankit Kalda (25:58.987) Yeah, yeah. Chad (26:04.104) It's really hard, mean, and one of the reasons why we love having these discussions is because we like to dig into all the different aspects, or at least try with smart people like you, a couple of dumb guys like us, to talk about those different aspects. So UI, yeah, there are definitely some short-term savings, as you had said, but there are some other aspects where it could really be hurting the economy, and not only just the economy from the standpoint of cost, healthcare costs, but also individuals being able to work longer because they might have cancer or something of that nature. Ankit Kalda (26:40.512) Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are winners and losers out of this gig economy. And I mean, which is true for most things in the economy, right? So on one side, these people who looking like who are benefiting in the short run, or maybe let's say if there's a mom of three kids, she doesn't she really, really needs the flexibility, otherwise she cannot really participate in the labor force, then this is essentially providing her an option to provide her labor and participate in the labor force, right? But on the other hand, you're absolutely right. Then what happens is sometimes there are these people who don't really realize like the... Chad (27:18.44) Yeah, good point. Ankit Kalda (27:28.342) For example, there was a survey that was done that talked about people would forget to factor in depreciation when they are thinking about how much they are making. And so they seem to think that they are making much more. And because of that, if they end up doing this long term, it ends up hurting them. And so there's always this winners and losers that is going to show up. And I think, again, the... Chad (27:37.994) Mm-hmm. Ankit Kalda (27:56.737) the solution is not that straightforward, which brings me to another point that you had raised, Chad, that maybe there could be an option. And I thought that was an interesting thought. I mean, not something that I've thought about before, but as soon as you said it, I was like, yeah, maybe there are merits to doing this. I don't know how it would look in terms of regulation, but I can see that look. Chad (28:22.897) Mm-hmm. Ankit Kalda (28:26.272) these people who are benefiting from the current situation in the short run, they continue to benefit by just opting to be contractors. And then these other set of people who are sort of losing out just because they are not getting health care benefits or other benefits that a long-term employee should get would be able to opt in and sort of get those benefits. So that potentially, I think that Warren's some serious thought and maybe you've given me something to think about and I'll try to see if we can like formally do some research on this and sort of propose like a policy around this. Chad (29:06.11) Boom, wrap the show up, Cheeseman. We're done. Joel Cheesman (29:07.342) Chad, Chad's gonna co-author that for you as long as he can do it verbally. Professor, I'm gonna let you out on this one and I appreciate your time in helping us while you're in India. Get out your crystal ball for me. There's so many pieces to this. you peel the onion, there's immigration, blue states, red states, politics. Are you bullish on the gig economy, bearish? Like where do you see it going in the next, let's say three to five years? Chad (29:14.47) Fuck. Ankit Kalda (29:36.14) I'm actually bullish on it. The way things are going, think people are just valuing flexibility more and more. It comes with its downsides, like we have discussed through the show, but I'm pretty bullish. see it. I think I saw the numbers the other day and gig economy as a whole is growing. The companies that are providing these platforms are growing and I see them growing much more. the next few years. Having said that, the only thing that I'm... That's going to be interesting to sort of watch out for is what you had raised, which is how is automation going to play a role? And that interaction of gig companies with automation is going to be very interesting. I personally am looking forward to see how that unfolds. Chad (30:30.356) So many factors. Yes. Joel Cheesman (30:30.51) We'll have to have you back when the robots take over and get your thoughts. Get your thoughts on that. Chad (30:37.546) That is Professor Ankit Calda. That's right, IU Kelly School of Business. If our listeners want to connect with you or I don't know, maybe even buy the book, where would you send them? Ankit Kalda (30:48.716) My email is public. It's on the university website. Feel free to reach out to me. The paper that this podcast was sort of based on is published in the Journal of Financial Economics, which is also readily available. So I think there's a lot of material out there. Chad (31:10.782) Beautiful. Joel Cheesman (31:11.566) Thanks, Professor. Guys, my door dash is here, so I'm going to have lunch. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Ankit Kalda (31:13.077) Awesome. All right, thanks a lot for having Chad (31:14.316) Hahaha We out!

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast: 🧨 💥 Job.com files Chapter 11 — But don’t worry, they’ve found a buyer… themselves . Yup, it’s like selling your house to your shadow to dodge the IRS, only sketchier. 🤹‍♂️ Debt? Oh, just $50-100 million 📉 Business model? Shaky from the start.   🧙‍♂️ Carnival Barking 101? Check.   💸 Scammy or just sad? Both can be true. This one’s got everything  — VCs, shell games, unsecured creditors, and a business plan scribbled on the back of a napkin soaked in bourbon barrel-aged syrup. It’s The Chad & Cheese Podcast – where bankruptcy isn’t failure, it’s just… Friday. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad (00:31.997) I'm not throwing away my shot because I'm gonna be in the room where it happens. That's right, you're listening to the Chad and Cheeseless podcast. I'm Chad Alexander Hamilton Sowash. Emi B (00:43.222) And I am Emi. We are the netball champions, my friend Beredugo. Chad (00:50.493) That's awesome. And on this week's show, job.com goes bust. Microsoft lays off and OpenAI hits the panic button. Let's fucking do this. Chad (01:04.421) Ooh, Emmy, what up with you? Other than not having AC in this country, what the hell is going on? What's going on here? Emi B (01:11.618) Look, we don't need AC in this country because it's only hot for a week every single year. So what's the point of investing? Chad (01:17.469) That's total bullshit. Why am I always here on the weekend that's hot then? I don't get it. That doesn't make sense. Emi B (01:21.794) Honestly, wow. I don't know. You brought the sun over and I am grateful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Chad (01:27.665) You're welcome. I'm here for you. I'm here for you. So I got to say though, we were in Brighton for a few days, had a great time. They have a lovely beach, except there's no sand. It's rock. I'm totally, it's not even pebbles. Pebbles are small. These are rocks. Because I'm spoiled with the whole fine sand, white sand, and the Algarve and shit. But the English Channel is gorgeous. I mean, it really is. Emi B (01:37.324) Lovely. Emi B (01:40.95) Knife pebbles, yeah. Emi B (01:50.998) Okay, rub it in. Chad (01:55.89) beach storefronts are awesome that upside down house. I just got to watch out for the seagulls when you're eating because they will take your shit guys and they're big. they're big. yeah. Emi B (02:05.188) yeah, yeah, yeah, they're huge. Don't fuck with our seagulls at all. Yeah, they don't care. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how they've been raised. Chad (02:09.533) Which is why Brighton Hove, the football team, they have a seagull because you don't fuck with the seagulls, right? mean, yeah. So the, yeah, the pier's cool, great pubs, restaurants. Our friends, Jem and Thomas from Talent Nexus actually took us up to an escape room that was there, which was awesome. The lanes are cool. We did a Emi B (02:18.69) Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely. Yeah. See you learning. Emi B (02:35.118) them. Yeah. Chad (02:36.529) Ghost tour where the actor was actually fully in period costume. I mean, was really cool. So we had a great time. Yeah, yeah, we did it around the lanes. Ghost tour around the lanes, started at the Druid's Head. was so awesome. Yeah, yeah. Last night came up for Hamilton staying in London around Victoria Station mainly because we've never stayed in that area before. And Hamilton was playing in the Emi B (02:44.12) Did you do that around the lanes? yeah. yeah, I love that city. Chad (03:06.395) Victoria Palace Theatre, so I found a place close. Have you seen Hamilton yet? Emi B (03:09.624) Yeah. No, I really, really want to. That is on my bucket list. Everyone keeps talking about it. And I'm like, I have to get around to it. I have to. Chad (03:18.553) So people become obsessed because you go to the show and it is just so, it's amazing. It took me a while to kind of digest what was happening, but the music, the rap, just the retelling, right, is awesome. It's our second time that we've seen it in theaters. Julie's probably see it a hundred times on Disney Plus. there's nothing like, you're gonna love this, there's nothing like coming all the way to London to be in a. theater full of Americans watching a play about American history. mean, that was that was just it was fucking crazy, but it was cool at the same time. But you had you do, but you you you are the champions. Talk about that. What happened? What happened this weekend? Yeah. huh. Emi B (03:51.374) love it. Absolutely love it. I have to, I have to get there. Emi B (04:04.558) Oh my God. Right. So for anyone who doesn't know, I am a massive netball fan. So for Americans who don't know what netball is, think basketball, but better. Sorry, Americans. No, no, it is. No, there's no backboard and you can't dribble, which means that you need additional skill. You know, how are you going to get the ball into the goal, into the goal net without, yeah, yeah, no, a hundred percent. Because that basketball is rely on a backboard. No, we need precision. Yeah. Chad (04:16.015) stop it. There's no backboard. Chad (04:24.775) What? What? Chad (04:30.439) Dribbling's a skill. Emi B (04:33.358) You know, you have to stop, have to pivot. No, honestly, it is brilliant. And I've been playing this sport since I was 11 years old. And yeah, we went away to Bogna, which is actually near where you were. So was thinking of you. I knew that you're around Brighton. So I was like, ah, not too far away, at you. And so a whole bunch of us went down and we fought hard. We fought hard. We were competitive. We were bringing it back for London. And it was amazing. But in the final, were playing against teenagers. Chad (04:34.141) That's like part of the show. Chad (04:40.561) That's awesome. Chad (04:46.507) okay. Yeah. Emi B (05:01.774) You know, we were a bunch of like kind of 30, 40 year olds playing against 14, 15 year olds, but experience won them out. We ground them down. You know, there was no niceties in the final. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sorry. I know I should be nice, but I'm here for the medal. I'm here for the shiny trophies and we brought it back home. So I am very, very excited. Yeah. Chad (05:05.511) Mm-hmm. Jesus. There it is. There it is. Ha ha ha! Chad (05:21.415) Yeah? Chad (05:26.749) Well that being said, you're talking about silverware and we have kind of a somber shout out. Emi B (05:32.579) Yeah. Chad (05:35.673) that happened last week. So go ahead and hit it up because this guy actually had some silverware. Emi B (05:42.604) Absolutely. So my shout out, as you said, is a sombre one this time around, but it's actually to Liverpool Football Club. So why am I shouting out to them? Because they stepped up when tragedy happened. And if you read the news, you would have heard about the tragic loss of, I'm not sure if I pronounced this correctly, but Dior Jota and his brother, Andre. So what the club did was actually something quite extraordinary, something that I think not many other clubs have done. So they've actually announced that they're going to honor the remainder of Jota's contract. And this is estimated around 14 to 15 million pounds. So that's about $20 million. And they're paying this out to his wife and their three young children. So why am I shouting them out? Because I just think that this is more than a PR jester. This is a real true reflection of the football club's anthem and core philosophy. Chad (06:11.025) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:20.647) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (06:32.665) yeah. Emi B (06:37.848) So if you know anything about Liverpool Football Club, their anthem is the song, You'll Never Walk Alone. They really live into that. And I really do think there's a powerful lesson in there. They didn't have to do what they did, but what they're doing is reminding us that, I suppose they're reminding us of what real leadership looks like. So it's not just in the wins, it's not just in the trophies, but it's actually in solidarity, it's in empathy, it's in heart, and it's in being true to your values. They're doing something not because it looks good, because it's the right thing to do. And really in doing so, they've set example for other sports clubs, other organizations, other communities. So that's why my shout out goes to them. Chad (07:22.481) And I'm going to double down on that because Jota is, and you probably don't know this, he's actually my favorite football player. He plays for the Portuguese national team. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see my new Jersey that I'm very proud of. The Portuguese national team. I'm not, I'm not a, I don't have like a team in the premier league. I do in Portugal, sporting is my team, but not in the English premier league. I root for all the teams. that have Portuguese starters. And I love how Jota played. And I just loved how scrappy he and really Liverpool was. The thing that gets me is, I mean, and again, not to get too somber, but he was married just 11 days before this and has three children. This season, I got to say, you know, he had an amazing season. Liverpool FC squad won the Premier League Championship. Emi B (08:08.654) Mmm. Chad (08:21.533) Portugal national team just won the UEFA Nations League. They just beat Spain, which was big. So yeah, this one was rough. This one was very rough. watching Liverpool again, this isn't just a gesture. This is $15 million. And I know that people are like talking about, they're billionaires out there. They can do this. It's chump change. Yeah, but they did. And that to me, it means a lot. Emi B (08:31.971) Yeah. Chad (08:49.437) Again, not a Liverpool fan, this makes me want to become a Liverpool fan. He was on my favorite team and they do something like this. So it was pretty amazing. It was pretty amazing. And rest in peace to our friends, our friends and Jota and his brother, Andre Silva. Emi B (09:06.06) Absolutely. Chad (09:14.909) Give them a minute kids, give them a minute. Okay, I'm tearing up. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and. Chad (09:23.26) That's you, Emmy. Emi B (09:24.43) That is me. Okay. What free stuff do we have? So we have whiskey and whiskey goes, yes, I love a bit of whiskey. So this goes to the tech talent experts over at Van Hack and oh, chicken. Oh, I need to try some of that chicken cock. I'm hoping that you're going to, yeah, a hundred percent. What else have we got? We got bourbon barrel age syrup. So this is from the guys over Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Cura. Chad (09:30.158) Chad (09:36.519) Chick, chicken cock whiskey, by the way. Don't forget about the chicken cock. Two bottles, chicken cock. you do. yeah. Emi B (09:53.632) We have t-shirts. So if you, I don't know, I saw those t-shirts online recently. Those new t-shirts are amazing. And that's from the, the red shoe wearing weirdos over at Erin app. We also. Chad (09:58.649) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (10:05.201) Now they are Motley Crue, Dr. Feelgood inspired. That's the album. The album cover is Motley Crue, Dr. Feelgood. So if you know that album cover, yes, yes, yes, yes. Why it looks so cool? It was inspired and you know, it's not a ripoff. It's not a ripoff. It's just inspired. Emi B (10:09.834) yeah. That's where it comes from. Yeah. yeah. Emi B (10:23.476) No, just inspired. It's fine. Yeah, absolutely fine. Okay, what else we got? We got craft beer. So that's from the job jobs. I can't talk properly today. The job data geeks from Aspen Tech Labs. And finally, if it's your birthday, we have rum with plum. Chad (10:30.941) you Chad (10:36.103) Love those guys. Chad (10:43.197) That's right. Chad (10:48.059) Yeah. Emi B (10:48.078) Down to my palms! Chad (10:54.787) And remember kids, can't win if you don't play. You gotta go to ChadCheese.com slash free to be able to register to win all this stuff. More than likely, we're just gonna send you a t-shirt anyway. We're gonna skip this week for birthdays, because Joel loves birthdays so much. He'll double down next week. He's in Berlin this week, which is why it's a lactose-free Chad and Cheese. So it's just Chad and Emmy, which is okay. It's all good. It's all good. And last but not least, before we get into the big stuff. Steven, you know it because you're gonna be there. This week, now if you're listening on Friday and you gotta be, because that's when this drops, guess what? You already missed RecFest. What the fuck? You've got to have so much FOMO, but, but you can go to RecFest in Nashville. That's happening later this year. You can get a ChadCheese.com slash events. Check all the different events that we're going to. If you missed, Nebworth, shame on you. Although... Although you can go ahead and check us out at Nashville. It is a blast. Emmy, are you coming to Nashville? Emi B (12:03.01) really want to. I've got those dates saved. I'm going to fly over if I can. I want to be there. Yeah. Chad (12:08.987) Yeah, we need to talk to Jamie. We need to talk to Jamie about possibly getting you on stage, getting a little English flair on stage. Emi B (12:14.658) Yeah. Yeah, I think so. we do a request now? Jamie, I know you are listening. Get me to RecFest Nashville. You know you want me there. The crowds are asking for me. Are they? Let's just say they are. Chad (12:31.613) I've created a monster, Jamie. I've created a monster. Emi B (12:33.708) Yeah! They all want me there! Please get me there. Chad (12:40.602) god. Chad (12:46.971) All right, before we actually start with the topic stuff, I have a rumor alert. Do you want to hear this one? you know you do. So this is, it's still just a rumor. I want to double tap on that, but we've heard that Monster plus Career Builder, the job board asset that they're selling to JobGet, is going for a whisper amount of $7 million. Monster at one time, with more assets of course, Emi B (12:51.682) I do, I love a reamer. Yeah. Chad (13:15.121) had a valuation of $1 billion by itself, by itself. And both Career Builder and Monster job board assets are going for a rumored $7 million. So there'll be more to come. We'll get more information on that information. We got a really good source on that one, which is why I wanted to release it as a rumor, not, we still have to get more sources on it, but I'm pretty stoked. What do you think about that? Emi B (13:18.208) No! Emi B (13:32.727) Emi B (13:39.714) I think that is fucking hilarious. Is that wrong? that, should I say? Chad (13:41.981) Hahaha Emi B (13:45.878) You know me, I've been saying for ages that they need to just hang up their boots, you know? And the fact that they've gone for that massive amount, to seven million, it just shows you just how shitty their product is. No one wants them. No one wants them. Chad (13:57.649) Yeah. Well, guess what? We've got more news of bankruptcy. So job.com, job.com, a three letter dot com has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The entity operating this site, job.com-hvinc, they've got so many companies, it is fricking ridiculous, of Florida filed for chapter 11. Emi B (14:02.67) Yeah. Mmm. Chad (14:24.541) 11 bankruptcy protection on July 6th, 2025, making another high profile collapse in the online career services sector, following in the footsteps of industry names like Monster and Career Builder, which we just talked about. Now, this is from the official 201 form. Love you, baby. Love you, baby. This is from the official 201 form, the number of unsecured debtors. that they have is anywhere from 200 to 999. The estimated assets of the organization is 10 million to 50 million, 50 million, but the liabilities, the liabilities are anywhere from 50 million to 100 million. Riverin Consulting is owned 2.1 million. That's a professional services company. Soja Ventures, which is a VC company. is owed 1.6 million. That's possibly a loan. Lukowski, Brookman, which is, I think it's an attorney, a legal organization, owed 864,000. MDJ Group, 808,000. And number seven on the list, I'm jumping down to number seven because it's very interesting. Job.com's CTO slash CPO is owed over three Emi B (15:33.646) Okay. Chad (15:51.857) hundred thousand dollars. Side note, you're love this. LinkedIn and Indeed together are owed about seven hundred and eighty thousand. But there's more. There's more. It goes deeper. Emmy, they have a buyer. Can you believe that? I'm gonna paraphrase this. It is in the best interests of the companies to enter into a proposed asset purchase agreement by Emi B (16:02.478) Jesus. Emi B (16:10.242) Who? Why? Chad (16:22.768) Job.com acquisition company. Who's buying it? Job.com acquisition company. They're selling it to themselves. And as knowing through bankruptcy, usually unsecured debtors don't receive 100 % repayment, right? So it's anywhere from zero to 50%. So do they cut the debt in half and continue operations? So what do you make of this? It seems pretty scammy. I don't know. just, again, personally, Emi B (16:30.012) to themselves. Emi B (16:41.443) Yeah. Chad (16:51.271) This seems scammy. What do you think? Emi B (16:53.454) It definitely sounds weird. I've never heard of a company going bankrupt and selling it to themselves before. Ever. Yeah. It doesn't even sound legal. I don't understand what kind of loophole they've actually managed to kind of get away with this, but I've never heard of this before. Have you? Chad (17:00.038) And allowing, yeah. Chad (17:12.117) No, but here's the thing is that they are known under several different companies under like a holding company. So job.com didn't own them before. So it sounds like it is more trickery than it is anything else to go ahead and create another company that is job.com acquisition company per se. But we can agree this chapter 11 filing makes Apollo's file with Monster. Emi B (17:19.874) Yeah. Emi B (17:32.396) Okay. Chad (17:41.295) and career builders look pristine, to be quite frank. Julie and I went into this and we went into rabbit holes. And it's really interesting to see how many companies are involved in buying assets, the money that's trading hands left and right. And again, nothing's clear. And that is deliberate. I can almost fucking guarantee you that is deliberate. When you have VC involved, you have PE involved, what are they gonna wanna do? They're gonna wanna know where the money's going, right? So you can't tell me. Emi B (17:43.489) Yeah. Emi B (17:58.584) Mm-hmm. Emi B (18:09.506) Yeah. Chad (18:11.377) that something this murky and this gray is not done deliberately, right? So for me, I don't know. But again, in my honest opinion, this seems incredibly weird. There are a lot of companies that have already gone into bankruptcy and Chapter 11 have closed. There are part that have been a part of this group over the years. So I don't know. I don't know. We're going to continue to watch to see what happens if it folds. Emi B (18:31.534) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:41.117) The only thing I can say is obviously, companies like this with with PE pushing money into an organization, you know that the CEOs, the CTOs, the CEO, I mean, all those people, they get paid, they get paid. The ones who get fucked are the ones who are actually doing the job every day. And I have to send out my regards to them with hoping that they find a gig because that's a really shitty way to go. Emi B (18:53.891) Yeah. Emi B (18:58.668) Yeah. Emi B (19:11.146) It is. I'm still a little bit shocked because from everything I've read about them, you know, what they've got a history of overextending themselves, overspending, overperforming. So even if they're by themselves, which, you know, this kind of weird, murky way that they're doing, what are they going to do that's different? You know, what have they learned from everything that's actually gone wrong so far? Yeah. Chad (19:19.547) Yes. Yes. Chad (19:26.514) Mm. Chad (19:31.065) Let's talk about the business model real quick, okay? Because Joel and I have dug in really deep, even with the CEO, Aaron, over the years. He was actually on stage, death match and whatnot. And I have actually called him. I've said this and you can take a listen at many back episodes. He's one of the best carnival barkers in our industry period, right? He can sell elixir. Emi B (19:42.424) Yeah. Emi B (19:55.584) Okay. Chad (19:58.235) He can sell shit that doesn't exist, right? Whether he did or not, that's another question. But let's get into the business model. Quote from the website, job.com is a paradigm shifting force that is laser focused on disrupting the antiquated $650 billion global staffing industry utilizing artificial intelligence. There's the word. And end to end connected product suite and world class recruiters, end quote. So kids, remember, Emi B (20:03.468) Yeah. Chad (20:27.559) When I talked about pets.com a couple of weeks ago, just because you bought a great URL, pets.com, doesn't mean that you've got a great business model. And it was not a solid business model in the case of job.com. The business model was suspect from Jump Street. What was the model? You create efficient hiring models that speed up hiring. this sounds all great. And then help. Emi B (20:34.062) Mm-hmm. No. Chad (20:55.431) quicker staffing placements, right? Via said technology. For only 2 % instead of 20 % of placement fees. This sounds amazing, right? It's only 2 % versus paying a staffing company 20%. So moving companies into this model means you have to gain adoption, which is way too slow if you only have a margin of 2%. And that's not even your margin, right? Emi B (21:18.744) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:20.445) You need massive amounts of transactions in placements to make this work. So what do you think will actually fit this adoption piece? You buy staffing companies with existing client portfolios. That's a smart way to force adoption, right? If you're buying a portfolio that has revenues of 20 % of placement fees, and you move that to a 2 % model, yeah. Emi B (21:31.864) Yeah. Emi B (21:44.814) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:50.001) You can increase adoption, but you've just decimated your revenue. you have to then go get more clients to cover the new shortfall that you just created, which doesn't make any sense. So... Emi B (21:53.537) Revenue, yeah. Emi B (22:03.086) And that's a massive shortfall going from 20 % to 2%. How many more? Chad (22:06.351) Yeah, and the whole model, the whole idea that Aaron pitched on stage was we're gonna do it with scale. We're just gonna do more transactions. But you can't do 18 % more transactions overnight. You have to gain adoption, right? So if you thought this sounded shady up to this point, when you download the official 201 PDF, the text is inaccessible. Emi B (22:16.494) Wow. Chad (22:34.235) So if you can't, it can't be properly indexed by search engines or LLMs. It's like ghost unindexable filing. I mean, it's hard. Emi B (22:46.766) So it was going to fail. So it was always going to fail as a model. Chad (22:50.479) It was, well, the model itself was, it made no sense. mean, when he was on stage, he was actually on stage in Austin. And he's on show a few times to kind of try to quote unquote explain some of the moves that they had been making because we were like, this is total bullshit. This makes no sense. But he pitched and he is an amazing pitch man. But when you're pitching shit with a smile, it's still shit. Emi B (22:55.031) Yeah. Emi B (23:00.813) Okay. Emi B (23:19.04) Yeah. Wow. I find it fascinating, but I'm interested to see what the hell is going to happen over the next couple of months, because how are they going to compete with all the other competitors out there? Just buying yourself, is that going to make it any better? Has he actually learned? Is he still going to be pitching shit? Are people going to buy into it? I don't think so. Yeah. Chad (23:38.502) Yeah. It feels like financial engineering. mean, literally just trying to keep yourself afloat, but with the model that you're already running, like you'd said, you have to change models. You cannot stay on this model. Now, the first model, just to be clear, it was 5 % that they were going to keep. Still, 5 is a far throw from 20, right? But it was 5%. What they were going to do was, Emi B (23:45.069) Yeah, 100%. Emi B (24:06.67) for 20. Chad (24:10.109) they're going to give 3 % to the job seeker, 2 % to themselves. Yes, so they made it more complex right out of the gate and they had a job.com credit card. Emi B (24:23.992) What? Why? Chad (24:25.361) because all the money that they gave you was on a job.com credit card. Emi B (24:28.44) Yeah. Emi B (24:32.391) no, no. Chad (24:33.593) It was doomed to fail from the beginning. Emi B (24:38.114) Has anyone investigated this organization? I just feel like we're gonna find out in a couple of years, maybe a year, that he's some kind of criminal, of financial wrangling. Yeah. Chad (24:47.933) I don't know. I don't know. It's all speculation at this point kids, but you just sit there. You sit there and you try to digest this because we'll be right. Emi B (24:53.677) Nyeh-ha! Emi B (24:59.651) Yeah. Chad (25:03.623) Whoo, okay, so I'm just trying to stop digesting the whole job.com thing. And I'm gonna go into Microsoft because they're having layoffs. Did you hear about the layoffs? Emi B (25:17.29) I did, Chad (25:19.537) Yeah, so an Xbox executive, this is actually from TechRadar, an Xbox executive's well-intentioned AI advice to recently laid off staff sparked widespread backlash. Following Microsoft's announcement of some 9,000 job cuts around 4 % of its global workforce, including many of Xbox Studio, Matt Turnbull, an executive producer, posted a now-deleted LinkedIn suggestion. Now deleted means something, means he knows he fucked up. That affected employee, or I'm sorry, he suggested that these employees, these laid off employees use AI tools like ChatGPT or CoPilot, which Microsoft owns, to help manage the emotional burden of job loss and rebuild confidence via provided... prompt ideas. So he was providing them prompt ideas instead of give me a bigger severance. I don't need your fucking prompt ideas while his aim to support colleagues. Critics argued that urging laid off workers to lean on an AI, especially from the same company, the Microsoft was was really tone deaf, minimizing the value of human empathy, social support and meaningful assistance during a crisis. So Emmy, would this be the way that you would go after it? Would you just give some great AI prompts and hope that they would take it in stride? Emi B (26:57.91) and go, yeah, this is amazing, thank you so much. No, the short answer is no, I would not. This person needs to go, I don't know who taught him how to be a leader, I don't know who taught him how to manage people. I don't think he's ever had any kind of conversation about how to empathize with their team members. But he needs that now, because obviously he sat there going, my God, I'm with you, I feel for you, we let you go, even though you helped us to. Chad (27:00.551) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (27:16.701) Mm. Emi B (27:26.722) build these AI products and sell these AI products, what am I going to do? I'm going to tell you how to use those same AI tools to, you know, almost as grief counselling. And did you see some of the prompts that he came up with? Okay, so one of them I saw is like, okay, so type into chat GPT, I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me of what I'm good at? I mean, are you a fucking idiot? Chad (27:40.838) No, no, no, no, tell me. Emi B (27:56.558) Has he ever, he even, did he even stop to put himself in his employee shoes? And, and if he didn't, you know, well, obviously he didn't because he's now gone back and deleted those posts, as he said, you know, the internet went wild. They were brutal. They were swift. You know, people were saying that is, is this the latest episode of severance? You know, like you said, calling it out is tone deaf. It is tone deaf. It is out touch. And even more, it's actually cruel. Because this is not, he's not doing it for Chad (28:06.961) Yes. Yes. Yes. Emi B (28:26.58) his employees that have been laid off. I honestly think he's doing it for himself. He's making himself feel good, making herself feel better. It's like a almost like a PR gesture. So I don't know what's going on over there, but they need to retrain him, get rid of him, do whatever. But do not let this person post online. Do not let this person deliver a message, do something to help him become a better leader. Chad (28:55.261) Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much what's happening here, kids. mean, it's more like you just get handed your papers, right, to be able to get your walking papers. And then somebody was like, oh, you must be, you you must have imposter syndrome or you must have, don't put that shit in their fucking head, you goddamn idiot. I mean, first and foremost, have a little empathy. Emi B (28:55.342) That is it. Emi B (29:14.146) Yeah, of course. Chad (29:21.781) And if you think they need help, give them some more fucking severance, right? If that's what it is, give them some more money, not to mention, I don't know, maybe start working with some of the partner companies that Microsoft has to try to get them over into other jobs. Yes. Emi B (29:40.712) companies help them with their resume help them with outplacement services do that don't yeah Chad (29:46.427) Yeah, outplacement services, no question, but get them hooked up into companies and pipeline them into companies that need them. mean, so here's a great example, and this is during the pandemic. Marriott had a ton of hospitality workers that they just didn't need anymore because nobody was coming to hotels. Guess what they did? They worked with CVS. Emi B (29:51.37) Yeah, use your network. Emi B (30:08.931) Yeah. Chad (30:13.381) And they pushed those individuals over to CVS because CVS had a, they had a ton of jobs opening because they had the shock that was happening, right? They had the inoculation they had. So they needed people to be able to work customer service and hospitality for CVS, right? So they worked together. Those companies work together to be for good, right? There's no reason, even if we don't have a goddamn pandemic, which to be quite frank. Emi B (30:24.003) huh. Yeah. Emi B (30:31.351) Yeah. Emi B (30:38.039) Yeah. Chad (30:43.515) With the labor market shortage and not labor market shortage, the labor market overage that we have right now, pushing hundreds of thousands of government employees on, pushing immigrants out. mean, the whole workforce imbalance issue that we have right now, companies should be helping these individuals, period. I mean, there's no reason. I mean, especially the US government is not going to fucking do it. That's for sure. Emi B (31:02.732) Yeah, yeah. Emi B (31:09.164) No, not at all. And all that's going to happen, which is, you know, obviously it's out in the press. Not only does he make this guy look shit and stupid, but it's actually damaging their morale. You know, yeah, damaging the morale of the employees is still there. Damaging the brand because when the market picks up, they're going to remember that in the times when it was hard, they got rid of their employees. They offer support in the worst possible way. And Chad (31:14.023) Mm. Chad (31:20.049) Microsoft, yeah. Chad (31:25.191) Yeah. Chad (31:37.394) Yes. Emi B (31:38.094) They're going to remember that this guy's most human thing they can do, or he could do, was just to offer his employees a chat bot as a way of getting back into a new role. it's like, these people are going to remember that. They're going to remember, and they're not going to work for you, and they're going to tell other people that Microsoft is a shitty company that does not care about their employees. Chad (31:53.627) Yeah, and. Chad (31:57.778) Yeah. Chad (32:02.045) And productivity for your current employees, as you were talking about, goes in the shitter because they can't trust you when they see their leaders act like this, which means... Emi B (32:04.749) Yeah. Emi B (32:09.504) No! Emi B (32:13.176) They're gonna get the fuck out. Chad (32:16.573) That's right. And that wee problem is also showing up at OpenAI as they hit the panic button. OpenAI is sounding the alarm amid aggressive poaching of its top talent by Zuck and the people over at Meta. Earlier this month, OpenAI ordered a full week off for its workforce, officially to quote unquote, recharge. But insiders cast it as a defensive strategy and relentless recruitment. Emi B (32:21.571) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:46.617) amid relentless recruitment overtures from Meta. OpenAI is now publicly evaluating higher compensation, go no shit, across its research organizations signaling that its famed mission-driven culture may no longer be enough to retain elite talent. It's been reported by Didi Das VC at Menlo Ventures that more than 10 open AI heavy hitters have jumped ship and joined Metta with packages over $10 million. Emmy, would you jump ship to join Zuck for a cool 10 million? Emi B (33:27.084) Yeah, 100%. I'll be there. Listen, I'm in the process of buying a new house. I'm going to be knocking down walls, building a new garden, installing a new kitchen. Yeah. Give me the money. Money, money, money, money. Yes. Give me all the money. Listen, as much as I might love the culture, you know, if I was an open AI employee, I might be mission led. I've got bills to pay. And if Meda are going to throw money, Chad (33:44.541) What? Yeah. Emi B (33:57.326) me 100 % I'll be like see you later thank you very much I'll put up with a toxic culture because that 10 million is going to more than make up for the toxic culture it's Chad (34:08.305) So we've heard for years and we've been programmed for years that we are family, right? And that was something that was just a bullshit line to try to keep people on and to retain them so that they wouldn't leave. And then the family also was merged into vision and the vision of the organization and the culture of the organization was just so good that you just can't leave. Emi B (34:35.448) We're gonna do this together, through thick and thin. Chad (34:36.995) Exactly. And the thing is that employees have seen for decades now that the company doesn't give two fucks about you. Okay. They want to push you as hard as they possibly can. They want to bleed you dry of all your ideas, all of your time, all your development, whatever you do, your sales, customer service, whatever it is, you're great at something. They just want to bleed you dry and they want as much time as they possibly can get. So what does that mean? That means, and again, back to the day when companies used to be loyal and individuals would stay around for 40 years, right? Those days are gone. It's all about the money. And if you're not giving them the money. Emi B (35:18.584) They're gonna go. Chad (35:22.289) They are going to be gone. so I really believe that companies today who are leaning really hard, like OpenAI is, on their quote unquote culture, values, vision, all those things, right? They're gonna get smacked in the face by organizations that just have more money, period, right? Emi B (35:46.402) Yeah. Well, I think if they're only relying on the money, then that's the issue. If they're combining the money with the vision, with a good work culture, with progression, then great. That's what's going to make you stand out. Chad (36:00.103) They're talking about super intelligence though, right? And that's what the meta has moved. And they're like, what's a cool word that we can start to use to try to draw people in with super intelligence? Yeah, I totally get that. But the reason that these people are going is money. Emi B (36:02.071) Yeah. Emi B (36:20.142) Yeah. With those paychecks, yeah. You'll sacrifice, yeah. If it's only a small amount of monetary difference, then fine. You'll stay for the culture in most cases. But if you're throwing that amount of money, I'm not being funny, culture is going to go out the window. It's absolutely going to go out the window. Chad (36:21.703) That the pure and simple. Pure and simple. Yes. So. Chad (36:37.415) But you know that you cannot trust Zuck, period. So that number better be big enough so that if I'm only there two days and he kicks my ass to the curb, okay, cool, my bank account is flush. Emi B (36:41.998) No, of course not. No, never. Emi B (36:50.702) Yeah, it's fat. absolutely. I'm okay if I'm out of the market for a year, two years, because there's still money in my bank account. Not a problem. Chad (36:57.959) Yeah, yeah. And I mean, anybody who I've led or would lead or mentor, I would definitely say, look, what is best for your family? That is that's what matters the most. And don't be not your not your work family. I'm talking about your actual fucking family. Right. What is best for your family? What can because again, you want to you want to be able to work to live. Emi B (37:08.717) Mm-hmm. Emi B (37:14.52) Yeah. Chad (37:24.401) Right? Not live to work. And what the company wants you to do is they want you to work to live or live to work. I'm sorry. They want you to live to work and be at work every day and live the vision and live the culture and live the bullshit. Right? No. Exactly. Which is why when you listen to a lot of these these founders like Elon Musk talking about how he used to sleep in his his fucking office at night, it's like it's like motherfucker. Yeah, you own the company. Emi B (37:36.558) It's not my company. Yeah, I don't own the company. I didn't start the company. Yeah, I go off in Big City. Emi B (37:49.112) Good, it's your company, you do that. Yeah, you're the one of the richest men in the world. Of course you're gonna do that, fine. I'll do it. Chad (37:54.553) It, yeah, give me enough money and I'll do that. And that's what Zuck's doing right now is he's giving them enough money to say, okay, this is best for my family. And if my bank account is flush, I don't care. Have a nice day because none of these, none of these founders give two shits about me. Emi B (38:03.415) Yeah. Emi B (38:09.675) Yeah, absolutely. No, no. And it's so true. I 100 % agree. Your loyalty has to be to yourself. What are you trying to achieve? Is the job going to give you what you're trying to achieve as quickly as possible? Absolutely. Nine times out 10, money's going to get you there. Chad (38:24.029) Mm-hmm. Chad (38:36.643) Okay, I mean, this one is from TechCrunch. Remember Cluely, where the startup founder Roy Lee was suspended by Columbia University because he and a co-founder developed a tool to cheat on job interviews for software engineers. Now, again, not cheat on tests in Columbia, but cheat on job interviews for software engineers. Well, guess what? Said startup, Cluely, just pulled off the SaaS equivalent of a Vegas magic trick. more than doubling ARR from 3 million to 7 million in one week. In one week. Founder Roy Lee swears, it wasn't a glitch in the Matrix, but rather the enterprise rollout of their AI meeting assistant that reads the room, whispers useful information in your ear, and probably knows what you're going to say before you do. I guess, Emmy? Do you feel that you know lion is a part of the game these days? Emi B (39:39.966) depends what game. So if it's a pub quiz, now I'm not gonna lie, if it's a pub quiz, then I'm cheating all the way through because I'm not clever enough to know about general knowledge, you know, so I'm there always like on my phone under the table, do not use your phone kids. Yeah, yeah, I'm using my phone. don't care, you know. But in this situation, I don't think this is cheating. I think this is clever work. I think this is clever work. Why, why have to do all the thinking yourself? You get into those environments, you're in front of the clients. Chad (39:41.819) You Chad (39:52.957) way. Chad (40:02.685) Sure. Yeah. Emi B (40:08.962) Sometimes you just have a bit of a freeze where you can't remember what to say next or you miss a trick and they go, you know, if I went back, if I went down this angle, this would have been great in, you know, in terms of like kind of hooking that customer. I think this is a fantastic tool. I think this guy is intelligent. I think he's clever. And I think this is visionary. I'm all for it. So do I call it cheating? No, Helping, assisting. Chad (40:09.053) Mm-hmm. Chad (40:33.597) So it's only cheating when the employees are doing it and not when the company is doing it. Is that what I'm hearing? Because all these companies are trying to use AI right now. And from my understanding, 80 % of CEOs said they're trying to actually transition or at least find areas of adoption for transition of AI in their workforce, Exactly. Emi B (40:43.33) Mm. Emi B (40:46.816) Everybody's using AI, yeah. Emi B (40:57.09) Yeah, everybody's an AI first organization, but candidates do it. No, no. It's like, how is it okay for the organizations, but not for candidates? Don't be ridiculous. You know, they're going to use it for doing their resumes. They're going to use it to think about interview questions and how to answer interview questions. They're going to do it at every part of their job hiring process. we have to do as organizations, make sure we actually talk into real candidates who can actually do the actual job. So we're making sure our assessments are. Chad (41:07.174) Yes. Emi B (41:26.998) robust, but you cannot say that candidates cannot use AI when organizations are using it. It's ridiculous. Chad (41:35.569) Yeah, it's a double standard. It's a double standard and I have to say that, you know. Emi B (41:41.664) Yeah. Chad (41:44.637) And that being said, I gotta say that I am not going to do the creepy uncle joke this week. We're just gonna go ahead. We're going to, no, we're not, I'm not gonna do the creepy uncle joke. Joel likes to call it a dad joke, but I guarantee you he doesn't tell those jokes to his daughter. So we're gonna be at Wreckfest. Emi B (41:57.4) Really? No joke? Chad (42:10.811) We're going enjoy ourselves. We're going to come back and we're going to have a blast. Not just, not just this week, but we come back on the show. Thanks so much again, Emmy for, for coming on for, for Joel again. and we'll see you soon. We out. Emi B (42:25.26) Abslily, be out.

On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast , we welcome Marc Effron —the guy who looked at HR’s bloated complexity, rolled his eyes, and wrote One Page Talent Management . Yes, one page . Shocking, we know. 📉 CEOs love to say “our people are our greatest asset.” Marc calls BS—unless “greatest” means “we forgot to invest in them, again.” 💰 Why don’t companies train their people anymore? Marc says it’s not about the money. It’s about zero accountability . 🧠 HR's obsession with 48-page competency models? Just insecure nerds trying to impress other insecure nerds, apparently. 💬 Plus: performance reviews, remote work, AI hype, why plumbers should earn more than liberal arts grads, and a well-placed jab at Joel’s “inside the business” habits. Tune in for laughs, truth bombs, and a reality check for every HR pro still clinging to that sacred 200-page leadership binder. 📚 Book: One Page Talent Management 🛒 Available on Amazon —because of course it is. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:30.542) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Mark Effron, president of the Talent Strategy Group and coauthor of One Page Talent Management, Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value. That's a complex title for a book that promises to strip away complexity. Mark, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:49.796) Hahaha Marc Effron (00:51.856) Super happy to be here, Joel and Chad, and editors pick the title, not the writers. Joel Cheesman (01:00.303) good point. Good point. Well, Mark, a lot of a lot of our listeners won't know you probably may not know the book give us the elevator pitch on what makes Mark tick. Chad (01:01.87) Really? Marc Effron (01:11.152) Sure. So short answer, Mark Effron, I lead a firm called the Talent Strategy Group. We work with the world's premier companies, everybody from Apple to the Saudi government. We help them to radically simplify HR. So science-based simplicity, basically, let's stick with the proven science and let's make it really easy to apply at work. Lots of detail underneath that, but that's the essence. I've been doing it for about 15 years in our firm and before that had a real job. as either a senior HR VP or head of talent management at places like Bank of America and Avon products. So I've actually had my bonus depend on this stuff working. Chad (01:50.532) Which it should, to be quite frank, and it should for all CEOs. And that being said, great, great, great segue. Every CEO that's out there says that our employees are our greatest asset, which to be quite frank, to most call bullshit on that because they're not good at talent management. They're not good at talent development. They're not good at any of that. So when you come in, After you've heard that said over and over and over and you see just a mess. What's your thought right out of the gate? Cause you've been doing this for a Marc Effron (02:24.804) Yeah. So what most CEOs really mean when they say that is our best employees are our best assets. And the first question is cool. What you mean by great. And this is such a fundamental question is when you say we value talent, cool. What are the three or four things you really value? It's such a fundamental question, but when you ask HR, they come at you with a 48 page competency model. It's like, no, no, no, no. We know the 85 things that make a good leader. Given your strategy, what are the three or four things that are gonna differentiate your ability to actually meet that strategy? Something as simple as that is missing in almost all of our clients before we get there. But if you haven't figured out the three or four things, what are you building towards? What are you trying to produce? So first question is, Ms. CEO, Mr. CEO, what do you really need? When you say that we value our talent, what do you really value? Chad (03:07.332) Mm. Marc Effron (03:20.688) promise you they have an answer because they always tell us, it's A, and A. And then we normally will go to the HR leader and say, hey, what are the competencies that you have? And they'll give us the long list. And normally half of the CEO's list is not on their list. So the beginning of the answer to your question is that, which is when they say, our people are our best asset, they mean our best people and they're clear about it. But oftentimes their answer doesn't mirror what HR is pushing. Chad (03:50.946) Here's the thing though, and this is again a part of a leader's job is development. And when you say your best people, you're focusing on the successful, right? The ones who are doing a good amount of the work, the ones who are pushing the goals and really meeting their deadlines quickly and so on and so forth. As a leader, it's not your job to sit around and pat them on the head. You can do that on your way to developing your other employees. Why are companies so bad at developing their employees? They spend literally no money compared to what we used to about 50 years ago. We used to dump a lot of money into development of employees because we got tax breaks on it. That went away, trickle down, economics happened. Doesn't happen anymore. So therefore it's not good for the bottom line, but yet it is good for the bottom line because we have more successful people, more A players, let's say. It just makes good sense. So why, why Mark, are CEOs not doing their damn job? Marc Effron (04:55.568) would suggest it has nothing little. It has little to do with money. It has everything to do with accountability. In most companies, if I am brilliant at developing leaders, nothing good happens to me. If I am horrible at developing my teammates or team members, nothing bad happens to me. So if there's no upside and there's no downside, why the F would I spend any time doing this? Chad (05:00.386) Ha ha! Marc Effron (05:19.056) Now there's probably a third of people who actually care about it. So a third of people probably genuinely believe it's the right thing to do. There's naturally why or they came from a company where that was what you did. So it's muscle memory. And there's probably a third of the people who, you know, they have some time, they'll do it. You know, I'll talk to Chad about stuff. I'll talk to Joel about stuff, but it's not regular discipline or thoughtful. And there's a third of people who just for whatever reason, aren't going to do it. That's pretty random. If I'm serious about developing people in my company, that's not going to get it done. But in most organizations, there's not even the lightest form of accountability to make that happen. And we're big fans of kind of the lightest form of accountability being given to managers to ensure that they're doing this. Something as simple as let's say Chad, you're my manager. Once you're at performance management time, you say, Mark, I'd like you to walk through your team members with me and tell me why each of them is a more capable person this year. than they were at the end of last year. Just walk me through each of them. Because I guarantee you each of them or that manager is going to squirm like heck at that conversation if they have not done something to develop their team members. What does that accountability cost? Zero. Cost zero. And all you need to say at beginning of the year is, Mark, at the end of the year, I'm going to ask you this question. I certainly expect you'll be prepared to answer it. Now, There are a million paths for me to get to the outcome of, me tell you about Susie, Bobby, Raj, and Shruti. I can tell you at the end of the year, however it happened, maybe some of them are self-motivated, maybe they needed to beat some of them to getting it. Maybe some had classes or coaches or experiences. Cool. I don't care about the pathway, but I need to be able to tell you why each of them is better, or maybe some of them aren't better. Hey, actually, know, Juan didn't get any better. Let me tell you what we're going to be doing about that. zero cost, but a hundred percent accountability. so I, sorry, long way around, I'm not sure it's about dollars. I really do think it's because there's no upside or downside in most organizations around that. But also, and maybe especially add on, especially for our best talent, let's say that I don't even care about the lower 70%, at least to the upper 30%, my high performers and my high potentials. Marc Effron (07:42.71) I should certainly say, Ms. Manager, Mr. Manager, I have given you some really special people on your team. You definitely have to make sure that they are getting the right experiences, the right exposure, the right education. Maybe I'll give you a decent HR leader or a decent talent leader to help with that, but your job is to steward these very special people and to make sure they're getting better every single year. And I'm going to evaluate your capabilities. based on your ability to do that. mean, even if it's not everybody, at least make it our best talent. So kind of long way around, I think a lot of it is lack of accountability. And every CEO I have met can find some money to spend on hypos. There is always a little money in the budget for hypos. So I think that's where I would start with is accountability is free if you do it the right way. There's always a little bit of extra cash to spend on the best talent. Joel Cheesman (08:40.75) Why'd you write the book, Mark? You've got a lot of experience working at some big companies. Was it something that you experienced? Was it just consulting when you did that? Why'd you write the book? And he wrote it 15 years ago. You had an update in 2018. My next question will be what is changing that time, but why'd you write the book initially? Marc Effron (08:59.94) Yeah, a lot of it was frustration with what I saw as being needless complexity in getting to really valuable outcomes. Meaning, was a, I worked in corporate, I worked as a consultant, and I just saw HR doing things in what appeared to be really slow and bureaucratic and complex ways, but without any need to do things that way. It's like goal setting. Well, if Joel's my manager, why doesn't Joel and Mark to sit down and say, Hey, what three things do you want to work on this year? how about A, B and C? Well, no, how about A, B and D? Okay, cool. A, B and D let's go. Hey, that's a 15 minute conversation. Why do we have long forms and weight each goal? And it just felt like we were spending a lot of time and a lot of energy on really important topics and not getting to good crisp answers. And so that was a frustration that I had had for, for years. And I learned a lot of decent science when I was in business school. I learned a lot of, or I saw a lot of organizations when I was in consulting, had, I'd been there as a corporate leader. And then when I got to Avon products, that was, I was head of talent management, Avon products starting in 2005. And I had a chance to test some of these ideas. And I had almost a greenfield side. got to test performance management the way I wanted to test tower views and potential the way I wanted to succession way. wanted to three sixties way I wanted to. kind of this very science-based simplicity approach. And just complete luck, somebody asked me to speak at a conference and we were doing a lot of this new work, turnaround work, and they said, hey, what's the title of your presentation? like, I don't know, it's like a one-page talent management. And I was doing this speech and there just happened to be an editor from Harvard Business Publishing in the room. And after the speech, she said, hey, do want to write a book on that? And I said, no. It'd be pretty stupid to write a book on one page talent management, wouldn't it? And I said, but I've got three really good book ideas. And I said, here's, you here's pitch number one. She's like, that's a really bad idea. I'm like, well here's pitch number two. She's like, that's an even worse idea than pitch number one. And I'm like, well, here's pitch idea number three. She's like, those are three really terrible book ideas. Literally she was saying that. And I said, let's go back to idea number one on that whole one page thing. Marc Effron (11:18.132) And so I literally wrote it simply thinking it was going to be a narrow handbook for technical talent management people to simply say, look, there's an easy way of doing this. Here's the science. Here's how you translate it into practice. Just go do it. so it was intended really just to kind of put my thoughts and my co-authored Miriam Orchardt, who's now a CHRO of two big companies at the same time, put our thoughts on paper. Turned out that it. seems to pretty broadly applicable, but it was really a way of simply saying, there's an easier way of doing this. Just do it like this. Joel Cheesman (11:55.66) Yeah. What, what do you say to the argument that HR is complex on purpose? In other words, it's too complicated for you to under, there's so many processes. It's a black box. The more complex it is, the less people will want to like fix it. It's a little bit like government, right? A lot of policies, lot of bureaucracy, and we kind of like it that way because everyone sort of keeps a safe distance from looking under, know, under the hood at what's going on. Chad (12:09.892) It's a catch-all. Joel Cheesman (12:25.09) What do say about that argument that a lot of HR departments want to be complex because it's a way of keeping their jobs? Marc Effron (12:25.359) Yeah. Marc Effron (12:33.04) I might have a core literally to that. think a lot of HR people want to appear to be smart and smart people like other people to think that they're smart. And so I think sometimes HR people design stuff for other HR people as opposed to designing it for the customer. So if I'm designing a competency model, I want my peers, Joel and Chad to be impressed by the competency model. look, there three bullets for everything and there's some rows and there's some columns and look, there's blue shading and there's white and there's blue shading and it's all symmetrical. I want you guys to be impressed. I don't give a flying F what the client thinks about it because you guys are my true peers. The client doesn't know what they're looking at. So I think part of it is that we're trying to impress the wrong people and or we're not close enough to the customer to even understand how they should use it or in some cases, hopefully a small number. We're too arrogant to even care what that customer wants. they should be using this. It's the right thing to do. And in many cases, it is the technically right, I'm doing air quotes, everyone listening. It is a technically right thing to do, but it's just not usable. And I think that's where sometimes we get wrapped up in HR is the right answer isn't always the right answer. The right answer is the answer that gets applied, not the technically right answer. And I think we can sometimes get wrapped up into an engineering mindset of Why doesn't the client like my product? Because it's unusable. That's why they don't like the product. You designed a technically perfect, practically unusable product. That means you failed. Not that you got an A from your professor. Chad (14:13.166) So talk about one thing that really, really sticks with me and there are many thus far. So I'm gonna hit this one first, is that they don't care about the customer, right? And I would agree in many cases because they are disassociated from the actual customer in the business itself, right? And how companies make money. Therefore, when they're whining about not having a seat at the table, that's the reason, because they don't understand how They the actual engine of the organization, TA, talent management, talent acquisition, talent management is the engine of every organization until robots start doing this shit, right? So we don't understand how we actually impact the bottom line. And I think that's one of the biggest issues. Yes, we do have to learn the business from the the product standpoint, from the sales standpoint, from the marketing standpoint, from all the different aspects so that we know that we can deliver to them what they need and that is delivering to the business and we can actually articulate that to the C-suite. We don't do that today. Why have we not? Why are we so insulated and we haven't actually been a part of the business? Because we need to be a part of the business. Marc Effron (15:28.314) I think in many cases we have the wrong people in HR. We teach a core model in our talent management Institute. So I didn't in my intro, I didn't mention we formed the talent management Institute, the university of North Carolina 14 years ago have graduated 7,000 leaders from it. We teach basic talent management. One of the things we teach is a core model. We call it the four plus two, basically our, little competency model. The first element of the four plus two, we call business junkie business junkie has two pieces. The first one is. Chad (15:46.638) Mm-hmm. Marc Effron (15:57.36) know the business, just what it sounds like. You understand sales, ops, supply chain, finance. And I tell people that probably eliminates 75 % of the people in HR who don't understand just the fundamentals of the business they're in. The second part though of being a business junkie is loves the business. Loves the business is you wake up thinking, I wonder if I can go on a factory tour today. I wonder if I can go out with that salesperson today. I wonder if I can hang out with somebody in the lab today. I'd love to have lunch with somebody at FP &A today. That's what somebody who loves the business thinks when they wakes up. I can't wait to put on my hip waders and get into the business today. And I just think most people don't go into HR for that reason. They go into HR for some very good reasons. They want people to be more productive or grow. And those are wonderful reasons, but they're incomplete reasons to be in the field. And so I think half the challenge is we attract the wrong people into HR. And so to your point, Chad, if you're, if you're reasoning for why I'm doing something doesn't start with, well, I saw the factory the other day was X. Then you're likely not to come up with the right solution. If it is, this vendor said skills are the hot thing. So I'm going to go tell somebody about skills. Well, then you've already failed because you're just pushing a product that no one gives them. Then when it cares about, Chad (17:09.508) Mm-hmm. Marc Effron (17:22.678) If you, if you're in the factory talking to the factory manager and she was complaining that people aren't walking in with the proper laid skills. Okay, great. Let's talk about laid skills and how we can, that's now a relevant conversation. But if it is, I talked to, glow, they've got this new component to do. Blup. That no one cares. Chad (17:23.417) Mm-hmm. Marc Effron (17:47.854) You're just now an extension of a salesperson talking about something that no one cares about. Chad (17:56.516) So when you say I want to get into the business today, that means something entirely different for Joel Cheeseman. Just wanna make sure you know that. Hit it, hit. There we go. Marc Effron (18:07.057) I do not know your inside jokes. Chad (18:09.868) Yes, yes. That's for the listeners. That's all for the listeners. Okay, so I want to throw something at you because you said Apple earlier and we literally just had an amazing interview with Patrick McGee who just wrote the book Apple in China. And he has uncovered that you talk about spending money, right? That Apple spending at least $55 billion a year on training talent, on the people. Joel Cheesman (18:10.158) You don't want to go inside. Marc Effron (18:14.404) Okay. Chad (18:39.638) and giving them the knowledge and the experience necessary to now be the number one country manufacturing, one of the biggest tech companies in the world, right? But all in China. We're not seeing that kind of expenditure in the United States around vocational skilling, around being able to actually get those employees developed and continuing to develop those employees, not just your most successful, but all of them. They have trained 28 million employees Apple has in China. Why? And again, you have kind of like a, I would assume a light touch or maybe more of even a heavy touch with Apple. Give me kind of like your idea around that. The government, Chinese government is kind of like a heavy hand there. Do we need to have a heavier hand in the US? Because as you'd said before, if there's no accountability from the company, which obviously is not happening in the US, maybe there's got to be accountability a little bit higher on the government side of the house. How do we get this done? Marc Effron (19:50.872) Yeah, I didn't know we would be veering into economic policy thoughts, which is probably outside of my area of expertise. But as a former congressional staffer, which you probably didn't dig deep enough in my resume to see, but I was a congressional staffer for my first job coming out of the University of Washington with a political science degree. So I'd like to suggest that makes me an expert in the topic that you've asked me this question about. Do I think that given the fact that Chad (19:56.727) Always. Chad (20:08.014) So it's perfect for you, Mark. It's perfect. Joel Cheesman (20:17.57) Ha ha. Marc Effron (20:20.912) Plummer makes about $200,000 a year and she does, or first of all, does she, and she does a great job that we should be introducing more people into vocational careers. Darn straight we should be, but that also means that the economic incentives need to be there. Why are we loaning people $80,000 a year to go to Columbia University to learn social work, which pays $40,000 a year? That is a perverse economic incentive instead of saying, hey, why don't we loan you $20,000 a year to not only go to a school that teaches you plumbing, but also $10,000 a year that is going to buy you plumbing equipment to start your own business. Yeah, that feels like a pretty worthwhile investment. So should there be some balancing of economic investments around that? Yes. And I think, again, I'm not an expert, but I think we are seeing greater movement into vocations, especially by men. think there's probably a larger male-female challenge here, more women going into four-year routes, more men are going vocational. There's probably a much larger social conversation to be had around that. Chad (21:38.02) Well, real quick, what we're also seeing is that, let's say for instance, HVAC companies, they are doing the vocational payment at least for plumbers, HVAC, so on and so forth. They're not putting that on the individual, although they're putting them on a three-year contract, much like the military does if you want the GI bill. You're coming in for three or four years, great, you're gonna have college money at the end of it. So again, the employer, is actually footing the bill, which is not something that we see enough of in the US. Sorry, Joel, go ahead. Joel Cheesman (22:13.374) So the last time you updated the book, a few things have happened in the world. We've gone through a pandemic, AI is all the rage. I'm curious, what recommendations would you make in tackling some of these new realities in the workplace? We see companies replacing HR with automation and we see how you engage with employees different through remote work. What's your take on that new reality of the workplace? Chad (22:17.722) Hahaha Marc Effron (22:19.248) Nah. Marc Effron (22:42.864) Yeah, let's start with what hasn't changed. I'll move into what has changed. Here's the good news is the fundamentals of good talent management are the same and probably have been the same for the past 50 years. So a lot of what we write about a lot of the science that we cite in the book around fundamental things like setting great goals, coaching people, selecting for potential, accelerating development. The science and the practice of that is still the same and should be the same as it always has been. We know that setting a few big powerful goals works. We know that transparent coaching works, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of what we write about in the book is absolutely as applicable as it always has been. Now, the question is, are there new ways of applying that given things like folks are working remotely? Yes, what it means is managers need to be far more conscious about applying some of these tactics. So it used to be Joel, my manager might walk by my cube and say, Hey, we need to talk about your goals. And that was our reminder to get that done. And because you saw me every morning, we'd get it done. Now, if I'm working at home, we might not have that visual reminder to have that conversation. Does that mean that gets lost or we don't have a check in conversations frequently. So it needs to be much more conscious and scheduled. to make a lot of those things happen. And so let's take something like that. So part of it is just the regularity and the planned interaction that needs to be much more over. Also, we need to figure out what are your signals for my contributions to the business and how do those change in a remote environment? It used to be that you saw me working hard. You saw me in meetings. You got. clues about am I contributing because you were able to watch me and it's like okay that guy is doing things that suggest he's contributing in a way that I value. If I'm remote, hey that report was a day late. Is that because he was working on other important stuff or he just wasn't working hard? Well, I don't know, you're going to interpret that in whatever way you want to. How do we help you to manage me in a way or help me to manage you in a way that gives you confidence? Marc Effron (25:00.602) that I'm still contributing at the level that you want. So how do we build new mechanisms to make sure that you're still getting the right signals about my performance and contributions, even though you don't have the same signals that you used to, to let you know what I'm doing. So the same standards apply around, you need to understand my delivering, but we need to think through how are you now going to get information about my contributions and how am I going to filter out the noise or your interpretations about Is he doing what he should be doing? So I think there's, application challenges like that. think when we look at things like AI, it feels one, I, there's so much noise right now and there's so much uncertainty about what it really means in terms of how we manage people. look at it right now as a helpful overlay and decision support system, at its best. What I would love to see is, let's say you guys are both on my team. I would get my morning text from our, our system at work at the Cheeseman and Chad company. And it would say, Hey, make sure that you're touching base with cheese this morning about A, B and C on this project. He's interacted with these four people in the past two days, but not this other person who's actually pivotal on this project. Make sure you talk to cheese about which. It would give me kind decision support around who I need to talk to or hey, Chad's birthday is coming up tomorrow. I've already ordered that box of cigars from his favorite cigar place, it under your credit card. Literally that level of decision support is what I hope it will do. And obviously even at a higher level, when it comes time for talent reviews, we've sorted through all the relevant data from ONA stuff to everything else. And we've added a little bit of additional value to predicting upward potential in our company on cheese. Here's our, our summary on what we think he can contribute going forward. So I think that's an added layer of help. Does it change the fundamental processes around performance management or talent reviews or succession planning? Nope. Still need to do all that stuff. And it's not going to do it for us, but it should help make us. Marc Effron (27:24.278) incrementally smarter, not much smarter, but incrementally smarter in doing all those things. Joel Cheesman (27:33.698) rest assured, any message around our company would involve bankruptcy or is that legal? Is that legal to do that? But that's, that's neither here nor there. Curious Mark, your take on a couple of things. One of the, one of the criticisms of the book is that it's really good for big companies and you've spent most of your time in big companies, but for the smaller organization, it doesn't quite have the same fit. And the other, the other side of that is I feel like general generationally, Marc Effron (27:38.756) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Chad (27:40.227) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:03.406) timing you've, you've, you've timed it right to where now more than ever simplicity with this, with the new generation is paramount and keeping things simple. talk about the generational divide from when you wrote the book and also big Co versus sort of small business. Chad (28:11.716) Mm-hmm. Marc Effron (28:20.304) Sure, let's start with this. Everything that we write about in the book, we consider a crutch. Performance management is a crutch that we have because managers aren't going to set goals and coach and review fairly on their own. So we give them a structure called performance management to say, aren't going to do this on your own well, therefore here are some crutches to use to get through it. If I have a company of eight people, I don't need a performance management process because we're going to sit around the table Monday morning and say, let's make sure we sell out our goals. So in terms of, um, do we need tools in small companies? No. I would resist them as long as you possibly can. I would ask the question, are we setting clear focus goals? Are we having regular transparent conversations with people about their behaviors and their performance? And at the end of the year, are we generally reviewing people in a fair way? If we are great at the point where you say, it feels like, don't know the guys in the new region very well. Are they doing it? Can we see people up into that point? No, don't apply any of stuff. So do you need one page talent management? If you're a hundred person company, probably not. if you're a 500 person company, I might crack the cover just to understand what concepts are thousand person company. You're probably in the range where yet it's going to be helpful just to make sure you're not doing things wrong. But no, I would say resist until you absolutely need to have that structure, those questions there. But I'm very clear that all of these things are crutches because we cannot control what every manager does. And there are so many biases that managers are naturally going to engage in that at some point we need to say, no, no, no, we know you're going to pick a cheese because he's the same age as you, looks like you and talks like you. That's not how we select people as successors. We have other ways of doing that. So we're going to put a process in place to make that a bit more fair. In terms of generations, is your thought there more to kind of... Go ahead, Chad, sorry. Chad (30:18.999) I love a comp- Chad (30:26.232) No, go ahead. Marc Effron (30:26.286) Now in your generation question, cheese, is that more about Joel Cheesman (30:27.394) Well, know, have, have generally speaking, generally speaking of. Well, generally speaking, you have, let's call it older people at the top and the world is going to, think, a simpler way of communication. You look at solutions like, you know, 15 five, we're like every day we have a little, little engagement. We know what we're doing. We're moving forward. I guess part of it is, you know, if you're talking to an older generation that loves, you know, handbooks and the 47 page, you know, strategy, what's your conversation to them to embrace this? Because this is what younger people will embrace. And if you don't, you're going to lose them. Chad (30:48.206) pulses. Marc Effron (31:03.534) Yeah. Yeah. I would say two things more frequent, more transparent. So processes still apply. So do we still need to set goals and coach? Absolutely. But the, feedback cycle and the transparency of the feedback cycle needs to be faster. And there's absolutely nothing that prevents us from doing it other than a lot of the managers are forties and fifties and they don't feel as comfortable or don't see the need to do that. I would suggest. Does technology help? Yeah, but I don't need technology. If you guys are on my team, I can still give you frequent and transparent feedback without having some huge system that enables that Transparency is the number one underscore number one problem at every single client We have around the globe and we work with the premier organizations because it's a human issue Humans don't like being transparent all sorts of wonderful reasons around that But that's that's going to influence or be a barrier for any generation because we want to get along. The reason we're not transparent is we want to get along with people. Transparency creates threats or feelings of threats. And so we need to kind of force that transparency. So even if that younger generation wants to be more transparent or wants more transparency as the receiver, the giver of the transparency still needs to feel comfortable with it. That's always going to be a barrier. But I would suggest the same processes from performance management and talent reviews in 360s and everything else still applies. More frequent, more transparent, should satisfy the needs of a younger generation if we're implying they want faster, more frequent, easier conversations around these things. Chad (32:48.462) keep it simple, stupid is my policy. That's Mark EfFron and the book is One Page Talent Management. Mark, if somebody wants to connect with you or I don't know, maybe even buy the book, where would you send them? Marc Effron (33:02.512) Well, I would send them to Amazon to buy the book they can go to our website talent strategy group comm for lots of great articles videos and more information Chad (33:14.763) Excellent. Joel Cheesman (33:14.978) Maybe Brent said it best when he said kiss Chad. That's another one in the in the can we out. Chad (33:21.582) way out

On this week's show we have Shareholders, Agents & CEO Facepalms Indeed uses their powers for evil while Recruit wants to "simplify hiring"—translation: control everything. JobRight raised millions to unleash job-hunting agents. Spoiler: it’s AI catfishing until the interview. Ford’s CEO just realized paying people more  keeps them around. Shocking. Layoffs keep piling up, the economy’s a mess, and the job market needs a total reboot. The Chad & Cheese Podcast—where innovation meets insanity (and we mock it all). PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.086) It's 106 miles to Chicago. got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel alligator out Alcatraz Cheesman. Chad (00:49.633) This is Chad England, here we come, Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:52.672) I'm JT, I'm on vacation, O'Donnell. Joel Cheesman (00:56.302) And on this episode, more indeed applies for a job overlord. I didn't say that right. And on this episode indeed applies to be your job overlord. Agents are a thing and layoffs. Let's do this. Joel Cheesman (01:15.014) So what'd you guys do for Canada Day? Did you have some poutine and some ketchup chips? Chad (01:20.373) don't even know what that is. J.T. O'Donnell (01:22.846) I love poutine though. mean gravy cheese like fries. Joel Cheesman (01:25.254) Taints good. Chad (01:26.483) On, yeah, on, on, on fries. mean, you can't, you can't. Yeah. Yes. Well done, Canada. Joel Cheesman (01:29.734) fries, gravy, cheese. Yeah. Hard to do. Hard to do. A lot of Americans have no idea, but Canada Day, July 1st. It gets overshadowed by the 4th of July, obviously. you know, we have a lot of sponsors are Canadian. love everything Canadian on the show. It was not a revolution. There was an award. They signed some papers, I think. It was pretty, pretty polite, but they got their independence and they celebrate it on July 1st. So happy Canada Day. J.T. O'Donnell (01:31.022) Well done, Canada. Well done. Chad (01:55.349) Nice. Chad (01:58.739) Nice, nice. Much like Portugal, they call the Carnation Revolution because there was no war. was all just peaceful transfer, peaceful transfer of power. From years of being a theocracy. That's fucking fun. Jesus. Joel Cheesman (02:08.506) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (02:09.486) face. J.T. O'Donnell (02:14.796) I learned so much about history on this show with you boys. Chad (02:19.165) And jerseys, look, my new jersey. Joel Cheesman (02:22.628) That's right. There's a reason we have that sound bite on this show. There's a reason. Chad, you got a new soccer jersey on or should I say football? What? That is pretty. Chad (02:24.413) no. no. Yeah, sporting. Sporting Yeah, they won they won the Portuguese League for last two years last two years in a row. So yeah, I will be sporting get it. The Portuguese national jersey on stage at Wreckfest. New one. Sexy. Oh, it's sexy. J.T. O'Donnell (02:30.177) It's pretty. Yeah, it's like... Joel Cheesman (02:48.862) which, we will get to an events. but, JT's, we're only thing standing between her and vacation, I think. So let's, let's get to some, shout outs. I'll go ahead and go first guys. you probably know Lars Schmidt. A lot of our listeners will know Lars. he's quite the icon in the industry. anyway, he, he recently shut down his, his podcast, a lot of things that he was doing social media and whatnot. Chad (02:52.416) Yes. Chad (02:57.345) Let's this over with. Okay. Chad (03:04.513) yeah. Chad (03:14.847) Yeah, so good focus. Joel Cheesman (03:16.742) which I thought was really interesting. So he re he recently launched a clothing, store line online, platform and I'm wearing one of his shirts. It's a, it's a lightning bolt. Cause you know, I'm, I'm hot and cool like that chat. gotta, gotta wear the lightning bolt, but it's called joy syndicate. good on him. know a lot of people are in industry sort of get stuck in recruiting and then doing what they do. And, shout out to Lars. Chad (03:26.273) Nice. Chad (03:33.44) You Joel Cheesman (03:45.626) for getting outside the box. He is still head of talent at a company called fruity fruitiest or fruitist. so he's still doing that, but good on him. He's had this idea for like 20 years, finally did it. it's joy hyphen, syndicate.com go get a shirt, get a bucket hat bags, maybe Merce, depending on, know, who, who, who you're shopping for. I do need a Merce, a bum bag, I think is what you call it in Europe. I'm going to maybe bring that to Germany. Chad (03:55.786) Awesome. Chad (04:07.438) You need a MRS for your Europe test after your... Yes. Joel Cheesman (04:14.694) Uh, this, this, uh, this weekend. anyway, shout out Lars, man, keep, keep doing what you do. Hopefully you're not going to disappear from the landscape. We'd love to see it in an event coming soon. Don't don't disappear totally. Chad (04:25.803) Yeah, GT. J.T. O'Donnell (04:27.534) Yeah, I'm going to give a shout out to AI app building. So I came across this app that said you can take any idea you have and talk to us and we'll build you the app. So I took the challenge on Sunday afternoon and built a LinkedIn profile analyzer that I literally launched same day within like three hours. And we know AI is coming but to interact with AI like that the way I did and to build something that I could Chad (04:44.768) Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (04:54.818) go out and immediately give value to you, people. tells you like rates your profile, tells you out of the four areas what to fix. I called it profile boost. It's work at daily profile boost. It's you'll find it in my LinkedIn feed. It's still in beta, but you go to my, I've posted it every day and say, Hey, pop your LinkedIn and see your score. It's been, yeah. Chad (05:00.789) What's the name of it? Chad (05:05.205) Okay. Joel Cheesman (05:14.68) And she just raised $100 million, everybody. She's the lightest unicorn in our space. Sorry, sorry. couldn't resist. Chad (05:14.945) Nice. J.T. O'Donnell (05:19.918) Right. But, but you know, it cost me $60. So like, it would have taken a team of a hundred developers. And you know what mean? When you think about that for someone like me to sit on my couch and be like, okay, dude, no fixes, do this, do that. The app is called Replet. I'm not sponsored by them in any way, folks. It's just somebody just said, Hey, it works. And I went, sure. It does. Like, this is what I really need. Cause I get asked every day how to, how do I fix my LinkedIn profile? And I was like, chief, I could just have the app for that, know, boom, I the app for that. So. Chad (05:20.001) Valuation 20 billion. Joel Cheesman (05:30.374) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:34.01) What service did you use? Yeah, Replet, yeah. Yeah, there's a Chad (05:46.048) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (05:49.634) Folks, do not underestimate where you can build with AI these days. Chad (05:52.609) That's right. That's right. Well, since JT's on vacation and she's she still showed up, which I appreciate that JT because Joel doesn't do that. I'm just going to go straight into free stuff. I'm going give you some time off this week. You don't have to do free stuff. One of the reasons why is because we have new T-shirts. We have new T-shirts. They're Dr. Feelgood Motley Crew Chad Cheese T-shirts. Very inspired. Going to be at Nebworth. We'll talk a little bit about that. But free stuff. J.T. O'Donnell (06:08.716) Hmm Joel Cheesman (06:12.674) Inspired. Chad (06:21.675) Go to ChadCheese.com slash free where you could prospectively win those t-shirts, gorgeous t-shirts from our friends over at Aaron app, whiskey, two bottles of chicken cock. That's right. One, one cock for each hand. The talent experts over at Van hack. That's right. In Canada, Vancouver. We got more Canadians. We've got barrel bourbon barrel age syrup by our friends at Joel Cheesman (06:40.964) Headquartered in Vancouver, that's right. One of our proud Canadian, along with Kiora. Chad (06:50.571) Keyura also sponsors of shout outs, texting made simple, craft beer, the job data geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. That's right, you get a box of beer on your doorstep. Joel Cheeseman will deliver it himself. And if it's your birthday, if it's your birthday, you can win rum from plum. Got to go to ChadCheese.com slash free to register. J.T. O'Donnell (07:03.555) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:07.248) Make sure you have snacks. Make sure you have snacks. J.T. O'Donnell (07:19.575) Yup. Chad (07:20.993) Ha Joel Cheesman (07:21.776) That's right guys. Another trip around the sun for listeners. Christina Baciu, Mark Anderson, Scott Allen, Aaron Koteff. That's right. Aaron. Chad (07:37.473) Who's next? What? Joel Cheesman (07:38.628) Yes. Aaron Koteff. There we go. All Nick Bowers, Jesse Sims, Christine Hampton, Daniella McDonald, Elaine Orler, Bill Fisher and Michael. What a full nose McDonald. That's right. Another trip around the sun. When I make, when I make notes at night, I'm usually about two or three bourbons deep and I have all the intention of having little sound bites in these things. Chad (07:42.049) There we go. There we go. J.T. O'Donnell (07:56.526) Happy birthday everybody. Chad (07:58.367) And hopefully... Joel Cheesman (08:06.906) And then I mess up in the next day. forget. totally forget that I, that I did it, but. Chad (08:08.095) and you forget. That happens. Humans. J.T. O'Donnell (08:10.574) Rollback, are the shirts coming to Nebsworth though? Nebsworth? I always put an S in there, I don't know why. My shirt will be there, I will be wearing my shirt, because they are very comfy shirt. Chad (08:12.991) Yeah, yeah, yeah, Chad (08:18.69) yeah, I like the comfy shirt. Joel Cheesman (08:18.884) Yes, they will be at, Chad (08:22.911) Well, luckily, Shaker Recruitment Marketing is a sponsor of our travel, where we will be going to, as I'd said, England next week. That's right, RecFest UK and Nebworth July 10th. If you don't have your tickets already, kids, what are you thinking? Go to recfest.com, go get those tickets. We're gonna be on the disrupt stage with our friend, Steven, our favorite Scott McGrath. JT's gonna be there. Mo had to actually eject because she's taking her kids Joel Cheesman (08:27.983) Yes, they are. Chad (08:52.865) to a Disney inspired or Disney cruise, which actually goes out of Barcelona. I can't hate her for that. But we're also gonna have, Emmy's gonna have her own stage. We're all gonna be there. It's gonna be a blast. See you next week at RecFest. Joel Cheesman (09:09.008) Be on the lookout for a 6'4 teenager that looks sort of like my bodyguard. He will have the t-shirts. So he's on alert and usually very, very friendly and with a big backpack. An invitation. Chad (09:12.321) Thanks Chad (09:19.711) and a backpack. J.T. O'Donnell (09:22.478) Can I throw out an invitation too? I'm so excited to be there and I'm not on stage, but if there's anybody in the audience that would like to join me in heckling the boys, I chat CPT'd some pretty fabulous heckles that I think we could joint do. So just come find me, front row, yelling, it'll be great. Chad (09:33.185) That's easy. Chad (09:38.987) They don't need any help, okay? They don't need help. Chad (09:46.623) Now we're going to pull JT on stage too, so she can be part of the heckling as well. Well, you can, back and forth. Joel Cheesman (09:49.402) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (09:50.956) I want a heckle. Joel Cheesman (09:52.038) It's going to be a good time. It's going to be a good time. It's going to be a good time. See you guys in London. Chad (10:00.577) Well, Joel indeed has been busy kids, healthy budgets enforced. Hyams is out or he decided to leave. He decided to leave killing agency XML feeds, forcing them into APIs, focusing on how to force hiring companies to give in deeds, disposition data for their ATS. And then Jim, the indeed whisperer Durbin sends us this good roll that beautiful bean. J.T. O'Donnell (11:38.702) Tasty. Where was the cowboy hat, Jim? Chad (11:39.871) I see. Next time. time. Next. J.T. O'Donnell (11:45.516) I only know Jim with a hat on, you know what I mean? He's off-brand, that was like kind of buttoned up, Jim. Joel Cheesman (11:45.612) Hey, he's he's not he's off brand isn't he? JT knows JT Joel Cheesman (11:53.302) I love the indeed whisper though. He's always on that. I think he's still single. I wonder if he uses that in the bars there in Texas. keeps us busy on this show. That's for sure. mean, they're not gonna get accused of not innovating, at least trying some stuff and innovating in air quotes. Look, I can't hate on them for swinging for the fences. J.T. O'Donnell (11:55.605) Mm-hmm. Yes. You Chad (12:02.273) I hope not. I hope not. Yeah. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (12:07.512) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:21.572) whether this becomes the new monster type screw up, like be known and it fades away and they don't have the core competency to pull it off. I guess that's left to be seen, but they are full on full core. We're going to own the process. We're going to be in your, in your ATS, the background, like all that stuff. They want to own the whole thing. I can't hate them, hate on them for that, but I can kind of hate on them. Chad (12:46.017) Mm. Joel Cheesman (12:50.662) for, guess, the bullying way that they're just saying, we're going to do this and either get on, follow, or get the hell out of the way or get run over. One of the things I found funny was Jim posted this on LinkedIn and Megan Radigan, a friend of ours over at Marriott's, had a quote, something like, it's not a time to be lazy. It's a time to be sort of focused on this. And I thought that's funny because people in general are lazy and people in HR and in town are lazy as well. Chad (13:14.165) love her. Chad (13:19.402) Megan's not. Joel Cheesman (13:20.322) Ultimately, Megan is it's an 80 20 kind of thing and Megan is in the 20 % but 80 % of the people of the companies are going to roll over and they're going to let indeed do this. And I'm sure whatever pencil net geek and indeed said, look, if we lose 20 % big deal, the money we're going to make on the 80 % that agreed to do this, we're going to, we're going to come out, come out on top. there is some historical relevance, to this that I wanted to throw in. so, so Google, Chad (13:23.369) Yeah. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (13:25.006) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (13:46.136) Shocker. Shocker. Joel Cheesman (13:49.636) back in the day, tried to sort of do similar thing. They were doing pay per click. wanted to, they launched an analytics solution. They wanted to be in your code. They wanted to know when everything that you sold, how much you made, they wanted a piece of that. They wanted to monitor everything that was going on, which made sense. Cause Hey, if you, if you saw a hundred dollar pair of shoes, we're going to get 10, right? What happened was all the webmasters, all the companies were like, Chad (14:00.203) Mm. Joel Cheesman (14:16.174) No, you're not going to do that. you're like, you will pay you for the traffic you give us, but we're not going to let you in and open the kimono and have you control everything. My fear is that indeed is doing something similar in trying to overtake the process. We'll see if there's a revolt similar to how Google saw a revolt back in the day. but again, I think laziness will rule the day and 80 % of companies will just roll over and let indeed do this. And I think it'll be successful. Chad (14:18.166) Yeah. Chad (14:45.825) So cutting down time to fill, they don't control. I mean, that's nothing they control. And they're talking about a lot of things that they don't control, which is it's weird. So to have those expectations over things that you have no control over, like hiring, I mean, they don't hire people. They don't do that hiring managers hiring people, right? And if they take three additional days or two additional weeks, indeed does not have anything to do with control. I jumped into the business report. on page 40, quote, to achieve the goal of simplifying hiring, which is what Jim was talking about. Recruit believes it is essential to further strengthen the collaboration between all HR related businesses across the recruit group and operated operate them in a unified manner. They're looking to pull these together and call them the HR matching markets. Okay. It goes on to say recruit aims to leverage the vast amount of data. J.T. O'Donnell (15:41.486) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:44.445) available, the vast amount of data available in each service combined with AI and machine learning technology to simplify the hiring process and deliver greater value, yada yada yada. And then on the very next page, additionally, by expanding integrations with ATSs, what does that sound like? Disposition codes recruit aims to improve matching by bringing outcome data disposition from external applicant tracking systems into the indeed Platform, okay. So you can easily see that recruits once in needs are going to move everything into the old staffing company cost per hire model. That's what they wanna do. Which is why they're using Indeed to try and force disposition data from the ATS so badly. This feels like newspapers attempt to conform job boards into their old newspaper models, forcing column inches on hiring companies and getting a job posting as a gift with purchase or maybe a small up sale. It didn't work. The model died in the same way that cost per hire is an old and tired model. Every recruiting platform today should be focused on getting more revenue. How do you do that? New models. You get every qualified candidate, you get paid for them and you give them what they're asking for, right? We're so used to just loads of Candidates qualified unqualified and Megan from Marriott actually said we got 10 million candidates. The fuck do we need you for I'm paraphrasing at the end of the day Last but not least they kept saying over and over and over quote as a leader in the global HR matching market and quote global HR matching market This is something they literally just made up This does not exist We've been talking about matching. There's no market. I mean, it's like they're trying to create all of these things out of thin air. And it's really weird. I do like that they're trying to swing for the fence. I don't like that they're using their powers for evil and with the bullying. And I don't like that they're trying to force everybody into an old ass model like Cosper, hire one that could make more money on CPQA or CPQC. That's all I got. Joel Cheesman (18:05.381) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (18:08.48) Yeah, so I agree with both of Joel Cheesman (18:09.326) It's hard to imagine that they don't see a world, sorry, JT, where it feels like they want a world where someone joins Indeed as a job seeker. They put in their resume, what kind of job they're looking for. And then the Indeed agent just 24 seven applies to jobs based on what they're looking for and that companies in a similar way say, Hey, I need a PHP developer or whatever. And then it creates the job posting. It goes to the same, like it interviews. Chad (18:28.551) We'll talk about that later. Joel Cheesman (18:38.426) Like I think they envision a world where agents talk to agents and a lot of this stuff you go to, you go to indeed once or twice and they do the rest for you 24 seven. J.T. O'Donnell (18:50.91) I agree with that. In fact, you're so here's the way I look at it is they've got this house that's very old. It has no more market appeal. Do you raise the house and start over or do you try to rehab what you have? And so I'm glad that they're trying to swing for something, but it still feels very much as Chad was talking about that they're rehabbing as opposed to just building something brand new and improve, which those are strategic business decisions. That's fine. What I truly see and believe. is that there will be no resumes, there will be no job boards, you will not apply on a job board anymore, you will get on and talk to a virtual agent that'll ask you questions, and every day you'll go on. Kind of like your, you know, it's like your career therapist, what did you do today? What did you work on? What skills, what technologies did you use? You'll document yourself, it'll all be sitting there, and then when a recruiter needs somebody with that, it'll go out, it'll listen to all that, which is far more comprehensive. And quite frankly, can be far more inclusive if you're looking to switch industries, switch skill sets. You can talk about a lot of things and prove you know something, whereas opposed to your resume is just a history of your past, which is lame. We shouldn't be basing it just on that. So the potential for candidates to just get in there and authenticate themselves, provide the data, provide the evidence all the time, ongoing basis. And the AI can go and find them and match them. You might believe that's coming. I mean, if I learned anything this week in building an app in four hours. Chad (20:07.392) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (20:08.526) This is so coming. so someone's got to do it. The question will become, and this is where I think it's like an arms race. This would be really interesting. Isn't it an indeed who can push their weight around and has the money and can get through it? Or is there somebody out there right now with four people that's going to build the next unicorn because they can write like this is the. Yeah, it's fascinating. Chad (20:24.641) It's always the question. Joel Cheesman (20:28.39) It feels very paradox when you look at demos of what Indeed is building. Very chatty, very, although paradox, it's still a person using the chat bot and indeed's world. think it's agents talking to agents, robots, hiring robots. J.T. O'Donnell (20:35.608) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (20:43.436) agents. Chad (20:45.611) So to JT's point, think she's 100 % correct, but there will be assessments and simulations. So when you're talking to the computer, you're actually using whatever it is, the AI, there will be standardized assessments and simulations that you have to go to to prove that you can do those jobs, right? Because I think there's gonna be a lot of hallucinating happening on these profiles. Yeah, well, which are the same thing. J.T. O'Donnell (21:02.638) Of course. Joel Cheesman (21:12.504) fraud. J.T. O'Donnell (21:14.082) Which, but exactly, but the technology is coming there to authenticate them, to build the constraint, right? So that we know that will be solved for. both sides want it. Does anybody want to post a job anymore and get 10,000 applicants and then get yelled at because somebody didn't get an interview? And does any job seeker want to apply and sit in a black hole and get rejected six months later? Like the whole system is just a joke on both sides. Joel Cheesman (21:15.651) You Chad (21:27.943) No. No. Joel Cheesman (21:40.922) Guys, did you know we're on YouTube? If you haven't checked us out yet, head out to youtube.com slash at Chad cheese and tech check out our, beautiful, beautiful mugs and attire that we wear that you can't see on the audio version. we'll be right. Chad (21:43.251) What? What? my sexy shirt. Joel Cheesman (21:59.174) Did somebody say agents? We'll bring on the agents. JobRite, an AI native job platform, just raised $3.2 million in funding to accelerate growth and deepen its AI engine. The platform, already used by over 520,000 professionals, that's per the company, automates job applications and promises to improve the job search experience. If you haven't had enough agency, here we go. WISC, an agentic HR platform. J.T. O'Donnell (22:00.994) You Chad (22:02.625) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (22:26.918) provider raised $15 million in funding this week too. Ched, your thoughts or do you just want to have an agent speak for you on the podcast from here on out? Chad (22:36.267) So you've both seen the accountant with Ben Affleck and the accountant too. The accountant too just came out on Amazon. Well, the sequel to the one that just came out, so you can go to Amazon and watch it, Ben Affleck, who is a forensic accountant, a hit man, and he also has Asperger's, he games a dating system algorithm and seems to be the perfect date for every female in the room. until they have their face-to-face meetings, right? Needless to say, he bombs every single fucking date, much like tailoring everything about yourself with co-pilots. You can look perfect on screen, but when you show up to the interview, the date, it probably won't go well. So it's kind of like the level of AI catfishing, to be quite frank. That's what JobRite feels like to me. I like the idea of tech helping us be more efficient, but I don't like the... J.T. O'Donnell (23:10.734) every single one. Chad (23:35.443) eventual, you know, wolf and sheep's clothing impacts that we could prospectively happen by using systems like this. Like it. If we can do agents like more like Wisk where it's more like doing tasks for you as opposed to trying to create this Instagram filter to make me look much more pretty. And I know it's hard than I already am. Yeah, I mean, come on. I mean, stop the catfishing kids. We don't need platforms to catfish. J.T. O'Donnell (24:01.88) Perfection. Joel Cheesman (24:08.976) So I'm on, I'm on the opposite of this, I think. And I'll let JT be the tiebreaker. There, there have been many times in my life where I've looked at a technology and I've said, yeah, that's a thing. That's going to happen, whether it's digital photos, whether it's search, email, streaming video and whatnot. And I just look at this agent shit and I go, this is a thing. Job search sucks. It's time consuming. It's painful. It's depressing. It's ego destroying in many cases. People are going to want to have an agent do the job search for them, do the interview for them 24 seven. I don't have to touch it. And then once a day or whatever I get back, Hey, this company's interested. They've done the preliminary interview. Now they want to meet you in person. Like that is something that I can see people wanting to do, whether it's a startup or it's indeed. Like I think people want to do, they're sick of being ghosted. They're sick of the black hole. Like just let a technology do it for me I'll get on with my life. And similarly with whisk, think HR in many ways, they would like to take off the job posting, the sourcing resumes, like all that stuff that is promising through agents. I think that's going to happen too. I don't know who's going to do it. Maybe it's a big player, like indeed, maybe it's a spunky startup. but agents make too much sense to me. Yeah. I said spunky. And by the way, if you have been Affleck on your bingo card, make sure that you, you, you, you snap that. so for me, like, I think it, just makes too much sense not to happen. think agents are going to talk to agents and people are going to be out of the picture until they, until they absolutely have to be in the picture. That's my, that's my take on this. Chad (25:29.739) Bunky. Chad (25:35.105) Boom. Chad (25:52.987) Don't don't don't be confused. didn't say it wasn't going to happen. I just said that it's going to be more like Ben Affleck or who looked who looked awesome to all those women until they actually fucking met. J.T. O'Donnell (26:03.438) Yeah, there's going to be more. I mean, rarely I've ever said that I was going to side with Joel in a situation. Joel decided to me. But let me give you some anecdotal evidence on the job seeker side, right? I am seeing a massive surge and people asking about reverse recruiting. This comes up every time in a really bad job market. These slimy companies come out of nowhere and say, pay me and I'll find you a job. I'll get you the job interviews to find you a job to the point that this week, is the third time it's happened. Chad (26:26.218) Go for it. J.T. O'Donnell (26:31.886) Somebody is faking me on Fiverr and grabbed all my stuff, claims it's me and says that for $650, I will reverse recruit for you. So people have been smart enough to come and let me know and we're shutting it down, right? But when I see this much about reverse recruiting, that just tells you exactly what Joel's saying. They are so done and everybody wants an agent. Everybody wants to feel like the star and there's an agent representing me. That's like just human nature. So I'm with in Wonder % who does it, how it's happening. Joel Cheesman (26:37.03) Hmm. Chad (26:40.833) catfishing. J.T. O'Donnell (27:02.092) Yeah, yeah, definitely happening. Chad (27:04.065) Well, it's the 80-20 rule that Joel just talked about. It's the 80-20 rule that Joel just talked about. 80 % of the motherfuckers out there are lazy. So yeah, of course they would like to have tech do it for them. I don't disagree. I just think that it's not gonna come with great outcomes. Joel Cheesman (27:04.176) Did JT say she agrees with me? J.T. O'Donnell (27:10.904) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (27:22.86) until they do the things you talked about, in the assessments, work in the things that validate and prove that somebody's real. Chad (27:25.835) Yes. Yep. 100%. Joel Cheesman (27:29.67) There will be hiccups. Email has spam and this will have fraud and abuse and all kinds of other s***. Yes, but we still use it every day except my kids, which I make use because I still email my kids. For the record, JT agrees with me, everybody. All right, let's get to, I don't know, let's file this one under the no s*** Sherlock file. we do that? Ford CEO, Jim Farley. Chad (27:34.739) Email still has spam. Still has spam. fucking choice. Joel Cheesman (27:55.878) learned from older employees that young workers were taking multiple jobs due to low wages. Inspired by founder Henry Ford's decision to raise factory wages, Farley transitioned temporary workers to full-time positions, providing higher wages, profit sharing, and better healthcare. This move aimed to attract stable workforce and encourage employees shockingly to buy Ford products as a result of getting paid more. Chad, back to the future. Your thoughts on Ford's CEO's comment. Chad (28:28.304) my fucking God. mean, like you said, no shit, Sherlock. More pay, that's the answer. What a fucking genius that Jim Farley is. Seriously, this is complete and utter bullshit of an epiphany. Of course, employees will be happier. They will be retained easier. And paying your employees means that they might even become customers. That's what Ford understand. How do we not know that already? I mean, that that to me just blows my fucking mind. Henry Ford was not being charitable. He wanted to have more Ford cars on the road. And that's the easiest way to get to quicker adoption. Right. You do that through your employees. People see him on the road. I got to have me a Ford. That's how you start adoption. Right. It just makes sense. So to be able to pay people, it just it drives me crazy. Yes. The most amazing bullshit that we have had to endure in our lifetime. is the myth that paying people more will just put prices out of reach and tank the economy. It's wrong. California increased fast food worker paid a $15 an hour minimum wage and the price of a Big Mac went up cents, not dollars, went up cents. It's good for company morale. It's good for local economies and it's good for the nation to pay the employees a living wage. I mean, all of this to be an epiphany. for a guy who makes hundreds of millions of dollars. He deserves to be fired. Fire that fucker. Joel Cheesman (30:05.126) Fired him, Ford stock is up 20 % year to date, Chad. He's not going anywhere. He's not going anywhere. So a few things on this. The whole commentary from the older workers to him was that younger workers were working at Amazon and then they were getting off work and going to Ford and sleeping like three to four hours a day. Well, no shit, that's an environment that's going to be bad for business. So doing that just made sense. It also makes me question all the unemployment numbers. J.T. O'Donnell (30:07.904) Mm-mm. Chad (30:09.236) And he's getting his ass kicked too. mean, geez. J.T. O'Donnell (30:30.84) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:35.13) thinking like how many people have multiple jobs that are being counted in who knows what kind of ways. like that was sort of eyeopening to me. the second thing I think that he mentioned that makes a lot of sense is that governments need to get a lot more serious about training people, for jobs in this, in manufacturing and, this like you. Chad (30:39.776) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:53.642) Fuck him. Fuck him. Joel Cheesman (30:58.176) Why? Because he said it? Chad (30:59.36) Apple paid China $275 billion and Apple trained 28 million employees. But yet they want to go to the government for a handout. Fuck you. Joel Cheesman (31:02.402) Okay, so put up or shut up. Joel Cheesman (31:14.796) Okay. Okay. All right. But we both agree that schools need to do more to train people to do trade skills. Chad (31:18.676) I'm supposed to be Euro Chad, why are you making me mad? Chad (31:25.824) It's just where the money comes from. It should be coming from Ford. Joel Cheesman (31:28.88) Fair enough, fair enough. He mentioned Germany, that students are taught in junior high and they're much more skilled than American workers. And then the third thing I think, the need for a higher minimum wage. We have such a low floor in America that when they get to these jobs, even though it's more, it's from a much lower base. And we need to raise the base so that these jobs become living wages that you don't just go from fast food. J.T. O'Donnell (31:29.795) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:40.277) Yes. Joel Cheesman (31:55.856) to manufacturing and you're still not being able to make ends meet, still have to take extra jobs. as a country, we need to get our minimum wage up to that 20, 25, $30 range so that these things don't happen. So good, bad, ugly, the four news, take it for what you will. But those are three takeaways that I had from the story and his comments. J.T. O'Donnell (32:18.582) Yeah, it's so funny. I think if you factor in true underemployment right now, our rates got to be way up over 8 % when you think about it. And for somebody to doing two or three jobs exhausted, the emotional stress, the physical stress, the sickness, it's just so obvious. Raise the dang rates. It's crazy to me that they don't see it. hopefully it's coming. Gig work isn't for everyone, too. Shift work and multiple jobs and running around. People would just love a decent wage, work one place, go home and get a good night's rest. Chad (32:46.954) Yeah, and have a life and have a life. We talked to Catherine Watt from CNET and she said the unemployment rates probably more around 20 percent when you're talking about unemployed. mean, so it's it's it's much higher than what we're than we're actually saying. But yeah, it's it's ridiculous. Joel Cheesman (32:47.398) I think that's most people. J.T. O'Donnell (32:47.52) That's not much to ask for. Joel Cheesman (32:59.62) under play down. J.T. O'Donnell (33:00.042) Exactly. Joel Cheesman (33:06.182) All right, let's take a quick break. Guys, if you haven't left us a review on your podcast platform of choice, please do so. We love to hear from you. Joel Cheesman (33:18.054) All right, guys, let's let's talk some layoffs. Shall we? One of our favorite playoffs. That's right. In 2025, tech layoffs persist with over 22,000 job cuts so far peaking at 16,234 just in February. That's per our friends at layoffs.fyi. Companies like Rivian, Bumble, Clue, Google, Intel, Airtime, Microsoft, Slash jobs to boost efficiency and fund AI. Chad (33:22.218) Layoffs? J.T. O'Donnell (33:23.02) more enact Joel Cheesman (33:48.216) impacting HR's talent strategies and exacerbating infinite workday risks. Chad, your thoughts on all the layoffs that are going on these days. Chad (33:59.083) Just the mess continues. I mean, we take a look at dumping hundreds of thousands of federal white collar workers into the the mess that's already there with tech workers because we had huge companies like Facebook who literally were hoarding talent, not even using them. were literally just pools of talent that they didn't want their competitors to have. And then when the market needed to be skinned down a little bit, they just dumped them back on. mean, so I mean, the only way that we're going to fix this is to retool. Joel Cheesman (34:13.712) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (34:15.608) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:29.056) how we look at work and the workforce and actually the workforce economy in itself and how we drive and build an economy. The way that we're doing it now, it's it's flawed and it's been flawed for decades, for goodness sake. So we've got to take a different look at how we're doing things. going back to the Apple in China conversation that we had with Patrick McGee, the way that we get ourselves out of this, is companies have to remember they're a part of the community. The community is what feeds them with talent where they can actually build product and build revenue. Right. That's how it works. When companies go to government with their handout looking for, you know, corporate charity, for God's sakes, that's where things fall down because then the money doesn't get put into the actual talent to be able to build. And then they start bitching about what Germany has and China has. It's like, well, yeah, because you're spending money. So we really have to take a look at that. And unfortunately, I don't like to say it, but government's got to get involved and there've got to be parameters that are built around this. Not to mention CEOs making, you know, 1500 % more than, you know, the guys actually on the manufacturing line is bullshit too. It's just, it's a top-down reorganization that we have to take a look at. J.T. O'Donnell (35:49.347) Yeah, there's also a narrative that needs to be switched up too, though, right? We've taught people for very long time, go to college, get a good job, work it in. Number one, you know, those people that worked at Facebook, that was their end game. That's going to get me every job I ever won after this because I got hired at Facebook. Well, that's not true. So many people's mental models of career have collapsed. The definition of career has collapsed, collapsed. And so we have to address that too, because even I mean, the employers need to do it. right. Chad (35:58.912) Yeah. Chad (36:03.796) Mm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (36:03.845) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (36:15.714) But even when they start to do that, we also have to have people's eyes and ears opened up to the switch. So it's pretty messy, you know? Chad (36:23.646) Yeah, yeah, college. mean, so the whole college aspect, I mean, it just turned into a moneymaking model, right? And that's really what that's really what screwed us all. We stopped what Ford was talking about in Germany doing vocational schools. We used to do those. We used to do those. As matter of fact, Cummins Injun Company back in Columbus, Indiana, where I live, they actually fund the vocational school and the high school. because they understand they have to support the community. It's just a great example, but it's also great business. J.T. O'Donnell (36:55.318) Right. But I'll tell you, did a last Friday, I did a TikTok because somebody posted and he said, I'm a college grad. My parents don't understand how bad the market is. They don't understand. Would you do a video on it? I was like, sure. So I put up PSA parents, listen up. All of sudden, 300,000 people viewed it in two days. it's just kids are sending it to their parents. And you should see the comments of like what the parents tell them to do. Well, have you walked in the front door yet? And like, you know, all that great old school advice is just so cringy. Chad (37:20.497) store. J.T. O'Donnell (37:22.799) And it just shows you how messed up it is, that piece of it. don't Joel Cheesman (37:27.046) I love how JT has a way of humbling us on this show. Like we think we're so cool and she comes on with 300,000 people. Chad (37:34.058) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (37:35.054) Well, maybe you should do a few more TikToks, boys. I've only mentioned it a zillion times to you. You'll be stars. You'll be stars. Not true. Not true. Joel Cheesman (37:39.44) We have a face for radio, JT, haven't we told you that? Well, the good news is I guess LinkedIn doesn't have to worry about BumbleBiz taking over the LinkedIn business anytime soon. Don't forget in our space, like CB Monster, 390 people laid off, Dice has cut a fourth of its workforce, LinkedIn laid off almost 300 people recently. Chad (37:39.488) Do TikToks all the time. Chad (37:57.6) Mm. Joel Cheesman (38:01.508) that impacts our industry as well. It's not just big companies that you're looking at. And, and if I could be selfish for a little bit, and I'll, I'll loop this into a bigger point. Every time these layoffs happen in our industry, I freak out cause I go, these are people who listen to our show. What's going to happen to these people? Are they going to leave the industry and never like listen to us again? I always think like, God, we got to run this hamster wheel, like more listeners and they leave because they get fired from the industry. So I worry about that, but I'm going to loop this around with. with, if you're a SaaS business and you are focused on seats for your revenue, companies are having a lot fewer seats these days. And if you're like LinkedIn, hey, we charge per seat, you might want to rethink your business model because seats are getting fewer and fewer. And so is your revenue if you have a model that is for that. So I expect to see, we'll see a lot of companies in our space that charge per seat. Chad (38:44.127) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:57.316) rethink how they do, do their product, get a lot more serious about brand and, building trust and retention with their clients. Because there are fewer, fewer people at these companies and you still need to make money and you're making less because you're on a seat model that is going to impact a lot of businesses in our space, not just podcasts that are looking to talk to people in our space. Fortunately for us, we have dad jokes, which keep people coming back again and again. All right, guys. Chad (39:26.24) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (39:27.406) What's the difference between a drug dealer and a hooker? The difference between a drug dealer and a hooker. Chad (39:37.024) You got me. Joel Cheesman (39:37.762) A hooker can wash or crack and sell it over and over. Chad (39:43.72) horrible. Joel Cheesman (39:44.651) See you in England everybody. We out. Chad (39:46.273) That's fucking horrible. J.T. O'Donnell (39:46.978) We out!

Strap in as Chad & Cheese welcome back the one and only Indeed Whisperer  Jim Durbin for a deep dive into Indeed’s latest chaos-bomb: the quiet nuking of single-source XML feeds from agencies. That’s right — if you’re not plugged in via an ATS, you’re out. And if your ATS data sucks (spoiler alert: it does), good luck. 💥 Major topics include: 🤖 Why Indeed’s communication strategy feels like “chaos on purpose” 🧼 The death of data hygiene and what it means for job posting quality 💸 “Healthy Budgets” that seem more like unhealthy cash grabs 🔌 Agencies getting cut off at the knees — and not even knowing why 🕵️ Disposition data obsession: helpful tool or just another way to charge more? 🔮 Is this all part of Indeed’s final boss move to control the funnel? It’s part whodunnit, part job board therapy session, and all-out war over who owns your job data. 🎧 Listen now before your XML feed gets ghosted. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:30.364) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, riding shotgun is Chad Sowash. And please welcome with us, Jim Durbin, the self-proclaimed Indeed Whisperer and VP of Recruitment Marketing at responsible.io. Jim, welcome again to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:42.751) Jim Derbin. Jim Durbin (00:50.431) Pleasure to be here Chad (00:52.536) lies already already is the beef tallow on the face Joel Cheesman (00:53.084) He looks so excited. Yeah, he looks so excited to be here. Jim Durbin (00:57.674) that's beef tallow on the face. That's it. That's just moisturizer. Joel Cheesman (01:02.62) All right, Jim, some of our some of our listeners actually won't know you, believe it or not. Give them give them the elevator pitch on you. What did I miss in the intro? Give us a little bit about you and what you do. Chad (01:06.616) Huh? That's crazy. Jim Durbin (01:13.518) Sure, I'm a consultant for TA, for talent acquisition. I've ran the gamut of staffing, recruiting, corporate, RPO, headhunting. In the last couple years, I've been focusing on recruitment advertising internally and with RPOs. And then decided, what we need to do maybe is focus on how we change our processes in tech for the internal stack. So I tend to work with TA departments on how to better work with their vendors. And that's the whole point, is to build that next generation of leaders by showing them data, finance, AI, tech, and how to get... More candidates when you need it, less candidates when they're too much and I'll get them cheaper. So it's kind of an interaction piece where I train young folks. Joel Cheesman (01:48.604) In short, Jim is a wild man at parties, everybody. He loves talking and all that stuff. Chad (01:57.272) So being the Indeed Whisperer, you have Indeed News. So if you could go ahead and kind of consolidate and we'll run through some of what is happening at Indeed so our listeners know what the fuck is going on. Healthy budget requirements, all the fun stuff. So let's chunk it out. Let's chunk it out. Joel Cheesman (02:14.364) Feel free to dumb it down, Jim. Feel free to like lower the, yeah. Like I'm a sixth grader. Jim Durbin (02:17.912) Well, it's probably best to go upstream real quick and think about the story you broke last year where Himes came out and they talked about the total addressable market and how they're going to start to move further up the funnel. They've been paying for years. You just pay for clicks. Now you're paying for applications. And the idea was eventually to start paying for hires and healthcare and technology. So everything has to be seen through that lens because there have been a number of moves they've made. And in trademark indeed fashion, they're not communicating them well, which is why I got a phone call and then another phone call and my phone was blowing up. from about last week and continues to do it today. What's going on? And the big news coming out of them is that single source feeds coming out, basically XML feeds from agencies are no longer going to be accepted. So the official announcement, the email announcement says no more single source feeds. And I already know one person that they've been rejected. What that means is all the data's gotta come out of your ATS. So it only counts, there's always a couple caveats, it only counts if you have Chad (02:52.703) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (03:18.254) integrated with an ATS. But that's like over 350 of them now at this point. So pretty much every major company has an ATS that's been integrated with Indeed. So if you're using an agency now, this is quite a big chunk of their work. The reason you even have an agency is because the job data you have, all your job postings put together by recruiters over the years, Chad (03:24.216) Mm. Jim Durbin (03:44.012) There's lots of errors in it. It's user generated information. So it's not clean. It's not a good source for advertising. And every time you try to look at that data, you're just kind of horrified. So the agency takes it, cleans it up, sends it in this pretty little thing called an XML feed and chooses which jobs are sponsored, how they're supposed to look. It's a way of making sure that the data that gets to Indeed is better. And they're cutting that off. So I've talked to a lot of agency heads. They had calls with each of them. Chad (04:13.944) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (04:14.232) They're a little confused as to why, but of course it's always hard to figure out the perceptions. And they're all seem to be, what's scary is they're all have a different take on it. Some are like, we already have a programming fixed for it, which I don't see how that's possible because you can't clean up user generated information. You can't fix your recruiters unless you fix the process, which means the only people I've ever seen do it are RPOs that you have teams of admins whose whole job is to make that data clean for reporting. Chad (04:19.224) course. Chad (04:30.71) in the ATS. Yes. Jim Durbin (04:42.87) Almost no TA department has that kind of resource and they're not going to go back and clean things up. I mean, we have folks that'll open up a job and leave it for three years because it's an evergreen. The only way to get that advertised without spending a massive amount of money is to put it into an XML and have it new. So I'm not sure it'd be terrifying if Indeed doesn't understand this, but we're looking at changing the way that we do processes internally because the agencies won't have that access, but no one's told the clients. So it looks like it's not gonna be a happy thing. And it really is an asteroid changing impact. The agencies are restricted from doing more and more, and now they don't have the data. They're gonna have to change their business models. If any of this is remotely true, because now you had some people say, it's just new ones. No, it's just some minor fee difference. It's over an override. This goes right to the heart of what I do with every client. I clean up the job descriptions, the title, the databases, the ATS. Chad (05:21.282) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (05:40.684) I work with the vendors to make that clean. That's not an easy job to do. And I don't see how it's even going to work without having really, really terrible data starting to come out of these ATSs. Chad (05:40.792) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:52.92) Well, indeed, yeah. Indeed, they're really bad about communication. Now, is that on purpose? Because it feels like they're trying to create chaos, and it's just moving from chaos to chaos, right? So this healthy budget bullshit, now they're moving directly into this, and they really suck at clarification around what is happening. Joel Cheesman (05:53.18) So you're optimistic about what's going to happen, it sounds like, Jim. Jim Durbin (05:56.672) I'm gonna make a lot of money, so I guess that's happy. mean... Jim Durbin (06:06.594) Right. Chad (06:18.944) Right. And really the devil's in the details, especially things like this, especially when you're trying to, you've got to, you've got an API to the, to the applicant tracking system. Obviously, if you've ever worked with applicant tracking system before, you know, the maintenance cycles and those types of things, they fucking suck. It's, hard. Right. And it's not that it's an easy system to actually manage. So do you think this, this, this narrative control and this, controlled chaos is really just a part of the process for them? Jim Durbin (06:47.342) I really don't think so. I mean, I've heard some people talk through that. I think the issue is this, it's a big company with a lot of different competing issues. When we talk about recruiting, someone will yell at you because you talk about something you did in executive headhunting and that's not how they do it in high volume. I think there's a lot of that. If you go talk to a CSM, I've been fortunate enough with enough clients, I've sat in front of their enterprise CSMs, their Arpreo CSMs, their agency ones. It's not just talking to agencies and clients. Chad (06:51.832) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (07:15.182) you're going to hear different things from inside, indeed. The funniest thing about this, I think, was that the agency reps themselves didn't know. So this came from up high. Hey, we're going to make that change. So they don't communicate to each other. And in the past, I've been OK with it because it's kind of like the way Google's not going to tell you exactly how to rank number one on the page, because people like Joel and I used to take advantage of that. That's how we made our money. So they can't tell you everything. So the CSMs, the customer success managers, Chad (07:35.256) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (07:43.534) are stuck telling you what another client did or what bits of information they got from trust and safety or from product or, so they're not given all the information because they don't want to spread it all because then we'd game it and we'd try to figure that information out. This feels different though. If you talk to different people and indeed we had some joker jump on one of our pages and begin to try to insult us that we didn't understand how stuff was going. And I was like, dude, you're a sales guy. It's been there 10 months. I... I wasn't sure if I corrected him or just hushed him to do so, but then that disappeared. It's scary when they don't know. I think that's the hardest part is where do you go to to find out this information? If what I'm saying is true, it's remotely true. Every, every TA leader who's going to be sending stuff, everyone, this impacts and who knows, maybe it's 20 % of the agencies, maybe it's 60. They're all going to have to change the way they post jobs. That is not easy to do. I've lost quite a few clients when I say you have to, you're losing. 15 grand a month because you refuse to make this change. And they don't want to make that change because internally then they have to ride shotgun on it. So do they even understand how we do business? Because it reminds me of a couple years ago when they ran that CPA test. And what did they do? They would tell you, you have to hire people. Or you have 72 hours to respond or you're going to get charged. And small businesses lost their mind about that. And the response from Indeed at the time from multiple account managers You're just going to have to hire somebody to do that. That's a breathtaking amount of arrogance. And it feels like that's too. It's like, they understand? But this isn't something you can easily roll back. Some of these agencies that just had to trash some programming they've done, it's cost them real dollars already. So it's, it's not minor. If someone says, I just lost 30 K that can't be applied to this, or we're to have to make these changes. So this is, this is bigger than they've let on. Joel Cheesman (09:30.97) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (09:35.394) And they haven't even communicated to every agency. They've only talked to the programmatic agencies, which is why my fund was blowing up. They're like, did you hear about this? Did you follow up? I mean, it definitely, I think this is bigger news. You can't get rid of the thing that cleans up your data and then go, wait, what happened? Joel Cheesman (09:47.824) Which- Joel Cheesman (09:52.39) I want to go back, go back to the Y a little bit. And by the way, Jim and I had a lot more SEO money before our ex-wives went loco, but that's a different show altogether. You touched on why, but you, you and I, we've all three of us have been in this industry for a long time. What, why is indeed really doing this? Is it to stick it to programatics? Is it a LinkedIn, a defense mechanism like Jim Durbin (09:59.917) you Joel Cheesman (10:18.5) Really, do you think it is, if you're reading between the lines, why is Indeed really doing this? Jim Durbin (10:24.28) So it's gonna be to do that without being tactical. I try not to guess motives since I'm not in the room and it's not like Heims or Decker were calling me and saying, hey, this is why I'm doing it. But I do know this, quality has become a real issue. What did they tell us when you broke that story last year? You're get better quality candidates, they're gonna cost more. And that's actually happened. In fact, when you start looking at what happens, the new algorithm, they have smoothed it all down, they've added smart sourcing, which now is attached to the brain. So you can actually figure out the algorithm by just looking at the smart sourcing panel. You can see how it works. And once they tell you how it works and you have a good sense of how it's going to fit in. So they are selecting for good candidates. So if you have a good job description and you have a good resume that's accurate, it does a pretty good job of matching until it doesn't. And this is something I just did it again yesterday. Once they can no longer give you your top matches, which is their behavior, their IPs, what you've clicked on, other information. It reverts back to the simple search, which is a text search of the title. So if you're looking for CNAs and you're a certified medical assistant, which is not a CNA, but the word certified's in it, you're gonna pop up with one of these jobs and they're gonna invite you to apply for it. If you're looking for texts of some kind and you write technician or technologists or just the word tech, you'll get EMT texts and firefighter texts. Not at first, but once the algorithm basically gets its stutters and it breaks, Chad (11:25.4) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (11:49.966) So you're getting these great people, but the second they try to expand it, then you're getting it sometimes 40, 50 % just garbage wrecks coming out of it. And this is something we knew earlier in the year. That's a big deal. That means that they are either running out of supply or the algorithm has been so smooth. And the reason they're mad at programmatic is programmatic keeps changing what they're doing. Every CSM will say, do this, post your jobs, leave them 30 days, and then just give us 20 % more every time we ask for it. That's their basic pitch. And the problem is, is programmatic kind of gets around that. I mean, it's the whole point of programmatic is to smooth it, decide which jobs go up and down. So you're not getting waste. The real question is, is this model mature now? Like the old joke in marketing, Joel, you know, this one is 50 % of my budget's wasted. I just don't know which 50%. I think we might've reached a point where indeed can't grow. have too many, they have too many candidates that are sitting out there. They've made it too easy with easy apply. Chad (12:28.386) Yeah. Yeah. Jim Durbin (12:49.678) How do they actually begin to add to that when they're sending out emails saying, hey, take this other job? Or if I quit my job, I can get another one instantly. So they've reached the law of large numbers. I don't think they can grow. And I think this is a big aspect of that. How do I get more money? Because we're not going to be able to grow our size in the industry. Chad (13:08.024) Well, first off, mean, they're saying that better quality costs more. Totally get that. Makes sense, right? I don't want a thousand candidates that are for shit, right? And I have to weed through them, number one. So that makes sense. I get it. This doesn't make sense because you're gonna get worse data to be able to match upon, right? Not to mention, let's dig it a little bit further into that. Disposition data, going down funnel. It's not their fucking job. Fixing the top of the funnel is their job. Plus, it's none of their goddamn business. who your company is pushing into interview stages, knocking out and hiring. If indeed did their damn job and matched candidates up at the actual job requirements and provided companies with the market data around the amount of talent actually available within their ecosystem, which matches said requirements, that would be a great service that companies would pay more for, but they don't give a fuck about what the company needs or actually fixing the real problem. That's the thing that drives me crazy the most. This is not the problem. You don't need disposition data. You don't need those signals. What you need to know is you have to have better data, which is what the agencies were trying to give you. And now you've just ripped that away from them to be able to make a match on the top of the funnel. Stay out of my systems. That's the thing that gets me. I don't get it. Jim Durbin (14:30.779) Well, I think the disposition data why they're so interested in it If you look back to the way marketing used to work they went from search and SEO and SEM to conversion companies they were forced to move down the Pipeline because no one cares about clicks and impressions anymore nor should they ever of the dissolved fake marketing stuff how for us it's when somebody starts Yeah, because because you're buying you're buying a product you're buying a service a person is not like that it goes much further than that so Chad (14:47.756) That's different between qualified, right? That's different between like a. Yeah. Jim Durbin (14:58.606) They're not gonna be able to gather that data. What they're really looking for, I think, is what disposition data is. And that's schedule, interview, did someone get hired, how far along they went. That's pretty valuable to figure out what kind of people that you're picking, but are you gonna give that to a vendor? I think that is the answer for those. The scary thing is they're gonna come back and they're gonna use it, so they want your data so they can justify charging more. That's it, that's the whole game. Hey, you did this hire, now it's $800. That's how we justify it. And here's how you justify it up the chain. And I get the reasoning behind it, but they're still missing that it's a big ecosystem and what it takes. I don't know what company out there that has all of their disposition. I mean, sometimes it's all in the hands of the hiring manager. Sometimes you'll go in and you'll have recruiters with negative five days contact to hire because they went in after the fact when they were busy and put that information in. You can't trust your disposition data because no recruiter got hired or promoted and even praised for having the cleanest database. Chad (15:41.208) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (15:57.708) It's just not something that we do. It's the whole point you have to clean it up. So I do think that's a bit of a fool's errand. If they actually got that data, it's going to give you false positives. Like the company that was telling me that one out of every four candidates from LinkedIn was hired. I was like, that's not possible. And he showed me in his ATS. I'm like, careful with that. Careful, because he had some recruiter cherry picking what was going on. entering, so one out of four of candidates submitted is, but that's what the report said. Chad (16:12.918) No. Chad (16:20.908) It was probably a drop down. It was a drop down. Joel Cheesman (16:22.748) And LinkedIn was the first one. Chad (16:27.448) Yes, yes. Jim Durbin (16:28.366) Oh, terrifying for those kinds of things, yeah. But it's not just that, it's also the $25 minimum one that came out. they announced that like a year, two years ago, the 20, you need $25 minimum for every job, which makes sense. It really affects small businesses more than the large ones. But they just recently came out. And I know this is happening because I've had accounts that are flagged for it, that if you add jobs, Chad (16:31.2) Yeah, but okay, so. Chad (16:36.578) Yes. Healthy budget. Jim Durbin (16:54.126) And this is where the confusion gets. Let's say you have 100 jobs and you're spending $10,000. 15 of those during the course of the month are closed and you want to add 15 more. They're telling you you have to add to that budget, to that $10,000 budget. Where before it was, here's my budget for the month. I can move as many jobs in or out of that, like it's described as a parking space, or parking lot. I can move cars in and out of it. So I've talked to agencies that said that's still operative. That didn't make any sense. why would they have a new announcement if that's been around for two years? So what it's really leading to is people having to cut their budgets in half. And so if you have a $50,000 budget, you start with 25, and as you add jobs over the course of the month, you add to the budget, that's gonna cause a massive amount of spending, and that's the exact problem now. All that money you had in the beginning is gonna go to your old jobs, which means they're gonna be more expensive, they're gonna pop up, they're gonna send them to worse people. If that's really the case, that's probably, it's just shocking that this isn't communicated and they haven't really told you. All they're telling you now is you're getting flagged for it. You have too many jobs they're adding without your budget. So, it's just, it's just fascinating. You can't get answers about any of these things, but both of those are pretty huge for us who actually do the work. Joel Cheesman (18:08.326) Jim, is historically speaking, and I hate being an old guy always doing this, but this sounds really familiar with like the job board drama. So back in the day, job boards used to like want to plug in redirects on indeed. like the traffic would get redirected to them. So they look like the source for the applicant instead of indeed. And indeed had to like play whack a mole. Chad (18:20.927) yeah. Joel Cheesman (18:33.86) And eventually like got so sick of the job boards that they started like algorithmically destroying them. And then the stories is this, is this a similar, is it, does this rhyme with history or is this a totally different beast altogether? It feels like whack-a-mole like indeed is like the programmatic providers are the new job boards and indeed is sick of their shit. And they're like, okay, finally we'll just go to the ATS and that's the final solution. No. Jim Durbin (18:47.19) I think without guessing. Jim Durbin (18:58.894) Uh, it would not surprise me. mean, I can't, I can't predict or say it without having someone tell me, but man, that would not surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that's the case because programmatic comes in and it makes all the adjustments. They want you to just leave your jobs there. They want you to hand you the money, hand you the jobs that go away and you can get what you get. Programmatic literally goes and interferes with it. A lot of the stuff that I did, the way I posted jobs, I mean, I figured out how to change job descriptions to get higher quality. Joel Cheesman (19:01.008) Okay. don't be so nice, Jim. Jim Durbin (19:28.654) But I run that through test. If they're not allowing you to do that and you're going to edit it to the job API instead of the XML, a lot of that ability to test things goes away. And I think that ultimately comes down to is it's, stuttering their algorithm. And, I mean, if you think about all those companies putting in, if they can control it, that's exactly what they're doing is they're controlling their bids. They're controlling how their jobs go up and down. They're stopping a lot of waste. Why get 300 candidates for one job when it should be distributed? Well, then you put caps on it. Joel Cheesman (19:41.862) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (19:57.148) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (19:58.456) That's very difficult to do manually if you have hundreds of jobs and you have to communicate with the managers. That's the whole point of using a programmatic solution, but that makes it harder for Indeed to track the data. And I think that's what a lot of this is about, is cutting off those avenues. The same way LinkedIn used to, you know, you go to SourceCon and someone from LinkedIn be sitting in the back and whatever tips that you got that day, stop working two or three days later. It kind of feels like that. You know, quit telling people what we're doing. Joel Cheesman (20:12.859) Yeah. Chad (20:21.804) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (20:22.298) Yeah. And if, his let's go back to history, Jim, before when SEO dropped, none of the ATS has understood like readable URLs and title tag. Like they didn't know any of that shit. And consultants had a really nice time for four or five years of like creating a landing pages that were SEO friendly, like the jobs to webs and those services. Jim Durbin (20:28.483) Ha Joel Cheesman (20:51.556) Is this similar? Are the ATS is just eventually going to say like, we have to have our data cleaned up. We have to like appeal to indeed. And three or four years from now, all the ATS is just do it right. And we're not even having this conversation. Jim Durbin (21:05.612) I don't think there's enough money to fix that. Look at this way. Who do you? No, not at all. What are the favorite ATSs that are out there? The brand new ones. Greenhouse and Lever were the darlings. Joel Cheesman (21:09.724) You don't see ATS as saying, we are an ATS that is friendly to indeeds. Really? Chad (21:15.618) They don't know. They don't give a shit about that. know they they've said that for years. They've said that for years. They've said it for years. Joel Cheesman (21:17.574) They will if their customers say it means something to them. Yes, they will. Well, they SEO. They put little like buttons on their jobs. Like they do respond to customers saying they want shit. And if their customers say, look, Indeed wants this. You guys need to provide that. I think they will. But if customers don't get it and don't do that, then they won't. Chad (21:36.12) That's. Jim Durbin (21:36.384) I think that you should go look at some of the integrations that have been done. All integrations are not equal just because you're integrated. It's not possible though. It's not, they're not built right. So greenhouse and lever were the two favorite ATS is a couple of years ago. Now everybody's onto Ashby. It's real simple. The most recent code base tends to be better because it's built for the modern web. What do do when you have these old places that are out there? They can't change because they go in and they customize and they customize and they're customized. Then they have tactical debt. Chad (21:55.778) Easiest. Jim Durbin (22:05.92) It's not possible to fix unless you tear it out and start over, which is what Oracle tried to do. They went from Taleo over to the Oracle infrastructure. Those are nightmare implementations because there's so much built. We've automated things. Sometimes you just tear it down and start it over. It's very hard to go back when you don't even have the engineers anymore. mean, and there's so many vestigial tales in those ATSs. The quality of the data really is astoundingly bad. Because of course no one's minded the store for years. We've let agencies take over for us. Or we just didn't think about it. I mean, how many times have you, I have 300 jobs. God, I have 700. I just couldn't see them. Well, the system sees them and now I've got to sort through those 700 to pick the 300 I want. and the title's wrong on this one. And this one has the percent sign in it. and this one lacks salary data. And my God, I posted it in New York city. I've got 300 jobs in New York city without salary data. Now I'm getting fined. I this is serious stuff. This is why this needs to be addressed. And they've just got to do a better job of explaining it. Here's one for you. Single source. So based on the letter, because they didn't discuss this, no one knows this yet, the ATS data, if you're integrated with the ATS, you can't have a single source data, a single source feed. Does that count Phenom, Paradox, Chatter? Those all have integrations. Joel Cheesman (23:05.148) Okay, different beast. Chad (23:26.754) Yeah? Jim Durbin (23:29.038) Not all of them are turned on. Maybe it's just the indeed applied, but Phenom covers everything up. That's one of the problems is the source data comes from Phenom because they're scheduling interviews, they're talking to people. That's a big question. Nobody knows that yet. Or maybe hopefully they've gotten some clarity, but I mean, if they go by the letter of the law, those are all there. By what they said, that's not counting. Joel Cheesman (23:31.484) They're all now ATSs. Chad (23:50.975) Yes, well, mean, in. Joel Cheesman (23:57.724) Ultimately indeed we'll be able to say you're an ATS and you're not. They're going to be judge and jury on this, right? Jim Durbin (23:57.9) or is it going to be selective? Chad (24:03.19) It'll be source of, and again, you go back to a lot of these companies have more cosmetic layers over top of the applicant tracking system because they're the cosmetic piece of the applicant tracking system just as ugly as shit, right? So they've got cosmetic layers, right? And those cosmetic layers fix in some cases those problems where the agencies come in or the RPOs come in and they actually clean all that stuff up. But it's not happening at Jim Durbin (24:03.81) But yeah. Chad (24:32.756) at the applicant tracking system. It's going to be interesting to see who they take the actual feed from, right? And who they actually get the integrations from. Jim Durbin (24:40.856) That's the question. Jim Durbin (24:44.846) And they're not going to cut all the feeds off overnight. That'd be insane. Everybody would die if that happened. It's too much money coming in for Indeed. But they were clear. They were shifting that letter. New or maintain. You can't create new or maintain. So is this the sunset provision that occurred, like they did with the CPC, where you could leave your campaigns up for a few months, but you couldn't create new ones? Is this three months all those feeds will be gone or will be selective as they go through? Chad (24:48.662) now. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (24:57.42) Yeah. Jim Durbin (25:12.342) Again, we're not sure because they just said further updates for your existing customers. I mean. Chad (25:18.21) So back to the agency side of the house, right? So I've talked to a lot of agencies back and forth messaging and actually had some calls and a lot of them were just soft-shoeing around it because they weren't really sure what the hell was going on, right? And you can't trust indeed when they tell you what's going on. But at the end of the day, let me see here, I've got a nice little text, is that this move is about centralizing control. reducing agency influence and extracting more value from employers by getting closer to the source of job data. That was from directly from an agency executive. To me, again, getting directly to the source of job data. This is this is over engineering a problem. They want all of those signals. They don't need all of those signals. There's no reason for them to have all those signals. They need to do their job up front at the top of the funnel. They're not doing their job at the top of the funnel. Why? That's the big question. That's what they're trying to get to this disposition data. They're not doing their job. Jim Durbin (26:18.402) I mean they are. Joel Cheesman (26:21.66) I think it goes back to Jim saying they can't grow anymore. They've hit a ceiling. Jim Durbin (26:21.752) I mean, they're getting better quality candidates. yeah, they're just... Chad (26:25.91) They can grow. Their models, if they move to, like you said before, they said, more quality is gonna do what? It's gonna cost more, right? Which means they will be able to drive more revenue, right? It's gonna cost more, you're gonna drive more revenue. Which means I can give you less candidates that are more qualified and it's gonna cost you more. Makes sense, makes sense. Plus, I'm not feeding your system with a bunch of individuals who are qualified that you haven't hired. And we just talked to, Megan over at Marriott and they have 10 million people in their database and they're going there first before they go to Indeed. Right? So what Indeed is actually looking at doing right now, which is the stupidest fucking business model I think I've heard is we're just going to pour all these people in and then we're going to see who you hire. Well, the next time I go into the process, I don't need to send jobs to you because you just sent me a shit ton of candidates. This, none of this makes sense to me. You don't need the disposition data. You're not doing your job at the top of the funnel. And you want to send me a shit ton of candidates that literally UPS hired 35,000 of the 150,000 out of their database that they didn't have to go spend money on indeed. This, none of it makes sense, man. Yes. Jim Durbin (27:41.806) Well, that's certainly what we should be doing. Again, TA has got its own problems with this. We've let them put us in this situation. We refuse to change what we're doing. So, but it's same. We're also burnt out. They're laying us off. They're talking about getting AI and aspects, and we're not rewarded for those. And this is all brand new. Most TA leaders don't come from a data tech finance background. Why would they? They know how to manage recruiters and put people to work. So a lot of this is new. You start talking XMLs, APIs, web hooks. Chad (27:49.208) Yeah. Jim Durbin (28:11.234) They don't know what it means necessarily. And a lot of their HRS teams don't either. Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, yeah. Apparently, XML is not good enough. Chad (28:12.664) We've been talking about it for 20 years. We've been talking about APIs for 20 years, Jim. Joel Cheesman (28:18.662) We could be talking about it for 20 more. All of us might not be around in 20 years, but I hope none of us are around in 20 years. Jim. Chad (28:20.566) Yeah, we could. Could be API plus. sorry. Jim Durbin (28:28.43) And 2000, remember this guy coming to with this great idea for HR XML was going to revolutionize the ways what we're doing was 2000 when he was like, he was a big thing. were taking money and building HR XML to standardize. Didn't go anywhere, but XML took over everything. mean, that was everyone use it. It's real simple. It's just, it's just clean. Yeah. It's a, then they got rid of readers. Chad (28:34.178) Yes. Yes. Chad (28:45.688) I think Sherm got behind that, which is probably why it didn't go anywhere. Joel Cheesman (28:52.806) Jim, me your breakdown of the winners and losers in this, and most importantly is indeed ultimately gonna be a winner or loser in this deal. Jim Durbin (29:02.126) I think that this is going to be a slow rollback. think I I Can't imagine them actually cutting everybody else off and if they really try to go for that ATS data They're gonna have a lot of angry clients Because it it just doesn't work flat out does I wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't have access all that some of the programatics They think that there's a lot of native new automation for this. I'm not sure I think this goes back to changing the way we post jobs Chad (29:31.448) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (29:31.522) Which isn't the worst thing in the world for us to do is just galling for Indeed today. You have to do it. You take this expense because we're just to keep shoving candidates at you. If their quality was 90%, if there was someone like Vivian, like Vivian does travel nurses and allied, they tend to be really high quality, but they also tend to be pretty, they tell you what they're going to allow and what they're not going to allow because they, went from market to market and they're careful not to give you people who are on good fits. Chad (29:57.656) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (29:58.136) There's no way, the only way they could grow is just more volume. So I think what's really gonna happen is the small and medium players are gonna pick up people who can actually prove that they have quality, which is not a lot of the boards that are out there, but the assessment companies that are coming along, there's a bunch of new tools for that that are judging intent. So you apply for a job and it starts asking you questions. And because of the way that you move forward, you're like, I actually care about this job versus if it's fully automated, you end up ghosting everybody. So the problem is where do those sit? Does that sit in front of the agency? Does that fit in front of the ATS? And if you're paying for 60 % of the slop, people who just clicked and have no clue who you are, that cost begins to add up after a while. So I think people who are focused on quality are going to do really well. think recruitment marketing consultants are going to make a little extra money. And honestly, they're going to be start paying because we don't pay consulting dollars. That's the dirty thing of the agencies is that they do so much for free because of the money they're getting from Indeed. So you don't pay for vendor hours. You don't pay for them cleaning up your data. You don't pay for the CSM sitting up at night putting together giant list of Excel of all the jobs. That's hard to do, guys. No one's paying for that right now because so much money is coming on the other side. What will be funny is if Indeed captures a bunch of people and they end up coming back into the fold, you may end up with a two-tier thing here where you have one budget for Indeed and your agencies cover everything but Indeed. Chad (31:06.882) Baked into the cost, yeah. Yeah. it's heavy lifting. Joel Cheesman (31:14.172) they will going forward. Jim Durbin (31:25.954) which will then push everybody else to innovate because you can't have one source of hire. But I think it's going to be a muddled mix. I don't think they're going to be clear winners. Some small companies are to do great. I think the agencies are going to start to be restricted and not all of them are going to make it. I've heard that. If what they're saying is true about the single source and they really do cut them off in three months, what does that do to your reporting? Chad (31:42.712) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (31:52.554) What's the what's the even point of having an agency if they can't clean it up can't report and they can only edit something at the API? Like if that if that's the case, that's a dagger through a heart if they really go that far That's gonna be a big deal. A lot of the agencies aren't gonna be able to make it from there I don't think that's the case Because that'd be there's too much money flowing to indeed from the agencies But again, we're gonna have to learn more just as an industry we're gonna have to start fighting for budget be clear Chad (31:59.17) Yeah? Chad (32:08.696) Well, not on day one. Jim Durbin (32:21.696) Look for alternatives, focus in on our own databases. Yeah. Maybe some of these AI sourcing tools will take some of the pressure off. Chad (32:25.944) Yeah, but the behaviors are already there. The behavior is already there. I remember back in the day of the Monster Hay Day, they bought Monster and Career Builder. Why? Because of the name. That was it. That was because of the behavior. That was what it was. And it feels like, indeed, slowly starting to try to, again, as my agency contact said, trying to knock them down wrong so that they don't have as much control and they're not as close to the customer anymore. Joel Cheesman (32:26.8) That sounds like a lot of work, Jim. Chad (32:54.424) And the customer is just like, yeah, just go ahead and throw it into Indeed. That's how we do business. That's how they did business back in the Monster days. This does not feel different. Jim Durbin (33:01.614) Yeah, this, this has the potential to interrupt how we do business. And when I say we, mean, internal, not consultants, not agencies. This is the way that it's going to impact. TA in a way that they can't just ignore. And I think there's enough anger out there. I mean, we've seen enough people spit when they say the name indeed. That's not a good sign, but as you pointed out, Hey, you made the bed. If you're not willing to make changes, you don't get a cry. If indeed does something for their own business. So it's not even, they're not, they're not some evil empire with. Chad (33:05.805) Yeah. Jim Durbin (33:31.79) 15 steps ahead planning all this 5d chess nonsense, but it, but this, is part of a long-term, but if this fits in exactly with what they told us that they were going to do, which is try to become for the only way for them to grow is to basically take over as much of the data as they can control it then come back to you and say, you got to spend more. mean, that's, that's, you can't complain if you're not doing anything about it. Joel Cheesman (33:33.542) Sure they are. Sure they are. Totally evil. Chad (33:35.35) Maybe not 15 steps ahead, but they are the evil empire, yeah. Jim Durbin (34:00.504) But they're just so big in the market. They really are 90 % for a lot of companies. A lot of companies, so. Joel Cheesman (34:03.74) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:07.106) So we've heard from many individuals that they don't think that the competitor that's out there for Indeed are job boards or programmatic players. They feel like it's more like the paradox, the gem, the fountain. mean, all of those systems that allow you to finally dig in and start matching and engaging the individuals that you've already bought because Joel Cheesman (34:24.38) conversational AI. Chad (34:35.914) Most of these companies are starting to realize they've bought the same fucking candidate six or seven times over. Right. And now it's like, wait a minute, time out. We're just going to do the same thing over and over. We don't want to do that. We are. We already have a limited budget as it is. We need to start using the candidates that we've already we've already paid for. And some of them, again, like Marriott, over 10 million in their database. I mean, you're going to see enterprise companies start moving that way, which means there's going to be less money for indeed. I don't think this move for indeed is going to get them what they think it's going to get. Jim Durbin (35:10.796) It's the same thing I think is what happened with LinkedIn when they charged charging three year contracts and they came to everybody at one point said, Hey, by the way, you have 700,000 more. We've been misclassifying how you used recruiter. And we're like, no, we don't. We're just not going to do it anymore. So. Not at all. You've got to go in and I think what happens is the good news is everyone's going to look at their budget. But as we know, it's waste. Why wouldn't you just turn your budget off for the last four days of the month? If it just ends up getting crying. If you're actually looking at the quality day in and day out, once you start looking at it, like I do for every client, it's very easy to cut budget. The problem is nobody wanted to do that because they didn't have other places to put that money. And there's so much pressure. Don't add something new. So if you're not careful and they cut that budget, you don't get it back. Chad (35:50.381) Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin (35:56.952) So the question is, if we can get better fungible budgeting, we're going to start taking it from somewhere. And I guarantee you there's waste in every Indeed advertising budget. Once you're aware of that, then you start finding solutions. So it'll take a little courage on our side. think overall, I think it's going to end up dropping the revenues overall. All of these little steps together. Joel Cheesman (36:18.012) indeed the gift that keeps on giving everybody and Jim Durbin, thanks for coming back on the Chad and cheese podcast for those listeners that want to know more about you. Where should they go? Chad (36:24.568) the clown car. Jim Durbin (36:34.723) respondable.io or you can go to LinkedIn you'll find me on there just search the Indeed Whisperer it'll take you where it's probably the easiest Chad (36:43.192) If you need help with this problem, I don't know, maybe reach out to Jim. Joel Cheesman (36:47.484) Call the whisperer. How many times is this on? How many times is this for you on the show, Jim? Two, three? I know it's two at least. Jim Durbin (36:48.142) When you're in trouble, look for a man in a hat. Jim Durbin (36:54.402) This is the third time I think I've been on because we did. Yeah, it's the third time always about indeed. I guess I don't have anything else interesting to talk about. Chad (37:02.04) That's what happens when you are the indeed whisperer. mean. Joel Cheesman (37:02.908) We wish we knew how to quit you, Jim. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Jim Durbin (37:07.566) you Chad (37:08.024) We out!

The Chad & Cheese crew teams up with JT O’Donnell to unpack a week of HR tech chaos and eyebrow-raising headlines: 💥 CareerBuilder + Monster go bankrupt  — $25M owed, JobGet grabs the scraps 🧾 Vendors screwed  — Google, Talroo, Appcast, and more left holding the bag 📉 Dice layoffs  — Revenue tanks, execs cut staff while Wall Street cheers 🤖 Automation hits hard  — Robots now unload trucks better than humans 🚗 Tesla's $4.20 robo-taxis  — Cool tech, glitchy rides, questionable weed vibes 🍔 In-N-Out sues a YouTuber  — Fake employees, real lawsuits 🔥 OnlyFans stats drop  — West Virginia wins, Mississippi loses (again) 📱 Job board evolution?  — JT explains why UX finally matters PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.478) I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Midnight Hammer Cheesman. Chad (00:44.716) This is Chad, Gold Rush, Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:47.573) and I'm JT Fish and Chips O'Donnell. Joel Cheesman (00:50.894) And on this episode, job getting jiggy with it, Dice Pink slipping it, and bots unpacking it. Let's do this. Chad (01:03.074) So are we ready for some Europe time kids? I'm already pumped, I'm already prepped. I'm good to go. What about you guys? J.T. O'Donnell (01:10.101) Very ready, yeah. My first time to London. My first time, or hence the fish and chips. I know, I lived in France for a year, never made it to London. So really, really excited. A bunch of meeting people I've never met before. Scheduled, it's gonna be good time. Yeah. Chad (01:13.046) What? First time to London? That's awesome! Joel Cheesman (01:23.298) That's huge. What are going to see? What's the priority list? Chad (01:27.48) Where you going? J.T. O'Donnell (01:27.681) Yeah. Yeah. My husband's been planning all of that. There's definitely a couple of things in London downtown to go see Stonehenge is on the list and then we're headed over to Dublin for a bit. So it's going to be a good trip. Yeah, it is. It's like two, two hours by the way. Yeah. It's going to be a day trip for sure. But yeah, he's got the list. The punch list will knock it out. Um, and definitely a lot of downtime, like the pubs that, you know, nobody knows about, you know, we want to do the off the beaten path stuff. Do I like what? Gin like J-I-N? Joel Cheesman (01:37.038) Quite a ways from London, Stonehenge is. I'm not sure it's... Chad (01:37.058) Nice. It's a minute. Yeah, it's a minute. Sweet. Chad (01:51.178) Always. Yeah. Do you like gin? Gin. D-I-N. Gin is in the, the, the drink. Yeah. The gin, the alcohol. Yes. You're going to love London because they got some great gins. That's for God. Joel Cheesman (01:52.076) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (01:56.984) G-G-I-N. J.T. O'Donnell (02:00.309) The drink? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And fish and chips, I've never had, like, I want fish and chips with vinegar on it really badly, so. Chad (02:11.221) hell yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. At least once a day. Joel Cheesman (02:13.048) Do you or your husband enjoy military war history stuff? J.T. O'Donnell (02:16.897) Oh, it's on his list. He's huge. He's a pilot. yeah, he wants to go to Churchill's. Yep, the Churchill's War, the thing where he would wear it. Yep, that's on the list. Joel Cheesman (02:21.154) Definitely go to the war museum or military museum. The Churchill's, yeah, the Churchill's, that's okay. So you got all that covered. Yeah, that's a highlight for me, for sure. Chad (02:23.788) Yeah. Chad (02:29.122) That one is sweet. That is sweet. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (02:34.579) He's got that all covered. I am seriously just a tag along. So, it's all good. Chad (02:36.088) it's sweet, it's sweet. Joel Cheesman (02:39.086) Well, it's, your first in London. It's going to be my first, uh, in Berlin. So I'm pretty, pretty excited about that. Taken a one young coal cheeseman, uh, 18 year old now adult coal cheeseman and we're, um, yeah, I love, I love the military stuff. So you can imagine the world war two, uh, just history in general. That's in Berlin, lot of the middle ages stuff. So yeah, pretty, pretty pumped about that. So that's great. Chad has no first that I know of. Uh, he, owns Europe. Chad (02:43.572) and Berlin. Nice. Chad (02:50.433) He's back. Chad (03:03.608) Sweet. No, I've never been, I've never been to Brighton yet, which is where my daughter lives. So we're actually going to go and spend a few days in Brighton. We're going to, leaving next week. Gonna land in Gatwick, spend some time in, in Brighton, uh, see some friends, just do some stuff and do some exploring. Then we're going to go see Hamilton in London. Uh, we've only seen it once before. Uh, but J.T. O'Donnell (03:07.2) He does own Europe. Chad (03:30.328) We're going to see it in London. Got to see it in London. I mean, King George, come on. Then obviously, Nebworth for the GL 100 and Wreckfest and whatnot. But yeah, should be fun. Should be fun. J.T. O'Donnell (03:40.683) Wait, are they gonna do it with American accents? I gotta know. No, seriously, don't you like, that's not authentic if it's not with American accents. Joel Cheesman (03:41.07) That won't, that. Chad (03:44.532) I don't know. I don't know. I'm ready though. Well, I mean, it's, Joel Cheesman (03:44.652) Should. Joel Cheesman (03:49.952) It's not the famous, I don't know Broadway for shit, but there's a famous, the guy who wrote it. Yeah, you know who he is. Yeah, Miranda. And then there's a couple other actors. They won't be in this, the London presentation, will they? Okay, that'd be cool. London feels big enough that they could, but. Chad (03:54.114) Mm. J.T. O'Donnell (03:56.565) Lin. Chad (03:58.113) Miranda, yeah. Chad (04:04.8) No, I don't think so. I don't think so, yeah. Oh yeah, London's big. London's big. Pretty excited though. And we're all going to be, all of us are going to be in London and the UK, at least at the same time. So it's going to be, I don't know, the place might implode. I don't know. J.T. O'Donnell (04:23.045) Lots of photos. Yeah. Insane. Joel Cheesman (04:23.394) The whole team is gonna be at Wreckfest, right? All right, Mo, obviously, Emmy owns that town. So yeah, get ready for the selfies, everybody. Get ready for the selfies. But until then. Chad (04:30.235) Hahaha! J.T. O'Donnell (04:34.271) Hmm? Mm-hmm. Chad (04:34.481) Excellent. yeah, well, yes. Joel Cheesman (04:39.534) All right, guys, we haven't covered only fans in a while. I'm getting a little, little, little lonely, almost as a, United States of lonely fans, a new survey came out and we finally know which states love them. Some only fans. Here's your top five in order from five to one, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, and West Virginia at the number one spot. So these. Chad (04:42.008) Yeah. Chad (05:06.636) Big surprise. Joel Cheesman (05:07.79) This is based on per capita and a West Virginia per 10,000 residents spends $116,000 a year on only fans. Now you're, you're bottom, your bottom, your bottom five case. You're case you're wondering, uh, is Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska. And last is Mississippi, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. So that's interesting. Now West. Chad (05:09.868) Yeah, makes sense. Chad (05:19.138) Holy fuck. Yeah. Chad (05:32.78) Yeah, they don't have they don't have bandwidth in those states. Joel Cheesman (05:36.974) West Virginia is not exactly, you know, uh, that's standard for, for high tech. I don't know. It's kind of weird that that was, that was the list. Now, uh, roughly 50 % are married and it's roughly 80, 20 men paying versus women. So 20 % of women, uh, 50 % of married people and West Virginia loves them. Some only fans. So a shout out to, to only fans, everybody. Chad (05:42.402) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (05:45.025) per capita. Chad (05:48.088) okay. J.T. O'Donnell (05:48.097) Mm-hmm. meant to fit. Chad (05:53.356) Go faker. Makes sense. J.T. O'Donnell (06:00.147) Love it. Chad (06:04.354) Beautiful. Well, my shout out is to our friend over at Marriott, Megan Radigan, and many ETA practitioners who aren't going to fall for the banana in the tailpipe that Indeed is trying to give them. That's right. So go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage. Joel Cheesman (06:10.798) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:54.306) So again, shout out to all those TA leaders like Megan who aren't falling for the indeed and appcast banana in the disposition tailpipe. Don't allow them to have access to your data guys. That's just dumb. That's just dumb. Joel Cheesman (08:10.536) How intrusive is my voice? my, uh-huh, yeah. What Neanderthal is on this interview? Jesus Christ. Chad (08:18.36) You're just now finding that out? Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (08:19.915) You got like a split second. I didn't even know you were there until they just threw a split second. I've been there. Joel Cheesman (08:23.918) Chad (08:25.341) Aww. Hit it, JT. Joel Cheesman (08:29.24) What you got, JT? J.T. O'Donnell (08:31.009) So my shout out is to Mira Murati, ex CTO of OpenAI, who went out and said, you know, I don't have a product. I have an idea. I don't have anything put together. Want to give me some money? And they were like, yeah, sure. Here's $28 million and we'll value you at 10 billion. She has no product. There's nothing. There's an idea. She's Avicii's dream, apparently. Right. You know, let's I mean, what? I mean. Chad (08:36.696) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:53.9) Yeah, I, yeah, yeah. Wow. Joel Cheesman (09:00.622) Well, Zuckerberg's given out $100 million checks to anybody that's an employee at OpenAI. So I mean, hey, you know. J.T. O'Donnell (09:03.317) Right, just to steal you. That's what it is, right? Like, let's... Chad (09:05.4) This is two billion. He has no idea yet. And again, I think it's very apparent that Mira is an amazing talent. Don't get me wrong. But in the rush to super intelligence, Joel, I think it's time for a history lesson. think it's time for history. Yep. So kids, let's talk about pets.com. J.T. O'Donnell (09:13.682) No question. Joel Cheesman (09:21.131) what? History lesson. Chad (09:29.438) November of 1998, the world was starting to wake up to the prospect of doing business and expanding current business models on this thing they call the Internet with companies like Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape, eBay, Google rising to prominence. seemed like a gold rush for businesses who wanted to dramatically expand their TAM and start selling products state by state or even country by country. Right. The problem was this was a deceptively promised market, right? It was totally deceptive. You couldn't just start up a website and then orders would start flowing. Now in the case of Pets.com, you had to change market behavior, which didn't happen overnight, understand product pricing, coupons are the bane of any business, logistics, warehouses, they had one, it was in San Francisco, that's not great, shipping costs, much higher than they thought, tech costs, had to buy server farms, that's right kids, we didn't have the cloud, labor overhead, advertising, they had to pay for that fucking sock puppet. My point is that the dot com gold rush was rushed, right? Much like today, everybody wants AI. But I just read an article that Microsoft can't sell copilot subscriptions because everyone is used to and likes chat GPT. So Microsoft has a product. It's AI. But what about the current market behavior and saturation? Right. So I believe This AI gold rush is much like the dot com gold rush, which turned into a bust. It's too rushed and money is being thrown around for one reason. FOMO. Everybody's got the FOMO and the fear of missing out on another open AI. So that's my two cents on a history lesson, kids. Joel Cheesman (11:20.344) I love that history. Listen, and that has been proven through many, many industries, cars, trains, throughout history. yeah, by the way, it's, it's now super intelligence and not AGI like that's hasay. So we're all going to say super intelligence from now on. And by the way, I, understand, as I understand it, Zuckerberg has gotten four open AI folks to take him up on that. Not sure. I, I've, what I've, what I've heard is for four open AI folks have taken him. J.T. O'Donnell (11:24.075) great. Chad (11:31.084) Yeah. Yeah. super intelligence, something new. J.T. O'Donnell (11:35.531) superintelligent. J.T. O'Donnell (11:39.553) 100 million a piece, so he's up to almost half a billion. Sweet. Joel Cheesman (11:49.526) him up on whatever offer is going on. Chad (11:50.232) We should buy jazzhands.ai because I think that would be the best. J.T. O'Donnell (11:54.283) I like that. I like that. Joel Cheesman (11:55.352) By the way, there's a, there's a, there's a documentary called startup.com that I'm sure is somewhere on the streaming services. that's a really cool, like late nineties startup story about all the stuff you're talking about. The rise, the crash and burn, you'll laugh, you'll cry. it's, it's all good. All good. Chad (12:11.64) Yes, of course. J.T. O'Donnell (12:13.013) Can I? Can I have one more quick shout out? All right. So my two daughters begged me, begged me, begged me to watch this show Love Island this season. I went in kicking and screaming. But the first time I heard it, I was like, Steven, you're Steven that does all your sound overs. I was like, he's he's the speaker of Love Island. my gosh. Because the guy does no, no. And he says all this stuff. And I was like, I know this guy. Joel Cheesman (12:15.768) Course. Chad (12:21.757) Jesus. Chad (12:33.016) Wait a minute, he's doing side gigs? J.T. O'Donnell (12:41.611) I know him already. He does the shout outs on the podcast of mine. So if you listen to Love Island, you know what I'm talking about right now with that. Chad (12:44.984) I didn't know that he was doing voiceovers for others. Joel Cheesman (12:50.466) Sounds almost as good as... Chad (12:55.397) yeah. Tell us what you can get. J.T. O'Donnell (12:56.705) Speaking of free stuff, I know I'm- Joel Cheesman (12:56.76) By the way, free shout outs, shout outs are sponsored by our friends at Kiara. That's right, Kiara. is text recruiting made affordable and simple. Now let's get to free stuff. Chad (13:01.656) J.T. O'Donnell (13:09.141) can't believe they're letting me do this again, everybody, but here we go. There's amazing free stuff as always. You cannot win if you don't play. Let's make sure you go to the right place. That would be Chadcheese, no and in between, .com forward slash free. Chadcheese.com forward slash free. Okay, now that I've done that correctly, let's start with the whiskey. The talent tech experts over at Van Hac, some sweet, whiskey is coming your way. If you don't like whiskey, then you might win bourbon barrel aged syrup. Maybe you want to have the booze in with your pancuk. Chad (13:12.352) yeah. Chad (13:32.982) Chicken cock. Chad (13:36.92) you J.T. O'Donnell (13:40.737) Those are the Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Kiora. Thank you for that little shout out there. T-shirts, I can vouch the t-shirts are super soft, super comfortable. You can also cut them up and use them as rags. I'm just kidding. The red shoe wearing weirdos over at Aaron app are providing those. They're fantastic. Craft beer. I mean, if you like beer, that's awesome. Cause you're going to get it from the job data geeks at Aspen tech labs. And of course the best one is always safe for last. If it's your birthday, it's rum with plum. Chad (13:48.653) Mmm. Chad (14:10.486) Gotta go to ChadCheese.com slash free or you cannot win. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (14:17.678) That's right, kids. Celebrating another trip around the sun for Lees Cuevas, Chad Mattson, Megan Maker, Deb Linsley, Joshua Tarotsenzi, Tommy Menser, Brock Magnus, Maria Colacurtio, Jal Steven, Joel Keene, Scott Eichner, Sarah Holder, Adam Wardlow, Weren Tit-Gen, Paul DeBittagenis, China Gorman, Josh Akers, and Kyle Lagunas. Chad (14:32.343) yeah. Chad (14:40.172) Excuse me. Joel Cheesman (14:47.808) And just, just for chat, it's also Ariana Ariana grande's birthday this week and space balls celebrates a birthday, looking for space balls to coming out. Yeah. Which is guaranteed to be a total downer because every time they do this, it's never good. It's never good. It's never good. But yes. Yes. I, yeah, sometimes it works. Sometimes it works most of the time. Chad (14:52.254) very nice. Chad (14:57.036) and they've got Spaceballs 2 that's coming out. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (15:04.84) Ever is good. Chad (15:06.316) I don't know, Naked Gun 2 looks pretty good by the way. It does look good. Liam Neeson? Yeah. Sometimes it works. Liam Neeson? Yeah. No, he's got a certain, he's got a special set of skills that he's gonna use. J.T. O'Donnell (15:14.547) Is he still alive? Is he going to be in it? Liam Neeson? Naked gun too? Not like the joke. Joel Cheesman (15:17.944) Yeah, he's... Joel Cheesman (15:25.484) I mean, the scene where they're like honoring their dads and the one dad is OJ and they're like, no. So yeah, if they can poke fun at OJ, then I'm down. I'm down. Chad (15:30.572) Yes. Yeah. Hey, How can you not poke fun out of OJ? Well, no, we are leaving. We're leaving for the UK. We just talked about this, Joel. Travel sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right, Wreckfest UK and Nebworth, July 10th. If you don't have your tickets, get your goddamn tickets, people. This is the place to be. This is the place to go. The Chad and Cheese are gonna be on the disrupt stage with Steven, favorite Scott McGrath, JT and Mo, and Emmy's even gonna have her own stage to herself, at least for half a day. You gotta go to the UK, get Nebworth, just go to Wreckfest.com. Joel, I also have a special request. Jamie said he's out of chicken cocks. So he's asking if you can help a brother up. Joel Cheesman (16:24.75) I'll see what I can do. may have to take care of him in Nashville. I don't know. I may have to give him a year's supply. It's a lot to go to Berlin and yeah, customs and all that shit. So we'll see what we can do for our friend. Chad (16:26.41) Okay. Okay. Yeah, I might have to wait till Nashville. You'll get it. J.T. O'Donnell (16:30.177) That's a lot to drag, That's a lot to drag. Chad (16:34.518) It probably wouldn't make it. That's the problem. J.T. O'Donnell (16:39.849) chat. Why is there only a third left in this bottle as a gift? Chad (16:39.937) Okay. Chad (16:43.808) Yeah, you'd be lucky to get any to be quite frank. J.T. O'Donnell (16:49.281) You Joel Cheesman (16:51.982) All right, guys. Career builder plus monster is reportedly selling its job board business to job get and its media and government services businesses to Valnet Inc. And Valsoft corporation respectively. The company has initiated a voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy process to maximize value and preserve jobs. Haha. That's a good one. The sales are expected to close in the coming weeks. Subject to court approval, Chad. your thoughts on the acquisition. Chad (17:23.862) Yeah, I made a comment this week on LinkedIn that JobGit seems to be buying up as many distressed assets as possible, like Snagajob, Workin', Hero's Jobs, and now the Monster and Career Builder job board business. It's kind of like the island of misfit toys over there. But the most logical question is why? Why would JobGit buy? And I mean, if they're buying the revenue portfolio, it's really a stopgap solution at best. I mean, yeah. It will artificially increase the revenues and make burn look a little bit more manageable. But these are majorly distressed assets that took money to operate. And I doubt JobGet will be growing headcount in burn to do that. I I really want to see them do something with this. So I'm hoping to see their official statement soon so we can have some fun with it. Now down to the brass tacks that I think is most important. This from the official form 201, which is the voluntary petition for non-individuals filing for bankruptcy. That's right. That's chapter 11 kids. Companies involved, Zen, JV, Monster Worldwide, FastWeb, Monster Government Solutions, Camaro, Acquisition, CareerBuilder, CareerBuilder Government Solutions. There are a shit ton of companies here that are a part of this bankruptcy. CareerBuilder France Holdings and Military Advantage. Here's the important part. Listen up. The unsecure creditors, the people who are owed money. That's right. Career Builder Monster owes Jobverse, who's their agency of record, $2.7 million. Text Kernel, $2.2 million. They owe Google $1.9 million. Tal Roo, they owe Tal Roo $1.7 million. And just a little speculation here. That might be why Thad's gone. I would hate to hear that, but $1.7 million, that could take a chunk out of anybody's ass at TauRu. JobGit, $1.5 million. So think about that. JobGit's looking to actually negotiate possibly discount on price because you already owe me $1.5 million, motherfuckers. AppCast is owed $900,000. JobCase, $700,000. J.T. O'Donnell (19:29.387) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (19:42.478) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (19:42.657) I'm gonna... Chad (19:48.536) Brazen the online job fair people five hundred and ten thousand recruitix 438 next little over four hundred thousand Jovio 250,000 aim well 250,000 so many In our space mainly on the recruitment marketing side of the house They are owed J.T. O'Donnell (20:04.865) millions. Chad (20:12.148) shit tons of cash. But let's be clear, at the front of the line with their hands out, much like Oliver Twist, will be ronstad. And they are secure debt, right? So they're going to get their money before any of these guys get. J.T. O'Donnell (20:25.381) and Chad (20:26.986) Apollo is insulated from this mess and many companies in our industry who provided services that I just mentioned to Monster Plus Career Builder could get totally fucked. Tune of millions. This is the roulette game you play when you're dealing with VC who have bought a mature company and are selling it for parts when they believe they're down to the rotting carpet carcass. They stop paying their bills. J.T. O'Donnell (20:37.59) Great. J.T. O'Donnell (20:54.987) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:55.128) and their vendors are the one holding the bag. So CareerBuilder and Monster, top 30 unsecured creditors are owed $25.5 million. That's just the top 30. Unsecured creditors are likely to retrieve, and this is just a little research that I did, they're likely to retrieve anywhere from 0 % to 50 % of what they're owed while a public... Possibly. while Apollo sits on a pile of fucking cash. So we all know it, the system's fucked, but when you work with VC, this is the kind of shit that happens and I fucking hate it, especially for all those companies that I mentioned. That just hurts. You do a good job and you get fucked and that's not cool. J.T. O'Donnell (21:28.779) Get a shield. Joel Cheesman (21:29.112) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (21:38.318) you J.T. O'Donnell (21:38.613) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:47.702) JT, it looks like you got something to say. J.T. O'Donnell (21:50.399) No, I mean, it's just, shame on you, you know, just to have that. And I, all those companies you mentioned, right? That's not a small amount to write off on your receivables. That's huge, you know, that's going to trickle down to your people. You're going to end up seeing cuts and layoffs and restructurings all because of this, you know, and like you said, versus those ones that have the security and are going to recoup probably most of their money, right? If not all of it, it's, it's, it's sick to watch. It really is. Chad (21:58.68) no. Joel Cheesman (22:21.25) Yeah, right down galore. so a couple of things on this. so in the, in the news, the report that I saw, it said that they were expected to close in the coming weeks and less better offers were received. like, I'm not, I wouldn't be shocked if they release this to somebody to say like, Hey, let's see if we can get some other fish to bite. Cause I still think there should be some. Chad (22:37.132) Yeah, sure. Joel Cheesman (22:47.214) international companies that should be interested in this to like get a foothold in America. I did not see job get coming at all. Like they would have been way down on the list of potential acquirers, even though they have acquired snag a job and heroes jobs and season. Some of the ones that you're talking about. Uh, mean, they've only re they've received $55 ish million, uh, job get has, which is nothing to sneeze at. But when we're talking about buying companies that used to be valued at $8 billion, uh, the hell job get got enough money. Uh, I don't know if was creditors or got some more money for a series, like they're going to announce a series, uh, see, guess beer, see, uh, down the line, but I wouldn't be shocked if job get doesn't do get this and somebody comes in late and makes a better offer. We'll see. We'll see. J.T. O'Donnell (23:32.129) I know in the industry, this nameless came to me and said they think it's a great idea that Job gets buying them, that because they think they know something that none of us do about Google search. SEO is tanking right now. Everybody's using AI. Google's scrambling to figure out how to be relevant as it's dropping. So that's why I'm not naming the person. I don't want to out them. They think they're hedging their bets, and that Google's going to come out with something magical. And now all of sudden, you've grabbed all that domain. Chad (23:46.68) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:49.568) Your friend thinks JobGet has the secret formula to SEO? Chad (23:53.093) As you know. J.T. O'Donnell (24:02.177) and I need all those pages, all that domain, and they're gonna be able to turn around and do something incredible and get it into AI searches. And that's how they're gonna be, that's what I was told. But again, that is a moving target right now, what you're gonna do with SEO. Joel Cheesman (24:12.302) Okay. So they, they got a banana in the tailpipe, a secret plan. So we'll see. the number, the math isn't math thing for me, but we'll see. We'll see the number two is if this deal does happen, job get needs to trash the name immediately unless there is so much equity in SEO, which I don't see it when I do searches, kind of search around monster. This monster should become every brand that job get has acquired. J.T. O'Donnell (24:22.271) I agree. Chad (24:26.284) Mm. Joel Cheesman (24:40.75) That's just my two cents. Monster is still a good brand. It's great URL. Like it's great for advertising and branding. Like job, get trashed the name. It sucks. I still say job, get instead of our get job instead of the job. Like I can't even figure it out and I live this shit. So change the name. That's number number two and number three. Come on, man. If they get this done, go buy a zip recruiter, go by zip recruiter. Finally, somebody, somebody has to do it. Somebody has to make me happy and buy a zipper. J.T. O'Donnell (25:07.649) Well, I mean, if they've got that much lying around, I got a little company website called Work It Daily. Great domain name, great SEO. Call me up, you know. Everything's for sale, if you know what I mean. Bring it on. Joel Cheesman (25:15.126) Yeah, yeah. Chad (25:15.574) Talk about SEO, right? Talk about SEO. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the trust, the time and trust that CareerBuilder and Monster have are huge, right, from an SEO standpoint. I mean, they've been around since the, or at least Monster's been around since the mid-90s. CareerBuilder, I mean, evolved out of Headhunter.net, but still had huge traffic, great trust, that type of thing. So, I mean, yeah, could you do something with it? Possibly, but look what... You know, look at what Indeed did with Simply Hired and everything that they've done. I mean, they've literally just mirrored to try to game SEO. I don't think Google's buying into that anymore. Again, they're not. Joel Cheesman (25:53.838) I'm not saying it's a new day for monster and watch out world because they're cooking with gas. I'm just saying like, if you're buying this asset, your name should be monster. And, just hell they're relaunching Chi-Chi's for God's sakes. You've probably seen this, right? They can relaunch Chi-Chi's Mexican. they can relaunch monster, for sure. So, yeah, I. But look, I mean, history lesson, you know, you can pick up these clearance rack. Chad (25:56.792) Yeah. I don't know. No. Chad (26:07.032) Ha Chad (26:15.766) Leave it to Cheeseman to know that, that CheeChees is coming back. J.T. O'Donnell (26:18.718) at that. Joel Cheesman (26:22.04) TJ Maxx sales as companies falter and go out of business. mean, like, we, Chad, we listened to pivot, I think pretty, pretty frequently. And, professor Galloway talks about back in the day, they used to buy yellow pages. And the thing is those businesses stay profitable for a long, long time. And if you can just buy them, cut everybody out, you can just keep adding money to the bottom line. Now these are inevitably dying businesses, but if you can keep ahead of the grim reaper. J.T. O'Donnell (26:26.037) and the research of the brand. Joel Cheesman (26:49.988) you know, long enough, then you can get, you know, some money back from what you invest. long shot. We'll see what happens, but yeah, that those, those would be my takes on what's going on. And I didn't see this one coming at all. This one escalated very quickly for me. Chad (27:04.12) Well, that's because we didn't know how much debt they had, right? And we didn't know that JobGet was one of the bigger debtors, right? So I mean, that makes it a little bit easier to provide some leverage to prospectively get some of those assets. So yeah, I mean, that was shit that we didn't know. But again, there are big, big names that are on that list. And again, TexKernel, which is now owned by Bullhorn, is owed 2.2 million. J.T. O'Donnell (27:07.157) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:10.604) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:17.08) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:31.278) Mm-hmm. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (27:32.981) And it's now exposed, right? So now everybody knows those companies allowed that debt to ring up like that and sit like that on the books for how long, right? And it's sitting there. So, you know. Joel Cheesman (27:42.38) Yeah. And I'm not a bankruptcy lawyer, but I'm guessing a lot of those companies are screwed. They'll get a little bit back, but I'm guessing the laws will be unfavorable for them. Chad (27:51.274) Yeah, think well, I think job get this might be a good deal for them because they'll get a write off. Number one, they'll get a write off. Plus, they'll also leverage and negotiate a much better price for the assets that they're getting. But again, there's no reason to run the tech. You don't want to you don't want to push your head count up, right? I mean, this is about trying not to build burn. And I don't know how you do that with all of the assets that they just bought that to me is going to be hard. It's gonna be hard to manage that. J.T. O'Donnell (27:52.095) I wouldn't expect much back here. Joel Cheesman (28:11.266) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (28:18.124) Yeah. It's, also intriguing. Like we'll never know, but, this stuff in our industry trickles down from the top. So if companies aren't paying for those clicks, those companies aren't paying the sites that are giving us the clicks and it sort of filters all the way down. So is this a career builder monster or just that bad, or is nobody getting paid because at the top employers are paying late or they're not playing, Chad (28:27.416) Mm. Joel Cheesman (28:46.218) as quickly as they used to. I'd be curious to know how much of that is employers struggling versus career builder monster just fucking people over. Chad (28:53.936) think this is the PE game plan. This is the PE game plan. You suck all the money out. You load it with debt. We just heard of a company in our space who will remain nameless, who is a part of a portfolio company. The PE took huge debt. What did they do with that debt? They split it up within their portfolio. They went to their CEOs and said, guess what? Here's some debt, right? Joel Cheesman (29:02.648) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:07.842) Yeah, yeah. Joel Cheesman (29:13.709) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (29:21.474) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:22.52) PE literally, they've been sucking a lot of these amazing companies dry. And again, this is just part of the playbook. It's like, how can we fuck the system and go into bankruptcy, leave these guys holding the bag while we're sitting on our pile of cash while Apollo is insulated from it, which is total bullshit. Joel Cheesman (29:45.486) All right guys if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel we are just as good-looking as our voices and Be sure to subscribe at youtube.com backslash at Chad cheese. We'll be right Chad (29:52.823) Yeah Joel Cheesman (30:01.486) All right. From one job board success story to another, it's a bloodbath quote unquote at DICE according to trusted sources. DICE allegedly let go of a hundred plus employees focused on sales, account management, engineering, and product positions, including some who had been at the company for over 20 years. Chad, you got some insight on this. What are your thoughts? Chad (30:26.072) So first and foremost, Q4 2024 for Dice revenue was down 14 % year over year. Q1 2025 Dice revenue fell another 18 % year over year. Subscriber renewal rates dropped from about 100%, which people were just paying the bill, right? Which we've seen for years. When they stopped doing that, you know, you have a problem down to around 70%. So about 100 % renewal rate to 70%. J.T. O'Donnell (30:43.617) Did you see the doors in? Chad (30:56.312) It's the same old story as Monster and Career Builder. It's an innovator's dilemma, which is where an established, successful company fails to adopt new disruptive technologies because they initially don't meet the needs of their existing profitable customer base. It's a great book by Clayton Christensen, by the way, so check that out. What does this mean, though? Monster and Curbbuilder didn't adopt search engine style job search because their duration based newspaper forward revenue was still strong until it wasn't and indeed kicked them off the top of the mountain. The classic example, which we always talk about is Netflix, who had a solid DVD by mail program, but disrupted their own service when they launched a streaming platform. Netflix understood their business model would get crushed when streaming was adopted by mainstream. So You either crush the DVD mailing model yourself or somebody else is going to do it for you. So you should do it yourself, which Dice did not do, which Monster and Career Builder did not do. Dice hasn't evolved. They're still mailing DVDs for God sakes because they don't have a leader in charge, Arthur Dart, that is innovative. Thus, a staple in the tech job search industry is circling the drain. And I hate to see this because great employees get laid off because leaders didn't have the vision or the guts to pivot. And I hope they all find soft landings. mean, this, and I want to also point back to what we saw smart recruiters do. They literally gutted their entire system. Their older ATS, their old style ATS, and they went more toward agentic. Those are the things that you have to do. in every type of situation with regard to business, you have to be able to look at pretty much skate where the puck's going. And Dice has never done that, unfortunately. Joel Cheesman (33:02.424) So Dice has basically become a financial engineering business. What they do is usually around earnings calls, they announce layoffs. So in July of 24, they cut 7 % of their staff. In January of this year, they cut 10%. And now they're allegedly cutting, I guess the numbers will come out eventually, but another group of folks. Wall Street loves it. Unfortunately, the stock is spiking once more and they've kind of done this in the past. Some firms have actually come out. So one analyst came out and raised the price target for the company between $10 and $13. They're currently trading at about $2.61. So if you're a trader, that's a pretty good upside to the business. They're trading at around 12, 13 % PE ratio. Which is still pretty low. So the whole point of this business is how can we engineer it so that wall street looks at us from a just strictly numbers business. have split clearance jobs and dice. And by the way, Dice is Dice has been hurting ever since chat GPT and AI started writing code. Right? So you have more job seekers, less jobs out there for a lot of programmers. And now you have the Trump administration gutting government. So clearance jobs and the people that need those kinds of jobs are less so because there's less opportunities at the government level. you have, you have, you're burning the candle at both ends at Dice. They split those companies again to re-engineer, guess, probably where profit is going. Art is pretty good. He is artful at doing this game and Wall Street and the investors like it. Now the people that he's put in, the president of Dice, his name's Paul Farnsworth. You should go search some videos. He used to be a product guy. He used to look like me. he became president shaved, got a haircut and looks pretty good. But some of the old videos of him as product guy used to be a plumber, probably a really nice guy. want to party party with Paul. but is he the guy that takes dice to the next level? I don't think so. I think he's a puppet for art to kind of do whatever art says. And I'm sure clearance jobs president is the same way. So this has become just a financial engineering company. Joel Cheesman (35:24.748) Nobody wants this job, so art is going to stay where he is for the time being until they take it private and sell it to maybe Apollo or maybe job get soon to be monster.com. We'll see. We'll see. J.T. O'Donnell (35:36.289) Look, I just, we know what's happening to job boards across the board. They're dying. The way that that works doesn't work anymore. Job seekers hate them. It's not working anymore. And so it shouldn't surprise us that this is happening to dice, especially when it's tech. When you think about AI's wiped out entire careers. You know, if you go look up the dictionary, the definition of career is something that you work at for a long period of time. Every job's temporary today. Most of us are, the careers we're going to have in five or six years don't exist yet, but we're certainly not going to be in the same ones. It's evolving. And to know that is to think, how do you cut back your business if it's in something that's as dead as job boards? Stay profitable long enough to reinvent yourself and move in a different direction. I mean, that's the only thing left to do. I think, I hate to say it, so I'm to be an optimist here and say, you watch what happened to career builder and monster. Joel Cheesman (36:00.738) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (36:25.899) You're seeing what's happening to Dice. If you're a job board listening to this today, you're thinking, how do I come back and really invest in innovation? How do I go find something new in this space? Because it's innovate or die right now, right? The bigger the disruption, the bigger the innovation. I think we're sitting on a very cool opportunity right now. So as we talk about this, I'm excited a year from now when we're talking about things that we're like, wow, that's cool. Didn't see that company. I really believe that that's hopefully where we're going to get out of desperation. People can't keep sitting there. Joel Cheesman (36:47.768) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (36:52.245) you know as cash cows and thinking they're going to just keep collecting those big paychecks without innovating. So I hope that forces that and that we you know we see that kind of change because we need it. We really do need it. I mean how you get jobs is different. Joel Cheesman (37:02.318) They can't be public. They can't be public and do that. If they go private, I agree with you, but there's no way, there's maybe. J.T. O'Donnell (37:08.085) Fair? Then maybe that's what you do. That's my point. Like, already. know, they used to say, like, amputate by the inch. Let's be done with it. You know, I hate to say it, but that's what they're all doing. That's like, now that's the fastest way to die is amputate by the inch. Get it done. And I'm, you know, it stinks, but you got to do it. Chad (37:08.354) Yeah. Chad (37:18.232) Oof. Chad (37:27.52) Yeah, so the job boards that are doing well, right, they are evolving. They're becoming something entirely different, right? And they're becoming niche and they're focusing on quality. And I think that's the big key is we went to Indeed, which was broad based, monster broad based, career builder broad based. You can go there for anything, right? Then you can't build communities that way, right? Because you're just not good at anything. You try to do everything, you're not good at anything, right? so you take a look at like tech sectors or financial sectors or things like that. And then you go niche. Now the problem was dice was already there. Niche. The problem was though, they didn't evolve. They just continued to be a job board. That was it. You have to go toward quality. In that case, they just got flanked by, you know, hack a job, hacker rank. I mean, all these different, all these different coding, systems. Yeah. Get hub. They just got out flanked. Joel Cheesman (38:22.35) GitHub, yeah. Chad (38:26.646) And they had an opportunity, shit, a decade ago to make this happen, but they didn't. Again, it's the innovator's dilemma. So I think job boards out there have a great opportunity to focus on quality. J.T. O'Donnell (38:40.449) If it's okay for me to say, so I'm an advisor to JobLeap, Josh Gample and crew, former Recruitix. And when they came to me, I said, the only way we're going to do this is if you create a job shopping experience. Nobody has paid attention to the job seeker. Let's create a user experience. And we pushed back hard on their development team. And when we launched a month ago, my job seekers are obsessed with it because they come in, it asks them a few questions. It starts to show them jobs and they literally start just with thumbs up, thumbs down. Is this, was this what you're looking for? And then we give them a scorecard. Chad (38:44.192) Yeah, yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (39:09.141) And it says, based on what you're looking for, these are the real jobs that are out there. And these are the ones that you're 80 % are better match for. And these are 70%. Don't apply. Like we're forcing them to understand what the reality of the market is, what's available. But here's where it gets amazing to them. Let's say I'm a job that I'm a 90 % match for. I click on it. It immediately goes out, grabs everything you need to know about the company. Right? No more going to Glassdoor. No more going to sit. all in one spot. It gives you the job description. And then there's an AI agent to have a conversation with. So what we taught it to do, really simple, is say, all right. Now create a job matching matrix. Map out exactly how my experience is a fit for all the major requirements of this job so that I can throw it in a document and send it to a recruiter. Recruiters are obsessed with this now because instead of trying to understand your resume or your LinkedIn profile, you're literally saying, here are the requirements of job and here's literally quantifiably how I'm a fit. Job seekers are obsessed. This takes all the guesswork out for them. They know the jobs are real and they understand why they should or shouldn't apply. And that's... That's the future. That's the user experience that should have been happening quite frankly years ago, you know, but when you're, when you're trying to make money off the, off the companies and you know, through clicks, I get it. You care more about what's happening on that side than you do. But when you understand and do what job lead did, and we literally call it, if you guys want to go play around with it, it's amazing work at daily.jobleap.ai. It's the job shopping tool. You will be blown away by the, and they are obsessed. Like they just flip because they feel empowered. They understand. And that's what's been the problem all along, right? Versus applying blindly, getting ghosted. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Chad (40:36.354) Well, and you're teaching the AI too. You're teaching the AI, not to mention you got a guy like Josh Gample, who has been in this space for a very long time, incredibly smart dude and an operator. So he totally gets it. A lot of this has to do with the founder, right? And how they did the research, like through you, to be able to really understand what the market wants. J.T. O'Donnell (40:42.729) Amazing. J.T. O'Donnell (40:55.329) Yeah, months, we worked on this for months. They would, we killed so many ideas in order to make sure it was job seeker first and it's paying off. Joel Cheesman (41:06.528) Why in the world dice 15 years ago didn't create a community for developers to like share code and get badges and whatever and become that is one of the great mistakes in our industry because they were in the perfect spot to do that. Chad (41:24.728) agreed. Joel Cheesman (41:26.444) All right, guys, let's go from that to Tesla and automation and truck. In case you missed it, Tesla's robo taxi service launched in Austin this week with a small invite only fleet of about 10 to 20 model wise, charging a flat $4 and 20 cent per ride. weed aficionados will appreciate the four 20. the debut was a mixed bag that wasn't without hiccups. On the other side, little less hiccupy, the Wall Street Journal dropped a story saying companies like Walmart are deploying robots such as Boston Dynamics Stretch, which can unload 580 boxes per hour, nearly double a human being's pace. Chad, your thoughts on all the automation going on this week. Chad (42:15.126) Last thing I want is my driver, whether it's AI, autonomous or a human on weed. I don't mind that they do it. I just don't want them driving me around that way. I did truly. I just hope Zooks and Waymo beats the shit out of Tesla. I mean, I did. That's that's just my one wish. The thing that I really liked, I watched some of the videos around the loading and unloading the robots. And it is amazing because they've got they've got Joel Cheesman (42:40.44) Yep. Chad (42:44.396) this little accordion style conveyor belt that follows them, right? So it just goes to the ramp, goes on and then just starts doing the job. And you said this does twice the amount of what a human can do. and we're just getting started. This is gonna get faster. It's gonna get more efficient. Not to mention these jobs suck. If you've ever unloaded a truck before, and I have, you know it sucks. It fucking sucks. A robot do it? Okay, great. But what can you do with those people as opposed to just doing loading and unloading? That's the big question. So yeah, mean, shitty jobs. Will it create other jobs? No clue. That's some of the some of the biggest questions that are still up in the air today. Joel Cheesman (43:34.648) So let's look at a quick video of a Tesla highlighted by one of the, I think, Tesla influencers. Chad (43:39.234) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (44:00.119) You Chad (44:03.864) 420. Chad (44:54.104) Shit. Joel Cheesman (45:12.663) you Chad (45:28.919) fuck Chad (46:11.294) I'm about ready to puke. Jesus. Fucking jazz hands, boy. Joel Cheesman (46:12.256) Yeah, right. look, cars, cars suck. they're bad. They're bad to own. insurance sucks. You got to house these things and basically an extra room in your house in a garage. I am all here for the autonomous driving. I am all here for Waymo zoeks. Tesla will get this right. Eventually. I have an eight year old kid. I hope that he grows up in a world where he doesn't have to own a car if he doesn't want to, that these cars will take you wherever you want to go. They'll show up wherever you worry, where you are. you'd have to buy insurance. You have to buy the car. Like that's that experience sucks as well. So I'm all down for the automated car, like trend. And I've been in a way Mo, I've been in a way Mo in a circular driveway that it just kept doing circles until I had to call like, The headquarters and somebody's like, Oh, what's going on? Like I am just looping. And they had, they probably had some guy with a steering wheel saying like, okay, I'm going to take over the car and take it out. So we're really, we're really hard on these companies, but they are doing miracle work. Like think about when you were a kid, if you saw this stuff, you would think it was mind blowing. And it really is like, they'll get some of the stuff fixed. Uh, so I'm all here for the autonomous car as far as jobs. It's going to disrupt a whole lot of jobs. drivers, taxis, trucking will be eventually in this realm. So from a jobs perspective, it's going to have huge, huge impact on the, on the automated, truck unloading or unloading robot. That is really the call it the Holy grail of, of automation. Like, and I've been, I spent a short time at UPS one summer and these literally human beings go in these containers. And they're lifting basically up to 70 pound boxes and putting them on conveyor belts. So imagine doing that for three, four, five, six hours. It's incredibly hard. People get injured. companies got to pay a lot of money for people that are out of work, backbreaking stuff. So if robots can do that, I mean, that's a godsend for a lot of companies, as well as being way more productive and getting the shit that we want at our doorstep, much, much quicker than, than we have. Joel Cheesman (48:24.824) previously. I'm mostly optimistic about about this news. It will create more jobs around how do you maintain these robots? How do you manage them? They showed one person with like an iPad sort of managing all the, the unloaders. So I'm all for it. I this is, I this was a good news week for automation. J.T. O'Donnell (48:43.425) You know, you mentioned UPS, my husband's been a pilot for UPS for many, years. And way back when he said to me, we won't have pilots one day before all this was coming out. So I think this to me really solidified what he's been talking about for decades, which is the moment a drone or someone else can fly that plane. They won't need us anymore. We'll sit in we'll sit in a sim, you know, in, in Louisville and we'll just fly the plane from there. We won't physically go there back and forth. And I remember thinking, okay, we're really far away from that Eric. We're not like to your point, we're not. And the same thing, the backbreaking work, you know, the drivers and so yes, it's going to eliminate a lot of jobs, but a lot of good paying jobs. And again, that's we're already seeing that happen in the tech space, right? AI is wiping out these coding jobs. You know, drivers at UPS would retire as millionaires. They were well paid blue collar workers who go in and so you start thinking about all the things that'll wipe out. Those are good paying jobs. Pilots. make a great living. UPS has been a really good company to my husband, our family, the benefits, but the reality is they're a business. And as this stuff comes along, like any other company, they're going to look to utilize it. Joel Cheesman (49:53.688) So these are pilots with planes that just have packages on them. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (49:56.843) Cargo, that's what I'm saying. Cargo only, it's not even real people. They'd be the first person that you would have them do the sim with. My husband was the first to say this and he wasn't saying it as any disrespect. He's like, it's coming, JT. It's just coming. But for me now, I really see it. And as a job search career coach, you're wiping out very, very well-paying jobs. Joel Cheesman (50:17.985) Yeah. And you got to think, we just talked about UPS layoffs a couple of weeks or months ago. they see this stuff coming. They, they are preparing for this world. and I think that's partly why you're seeing some of those moves. yeah, let's take a quick break and, talk about some in and out burger just in time for lunch. By the way, guys, if you haven't left us a review on, your podcast platform of choice, please do so. Joel Cheesman (50:48.056) Guys don't fuck with in and out burger. Okay. They're suing YouTuber Brian Arnett for impersonating an employee and making false claims about the company's food and practices in videos posted online. The lawsuit alleges trademark infringement and business defamation seeking damages and a ban from in and out establishments. Let's take a quick look at one of the videos Mr. Arnett posted about in and out. Chad (51:04.779) Idiot. Chad (52:05.836) Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. Joel Cheesman (52:09.664) I'm headed to Taco Bell. That sounds like a better choice for me right now. So, Chad, what do think about our net and his little, little gag there and in and out's response. Chad (52:11.381) Okay. Chad (52:20.428) I think he's an idiot. He's an idiot. mean, was the other guy an actor too? would assume so. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. From a brand standpoint, that's just fucking stupid. mean, yeah, stupid. Don't do it. Influencers can be influencers without trying to do stupid bullshit like that. Joel Cheesman (52:26.646) He was in on it. Yeah. There wasn't really a cockroach. Yeah. He was in on that. Don't sue us in and out. We're just showing. Joel Cheesman (52:45.474) Yeah. JT, you're somewhat of an influencer whisperer. Like, what are your thoughts on this? J.T. O'Donnell (52:48.864) Yeah. It brings me back to the Dennis Robbins days. Remember how he just got more and more outrageous in order to get like attention and then the hair and like, and you just go and go and go because the addiction's there to try to keep it going. And I think for a lot of influencers, that's where they're at now. I mean, the market is saturated with so many different people playing pranks, doing things, whatever, know, Mr. Beast has paved the way. And so they're all trying to be the next Mr. Beast. And sometimes they're going to make rookie mistakes when they're that young and they don't understand business. They just. Chad (52:56.652) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (52:56.726) Yeah, the wedding dress. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (53:20.705) I guarantee you when they were making that, they didn't even cross their mind that a company might sue them. Their thought was, we'll just give him, we're giving them eyeballs. We're giving them free, but like they're just, that's when you're that young and you don't understand business. That's what's happening in that moment. So he'll be a powerful lesson to a lot of creators, unfortunately. Joel Cheesman (53:25.878) we could get sued by In-N-Out, yeah. Chad (53:35.538) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (53:38.478) I think it'll keep going though. People will still push the envelope and take it to levels that haven't. There's another video where he offers to buy a person's meal that's around $15 and he's like, do you guys take cash? And they say, yeah. And he pulls out a thing of pennies and like dumps it on the counter. The, oh, whatever the manager's like, you got to get out of here. You got to go. yeah, this stuff is pushing. thing that's interesting to me, Chad is like, we've been five years ago, we were talking about Sherwin Williams employees. J.T. O'Donnell (53:40.481) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (54:07.714) that we're doing like legitimate social media videos. And now employers have to worry about fake employees making bullshit videos, which is a whole slew of issues that people are going to have. So I don't know where this goes, but employers have to be really aware of people impersonating employees and what that looks like to the outside world. Unlike dad jokes, which we know always looks Chad (54:09.708) Yeah, good stuff. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (54:10.473) Beautiful, yes. Chad (54:22.998) It's fraud. J.T. O'Donnell (54:34.367) No, no! Joel Cheesman (54:37.016) Positive to the outside world. All right guys. Football is almost here now that basketball season is over. What does broke back mountain and the NFL have in common? What does broke back mountain and the NFL have in common? Chad (54:39.552) Always. Chad (54:56.342) Yeah, that's probably what it is. Joe, Joe, we don't know how to quit the NF. Joel Cheesman (55:02.414) Both, have cowboys who suck. Chad (55:08.856) Good call. We out. Joel Cheesman (55:09.45) We out, see ya in England!

Pack your burner phones and buckle up, because this week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, it's all jungle—no welcome. France is banning social media for kids (but can your teen outsmart Macron with a VPN? Oui.) Amazon’s bringing “jobs” to Europe—aka quotas, piss bottles, and tax-dodging galore. Spoiler: Europe’s not buying the propaganda. "Welcome to the Jungle” launches in the U.S., and it’s giving strong “Muse with amnesia” vibes. Brand pages? In this  economy? Plus: Lithuania’s Sentra seduces us all with sexy AI agents while Italy’s JETHR reminds us boring still pays the bills. 🎤 And don’t miss: Belgian punks ghosted by Trump’s America, Ronaldo comparisons gone wild, and why Taco Bell + Guinness is either innovation or indigestion. It’s chaos, comedy, and career site carnage—just another day with Chad, Cheese, and Lieven. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:35.658) Seven Nation Army couldn't hold us back. were listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast as Europe. I'm your co-host, Joel, Supreme Leader Cheeseman. Chad (00:44.945) This is Chad, Dopa hit, So Wash. Lieven (00:47.926) And I'm leaving to punk for Trump, van Nivenaessen. Joel Cheesman (00:51.726) And on this episode, the jungle is Americanizing, France is banning, and, you guessed it, who'd you rather? Let's do this. Chad (01:05.969) We gotta hurry this up. Leaven's on vacation. Okay? We gotta get this moving. Where you going, Leaven? Yeah, where you going? Lieven (01:08.462) Hmm Joel Cheesman (01:10.766) How is my all? Lieven (01:14.276) To France. Joel Cheesman (01:14.7) Yeah, the ski resorts are closed, Leaven. Where do you go in the summer? The Alps are snowless, right? Lieven (01:21.344) The Alps are up, they have some white caps left but it's not ski material. My kids actually are complaining, my kids they said you can ski in Chile and they were very offended that I didn't want to take them to Chile to go skiing. But so we're going to we're going to tropical France, Martinique, the Caribbean. We were supposed to come to the United States. Well, Trump happened. Joel Cheesman (01:26.86) not leaving ski material. Chad (01:35.569) That's a hell of a flight. Chad (01:40.017) Motha Neek. Joel Cheesman (01:41.87) Martinique. Chad (01:47.149) Yeah, I remember. Yeah, what happened? Lieven (01:51.572) And so... It's not happening now. Joel Cheesman (01:51.982) you Chad (01:54.491) Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing when you start to see. Yeah, it's one thing when you start seeing the, you know, the whole, you know, ice kind of like converge and just start plucking people off the streets. And then the next thing you know, it's wait a minute, those are citizens. What the fuck is going on here? Joel Cheesman (01:58.806) You ain't welcome here, boy. You ain't welcome here. Lieven (02:01.056) No. Lieven (02:08.087) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:13.422) Apparently the shit's true. Like give me your phone. I've, I mean, I've heard stories of people bringing burner phones from outside of the U S because if their phone gets searched, they don't, I mean, it's crazy shit. It is. Lieven (02:22.98) It's like China. It's like China when our politicians go to China, they have to bring burner phones. Chad (02:28.133) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (02:30.926) Cats, cats and dogs living together. Chad (02:31.665) Too much, too much. This is the, you're bringing me down. We need shout outs. Lieven (02:35.62) Only three more years or something. Joel Cheesman (02:36.763) We need some shout outs. man. Chad (02:39.259) my guy again. Come on. Yes. Thank God. well, you're gonna love this one. Shout out to the Portuguese national football team who are now the UEFA Nations League champions. Portugal beat Denmark in the quarters, Germany in the semis, and Spain in the final. Winning by penalty kicks. Joel Cheesman (02:44.684) Save us, Chad. What do you got? Joel Cheesman (03:00.334) Damn. Chad (03:05.989) It was on the same day that Roland Garros was finished and Alcazar that that motherfucker came back one in five sets over five hours. Then we've got Spain versus Portugal. Portugal takes it. Independent kicks five to three. But here's what's mind boggling for me. And I bet it is for you to leave and watching Portugal win the Nations League trophy while the US gets smoked by the Swiss for nil. Joel Cheesman (03:24.248) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:35.461) It's amazing that a country like Portugal, which only has 10 million people, about the same size population as Ohio, they can be so much better than a country with 300, over 300 million people. big shout out to little old Portugal, Nations League winner. Lieven (03:43.822) hehe Joel Cheesman (03:56.878) Chad, I gotta know, because I always compare my physique to Ronaldo's. So I feel like I have a connection with him. Is he gonna play? he playing? I hear he's coaching a little bit. What's going on with Ronaldo? Lieven (04:01.538) Hahaha Chad (04:12.911) Yeah, I think that he's a specimen. He looks better than most 20 year olds, right? And he is an amazing shape, great cardio. He does cherry pick a lot. I mean, he's not playing both sides of the ball. He's not playing defense. That dude's not playing defense at all. So he's saving a lot to cherry pick and he gets obviously a good share of goals. But the Portuguese team is so young in the talent they're hell. They have five on PSG and PSG Joel Cheesman (04:35.458) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:42.149) just won Champions League. it's pretty deep. even if he... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fernandes, yeah, mean, tons, tons of talent. So he could walk away and they would still be fine, but I don't see him doing that. He's just, he's the GOAT. I mean, that's all there is to it. He's the GOAT. Joel Cheesman (04:46.712) Don't forget Man United's Bruno Fernandez. Joel Cheesman (05:02.626) Yeah, it's like, it's like watching messy in Miami. The dude is just phoning it in until he gets like two or three, well, just gobstopping plays. But the rest of the game, he's just kind of floating around watching these scrubs, you know, try to play, try to play soccer. So speaking of Ronaldo's physique and how similar it is to mine, my shout out goes out to Taco Bell. Chad Taco Bell saving the world one Chalupa at a time. Chad (05:11.247) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (05:17.649) You Chad (05:29.797) No. Joel Cheesman (05:31.788) which you can find in many, many European countries. But guess what? Taco Bell is coming to Ireland and one Irish influencer had something to say about it. Check it out. Chad (05:43.067) Yeah. Chad (05:49.393) You Joel Cheesman (06:05.719) Sedilla. Joel Cheesman (06:27.288) Ha Chad (06:27.793) Catholics. Fucking Catholics. Lieven (06:27.895) You Lieven (06:32.376) You Joel Cheesman (06:44.344) Just to help out the Irish out there. What goes surprisingly well with Mexican pizza? How about a Guinness and a shot of Jameson? Now it's a party, kids. Now it's a party. Taco Bell coming to Ireland. Shout out, shout out to the Bell. Shout out to the Bell. Chad (06:54.176) Jesus. And your stomach. Leave it. What you got? Lieven (07:04.653) From the bell to the Belgians. I got a shout out to the Belgian band, The Kids, and it's a punk band. And they were supposed to be touring all around the United States by now. But they had to cancel their American tour after being ghosted by the United States visa office. No visa, no reason, just radio silence. And all because they posted some negative posts about Trump on social media. And now they're... They're totally not welcome anymore. we support our Belgian punk. We support the attitudes. So shout out to the kids. Joel Cheesman (07:41.772) Belgian punk rock. Chad (07:42.097) Shout out to the kids. Lieven (07:44.48) And I wonder Joel, chat, do you think I'm on that blacklist as well for being, for saying something not that nice? So, okay. Joel Cheesman (07:51.614) You're rolling with Chad and cheese. You have immunity from Trumpism. Nothing but love for you in America, my friend. Nothing but love for you in America. That's right. Chad (07:55.163) So yes, you're on the blacklist. You're on the blacklist. Lieven (08:01.732) Okay. Chad (08:02.513) Oh, dude. Oh, we love you. We love you. I can't speak for the administration. mean, I've been in the military for 20 years. I'm going to be coming back sometime soon and I'm going have to bring a burner phone. Joel Cheesman (08:08.238) And Lieven (08:08.526) Because I... Joel Cheesman (08:15.97) Yep, and you know what they say about hanging with Chad and Cheese. Lieven (08:16.547) because Chad (08:22.705) And that's a high average. Lieven (08:24.82) Yeah, but I'm constantly looking over my shoulder if those ice people aren't there yet. So I'm getting anxious. The ice people. Joel Cheesman (08:29.868) The ice people. it's ice. Chad (08:31.121) They are the ice people. Lieven (08:35.044) a wee couple boys. Joel Cheesman (08:39.06) All right, this is pretty good shout outs. I like this. This is good. Let's get to our topic. Chad (08:41.809) Not too bad, not too bad. To the meat. Lieven (08:45.71) Topics! Chad (08:47.813) Topics. Ha ha ha. Chad (08:55.164) love Stephen, love that Stephen. Joel Cheesman (08:56.59) Ugh. nursing a hangover boys, my bad. All right, let's get to Mumford and Sons concert and 20,000 white people have me all have me all out of out of whack. All right, let's get welcome to the jungle. We got fun and games a French based recruitment marketplace. They've launched a new talent sourcing solution that matches job offers to candidates and the database. More importantly, the company is also expanding to the United States aiming to help companies showcase their employer brand. And of course attract Chad (09:06.412) my god. Chad (09:11.301) Mm. Joel Cheesman (09:28.878) top talent. It's not just a Guns N' Roses song. It's now the newest job board in America. Chad, what do think about Welcome to the Jungle in the US? Chad (09:40.027) So you remember the Guns N' Roses music video for Welcome to the Jungle, which is very apropos. It has Axl Rose getting off a Greyhound bus in LA, dressed like a hick from Indiana, backwards ball cap, blade of grass sticking out of his mouth. Remember that? Well. Joel Cheesman (09:46.688) Okay. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:53.87) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (09:58.894) Yeah. Chad (09:59.627) That's a great metaphor for welcome to the jungle coming to the US. They have no clue what they're getting into. And you can easily identify that by looking at the deliverables on the goddamn website. They're basically a job board with an ATS. Yes, I'm using air quotes, kids. And brand offerings like employer profile pages. 2008 called and they want their product modeling backs. Now, don't get me wrong. If a job site is niche and it serves a specific community where hiring companies don't have landing pages on their career site for that community, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense to create a company profile to share that specific community message to users. I totally get that. That's not Welcome to the Jungle. They're broad-based, right? It could be more welder-specific, LGBTQ +, landing pages, whatever it is, but Welcome to the Jungle isn't niche. So why would I use a job board to do that? When I can do it on my own site, right? Or it can go to a company like Happy Dance that focuses on landing pages and kind of like the cosmetic pieces of that so I can get SEO juice. Not you welcome to the jungle, but I can get SEO juice. And for a similarity standpoint, all of this feels like the muse about 10 years ago. Joel Cheesman (11:11.758) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:24.109) And the Muse isn't setting the world on fire. So whoever the advisors are for Welcome to the Jungles, Go to Market Plan in the US, I have three words. Stay in Europe. Joel Cheesman (11:43.06) Axl Rose from Indiana, by the way, little known fact, Axl Rose and and Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose and John Cougar, Mellon Cam, which most people know. The names, the name is awful. I've said it before, like I can't imagine a sales rep calling a US company going, hi, this is this is Sven from Welcome to the Jungle or whatever. I'm giving an American accent. I mean, you're with who? What? Chad (11:45.071) Yeah, that's why I said, Hick, Indiana Hick. Yeah, Gary. Chad (12:08.613) man. Joel Cheesman (12:12.462) Welcome to the jungle. Okay. So aside from that, you know, Chad, we just had a show talking about the demise of monster and career builder. we've talked about talent.com recently who formerly knew VU and, and multiple sites that have come and gone. I can't name one that's come from Europe and been successful. Help me out here, but I cannot. these guys have raised a lot of money. Chad (12:21.189) Mm. Joel Cheesman (12:39.79) Uh, they've been around since 2014. They're clearly successful in, that niche and they get Europe. obviously get, get, get France and the surrounding areas. The U S is a totally different beast and the U S basically 80 % of job postings and the hiring like ecosystem is indeed in LinkedIn. So to make any kind of like, uh, headway into the U S market, um, I think as a, as a fool's errand, everyone wants to come to America, but This is not innovation. This is not new technology. Chad, I think you talked about a video recently about a Gentic basically buying something or scheduling something where an agent talked to another agent and talked basically R2D2 to each other. Like that's where shit is going. Lieven (13:19.044) video recently about AT &T. Joel Cheesman (13:32.078) Uh, like show me innovation where a job seeker has an agent and the company has an agent and the two people talk and the two things talk to each other and figure out interviews and all other stuff. Like that's where the future's going. The future is not going to search for a job, look for, look at the job, apply the, that game is played and welcome to the jungle. Um, I've decided to say is, is barking up the wrong tree. Uh, I think this will be a massive failure, uh, for, for the company. Stay in France. Lieven (14:00.92) Thank Yeah, welcome to the jungle. You know, I think in 2018, they were ahead of their time. It was a great concept and they were doing stuff which needed to be done and they should have moved to the US back then. But I think by now they're risk becoming a relic. AI is changing everything. It's changing so fast. look, like employer branding, content creation is commoditized. That is something all companies can do now with just a few clicks. It's very easy. Chad (14:08.401) What think? Chad (14:15.494) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:29.364) yeah. Lieven (14:31.652) Job descriptions, career pages are AI generated now. So you don't need a company like Welcome to the Jungle. There are so many things they are very good at, which now can be done by just a junior using five different AI tools, costing them 100 euros a month. So I think moving to the US is, I don't know, but it's going to change back to their core. Nothing. Chad (14:48.241) Mm. Chad (14:56.421) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (14:57.048) And it's kind of weird because they bought OTA. You, you, you OTA? No. which was Paul Forster was an investor, a founder of indeed. So Paul should probably know better than to think that this is going to work, but OTA came and then didn't really fly. So they got acquired. mean, the, mobile app, was, is an OTA app that they've now rebranded as welcome to the jungle. I mean, it's really warm and fuzzy. Chad (15:01.157) Which, yeah. Lieven (15:03.268) Thank Joel Cheesman (15:25.26) They focus it on like millennials and Gen Z and it's like, kind of work do you want to do? What kind of company? was very kind of warm and fuzzy. I just think that time has passed and that, they're behind the times on this one. Chad (15:38.605) And you really have to understand the US market and you have to understand the competitors. mean, like I said, the Muse has been here for years. I mean, for at least a decade, right? They've been doing that exact same thing even more than Welcome to the Jungle. And again, most people don't even know who the fuck they are. So to be able to understand, you know, really what the markets that you're going to, you have to have the right advisors in place. Joel Cheesman (15:51.352) Mm-hmm. Yep. Chad (16:07.269) And you have to have enough money. They don't have enough money to come to the US to be quite frank. ATA, it felt like a clearance rack buy. Good for you. You got an app out of it, but it wasn't a great, I don't think it was a great model in the first place. So you put two not so great models together and what do you get? Well, if you take it to the US, I think you get trash. Joel Cheesman (16:26.882) Yeah. I mean, you have brands that Americans do know that that are failing monster career builders, zip recruiter, a dice. Like these are brands that have been around a long time that people know and they're failing. So you're going to tell me you're going to launch a brand new brand. That's going to be successful. I I'm, I'm not falling for the banana in the tailpipe on this one, Chad. Chad (16:32.037) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:46.481) But I do believe if you go niche, there are some really great opportunities to go niche. take a look at like Hackajob, for instance. And again, being an advisor for those guys, they started off in the UK and then they came to the US. They are incredibly niche and they've created a community around the tech sector. And even with everybody shedding tech individuals, they're doing great because they understand their community, right? And they understand the market. Joel Cheesman (16:57.294) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (17:06.19) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (17:12.152) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:16.737) So, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to understand go to market and you have to understand. And I would think that being from Europe, knowing that you're going from one country to the next, there are different go to market plans for those. I'd like to hear what Leeuwen thinks about this because they have so many companies in so many different markets in Europe. You would think they would take the same kind of thought process and do enough due diligence for Joel Cheesman (17:36.685) Yeah. Chad (17:44.559) the US, especially coming to a very large market like that. So, so leaving when you guys are looking at different go to markets for your current your current products. I mean, how much how rigorous is that is some cases that just pull the trigger and let's see if it works or is it always really deep due diligence? Lieven (18:05.924) It's definitely deep due diligence because it's too expensive to just try. mean, you always have the buy or the build strategy. And we realized if you are moving to a different country, it's much easier to buy something which is already strong than to build something which is strong in one country, but not necessarily will be success in another country. And we have some great products like NowJobs in Belgium. It's booming. It's a digital platform for freelancers. We have over 100 million revenue. It's amazing. Chad (18:09.937) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (18:09.998) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:26.193) Mm. Joel Cheesman (18:32.578) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:35.696) Wow. Lieven (18:36.052) We started from scratch a few years ago, but doing exactly the same thing in the Netherlands, which is almost the same country, basically, it's very hard. So trying it in France, trying it in Germany is even harder. And I think if those people can't make it in Europe, why would they be able to make it in New York? If you can't make it there, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, but I'm not sure. I don't think they should try there first. Joel Cheesman (18:45.07) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (18:59.87) Maybe welcome to the jungle is going to buy a career builder plus monster Chad. that would be interesting. By the way, I, I reserve, I reserved the right to change my mind if they get slash to write the jingle for their, for their American American ad campaign. All right, boys, let's get to, who'd you rather. That's right. If you don't know who'd you rather we read to companies that have recently gotten funding and we let you know who we'd rather. Lieven (19:04.181) Yeah. Chad (19:06.129) I don't have enough money. I don't have enough money. Lieven (19:22.423) You Joel Cheesman (19:30.634) And in this corner. Lieven (19:38.5) You Chad (19:38.513) There you go. Joel Cheesman (19:39.278) This will be fun to edit. have Sintra, Frank Sinatra, not Sinatra. All right, Sintra, Lithuanian AI startup. We don't say that very often has secured 17 million bucks in seed funding to empower small businesses with AI powered helpers. Sintra offers a platform with AI teammates that handle core tasks like social media, customer support, administrative work. That is Sintra. And in the opposite corner, have JET. JEDHR, an Italian HR tech company, has raised 25 million euros in Series A funding. JEDHR says it, makes managing people incredibly simple, payroll, benefits, devices, compliance, and much, much more. Those are our two competing companies. And who'd you rather, Chad? Who'd you rather? Chad (20:31.889) I'm gonna start off with Jett and say that I believe it's boring. And you know what we say about boring companies that do the work that humans hate to do? They make money. On the other hand, this is who'd you rather. And if I'm at the bar and it's 2 a.m., I don't want boring. I'd rather go home with fun and sexy. And that's Sintra to a T. 12 million in ARR serving over 40,000 SME players. Joel Cheesman (20:39.072) You love boring companies. Lieven (20:50.067) Chad (21:01.777) customers globally I I usually don't buy into SMB platforms, but with 40,000 customers They've obviously figured that the hard part are out their marketing is slick I've personally seen their ads all over the internet and even I believe on the tube in the UK And the numbers real quick 12 million AR are at 40,000 customers is only $300 a year per customer pretty cheap, right? That's $25 a month. Pricing on the site today is $97 a month, which is about $1,200 a year. So that's still really cheap. If they can transition their current customers without even growing net new from $25 a month to $97 a month, that's $48 million in ARR. That's without any growth whatsoever. Sintra is smart, sexy, and it's getting SME Lieven (21:53.156) 48 million ARRs. That's about any close to what's left. SMPRA is smart and sexy in getting SME because they cook on the run. They can't get any more efficiency and hiring less human by offering more than 12 different agents. Chad (22:01.201) companies hooked on a drug they can't get away from. Efficiency and hiring less humans by offering more than 12 different agents for only $97 a month. I only have one question for Cintra. Your place or mine? Lieven (22:16.318) Hmm Joel Cheesman (22:21.998) I don't know how much I can add to that. I mean, this is do you want the girl next door? Or do you want, you know, the big booty Latina in the in the club? And yeah, like, one is bored. I look, the whole like one platform, this whole it's, it's getting interesting. I mean, the rippling deal drama is entertaining. We got factorial over in Europe as well. These guys. Yes. Lieven (22:25.348) Do you want the girl next door or do you want... Chad (22:30.545) Thick. Thick. Joel Cheesman (22:49.112) probably going to be very profitable, probably will be acquired by a very big fish at some point. And shareholders will be incredibly happy. But if I'm looking for something real exciting for the future, that's going to get my attention and be really cool. Sintra is it, man. I mean, the website is cool. The whole sort of aesthetics about it. These little like robot, I don't know. Yeah, these. Chad (22:54.449) Mm-hmm. Lieven (23:04.068) Thank Chad (23:13.649) with assistance. Joel Cheesman (23:15.874) fairies, these, it's like a magical mystery tour. mean, this thing is, yeah, it's like, and you and I talked a lot of startups, Chad, and I know that Leven's incubating a lot of startups and their company, like every company that's starting has to ask themselves, you know, okay, we need to do marketing. Do we hire marketing? Do we hire an agency? Like, what do we do? And ultimately the conversation is going to come up of let's just AI this shit. Chad (23:19.503) They're astronauts, aren't they? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:42.798) and that's something that Sintra is doing, whether it's customer service sales, outbound, outbound calls, like all that stuff is getting automated in Sintra is at the cutting edge of being, you know, a trendsetter in that realm. So do I think jet will probably cash out and make their shareholders really happy? Yes. But do I think the bigger bet, the 20 X investment opportunity is with Sintra. So for me as well, I'm going to go Sintra. Chad (24:12.763) Sexy. Lieven (24:14.148) But I to disappoint both of you because Sintra is far too young for both of you. So I'm the youngest one and I'll be the one taking Sintra home. We're not even going to talk about Jett and Jett rhymes with Jett. go ahead. that even rhymes too. I'm so good. Anyways, Sintra, I loved it. And I was wondering, looking into it, how did they get without any budget? How did they get known in the United States? How did they... Chad (24:15.185) What do think, Leaven? Chad (24:20.485) Hahaha! Joel Cheesman (24:21.486) Ha Lieven (24:44.898) become so popular and they didn't localize for Europe, they globalized from day one, they focused on the whole world. It's like they didn't even have a strategy for a certain region, they just launched. And then it went viral and they did something which was amazing and they published on Reddit and on X and they got picked up and people were talking about them like it was easy. And this is something I want to copy, which is very hard to do, I'm afraid, but I loved it. And it's a great idea creating something like... Chad (25:07.665) Yeah. Lieven (25:12.226) Personalities and those agents giving it body. It's I love it So centralize what we're going to do and it's it's yeah Joel Cheesman (25:15.79) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:15.95) Yeah. Chad (25:21.935) And I love it because it was, it's too easy. mean, their marketing was so in your face of stop hiring humans, hire AI, right? They were one of the first ones that I actually saw do this. And I was surprised they hadn't gotten funding until I looked into their founders, who at 15 and 16 were already building companies. I mean, these guys, I mean, Joel Cheesman (25:22.114) That was an easy one. knew, I knew leaving was going to go Sintra. Lieven (25:25.124) Yeah Lieven (25:31.364) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (25:36.11) Mm-hmm. Lieven (25:48.452) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:50.769) Apparently, you know, they're a hotbed there in Lithuania out of the garage. Very, very Larry and Sergey garage. Google feels, right? But yeah, this is, it's fricking, I dig it. Joel Cheesman (26:00.258) Mm-hmm. Lieven (26:02.998) And one thing I really liked about them was their, it's not really a baseline, but something they stated on their websites. We're not here to replace stuff. We're here for those who can't afford stuff. That's nice. It makes sense. Yeah. Chad (26:13.943) Especially for SMBs, right? Joel Cheesman (26:18.168) Sintra, call us. We want to be in the Sintra, Sintra business. We'll be right back. Lieven (26:19.778) Yeah. Chad (26:20.387) You Joel Cheesman (26:27.982) All right, guys, a little Amazon and agent talk. Amazon's 2024 impact report underscores its 41 billion euro contribution to Europe's GDP and 150,000 direct jobs boosting high unemployment region like France's help me out here leaving. Did I say that correctly? Okay, there you go. Well, further growth expected from AWS investments in Germany, the UK, France and Spain. Meanwhile, Lieven (26:47.837) Haute France. Haute, so the high parts. Joel Cheesman (26:57.036) The rise of AI coding tools fueled by low cost or free pricing for mass adoption and data collection threatens entry level tech jobs. Though some suggest higher AI prices could encourage hiring humans on unlikely shift in the short term. Chad, your thoughts on all things Amazon and agentic this week. Chad (27:17.937) going to surprise you here because I think the Amazon narrative feels like total bullshit propaganda. I'm surprised they didn't get Josh Berson to write research for him. We're talking about a company that has burnt through total populations of workers in the US because the jobs suck. So thinking that it's changing from a you have quotas so no bathroom breaks unless you piss in a trash can kind of company to a savior of Europe. Joel Cheesman (27:33.752) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:46.545) is laughable at best. I do think it's interesting, though, that Amazon is playing the GDP and investment card. It feels like they ripped a couple of chapters out of Patrick McGee's new book, Apple in China. We just talked to him this week, Go check out our episodes where Patrick outlines how Apple has built China's tech sector through spending hundreds of billions in the country and has trained 28 million Chinese employees over Lieven (27:46.947) Yeah. Chad (28:16.354) over the years. So I really feel like kind of taking that framework of, wait a minute, Apple went into China, they're spending this kind of money, and that's how they won the Chinese government over. Amazon wants to do the same thing. They want to win all of these different European governments over. they're trying to talk GDP. They're trying to talk investment, blah, blah, fucking blah, blah, blah. Yeah. they're so they're, know, Europeans can piss in trash cans instead. On the AI side of the house, we've been talking about this forever. Short-term cuts in headcount. Everybody's looking to try to skinny down so that they can have bigger margins. This sets up for a no skills workforce implosion later, period. We're not going to be teaching people because we're going to be giving jobs to AI. There's going to be no skills whatsoever as they try to move up the funnel because they can't move up the funnel. That's the hard part. Amazon bullshit AI. I mean, it's a short term win. It's a long term implode. Joel Cheesman (29:18.732) Yeah, Chad, we we've seen this movie in America on the Amazon side. look, they, start out, they hire everyone that possibly can, they run out of human beings. They start moving into, impoverished might be too harsh of a word, but they move into areas where the jobs aren't plenty and people are willing to do, this work. They have warehouses near freeways, whether it be Alabama, Kentucky, like name your cunt, name your state here in the U S and there's an Amazon warehouse. and they're employing people. obviously the PR side of this is great because every local community says, Amazon is moving in. We'll have jobs. People will be employed. Like we haven't had good jobs like this in a long time and working at the Texas roadhouse isn't exactly doing it for, know, for my family for so in the short term and PR it's, it's a great move by them. Um, I think it's all a, it's, it's all a ploy to do this until they can get rid of all the people and automate. Lieven (30:06.468) Thank Joel Cheesman (30:16.514) this whole thing or at least 80 to 90 % of the process. This movie is now playing out in Europe. They're going into areas that are diminished, that are challenged, that are economically struggling. They're getting great PR, which helps them with regulators, which helps them with politicians. We're bringing jobs to your community. How about you relax that regulation on such and such? And that is the game plan. Chad (30:35.012) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (30:42.144) until I think ultimately they, they automate a huge part of the business because they ran out of people to hire because the jobs aren't all that great. Like Chad said, pissing and trash cans gets old pretty quickly. I think eventually Europe will catch onto this and Amazon. will be caught with their pants down, if you will. And their banana out, yeah, in the trash can. So many metaphors. Leaven, what do you think, man? Chad (31:05.52) Oh, pissing in the trash can, yeah. Chad (31:11.505) Are you excited, Levin? Are you excited for Amazon to come to Europe? Lieven (31:16.118) Not really. I refuse buying anything from Amazon. reading the press release, it almost sounded like Amazon wasn't a charity. They're going to make Europe great again, and they're going to help poor all the France out of their misery and parts of Spain. Okay, so yeah, great. But I would ask them first to start paying taxes, because they do pay taxes, they definitely pay some taxes, but they don't pay them where Chad (31:27.635) Yeah. Chad (31:33.005) Mm-hmm, Germany. Chad (31:41.008) There you go. Lieven (31:45.824) they make their money, they just choose wherever in Europe can I pay the least and then they pay even less so they have some deals. There was a European Union investigation in 2021. They were fined 250 million euros, which they refused to pay. they lobbied a bit and then the decision was annulled. Is that the word? Annulleren. I'm not sure. You know what it is? The decision was whatever. And the commission now appealed and we're five years later and nothing's happening. Joel Cheesman (32:12.566) An old? An old? Chad (32:16.015) marriage. Joel Cheesman (32:16.524) We'll go with it. Sure. Lieven (32:24.804) So they probably will never pay the 250 million. But looking into what's happening right now, it's like you said, the jobs they offer suck. And Europe at this point has an extreme low unemployment rate. It's the lowest in history in the European Union for the moment. And some regions still suffer a bit, but it's okay. It's getting better. So I don't think we definitely need those jobs. I'm more afraid about Amazon screwing up local entrepreneurs, local businesses. Chad (32:53.028) Yeah. Lieven (32:54.53) So I'm not, I'm definitely not left-wing, but I prefer small local people growing a small business than one multinational coming, killing us all. Joel Cheesman (32:57.025) and Joel Cheesman (33:05.07) And that, and that, know, blame Americans like everything else, but this was a, of the dialogue with the tariffs was that China's going to have to sell all this shit somewhere. And that Europe is a, is a very easy bridge from if we can't sell to Americans cheap shit, let's sell it to Europeans. And there was a lot of fear of this. think there still is, but Amazon coming, they're going to deliver all the cheap shit. like you can kind of blame America. Thank you very much for, for some of this because of. Lieven (33:18.136) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (33:33.44) of the tariffs and everything that's going on here. But yeah, the mom and pops of Europe, which I know both of you love, are definitely at risk with this trend. Chad (33:39.855) Yes. Lieven (33:43.496) And Amazon claimed they will provide stable jobs, will stimulate local economies, they will bring infrastructure, skills training, et cetera. I don't think Amazon is thinking about much more than Amazon. We'll see. Chad (33:55.527) Yeah. Yeah. More promises and propaganda than reality, unfortunately. Joel Cheesman (33:56.078) You Lieven (34:01.667) No. Joel Cheesman (34:01.909) Yeah. Leave and curious your thoughts on the, the agentic side. Cause I know you have some really strong opinions about agents and in automation and AI doing a lot of this work. And the story that you shared in our group, uh, highlighted a guy named Luke Aragone who in 2007, uh, earned $63,000 a year at his first job as a junior software developer. and today he says that AI tools will write better code than what he did back then for the cost of roughly $120 a year. What are your thoughts on that trend? Lieven (34:30.265) Hmm. Lieven (34:37.036) It's going to happen. It's happening already. So we can cry about it, but better live with it. But we have a, and I think I said this a year ago also in one of these shows, we are getting a very big society problem. If people who are graduating now can't find a starter's job because starter jobs are just disappearing, they're being replaced. And I think the very best students, the top, They will be hired by the big tech companies and they will, they get some kind of an education within the company, but it's a mediocre group, which just won't be able to find a job. And there's nothing worse than youth unemployment. It's a disaster. So all those agents, I love them and I'm playing with them and it's making my life easier. But if it's going to replace jobs, then we have a problem because we don't want young people hanging around. Joel Cheesman (35:04.344) Mm-hmm. Lieven (35:30.208) making a nuisance of himself. They need to work and they need to work through House of HR. Chad (35:32.216) And we don't want them on social media. If they're not on social media, they can work, right? Joel Cheesman (35:38.21) Yeah, this is, this is not a wee problem, not a wee problem. So let's, let's go into a France taking a stance on social media. So French president Emmanuel Macron announced plans to ban social media for children under 15 and implement age verification for online knife sales. Apparently knife, knife sales are trending in Europe. emphasized the need for immediate action. Lieven (35:38.98) course. Wee problem. Joel Cheesman (36:03.628) citing concerns about online safety and the recent murder of a teaching assistant. Something that I know nothing about as has, Levin shows us his Rambo knife, for, for the listeners out there, Chad social media and teens. know you have some teens that are no longer teens, but you have experience with this, your thoughts. Lieven (36:12.26) You Chad (36:13.572) That's not a knife. Lieven (36:15.246) That's nice. Chad (36:24.698) I think it's funny because when we were teens in the 80s, there was this big war on drugs and an aspect of that was pointed at kids, right? Don't do drugs, dare officers come to talk to us at schools, there were commercials, you know, that kind of thing. Fast forward to today, dopamine hit after dopamine hit, it's just not good for anyone, especially your kids. It's made bullying worse, teen suicide worse, anxiety, depression, self-esteem. Joel Cheesman (36:32.814) Mm-hmm. Chad (36:53.154) Issues with filters everybody wants to look glitz glamour like they're from Twilight or something loss of attention and focus That's what Joel calls internet brain Social isolation get the fuck outside kids go play some sports and posting stupid shit Can you imagine the stupid shit we would have posted when we were 15 years old for God's sakes the list goes on so for me Yes, I know that It is almost like an electronic leash for lot of parents and that's how they kind of like manage their kids. I know that they can see where their kids are at, but guess what? It's not good for him. It's a drug and it's bad and we I don't know personally. I think this would be a good thing. Joel Cheesman (37:33.742) Chad, you got me nostalgic. Let's take a look at that ad from the 80s. Chad (37:37.821) jeez. Yes. Joel Cheesman (37:53.838) they still have the partnership for a drug free America or do they just abandon abandon that whole that whole effort? I would like, I would exchange a little drug use for the kids in exchange for social media. think social media is so much worse than the occasional Michelob light. that, it's, it's, it's a shame. mean, you mentioned it. Great depression. Chad (37:57.869) I don't... Yeah, probably. Chad (38:09.903) yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:18.658) depression, anxiety, self esteem, body image, suicide rates increasing, sleep deprivation, physical activity, nobody's bullying, inability to have a conversation. I hate this. will, I will take my kids. have two teenagers. I will take them to lunch or dinner and I ask every question. Now I agree that I didn't ask a lot of questions as a teenager, but I could hold a conversation. I could ask and probe questions. My kids are just like, Chad (38:21.796) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:46.252) wall. It's amazing and they're smart kids, but they just, the communication just isn't there. look, there was, going to rec fest soon and you know, I bring Cole, this will be the third year that I bring Cole. He's now 18 years old. and let's just say that, that, that one, Steven McGrath, he's not alone, have tried to get Cole to have a good time. I'll leave it at that. And Cole's comment, he, Chad (38:52.057) not social. Lieven (38:57.6) and Chad (39:02.586) Mm. Joel Cheesman (39:14.35) very anti-drug, very straight, very clean, very square. He said, think to you, uh, that you need to get smart Chad, that drinking is ruining, uh, your generation. And I think Steven's comment was no, that is ruining your generation. And he pointed at, uh, at Cole's iPhone and there's a lot of truth to that. problem is parents are in a no one situation because if I say no, no smartphone, no, no social media. then my kid is ostracized and probably bullied, made fun of, and feels like a total loser. So as a parent, correct. So as a parent, it's like, it's no win. either like give it to them and they're like everybody else or I say no, and then they're, they're ostracized for that. We need the government. I'm generally not again, I'm not, generally not for more regulation and laws and government, but this is something that unless the federal government says no, no social media for kids under 15 or under 16. Chad (39:48.664) Not if it happens the whole country. Lieven (39:59.972) We need the government. I'm generally not for regulation and laws. The government, this is something that unless the federal government says no social media for kids under 15 or under 16 and parents can say, it's the law, because you can't have it, then it's going to continue to be a thing. But I think it is a huge, huge redemption for our kids. We are not seeing the effects yet, but we will, and we will all regret. Joel Cheesman (40:12.938) And parents can say, look, it's the law. You can't have it. Then it's gonna, it's gonna continue to be a thing. But I think it is a huge, hugely detrimental thing for our teens. We are not seeing the effects yet, but we will, and we will all regret that we let our kids at such a young age be on social media. Lieven (40:28.868) I totally agree about social media. Even though I feel 15 years ago social media was fun. It was totally different than it is today. Now it's all fucked up. But when I was young social media was cool and healthy and... Chad (40:33.55) Leave and wrap it up, my friend. Chad (40:46.554) Mm-hmm. Lieven (40:53.196) actually an improvement to my life. Anyways, I've got two kids who are 14 and I discussed it with them. Franz is going to, it's a great idea. Totally, totally make it illegal. And I was surprised. Yeah, we're becoming 15 the 1st of July. Ha, and then their little sister couldn't use it anymore. They were happy. But the problem is it's very hard, I think, to just block it. My kids are smart and they're going to use a VPN. They're going to find a way to get around it. Chad (41:08.927) there you go. Lieven (41:21.474) you'd have to take their smartphones away, which we're not going to do. So I don't think it's easy to make it illegal, but it's not easy to actually make it happen. Or it should be on a total European level and not just France. And then maybe, but still, I don't see it happen. It's a nice try. Chad (41:31.162) force. Joel Cheesman (41:43.64) Kids would be a lot better telling dad jokes, wouldn't they? I mean, that's my feeling. All right, guys, why did the Irish person go outside? Lieven (41:46.532) you Chad (41:46.608) There we go. Joel Cheesman (41:54.338) to sit on his patio. Patty, What's an Irish person's favorite kind of music? Sham, rock and roll. That's right, that's right kids. And the last one, what do you call an Irish spider? Patty Longlegs. Patty Longlegs. Leave and have fun in the Caribbean. Chad, I'll see you soon in England. We out. Lieven (41:58.436) my god. Chad (42:05.273) Ahhhh Chad (42:11.459) No. Chad (42:17.38) You got it. out. Lieven (42:19.22) We out.

Apple: the company that made you believe your phone is magical, your charger is proprietary, and your values are still intact. In this episode, Chad & Cheese welcome FT’s Patrick McGee, who rips the sleek aluminum lid off Cupertino’s best-kept secret: how Apple accidentally  became China’s greatest workforce trainer, economic investor, and nation-builder. Move over, Marshall Plan—Tim Cook just dropped a casual $275 billion in Beijing’s lap like it was a tip at brunch. 🔥 Inside: The “Gang of Eight” (no, not Marvel villains—Apple’s secret China crew) Vocational schools, iPhones, and ghostwritten investment math Why Apple’s entire PR strategy is basically Jedi mind tricks And why India’s “Made Here” dream is more Bollywood than business Apple gave China the playbook, the players, and the gear—now they might be coming for the car keys (and your EV market). Don’t worry, it’s only the future of global manufacturing. No biggie. 📱 Click play. Before Tim Cook gets mad and makes it disappear. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:29.784) Yeah, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman. Chad Sowash is writing shotgun and we are so excited to welcome Patrick McGee, Financial Times reporter and most importantly for this interview, the author of Apple in China, Patrick, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:36.11) Give it up! Patrick Mcgee (00:49.88) Looking forward to it guys, thank you. Joel Cheesman (00:51.842) Very good. So while I'm saying, mean, after, after, John, yeah, John Stewart and, you know, prof Jean, wherever else you've been, I hope that you're ready for the tsunami of attention that this show is going to rain down upon you. hope you're ready. Hope you're So financial times and author pretty, pretty, pretty basic stuff. What, what should, our, listeners and watchers know about, about you? Chad (00:52.014) He's been everywhere. He's been everywhere, man. He's been on Jon Stewart. He's been on Prof G now. Chad (01:08.218) Can't wait, can't wait. No, book sales, book sales. That's the thing. That's Patrick Mcgee (01:08.654) Publicis is very excited. Patrick Mcgee (01:21.134) Well, I mean, that probably is the stuff I suppose what's worth knowing maybe is for the FT I've written from Hong Kong, Germany and Apple. And if you sort of think like, where did the idea for the book come from? It's the culmination of those three things on Hong Kong. I was obviously learning about China. This was the time of what the Hong Kong is called the umbrella revolution when they were sort of protesting against authoritarian Beijing and, know, maybe not going for democracy full scale in Hong Kong, but at least sort of more independence or at least the status quo. as Beijing was sort of tightening its grip. Germany was very much covering the Volkswagen scandal, but really what that meant was I was covering German industry and being in and out of factories all the time. It sort of my introduction to supply chains and had to get up to speed pretty quickly. And then Apple. And so if you take sort of China, supply chains and Apple, you sort of get the birth of the book. Chad (02:08.548) So where did all the basis of research come from? Where'd the source material come from? Because it feels like you've got tons of insider information. Patrick Mcgee (02:19.586) Yeah, I was really happy when there's an Apple blogger named John Gruber and he said, you know, most books are like a long magazine article that did well and then you pad it out for 300 pages and your book seems to be like really dense throughout, like the density of a magazine article but for 400 pages. And that really is what it is. I I actually didn't know all that much about Apple's first 25 years, even after covering the Apple beat for four years. I just never had thought it was all that relevant. So some of the early chapters are really like me grappling with early Apple history as it was written through books and by speaking to some people. But the vast majority of the rest of the book is really just based on interviews with people. So I mean, I would ask Chet GBT various questions about Apple history and Apple's relationship with Chinese government or who built the translucent iMac and everything. Chad (02:54.458) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (03:08.384) I just got all of those answers wrong. And the reason why is like that stuff just hasn't been written. There's never been a manufacturing angle applied to Apple, at least in the 21st century. mean, Apple used to build their own computers. And so that was part of the angle, you know, famous Harvard business review cases and stuff like that. But for whatever reason, you know, like Steve Jobs or people around Steve Jobs to talk about the reality distortion field. And I kind of think Apple reporters are caught up in that as well. We focus on the things Apple wants us to focus on. Chad (03:29.882) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (03:36.844) which is like the beauty and sophistication of their hardware and product features. And this week is a great example. So I don't know exactly when this is being published, but WWDC is this week. And I mean, it's all about the features of their software called Liquid Glass and all this kind of stuff. And so most of the reviews are just all talking about Liquid Glass. Now, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but we're sticking with the Apple narrative. And so I tried to totally get outside of what Cupertino wanted us to report on and look at instead about the... Joel Cheesman (03:44.334) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:45.934) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (04:04.598) sort of most sensitive underbelly of the company, which is how the sausage gets made, right? You know, someone compared the book to Upton Sinclair, which was kind of amazing, right? The guy who sort of exposed how the meat industry worked. And yeah, that was my big goal. So the book is primarily based on more than 200 interviews. I'm only counting the people at Apple or with Apple experience. I talk to other people as well in supplier network. But as a result of Apple being a very secretive company, which is usually a frustrating thing as an Apple reporter. If you take two years off as I did and you're doing nothing in your life but trying to talk to Apple people, it means that whenever you break through, you are inherently getting novel information because if you talk to people at a secretive company who haven't talked before, you're only dealing with new facts and figures so long as you're asking the right questions. So my job was really just to take what I had learned from an astounding number of hours of interviews and just make it compact into a 400 page book and sort of weave it all together. Chad (05:00.004) How does Apple have such control over the narrative? That to me is fascinating. I mean, we'll get into the manufacturing and all the other fun stuff, but when you start to see, obviously, whether it's Google I.O., whatever it is, but it seems like Apple has such a great, I should say, they have total control almost over the narrative. Patrick Mcgee (05:22.604) Yeah, I mean, I can only speculate. think in part just because so many people watch their events that you sort of have to have a handle on all the things that Apple is announcing because, know, they've got five million, 10 million, 20 million people watching their keynote speeches. And so you sort of need to pay attention to that. And there's such an audience, let's say, for what the next Apple product is going to be that it sort of gears your scoops towards like Chad (05:46.874) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (05:49.646) Why don't I get ahead of Apple and find out what the next features are going to be? But in a sense, to make the case that we've covered Apple wrong, I would just point to like maybe two or three things that are all in the book. I profile Isabel Gamahi in the book. She is the current head of China for Apple. She's the only managing director in the company, which has 160,000 employees. She's been at Apple since 2008, and she's been the head of China for seven years. Chad (06:07.108) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (06:16.93) She's never been profiled in any depth before. mean, the number of people who even know her name is astoundingly slim. And like, that's pretty bizarre. mean, China is the most important market for Apple overseas and the most important base for producing everything. And ostensibly it is the most covered company on the planet. And we don't know two things about Isabel Mahi. That strikes me as strange. The other thing is that I discovered more than a thousand pages of internal Apple documents that were made public in court discovery. that hadn't been reported on. I discovered that 16 months ago and no reporter in that time period even found it, let alone spent the 60 hours to go through it like I did. We're talking about depositions of Tim Cook and Luca Maestri, the CFO, internal emails between Tim Cook and the board of directors, an internal competitive analysis of Huawei as a threat, all sorts of, I mean, just a total goldmine if you're an Apple reporter and... Chad (06:51.139) Wow. Joel Cheesman (07:11.854) you Patrick Mcgee (07:13.902) it's sort of indicative of how much we are caught up in the reality distortion field that a book like mine can have such novel information. Like I sort of think the book I wrote, A, I don't know why it hadn't already been written, right? Why in 2018 didn't someone write Apple in China, right? I mean, that would have been more than a decade. I mean, lucky for me, yeah, but I also just didn't know how much there was to uncover. I mean, what's really interesting is a lot of people will say, Chad (07:31.896) Yeah. Good for you. I didn't. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (07:32.024) Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (07:40.576) If I send them the book, they're like, well, I already know Apple's narrative. Like, why would I read this book? And then they get like pages in and they're like, I don't know any of this. And I tried to sort of keep that bar throughout the entire book. So I think if you, if you feel, you know a lot about China and especially if you think, you know a lot about Apple, I think you get stunned pretty quickly at just how much novel information there is. And it's not because I'm brilliant, but it's because the people I spoke to are brilliant. They haven't spoken to journalists before. They agreed to speak with me. Joel Cheesman (08:07.33) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (08:10.374) And I think I structured it really well. The writing is nothing particularly special about the writing. I'm not Proust, I'm not Joyce, but the structure of the book was really well done because I took two years off to really work on that. So yeah, I mean, that's what I would say. But I don't know why it hadn't been written before, but it was quite the sort of silver platter to be able to go after it for two years. Chad (08:31.012) Let's jump into the meat real quick. for the listeners out there, I think one of the biggest numbers that surprised me was the amount of money that Apple is spending in China every single year. Can you hit us up with that peak times, what it looks like now, and how Apple, to some extent, is really the reason why China looks like it does today? Patrick Mcgee (08:54.35) Yeah, basically the narrative point is that Apple is sort of put, like has a gun put to its head in 2013 when state sponsored newspapers all attack Apple in what I call a digital blitzkrieg for three weeks. I mean, it is on the cover of what you might call the state sponsored CNN called the People's Daily. Well, consumer, okay, so consumer day is the first attack. So Apple is sort of taken to task for having Chad (09:13.54) Was that consumer day? Chad (09:18.276) Okay. Patrick Mcgee (09:23.022) treated Chinese customers in an inferior way to the rest of the world. And so CCTV hosts this thing called Consumer Day every year. So on March 15th of every year, companies are called out for not living up to the socialist ethos of the country. This is my opening prologue. And Beijing is, I'm sorry, Cupertino is totally flummoxed as to what's going on. mean, I've actually learned more about this from new sources since the book was published. So you had teams within Apple in China watching Consumer Day because they knew that it was about to happen. And being totally flummoxed by the secret footage of customers in the Apple Store in France, the Apple Store in somewhere in America, asking questions about returns and then the secret footage happening in China where the Chinese customers are being given a different warranty policy. And none of them really understand what's going on here. And unpacking that narrative and sort of solving that riddle of what went on was sort of one of the biggest achievements of the book. Because in 2013, this was really widely covered, not just the Associated Press and Reuters, but New York Times, The Atlantic, and all these places. And I really feel like I solved why Beijing went after Apple. And I'll have to say, maybe read the book if you want the full narrative. But the most basic thing is that Xi Jinping sort of understandably sees Apple as this exploitative power that is not in China for China, which is the thing that he really wants. And the Chinese are very sensitive to being exploited. because before the rise of the Communist Party in 1949, they called the previous 100 years the century of humiliation. This is when they had to give up Hong Kong, when they were involved in the Opium Wars, which if you don't remember, mean, they're called the Opium Warms because Britain basically forced opium exports into China against the will of Beijing. It's not a very pretty episode if you're a Westerner. It's like someone pushing fentanyl into America today against the will of Washington. you know, wouldn't look kindly upon that country. And that's the role of Britain, unfortunately. I'm getting way ahead of myself here, way back into Chinese history, but some of this is pretty fascinating in the book. Anyway, the point is that for reasons we don't need to go into, Cupertino feels threatened and they worry that their products are going to be blacklisted. And so they hire or name a team of executives that call themselves the Gang of Eight. And these are people who are basically the first senior people living in China for Apple. So Apple has been in China Chad (11:32.431) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (11:32.642) me. Patrick Mcgee (11:44.16) in a sense since 1993, if you're including the channels business, but really since 2000 for building stuff and really since 2008 in terms of selling stuff at the online Apple store. And yet no senior person has ever been living in the country. They're orchestrating events from afar and they're sending their top engineers in by the plane load to train and audit and supervise all these factories. sort of compare it to Uber being the world's biggest taxi provider without owning any taxis. Joel Cheesman (11:51.576) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (12:12.456) Apple managed to become the world's best manufacturer without owning any factories. so Apple has to basically turn this on its head. And so what the gang of eight working with the government relations team figure out is we are contributing an amazing amount of what the Chinese call indigenous innovation. And true, we're not doing it intentionally, but that is the impact of our operational presence in this country. Chad (12:32.43) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (12:39.702) and we need Beijing to understand it. Because if they understand just how much we're doing for hundreds of factories across the country, they will essentially remove the obstacles to us remaining here and they'll probably look upon us kindly. That's essentially exactly what happened. So in this process, they do their own supply chain study where they realize that they're investing $55 billion a year in 2015. And when Tim Cook goes to Zhang Nenghai, the citadel of communist power, Joel Cheesman (13:02.136) Mm-mm. Chad (13:02.778) 55 billion. Patrick Mcgee (13:06.766) 55 billion, I'll come back to what that figure means and stuff in a second. And so when Tim Cook goes to Jiangnan Hai in May 2016, just as Trump is campaigning on an America first platform and just as Trump is actually telling his users, his sorry, his fans to boycott Apple products. I mean, this is the climate that Tim Cook is operating in. He pledges, he basically takes that $55 billion figure, multiplies it by five and says to... Chad (13:08.748) Okay, okay. Patrick Mcgee (13:32.218) Chinese officials, we will invest $275 billion over the next five years. This number is so extraordinary that I could not find any corporate equivalent. In other words, you want to look at a company like Dell or something and find out how much they're investing and you just don't find anything close. So I had to look at government efforts and almost as a thought experiment, I decided to look at nation building efforts, not thinking that the numbers would be comparable and then being blown away that if you convert Marshall Plan spending. Joel Cheesman (13:54.102) Marshall Plan. Patrick Mcgee (13:59.5) In a sense, the plan that helped revive Europe after World War II, that's a four-year program that adds up to real adjusted figures of $131 billion. So Apple was investing in five years double what the Marshall Plan spent. And the Marshall Plan was for 16 countries. The Cook Plan, if you will, is for one country. And the Marshall Plan is actually, you some people think this isn't a great analogy or whatever. And like for whatever, it's imperfections. Chad (14:03.268) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (14:28.736) It, the imperfections actually all sort of point you in the direction of how big the Cook Plan is because the Marshall Plan isn't about industrial revival. It's partly about that, but it's also like half of the first year spending is just on food aid. And later you get agricultural revival, highways being built, railways being built, et cetera. The Cook Plan is exclusively about one sector, the advanced electronics industry, which China expert Barry Naughton has called, quote, the most important thing, end quote, for Xi Jinping. So it is Joel Cheesman (14:52.066) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (14:57.708) ruthlessly efficient, it is ridiculously targeted, and the caliber of talent that is undertaking the plan are America's top engineers rather than government bureaucrats. So if the analogy is imperfect, fine, but it's imperfect in ways that demonstrate just how impactful the Cook Plan was rather than the Marshall Plan. Joel Cheesman (15:16.226) Yeah. Patrick, I'm glad that you brought up some of the Chinese history, which I think a lot of our listeners probably don't know, but I'm also curious from the Apple side of it. know, Apple was basically bankrupt in 96 jobs comes back. I Mac is, is released iPod. We're off to the races was at what point did China go? damn. Apple is building us a workforce to not just build electronics, but build Patrick Mcgee (15:27.789) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:46.018) military equipment and build cars and build like was there a was there an inflection point where China clearly Realized what was happening and what they could benefit from Was it from the very early when they joined the WTO that said how can we get American companies in here to sort of train us on this stuff I know there's a lot of Tesla in your book as well as Apple in terms of how Chinese have bought at what was there an inflection point that China knew what they had and that could use it to their advantage militarily and diplomatically. Patrick Mcgee (16:16.408) So the wake up call, if that's what you're asking for, really isn't until Cook goes to Jiangxi, which is described to me as music to the ears of Beijing. They really didn't know how Apple was operating in the country, and they certainly didn't know the extent of it. To be fair, I don't think Apple knew either until they do their own supply chain study. And as strange as that might sound, Apple, especially under Tim Cook, is very much an engineering organization. mean, the engineers were not sitting around pontificating Chad (16:26.489) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (16:45.356) state politics or even provincial politics in China. The people that have China expertise that joined Apple in mid 2010s are sort of stunned at the level of ignorance among officials at Apple in terms of, we think of Foxconn as the company that Apple outsources their assembly to. It's also the company that they really outsource their politicking to. Chad (17:04.89) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (17:08.814) So it's Terry Guo and Foxconn that really handle the political side of how to build factories and sort of score points with local officials. Apple doesn't take control of that until at the earliest 2013. And they're really quite savvy now. I mean, I want to be clear. They go from like zero to hero or something like that, you know, in terms of their understanding of Chinese politics over the last 12, 13 years. But I don't think it's really understood by Apple until the supply chain study. And it's certainly not understood by Beijing until Apple goes hand in hand. or handing them glove to teach them all the things they're doing. And then Tesla is, in a sense, one of the beneficiaries of this because they agreed to adopt the Apple model and do for EVs what Apple had done for smartphones. But just to back up a little bit, Beijing since the 1980s has wanted technology transfer in the country and has had explicit policies of joint venture. So if me, Cheese and Chad want to go set up a business in China, that's fine. Chad (17:56.835) Hmm. Patrick Mcgee (18:04.706) but it's going to be 50 % owned by some Chinese entity. And the whole point of that is that the Chinese are going to learn from us and then sort of build their own business and thrive on their own. And the quid pro quo there is that the three of us are getting access to 1.4 billion people. So even if we're sort of willingly giving away some of our technology and know how it's going to be worth it, at least in the short term, and the Chinese sort of famously think long-term, so they think it's going to work for them. Technically that is supposed to be illegal after WTO in 2001. Joel Cheesman (18:19.704) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (18:33.08) but it never gets prohibited per se. It sort of evolves into what I call voluntary is the new mandatory. So there are ways that Western companies continue to do it. And the textbook example is high-speed rail. Sorry, there's a lot to unpack here, so I will stop. Chad (18:33.272) huh. Joel Cheesman (18:44.59) So you have Google around this time says, we're out of China because we're not willing to give up our data and everything about you. They don't let Amazon in, Facebook doesn't get in. Did that not play into Apple's calculus on should we be in China? Just the money and the share, it was just too much. Yeah, mean, there any come to Jesus moment at Apple where they said, hey, all of- Chad (18:46.855) yeah. Chad (19:05.85) Capitalism, baby. Capitalism. Joel Cheesman (19:12.48) Everyone in the valley is out on China. Maybe we should be too. Patrick Mcgee (19:17.774) So no, I think it's a short answer. But their experience is really different. And let's just give a sympathetic view to Apple here. All the companies you mentioned are in some way content or services companies. And Apple hasn't necessarily had great success in content or services in China, but they are a hardware company. And so it's almost unfair to compare Apple, a hardware company, with true companies that are in their size and geography, because it's Silicon Valley. But if you compare them to hardware companies, electronics companies, Apple is not unique, right? Everybody in electronics is moving to China. And if anything, Apple is late to the game, right? The likes of Dell, HP, Compaq, everyone's already working with Taiwan and China, but the time Apple goes there. So they're not unique in that sense. What they're unique in is their business model, which is more hardware focused than any of the companies you mentioned or any of the Magnificent 7. Chad (20:11.514) So back to the Gang of Eight real quick. So Apple's Gang of Eight helped China see that they were, they being Apple, were the biggest aid in nation building, probably, for China, at least from the outside. How in the hell did the US see this and not demand that Apple and other companies also kind of like reciprocate? I mean, it... Is it because Apple paid $22 billion in taxes last year? Is that good enough? It's amazing because all the training that happened, they trained what was it, 28 million people since 2008? And they've got a highly trained population now. I mean, again, this is a long, of like slow roll and boil, but this is where we're at today. Patrick Mcgee (20:49.731) Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (20:57.902) So the simple answer is that they didn't know. I mean, again, we in the media have failed to tell this story. I should give credit to Wayne Ma from the information of a task report who has covered supply chain and the initial $275 billion agreement, which was in 2016, was broken by Wayne in 2021. Now, what I don't think comes out of that reporting was a real tallying up of what the number was counting, why it was investment versus spend, and you have lots of confusion among readers as to Chad (21:00.419) Okay, gotcha. Chad (21:08.047) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:15.159) Wow. Chad (21:21.433) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (21:26.69) what the number really referred to. And I think my book goes into considerable detail about why it's counted as investment rather than spend. So for instance, we're not counting the bill of materials. It's not that Apple buys a whole lot of chips and aluminum chassis and things like that, and that adds up to 275. That is not even counted. That is zero dollars of that 275 billion. So if you were to add up that, you double or triple the figure immediately because the so-called bill of materials for the iPhone alone would be more than $50 billion a year. Chad (21:35.194) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:50.905) Wow. Chad (21:55.418) And they're buying that from local, I mean, they're generally buying a lot of this out of China, right? So, I mean, so you're talking about that first number and then the second number is like ginormous at that point. Patrick Mcgee (22:02.03) Yes, Apple's defense. Patrick Mcgee (22:08.204) Yes, and to be clear, that should not be counted as investment and it's not counted as investment because it's leaving China, right? Or maybe it's going to some Chinese consumers, but it's not an investment. so this is a little bit wonky. I don't know if this is where you want to go. So feel free to just edit this out after the fact. But if you're operating in China, let's say you're Walmart. Walmart earns more revenue than Apple. It's one of very few companies that does. they, according to some estimates, and I'm not a Walmart expert, a purchase is more than 60 to 70 % of their goods from China, right? So Walmart, for instance, had $600 billion of revenue roughly last year. If they were buying 60 % of that from China, then, you know, just by the numbers, they are already sort of spending more in China than Apple. But that's not investment. You know, if they purchase kitchenware and action figures, plastic dolls, whatever else comes from China, and it just gets on a ship and goes to Walmart, it's not staying in China. That's not an investment. That is just spend. What Apple realizes Government Affairs team and the Gang of Eight is that there's a concept in China called registered capital. And if you're a General Motors or if you're a Volkswagen, you can count certain wages as investment, as fixed asset investment, essentially, if you were training workers. So if you train workers how to build up the Volkswagen assembly line for the first 18 to 24 months, if you training them how to do this, it counts as registered capital. It counts as investment rather than spend. Once the operational line is basically set up. You're no longer doing investment because the workers know what they're doing and they're just carrying out the tasks like any other work would, you know, building something from Walmart or something. Apple basically makes the argument to Beijing. We never really leave that phase because we don't set up a production line for the RAV4 and just build the same car for seven years. We are upending the iPhone, the MacBook, the iPad, AirPods every single year. We're using new materials, new techniques, new degrees of automation, et cetera. So we're continually training. the workers. And so in a sense, what they're able to argue is that most of the wages of the three million people in China are in fact investment costs, are fixed assets, essentially, and therefore are registered capital. So they're counting that as investment. Now, someone could say, I don't like that accounting. That feels fuzzy to me or whatever. First of all, I would argue against that. But secondly, it's not an argument with me. It's an argument with Apple and it's an argument with Beijing because Apple came up with the argument and Beijing accepted the argument. Chad (24:26.457) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (24:32.462) So that's worth knowing and that's spelled out in some more chapters. But I think a lot of people on social media haven't read the book and so sometimes criticize the figure because they haven't seen where it derives from. Chad (24:41.636) So investment, you're talking about training, supply chain, manufacturing, mean all of those and machinery. Okay. Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (24:46.294) And machinery, machinery is massive, right? So something Apple does, which like doesn't have a name for it, but like it's not really outsourcing in the traditional sense. Outsourcing implies that the three of us come up with some sort of design and we send the blueprint over to some capable factory who knows what to do and conjures it into existence. That's never what Apple does. Apple trains their suppliers to come up with the next generation of components and parts. It actually does the machinery behind the processes. You know machine that builds the machine as Elon Musk sometimes calls it it even does the software for those machines and crucially of course it mounts them the machinery in other people's factories and They're not supposed to be able to use it for other products But in many cases they either do or they reverse engineer those machines So you basically get to copy the CNC machines that Apple installed on your factory floor for instance And of course, you know Chinese factories are very adept at at doing that So yeah, it's not just the people, it's the machinery. But what that means is that the suppliers and Apple supply chain aren't just working beyond their perceived capabilities, they're working beyond their actual capabilities because Apple is training them and giving them machinery that they otherwise couldn't afford. So the impact of this in the early 2000s is monumental. The impact of this today is probably much less because the Chinese are now so adept and world leading and have their own robotics and automation. which in a sense means there's a certain loss of control on the part of Apple, but it's been brilliant for Apple's margins because they have not outsold the number of iPhone units they shipped in 2015. That was the peak year for iPhone, but they continue to make more iPhone revenue because the phones cost more and their margins are higher. And it's largely because Chinese companies operating in China are footing more of the bill, if you will, by owning and operating the machinery themselves rather than having Apple do it for them. Joel Cheesman (26:33.038) So you talk about training and equipment and I'm curious your thoughts. I this is a show primarily about hiring, recruiting, talent, et cetera. That's a ton of people that have jobs in China now because of Apple that wouldn't have had them otherwise and jobs that probably aren't in America because Apple made this decision. And when you, when you see the chips act. Patrick Mcgee (26:50.659) Yes. Joel Cheesman (26:56.652) When you see, you know, Howard Lutnick talking about bringing these factories back and Americans screwing in little screws, and iPhones, your comment about automation, in China, where, where are we with China actually needing people to the degree that they did before? Can we actually bring these jobs and plants back to America? Has that ship sailed? I'm just curious what your thoughts are in the current landscape of all this transfer of talent and equipment, cetera. Chad (27:00.548) You Patrick Mcgee (27:27.31) So there's sort of this fever dream, if I'm not being too harsh, that if we can just automate everything, then we don't need 400,000 people in Zhengzhou putting together the next iPhone, and so maybe it can come to America. Look, I would love for that to happen. There's nothing in my ideology that's like preventing me from seeing that picture or something. But A, everything that can be automated in the iPhone supply chain already is automated. Like the final steps of the process really are handcrafted. in a way that you know, seats in a Ferrari are or something, right? Like there's a lot of like hand touches for a luxury product. Kind of amazing for something that is shipped in the quarter billion units per year. But there's all kinds of automation in the process. So people either think it's either automated or it's handcrafted. It's both. Maybe we can get to a stage because of AI advances applied to manufacturing where more and more stuff really is automated. Chad (28:07.866) Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (28:22.734) you know, a lights out factory where basically it's just being orchestrated by a few clever engineers. And if that's the case, people think, well, why can't it happen in Pittsburgh? Look, if that can happen, amazing. The trouble is even then you are working with, you know, mined metals and refined materials, et cetera. And all of that is happening in China. So it's not as though if we just have a breakthrough in automation, it all transfers here. You're still having to put stuff into the lights out factory. And unfortunately, all of that stuff is currently happening in China. And who's going to come out with the lights out factory? Well, at the scale that Apple needs, it's going to be Chinese companies because they're the only ones sort of doing the partial steps today because China, I think I'm getting this right, has more operational robots in its factories than the rest of the world combined. And if I'm slightly getting that wrong, it won't be wrong within a year or two. You know what I mean? Like the advances they are making are absolutely incredible. And they have a lot of leverage to keep that business in China rather than see it go off to Ohio. Chad (29:00.036) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:11.16) Yeah. Chad (29:21.24) Yeah, well, we've seen so we actually talked to an entrepreneur who she said she was doing all the research to try to onshore her product called Busy Baby. She's been she's been on the on the trail as well. Yeah, yeah, she's on the daily. Did all the math. And that's what was so interesting for me is that even if she could onshore, she would have to buy the equipment from China because she could not get it here. She would have to buy the materials because she could not get it here. Patrick Mcgee (29:34.424) She was on The Daily, right? The New Yorker, yeah, I remember her. Chad (29:50.49) in the US. that to me, it just it's like you're talking about this fever dream. I don't think you're being mean at all. I mean, it does seem like a fever dream. It seems like we haven't thought through much of this and trying to blanket everything with a tariff. Patrick Mcgee (29:52.504) Yes. Patrick Mcgee (30:06.35) That's the great irony of introducing all these tariffs because I get that you want to build stuff in America, but so many of the parts, components, metals, materials are all coming from abroad that you can't just do this all at once. You need some sort of tiered system where over the course of many years, things get tariffed at a different rate if you're not taking action, but just giving it at a 25 or even 145 % rate all at once. Chad (30:09.7) Mm. Patrick Mcgee (30:32.01) is just mind bogglingly stupid. I mean, it is not going to produce the intended effects. And if you look at the history of tariffs, I it's just all sorts of unintended impact. mean, silly things like we tariffed cotton coming from Japan, I think in the seventies or eighties. And the result was that synthetic fibers like Lycra became the huge import from Japan because they were exempt from the tariffs, right? So it's like people and entrepreneurs find ways of getting around this stuff. Chad (30:46.424) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (30:57.794) that doesn't sort of just align with the ideological goal of he who announces the tariffs. Chad (31:02.404) Joel's always wearing lycra pants. real quick, vocational schools in China. That is pretty much Apple's doing, pretty much, right? The amount of training. And Joel and I talk about, you know, when we went to school, high schools, we had vocational training back then, and it was ripped out by Reagan, trickle down economics, whatever the hell you want to call it, right? But it's gone. It is vanished. But we're seeing Apple pretty much subsidizing that in China. Joel Cheesman (31:02.648) Mm. Chad (31:32.09) Is there any opportunity, do you think, especially now that the book is out, now the information is out, that we can start to ask companies to do that back in the US, to be able to get our individuals skilled back to the point where, I mean, we can actually compete with China, maybe not in small manufacturing, but in other ways. Patrick Mcgee (31:52.654) Yeah. So I used to live in Germany covering the auto industry. And what's fascinating is they have a dual track program for education where when you're 15 or 16 years old, you essentially choose whether you're going to take a sort of more academic route, studying something like humanities, like I studied, or whether you want to go the vocational route. And I feel like in Canada, where I'm from or America, like that's maybe even looked down upon in Germany. It's not right. Like you are going to end up being an apprentice at BMW, which is a great employer. Um, and you're going to be learning, you know, Chad (31:55.427) Really? Chad (32:19.705) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (32:21.448) combination of like hands-on how to work with machine read. These days it's often more likely that you're holding an ipod than it is a hammer. But you're doing like the practical training in addition to the sort practical education. And I love that idea and Germany has sort of done very well in it. I want to be more optimistic about it but Germany's economy actually really hasn't experienced growth over the last five years. And if there's one country that's experiencing the same overexposure to China problem that Apple has, unfortunately it is Germany. So I sort of say, idealize that system with some caveats right now that it's actually not working out incredibly well. I mean, a friend of mine has just written a book called, I think, Broken Republic about Germany. So I don't want to be sort of, you know, esteeming the German system too well, but there's nevertheless a bunch of models to learn from them. The occasional school comment, I have to say this came out of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and I stand by it, but it's not based, it's not in the book. What I'm referring to is that the manufacturing design engineers who go over to China by the plane load, they would describe the training that they offer to China, to Chinese factories as the Ivy League equivalent of hardware engineering. know, another person said the training we offered was second to none. And if you look at yeah, the fact that they've trained 28 million people I don't think it's an unfair comparison at all to say that Apple has played the role of a great vocational school Not that they're giving lectures. Of course, they're not giving lectures They're giving on-the-ground training and the the proof is in the pudding to get the metaphor right this time that that Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc. are all world-leading when it comes to building smartphones and EVs are as well and I think the Chad (33:32.996) Wow. Chad (33:36.783) Yeah. Chad (33:56.324) Okay. Patrick Mcgee (33:58.286) triumph of Apple, if you will, has had this unheralded impact on the entire electronic sector, specifically around four industrial clusters, Shanghai, Suzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. The impact is just really hard to grapple with. mean, I'll just give one figure from, you know, it's nice to go with incontestable figures in a sense, right? Because then it's harder to argue against. So the official tally. From Tim Cook and this is a few years ago But of how many people in China are working on the Apple supply chain is three million people The official tally of how many Americans across all industries are working to fulfill Chinese demand Okay, so from 1.4 billion customers is as low as 1 million and as high as 2.6 million So regardless of which estimate you take one Super corporation has more of an impact on job creation in China and all Chinese people's demands Chad (34:32.535) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (34:56.29) have for across all industry on America. I mean, sorry, these are mind-bogglingly large numbers. Every number you need needs to be put into context because otherwise our brains just can't compute. Sorry, I could go on, but yeah. Apple's influence is enormous is the conclusion there. Chad (35:02.159) Yes. Joel Cheesman (35:13.016) I want you to, if you could for me, take out the crystal ball. it sounds to me like China's got us by the short and Curly's. and we are currently in negotiation. We're in a tear for by all accounts. tick tock is still legal in America, even after a bipartisan, legislation to ban it. What does the world look like, at the end of the year is China making American iPhones in India? Is there a major conflict that you're envisioning? Like what does this look like in a year? Patrick Mcgee (35:47.758) So I think there's just a failure of imagination on my part. I don't see much but the status quo. So look, Apple is moving some operations to India, but it's more make believe than reality at this point. When they say the phone is going to be made in India, and they never say this directly, it's through reporting, right? But I think you can tell that Apple is orchestrating the move because it sounds good for them. Really what's being moved so far is final assembly. So if you think that there are thousand steps in making an iPhone, if the final one is done in India, Chad (35:58.479) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (36:17.612) That is a quote unquote substantive change to the product. So legally you can say it was made in India and legally you can avoid tariffs. Trump has come out against that, which really does sort of throw a wrench into the system that Apple's trying to do because Apple wants to build like the breadth and depth of the supply chain in India over the next 10, 15, 20 years. So Trump making that difficult for them puts Apple in a bind where they either have to sort of contravene the president's statements. or give up their India plans. Neither of those options is very good. But Beijing also has the same, well, maybe to put it differently, Beijing and Cupertino, broadly speaking, have the same interests. Both of them would prefer to just keep making everything in China for different reasons, obviously, but basically the partnership works really well for them. So Beijing has put up blockers, if you will, of sending... Chinese people that have the experiential know-how of how to run the production lines of them going to India, right? So they're not able to get visas. And the machines, the robotics, sort of like we talked about earlier, a lot of that is built in China and China is making it difficult to send that to India as well. So India is sort of like the next logical place to move. If you're a contract manufacturer, if you're a supplier and a lot of your stuff is labor intensive and you're chasing labor and not just in terms of cost, but in terms of abundance and in terms of, India actually subsidizing some of this stuff through various schemes to scheme sort of has a bad, you know, North American context. But but in India, which is sort of British English scheme is just a word for program. Right. So various programs like I think it's all made in India or make in India. So so I'm getting off track here other than to say that the moves to India, a aren't all that substantive. Chad (37:41.754) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (38:07.094) And B, insofar as they are going to be substantive, both Washington and Beijing are against it. And that is going to make it really quite difficult. So when I just look at sort of the chessboard or the risk board of the world map, I just see China getting better and better at this kind of stuff. And nobody else has a sort of Nietzschean will to power based on manufacturing prowess the way China does. So I don't know that anybody competes with them. Because as much as you could say a lot of it's moving to Vietnam, Vietnam doesn't have the scale. that China has. It's never going to be a massive threat. India does have the scale. They don't have the skill. And insofar as Apple wants to build the skill there, supply chains move really slowly and B, the two superpowers are both against it. So I don't know what the rosy optimistic scenario is here. And to be fair, I'm not calling for therefore a collapse in Apple revenues or something. I think Apple continues to build stuff in China and everything's basically fine. The caveat being that AI is taking on more more precedence and Apple sort of failing there. Chad (38:35.15) Yeah. Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (39:02.094) and the failure is more pronounced in China because they can't even use sort of chat GBT, which is like sort of their escape hatch here. So I do see problems there, but I'm not necessarily predicting some sort of demise of manufacturing prowess on the part of Apple. But I do quote someone saying, the relationship they enjoy with Beijing could blow up any day. Chad (39:21.892) So talking about phones for the most part in this case, but talk about BYD, Huawei, Xiaomi. Did Apple combine with VW and Tesla literally just give China the lead in EVs? And do we have a chance in getting that back? know that Ford CEO has been driving a Xiaomi. I don't know if he's given it back yet or not farly and said that he, no, he said he loves it. He said, it's a beautiful car. It's a wonderful car. Have we lost? Patrick Mcgee (39:43.15) I've not heard that. Chad (39:51.19) Automotives because EVs next whether we want to believe it or not. It's that that's what's happening next China's got the lead when it comes to when it comes to EVs Have we lost that have we lost that fight too? Patrick Mcgee (40:05.326) So let me just say I really was more optimistic about the West in 2016 to 2020 when I was living in Germany and reporting on the German automotive industry, because it felt to me like they understood the threat of Tesla. And Tesla was a tiny company back then. especially, I mean, maybe not in terms of market cap, because I think that's when they overtook GM around 2016. But in terms of market share, I mean, it was kind of pitiful in a certain degree. Chad (40:21.86) Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (40:31.778) And you could look at a company like Audi, just like the luxury unit of Volkswagen. And it looked like once Audi introduced batteries, they would just wipe the floor with Tesla. That did not happen at all. I mean, the Germans really struggled to migrate into EVs. And you can sort of understand why. The sort of heart of the car, brain of the car, however you want to put it, really is the internal combustion engine. And that's what the Germans are so damn good at. And so by taking that away and replacing it with batteries, Joel Cheesman (40:31.918) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (40:56.494) You're really taking away the IP of the Germans. And so there's great reluctance on the part of the labor forces and the labor forces really do have great power within Germany. The Chinese on the other hand, have the battery supply chain on lock. mean, whether you're looking at the cathode, anode or just the other battery IP, and we were talking 70, 80, 90 % of the material is all coming from China. And maybe some of the cathodes and stuff are the materials. Chad (41:19.481) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (41:22.894) What am I trying to think? Cobalt is mined from places like Congo, but then it's all refined in China. So we are at a massive disadvantage as things go towards EVs. Tesla is doing quite a good job of having three localized supply chains that really are not exposed to China. The supply chain around Berlin is very German. The supply chain around California and Texas is very American. Tesla is, as they say, the most American-made car you can buy. Chad (41:44.57) Mm-hmm. Patrick Mcgee (41:49.23) On the other hand, the one around Shanghai is very Chinese. so Tesla sort of adopted the China model by training up the local supply chain, who then use their skills to upgrade BYD, Xiaomi and everything else. So they played quite a role there. I think an unheralded one, and I don't think one that I'm overstating, because sometimes people will say that doesn't sound right, because that wasn't until 2019. The Chinese have been building EVs since 2001. And it's like, true. How concerned were you about Chinese EVs in 2018? Chad (42:17.626) Not at all, yeah. Patrick Mcgee (42:19.648) Exactly. Tesla really changes the game. it's before Trump 2.0 comes on that Biden is the person who introduces 100 % tariffs on Chinese EVs. So the Chinese EV story takes a radical step forward within 24 months of Tesla setting up its operations in Shanghai. And it's because Tesla adopts the Apple model, literally hires people with Apple experience, and begins training the local supply chain. Joel Cheesman (42:46.494) It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. That is Patrick McGee, everybody, the author of Apple in China. Patrick, for our listeners and watchers that want to know more about you, maybe buy the book. Where do they go? Patrick Mcgee (42:59.854) I'd love for you to buy the book. Of course it's on Amazon. Bookshop.org is a site that I find few people know about. It sort of operates like Amazon, but it distributes books through your local independent bookseller. That's great. But you know, it's basically everywhere. I mean, I hope it's in the window of your local bookshop. And if it's not, please yell out the staff for me. Get it in the window. But it should not be difficult to find. And it is on Apple Books, which honestly, I give loads of credit to Apple for that. I like that they're not sort of selecting, know, out selecting it, let's say. Chad (43:17.818) It's on Apple. Chad (43:23.353) Yeah. Patrick Mcgee (43:27.403) And appleintrina.com is my website, so you can find more material there, can find reviews. Yeah, not a difficult book to find, I hope. Joel Cheesman (43:35.662) Thanks for your time, Patrick. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (43:37.178) Thanks, Patrick. We out.

What do ghosting, bogus job numbers, and your overpriced degree have in common? They're all part of the gauntlet job seekers are running in today’s economy. On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, we welcome CNET’s Katherine Watt, author of “Trying to Find a Job? In This Economy? You Need to Follow These Rules.”  She joins us to break down: 🔹 Why the official 4.2% unemployment rate is laughably disconnected from reality 🔹 Why “just apply more!” is terrible advice 🔹 How companies are laying off workers and  hoarding power like Gollum with a LinkedIn account 🔹 Why optimizing your resume for AI is a crapshoot, and ghost jobs are the new catfishing 🔹 And why the "hustle economy" might be less about passion and more about survival If you’re frustrated, broke, and staring into the resume void—this one’s for you. Katherine brings the data, Chad brings the snark, and Joel brings coupons for free Chalupas. 🎧 Listen now, before another job post vanishes into the ATS abyss. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:24.846) OHHHH YEEEEAH! Joel Cheesman (00:29.73) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman writing shotgun as always Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Catherine watt, a money writer for CNET Catherine Watt, welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:36.187) Sup? Katherine Watt (00:45.319) Thank you for having me. Chad (00:46.555) She's also JJ in TJ's sister. You didn't know that? Katherine Watt (00:50.757) Yeah. Chad (00:56.753) Wait a minute, she's not? She's not? Joel Cheesman (00:58.062) Leave the jokes to me, my friend. Leave the jokes to me. Katherine Watt (00:58.364) No, but I... I'm not TJ and JJ's sister, but I am a descendant of James Watt, who invented the steam engine. So Watt's full electricity is... Chad (01:08.726) that's impressive. Joel Cheesman (01:09.378) Wasn't he under Reagan, the ecology, James Watt? I'm going way back in time, but okay, different. Chad (01:17.913) Not the same guy, yeah, not even close to the same guy. Steam engine, Reagan, not the... Leave history to me. Katherine Watt (01:20.253) I'm missing you. Joel Cheesman (01:26.126) All right, Catherine, a lot of our listeners, viewers won't know who you are. So give us a little bit about what makes Catherine tick. Katherine Watt (01:26.415) Thank Katherine Watt (01:36.951) what makes Katherine tick? Bad headlines, people walking slow on the sidewalk, poor subway etiquette. Joel Cheesman (01:49.122) I didn't say what ticks you off. said what makes you tick. Nuance. Yeah, that is good stuff. Give us the elevator pitch on you. Chad (01:51.633) Although that's all good to know. Although that's all good to know. Katherine Watt (01:52.125) Hello, what makes me tick? Katherine Watt (01:57.361) What makes me tick? Yeah, so I have been covering the economy for the past few years. I started out really just grinding in the housing market area and so really focused on mortgage rates in particular, federal reserve, yeah, fascinating stuff. But over the past two years, I've been transitioning into more economy-based reporting and really Chad (02:12.379) exciting. Katherine Watt (02:24.801) My goal is to be creating content that is not for the people in the high level offices on Wall Street. It's for people that did not study economics. I didn't study economics. So as I've been teaching myself, I want to be creating content that is understandable and is clear to how it affects you. And I think that's an area where. Chad (02:45.137) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (02:49.565) The playing field hasn't always been level of some, you could read the Wall Street Journal and not understand what they're talking about. And so I really want to cut through that jargon because it's frustrating to me when it just seems so obtuse. Chad (02:55.64) yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:56.752) The Main Street, if you will. The Main Street, yeah. Chad (03:06.735) Yeah, well, you're so how do you get from, you know, to the CNET economics desk, right? How do you get that beat per se? Where did you start? How did you get to that beat? And then we're not going to be talking about that as much today. We're to be talking about job search, the landscape, those types of things and how they all come together. But a little bit about you, though, how do you how did you get to the economics beat? Katherine Watt (03:33.501) Honestly, I wish I had a story. I really just got placed there out of college. And when I tell you that when I started, I did not know what a HELOC was. it really just, I had an internship, signed a full-time offer. And my first beat was actually covering health and wellness as an editor. And so. Chad (03:39.683) Okay. Chad (03:49.162) huh. Chad (03:55.141) Okay. Katherine Watt (03:57.143) I was terrified and I ended up here and ended up really liking it. because I love doing research, love data, and that has all of those aspects in this coverage. So I wish there was some fascinating story, but I kind of was plopped here. Chad (04:08.635) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (04:16.216) Well, nothing, nothing says thrills and chills like stagflation. So let's, let's party, baby. Let's go. Let's do this. Chad (04:20.698) Hahahaha Chad (04:25.585) Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we try to get into our listeners brains is that the workforce is the economy. Without the workforce, you have no economy. So what you're doing is you're actually you started the economy and you're working your way down. And the article that actually just came out this week is called, Why Can't I Get a Job Right Now? Nine Expert Tips to Stand Out to Recruiters. I don't know if you'd call me an expert and I've been quoted so that's suspect. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:51.736) She quoted you for the article chat, so you're clearly an expert. Chad (04:54.863) Yeah, whatever. From ghosting to burnout, here's how you stay sane, good luck kids, and get hired in a brutal, brutal job market. So what landed you with this? Because you're talking about housing, stagflation, and now you're like, wait a minute, this job market sucks. Joel Cheesman (05:12.792) To ghosting, housing to ghosting, yeah. Katherine Watt (05:15.981) Yeah, definitely. So it started with everything that we cover on the economy basis. A lot of it is data. And there's a pretty big disconnect when you look at the numbers and you see unemployment low. I think it's up 4.2 right now. And historically, yes, low. But then you'll see these headlines saying robust job market. Everything's great. No need to cut interest rates. And then you Chad (05:44.453) Lies! Katherine Watt (05:45.629) And then you ask anyone, or if you just scroll on LinkedIn. And my editor and I have just been sending these posts to each other back and forth, like, look at this, look at this. All these stories of people who are desperate to work and are having no luck. And it really struck me at this time of year because people are graduating from college, they're graduating from high school, and especially leaving college, do you think, with this degree? you're told it should be easy to find a job and the reality is very opposite. And so we wanted to do two things here. And one is just make it clear that your feelings of that struggle are very real. And here are the strategies that you can use. We don't just want to be doom and gloom and say this all sucks, which it does. I think we could probably all agree there's enough depressing news out there right now. so at least Korea giving some. Joel Cheesman (06:46.104) What do you, what do you think is the disconnect? mean, we get headlines about, you know, unemployment rate is still 4 % ish. you know, inflation is under control. Everything seems rosy in the headlines, but I think we agree with you. Like the, the stories on the street is if I'm right out of college, it's really hard to get a job. If I'm even Gen X where I should be making the most money, I'm being replaced by younger workers who can use AI. Chad (07:10.289) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:13.326) automation, of course, we're hearing a lot about. what, you know, what, what can you, can you, like, crystallize it for us? What is going on with the numbers that the government's giving us and what people are saying on the street? Chad (07:15.227) Well, they're cheaper too. Yeah. Katherine Watt (07:26.575) Yeah, of course. I think there's two aspects here that one, the disconnect on an emotional level is that I could say unemployment's at 4.2%. What does that mean? Like what it means to people is how they feel about the job market. And if they can't get a job or they can get a well-paying job or find, you know, gainful employment, that's not a healthy labor market to them, regardless of unemployment rate. The other part of it is that the way data is collected, by the BLS and reported really does not reflect what the situation is actually like. And so I often refer to LICEP, which is Gene Lovewig's research center, where he measures the true rate of unemployment, the true quality of life index. And I believe his figures would show that the true rate of unemployment is actually something closer to 25%. And I've spoken to him a few times, and it's really striking. Joel Cheesman (08:21.134) Whoa, ho. Chad (08:22.961) you Katherine Watt (08:25.457) because it has a much broader view of the data. And I think he's doing some amazing stuff there. And so that's on the statistical side of things. There is a genuine disconnect. And we're even now starting to see questions about the quality of all the reports we're getting, inflation data, like we got this morning. And so there's a disconnect on both ends there. Chad (08:51.505) So the BLS data is always been, it's been suspect for a long time because it's looking backwards 30 days. There are companies in our space like Aspen Tech Labs and Linkup. I mean, in just a ton of like, I think Lightcast even does it, but they're all focused on jobs that are available right now, right? So it's like real time data, what's open, what industries, et cetera, et cetera. And Joel Cheesman (09:13.389) Yeah. Chad (09:17.805) Kind of to answer I think Joel's question if they shared those real numbers Joel, it's called mutiny. It's called rebellion It's called bullshit right there. They would be calling bullshit on what's actually happening. Yes. Yes Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, it's it's kind of like trying it sounds like trying to keep people Somewhat at bay even though they feel it Joel Cheesman (09:23.843) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:27.874) Pitchforks and Frankenstein. Yeah, that's okay. Katherine Watt (09:39.663) Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I will say there are pieces of data that do show this pain that we're feeling and people kind of discount them. So whether that's ADP numbers, whether that's, you know, consumer confidence, one thing that is pretty important is hiring. Hiring has slowed down and we can see that that's clear as day. so. Yeah, people don't really. Chad (09:46.449) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:57.659) Yes. Chad (10:02.308) Layoffs are up. Katherine Watt (10:06.621) highlight that as much because they focus on the big number, the CPI, the unemployment rate. But that's significant. there's other research from other companies that people who have been out of work in 2024 are still looking for work now. so jobless claims, also continuing jobless claims. There are ways that you can see this weakness. I just don't think it's being highlighted. And the people. Chad (10:08.176) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:35.8) What's your sense? What's your sense? Because I think it's blue collar and white collar and maybe no collar. What sort of your take on is everyone feeling the pain? Are there spots where there is sort of a healthy labor market? What did you find? Katherine Watt (10:36.221) on. Katherine Watt (10:48.765) I think there's pain being felt across the spectrum. If you look online, there are people who are saying they can't even get a job at a fast food restaurant. I've talked to people that have well established in their careers and they never expected to be out of work and be out of work for six months. So I think it's ranging across white collar to blue collar to no collar, I think. Chad (11:02.331) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (11:16.081) When you see companies much like the Fed in a wait and see period, they're also in this wait and see and that has theirs. They're, they don't have the incentive to go and invest like we saw in, you know, the hiring boom around the pandemic. So they're going to protect their profits. And ultimately that hurts the people who have just invested. Joel Cheesman (11:22.606) Tariffs. Katherine Watt (11:40.933) and taken on massive amounts of debts to get college degrees, that's hurting so many people. Chad (11:46.811) Feels like the perfect storm in a bad way from the standpoint of we're pushing migrants out who are doing incredibly important jobs for the supply chain. Then we're pushing hundreds of thousands of federal employees out. We've got AI that are pushing, again, more white collar people out. And all those white collar individuals are not gonna go pick tomatoes. They're not gonna go work the docks. They're not gonna drive semi. So you've got that happening. Then you've got kids coming out of school who are deeply in debt. So it just seems like this perfect storm of, shit. Joel Cheesman (12:25.91) Yeah, Chad, but the government says that they want to put in little screws and iPhones. So I think if we just get that back, we'll be fine. We'll be fine. Chad (12:30.661) Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Katherine Watt (12:33.477) Yeah, once you build the factories first, yeah. You know, it definitely is the perfect storm. I mean, there's a massive influx of really talented people in the labor market and very few roles available. so the layoffs, the mass federal layoffs, shouldn't have happened, but they couldn't have come at a worse time because there's just so much uncertainty. yeah, and the part with Chad (12:48.283) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:59.899) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (13:03.415) know, losing such a key part of our workforce is where there are fears about the economy slowing down, you know, we're starting to see that in the house. Joel Cheesman (13:12.046) You have an interesting perspective because you're in the mortgage space, the real estate and what's going on there. Chad and I, from afar, when COVID hit and money was free, everyone's buying homes. I'm going to live in Vermont and work for a company in San Francisco. You have an interesting perspective, I think, from the work from home, where mortgages are going. There's this whole phenomenon of Katherine Watt (13:23.236) Yeah. Chad (13:33.915) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:37.806) No one's leaving their job. used to be the great resignation. Now it's the great stay. where you sit with such an expertise in mortgages and real estate, what are you seeing in terms of the job market and where you live kind of every day? Chad (13:42.597) cycles. Katherine Watt (13:52.253) Mm-hmm, right. I mean, there is, like you said, with the great stay, we're also seeing that with mortgage rates. That's the lock-in effect. So people who got those mortgages in 2020, 2021, when they were below 3%, congrats to them, honestly. They can't afford to... Chad (14:00.891) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (14:13.837) move somewhere else and take on a new mortgage that's double that rate, especially considering that home prices have went up astronomically and are not going to be coming down, even if they're slower in how they're increasing. And so I think people are feeling really boxed into a corner in terms of where they can go to work. And as these return to office mandates are kind of spreading, mean, we're going to start to see that at some point people do need to. buy and sell homes because they don't have a choice. They're getting married, they're having kids, they're getting divorced. And so you do see some of those transactions happening, but I mean, if you can afford and you can't afford to move and you don't have to, I think that's putting a lot of pressure on people. And that's why we're not seeing, we haven't had like a good spring home buying season in years, and this year is not going to bring. Joel Cheesman (15:05.283) And employers don't mind that you're stuck where you are, because then you can't leave, right? Katherine Watt (15:08.527) Yeah. Chad (15:08.857) God no. Well, and they don't have to give you raises and they don't have to, I mean, they don't have to do anything to be quite frank. Katherine Watt (15:14.203) Yeah. And there's also that fear of layoffs. you, you know, I mean, they're happening and in certain industries like tech or media, media, especially, there's always that kind of fear. You're going to be less likely to want to take on a big purchase, refinance your mortgage. If you were to 3%, I don't know why you would be refinancing now. But, you know, there's also that pressure that people don't feel like they have the Chad (15:21.722) Hmm. Katherine Watt (15:41.789) Like in a real estate situation, there's a buyer's market and there's a seller's market. There's also like the hiring. Right now it's clear. I think employers always kind of have the upper hand, but it feels very starkly employer's market and a seller's market. Chad (15:58.319) Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's go into an extension of the article, right? We've got Katherine here. She wrote the article. I'm sure she has even more questions that she would like to dig into, but we do too, Katherine. We do too. So you picked these nine focus areas. Was that pretty much because the feedback that you got back, you distilled it down, and that's pretty much how you picked it? Okay. Katherine Watt (16:05.575) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (16:18.557) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (16:26.437) Yeah, pretty much. As I talked to various people, I wanted to get there. I mean, there's a lot of boilerplate answers out there. You could make a list of 45 tips. You can make a list of three tips. But I did want it to be directly from these experts, not just me spewing stuff as someone who is employed and not looking for a job. I wanted that to be real. I mean, some of the tips, networking, that everyone would suggest that, right? Chad (16:31.441) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:35.792) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (16:54.496) As old as time networking. Katherine Watt (16:56.253) But I think especially, I think about my parents if they had to get back into the labor market today and they had to go through optimizing their resume for ATS, that would be a brain shock to them. And so I think there are a lot of people that don't know about that or its prevalence, even if it's not that new of a technology. Chad (16:56.261) Yes. Chad (17:02.629) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:17.617) Well, let's go ahead and dig into that, because that's your second point. Optimize your resume for automated software. I don't know how many people in our industry, their brains would blow up if they heard you say that. Because it's so, and here's why, it's so hard because you don't know what system you're actually applying into. And there are so many different applicant tracking systems. Not to mention there are so many point solutions that fit on top of the applicant tracking systems. So I mean and that's hard then you've got workday who's now in court because they're discriminating because of their AI Which probably wasn't AI in the first place. But anyway, there's a lot of just crazy mixed up shit But to be able to say optimize your resume for for an automated system I mean, that's that's difficult. It's it's it's very difficult to be able to game the system, but it is Joel Cheesman (18:06.924) Yeah, it's, it's become beat, beat the computer, beat the computer to get a job. Chad (18:12.375) And that's where your first point was, know, quality over quantity. You're seeing people go in and literally apply and even use some of these AI systems to be able to apply for a thousand jobs a day. Right. So you can do these different things and you're hoping that that AI can figure out the best way for the system, whatever system that whatever applicant track system that is to be able to to actually get you in the door. Katherine Watt (18:25.799) Yeah. Chad (18:40.783) But to be quite frank right now, it's a toss up. I mean, that's hard for job seekers to be able to give them one way to go and optimize your resume. It just can't do it. It's hard. Katherine Watt (18:54.895) Yeah, and you know, I had we had cut down that section a lot because we had very specific stuff. But the point is, you can't really give that specific advice because then everyone will do the same thing. I mean, it is as Daniel's out told me, it's not about beating the computer. It's really trying to work with it. And if you know how to use these systems, whether you're using Chad (18:59.459) I'm sure. Chad (19:08.271) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (19:23.837) TATTPT, if that's back up and running again, I think it was out yesterday, or you're using a service to help you optimize. I mean, you really still do need to put in the elbow grease and know what the job description is. But I think you also can't fly blind and just hope your resume fits because you think you're qualified for the job. Joel Cheesman (19:45.998) You talk to a wide range of, guess, generations for the article. Give us a sense of our younger people sort of doing this automated lazy apply thousands of applications versus what maybe older people like us are doing. Is everyone doing the same thing? Like, what did you find in your research in terms of generation breakdown? Katherine Watt (19:50.94) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (20:07.739) I didn't find a huge difference across generations. I imagine that maybe there is much higher usage among younger generations of AI and things like that. But I would also probably argue that people that have been in school and have been handing in AI-generated essays and papers have learned that teachers and professors have their own ways of spotting that. And they've probably felt that backfire on them before. And so I think that's an interesting side of the coin that Chad (20:26.555) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (20:37.118) People don't always talk about they think that younger generations are lazier, but they might just be like. Joel Cheesman (20:42.734) Could there be more automation with the older folks than the younger folks? Because they have that experience? Interesting. Katherine Watt (20:46.671) It depends. yeah, I mean, the people that I've talked to in the older range who are later on in their career are using these AI platforms because I mean, especially when you've been out of work for months at a time, there's no doubt that you haven't been Googling, what am I doing wrong? And there's no doubt that you're coming across that ATS things exist. And so of course, you're going to try it if you're Chad (20:59.569) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (21:15.643) if you haven't before and that's not working for you. Chad (21:18.639) Yeah, I think the biggest differentiation that I've seen, Joel, is Xers or I don't know, boomers or even look for jobs anymore. But Xers and millennials are more apt to use desktop versus mobile. You got the kids that are out there and they're using their mobile apps to be able to do that. And it's just what you feel comfortable with. yeah, mean, and for me, it's funny because we talk to employers all the time and employers talking about job seekers gaming the system using AI. It's like, wait a minute, time out. We just had a long discussion about you using AI, right? So this isn't, it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. There shouldn't be anything wrong with that. And to be quite frank, if they're not lying on the resume, right? If they are meeting the requirements of the job and that's what they're saying, then who cares if they use Chad GBT, Chad GBT, or even Joel GBT, right? It doesn't matter. Joel Cheesman (22:14.734) That's a tech no one needs to be using, Chad, just so you know. Which makes me think of the duality of ghosting, right? How many recruiters, applicants, they don't message me back. Well, guess what, dude? You've been doing the same to them for decades, like, and now you're complaining about it. What did you find about ghosting, Catherine? I get some thoughts on that, I know. Chad (22:17.307) Yeah. It's full of fart jokes, Yeah. Chad (22:33.937) learn from you, Dad. Katherine Watt (22:36.26) Yeah, ghosting is super prevalent and I mean, it does happen on both sides, but obviously it's way more painful if you're the one that is looking for a job. I think there's a figure that 40 % of people are experiencing ghosting and they're applying to more jobs. Which is a staggering number. Yeah, I mean, just also what the people I've talked to, they just want to like a rejection email. Chad (22:42.353) Mm. Joel Cheesman (22:55.662) We can do better than that, employers. My God, 40%. Chad (22:58.558) yeah. Joel Cheesman (23:04.056) Yeah. Katherine Watt (23:04.253) They're not looking for the informational interview. They just want to know. It is a strong closure. So just tell me if I didn't get the role or the interview, and don't leave me hanging for months on end. And then you get a random automated email two years later that you didn't get the role. mean, it's painful. I think employers do owe applicants at least that if they're going to say that they can't use AI. Joel Cheesman (23:31.406) And hello with AI, there's no reason why they can't have some sort of a custom like, thanks for playing. Uh, but we went, we went a different direction. Well, yeah, I mean, before I remember the old postcards, I would get in the mail like, thanks for applying. Here's a coupon for a free Chalupa while you're, while you're there. Katherine Watt (23:35.057) night. Chad (23:37.655) even before AI. Katherine Watt (23:41.021) Now. Chad (23:49.009) That's why you always apply to the taco bells. Joel Cheesman (23:50.21) That's why I only applied to Taco Bell for the coupons, but that's a different podcast. Chad (23:56.667) So digging into this, Catherine, is there anything that you wanted to dig into with a couple of old souls like ours? Joel's is more of an old soul than mine. I said your soul, I didn't say. That's a good thing. Yeah, that's okay. Anything from your side that you would like to know? Katherine Watt (24:06.333) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:09.025) You're older than me just for the record. so yes. Katherine Watt (24:18.621) Yeah, definitely. I was kind of curious. The last time I was looking for a job was in the pandemic. So I obviously felt like when mortgage rates were really low, it was a little bit easier, at least for me. How has the job market really changed since then with the normalization of remote work? Maybe it's de-normalizing now. How has that really changed hiring practices? Chad (24:25.147) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:46.478) it has created an incredible amount of volatility, uncertainty, fear, and doubt. I think that we've, we've moved to a place where I just want a job in X to, want a job in X in this location at this company. So to the, like to get that right. Is really challenging for people because a lot of people just want a job. Like ideally I want to do this here and, and, and for this amount of money. And so You want that, but then you also have this, like we said, perfect storm of competition. Companies are like putting everything on pause. There are fewer recruiters than there ever used to be. companies to their, to their defensive, they're trying to figure out how do we automate things with fewer recruiters and what does that look like? And so it becomes a situation where. Zig, when everyone else is zagging and I think. I think it's a fool's errand to think that if I can just apply to jobs and if I word my resume correctly, that I'm going to get through the filters and magically get a job. think, call me an old soul, that's fine. But there's a lot to be said for old fashioned networking, getting on LinkedIn, connecting with people. We had a great interview with someone searching for a job. Her strategy was, I'm going to create content on LinkedIn. I'm going to put that I'm open for work. I'm going to connect with people at companies that I find interesting and I might want to work with, build a connection and then like look for job opportunities. That's not what most people do, but that is very effective. So when I give advice for searching for a job and it's easier to create content than ever before, uh, with, AI tools, like pick a topic that's timely, write an opinion about it, put your own spin on it and put it on LinkedIn. Inevitably people are going to, going to engage. find you interesting, want to give you a job. So that's where I think the magic, the humaneness is more important than ever before. Even though we keep talking about automation and tools and blasting your shit everywhere, going back to the basics, there's a lot to be said for that in my opinion. Chad (26:45.584) Yeah. Chad (26:50.832) Mm-hmm. Chad (26:54.747) Well, there's an individual who's looking for branding jobs and you know how they've got the open to network or open little frame. Well, she put desperate on hers. I mean, she received a ton of posts that were written about her, people that were pointing back to her. Joel Cheesman (27:03.266) Hope and work. Katherine Watt (27:04.997) Yeah. Chad (27:17.209) And again, that was more branding than anything else. And one of the things that I think that if you could say to any job seeker that's out there today is that, yes, it's important to work on your resume. Yes, it's important to go through the process. Yes, it's incredibly important to network. But what will always, I wouldn't want to say make you recession proof, but to make you more likely to be recession proof is your brand. People want to be able to buy into your brand and who you are. And they won't see that on a resume, right? If they see that in a short video, if they see that in posts, if they see all these different things and you're in a specific industry, that's another point, is that Joel and I have been in this same industry for 25 years. If you have individuals who jump around industry to industry, it's really, really hard to build networks. You build like many ecosystems that aren't connected in most cases. So, you know, to be focused, to be disciplined, to look for that industry, and it doesn't have to be right out of the gate, because I was in radio before I actually got here, but it doesn't have to be right out of the gate. To be able to be disciplined and focused so that you can build that network, because that network isn't just for now, it's four five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when experts like us are looking for jobs. Katherine Watt (28:41.659) Yeah. And I think that raises an interesting point for the younger generations. I think they both have an upper hand here because they perhaps are more tech savvy and are they know about brand building, right? Because they're, yeah, I've checked my math. And they know about influencer culture. They know about the importance of self-branding, but they also are less practiced in the art of networking, I would say. I mean, they don't want to get on the Chad (28:52.815) You shut your mouth. Joel Cheesman (29:06.658) No shit. Katherine Watt (29:09.025) to call and make a doctor's appointment. And COVID really stunted that. mean, many people have never even been to an in-person job interview. And so the idea of going for a coffee chat that's not virtual, getting an actual cup of coffee, that can be really intimidating. And I think they can not hide behind the online applications, but it's a lot more instant gratification to fire off 50 applications in one day than it is to do a cold outreach email. Joel Cheesman (29:10.018) Yeah. Chad (29:18.086) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (29:37.821) and really present yourself that way. And so I think, especially for younger generations, that's probably where they're challenging. Chad (29:37.925) Mm-mm. Joel Cheesman (29:45.686) But guess what? That's an opportunity because if fewer people are doing it, then you have a greater opportunity to cut through the clutter and do the thing, do the face to face. And look, there's a conference for everything. Local conferences, regional, national, global. I would venture to say that if you were a young person and called any conference that's within the realm of your expertise and said, Hey, I'm a Katherine Watt (29:58.396) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (30:11.148) recent grad, I want to get in this. don't, you I don't have a lot of money or job. Like, could I, can I get a scholarship to come or like, can I just, I would guarantee you most conferences would say, sure, come and then have your resume, have your, have you be prepared and start networking, start having conversations. And most of the things that happen in conferences happen after all the PowerPoint presentations and the keynote speaking, make sure that you're doing that stuff because that's where deals happen. Chad (30:37.711) Yeah. Yeah. We also have a really good friend of ours, JT O'Donnell, who is big on hustle culture. And she really believes that there's going to be or there's developing or evolving in a hustle culture kind of gig economy, where you don't just have one job, you have, you know, several jobs. Katherine Watt (30:39.527) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (31:04.721) And she because she's an influencer has like 1.4 million followers on tik-tok She's also created an influencer agency and so to be able to to really look at her vision for what she's done for herself and the actual revenue stream she'd been able to make for herself and then to be able to go ahead and help push that out of the market do you see that as kind of like just a a short gap solution, or do you think that that's really how the market's moving where it's definitely not going to be we're going to have a job like our grandparents did for 40 years, right, and get a pension. Those days are gone. So do you think that it's going to be more of kind of like side hustles along with part-time jobs and whatnot? Katherine Watt (31:55.687) I mean, at this point, considering how high the cost of living is and the fact that wages aren't keeping pace, it almost feels like a necessity for people to have side gigs if they can. I mean, some people, they're like, I'm already working three jobs just to pay my rent. yeah, but I mean, I have always tried to be doing side gigs since I was a kid. And then still in my 20s, I'm walking dogs, I'm taking babysitting jobs wherever I can because like you said, I mean, I don't think you can ever be recession proof, but I mean. Chad (32:02.289) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (32:07.182) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (32:24.965) especially in a very uncertain economy there. And if you see, can make money online doing influencer stuff or good old fashioned babysitting. mean, especially now, I think that's worth looking into. Joel Cheesman (32:37.422) I tried babysitting and no one would hire me. don't, I don't know why. I don't know why. You'll get me set. Katherine Watt (32:43.195) I'll give you some pointers. Chad (32:44.193) Yeah, I don't want to go too deep into that one. Joel Cheesman (32:52.23) The gig economy, you bullish on that or has it been sort of less? And one the things I think you also brought up sort of upscaling or learning. And I think it deserves sort of talking about if you have something you're passionate about, the ways to learn more and get credentials and badges, whether that's LinkedIn or wherever else. mean, you kind of dove into that. What did you find? Because I think that's sort of a new way. Katherine Watt (33:02.992) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:18.712) that people can get opportunities by getting some new certifications. Katherine Watt (33:23.247) Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm bullish on gig economy. I think it's been here. It'll be here to stay. don't know how. It really depends on where the economy goes. But in terms of upscaling, I do think that's a really great way to be filling gaps on your resume, especially if you're long-term unemployed. I mean, it shows that you're self-directed, that you're proactive, that you're willing to put in that time. mean, and this is something that you can do and probably especially should be doing while you're still employed. And so for example, in my role, I've found I really like data visualization. I'll be making graphics on Canva, but I don't have any formal training. But there are courses that I can take and that have been I've started taking to kind of really establish my skill set in that area. And that has really nothing to do with my current job, but I want to be able to include that on my resume in the future. And so. I think that is probably where people, in addition to networking, should be really focused on building their skills. And at the bottom of my article, I included a very long list of different free online resources that you can kind of explore. And yeah, you should be learning about AI if you haven't already used it, but there are so many if you can learn to code. One of my goals for the year is to be a lot more proficient in HTML, even though there is AI now. I think that networking is where people should really be focusing their time. Chad (34:50.449) So on the upskilling and employee development side of the house, we talked in the green room about yesterday, we talked to Patrick McGee, the author of Apple in China. He's an economist. And one of the things that he was able to uncover is that Apple is spending $55 billion a year in China training their employees in China. We don't have that kind of reciprocation in the US. And what seems to have happened since trickle down economics and Reagan and all that happy horseshit that happened back in the 80s. It's really trickled down in a bad way for us because we're not seeing companies spend money on developing the community that they live in. Number one, which is their workforce and they're waiting for government, To be able for corporate charity to be able to do that for them. Right. But yet, but yet we've got Apple spending $55 billion a year in China to skill, upskill, develop their people. And they're taking great minds from, you know, the U.S. and other areas to be able to do that. What the hell and when can we finally figure out that that is the model and we had that model before, by the way. That's the model that we have to get back to. We have to train our people for what they're ready for. And why do we do that? Because if we have trained people, they're gonna be more efficient. They're gonna be more proficient. They're gonna be up to the job much faster, which means more revenue, right? And that's what capitalism is about. Am I wrong? mean, why aren't we spending money on our people and also our communities? Katherine Watt (36:32.847) No, you have Katherine Watt (36:37.211) Yeah, I mean, a two week onboarding, some of them are shorter, some of them are one day onboarding to a new role. I mean, you're going through some really standard template PowerPoints. You're not, you know, on the job training that really just starts when you actually have your responsibilities. And I think that's a disservice, especially to the younger generations or also people that are coming back to the workforce after being out for a long time. They're not they don't have these own like. opportunities. That was one of the questions I wanted you guys to talk about, the importance of that and whether you see any hope for that return. If people aren't hiring, will they at least reinvest some money towards, you know, providing those learning experiences for their employees? Joel Cheesman (37:22.358) you Chad (37:22.691) Yeah, I don't see it in this country unless it's forced. Unless it's forced. And to be quite frank, the reason why Apple, obviously they were doing that is because they knew they could get cheaper labor. They knew that the materials to make the phones were there. So it made it much easier. mean, just from an economic and a supply chain standpoint, it just made sense, right? from our standpoint when we're sitting back and we're waiting for the gate and they know that China's not going to give them any money. They know that China's not going to do what the United States will do and give them that charity or that tax break or what have you. until we have an administration that's in place that holds these organizations and CEOs feet to the fire, I don't see that. And you even said earlier that wages aren't staying up with inflation or And, yet CEO wages since 1978 have gone up 1300%, 1300 % where everybody else is at 14%. Right? So. Katherine Watt (38:22.194) Mm-hmm. Katherine Watt (38:27.087) Mm-hmm. I think you see it in small pockets. They're starting to do some trainings for people who are graduating high school, and they want them to join into the construction industry. yeah, we need more of that, but we also need more accountants and things like that. And yeah, it's one of those areas where you have to make the investment, even though you won't see the immediate return. I think about that in terms of like, Joel Cheesman (38:37.015) trades. Katherine Watt (38:56.881) making sure broadband is widely available across the country. You won't see an immediate return on investment, but down the line, you're connecting more people, you're boosting local economies. Joel Cheesman (39:07.884) I would, I would say companies are way more focused on how do we get rid of people than they are? How do we retrain and get people back into these jobs until, until we realized that, until they realized robots don't eat hamburgers and who are we going to sell this stuff to? But as long as our shareholders and everyone, everyone else is, hitting the table for that. My last thing to you, Catherine, you talk a lot about speed, you know, speed to apply speed to sort of communicate. Chad (39:15.089) which is the antithesis of actual good performance. Katherine Watt (39:21.702) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (39:35.094) What sort of tools or tips or things did you find of how job seekers can like be Johnny on the spot when something comes available? Katherine Watt (39:43.101) Yeah, I would say job alerts for sure, set up multiple and not just for like, let's say you have a job alert for editor, maybe also have content specialists, different ones and be checking regularly. mean, it's painfully boring and that is sort of the rule of the game. I mean, with such a competitive market, you'll see a job posted and an hour later, there's a hundred applicants and it really doesn't pay to be applying to a job that's been listed for three weeks. that probably already has been filled or they just forgot to take it down or it's a ghost job, which is a whole nother thing. And so yeah, really being on top of it and not just, you know, applying, but also using that time to start doing outreach. So you make you send in your application and you try and contact the hiring manager if you can tap into your network. Do you know anyone who's connected whether to the industry or if at the company itself? And so. Yeah, it's not about the speed at which you fire off a huge number of applications, but the speed at which you're able to jump on it with an adaptable resume. And so I think a lot of people I talked to talked about having multiple resumes that you can easily tweak. And they still showcase your experience, but maybe you have one bullet point higher on the list on one resume versus another. And so, yeah. Joel Cheesman (41:06.198) And I would add to that, don't just look at job alerts, but look at the news people who's getting funded, who's getting series A, B, D, and E, because companies that get money hire people. And if you, if you get on it before the job postings, you're going to be that much better for it. So I'll throw that in there, Catherine as well. Katherine Watt (41:11.238) Yeah. Chad (41:13.017) Mm hmm. They have startups. Yes. Amen, brother. Chad (41:26.445) Exactly. Well, that's Katherine Watt, writer at CNET. She was on the economics beat. She was on the mortgage beat, but now she's on the Chad and Cheese beat. Katherine, if people want to find out more about you, they want to see what you're writing about, those types of things, where would you send them? Joel Cheesman (41:40.046) You Katherine Watt (41:47.899) I would send you to cnet.com, specifically CNET Money. You could also find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on my personal site, Katherine Watt Editorial. And yeah, this was such a great conversation. Hope to be back. Joel Cheesman (42:01.902) Thank you. And I bet there are lot of job opportunities in those CNET stories as well, Catherine. So tune in to CNET, everybody. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (42:02.001) Thanks for coming. Chad (42:07.234) Chad (42:11.855) Way out.

Yes, kids, Meta's out here throwing $100 million signing bonuses  like it's Silicon Valley's version of The Bachelor: AI Edition. Sam Altman says Meta doesn’t innovate—they just copy, poach, or panic. Zuck disagrees, mostly by pulling out the ol’ checkbook and seeing who flinches first. 💸 Altman has purpose. 🧠 Zuck has pockets. 🤖 Apple has… denial? And in the spirit of absolute chaos, we also tackle: Trump’s ICE raids and immigrant whiplash policies Amazon’s AI-powered job apocalypse—with a side of robo-taxis and Zoox. Indeed’s data-hungry money grab—coming for your CPA and your sanity. Klarna’s AI CEO hotline And yes… Zoom’s CEO says forget hobbies, sell your soul to the company. Charming. 🔥 All this while Emi debates whether she’d sell out for $100 million (spoiler: yes), Joel relives Steve Jobs’ passive-aggressive email game, and Chad prays Zuck doesn’t start poaching podcasters next. 🧨 Silicon Valley is on fire, and The Chad & Cheese are here to roast marshmallows on it. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:34.858) Wake us up before you go go. Cause we're not planning on going solo. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel. Does anyone know the name of Elon's ketamine dealer Cheesman? Chad (00:48.004) This is Chad, the world is on fire, Sowash. Emi B (00:51.828) And this is Emi, I am so happy that Summer is finally here in London, Beredugo. Joel Cheesman (00:57.84) Ad on this episode Meta Poaches, Amazon Replaces, and Tariffs Are Tariffing. Let's do this. Chad (01:07.212) That's the end of the world as we know. What the fuck is going on around here kids? Jesus, how many wars can we have? Jesus. Joel Cheesman (01:13.304) Come on, it's summer in England. Let's focus on summer in England. That sounds beautiful. That sounds Shakespearean. It sounds just quite like a gin and tonic. Chad (01:21.016) It does sound. Emi B (01:22.478) It is beautiful. is, this is honestly, it is Pym's weather. It is Prosecco weather. It is strawberry, it's in cream weather. Wonderful. But listen, I'm just going to let you know, cause summer only lasts for about two days this year, you know, every year. Um, yeah. So by the time you guys come over, it may not be summer anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Honestly. Chad (01:23.682) midsummer night's dream. Chad (01:28.888) Who? Pins? Who? Chad (01:43.235) Joel Cheesman (01:43.97) Well, we were in a mud bog last year. Remember they had to put hay down on the ground and, and, the RECFEST crew. Chad (01:49.956) Still had a blast. Still had a blast. Emi B (01:51.894) It was fun, but my white trainers were not white by the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, that was an issue. Chad (01:55.606) Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it. That be a problem. Joel Cheesman (01:58.772) You probably don't remember this chat. was, I was going to meet you at the RL 100 and pick me up. They, they took me to the, Nebworth site. thought they knew where I was going. The next thing I know, I have a worker vest, one of these, you know, glow in the dark vests and I'm in the middle of this mud. like, what am I doing? I'm supposed to be at like some recruiter leaders thing. And they're like, you're in the wrong place. And then they're like on the mics and I showed up late. yeah. Chad (02:03.972) No, I do remember. Chad (02:09.625) Yeah. Chad (02:16.375) Yeah, yeah. Emi B (02:24.718) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:24.772) You Joel Cheesman (02:28.546) was a good time. Good time. Good time. Well, it's Juneteenth. It's Juneteenth here in America as yeah, the rest of the world burns. What's it looking like from Europe with all this action going on? Emi B (02:28.586) no. Chad (02:30.702) Good times. Emi B (02:38.414) It is like a TV show. It is hilarious. Honestly, it is like what else is going to happen? Just when we think that it can't get crazier, it gets crazier. It's mad. So if you look at my YouTube reel, because I'm like on YouTube every single night, I following everything that's going on with Trump, everything that's going on with Elon Musk, and also the PDD trial. So those are my three things. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, people. Bringing it down. Chad (03:01.966) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (03:04.184) It's funny that you say show because I do think if Trump is good at something, it's the reality show. But he's brought that to the White House and it's frightening. But he does like a good show. So it's interesting that you would describe it as a show because I think he thinks this is one big show and he's the apprentice still. Chad (03:05.412) Mmm. Emi B (03:21.422) Honestly. yeah back on the apprentice or you know some other apprentice spin-off. Joel Cheesman (03:29.932) Yeah. How about Portugal, Chad? Is it still paradise? you watching? Yeah. Chad (03:30.467) Yeah. Chad (03:34.724) It's wonderful. It's wonderful. Today it's 90. It's 90 degrees. So a little warm, a little warm. But other than that, it's great. I mean, I've got a pool. I've got a beach. I've got plenty of beer. I've got great food. mean... Emi B (03:47.875) look at you just rubbing it in. Chad (03:52.196) It's really close to you, Emmy, so I don't want to hear it. Emi B (03:55.95) Well, I might just pop on a plane next week and like, hi, I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:56.13) That is true. Chad (04:00.718) Come on over, come on over. Joel Cheesman (04:01.482) I love it. love it. Just remember, just make sure your passport is up to date, Emmy. Just make sure your passport is up to date. What you got for... Ladies first for shout outs, Emmy. What you got? Emi B (04:07.574) Yeah, yeah, it is all done. Yeah. Chad (04:12.322) Until they Brexit again. Until they Brexit again, yeah. Emi B (04:18.446) Well, my shout out is to my favorite app, which is TikTok. So I'm just going to cast your mind back. Do you remember back in the beginning of the year, maybe December last year, I was asked to do my predictions. And my predictions were, you know, that TikTok was not getting banned. So guess what? You know, apparently June 19th today, TikTok was supposed to be banned. It's not getting banned. Trump has, what is it? Done a taco. So Trump always, yeah, love that. Trump always chickens out. He has chickened out. Joel Cheesman (04:30.445) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:30.615) yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:42.648) Taco. He's done it. Emi B (04:48.014) Poor, poor Trump. I mean, he's not having a great time at the moment, but I'm being nice. I'm being polite. Actually, fuck Trump. Yeah. Chad (04:50.732) or drones. Joel Cheesman (04:54.68) Do the Brits talk about banning it or is that not a topic? Chad (04:55.843) Yeah. Emi B (05:00.276) No, it's not even a topic. We don't care about things like that. You know, we're just interested in TikTok dances and everything else. So I'm all for TikTok staying. Well done, TikTok. TikTok's not going anywhere and Trump is going to keep doing the taco. Yeah. Chad (05:16.484) Constant taco, which is making Joel really really hungry right Emi B (05:20.014) sorry, sorry Joe. Joel Cheesman (05:23.758) it's, it's just getting started with, with that stuff. So, my shout out guys, I've, I've been in the internet business for a long time. and I've always been fascinated with dating sites for whatever reason, like dating sites and classifieds have always been the moneymakers in the internet. People can't get you to sign up for newsletters, but like dating people will pay for, and they have for a long time. Chad (05:32.324) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:48.97) Not since Tinder has a dating site been so, I don't know, intriguing. So there's a new site, it's called browser dating and it's, it's pretty much what you think it is. they, you upload, your, your browsing, profile from your fight, your 5,000 most recent searches. And then they algorithmically match you with someone who has a similar search history. Chad (06:05.934) browser history. Chad (06:10.07) Okay. Joel Cheesman (06:19.244) to match you up. Now, I don't know who's gonna upload their last 5,000 searches. And I don't know what kind of matching they're doing between, know, bug fights and big booty Latinas, what my searches would be. So anyway, I'm just curious, you guys, is this something you would entertain if you were a single person or no? Emi B (06:39.286) No, no, because do you know what it is though? Because the thing is I have, I know what I'm actually like and I know the image I portrayed to the world and what type of person I'm trying to get. So I want to really like a gentleman, but if you're to go through my browsing history, I, you know, I'm skanky. I know I am. I'm sorry. Like, you know, there's stuff on there that needs to, no one needs to see. That just needs to stay in my head so I can attract the right husband, you know? So no, absolutely not. Chad (06:46.35) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (07:07.864) So you don't want to be the real you when you first meet somebody. You want to... Chad (07:07.908) See? That's not fair. That's a bait and switch. That's a bait and switch. That's not fair. Emi B (07:10.83) No! Yeah, 100 %! I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Joel Cheesman (07:16.118) What is makeup? Makeup is bait and switch. You're not, you know, like visually you're not who you really are when you first start dating, right? Emi B (07:22.902) Listen, no one needs to know that. I've had, how long does my Botox last for? know, other like, what would be good to spice up the love life? You know, that no one needs to know that kind of, actually, I've just told the whole world now that that's my brows and history. But when I'm meeting a future husband, they don't need to know that. They just need to know the image I'm presenting. Joel Cheesman (07:44.074) All right. Chad (07:47.16) It'd be a lot easier if you literally, if TikTok just did that automatically, because they have everybody's history and they know where your location is and they could, boom, just go ahead and make that happen. But for me, I don't want to, yes, common interests are really cool, but I don't want to date somebody like me. I mean, I want a better half, right? I don't know. I don't want a worse half. So yeah, mean, to me, that doesn't really make any sense. Emi B (07:53.581) Well. Emi B (08:10.849) You Emi B (08:17.614) You Joel Cheesman (08:19.672) All right, so that's a, that's a no on browser dating for everybody. But if you're interested, it's browser.dating in case you're single out there and looking, looking for love, looking for love Chad. Emi B (08:22.934) Yeah, yeah, 100%. Chad (08:30.628) I can't believe there's a top level domain dot dating. That's fucking ridiculous. Emi B (08:33.511) sit honestly. Joel Cheesman (08:34.24) Well, imagine if this gets into the job space, which most dating sites do. Someone's going to come up with like, upload your last 5,000 searches and we'll connect you to a company that you match with. This is coming, I'm telling you. Chad (08:38.852) Mm-hmm. Emi B (08:49.134) Watch this space, 2026 prediction. Chad (08:49.302) stoop, stoop, stoopidity everywhere. As a matter of fact, Indeed might do that. My shout out is going to Jim the Indeed Whisperer Durbin who sent me this little gem last night. Go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage, Joel. Chad (09:10.147) affectionately. Chad (10:33.54) Asteroid, big asteroid, prehistoric. Yeah, no, no, no, no. But I mean, it's literally just another chapter of Indeed's newest hit series, Suicide by a Thousand Cuts, right? So they, CPSA, CPA, Healthy Budgets, AKA, raising the rates, and now this. So it's still early days, as Jim had said. I've reached out to a couple of... Joel Cheesman (10:35.877) No hyperbole there at all. No hyperbole there at all. Chad (10:58.004) agencies had a couple of conversations, but we need to dig into this a little bit deeper. Talk to, we'll talk to Jim this week, talk to some agency contacts and some other industry veterans to find out what the hell is going on. But for me, right out of the gate, this automatically went right to disposition data, right? You know, that's what Indeed wants. They want this position data. Can they get that from the agencies? No, they can't. Where do they get that from? They get it direct feeds from applicant tracking systems, right? So Emi B (11:01.998) Mm. Chad (11:25.954) being able to start to snake and trojan horse your way into these different areas, Indeed wants more control. They want your disposition data. They want to push competitors out of the market and control wallet share. And every move that they've been making, you start to see everything kind of coming together. I don't think it's a very smart plan, to be quite frank. Maybe that's why I mean, I mean, I left. But shout out to the Indeed whisperer Jim Durbin for the news. What do you guys think? Joel Cheesman (12:07.49) To me, I look at it competitively and I'm still digesting this because Jim sent it. last night I just saw the video, like appcast and programmatic has always been a burr and indeed asks and. Appcast acquiring Bayard, an agency, like somehow those pieces might fit together. but to me, this hurts agencies and like the programmatic guys, unless I'm saying it wrong. And I think that's ultimately what they're trying to do. Squeeze out competition. Chad (12:10.638) Mm. Joel Cheesman (12:37.132) That's what they've been doing for a long time since they, since they kicked out job boards down the algorithm, you know, into algorithm abyss. they've always thought about how do we screw the competition? And maybe this is another move towards that. Chad (12:50.797) Anything, Amy? Emi B (12:52.834) I think you basically covered it. I agree with both of you. I'm just interested to see how this works out. I don't think it's going to work out very well in New Launc. They've tried everything. They keep trying new ways to keep the business alive. Nothing really works. So, yeah. Chad (13:05.208) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (13:08.568) Well, there's clearly, as we talked about, there's a clearly avoidant innovation at Indeed. And I think that's why the CEO shuffle is going on over there. So if you don't have innovation and you can't provide great products, it's like, how do we squeeze people? How do we add products and nickel and dime people to death? And this is kind of what we're seeing. It's like, this is a desperation move, which we've been seeing for years at Indeed. Chad (13:12.779) yeah, god yes. Emi B (13:30.028) Yeah. I think they're trying to innovate. It's just that they're what they're innovating is a bit crap. Yeah. Chad (13:32.553) We Chad (13:37.156) Well, I think it's a force for the trees kind of thing. I mean, they see what's good for them. And to be quite frank, they don't give a fuck about anybody else. We've heard from Matt over at UPS. We've heard from Megan over at Marriott that, to be quite frank, if they keep making these decisions, it just gives them more reason to look at other things. mean... Emi B (13:44.664) Mm. Joel Cheesman (14:02.936) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:03.524) UPS is already hiring directly out of their applicant tracking system out of their CRM because they have shit tons of candidates. Marriott has over 10 million candidates, right? So it's like, you're going to push them in different areas and they're going to spend less. They're going to spend less. And then you do things like this and then you really start to piss them off. anyway, I tell you what is not going to piss them I know. I know. I know. Joel Cheesman (14:27.274) It's, it's the hubris, Chad. It's the hubris that killed career builder monster. It's like, we're the shit and we're going to do what we want to do. And you're going to get in line and take it. And consumers don't like that and they go elsewhere eventually. So good luck with that indeed. Emi B (14:29.966) You Chad (14:41.378) You know what consumers do like though? They like free stuff. That's right. And kids remember that there's always free stuff with the Chad and Cheese. Just go to ChadCheese.com slash free. And if they go there and they register, Emmy, what could they possibly win? Joel Cheesman (14:46.616) Yes, they do. Emi B (14:59.918) They could win so much stuff. They could win chicken cock whiskey. Still waiting for my two bottles. Oh my God. I'm just waiting for my one bottle. absolutely. Oh, chicken cock whiskey. Going over to the tech talent experts over at Van Hack. And then what else could they get? Bourbon barreled age syrup. So that's going to go over to Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Kiara. Lovely soundbites. Chad (15:03.62) Ooh, two bottles. yeah. Chad (15:24.172) Okay. Emi B (15:29.44) And if anyone wants a t-shirt, you've seen those love soft to the touch t-shirts, you know, yes. what's that? Just a tip. Yes, they could get t-shirts. So that's going over to those red shoe wearing weirdos over at Erin app. Then we've got craft beer. So that's going to go over to the job data geeks at Aspen tech labs and the best free stuff of all. If it's your birthday, you get, woo. Joel Cheesman (15:37.548) hahaha Chad (15:38.2) Yeah Chad (15:44.9) Mm-hmm. Emi B (15:58.924) Run with Plum! Chad (16:00.568) Right, baby. Wait, you have to register. Emi B (16:04.322) to register, absolutely. Chad (16:05.686) at chadcheese.com slash free. Joel Cheesman (16:08.12) That's right guys. And don't forget our, our shout outs are sponsored by Kiara simply awesome candidate texting software celebrating another trip around the sun this week. have listeners, Tom Bickle, Brittany Porter, Seppi Nyeri, a proud Iranian. know she's, she's challenged. So if you know, if you know Seppi, her a shout. I know she's concerned about what's going on in the middle East. Heather Myers calling to George, Jenny Shiaka, Sean Paul, Seth, Robert Rudolph, Biddy Henneken. Chad (16:12.317) yeah. Chad (16:24.26) love her. Joel Cheesman (16:38.553) Mary Ellen Slater, Carrie Corbin and Shannon Pritchett all celebrating another trip around the sun. Happy birthday. Chad (16:43.586) There we go. And you can possibly have your birthday on stage with Chad and Cheese, one of the disrupt stage in Wreckfest. Well, Steve, you know where we're going, because you're going to be there too. Travel sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Nebworth is calling, that's right, Wreckfest UK in Nebworth, July 10th. The Chad and Cheese are going to be on the disrupt stage with Steven, our favorite Scott McGrath. Joel Cheesman (16:58.154) Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's gonna be there. Chad (17:13.09) JTMO are going to be there and Emmy, you're going to be hosting the stage too. Which one are you going be hosting? Joel Cheesman (17:17.068) God. Emi B (17:17.998) Oh, I knew you're gonna put me on the spot. I was like, what's the name of that new stage? I'm gonna have to come back to it. The Emmy stage, that's all you need to look for. Go onto the app, go onto the website. You'll find me there. So it starts at 10 o'clock, I think. That's when I'm doing the opening for my stage. Ta-da! Yes. Absolutely. Chad (17:22.572) the Emmy stage. Just look. Joel Cheesman (17:34.924) The Emmys, I like that. We should have a new award. The end of year Emmy Awards. I like it, I like it. Chad (17:36.556) The Emmys, the Emmys. Well, there we go. Joel Cheesman (17:46.52) All right, guys, let's get into it. Who loves a good poach? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims Metta is aggressively poaching his staff with lucrative offers, including, get this, $100 million signing bonuses. Altman believes superintelligence is the next step in artificial general intelligence, where the aim is to create AI which can vastly outperform human cognitive abilities. Altman reportedly told his brother, quote, Chad (17:49.987) off. Joel Cheesman (18:15.736) There's many things I respect about Metta as a company, but I don't think they're a company that's like great at innovation. Ouch, sick burn Altman. Chad, what are your thoughts on the poach-a-rama between these tech giants? Emi B (18:26.19) You Chad (18:30.616) mean, all this and OpenAI who has received $62 billion in funding, they're under pressure to grow headcount as well, right? But think about it, $100 million signing bonus, that's nothing to brush off. But you've got to ask yourself, why are these over-the-top bonuses? Why over-the-top signing bonuses from Meta? Because Google Anthropic Emi B (18:45.998) Mmm. Chad (19:00.416) Open AI, their newest models are leaving Meta's llama for in the AI dust. mean, have you seen or played with any of that new stuff? The VO stuff, the, ma- it's amazing. So Meta is sounding the AI alarm in an effort to try and catch up. Not by out innovating the competition. no, that's not Meta's MO and it hasn't been for a very long time. When Meta is behind, they either copy, buy competitors, or they poach their talent, right? OpenAI thus far has retained quote unquote their best talent, but how? Well, I'm sure they're highly compensated already, not to mention who wants to play catch up when you're already one of the main horses in the race with other global leaders in AI? Why would you leave all of your hard work and start from ground zero? Sometimes it's just best to stick with the devil you know, and that's Altman. Emi B (19:31.565) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:57.964) Whether you like the tactics or not, at least meta is trying because it seems Apple has given up on AI altogether. Apple just released a paper from their AI researchers. That's right. That was air quotes, kids, which dispels the major models are actually reasoning. So apparently if you can't build it, you go to meta, you go to the meta route, you try to buy it or you go the Apple route and you just deny it even exists. Either way. AI, whether it's reasoning or becoming better at predicting patterns, has been pretty fucking awesome. You've got to say it, And it's leaps and bounds different today than it was literally just six months ago. So all the way around, Meadow's behind. They've got a way to go after it. Apple's behind. I don't know what the fuck they're going to do. Joel Cheesman (20:53.848) I mean, you like a good poach. What are your thoughts on this story? Emi B (20:56.802) do like a good poach, always. Listen, I mean, you're right. Look, Meta is way, way, way behind all these other companies. you know, Chad, you're saying they haven't been great at innovating. And that is true. They've copied everything, you know, they're, they're, they're reels, for example. That's just a straight copy of other companies. They don't know how to innovate before. They used to, but they don't have that reputation anymore. Chad (21:24.388) Mm-hmm. Emi B (21:24.408) So the only way they're going to attract people really to the organization is by throwing money at them. And that money, yeah, it's huge amounts of money. It's giant amounts of money. And that's just a signing bonus. That's not the annual basic. That's not the stock options. That's not none of the other incentives. So that total package just to get those really strong tech minded people into the organization, I think from Mark's point of view, that's going to be worth it. Chad (21:39.745) Mm-hmm. Emi B (21:51.054) Because you get those great minds into your organization, they're going to help Metta to innovate. That's going to down the line realize itself in increasing revenue. Now, the problem that Metta also has, though, is whether or not money is enough to sway people. If it was me, yeah, you're going to give me $100 million? Yeah, maybe I'll take it. Yeah, I'll be there for a couple of years. But when you get people who are more ethical maybe than I am, who care about the culture, who care more about the mission, the vision in a company, building something which is actually going to be groundbreaking, that may not be enough to sway people. And that's what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks as well. He thinks that they've got the culture. He thinks that they've got the ethos, the mission, which is far superior to meta. I'm interested to see whether or not, know, when it comes down to it morally, where people are going to stand. Joel Cheesman (22:51.416) So Emmy's price tag is 100 million in case anyone was wondering what that dollar figure was. Emi B (22:53.826) Yeah, come pay me. Show me the money. I got a house to buy. Show me the money. Chad (23:00.612) I would take less. would take less. I would take less. Joel Cheesman (23:03.476) much less. Yeah. Yeah. 10 mill gets me blue chew for the rest of my life and a, and a beach somewhere. you know, you know who remembers my space? we do, but also Mark Zuckerberg does when Facebook launched to the public, my space had roughly 90 % market share of, social media. know how that worked out. So Mark is very aware that I don't want to be the next my space. I don't want my tombstone to somehow. Emi B (23:08.536) Yeah Chad (23:08.976) Hahaha! Chad (23:24.9) Mm. Emi B (23:30.222) Mm-hmm Joel Cheesman (23:32.738) connect me to the people that I kicked their ass at some point. So to Chad's point, at least he's trying. A hundred million is insane. A hundred million is like Ronaldo money, like messy, like that is insane. So either Altman is full of shit or there's some serious stock options being thrown at these people because a hundred million dollar salary is pretty nuts. So I don't know. That's sort of hearsay to me, but the point is, for Facebook to compete. Historically, Facebook in the 2000s was incredibly innovative. And then they became like, we're just going to acquire all the innovation. So let's go by Instagram, let's go by WhatsApp. They're at a point where there's no one really to buy that's left. They can't go by TikTok, another competitor to put them or an AI competitor that they can probably do. So let's resort to this. My feeling on poaching is if you can get away with it, it's great. Like you pressure your opponent, Chad (24:13.124) Yeah. Emi B (24:14.594) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:32.568) To put a hundred million dollar price tag, the next employee at open AI that comes up for review is going to be like, Hey, a hundred million is on the table at Facebook. What do you guys got for me? So you, you, you press your competition to pay more for the talent they have without actually spending any money. So generally it's smart. think that where it becomes dangerous is if you, you try to piss with the big dogs, bigger dogs than you. So there's a great story. You mentioned Apple, Chad, Adobe back in the day, was poaching from Apple. And this was the old boys club when like everyone agreed we're not going to poach from each other, like gentlemen's agreement, which is bullshit. And that'd be that's illegal. But anyway, back in the day, Adobe was poaching Apple people. So Steve jobs sends an email to Adobe CEO. which yeah, this, this is, this is your history lesson, everybody in case you, in case you missed it. So, so. Chad (25:03.204) Mm. Joel Cheesman (25:29.752) Job sends an email that just says recruiting in the subject line. And then he says, uh, let me get this right. Cause I don't want to, I don't want to mess it up. So he says, uh, quote Bruce, who was the Adobe CEO Adobe is recruiting from Apple. Uh, it seems you have, uh, he quip, uh, that Adobe has already poached one of some of their talents is our talents. Um, however, the policy at Apple is to never hire from, uh, on a, on a competitor. He says, it seems you have a different policy. Um, Chad (25:56.1) Mm. Joel Cheesman (26:01.908) One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who. So we put the pressure on Adobe to say either we're going to start taking Adobe people or you're going to stop taking our people. this case, Adobe was a bigger fish than, or Apple was a bigger fish than Adobe. Facebook is still a bigger fish than open AI. So I think it's a good move on their part. If it was reversed, I'd say probably not do it. Chad (26:09.771) Right. Emi B (26:11.67) Yeah Chad (26:25.924) Well, they did spend 14 billion to buy 49 % of Scale AI. And then they took Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang into meta. That's only the beginning of what's going to happen. But they did spend, go figure, 49%, not controlling. not controlling so that they can't play the antitrust. They're doing a lot of Microsoft kind of like open AI games at this point from a funding standpoint, but they are still buying and they're trying to buy stuff. Joel Cheesman (26:50.039) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (27:03.928) All right guys, let's take a break and come back and talk some Trump. Joel Cheesman (27:11.416) Alright guys, terrorists are in the news again. know that you thought maybe they were gone. Immigration is in the news again. Let's check out a quick video highlight from last week's news. Emi B (27:14.894) You Chad (27:15.364) Woof. Joel Cheesman (28:07.416) Yikes. So the pressure is on. Last week, President Trump had directed the Department of Homeland Security to halt immigration enforcement operations targeting farms, meatpacking plants, produce operations, and hotels following a string of high profile ICE raids over the past week. But an about face came just days after President Trump signaled sympathy for producers relying on immigrant labor only to reaffirm his administration's commitment to carrying out Chad (28:09.901) Jesus. Joel Cheesman (28:37.334) mass deportation, especially in blue states. gets political all this with the effects of tariffs yet to come, even though the housing market may be a canary in the coal mine as well. Chad, a lot going on with the economy and immigration, your thoughts. Chad (28:54.552) He's trying to have it both ways. You can't have it both ways. I mean, you can't you can't be sending immigrants out of the country and having ICE raids. I mean, it's they're they're freaking storm shock troops for God's sakes. They're sending people out. And these are the people that are doing the work, the migrant work at the farms. And now he's being, well, yes, this is very hard for them. And we should it's like, you're the problem, dude. You can't you can't you can't send your shock troops in. and then say, well, we're going to make it better. You can't have it both ways. You can't do both. And I mean, there's video of ICE going across farmland, actually trying to round up migrants. And it's like these individuals are doing the hard work that Americans won't do. Right. Then you take a look at the actual jobs number. So you take a look at how many people actually from a participation number left, right, over 600,000. Joel Cheesman (29:39.702) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chad (29:54.456) Then you have the actual jobs numbers. Well, tariffs are smacking the jobs numbers in the fucking face. And that is a huge issue. When the market isn't stable, consumers stop or slow spending, which is why AT or At Home is in bankruptcy. So this is one of the companies that's in bankruptcy. 260 stores across 40 states. They're looking to close. At Home, They were feeling the pain. They hired a new CEO, Brad Weston, last year to try to get the train on tracks, but then tariffs removed the tracks completely. Again, you can't have it both ways. You can't grow an economy and starve the economy at the same time. So we're seeing the same thing on the workforce side of the house and then on the spending side of the house. We need stability and we don't have stability. Emi B (30:51.671) No. Joel Cheesman (30:55.874) So he's, I don't know if he's wanting it both ways. By the way, have you guys seen the Trump phone that's coming out? Was this news in Europe? is doing a phone, actually it's the Brothers Trump. They're creating a gold phone. It's 45, 47 a month, because he's president for number 45 and 47. Chad (31:04.023) Jesus. Emi B (31:06.036) No, what is a Trump fine? Joel Cheesman (31:22.07) And apparently they can't, it's supposed to be made in America, but they can't make enough for the launch. they're going to be made in China, which is very ironic. But anyway, so yeah, the Trump phone coming, coming soon to no store near you anytime soon. he, if you look at Trump's favorability numbers, the only thing, well, the only thing I guess with independence that's working for him is immigration. so he looks at. Chad (31:33.324) and I bet they don't get hit by tariffs. Emi B (31:35.651) Of course not, but yeah. Joel Cheesman (31:52.15) He has farmer friends. has big business friends. He has restaurants that he goes to and people he knows there. And they're all telling him, dude, we don't have people to pick the food, to slaughter the animals, all the restaurants, like restaurants are going to be empty. Like farms are going to be on like, so on one hand he hears that and he's like, yeah, that's bad. I need to be able go to my restaurants and eat and feel like the lifestyle that I'm raised had. But then he has this issue of immigration that he's still fairly good on. Chad (32:04.26) to serve, to cook. Emi B (32:14.83) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (32:22.486) compared to his other other issues. you have a Stephen Miller who's like Gestapo and chief and, telling, telling ice that we need more people. You need to like arrest more people because this issue is a good one for us. So then they go down to the home depots. They go down to the lows and they're like, let's get everybody out of here. Everybody's arrested. Apparently they're targeting blue States shocker. So Stephen Miller's like, let's keep the immigration thing going. Let's hit it. Let's hit back on blue States. Chad (32:47.342) Big, big surprise. Joel Cheesman (32:52.396) But he's caught in this catch 22 of we need people to do this work, but I have this issue that's fairly popular for me. What the hell am I supposed to do? And this is all in light of the tariff like effects are coming. Like the whole 30 day thing where everything stopped is coming to a head and we're all going to see it in action. So he's got a train wreck that's coming. Emi B (33:05.902) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:07.118) Yes. Chad (33:15.832) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:17.706) And he's trying to, he's trying to dance, but I don't, I don't think it's working. The train is coming and it's, it's coming down the tracks and it's not going to be pretty, for the Trump administration. I'm afraid. Emi B (33:31.724) No, to be honest, I kind of listening to all of this, I agree with both of you. Well, I don't think he's trying to play both sides because I don't think he's intelligent enough to do that. Definitely not. Well, it's not even playing one D chess. Yeah, he didn't think things through. So his own party obviously wanted to push forward the immigration issue, but... Chad (33:45.464) I didn't say he was playing 4D chess, okay? Emi B (34:00.258) He didn't actually realize the long-term effects of this, which is now what he's hearing from, like I said, the farming industry, the hospitality industry, the construction industry, because all of those industries are largely made up of immigrants. Like you said, they're made up of people who are doing jobs, very long hours, sometimes very hard, physically demanding jobs, sometimes six days a week that Americans generally don't want to do. They want to do your knowledge-based work. Chad (34:13.656) Mm-hmm. Emi B (34:29.614) which is in the office space work, not your manufacturing jobs that he wants to get back or the physical type of jobs. So it's good, like I say, that he's now feeling the effects of this. It's good now he's now admitting that his policies are now hurting American industries. What he does about it, I'm not actually too sure. I'm interested to see where he's going to go. But he does have to back down from my point of view. If he wants to stay in power, if he wants to appease his government, his party, he's going to have to do something to try and kind of, I suppose, make both sides happy to some extent. And that is why he's going down the route of, yes, he's going to protect the farmers, he's going to protect the hospitality sector, but he's going to ignore the other sectors and still force, you know, the immigration raids on, you know, the other types of jobs. Joel Cheesman (35:11.245) Mm-hmm. Emi B (35:25.848) But I think what's eventually going to happen is that American employers are going to, they're going to push back. They're going to start demanding solutions like they're doing already. They're going to, they're seeing their industries crippling. They're seeing farmers farming industries losing money. They can't, they can't replace them with American workers because American workers maybe will not work the longer hours, will not work the however many days a week. And that's going to put their business, you know, you know, put their business out. So. he's in a tough situation at the moment, but this could be the thing that, or one of the many things that will hopefully make sure that he doesn't return to power in four years time. Chad (36:05.71) can only hope. Joel Cheesman (36:06.038) confusion is the worst part because people just don't do anything. Like, I don't know if we're going to have immigrants, if they're going to be fucking arrested tomorrow. So there's this, this whole like stoppage in business and Emi B (36:16.566) I think they'll just concentrate on a couple of industries. don't like, you yeah. No. Chad (36:19.812) It doesn't work that way, Emmy. It doesn't work that way. No, because you have some people that are working in farming, same families. And then some people are working at the Home Depot and so on and so forth. That's not how communities work, right? That's not how communities work. Not to mention, we talk about farming. He's already hurt the farming industry by killing USAID. That used to be $2 billion of revenue to American farmers. Used to be $2 billion. It's not anymore. Emi B (36:26.616) Yeah. Emi B (36:32.044) Well, I suppose they, yeah, you can't just get rid of one. Emi B (36:43.009) Hmm. Emi B (36:48.525) Yeah. Chad (36:48.888) So there is no, he's got to please people. He's only pleasing one person and that's himself. He takes a nap, he forgot what he just said. I mean, that's what it is. So I wish it was as easy to say, hey, look, why don't we just leave these people alone over here? They're all connected. They're all connected. They see their friends and family getting deported. What do you think that makes them feel like? And what do think they're gonna do? They're getting the hell out. Emi B (37:01.431) Yeah. Emi B (37:15.235) Yeah. But isn't that what he's doing at the moment by his appeasing the farming and the hospitality sector at the moment? Yeah. Yeah. Chad (37:18.338) Right, so there. Chad (37:23.448) He's saying it, it's not happening. Again, there are videos of ice running across fields, mean, might as well call it abducting people, for goodness sake. So yeah, it's all bullshit to be quite frank. Emi B (37:30.264) Hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (37:38.84) To me, you can narrow it down to two things. Trump likes money and he likes to be liked. And if you start with that, with everything he says and does, it kind of starts to make sense. think you mentioned the next election presidential, it's not that late. He has midterms in 18 months or so. That's his window to get as rich as possible. Emi B (37:46.062) I'm Power. Emi B (37:55.456) Well, yeah. Emi B (38:02.306) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:06.144) and not totally go down in history as an, a total dipshit. And he's trying to balance that and the shit like the Trump phone and the crypto shit and what he's, what's going on in the middle East. Like it's all about Trump getting rich and Trump being liked and being, you know, like when, the Saudis bring him under the middle East brings them in and the plane is yours and the luxury shit. And like, that's what he likes. He is not comfortable. He left the G seven meeting in Canada. Chad (38:07.822) And he is. Chad (38:15.396) Mm-hmm. Emi B (38:31.906) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (38:36.128) A beautiful part, beautiful part of Canada, by the way, Chad left because he doesn't like dealing with that shit. He doesn't like bureaucracy and democracy and I got to get consensus. Like I'm out of here. Cause you talking to you, European people piss just like aggravate me. I'm out of here. Take me back to the middle East where it's a bunch of authoritarians with a lot of money, having nice dinners and shit. That's what he likes, not the Europe stuff. So to me, like if you narrow it down to money and like, Chad (38:47.852) It's like governing. Yes. Emi B (38:56.172) Mm-hmm. Emi B (39:01.656) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (39:05.824) You can understand Trump a lot better than if you try to, I don't know, pretzel your brain into figuring out what the hell he's talking about. He doesn't, the communication's awful. Marco Rubio comes, you know, after, Israeli bombs and says, Israeli acted, Israel acted unilaterally to bomb us had nothing to do with this. If anybody bombs the us we're coming for you. And then Trump right. Like throws that away by saying like, yeah. Chad (39:24.578) Yes. Yes. Chad (39:32.004) Took a nap, got up, yes. Joel Cheesman (39:33.92) Yeah, we knew about it. We're involved. We green light like so it's so fucked up. It's so fucked up. anyway, it's, it's like, it's like being at, it's like being at Amazon. anyway, so let's go to our next story. Amazon CEO Andy, Andy Jassy anticipates AI will reduce the company's corporate workforce in the coming years as it implements more generative AI and agents for internal operations. Emi B (39:34.062) Yeah. Totally contradicted him, yeah. Chad (39:41.238) It is. Chad (39:47.268) you Joel Cheesman (39:58.624) In a blog post, Jassy said they'll need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, but more people doing other types of jobs." quote. And I'd expect there to be fewer driving jobs as Amazon reportedly hopes to start dropping 10,000 robo-taxes yearly through its recent acquisition of Zoox back in 2020. Chad, is Amazon putting a banana in our tailpipe and are we going to fall for it? Chad (40:27.18) Yeah, people aren't paying attention. yeah, we'll definitely, definitely fall for it. So we've, we've sat on the show for years, no matter who's in charge, Bezos or Jassy, they want to cut overhead and create wider margins. The easiest way to do that is to cut out humans and replace them with robots or automations. It's funny because we just recorded an episode earlier this week on the Europe show. It'll drop next week where we talked about Amazon posturing with European. countries boasting the investments Amazon is making in several countries, Germany, UK, France, yeah, so on and so forth, because they want more European market share. since tariffs are hurting US and people are pulling back from spending, where can they go where tariffs aren't hurting them? They're going to try to get into Europe. Zoox on the other hand, Joel Cheesman (41:03.704) cross. Emi B (41:20.535) Europe. Chad (41:25.348) They have approximately 4,000 employees, which is pretty good growth. It's up from 2200 and 22, no, 2023. So two years, almost doubling in size. The company is expanding its workforce and it continues to develop the testing automation stuff. I think this is going to be interesting as you've done the way Mo, Joel, Tesla has been talking about automations and Tesla taxis for, yeah, coming soon for Joel Cheesman (41:46.732) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (41:50.968) Coming soon. Coming soon for 10 years. Chad (41:54.626) Yeah, the last decade, right? And then then Amazon put some money into this. mean, we've got some very, very big players, Google, Amazon, Tesla. This is going this is what I see, where I see innovation actually happening. And I hope Google and Amazon eat fucking Elon's lunch on this. Emi B (41:55.288) Ha Emi B (42:17.464) Fingers crossed, fingers crossed. dear. Joel Cheesman (42:22.348) You know, I, there's a, there's a podcast, British guy runs called diary of a CEO. And it was really interesting this week. he interviewed a guy who's known as the godfather of AI, guy named Jeffrey Hinton, who's who's English as well. I mean, he'll appreciate that. and I'm, I'm so, back and forth when I hear, people say like there's, it's going to create more jobs than it does. Mark Cuban's like, Chad (42:28.366) Mm-hmm. Emi B (42:28.76) Steven Bartlett. Emi B (42:38.03) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (42:51.896) This is going to be great, but then also people that it's doomsday. so this guy, he was out there at the beginning and he's got a, he's got a great opinion, but it's not, it's not shiny, happy people. I'm going to play this and then, uh, come back and comment on the other side. Joel Cheesman (43:54.434) So I don't know exactly, you I don't know what's going to happen, but I, but I do think Amazon, Microsoft meta, all of Elon stuff, they do believe that all of these jobs will be replaced. when I, when I see Amazon saying, Hey, we're weaning ourselves off, there'll be, there'll be fewer people, even though the new jobs will be created. And then you have Microsoft, they're planning to cut a lot of salespeople, in the thousands number, they employ a lot of people. Chad (44:22.136) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (44:24.596) So whether or not, I don't know what the future holds, but I do believe that all the tech companies out there do believe that we can do everything with AI. And we're seeing that this is the canary in the coal mine to me. We're going to see all the big companies and big tech do this. If it works, you're going to start seeing the SMBs do it. And you're going to see products created by the likes of Amazon that make it easier to replace human workers. And we'll see how it turns out, but I do think they believe that this is the route. And we're seeing that unfold with these stories like the ones from Amazon. Emi B (44:53.678) I agree with you there. think this is the tip of the iceberg. Lots of companies are already doing this. It's nothing new. I think it's going to hit the knowledge workers. So the people who, like myself in HR, people in finance, for example, we have a lot of administrative parts of our job which can be automated. Fine. I do believe that means that it's an opportunity for our roles to evolve. because so much of our time, so much of my time is spent doing admin that I don't actually need to do. So hopefully with the introduction of AI, introduction of different types of technology, it means that we'd be able to add more value to an organization. But I think that the message that Andy Jassy had to his employees was a good one and is a good one in the fact that people have to get ready for this. This is a reality. This is not something that is not hypothetical anymore. We know that AI is here. Great. Well, what does that mean for us? If we want to future proof our jobs, we need to put ourselves in a stronger situation. So if you're not good with AI at the moment, get good. If that means going to workshops, experimenting with tools, building prototypes, that is what you need to do right now, today, to future proof your job. Because otherwise, you're going to be left behind. you're not going to have a job to go to, or you're definitely not going to have the job you have now in the future. Chad (46:20.292) So it's really hard to do that today because people are working full-time jobs or more than one full-time job, right? So it's hard to actually do those things. Now, when he was talking about ditch digging and those types of things back in those days and before the 80s, companies used to spend a lot of money on upskilling and developing their employees as a part of work. They don't do that anymore. Emi B (46:27.298) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (46:50.252) It is, it's not something that is ingrained in the actual systems, right? They wait for the government to be able to do that. They wait for, you know, schools to do that. So we literally just talked to Patrick McGee last week, the episode dropped this week about Apple in China. Apple spends $55 billion a year in China to help upskill their workers. They've trained 28 million workers. They've spent $55 billion a year. That's not happening in the US. That's not happening in many, The UK is a mini US. It really is. It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate, but it really is. But that money's not being spent. So the upskilling and development isn't happening. That's not happening. you Emi B (47:18.84) Wow. Yeah. Emi B (47:26.306) Not happening in UK. Yeah. Emi B (47:30.958) Baby America, yeah. Chad (47:44.224) If it has to be all on my shoulders and I'm working two to three fucking jobs, when am I going to do it? Right. So we're in this much like Joel said earlier, this catch 22 position ourselves, and we're being told to do all these different things. And I'm trying to make rent. Right. Companies have to start putting money into their people. Period. Upskilling development. Those are the things that we have to do. If we don't do those, shit's going to collapse. Emi B (47:46.414) Mm-hmm. Emi B (48:11.63) But if the organization doesn't provide that, like you said, the onus is on you to find time. And I agree, it's not easy. People are busy. People are working long hours. But people have to start thinking ahead in the future. So that time that you spent, you know, I don't know, like, you know, kind of watching TV maybe on a weekend, you you could spend an hour a week. You could spend an hour a week just learning a new skill. It might not be everything. You might just learn. 1 % more than you did last week, but those 1 % add up. So in the future, you're going to be in a better situation. Joel Cheesman (48:47.48) I fear that if Jesse really believed that if we just upscale people, they'll be fine, then Amazon would pay for these people to be upskilled or learn new skills. What he is saying is, best of luck to you. There'll be some jobs left. I don't know who's going to get them, but you need to have certain skills. mean, if he really believed that Amazon would put up and train these people for the new jobs of the future that he's talking about. Chad (49:01.156) margins. Emi B (49:05.816) you Joel Cheesman (49:17.334) I don't know that he thinks there are jobs in the future. Otherwise, who would be training his people for that? Or doesn't know what they are. Chad (49:22.008) or doesn't know what they are. Yeah. Emi B (49:23.806) No, you don't know what new jobs are going to come up in the future, but he also hasn't said that he's not going to invest in his employees. He just said to get ready. So hopefully, Later. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (49:32.482) Correct. Correct. Which is very, which is very American. Good luck to you. Hey, we might, there might be a job here or not. Go train yourself and figure it out and then we'll bring you back. Rugged individualism, capitalism on the way up, socialism on the way down, everybody. Chad (49:40.672) It's rugged individualism, rugged individualism. Emi B (49:48.334) you Joel Cheesman (49:52.108) By the way, I was so pissed off. got fooled by an AI video for the first time. I thought it was real. And I was like, God damn it. Even I got fooled. So God, this shit's common. People are going to be fooled for like news stories and all right. When we come back, we'll, we'll talk a little zoom and Klarna. Emi B (50:00.622) Chad (50:00.928) it... dude. Yes. Yes. Yes. Joel Cheesman (50:13.368) All right. Welcome back to the feel good episode of the Chad and she's podcast zoom zoom CEO. Eric Yon believes, work life balance is unattainable for leaders to tech are dedicating his life to zoom and his family. probably in that order, he acknowledges the challenges Gen Z faces in the job market and the potential job displacement by AI, but envisions a future with shorter work weeks, possibly two or three days in the future. Chad (50:15.992) You Joel Cheesman (50:40.086) Meanwhile, Klarna CEO, always in the news, has launched an AI powered hotline where users can provide feedback to an interactive AI version of himself. Dystopia on steroids. Chad, your thoughts. Chad (50:55.876) love that Eric Yoon saying the quiet part out loud, right? I mean, he's saying that I gave up all my hobbies. You should too. Well, you're the fucking CEO. I don't get your compensation, right? I don't have your shares. don't, I don't, yeah, I don't have any of that stuff, right? So you want me to work as hard as you. You can fuck off. But this is beautiful. This is beautiful because now everybody who might've applied to Zoom before, they know what that company's about. They know what to expect. Joel Cheesman (51:06.837) Yep. Jamie Dimon. Emi B (51:10.901) Mm-hmm. Chad (51:25.068) right? So I appreciate that. do appreciate that. I he's an asshole for saying it, but that's what he thinks and that's how he runs his company. Okay, great. Now you know, don't apply, right? Beware, right? That's what's going to happen. On the the Klarna front, I mean, I've said it before, I hate Klarna's micro loan sharking business with a passion, but I gotta say Sebastian knows how to keep the news outlets and socials buzzing. This is exactly what companies should be doing instead of leaving someone on hold or asking them to fill out an old style fucking feedback form. Why not ask them to go ahead and provide that feedback to the AIC CEO, right? Plus these conversations are data that's training the models with every single interaction. So I don't like corner, but I do. I think this is smart. Emi B (52:18.872) think it's a bit weird though, don't you think? Chad (52:22.328) Joel couldn't tell whether that fake was fake or not, right? I don't know that it's weird. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (52:26.134) mean, they're doing quarterly reports with an AI, whatever, analyst or whatever that is. So this is their brand. Emi B (52:31.575) Yeah. Chad (52:31.672) Yeah, I- Yeah? Emi B (52:35.074) I know. See, I'm with you. didn't, to be honest, I didn't know too much about Klana other than the brand name before, you know, kind of joining the show, but everything I read about Sebastian, I'm just like, you are an odd individual, really odd. And are all Swedes odd? Okay. I had no idea. I haven't met enough Swedes. And like, look, I suppose everything I read about him means I shouldn't actually be surprised because I read somewhere that he leaned into AI. Chad (52:48.504) He's Swedish. He's Swedish. Joel Cheesman (52:49.324) He's Swedish, yeah, that just suck. Emi B (53:04.782) you know, to read his last earning calls or one of his earning call script for him. I was like, okay, that's weird. Now you're having this AI hotline, which apparently lets you feel like you're talking to him, but you're actually talking to an AI clone of him. It's strange. But you're right. It collects data. It's apparently that data or the data that they get from the call is transcribed, is summarized, is put into innovation dashboard. And apparently in 24 hours, they can act on Chad (53:08.9) Mm-hmm. Emi B (53:32.398) For example, if you said there's a bug 24 hours, it's not gonna be a bug anymore the next day. So yeah, I can see some benefits from that point of view, but I still think that people want to speak to a human at the end of the day. And I don't think you can get customer service fully automated in this way. yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a weirdo. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Chad (53:40.036) Mm. Chad (53:49.772) It's just creepy. You feel like it's creepy. I get it. get it. I get it. Well, now. Joel Cheesman (53:53.026) That'll, that'll end, that'll end. It'll feel like a person at some point. I'm waiting for their job. I'm waiting for their recruitment to have like the AI CEO, talk to you about the job and give you the job description interview. This guy, this guy's going to be interviewing everyone at some point because he's, he's clearly, he wasn't hugged much as a child. He needs a lot of attention. which sweet, sweet Swedes aren't known for their loving demeanor. So, I mean, it's not, it's not that surprising. Chad (54:04.93) Interview. Emi B (54:09.869) Yeah Emi B (54:13.807) Yeah! Let me talk to everybody! Are you sure? I need some sweets. Can we just... Chad (54:20.708) Good. Joel Cheesman (54:23.032) They're a little cold. They're a little cold, uh, figuratively and, and literally, but, um, and I, I always find that, that zoom is a brand. they're not, if they're not like fully remote work life balance, like your zoom, your whole brand is like, I can be at home and, like work life. So it's, it's always, I think a brand killer for them when they talk about there's no work life balance. You got to get back to the office, which they've done. so we haven't had a buzzword in a while. Emi B (54:39.116) Yeah. Chad (54:42.626) Weird. Joel Cheesman (54:51.884) You remember quiet quitting. You remember the great recession, like all the things. So there's new one now it's called the infinite work day. I don't know why that's just now catching on. but so new research from Microsoft found that 40 % of people are checking emails, before they're out of bed before 6 AM and nearly a third check back in after 10 PM as an employee. And we're also finding from the survey that 20 % of workers do work on their days off. Chad (54:55.416) No. Emi B (54:59.758) Jeez. Emi B (55:13.55) Mm. Joel Cheesman (55:21.676) So even if you're remote now, you're working all the goddamn time. It's no, it's no, it's no surprise that people are losing their shit. burnout is real. there was an article about, yeah, working from home. Cause you're not, you're dealing with work and then by, the dog needs a walk. like the sitter needs like all these things need to be done and you're pulled in both directions. People are losing it and something's got to be done about that. I think. Chad (55:31.982) Burn out. Joel Cheesman (55:51.33) to really ease all the stress, Chad. We need a dad joke. Emi B (55:56.418) Okay Chad (56:00.228) We'll see if this eases anything. Go ahead. Joel Cheesman (56:01.696) Alright guys, alright guys, what, what, what, come on, all my, these are awesome. Emi B (56:01.748) I'm thinking no, I'm thinking not. Emi B (56:09.366) Ave, ave, day. Joel Cheesman (56:12.652) That's right. what does, what does masturbation and brain damage have in common? What does masturbation and brain damage have in common? Not bad. after a few strokes, there's nothing else to do. There's no turning back. Chad (56:17.806) Joel Cheeseman. Emi B (56:18.99) There you go, there's the answer. Emi B (56:30.885) gods, gods! Joel Cheesman (56:34.912) Emmy, we'll see you soon. Chad, we out. Emi B (56:36.32) Yes. Yeah, I'm definitely out.

Batten down your LinkedIn profiles and sharpen those résumés—things are about to get messy. In this episode, “ Monster + CareerBuilder: End of an Era? ”, we spill the tea on why two of the internet’s original job-board dinosaurs are up for auction faster than you can say “résumé black hole.” But wait, there’s more! We’ll peek behind the curtain at Indeed’s latest foray into AI chatbots—because nothing says “we care about your career” like a robot that still can’t find your typo. Then, we’ll roast Workday’s “economy of skills” pitch (buzzword alert!) and decide whether it’s the next big thing… or just another narrative for Josh Bersin to spin and make a buck. Next up, it’s SmartRecruiters’ Winston AI squaring off against those crusty old ATS relics—think Rocky, but with fewer eye pokes and more API integrations. And because we can’t resist charting growth curves, we’ll compare social media’s meteoric ad revenues (hello, viral cat videos) to traditional media’s snail-pace earnings—spoiler: nostalgia isn’t exactly a cash cow. So grab your popcorn (or that stale office donut), sit back, and enjoy the snarky insider tour through the highs, the lows, and the utterly absurd of modern recruitment tech. Grab popcorn: job-board dinosaurs for sale, AI bots trolling résumés, & social ads vs. TV—wild snarky recruitment tech ride! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:01.374) I'm back, baby. Chad (00:03.944) whatever Joel Cheesman (00:30.832) Aww. Joel Cheesman (00:36.592) podcast, we've got fun and games. Hi, boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Pet Sounds Cheeseman. Chad (00:45.34) I'm Chad, indeed, scammy texts. So was. J.T. O'Donnell (00:49.538) And I'm JT, my back hurts, so Donald. Joel Cheesman (00:52.912) And on this episode, indeed is chatting. CareerBuilder plus Monster are selling and Smart Recruiters is evolving. Let's do this. Chad (00:54.046) I don't wanna know. Chad (01:06.43) Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. Joel Cheesman (01:07.728) Did you miss me? Mr. Carter reference. love it. Who was your favorite character on Mr. Vinny, Vinny Bobberino. Horshack. Horshack was pretty good too. Mr. Carter. Jesus. Chad (01:15.39) shit Vinny Bobberino. yeah, definitely Vinny Bobberino. Yeah So, what are you doing? What are you doing? J.T. O'Donnell (01:22.744) Mm-mm. Joel Cheesman (01:28.91) Yeah. So, I'm, I'm in the, I'm in the, I'm in the, crossroads of like college visits, graduation and, my, my dad falling, all kinds of stuff are going on, with me right now. But, I took my daughter, went up to Chicago, took in a Cubs game. then we went, drove out to Notre Dame, visited Notre Dame, came back to Chicago, hung out, ate some Italian beefs. Chad (01:30.354) out on birthday week. Chad (01:53.054) Sweet. Sweet. Joel Cheesman (01:57.488) and a deep dish. And then we visited Northwestern and the University of Chicago and came back and had a bunch of family come in. And my oldest son, first born, graduated high school. He'll be going to Indiana University in Bloomington in August. yeah, so big, big things happening here on the ranch for sure. Chad (02:02.984) Very nice. Chad (02:13.871) that's scary. Scary. J.T. O'Donnell (02:15.457) Nice, congrats. Chad (02:19.774) Party University, Party University. Joel Cheesman (02:22.352) I mean, very few aren't party universities, yeah, Indiana is pretty good time, I'm sure. Chad (02:26.886) Not like Bloomington. Like ranked in the top five of party universities. Solid for like 20 years, dude. So okay, no, that's good. All good. All good. Joel Cheesman (02:38.66) He obviously chose it for academic or he's academic or academic or intellectual academic reasons. Anyway, clearly, clearly he's my son. So yeah, I'm back and we, and we missed the day, the last week and then, I'm two weeks out. So I'm ready to rock today and we got career builder monster. Indeed. got everything. We got so much red meat today. I'm ready to rock, but I do want to say, speaking of old and, and good stuff, Brian Wilson of the beach boys passed away. And I know, Chad (02:40.784) Of course. Yeah. How about you, JT? What'd you build to? Chad (02:53.224) OK. Chad (02:58.237) It is. J.T. O'Donnell (03:05.515) Yeah. Chad (03:06.142) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (03:08.496) You guys probably know the beach boys. lot of, a lot of the young ones don't, uh, any beach boy memories, favorite songs. JT's nodding. J.T. O'Donnell (03:16.205) I got to dance, I was a cheerleader in high school, captain of my squad. And I got to dance on stage with the beach boys to be true to your school. They chose cheerleaders from across the state to do a routine on stage. So that's my big beach boys memory in front of like 15,000 people. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's a thing. Be true to You want me to, I mean, I'll bring the routine out at rec fest. mean, you didn't let me know. Joel Cheesman (03:19.51) Shocking, shocking. Joel Cheesman (03:26.576) Joel Cheesman (03:31.385) stop. Chad (03:33.148) I can't, yeah, can't, I can't. I can't, I cannot do that. I'm just gonna shut up. Joel Cheesman (03:43.162) So did you meet them or were you just like a dancer in the background? J.T. O'Donnell (03:45.23) Yeah, of course, you know, they came back and did the obligatory shook our hands and then hit the stage kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I do remember everybody was like, dang, these guys are old, right? You know, I'm 17 years old. You know, so. Joel Cheesman (03:49.424) Was Brian Wilson still around by then? Was he totally out of it? He was totally off his tits, right? Joel Cheesman (04:00.237) Yeah. Chad (04:03.378) Dude's doing shrooms. Joel Cheesman (04:03.714) It wasn't the Kokomo video, which by the way, no one's favorite song is Kokomo of the Beach Boys. John Stamos playing the bongos. I'm going to go Sloop John B is my favorite Beach Boys song and Pet Sounds, the album, of the hundred best ever. If you love the Beatles, there is no Beatles without the Beach Boys. And of course, without the Beatles, there's not a lot of what came after that. So if you love the Beatles. Chad (04:12.094) It's memorable though. It's memorable. Yeah, it's memorable. Joel Cheesman (04:32.58) pay homage to the Beach Boys, the Beach Boys. You guys are clearly bored with this conversation. So let's get to it. Chad (04:36.616) Beach Boys. Joel Cheesman (04:43.662) Shout outs as you guys know, are sponsored by our friends at Kiara. That's text recruiting made simple and affordable. my, my, my shout out, pretty obvious one, father's day father's day is this weekend. I've my biological stepmother, have, have gone, to the big sky up above and, my father at 85 is still chugging. he's, he's not without his faults and his, his, you know, memories fading, but, this Chad (04:50.098) made some. Chad (04:55.656) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (05:12.4) I'm celebrating father. I'm really focused on father's day and being father myself, my son leaving for school. So like, it's just sort of on the mind. if you're near your father, like hug him, tell him you love him. because father's day doesn't get a lot of respect and I have a little comedic clip, that kind of encapsulates what, father's day has become. but, check this out. think, I think you'll enjoy it. Chad (06:04.082) Arbor Day. Chad (06:35.42) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:37.968) Shout out to fathers. Happy Father's Day everybody. All the fathers out there. What you got JT? Mother, mother, mother JT. J.T. O'Donnell (06:40.991) Happy Father's Day, gang. J.T. O'Donnell (06:45.375) My shout outs to Mark Eben, who just made a, what they're calling a bold prediction. You'll find it in an ink magazine. And he's saying that, you know, because of AI and the next three years or so, people are really going to be seeking out human interaction, right? You're to get out of the office. You're going to get out and want to connect. And I agree with him. I think that if you remember this little thing called the pandemic, right post pandemic, everyone was spending money on experiences. experiences, experiences, right? It was like, that was the reaction to it. And I think with AI, we're going to have a very similar reaction. I've been told, and I haven't seen it in quotes, but I've been told by multiple people who know me that Gary Vaynerchuk has said there'll be a day where people pay to take a walk with you or something like that, you know, that we're just going to get to a place where we're going be paying for human interaction. And I don't know if it's necessarily human action, but more like knowledge exchange and we trust humans more and we want to just talk to a real person instead of a bot. So I'm with them on the prediction and I think it's cool. Chad (07:45.82) Hmm. Well, JT totally stole my shout out. Although, although I do have his tweet that he put out, is a little condensed form, quote, within the next three years, there will be so much AI, in particular AI video, which we're going to see a little bit later, People won't know if they see or what they see or hear is real, which will lead to an explosion of face-to-face engagement, events, jobs. Joel Cheesman (07:46.455) All right. J.T. O'Donnell (07:50.987) Right. Right. Joel Cheesman (07:51.34) What? Chad (08:15.643) Those that were in the office will be in the field call it the Milli Vanilli effect Chad (08:25.956) Okay, I get the deep fake aspect. I get the deep fake aspect. We're not going to know. It's like, don't believe your lying eyes kind of thing. That's going to be an actual thing. But the whole hot take on explosion to face to face, I think humans are more wall-y than they are really caring about needing the social vibe, period. mean, the reason why in the pandemic, Joel Cheesman (08:27.172) It needs a better name. It needs a better name. Chad (08:54.782) we needed it is because we couldn't have it. Now we can have it whenever we want it. And we don't do it. Right now we can do it, right? And we don't want it. Now, Gary Vandertuk, that dude is fucking off his rocker. They might pay him for a walk, right? I get that. They pay Gary Vandertuk or Mark Cuban for a walk, but they're not gonna pay Chad and Cheese. They might pay JT for a walk maybe, but come on. I mean. J.T. O'Donnell (09:21.613) Okay, but do remember when they automated the phone and you got so sick of hitting one, five, seven that everybody just started going zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero to speak to an operator? That's what I think about when I think about AI. We're massively automating everything with AI. Everyone's playing with everything. You're eventually going to get to a place where you just want to talk to a human. And I do think that's going to happen. Joel Cheesman (09:31.344) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:41.272) I get that. just don't think we're going to we I think we've gotten to the point where we don't even know the name our neighbors names anymore. We don't even go to our neighbors kids softball games anymore. I remember growing up. That's our neighbors would actually come to games and stuff that doesn't happen anymore. And we don't I mean, so I just don't see that happening. It's very optimistic and I love optimism, but humans are stupid. I mean, we're just going to self disrupt. We're going to self-destruct. Joel Cheesman (10:03.716) The explosion in pet ownership says that people want that sort of organic connection, but not with people, because people suck. Like, my dog, cool, I'll hang out with my dog, but Chad, no, that's a bridge too far. Chad (10:11.422) Yeah. Yeah, we and just on the record, humans do not deserve dogs. We do not deserve dogs. They are the best thing on the planet, bar none, period. Joel Cheesman (10:30.116) Chad loves dogs. Cuban, a proud IU graduate. Mark Cuban, by the way. So you can party and do great things, kids. You can party and do great things. J.T. O'Donnell (10:31.031) That's my dog's birthday today, I'm not gonna disagree with you. Yes, he's six. Chad (10:31.228) I do. hello. Chad (10:39.581) Hahaha J.T. O'Donnell (10:40.077) There you go. Joel Cheesman (10:45.796) Brings us to free stuff. J.T. O'Donnell (10:45.869) and I just want to comment that it's been six months before these two have finally decided that I can actually do something and not mess it up on the show. So I would love to announce that today I am now going to explain the amazing free stuff that you can get from this show. But first, can I just say upfront, you can't win any of this junk if you don't play. So please go to Chad and cheese dot com slash free. Do you hear me now? Don't complain when you don't win. All right, folks. Chad (10:47.166) You know he does. Joel Cheesman (10:57.738) You Chad (11:02.781) Yes. Joel Cheesman (11:13.648) Sorry, it's ChadCheese.com, not ChadAndCheese.com. This is already off the rails, Chad. J.T. O'Donnell (11:16.409) sorry, Chad, you see? And this is why they don't give it to me. I got no rehearsal, people. I was thrown into this. Zero rehearsal. Chad (11:21.19) Hahaha! J.T. O'Donnell (11:26.113) Let's go. right. Let's start with some whiskey because it's shocking. It's all booze. We're going to go with whiskey from Second City Lovers over at Van Hack. Thank you, Van Hack for the whiskey. You can win bourbon barrel aged syrup. That way you can claim you're not drinking when you're having your pancakes. Bob and Doug McKenzie over at Kiora. T-shirts. I can attest. The t-shirts. Chad (11:28.968) Yes. Joel Cheesman (11:30.254) All right. Chad (11:41.171) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:48.136) Yeah? J.T. O'Donnell (11:53.006) T-shirts, I will attest, they are super soft. They're very nice. Those are for the red shoe wearing weirdos apparently at Aaron App. By the way, they told me to say all this. Sorry, I'm in advance. Some craft beer, some craft beer from the job data geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. And here's the biggie. If it's your birthday, you are going to get some rum with plum. Chad (11:57.566) you Joel Cheesman (12:06.906) Chad told her. Chad (12:16.904) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (12:19.024) you Joel Cheesman (12:22.82) Little more feeling next time. Little next time. That's right. All right guys. Another, another, another trip around the sun for Karen Wong, Eli Carstens, Kimberly Ulstrup, TJ LL, Robin Walsh, Zach Martin, Catherine Henry, Eric Baker Mayfield, Linda Whitmore, Summer Baruth, Katie Crissa, Jennifer McClure, and Jeff Lackey everybody. Jeff Lackey. Happy birthday, everybody. Happy birthday. Chad (12:23.036) You can't win if you don't go to ChadG's.com slash free. Chad (12:31.838) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:46.61) There it is. There it is. J.T. O'Donnell (12:47.287) Happy birthday! Chad (12:52.21) In what time is it? Joel Cheesman (12:53.872) Oh, is it time to go somewhere? Chad (12:57.438) Yes. Well, Stephen, you know where we're going because you're going to be there too. As a matter of fact, we're all going to be there. Travel sponsors by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Next on the board is RecFest UK in Nebworth. That's July 10th. And this week on LinkedIn, the boys over at RecFest pushed out a promo video that was primo. You got to check this out. Go ahead and roll that, Chad (13:43.837) Rupert. Chad (13:58.878) 2050. Chad (14:13.512) That was all AI kids. Google's new VO3, AI avatars are fucking wild. I mean, literally Google has, first and foremost, they lost the lead in AI, right? Open AI came out and next thing you know, Google's like, what the fuck? J.T. O'Donnell (14:17.356) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (14:32.016) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:38.268) Those guys, they've got DeepMind, they've got a lot of shit that's actually happening right now, and it's pretty amazing the kind of content that they're putting out, but it's also scary as shit. Joel Cheesman (14:49.764) It's and it's off the it's off the tracks already. the best one that I, it's two Yetis, two Sasquatches and one's black and one's white. And they do like mushrooms and Coke. It's like, it's pretty funny. It's pretty, so people are getting really creative with this stuff and we'll get to the creator economy, at some point in the near future, but we have a lot of other stuff to cover before that. All right, guys, the doctor is in the doctor's in per the better. So wash. Chad (15:07.859) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (15:11.095) topics. Joel Cheesman (15:19.064) and the much better looking one. CareerBuilder Plus Monster is reportedly closing its U.S. headquarters, terminating employees and putting itself up for sale. The company, owned by Apollo Global Management and the Ontario's Teachers Pension Plan Board, that's a mouthful, is exploring a sale process and providing notices to most U.S.-based employees, despite the company's statement contradicting the termination letter. It looks like it's going down. Chad, you're pretty close to this in more ways than one. What are your thoughts? Chad (15:20.595) Yes. Chad (15:50.408) So she was incredibly excited to be able to get the scoop on this. She asked me, like, hey, did you know about the Monster Career Builder News? I'm like, no, what? She read it to me like, holy shit. Yeah, she got the scoop on it. She even got the scoop on AIM Group and everybody else. So was pretty amazing. J.T. O'Donnell (16:08.001) Nice. Chad (16:09.566) So the question is, is this the end of an era or a new beginning? I'll get back to that later. The last decade has truly been hard to watch after being a part of the big launch of the combined Monsterboard OCC merger in January of 1999, which created Monster.com. What we've watched over the past decade with Monster is what happens when accountants start controlling a company. No vision. no understanding of what companies were acquired and how to blend those acquisitions into an ecosystem, and an overall lack of innovative focus and leadership. beat newspapers, became more prominent than major advertising agencies, only in the end to be handed over to some fucking bean counters. Then you have Career Builder, the nemesis of Monster, who built probably the best sales machine this industry will ever know. They knew how to blend their acquisitions into the career builder ecosystem. But in the end, they were sold to Apollo who did what private equity does best, rip great companies apart and sell them for pieces. Now back to my question. Is this the end of an era or a new beginning? Because we're talking about the process or the prospect of sale. First off, the tech is old. Even major systems are rebuilding. So Monster plus Career Builder, would have to start from the ground up on tech, making the tech currently worthless in my honest opinion. The candidate databases, well, you can buy that data for much cheaper than actually an acquisition. The major asset I see are the people. But once again, Apollo isn't a people company and buying people is fleeting because they can walk out the door the next day. Last but not least, the brands. Monster and CareerBuilder were once worldwide and known. brands. But unfortunately, those brands have become incredibly tarnished and have atrophied with bean counter and PE neglect. So we just dropped a great episode, an interview from Unleash where we found out that gem.com that domain was $2 million. So that's a nice benchmark, I think, for a company like maybe StepStone with designs on coming to America, just pay a cool 10 million and walk away with a monster and career builder domains and brands. Chad (18:36.87) and let the day begin. Joel Cheesman (18:39.696) Did say step stone? Did someone put that in your ear? Maybe you've heard that one, heard that one before. Yeah. Chad (18:42.812) Yeah, yeah, it was one of my friends over in Europe. Joel Cheesman (18:48.689) well, before we get to my predictions, I want to go, I think it's time, Chad. Chad (18:53.778) Yes, history lesson. I knew it was coming. Joel Cheesman (18:57.168) All right. Chad touched on this, but it's really fascinating. At least I find it fascinating. So if we go back in time to the world of display ads in the, in the mid late nineties, major newspapers were getting five, 10, 20 grand for one display ad on any given like say Sunday, example, advertising agencies, recruiting advertising agencies were making money hand over fist, basically creating this stuff, putting it out for, Chad (19:06.91) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:21.214) like. Joel Cheesman (19:25.36) uh, for businesses, for employers, and then the internet happened. And basically the world said, let's take the ad on the paper and put it on the computer screen and we could do it for so much cheaper. We're not printing paper. We're not doing all those things. So there was this, this whole re this whole array of newcomers, uh, there were about a dozen or so, and they were selling ads, like free ads, uh, $99 unlimited. The ad could be as long as you want. And you had, you had two brands. Chad (19:51.784) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (19:55.384) Mainly monster monster and Chad, you're close to this, but monster was basically like, look, we're going to, we're going to undercut the newspapers because we can. And in the next five, 10, 20 years, we're going to be getting that five, 10, $20,000 potentially for a package on monster for advertising. So, so their, their mindset was kill the paper, kill the newspaper. You know, Craig's list obviously was, was a big part of this well. So you, you fast forward. It's like, let's build these brands. Let's do Superbowl ads. Let's. Chad (20:10.44) Yeah, for more than one job. Joel Cheesman (20:24.76) buy blimps, let's do all this crazy shit because we need to be the brand when employers think I need to post my job. Holy shit, right? if history doesn't repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. So we see indeed, and this goes back to our relationship where we met first was when you were direct employers and a guy named Joe Jason Goldberg, who was then CEO and founder of jobster, which was one of these upstarts because Google became a thing and I don't think anyone sort of thought of it, but Google gave you the ability to say, look, I need a job in Toledo. I'm going to search for a job in Toledo. There was no monolithic site that I would go to potentially to do that. Now Monster and Crible and everybody still had great search rankings, but then Indeed comes along and says, well, we can undercut all this big brand stuff by going to Google and driving traffic from that. They were largely ignored by monster who was now a public company career builder who was like focused on we're a newspaper, but we're online. We're doing parties in Mexico. We're taking people out to games. We're doing all things that agencies did. And all the while indeed is undercutting the entire process. Job seekers go into indeed and job boards are dumb enough at the time. And a lot of people saw this, like, why are you letting them index your jobs? Why are you letting them do this? But they kept letting them do it. They could have destroyed indeed early. They could have destroyed simply hired, which indeed eventually killed, but yeah, could have totally just killed them in the womb, done, monster keeps going, but they didn't. In fact, they even put APIs on their sites to backfill their jobs, which shocker had a backlink to jobs, the key phrase anchor text jobs, which helped indeed further get better search rankings. Chad (21:49.31) could have bought them. Yeah. Easily. Joel Cheesman (22:10.692) to quicken the demise of Monster and Cribbler. Well, before they knew it, 2008 happened, the world, great recession happened and companies started saying, why do we need Monster? We can use Indeed, which is cheaper. We only pay for clicks. Like it's just so much better. So there was this earthquake that Indeed and Cribbler never recovered from. They have Like you said, fast forward today, indeed and LinkedIn are like 80 % probably of the market share monster and crib builder, smart part. are $200 million revenue business combined, apparently. So there is some value there. We know they, we know monster at least has some global presence, but ultimately these companies were killed by indeed, indeed kill a lot of their competitors. And now we live in a world where we are now we'll get to indeed later, but indeed again, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. Indeed, I think is facing a similar threat and we'll get to that in our next in our next piece. So, but, but you have companies that once ruled this landscape were once these huge monolithic brands and they're, basically gone. mean, these companies are for sale clearance yard sale, TJ Maxx clearance rack. Nobody wants them. Nobody they're shrinking. They're not growing. So that's what we have. Now what happens next? Chad touched on acquisition. I have three scenarios that I think are potentially possible for the career builder plus monster future. Number one is I still think ZipRecruiter could go private. think Apollo could roll up a ZipRecruiter acquisition, go private, bring all these brands together. get them up to snuff or whatever, do whatever Apollo does, cut as much fat as they possibly can, maybe get this thing to some crazy, crazy, profitability, and then they could go public again, or they could maybe sell it to somebody else. So I think Apollo or private equity could roll this thing up with, with zip recruiter. number two, number two, yeah, you once said that about step stones. So number two is, indeed, recruit holdings. Look, Joel Cheesman (24:27.332) They got this thing down pat. They've whether it's workopolis, workopolis is a, zip recruiter got workopolis, but so it's simply hired, indeed knows this backfill. all they would have to do is, is have these properties roll the, roll the indeed con, you know, content around job postings. They've done this before. So recruit holdings could further, you know, sort of consolidate this market, really kill the competition. Chad (24:38.538) indeed. Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (24:55.288) and roll that $200 million combined revenue into recruit holdings. Kitty now number three, we're telling is probably the most interesting is an international player that wants to get into America could easy button this thing, a step stone, seek job and talent for a, for pennies on the dollar. You guys can have a footprint in America brands that people know in America and you guys could hit the ground running. and in America, the largest economy in the world. number one, private equity rolls this thing up with zip recruiter. Number two, recruit holdings just buys it, kills it, throws in a backfill or number three, there's an international player that wants to make a splash in America. Those are my three predictions for what happens now with career builder plus monster. Chad (25:46.418) JT, you've had a lot to soak up. What do you think? J.T. O'Donnell (25:49.55) I mean, if I was in the room with Joel right now, I'd just pat him on the head and say, you're so cute. First of all, I love that you're talking about the brand. Go ask anybody under the age of 25 if they know what the heck career builder and monster are. Nothing. Secondly. Joel Cheesman (25:53.602) A lot of bullshit to step over is what she's saying. Chad (25:53.682) Yeah Chad (26:04.574) You got tons of trust though, that's the thing. That's the thing that matters the most, which I only think, which is one of the reasons why I think it's only a $10 million. J.T. O'Donnell (26:10.445) It's, it's, it's a no, it's stop. Nobody's looking at this from the job secret perspective, which is, you know, I appreciate you letting me be here. They hate career builder and monster. They hate indeed. That's not going to change. The perception is there and there's nothing you're going to do to change that. Okay. Job boards as we know it are going to die. And that's what they are labeled as. And if people can't see that and that the change is coming and how we're going to recruit and connect. Chad (26:21.03) I get that. J.T. O'Donnell (26:38.249) My gosh, it's adorable, but I wouldn't touch those assets. You can't do anything with them. Let them sunset. You just can't. Job seekers want no part of it. Ask them how they really feel. Joel Cheesman (26:53.968) Did I mention the combined revenue of $200 million a year? J.T. O'Donnell (26:57.549) It's a drop in the bucket and it's crashing. Let me tell you a story. In 2018, a Fortune 100 company subsidiary hired me to go through their budget. They were spending half a million dollars between Cabir Builder and Monster. I said, go into your ATS system and show me how many hires you got from both of those last year. Goose egg. Half a million dollar goose egg. So I'm sorry, there's a lot of people that just, to hold onto budget, pay for stuff. Not even sure if it works or not. That $200 million is going to dwindle. That is why they are selling it. And I'm sorry, they were amazing. They had great runs. All the stuff that you recapped about the innovation. Yes, but people innovate and then they don't. And indeed is in a heck of a lot of trouble, a heck of a lot of trouble. If they don't pivot, this is where I give LinkedIn props. LinkedIn has figured out that the futures video has built TikTok for careers, whether you like it or not. That is where that's all going to happen. They've built a billion dollar creator economy for the white collar worker. They have pivoted. They understand they need to pivot. And so that's the truth. I gosh love you. Joel Cheesman (27:59.12) I don't, I don't think, I don't think JT's fallen for the banana in the tailpipe. the, the sad thing is, is this story might be, well, it's not over, but it's close to over. And we've been talking about this, these companies for eight years. And it's kind of sad that we won't be able to talk about them much. There will be a final, like they're done. They're out. Monster.com is now an energy drink URL and they're out and cribbillers just is just. J.T. O'Donnell (28:01.165) Absolutely not. No. Not with the people I work with every day. Uh-uh. J.T. O'Donnell (28:25.505) Yeah, right. Joel Cheesman (28:29.604) That's a bit of melancholy for me. take a quick break and get back to when we come back, we'll talk about indeed the next victim of history. Chad (28:30.897) sad. Chad (28:38.115) next victim, step up. Joel Cheesman (28:45.84) All right guys, watch out paradox indeed is developing conversational AI tools, career scout for job seekers and talent scout for employers. That's creative to simplify the job search and hiring processes. The tools currently in beta testing will be unveiled at indeed future works 2025. You want some more indeed do's you know you do if you're listening to this show indeed job offer scam texts are on the rise. These scams, which often promise quick cash for product testing or data entry are particularly insidious because they take advantage of people who may be struggling financially. By the way, they also have a new CMO and a new focus on AI with their new CEO Chad. There's a lot of indeed news going on. What are your thoughts? Chad (29:22.984) Yes. Chad (29:33.384) So new conversational AI, tell me you're five years behind without telling me you're five years behind. This feels like a relic that Chris Hyams left behind for Daco. Anyway, before we dig too deep, what's your reaction on the Chris Hyams being canned story? I mean, my bad, my bad. Deciding to leave story. What's your take? Joel Cheesman (30:02.7) yeah, I missed last week to comment on that. I, you know, it's, it's apropos that, Apple's developer day, was, was recent was recently because I think there's a lot of comparisons that you can make between Apple and indeed. So indeed you had some, well, relatively innovative, founders, CEOs, you had Ronnie and Paul. I mean, when I say innovation in our space, means let's copy Google, let's copy Google and make it for jobs. But that was innovation for our space. So it worked. and then Tim Cook is like, hi, I'm comes in company guy says all the right things. Super nice. Doesn't rock the boat drives them into, incredible growth, a growth period. think when he took over, they had around 300 employees. Now they are who they are today. but the world changed and just like Apple, the world is moving on from a device in your hand. they've They've tried to do headsets. like they innovation just isn't working in an AI world, with, with what Apple has been famous for, for over a decade. So indeed is that this crossroads of like, Hey, this whole job posting thing was fun or maybe JT would say cute. but the world is changing. moving into AI. moving into a totally different realm. And Chris Himes is not the guy to take you to that place. So, so nice guy, just not. not the one to take them into where they are going now. And I don't think, I think Deco is a, is an interim guy. I don't think he's the one that's going to be there long-term, but I, but the problem is these jobs suck. Nobody, nobody that knows shit wants to like run a job site. So they're going to have a lot of fun trying like, thank God recruit holdings is a good staffing company because they're going to have to find someone to drive this Turkey. And it's, it's, it's not going to be something a lot of people want to do. So J.T. O'Donnell (31:42.573) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (31:55.728) That's, that's my comment on indeed. I think they're at a crossroads or trying to figure out we've, we've talked. In nauseam about the spaghetti they've thrown at the wall, hoping that it sticks. Now they're going to have somebody with hopefully some AI chops to try to throw some, stuff at the wall that does stick. Um, which I think takes us into conversational AI and some of the things that they're doing. interestingly, I was, I was. Chad (32:03.688) Nuh-uh. Joel Cheesman (32:21.646) I've mentioned this, but I was on a call with a, an executive who's a former indeed, employee. And he said, you know what the biggest threat to indeed is? And I, I think I said programmatic, and he said, Nope, it's not programmatic. the biggest threat it's not LinkedIn. It's paradox. He said, why would you post a job when all the data is there? The paradox can, like, you got it. Right. So, so shockingly. Chad (32:44.702) You've got them. You've got them. You've got them. Joel Cheesman (32:48.964) Yes. He says that and then indeed launches a conversational AI competitor, I assume, to Paradox who's been doing this thing for 10 plus years. So you tell me who's better at this thing. And I don't think it's easy to do. We've seen chat bots come and go. I don't think it's easy. I Indeed has its work cut out for it. So those are my basic thoughts in terms of where they're going. think, you know, the CMO that they have, you can tell a lot about where a company is going by their new executives, especially when a new CEO comes in. Chad (32:56.744) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (32:57.485) Hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:18.584) So, so the new, the new CMO, no experience in, recruiting zip, not like he didn't come from, from Baird or like he doesn't have TMP experience. where he, comes from is, automation platform. worked for the company called Sligo. I believe it's how you pronounce, pronounce it. he says in his, in his updated LinkedIn profile, says, quote, I'm excited to help elevate the brand meeting indeed. Chad (33:25.96) Imagine that. Joel Cheesman (33:47.292) power growth through AI enabled marketing innovation. So that gives you a little tip of where indeed is going. When he says AI enabled marketing innovation, that's where they're going. This guy would not have taken this job unless they sold him on. We're a lot more than just jobs. We're going to the next phase and we'll have a fun time talking about the next phase of indeed, but they have their work cut out for them. Chad (34:09.118) I'll see. J.T. O'Donnell (34:09.153) I, yeah. Well, one, they got a pivot, just like I said before. Two, they've got money. And three, it's not easy, you're right, but it's gotten a whole lot easier thanks to AI. I know a company right now that didn't have the money to build their Android app, right? It's hundreds of thousands of dollars two years ago to hire an Android app developer. You can build an iPhone app overnight, right? Now it's being completely built with AI. No developer needed. So when you start to think about what we're going to be able to do, Chad (34:27.678) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (34:38.871) they're going be able to speed up getting there. Like you're right, Paradox doing this for 10 years, amazing. But that first movers advantage, they also spent a lot of money and had to do it a lot longer and harder, you know, than to where we are now. So I don't rule indeed out. I think they have to do something extremely dramatic though, because the job seeker as a whole does not like them. Yes, they're the biggest one. But if your source does not like you, if you can't pivot and get them to not feel like they have to use you. but they want to use you, right? That's what they have to be looking at. then, you know, it'll be interesting to see how it works, but my two cents. Chad (35:15.71) Four points, four points, four points. First off, who's gonna answer a message from Indeed's conversational AI if they're worried about being scammed? It doesn't matter whether it's a text or a messaging app. Searches for Indeed text scams are up over 500%. Talk about shitty timing, right? Talk about shitty timing. Number two. Joel Cheesman (35:17.391) Historically, go ahead, Chad. J.T. O'Donnell (35:32.161) You are proving my point. J.T. O'Donnell (35:37.741) They are not trusted. Chad (35:41.636) Indeed, we'll have the same old non agentic tech issues that Monster and CrewBotter had. Yes, they do have the opportunity and they have the money to be able to spin up new tech. The problem is they're talking about conversational AI. Everybody else is already 10 steps ahead of them with agentic. large language models and agentic, right? Number three, as Joel had said, And we're seeing this over and over and over, not just with with paradox, but with fountain, with gem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hiring companies are finally engaging candidates that they've already bought in their CRM and their ATS, which lessens the need to buy more candidates from Indeed. And fourth and final, Indeed has built bad and misguided products like CPSA, CPA, candidate monetization, and trying to spin rate hikes as healthy budget bullshit, it's all left a bad taste in the entire industry's mouth, including job seekers. Now, will this kill Indeed? No. Will Indeed's control weaken? Most definitely. Will employers smile when they start cutting Indeed's budget? You bet your fucking ass they will. That's the thing. They're not looking at what's actually happening and Joel Cheesman (36:42.288) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:03.676) What kind of narrative they've been playing. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe that's why Hinds is out on his ass or decided to leave. I don't Joel Cheesman (37:11.64) Look, similar to monster when indeed came around, companies are actively wanting to put money in something other than at the time it was monster. Now it's indeed. And Chad and I have talked to multiple big company heads of talent that say we've reduced budget in double figures. and they're looking, they want to do more and, and things like conversation AI are doing that. So I find it hard, Chad (37:20.53) Yeah, exactly. J.T. O'Donnell (37:22.562) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (37:40.408) If indeed came to me and I'm trying to get off the indeed heroin drip and they go, Hey, we got conversational AI now. I don't think I'm, on board. I'm like, dude, I S I have made a decision to get off your heroin drip a long time ago. I'm not getting back on because you have some new tech and historically. In our space, particularly just because the company launches new stuff because they think it's the future does not mean they're going to get it right. Be known. Chad probably remembers was monsters sort of foray into social media because social media was hot and monsters are going to be cool. And it just doesn't usually work one because the brand is associated with one thing and they try to switch it up. and then the other thing is they don't have the core competency. They don't have the talent to do it. Job boards and people who sell job postings have a really narrow like competency to like now sell something. Chad (38:07.678) Facebook. Joel Cheesman (38:35.234) Outside of that is really, really hard. And I don't think you should discount that. J.T. O'Donnell (38:39.533) I'll just say one more thing. If I was running an enterprise and I had a big budget and you're not hiring as much right now, I would really be pulling back that Indeed spend and I would start an earmark and say, let's go test every hot new thing out there. Right? You all introduced me to Flakity. We're partnering with Flakity right now. We're getting 98 % net new traffic to directly to companies, career sites. That's interesting. That's all done through video on social media. Right? Like there's so many cool things starting to happen out there that are really legit, that are not a lot of money for you to test. That's what I would be doing right now. I'd have a total test bed. Let's try 20, 30 different of these startups right now and see what works because they're gonna hit. They're gonna be the next new thing. Joel Cheesman (39:17.156) That's cool and sexy, JT. That's right. Well, one final word for indeed. Joel Cheesman (39:27.184) Let's go to the tale of two innovators, innovators in quotes, everybody. Our friends at Smart Recruiters has launched an AI powered hiring platform featuring Winston, an agentic AI companion. say streamlines the hiring process for recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers. Meanwhile, Chad, your boy, Josh Bersin is touting Workday's latest innovation dubbed the Workday economy. That's creative. As big as Workday's marketing department must be. That's what they came up with. he Burson's touting it as quote, a bold new strategy in quote, it's going to quote super fuel Workday's growth and quote super fuel, Chad, not just regular fuel. What are your thoughts on these two innovators? Chad (39:57.468) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (39:58.926) You Chad (40:07.688) you Chad (40:14.024) So here's a great excerpt from Rich Lewis Jones LinkedIn post, quote, fair play to work day for catching up with the rest of the industry. But if you think this is a new bold strategy, Josh Bersin, and believe it is, you've been living under a fucking rock. I put fucking in there for the last 10 years and only been listening to those who get paid to tell you it is now. End quote. Now, Rich. Didn't come out and say it, but guys like Josh Bersin aren't just analysts. They're paid content creators. They create narratives and content specifically for clients like Workday. Call it corporate propaganda or whatever the fuck you like, right? It's a great way for a huge company like Workday to get their narrative out. Is that bad? No, but as HR practitioners, it's pretty damned important that you first know this is happening. and second, have multiple sources in which to educate yourself. Okay, so enough about Workday. Let's stop talking about them and talk a little bit about smartrecruiters versus Workday, right? This is a smart recruiters versus Workday segment, but I don't like that comparison. I think it's more of like an apple to a truckload of oranges, which is why I like throwing in iCims into the mix here. Yes, kids, iCims. because I think iSIM's announcement this week was incredibly telling. iSIM's announced agentic capabilities with a drum roll please, press release. While SmartRecruiters had a live on stage Apple iPhone unveiling of Winston. Did you see that thing? SmartRecruiters went the iPhone route because it was big, right? So it gives you an idea which company is adding the Joel Cheesman (41:55.152) Sorry, a little late on the sound bite, Chad. Joel Cheesman (42:06.244) Mm-hmm. Chad (42:09.764) agentic me too layers versus a company that's fully embracing tech today by rebuilding their systems for the future. So when we see companies like Google, which we did this week, start shedding search and ad teams and executives from those ad teams and search teams reported buyouts are happening and now focusing squarely on AI and agentic products like Google mass. You can see the importance of throwing out old models. and retooling for the future and from all three companies we just talked about. SmartRecruiters is the only one I believe who is committed to doing just that. The other two has one selling propaganda. The other one is just dropping press releases, MeToo press releases. Joel Cheesman (43:00.172) I love what SmartRecruiters is doing. And by the way, full disclosure, Josh Bersin, SmartRecruiters is a sponsor of the show and we love them. Chad (43:06.867) Yeah. Chad (43:10.379) We've been on stage with iCims, smartrecruiters. We've never been to work day. Joel Cheesman (43:14.672) Work day won't call us back, unfortunately. Work day won't call us back. I just love the play to win attitude. And I particularly love when companies say, you know what, if we're going to be disrupted, we're going to do the disrupting. And so many companies get just set in their ways and their profits and they don't change. And smart recruiters said, you know what, this is the future. J.T. O'Donnell (43:26.093) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (43:40.88) We're going to change it. was reminded Chad of a conversation we had with Dan Finnegan in 2019 when he was CEO of, of job bite. said, he said, quote, uh, we felt that the era of the ATS was over and that the opportunity would be the recruiting platform and suite of products that service the entire value chain of recruiting, uh, was a limited window. And that time was now I'm guessing that Dan felt like he wasn't supported in that, in that vision. Chad (43:45.982) Mm-hmm. Chad (43:50.6) Jump right. Chad (44:10.014) Mm. Joel Cheesman (44:10.106) which is why he's at in border now. But in 2019, you know, he saw where the world was going and many have not embraced it, but I see smart recruiters embracing it. I think, I think it's fantastic. And I think that. Oddly enough, I I'm starting to see a paradox ads on Google about they are a conversational ATS. And I feel like the new thing now is going to be conversational ATS. And we see Winston. Chad (44:34.046) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (44:39.856) going that route, we see Indeed kind of going that route maybe, and obviously Paradox going that route. And I think part of it is it's harder to value a chat bot or a conversational AI company, but if you can start valuing your company as an ATS, like that becomes something that I can start putting my head around if I'm an investor or buying this thing. So I think this is the wave of where this is going. We covered it first and you can see it in our archives, our chat with Dan Finnegan. Chad (44:55.294) platform. Joel Cheesman (45:09.744) But this is where I think the business is going. And I think it's fantastic. Rich Lewis Jones. Awesome to call out Bersin and say, quote, people are being influenced by people being paid extortionate amounts of money by big tech businesses to position them as trailblazers buyer. Beware. God bless rich Lewis Jones, who's a VP at smart recruiters for saying this publicly. Chad (45:18.066) Ha Joel Cheesman (45:38.604) idiots like us Chad say it all the time, but people go, those are dumb ass podcasters don't know shit. So God bless him. I love it. I love this story. Smart recruiters keep keep crushing it, man. I love it. J.T. O'Donnell (45:49.944) question for you guys. if I look at the three, smart recruiters is the most nimble, the most agile, not huge. And if you think about it, it's a great time not to be overly huge company in our business because the amount of tech that investment, right? You're nimble. Name one massive company from our space, a workday size and ISIM size that was able to just let go of the debt, accept it, pivot in order to stay going. Name one. Joel Cheesman (46:01.007) nimble. Chad (46:14.43) Well, think so. Smart Recruiters has about 2500 clients, right? That's still a big, a big pivot for them. Still a big pivot for them. Now Workday, I think if you take a look at Workday, Workday is a bunch of different ecosystems. You've got the piece of shit recruitment piece that's on there. You've got the HCM, you've got pay, you've got all this stuff, right? And then you've got iCims. J.T. O'Donnell (46:25.909) Okay, fair. Chad (46:41.462) and smart recruiters, which are both, which is why I like that comparison better because they're both applicant tracking system, both in the recruiting talent acquisition side of the house. And that's why I believe the leader makes all of this shit happen. Rebecca Carr was the the chief product officer at smart recruiters, right? She brought in Sharon. who was the CEO of one of the companies that they acquired. She's now the CPO. She's now the chief product officer. You've got two product people that can see where products going and where the industry is going. With iCIMS, what do you have? You have a company that couldn't go IPO, and now they're trying to look pretty and skinny up to hopefully get acquired. Again, that's my opinion, trying to get acquired. They're having a bean counter situation, much like Monster did. Right. So they're not going to spend a lot of money to retool smart recruiters is. So, I mean, there are a lot of dynamics that are happening. But to answer your question, smart recruiters, not a small company, not a humongous company, but to make that kind of pivot in the time frame that they did. I was on stage with them in Madrid in February and they just made the fucking pivot. I mean, they just did it. I mean, that's that's amazing. And that's quick. J.T. O'Donnell (48:01.23) It's going to be a win. That's what I think more companies have to do. I'm with you. That was the point. You just got to go. You got to go for it. There's no, no more time left. Yeah. Chad (48:05.085) Yeah. Chad (48:08.582) Yeah, well we saw what it did to Monster and we saw what it did to CareerMotor. Joel Cheesman (48:09.346) Rich, Rich, Rich Lewis Jones laying the wood to Josh Burson. Chad (48:14.622) Thanks. Joel Cheesman (48:20.112) We'll be right back. Joel Cheesman (48:24.848) All right, JT, this is right in your wheelhouse, baby. Warm up, warm up, get it warmed up. right. User generated content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram will surpass traditional media and add revenue this year for the kids. That's TV, radio, billboards, et cetera, marking a significant shift in media consumption. This change driven by a shift towards digital platforms is impacting traditional media, forcing them to adapt. to retain advertising income and attract younger audiences. Historic shift, JT, your thoughts. J.T. O'Donnell (49:01.005) Oh yeah, mean, the governor predicts $480 billion economy by 2027. Economy, economy, it feeds itself. You know, one of the things that we haven't figured out is that we're going to stop trading time for money. Jobs, as we know it, where you trade for hours, right, is done. Okay. We now need to trade our knowledge for money. If I can solve your $10,000 problem in 10 minutes, you give me $10,000. And once we all started to figure it, the creator economy has been doing that for a while now, haven't they? They've all got that figured out. but it's now coming to the mainstream, which gets me so excited. I mean, you all have been creators forever. You're it. You're old school. You're OG. You too. And so when you see where it's going and all the ways that you can monetize, right? The diversification of income streams, that's the new income security. Instead of being held by golden handcuffs, one paycheck, trading my time for money, that company can rip it out for me at any time and I am scrambling, right? Joel Cheesman (49:37.69) Say more, say more. Chad (49:38.792) Huh? What? Chad (49:49.779) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (49:59.18) This, we have hit the tipping point. Everyone is a creator and it's not, people get way down and go, I'm not an influencer. No, you're a context creator, right? Share your knowledge, share your education. I mean, there's a reason why TikTok launched just a month and a half ago, a new knowledge creators fund, okay? Where they will hand pick you and if you're doing videos a minute or longer that are just educational in nature, they're like giving you a huge payout on top of the normal payout. because they see where it's going, right? So this is so exciting to me because everyone listening to this is a context creator. Everyone could be monetizing multiple different ways besides their day job. And that's where you create this income security that doesn't exist anymore. So, yeah, this girl's all in on this. Joel Cheesman (50:47.834) How do traditional companies combat this? Do they acquire? I love the ads on TV that look like a story from a mobile phone. Even the ads look like social media content. Do they buy? What happens? Chad (50:53.81) In a choir they hire. J.T. O'Donnell (50:58.178) Bye-bye. J.T. O'Donnell (51:01.591) So yeah, yeah. think so. What do mean, how do the companies purchases? Joel Cheesman (51:08.912) How does Paramount discuss, like how do they buy the, like somebody's gotta buy Snap at some point, right? Like somebody, like some of these. J.T. O'Donnell (51:17.073) right. 100%. Yeah. I mean, you think about it, it would be great. But what you're also seeing is a lot of agencies, right? There's a huge rise in agencies. Why did I start Pro Voice? We already have 60 white collar workers making money signed by our company that we're partnering. Partners are coming to us and saying, hey, we need somebody to talk about this or that or that. Somebody worked for the FBI, a cyber psychologist. Chad (51:24.286) Yeah. Chad (51:32.488) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (51:44.608) right there. And so the people that will win will put these agencies together, make it very easy for these companies to come and buy. And if you think about it, it's micro influencing. We already know you don't go pay Kim Kardashian a million dollars. You go pay 100,000 micro influencers, you know, $10,000. You get way better engagement. Right. So we already know the shift is away from the mega influencer down to the micro influencer. So you look at that, you look at the agencies, it is so easy to execute and everybody wins. Joel Cheesman (52:14.532) And then how about the AI influencer? J.T. O'Donnell (52:17.185) Well, and so that's exciting because there are mobile apps. If none of you have checked out mobile apps like, no, seriously, there's free mobile apps where you can download a video of yourself talking for two minutes and then you can give it a script and it just recreates you. And it's pretty solid as long as you don't use too many hand moments, right? It's like, it's really, really solid. right? Don't be doing that. But, you know, we'll have video authentication. And even then, like people, if the personality is there and the content is there, they don't really care. Chad (52:40.252) J.T. O'Donnell (52:46.731) You know, so it's, we're in a really interesting time right now in terms of the ability to monetize. Any single person listening to this, recruiting HR, you literally could be monetizing as a context creator right now, today. Crazy. Chad (52:57.43) Yeah. And I think it's got to be something that's authentic. Number one, if you don't have 25 years in the biz like Joel and I do, right? I mean, we've got 25 years in the biz. That's experience. People are going to pay us for our knowledge, right? If you're a kid who's been in for five years, not so much. So it's got to be something different, right? And you've got to lean into what your strength is, right? J.T. O'Donnell (53:19.137) I disagree. J.T. O'Donnell (53:24.737) That kid with five years of knowledge has enough knowledge to influence everybody that has less than five years of knowledge and are going to relate to him better than the person that has 25 years. They've already got studies to show this. So you can monetize at any stage that you're at if you choose the right lane and you choose what you're going to monetize about. So, but to your point, lot of very experienced people are missing out right now. You guys got on the train early. So many people out there that can't get paid what they're worth anymore in a traditional job. Get into the freaking creator economy. Chad (53:45.981) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (53:53.762) This is your second act where you could be making dumb money, dumb OnlyFans money right now with your knowledge. And that to me is the exciting thing for folks like us, you know? Chad (54:04.274) What's important though is they engage an agency. And I know that you're working very hard on that because user generated content is a business. That's pure and simple because if you're not, you've got to treat it like a business. You have to understand your targeted audience. You have to understand your TAM. You have to understand engagement, the tech platforms, marketing message, sales outreach, what you're going to use for that outreach if there's an agency or different mechanisms. It can be incredibly hard even if you have a million followers, right? You might not be getting all that you could out of that. I mean, it's whenever I talk to people who want to run a podcast or they want to become a quote unquote influencer, I'm like, what is your business model? And that's where they need people to be able to lead them into business models. And that's where agencies come. J.T. O'Donnell (54:58.901) Right, right. That's exactly what we do at Pro Voice, right? From the beginning to figuring out what your model is, to making sure that you're monetizing correctly. The truth is you don't need a million followers anymore. It doesn't matter anymore on platforms. The right piece of content goes viral, you will make a lot of money. You don't need a lot of followers to make a of money. What you need, and you are absolutely right, is the right process, the right monetization model, and consistency. A lot of people give up. I did 10 videos, it didn't work. It doesn't work that way. This is like brushing your teeth. This needs to be habit. And you all know that, and that's where most people give Chad (55:05.052) Yeah. Chad (55:23.666) Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (55:27.78) Well, you may not need a million people, but you may need a thousand penises. Let me introduce you to Bonnie Blue. Speaking of OnlyFans, if you don't know Bonnie, Bonnie was famous for having sex with a thousand guys in a pretty short period of time. Well, even, even OnlyFans has a line that you can't cross. Bonnie has recently been banned on OnlyFans for wanting to do the following. Check it out. Joel Cheesman (56:32.366) going too far but never going too far are the dad jokes everybody. Chad (56:33.694) Oof. Joel Cheesman (56:40.218) Guys, have you heard Grindr's launching a new app for roosters? Grindr's launching a new app for roosters. It's called Any Cockle Do. Any Cockle Do. Happy Father's Day, everybody. We out. Chad (56:54.578) We out. J.T. O'Donnell (56:55.308) We out.

Hold onto your berets and bottomless mimosas—Chad, Lieven, and Emi are back with another transcontinental rollercoaster of HR tech, political chaos, and tech unicorn carnage. 🦄 One AI unicorn rises (Parloa) while another fakes it ( Builder.ai —aka “Actually Indian Developers”) 🛩️ Ukrainian drones = startup innovation meets Russian dysfunction. Take that, 🇪🇺 Elon’s Tesla is getting ghosted across Europe faster than a bad Tinder date. 🍳 Emi praises boozy brunches while Lieven mourns Tesla. Balance restored. 💸 RecruitRoo’s leaping across Europe like a caffeinated marsupial with a visa stamp.🇺🇸 And finally—Americans fleeing the land of the free for croissants, healthcare, and mild political sanity. Plus: Red wine + Coke, tipping culture crimes, and one very cerebral Putin joke. It’s The Chad & Cheese Podcast: Euro Edition.Fraud? FOMO? Frogs slowly boiling in AI sauce? We got it all. Press play, kids. It's chaos... with accents. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad (01:40.499) Hold on to your berets and lederhosen kids. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast as Europe. I'm Chad. Your planes are on fire, Sowash. Emi B (01:48.47) And this is Emi Ikyomayemi Kroba Numanayo Berejigo for those in Europe who don't know me. Yeah, that is my full government name. Chad (01:52.341) Excuse me? Lieven (01:59.718) I'm Lieven cheering for those Ukrainian drones Van Nieuwenhuyze. Chad (02:03.241) There you go. And on this week's show, a unicorn is born, a unicorn dies, and when did the UK import kangaroos? Let's do this. Chad (02:16.625) Okay, so I'm sure you both have seen the news out of Russia. Right, right. Okay, so I mean, it's all over the news. And what do you think about, and Levin says it was part of your name, what do you think about the Ukrainian drone strike? We're talking about like 4,000 kilometers inside of Russia. Lieven (02:37.408) I'm sure someday someone will make a movie of this. It's amazing. You have to just think about it. Those special forces operators entering those trucks, they smuggled those drones 4,000 kilometers behind enemy lines. They gathered them. They created some kind of a house with an open roof. They put on the truck and they parked the car next to some enemy airplane, what's it called, an airport. And then they... launched all those drones which cost about 300 euros a piece and they damaged for 7 billion euros on Russian planes. That's amazing. Chad (03:17.077) That is amazing. So what do you think, what do you think, Emmy? Emi B (03:20.374) think it's wild. mean, I'm not even sure what world we're in right now. It's very confusing. Like you said, it's a movie. It's gonna be a movie. It's like some dystopian universe. Weird, weird, scary. Chad (03:25.717) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:33.503) like to think of the Ukraine war as a startup versus like a big old slow moving company. So Ukraine is out innovating Russia and they're using cheap drones, as Liebman had said, to take out a third of Russia's bombing capabilities by suicide drone, droning those, I guess you call it suicide droning Russian bombers while they're sitting on the tarmac. That's like an old AI company, like let's say IBM. who was bested by a young startup, OpenAI. So, mean, tech just isn't changing business. It's obviously also changing the battlefield. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. We're seeing it everywhere. the thing that I think, there are two big areas, especially in the US, and now we're definitely seeing it in Ukraine, where innovation, Emi B (04:18.944) Yeah. Chad (04:28.777) has happened. That's been on the battlefield over the years where development of major technologies have happened and space and being able to see those things happen, especially to a much smaller country, one that was the underdog, is pretty amazing, especially being here in Europe, obviously. Not really close, but still here in Europe. Emi B (04:37.141) Hmm. Emi B (04:48.442) Yeah. 100 % totally agree with you there. Lieven (04:53.66) If this was a buyer-sale, I'd definitely be buying Ukraine. Chad (04:57.841) Amen. Their stock is definitely up. That's for sure. Okay, let's go ahead and let's Emi B (04:58.549) Yeah Chad (05:05.381) Yes it is. Go ahead, leave and all you man. Lieven (05:08.906) Shout out, okay, my shout out goes to Elon Musk and Stella Li. You've probably heard of Elon Musk, but do you know Stella Li? Okay, Stella Li apparently, I didn't know her either, but Stella Li is the number two of BYD, Chinese car manufacturer, and she's visiting Brussels right now. And it's not a coincidence, Elon Musk isn't as popular as he used to be, definitely not in Europe. And the Tesla sales has... Chad (05:13.647) who's Stella Lee? No, huh? Emi B (05:19.134) Nice. Emi B (05:33.706) Really? Lieven (05:38.762) Do call it plummeting? Is that the right word? I'm not so good in English. Plummeting, it's going down. Okay, it's going down very hard. yeah, it's like, indeed it's like the drones and the total EV market is skyrocketing. So this is kind of a contradiction, but if you look at what Tesla is doing, they're totally losing it in Europe. And I'm going to read you the numbers and Sweden. Chad (05:40.787) Yeah, plummeting, yes, taking a dive, much like those drones. Lieven (06:04.704) The car sales plunged 53 % and in Germany it was even more. I I read something about 70 % because Elon has really, he got involved into German politics and the people were, they didn't really like it. Then you have Portugal, Tesla's going down 68 % and in those markets Tesla, the EV, I'm sorry, EV sales rose by almost a quarter, 25%. Well, that's a very big. Chad (06:27.935) Yeah. Yeah. Lieven (06:31.808) Difference also down 30 % in Denmark, 36 % in the Netherlands, 90 % in Spain. Spain is a bit slow, it's coming. And in France, 67%. So basically Tesla is totally dead in Europe and BYD is the new king. Chad (06:48.533) Well, so I took a walk before we started recording and we see I see B Y D's here in Portugal all over the place or dealerships literally just saw a new seal, which is a really good looking car. But yeah, I mean, this is this is B Y D's opportunity. They are the number one EV automaker in the world now. Period. They've taken over Tesla and they're now kicking their ass out of Europe. I mean, to be quite frank, I mean, I think Lieven (07:01.984) Yeah. Chad (07:17.233) Elon obviously has done this to himself, as you had said. Yeah, I mean, he's getting involved in politics and trying to pay much like he did in the US. I mean, he gave a million dollars a day away to voters. I mean, this is this is just this is the most crazy amount of fraud and money in politics that I think we've ever seen. It's just it's gone off the rails. Emi B (07:19.734) 100 % Lieven (07:44.882) And he supported European politicians as well, the extreme rights politicians, which are like the descendants of the Nazis in Germany. I mean, you don't do something like that in Germany and get away with it. Emi B (07:56.852) And now he's crying online about, at my company, look how I've been targeted. Is that, honey, you did this to yourself. Lord. Of course, putting stickers over the logo. Chad (08:03.593) Yes. Yes. Lieven (08:03.956) Yeah, yeah, exactly. People are ashamed to drive a Tesla right now. And I think... Yeah, and it's... Chad (08:13.589) Well, and the resale value has dropped. They had great resale value before. They have shit for resale value now. And again, I mean, a lot of this has to do with the then narrative. Everybody bought into the Elon narrative, and now they're saying that's just a bunch of bullshit. So it's obviously backfiring on him. I know. I know. Elon for president. Emi B (08:32.576) Mm-hmm. Lieven (08:35.23) I used to love Elon. mean, if you go back two years in this podcast, was a very big fan of Elon Musk. thought, yeah, indeed, for president, I said it once and I'm so sorry for it. Yeah, but it was two years ago and I thought Elon Musk is brilliant and I think that I still think he must have some stroke of intelligence from time to time. But he totally lost it. But you have to admit he by himself changed the whole car industry. Chad (08:44.03) Yeah? Yeah? Emi B (08:44.81) Did you? my god. Chad (08:50.421) Hmm? Chad (08:56.149) Too much ketamine. Emi B (08:57.174) yes. Lieven (09:04.66) Without him, I would still have to drive my Audi to the garage to have a software update installed and I had to pay 1000 euros for it. Now it just stands on my drive, my whatever, on my parking space and it's updating by itself. So, Elon changed everything. Chad (09:11.987) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:17.481) Yep, upload via Wi-Fi or data connection or whatever it is. All right, Emmy, what kind of shout out do you have for us? Is it car related? Lieven (09:21.822) Yeah? Indeed, Emi B (09:28.264) No, and the thing is I feel really bad now because that was obviously a really intellectual shout out. And I'm like, my God, okay, how do I follow that? was like, my shout out is to bottomless brunches. So yeah, so for people who don't know, this is actually one of my favorite things. So this is not just breakfast and lunch. This is basically where you go out at midday and they give you a 90 minutes to two hours of alcohol with your food. And unfortunately, I'm just one of those people who I get a little bit excited. I'm like, what? Free alcohol for two hours? Chad (09:37.301) Bye! Chad (09:42.068) Lieven (09:57.088) You Chad (10:02.343) Mimosa's? Emi B (10:03.254) Yeah, mimosas, margaritas, I was mixing everything. Hence why, know, in my, actually I was gonna tell you my real age, I'm gonna lie because it's online, I'm gonna say in my 30s. I can't cope anymore. You know, that was on Sunday and I am still recovering today. But yeah, shout out to those alcoholic bottle and brunches and apologies for bringing the intellectual tone down. You're never gonna let me on the European show again. Chad (10:24.533) Chad (10:33.365) Stop it. You're on the Chad and Cheese podcast for God's sake. Emi B (10:33.974) Yeah, true, actually, yeah. What am I talking about? I'm on the right show. Lieven (10:37.024) that says something about mixing red wine with coke, right? Chad (10:41.973) No, stop it. Stop it. Yeah, we're gonna have Europeans or French up in arms all over. Yeah, French listeners. Emi B (10:43.026) No one knows what's in this mug. It's like, it's... Yeah. No, trust me. It is, it's like a sangria. It's like a red sangria. You have to try it. It sounds disgusting, but tastes awesome. Tastes awesome. Yeah. Lieven (10:49.236) Yeah. Lieven (10:59.636) this. Chad (11:00.691) Not doing it, not doing it. My Portuguese wine is wonderful without Coca-Cola, without Coca-Cola. My shout out is for European tip culture. And we talked about the no tax on tips legislation for the US. And now here's an explanation of why tips really aren't a thing in Europe. Take a listen. Lieven (11:05.408) By itself, by itself. Emi B (11:25.408) No. Chad (11:38.538) Beer. Lieven (11:54.88) All right, fair enough. Emi B (11:56.241) Love that. Chad (11:57.457) So shout out to Europe for hopefully continuing to pay their workers a living wage. And maybe one day, maybe one day, it's not going to be anytime soon, I can guarantee you, the US will actually follow along with said living wage. You guys have both been to the US. It's weird, right? Tell me it's not weird doing tips because it was funny. My daughter came over for an unleashed. She lives in Brighton. Emi B (12:02.288) Yeah. you Chad (12:26.357) She came over friendly, she had a bunch of her European friends with her and they said, okay, Kennedy, what's the tip amount? Should it be about 10 %? She's like, oh no, no, it's gotta be at least 18 to 20%. And they all looked at her and said, shut up. That is not true, yeah. Emi B (12:40.534) Yeah, I'm thinking that. No. And the thing is, it's like doing a maths exam. You know, you're like, okay, what is 18.5 %? I don't know what 18.5 % is. You know, I'm just like, is that enough? And then I look at their face and they're like, okay, that's not enough. Okay. Let's put down a little bit more. Literally, it's so confusing. So confusing. Yeah, we don't tip here. Yeah. Chad (12:54.741) I'm Lieven (13:02.974) Yeah, I really hope you're not going to import that in Europe. I know the UK also has some kind of a tipping culture, but yeah. Chad (13:02.997) I love it. Go ahead, leave it. Chad (13:12.145) in like London, like London, some of the bigger cities you start to see some of the tipping culture happen, but it's definitely not as pervasive as it is in the US. So if you go to literally just a local coffee shop, not even a Starbucks, but they'll have the little machine and you have to do your little tap on the little machine, it will ask you, and this is literally just doing a takeaway with coffee, what tip amount you want to ask, you want to add. And you have to click custom. and zero for no tip and feel like a total asshole. It is is guilting you into spending money because that motherfucking company won't pay their people. Emi B (13:43.87) Yeah. Lieven (13:44.607) Yeah. Emi B (13:50.742) But do see the side eye they give you though, when you go, no tip, and you're like, oh, I'm sorry. It's like, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, don't put it on us, too like pay you. Chad (13:53.109) yeah. Chad (13:57.353) Yeah, tell your boss to pay you some more. Lieven (13:57.471) Yeah. Lieven (14:03.594) But I think those people still got paid decent, but now they feel I could get a tip also. And that's a problem. Chad (14:11.189) Yeah, I mean, it's something that's been literally ingrained into the entire society. And to be able to think that somebody has to live off their tips day to day is just ridiculous. I mean, it's something that people are like, well, if they want, they can go try another job. Well, in a lot of these smaller communities, that's not, they don't have those opportunities, right? So anyway, no tax on tips. Emi B (14:34.454) It's not possible. Yeah. Chad (14:40.905) We talked about it last week or two weeks ago on the show. It's literally a mirage. We should be following the Europeans. And that being said, guess what time it is, kids? Lieven (14:48.2) Mm-hmm. Lieven (14:54.272) Thank you. Chad (14:57.217) Here we go. Number one, let's talk about the unicorn. Okay, I gotta get this ready. Give me a second, give me a second, give me a second. This is awesome. So let's talk about unicorn builder.ai. Okay, let's talk about these guys. Ooh. Lieven (15:20.309) Ha Chad (15:22.133) Oh shit. So once hyped as the UK's AI golden child, builder.ai is now in a meltdown mode accused of listen to this faking revenues, laundering cash with India's Versailles and passing off human engineers as artificial intelligence investors furious CEO. Yeah, kinda. He's he kind of left, but he's still around. Emi B (15:25.562) lord. Chad (15:50.453) AI. what does that stand for? Well, apparently it stood for actually Indian developers. Levin, this feels vaguely familiar. Remember WeWork and the WeCrash? Tell me a little bit about what you think about builder.ai. Lieven (16:08.948) I must say, I love the business model. So you have some great idea and then you use the idea to get tons of money. And then you pay yourself a really large sum. So it was almost something about 500 million from, yeah, from, from Microsoft, I think, and some other huge companies. then you use the money mainly for yourself, I think, to get, give yourself a decent salary and you live the life. And then when it's... Chad (16:13.279) Yeah. Chad (16:18.345) large sums. Half a billion. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Emi B (16:27.603) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:32.275) Yeah. Yacht. Lieven (16:37.788) almost finished then you get some more money because you still have a great idea and the third time probably you will file bankruptcy and then the business model is over and you start all over again with a new great idea I think I should try it I mean this is the perfect time for this business model Chad (16:42.197) Mm-hmm. Emi B (16:51.504) promoting that. Chad (16:55.583) That is deep sarcasm, kids. It's deep, deep sarcasm. What do you think, Emmy? Emi B (16:57.808) gosh. The thing that, like what I don't get, because they had lots of people investing into this organization. Yeah, that huge. was like, so we said Microsoft, I think there was SoftBank, QIA. So these are big organizations, giants, you know, but they actually were so gullible. You're like, how are these organizations so gullible? There's like, did you not do your due diligence? You know, you just taking everything on face value. Yeah, we did this. So it's like, okay, yeah, cool. Let me just send over money. That is ridiculous in this day and age. Chad (17:07.232) yeah. Chad (17:29.247) Mm-hmm. Emi B (17:31.638) And I think this has got to be a massive wake-up call for them. You cannot be like this. With all these new startups coming up in the world, they should take a step back and go, OK, where did I fuck up? In a lot of places. And they're probably, all those other investments into these organizations, I feel like they're going to be sweating it now. They're going to think, OK, what else? Is this just the tip of the iceberg? It's going to be a wake-up call for the industry, not to rest on the laurels. Yeah. Chad (17:45.833) Yes. Chad (17:58.463) Yeah, yeah. So builder.ai, I mean, was a huge hype machine, which became, you know, obviously one of the UK darlings. And why not with a 1.4 billion valuation backed by, as you'd said, Microsoft? Here's one that scares the shit out of me. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. Do you want those guys coming after you? I don't think so. And enough VC Kool-Aid to fill the tames. The pitch, AI powered. Emi B (18:04.181) Hmm. Emi B (18:12.689) Mm-hmm. Emi B (18:17.226) Yeah. Chad (18:27.313) app developments at the push of a button. The reality, hundreds of underpaid engineers in India writing code manually while sales reps used chat GPT to fake AI demos. That's not innovation. That's bullshit wrapped in a venture capital hoodie. It gets worse though. Builder.ai engaged in a shady as fuck revenue stream with the Indian media firm. Versailles who's owned by a daily hunt where both companies swapped almost identical payments millions of dollars for services that conveniently inflated their books revenue went from a chest thumping 220 million down to the reality of 55 million after someone popped the hood and realized this AI Ferrari ain't got no engine And while the CEO stepped down, he's still clinging to the board seat and now wants to buy the company back again. Very, very we workish, right? Like setting your house on fire and asking for the insurance company to, you know, go ahead and give the, the, the money to us plus the deed. A company blatantly lied about its tech, juiced its financials, fooled investors and screwed over customers and somehow Emi B (19:31.53) Wow. Chad (19:53.947) Nobody is in cuffs. I mean what the actual fuck I mean seriously if some Joe off the street or Jane off the street Perpetuated this kind of fraud and that's what this is. This is fraud They'd already be sporting an orange jumpsuit. So Any any predictions out there? Do do we see people in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits in this case because we did with Theranos Emi B (20:19.23) Yeah, and I think they will, you know, that that's I think that that's why these people are to be shitting themselves right now because they're not going to get away with this. It's too public, you know, people there's too many big firms involved in this to let this lie. So absolutely. I think that, yeah, people are going to jail for this and it'll be good. It's a good wake up call for the industry. Chad (20:27.477) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:41.631) What do you think, Levin? I know you want to try this scheme, but this is a... Lieven (20:41.898) think so too. Emi B (20:47.254) Okay. Lieven (20:50.496) I still believe that the momentum is right. It's a perfect moment. If you say AI, people jump. But now you have to say agents. AI was last year. But I think they promised something like building apps like ordering pizza, which sounds like great marketing. But if it's not true, then it's just a lie. And then it's fraud. So you can't claim all these things that will be possible if you can't. And they probably never even believed that they were possible to do it. Chad (20:55.647) Mm. Lieven (21:18.016) It's not because you have a slick AI pitch that you have a strong foundation. It wasn't anything more than that, I think. So people going to jail for that amount of money, probably, think Microsoft will want its money back and it's gone. Chad (21:21.927) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:33.365) It's interesting because WeWork, SoftBank, didn't go after WeWork, right? And I almost think it was because it could have been like a black mark on SoftBank as an investor. Although, if you don't keep these startup founders accountable, what's to stop this from happening, right? I mean, if there are no guardrails, and in this case, yet, because they're not in an orange jumpsuit, there are no guardrails. So I really believe, and this I think goes for the investor community as well as practitioners, because practitioners, HR practitioners, are also investing in products, right? And this is customer service. We talked about Klarna and how they fired 700 people only on the download to offshore those jobs, right? So we've seen a bunch of kind of like sleight of hand and fraud. I think it's going to be incredibly important that practitioners look at, first and foremost, the solution or the problem that they have. And I always say this and Julie laughs at me, but you have to fall in love with the problem to be able to figure out what the solution actually could prospectively be. And if that is 700 engineers in India, just as long as you're being told the truth, it doesn't matter. Right, it's all about the outcomes at the end of the day. So I think we do focus much like, which like Levin said, you slap AI on something agents and orchestration on something. ought people automatically go crazy fanfare. These guys got half a billion dollars. What's that? It is. Lieven (23:13.066) Fear of missing out? Totally. It's fear of missing out. FOMO, you don't want to miss the big next new thing, so you just invest. Chad (23:19.743) Mm-hmm. That's exactly right, that's exactly right. And listener, don't get the FOMO because we got more to come and we'll be right back. Chad (23:32.987) All right, from a dead unicorn to guess what? Chad (23:41.455) yeah. Chad (23:47.509) So this one. Chad (23:51.935) That thing's long, slow down. Joel loves that. You can tell Joel loves that because it's so long. So this one is from Silicon Canals. In a significant development for Europe's AI landscape, Berlin-based startup, Poloa, has emerged as the continent's latest AI unicorn. The company secured 106 Lieven (23:57.511) us. He really does. Chad (24:18.933) million euros, that's 120 million USD, in Series C, the funding realm, elevating its valuation to $1 billion. Parloa specializes in, wait for it, agentic AI, offering an AI agent management platform that enables businesses to develop and deploy AI agents capable of natural and personalized customer interactions. Lieven (24:32.328) Yeah. Chad (24:45.981) The recent funding led by Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, and General Catalyst will support the company's expansion across North America and Europe, as well as investments in new capabilities and talent acquisition. That means hiring kids. That means hiring kids. Levin, your next door neighbor just minted a new unicorn. Any thoughts? Lieven (25:09.396) This one is something I would invest in myself really, because it's all about conversational AI with voices. And this is going to replace, it's happening right now and it's terrible in fact. This is going to replace thousands of people's jobs, people who are in customer care, customer service, people who are first line help desks. All these things are going to be replaced by this kind of conversational AI tools. And I've tested some tools like this and it's already amazing. Like you can... Emi B (25:27.712) Yeah. Lieven (25:38.492) use the advanced voice mode from Chet CPT, where you can just have a perfectly normal conversation. If you use this, and they actually do it in a customer care environment, you can save millions and millions on people's salaries. It will work 24-7. It won't make any mistakes. It will stay polite even the client is roots as hell. And it knows everything. This is something every company will need. And this is... Chad (26:00.361) Mm-hmm. Lieven (26:07.496) something which is going to destroy lots of jobs. And this is not a good evolution, if you ask me, but it's going to happen and you can't stop it. So why not invest in it? Chad (26:15.295) Yeah. Why not make some money off of it? All I got to say is. Lieven (26:23.283) Yeah. Chad (26:23.381) What do think, Emmy? Emi B (26:25.014) I mean, it is sad. You are going to lose jobs, you know? And I think more and more organizations are going to go down this route. I think in the past where people will worry about this type of AI replacing customer service roles, there may have been some skepticism about it. I can't really say that word properly. You know, because I said it hasn't got the human touch. When things go wrong, they're going to have to escalate it to a human anyway. Chad (26:41.524) Mm-hmm. Emi B (26:51.988) This is actually proving something different. This is actually showing that you can actually replace people in customer service roles. So yes, I agree that roles are going to be lost, which is unfortunate side of things. Does it mean that those people in those roles will have to pivot to something else? Yeah, because that is the way of the world. Roles do not stay the same. Roles evolve as technology evolves. However, from Palo's point of view, I think that whilst everything's looking rosy at the moment, Chad (27:14.229) Mm-hmm. Emi B (27:20.916) they are going to still have to prove themselves. They're going to have to prove themselves in terms of customer retention numbers. They're going to have to prove themselves in terms of churn rates. So if they can get those NPS scores up, if they can continue to prove that, what we're doing is the future, other people, you know, we are better, we are more advanced, we are saving money, we are doing X, Y, Z to progress our organization, other people are going to follow, but they're going to be the leaders of the pack. Chad (27:32.981) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:49.823) All I gotta say is... Chad (27:57.173) Yeah, I mean, Parlo is leveraging the big words of 2025 agentic and orchestration by providing customer service voice automation products. Lee even talked about it. This is revolutionary stuff. It's great stuff. So why is this important for the HR space? Well, simply many TA and HR departments are looking for validation to start adopting such products for their needs. And these voice AI systems can help. Emi B (27:57.897) You Chad (28:27.037) with candidate engagement and scaling your hiring without shoving candidates into a black hole. So the beautiful part about their products is that number one, they have an automation with AI agents, so that's full robot. And number two, assist with human agents with the AI, right? So you've got kind of like that little buffer zone of having a human there. So instead of going full Klarna, and leave an Emmy, you never want to go full Klarna. Parloa understands how you market this type of product, number one. Not to mention offer the full meal deal or human equipped robot, right? One scales better and is less expensive and the other gives an option for the human touch. But let's face it, the human touch factor is just having human customer service reps train the AI. Emi B (28:55.978) Nope. Chad (29:23.765) So this is boiling the frog or more of like a Trojan horse method of slowing or yeah, slowing training of the AI, right? And then starting to slowly seep it into our culture and making it an everyday occurrence. That's what sells. In our space, a company I've advised for years, TalkPush, now out of Ireland, are already offering the ability for its clients to use voice for interview scheduling. Emi B (29:41.867) Yeah. Chad (29:53.045) hiring status updates, reminders, document requests, et cetera, et cetera. mean, things for like background checks, extending offers, all via voice. So this is happening in our space. The worst part about the hiring process for candidates is being told you didn't get the job. That's not really the bad, the worst part, it's the wait, it's the black hole and never getting any type of interaction, right? So that's a pretty easy budget. for a company to spend to be able to say, look, we need to be able to raise our NPS scores. We need to be able to actually engage candidates. We can't do that today because we don't have an amount of humans, because humans don't scale well, right? But this does. So what I see is a company like Perloa starting to humanize full robot products without going full Klarna right out of the gate. Emi B (30:38.507) Mm. Lieven (30:50.272) Hmm. Chad (30:50.773) Klarna was looking for an IPO, they were looking for some flash in the pan, there was all sizzle, no steak. These guys look like they're actually taking the time to do it the right way. But at the end of the day, much like Leven had said, this is gonna happen, kids. This is gonna happen. Emi B (31:08.522) the way of the world. Lieven (31:09.416) And in fact, it's going to be an improvement. If you don't mind the jobs being lost and like you said, Amy, they're just going to pivot to something else. It's happening all the time. But, do you remember yesterday when you had to call, some kind of a company? If you want to file a complaint, press one, if you want to press two, et cetera, this is making people angry. And now you're actually going to have a system. Which can do something service agents. Emi B (31:17.14) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (31:17.322) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:32.693) Mm-hmm. Lieven (31:38.578) It's like actually listening and offering solutions. And I tested something like this and it's really amazing. Emi B (31:44.576) Really? Yeah. Chad (31:44.873) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if you haven't take a look at Talk Push again, they're out of Ireland. So they're here in in Europe. And again, I'm biased because I've been an advisor for about three years. But the voice opportunity as well as just the regular text chat bot is is amazing is amazing. So Talk Push dot com. Yes. Push it real good. A little salt and pepper for you. Lieven (31:51.338) Fuck push. Lieven (31:55.84) Mm-hmm. Lieven (32:04.052) I'm going to, I'm going to look into it. Stock push. Okay. Perfect. Emi B (32:10.71) Chad (32:14.293) All right, we're go ahead and move on to Recruit Roo and they have an expansion. This is one from the AIM group. So hold on to your CVs. Europe Recruit Roo, the HR tech startup from Dublin. Wait a minute, Recruit Roo, like Kangaroo? Isn't that Australian? Why aren't they in Australia? Recruit Roo apparently is hopping across the border faster than a caffeinated kangaroo. Emi B (32:15.978) I need to start singing in public. Emi B (32:31.99) Mm. Chad (32:43.827) With operations already in Ireland and the UK, the company is now expanding into France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, and Poland. Their mission to revolutionize the recruitment process with their tech-driven solutions, making hiring as seamless as possible across the continent. Levin, you have some pretty amazing experience revolving around expansion in Europe, and House of HR has expanded. in a very successful way in many countries. So how do you feel about recruit roos go to market expansion? Lieven (33:21.024) In this case, think it's about international recruitment. And definitely within Europe, the complexity and compliance slows everything down. Like you always say in the show, Europe has a bunch of countries in it. It's a fact. You have not one legislation, have how many countries are there. keep forgetting, far too many. Europe has a bunch of countries in it and they all have different legislations. Chad (33:24.746) Mm-hmm. Lieven (33:49.312) If they can offer a solution to smooth things down, to slow it down, to make it easier, it will probably work. The only thing I think is we already had several companies like this in the show. We had some people talking at the Congress, the Eurogroup in Congress last year, doing something similar. I think this is already a red ocean. Plenty of competitors and you have to offer something which is totally new. Chad (34:07.541) Mm-hmm. Lieven (34:18.538) But I'm going to look into a recruit rule deeper to figure out what exactly they are doing different than the others. I should have done it for this show, but I didn't have the time. But we'll get back to this later. Chad (34:34.431) Where you're gonna want to I mean I'm gonna go ahead and jump in recruit roost seems to have moved from staffing to tech to EOR Okay, so maybe not moved but incorporated tech and EOR into their staffing making them look less like a traditional staffing firm and more tech forward So France Spain Germany Denmark and Poland Is it me or is that five new countries with five majorly different languages? Emi B (34:35.153) Hey Chad (35:03.113) by an Irish English speaking country. So plus the immigration laws as you talked about, leaving compliance around immigration for all those countries differ. To me, this seems incredibly aggressive. Incredibly aggressive. What do you think, Emmy? Emi B (35:21.706) Yeah, I agree. The expansion plan is aggressive for a company that's only been around for a couple of years. know, so it's bold. So let's see how well they do. But if they do well, if they have the in France, in Germany, in Denmark, in Poland, then the rest of Europe is going to be so much easier for them. So I'm interested to see where they're going to go. Chad (35:42.879) Do you think it's kind of like a litmus test they're going into? Because these are all, these are five different countries, five different cultures, entirely, right, five different languages. Do you feel like this might be a litmus test to see where they actually stick? Emi B (35:48.085) Yeah. Emi B (35:59.24) I would agree to some point, but these are the countries that they do have to go to first. So they have to be bold. They have to be ambitious. They have to be aggressive about their plans if they want to conquer the rest of Europe. So I'm interested. But the other thing I was going to mention, because, Leven, you said there's other, which I didn't know, you said there's other people doing this already. And you were wondering, what's the differentiating factor? Chad (36:03.775) Okay. Chad (36:08.213) Mm-hmm. Lieven (36:24.384) Mm-hmm. Emi B (36:25.126) What I liked about this organization, so yeah, they handled all that kind of their visa side, but it's into offer once that once all that kind of paperwork is and that's how the thing is done, then they move into that relocation support. And I don't know many companies that kind of do both, you know that housing, the travel itineraries, anything to like, it's almost like a like a relocations concierge within a platform. That could, yeah, that could be what actually sets them apart. Chad (36:49.673) It's an EOR, yeah. Emi B (36:53.922) And when they're moving into these other territories, this is why people go, OK, this is why you're different, recruit route to other organizations, and this may propel them in the expansion plan. Lieven (36:54.802) Absolutely. Chad (36:56.853) Mm. Lieven (37:07.2) And there is a market for it because, for example, in Belgium, it's not allowed if you are in a secondment company like we have some. It's not allowed to supply the logistics part like housing. We even call it bedding. We're not allowed. In the Netherlands, it's allowed. In the Netherlands, even you are obliged if you, to use a strange word, import people from Poland or Romania to work in the Netherlands. You have to provide housing. You have to make sure. Emi B (37:14.698) Yeah. Emi B (37:22.879) Yeah. Emi B (37:32.596) Yeah. Chad (37:32.757) Mm. Emi B (37:35.242) accommodation for them. Yeah. Lieven (37:36.096) They're embedded in a community and you can't just buy a whole street with all houses for Polish people. No, they have to be part of communities. You have to spread them all around town. Actually, it's like that. have one of our companies called VEBO has 800, we call it beds to house those people. So it's perfectly fine. And in Belgium, it's not allowed. And I don't actually know why. Sometimes some politician thought it was good to... Emi B (37:46.41) Okay, yeah. Lieven (38:04.212) keep those things apart, housing and maybe to make sure people don't put them in very bad houses to save money. I'm going to check this out. I want to know it now. So if they can help us with that, we will be welcoming them. think we are constantly struggling with our people. want to give a job and they can't find houses. So could be, you know. Emi B (38:10.186) Maybe, yeah. Chad (38:16.745) Mm-hmm. Emi B (38:18.932) Exactly. Emi B (38:26.73) This company is going to help you. Chad (38:28.063) Yeah, I think what we've seen with Deal, Rippling and the other EOR organizations, and that was one of the things that we said with Deal and Rippling and Atlas and some of the bigger EOR companies, is that they're going to do the employee records stuff and then they're going to move toward hiring, right? So they're down funnel already, which is where a lot of the money is. But then to be able to actually be the entire supply chain, that's the key, right? These guys, what they've done is they started on the staffing side. Emi B (38:43.094) Mm-hmm. Chad (38:57.205) and they're moving toward EOR. Exactly. So they're literally just going backwards where Rippling and Deal, they focused on down funnel stuff to be able to get a lot of the logistics and a lot of the, one of the reasons why they could get so much money is because the HCM and the EOR side, that's more expensive and you're gonna get a lot more money down funnel than you are up funnel on a town acquisition. But from a strategic standpoint, to be able to own the entire Emi B (38:57.93) And then that's the idea. Emi B (39:16.725) Mmm. Chad (39:27.093) process and cycle, that is key. If you can own the entire process and cycle, that is amazing, right? So yeah, I personally think that this is incredibly smart, but again, these are literally, it kind of feels almost like a Trojan horse because they started off as a staffing company, started using technology, which is awesome, right, for efficiencies and whatnot, and then they started moving into EOR, which is what we're seeing here. Emi B (39:30.25) Game changer, yeah. Yeah. Emi B (39:48.907) Mm-hmm. Chad (39:56.687) Excellent. Well, we've got one more segment, kids. Americans are leaving and they love Europe for some reason. I don't know what that's all about. We'll be right back. Chad (40:12.661) All right, so in a twist of irony, some Americans, kind of like me, are now seeking the very freedoms abroad that the US once symbolized as the political landscape shifts, the question arises, is the US the American dream now found on European shores? A growing number of Americans are eyeing Europe, not for vacation, but for a permanent escape. Driven by concerns over political polarization, threats to personal rights, and social issues, individuals like Doris Davis and Susie Bartlett are considering countries like Portugal, imagine that, and Spain as their new home. Relocation firms report a spike in inquiries and applications for Irish, French, and UK passports that have surged. While Europe isn't without its own challenges, we all know that. Emi B (40:56.115) Chad (41:10.921) For many, it represents a haven of relative stable and safe places to live. Emmy, do we really want all those crazy Americans in Europe? Emi B (41:25.44) Well, you go to other parts of Europe, not London where I am. No, I'm only joking. You know I love the Americans. What I would say though, and I get it, I have family in America. I work with a lot of Americans in my organization and I feel for you, like I feel the heaviness of what it must be like to live in a country where Trump is in charge. Chad (41:27.817) Hahaha Lieven (41:29.704) And shut, it will only be. Chad (41:47.925) Mm. Emi B (41:51.37) where the country, which like you said, was the American dream. It was my American dream. I always wanted to live in Dubai, you know. Now I'm like, I might come on holiday, might. I definitely don't want to relocate there. So they look at Europe and go, my God, look, it looks so sophisticated and it's safe. But you have to, people have to be a little bit more realistic now because they need to take off the rose tinted glasses. So whilst, for example, it may not be as tough and as polarizing as the U.S. right now. Is it safe in all parts of Europe? No, we don't have gun culture in Europe, but we have knife culture. You have the US taking away, like, know, reproductive rights and coming down on marginalized group. Well, look at London, look at the other parts of the world. How many far right organizations, so political organizations, are now coming into power? So many. So Chad (42:44.629) Mm-hmm. Emi B (42:46.898) It's not the safe haven, the rosy tint glass world that people believed it was in the past. So that's my only cautionary tale. Chad (42:58.665) Hmm. Lieven (42:59.764) But it's... Emi B (43:00.342) You Chad (43:02.25) leaving. Lieven (43:03.06) But it's definitely better than America right now. Even though it's not a... So I think Americans are welcome, that's for sure. But it will also be a very natural selection. The Americans who are disgusted with everything that's happening and are coming to Europe are the kind of Americans we are welcoming even more. So in French, they have a saying, Emi B (43:05.802) yeah, yeah, definitely better. Lieven (43:32.35) disgusted people are leaving, only the disgusting people will be left something like that. And this is what's happening, I think. People who are actually considering, I don't think most Americans will be leaving, of course not, but the people who are even considering it, that it could be a way out, are the people we would definitely welcome. And that's what's happening now with those university people from Harvard. The French, Macron offered them all a position at the Sorbonne, the French university. Chad (43:36.981) Nah. Chad (43:40.693) That's a good one. Emi B (44:02.111) really? Yeah. Lieven (44:02.506) which is, probably as good as Harvard is. The same in Belgium, the best universities in Belgium offer to generously guest professor, guest lecturer spots to those people who wanted to be here. So... Chad (44:03.421) yeah. Emi B (44:05.588) Yeah. Chad (44:05.845) Smart. Emi B (44:13.055) Yeah. So other people are going to profit and benefit from Trump's mistakes. Yeah, that's the word, that's the term. Lieven (44:21.278) Yeah, and if Bruce Springsteen is not allowed to enter the US anymore after his tour, he can stay. mean, his daughter is horse riding in Barailiff in our streets. Emi B (44:33.078) Hahaha Chad (44:34.549) I mean, it's pretty simple. People want stability, not chaos. And for the first few months of this administration, US applications for Irish passports were up 60 % from last year, according to the data from Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs. So personally, as one of, quote unquote, those people. And after serving 20 years in the US military, it's fucking hard. I mean, no president has ever been perfect. Lieven (44:39.861) Yeah. Emi B (45:04.192) Yeah. Chad (45:04.603) ever, right? But I have never, I have never felt like one was trying to dismantle the country. And this is one that I believe and I've actually fought for. So, you know, just a quick example, we have multiple couples flying over to spend time with us in Portugal during our, you know, our five months, our five month stint that we're here before we actually jet back to the US for some events. Lieven (45:05.181) notes. Chad (45:33.341) And as I've said in the intro to this topic, the American dream isn't gone. No, it's not. It's alive and well in Europe. Emi B (45:43.839) Mm. Lieven (45:44.916) but you will be having some rebuilding to do in three years when he left. Chad (45:48.821) Yeah, no, there's going to be a lot of rebuilding. And I think, you know, the brain drain is one thing. And that's going to be a long that's going to be a long process because there are a lot of individuals who were actually thinking much like Emmy was thinking, you know, hey, that the American dream, I want to go there. I want to be able to live there. I want to be able to experience that. And now that is all shattered. And it really doesn't, you know, in the eyes of people that are not American, it's shattered. because I'm not welcome anymore. And when you don't, and you're not welcome, you don't feel like you belong. You're sure the hell not going to go there. Emi B (46:25.472) You're not gonna come running back. Even if Trump hopefully is out of power within three and a bit years, America still needs to build the trust with the rest of the world. They're still gonna go, okay, Trump may be out, but other people are there maybe still thinking the same way. Yeah, it's gonna take a while. It's definitely gonna take a while. Chad (46:29.299) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (46:40.373) That's the hardest part. That's the hardest part. Yeah. So I know Joel's not here. Um, but, uh, I do have a joke. You have a joke. know Joel is a more experienced at the, at the bad dad jokes than I am, but I'm going to, I'm going to try. So did you hear that someone got 25 years in prison for saying Putin was an idiot? Yeah. Yeah. Five years for insulting Putin and 20 years. Emi B (46:54.988) dear, dear. the Chad (47:13.087) for revealing state secrets. Lieven (47:15.508) Right. Chad (47:18.229) DAAAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHA Emi B (47:19.756) God. I'm like, hold on a second. Did I get that? no. Yeah. I'm like, wait, hold on a second. Yeah. Am I intelligent enough to get this? It's like, Chad (47:23.859) I know, it's a little bit more cerebral than one of Joel's, Listener, thanks for joining and have a wonderful day. Emmy, leaving again. Thanks for coming back, doing the little Europe with me. We out. Emi B (47:38.774) Yeah We out! Lieven (47:42.78) We out.

HR is broken—and no, it’s not just your jaded coworkers whispering that by the watercooler. Jordan Birnbaum, former nightclub impresario turned I/O psychologist (yes, seriously), joins The Chad & Cheese Podcast to make the bold claim that HR can’t work... because it was never built to. 💥 📉 HR needs to be blown up and restructured like Blockbuster in a Netflix world. 🪑 “Seat at the table”? Bring your folding chair. 🧠 Compliance should be in Legal, comp in Finance, and HR? Maybe just focus on helping people instead of terrifying them. It’s guidance counselor vs. Dean of Discipline, with a dash of behavioral economics and a splash of snark. Oh, and AI might burn the whole thing down anyway. So grab a vodka tonic, cancel your next HR all-hands, and listen up. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:32.431) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman joined as always, Chad. So washes in the shotgun position as we welcome Jordan Birbaum, co founder at the Glenda group, Jordan, welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:38.254) Hello. Jordan Birnbaum (00:49.314) Thank you, I am so delighted to be here. However, I was told that there would be no snark, so I have to kind of readjust my expectations for the next few minutes. Chad (00:57.134) You haven't been paying attention. Joel Cheesman (00:57.399) I'm sorry, do you know what show this is? Jordan Birnbaum (01:02.286) I have been a long time listener. I am a big fan of you both collectively and individually. And each of you I find has something really powerfully unique. I love that Chad is constantly looking at how things are about to change. He embraces change like no one I've met. And Joel, your tidbits on LinkedIn are amongst the most usable content that I have. So. Let me just kick things off by totally ingratiating myself to both of you so that you'll be inclined to be kind to me from here on out. Joel Cheesman (01:34.735) Totally buttering us up, Chad. I'm not falling for the banana in the tailpipe on this one. Chad (01:37.072) Smart. Yeah, you can tell he's an IO-psych. He knows. He knows how to bring people in. He knows. Joel Cheesman (01:44.419) All right, Jordan, a of our listeners won't know you. Give us the elevator pitch. Jordan Birnbaum (01:49.908) Well, I would say that they should know me like 700 episodes ago, but that's a different discussion. I am an IO psychologist with a really varied background. I've been a market maker of Japanese equity warrants. helped take an internet company public. owned a nightclub in Los Angeles for 10 years. And then I became an IO psychologist and designed a product called Compass for ADP that won HR tech product of the year. Joel Cheesman (01:55.791) You Jordan Birnbaum (02:15.372) And since then, I have been doing a lot of consulting around the intersection of behavioral economics, behavioral science, and industrial and organizational psychology, which is for me a wonderful landing place and I'm having a great time. Chad (02:31.61) What kind of club? That's the question. Jordan Birnbaum (02:34.314) It was called the Vanguard. It was on Hollywood Boulevard between Gower and Bronson. We were primarily known for electronic dance music. It was really large. We held 2,000 people. And we had a great sound system, something called the Function One. And so all the best DJs wanted to play our plays because of the sound system. So every weekend we would bring in the big international DJs. If you're familiar with EDM, it's all the biggest names, Tiesto, Chad (02:50.061) huh. Jordan Birnbaum (03:03.95) You know, one of the fun things, one of the big like fun tidbits I like to share is the first time that we booked David Guetta, it was for 8,000. The last time we booked him, it was for 80,000. So just to give you sense of like what has happened in that career. So I had a wonderful time with the Vanguard, the stories we could do an entire episode on just both the experiences of being a club owner in Hollywood and also like Joel Cheesman (03:04.365) Chad's a huge fan of the EDM, can't you tell? Chad (03:13.744) huh. Cool. Jordan Birnbaum (03:33.378) the psychological experiences of owning a tooth, you know, seeing 2000 drunk people every night gives you some insights into the human. Joel Cheesman (03:40.591) All right, biggest star that came in and you hung out with. Ooh, Prince, that is really big. Jordan Birnbaum (03:43.907) Prince. Chad (03:45.616) Ooh, that's big. Jordan Birnbaum (03:47.544) But it's a long list though. It's, and there, know, and Prisms are regular. yeah, so. Sunday night, Steve. Chad (03:49.988) That's big. No shit. See, this is why you didn't get invited on earlier, Jordan, because we weren't invited to see Prince. So I don't wanna hear any shit from you. Joel Cheesman (04:01.913) Yeah, he buried the lead on that one. He buried the lead on that one. Jordan Birnbaum (04:06.144) In my defense, I didn't know you yet. Chad (04:08.656) It's not my fault. Joel Cheesman (04:08.909) Now is Prince in your background? People that are listening can't get this, but you have a wall of memorabilia from Einstein to John Lennon. I'm guessing there's a Prince figurine. Okay. Yeah. His purple, purple badness. Jordan Birnbaum (04:13.722) yeah. Chad (04:20.196) Got it. there he is. Yep. Jordan Birnbaum (04:25.55) He's Mozart. His genius is unmeasurable. Joel Cheesman (04:31.96) Yeah. Chad (04:32.9) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:35.481) Did he make you pancakes or play basketball with you? that okay? Jordan Birnbaum (04:38.734) Neither. He did pitch me on letting him take over the club whenever he felt like it. And so he wanted me to just clear my calendar. just whenever he got a whim, he would create like some kind of huge event. And I wanted to, but I was like, I got, you know, I got 150 people to pay, man. I'm like, can't just chance it on you. so that opportunity evaporated. Chad (04:48.346) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (04:57.657) Yeah. Chad (04:57.68) I got stuff to do. Chad (05:02.042) It would have been yes if Charlie Murphy would have been pulling it together. It would have been yes. Joel Cheesman (05:02.223) So now you're... Jordan Birnbaum (05:06.668) Yeah, put a little bit of it there. Joel Cheesman (05:07.097) So now you're ahead of the much less sexier Glinda group. Give us, what's behind that name? What's the story? Jordan Birnbaum (05:14.838) So, you know, I mentioned this tool that I created at ADP called Compass. The way that it worked was we used email-based coaching that I wrote that was very heavily behavioral science-based. And we got people really bought in and they ended up having some pretty impressive score improvements. And what I would tell everybody is I don't know anything about leadership that we don't all know. What this was, was what happens when you apply behavioral science. Chad (05:44.272) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (05:44.716) Anyway, when I was forming the Glinda group, I partnered with a former colleague of mine from ADP who was with me while that was happening. And she said something to the effect of, know, I've seen you use behavioral science to affect lots of people. But the thing is, is that you did it for good. You're like a wizard, but for good. I was like, yeah, I'm like Glinda. And we just sort of chuckled and then looked at each other was like, wait a minute. And sure enough. And then... We probably in the back of our minds knew but the wicked movie was coming out like, you know, basically 30 days after we announced so We figured that was a good good omen Joel Cheesman (06:22.999) And Glenda the good group is too long. So Glenda group. Yeah. Jordan Birnbaum (06:25.772) Wait, yeah. Chad (06:26.768) I actually like Glenda, the good girl. Well, we're here today, Jordan, because you actually penned an article called, Why HR Doesn't Can't Work. And we kind of feel that day to day, but you've kind of like broken it down into different archetypes and things like that. So go ahead. What did you do? How did you come to this in the first place? Because obviously we've seen where HR doesn't can't work, but you broke it down in a very technical way. So talk a little bit about that. You saw a problem, you just wanted to attack it this way. How did you go about it? Jordan Birnbaum (07:07.374) You know, I don't know that I could even answer how it came to me. would say that one of my, I think that one of my gifts is that like I sometimes will just notice stuff and point it out and it's pretty obvious that it was there. It's just hadn't been seen yet. And so I feel like that's what happened here. But I just, while I went back to school, one of the good things about going back to school after you've been in the workplace for a long time is that, Chad (07:14.809) and a dream. Chad (07:25.136) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (07:35.342) it's something it's an entirely different experience. And now you get these theories and you get, you know, I have two decades of experience now to compare to these theories. And I think that probably in some of that thinking is where this realization came up where it's like, even if you think about like, what's the purpose of performance management? Like, is it to hold people accountable? Or is it to drive their performance? Because those would take two very different approaches if you had clarity on what it was all about. And so that to me is a little bit representative of the whole problem with HR, which is that the people who are responsible for like making us afraid and keeping us in line are also the same people who are responsible for motivating and engaging us and making us loyal to the company. how does that work? And what I realized was that it was very reminiscent of the archetype of high school. Joel Cheesman (08:20.556) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (08:27.95) If you thought about like the Dean of Students who was there to make sure that we were all scared of consequences if we misbehave. And then you had the guidance counselor who was there to be like this really safe and nurturing figure to help us discover ourselves. And what I realized was that somehow in HR, they thought it would be a good idea to take the guidance counselor and the Dean of Students and combine it into one role. And that's a really bad decision. Chad (08:32.154) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:36.058) paddle. Jordan Birnbaum (08:58.338) because the two worlds undermine each other and that is what leaves HR unable to fully execute on either. Chad (09:06.554) So if it's so flawed, which we've seen different aspects, no question that it is flawed, what do we do about it? Do we have to implode the current system framework and rebuild? Joel Cheesman (09:19.555) load up. Jordan Birnbaum (09:23.318) I think we do, you know, and I tell sort of like a fanciful imagining of how HR first came to be. And if you sort of take a step back, what I think it is, is that HR is all the stuff that senior leaders didn't want to deal with. And usually the type of people who end up in senior leadership roles are very achievement oriented. And so they like... objective metrics that they can hit. And they like unambiguous victories. And that the two things that people aren't are unambiguous or objective. And so it's easy to see how most senior leaders would gravitate to things like sales and marketing or even client success. But when it comes to things like training and developing people and keeping them engaged, that is so far. Chad (09:54.608) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (10:19.914) outside of what the normal course of business is. Sorry about that. That is so far outside of where the normal course of business lies, that it seems like we just grouped all of this stuff together to say, okay, here's the human stuff. But that's a terrible way to categorize it because there are so many different important distinctions in what that overall grouping is. And so what I would say is, you know, it seems like anything related to compensation, insurance, anything along those lines, that feels a lot more naturally fitting with finance. anything with compliance, with complaints, sexual harassment, anything at all around things that could create liability for the organization, that very clearly belongs in legal. Like legal is a great Dean of students. We are scared of legal. And so if legal is responsible for driving that stuff, it's actually gonna be much more impactful. Being able to deal with financial people when we're worried about like our Chad (11:02.853) legal. Chad (11:20.858) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (11:25.694) insurance companies trying to screw us over like, yeah, that's what we want is like the aggro is in there who are going to get in there and solve stuff. So ultimately, what I think we need to do is break up HR according to what are the various functions that they play and think about realigning them with the goal being that HR should be about supporting the employee. We got to make HR into the guidance counselor. That's the part that is missing within our organizations. Who is there to make sure that the employees are doing all right? And that's where HR belongs in my opinion. Chad (11:56.89) Well, on the talent side too, you take a look at we've broken talent acquisition away from talent management. And to be quite frank, it should be a fluid talent lifecycle, right? It should be the acquisition of talent, bringing them in, engaging them, developing them, and then moving them up or out, right? I mean, that's what we should be doing. And in many cases, I mean, they're gonna move out on. They're going to move out on their own as much as we have to push them out or up as well, right? But yeah, I see where there's, it's almost like HR to some extent was like a catch all. Jordan Birnbaum (12:35.992) And it shouldn't be, you with regards to talent acquisition, I'll tell you something else too. This is one where we could go even a little bit further down a rabbit hole. like, I feel as though talent acquisition, it belongs more in the BUs. Like the more specialized you are in that business, I feel like the more effective you're gonna be at finding the right kind of talent. And so whether or not we cap someone's job at recruiting, Chad (12:44.101) Mm. Chad (12:54.16) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (13:04.262) or that becomes part of some broader function embedded within a business unit. think that there are a lot of arguments to be made that if we integrate talent acquisition into the BUs as part of a re-imagined role that, to your point, stays much more connected to that talent when they come in, is involved in onboarding, is involved in performance management. Exactly. Joel Cheesman (13:17.039) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:29.156) or they understand the business. Jordan Birnbaum (13:32.118) So I think that that's another part of this whole reimagining. Joel Cheesman (13:35.245) What's the what's the tip of the spear in this happening because asking a department to become less powerful by eliminating or moving positions, it feels like it's not going to happen in HR. So where is this change going to come if it does come? Jordan Birnbaum (13:53.582) Well, so I don't know that I'm willing to accept the first premise because, know, something I'm going to tell a quick story and then I'll share with you why I'm telling it. And it's the story of Blockbuster and Netflix, right? Blockbuster was in one of the most dominant market positions of any company in any industry in history. Uh, oh yeah. Especially in late fees. Yeah. Very nice call out. Joel Cheesman (14:14.383) They got a lot of my money. Chad (14:16.218) Yeah. I always loved the manager's choice as well. Jordan Birnbaum (14:22.4) Netflix realizes though that there are so many problems with blockbusters customer experience from driving there to videos out of stock to returning to late fees. I mean, it's stuck. It was not a good experience. so Netflix comes up with this, you know, DVD by mail to solve for those problems. And it's a big hit. The problem for Netflix was that Once they proved that this was a viable business model, there was nothing stopping Blockbuster from flipping a switch and sending a note to all 55 million of its subscribers saying, hey, you can now get your DVDs by mail if you'd like. And so they did. Netflix actually had gone in and pitched that they wanted to get purchased by Blockbuster for like hundred million dollars. And they got laughed out of the room. And Blockbuster said, why would we ever buy you? We can just do it. And so they did. But then along came... Chad (15:07.578) Mm hmm. Yeah. Jordan Birnbaum (15:16.448) activist investors, I won't mention any names. And they said, are you telling me that you're gonna introduce a business model that will have us lose our late fees? Are a cash cow? Are you morons? Undo that program immediately. And they kibosh the DVD by mail program for Blockbuster, which gave Netflix a second life in which they then reinvented themselves by going from mail to streaming. And now, you know, I think Blockbuster probably topped out under a billion dollars in their market cap. And I don't even know where Netflix is today, but I think the reason that that story is important is because it makes agility cool. And if you can make agility cool, people can get behind just about anything smart. And so I think that if we can make agility cool for HR practitioners, Joel Cheesman (15:57.006) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:06.128) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (16:13.474) The people who deal with comp, I think that they would love to be in finance. I think they would love the respect. I think that we would love to be with their number oriented peers. The people in compliance, I think would love to be in legal and be part of that archetype. And the HR practitioners to whom my heart goes out are the ones who really want to help people and now find themselves in a position where they're always conflicted between helping the organization versus helping the people. And so for them, If we can tell them, your job is just help the people, I think they would love that too. So to me, this is one where everybody actually wins so long as we can like let go of our fiefdoms for a Joel Cheesman (16:43.375) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:54.448) very hard as human beings, as human beings. Joel Cheesman (16:55.265) I know I was going to say... You think a lot of people. Jordan Birnbaum (16:57.486) It doesn't mean it's worth the, we shouldn't aspire. Chad (17:00.312) Yeah, mean, that's the, I mean, and again, that's the hardest part is we get comfortable, right? And that's where things start going wrong is because we, in the uncomfortable is where we actually find innovation and we find solutions to problems. But when we're not looking for problems, because it's the way we always done it, right? I agree. I do like, the idea, I don't know that I think that they should be like embedded in the business units, but I do believe that there should be individuals who are like concierge talent people who should be connected because there has to be, there has to be an underlining infrastructure that's being used from a technology standpoint because there's so many different pieces of tech on the talent side of the house, the people side of the house that, but those individuals, today we ask recruiters, to be experts in all the different areas of the business and which means they know none of the business. Maybe, you know, pieces, parts here and there, but they're not experts in anything, right? And we need them to be experts in the business. Not just talent, but the business of talent. That's where, you know, again, the difference between staffing and talent acquisition is talent acquisition is staffing's business. They make money off of that. know what that actually means when the rubber meets the road, they know what the revenue looks like, right? Town acquisition is their job and they don't go any further than that. So I do agree with that and I can see Joel wanting to rip in there. Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (18:48.163) Hahaha! Joel Cheesman (18:48.431) hype dream is maybe too mean. It's but people change is scary, Jordan. And HR is probably the most risk averse of all the departments in the in portfolio. So a total redesign of HR sounds scary. What also sounds scary is I've been begging for a spot at the table. HR needs a spot at the table of the company. Jordan Birnbaum (18:58.906) yes, Joel Cheesman (19:20.417) if you dismantle it and make it less of what it was, it feels like that seat at the table gets further away. Help help me understand why I'm wrong in that and how it can maybe help them get to the table. Jordan Birnbaum (19:37.816) So it's so interesting. I think that part of the reason that it's so hard for HR to get a seat at the table is because, which part of HR? Are we going with risk management or are we going with talent development or what's the orientation of that senior leadership? And wouldn't that determine then who within the HR organization might actually get a seat at the table? And so I think that part of what my argument would be that by breaking this current makeup of HR into the separate business functions that we both clear a path for the individuals within each of those functions to rise. But also we create the necessary seats at the table because getting HR a seat at the table, it's like, I don't know what that means. And that's entirely the problem. Like getting sales at the table, I know what that is. I know what client success is. I know what product management is. I know what R &D is. I don't know what HR is. I don't know if that means talent growth. I don't know if that means employee engagement, performance, talent acquisition, training. There are so many different directions that you could take that that's a huge part of why there's no seat at the table because it's like 25 seats. Chad (20:52.59) So you take a look at business structure and I think it's interesting because Joe will ask, know, who's gonna make HR is not gonna make that decision. And to be quite frank, it's not up to HR, it's up to the CEO, it's up to the C-suite. So we've actually talked about Salesforce doing this new business. I believe it's with a Deco, isn't it? Where they've created this new company that is focused on being able to use agents to really do the staffing side of the house. Jordan Birnbaum (21:04.163) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:21.488) In in in that whole process of thought around that new model, I thought, holy shit, Salesforce doesn't need a Deco. They already have connections to the CRO who they who they sell directly to, right? The CMO, the CTO, the CPO, all of the people who are already at the table. You're already selling to them, right? And if you have a talent delivery structure. in which you're delivering key talent to those individuals, you're literally bypassing that of talent acquisition. Now, you wanna have people embedded in your team who can actually have a concierge service around that. But I can see kind of like, let's say for instance, kind of like a straw man structure of what you're talking about. Is that what you're really kind of getting across is like, look, the structure's already there. The people who have seats at the table, are gonna stay at fucking table. They don't have seats at the table, especially because they're so splintered from an HR standpoint, HR, TA, TM, I mean, all the way through payroll, et cetera, et then you can literally just go to where the power and the control already resides. Is that what I'm hearing that you're distilling? Jordan Birnbaum (22:39.562) If you are in compensation and benefits and you want to see it at the table, your best advocate is the CFO. If you are in compliance and you want to see it at the table, it's your general counsel is your seat at the table. And if you're in talent, you don't currently have a seat at the table because you're mushed together with all these other things. And so this might actually get talent a seat at the table, by breaking us down into these core functions. Chad (22:42.737) huh. Chad (23:09.36) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (23:09.612) My only point is that until we have clear archetypes around each of the business functions, this will be a mess. And that once we can identify what are the different archetypes that exist within HR and where do they belong naturally. And even if it means that HR becomes four different business units, which I don't advocate, but that would still be better than what we currently have because by cramming them all together, we undermine them all. And it's one of the reasons why I think we've come to accept such low engagement scores. This idea that two out of three people not being into their jobs is normal and okay, that's crazy. Joel Cheesman (23:53.081) You'll appreciate a reference to the untouchables. Sean Connery, Kevin Costner. There's a scene in that movie where they're they're getting a new recruit to join the team. And the comment of if you want an apple, you get it from the tree, not the barrel. And I feel like HR is a whole lot of barrel apples where they've been around a long time. They've done it this way forever. Like change is not going to come from them. So my question is around generational. Jordan Birnbaum (24:00.056) worth. Joel Cheesman (24:22.723) challenges, like anyone that's in college school right now to learn HR and the business, they're learning probably old models and old archetypes around what it is. How important is the generational gap? How do you close it? And how do you make sure that the next generation of professionals have sort of your vision and not the old school vision? Jordan Birnbaum (24:45.464) Well, my vision comes from learning the exact same stuff. you know, maybe part of the solution isn't that we need to be teaching different things, but rather, you know, growing up in a technologically informed age has given each subsequent generation a new perspective on this stuff, which leads to ideas like this. You know, I think you're always going to have progressive and conservative within any band. but my, again, my point is that, you know, on a certain level, if AI is coming and everything's getting recreated anyway, then well, this, we might as well take advantage of the moment, you know, like Lewin's whole change theory is like, first you got to unfreeze the ice before you can do anything. And that's what everybody always forgets to do. Well, AI is unfreezing the ice. So we're going to have just like COVID did COVID Joel Cheesman (25:34.351) Mm-hmm. Jordan Birnbaum (25:41.07) You know, unfroze the ice and it allowed us create an entirely new reality. AI is about to unfreeze the ice. So I guess what I'm suggesting is, is that we take advantage of it by thinking about HR, not in terms of traditional HR, but about what are the different functions and archetypes within HR. And let's start thinking about each one of those individually instead of as a group, because that is leading to endless amounts of problems. Joel Cheesman (26:12.375) Ultimately, AI might add a lot of layers to this that you don't have to put finance together. That's just AI is going to... The new HR person is going to have a hand on all the AI tools and they're going to, I think, house that within and not have this whole sort of deconstruction of the department. That's my own two cents. Yeah. Chad (26:12.441) It seems like. Chad (26:32.889) or could actually hasten it if you think about it because it could be easier to actually put some of those pieces into the CFO's hands or the CRO's hands or what have you. And just taking a look at the talent acquisition side of the house, once again, as Jordan had pointed out, being able to actually have talent experts in your space who's not just focused on talent acquisition but also the onboarding, just the concierge services. Joel Cheesman (26:42.703) Sure. Chad (27:02.564) being able to be that counselor per se around the career. And that's why a lot of people leave their jobs. They've got shitty managers and they have, which is a horrible experience. But if you have concierge service that also helps develop where you can see your path in the company, which most people can't see. And then you're actually getting the development, the training and those types of things. know, there could be, this could be a different answer. But back to Joel's question, who makes that decision? Because to be quite frank, I don't think the CEO, most CEOs fucking understand how important talent is. They say it left and right, but we're still low balling talent. We're still paying them a hell of a lot less. We're still treating them like shit. We're still not providing a clear. career paths. I mean, we're not doing any of these things that we should be doing to be able to keep that talent. So to me, the CEOs are full of shit when they say that they believe talent is the number one thing on the list. What's your thought around that? Because again, if it's going to change, it's going to have to come from the top. And I don't think the top knows what the fuck is going on. Jordan Birnbaum (28:16.918) So there's a couple of different big questions hovering here. so I think the first is like, well, is AI gonna take everybody's job anyway, rendering this entire conversation moot? And maybe, but I just don't understand how we're going to make it as a society. If we let AI take everyone's jobs, don't know why it would stop at the C, why couldn't it be the CFO and why couldn't it be the CEO? then eventually why wouldn't it just be AI selling and selling to and buying from itself on LinkedIn? And we're just all gonna sit home and play video games. I don't understand what kind of society we'll have if that happens. Chad (29:01.612) one fueled by universal basic income. That's the one. Joel Cheesman (29:05.775) Fembots and OnlyFans, Jordan, is the future. Jordan Birnbaum (29:05.932) that maybe. Jordan Birnbaum (29:10.094) But, but assuming that human beings will continue to sell and buy, uh, to and from each other, then I think, um, our next bet's bet is just to figure out, right, then how do we optimize our experience of work using AI to help us to operationalize the unbearable stuff and, you know, spend more time in the really valuable stuff and then also spend less time working. Joel Cheesman (29:14.178) huh. Jordan Birnbaum (29:37.334) and get back to an actual work-life balance. Joel Cheesman (29:40.461) Maybe get back to drinking a little bit. Jordan, you have a cute little cocktail description of all these hierarchies and archetypes, etc. Just what's your favorite cocktail? Jordan Birnbaum (29:54.508) I am a vodka tonic kind of guy. mean, I will, I'm a margarita. I really enjoy margaritas too, especially when my wife and I go out, like we'll do margaritas together and there's just something fun about that. But yeah, like I would say that like in a pinch, I'm a vodka tonic guy. Joel Cheesman (29:58.489) Simple man, simple man. Chad (30:03.833) on the beach. Joel Cheesman (30:14.947) Fair enough, fair enough. Chad (30:16.25) That's too easy. Jordan Birnbaum everybody. And Jordan, if somebody wants to connect with you, talk about these crazy deconstruction ideas. Where could they find you? Jordan Birnbaum (30:28.974) Glendagroup.com , one word, or Jordan Birnbaum on LinkedIn. And you can even find me on Psychology Today. if you search for my name, you'll get all my articles and you'll decide whether or not you think I'm crazy. Joel Cheesman (30:45.241) That's Glenda with an I, the good witch. And this is the good podcast. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad (30:52.634) We out.

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast , the HR gods giveth—and then drop-kicketh your CEO. Mo Clough returns to the mic just in time for the Indeed implosion: Chris Hyams “decides” to leave (read: got yeeted), and his old boss steps in like, “I’ll take it from here, champ.” 🔥 Indeed’s parting gift? Doubling your ad spend and calling it a “Healthy Budget.”   🕵️‍♀️ Meanwhile, Deel and Rippling are still engaged in a tech bro slap fight that includes fake customers, espionage, and… an axe? ⚖️ Workday gets slapped with a class-action lawsuit over alleged bias in its AI tools. It’s either ageism or just their recruiting module being trash—TBD.🤖 And if you weren’t stressed already, AI’s coming for your job. Literally. Mo suggests a bunker. Chad suggests more booze. It’s HR meets high drama, served with sarcasm, suspicion, and strong opinions. Because “unfiltered” isn’t just a style—it’s a survival strategy. 🍷 Drink up, kids. The robots aren’t just coming—they’re updating your resume for you. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad (00:29.899) Welcome back to the Chad and She's, HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. I'm Chad. Well, it's about damn time, so watch. Maureen Clough (00:38.456) And I'm Maureen, AKA Mo. Should I be building a doomsday bunker or something? Clough. Yeah, probably. Chad (00:44.196) I think you might, I think you might. And on this week's show, indeed gets healthy. Workday gets some action and Bozo rides again. Let's do this. Chad (00:57.759) Hey Mo, whatcha up to? It's been a while, where you been? Maureen Clough (01:00.206) I know. This feels like a homecoming. I'm so happy to be back. It's been like a minute, huh? It really has. Or it felt long to me. I missed you guys. I missed you guys. And I still miss Joel. I still miss Joel. Goes straight to his head. Chad (01:03.499) You Chad (01:07.1) It has been. I don't Chad (01:18.057) Yeah, well, mean, so last week he and I were out birthday week, right? This week he's enjoying quality time with the kids, probably sitting in pool side having Taco Bell in the core's light. Yeah, last week though, I I lived it up and it's funny to actually say this. It's surreal to say this because last week I played golf in Spain, went kayaking in the Ria Formosa, played about 10 hours of paddle. Maureen Clough (01:32.504) That's the life, man. Maureen Clough (01:44.622) Such a flex. Chad (01:46.827) had my birthday party at my favorite bar. Oh, I gotta show you what I got. Give me a second, give me a Maureen Clough (01:51.48) Show me, show me. Wait, we love birthdays. Getting older is so hot right now. That's so awesome. All right, my gosh. my gosh. If you guys aren't watching on YouTube, that's a loss for you because what he just brought out is fairly massive. What the? Chad (01:59.95) Yeah Chad (02:07.375) It is massive and what it is is five liters of port. Maureen Clough (02:15.006) my, don't you like sip port? Like port is something you have like a little, so that's gonna last you a while, right? That's not coming through TSA on the way back over to the States, huh? No, no, no, get detained. Yeah. Chad (02:16.458) get that. Yeah, which means We're going to have to have several parties to get rid of this fucking thing now my buddies No, no, this is this is staying. Yeah, no my buddies. It's tenure Sandman Tawny port. Whoo. Anyway, buddies buddies got that for me as a birthday gift five liters of point always trying out Always trying Maureen Clough (02:45.026) Your friends know you well. They know you well. They know the way to your heart. Chad (02:49.013) Always trying to outdo me is what it is. Always trying to outdo me. Maureen Clough (02:51.086) Did they succeed? mean, that is a pretty, I mean, that's tough to compete with, let's be honest. Yeah. Yeah. They killed it. Good job, Chad's friends. The bar is higher. Chad (02:55.965) Yeah, yeah, no they did. Bunch of, bunch of horseshit. Yeah, bunch of horseshit. So what were you doing? What were you doing? You just out and about? Were you on the island? What's going on? Maureen Clough (03:09.108) Out and about, yeah, I've been all over the place. I just got back from my 20th college reunion, if you can believe it. I know, I was like, what? I just cannot believe that that happened. It's like, man, life is moving really fast, right? It's that like Ferris Bueller quote, right? Like, how? How am I here? It was just bizarre. But it was so much fun getting back to campus and seeing my old friends. And so many people looked exactly the same to me. Chad (03:15.404) stop it. I can't. Chad (03:36.213) So was on campus. OK. Maureen Clough (03:37.422) Yeah, it was on campus. So I went back to Boston for it and it was a blast. Got to catch up with some of my best friends and see people who like, to be honest, I literally forgot existed. And I was like, oh, you, you know, but it was, it was really nice. It was like a, it was a heartwarming thing to remember back in, you know, the day when I was a little, little baby, you know, walking around the streets of Boston thinking I knew everything, knowing nothing, you know, it's funny how that works, right? Yeah. I was all eager and like really had hope. Chad (03:58.227) Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Bright eyed. Ocea tail. Mouth, I know. Maureen Clough (04:05.784) And now I'm just like this downtrodden, beaten woman just trying to get through. Chad (04:12.235) I'm trying to get through life people. Okay, we gotta get out of the Debbie Downer stuff. We gotta get out of the Debbie Downer. I can't have you there. can't have you there. We're gonna go directly into, you know. Maureen Clough (04:14.127) Maybe building a bunker. don't know. Doomsday is coming. We're to be happy. We're going be happy today. Chad (04:27.366) you know it as an and you get to go first because you've got you've got a fun one. Maureen Clough (04:29.778) man, do I ever have a shout out for you? My shout out goes to a guy named Oliver Widger, who is just this like complete sensation. Now he's kind of a national hero. I think he's emblematic of what so many people feel right now, which is like completely left behind, like the American dream is no longer possible. Like things are just out of reach. And so he did something pretty sick. Why don't you go ahead and roll that for the audience? Chad (04:36.618) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:49.515) Yeah. Chad (04:54.079) Beautiful Bane footage, here we go. Maureen Clough (04:55.997) Hmhmhm. Maureen Clough (05:21.39) conventional wisdom. Maureen Clough (05:30.616) Dude, like this guy, you should see, I mean, everybody's like, yeah, man, you're the best, but we all are like feeling this so hard. And he was faced with a job that he despised. He had this condition that could render him paralyzed if something goes awry. And he was just like, what the F am I doing all this for? Like, what is the point? And decided to just like embrace the moment. And I feel like that is going to be the way so many of us approach life. Chad (05:44.213) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (05:55.938) And as someone who's always been a constant worrier and a people pleaser and looking far off into the future, like I could take a page out of this guy's book, right? Like it's about the now. And so I think he's like actually straight up a hero. And I think a lot more people are going to be doing some version of this, not necessarily this bold or this like splashy, but this guy's also a genius because bringing people along on this journey. he amassed this crazy platform, right? He could be like a keynote speaker. He could do brand deals for the rest of his life. I don't know if that was his plan, but the guy is a genius and he's just inspiring a lot of people to go and do the things they love and be present in the moment. And I just think that's pretty cool. And he got to Hawaii, by the he actually made it and was, he got like a big, huge heroes welcome. He met with the governor. Like people are all... Chad (06:39.113) It's like Waikiki or something, right? Maureen Clough (06:40.882) It's like crazy. Yeah, people are like rooting for this guy and he's getting dinners bought for him. He's going all over. I mean, it might be his 15 minutes, but man, he's using them so, so wisely. And he's just, I really feel like that's compelling. And he got to Hawaii and I thought it was really funny because he posted corporate America, I won. I was like, wow. If that doesn't sum up how so much of the population feels right now, I don't know what does. So anyway, hat tip to that guy. Chad (06:51.275) Amazing. Chad (07:04.821) Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sad. He obviously, you know, kind of eyes wide open situation, right? He comes down with this with this with this illness. You know, he kind of laughs and said, you know, I just went ahead and took all the money out of my 401K, sold my cars, did this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's no question in, you know, we we are really trained in the U.S. to build. Maureen Clough (07:15.308) Right, like look at the prospects. Maureen Clough (07:23.566) Great idea, as they tell you, right? Chad (07:36.989) wealth until we retire and then enjoy it. And to be quite frank, mean, I really enjoy kind of like the European lifestyle where we don't rush through everything because that's what it feels like in the U.S. It's like you graduate high school, you go directly into college, you go undergrad, and then you go directly into grad school. And here it's so much slower. It's like, take a gap year. Find yourself. And people like to find yourself. Right. It's like, no, it's a fucking thing. I mean, seriously. Maureen Clough (07:39.244) Yep. Yes. Maureen Clough (07:45.219) Mmm. Right. Maureen Clough (08:02.03) So right. It is. We would all do better if we were to all take gap years and chill the F out and not just be on this constant treadmill for achievement and like success and under 30, Forbes 30, it's like, let it go, chill. I agree with you. I think it's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, lists, it's all that. But, you know, and I think people are having their own version of that. Like I said, I mean, Chad (08:06.568) and in Chad (08:10.684) Yes. Uh-huh. Chad (08:18.229) Yeah, lists, lists. Maureen Clough (08:26.924) I'm about to move to a rural place in Washington state with my family, because I'm just ready to get out of the rat race, you know, sky high expenses in Seattle and everything else. And it's just like, what are we all doing? Like, I want to be with my family. I want to be with people I love. I want to slow down and take appreciation for, you know, the finer, smaller moments in life and not just be on this treadmill that's just really feeling very uninspired and really unfulfilling. So, yeah, I think you'll see a lot of people kind of mixing it up. Chad (08:30.667) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (08:55.126) in this year because and in future years, I think because so much is uncertain. So much is uncertain. So I think people will lean into that. So that's like kind of a silver lining there. Chad (09:04.947) It is, it is. Many, many new influencers coming your way. I have rapid, rapid fire shout outs. So I list, let's say, of shout outs. So shout out to Wedgie, AKA WedgeHR, the video interviewing platform, announced a stealthy strategic investment round while adding a COO and a CRO on the way. Matt and the kids over at Wedgie are bulking up and sound like they're actually getting serious, which is good. Maureen Clough (09:08.173) Haha! Maureen Clough (09:11.628) Ooh, I like it. Maureen Clough (09:31.342) You Chad (09:31.499) now shout out to, employee Inc parent company of job bite lever and jazz HR introducing their first AI companions, companions, just another way to say assistant maybe I fuck. don't know. but can, yeah, I mean, come on companions, dating. I got nothing. got nothing. But imagine trying to integrate this companion into three separate. Maureen Clough (09:44.622) It depends on your style, I guess. Hahaha. Chad (10:00.543) code bases. They've got three different applicant tracking systems. That's going to be interesting. Going to sit back, going to watch, maybe be cringy, who knows, but we'll see. And the last, but never least shout out is to Pride Month. No rainbow logos necessary. It's about how we treat everyone. And I mean everyone around us, respect, humility, happy Pride Month everyone. those are my rapid fire shout outs. Maureen Clough (10:09.475) Ha Maureen Clough (10:25.966) Hell yeah. Chad (10:30.499) and we're going to go ahead and jump into the free stuffs. Kids remember, remember there's always free stuff from the Chad and Cheese. go to Chadcheese.com slash free mo. If they sign up for free stuff, what do they get? Maureen Clough (10:35.343) man, free stuff. Maureen Clough (10:47.096) Well, I mean, it's the Chad and Cheese show, so you know alcohol is gonna be involved, right? So you can get some whiskey from Van Hack, then. my God. Always, always. And then if that's not your sort of flavor, you could go little less spirit forward and do bourbon barrel aged syrup from Kiora. That's pretty delightful. Chad (11:07.249) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's our boys. Our boys from Canada. Maureen Clough (11:14.414) my gosh, Hoser is such a good one. my God. Anyway, I digress. You can get some t-shirts from Erin App. Pretty solid. And then two seasons ago, all right. hey, I love it. And then craft beer, back to alcohol, got to go back there. Craft beer from the Job Data Geeks from Aspen Tech Labs. Chad (11:22.219) Mmm. There's two seasons ago. T-shirt. T-shirt, yeah. Chad (11:37.855) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (11:39.796) And if it's your birthday, you can get some rum with plums. Chad (11:42.464) yeah. Chad (11:48.267) The only way you can get that kids Chad cheese.com slash free. Register register register. Now this is because we were off last week. It was Chad cheese birthday week and this is going to be a week of May and a week of June birthday. So get get ready kids. We have so many listeners Jesus. So happy birthday to Tom Hunley James AKA Jim Andrew Chuck. Sean Johnson Travis. Maureen Clough (11:55.598) So good. Maureen Clough (12:01.208) You Chad (12:18.121) Windling Adrian Aston Villa Anita Brekka or Anita. That's Anna Brekka. I'm sorry, Anna Nancy from Philly bear Savoy Anders Storman Daniela McDonald Andy Peterson Martin Dangerfield Scott Allen Les Wessel Jim Stroud Bosco. That's right. I said Bosco Vujo to Vic Olga and this free guy Maureen Clough (12:27.662) You Chad (12:46.377) man, we've got people all over, it's awesome. Then all of those really crazy foreign names, and then we get J Arnold. Jane Superman Curran. Maureen Clough (12:57.646) That's a great one. That's my middle name too, by the way. Okay. Chad (12:59.485) Nicole, that's Joel. Joel did that one. Yeah. Nicole Bowers, Lindsay Nimmer, Courtney Howard, Jamie Hartley-Ribaro, Jesse Sims, Tristan Deguer, Vince Morgan, Laura Roots, Christine Hampton, Michael Duby Brothers-McDonald, Matt That British Guy Alder, and our favorite porn star Hung Lee. All of those kids. Maureen Clough (13:21.921) You Chad (13:29.279) people are signed up for free stuff. That's right. And a big, you know. Maureen Clough (13:33.42) Woohoo! Maureen Clough (13:37.39) You Chad (13:37.823) Happy birthday. Maureen Clough (13:40.014) Happy birthday. Chad (13:41.579) And then what's next? What's next? Chad (13:48.747) So, travel sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Next on the board is Wreckfest in the UK. You're gonna be there. Are you excited? Maureen Clough (13:56.108) Yes, I am so pumped. I love me some British people. I'm so there. Such an Anglophile here. So yeah, sign me up. Can't wait. I totally am. I'm stoked. British humor, dry British humor. Get me there. Chad (14:05.191) Such an Anglo file. Dough. Well, that's all it by the way. We're all going to be there. JT, Emmy, yourself, Joel, myself and our favorite Scott. Maureen Clough (14:23.854) Yay! Stephen McGrath. Chad (14:24.778) Who is it? Maureen Clough (14:30.167) You Chad (14:31.507) No, Steven, you're gonna be there, shut up. But yeah, no, we're pretty stoked about it. I going to Wreckfest, we've been going, geez, this is probably our fifth year, I think, and not consecutive because of the stupid COVID thing. But it's just a blast from the standpoint of it being literally like all hands meeting for some companies. I mean, some companies actually bring over 100 people. Maureen Clough (14:33.88) Hahaha! Maureen Clough (14:46.19) thing. Maureen Clough (14:58.264) So awesome. So tight. Chad (14:59.273) Yeah, and to be able to learn, to be able to gel and be around your peers, have a couple of drinks, be cool, be cool. But at the end of the day, mean, it's fun. There are like 10 or so tents that you go into. We're gonna be at the disrupt stage. And that's what we're gonna be doing in July. I can't wait, to be quite frank. It's gonna be a blast. So when are you gonna get in? You're gonna be in early, aren't you? Maureen Clough (15:06.712) Yeah. Yeah, it still work. Maureen Clough (15:23.982) Stoked. Stoked. Yeah, I'm doing a vacation prior to that in Italy and then I'll be rolling over. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't live in Portugal like some of us. my God. Damn. Not fair. Chad (15:34.123) it sucks to be you. Okay, enough of that. Chad (15:49.129) All right, believe it or not, we're gonna be talking kids a lot, a lot today about this little company you've probably never heard of called Indeed. We've seen some major changes over the past couple of weeks. Terry Baker left Daxstra, Thad Price left Tauru, and just this week, according to the official script or statement, Chris Himes has decided, if you're not watching on, Maureen Clough (16:16.302) Some air quotes. Chad (16:17.515) YouTube I'm using air quotes decided to step down as CEO of indeed because nothing says Making your own free will decision like your boss stepping into your position Enter indeed's new and returning CEO. That's right. He was CEO before Hi, hi Sayuki. I hope I got that right. Hi Sayuki Dico a deco ba the CEO of indeed's parent company recruit He's the CEO of the parent company and he's coming down kicking Chris to the curb or I'm sorry, he decided to leave. Yes, the new CEO is also the CEO of Indade's parent company, Recruit Holding. So Mo, what are your thoughts about kind of like the CEO shakeups that are happening in the industry? Maureen Clough (16:49.251) Yeah. Maureen Clough (17:02.904) I mean, I think when people quote, air quote, decide to leave and then their old boss comes in and replaces them, it's usually something else that's going on behind the scenes, is my guess, or something perhaps like performance related or maybe even some brewing potential. Obviously, I don't know anything about this current situation, but like sometimes it can be a way to signal that there might be some upcoming litigation or some settlement that's happening behind the scenes, right? You just never know. But yeah, it's... reading his substack statement, Chris Himes, I was like, hmm, this is a quite vague description of what you're doing. he spoke about something around the lines of like, ethical AI and responsible AI being so critical and wanting to go focus on that. And then in the next paragraph was like a core component of indeed moving forward. will be these AI agents and these talent scouts that are going to help each job seeker. And I was like, well, wouldn't you want to do the ethical responsible AI like at your company? it just, was kind of like, right. was like, I don't know. Reading in between the lines here. I'm not quite sure that you decided to go. mean, would, would be lovely. Wouldn't it be nice to just like up and quit your job right now? Like, like in this market, come on. But yeah, I think it's a little different for the average CEO to be moving on. So yeah. Chad (17:58.08) Yes. Chad (18:03.881) with a lot of money. Chad (18:18.122) Yeah. Maureen Clough (18:22.296) But yeah, they're shaking it up. Most other people are holding on to their jobs for their dear damn lives. And these guys are rolling on out to perhaps greener pastures. don't know. Chad (18:31.851) I think it's a little sus to be frank. I think it's a little sus. But I do think we have a recording of Chris's response when Deco said that he wanted his chair. Wait a minute. Can we get that audio? I kid I kid I kid. So yeah, it's a new day at Indeed and it's about goddamn time. Himes should have been kicked out last year after the disastrous flirtation with CPSA and CPA. It was a total debacle. Both were rebranded pretty much bullshit products. Now, I'm personally a fan of CEOs innovating and unfortunately, Himes is not an innovator. Nope. the engine. Maureen Clough (18:48.046) That's awesome. Chad (19:17.021) out of the Indeed Ferrari and he dropped it in a fucking horse and buggy. mean, Indeed, slick, easy to use search engine with the best user experience in the industry, but Himes turned it into a job board with PaperClick. Woo, big deal. The user experience has been downgraded. PaperClick was introduced by the original founders, Paul Forster and Ronnie Khan over 15 years ago. Maureen Clough (19:32.75) you Chad (19:44.851) and indeed is still just a post spray and pray system that is now forcing companies, now forcing companies to pay more because the leader was too inept to figure out cost per qualified candidate for starters, for starters. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to see what Deco is gonna do. I believe he is much more disciplined and has a much better grasp. on the recruit ecosystem. So there's more indeed news. Next in the news, Hyam's farewell gift to the industry. Guess what? Higher prices branded as healthy budgets. So what the hell? Yeah. Maureen Clough (20:33.72) That is quite the euphemism there, man. my God. Bold. Chad (20:35.795) It's good, right? It's good. Wait, do we call it a price increase? No, we don't call it a price increase. We call it healthy budgets. can see like a Hollywood, know, the budget's healthy. anyway, so Julie, the job board doctor, so wash. Yes, she's she's very close and near and dear to my heart. She writes last week, quote, it's a what is a healthy budget? It's a minimum spend. Maureen Clough (20:40.974) Healthy budget. Maureen Clough (20:47.724) It is so hilarious. Maureen Clough (20:57.774) You Chad (21:04.139) spend, plain and simple. Before 2023, advertisers could set their own budget caps per job or campaign, giving programmatic providers the flexibility to move jobs in and out of performance, right? In other words, the model worked. If a job could be filled cost-effectively with, let's say, 10 bucks, it was. But then, Indeed decided to implement a hard minimum, $25 USD and 15 pounds in the UK per advertised job. That means eliminating or at least seriously devaluing programmatic optimization for agencies still choosing to play ball with the industry's biggest gatekeeper." quote. Mo, what do you make of these healthy budgets? Maureen Clough (21:49.39) Oof. Oof. I mean, who's got a healthy budget in 2025, man? Like, come on, like read the room. I get that you don't want to call it a price increase because that's like pretty bad PR for you, but like, come on, come on. This is, you got to be thinking about other people and your customers. Like, what about putting your customers first? Like, I understand that you haven't innovated or made things happen the way you should at the company, but putting that on the backs of these agencies and scaling at what 2.5X for the cost, like that's ludicrous to me. How did you think that was gonna land? Come on, like, is anyone happy about this? I doubt that, right? It's like, come on. Chad (22:30.315) Yeah, because I think agencies, first off, they're going to have to be screwing around and reformulating how they do campaigns, not to mention companies. mean, I've got some quotes. I'll share some quotes with you. so in proper indeed fashion, they introduce an arbitrary healthy budget rule, which has literally created a complicated version of a very simplistic model. Maureen Clough (22:39.534) Yeah. Chad (22:56.405) prices for clicks should rise and fall dynamically with the market. And if a position is not filled during a campaign, that campaign needs to be funded again. Pretty simple, right? Much like if you don't fill a job after 30 days, duration-based, what do you do? You buy another fucking job for God's sakes, right? You repost it. Indeed has done nothing more than create self-induced chaos and over-engineer a model that should have evolved. Maureen Clough (23:07.468) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (23:15.041) Exactly. Chad (23:25.543) not gotten more expensive. I've got some really cool quotes from some some industry leaders. Doug Monroe, CEO of Adzuna, who's actually a competitor. He's looking to throw a little shade. That's OK. We've seen the movie that he says we've seen this movie before. When you can't grow by improving the value you deliver to your customers anymore, you try to grow by squeezing them on price. It works for a bit and then it doesn't. Maureen Clough (23:37.198) You Maureen Clough (23:49.624) Mm. Chad (23:52.811) Again, throwing a little shade, but I totally get it. Then Martin Lentz, who's the CEO over at Jobbico in Austria, says, funny enough, moves like this can open doors for smaller job boards to win clients back. Could be a net positive for the job board ecosystem. And Martin also says, quote, indeed, lean's duration while StepStone, the most expensive post-based board globally, quietly launches Maureen Clough (23:54.957) Yeah. Chad (24:20.829) StepStone 360 higher, a programmatic budget model using AppCast tech. And he predicts there might be a collision course here. indeed, collision course with StepStone would be interesting because they're two very, very big organizations. And then last but not least, I'm saving the gravy because this is the good stuff. This is actually anonymous, but it's from an enterprise practitioner who uses Indeed. Quote. Maureen Clough (24:31.264) Interesting. Maureen Clough (24:41.486) haha Chad (24:48.363) If this enforcement change is accurate, it's not a small tweak, it's a shift in how we need to use Indeed. For us, it would likely mean cutting back on job volume, not increasing budget. Any roles that don't justify the $25 minimum just won't run. And we explore other options. My guess is it would reduce our Indeed spend by 15 to 20%. We've already... been watching our investment there very closely and this would only push us to be even more selective. this practitioner, and I've heard from more as well, he just wanted to go semi, not on the record, but semi on the record. But it feels like many of these companies are just fed up with indeed bullshit. And that's why I, my honest opinion, right? And this is conspiracy theory, but I think that's why Chris, the curb to be quite frank. It means, you know, Maureen Clough (25:28.867) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (25:39.694) Interesting. Chad (25:45.035) Chris decided to leave in a very different way. But in talking to a lot of these enterprise companies, I'm getting to feel that this is just another win for bigger platforms like Paradox, Fountain, Smart Recruiters, Jam, and all the other systems of record that help hiring companies leverage candidates that they've already purchased that reside in their candidate databases. So this could be a desperate Deja Vu money grab a collision course or a solid reason hiring companies start pulling budget from indeed and all of this after the CEO got canned. I mean my bad decided to leave a very fucked up storm for this poor guy Dico. I think he's got a lot of power. got a lot of money any any additional thoughts on on this and just it seems really weird all of this happening. Maureen Clough (26:30.83) He'll be all right. Chad (26:41.693) in this same scope of time. Maureen Clough (26:44.736) Yeah, no, I totally agree with your analysis there. And I think, you know, the fact that you have industry leaders saying what they did, of course, you know, some of them having a vested interest in throwing some shade. the industry insiders, especially those who are willing to talk off the record and tell you the scoop from their perspective as customers and prospective customers. mean, that that is very telling. Right. And and certainly, I think it is something that's going to open up the space for other competitors to come in and scoop up some unhappy customers of Indeed. So definitely seems like an own goal to me. And yeah, I agree with your assessment that it seems highly unlikely that Chris Hyams really voluntarily decided to opt out. I think he probably having his hand forced just a tad. Chad (27:26.175) You know what this feels like? This feels like indeed tariffs. That's what we should call this. These are indeed tariffs. I don't know where. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed tariffs, indeed taxes, indeed taxes. Yeah, I mean, to say that it's an own goal, it's it's hard to see the force for the trees, right? When you're actually sitting in the CEO position, you know that there are yes men around you all. Maureen Clough (27:34.06) my gosh. Healthy budget or indeed tariffs. I love it. my gosh. It's hilarious. Chad (27:55.515) Not saying that they don't have some people that actually speak their mind, but I doubt that's the case. I've spoken to companies for years and also agencies for years who have been looking for reasons and ways to just get the fuck, just to stop spending money with Indeed. again, if Chris did decide to leave, good for him. Maureen Clough (27:56.014) That's a point. Chad (28:21.803) because it was way past time and I can't tell you because I sent a bunch of messages out asking you know what they thought of Chris leaving and every single one of them told him it is way too late. He should have left a long time ago. So enjoy your time away Chris. Enjoy your time away. We'll be right back with another little company called Workday. Maureen Clough (28:40.888) Rough. Rough. Chad (28:52.691) All right. Workday has been in the news. I'm sure you've seen this, But before we get rolling, I want to be able to show a video of Jeffrey Poole, who's actually the CEO of a startup called Warden AI. They're an AI compliance firm for HR tech companies. Jeffrey had a few words to say about the situation. So let's go ahead and roll that. Maureen Clough (28:58.508) Yes, I have. Big news. Chad (30:24.683) So if you're not aware of the case, I'm gonna give you a quick and dirty. I'm gonna give you the quick and dirty on the case. And this is something that's right down your alley, Mo. Derek Mobley, a black man over 40, claims he applied to over 100 jobs through companies using Workday's AI screening tools and was rejected every single time his lawsuit. Now, Greenlit, this is big. Maureen Clough (30:34.926) yeah, it is. Chad (30:52.363) to proceed as a class action suit alleges that Workday's algorithms discriminated against him based on age, race, and disability. And to be quite frank, whether it was all three or not, if they catch one of them, it's gonna be a fucking home run. The court's decision to allow the case to move forward suggests that AI-driven hiring practices may soon face the same scrutiny as their human counterparts. Mo, knowing you're an advocate of seasoned workers, not aged. seasoned workers, what are your thoughts on this claim and it going class action? Maureen Clough (31:24.649) Aged workers. So I think that there is a high likelihood that there is some merit to this case, but we don't know yet. We have to point out there's no, these are solely allegations at this point. We do know, however, that AI tools have created biased outcomes in the past for applicants. This is not the first time this has ever happened. Amazon had a tool that was found to actually be biased against women and it was used in the hiring process. So they had to sunset that once they figured it out. So that has happened. We also had a tool. Chad (31:37.737) Right. Yep. Maureen Clough (31:57.518) that was called iTutor. was a company called iTutor Group that was hit by the EEOC. And they were using AI to proactively screen out women over the age of 55 and men over the age of 60. Because of course, men got to age a little bit more than women because our world sucks. So this is a thing that definitely happens. There's bias in all humans. There's bias data in, bias data out. I think this is plausible. Age discrimination is one of the hardest types of discrimination cases to prove. Chad (32:13.867) Ugh. Chad (32:26.603) Mm. Maureen Clough (32:26.624) and it has the highest burden of proof. And typically, and I'm not a lawyer, I want to point this out, but my understanding is that it cannot usually be used in a mixed mode of fashion, which is why I'm interested in the race and age and what was it? Was it disability? Was that the third in here? Yeah, I'm interested in the fact that that has all three. Now, there were four other plaintiffs that have since joined the case and it is, I mean, I think this does have a lot of implications for Chad (32:43.103) Yep. Yep. Maureen Clough (32:56.174) a lot of companies everywhere because the question then is, do you have the responsibility as the company actually employing the technology or is it the company itself, Workday, that's providing these services that has the onus of ensuring that there's no way that bias can come into the fold? But this is, I think, probably going to be, I mean, if this is found to be legit, like imagine the size of this class action group. Like, holy, holy crap, what 11,000 companies use Workday. everyone and their mom applies on workday platforms. Like even finding the people who are part of this class is going to be nuts. But I can tell you anecdotally, I've heard from countless people who've said that they've experienced, you know, a quick rejection, whether or not that actually is age discrimination remains to be seen. And quite frankly, I mean, I would never say I hope to see age discrimination out there. We all know it happens, but I will say if this does not found to have merit, it's Chad (33:49.461) Yes. Maureen Clough (33:53.854) I fear going to create somewhat of a chilling effect on other very legitimate cases of age discrimination. So it's weird to say, I hope it's legit. I hope it actually happened, but I kind of do in a way. But yeah, it's going to be really fascinating to watch this one come through. think there are massive implications. There's so much AI and non-AI, just all this technology that's out there in the hiring process. And all of them have the capacity to discriminate or have bias against people for a variety of reasons. And as was suggested, my whole podcast, it gets laid early, is about ageism in the workplace. And it's one of the least discussed forms of discrimination, the most widespread, and the hardest to actually prove in court because of the way the Supreme Court rolled back in 2009. So this has big, big, big implications for all of us over the age of 40. And we will have to just see what happens. But yeah, very, very intrigued to see what happens. Chad (34:48.201) Yeah, well, just in case. again, we're not going to have a decision yet, but. Workday, come on workday, mean, because workday is recruitment module or what have you like that most people. I've heard many companies call it gift with purchase. It is something that companies get for free after they buy their buy the HCM right. So, you know, there's there's there's not all. Maureen Clough (34:53.452) No. Maureen Clough (35:13.872) yeah. Chad (35:17.227) as much thought and R &D put into that module, which to me, to be quite frank, I would be partnering with some other companies who focus laser focus on that. mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's ridiculous, right? But Workday has generated 8.45 billion in revenue, okay? Maureen Clough (35:22.766) Such a strong point. Maureen Clough (35:28.45) Yeah. Build. Build by our partner, yeah. Don't open yourself up to this potential litigate. Yeah, fascinating. Good point. Yeah. Maureen Clough (35:45.336) Damn. Chad (35:47.177) Workday, you need to do better and you need to do it faster. On this show, we've had several experts, practitioners and government officials. We've talked about this specific topic of scaling bias with AI for years now, because humans have bias, no question. But take that bias from that one person, then scale it. Explosion, kids. That's what happens. We knew this was coming. Workday knew this was coming. If you take human bias and you train AI or Maureen Clough (36:03.502) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (36:08.468) Huge problem. Yeah. Chad (36:16.917) take a biased assessment and train AI or create a bias process and train AI. I mean, there are so many different situations, right? All that bias will scale incredibly fast. So remember again, Workday has no excuse to having a substandard product. They have 8.45 billion in revenues, okay? They've got plenty of money. Don't give me this, I can't. Maureen Clough (36:38.178) Yeah, it's fair. I didn't know. Chad (36:42.123) Crying for work day. I don't wanna fucking hear that shit, right? They got enough money, they should be able to do this stuff right. This is their job. Hopefully, moving this into a class action penalty territory scares the shit out of vendors into not releasing substandard products. That's what we need. And last but not least, if you're a vendor out there, listen to me, if you're a vendor out there in the HR space, I want you to take the word unbiased. And any cinem-cinemab- Maureen Clough (36:55.586) Yep. Everywhere. Yep. Chad (37:11.015) out there and strike it from your sales and marketing bullshit spiel, okay? Because we all know that there's no such thing as a base model piece of tech without bias. So let's try and revert back to the days of truth in advertising and stop acting like you're Elizabeth Holmes pitching Theranos, okay? I mean, it... Maureen Clough (37:23.15) agreed fully. Maureen Clough (37:32.974) Yeah. Sam Baker and Friede or any of those bastards, yeah. Chad (37:38.877) Yes, think so we start we start seeing fines for things like this, but they have to be bigger fines. They've got to be bigger fines. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maureen Clough (37:44.012) Yeah. They gotta be big. Yeah. It's like the drop of the bucket finds don't do shit. That's the reality. People like account for that and they just, you know, they have enough money to cover it so they're not inclined to change at all. It's so true. Problematic. Chad (37:56.543) Yeah. Well, and again, if you are a company like Workday, you're pretty much giving your recruitment module away for free anyway. Okay. In my, in my opinion, what I've heard in many companies and other vendors say it's, it's free with purchase, right? Okay. Then go ahead and lop that off and then start partnering with companies very closely so that they can take the risk. Yeah, they're going to get the revenue, but you're not really getting big revenues out of the recruiting side anyway. Maureen Clough (38:26.253) on point. Chad (38:27.051) At the end of the day, just be smart about how you do business. And this is for all of those big, all the acronym companies, the SAPs, the ADPs, the UKGs, all of them, right? If you can de-risk yourself, right? You make billions of dollars. We totally get that. But if you can de-risk yourself, especially on the recruiting side of the house, because we all know that you don't spend enough money in your recruiting modules, partner. Maureen Clough (38:53.172) I agree. You can even white label if you want, right? Like just bring in the best in class solution to your tool. And like if you want a one-stop shop, you can just pull that in. No one has to know. No one has to be the wiser, but don't open yourself up to this litany of bad press. mean, whether or not this goes and gets settled or they're found, you know, to have actually engaged in age discrimination, this is pretty bad press for work day. Chad (38:56.608) Yes. Maureen Clough (39:15.074) I know some people say there's no such thing as bad press. I kind of disagree. But anyway, I mean, there's already a lot of anger about like the annoyance of using an ATS like work day. mean, people are constantly bitching about it online. So like to have this sort of thing come to the surface is not helpful for your image. And yeah, I mean, again, like I weirdly kind of hope that this is found with merit because otherwise I just. Chad (39:18.302) I do. Maureen Clough (39:39.872) This happens everywhere. We see it all the time. It is legitimate. And I just don't want people to be afraid to speak up or to actually fight back when it's legitimate. let's pray there's such a weird thing to say, but you know what I mean. Chad (39:53.993) Yeah, we don't want to see you get nailed workday, although we want to make sure that if there is a case, that the case is brought and the rest of the industry can actually go ahead and see that there will be ramifications. Maureen Clough (40:08.75) Yeah. And one other thing is I wonder how much of this actually is like AI. know that AI is such a buzzword and it's brought into the conversation in order, I believe, often to just like bring eyeballs with it, right? And the fact of the matter is it's incredibly possible that Workday was doing all of this potentially without any AI at all. Like these tools can be programmed and is that on them to ensure you can't program them or it's just, it's an interesting conversation. But yeah, I'd be curious to see how much. Chad (40:14.859) Yes. Chad (40:21.791) Yeah. Chad (40:29.023) Yes. Yes. Maureen Clough (40:37.684) of this is AI related versus just like software related. Chad (40:42.175) Yeah, agree 100%. Chad (40:50.185) There we go. Okay, kids, you've probably never heard of these companies before, but this is one from TechCrunch. The dramedy continues as Deal, our friends Deal and Rippling. Deal, the $12 billion darling of global hiring has accused its arch nemesis Rippling of deploying a corporate espionage scheme that feels more like a misdirection for me. According to Deal, Maureen Clough (40:50.7) Hahaha Maureen Clough (41:00.302) You Chad (41:18.963) A rippling employee spent six months masquerading, masquerading as a customer to infiltrate their systems, allegedly to pilfer proprietary secrets and replicate their products. Masquerading, infiltrate, and pilfer. They went through the James Bond dictionary or some shit like that. This isn't the first salvo in the corporate cold war. no, kids. If you've been listening. Maureen Clough (41:39.562) That's amazing. No. Chad (41:48.467) Earlier this year, Rippling accused Deal of enlisting a Rippling employee as a spy who, when confronted, reportedly destroyed his phone with an axe. that was after hiding in the bathroom, by the way. Hiding in the bathroom, trying to flush it down the toilet. wouldn't go down the toilet. Lawsuits are in California, Delaware, and even Ireland courts right now. Mo, is this a battle over business ethics or just... Maureen Clough (42:00.718) Right? Hiding in the bathroom. my gosh. Can't make it up. So funny. Chad (42:17.265) in audition for the next Kardashian reality TV show. Maureen Clough (42:20.748) Like truly, I actually want to sit down with a drink and read the entire complaint. Like it is hilarious. Like I actually just read a little bit of it and I was like, wow, this feels intensely personal. Like they're hurling insults that are like basically schoolyard style. And I'm like, can we just get these guys in like an MMA fight and just like call it good? Like you guys have this intense hatred for one another and it's just, it's hilarious. Honestly, it is hilarious. But yeah, it feels. Chad (42:24.235) Ha ha ha! Chad (42:32.649) It is. Maureen Clough (42:49.91) It feels like very tit for tat, like you did this, so I'm going to do that. like, know, manufacturing detail. mean, like you said, the language that's used there, masquerading, pilfering, whatever else the third one was, like it's so dramatic. Like, come on. It's like, who knew HR tech companies could be so exciting, right? Like this is, this is really hilarious. But legitimately, I'm curious to go through. It's like 125 page complaints. So like, maybe I'll have to have a whole bottle, but like it's. Chad (42:59.753) Yeah. Chad (43:03.465) It is. Maureen Clough (43:18.004) It looked really freaking funny. And I remember I was actually going through another article and I hadn't known this. I hadn't known that in the past, Rippling had actually opened up an investigation via a congressman in the US for an investigation with the Department of Labor, I guess, to see whether or not Deal was pretending that its employees were actually were actually contractors in order to like save money and have enhanced performance and all this stuff. So they had raised the flag and I'm hoping I'm not mixing up the two because it is possible that mixing up who went after who. But the point is it's so much shit like you keep going back and peeling back the curtains. It's like, my gosh, this years ago involving like the Department of Labor and making all these accusations. And it's just like, wow, you guys, you really can't stop going at it one another's throats. Like it's just wild. Chad (43:53.515) There's so much shit in this thing. my God. Maureen Clough (44:10.306) But this is the gift that won't stop giving. mean, I just like, I love the story. I'm like, what's gonna happen next? Give me some popcorn. Chad (44:15.999) I think they threw all of the suits and all the information in the chat GPT just to start creating press releases. It's like come up with the craziest shit and then it, anyway, I'm feeling. Chad (44:35.401) So this is definitely turning into a mudslinging contest. Deal allegedly got caught red-handedly, red-handed, yes, not handedly, red-handed, yes, paying a spy in Rippling who worked for Rippling and then to counter Deal accuses Rippling of dealing with Russian companies around sanctions, which they're not allowed to do. And now this from TechCrunch. Maureen Clough (44:39.469) Yes. Maureen Clough (44:44.046) Yeah. Chad (45:01.291) quote, specifically deal alleges that one of Rippling's employees who holds the job title of competitive intelligence spent six months impersonating a legitimate deal customer to gain unauthorized access to deals system to meticulously analyze, record and copy deals global products and the way deal does business for Rippling's own benefit and use end quote. how did Rippling's competitive Intel person gain access, number one. I mean, if you are a legit client company, as they state, how did they get access? I mean, how did they get access? And there's a ton, there's just a ton of noise that personally, I think it's a distraction. While Deal is trying to misdirect you, the listener, an HR practitioner slash buyer from thinking about. Maureen Clough (45:40.942) That's a very good question. Chad (45:56.917) their alleged Mr. Bean corporate espionage team. Personally, I'd steer clear, mean, again, this is me, you do what you do, but I would steer clear of both of these companies. Just the mudslinging that's happening, the bullshit that's happening, there are plenty other EOR types of organizations that are out there that you can deal with and not have to go through this fucking drama. Maureen Clough (46:00.654) Bozo. Yeah. Maureen Clough (46:07.566) you Maureen Clough (46:17.802) yeah. Maureen Clough (46:22.552) Dude, and they're poor employees. Imagine working at either of these companies right now. This has nothing to do with almost every single person at the organization, and yet they've been embroiled in this dramedy, as you said. They're like the punchline of every joke now. It's like, my gosh, how embarrassing. I feel for them. And man, if I were working there, I'd probably be fleeing for the exits, let's be honest. That's brutal. Chad (46:32.681) Yeah. Chad (46:36.468) You Chad (46:49.301) We just went to an event in Vegas about a month or so ago and Deal had a big booth right at the entrance. And you walked in and you could see the people kind of like looking side eye. It's like, what the fuck are they doing here? I mean, and I get it, they still have to do business. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't be doing business, but. Maureen Clough (47:07.807) Awkward, yeah. Chad (47:14.879) when you go over and you start having those discussions, Rippling was in the back corner, by the way. So they were both there. But it's just really, really fucking. Maureen Clough (47:25.87) It's so bizarre. just, yeah, my heart goes out to any employees who are caught up in all this. Brutal. So bizarre. Yeah. Chad (47:31.423) How bizarre, how bizarre, okay. We've got one more to go kids. Yeah, that's right. I think you're probably gonna like this bunker. Chad (47:44.723) All right, so this one could prospectively give you nightmares, kids. I'm just gonna play this video clip. I'm gonna play this video clip so you can see it and then gonna talk about it on the other side. Here we go. Maureen Clough (47:51.47) What doesn't this year? Chad (48:27.371) Holy shit. Maureen Clough (48:32.216) That's... Maureen Clough (48:54.542) Hmm. Sure did. Chad (48:58.027) So on top of that, in an Axios article, Dario Amandai, CEO of Anthropix said, quote, AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10 % 20 % in the next five years. it sounds like it's time to start stockpiling that doomsday bunker. What do you think? Maureen Clough (49:19.214) Dude, hell yeah. mean, what do those tech CEOs know that we don't? They're all building doomsday bunkers and have been for a while now. So I'm like, all right, all right, what should we be doing here? I don't have billions of dollars, unfortunately, so I doubt the bunker is gonna happen for me specifically. I'm like, hearing all this, can we resurface that whole universal basic income concept that I thought was like core to at least Sam Altman's idea of what we should do in the face of all this changing technology? Chad (49:26.987) They are, Maureen Clough (49:48.11) This seems to be happening so incredibly rapidly that no one knows what the F is going on. And it's like, who's driving the bus here? know, like it seems like the robots are. And that doesn't make me feel super warm and fuzzy inside. It makes me feel a little terrified. And I know there've been some recent developments like with AI trying to be turned off by a user and then AI going to blackmail said user with like details that had been fed to them about said user. And I was like, Chad (50:12.341) Yes, yes. Maureen Clough (50:17.216) This is like literally straight out of HBO Silicon Valley. Like this all freaking happened. Like Guilfoyle was like, dude, I'm paying close attention to our robot overlords and I'm going to say please and thank you and I'm going to treat them with respect. This is bizarre. I don't, frankly, I don't know how much of it is like hype and hysteria and, you know, coming from certain messengers, you have to wonder about their reasoning behind sharing said details. Like is it? going to just help them, right? Are they raising money, perhaps, for example? And then how much of it is legit? And when I see the sheer power of what these tools can do after only so long they've been in the public domain as generative AI tools accessible to us, I am like, actually think a lot of crazy shit's possible based on how good this stuff is. It is so freaking good. It's uncanny. That video you just showed us, that like sent a chill down my spine. Chad (50:47.358) Exactly. Maureen Clough (51:13.498) Like, I know it was really a banal topic of like planning trips, but like think of how else that could go. anyway, I don't I don't want to be a doomsday or naysayer type, but like, like, please someone get the rails on this thing. Like, who's going to stand up? Who is going to regulate this stuff? Who's going to actually give a flying fuck about A.I. ethics and responsibility so that we don't find ourselves in this dystopian fucking nightmare? Like, who's going to do it? I want to know. So far, I'm like, Chad (51:20.789) Yeah. Chad (51:42.132) Yeah. Maureen Clough (51:43.382) I don't see anyone rising to the occasion. Chad (51:48.098) As I said in Europe, see Europe is the only one looking to actually protect as the current administration in the US is actually telling the rest of the world, if you have any government contracts at all, you need to get rid of DEI and you need to stay away from our AI. So you've got that. That's one thing. Then you're talking about UBI, so universal basic income. That's going to be hard as fuck to be able to do in the US when they're doing the tax cuts that they're looking to do. Right. So how are you going to pay for that shit. Right. Not to mention we don't have tax schemes in place to be able to have robots or companies who are actually displacing workers and a tax base because obviously there's no income. There's no tax base. Right. You have to be able to displace that. So how do you do that. How do you tax those companies to ensure that there is you be available and then Maureen Clough (52:20.278) true. Chad (52:43.743) Last but not least, the real versus fake, I think we are getting played in many cases. So Klarna, we got played by Klarna. let's just say we got played by builder.ai. got build, both of them, right? They took half a billion dollars at Builder and now they're like winding shit down, right? Klarna. Maureen Clough (52:52.054) Yes, we did. 100 % of hype. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (53:05.855) gets rid of 700 people, no they didn't, no they didn't, they actually fucking offshored those and they weren't FTEs, so therefore they weren't on their rolls. So I mean, it's like we've gotta really take a look at what's real versus fake. I think those types of organizations, we're gonna see a lot of those, there are gonna be a lot of fakes. We need to call that fraud, they need to be in orange jumpsuits, but, but, there are amazingly smart people that are out there where I think this is real. Maureen Clough (53:10.99) Hmm. Maureen Clough (53:18.083) Right? Maureen Clough (53:26.83) Thank Chad (53:33.803) So we're gonna be, I think we're gonna see a lot of this fake shit come through and then we're just gonna get numb to it and go, ah, that's not a big deal. And the next thing you know, we have 20 % unemployment. Maureen Clough (53:43.842) Yeah, unemployment. Yeah. It's certainly spooky. And I agree with you. There is more than meets the eye. A lot of people are saying one thing and actually doing another. There's a lot of fabrication happening. And so, yeah, you have to be discerning. So good news, the American average person is super discerning and very intelligent, right? Just kidding. But just kidding. So yeah, it's going to be a wild ride. I mean, it's like, Chad (54:06.446) Just kidding. Maureen Clough (54:12.898) we're all strapped into a roller coaster that we didn't necessarily elect to get on, right? And we're going down, we're going on those loops together. So I just, you I try to be as positive about it as possible and I do see some incredible applications of AI. I see it as democratizing access to entrepreneurship and unfurling like a lot of opportunity for people who wouldn't otherwise have had it and an ability to learn new skills and do more with less. All of that stuff is super cool. And then I see the darker side, right? Chad (54:43.573) and you have to breathe. But I'd like to speak for America because talking about us like that, you Maureen Clough (54:43.798) Yeah, you have to breathe. Chad (54:53.131) Well, I know that which is why it's a little bit easier. Mo, it's been real. It's been fun. Thanks a lot for coming back. We haven't seen you forever. Hopefully you come back sometime incredibly soon before Nebworth, before Nebworth. Next week, the Cheez Man is going to be back. But until then, we out. Maureen Clough (54:55.448) But you're in Portugal. So you got out. Maureen Clough (55:03.278) So fun. Maureen Clough (55:08.492) Yes. Before and after, for sure. We out!

🧯HR compliance isn’t sexy—but it will  save your ass.🧠 OutSolve’s Jeremy Mancheski joins the show to: Decode the alphabet soup of I-9s, DEI, and AI Laugh through the regulatory circus with sharp wit and sharper takes Most of all, wow Joel with posters. YES POSTERS!?! If you think compliance is boring, this episode will slap that notion with a laminated labor law poster. Buckle up. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:29.237) Yeah, what's up boys and girls? This is the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always riding shotgun is Chad. So wash as we welcome Jeremy Manchesky to the show. He is CEO and founder of out solved Jeremy. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Jeremy Mancheski (00:47.938) Thank you, good to be here. Joel (00:49.909) Good to have you. Well, a lot of our listeners won't know you, probably may not know OutSolve. Give us a quick sort of elevator pitch on you and the organization. Jeremy Mancheski (00:58.318) Sure, we're a company founded in 1998, I was the founder, focused on HR compliance. We handle a lot of the stuff that HR folks don't want to do but have to do. Chad (01:12.334) Yeah. So I always told Joel that starting a company to do the boring stuff, the important stuff, but the boring stuff is a smart business. And apparently since 1998, that's, that's been a smart business. yes, yes. Joel (01:28.021) Boring is usually really profitable for some reason. Jeremy Mancheski (01:29.89) Well, well, I can assure you, no one's six-year-old self ever said, you know, when I grow up, I want to do HR compliance. Joel (01:35.797) You Joel (01:41.013) haha Chad (01:42.116) do poster updates. We'll get into that. We'll get into that. Jeremy Mancheski (01:43.981) That's right. Joel (01:45.084) please, yes, yes. I'm waiting, I'm patiently, Chad, for the posters. Chad (01:48.784) Joel's 14 year old self keeps thinking concert posters. It's not that kind of poster, Cheeseman, but we'll get there. So Jeremy, the landscape of compliance has changed dramatically. And I mean, you being in this business for a while, I was an EEOC and OFCCP side of the house with VEVRA and 4212 and 503 and all these different things. These are very important things, right? But they seem to have... Joel (01:55.817) That's a shame. Jeremy Mancheski (02:14.434) Sure, of course. Chad (02:18.252) either changed dramatically lately, AAP as well, changed dramatically lately, just pretty much gone away. So when you take a look at the landscape today, we have companies asking us left and right, not just about DEI and what we should do on the DEI side, but also on the compliance side. So what are you hearing from companies and knowing that it's not the most stable of times? What's the advice you're giving back? Jeremy Mancheski (02:51.084) Sure, and like every, like your listener base, we have companies who lean left, lean right, people at those companies who lean left, lean right. The first 25 plus years of Outsolves existence, affirmative action planning and compliance, was a major part of the business, for sure. Obviously, there's been some change. January 21, Chad (02:58.32) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (03:19.822) I'm sure as I write my memoir one day, it'll be enough snow fell on that day in New Orleans that it was the equivalent of 100 years. True story. Over a foot of snow fell in New Orleans the day the executive order 11246 was rescinded. Yeah, 100 years worth of snow one day. Made it tough to get to the office to start getting this figured out, but here's the strange reality. Chad (03:37.413) Wow. Joel (03:45.845) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (03:48.556) Some companies left, some companies right. You'd think that would have put that portion of the business completely on its heels. It's actually quite the opposite. Companies do want advice and they see these choppy waters we're in and they just want to know what to do. I've said since 1998, Outsolve has no political leaning. We're here to make our customers compliant. Part of that is helping them navigate Chad (03:55.493) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (04:17.516) whoever's in the office. Remember, I've seen Republicans, I've seen Democrats, and this is obviously a very extreme administration in lots of ways, certainly not just related to my little corner of the world. The administration has some of this simply wrong. 1-1-2-4-6 in no way created quotas. 1-1-2-4-6 in no way created illegal DEI. And certainly, think anyone, regardless of what side you're on, Chad (04:43.652) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (04:47.874) would see that this administration gets focused on headlines, not necessarily the entire story. And in here, the headline is illegal DEI. And furtherance to that is meritocracy and trying to tear down what they see as some of the holdouts to policies that may not suit that agenda. So to your question, Chad, Joel (05:02.975) you Jeremy Mancheski (05:15.63) Is your earlier question, you asked me, you said, this a four-year problem? Is this something that changes? At this point, who knows? I think it's very reasonable to say that should a Democrat come into office or certainly a more moderate Republican in the next administration, we could be right back where we were just as quickly as these executive orders stripped some of these— Chad (05:38.224) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (05:43.969) other executive orders, we might see them put back in place. But for now, many companies are still trying to navigate the waters. You mentioned VEVRA, 503, those are still the law, gotta comply. And companies are still obligated to ensure a non-discriminatory workforce. So once you get past the buzzwords, you're not too far off of where you started. Chad (06:03.759) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:08.272) So Bush though, in the latter part of his term, I mean, he doubled down OFCCP, right? They put a lot into OFCCP enforcement to ensure that people, companies who are taking cash from their dollars are doing right by veterans and individuals with disabilities and so on and so forth. So we did, and you're 100 % right, Republican. And he was doubling down on those things because he thought it was right. so right now, again, it feels like you have to focus on what's in front of you today, not four years down the road. Is that what companies are really focusing on at this point? Although you still have to set up for who might be in next so that you have to do data collection and the things that were important before they're still important because data, we live in a world of data. We need that data. So talk about. Jeremy Mancheski (07:02.67) Well, 100%. It is an interesting timeline. Normally, companies like to plan for what's going to happen next year, two years, five years. You can't do that right now. Look at tariffs, for instance. They come, they go, they're in, they're out. Same with HR regulations. Today, we're trying to see what the very next step will be. And what I mean by that is they're going to be Chad (07:11.984) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:22.384) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (07:32.734) an enforcement arm of OFCCP. OFCCP has been stripped down approximately 90%. What data analytics would the administration suggest? Just last week, disparate impact is being challenged. That's often misunderstood by the federal contractor community and misinterpreted as adverse impact analysis, two very different things. What we can focus on today Let's talk about the EEO1 report. If you think posters are sexy, let's talk about the EEO1 report. There you go. I'm not. I'm not. I can't wait to get to that. But the EEO1 report has effectively an unbroken line of data collection for 40 plus years. No one really knew or even now knows whether current EEOC would even collect it in the Trump administration. Chad (08:06.64) Get ready, Cheeseman. Get ready, Cheeseman. Joel (08:07.989) Don't steal my thunder, don't steal my thunder, Jeremy. Jeremy Mancheski (08:30.722) Fortunately, last week we got an instruction manual came out. And even though non-binary gender was never part of the E01, this administration wanted to make it clear that it's not part of the E01. So that's the big change, non-change for the E01. Exactly, exactly. We don't want it even creeping in. Chad (08:49.69) Thanks for the clarification, right? Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, that's great. Jeremy Mancheski (08:55.79) But what we have, what we have is hopefully end of May, I think it's May 20, we think the EO1 data collection will happen and that's going to trigger quite a few things for companies out there. One, the requirement to file. You got to do it. Again, unbroken line. You will also find that that form is used for many state obligations, certifications, maybe even internally with 10K filing. for public companies, for RFPs when companies produce that. Lots of things that I've been saying, this administration has cut twice and measured zero. A riff on the old cut once and cut once, measure twice. But here, we're not sure of the impact of everything that's going on. So data collection remains important. 503 and VEVRA still have to do it. and what we're calling non-discrimination and employment analysis, 95 plus percent of our customers are still continuing the long doing. Joel (09:59.317) Cut once, measure twice. Tell me you're old without telling me you're old. Chad's former life was knee deep in this stuff. Mine less so. And when we spoke a few months ago, what really crystallized the importance of this to me was your recent purchase of a posters company. We just talked about the feds, but you guys have to worry about state and local laws and laws on a global impact as well. So talk about the posters, help the people like me who aren't as well versed this, like what you guys do and how important it is keeping companies out of court. Chad (10:28.868) Changes, yeah. Jeremy Mancheski (10:31.31) her. Jeremy Mancheski (10:39.598) Joel, I hate to correct you, but we have bought two poster companies. Joel (10:44.339) Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo. I can feel it Jeremy. Speak to me baby. Jeremy Mancheski (10:47.822) Sure. That's right. That's right. That's right. The two-poster business, Federal Wage and Labor Law Institute. There you go. No, not even close. It's a big market. Federal Wage and Labor Law Institute out of Houston and Labor Law Center out of Southern California, Santa Ana. Those posters are actually some very basic blocking and tackling for HR. And what we found Chad (10:48.24) a poster monopoly happening here, Jeremy. Be careful. Be careful. Joel (10:55.155) and antitrust issues. Jeremy Mancheski (11:17.486) It's one thing to say, let's go to your break room and let's look at the poster up there. It's another thing if you are a 50 state employer and you have to figure out how to maintain compliance at various sites. Imagine, let's say you pick a large fast food chain. How do you keep that poster compliance managed? And we do that through a few different ways. Of course, individual poster purchase, but... most do a subscription. And if you think about change, change being the driver of something changes on a poster, that's why you need a new one. Keeping up with it is really, really complicated for large businesses. So subscription model makes sense. We see this year, we anticipate lots of federal and state updates, which means we're going to be shipping, when I say literally millions of posters, that's what I mean. I'll have to get you all some pictures of our facility in Santa Ana. It's amazing. It's a large, large operation. But the connection to the other products and services we have, we found that compliance, HR compliance, everything from EEO, affirmative action, what we're learning is I-9 compliance, and of course, state posters. Joel (12:24.679) huh. Jeremy Mancheski (12:46.402) those usually fall to similar contacts within a company. So for us, providing connected solutions is critically important and a real value add to the customer. Chad (12:59.118) So AAP, as you had said, very big part of the business at one time, you guys diversified, right? Now let's take a look at, you know, kind of like the small business side of this. There are many companies that are out there that are laser focused on AAP. That to me seems like a cottage industry that's pretty much, I mean, they're going to have to diversify quickly or they're just going to have to go to the way of the dodo. What have you seen, because again, this is small business and small business runs this country. Talk a little bit about what you've seen with regard to AAP providers and then also companies asking questions around AAP. Jeremy Mancheski (13:40.558) Sure. I actually have spent quite a bit of time talking with my large and small competitors throughout this. The stark reality is there isn't a lot of guidance. So how customers can be best protected. Remember the concept of illegal DEI. The OFCCP has even suggested Chad (13:48.474) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (14:06.754) They've suggested OCCP become a of watchdog for illegal DEI. So if last year we're selling affirmative action, this year we have to pivot to monitoring nondiscrimination and part of that being ensuring no illegal DEI. Air quotes, I know we're not doing video on this, but consider air quotes around illegal DEI because we still don't really have a solid definition. big companies, small companies, and everybody in between are struggling to try to keep their names off of government watch lists, recognizing, of course, that the government is just as capable of using AI tools as any of us would be to maybe search websites, find something on diverse slates, find job postings that are seemingly using language related to DEI or something to that effect. Chad (14:44.708) Mm-hmm. Joel (14:44.81) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (15:05.784) So companies are kind of in the woods right now. I spend probably half my day speaking with customers, asking pointed questions in this direction. And we have a process for them that involves a non-discrimination and employment analysis, real analytics. Because like you say, Chad, data is a key driver. Metrics related to data are key drivers within HR. Joel (15:33.693) You, you, guys are on the front lines of, of what customers are talking about. What's worrying them. We've covered sort of the, new administration and the white house, some of the state issues, DEI. What else is on the tip of, of customers tongues? I mean, you've got gig economy, privacy, you have mental health, like there's so many issues. What are some other hot topics that clients are talking about with you? Jeremy Mancheski (15:57.27) Immigration. We found a lot of our customers who were responsible for affirmative action plans are also responsible for completing I-9 forms. Again, take something so simple as verifying immigration status or the appropriateness to work with someone and magnify it across a large enterprise. And it's very, very cumbersome. You mentioned where we... Chad (16:09.232) Mm. Jeremy Mancheski (16:26.638) We're adding new products and services and diversifying. I9 solution we found was something that was absolutely on the tip of our customers' tongues. It was coming up in so many conversations. One of the advantages of having a decent-sized workforce, Outsolve has about 150 employees, and the vast, vast majority of those are customer-focused, having conversations with HR people every day. Chad (16:52.24) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (16:53.246) and now navigating all this change. if they're asking about immigration and I-9s, well, that's a service we can provide. Another thing that's come up quite a bit, how can I balance state compliance, as we say, with federal compliance? It's complicated because remember, you have very blue states and you have very red states. Guess which ones are following the lead of the federal government? Chad (17:24.08) Yeah, fairly simple. Yeah, yeah, the red ones. So when we take a look at, and it sounds like very smartly, you guys have actually gone into the non-discrimination employment analysis instead of disparate impact. Is that kind of like a renaming per se? Joel (17:25.319) over my shirt maybe red Jeremy Mancheski (17:43.31) It's a renaming and a refiguring of analytics to make sure we're not stepping over any lines, invisible or otherwise. Title VII still exists. So companies have to ensure a non-discriminatory workforce. And if there's the concept of certification, I think the new administration suggests, what do we need affirmative action for? A company can just simply validate somehow. Chad (17:46.864) huh. Chad (17:52.528) You Chad (18:09.189) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (18:12.814) in a process that hasn't been determined, or certify that they have a non-discriminatory workforce, I don't know how you can certify something you haven't analyzed. Chad (18:22.32) Yes. Yes. So it also seems like in the renaming or the retooling, let's say for instance of disparate impact. Same thing with the, the EI and every company that I've, I've talked to around this is like, what do we do? It's like, what, what, what has given you the great outcomes, right? What, what, what are you doing? I don't care what you call it, but what's best for your business. Um, whether you're going to, you know, a female heavy, college or university, which you know, we, they're actually more females in academia today than, than there are males. You're going there. It's probably going to be heavy on the, on the female side. Again, this is all about outcomes and getting to the people that actually have the skills that you need. The question is, do we call it DEI? And my answer is always no, just call it hiring. Why do we have to put labels on all this shit? It drives me crazy, Jeremy. Jeremy Mancheski (19:15.922) I completely agree. Completely agree. know, one thing I've found, you DEI was never a significant portion of Autsault's business. know, affirmative action is compliance, right? DEI is sort of the like to have and often well intentioned exactly what it says it is, creating diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now, it's seemingly a bad word with this, a bad term with this administration. But I- Chad (19:26.446) Mm-hmm. Right. Jeremy Mancheski (19:45.806) I'm advising clients right now and what I'm suggesting to them is, what were your objectives to begin with? For some companies, candidly, DEI was public relations. I think it's a dirty secret of DEI. Some companies it was something to put on a website, something to appear to be welcoming, et cetera. Others took it very, very seriously. And of course there are varying degrees in between. I think it's important Joel (20:00.458) Hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (20:14.636) that companies who consider the path forward set clear objectives in their minds. What are you trying to accomplish here? And you can still do DEI that is not illegal. A great example, affinity groups. Companies had affinity groups. Now, theoretically, you can have an affinity group as long as everyone's invited. Lots of things along those lines. Set some objectives. Make realistic, have a realistic understanding of what you're trying to accomplish and don't overstep. Joel (20:54.965) So we've covered a little bit of the past, a lot of the present. I want to talk about the future. What are some of the issues that you see coming down the pike? Obviously AI is changing everything, remote hybrid work. What's coming down the pike? What should we be looking for in terms of pitfalls and threats throughout 25 and into 26 even? Jeremy Mancheski (21:15.374) Sure. You know, it's funny. Go back even a year and AI was the hugest rage. Everyone needed it, didn't know what it was, but we got to have some unit of AI within our business, right? And AI is obviously going to be a strong driver, particularly in the HR space, for a long time. I think and I sense that the world is taking, I don't want to say a step back, because that would suggest there's some... Joel (21:35.359) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (21:43.874) hindrance of technology or progress or whatnot. I don't believe that to be the case. But I think we're trying to be more thoughtful about how to use it, not just throw some AI against the wall and hope it sticks. I think we want to really think about it. Some of the very early adopters of any technology for that matter face the most scrutiny. I think we saw AI recruiting early on that was deemed in some instances even discriminatory. Joel (22:11.839) Yeah, we did. Jeremy Mancheski (22:13.038) And really, and I think this administration would see it even more so as discriminatory. So I think everyone's being a little more thoughtful. Everyone's a little more mindful. So yes, AI. Hybrid workspaces. Boy, we all went off the same deep end, for lack of a better term, on that during COVID. I think companies are. Joel (22:38.677) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Mancheski (22:41.088) in some respects, rethinking policies and productivity and maybe rewriting some of those policies. It's the Goldilocks effect, not too hot, not too cold and just right. think we were too hot on some of the stuff and I think we'll probably find a way that's too cold and time will tell on all this. So I don't love making big policy shifts on things like this without letting some others. figure out the pitfalls first. Joel (23:12.319) Fair enough. Chad (23:12.344) Not too hot, not too cold, but Jeremy Manczewski is just right, my friend. So Jeremy, if somebody wants to connect with you or learn a little bit more about Outsolve, where would you send them, sir? Joel (23:15.189) Just right. Jeremy Mancheski (23:25.742) I would tell them to call me or email me directly. My email is jmancheski, M-A-N-C-H-E-S-K-I at outsolve.com. Love hearing from clients, non-clients, HR people who undoubtedly have thoughts, comments, questions, and I promise I'll answer. Chad (23:45.484) Even competitors, because you guys are having to, to, to really pull together in this time of change. So yeah, that's, that's awesome. And that's great to hear, Jeremy. That's awesome. Jeremy Mancheski (23:52.79) Absolutely. As an industry, I've been around this industry for 30 plus years now. Known some of my competitors for that long. Had competitors who are now employees and vice versa. If we can't stick together now, when are we going to? Chad (24:11.45) Amen. Joel (24:12.243) Jeremy spoke on Chad and Cheese. We out! Jeremy Mancheski (24:17.728) I swear I was waiting for that. Chad (24:18.734) So bad. So bad. We out.

It’s Chad & Cheese  birthday week, baby! That’s right— two birthdays , one week , and after 8 years and almost 1,500 episodes, we’re treating ourselves… poolside for Cheese, beachside for me. Margaritas were definitely  harmed in the making of this celebration. But before we vanish into vacation mode, we’ve got a little gift for you . A fresh episode of Talent Chasing —where Moneyball  meets Office Space . What’s that mean? Not even Jasper knows. You’ll just have to listen and find out. This one’s a doozy: Brian Johnson, Jasper Spanjaart, and Chad (Yea The Chad) dig into Shedeur Sanders, NFL talent, fifth-round pick. Yeah, we said fifth . The guy had the stats, the swagger, and still got passed up more than a junior dev with a philosophy degree. Why? Race? Dad’s fame? NFL execs allergic to personality? We dig into all of it. So unwrap your birthday bonus, hit play, and embrace the chaos. It ’s our party, and we’ll snark if we want to. More at talentchasing.com PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Jasper (00:24.995) Hello and welcome to another episode of Talent Chasing. My name is Jasper Spangard. I'm a filmmaker and journalist joined by former military drill sergeant Chad Big Drill Sowash and Brian aka Frank Johnson who scouted two World Series winning San Francisco Giants teams and played for a whole bunch of three, sorry three, God's sake Brian, is two not enough. I was also about to mention that you played for a whole bunch of MLB teams, but then again, it sort of pictures you as a journeyman. Brian (00:41.654) Three. Jasper: Three Brian, isn't two enough? Chad (00:48.716) Never. Jasper (00:53.699) which again is true. But hello, you beautiful, young, bold American souls. I'm happy to be in a recording space with both of you once more. How are things, guys? Chad (01:05.857) All good here, man. I am back in Portugal, baby. I mean, that urge has back, can't be happier. All the sun, all the beach, all the water, all the beer, can't beat it. But you just got back from Japan. Talk a little bit about that. That's one hell of fricking flight, man, or series of flights. Jasper (01:09.615) Euro Chad. Jasper (01:22.991) A series of flights. So it was from the Netherlands to Indonesia where we had a wedding, a friend's wedding, which was beautiful. Then we flew to Japan after that via China. So I saw pretty much all of Asia in one trip, I feel like. But I spent the week in Tokyo watching baseball, eating far too much sashimi and sushi. Chad (01:34.16) wow. Chad (01:50.187) No such thing. Brian (01:50.656) No such thing. Jasper (01:50.703) Just, just no, there's no such thing. And beautiful beer too. The Japanese do beer quite excellently for my mate. Um, no, and it was, it was just completely captivating that the Tokyo is, is batshit crazy. It's, sort of the craziest city you can ever imagine. It's literally 15 cities sort of bolted into one. Um, fascinating. If you ever get the chance to get out of there, you absolutely must. I've got a whole range of tips and things you need to do. And whilst you're there, um, avoid the Shibuya crossing, but go to some far less known museums. much better way to spend your time there. but I remember vividly cause the, the, the day I flew out was the day of the NFL draft. So it was my first ever experience. well, following the NFL draft, literally from afar, 35,000 feet up in the air, somewhere above the South China sea. and I love the draft. I always make a note of staying up at least for the first and second round. those days. But it was weird because I had to follow it just shitty Wi Fi on the plane, trying to get updates from you guys and from Twitter that wouldn't load. So yeah, it was was it was interesting. Brian (03:02.464) It was interesting. And we talked about it last show when you were, you know, out and about doing your Asian Jasper trip. But the pre-draft conversation about Shadoor Sanders was fascinating. Amazingly, the post-draft story of Shadoor Sanders is even more interesting. And what's fascinating for me, and we've talked about this before, Chad (03:20.781) Mmm. Brian (03:29.558) There's about eight different storylines or eight different opinions you can have on the should do or Sanders situation and you would be accurate. That's what makes it intriguing is that there's a lot of things that play here that you got talent on the field, okay, which you would think could be primo, but it's part of the mix. You got personality of the player, you got interviews that were done. The Giants say one thing, other teams say another. You have Chad (03:46.455) Mm-hmm. Brian (03:57.644) You don't have 32 teams needing quarterback, you have like four or five. And then so that comes into play. So it's a shrink shrink market. So it's not a normal market there. For quarterback, you have the helicopter parent. We have the the you know, whatever round you think he deserves. You have in evaluating his talent, you have, oh, he doesn't throw on time. Oh, he's he's doing this, doing that. The bottom line is he carried a program from nothing to national relevance NFL teams to where they're facing huge TV audiences every week. And then some would say, well, it's because of that. People don't, know, there was a report. I don't know how true it is. Doesn't sound true, but whatever. One of the other ports was that Brian Dable was concerned that Dion Sanders would be in line for his job if things didn't go well or whatever it may be. So. Chad (04:26.839) Mm-hmm. Jasper (04:30.175) Exactly. Chad (04:37.783) Mm-hmm. Brian (04:52.8) Fascinating, fascinating. All these lines could be accurate. What's that? Chad (04:55.031) Deon's the last guy he's got to worry about for God's sake. He should just worry about himself. He should just worry about himself because Brian, Brian Dable, to be quite frank, I don't know how in the hell he's still in that position. But anyway, anyway. Brian (05:01.237) Yes. Jasper (05:07.353) But before, because what I want to, what I was about to mention is we talked about Shadur Sanders at length before, you know, I jetted off to Asia and I was just dumbfounded by his freefall. Because he doesn't go in the first round. So for those, you know, non NFL fans out there, first round, 32 teams. So each team gets to take their player, their favorite player of the draft, essentially. I was 100 % expecting, you know, Shadur Sanders to go in the first round. Just based on talent is based on what he did at Colorado, based on what he did at Jackson before that, the type of character he is, know, we've talked at, know, Brian's talk at Nauseam about, you know, quarterbacks and, know, what makes a good quarterback the fact that you need to be a bit, a little bit confident and we'll, we'll delve into that later. Um, but you know, this is a quarterback who completed 70 % of his passes in college, like 134 touchdowns, like 227 interceptions. Chad (06:01.517) with not a great O line. Brian (06:03.51) Zero all-in. Chad (06:04.969) Yeah. Jasper (06:04.975) But fill me in guys, because I wasn't there. What happened? Just then what was it like following this sort of process? Cause this is the biggest freefall of talent that I think I've ever seen. And it's the worst part of it is, I don't think people understand this fully. If you're not an NFL fan, it's there for everyone to see. Everyone gets to enjoy. And this is Schadenfreude at its global, at a global stage guys. Like this is, this guy's freefall was depicted to the entire world. Chad (06:20.941) Mm-hmm. Jasper (06:35.011) But what was it like following the draft from your guys' perspective? Because I wasn't able to watch. I was just reading tweets and messaging you guys. But tell me, what was it like? Chad (06:45.205) I for me it was it was as much of his slide as seeing the teams take other quarterbacks and who they took before that. mean Tyler show I mean he's he's older. I totally get that they want a little bit more mature guy but I mean to me he just didn't seem like he should have gone even close to that that high even Jackson Dart for goodness sakes. Then you got Jalen. Milro, Dylan Gabriel. Dylan Gabriel was taken by Cleveland before they took Shador Sanders. And it's like, how in the hell? Don't get me wrong. Big 10 quarterback, played at Oregon. Great team. They've got an NFL kind of like pro set offense. Totally get that, right? Totally get that. But he does not have the physical attributes. He does not. Jasper (07:31.385) Yep. yeah. Chad (07:42.829) have the physical attributes that should or Sanders does. So to be able to watch this for me, and again, as we were talking about it coming out of it, it was like, how can they not take this guy in the first round? Of course they will. Yes, he had some interview hiccups. Maybe he didn't want to go to those teams. Who in the hell ever wants to go to the Giants, especially right now? But at the end of the day, a lot of these things that Brian was talking about have actually come out and have made me think a little bit deeper about You take a look at personality and how that actually goes to marketing, right? And the Cleveland Browns are getting one hell of a personality marketing bump from a fifth round draft pick. That's from their fifth round draft pick, not from their quarterback that they took earlier, right? Number one. And then the second biggest one for me is that it's blending that personality and then the helicopter parent. Deon. was doing interviews and they're saying, well, you know, what if, what if should do where he picks a team that you don't want him to? And he's like, excuse me, pretty much he's controlling everything. And I totally get it. Dion is a, an, for all intents and purposes, he is an expert in the space compared to many other people, right? He's gone through the draft. He's gone through, he's been an NFL, an NFL player. He's been on both sides. He's been a coach, right? He's been a commentator. He's done all of these things. So therefore he really feels and he brings the chops of being an expert, but it's also the ability to have hubris and that's something that Dion's never had. So you've got one of those things where it's like, that can my team not only take on a Shador Sanders who also is going to have that kind of personality, perspective Lee and also hubris, but to Are we gonna have Dion in the fucking locker room too? So those are two big things for me, especially after the fallout. Just wow, just big, big wow. Brian (09:51.05) Yeah, completely fair. think Dion has not gotten the criticism that he deserves post draft. We talked a little bit about in our project because I don't think we realize how possibly this could play out. And now that it's played out, I think you're exactly right. For any of us that have coached at the high school level or the middle school level and realize that parents are heavily involved, here you have, just like you described, Chad, a parent who you're right. Chad (09:57.591) Mm-hmm. Brian (10:21.1) As far as his knowledge base is concerned, it's all on one level. He's dominated since he was a long time. And he dominated the draft, he dominated after the draft, he dominated everything in football. And so as a coach, now all of a sudden he's done really well as a coach in two different spots. So he deserves that acclaim. But sometimes a criticism of former athletes, former professional athletes, is that when you get back into the real world, it's hard to have that humility. Like in coaching, you don't remember when you stunk as an eight-year-old and you struck out four times, right? You don't remember when the 12-year-old, you had a hard time finding your release point when you're pitching. You know, when you guys shellacked one game or whatever, maybe, or he threw a bunch of interceptions. You'd forget those times. And so as a star, that's why many star players don't turn into good coaches because you have to have the humility because you need to coach in different ways for different people. The star... Chad (10:52.813) Mm-hmm. Brian (11:20.62) Probably needs a little more cerebral approach, keeping their confidence up, boom, boom, boom. The player who lacks the star skills, they need to make sure that they are fundamentally sound and thinking about A, B, and C that's different from the star. So that's why catchers are such good managers in baseball. That's why Dan Campbell with the Lions, he was a bench player for the most part. He got hurt a bunch of times in his career. A great way to be able to understand each person on your roster. Chad (11:43.597) Mm-hmm. Brian (11:49.622) Dion didn't have that and therefore he made big, big mistakes as a parent slash coach slash Dion and Shiloh's agent that he oversold his product, not because they're not any good, but because he did engage the market well. Chad (11:58.807) Mm-hmm. Jasper (11:58.895) Yeah. Jasper (12:07.619) But do we feel like, mean, this level of scrutiny though, I feel like it's unparalleled. I've never seen, you know, a young kid in, in, know, both Shiloh Sanders and Shaddur Sanders, both of his sons who have been scrutinized just to a point where I go, sure, but they can't help that that's their dad. Like, and they've looked up to this guy their entire lives and to give them some credit, you know, they've flourished under him, you know, they have flourished at their own level. But at what point do we... does perception of that family take overtake, you know, just performance in the way we assess talent because, know, it's, it's a dramatic slide. Sure. I didn't anticipate it. Like, okay, he's not going in the first round. Surely he's going to go in the second. Okay. Surely he's going to go into third. No, he wasn't taken until the fifth round by a team that as Chad just said, already took a quarterback early in the drought. I don't think I've ever seen that before either. Like taking two quarterbacks in the first five rounds, but beyond that it's, it's. Chad (13:00.045) Mm. Jasper (13:05.263) It feels unfair. It feels unfair. It feels like these kids, if they had a different back name, different last name, they would have been drafted in the first round. I think that applies honestly to both of his kids. Chad (13:17.677) I think so trying to make a correlation to kind of like the corporate world. remember working with tons of Fortune 500 companies and they would do college recruiting. So they would go on campus, these big campuses. And this is the first time I ever heard the term helicopter parent. And I was like, what the hell is that? Well, with these kids and their young adults, right? Their parents would show up to interviews with their parents would actually start the negotiation for their pay and their salary. Now, now, now, these parents have a hell of a lot more experience in all of those areas. Interview, salary negotiation, all those types of things. And there's all these reasons why, obviously, companies don't want to see that happening. They don't want to the parent in the office, right? They don't want to get notes from the parent. They don't want to get calls from the parent, right? This is, you're an adult now, you got to take this thing over. So you see this translate and I've seen many times and heard many times companies say amazing candidate, what they did in the classroom, what they could articulate in the interview, but we just can't have the perspective distraction of a parent feeling like they're sitting down beside them in the office. Right. And so you'll see this on the corporate side too. And that's where, you know, the first time I heard helicopter parent. So I can see this, especially when you're talking about Dion. We were talking about Dion, this guy's not just metaphorically sitting there. He's literally sitting there and he has access to every fucking TV channel, any broadcaster that he wants whenever he wants. And he can bring down a head coach, which, you we talking about Brian Dable earlier. He's going to bring himself down. But can you imagine if Shador did not get playing time? like he wanted, how, perspective-ly, Dion could come down on that entire organization. Brian (15:20.768) Yeah, or if Shadour goes to the Giants, he plays great. The team loses anyway. Dion's going to be talked about for months and months and months. But for me, would go to, let's talk about the other pieces as well, because the helicopter parents are great point. But I think also you have to come into play is race, right? The profile of a black quarterback, number one, right? We didn't have black quarterbacks for Chad (15:25.805) Mm-hmm. Brian (15:48.992) forever until recently, relatively recently. So is that the perception of of glitz and glamour, the perception of arrogance from a black quarterback? Right. So in the United States, we have a racial history here. And regardless of whether some people want to feel like some things have to do with race and some things don't take that argument out. Race involves everything. It touches everything. It may not be the only thing involved. And I think that's a lot of times perception gets wrong. is that just because race involved doesn't mean nothing else counts. Doesn't mean nothing else influenced it. That's why again, Shadoor's situation is so interesting because all these things come into play. when we had Ryan Leaf come to draft, number one pick, Peyton Manning, arrogance all over the place with both those guys in different ways. There was never a talk of making an example of, there's never a talk of a slide. And sure enough, unfortunately, Ryan Leaf had some other issues that came up to bed, Johnny Manziel. Now, the only time we've seen this happen with a I don't wanna say the only time, but we saw this slide happen with Aaron Rodgers, a white quarterback. But Aaron Rodgers wasn't the, we can't look at his pro career and look back in college and say, well, he came out as the number one prospect and came out as the guy, as the man. Same with Tom Brady. Tom Brady didn't play a whole lot in Michigan. He shared time in Michigan, so he wasn't Tom Brady at the time of the draft. So even though he slid further than Shadour, it's not the same situation as Shadour. Jasper (17:15.083) I wanna, yeah. Are you making it? Chad (17:15.454) No, no. Brian (17:16.202) Nor is Aaron Rodgers same situation. So we've never seen a white quarterback being made an example of, right? If we can say that, because I think that's pretty obvious that he was made an example of, regardless of what reason it was that we agree or disagree on. He was made an example of and it's gonna be fascinating to see him go forward. And it is a good, slate for him to be able to really show what he can do and plenty of who cares what team is from his talent is gonna overcome because Chad (17:26.114) Yes. Brian (17:46.688) What thing you can't get away from, which Damien Woody in the video you sent to us Jasper, you can't get away from talent. If you're a talented quarterback, you're gonna get an opportunity. Chad (17:55.444) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:03.725) Look, Joel popped in. Yeah, we've got a podcast in 15 minutes. Joel Cheesman (18:04.113) Not bad. Brian (18:08.062) nice. Jasper (18:08.623) No, but I think you're, I think you're making a fantastic point, Brian. And just to pivot back on some of the names that you just mentioned, because I did get some Aaron Rodgers vibes. Like there was some Aaron Rodgers, you know, when he was initially in the draft process, there was that whole ordeal of, okay, is this guy too confident? Is he too cocky? Same sort of thing, right? Johnny Manziel, same sort of thing. But we mustn't forget both of them, Rodgers, Manziel were first round picks. They were first round NFL draft picks. Shadr San is a fifth round draft pick. That means four times in a row, every team that possible passed on this guy, four times. And I feel like this, again, it's just, it's incomprehensible to me. Sure, you've got the name affiliation and you've, but you must be, as a team, you must be so insecure about your own livelihood to not pick this guy in the first four rounds. Like if you're honestly, if you let the fear of, Chad (18:40.727) Yes. Jasper (19:07.801) Deon Sanders might come in, his dad might come in and he might take over my job, blah, blah, blah. You must be horribly insecure in your own job because if you're not confident enough to pick that guy in the first four rounds, in the first three rounds or the first two rounds, what are we doing? Honestly, what are we doing? Chad (19:24.745) What the hell were the Browns thinking though? They took a quarterback first and then they traded up to get Shador. What the? Jasper (19:28.557) Yeah, that's I don't get either. Yeah. I don't get it. I honestly, I don't get it. Yeah, no going. Brian (19:34.422) Well, I think, I'm sorry, were you finished Jasper? ahead. So I think going on your point Jasper of the organizations, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but I think if you look at the four or five teams that really need the quarterbacks or Pittsburgh and Cleveland, let's just focus on those two. I think this was something that was sent down from above because just look at the mannerisms of Andrew Berry in his press conference and look at the head coach sit next to him in the press conference. Everybody's bending over backwards to make it seem like, know, Shadour's, you know, the one thing Andrew Barry say was he was oversold, right? So they're doing everything they can to make it seem like, this wasn't done on purpose. This wasn't done on purpose. And it's fascinating, you know, the comments out of the New York Giants, the zero comments from the Pittsburgh Steelers who needed a quarterback even more than Cleveland. How on earth does Cleveland does The Pittsburgh Steelers not draft a quarterback in this draft. It's ridiculous. And with a guy like Charlotte and with Tom, with Tomlin there as their head coach, I mean, that speaks to me again. Your boss told you not to do it. doesn't matter if you agree with him. You have to do what your boss tells you. And so you just stay out of the limelight because you can't change what your boss is saying. The bosses of those two organizations told them. Jasper (20:38.543) It's. Brian (20:59.764) You cannot take this guy for whatever reason you want to point out. It's hugely got to be racial, number one. And I hate to say that, but it's got to be part of it. The social media following has got to be a huge part of it. And the and there I'm sure they're reading the same reports we all did. He doesn't throw on time. You know, they're they're worried about the Johnny Manziel coming up. They're worried about a Ryan Leap. So they don't want to make a mistake. I get that part. But it's just when you look at the tape, no one's playing the game like he's playing. Jasper (21:03.161) Yeah. Jasper (21:08.526) I swear. Brian (21:28.556) except for Cam Ward with Miami. He was great. And I hate the argument that says, well, doesn't run, Sanders doesn't run like Cam Ward. Who cares? Dan Marito didn't run well, right? A lot of guys don't run well. Who can operate in the quarterback position? Cerebrally, Shadour is right there with Cam Ward. And maybe better, it's hard to read that kind of stuff. But cerebrally, the mental stuff, Shadour is in a class by himself. I think that's gonna show up. Jasper (21:43.929) Yeah, but- Jasper (21:51.318) You- you- you- Jasper (21:58.691) No, easily. again, you've alluded to the fact that, okay, only five or six teams needed a quarterback. But honestly, when does the draft ever become about need? I get that when you need a quarterback, you draft quarterback. But there's teams like the New York Jets, my New York Jets. Okay, great. You sign a guy in free agency. Great. know, Justin Fields, good, decent quarterback. Hasn't been a starter for two years, but he's good. Good enough. Really? You're not going to take a flyer on Shaduo Sanders in the second or the third or the fourth round. Really? Like honestly, it's just, I, again, I can't speak to the level of surprise I felt because it's, it feels wrong. It just feels wrong. And, and, and you're, think you're absolutely spot on in the fact that the race has to be an issue with this. And yeah, Dion Sanders is a personality of its own. We've, well documented that even on our podcast, you know, the type of character he is, but at same time. I didn't expect that type of backlash to happen based on the character he's got. Like sure, because next year we'll see Archie Manning probably in the draft, right? He's going to be the first round, first round, I think he's going to be a shoe in lock in for the first overall pick. Chad (23:03.638) Aren't ya? Chad (23:08.235) He might, I mean, his uncle played for four years. You never know with the Mannings because the maturity level those guys have, not to mention the NIL money that they're gonna be pulling, he might stay longer. He might. Jasper (23:15.36) No. Jasper (23:21.647) could be if he's not secured of a first round draft slot, sure, but that's why it's just all the war- and then again, no? Chad (23:28.267) I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the case with the Mannings. The Mannings are smart. They understand that he's got to be ready for the NFL. He can come out early because he's going to go in the first round. That does not mean that he's ready for the NFL. And if anybody knows, talk a little bit about that, Brian. I think that's one of the things that the Mannings, from my standpoint, I look to see what they do because they know fucking football. If any family knows football, that family knows football. Jasper (23:34.999) Hmm. Yeah, but who's to say? Chad (23:55.917) I think that he will come out when they think he's ready. now here's also a twist to this, Brian. You got the whole Manning family, right? Who are also big out in the marketing space. mean, you've got a couple of uncles who have won Super Bowls, right? And you got this quarterback who has this big marketing opportunity. He had the same thing with Deion Sanders. But you're afraid of Deion Sanders, right? Jasper (24:08.172) Exactly. Jasper (24:24.994) Exactly. Chad (24:25.165) So I think back to back to your point, you know, is is this a race thing? I there's got to be some implications to that Brian (24:34.944) Yeah, without a doubt. think that's a great example that proves that point. Again, it's just different. It's just different when a Black person is involved. And regardless of what it exactly was, it's going to be hard for us to decipher. But race always plays a part. We're in the United States. Our racial history has been denied. It's been trying to get rid of it from our schools, trying to act like it didn't happen. And therefore, That means that it continues to linger and linger and linger and we don't acknowledge it. Just like in a relationship with your wife. You have a fight, right? And you have a fight. You did something wrong, but you'll never admit it and you'll never bring it up and never... Tell me right now if that relationship is going to last forever. Probably not. And if you do it once, it means you're going to do it a couple of times. So that's going to be hard to maintain. Same thing that's happened in the United States with our culture. It's always there. White folks deny it ever happens. And they're they accused black folks of always playing the race car. It's just anyway, it's just an issue that's there again, like we talked about. It doesn't mean it's the only issue that's there. It's an issue that's there. But with the Manning family, it's fascinating because look at Arch Manning. He didn't play last year. And so that's a little close to two years when his kids going to not be able to play a game to your point, Chad, in that if I'm if I'm Peyton Manning, if I'm Eli Manning, if I'm Archie Manning senior, I'm thinking Chad (25:59.757) Cooper. Brian (26:03.388) Nowadays, you got to be ready when you get there, especially if he's going to be the number one overall pick. You got to have experience to play this game, especially all these guys who have played five and six years because of COVID, an extra year of COVID eligibility. These guys are coming in seasoned and ready to play. If he's only getting one year of actual D1 competition, he may not be ready. Chad (26:24.619) Yeah, well, you take a look at you take a look at Richardson at Indianapolis. He did not have enough. He should not have come out. Period. Period. But Brian (26:28.214) great call. That's right. That's right. but he can run. He can outrun everybody. He can throw the ball a million miles. That doesn't matter at the quarterback position. You have Chad (26:40.077) He's just not short and mid. He has no short and mid game. Everything is long or he is running. Brian (26:43.98) Here we go. You gotta be able to make the layup. can't slam dunk on everybody every play, right? Chad (26:50.369) Yeah, you want me to play that Jasper? Okay. Jasper (26:51.491) Why don't... Go for it, yeah. Brian (27:06.602) thought Joe was going to be our special guest. Chad (27:41.389) Jesus. Ads. Trisha, you're gonna have to cut that first part and get ready. Here we go. Jasper (27:46.735) for Trisha. Jasper (29:45.507) Yeah. Yeah. Beyond the fact that, Go ahead. No, no, Brian, go ahead. Chad (29:45.867) You're just not him. Brian (29:48.064) So I have a problem with this, but go ahead. Chad (29:52.108) Hit it. Brian (29:52.47) So I like his one point of that, that, you know, they're in the talent acquisition business. Yep, I get that. But again, not every team needs us. So we're not talking 32 teams, we're talking three or four that really need to have quarterback talent. And we just saw them not in the talent acquisition business. And as far as how you evaluate it, he's saying that, I just disagree that because this, well, Chad (30:00.459) Mm-hmm. Brian (30:21.868) pull back a little bit. What I do agree with him, I think is the social media presence. And this is what we talked about with Tim Tebow. I think that was his strongest point, because I think with the Tim Tebow situation, we know that the social media piece they don't want because of all that. then you combine that with Deion Sanders. And that, I think, was the stew that they were trying to avoid. What's happened? And again, I think we talked about with your fifth round pick, as you mentioned, Chad. Chad (30:26.539) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Brian (30:50.42) I've never seen this much exposure and this much of the Cleveland Browns being a focal point from a fifth round draft pick. It wasn't Myles Garrett, your number one defensive end who just who's the highest paid guy in the NFL. It wasn't Joe Flacco who had a great season two years ago that saved the franchise and took them to the playoffs when your main guy got hurt. It wasn't the owners. It wasn't the GM. It was your fifth round traffic, not your third round draft pick, Dylan Gabriel, who's a solid player. It was your fifth round pick. And that is, I think, something that Cleveland's gonna benefit from that they didn't anticipate. Jasper (31:28.917) I mean, it's, makes, makes for an interesting sort of conundrum, doesn't it? I mean, you just alluded to Tim Tebow and I think he was very much one of the first players in the NFL to really undergo a level of scrutiny that no one else went through because he was, he was a talented guy, just a talented quarterback, first round draft for the Denver Broncos was traded to the New York Jets where he didn't get to play quarterback at all. Still don't know why, because they needed good quarterback play at that time. And it's just. The whole circus around them, that was always the same, right? The way they sort of phrased it, the media phrase was the circus around Teebo. Teams don't want the circus around Teebo. Well, guess what? The NFL is a circus already. It's a circus already. Like no matter whether you sign Tim Teebo or not, it's going to be a circus no matter what. Journalists are going to be there. They're going to ask different questions, going to ask stupid questions, going to ask right questions. It's always going to happen. Chad (32:08.513) Yes. Yes, it is. Jasper (32:21.647) But to me, it's it's just staggering to see this happen over and over again with, you know, you need a talented quarterback. You like, there is absolutely no one that can tell me he's not a talent quarterback. Shadrassana is a talented quarterback. 32 teams should have been in line for him, waiting and hoping and wishing that they could be the one drafting him. Instead, they all said, no, not our guy. Cause we don't want the circus around him. And that to me is just, it's staggering that It's, it doesn't feel like it's about talent acquisition anymore. It doesn't feel like it's about talent anymore. It just feels like we're so incredibly concerned with what the media perspective will be that that will be the one thing that will shy away from any type of talent decision-making because based on talent, he should have been a first-round pick. based on all everything around it and the whole sort of worrisome like, okay. What are they going to write about us? What are they going to say about us? leads them astray and leads them to different decisions. And that is, it's so weird. It's honestly, it it feels, it feels like the NFL is not ready for this. Like college football has made leaps and bounds and you know, with, with NIL coming in and the way, you know, plays are now being paid and, know, getting, you know, sponsorship deals and marketing deals. It's weird that the NCAA has sort of overtaken the NFL when it comes to that. And I do know, I know that, that, you know, NIL is, is, is still, you know, up for discussion, whether it benefits the integrity of the sport, but at the same time, it feels like they are the ones embracing personalities and the NFL just wants boring, basic people to do the job that it's task at hand and well, don't try to do much else. Chad (34:09.751) Well, and I think the hardest part about this whole thing is we talked about this on one of our one of our baseball shows where we're talking about the personalities out of baseball. The personality is in football, and that's exactly what's selling the game. It's what it's what makes it the most. It's the most profitable sport in the world. Period. It's the number one grossing sport in the world. The National Fucking Football League. Right. Take a look at that. You take a look at the Dallas Cowboys. makes more than the than the English Premier League does. Just the Dallas Cowboys, right? So then you talk about, well, we don't want the circus. Yes, you do. That was an excuse. That was an excuse to say no to this circus. But you're looking for another circus because you want to sell jerseys because you do want the limelight on you, right? Especially, especially, hopefully on your way to winning. So then you take a look at. A kid who is in two. Jasper (34:57.303) Exactly. Chad (35:10.093) two teams, Jackson State and then obviously Colorado did an amazing job. And like you'd said, Brian, zero offensive line. He had to make plays happen. He had to make plays happen. It was funny because Cam Ward was giving Shidora a hard time saying, well, if I threw bubble screens all day, I could do that too. I could have that high percentage rating too. It's like, shut the fuck up, Cam. You had an offensive line. OK? Brian (35:28.349) you Chad (35:37.129) It might not have been a great, but you had an offensive line should do or did not have one. So I just see so many, so many cards in this house of cards that are just tumbling from all this bullshit excuse from these different teams. think a lot of it. And again, not, not trying to be mean to Dion, but I think a lot of it is that they are afraid of Dion. They're afraid of. Brian (36:02.124) I agree. I think both your points are correct. think I want to circle back to the race card again, because again, for me, as a studier of race for the last 50 years, being in a multi-ethnic environment, Oakland, California, being in a multi-ethnic environment, and again, a predominantly Black city in Detroit, Michigan, my whole life. Being sensitive and aware of racial issues when I started, like I was like eight years old when I first, the light went on, I saw the world through a different lens. I think race is a fascinating conversation. And I think as we talk about this, Jasper brought up the great point of Tim Tebow, right? But we often forget to bring in Colin Kaepernick. Chad (36:36.493) Mm-hmm. Brian (36:53.068) Collin, if you look at examples, two examples of players being excommunicated and removed and blacklisted from the NFL, those two guys hit it spot on. Tim Tebow, because of social media following and because his arm isn't that strong. But you could say the Baltimore Ravens won a Super Bowl with a quarterback that didn't have an arm that was that strong either, but whatever. Chad (36:53.292) Yes. Chad (37:10.24) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:17.943) That hell of a defense. Brian (37:18.902) But that would like the like the should do our Sanders doesn't throw on time. That was the that was the thing that was done with Tim Teebo is that he didn't throw even though they want to play off game with them. He was communicated from the NFL just like Colin Kaepernick. So it's fascinating to see the two situations Teebo is because of social media following Colin Kaepernick situation just because he was black and because he was challenging the system and peacefully quietly took a stinking knee. Jasper (37:48.131) you Brian (37:48.372) And so it's. Chad (37:48.929) And he was, and and he was actually advised to take a knee by a green beret who I trained in Fort Benning, Georgia, by the way. yes, but. got to bring it back to me guys. Got to bring it back to me. But again, I agree a hundred percent races of discussion. need to have more of, right? Not just in sports, but outside of sports. but because it's so uncomfortable, it is, it's uncomfortable. Brian (37:51.422) Exactly right. Exactly right. Really? Jasper (37:57.931) weighted name drop, weighted name drop. Fantastic job. Yeah. Brian (38:00.448) Love that. It is all about you. Brian (38:16.716) Yeah, it is. Jasper (38:18.337) It's... yeah. Chad (38:18.827) We need to have those uncomfortable discussions and we need to have them just to make ourselves better. It's not throwing mud, right? It's to be able to ensure that the humans that we work beside, left and right, that they are getting a fair shot at shit. And that's not a bad thing. Brian (38:34.026) and that you're factoring in all the pieces into play. Like we're doing this conversation. We're throwing out a whole bunch of different threads to this that are all compatible. Race is often thrown out because it takes all the oxygen in the room when it comes up because white folks, quite honestly, have a hard time talking about it. Black folks don't have a hard time talking about it. Latino folks don't have a hard time talking about it. Asian folks don't have a hard time talking about it. It's white folks have a hard time talking about it. Chad (38:42.541) Mm-hmm. Brian (39:00.308) And that's what sucks up the energy in the room or the atmosphere in the room is because we, me, my people, we get defensive and feel like, no, if I admit the racism was a part of our history, then it means I didn't earn anything that I've ever done. That's not true. That's overthinking it. That's not true. And that has nothing to do with the conversation. Anyway, so I'm glad we're able to have the conversation here and really factor in all the pieces of Shadoor Sanders' story because it's fascinating. Chad (39:07.757) Mm. Jasper (39:31.203) Now I think one final point I do want to make, and I know we've done an extensive episode on Dion Sanders himself. So, I mean, people should very much just go back and listen to that because we're going to probably duplicate what we've already said. But I wonder just with Dion Sanders, whether his, the way he acts, the way he talks, the way it like, it's almost as if people just perceive that as him being arrogant and brash. I just see a confident guy. Honestly, for me, honestly, it just boils down to confidence and a faith, you know, in something higher than him and of sort of faith in himself. But why do we see that as a danger as society? Brian (40:15.692) He doesn't cuss, he doesn't put anybody down, he defends his players, he promotes his players, he's building young men. Jasper (40:20.173) Nope. Only talks people up. Yeah. Why it's, it's, it's almost as if we're not ready for a powerful black man of that stature. It almost feels that way. Chad (40:24.171) He's a powerful black man. Brian (40:30.908) I think you're right. And what we don't hear about at all when we talk about Deion Sanders is they were the number one team, the only team in history to have a football team in total with a great point average over 3.0. And I posted that on social media. People responded back to me like, that's a lie. Did you go to Snopes? Did you find out that's true? Is that a lie? And I had to throw a video on there. The academic advisor, a white woman, was there to justify it or verify it, right? Chad (40:38.861) Mm. Chad (40:44.094) yeah. Chad (40:58.082) Yeah? Brian (41:00.204) as far as visually, and I got no comments after that. They said it was untrue, but the academic. So this program, not only on the field, was garbage before he got there. And over time, he's built them into not only a team to be reckoned with on the field, but also academically. These young men are building a foundation for themselves under his stewardship. That is amazing. Chad (41:12.596) Mm-hmm. Chad (41:25.835) Yes. Well, Dion, one of the things that I love about Dion is his discipline, not just on the field, but off the field. And what he's doing is and one of the this is the biggest thing. He is a mentor. Right. Not just to his sons, but to everybody on that damn team. That's why Travis Hunter followed him. Right. He was able to to to show lead. Jasper (41:34.898) yeah. Chad (41:55.019) and show discipline, right? And then also enforce that discipline, especially when it came to grades, behavior, those types of things. He understands this is a business. You have to understand your personality, the marketing, developing yourself, but also outside of that, it's a much bigger thing. And much like you talk about, Brian, this is fantasy land. You've got to prep yourself for when you're out of fantasy land. And those grades are going to be the foundation of the deal. of how you do that. Brian (42:26.06) That's right. And the athletic part is the easy part, right? That's what we enjoy as kids or as young athletes or young men. We enjoy that part, the hard part. It was hard part for me. The academic part, that wasn't fun. Going to class at eight o'clock in the morning wasn't fun. Studying for finals wasn't fun, right? But you had to do it. And I love to your point, Chad, that Dion has forced his team, used the power and the leverage he has as the head football coach and forced them to show up to class, be in the first row. We've all seen the videos. Chad (42:33.879) Mm-hmm. Chad (42:48.247) Mm-hmm. Brian (42:54.838) You got to be in the first row. You got to be on time. You got to be all these things. And here they have produced and we don't hear anything about it, which is, which is too bad. Chad (43:05.751) Great. Jasper (43:06.287) It feels like a slap in the face of all of that. Yeah. Chad (43:10.135) Yeah, well sliding, but the beautiful part and we'll end on this is we have a Chador Sanders who we know is incredibly talented that got knocked down to the fifth round and that's going to put a chip on his shoulder that you hope the Browns thought they could actually use. Who knows? We'll see. Jasper (43:24.717) He got humiliated, yeah. Jasper (43:29.325) I hope so, yeah. Brian (43:36.554) And the humiliation, Jasper, was the point, right? That was the point. And I think what it's going to do is going to fuel that fire. It's going to be He'll be fine. He just signed a contract for four years for $4 million. He'll be fine. He got plenty of NIM money. His money's fine. Jasper (43:39.535) Exactly, that's the point. Yep. Chad (43:39.671) Yeah, well that was the point. Jasper (43:50.188) I think we'll be fine. No, I don't even worry about his money. I just I just really hope that guy. Brian (43:54.7) He's gonna be fine. It's gonna be a fun story to continue to watch. Jasper (43:59.535) I hope he just gets a shot somewhere, whether it's with the Brown somewhere else, I just want that guy to show the world what he does as a starting quarterback because he's gonna... Brian (44:06.836) And is it an interest? I think many of America or many of the world really he's following is amazing. People are tying into that. Because we all like underdogs, We all as human beings, Jasper (44:17.46) Yeah, and the NFL just made him an underdog. Brian (44:20.118) Exactly right. And the NFL made this a bigger story than it was gonna be before. And it's fascinating, again, to you guys' point, the NFL is already about chaos and all kinds of stories and villains and good guys. Shadour Sanders, when he goes off and takes his team to the playoffs, that's gonna be fun to watch. Chad (44:20.407) Yes. Jasper (44:39.094) Ooh, buddy. Chad (44:41.575) And we will be following kids. So every week come on back to a little talent chasing. We'll be back next week. And again, we will follow should or Sanders as well as all the other amazing talent, not just on the field, but in the corporate ranks as well as Chad. So wash jester Spaniards in our Frank. I mean Brian Johnson. We appreciate you coming subscribe like and come on back. Have a good one guys. Jasper (45:10.478) appreciate you, see you soon.

Fear and Loathing in DEIThis week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, we go full DEI—fear, backlash, boomers, clowns, and Costco. Buckle up. TEDx speaker and DEI whisperer Dr. Poornima Luthra joins the chaos to explain why equity makes some people clutch their pearls… or their privilege. Poornima breaks down the five flavors of corporate DEI fear  and why even woke allies are sweating through their Patagonia vests. We unpack how unqualified dudes named Bill keep running the show and why that’s not “best in class.” Political DEI backsliding? Check. Costco as the unlikely hero? Double check. Poornima pitches a survival guide for allies who don’t want to be labeled the “DEI police.” And yes, her new book Can I Say That?  is basically a DEI crash course for folks who fear getting canceled but still want to get it right. 🎧 Listen now. Learn something. Or at least pretend to at your next staff meeting. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:31.488) Yeah, this is the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the shotgun seat as we welcome Dr. Poornima Luthra. She's a TEDx speaker and leading academic on the DEI space. And she's an associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School. and she's also an author. Dr. Luthrah, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:39.53) What's up? Poornima Luthra (00:59.032) Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to this conversation. Joel (01:02.422) Pleasure is all ours. A lot of our listeners and viewers do not know who you are. So give us the elevator pitch. What did I miss in the intro? What should I have expanded upon? Let us know who Dr. Luther is. Chad (01:13.418) She's getting ready to go on vacation. That's the most important part. Poornima Luthra (01:16.366) Absolutely, absolutely I am. But for now, for the next 30 minutes, I'm here. Well, my name is Poornima. I'm an academic. I've been in academia for a long time, 18 years after finishing my PhD at the National University of Singapore. And I've been in the space of talent management, HR, researching and teaching in this area for this period of time. I'm the author of multiple books within the diversity, equity, inclusion and inclusive leadership space. My fourth book comes out in a few weeks in May and it's titled Can I Say That? and really unpacks the resistance and backlash that we're seeing to DEI. So I spent the last two years really exploring this, studying this, trying to come to terms with why does this backlash actually exist? And that's probably something we're going to take a look at today. I live in Copenhagen in Denmark. I am going to be taking on a new role in Imperial College Business School in London. going to be making that shift really soon to a senior faculty role over there. Very excited about taking that up. Chad (02:13.11) Nice. Joel (02:14.176) Congrats. Chad (02:19.868) Awesome. Awesome. So what brought you to the DEI inclusion kind of ranks? mean, because you could have there could have been many things that you could have done, but you did this. Why? Poornima Luthra (02:31.214) I think the two things, and the thing on a professional front, it really started with getting exposure to various theoretical perspectives around DI during my PhD program. And that sparked interest, of course, but I think there's a more fundamental personal reason here. I think if you ask my parents as a child, I always had a very heightened awareness around social inequity that I saw around me. I noticed it a lot more living in Asia, traveling around the world. I, of course, came from... Chad (02:40.726) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (02:57.934) and had those opportunities, very privileged background to be able to do that. But I also in travel also noticed social inequity around me in different contexts and in my own environment and circumstances being a woman, woman of color. And there were number of different experiences through my life where this felt like it was the right pathway to go down to ensure that the world is fairer. for other people. And of course that narrowed down into focusing on organizations once I did my PhD and then got into the research and teaching realm. Chad (03:36.598) Gotcha, gotcha. from across the pond, from across the pond, you're seeing what's happening here in the US. We had very solid DEI practices, EEOC, OFCCP, all the acronyms, right? All the enforcement, all the education. From across the pond, what do you see happening right now? Because we're here, we see stuff, but from across the pond, what are you seeing? Joel (03:37.675) So. Poornima Luthra (03:39.918) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (04:01.228) Yeah, I I am tapped quite into it. Of course, you only feel the nuances and the details once you're in a particular context. But the reality is that what's happening in the US does affect the rest of the world. And as it's often said, when the US sneezes, the rest of us seem to catch a cold. But I'm hoping we're not catching too much of a cold right now. But what we're seeing is a backlash, perhaps the peak, if you'd like, of a backlash towards DEI. Chad (04:03.862) Mm. Poornima Luthra (04:29.698) the administration in the US government. And we're unfortunately seeing the ripple effects of that across the pond. know, many companies have been issued across Europe with a letter from the American embassies on removing DI training, the usage of the term diversity, equity and inclusion, or its acronyms, if they are engaging with Joel (04:48.438) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (04:57.442) federal contracts. you know, there is a clear impact on this side of the world and there are real consequences to many of the clients and companies that I work with. Joel (04:59.755) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:10.102) A lot of your research talks about or highlights the opposition to DI as a rooted in fear, whether it's political fear, consumer fear, et cetera. Can you elaborate on how this fear manifests in corporate settings and its impact on decision-making by organizations? Poornima Luthra (05:27.746) Yeah. So resistance and backlash to DEI, if you'd like, has always been there. You can trace this back around the world, whether it's the civil rights movements in various parts of the world, movements for women's rights. And you go back to the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and we've always seen resistance to DEI. It just takes different forms. It shows up in different ways depending on the context, global context in which we're in. Yes, we are seeing in the last two years that backlash amplifying and we're probably seeing the peak of it unravel itself right now. Now, if we try and look at where this comes from, it comes from seeing DI or people feeling that DI is a threat and a threat to what is the next question that would come up, a threat to my status, to my cultural values that I hold so dear to me, to the opportunities that I've had in the organization that I'm with that are suddenly challenged. I don't enjoy the same privileges or advantages that I used to enjoy. So the carpet or the floor under me is being shaken and that creates a certain set of emotions. And so when we get into the emotional space and we try to understand, well, what does DEI actually evoke? It doesn't just evoke emotions in those who are part of the dominant group. who have enjoyed advantages or privilege, it actually evokes emotions in all of us, even those of us who are working in the space. Chad (06:50.848) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (06:55.51) And it creates emotions that are around feeling overwhelmed, feeling anxious, feeling worried, feeling uncertain, feeling inadequate. And when you look at the research on emotions, these emotions come down to the core human emotion of fear. And when I was doing my research, one of the things that came up is we as human beings don't like talking about fear. In fact, we're fearful of talking about fear itself because we find the concept of fear something that we really struggle with. But until we address that this actually, these emotions that we see play out in organizational environments and conversations that we're having and in actions, that they actually come from this core human emotion of fear. And then how do we let go of that fear? How do we understand that goal? But I want to emphasize that this fear is experienced on all sides. This is not just fear that's experienced with those who are from the dominant groups. This is experienced across the board. And so my research shows that there's five main types of fear that we experience. It's the fear of change, things needing to be done differently, me needing to address the fact that the systems around me were catered for some groups and not others, depending on which side I'm on, it might benefit me, it might not. It might be fear of needing to do things differently in terms of how I've been hiring, needing to come to terms with the very idea that I am biased and the systems around me have bias embedded within them. Chad (08:22.262) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (08:22.35) So that fear of change. And then it's the fear of getting it wrong, right? Saying and doing the wrong thing. And that I see plenty of it's, can I say that? Can I do that? Am I doing the right thing? It feels like we're all walking around eggshells right now. Even someone like myself, right? And it says, I walk into spaces these days. I know that 10 to 15 % off the audience is quite likely gonna have a very different worldview compared to me. And that number could be more depending on the company, depending on Joel (08:36.16) Yeah. Chad (08:36.406) huh. Poornima Luthra (08:52.074) where people are from. you know have to be cautious, careful, you almost worry or are concerned with the words that you're using so that you get people along the journey rather than creating that block. So there is a fear around what can I say, what can I do in the climate that we're in. I don't want to be cancelled, you know it's all of those different things. And then it's the fear of taking actions and the personal consequences to it and that is Chad (08:53.686) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (09:19.158) leans a bit more towards those of us working in the space that we're always going to be labeled as the Vogue police and I put that in quotation marks or perhaps the DI police or there she comes or there he comes or there they come. They're going to be the ones addressing it. They're going to be asking us to do something differently. Those labels that are attached to those of us who are trying to do this work. And then there's the discomfort, right? And I alluded to it earlier with the fear of change, but that also creates in us this discomfort coming to terms with the very fact that we are biased is challenging for many people. have an, am not biased bias, right? We'd like to think that everyone else is biased, but I'm not, I'm very rational. And so, you know, that discomfort, also the discomfort with having these difficult conversations. We live in a very polarized world and it's almost... Joel (09:59.876) Thank Poornima Luthra (10:09.504) a world where you either take a stand on A or you're taking a stand on B and we've created an environment that is a zero sum game with how we've communicated around diversity, equity and inclusion that has required people to take one of two stands. But there's a lot of nuance to this. There's multiple perspectives that coexist. It's not so straightforward and it's not so simple. But in that zero sum game in this polarized world, we have created that disconnect. and almost like a big vacuum in between and having those conversations is very challenging. And the last one is taking action, the fear of taking action or not seeing the positive results if you'd like off the action. So you feel it feels right now like we're taking, we've taken two steps forward but we're taking 10 steps back right now. And sitting with that, especially for those who work in this space can be quite challenging because it is how do you... Joel (10:58.378) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (11:05.826) keep the resilience going? How do you keep the strength going? Where do you find the motivation when the backlash is so severe? So those are the five fears that have come up through my research. And I think they cover a fair bit of how many of us are feeling right now. Joel (11:21.162) And don't forget number six, the fear of clowns. I just want to make sure everyone's clear on the sixth fear that everyone has. Chad (11:24.534) Hey, there's got to be equity in this. Okay. There's got to be equity in this. yeah, quick. I don't think so. They're all scary. So quick story. We were a bunch of individuals during a conference taking some time out and we're talking through DEI and we had one of our friends who's a DEI leader was talking and he had to go take a call. Poornima Luthra (11:30.136) That's it. Joel (11:31.198) All clowns are inclusive. Chad (11:53.278) And while he left, this older white woman said, look, I don't know that I would ever want to give away my advantage. I don't know that I, she was being truthful. She was saying the quiet part out loud. said, I don't know that I would ever want to give up that privilege. I guess my biggest question is, do we have to wait till the boomers die and until we actually get into, which I think is where a lot of the fear is happening in the U S where whites will be the one in the minority group. And about 2035, 2040, do we have to get to that point to we actually start to embrace this? Because to be quite frank, this back and forth just seems like a political Kabuki theater to me, more than anything else, because we all know that diversity is better for business. Looking like your community is better for business. Selling to people that look like you, talk like you is better for business, right? So are we just going to have to wait till the boomers die? Joel (12:34.326) suicide. Chad (12:50.934) It's what it feels like. Poornima Luthra (12:51.726) I mean, I love that perspective. mean, it's just, you know, no one wants to think that we have to wait for a whole generation to perish before we make progress. I'd like to think that we can bring people along the journey. But you know, the way the world is right now, it's hard to stay optimistic. I'm a realistic optimist. I can't do this work and I cannot have done it for the period that I have without kind of having that optimism. Joel (12:53.332) I got dark. Chad (12:56.374) Hahaha Chad (13:13.12) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (13:20.11) But at the same time, I also want to be realistic that do we have to... Look, an entire generation has an entire generation that's intersecting with gender and with race, a particular group has enjoyed those advantages. I wish we could bring people along the journey. And I would argue that the arguments that we have made around diversity, equity and inclusion have not necessarily got them through that journey. of self-reflection. So I think we need to hold the mirror up for those of us who are doing this work. We need to find better ways of communicating around this. We need to ensure that people understand that this is about leveling the playing field. It's about fairness. And come down to the core. Yeah. Chad (14:06.462) These people don't want fairness though. That's the problem. They want their advantage, right? They want their advantage. So again, how can you get somebody to buy into equity if they understand that equity means I lose my advantage? Poornima Luthra (14:24.162) Yeah, and I think that's a zero sum way of looking at it. And that's what I mean by I think we've painted the picture incorrectly. Like we have painted that picture in the DI space that if we prioritize one group, we're prioritizing women, it's at the expense of men. If we're prioritizing marginalized racial identities, depending on where we are in the world and what that looks like, then we are, you know, deprioritizing the dominant groups. If we're prioritizing the LGBTQ plus community, it's at the expense of Chad (14:28.34) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (14:54.05) cisgendered heterosexual individuals. And that's the game that we have played. And that's incorrect. And so that fundamental shift that we need to make away from the zero sum game, this excessive focus on numbers and targets without doing the real work of systemic and cultural change is why we are where we are today. So yes, this is a direct consequence. in the zero-sum thinking that we have created in how we have communicated and the efforts that we've made around diversity, equity and inclusion. And so if you ask me, this is a pivot point, this is a shake-up, if you'd like, of how we do this work and a real need to go down to the basics of what does diversity, equity and inclusion stand for. How do we make it happen? And that's about systemic and cultural change, really addressing the bias that's embedded in our processes, in the ways in which we're doing things and how we're interacting with each other. But the reality is that this takes time. This takes effort. This takes commitment from organizations. And the quick fix is always going to be the quotas and the targets. And if we continue down that pathway of quotas, targets, and numbers, and obsession with numbers, we will continue the zero-sum game. Chad (15:57.43) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:59.062) Thank Joel (16:05.75) Hmm. Poornima Luthra (16:10.072) So I think organizations really need to wake up and ask themselves that if we want an organization in the future that does hire on the basis of competencies and strengths, that is reflective of the customer base that we are trying to serve, that is reflective of demographic groups, that is getting the best people into the organization, that is creative and innovative, then we've got to address those systemic biases that are at play and challenge the culture as well. But this requires effort and I'm not necessarily sure I'm always convinced that leaders in organizations want to put in that effort and that commitment to seeing it. It's always quarterly results. It's how things are changing. It's the annual report and how the numbers are looking. So it requires a real shift on boards. It requires a shift in senior leadership around how we do this. What are we prioritizing? And really seeing this for the medium to the long term and not looking at those quarterly results. But that's the world that we live in, right? Chad (16:49.755) huh. Yep. Poornima Luthra (17:08.704) I'm not very optimistic. If we stay down this pathway, you're right, Chad. We're probably going to have to wait for a generation to leave this world, as morbid as that sounds. But yeah. Joel (17:20.362) Changing the world one funeral at a time. And I quote Axel Rose, Chad, you can have anything you want, but you better not take it from me. That's right. Chad mentioned, Chad mentioned how we all know that it's that DEI is good, in a corporate environment. I'm curious about the workplace impact of resistance, to DEI, particularly on employee morale, retention, productivity. talk a lot about this in your, in your writings and speeches talk about. Chad (17:23.413) Yeah. Chad (17:27.52) Take it from me. You're in the jungle, baby. Joel (17:49.94) the impact of resistance to the EI. Poornima Luthra (17:53.464) So first of all, it's not always a guarantee that diversity, equity and inclusion results in positive outcomes. Okay, it, know, or rather that diversity results in positive outcomes, right? And so when we look at the research out there, this is what is known as the diversity paradox. Putting people together who are different from different backgrounds, experiences, skills, whatever combination we'd like, doesn't always result, Joel, in those wonderful things of lower. you know, job turnover, retention rates, job satisfaction. It doesn't. There is an ingredient there and that ingredient is the equity and inclusion piece that we often don't prioritize in our organization. So what we were talking about earlier with the systemic and cultural change, that is what we do need to be focusing on because you can't just put people who are different together and expect the magic to happen. That doesn't always happen. In fact, it can lead to greater miscommunication, misunderstandings. Joel (18:25.098) Mm-hmm. Okay. Chad (18:35.627) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (18:50.498) People look at things in different ways. They might be that some groups might continue to be alienated, not feel like they're included or that they feel like they belong. And that creates increased job dissatisfaction and it actually adds to stress to employees. So it's not always a guarantee. And I think this is where companies make a mistake with prioritizing the D over the E and the I without realizing that the hard work of E and I needs to be done first. before you get the D in so that you can get those wonderful outcomes at the end of it. So that's known as the diversity paradox. It's not always guaranteed. So if we assume that we've got the diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we've got this resistance at play, this resistance is going to, in its current state as it is right now, it is going to have a consequence if it stays the way it is on people's morale, on how people are feeling, especially if folks are from marginalized groups, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my opportunities in the organization? We're gonna see heightened levels of job dissatisfaction. We're going to see people feeling insecure with what's next for them. Are they going to be on the chopping block? When there's promotion opportunities, growth opportunities, am I even gonna be considered for it? Is the process actually gonna be a fair one? Because without some of these equity practices in place, Joel (20:12.886) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (20:13.518) It is very easy for bias to slip in and dominate the kind of decisions that we're making. So it's difficult to predict, Joel, what we're going to see in the next few months and years. And I think many of us are just kind of holding on just to see how this plays out, especially globally. Because a lot of my work is, of course, much is outside the US. But I also see pockets of resistance to the resistance, especially in Europe. Joel (20:30.954) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (20:42.006) And that's been nice. While there's also been the wave of companies here shifting some of the language around this, we've also seen leaders saying, is part of our value systems in this country or in this community or in Europe, that this is important to us and we'd like to continue that. So we're seeing that resistance to the resistance. So I feel it's early days right now to see how this is gonna have an impact on employees more broadly. Chad (21:07.435) huh. Joel (21:09.302) It's not just about the D Chad. It's not just about the D. Words of wisdom. Chad (21:10.012) So, but that's what I've been told my whole life. so let's talk a little bit about this meritocracy versus DEI. And I'm going give you a great example. Bill Cassidy has been in Congress for 17 years and the state he represents, Louisiana is one of the poorest, least educated and unhealthy states in the union. And yet the Louisiana Senator heads the U S Senate committee for Let's wait for this health education, labor, and pension. So how does someone with such a horrible track record lead such an important. Committee is this meritocracy? Because what it feels like to me is the old boys club. Poornima Luthra (21:57.688) Yeah, so I mean, again, look, I'm sitting outside, so I won't comment on individuals and their background, but we're seeing plenty. You can go ahead and do that. But we see plenty of evidence of this where it's people who don't have the skills or the competencies to be actually able to do the job. Those that have the skills and the competencies have been let go. Chad (22:03.503) No, we will. That's fine. Poornima Luthra (22:18.51) from these roles. So we have to ask ourselves, is this really as you say merit and meritocracy? Now, if we look at the very definitions of merit and meritocracy, meritocracy is really about hiring people who have the right skills, backgrounds, strengths, competencies, and they're bringing value to the team. Now we have to ask ourselves, is that what we're seeing? Because if you look at the research around meritocracy, you will see that meritocracy is actually a myth. Because the very idea of who we think has merit Chad (22:48.086) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (22:48.16) is very deeply biased in itself. So it's a construct that is biased. You know, there's research that shows us who do you think of when you think of someone who's brilliant? Who do you think of when we think of someone who's confident? Who are the images? What are the names that come up? So we are all socially conditioned into assuming that merit is in the hands of certain types of people. And we assume that those people, whether it's because of their gender, whether it's because of their background, socioeconomic status, Chad (22:50.656) Yes. Poornima Luthra (23:17.422) whether it's because of their race, that they somehow are more competent than someone else who doesn't have those characteristics. So the concept of merit and meritocracy as we see today is actually deeply flawed and deeply biased. So how do we actually create real genuine meritocratic systems that requires effort, that requires us to unpack the bias that exists. in these decision-making processes around how we decide that someone like that should take up such a role? Are we asking the right questions? Are we genuinely looking at competencies? What are we putting down in our job descriptions as we think about who we want to hire? And are we actually blocking bias throughout that process so that we get to an outcome where the person that is hired for that role is truly competent and able to do the job? Chad (23:45.206) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (24:11.362) But as we see it right now, especially in the last few weeks in the US context, we can see a number of different positions that have been filled by people who don't, who on paper at least, from what I can see from where I'm sitting, do not have those credentials or experience to be doing those jobs. And I guess you have to believe in some kind of... Chad (24:24.832) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (24:34.862) whether you call it karma or something, that this will play out, right? That there will be consequences to it. My issue is that who's gonna get hurt in this process? Which groups are going to be heavily affected and hurt and harmed by this is what we need to ask. And that's not something I wanna see play out. Chad (24:43.382) huh. Yes. Joel (24:55.894) Karma, the cosmic justice system is gonna get everybody. So Dr. Luther, we're seeing a parade of companies abandon DEI publicly, but we're seeing some bright spots. Costco has been a shining star. You look at this from a global perspective. I'm wondering whether it's Costco or someone else that you've worked with. Chad (24:59.318) God, yeah. Which gave us the drunken frat boy as the sec def. Chad (25:12.854) Costco. Poornima Luthra (25:14.21) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:23.114) What can we learn from their approach to maintaining their DEI commitments in the face of political pressure, societal pressure, et cetera? Poornima Luthra (25:32.29) Yeah, I think we've seen a number of cases where companies have backtracked both both in the US. Of course the number of companies, but also in Europe as well, where their shifts to language where they're removing things from their annual reporting where they're cutting down teams. They're removing roles and then you see other companies that are taking a strong set stand. Many of my clients, you know across across Europe and Asia are taking a stand saying no, we're going to continue this. This is. in line with our company's values. Now what we're seeing play out is what we're seeing with Costco, right? We're seeing customers shift who they're buying products from. I know personally within my own networks that like myself, many others are making conscious choices about the companies that we are supporting in our day-to-day purchases and things in companies that I'm also engaging with as well, but also challenging the companies who are you know, backwards if you'd like or retracting on their commitments that going in there and challenging these things. But we are seeing that share prices do fall. IBM was the latest, I think, in the past few days and you've seen share prices fall. So, you know, there are consequences to this and the more companies that see that there's a consequence both from a shareholder value perspective and from a customer perspective, I think that's when we'll start seeing companies really realize that this isn't just, you know, going with the wave of what the political climate is, but this is actually good for business and that customers do care and employees do care. I think we do need, I think we haven't seen enough of that happening yet, but we'll come to a stage where employees are also stepping up and vocalizing this. I think right now, again, there's a lot of fear. I think people are really afraid of their jobs and holding onto it. Chad (27:26.454) Mm-hmm. Joel (27:26.454) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (27:26.638) So I don't think we're seeing enough of that internal backlash to the backlash, but that will come. It has to come. If it continues down this pathway, it will come. Joel (27:37.91) Dollar dollar bills y'all I'll let you out on this. Dr. You talk a lot about allyship. I don't know if you've you could tell but you're talking to two white guys. We always we always want to know how can we do better what can we do and allyship I think sort of really encapsulates your opinion on how we can how we can help the movement talk about allyship. Poornima Luthra (27:44.312) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (27:49.166) you Chad (27:50.133) What? Poornima Luthra (27:59.918) So allyship is for everyone. Of course, those who are like you, white men, do need to be allies, but so do all of us. At the end of the day, there's always going to be someone who experiences bias and discrimination in society and workplaces in different ways compared to me. So I'm also very much like you, always looking for a pathway down how we can do better. So in my second book, The Artifact of Allyship, I really look at these seven behaviors. of what we can all do. And for me, it starts with introspection. It starts with the self work. We do need to be curious. We need to be humble. We need to honestly introspect. So we need to have this deep curiosity to find out how people who are different from us, how do they experience the world around us? I think we don't do enough of that, that deep curiosity. We assume that people have the same experiences. We might intellectually know that they don't, but we don't necessarily truly believe it and we don't feel it in us. So that deep curiosity, then it's honest introspection on our own biases, coming to terms with that discomfort that I am biased. And what does that mean? How does that show up? What does bias look like in my day-to-day interactions with people in terms of the decisions that I'm making or what I'm saying and doing, or just the people around me, who am I engaging with on a day-to-day basis? And do they have a very similar worldview as myself? How much am I challenging my own echo chamber? that I live in, right, that honest introspection. And then it's humble acknowledgement of my own privilege, but also to reframe privilege. think that's one of the things I write in my second book is the word privilege is something that's got such a negative rap to it. And it's just something that we, for those of us who hold privilege in various different forms, one is gender, of course, and it's race, but it's also so many other things. It's the accent with which I speak with, the passport that I hold, the education that I've had, the doctor in front of my name. Chad (29:28.843) Yeah. Poornima Luthra (29:55.064) that gives me privilege and sitting with that very fact that what am I doing with this privilege? How am I using it to lift others? So reframing how we look at privilege, not as something to be ashamed of or guilty of, but to really use it as a leverage for what I can do differently in my own spheres of influence. And that's the introspection part, that's self work. And then in the book, I go on to then talking about how do we engage empathetically? How do we have more authentic conversations that move beyond this polarized way of looking at things? Can we create space for multiple realities to coexist? Because right now we're living on two sides of a valley. How do we come together to have those conversations that we should be having to understand from different perspectives? We may not agree. Chad (30:25.888) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (30:40.984) But at least we need to have those conversations so that we can understand where someone else is coming from. And then having vulnerable interactions. To move the needle further and faster, we have to show vulnerability that I'm willing to admit when I've been biased, when I've made a decision that did favor someone without having the right rationale for it. Can we have those vulnerable interactions? And then quite honestly, the last one is courageous responsibilities. We all got to step up within our own spheres of influence to change things, shift the language that we're using around us, the low hanging fruit. There's lots of things that we need to do systemically and culturally as well. So if we are in leadership positions, how do we make sure those things happen? So those are things I talk about. So it really starts with us and then of course expands out outwards. Chad (31:29.11) So last but not least, the newest book. Can I say that? Right? want you to do a little promotion, but for me, I was internalizing as I was actually reading this and it sounds like you've created a dumb white guy guy to understanding the non white guy stuff. Right? It's like, like you said, we understand what we do, what we know our personal experiences. And this is, you know, non us stuff. And these are things that are incredibly important. So it sounds, it feels, and you, you tell me. Poornima Luthra (31:32.046) Mm. Chad (31:57.92) And then also, where can we get the book? It feels like a guide for a guy like me to not be too worried, but to actually dig in and try to understand the others around me. Give us a little bit more about that. Poornima Luthra (32:10.316) Yeah, so the book is a guide to how you can do and engage with diversity, equity and inclusion by letting go of your fears, right? And I'm saying your fears, I'm also talking about my own fears as well, even those who work within the space. So it's really a book for everybody. have the intended audiences by no means only white men. I'd love white men to read the book, but it's certainly for all of us across the two valleys. so that we can let go of this fear, have those conversations that we need to be having, but also to take actions to bridge the gaps that exist. And I do believe that fear is at the heart of it. And if we can let go of that fear, I do think we can make progress. So yeah, I'd like to think that the book is for everyone, but of course, and it is within a workplace context. So I do have my delimiters around it. And I'd like to see that it is something that resonates. Joel (33:03.562) Mm-hmm. Poornima Luthra (33:08.514) with people across the aisle, that it isn't just for the believers of DI, that it's also for the non-believers who currently are challenging this or feeling that this isn't about them or that they are in some ways feeling that DI has gone wrong. I'm really hoping that this book helps us all let go of the fears that we hold. And book comes out in May. I think it's a little later in the US as per my publishers. So it should be out in June or July in the US. and will be available on all regular channels, Amazon and the like. Joel (33:40.976) Love it. Love it. That is Dr. Purnima Luthra. Doctor, for those that want to connect with you, buy the book, etc. Where do you send them? Poornima Luthra (33:50.606) A LinkedIn. I'm really not very good at other social media channels. So LinkedIn is best. I post Monday to Friday with content as well. So if you want to follow, if you want to just be challenged or inspired whichever way, or you want to share, engage with my content on LinkedIn. Joel (34:10.368) is a platform all of our listeners are familiar with. Enjoy your vacation. Thanks for launching it with us. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad (34:13.142) Yes, they are. Poornima Luthra (34:16.344) Thank you. Chad (34:17.792) Thanks. We out.

Buckle up, buttercup—it’s a bumpy ride through HR hell and economic WTFs on this week’s Chad & Cheese: Spy Games Update:  Rippling accuses Deel of espionage so shady it could trigger its own Netflix doc. Globalization Partners whispers, “Same.” Klarna drops an AI avatar earnings report so cringe, it screams “IPO thirst trap” while micro payments scream back in predatory. AI interviews are here, and they suck. J.T. preaches job-search strategy while Chad wants to Max Headroom his way out of the uncanny valley. AwardCo hits unicorn status by slapping gold stars on bad management. Recognition? More like “congrats for not quitting.” Trump tells Walmart to “eat the tariffs” like it’s a McRib—Chad sees chaos, J.T. sees campaign cosplay. Senate says no taxes on tips = working-class win. Joel says try paying a living wage, you cowards. It’s corporate espionage, AI awkwardness, and political head fakes—all in one glorious trainwreck. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:37.353) them eat tariffs on a Qatari luxury jet. Hi boys and girls. This is the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Hicks versus Nick's Cheesman. J.T. O'Donnell (00:38.892) Thank The Chad (00:46.862) This is Chad, Skype is dead. Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:50.964) And this is JT. I can't take this weather in New England anymore, Odon. Joel Cheesman (00:55.103) And on this episode, eating tariffs, taxing tips, and dancing unicorns, everybody. That's right, let's do this. The Chad (01:08.502) You were all, I mean, you're now sleeveless, but you just had a big, like, coat sweater. I mean, I don't want you to freeze, just on account of us. J.T. O'Donnell (01:12.172) Oh yeah. You want me to go there? there. I mean, hey, if you're in New England, you get it, you get it right now, right folks? Like they're telling me a nor'easter, 35 degrees and I'm gonna see snow. It's May 22nd. I am. The Chad (01:22.03) It's almost June. It's almost June. Joel Cheesman (01:25.705) mean that hot pink sweater increased the temperature in my house. It's so warm. Like I don't know what you need. J.T. O'Donnell (01:30.42) I'm supposed to be on the golf course on the river swinging away. Instead, I'm going to have a simulator golf lesson today because we can't go outside. What is that? is that? River. Yeah. So, yeah. So in New England, there's a up in Maine is Sunday River and they have the number one golf course in Maine. It is absolutely beautiful and stunning. But if you go and you go into the river and so, Joel Cheesman (01:42.443) So you're wearing a hat that says RIVA, R-I-V-A-H. Is that a golf course in New England? The Chad (01:59.372) River. J.T. O'Donnell (01:59.852) This hat is sold out, just, know, it's the only one you can get and I love her. I love her. You don't always hear my accent. I can bring it out. The Chad (02:03.512) So no, she's got it. She's got it. Joel Cheesman (02:06.251) What do we think of the, have we seen the trend of the upside down text on hats? That's a thing now? I don't, I don't, I'm too old to get it, but I noticed it. The Chad (02:13.334) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (02:13.42) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (02:17.034) That works for me. I love hats. I'd wear them every day if I could. I do. And I decided today. What? The Chad (02:18.894) You know who else? Who else is too old? They know who else is too old to get it? Skype, because it's dead. 23 years old. Hey, and could we could we possibly call Skype the blockbuster of video calling? I mean, they were the biggest in the space and they just got smothered by tons of other video call companies. Zoom, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Facebook, WebEx. mean, all these other and even. Well, yeah, the its younger sibling. Microsoft Teams is more used. J.T. O'Donnell (02:31.382) Wait, I think I still have credit. Joel Cheesman (02:50.827) Microsoft fucked that up. Joel Cheesman (02:56.787) Mm-hmm. Yeah. The Chad (03:00.066) Then Skype and they say they're going to just roll Skype into Microsoft Teams, which means they're just literally going to make accounts accessible. I think. Joel Cheesman (03:08.203) I'm still getting over. I'm still getting, yeah, I'm still getting over Flickr leaving Flickr without the E. Everybody remember all my photos on Flickr. Damn it. Damn it. All right. So yeah, we got snow in the forecast in May, New England. Here it's here it's fifties and cloudy and what's the weather weather in Portugal, Chad? J.T. O'Donnell (03:08.652) Where are my credits? I think I still have money. The Chad (03:13.582) I J.T. O'Donnell (03:14.173) Thank you. The Chad (03:19.182) Will still has a MySpace. The Chad (03:26.381) ridiculous. The Chad (03:32.238) 85 baby, I had to shut the curtains because there's so much sun coming in. 85 and beautiful. No clouds. Joel Cheesman (03:38.291) Nice. So what's on top for you this weekend, Chad? The Chad (03:44.088) Beach, beach, yeah, beach and bar, bar, beach, restaurants, that kind of stuff. Yep, bye. J.T. O'Donnell (03:44.556) What you doing Chad? Joel Cheesman (03:45.097) Bitch, yeah. Joel Cheesman (03:50.699) Bar beach, I got it. I got, you'll appreciate this, the Indy 500 I'm going this weekend. This weekend, yeah. Oh, we got seats. You know, I'm too old for that shit. I got seats, I got a plush recliner somewhere. Indy's not the best place in the world to live, but in May, it's not bad. Like you got the race, usually the weather's turning. The Chad (03:56.615) yeah. Are you going to the infield? Where are you going? OK. Joel Cheesman (04:19.231) We got Caitlin Clark playing again. We got the Pacers Pacers and a big one last night against the Knicks. so yeah, mayors usually pretty high in Indianapolis. So it's not, it's not too bad. Not too bad. How about you, JT? Yeah. The one month out of the year. The Chad (04:20.952) Got the Pacers. Whoo. That was awesome. The Chad (04:30.914) You get a few days out of the year. It's great. J.T. O'Donnell (04:33.324) Yeah, graduation party's nephews graduating. So yeah, weather permitting if we can get to the outdoors. Yeah, I'm pretty chill. Joel Cheesman (04:38.377) Yeah. Yep. Yeah, cold cheeseman, cold cheeseman graduation. I'll be I'll be absent in a couple weeks for his graduation party and everything. So yeah. All good stuff. All good stuff. We got shout outs. J.T. O'Donnell (04:48.128) Nice. Nice. The Chad (04:49.326) That's awesome. That's freaking awesome. Well, good for him. Are you ready to the shout outs? Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (04:56.972) Good luck. Joel Cheesman (04:58.249) You know they're sponsored by our friends up North, Kiora. That's text recruiting done simply and cost effectively. JT has got some stuff she wants to get off her chest. J.T. O'Donnell (05:08.556) Yeah. My shout out is to Shannon with one end Burgess, the, um, prosecution's expert in the Karen Reed case this week got on there and, uh, talked about all his wealth of knowledge and then was systematically dismantled by the defense when they pulled up his LinkedIn profile and three versions of his resume, all of which claimed he had a bachelor's degree, uh, in various different titles and all a lie, all a lie. They caught him in a lie on the stand. The Chad (05:08.558) Huh? What? Joel Cheesman (05:25.163) you J.T. O'Donnell (05:37.516) He had to come back for more testimony the next day. Shockingly, the LinkedIn profile was private and all the references to it were suddenly gone on the profile page of the company that he works for. And it's been revealed he has associate's degree. He's been going after the bachelor's though for 17 years. So he's going to be getting it any minute now. But, you know, the crazy thing about it was everybody was like running around saying, yeah, but you know, everyone pads their resume, but he really blew it. Like you shouldn't pad it that much when you're on the expert stand and like, The Chad (05:43.694) Ouch. Joel Cheesman (05:44.267) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (05:55.507) Mm-hmm. So he's a doctor. The Chad (05:57.326) Okay. Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (06:07.648) That's why we don't believe resumes anymore. And that's why we don't believe it. It's just, you just proved why the system should die. And we have to find something different, you know? Joel Cheesman (06:09.899) Mm. Mm. The Chad (06:10.072) Yeah. The Chad (06:15.95) And let's say he did have a bachelor's degree. I don't know how many people have like bachelor's degrees from 20, 30 years ago, right? It's about can you do the job now? Can you prove that you can do the job now? So yeah, mean, is... Joel Cheesman (06:17.227) Cheers. J.T. O'Donnell (06:24.993) Mm-hmm. job. J.T. O'Donnell (06:31.628) Chad, that's the thing. He had an associates and 10 years of experience. He could do the job. Why July? Why July? You know, and it just did ruins it for everyone else. Like you can't trust a piece of paper anymore. Right. The Chad (06:39.564) Society, Society. It's like you gotta have a certain thing. So it's like you push people. Not saying that it's good to lie. Don't get me wrong, don't pad like that. But yeah, I totally get it. So why was he on the stand? Was this because he was lying about his credentials to get a job or? Joel Cheesman (06:42.602) Hmm J.T. O'Donnell (06:56.284) No, he was brought in to introduce some new evidence in the timeline of what the prosecution was claiming, which was also systematically dismantled by the defense. was just a nightmare. And then he admitted he claimed it was brand new, but then in his own testimony admitted that they asked for it over a month ago. So it was like what they truly call like an ambush of the defense. It's a crazy trial if nobody's watching it. If you are, everybody just message me because I don't have enough people to talk about it with. Like I'm obsessed. The Chad (07:03.352) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (07:25.768) obsessed with this case as many people across the country. But this one just blew my mind. Like they're putting up his LinkedIn profile. I mean, it's screenshotted forever. I don't know where this guy's going to get a job after this. Like it's everywhere, you No. Karen Reid. The Chad (07:36.558) it. Joel Cheesman (07:37.003) Is this part of the Diddy trial? I'm lost. What is... You mean there's another trial besides the Diddy trial right now? The Chad (07:40.43) Now there's just, there's just trials everywhere. Netflix. man, Netflix is going to have just so much fun. You've got Rippling versus Deal. You've got Diddy. You got this guy. I mean, there's just so much content out there available. Yes. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (07:44.518) Yes, a field day. J.T. O'Donnell (07:52.748) There's so much good stuff coming. Joel Cheesman (07:54.283) Buy Netflix stock. That's an insider. That's an insider deal. That's an insider deal. Well, Chad, I don't know how I follow that because that's good. Clowns on the stand. But I'm going to go with another clown, Ronald McDonald. This is my second week that McDonald's is getting my shout out, saving the world one Big Mac at a time. I mentioned the new jobs that they're going to be creating, 900 new stores across the country. And just like Taco Bell, they're going to be open later this summer. That's right, kids. If you need that, that McFlurry craving satisfied at 2 a.m. in the morning and who doesn't, who hasn't been there, go to McDonald's and get it up. But, but here's a bigger reason why McDonald's is getting my shout out. A lot of us out there suffer from migraine headaches. I'm one of them. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of other, if you listen to this, you probably get in the migraine right now and migraines can be cured. J.T. O'Donnell (08:33.664) with a french fry dip. J.T. O'Donnell (08:44.704) you're not going. Joel Cheesman (08:50.921) Get this by McDonald's. out, check out this footage everybody. The Chad (09:08.533) weird. The Chad (09:21.55) placebo effect. It's called placebo effect. Joel Cheesman (09:21.715) It's McMagic, baby. It's McMagic is how it works. McDonald's, McDonald's curing migraines, everybody. Shout out, I'm loving it and I'm feeling better from fries and my Diet Coke. Thanks. J.T. O'Donnell (09:24.022) Yeah. The Chad (09:33.826) I have to make a little placebo effect via cholesterol. My shout out this week goes back to last week. Last week I asked Matt Lavery and Joe Shaker to try out Portillo's sandwich called The Leo named after the newest pope and first American born pope also from Chicago. And here is Matt's review. The Chad (10:01.656) I love the closeup on the sandwich. Joel Cheesman (10:25.405) Here we go, Cubs. Joel Cheesman (11:05.899) Mm-hmm. The Chad (11:43.736) question. Joel Cheesman (11:47.381) He's so diplomatic. The Chad (12:14.583) End of story. Joel Cheesman (12:25.867) Cheers. J.T. O'Donnell (12:31.148) What? The Chad (12:31.566) Matt Lavery does nothing halfway. Joel Cheesman (12:34.219) That was was good. Portellos. Yeah. It's a restaurant. It's a Chicago staple. We have one in Indianapolis, so I get to enjoy those. All right, couple things. Couple things real quick. I made a bet with Lavery on the Cubs over and under on wins for this season, which was 90. They're on pace to win 97 games, so I'm not looking real good at the moment on that bet. J.T. O'Donnell (12:35.052) What's a portillo's? The Chad (12:37.124) my God, my God. J.T. O'Donnell (12:38.176) Was it Portillo's? We don't have those in the Northeast. Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (12:44.958) All right, send one to New England. Italian beef. The Chad (12:46.606) Italian beef. Joel Cheesman (13:03.891) Matt's going to get a pretty good bottle of Irish whiskey on that. number two, Matt, Matt, that is that is one dry looking Leo man you get that thing should be swimming in a hot tub of gravy. I'm a little disappointed that looked really, really dry to me. I don't know. Hey, hey, hey. The Chad (13:08.002) the Portillo's gift card. The Chad (13:16.942) Hey, hey, hey, don't you shame him on his Italian beef. He likes it the way he likes it. Just because you're a wet sloppy sandwich eater doesn't mean that Matt has to be. Joel Cheesman (13:27.103) I want to wear my Leo. want to wear it. need to do laundry after I eat that thing, man. That's, that's, that's how I do it. That's how I do it. But shout out to him, man. Love, love me some at slavery, man. Love me some at labor. The Chad (13:34.926) Matt Layrie is amazing and just waiting for Joe Shaker to give us his review as well. And in the meantime, kids, got to sign up for free stuff. That's right. Go to Chadcheese.com slash free where you can get a free t-shirt from who? That's right. If you can see it, if you're watching video, Aaron App, from Aaron App. We've got a new design coming soon. Hopefully we'll release that kind of tease what's happening. We've got a bourbon barrel aged syrup from the boys over at J.T. O'Donnell (13:38.582) That's awesome. Joel Cheesman (13:47.071) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (13:47.21) Mmm, yeah. Joel Cheesman (13:55.655) Aaron Joel Cheesman (14:01.451) Mm-hmm. The Chad (14:07.502) Keora up north at Keora whiskey two bottles of one bottle of kind of two bottles of chicken cock from Van hack craft beer from the job data geeks over at Aspen tech labs love those guys and if it's your birthday you know what it is you get rum from plum one winner with a birthday could possibly win rum from plum you got to get a chad cheese.com slash free J.T. O'Donnell (14:24.662) Mm. J.T. O'Donnell (14:30.55) Fingers crossed. Joel Cheesman (14:37.749) That's right, Chad. Another trip around the sun for Shelly Billinghurst, another Canadian, Matthew Brigham, Jeff the doctor retired, Dickie Chasen's, calm. Quinnen. Well, that's Irish. Jacqueline Adair, Jeanette leads Matt Soroka, Sean Campbell, Madison, Richard, Stephanie, Trasic, Caitlin fail, Bruce Carey, Kevin Robinson, Sarah Grossman. And last but not least, Chad. The Chad (14:41.924) I love her. Joel Cheesman (15:05.597) You and I, if you know you know, celebrate another birthday this coming week. Happy birthday, Chad. The Chad (15:12.75) A lot of superstars, a lot of superstars. And they'll get a chance to see us in Nebworth. That's right, we're traveling thanks to Shaker Recruitment Marketing. But next on board for events is Wreckfest in Nebworth July 10th. Who's excited about this one? JT, you excited? Is this your first one? Joel Cheesman (15:15.455) You J.T. O'Donnell (15:21.213) Bye! Joel Cheesman (15:21.579) Ooh. J.T. O'Donnell (15:32.864) So excited, kicking off my vacation. Psyched. Absolutely. The Chad (15:36.92) Freaking awesome. Yeah, she's gonna be at the festival. I mean, if you've never been to RecFest, come on kids, come on kids. This is like the Lollapalooza of recruitment events. It's outside, it's a festival, and I think around noon or 1's when the beer starts flowing. So you get to learn, you get to connect with your peers. Hopefully you've got all your peers, all your friends, got the whole office there, and you get to learn, enjoy, and just get that gel, that wonderful gel happening. Joel Cheesman (15:52.171) Mm-hmm. The Chad (16:06.486) within the actual organization. It's the only way to do it. That's the bonding. Joel Cheesman (16:11.467) And rumor has it one Stephen McGrath is gonna be there. Is that true? The Chad (16:14.518) yes. Yes. You're going to Nebworth, Stephen. J.T. O'Donnell (16:14.91) you Joel Cheesman (16:21.259) That's right. taking the stage is no way, sis, Chad. That's right. They're back. The Oasis cover band, the real Oasis is on tour this summer. But if you can't make that, it's a lot cheaper to go to a direct fest, get some good stuff, get some, get somewhere and feel like, feel like the rock and roll star that you all, that you all are. J.T. O'Donnell (16:36.564) It's going to sound the same. The Chad (16:39.362) We're all gonna be there. Emmy's gonna be taking the stage. Mo's gonna be taking the stage. JT's gonna be taking, I mean, you guys are probably gonna be everywhere. J.T. O'Donnell (16:40.3) Thank Joel Cheesman (16:44.135) Mm-hmm. Damn. J.T. O'Donnell (16:46.558) No, I'm going to be anybody that's a newbie that's listening to this. We're going to form a posse. We're just going to have the newbie posse. No stage needed. Let's go message me. That's all good. It's going to be fun. Joel Cheesman (16:50.921) You better show up. Don't... Don't... Joel Cheesman (16:56.683) Don't tease us with that stuff. Joel Cheesman (17:05.009) Alright, it's clown time. That's right. The corporate espionage conflict between HR tech giants, Rippling and Deal has intensified. Now implicating a third unicorn, Boston based HR software firm, Globalization Partners. That sounds made up. This new company reportedly discovered and reported similar deal conduct to federal authorities, prompting an ongoing investigation. How many spies does Deal have? around the world. It's very thought provoking. Chad, what are your thoughts on this ongoing circus? The Chad (17:43.66) It's just time to sit back and continue to watch kids and watch all these things roll in. We keep hearing new companies kind of like throwing deals name out there, Rippling's name out there. So yeah, I mean, again, we've got a corporate espionage story happening. Who would have thought that would happen, right? So yeah, I mean, it's it's not surprising. I mean, if they've done this with Rippling, who's to say they haven't done this with others? Not saying that they have, but who's to say that they haven't, right? So, yeah, not not surprising, not surprising. Joel Cheesman (18:15.083) What's the over under on DLCO surviving at this point? Are six months, six, seven, eight a year? The Chad (18:22.062) I don't understand how we, mean, so we're still in kind of like the Trumpian, you you can't admit when you're wrong kind of bullshit. I wonder how long that lasts when it comes down to the investors, right? The investors, if they start losing revenue, it's gonna be an issue and he's gonna have to go. I really, I'm gonna stick to my guns on this one. I really believe they have to get rid of the entire C-suite. Joel Cheesman (18:29.983) Hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (18:38.901) Mm-hmm. The Chad (18:51.542) It's not just the CEO, COO. mean, everybody had to know about this. CFO is his dad. He was a part of this thing, right? So it's like they have to get rid of everybody, top down, not the staff who's doing the work, but just the C-suite. Joel Cheesman (18:58.655) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (19:07.921) At the CEO, can't go IPO with this dude at the head of the table, Yeah. The Chad (19:13.004) Yeah, and they were set to. mean, they were at least on a good run rate too. Joel Cheesman (19:18.973) And Rippling clearly is. They're submitting paperwork and getting this shit done. Have you ever heard of Globalization Partners? That sounds like the stepbrothers to like new company that they've created. Globalization Partners. The Chad (19:26.21) Yeah. You The Chad (19:32.822) Yeah, EOR companies are all over the place these days. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me. Joel Cheesman (19:36.565) Yeah, that's true. That's true. J.T. O'Donnell (19:39.008) I mean, tagging in on free media, right? Like if you see something going on, why not tag in on that and get some visibility? You didn't know the name, you know now, Joel. It's pretty multisyllabic, but hey, I mean, way to rock it. You know, is the way I look at it. Meanwhile, I'm just going to say it. I've said it before, why this thing's gone down over and over again. They're doing this all over here and somebody's crushing it over here. That's going to come out of the woodwork. We see this over and over and over again. This hurts all sides involved in that right now because they're too busy dealing with, with that. So. The Chad (19:41.24) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (19:50.859) You did. Joel Cheesman (19:58.207) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (20:09.482) Mark my words, it'll be interesting to see who comes out of nowhere. But it's going to be someone who's flying under the radar. Joel Cheesman (20:15.787) crazy. All right, a name I will remember not globalization partners after this call is Klarna. Klarna. That's right. We talked about Klarna backpedaling on their AI first workforce last week, they're actually hiring people again, but they also doubled down this week as they prepare to go public. I can't believe this is actually news, but the the quarterly earning report was delivered by an AI The Chad (20:19.501) Yes. The Chad (20:23.0) Yes. The Chad (20:35.798) you Joel Cheesman (20:45.373) Avatar, take a quick look. Joel Cheesman (21:09.131) All right, you get the idea. Chad, what do we make of this? Is it a trend? Is this a one-off? Are we going to see more of these AI presentations? I mean, this is going public. Why is there CEO not up there? I get the idea, right? Like we're an AI first company. So here we are AI. I'm not sure what to make of it. What says you? The Chad (21:31.79) So I think Klarna CEO is becoming just as thirsty for attention and unreliable as Elon Musk. These avatars are gonna be all over the place. I whether they do stupid shit like this, CEOs, I mean, this is more of a trick than anything else. I have zero love for Klarna as a business, just to get that out there. It's a micro payment system that is nothing more than a. J.T. O'Donnell (21:52.108) you Joel Cheesman (21:54.069) Mm-hmm. The Chad (21:57.9) micro payday loan scamming system, AKA modern day loan sharking kind of thing, right? But for the kids out there, here's a quick rundown. Klarna was prepping for IPO. So they made these bold AI claims they couldn't back up. So they needed people again, and they started with cheaper offshoring instead of hiring back. So it wasn't actually on their rolls. Made it look like it was AI to some extent. Joel Cheesman (21:59.851) Predatory. The Chad (22:25.922) Then the economy, for orange reasons, started another downward slide. So the quote unquote, you know, not doing IPO writing was on the wall, which means hire people and re equip with new AI enhanced system. So Clarence is literally going to do what they should have been doing in the first place, using people to train the AI every single day. You've got hundreds of people that are training the AI and then the AI gets smarter. And then you can start to kind of like bleed it into the system. Joel Cheesman (22:26.187) Mm-hmm. The Chad (22:55.671) But they tried way too fast and he stepped on his own balls on this one. Joel Cheesman (23:04.405) JT, are job seekers gonna embrace this? J.T. O'Donnell (23:05.323) Yeah, so I'm more obsessed. Yeah, I'll go a different route about the actual AI piece of it. So I tested them. There's lots of them out there. I tested one called captions. You can download it for free on your iPhone, upload two to three minutes of video. The key is to not use a lot of hand gestures or motion so that you can look realistic. It's darn real realistic. And where I find it interesting being so focused on pro voice, you know, my talent agency is that companies are going great. This is our solution for our executive team. We want our executive team out there, but The Chad (23:29.4) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (23:29.589) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (23:35.264) Dang, they suck on video. So this is going to be the solution to make them sound good and look good. And as this technology gets better and better, pretty seamless. And so all that says to me is that we're going to be looking even more so now for authentication that the video is original, that it is real. And the thing that you notice about it is it's a little too perfect. You know, where's the skip, the stutter? Where's the natural inflection in the voice versus sounding melodic? The Chad (23:52.014) Mm-hmm. The Chad (24:02.382) Where's the humanity? J.T. O'Donnell (24:03.794) Right. Like exactly. And so you're just going to see very quickly the need for that. Hey, here's the little sticker on the bottom that says this is authentically me. You know, like this is a real recording. This is not an AI recording. And I believe that that will come soon enough. But what it does tell you is that everyone will be required to do video. And I've said this a million times over every single person listening on this call. I don't care what your level is. If you don't understand, you're going to have to authenticate yourself on video. You're an ostrich with the head in the sand within two years, everyone will have to do this. And so. The Chad (24:21.602) Yes. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (24:33.706) You know, get started, you know, stop with the face for radio, get over yourself. You have to go into interviews. You have to meet with people. You have to talk to people. Video is just another form of doing that, you know? And so get comfortable as opposed to relying on the AI like he did. Cause yeah, I felt like. The Chad (24:48.238) Joel never thought we would do video. Joel never thought we would do video and then look what we're doing. J.T. O'Donnell (24:51.496) No. Here we are. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (24:57.013) So much of going public is the story. Numbers work and I know that that is obviously a big part of it, but people want to know what your story is, what your vision is, who's leading this, who's steering this ship. And to me, this AI narrative only works for Klarna. I don't see every company coming forth or having this something be standard. there is a threat, like this is a really good video. The Chad (25:01.166) Too much. Joel Cheesman (25:26.827) Like if I just not know it was AI, I would probably do a second take. Like, that a real person? Like, no, it's not. It would take me a while and it's just going to get better and better and better. So at some point we will be able to just have me on the podcast and you don't know if it's me or an avatar and we'll get there at some point. But this only works in my opinion for Klarna because they are an AI first AI workplace story. And although they are hiring people again, I mean, they've been able to shrink the company from 5,000 to 3000 because of AI at the end of the video, they talk all about how AI we're an AI first company. So it only works for them. I don't think if you launch a new EV that you could do this. I don't think, Elon's avatar is going to be the same kind of impact as this. People want to know the human beings behind it. They want to know the story. They want to know, they want to feel something when they invest in a company. It's not just about the numbers. and sense. The Chad (26:21.358) We talked about this before the story does matter unless it's just bullshitting right and in this case They're bullshitting he was bullshitting the market, which I would call fraud When you're saying that you're doing something and you're telling investors that you're doing something and you're doing something entirely different Hey, we're going strictly AI. no, they're offshoring. That's bullshit. That's fraud So that's not a story. That's a bullshit fucking a lie and the same thing with fucking Elon Musk Joel Cheesman (26:29.674) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (26:34.975) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:41.567) Yeah. The Chad (26:49.912) How long has he been talking about these robo taxis? It's like, yes, I totally get it, but the thing is, we have gotten so far away from the numbers that we're believing bullshit left and right. We need to focus, there has to be a good blend, but right now it's less on the numbers and it's more about what's your vision. Well, his vision is a bunch of shit at this point. Joel Cheesman (26:54.24) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:13.161) Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of Tesla investors were wished there wasn't so much Elon out there. Maybe it was a little less Elon would probably be good for that company. It'll be really interesting when they when these guys go public, like are people going to buy the shit? they not? Because the market has a way of correcting a lot of this shit. And if the market says the numbers don't add up, the whatever the what do you guys are doing? We don't like it, the markets gonna but if the market rewards them, J.T. O'Donnell (27:28.204) Okay. Joel Cheesman (27:41.129) You may see a lot more AI, may see a lot more reports and earnings and things that are automated. The Chad (27:46.638) I just hate, I hate the fucking product. It's micro loan sharking is what it is. I hate it. I hate it. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (27:52.881) I'm yeah. Yeah. Micro, not so much sometimes. hurt. I'm hurt. All right, guys, let's talk about automation gone wrong. And JT, this one's right up your right up your alley. Interviews, interviews are who Okay, the increasing use of AI powered job interviews is starting to be met with skepticism and frustration from job seekers on social media. While some acknowledge the potential benefits of AI and screening more candidates a growing number of users. The Chad (28:03.918) J.T. O'Donnell (28:05.676) What? Joel Cheesman (28:26.601) are finding the experience impersonal, dehumanizing and time consuming. JT, you talked to a lot of job seekers. I'm sure a lot of them have dealt with these automated interviews. Your thoughts. J.T. O'Donnell (28:39.902) Yeah, I mean, it's heightened by the fact of what's going on right now. You know, in all my years of doing this, this is way worse than 2008. You know, there's a lot of highly educated white collar workers out there that are scratching their heads going what's wrong. And so they don't understand how bad the market is. So it's easy to blame the AI when in reality, everybody's experiencing it. It's not a you problem. It's a the market problem. But you want to look to blame somewhere. And so it's really easy to say it's the AI screening and The Chad (29:04.238) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (29:09.94) You know, I'm not getting my shot to speak to someone. And if I did, you know, they would see I'm the candidate for the job. Well, there's a thousand of you. Even if you got that shot, it doesn't mean you would get the interviewer move forward in the job. And I think that's been really hard and technology is always the easiest thing to blame. So, you know, I see job seekers, secret frustration at all time high. Where I get more worried is about when they're forced to do things like autonomous video interviewing, where that video captured of them is going to somebody else and is owned by somebody else. and things like that that are really disturbing for them. And so I try to remind them to not use job boards and mass supply online and do all the things that just aren't a good use of your time and honestly just make you feel bad about yourself psychologically. And instead learn to do the smart things, the more intentional things, the more focused things to be a job shopper, not a job seeker, which will make it feel more human to you and you also happen to get better results. Joel Cheesman (30:02.826) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (30:07.626) Yeah, I mean, we're going to keep using the technology. Some of it will fail, but it's not going to go away. know, AI is going to get more more sophisticated. And someday I'm going to be a candidate talking about what I know. And that's going to turn into a bot that goes and talks to a recruiter. And they're going to have a conversation and eventually get to the place that, we should meet in person, right? Like all of that's coming, not in 10 years, but in two years. I'm already seeing some of it now. So it's bad before it gets better, but you've got a heightened market right now that's making it feel worse and hence the job seeker frustration. Joel Cheesman (30:12.863) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (30:28.011) you J.T. O'Donnell (30:37.365) Easy to blame. The Chad (30:39.192) So quote from the article, the experience of auditioning for a computer can feel somewhat surreal, end quote. Yeah, our robot overlords have arrived, This is, you're gonna get used to it, you're gonna have to get used to it. Some companies are gonna be different. Some companies are gonna have actual humans. Some companies are gonna have avatars like the Clarn avatar that you just saw, and you're not gonna be able to notice the difference until maybe later. But I think we could get rid of all the weirdness by doubling down on the weirdness. Stick with me, JT, stick with me. Do you remember Max Headroom? Yeah, the 1980s, in the 1980s, Max Headroom, a virtual TV host, a fake AI generated talking head, he was one of the early Klarna guys, with a stuttering, glitchy voice and fast talking sarcasm, complete with slick back, J.T. O'Donnell (31:17.504) Yes. The Chad (31:36.43) plastic hair, this guy could be the answer and could be the interviewer. Go ahead and roll it, Joel, so that the... The Chad (32:10.702) Max. The Chad (32:18.892) I Max Headroom's the answer, kids. That's it. We switch over a thing. We've got Max and maybe a Maude Headroom. Who knows? But we could make that happen. Joel Cheesman (32:29.141) It would actually be really good branding if a company was like, you know what? We're not even going to try to fake you out. Like this is a robot and maybe actually put a robot, you know, like do some shit like that. That would be funny. So, so what's happening is on tick tock and other social media is that people are actually recording the automated interview for tick tock and other social media. So what tends to be happening is there's glitches in these programs and they just repeat over and over. The Chad (32:38.424) You The Chad (32:48.472) Glitchy. J.T. O'Donnell (32:48.95) yeah. Joel Cheesman (32:58.539) and people are recording this and embarrassing the whole process. I think it's probably time for a little history lesson. For the kids out there, some of you might be too young to remember the black hole. Let me introduce you to the black hole. The black hole was I submit my resume and I never hear shit from anybody. It's total silence. Still happening. Okay. So, so now for a while it was like, holy shit, someone's replying at the time was probably chat bot initially text and whatever came back like, holy cow. And we didn't care that it was a bot because we're actually getting engagement. The Chad (33:22.542) Still happening. J.T. O'Donnell (33:23.158) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (33:40.805) actually like going back and forth with a company as opposed to just not hearing anything and maybe getting a postcard in the mail six weeks later saying thanks for applying to the job. So I'm with JT. This is going to happen. Companies are not going to go back and say, we're going to hire people to interview you. Like that's, that's not going to be a thing. The tech will get better. They'll look more like the clarinet guy and less like Max Headroom. J.T. O'Donnell (33:58.732) Like that. Joel Cheesman (34:06.643) And this is, that's how resume, that's how interviews are going to happen. Now I think there are going to be some positions where I'm not going to talk to a robot. I'm a, I'm a SVP or I'm a whatever, like for some positions, this isn't going to happen. But if you're at the level of high freak, know, high frequency turnover, entry level seasonal stuff, like this is your reality. And my question is, would you rather go back to the black hole where you heard nothing or getting max headroom during your interview? J.T. O'Donnell (34:36.268) More, let me build on that though, okay? Because the other thing I think we did was we made applying easy and we made people lazy. At the end of the day, you're a business of one selling your services to an employer, okay? They are going to pay. Now, yes, you want them to have a great candidate experience. We've talked all about that and you want it to be a good partnership. I get all that, so don't come at me folks. But what we've lost is the fact that if you want to reduce the amount of candidates you get, if you want candidates that are more passionate, the way you make them jump through hoops is you give them the tools and the ability Joel Cheesman (34:46.955) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (35:05.643) to put skin in the game in the way that will serve you. And this is where it's been broken for too long. So I'll give you a great example in full disclosure. I advise this company, but McCoy just dropped the newest version of their app. And this is what it does. You log in, you upload your resume, your LinkedIn profile. You give it a job URL, job posting. It reads it, it scans it. tells you what the top pain points are. And it tells you what four videos you should record. Do you want a script? Let's pull the script out of your job history and let's put it on a teleprompter and let's record it for one minute or less videos. Let's put it on a URL and let's send it to a hiring manager. Let's send it to a recruiter. The recruiter now sees the real person first interview. That skin in the game separates you. You're not going to do that for a thousand jobs. You're going to do it for the ones you actually care about. It's going to reduce the amount of applicants, increase the quality and allow it to sit fully with the job seeker. That's the kind of technology that is out there and happening and working right now. And it's going to be taking over in the next year. So we're going to keep hearing about all these low end. The Chad (35:47.491) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (36:02.346) you know, garbage in garbage out cheap AI versions, but it's going to get more and more sophisticated. And the job seeker has to accept that it is their job to sell themselves, whether you like it or not. So use tools like this to make a value impact. You know, it's the way that I look at it. And I, know, I'm always really honest with them about that job seekers have lost sight of that. You know, they can complain all they want about recruiters and HR and everything else, but you want a job that pays thousands of dollars. What are you doing to get that job? And so. The Chad (36:10.658) Mm-hmm. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (36:30.366) Again, I'm an advocate for the job seeker, but I think in some ways we've left them off the hook a little too much. Joel Cheesman (36:36.329) and they're not stupid. Like I've always said, eventually robots are going to interview robots. And the only time human beings interact is when they show up for the job. And I appreciate the take, but I also think like it's funny how employers will clutch the pearls when they go, my God, job seekers are automating their job search process and lazy apply and all. So yeah, so it's, this is just going to shake out to where The Chad (36:45.57) Your avatar talks to my avatar, yeah. The Chad (36:57.87) Kind of like job seekers are ghosting us. Joel Cheesman (37:06.288) Applicants have bots that are going to bat for them at these companies and interviews and companies are going to bat with bots and it's just bots on bots. And I don't know how it's going to shake out, but it's, it's all very dystopian and scary, scary to me. It's all very scary. Bots on it could go very right as well. It could go very, very right chat. All right, let's take a quick break. yeah, we'll be right back. The Chad (37:20.91) That's on bot. could go wrong very quickly. J.T. O'Donnell (37:24.524) I'll talk to you The Chad (37:25.644) Yeah Joel Cheesman (37:38.549) Chad, they've been hybridating for a while, but my God, stock of unicorns is back, baby, and I am here for it. Utah-based AwardCo has raised $165 million in a Series B round, surpassing a $1 billion valuation. The company plans to use the funds to expand its global recognition platform, accelerate product innovation. J.T. O'Donnell (38:02.88) to say. Joel Cheesman (38:07.709) and deepen employee engagement. The company now serves 6 million users across 160 companies. Chad, your thoughts on this newly minted unicorn in the employment space. The Chad (38:19.842) getting a headache. think I might need a McDonald's Diet Coke and a fucking Big Mac or whatever the fuck they call it. So one billion valuation for a recognition platform. Am I getting that right? Well, you know, your labor market leadership and just overall culture is complete and utter fucking wreck when you need a recognition platform. Joel Cheesman (38:26.26) Yeah, you do. J.T. O'Donnell (38:29.164) Thank Joel Cheesman (38:34.827) Mm-hmm. Blame the kids. J.T. O'Donnell (38:35.99) Mm. The Chad (38:49.218) and it's getting that much fucking cash. So we talk about the disconnect almost every week from leadership to the frontline workers. Leaders are making huge comps and the people doing all of the actual work, day-to-day work. They're making not a living wage in many cases, right? And yet we think a pat on the back from a fucking platform is gonna do this. We think that's the answer. That's where we need to come back to reality. How the fuck does a company like this get $165 million, get a billion dollar valuation when that's not even the fucking problem? That's what bothers me. That's what bothers me. J.T. O'Donnell (39:25.792) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (39:29.676) Yeah. There's a book I've talked about a lot called Punished by Reports by a guy named Alfie Cohn, it written in the sixties, anticipated the problems with A's, praise and other bribes. And they wrote about this, how we've conditioned a generation from a very early age, right? With the carrot so that they've knocked all the intrinsic motivation out of people. It's all become extrinsic, but extrinsic motivation is very hollow, right? You're psyched for a second until you're not. So the dopamine hit of the award is what you're holding them onto. But all it does is The Chad (39:44.162) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (39:58.75) over time just make them super depressed because they're not internally intrinsically motivated to do anything. And it explains why so many people get into jobs and careers where they're just miserable because what they pursued a paycheck and they pursued the ability to answer the question. What do you do in a way that made them feel like somebody respects them, right? Regardless of how it made them feel like we have an epidemic problem here, particularly in the U S. So to see a company like this expanding Honestly, all it's going to do is create more of that dissatisfaction, that lack of intrinsic motivation. It's focused on the wrong thing, in my opinion. Joel Cheesman (40:35.071) We actually have some historical footage of a review, employee review from 1964. Joel Cheesman (40:48.683) So we've, we've, we've come a long way, which, which leads me to my history lesson number two. Yeah. So let me, let me take you, let me take you back to a trade show in a let's call it circa 2001. Chad, you'll remember this booth, successories. was full of people in three piece suits with a myriad of plaques, trophies, banners, et cetera. The Chad (40:53.685) not another one. my God. J.T. O'Donnell (40:56.34) all about the history. Joel Cheesman (41:16.523) Rewards used to be here's a plaque for your service at the company and that's this. Yes. And success stories is still there. Uh, so I will say at least this is a step in the right direction. I'd much rather have Uber eats and, uh, AirPods, uh, than I would a trophy or plaque in my, in my room. Look, the kids today are insecure and they're dead inside and they need this ongoing affirmation that they matter. And a company like this. The Chad (41:19.498) yeah. We saw them all at SHRM. Joel Cheesman (41:44.235) The timing is right. Yes, Chad. I know that you and I old people are like, what this company got? This is a billion dollar company. You got to be kidding me, but the kids need the Dopa hits. They need the hits. They need the gifts. They need the stuff like in this company. Look, you got bonus Lee in a similar situation achievers. There are all kinds of companies like this. And apparently the investors look at it and the kids need these real time nudges that they're special. The Chad (41:50.926) ridiculous. The Chad (41:56.158) retrained. Joel Cheesman (42:12.873) and that they're snowflakes and that they are one of a kind. And this company is right there to profit off of it. The Chad (42:21.868) J.T. O'Donnell (42:23.34) I can't even, I can't until they're 35 and they wake up and they're, miserable and they, yeah. The Chad (42:26.742) Again, getting the headaches. J.T. O'Donnell (42:32.268) Ugh. Joel Cheesman (42:33.877) All right, more good news, everybody. Tariffs. President Donald Trump and American retail giant Walmart traded stern words this week over the impact of tariffs after the company's announcement of impending price hikes drew ire from the president who accused Walmart of unfairly blaming the tariffs for their unexpected or their expected price increases and ordering the world's largest retailer to quote, eat the tariffs. The Chad (42:36.442) Jesus Christ. my God. Joel Cheesman (43:02.099) and not pass the import costs on to consumers. Chad, the president keeps going after good American businesses. What's your take? The Chad (43:11.832) I think we should allow a good American business to talk a little bit about tariffs. We had Beth Benicki on the show a couple of weeks ago. She's been all over the media. She graced the Chad and Cheese podcast. And we got a little clip. So go ahead and play it. The Chad (44:08.632) So, much like Trump said with Mexico's going to build the wall, news alert, Mexico didn't build the wall, then Trump said that tariffs would be paid, would not be paid by Americans, but by other countries, news alert, as everyone with half a brain predicted, they're paid by Americans. And in this case, the administration is afraid that if... J.T. O'Donnell (44:10.209) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (44:30.401) Mm-hmm. The Chad (44:33.55) the 5,000 Walmart stores, close to 5,000 Walmart stores in the US start raising prices, there's gonna be a fucking rebellion. So he's pressuring Walmart to eat the tariffs. He's gonna be pressuring a lot of companies because we see Ford, Subaru, a lot of the auto companies saying they're gonna have to raise the car prices by anywhere from $750 to $2,000. And that, again, depending on the actual tariffs, Joel Cheesman (44:52.491) Mm-hmm. The Chad (45:02.114) That could, that could prospectively go up. the biggest misdirection of this entire debacle is this administration caused this high priced tariff chaos. And now they want credit for starting to clean up the process. They fucking the mess they fucking made. Period. Joel Cheesman (45:29.087) What's so stupid about this? So the first big one was Amazon. Like, no, you can't put in your little listings with the price increase. And now it's like, Walmart, no, you gotta eat the price of this. Like, the whole point of tariffs that we were sold is that more stuff would be made in America, more jobs would be coming back to America. If he's telling... The Chad (45:31.992) You The Chad (45:38.678) Exactly. Transparency. Stop that. J.T. O'Donnell (45:39.649) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (45:57.255) Walmart to eat the cost, you're basically saying Walmart don't raise prices, but the whole point of the tariffs is so that prices are increased on those items, so that people behaviorally start buying stuff that's American because the Chinese stuff is too expensive. So it makes me think that Trump has no like understanding of tariffs because the whole idea is like, well, maybe stop bringing in China stuff, as opposed to like, well, you should eat the tariff. The Chad (46:07.31) Mm-hmm. The Chad (46:17.984) Idea? Yes. Joel Cheesman (46:26.891) It just, it makes me think that this thing is unhinged. There's no strategy. It scares me. And I think that most companies, big companies are going to eat this. They're going to eat it for a year and a half and they're, they're gonna, they're gonna pray to baby Jesus that the house goes big Democrat and that, that laws are passed that he can't The Chad (46:43.169) if they can. The Chad (46:47.598) You Joel Cheesman (46:52.981) do tariffs or the tariffs get rolled back. But I think most companies are taking this sort of strategy of like, look, just shut the fuck up, eat the tariffs, whatever Trump says do. And I think you're going to like he went after Apple. said Apple. Okay, yeah, make them in India. But that's not why we did this. Like it's you need to start making these in America. It just doesn't make any sense. Like again, he doesn't understand what's going on. And Apple's playing by the rules. It says, okay, China is too expensive. The Chad (47:14.584) Not gonna happen. Joel Cheesman (47:22.603) We'll go to India. It's not, you can't go to India. And he's playing this like socialist game of like, I'm going to control where you go and where you produce. But I think Apple and Tim Cook being Tim Cook is going to say, Mr. President, you know, the president's correct and we're going to make moves and we're going to make investments here. But in their, in their back room where they're talking, it's going to be like, look, let's just suck this shit up for a year and a half, wait it out, put tons of money behind Democrats that are running, in The Chad (47:45.464) Wait it out. Joel Cheesman (47:51.861) for Congress next year and a half and senators that are up. Like that's where we need to be pointed and let's just suck it up until now or for the time being and that's where we are. But the big picture is this is how it's supposed to be. This is what Trump wanted like price increases, buy American, jobs come to America. It's self-defeating to say Walmart should eat these tariffs because you're not achieving what you wanted to achieve in the first place. The Chad (48:17.486) Well, most of what Walmart has is from China and Beth, who was just on, she's an American company and her shit's produced in China. mean, and we had a whole podcast going down the math of why she did that and why she can't produce here in the US. I mean, there are reasons behind that. And there's no way in hell Apple's pulling out of China. There's no way. They spend hundreds of billions. I say that again, hundreds of billions of dollars in China every fucking day. Joel Cheesman (48:23.189) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (48:43.963) yeah. The Chad (48:47.182) year. Joel Cheesman (48:48.617) and every phone not sold in America is made in China. And if this gets reversed, your iPhones will be made in China, like once again. Once again. by the way, Beth is a small company that can't call the White House and say, you know, like she can't eat it. She can't survive. look. The Chad (48:51.842) Yeah. Yeah. The Chad (49:00.983) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (49:03.126) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (49:10.357) shit's going to hit the fan. If there's empty shelves at Christmas and back to school and all these things that people go to Walmart for and expect to see product on the shelves, shit is going to hit the fan. and it sounds like from her, the 30%, she can, she can deal with that and there'll be product back on the shelves, but, she's, she's hurting. And so are a lot of other small businesses. Yep. The Chad (49:19.032) Mm-hmm. The Chad (49:32.344) Still gonna have to raise prices. J.T. O'Donnell (49:34.184) isn't, isn't, isn't the MO here, I'm going to create the chaos, and then I'm going to be the savior from the chaos. And so you're going to remember me as the savior. So that idea of nothing being on the shelves at Walmart, he'll want to swoop in and fix that. And then he'll take the airtime and say, look what I did. I saved Christmas. You know, I don't think we've ever, right. Right. That's what I'm saying. We've never had, if you've ever seen that entrepreneur that's The Chad (49:53.134) that's what this is happening now. 145 to 30 because there's going to be, yeah. Joel Cheesman (49:54.485) That's. J.T. O'Donnell (50:02.44) just wild enough that starts a company. And if you really post-mortem their whole journey, there are as many failures as there were successes. But if at end of the day, they end up the success, that's the story that gets written. Right. And most of time they can't run their own company when it gets to a certain size, because just the way they built that business is not the way you sustain that business going forward. And you sit and look at it, what he's doing, nobody knows how to react to it. It's like watching something chaotically spin and everyone, like you said, is just going to sit back for a year and a half and wait and hope it settles. It's not going to settle. This is a whole Joel Cheesman (50:30.315) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (50:32.34) different way of that he likes to sit and live in and conduct business in. Right. And so it's crazy. The Chad (50:38.114) chaos. Joel Cheesman (50:39.575) can correct. I mean, if the house goes all damn, then it grinds to a lot of this stuff grinds to a halt, I think. J.T. O'Donnell (50:48.608) Fair, fair, but again, we're a year and a half out, which doesn't solve. So we also type for year and a half while we watch this, this crazy up and down, create the chaos, save everyone from the chaos, create the chaos. And he understands cycles. He understands media cycles. He understands sign beds better than anyone. We were talking about that before we went live on the show. He has mastered the art of, as long as I get it out there, if someone's heard it, people run with it, I win. And so, you know, because it's out there. The Chad (50:55.842) Mm-hmm. The Chad (51:05.006) Mm-hmm. The Chad (51:10.648) Could be the biggest lie in the world, but it doesn't matter because it's out there. Joel Cheesman (51:14.535) This is the 4D chess theory that Trump is behaving in such a way that no one else understands it, but it all makes sense in the end. I'm not sure I'm buying it. I'm not sure I'm buying it. I'm not sure I'm buying it. All right, guys, let's take a quick break. Look, if you like what you've been hearing, if you like the show, please leave us a review. Please subscribe YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, we want to hear from you. The Chad (51:22.838) after the economy collapses. Yeah, that's good. J.T. O'Donnell (51:25.324) You never know. Joel Cheesman (51:39.243) And definitely there's not enough of you when I go to conferences that have signed up for free shit Look, we'll send you stuff literally like just go to Chad cheese comm slash free or click the free link and sign up for shit, dude It's awesome. It's awesome. It's awesome. No other podcast in our space does this do it? We'll be right back J.T. O'Donnell (51:45.78) It's good stuff. The Chad (51:50.924) No marketing emails, none of that shit. Joel Cheesman (52:02.751) The Senate has unanimously passed like everybody, everybody the no tax on tips act that offers a $25,000 tax deduction for cash tips for workers earning up to $160,000. The bill now heads to the house where it could pass standalone or as part of a larger GOP package. Chad, your thoughts on no tax on tips. The Chad (52:28.75) I mean, it sounds great, but no tax on tips is total bullshit. It's a massive misdirection. Tips are supposed to be a little thank you for good service, not something you depend on to feed your fucking family. So to me, it's pretty simple. Pay your people a living wage. Your employees should not have to live day to day off of the tips they make. And many people do. So I know, I know, I know. Welcome to America, Chad. This is a fucked up system. It's how it is. Okay, okay, I get it. then why put a no tax cap of $25,000 on tips? While government spends all their time taxing the hell out of the lower and middle bracket earners, wages have barely moved at 14 % since 1978, while motherfucking CEOs see comps in the same timeframe over 1300%, 1300%, 1300%. We get excited about not taxing tips. It's a misdirection. Don't fall for it. Pay a living wage. Your people and your customers deserve it. Joel Cheesman (53:39.243) JT. J.T. O'Donnell (53:41.29) Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. don't think they should be taxed on that. And I think that the base rate should be a lot higher and I've just seen the results of it. So I have a daughter that worked at a place where they were all paid starting 17 up to 20 an hour smoothie joint. Think about that 17 to 20 an hour, right? Base. And those kids were pulling in another 20 to $25 an hour in tips. mean, these kids busted their humps. That place had a line out the door. The vibe was amazing. They were all able to pay for school. It was just such a beautiful. The Chad (53:53.742) Mm-hmm. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (54:10.856) example of that piece. I also know another place right now that it's a flat 25 % tip is included in everything in this particular club, right? So it's a club where you go in and you eat, you walk out the door and you're just charged your card, right? But you're going to complain heavily if the staff wasn't amazing. So once again, they're guaranteed, they're all heavily invested in making sure you have a great experience because the setup is so good for them. They're making this a great career. It's a career. The Chad (54:25.166) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (54:39.338) of being incredible at customer service. And I think not realizing that, I mean, we're continuing to just decimate that field. If you've been places lately where people just don't care the kind of service they're giving you, right? They're completely checked out. think, you know, giving them more incentive for that would be better. And I'm with you on the wage piece. It's got to go up. Joel Cheesman (55:03.37) So. Joel Cheesman (55:07.819) Senate hardly ever does anything unanimously. The fact that they all voted for this is scary to me because if they all agree on something, I'm worried about that in today's world. it's so political because it's so easy. It sounds so good. How could you be against this? And it's really frustrating because they can do this, but they can't do the hard work of The Chad (55:16.814) Polling, polling. Joel Cheesman (55:35.947) minimum wage law that's fair to everyone. And I think that to be distracted by wow, look what look what the government did is really is really a shame. Roughly 2.5 % of the workforce earns most of what they they do by by tips. So it's a very small percentage of the workforce. And frankly, a lot of them don't make enough to be taxed federally anyway. The Chad (55:37.442) Yes, yes, yes. J.T. O'Donnell (55:38.294) facts. Joel Cheesman (56:05.597) What about the people washing dishes in the kitchen? What about the cooks that are making the food in this same restaurant? how do they feel knowing that the wait staff isn't getting taxed on the tips? Like, why can't we just bite the bullet, raise minimum wage to a place where people can be proud of what they do? Really, let's turn this back to me. I want to be able to tap and go when I get a drink at the bar. I don't want to like think about what am I tipping on this? I got it. I got to get the check. I got to wait for this shit. Let me tap and go. Let me tap and go. That's really what this is all about. Let me be more like Chad is really what I'm saying. What I'm saying. J.T. O'Donnell (56:34.22) Thank J.T. O'Donnell (56:38.23) here. The Chad (56:49.134) Yes, Europe's tip culture much different obviously than the US tip culture. And again, Europe pays a living wage for the most part. I mean, tipping isn't even a thing to be quite frank, unless you're like in a big city like London or something like that, which is really like a little America. But the big difference here between the two is that in the US, it's all about turning tables. So they want you in and out as fast as you can possibly get in and out. It's because they have to get to that next tip. Joel Cheesman (56:58.923) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (57:06.922) Mm-hmm. The Chad (57:19.116) Right here, I have dinner, it's three hours. It's three, nobody's rushing me. Now do I also have somebody coming over and saying, hey, would you like this? Hey, would you like this? Hey, would you like this? No, usually I have to kind of like put my hand up to get something. But I mean, that's the big difference. And again, if you're paying your people a living wage, then they shouldn't have to live. J.T. O'Donnell (57:22.7) Yeah. The Chad (57:44.682) off of tips and that's and that's to me the big thing and the whole misdirection is as Joel had said they should be doing bigger things much bigger things like pushing the wage up so that this isn't even an issue. Joel Cheesman (57:53.579) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (57:58.091) Yeah. Tip exhaustion has hit America. Everything is a fucking tip. And by the way, Chad, the, the, the States that have implemented $20 an hour, uh, minimum wage, remember like cats and dogs are going to be living together. Mass hysteria hasn't happened. Yeah. The Chad (58:00.76) haha J.T. O'Donnell (58:01.324) Hmm. Facts. Well, it's down too, isn't it? think, hmm, it's down. The Chad (58:14.884) yeah, it's working. Well, in what happens is when you pay all those more people more money, what do they do with it? They don't put it into fucking stocks and bonds and buy fucking yachts. No, they don't. They put it in the fucking economy. The very next day in many cases, right? So it's like, if you want to get your economy rolling and churning, pay the lower and middle section of the economy. Those people pay them more because they're going to spend more. Joel Cheesman (58:25.099) Spend it. Yep. J.T. O'Donnell (58:26.814) spend it. J.T. O'Donnell (58:30.59) and greed. Joel Cheesman (58:45.035) And get rid of tariffs because that's a regressive tax too. The Chad (58:45.848) Duh. Yes, duh. J.T. O'Donnell (58:45.932) Thank If you're trading your time for money and somebody's willing to give you more money for your time, you're going to hang onto that job, right? It's just the whole, it's obvious. If I was running a business like that right now, I'd, I'd raise rates just to get the better talent, get them to stay. Joel Cheesman (59:01.023) Think about how better recruiting and retention would be if you did that. It works, Chad, just like my dad jokes. That's right. That's right. Here we go. What do you call a redhead with a yeast infection? What do you call a redhead with a yeast infection? The Chad (59:03.918) you no. The Chad (59:14.278) my God. my God. I don't even want to think of a yeast infection for God's sakes. Go ahead, go ahead. Joel Cheesman (59:23.956) A gingerbread. Joel Cheesman (59:28.363) We out! The Chad (59:31.01) We out. my God. J.T. O'Donnell (59:32.104) We out.

Is DEI dead? Or just taking a disco nap while corporate America loses its damn mind? In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Joel and Chad welcome the unicorn of corporate consultants—Dr. Joel A. Davis Brown, Esq.—to separate fact from fearmongering in the DEI world. Spoiler alert: DEI isn’t dead, it’s just rebranding while dodging culture war shrapnel. 🔥 Highlights include: • DEI isn’t failing—it’s just catching heat from folks who confuse fairness with personal attack. • JP Morgan ditches “DEI” for “DOI” like it’s a witness protection program. • Why banning politics at work is like banning air at the office—good luck with that. • Equity explained via fire drills. Yes, really. • McKinsey drops truth bombs: diverse teams = more money. Shocked? Neither are we. • Chad goes full white-dude apocalypse about 2045—Dr. Brown calls it what it is: "replacement theory lite." • From “pride-washing” to performative allyship, we’re calling BS on corporate cosplay. Bottom line: If your DEI program is just rainbow logos in June and a dusty PowerPoint from 2021, you’re doing it wrong. 🔊 Tune in before someone rebrands “diversity” as “strategic synergy optimization” and calls it a day. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:31.95) This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheesman joined as always. Chad. So wash is in the house as we welcome Dr. Joel A Davis Brown, a corporate diversity and inclusion expert. And with a name like Joel, you know, he's got to be good. Welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast, Dr. Chad (00:41.836) Doc! Joel (he/him_) (00:54.124) Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here with you. It's good to meet you both. Joel (00:57.55) excited to. Chad (00:57.834) Wait, real quick, we didn't ask in the green room. At least I wasn't around. Maybe I was getting water. Have you listened to the pod before, Doc? Joel (he/him_) (01:05.972) No, mean outside of just prepping for this, no. Joel (01:09.272) fresh meat. Fresh meat. Well, before we get into the q &a, I want our audience to know who you are. So give us your elevator pitch on you what you enjoy sort of your professional background as well. Chad (01:10.784) Yes! Yes! Love it! I love it! Joel (he/him_) (01:28.216) True War, what do I enjoy? I enjoy working with organizations that are human centered that want to help their people grow and build a culture that supports everyone. So that's what I do. I'm an organizational development consultant. Sometimes people say, what exactly is that helping organizations perform better and to create cultures that allow people to leverage their best and highest skill set. So that's what I do. Joel (01:50.35) That's good. That's a tight pitch. That's a tight pitch. I like that. So we're, so we're focusing on, on, on, on DEI and I I'm really curious as someone who lives in this space on a regular basis, what is your take on the current state of DEI? Chad (01:52.614) That is a very tight... It's like he's done that before. Joel (he/him_) (01:52.854) Thank you. Joel (he/him_) (01:56.428) That's a few times. Right. Joel (he/him_) (02:08.984) It's predictable. So if you had talked to me, let's say probably five or six years ago and said, where are things going? I could have told you that where we are right now is where we would be, which is through a down cycle. This industry and this field has been through this before where there's some success, there's some social. Chad (02:23.8) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (02:34.072) turbulence that causes people to be more focused on this and then all of a sudden there's backlash. And so I think a lot of the pronouncements that DEI is dead are premature, inaccurate, and self-serving. But we know that there's still work to be done. I think there's opportunity for us to reframe and to help people to understand what it really is about, which not surprisingly has not been helped by some of the the statements and some of the propaganda that we've heard in social media and just in this social space as it were. Chad (03:08.312) So what is it about then? I mean, if they're taking the narrative and they're owning the narrative, how do you take the narrative back? What is it about? Joel (he/him_) (03:16.376) It's about helping people to work together and to work together effectively. So if I were, for example, to say to you, hey, you're gonna be working with, let's say the Chad and cheese, your counterparts in France or in South Korea or in South Africa, you would say, well, how do we do that? And so I would say, this is where we had to be aware of, know, different cultural perspectives on how to get people to work together. That's the diversity part. Equity is dealing with historical. inequities where people are not always given the same opportunities and they want to make sure that people have equal or equitable opportunity to get jobs, to work, to advance within the professional sphere or their workplace. then, know, inclusion, who doesn't want to feel included? So you want people to feel like they're part of a team, that their viewpoints, their contributions, their Chad (03:58.616) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (04:07.338) skill sets are going to be welcomed. And so that's really what it comes down to. So it's not this demon that I think a lot of people have thought about. Any industry, of course, always requires a little bit of work. No industry is perfect. And so whether you're talking about attorney, lawyering, or being an accountant, or working in the medical profession, there's always room to be better. And we're no different, but that doesn't mean that DEI needs to be thrown out. Chad (04:29.038) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (04:34.232) All together we're eliminated as some people have suggested Chad (04:37.72) Well, it seems like diversity has really been under the microscope and we've forgotten about equity altogether because it's obviously a part of the narrative that nobody wants to talk about, at least in this administration. And it's the one that for me is one of the most important. Obviously they're all important. But when we have individuals who are doing the exact same job as others and just because they're female or just because they're a person of color, they're actually making less. from an equity standpoint, from the standpoint of earning wages and going home and being able to put food on the table and so on and so forth. I mean, that just seems fair. I mean, fairness, right? Maybe equity is the wrong word. Maybe we should start using more around fairness. Why has that been lost in this entire narrative? Because we're not talking about it. Joel (he/him_) (05:30.84) Right. I think because a lot of companies have taken a very lazy approach to how they address equity. And I think a lot of times these words have been confused. So for example, you have a number of people thinking that DEI is affirmative action and people don't know what affirmative action really is about. So for your listeners, let me just break down, I'm giving a short story of how this shows up. So I went to the University of Minnesota, Big Ten. And I remember we would have fire drills just to make sure that if there was a fire. Chad (05:36.238) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (05:58.456) that everybody got out safely. So when the alarm would ring, obviously for those of us who could actually hear, that was the effective way to communicate that there was a fire drill taking place. But for those who couldn't hear, they had different methods in place. So they would flash the lights as a way of letting people know. Chad (06:00.323) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (06:17.814) hey, you need to get out the building. But for those who were visually impaired, they also had a different system. And so again, it's making sure that everybody has equal access to whatever measures are necessary for them to have a healthy life, to be able to pursue freedom and the pursuit of happiness, whatever that looks like. So that's really what equity comes down to. And I think what it really illustrates is how we have to showcase the different realities within the United States and just within the globe. Not everybody is going to have similar opportunities. And so that may mean, for example, companies making sure that they go to different universities or that they do a little bit extra not to create quote unquote special rights, but to make sure that other people are apprised of opportunities or are given opportunities that may not otherwise exist. So when I practice law, for example, I know that Chad (06:48.334) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (07:10.218) a number of the wisdom that was passed on, or a number of the opportunities that were shared with, let's say some of the junior associates, many of whom, most of whom were male, were done as sporting events. So people would go play golf and that's where someone would say, here's what I'm going to, here's some advice about your performance, here's some things I think you should do in order to be more successful as an attorney, as a junior associate, here are things that you can do to make sure that... Chad (07:26.036) yeah. Joel (he/him_) (07:34.122) our firm actually hires you and that information was passed along in these kind of discrete conversations that other people don't have access to. So then how do you make sure that other people can have that same type of knowledge and wisdom? shared with them. And so that's why you would have, for example, pipelines where, let's say, underrepresented groups such as women or, let's say, ethnic minorities might get that same type of treatment that they otherwise would not be able to get. So I think it's about going back to the basics and the fundamentals and helping to explain to people what these things actually mean, because we know in a news cycle where things are very quick and they're based on entertainment, Chad (07:46.85) Mm-hmm Joel (he/him_) (08:10.038) they don't really always allow for really cogent explanations. And a lot of times it's just gonna end up becoming propagandized in a way that again, it's not gonna be very helpful. Joel (08:20.302) You sound, you sound very healthy about this whole issue, which I'm going to have to, I'm going have to get the name of your, of your doctor. Uh, when you, when we're done with this, see what kind of meds you're on. Uh, cause we know he's not a drinker from, Chad (08:28.014) You're therapist? Yeah. Joel (he/him_) (08:33.366) No. Joel (08:34.252) My drug of choice. You talk about the, the pendulum. my sense is that it's less about it comes and goes and more about it rebrands. In other words, you change it to change the perception. And, Chad talked about the lack of equity or equity being deleted. And I think that's true. You see JP Morgan changing it to DOI, diversity, opportunity, and inclusion. So my question to you is, do you think it really is a pendulum that says it goes away and then it comes back? are we still doing it, we're just rebranding it to stay out of the headlines, to stay out of the crosshairs of an administration? Do you really think it's going away or are we just rebranding it, putting a different label on it? Joel (he/him_) (09:22.09) And maybe saying that it goes away is probably not the most precise words that I use that I apologize. I would say those who are invested in it will stay invested in it and those who are doing it for superficial reasons will find a reason to say no. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk around companies and organizations that have decided that they don't want to pursue or continue with their DEI work. We also need to recognize too that we're living in kind of an unprecedented time where there is perhaps I've never seen an administration be hostile to this effort, at least in my lifetime, and I've been around for a little bit, right? So I think a lot of it is around survival and a lot of organizations trying to make sure that they're not going to be targeted, so I get that. But we also historically have had organizations that, yes, when it's convenient, when they find it to be good for their bottom line, they'll champion this type of stuff because Chad (09:57.016) Mm hmm. yeah. Joel (he/him_) (10:17.28) it helps to increase our profit share. And so that's certainly not different. So that's what I mean by the pendulum swinging back and forth. We knew, for example, during Me Too and Black Lives Matter, are a number of people who did not, or organizations that didn't want to be seen as lagging behind or somehow undervaluing DEI because it just wasn't good for the profits they wanted to make and it wasn't good. Chad (10:34.083) Mm-hmm Joel (10:38.018) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (10:39.018) according to their consumers. So I do think some of it is rebranding. This work has been called a number of different things. And there's a number of different acronyms for those of us who have practiced and been practitioners of this work. So I think it's a combination of both. But I think more of it really is around who actually has a commitment and understanding that it's not a superficial thing. So a number of organizations may think, well, we'll have a program, for example, during Black History Month. And that's the extent of our DEI work. Well, that's not really DEI work. And I think that's part of the challenge. A number of leaders and I've worked with and decided not to work with companies who I think want to give this short riff and just want to do the most politically expedient thing by saying, yeah, we'll do it for a month or two when really it should be integrated into your business function. It shouldn't really be a programmatic thing. Chad (11:08.302) Yeah. Joel (he/him_) (11:30.198) When people come to me and say they want to do programs, that tells me they're not really invested in doing this work. So part of it is realizing this work is long-term. This work has to be strategic. It has to be integrated. It's not just episodic or programmatic or something that you just do simply to be, to be, not to be placed on someone's watch list. It is part of a healthy strategy to say, we want to get the best out of all of our people. How do we do that? And I don't know any organization, any business, any company that doesn't want to extract the most. Chad (11:47.63) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (11:58.582) out of all of these people to make sure that they can accomplish the organizational mission. That's really what it comes down. Joel (12:04.462) I I can't just rainbow rainbow find my logo once a year. I can't just do that. I got to really Chad (12:04.974) . Chad (12:09.42) You can. Joel (he/him_) (12:10.168) No, that wouldn't be good. And we call that, for example, pride washing. If you're trying to appeal to the LGBTQ plus community or you'll see it in different contexts where someone just says, I'm to put a little sticker out there. I'm going to come up with a clever slogan. We'll go to, let's say, Juneteenth festival or we'll join some type of local or regional civic effort. But that's it. And I think that's the reason why DEI, frankly, has gotten a bad name is because a lot of organizations are not doing good work. They are resistant to the work and they're not fully invested. And I think if more organizations try to do this at a high level and took the advice a number of solid experienced practitioners gave them, then I think we'd be in a better place. So for example, let me just address the pink elephant in the room. I've talked to a number of people over the years who will say, Chad (13:00.75) Yeah. Joel (he/him_) (13:03.778) Well, this doesn't apply to me. And some of them will be white males. And I said, well, why do you think diversity doesn't apply to you? Diversity refers to a system. Within a system, what is the heterogeneity? Who is different? Anybody who is there, who is part of a group, is part of a diverse system, unless everyone acts the same, comes from the same cultural background, which is rarely the case. So diversity necessarily includes anybody within the system to make sure that we all understand how can we accentuate our strengths and mitigate weaknesses in order to do the best work possible. The only time where perhaps you may not see a focus on let's say men or let's say people who are white or people who are heterosexuals when it comes to the equity piece, but DEI is paired together for a reason because you have to have all three. You have to recognize who's different, what's there, what's present. How do we make sure everybody has equal access and how do we make sure that everybody can belong and feel included? And again, be allowed to bring their skill sets and their talents to bear on the organization. So I think we do that education and I think we understand that. And there's plenty of data out there. I here's the thing. There's tons of data that indicates that DEI works from a leadership perspective, from a business perspective. If you're just about making money, we are in a capitalistic system. So if you're just about making money, DEI when practiced well, when done well, obviously works. So the question then becomes, why are people resistant to this was because again, it's been misbranded, it's been mislabeled. And I think a lot of people who have political agendas want you to believe that there's something different than what it actually is. Chad (14:41.006) So you talked about not getting the investment and to me, and actually I've built veteran hiring programs for large force and 500 companies over the years. My wife has actually done the same thing for the individuals with disabilities community. And for me, it has to do with really interested and not being performative. Most of these companies, most of these companies, they're putting CDOs in place who shouldn't be CDO in the first place. I mean, they don't have the business chops to be able to do what they're doing, not to mention they don't give them the investment in support so that they can actually create programs within the organization to be able to do exactly what you're doing. You're talking about is being able to really support the business and How are you supporting the business? By looking like the community, by being a part of the community, right? And we've lost that in this whole capitalistic society is the company is the company. It's not a part of the society anymore. That's bullshit. It's part of the society. It's part of the community. So therefore it should reflect what the community looks like. Am I way off base here? That's the question. Joel (he/him_) (15:46.622) No, not at all. No, and not only should it reflect the community, it should reflect the world. We live in a global economy now, which is highly independent. And so you, know, if I sell a widget or let's say I come out with my own version of a smartphone. Chad (15:51.831) Yeah. Joel (he/him_) (16:01.354) I wanted to reach as many people as it can, and I need to understand the needs and the sensibilities and the profile and the cultural background of the people who I want to attract to buy my phone or to buy my widget or whatever product or service I'm selling. So it just makes sense then to understand sensibilities. It makes sense to make sure that you have the best talent, and the best talent is gonna come from a variety of different disciplines, from a variety of different backgrounds. To your point about CDOs, for those who are listening to me and know what that means, Chief Diversity Officer. Oftentimes what I see happen that frankly can be problematic, organizations will retain or create this position for a chief diversity officer. And then the CEO, the CEO will say, okay, you deal with this stuff because I can't, I'm too busy. And my thing is as a CEO, and I work primarily with people in the C-suite. Chad (16:40.398) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (16:52.17) It is your job to make sure that you are developing and attracting and harnessing the best talent. It is your job to make sure that you're reaching the customers all across the globe. It is your job to make sure that when people walk through your door, they're not leaving a week, a month, a year later, that you're really making sure that people feel comfortable and psychologically safe. And sometimes the error is the CDO is a person who has scapegoated with doing all that work. And people think, Chad (17:18.382) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (17:18.644) I don't have to think about this. I don't have to think about this from a marketing standpoint, from leadership standpoint, from a community partnership standpoint. That's the CDO's job, which means that the CDO gets set up with doing something, but then they're encountering resistance with every conversation they have, which is why the work doesn't go well. Which is then why another reason is the confirmation by the say, see, we see that DI is not working well. Did you really set yourself up for success? Did you really invest or did you really just hire one person who was understaffed? Chad (17:42.102) huh. Joel (he/him_) (17:48.408) and didn't have the resources to do what really should be an enterprise level initiative and strategic operation. Joel (17:58.254) talk about money for a second. I mentioned that, it's profitable to be, to follow this strategy. What are, what are the numbers around that? And what would you say to the company, the companies that out, I don't want to say outlaw, but, frown upon talking about politics or talking about some of these issues at, at the office, because we're all about shareholders and profits, because I think that we need to, we need to build a bridge between this is a profit making strategy. Joel (he/him_) (18:01.996) Kitchen. Joel (18:31.928) But I'm quite sure that you can elaborate much better than I could on that. What are you saying in terms of the dollars and cents of doing this? Joel (he/him_) (18:39.48) Well, we haven't seen most of the data that we have around the profitability, the increased profitability of DEI goes back to 2020. So there's a little bit data. So I would love to see something from 2024. But if you look at studies from places like McKinsey, et cetera, et cetera, the studies just show that particularly when you have organizations that are led by diverse teams, whether you have female CEOs, whether you have boards that reflect the community that they live in, you're looking at profit margin increasing by a significant amount. And when I say significant amount, I'm looking at between, let's say, 10 to maybe 25%, 30%. And so that's a significant increase for the business. In terms of your question related to politics, The way that we think about politics is going to be based on your value system. So I've had a number of people say to me, particularly after the last election, well, we're not here to really talk about politics. I said, well, people expressing and sharing their cultural background and how they're impacted does not necessarily them talking about politics or not necessarily getting into policy per se or talking about the horse trading that takes place within. a legislature or within Congress are talking about how their communities, how their families, how their lives are being impacted. Is that political or is that more of a human discussion? And even if it is political, so what? I politics is affecting everything that we do. There's a congresswoman, former congresswoman out of Ohio, her name is Nina Turner, next door to you. And she always says, if you don't do politics, politics would do you. And so I think Many organizations, of course, are very much attuned to politics and policies and who's in, let's say, the state legislature or in the White House and Congress because they're looking at what's going to impact their bottom line, who's going to support policies that help us to do better, whether it's through lobbying or whatnot. So I think, you know, when leaders make this whole idea that we don't want to discuss politics, I think it's rather disingenuous. But I think to the point, Joel (he/him_) (20:43.256) It usually comes down to who is disfavored within the system. So if it's, let's say, BIPOC communities or LGBTQ, then it's political. We don't want to talk about this. We just need to focus on cultural groups. And we're seeing some of this play out in states like Utah and whatnot, particularly as they try to turn back LGBTQ rights and any type of LGBTQ civil rights legislation. Anyone who's sharing just their lived experience and their cultural background, Chad (21:06.232) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (21:12.074) is really not talking about policy per se or politics. They're talking about their lived experience and that should help to inform what type of products and services we provide, what type of organizations we are, but more importantly, what type of community partners we are. That's part of, again, thinking about thinking holistically in terms of what type of organizations do we want to be and making sure that we don't see ourselves as the point was made earlier, see ourselves as apart from the community organizations and companies are made possible because of the community and it behooves us to make sure that we're paying attention to the needs of the people that we're supposed to be serving, the people who make up our workforce and the people who live in the areas where we're situated and where we're based. And so I hope we can get past that. A lot of what's taking place right now, frankly, is political. So when we hear DI is bad, DI is wrong and organizations are being targeted, all that's political. So again, it depends on who's in favor, who's in power and what rights and what privileges you're discussing. That's usually an indicator of when someone or what... someone means when they say that something is political, usually just is a code word for saying, we don't want to touch this because we're either afraid of the blowback that we're going to get, or we're just not investing in it. And we just want to come up with a convenient excuse to not do something. Chad (22:30.092) When you take a look at business operations and instead of calling it DEI, whatever you want to call it, I mean, there are companies that I talk to on a weekly basis that are like, we are continuing X programs, right? What should we do? What should we call them? Should we just go ahead and dismantle? Like, no, it's a part of your business operations. You don't have to label it anything. Joel (he/him_) (22:55.288) Correct. Chad (22:55.372) It's called hiring, right? If you are going to a community college and there is a specific group that is female focused and you've been engaging them for years, don't stop that. Continue to do that, right? Continue to do the things that you know work for your business and expand on that. The thing is, you don't have to call it out as DEI. This is basic business operations for you and your organization. This is how we profit. This is how we become more productive and this is how we stay a part of the community. Now, The question is, if that is the answer, why in the hell are we making this so complex? Joel (he/him_) (23:34.336) Well, I'm just going to be real. Why are we making it complex? Yeah, well, in some ways, don't think, I think it's, again, a political calculation. So there are some people, for reasons I don't understand, who look at these types of things from a zero-sum lens. So there's the idea that if you Chad (23:40.258) Yeah, because it is. Joel (23:42.473) Hahaha. Joel (he/him_) (23:59.766) black person, you get something or something is designed to help you to succeed. Therefore, I'm somehow going to be at a disadvantage or something. I'm losing something. you, let's say a female leader within an organization, you get something, there's a pipeline dedicated to help you to become the best version of yourself. Therefore, I as a male am losing something. And it's really, I would say immature thinking. And it really highlights what I think is a problem that we're having within the US right now, which is this whole idea of others somehow being attended to and supported means that somehow I'm suffering or that I'm somehow going to be disadvantaged. When the water rises for one, it rises for all. When we're able to make sure that one person is succeeding, then it helps all of us. And part of what I get frustrated by is when I think about a lot of the barriers that exist within a society, just think about where we would be in 2025 if we didn't have to continually renegotiate and relitigate these issues. If we didn't have to think about, well, okay, we're in 2025, we still got to deal with race, we got to deal with gender and sexual orientation and disability and class and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We could be much further along. We could be in a place where we could be more advanced, we could solve a lot of the social issues, we'd probably be lot happier as a species. And that's the thing that's frustrating to me is there still is this tribalism where we think that, well, if someone is being supported, that somehow, Chad (25:15.437) Hmm. Joel (he/him_) (25:25.388) there's less and I think that goes to what's happening politically within the country. That's what goes to what's happening socially in the country and it shows a lack of leadership. That's what it really comes down to. So I love what you said about, you know, why do we need to call anything? Cause to me, any leader I work with, if they want to be transformational, I will say to them, you should be thinking about this anyway. You should have global awareness. You should have social awareness. You should be trying to make sure that every person you come across, every person's part of your enterprise is able to do their best job. If you're not. then what kind of leader are you? If you're simply focusing on, I just want this particular segment of my community or organization to do well, you're a leader, but not the type of leader I would want to follow, and not the type of leader who's gonna have positive impact. And I think we're seeing a lot of that where... Chad (26:00.417) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (26:10.2) people see and hear some of this type of demagoguery and some of these rationales and they think it feels good. It's like whipped cream. You eat the whipped cream and you think it's gonna be something substantive, but at end of the day, it's gonna leave you feeling empty, probably more empty and on a sugar high than what you thought before because you're going by these slogans and the scapegoating that takes place. They let you think, oh, because I deny someone something. that I probably already have an advantage of, or I probably already have access to, that somehow I'm going to be doing better. And it's an illusory idea, and it's a full-hearted concept. And that's really what I think we have to get to is all of us, a collective notion that when one of us can succeed, it helps all of us. And all of us are in this together. And again, whether we call it as one of my friends and colleagues have said, diversity, difference, and dialogue, or what do you say? Difference distinction and belonging. I've heard that I'm not interested in frankly trying to come up with the latest or Word or phrase of what de I should be called Yeah, I'm not gonna do the wordsmithing to me I think it's important to show commitment and to let people know exactly where my values lie But to your point if you're doing this and you're doing this well, this should be embedded in your philosophy Chad (27:07.758) Yeah. Chad (27:15.656) campaign yeah Joel (he/him_) (27:31.004) There shouldn't be a separate DEI program or DEI focus. It should be embedded. And of course, it can be one of your organizational pillars, but it should be something that is well integrated into your strategy, your thinking, and also your actions on a daily basis. Chad (27:37.368) Mm-hmm. Joel (27:43.404) Did you see Chad perk up when you said whipped cream? I noticed that. That was good. was good. politics we've covered, I want to cover generational divides. You mentioned sort of, you know, the boss thinks this, we're all about money and shareholders. But my sense is you have a generation of younger workers who want to work for a company that has an opinion, that wants to work for a company that lets me voice my opinion. Chad (27:43.49) Put down the whipped cream, cheeseman. Put down the whipped cream. yeah. you Joel (he/him_) (28:10.68) Sure. Joel (28:11.244) I think from a dollars and cents perspective, that's a retention tool. If you can retain talent because they enjoy being there and feel like they can express their opinion, that saves money because you're not recruiting and replacing those workers. I'm your thoughts on generational divides on this issue. Are you seeing that and how would you sort of encapsulate that? Joel (he/him_) (28:32.05) Absolutely. And I see it happen in one of two ways. Number one, I think because of some of the progress that's been made, I don't know if Gen Z and I guess is it the, what's after Gen Z? Is it the Alpha generation? that what they're calling it? I don't think a lot of people realize the quote unquote business and legal case for DEI. I think because a number of people have been able to benefit. So for example, there was this video, Chad (28:47.928) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (29:01.944) where this young man was saying, why does it matter what color someone is if they work at Wendy's? And are you saying that a person should just be chosen just because of their gender or their race? What sense does that make or their religion? And I don't think people realize some of the historical injustices and things that they are not privy to and they didn't have to fight. So I think part of what has to be done is re-educating people that these things that we've secured are tenuous as evidenced by this current, you call it administration regime. Chad (29:20.888) Yeah. Chad (29:27.48) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (29:31.83) this current administration has made, I think, helped to highlight to people that these things can be taken away in a moment's notice. So I think that's important. The other thing I see is that, there is this social consciousness and, in some cases, impatience where people, young people realize, yeah, I want to work someplace that has certain values. I want to work someplace that is connected. they don't separate themselves and their values. Chad (29:37.548) Yes. Joel (he/him_) (30:00.684) from their nine to five job to when they're at home or they're with their friends or they're in the community, which I think is smart. The only thing I would say to some of the young people, because I've seen this in some of the organizations is your organization, your workplace can't be everything. And sometimes I see this hard line stands, well, my organization needs to be my therapist, my organization needs to be my, you has activist strain, I had to be a best friend, it has to create my family, the family I didn't have that I'm estranged from. No entity and frankly no person, for those of you who want to be married, can do that. You have to understand that organizations are there and they can do some things. Organizations can, I think, help to build a sense of community. I think organizational values are going to be important in terms of choosing where you want to work, where you spend your dollars, where you spend your time. But I think there also has to be a healthy, balanced perspective to realize that, organizations, I think, should lend themselves to some of these larger social issues. But at the end of the day, the main thing we have to focus on is how do we achieve our organizational mission? And so that's where this goes. And so where I think sometimes DEI can get a little bit far afield is, let's say, again, your job is to make a widget. Well, really where DI is most effective is saying, how do we make sure that we can make the best widget and that everybody has access, we're leveraging everybody's wisdom, everybody has access to move up throughout the organization and can matriculate and to accelerate their career in a way that is healthy and equitable. That's how that works. Chad (31:40.014) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (31:41.804) That doesn't mean, for example, that organizations are always gonna be well equipped to be professional activist organizations. That's not how they're designed. And so I think a little bit of a balanced perspective can help. That doesn't mean, however, that, because I don't want anybody coming away from this and think, he's just saying that you should just sell out just to make a buck. No, not at all. But just realize that a certain organization or system is only designed to produce a certain outcome. And let's make sure that we understand that. Chad (32:06.648) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (32:09.792) You can hold people accountable for their values and how they support people within the organization, but we can't expect organizations to solve all of our personal needs or all of society's ills or to cure all of society's ills. There's a time and a place and I think organizations realize that, which why they can partner with other organizations to help support philanthropic efforts and things of that nature within the community. Chad (32:33.806) So I have a theory and I need you to weigh in on this theory, Dr. Joel. So in 2045, the population is supposed to flip, right? And the white people are supposed to be the minority as opposed to the majority. And I think this is freaking a lot of white dudes out. And I think there is this looking forward and you hear this, I mean, it's total bullshit around Joel (he/him_) (32:36.268) Let's hear it. Joel (he/him_) (32:40.088) Cool. Chad (33:02.816) a lot of the reasons why we're focusing on immigrants right now, right? At least this is what I'm feeling. This is my theory. I think white dudes are freaking the fuck out that 2045 is gonna come, 2045 is gonna come, right? And their legacy is going to be lost. What are your thoughts around that crazy theory? Joel (he/him_) (33:13.688) Hahaha Bye. Joel (he/him_) (33:21.944) Well, we hear that in terms of replacement theory. So that's the theory that's bandied about. I think we're already seeing parts of that. I mean, what it really comes down to is people feeling like the country that they knew that they're invested in and their political position within or social position within the country is being lost. And that's happened because you got, you know. Chad (33:26.519) Yes. Joel (he/him_) (33:44.076) gay folk getting married and you got quote unquote this idea of Latinos running across the border, I'm being facetious. You had a black president and right, and elected twice, right? So, and then you had a Southwest Asian and black vice president. So I do think people are scared. I do think people are being fear-based, which I think is in fact informing a lot of the dissent and a lot of the hostility towards DEI. Chad (33:46.35) you Chad (33:50.253) Yes. or the tan suit. you Joel (he/him_) (34:13.92) So what I like to do in my conversations, as I've already shared with you, I like to keep it real. So a lot of times I think we have conversations and we like to sound academic and keep it above the board. And I think there's a place for that. But I do think we also have to address what's under the waterline and the part of the glacier that we're not talking about. So for example, when I have been in those situations again, where people say, and they'll be very curmudgeoning, I really don't believe in this DEI stuff. And this is just reverse racism, all these sorts of things. Chad (34:23.982) Mm-hmm. Joel (he/him_) (34:43.168) What I like to do is ask them, what's your fear? What's really going on with you? And I will propose a grand theory and say, is your concern here that you're not part of the conversation? Is your concern here that somehow you're going to be minimized, you're going to lose power? And then sharing with them that in reality, I liken it to you have this sprawling mansion and you have this oversized bathroom. And also what I'm saying to you is you probably don't need the the tub, the jacuzzi tub and the shower, let's just get rid of one of those and you're still gonna be fine, right? So I think having those real conversations, right? Probably the jacuzzi, maybe. But I do think that's part of it, right? I do think that there is a concern that people are going to be replaced. And I think what people need to realize is what's happening is we're transforming and we're being enriched. No one here is, at least from my standpoint, Joel (35:17.122) Keep the jacuzzi, by the way. Keep the jacuzzi. Chad (35:18.798) you Joel (he/him_) (35:37.656) is going to be replaced, nor should they be. I think we're better when we entertain all healthy, inclusive positions and opinions about the world. But there is also a reality that the world is constantly changing and the way we were, let's say, back in the quote unquote good old days is not what we're going to be. And how can we leverage what's there and learn from what's there? That's the most important thing. How do we learn from the diversity that we have, the changing demographics? How can we be better? And in some cases, The perspectives aren't new. These are things that have been around there for quite some time. So maybe this is a time for us exercise greater curiosity and empathy and say, how can we learn? How can we be better? And how can we make sure that people, no matter who they are, no matter where they come from, can be honored and welcomed and respected? But to your point, that is a larger conversation. And I do think that is part of the fuel-based hysteria. that we're seeing with respect to and in relation to DI is that people think they're be replaced and people feel like what's been done historically to marginalized groups is also going to happen to them. And I think that's where greater education, more storytelling and more honest dialogue needs to take place so people understand what DI is designed to do. It's not designed to replicate historical grievances, it's designed to correct. and to support and help remediate historical grievances, at least with the equity piece. Joel (37:03.148) You ain't Jacuzzi nobody, so wash, just for the record. Let's take a quick check on White America, shall we? Joel (he/him_) (37:05.718) Hahaha Chad (37:11.394) Uh-uh. Joel (37:14.126) All right, Joel, I'll let you out on this one. By the way, I like the sound of Dr. Joel. I like that. That sounds some sensuous night at home. I might throw that in. Voting with your dollars. Where should we be spending money if we support this issue? Where should we maybe be driving past and avoiding on this issue? Where do you shop to support and where do you put your dollars? Chad (37:19.415) You Joel (he/him_) (37:19.714) Thank you. Joel (he/him_) (37:42.712) Well, I am putting my money in places that not only I'm avoiding spending money in places that don't support social justice and a lot of the values that I align, but more importantly, I'm putting my money in places that do so places where I think it could help those communities and those entrepreneurs, businesses and enterprises that are underfunded, undervalued and perhaps invisible. All right. Joel (38:05.626) We name names on this show, Dr. Joel. We name the names. Chad (38:08.63) No target. No target. Joel (he/him_) (38:10.772) I mean, so yes, I am spending a lot more time at Costco. I don't live in a Delta hub, but I certainly am using Delta more often. I always loved vintage ice cream. So, I mean, what I would say to people is, you know, do the research because of course you can find out very quickly which organizations are invested in DEI and social justice, which ones are not, and also check to see if they're being performative. I had a situation very recently where from my 50th, we were going to be hosting it at the Miller Caves in Milwaukee. Miller has this, there's these caves where they used to house the beer to keep it cool and chill. I know it's gonna make you guys pretty excited about that. But unfortunately, Miller is a very progressive organization. The parent company Molson Coors is not. And so we made the decision. Joel (38:57.43) Say more. Chad (38:57.807) yeah. Joel (he/him_) (39:06.936) A hard one, but a very quick one to say we can't have any type of celebration there because of your stance on the I and we also make sure that we communicated that. So I would say as you as consumers, as us, whoever you may be as citizens, as you make your decisions, also communicate to the organizations why you're not supporting them and also to make sure that you're giving your money to places that are supporting the values that are important to you. So again, Apple is still holding on to the D.I. initiatives. I know they're allowed. There's some law firms are now starting to pull back. So these are all intentional. These are options for intentional choices. These are options for us to decide where we're going to spend our money. And also in some cases, I'm saying, I want to kind of be more mindful and start the system. So in any situation where I feel like there's a compromise or I feel like people are not reflecting my values, that's one thing I'm going to keep home. And I want to support more local businesses, particularly those from underserved communities. so wherever you might be, whether it's in Columbus or Indianapolis, Indiana or elsewhere, Chad (39:54.03) you Joel (he/him_) (40:06.184) Do the research. Look up local vendors and retailers. Figure out where you can put your money that's going to have the greatest impact, particularly with social justice organizations, and continue to fund those places, particularly that are under attack for reasons that we've already talked about based on their affinity for DEI or justice or freedom as we used to know it. Chad (40:28.792) Well, kids, that is Dr. Joel A. Davis Brown. That's right. Dr. Brown. Well, first and foremost, I'd like to know just from an equity standpoint that the Golden Gophers are not going to get an equal amount of national championships from our Ohio State Buckeyes. at the... them some time. Joel (he/him_) (40:46.504) the haterade. Look at you. Look at you. I'm more worried about my Milwaukee Brewers at this point. They can't seem to stop anybody from putting home wines, but that's neither here nor there. Joel (40:57.174) It's early. It's a long season. Chad (40:58.466) Given some time given some time. somebody if one of the listeners want to reach out they want to connect with you and or you know they might want to buy the book. Where can they find out more about you connect with you and buy a book. Joel (he/him_) (41:11.042) Sure, so my book is The Souls of Queer Folk, How Understanding LGBTQ Culture Can Transform Your Leadership Practice. You can find me at JoelDavisBrown.com. You can find the company at Newmost.com, that's spelled with a P, it's a Greek word, P-N-E-U-M-O-S. You can find me on LinkedIn, or you can find me at Instagram at JoelABrown. I'm trying to not be as much on social media, but I still need to be hip and cool and be able to know what's going on. So go subscribe to my channel. Chad (41:36.91) Gotta get on the TikToks. Joel (41:38.382) And speaking of hip and cool, Costco. Joel (he/him_) (41:39.704) Yes, that's what I mean too. Up to, that's right, correct. Yes. Joel (41:42.542) Costco, it's not just a dollar 50 hot dog. It's diversity, equity and inclusion. That's another one in the can Chad. We out. Joel (he/him_) (41:46.008) hahahaha Chad (41:48.174) Yes! We out! Joel (he/him_) (41:50.774) Yes. Yes.

Buckle up for a wild ride with Joel Cheesman and Emi Beredugo, where they sling HR hot takes with the finesse of a fast-food fry cook! This episode’s a rollercoaster of laughs and eye-rolls, diving into the AI-first workplace fiasco like it’s a soap opera. Klarna’s CEO got a reality check after ditching 700 customer service reps for AI, only to realize bots can’t sweet-talk angry customers. Now they’re on a hiring spree to bring back the human touch—oops! Duolingo, meanwhile, thought AI could teach languages better than people, but TikTok’s Gen Z army clapped back, rage-quitting the app and calling it “disgusting.” Ouch, that’s gotta sting.Then there’s IBM’s bigwig, Arvind Krishna, tossing shade at HR by saying AI freed up cash for “essential” jobs like sales. Emi’s not having it, firing back that HR’s the backbone of fairness and inclusion, not just fluffy admin work. She’s all about adapting to AI without yeeting humans into oblivion. LinkedIn’s new AI job search gets a nod for letting you type “I wanna save the world in sweatpants” and matching you with dream gigs, aiming to hook passive job seekers while sparing recruiters from resume spam. Wrapping up, they tackle the EU’s 2026 Pay Transparency Directive, a game-changer forcing companies to spill salary tea upfront to shrink gender pay gaps and stop wasting everyone’s time. But, plot twist: firms better get their org charts in order or face a discrimination lawsuit mess. And they serve it all with wit juicier and tastier than a McDonald’s chicken strip! AI Takes Over IBM HR ⚠️ | Klarna & Duolingo Hit the Brakes on Automation, LinkedIn AI Job Search PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:35.897) Yeah, big P O P P a no info for the DEA. Hey boys and girls. It's the Chen Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel the real creator of the world equalized cheeseman Emi B (00:49.102) And this is Emmy, the Duchess of Borodego. Joel Cheesman (00:52.173) And on this episode, it's earnings season again. Score one for the humans and pay transparency anarchy in the UK. Let's do this. Joel Cheesman (01:05.963) Emmy, what's good? Emi B (01:07.662) Hey, how you doing? How you doing? It's been a long time since you've just been me and you on the podcast. Yeah, yes. Joel Cheesman (01:13.005) I think it was last year, November. Yeah, before the holidays, it was a good primer for some downtime. And now Chad is Euro Chad, full effect. We'll get to his video in a second where he explains what's going on. But how you been? Emi B (01:21.262) Absolutely. Emi B (01:26.678) You Emi B (01:31.309) Do you know what? I have, I'm now looking forward to a holiday. I'm just looking at my calendar and thinking, it's mid May. I haven't been on holiday since October. So yeah. Just a little, I just want to chill. I just want to be on the beach exactly sipping a margarita. And I, yeah. look. Joel Cheesman (01:39.822) Yeah. Typical European. Time for a little vacation, a little holiday. Joel Cheesman (01:53.357) Now is your passport up to date? Is your passport renewed? You don't want to get into that again. There you go. Emi B (01:58.7) Don't, don't, please. Like I'm getting like trauma and like PTSD and like the whole passport debacle. But yes, my passport is now renewed. Joel Cheesman (02:07.961) Well, I'm glad I'm glad you told me that story. So you're if I'm if I'm encapsulating this, you went on holiday. It wasn't you have to renew up to six months or six months prior to to leaving the country, which alerted me to think, I probably need to renew mine. And I got to say government efficiency can happen. I renewed my passport totally online. Emi B (02:14.838) Yeah. Emi B (02:26.018) Yeah? Emi B (02:35.298) Really? And it all worked? Yeah. Joel Cheesman (02:35.449) I didn't go into a post office. I didn't like fill out any forms. The picture that I got, we go to drug store. People will know Walgreens. And they usually give you little hard copy photos and then you like put that and you take it to the post office. They gave me a digital copy this time and I thought, well, that's kind of weird. Like why would I'm not going to print it out and send it? It's not my new Christmas card, right? But they gave me digital and they gave me digital because Emi B (02:41.036) Yeah. Emi B (02:56.226) What, like on a floppy disk? Or how do I do it? On a chip? Or... Joel Cheesman (03:03.689) On in America now you can up renew your passport. can upload the photo. You don't have to send in your old old passport. So I did it and it's probably been about two weeks and I got an email yesterday that it is on the way. So if you haven't renewed your passport, if you're thinking like, it's going to be a pain in the ass, it's really quite easy now. So I don't know how it is in the UK, but in the US now, at least if you already have a passport, it's super easy to renew it. Emi B (03:06.413) Yeah. Emi B (03:23.512) Just get online, yeah. Emi B (03:30.03) I think I'm pretty sure we can do it online, but I went in and I did a 24, no, a couple of hours one. So went in, filled out all my forms, came back a couple of hours later. So I got my new black passport, which is really weird because my last passport was red. So anyone online looking at it and it's cheap and flimsy, but yeah, that's me now. Yeah. So I can go on holiday soon. Joel Cheesman (03:36.429) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (03:44.782) huh. Yeah, they're right. Joel Cheesman (03:52.035) Is there, stupid question, is there a reason why it's kind of, it was kind of a burgundy, right? The British passport. Emi B (03:57.782) Yeah, that'll be Brexit. Brexit with all the fuck-ups and changing everything and making everything worse means that we now have black passports. Joel Cheesman (04:02.914) huh. Joel Cheesman (04:09.571) So is a, like if I'm in France, is it that burgundy? Emi B (04:12.312) Yeah. What if you're British and going to France? Joel Cheesman (04:18.617) No, your passport used to be burgundy and now it's black. Is there a reason why it was burgundy? It's not Brexit, is it? Like, Brexit wasn't like, we're gonna make passports black now. Emi B (04:20.928) Yeah. Yeah. No, we... But I think that's part of the reason. So when Brexit happened and we left the EU, we now have the black passport saying United Kingdom, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, British passports. All of our passports are black. Yeah, because we left the EU. Honestly, it's flimsy. My Lord is flimsy. I mean, I've just bent it for anyone looking online, but crap. Joel Cheesman (04:38.721) Okay. And you say it's cheap. Wow. The US one now it's like a it's almost like a credit card. The first the main like with your picture and everything. It's it's really yeah, it's really it's really robust. So yeah, we're Emi B (04:53.384) really? they speak to the guys over here, please. Honestly, this one's shit. We need a new passport. It's crap, honestly. Joel Cheesman (05:02.787) As long as the barcode works and they get you in and out of the... Emi B (05:05.486) Yeah, as long as it gets me on the freaking plane next month on the beach. I'm not even supposed to be in the country. Do remember last month I said I was supposed to be in Dubai hunting down, you know, the, you know, being involved in a deal and rippling saga. Yeah, I'm still here. So hopefully, hopefully July, I will be there. June or July. Joel Cheesman (05:12.973) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (05:25.261) Well, here's your chance to show off how much vacation time do you get as a British citizen? Emi B (05:29.678) I think to be fair, I've got holiday rolled over. So I think at the moment I've got about 35 days rolled over. I probably actually shouldn't say this online because my, yeah, yeah, just going to rub it in. And my manager will be listening and probably so will my VP go, no, I mean, haven't spent your holidays. But yeah, I've got loads of holiday, loads of holiday, but we normally get about 28 days. So I will be chilling on that beach. Absolutely. Joel Cheesman (05:33.241) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (05:54.327) Loads of holiday loads of holiday, but we're glad we're glad you made time for the show this week, especially with with chat out. So without further ado, let's get to some shout outs. As you know, shout out sponsored by our friends up North, Kiora that's tech recruiting made simple and affordable. I'm going to start with my shout out. My shout out goes to McDonald's McDonald's. That's right. You got them all over the world and it's fast food. So it's Emi B (06:06.263) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (06:23.609) right up my alley, but I'm going to give you three reasons why McDonald's gets a shout out for me. Mickey D's is crushing it. First, they drop chicken strips on the menu. They have the chicken sandwich, the chicken nuggets. Now they got the chicken strips and they have a new creamy sriracha sauce that's just to die for. So that's just one reason I'm giving them a shout out. Number two is they have a new chief people officer, guy named Pat Myers who previously served at Target. and did some cool things there. So we'll be seeing some probably interesting things from them. And lastly, they announced last week or this week that they plan on hiring up to 375,000 people as they look to open 900 new US locations through 2027. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. McDonald's gets a big shout out from me. Emi B (07:05.774) thousand. Emi B (07:15.106) Wow. Yep. Joel Cheesman (07:21.123) Gotta love it. What you got, Emmy? Emi B (07:23.15) So my shout out is for, it's actually for a person. So you may not have heard of this person in the US, but if you're in the UK, hopefully you have. you know, if you haven't, go check him out. His name is called Keith Rosser. So Keith Rosser, he doesn't know I'm doing this by the way. So I'm going to see him tomorrow and I'll let him know. But he's actually the director of Read Screening. And he's also the chair of an organization called the Better Hiring Institute. So. Joel Cheesman (07:45.326) Mm-hmm. Emi B (07:51.52) In my opinion, Keith is a bit of a powerhouse in the world of recruiting. And the reason why I think he's a powerhouse is because he knows his stuff inside out when it comes to TA. But most recently, he's been working with the UK Parliament and he's been working with them to create the first ever UK hiring task force. Now, this hiring task force is all about putting UK hiring on a map. we know we're coming for the US and hopefully we're going to be number one. And the idea is to make... Joel Cheesman (08:17.219) Mm-hmm. Emi B (08:21.642) What? Okay, listen, we will gonna be number one, you wrestling listeners. You're be learning from us. Joel Cheesman (08:26.105) It's not 1892 anymore, I mean, sorry to tell you. Emi B (08:28.974) Okay, whatever. But the idea is to put the UK hiring on the global map. So we're going to make the UK hiring better. We're going to make it faster. We're going to make it fairer as well. So he's got big goals, big ambitions. So really, really important goals. And look, to be honest, I'm really excited because I'm going to be working alongside him as part of this task force. And even better, because I checked his profile out today and he has a link on LinkedIn. He said that the word has actually spread outside of the UK and it's open in US. So the White House is actually sending someone over. So I'm going to be meeting someone. So let's see how that goes tomorrow. like I said, hats off to Keith. He's making history. So well done. Congratulations, Keith. Joel Cheesman (09:16.035) like that you pronounced it Keith and not Keefe, which is a typical English. Emi B (09:19.086) Listen, I'm trying to push up for the podcast. mean, I'm from Southeast London for anyone who's from London. Like I ordinarily say, Keith. Joel Cheesman (09:25.315) Hosh up for the podcast. Joel Cheesman (09:31.683) Posh up. I'm going to use that this weekend. I'm going to Posh up for the weekend. Yeah. You know, you know, I love, you know, I love, I love the Brits. I love Britain. mean, ancestry says I'm 60 plus percent British and Scott or English and Scottish. So I'm all about the Brits. but just Emi B (09:35.502) why I called myself the Dutchess, you know, I've got to pretend, you know. Emi B (09:48.272) there you go. There you go. And I love the Americans as well. I told you before, I was supposed to live in America and then life took a different turn, a different path for me, but you never know. One day, one day, in about four years time though. Yeah. Let's have that conversation again in about four years time. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (09:53.945) I you. Joel Cheesman (10:02.081) I'd like to say the door, I'd like to say the door is wide open, but I'm not sure in Trump's America that it is wide open. Although Yeah. Yeah. Cause we do, we do have a spot open because Chad, as you know, has left the country and is now in Portugal and, in Chad and Chad fashion, he's, he's, he's got an excuse. I'm not sure I'm buying it. I'm going to, I'm going to play his video. sent this in from the beach. Very nice of him to do that, but let's check this out to see why, why Chad is not here and what his shout out is. Emi B (10:15.342) Exactly, we can replace. Yeah, one in one out. Emi B (10:26.082) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (10:49.902) Mm-hmm. Emi B (12:00.458) He's okay. Look at him. He's okay. Joel Cheesman (12:01.669) I don't know. Do they have clouds in Portugal? I swear every video he's in, it's just clear blue skies everywhere. Emi B (12:10.158) And look at it, I'm just at the beach chilling like, yeah, of course my mic broke down at the last minute. Chad, we don't believe you. You're lazy. What are you doing? Get back on the mic. Joel Cheesman (12:23.033) All right, real quickly, Chad's getting into my lane here a little bit. There are no sweet and sour peppers on a Portillo's Italian beef. It's either sweet or hot. This sour thing, no clue. And my challenge to Joe Shaker and Matt Lavery is, is there any difference between the Leo and just a regular Portillo's Italian beef? Because I see nothing different. They're selling it differently. Emi B (12:31.374) I love this. I love how you know. You know your food. Joel Cheesman (12:51.801) But it's pretty much the same ingredients from what I can tell. so unless I'm wrong, let's get some Chicagoans in on this. And by the way, Chicago Pope one, uh, green Bay Pope zero, just in case you're keeping those, they're big rivalries by the way. Uh, if you don't know me. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, there Portela's, uh, tying beefs are not free Emmy, but we have, we have free stuff, uh, from Chad and sheaves. Emi B (13:03.37) are they? Okay, okay, I'm learning. Emi B (13:15.054) Okay. Come on. Joel Cheesman (13:18.871) more stuff to love about us. So, we were giving away whiskey, some bourbon from our friends at Van Hack, more Canadians, as you know, we have a nice selection of chicken cock for everybody, that gets to win that. course, everyone loves chicken cock. That's right. That's right. We have free t-shirts from our friends at Aaron, Aaron app.com. Uh, we also have free beer from our homeboys and home girls at Aspen tech labs. And yeah, you know how we do, you know how we do. If it's your birthday, we might send you a bottle of rum from our friends at plum, not to mention free syrup from our friends at Keora. That's Pappy's bourbon aged. Emi B (13:37.057) You Joel Cheesman (14:05.485) barrel syrup. So who's celebrating a birthday this week and last week because we missed I was in Vegas. got Jim Lowe, Alicia Buchler, Lucas Roscoe, Karen Heatwool, Katie Gentry, John Tehan, Kevin Lowe, Alan Jason Bourne, Laura Martinelli, Nikos Lavidas, Loka, Paul Norman, Ed Newman, Jenny Rutt, and Ward Crispin. Chrisman, sorry, I'll celebrate another trip around the sun, which leaves us to travel sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing while they're having some portillas. We'll be thinking about them as well. We'll be at Wreckfest, Emmy, as you know, which you will as well. That's July 11th, 11th, 12th, yeah? Emi B (14:39.384) Happy birthday. Emi B (14:50.164) Yes, I will be there. 11th, I think. I was going to say 10th or 11th. It's one of those days. Joel Cheesman (14:57.795) 10th, 11th, 12th. It's that Thursday in there, whatever that Thursday is. Cole Cheeseman is making his third appearance in Nebworth. He'll be passing out t-shirts, taking notes, and maybe I can even talk him into having a beer. Otherwise, we'll have some fun there. Anything you're looking forward to at Nebworth in particular? Emi B (15:19.47) Do you know who I am looking forward to? Now she's going to love this. I met this fabulous, I'm telling you, fabulous woman last week. Actually, she's from the US, flew over from the UK, and she is just a similar role to me. She does a recruiting enablerment role. And for people who don't know, there's not many of us around in the world. Recruiting enablers quite an emerging function. So I remember when I joined the company, I remember that kind of stalking and LinkedIn. Joel Cheesman (15:21.739) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (15:27.991) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (15:41.049) Mm-hmm. Emi B (15:48.832) Now I had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but she's also going to be talking at RecFest and she's actually going to be talking on the stage that I'm hosting. So if anyone's thinking of coming down, definitely buy your tickets, definitely get over, watch Molly on stage. She is fantastic. Joel Cheesman (16:03.15) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (16:06.849) I'm glad you mentioned poetry, which is run by a bunch of Scots from what I understand, and I'm looking forward to seeing my favorite Scott. Emi B (16:15.598) Stephen will be there. Joel Cheesman (16:17.235) One Stephen McGrath and I'm also excited if you see the see the thing behind me there. Does that? Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, so so. So no Asus, the cover band is the entertainment this year again at Neoworth. At least that's that's the rumor, so I am really excited, excited about that to get back to the UK. Alright, before we get to topics, we got some. Emi B (16:25.41) Definitely maybe. Oasis, so maybe gonna be the one that saves me. yeah, I heard that. Joel Cheesman (16:46.873) layoff news to talk about Microsoft laying the hammer down on about 6,000 employees. That's about 3 % of their workforce. Chegg, 22 % of their workforce match group, which owns Tinder and a bunch of dating apps that I'm sure you've never heard of. 13 % and CrowdStrike, 5%. As far as LinkedIn impact, they're owned by Microsoft. There is some evidence that some LinkedIn people got laid off. Someone on LinkedIn. Emi B (17:02.435) Never. Emi B (17:09.71) Mm. Joel Cheesman (17:15.883) Ironically said today has been a rough one in which a lot of good friends, colleagues and world class talent will be leaving us and other users said the laughs would be the largest at the company since 2023 when Microsoft eliminated 10,000 jobs. Any comments on the layoffs? They certainly keep coming. Emi B (17:34.574) Yeah, and it's, do you know what? is, I feel for those people because those people who are getting laid off at the moment are going into really crap market. And I keep seeing online, I keep seeing on LinkedIn, I keep talking to people who are great at their jobs. They are fantastic. They know their jobs inside out, but there are so many people being laid off. So when they're applying for jobs, they're competing against so many people. And I'm not talking about You know, in the past, maybe people may be out of work for three months, maybe six months. I know great people who've been out of work for over a year, or they're at a certain level or were at a certain level in their previous jobs. And they're now having to drop down to lower levels just to get back into the marketplace because people have got bills to pay, you know? And I think that's just a, you know, it's not just in the U.S. We have that in the UK. We have that in other countries as well. So it is upsetting, it is hard and I do feel for those people. Joel Cheesman (18:36.857) Yeah, and a lot of it seems like it was at the management level, which we've talked about how Gen X is getting fucked again in life and how they've reached a point where they should be really crushing it financially and professionally. And they're too highly paid. So let's let's put millennials in their place who are lesser lesser paid and get rid of Gen X. So all right, we're here for it. We're here for it, America. Gen X, Gen X sex will kill you. Drugs will kill you. Everything sucks. Emi B (18:39.884) Hmm. Yeah. Emi B (18:48.867) Yeah. Emi B (18:58.062) We got you. Joel Cheesman (19:04.941) We're used to it. We're used to it. Let's get to topic. Shall we? Emi B (19:07.724) It might get better. Joel Cheesman (19:12.569) All right, let's talk a little man versus machine, shall we? I Klarna and Duolingo, early adapters of an AI-first workplace are facing challenges in balancing AI automation with human labor. First up, let's talk about Klarna after replacing 700 customer service agents with AI. They're now planning a hiring spree to ensure human customer support, citing quality concerns. Shocker. Emi B (19:14.926) Mmm Joel Cheesman (19:37.998) with an over reliance on AI in the past. Emmy, what's your take on Klarna's news? Emi B (19:43.566) So my take is that this Sebastian guy who's the CEO of Klana, I think that his cockiness has actually, you know, fucked up. It's turned back around. I remember him saying, do you remember like, was it last year or maybe the year before, you know, AI is going to replace all jobs. AI can replace all jobs. We don't need humans. It's fucked up because at the end of the day, when something goes wrong, Joel Cheesman (19:54.585) Mm-hmm. Emi B (20:11.918) with a service, you don't want to speak to a machine. You don't want to speak to a chat bot. You want someone who's actually going to understand your issues and help you be a bit more empathetic and be able to resolve those issues for you really quickly. Machines can't do that yet, but he seemed to think that he knew better than anyone else. So for me, think, yeah, OK, cool. You know now, but what at the expense of other people that you've got rid of? What about them? They're now in that shitty job market. So yeah, I think it's a Joel Cheesman (20:27.225) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (20:38.691) Mm-hmm. Emi B (20:40.492) I think it's a bit of an idea, to be honest. Joel Cheesman (20:45.699) So the pendulum swings back and forth and it's swinging back into sort of the benefit of the humans. You know, these are stories you're probably heard of even in the UK, Walmart, Target, Dollar General. They've all recently either cut back their sort of self-service or self-checkout, either eliminated or cut back on it. Now part of it is people steal shit when you can just serve yourself. Emi B (20:53.005) Yeah. Emi B (21:11.438) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:13.013) but, it's also complicated things. And I'm even in my own use. like, I like to think I'm a fairly smart guy, but it's like, it doesn't scan. I don't know what fruit I'm getting. Is it organic or not? I got to call the person over to get information. The car doesn't work. I try to tap like there's so you end up spending more time. Like at the checkout when you're on your own and getting someone else. So it's like this big mess and, and Amazon, as you may know, Emi B (21:27.31) Should have weighed it, yeah. Emi B (21:36.834) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (21:41.281) recently launched this sort of cashless, just walk out store. And it was huge news. SNL made a really funny skit on it with with black people saying like, they won't just walk out. Anyway, it's funny skit. But like, shocker, people just steal shit. They break shit. This is why we can't have nice stuff, Emmy, as because employees aren't there. But yes, companies are realizing like, yeah, we can't just full on Emi B (21:47.286) Yeah, what is that about? Emi B (21:59.51) Yes, of course! Joel Cheesman (22:09.165) wholesale automate this shit and think that it's gonna turn out okay. And I can tell you that I have an 85 year old dad and I have a 14 year old dog, both of them need healthcare and I'm on the phone with vets and nurses and all this shit. The automated whatever decision tree that I have to go through is awful, awful. It has not yet type one if you'd like to pay your bill. Emi B (22:18.456) Good. Emi B (22:31.566) And you didn't say that press one to speak to this person press two. It's like just, just put me through to a freaking person. Yeah. And you just press zero until you get through to someone. Zero zero. Yeah. Don't want to talk to a freaking automated machine. Joel Cheesman (22:38.601) Number two, if you'd like a reschedule, like what the, yeah, it's like zero, zero. Talk to someone, please talk to someone. Yeah, so, and I do think that there's a opportunity for companies that are people heavy. You're never gonna walk into an in and out and get automated. Like there's certain experiences that you just expect, like Chipotle. Emi B (23:01.614) Nah. Joel Cheesman (23:06.969) If there's ever a kiosk in Chipotle, like I'm out. I mean, it would take a lot for me to get out of Chipotle, but like that there are certain brands that you expected. think with McDonald's, it's okay. Cause you want your $5 meal deal and you're okay to be at a kiosk and kind of deal with some shit. But for a lot of brands, dude, they're, they're running into a problem, uh, with sort of not, not seeing that this whole automation thing isn't quite what it's, it's a cracked up to be. Emi B (23:07.756) I love it. Chipotle again. Emi B (23:31.628) Yeah, you just, you just can't fully automate all of a human job. You know, you can do the low level, like kind of low level administrative side. Yeah, absolutely. No, no problem. Automate the hell out of that. But when, when it gets more complex, when it requires decision-making, when it requires creativity and problem solving, AI is not there yet. So you cannot fully rely on a machine to do that for you. And it doesn't feel. Joel Cheesman (23:43.833) Mm-hmm. Emi B (23:59.502) You know, cause you know, like you said, you know, when you're on the phone and you just say, just get me through to a fucking person, you know, you want that you want, you want someone to actually empathize and understand how you're feeling and help you feel safe. I help calm you down. A robot is not going to do that. So he kind of fucked up from this point of view, thinking, or just thinking about the cost element only, which is what I think he was doing and not thinking about the human element. And that's where you're going to lose your customers. Joel Cheesman (24:27.161) Yeah. And there's a lesson there for recruiting how people feel about that as well. All right. Next up we got Duolingo, who recently cut contractors in favor of automation. they're facing significant social media backlash for the move with users criticizing them as harmful to employees, customers, and the environment, which I'm not quite sure I get. Emmy, your thoughts on Duolingo and the, the anger that the market is showing. Emi B (24:30.21) Yeah, 100%. Emi B (24:48.781) Mmm. Emi B (24:53.332) Yeah. So this is the same kind of thing as another organization kind of following down the Klan route and everything's going to get AI fast and everything's going to be automated and cutting back on human contractors to do the work. Yes, it's going to save you money. But again, when things go wrong, you need a human, you need someone on the other side to actually kind of help you out and put yourself put as well as put themselves in the. customers, the users shoes to help resolve the issue. I don't know, Joel, did you see the kind of the TikTok kind of comments like to the post? Joel Cheesman (25:35.374) No. Emi B (25:36.094) No, because it made me laugh, right? Because some of them were saying, and I remember one of them was like, they were like properly calling out Duolingo. They were saying things like, know, was firing all your employees and replacing them with AI, a hiccup, because they were talking about some hiccup that took place. You know, they saying using AI is disgusting and language learning. Yeah, it should be pioneered by people, you know, and people are even rage quitting now. Joel Cheesman (25:53.817) from the How to Train Your Dragon. Yeah, heck up, yeah. Emi B (26:01.464) So they've got to this stage where they're so pissed off with Duolingo, they're like going, fuck it, no, I don't want it. Let me just log off. Let me not just put my money into this organization. And now they're now going, my God, okay, we're kind of fucked up a little bit. Okay, maybe we are in the wrong. And they say, no, no, no, no, chill, relax. Humans are still in charge. We're still involved, kind of. But I think that again, it's the same kind of thing. AI. Joel Cheesman (26:01.592) Mm-hmm. Emi B (26:29.312) is there to help you. AI is helping to make you more productive. AI is not there to totally replace the human. So at the end of the day, they're going to have to think of a way to say sorry properly. Maybe they say sorry in 30 different languages. Maybe that's what they do. Use that tool. Joel Cheesman (26:32.814) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (26:49.059) You know, I meant to take a look at the videos, but I got caught up in a tarantula versus centipede battle, which I typically get into when I'm on TikTok. know, generally young people, we're talking back, look, young people aren't stupid. Young people read, you know, read or least read or see news about your college degree is worthless. Emi B (26:51.768) Yeah. Emi B (26:56.042) and love it. Joel Cheesman (27:17.695) Every entry level job is getting automated. Companies aren't hiring young people anymore. and they're kind of pissed off and they're like, fuck this shit. we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna smack companies that go full automation because I think they see their own challenges in companies doing that because every company that says we're going fully automated, automatic. Emi B (27:41.422) Don't let know. Joel Cheesman (27:41.995) automation, that's my, that might be my job or that might be a competition for an opportunity that I might get, or I'm not going to get now because of that. So I, I certainly feel like there's going to be a human uprising with younger people in saying like, we're going to support brands that hire people. We're going to, we're going to give our money to companies that hire people and have customer service reps. Emi B (27:45.089) Yeah. Emi B (27:58.222) 100 % Yeah Joel Cheesman (28:08.62) who are human being that are carbon based life forms, like we are going to support those businesses. And let's be honest, the best way to, provoke change is with your dollars. And if young people decide we're not going to support companies that go fully automated, then you won't see companies go fully automated automation, right? so I think Duolingo is an example of that. Now the challenge that Duolingo has is that their stock is, is at all time highs. So they're looking at, Hey, Emi B (28:31.095) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (28:38.797) we're being rewarded on wall street, but on main street we're being smacked. So I think companies will ultimately say like, yes, automation is going to happen, but we need to boil the frog a little, a little longer than just wholesale. We're going off fully automated and, and you know, one day we'll wake up and say like, shit, yeah, it is, it is fully automated and we didn't even sort of recognize it. And I think that's kind of where we're going. Emi B (28:43.171) Yeah. Emi B (28:54.924) You can't just do blanket exactly. Yeah. Emi B (29:04.3) Yeah, 100%. But you know the challenge there as well, because I know that obviously the younger generation obviously at the moment they're saying, look, we're going to go for the human first organization. We're going to go for the people who are more empathetic. But like I said before, the market is shit. So when they're out of work for three, four, five, six months, are they still going to be hold that moral high ground or are they going to think I got bills to pay? And that's, think that's going to be a kind of a moral dilemma that the younger generation, even like older generations as well, are going to have to think about because they're going to have to balance that situation, the economic situation with, with their morality. And I think that's a tough one. Joel Cheesman (29:45.497) Yeah. Yeah. Certainly you can, you, your price McDonald's is not in and out or Chipotle, right? Like, yeah, I want to support the company hiring people, but the shit's a little tight. So I'm going to, I'm going to go out of Matt. Yeah. I mean, and history teaches us that the machines will win. I think it's just a balance of companies, not just swinging for the headlines and saying like fully audit, like no more people are going to be working here. Uh, that kind of gets you into trouble. think. Emi B (29:51.311) Yeah. Emi B (29:57.612) Yeah, I got bills to pay. Yeah. Emi B (30:07.104) Yeah. Emi B (30:14.382) 100%. Joel Cheesman (30:15.075) That's kind of a bad idea. All right, a little bonus time in the man versus machine news. IBM CEO says replacing HR staff with AI actually led to more essential, I'm using air quotes, hiring for positions like sales marketing and customer service. Ouch, it looks like we can eliminate HR in light of hiring more essential people. What are your thoughts on that, Emmy? Emi B (30:41.838) Great. Well, I'm pissed off because he's basically telling me, so this is the CEO, Arvind Krishna, telling me that my role in HR is not essential. What am I? I'm just fluff, you know? And that just means this is someone who doesn't really understand HR, doesn't understand the nuances of HR, doesn't understand the strategic value that HR brings, doesn't understand how HR helps to advance an organization, that the fact that he thinks that he's just bringing a machine. And don't get me wrong, you can automate many parts of a HR professional's role, but you can't, like I said before, you can't automate it totally. But he's saying that, yeah, just, you know, automate it, get rid of all HR and that extra money that's left over. We're going to bring in the strategic software engineers because they're going to drive our organization forward. I think he's short-sighted and I think he doesn't understand his organization. Joel Cheesman (31:33.155) Mm-hmm. Emi B (31:37.612) And I think anyone who works for this Arvind Krishna at IBM, they should think carefully about who the leader that they're working for. And if they get the opportunity, go work for a more human organization, go work for a more empathetic organization, go work for an organization that actually understands the value that HR can bring to organization. Joel Cheesman (31:59.321) Mm. Emi B (32:01.422) It does hurt. Joel Cheesman (32:04.121) So, so, so I'll give some props to Chad, uh, who posted this on LinkedIn and made a comment about how I look at as long as HR is viewed as a cost center, this shit's going to happen. Um, and I think it's imperative that HR start getting the proverbial seat at the table and start looking like part of the vision of the company and part of the, the, you know, the profits. to come into the business because you have, when times are tough, you have every CEO going on stage and saying like, people are our greatest resource. and then when times are, you know, like, and then times like this, it's like automate everything. Fuck them. Yeah. Like, so, so, and, and so until, you know, HR it's really imperative that HR start. And we hear so much about like, well, if, if, Emi B (32:37.3) Mm-hmm. We love our people. Yeah, yeah. People what? No, out. Joel Cheesman (32:55.521) AI is going to take the role of scheduling and sourcing and all these things that you stick all up all this time. Like you should have more time to think about the big picture of, of, the business and where you fit in and how pro like how the profits come in. And I think a lot of the tools that are being created, give you, give you a dashboard of data to help you tell that story. we interviews in Vegas and unleashed, you know, kind of underscored that. Emi B (33:03.542) Yeah. Emi B (33:21.111) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (33:22.297) I also think that some of the stuff that Kevin Wheeler's talking about, I don't know if you know Kevin, he's got a substack. He's been around a long time. But he talks about, he's pretty medieval about shit's over. Like the recruiting jobs, know, a lot of the HR, like a lot of these jobs are gone and there's nothing you can do about it. But in light of that, just like, you know, the meteor that hit the earth and killed the dinosaurs, something else came in place of that. And he talks about jobs like Emi B (33:29.25) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (33:52.025) chief empathy officer and cultural curator, among others is new jobs that will be created out of out of sort of this replacement of HR. Look, a great English scientist, right, Charles Darwin, adapt or die, and people in HR have to adapt to this new reality. I don't think they can just say, hey, you're dumb. think they have to evolve, adapt, take on new positions, take on new roles just to survive if they're going to. Emi B (33:58.53) Yeah. Emi B (34:20.652) Yeah, and I, yeah, I'm with you to some extent. And this, and this guy that you mentioned as well. mean, do I think that AI is going to replace the jobs? I mean, there's so much press out there saying, yeah, AI is going to take your jobs. AI is going to take your jobs as HR professional. AI is going to take your job as a recruiter. I don't believe that. I do agree that your roles are going to adapt. Yeah. You don't need to be as an AI professional spending all your time or so an AI professional or recruiter for spending all your time scheduling interviews. This is admin. Important, as admin. Yeah. Where can you add value by advising hiring managers and interviewers on best practice on how to hire them fairer, how to hire more inclusively, how to hire so how to improve your process so it's more effective, how to find people who are going to drive your organization forward. And I think for so long, HR professionals have been saying, I need to have a seat at the table. I need people to listen. And but I've I've been hearing this ever since I joined, like entered the recruitment agency. And I think I've been in it for about 18 years now. You know, the story has a change. So I don't know whether or not is we as HR professionals, that we're not positioning ourselves properly or other organizations just still see us as a fluffy function, you know, that we don't add much value. I'm like, I think it's somewhere in the middle, but I think that this kind of person like Arvind Krishna, the IBM CEO, Joel Cheesman (35:20.685) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (35:37.133) Mm-hmm. Emi B (35:47.372) I think he is a dinosaur. I think he's not a great person to follow. I don't think he's really truly believes in his organization. He's just seeing HR as a lower, lowly kind of function. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so yeah, I want people who can go out and make money. I want people who can develop the actual products. Joel Cheesman (36:00.097) A necessary evil, a necessary evil, you will. Like I want salespeople, I want these, but this is a necessary evil. Emi B (36:11.49) But I don't realize that the recruiters, for example, are the people finding the people who are going to do that, who are going to sell your products and build your products. They're the people who retaining the people within the organization. They're helping you to design the structure. Yeah, it pisses me off. Joel Cheesman (36:24.717) Yep. I think, think similarly to, to Klarna, like 700 customer service people gone and realizing, shit, we needed those people. Like the same thing may happen in our space as well. Emi B (36:31.754) fuck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (36:40.313) All right, let's get to earning season. Two of our favorite companies, Recruit Holdings, parent company to Indeed Glassdoor and also Zip Recruiter reported Recruit Holdings reported a 2.1 % increase in Q4 revenue to around 5.7 billion US dollars driven by growth in the HR technology sector, which includes Indeed. It saw an 11.5 % year over year uptick. meanwhile, zip recruiter reported a 10 % decline in first year, first quarter revenue to $110.1 million. And the company forecasts a similar decline for Q2. your thoughts on all of this earnings goodness. Emi B (37:24.842) I what I would say, I'm surprised that recruit holdings, like you said, who own Indeed and Classdoor are kind of holding ground, but ZipRecruiter, I kind of feel a little bit sorry for them now, you know, because I do, because I just think everything's just going wrong. It's like they can't do anything right. I mean, they've got a shitty product. And I'm like, every new angle, every new feature, every new product they come out with, it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference. And I'm just thinking, Joel Cheesman (37:49.337) Mm-hmm. Emi B (37:54.414) I heard that they're saying they're quietly optimistic. I don't know why they're optimistic because the numbers are saying otherwise. But I'm almost thinking, give up, it's okay. Yes, you had a good run, it's okay, don't worry. Joel Cheesman (38:01.369) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (38:05.017) You're tired of beating the dead horse is what you're saying. You're tired. It's just, it's just. Joel Cheesman (38:13.677) All right. So year to date recruit stock is down 20%. Zip is down 28%. So I think the indeed recruit holdings was a little bit of financial engineering. Well, you had the Japanese yen versus the fluctuations in exchange rate with the US dollar. Apparently when you adjusted for that, the revenue increased only 1.3%. Emi B (38:26.542) really? Joel Cheesman (38:41.837) So almost half was sort of financial engineering, I think. and then you have, I think, I think, I mean, I think they're, they're probably getting a little more out of each job. but their forecast, was negative. so I think indeed is trying to make a little bit of, a chicken salad out of chicken shit. so I'm not, I'm not a wall street expert, but it just sounds a little bit dicey. Emi B (38:46.382) The little cheeky fucker's doing that. Joel Cheesman (39:10.593) Zipper Cruder, I'm with you, man. Like, fuck every week. It's like, they suck. So you know what? I'm not just listen to some past episodes if you want to hear my shit on it, but they're I think they're done, dude. They need to be bought, go private like somebody. It's like, don't there's an old adage in Wall Street. Don't don't catch a falling knife. And I think Zipper Cruders like don't acquire a falling knife. Like just let it go. See how far down it can go and make Emi B (39:12.366) Everything! Emi B (39:19.434) I mean, I think so. Dischat shop. Yeah. Emi B (39:36.078) Let it go. Yeah. What's that song? Let it go. Let it go. Yeah. Absolutely. Bye Zip. 100%. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (39:39.831) Let it, yeah, Disney, there you go. Yeah, that's good. Just let it fall and eventually it'll hit bottom and then we'll buy that shit for nothing, which I think is what happening to LinkedIn. All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk a little LinkedIn. Emi B (39:56.238) Okay. Joel Cheesman (39:59.801) All right, Amy, LinkedIn's new AI job search promises to let users describe jobs in plain language, matching them to relevant roles without exact keywords. Large language models interpret intent, aiming to uncover unique opportunities. Ooh, magic tricks. LinkedIn says features like job match, assess fit, and hiring status insights save time. And in case you missed it, you and I talked about LinkedIn's recruiter AI tools last year launched. Emi B (40:26.029) Yeah? Joel Cheesman (40:26.521) promise to find candidates faster and launch ads more efficiently. It's peanut butter and chocolate, right, Emmy? What are your thoughts on what LinkedIn is dropping? Are you picking it up or not? Emi B (40:32.91) Hahaha Emi B (40:38.04) Do know what I am? Because I'm a little bit of a fan of LinkedIn. So I don't mind when they kind of throw out new products and their new AI features. Some stick, some doesn't. But I actually quite like the stuff that they're doing for candidates, you know? And it's kind of like this kind of, you know, chat GPT style where you can sit there and go, okay, what is my perfect job? So, mean, Joel, I mean, I love my job. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I love my job that I'm doing at the moment. However. Joel Cheesman (40:46.169) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (40:59.148) huh. Emi B (41:02.838) My ideal job, if I had to work, it'd be like two hours a day. I'm going to sit at home in my sweatpants and then I'm going to like, yeah, have a holiday and maybe review some reality TV. Cause I'm a massive reality TV fan, you know? So give me some like kind of married at first sight, love is blind, you know, love Island. That'd be my ideal job. So what LinkedIn is saying now is that you can just use that chat GPT style kind of prompt, put in your ideal job. Joel Cheesman (41:09.421) be on holiday. Joel Cheesman (41:15.065) Mm-hmm. Emi B (41:32.97) into the LinkedIn search and it will pull up those kind of job searches for you, those job search results for you, making it that whole process of job hunting just that little bit easier. So I think they're doing great stuff in terms of putting themselves in a job hunter's shoes and empathising with them a little bit more because it is tough out there. So why not make it easier? Joel Cheesman (41:57.101) You know what? You know what I did not have not heard at the two conferences that I've been to this year? LinkedIn's new recruiting tools are amazing. They are game changers in our business like no. Well, I'm talking about. I'm talking about the recruiter stuff. The recruiter stuff, not the job seeker stuff. So the recruiter real quickly on the recruiter. LinkedIn makes so much money from recruitment they they can't just. Emi B (42:00.334) Yeah. Emi B (42:05.646) I didn't say amazing or game changing. I said I'm a bit of a fag. Emi B (42:14.536) Okay. Yeah. Joel Cheesman (42:24.771) hatchet the shit up and like change direction. They like they need to boil that frog really slowly. So if you're expecting incredible innovation out of LinkedIn for recruitment, don't hold your breath because they make so much money from recruitment, they're not going to upset that apple cart anytime soon. Now to the job, the job seeker side. It's time for history lesson. Emi B (42:48.206) Joel Cheesman (42:50.937) All right, 20 years ago, I sat down with some executives at CareerBuilder and they said to me, do you know what the number one search is on CareerBuilder? Do you wanna guess? All jobs. All jobs was the number one search. Why? Because everyone wanted to go through every job. They did not trust that CareerBuilder would give them the right jobs for their searches. Maybe they didn't trust that the employments would put the jobs in correctly. Emi B (43:02.293) No. Joel Cheesman (43:19.961) They just weren't willing to roll the dice. They wanted to see all the jobs, at least maybe near them, right? So, are you, do I think that job seekers are willing to just roll the dice with LinkedIn saying, our AI is so good, it will on a silver platter give you only the jobs that you want? Maybe, but I think there's a greater chance that job seekers are like, okay. Emi B (43:25.516) Okay. Emi B (43:42.712) Think it's gross. Joel Cheesman (43:46.829) I'm going to trust but I'm going to verify. okay, all your LLM stuff, that sounds really cute, but I'm still going to look through all the jobs anyway, because you might have missed some of those. think that most of what LinkedIn is doing is they know that active job seekers are going to go, they know that active job seekers are going to like, take a baseball bat to search, look at every job possible, apply to every job possible. Emi B (43:49.142) Yeah, of course, yeah. Emi B (43:55.832) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (44:13.721) they want to do is attract more of the passive job seekers. Because I can tell you that getting recommended jobs from LinkedIn has sucked. They literally think I'm the host of a, they literally think I'm a host of an Applebee's because I'm a co-host of a podcast. Like they cannot connect host and host for what I do. Emi B (44:26.99) I Emi B (44:38.245) Lord, yeah. Joel Cheesman (44:39.339) So if AI can say like, okay, we know you're not going to come here and look for a job, but if we can sort of like tease you with a pretty good job, that's really a great fit, or like exactly what you're looking for, we might get you to come to LinkedIn and apply to that job. So I don't think this is about the active job seeker. I think this is about getting that passive enough, enough of a little, a little tease, a little bit of something there that they might want to get that they'll, that they'll apply, apply to the jobs. And I think for recruiters, recruiters are kind of sick of shitty candidates applying to jobs. And, and the fact that you have lazy apply and all these automated tools that are like apply to every job under the sun and we'll customize your, your, your resume and cover letter to be the perfect candidate. I think, I think employers are over that shit. So if, if LinkedIn can get you a better passive job secret to start applying to these jobs, that's going to make their customers happy because they have a real problem with shitty. Emi B (45:13.046) Yeah. Yeah. Emi B (45:19.574) It's fine. Emi B (45:27.585) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (45:39.307) resumes and fake applicants and all that other shit. So that's, I think this is where it's going. I don't think it's a panacea, but I think it's an incremental improvement to get better. It's one less reason why podcasters can't complain about, about LinkedIn, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. And speak, speaking of complaining guys, if you like the show so far, if you like us or not, we don't care. Leave a review, subscribe, go check us out on YouTube. Emi B (45:47.182) But it's, yeah, exactly. It's step by step, yeah. Emi B (45:55.854) I'll be there with them, I'm still championing them. Joel Cheesman (46:08.598) we want to hear from you and we want to connect with you. But when we get back, Emmy's going to tell us all about pay transparency in the UK. Emi B (46:16.524) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (46:20.545) Is this your first summary that you're reading? okay. All right. I'm to sit back and bask in the genius. Here we go. Emi B (46:23.16) Yeah. Emi B (46:31.95) Okay, so what I'm going to talk about is the EU pay transparency directive. So that's a bit of a mouthful. I'm trying to say it again, EU pay transparency directive. So for me, this is actually a big deal. And I think it should be a big deal for anyone who's actually recruiting in the EU, especially if you care about pay equity, fairness in hiring, or just not wasting a candidate's time in interviews. So for people who don't know, this is a law. that actually requires EU employers to be open about how they pay people. And the whole idea about this is to try and close the, you know, close the gender pay gap that still exists, unfortunately, in 2025. And for all those people in the EU who are accrued to the EU, have business in the EU, this is coming in 2026. So Joel, do you know, I mean, I know you had this in the US, but you know, how much do know about what's actually going on in the EU and what's actually coming next year? Joel Cheesman (47:30.937) Is that your summary? Are you done? All right, there you go. Good job. Joel Cheesman (47:38.435) So I'm by no means an expert in the EU legal system and what they're doing around this. I can tell you that it was certainly a topic that we discussed fairly frequently when the Biden administration was in office. I think a lot of this is gone by the wayside under the Trump administration. I mean, to me, lot of this is market driven anyway. mean, number one, jobs that have a pay range perform better. Emi B (47:51.372) Mmm. Joel Cheesman (48:07.065) If you want people that can look at a pay range and go, that's a job I want because that's a major reason why people apply the jobs is they know what it pays. So you don't have a lot of randos that are like, what's the pay and shit, I was expecting more. Yeah. So like, so it's just, it's just better jobs. Number two is it's better for diversity because people that don't want to bargain negotiate that don't want to do the hard sell. Maybe the job doesn't, you know, Emi B (48:15.83) Exactly. Emi B (48:19.86) It's competitive! Joel Cheesman (48:35.853) benefit from it or you're not a personality type that does that. Like, you don't have to barter or bargain around what the job pays and you're going to get it you're going to get a more diverse group of people apply to the job. And frankly, the market is going to do this for you anyway. Indeed, another job search sites already put what they think is a pay range for the jobs that they have on there. So you might as well put it on there. Otherwise, the job site that you posted on is going to do it for you. Emi B (48:41.922) Yeah. Emi B (48:53.752) They're doing it. Joel Cheesman (49:04.205) So for those reasons, you can make all the laws you want, but the proof is in the pudding that if you put your pay range in the job, it's gonna be good for you on many, many fronts. Emi B (49:13.582) I 100 % agree. And look, I know that this is going to be hard work for organizations. And I'll give an example. I used to, I think I've mentioned before on the podcast, prior to coming back to the UK three and a half years ago, I lived in the Middle East. I lived in Dubai for 12 years. I recruited across the GCC region. Very rarely did we have to advertise salaries on our jobs. And then came back to an organization in the UK and I said, hey, we put all of our salaries on our jobs. I was like, what? Why? Why would you do that? How would you negotiate with candidates? Surely if you put a salary range on your job descriptions, candidates are always going to ask for the top end of the range. know? So to be honest, I was nervous. I can put myself in the shoes of recruiters or organizations who are now facing this and now realizing, shit, I'm going to have to do this next year. But there are so many benefits for doing this. So many benefits. Like I said, if you care about fairness, you care about inclusive hiring, if you care about reducing the gender pay gap. Like I said, I don't understand how in 2025 we still have quite a big gender pay gap. Sorry, I can't talk properly at the moment, but that is still actually the case. So let me just go through it with you, what organizations need to do. And I need to do this very quickly before it actually rolls out in 2026. So the first thing they need to do is actually that before a candidate gets to the interview stage, Joel Cheesman (50:12.153) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (50:32.472) Hit me. Emi B (50:40.962) they need to display, they need to tell the candidate salary. So the most practical way to do that is actually to put the salary range on the job description. Or if they don't want to put it on the job description, they definitely need to tell the candidate before they attend the interview. So why are they doing that? Because this is going to level the playing field. I mentioned about gender, you mentioned it as well. Females are more likely to find it harder to negotiate towards a... you know, the top end of the scale. Males, and obviously I'm generalizing here, but that tends to be the case. know, females tend to, you know, ask for a lower range because they go, I'm not meeting all the criteria. So maybe it's a bit cocky to ask for that much. Underrepresented groups do that as well. Like people with disabilities, for example, black people are more likely to do that. This levels of playing field, kind of it's going to interview, they know what to expect. And it also means you're not going to be Joel Cheesman (51:10.051) Yeah. Joel Cheesman (51:23.822) Mm-hmm. Emi B (51:38.082) a hiring manager, interviewer, recruiter, just wasting time speaking to a candidate who's never going to accept your salary. So that's number one. Then what people cannot do or organisations can't do, they can't ask people what their current salary is or what their salary expectations are either. All you can say is, this is a salary range. Does that work for you? Joel Cheesman (51:53.497) Hmm. Emi B (52:03.2) And the good thing about that, because what I've experienced in the past, and I remember having an argument with someone in comp and bens in, you know, a couple of roles back, where they said, Emmy, why aren't you asking for their salary certificate? And I'm like, I don't give a fuck what they were paid before. You know, I know this organization, this organization is notorious for underpaying people and they are. Joel Cheesman (52:03.203) Yeah. Emi B (52:26.068) Yes, I love that sound back. But a notorious for underpaying people. So what does that mean? What you're to give them a little bit of pay rise ago? Hey, well, I did good because I gave you like a 2k pay rise when really that's still way under market rate. So don't say this is what that directive is saying. You can't ask about salary. You got to be totally transparent as well. So candidates and employees can ask people, how did you come up with that salary range? Joel Cheesman (52:26.809) you Joel Cheesman (52:40.025) Yeah. Emi B (52:51.47) You know, what, what bonus structures I'm play and what exactly do I need to do to get to the next level in a salary band that a lot of people can actually do that now. And that's again, another great thing. Another puts power back in employees hands. So all these kinds of things, like I said, it's going to make it easier for employees. He's going to make it those checks, those pay gaps that we've seen is going to reduce it a little bit. And yes, is it a shock to the system? But it's a good shock. It means like, you know, it's going to. Joel Cheesman (52:51.672) Mm-hmm. Emi B (53:20.982) It's going to benefit the employees, it's going to help retention, but it does mean that organisations need to get their ducks in a row because they now got to look at, what is my organisational structure like? What are the job descriptions like? How can I actually, am I actually paying people the right salary band for the role that they're actually doing? Am I, have I actually correctly levelled it? Do I actually understand what equal pay for equal work means? Joel Cheesman (53:40.793) Mm-hmm. Emi B (53:47.298) Because if organizations haven't done that, they're going to leave themselves open to more discrimination claims as well. Joel Cheesman (53:52.439) Yeah. And isn't there something about not asking about gaps in resumes? Yeah. That's something. Emi B (53:56.684) Yeah. yeah. So that's not part of this directive, but that's something that I know that organisations still do. They still have that bias. I was like, why have you been out of work? Now, we know that females are more likely to be out of work compared to their male counterparts. They're the primary caregivers. And because of that, because whether it's maternity or they're looking after a relative, for example, that means that when they've been at the workplace for a while, Their skill set isn't diminishing, but yet when they come back into the workplace, the employees are more likely to go, no, sorry, you've been out for a year, two years, so we're not going to pay as much. Contributing to that pay gap, which is where this salary pay transparency is coming in to try and address that. Joel Cheesman (54:37.305) Mm-hmm. Joel Cheesman (54:43.511) And speaking of contributing to the gap, let's get to this week's dad joke. Are you ready? And speaking of inappropriate, all right, have you heard the book about the transgender whale? Have you heard about the book about the transgender whale? Emi B (54:50.185) Okay. I love the segue there by the way. Emi B (55:05.134) Do you know what? Like, again, every time I come on this podcast and hear these dad jokes, I get scared because I'm just like, where the fuck is this going now? No, no job. I haven't heard of this. Joel Cheesman (55:17.325) You haven't heard about the book about the transgender well. It's called Maybe Dick. Emi B (55:19.924) No, no. Emi B (55:24.418) no, that is far! Okay, so that took about two seconds to get, but that is shit. That is definitely shit. That is bad. my God. Yes, we out people. Joel Cheesman (55:24.985) Hahaha Joel Cheesman (55:30.999) Ha ha! Joel Cheesman (55:34.873) We out! Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And, not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out!

Your CEO thinks everyone's thrilled  to be here. Your employees are mentally on a beach in Portugal. 🏖️ In this episode, Dr. Beth Linderbaum joins The Chad & Cheese Podcast to drop a reality check harder than a Friday morning HR memo. Turns out, ping pong tables and direct deposits aren’t enough to make people actually  want to stay. 😬 We’re talking real engagement—like actually caring about the job—and spoiler alert: it’s not about the money. It’s about fit , growth , and not having a boss who thinks Slack messages count as mentorship . Oh, and yes, Gen Z does  want feedback faster than you can say “OK Boomer.” Also: why your fancy AI might be better at building human connection than your VP of People. 💸 Forget the cash.  You want loyalty? Try career paths and leaders who don’t suck. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:34.587) Yeah, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, writing shotgun is Chad Sowash, and we are excited to welcome Dr. Beth. Work doesn't have to crush your soul, Lenderbomb. She's an SVP at Wright Management. Beth, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:40.216) Hello. Chad (00:50.828) Yes! Beth Linderbaum (00:56.943) so happy to be here with my fellow former Ohioans. Yeah, that's right. Chad (01:00.782) Buck eyes, baby, buck eyes. Always a buck eye, always especially. Joel (01:01.921) Buckeyes, baby. And a big fan. She wanted a middle name, just like we do on the weekly show. That's major props. If this were Firing Squad, you'd automatically get a rousing applause, unfortunately not. So we know a little bit about you. Our listeners probably do not. Give them the 411 on Beth. Beth Linderbaum (01:07.789) I did, I won in one. Chad (01:11.694) That is mage prop. Yeah. We done. Yeah. Too easy. Too easy. Beth Linderbaum (01:25.037) Sure. Beth Lenderbaum, I lead North America Delivery for Right Management. And as you said, my middle name is work doesn't have to crush your soul. I really believe in building cultures that are soul nourishing instead of soul crushing and helping our clients do the same. just to be a little punny to start us at right, we do believe there is a right way to do things. And we think the right way is See I got a sound effect. Look at that. The right way is... No, no. They're all good and surprising. I like that they're sometimes unexpected. yeah. Good, good. I love it. So we believe there's a right way to do things and it's career focused and human centric. Joel (01:55.563) Woohoo! Do you have a favorite? Sorry. Chad (02:03.576) with Stephen. Joel (02:06.181) All right, we'll pull some in here in this interview for you, just for you, just for you, keep going. Joel (02:17.465) And a great URL, write.com. I mean, come on, come on. Has it always been that? Has it always been that? Beth Linderbaum (02:20.813) Yeah, R-I-G-H-T. It has a, it's funny because apparently our founders, their name spelled left L-E-F-T and their wives said, you can't be left consulting. You have to be right consulting. So that was, that's a story from the archives for you. Yeah. Chad (02:21.538) No, you can't beat that. Joel (02:40.113) Thank God for wives. Chad (02:40.632) Well, and I got to say, she's doing it right. She's got a microphone. She sounds good. mean, usually we do these things and we have to go through at least 10 minutes with a startup CEO out of Silicon Valley for God's sake. So you should have all the gear and sound good and stuff. You're right on it. The bomb, lender bomb. Yeah. Joel (02:57.403) Yeah, her other middle name is not fucking around. Not fucking around. like it. Beth Linderbaum (02:57.766) good. Beth Linderbaum (03:02.155) Well, until my kid, he's eyeing my microphone. He thinks it's going to be perfect for his gaming setup. So I've been protecting it. Chad (03:09.432) Yeah. Tell him he just needs a headset. He doesn't need, he doesn't need that kind of equipment. so what are we talking about here today? We're talking about money can't buy you love slash loyalty, right? You did some, you did some, you did some research. Joel (03:10.065) you Beth Linderbaum (03:13.645) No. Joel (03:20.197) Yeah. Why fit and development are the keys to employee retention. It's a long title, but it says a lot. Beth Linderbaum (03:21.356) That's right. Chad (03:28.568) So why the research was, did you see a need? Did you see a gap where their company's coming to you talking about loyalty? Obviously we see that, you know, back when, you know, at least when Joel and I were growing up, I don't think you're as old as we are. you know, we had grandpa's debt, they stayed, stayed 40 years at a place. Loyalty was key, right? That doesn't exist today. None of that stuff exists today. So. Did companies come to you and say, how do we actually get more loyalty back, retention back? How did, what is the genesis of this? Beth Linderbaum (04:02.753) Yeah. Well, actually part of this comes from our history in the outplacement business. Because that was how we started as an organization, it gave us a lot of insight into careers. So we have over 45 years experience in supporting people in career mobility and career transition. And we realized that this isn't something you should wait until someone leaves the organization to do. And so we really have a firm firm belief that careers are important and we knew things intuitively, but we said we need to start putting numbers and research behind our point of view. And so that's really what was the spark of the research. And I think it's very timely in terms of, I think the transformation that we're seeing in workplaces today to be able to provide these insights and say what truly does drive employee engagement. And spoiler alert, what we found is that organizations and leaders are definitely out of touch. Chad (05:02.696) that's a big surprise. Come on. Are you saying, are you saying, are you saying Jamie diamond doesn't know what's going on? I think that's what she's saying, Joel. think she's saying Jamie diamond doesn't know what's going on. So is that the biggest, mean, so loyalty connected to leaders not really being connected is what it sounds like, to, the needs of their employees. What are those needs? And apparently it's not, it's, it's not money. Joel (05:02.809) No. Beth Linderbaum (05:04.938) hahahaha Chad (05:32.076) Or maybe it is. What are those needs? Beth Linderbaum (05:33.247) Yeah. Well, first, let me talk a little bit about what we're calling the engagement illusion. Because I think it's important to talk about that disconnect. So when we asked leaders, how engaged are your employees, 83 % of leaders said, my employees are fully engaged. They're just delighted to come to work. They love being here. It's amazing. Yes, that would be another term for it. Chad (05:57.09) They're delusional. Beth Linderbaum (06:00.781) When we asked employees the same question, 48 % of them reported being fully engaged. And so this was kind of the start of the disconnect. And I think if you see other research being posted right now, you can see engagement is at an all time low. There's lots of headlines around this disconnect happening. And so for us, we're not in this great resignation anymore. We're in this engagement illusion or delusional leaders, as you're saying. We see leaders and organizations being out of touch. And so that really leads us into what is important to employees. once again, and I'll get into this a little bit, but the leaders are once again out of touch. But first, let me tell you what employees say is important to them when it comes to their engagement. So when we modeled this out, Chad (06:49.838) Hmm? Beth Linderbaum (06:53.023) about a third of the variance in engagement was accounted for fit with the organization. So when we defined fit as like, is this a place that aligns to my values? Do I believe in this company's strategy? Do I get along and can I get along with these people who work here? So it's really fit with the team, fit with the organization. So that was the biggest driver. The second biggest driver was career. And we define career as meaning and purpose. So can I feel successful at work? Yes, promotion was one piece of that, but it wasn't the full definition. Can I be successful? Can I do meaningful work? Can I feel purposeful? And are there opportunities for advancement? So all of those things are how we define career. And then the third most important thing was training and development. So I still haven't gotten to money, if you notice. Chad (07:46.862) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:47.025) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (07:47.741) Number four was pay. And then the fifth was logistics. But pay and logistics were only about less than 20 % of the variance in the model. Chad (07:58.68) So what roles were these? Because for many roles, obviously, as we take a look at, obviously CEOs, they've had compensation hikes and it's just skyrocketed. Middle level and middle class has been shrinking. And then we've got, you know, that below that middle class line where wages, many cases aren't actually hitting living wages. So who, who did you, who did you talk to here? Joel (07:58.865) So there's. Beth Linderbaum (08:01.941) Yeah. Beth Linderbaum (08:22.593) Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely not salespeople. It was a white collar population. So I think that is a call out because we know if your basic needs are not being met, of course, money and benefits are going to be really important. But once you've had that baseline need being met, really, it's not that that's going to drive Joel (08:25.438) All salespeople, all salespeople obviously. All salespeople. Chad (08:28.163) Yeah Beth Linderbaum (08:50.015) engagement, satisfaction, happiness at work. And so, yeah, and well, if I could throw back to some of my grad school days, you know, there's all those research studies that show like, you know, if you win the lottery, will you be happy at first? Absolutely. But then your happiness goes back to that baseline level. So this isn't the only research that's saying money isn't the end all be all of happiness. But I think it is important to call out that this is a white collar population. Joel (09:17.361) So white collar population, this sounds like a millennial thing. This sounds like a lot of kids don't care about money with old people saying everyone's happy because we're paying. Like who, is this a generational issue? Are older people more into money and the younger folks want, you know, all that other stuff, the fluffy stuff? Talk to me about the generational gaps. Beth Linderbaum (09:30.753) Yeah. Beth Linderbaum (09:39.039) Yeah, I will. I always struggle with the generation stuff because I feel like we're making sweeping generalizations. So we actually didn't include generation, but we did include stage of career because I think there is probably more meaningful differences in stage of career. And what was interesting, and stage of career will probably loosely map to some of the generations in the workforce right now. So for early career individuals, it still was fit. career and training and development that were top three, but actually money was higher in importance to them than later stage career. And I could kind of relate to this because I was in grad school once, I ate ramen noodles. My first paycheck, that was delightful. I can go out to dinner, I can afford to do things. So I think early career, we did see a little bit higher on money, but it was still in the bottom. Chad (10:28.984) Hahaha Beth Linderbaum (10:36.247) bottom of the model in terms of the variance accounted for. Chad (10:39.808) It's interesting. You talk about fit, right? And then Joel was just talking about generations. We're, we're Xers. We grew up, we were raised by boomers. Boomers were raised by the greatest generation. Right? So it had nothing to do with, you happy? Had nothing to do with fit. It had to do with Gordon Gekko. Greed is good. Go get your money. Right? So it's interesting. It's interesting that it seems like it's actually moving and we see this like in different countries. like Denmark and Sweden, more happy. They're a much happier nation. Now the GDP is not incredibly high, but it doesn't matter because they're all happy over there. Where we're focused on GDP and money and not as much happiness. So are we starting to tip the balance to start caring about happiness? Beth Linderbaum (11:35.989) I think we should be, but I would say I don't know if we are. That's why I think this research is provocative. Because when we asked leaders the same, like what drives engagement, actually they got it right in terms of fit. They said, yes, fit is such an important driver, but they thought number two was money and benefits. So I think it's one of the things where, I have a background in IO psychology. Chad (11:46.755) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (12:05.333) I have a lot of training on personality theory, what motivates human behavior. And it's always amazing to me that I show up to corporate America and what we're doing is often the opposite of what inspires performance. And often the things that inspire motivation and performance are also the things that make you happier in life, right? Feeling connected to your work, feeling purposeful, feeling values alignment in what you're doing. So I think it... Joel (12:26.598) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (12:33.557) I would say we are not focused on the right things and hopefully we start having a conversation about this so we can think differently about it. Joel (12:43.321) So Beth, I know you're an Akron and a lot of things, a lot of... Stereotypes around the area say that things are bad. I'm here to tell you if you think that things are kind of bad all over the place. We just had a pandemic not so long ago. We had a lot of political geopolitical issues. How much of world turmoil goes into people's attitudes changing with, know what, life is short. What's important. Where should I be spending my time? It's not all about the dollars. How much has the world in the last five years? change people's attitudes in the workplace. Beth Linderbaum (13:21.714) I think a lot and actually going back to what Chad was sharing. So part of the reason there's been a shift, and I remember I took a whole summer course on this when I was in grad school, part of the reason in the shift of loyalty from I have an employer for life to what our generation and future generations have moved to is that many of us watched our Boombird parents get laid off, right? We watch them get mistreated. We watch their pensions get impacted. Chad (13:41.72) Hmm? Chad (13:53.614) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (13:54.505) as a result of those impacts, it changed our psychological contract with our employer and how we think about it. And so now there's a little bit of more of what's in it for me. And I do feel like we're kind of in another like workers revolution in terms of, okay, like we want higher standards. We want something more out of our employer. And I truly believe that employers who are up to meet that calling are gonna be the ones that advance and accelerate in the world as we move forward. Chad (14:28.942) I think it's interesting because as we talk about the boomers and having 40 years with the company and whatnot, back then before trickle down economics, companies would put money into training and development because it was part of, there were different tax schemes there, but it was also good because you were developing your own workforce, right? To be able to move them up the ranks or move them laterally, whatever it is. And we've lost... Beth Linderbaum (14:37.186) Yeah. Beth Linderbaum (14:52.811) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:58.324) That that whole structure within most organizations isn't as robust or, is totally absent compared to what was there in the seventies and eighties and then started to be dismantled in the nineties and moving forward. So this to me just makes sense, but the United States is focused on money. It is, I mean, it just who we are, right? Capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. It's never enough. Profits need to be bigger, et cetera, et cetera, right? How do we move past that thought process and help companies understand that if you have happier employees, you have more productive employees. If you have more productive employees, they obviously produce more, which is good for your bottom line. They stay longer, which is good for your bottom line. How do we get to that point? What needs to happen? Beth Linderbaum (15:57.001) It's sad because we've taken away a lot of the leadership development programs that help prepare leaders to be better. I was actually with a client yesterday and they said, we have like incompetent leaders leading incompetent leaders because we've gotten rid of all of these programs. Yeah. Yes. And by the time they get promoted, when they finally figure out what they're doing in one role, they get promoted and you backfill it. And so I think that training gap is huge and we're going to pay the Chad (16:13.198) Yeah Beth Linderbaum (16:25.943) price of that. And yeah, I think we are. And I think the other thing that I see a lot of is short term thinking, like first order thinking versus second and third order thinking. It kind of drives me nuts because it all starts at the top, right? Boards want shareholder returns. So there's kind of this hierarchy of pushing for profits and pushing for immediate results. Chad (16:28.238) think we are. Beth Linderbaum (16:53.805) But that's not necessarily what is going to drive results for the long term. And so I feel like, yeah, it's a little bit dire, but this is why I actually take a lot of joy in the work that we do, because I feel like we're kind of a force against that trying to be, sometimes I feel counterculture in the world we live in, but really trying to like push the envelope and develop leaders in a way where they can go out and make a difference and be the voice of, Chad (16:58.478) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (17:22.591) connecting people and seeing how to truly motivate people through purpose and meaning. But yeah, I yeah. Joel (17:27.985) Going back to the world we live in, like you said, I to get your take on the impact of the return to office phenomenon, you know, work from home, I'm guessing has a good positive effect on people's happiness in the workplace. We're also seeing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts going by the wayside. I have to assume that that is a detriment to Beth Linderbaum (17:38.636) Mm-hmm. Joel (17:55.525) people being happy, but I want to know your thoughts and any studies that you guys have seen. Beth Linderbaum (18:00.257) Yeah. Well, I will say, I think the work from home debate is the wrong discussion. Like we are wasting breath. Organizations, HR, senior leadership, like they keep talking about something that no, it's just, it's wasted breath. So actually the logistics, where I work, when I work, how I work was the lowest driver of engagement. we're. spending hours and days debating about return to office when we would be better off spending that time talking about are we hiring leaders that fit? Are we giving them meaningful work? So I feel like there's a real missed opportunity there. I'm kind of like when I hear leaders talking about it, it drives me nuts. But we also know the leaders who are most passionate about often are the ones that are not about empowerment. there may be more about control, right? And so they're not going to be the ones talking about how do we provide meaning and purpose to our employees. So yeah, I'm kind of over the work from home debate. Chad (18:55.075) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:01.218) So do. Do we have to wait for these boomers to die for this to actually start to take hold? Because what it seems like we're seeing is we're seeing a bunch of ill-equipped leaders. They haven't gone in, in most cases it's not their fault. They haven't been pushed through learning development like they should, right? Like every organization should. And so now they're just doing what they know best and that's try to, try to keep a hold of. Beth Linderbaum (19:09.185) Ugh. Chad (19:33.282) the control and they feel like they're losing control as people are leaving. Are we just going to have to wait until these boomers who know one way how to do things and that's the, obviously the iron fist to die out before we can actually start to be more happy in the workplace. Beth Linderbaum (19:52.301) I don't know about that, although my kid was calculating the age of some senior leaders in the world and saying, how long do we have to live through this? I'm like, my God, that's horrible. Even kids are thinking about this. But another way path forward is to look at leadership competencies differently and also to look at DEIB because you know who are more empathetic leaders? Joel (19:55.345) So dark. Chad (19:58.958) Huh? See? Even kids are thinking about this shit. Beth Linderbaum (20:18.445) And it's proven by research, it's women. Maybe we should promote more women because it's not DEI, it's not affirmative action if they're more capable at the job, right? Like they actually are more capable at the job. So I think maybe there is a little bit of an answer on not letting go of making sure we are driving diversity and supporting diversity at the top in leadership roles. Joel (20:46.245) You get Gen X next everybody. So be careful what you wish for all the boomers dying out. I know, but you get us next. Technology is always the solution to everything these days. We've got a problem, let's buy some software that'll fix it. We've seen solutions like 15.5, tons of engagement platforms to help people feel good. Chad (20:50.754) We're a very, very small cohort though, that's the thing. Joel (21:11.885) About their jobs is software solving some of these problems, making it worse, making no difference at all. What's your take? Beth Linderbaum (21:19.275) Yeah, actually, I appreciate that as part of the right way, we've started to develop a point of view around this. it's really, we believe technology has an important role, but that role should be creating deeper human connection. And it really can't do that as a standalone, right? It has to be an enabler. Actually, I have a Northeast Ohio Talent Management Roundtable where we were talking about how everyone is using AI. Chad (21:37.175) Mm-hmm. Beth Linderbaum (21:46.845) one of the women in that had gone to a conference and she said, it's not AI that's going to replace humans. It's humans that use AI that will replace humans that don't use AI. And I think that's a great take on where we're heading. Joel (22:03.227) Sounds like something on our show that you might have heard at some point. Chad (22:03.416) Do you? Yeah, and we're hearing that a lot and we're hearing that a lot. I think I think the the thing for us and I think we've actually we talked about, I think it's coaching hub or coach hub, something like that, where it is almost like your assistant and it gives you kind of like some some coaching options on your journey to leadership, right? To be able to get there and do it on a daily basis as opposed to just something. Beth Linderbaum (22:25.517) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:31.176) that you never go through, which is pretty much what we do today, trial by fire, or actually going to a school. Do you see more of those platforms taking hold where we have assistants that are just trying to guide us through being a better leader? Beth Linderbaum (22:44.685) Yeah, so my husband and I have talked a lot about this actually and I think some of that already exists. Like you can go into co-pilot. I've asked it for leadership advice. It gives pretty good leadership advice. My husband asked it. He's just stepped in a new management role and he's like, how do I support a team who is under resourced and we need to do these things? He asked it the questions and read back to me what it said. I'm like, that's great leadership advice. I know Marshall Goldsmith has a free platform that you can try. So I think there are ways that it's gonna make us more effective. I was a little jealous. said he had a, he met a colleague who their company had an AI platform that if you needed to figure out how to do something at your company, it told you how to do it. Like it would read all the processes and manuals of the company. I'm like, my God, that's amazing, right? Cause if you work for a big corporation, figuring out how to get things done sometimes is really hard. So I think those things are going to be great, but it's not going to replace the, if we need to raise our complexity as humans to deal with the complexity that we face, AI isn't going to do that. That's where human interaction, where coaching in particular, I have such a passion for coaching because coaching is a tool where you can create a whole new worldviews for yourself. Chad (23:43.649) yeah. Beth Linderbaum (24:08.695) That's not something AI can help you with. Having those deep changes, I think you really need someone to sit alongside with you and witness your change and be part of your change, not a computer. Joel (24:22.981) Wow. You and your, you and your husband have some interesting pillow talk. If that's what you're talking about with your husband. I want to talk about, the process before the interview, the higher even starts. We're seeing a lot of data that data that says you got to have the salary range in your job postings. If you have a good salary range, people are going to apply more. Right. So that, that indicates that money does matter. At least initially and some interviews you don't even talk about money until further in the process of the interview. So my question is, is there a disconnect between maybe what people think they want in a job versus when they actually get into it and realize, this isn't just about money. I really hate my boss and I hate the culture and, and should job seekers be thinking about the interview process differently as opposed to just how much am going to get paid? Chad (25:09.686) Eat this place. Beth Linderbaum (25:15.339) Yeah, I think sometimes we do underestimate that. We think, if I get paid a lot of money, there's a lot of jobs I could do until you do those jobs and realize there's no amount of money that would make you want to do that job. So in the research at one point, we did uncover like a little bit of that disconnect. It wasn't something we wrote up, but there was a little nuance there of like, wow, people might not always know the difference between when they're out searching versus what genuinely will make them happy. But I think people are learning. We've had candidates come through our transition program. I remember one in particular, he was a senior executive and he was wanting to do something more meaningful and purposeful. but he landed another executive job and he went in there and he was like, no, I'm leaving. He realized pretty quickly, I just signed up to do the same thing that I was trying to get away from. And so he made a real career shift and went and worked with a startup that has much more meaning and purpose. Yeah. Chad (26:19.182) That's what we're taught what success is though, right? And it was funny because I remember starting a sales gig and we had another guy that was selling right beside me and he, his background was he was a VP at AT &T. And I asked him, I'm like, what the hell are you doing here? You're doing the same work that I'm doing as, you know, an early 20 year old. And he's like, I need, I need to get away. I made my money. I needed to be an individual contributor, but that was so foreign to me. And the way that you think, the way that we were taught, that you start at the bottom, you finish at the top, and then you retire on a private island, which nobody can do anymore, and just do your thing, right? So it's interesting when that's beat into your brain of this is what a career path looks like, it's really hard to kind of deviate, isn't it? Beth Linderbaum (27:14.965) It is, it is. And well, back to the career research, one of the things that we found was that late stage career fit came back out as the number one driver where mid-career career factors were more important, like purpose, meaning, and promotion opportunities. Mid-career, that was more important. Late career, we're back to, no, I just want something that's a good fit. You know, like I'm here for my values. I'm here for. you know, I just want to do something that I want to do, right? yeah. Yeah. Chad (27:49.326) want to be able to take a nap when I want to take a nap and walk the dogs when I want to walk the dogs and I'll get on a call when I need to. Beth Linderbaum (27:55.597) Well, guys have made a different career path choice, really, right? Yeah. So what was that about for the two of you? Joel (27:55.728) life. Chad (27:58.466) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (28:01.457) We're doing the interview, Dr. Beth. Don't put us on the couch. Don't put us on the couch. Chad (28:04.782) you put that cheese, put Cheeseman on the couch. He needs it. Go ahead. She's going to answer the question. Joel (28:10.353) If there's not a burrito bowl involved, I'm not interested. is Dr. Beth Linderbaum, everybody. All right. All right, Linda or sorry, Beth, where can they download the report? Learn more about you connect to a right.com. Beth Linderbaum (28:26.143) Yeah. So yeah, if you want to connect with me, I'm on LinkedIn. So just find me on LinkedIn, Beth Linderbaum, and you can download all of our research at our ight.com, right.com. Just go there and download. We have three chapters of the research. And actually this year we're going to be doing a part two. Chad (28:38.318) Too easy. Beth Linderbaum (28:46.989) And we're going into taking it global. So we'll see if there's global differences in what drives engagement and how connected or disconnected leaders are. Yeah. Ooh, I'll come back. Can I come back? Joel (28:55.727) Are you teasing us? Are you teasing us, Dr. Beth? Chad (28:57.1) No, yes. I want to. Yes, of course. Yes. We want to know how the rest of the world shakes down. Joel (29:02.577) Shut. Joel (29:06.011) That's right. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Beth Linderbaum (29:06.123) Yeah. Chad (29:09.547) We out.

Live(ish) from the Gem booth at UNLEASH Vegas—powered by caffeine, chaos, and questionable judgment—the boys duct-tape together an episode that stumbles through everything from Warren Buffett’s recruiting wisdom (??) to StackOne stacking cash like it’s Monopoly night. Joel is dazed and confused over Appcast with Recruitics news (sorry, not sorry), taking the usual swing at ZipRecruiter, and somehow drag Indeed into the dumpster fire, even though they weren’t invited. It’s unfiltered, unscripted, and probably unwise. Sleep-deprived? Definitely. Worth it? Debatable. Tune in for the mess. We’ll pretend to be professionals again next week. Maybe. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel : We're giving our listeners a rare glimpse into the green room as we chat. We should preface this week's show with: we're totally unprepared. We've been recording for like, how many hours? Ten? Chad : Hours, hours. Joel : Ten hours? Chad : Yes. Joel : So you're in for a treat of mismanagement and confusion this week. Chad : You lucky bastards. Joel : Lucky bastards, you. Chad : We're rolling? Joel : You're rolling? Okay. Chad : Ready? Joel : You need to hear it. There you go. You ready to do this? Chad : Yeah. Joel : Let me apologize in advance, everybody. Podcast Intro: Come on. Just slam an iron brew and let's do this, boys. Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel : Oh, yeah. Talking shit till the tariffs kick in. Chad : Yes. Joel : And they throw us into Alcatraz. Hey, boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel the Oracle Cheesman. Chad : And this is Chad, tired as fuck, Sowash. Joel : And on this episode, StackOne raises Appcast searches and LinkedIn gets creative. Let's do this. Chad : Creative. Joel : What you got? Chad : Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, so first and foremost, just so that we get this out of the way really quick. Joel : Yep. Chad : Mark Coleman, I apologize. Yes, kids. The very first thing that happened, I came down to check out day zero of Unleash here in Vegas. Saw our friend Mark Coleman. Went to shake his hand, and he was talking to two guys. So, I was just kind of trying to be stealthy. He put his arm behind his back to kind of shake my hand. I didn't see that he had coffee. Joel : A little reach around? Chad : Yeah, he did. Joel : A little reach around for you. Chad : Mark's great with the reach around. [laughter] Joel : The Irish reach around. [laughter] Chad : So, I go to shake his hand, and I just give him kind of like a little wiggle. Yeah, he had coffee, and it went all over the front of his white shirt. Joel : Oh, my God. Chad : Yeah, so sorry, Mark. Didn't mean that, and my bad. Joel : So, I was at the Las Vegas Knights Edmonton Oilers game one playoff series round two last night. Chad : Now, I heard because Omar was not happy. Joel : Yeah, I ditched... Chad : You didn't make it to family dinner. Joel : I ditched dinner. I ditched barbecue, which is pretty unlike me. Chad : I was there. You remember that, Omar. Joel : Yeah, I ditched barbecue. Chad : That's not easy. Joel : It was a great game. Shout-out to Ben Sesser and BrightHire and our girl Megan at Marriott, not Marriott. Marriott. Marriott. Chad : Chariot Marriott. [laughter] Joel : Marriott like chariot. And I'm proud to say there was no booing by the American crowd, mostly American crowd, when the Canadian National Anthem played. I know that's a thing now with my Canadian relatives and in-laws. Chad : In Boston, it's a thing. I mean, come on. Joel : I was crossing my fingers like, please don't boo. Please don't boo. And they did. Quite a show. You get your money's worth before the puck even drops. It's a show. It's a Vegas show before the game even starts. So, shout-out to the Vegas Knights. It was a good time. Now, you think as I do that Vegas is a little slow right now. And we've seen death of Vegas videos on social. Chad : It is. Joel : And I will... But it's not dead, but it's definitely about 10% to 15% less people. Chad : It's not dead. Yeah, I think, well, I mean, and the people who, again, you'd said, are here made this commitment a year ago, right? Joel : Yep. Chad : So, they were going to send the team just to be able to make sure they got the ROI that they could get out of this. But, yeah, I mean, we've been here since Saturday. Saturday was kind of okay, but it wasn't like Vegas tourism trap shit, Joel : Right. You weren't swamped. Chad : And then today, I mean, everything, lines were short. I mean, we even went to... Joel : Getting a taxi is easy. Chad : Oh, yeah. We went to Area 15. We went to the Mob Museum. We did all the touristy things, and we got in easy, right? So, yes, I'm not saying that Vegas is dead, but it's having problems right now. Joel : It's having problems. Chad : Unlike my shout-out, and do we talk about shoutouts? By Kiora. By Kiora, that's right. By our Canadian friends. Joel : Text recruiting made simple. Chad : Canadian friends. Yes. So, you might have heard of these guys, StackOne. They are probably, I would say, one of the smartest startups that are out there. We see StackOne, Merge, Combo, they're all integration platforms. What is the hardest thing to do when you are a startup? Joel : And the most important. Chad : It is, yes, it's integrating to these bigger platforms, because if you don't integrate to these bigger platforms, guess what? Joel : You're invisible. Chad : You get zero fucking sales. That's right. See that right there, kids? Zero fucking sales. So, yeah, very smart. $20 million in Series A. Joel : That'll buy a lot of beer. Chad : I love it. I love it. Love those guys over there. Love what they're doing, and hopefully this will propel them. Joel : Every startup we talk to, when they ask, what should we be doing, it's integrate. And these guys are an easy button. Chad : It's a cheat code, man. Joel : It's a cheat code. Chad : It's a total cheat code. Joel : Easy button, getting into all the systems that you need to get into. I like that shout-out, and I think there are some really good companies around that space and offering some pretty good services. Chad : I have heard stories about Merge. This is secondhand, but vendors that I've actually talked to said, hey, look, that sounds great. It's an easy button. And they're like, Merge isn't really that great at integration. And I almost wonder if they're trying to go, and this is also a problem with many startups, is they try to open the TAM up way too far instead of focusing on a specific specialty and then growing out of that landing in that specialty and expanding out of that specialty. Joel : Because they integrate on everything. Like Salesforce and Slack. Chad : It's too much. It's too much. So hopefully StackOne's not doing that. Joel : Stay focused. Stay focused, Johnny. Chad : Stay focused, Padawan. Joel : Stay focused, Johnny. Well, Chad, my shout-out is really heartfelt because I want to let you know that not all heroes wear capes, Chad. You probably heard that our beloved Warren Buffett, American icon, is stepping down as CEO of... Chad : He deserves it. Joel : 94 years old. Still sharp as a tack. Anyway, at 94, he made a special... Let me say this. The shout-out is not for his investment prowess. It's not for his all-shucks, common-sense, Midwestern values. It's not just the nice guy that he is, and stories of that are everywhere. It's because the man is a hero for all of us that don't exercise every day, that aren't eating salads every day. The man made it to 94, sharp as a tack. Chad : Good for him, yeah. Joel : He admittedly drinks four Cokes a day. Not the diet stuff. Not the zero is my hero. The full. He has McDonald's for breakfast every morning. He loves Dairy Queen. He loves Utz chips. His comment, and this is great, Chad, he said, the age group with the lowest fatality rate are six-year-olds in America. So why not eat like a six-year-old? Shout-out to you, Warren Buffett. Shout-out to you. In my next fast-food meal, probably In-N-Out as we walk out of this expo hall, I'm going to be thinking about the Oracle of Omaha. Chad : I think being a billionaire has something to do with life expectancy as well. You have... Joel : You shut your mouth. [laughter] Chad : Amazing health care, right? Because you can afford all of that. So he probably goes to the... He probably gets a workup and a colonoscopy every three months or some shit like that. And good for him. If it works, it works. Joel : Maybe good genes. Maybe good genes. Chad : If it works, it works. I mean, he's got to have good genes. So at the end of the day, it's all good. Joel : We should give him some free shit. Chad : You know who? Everybody loves free shit. Joel : Yes, they do. Chad : Everybody loves... Joel : Even Warren Buffett. Chad : Yes. And if you like free shit, and of course you like free shit, you just go to chadcheese.com/free where you can get T-shirts from our friends over at Aaron App. It's got this lovely Guns N' Roses montage. But it's Chad and Cheese on the front. If you like craft beer, and who doesn't like craft beer, kids? We're going to send you a box of craft beer, one a month, to a lucky listener. That is coming from our friends over at Aspen Tech Labs, the data geeks at Aspen Tech Labs. Then we've got whiskey. We've got double cock happening. We've got chicken cock, baby, coming to your front door. [laughter] Joel : Double cock surprise. [laughter] Chad : Two bottles of chicken cock. One for each hand. Cock for each hand. That's coming from our friends at VanHack. More Canadians. I love those guys. And if it is your birthday, you've got to have a little rum from Plum. Beautiful rum. Only if it's your birthday, then you get put in there. But you've got to go to chadcheese.com/free. Register, and you might win some stuff. Joel : Still amazed that there aren't people that are signed up. People will be like, I love the show. You guys are awesome. Chad : Go to free. Joel : You sign up for free stuff? What's that? Chad : Go to free stuff. Joel : Give me a break. Chad : It's really easy. Joel : It's free. And you'll get something, in most cases. Chad : You'll at least get a T-shirt. Joel : You should get something from us. Yes. All right, so we're going to pass birthdays. We'll save those for next week. Chad : Pass birthdays, yes. Joel : But that doesn't mean that Plum's sponsorship is any less important to us. Chad : Oh, no. Of course not. Of course not. Joel : Let's go to topics, shall we? Topics! All right, guys. LinkedIn is in the news. Their Wire program, now called BrandLink, lets brands place video ads in premium publisher and influencer content. Video consumption on the platform is up 36% year over year, with video posts driving 1.4x more standard ads. More ads, Chad. That means more money. Chad : Makes sense. Joel : Selected creators earn ad revenue, paving the way for more video content on LinkedIn. Paying creators for their content, Chad. Sounds familiar. Chad : Problem here, though, is there's bias because they say selective creators, right? So what's the vetting process? How are people getting in there? I mean, it's, yeah, but that's bullshit. I mean, especially when you're talking about some influencers who have a lower follower base because they're more specific. That's total bullshit. So it's like, what LinkedIn needs to do, I love all this data. Duh. Video works. No shit. But at the end of the day, it's like, how are you getting to those individuals, right? And who are you allowing in? I do notice, which I love, there are shit tons of females doing videos in those feeds. So that's pretty awesome because usually everything is so male-dominated, but females are getting a lot, a lot of time on there. Joel : As they should. Chad : I love it. Joel : And next time JT joins us, we'll need to ask her her opinion of this creator ad revenue. Chad : It's going in the right direction. Let's just say that. Joel : I mean, look, it's great that platforms are finally getting on board with paying people that are creating content that is driving engagement and usage of their platform. It just kind of makes some sense, in my opinion. Now, we have some more LinkedIn news. Our friend Max Armbruster had a post this week. He said, I need a reality check from my LinkedIn network. I'm hiring for remote roles, and here's what's happening. Product support analyst. He's paying €73 per application. Account manager, €43 per application. And solutions architect, a whopping $133, euros, excuse me, per application. Is it just me or is this the LinkedIn norm now? Any thoughts on Max's distaste for what he's paying for applications on LinkedIn? Chad : I think it is the norm now, which is, I mean, whether you like the answer or not, the problem is those aren't, you don't know if those are qualified candidates, right? So if it was like more of a CPQA, a cost per qualified applicant scenario, I mean, those aren't bad numbers, right? And then you just serve up specific slates. So I think that model is incredibly smart only if it's qualified applicants. Paying that much for just an applicant, I mean, any Tom, Dick, or Harry who they don't meet the requirements is total bullshit. But if they're going toward, I'm sure they are, if they're hitting the qualifications, that just makes sense. Indeed, or Indeed, Indeed's really shitty at matching. LinkedIn should be better at matching because they've got more fucking data and context on who you're connected to, right? And the shit that they put out there. So I would expect LinkedIn to be able to match so much better than what they do. I know they're getting into "AI matching". We'll see how that goes. But at the end of the day, yes, I think that if they're qualified applicants, $73 is fucking cheap to actually find somebody to go toward hire. Joel : I love that Indeed wasn't even in the show notes and they made it into the show. I'm sorry, Indeed. I tried one week to not have you guys be on. Here's my solution for Max. He needs to join the creator monetization program and get money for his content that he can use to lower the price of his cost per applications. There you go, Max. Problem solved. Problem solved. Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about Appcast's search ads. Joel : And we're back, everybody. All right, Appcast has launched Appcast Search Ads, the recruitment industry's first programmatic search advertising solution. We'll have to fact check that one, but Appcast wouldn't lie to us, would they? It's integrated into their Appcast One talent engagement platform, building on Appcast's decade-long expertise in programmatic job board advertising. This tool targets high-intent candidates for hard-to-fill roles with employers paying only for completed applications. That's music to your ears, I'm sure. Joel : Key benefits include 20% more total applications, 15% lower costs for qualified candidates, and 25% reduced time to fill. That's per the company. The solution offers full funnel tracking from click to hire, conversion-focused optimization, and prioritized ad spend on critical roles, enhancing ROI and efficiency in recruitment marketing. A lot of hype words in that. Didn't have time to run it through the objective filter, but Chad, what are your thoughts on Appcast search ads? Chad : So I read it, and it was like, what the fuck does this mean, right? It's like, I really wish that some of these companies would get out of the buzzword bingo bullshit and just put it in. Joel : Buzzword bingo bullshit. That's good. Chad : That's good, right? Joel : Yeah, that's good. Chad : Put it into somewhat layman's terms to help people understand, and I think that we get kind of like forest for the trees, and we drink too much of our own damn Kool-Aid sometimes. This was not an easy – I read it three fucking times, and I'm like, what does this thing do? Joel : And how is it different, and how is it the first ever? Chad : How is it the first, right? But one of the things that strikes me kind of odd is I see Appcast moving way too far down funnel, right? And they talk about how they're getting the higher signals from the applicant tracking system. If I was a company and I was allowing somebody to have that data, it's nobody's fucking business outside of my company to know who the fuck I hired, right? Now, if you're working with a staffing agency, and again, a traditional model that's been around for how many goddamn years, we need to evolve the model. I do love – they have, I think, a setup to be able to get into CPQA and actually give qualified applicants and get some really good cash out of that without overextending, right? But first and foremost, message is shit. Second, they're going way too far down funnel and over freaking architecting shit. They need to fix the issue that's in the room right now, and that's the qualified applicant. I don't pay you for hires. I pay you for qualified applicants. Give me fucking qualified applicants. Joel : So our friend Alexander Tchaikovsky had an interesting take on this problem and solution by saying that the automated job apply problem has hit a problematic standpoint to where there needs to be some friction between the applicant and the apply. In other words, if there's payment, there's going to be friction around the application and the automated application process. Chad : I don't think so. Joel : Let me quote Alex's problem. Unveiled last week, Recruitix supply anywhere strongly confirms what many thought leaders in the recruiting have recognized as a significant industry problem, automated applications. Product promises to help reduce unqualified applicants and combat fake applications. It introduces a form of positive friction, a term gaining traction. You must confirm your phone number before applying. Chad : That's Recruitix. Joel : Oh, shit. Chad : To continue though because it's a good wrap into what's happening. So this is, I mean, two entirely different things. You've got an ad network and then now you've got this process methodology that is automated applications. Joel : So basically, let me wake up for a second. I needed a venti coffee. So Appcast is basically creating an Indeed pay-per-click model. Chad : Well, it's search, yeah, ad search. Joel : Okay. And Recruitix is adding friction to the apply process. So we're in on Recruitix, not so much on Appcast. Chad : Well, I don't think Recruitix is really adding friction. They're adding validation into it, right? So there are some validating measures. Are you qualified here, here, and here, right? So I don't know that I'm allowed to actually say who the technology is behind this, but they've been building this stuff for a very long time. It is agentic, and it's incredibly smart. I think it's smart, but again, I hope, much like I said with Appcast, that Recruitix actually focuses on asking those questions that are necessary to see if they actually match up with the requirements and then charging at a CPQA rate as opposed to CPC and not playing that stupid cost-per-hire bullshit. So, yeah. Joel : Recruitix, Appcast, two different things. Chad : Two entirely different things. Joel : My bad. That's my bad, Chad. Eight years. Chad : Hey, it's all good. We got the news out there. Joel : I got a mulligan every now and then. There you go. All right, let's take another quick break. I'll grab a coffee, or not, because we're on video. You won't see that I have a coffee. But anyway, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about ZipRecruiter. All right, Chad, ZipRecruiter, once a top U.S. Job board, faces a crisis with revenue down to $111 million from $240 million. An $11 million Q4 2024 loss in clients dropping from 170,000 to 58,000. Yikes. Its reliance on small businesses, which if you've listened to our interview with small business recently, you know they're kind of hurting a little bit. Chad : Yes. Joel : Anyway, its reliance on small businesses, failure to win enterprise clients, something you are hot on, and a 74% price hike have fueled a stock plunge to $5 to $6 from a $32.90 high. Competitors like LinkedIn and Indeed fare better. Experts predict a buyout. Point at this guy, buyout. Likely buy Recruit Holdings, who called it. That's right. Our friends at AIM are calling it too, though antitrust rules are unclear. Chad : I think they quoted you. Joel : To survive. They probably did, if they're smart. ZipRecruiter must diversify and go private to escape public market pressure. Stop me if you've heard this one before, Chad. Is ZipRecruiter finally in its final throes of legitimacy in business? Chad : So I'm just going to say this. Hey, ZipRecruiter board. Hey, are you out there? It's just us. It's just us. Joel : Let me check if it's on. It's coming through. Chad : It's just us. Fire Ian. What the fuck is going on here? So we've talked about this before, and even, I mean, years ago. I mean, we're probably talking about 2019 pre-COVID. We were talking about how ZipRecruiter had to go upstream to enterprise because they were not recession-proof, number one, with small business, right? And they needed to at least try to get more into enterprise. Well, they have failed that. Then they went IPO. They had this amazing opportunity to literally do CPQA, qualified applicants before everybody else because they had the tech built. They had a whole fucking AI center in Israel, right? They were on the path. They started tightening the belt for IPO so that they look good, they look pretty, right? And then what happened? They went off the fucking rails. They were on path. So every startup that is out there today, focus, focus, focus. And if you're looking to go for that next round of funding or maybe, who knows, going to actually get acquired or something like that, you still have to focus on the mission because if you don't do that, you're gonna go off the fucking rails. ZipRecruiter was one of the darlings of our fucking industry, and look at where they are today. Joel : Focus is the key word here. Chad : Fuck. Joel : And small business accounts for 85% of the hiring that happens in the United States. ZipRecruiter did a fantastic way of branding themselves as the small business option. Chad : Spending a lot of money to do it. Yeah. Joel : Spending a lot of money to do it. But if you were a bar, dry cleaner, a small business, you knew ZipRecruiter and you used it. The minute they started talking IPO, AI, Phil, expand the TAM. We're enterprise. We're everything to everybody. The wheels fell off and they never came back on. And they never are going to come back on. Chad : They're not. Joel : They should be praying to the gods of job boards that Recruit Holdings comes down and writes a check and folds them into the glass door. Workopolis just have all that. Because they own Workopolis, so they can like, have a whole, like, just do it. It's over. ZipRecruiter's not here, by the way, as far as I know. So, yeah, a little tired of stopping my foot on this, but it is what it is. I'm ready for my dad joke. Chad : No. Joel : And it's awful, so. It's awful. I just googled dad joke and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna tell you what it is, and it's awful. Are you ready? Chad : It's literally about 90% always awful. Joel : How long has the show been? Hold on, 30 minutes. Perfect. Chad : What a good one. Joel : Our listeners will forgive us because it's so short. All right. Chad, you ready for this? Chad : Yes. Joel : What do you call a fish wearing a bow tie? What do you call a fish wearing a bow tie? Chad : Bow fish. Joel : So fish decayed it. [laughter] Chad : That was good. Joel : Live from Vegas, we are at the Jim booth. Thanks to them for letting us... Chad : Thanks, Jim! Joel : Stick around for a while. We appreciate it. Until next week, when we're back on track. Chad's in Portugal, I think. Chad : Yes! Joel : Until then, we out. Chad : We out! Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And, not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out!

Can AI really  recruit humans without turning the process into a bad episode of Black Mirror ? Terry Baker from Daxtra says: maybe… if you feed it better than your average intern. This week, The Chad & Cheese Podcast welcomes a man with more AI mileage than your uncle’s ‘98 Camry. Terry dishes the dirt on training data disasters, resume forgery worthy of a Netflix doc, and why bots still can’t handle the emotional trauma of job hunting (or office coffee). We’re diving into: Resume validation so intense it should come with a blacklight 🕵️‍♂️ Why “Excel proficiency” might mean yoga for some folks 🧘‍♂️ And a future where AI writes your performance review and  roasts you for using Comic Sans. 💀 🤖 It’s not man vs machine—it’s man with machine… as long as the machine doesn’t ghost your candidates. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:28.445) Ohhhhhhhh Yeah, this is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Join us always. Chad Sos is in the house as we welcome Terry Baker, CEO at Daxtra. Terry, welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Terry Baker (00:45.003) It's good to be back with you guys. It's been a while. Chad (00:47.084) Not his first time, that's for sure. Was the first time in Ireland, was that the first time you were on the show when we were at the Guinness? It wasn't at the warehouse, so that was the second time, okay. Joel (00:47.447) X not Terry Baker (00:52.727) No. Terry Baker (00:56.943) I think so. Joel (00:57.021) I'm glad you added on the show to that was the first time at the Guinness fact. Yeah. On the show. Yes. Yes. Well, Terry, Terry, you know, we're adding fans all the time. So there are people that don't know who you are. Haven't heard you on the, on the show. give them, give them kind of the elevator pitch on you and about Daxter. Chad (00:59.31) On the show. On the show. Terry Baker (01:02.244) The other. Terry Baker (01:13.766) Sure. I've been in HR tech for the hard to say, but 30 years, formerly at Panda Logic, RealMatch sold that company for 200 million. Got a great exit. Thought I was done. Went three months on the beach. And, you know, I communicated with Chad when I was on the beach and I was like, this is really fun. And then... Joel (01:27.357) You Chad (01:29.262) I hope so. Terry Baker (01:43.328) One month went by, two months went by, it's kind of got a little boring. And so I started doing some private equity capital work and the company called Strato pulled me in on a due diligence they were doing with Daxter Technologies, a Muscle Burrow backed company that's been in AI for 23 years, which is amazing. And so they pulled me out of retirement and got me back and I've been enjoying the ride ever since. I haven't been to the beach in a year. Joel (02:13.021) Is, the, I was going to say, the yacht getting gassed up? Is that why you're calling us from a room? You're usually, you know, you usually look like a Duran Duran video yachts and like, you know, caught the cock cocktail shrimp and yeah. So it's, it's nice of you to tone it down for the show, Terry. We appreciate that. Chad (02:16.142) That's sad. That's sad. Terry Baker (02:25.894) The very Chad (02:26.496) He's hungry like the wolf. Terry Baker (02:31.108) Yeah, we did have a good day on a yacht in Newport Beach. That was fun. Chad (02:37.365) Yeah, I know it's a good time. It's a good time. Hoping for more of those, hoping for more of those, especially God. Joel (02:38.074) on a Terry Baker (02:39.566) Yeah. Well, let me tell you a little bit about Daxter because they've been doing natural language processing, machine learning, parsing resumes, job descriptions for 23 years. And I think the data that HR tech is based on, you look at any ATS system, if they don't have a good parser, they're not getting good data. So AI is only as good as the data you generate. Joel (02:44.733) Yeah, please. Chad (02:53.88) Mm. Terry Baker (03:08.618) And we've been generating really good data for quite a long time. And now we've moved kind of down funnel. Now we don't just parse resumes job descriptions, but we do grading, scoring, ranking on scaling data, enable recruiters to see who the most qualified applicants are in just seconds. And then we do the engagement part. So if you've found the most qualified candidate, you don't want to send them to a chat pod. You want to... Chad (03:37.304) You pivot. Terry Baker (03:38.414) you want to engage them directly, pivot. That's a good word. We can now call it Daxter Engage. And that engagement helps solve the black hole, getting conversion of candidates, particularly the most qualified, quickly, effectively, and with little effort for the recruiters. So that's what we do. Chad (03:58.2) So let's talk to this real quick. So you get a job description and tell me where I'm going off the rails here. You get a job description, you parse it, you rip it apart, you contextualize it, you know exactly what the requirements are. Then you jump into the databases, whatever those databases are, external, internal, yada, yada, yada. Then you do the matching at the matching points. You hit a certain threshold, whatever the company wants that to be, let's say 90 % match or what have you. And then you engage those individuals. to be able to either get more information and, or just to apply. What happens after that? Is that first and foremost, is that a good picture? Okay. Terry Baker (04:33.434) Well, there's one little piece that is a good picture. There's one little piece that we provide during that process and it's called the DAC agent. lot of companies are getting into antigenic agents, are so much smarter than bots, right? They learn, they take actions, they make recommendations. And so when a recruiter... Chad (04:47.295) Agents Cheeseman. Joel (04:48.775) Agents. Chad (04:56.27) Well, they're specialized. Terry Baker (04:57.786) Yeah, when a recruiter runs a search, we're learning from that specific recruiter's work log and building an agent that is making recommendations and then pushing the engagement part directly out so the recruiter doesn't need to worry about it. Everybody that's applying gets a campaign response, but the most qualified applicants, they get to talk to a human, which is what they prefer, right? Because it's what enables Joel (05:25.053) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (05:27.078) the hiring manager and the recruiter to humanize the engagement with the most qualified applicants. Joel (05:35.229) Here and I know you I know you like baseball, you're a big Padres fan. So I'm gonna start out with a nice little little lob for you to knock out of the park here. Okay, ready? What? What? And you get this as a as a sponsor of the Chad and cheese podcast as well. Who are some companies leverage? Who are some companies leveraging Daxter's technology? Terry Baker (05:42.444) perfect. Chad (05:49.038) You get one. Terry Baker (05:53.35) Just small little companies like I'm gonna play many Machado here and just hit it hit it out So little companies like Google Amazon Apple Metta Ernst and Young We have a lot of people that have taken our technology and then grained it into their recording platforms And when they buy our technology they do the companies to have the resources to do this, they put it through a trial and they look at the accuracy, they look at the speed, they look at the privacy. And we've won all of those particular clients because of the parsing nature of our application. And a parsing is just kind of the foundation that you build on. All right. Joel (06:39.869) All right, Terry, the ad's over, the ad's over. got your list. All right, that's good, that's good. Chad (06:42.776) Well, here's the thing, though. But here's the thing, because you've got big tech companies like that. Right. And some of them, like Google, have come into our space and they exited. They got the fuck out. Right. So, I mean, I think that says a lot, first and foremost, from the specialty, right. The focus in this industry is not easy to be able to not just parsing, but we're talking about matching. There's so many different aspects. Joel (06:47.836) Yeah. Chad (07:10.25) of what we do in our industry that even the big boys can't do. So, I mean, I think that says a lot and we don't have a lot of parsing matching types of tech in this space. Now, quick question around that because of LLMs and because of agentic, do you think that's going to change? Do you think that it's going to be easier for some companies to be able to get massive amounts of information, train those LLMs and then start parsing matching on their own? Joel (07:23.271) or list. Terry Baker (07:25.616) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (07:38.682) Yeah, I think big companies are going to produce their own LLMs for specific use cases because every LLM is trained differently and they're not necessarily trained for HR tech, right? For qualification of candidates. So to some extent we've seen parsing become a little bit of a commodity because I can take a job description and I can go to chat GPT and dump it in and look at what's coming out of it. But if I have to do, you know, 10, Chad (07:42.531) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:48.451) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (08:08.616) Resumes a month. It's just not going to work So we're focusing on the high volume hiring highly complex jobs where you need certifications You need not only hard skill qualification, but soft skill qualification and that becomes Really tough to do and so we've doubled down on parsing. We're actually releasing a new parser next month that will be vector based and Will extract even more data out of a job description and automatically match it to a job posting. So you get that accuracy and speed. Joel (08:45.585) Let's, let's touch on Terry. know that this is something near and dear to your heart, sort of the, humanizing of AI through, you know, technology. And you, we've all been in the, at this for quite a while. And you know, the, the, the black hole candidates don't hear back ghosting, like all these things have, have been a real deterrent to the job seeking experience. You're a real, you're really high on how technology is humanizing. the whole process. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Terry Baker (09:18.342) Yeah, think recruiters are a little bit scared right now that AI is going to replace them. And I don't think AI is going to replace humans. Humans will, with AI, replace humans without AI. So you have to have a recruiter that knows how to utilize AI to take care of the right tasks. But we promote the humanization of hiring through AI and automation because We want recruiters to focus on what they do best. And what they do best is selling candidates and selling hiring managers on the right candidates. All the other tasks. of looking at qualifications of resumes, we simplify that. We grade, score, and rank them to do engagement. We automatically run campaigns with SMS and WhatsApp. So the team-based approach, so everybody within the organization can see the data that is coming in and that data gets captured. One of the things that we do is ensure data integrity within the ATS. So we don't run without an ATS. We add value on top of ATSs and ensure that all that data, you know, I came from programmatic job advertising and so many candidates get stuck in recruiters email boxes, right? They run a search, they run back the data, they look at the data, they pick one or two candidates and put them in the ATS. Joel (10:35.325) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (10:49.018) We automate that whole process so everything goes in the ATS, gets updated, gets validated. We can even do data validation, right? Because in today's world, so many applicants are going to chat GPT, dropping in the job description, job posting, pulling out the data and putting it in their resume. We're seeing resumes balloon. because of the use of large language models. So how do you do validation of that for a recruiter who may not know that this candidate, they're ranking really good because they're meeting all the requirements from the job description because they got that from chat GPT. Joel (11:12.541) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (11:29.294) So how do you validate that? You do that through third party sources. You can put a notification, this resume was generated by ChatGPD or it's got a lot of large language model content in it. You need to validate this through third party databases. Joel (11:43.76) huh. So the, so the, so the policeman, the validators, if you will, is, technology. So, so Google kind of knows what content is being created by AI, similar to resumes being produced via AI. Does that turn into a game of whack-a-mole? I mean, are we just into for a future that the lazy applies with the world, just get better about hiding whether they're AI or not. And then our tools and the policeman have to get better at policing that. And it just keeps going on and on. Terry Baker (11:54.085) Yes. Joel (12:14.705) Or is there an end in sight to that dilemma? Terry Baker (12:17.284) Well, I think the end in sight is validation through third party sites. And if you can do that in real time, which we do, then the recruiter knows this was in a resume, wasn't in their LinkedIn profile or wasn't in their HubSpot resume that they utilized two weeks ago. Chad (12:20.867) Yes. Joel (12:35.961) Okay, so it's much different than a Google looking at text and saying that's that's AI produced. You're talking about cross referencing something like LinkedIn to verify that that's that's fascinating. Okay. Terry Baker (12:43.874) Exactly. Chad (12:46.382) Well, and if it's, and if it's AI produce, who gives a shit as long as it's true, right? The validation part is what Terry's talking about. So that validation part. And then also, I, I don't understand why we're not moving more toward, uh, validation screening testing, right? Like coding tests and those types of things for, for, for many different types of positions. Uh, and I know that you guys are really focused on being able to provide kind of like those, those, uh, Terry Baker (12:47.93) Yeah. Terry Baker (12:52.419) Yes. Joel (12:53.479) Right. Chad (13:15.95) technologies and those different pieces to help companies get to that validation point. Are you guys looking at, or do you have partners where you are currently doing those kind of like coding tests, screening, those types of things to not just validate what you're seeing on their LinkedIn and other points of reference, but also actually what they can do. Terry Baker (13:33.83) Yeah. Yeah, that's where the DACS agent comes in. It can look at a resume, look at a job description, say where the gap is on skills. It can say, for engagement with this candidate, ask them the following three questions or give them a test on this particular criteria. Chad (13:40.087) huh. Chad (13:56.536) The agent has testing capabilities as well. mean, like creating tests. Terry Baker (13:59.724) It can, can, eventually we'll get there. Today it's doing recommendations, but yeah, we'll get there. Chad (14:04.138) Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Joel (14:08.509) Is this exclusive to Daxter or are you guys like third party? Is there a solution out there that will verify resumes that everyone can plug into? is this exclusive for you? Terry Baker (14:18.136) No, we're using a company called PitchMe. And PitchMe does real-time validation. use people data labs. We've used LinkedIn. We have a product called Magnet. A recruiter can go directly and pull down a profile right off of LinkedIn and put it right into the ATS and compare it. Joel (14:21.169) Okay. Chad (14:41.838) Amazing. So when you're taking a look at the landscape that's out there today, because there's so much that's happening, there are a lot of legacy companies and some could look at Daxter as a legacy company. The only difference is you guys have been doing AI the entire time, right? you're a little bit more fluid. It's a little bit easier for you guys to move. But when you take a look at the landscape today, what do you see happening with some of those Joel (14:42.077) Good advice. Chad (15:08.82) legacy core platforms like the applicant tracking systems. What kind of disruption disruption do you see happen? Terry Baker (15:16.346) Well, I think everybody is looking at Agents to build value into the recruiting process. So if you're an ATS company, what we have to do is add value beyond what they're doing, utilize our AI data to take it one step further than what they're doing. So you guys even promote Winston, right? You promote, you know, there's LinkedIn agents, there's agents across all different kinds of ATSs. Chad (15:23.714) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:32.494) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (15:45.968) But are they solving the problems that recruiters want them to solve? And are they manually eliminating the tasks that recruiters get bogged down in? And that's our goal, is to ensure that those tasks become easy and an agent can fulfill them. Chad (16:03.306) Is there a specific industry that you guys hone in on to ensure that you can really focus, industry and or level? So you've got obviously high volume is much different than mid-level, et cetera, et cetera. Then you've got warehouse, warehouse workers much different than healthcare workers. Do you guys hone in? How does that whole process work? Terry Baker (16:12.858) Yeah. Terry Baker (16:21.392) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Panda logic, we use bots to qualify warehouse workers and delivery drivers. And all you had to do was ask three questions. If they answered them right, you send them a link to, you know, day one start and they show up at a place and they start working. That's not the same for high complex jobs, nursing jobs, right? Chad (16:33.794) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:41.87) Mm. Terry Baker (16:47.108) doctor jobs, trucking jobs even require certifications, right? So we're looking at jobs that have at least 500 applicants per job, which means there's a volume that we can accelerate and highly complex jobs. So it's high volume and highly complex jobs where we can extract all the data and the more data you extract, better the qualifications. is for these higher level compliant types of jobs. So we're not talking about stand-up jobs, we're talking about sit-down jobs. Joel (17:22.106) Any idea? Chad (17:26.414) Mm. Joel (17:27.429) Any idea why LinkedIn doesn't use LinkedIn to verify applications? I'm kidding. Let's move on to another question. So let's back to... Terry Baker (17:32.837) Hahaha Chad (17:35.47) Anyways, we could talk about how LinkedIn doesn't use LinkedIn data to actually match shit because I mean they're bad at all of it to be quite frank Terry Baker (17:36.101) Yeah. Joel (17:43.453) All right, Terry, back to your scary comment. Just something in the news this week that just terrified the hell out of me. Elon obviously is in the news big time with firing federal employees. Write us an email, let us know the five things you did this week. It came out that he said he's going to use AI to throw all the content of the email in an AI and AI will decide whether you can keep your job or not. Chad (17:52.174) Joel (18:12.729) Is this the kind of future that employees can expect going forward that everything you do, everything you write, say produce, et cetera, is going to get chunked into an AI and the AI will recommend whether you keep your job or not. You're nodding your head. Yes. But I want you to expound upon that. Chad (18:26.926) You Terry Baker (18:27.523) Yeah, well, my wife likes Elon and she asked me to name five things I did in the house last week and I didn't. Joel (18:35.559) That's only cause she owns four cyber trucks, but that's a different podcast. Terry Baker (18:38.454) Yeah. But yes, I believe that now this one example of five things you did last week to validate and to either make a determination to fire somebody or keep somebody is kind of ridiculous. But I can tell you my last performance reviews that we did all had chat GPT. Content in them right we sent out questions How did you write on these this and that and everybody went to chat GPT now I'm through performance reviews, and they're all the same answers Right because everybody took these performance questions put them in chat GPT took the content back and that was their performance review So how do you distinguish between? Anybody that's using a large language model? Right, right Chad (19:27.082) Outcomes. Outcomes. Terry Baker (19:31.494) So yeah, it comes down to what did they provide? What was the quality of data and some measure of timeframe. You can't just do one instance and make a hiring decision or a firing decision over that. It's gotta be over time where this data is being collected and being evaluated. And I think performance reviews already reflect that in the world today. We're using AI to do performance reviews and we should. Chad (20:01.934) We had an instance where GoFigure, one of our favorite companies on this show, Amazon, they used AI to advise and also to fire individuals who weren't performing. And many of these people were actually on vacation. So they weren't performing, of course, because they were on the goddamn beach because they were taking their time off. So mean, it's one of those things where we definitely need to, as you talk about humanizing AI. The shit that Joel's talking about is what everybody's thinking. They're like, my God, they're just going to throw this stuff in a blender and it's just going to go crazy versus being able to take a look at a job. A job, especially recruiting is a list of tasks and being able to see which of those tasks are administrative. And you can actually take off the back of a recruiter so they can do the things that they need to do, like talking to candidates. Terry Baker (20:44.902) Yeah. Chad (20:59.48) talking to hiring managers, actually talking to people. the whole humanization piece to me really rings true. Terry Baker (20:59.834) Yeah. Terry Baker (21:05.454) Yeah, here's the positive equivalent to your example with Elon. If you're doing upskill analysis of current employees and you have a new job description and you run that job description, know, most employees are not updating their resumes and providing it to the company, but they're doing tasks each day. And if you look at those tasks, you compare it to a job description, we can analyze the skilling and the gap of that skilling. Chad (21:13.87) Mm. Terry Baker (21:34.54) and present learning modules to reduce that gap and enable internal employees to actually get higher quality jobs, higher paying jobs within the organization. And I think a lot of this is a positive aspect of using that same methodology to helping companies improve their hiring process by tapping into existing employees. And I think the world, you know, You guys know the labor market as well as I do, and there's underperformance of jobs. And I think if you can tap into first your existing employee base and identify a skill gap, get them trained up to that quality of job, you save yourself so much time, money, and energy. You have somebody that already appreciates the culture. They want to continue working there. It becomes just a... really positive approach to hiring candidates. Chad (22:33.824) It seems interesting to me that we have had technology that can enrich resumes, right? For years now, where it just goes out on the web, looks at different points, enriches a profile and or resume. There's no reason why we can't do that for employees to be able to collect data on performance, right? To be able to enrich the actual performance profile of that individual so that you know and so that they know. Exactly what's happening day by day. So, I mean, I think there are some really good aspects and as we take a look at Doge and the stupid shit that they're doing if they could actually analyze performance Outcomes right versus doing this stupid send me an email thing I mean at the end of the day we could be more productive and then obviously the people that are you know, they're they're shaming out They're not doing as much work. They're not gonna be able to hide as easy Terry Baker (23:02.138) Great. Terry Baker (23:29.186) Exactly. Yep. Joel (23:30.951) I want to jump back to, to Amazon again, real quick, Terry. they were, they're sort of well known for a few years back of creating, an algorithm or an AI around hiring that became a really biased product and they, and they killed it. Chad and I talk about companies killing their DEI efforts every week. seems like from the making the technology, talking to the customer's point of view, which you live every day. Chad (23:33.912) Jump back, jump back. Joel (24:00.911) Are companies still doing it? they still concerned about biased hiring through AI? Are you guys still iterating and improving the technology? Like what's the state of DEI from your point of view and hire? Terry Baker (24:13.476) Yeah, that's a good question. So I was on a board call this morning. I'm on the board of ZRG, a top 10 executive search firm. They have a consulting practice. And the consulting business is being impacted by the fact that DE &I is somewhat going away. And there's a push on that, but I don't think it's a positive push. I think we've gone through two cycles of DE &I. We've gone through the Biden version where hire somebody based upon their whatever, but not their meritocracy. And then we've gone to the Trump model where no DE and I exists. there's two really broad spectrums that are both wrong. And in the middle, you want a cultural that's diverse. You want a cultural that performs. So you have to marry DE and I with meritocracy. I once hired a a diverse HR rep and she's like, we need diversity in this company. I'm like, yes, we do, but we need diversity with meritocracy. She's like, what's that? Well, it's meaning you can do your job adequately. You can perform. You have the skillset to make this happen. If you have meritocracy and you've got DE &I, it's perfect match, right? Why not make that happen? but it's been not coexistent in today's world. Chad (25:45.934) Yeah, I think that's easier said than done, depending on how large the company is. because obviously there are many areas of the United States where there just aren't the skill sets. and you want to be able to ensure that you can develop the, the, the community that's around you because that is your workforce, right? So being able to actually dip into that community and go through the training process, either with community colleges or, or if you have internal training. I mean, I think there's, again, there's no one way of doing things. And that's the problem that we're talking about is that, you know, there's this way, there's that way for a company. They have to figure out what works for them. Jamie diamond doesn't want anybody out of the office, right? Okay. Okay. That's their culture versus Daniel leck. Everybody can work from home, adults. They can do whatever they want. We have to stop this trying to do black and white scenario. Dei. We need to be able to take a look at the actual culture of the organization and then that individual, me, I get to decide whether I want to come work for you or not. Terry Baker (26:51.802) Yep, that's the right approach. Joel (26:56.465) We talk about different. Terry Baker (26:56.528) But not very many people are doing that. And what do you need from a technology standpoint to make that happen? You have to do skill analysis, you have to do hard skill, soft skill analysis, you got it. Great. Yeah, exactly. Chad (27:03.042) Well, they... Chad (27:07.106) Things that are important to me, the company and the candidate, right? Yeah. Joel (27:13.021) Terry, do you ever see a rage against the machine moment with AI? I've mentioned on the show all the time that my 18 year old has more vinyl records than I do. There's a need by humans to want to go back in time or feel a certain way. AI is changing that how we apply to jobs and how we're up skilled is changing that. Any guesses from you or do we, at some point do companies say we have no AI whatsoever in how we hire? And that's certain attraction for lot of candidates. Are we there yet or do think we'll get there? Terry Baker (27:48.994) No, but we got to get there. So one of the initiatives we're looking at, and we've been doing AI for 23 years. Generative AI is new in the marketplace and needs to be adopted. And a lot of the agentic agents are being generated from internal large language model usage. But I think that there's a problem with utilizing this. think about deepfakes, right? Joel (28:17.863) Mm-hmm. Terry Baker (28:18.232) in stealing somebody's picture, stealing somebody's voice, and propagating that and creating a resume that's not authentic and that's not you, that's a problem. And that will be something that I think over time we'll be able to identify and dismiss. But it's a hard problem to solve. Joel (28:40.209) And that's why Chad and I, Chad and I are buying the Kinko's brand and we're bringing back a resume printing and cover letter printing for the, for the kids, for the kids. Cause they, they love, they love all that stuff. That's Terry Baker, boys and girls. Terry, thanks for joining us for those that want to connect with you or learn more about Daxter. Where do you send them? Terry Baker (28:45.753) Yeah. Terry Baker (28:49.574) Let's not go back there. Let's not go there. Chad (28:50.03) Faxing. Faxing. Yes, faxing. Terry Baker (29:05.67) Daxter.com . It's pretty easy. D-A-X-T-R-A dot com. And we're here to make recruiter's lives better. Chad (29:07.982) too Joel (29:11.165) pretty easy. Joel (29:16.135) Thank you, Terry. Good to see you again, Chad. That's another one in the can. We out. Terry Baker (29:17.368) All right, good to see you guys. Chad (29:20.61) Way out.

When corporate espionage meets Silicon Valley drama, the lawsuits fly faster than crypto coins at a Miami tech bro party. 🔥 It’s Over the Top energy all the way as Rippling and Deel square off in a corporate slap-fight featuring spies, subpoenas, and a crypto side hustle gone sideways. Buckle up, kids—this beef is messy, petty, and beautiful. Just the way we like it. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Cue the affidavits. 🎯 Other Big Topics in This Episode: RTO = Layoff Lite: Uber, Google, and Microsoft are dragging employees back to the office—with layoffs disguised as "come back or else." UPS Delivers... Bad News? Empty Ports, Empty Shelves TikTok Saves Grandma Wrexham’s Hollywood Hustle Gen Z + AI = No Entry-Level Jobs Canada Claps Back Economic Gut Punch: Stagflation, layoffs, and a labor market on edge —aka your weekly reminder that winter is indeed coming . PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:27.995) OHHHH Joel (00:34.139) Pack it up, pack it in. We came to win. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel "Shadeur" Cheeseman. Maureen Clough (00:43.534) And I'm your co-host Maureen, AKA Mo. What if I need 30 plus dolls? Chad (00:49.68) You probably don't, but we'll talk about that later. And this is Chad, "Historic Promotion" Sowash. Joel (00:57.147) And on this episode, deal strikes back, UPS says don't come back, and Uber tells workers that they'd better come back. Let's do this. Chad (01:09.832) 30 dolls? What the hell is 30 dolls? Joel (01:10.565) Baby got back. that's the Trump thing. Who needs, they'll get two dolls instead of 30. Who the hell's getting 30 dolls? The Trump family, I guess. The Trump, yeah. Maureen Clough (01:13.422) I need 30. I need them. Chad (01:18.726) No, wait. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Maureen Clough (01:18.734) Probably his kids, probably his kids, yeah. I I just, kind of feel like I don't need someone who's giving guided tours showing off gold angels and his ostentatious wealth to tell me that I should have only two dolls. Sorry, just not landed. Yeah, exactly, he's like, come on, man, come on. Chad (01:31.08) In a gold toilet. Yeah. Okay. So, so, so let's talk about the economy and jobs real quick. Okay. Listener. Okay. Listener. Just listen. Just want to hit this high points real quick to be able to jump through this. us job openings fell to 7.2 million in March, private payroll growth slowed way below expectations. GDP hits the negative. Yes. And Q4 GDP. Uh, was 2.4%. We're now looking at about negative 0.03. Um, then the conference board said consumer confidence dropped almost eight points this month, the lowest reading since May of 2020. What the lion did in a hundred days. It's in a hundred days. Maureen Clough (02:16.814) Thanks Maureen Clough (02:20.238) It's like a grenade. It's crazy. Yeah. Debbie Downer. God, no, no. Please don't do that to me. Joel (02:23.46) starting the show off on a high note, so I love it. And I thought we'd talk about the draft. Chad (02:29.884) What about WeChat? Well, that's, Joel (02:31.515) No, sorry. But I do have a Seattle question, Mo. I'm seeing a lot of TikToks and whatnot about the port of Seattle being empty because nothing's coming in and you being on the ground, kinda. that, I know you don't have like that Pacific front, ocean front property. Like, this a topic in Seattle? The port is empty and people freaking out or not so much? Chad (02:41.618) Mm. Maureen Clough (02:43.706) Maureen Clough (02:47.947) on the ground reporting live. Yeah, I haven't been Chad (02:48.038) On the ground. Maureen Clough (02:53.43) Not port side, my friend. yeah. Oceanfront property by the port. Chad (02:57.029) Or does she? Maureen Clough (03:01.262) I don't leave my house, your guess is as good as mine. I don't know, I don't live port side, but yeah, I'm sure it's, of course it's taken a hit. Of course it's pretty... Chad (03:09.384) You eat Joel (03:09.411) I read books from the 1800s and I never leave my house and I have my own Victory Garden in the back. I am ready for the end of days. I am ready for the end of days. Geez. Chad (03:12.584) Yes. Well, that being said, we did talk to somebody who did understand what was happening, what was happening. Right. So the biggest topic of discussion for me personally, beyond higher prices in the last hundred days is the impact on small businesses. And I want to go ahead and set up a clip from an interview we did earlier this week with Beth Benaki, the CEO and founder of a small business called Busy Baby. You might have seen her on Shark Tank, but Maureen Clough (03:19.95) Leave their house. good, good. Fill me in. Maureen Clough (03:33.582) Mm. Yeah. Chad (03:48.252) Beth is frantically trying to figure out how to stay alive after these terrors. Let's go ahead and play this clip real quick. Joel (03:54.907) She is not alone. Maureen Clough (03:56.654) Mm-mm. Chad (04:37.352) fucking crazy. Chad (04:51.09) That was from earlier this week. Again, our interview with Beth, the entire interview was amazing. She has done so much work to even see if she could bring her manufacturing back to the U S she's done the dollars and cents. She's done all that. The SBA says there's about 33 million small businesses in the U S which account for Joel (05:06.011) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:13.224) 46.4 % of the private sector jobs. Now, Beth is only one story. Totally get that. She doesn't reflect all of the 33 million, but just think of hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small businesses who employ people in your community. People who pay taxes, people who spend in the local economy. The ripple effects are real, and that's what I think we need to really focus on. Joel (05:30.106) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:42.147) I love the insider info she gave us about Walmart and Target and I think Home Depot going to talk to the president, which happened and he sort of changed the tune on some of this, but not enough to make a big difference. Yeah, the ripple effects on this, I don't think we have any idea yet how this is going to hit. Maureen Clough (05:59.178) Mm-mm. the dominoes are falling. Chad (06:01.426) Well, you were talking about prices and she said, I'm not as worried about prices. We're looking at empty shelves at this point. And that's what's the most scary, right? I mean, it is one thing that we have and we'll talk more about, you know, jobs in the US and whatnot and how they're going down and wage. Obviously the power, the dollar buying power is much lower as well. So yeah, this is all, I mean, literally ripple effects. Joel (06:08.975) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (06:09.678) Hmm Joel (06:28.609) It empty shelves impact everyone. It's not a, I've got money to weather this and I can still buy my stuff. Stuff on shelves means we're all screwed. Like no matter if you have money or not. So that was very, very, very telling, from what I saw. Maureen Clough (06:29.484) It's heartbreaking. Yep, exactly. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Yep. This is hitting everybody. It's just heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. Chad (06:40.327) Yeah. Joel (06:47.183) which is the theme of this show. So let's get into. Chad (06:47.304) All right. Let's, let's bring it up. Let's bring it up. I'm going to bring it up kids with Rexam's third straight and historic promotion. So shout out to Rexam. This has never been done before. Never been done before from the national league promoted from the national league to league two, league two to league one. And now they are promoted to the championship league three consecutive years in 2021, their first full season of owners that being, Maureen Clough (06:48.908) Yeah. Chad (07:15.912) McElhenney and Reynolds, their revenues increased by 404 % to just under 6 million. That was year one. And then 2022 to 2023, they rose 75 % from 6 to 10.5 million. 2023 to 2024, Wrexham announced a record profit, AKA turnover. to 26.7 million pounds, making out 155 % increase from the previous year. They're just growing, growing, growing. And if you want to know why, it's really simple. Watch Welcome to Wrexham. If you watch it, you can see this is a master class in business. While you see NFL icons like J.J. Watt buy into Premier League teams that get relegated down to the Championship League the very next year, McElhenney and Reynolds bought cheap at the bottom. Joel (08:09.627) Bye Lowe. Chad (08:10.022) the national league, they created a story and they blew the doors off the league. So shout out to a masterclass in business and three straight historic promotions to Wrexham. And it only took a Canadian and an American to make that happen kids. Joel (08:25.637) So how many more till they till they get to be in the Premier League? For those not as versed on this sport as you are. Maureen Clough (08:25.678) power of different teams. Maureen Clough (08:31.82) Yeah, I got a Ted Lasso level of education on this. So like, that's the only reason I understood a single word of what you just said. Chad (08:38.78) Which is, which is, which is why you've got to watch welcome to Rexham because they, from the season one, they actually show you the pyramid of the league, right? The premier league being on top. And in their case, they were at the bottom of the national league. And, so that just watching the promotions, which is awesome. but at, at the end of it, I don't know. I didn't think they'd go to the championship league already. I mean, they shot up through the ranks. Joel (09:03.493) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:05.668) I think they're buying power and they're mainly their star power and their their tick tock ability. Their Wrexham, a welcome to Wrexham ability gets gets these guys to become superstars on the big and small screen. So there's this huge lure to get to get people from leagues that are well above the league they're playing in. So can they get some awesome like top shelf talent from the Premier League to come down? to the championship league, I think that's gonna be the question. They've been able to do that before, but they've never had to spend this kind of fucking money. Joel (09:34.907) Hmm. Joel (09:42.021) Well, they better get some American or Middle East money if they want those kinds of stars to come. Otherwise you messy and Rinaldo are going, going elsewhere. Chad (09:45.306) Hahaha! Get get get Ronaldo. He doesn't need the money anymore. Go ahead and get Ronaldo. Joel (09:53.403) You ever know? Have you tried? There's a Wrexham logger now. Uh, I'm seeing, I'm seeing ads for it. Uh, I'm going to have, I'm gonna have to try it, but it's apparently a, an old witches brew recipe and that they brought back. so it means it's old. It's got, you know, like, Oh, we w it's 1742. The brewery was founded. Yeah. Cause cause you appreciate old is better. Right? Mo you like, you like the old, you like the old, you like the old folks. Chad (09:56.978) I haven't tried it now. Yeah. Chad (10:04.509) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (10:05.688) What does that even really mean? Like what's an old witch's brew? It's just old. Chad (10:13.212) Means it's delicious. History delicious. Maureen Clough (10:14.84) Okay, it's got some history, some weight. Yeah, old is gold, man. Old is gold. Love it. Speaking of old folks, so my shout out, my shout out, well, thanks to the American dream of living here, basically, as I was talking about with my barista this morning, like no one is basically going to be able to stop working until they drop dead, which is really cute. Joel (10:23.405) All right, what you got? What you got, Mo? You Maureen Clough (10:39.458) But so this shout out is actually to a woman. This woman, she went to a restaurant with her son and she saw this waitress and she was there, the server, and she was probably around 81. Well, I know she's 81 because of the news article, but she's 81 years old and she's barely kind of minute. The server was and she's having a hard time with mobility. Yeah. And, know, 81 looks different, right? But 81 looks different on other people. Like I know an 81 year old who like is crazy active, but whatever. She was not doing super well. Chad (10:53.212) the server would be one? Holy shit! You don't say. Maureen Clough (11:09.26) and this woman and her young son were in the restaurant, they noticed her, and this woman was like, God, this is so screwed up. This woman told me she's working because she can't afford to retire, and she's trying to keep up with, in her words, quote, the young whippersnappers. And I just wanna do something for this woman who's working her tail off. And so she did a TikTok about this 81-year-old server. It went viral, and they raised $300,000 for this woman so she could get the F out of the restaurant. And I'm like, Chad (11:28.253) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (11:36.11) So simultaneously like heartwarming and wonderful because look at the power of people coming together and giving a damn about the fellow man. And then it's also like, my God, how did we get here? Like we have to do something different because this is just, this is wrong. yeah, it's nothing new. Chad (11:50.08) systems been broken. mean, you take a look at wages, you take a look at the tip culture, you take a look at... mean, it's broken from the top down, bottom up, whatever you want to say. But yeah, unfortunately, that just fucking sucks. Maureen Clough (11:57.344) all of it. Maureen Clough (12:01.19) Mm-hmm, totally. It totally does. Such a good one. That would be a lot of points. That's like you're winning. Mm-hmm, yep. Sure is. Joel (12:04.773) By the way, everyone, if you have whipper snappers on your bingo card, be sure to stamp that. think that's the first on the show. That's, ooh, whipper snapper. That is a winning formula for that. Chad (12:07.528) Hahaha Chad (12:12.648) How many points is that in Scrabble? That's the question. Huh? Yeah. Whippersnapper Scrabble. Alright Cheeseman, alright. Joel (12:25.655) Okay, guys, you know, we, you know, we love Canada on this show, which is a great opportunity for me to also say that our shout outs are sponsored by the good folks at Kiora. Text recruiting made easy and affordable. So my shout out goes out to Mark Carney. If you watch Fox news, you might not even know what the hell's going on. Anyway, Canada has a parliamentary system. have conservatives and liberals before Trump came in. Chad (12:34.311) Love them. Chad (12:41.733) Maureen Clough (12:45.014) Hahaha Joel (12:53.861) Justin Trudeau, incredibly unpopular. He had been in for 10 years. It was kind of time for a change. And they had a cool guy named Pierre out in, think, the West part of the country. He was up by 25 points before Trump got into office. Trump gets into office, talks about the 51st state, talks about taking over, talks about Governor Trudeau, et cetera. Trudeau steps down, Mark Carney comes in. And thanks to Trump, the liberals... Chad (12:58.28) Yep. Maureen Clough (13:21.838) Okay. Joel (13:22.427) Got back into power, Mark Carney, Mark Carney went, that is a snort from Moe, not one of the old guys on the show. So in his speech, Mark Carney said that Trump's trying to quote, break us so America can own us, end quote. And this was a rallying cry for all Canucks who don't really relish the thought of being a 51st state. Chad (13:24.328) Was that a snort? Maureen Clough (13:25.794) Yeah, I'm dying. It's amazing. Maureen Clough (13:33.102) You Joel (13:45.709) or any part of America. So shout out to him. By the way, Mark Carney is a Harvard grad, which I've talked about quite a bit on the show is fighting the power of Trump. And by the way, Mark Carney spent very little of his life actually in Canada, most of it's in Ireland and England. anyway, Trump is so bad that he can put a Brit in power in Canada. probably messed that up for my poor Canadian friends. But Canadians love Chad (13:51.932) Mmm. Yeah. Maureen Clough (13:52.216) Mmm. Maureen Clough (14:05.742) You Joel (14:14.787) Independence from Trump and they love free stuff, Chad, as we know. Chad (14:16.102) Yes. And they love, and they love Chad and cheese. They love Chad and cheese. Why? Because if you go to ChadCheese.com slash free, could perspectively win, get ready kids, bourbon barrel aged syrup from Kiura from yes, the great white North from Kiura. Maureen Clough (14:18.199) You Joel (14:20.015) Hell yeah, they do. Joel (14:31.45) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (14:32.238) You Chad (14:35.15) Whiskey, a cock in both hands, chicken cock possibly. Whiskey, two bottles, two from Van Hack, our friends up north at Van Hack. Then we've got craft beer from our friends, the job data geeks over Aspen Tech Labs. More about those guys later. T-shirts from Aaron App, that's Aaron App. And if it's your birthday, another Canuck company. Maureen Clough (14:42.844) boy. Joel (14:56.251) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:04.101) You can win rum from plum. Just go to Chadcheese.com slash free. Ooh, I love Canada. Joel (15:13.423) That's right, some listener. Little sound bite, you like the plums, huh? Yeah. And Plum loves it too. They didn't even come up with that. We did. So... Maureen Clough (15:13.762) I think that's Maureen Clough (15:21.388) I bet. Chad (15:23.346) Yeah. Joel plays that before, before he goes to bed every night. Joel (15:28.357) What do you know about what I do before bed every night? I'm a little scared about that comment. Anyway, celebrating another trip around the sun, our listeners, Annie Jarvis, Glen Hill, Garvich Sharma, Jerry Frank, Peter Sharipa, Shana Berthold, Keegan Osepich, Stefan Jean, Sarah Addison, Bennett Sung, Robert Rayner, Alfonso Zamora, Herb Drew, Chad (15:31.848) Christine, Christine told me. Maureen Clough (15:34.67) He's watching you. Joel (15:55.739) Come on Eileen Kowalski, Joshua Skloot, Lou Adler, Joe Shaker. We'll get to travel here in a second and our very own JT O'Donnell celebrate a birthday. Happy birthday everybody, happy birthday. Chad (16:02.312) There we go. Maureen Clough (16:06.99) Aww. Woohoo! Chad (16:07.016) There we go. Well, what a great segue. Joe shaker birthday and shaker recruitment marketing. What do they do? They're our travel sponsors, kids. That's right. We're going to unleash next week coming up May 6th through the eighth, where we're going to be in Vegas on Wednesday, the seventh, uh, are going to be spending a little time in the suite at the Cosmo filming a new sessions season with our friends over at smart recruiters. Uh, then that night we're going to do a film rap VIP party. Uh, all you have to do is go out to Joel (16:14.139) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:39.784) LinkedIn, look at Joel's LinkedIn profile mine and we'll have the details there. Um, but dude, there ain't no party like a Cosmo sessions, wrap party. Uh, and then we're going to be hosting two talks in the gem booth. That's J E J M gem booth on Wednesday, the seventh at 3 30 PM and then Thursday morning at 10 30 Vegas time. If you come to unleash, we're to be there. Maureen Clough (16:50.286) You Joel (16:57.135) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:09.436) Find us whether we're drinking. Well, we're going to be drinking. We'll see you. We'll see you there. Joel (17:13.945) Mo, are you too young to remember the Jim animated cartoon from the 80s featuring a, I don't know, socialite named Jim? Yeah, you are, okay. Chad (17:19.016) Aww. Maureen Clough (17:20.589) Yes. I am, apologies. Chad (17:23.848) But the thing is though, we also have video because we saw that apparently some of the concierge services and the valet services are not gonna be readily available in Vegas. Can you play that? Beautiful bean footage. Maureen Clough (17:38.766) It's a shame. Joel (17:44.261) What's going on in Vegas? Holy shit. Chad (18:35.93) Ouch. Yeah. So, I mean, and again, a lot of times media can like overplay some of this stuff. They said occupancy rates are like around 82%. So, it still feels kind of full, but I mean, in Vegas, when you're used to being popping at the seams right now, Europeans aren't coming over, Canadians. You know where the Canadians are going? Have you seen the reports on this? They're going to Mexico, which means... Maureen Clough (18:36.29) Good times. Yeah, let me know. Joel (18:37.243) We'll be there. We'll see it for ourselves. Joel (18:54.501) Mm-hmm. Joel (18:57.925) Canadians aren't coming. Maureen Clough (18:57.93) Mm-mm. not coming. Chad (19:05.308) The US is literally flyover country. Literally, the entire US, flyover country. Maureen Clough (19:06.47) man, we so deserve that. We so deserve that. my gosh. Wow. That's wild. That's wild. I mean... Joel (19:15.939) I got nothing. I got nothing. Let's just get to topics. Chad (19:19.688) Please save me with some good topics. Maureen Clough (19:23.244) Hmm. Joel (19:23.323) we got some more, more goodness, Chad. That's right. your, weekly weekly dose of, of deal and rippling the feud keeps escalating a deal officially agreed to be served legal papers in Ripley's lawsuit deal backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Maybe you've heard of them who has a $3 billion stake in the company counter sued, alleging defamation by Ripley's CEO, but wait, there's more. Chad (19:28.114) Bozo. Bozo? Maureen Clough (19:30.242) Bozo, definitely. gift that keeps on giving. Joel (19:53.243) Crypto startup Toku claims deal was part of a scheme that exploited its private information and tried to place spies among its ranks of employees. I don't know if this is going to get any crazier, but I hope that it does because it's a lot of fun to talk about the corporate spy drama continues. Chad, your thoughts. Chad (20:16.338) So the defamation case that Deal is actually throwing at Rippling, I think is interesting. They have like little pieces, parts of emails that they say are defamation. Parker Congrad was asked for a comment and said, quote, Deal did not directly refute Rippling's central claim, right? And he's focusing on the central claim that it paid employees to steal Rippling trade secrets, end quote. Maureen Clough (20:37.646) You Chad (20:46.284) the Russian sanctions is also another piece on this. mean, there's just so much smoke that's happening. It's in, and at first as, as listeners, you know, when rippling first came up that with this, we're like, come on guys, this is bullshit. And then we started getting evidence. Then we got Keith O'Brien giving us under testimony affidavits, right? They, had affidavits where we could read down through what the hell's going on. And unfortunately we live in a time. Joel (20:52.866) huh. Maureen Clough (21:01.142) You Joel (21:03.867) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (21:06.712) He's a man. Chad (21:15.122) where accusation without evidence is happening all over the fucking place. Right? And it's literally just trying to change public opinion. That's where we're living today. So show me the evidence deal. You say there's, there's defamation. You say there's Russian sanctions. Also, what was the other company's name? the cryptocurrency company. Yeah. Cause I trust them. evidence. Joel (21:19.822) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (21:20.814) Goddamn true. Maureen Clough (21:26.062) you Joel (21:32.325) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (21:39.628) Hehehehehe Chad (21:41.734) Release the fucking evidence. If you want to put this out in public, then do it. Do it like, like, I mean, rippling didn't really do it because it was, it was, an official affidavit, but get that shit done so we can all take a look at it and you can do it in court. Joel (21:54.021) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:59.567) Go deep. Mo? Maureen Clough (22:03.33) God, I'm sorry, you're killing me. Yeah, I mean, I found the whole thing pretty, I mean, this thing is just like unbelievable. I truly cannot wait to watch this on screen. It's gonna happen for sure. But I mean, to me, it's like, like you said, Chad, the evidence sounds pretty credible. Like you said, this guy was testifying in court under affidavit, like this is not like a nothing thing that he just spun up. So I would love to see something that's irrefutable that suggests that this was all just like one big ploy against them. I doubt we're gonna see that. It sounds pretty legit to me, but it did make me crack up. And I also saw a past video on YouTube that was about like the genius of the bozo at the head of Delm, Deal, not Delm, what's Delm? Who am I? At the head of Deal. And I'm like, this guy doesn't seem so smart to me. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, it's just, it's hilarious. And people can just throw accusations out there like left, right, and center and like. At least give us something to back it up. I totally agree with you. It's so stupid. Joel (23:03.739) All right, all right kids gather around the bonfire. Maureen Clough (23:08.654) Aww. Joel (23:09.455) That's right. That's right. We, never get out of high school. Everybody let's, let's, let's take a trip down memory lane. Shall we 2013 Xenefits Xenefits co-founded by our friend Parker Conrad got millions in investment from guess who? Andresen Horowitz. That's right. So when Buzzfeed exposed Xenefits for all its bullshit and it's sex in this stairwell, stories, Conrad was pushed Maureen Clough (23:13.664) Mm-mm. We don't. So true. Maureen Clough (23:19.726) You Chad (23:26.392) Andreessen Horowitz Maureen Clough (23:26.922) Andreessen. Maureen Clough (23:37.961) my God, forgot about that. Joel (23:38.693) Conrad was pushed out. David Sachs, if you listen to the All In podcast, David Sachs was the COO of Zenefits at the time. He was moved to CEO. Guess what David Sachs current title is? He's Trump's crypto czar. You mentioned, you mentioned Tycoo, the crypto company. I don't know if there's a connection. Maureen Clough (23:41.784) Woof, man. Chad (23:45.064) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:49.628) Big surprise. Maureen Clough (23:50.892) Hmm. Chad (23:57.938) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (24:02.71) You Joel (24:05.999) But it sounds kind of fishy, fishy to me. Anyway, Xenefits goes to hell. Conrad launches Rippling, which let's be honest is a poke in the eye of Andreessen Horowitz. I'm sure. Cause they backed him over at Xenefits. So they go to deal and they go deal. Fuck Rippling. We're on your team. They dropped $3 billion on deal. Maureen Clough (24:07.97) That does. Ooh. Maureen Clough (24:22.584) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (24:30.048) Ugh. Joel (24:34.499) And now this shit happens. Not 3 billion. Maybe it's 3 billion. Anyway, it's a lot of money. Google it. now his, I don't, I don't get all the facts in my history lessons. Everybody. I like to, to, empower you to, find your own stuff. But anyway, so now deals in trouble and at risk of looking like a real shit. And so, Chad (24:40.2) 300 million? No, yeah, they don't have 3 billion in. Yeah. Maureen Clough (24:42.316) No, it's worth it, yeah. Chad (24:45.528) Google it. Making work for our listeners. That's awesome. Maureen Clough (24:49.282) I love it. You guys, you guys do some shit. Chad (24:56.025) yeah. Joel (25:04.675) Andreessen Horowitz are like, my God, we got to save our investment. We can't get beat by Rippling. So now this has become our lawyers at Andreessen Horowitz and Deal versus the lawyers at Rippling. I'm sure they all know each other and have lunch at that laundromat, French laundromat or whatever it is in the Silicon Valley. Mo gets that reference. She gets the French laundromat because that's where she, that's where she. Chad (25:18.716) Guarantee it. Maureen Clough (25:24.25) French laundromat, I think we need to call it. Oh, well, how could we forget? Remember Gavin Newsom and like his people? Oh yeah, I go there all the time, all the time. It's like my McDonald's. Joel (25:32.891) So, so now, so now this is becoming Godzilla versus King Kong and lucky us with a podcast. get to talk about this never ending high school drama about everyone being pissed at each other and getting, getting even through legal, legal means and just counter suing and eventually probably going to the French laundromat to like decide who's getting what and how much, uh, the shit show continues in 2025 and I'm here for it, Chad. Chad (25:50.108) Yeah. Maureen Clough (25:50.296) So fun. Joel (26:02.061) I'm here for it. Chad (26:03.034) I, everybody's here for it. Like I said, this, this has never happened in our space. Something this size. We've got spy, we've got bumbling Mr. Bean spies. We've got, mean, we got Bozo going to Dubai trying to get Mr. Bean to come with him. I mean, it's just like, this is, wow, this is amazing. But again, evidence kids, give us the evidence. Maureen Clough (26:07.758) That's insane. Maureen Clough (26:13.55) That's insane. Joel (26:17.083) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (26:25.784) Yeah, I guess we have to see that. my God. Yeah, we have due process here. Hello? Chad (26:28.754) Can't, can't do it. Chad (26:35.09) Be careful. Joel (26:38.085) Be careful with all of that. All right. That is our history lesson for the day kids. Let's go to our next story. Power to the people. Yeah, not so much. this week Uber raised it's in office requirement to three days, clawing back remote workers, not to be outdone. Google is requiring remote workers to return to the office three days a week as well. They have until June to return and if they don't comply, well, they'll be fired. Maureen Clough (26:38.158) Allegedly. Joel (27:05.774) Microsoft is laying off nearly 300 people on the heels of eliminating quote low performers and quote. did you see Intel just laid off 22,000 workers, roughly 20 % of its head count cats and dogs living together mass hysteria. Mo, what are your thoughts on all the RTO layoff news? Maureen Clough (27:24.014) Dude, I mean, thank you for calling it RTO layoff, because that's exactly what it is. It's like, it's a forced function. They know that not enough people are going to come back to the office. They're doing it on purpose so they can save on costs. We all know what this is. It's going to impact certain people more than others. We all know that. They know that. They're counting on it. They don't give a shit. It is infuriating to see this happen again and again and again. And when I talk to people who are currently employed within any of those companies or any big tech companies, Chad (27:39.442) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No. Maureen Clough (27:51.51) It's like the Lord of the Flies internally. Like everyone is throwing one another under the bus. They're trying to save their job by any means necessary. They're not fucking thinking about the customer. They're not thinking about what's right for the company. They're trying to save their own butts, right? And who could blame them? And so these companies are dealing themselves this situation where they don't have people in place at the company who are thinking about what the company wants them to think about. They're trying to save themselves. So it just creates this like super toxic horrendous environment that it just makes me so angry because it doesn't have to be like this. Like I don't understand why they can't find a different path, a better path and why we can't have more humanity in the workplace. Cause we are freaking humans at the end of the day. We are not robots and I know they'd rather replace us with them and some of them are. But one thing that did not get picked up in any of that also is how tough tech is right now for a specific generation. And that's Gen Z. So Gen Z is usually, mean, tech is all about the youth, right? They love them, they think they're the best hires. They all die in this hill. I hate that tech seems to want to not hire or not keep any of the older workers so that they can then hire only younger workers and exploit them. Hate that. But now they're deciding that they would actually prefer to hire robots instead of young people. So entry level jobs are going out. Chad (28:51.624) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Maureen Clough (29:10.242) by the white side. There's not an ability for Gen Z to get some of those early career experiences. There's no mentorship because again, everyone's covering their own ass. They're not thinking about bringing someone along and teaching them the tools of the trade. You've got AI outsourcing. You've got a lack of skills and training in these organizations. It's really like good luck. If you get this job sink or swim. by the way, you got to be using AI and you got to tell us how you used it and if it worked or not because we don't have a training program and we're just like fly by seat of our pants type of operation. But this is Joel (29:15.099) you Maureen Clough (29:40.242) so shitty for everyone of all ages. And I just feel absolutely horrible for anyone who's just mixed up in this. And I can, I know that the pendulum will swing back at some point and it will be more and of an employees market. I just, no one forget that this happened. Like these companies are showing you exactly who they are right now with how they're treating their workforce. Do not forget it. And if you're a customer who can make a choice, don't forget this either. See what they're doing to their people and go elsewhere. So. Joel (30:09.177) Vote with your dollars. Maureen Clough (30:09.666) That was my. So infuriating. Chad (30:13.618) So this is the short-term mindset that we've put ourselves into. We used to focus on community, growing the community, not just being a part and giving back to the community, but that's where our talent's at, right? And being able to build talent pipelines through developing, you know, at the high school age, middle school, high school, community college, you know, what have you, that is all out the door. It is all about this quarter, dollars and cents, right? Maureen Clough (30:42.2) true. Chad (30:43.152) So short-term mindset in that pain that we're hearing about all over the place. people are going to remember that people are going to remember that shit. if you're at Microsoft, take the 16 week severance, get the fuck out of there. They're showing, they are showing who they are. They're showing who they are. Google Uber, they're boiling the RTO frog. And also there's the layoff pieces that are in there, but Maureen Clough (30:55.554) I'd get the hell out. No one ever comes back from a pip. Are you kidding me? Like, get out. Maureen Clough (31:06.563) Yep. Chad (31:10.088) I know we talk a lot about the big names like Google, JP Morgan, Chase, Uber, and many others who are pushing RTO, but Aspen Tech Labs, that's right, our friends over at Aspen Tech Labs, they dropped the following information last week on the job board doctor. Quote, remote jobs continue their strong trajectory, increasing 27.5 % compared to Q1 2024. Insurance information tech, IT. accounting sectors are leading this trend underscoring the persistent shift towards flexible and remote working arrangement end quotes. So the big names are forcing RTO. Many of the others are vying for the same talent echoing Spotify as you're an adult work from wherever you like. So yes, the headlines make it feel like everybody is moving back to the office, but the numbers say it ain't so Joe. Maureen Clough (32:05.069) When- Maureen Clough (32:10.35) I was not expecting that one. Joel (32:10.521) Well, we interrupted you. had something to say. Go for it. Chad (32:14.184) What you gonna say? Maureen Clough (32:15.746) I may have lost my train of thought, because that just really was quite jarring. Joel (32:17.605) Well, I'll talk and if you, if you remember, just, chime in. Okay. a few weeks ago, it was last week, LinkedIn invested in an office space, which I said at the time, well, if, anyone has remote work job listing information and trends on remote jobs being posted, it's LinkedIn. So to make that investment, they must know something about the future of remote work that we don't. this feels like. Maureen Clough (32:25.516) Amazing. Maureen Clough (32:30.35) Mmm. Maureen Clough (32:44.226) Mm. Joel (32:47.771) A world that is dividing between tech and those that aren't in tech. And if you're in tech, going back to the office, having people leave, they don't want to go back to the office and less head count is a good thing. And if you can do it by avoiding the layoff headline, that's a great thing because saying we're going back to the office and losing 5 % of your workforce is a lot better than saying we're firing 5 % of our workforce. Microsoft as of this writing, uh, Meta and Microsoft. Maureen Clough (33:10.766) Exactly. That's precisely right. It's a PR play. Joel (33:17.295) both reported quarterly earnings. Meta jumped 6 % on an earnings beat, citing some advertising resilience. Microsoft also blowout quarter jumped 9%. So these tech companies have incentive to go back to the office if nothing else, because they can eliminate headcount and increase earnings. Microsoft said in their report that 30 % of all code written now is AI generated. That's a lot of developers that aren't going to have a job at Microsoft. And it's early, it's early. And to Mo's point, how many of those entry level jobs that Microsoft used to bring in people are not going to be brought in anymore and mentor those folks. The other side of it is that it's a softening labor market. There are fewer opportunities for better paying jobs. People used to be able to jump ship and get a 20, 25 % raise in a new position. Chad (33:46.79) And it's early, and it's early. Maureen Clough (33:48.34) Mm-hmm. It's only gonna go up. Maureen Clough (34:00.482) man. Maureen Clough (34:05.304) Yep. Maureen Clough (34:11.496) yeah. Joel (34:11.641) Those days are gone. So you have power back to the employers, which means get your ass back to work. We're laying people off, but not saying we're laying people off. and it's, this is a continuing trend that we're going to see. mean, I, I'm, I'm, I'm inspired by Chad and it's in Spotify and there are those organizations, but I fear like this is going to trickle down to smaller businesses that say, if Microsoft and everyone else big that I know uses does this. Maureen Clough (34:17.429) Mm-hmm. Do as I say. Maureen Clough (34:24.802) Yeah. Joel (34:39.247) Then I should be doing it too. They just don't have the shareholders, the boards that are sort of pushing them into that direction. Maureen Clough (34:47.126) It can also be, yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, they can compete. Yeah. no, what I was gonna say is I think that they're actually gonna double down on offering things that people actually want because they need to compete. They probably don't have as much money to throw at these people as these bigger players. So they're gonna be like, hey, you know what? You can work from home a couple days a week or all the time, whatever. And they get expansive access to more talent. it just... Chad (34:47.27) I disagree. I think that's how they get the good talent is because yeah, exactly. Go ahead, Mo. Maureen Clough (35:10.542) I mean, Zillow is doubling down on their remote first policy for that reason. They've had like 4X the applications and talent available to them because they are a fully remote organization and they optimize for that. And so it's just, I think it's kind of an own goal for a of these companies because they're going to see people leave. And by the way, like you said, people are not able to earn what they used to be able to earn at these corporate jobs, even at these big players. I have people reaching out to me saying, you know, first of all, I can't get a freaking job interview. And you know, five years ago I did all the time, but when they actually look at the job, Chad (35:30.877) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (35:39.768) that they're interested in, the range of pay is like sub what they made in 2021. So like you said, this market is changing, the demand is changing, it's softening, and so there are gonna be some implications. So people are gonna be able to win, other companies are gonna be able to win on benefits and making accommodations for people that bigger companies apparently refuse to do. Chad (35:45.085) Mm-hmm. Joel (35:59.237) I mean, we also know that the number of remote jobs being posted is decreasing quite a bit. unless they're reframing them as different kinds of opportunities, we do know that there's a lack. Chad (36:09.01) You're talking about at those companies or overall? Joel (36:12.185) Jobs being posted as remote jobs is decreasing. I know indeed. Chad (36:16.488) So remote jobs continue their strong growth trajectory increasing by 27.5 compared to Q1 of 2024. That's Aspen Tech data and they're the data kid. So what you're reading, I don't know, to take a look at the actual data source, could be companies, specific segment or cohort of companies, but the actual data in Aspen Tech goes out and they look at Joel (36:25.701) that. Okay. Chad (36:45.32) corporate career sites, top down, scrape those sites, and that's where they get their job data. So that's 27.5 % growth. Maureen Clough (36:53.122) Your study was sponsored by commercial real estate probably. Let's be honest. We can all cherry pick the data, right? We can find the survey. Joel (36:57.979) Mine was, mine was, well, mine was, mine was in D-Day. This is from October of 24. The share of job postings, advertising, remote or hybrid work options fell from a high of 10.4 in February of 2022 to 7.8 % as of October, 2024. So a little bit of. Maureen Clough (37:04.715) Indeed. Chad (37:14.898) And that's a bad index because you have to pay to get on there. And also they don't go after all the jobs like Aspen Tech does. So you're looking at subsets of data versus again, it's like LinkUp, which we'll talk about here soon, the same kind of thing, right? They're looking at the broader expanse of job data where Indeed is more focused on really what they're getting paid for. Joel (37:31.183) Mm-hmm. Joel (37:40.217) Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll be right back. Maureen Clough (37:43.586) Make sense. Joel (37:51.355) All right, gang, follow this one under Canary in the coal mine. Uh, United parcel service, also known as UPS announced it will lay off 20,000 workers, about 4 % of its 490,000 strong global workforce and close 73 facilities by June of 2025, aiming to save $3.5 billion. The cuts part of a network reconfiguration plan STEM. from a strategic reduction in Amazon shipments, which are down 50 % projected through 2026, and economic uncertainty from Trump's tariffs. It's worth noting the Teamsters Union representing 330,000 of the UPS workers warned of a fierce fight if the company violates its contract to create 30,000 jobs in light of the news. Chad, your thoughts. Chad (38:46.14) Yeah, UPS, I think the whole UPS Amazon relationship started out really well for UPS and it gone into the shitter. So I don't think they want those, they don't want those packages or that contract anymore because it's starting to become a loss for them. And I believe this does have to do with a tariff anchor around the economy's neck. mean, what should we expect at this point? But, but. UPS is also shutting down facilities while opening brand spanking new robot clad ones. And this is an evolution that we've talked about over the years. For example, working in an Amazon or UPS warehouse is backbreaking work. Amazon actually blew through entire population of workers because the work was hard and the expectations were unreal. UPS leans heavily into the working with unions. which is good because unions won't allow that type of Amazon treatment. And UPS doesn't want to burn through total workforce like Amazon has in some cases. Now that means less backbreaking jobs, but then creates new segments of jobs for people skilling up to maintain the logistics slash robotic machine. So yes, I see where the economy. with less ships coming in from China will need less dock workers, less conductors on trains carrying product, less over the road truck drivers and less last mile UPS warehouse and delivery workers. But this might be the perfect time to transition and hopefully start training some of those laid off workers as robotic mechanics and also more of the over the road drivers for when this tariff lunacy is hopefully over. So Positive I see the optimistic side on this looking for optimism and and seeing that you know UPS again working with unions It's an entirely different kind of like scope than what you'll see with with with an Amazon Joel (40:41.626) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (40:42.808) Thank you. Maureen Clough (40:55.106) Dude, thanks for that little injection of hope. We need some silver linings, man. Thank you. I was gonna be like, hey, next time I do the show, can we get some happy news up in the mix, please? So you don't have to call me Debbie Downer. my gosh. Okay, yeah, I like that. I like that. So hopefully there will be some upside to this really shitty news. So yeah. Chad (40:57.48) Here for you. Here for you. Chad (41:02.362) You Maureen Clough (41:13.848) But yeah, mean, now that I can't get $30 because I'm not going to have any money and they're not shipping them in, like, of course that's going to have a cascading effect, like your guest said, right? The ripple effect and the domino effect of all of these decisions. And it just extends so far out into Main Street and into our communities. And so we'll see that. Chad (41:30.926) Get your kids a sharp stick as Joel Cheeseman would say. Joel (41:31.131) Where's here's sharp stick and yeah. so a little, a little, comic relief, maybe Mo I found this video on tech talk, which is dripping with sarcasm, but there's some truth behind it. Maureen Clough (41:32.704) Yeah, yeah, just. Joel (42:51.343) No, of course not. Anyways, I thought you'd enjoy that. Maureen Clough (42:52.398) That's so good. That's so good. Thank you. Chad (42:56.242) should be a spokesperson for the Trump administration. Joel (42:58.395) She's good. So I looked back in history because I was curious. The last time UPS laid off 4 % of its workforce, any guesses, any guesses, any guesses? 2008 was the last time they made financial, the great recession. So this is serious business. we know some of the people at UPS and do believe, I'm sure, that they will, just like in 2008, Maureen Clough (43:01.646) You Chad (43:09.736) COVID. financial, wow. Maureen Clough (43:12.494) Mmm, that's a telling time. boy. Joel (43:26.009) repurpose, refocus, do what's right by the workers. think that's a huge part of what UPS does. So while I do agree, like this is a canary in the coal mine. stuff like these, again, these guys see the data, they see what's coming in, what's, what's coming down the pike. When you see Jamie Dymans saying that a recession is likely, it's, it would behoove you not to take some of that data and advice and not. you know, prepare for it. And I think that's what UPS is doing. hopefully to Chad's point, the jobs that do come back will be higher level jobs, automation specific new job titles. Totally. So, it's, it's, it's gonna be painful guys. It's going to be two dollars instead of 30 for awhile. but just like our friend there at target, get used, maybe get used to it, but will we come out better? I sure as hell hope so. I sure as hell hope so. Also, I it was funny. Maureen Clough (44:09.688) That's what they're telling us about AI. It's gonna be better jobs. it's so tough. Chad (44:12.71) Mm. Joel (44:25.755) You probably saw Amazon was coming out with the tariff addition, additional costs from tariffs. And then the Trump administration said, this is a hostile, hostile move, which is. Maureen Clough (44:29.89) Yes. Chad (44:34.524) was hostile. Maureen Clough (44:35.811) bent the knee. Chad (44:41.458) Transparency is hostile. Maureen Clough (44:42.432) Yeah, exactly. Joel (44:42.563) I'm- well- Again, this guy just doing stuff that's unconventional. I don't remember a president basically dictating what businesses could do at this level. There was some commentary about, if lower price goods go up, let's call it 50%, then they'll be more equal to stuff that's made in America. Someone said, well, Chad (44:55.24) because we've never had a dictator before. Maureen Clough (44:55.63) Mmm. Yeah, I was like, mmm. Joel (45:13.091) Why wouldn't America come and just raise the price because all the cheap shit is now more expensive. And Trump said something like, well, if they do that, you know, they better not do that. We're watching them, et cetera. It's like free market, this stuff, like it's just kind of sad that, that the white house feels like they need to attack someone like Amazon. A business from putting like, Hey, here's the cost, but with tariffs, here's the cost that you're going to be paying. and basis basis, bend it over bent over. Chad (45:37.0) transparency. Yeah, that's all it is. Joel (45:41.793) And it's taking it and not, it's just, it's just a sad, it's just, it's just unfortunate. Maureen Clough (45:42.446) Immediately. It's crazy. Chad (45:46.266) It's the fellatio 2025 baby. Admit it. That's this administration. Maureen Clough (45:49.858) Yeah, that's right. That's the t-shirt you wanted that we were like, We're like, maybe not, Chad. Joel (45:54.075) Felatio 2025, yeah. That sounds like a great one to have on stage at the next SHER meeting. Guys, if you like what you're listening to, if you love the show, hate it, whatever, leave us a review, subscribe, go check us out on YouTube. We are everywhere if you haven't noticed. And if you're not plugged in, please do so. We'll be right back. Chad (45:55.196) Yeah. Maureen Clough (46:07.79) You Maureen Clough (46:12.046) You Joel (46:19.995) Winter is coming. Actually, it's just ending here in the Midwest, but it is coming. And a post entitled, quote, winter is coming, but not quite yet. End quote. Our friend Toby Dayton, you know him as the Sasquatch of statistics warns of an economic slowdown signaled by a weak jobs report. He predicts potential stagflation in 2025 with inflation at 3.2 % and unemployment possibly hitting as high as 5%. The silver lining. Maureen Clough (46:25.198) you Joel (46:48.731) Toby's firm is forecasting a net gain of 211,000 jobs in April above the 130,000 estimated. And from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, US job postings stalled in February, showing zero month over month growth and a 3.5 % year over year decline, signaling a cautious hiring environment. Job creation dropped 10 % from January. And 9.8 % from February in 2024 reflecting a slowdown. Who says this isn't a feel good podcast, Chad. What are your takes on all these numbers? Maureen Clough (47:22.701) You Chad (47:27.206) I'm going positive because if I don't, I wouldn't be Euro Chad. I'm almost out of here. Okay. So take a look at the, the, the, the, the linkups, this week in jobs data update says daily active job descriptions featuring the term, the term agentic have spiked from virtually zero to 2000 plus in just over two years. then Aspen tech labs, yep. Those kids again, Aspen tech lab shows that in Q1. Joel (47:33.209) EuroChat is coming. Maureen Clough (47:33.518) That's not fair. That's cheating. Chad (47:57.128) AI related job positions increased 25.2 % compared to Q1 of 2024. So AI roles are increasingly strategic and command high compensation. Hear that? That's more money kids. With median annual salaries reaching about $155,000, $156,000. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. So good on growth, good on evolution. Now we have to do is get trained up for it. Maureen Clough (48:26.136) So the A, another good one. Okay, maybe that one's my favorite. But okay, so, but the AI related roles that you mentioned that are getting upticked right there, does that mean like they're actually functionally working on AI solutions there or they just are using AI at the company? Do you know, there a date on that? Chad (48:32.391) You Chad (48:46.94) No, they're AI solutions, they're AI related roles. So they're not just using, yeah. Now, linkups, theirs was actually focused on the term in the job description being agentic. So that was more kind of a parallel where Aspentech Labs is focused on specifically AI related jobs. Good question. Maureen Clough (48:50.486) Okay. They're not just like average person just using, all right, yeah. Cause now everybody has to do that at their jobs. Maureen Clough (49:12.92) Okay, okay. Yeah, I still, I'm a little concerned about the fact that we all are being told we have to use AI at our corporate jobs now and that we have to prove that we don't need to hire anybody else. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that, but Quiet Part Out Loud is happening more and more. But yeah, it still strikes me as crazy that there doesn't seem to be any sort of skills-based training on this. They're just like letting people fly with what I would imagine is pretty sensitive data internally at their companies on these platforms. And they're just like, hey, Chad (49:23.62) Yeah Maureen Clough (49:42.094) use it and let us know what happens. Genie's out of the bottle, I guess. I don't know. It's kind of a wild ride. And I wonder where we're going to land. I guess it's good that more high paying jobs are coming. I also hope that people who are over 50 can access them, since there's a crazy bias that was released in a recent report by Generation. and done with Google.org about how anything that touches AI at all as a role, you're like 60 % less likely to consider someone over 60 for that job. So that sucks since I know I was like, yeah, like exactly. You better be in the middle and you better somehow stay there. Yeah, it's a wild time. It's a wild time. I know I probably should. Chad (50:13.938) Sounds like we're screwed on the bottom with Gen Z and we're screwed at the top. I mean, you better be in the middle. Joel (50:24.455) You better start a podcast or some shit. If you're like, better just, you better just become an influencer, start a podcast, something that's where the world is going. Who's the CEO that was like, if you want me to hire, you have to prove that we can't AI the job. Okay. So, for sure. Chad (50:26.576) It gets late early. That's all I gotta say. It gets late early. Maureen Clough (50:33.995) God. Maureen Clough (50:39.842) That was Shopify. That was Shopify. I'm sure in others that just haven't leaked, Like, or people who like say the quiet part out loud are just, I'm surprised that people are just out there saying it, but I'm sure it's happening behind the scenes in cloaked language all the time. Joel (50:52.527) My fear is that we haven't even begun the job loss, the inflation, the empty shelves. When there's run on toilet paper, like Katie bar the door, shit's going to hit the fan. Canada sort of set the stage of you can stand up to America. Our little 40 million person country can stand up and vote accordingly. Maureen Clough (50:59.042) Right. Chad (51:01.084) We have it. Chad (51:08.028) No pun intended. Maureen Clough (51:09.23) Dude. gross. Joel (51:22.363) and fight this guy. And I feel like lot of other countries will be empowered to say like, not necessarily the emperor has no clothes, but maybe, you know, it's a red tie and a really ugly blue suit instead of you know, emperor's gown. But so I question, know, so I don't think China is backing down. I think this is really focused on China. I don't think they're going to back down. I think this is a, like almost a war of wills. And I question whether America Maureen Clough (51:32.494) I love it, the fashion critique. That was funny. Chad (51:37.404) And a back tattoo. Joel (51:52.293) can suck it up and deal with it because this is not, this is not the generation of our grandparents and great, great grandparents, depending on your age. Look in a year and a year and whatever change, there's going to be another election. and if shit is bad, the Dems will take the house and then we'll be in court again and impeachment and she'll be sucky. China doesn't have that problem. Like there is no reelection. There is no like cycle that they can shit. So Chad (51:54.492) We can't handle pain. Maureen Clough (51:56.3) Mm-mm, we're not doing well. Joel (52:20.557) I question America's ability to stick this out. And whereas a company like Apple can say, okay, we're going to pivot extreme to India. Companies like small businesses that we focused on, like don't have that luxury. So the stress on our system is going to be immense. And I, I question whether or not we can, we can play the long game. Unlike. Maureen Clough (52:24.536) Good point. Maureen Clough (52:40.814) So true. Joel (52:46.821) Dad jokes, which I can play the long game all day, baby. I can go all day. Chad (52:51.752) Oh we know, oh we know. Maureen Clough (52:52.782) Bring us home, baby. Joel (52:54.299) If a man and a woman need a marriage license to get married, what do two lesbians need? If a man and a woman need a marriage license to get married, what do two lesbians need? Chad (53:08.242) Did you buy a lesbian joke book? Because it seems to be like scaling that way for some reason. I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead. Joel (53:16.003) A Liquor License. Maureen Clough (53:16.206) I got nothing. Maureen Clough (53:21.101) boy. Okay. my God, bye. Chad (53:22.14) We out. Joel (53:22.765) We out!

💼 Indeed vs. ZipRecruiter: The HR tech legal slap fight ends with a conspiracy theory? 🧠 Big Tech's antitrust tour: Meta and Google are getting legally undressed by regulators. 🦾 AI replacing humans: A startup literally called Mechanize  wants to automate everything . But don't worry, the CEO swears it’ll "enrich humanity." Just like trickle-down economics did. 💣 It's either China or SkyNey as Palmer Luckey is back—this time pushing AI weapons. Tune in before the machines take your job and  your podcast mic PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:34.132) Yeah, just counting the days til the Christie Nome OnlyFans account launches. Hi, boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Draft Day Cheesman. Chad (00:44.861) This is Chad, antitrust, Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:47.66) And I'm JT. It's finally summer here in New England O'Donnell. Joel (00:52.404) On this episode Indeed drops big tech flops and the AI war machine pops. Let's do this. Chad (01:03.429) Love the weather getting nice before I get out of here. That's, that's beautiful. That's just beautiful. Joel (01:08.02) Does it feel like Portugal or does Portugal have its own sort of feel? Got the ocean breeze there, yeah, the laid back atmosphere. Chad (01:13.671) Yeah. Yeah. Portugal. Yeah. Yeah. It's just an entirely different, it's an entirely different experience, but it is nice. It's going to be 80 degrees here. So that's nice. That's one. Joel (01:22.163) I get it. Joel (01:26.964) It is, it is nice. And I, uh, I'm, participating in my annual half marathon, uh, down in Louisville this weekend and, it's supposed to rain all weekend. enjoy this while it, while it lasts, my 85 year old dad, 85 year old dad is doing a, uh, a 5k on Friday. we'll see, pray for, pray for my father to make it out alive in a 5k. Chad (01:33.411) Chad (01:39.835) You might be running with robots. J.T. O'Donnell (01:46.83) Meanwhile, good for him. Meanwhile, we're breaking 60 here in New England, breaking 60 in New England and sunny. And that means everybody's like shorts, shirts off and walking around with the dunks. You know what mean? It's like, it's a good life. You got it. Yeah. Chad (01:49.607) Thank you. think you're dead. Yeah Chad (01:59.165) Ha ha ha! Joel (02:00.692) Is that Dunkin' Donuts for our non-Northeast listeners? Yeah, I'm sure the Birkenstocks come out. The whale shirts, shirts with the whale in it come out. Chad (02:03.645) The...the dunks. J.T. O'Donnell (02:08.812) It's a vibe. Chad (02:09.981) It's a real vibe. J.T. O'Donnell (02:12.046) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:14.907) Yeah. dude, drafts today too though. Thursday. Thursday. Joel (02:17.78) drafts today and the Browns have a, an epic history of picking really good in the top two or three players. so they have the number two pick today. I'm, I'm going to go with Travis Hunter. I'm fine with, mean, he's probably the best receiver and the best corner in the, in the draft. So that's kind of a unicorn pick. I'm fine with that. Chad (02:22.274) Jesus. Fucking it up. J.T. O'Donnell (02:24.622) you Chad (02:28.241) fucking it up. Chad (02:37.041) Yeah. Yep. he's amazing. He's amazing. Joel (02:42.952) But I'm not sure a Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Deshaun Watson, quarterback trio is what they want to go in with for the full season this year. think they probably pull a quarterback somewhere out of the draft. Chad (02:54.363) Yeah. To think that the Browns could also ruin Travis Hunter, it just makes me sad. It makes me sad. He needs, I mean, he'll play great secondary wise, but he needs somebody to be able to feed him the ball. Deshaun Watson's a mess. I mean, and everybody, it's just, it's a potpourri of quarterbacks at the Browns right now. It's fucking horrible. Joel (03:05.534) Mm-hmm. Joel (03:15.026) Yeah. Yeah, it's, the land of misfit toys at the quarterback room for sure. For sure. J.T. O'Donnell (03:16.92) There's a word, potpourri. Whose grandma house were you at Chad? Chad (03:19.261) you I was being nice. I'm trying to get into Euro Chad mode. Joel (03:31.636) I'm kind of, I'm kind of hoping like for a dark horse, will Howard, pick up at the QB spot. think will Howard is a, he's, will Howard I think is a, is a, he's an uncut gym. I think he could be a solid, at least backup in the league. We'll Chad (03:37.007) god again, you're trying to ruin a good- Chad (03:48.781) He could be, he could be a Josh Allen. He's got the same stats that Josh Allen does. I mean, I mean, just from a physical standpoint, I mean, he's played all the way through, and obviously won a national championship, which Allen didn't do. but I mean, yeah, don't do it Browns, please, please don't do it. Joel (04:07.828) I think you're a little out of control with the, uh, with that comparison, but we'll see. We'll see Tom Brady, right? Go back to the Northeast for JT Tom Brady, greatest ever arguably. Uh, you know. Chad (04:11.409) Comparisons, mean, you know, it's early. It's early, yeah? J.T. O'Donnell (04:16.054) Well, the only way can contribute to this conversation is I'm married to a Raiders fan. He's been a Raiders fan for 40 plus years and it's just so sad every year I just watch him. Chad (04:28.241) Yeah, yeah. Joel (04:28.788) My oldest is a Raiders fan. think just because the jerseys are cool. Just the black and the silver is cool. Yeah, and Vegas is cool. J.T. O'Donnell (04:34.51) And they're in Vegas now. Chad (04:36.145) Yeah, but when we were growing up, Howie Long, man, watching Howie Long just destroy motherfuckers, that was, I mean, you know, that was back in the day when, yeah. Yeah, Marcus Allen. J.T. O'Donnell (04:39.072) Yeah. Joel (04:43.508) Kenny. yeah. Jim Plunkett, Alan, who was the corner with all the goo on his hands. Remember that guy? well stick stick it. No, no, no. Stick them used to be a thing. Remember guys would put stick them like all over their arms and like the ball would just glue to their hands and the Hendrix. No, Jim Hendrix was a linebacker. Anyway, the Raiders had a guy in the eighties who had like stick them all over like his uniform and shoes and Chad (04:52.285) That sounds like a porn. Yeah, I do it. Yeah, was. Yeah. yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (04:58.338) Yeah. Amen. Joel (05:13.396) It got, it got disgusting, disgusting. But yeah, come on Browns. Come on Browns. Do the, do the right thing. Do the right thing. Chad (05:15.312) Nasty. Chad (05:19.697) Yeah. Do the right thing. Don't, don't, don't draft Will Howard. Yes. Yes. Shout outs. Joel (05:24.02) This time a shout out sponsored by our friends up North. Kiora text recruiting made simple and affordable. Chad, what you got this week? Chad (05:29.447) Kiaora! Love it. Well, my shout out is to Shungun, you know him as Roy, Roy Lee, who got kicked out of Columbia for building interview coder AI, which was built to cheat on coding interviews. He raised 5.3 million to build something new. Go ahead, let's roll that beautiful bean footage. You can check it out. J.T. O'Donnell (05:48.76) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (05:57.565) Let's go. Chad (06:00.839) Okay, for all those kids not watching on YouTube, guys are out of date. Chad (06:09.787) And he's obviously lying. He's not 30. Chad (06:36.209) So I could see you doing this, Cheeseman. You've got the glasses for it. Chad (06:56.573) Alerts are going off. Joel (07:13.236) Every guy needs this, by the way. Chad (07:14.215) Here he goes. Here he goes. He got it. Chad (07:21.413) as calendar pops up. Chad (07:30.685) Okay, so this guy creates a tech called Cluely, which looks like it's going to pretty much attach to those meta ray bands that Joel owns. Has a heads up display so that you can see it, your date or the person across the table, maybe a company interviewing you, they can't see the answers that are popping up in your glasses. And this guy, again, just got thrown out of Columbia. Joel (07:40.852) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:58.919) for building an interview coder that was helping coders cheat. 5.3 million, yeah. Joel (08:03.262) just got five and a half million dollars, right? To do this thing. Yeah. Do you remember the scene in Terminator where the guy, Arnold's in the hotel room and the guy knocks on the door of the super and he's like, Hey buddy, what are you doing there? And it's like possible responses. And the last one was like, fuck you asshole. he goes, fuck you asshole. That's what that reminded me of. J.T. O'Donnell (08:06.734) You Chad (08:19.291) Yeah. Chad (08:22.919) That's exactly it. That's exactly it. But Roy did say every time technology has made people smarter, the world panics, then it adapts, then it forgets, and suddenly it's normal. The question is, I know guys will think this is normal because we love to cheat, especially on dates, but JT, is this something that, I mean, if you know a guy's wearing glasses, maybe he's got those Ray-Bans on, would you say, okay, J.T. O'Donnell (08:24.322) Yeah, there is a simple fit. Chad (08:50.043) What's happening behind those shades? Joel (08:52.83) post foster grants. J.T. O'Donnell (08:53.0) I mean, literally the first thing I thought of when I watched it is like every girl is just gonna say, your glasses off to talk to me. they say take your glasses off to talk to me, right? I mean, I'm sorry. You're gonna need to make those in contacts. Chad (08:59.709) There you go. There you go. Easy win. Joel (09:04.392) Which, which let's be honest with, with some of the girls I've dated taking off your glasses might be a good thing for some, for some of the guys out there for them as well. Yes. Yes. Bad eyesight has always been an advantage for me. Advantage for me. All right. JT, what you got? Chad (09:10.701) for them as well. Yes, carry on. Chad (09:20.509) J.T. O'Donnell (09:24.366) So my shout out is to the 1,504 people that joined me live last week. We officially launched Pro Voice Talent Agency, which I'm super excited about. Thank you for letting me share it. It's the first white collar talent agency that is repping professionals and helping them land brand and partnership deals. And I will also just say my book came out on Amazon, which I'm so excited about. Yeah, Pro Voice is now live. This is 20 years of my life. The story around how I... Chad (09:44.603) Yeah, pro voice baby. That's awesome. J.T. O'Donnell (09:52.526) got my own pro voice and how I've coached people to get their own pro voices and earn a knowledge paycheck, which is very simply stop being held hostage and trading time for money with a single paycheck. Let us show you how to build multiple income streams so that you've got income diversity and security with a knowledge paycheck. And so that's the is about. Thank you to all those people. The response has been amazing. We have signed a bunch of people already, which is just exceeding all goals and expectations. And I'm just a happy person this week doing what I love and helping people. Chad (10:20.049) Wait! J.T. O'Donnell (10:21.4) you know, build their dream. Yeah, yeah. The agency's launched. Deal, partner deals. It's a good life. Yeah. Chad (10:22.737) great weather, a book's out, you got all this coming together. I love it. I love it. Joel (10:28.776) So help walk me through this real quick. I come to you and I say, I need you to be my agent. What happens? J.T. O'Donnell (10:34.158) So you come to us and first we, you essentially audition by coming into the program and learning how to be a pro voice, right? So you go through the training, you pass, if we see and like what you're doing, we sign you. When we sign you, we put you in a platform that allows you to not only gain followers for free, but monetize those followers. And then through the monetization of those followers, we're able to identify what you could be charging for. What can you be creating in this world that people would pay good money for? So there's a whole journey that we take you through. Chad (10:39.879) There's an audition. Ooh. Chad (10:53.644) that's J.T. O'Donnell (11:03.256) But additionally, we've signed deals with various companies who are looking for white collar talent to do video and to talk about whether it's product services, jobs, for example, shout out to Flockety, amazing partnership with Tracy, so that people can monetize in that way. And it's incredible. I've done it all. One of the big things is I literally showed people in this training that I've done this in under two hours a month. Let me show you how I made money here. I made money here. I made money here using my ProVoice. so that you don't feel held hostage. If you want to keep a day job, keep it, because it's going to give you a lot of great ideas for content. But if you also, over time, want to transition out of it and be paid for what you know, then this is the way to do it. And it's been happening for a long time, but I will say AI has created this incredible moment. The technology that's come available in the last six to eight months is really what pushed my ability to be able to launch this agency confidently, because I won't do anything where I can't make people money. It's got to be there. And the tech really came full circle, something that Chad (11:54.557) Nice. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (11:58.85) would have cost you $2,000 a month to just get started with, probably not seeing any return, is now zero cost. So think about that. We've got the runway to get you up and running and monetizing. And that was the big shift. so very, very exciting times. Both of you would be great pro voices, by the way. Yeah, right? Cha-ching. Joel (12:12.468) You had me at monetizing. And where would I go to find out more? J.T. O'Donnell (12:19.616) Yeah, if you just go to the company work at daily.com and you will see Pro Voice Talent Agency in the menu bar, or quite frankly, it's already ranking on Google. So if you put in Pro Voice Talent Agency, you'll find it there too. Joel (12:22.388) Mm-hmm. Joel (12:30.036) you with the SEO. All right, I'll give you guys one guess at my shout out. Chad (12:30.973) Very nice. J.T. O'Donnell (12:31.512) Yeah. Chad (12:34.193) Food. J.T. O'Donnell (12:34.584) Food. Chad (12:36.797) Cheers. Joel (12:39.796) Shout out to Chipotle this week. They are opening their first location in Mexico. No location has been announced yet, but I didn't know this. Chipotle has 58 restaurants in Canada, 20 in the UK. I didn't know if they had it in the UK. And they have six in France and two in Germany. But to go to Mexico, which is so close, is interesting. Now, word of warning to Chipotle. Taco Bell did this and they failed in Mexico, in China, by the way. Chad (12:57.604) wow. Chad (13:03.655) Yeah. Joel (13:09.256) Panda Express failed in China. So apparently something about Americanized Mexican food failing in Mexico. So can Chipotle knock the trend? Can they buck the trend? I guess we'll see. think it's a black market effort to get avocados under the tariffs. I think there's going to be an underground railroad for Chipotle from Mexico to the, yeah, funnel, they're funneling guacamole avocados from Mexico. Chad (13:11.73) Yeah. Chad (13:28.861) a kind of fun funnel. Yes. Joel (13:36.03) to avoid the terrorists. That's my thought. But shout out to Chipotle. And you know what goes great with a burrito, Chad? yeah. Chad (13:45.063) free t-shirt. You have a nice free Chad and Cheese t-shirt or I don't know maybe some chicken cock. I love that. But first you got to go to chadcheese.com slash free. You can get that t-shirt. You can get that t-shirt. Sponsored by Aaron App, our friends over at Aaron App. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from the boys up north at Keyura. J.T. O'Donnell (13:49.208) you you Joel (13:52.944) yeah. Chad (14:10.769) Craft beer from the Data Geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey, chicken cock baby, two bottles. Whiskey from Van Hack. Again, another, another, that's right, Canadian. And then our last Canadian. Jesus Christ, we got Canadians everywhere. If it's your birthday, you're gonna want some rum from Plum, but you can't win if you don't actually register. So go chadcheese.com slash free. Joel (14:29.778) Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Chad (14:40.893) play and win. Joel (14:42.004) That's right, Chad. Another trip around the sun for listeners Duarte Mendonca, Danielle Kozinski, Matt Lozare, Gia Johnston, Chris Brevik, Michael Simon Cowell, Tony Hoban, Joe Samuelson, Scott Lazerman, Yoni Zapiro, Steve Gilbert, Charlotte Marshall, and Lars Schmidt. Happy birthday, everybody. Happy birthday. J.T. O'Donnell (15:03.118) Happy birthday! Chad (15:06.801) Very nice. Then go figure. It's time for events. Events, where's my McGrathic events? Yeah, come on. I feel naked without Steven McGrath talking about events. Joel (15:13.626) Events. Chad (15:23.741) Oh, Steven. Yeah. So thanks to shaker marketing, uh, we're going to be going to unleash in may, may six through the eighth coming up really quick. That's right. We're going to be doing this in Vegas on Wednesday, the seventh. We're going to be, uh, during the morning, we're going to be in the suite and the Cosmo filming the new sessions season with our team, uh, the team over at smart recruiters. Uh, that night we're going to have a film VIP wrap. Joel (15:32.19) Vegas, baby. Chad (15:51.591) party, we'll have more details to come. But this, this again, this, isn't your regular party. We're filming during the day. That's right. Big film wrap at night. then we're going to be hosting two talks in the gem booth, one on Wednesday, the seventh at 3 30 PM Vegas time. And then Thursday morning at 10 30. So don't drink too much chicken cock cheeseman. if you're coming to unleash, look us up. Joel (16:16.869) Mm-hmm. Yeah, good luck with that. Chad (16:19.749) Again, gonna be at the Cosmo in a suite. We're gonna be at Jem in the booth. We'll be around, look for us. And who knows, Joel might be drinking some chicken cocks. Joel (16:29.909) Don't tease him, Chad. Don't tease him now. Chad (16:33.036) It's all about the tease. Joel (16:41.958) All right. How about some Indeed and ZipRecruiter news? Indeed's lawsuit against ZipRecruiter filed in October was dismissed without prejudice. On April 8th, the suit claimed ZipRecruiter made false and misleading statements about Indeed to steal its customers. ZipRecruiter denied the allegations and vowed to contest them. Things ended with no monetary payments or restrictions on Zip's operation. And court documents suggest both companies discussed Chad (16:44.093) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (16:45.23) Bye! Joel (17:10.95) an amicable resolution to avoid further litigation. Chad, your thoughts on all this kumbaya between Indeed and ZipRecruiter. Chad (17:20.221) Yeah, I mean, to be fair, when Indeed does clear, they're not clearly messaging to the market and they hardly ever do. But when Indeed does either, you know, poorly articulate or they have a half-baked product like CPSA or CPA, it's really hard for the market to understand what the fuck's going on, let alone competitors. So in this case, what it sounded like is the sales staff was pretty much putting out what they heard. Joel (17:43.22) you. Chad (17:49.711) A version of what they heard. And again, when you have a company like Indeed, who's really not articulating well, they're putting half baked products out on the markets, you know, things could, you know, things could get kind of, kind of shook up. But to me, this messaging from Zippercruter is purely diversionary as they, their own products. They have poor messaging themselves and they have shitty products. Phil. so to To me, this feels like two over-promising and under-delivering competitors trying to divert attention from lackluster product and revenues. It's all a bunch of drama for your mama. Let's get back to business. Joel (18:37.332) JT. J.T. O'Donnell (18:38.35) I think it's financial. It's bad out there right now for them. So do you really want to be wasting money on lawyers? That's pricey. 500 bucks, 1000 bucks an hour. So, you know, I don't think either side really wants to burn their cash when they've got much bigger problems ahead of them, which is, you know, people are dumb with job boards, especially job boards with a lot of bogus jobs. The experience is defined. And if you've been in the market for a long time, the vast majority of job seekers have made up their mind about you. If someone works with job seekers every day. Chad (18:55.773) you do. J.T. O'Donnell (19:07.938) They don't like what's out there. And so, you you've got to figure out how to be new in the space. I would be spending my time and money on looking for hot properties to purchase, you know, the way Metabot and stuff, for example, like this is where you're going to have to redefine yourself. Cause I just think a lot of these brands aren't going to be able to come back. It's too far to find. Joel (19:27.86) So you're saying it's a profit deal, huh? You're saying it's a profit deal. All right, guys, I want to make this real simple. Let me put on my aluminum hat here while I get conspiratorial on you guys. Recruit Holdings buys Indeed. They buy Glassdoor. Zip Recruiter would be the final leg of the stool. J.T. O'Donnell (19:30.22) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (19:37.877) no. no. Chad (19:55.613) You've got Simply Hired. Joel (19:55.796) While this case, while this case was being brought up and being, being, you know, the lawyers go back and forth, somebody recruit holding said, Hey guys, listen, we're buying zip recruiter soon. So let's just sweep this little lawsuit thing under the, under the rug. And then we'll be announcing our acquisition of zip recruiter, you know, in the next year at some point, uh, by the way, zip recruiter stock down 23 % year to date, a market cap of about $580 million. That is couch cushion money for recruit holdings. So, the government's too busy with antitrust with the big tech time for recruit holders to come in, snag up zip recruiter and add it to the stool. That is indeed glass door and soon to be zip recruiter. You heard it here first. Chad (20:41.233) ZipRecruiter's already dying. ZipRecruiter's already dying. mean, what's the use of even buying them? It's like buying Monster Career Builder, which you've also predicted. They're not even a competitor really anymore. They're taking themselves off the board. That's the point. And again, as JT had said, they got their own problems. They got revenue problems. And it's not because of ZipRecruiter. J.T. O'Donnell (20:47.916) Yeah, exactly what I think. Joel (20:50.994) You, you take a competitor off the board, baby. Take a chess piece off the board, just like they did with glass door and they'll put indeed content on there. Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (21:06.818) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (21:10.614) Mm-hmm. That's not the property I meant. Joel (21:12.69) And what's the best time to, what's the best time to buy when there's money problems, when they're, when, when zip is desperate, needs a sugar daddy, who they calling recruit holdings, baby. That's why this, that's why this case is, is swept under the rug. Everybody, everybody. let's, let's keep this thing, litigious. Shall we, meta Chad (21:15.835) What's the best time not to buy is when you're having money problems. Chad (21:24.199) They're probably calling everybody. They're probably calling everybody. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (21:29.24) Joel (21:37.256) Google, Microsoft, Amazon, all the big tech is in the news, not for all the good reasons. Metaphase is an FTC lawsuit alleging illegal monopolization via Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions with a trial underway and potential divestitures. That's a tongue twister looming. lost two antitrust cases, one for search monopoly, another for ad tech facing remedies like breakups or bans on the horizon. Microsoft fired 2000. J.T. O'Donnell (21:39.85) Yeah. Joel (22:06.494) quote, low performers this week with several with without severance. A memo outlines strict tools, including rehire bands and transfer limits for low scores. More layoffs may hit managers in May at Microsoft and Amazon last but not least is stepping up plans to lower the ratio of mid management executives to lower level employees because they're cheaper. Probably Chad, your take on all things big tech this week. Chad (22:33.5) Yes. Chad (22:37.031) So on the employee side of the house, these companies are huge and they're going to continue to do these things. They feel like they've got control in the market and they do right now. So they're going to continue to really push people out or push them down. Because again, money, if they're out, they're not paying them. If they're pushing down, it's less that they're paying them. But when it comes to the monopolies side or the monopoly side of the house, It's been a long time coming for monopolies. mean, the US government has been asleep at the wheel, allowing some of these app acquisitions to happen. In Google's defense, though, they built search and Chrome, right? And it looks like they might have to divest in Chrome. I mean, Chrome is literally just an extension of Google search. I mean, it's a smart extension, right? It's amazing. YouTube should have never been allowed. It's like it's the number two search engine. Right behind, right behind Google. and then obviously the ad exchanges is, is, a huge issue. Meta on the other hand, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, they've got kind of like this buyer berry mentality and they've talked about it, which was dumb, but they've got this buyer or, or, Barry. but the thing that the two big arguments Zuck has is TikTok, surging and YouTube. which is also seen as another social network, right? So he can kind of like back out on those two. And as we talked about Microsoft, Microsoft has gone through antitrust before they were the last big antitrust company. and they started to engineer cheat codes around antitrust where instead of buying. Microsoft invests large amounts funding startups like open AI. didn't go buy open AI. They just put over a hundred million dollars in. Joel (24:18.612) Mm-hmm. Chad (24:35.707) Right? So this allows Microsoft the oversight and control without the worry of antitrust. So I guess, you know, the big question for me is how in the hell do they get around this? Cause this is, mean, this is, this is still market manipulation. and then you can talk about Apple. obviously they hold a 55 % market share, on search on mobile because go figure the iPhone and then Amazon. mean, Joel (25:00.808) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:03.897) Amazon just owns the whole damn system for God's sake. So we need antitrust and we need it now. J.T. O'Donnell (25:17.486) I think you covered that. can't, I don't know, yes to all that you said there on that whole side of it. think it's fascinating. I'll be interested to see who buys Chrome. I really think that a lot of people, I think, would love to get their hands on Chrome. For me, the big thing was what, Microsoft is laying the groundwork for what I think a lot of these companies are gonna do, which is you're fired and you can't come back for two years. And I think that is lost on a lot of people what that means. It's really easy now in an interview to be like, oh, you just got laid off from Microsoft? Did you get severance? Joel (25:17.566) JT. Chad (25:34.397) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:45.787) Yeah. No. J.T. O'Donnell (25:47.374) It's not an illegal question. It's not an illegal question, folks. Right? So there you go. When you can't say yes, guess what? I know you're not welcome back there. I know you've got let go for performance. This stuff is real. We don't understand that these companies get to decide. And this is one of the reasons I've been talking to people for so long. Stop outsourcing your brand to your employer. Joel (25:47.86) That's crazy. That's a brand. That's a brand shot in the foot for Microsoft. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (26:10.702) Everybody sits around their resume and says, want these companies on my resume. That's your brand. You allow them to manipulate you. And so I get worried with these people that feel like they have to work with these big companies and they want to have all these pedigrees because it's not doing what it used to anymore. And it really can set you up for something like this. These people worked for Microsoft so they could run around and say, I work for Microsoft. And now I'm going to have people coming to my doorstep saying, can I hide that, JT? How do I deal with that? So much bigger ramifications than people realize. Joel (26:42.174) Love it. Joel (26:45.492) So my favorite part about this whole story is how Big Tech, kissed Trump's ass, went to the inauguration, wrote big checks. And then when, when Metta, gets its feet to the fire, Zuckerberg offers $450 million, on a $30 billion, penalty, right? so like, let's take a huge discount and then, Trump and, and, the FTC, guess. Chad (26:58.941) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:05.863) Chomp change. Yes. Joel (27:14.994) said no. Zuck calls Trump apparently meets with them in some form or fashion moves his offer from 450 million to 1 billion. And Trump says no. So like after all this ass kissing and probably doing like bending over backwards for the government when they want information or terrorist stuff, like, like for, like for the government to just say like, fuck it. Nope. You're on the hook for 30 bucks. So that's the, that's my favorite part about this whole story is how Zuckerberg and Metta like did everything they thought they should be doing to get like a pass and got screwed on Google. Man, Google has, think six products with a billion plus users. And it's, I think it's less about monopoly than it's just good stuff. Like they just have a better search engine. They have a better browser. They have the best, video play and they're, they're been competitors in the past. Chad (27:49.373) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:11.796) so it's, hard to me, to give Chrome away or divest Chrome is a throw away that to me, that's like, okay, we'll, we'll give up something. YouTube probably would be a better product as a standalone company. Like I do, I do believe YouTube is held back a little bit by Google, but a lot of the other stuff, docs and Gmail, like, I think it just works and people use it. So I, and like you said, Chad, to Microsoft, this is the, this is the playbook. Chad (28:22.407) Mm. Yes. Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (28:25.986) you. Chad (28:40.893) Yeah, it's new. Joel (28:41.266) launch it, go hard, flood the zone. And then by the time the government and the legal system figures it out, you've already got 90 % of the market and you can kind of call the shots from there. think JT crystallized or set the table for what Microsoft's doing pretty well. Amazon is interesting to me. And we'll talk a little bit about AI taking over later in the show, but there's not a company Chad (29:03.943) Mm-hmm. Joel (29:09.008) out there that's trying to do more with less. I think that middle management piece is going, and JT, talk about the white collar worker and the knowledge-based worker all the time, and this is, we're seeing it, right? This is the knowledge-based middle man getting squeezed out, going for less expensive workers. And I think that is a pretty interesting development at Amazon. J.T. O'Donnell (29:30.446) The executive wasteland is enormous right now. It's just littered with people who thought if I just do good work and climb that ladder, I'm going to be the one that survives, right? And now look who's losing their jobs. It's crazy. Chad (29:34.593) I bet. Joel (29:42.579) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:42.907) Yeah. Yeah. Well, you take a, you take a look at before all the layoffs, I mean, it was bloated. I mean, it was bloated and, I think, you know, being able to, and, and, and hopefully you get, get a lot of these executives and they turn around and they, have new startups. I mean, hopefully this leads to more innovation. Right? So you take a look at two things. First and foremost, you're getting rid of some of those individuals and hopefully they go out and create their own innovative organizations. And then you have the antitrust, you split them up and hopefully there's much more innovation because they are split up, right? One thing that gets me the most though, and I wanted to mention this, is that we always give China shit for stealing IP. I mean, always. That's one of the things that everybody, every business person talks about. What about how Amazon plays around the edges with IP? They develop products that are on their platform, they duplicate those products, but they go around the IP edges, right? And then they sell against the originals who are on their platform. And then they rank above them. Right? So, I mean, this, this to me, mean, if Google is easy, Microsoft, mean, Facebook, you know, they're having some issues with, obviously YouTube and, and Tik TOK, but Amazon shit, that is a not, that's, that's a shot out of the park. then add AWS on top of that. Jesus. I mean, it just seems, it seems easy. I don't know why we're so slow other than we're lazy. Joel (31:12.468) Hmm. Joel (31:18.996) By the way, there's an article in Quartz talking about how Gen X is getting screwed again. They started our careers in a recession, dot bomb, 2008, mortgage crisis, COVID, and now like robots are taking over. And in our older years where we should be making the most money possible, now is when all the robots come and AI comes and takes all the jobs. And while we're the most, the highest paid people, guess who gets screwed? Guess who gets nothing. Chad (31:24.349) You Chad (31:30.813) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:50.095) And guess who got it all? The fucking boomers got it all. Fucking boomers. Joel (31:51.39) Gen X once again. Fucking boomers. All right, let's take it. The, yeah, the silver tsunami, the silver tsunami, all the, all the laundromats that are going to be handed down to, to the lucky, the lucky people. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a quick break. Come back. We'll talk about more doomsday AI stories. J.T. O'Donnell (31:53.302) and That's okay. There's a great wealth transfer coming. We're good. We're good. Chad (31:59.078) That's what I'm hearing. Chad (32:07.483) And homes, yeah. Joel (32:18.964) All right, guys, a recent survey of 84 C-suite executives found by Spark and Missions revealed entry level positions for college grads are being eliminated at 52 % of companies. That's one out of two for people who aren't good at math like me. The survey also revealed that execs believe 51 % of grads lack verbal communication and presentation skills, while 50 % lack problem solving and critical thinking abilities. What's more, a recent Indeed survey says more than a third of workers regret earning a college degree. yeah, and a startup called Mechanize launched this week promising to quote, the full automation of all work, end quote. JT, the kids are not all right. What's your take on the future of entry level jobs for college grads, college in general, and human work totally disappearing? J.T. O'Donnell (33:06.264) Yeah. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (33:13.294) Yeah, so first of all, I would agree completely. We're seeing that there are no jobs for college grads. As someone who works with, you know, I always have friends that I've grown up with, can you coach my child? The articulation thing is a real problem. I'll get them senior year of college and then we'll get them in their first job and then more recently their second. And the way that they communicate with that two year time in the workplace, significantly different, right? So we do have a really true issue there. And I think any parent listening here today needs to understand that. your child in order to graduate and get a job is you're going to have to focus on those communication skills big time. College degree thing, we've been talking about that for a while. I'm just seeing so many young people get in and decide to not finish. And again, my youngest daughter just took a semester off. Junior in college, she's making six figures a month in her business. So she took a semester off to say, I think I need to work on the business mom. I'm like, six figures a month? Yeah, you probably do. That's crazy, crazy business money. Joel (34:12.532) Not a month, a year. 100K a month? 100K a month? She's making 100K a month. What? All right, say more. J.T. O'Donnell (34:20.16) Yes. Yeah. So do I need to say anymore? And so she's like, is it makes sense to go to I can probably finish mom community college online. Yeah, she probably can. So you just have to ask yourself, they have so much access to information and knowledge. They have no bad habits. They have no preconceived notions. your kid, you know what she does do? She's watched every episode of Shark Tank. So there are going to be. young people out there that need to go at it a different way. And if you're a parent out there listening and your kid saying, think I can make money doing this, give them a shot, because there's no jobs for them to get when they graduate right now. And that's going to be that way for a little bit here. So teach them to be entrepreneurs. Their business is one. Joel (35:02.686) God, I'm a loser. God, I'm a loser. I'm sitting here talking to you idiots with an aluminum foil hat on my head. Chad (35:04.065) Yeah. Look at that. Look at, look, look at the hat you got. Yeah. I mean, this is on you, man. This is on you. Joel (35:12.692) I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something. I don't know what. Chad (35:16.029) Bugs Bunny, good one. So around these kids not being able to get any of these skills, this is the problem of the system. We don't have mentorship and development like we used to. We don't. And then now we take a look at education and then we look at it as bad. Are you fucking kidding me? That's because the system's fucked up. Because we have... Joel (35:18.654) Yeah, fuck's funny. Chad (35:44.997) We have charged way too damn much and put all these kids in debt. Right? And then, well, wait a minute, before we did that, blue collar jobs were bad. Right? You don't want to be blue collar jobs. You want to go into college. Well, then everybody went into college and then they charged the shit out of them. Right? So, I mean, this is a systemic problem from the top down. And this is about fucking workforce. Period. This is all about workforce. And if we don't have people right now, Understand robots are coming. If we don't have people doing the jobs, you're not going to get the revenues. It's just not going to happen. To the mechanize. So they talk about full automation of work and full automation of the economy. Okay. So when you hear something like that, you think of the clarinus CEO, right? Who's just bullshitting and he's doing that for pre IPO buzz, right? It's all pre IPO PR buzz. Well, the difference is that the mechanize founder Joel (36:28.948) in. Chad (36:40.413) and see CEO to may Bursa Bursa glue. That's a hard one. He's not a slouch lives in the Bay Area, still an associate director at epoch AI, a company that is in big letters on their website, quote, investigating the trajectory of AI for the benefit of society. What the hell does that mean? Well, epoch analyzes the economic impact of AI. and produces benchmarks for AI performance for companies like OpenAI. They do a much better job of sequencing those types of things. So before he was at Epoch AI, the CEO, he was a research scientist at MIT. Yes, MIT. Then before that, he was also a research intern at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. Yes, at Oxford. He also had a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. This guy's no slouch, okay? So at the end of the day, you want to think of market potential just in the US, right? Because they're looking at agentic and they're looking to actually take over human jobs. There's estimated $18 trillion. in aggregate wages just in the US alone. So this is where I call bullshit. He said, and he argues, that having agents do all the work will actually enrich humans, not impoverish them, through economic explosion, explosive economic growth. Okay, so this guy is fucking killing me. He doesn't understand that the only... He can't make trickle down work. We haven't been able to make trickle down work. AI is not going to make trickle down work. This is lunacy. The problem is we have incredibly smart people who have these visions that are out there and they just don't align with reality. That's a problem. We talked about it, about mentorship, development, education, blue collar. That was all vision. It all went to shit. This is the same kind of stuff, man. Long diatribe. Joel (38:56.744) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (39:06.424) I have great faith in the creator economy though. I do. just, economy, right? I say that word because you see how it's, for example, TikTok in China is not our TikTok. It's an educational platform. It's where people are just learning and absorbing all sorts of things. And when I think about the creator economy that's coming upon us and how people could teach what they know, learn from others, and that becomes a monetization center. I do see a world where that's pretty exciting and that there's a lot of opportunity there. What I struggle with is how many jobs are being lost until that innovation, you said it best, the bigger the disruption, the bigger the innovation. We've seen that historically, but they never coincide at the same time. So we're in, we're going to a lot of pain here for a while. We're going to have a lot of pain here, but I think I am ultimately an optimist and as someone who is seeing the possibilities and actually executing on them in the creator economy and seeing what we all can do. I mean, you're part of the creator economy right here with this podcast. it's incredible. what I think we'll be able to do and that's exciting and interesting to people. You know, like I'd rather use my brain that way than to do that stuff that doesn't light me up. So I guess I'm overly optimistic but I see an incredible future ahead, pain for a while but then a really interesting future ahead. Chad (40:14.781) I think it's amazing. I don't think it's enough to actually bridge the gap that we're actually heading into. I think it's gonna be good for some people. It's not gonna be good for the greater good period of all those people. It's just too big. Joel (40:32.852) I bring up my new, uh, Tik Tok fascination. It's, called, it's called friendliest catch. And they catch these crabs that have barnacles growing on them and they, they pinch off the barnacles. It's like dermatology meets with the wild kingdom. It's, fascinating stuff. And there's another guy that does it with lobsters. So barnacles grow on these lobsters. They pick them off. It's great. It's great. It's awesome. Learning. No learning. No entertained. Chad (40:36.388) good God. J.T. O'Donnell (40:36.782) Bring it. Chad (40:43.516) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (40:58.22) Incredible. Monetization of what you know, right there. But still good. They're getting paid per click. Paid per click. Paid per click. That's it. You know, you get a million views. That's not jump change. Chad (41:02.045) going to say, how do they make money doing that? That's what it is. Yes. Joel (41:03.558) Entertained, yes. Chad (41:10.749) And then you sell that crab on top of it. you're double dip. Oh yeah, they throw them back into a net. No, they throw them back into a net. Joel (41:14.738) They throw them back in. throw them back in. It's a party. put them on the operating table. They clip the barnacles off and it's like, Hey buddy, they even give them a little snack when they throw them back in. It's great. Friendliest catch. it out. By the way, since this is a recruiting show for the most part, Kevin Wheeler, friend of the show, had an article on his sub stack recently. It was really good. want to quote what he said. I am tired of hearing AI won't take your job, but someone using AI will. J.T. O'Donnell (41:17.398) You give them names, you do memes, merch. Joel (41:41.63) This is false reassurance for recruiters. AI isn't just automating tasks. It's dismantling everything recruiting has been based on. The role isn't evolving. It's disappearing. Wow. That, that got my attention. Chad (41:57.373) That's a deeper discussion. I don't agree, but yeah. Joel (42:01.894) All right. Let's take a quick break. If you like what you're hearing, make sure you go leave us a positive review or a negative view. We don't care. We just like reviews. subscribe to our YouTube channel or slide in our DMS. I don't know. Do something, whatever the kids are doing these days, whatever the kids are doing. Yeah. Sign up for free stuff. we love you. Go buy, go to work at daily by JT stuff, buy your kids stuff like she needs any more money. Good God. We'll be right back. Chad (42:14.961) Chatcheese.com slash free. Get a t-shirt. Chad (42:24.669) Pro Voice book. Joel (42:30.452) All right. I'm calling this the word doomed segment of the show because it's been so happy go lucky up to this point. right. Palmer lucky and Dural founder urges the US to heavily invest in weapons, arguing that quote Pandora's box and quote was opened decades ago with autonomous systems like anti radiation missiles. The hell is that? Speaking at a Ted live event, he warned that failing to advance AI weaponry. risks China surpassing the US in a future autonomous weapons race. and I mentioned my half marathon this week. I'm in big trouble too, because these robots run. More than 20 robots raced against thousands of human runners this week in a half marathon in Beijing organized to showcase China's advances in humanoid technology. Chad, this isn't your military. from 40 years ago and it's not the world you joined 53 years ago. What are your thoughts? Chad (43:29.937) So robots running half marathons, I mean, that's just an effort to humanize and normalize. mean, you get it, right? They are testing, don't get me wrong, but they also want to normalize what we're seeing. Lucky, he has three major messages that he can use in this endeavor for him to make more and more and more money. Fear, China's gonna beat us to the next super weapon. That's scary, that's fearful. Hearts and minds. Americans don't need to die on the battlefield, right? That's win hearts and minds. Hey, allow the robots to do it. They don't need to do it. And then history. This is probably the most scary. So from a historical sense, Lucky's right. There are definite innovations and technologies that helped us win wars, tanks, airplanes. And what if Germany or Japan beat us to developing the atomic weapon in World War II, right? If you haven't seen Man in the High Castle, go watch Man in the High Castle. I don't believe he's right, or I do believe he's right, but I believe we should be developing these weapons under strict oversight. Elon can turn on and off Starlink at will. That should not be allowed and should be under government's oversight, period. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, you know, the, agency that developed the internet GPS drones and a variety of advanced robotic systems, they should be leading in watching these efforts, not allowing guys like Musk and lucky to prospectively burn the goddamn world down. Joel (45:19.892) JT. J.T. O'Donnell (45:21.414) I just don't think I can add beyond it. It's just so your brain, we've all seen enough movies. Your just brain goes to those extremely dark places with what this can be used for and you know, in all of those movies, it didn't end well for us. So, you know, I, yeah, I don't even want to belabor it. I'll let you, you take it over with that beautiful hat of yours. Yeah. Joel (45:41.896) Not just movies, but real life, which brings us to this week's. Chad (45:48.413) my favorite. Joel (45:49.204) All right. Let me take you back to September 1939, known as an event known as the charge at Grahonti. Poland on horseback charges the German armored resistance or invading force. I'll let you guess how that ended for them. Not very well. A lot of dead soldiers and a lot of dead horses. Poland was fighting a war from 1914. Chad (45:58.706) Mm-hmm. Joel (46:16.436) Germany was fighting a brand new war and technology almost always wins in a military conflict. So it makes perfect sense to be very afraid that China or Russia's or North Korea's AI is better than ours and we have nothing to fight back against it. The challenge, what's going to be interesting is can AI disable nuclear weapons? I'm speaking science fiction. I don't know. There are people smarter than me. Can they, can they put some gamma rays, some crazy shit like, star wars base space force like knock some nuclear weapons? I don't know. But if, if the world has been a pretty safe place when everyone knows that mutual assured destruction is going to happen, we've all been kind of cool. We've all been kind of playing it on the low key. But if somebody gets a weapon that they say, Chad (46:53.095) Hawk. Chad (47:07.367) Mm-hmm. Joel (47:13.394) we can eliminate the nuclear threat. It's going to be bad for the sides that don't have that technology. I, I totally, totally appreciate where he's coming from from there. So sonar, what was it? Radar gun missile. I don't know what the hell is going on. Yeah, I don't, I don't really do military stuff that well, but dad jokes, dad jokes. I do. I do pretty well guys. J.T. O'Donnell (47:18.414) you Chad (47:29.649) Radar gun missile. Chad (47:36.146) Yeah. Chad (47:39.973) is your weapon of choice. Yes, yes. Joel (47:41.596) Yeah, this is my deadly weapon. Weapon of mass destruction, if you will. All right, guys. What's the hardest part about eating a vegetable? What's the hardest part about eating a vegetable? Chad (47:56.797) There's so much iron in the vegetable. Joel (48:00.766) putting them back in the wheelchair. Chad (48:03.325) come on, man. That's so bad. So bad. Joel (48:06.406) We out. J.T. O'Donnell (48:06.892) Me out. J.T. O'Donnell (48:11.554) Just kidding.

This week, the boys unpack why Europeans are ghosting the U.S. like it’s their ex. Spoiler alert: it’s Trump’s Tariffpalooza meets Border Chaos™. Why deal with TSA cavity searches when you can sip wine on grandma’s terrace in Lisbon? Next, it’s off to Spain, where Job&Talent is printing money like it’s fiesta flyers. They're not just staffing—oh no—they're matchmaking you with your dream job and  your future ex-husband using AI that’s smarter than your average CEO. Turns out, treating workers like actual humans and  sprinkling in some Silicon Valley fairy dust makes traditional staffing agencies look like they’re still faxing résumés from a RadioShack. From there, it’s a full-on HR tech roast. The gang throws elbows at startups chasing AI clout like it’s 2016 crypto. It’s “Buy or Sell,” featuring Vizzy (not a seltzer), PeopleForce (sounds like a failed Marvel reboot), and Klara (no notes, just vibes). And hey, Spain’s immigration stance? Basically, “Come on in—we’ve got jobs, tapas, and a booming economy.” The question is: will the rest of Europe catch up or keep gatekeeping like it’s a VIP lounge? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:17.867) Yeah, causing chaos and rocking like Amadeus you were listening to the Chad and cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your co host Joel tiptoeing through the tulips Cheesman Chad (00:29.289) This is Chad, Vino verde, Sowash. Lieven (00:32.824) And I'm Lieven "Going Short on All that's American" Van Nieuwenhuyze Joel (00:37.985) this episode, Job and Talent Raises, Spain Embraces, and a little Buy or Sell. Let's do this. Chad (00:48.339) Lieven, can't go short on us. You're going short on Chad and Cheese. You can't do that. that's a point, yes. Good call. Good call. Good save, good save, good save. Lieven (00:53.556) But you're Portuguese and Joel is almost Canadian, right? Joel (00:58.463) Yeah, half Canadian. Yeah, half Canadian. Joel (01:05.163) By the way, it's good that Chad's going back to Portugal soon because apparently, dude, no one's going anywhere. No one's coming to America. That's for sure. Have you seen some of the numbers that have come out? I mean, huge 25 % reduction in Europeans coming to America this summer, according to some surveys. Like, it's a sad thing. Chad (01:08.093) Yes. Chad (01:15.677) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (01:22.793) Yeah. Chad (01:27.561) Europeans spend about hundred and fifty five billion dollars on US tourism and we're just throwing that down the shitter. so I leaving, are you coming to the US this year? Oh, yeah. Joel (01:33.279) Mm-hmm. Joel (01:37.845) And leaving told us a story. leaving, Don't tell the Hawaii story that you told us in the green room because I didn't even know that happened. Lieven (01:39.438) No. Chad (01:44.554) No. Lieven (01:46.99) I'm looking the article up right now, need to find it, but I'll give you a short resume. Two Flemish girls and Belgian girls went or were planning to do a trip to Hawaii and they arrived at the American border. All their papers were okay, of course, and they had the right visa, And they were arrested and they've been in jail for 10 days because they couldn't prove Joel (02:05.377) Mm-hmm. Lieven (02:10.932) what hotels they booked in Hawaii, but they didn't book anything in advance. They were just going to travel a bit and see where they ended up. But just because they didn't have any reservations, they weren't trusted and they were sent back to Europe after 10 days in jail. They were handcuffed and their feet were cuffed and to jail. It wasn't really a jail. It was called some kind of institution for, you name it. don't know what Trump called it, but yeah. Chad (02:17.406) Mm. Joel (02:28.673) They went to jail. Joel (02:38.56) Yeah. Chad (02:39.561) Yeah. Lieven (02:40.258) But it wasn't jail. Chad (02:42.429) Yeah. So that, those types of stories do not help tourism. Number one, and I'm somewhat plugged into the news in Portugal and it's hard to get, it's hard to get the Portuguese pissed off. But Trump's first and foremost, the US government, the way he's pissing them off is they sent a letter to companies in Portugal and say that if you supply... Lieven (02:46.528) Nope. Joel (02:52.833) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:10.355) goods and services to the, to the United States, you've got to abandon your diversity, equity, inclusion efforts. So that pissed them off. and then, then the U S polls, the metaphorical plug on European wines, which a big export for, for, the Portuguese wine industry. So Portugal, Portugal pulled their orders for F 15 fighters and are now buying Swedish Griffins. Joel (03:28.075) Yeah. Chad (03:37.225) Instead, Swedish Griffin fighter. let's do the math real quick. Last year, Americans imported nearly $6 billion of wine from the EU, especially from France, Italy, and Spain. Now the other side of that equation, Europe spends hundreds of billions buying American weapons systems. The math doesn't work out kids. The math just doesn't fucking work out. Yes. And think of the, the, the Joel (03:45.537) You Joel (03:59.817) Math isn't math-ing on any of this, any of stuff. Chad (04:05.597) thousands of jobs. So the American aerospace and defense industry employs about 2.2 million people. And less orders means they need less people, right? And those are good paying jobs. We're talking about companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, L3. And then think of the next order of all of those supply chain partners who are smaller companies who actually provide their American companies and they provide Joel (04:12.683) Mm-hmm. Joel (04:22.081) Right the on. Chad (04:35.407) American supply chain parts, things like that to those huge companies. So mean, the downward cascade of fuck around and find out is happening. Joel (04:39.328) Mm-hmm. Joel (04:46.365) And Hawaii relies on people coming to visit. don't know if you've been to Hawaii or know much about it, but if they don't have people go there, it's kind of a really bad situation. I went to Canada recently, which is not Europe, but they all think they're Europe. It's like Europe light in Canada and the border to and from was nothing I've ever seen before. It was like maybe one or two cars ahead of us. Maybe two lanes open. It's usually if you've done the Canadian border in Detroit. Chad (04:50.045) Yes. Yeah. Chad (05:01.129) Hahaha Lieven (05:01.166) You Chad (05:08.937) What do you Uh-huh. Joel (05:16.041) can be somewhere between nightmare and, you know, moderate discomfort for the weight that you have to do. it was not a problem to get in or out. Like there was not, I didn't get the cavity search or anything, but clearly the number of people coming and going between us and Canada has decreased significantly. And the numbers I've seen around 70 % mark of people I've heard towns in Florida, which the snowbirds, from Canada go to in the winter have been. Chad (05:43.817) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:44.757) ghost towns, Arizona, Phoenix, a lot of Canadians are bypassing America. like you said, Chad, a lot of jobs are dependent upon Canadians coming down and spending money and that's not happening. Chad (05:54.739) Yes. the number one industry in Hawaii. what do you think it is? Tourism. Billions and billions of dollars. And now you got guys like Liebner like, no, fuck that. I'm not gonna go there. I'm gonna go to Madeira instead. Lieven (06:10.476) Mm hmm. Madeira, I love Madeira. That's right. Joel (06:12.129) Levin's not spending a night in a hostel. I mean, jail in Hawaii anytime soon. That's not. Chad (06:13.982) Yeah? Lieven (06:17.87) And by the way, I just checked the article. The girls were handcuffed and brought to a deportation center. And they had to sleep on molded mattresses and they had to wear some green uniforms and got crappy food and a disgusting toilet. And it took them 10 days before they were deported again. Chad (06:30.133) huh. Lieven (06:41.376) And the reason was not only because they couldn't prove that they made reservations for a hotel, but also the people at the border thought they were going to work illegally in the United States. And why they thought that, nobody knows. But they said, you're going to work illegally, so we're going to deport you. That's it. Joel (06:47.873) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:00.045) They need that leaving Ritz-Carlton Concierge service to get them out of trouble when they're in Hawaii. Chad (07:00.241) isn't necessary. Chad (07:07.337) Unfortunately proof isn't necessary anymore. It just is do shit. It's gut Joel (07:10.751) yeah, yeah, due process, what the hell's that? Due process, fuck that shit. Jeez. Lieven (07:10.827) No. Yeah. well, at least already ported to Europe and not to El Salvador or whatever. You normally deport people to, I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Chad (07:16.155) my God, let's do shout outs. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Let's get out of this. Joel (07:26.187) Bringing me down. Can I, can I shout out, Emmanuel Macron, the dude, dude's a baller. you know, I, there's a vacuum in Europe of like, who's going to pick up the ball and go, for Macron for me is just, is just the man. three, three things that he's done in the past couple of weeks, two weeks ago. he told the EU at a, in a press conference or speech, told the EU to stop investing in the U S in retaliation, for the tariffs. Chad (07:28.499) Please. my friend. Lieven (07:31.83) Macron. Joel (07:55.553) He's been very public, not afraid at all. Secondly, he's meeting with the UK ahead of a Trump visit to sort of get ahead of the game and try to get the UK into the EU arms embrace as opposed to Trump slash America's embrace, which I think is a baller move and a real poke in the eye to the Trump administration. And number three, Chad (08:01.533) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:08.103) yeah? Joel (08:19.327) You guys know I'm married to a scientist. So I'm hearing this all the time, but France is spearheading a choose Europe campaign to recruit scientists from the US who are genuinely concerned because of budgets drying up things getting canceled research getting deportate. Yeah. I mean, you're seeing it in Ivy league professors and whatnot. But anyway, McCrone and the choose Europe campaign. Chad (08:38.781) Deportations. Joel (08:48.459) come to France, come to Europe. We're, we're, we're focused on and committed to spending money on research on science. We believe in science, et cetera. So some of these moves that Macron is making, I just, I love it. he's not afraid just like I was, you know, propping up Harvard and Maine for fighting back. Macron in his own way is fighting back against authoritarianism and I shout you out, Mr. Macron. Chad (09:15.806) You enjoy some France, don't you, Levin? You enjoy going to France. What are your favorite places to go in France? Lieven (09:21.525) Sure I was, First of all, we live very close to France. think it's a two hour drive, one and a half hour drive. France is a lovely country. Really, it has beautiful seas, has the mountains, it has everything. So there's a saying, when God created France, all the other countries were very jealous. So in the end, God created the French to make up. And there is something about it. But still, I love France. Chad (09:26.589) Yeah, right there, share border. Joel (09:34.081) Mm-hmm. Joel (09:47.403) Ha ha ha. Lieven (09:53.87) And I love skiing. Joel (09:55.189) Lieven has a frequent flyer card at the Moulin Rouge. We know that. We do know that. Lieven (10:00.384) You've been there. You've been there with me. Yeah, so don't blame me. Don't blame me. Joel (10:04.083) I have, I have, I have for sure. Chad (10:06.473) We're gonna have to rectify that this year. I gotta make sure I get up on my meds. Lieven (10:09.326) No. Joel (10:11.679) My question is, can I go to France now? The stories I hear are like Europe hates America, they hate Americans. Can I? Chad (10:19.315) Just don't act like a dumb American, you'll be fine. Lieven (10:20.846) just say you're from the UK, they won't know the difference. Chad (10:24.121) Or, or yes, where are your, where are your Canadian, the big maple leaf. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. No big deal. Joel (10:24.223) Sam Canadian. Lieven (10:26.765) Canadian is fine. Joel (10:29.771) say about and a lot about ask Lieven (10:30.19) I really think if you go to Paris and you think waiters used to be rude against Americans before, you'll notice something different now. Chad (10:39.081) Oh, wow. I can't imagine. I'm definitely going to stock up on my Canadian gear. Joel (10:40.99) Hmm I'm going to go to the finest restaurants and ask for the poutine when I go there, see what happens. Yeah. Lieven (10:48.686) I once, maybe I already told this in one of these episodes before, but I was once in a very, very good restaurant in France and I ordered a bottle of, I said Montrachet and the waiter said, sir, it's Montrachet. Otherwise people will think you're American. It's not Montrachet, it's Montrachet. sorry, sorry. Like it was the most terrible thing that could happen to me was that people might think I'm American. Chad (11:08.292) Ha ha! Chad (11:15.657) Could be, could be. All right. So, leaving the soap beside himself with all this tariff talk, he doesn't have a shout out. So, I'm going to go ahead and hit my shout out. It's to the 2030 World Cup. That's right. We're talking European football kids, which will be hosted by Spain and Portugal. When these major events happen, money flows into the cities and countries. And in this case, Lisbon is getting a new airport. Lieven (11:18.296) Okay. Lieven (11:21.813) Mm-mm. Joel (11:23.061) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:43.185) But I am incredibly excited about a new Lisbon to Madrid high-speed train, which is planned to cut the journey from 10 hours to three hours. So shout out to the 2030 World Cup and bringing more high-speed rail to my new backyard. Joel (11:49.323) Hmm. Joel (11:59.551) And if you're looking to reserve your Chad Airbnb, book now because that's going to be going fast. Chad (12:02.665) Hey. Chad (12:06.419) Book now, yeah, yeah, good call. Joel (12:09.419) Book now before the surge pricing takes effect. Takes effect. By the way, Chad, I can, I can tell you're you're headed back to Europe soon because your mood is, is brightening. what is it after unleashing in May you're headed back. All right. Euro Chad's coming back. Everybody rejoice, rejoice. Lieven (12:12.302) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:13.576) I'm not Uber. Chad (12:19.145) So happy. Yep. Yep. Straight back. Chad (12:27.337) Nobody's, nobody's happier than, than me and, and more than likely Julie too. Joel (12:32.701) And your work wife is pretty happy about it too. Let's get to topic, shall we? Lieven (12:33.016) you Chad (12:35.005) Yes. Bad. Excellent. Joel (12:40.745) All right, guys, speaking of Spain, let's talk about Spain based job and talent, the on demand staffing platform. They closed a 92 million dollar euro. That's around one hundred and one million dollars for our US listeners in series F funding, valuing the company at you guessed it, a unicorn worthy one point three billion euros. The funding will support international expansion, sales and product development. development with a focus on AI. The company plans to roll out its agents. That's AI agents to support workers and supervisors with their first agent named Clara already conducting over 180,000 interviews. Chad, your thoughts on the JNT news. Chad (13:29.031) Yeah, I mean, why does J &T need another 92 million? I mean, they already have over 500 million in funding. I mean, during a down round, I might add. Job and talent is so deep into their current models that it's, I would assume it's really hard to pivot toward AI at this point. They've done a ton of acquisition around traditional staffing. Joel (13:39.169) Series F. Chad (13:55.113) So they're going to need some extra cash. It sounds like to pull this off. So for reference earlier this month, we talked about companies like a Deco joining forces with Salesforce and creating a new company that evolves the traditional staffing models with agentic workers. So it feels like the 92 million is a necessary adjustment because if they don't invest now, they're, they're going to be toast. What do you think, Levin? Joel (14:20.165) I'll throw in the, let's call it political, economic, geopolitical headwinds that they're probably going to be facing over the next four years or so. The investor confidence is such that they're like, hey, we might need a little extra to get through some of these bumps in the road. These guys have been a real success story that has been a real pleasure. One of the biggest in Europe, if not maybe the biggest. Lieven (14:20.737) Thank Chad (14:25.31) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:31.239) Yeah, especially in the US. Joel (14:47.905) Uh, there are a few reasons I think that they're pulling this off. One is the scalability of their model. They're basically Upwork for, for frontline workers. Uh, whereas Upwork is really easy to, you know, contract a designer to make your logo. Like these guys have figured out how to sort of on demand, get someone to work in your frontline organization in real time. Almost. Uh, I think that's been a huge benefit for them and the tech that they have apparently is a little bit of a secret sauce, uh, that they can do that. You mentioned the expansion. They've been incredibly aggressive, but also pretty thoughtful in their, in their expansion, obviously Spain, UK, Germany, and France are kind of layups in terms of European expansion, but they've also acquired a company in Mexico. They've grown in Columbia as well as coming to the U S which are our growth markets for them. And I, I assume that they will continue to grow targeting Asia at some point, maybe India would be interesting as well. And the number three, they're really focused on the worker. They offer health benefits. They offer training for workers. It's not just a technology platform where, we'll fit you in with a job and you figure out the rest. actually seem to care about their workers. And I think the workers are reciprocating by using the platform and sharing it with their friends and using it pretty religiously and not using anything that competitively comes down the pike. I think the new AI stuff is pretty interesting. Think about Paradox or any other kind of conversational AI. Clara says, hire hundreds of workers in two hours. That's language that we're very familiar with in the conversational AI space. They also have a agentic AI coming that's named Tio. He's coming to manage your accounts. So if you hate managing all these vendor accounts, Tio is going to be here to manage it for you, which I think is a really interesting progression in regards to AI. Help your customer use your platform. What a concept. Lieven (16:57.102) Nice. Chad (17:02.729) So, Levin, were they buying up a lot of staffing companies? Did I get that right, or were they buying other tech platforms? Because I seem to remember them buying staffing companies for the most part. Lieven (17:14.668) Yeah, they're not playing in our league, think, or not in the same playing field as we are because we never meet them when we are trying to do &A's. So I think they're buying different companies. And I've looked into them some time ago when we were talking about them and they show. They're basically a platform. And I think they buy companies that still do manual work behind the scene and they try to integrate it. Chad (17:25.917) Mm. Lieven (17:44.728) But I'm not sure how much actually is totally automated and how much looks automated. But I'm not sure. But anyways, I was looking at the article and 92 million euros, that's a lot of money. And the good thing is, since it's euros, it will still be a lot of money tomorrow. Well played from Job and Talent. But actually, I think they're making a very smart move. And 92 million actually is Chad (17:44.829) Mm. Joel (17:50.219) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:02.089) way to rub it in. Joel (18:03.329) Ouch. Ouch. Yeah. Lieven (18:13.388) really a lot of money. If you want to invest in agentics, then you can do a lot with 92 million and they're doing the right thing because the market is going through a very difficult time right now, even though Spain is doing pretty well, but the markets on average is doing as it's pretty heavy. But now is the time to invest because they will be ready once the market starts booming again and they'll be there. And I think I always have mixed feelings with those agents. Basically they are developed to replace humans. That's the whole idea, to save money. And thank God we have the European AI Act because it states that hiring people or not hiring people, making that decision is something which has such a big impact that it shouldn't be done by AI, it should be done by a human being. So we still need humans to make the final decision, even though I feel that AI could definitely be very objective. But in this case, it's not allowed and that's a good thing. Joel (18:43.873) Mm-hmm. Lieven (19:11.244) So I think 90 % of recruitment can be automated and can be replaced by those agents. So if they get their technology right, this could be a very big step forward. And their agent is called Clara with a C. Ours is called Jules. Let's see who wins. Joel (19:31.521) I think timing, timing matters as well. I mean, you might remember Chad, when we first started the podcast, snag a job, launch snag, which was sort of a similar platform, apparently too early, not enough juice or who knows, the tech wasn't tech wasn't right, but job and talent seems to be hitting this at the right time. And if they can start taking chunks out of sort of the frontline workers, Chad (19:40.083) Yes. Joel (19:56.575) like Upwork and the gig economy platforms have taken out of job boards on that segment. If they can start chipping away at the frontline worker segment, like that's going to be pretty bad news for the traditional job boards, I would think. Chad (20:10.983) Yeah. Well, and I also think you're talking about before economies of scale was good in the U S when they actually opened up into the U S probably not so much right now. So the big question is, they just allow what they have to kind of stay dormant? And then really focus on areas that, have high growth like Spain, you know, throughout Europe or through Latin America or what have you. Joel (20:19.925) Mm-hmm. Joel (20:37.046) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:37.095) That's the big question. And being able to have a footprint like that allows you to kind of like ebb and flow. And I would assume Leevin gets the idea since the house of HR is all over Europe. So, you you have an economy that's really booming and then you've got ones that aren't, right? So yeah, I think that might be helpful unless they put way too many eggs in the US basket. That might be a big issue. Joel (20:50.357) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:04.939) Chad, we're moving all manufacturing back to the US. This is a great time to be job and talent, right? No? Okay. Chad (21:08.361) Yeah, yeah, that'll happen Lieven (21:11.938) Yeah. Joel (21:14.017) All right, let's take a quick break and play a little buy or sell, which we haven't played in a while. I'm pretty excited about that. We'll be right back. Chad (21:17.799) Yes! Joel (21:23.521) All right, listeners, you know how we play this. It's a buyer sell. What we do, we talk about three companies, startups that recently got funding. I read a quick summary and then each of us on the panel here will either buy or sell. Let's play a little buy or sell, shall we? Number one, Ukrainian startup PeopleForce, an HR tech platform with 1300 plus clients in 30 plus countries and 90,000 plus active users. secured $5.4 million in funding after seeing 80 % ARR growth in 2024. The investment will expand, go to market and support teams in Poland, Mexico and Colombia, enhance localized HR automation, develop AI analytics and improve corporate client onboarding. Chad, are you a buyer sell on PeopleForce? Chad (22:16.229) So an all-in-one HR system, that's not small. Usually when a company tries to attack a total addressable market, that large they fail. Why? Because it's extremely hard to start out being all things to everyone all at once, especially with that kind of footprint. And especially as a startup in Europe, let alone Latin America. So can you imagine trying to cater to an SME market, not just in Europe, but in Latin America too? So many different countries with so many different languages, cultures, norms, regulations, and we haven't even broached the discussion about the amount of money needed to reach the SME market. So last but not least, the money will be used for expansion of go-to-market and support teams in Poland, as you'd said, Mexico and Columbia. That's all over the fucking place, man. So I'm getting a headache. Joel (23:05.633) Mm-hmm. Lieven (23:10.04) Yeah. Chad (23:11.805) Just thinking about executing this go to market for a startup. It's, all over the place. It's a sell for me. Joel (23:19.905) All right. That's a sell. Well, I'm going to have a hard time selling any startup from Ukraine that has raised $5 million or more like that in a, in and of itself is quite a feat. So if nothing else, props for that. We talked about factorial on a recent show and I sort of opine that factorial was sort of in the Dr. Pepper spot of where maybe rippling and deal worth the Lieven (23:25.773) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:25.833) Hahaha Chad (23:29.927) I agree. Yes. Lieven (23:31.693) Hmm. Chad (23:35.101) Agree. Joel (23:47.423) the higher end of the buyer, Factorra was getting sort of a nice lower SME market. people force feels like a poor man's factorial. So whereas factorial raised 100 million plus dollars, these guys are at the 5 million. They are price wise about four times less than factorial per user. So if you believe that you can you can be somebody in the what's what's lower than the Dr. Pepper out of the Fanta, can you be the Fanta or maybe like the Jones Cola of this market? Lieven (24:20.366) Thank Chad (24:23.571) the Kroger brand, the generic. Lieven (24:24.11) . Joel (24:25.557) Like there's, there's, Like the brand X, the, the Sam's Cola, whatever it is. like, could they, can they make a market of that? think for $5 million they could. And if they make enough headway in, in markets like Mexico and Columbia, someone like factorial is going to write a big check and get them off the board, take their clients, put them into factorial or someone else might come in and buy it. So I love that they are a successful Ukraine startup. I love that they take in a fairly modest amount of money. And I love that they have no fear in being on the lowest end of the profit spectrum. And if they can scale that, they're going to, they're going to find a buyer. for me, people force may the force be with you is a buy. Lieven (25:11.403) Nice. I the same reaction looking at the regions where they want to expand. Poland, yeah of course, if you're Ukraine you can expand into Poland. But Colombia and Mexico, why Colombia and Mexico? Of all the countries you can choose from, why Colombia and Mexico? I'm sure there is a reason and I know those people from... What was it called again? People are listening. So if you are listening, tell me why Colombia and Mexico? Because... Chad (25:27.975) It's all over the place, yeah. Lieven (25:44.446) I could come up with some other countries which might be more convenient. Anyways, I kind of like the idea about startups in Ukraine. You have to have the right mindset if you want to launch a startup in that country today. So only for that, it would be a buy. Those people have guts. have the... Yes, indeed. So I think that alone would... Chad (25:59.411) Mm-hmm. Joel (26:05.089) the stones. They got the stones. Chad (26:05.171) Yeah, they do. Lieven (26:12.248) would make it by for me, but they say the main goal of Peopleforce is to automate routine tasks, freeing up time for HR professionals to focus on the company's talent and their development, blah, blah. Normally I would say this has been set for 20 years already, but now with the agentics coming up, this actually could be true. And if they focus on as Amis, those as Amis don't have the time nor the knowledge to figure it out themselves. Big companies will be able to, as Amis won't. So this actually might be a very good product to sell to SMEs. If it can save them time, they will happily buy it. Which will not be the case, I think, with what AdEcho is doing, for example, working together with Salesforce. They're apparently going to focus on the multinationals. But you can sell one agent to a multinational. That multinational will figure out very quickly how to copy those agents. So it's not like with real talent, with humans, where the value of the person is Chad (26:52.647) Mm-hmm. Lieven (27:08.236) basically because of the human is unique. Robots aren't unique, so the value is going to go down very fast, I think, but not with Vazamis because they can't figure it out for themselves. So for me, it's a buy. Joel (27:20.117) All right, that's two buys and one sell for people for us. Let's go on to our next contestant on buyer sell. Vizzi, a London based talent platform provider has raised 3.65 million pounds in seed funding. The company plans to use the funds to expand operations and development efforts. Companies that use the service include Burberry, Virgin Group, Louis Vuitton, some of Levin's favorite brands and oddly, Lieven (27:47.979) no, no. Joel (27:49.163) Pizza Express is thrown in there. Chad, are you a buyer sell on Vizzi? Chad (27:49.417) you Chad (27:55.165) They've through pizza express in there just for you, Cheeseman. the, the busy apply process seems to be vibrant and cool. The problem is that it's way too late as employers and the, the actual cohort paying for tech, employers move away from manually reviewing these sexy profiles and searching for candidates while agentic platforms carry the manual workload. So I think it's cool, but it's about five years too late. So this is a sell for me. Joel (27:58.132) I know, I know. Joel (28:25.409) Chad, do you remember Visual CV about 20 years ago? was for those that don't know, time for a history lesson. Visual CV was a visual representation of your resume where you could put in pictures, links. This was 2005 people, so this was pretty fancy stuff. You could actually have a picture of yourself. It died, wasn't ready, the market wasn't ready. Chad (28:27.879) I do. I do. Chad (28:46.345) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:54.197) Vizzi to me is sort of visual CV 20 years later. It's very visual heavy. It's very personable. Like it's sort of tick tock and a resume, which is part of the part of the reason why I'm selling this. I just think it may be great for the design community, which is why they have Louis Vuitton and the brands that they have, but can they expand outside of that market? Like I just don't see it. I don't see techies doing this. I don't see accountants doing this. Like It's a very niche market. don't, think it's the ceiling is really low. so kind of cutesy product. We've also talked about if there's a depth of the resume, it's going to be segmented into many things like the on demand, platform like we have with job and talent, tick tock. course, we're seeing some things there and listen to some of our podcasts, but for me, busy as a cell, it's a niche product. it's not gonna, it's not gonna scale very well. Lieven (29:50.925) Alright, two weeks ago I was in France skiing, for the people who like skiing, in Val d'Isère, which is one of the most beautiful places in France. And there was a girl called Lizzie, and she was from London also, so Lizzie reminds me of Lizzie, and I kind of like Lizzie, so that alone would be a reason for me to buy it, but maybe not today. I have you know, but I need to be quiet because she's here. But you know... Chad (29:55.537) Rub it in. Joel (30:11.829) Was your wife with you on this trip, Levin? Lieven (30:19.329) We ski in different groups. mean, I'm a better skier. when we go skiing, I still take lessons because it's fun to have a guide to guide you around the area. And I'm in the 3A and she's in the 2B or something, whatever. So anyways, she wasn't. No. But Vezzi and Lizzi, yes. OK, no, it's a cell. Joel (30:23.905) Ooooo Chad (30:29.353) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:46.241) Man, a few words and frankly, where you were going, fewer words is good for you right now. Fewer words is good for you right now. All right, let's go to our third and final startup, French startup, Clara, a platform that aims to cut onboarding time and enable continuous upskilling for frontline workers has raised 10 million euros in funding. The cash will be used to accelerate deployment, grow the team and introduce new AI powered functionalities. Chad, are you a buy or sell on Clara? Lieven (30:47.663) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:48.627) always. Chad (30:52.759) Yes, another Clara. Chad (31:15.859) So many retail manufacturing and logistics companies are flailing with performance tracking, skills development and retention programs and platforms like Clara could bring them up to speed. So there's a huge need and France generated $320 billion just from manufacturing in 2023. It's a rich industry. It's available. They're focused retail manufacturing and logistics. So for me, this and it's French. It's a bye. Lieven (31:48.687) and Joel (31:49.567) it's clear with a K not a C like job and talent. This might be confusing to some of our listeners. This man the whole like, whatever 360 shed and the upskilling and like it's so I hate it. It's so it's so cerebral. Like it's a bunch of scientists and shit like plum and guild and like I have a hard I'm a simple man chat and these these Chad (31:51.847) Yes. huh. huh. So many Claras. Lieven (31:53.583) That's right. Chad (32:18.441) I know, I know. Pizza Express. Joel (32:18.955) These companies are confusing to me, but, I do know that, that if you look at the number, like some of the competition, like they haven't set the world on fire. They've raised a lot of money. Guild for sure has raised a ton of money. and they just kind of exist and you have the occasional ones that come up. Look, I know there's a huge need, particularly for the kids. The kids want upskilling. They want to keep learning. They want to like improve their skills. And I also know that AI is making it so that if you don't learn new skills, you're out of a job. And I know a lot of companies are going to say, look, you either learn this new skill or we can't keep you on anymore. And that's going to be a lot of incentive to learn that skill. If you want to keep getting a paycheck from the company that currently employs you. So for those reasons, I don't totally understand all the stuff. It's very, very complicated to me, but I do understand the macro trends in this. So for me, Clara is a buy. It's a buy. Chad (32:49.949) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:17.065) Big applause. What do you think, Levin? Clara 2 is the second Clara in this podcast. Is this a good Clara? That's the question. Lieven (33:18.883) Hmm. Lieven (33:25.391) This is the. Joel (33:25.417) And does she does does she do ski instruction? Does Clara? OK, sorry, sorry. Chad (33:28.361) Let's not go down that road again. Lieven (33:29.743) This is the K Clara, not the C Clara, but I didn't meet a girl called Clara, so no advantage there. But I think focusing on frontline workers could be a good idea on the very short term, but not on the long run because in the age of Vygentics, I think the jobs which will be replaced by agents will be all those frontline workers. Joel (33:33.665) Yeah. Lieven (33:56.065) So for me, I don't see this as a long-term investment. And normally when we invest, it's for the long run. I think three years, yeah, not longer. So for me, it's not a buy, which makes it a sell. Chad (34:07.529) Two buys and a sale. Joel (34:07.873) Fair enough. Fair enough. That is another episode of buy or sell. All right, guys, if this is a show focused on one thing, it's focused on Spain. So what better topic to end on than Spain. So Spain's economy is growing faster than the US and EU due to its acceptance of shocker foreign workers who now make up 13 % of their workforce. Chad (34:22.035) death. Chad (34:31.709) Hmm... Hmm... Joel (34:36.277) This growth is attributed to foreign workers filling critical labor gaps in industries like tourism, agriculture, and construction, which struggles to hire local employees. familiar? Spain's welcoming stance on immigration contrasting with stricter policies and other European countries could influence broader EU rules and serve as a model for sustainable growth throughout the continent. Chad, you're close to Spain. Your thoughts on the news on immigration. Chad (34:38.025) Hmm. Chad (35:05.287) Yeah, this from the article, the etias.com, quote, foreign workers play a key role in tourism, agriculture, construction industries and struggle to hire local employees. Many young Spaniards choose higher education and professional careers, leaving essential low wage jobs unfilled, end quote. Ask yourself, does that sound familiar? Because while Germany, France, and the US struggle with slow economies and growing anti migration views, Spain offers a much different approach. And I think the following quote from Spain's minister of social security and migration, Elma Saiz, says it all, quote, we have two choices to be a closed struggling country or an open and thriving one, end quote. So the Iberian Peninsula, that's Spain and Portugal are two countries that are seeing great growth in the EU. It's all about properly managing that growth. As we see countries like the U S becoming more isolated and closed, that isolationist stance will help countries like Spain thrive. And what you were talking about Joel, in addition, due to the change in U S immigration policy and the rescinding of research funding from major U S universities, Europe is trying their ass off to woo American researchers across the pond. Not to mention all of those other brain, big brained researchers from other countries who might have come to the US, but they're looking for alternatives. That's the thing is that this isn't just about the low wage jobs. This also from a migration standpoint, from an immigration standpoint, this hits all the way around. Joel (36:52.321) Yeah. And if there are two other legs on that stool, Spain has a balanced budget, something America could learn something about, and they have progressively strong business friendly policies, which I think a lot of Europe, as well as where America is trending, can learn from. think that the debate on immigration, like I wish we would hold up countries like this as examples. They've done it really intelligently. They've focused on Spanish speaking countries. They've looked at immigration as a recruiting effort, not as a burden on the society and the government. Immigration really is recruiting. If you think of it as recruiting, your mindset changes significantly. These are workers coming into the country. These are people who pay taxes and spend money and grow economies. And for whatever reason, so many countries are going away from this. I hope that we see a Chad (37:27.657) Mm-hmm. Lieven (37:37.999) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:43.067) Mm-hmm. Yep. Joel (37:52.033) for lack of a better word, like a NAFTA sort of movement in Europe. And I think the time is right, thanks to America, that Europe will start embracing some of the policies and tactics of Spain to grow their own economies, particularly on around less bureaucracy, less regulation. Certainly budgetarily, a lot of countries are in better shape than America is. But I hope that you see this sort of spillover into Europe, and I'm sure Leven has some thoughts on whether it will or not. Lieven (37:53.976) and Joel (38:21.441) And Spain has to keep doing this and they'll get help if the continent does it because Spain still has demographic challenges. The median age of a Spaniard is 46 years old. In France, it's about 40, 43, 44 years old. So they're still on the demographic challenge meter. So they have to keep this up. Otherwise in 10 years, they're going to be back kind of to where they were. So they have to keep pumping up the immigration because they're not producing enough citizens to grow. at the rate that they are. So big applause for Spain. I'd love to see this kind of infect the rest of Europe, but I'm curious what, what Levin thinks. Lieven (39:01.167) For me, this was a very interesting topic and very interesting discussion because like you said, in most European countries, the governments are tending to the opposite. They try to make labor migration more strict. They want to have more rules, more regulation. And in our business, that's never a good thing. Too much regulation, it could be a good thing. But labor regulation and restricting people to come to work in... Chad (39:15.635) Mm-hmm. Lieven (39:30.715) economy is not a good thing. So I was very happy to read the results of Spain and the government decided to lessen the rules and to invite those people to come over and it worked, which is a very good precedent. But the interesting fact to me was most workers came from Latin America and those are normally the people who traditionally went to the US to work, but now they came to Spain because they're less welcome, I think, in the US and also they have the same language in Spain, they have the same religion, which is very helpful because language mostly is the biggest barrier. And this brings me to the next part. I hope for the rest of Europe that labor migration will become easier because of AI taking away the language barriers. We see this happen right now. We have a company in the Netherlands, example, called Vable, which is specializing in hiring people from mostly Eastern Europe and having them work mostly in construction. some other businesses in Western Europe. language was always a barrier. And now thanks to AI, we have those little ear things which can translate simultaneously. So that's a very big advantage. And this is only starting now. So this is going to become flawless, I think, in the coming years. So I hope you can use this article and these results to show the government in the Netherlands, for example, that's Chad (40:32.36) Mm-hmm. Lieven (40:57.889) Labor migration is the thing they need instead of trying to close everything down, which is happening now because they have a pretty right-wing government. It just doesn't work. So I'm very enthusiastic about the whole idea and Spain and we from Western Europe, we used to look at Spain and Portugal as Southern Europe, which was always a bit lagging behind. I'm very happy they're gaining up and maybe even are advanced, advancing us. Joel (41:17.857) Mm-hmm. Chad (41:20.296) Mm-hmm. Joel (41:28.063) You know, the right wing could learn from one of the OG right wingers back in the day, Chad. Certain President Ronald Reagan had some interesting things to say about immigration. Let's take a quick listen to what Ronnie thought about immigration. Chad (41:36.617) about, yes he did. Joel (41:46.965) And you know what else Ronnie loved? He loved a good dad joke, which leads us to this week's this week's gym inspired by Spain. Guys, what do call a Spanish streaker? What do you call a Spanish streaker? Chad (41:49.171) What? I don't know that's true. I don't know that's true. Lieven (41:51.897) Thank Chad (42:06.227) Hmm. Lost in translation. Lieven (42:07.055) No, I didn't. Joel (42:07.827) See, senior Willie, senior Willie. Lieven (42:11.727) Adios! We out! Joel (42:15.751) Adios amigos, we out! Chad (42:17.799) Way out!

What do you get when you mix a Shark Tank alum, a silicone baby mat, and a $230K tariff bill? A broken supply chain, that's what. In this dollars-and-sense  edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Beth Benike—CEO of Busy Baby—joins the boys to explain how a product designed to keep sippy cups off the floor is now caught in a global trade war. From American factories ghosting her, to Chinese partners defending her IP with literal raids , Beth's entrepreneurial journey is part "How I Built This" and part "Game of Thrones." We talk: 💸 Tariffs that double product costs overnight 🍼 Baby shower gifts priced like luxury handbags 🚫 Walmart contracts vs. reality 🇺🇸 The myth of "Made in America" for small businesses 🤯 And why your kid’s Christmas might look more 1970 than 2025 No politics. Just cold, hard manufacturing math—and one mother’s mission to keep America from running out of bibs. 🎄 📦 Tune in before the shelves go empty. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:31.086) What's up boys and girls, this is the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman join as always, writing in the shotgun position is Chad. So wash as we welcome Beth Benike, CEO of a little business called Busy Baby, to the podcast. Beth, welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (00:51.27) Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Chad (00:54.388) She's been on Shark Tank. She's been on Guy Razz's How I Built This. I mean, this is, she's used to this. Joel (00:54.828) The pleasure and honor is all ours. Joel (01:03.63) CNN, yeah, it's all pregame. It's all pregame to the Super Bowl, which is our show, Beth. So everything you've done before this is just getting you prepared for this show. aside from the media properties that you've been on recently, a lot of our listeners will not know who you are. Give us the elevator pitch on you and what Busy Baby is. Chad (01:10.112) chat and she's podcasting. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (01:28.577) Yeah, I'm Beth. I am a mom who was in the army, had a kid when I turned 40, and came up with an idea for a baby product and took that product to market, got to go on Shark Tank with it, finally found some success about seven years in now and had my legs cut out from under me this week when tariffs were announced. That sums it up, I think, pretty quick. Joel (01:51.118) What is the product? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (01:53.901) So the Busy Baby Mat is the original product I came out with and it's just a very simple concept. It's a silicone place mat that serves as a clean place for baby's food. It's suctioned down to your high chair, your restaurant table, and then it has a tether system that allows you to hook up baby's toys. Since the invention of that first product, my brother and I, my brother quit his job joining the business. We've expanded to eight products that are all interchangeable, all designed to keep things within reach off the ground at home and on the go. Chad (02:21.75) Nice. Joel (02:22.37) chance I've been a customer at some point, or maybe one of my wives has been a customer at one. Chad (02:28.566) Yeah, you would have been a good husband if you would have bought one for yourself. So you didn't have to pick that stuff up when you were at the restaurant. Yes. Horrible husband. So we don't want to talk about politics this podcast. We want to talk about dollars and cents. And everybody's talking about how we want to be able to help entrepreneurs, small business people like yourself, to be able to thrive. Right? And so we want to be able to dig into the dollars and cents. You talk about Joel (02:33.816) Horrible husband, Horrible husband. Decent podcaster, though. Chad (02:56.692) This being a Silicon Place mat. So the first order of business for me is why did you choose to be able to start manufacturing in China? Why, what were the decisions behind that? Cause obviously there has to be a lot of research. have to take a look at cost margins, all those things, all the business things that you have to do when you're starting a business. So help us understand, get into your head when you were in those early, early decision-making process and research. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (03:24.685) You know, honestly, it wasn't a choice. There was no choice. I looked in America as a 10-year army veteran. I wanted nothing more than my products and everything about my business to be made America. And I actually further wanted it made in Minnesota. I worked with a factory here for 18 months. They tried to develop their own material because at that time, the biggest and first problem was the raw material was cost prohibitive because it's imported. It does not exist in the US. So that's the first problem. The material. Chad (03:27.413) Really? Chad (03:52.575) Wow. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (03:53.271) does not exist here. Silicone is made from silica, which is a very fancy pure sand, and it's actually very plentiful in the US. We just don't mine it. It's not usable. It's under the ground. So that's number one. Number two is factories in the US have to run very large volumes because obviously it's more expensive to manufacture here. They have to buy material in massive quantities to get price discounts. Chad (04:06.912) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:21.79) Beth Benike - Busy Baby (04:22.153) And so they can't do an opening order of a couple thousand units for a company. It just doesn't make sense for them, for their business model. And I get that. Exactly. But at the same time as a startup, a mom of an infant working a full time job, I couldn't commit to the two million dollar minimum, which I just was offered this week, to work with a factory because now, you know, things are happening. Chad (04:30.987) scale. Chad (04:43.627) What? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (04:47.851) back to looking at US manufacturing. I talked to, we have requirements as well. Because we're making products that are made for babies, that has to be done in a clean environment. Most silicone factories are making O-rings and like parts for cars. They're not, it's not clean sterile environment. We need to have that clean environment. We also have a special kind of manufacturing. It's not injection, it's a press. It's a different type of machine. It's not common in manufacturing in the US. So when we do find someone who can do it, that's the... Joel (04:48.078) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:56.533) Yes. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:16.637) a challenge in itself and then to have that conversation with them like this week because I've gotten so much media, they're reaching out to me saying, hey, we can do what you're talking about. And as we furthered the conversation, they said, well, our minimum contract is $2 million a year. In the six years I've been making this stuff, I've never made a total of $2 million worth of product. So there's no way I could commit to a one-year contract of $2 million. It makes sense for them that that's what they have to do. I'm not mad at Joel (05:18.412) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:38.008) though. Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:46.069) added, it's just not a feasible option for me. Joel (05:49.166) And currently right now you have $30,000 of product in China. And what would it take to get it here? What are you going to do with it? Like what? Where do we go from here? Chad (05:49.302) Yeah, Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:55.201) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:02.539) have $158,000 of product in China. The $30,000 that I think you might be thinking of is what we budgeted for a reasonable tariff. So we did not have any tariffs prior to this administration. We knew what they were coming, so we budgeted. A reasonable tariff is 20 to 30%. So that would have, you know, we were at 20%. I think that's around $30,000. So we were budgeting for that. Our tariff right now is almost $230,000. Chad (06:06.655) Wow. Chad (06:16.907) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:26.24) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:31.358) And the product cost what? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:32.908) 158. Chad (06:35.286) Ooh, so, okay, a couple of things. First and foremost, that is ridiculous. Second, what would you have to price those products at when they would actually get here in the U.S. if you did have the money, right? If you did have the financing, what would you have to price them at compared to where they're priced at now? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:58.317) I mean, it more than doubles our cost. So the rule of thumb when you have a CPG product that you want to take to market is you need to be able to sell that product for four times what it costs you to make it. Because you have all these other expenses like payroll for the people who help you run your company, insurance. I pay $50,000 a year in general product liability insurance because I have a product for babies and that's a requirement. Chad (07:11.52) Okay. Joel (07:16.174) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:24.598) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (07:26.637) marketing to let people know your products exist. I'm sure most of the people on your show have never heard of me or Busy Baby, have no idea what it is because it's very expensive to market your products and let people know they exist. There's a lot of other costs. So when you're doing the basic math, if you have an idea for a product and you're like, hmm, wonder if I could have a business out of this, you find out what it takes to make it and you multiply that times four. And if you can't sell it for that much, at least it's not going to be a profitable business, right? So my product cost now would be closer to $15, maybe just a little under $15. So the product that is normally 30 is going to go up to just under 60. Chad (08:05.738) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:11.606) Wow. And we're talking about, for the most part, and you have to understand the consumer that you're actually selling to. For the most part, these are first time, you know, and they're young and they don't have a lot of money and they got to pay for a lot of other stuff. So this, to me, this is like a luxury item to some extent. And if they're buying it for, you 30, they might be able to swing that, but to Beth Benike - Busy Baby (08:23.84) New parents, Chad (08:39.178) to be able to take a look at how prices are actually going up and especially I would assume on the infant side and then being able to take a look at this as a luxury item that to me seems like a marketing issue as well. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (08:53.433) I mean, it's just an impossibility right now. There's so many new expenses that come with having a baby. Diapers, formula, cages to put them in, all the things. Chad (09:00.736) Yeah. Joel (09:03.255) we know. We know, Beth. We know. Many times over. Chad (09:06.12) Ha ha! Beth Benike - Busy Baby (09:08.596) So my products typically are at a price range of $10 to $30. They're very accessible and they provide a lot of value. Not only are they convenient to have and they keep babies busy so you can do other things like maybe eat your own food while it's still warm, but they're developmentally beneficial as well. We have occupational therapists using our products in their therapies with kids and teaching babies to learn how to self-feed. They're very useful. And they're at a price... a very reachable price point. Like if you think about giving a baby shower gift, maybe it's not the new parents. Maybe you have a friend having a baby and you have to get a baby shower gift. That $30 to $50 price range is the most common price range people are willing to spend on their baby shower. Now, if I take that one item and double it, I'm now out of baby shower gift range for the people who don't have that new baby expense. I'm definitely out of the range for people with the new babies. Chad (09:49.653) Mm. Joel (10:01.144) Do you sell into like Walmart, Target, or is it all online? Like I can get your products everywhere. do you think happens at Walmart when everything doubles in price one day? Like I have a hard time wrapping my head around because people still need to buy stuff. don't think that, I don't think people understand the gravity of what's coming. Put it in your own words because you live this. What should we be expecting from in the retail market in America and you know, coming in? four to six months. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (10:32.395) Yeah, I mean, probably empty shelves if nothing changes. I, as of this morning, Tuesday morning, I know Walmart is going to talk to the president today because there's probably hundreds of other suppliers like me who reached out to my buyer and said, I'm sorry, I can no longer supply you with my products once I run out of what I have in my warehouse because it's just not possible. We are locked into pricing with Target. We are locked into pricing with Walmart. So just because my costs go up, doesn't mean anything. I still have to provide them, I'm contractually obliged to provide them with the product at the price we agreed to, which did have that 20 % tariff built in, not 145%. So now Walmart's probably heard from enough of people like me that we can't continue to sell you this stuff at this price that they have to go talk to the president themselves. Joel (11:23.96) So that's great to know. It's less about double pricing than no product at all, because you guys are in contract to price these things at what Walmart agreed to. It's going to look like post-USSR Russia looking for food and goods. That's scary. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:28.236) Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:32.075) Yeah. Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:37.515) Yeah. And Joel, here's a fun fact for you. 80 % of our country's toys and games come from China. So this right now is the time of year we start production for Q4. Nobody is producing anything right now. We are all paused because nobody knows what the heck is happening or what's going to happen. And we can't invest in the manufacturing for our Q4 products if we don't even know if we can bring them back to our own country. So now you're looking at potential delays. Chad (11:50.436) Mm-hmm. Joel (11:54.222) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (12:07.423) and empty shelves during Christmas because Joel (12:10.382) And that's great because the narrative we're hearing, or at least I am, is it's going to go from a dozen presents to 10. But it's not a financial issue, it's an accessibility issue. You're saying there won't even be toys to buy. Chad (12:22.143) I guess both. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (12:24.449) No, we're not producing anything right now. We're supposed to be producing our Q4 stuff right now. We are paused completely. If we get into it, I'm going down a different path and I'm to start production for Europe. But yeah, we're all, everybody's paused right now. Chad (12:36.598) I Chad (12:40.758) Well, I mean, if you, if you think about it, the 80 % of toys that are coming over that do get tariffed more than likely, they're not going to make it to the shelves. If they do make it to the shelves, they're going to be at a different price. And that means all the prices are, have been going up in the first place. So we have less buying power as Americans. So we were going to buy less presents in the first place, Joel. Now, now. Prices are going up even more on those. So you talk about 10 instead of 12. Now it's more like two, possibly, right? Joel (13:13.294) They're going to be a bunch of Gen Xers running around with sticks as toys in the street. It's going to be back to 1970. Chad (13:15.926) That's what we did. I don't see that happening though. So, okay. So there's this big push for bringing manufacturing back and you have actually done the work. You've done the math. You said earlier, you've actually talked to manufacturing facilities and companies to be able to say, okay, look, we want to be able to do that here, but they're not... Beth Benike - Busy Baby (13:32.205) Yep. Chad (13:44.586) That's just not an option because of $2 million can't do it. You've also priced out what it would take for you to buy machines and manufacture yourself and turn yourself into this manufacturing entity. Is that feasible? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (13:59.821) No, not even close. In fact, yesterday, my brother and I went down to a silicone factory about half hour away from where warehouse is. And it's a factory that's been there for over 20 years, almost 30 years. And they manufacture some medical parts that are made out of silicone. So we went down to see their operation. Wonderful, wonderful, smart men and very helpful. Chad (14:02.133) What have been up? Chad (14:09.654) Mm. Chad (14:19.158) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (14:25.639) and they walked us through their new set up because they just invented a new product, they created all the machines from scratch, they're doing everything 100 % made in America. And it's very impressive. And for that one product, in the last year, it cost them $4.5 million to build out their manufacturing for that one product. Chad (14:50.902) Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. So if you are a big company and you have cash, right? And you have cash or you can, you can, you obviously you can go and actually get big loans. That's one thing, but we're talking about small businesses here. Small businesses don't have the ability to get that leveraged because I mean, they're pretty much leveraged from day one as it is. So to be able to continue leveraging and over leveraging, it's just not an option. So what does it actually cost? And you price this out to actually bring a machine here. Where would it come from? Go through that whole process when you were thinking about actually setting up operations here in the U Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:25.602) Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:28.961) Yeah, so keep in mind I have eight products. So this is just the numbers for one, the Hero product, the Busy Baby Matz, Acetone Shark Tank. That product uses eight different machines in the process of its creation. I could get those machines from China, which is where they're made because that's where the manufacturing happens. They do not exist in the US. They are not made in the USA. Chad (15:51.06) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:57.549) Those machines I could probably get for just under half a million dollars. If I bought them outside of China, they would be 1.4 million for the same machines. So, okay, let's get them from China because that's cheaper. Oh, wait, we have to add on 145 % tariff to that cost. So now we're back over a million. So right there, that's a dead end. I can't afford that. Joel (16:09.55) Mm-hmm. Joel (16:14.286) You Beth Benike - Busy Baby (16:25.431) but then also still have to import the raw material. Again, also tariffed. But let's just say I have magical money tree. Actually, I do have a money tree in my office, and that's not the obstacle. Well, now I need someone to set this up and operate it. Where's the expertise? I'm not going on LinkedIn and finding a silicone manufacturing expert looking for a job right now. So who's going to set it up? Who's going to do the maintenance? Who's going to make sure the thing runs smoothly? But let's just say magically, the manufacturing fairy drops a guy. Joel (16:29.838) Mm-hmm. Joel (16:44.608) What? What? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (16:54.861) that can do that, or a girl. Now I gotta do keep up with production. So that one line can produce just over 100 mats per day. I sell more than that in a day. So that one line isn't gonna be enough. I'm gonna have to have a minimum of two of those production lines just to keep up with my current sales. Chad (17:09.354) How many machines then? Chad (17:18.656) That doesn't, it has nothing to do with growth. I mean, you stay, you want, you want to grow. Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (17:21.227) No, but the goal for me is to grow. Yeah, I want to go from 250 Walmarts to 4,000 Walmarts. Well, now I'm going to need 50 of those lines. It's it's not feasible for me at this point. Small businesses are not going to bring manufacturing back to the US. We can't. We're paycheck to paycheck. Joel (17:29.912) Yeah. Joel (17:38.574) Beth, you mentioned Europe. And I think what I would have said is, you know, maybe Mexico, maybe Vietnam. So as you're grimacing on that, how did you get to Europe and why are these other countries not an alternative to China? Or are there any alternatives to China? Chad (17:38.774) So, go ahead, go ahead. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (17:59.213) Well, I think you're talking manufacturing, right? I'm talking selling. There's babies all over the I'm not moving. Why on earth would I move my manufacturing? I have literally the most efficient, most proficient, most expertise manufacturing on the planet. They've been with me from day one, held my hand when the American companies laughed me out their doors. They've gone through ups and downs with me when Walmart last minute wanted me to pump out. Joel (18:05.388) Okay, let's talk about manufacturing. Yeah, let's go to manufacturing because Beth Benike - Busy Baby (18:29.375) a new product put on their shelves and I needed that opportunity. They dropped everything and made it happen in a record amount of time. When they've made mistakes, as everybody makes mistakes, they've owned it and corrected it. When I had knockoffs in China, they went to those factories and said, stop making that and stood up for me and stood up for my, have a Chinese patent. They went for on my behalf and stood up for me. I have no desire to. Everybody's jumping right now. I'm going to move to Mexico. I'm going to move to Taiwan. Good luck. Have fun. I'm going to stay with my... They hold every high quality standard that we have for our products because these are products going in a baby's mouth. We have to meet American safety standards. We do third party testing on every single batch. We have a US consultant who makes sure our products are safe. They do an incredible job and they've been with me through everything. I am not going to walk away from them now. Chad (19:25.472) So from a sales standpoint, because... Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:25.505) to go somewhere that's less quality and more expensive. Joel (19:29.25) He would rather go out of business than find alternatives. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:31.861) No, no, that's what I'm telling you. I'm going to sell to Europe. I'm going to sell to Australia. I'm going to sell to Canada. There's babies everywhere. Chad (19:32.658) No, she's looking at selling in Europe, right? That's what you're talking about. Yeah. Joel (19:38.334) Okay, so because there's no tariff. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:43.915) because they're willing to take my products and sell them. Our country currently is not allowing me to bring in my products. So I would love to continue selling to just Americans because that's what I can handle and that's what I know how to do. I don't know how to sell to any other country right now, but I'm going to learn real quick. Joel (19:45.048) or they're- Joel (19:59.094) Okay, glad I made that clarification. Thank you. Chad (20:00.352) Those are, yeah, those are, those are other challenges though, right? Because you don't know those markets. So therefore you don't have expertise on how to actually sell into those markets. And as we know, Europe has a bunch of countries in it and they're all different and they all have different cultures and regulations and so on and so forth. So it is much harder. So yes, you would definitely rather sell here on home soil, but since that's not an option, because you would go out of business, you've got to look for Beth Benike - Busy Baby (20:02.237) you. Yeah. Chad (20:30.25) Contingency and the contingency seems like Europe is are there other contingencies? Around the world that you you've started to kind of like research and prospectively start developing Beth Benike - Busy Baby (20:40.353) Yeah, mean, fortunately, because of the the press I've gotten, I've gotten outreach from everywhere. Dubai, the UAE, Australia, I've had a ton of outreach from Canada. I'm not having a hard time finding the people interested in selling the products. It's it's unreal how many people are interested in selling products. Now it's just like, how do I do that? Like, what are the regulations? What is the process? What are the contracts like? What do I have to watch out for so I'm not taken advantage or don't know? I don't know what I don't know. So that's what I'm working as like crash course on global distribution. Chad (21:17.622) you Joel (21:18.562) My ears perked when you said the Chinese factory went to bat for you when knockoffs were being created. I think the narrative in America is that China is a bunch of thieves. They're taking all of our IP. They're repurposing products and undercutting and totally screwing the American businesses. But I'm hearing something different from you, but I'm curious, was them fighting Chad (21:24.991) IP. Joel (21:46.572) back against a knockoff product sort of by their own volition? Do they feel like they have government support to go after a company? what is it like working with China? Is the government one level, but then the commercial entity is another one? Are they hand in hand? Help me understand what it's like working with China. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (22:09.877) Yeah, I mean, it's a team effort. I can't actually help you understand because I don't understand a lot of it myself. The things I do understand about China is they care more about relationships and how you treat each other versus contracts. So, you know, when you treat each other well, the relationship is good and there's value and it creates long lasting good conditions. Chad (22:38.302) Hence, you're not wanting to leave them. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (22:40.277) Yeah, yeah. So when the first knockoff came out, it was actually the month before I aired on Shark Tank. I was fully expecting knockoffs to come out like three to four months after I was on air. No, the first one came out a month before. And because I have IP in China, my patent attorney has a counterpart in China who he reached out to and they did an investigation. went to this factory, determined yes, they are absolutely making a knockoff. And then there's two routes you can go. You can do the legal route, which is similar to what we do here in the US. You can litigate. It's very long and very expensive. But in China, they also have another thing you can do, which is called a raid. And it's essentially what it sounds like. They go in and say, knock at the F off or we're going to burn your shit down. Chad (23:31.318) You Joel (23:32.236) Wow. Street, street justice, street justice. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (23:32.237) It's legit like my percent and so I didn't want to I didn't have the money to do the litigation route So I said well, how much does it cost to send someone in and politely ask them to stop? Knocking off my products and it was a very affordable price and I did that and they stopped the problem is I've spent over $15,000 this last year because an American company knocked me off And when I went to take them down from Amazon, so Amazon has a great process where if you have IP, you can file your patents within Amazon system. When somebody lists a product that infringes on your patent, you just submit a case and say that they're infringing. They check the patent. They're like, yep, them down. And if they want to contest, they can. And we both put in $4,000. And then someone at Amazon will review the case. And whoever wins gets their money back. Whoever loses doesn't. and then they get kicked off Amazon. So when this American company knocked us off, straight up knockoff, we put it in, Amazon took them down, their IP lawyers reached out to our IP lawyer and said, we'd just like you to know, we diligently designed around your patent. You may wanna resend your take down. So we looked at it, sure enough, they designed just enough of a difference, just enough of a difference to make it not infringing on my patent. So I had to spend $15,000 to do some IP strategy stuff, and now they're not selling that product. But that was an American company, not a Chinese company. Chad (25:05.878) Hmm. Okay. So we've been, we've been talking about obviously entrepreneurs, small business and the big reason behind that is I think it's important, especially for our listeners to understand that obviously, you know, small business jobs, but then times that by 10,000. Right. In companies like yours who are facing these issues, it's not just onesie twosies. We're talking about tens of thousands. of entrepreneurs and companies who are having these issues. And I don't want to get you too fired up, but, but, but what about companies like Apple who are getting like a free pass possibly from these, these tariffs? Yeah. I mean, what, what, what about, what about those and how does, what kind of messaging does that actually send to the small business community when you have a Joel (25:53.237) Exemptions. Chad (26:04.784) large company who can afford if any, any company in the fucking world can afford to bring, you know, manufacturing to, you know, the U S United States and charge, you know, $3,500 for an iPhone. Apple can do that. Although they're perspective of getting exceptions. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (26:25.229) I'm going to take the politics out of this because we got to remove Apple because there's a lot of political associations with Apple. And they say since the first Trump administration that they're building a $5 billion factory in Texas. I'm not sure if ground is ever broken on that, but let's take Apple out. And then I'm to bring in Microsoft as a replacement, another big man. But the thing that gets me fired up is Lenovo. Have you heard of the brand Lenovo? It's computers, right? They do. Chad (26:50.41) Yes, computers. Joel (26:50.798) Yep, IBM. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (26:54.891) a little over $15 billion of sales per year in the US. They are a Chinese-owned brand. They no longer have to pay tariffs. They are exempt from paying tariffs, so their computers can come into our country right now, and we can buy $15 billion worth of computers from them, and they're all fat and happy. They don't need to make them in the USA. Why would they? They can make them where they're good at it and keep all their profit. But me? a small, small business, American, veteran-owned business, I am going to potentially go out of business if I don't find a solution here because I can't afford the $230,000 tariff. So, I'm gonna talk too much more about that. Joel (27:38.104) Well, thankfully Walmart, Walmart, and hopefully Amazon are making some cases for you because they do have a big enough, name and bank account to do. So hopefully the Walmart meeting goes well. I'm curious. This is a show largely about the world of work employment. I know you have a small team, but I'm curious about what, what does this mean to your current team? What does it mean to your growth plans of adding headcount and Beth Benike - Busy Baby (27:45.686) Yeah. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (27:54.784) Okay. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:05.229) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:05.866) And knowing that most of hiring happens at small business, what do you think on a macro level we should be expecting as more and more small businesses like you are impacted from a headcount challenge? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:21.047) Yeah, my team was worried and they know I am determined we are going to succeed somehow. We're going to make it. No one's losing their job. I'm not going to let that happen. But what concerns me and what should concern Americans is the ripple effect of this. When we get a container shipped here from China, it comes into the St. Paul rail yard and there's a woman owned small business called semi-legal trucking. Chad (28:38.987) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:48.289) that picks up that container and brings it down to my warehouse for us to unload and put in. I checked on her the other day and said, how's it going for you? She says, well, we still have a few trickling in, but the outlook is not good. I might actually lose everything I've used to build this. Now she's an American owned company with American employees doing transportation and logistics around our country. If you look at the math, there's been over a hundred ships canceled so far since this has happened. Each ship that comes over from China contains 8,000 to 10,000 containers. Those ships come to a port where we have hundreds or thousands of employees who work to unload them and put them on rails and put them on trucks. Those employees now don't have any containers to move. What these trucking companies who rely on the logistics of bringing of our economy, of our commerce, they're being affected. The manufacturers currently manufacturing in the US that have clients who are working already on razor thin margins because they are paying extra to manufacture in the US, they're now being hit with import fees on their raw materials and they're afraid they can't raise their prices for their current clients because their current clients can't afford that and now they're gonna go out of business. Like the ripple effect of this is so much bigger than just people like me who manufacture in China. Chad (30:09.942) So what's the most discouraging? Because we get into these news narratives that don't seem to be rooted in reality in many cases. We just were watching one right before we came on. So I guess if it's not good for small business, it's just not good for the American people. Why are we seeing the antithesis of that on news channels all over the place. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (30:42.935) You know, I think that I have unfortunately seen our country become more more divided in the last decade. And people are consumed, consume media. Like we learn things from watching media and media, it's hard to keep things just bipartisan and not make it about something or the other thing, one side or the other side. I have so many people telling me I deserve to fail because they think I voted for Trump. Nobody deserves to fail. I don't care who they voted for. We're humans. What has happened to our humanity that this has all become about politics? And I don't even know what the politicians are thinking or doing. I'm trying to convince myself that there are some really intelligent people with a really outside the box strategy at play here. And obviously we can't know the strategy or it wouldn't work. And at some point this is going to come out and it's going to be the most brilliant thing that ever happened. Chad (31:19.318) Mm-hmm. Joel (31:34.456) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (31:42.561) That's what I'm doing in my dreamland because I don't want to think that this is all for, you know, billionaires become richer and all the things we're seeing in the media. But what's the most disheartening to me is the humans and how we're treating each other as Americans outside of the media, outside of politics. If you look at the comments on my videos, people are just being hateful to one another. And unless we come together as Americans and band together for our country, like all this fighting is Chad (31:44.49) Yes. Joel (31:44.493) Mm-hmm. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (32:11.157) making things worse, it's not making anything better. Chad (32:13.462) Yeah, which is why we need to have these no bullshit dollars and cents conversations around how it's impacting business. And obviously if it's impacting business, then we've got to take a look at job growth is going to impact job growth. If impacts job growth, well, then those individuals are not going to have money in their pockets. They don't have money in their pockets. They can't buy stuff. Right. So, I mean, from our standpoint, trying to educate and entertain, but educate the industry and our listeners about how this actually has this downstream effect is incredibly important to us. Beth Benike - Busy Baby (32:46.285) Hmm. Yeah, it's scary. don't know it works. Joel (32:48.93) By the way, Walmart Walmart employees around 2 million associates. So if the shelves are empty, how many Walmart employees are going to lose their jobs? That is Beth. Benaki everybody at busy baby Beth for our listeners who want to know more about you. Maybe buy some some products. Where would you send them? Beth Benike - Busy Baby (33:11.245) Yeah, if we have any left, actually we have a really great product that's a bib that has a tether system, so it's great for restaurants. We have a lot of those. Busybaby.com is where you can find us. Busybabymat on all the socials. And if anybody has words of wisdom and ways to help me, you can find me on LinkedIn. Chad (33:11.722) in Europe. Joel (33:32.046) Christmas in Canada, Chad. Christmas in Portugal and Canada. That is another one in the can. We out.

Chad & Cheese cozy up with Alex Fourlis, SVP and GM at Veritone Hire and low-key philosopher of recruitment doom. They unpack LinkedIn’s growing chokehold on recruiting like it’s a Marvel villain nobody voted for—complete with algorithmic mind control and passive-aggressive InMail. Alex drops truth bombs about the platform’s data addiction, employer branding gymnastics, and the fact that recruiters are basically just paying rent in LinkedIn’s World™  now. Also: 🎯 Are job ads even ads anymore? 💸 Why PPC is like lighting money on fire, one click at a time 🧠 And how to survive when your “recruiting strategy” is just hoping LinkedIn doesn’t change the rules again Spoiler: They always do. ENJOY! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:29.774) Yeah, this is the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always. Chad. So washes writing shotgun as we welcome Alex Fourlis SVP and GM at Veritone Hire. Alex welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Alex Fourlis (00:48.574) Thank you for having me guys. Big fun. Joel (00:51.084) He's so subdued after that. I was hoping to get you excited, but I guess not. All right, let's. Chad (00:55.319) Hahaha Alex Fourlis (00:56.202) I'm seeing that Manchester United shirt and I'm a Liverpool fan so I'm kind of hurting right now. I'm bit hurting, you announced this immense new stadium and everything so it's kind of... Chad (01:00.591) Yeah, kind of put Joel (01:01.23) Are you offended by that? you? Uh oh. Chad (01:03.908) Yeah. They had an issue yesterday. Yeah. Joel (01:12.792) I think Liverpool is going to be okay. I think they're going to be all right. I'm not too worried about them. Aside from being a Liverpool fan, Alex, you have a rich history in the industry. I don't know if you're Greek. Let the listeners know a little bit about you and Veritone and specifically maybe what you do for Veritone. Chad (01:16.176) think that'd be okay. Alex Fourlis (01:17.503) thing. Chad (01:33.924) And what's your favorite Greek island? That's what I want to know. Alex Fourlis (01:34.259) Yes. Okay, that's a very, very, very difficult question to answer. There's an island for everything, pretty much. Let's get to that. But if you want my... a nice tip, let's say Milos for now. Like Milos is an amazing island, it has a lot of things to offer. So look it up. Joel (01:38.219) and Chad (01:40.794) Ha ha ha! Joel (01:54.862) Is that the one with the tops, the roofs, the blue roofs, the domes? Chad (01:55.236) Milas. Alex Fourlis (02:02.218) No, it has famously a lot of small colored houses that literally used to house fishing boats and they're literally almost on the sea and has some amazing volcanic beaches. It's the ones where you see the rocks and people diving from white rocks towards the blue sea. Joel (02:22.894) Sounds just like Indiana, sounds a lot like Indiana. So yeah, continue with Veritonin and your background. Alex Fourlis (02:30.11) Yes, I'm more than 25 years in this industry. started from like founding a Greek job board with some friends right out of university. At the time, before 2000, were very few players in the market. And this kind of journey got me through Carrebuilder. I've worked for a big job board, managing businesses on the European level. and eventually moved to Broadbean and now to WaitOnHire. So WaitOnHire shortly as is an integration of two very big brand names in the industry, Broadbean and PandaLogic. So we offer the complete breadth of solutions that someone that needs to attract candidates needs today from advertising, programmatic advertising, anywhere in the world. we can help you get the best candidate at the right time at the right price. Joel (03:30.766) So an employer comes to you and you do what for them? Alex Fourlis (03:34.984) So we will help them distribute the jobs right from inside their ATS or their preferred recruiter software system and distribute it to more than 2000 job boards globally. In some markets, we will distribute from the ATS straight to the job board. In other markets where I have matured like the North American market, we will programmatically manage their campaigns. So we completely automate the delivery of their jobs, manage the budget. Chad (03:51.525) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (04:03.368) the outcomes and the analytics back to them and they don't need to lift a finger. Chad (04:10.042) So you have a deep understanding of not just the duration based market, also the performance based market. So are we starting to see more of a movement in the U.S. obviously to performance and then what are you seeing outside of the U.S. because I know that the adoption outside the U.S. is much slower when it comes to performance. What are we seeing U.S. adoption and then obviously outside? Alex Fourlis (04:34.046) Yeah, just to give you an understanding, we distribute more than a million jobs per month and we deliver back to our clients more than 10 million of applicants every month, right? So the numbers are pretty huge and that's on a global scale, right? So pretty much everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere and in some cases the Southern as well. But what we're seeing right now is obviously... Chad (04:42.863) Hello. Alex Fourlis (04:58.418) in terms of automation and programmatic advertising, the North American market is what we consider closer to maturity. It's still, I would say that there is a lot of room to grow in that market as well, but our focus this year is actually taking programmatic advertising on a global journey. We launched in UK, we launched in Australia, we're launching in Germany very soon. Chad (05:06.597) Mm. Alex Fourlis (05:26.442) We already running campaigns in central Europe. that's where we see things. But in US, definitely the large enterprise clients are looking at programmatic advertising as a core strategy they wanted to deploy. There's a lot of, all the key global players are starting from there, ourselves, our competitors like Upcast. Jovio, they're all present in that market and we're all kind of tiptoeing internationally. Joel (06:00.238) Talk about what you see from a macro perspective. Are jobs increasing, decreasing, parts of the world that are hotter than others? Just give us your 30,000 foot view of jobs right now. Alex Fourlis (06:11.74) No, think that the last two years have not been great for the hiring market. So, in all the key kind of like vacancy reports that we see across the last two years, we see like a declining pretty much trend and it's pretty consistent globally. I would say there's obviously there's always going to be the exceptions, but if we look at the big markets, hiring activity has been decreasing, especially the last 18 months, I would say across North America, Europe and APAC. And I think that's really kind of like hurting different players in the market differently. And there is obviously a lot more focus on budget savings, on getting the optimal expense, on trying different potentially channels, but with the view of managing the budget and the outcomes, and optimizing the outcomes more. So I think that's the pre-evalent kind of trend in the industry right now. It's optimization and efficiency, as said, mentioned many times. That's the same when it comes to hiring and job advertising. And we can see it like the announcements of the public results of every staffing company in the world and every public job board in the world pretty much. Chad (07:33.69) So talk about the maturity models and being able to adopt performance. What about the maturity model around going from CPC, which is literally just spray and pray for God's sake, to CPA and then to CPQC, right? Or CPQA. Right. CPQA. Alex Fourlis (07:50.27) Yeah. CPQA as we, yeah. So I think we are literally on the verge of this big change in happening, at least from the side of the platforms, right? I think a couple of months ago, weeks ago, had Chris Forman talking about this move to down funnel, right? To CPQA. And this is exactly where we are as a business as well. We already have... Chad (08:13.445) Mm. Alex Fourlis (08:20.042) a significant percentage of our clients where we are tracking all the way down to hire and we are increasing it every day is a key focus for us right now. have CPQA data, we have a very flexible model. So pretty much we allow every employer to define what's quality within the ATS status or hiring signals. So for some employers that might be, I want somebody to be going on interview stage for somebody that's a staffing agency that might be Chad (08:41.754) Gotcha. Alex Fourlis (08:50.018) hiring manager approval of the candidate. So there's different definitions of what quality is per client, but we have a consistent model that we measure CPQA, we measure cost per hire as well. So overall what we are seeing is that this is a very critical point of data for us, but it's Chad (09:05.946) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (09:17.266) It's starting to become a demand from the industry, right? So even I know that indeed went back and forth with the decisions of working on like these models. But if you see their integration strategy, the mandates that they have for the APIs, the fact that if you want to use Indeed Apply, you need to be providing hiring signals increasingly. They start having deadlines and thresholds of how many signals you. Chad (09:38.287) Hmm. Alex Fourlis (09:45.054) putting back as a client if you want access to Indeed Apply. And we're seeing pretty much every major competitor, LinkedIn, SICK, I wouldn't say copying, but implementing the exact same strategy that, you know, if you want to have direct apply, like you need to exchange data with us, which is really good. Chad (09:58.385) Mm. Joel (09:59.342) That sounds like copying. Chad (10:01.124) Yeah Chad (10:06.842) Well, we're hearing just rumors that Indeed's actually moving to the process where if you're not providing those signals, that you will not be able to actually do business with them. So they will start on the SMB side of the house. And you can do that because they pretty much have the ecosystem that they can force SMBs to use, right? As opposed to actually owning an applicant tracking system and then working up to enterprise. Alex Fourlis (10:34.664) Yeah, I think not doing business is too extreme. think, as I said, access to specific APIs that are critical to indeed apply, for example, it is the way that how they would push for more adoption. And to be honest, if we want the outcomes to improve for recruiters and employers, that's the perfect strategy. think as the whole sector, we need to adopt that mentality, right? Chad (10:39.216) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:44.528) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:52.015) Gotcha. Alex Fourlis (11:04.486) If you exchange those types of those points of data and those signals, you will by default improve the targeting and the efficiency of those advertising campaigns of those job postings. So I think it's a great thing. know, Indeed is a pioneer in that regard and we are kind of very happy to help the entire kind of ecosystem of clients integrate. Chad (11:21.136) Mm. Alex Fourlis (11:32.04) with those examples. as I said, it's not just LinkedIn. think there's no major leading job in the world that is not following the exact same practice. And I can give you examples like in even StepStone and even like strong local leaders like Nokia in India, they have very, very similar strategies that they employ. Joel (11:55.894) Alex, said, was it 20,000 sources, job boards, other destination sites that you're posting jobs or getting jobs onto? Was it 20,000 you said? Alex Fourlis (12:06.152) No, I'm saying 2000 that are really active in the last 90 days we posted jobs and yeah, it's very easy to blow up those numbers, right? Is it did one side or 150? Joel (12:08.853) 2000. Joel (12:12.398) Uh, what's an extra zero? What's an extra zero 2000, 20,000. Uh, yeah. But, uh, I was, uh, no, this is, this is how I, this is how I lose weight in my head. I'm eating two 20,000 calories, but I think it's only two. Anyway. Um, I've, I've had, uh, I've had vendors and people tell me like, uh, all people really need, particularly in the U S is LinkedIn and indeed. Chad (12:18.978) Joel Joel's been working for Doge. thinks he thinks six million is six billion. Alex Fourlis (12:24.008) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (12:30.298) much easier. Joel (12:41.046) Agree, disagree, and if you disagree, why? Chad (12:48.144) Can you hear him? Oh, there you go. Lost you there for a minute. Go ahead. Go ahead. Particularly in the US. Said, yeah, go ahead and start all over. Yes, particularly in the US. Alex Fourlis (12:49.172) No, I lost Joel. yeah, he's back. Joel (12:53.208) Did you get any of it? Alex Fourlis (12:54.952) No. Particularly in US, yeah. Joel (13:01.816) So I've had conversations with people that say all these programatics, all these other sites, it really doesn't matter. Indeed and LinkedIn are like 80 % of all you need. If you have those two, you don't really need a programmatic solution. I assume you disagree, but I'm curious why. Alex Fourlis (13:17.822) Yes, definitely that may apply if you have a very kind of narrow vision of a very specific job role in a very specific market, right? And might be true in that sense. But if we think across the board in many countries and even in North America, there is strengths and there's sides that are particularly good in certain niche. areas, they're particularly good in certain geographies. And to put it very simply, we all know from like economy and we know from like competition and free competition, the more that you kind of like go into a position as an employer or recruiter advertiser that I put all my chips in like a monopoly or duopoly in that sense, the more in danger long-term is that I have zero control of my strategy. spend outcomes and no way to diversify. Right. So I think the smart thing, and if we look at commercial advertising, Veyton is coming from the commercial advertising space as a business. Right. That's not what happened there. It's not just, know, there's only, I don't know, Netflix and a single channel that everybody goes to. Right. There's actually, I think we are... Joel (14:34.551) and Pepsi. Chad (14:35.716) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (14:40.906) in cycles of diversification in every market. And right now it might look that, know, indeed, LinkedIn have conquered the universe and, you know, in four or five times, four or five years time, we might see that this is also starting to change. And by the way, if we look, if I'm a multinational employer, what I'm going to do in Australia, what I'm going to do in China, what I'm going to do in India, what I'm going to do in Europe, that's not a... Chad (15:07.418) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (15:08.938) a solution that can work on 100 % of the globe today. Chad (15:14.276) Sounds like Joel's talking to lazy recruiters. I need two places. That's it. So we're talking about, again, let's, let's just keep it to the big names right now. We talked about how indeed looks like they're trying to mimic what's happening at LinkedIn, right? Raise the walls. They've got a wall. They've got a walled garden, get more data. More data means better matching. looks like LinkedIn is actually doing better matching within their system. We've been on them for a very long time about just really, they've got more information about Joel myself and most people that are on LinkedIn that use it daily than anybody else. They should be able to match on that very well. It looks like they're getting better there from a job standpoint, which means they're looking to, prospectively, I would assume, monetize that area of their business more. Alex Fourlis (15:44.499) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:08.116) you guys are actually working with them around that. Is there, is there a focus on that now? And is it pretty much like they're trying to mimic indeed as indeed is trying to mimic them. Alex Fourlis (16:19.636) No, I think that, you know, just to connect to my history, when LinkedIn popped up in like the mid 2010s, everybody in our industry, I was working at Gary Builder, you know, the product team at the time. Everybody thought that this will kind of like, this is the prevalent model. This is going to kill job boards. Like they have the data, they have like the candidate and we all know kind of like a candidate is king when it comes to the job board businesses. Chad (16:28.08) Mm. Alex Fourlis (16:49.722) I think it took a very long time, but we are now at the point where I think it's going to be an inflection point. Like I think that people start recognizing LinkedIn as also, yes, it's social media, it's somewhere where I build my brand as a business or as an employer, it has other services, but it's also a fine tool for somebody that's looking for a job. And I think that LinkedIn is also serious about the jobs game and they're becoming... Obviously they launched pay for performance. We're now seeing on our view, an explosive growth on that side of the business, the amount of jobs they're receiving and the amount of, of drafting they're providing back. They're the fastest growing publisher in our network in North America. And I think, and as I said, in a prediction I put for 2025, I think that's going to be the year that the online advertising industry will realize that, you know, LinkedIn is as big as we always thought they had the potential to be when it comes to not only to recruiter seats, which is kind of like an ubiquitous product for recruiters, but for jobs as well. That's going to be an advertiser as big as Indeed on a global scale, a publisher as big as Indeed on a global scale. And I think we're seeing this in the numbers literally in the last months. And we see it not just quantity, we see the quality as well. Joel (18:14.819) What? Joel (18:18.808) So speaking of 800 pound gorillas, LinkedIn becoming one. By the way, Chad, I speak to lazy recruiters, which are 80 % of all recruiters, by the way. We haven't mentioned Google. haven't. Well, it sounds like to Alex, we're just going to have to post on LinkedIn and we're done. Alex, we have talked about Google, Google for jobs. Is it an impact? Is it growing, shrinking? What are your thoughts on Google for jobs and how it plays into the ecosystem? Chad (18:28.858) Not for long, agentic, agentic. Alex Fourlis (18:30.216) Yeah. Alex Fourlis (18:46.922) Yeah, I think right now it's on a kind of a bit of a stable mode, right? Nothing that's really in the horizon of changing there. If I'm thinking there's another disruption in the industry, it's more likely to come if search is disrupted by definition from LLMs and different modes and different players that will evolve out of that ecosystem, right? That's moving so fast. So... I think right now it's easier to predict that Google itself will be disrupted potentially. The entire model that's kind of was a starting point even for job search might be disrupted, then they will disrupt the rest of the industry. Joel (19:34.702) And I love that. I'm curious your thoughts, chat GPT, pick one perplexity. What does job search look like on those platforms to you? Is it happening today? Cause it's hard for me to envision searching for a job on chat GPT, but maybe I'm just, old and, and, and it's like, Alex Fourlis (19:52.85) No, no. I've seen demonstrations and I played around it myself. And yes, you can, you know, instruct some of those models to review and, you match your profile to jobs and then go and... Joel (19:58.414) Uh-huh. Joel (20:08.214) Is it pulling from job boards, just job boards around the web? So it's like a vertical search, but it's a conversation as opposed to a search box. Okay. All right. Alex Fourlis (20:11.623) Yeah. Alex Fourlis (20:15.566) Exactly. And you can guide it and say, I want to look at specific employers or specific areas of employment that I want to focus on and find those jobs. We could go and say, I want to find a job as a CEO in a technology business, give me tips or give me sources of where can I find those jobs and it will bring back results. And I can't think and looking at my son when... We were studying trigonometry yesterday and my 12 year old son, you know, was checking the answers through charge GPT to make sure that he understood it correctly or taking, you know, all his answers seems to be kind of a go-to tool for every day. cannot imagine that somebody who's in university or graduating from a university day doesn't start there to seek advice, to seek guidance of how to look for a job. think there was a... Chad (21:06.576) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (21:13.678) An interesting study like circulating last year that a third of graduates from Ivy League universities, they're using AI-supported career search to find their first job. So I think that those types of technologies have a much better chance of disrupting the current business model in the industry. Chad (21:37.201) So are you surprised going back to LinkedIn, I mean it's taken them over 20 years for God's sake to actually get jobs right. And that is literally, I mean the space in which they've worked for the most part. How much better are they getting I guess from the standpoint of being able to deliver? Because one of the biggest issues that companies have had over the years is they can go into LinkedIn and they'll spend money on LinkedIn for the seats so that their recruiters can go and proactively search, right? Not for the jobs. They'll get slots, but for the most part, it's junk, right? Because they really have shitty matching to be able to display the right types of jobs, the right people, et cetera, et cetera. It's taken them 20 years. So we're actually, what I'm hearing is we're actually starting to see the maturation process. Alex Fourlis (22:07.988) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:30.781) get closer to where they're going to actually be doing much better in the jobs arena. And since in the kind of stats that you guys are saying from the Alex Fourlis (22:38.814) Yeah. Look on a global basis, and I'm surprised when people think like it was necessarily junk. The number one source of candidates and applicants that we provide to our clients, and I said like we're talking about, you know, more than 150 million applicants last year, is LinkedIn across the world, right? The number one source of applicants. And the second thing that I want to point out is that they never really went into the performance. or pay for performance came. They did a release two years ago. It kind of went under the radar. So we started seriously kind of like playing around and putting clients on that model. And I can tell you that within the space of some months, LinkedIn is now our second biggest publisher in North America, right? In the mature programmatic advertising market as we started talking in the beginning. So... I'm not going to be saying something that you didn't expect here. What we see is the results are there. In some industries, already are above the benchmark. So they're performing more than the average job board. They're also, you can imagine, technology, finance, marketing and everything. They have performance in surprisingly in industries and areas where we didn't expect. know, transportation and retail and, you know, they're doing pretty well. They're providing a lot of applications to our clients in those areas. And the other very interesting thing is the quality, the conversion from an application to a quality application. The CPQA that we were talking previously for LinkedIn is the best performing job for the last months in North America. It's one out of three of applications that convert to a quality application. according to our clients. So that's a very interesting kind of like metric that's pointing out that they're doing something better in terms of matching. It's still, you to be honest, we are trying to help them in a way. Like when we post the jobs, now we're trying a lot more to put the right skills and the right salary and the right location to help them match against it. The matching is still controlled by LinkedIn, but you know, owned by Microsoft. Chad (24:56.656) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (24:59.144) with all the investment on AI and general AI going across Microsoft right now, I won't be surprised that, you know, we see, if we see on the candidate side of LinkedIn, we see leaps and bounds improvements. So why not the same kind of like improvements being on the employer side of the matching? I would be. Chad (25:09.956) Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Chad (25:19.834) So if I am a smaller site or I am a startup that I'm getting into this space, LinkedIn and Indeed, they're trying to squeeze the entire market, right? And if I am in a specialty job board scenario, let's say it's tech, Indeed has already said that they are going after tech, right? How do I differentiate? How do I compete? Joel (25:46.712) Stay relevant. Chad (25:47.085) against these fucking monsters. mean, this is this I mean, and there are obviously tens of thousands of job boards that are actually out there. So so what's your advice to them other than get you know, get to get to maturation faster than they do? Alex Fourlis (26:03.47) Finally, I did a speech on this recently and I was invited by my first employer, that Greek job board to talk about how do they can compete on that same subject, right? You know, they are 800 pound gorillas. So you need to kind of like have a very clear plan as a job board, what you're doing around that. And for me, there's like two or three key questions that you need to answer. One is the tech stack. So if they want to integrate and go... done funnel and I'm going to build an niche site, let's say focused on, you know, transportation and drivers. For example, just say, I need to think like how my tech stack will serve the candidate and the employer better than they do today. Right. So I need to be kind of very laser focused and seeing drivers, they use mobiles in like, you know, Chad (26:49.328) Mm-hmm. Alex Fourlis (26:58.92) So that should be my kind of like a go-to model of operations for the candidate. I need to think are they ATSs, are they providers that they kind of like focus on that market? You know, there is an ATS, I think it's called 10th Street, that's focusing on that market. Like how do I get a better integration there than, you know, what Indeed or LinkedIn have in place? Because I have to beat them on the tech stack. I need to provide more services. The second beyond the tech stack is the services, right? They provide some content, know, and some reviews, for example, you know, can I do it better, like to service, you know, a very specific needs. need to, you know, I need to pick my fights, I think as a job board and say, okay, how can I provide the best possible content, right? For the Greek job board, that might means, you know, dominate the Greek language search, right? The dominating career content for... the local language that they will never match, right? Versus English. But there needs to be like a focus in technology integrations, in services that I provide to the candidate and eventually to the employer first. we need to decide like, okay, where are the modes? And the third piece, I think it's like potential disruption that comes in the future from things like generative AI. How can I incorporate it? Because... Chad (28:00.4) Mm. Alex Fourlis (28:26.108) As a smaller player, you have that ability of incorporating new technology and new models a lot faster than some of these kind of like big platforms that have to kind of have a more like kind of a release process that takes time and takes more resources to evolve. So I think that's where you're trying to compete. You need to pick your mode. You need to pick your niche. And I think from then on, it's services content and tech stack that you need to see how we did differentiate. Joel (28:59.726) So to piggyback a little bit on that, Alex, you talk about what maybe job boards or other sites need to do differently or how they can maybe think differently from the big elephants in the jungle. What are they doing wrong that they need to fix? I'm of the opinion that they've been their own worst enemy in many ways. Programmatic jobs are awful in many cases. You go to a career builder, search for a job. Chad (29:20.695) Yes. Joel (29:27.618) You're bounced around to four different sites. You got to go through a submission or registration. Like to me, that drives everyone to LinkedIn and indeed where they know they're not going to get that. They know they already have an account. They can easily click apply and get a, get an apply. Haven't job sites been their own worst enemy and shouldn't they correct some of that stuff? Alex Fourlis (29:46.408) Look, definitely, and I don't like to generalize. There are job sites that are doing an excellent job, right? Like if we look at what SICK is doing in Australia or what Carrier is doing in Turkey or Stepstone in areas of Europe, they have created their own kind of playbooks to defend on their market and on their niche, right? And I'm not just talking about this kind of, like we can talk about any sites that are doing extremely well in specific niches. So yeah, I was in Carrier Builders, so I've seen also the other kind of extreme of how do you completely lose the plot? And I was in a product team at the time where we're reviewing things like LinkedIn, like Glassdoor, like other approaches, like Indeed. And we kind of like again and again, kind of I saw in front of me how the leadership could completely lose the plot on major disruptions in the industry. But at the same time, I have to... We have to note the resilience of all these players, That we, know, many times, and I know about the four horsemen of the apocalypse and all that stuff, we predicted the end of job boards and we still, you know, finding new exciting job boards are doing great things that grow today, right? So I think you mentioned in the past, like, players, new players in the market that popping up anytime, like last year, For us, we've seen some boards like Sonic Jobs, for example, doing really well, growing in this market. And we see it in the numbers, in our programmatic exchange that they're doing really well. So I'm sure there's going to be innovation from areas that we don't expect today, and that some of these players will find the solutions and will be thriving for the next years as well. Chad (31:28.016) Yeah. Joel (31:38.222) Well, that's good news, Alex, because we need shit to talk about. So we need these companies to stay relevant. Thanks. Chad (31:41.734) Hahaha! Yes. And that being said, need to, we need to go ahead and wrap this up because we need to talk about, coming to Milos. So, if somebody wants to find out more about you connect with you and, or find out more about Veritone hire, where would you send them? Alex Fourlis (31:53.95) Definitely. Alex Fourlis (32:01.5) at veriton.com and for myself you can find me on LinkedIn. Joel (32:08.108) Alex Forliss everybody, the original Greek freak. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (32:14.841) We out.

This week on HR’s most dangerous podcast, things get wild . We're diving headfirst into the espionage-soaked saga between Rippling and Deel — corporate sabotage, shredded iPhones, axe-smashing, and a resignation with Meta-level baggage. It's the kind of plot twist even Netflix couldn’t dream up. But wait, there's more China and Dave Chappelle's next-level trolling of American manufacturing dreams. Hilarious and horrifying North Korean IT infiltrations at Fortune 500 companies? (💥 That’s right — the hackers are already inside the house .💥) A 23-year-old CEO and AI startup Artisan get $25 million ...and Shopify creates a world where your job has to beat the bots to survive. If you're in HR, tech, or just love a good spy thriller with a side of corporate chaos — this one’s for you. Get ready to rethink remote hiring, laugh nervously, and maybe double-check your VPN. Listen now. Before your office gets Pyong-yanged. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Chad (00:39.095) yeah. You put your tariff in, you pull your tariff out, you put your tariff in and you shake it all about. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Chad tariff, hokey pokey. Sowash. J.T. O'Donnell (00:52.241) I'm JT, Thursday is the new Friday, O'Donnell. Chad (00:54.747) Ha Maureen Clough (00:55.664) And I'm Maureen, AKA Moe, where's my cabin, Wiley Clough. Chad (01:01.862) Where's my cabin. We'll get to that. Maureen Clough (01:03.92) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:09.024) Where's my cabin that sounds like, it sounds like a movie reference. What's going on here? wait a minute, no I can tell by your background. You're, you're, you were in a cabin before. Tell us a little bit about that. J.T. O'Donnell (01:12.633) Yeah. Maureen Clough (01:13.435) Mmm I'm home. I was, I just feel like as much as humanly possible, I wanna be as far away from other humans as possible. So that's it. Yeah, I wanna touch grass. No, I love, you guys are the best, but we always do this remotely anyway. So I could be doing this on the moon. So, but yeah, you know, just touching some grass these days, getting grounded. That's what I'm looking for. So. Chad (01:28.182) Should we take that personal? Should we take that personal JT? Chad (01:35.462) Yeah, that's a point. Yeah, that's a point. Yeah. Chad (01:43.286) I it. Touching some grass. Touching some grass. So, I guess, you the big question is are we sick of tariff shit? Maureen Clough (01:45.102) Mm-hmm, we all gotta touch some grass, Maureen Clough (01:52.796) Terrified. Yep. I did not actually, I'm sure I'm not the only person who's come up with that one. Although I like to think it's the Maureen Wiley-Cleff original, but no, doubtful, doubtful. J.T. O'Donnell (01:53.414) Yeah. Chad (01:54.726) Terrified. That was good. Did you use that one before? Chad (02:02.554) terrified. So did we ever think in our lifetime that we would be this focused on blanket tariffs? I thought like, you know, that was something that we talked about in the, in the past, you know, like the 1800s, 1900s, but did we ever think that we were going to be talking about this? J.T. O'Donnell (02:15.535) No. Maureen Clough (02:18.716) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (02:24.409) No, and can I just say that I've somehow gotten on the side of tariff talk. So my feed is blowing up with people who want to give you the detailed explanation right down to the guy that held my attention yesterday for over four minutes with Lego figures. Like he made Lego figures to explain scenarios to help people understand. mean, he was really going for the fifth grade audience and I was there for it. So it's insane. It's like it's everywhere. I can't get away from it. Maureen Clough (02:24.601) Everything old is new again. Hehehehehe Chad (02:33.229) my god. Chad (02:38.998) that's... I like that. Maureen Clough (02:39.438) Chad (02:46.554) Yeah, I mean. Maureen Clough (02:46.8) Hey, I'd love that video. Please send it to me. Chad (02:53.166) It is, it is. I mean, unfortunately, you know, damage is kind of done by now. We've got, you know, the whack job of Howard Lutnick making a statement about millions of Americans screwing in tiny little iPhone screws and they're going to bring back manufacturing to the US. Then China. This is, God, I hate to say this. This is fucking hilarious. China's trolling us, kids. J.T. O'Donnell (02:58.737) Thanks. Maureen Clough (02:59.255) Mm hmm. Yeah. Chad (03:18.244) China's controlling us and I'm gonna show you why. if you're listening to the podcast, you can always come back, go to YouTube and actually watch this, but you've got to see this video. Here we go. So this is what bringing back manufacturing looks like in China's trolling eyes. We've got some big Americans on sewing machines. I mean, come on. Maureen Clough (03:49.766) Yeah, they're getting us good here. Chad (03:50.726) Screwing in iPhone. Make America great again. Maureen Clough (03:56.764) Pretty good trolling, A plus trolling. J.T. O'Donnell (03:57.19) Yeah. Chad (03:58.736) But now, on the back of that, I do have an American who has an opinion as well, and I think this, this coupled together, I think is important. So let's watch this. Maureen Clough (04:32.346) my gosh. Maureen Clough (04:38.14) None of us want to work that hard. Chad (04:38.383) J.T. O'Donnell (04:42.863) It's crazy. It's crazy. know. And I read an article yesterday, a couple was in Canada on a trip and they got on a gondola or a ski trip. And this Canadian couple, the wife just started railing on them about being American. while they were in Canada, they better buy Canadian and all this stuff. And finally the husband that kind of calmed her down, the Canadian husband, they got off and she said, you know, should really go down this trail, like trying to be a nice person. It was the worst trail they'd ever been on. They barely made it down the hill alive. I think she's really angry with us. So I don't know. I mean, you're going to be traveling soon, Chad. Who knows how people are going to feel. Maureen Clough (05:17.468) You got to throw that Canadian flag logo on your backpack or something. Throw them off. Chad (05:17.775) Yeah. Chad (05:22.33) Yeah. Well, where, where we have a place, there are more Canadians because apparently, Europeans wanted to keep it a secret from us dumb Americans. And I don't blame them to be quite frank, but the thing I have noticed because we've had the place for a few years now is that we were literally like the only American in this little village that we have right off, right on the ocean. And, now I go and I'm noticing more and more and more. Americans. And it's like, you hear through the news, a lot of people are like, fuck this, I'm out. And then people are like, I thought you said you were out. Why are you still here in the US? And it's like, no, they're coming now. Stop it. Stop it. Maureen Clough (06:05.82) Chad, you're a trendsetter. I think a lot of people are going to be following in your footsteps for sure. Yeah. Chad (06:11.863) Yeah, I think my wife's the trendsetter. My wife's the trendsetter. Maureen Clough (06:15.564) out while she's a smart one. She's a smart one. And please hook us all up when the time comes. Yeah. We'll do. Chad (06:19.27) Duh. Come and visit, come and visit. All right, let's go ahead. Let's jump into, Yep. Who wants to go first? it you, you Mo? You want to hit it? Okay. Maureen Clough (06:31.856) I'll go, you know, being a fan of jumping on the bandwagon for trends, I went ahead and did what literally everyone on planet Earth is doing according to LinkedIn, my LinkedIn feed, which is pump some prompt into chat GPT to see what kind of action figure it's gonna pop out based on what it knows about you. You guys, this is mine. So I'm gonna go ahead and tell you that I think it hallucinated, it hallucinated a little bit on this one. Chad (06:48.41) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (06:51.473) You Chad (06:53.508) I, you shaved today. That's, that's awesome. Maureen Clough (07:00.63) I would like to also point out, not only am I not a male, I do not play video games. I know almost nothing about video games. Mad respect to people. Chad (07:06.752) you're not a gamer. Chad (07:11.59) So listener there's there's there's an Xbox controller There's a book that says the journey it says writer and you do some writing right? Yeah, okay Then there's a 20-sided die and then a robot underneath it now the 20-sided die is Mainly a Dungeons and Dragons thing. So is that are you a Dungeons and Dragons girl? Maureen Clough (07:16.816) Yeah, thank you. Good point. Maureen Clough (07:21.468) I do, I do, Bit of writing. Maureen Clough (07:31.216) which is amazing. No, I've never played. I don't even know the concepts within. And by the way, like to call the book that I'm allegedly writing, The Journey, is such an insult to me because I cannot stand when people use the phrase, The Journey. Like it kills me. So chat GPT, Chad GPT, Chaddy GPT, whatever we want to call you. You got some work to do. Please don't hallucinate this hard. Like this isn't a front to me. Yeah, like did someone like, right? J.T. O'Donnell (07:53.553) think someone hijacked it. I think someone hijacked your chat GPT and like fed it some stuff beforehand because whoa, that's a mismatch. Maureen Clough (08:01.464) I was like, this makes zero sense on any level, but anyway. Yeah, you should. Let me know, I'll send you the prompt. J.T. O'Donnell (08:05.362) But I now want to try it, so you're going to send me the prompt. Yeah, I know. Chad (08:08.582) Oh, no, I will send you the prompt because mine actually looks like me. She did. I'll send. J.T. O'Donnell (08:12.963) Okay. I thought there was like a prompt going on that everyone was using that was the same. No, everyone's just prompted. it. All right. Chad (08:17.606) Yeah, but I mean, the thing is it's all about prompt engineering. It's about continuing to add to it so it actually comes closer. So hers is probably version one and mine's like 25. I don't know. She got on the bandwagon very early. Let's say that. All right. My shout out goes to Colossal Biosciences. You might've heard of these guys lately because they're the ones who brought back the dire wolf. The dire wolf has been extinct. Maureen Clough (08:19.088) thought there was. Maureen Clough (08:23.462) See? I don't know. Mmm. J.T. O'Donnell (08:30.81) love that. Maureen Clough (08:31.248) Hahaha! Maureen Clough (08:44.988) The what? Chad (08:46.854) extinct for 12,500 years. Watch this. Wait, we're Jurassic Park times kids. Watch this. Maureen Clough (09:05.372) It's cute. Chad (09:09.076) they're here. Chad (09:28.826) wooly mammoth. Maureen Clough (09:28.86) Bring it back. Bring back jobs to the US. Bring back William & Chad (09:33.264) Yes. dude, dude. So, I mean, this is how Jurassic parks started, but I mean, AI is going to kill us anyway. So I mean, why not bring some cool extinct animals back? mean, so, so as they asked in the video, what's, what extinct animal would you guys bring back? Maureen Clough (09:36.088) Wow, that's kind of crazy. Maureen Clough (09:43.876) That's true. Maureen Clough (09:54.864) I'm going Dino for sure. Like I'm going T-Rex. Mm-hmm, 100. Chad (09:57.882) T-Rex, a little Allosaurus or T-Rex, one of those big ones. What about you, JT? J.T. O'Donnell (10:02.726) Just no, no, I vote no. Thanks, Stupor, no. Chad (10:06.95) Too late! Too late! We've got a dire wolf. The toothpaste is out of the tube. It's gonna happen. Do you want a saber-tooth tiger? Raptor? Do you want a dodo bird? I mean, come on. What do want, JT? Maureen Clough (10:18.012) those are cute. J.T. O'Donnell (10:19.025) Everything that died was like killer. It was going to take us out. I just, in the words of White Lotus, no, Piper, no. Buddhism, no. I'm sorry. You're not getting one out of me. Chad (10:23.954) Dodo. think it... I think it... I think it... Maureen Clough (10:24.316) Go out with a bang. Ugh. That was good, JT. I'm impressed. Chad (10:40.067) You Maureen Clough (10:42.204) Things are getting weird out there, man. Chad (10:43.694) Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, I'm going, I'm going with the saber tooth tiger to be quite frank. Like I said, I think we're, we're in the days of idiocracy and we're going to be putting rondo on the, on the lawn soon. So yeah, let's just go ahead. We'll, do that. JT, what you got? Maureen Clough (10:48.87) Hmm. It's very solid. J.T. O'Donnell (11:00.48) my goodness. All right. So my shout out is a little different. Jorge Bastard posted that he runs for EMEA, vice president of sales for EMEA for Canva. That every quarter he now institutes this first week of the month of that quarter is this time where they just regroup and rest and just take time, which is so counterintuitive to a hustle culture, especially as sales hustle culture, right? Delivery. Chad (11:12.71) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:28.816) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (11:28.943) You've just come off a quarter and he got it. He was inspired by somebody in the health space who said, you know, you need to recalibrate. So they clear out the meetings, they review, they work on strategy. No one's pushing to make calls, appointments, et cetera, for one week. And it's all about mental and physical wellness. What I like about it is the fact that right now I'm seeing and hearing a lot of, you know, managers be like, okay, it's our time again, right? People are lucky to have a job. I saw a whole diatribe about like, why don't people have hustle anymore? Chad (11:42.79) Go ahead and connect to him too. J.T. O'Donnell (11:58.14) You know, it's time to bring hustle back. And I just thought it was nice that he was like, no, I get it. My people are hustling. And so they need a week to recoup, you know, and I'm going to work it into their, to the actual business, you know, and not make them take their own sales, their own vacation time. So shout out. think that's well played. Maureen Clough (11:58.396) Kids these days. Chad (12:14.18) Yeah, very well played. And I mean, when we're in a situation where we're doing the, you know, we're, in chaotic times, kids. Okay. Let's just go ahead and say that. So, you know, especially if you're in management, okay, if you're in management, you know that there's some stress that's happening. Not just with you and your family, but obviously with the, with, with the people that you support, the people, the teams that are out there. So again, one of the things that I've been trying to say more Maureen Clough (12:14.821) I agree. Chad (12:42.454) is give some grace to yourself, but then also those around you, right? So I think that's the big key. So that's a great shout out, JT. That's a great shout out. Maureen Clough (12:44.892) Love that. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (12:48.241) percent. J.T. O'Donnell (12:51.665) Yeah, the cool down week. He called it the cool down week. think it's great. I think it's the way to do it. Maureen Clough (12:51.846) He's gonna make more money. I love that and I bet you the productivity and the employee retention and all that's gonna skyrocket and I hope we get to see some really great results from it that can be then trumpeted around. I because right now I saw an article that came out recently that said that it's costing the economy $766 billion a year because of workplace insolvility rising, meaning people are just being rude, people throwing people under the bus, eye rolling, degrading comments at the office. Chad (13:01.042) yeah! Chad (13:18.406) Mm hmm. Yeah. Maureen Clough (13:23.268) And like you said, a lot of that's caused by the stress in these chaotic times and this job insecurity and instability that everyone's feeling all these layoffs, AI coming for your job, et cetera. And so if you're just like freaking nice to people, you can actually change your company's trajectory and the lives of your employees. So you can have a win-win. So I love that that guy is doing that. I hope we can follow up. Maybe we can get him on the show. Who knows? J.T. O'Donnell (13:34.577) Hmm. Chad (13:40.558) So, so, so the problem is toxic masculinity is making a comeback. That's a problem, right? So when you can actually get other males to get in there and say, first and foremost, it's not right. mean, I don't care what the fucking Manosphere tells you, okay? It's not right. These are, all human beings. We're, we're all created equal, should be paid equal, all that other fun stuff. But I think this is where, this is where we need to step up as leaders. J.T. O'Donnell (13:40.614) Right. J.T. O'Donnell (13:47.643) Hmm. Maureen Clough (13:47.887) It's Maureen Clough (13:56.187) Right. Mm-hmm. Chad (14:10.362) and actually have the discussions with our teams. It's not right, right? I mean, you have those discussions with your kids and sometimes, unfortunately, the people that work for you act like your kids, right? So you just have to take the time. You do, right? Maureen Clough (14:13.09) Mm-hmm. Yep. Maureen Clough (14:18.524) Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (14:23.089) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (14:23.26) We want to give our kids good examples, right? And when our leaders do this kind of stuff, you know, this negative stuff, this toxic stuff, it's not set in the right course for people. And so that drives me crazy that I have to actually tell my kids don't do what that world leader is doing because it's not okay. Kind of a weird moment. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (14:25.86) Yeah, yeah. Chad (14:42.49) Yeah, don't do that. I know he's the leader of the free world. so yeah, but one thing, leader of the free world, no, we're the leader of free stuff here at Chad and Cheese Kids. Always, always, always free stuff from the Chad and Cheese at chadcheese.com slash free. What can I get for free, Chad? So you're love this. First and foremost, t-shirts. Everybody loves t-shirts. They're on... Maureen Clough (14:48.028) Details. Maureen Clough (15:02.852) You Chad (15:09.43) LinkedIn all over the place. They're on the socials all over the place. Everybody gets a Chad and cheese. when they get a chad cheese.com slash free, they post it. Joel sent me this morning. You guys haven't seen it yet. I'm to send it to you. Joel sent me this morning, the new design and you know how we love concert t-shirts, right? So the last one, you know, we have like the guns and roses one before that. It was like ACDC. This new one is fucking kick ass. So I can't wait to be able to do that. who sponsors those shirts? Well, our friends over at J.T. O'Donnell (15:26.341) Yes. Chad (15:38.85) Aaron app. we also give away two bottles of whiskey a month to one listener. Just one listener. get two bottles. that's from our friends at van hack bourbon barrel aged syrup. Do you get a theme here? Kids? Bourbon, bourbon barrel, age syrup from our friends at key. Yorra who actually sponsor shout outs. Love those guys from up North. Maureen Clough (15:55.957) Mm, yes. Chad (16:03.362) Craft beer from the data geeks over at Aspen tech labs. And if it is your birthday It's time for a little rum from plum the hard part here is because Joel usually runs the soundboard he has all this shit up and I can't allow a Episode to go by Without a little bit of that. yeah. yeah This is this is for you Joel. We miss you Maureen Clough (16:28.444) There we go. There we go. Chad (16:33.446) He's spring break in Canada. He's spring break in Canada. Yeah, he's he's well He's at spring spring break in Canada, which means all of his in-laws have been giving him shit all week because of all this tariff stuff so come back and be able to blow out a little bit, but he's traveling to Canada we're going to be headed to unleash in less than a month unleash America in Vegas Maureen Clough (16:36.54) Joel's proud, he's proud of you right now, you found it. J.T. O'Donnell (16:39.782) Well done. J.T. O'Donnell (16:45.329) Right? Maureen Clough (16:46.198) yeah, fair. Maureen Clough (16:51.036) You Chad (16:59.19) We're doing some cool stuff with the team over at GEM. We're going to be in the GEM booth moderating some panel discussions on the 7th and the 8th. And we're also doing some really cool shit with the team over at Smart Recruiters. Going to be recording another sessions season. That's right. We've got two out now. We're starting to drip out season two. We've got three. We've got another one that's in the can and we're getting ready to record season four. This shit is amazing. We're also going to have Maureen Clough (17:28.412) tight. Chad (17:28.856) A film wrap-up party on the 7th in a suite at the Cosmo. You might be, who knows, you might get a VIP ticket. But what are you guys up to? Are you going back to the cabin anytime soon, Mo? Are you going skiing anytime, JT? Maureen Clough (17:36.87) So much FOMO. It's awesome. I sure am. Yeah. Hitting that up. J.T. O'Donnell (17:45.146) Yeah, it's month season here. So there's not really more skiing left. We're waiting for summer, which is good. just feel this is the season of graduation and charity events and stuff. You know, I just feel like every time I turn around, there's something else to go to. I might slip a birthday in there. So yeah, so there's stuff coming. Chad (17:47.064) It's mud. Maureen Clough (17:50.391) yeah. Maureen Clough (17:59.59) So true. I'm going to my 20th college reunion too. And those are happening as well. It's crazy. J.T. O'Donnell (18:06.928) Yeah. Chad (18:06.95) It's crazy. I went to one college reunion. did not, or not, well, I'm sorry, high school reunion. It did not turn out well. So therefore I haven't been back. Maureen Clough (18:16.252) no, what happened? boy. We're to get this after the show. J.T. O'Donnell (18:18.897) We're back. So you're not allowed back is what you're telling us, Chad, right? Yeah. There's like, you're on a list. Got it. Got it. You're on a list. Nice. Chad (18:21.912) I don't want to talk about it. All I gotta say is old high school, know, somewhat who wanted to be flames. You get a little drunk, people start to hit on you. Yeah. I'm a Julie almost killed a bitch that almost happened. Maureen Clough (18:31.447) J.T. O'Donnell (18:34.149) Not allowed. Well, now that's a story we're going to need to hear over some drinks. Maureen Clough (18:39.61) Yeah, 100%. Chad (18:39.844) Yeah, I'll let Julie tell that one in the meantime. Maureen Clough (18:44.016) Ha ha ha. Chad (18:48.944) Whoo, so have you heard about this whole thing with Rippling and Deal? you have it. Yeah, you guys are full of shit. Anyway, it's literally, okay, listener, if you haven't listened, it's like corporate espionage thriller. So Rippling, which is a workforce management software, it's also a comedy, by the way, they recently sued Rival Deal, accusing them of planting a spy within their ranks. J.T. O'Donnell (18:54.093) No, what did something happen? What? Maureen Clough (18:54.108) What? Huh? Maureen Clough (19:11.664) literally. Chad (19:17.478) can listen to last week's show entitled deal spy games, to get more in depth podcast story. It's juicy. It's juicy. Anyways, now admits this scandal deals head of communications, Elizabeth Diana. That's a great name. Elizabeth Diana has resigned. She had been with the company since November, 2021 and her debark, her departure comes right on the heels of all of the spy talk. Meanwhile, rippling. which has raised over two billion with a B, $2 billion already in funding, reportedly in talks to raise several hundred million more aiming for a valuation of 16 billion. So, okay, so give me your thoughts, JT, you start out first. Thoughts on Elizabeth leaving deal during this whole spy thriller thing, and then also the rippling cash. What do you think? J.T. O'Donnell (20:07.419) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (20:14.513) Okay, so her leaving deal reminds me of every political drama show I've ever watched where the comms person takes the hit. Do know what I mean? Somebody in that organization made some bad choices and you go to the comms person and go, the whole reason we really have you is for moments like this so we can fire you publicly, blame you. Hopefully she's getting the nice parachute, right? And somebody that they know is going to set her up with a job, but that's how that works, right? Chad (20:21.839) huh, trying to get out early. Mm-hmm. Chad (20:33.684) OOOOH Maureen Clough (20:43.196) that's a good one. Chad (20:44.087) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (20:44.325) I'm telling you, it's the, it's the calm person. That's what they do. Like that's why they're there, you know? So I, I'm hoping she's out there collecting the check on, you know, whatever. being a startup advisor, which I know we all are like, I can't wrap my head around why you need to go for more money. just, what? So you can, so you can say 16 billion with a B like that's just got bad news written all over it. You know, really, really hard for that unicorn status. I just don't think you need it though. You know, so. Chad (20:54.31) Whoo! Chad (21:13.158) Yeah? Yeah? J.T. O'Donnell (21:14.562) I don't know, what do you think? Chad (21:16.518) What about J? What do you think Mo? Maureen Clough (21:18.992) Well, I think that this proves the adage, there's no such thing as bad press is actually incorrect because this was so bad. She was like, peace, I'm out, right? Like I wouldn't want to touch this company with a 10 foot pole. I mean, I would just be like, you guys are on your own. I had nothing to do with this nonsense. Good luck to you. See you later. And hopefully she has some sort of package like you were saying, JT, where she can kind of coast for a bit. But I think I read she was previously at Meta Instagram and did some other pretty high profile stuff. Chad (21:30.63) Yeah. Chad (21:48.356) Uh-huh. Maureen Clough (21:48.75) I'm gathering she will land just fine. yeah, that dumpster fire, I would run as hard and as fast as I could away from it. I would want my name nowhere near it, which is why I feel so bad for the people who were innocent within the organization had nothing to do with this because this company, I think they're tarnished forever. I don't think this is, there's no redemption from this if you ask me, which I don't know. I mean, we'll see what happens. It's all allegations at this point, but based on what Mr. O'Brien had to say, it sure sounds pretty damn credible. So shout out to Mr. O'Brien who gave us the most lurid details that I legitimately think this will be a Netflix drama. It was incredible. J.T. O'Donnell (22:25.873) Do you remember the Lyft, Lyft claimed at one point that Uber made a bunch of calls, a bunch of fake requests for Lyfts and then no shows. I swear that was the thing way back when, right? So it's got that whole competitive, right? And so true, so true. But you know what I mean? Like the fact that it still goes on. Maureen Clough (22:35.106) yes, yes, yeah. Chad (22:36.976) Yeah, yeah. Well, that was that was child's play compared to this, though. Maureen Clough (22:41.678) No. Maureen Clough (22:46.094) It's wild. Chad (22:46.288) I, so, you know, for Elizabeth leaving, all I can say is run Lizzie run, okay? Because, I mean, she had a star-studded resume before, as you'd said, Mo. She was global comms and PR at Google, might've heard of those guys. VP corporate comms at Facebook, head of comms at Insta. Dude, I'd run as fast and far as I could away from this mess, especially with the likelihood that some of her buddies in the C-suite Maureen Clough (22:52.845) No. Maureen Clough (23:01.371) Yeah. Maureen Clough (23:07.42) Right? Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (23:08.163) Exactly. Chad (23:15.14) are gonna be wearing orange jumpsuits possibly, possibly sometime soon. So yeah, I get it. mean, if you can get away from this, and again listeners, if you didn't listen to last week, the spy games, gotta listen, we ran through the affidavit. You gotta listen to that. But then we talk about other unicorns. Maureen Clough (23:16.912) in the big house. Maureen Clough (23:35.644) It was nuts. Chad (23:42.765) in Oh my God, dude, we're talking about rippling needing cash. Talk about warning signals. Okay. So you remember the, I'm going to go back, I'm going to go back a little bit, uh, to March of 2023 when, uh, the SVB debacle happened. Silicon Valley bank. Remember when that happened and everybody was getting ready. So when that happened, I don't know if you remember this or not. Maureen Clough (23:47.61) I hadn't heard that one. It's great. Maureen Clough (23:54.63) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (24:04.07) Mm-hmm. yeah, absolutely. Maureen Clough (24:05.367) Mm-hmm, sure do. Chad (24:10.412) Rippling struck an emergency $500 million term sheet in 12 hours during that SVB meltdown. And as Joel would say, don't allow a crisis to go to waste. But seriously, this is, you know, to me is a huge warning signal. If I were a company looking for a workforce management payroll platform, looking at the unstable market, Maureen Clough (24:16.816) Wow. J.T. O'Donnell (24:19.003) Mm-hmm. Chad (24:37.591) wondering why Rippling needs more cash and remembering Rippling obviously wasn't on solid ground during the SVB meltdown, being able to cover payrolls, hence needing $500 million to be able to do that. yeah, I forgot about the whole spy drama too. Yeah, that thing's going on. In my honest opinion, I would get away from anything that was Rippling or deal at this point. J.T. O'Donnell (24:47.909) Right. Chad (25:05.626) I don't know if you got, even if they were my current provider, I would be in, in emergency mode, looking for a contingency just in case I needed to hop quick. Because the last thing you want to do is not have payroll. I mean, and I also have more news. Are you ready for more news? J.T. O'Donnell (25:19.141) Yeah. Maureen Clough (25:19.344) Yeah, it's kind of important people like that. Chad (25:29.806) Yes, deal who's, who is also also a unicorn, Keith O'Brien deals former spy who was working at rippling has avoided imprisonment. That's right. He's not going to prison for contempt of court, despite admitting to destroying his iPhone, which was central to the allegations of corporate corporate espionage. O'Brien had been accused of acting as a spy for a riot rival deal. After being served with a high court order on March 14th, yes, less than a month ago kids, to preserve his electronic devices, he performed a factory reset on his phone, later destroyed the phone with an axe. Maureen Clough (26:16.156) I just love the theatrics of this. Chad (26:16.646) I'm pausing. Yeah, it's a pregnant pause here. Cause I mean, with an axe and disposed of the remains down a drain at his mother-in-law's house, O'Brien claimed he was under duress, alleging harassment and surveillance of his family. The court accepted the apology and explanation deciding to impose a custodial sentence. So more likely is going to get like a, you know, a ankle bracelet or something like that. But, so do we believe Maureen Clough (26:40.924) monitor. Chad (26:45.668) This leniency has anything to do with O'Brien's cooperation thoughts? Maureen Clough (26:51.964) I'm no expert on this at all, but I would think so. And also like maybe a hat tip for the incredible details he provided. Like he didn't necessarily have to throw in that they mentioned James Bond, but he did. And for that, I'm forever grateful. Also, I mean, I have to say like at some level, he's the little guy in this situation. He was the pawn, pawn ship. Wait, is that a pawn? No. J.T. O'Donnell (26:54.896) Hmm. Chad (27:02.982) He did. Chad (27:13.926) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (27:18.789) Right. Chad (27:20.762) He's the pawn. Yeah. He was the pawn. Yeah. Maureen Clough (27:21.478) whatever the term is, he was the pawn and the masterminds were the high powered individuals. And I feel like so often those guys are kind of untouchable in the eyes of the law. mean, we all just, hopefully, if you like good television, we all just watch the White Lotus. And typically it's like the people in those positions of power, they just can do what they do and get away with it. So I kind of sort of like that they do. And I kind of sort of like that the little guy is not going down for this. Chad (27:44.663) And they do. Maureen Clough (27:51.012) in the same way that I imagine the big guys who orchestrated the whole thing, who are in the positions of exceptional power and wealth and privilege are going to go down. Chad (28:01.86) ArchJT. J.T. O'Donnell (28:02.706) I just, I just envisioned somewhere like in the police or wherever this goes, everybody's looking at this case going, don't want it. Like, I don't like you take this one. Low, low guy in the totem pole. Like you take this one. Like just like, don't, I don't want Mike. No, I just feel like there are people who was like, I'm not attaching this one to my career. These two nerdy HR companies are spy gaming it with this guy. Like I just, somewhere out there they're going, yeah, I don't want that one. Like. Chad (28:16.218) Are you saying if Johnny Cochran was alive, he wouldn't take this case? Maureen Clough (28:23.42) Ha ha ha ha ha! Chad (28:27.782) Dude. J.T. O'Donnell (28:31.845) Give it to someone else. Give it to Mikey. Remember Life's here. Give it to Mikey. I swear that's what they got to be thinking. But I am with Mo. I do think that he must have struck a deal of some type to be able to not go to jail. But the acts, like it just would have been more perfect if he filmed himself breaking his own phone like Kevin is his wife or somebody film it. the fact that he can give it to us in such vivid detail. Absolutely. Right. Again. Yeah. Maureen Clough (28:31.888) That's so funny. Chad (28:34.362) Give it to Mikey. Chad (28:55.686) Oh, we're going to get a re-enactment. We're going to get a re-enactment. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And just a quick reminder, he did all of this for 5,000 pounds a month. Maureen Clough (28:58.413) yeah. I can't wait. Maureen Clough (29:04.924) No! J.T. O'Donnell (29:05.497) I just... Maureen Clough (29:07.9) It kills me to know this. It kills me. Chad (29:09.478) 5,000 pounds a month. That's about 6,000 US dollars. To be a spy, corporate espionage, you think that, I'm gonna get a cool mill each month to be able to knock this out, because we're gonna, know. At least six figures. Give me a break. Are you kidding me? J.T. O'Donnell (29:13.273) I just... J.T. O'Donnell (29:24.977) No. Has he not watched any movies? Like you asked for way more. Like a hit's at least 20 grand. Maureen Clough (29:28.627) Right? way more. J.T. O'Donnell (29:35.685) Bye. Maureen Clough (29:35.834) It's wild. Chad (29:36.718) I know we are a cheap industry, don't get me wrong, but come on. O'Brien, you're worth more. You're worth more. Well, you're not now, but you were. You were worth more. Maureen Clough (29:39.888) Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That takes the cake. Yeah. Yeah, think he's done. Poor guy. Poor family, innocent family, know? that's the part that gets me. J.T. O'Donnell (29:49.328) Yeah. Chad (29:52.355) Excellent. I know. I know. Anyway, as again, the prediction and as you were talking about earlier, Mo, I think and I said last week on last week's show, I think the only way to save deal, the only way to save deal is to clean the C-suite house, period. And I think that from a couple of different reasons, first and foremost, all the people who had nothing to do with it, they're going to fucking leave. And if you don't have the people to actually do the job in the first place, who have gotten you to where they're at, at about 800 million ARR in a very short amount of time, Maureen Clough (30:08.742) Yeah. Chad (30:25.542) What happens when they leave? Right? So you need to get that head shed. You need to get that C-suite restocked with adults in the room and do it quick. Because if you don't, think, I fear you're 100 % right Mo, they're gonna be dead. Maureen Clough (30:27.803) Nothing good. Maureen Clough (30:35.228) You J.T. O'Donnell (30:41.787) Chad, you know the industry best who's third that's nobody's talking about. mean, these two are duking it up. Who's third? And that's where I think I said this a couple of episodes ago, which we keep talking about these two, these two, these two, or whoever where it was talking. It's going to be somebody that's not even talking about that's going to win the game while they play these games. Maureen Clough (30:42.0) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:45.508) Well, so there are so many. There are so many EOR companies. I I love it. Maureen Clough (30:46.022) Great question. Maureen Clough (30:59.26) Who's, that's such a good point. Who's gonna be that underdog who rises up and eats their lunch right now? Great call. Chad (31:00.454) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (31:03.951) Yeah, whoever's listening, message in. Like, let's see. I want an informal poll that I didn't ask that we could do. Everybody message in and tell us who you think is going to be taken over while these two do get out. Yeah. Chad (31:08.902) God. They're so... Maureen Clough (31:14.78) Great call. Chad (31:14.828) Yes. And EOR is so big. It's gotten so much money over the last three years, that there are plenty of, there's Rippling and Deal, right? And then the rest of them, I don't want to say close third, but there's a pack of them and there's a ton of them. So yeah, I mean, this is definitely their opportunity literally to try to go and pick the bones of either one of these organizations. And when Rippling, to me again, sends the signal of warning, J.T. O'Donnell (31:31.035) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (31:37.617) 100%. Chad (31:44.506) That they need more cash. Too easy. mean, that's just too easy. J.T. O'Donnell (31:48.145) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (31:48.496) Yeah, I think that's totally right. And I wonder how many of these competitors that are in this mix are going to capitalize specifically on this whole drama. Because I can imagine like such fire social media content, making fun of it and suggesting an alternative. So I kind of hope they get someone like the Duolingo Owl social media analyst or social media creator in there just like going to town. I can't remember her name, I feel bad saying that. Chad (31:53.659) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:58.374) They should. Chad (32:02.692) Yes. Maureen Clough (32:16.442) she's exceptional and she's done so much for that brand. But I think this is like the moment that you can leverage this and have it, you know, give you some great leads and close this. Chad (32:27.374) My advice is to check out whoever did the, the earlier AI video manufacturing video. That was pretty funny. And then have them actually do that for you as well. All right. We are going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back for a tariff version of buy or sell. Who's ready? Maureen Clough (32:35.308) yeah. Yeah, yeah. Chad (32:49.282) All right, here we go. okay, so it's sell kids. It's tariff week, so instead of having three startups getting cash, we only have one. Damn tariffs. So what happens? What happens when you get a tariff? Okay, so, geez. J.T. O'Donnell (32:59.025) Yeah. It's terrific, like she said. Chad (33:08.154) That was bad. That was really bad. Give me a second. gotta get my... Again, where's Joel when I need him? well, shit. Okay, whatever. Maureen Clough (33:09.884) You Maureen Clough (33:16.625) I don't know how either of you do that. would be like, seriously, it'd be so bad. Chad (33:20.518) We'll do this instead. I do. So Artisan is the AI startup known for its cheeky stop hiring humans campaign has secured a 25 million series a funding round by glade brooke capital. Ironically, despite advocating for AI driven sales agents, Artisan is expanding its human team. That's right. They need humans currently employing 35 people with plans to hire 22 more. 23 year old CEO Jasper Carmichael Jack. That's right. His name is Jasper Carmichael Jack. would go by JCJ. Yes, I would do that. Emphasizes that the provocative slogan was primarily for attention, acknowledging that human labor becomes more valuable alongside AI advancements. That sounds like a bunch of bullshit, Jack. So the CEO is joined by J.T. O'Donnell (34:04.784) I like it. Maureen Clough (34:05.628) Wow. You J.T. O'Donnell (34:22.619) Yeah. Chad (34:25.638) co-founder and chief product officer Sam Stallings. Now she is the veteran of the two at 30 years of age and spent eight years in product at IBM. So I'm gonna go ahead and do this first because I've been talking about agents, agents, agents for the last fricking months for goodness sakes. Does this young duo have what it takes to send Artisan to a big exit or maybe become the new platform for IPO? J.T. O'Donnell (34:33.551) nice. Maureen Clough (34:33.734) Mm. tracks. Maureen Clough (34:40.571) interesting. Chad (34:55.728) First off, Sam working at IBM for eight years. IBM was a powerhouse 25 years ago. So Sam's experience is great, but how often do you hear about Watson? Right? This is not an NVIDIA. This is not a chat GPT, not an OpenAid, you know. Anyway, Artisan is experiencing high churn, which is very normal when you start selling a product. Maureen Clough (35:12.294) Mm-mm. You don't. Chad (35:24.794) That's not ready for the markets. I, currently advise, poetry, Adam Gordon, Mike and Stephen and, the team watching them take gen AI and agents into the market is masterclass. yes, you have to be fast because text velocity today is staggering, but you also need to know when to take a beat and listen to the market. Right. And it doesn't feel. Maureen Clough (35:26.81) Vaporware. Chad (35:54.648) Again, like these guys are doing that. I believe these two co-founders are brilliant. And even as Joel would say, this wave, the agent wave is a big wave. The problem is there are too many surfers on it. It's crowded. And unfortunately it feels like Artisan has a substandard surfboard. So for that reason, I'm going to go with a cell from me. Maureen Clough (36:08.187) Hmm. Chad (36:20.442) JT, what do think? J.T. O'Donnell (36:22.363) So here's the one thing I love about young startup founders is they don't know what they don't know. And they're not sitting with years of baggage behind them where they shoot down every idea because we tried it here, we did it here, whatever. I mean, I think there's something real there. So I love the energy of young founders that can do spirit. They don't carry the baggage. I like that. I'm with you. I don't see IBM as a visionary place. I think Chad (36:25.787) Mm-hmm. Chad (36:36.538) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (36:49.137) If they were much later stage, maybe she would see, you know, how bigger companies run and that could be a real plus, but I don't, I'm not seeing that there. I think the thing that you said that hits home most for me is just how many players are in the space. And when there's that many people in the space, it can be the littlest thing that's going to help you break through. And I'm not seeing or hearing that in what we had here. So for those reasons, there are sell for me too. Maureen Clough (37:15.228) I love it. Well, I'm really glad you guys are touching on the age of the founders because I think that matters. And the reality is you should have an intergenerational team in order to have the best possible outcomes. And people don't remember this in tech, especially there is such incredible bias for youth. And so everybody wants the young founders. But guess what? The young founders don't have experience, which I view as a massive asset in Chad (37:15.654) That's right. That's right. Mo, what do think? Your thoughts. Maureen Clough (37:42.094) you can have all of these things together. You can have these people who haven't tried things before and are not necessarily feeling as though they have the roadmap and that might embolden them in some ways that some other people would be held back by, right? But if you don't have people who've been there done that and have the experience to see around corners, see potential pitfalls emerge before people with less experience, I mean, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. And like so many, did obviously a lot of... young founders in tech companies still make it, right? But like you said, there's so many people on this wave. And so if you have two people who are super young early in their career, and by the way, like young people are freaking brilliant and I am not being ageist against young people. I wanna make that very clear. My whole podcast is about ageism in the workplace. So I'm not being ageist here. I care deeply about the subject. But this is a moment where I think you need people who have experience to help. guide along the way. And one of the things that freaks me so much out about this whole AI boom is that we don't have intergenerational teams and people are hurtling through space in an arms race to find and develop technology the most quickly as possible so that they can make the most money as possible. And they don't have guardrails in place. We don't have regulations. We don't have people who've been there done that kind of sorting through what's going on. And I think that opens us up to so much risk and to the possibility of less revenue and value creation. So for those reasons, I'm gonna pass, but I also do wanna say that I like that the founder Jasper Jack or whatever his name is, I like that he admitted that his billboards were specifically to provoke. Like thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. And the reality is, know, this is what companies everywhere are doing. He's just saying it out loud. He's like. If they can outsource you with cheaper labor elsewhere, or if they can replace you with AI, or if they think they can, it doesn't matter if you're at work in the office five days a week, if you're best friends with your boss, if a company thinks that they can replace you with cheaper labor, whether that be by a robot or a human across the world, or someone who they think they can extract and exploit, who may be younger, for example, because one of the things I can't stand is that I feel like tech companies push out older workers so that they can hire and then exploit younger workers, which is not cool. Chad (40:01.094) part of the recipe. Yeah. Maureen Clough (40:03.1) But like all of these things like I this is the quiet part out loud This is what every company is doing and he's just kind of coming out and saying it and also provoking people and getting buzz So I think that's actually kind of smart and so anyway, that's just a side note. But yeah, I'm still passing I'm out Chad (40:23.354) Yeah, so I do agree. mean, they are on as again, Joel always talks about the way this is a great way of the problem is that you have and just a great example, you have a company like smart recruiters. They were a legacy type of platform from an applicant tracking system standpoint, at least the way that they were set up, right? The way that they were actually built. And they in less than three months, turned the ship around and went full agentic all to the point where they were, I believe the highest quadrant for Gartner's quadrant that they just put out. So they went from, that's how fast you can move if you have resources, right? So the problem is trying to actually start up a new company, right? And trying to compete with organizations that already have all of these resources. Number one, And then number two, are, you're a dime a dozen. You're a dime a dozen. Every single company that's going to want to get funding is going to have AI and agentic out there. They have to. That's where the money's at. And if you don't have it, then you're not going to get the money. Right. And some of those organizations that are out there who are not looking to take cash, because they're focused on, you know, trying to get into the market and get a quick, quick exit. I see that happening, but These guys are Y Combinator. They take 25 million. That's something that I'm personally not interested in. So that is our tariff version of buy or sell kids. So there you go. Let's go ahead and hit the next one. This next one straight out of CNBC. my God. So companies, companies are facing a new threat. Job seekers who aren't Maureen Clough (41:51.388) Hmm. Maureen Clough (41:56.54) So with you. Ha ha ha. Maureen Clough (42:11.013) Chad (42:16.026) who they say they are using AI tools to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment history and provide answers during interviews. wait, no, there's more. There's more, you thought that was bad. This one from Fortune Magazine. So it turns out that North Koreans didn't need to hack your firewall. Nope, you just hired them into your organization as remote workers. Yep, the hacker. is coming from inside the house. So Fortune 500 companies have unknowingly employed North Korean IT workers posing as remote staff. These fake hires funneled their salaries and access back to Pyongyang, possibly even funding missile programs, who knows? So while companies were busy trying to build strong firewalls, Maureen Clough (42:48.028) We're so screwed. Chad (43:10.638) North Korean spies are gaining access via VPN during your company onboarding. I got no words. Who wants to tackle this one? Anyone? Maureen Clough (43:21.104) go, mom, will you please come pick me up? I am freaking terrified. Like this is not okay. And the fact that this is happening at Fortune 500 companies where you would imagine that their compliance and security teams would be top notch, tip top. I've worked in tech for a long time. Like I had to log into so many VPN systems and all this stuff and there were so, it was so irritating as an employee and Chad (43:31.066) Yes. Chad (43:43.27) But they're already in, that's the thing. Maureen Clough (43:44.666) And they're exactly, yes, but it's just like, how did they get through the process without being found? Like that freaks me out because I'm like, come on guys. we had, I hope that this story gets spread far and wide because this is freaking terrifying. Like this is really, really grossly frightening to me. And I think, you know, and I also read another, excuse me. I read another story related to this about the fact that some of these workers that were aided and abetted, Chad (43:50.17) Background check anyone? Maureen Clough (44:13.562) were aided and abetted by US citizens who got paid for facilitating the entry of these fake IT workers. like, should go to, you should be in prison for that. This is like so unacceptable. And I think right now, the fact that this is coming out, I think it means that every company that gives a damn about our country and our security has to beef up their, cybersecurity, their interview process, it sucks. It's a burden that's going to fall, I think, on companies to take up, but it is the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do. This is so terrifying to me, truly. I mean, it like made my blood run cold thinking about this. And especially with all the technology that we have at our fingertips to try to prevent this kind of thing, the fact that it's happening to this degree and has been since 2018, it just gives me the chills. Chad (45:02.32) Mm-hmm. Maureen Clough (45:10.416) Honestly, like it really, it really makes me feel deeply unsafe, kind of like when war plans get sent across signal. That's also a little frightening. So yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared. Chad (45:23.942) JT, can you bring us off the ledge? Okay. Deep breath. J.T. O'Donnell (45:24.753) Probably not. I don't think I'm known on this shift for bringing anybody off the ledge. I'm pretty sure I'm the one that pushes. So, you know, we just came off talking about, you know, instead of hiring humans, hiring bots and how this is all working, we have been talking for so long now about how companies that finally figured out, wait, the jobs I have for remote will let me go get remote workers where they're cheaper. So there's been this massive offshoring ideas and concepts and Maureen Clough (45:26.71) hahahahah J.T. O'Donnell (45:53.868) You know, if it's too good to be true, if you've got a worker that sounds perfect on paper, that's willing to work for five bucks an hour, should we be suspect? You know, and that's where it just boggles my mind for all the reasons you spoke of Mo, but also the fact that these companies are just, they're just so quick to go do these things without double checking. Where, where is this going to go? Is it going to bring us full circle back to people have to physically be in front of us to know that they're real? Maureen Clough (46:14.278) Hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (46:22.405) You know, I've saw multiple tech companies have said they are now only doing in-person hiring and in-person testing because they have been screwed so badly by remote workers. have to physically come in and you have to actually do the work in front of them so they know that it's really you. That's where we've gotten full circle. And I think you're going to continue to see and hear that because of what's happening at this scale. So, you know, how do they adjust for that? How do they compensate for that? I don't know, but it's, you know, it's scary times. Maureen Clough (46:22.748) you Chad (46:23.056) Yeah. Chad (46:37.094) Hmm. Maureen Clough (46:39.132) Jeez. Maureen Clough (46:51.452) really is. Chad (46:52.176) All I have to say... Chad (46:57.102) Yes. mean, we've got the thing that kills me about companies right now. It's move fast, break things. Well, they're going to be breaking their own things from the inside out because they're not doing the background checks. They're not doing the due diligence. They're not doing what's necessary to make sure that they're safe. And as Moad said, it's really hard today to try to get serious about your corporate side when you've got the U S government putting things on signal. It's so, I mean, it's over and over. So yes, I've got to play it twice and then. Maureen Clough (47:31.004) Hahahaha Chad (47:33.574) and we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be back. Maureen Clough (47:35.898) You Chad (47:39.192) All right, so if it can't get any crazier, another one from CNBC, Spotify CEO Toby Lutke told employees in a memo, classy Toby, a memo, that's awesome, that they'll have to show jobs can be done by AI or they can't be done by AI before asking for more headcount or resources. So, wow, a memo, number one, that's pretty impersonal. J.T. O'Donnell (48:03.365) Mmm. Chad (48:08.794) I mean, a memo and then saying, look, you have to prove to me that you deserve these new resources, thoughts. This is, this is not going to be, this isn't, this is, this is going to be a trend. Watch it. J.T. O'Donnell (48:19.598) Office. J.T. O'Donnell (48:23.377) Oh, I mean, first of all, as a 20 year career coaching veteran, right? Coaching people every day, I explained to them, you are not an employee. You are a business of one. You are a service provider. Okay. And your job is to show how you save or make enough money to justify the cost of hiring you, which is about 130 to 140 % of your salary. Do the math back in the work and prove yourself. If you want to stay employable, when all this AI stuff hits, first thing I said to people is understand either figure out how to use the AI or you're out the door. Figure it out, either be the prompt and figure, be the head of marketing. They can do the work of 10 people. I'm not saying you're working 60 hours a week. I'm saying, show them how you can do it in 35, you know, but the work of 10 people, if you don't figure that out sooner than later, you are going to be in trouble. And that is exactly where we are now, because eventually those people way at the top, we're going to understand the magnitude. And I'm going take you totally off subject for a minute, but to show you my husband's a pilot. Okay. He's not spending time on chat. TPT doesn't care. We're planning this trip to Europe. Maureen Clough (49:15.964) You J.T. O'Donnell (49:22.513) He's trying to figure out the miles and he looks at me and says, you haven't planned the itinerary. It's going to take time. We need to clear a schedule. like, okay. I said, why don't you pick those dates? He's picking the dates. I'm putting into chat GPT a prompt about us, what we want, what we want to do. He tells me the dates. I hand him my computer. He goes, what I go, there's your 11 page detail complete with Google maps, hyperlink suggestions. He goes, shut up. He opens it up. He looks at it and he looks at me he goes, is this a public company? Can I invest? Maureen Clough (49:45.413) You Chad (49:50.566) Ha! Maureen Clough (49:50.683) Hahaha! J.T. O'Donnell (49:51.538) Little behind, baby. Little behind with the chat. I love you. I love you. But no. And but my point in that moment was how long has he heard about chat, GPT? But the moment somebody does something that you get, and that's where I feel like executives are hitting now, they are starting to see the magnitude. And so you are going to he is just leading the way of C suites going, show me what you're doing with AI. And when you can show me that this has to be done with a human. Maureen Clough (49:55.462) amazing. J.T. O'Donnell (50:20.001) you're going to see this is just the beginning for that reason exactly, which is why either be part of the AI solution or you're out, you know? And so we've been talking about this for over a year with people, until it happens to them, they, you know, they just don't see it until it, until it hurts, you know? And so there you have it. Maureen Clough (50:22.434) yeah. Maureen Clough (50:28.092) your gun. Maureen Clough (50:37.18) 100%. I agree with literally everything you just said. And what I also found to be really interesting is there was another, there was a snapshot of that memo itself. And so it's clear from the snapshot of the memo that not only is it an expectation for people to actually use AI tools in their day-to-day jobs, there's also an expectation that you share the findings with the group. So there's, it's all self-guided. They expect you to go DIY AI and it's not. something that they're doing a corporate rollout, they're not giving you training. And so that to me seems like such a massive gap and they're putting it on the backs of the workers, right? Which to your point, JT, because of the way these things are shifting, we should be doing anyway, but now they're being forced to by their bosses, right? So it's kind of like, eat your broccoli, like we should have been doing this all along, right? And now there's a mandate, but. Companies don't know what they're doing. This is all fly by night. They're like, hey, use AI. Tell us what you did. Did it work? What should we change? Like, how should we roll this out? So there's still, I view a huge need for AI education across organizations because people don't know what they don't know to your point. And there is a lot of... resistance to AI adoption. It's decreasing thankfully, but there was a huge difference between women and men in their adoption. was like over the course of 18 studies, Harvard Business School did a report that said it was on average 25 % lower adoption rate for women. Wow. I mean, the impact of that, huge. We're actually, we're moving up. It's gonna be better, thankfully. People are getting it. But I also found it interesting. Women, one of the reasons that was... was suggested as one of the reasons they did not want to adopt AI was they felt like it was quote, cheating. And with women who often have this imposter syndrome thing, I can totally see why they're like, ooh, I don't want, know, ooh, I don't want someone to think like I only was able to achieve this because I had a chatty GPT robot helping me, right? But it's, we're finally figuring that out, but there's also much more adoption of AI tools in younger generations than older generations. But there are also, Chad (52:26.106) Mm-hmm. Chad (52:33.402) Right. Maureen Clough (52:46.492) older people over the age of 45 who are AI masters. They totally know it inside and out. the thing that I think freaks me out about all this AI stuff is there's already so much ageism in hiring. And there was a study that came out recently by Generation that was funded by Google, google.org. And they found that it was something like 60 % more likely that people would consider, or gosh, I'm gonna get, I'm like, I literally wrote these down so I wouldn't, botch this, but here I am. Sometimes the numbers get changed, but I promise you it's worth this. finding it right now. So only 32 % of US employers would consider candidates over age 60 for AI focused or AI adjacent roles, like roles that leverage AI, which for Shopify, every employee is expected to use them. So if you're over 60, you're going for jobs, which by the way, by 2030, 25 % of the available workforce will be over 55. So this is going to impact a ton of people in a ton of companies. People don't want to hire you because they don't think that you have what it takes. So we have a lot of work to do. And a lot of it, frankly, is just going to be on us until companies get a roadmap and they're able to help us with training and anti-bias prevention and stuff once they care about that again. Anyway, that was a lot. But. Chad (54:11.174) Yeah. So, I mean, for me, this is the same as it ever was. This isn't new. It's just another version of why do you need this position? Right? And this is something that hiring managers have had to deal with for years, but now there's an AI spin to it. Remember? So now, instead of, you're being fired because of AI. Now it's like, proved to me that you deserve these resources. That AI can't do it, right? That is not cheaper. I think obviously the HR managers, there should be supporting in being able to pull together a lot of this data. but here's a quick hack for, for, for TA folks, forever. We've needed to learn the business side and there's no better time than now due to this rapid transformation in business to help differentiate departments and build business cases on how specific positions are vital and they impact the business's bottom line. This is our chance as TA to actually come in as experts, learn the different disciplines, the different vital positions so that we understand the business more. That's one of the biggest issues is that we have not been strategic enough and we can't be strategic because we don't understand the business. This gives us the opportunity to get into the cogs of the actual business. to see what moves business and what's bullshit. We don't need that position anymore. That's dumb, right? Be the person that focuses on doing that and being the expert for your organization and then they will never call you a fucking cost center again. Maureen Clough (55:50.972) That's brilliant, really good advice. Love that mic drop moment for you. J.T. O'Donnell (55:53.591) Well said. Well said. Chad (55:55.568) Thank you, thank you. Well, that's another week in the can, I guess. Joel's not around, so that's gonna happen again next week. He'll be back, kids, don't worry. Don't worry, either JT, Mo, Emmy will be around too. So we'll be back next week, but until then, I don't have a dad joke because that's a Joel thing. Maureen Clough (56:20.284) I can't help either. Chad (56:21.638) And plus, I don't want to talk about lesbian scissoring or anything like that because that's his thing. So I'm just going to leave it with, we out. Maureen Clough (56:25.433) boy, that would be, that's his lane. J.T. O'Donnell (56:31.92) out. Maureen Clough (56:32.742) Peace.

This week’s episode has more plot twists than a Netflix docuseries, and it all starts with a CEO on the run… Deel’s New Drama: Forget corporate espionage—now Deel’s CEO is literally  dodging subpoenas. Indeed’s Midlife Crisis: Indeed woke up, saw LinkedIn’s reflection in the mirror, and said, “Yeah, I’ll have what he’s having.” LinkedIn’s Throwback Vibes Made in America (By Someone Else): Everyone says  they want manufacturing back in the U.S.—but only 1 in 4 would actually take the job. Bring on the patriotic posturing, just hold the overalls. 🎧 Buckle up as Chad and Cheese unpack the corporate cosplay, legal dodges, and workplace nostalgia no one asked for. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:36.782) Yeah, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Hey, boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel "No Deel" Cheesman. Chad (00:48.12) This is Chad "A1" Sowash. Emi B (00:50.665) And this is Emi, why didn't I give up wine for Lance Beredugo? Joel (00:55.266) And on this episode, the deal drama don't stop. The boxes are back and OnlyFans says a recession is on the way. Let's do this. Chad (00:58.574) Yeah. Chad (01:08.878) So, before you came on, I was telling Joel that last weekend I went with a bunch of guys and we went paintballing. And I think, and I don't want get your feedback there, do you think that we should have like a Chad and Cheese tournament where people can actually sign up and they can prospectively shoot Chad and Cheese? Joel (01:28.366) Dude, you can get hurt in paintball, man. What are you talking about? Dude, I'm tender. I'm sensitive to paintballs. Emi B (01:28.868) yeah. Chad (01:31.15) Would you do that? Would you do that, Emmy? Yeah? yeah. yeah. yeah. No, people will pay. Really, Emmy? I thought you were supposed to be a friend. Is this how we're doing things? Jesus. Emi B (01:34.964) you? No, no, honestly, is this a serious thing? Are we going to do this? Because people are going to pay for this. I'm not going to lie. They will. Yeah. 100%. Can I go first, Emi B (01:50.184) We are friends, but you know, I'm not gonna pass out the opportunity to kind of kind of shoot paintballs at both of you. Amazing. Joel (02:00.802) We can do it like, remember, remember the predator movie, Chad, where they released the convicts in the jungle and then predators would hunt them. Like you could drop us in a field or something of woods, wooded area, maybe in, maybe in Nebworth at rec fest. can like drop us and pay for all the, for all the companies we've destroyed. they can pay to like come shoot us with paint balls. Chad (02:10.594) I just want, I need to be able to shoot back. Yeah. Emi B (02:14.27) Can you imagine that? can you imagine who's going to come after you? I mean, I won't be... Chad (02:23.768) fucking perfect. Jesus. Indeed'll have like six teams. Thing is they have to be employees. They have to be. So you're not sending like fucking black ops motherfuckers. Joel (02:28.301) it Indeed. Emi B (02:31.696) You Joel (02:37.986) Yeah, the CEO has to put on some fatigues if they're going to do it the right way. Emi B (02:40.348) Chad (02:42.109) yeah, I could see Hines doing that. sure. Sure. Emi B (02:44.99) That'd be hilarious. Joel (02:47.0) So Chad, I see you've got your Buckeyes jersey on. I'm assuming you saw the JD Vance fumble of the trophy on TV. What'd you think of that? Chad (02:51.417) yeah. Emi B (02:53.086) thing. Chad (02:56.819) That frickin douchebag. Well first and foremost, mean, okay. Come on man. I mean, Jesus Christ. You get a trophy handed to you, right? You don't just grab the base, you grab the base. I mean, the guy, first off, the guy's a fucking loser in the first place. He's never held a trophy in his life and that's probably one of the reasons why he did this. Ugh, fuck. Joel (03:25.026) he dropped it. Like of all of all the the visits of teams throughout the years to the White House, I've never remembered any president or vice president dropping the trophy and he's an Ohio Senator. So that was very apropos to everyone. Chad (03:26.498) I know! Emi B (03:42.804) think it's hilarious. Chad (03:43.168) Thanks for reminding me about that. Jesus. God. Joel (03:45.578) It is, it is quite funny. so you two are hung over. Let's set the stage here. You two are hung over and I'm, I'm, I'm, nursing like day three of a cold. I went to Canada on, on spring break and I think I got the, the Toronto flu or something. Yeah. I don't know what that was. yeah, by the, by the way, Canada, Canada is on full anti-America alert, by the way. there's a, there's a place there called Boston pizza. Emi B (03:50.514) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (03:56.232) my head hurts. Emi B (04:00.51) Got the laggies. We are on form today. Chad (04:15.138) Okay. Joel (04:15.712) And it's like huge sign like Canada owns since 1972 or something, even though it's called Boston pizza. Yeah. I, I will tell you though, for all the, the boycotting that's going on in, Canada, they are not boycotting Chipotle. They are not boycotting Chipotle. Chipotle is above all. Yeah. Chad (04:21.834) Oh, yeah. Uh huh. I had to make sure. I had to make sure. Chad (04:35.799) Yeah. Emi B (04:35.828) Exempt. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (04:41.506) All else. All else. Joel (04:43.182) They're exempt from all hate, Chipotle. Of course, yes, that's right. Chad (04:46.862) It's kind of like Apple gets the exception for tariffs and Chipotle gets it from Canada. Joel (04:55.042) The one thing that could bring us all together is Chipotle. Like, let's be honest. Let's be honest here. Chad (04:58.51) That's a very good point. That's a very good point. Oh, don't get him started. Don't get him started. Don't get him started. Emi B (04:59.346) You say that, I've never had it before. So I'm just hearing about it through you two. no, we don't have that in London. Joel (05:03.495) What? What? Chad (05:08.78) Yeah. Emi B (05:09.812) Have I broken your heart now? No. Joel (05:11.468) Wow. Do they not have it in Britain? I thought there was one next to the Five Guys. Chad (05:18.798) Jeez. Emi B (05:19.438) Not that I've heard of, maybe, well I'm gonna, I'll Google it later and see and I'll let you know, but I swear to God, no, never. do you know what? Yeah, yeah. I'd still do like a chicken drumstick, yeah. Chad (05:26.776) KFC man, they're big on the KFC and the McDonald's. Yeah. Yeah. Big on that. Yeah. Joel (05:26.894) every night, Paul. Alright, 10 is to cover this week so what do say we... Emi B (05:39.796) You Chad (05:39.874) Yes. Joel (05:40.43) Shout out sponsored by our friends at a Kiara speaking of the great white North text recruiting made simple by Kiara. I'll go ahead and lead off with with shout out. So my shout out goes out to the fine institution of Harvard. Harvard, you've probably heard of it. America's oldest college, widely known as maybe the best college in the country. So Stella and I. Chad (05:43.662) Mmm. Chad (05:50.292) Eora. Hair free. Chad (05:58.996) Ooh. Yeah. Emi B (06:01.885) Yeah. Joel (06:09.016) chat again, go back to our stage. Stella, Stella has Michigan as one of her schools, that she wants to visit, which is fine with me. It's arguably top, top five public school in the country. So from London, Ontario, we drove to Ann Arbor and it was just, it was just so great to see like American institution, like the buildings, the students, the learning, just all of that. It really made me appreciate the American system of education and any, depending on the list you look at America's institutions are like, Chad (06:15.608) Good school. Let's go to school. Yeah, let's go. Yeah. Chad (06:34.23) Uh-huh. Joel (06:38.574) Seven 65 to 75 % of the top colleges in the world are in America. It's one of the foundations. I think of the pillars of what makes America America, it's, education, it's rule of law. It's sort of the flow of capital and it's free speech and freedom of the press. And to see, I assume people know the news. The Trump administration is going after Harvard. went after Columbia. Um, Harvard thankfully has like a $50 billion, uh, Emi B (06:44.852) Mmm. Chad (06:59.126) Whoo! Joel (07:09.24) trust like, or like, bucket of money, they can they can fight this. And they probably have a few lawyers that would like jump at the chance to like take on the Trump administration. So shout out to Harvard for fighting the good fight. And you've probably seen this chat as a Big Ten fan as I am. The Big Ten is creating like sort of a university NATO. Like the Big Ten schools are getting together. Yeah, like Indiana, Michigan State's on board, I think Iowa. Chad (07:10.368) Endowment. Endowment. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (07:23.992) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:30.294) Really? Nice! Yeah! Joel (07:36.302) Michigan on house day, which I think has to be the two main ones that have to join. Like I think they're voting on it this week, but the big 10 is joining forces, basically saying if, if the administration goes after one of us, they go after all of us and we pull our resources to fight that. So I, I believe Americans institutions can, can hold. think they're going to be tested like they have never been. and it's good to see Harvard not roll over. I think we should all be rooting for Harvard. to take on the administration. mean, from their tax status getting taken away to no international students, mean, Trump and the administration is pulling out every stop to basically put a hurt on education. And that is one of the American pillars that I would hate to see crumble in the wake of the Trump administration. So go Harvard, go Crimson. Emi B (08:27.208) Guy hop. Chad (08:27.224) Well, and it's very fitting Joel that you're talking about education in the U S of a, because my shout out goes out to the secretary of education kids, pro wrestling tycoon. Yes. You heard me right. Pro wrestling tycoon is in charge of the U S education system. And during an interview, she talked about, hell screw it. I'm just going to play this stupid thing. Joel (08:37.739) no. Joel (08:47.724) Linda Mc- Chad (08:56.694) This hurts. Okay. We talk about American education. Joel (08:57.646) You're gonna make me hungry. You're gonna make me hungry at lunchtime, aren't you? You're gonna make me. Chad (09:36.246) Okay. She didn't meet, she was talking about AI kids. She, this is our secretary of fucking education. Okay, okay, okay. So listen, listen, this is a cautionary tale for all the HR and TA people listening out there. Don't try and bullshit your way through AI. Okay. Do your research. Lucky for you, we've already made it easy with the sessions.ai where you can actually go see season two. We just dropped it. Joel (09:41.719) Yeah Chad (10:04.396) where we have HR and TA practitioners talking about how they're actually using automation and AI, their fails, their successes and tons more. So don't be the one who says A1 in your next fucking board meeting kids, okay? Go educate yourself, go to thesessions.ai. Joel (10:21.71) New York strips and rib-eyes for all the first graders in America, I say. I can get behind that. Chad (10:28.238) A1 baby. So bad. Emi B (10:29.214) Seriously. Yeah, that's so embarrassing. my God. Chad (10:35.278) Yeah, yeah, American education. All right, all you, Emmy. Emi B (10:39.71) Joyce, well, my shout out is gonna go to a Democratic representative and by the name of Lauren Ashley Simmons. So to be honest, I never heard of her until actually late last night. I was actually in bed watching TikTok and then I came across this and I was like, ooh, this woman is fire. So basically for anyone who doesn't know, she actually absolutely schooled this Republican Andy Hopper, is his name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually go ahead and play it, yeah. Joel (10:40.086) Emmy, what you got? Chad (10:49.038) Okay. Chad (11:04.316) You want me to play it? Alright, let's do it kids. Joel (11:09.247) that beautiful bean footage. Emi B (11:25.524) Hmm? Chad (11:39.117) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:16.914) My. Fucking. God. Emi B (12:19.868) Oh, oh, this is your American education system. This is your government. These are the people. The guy doesn't know what intersex means. And you know. Chad (12:24.814) This is all with Joel (12:30.05) Hold on, Texas is a little bit of a side show for the US. And the right would say California is a little bit of a left turn from the rest of America. Emi B (12:34.278) Is it? Okay, okay. So, I mean, just to give a bit of a back... Emi B (12:41.824) okay. I mean, so just to give a bit of a background, but people haven't seen the full clip. mean, definitely go into TikTok and find it. But this Andy Hopper, so this Republican Andy Hopper, he's trying to pull funding from the University of Texas. So why? Because they are offering LGBTQ plus studies and DEI programs. So Lauren Ashley Simpson is like, know, as you see there challenging him. Do you, what about people who are intersex? And Chad (12:56.279) Mm-hmm. Joel (13:00.494) Mm-hmm. Emi B (13:10.356) Like he said, he heard that he cannot explain, he doesn't even know what intersex is. I think it is confusing with being transgender. And then he then goes on, I don't think we played it, to say that, you know, there's still XX or XY chromosome. And then his Republican colleagues said, Andy, that's not true, publicly. And it's like, you were dumb as fuck. Honestly, I learned this when I was 11 or something. I'm like, how? Chad (13:27.639) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:37.934) Yeah. Emi B (13:39.792) Again, shout out, Lauren Ashley Simpson, you know? Joel (13:41.966) You know, the sad part to me is that people will focus on saying, you know, well, the intersex population is less than 1 % probably. The battle here is for the control of the educational system of America. And I would argue that what Germany put as Jews is now woke and woke has become the parallel enemy. Emi B (14:01.246) Mm-hmm. Joel (14:11.956) me like that's something everyone or at least the right can get behind. So when I hear stuff like this, I think the knee jerk is to say like, it's such a small group. What's the big deal? It's a much bigger deal because if the government, they are people for sure, but the government control, like the Reich took over the educational system when Hitler took over and they put in jail any teachers that went against anti-Jew education, pro-Germany. So Chad (14:22.99) They're people. Emi B (14:33.022) Mm-hmm. Joel (14:40.982) It's not that it can't happen here. there. It's trying. What scares me is that the road that we're on is incredibly scary. It's much bigger than just a 1 % of the population. We're talking about a major shift. There's a reason why Albert Einstein came to America from Germany because he saw what was happening in Germany. And if we start losing our brightest minds because of this kind of trend, like it's really, really, really bad. Emi B (14:43.934) They're trying to, yeah. Emi B (14:49.363) Yeah. Chad (14:49.422) Yes. Chad (15:01.24) Mm-hmm. Emi B (15:04.67) Do I go? Joel (15:08.18) So I would invite everyone to think of this in a bigger context than just an LBGTQ issue because I think it is. Emi B (15:11.645) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:15.958) It is. And no matter what kind of sex you are, you can get free stuff at the Chad and Cheese. You know why? Because we love y'all. So remember, remember, always free at chadcheese.com slash free t-shirts from our friends over at Aaron App, you know those slothy guys over there, t-shirts by Aaron App. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from Canada, the good stuff from Canada, it's barrel aged, bourbon barrel aged. Emi B (15:16.18) 100%. Yeah. Joel (15:24.462) I love the segue. This show, man. This podcast. Emi B (15:24.852) No. Joel (15:36.462) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:45.518) from Kiura. Craft beer from the job data geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. Gotta love those guys. Two bottles of whiskey from Van Hack. And if it's your birthday, oh, wait a minute, Emmy, you might win some rum from plum. That's right. But you gotta go to ChadCheese.com slash free. Joel (15:54.126) Mm-hmm. Chad (16:07.732) yeah! Joel (16:10.26) All right guys, celebrating another trip around the sun, our listeners, Barry Doctor. I like that Barry Doctor Detroit, Rick Cosmo Kramer, Jason Crowell, Jonathan Chen, Andreas Iriarte, Mike Kleber Lang, Brian Moore, Dave Lowry, Jonathan Zilla, and our own, Emi Berradugo is celebrating. Chad (16:31.532) Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Mrs. President. My best Maryland. Joel (16:36.142) How's it feel to be 29 again? Emi B (16:40.468) I love it. Happy birthday to me. I love that. Thank you so much. And it feels wonderful to be 29 again. I think I've been 29 for about, you know, 10 times and it's like, I'm just going to stay this year, stay this age. I love it. Absolutely love it. And Joel, are you not going to sing to me either? I mean, I can't just have Chad singing to me. Joel (16:55.918) you Joel (17:04.504) I have a little special prize coming, coming to you now. Chad (17:05.525) It's never good enough. It's never good enough with this one. First, she wants to shoot us. Then we don't give her enough love. mean, my God, that's it. We're going straight to events. That's that. am, am calm down back there. Calm down back there. Don't make me pull this podcast over. Unleash is coming. Kids. Unleash is coming May 6th through the 8th. What are we going to be doing at Unleash and Vegas? Emi B (17:06.452) Bravo! Emi B (17:12.744) The shooting was your idea, not mine. You put it in my head. I'm like, well. Whoa, Joel (17:32.716) Vince baby Chad (17:33.87) Joel, what are we gonna be doing? That's right. On Wednesday the 7th, we're gonna be spending the morning in a suite at the Cosmo filming a new sessions season with the team over at Smart Recruiters. That night we're going to have a film VIP wrap-up party, more deets to come for the VIP party. But there ain't no party like a sessions wrap-up party, hear me? Then we're going to... Joel (17:46.99) Love it. Joel (18:00.216) feel you. I'm picking up what you're dropping. Chad (18:02.574) We're also going to be hosting two talks. That's right. Not one, but two, with our friends over at gem and the gem booth on Wednesday, the seventh at 3 30 PM, probably just in time to get some beer. And then Thursday morning at 10 30 Vegas time. That's right. So if you're coming to unleash, look us up. we're going to be having a blast. And if this is the fun part, if you're wanting to go on to unleash and you don't have passage yet, guess what? Joel (18:14.862) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:31.886) I've got something for you. me a second here while I do all this fun clicking around stuff. And here we go. Chad (19:02.772) And just to be clear, when she says hit me up, she doesn't mean for a date guys. That's my daughter. It's my fucking daughter. Don't be, don't even think about it. I will have your ass. Okay. Well, yeah, you can get, you can get obviously, Kennedy cook on LinkedIn message, message her very professionally and ask her for passes. Okay. we're going to fucking hear about it. yeah. Emi B (19:07.316) No. You Emi B (19:16.756) You Joel (19:24.454) We're gonna hear about it if it's not. And we're calling you out on the show if it's not. I want a free pass to wherever she is. Like beachside, ocean, where was that? okay, nevermind. English beaches, sorry. Emi B (19:25.734) Hey. Chad (19:31.342) That's Brighton. He's in Brighton. That's Brighton. Yeah. Right by Emmy. Emi B (19:31.42) Yeah Brighton UK is beautiful. What do you mean? It's a pebble dash beach. It's beautiful. You don't need sand when you've got pebbles, you know? Chad (19:40.814) You Chad (19:45.518) Oh, I have to say. Joel (19:46.926) Brits get so mad when you diss anything Britain. like blood sausage sucks. What are you talking about? Blood sausage is amazing. Emi B (19:49.908) Yeah, yes, because this is the best country in the world. Chad (19:50.094) you Chad (19:57.134) If that's the case, then why do you come down to the Algarve every goddamn summer, Britain? The entire country comes there. Stop it. Just stop it. No, don't stop it. It's good for business. It's good for business. Emi B (20:10.462) But no, it's, yeah, I'm saying nothing. I'm like. Chad (20:14.616) Ha ha ha! Joel (20:15.48) Let's get to topics, shall we? Chad (20:17.293) Yes! Good stuff. Joel (20:21.708) Alright, well the clown show continues. Emi B (20:24.02) You Chad (20:25.164) Bozo. Joel (20:26.606) All right. Where's Bozo? Earlier this week, Deal CEO Alex Bozo Boazis was apparently on the lam as bailiffs couldn't find him to serve up a nice hot lawsuit, but he's turned up in Dubai, apparently along with his father, the CFO and Deals general counsel. Dubai is a country known for its extradition challenges. So the cat and mouse game continues. Chad, your thoughts on the ongoing drama at Deal. Chad (20:49.742) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:55.576) So remember when I said the only way this company deal survives if, if an entirely new C-suite comes in, takes over and demonstrates that deal now has adults in the room. It would have been bad if the C-suite stayed in place and then fought this case right in place, right? That would have been bad. This is a hundred times worse. These guys are on the fucking run from the law. I mean, what? Emi B (21:05.799) Mm-hmm. Emi B (21:19.7) . Joel (21:22.478) You Chad (21:24.024) prospective customer or current client is going to choose to stay with Deal Now. I mean, seriously, why would you, a vendor whose CEO, CFO, and head of legal are on the run from from Johnny Law? I mean, it's just crazy. one thing, this came in a little bit later. Did you see that Rippling is now pressing Revolut to find out who paid money to Deal's alleged spy, O'Brien? yeah, so apparently apparently DLC Dan West Garth's wife, Alba Basha, West Garth was a crypto compliance lead at Robin Hood. Yes. When all of this went down last year in November, right? So Rippling is now suing Revolut to get the full name and address of the Alba Basha. That's right. Those are air quotes listed on the sender. for that $6,000 payment to O'Brien. TechCrunch reports she's no longer at Robinhood and her LinkedIn profile has been deleted. This is fucking crazy. All hands meeting in Dubai, everyone. Joel (22:37.998) Do we know where, do we know where Revolut is headquartered? They've got to be like some Caribbean, Caribbean country company. Are they UK? Even better, even better. Yeah. Emi B (22:38.249) Wow. Chad (22:42.218) UK, right? I think they're UK. I think they're UK company. Emi B (22:49.812) I'm like, yeah, we'll hunt him down. But can I just say something though? Because do you remember a couple of weeks ago when this story broke, I said that this is gonna turn into a Netflix movie and you weren't too sure because you said it was like, know, HR. Now look at it. It is juicy. It is juicy. And what's gonna happen now, I'm actually gonna insert myself into this story because I'm going to Dubai next month. I'm gonna hunt this person down. Literally, I've got the picture. I'll be there going, hey, where are you? You're gonna see me involved in this. I love this. Chad (22:53.55) Okay. Joel (23:09.102) Mm-hmm. Emi B (23:19.078) I absolutely love this. I'm like, where is my popcorn? You know, I should have had my popcorn today, but I'll definitely have my popcorn in Dubai hunting this person down. Joel (23:26.446) Should we start the GoFundMe to make this into some sort of a movie? Because it's pretty juicy. got to. Emi B (23:30.086) Yes! Yes! Chad (23:31.128) That would be freaking awesome. That'd be awesome. Revolut is in London, by the way. They're at HQ. Emi B (23:35.718) Yeah, get them involved as well. It'll be fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going. I'm going. International spy, spy hunter. That's what I am. Joel (23:39.064) Nice. Chad (23:40.048) yeah, that's what we got you around. Go get them, Emmy. Revolut, DePy, come on. On them down. Joel (23:46.968) So, so I knew, I knew, when this broke, the head of communications was the first to like parachute out of the company and her name is Elizabeth Diana. And she was, when I was like all on the deal train, she reached out, sent me this shirt, which I have customized for the show. Hopefully you're watching that on, on YouTube, but she, she jumped ship and her background is Chad (23:55.972) she bounced. yeah. Yeah. Emi B (23:56.82) Run Chad (24:08.398) No deal. Joel (24:16.224) Instagram, Facebook, Google, like she's worked at some real serious companies. So I knew when she jumped ship and I bet she had a ton of equity, a ton of like incentives to stick around. She wanted no, she wanted no part of this clown show that that is unfolding right now. And it's looking a little bit to me, like a house of cards, because if you start digging into reviews online, Chad (24:18.669) Yeah. Emi B (24:30.289) No part of it. Chad (24:32.218) No way. No way. Joel (24:43.554) They're very, very telling. So here's just a quick glimpse of some of the glass door comments that I found quote, we were forced to email clients to tell us which companies they're using for HRI, HRI, S coms, et cetera, under the false pretense of setting up integration pathways. So even like the mate, like the frontline workers were in charge of like getting information. And another one that I saw was that they, apparently they ask you. Chad (24:48.237) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:11.406) at deal to give them a five star review on Glassdoor as soon as you join. And apparently the company really pays attention to their ratings to make sure that they're high. Cause so the company has like a 4.6 out of five and, and Bozo Bozo has a very high, uh, positive, uh, favorable rating as well. So I'm sure not only it was it give us a five star rating on Glassdoor, was give our CEO a very high rating as well. So this is starting to look at a little bit like house of cards. Chad (25:19.992) That's a trick. Yeah. Emi B (25:24.552) Fake reviews. Chad (25:33.038) Mm Emi B (25:33.342) Give this a go. Joel (25:39.832) They need to clean house ASAP, get the ship right. Cause they've taken too much money, have too much like a footprint in this business to like fall apart like this. Somebody needs to act quickly and fix this really, really quickly or else it's going to be a total, total sideshow, but I'm enjoying the clown show while it's still, while it's still going. Chad (25:45.801) dude. Yeah. Emi B (25:57.778) Me too. Chad (26:03.2) More please. Emi B (26:04.688) Hehehe Joel (26:05.086) Alright, indeed, from one clown show to another, if you will. Emi B (26:07.994) Hehehehehe Joel (26:11.724) Listeners might remember us torching Indeed for getting rid of their search boxes from the home page. Well, the boxes are back, everybody. But wait, there's more. According to our Reddit string on an accompanying screenshot, Indeed Premium, very creative name, premium is on its way. And for $9.99 a month, users can get a bunch of bullshit in return. Chad, your take on all the news out of Indeed this week. Chad (26:17.038) Hmm. Chad (26:37.922) Yeah, the boxes going away that more than likely was just kind of a pilot to tell them what we already knew. It was fucking stupid. Yeah, I mean, so that was easy. On the Reddit users, one of the Reddit users commented they had performed the search and it looked like it was Canadian only, right? So I'm like, first the tariffs and now this. I mean, can we stop pissing off the fucking Canucks for God's sakes? Please, please, let's stop. Joel (26:44.782) dumb. Chad (27:07.31) Let's go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and pop this up, but the Indeed Premium, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so everybody can enjoy, think. there it is. Chad (27:23.47) You gotta be able to see it first. Joel (27:26.766) Thanks Riverside. Chad (27:28.11) There we go. Yeah, you guys suck. Indeed Premium, here you go guys. So if you're watching on video, let's go through these, all of us point by point, okay? Stand out to employers. So job seekers can mark their jobs that they're most interested in because that's a signal to employers that they mean business. What do you think about that, Emmy? You think that's bullshit or what? Emi B (27:30.493) Aha! Emi B (27:50.548) I think it's the most stupidest thing ever, honestly. It's like, what does that even mean? It's pointless. Who did they consult to see whether or this is actually necessary? It's like, yeah. Chad (27:56.46) Hahaha! Chad (28:05.246) Yeah. It's almost like Oliver, right? Can more, more, please, more, more. Joel (28:11.384) No, it's going to be like a dude on Tinder. He's going to swipe right on everything. Every job I see is the most interesting job in the world. Yeah. Everyone's going to mark jobs as interested. So yeah, keep, keep going on these, on these features. Emi B (28:15.22) Yeah, it's me. Love this job. I mean, yeah. Chad (28:19.182) crazy. Chad (28:23.604) Okay, so apply with confidence. You can see jobs where you might be a top applicant. You might be a top applicant. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine going into search and not being the fucking top applicant for anything? I mean, seriously, or being the top applicant for everything. Yeah, just, it's, again, this doesn't make any sense to me, other than it's literally signaling to the Joel (28:27.342) Because that doesn't happen now. You can't apply with confidence. Emi B (28:30.76) Might, yeah, not definitely might. Emi B (28:43.572) It'll be demoralising, yeah. Chad (28:52.598) Job seeker, you need to lie on your resume. Emi B (28:55.197) Yeah. Joel (28:56.654) You can be a top applicant if you pay us $9.99 a month. That's how you become the top applicant. No money, no top applicant. Chad (28:59.822) Hahaha! Okay. They stole, they stole this next one. mean, this whole thing is really stolen from LinkedIn. Let's just go ahead and let's, let's be real, but this one, see who has viewed your profile, much like on LinkedIn, anybody who gives a shit about who's looking at their profile. I don't. yeah, this is, this is going to be important to them. and then last but not least compare your skills. See how your experience compares to other applicants. Yeah. Emi B (29:08.884) 100%, yeah, yeah. Emi B (29:14.068) Ooh. Emi B (29:28.742) Just to make you feel shitty again. It's like. Chad (29:33.27) I don't see the relevance behind any and or most of this. And here's some comments from the Reddit thread. Here's a quote out here broke just browsing for jobs and now they're charging subscriptions for premium. Another user said, this is gross and greedy. We should get paid to apply for jobs on this site. I don't know. Do you think this is going to go the way of the Dodo like most of the other shit that they've been doing lately? Because indeed throwing a lot of shit. Emi B (29:52.926) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:03.262) at a lot of not spaghetti, but shit at the wall. And it's just not going anywhere. So thoughts. Emi B (30:08.998) No, they're running out of ideas. I mean, they're obviously trying to claw back money from somewhere. And it's like, I almost want to go into this. Okay, call it a day. Give up. Give up my day. You know, it's not it's not working. And yeah. Chad (30:13.454) You Joel (30:19.416) Yeah. I want to, I want to be in the customer service department when they start getting calls from people that aren't getting jobs, even though they are a top candidate on the, the indeed algorithm, and then have indeed explain why they're not getting a job because of that. look to Amy's point when, when, the money starts drying up on one end, job boards are like, have employers, we have job seekers when the, when the employer money starts drying up. Chad (30:31.214) $10 a month. Emi B (30:35.735) Because you're a bit shit. Sorry. Emi B (30:45.32) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:48.834) They get, there's desperation and how do we make money? How do we squeeze a little bit more out of this turnip? And that goes to job seekers. And I have no doubt that people will pay for this. They have a ton of users. If they just get one, one to 5 % of people use this, they're going to make a lot of money. But the question is how valuable is it? And it's a total move to be like, like, or be like LinkedIn. Unfortunately, LinkedIn has some actual good information about companies and people who work there. Chad (30:58.254) Mm. Chad (31:16.578) Yeah. Joel (31:18.318) I pay for LinkedIn premium and it's partly because I'm a podcaster and the information is beneficial for the listeners, but it's actually beneficial. I don't, I'm not sure indeed has the data to make this thing valuable. And it's, it's almost like you remember on when you, when you put something on eBay back in the day and you pay an extra $4 for it to be highlighted. So that would stand out. That's what this feels like. And the old, the old headhunter.net, which no one will remember it, but chat, but with us is like, you would pay. Emi B (31:37.78) Mm. Chad (31:40.763) yeah. Chad (31:44.728) Yes, yes. Joel (31:48.024) per whatever and it would move your resume up the list because you paid money for that. Chad (31:55.692) Not because it was relevant. Emi B (31:57.684) Yeah, see, yeah, yeah, I think it's awful because I'm thinking about that, you know, the comment that someone saying that, you know, indeed is greedy. I think they are. And I'm sure if you speak to indeed or whatever press release they'll, you know, they send out, they'll say, oh, yeah, it's there to help the people. But my challenge is that is it really because it's not built for the unemployed. This service is not for the unemployed. It's not for the underemployed. The only people who Joel (31:57.772) Because you paid, yeah, because you paid. Emi B (32:24.756) actually have the disposable income to pay for this are those who are already working, you know, they've got extra money to go, hey, okay, I can spend that 9.99 a month. But for everybody else, it's just making them feel shit. And it's just, I honestly, I think this is really bad. This one pisses me off. Yeah. Joel (32:40.382) And it's going to reveal things to job seekers that they don't even know is going on. For example, imagine the sourcing tools that automate looking through the database. Well, a job seeker is going to see that and think, they looked at my resume. No, they didn't. A bot went through the system and looked at it as a bot, not a human being. So then they're going to be like, well, Acme, looked at my resume. They must be interested. What's going on? So there are so many Emi B (32:52.276) Mm. Chad (32:52.546) Mm-hmm. Joel (33:10.904) consequences to this that they job seekers are going to like freak out and what is going on. This, the, the unintended consequences of this are going to be a disaster to their credit. They launched it in Canada only apparently. So Canuck, sorry, but yeah, get, get, get, get your, get your Tim Hortons, get a double double, and, stick it to indeed for, for doing this to you. they need to be held accountable. Chad (33:37.486) The performance was supposed to level the playing field with regard to high markets, low markets, because obviously, you know, in a market where there's a lot of clicks, the CPC is going to be lower. When it's not, they're going to be higher. I mean, you can like flow with it, right? For some reason, indeed, in their modeling is for shit. not to mention they haven't gone down funnel to the qualified applicant. If anybody should have this right, they have all the data. They're forcing the job seeker to actually get their information on the data. They could actually field that to make it easier to match on, to contextualize, do a lot of stuff, but they've got shit matching. It's shit matching. And it's just like, why are you focusing on things new? Emi B (34:21.95) They don't. Chad (34:29.622) things when you got shit that you need to fix where you could actually make more money. It doesn't make any sense. It really does. Joel (34:30.414) Mm-hmm. Joel (34:36.386) Yeah, they're trying to appeal to, I guess, a higher level job seeker. And, and this, don't, I don't see this offering being something that's appealing to the people that are willing to pull out their wallet and pay for it. In some ways they might be turning off the very audience that they're trying to appeal to. Chad (34:42.414) Good luck. Emi B (34:43.474) Not gonna work. Emi B (34:49.918) Yeah. Chad (34:55.851) Exactly. Joel (34:58.094) Let's take a quick break and talk about LinkedIn. Emi B (34:58.356) Bye indeed. Chad (34:59.822) You Joel (35:10.638) All right, guys, LinkedIn is coming in hot this week with the headlines. Here's a sampling. Number one, quote, come back for big tech. LinkedIn shells out $75 million for Silicon Valley office, end quote. Number two headline, LinkedIn study finds adding links boosts engagement by 13 % on posts. And number three, LinkedIn launches new mini site for posting tips. Chad, what are your thoughts on all things LinkedIn and the headlines we saw this week? Chad (35:44.364) I looked at a lot of these and they look like they were all pre COVID. Right? I mean, it was like, you know, we're buying, we're buying real estate and we're showing you how to do these, you know, tips on it's like, what this is, you, this is kind of old. It seems like back to the future kind of shit. So again, mean, LinkedIn and I appreciate they're trying to give tips to influencers because they want to get more people posting videos and those types of things. Joel (36:01.336) Yeah. Chad (36:12.052) But the landing page that they created, straight out of 2010, for goodness sakes. So just really weird. mean, it's odd. You see these high, high profile companies who are churning out a shit ton of cash, indeed, LinkedIn, and they put out just shit like this. just, to me, they're not at the level they should be. And it blows my mind. I don't know how it happens. Joel (36:21.71) Mm-hmm. Chad (36:42.306) other than leadership. Yeah. Emi B (36:42.354) rested on their laurels. I think so, yeah, maybe rest on laurels. I I won't comment on all of them. The one that kind of struck a chord with me really is the posting. Because I tell you what, I was looking at it and it's like, right, okay, this is how to boost your kind of, you know, your LinkedIn posts. I'm like, great, I need to know because sometimes I will post and everyone likes it. And then next week, it's like, no one likes it. You're like, fuck. It's like, what did I do wrong? Or did I just do the same thing? And... Chad (37:05.026) Yeah. Yeah. Emi B (37:10.236) This time around is telling me, links get 13 % more interactions. Carousels with almost like that PowerPoint slide, that gets about 45 % engagement. Polls, I mean, hardly anyone uses polls, that, okay. Maybe I need to try it. But apparently that smashes your reach. So you've got all these kinds of things and videos, know, it's a new thing, everyone's into it. The problem is when I looked at it, I on a second, a couple of years ago, didn't you just tell me something different? Joel (37:16.504) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:17.314) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:22.776) Joel loves a pole. Emi B (37:39.668) Didn't you say links, don't put links in your post because that actually decreases interactions and decreases views and engagement. So they're changing their minds in a couple of years. So which one is it? And they can't make up their minds as which, how are we going to know how to use the platform properly? Yeah. Chad (37:54.368) I think it changes day by day to be quite frank because I think it depends on the amount of content flow that's going in. And I know that there are specific days that I post that I know I will get better interaction, engagement, reaction off of than I do other days. So I mean, a lot of it I think has to do with what content is already in the flow and what you're competing with. Emi B (38:03.134) Yeah. Emi B (38:11.444) Okay. Emi B (38:19.251) Yeah. Chad (38:19.47) I think that's the hard part. You just got to try to make it sexy for the most part. It's marketing. It's trying to get information out there. Emi B (38:28.296) So get sexy as in videos, pictures, is that what you, no. Chad (38:31.968) Videos, pictures, I mean, even some of the, literally just some of the, we're going to be talking a little bit about Cato Institute information a little bit. I mean, that thing just blew up, but it was around manufacturing and I literally just put some statistics and people are drawn to statistics really, really quick and they engage with it. So yeah, I mean, even if it is something boring like Cato Institute research or something like that, if you can pull out some really good nuggets, people will engage. Emi B (38:39.796) Mm-hmm. Emi B (38:48.884) Mmm. Emi B (38:58.504) But it's resonating. Yeah. Joel (39:02.018) You just need a good poll, everybody. That's what you need. So since I'm a complete whore for LinkedIn, I'll sound off on this stuff. the first one's a little bit interesting for the fact that LinkedIn knows the trends on remote jobs. And they would not spend that kind of coin on real estate if they didn't feel really sure that the remote job thing is on the downside. And we've talked about it on the show quite a bit. Emi B (39:04.084) Man. Emi B (39:29.918) Mm-hmm. Joel (39:30.892) Back to work is in remote is out. So I think it's very telling that a company that's very, very knowledgeable about what kind of jobs are being posted and what kind of things are in demand would spend 75 million on a piece of commercial real estate. So that's, that's my first takeaway. Number two, you're right. Like for over a decade, the popular sentiment has been do not get people off of the platform. The minute you send someone off LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or any of them. Chad (39:56.226) Mm-hmm. Joel (39:59.26) the algo is going to ding you because they want people to stay on LinkedIn. So I, I'm, I'm still a little bit, cynical about this. I, I still think it makes sense to keep people on, on the platform. maybe this one little test says differently, but everything I do on LinkedIn, I almost never post a link. I would even say that they even ding the ones are like Lincoln comments. And then you put a link in the comment to try to go try to get around it. So I'm, I'm. Emi B (40:00.692) Mm-hmm. Emi B (40:24.403) Yeah. Joel (40:26.998) I'm not as, as sold on that idea as, as I, as I, as others might be. And then the third one, I think, I think it's largely SEO driven. If you go to, if you go to Google or any search engine and look like how to on LinkedIn, there's a ton of stuff and they're losing, they're losing real estate to people on YouTube and Tik TOK and people like educating folks on how to use LinkedIn. So this was to me was an SEO play to try to get ahead of that traffic, get people actually into LinkedIn and doing the things that we want them to do as opposed to what, you know, Chad (40:37.774) Mm. Joel (40:56.738) the masses are telling people what to do. think this was an SEO play in a way to kind of control the narrative with their users. Chad (41:05.491) Amen. Joel (41:07.298) All right, going back to Britain. Adzuna, a job search engine that Brits know very well, has launched Apply IQ, some Americans do, an AI job search agent that automatically applies to relevant jobs. The company says, Apply IQ uses large language models to match users with jobs based on skills, experience, and career goals, ensuring only the most relevant applications reach recruiters. Chad, you have some insight on this. What's up? Chad (41:36.694) Yeah, I want to thank Doug for being so responsive, CEO of Adzuna for being so responsive to my questions earlier this week about ApplyIQ. I feel like this is Adzuna's glide path toward charging for qualified slates. They're not quite there yet. But, and I believe every job site, every vendor should be moving in that direction. It's around qualified slates as opposed to clicks and spamming with as many job securities as you possibly can. The big problem that I see that might happen here is Adzuna's adding auto-apply. And that could get sketchy around candidate intent coming with some employers. Because some employers are really big on candidate intent. If a machine does it, the candidate, actual human didn't intend to apply, the machine's just doing it for you, right? So I've actually heard stories from many employers in talking about this over the years that I've called candidates, this is a recruiter, I've called candidates and they had no clue they applied for a job, right? Which means the candidates hasn't researched it, they don't know about it, it's just one of those things where it's like, possibly we're going a little too far, although I do think we will be moving in this direction. I think it's just really early. So think Doug and team, I do like moving toward qualified slates. The auto apply might be a little soon. Emi B (43:04.252) Yeah, see, I just want to pick up on the comment that you said, Chad, because you said that, you know, candidates sometimes are called by recruiters and they don't know that they've applied for a job. But that might not just be the case of because of automation. That might be because it's a shitty market. They've just tried their luck. And yeah. And so, you know, it's a case of like, okay, who the fuck did I apply to? Who's calling me? Yeah. And then, so I, I'm, I'm not so kind of hung up from that point of view. Chad (43:20.096) applied for everything. Chad (43:24.942) Yeah. Emi B (43:30.48) My only thing about it is that, it sounds great. Yes, it's actually helping, apparently helping candidates because it just speeds up that process. People can get application fatigue if they're just constantly applying for jobs. So this one, while you're sleeping, while you're watching Netflix, cool, it applies for relevant jobs. But the key word is actually relevant. That's what I want to know over time. Are you actually producing relevant candidates? Because otherwise, recruiters are just going to get pissed off. It's like... Chad (43:42.381) Mm-hmm. Chad (43:51.426) Yes. Emi B (43:58.526) They're already inundated with CVs. They're already trying to find ways that you go through all the applications, still maintain a good candidate experience by getting back to other candidates, which is hard when you've got that many. But then if this tool is actually just going to increase the number of applicants, everyone's going to lose out. know, experience is not great. Candidates are going to get pissed off. Recruiters are going to get pissed off. So I hope it does what we know what they're trying to do. Chad (44:04.258) Right. Joel (44:24.558) Yeah, I think the intent is great. But I think whenever you build a technology, have to realize people are going to use this and people suck. And people are going to do things that you don't think they'll do with it. So if I'm unemployed, am I happy trusting your algorithm that you're only applying to relevant jobs? Am I willing to trust you that you are? Well, maybe not. I'm going to apply to everything. I'm going to lazy apply. Chad (44:37.09) Humans are stupid, okay? Humans are stupid. Joel (44:54.446) where they just shotgun the whole system. Um, and, and if I'm an employer, do you trust that you're only going to get relevant candidates? Like, are you willing to trust the algorithm that, that you're going to get good people when in my opinion, employers are moving toward, we're going to set up our own filters. We're going to set up our own sort of gatekeepers, whether it's pre-screening track, whatever it is, right. Uh, blockchain, I mean, all the stuff that's coming down the pike. So, so I applaud the, the intent. I just think when. Emi B (45:02.996) Mm. Chad (45:14.19) and are applicant tracking systems and CRMs. Joel (45:24.172) when you're dealing with people on both sides of the aisle on this one, like a lot of things can go wrong. So I would say, let's see how this plays out. But people are likely to take a, take a Louisville slugger and just beat this thing, beat this thing to hell. But we'll see what happens. See what happens. Emi B (45:29.94) Mm-hmm. Emi B (45:38.356) Let's see. Joel (45:42.624) Alright guys, a story entitled, Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back, Dylan Matthews of Vox argues that the decline in US manufacturing jobs stems from structural economic shifts and automation, not just trade policies. Tariffs have failed to revive these jobs, instead causing losses elsewhere. as a proud son of the Rust Belt, what are your thoughts on manufacturing jobs coming back? Chad (45:49.165) Ouch. Chad (46:09.656) Yeah, the structural economic shifts was, I think, the most important in this discussion, which is what people need to understand. And what that means is the decline in manufacturing jobs is attributed more to structural change in the economy rather than our trade policies. So as countries like the US become wealthier, there is a natural transition from agriculture, which we were a big farming country. still kind of art to some extent, but we were a huge farming company country, and then we went to manufacturing. And then we transitioned to a service based economy. This shift is driven by increased productivity and changing consumer demand. So we don't make cheap shit anymore, right? That's not what we do. We provide valuable services that are higher margin, which means the dollars made per hour in services positions drives more revenue. And we should actually drive more pro should drive more prosperity. But even if we did bring manufacturing back, what the hell would we do? because tighter immigration has driven immigrants out of the country. And last November, the Cato Institute commissioned a poll. Joel loves a poll, especially if it's paid for. anyways, this poll was commissioned, was commissioned to understand how the American people felt about bringing. Joel (47:20.174) I love a good pole. I do. I love it. Emi B (47:20.98) You Chad (47:31.022) manufacturing back to America. And the report found that 80%, very big number of Americans say boosting manufacturing jobs is great for the country. Yet only 25 % said that they would actually do the jobs. So here's something that's even more interesting than having 600,000 jobs open. Blue collar workers make up 27 % of America's workforce. And that's from the AFL-CIO, right? Here's a math breakdown. Emi B (47:45.117) Okay. Chad (48:01.262) If only 25 % of the US population want to work in manufacturing jobs, and currently 27 % of them are already in blue collar positions, what does that mean? It means 2 % of the people want to get the fuck out of blue collar jobs. Right? So we need more people and we're actually retracting. So this is, we're not training the next generation. People want to get out of manufacturing. And yet, and we don't have the supply chains that are actually set up here to make it more efficient and smarter and cheaper. We don't have any of that. So this is where we're at kids. Chad (48:47.17) I do. Emi B (48:48.146) Yes, I agree. There's lots of crazy pills taking place. OK, so this is my question to you. You both put put up really logical arguments and I 100 % agree with it. But I also think that in this kind of day and age, it's really important to see, try and understand the other side, you know, to because we can't you can't change someone's opinion until you actually almost step in their shoes. OK. And obviously, the Trump administration is saying this is going to work. This is going to work. I can't figure out why it's going to work, why they think it's going to work. So, I mean, can you help me out? Why do you think that they truly believe, even though you both put up very good arguments as to why it's not going to work, why do you think that they believe that it is going to work? Joel (49:33.452) They being. Emi B (49:35.272) the people who voted for Trump. Yeah, Trump himself, the Trump administration. Joel (49:37.275) okay. Joel (49:42.446) I mean, it sounds good. It sounds good. We're going to bring the jobs that China's taken and the rest of world's taken. We're going to bring them back home. it's, guess it sounds good. And when I go into a of voting booth, to certain number of people, it sounds great. And I do see the side of like, if we stop making stuff in this country, we put ourselves at a disadvantage. If there's ever a conflict, right? If we can't make boats, planes, bullets, like that's a bad, that's a bad thing. And more so like pharmaceuticals, if that's all outsourced somewhere. Chad (49:42.67) 80 % of people said they wanted. Emi B (50:03.72) Mm-hmm. Chad (50:10.69) We make those. Joel (50:11.886) Like that, that, but, we're talking about like 1940 style manufacturing. And part of me thinks like Donald Trump is still mentally in the fifties and the sixties and seventies. and to Chad's point, uh, I think it was a Frank Lutz poll that like 80 % of Americans want manufacturing jobs to come back, but only 25 % will actually do those jobs, uh, if they do come back. So imagine if we go through this whole process of tariffs and moving factories back and Nike says, okay, we'll make Chad (50:18.19) Mm-hmm. Emi B (50:22.268) in the dark ages. Yeah. Chad (50:23.939) Yes. Joel (50:41.87) We'll make Nikes and Albuquerque and these factories get put up and nobody wants these jobs. And we've shut the border down. So there are no immigrants that want to come over. Like we could go through this whole thing and shoot ourselves in the foot because we find out nobody wants these jobs. not, although they're called peasants, China over the last 30, 40 years, they've advanced like we did. Right. So they don't want these jobs either. And Chad (50:48.184) No. Yeah. Emi B (51:03.284) Mm-hmm. Joel (51:11.522) The studies I've seen are like 70 % of Chinese manufacturing is all automated. And it's in the high nineties in some of these, these places. So as China gets richer, these people don't want to do those jobs either. So they're outsourcing to like Vietnam and Cambodia and other countries. so it's really hard to wrap your head around what's going on. And I know that the narrative that Trump is playing 4D chess and we're all too dumb to figure out what's going on is popular, but Chad (51:16.835) dark. Emi B (51:17.427) Yeah. Chad (51:26.339) Mm-hmm. Emi B (51:26.356) Mm-hmm. Emi B (51:38.228) Yeah Joel (51:40.174) It's, really hard for me to understand. We're taking this risk and no one wants to do the jobs. Right. And, and in the meantime, we're going to pay more for everything, which is a regressive tax, which means poor people are going to pay more. Like none of this stuff makes sense. Which makes me goes back, makes, me go back to this whole geopolitical struggle and China and America. Like I'm still going with that. And you can look at the past episodes where I've talked about that, but it's hard to wrap your head around why this makes sense because it just doesn't. Emi B (51:43.38) it hard yeah Chad (51:49.422) Yes. Emi B (51:54.142) Mm-mm. Joel (52:09.441) It just does it. Emi B (52:09.564) No, but somehow they believe it. Yeah, it's really hard. I can't find anything that makes sense. Chad (52:11.751) I wish we could make some sense out of it, just some. And here's the thing, and we talked about this on past podcasts, usually when you fight a war, and this is an economic war, okay, you try to do it on as few fronts as you possibly can. Then you win those fronts, and then you start, open up new fronts, right? What these guys did was open up every fucking front available. They tariffed everybody. Everybody, and it was everybody on everything. Emi B (52:25.172) Mm-hmm. Emi B (52:46.782) Mm-hmm. Chad (52:46.796) Right now things are starting to get pulled back here and there, but this is the fucking penguins for God's sakes. Anyway, it's just when anybody says this is any 4D, somebody actually said 5D chess. like, what the fucking dimension is five? the fuck it, what are you talking about? Anyway, to me again, none of it makes sense. People want manufacturing back, but they don't want to do the job. Joel (52:49.071) Don't forget the penguins. The penguins were hit too. The penguins were hit. Yeah. Emi B (52:52.596) Go! Emi B (53:00.916) 5D chess? Of course! Yes! Joel (53:00.92) Why not? 5D, sure. Emi B (53:09.012) No. Emi B (53:14.408) that they don't want to do it themselves. Yeah, exactly. Just a little bit problem. Joel (53:20.462) All right, let's take a quick break. Guys, if you like what you're hearing, hit us up on your podcast platform of choice. Subscribe to YouTube, leave us a review, subscribe. Tell your friends and family we'd really, really appreciate it. Chad (53:32.354) yeah. Joel (53:38.274) What better way to end this show than OnlyFans? All right, guys, an OnlyFans creator, Ellen Hancock, I don't know if that's her real name or not, I doubt it is, claims that her client's spending habits indicate a potential recession is on the way. She notes a decrease in spending and concerns about the cost of living among her clients, suggesting a tightening of budgets. Hancock compares this to the economic impact Chad (53:41.279) Only fans. Chad (53:47.564) I doubt it is. Joel (54:08.0) of the COVID-19 pandemic indicating a similar trend. must be an economist. She's going back to COVID. Chad, who needs the federal government and Toby Dayton's numbers? We have only fans to tell us a recession is coming. Your thoughts. Emi B (54:20.532) 100%. Chad (54:25.198) Well, I mean, these are the people. Let's just say these are creators, these are entrepreneurs, right? And they are going to feel it first. There's no question because what happens is when prices go up and wages do not go up, you look at things that you don't need and you don't spend money on them, right? This is a need versus it's a must have versus a nice to have, right? Only fans for these people is a nice to have, right? not a must have. yeah, I mean, this is these, these are early indicators. And if you take a look at a lot of small businesses who are, are already getting hit by these Chinese tariffs, many small businesses are going to go under very quickly. And this, these guys don't have to worry about getting shipments from China, but what they do have to worry about is higher prices, right? Their people have less spending power. Emi B (55:13.716) Mm-hmm. Chad (55:17.238) and they don't spend with them because they're not a need to have. Emi B (55:21.308) No, 100%. I totally agree with you, but I do love these little kind of soundbites, honestly. They make me laugh. Yeah, I'm going to comment, I just want to say something first of all, because I'm assuming you both watch Sopranos. Yeah. Chad (55:25.134) Hahaha Joel (55:28.75) I do too. Chad (55:39.086) I have not. Go ahead. Joel (55:39.17) Yeah, Sopranos. Sopranos. Sopranos. Emi B (55:40.38) Okay, now, okay, so Chad, you're like me. So that, how do I say sopranos? Sopranos. Sopranos or sopranos? So I've been watching the sopranos and only in the last, to be honest, in the last couple of months or so. And there's a quote that Tony Soprano said, which actually stuck with me. And he actually said, there were only two businesses that are recession proof. Joel (55:45.752) Sopranos. The Queen's English. Sopranos. Sopranos. Chad (55:55.094) huh. Emi B (56:08.884) one of those businesses is the adult entertainment industry. And I think what this article or what Ellen Hancock is actually proving is that Tony Soprano is actually wrong. Even the adult entertainment industry isn't actually recession proof. So there was a reason why I brought up Sopranos. Chad (56:24.13) Yeah. Yeah. Emi B (56:30.958) I think like you said, like you said, Chad, she's got her pulse, if you like, on the consumer wallet. You know, this is someone who used to make between three to seven K a month, you know, just having a chat and I'm supposed to do a little bit more, but you know, people willing to pay three to seven K, but when times are hard, people are saying to her, I can't afford it now. You know, they, they've got to say no to the kind of the spicy videos and the, you know, the one-to-ones, they got paid for eggs, they got paid ring, they got paid gas, you know, those are actual necessities. So. Chad (56:36.056) Mm. Joel (56:39.427) Mm-hmm. Chad (56:44.814) Yeah. Chad (56:53.166) Mm-hmm. Chad (56:59.266) Yeah. Emi B (57:00.212) I agree with Ellen, do, and I agree with you, Joel. I think she is actually an economist and I know it's a tough market out there, but you know, if she does end up losing her job in OnlyFans, I think she should knock on JP Morgan's door. You know, she's got a transferable skillset. She is predicting the job market. She's predicting the economic market. So I think it's a good one. Yeah. Joel (57:22.072) Nostradamus. By the way, if more unemployment means more people on OnlyFans means there's more supply and if demand is going down, there's a bad squeeze in there somewhere. New trend that led me through this, at this, there's a new, influencers now teaching fans how not to spend money. That is apparently a new trend on social media, how to save your money, how not to spend, how to do. There's this whole thing about Emi B (57:32.468) Pay for it. Chad (57:35.724) Yes, we need a balance. It's balance. Chad (57:49.751) Uh-uh. Emi B (57:50.246) Is it? yeah. Chad (57:53.048) Don't go to Starbucks. Easy. Joel (57:54.434) buy directly from China. So your Hermes bag is 30 bucks instead of 3000. Like this is a trend that we're seeing, but that is a trend, not nearly as, as awesome as my trend of awesome dad jokes, which leads me to this week's joke and honor of deal spy and Irishman Keith O'Brien. Guys, what do you call an Irish lesbian? What do you call an Irish lesbian? Chad (58:07.778) Bad jokes. awesome. Emi B (58:25.204) Can we get a clue? I want a clue. Chad (58:25.368) I'm not even gonna try. Not even gonna try. yeah. Joel (58:29.26) No clues. Chad (58:32.706) Go. Joel (58:34.081) A Gaelic. Emi B (58:36.532) my lord. Joel (58:47.502) That's right. That's right. Emi B (58:55.796) That's hilarious. Joel (58:58.114) I'll take it. Guys, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad (59:01.9) We out. Emi B (59:02.036) God. yeah. I'm going to tell my friend that Yeah.

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast , it’s nostalgia, disruption, and a little Monster in the bathroom. We sit down with Jeff Taylor—yes, that  Jeff Taylor—the original founder of Monster.com , DJ of disruption, and proud towel-dryer. From breaking the help wanted section in the ’90s to building Boom Band in 2025, Jeff dishes on the dumpster fire that is the current job board scene (spoiler: he doesn’t pull punches). We get the real story behind Monster’s fall, how Indeed jacked the model, and why your résumé might as well be from 1907 (fox hunting, anyone?). We talk AI airbrushing the talent market, recruiters ghosted by robots, and why Jeff almost bought a billboard just to prove a point. Oh, and Ray Dalio? Let's just say it started with a one-hour monologue and ended with 25,000 data points. Buckle up. Jeff Taylor is back, bitches. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:33.016) This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Boys and girls, I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house and do we have a treat for you. We welcome Jeff Taylor, serial entrepreneur, founder of Monster.com and current startup, boom band, and so many other things that I'm sure that we'll talk about. Jeff, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad (00:39.294) Sup. Jeff Taylor (00:45.186) Watch out! Jeff Taylor (00:55.086) Thanks Joel, thanks Chad. I've been kind of dreaming about this, I'll just be honest with you. As I was thinking about kind of re-entering and having some fun in the talent space, one of the first things I did was drop in and if I fast forward, getting out of the shower today and I said to my wife, I'm on with Chad and Cheese today, I don't know where we're going. And she said, why are you doing that? I said, because you have to like lean into the pain. Chad (00:56.062) Guess who's back. Joel (01:24.408) Question is, Jeff, are you an air dryer or are you a towel dryer? Jeff Taylor (01:28.75) I'm definitely a towel dryer. My shower is two minutes, like in and done. I don't spend, you know, I used to say you can change the world in a half an hour shower, but I don't take one, you know. Joel (01:45.016) All right, aside from aside from bathing techniques, Jeff, a lot of our listeners will know you very well. A lot will have no clue who you are. So give us sort of an elevator pitch encompassing all of that for everybody and we'll get we'll get down into business and the topics we want to discuss. Jeff Taylor (02:02.616) Holy shit. So I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an idea generator. It's kind of just the way my mind works. I'm a creative kind of brand marketer. So I'm all about naming and how do you amplify an idea? And I'm a CEO. So I'm not only like the idea generator, but I like to stick. and, you know, kind of helicopter through, do software development design. I'm not a developer. I'm an over the shoulder designer and developer. And I'm a, I'm a culture builder. I love team success. I like to build the careers of people around me. And I like the talent space. It's just kind of been my life and I believe in it. I believe in the idea that someone can be huge and I always try to figure out how to draw that out of people. Chad (03:05.976) And he's a DJ. He obviously always brings the energy. mean, that's one of the things that I mean, when you take a look at leaders, Jeff, we always talk about, I mean, startups on the show always. And the very number one thing for me is always the founder, because they have to be out there. They have to be bigger than life because you have to get because there's so much noise out there. is fucking crazy how much noise is out there right now. Now, when You started Monster back in the day, right? Monster board back in the day. It was almost crickets from the standpoint of getting online, right? Because you were one of the first, right? Today you were jumping into an entirely different, different landscape. Now that's gotta be exciting and scary as fuck. Talk about that a little bit. Jeff Taylor (03:45.058) That's right. Yeah. Joel (03:51.211) matured. Jeff Taylor (03:54.606) Well, you know, I think what's interesting is I don't think that the fundamentals really change and so I think if you go to a playbook where you have an idea you're able to describe your idea enough so that people want to work with you on that idea. I'm doing that right now. Chad (04:04.392) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:13.3) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (04:19.798) And then you amplify that idea to include kind of customers. And so for me, the job seeker was always the customer. How do you catch that voice? Right. Half about a better job. It's half about a better life. I can go to, I have a monster bathroom. I want to just share that with you. Everything in my bathroom is monster. I didn't know where to put it. And so it's all in there. So you go in there and it's basically like the empowering message of monster.com. And I'm sharing that with you. I haven't shared that with anybody else. Come on. I'm doing it. know, like, so, yeah, what, what here? Here it is right here. I, I, I, I, I am not, I am not kidding. I've never shown it to anybody. And, it's, you know, yeah, it's, so I think the, Chad (04:47.856) in the bathroom. Joel (04:49.044) I have a monster in my toilet, but that's a whole different podcast episode. Joel (04:58.658) For the listeners, he's walking us through his office. Chad (05:01.003) yeah, this is definitely going to be a short. Joel (05:07.426) Do you sleep with Trumpasaurus? Do you sleep with Trumpasaurus? Be honest. Jeff Taylor (05:16.514) The interesting thing if we kind of dig in a little bit is there was a huge problem in the marketplace in the early 90s and the help wanted section wasn't working. And I had 300 clients in the Boston area and a couple of my clients were basically saying, I owned an ad agency. We specialize in placing help wanted ads. The poor younger sister or brother to, you know, the fancy ad agencies in Boston. And My clients were the biggest high tech companies that were emerging, big hospitals and big biotech companies. And they were all telling me the help wanted section is not working. And it's like, why? And it was like, it was getting too expensive. was very sectioned so that it wasn't, it was hard to get your employee brand out there. The shelf life was one day. There were so many problems with it. The main thing is they weren't finding talent. Chad (06:08.211) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (06:13.748) And so if I just fast forward to today, there's a whole set of problems right now. And so I did like a post that was like, you know, rest in peace to the traditional help wanted section. And I listed out like all the things that went wrong that created the opportunity to start monster.com the same set. Joel (06:17.208) Sounds familiar. Jeff Taylor (06:37.218) But with different words are happening right now and I'm about to do a post. It's like rest in peace to the job boards. It's not working. And you could argue that it's not just the job boards, but the systems and process that we have right now is about to get kind of jumped the curve on, jumped the shark. And it's been happening like I was describing, kind of like a frog in the boiling water, you know, like it just. it would just kind of bounce in the road and it's getting hotter and hotter. I don't know why it hasn't changed and that was the beauty of dropping back in after taking little break. Chad (07:16.788) So it's interesting because what pretty much killed Monster and Crew Builder was Indeed. Indeed was the Google for jobs. It was a job search engine, right? And what we've noticed and what we actually talked about on this week's show is how they have actually walked back into a job board model. they're back in, literally, Jeff, they're in your fucking model. What you built back in the mid-90s. they are doing today. So it is, I mean, it's amazing how we take a look at these technologies. We've got this great technology. It's incredibly fluid. It's helping. It's getting job seekers to companies and to jobs faster. And then you start walking that back and you start to put barriers in front of the job seeker. Number one, why do you think that is? Obviously revenue, but why do you think that is? And why do you think CEOs think that's a good idea? And number two, Jeff Taylor (07:46.242) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (08:14.472) I mean, Monster and Cruebill are still around. They're one together, obviously, but they still exist. How long do you think it's gonna take for the job boards really to have to evolve into something entirely different? Jeff Taylor (08:29.164) Well, I think the first thing is it's it's really difficult to do. You know, when you when you rely on a system for your profits, actually really for your revenue, you know, the profits may be fleeting, but your revenue, which is kind of, you know, paying for your teams and all of your expenses. And and I think this is that frog in the boiling water thing that over the course of the last 20 years, this this monster buyer seller model, which was kind of a mirror from the newspaper with a post and pray model. There was no pray when we started, it was just post, right? And that model is so beautiful, whether you charge $10 or $200, whether you charge for a month or whether you charge for a day, that model's great. While I was running Monster, there's some stuff you don't know, but while I was running Monster, we never worked with Indeed. And because I always had this Indeed, we had like 10,000 jobs, 20,000 jobs. We had a million jobs. And the Indeed teams were coming to us and saying, look, we can extend the reach of your postings. And so there was like this groundswell inside Monster. I'm like, no. And so I had a, there was a little side conversation that happened between Reed and I with the idea that we'd put LinkedIn and Monster together. and I took it to my board and my board turned it down. So I resigned and that's why I left Monster, just so you guys are aware. And that was in 2003. I didn't have a temper tantrum. I gave him 18 months notice, but almost without fanfare, I left. And within a couple of months, they did the deal with Indeed. And so I don't have an exact press release path. Chad (10:07.892) Really? Jeff Taylor (10:24.856) But they started saying, the soon as they added the million Monster jobs and they had 30,000, they said, we're bigger than Monster. And that was the beginning of Indeed's ability to grow. They were already growing. The aggregator model was a fine model, but the Monster model was better. We actually had the direct line into thousands and thousands of daily jobs because we had direct relationship with the companies. Chad (10:31.956) Mm-hmm. Joel (10:35.746) Hmm. Jeff Taylor (10:54.484) Even today, if you have direct relationships, you know those are real jobs. When you're an aggregator, you're starting to pick up jobs from lots of different places. You can look at one of the posts on my LinkedIn where I say like, where did the job posting go? Like why are there so many ghost jobs? And the main thing is you lose control of the job. So the jobs gets posted. at a recruiter website, somebody scrapes the recruiter website and posts it at another website, and six months later, you're still getting a site that's posting a job as new, but it's six months old. And so what we're seeing is that process started and started to break down as soon as you basically had aggregators. And the thing that I understand that Indeed recently did is basically back off on that network, backed off on those free jobs. Chad (11:21.108) Mm-hmm. Joel (11:46.402) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (11:46.606) And I think they're saying LinkedIn has a model, I don't know, $92, $94 a day. Let's go to a daily model. We can't really do a CPA model where you're counting applications because there's so many fucking applications that that that model basically and no, and that model basically got overwhelmed. So you got to go back. so, so I actually like indeed, I like what the way they've approached things. Chad (12:02.972) Yeah, and they're not qualified. Jeff Taylor (12:16.61) The site's tight and it's good and I like the way they're innovating around their delivery. But this move alone, Joe, you said it, it basically brought them right back into parallel with the other job boards. I think it's a terrible move in the middle of what a terrible moment. And I think it's bad. Joel (12:36.034) Jeff, I can't let, I can't let you get away with saying that the LinkedIn deal was what broke the camel's back, if you will. let it go like left to say a little bit more about that. And you guys ended up buying tickle. Were you a tickle fan or was a tick was the tickle move like, well, we lost it on LinkedIn. Let's try to make up for it. then, and why not build your own network at monster? Because you had the numbers and the traffic. Like, tell me, tell me more about that LinkedIn deal. Period. Chad (12:56.244) Well, they did. had Monster Networking was there. Jeff Taylor (12:58.19) So, so, so I, I don't know. So, so Reed and I met, it was very early. They were losing a lot of money. We, we had a napkin deal basically to say like, you know, let's, let's see if we can put something together. I took it to my board and my board said no. And that was my singular decision where I decided that if my board knew better how to run Monster than me, that then they should go and do it. And so I basically step back. I'll answer the question about Tickle. coming out of 9-11, we were profitable and a very strong company. so in 2001 and 2002, I don't know, if I go back a little further, there was an Amazon.bomb article that was in Barron's that basically kind of blew up most of what it wasn't even called HR Tech yet, but most of the companies that were kind of trying to fake it till you make it, were actually had no money, no revenue model, you we're just kind of flailing out there. All those companies started washing out and Monster was profitable and a really good quality company, like the number 11 or 12 or 13 website in any given month. And it was clear that we needed to press the accelerator. take advantage of what we were doing. We downsized a little bit because we had like six months of no business. It was after 9-11. And honestly, I was starting to lose my leadership control of the company because there was this perception that you needed a fixer to come in, lay off lots of people. And that wasn't my reflection of the way we should do it because we were healthy. And so, Chad (14:45.539) you wanted to build too. You were about building. Jeff Taylor (14:48.352) Yeah, and so I was building the talent market and Monster Networking and honestly, they weren't working. They weren't working well enough. And that's why I approached Reed. And, you know, I think that there's a bit of revisionist history here because... You know, I bring my wife into it. She's she's like, you know, you probably would have fucked it up. I think it's fine. And that might be true because I would have rebranded it because of the hubris that I had, you know, about the strength of a brand in the market. And but I think it was an interesting time. And the purchase of Tickle was we purchased military dot com. We purchased Tickle. And there were a handful of companies that had traffic or had engagement. had page views and coming out of 9-11, it was really important to have all of your metrics be strong and Tickle had an assessment that was like, what dog are you like? And I had a crazy amount of followers that were just doing this silly assessment. And we overpaid for the company because we were starting to build the asset base and the value base of. our offering and making sure coming out of the pandemic that people knew that we were strong. And so, you know, that we were filling in corners to continue to grow as quickly as we grew up from there. The other thing. Chad (16:16.446) So yeah, real quick, Jeff, I got to say that Monster Networking, Chief Monster, Blue Collar, I mean, there were so many great ideas that it felt like they were just early. They're just too early. And if they could have hung on a little bit longer and actually given more love and affection to, but everything went back to Core Monster. Everything went back to Core Monster. Jeff Taylor (16:36.077) Yeah, yeah. Jeff Taylor (16:44.014) So there's a theme here, right? It's like the same thing we were talking about about why the job boards aren't changing their models. It was also true at that point. We were public. We had a quarterly number to hit. You're kind of all of sudden you're beholden to the man to make sure you're advancing on the goal. so these explorations Chad (16:53.396) Mm-hmm. Joel (16:59.276) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (17:12.534) I hesitate to say experience because they were way better than experiments. But this was all me trying to position to be a broader solution for recruiting. And what's classically hard for company is to have even a second offering for revenue. So we had our job posting revenue was about 65 percent. We had our resume database that was about 30 percent. We should talk about that, by the way. And then all of our other activities were like 8 % of revenue. And so it was my job as the leader of Monster to experiment to basically like push in and pull out, push in and pull out, trying to build what I would say is that portfolio, which Monster had the potential to be. And so me leaving, you know, I was a public CEO for 31 quarters and I At some point, Monster had 70 % market share and we were a hot brand. That is hard to sustain, right? And that was going to be hard for me to sustain. So I had a reflection that if I really care about my brand, I should be willing to let it go. And that was always my job. through all the years was as soon as I got something down to hire somebody into that and then move on to the next thing, give up the thing that I was loving. And, you know, you would always say hire into your weaknesses. And I did that and I did it so much that I actually developed this theory that you have to hire into your strengths because I was a good product developer and I was a good marketer. And so I never developed, I thought, really good strength in those areas of my strength. And then all of a sudden I'm 5,000 employees and I've kind of played a lot of my marketing stuff out and built the attitude of our brand, but I needed more people. so, you know, hiring Pete Blacklow and these other leaders in the marketing area and making sure that like, uh, D and the product team. Jeff Taylor (19:24.94) were felt like they could bring their ideas to the table. So was giving those jobs away. And even the leadership of the company, I was actually willing to give away if I felt that it would be good for the brand. And so that's that's kind of what happened. Joel (19:33.656) Mm-hmm. Joel (19:37.91) When you look at what Monsters become, mean, I'm sure seeing Career Builder plus Monster in some ways makes you want to throw up in your mouth a little bit. But when you look at that, how do you feel looking back? Is it a melancholy? it, I had fun while I was there. Like don't cry that it's over. Chad (19:46.246) A lot, a lot. Jeff Taylor (19:52.214) Yeah, it's, yeah. You know, I took you into my Monster bathroom. I'm proud of it. And it's defining for me. It's interesting how the brand and the creation of that brand is defining for me. when people, it is funny. I go in to get my haircut and someone will say like, he found a Monster.com and there's these confused looks around the room. No one knows the Monster.com. Chad (20:18.068) Yeah. What? Joel (20:18.872) The energy drink. Jeff Taylor (20:20.622) And so yeah, they'll save the energy drink or whatever. And that's okay. I think that's the beauty of a brand having a cycle and that's fine. I have to do it because it's, I say it on my fundraising calls. It's like, okay, you put Career Builder, which was the answer that the newspapers really tried to put together to fight against Monster. Chad (20:45.736) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (20:46.926) while I was in my process of building Boom Band, the two of them decided to merge. And I'm like, that is glorious. Like, that's just so beautiful. And so I'm thinking about it, and somebody said it's like two dumpster fires make a bigger dumpster fire. And I'm sorry, like, I can't say that about the product that I found. So I said, two Lukewarm glasses of water, it's very difficult to make a hot glass of water. And I think that's classic. And then they spent a bunch of money Chad (21:02.132) That was us, Jeff Taylor (21:16.788) to brand this company and the new name is Monster Builder. I was like, thank God. Okay, this is so beautiful because I'm going to build a new company in this space. so I am connected to care about not just Monster Employees that worked with me, but Monster Employees that still work there. And I don't want to speak badly. I'm really just for a moment kind of saying like, this is what's happening with our industry right now is indeed is like reeling back into $32, $34 job postings daily, kind of following a LinkedIn model that seems so beautiful and makes $16.5 billion a year in revenue. Like, holy shit, that is the 800 pound gorilla. that's not what Indeed was good at. keep doing what you're good at is what I would say. For Monster and Career Builder, like, no, no, no, no. If you're gonna reinvent this thing and you're gonna spend money on branding, don't come out with Monster Builder. Like, I'm sorry, it's not good enough. It's not gonna work. Chad (22:23.86) They're just looking to sell it. It's Apollo, Jeff. They don't want to make anything. They literally just want to put a new shade of lipstick on this pig and they want to sell it off as parts. That's all they want to do, my friend. I'm sorry. Joel (22:36.524) Just wait till it's zip monster builder. Jeff Taylor (22:40.43) I had a dream a few weeks ago that I went to Apollo and said, whatever you're going to spend on that, put it in a boom band and let's actually go reinvent this thing. And so I had a moment and I reached out to everybody I knew and said, introduce me to Apollo. And it is like fucking crickets. And I like, I don't understand. Other than I'm from the Jurassic period. Of course, I don't know anything about this and you guys are better at this. But I'm coming to play. Joel (23:10.392) So speaking of Jurassic, Jeff, I'm about, let's talk about eons for a second. You come out of success, probably more success than you imagine with Monster. mentioned top 10 website of traffic, 70 % market share. You leave and then launch eons. This is sort of when MySpace was just a thing. Facebook wasn't, maybe had been a college site. And I think it's, yeah, I think it's fair to say it. Jeff Taylor (23:32.556) Yeah, actually Facebook was a thing. Facebook was in colleges. Yeah, go with your answer. Joel (23:39.264) Obviously it didn't work out the way that you wanted it to. I'm curious, having something really successful as an entrepreneur and then sort of, guess, failing, what did you take away from that? Did it affect what you did after Eons? What was the recipe that you missed? Jeff Taylor (23:41.55) I'm fed. Jeff Taylor (23:55.714) Yeah, so I could probably sum it up in saying I got my ass kicked by Facebook. So I built, right, when I was coming out of Monster, the average age of a user when I started Monster was like 34, 35, like it was an older group. And so that group basically grew up with me. And I decided that I would take a niche that I felt was Joel (24:03.778) You're not the only one. Jeff Taylor (24:24.458) underserved, AARP feels a little like our job board industry. And I was like, you know what, I think I could probably take obituaries out of the newspaper and migrate those the way I had done jobs. And let me anchor telling a story about your life to the idea of telling a story while you're alive. And that's where Eons was born. And Eons grew to a million monthly, was a pretty Chad (24:28.531) Yeah. Jeff Taylor (24:53.614) cool thing. have a story about a longevity calculator I'll share in a second, but the reality was I got to a million, Facebook went from college to high school, and then high schoolers taught their parents how to use Facebook and in a moment, like a flash, it was like one of those things that the police officers throw into a house, it was like we didn't grow anymore. Like all of a sudden it's like, you know, where is everybody? Everyone went to Facebook. And so I would sum up that era as I got my butt kicked by Facebook. And what was cool about it was, I was too early. I have it right in my LinkedIn profile. If you read my overview, I say like, I'm always early, but what other way is there? Like if you want to have ideas, in a space you're going to be early or else they're not, they're copycat ideas, right? And, and so I think I've hit it at different points. Monster, you, you said it's in terms of the success from Monster. mean, it's like, holy cow. I remember negotiating to, get a million dollars if we went public, right? Like I, like, I wasn't thinking. like billionaires of the internet. It was a different time. There weren't any internet millionaires at the beginning of the monster process. And I started, there were only 200 websites. So I could have bought the URLs, Coca-Cola and Nike. It was that early. And so to go from... early, early to the innovator, you know, crossing the chasm to, you know, kind of get those early adopters to get the massive middle, stay as the leader. It was amazing, right? Something I never could have expected. And I was just old enough, I think, to appreciate it and just, just not humble enough to realize I couldn't just automatically do it again. And so there's the story in a nutshell. Yeah. Joel (26:59.341) Yeah. Chad (26:59.512) Yeah. And if you would have turned it into a dating site, it would have blown up. That's the thing. Joel (27:06.966) I'm surprised Google wasn't nervous with your cranky search engine. That's what I remember. Rank was in all caps and had a little sea cranky. Jeff Taylor (27:13.528) So these are all fun. I had a dating part of Eons, which was called Meetcha, know, nice to meetcha. I had a reference point for Cranky. But the tributes piece of it went on and sold to Legacy. And the exit was like a bunt. Chad (27:24.296) just too much at once? Jeff Taylor (27:42.638) where Monster was a home run. so I think it makes, it builds my character. know, like I think these are important things. There's so many books about fail better and struggle well and all that stuff. And I think that I've always embraced that. And so I think it was good. And then, I don't know if you're gonna bridge this, but then I went to work for Ray Dalio. And... Chad (27:42.824) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (28:05.4) Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Because your personality's mesh. Chad (28:06.61) way before we get to that, before we do that, before we do that, before we do that, we gotta do, we gotta do, we gotta do the TMP thing, right? Because obviously, you know, TMP had Monster and had, was, was obviously an advertising agency and then Monster flipped the script on them and became the, the, the over, I mean, I can see, because the ego, I can see the Jeff, we probably in Andy's office having this discussion, Hey, we should be, the big dog here because the internet is where it's at. It was interesting being in the industry, watch that happen first and foremost, and then watching TMP, because I have very close relationships with TMP people, how they just, they were enraged because this little baby monster came over and they took the headline. Talk about that. How did that actually happen? That's what I want to Jeff Taylor (29:04.91) It's probably, it's probably, it's probably its own podcast. Yeah. I had an ad agency, which was just like TMP, right. But smaller in Boston. It was, was called Adion and it was ads that we did and an ion was a particle of energy. I've never really changed by the way. Right. And we, Andy McKelvey was, ran TMP, which was telephone marketing programs. Chad (29:05.448) Come on, you do know you were there. Joel (29:05.783) He got really the hushed tones say so much, don't they? Chad (29:15.496) Yeah. Right. Jeff Taylor (29:32.61) And Andy decided, he rolled up the YellowPage agencies and then he said, I'm going to roll up the recruitment agencies. So long before Michelle Abbey would have been upset with me for renaming the company Monster, was, you know, all of a sudden YellowPage has got a little bit usurped by rolling up these recruitment advertising agencies. Andy came to me and I was like, no way, our agency's hot. And I got this idea and I didn't even tell him. And it's kind of like, can't tell you a lot about Boom Band today. And so he came back a year later, offered much more money, wanted Adion because we were a very good agency in Boston to be an anchor point for, I think he ended up buying some around 25 recruitment advertising agencies. And I could see that I had Monster in Boston. And I had jobs in New England, but I wasn't very well covered in Chicago or Phoenix or Austin or San Francisco. And I could see some ability to extend the value of Monster by basically piggybacking onto this set. So I basically said, the only way I'll sell my agency is if you buy Monster. And Andy was like, I don't want it. And I was like, you don't understand. And it's probably about the conversation. And I said, I need you to come spend a day with me. And I had a sun spark 20 monsters running, I don't know, 800 jobs a day. And the machine is creaking under pressure and we're starting to get articles written about us. And it was starting to take my investors in my ad agency are saying, you need to shut that down. because it's taking you away from the agency, which was sending them a check every year. They were angel investors. And so I had like this, let's call it one of the perfect storms in my life where I went to the Boston Globe and said, do you want to buy half of Monster? I had four or five meetings with them. I met with the tailors, the senior people, and there was a lot of discussion about it. And they got back to me and they said, our great grandfathers would roll over in their graves. Jeff Taylor (31:50.42) If we if we actually did an investment and partnered with our most important section of the newspaper with a company called Monster. So I was like, OK, Andy, Andy was talking to me. The Boston Globe was talking to me. The Boston Globe said, no, my my angel investors are noisy. And I said, OK, fine. And so Andy said, I'll buy it, but I'm not really going to give you any money for it. And and I said, OK, I'm fine with that as long as I get the plan. And so we created TMP interactive, Monster became the product. And it's been, you didn't go right to it, but one of the miss moments in my life is two years later, Mark Cuban, whatever, all became billionaires with things that were similar to mine. And I made my boss a billionaire, Andy McKelvey. I'm fine. Right? If you guys are worried about me, I'm fine. Right? Chad (32:50.164) Yeah. I've seen your bathroom. You're fine. Jeff Taylor (32:50.7) But what happened then over the next few years, so weird. It's like a bumper sticker. I've seen your bathroom. That's funny. It was like a bam bam moment where the tail like banged the body of the dog so hard that the tail became the dog. so what, probably even dating myself in that analogy, people are whoa. was Bam Bam. But the idea that we became Monster Worldwide was for me one of the pinnacles where I basically said, okay, I think I can walk away from this. I've accomplished the goals that I plan to accomplish. And what's interesting, what's it called? Radiance or radiancy? Sorry. I don't Joel (33:22.306) Yeah. Chad (33:38.578) Raidency, Raidency. Joel (33:39.958) Raiden C. Jeff Taylor (33:42.894) pay as much attention to the employer branding companies, which we should talk about, by the way. There's a interesting concept where the TMP business got stronger in the short term because they had Monster. unlike when Ron said buys Monster, now you have a staffing firm that owns Monster. In this case, it was a recruitment agency that had a distributed vehicle. So we became the back end of every job that won the newspaper also won a Monster. And that was the way we seeded the market. And in some ways, even though I gave up personal wealth in that moment, it actually was a pivotal moment in building the Monster brand. Joel (34:25.9) Ray Dalio discuss. So we go to eons, we're to get to boom band. You've done some like Ray Dalio is a very calculated sort of thoughtful low key guy. I can't imagine you guys wouldn't have more in common based on your, your demeanor. But so Ray Dalio, you kind of have a lost in the woods period. You're doing like Range Rover stuff you're doing. Yeah. Let's jump to boom band between eons and then. Jeff Taylor (34:41.794) Yeah, you know, you know it's funny. Jeff Taylor (34:49.47) No, let's get the order. So the order was, so Eons took a huge swing and did a little baby bunt. And then I was in a little period where I was there to support the person that bought Eons and Ray Dalio called. It was actually a recruiter that Ray had assigned. know, go find me five entrepreneurs that aren't finance people that could come in and bring a different kind of spice to the Bridgewater scenario. And at that point, I was like, I don't know who Ray Dalio is. And so I had to go do some research on Ray Dalio. was like, wow, isn't that a twist? And so I went and interviewed Greg and David and Eileen that were the three, really the three senior leaders other than Ray. Joel (35:20.216) Huh. That's you. Jeff Taylor (35:47.35) were, I had good interviews with all of them. And my interview with Ray was an hour and eight minutes long. He talked for an hour, I talked for eight minutes, it's on tape. he did not like, yeah. He did not like me. And so I think David or Eileen went to him and said, you gotta hire this guy. Joel (35:59.416) There's no way that you didn't get any words in. wow, okay. Jeff Taylor (36:14.606) And so he said, okay, do like a try buy for six months and let's check it out. And so I accepted the try buy. was a good, was a North of Fair offer. know, like it was fair, the biggest hedge fund in the world. And I moved to Westport, Connecticut. And I showed up at work and one of the first things Ray said was like, why did you move here? Joel (36:30.264) worth your time. Jeff Taylor (36:42.382) And I was like, because I'm gonna work for you. And he's like, you're not gonna last six months. And I said, I'll work for 10 years and we'll see. so for the first like three months, it was horrible. I really struggled there because nobody cared that I had founded one of the biggest brands in the world. It's like Bridgewater is you start with your head cut off and you walk around like a newbie no matter what. position you're in and you earn your way through the process. And just to fast forward, we have this thing called dots, which are basically feedback that you get in the moment on an iPad in every meeting. So I'd be saying like right now, Joel, it's like, you know, like go to the harder question. And I'd be like, like Chad, like we should probably have a separate conversation just about the monster experience. in So we'd be giving feedback to each other and you'd be saying, okay, I don't think he's listening that well. I'm not sure he's answering the right question. And we'd be giving each other dots. I have 25,000 of those dots in my experience working there. And I gave out 22,000 dots. So I basically was a feeder of, I believed in the system. I'm telling you, it made me sharp. Like if I look at my peers where I am right now, I think it gave me 10 years of ability to navigate levels and understand what's important and to be able to understand what people are like, which is a very important part of what I'm doing with Boom Band. And so that was like a 10 year MBA for me. And I did work there for almost exactly 10 years, incredible experience. The first three months, Ray beat the crap out of me. And, you he brought me into a room with 30 people and he had asked me to do this assignment. Go taste the soup in these six different areas. And tasting the soup is like go into areas and like see what you think it's like. And if you would make suggestions, whatever. He's basically testing me to see what I'm like. And I did a couple of reports, gave them to Greg, who was, you know, kind of number two at that point. Greg said, these are terrible. Jeff Taylor (39:01.654) And then I did some more. said, okay, they're better. And then Ray calls me into a room with 36 people and basically says, why are you so terrible at tasting the soup? I said, Greg just said I'm mediocre. Like, Greg fights me. And so I had to do a, I did a reflection, which we would write almost every day inside the company. And I said, I'm fighting for mediocrity, right? That was the beginning of my Bridgewater experience. But by the end, I think I didn't. Joel (39:27.672) Cheers. Jeff Taylor (39:30.938) sell my soul, I was me. It was an incredible experience. The people that work out at Bridgewater are lifelong, incredible people. And so for me, it was a great stop in a building career. Joel (39:46.378) And why'd you leave? Was it to start another company or you just had Jeff Taylor (39:49.73) So, well, actually, we carved off principles. At one point, Ray said, you know, like, what do you want to do? You're doing a great job in the company. it was like, your book is in the corner. You you're messing around with that. And I said, I'll help, you know, project manage the books, the book principles. Chad (39:50.557) You the itch? Jeff Taylor (40:10.886) I worked as the project lead on that team and with a couple other incredible people and kind of got Ray over the finish line of getting that book out there, producing those videos that are about how you fall down and get back up. If you haven't watched it, it's a really good watch. Joel (40:24.886) Is that the Empire stuff or are these different videos? Jeff Taylor (40:27.662) Oh, well, so there's this a little bit earlier. So this is is is principles you this is how the economic machine works and some of the early videos. And so the spirit of that, for me, we ended up carving that company off in 2019 as a separate company called principles. And we were going to see if we could sell these tools into places like Salesforce and zoom and some of our early meetings. And then the pandemic hit and Joel (40:30.904) Okay, so the Empire is the new stuff, yeah. Jeff Taylor (40:57.818) feedback in year one of the pandemic was, I didn't know you had kids and what's your dog's name and are you okay? See you next year. That was the transparency and the radical feedback for year one of the pandemic. And that was when we were trying to build a business. And so I finally said, it's probably time, you know, in a theme that's very similar that you'll start to hear from me, it was probably time. And I... I had built a couple of Land Rovers and I was like, you know what, this is so creative. I'm not a refiner and an advanced working for Ray. I'm completely envisioning these things. And so I created a little company called Rover Trophy during the pandemic, built about a hundred really cool Land Rovers. And then, I don't know, one of my buds called me and basically said, you gotta get back in the game. And I was like, I'm building these Rovers and I was thinking about it and I basically, it's always danced, like there's been a couple of points where it's like, I should go buy Monster. you know, Monster has been doing that steady march down and I think the brand was still good. But I think that's not typically what I do. I've typically gone and done different things. Joel (41:58.04) It must have been dancing in your head. It must have sort of been there, right? And he... Chad (42:09.96) Mm-hmm, yeah. Or they pay you to take it. Jeff Taylor (42:21.672) And so this is actually a real coming around for me to come back into the business. Chad (42:27.838) So do we know what boom band is gonna be? That's the question because it seems like there's an idea, there's a concept, but it's a little nebulous at this point. Give us an idea. Joel (42:31.106) Give it to us. Jeff Taylor (42:34.99) I do. I Yeah, and it is completely by design. Like I, you know, one of the things that I've been talking about, and I think we probably should spend some time and talk about this because there's a there's kind of a what I'm describing is like a meltdown in the industry right now. It's not working. It's literally not working. And I was I was describing it as like leaves up against the fence. And you have Chad (42:56.628) Mm-hmm. Jeff Taylor (43:05.006) guest after guest after guest that is tweaking and doing middleware and reinventing this and putting AI on top of that. And these are all micro adjustments to something that fundamentally, when I started Monster, the biggest problem was there was not a big enough talent pool to service the companies and they needed a new way to do it. And there was no tweaking of the help wanted section that was going to get that done. Some of the help wanted sections were 150 pages. Big, right? You know, like that just didn't work. Still one day publishing, whatever. Right. Now I think what's happening is cost of posting, has gone to like a day rate. If you add it up in a month, postings are as expensive as they've ever been. And you have every flavor of microsite and you have. the application process, is broken. The ATS system, I think at some point it's just the machine settings in the ATS is can't keep up. You know, my airbrushing thing I've been talking about. don't know how much you've, you track me, but I can do it. I can do it right here. And this, you mostly do podcast, right? So I have a tangerine company says, this is an exciting job posting. I'm going to put it through AI and they make this. Joel (44:24.78) Yep. Uh-huh. Jeff Taylor (44:30.67) this much more sexy looking orange. And then they put it out in the marketplace and here's your candidate is like this orange cup. And the candidate's like, wow, I'm gonna put that job posting in my favorite transformer, my favorite LLM. And so now it's in there, put my resume in there too. And what comes out the bottom is like, okay, now here's my resume. It looks so beautiful. And then it comes back over and answers the job. And the ATS system is like, Holy shit. I used to have five to 7 % of my applicants where I could identify the keywords and then I could help a recruiter who's not quite as good at human interactions anymore to move people forward in the system. And the reality now is you've got instead of two to 300 responses in three to four weeks, now you're getting 500 responses in three to five hours. And now I said conservatively 30 % look like an orange, but I just saw somebody say half look like an orange. Okay. So the, so the ATS system is like, yes, there are 400 people that match your job posting. then the recruiter. Joel (45:38.168) Cheers. Joel (45:44.524) Yeah, close the posting. We don't need any more, right? And then. Jeff Taylor (45:48.718) We are 400 people that are at 92%. It's like, wow, this is awesome. And then you go to the first person. I just heard a story, fourth interview, and it's for a recruiter. And the person says, tell me what kinds of positions you've recruited for. And the person said, I've ever not actually been a recruiter before. Right. I've been in marketing and sales, but I've never recruited somebody. It's like they're at the fourth interview. so interview one, you know, I don't know, interview one is Chad (46:17.332) Well that's not a technology problem, that's a company problem. Jeff Taylor (46:21.294) Right, but what's happening is phase one, phase two, we're getting a bunch of AI tools that are taking care of the administrative and setting up your meeting. And then your first meeting, I just talked to an applicant yesterday. So I'm so excited. I got my first interview in two months and it's a robot. And she like was almost crying while she's answering the questions. Joel (46:21.816) But they're funneling through with tech, yeah. Jeff Taylor (46:46.956) because she thought she was gonna talk to Alan or whatever and it's basically mechanical questions being asked to her that then she's answering. She has three tries at it and she has one minute for each answer. And she said, I'm so, so frustrated. Like I don't know what to do. So anyway, I think this thing's melting down. And so I think it's a macro issue. So Boom Band is going to deal with. Let's call it three of the macro problems. I think the resume, the definition of a resume, it's French, it means summary. That's an absolute disaster in using AI that can actually, it's both semantic and eugenic ways that it's going to find the neighborhood of the information in your resume. And if your resume is a summary, it doesn't work. And so you're only matching the same way an applicant tracking system is matching by some keywords and by years of experience. And you need to do much more. So my first thinking is the resume's got to be different. And if I had a nickel for every time I went to every HR tech conference, there was many of these, I was a keynote speaker at, and I would walk the floors. And if I had a nickel for every time somebody say, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, come over here, I'm reinventing the resume. I'd say, good luck. Right? Because I did a hundred million resumes with a form-based resume. So if you went to Amherst college, it was in the college line. It wasn't in the location line as Amherst or in your engineering experience as Amherst software. You knew where the stuff was in a form-based resume and all of the resume parsers. I did a big evaluation of all of those five years ago. I've always been in it a little Joel. and the best ones hit 83, 84%. That's not good enough for a resume parser because that means you still have mistakes. And so the experience that I had is the resume is broken and it does need to be reinvented. And so I have an idea and my idea is to say, I think your resume needs to be 80 % current, 5 % historical and 15 % future. What are your goals and dreams? Including what companies you'd like to work for. Jeff Taylor (49:13.87) what jobs you would like to have, why you'd like to have those jobs, and what are my five-year goals in terms of what I'd like to do with my career. And I want to ingest all that so I start to get a little bit of a spirit of like the culture of this person. The other thing is when you have a LinkedIn resume, let's talk about LinkedIn for a minute. 1 % creators, 9 % engagers, 90 % lurkers. That's the industry standard. Chad (49:39.636) . Jeff Taylor (49:40.942) I think if anything, it might be higher lurkers on LinkedIn. There's there's there's and then of the 1 % of content creators, 10 % of those produce real content on a regular basis. So it's a very small number of content creators. You guys you guys know this, you know, the one 990 rule. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry. I'm just just trying to like set up a picture, right? So this means 90 plus percent of the people that are on LinkedIn are using it like Instagram. Chad (49:59.476) Kind of what we do kind of what we do Jeff Taylor (50:12.424) Or they have an old resume on LinkedIn. That's it. It's a commercial resume, 85 % historical, 15 % current. So for 90 % of the users, that's what they got. It's not good enough. And so what I want to do is fill up that experience, bring your whole self. And that's the first anchor point that I'm doing. The second thing is we have to get rid of job postings. There are 100 companies including Chris that was just on your show Who I'm amazed at he's he's amazing guy and he's built an amazing business and now he's gonna go make cheese which I think is funny and I think what's what's cool is he's been able to cycle so I can have a little fun with this is That all of these things are things to make the job posting better to make it more efficient, to find the efficiencies, to place on a hundred job posting sites, we have to get rid of the job posting. The job posting has been around since you had an anvil and you're banging the shit out of a piece of metal and you put on a tree that I need an apprentice. It's been the same. It's just like the resume. A resume has been around. The first ones I found were from 1907. That's when the telephone was invented and that's when the automobile was invented. A resume has been the same pretty much. I have a resume from 1907. I'm sorry, I'm excited. I'm really fucking excited right now. Like this is me. Chad (51:44.692) about a 1907 resume. I get some money out of that. Joel (51:45.576) So you're taking on LinkedIn, you're taking on Indeed, and any other 800-pound gorillas you want to take down? Jeff Taylor (51:52.826) No, I can't take on LinkedIn yet. But the idea is, you know, if I just take that resume, the only difference between a 1907 resume and one today is the person said they were happily married, which is typically not on resume today, and the person said they enjoy fox hunting. And you probably wouldn't say, you know, you could lose a vice presidential opportunity for killing an animal. Joel (51:57.196) Yet. Jeff Taylor (52:17.452) right? And so I think that there is a that resume has to change and the job posting needs to change. And my own view is that what you have is a requirement. You have signal. But what you don't want is a thousand people to apply. So what's happened from 1994 to now is there were no applicants and there was so much demand now, now because of the economy, because of Doge because of everything going on. There's way too many applicants. And so now the system is, I don't want to put an announcement out there. A third of positions right now are where someone's not working out in the role. The only way you can fill that position is with a recruiter because it needs to be a confidential search. can't put that out in the marketplace. And so what I'm saying is if we were going to get rid of a job posting, that means we got to be more predictive about what that company wants and. So I'm building that. Joel (53:18.392) these will be easy sales and the good news is Super Bowl 50 is 60 is really close. just produce another commercial, buy a blimp, get the blimp going, get the blimp back and you're on your way, right? Jeff Taylor (53:25.774) $8 million. Chad (53:26.58) So only like eight million. Jeff Taylor (53:35.348) So how do you do that again and not do a blimp? You know, one of the things I always had this idea of going up on a billboard and like a live person like me staying up on a billboard until I get, you know, 100,000 people to build their profiles on Boom Band. Like I never did that. I wanted to do that. I proposed that to the team. But I did crop circles. I did snow mazes. Joel (53:45.004) Now you're talkin'. Jeff Taylor (54:04.846) I did blimps in the sky. I set the world record water skiing behind a blimp. You can't buy a blimp ride, so it wasn't that much of a physical accomplishment, but it was fun. And so, yes, I've done those things. So what do I do with Boom Band? And so I'm excited about it. I think the industry is really ready for a change. My website's up. It's just a teaser site. just, it even... Joel (54:30.826) End quotes. Yeah. Jeff Taylor (54:32.11) It floats, it basically says, you know, come and get a backstage pass so can play together. Joel (54:38.917) When's the real launch date? Do you know yet? Jeff Taylor (54:42.092) I don't know yet, I'm building right now. My target is late fall. Joel (54:48.152) We will be watching, Jeff. Chad (54:48.158) Fair enough. You need some pilot, you need some pilot users and then some real data and then you know what the hell's going on. That's the thing. So you've got a great concept. Everybody thinks they have a great concept. And then there are like 27 pivots within those first six months, especially now, especially now with the market and how fast it's moving. So it'll be interesting to see how this actually comes out. Joel (55:07.99) And more importantly, Jeff Taylor is back, bitches. Jeff Taylor is back. Chad (55:10.846) There he is. Jeff Taylor (55:15.83) You know, I appreciate you guys. Like, I think you have a great role in the middle of this. you know, to tell the stories, I think this is a new kind of journalism in a way that I'm just, I'm proud of the work you're doing and thank you for having me on. Joel (55:15.874) Can't wait, Jeff. Joel (55:24.162) Say more. Joel (55:33.152) Does that mean you'll come back when Boom Band is rockin' and rollin'? Chad (55:33.3) Thanks for coming on, Jeff Taylor (55:35.662) Yeah, if you'll have me, I'll show you the boom band arena sometime late summer. Chad (55:38.035) Ready? Joel (55:41.272) Ugh. Joel (55:45.89) Sounds good, man. So for our listeners that want to connect with you or learn more about Boom Band, where do you send them? Chad (55:45.94) Okay, good stuff. Jeff Taylor (55:53.819) So, you know, this is crazy, but go to my LinkedIn just so we can start the conversation. And if you just put in Jeff Taylor and Boom Band, I think there's 17,000 Jeff Taylors on LinkedIn, which is great. And then go to boomband.com, sign up for Backstage Pass so we can play together over the next few months as, you know, be an early power user. Joel (56:14.744) Boom boom boom, Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (56:16.02) Good stuff, baby. Way out.

Corporate espionage, political meltdowns, and matching t-shirts —what more could you want? This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast (featuring the always-fashionable Mo Wiley Clough), the gang dives into the dumbest spy drama since Austin Powers . Yes, Deel paid a payroll guy to snoop on Rippling … (Spoiler alert: he wasn’t exactly 007) Meanwhile, Mo channels her inner Gryffindor, Chad is spiritually allergic to Cory Booker praise, and Joel just wants everyone to stream Real Genius  on their next flight. Oh, and they bid farewell to Val Kilmer—icon, legend, fashion inspiration. But wait, there’s more! We’ve got April Fool’s pranks, a filibuster fueled by desperation, Gavin Newsom talking to right-wing wackos, and a full-on economic apocalypse brought to you by tariffs, layoffs, and what experts are calling “a really stupid plan.” If you love chaos, cursing, and conspiracy-level incompetence, this is your episode. 👉 Buckle up. It's like Succession  meets The Office —if both were run by drunk toddlers. Want it even shorter/snappier for platforms like Instagram or TikTok? Just say the word! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:39.086) To run away high so we wouldn't come home low. kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Liberation Day Cheesman. Maureen Wiley Clough (00:48.366) And I'm, I'm Maureen AKA Mo. What the F is happening, Clough? Chad (00:48.768) I'm Chad. Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Chad (00:58.858) And this is Chad, I'm your Huckleberry Sowash. Joel (01:02.524) On this episode, Deal's spy comes clean, the countdown on TikTok keeps ticking, and just another day in Trump World everybody! Chad (01:06.175) Ooh. Chad (01:12.777) No. Joel (01:16.912) Let's do this. Chad (01:20.852) So Mo, before you got on, I had to go change shirts because for the second day in a row, Joel and I were wearing the exact same shirt. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:27.469) Oh, we can't have that. No, no. Joel (01:27.708) It's scary. It's scary. Chad (01:30.14) No, in the amount of t-shirts that we have, mean, just the, the likelihood of that happening. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:34.093) Yeah. I love it. I love it. I'll be your fashion advisor. Joel (01:39.394) It's scary. And it's usually a jersey, which in this case it was, he just altered another jersey. You should wear jerseys we don't have, like I don't have. I don't have the Portugal jerseys. But yesterday it was just like a plain grayish blue tee. that was totally random, totally random. Guaranteed I'll never have what Maureen's wearing because she's way more fashionable than I will ever, ever be. Chad (01:44.831) Yep. Chad (01:50.08) You Maureen Wiley Clough (01:51.918) Hahaha Chad (01:55.22) Yeah. It was random. Maureen Wiley Clough (02:01.422) Thanks, I definitely am. 100%. It's weird because it feels like we should be excited because we've been liberated from what's in our bank accounts and our pantries and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Chad (02:01.916) Easily, easily. Looks like she's a wizard at Gryffindor. Joel (02:07.462) You guys are both in black. It's almost like you're in mourning. Did someone, someone pass recently that. Chad (02:13.088) Hmm. Chad (02:19.072) I think. Joel (02:21.2) The only thing liberated is my money and my... Chad (02:23.653) I think Val Kilmer was liberated from all of this bullshit, okay? So he died on April Fool's Day, which, RIP Val Kilmer. Joel (02:29.092) Yeah. Joel (02:36.272) which he played Morrison who's still in doubt of whether or not he's actually dead. So I don't know. This would be really, really poetic if Val just, you know, disappeared Jim Morrison style. But yeah, apparently in the hospital pneumonia, with his, I think his family and close friends around him, a real icon for, for gen X. mean, there's, there are some actors that are really connected to our generation, tombstone, the doors, top gun. Maureen Wiley Clough (02:36.536) rough. Maureen Wiley Clough (02:42.594) Wow. Plot twist. Chad (02:46.728) Yeah, doubtful. Maureen Wiley Clough (02:53.678) Wow. 65 is young. Chad (03:01.149) yeah. Chad (03:05.011) yeah. Heat with Pacino and De Niro. Joel (03:06.266) Like Chad, know, I know you're a big fan. were. And he, yeah, he like what, what's your favorite? Well, like some of your, your favorite Val Kilmer moments. Chad (03:16.116) So one of my favorites, because it was in 85 and I was a kid, was Real Genius. Not a great movie, not a great movie, but I really, I mean, as a kid, I just fucking loved it. But what I love, I definitely love my favorite movie is True Romance. I know it's more of a Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette movie, but I just love that, love that movie. The Saint was awesome too. Joel (03:20.828) Ugh. It was a good movie. Joel (03:37.818) Elvis Ghost. Yeah, that was good. Joel (03:46.192) I don't know how you beat Tombstone for me. That was like, probably watched that every day for a year in college. just cause it's so great. The doors was fantastic. I Oliver Stone was at the top of his game. He like everything kind of clicked on that. I love real genius too, Chad. Like I was. Chad (03:49.0) It's hard. Yeah. Great movie. Chad (04:00.97) Yeah. Joel (04:06.714) The last scene where the, star Wars weapon in the popcorn in the house. And then they play tears for fears. Everybody wants to rule the world. That's like such an eighties moment that I guess, anytime that's on a movie flight, I watch it. Like I love that movie. It's a quick watch kids. If you haven't watched real genius, I, highly encourage you to do so. Chad (04:07.924) Great memories. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (04:20.744) Yeah, it's great. Chad (04:26.1) We're talking to you Moe, because we know you haven't seen it. Maureen Wiley Clough (04:28.014) I've got some homework. Yeah, was three when that movie came out that you were talking about. But I have seen Top Gun and Top Gun, Top Gun. Yeah, it's legit. Mm-hmm. Okay. Joel (04:28.848) Damn millennials. Chad (04:34.078) real genius, top gun, iconic, iconic Iceman. You definitely have to watch true romance. Walk-ins in that one. mean, they're just, that is star studded. Just awesome. But yeah. Yeah. Yep. He was, he was leading that. Joel (04:34.24) nice, just stick it in there dude. Joel (04:49.244) Don't forget the was it Island of Dr. Moreau that like there's some real gems in there. if you look that, that the mainstream ones, everyone knows, but there are some real, and, his, his, there's a documentary on, on Netflix about his life. And he did a Mark Twain, like road show kind of a Broadway thing that he played Mark Twain. That was really awesome. So the dude was, was, handsome. Maureen Wiley Clough (04:49.422) What's going on the list, man? Maureen Wiley Clough (04:56.59) haven't even heard of these. Chad (04:58.442) Yeah. All right. Chad (05:06.048) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:17.894) But he played roles that were very challenging and yeah, Val Kilmer, Gone way too soon, like so many. Chad (05:23.476) Yeah. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. It is. He had throat cancer and yeah, it was kind of like, I think a downward spiral from there. So anyway. Maureen Wiley Clough (05:24.984) Way too soon. 65 is young. It's rough. Sad. Joel (05:28.922) It is young. Throat cancer. Maureen Wiley Clough (05:36.142) Yeah. Joel (05:36.282) And the opposite of too soon is Cory Booker's filibuster. Did you guys see this? Maureen Wiley Clough (05:39.726) No kidding. I mean, you got to hand it to him. I don't care if you don't like what he had to say. Standing up there for over a day, the stamina that takes is just ludicrous. I'm tired just thinking about it. I need to go nap thinking about what he did and all the preparation he did for it. But just the beauty of him eclipsing Strom Thurmond, that is so awesome, so sweet. Chad (05:41.556) Yes. Chad (05:47.216) yeah. Chad (05:59.54) Yo, yeah. yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (06:05.934) But hats off to that guy. mean, he's 55 years old. That's what 55 looks like in 2025. So keep rolling, right? Chad (06:11.178) For, from the Strom Thurman standpoint, thank God, hopefully we can start to strike that piece of shit from the history books for God's sakes. but the thing that got to me though is like afterwards, you know, they talked to them and it was almost like they were, they were talking to an athlete about, the, the stamina and the, okay. So, and just take it from my vantage point. I have a military background. We did that shit all the time. Maureen Wiley Clough (06:16.142) Ugh. Yep, with you there. Maureen Wiley Clough (06:28.824) Totally. 100%. Chad (06:38.496) I mean, give me a fucking break. We didn't just stand and talk. We were all over the place. I mean, and we were up for days for God's sake. So when I start seeing that the guy is in a, a, temperature controlled area, he's got the only thing he didn't have to do with, he probably wore double depends good for him. But I mean, at the end of the day, it was like the stamina it takes. It's like, motherfucker, please. We got, we got, we got people on a daily basis who are guarding your asses who are doing more than that. Maureen Wiley Clough (06:38.766) Mm. Maureen Wiley Clough (06:43.64) Good point. Maureen Wiley Clough (07:00.686) That's fair. Chad (07:07.978) But yet we want to, okay. Love Cory Booker. Don't get me wrong, but come on people, give me a fucking break. Maureen Wiley Clough (07:10.104) That's totally fair. Maureen Wiley Clough (07:14.786) Yeah, maybe we're focused on the wrong stuff. Joel (07:15.206) Not, not, not so impressed as Chad. So wash. like that. I like that. He's a hard motherfucker. Now I want to know, at least one Democrat on the call that I know. think not just me saying it, but the Democrats are kind of lost in the wilderness. Bernie's back. Like is Corey setting himself up to be the voice, the leader of the party after this, after this episode or no. Chad (07:18.792) I'm not. Maureen Wiley Clough (07:22.157) Hahaha! Maureen Wiley Clough (07:42.54) I mean, I think that has to have been part of why he was doing it, right? And I think, God, like do something, Democrats. Like, please show us something different. Do something different. I mean, it gives him a shot, I would say, for sure. I mean, he deserves a shot for other reasons too, but yeah. I mean, to say the least. Joel (07:53.638) Yeah. Chad (07:56.5) I think what we're seeing, yeah, no question, but I think what we're seeing from Gavin Newsom right now is one of the smartest pivots where he's actually talking to Steve Bannon. He started a new podcast and he's starting to, he's talking to all these right wing fucking wackos. And I mean, we're not just talking about, you know, right conservative. We're talking about fucking wackos. He's talking to all these guys and what he's doing is he's trying to get the Manosphere Joel (08:03.868) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (08:04.116) Mm, yeah. Agreed. Chad (08:25.46) to understand who he is, right? So he's talking to all the fucking wackos. So he's trying to get the manosphere to understand who he is to try to slowly nudge them back into the same portion of what we call life, right? So I think what he's doing, which many, many Democrats and progressives do not like, I think is incredibly smart. And it's exactly what we need to be doing to be able to win over Maureen Wiley Clough (08:50.798) Brilliant. Chad (08:54.356) the actual narrative. I think what he's doing is incredibly smart, but they, the democratic bench is deep. It is deep. Now how they go after the different narratives. Like I was just talking about Gavin Newsom, maybe this is Corey's, you know, first foray into be able to, launch into something like that. don't know. Maureen Wiley Clough (08:56.664) Totally agree. Joel (09:13.596) Yeah. Most, most parties, uh, have someone that the world thinks of whether it's Obama, Clinton, but like they have the person. Um, and I've said they need another Clinton. need another Obama and maybe Booker Gavin. Um, is it, I do love how Gavin will go into the lion's den. I guess if for lack of a better word, like when he went on Fox and, debate it, debated DeSantis like that was a baller move. Um, know, he's, he's, and he's not. Maureen Wiley Clough (09:17.654) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:20.148) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:32.488) yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (09:33.091) Yeah. Chad (09:37.534) Yeah. yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (09:39.054) Totally. Joel (09:41.978) He's not prone to like canceling or you're wrong and get out of here. Like he he's open to conversations. And I think there needs to be more of that on both sides, but particularly on the Democrat. mean, when the Democrats sort of. Yeah. I mean, when the Democrats tried to embrace Liz Cheney, they caught him was like, Nope, Cheney done. like we, know, politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. And I think Gavin is following that, that playbook. And, I do, I do applaud that. Chad (09:50.057) Agreed. Maureen Wiley Clough (09:51.345) 100%. It's literally what we need. Chad (10:09.002) Big tent. Maureen Wiley Clough (10:09.016) I think it's brilliant. When I heard it first, I was like, great, another podcast? Are you kidding me? But then when I found out that what he was doing, I was like, this is literally exactly what we need because we are so completely polarized in this country. We need to have these conversations. I mean, we are in our own echo chambers constantly and that's why no one can kind of cut through the noise and see the other side. And you have to believe otherwise you go absolutely insane that the far right contingent is not everybody and that, you know, there are people that fall far. Chad (10:13.952) Yeah. Chad (10:20.608) Mm-hmm. Joel (10:31.91) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (10:37.614) closer to the center, to the more independent realm that have made the choice to go right or go left, right? But it's like, we have to imagine that there are more people in the center than anything. So getting those conversations to happen, it's just critically important for anything to change. Chad (10:53.608) We hope. Enough of this political stuff though. It's April Fool's Day. Shout out. Let's do this. Joel (10:57.134) It's like, it's like. We're doing shout outs without shout out shout outs are sponsored by our friends at Kiara up north. Shout out to them. Text recruiting made easy and inexpensive. Chad, you gotta shout out what you got. Chad (11:04.178) Yes, love those guys. Love those guys. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it was April Fool's Day and there were all of these April Fool's pranks. One that we got that was actually an article slash press release that was dropped by TalkPush. I'm just going to go ahead and drop this CEO Max Armbruster sent us a video. Here's what it is. Roll that beautiful beam footage. Chad (11:47.56) Chad (11:52.426) Huh? Maureen Wiley Clough (12:03.636) That's good. Maureen Wiley Clough (12:24.462) That's really hats off. Totally hats off. Joel (12:25.276) That was flogging great, wasn't it? Chad (12:29.138) love it we need some more flogging Joel (12:31.444) I did love the career crossroads getting acquired by Workday. That was also, that was pretty good. Chad (12:35.39) Yeah. It was good. It was just so over the top. I looked at it and I went, what the fuck? This doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Okay. I got it. I got it. Joel (12:45.036) April Fool's Day, okay, got it. I'm like, why didn't we think of that one? Shit, we should have thought of that one. Mo, what you got? Maureen Wiley Clough (12:50.146) Hahaha! Well, I mean, no jokes here. know Chad or Joel, you are excellent because you can always work in like a fast food reference. There's no show that goes by that you don't do that. And so for me, I guess my thing is kind of becoming like an ode to those who like make me laugh so I don't cry. And so I want to shout out corporate bro, AKA Ross Pomerantz and his team of actors and comedians that work with him like Ben Gould. They put together the sickest like lickety split right after it happened. Chad (13:02.592) Pretty much. Joel (13:03.855) try. Joel (13:09.926) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (13:23.106) deal versus rippling spy drama video that just killed me. It was so hilarious. So I think we got to roll it. Joel (13:29.178) Yeah, this is going to be the gift that keeps on giving this year. Maureen Wiley Clough (13:31.446) Mmm, so good, so good. Chad (13:38.144) . Maureen Wiley Clough (13:46.19) you Chad (14:00.493) looks like 007. Maureen Wiley Clough (14:32.002) Huh. Chad (14:48.776) And he runs. He's off. Maureen Wiley Clough (14:49.166) Just brilliant. mean, especially in the age of AI where everything is just like nonsense, like all this content is total crap. Like to see that beautiful skit like done so perfectly well, like just hats off. Just thank you. Thank you for making us laugh. And by the way, like whoever said that HR was boring, look at this. Are you kidding? Like James Bond, James Bond shit. Chad (14:52.992) It's funny. Joel (15:07.792) This is gold, baby. This is gold. Yeah, this is gold shit right here. But if it wasn't for all the crazy political shit going on right now, this would be it. This would be headlines. So thank you for mentioning my fast food stent. My mom would be so proud to know that I'm being known for fast food references, but brings me to my shout out to Wendy's, but sort of indirectly Wendy's shout out to sponsored snaps. Chad (15:08.864) Once in a lifetime. This is once in a lifetime shit guys. This is once in a lifetime. Chad (15:16.383) Yes. Maureen Wiley Clough (15:17.517) yeah. Chad (15:21.312) god. Here we go. Maureen Wiley Clough (15:21.814) anytime. If I don't do it, you will, that's for sure. Maureen Wiley Clough (15:32.398) So good. Joel (15:34.96) I know the kids love the Snapchat and Snapchat launched sponsored snaps in November, I think of last year. Basically these are, you got your text messages or your messages, and then we have little corporate messages within the messages from friends. Now these better be entertaining. They can't just be, you know, depends ads going back to the diapers. it has to be good stuff, but Wendy's did this ad and 52 million people, watched. this Wendy's ad. And when you think about what Wendy's normally would have done with television advertising or something general, like this is a huge deal. think this sort of ad within your experience in an app is akin to ads on keyword searches, right? It's kind of organic. It's similar to the feed. When the feed came out, I was like, ads are actually going to show up as you scroll through the internet. This I think is something very similar. So if you're a, if you're a company and you need to get in front of a lot of people, Chad (16:08.512) Mm-hmm. Joel (16:32.634) work with your agency or whoever, like create, look at some of these sponsors snaps because I think that's going to be a really interesting, unique way for you to get your message out as an advertiser. Chad (16:42.986) Very nice, very nice. Last shout out goes to Oroz Alcubasi who heard us talking about Indeed's traffic decline last week and noticed that Indeed did not experience the biggest drop from January to February 2025. No, the dumpster fire we know as Career Builder dropped 22%, but one quick question to Oroz. Oroz, did you factor in Simply Hired and Indeed Property? dropping 17 % into that narrative. Now I know that Indeed and SimplyHired are separate sites, but they're both owned by Indeed. And an honorable mention to the shitty traffic decline goes to any guest cheeseman who the number three pick was? Number three goes to ZipRecruiter who dropped 16 % Joel (17:22.374) Mm-hmm. Joel (17:28.316) Craigslist. Joel (17:32.391) no. Maureen Wiley Clough (17:32.974) Hahaha Chad (17:35.552) 16%. Once again, shout out to ORAS and all of the listeners who help us dig deeper into these topics. Joel, Mo and I, we love you listeners. So thanks. Keep it coming. Joel (17:47.369) We'd love to give you free stuff. We'd love to give you free stuff for all the love that we get from you. Maureen Wiley Clough (17:49.676) You Chad (17:50.428) What? What? What we do in it's... Well, you can actually do that at chadcheese.com slash free. T-shirts from our friends at AERNAP, those beautiful ched and cheese guns and roses looking t-shirts. We've got new designs coming out soon. Bourbon barrel-ade syrup from our kids up north at Kiura. Craft beer. Joel (18:03.226) Yeah. they're beautiful. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (18:05.998) Ooh. Chad (18:15.604) fucking Bob and Doug, craft beer from the data geeks over at Aspen tech labs, whiskey, two bottles of whiskey from van hack. And if it is your birthday, it's time for rum with plum, but you can't win. If you don't play Chad, cheese.com slash free feeling all the way down. Joel (18:16.71) Canada loves us. Maureen Wiley Clough (18:34.318) you Joel (18:38.996) That's right. Another trip around the sun for Sean Godfrey, Steven Rothberg, Todd Burns, Amy English, Jason Casey, Arno Schaeffer, Rob McIntosh, Louis Nobrega, Nishay Argawal, Phil Rodriguez, aka P-Rod, Allie Roberts, and my man, Patrick York. Happy birthday, everybody. And I know we don't have travels, but word. Maureen Wiley Clough (18:56.846) You Chad (19:00.394) There it is. Joel (19:06.938) Broomer on the street is Euro Chad. Euro Chad is coming. Euro Chad. If you feel like the show's been a little salty lately, we're gonna sweeten it up. Getting the honey out, little maple syrup, the sweetness is coming back this summer. Don't worry everybody. Do not worry. Euro Chad is coming back. Chad (19:10.89) Please God, please, please allow JuroCad to come back soon. my God. Maureen Wiley Clough (19:12.362) Ugh, so jealous. Get me out. Chad (19:23.744) I need it. We all need it. Maureen Wiley Clough (19:31.032) That's awesome. See like a noticeable lift in his spirits. Chad (19:39.056) as we've been talking about this once in a lifetime thing, this corporate espionage, first and foremost, again, I can't thank our listeners enough. We receive relevant information all the time. And the following affidavit, yes, I said affidavit, was provided to me this very morning by a loyal listener. Again, I love you listeners. So are you ready? I don't think you are, but we're gonna... Joel (20:01.404) Mm-hmm. Go ahead, Chad, Chad Esquire, Chad Sawash Esquire. Maureen Wiley Clough (20:06.104) So ready. Chad (20:07.114) We're gonna do it anyway. We're gonna do it whether or not. So on April 1st, yes, just a couple of days ago, April Fool's Day, Keith O'Brien, formerly Rippling payroll employee, signed a sworn affidavit with his testimony of deals, corporate espionage through him. So let's go. We're gonna go through this chronologically and you guys just kick in wherever you feel like you wanna kick in. Maureen Wiley Clough (20:23.287) You Joel (20:25.254) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:31.808) July of 2023, O'Brien begins employment with Rippling in the Dublin office overseeing payroll issues in Europe. Early 2024, O'Brien interviews for a position at Deal, but has not offered the job. O'Brien reaches out to Deal CEO Alex Boiseis to ask why he wasn't hired and the connection of those two were connected. He was literally just looking for feedback. Hey, Joel (20:45.404) Hmm. Chad (20:58.88) Appreciate you guys having me in. I wasn't chosen. Why wasn't I chosen? Very, very innocent, but that connection. Yeah. Joel (21:00.284) Sure. Maureen Wiley Clough (21:01.23) Lots of people ask that. Yeah. They usually don't get an answer. Yeah. O'Brien. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel (21:04.966) Very Irish. Very Irish. Chad (21:07.472) Exactly. but Alex did, he did, and that was where the connection was made. So in mid-24, listen to this, O'Brien establishes a payroll consulting business and offers services to Deal. During discussions, he informs Deal CEO, Boazis, of his Joel (21:10.064) What the feck? Chad (21:32.732) intention to leave Rippling to focus on consulting. So he had a little side business going on there and he was one of Deal's providers. Late September 2024, that's right, only a few months back, Deal CEO proposes that O'Brien remains at Rippling to act as a spy for Deal, referencing James Bond. No shit, referencing. Maureen Wiley Clough (21:39.864) Smart. Maureen Wiley Clough (21:55.896) That's, can you even, I mean, that part is so good. My God. You were gonna tech company. Come on. Chad (21:59.904) I mean, come on, you can't make this up. Approximately 30 minutes later, because O'Brien went away, like, I'm not sure about this, let me think. He waited 30 minutes and then he called him back on WhatsApp. October 6th, 2024, O'Brien receives his first payment. Listen to this kids, first payment of 6,000 USD for espionage activities. Yes! Yes! Maureen Wiley Clough (22:08.909) Ha ha! Joel (22:25.788) That's it? That's all? What a fucking wanker. What else? Maureen Wiley Clough (22:27.192) Honestly, you're gonna have to pay me a hell of a lot more if you want me to do that. Right? What a fucking idiot. And the CEO. Chad (22:30.054) I know. That's it. Well, and he, he, they agreed to five hun- five thousand pounds per month moving forward. And I mean, this guy's working as a spy for five thousand pa- he had to be the cheapest spy. Maureen Wiley Clough (22:50.798) Cheapest spy of all time. Dude. Joel (22:52.22) What is that in USD? That's like 40, 4,400 something like that. mean. Chad (22:56.19) like no no no no it's like it's six thousand it's it's it's more the conversion rates the other way so Maureen Wiley Clough (23:01.89) The CEO must have been like, dude, I'm making out like a bandit. I'm getting a corporate spy for 5K a month. Joel (23:03.551) you're right, you're right. Chad (23:04.511) Yeah, yeah. So, but but then they were they were like, okay, we're gonna start paying you in crypto after this. So go figure as we talked about before, we should just ban crypto from fucking every everything. It's just it's it's it's it's Yeah, I know it's not gonna happen. But it's fucking shady shit. October 2024 to February of 2025. Joel (23:14.204) Perfect. Maureen Wiley Clough (23:15.362) this story. Maureen Wiley Clough (23:20.014) Cause shady shit goes down. Yeah. Joel (23:20.156) Good luck with that. Chad (23:31.26) O'Brien Supplies deal with confidential information from Rippling's internal systems. According to Keith O'Brien and accompanying reports, he provided a broad range of confidential and proprietary data from Rippling to Deal CEO. Here's a breakdown of some of those things he passed along. Customer lists and Salesforce data, product roadmaps and development plans, internal Slack communications, Google Drive documents. engineering and technical information, recruiting and hiring information, including employee contact info, financial and strategic documents, rippling strategic weak points. Now the way that he delivered these was through WhatsApp and Telegram. And then Boazis reportedly asked for specific information and O'Brien obliged regularly. So in the affidavit, O'Brien mentioned taking screen recordings and screenshots and sending texts of information to Boaziz up to six times a day. Boaziz was also contacting O'Brien if he hadn't heard from him in a couple of hours. I mean, imagine, and let's take a second here. Imagine the paranoia that the deal CEO had that, wait a minute, this guy might actually flip back. Maureen Wiley Clough (24:38.926) Stupid. Maureen Wiley Clough (24:43.566) Jesus. Chad (24:53.992) and start telling Rippling because he's getting, he's getting scared. Number one. Yeah. And then number two, so everybody who's out there, who's ever studied espionage whatsoever, you don't ask for the myriad of bullshit that he asked for and going into systems multiple times on, I mean, not just one system, multiple systems on a daily basis. I mean, if you're going to trip, if you're going to, if you're going to trip over some, Joel (24:56.986) He's double agent. Maureen Wiley Clough (24:57.623) my God. Yeah, seriously. I don't think he has it in him. Let's see. Maureen Wiley Clough (25:18.222) Play it cool, man. Like, this is bush league. Joel (25:22.588) Buy tips from Maureen. Maureen Wiley Clough (25:24.206) Yeah, seriously, when I have done this, I definitely, yeah. Chad (25:25.245) my god. Yeah. Chad (25:31.348) So, mean, so he's asking this dude to do all this stuff, all of it. And you know you're gonna hit a tripwire somewhere, right? So late February, 2025, Rippling discovers unauthorized information access and sets up a honeypot operation, creating a fake Slack channel named D-Defectors to monitor O'Brien's activities. When you have that much activity, go fucking figure, you're going to notice, especially guys who are in systems like Salesforce. Joel (25:36.006) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:59.548) multiple times a day like in sales slack conversations multiple times a day. mean Jesus Maureen Wiley Clough (25:59.681) Mm-hmm. Joel (26:00.764) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (26:07.022) Stuff is not private, man. Like what you do on your company computer is, come on! This is basic. Chad (26:09.76) No shit? So late February 2025, this is funny. So this tells you just how stupid the deal CEO is. Boaziz alerts O'Brien about the defectors, about the... We should do Bozo, yeah. About the slack channel, the decoy slack channel. Maureen Wiley Clough (26:20.302) Bozo. More like Bozo. Yeah, we gotta call him Bozo, sorry. Yeah. Joel (26:26.78) We have a nickname, folks. Chad (26:35.612) As soon as he gets the letter, he gets on and he tells O'Brien, hey, look, there's this Slack channel, right? And then realizes afterwards that it's a trap. He reaches out to O'Brien and says, wait a minute, don't do that. It's a trap. And O'Brien's like, shit, I've already done it. I mean, just to be able to take a second and breathe to understand what's going on. First and foremost, you've got this guy tripping wires all over systems, all of these systems, right? And then, because you're acting way too fast and acting like an idiot, you send him into a honeypot and then say, wait a minute, don't go there. I mean, it's fucking crazy. Maureen Wiley Clough (27:20.05) Man, how many of those do you have? Those are good. His don't start. Yeah, he's definitely bozo. Chad (27:22.192) Exactly. So, a bunch. We have more. March... We can get one. March 14th, a court-appointed solicitor confronts O'Brien at Ripley's office with a court order to search his devices. O'Brien panics, performs a factory reset on his phone while in the bathroom, and leaves the office despite solicitor warnings. On the 15th... Joel (27:24.921) don't even get me started, Mel. And now we need a bozo. Now we need a bozo soundbite for all the... Maureen Wiley Clough (27:50.136) So good. Chad (27:51.132) On the 15th, Deals counsel advises O'Brien to destroy his phone. Deals counsel advises him to destroy his phone and eliminate evidence. Following this advice, listen to this. O'Brien uses an axe to smash his phone and dispose of it down the drain of his mother-in-law's house. I think I just told you what it means. March 15th. Maureen Wiley Clough (28:11.15) It's so good. It's so, so good. Chad (28:17.546) through the 25th, this timeframe, Deal offers to relocate, listen to this, Deal offers to relocate O'Brien and his family to Dubai and cover his legal expenses to mitigate the fallout. March 19th, O'Brien files a report with the Central Bank of Ireland making false accusations of rippling. Maureen Wiley Clough (28:28.974) Totally normal. Maureen Wiley Clough (28:34.338) Nothing to see here. Chad (28:43.092) facilitating sanctioned Russian payments, a claim later that he admitted was fabricated under deals direction. Late March, we're almost in April guys, late March, experiencing guilt and pressure, O'Brien decides to cooperate with Ripley's investigation, acknowledging the harm caused to himself and his family by his actions. And on April 1st, the above, to the best of my ability, is a recap of his sworn statement. Thank you. Thank you very much. Maureen Wiley Clough (29:14.39) Hahaha. Maureen Wiley Clough (29:18.926) That was a doozy. Chad (29:18.952) So, so. So what do you think? Maureen Wiley Clough (29:25.902) that I didn't know that human stupidity could go this far? like, I can do anything. Like, being a CEO means nothing. Like, what on... Chad (29:29.536) You Chad (29:37.268) Dude. Joel (29:37.692) So here's what I know of spies. The mob and the CIA. The mob, from what I understand, goes through a very rigorous set of actions to make sure that you'll keep your mouth shut and you never rat on your friends. We've all seen Goodfellas, right? Well, maybe not Moe because she's too young, but another one for you to add to the roster, Moe. The other is the CIA where they have really detailed psych stuff. Chad (29:41.322) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (29:55.992) To the list! Chad (29:59.648) Yes, that's a good one. Joel (30:06.352) they really get into like, who's going to be a good spy. This, this guy did not go through some deal pre-screening obviously for, for this job. it's such, it's so boneheaded that it's, it's really beyond understanding. And apparently O'Brien gets O'Brien gets a text the day that he goes to talk to the, to the, whatever the, the feds or whatever the equivalent is. And he said that the text is the truth will set you free. Maureen Wiley Clough (30:12.31) you Maureen Wiley Clough (30:23.489) You Joel (30:33.66) So this guy finds a moment of clarity and a text message from a friend and decides to just like lay out his guts instead of taking a few shots of Jameson and keeping his mouth shut. He just like sings like a bird. This guy would not make the cut for the, uh, for the, the, Corleone family, uh, for sure. So that's what we're doing. So, this guy's going to go to jail. I think maybe not a long time, but he's going to go to jail for, I don't know how much total he got. Maureen Wiley Clough (30:40.888) Right? Maureen Wiley Clough (30:46.189) Well, yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (30:50.478) Hell no. But also it's like, there was something in there. yeah. Chad (30:58.816) Yeah. Joel (31:02.342) let's call it under 50 grand. He's gonna he's gonna he's gonna go the pokey and I don't know. I don't know what Irish prisons are like, but they do not sound like a place I want to go. Okay. And and his name is mud. Apparently the guy's employable because he had two people like potentially employing him. had a site like the dude had a future. It's not like they pulled him out of some homeless shelter and made him made him a spy. So his name is mud forever. He's going to be on every Fama, you know, Fama background check. Maureen Wiley Clough (31:03.918) Yeah. Chad (31:04.287) Yes. 20 at most. Maureen Wiley Clough (31:16.846) yeah, screwed. Chad (31:21.354) Yeah. Joel (31:32.038) from here, from here to eternity. He's probably gonna do some jealous time. He might get fined. So he's, he's fucked for not much lesson to the kids. Like don't do shit like this. The thing with deal. so historically espionage has progressively gotten worse in terms of punishment. Like, I know like the country's laws and things, but if you look at historically, Maureen Wiley Clough (31:41.622) You Joel (31:56.764) In 18 and 19, two Apple engineers were caught leaking autonomous car tech secrets to Chinese firms. They got jail time of three years, right? So three-year jail term for leaking this case, that probably had some bigger implications because we're talking about Apple and the Chinese government. But deal's going to pay a big fine because Ripley is going to prove how much business they lost, how many deals that they lost through this. Chad (32:01.738) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:23.178) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (32:23.918) Hmm. Joel (32:26.534) Chad, you think that some executives from Deal are going to the pokey. Which ones? Chad (32:32.096) If you take a look at the CEO who was he was in this from day one and his dad who is the CFO they had two separate telegram channels set up between them and O'Brien. One was to be able to get the intelligence to the CEO. The other one was for payment. Right. Those to me easily orange jumpsuits too easy. It's just too easy. And Maureen Wiley Clough (32:58.603) yeah. No question. Chad (33:02.344) If you think about it, it's funny because you talk about the pre-screen. Look at who was pre-screening this guy. We're talking about this Bozo, who's the CEO, who literally sends him out to all of these areas where he can hit numerous amounts of tripwires, and he does, right? O'Brien wanted to start up his own consulting firm. He wanted to leave Rippling, right? And he says this over and over and over, and it's more of an excuse than anything else because he still did what he did, but he wanted to get the fuck out of there. Maureen Wiley Clough (33:10.126) Hmm. Chad (33:31.93) And the deal CEO Boazis kept saying, no, just stay for a little bit longer. Stay for a little bit longer. And if you do stay, you will be on the premier list of our partners, which means more money, right? So at the end of the day, dude, this to me, literally, I asked ChatGPT to create a comedy out of this, like an SNL skit. Joel (33:58.33) Uh-huh. Yep. Chad (34:00.96) There's no way that this comes out as like an espionage trailer. This is literally the Keeks, Stone Cops, and the Three Stooges version where Mr. Bean plays Kevin O'Brien. Or Keith O'Brien, yeah. Yeah. Joel (34:09.242) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (34:09.602) Right, 100%. Joel (34:12.08) Mr. Bean and Benny Hill would have a good time with this story. The other issue, aside from the justice thing is trust. know, like growing up, you learned like you can spend a lifetime building trust that you can destroy in seconds. And if I'm deal, I'm on the cusp of IPO. I'm boats and hoes. I'm rocking on all cylinders and I do some stupid shit like this and get caught. Like if you're a deal, cause if you're a deal customer, Chad (34:20.912) dude. Chad (34:27.615) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (34:27.762) God, Maureen Wiley Clough (34:38.232) Just why? Joel (34:40.836) If you're a deal prospect, how do you feel about using deal now? If you're an employee at deal, how do you feel about this? Do you feel good about it? Probably not. The only people feeling good at this is like remote oyster factorial, like all the competition that's looking at us, like what a bunch of knuckleheads we're going to grab some business. So if I'm a shareholder, employee prospect customer of deal, like this is awful. The optics are horrible. Chad (34:44.692) Ouch. Maureen Wiley Clough (34:45.272) hate. Chad (34:49.632) That's why they have to clean out the C-suite. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (34:54.432) Right? Chad (34:57.589) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (34:57.836) Yep. Totally. Chad (35:06.014) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (35:06.04) That guy's going to the big house for sure. mean, this is just the whole thing is outrageously stupid. And it just makes me feel like there's just no one should have imposter syndrome. I mean, you look at people who have these titles of CEO and whatnot and you think like, man, they must be really killing it. They must be super, super sharp. Nope. Look at this guy. Are you kidding me? He's just like lighting his whole life on fire. And for what? Like what are they worth? Like 10 bill or something? I mean, it's like you said, they're going to IPO. What are you doing? Chad (35:12.202) Mm-hmm. Joel (35:12.219) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (35:35.17) Who comes up with this harebrained scheme? Joel (35:35.353) I'll tell you for what, Mo, I'll tell you for what. Chad (35:35.52) Yeah. Chad (35:42.816) I think the only thing Deal can do right now is clean out the C-suite and to be able to refresh the C-suite so that they can try to start gaining trust back. mean, it's all you can do. It's all you can do. Yeah, you better hope she's clean though. That's the thing. You might need to, this is so deep and this is so dark. I don't know and I don't care whether... Joel (35:46.204) Joel (35:51.716) Yeah, make the co-founder, make the other co-founder, make her CEO. Yep. Maureen Wiley Clough (35:54.2) They have to. Maureen Wiley Clough (35:58.99) People are gonna run. Joel (36:00.572) Clean the house. Maureen Wiley Clough (36:03.422) Yeah. God. Chad (36:12.134) Anybody in the C-suite or everybody in the C-suite was was actively helping or not they need to go from an optic standpoint We need to say we cleaned out the headshed We are putting new people in place that you can trust Period and whether they were a part of it or not It doesn't fucking matter at this point this tell me the last the last story that was this fucking big and juicy in our industry Joel (36:24.796) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (36:26.178) Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (36:30.562) Yeah, unfortunately. Maureen Wiley Clough (36:38.094) I got nothing. Joel (36:40.678) Nope. Nope. Chad (36:41.802) This is once in a lifetime, dude. They got a clean house. Got a clean house. Maureen Wiley Clough (36:43.606) It really is. I agree with you. I feel really bad for the people who are working there who just had so much, you know, taken out from underneath them, just the rug pulled out completely. Like that sucks. Right? Like what a joke. my God. Yeah, no, he's, they're cooked. Yeah, that's a problem. Chad (36:48.234) Woof! Joel (36:54.054) How do you oversee a corporate meeting after that? How do you do an all hands meeting as a seat like, let's. Joel (37:05.98) Den of Thieves, Bozo, Bozo the Clown. All right, let's take a quick break. God, there's so much going on. All right, we'll be back. We'll be right back. Chad (37:07.827) Hahaha Maureen Wiley Clough (37:09.12) Ibozo, man, we gotta make that stick. He deserves it. So much. Chad (37:14.912) Alex Bozo. Chad (37:20.159) Ooh! Joel (37:20.772) All right, kids. what's going on in politics in the world today? Let's so, so lay off, lay lay off announcements surged in March, which, know, if you listen to the show driven by significant cuts in the federal government, particularly within the department of government efficiency, AKA doge, the DC area has been particularly hard hit with year to date layoffs totaling any guesses. Chad (37:25.352) Nothing. Thank God. Maureen Wiley Clough (37:26.166) Nothing's happening. It's very, very boring. Joel (37:46.748) 278,711. What's more Musk is gone. Apparently Trump told his inner circle, including the cabinet that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man. and did you hear about the tariffs, the tariffs that come, that came by the liberation day in America? Maureen Wiley Clough (38:11.158) Yeah, a couple of those. Liberation. Chad (38:11.498) What? Chad (38:14.848) Jesus. Joel (38:15.068) That's right. We got a 10, 10 % across the board increase. Uh, the congressional budget office predicts that it'll bring in $2.2 trillion in revenue by 2034. China was especially hit at 34 % our beloved European union, 20 % in India got a 34 % increase. Chad, your thoughts on all the news from layoffs to Elon to tariffs. Chad (38:42.1) This has been a hard week because just after the freaking deal shit and all the things that I had to go through from a research standpoint, let me lay this out. So we go from deals, stupidity and greed to a much larger landscape of you guessed it, stupidity and greed. As, as Joel so eloquently laid out what's happening in the headlines, I'm going to use my time to lay out some pretty much the economic battlefield that's happening right now. So on the jobs front, Maureen Wiley Clough (38:49.496) You Chad (39:11.068) Why are low jobs in abundance in the US? We'll go through that. On the immigration front, quickly, the US is losing hard working talent immigrants who pay nearly $100 billion in tax revenues every year. Those taxes go to local police and fire departments, less potholes in the roads, local schools that your kids attend, and many other areas. Then on the layoff front, which you talked about, yes, We just saw, you know, HHS layoff 10,000 people, but understand that in the first quarter of 2025, that's right, nearly 300,000 layoffs were announced, making the highest quarterly total since 2009. Nearly, I mean, we're approaching half a million for God's sakes. I like to cite several sources, Business Insider, Reuters, Bloomberg. I mean, they're all citing just huge numbers. Anyways, I'm always sure everyone understands those laid off government workers won't be taking the healthcare manufacturing and food service jobs that we just heard on the last jobs report. Yeah, I believe that shit. No. And then on the defense front, holy fuck, the EU member states have significantly increased their defense spending with the United States in recent years. Joel (40:23.44) No? You don't think so? Chad (40:38.496) with those total expenditures reaching approximately $326 billion alone in 2024. fuck the amount of jobs, the hundreds of billions of dollars that we are losing in revenue that we're losing in revenue. And then you take a look at the tariff front, every single country, even, even islands that don't have inhabitants are getting a 10 % tariff on, mean, treating all, treating all countries like enemy combatants, attacking them economically. Maureen Wiley Clough (40:54.402) That's so loud. Maureen Wiley Clough (41:07.746) Unreal. It's absurd. Enemies. Yeah, what the hell? Joel (41:08.826) Islands without inhabitants. That's good. Joel (41:15.74) Bora Bora is pissed off. Chad (41:17.536) Okay, so here's some tourism numbers. Europeans normally spend about 155 billion in US tourism. Since the Trump craziness, Bloomberg is reporting a 25 % drop in forward bookings from Europe to the US. 155 billion. Canada has over 20 million, Jesus Christ, 20 million visits to the US in 2024, generating 20.5 billion in spending. and supporting, this is the most important, in supporting 140,000 American jobs. Since Trump's tariffs were announced, border crossings have fallen by 45%. But no worry, the decline in European and Canadian visitors is expected to have substantial economic implications affecting airlines, hotels, national parks, and other. other tourism, right, which is where we have immigrants usually do those jobs and they've left. So it's all good, which means on the child labor front, we will need less 14 year olds in Florida, which is a very hospitality state to be able to do those jobs. And then we have the Doge front where they're canceling contracts. have thousands of people who are losing their jobs because the contracts are getting, I mean, dude, I'm sorry. Maureen Wiley Clough (42:26.111) my god. Chad (42:40.136) I had to go through all of this, but this is an assault internally on hardworking Americans and externally on our allies. none of this makes sense. We think the deal story is dumb as fuck. This is exponentially, exponentially more dumb. I'm done. I'm done. Maureen Wiley Clough (42:49.486) Mm-hmm. None. Maureen Wiley Clough (42:57.71) Taste the cake. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I have tried to stay away from the news as much as possible because it just makes me so deeply depressed and I don't want to fall into that deep, dark hole because that's just not good for me or anyone around me. Yeah, thanks a lot. But, you know, obviously coming to the show, I knew I had to talk about the news. So I guess my... Joel (42:59.836) Hmm. Well. Chad (43:07.646) It's impossible. Chad (43:15.196) Sorry. Sorry. Maureen Wiley Clough (43:26.446) Keep it on the high level. God. Okay, so I have a question and it is this. Here's part of the problem. We don't know that many people in our cities, coasts, et cetera, because they lean blue that voted for Trump. my question is, for those who did, is now the time when they're like, shit, maybe. Joel (43:29.788) Or deep, whichever. Maureen Wiley Clough (43:52.812) Maybe this wasn't the right call because this is like a freaking wrecking ball going through not only our country, but the rest of the world. And like you just pointed out Chad, like the ripple effects, they go on forever to infinity. Like this, this will leave no one unscathed. And so we only, we know of course that, that the billionaires are the only people that Trump actually really cares about. So the billionaires too are losing out on this right now. Like they're taking a hit. So Chad (44:05.578) Yeah. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (44:22.22) Will them getting pissed off at Trump change any of this or like what's going on? And you know, I just, I'm so frustrated watching this play out because it seems so completely fucking pointless and unnecessary on every level. And just the amount of pain and anxiety that the American people and frankly the world are gonna go through because of these self-inflicted wounds that we have been dealing ourselves. Like I just. It's so confounding to me as a semi-intelligent human. I just, holy fuck. Like it's, I have so many feelings. I have so many, thank you, thanks Joel. But I mean, it's just, it's, I never thought I would see something like this. Like he threw a bomb into our country and just like watched it detonate and was like, let's see, right? Like it's just, I really, I really struggle to comprehend it. Joel (44:57.628) Be nicer to yourself than that, Mo. Semi, semi. Maureen Wiley Clough (45:18.498) The one thing that I guess I'm happy to see is that Elon will be no longer gracing us as frequently. I guess there's only room for one malignant narcissist at the top of the country, so bye, Elon. But yeah, the rest of it is just like, my God, I just have like this deep. Joel (45:35.42) Only smart people use words like malignant narcissist, so don't worry about your cerebral capacity. You still got it. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (45:40.331) thank you. I still got it. But yeah, it's been rough. It's been rough to comprehend. I've been told my whole life that free markets were a good thing. What is going on? What the fuck? Chad (45:54.26) Yeah, that's what we were all taught. was, it was, I mean, to some extent they are, but it's, if you let them go crazy, it's fucking bullshit. I mean, you can't let them go crazy. There's gotta be guardrails. Joel? Maureen Wiley Clough (45:59.678) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel (46:04.476) America is the largest economy in the world. We are 5 % of the world's population roughly, and we are 25 % of the world's output. We have gotten there because of the world, the way that it is. So economically, this doesn't make a lot of sense. We've been very successful in the way that the world is. I have stopped looking at this from a economic point of view. And I look at it as a geopolitical struggle for power, if you will, of the world. And if you listen to Howard Lutnick, if you listen sort of into some things Donald Trump will say, it all points to they are afraid that there is going to be a conflict, probably with China and probably with Russia. When Trump goes in front of Congress and says, we need to build more boats, Maureen Wiley Clough (46:54.946) Hmm. Yeah. Joel (47:02.298) That's because China is building manufacturing boats, military ships at a rate that we cannot match. When Lutnick says we need to make steel in this country because if there's a conflict, we're screwed because we don't have the ability to make steel and then weapons of war with that steel. When he says that if China shuts off our pharmaceuticals, our people have a real problem. That's a geopolitical statement. So to me, if you look at this from an economical question, it doesn't make sense. America is not losing economically. Capitalism globally works for us economically. But when you look at it from a war could, war could come, then it, then it doesn't. I think all of it, ask yourself, how does this help us in a, in a worldwide conflict? To me, it starts to make more sense. We are. Maureen Wiley Clough (47:40.61) Right. Maureen Wiley Clough (47:44.024) Hmm. Chad (47:46.431) Meh. Joel (47:58.874) We are tightening the screws on China in hopes that we can suffocate them. Chad (48:02.848) We're tightening the screws on everybody, our allies who would actually protect us against the China or what have you. So this does not make sense. I love the one sided that you're trying to go with, but this makes no fucking sense, dude. Why would you piss off your allies when they would be there to and allow China to actually fill the vacuum that you're creating? None economically and from a defense standpoint, it makes no sense. Why are we so strong in Europe? Maureen Wiley Clough (48:09.961) Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're isolated. Maureen Wiley Clough (48:16.27) You Maureen Wiley Clough (48:21.431) We need them. Chad (48:32.382) right now because of our military installations because we actually have footprint there. Guess what happens when we get kicked the fuck out? This makes no fucking sense. Joel (48:34.32) Well, because Well, now that we're being hard on Europe means now they're spending money on defense. Is that not a geopolitical issue? Chad (48:44.964) And they're not spending money with us. So therefore we're losing the revenues. We're losing, no, and they're losing jobs. No, they should be doing that anyway, but they could be doing both. That's the thing. You're looking at it as a black or white thing. It's not. We can still play in the gray. There's still soft power that we need to focus on. USAID was the carrot. We took the carrot away. Now we're trying to beat everybody with a fucking stick and people do not react well to a stick. Joel (48:48.71) But if we know they have to fight Russia, does that not make sense? Joel (48:55.11) But they weren't. Maureen Wiley Clough (49:00.874) Nothing ever is. Maureen Wiley Clough (49:13.836) Nope, nowhere. Joel (49:16.72) I'm not saying they're going to act well. I'm just saying if I look at this from a geopolitical struggle question, it makes more sense to me because economically it doesn't make sense. I just explained to you how it makes sense geopolitically. Chad (49:21.864) It's stupid. It... Where does it make sense? Chad (49:30.408) And I just told you it's fucking stupid because if we piss off our allies, we're by ourselves. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Joel (49:38.076) Trump and his administration have already said in public through whiskey leaks that they don't care about Europe all that much. Maureen Wiley Clough (49:45.866) my god, that whole text chain. Incredibly stupid. I mean... Chad (49:46.118) Again, stupid. Why do you think we have troops in... Joel (49:50.17) You could, I'm not saying it's not stupid. I'm saying it helps make, it helps this make sense to me when I look at the headlines, because if I look at it strictly from this is dumb economically, yes it is. And by the way, most companies. Maureen Wiley Clough (49:54.812) You make sense of it. Chad (49:57.78) that he's stupid? Chad (50:03.89) It's dumb defensively. It's dumb defensively. Joel (50:10.64) I don't think so. Maureen Wiley Clough (50:10.83) It's dumb all around. Chad (50:12.212) That's because you don't understand defense and military. Joel (50:13.71) If you say, don't make steel in this country, we don't make pharmaceuticals in this country, and we need to do that, that makes sense from a defense perspective. Chad (50:19.41) We can do that. We can continue to do that. We can do that though. We can do that while we have good relationships with Europe and our current allies. Joel (50:26.672) But this administration thinks the quickest way to do that is tariffs. Chad (50:30.4) because they're idiots. And if anybody has actually done any type of research whatsoever, and they take a look at Smoot-Hawley, which happened, tariffs that were supposed to help us, that it doesn't matter. You're talking about, they're all pieces. But they're doing both of them. They're contracting from a military standpoint, number one. Joel (50:33.402) That's fine. Joel (50:42.726) That's economic. That wasn't, that wasn't defensive. It does. That's my whole point. There's an economic question and there's a geopolitical question. But Smoot-Hawley was only economic. There was not a war. Chad (51:00.178) And number two, they're doing tariffs. Both of those are happening right now, correct? Joel (51:05.328) What was the first point? Chad (51:07.038) We're contracting from a military standpoint from Europe. And then we're in, yes, we're starting to pull. Joel (51:13.178) We are isolating. We are creating fortress, this is Fortress America. The strategy is Fortress America. And more than likely, think there's a multipolar world where China and Asia is a thing and Russia and Europe is a thing and the Americas are us. We've lived our whole life with America, Russia for a period. The world is changing. And I think they believe that and they... Maureen Wiley Clough (51:16.632) which is contracting. Chad (51:20.448) And that worked in World War II How? Joel (51:42.17) with the debt that we have, with stuff not being made in America, like they are hoping to change that. And they think that the tariff system. Chad (51:46.878) The debt we have is due to tax cuts for rich people. Yeah, I mean we could pretty much erase that pretty quickly. Joel (51:51.504) The debt is the free money that we had during COVID. If you look at the debt, you... Chad (51:55.752) Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? That is... Go ahead. Maureen Wiley Clough (51:56.27) Wait, Joel (51:59.142) Go look at the debt from 2020 to now and look what it's done. Chad (52:03.309) Look at the look at the tax cuts from Trump last time and then take a look at how because if you don't have revenues, if you don't have revenues, what does that actually do put you deeper in debt? Joel (52:07.45) We've had tax cuts. Joel (52:12.816) Well, we gave out a lot of money and that put us in deeper debt. Chad (52:15.42) If, yeah, so the problem was those poor people who needed to survive COVID. Joel (52:20.464) I mean, we can argue about how we're in debt, but the fact that we are in debt makes it harder to fight a war. Chad (52:24.8) Well, then we should start taxing people and we should maybe we I mean, maybe. Joel (52:29.306) Well, that's that's your opinion. And that's great. Their their idea is let's lay everybody off and let's cut costs. Chad (52:36.148) That's great for morale. can't wait to see poverty numbers go through the roof. How's that going to make us a stronger country? Joel (52:42.192) You're mistaking me defending this with me trying to make sense of it. It makes sense to me. Maureen Wiley Clough (52:42.377) boy. Chad (52:46.334) It doesn't make sense, that's what I'm saying. I have no fucking clue. Joel (52:51.588) It makes a lot more sense than anything else. Chad (52:53.503) Mo? Maureen Wiley Clough (52:55.79) Yeah, guys, I got nothing here. I think it's all just like a giant cluster, honestly. It's outrageous. And us being more isolated, I don't see how that helps us in any way, or form. I think it's outrageously stupid. I have never felt more uncertain about my future, our future, like at a meta level. It's just at a macro level. It's just not, nothing feels good. And I think, you know, a lot of this Chad (52:58.146) Ha ha ha! Maureen Wiley Clough (53:25.016) whole America first mentality, the concept of like bringing things back to America. mean, that doesn't happen overnight. Like that's a great concept of like, yeah, let's have American made goods. But, you know, small business owners who have tried that have seen problems with it and it's caused businesses to fold and people to have to switch to other suppliers. Like none of this happens overnight. Joel (53:46.384) If you're Nike, you're making shoes in China, you go, okay, China's bad, we're gonna go to Vietnam. And now Vietnam is bad. So if you're Nike, it's like, okay, they want us to come to America, that's gonna take three to five years to do. I think a lot of businesses are gonna say, hey, we're gonna take a flyer on this Trump thing being done in four years and hold our nose and hope that that's what happens. Because these are major decisions for a company. Maureen Wiley Clough (54:01.368) yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (54:09.56) Hopefully. Maureen Wiley Clough (54:14.808) They really are. And they're not seamless transitions. And we don't have the fucking skilled workers. We don't have the skilled workers to do that right now. So what does he think they're gonna come out with? A fucking ether? Joel (54:14.844) to move operations to America. And then if you do that, then someone else is in power. Well, another like with, with, Howard Lutnick, right? This is really interesting. The whole thing is like, we need jobs over here, but his statement is why, why can't Apple make iPhones with robotics here in America? So, which is a weird thing to say. If you're, if your pitch is we want more Americans to be employed in America. If your pitch is like, maybe it slipped out. said the quiet part out loud, but like, Chad (54:44.916) you Maureen Wiley Clough (54:45.774) So they don't give a shit about us. Maureen Wiley Clough (54:50.35) They always do. Joel (54:50.94) If their idea is like, we're going to bring manufacturing back to America and we're going to have robots do it, then the people aren't winning anyway. So there are a lot of, a lot of mixed messages and what this administration says. just, I to help, to help me because Scotch is now more expensive. need other ways to try to make sense of all this and weed is still not legal in, in Indiana. So. Maureen Wiley Clough (54:55.466) Robots doing it. Mm-hmm. No. Maureen Wiley Clough (55:03.403) No one is winning. Chad (55:08.649) You Maureen Wiley Clough (55:10.474) I mean, yeah. Chad (55:12.756) bourbon. bourbon Canada's not buying our bourbon anymore so we can go ahead and get more bourbon Maureen Wiley Clough (55:16.28) That's depressing. Joel (55:18.63) Free, free chicken cock for everybody, say. free chicken cock for everybody. Maureen Wiley Clough (55:23.234) That might be the only way through this. Chad (55:25.44) God. I do like hearing the military stance though, Joel. I haven't heard that one before. So I'm going to dig in even deeper on that one. Good one. Joel (55:37.798) Well, we'll take a quick break and you can dig into that one. And by the way, folks, if you like what you're hearing, please be sure to subscribe through a podcast platform that you enjoy or even YouTube. If you like seeing our lovely, lovely faces. When we come back, we'll talk about X and tick tock as if it couldn't get any crazier. Maureen Wiley Clough (55:49.678) You Chad (55:54.634) So much fun. Maureen Wiley Clough (55:55.106) You Joel (55:59.048) X X X owner, Elon Musk announced on the X platform late last week that X AI acquired X and an all stock transaction. This combination values X AI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. He bought it for $44 billion. FYI, in case you missed it on the deal must said quote, today we officially take the step to combine the data models, compute distribution and. Maureen Wiley Clough (56:05.294) You Chad (56:18.815) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (56:19.534) Mm-hmm. A little laugh. Joel (56:27.804) talent in quote, easy peasy, right Chad? What are your thoughts on the X X AI Twitter deal? Chad (56:36.16) I'm gonna go with Alex Murphy's thought so friend of the show Alex Murphy one of the smartest guys in the game CEO over at jobs, and he writes here's the math Elon bought Twitter for 44 billion Elon drove the value of Twitter down to 1 billion by making it into a dumpster fire Elon contributed the domain x.com to Twitter Elon sold X to his own company. He's selling this to himself Maureen Wiley Clough (56:55.47) You Chad (57:05.236) for $33 billion on an inside deal that does not represent a proper valuation in any way whatsoever. Netnet X's sale marks that the x.com domain as worth $32 billion and this is the largest domain sale in history. Thanks Alex. Thanks Alex. I love that. I love that. Maureen Wiley Clough (57:25.454) Ooh, Jesus, so loud. my God, so loud. Apparently I need to, yeah, this is intense. This is intense. Joel (57:32.188) Can we get your mic set up correctly? Chad (57:34.538) You Joel (57:37.786) You got the Lounge Singer mic today that's going in and out for us. You got the AirPods. Geez, this is amateur hour. What are your thoughts, Mo? Maureen Wiley Clough (57:42.546) know, reporting live. Yeah. I know, it's really bad. I mean, I don't think about X because I hate it and I will never actually refer to it as anything other than Twitter because that feels just like the slightest transgression than I can do against Elon, my favorite guy. Listen. How many AI platforms are there now? just like, this is going to be, I wonder who's going to win because it's going to be a commodity at the end of the day. And I'm just exhausted. Do I have to go try another one out? Like, seriously. But yeah, I mean, whatever. Elon sucks. I'm so not a fan. He blows. Next story. That's how I feel. Joel (58:27.42) Wow. Chad (58:28.288) What if you're an XAI investor though? What if you're an XAI investor, you put your money into XAI and then he goes and spends that money or shares on a dumpster fire? Maureen Wiley Clough (58:33.389) Ahem. Joel (58:37.692) Dude, if you put your money in Elon, buyer beware, buyer beware. Like, yeah, I mean, I have no sympathy for the banks and the investors that put money in him. They get what they deserve. But even when he loses, he still wins big. Look, this, his, Maureen Wiley Clough (58:38.688) on Twitter, I'd probably be pretty bummed. Chad (58:42.922) Woo. Maureen Wiley Clough (58:42.926) You get what's coming. You get what's coming to you. Chad (58:47.569) Good point. Good point. Jesus. Chad (58:55.527) Eh. Maureen Wiley Clough (58:55.542) You reap what you sow. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:00.544) It's really annoying how that's true. Joel (59:05.104) His 300 or so million in the Trump campaign is going to go down as one of the best investments, probably ever. mean, what he has been able to gain, he will not be investigated for this deal. The feds aren't coming. It's clean. No one's, no one's, no one's talking about, you know, breaking the law, trade violate anything like that. All right. So, so he bought, he bought kind of a free, he bought kind of a free pass to do this. Tesla. Chad (59:08.032) Mm. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:12.718) gross. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:16.952) Yeah, you're totally right. Chad (59:18.132) no. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:20.974) All right, pay to play, baby. Chad (59:25.791) self-dealing. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:26.934) It's, how is this legal? It's... Chad (59:31.328) Mm-hmm. Joel (59:33.53) not that this was on purpose, but Tesla is the most American car on the market. So Tesla can win big. The tariff system could be a big win for Tesla. think similar to the deal question, think he needs to step down similar to how he did at Twitter. I mean, he's still in charge, but at least optically, he's not in charge. Somebody else needs to be in charge of Tesla. Chad (59:39.007) Mm-hmm. Maureen Wiley Clough (59:40.782) That's depressing. What does that say about America? Chad (59:58.932) Mm-hmm. Joel (01:00:01.648) He needs to go work on AI stuff or launch rockets. because I think, I think Tesla could be a big winner in this. Grok, you know, I agree like the AI thing who wins in that, who doesn't, is kind of a question, but I mean, this guy, this guy kind of, everyone thought he was done when he dropped 44 billion on Twitter and it looks like he might have the last laugh out of all this. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:00:16.64) I'm tired, man. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:00:24.64) Mm-mm. He is not done. Well, when you have however many billion dollars, 300 billion dollars, you can do whatever you want is the deal. Joel (01:00:33.135) Yeah, the dude. Chad (01:00:33.312) How do think he's gonna get the last laugh though? Because it's still a dumpster fire. There's no difference. Joel (01:00:37.338) Well, he's not going to, Twitter's not going to kill him. Tesla might come out of the ashes with the tariffs. mean, X is going to get big contracts from the government. And if we do go to war, guess who's going to make a lot of stuff that we used to fight the enemy, maybe Tesla and Elon's companies. I don't know. Chad (01:00:55.84) Nah, I don't see that. I do see, I think it's interesting though, because people who can't afford to buy a Tesla today, doesn't matter. The tariffs aren't going to make them able to buy Teslas tomorrow. And I remember growing up in a very depressed area in very industrial Ohio, manufacturing was leaving. I didn't know anybody who owned a new car. We had nothing but used cars. I mean, that's all it was. It's all it ever was. It's all I ever remembered. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:00:58.807) Damn it. Chad (01:01:26.028) so yeah, to think that Tesla is going to, to benefit from new car sales off of this. I don't see it. I don't see it. I mean, we will see, we do see that they're dropping huge in, in, Europe. Are they going to be able to make that up here? Again, unless they drop to about half the price so that normal working fucking people can buy their cars. Sorry. Have a nice day. Joel (01:01:48.422) Yeah. I mean, it looks like BYD is going to take over the rest of the world anyway. So if Tesla is like, we're going to lose anyway to BYD, at least we can nail down the American market. I don't know. I don't know. Like most of our disagreements, Chad, time will tell. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:01:49.39) I was like, none of us are gonna have any money. Chad (01:02:00.958) Maybe, Chad (01:02:07.808) And I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying just from my experience, I remember growing up when people couldn't afford new cars just because you throw tariffs on something. Joel (01:02:15.388) Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean people didn't buy cars. You just lived in the hood. Yeah. mean, know, Mo bought new cars. She's a new car kind of gal. She's a new car kind of mean, mine was a Ford Escort. Mine was a Ford Escort, but it was still kind of new. Chad (01:02:19.456) Use cars. Use cars. I mean, was use cars. But yeah, anyway. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:02:27.256) all the time since I was a child, yeah. My trust. Chad (01:02:30.521) Hahaha Chad (01:02:36.212) Yeah, not a Tesla. Anyway. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:02:37.812) Use cars all the way, Never. Joel (01:02:40.636) All right, let's go to tick. Let's go to tick tock. Shall we let's go to tick tock. This is, this is getting fun. All right. Tick tock faces a potential us ban. Stop me if you've heard this one before by April 5th, unless bite dance sells its us operations to a non Chinese buyer. Per a 2024 law upheld by the Supreme court this week, Amazon joined bidders like Oracle. And you're ready for this. Chad (01:02:43.06) Whoo! Maureen Wiley Clough (01:02:47.758) You Maureen Wiley Clough (01:02:54.766) Deja vu. Joel (01:03:09.02) Only fans. That's right. only fans in the game. Everybody only fans founder last minute push to acquire it. Get it. Push Trump who extended the deadline from January met with AIDS on April 2nd to review options, including a US based entity leasing leasing tick tocks algorithm, kind of like a home. No deal is confirmed and the app could shut down for 170 million users. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:03:11.554) We love talking about them. Joel (01:03:38.19) If the deadline passes though, Trump may just extend it again. What the hell? Chad, your thoughts on all the tech talk drama. Chad (01:03:46.048) Yeah, I don't think anybody's getting the algorithm by the way. I mean, I don't care if they say they want to lease it by it. That shit's not happening, but I'm, that's where I want to focus because I had a pretty intense discussion with a guy who is quote unquote in the know. Um, while we were at transform a couple of weeks ago, he said the tick tock algorithm just isn't that important. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:03:49.262) All Chad (01:04:06.014) Rather, it's the user base, the 170 million, because they won't leave the platform. And I contested, it was like, hey, look, if the algorithm is total shit, and it's not what the user is expecting, they will eject and find another platform, just like the Exodus from Twitter, right? So needless to say, we were in an impasse, he didn't agree, I didn't agree. So I asked both of you, does the algorithm have worth, or is it purely the amassed Maureen Wiley Clough (01:04:19.864) Mm. Chad (01:04:35.501) user base because they won't leave even if the algorithm is shit. What are your thoughts? Maureen Wiley Clough (01:04:41.358) I think both matter tremendously. mean, that algorithm is serving up gazillions of dollars, right? Like they're putting products in the hands of people who want it. They know what you need before you know you need it. It is crack. You're absolutely right. And it's something that, you know, they've obviously figured out how to fine tune really beautifully. I don't know what some of my For You page says about me. I don't think it's particularly good. like, why am I seeing this? This is terrifying. Chad (01:04:52.104) It's like crack too. Chad (01:05:07.188) You Maureen Wiley Clough (01:05:09.87) they figure out that you have ADHD before you know you have ADHD. I'm like, why am I getting served all these ADHD reels? Holy shit. my God, how do you know? So I mean, yeah, it's definitely a contributing factor. think it definitely exacerbates it to say the least. I do think, I mean, they have half of America on TikTok. Obviously, that's valuable in and of itself. But that algorithm is something special, like no question. Chad (01:05:19.712) Probably because they're creating it. Chad (01:05:34.336) Mm-hmm. Joel (01:05:39.004) Chad, I think it's time for a history lesson. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:05:41.613) Heh. Chad (01:05:41.856) Finally! Jesus! Joel (01:05:44.932) I can remember being on stage in the mid 2000s and someone telling the audience that my space had 90 % of the social media market, which at the time was true. There was a little startup called Facebook that eventually took that down. had Instagram, we have Tik TOK, Snapchat for a hot minute. Like if we know anything, the kids are fickle. They're going to jump to the next cool thing and Maureen Wiley Clough (01:06:01.902) The Facebook. Joel (01:06:14.05) and continue, right? I've, read a story today that Tumblr is back for the young kids. They're back on Tumblr. So I would say the exact opposite. Like the algorithm is the secret sauce. It's the dopamine. It's the hit that people can't get enough of and keep on the platform. like they're going to stay on Tik TOK because the algorithm and I've always said like, whoever buys this thing, good luck. because Maureen Wiley Clough (01:06:18.414) I saw that too. Chad (01:06:18.634) Jesus. Chad (01:06:27.572) That's what I Joel (01:06:39.856) Good luck with the algorithm. Good luck with like keeping it cool and what people like, because China isn't going to give up the algorithm. In fact, there's a good, there's a good chance that China just says, fuck you to the whole thing. And like pulls tech talk out of the U S just to stick it to us for the tariffs. Right. So, Amazon makes sense. Cause you can sell shit. That's that's, that does make sense to me. And the, the shopping experience on tech talk is pretty good. And if the, Amazon could just replace that shopping thing with their shit. Chad (01:06:46.464) Mm-mm. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:06:46.936) Mm-mm. Chad (01:06:49.898) Yeah. Yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:06:49.902) Absolutely true. Yeah, I think that's a very likely outcome. Chad (01:06:54.078) Yeah? Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:00.046) Mm. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:06.094) true. Joel (01:07:08.912) That makes sense. The only fans guy, the Kevin O'Leary thing, like, Mark Cuban, none of that makes sense. Really. Lease China's not going to lease it to us because then we'll just steal it. Like they do our IP, right there. They know how the game works. They're not going to be like, live in the house for a month. And then we'll move you out. But in the whole time you've, you've gotten the whole blueprint for the house and everything. So yeah, I just, this is fun. I think the more, more likely thing is Trump just says like, Hey, let's just kick the. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:15.566) Yeah. Chad (01:07:22.654) Yeah, exactly. Yes. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:23.34) Yeah, that's true. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:31.672) Totally. Joel (01:07:38.054) kick the can down the road a little bit longer because I'm huge on Tik TOK. almost frankly, as huge as, my dad jokes have been recently Chad. Chad (01:07:47.023) good God. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:07:47.72) boy, here we go. All right. Joel (01:07:51.632) That's right. Well, Easter, Easter's right around the corner, kids. So I thought I'd have a little Easter, Easter influenced dad Joe today. What's the difference between Jesus and a hooker? What's the difference between Jesus and a hooker? Maureen Wiley Clough (01:08:02.99) boy. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:08:10.894) Got nothing. Joel (01:08:11.792) I love the thought processing. Give up, Chad. Jesus, Jesus and a hooker. The difference is the look they give while you're nailing them. That's right, the difference between Jesus and a hooker. It's the end of the world as we know it I feel fine, everybody. We out. Chad (01:08:14.216) Mmm. Yeah, things everything is going through my brain. I do not want to say on a mic go ahead Maureen Wiley Clough (01:08:14.702) Hahaha Maureen Wiley Clough (01:08:19.896) Mmm, yeah. Maureen Wiley Clough (01:08:26.126) oof, oof, yee, yeah. Chad (01:08:29.79) hell for that one. That's a one. We out.